The latest serious contribution to authenticist proselytisation on the internet comes in the form of a series from Bible Interact, ‘Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down,’ hosted by Drs George Sparks and David Graves, both eminent in the field of biblical archaeology, and with practical experience of investigative techniques.1 They invited Justin Robinson, coin specialist and sincere authenticist, to deliver a four-part lecture on the Shroud, during which he presents the ‘Standard Model,’ as currently accepted, wholly uncritically, and illustrated with slides prominently labelled “Fact.” Red rag to a bull there, I’m afraid. “It ain’t necessarily so…”2
PART ONE is subtitled ‘What is it?’ and the first ‘Fact’ is that “Far greater detail can be observed when the image on the Shroud is viewed as a photographic negative.” Nothing much to cavil at there, except to say that simply inverting a photograph does not really reveal any greater detail than there is on the positive, but it can appear to do so by enabling us to infer extra detail from a more lifelike representation.
The first myth comes in the statement that “scientists, scholars and theologians accused [Secondo] Pia of faking his results and he had to wait 35 years for the next public viewing before he could be vindicated.” I think there were probably a few sporadic attempts to accuse Pia of faking his photo, but they were very much a minority, especially as at least three other photographers took similar photos at the same time as Pia, all of which showed the same characteristics.3
The next ‘Fact’ is that “the image shows an anatomically correct image of Roman crucifixion.” This implies a knowledge of Roman crucifixion that we don’t have, and a precision of depiction that doesn’t exist. Robinson’s mention of a “three pronged Roman flagrum,” a “rough cap of thorns,” and a “significant side wound through the ribs,” as consistent with the gospels is only loosely true (the gospels say nothing about three prongs, and refer to a flagellum rather than a flagrum, and nothing about a ‘cap’ rather than a woven circlet of thorns), and are three details which are inconsistent with anything we know about Roman crucifixion. The wound depicted on the back of the left hand is not through the wrist, and it is not true that nails closer to the fingers would be incapable of supporting a body. The blood flows along the arms are only consistent with their being held more or less vertically, not in the customary ‘crucifixion position,’ and it is not true either that driving the nails through the wrists would damage the median nerve, or that severing the median nerve causes the thumbs to turn inward. There is copious blood on the feet, which is consistent with their being nailed, but it is insufficiently defined for pathologists to agree on whether it indicates nails through the instep or the heel, or even how many nails were used.
A few slides later we see the same triple leaden lash modelled on the ‘scourge marks’ as has been inferred, manufactured, illustrated and discredited many times before, and the ludicrous statement that “when a replica flagrum is placed on a full size image the wounds line up with remarkable accuracy.” Hardly surprising when the alleged ‘replica’ was modelled on the full size image of the wounds in the first place. Robinson is correct that Roman scourges are both depicted and described in contemporary accounts as being made with “bone fragments to rip and cut the flesh,” but no such ripping or cutting is evident on the Shroud.
The statement that “blood and water have poured out from the open wound and pooled in the small of the back when the body has been laid horizontally as you can see,” is illustrated by a photo of the small of the back which shows no such thing.
Moving on to rigor mortis, Robinson suggests that the apparent position of the head bent forward onto the chest is evidence of rigor mortis, without apparently noticing that two slides previously a model of the dead Christ shows his head resting against one arm and not bent forward at all, and two slides before that another model has one arm outstretched and the other bent at 90°. Apparently it occurred to Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus to bend the arms at the shoulders and elbows, but not to straighten the legs or head.
“Fact. The blood on the Shroud is human and came from a victim of extreme torture.” It may be blood, and it may be human, although tests applied to it so far have not been sufficiently diagnostic to confirm that, but a few microscopic grains of a chemical indicative of malfunctioning kidneys do not imply torture of any kind, let alone extreme. Neither can the fact that the blood is still red be linked to torture or suffering. The blood has certainly not been determined to derive from “one man,” nor has it been found to be “AB Positive.”
There is, I agree, valid academic dispute about whether there is evidence to show the order in which the blood and image appeared on the Shroud. I think not, in spite of some indicative observations claimed by Heller and Adler, albeit contradicted by Eugenia Nitowski. Either way it is not true that “tests have revealed that the blood was already on the linen before the image formed because no image appears under the blood.”
Moving on, Robinson claims: “When a person is tortured for a long period of time the body goes into anaphylactic shock. The cell walls of the red blood cells break down. The liver floods the bloodstream with an enzyme called bilirubin, which keeps the blood looking red.” Remarkably, this is false in all respects. Torture does not cause anaphylactic shock; haemolysis (the rupture of cell membranes, not cell walls) is not a feature of torture or anaphylactic shock; bilirubin is not an enzyme, and it’s yellow, not red.
And. “In 1976 scientists from NASA…” We do not need to go on. Robinson is referring to John Jackson and Eric Jumper, teachers at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, but obviously he doesn’t know that, and, I’m afraid, doesn’t care. The Standard Model of Shroud Authenticity is only loosely attached to veracity, and the legend is so much more compelling.
PART TWO, ‘Where has it been?” begins with the pollen. Robinson enhances his written text, “Pollen grains were lifted from the cloth by applying sticky tape to the Shroud” by orally inserting “by the STuRP team,” which isn’t true. Max Frei was not part of the STuRP team but an independent researcher who had already carried out the majority of his pollen studies in 1973. It is true that he claimed to identify 58 different species of plant, but subsequent attempts to verify his results have failed dismally. He did not identify any plants that grow “only in the Jerusalem area,” and his work was certainly not “supported by further investigations.” On the contrary, he has been widely discredited even by most authenticist sindonologists. The statement, “Pollen has been found from 20 plants that grow only in Jerusalem” is absurd. In Frei’s own list, published by Werner Bulst in Shroud Spectrum International, Issue 10, only Bassia muricata is classed as exclusively from “Jerusalem and environs,” and in fact it is widely distributed across the southern and eastern Mediterranean shores from Morocco to Syria.
This is not a good start. Where does Robinson get his information from?
He goes on to say that Frei identified Gundelia tournefortii, an identification that has been rejected every other palynologist to have looked at the Shroud pollen, and wonders whether the Crown of Thorns could have been made of it – a rather flimsy thistle.
The next ‘Fact’ is that “Rock traces found in dirt near the feet of the Shroud have the same chemical characteristics as rocks found in Jerusalem,” which isn’t true.
“Fact. […] From as early as 250 AD we have written reports of a linen cloth with the mysterious image of Jesus.” No, we don’t.
“The Shroud […] has been the inspiration for hundreds of paintings and sculptures.” No, it hasn’t.
On the next page, Robinson attempts to equate the Shroud with the gospels by translating σινδών as “a long sheet of clean linen cloth.” This is not just wrong, it is disingenuous. There is nothing about the word σινδών which implies or suggests the shape of the Shroud of Turin.
And so to προεγράφη (1 Corinthians), which doesn’t imply an image, and φαιλόνης (2 Timothy), which does not mean “something that carries information.”
And on we go. Robinson cites the Sermon of Athanasius, the Hymn of the Pearl (which is not at all “utterly incomprehensible”), the Image of Edessa (which was not written about in 250 AD), Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Philip Dayvault’s spurious ‘Keramion’ (which certainly does not have an “uncanny” resemblance to the Shroud). I have written of these elsewhere, and deny that they have any association with, or even relevance to, the Shroud.
Eventually we get a little closer to Robinson’s own bailiwick, and a more sensible discussion, which is the portrayal of Christ in art. Here, following the conventional trope, he mistakes geography for history, and claims that images of Jesus were of various characters – straight hair, curly hair, beard, no beard – until “shortly after the rediscovery of the Edessa cloth about 525 AD,” images of Jesus were all depicted with “the same iconic features in a style called Pantokrator.” This is untrue. Western European images of Jesus continued as various as ever: only in the East was any kind of prescribed Pantocrator iconography adhered to, invariably showing Christ long-haired, bearded, surrounded by a cruciform halo, holding a jewelled book in his left hand and gesturing with his right. Anybody claiming that there was an archetype from which all this was derived must account for the halo and the book just as much as the long hair and the beard, and the Shroud won’t do at all. The familiar icon is usually thought to have originated in either or both of the mosaics over the Chalke gate of the Great Palace of Constantinople and the dome of the Hagia Sophia cathedral, the former being favoured.
