. . . yes, the UAP concept broadens our focus and leads to questions about the factual adequacy and explanatory power of the conventional wisdom of modern, often hyperskeptical radically secularist worldview.
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| An AI constructed image of the man in the Shroud |
The Shroud itself is apparently a burial cloth for a crucified man, with a crown of thorns and a spear thrust in the side, who had been cruelly beaten before his crucifixion; which bears the image of the victim. Up until 1898, it would have been easy to dismiss it as just one of many religious relics of dubious provenance.
But, in that year, a photograph of the face was taken, and to the shock of the photographer, the expected "negative" image turned out to in fact be a positive, i.e. the shroud itself was a negative image.
Where, until photography was invented in C19, that was not a recognised concept. As well, the shroud shows a proper anatomical knowledge of crucifixion, i.e. the wrist is where the nails were likely to go through, as the palms are too weak to support the victim, and this would tend to lock the thumb in, as is shown in the image of the hand, due to cutting or damaging a nerve . . . itself a further source of pain. Hence, the visible four fingers with a "missing" thumb is a subtle sign of authenticity -- no medieval forger of a "relic" would have had that sort of anatomical knowledge.
Worse, when the STURP project investigated the relic in 1978, it was recognised that three dimensional information was embedded in the image; something that simply does not happen with a conventional photograph. (Where, manifestly, linen is not a known photographic, light-sensitive, image-forming material, nor is there silver in the material, as would be required.)
And much more, e.g. dust and pollen consistent with being in the ME near Jerusalem in the Spring time, etc.
Moreover, apart from blood deposits (Type AB), the image is not formed from dyes or pigments, but instead a ~ 200 nm surface layer of linen fibres has been altered (seemingly by radiation), forming the negative by means unknown but speculated to be an immense, short pulse of radiation. Also, the blood-stained areas do not have an image, showing that the blood was deposited first.
Likewise, the blood (which retains a reddish hue) shows breakdown products consistent with horrific trauma that reasonably would be associated with crucifixion. Again, beyond the credible knowledge base of a medieval forger.
So,
bottomline on the shroud: at minimum, we likely have here an artifact that allows us to better understand crucifixion. If credibly authentic as burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, we have here direct artifactual, archaeological evidence of Jesus and his crucifixion.
More:
Where, this last video documents a more recent, C21 investigation of the shroud. In 2015, as part of a further investigation, sterile vacuums were used to collect dust and debris embedded deep in the shroud. Mitochondrial human DNA (which passes in the matrilineal line) was analysed. It gives a pattern of hits pointing to the middle east/Levant region, North East Africa (Egypt, Ethiopia), Europe, but also INDIA and CHINA. This is consistent with the traditional narrative of its journey, which of course has long been dismissed by skeptical scholarship. Namely, Jerusalem > Edessa > Constantinople > Europe. Where, Edessa is a known node on the Silk Road trade route that tied Asia to Europe. Also, it has been suggested that possibly the original cloth was woven in India and traded as a prestige cloth. However, even deeper pause was given by pollen samples: 58 species, and again following the traditional route. But also, the dominant pollen source, nearly half of the sample, was a thorny thistle known from the Jerusalem-Jericho area. Significantly, this was heavily concentrated in the head and shoulder region of the shroud image. Precisely where a "crown of thorns" would have been, and it is further suggestive of springtime, the time of Passover. A second strongly represented pollen type came from another plant native to Judaea and the Sinai. 2017 investigations of the blood stain material also came from type AB blood, not pigment, and had breakdown products associated with extreme trauma: prolonged torture, dehydration and muscle destruction. This suggests not only crucifixion but a prior brutal beating that itself was mortally wounding; consistent with the observable marks of a whip having thongs loaded with metal balls, making over 100 strokes. The red colour of the blood is said to be compatible with liver release of bilirubin, a further mark of catastrophic trauma.
Nor, can the notorious 1988 C-14 radiocarbon dating settle the matter as a medieval forgery (as I recall seeing roundly declared in a CXC Physics Textbook, as a triumph of Science). As, it comes from a section that seems to have been repaired and rewoven, apparently including cotton fibres. (The Shroud proper, IIRC, is 3:1 Herringbone Twill, Linen. [Cf. Schwortz.])
