From: daveb@pogo.wv.tek.com (Dave Butler)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Shroud of Turin (was DOES GOD EXIST?)
Date: 31 Aug 92 22:18:21 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville,  OR.

Paul give his reaction to my last article and I think we have a bit of a
problem here.  Paul you have made a lot of assertions about the Shroud and
after reviewing them I find that there is nothing about your claims which I
can investigate, as you have no references.  This even extends back to your
claims that the C14 dating samples were poorly chosen, or were even been
deliberately fraudulent (Interesting assertion as the Catholic Church accepted
the judgement of the C14).  This lack of any documentation makes it very hard
to judge the veracity of your "references". 

Now I realize that you are finding time to be tight as the moment, but I do
not see that to be a reasonable justification to make such assertions with no
accompanying documentation.  I would hazard a guess that I am just as busy as
you at this time (I am coming up to a milestone on my present project), but I
have attempted to present references for the few assertion I have made.  Thus
since you are the one who is trying to either discredit or dismiss as
inappropriate, well documented tests and papers, it does behoove you to present
more than speculation. 

As an an example of such speculation you state:

> Perhaps I should have been clearer.  I was not saying that coins on the eyes
> were evidence of authenticity because I thought such a thing was a common
> 1st century custom.  However, I think it is suggestive (the word I originally
> used when I first mentioned the coins) because it seems to be a level of
> detail unlikely for a supposed 14th century artist.  There is no record that
> anyone saw this before the computer enhancement, so it would be useless work
> for a medieval artist.  Also, depending on the state of Medieval numismatics,
> it might have been unlikely for a 14th century artist to select a coin old
> enough to be consistent with a 1st century Shroud.

Firstly, why wouldn't it occur to a 13th century artist or forger? (By the way
the shroud was dated to the 13th or 14th century).  Its not like the custom of
coins on the eyes died out with ancient Greece (as pointed out by my reference
"Standard Dictionary of Folklore").  As to choosing a coin, it rather silly
for the artist or forger to choose a more modern coins.  And as we have such
Roman coins today, I can only assume that they existed in the 13th century (by
the way the artist need not have a real coin, merely a reasonable facsimile or
rendering).  Further as to your statement:

> There is no record that
> anyone saw this before the computer enhancement, so it would be useless work
> for a medieval artist.

You are assuming that a forger would actually know that the coin would only
show up under computer enhancement.  Rather as far as a forger might be
concerned, the ploy of the coins was a failure, but was a reasonable risk
considering he wanted to be as complete as possible in rendering his art.  As
it turned, assuming it was a forgery or a piece of art (which I have every
reason to believe), it wasn't as unsuccessful as the artist originally
thought. 

In any case, you can see why I am in no way convinced by your speculation of
why such a forgery couldn't have happened.

Now I have really tried to restrict myself to things I can actually document,
for had I wished to present undocumented assertions, I would have quoted from
a history book who's I now no longer remember the title, which stated that the
ancient Jews so deplored graven images (like those on most Roman coins), that
when conquered by Alexander, they appeased him and kept him from building a
statue in Israel, by promising Alexander that instead of a statue, they would
honor him by giving every male child born in the next year the name
"Alexander".  Further Rome in deference to the Jewish hate of graven images,
did not put up public statues in the Jewish Kingdom (I could though point out
the book of the Maccabees which shows the Jewish dislike for such images).  In
other words the graven images on the Roman coins would themselves make the
putting of such coins on the eyes of the dead, an offensive act to the Jews of
that time.  For that matter I also would have mentioned an article that made a
strong refutation of the shroud on the basis that it was made of one piece
rather than strips of torn cloth.  Because, I could not remember that article
I could only offer to get easily available references on the practice of
Orthodox Jewish burial as an indication.  For that matter I could have pointed
out the PBS show, which refuted the idea that the it was so difficult to
produce a 360 negative image of a human on fabric, which looked almost as if
it were burned there.  In that show, an art historian showed a little
remembered technique of the middle ages, of wrapping a statue tightly in linen
and then very lightly daubing stain, charcoal or some sort pigment, to the
tightly stretched linen (you could also gently apply hot irons to the fabric
to lightly char it).  This produces a 3D version of a art rubbing (which would
explain why there could be an incredibly faint and almost imperceptible image
of a coin covering the eyes, the method was only marginally successful in
recording the coins).  The final result of such a "rubbing" is a perfect 360
degree image of the statue, and that image is specifically a negative image of
that statue.  The art professor then demonstrated the technique and ended up
with an image on cloth which closely resembled the shroud in style.  Of course
Paul, all this will be rather difficult for you to refute, as you have only a
marginal idea of where I got any of this information. 