There is further exploration to be carried out here, but in general it seems that the Pantocrator style derived from imperial Roman iconography, and that the historical sweep of the image of Christ came from Rome to Constantinople, so that the Image of Edessa was derived from the Pantocrator, not the other way round, emerging during the reigns of Justin I or Justinian I in the first half of the 6th century.
Robinson then moves on to Paul Vignon’s alleged “Vignon markings,” which, as listed, were enumerated not by Vignon but by Edward Wuenschel, his translator, who very much simplified Vignon’s observations and added some ‘markings’ of his own for good measure. I have explored these in a presentation called ‘The Vignon Markings Myth.’4 The one Robinson chooses as an exemplar is the ‘supra-nasal square’ (“one of my favourites”) which has been more comprehensibly discredited than almost all the others.
The next ‘Fact’ is “Coins depicting Christ struck in Constantinople bear a startling similarity to the face on the Shroud of Turin.” I suppose it depends what one calls ‘startling.’ I don’t think they look anything like, nor have comparable characteristics to, the Shroud image more than they do to any other image of a long-haired bearded man. Like the previous images mentioned, Justinian II’s (and subsequent emperors’) coins all show a cruciform halo, the left hand holding a book and the right hand gesturing: iconographical features which clearly derive from a common source, but just as clearly do not derive from the Shroud.
If the coins of Justinian’s first reign were truly derived from an image known to have derived from Christ himself, then it would seem bizarre that the coins of his second reign depart so strongly from it, bearing, as they do, a short curly-haired Christ with a very closely trimmed beard. I find Robinson’s explanations (that all the coins from the first reign had been melted down, and that access to Edessa was now too difficult to arrange for minters to find the ‘correct’ image, or that depicting the Image of Edessa on his coins would have endangered the actual image, which was in the hands of his Arab enemies) too far-fetched to be credible. The new head of Christ (mounted on the old shoulders and torso, complete with book and gesturing right hand) seems a deliberate rejection of Byzantine tradition in favour of an alternative, probably one favoured by the allies (mostly Bulgarians under Khan Tervel) that he had amassed while in exile, who helped him to, and sustained him on (for a while), his recaptured throne.
The next part of Robinson’s presentation takes us through very familiar territory, which I will not recapitulate. However I will say in his favour that at least most of the ‘facts’ are true, and that it is in the interpretation of them that I differ, although he does quote quite uncritically a letter of Theodore Angelus claiming that the Shroud had been taken to Athens: a letter well known to be a forgery.
There seem to be two main acheiropoietic traditions whose history emerges from the ruins of Constantinople, the modern ‘Mandylion,’ particularly favoured by the orthodox churches, showing a disembodied head surrounded by a cruciform halo, and the ‘Veronica,’ the more western tradition, of a head very closely enclosed by a gold surround, with a pointed beard and two pointed locks of hair, irresistibly reminiscent of ‘Pinky,’ the ghost from ‘Pac-Man.’ I don’t think either of them has anything to do with the Shroud.
Then, oh dear. “Fact. […] The Shroud was guarded by the mercenary warrior monks known as the Knights Templar, who likely moved it from location to location and used it in their secret initiation ceremonies.” No. Some popular interpretations of Templar documents by Barbara Frale have not withstood any kind of scholarly scrutiny, and Arnault Sabbatier did not claim to have worshipped “a long piece of linen on which was impressed the figure of a man.” This has been so comprehensively discredited by leading authenticists that it is bizarre that Robinson should include it at all, let alone as ‘Fact.’
Nailing himself to the Templar mast, Robinson announces that the lord of Lirey, Geoffrey de Charny, was “obviously a descendent of the Geoffrey de Charney who was executed in 1307,” which he most obviously wasn’t, and illustrates the fact with a tombstone from yet another Geoffrey de Charny, also unrelated. Our de Charny did ask permission to build a chapel at Lirey, but certainly not “to display the Shroud of Christ that his family owned.” This is simply made up.
“De Charny always refused to say how his family had acquired the Shroud.” No. Made up.
Robinson concludes with a small but significant error, that after moving to Turin, “the Shroud was kept in a side chapel within the cathedral.” Close, but in fact the Guarini chapel was not part of the Cathedral at all, although it was connected to it. It was designed and built as part of the Royal Palace, in recognition that it belonged to the Dukes of Savoy, and not the Church. It was therefore the possession of, and within the palace of, the royal family when King Umberto II was deposed and all his possessions sequestrated by the state.
PART THREE, “How old is it?” is mostly the fairly conventional authenticist gripe against the 1988 radiocarbon dating, a championing of the 1st century dating techniques of Giulio Fanti, and a comparison with the Sudarium of Oviedo. I think I have covered all these in depth elsewhere, and it would be nitpicking to go through every little inaccuracy all over again. I just wish Robinson didn’t start so many inaccuracies with the word ‘Fact.’ It is obvious that he has never read what Ray Rogers, Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, Gilbert Raes or any other primary observer has said about the Shroud, but quotes or mentions them via third parties, so it’s hard to say whose fault it all is.
One or two general comments about the whole episode then.
Firstly, in several places, Robinson quotes the gospels as referring to a “long” burial cloth, which of course they never do. Is this a genuine mistake derived from his conviction that Shroud must be authentic, or an attempt to mislead his hearers into coming to the same conclusion? Either way, it’s wrong.
Secondly, and he is not alone in this, Robinson quotes Mechthild Flury-Lemberg rather selectively (and very inaccurately), treating her opinion that the textile evidence suggests that the Shroud could be from 1st Century Judea as if it were set in stone, but completely ignoring her insistence, having examined the area in close-up, that there is no invisible repair to the radiocarbon corner, which repudiates his own conviction that there is.
PART FOUR, “How was it done?” is a short review of four possibilities, paint, natural process, photograph, and resurrection radiation, rejecting all but the last with minimum examination, and misunderstanding Luigi Garlaschelli’s reproduction technique in the process. This is followed by an impressive looking list of 23 statements under the heading ‘Consider the Evidence,’ not one of which stands up under any kind of scrutiny. It is entirely fitting that the list is followed by a quote from Herbert Thurston’s article for ‘The Month’ magazine of January 1903, which appears earnestly to defend the authenticity of the Shroud, when in fact the entire article is dedicated to demonstrating that it is medieval. The quote ends: “If this is not the impression of the Body of Christ, it was designed as the counterfeit of that impression. In no other personage since the world began could these details be verified.” But the article ends: “None the less, the case is here so strong that however plausible M. Vignon’s scientific hypothesis may seem, the probability of an error in the verdict of history [that the Shroud is medieval] must be accounted, it seems to me, as almost infinitesimal.”
“It ain’t necessarily so.
The things that ya preacher is li’ble to teach ya,
No, it ain’t necessarily so.”
=========================
1). ‘Shroud of Turin Part 1: What is it?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvDYTLtxTS4, January 2026
‘Shroud of Turin Part 2: Where Has it Been?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE4PvZygBs0, January 2026
‘Shroud of Turin Part 3: How Old Is It?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBNbcXoCfJ4, February 2026
‘Shroud of Turin Part 4: How Was the Image Formed?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMKCCwS8KOM, February 2026
2). A song from George and Ira Gershwin’s opera ‘Porgy and Bess,’ in deliberate parody of the formal Jewish blessing recited before the reading of the Torah, and disputing such biblical facts as David and Goliath, Jonah and Whale, Moses in the Basket and Methuselah. Rather bold for 1935, I think.
