Two comments from blog posting, “Barrie Schwortz Announces Latest Changes to the Shroud of Turin Website (STERA, Inc.)” warrant special attention:
1. The first is from Thibault Heimburger:
Congratulations to you , Kelly Kearse, for your very beautiful and comprehensive review of the immunology of the blood.
I have learned many things, especially the details of Bollone’s studies which unfortunately are not available in English (or French).
It’s exactly the kind of balanced and honest paper we need.
I fully agree with your conclusion.Thanks again and bravo !
2. The second is from Ron, a frequent and thoughtful participant in the blog:
MAN! You’ve got to hand it to Barrie, he is TIRELESS! Awesome update and sure worth the wait.
A huge THANK-YOU to our good friend Barrie Schwortz and anyone else involved in keeping shroud.com the place to go for Shroud studies.
And that hardly covers it. I’m just reading The Shroud and the "Historical Jesus": Challenging the Disciplinary Divide by Simon Joseph. Fantastic! I’ll be up all night delving into this wonderful update.
off topic maybe .the mechanics of a crucifixation. relying on a statics class from a long time ago here are some thoughts on the forces in play on the body of crucified man.To put maximum pain on the body the arms need to be nailed straight out with no slack at all and where the nails have no give towards the end of the hand. this will become apparent. I am sure the Romans were aware of this since they were experts in pain. assume the body weighs 160 lbs a fbd (free body diagram) of the forces on the nail in the wrist at an angle 15 degrees of the crossbeam and the arm when the body slouches would be 80 lbs straight down and a force pulling by the arm of 309 lbs which equals 80 lbs divided by the sine of 15 degrees or .2588. so each arm is feeling a pull of 309 lbs, also assuming a 72 inch arm span each arm would be stretched 1.22 inches which equals 1minus the cosine of15 degrees times 36 inches assuming no stretch in the shoulders but all in the arms. note as the body slouches more, the force pulling on the arms decreases but the stretching has to increase. This may explain why some people have commented that the arms seem too long; for normal arms are not long enough to cover the genitals which I seemed to have read somewhere
Thanks for posting that link, Dan! It’s not often I get to read those sorts of papers.