Archive for the ‘Shround of Turin’ Category

Originally planned for 2025, the current pope has made it happen earlier: The exhibition of the Shroud of Turin, now on display in Turin since yesterday. The ECSO web pages feature an article about the three main reasons why the Shroud is the work of an artist of the 14th century.

Unfortunately, the media has been carried away by the loud voices of the proponents of the burial cloth thesis. In contrast to the scientific evidence, with one exception, the proponents appeal to ignorance and vague similarities in addition to finding creative excuses to explain away the scientific evidence. Here are some of the main arguments of Shroud enthusiasts:

Blood on the Shroud. Wrong. Most refer here to the publications of John Heller and Alan Adler and is the only really scientific argument put forward. The problem with this is that the tests that showed positive for blood would also have had positive results for the collagen tempera. The test was thus simply not specific enough for blood. This contrasts with the investigations done by Walter McCrone, which were specific, and positive for tempera, but not for blood.

Palestinian pollen on the Shroud. This goes back to Max Frei, who had also declared the forged Hitler diary to be authentic. The pollen clearly show as fresh under the microscope, and do not show the kind of aging one would expect after 2000 years.

Imprints of Roman coins and Palestinian flowers on the Shroud. Very imaginative. Such pictures compare to patterns we appear to detect in clouds or tapestry and spring from our imagination and tendency to detect patterns even if there is nothing there.

There is evidence of an earlier history of the Shroud, such as the Codex Pray. Pure speculation. None of these stand up to a critical scrutiny and them being earlier appearances of the Shroud can be dismissed. Among the large number of paintings of Christ and the Crucifixion there are bound to be some that show some amount of resemblance. The Codex Pray depiction appears to show a box or coffin with a stiff lid, not a cloth at all.

The Details of the Shroud confirm reports in the Gospels. Some of the details of the crucifixion do coincide with the narration of the Gospels. However, this depends on which part of which Gospel is taken, as much of the details are in contradiction with each other. For example, details on the Shroud do correspond to details of the Gospel of John, but this Gospel does not talk of a single burial cloth, but rather of “strips of linen” (New International Verson of the Bible) or “linen clothes” (King James Version). And one should also consider that an artist of the 14th century would probably have used material available to him, such as the Gospels or other paintings as inspiration for his piece of art.

The Shroud cannot be the work of an Artist. Wrong again. There have been claims for a long time that the Shroud cannot be the work of an medieval artist. However, this has been shown to be wrong a number of times. Using material, such as red ochre, that had been a common pigment since around the 9th century, Walter Sanford and Joe Nickel had created quite similar images in the early 80s. Nickell had used a rubbing technique with red ochre on linen cloth spanned over a bas relief, which was also published in the Skeptical Inquirer (Vol. VI/3, Spring 1982) featuring the Shroud replication on the cover page. Last year, chemist Luigi Garlaschelli (CICAP) created a whole body image of the Shroud. which was artificially aged to show the additional yellowing coloration due to age. Though it will never be possible to have a 100% replica – after all, no one can completely “copy” a van Gogh – these replicas have shown that an artist using techniques and material available to him, could well have produced an original piece of work, such as the Shroud of Turin. It is of course not a forgery , which would require another original to work with, but rather a creative artist’s original of the 14th century. As for the pro-Shroud proponents, none have produced anything even remotely plausible as to how such an image could have formed without human intervention in a burial situation.

The Shroud shows a photographic Negativ, something unknown to medieval artists. The Shroud is not a negative. If it all, it is  a pseudo-negative as one obtains when rubbing the back end of a pencil on paper stretched over a coin. The Shroud image is darker where the hair is, as for a rubbing over a bas relief, but not the negative of a young man’s dark hair, the negative of which should be white or lighter coloured. Being dark in the hair image regions, the Shroud as a real negative would be showing a white or blonde person, both quite unlikely for a person from the Middle East. If it were a real negative, the Shroud should have been light, not dark in the hair regions.

Concluding, even skeptics can admire the Shroud as a piece of art of a creative artist. And the artist himself would have had every right to be proud of his work: It has remained a controversial topic of very high profile for more than 600 years now, keeping plenty of people busy. I wonder what he would have thought of the millions queueing up to watch its exhibition in the 21st century.