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| The Pray Manuscript Shroud image, c. 1192 - 5 AD, which gives reason to doubt the 1988 dating (Cf. here) |
Relevant, too, is the 1192 - 5 Hungarian Pray Codex, which as was noted may well document the shroud well before the 1988 dating window:
the Hungarian Pray manuscript (or Codex) is dated 1192-95, or 65-68 years before 1260 the earliest possible radiocarbon date of the Shroud (and 130-133 years before the claimed middle date of 1325). Yet the Pray manuscript is obviously depicting the Shroud with its: 1. naked Jesus (otherwise unknown in the middle ages); 2. having his arms crossed in front; 3. hands with no thumbs; 4. about to be covered by a shroud with the same rare herringbone weave pattern; and 5. (the clincher) the Pray manuscript's shroud depicts the same pattern of burn holes [--> the L-pattern of "poker holes" . . . possibly, from censer coals spilling on the shroud] that are on the Shroud of Turin!
Sceptics said it was a hoax, possibly made to attract the profitable medieval pilgrimage business. If the "sceptics" were truly sceptical (and not just true believers in the Shroud's inauthenticity) they would realise that it would take far less than the Shroud to make money in the gullible middle ages . . .
So, while those committed to dismiss the shroud may cling to the C-14 dating as between 1260 and 1390, we have independent manuscript evidence that the shroud was known to a Hungarian source by 1192-5, over half a century before the proposed C-14 date range.
reasonable doubt issue: Taking the location problem for the dating sample, the cotton fibres confirming that this sample was likely a repaired region and the Pray manuscript together, then, we already have reason to consider that the C-14 dating fails to firmly establish the true age of the shroud.
Where, too, a linen decay study (cf. here) led to the observation,
"aging of linen fabrics can be estimated by means of the WAXS-dating method . . . . the WAXS-dating method [8] was applied to a sample of the Shroud, namely, a thread taken in the proximity of the 1988/radiocarbon area (the corner of the Shroud corresponding to the feet area of the frontal image, near the so-called Raes sample) . . . One-dimensional integrated WAXS data profiles were fully compatible with the analogous measurements on a linen sample whose established age, though radio-carbon method’s and historical-record’s dating, is 55–74 AD (siege of Masada, Israel), thereby also implying that the Shroud is about 2000 years old." ["Long-Term Temperature Effects on the Natural Linen Aging of the Turin Shroud," Liberato De Caro et al., Information 2022, 13(10), 458; https://doi.org/10.3390/info13100458 ]
Obviously, there will always be onward debates, but again:
remaining plausibility of ~ 2,000 year old date: the aging of linen applied to the shroud, together with the questions regarding the sample for C-14 dating, gives plausibility to preserving the option that its date is ~ 1,000+ years beyond the 1988 claim. The observed Pray manuscript from Hungary, further plausibly is a dated observation of the shroud 1192-5 AD, over half a century before the C-14 95% confidence dating window, 1260-1390; which reasonably may suffer a systematic error, due to the question of being a repair region including cotton fibres.
This Schwortz interview (shortly before his passing), is therefore also worth pondering, to see just how mysterious this object is and remains, long after the dismissive 1988 dating episode -- which he addresses i/l/o a 27 year later FOIA request. Evidently, the dating was not as well-founded as it should have been (perhaps, in part due to only one sample being taken, and that from a part that it looks was rewoven after the 1532 fire):
This, then, is already exceedingly in the UAP category.
But, there is more, the Sudarium of Oviedo, Spain, which -- suitably folded -- matches the blood stains for the face, including, AB blood type. (Which, is relatively rare and would not have been known to a medieval forger.)
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| Matching the Sudarium to the face, 1 |
In more detail:
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| More details of the match, drawn out, 2. Notice signs of bleeding and/or effusion from nose and mouth, signs of internal injury. BTW, the biochemical signatures in the blood and bodily fluid evidence show such a degree of trauma from the whipping, that the injuries at that point were already arguably mortal. |
The tickler?
The Sudarium -- in the context of Jn 20:7 "and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself" -- has been separately dated and is in continuous chain of custody from Spain, ~650AD, with a plausible narrative of rescue from the ME c. 614 - 657 AD. Which, of course are before the ~AD 700 C-14 date cited by Wikipedia etc. Moreover, this is far outside the suggested window of the 1988 C-14 date.
