Hey wait just a dang minute, I thought that early tests of the Shroud’s image established that whatever it was, it _wasn’t_ paint, but something more akin to scorch marks. And that the test that dated some of its fibers as being from the Middle Ages did so because the sample used was from a repair that had been done on the Shroud in that period (come on early investigators, can’t we distinguish between the original fabric and fabric woven in centuries later?). Then there are observable details the significance of which the average Middle Ages antiquities forger would unlikely have been aware, such as that the configuration of the scourge marks indicates the use of a specific type of scourge used by Roman authorities in the time and place of Jesus’ ministry…well the more they have continued to find out about this piece of cloth and its image, the less and less credibility the “obvious or ok maybe not obvious but still a fake!” theories have. 😤. Does the stability of anyone’s Christian faith rest on the authenticity, or inauthenticity, of the Shroud? Of course not, but this is one of the most enthralling scientific investigations in history, and yeah I _love_ that the people who are emotionally invested in the Shroud being a fake get repeatedly smacked across the chops with an ice cold mackerel (or whatever kind of fish it was in the home waters of those fishers of men).
I was a miserable scientific atheist for some time. I’ve come to my senses, and while I don’t need the Shroud to be real for me to hold the conclusions I live by, it sure doesn’t hurt. Thomas was an apostle for a reason.
I think Christine is right. A true faith can’t rely on matter. It may tip someone to dig deeper, I suppose, but if it’s dependent on the ‘thing’ their faith is dust in the wind.
If the next ai model shows Ronald McDonald and it’s just a legit as what Prof. Sexy Bald Gandalf shared(I have my doubts) then they will be lost again.
I studied theoretical physics in college, and I’m willing to say “maybe” to the miracles in the gospels.
But what I know certainly is that when I decided to follow God, Christ showed me the path beneath my feet and revealed himself on the same path, walking in front of all of us towards the light.
Not only is the saying from the 1st Century, but pollen from the Middle East, from plant life in the area around Jerusalem, was found in the material. The image has no paints and no pigments, but does hold human blood of type AB. To produce the image would have taken enormous amounts of electricity, or a nuclear reaction, neither of which was available to potential fraudsters 700-800 years ago.
I suspect William of Ockham would be declaring the Shroud’s authenticity about now. 🤔
I agree with all above that when one has the faith through the grace of God, physical evidence becomes irrelevant, but does exist. Recall the discussion of miracles earlier. I have been following the Shroud story for quite some time, and when the original carbon dating was published, the methodology was flawed. They actually carbon dated some of the patches that were woven into the shroud when it was damaged in a fire. As Sierra Charlie notes above, there is substantial evidence other than the image itself of its veracity. When challenged to recreate something like the shroud today, artists could not come up with a 3D likeness (the Shroud image was subjected to 3D analysis, and shows a clearly human form, whereas even modern attempts fail terribly). I had not seen the recently generated image. Go back to the original hi resolution B&W negative plates made in the 19th century. They are truly shocking.
Catholics believe in the utility of relics, either a saint’s body parts (first class Relics), things owned by a saint (second class) and things touched to a first class Relic (third class). These are revered, and used to focus the mind on the saint, and his or her virtues. When St. Therese of Lisieux’s relics were brought to our diocese (at the time we had a Carmelite Monastery), I prayed over the relics for a resolution of my mother’s physical and living situation difficulties. She had severe pulmonary disease brought on by cardiac medication, and her physicians did not believe it was going to improve. She soon had a complete recovery, then agreed to move to a home near us from 400 miles away, which is a miracle on the order of dividing the Red Sea.
It is a focal point and a powerful reminder of that saint’s life. If the Shroud is the true burial cloth, we have a first class relic of God, in the incarnation of Christ. Not one more powerful than that!
There is good research going on now regarding the veracity of the Shroud, and has thoroughly debunked the earlier “debunking”.
The shroud's legitimacy is pretty irrelevant if you accept that he really lived. Flesh and bone. But anything that reminds us of that fact is absolutely chilling.
John 20:29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
I was raised Presbyterian (now Anglican), skeptical of relics, or at least ignoring them, but when I first saw photos and read about the shroud in high school, I had a spooky feeling it was real. Yes, a "chill of connection." I have continued to be fascinated. The AI photo gives me a spooky feeling of recognition too.
