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 Roman Catholic Church looks for miraculous cures etc to happen in response to devotions involving a sacred relic or a person thought to be a saint. The Church says it needs God to do that so that it will know that something is sacred and has his approval. No miraculous cures have been linked to the Shroud of Turin. Read The Vatican Prophecies, by John Thavis. It would be odd if there was no evidence from the supernatural that the Shroud was the real burial cloth of Jesus.
PLEASE VISIT
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/logical-take/201403/let-go-the-shroud-part-i
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/logical-take/201403/let-go-the-shroud-part-ii
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/logical-take/201403/let-go-the-shroud-part-iii
ULTIMATE LINK FOR DEBUNKING OF TURIN SHROUD: http://www.historytoday.com/charles-freeman/origins-shroud-turin
BAD ARCHAEOLOGY WEBSITE REFUTES SHROUD: http://www.badarchaeology.com/?page_id=322
In the Cathedral of Turin, what many people hold to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ is enshrined. The Shroud is around fourteen feet by three and a half feet. It is a sheet of linen. It looks like a big strip that covered the back and front of a man completely. Age seems to have turned it yellow. One would think God could preserve it better than that, for the image it bears is supposed to be the imprint of the dead, wounded, and bloody body of Jesus, his son. There are about forty other Shrouds supposed to be that of Jesus. What makes this one so special is the fact that it is so mysterious and superficially convincing, and has baffled some scientists for decades, and still continues to do so. The image on the cloth is faint, but it is a negative, like the negatives you have with a photograph. The image is very plain in the negative, or the quasi-negative, as I should say.
The Shroud of Turin seems to have sceptics up against a brick wall and unable to go any further. In fact, it is not the great challenge to scepticism and anti-religionism that it appears to be, or is made out to be.
For one thing, there is unmistakeable evidence that the apostles did not believe in a Jesus who was crucified in the first century, but in one who only appeared then as a risen being. The testimony of the earliest Church proves that the Shroud is not genuine, even if it is a first-century artifact. Testimony like that comes before the Shroud’s evidence—for why would they lie?
There is no evidence from history that the carbon dating of 1988, which found that the Shroud was made between 1260 and 1390 AD, is wrong. But the fact remains: even if the Shroud is much older than that, as many religious fantasists say, it is still not a miracle, and it is still not proof that Jesus existed and was buried in it.
http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/shroud.html
shows how believers even try to pretend that the samples of the Shroud used in the carbon dating were from the mended area of the cloth! Their lies are exposed.
Do you really want to believe in a miracle cloth that glorifies martyrdom purely for religious grounds? Christians believe that Jesus did not die to save the poor from genocide or for human rights, but purely for religious doctrine. Jesus was allegedly wrapped in the Shroud of Turin. Despite all the strange things that seem to be in the Shroud’s favour, the supporters choose to ignore proof on the cloth itself that nobody was ever wrapped up in it. THE TOP OF THE HEAD ITSELF IS NOT SEEN! If the image had been wrapped around a head, you would not see this effect. The cloth should show blood marks and images as if it were wrapped around a head. Instead, it looks as if the back and front were put on separately, with no connection in between. There should be a connection if the cloth covered a body. It is like somebody taking a photo of you from the front, and then one from the back, and putting them together with the head on each photo touching. It is not a natural effect when you have a cloth that a man was supposedly wrapped up in, and which went over the top of his head.
INEXPLICABLE DOES NOT SPELL MIRACLE
The Turin Shroud is one of the strangest things on earth. We cannot start holding that everything strange that comes along is a miracle. We do not regard the inexplicable Siberian fireball of 1908 as a miracle. The Cottingley Fairies photographs were considered inexplicable and miraculous for nearly seven decades, and were verified as inexplicable by many scientific experts, until the two young girls who created them confessed the truth, which was that the fairies in the pictures were just drawings and cut-outs. And it should be easier to tell if photos have something dodgy about them than it should be for the Turin Shroud, for nobody knows which of countless chemical combinations and reactions could have created it.
The real Shroud would have been seized by the Romans, who were investigating the empty tomb, and then destroyed. The Gospels do not say that the cloth would have been there at that time. John only says linens were lying there, but if there was a Shroud, he gives no indication that it was still there or that anybody cared if it were there or not.
The Shroud is impossible to reconcile with the New Testament accounts. The Shroud attacks the validity of the only thing that could have a chance at verifying the claims made for Jesus, so in doing so it shows itself to be just another piece of strange cloth. The Shroud contradicts the Gospels. After all, how could we even think that the Shroud could bear the image of Christ without the New Testament Gospels?
FINALLY
In light of the historical Jesus’ teachings, the veneration of relics or images like the Turin Shroud would have been contrary to his message. Jesus emphasized humility, faith, and the avoidance of ostentatious displays of piety, rather than devotion to physical objects. The Shroud, with its unverifiable origin, lack of clear anatomical consistency, and centuries-long mythos, functions as a false relic—a product of superstition rather than historical evidence. Its fame reflects more about human fascination with miracles and relics than about the life, death, or burial of Jesus. Therefore, the Shroud should be understood as a symbol of cultural and religious storytelling, not as proof of divine intervention or historical fact.
APPENDIX
The Shroud of Turin shows the faint image of a man from the front and back, but the top of the head is notably absent or unclear. Scholars consider this a serious problem for the hypothesis that the Shroud was the burial cloth of Jesus for several reasons.
First, if a single sheet of linen had been draped over a human body, as in first-century Jewish burial practices, it would naturally conform to the contours of the head. Anatomical features such as the crown, forehead, and scalp would leave at least partial impressions. The absence of such an image is inconsistent with what would be expected if the body had been fully wrapped.
Second, the lack of a top-of-the-head image challenges claims about the Shroud’s physical formation. If the front and back images were formed simultaneously or via contact with a real body, there should be continuity across the head and shoulders. The current separation suggests that either the head was never covered, or the images were created through methods that did not involve direct body contact.
Finally, forensic and imaging specialists note that natural gravitational and anatomical effects—such as blood flow, body fluids, and body contours—would produce markings on the top of the head if the cloth had been draped over a crucified or deceased person. The absence of these markers strongly indicates that the Shroud’s image does not correspond to the expected effects of a real human body being wrapped.
In summary, the missing top-of-the-head image undermines the claim that the Shroud is a faithful burial cloth. It raises questions about the formation process of the image, suggesting that alternative explanations—such as artistic or chemical methods—are more consistent with the evidence.
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WEB
www.shroud.com/faq.htm
FAQ on the Shroud of Turin
www.mcri.org/Shroudupdate.html
Latest Shroud Update
This site gives close up pictures of the blood on the Shroud to demonstrate that
it has to be paint not blood.
www.petech.ac.za/shroud/is the.htm
Is the Shroud of Turin the First Recorded Photograph? Nicholas Legh Allen
http://skeptic.com/Comments/turincom.html
Shroud of Turin
http://skepdic.com/refuge/bunk13.html
The Skeptic’s Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll