Shroud of Turin

Ok, I know religion gets everyone here all crazy, but for scientific and historic conversational purposes, what\'s everyone\'s opinion on the Shroud of Turin?  Do you think it\'s really the funeral shroud of Jesus or some cool artwork by some underappreciated artist?


*Note: the Shroud of Turin is a piece of cloth that has the image of Jesus on it, as though it had covered him during his funeral.  It has the entire body imprinted into the sheet, including what\'s believed to be blood stains on the wrists, ankles, and the forehead (the nails and thorn wounds during the crucifixion).

Hmm... I saw a documentary on it once (on Discovery) but I fail to remember most of what they told. There was some fuss about the dating of the cloth though. I believe scientists weren\'t able to carbon-date it (I can\'t remember if that\'s the English term). [EDIT: Or were they? And the date didn\'t exactly match, and the church/someone else claimed that carbon-dating wasn\'t accurate anyway...? Not sure.]

Personally I\'m most inclined to say it\'s a fake.

Yes, I know perfectly the matter of Turin cause i\'ve seen many documentaries and info on magazines and I personally think that it\'s a fake. Another fake like 99.9% of objects and histories relating religion.

By the way, did you know that if we join all cross\'s pieces of Jesus (distributed above the Earth as "real cross of Jesus) the result would be wood enough to make 30 or 40 crosses?

[Cerberus]

According to the carbon tests, it\'s less than 700 years or so, old.

[GmanJoe]

The controversy is contamination by some form of bacteria. The microscopic pollen in the cloth is quite intruging. There are no records of people knowing anything about pollen back in the 14th century....especially pollen indigenous only to Israel. And one of those pollens are more abundant around the forehead region....and it\'s from a thorny plant that doesn\'t exist anywhere except in Israel. Some of the wound marks on the body were made by two metal ball bearings at the ends of the Roman whips. Not many of those survive today. The question is, how could the forger know about them in the 14th century?

Originally posted by Jaye_Bennington
According to the carbon tests, it\'s less than 700 years or so, old.

I ve read somewhere that Carbon tests are very inaccurate.They sometimes can tell thousands of years more or less  than the true age.

All these years of carbon tests and almost all of them(if not all) are wrong.

[Kurt Angle]

I thought scientists had proved it to be a fake.

I\'m with Unicron!, I read time ago that Carbon tests are good for dates older than 5000 before Christ, and they\'re very inaccurate.

I want to believe that its a shroud for jesus....but science can be prove.  Opinions cannot.

[Cerberus]

Originally posted by Unicron!


I ve read somewhere that Carbon tests are very inaccurate..

Radio carbon dating is actually very accurate. The rate at which radio carbons decay after death is uniform, whatever type of life it is taken from.


Besides, the human figure etched into the shroud is too tealistic.

If a shroud or any other type ofd cloth is draped over the body, it would also pick up the marks from the side & top of the head as well as the legs arms and body.

The fact that it doesn\'t show this, indicates that it is more than likely an idealised image painted/etched onto fabric in a mild stain.

[GmanJoe]

Forgers makes more than one copy. Why is there only one if it\'s a forgery?

The cloth was folded over the body with the middle of it bending over the head and continuing over the other side of the body. The body wasn\'t wrapped in it. Simply draped over the body.