They say the only way the image could get on the cloth is through a brief, intense blast of light/ radiation (but no heat to burn) leaving a sort of photo negative on just the very top layers of the cloth. The moment of the resurrection of Jesus, the Light of the World?
The shroud does not cause me to believe more in Jesus than I already do. But I am happy it is out there, getting people to pay attention, wonder, argue even. I'm cheering for it, and for my home team, Christianity.
Thank you both for sharing your wonderful conversations. You are lucky to have each other, and so are we.
My questions are will we recognize Him when He comes, as many did not the first time around? And is His image in our countenance as we try to become as He is or at least reflect His attributes and character? As the hymn says, Jesus the very thought of Thee with sweetness fills my breast. But sweeter far thy face to see and in thy presence rest. Relics have no power, Christ and His Atonement are the source of power. Pray on fellow disciples. He lives.
I am a big "maybe" on the Shroud, but the carbon dating only dated the fabric (which many people at the time said was a sample taken from a later patch added after the Shroud was damaged in a fire) and did not identify any paint. Whatever it is, it wasn't painted. One reason I consider the Shroud more likely to be authentic than not is that, while no expert, I know a lot about medieval art. That isn't medieval art. It's the markings of a three-dimensional object--either an actual body or an anatomically accurate statue--on fabric. The "manipolo" that's supposed to be the cloth that covered His face is obviously (to me) a medieval painting. People at the time (and apparently now as well, because many people think it's real now) had no problem with an obvious painting that shows no distortions from being set to a three-dimensional object or body being said to be the result of being pressed against Christ's face. They did not require anatomical detail, it just wasn't the way they thought of images. Anatomical accuracy wasn't a goal of art at the time. For many centuries artists after the end of classical Greece and Rome, artists aimed for different ideals when painting or carving the human figure. Anatomical accuracy wasn't a goal again until the Renaissance, when wealthy people started digging up and displaying statues from Greece and Rome, and payed artists to create new pieces like them.
Likewise, while a medieval person certainly could have prepared an anatomically perfect statue showing the actual marks of a crucifixion (although art at the time universally showed the nails being driven through Christ's palms and arches, crucifixions were not done that way), indicated blood in anatomically correct places with some sort of resin or other liquid on the front, back and sides of the figure, placed it on the type and size of of burial cloth used at the time of Christ (perhaps gotten in the Holy Land from a market or a tomb, or perhaps the whole forgery was done in the Holy Land) strewn it with plants form the Holy Land, and then heated it or some other unknown way treated it so that an image was fused with the threads, and then destroyed the statue--why would they? That kind of forgery wasn't necessary. Much less convincing (to us) forgeries were perfectly convincing to people then given what they knew and could check at the time.
The sheer weirdness of this its what convinces me that if it's not real, it's inexplicable. There was no reason to make it, and no one would have thought all that up and done if forgers could have just painted something everyone would have thought was real.
I keep a third-class relic of Edith Stein in my zippered edition of The Imitation of Christ -- that bracing book that has changed my life. It seems a fitting repository.
While the veracity of the shroud is certainly not a necessary precondition of faith, I literally gasped when I saw the ai generated image. That face. Those eyes! Can’t you just hear him telling the story of the Goid Samaritan? Or - with a smile playing at the edges of his mouth. - suggest that you might consider the log in your own eye?
The shroud is no more important or significant than the cross hanging on my wall. A material reminder of God’s goodness and promises to come. It captivates as much as our intellect and imagination allows. A relationship with God fills the gap, always.
Modern testing has never found that the image is painted; it’s the result of a few microns on the surface of the linen threads that has been altered by exposure to something like radiation, causing a slight browning. The shroud is full of human body material like AB blood and lymphatic fluids. The blood and fluids exactly match the wounds on the body, which exactly match those of not only a crucified human male, but also the unique wounds suffered by Jesus.
The carbon dating was done after a tiny patch was removed and the results are plausibly explained by the fact that there were a lot of repairs done to the Shroud back in the 1300’s. They used a method of invisible mending where new linen threads were seamlessly woven into the damaged areas.
