Turin Shroud “is not a medieval forgery”

Shroud of Turin

Turin Shroud “is not a medieval forgery”. “The Turin Shroud is not a medieval forgery, as has long been claimed, but could in fact date from the time of Christ’s death, a new book claims.” Centuries-old mystery continues to be mysterious.

Bonfire of the Absurdities: After 35 year career writing software for IBM mainframes, am now self-employed contractor thinking of joining a union and striking for higher wages. Cured morbid fear of heights when I learned to look at them as lengths standing on end. Uncompromising in refusal to accept browser cookies. Amateur investor who has accumulated a small fortune in the market after starting out years ago with a large one. For recreation, I run, hike, kayak and play tennis but will not consider synchronized swimming under any circumstances.

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  • "And Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD counted him as righteous because of his faith." – Genesis 15:6 (New Living Translation) This was before the Law was even given.

    26After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”27Then He said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.”28Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”29Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” John 20:26-29 (New American Standard Bible)

    For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; Ephesians 2:8 (New American Standard Bible)

    I pray you all have a Blessed Resurrection Sunday.

    He Is Risen
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAuaSpJ7zGs

  • God leaves fingerprints behind everywhere. They are there not so much to convert unbelievers, but as a comfort to the believers so that as they are ridiculed and mocked for Jesus' sake, they can take strength from the knowledge that He is real, He is relevant and He DOES matter.

    • I agree. We must remember that after He Resurrected He chose to not go to the unbelievers and make His Resurrection known to them. He went to the believers and the believers alone and then commanded them to speak of it to others.

  • Not quite sure how this is a mystery. Since the issue of the age and other tests done on it have been exceptional and known for decades. If anything there was an history channel documentary a few years ago that also mentioned this and also show the results of myriad of tests done on this shroud since the beginning of the last century. I am not sure why the media doesn't seem to want to talk about the VERY MANY tests this one shroud has gone through and speak about the entirety of the tests and the results and not just on this ONE test that was faulty to begin with. Every other year the carbon test gets discredited and no one seems to remember that it has been discredited already and no one seems to remember there were so many tests done and that the results are amazing and unparalleled... for example that the shroud is essentially a 3-D image of the man inside and that the blood was tested and the man inside the shroud only had a mother not a father. How come people arent talking about that?

    • "...the man inside and that the blood was tested and the man inside the shroud only had a mother not a father. How come people arent talking about that?" --- Could be because they had never heard that before. I had not. It certainly would be news worthy. // I'm willing to believe this is the shroud that Jesus was wrapped in. But that leaves me with a ton of questions -- Where was the shroud for 1300 years? That's a long time to keep a secret. When did the image become visible? Immediately, or through a process of aging? Is this the only piece of fabric purported to be from the time of Christ? I've never seen anyone compare it to other pieces of fabric from either period. I'm just not really impressed with the testing I've read about. Guess I'm going to have to watch all those youtube clips sifi listed.

      • People that never heard of it before but KNOW of the Shroud are people that believed the media too easily and didnt do any further digging of their own. The history of the shroud is well documented I would advice you to take the time to research it. I believe the shroud may have an actual website and the history channel documentary aids in that as well. The image was always visible, because the image is essentially made with His Blood. What is astonishing is that the image was both a facsmile and 3-D image of the person inside is insane. It was never truly a secret. It was saved from the destruction of Israel and traveled with christians all the way to europe and kept in homes of believers, many of them show the shroud and in fact there are depictions of the shroud being handled by people from medieval times in paintings. There is another cloth that seems to be also legitimate that is in spain but it is not a complete shroud it is just a cloth with the face on it. The testings that were done were very intense, the problem was the media concentrating on the faulty one.

        • Kimmy, that's Veronica's veil. And since the image on the shroud is actually a negative, one would have to have some understanding of photography to fake it. And when it was found to BE a negative image after being photographed, THAT's when everyone snapped to the possibilities! I don't think there were a lot of cameras aroung from 33 AD to the mid 1800's. and certainly not in the Mideival age when the fake was purported to have been created.

          • Exactly. It is a very exciting thing. Once again not necessary for people to believe per se but come on! How can one not find it exciting.

      • wingater: "Is this the only piece of fabric purported to be from the time of Christ?"

        Sometimes, Veronica's Veil or the Sudarium is spoken of. They say Veronica gave Jesus a cloth to wipe His Face with along the Way of the Cross and that it left an imprint. I don't think this is on the level of The Shroud of Turin, though.
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_Veronica

        • I've watched another very good documentary about The Shroud of Turin that talks about the Sudarium, a separate cloth wrapped around His head at death. It is brought up about the 36 minute mark. This whole video is very good. It reveals information about customs in Roman crucifixion and Jewish burial preparations that is evidence of it being from the time of Christ.

          The Shroud of Turin [BBC]
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z__PLjun1Sg

      • Oh it wasn't secret, Its existence is pretty clearly tracked intermittantly since the crucifixion. There was some hiding going on to keep various opponents from getting it. Romans, then Muslims, the Church (it was privately owned.) I do not know if this is in fact the burial shroud of Jeshua, of Gallilee. What I do know is that despite a gazilion tests of everything from the fabric to the actual image, in multiple disciplines has never been able to determine how it was made, and what made the image. After that I suppose it becomes a matter of faith. I remember when I first read about it in the late 60's I used to pray that something would be found to definitly identify for or against, in hope it would be for, and that the world would be informed. Guess God wants us to take some things on faith.

        • The truth is that a lot of present technology can be back traced to the Shroud. Faxes, scanning, 3-D, photography... things that would have never existed at any point before this past century. It tells me that God's Kingdom may very well be an extremely "technologically" advanced place and/or He wanted as time went by and technology catch up to the shroud that people will be able to find what needs to be found.

          • That is the problem with science. It doesn't know what it doesn't know. I heard a debate last night on whether science debunks God. One of the first science speakers stated that based on 600 years of science, it DID debunk God. All I could think was God has some 6 billion years to prove He does exist!

          • Exactly. Considering once again the Shroud one can make the case that God invented the science that went INTO the Shroud and He allowed until now for people to figure it out. The science was not there first, but God was there first and allows us to find things out when He is ready for us to find things out not before. It is all about Him and MDLion is right, these scientists need to get their heads around that and gain some humility.

          • Many modern scientists desperately need humility. It seems all many discoveries are is a little discovery of the blueprint of the Creator, whatever method he used. How do people look at incredibly complex processes and say, no one designed or set this in motion? I think it's just pride. I've seen scientists who are believers just shred scientists who aren't believers. Ideally, faith and science should work together. Science can purify some aspects of faith, but faith can tell science to quit having such a big head and admit that some things like the spiritual realm and God's mysteries are just way beyond us. What does Isaiah 55 basically say: As far as the heavens are above the earth are my ways above yours.
            How would God be God if our puny craniums could figure him all out?

          • Once you read the Bible and you have science in mind, A WHOLE LOT OF THINGS makes the perfect sense. Science is a tool and it should be used in order for us to understand things better, but not to overshadow or take over what is already there or the Wisdom of God.

            When I read in Zechariah's last chapter I can only think of thermonuclear warfare and how that would create what it is described there as the fires melting people as they stand. How do you describe an incredibly fiery event that melts people like wax as they stand if you are an ancient person? Well the way it is described in Zechariah, but let's say nukes were invented back then all he had to say that nukes came down from the air without further description of what the nukes do to the human body. A lot of people talk about Revelations being "so confusing" how so when we have technology to explain a great deal of it. We are very lucky generation to have the knowledge that we have and I believe Jesus Christ of course saw this, the interesting thing is that He also foresaw perhaps that this much knowledge would make a lot of people uppity and they would seek to replace the Creator with created things.

        • My thinking on this now is that how the image was made is the least problematic aspect of the puzzle. You don't need a miracle to make a "nature print" and you don't need an extraordinary source of radiation to cause chemical reactions. We can't ever know every detail of the shrouds existence, but I'm convinced "beyond a reasonable doubt" that it is the shroud Jesus was buried in.

  • I like that libs are denying the science behind the findings. the same science they claim proves global warming.

    But..but...ya-but..ya..but..it's Bush's fault-

    • photography experiment before it was actually invented...? interesting. The photo on the left shows the picture taken of it at the beginning of the last century and what came out was a negative which in of itself is astonishing. No one in the renaissance could make that happen.

    • Except it is historically documented to the late 1300s. Even if what you suggest is true, it would mean that someone discovered the secret of photography and used it just once in a manner which effectively precluded it from ever being used again, since that would give away the game. That's almost as hard to believe as the alternative.

