Chamblee54

‏@Flyswatter Why are people so gullible about the Shroud of Turin? It was solved as a hoax in 1988! The Unsolved Mystery Behind The Shroud Of Turin Still Has The Power To Captivate
@chamblee54 @Flyswatter shroud has a documented 800 yr history how did ancient forgers create this? it is more interesting as fraud than as reality
‏@Flyswatter @chamblee54 Well, we know from testing that the “blood stains” are actually red hematite tempera paint. Seems like a forgery to me!
@chamblee54 @Flyswatter this image existed in the 14th century it was in a fire which melted silver handles on the box the man does not have a navel
‏@Flyswatter @chamblee54 We do know, however, that if this was actually the imprint of a man, it would be an imprint of the whole head. You’d see ears.
@chamblee54 @Flyswatter most jesus worshipers don’t like to listen they enjoy the image of their hero without ears
If you hang around twitter for long, you will not have writers tackle. PG had a discussion about the Shroud of Turin. This is a good subject for a long winded ramble. It is either a miracle of faith, or a miracle of deception. The two are closely related.
In 1978 there was a lengthy article about the Shroud in, of all places, Rolling Stone. The author went through all the possibilities for the Shroud being a forgery. He came to the conclusion that it is real. There is a lovely quote.
“You have to believe in some fourteenth century steppenwolf privy to now lost alchemical formulae, who had a knowledge of the peculiar pathology of crucifixion and the ways in which it was misrepresented in Christian ar undiscovered until the thirties; who procured a cloth from Palestine, one that was once in southern Turkey … and who mysteriously if not miraculously contrived by no known method a negative image to appear encoded with 3-D information only a computer developed for interstellar image analysis could read. And this character would have to have a pretty dry sense of humor .. because all that ingenuity would not become apparent to anyone till 500 years later. It takes, in other words, more of an effort and a more tortured manipulation of the facts to disbelieve in the authenticity of the shroud than it does to accept it.”
The shroud has a documented history going to April 1349. On December 4, 1532, there was a fire. It melted silver on the storage box, and would have destroyed any pigments in use at the time.
On May 28, 1898, Secondo Pia, an Italian amateur photographer, took pictures of the Shroud. When he developed the images, he saw the negatives. The negative was a positive image of Jesus.
There is an enormous amount of information about the Shroud of Turin. There are indications that the bearded image of Jesus is taken from this document. There are historic indications that the Shroud existed in the seventh century.
When Jesus was crucified, three nails were used. Two went in his arms. There is a space between the bones in the wrist where the nails (really spikes, which were pulled out and reused) went in. If the nails had gone in the hands the weight of the body would have pulled the hands down. When you drive a spike into this spot, the nerve controlling the thumb is broken, and the thumb turns inward. There are no thumbs of the image of Jesus in the Shroud. ( There is not a navel either, which is another can of worms. And yes, there were no ears. One of the Youtube lectures has an explanation for that. A slack blogger can only remember so much.)
In 1988, a sample of the Shroud was submitted for radiocarbon 14 dating. This is a scientific procedure that indicates the age of an object. The test indicated that the garment was created 1260–1390 A.D. Since then, numerous problems have been found with the test. Many people believe the radiocarbon 14 test to be discredited.
Since reading the Rolling Stone article, PG has not known what to make of the Shroud. If it is real, then how did a disfigured corpse create this remarkable image? If it is fake, how did a fourteenth century artist create a negative image of remarkable detail? It is a matter where having to have a belief, one way or another, is not an appealing option. Maybe it is best to accept it as a mystery.
Since we are never going to have a definitive answer anyway, maybe we can allow one more hypothesis. Maybe the Shroud of Turin was created before the crucifixion. Maybe some Egyptian mystics created this image as an act of prophecy. Maybe this image foretold the crucifixion/resurrection story. It was taken to Jerusalem at the proper time, to be seeded with the local pollen. The Egyptians were capable of building giant pyramids, and other miracles that we cannot explain today. Maybe they could draw a 3-D image on linen, and deliver it to the burial site of the man depicted in time for the burial.
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.