Lots more amazing facts about the Shroud but these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Hey wait just a dang minute, I thought that early tests of the Shroud’s image established that whatever it was, it _wasn’t_ paint, but something more akin to scorch marks. And that the test that dated some of its fibers as being from the Middle Ages did so because the sample used was from a repair that had been done on the Shroud in that period (come on early investigators, can’t we distinguish between the original fabric and fabric woven in centuries later?). Then there are observable details the significance of which the average Middle Ages antiquities forger would unlikely have been aware, such as that the configuration of the scourge marks indicates the use of a specific type of scourge used by Roman authorities in the time and place of Jesus’ ministry…well the more they have continued to find out about this piece of cloth and its image, the less and less credibility the “obvious or ok maybe not obvious but still a fake!” theories have. 😤. Does the stability of anyone’s Christian faith rest on the authenticity, or inauthenticity, of the Shroud? Of course not, but this is one of the most enthralling scientific investigations in history, and yeah I _love_ that the people who are emotionally invested in the Shroud being a fake get repeatedly smacked across the chops with an ice cold mackerel (or whatever kind of fish it was in the home waters of those fishers of men).
“Does the stability of anyone’s Christian faith rest on the authenticity of the shroud?”
Most certainly. I bet it would be the tipping point for some miserable scientific atheists.
I was a miserable scientific atheist for some time. I’ve come to my senses, and while I don’t need the Shroud to be real for me to hold the conclusions I live by, it sure doesn’t hurt. Thomas was an apostle for a reason.
I think Christine is right. A true faith can’t rely on matter. It may tip someone to dig deeper, I suppose, but if it’s dependent on the ‘thing’ their faith is dust in the wind.
https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Eccles%2012.13
If the next ai model shows Ronald McDonald and it’s just a legit as what Prof. Sexy Bald Gandalf shared(I have my doubts) then they will be lost again.
You have a point, Aaron. I’m sure you’re right. 🙂
I studied theoretical physics in college, and I’m willing to say “maybe” to the miracles in the gospels.
But what I know certainly is that when I decided to follow God, Christ showed me the path beneath my feet and revealed himself on the same path, walking in front of all of us towards the light.
Not only is the saying from the 1st Century, but pollen from the Middle East, from plant life in the area around Jerusalem, was found in the material. The image has no paints and no pigments, but does hold human blood of type AB. To produce the image would have taken enormous amounts of electricity, or a nuclear reaction, neither of which was available to potential fraudsters 700-800 years ago.
I suspect William of Ockham would be declaring the Shroud’s authenticity about now. 🤔
I agree with all above that when one has the faith through the grace of God, physical evidence becomes irrelevant, but does exist. Recall the discussion of miracles earlier. I have been following the Shroud story for quite some time, and when the original carbon dating was published, the methodology was flawed. They actually carbon dated some of the patches that were woven into the shroud when it was damaged in a fire. As Sierra Charlie notes above, there is substantial evidence other than the image itself of its veracity. When challenged to recreate something like the shroud today, artists could not come up with a 3D likeness (the Shroud image was subjected to 3D analysis, and shows a clearly human form, whereas even modern attempts fail terribly). I had not seen the recently generated image. Go back to the original hi resolution B&W negative plates made in the 19th century. They are truly shocking.
Catholics believe in the utility of relics, either a saint’s body parts (first class Relics), things owned by a saint (second class) and things touched to a first class Relic (third class). These are revered, and used to focus the mind on the saint, and his or her virtues. When St. Therese of Lisieux’s relics were brought to our diocese (at the time we had a Carmelite Monastery), I prayed over the relics for a resolution of my mother’s physical and living situation difficulties. She had severe pulmonary disease brought on by cardiac medication, and her physicians did not believe it was going to improve. She soon had a complete recovery, then agreed to move to a home near us from 400 miles away, which is a miracle on the order of dividing the Red Sea.
It is a focal point and a powerful reminder of that saint’s life. If the Shroud is the true burial cloth, we have a first class relic of God, in the incarnation of Christ. Not one more powerful than that!
There is good research going on now regarding the veracity of the Shroud, and has thoroughly debunked the earlier “debunking”.
The shroud's legitimacy is pretty irrelevant if you accept that he really lived. Flesh and bone. But anything that reminds us of that fact is absolutely chilling.
John 20:29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
I was raised Presbyterian (now Anglican), skeptical of relics, or at least ignoring them, but when I first saw photos and read about the shroud in high school, I had a spooky feeling it was real. Yes, a "chill of connection." I have continued to be fascinated. The AI photo gives me a spooky feeling of recognition too.
They say the only way the image could get on the cloth is through a brief, intense blast of light/ radiation (but no heat to burn) leaving a sort of photo negative on just the very top layers of the cloth. The moment of the resurrection of Jesus, the Light of the World?
