What do you think of the Turin Shroud?

true science has already proven this shroud as not what it surposed to be. This is just an effort by the false church to maintain a hold on it's dwindling power.
If Jesus was in his tomb he would be doing back flips right now thinking "why did people not understand my simple teachings."
Remember, true divinity is within, not external in idols or men in fancy dress claiming to be god's represenatives.

"Life can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you do what your told."
LRF.

I believe it is a matter of faith. All the tests in the world will never prove one way or the other what it really is.

I have read enough about it to make me think there's something more to the shroud than a mere Medieval or Reinassence-era hoax.

Of course, even if its shown that the image in the cloth was the result of an extraordinary event, and not only a clever application of pigment by whichever means you choose, it would still be impossible to link it to the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

So maybe I should have picked 'Other', bu what the heck, the vestigial Catholic in me decided to show more faith on this particular issue ;-)

I think the shroud, like the Virgen de Guadalupe's ayate, falls into the fortean aspect of the Christian faith that it still very appealing to me.

BTW: The Church acknowledges the reverence many Catholics have for this relic, but they are smart enough not to subscribe to the authenticity of it. They are quite content to remain in a gray area of 'Maybe'.

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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

Red Pill Junkie

I've followed this for about 35 years. There is an American trade magazine (R&D Mag) which back in the day offered glimpses into the long and sporadic process of analyzing the Shroud. For a science mag (not a peer reviewed journal), it gave a fairly balanced account of the steps along the way.

IIRC the split between the medieval story and the 'true believers' occurred when the carbon dating did not fully account for contaminants that would naturally advance the date substantially. (Remember, it was not in a hermetic chamber all those centuries.) Also, there were pollens and other microscopic evidence that could be traced back to narrowly specific locations in the geographic area the historic Jesus would have been.

I would guess that in another 10 or 20 years there will be new techniques that will vie for access to the Shroud and may give fresh insights.

On the flip side, I could never get my arms around how the 'fake' shroud would have been done. The scoffers all sounded like the "Amazingly Clueless Randi" (TM).

Cheers,
Xavier Onassis

Just going by what I've seen and read about the shroud, I believe it is genuine. But Jesus? I think that is all purely speculation.

Reaching out to embrace whatever may come

I voted "other".

I have no doubt that the shroud will be proven to be of the 1st century AD. Whether it is the shroud of Jesus, no one can ever say for certain. However, due to the pollen grains found within the textile, plus the method of manufacture, there can be no doubt of it's age, regardless of what the carbon-14 tests show. I don't believe it to be a cl;ever forgery, but I cannot say, nor can anyone else, that it is the burial shroud of Jesus.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am not a Christian. I am a Pagan. I have no doubt that Jesus was a real man, a Jewish Rabbi, but I believe his story was garbled in transmission, so to say. I'll leave it at that.

I do however, find it odd that so many in the scientific community take such great pains to try and "prove" the shroud to be a forgery. Are they that afraid of a bit of cloth? Why do they seethe and screech at anyone who would offer an opinion in support of the garment?

There must be something frightfully terrifying to the scientists that they would weigh in on this matter with such a heavy hand. It certainly makes me understand how Galileo must have felt when facing the Inquisition, eh? Irony simply drips off this entire story.

Respects,

Respects,
Gwedd

Due to the global warming it is snowing here again. So I need multiple covers on my bed, because I do not heat the place excessivly.

Go turn off some lights :P

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It is not how fast you go
it is when you get there.

I'm fairly certain I've read recently that the snippet used for C14 dating was found to have come from a patch of the shroud that was mended after that fire, and therefore not part of the original fabric.

I believe it is a fake made during Medieval times-it's a good one too-samples were taken that date the Shroud to Medieval times. A person also has to believe Jesus was wrapped in the Shroud-That could be anybody--Recent studies indicate that the traditional way Jesus was thought to have looked ie long hair and beard light skin color was probably not accurate-He now is believed to have had darker skin because he worked outside-true?

have a hard time to select one of the predefined choices:

I think that most likely the shroud is a genuine relict of the person known to us today as Jesus Christ; and that this person lived and was crucified - as A. T. Fomenko has found quite convinving indications, see his "History: fiction or science" book series - during the eleventh century in Constantinopolis (aka (New) Rome, Caput Mundi, City of Peace).
I don't fall for the renaissance churches efforts to make their own foundations stories appear much much older than their competitors stories, with the obvious goal to fool their followers into prolonged submission. Unluckily, their competitors choose to also play in the same game of inventing stories of fictious even older origins (appearently that was the strategy that ensured survival).

