Robert Siefker | 12-Oct-2014 | 11:00-11:30 am
THE SHROUD: A CRITICAL SUMMARY OF OBSERVATIONS, DATA AND HYPOTHESES VERSION 2.0
In 2013 The Shroud Center of Colorado (TSC) posted Version 1 of a new document on its website entitled The Shroud: A Critical Summary of Observations, Data and Hypotheses. Version 2, including updates to exiting materials and a new section on Shroud History, should be available by the time of the St. Louis Shroud Conference and it is our desire to present Version 2 at the Conference. . . .
As an organization TSC has studied the Shroud for literally 10’s of thousands of hours and the publishing of the Critical Summary is part of the effort of the organization to make our understanding of the Shroud available to the serious inquirer. We disclose in the Critical Summary that TSC as an organization holds that a critical assessment of the totality of currently available data on the Shroud supports the judgment that the Shroud of Turin once wrapped the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Nevertheless, we respect the autonomy of each person to formulate his or her own judgment concerning what conclusions the data leads him or her to. Unfortunately, many people make a snap judgment concerning the Shroud based on only one or two pieces of data, the publishing of conflicting hypotheses or simply their inability to get their arms around the large corpus of Shroud “data”. The Critical Summary is a fairly long document, pushing 100 pages, but we believe an individual must spend at least a number of hours in studying the extensive evidence related to the Shroud in order to begin to form his or her own judgments and arguments concerning this fascinating object.
Click on the title to read the full abstract. Click here for the conference home page.
BTW: Link to Version 1 as a PDF file (which is pictured, above)
Good grief. Didn’t Colin Berry already do a number on this? This document claims it is an established fact that “There are images of teeth and bone structures associated with the face, as well as indications of finger bones all the way to the wrist. There is also a shadow image of a hidden thumb.” Established fact?
Too right, Paulette. Even with the best of intentions, Version 1 comes across as pompous persiflage more than a Scientific consensus. The very first example announces that it is an ‘established fact’ that ‘we cannot appreciate which image is the more evident, front or back.’ What a shame that similar established facts are not more prominent. The second statement (also an ‘established fact’) is gibberish: “The body image has the normal tones of light and dark reversed.” I ask you. Examine your own body. What are your “normal tones?” What would you look like if your “normal tones” were reversed? No, it explains, normal tones are the normal tones of a black and white photograph – except that can’t be true, because the third statement (another ‘established fact’) says the Shroud image doesn’t behave like a normal photograph at all, and uses a VP8 image (which looks exactly like a bas relief) to illustrate the statement that the image density can be correlated to the “clearances between the three dimensional surface of the body and a covering cloth.”
Even the most fanatical Shroud authenticist must find it hard not to be embarrassed by such nonsense. I do hope the presentation at St Louis is a little less didactic and quite a lot less bombastic!
When shadows of artifacts constitute reality, sindology really looks like the allegory of the cave. And these guys have PhDs…