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Former atheist studies Shroud of Turin


Ranger Reno

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Former atheist and now best-selling Christian author Lee Strobel is depicted studying the Shroud of Turin and other evidence for Christianity in the newly released trailer of the movie "The Case for Christ."

I have been fascinated by this for years. I don't know much about Lee Strobel but my interest has been re-sparked.

Would love to hear others thoughts regarding the Shroud.

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The carbon-dating of the shroud has proven it to be a medieval fake.

Are we meant to disbelieve the dating because it's a religious artifact?

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18 minutes ago, acute said:

The carbon-dating of the shroud has proven it to be a medieval fake.

Are we meant to disbelieve the dating because it's a religious artifact?

Many question the sample taken as some believe it was part of a medivieal repair job on the shroud. From Wikipedia:

Raymond Rogers stated in a 2005 article that he performed chemical analyses on these undocumented threads, and compared them to the undocumented Raes threads as well as the samples he had kept from his STURP work. He stated that his analysis showed: "The radiocarbon sample contains both a gum/dye/mordant coating and cotton fibers. The main part of the shroud does not contain these materials".[48] He speculated that these products may have been used by medieval weavers to match the colour of the original weave when performing repairs and backing the shroud for additional protection. Based on this comparison Rogers concluded that the undocumented threads received from Gonella did not match the main body of the shroud, and that in his opinion: "The worst possible sample for carbon dating was taken."[

So, the carbon dating is not a settled matter in the opinion of many experts. No experts seem to doubt the medieval dates done by highly qualified labs, but the sample taken is in question.

Edited by papageorge1
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The shroud is more important for what it represents to Christians than what it actually is. No amount of testing or proof that it isn't as old as Christians like to claim that it is will convince them that it isn't special. The carbon dating shows that it is very likely to be a medieval forgery/fake. If there's doubt to that, as papageorge says, then it should be tested again. Regardless, magic isn't real so at very, very best it is nothing more than a particularly ancient historical object.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Instead of attempting to validate Christian myths so they can have proof or prove atheism wrong, maybe they think facts will convince others to join, they should do the work they were commissioned to do in Acts and other red letter tellings.

What did Paul say? Jews demand signs and Greeks look for a bailout, no sorry, wisdom they look for wisdom.

Strobel attempts to both make this icon as beautiful as it is into a sign and to win over others on wisdom.

Although Paul was dissing the Jew and Greeks as a sign meant their Messiah and wisdom was the hordes Sophia.

But no sign shall be given to an adulterous generation who strays from being the bride. I still don't know what the sign of Jonah means?

And knowledge is a vanity of all vanities says Solomon using his not so cute pen name.

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He must have figured out how much money is in telling people what they want to hear.

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Other problems I see that stretch the validity of the shroud include the fact that there were about 40 of Jesus burial shrouds, it was not an unusual thing to make one yourself, or that such an event would surely count as a miracle? Yet no sign of any such miracle in any writing. Further to that, when it first came to recognition, descriptions indicated the image to be very vivid, yet today it is faded, how did it survive 13 centuries with no degradation, and then start and continue to degrade from that point on? The blood stains are red, they should be brown or black and do not contain sodium according to all tests, yet sodium is in blood, what we seem to have in place of blood is paint. It is also made with a Herringbone weave which was unknown at the time of Christ, but well known by 1300 AD, when the shroud came to prominence. 

There seems to be many more anomalies than answers, and even the most ardent proponents see it as a 40% possible. 

 

Too much "against" and not enough "for" the most obvious answer is that it is a medieval fake. 

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On 2/21/2017 at 7:22 AM, Ranger Reno said:

I have been fascinated by this for years. I don't know much about Lee Strobel but my interest has been re-sparked.

Would love to hear others thoughts regarding the Shroud.

Sometimes physical objects can be a focus for faith.  It matters little whether they are real or not.

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6 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

Sometimes physical objects can be a focus for faith.  It matters little whether they are real or not.

Just like any religion. 

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7 hours ago, psyche101 said:

Other problems I see that stretch the validity of the shroud include the fact that there were about 40 of Jesus burial shrouds, it was not an unusual thing to make one yourself, or that such an event would surely count as a miracle? Yet no sign of any such miracle in any writing. Further to that, when it first came to recognition, descriptions indicated the image to be very vivid, yet today it is faded, how did it survive 13 centuries with no degradation, and then start and continue to degrade from that point on? The blood stains are red, they should be brown or black and do not contain sodium according to all tests, yet sodium is in blood, what we seem to have in place of blood is paint. It is also made with a Herringbone weave which was unknown at the time of Christ, but well known by 1300 AD, when the shroud came to prominence. 

There seems to be many more anomalies than answers, and even the most ardent proponents see it as a 40% possible. 

 

Too much "against" and not enough "for" the most obvious answer is that it is a medieval fake. 

Herringbone weave predates Christ.

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13 hours ago, Buzz_Light_Year said:

Herringbone weave predates Christ.

Not in the region at least.

LINK - Shroud of Turin Not Jesus', Tomb Discovery Suggests

The weave of the Tomb of the Shroud fabric, the new study says, casts further doubt on the Shroud of Turin as Jesus' burial cloth.

The newfound shroud was something of a patchwork of simply woven linen and wool textiles, the study found. The Shroud of Turin, by contrast, is made of a single textile woven in a complex twill pattern, a type of cloth not known to have been available in the region until medieval times, Gibson said.

Both the tomb's location and the textile offer evidence for the apparently elite status of the corpse, he added. The way the wool in the shroud was spun indicates it had been imported from elsewhere in the Mediterranean—something a wealthy Jerusalem family from this period would likely have done.

Assuming the new shroud typifies those used in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus, the researchers maintain that the Shroud of Turin could not have originated in the city.

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