ATTEMPTS TO PROVE THE RED MARKS ON TURIN SHROUD COULD BE BLOOD

The Turin Shroud has marks like burn marks and other marks that look like blood. The burns and the blood marks show clear boundaries. A man sweating and bleeding on a cross with the possibility of rain should have large patches of watered blood but that is not what we find at all. The blood is deliberately positioned and is too tidy. There are no puddle marks.

 

People who believe in Christianity want to believe the Turin Shroud with its red marks has real blood on it which they hope is the blood of Jesus Christ.

 

Diane Soran tested the notion that the reason the blood stayed red was because the cloth was given a good wash in a hemolytic called saponaria - soapwort. She made linen samples and the blood on them stayed red after more than two decades.

 

Sam Pellicori said that the blood on the top of the image is red because of that substance on top of the fibres stayed red due to evaporation but inside the fibre it went brown.

 

These tests are unscientific and dubious. And since when does 25 years of red blood on a cloth prove that a cloth could have red blood for two thousand years?

 

There is a relic of "blood" in Bruges, Belgium. It is a perfume bottle from long ago supposedly containing the blood of Jesus. Unlike the shroud it is followed with healings and alleged miracles. It used to go into liquid form but does not know and under inspection looks like a red waxy substance. The redness counts against it being real blood. It is a fact that the red blood on the Turin Shroud lines up with endless fraudulent blood relics that gave themselves away by failing to look like dead blood. Like the cloth, the relic in Bruges cannot be traced back to Jesus. Nothing that shows it existed before 1270 AD can be found.

 

BOOKS CONSULTED

 

Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Roberts and Donaldson, T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870

Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1985

Free Inquiry, Spring 1998, Vol 18, No 2, Article by Joe Nickell, Council for Secular Humanism, Amherst New York

From Fasting Saints to Anorexic Girls, Walter Vandereycken and Ron van Deth, Athlone Press, London, 1996

Holy Faces, Secret Places, Ian Wilson, Corgi, London, 1992

Inquest on the Shroud of Turin, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1987

Jesus Lived in India, Holger Kersten, Element, Dorset, 1994

Looking for a Miracle, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, New York, 1993

Miracles, Ronald A Knox, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1937

Sceptical Inquirer 9/10 2001 Vol 25, No 5, Article by Joe Nickell, CSIOCP, Amherst New York

Relics, The Society for Irish Church Missions, Bachelor’s Walk, Dublin

The Blood and The Shroud, Ian Wilson, Orion, London, 1999

The Book of Miracles, Stuart Gordon, Headline, London, 1996

The Divine Deception, Keith Laidler, Headline, London, 2000

The DNA of God?, Leoncio A Garza-Valdes, Doubleday, 1999

The Holy Shroud and Four Visions, Rev Patrick O Connell and Rev Charles Carty, TAN, Illinois, 1974

The Holy Shroud and the Visions of Maria Valtorta, Msgr Vincenzo Celli, Kolbe Publications Inc., Sheerbrooke, California, 1994

The Image on the Shroud, Nello Ballosino, St Paul’s, London, 1998

The Jesus Conspiracy, Holger Kersten and Elmar R Gruber, Element, Dorset, 1995

The Jesus Relics, From the Holy Grail to the Turin Shroud, Joe Nickell, The History Press, Gloucestershire, 2008

The Second Messiah, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, Arrow, London, 1998

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal, Lynne Kelly, Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2004

The Turin Shroud is Genuine, Rodney Hoare, Souvenir Press, London, 1998

The Turin Shroud, Ian Wilson, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1979

The Unauthorized Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992

Turin Shroud, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, BCA, London, 1994

Verdict on the Shroud, Kenneth E Stevenson and Gary R Habermas, Servant Publications, Ann Arbour, Michigan, 1981