New Study: the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo Covered the Same Person

[DameAgnes]

Imagine if they could do dna testing on all of these things. we might prove conclusively that all of it is the blood of the same man, shroud, sudarium and tunic!

http://aleteia.org/2016/04/11/new-study-the-shroud-of-turin-and-the-sudarium-of-oviedo-covered-the-same-person/

http://aleteia.org/2016/04/04/photos-the-exposition-of-the-holy-tunic-of-argenteuil/

[Catholictothecore]

You just made my day with this, lol. 

[CatherineM]

Really cool

[Guest]

"Let me say off the bat that the headline is too bold. The Shroud of Turin has never been and almost certainly cannot be "authenticated." There will never be any definitive proof that the shroud was ever wrapped around the body of Jesus of Nazareth. No laboratory test will ever demonstrate that the image was caused by some miraculous or scientifically inexplicable process. 

 

Moreover, there remain challenges to the Shroud's authenticity, such as the radiocarbon dating tests which suggest that the cloth is too young to be the burial shroud of Jesus. 

 

Still, it remains the case that various proposed explanations for how the image could have been deliberately created by artistic means are problematic. The convergence of the Shroud image with the Sudarium, if confirmed, would be striking for a number of reasons, not least that the Sudarium's known history is significantly older than that of the Shroud (notably, the Sudarium is known to be older than carbon dating has suggested). 

 

Attempts to explain the Shroud image as some form of painting or pigmentation are unconvincing for a number of reasons, not least because the image is essentially a photographic negative which looks more natural when the lights and darks are reversed. Chemical tests have detected pigments on the Shroud, which is not surprising, since painted copies made over the centuries were piously laid on top of the Shroud for extra sanctity. These are random flecks of pigment that don't form the image itself, as some Shroud skeptics have acknowledged.  

 

Conversely, attempts to explain it as some kind of very early photographic process are unconvincing, not only because of the historical assumptions needed to support this thesis, but because the light and dark images don't depict highlights and shadows of a body under a light source; rather, they correspond to elevation and proximity to the cloth. The darker areas (lighter when the image is reversed) are elevated areas that would have been in closer contact with the cloth, and the lighter areas (darker when reversed) are those areas that would have been further from the surface of the cloth. 

 

Again: The Shroud can never definitively be authenticated. But, skeptical claims to the contrary, the question of the nature of the image remains open. It may or may not be the burial cloth of Christ, but it remains interesting. Mighty interesting." - Steven D. Greydanus

Edited April 18, 2016 by Guest