Summary of the Evidence Against The Shroud of Turin
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:20 am
DAR
There are some who believe the Shroud of Turin to be authentic (I met someone this weekend). I have read bits about it here and there but have never been able to get very interested in it myself. I thought it might be useful to put a summary together. Let's start here:
RESEARCH AT McCRONE RESEARCH INSTITUTE
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The Shroud of Turin
According to Dr. Walter McCrone and his colleagues, the 3+ by 14+ foot cloth depicting Christ's crucified body is an inspired painting produced by a Medieval artist just before its first appearance in recorded history in 1356. The faint sepia image is made up of billions of submicron pigment particles (red ochre and vermilion) in a collagen tempera medium. Dr. McCrone determined this by polarized light microscopy in 1979. This included careful inspection of thousands of linen fibers from 32 different areas (Shroud and sample points), characterization of the only colored image-forming particles by color, refractive indices, polarized light microscopy, size, shape, and microchemical tests for iron, mercury, and body fluids. The paint pigments were dispersed in a collagen tempera (produced in medieval times, perhaps, from parchment). It is chemically distinctly different in composition from blood but readily detected and identified microscopically by microchemical staining reactions. Forensic tests for blood were uniformly negative on fibers from the blood-image tapes.
There is no blood in any image area, only red ochre and vermilion in a collagen tempera medium. The red ochre is present on 20 of both body- and blood-image tapes; the vermilion only on 11 blood-image tapes. Both pigments are absent on the 12 non-image tape fibers.
In 1980, using electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction, McCrone found red ochre (iron oxide, hematite) and vermilion (mercuric sulfide); their electron microprobe analyzer found iron, mercury, and sulfur on a dozen of the blood-image area samples. The results fully confirmed Dr. McCrone's results and further proved the image was painted twice-once with red ochre, followed by vermilion to enhance the blood-image areas.
The carbon-dating results from three different internationally known laboratories agreed well with his date: 1355 by microscopy and 1325 by C-14 dating. The suggestion that the 1532 Chambery fire changed the date of the cloth is ludicrous. Samples for C-dating are routinely and completely burned to CO2 as part of a well-tested purification procedure. The suggestions that modern biological contaminants were sufficient to modernize the date are also ridiculous. A weight of 20th century carbon equaling nearly two times the weight of the Shroud carbon itself would be required to change a 1st century date to the 14th century (see Carbon 14 graph). Besides this, the linen cloth samples were very carefully cleaned before analysis at each of the C-dating laboratories.
Experimental details on the tests carried out by McCrone are available in five papers published in three different peer-reviewed journal articles: Microscope 1980, 28, 105, 115; 1981, 29, 19; Wiener Berichte uber Naturwissenschaft in der Kunst 1987/1988, 4/5, 50 and Acc. Chem. Res. 1990, 23, 77-83.
Conclusion:
The "Shroud" is a beautiful painting created about 1355 for a new church in need of a pilgrim-attracting relic.
link
Next:
Claims of Invalid “Shroud” Radiocarbon Date Cut from Whole Cloth
Joe Nickell
Longtime Shroud of Turin devotee Ray Rogers, a retired research chemist, now admits there is the equivalent of a watercolor paint on the alleged burial cloth of Jesus. By tortuous logic and selective evidence, however, he uses the coloration to claim the “shroud” image was not the work of a medieval artist (Rogers 2004, 2005). Rogers follows many other shroud defenders in attempting to discredit the medieval date given by radiocarbon testing (Nickell 1998, 150–151).
In a paper published in Thermochimica Acta, Rogers (2005) claims that earlier carbon-14 dating tests—which proved the linen was produced between 1260 and 1390 (Damon et al. 1989)—were invalid because they were conducted on a sample taken from a medieval patch. “The radiocarbon sample has completely different chemical properties than the main part of the shroud relic,” Rogers told BBC News (“Turin” 2005).
In fact, the radiocarbon sample (a small piece cut from the “main body of the shroud” [Damon 1988, 612]) was destroyed by the testing. Rogers (2005) relied on two little threads allegedly left over from the sampling, [1] together with segments taken from an adjacent area in 1973. He cites pro-authenticity researchers who guessed that the carbon-14 sample came from a “rewoven area” of repair—“As unlikely as it seems,” Rogers admitted to one news source (Lorenzi 2005). Indeed, textile experts specifically made efforts to select a site for taking the radiocarbon sample that was away from patches and seams (Damon et al. 1989, 611–612).
Rogers compared the threads with some small samples from elsewhere on the Shroud, claiming to find differences between the two sets of threads that “prove” the radiocarbon sample “was not part of the original cloth” of the Turin shroud (as stated in his abstract [Rogers 2005, 189]).
The reported differences include the presence—allegedly only on the “radiocarbon sample”—of cotton fibers and a coating of madder root dye in a binding medium that his tests “suggest” is gum Arabic. He insists the sampled area was that of an interwoven medieval repair that was intentionally colored to match the “older, sepia-colored cloth” (Rogers 2005, 192, 193).
However, Rogers’ assertions to the contrary, both the cotton and the madder have been found elsewhere on the shroud. Both were specifically reported by famed microanalyst Walter McCrone (1996, 85) who was commissioned to examine samples taken by the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP). After McCrone discovered the image was rendered in tempera paint, STURP held him to a secrecy agreement, while statements were made to the press that no evidence of artistry was found. McCrone was then, he says, “drummed out” of the organization [Nickell 1998, 124–125; 2004, 193–194]. As evidence of its pro-authenticity bias, STURP’s leaders served on the executive committee of the Holy Shroud Guild.
Not only did McCrone find “occasional” cotton fibers on the Shroud, but the source of Rogers’ sample, Gilbert Raes, has since been challenged as to his claim, cited by Rogers (2005, 189), that “the cotton was an ancient Near Eastern variety.” In fact, others—including French textile expert Gabriel Vial and major pro-shroud author Ian Wilson (1998, 71, 97)—believe the cotton may be entirely incidental. They point out it could have come from the cotton gloves or clothing of the Turin’s cloth’s handlers or a similarly mundane source.
On the tape-lifted STURP samples (affixed to microscope slides), McCrone found a variety of substances (including mold spores and wax spatters). Major pigments were red ocher (in “body” areas) and vermilion (together with red ocher in the “blood” areas), contained in a collagen tempera binder. He also found the madder, [2] orpiment, azurite, and yellow ocher pigments, as well as paint fragments, including ultramarine and titanium white—together suggestive of the shroud’s origin in “an artist’s studio” (McCrone 1996, 85, 135)..
Astonishingly—and with serious implications to the spirit of peer review—Rogers omits any mention of McCrone’s findings from his report while insisting elsewhere, “let’s be honest about our science” (Rogers 2004).
Although Rogers is a research chemist, unlike McCrone he is not an internationally celebrated microanalyst with special expertise in examining questioned paintings. Working in his “home laboratory,” he did not, as far as his report informs, use a “blind” approach as McCrone did to mitigate against the subjectivity that has continually plagued the work of shroud advocates. Moreover, McCrone once referred to Rogers’ and his fellow STURP co-author’s “incompetence in light microscopy” and pointed out errors in the test procedures they relied on (McCrone 1996, 157, 158–171).
Rogers (2005) now also reports the presence of vanillin in the lignin of the radiocarbon-sample area, in contrast to its reported absence in other areas of the cloth. This is a dubious finding given his extremely limited samples. He attempts to date the shroud by the amount of the lignin decomposition but admits that that method can offer only an accuracy range of a whopping 1,700 years (contrasted with about 150 years by radiocarbon dating). He concedes that the decomposition could have been accelerated by the baking of the cloth in its reliquary that occurred during the fire of 1532, but thinks it unlikely the cloth is medieval.
However, apart from the fire damage, the cloth is remarkably well preserved for a reputed age of nearly 2000 years. Also, no examples of its complex herringbone weave are known from the time of Jesus when, in any case, burial cloths tended to be of plain weave (Nickell 1998, 35; Wilson 1998, 98–99, 188; Sox 1981). In addition, Jewish burial practice utilized—and the Gospel of John specifically describes for Jesus—multiple burial wrappings with a separate cloth over the face.
Other evidence of medieval fakery includes the shroud’s lack of historical record prior to the mid-fourteenth century—when a bishop reported the artist’s confession—as well as serious anatomical problems, the lack of wraparound distortions, the resemblance of the figure to medieval depictions of Jesus, and suspiciously bright red and picturelike “blood” stains which failed a battery of sophisticated tests by forensic serologists, among many other indicators. These facts argue against Rogers’ assertions that the shroud is neither a forgery nor a miracle—that “the blood is real blood” [3] and the image was produced by “a rotting body” (Rogers 2004).
Science has proved the Shroud of Turin a medieval fake, but defenders of authenticity turn the scientific method on its head by starting with the desired conclusion and working backward to the evidence—picking and choosing and reinterpreting as necessary. It is an approach I call “shroud science.”
Notes
1. Ian Wilson (1998, 187) reported that the trimmings “are no longer extant.”
2. Red lake colors like madder were specifically used by medieval artists to overpaint vermilion in depicting “blood” (Nickell 1998, 130).
3. Rogers (2004) does acknowledge that claims the blood is type AB “are nonsense.”
Link, and more notes
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DAR
Little bonus regarding a certain dishonest psychic. From Joe Nickell:
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"...it is Browne’s ideas on the Shroud of Turin (the reputed burial cloth of Jesus) that interest me most. She shows some admirable skepticism, concluding: “I believe that the Shroud is a representation and not a true relic—but I don’t think that should put a dent in our Christian belief” (199). Citing a fourteenth-century bishop’s report that the image was painted, Browne writes (196):
I found that passage intriguing since I had written (in the July/August 1998 Skeptical Inquirer, p. 21):If the Shroud were in fact painted, it would explain some image flaws that have always raised questions. For example, the hair hangs as for a standing rather than a reclining figure; the physique is unnaturally elongated (like figures in Gothic art); and the “blood” flows are unrealistically neat (instead of matting the hair, for instance, they run in rivulets on the outside of the locks). You see, real blood soaks into cloth and spreads in all directions rather than leaving picturelike images.
Now, the shared phrasing between Browne’s passage and mine may give new meaning to the term ghost-written. Considering the book’s lack of any reference to my article, one may wonder: Has Francine stooped to plagiarism? What does Browne know about this? Was she in a trance when she wrote it? Are there other Secrets & Mysteries of the World yet to be revealed?That the Shroud is indeed the work of a medieval artist would explain numerous image flaws. For example, the physique is unnaturally elongated (like figures in Gothic art!). Also, the hair hangs as for a standing rather than recumbent figure. . . . Everywhere the “blood” flows are unrealistically neat. Instead of matting the hair, for instance, they run in rivulets on the outside of the locks. . . . In addition, real blood soaks into cloth and spreads in all directions, rather than leaving picturelike images.
LINK
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DAR
Personally, besides the piles of good reasons to believe the Shroud is a 700 year old fake I think the biggest is "the shroud’s lack of historical record prior to the mid-fourteenth century...
Further reading here:
The Case of the Holy Fraudster
Oh, and now I find the mother lode. An extensive skeptical website from Free Inquiry with links to both sides:
THE SKEPTICAL SHROUD OF TURIN WEBSITE