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The honest skeptical inquirer considers . . .
How tall is the image of the man on the Shroud of Turin?
It is hard to know. Estimates generally range from 5'9" to 5'11".
One reason is that we don't know how flat the body is on the cloth. If the image is anatomically correct -- and it seems to be -- we know that the knees are bent and the head is tilted forward as though resting on a pillow (outside of the cloth).
Another reason is that we don't really know the size of the cloth at the time the image was formed. How much as it changed over the years due to stretching or shrinking? It has been held aloft, nailed up for display, rolled up, folded. It has been exposed to sunshine and dampness. It was seared in a fire that was doused with water. During a restoration effort in 2002 it was stretched with weights and steamed to remove wrinkles. By some estimates the length of the cloth was increased by eight inches during the restoration.
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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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