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
in Turin, Italy. The Shroud is an enigma. Many say it is a miracle.
The pose is interesting, as Jesus is shown flat on his back, with
his legs together and his hands covering his privates. Sure enough,
you can hardly see the buttocks—whoever created this was protecting
"Jesus’s" modesty! The buttocks should be clearly visible if the
image came from a body lying on it. Attempts to blame rigor mortis
for the barely visible buttocks are weak.
The Turin Shroud has been shown by carbon dating to date from a time
long after Jesus died. Yet, this does not stop believers from
arguing that the carbon dating is wrong. Shroud supporters want to
believe that 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’s unlikely to be extremely wrong. There is no way
it could 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, it is possible that it was made soon
after the Shroud.
Science, in terms of evidence, strongly shows that the Shroud is a
fake. Believers, despite knowing that science is the best tool for
testing, continue to look for evidence that suggests science is
wrong.
Nobody is interested in the 1110 image of St. Vincent, depicted
without clothes, holding his hands to cover his privates—exactly as
you would find on the Shroud. Yet any image of Jesus in this pose is
pounced upon as if it were a hint that people knew of the Shroud
before its first public appearance. But no one cares that, if you’re
going to depict a naked corpse, this is precisely what you’d do with
the hands. The pose itself is nothing special.
The Hungarian Codex, dating from 1192-1195, contains a picture of
Jesus being prepared for burial in the Holy Shroud, using what is
reputedly the same pose as the Shroud man.
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 too speculative. (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, let’s say the
picture shows the herringbone pattern. Believers like to claim that
it was not known in the time when the Shroud was allegedly forged,
but that it fits the first century, suggesting the Shroud is
probably real.
If the carbon dating is correct, and the Shroud is a medieval fake,
then the herringbone pattern was well known before the Shroud was
forged. There may be enough evidence to suggest that if you think
you see a herringbone weave on the cloth, it could have inspired the
design of such a weave. The artist may have seen such cloth and
mistakenly depicted the weave on the stone.
It is too much to believe that the codex artist knew about the
Shroud's 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 had knowledge 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 has
emerged to suggest it was used in Palestine. The Jesus Conspiracy
(page 78) made a futile attempt to disprove the carbon dating of the
Shroud, claiming that pieces of another cloth with a herringbone
pattern were used instead. However, this at least showed that the
pattern was not unique to the Shroud.
In the picture, Jesus is laid out on a plain white shroud. It is
only for lying on, not for wrapping him up. The artist did not know
that Jesus was meant to be covered by the cloth.
Poker Holes?
The lid has holes, and there is a slab below it which also has
holes. These are just holes, not poker holes. This strongly suggests
that whoever created the Shroud misunderstood or misremembered the
image. It certainly does not suggest that the Shroud was known in
those days. Overall, the picture refutes the Shroud, and with so
many speculative images of the Shroud from that period, you wouldn’t
be surprised if at least one bore some similarities to the Turin
Shroud. But none of them really match up—period.
In the lower picture, the shroud cloth is bunched up and has “X”
marks on 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 holes on the Turin Shroud
exactly. The slab beneath also has holes. The holes are simply a
pattern. It is a stretch to imagine that they represent the poker
holes of the Turin Shroud.
Shroud believers seem to want us to think the poker holes were put
in the fresh shroud according to the Hungarian codex. But why would
anyone put a hot poker in a new shroud? Whoever forged the Shroud
may have gotten the idea of poker holes from the picture, but they
misunderstood what the artist meant 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, not
poker holes. There are three holes in a line, with one hole beside
them. This arrangement could symbolize the three-in-one nature of
the Trinity.
The holes in the lid might simply be for spying on the corpse in
case it were to arise. Ian Wilson claims that the picture
authenticates the Shroud, but he has no right to make that
assertion. It’s the wishful thinking we’re accustomed to from him.
He even thinks a picture of Jesus lying in a shroud from the eighth
century—called the Byzantine Umbella—shows that the Shroud image was
known then (page 202, Holy Faces, Secret Places), even though the
Jesus figure in it is wrapped with a large towel around his waist,
despite the fact that his hands would conceal his modesty.
Coincidence?
We are told by people like Ian Wilson that the Hungarian Codex,
dating from 1192-1195, shows a picture of Jesus being prepared for
burial in the Holy Shroud, and another one where an angel holds the
Shroud, which allegedly has mysterious poker holes like the Turin
Shroud. This, they argue, disproves the carbon dating, which places
the Shroud no older than 1260. But when you think about what a
Christian would want the Shroud to look like—an image of a bleeding,
bearded man covering his genitals with his hands for modesty—you
realize that there would have to be images independent of the Shroud
that appear to have been copied from it. The Hungarian Codex may
have inspired many to believe that a shroud of Jesus would resemble
this image, even if the Turin Shroud didn’t exist then. What else
would you expect? What other pose would an image of the dead Jesus
take?
It’s interesting that, like the man on the Shroud, the image in the
Hungarian Codex shows the hands without thumbs, crossed in the same
position. But why would the creator of the Hungarian picture omit
the wounds and the thumbs? It’s utterly foolish to suggest that the
artist saw the Shroud, for the wounds would be the first thing on
his mind.
To claim that 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, with nails in his feet, are
copies of the first painting to depict this. There are many
depictions of the Shroud and the Cross, so coincidences have to be
expected—especially in the case of the Shroud, even more so than the
crucifixion. Yet people argue that ancient icons of Jesus, which
resemble the face on the Shroud, must have been influenced by the
Shroud image! But there are thousands of such icons, so it’s only
natural that some of them would resemble the Shroud man.
Furthermore, the Shroud’s facial features are not as clear as those
of a normal photograph, so anyone lacking access to the negative
image—which provides much more clarity—would find it difficult to
reproduce an accurate likeness.
Did the Image Inspire the Shroud Forger?
It’s odd to argue that the picture shows the Shroud is not disproven
by carbon dating and may therefore be real, when the forger could
have copied the picture when creating the image on the Shroud. Did
the Hungarian manuscript influence the Shroud forgery?
For example, the forger of the Shroud might have added poker holes
to his creation to make it seem older than it was, simply because he
saw holes in the Hungarian Codex picture. Every forger needs some
manufactured evidence to pull off a hoax.
The Hungarian manuscript does not prove the Shroud is 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 people profiting from Shroud "science" are using
the Hungarian manuscript and other “evidences” that only fuel the
errors of the believers.
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
