The Pray Codex offers no “evidence that the shroud may predate the radiocarbon date.” It only dates “to the late 12th to early 13th centuries” and an illustration on it only “shows generic similarities with the Shroud of Turin”. It might well have inspired the shroud’s forgery however.
“The same kind of coloration” is vague to the point of uselessness – many very different things have the same kind of coloration. That is why chemical analysis of the (dis)coloration is far more probative than this laser dog-and-pony show.
The claim has been made that the shroud is “the most studied artifact in human history”.
Given the paucity of rigorous evidence obtained directly from the shroud, this grandiloquent claim is demonstrably false!
Everything else, including Lazzaro’s “elegant” experiment, is mere speculation – and it would seem that it would be more accurate to label the shroud:
The most speculated-about artifact in human history
Not true. It is a matter of fact that the Pray Codex figures among the list of evidences that support the authenticity thesis. As for the idea that it may have inspired the forger, it doesn’t resist scrutiny.
It happens that Lazzaro, using Raman spectroscopy, has performed chemical analysis of the (dis)coloration produced by laser UV irradiation! I invite you to watch the video that Rum has linked to at 268 for hopefully it should temper your quite incomprehensible beef against Lazzaro’s experiments.
I know the meaning of the word evidence. The codex is evidence.
But it’s not evidence that the shroud predates the radiocarbon date, unless you can show that the codex was based on the shroud rather than the other way around. Which you haven’t done and almost certainly can’t do.
And if you can show that the codex must be based on the shroud rather than the other way around, however you do that is likely to be better evidence of the shroud’s earlier date than anything that can be provided by its resemblance to the codex - so the codex becomes irrelevant.
Meanwhile, it’s clear from your posts here and in other threads, especially your frequent invocations of credentials rather than data, that you don’t know the meaning of the word “evidence”.
Well, in part, yes, for it seems that aragonite is less rare than I thought. My mistake.
The first part of my question remains though.
Now regarding the soil traces from the foot region, there is something to add, and it is this: When these soil traces were analyzed for their composition with a scanning ion microprobe at Chicago’s Enrico Fermi Institute, the graph of the results almost completely matched the graph read-out for the aragonite soil of Jerusalem. This was literally pattern matching pattern. The question is then: what is the probability that aragonites from distant regions display such level of pattern matching? I don’t know the answer but maybe someone here knows.
The answer would be to compare aragonite dust from a variety of locations to see if samples can be located to specific deposits. If they can’t, end of story. If samples can be reliably assigned to areas, then further investigation may prove fruitful.
My next question is who established aragonite-containing dust occurred at specific points on the image and not at others.
Did not someone use scotch tape to pick up dust? How was this done in a way that demonstrated aragonite dust was only at specific points and not elsewhere?
That somebody (an authenticity enthusiast?) placed this codex on some list does not demonstrate that the shroud is authentic, nor does “generic similarities” in a document written over a thousand years after the crucifixion. You have provided no evidence linking the codex to direct knowledge either of the shroud or of the crucifixion.
So you assert, without evidence. But in any case, the codex need not be antecedenal to the shroud, they could both derive from medieval assumptions about Jesus’ burial.
So what?
Without evidence that the shroud image was caused by “UV irradiation” then “chemical analysis of the (dis)coloration produced by laser UV irradiation”, rather than (further) chemical analysis of the shroud itself, is utterly irrelevant!
First you determine the chemical composition of the (dis)coloration. Only then does it make any sense to attempt to try to reproduce it.
As far as I can ascertain, Lazzaro has never analysed the shroud itself. Until he, or somebody else, has done so, and ascertained the chemical composition of the image on it, Lazzaro’s “elegant” (wonderful, superlative, blah blah blah) experiment is nothing more than wild speculation!
For evidence that the Pray codex was based on the shroud:
Now, regarding the other way around, ie., the possibility that the shroud was based on the Pray codex, the so-called poker holes preclude it.
Indeed, there are 4 sets of burn marks arranged symmetrically on the shroud (the so-called poker holes). If the Shroud is folded in four, once lengthwise and once widthwise, all four sets of holes superimpose upon one another in the centre of the folded cloth, meaning that the burn marks were produced simultaneously on the folded cloth. From this, the idea that a forger would have sought to needlessly reproduce an insignificant detail of a painting taken from an obscure manuscript in such a complicated and weird way is absurd.
Some yahoo, on yet another ‘we really reallyreally want to believe that the shroud is authentic’ website, plucking assumed probabilities out of their arse is not evidence!
For the probabilities to be even remotely credible, they’d need to be based on an analysis of artwork, on a similar theme, from a similar localities and time-periods.
Baring such an analysis we simply have no way of knowing if the features in question were common, uncommon-but-not-that-uncommon, or (nearly) unique in such artwork. Lacking such knowledge, this “probabilistic approach” is simply vacuous hand-waving – something that seems all too common in Shroud Apologetics.
That’s not evidence, it’s a dubious probability calculation. Even if correct, it only shows that the two images are related, not which came first.
So it is not evidence that the shroud predates the radiocarbon date, and you don’t know the meaning of the word ‘evidence’.
You’re arguing that the shroud cannot be based on the Pray codex because they are too similar. That’s ridiculous.
You also haven’t realised that your ‘argument’ works both ways - it would mean that the Pray codex can’t be based on the shroud, because the idea that an artist would have sought to needlessly reproduce an insignificant detail of the shroud is just as absurd (or not).
But… but… but… they’re based on Tetris! Surely that’s credible?
as someone on the forum once pointed that the chance for four dots to have proper L shape (instead of single line, 2×2 box, ‘T’, or 2×2 with one row translated by 1 element –recall yourself Tetris) in any orientation are 1/5
A bayesian analysis of the situation shows that you are wrong.
Indeed, let’s called A the probability that the painting of the Pray codex display the six elements, H1 the hypothesis that the Pray codex was based on the shroud and H2 the hypothesis that the shroud was based on the Pray codex.
We have P(A/H1) >> P(A/H2).
This result provides support for H1 over H2.
experiment, is mere speculation – and it would seem that it would be more accurate to label the shroud: