Yes, I can recall no evidence from that era that long sheets of linen were ever used. They would have been impractical and extremely expensive compared to smaller rectangles of linen.
Of course, if your plan is to display the alleged anterior and posterior images of Jesus at a profitable relic shrine, you wouldn’t spare that extra expense. And one long “shroud” would make a more convenient exhibit than the multiple winding sheets that the New Testament text describes (and first century Palestine customarily used.)
An aspect of the Shroud of Turin which has always struck me as clearly wrong for first century Palestine—but very much in harmony with European imaginations of Jesus many centuries later—is the hair length.
Yes, the hair is far too long. I’ve heard a few Shroud defenders claim “Oh, that was because Jesus had taken the Nazirite vow” [and therefore wouldn’t have cut his hair.] But it is an ad hoc explanation which I’ve never seen promoted except in the dense of the Shroud.
Of course, at the time when the Shroud was created, men’s hair of that length was particularly common among royalty and the upper class. It was a symbol of importance and nobility. So I have no doubt that an artist of that time would have assigned that hair length to Jesus with hardly a thought.
The man in the image also appears to have disproportionately long “ape arms.” I have not found the various explanations for this obvious problem at all convincing. But I can imagine that an artist might assume that the genitals of the man in the image must be covered in a dignified way. And that’s how he chose to address that concern.
[I haven’t read this entire thread but I wouldn’t be surprised if these points have already been made.]
A simple test. Try adopting the pose depicted on the shroud. My arms aren’t long enough unless I keep my elbows raised. Perhaps Bill would like to try.
This has always been one of the major strikes against the shroud. We have not the slightest idea what Jesus of Nazareth looked like. There are no images anywhere near contemporary with the apostles. When images finally make an appearance in the Roman world, they are so obviously based on classical depictions of Zeus that without context archaeologists cannot really tell the intended subject. And wouldn’t you just know it; surprise, surprise, the shroud displays exactly the traditional depiction of euro Jesus which had become established by the middle ages.
The carbon dating is definitive proof against the authenticity of the shroud, but even without that, sound judgement would reject it as fake on historical grounds.
The 65AD-575AD interval isn’t a confidence level.[1]
It’s a upper and lower bound based on the age of two other samples. If the WAXS method works, the shroud is younger than the sample dated to 65AD and older than the sample dated to 575AD.
The 65AD date is from a sample from Masada, which is dated based on historical information rather than carbon-dating or some other measurement technique. While it’s possible that the inhabitants of Masada wrapped dead bodies in 40-year-old linen, it doesn’t seem likely,.
So if the WAXS method works, either the shroud isn’t old enough to be genuine, or you have to explain why the Masada sample is much older than expected. Given the difference in the plot lines, the cloth would have to be older than the Masada settlement where it was found.
And if the WAXS method doesn’t work, then it doesn’t cast doubt on the C14 dating.
There are only really three options:
WAXS dating works, the Masada cloth is from 65AD, the shroud isn’t old enough to be genuine.
WAXS dating works, but the Masada cloth is from much earlier than 65AD. The shroud could still be genuine (if you can justify the Masada cloth being older and overcome all the other problems as well).
WAXS dating doesn’t work, so cannot provide a date for the shroud.
Based on my reading of the various papers, I’ll go with option 3. If WAXS dating becomes more rigorous and useful, I may switch to option 1.
You might prefer option 2, but if so you need to justify the Masada cloth being older than Masada itself.
Good luck.
If it was a confidence level, the conclusion should be that the shroud could be from earlier than 65AD, but probably isn’t. ↩︎
It seems to me that presuming the shroud to be that of Christ’s is a stretch in any case.
The best we can probably expect is to find reliable dating methods and/or quite strong provenance that place the origin in the correct era. Blood typing doesn’t really help, either to demonstrate the connection to Christ or the age of the shroud. We do know that the shroud has been handled, partly burnt and frequently touched, cleaned and ‘treated’ numerous times. The result is massive contamination and chemical alteration (whether it be heat, smoke, exposure, or manual adulteration) that makes it very hard to definitively track the handling, movement and biological debris associated.
Carbon dating of the fibers is the gold standard and it appears most scientists accept the numbers obtained for the fragments that the Vatican allowed to be tested. There is the ‘patch hypothesis’ to try to explain away the results but the validity of that counter explanation is not well demonstrated. If that were the case, it seems that the ‘repairs’ would have been amazingly precise and hard to find.
So does the shroud date back to the first century AD? I wouldn’t bet on that. Is the shroud from after the first millennium AD? At least part of seems to be. So, is the main part of the shroud from the first century? I don’t know.
I do know that we could readily resolve this question if the Vatican allowed further sampling from different locations around the shroud for radio-isotope dating. But they haven’t and don’t seem inclined to. The Vatican also makes no commitment about the age or the identity of the image on the shroud. I’ll side with the Vatican on that assessment while I’ll fault them for failing to release more samples.
And in any case, be assured that if the carbon dating of additional samples still points to >1000 AD, we’ll still have people denying that figure with others claiming that the divine emanation / radiation that created the image also altered carbon nuclei.
BTW - All this is predicted by Ironic Designer Theory, which insists that the Ironic Designer will always create conditions such that its existence or non-existence remains unproveable.
I’m not seeing the logic here. Let’s assume that, against all odds, it is demonstrated that this piece of cloth is of the correct age and was actually used to wrap the body of Jesus of Nazareth.
Please explain how, from this, you conclude that the cloth was found in Jesus’s tomb, but his body was missing.
Sorry, what? In 1978 they were trying to rule out that the Shroud of Turin had been created by extraterrestrials?
Oh, I see. You are saying they demonstrated it was not painted. That is not what at least one member of the team (the one with the most expertise to determine this) concluded:
Would the resurrected Jesus have left the tomb naked? Surely not. Unless he was somehow resurrected elsewhere, it’d be natural for him to have taken his burial cloths with him.
That reminds me of remarks made by New Testament scholar and historian Dale Allison, who believes in the resurrection but not as a literal bodily resurrection. He asked questions like “Where was Jesus after he rose from the dead? Was he hiding in the bushes? Did he have bowels?”
Your question is particularly germane since, according to the image on the “shroud”, Jesus was so modest that, even in death, he used his hands to cover his naughty bits, requiring that he adopt a posture that, as @AlanFox has pointed out, is practically impossible to maintain. But once Jesus was resurrected, he just strode out of his tomb proudly flaunting his genitals for all the world to see.
Right, makes perfect sense. Or, maybe he used this method:
From the Gospel of John Mary made the claim the body was missing. John 20:
“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
The STURP team that worked on the shroud ruled it out. From the website you linked to commenting on McCrone.
STURP: “Your data is [sic] misrepresented, your observations are highly questionable, and your conclusions are pontifications rather than scientific logic.”
For the Shroud skeptics the biggest challenge is explaining the image.
Not really, no. Jesus was not the last man on Earth ahead of a millennium of nothingness. The image could be an imprinting of literally anyone else. It is those who say it shows Jesus that have the burden to prove that it does. Considering how many other people existed at the time and since, that a cloth should capture someone’s likeness is, far from hard to explain, rather somewhat of a banality. And that’s without resorting to the possibility of it being just a paint job.
Though I appreciate you saying that this is the toughest challenge shroud skeptics have to face. If this is genuinely the biggest argument proponents have, there is really no debate left to be had.
Meanwhile, the challenge of showing (with data, as you prefer) how that cloth could possibly not be too young by well over a millennium is yet to be attempted.
In fact, the traditional depiction of Jesus, the one represented on the shroud, emerged between the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th and became established well before the Middle Ages. Note that the end of the 4th century coincides, surprise, surprise, with the time when the Shroud may have entered the city of Edesse.
Here is a photo of a late 7th-century Justinian gold penny depicting Christ. Multiple points of overlap with the face of the man in the Shroud have been identified by Dr. A. Whanger.
And here is a photo of the famous icon of Christ Pantocrator dating from the 6th century. According to Dr. A. Whanger, there are no less than 250 points of convergence with the face of the man in the Shroud.
That the story of Jesus’s body going missing from the tomb is true is the claim you are making.
Finding the cloth that covered the body when it was in the tomb does not, in any way, support the claim that the body vanished.
OK?
No, some members of the STURP team disagreed with his conclusions. But since chemical analysis was his area of expertise, and this expertise the reason he was included in the team, that does not amount to much. It just gives cause to question their objectivity.
Compare the credentials of those on the “Pro” side to the “Con”
The reaction to Dr. McCrone’s work on the shroud:
PRO
Dr. Ernst Martin, retired Director of the Basel, Switzerland Police Crime Lab: “You were the first to conclude (1980) that the Turin shroud is a fake. The carbon datings of 1988 show how right you were.”
Marigene Butler, Head, Art Conservation, Philadelphia Museum of Art: “I have always felt that your microscopical analyses of the organic and inorganic image materials are absolutely convincing….All of us here agree with your 14th century date for the ‘Shroud’ of Turin.”
Dr. Mary Virginia Orna, Chemistry, University of New Rochelle, N.Y.: “I am convinced it [the Shroud of Turin] is a medieval forgery…. Your evidence is conclusive.”
Linus Pauling: “I must say that I think you should not worry about the Catholic Church in relation to the Turin shroud. I had thought, in fact, that the matter had finally been settled. The objections to accepting the results of scientific studies are just ludicrous.”
CON
STURP: “Your data is [sic] misrepresented, your observations are highly questionable, and your conclusions are pontifications rather than scientific logic.”
The Church: “You are the one person to challenge the enduring mystery of the Shroud. The Turin Center of Sindonology [a.k.a. Catholic Church] accepts the challenge from you…. We are all in a challenging mood in Turin, having fought and won many a battle.”
Heller and Adler: “…demonstrated that McCrone’s claims for the presence of red paint were prematurely and erroneously made with insufficient data….After hurried and superficial evaluation, he rushed into print to charge that the shroud is a painted fake.”
Kersten and Gruber in “The Jesus Conspiracy”: “McCrone claimed that iron in the marks [Shroud image] was a clear indication of an iron oxide pigment. This theory from a man who had never seen the cloth itself [Not true. Dr. McCrone did see the Shroud in Turin in 1978] was decisively refuted by further tests.”
I will remind members that @Giltil’s first language is not English. That might explain the obvious error he makes here.
Sure. @RonSewell wrote, “the shroud displays exactly the traditional depiction of euro Jesus which had become established by the middle ages.” (My emphasis).
Your comment states that it was “established well before the Middle Ages” (again, my emphasis).
“Well before” is consistent with “by.” It does not contradict or diminish Ron’s point in the least.
Your suggestion that all these depictions of Jesus were based on the “shroud” image, meanwhile, is just typical of the sort of ridiculous fantasies supporters of the “shroud” are forced to concoct in order to maintain their beliefs. It is only to be expected that the forger of the “shroud” would have created an image that was consistent with the existing preconceptions of Jesus’s appearance
One has to wonder about how successful the shroud forgery would have been if the painter had done a face never before associated with Jesus. All that the likeness to already established art proves is that the forger was familiar with the culture he grew up in. Who in their right mind would paint an unfamiliar face?
A bald shaved man with asymmetrical facial features and a large scar across his left eye probably wouldn’t have made him any money. “Guys this is the true Jesus, I swear.”
When you Google the claims of “shroud” believers, you often get some very amusing results. To wit:
The urge for some fresh, independent means of dating the Shroud - the modus vivendi behind the late Fr. Filas’ coin hypothesis - has found unexpected expression in a new claim by Duke University psychiatrist Dr. Alan Whanger: that he has found signs of influence from the Shroud image on a relief sculpture of Zeus Kyrios, precisely dateable to AD. 31, found at Dura-Europos on the Euphrates. According to Whanger: “By using the polarized image overlay technique [see Newsletter No. 1], we compared the image of Zeus with the face image of the Shroud of Turin, and found a very good match of 79 points of congruence between the two. In a court of law 45 to 60 points of congruence are sufficient to establish the identity or same source of face images. Thus there is excellent evidence that the face image of Zeus Kyrios was based on that of the Shroud of Turin.”
That the face of Jesus should have been used within two years of the earliest likely date for the crucifixion as a model for a pagan statue of the king of the gods is in itself quite sufficient to put an intolerable strain on our credulity. But in any case what Dr. Whanger seems sadly to have overlooked is the fact that with little doubt the source of inspiration for Dura Europos’ Zeus Kyrios was the magnificent chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Zeus at Olympia, created by the famous Greek sculptor Phidias back in the fifth century BC., and hailed as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Although this statue no longer exists - along with several other notable ancient statues it was burnt in a fire at a palace in Constantinople in 462 AD. - it is known from several copies, such as the Boston Museum of Fine Arts marble Zeus found at Mylasa, Caria (see below).
As will be noted, this is even more like the Shroud face than Whanger’s Zeus Kyrios, and not without justification some art scholars have even suggested that it was this, the classical Zeus, which was the source of inspiration for the likeness of Jesus that has come down to us in art [see, for instance, J.D. Breckenridge, The Numismatic Iconography of Justinian II, The American Numismatic Society, New York, 1959, pp.56-59]. The real lesson is that in the most well-meaning way the points of congruence argument can be overplayed, and with respect to Dr. Whanger one can only hope, for the sake of human justice, that American courts of law do not take it quite so literally as Dr. Whanger’s statistics suggest…
