Preferred New PDF Link The Missing Corners of the Shroud of Turin and the Radiocarbon Date
Pam Moon has a new paper out, The Missing Corners and the Radiocarbon date of the Shroud of Turin at The Shroud of Turin Exhibition website.
Note: the paper is 11 slow-as-molasses pages stored as PNG graphics files wrapped in HTML. I’m travelling this week and must read papers through a hotel WiFi signal. It took 6 minutes to load on Windows 8.1 It is still trying to load on an iPad. Printing fails each and every time with various pages being dropped. (Others have encountered printing problems, I’m told). My only option was to save each page file manually, then print each one in Photoshop. You can only copy text with OCR software, which is how I copied the following paragraph.
This paper argues that the corners were removed because of water damage from douse water used to put out the fire that partially burned the Shroud in 1532. The contaminated douse water led to the formation of mould and bacteria on the cloth. The corners were too damaged and stained to be saved so they were cut away by the curators of the Shroud. Then the area around the cut was unravelled and cleaned with a disinfectant applied with a cotton or linen cloth. Additional fibres were added to the Shroud material by the cleaning process. Finally the unravelled fibres were rewoven and a patch applied to the corner.
It is an interesting paper. Take the time to read it.
Pam, if you see this and you want your paper to get the attention it deserves, please put it into a PDF file.
Bacterial and/or mould contamination has been considered before and the evidence for sporadic ‘spotting’ is qute compelling, but much of Pam’s evidence for her cutting and reweaving hypothesis is considerably less so.
1) Her photos with arrows showing water douse marks after the fire of 1532. As Guerreschi has shown, the outer two arrows point to waterstains that are not associated with the fire at all. The middle arrow shows how very little water actually penetrated the shroud as a result of the fire. Either way, even the big stain almost completely misses the C14 cut-off corner. The other cut-off corner does largely coincide with a larger and more diffuse stain (still not associated with the 1532 fire though), but then so do four other areas along that edge of the shroud, none of which show substantial mould or bacterial damage.
2) Garza-Valdez’s bacteria. Those who examined the shroud in 1978 think this is vastly overplayed. To me, it is true, those little purple wiggles look like bacteria, but others claim they are no more than microfibres stripped off the fibres themselves. It is clear that even if they exist these bacteria have had little or no effect on the integrity of the cloth, and do not need (and did not need) to be cut away.
3) Terpene and cotton contamination. Pam has confused two separate pieces of research here, which cannot be eaily reconciled. The photo of an alleged piece of intertwined threads of cotton on end and flax the other – and not stuck together with anything – is a different thread from the one examined by Villarreal, where the two pieces were butt-joined, not intertwined, both cotton, and stuck together with gum. Given this contradiction, it is obvious that neither of these observations can be considered representative of the radiocarbon area as a whole.
4) The weave pattern. The first photo is the somewhat indistinct one used by Benford and Marino to show that one side of a herringbone ‘spine’ is more irregular than the other, which some textile ‘experts’ agreed may be evidence that the two were not of consistent manufacture. Actually an enlargement of any randomly selected part of the shroud on Shroud 2.0 shows similar irregularities. The second set of pictures does not show the C14 dating sample, or in fact any sample of the shroud at all. Caspar von Uffhofen, from whose work is was taken, says it is an ilustration put together entirely for illustrative purposes by Mssrs Castaldi and Bara.
I do not consider that the mouldy corner cut-away hypothesis has been established at all.
However, I don’t think the wiping of the cloth with a slightly sticky cotton cloth is unlikely. I suggested it a while ago when I first noticed that the Holland backing cloth under the shroud was considerably lighter than the exposed areas, and thought some stain might have been applied on the more visible areas to try to make them less conspicuous. Such a stain would have almost no effect on the radiocarbon date, but could perhaps account for the chronological gradient observed by Riani and Atkinson.
Fact is, that the shroud never get lost!!
Any substance normally consumed after 100 years
If you see that it even survived a fire
But this shroud after 2000 years is quite
in strokes. And that alone is a miracle.
I have no doubt more, in fact
The shroud strengthened my faith and
The paintings now hang on the walls.
Remember that everyone saw Jesus
toaal deformed and beaten so badly
And they saw him die on the cross.
What amazed me is that 500 people
saw it alive. And the dead from the grave came
and they went to Heaven with it. They will be much
more secrets for us than we even held
mar imagine. But the biggest secret is now
uncovered by Ray Downing and his team.
And I think these people are elected. By Jesus
I don’t believe a waterstain is required to justify the disinfection/re weaving hypothesis. There are many other water stains on the shroud. Why only those two were reworked. I think the more plausible cause is that these edges are the most handled parts of the cloth. I have a life-size replica and I can’t tell you how obvious that is. Any person who consider displaying the shroud or handling it will have no problem realizing this. The shroud is enormous and if you want to do anything with it you have to hold those two corners, over and over and over again. It goes without saying oil from the skin together with bacterial flora associated lodges on those corners more than anywhere else. Most of the historic depictions i have seen display the frontal image to the left, which would leave the damaged corners on the top side, where they were held as the shroud was dangling from balconies in big events. The rest of the paper makes sense to explain what a ” curator ” would consider doing after significant damage and deterioration to those corners.
Its more easy even, cause the Shroud is a real healing cloth!
That means, everyone who touch the shroud and are sick…?
Those people get heald right away, but its behind glas.
Re pieces having been removed from the Turin Holy Shroud:
In the High Book of the Grail (late or early 12th c CE), the Grail is a most holy relic of the Lord and of his passion and death (this is made abundantly clear by the vision that accompanies its 1st appearance to Gawain). It is virtually equivalent to Christ’s burial shroud. In the healing of Perceval/Perlevaus (P/P) with the lord’s own burial shroud (saintisme drap), which Dardrane P/P’s sister, fetches from the Graveyard Perilous, P/P lies powerless to avenge the Widow Lady, conquer his enemies and reconquer their land until the very same burial shroud has touched his face and a piece of it is removed…
Typo: late 12th or early 13th c. CE)
We now have a PDF file.