Further to this a study of the suggested face cloth, points to how:
Once the man had died, the corpse stayed in a vertical position for around one hour, and the right arm was raised with the head bent 70 degrees forwards and 20 degrees to the right . . . If the man of the Oviedo Sudarium was hanging by the right arm only, then the rest of the body, especially the head, would be relatively far from this arm, hanging to the left. This position is incompatible with that of the head that the cloth wrapped. It is therefore easy to deduce that the body was hanging by both arms. But if the body was hanging like this, without support for the feet, the man would have died in 15 or 20 minutes, and there would not have been enough time to generate the amount of liquid necessary to form the stains visible on the cloth. If the body were hanging with both arms above the head, then the head would have been leaning forwards and not to the right. So the only position compatible with the formation of the stains on the Oviedo cloth is both arms outstretched above the head and the feet in such a position as to make breathing very difficult, i.e. a position totally compatible with crucifixion. We can say that the man was wounded first (blood on the head, shoulders and back) and then "crucified". [RECENT HISTORICAL INVESTIGATIONS ON THE SUDARIUM OF OVIEDO By Mark Guscin, 1999]
In short, a: the shroud and the sudarium plausibly belong together, b: from the body of a crucified man executed over the course of hours by that barbaric form of slow hanging, c: who had been mockingly crowned with a crown of thorns, and d: who had been first brutally whipped to the point of already being in dying condition before e: being nailed in an anatomically accurate part of the hands (the wrist), and beaten about the face, f: in the spring, near Jerusalem; and g: who had fallen while carrying the cross beam. The Shroud's image h: is a photographic negative which further records 3-D information and even some X-ray information; perhaps i: coming from a burst of radiation after his burial. Some suggest, j: coins over the eyes consistent with small change coinage for Judaea c 30 AD, Judaea. Where, k: despite the C-14 dating from what seems to have been a repaired region, l: aging of the linen cloth points to victim was crucified at a time similar to the siege of Masada, i.e. C1 AD. These materials m: were preserved and carried on diverse paths, leading to Edessa, Constantinople, possibly Athens, Hungary and France then Italy for the one, and through Egypt and North Africa to Spain for the other. In addition, n: the traditional images and paintings of Jesus of Nazareth, are close to what could plausibly come from artists seeing the face on the shroud.
So, where does all of this sit?
- Is this "proof beyond all dispute" that this is Jesus' burial cloth, complete with markers of a radiative event connected to his resurrection?
- Does this then "prove" the Gospel narratives to similar absolute degree?
- (And if they fail such utter demonstration, can we then dismiss the lot as "no evidence" on whatever convenient objection or explaining away?)
No.
No, to all three, in fact.
Though, were this almost any other suggested individual, a fairly obvious conclusion would have been drawn.
But that is, in a perverse way, just the point.
For, artifacts and history, witnesses and record CANNOT prove beyond "all dispute." Instead, responsible due warrant and right reason would recognise that such evidence can only at best show to moral certainty. And the point of moral certainty would be that it would be irresponsible to act as though a claim with such a degree of evidence is false, on matters of grave weight.
In short, one of our points here, is to challenge our attitude to evidence and tendency to selective hyperskepticism.
Where, too, the real point of this post in the ESB series emerges.
For, we have here yet more evidence, that our conventional wisdom is too narrow and needs to be reassessed. Perhaps, starting with structural reason to believe in God, a reconsideration of the worldviews issue and with reason to examine the case of Jesus of Nazareth with fresh, open minds. END
PS: For me, though obviously I do not rely on this artifact as base warrant for my "reason for the Faith I have," this case is sufficient to give pause, including not only on how credulous we can be, but also that that credulousness can all too easily extend to a commitment to dismissiveness and to "gold standard" high prestige institutions and their authoritative pronouncements -- let's say it out loud: "the settled Scientific consensus . . ." -- on all too many issues of concern.
PPS: The above, is about how we construct or acknowledge warrant in our civilisation, making a call for reform. That is valid, but this morning I was strongly reminded that we also need to draw out the Isa 53 context and healing power of Jesus' stripes. Accordingly, let me excerpt two WA posts I have shared across a remnant-reformation circle:
<<Let us refocus:
Is 53:4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows . . .
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned-every one-to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He is risen with healing in his wings, and is capable of healing our inner pain and bringing our broken inner selves back into healthy wholeness. Peace, with God, peace within, peace with others, peace with the world.>>
Then,
<<The shroud and sudarium illustrate and just possibly may document [--> who else, historically was crucified with a mocking crown of thorns? ANS: Nil] what he went through bodily, the scriptures document his agony of soul, from which we have restoration, salvation, deliverance, healing. God be with you.>>
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