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The discerning skeptical inquirer thinks . . .
What is the significance of the wrists being nailed as opposed to the palms
It is very interesting is that the man of the Shroud was crucified with large spikes driven through his wrists and not through the palms of his hands. It is significant because it contradicts all iconography of medieval and pre-medieval periods. This is evidenced by both the image and the bloodstains.
Nailing through the wrists is more historically and medically plausible. It was not before the first part of the 20th century, that medical experts first realized that nails driven through a man’s palms would not support a his weight – even if his feet were nailed or supported – and that the nails would tear out. The Romans crucified victims by driving nails through the wrist area of the forearm.
If indeed the Shroud is a medieval forged relic, the craftsman who produced it knew how to do it right even if the nailing defied sensibilities of the time.
See: What is the significance of the human remains found at Giv’at ha-Mivtar? What features of the images defy the sensibilities of the medieval era?
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Shroud of Turin and the Skeptical Inquirer
Fact:
The 1988 carbon 14 dating used invalid samples snipped from a
discrete medieval repair. Furthermore, kinetics constants for the
loss of vanillin from lignin indicates that the cloth is at least
twice as old as the dates determined by the carbon 14 dating with
the faulty samples.
By some estimates, from
examination of documenting photographs, there is sufficient new
thread (about 60%) to allow adjusting the cloth's date to
approximately the first century.
Fact :
The images are formed by a brownish, complex conjugated carbon
substance within a carbohydrate layer of starch fractions no thicker
than 1/100 the diameter of a human hair.
The images are probably the
product of an amino/carbonyl reaction.
Fact :
The bloodstains are real blood. The blood is unusually red for
old blood.
The blood probably stayed red and
did not turn black as blood normally does because trace chemicals
found in the starch fractions are hemolytic. Also, the blood is rich
in bilirubin, a bile pigment produced when a human body is under
severe traumatic stress. Bilirubin is bright red and stays red.
Fact :
There is a faint, superficial face image on the back of the cloth.
This supports the hypothesis of an
amino/carbonyl reaction.
Fact :
There are sufficient descriptive historical records to suggest that
the Shroud of Turin is the Edessa cloth (ca. before 544 to 944 CE)
and the Bucoleon Palace grave cloth of Constantinople (ca. 944 -
1204).
Fragmentary evidence suggests that
the Edessa Cloth originated in Jerusalem in the 1st century and that
it is the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth.
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