Shroud Of-- Please Stop

[LogicalFallacy]

I fucking love you sometimes Lilith (in a totally platonic, I-appreciate-you-as-an internet-acquaintance-on-a-forum kind of way, I'm not a creep ^^), you're great at summing things up and giving words to thoughts I didn't even know I had until you wrote them.

So glad you clarified that rjn... ya know I had my doubts about you based on forum conduct in the past  

 

But yes Lilith is very correct. 1st: There are no absolute answers, we need to accept this. 2nd: There are arguments for and against EVERYTHING. Look at the evidence and decide with is the most rational and empirically verified.

 

Christianity provides many arguments, but little empirical evidence.

[Lilith666]

Daww thanks rjn, love you too. In an Internet-acquaintance way.

[Diddlyboop]

Thank you all! Sorry for being such a worrywart. Most of the arguments for it I spoke of came from a debate over the shroud on Amazon. ^^´ No doubt the atheists on there are kicking ass though, as well. It's just that no matter what is said, the Christians are hanging on tight to it...

[♦ ficino ♦]

There is a very thorough and interesting account on the Shroud as chapter IV of the book, Hoax: Hitler's Diaries, Lincoln's Assassins, and Other Famous Frauds, by Edward Steers, Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2013. He gives information that supports the conclusion that the shroud is a forgery from the 14th century. He also goes into reasons why the "believers'" criticisms of the C-14 dating and other tests are not cogent. For example, the "bioplastic coating" claimed to have skewed the C14 results cannot have done so and may not even be such. He says the Swiss policeman who announced Palestinian pollen was the same guy who authenticated the Hitler diaries.

Then, of course, there are the longstanding pieces of evidence, well known, against authenticity:

1. contradicted by the description of the burial cloths in the Gospel of John, esp the gospel's specification of a separate "sudarium" over Jesus' head

2. 14th century church authorities investigated the shroud, concluded it was a fake that was being displayed for money, and obtained a confession from the artist who they say forged it (I don't know whether they recorded his name)

3. no mention of it until 1357; the Mandylion of Edessa is not the shroud

4. blood is wrong: dries black not red as on shroud; too much blood for a body that would have been washed; one researcher found the pigment did not dissolve in chemicals in which dried blood dissolves, and other tests were negative for blood

5. arms too long, face not distorted as would be the case on a cloth draped over

 

In addition, Archaeology magazine, vol. 63.2 (March/April 2010) reported that a first-century sealed tomb was discovered near Jerusalem. That tomb contained a shroud, the first discovered in a tomb in that area. That shroud was C14 dated to A.D. 1-50. It was simply-woven linen and wool, not the complex herringbone twill weave of the shroud of Turin. The latter kind of twill weave is not thought to have been available in the region until the Middle Ages.

 

I did see one guy (I forget where I saw it) who said that cloth like that of the Shroud was woven in China starting around 150 B.C., I think. I don't consider this enough to outweigh all the other negatives, and one has to bring in a lot of auxiliary, unevidenced assumptions to propose that Joseph of Arimathea brought in an enormous piece of Chinese cloth to use for Jesus' shroud, when GJohn says "cloths" and a separate head/face cloth.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Adding:

 

the Gospel of Mark says that Joseph of Arimathea wrapped up Jesus' body in the shroud. The verb, enelisso, is from the root that we have in the words helix and helicopter, denoting the action of going around in a circular motion. One can't square that with what is presumed by the image on the Shroud of Turin, which demands we think that the shroud was merely laid straight over Jesus' body and folded to enclose the back. The verb used in Matthew and Luke, entulisso, usually means "wrap in," not "drape over," though a Shroud believer might insist that the idea of folding is consistent with draping to enclose front and back. From the inerrancy of scripture point of view, the meaning of the verb in Mark has to explain the vaguer verb in Matthew/Luke.

