Turin Shroud Older Than Thought

[Shemeska]

The story of the shroud may predate Leonardo, yes. But what proof do we have that the cloth that showed up in 1349 and the one shown by the Savoys in 1494 are the same piece of fabric? The word of the Savoys?

*shrug* I don't have any reason to not believe that the shroud produced by the de Charney family and later accquired by the Savoys was the same. [-Insert cliche about when hearing hoofbeats assume horses, not zebras-] There's also a tendency to attribute tons of stuff to Di Vinci regardless of solid evidence, ie the modern Priory du Sion hoax, etc. Assuming the shroud an intentional artwork (possible, possibly not)

I could see him doing it, but there's the question of why, and the lack of any evidence amongst his papers that he did so in either that case, or for any possible method he might have used. There's never been a precident for him doing similar things that I'm aware of. *another shrug*

Still, either way, be it natural, an unintentional creation, intentional artwork for devotion, or a hoax, I'm curious how the image was put there, and while a number of theories abound as plausible, none have definatively been shown to have been the case. (Though granted scientists don't have uninhibited access to it)

Assuming the shroud is not the burial cloth of Jesus Christ (and that's a good bet, since the images on the front and back don't even match in size or positioning), someone had to make it, right?

I can't make that assumption one way or the other, only that it seems plausible that the Turin cloth and the Edessa cloth are the same. And I've never seen any statements that the images on the front and back don't match in size or positioning, source?

 

[Umbran]

And I've never seen any statements that the images on the front and back don't match in size or positioning, source?

You can find the same basic information floating around in many places. I myself recall it from either a National Geographic special, or a program on the Discovery channel. The following quote comes from Mystery TV, summarizing:

There are features of the image, and the proportions of the man on the Shroud, that are hard to equate with it being created by contact with a real body: The man is impossibly tall, being 6ft 8in (2.03m). This may be explained if, as some researchers believe, the image was made with a projected (photographic) image - which of course may be any height. The head is disproportionately small for the body, the face unnaturally narrow and the forehead foreshortened. The front and back images, in particular of the head, do not match up precisely, and the back image is around 2 inches (5cm) longer than the front

 

[Welverin]

"Between 1,300 and 3,000 years old."

If only I could get my boss to accept that kind of margin of error...

What I like is it allows it to be 700 years after Jesus' death and it to predate that by about 1,000. So I think we can safely say it isn't more than about 2,000 years old, real or not.

 

[tarchon]

What I like is it allows it to be 700 years after Jesus' death and it to predate that by about 1,000. So I think we can safely say it isn't more than about 2,000 years old, real or not.

It holds only if the textile was never held at temperatures less that 68 F for any substantial length of time or exposed to temperatures in excess of 77 F for even a brief period, including the fire in which the reliquary melted and burned the cloth with molten silver.