THE SHROUD AS A RELIC

The Turin Shroud is the most famous relic in the world. Millions believe that it is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ bearing his crucified and bloodied image. The cloth is kept at Turin in Italy. The cloth is an enigma. Many say it is a miracle.

 

The Roman Catholic Church looks for miraculous cures etc to happen in response to devotions involving a sacred relic or a person thought to be a saint. The Church says it needs God to do that so that it will know that something is sacred and has his approval. No miraculous cures have been linked to the Shroud of Turin. Read The Vatican Prophecies, by John Thavis. It would be odd if there was no evidence from the supernatural that the Shroud was the real burial cloth of Jesus.

 

PLEASE VISIT

 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/logical-take/201403/let-go-the-shroud-part-i

 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/logical-take/201403/let-go-the-shroud-part-ii

 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/logical-take/201403/let-go-the-shroud-part-iii

 

ULTIMATE LINK FOR DEBUNKING OF TURIN SHROUD: http://www.historytoday.com/charles-freeman/origins-shroud-turin

 

BAD ARCHAEOLOGY WEBSITE REFUTES SHROUD: http://www.badarchaeology.com/?page_id=322

 

In the Cathedral of Turin what many people hold to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ is enshrined. The Shroud is around fourteen feet by three and a half feet. It is a sheet of linen. It looks like a big strip that covered the back and front of a man completely. Age seems to have turned it yellow. One would think God could preserve it better than that for the image it bears is supposed to be the imprint of the dead wounded and bloody body of Jesus his son. There are about forty other Shrouds supposed to be that of Jesus. What makes this one so special is the fact that it is so mysterious and superficially convincing and has baffled some scientists for decades and still continues to do so. The image on the cloth is faint but it is a negative like the negatives you have with a photograph. The image is very plain in the negative or the quasi-negative as I should say.

 

The Shroud of Turin seems to have sceptics up against a brick wall and unable to go any further. In fact, it is not the great challenge to scepticism and anti-religionism that it appears to be or is made out to be.

 

For one thing, there is unmistakeable evidence that the apostles did not believe in a Jesus who was crucified in the first century but in one who only appeared then as a risen being. The testimony of the earliest Church proves that the Shroud is not genuine even if it is a first century artifact. Testimony like that comes before the Shroud’s evidence for why would they lie?

 

There is no evidence from history that the carbon dating of 1988 which found that the Shroud was made between 1260 and 1390 AD is wrong. But the fact remains, even if the Shroud is much older than that as many religious fantasists say, it is still not a miracle and it is still not proof that Jesus existed and was buried in it. http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/shroud.html shows how believers even try to pretend that the samples of the shroud used in the carbon dating were from the mended area of the cloth! Their lies are exposed.

 

Do you really want to believe in a miracle cloth that glorifies martyrdom purely for religious grounds? Christians believe that Jesus did not die to save the poor from genocide or for human rights but purely for religious doctrine.Jesus was allegedly wrapped in the Shroud of Turin. Despite all the strange things that seem to be in the Shroud’s favour, the supporters choose to ignore proof on the cloth itself that nobody was ever wrapped up in it. THE TOP OF THE HEAD ITSELF IS NOT SEEN! If the image had been wrapped around a head you would not see this effect. The cloth should show blood marks and images as if it were wrapped around a head. Instead, it looks as if the back and front were put on separately with no connection in between. There should be a connection if the cloth covered a body. It is like somebody taking a photo of you from the front and then one from the back and putting them together with the head on each photo touching. It is not a natural effect when you have a cloth that a man was supposedly wrapped up in and which went over the top of his head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INEXPLICABLE DOES NOT SPELL MIRACLE

 

The Turin Shroud is one of the strangest things on earth. We cannot start holding that everything strange that comes along is a miracle. We do not regard the inexplicable Siberian fireball of 1908 as a miracle. The Cottingley Fairies photographs were considered inexplicable and miraculous for nearly seven decades and were verified as inexplicable by many scientific experts until the two young girls who created them confessed the truth which was that the fairies in the pictures were just drawings and cut-outs. And it should be easier to tell if photos have something dodgy about them than it should be for the Turin Shroud for nobody knows which of countless chemical combinations and reactions could have created it.

 

The real Shroud would have been seized by the Romans, who were investigating the empty tomb, and then destroyed. The Gospels do not say that the cloth would have been there at that time. John only says linens were lying there but if there was a shroud he gives no indication that it was still there or that anybody cared if it were there or not.

 

The Shroud is impossible to reconcile with the New Testament accounts. The Shroud attacks the validity of the only thing that could have a chance at verifying the claims made for Jesus so in doing so it shows itself to be just another piece of strange cloth. The Shroud contradicts the gospels. After all how could we even think that the Shroud could bear the image of Christ without the New Testament gospels?

 

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 amd 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

 

WEB

 

www.shroud.com/faq.htm

FAQ on the Shroud of Turin

 

www.mcri.org/Shroudupdate.html

Latest Shroud Update

This site gives close up pictures of the blood on the Shroud to demonstrate that it has to be paint not blood.

 

www.petech.ac.za/shroud/is the.htm

 Is the Shroud of Turin the First Recorded Photograph? Nicholas Legh Allen

 

http://skeptic.com/Comments/turincom.html

Shroud of Turin

 

http://skepdic.com/refuge/bunk13.html

The Skeptic’s Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll