Yesterday, Stephen Jones copy-pasted a complete essay by Danusha Goska from the pages of shroud.com thus making it more accessible. The essay, in two short paragraphs, contains one of the most powerful reasons for being quite sure that the image is not a scorch or a photograph or any sort of medieval Rube Garlaschelli Goldberg creation:
Items of expressive culture are not found in isolation. They are not found without evidence of practice. If one excavates an ancient site and finds one pot, one finds other pots like it, and the remains of failed or broken pots in middens.
If the shroud is a forgery, where are its precedents? Where are the other forged shrouds like it? Where is there evidence of practice shrouds of this type? If the technology to create the shroud was available in medieval Europe, where are other products of this technology? Humankind is an exhaustively exploitative species. We make full use of any technology we discover, and leave ample evidence of that use. . . .
You will never convince the world with mere science if you ignore the realities of history.
Picture: Annunciation to Mary, 14th century stained glass, Regensburg Cathedral, Germany
I am a firm believer. While I think I understand why they are doing it . I am somewhat shocked and dismayed at all the actions and reasons that some folks are going through trying to denigrate God’s gift to us. It was written in pre-Christian era documents what was going to take place, the Lord knew what was ahead of him in his human body when he was praying in the garden and it came to pass. The Shroud is as a quick but deep reminder that it did in fact take place.
Artistic context is certainly an important factor, and I would very much like to find some. That is why I occasionally mention the possibiity that the shroud may have started life as an altar cloth or reredos or epitaphios, from Eastern Europe (possibly North-Eastern Europe), rather than a French painting. No success yet, but absence of evidence is not (not yet, I claim) evidence of absence. Give me time!
I have entered into the necessary search engines, “Orthodox Epitaphos”. Duly expected, they were a gamut of results. Most interestingly was this one:http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1297/1264021834_d044bdac8d_z.jpg
Regardless, the Shroud may have “precedents”.
Wow.. That’s the best you could come up with and you still claim the shroud may have precedents?
What’s the date on that thing?
Why is there a Loin cloth?
Is it pseudo negative?
3D information embedded in the image intensity?
Forensically accurate blood stains on the vertical and Horizontal plains?
Does it have real Blood?
Serum retraction rings?
Dirt from Jerusalem?
Superficial to fibre level?
Just to name a few….I am curious how you came to that conclusion…
Yes, that was rather bad, I understand. I’ll keep looking…
I believe you misread. All that epitaphoi gives credence to is that the shroud (may) have began life as Altar cloth in Eastern Europe, by virtue of similarity. Of course, it fails to come close to the Shroud.
One of the most interesting epitaphioi is the Stavronikita Epitaphios. Daniel Scavone suggests it may be 14th-15th century which of course post-dates 1355. However apparently it comes from a Mt Athos monastery, and he suggests that it is therefore of Greek origin “looking back” rather than being influenced by the Lirey showings. The cloth clearly shows a representation of the herring-bone twill, extensive flagellation marks, and of course crossed hands over the loins. It is evident just from the chest wound that the Shroud is itself a mirror image and so we see it as if the right hand is over the left, rather than the actuality of it being left over right. The epitaphioi that I looked at all seem to show the right hand over the left, so they do seem modeled on the Shroud image. Wiki says that the oldest known epitaphios is one at Venice which is thought to date from ~1200. Epitaphioi are essentially an Orthodox practice, so that the oldest being at Venice is a little surprising. Perhaps the returning crusaders brought it as a trophy from Constantinople after they’d sacked it in 1204!!?? I wouldn’t bet on Hugh’s chances of finding a north-east European origin for the genre, no matter how much time he takes to search for it.
Daveb, Just curious, I know you do a good job researching stuff. Any 14 ft epitahios came across you way? Or was it more 7×1.5 (i.e trying to fit the turin shroud onto an orthodox altar folding it in 4)
This might pique your interest. Another epitaphioi which exhibits clear shroud influence, i.e. herringbone twill, head composure, and crossing of the hands.
http://greatshroudofturinfaq.com/Definitions/Epitaphios.html
I agree… Shroud influence not precedence.
I’ve seen the image URL from David Bowman before. I’ll see if I can find a good one of Stavronikita and post it. It’s impressive. You need to remember that they’re intended to be used as a rubric in the Orthodox Easter Friday and Saturday liturgies, that’s their purpose. I found a YouTube video, but it’s the full service, very long, rapidly wordy, and I didn’t see much action after about 10 minutes of watching, all behind the reredos stuff. But check out the stills sequence bottom of:
http://www.stirene.org/holy-friday-night—epitaphios-procession.html You’ll see it being taken in procession.
I doubt if you’d ever find one of the same dimensions as the Shroud, they’re intended to be representational, not accurate models, think Byzantine mind-set. They’re all frontal imagery, no dorsal.
Epitaphios Stavronikita at:
http://shroudofturin.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/image66.png
Zoom to over 200%, or save it as a *.png and then zoom it to get the full detail. You’ll see an accurate representation of the herring bone weave and also of the scourge wounds. Scavone says probably about 14th-15th centuries from Mt Athos, but I’d like to know more about this. From Dan’s original post of Mar 28, 2011.
See: http://shroudstory.com/2011/03/28/herringbone-weave-within-stavronikita-epitaphios/
Include Max Patrick Hamon comment: “The Monastery of Stavronikita epithaphios is only mid-16th c. CE. See also the 1300 CE ca zigzag/herringbone patterned epitaphios from the Byzantine Museum in Thessaloniki” He also refers to the Venice St Mark alabaster throne 6th century. He states: “I hold the cathedra of Saint Mark (6th century CE) to be the earliest testimonial so far of Yeshua’s zigzag weave patterned burial cloth.”
You can find the Thessalonika epitaphios easily enough. Apparently it was discovered in a Thessalonika church in 1900 but is attributed to the time of the Palaiologos family who became prominent in Greece in the 11th century, and founded the imperial Palaiologi dynasty in 1269. It is now considered the benchmark against which all other Byzantine embroidery is judged. An excellent detail clearly showing the herring bone weave can be found at:
http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/WF001729/detail-of-the-epitaphios-of-thessaloniki-depicting
It is claimed to date from the 13th century, and would seem to recall the Shroud cloth taken in 1204.
So far, although there seems to be a tradition that the epitaphios repesents a burial shroud, they all seem rather derivative. In other words the cloths show pictures of shrouds, rather than acting as the shroud themselves, and on the picture of the shroud is a picture of Christ, which misses the point. I understand that the antimension of the Orthodox priest, and perhaps the strachitsa, are also representations of the shroud, but in these cases the ‘body’ they wrap is not a picture of Christ but the Chalice of the Eucharist. However all the photos of these I’ve seen are again pictures of entombment scenes rather than representations of shrouds themselves. Although this is context of a sort, it does not immediately make me think that our Shroud is an obvious development of this artistic style.
Give it time Hugh, and with any amount of luck and God’s grace it might dawn on you that perhaps the Shroud is not derivative, but a unique original. There’s a very good reason why the epitaphioi are derivative. Think about it.
There are no precedents.