ASSESSING IF THE PRAY MANUSCRIPT/HUNGARIAN CODEX IS EVIDENCE IN FAVOUR OF TURIN SHROUD
The Turin Shroud is the most famous relic in the world. Millions believe that it is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ bearing his crucified and bloodied image. The cloth is kept at Turin in Italy. The cloth is an enigma. Many say it is a miracle.
The pose is interesting for he is flat on his back with legs together and hands covering the privates. Sure enough you can hardly see the buttocks - whoever did this protecting "Jesus's" modesty! The buttocks should be ultra clear if the image came from a body lying on it. Attempts to blame rigor mortis for these barely visible buttocks are just desperate and odd.
The Turin Shroud has been shown by carbon dating to date
from a time long after Jesus died. It does not stop believers wanting to show
that the carbon dating is wrong. The shroudies want to believe the Carbon 14
test was inaccurate but if they are right what if it was only wrong by 68 years?
Remember, even if the test is wrong it is not likely to be extremely wrong.
There is no way it can err by as much as 1260 years. Why 68 years? Because that is when an image
believers say is a picture of the Shroud was created! If the image is of the
Shroud then possibly it was made soon after the Shroud.
Science in terms of evidence strongly shows the shroud is fake. Believers then,
despite knowing that science is the best test, continue to look for evidence
that makes it look like science is wrong.
Nobody is interested in the 1110 image of St Vincent with
no clothes on holding his hands to cover his privates exactly as you would find
on the shroud. Yet any image of Jesus with this pose is pounced on as if
it were a hint that people knew of the shroud before its first public
appearance. Nobody cares that if you are going to depict a naked corpse that is
what you will do with the hands. The pose is nothing special.
The Hungarian Codex dating from 1192-5 has a picture of Jesus being prepared for
burial in the Holy Shroud using what is reputedly the same pose as shroudman.
Top part has Jesus being anointed at burial. If so then this contradicts the Turin cloth having no blood smears.
Top part shows no wounds.
Jesus' beard is sparse compared to shroud man.
Arms are crossed like the shroud to hide the private parts but that is what artists did anyway.
The cloth is too small to cover Jesus.
It has creases unlike the Turin cloth. Jesus' buttocks are on the crease. They are clear enough on the Turin cloth.
The lack of thumbs being shown is interesting. It is interesting that like the shroud man the image shows the hands without thumbs and crossed in the same position. But why would the creator of the Hungarian picture not show the wounds and show the thumbs missing if he were inspired by the Turin cloth? It is totally foolish to suggest he seen the shroud for the thing that would be foremost in his mind would be the wounds. Also, it is very hard to see that the thumbs are hidden on the Shroud if you look at it the way it is. The thumbs being out of sight were not verified until Pia did his work a hundred years ago. Unseen thumbs on the Turin Shroud only mean they did not appear not that they were in spasm and positioned along the palms.
The second image shows the shroud in pieces. The angel is announcing the resurrection. There is nothing on the cloth which is why he is so casual with it and it is just grabbed roughly.
There are crosses which some crazy people say must be the poker holes on the shroud. They are not nothing like those holes. They are just crosses. The picture was iconography for goodness sake.
The lid has what looks like holes. That does not make it the shroud which has holes. Holes are depicted on the sarcophagus too.
And there is a lid with a pattern. It is rigid and not a cloth and its supposed to be the herringbone pattern of the shroud.
If artistic licence, and it is, is involved then the picture cannot prove much.
We are told by people like Ian Wilson that it seems to prove the carbon dating which makes the Shroud no older than 1260 wrong. So the dating is said to be wrong for the Shroud must have been seen by the artist who made the picture in the codex. This is sheer speculation. (By the way there is a reproduction of the Hungarian Codex picture in the Ian Wilson book, Holy Faces, Secret Places (page 209). Typical shroud devotee - he tells lies about the picture and still has the nerve to let people see it! And that despite the fact that your eyes contradict what he says!)
The cloth seems small but some say it
could still be the much larger Turin Shroud and it is just the way it is bunched
up and it could be a lot bigger. But it looks as if it's not very bunched up! The
angel is holding a cloth similar to the one Jesus was laid on in the top
picture. It is the same one. Two pictures shout at us: the shroud was small!! Of
course believers pay no attention to that.
There is no blood on it or even on the cloth held by the angel. The Turin Shroud's main feature is its "blood". We see it is a lid and the believers disregard their own eyes and say it is the Turin Shroud.
HERRINGBONE
For the sake of argument, say the picture shows the herringbone pattern.
Believers like to say it was not known in the time the Shroud was allegedly forged but fits the first century so the Shroud is probably real.
If the carbon dating is right that the Shroud is a medieval fake, then the herringbone pattern was well known before the Shroud was forged. There could be enough there if you think you see a herringbone weave cloth to suggest designing such a weave. The artist may have seen such cloth and mistakenly put the weave on the stone.
It is
too much to believe that the codex artist knew of the Shroud pattern when nobody else
seems to have known of it. If he did then it is more likely that he was the
inspiration for the Shroud or that he knew of the pattern from people who had
been to Palestine.
Despite recent attempts to prove that the herringbone pattern of the Shroud was
used in first century Palestine the fact remains that the pattern was common in
the middle ages and no evidence that it was indeed used in Palestine has come
up. The Jesus Conspiracy, in a futile attempt to prove that the carbon dating of
pieces of the Shroud was a hoax claiming that pieces of another cloth with
herringbone pattern were used instead at least showed that the pattern was not
unique to the Shroud (page 78, The Jesus Conspiracy).
In the picture Jesus is laid out on a plain
white shroud. It is only for lying on and not for wrapping him up
in. The artist did not know that Jesus was meant to be covered by
the cloth.
Poker holes?
The lid has the holes and there is a slab below it which has the holes as well.
They are just holes not poker holes. This strongly suggests that whoever created
the Shroud MISUNDERSTOOD the picture or MISREMEMBERED it. It certainly does not
suggest that the Shroud was known in those days. Overall the picture refutes the
Shroud and with so many imaginary pictures of the Shroud from the period you
would not be surprised for at least one to have some similarities with the Turin
one. But not one of them really matches up. Period.
In the lower picture, the shroud cloth is bunched up and has xs in it not holes
at all. What has the holes is the lid of the sarcophagus which has an edge
jutting out to indicate that it is a solid object. These holes match the Turin
Shroud holes exactly. And the slab composing it also has holes too. The holes
are just a pattern. It is a stretch to imagine that they depict the poker holes
of the Turin Shroud.
The shroud believers seem to want us to think the poker holes were put in the
fresh shroud according to the Hungarian codex. Why would anybody put a hot poker
in a new Shroud? Whoever forged the Shroud may have gotten the idea of the poker
holes from the picture. But he misunderstood what the artist understood by them
indicating that the Shroud came AFTER the codex not before.
So the picture is inconsistent with the idea that the holes signify the poker
holes of the Turin Shroud. My theory is that the triple holes in the picture, on
the lid, are markers of the Trinity and not poker holes. There are three holes
in a line and one hole beside them. So you have three and then there is a hole
then on its own near them to indicate the oneness of the Trinity.
The holes in the lid could be just for spying on the corpse in case it would
arise. Ian Wilson says the picture authenticates the Shroud and he has no right
to. It is the wishful thinking to which we are accustomed in him. He even thinks
that a picture of Jesus lying in a Shroud from the eighth century called the
Byzantine umbella shows the Shroud image was known then (page 202, Holy Faces,
Secret Places) though the Jesus in it has a large towel round his waist though
there is no need for his hands would conceal his modesty.
Coincidence?
We are told by people like Ian Wilson that the Hungarian Codex dating from
1192-5 has a picture of Jesus being prepared for burial in the Holy Shroud and
another one where the angel holds the Shroud which has mysterious poker holes
like the Turin one. That seems to prove the carbon dating which makes the Shroud
no older than 1260 wrong. But when you think about what a Christian would want
the Shroud to look like you realise it would be a bleeding bearded man covering
his genitals with his hands for modesty you see that there would have to be
images completely independent of the Shroud that would seem to have been copied
from it. The Hungarian Codex would have inspired many to believe that that is
what a shroud of Jesus would resemble even if there had been no Turin Shroud
then. What would you expect? What other pose would an image meant to pass for
the dead Jesus have?