So: it is genuine as genuine can be, and that means it is about 900 years old and from the Bosporus region.

[Edited by moderator: Skills4u, please don't post this again. Some hidden character in the post is making the page crash. ]

It's genuine but Christ's death is only as old as the shroud.

The preponderance of evidence indicates that the Shroud is man made and dates to (roughly) the medieval period. However, that does not deny some fairly divine inspiration.

This artifact is a masterful piece of work. I don't know what was going on in that person's mind at the time but he (or she?) created something extra ordinary. It's not a miracle in the classic sense of the word, but it is a testament to something "subtle" within us that allows us to go past our normal boundaries.

If we were talking about a work by... say, Picasso, we would summon a number of musty old art experts to spend a few years examining the details. They would, after a time, stand forth and announce that it was either genuine or fake.

But with the Shroud of Turin, we have no one who can take the role of examiner. We have no historical or scientific contextual experience to fall back upon to make a sure pronouncement. All anyone can do is guess... and from what we may presume to think we know of the Christian God, He does like to do these things.

If nothing else, it forces one to think and in the world of religion and its icons, that is quite an achievement all by itself.

* * *
"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."

I think that it is the image of the last grand master of the knights templar. He was probably killed in the same way. At the time, I don't think that anyone even thought about the image, or associated with Jesus. I think that it is an accident of history that it was associated with Jesus. Besides, nobody knows what Jesus looked like and, probably, nobody has known what Jesus looked like for atleast 1500 years.

What do you think?

cnnek

{You Can Teach People How To Think Or What To Think; But, You Can't Do Both! It Is Better To Teach People How To Think!!!}

Just step back from the issue, and see who is most anxious to "prove" something.

I am an artist and art historian, among other pastimes. It is laughably astounding to me that that "Medieval forgery" aspect has gotten such play. Here's why: art during that period was very stylized. No known artist of that period created work that was "photographic" (looked exactly like what or who it was).

The very concept of 3-dimensions (appearance of depth) being produced on a 2-dimensional object (paper, or in this case cloth) was simply not within their understanding. It would have been IMPOSSIBLE for any trained artist to even conceive of the idea, much less carry it out. They just couldn't think that way because of cultural/social training.

To convince a rational person otherwise, just produce one, ONE, piece of art that is similar to the shroud which was made during that period. Just ONE!

P.S. There aren't any!

Modern artists may be able to fake up something like the shroud using modern techniques, modern styles, and modern concepts of dimensionality -- but that is NOT proof that a Medieval artist could.

So, exactly WHY are some corners pushing this scenario so hard? (And, they have to know that it's baloney, as well, if they have any art background.) What benefit do THEY accrue?

I was always of the opinion that it was an image of Jacques de Molay, like the other poster here suggested. Or DaVinci using some early technique to try and mimic the passage in the "Acta Sanctorum" dealing with the story of "Berenice" or "Veronica" as she became known later...

Not sure what made the image on the Turin Shroud. But from everything I have studied noone has managed to make anything remotely resembling it. A mystery still to be solved.

How easliy things from the past are misunderstood and misused in many ways...I believe that this shroud is just another cloth with an image that most people will associate with the 1st influential bearded figure that comes to mind (Jesus). It is most likely spilled wine or early use of photography paper and not a divine blanket.

Mister Taylor: tear down this poll!

The one clue so obvious is the cloth shows the head as if it was a flat object when folded over the top of the head. Looks more than likely this image transfer onto cloth was done with a wooden carving about 8 inches thick with the cloth folded over the head which was tapered to about an inch or two. Perhaps the entire carved front and back body image was no more than several inches thick. Look for yourself. You will see what I mean.

I wanted to ad, the image looks like one of those templars laying on the floor of the round nave in the temple church in england.

The one thing it shows is that after many years and many "scientific" tests no consensus is realized, and yet the usual academic archeology community continue to keep coming out with "words" specifying dates and interpretations of artifacts and excavations as if they "know" they are correct.
Archeologists in general are as establishment view bound as the rest of main line "science".

The truth comes only secondary to reputations, personal gain, peer pressure, establishment dogma, etc. etc.

that the church needed something to build audiences so it commissioned a work that wold attracted followers. however, i believe that the technique they used might have been more like a photograph than simply draping a cloth over a body. maybe to do with the sun or magnesium bursts like old fashion cameras. they may have even hired an alchemist to do it, since that would be the type of knowledge one would need to draw from to understand how the liquids flow.