The shroud does not cause me to believe more in Jesus than I already do. But I am happy it is out there, getting people to pay attention, wonder, argue even. I'm cheering for it, and for my home team, Christianity.
Thank you both for sharing your wonderful conversations. You are lucky to have each other, and so are we.
My questions are will we recognize Him when He comes, as many did not the first time around? And is His image in our countenance as we try to become as He is or at least reflect His attributes and character? As the hymn says, Jesus the very thought of Thee with sweetness fills my breast. But sweeter far thy face to see and in thy presence rest. Relics have no power, Christ and His Atonement are the source of power. Pray on fellow disciples. He lives.
I am a big "maybe" on the Shroud, but the carbon dating only dated the fabric (which many people at the time said was a sample taken from a later patch added after the Shroud was damaged in a fire) and did not identify any paint. Whatever it is, it wasn't painted. One reason I consider the Shroud more likely to be authentic than not is that, while no expert, I know a lot about medieval art. That isn't medieval art. It's the markings of a three-dimensional object--either an actual body or an anatomically accurate statue--on fabric. The "manipolo" that's supposed to be the cloth that covered His face is obviously (to me) a medieval painting. People at the time (and apparently now as well, because many people think it's real now) had no problem with an obvious painting that shows no distortions from being set to a three-dimensional object or body being said to be the result of being pressed against Christ's face. They did not require anatomical detail, it just wasn't the way they thought of images. Anatomical accuracy wasn't a goal of art at the time. For many centuries artists after the end of classical Greece and Rome, artists aimed for different ideals when painting or carving the human figure. Anatomical accuracy wasn't a goal again until the Renaissance, when wealthy people started digging up and displaying statues from Greece and Rome, and payed artists to create new pieces like them.
Likewise, while a medieval person certainly could have prepared an anatomically perfect statue showing the actual marks of a crucifixion (although art at the time universally showed the nails being driven through Christ's palms and arches, crucifixions were not done that way), indicated blood in anatomically correct places with some sort of resin or other liquid on the front, back and sides of the figure, placed it on the type and size of of burial cloth used at the time of Christ (perhaps gotten in the Holy Land from a market or a tomb, or perhaps the whole forgery was done in the Holy Land) strewn it with plants form the Holy Land, and then heated it or some other unknown way treated it so that an image was fused with the threads, and then destroyed the statue--why would they? That kind of forgery wasn't necessary. Much less convincing (to us) forgeries were perfectly convincing to people then given what they knew and could check at the time.
The sheer weirdness of this its what convinces me that if it's not real, it's inexplicable. There was no reason to make it, and no one would have thought all that up and done if forgers could have just painted something everyone would have thought was real.
I keep a third-class relic of Edith Stein in my zippered edition of The Imitation of Christ -- that bracing book that has changed my life. It seems a fitting repository.
Wow.beautiful and true.
While the veracity of the shroud is certainly not a necessary precondition of faith, I literally gasped when I saw the ai generated image. That face. Those eyes! Can’t you just hear him telling the story of the Goid Samaritan? Or - with a smile playing at the edges of his mouth. - suggest that you might consider the log in your own eye?
Lovely observations... bless you Andrew.
The shroud is no more important or significant than the cross hanging on my wall. A material reminder of God’s goodness and promises to come. It captivates as much as our intellect and imagination allows. A relationship with God fills the gap, always.
Modern testing has never found that the image is painted; it’s the result of a few microns on the surface of the linen threads that has been altered by exposure to something like radiation, causing a slight browning. The shroud is full of human body material like AB blood and lymphatic fluids. The blood and fluids exactly match the wounds on the body, which exactly match those of not only a crucified human male, but also the unique wounds suffered by Jesus.
The carbon dating was done after a tiny patch was removed and the results are plausibly explained by the fact that there were a lot of repairs done to the Shroud back in the 1300’s. They used a method of invisible mending where new linen threads were seamlessly woven into the damaged areas.
Lots more amazing facts about the Shroud but these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
I've always believed the Shroud was the real deal. The "debunking" rang hollow to me, though I had no logical reason to think that.
That's the beauty of it: "logic" isn't necessary to know miracles exist.
I KNOW 1+1=2, 2+2=4, 4+4=8, 8+8=16. I will accept of faith 16+16=32.