It is interesting that like the shroud man the image shows the hands without
thumbs and crossed in the same position. But why would the creator of the
Hungarian picture not show the wounds and show the thumbs missing? It is totally
foolish to suggest he saw the shroud for the thing that would be foremost in his
mind would be the wounds.
To say the Codex has a copy of the Shroud of Turin on it is as ridiculous as
saying that all the paintings of Jesus looking up to Heaven as he dies on the
cross and has a nail in each foot are copied from the first painting that does
this. There are many depictions of the Shroud and the Cross so coincidences have
to be expected and in the Shroud even more so than the crucifixion. Yet people
argue that there are ancient icons of Jesus which have too much in common with
the face on the Shroud to mean anything other than that the Shroud inspired and
influenced the pictures! But there are thousands of icons so it is only natural
that some would look a fair bit like the Shroud man. And the Shroud facial features are not as plain as an ordinary photograph so anybody that could
not
have the negative image which was plainer would have found it difficult to
render a very accurate likeness.
Did the Image inspire the Shroud Forger?
It odd to argue that the picture shows the Shroud is not disproven by the carbon
dating and thus may be real when in fact the forger could have copied the
picture when he made the image on the Shroud. Did the Hungarian manuscript
influence the Shroud forgery?
The forger of the Shroud for example might have put poker holes in his creation to make it
seem older than it was just because he saw holes in the Hungarian Codex picture.
Every forger needs some evidence manufactured to pull his hoax off.
The Hungarian Manuscript does not prove the Shroud to be genuine even if it is
true that it depicts the Shroud of Turin.
There is no evidence at all that the image on the Shroud of Turin predated the
carbon dating. Or even that the cloth did! We must remember that some scientists
who must be getting money out of their shroud "science" start the rubbish about
the Hungarian Manuscript and other things that only fuel the delusions of the
believers. What kind of scientist would show such a dreadful loss of reason?
BOOKS CONSULTED
Free Inquiry, Spring 1998, Vol 18, No 2, Article by Joe Nickell, Council for
Secular Humanism, Amherst New York
Holy Faces, Secret Places, Ian Wilson, Corgi, London, 1992
Inquest on the Shroud of Turin, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1987
Looking for a Miracle, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, New York, 1993
The Blood and The Shroud, Ian Wilson, Orion, London, 1999
The Divine Deception, Keith Laidler, Headline, London, 2000
The DNA of God?, Leoncio A Garza-Valdes, Doubleday, 1999
The Holy Shroud and Four Visions, Rev Patrick O Connell and Rev Charles Carty,
TAN, Illinois, 1974
The Holy Shroud and the Visions of Maria Valtorta, Msgr Vincenzo Celli, Kolbe
Publications Inc., Sheerbrooke, California, 1994
The Image on the Shroud, Nello Ballosino, St Pauls, London, 1998
The Jesus Conspiracy, Holger Kersten amd Elmar R Gruber, Element, Dorset, 1995
The Jesus Relics, From the Holy Grail to the Turin Shroud, Joe Nickell, The
History Press, Gloucestershire, 2008
The Second Messiah, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, Arrow, London, 1998
The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal, Lynne Kelly, Allen & Unwin, Australia,
2004
The Shroud, The 2000 Year Old Mystery Solved, Ian Wilson, Bantam Press, London,
2010
The Turin Shroud is Genuine, Rodney Hoare, Souvenir Press, London, 1998
The Turin Shroud, Ian Wilson, Penguin Books, Middlesex, 1979
Turin Shroud, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, BCA, London, 1994
Verdict on the Shroud, Kenneth E Stevenson and Gary R Habermas, Servant
Publications, Ann Arbour, Michigan, 1981