        • Wow. Thanks. I had no idea there was so much documented history of the shroud! Its a great story. I wonder about the chemistry of all the areas of image and why no one (I assume) has ever proposed a method to produce a similar result. That seems like one avenue for science to go down.

          • The person inside was not unrolled, he did not unroll himself and the shroud wasn't ripped. So how did the person come out of the shroud? They found radioactive traces on the shroud. The theory is that it is very possible the person inside the shroud disappeared from within the shroud by being imploded by a nuclear blast that only took his body and nothing else inside the cave nor outside of that matter. It is an astonishing find. Now my point is that where would people in any time frame before the what 1930's (?) would come up with radioactivity?

          • Radioactivity isn't a new thing, it's been around since forever. Exists nauturally in the earth. It's just we weren't aware of it or of it's affects until recently. In fact the majority of our understanding of it today comes from our research of the aftermath of Hiroshima. But long before that it wasn't unusual to find radioactive materials in things people used everyday. 1917 glow-in-the dark watches for example. The painters who painted the watch faces ended up dieing from the radiation exposure as they used their mouths to reshape the bristles of the brushes and injected the radioactice paint. the radium that was used in the paint settled in their bones and killed off the bone marrow which left them unable to generate new blood cells.

          • How unusual to be such an amounts that is necessary to be on the cloth, but not enough to disintegrate the cloth or destroy the blood on the cloth or to destroy the other things about the cloth that makes it unusual.

  • Christians, beware the The Turin Shroud trap. While it might be authentic in that, yes, it's a burial cloth, and, yes, it bears someone's imprinted image, and, yes, it may be quite old, it can't be Jesus. The image clearly shows this fellow's nose is broken (Psalm 34:20; John 19:36).

    • It shows the nose was severely bruised and disjointed not necessarily broken. Also even if it was broken it wasn't broken during the actual "sacrifice" stage of his death. When a lamb (or another animal) is sacrificed for remission of sins, the animal is broken in pieces at the time it is sacrificed. The nose either bruised and disjointed or broken happened during the scourging not during nor after he was actually ... well sacrificed or killed.

      I have always said that I do not need the shroud and I think that many Christians do not and I hope that most Christians new or old don't, however the truth of the matter is that the very many tests done on this shroud more prove that the person inside the shroud was a very UNIQUE human being (truly unique) unlike any other human being and it is just very hard to imagine that it is not Jesus Christ. But like I said, I dont need it but it is nice to know that God cared enough to leave some evidence that if tested correctly is irrefutable. This shroud shouldn't exist if one knows the history.

    • It is true that the prophetic psalm says not one of his bones will be broken and that's why Providence saw to it that the soldier didn't break his leg like the two thieves. But I'm not sure you can tell His nose is broken on the Shroud. It's flattened from the falls and blows, but broken? Admittedly, Jesus' Face on the Shroud does sorta look like a boxer whose nose has been broken but I lean towards thinking only the cartilage was damaged.

      The nuns did some painting around the edges about the 13th century, which they shouldn't have done. But under microscope there are no brush strokes on the body of the shroud. Art work for centuries would show blood running straight down on Jesus. But the medical fact is that blood doesn't run straight down, but clots a bit as it runs down. The Blood on the Shroud is clotted. They didn't know this until fairly recently. No believer has to believe the Shroud is authentic. But personally, I believe the Power and Light of Christ's Resurrection imprinted his features on the Shroud. Though He died at 33, they beat, tortured and crucified him to the point to where He looks like He's about 50.

      • He got no broken bones in the crucifixion. The common means of hurrying death along was to break the legs so they could no longer push up to breathe. But he certainly could have a broken nose from the beating and flogging he endured prior to crucifixion. The Roman lashes had multiple tips. each wit a lead ball at the end. Even if his nose wasn't broken, that could certainly cause enoogh swelling to LOOK like it was broken.

      • He means the prophecies that "none of His bones will be broken." But I've never heard that about the Shroud image before. Strictly speaking isn't a "broken nose" damage to cartilage and not bone as such?

        • You are correct. most of the nose is actual cartilage that actual little bone there may have not been broken at all and the entire nose was just disjointed or severally bruised.

        • Or perhaps the shroud was heavy enough to flatten out his nose and give the appearance of being broken?

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