Blues Guitarist
Well-known member
Why don’t you apply the same level of critical analysis to the bible that you apply to the forger’s letter?I'm pretty convinced, yes. I've looked at the arguments on both sides, and noticed that there is a difference in the quality of them. The arguments against seem to boil down primarily to two things. A letter in the 14th century saying it was a fake and the radiocarbon dating test of 1988. That's about it, and they are what I would call easily dismissable. Why do I deem them dismissable? Well, let's take the letter. It claims that the caught the forger and he told them how he "painted" it. However, this alleged forger is not named, there is nothing mentioned in the letter about how the forger is supposed to have "painted" it, and the image is not painted on anyway. There is no paint, ink or dye in the image. The image itself is caused by oxidation and dehydration of the cellulose in the absolute very top layers of the micro-fibres of the cloth. Not painted, and impossible for anyone to do, even today. Everything about it is impossible really. No one can replicate it. Not with all the properties it has. Wikipedia is silly, too, because it says things like "the repair patch theory has been debunked." I think, "Oh really? Sounds interesting. I haven't heard anything about the repair patch theory having been debunked." So I click on the link of the alleged debunking, and it leads nowhere. Really strange.
On the other hand, the evidence in support of the authenticity of the shroud is not easily dismissable. In fact, as I've already mentioned, it is so good that scientists working on the shroud have converted and become Christians on the basis of what they have seen. Of course, the media only talks about the radiocarbon dating test of 1988, and doesn't mention the fact the even the director of the project himself (Ray Rogers) came to agree with those who pointed out that it was in fact a medieval repair patch.
There are many things about it that are extraordinary. For example, as I said, no one knows how the image was put on the shroud. It is not scorched on, because the image does not fluoresce. It is not painted on. One of the hypotheses is that it would have had to have been caused by a sudden burst of a colossal amount of light energy lasting only the most infinitesimally small amount of time. I can't remember the exact figures, but it's a ridiculously huge amount of energy and a ridiculously short duration of time. Pretty difficult for a medieval forger to arrange. What could have caused this to happen?
I've already mentioned the VP-8 image analyzer. Peter Schumacher, the inventor, is one of the scientists who converted and became a follower of Jesus of Nazareth when he saw the results of the scan. It has 3D information encoded into the image.
There is no image under the areas where there is blood. So the blood got there first, and the image was created later. That in itself is interesting, but also it makes the job of the forger harder. It would be easier to do the image first, and then add the blood after. It's much harder to get the image to match the blood.
The fact that the actual image on the cloth is a photographic negative is also astounding. How and more to the point why on earth would a medieval forger do it like that, centuries before the invention of photography? What would be the point?
It has x-ray and holographic properties, too. There is pollen endemic to the Jerusalem area on it. The blood stains match those on the Sudarium of Oviedo, too which is also interesting. Police photo IDs and face recognition technology require 40 points of coincidence to establish someone's identity. The Shroud and the Sudarium have over 100. Now, the provenance of the Sudarium is well known. It travelling west along the coast of North Africa as Islam expanded in the 7th century, ending up in Spain. So if the Shroud and the Sudarium are of the same person, which over 100 points of coincidence would strongly suggest, the Shroud must date back to at least then.