3). By A. Gallo, Saverio Fino, Noël Noguier and Giammaria Sanna Solaro. See https://sabanasanta.org/2018/09/01/primeras-fotografias-sindone/
4). Part of ‘The Medieval Shroud 3,’ at academia.edu.
Hi again Hugh,
Thanks for that elaboration of your position and “Ain’t So” blogpost. I have some difficulty, though, in appreciating some of your new points.
Too often in your blogpost you made statements of blanket dismissal, “wholly discredited,” etc., etc., not allowing for any ambiguity. And I’d suggest there is a lot of ambiguity in many of these Shroud matters.
Of course, Robinson is to blame for his provocatively error-ridden podcast talks. I hope I did not give the impression to other readers that I was giving him a “generous justification,” as you call it. I rarely if ever took his specific side on a question, defending his exact words.
Besides Robinson, any and all of those people (BSTS members and especially officers?) who knew ahead of time that he was going to give those talks and who nevertheless did not offer him any help in making them accurate, in correcting his predictable mistakes and his overconfident exaggerations, which might only have taken them 20 minutes of reading his script, are definitely also to blame. It’s appalling how many people in the Shroud field, having many like-minded believer colleagues, do not request, and do not receive, any scrutiny of their public presentations beforehand. The same goes for the skeptic side, of course.
As for your request that I actually watch his four talks, sorry, I simply haven’t got the time. I assume they were rather bad, and you sufficiently quoted from them. Besides, the Shroud field is manic, chaotic, and prolific enough (including, sometimes, your own many and often rapid-fire blogposts – such as those five or six within just a couple of weeks last August and September, which frankly wore me out).
Your long and rather wordy second paragraph seemed to miss my point, Hugh. You wrote there of such Jesus crucifixion details as being “not typical of Roman crucifixion.” But that is not the word you had used in your original blogpost. There, you wrote “inconsistent with,” which has a different meaning (which is why it is a different word in the first place). The crown or cap of thorns is actually perfectly consistent with Roman crucifixions, which were meant to humiliate as well as cause terrible pain. The ridicule of a crown of thorns on a “pretender king” fits perfectly into that practice. Perfectly. Atypical, yes. Not known elsewhere, yes. But inconsistent, no.
So I still say that the language you used was often extreme and rejectionist. Robinson was an easy mark, a straw man, while you should have allowed for more ambiguity.
By the way, your latest blogpost, “Seeing Red,” seems to me right on the mark. How unfortunate that talk was. Such blarney. I’ve since even watched a bit of the episode, with Guy Powell’s unfortunate lead-in: “a real honor today … excited….” etc., etc.
John L.
Hi John,
Thanks for taking the trouble. As you will know, many of Robinson’s ‘facts’ are conclusions drawn from uncertain data which have been interpreted in contradictory ways, and in most cases have been the subject of detailed exploration on this blog. Simply listing them as facts is misleading and untrue. Your generous justification of them suggests that you haven’t actually watched the podcasts I’m critiquing, and you really need to do so in order to carry out an accurate critique of my critique.
To cover just the crucifixion one, as you have: this is the second of the slides labelled “FACT” and is headed, “The image shows an anatomically correct image of Roman crucifixion.” There is no sense in which that statement is a fact at all. It could perhaps be justified by some reference to classical literature or imagery or archaeological remains, but it isn’t, because no such evidence exists. Robinson justifies it by three details which are peculiar to the Shroud and the gospels, but exclusive of any non-biblical evidence. The flogging, the crown of thorns and the lance wound are all specifically referred to in the gospels and/or Christian tradition as not typical of Roman crucifixion, but exclusive to Jesus. The flogging, almost unto death, is described as what Pontius Pilate prescribed as an alternative to crucifixion, not a characteristic prelude to it. Wearing a crown of thorns is invariably described by authenticist apologists as exclusive to Jesus in order to distinguish his Shroud from the putative shrouds of any other crucifixion victim, and the lance wound, as described in the bible, was a coup-de-grace given to people who, uncharacteristically, had died earlier than expected. As I say above, we know virtually nothing about the details of Roman crucifixion, but the suffering of Christ as described in the bible and illustrated on the Shroud does not match any of what we do know, and, clearly, nor did the evangelists want it to.
It is true that the image on the Shroud illustrates the Gospel accounts in its own way, and it is true that either it or they or both could be describing one particular crucifixion among thousands, but Robinson’s ‘Fact’ is an attempt to authenticate the Shroud within its first century Romano-Jewish context, which must be done with reference to known archaeological evidence.
Much of your comment seems to consist of claims that this or that characteristic of the Shroud, such as the lead balls, some of the pollen and the limestone cannot be proven not to be part of an authenticist context, which I perfectly agree with, but I do not agree that “cannot be proven not to be” is a synonym for “are good evidence for,” which is a very common authenticist trope. Your sentence “If the particles have at least several of the same chemical characteristics and could very well be consistent with other dust from the neighborhood of Golgotha, that should surely count as evidence,” is a perfect example. The idea that a rock “could very well” come from anywhere unless every rock in the neighbourhood is chemically analysed should certainly not, to my mind, surely count as evidence for any specific providence.
Thanks for commenting though!
Best wishes,
Hugh.
Hi Hugh,
You make some excellent points in your critique of Justin Robinson’s recent podcast appearances on Dr. Sparks’ “Biblical Archeaology” podcast.
Robinson was certainly sloppy. That’s unfortunate. His mistakes or other faults that you enumerate seem to range from serious to moderate to minor. Not that the minor ones should be forgotten, especially when occurring together with so many bigger ones. I’ve only watched short portions of Robinson’s appearance/s. No time for more. I trust that your summary is mostly accurate. You do often quote him, which is reassuring.
Yet one wonders how significant some or many of those mistakes/falsehoods are in the greater question of the authenticity of the Turin Shroud.
Also, you may have gone to extremes in some of your criticisms. Let me try to explore several cases, starting with your first page:
Regarding Robinson on “Roman crucifixion,” you write of “three details which are inconsistent with anything we know about Roman crucifixion.” Your words “inconsistent” and “anything” seem flawed to me. If the gospels are accurate in that regard (not speaking of the Shroud now, only the traditional four gospels), then there was indeed a thorny cap or crown or covering put on the head of Jesus, and he was also stabbed in the side with a lance (Gospel of John). There may be no other cases known where such injuries were inflicted, but that does not make them “inconsistent” with the practice of crucifixion.
Mockery seems very consistent with Roman cruelty during such crucifixions. Other cases of crucifixion mockery are known, though not involving a cap/crown of thorns because no “pretender king” was involved. Besides, we also know that caps, ornate royal caps or “tiaras,” not the circlet crowns of Western Europe, were often used by royalty in the ancient Middle East. If, as it certainly seems from the gospels, the brief ministry of Jesus of Nazareth involved his proclamation of a “Kingdom of God” or “God’s reigning” on earth, and if that claim offended the Romans as a challenge to their emperor and empire, then mockery of that claim is perfectly consistent with their treatment of him.
As for the lance wound in his side, it seems quite consistent with the Jews’ concern about their approaching holy day and their not wanting to disgrace it by an ongoing crucifixion, and with a related Roman need to verify Jesus’ death and therefore remove his body quickly from public sight to appease the Jewish authorities. No “inconsistency” there, merely no other examples known, due to the general lack of detail about crucifixions.
You also mention the wound on the back of the hand as not being through the “wrist.” Yes, true, externally it is not, but internally, as I’ve often written and as you well know, the nail did go through or between the wrist bones, which extend far up into the base of the hand. Let’s acknowledge that ambiguity.
Regarding Roman scourges/whips, you neglect to mention that there are extremely few artistic depictions or written descriptions of Roman scourges or scourging, maybe two dozen at most so far known. Several of them are truly tiny, on mere coins, thus unable to show even tinier details on their lashes, while some others depicted are whips used merely on horses, so they naturally did not bear little pieces of terrible injury-inflicting metal on their tips. Hugh, we have been through this whole Roman whip/scourge question at length before here on a blogpost of yours (early 2024?) and elsewhere, and I think you have been too extreme in your denials. Of course, Robinson was wrong to have claimed Roman whips definitely did sometimes look like the ones that caused the scourge marks on the Shroud Man. I’ve merely claimed that there is a very high probability of it. And I think everyone should admit that.