The whole point of this is that unless you have some actual and respectable
references, it is rather silly for you to expect us to dismiss the C14 tests
that were done, and give any credence at all to the claim that the shroud
might be an actual holy relic. 
 
				Later,

				Dave Butler

			Facts are stubborn things.
				Alain Rene' Le Sage
				Gil Blas, book x, chapt i

Ob Reference:

                             THE WASHINGTON POST
 DATE: FRIDAY    October 14, 1988
 PAGE:   A03    EDITION: FINAL
 SECTION: FIRST SECTION                         LENGTH: SHORT
 PHOTO: By AFP
 SOURCE: Philip J. Hilts
 Washington Post Staff Writer
 MEMO:
   STORY-TYPE: NEWS FOREIGN

              TESTS FROM 3 LABS CONFIRM TURIN SHROUD NOT AUTHENTIC
                               CLOTH 700 YEARS OLD
                               IMAGE CREATED LATER

    Final results of the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin*show that
 the cloth was made about 1280 A.D. and the image of a crucified man created on
 it after that, Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero, Archbishop of Turin, announced
 yesterday.
    The cloth has been venerated for centuries as the burial sheet of Jesus
 despite 14th- and 15th-century records which indicated that the cloth was a
 fake. Millions of pilgrims filed past the cloth when it was last put on public
display in Turin 10 years ago.
    At a news conference in Turin, Ballestrero said the church has never
 claimed the shroud to be a holy relic. He added that although the date of the
 cloth is now known, the shroud will remain an object of veneration because the
 image on it is remarkable. The archbishop's scientific adviser said that no
 one knows how the image was made, adding that it is an important work of
 medieval Christian art.
    A faded, straw-colored image of the front and back of a crucified man is on
 the 14-by-3 1/2-foot winding sheet.
    Three laboratories in the United States, Britain and Switzerland
 simultaneously tested the cloth and their results were in close agreement. To
 a 95 percent certainty, the cloth was made between 1260 and 1380 A.D. There is
 a virtually 100 percent certainty that the cloth was made after 1200 A.D.
    The results showed that the most likely date that the flax was cut to make
 the linen in the cloth was about 1280 A.D.
    "This agrees very well with the historical story," said Paul Damon of the
 University of Arizona, who worked on the dating. Historians have said the
 shroud first appeared about 1353, when it was given by French knight Geoffroy
 de Charny as gift for the building of a new church in Lirey, France.
    The method used to date the cloth compares the amount of ordinary carbon in
 plants and other living things to the small amount of radioactive carbon-14
 they absorb while alive. The carbon-14 begins to decay as soon as the plant,
 in this case flax, dies. Scientists know how much carbon-14 should be present
 for given dates in the past.
    To check accuracy of the three labs' work, each was sent a centimeter-sized
 bit cut from the shroud and three other control samples, including a piece of
 cloth from Cleopatra's mummy, about the first century B.C.; a Nubian tomb
 cloth from the 11th century A.D., and a piece of ceremonial garb from St.
 Louis d'Anjou from the 14th century.
    Multiple tests of all the samples showed the labs' results "in very tight
 agreement," Damon said.
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