 

The verb entulisso is used in ancient Greek for wrapping or folding something sideways around a cylindrical object, not for draping lengthwise over one end of the cylinder. For example, it's used in medical writings for wrapping a patient in cloths to induce sweating. It's used for wrapping the Greek version of the toga around the body. This link shows a drawing:

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=himation&biw=1280&bih=699&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwi5sOb7gZLRAhUO3iYKHeytCakQ7AkIPg#imgrc=3Cpjx3WdlB9fbM%3A

 

 

In any case, in John it's emphatic that there were plural pieces of linen and a separate sudarium for the head. John says that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus "bound/tied" jesus' body in these plural pieces of linen. Again, no draping over. It won't work to argue that the plurality of cloths comes from the almost 14-foot-long shroud and strips used to tie it. That's because:

   a. it would introduce misunderstanding for a writer to refer to an enormous single shroud w/ tie strips simply all in the plural as "pieces of linen" as though they are in the same category;

   b. Jewish burial custom calls for pieces of linen, plural, in which to wrap the body.

 

Without crucifying language, one cannot maintain the inerrancy of scripture with discrepancies like these between the Synoptics and John.

 

There isn't a way to square the image on the Shroud of Turin with the description of the way Jesus' body was wrapped in linen in the gospels. The gospels disagree over how many pieces of linen were used, but they show the cloth wrapped around or tied around the corpse, not laid straight over it.

[Diddlyboop]

Eep! Thank you so very much! That has made me feel a whole lot better about this whole ordeal. I'm a ton less worried now...

[Jedah]

Ah, the shroud. I've seen this thing talked about and debated so much I don't even care anymore.

 

But the main problem I always had with it is even if we examine all the evidence in the most pro-christian optimistic way possible, there is still no evidence that it was actually Jesus. It could have been the shroud of any middle eastern inhabitant of the time, making it an interesting piece of history but not really evidence of the divine.

[Diddlyboop]

I really wish I could just calm down from all this. It's a pain. Dx

 

As you say, it has been talked about and debated a ton. I feel guilty for even bringing it up here and making you guys probably beat a dead horse. But that's the thing, there are so many different sites debating the thing. So many debunking it, so many more promoting it as authentic and "debunking the debunking", so many different answers that instead of not caring anymore I just panic.

 

But thank you all for taking the time to talk to me about it, regardless. ;u;

[Vigile]

So many like yourself come here with these types of issues and many seem to keep going back and forth between sites like this and apologist sites hoping someone will provide them with the silver bullet answer. 

 

Like them, you are taking the wrong approach. You need to develop critical thinking skills. It's not hard and once you do, you will no longer struggle with these issues. Here's a good place to start: 

 

 

[Shinzon]

I really wish I could just calm down from all this. It's a pain. Dx

As you say, it has been talked about and debated a ton. I feel guilty for even bringing it up here and making you guys probably beat a dead horse. But that's the thing, there are so many different sites debating the thing. So many debunking it, so many more promoting it as authentic and "debunking the debunking", so many different answers that instead of not caring anymore I just panic.

But thank you all for taking the time to talk to me about it, regardless. ;u;

was in a similar boat quite a few years ago. Then the thought hit me that a: i didnt want to become a scholar of religion and b: most of this stuff has a clear already been turned over and discussed thousands of times and will be till the world ends.

 

That lead me to realize that i simply had to make best sense of the data i had. The best answer was that christianity was a myth.

[sdelsolray]

I really wish I could just calm down from all this. It's a pain. Dx

 

As you say, it has been talked about and debated a ton. I feel guilty for even bringing it up here and making you guys probably beat a dead horse. But that's the thing, there are so many different sites debating the thing. So many debunking it, so many more promoting it as authentic and "debunking the debunking", so many different answers that instead of not caring anymore I just panic.

 

But thank you all for taking the time to talk to me about it, regardless. ;u;

 

 

 

And there are millions of websites that don't talk about it at all.