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The honest skeptical inquirer wonders . . .
What are the poker holes?
A repeating pattern of four holes are often called the poker holes because some have speculated that L-shaped patterns of burn holes on the Shroud were created by someone thrusting a hot poker through the Shroud. The speculation is that this was some sort of “test by fire” to ascertain the Shroud’s authenticity. That seems fanciful and there is no good basis for imagining that this is how the holes were formed. It is just as probable that the burns were caused by a careless thurifer who may have accidentally sprinkled some granules of burning incense onto the Shroud.
There is no question that they are burn holes. The cloth was folded in half lengthwise and again in half to half its width when the burns were made. This is evident as there are four matched, mirrored repetitions of the holes showing progressive levels of burn penetration. Each pattern has the same four burn marks or holes.
However the burn holes came about, it did not happen in a devastating fire in Chambéry in 1532 when the Shroud was severely damaged by molten silver dripping onto it from its storage reliquary. We know that because a copy of the Shroud, the Lier Shroud painted in 1516, possibly by Albrecht Durer or Bernard van Orley, clearly shows the burn holes.
There is a far more interesting and older picture of the burn holes in an ancient document known as the Hungarian Pray Manuscript or Pray Codex.
See: What is the Hungarian Pray Manuscript or Codex?
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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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