Also with regard to any such tiny metal bits attached to the lashes of some Roman whips, especially those used for punishing criminals or alleged criminals like Jesus, I’ve previously mentioned to you some relevant analogies in Roman times such as their little lead sling pellets for fighting battles, etc. Here’s another and new one now: the Roman/Greek boxing glove called a “cestus” was a leather wrap/strap which was often studded with small metal beads to inflict more injury than mere leather would. It is well documented because there is far more documentation about Roman gladiators than about Roman whippings of criminals. That brutal cestus practice and equipment seem analogous and very relevant to the case of whippings as severe punishment. So, again, it appears that the evidence indicates a high probability of some Roman whips, especially those used as punishment for capital crimes (treason, etc.), having metal beads on their lash tips.
As for the blood on the feet, it would be best if some experts from a Blood Spatter Analysis association would evaluate the question and judge how realistic or not realistic those blood flows appear to them. I tend to think they would judge the flows to be highly realistic, that is, very credible as real blood flow patterns. The precise location of the nail hole/s, which you mention, is a secondary question.
You then write of Robinson and the blood pool on the small of the back, correcting him: “… a photo of the small of the back which shows no such thing.” That’s a rather abrupt and empty contradiction, Hugh. You provide no citation for your rejection of that highly unusual “blood belt” or rivulet on the lower back of the Turin Shroud Man, which has no parallel in medieval art that I know of. As so often, you leave your readers hanging, without providing any evidence or detail, only your insistence that it is so.
Regarding the blood flows down the forearms on the man imaged/depicted, you state that they are not consistent with a traditional crucifixion posture with the arms raised diagonally outward, but instead “only consistent” with the arms raised vertically overhead. Well, first of all, that’s not an argument against the authenticity of the Shroud and its image and forearm bloodstains. Maybe the Man on the Shroud was indeed crucified in such a position in the 1st century, hanging straight down. He could still be Jesus.
However, you forget (or omit) to mention the very short blood flow, about 2 inches long, on the back of the hand and which goes not directly down the forearm but instead angles off from the hand diagonally to the outside at about 45 degrees. The blood then surely fell off the hand entirely, thus leaving no visible trace on the body, as we see. (Unless that blood flowed down the side of the forearm and was therefore not imprinted on the cloth when laid atop the body.) That flow, however short, is perfectly consistent with the traditional crucifixion angle of the arms as affixed to the crossbeam in a “Y” shape. That very short flow presumably had its parallel on the back of the other hand, which unfortunately is not visible.
As for the flows down the forearms, we don’t know at what stage in the process they formed, early or late, or whether he was leaning one way and then the other, thus creating vertical paths down each, one at a time.
Their erratic shapes are perfectly consistent with some rapid or strenuous movements of the arms, perhaps due to agonized trembling or thrashing that may have occurred, or to the strained and bulging forearm muscles also produced by a supreme effort to survive the crucifixion as long as possible or to alleviate the worst pain. So, those irregular, meandering blood flows seem no evidence of inauthenticity to me. Quite the contrary.
You then write skeptically of the (alleged) burial attendants and how they (oddly and improbably, you suggest) made the effort to “bend the arms at the shoulders and elbows, but not to straighten the legs or head.” But Hugh, that is not odd at all. They were certainly not going to bury the body with its arms stretched out widely. How awkward that would be. They wanted to lower the arms to the sides for a neat and peaceful appearance. And given that the body was naked due to the crucifixion, they very naturally bent the elbows to enable the hands to modestly cover the privates. So they broke the rigor in both pairs of joints (if rigor mortis had already set in there) by means of repeated pressure on them. But in the case of the legs or knees there was no such problem because the legs were already together, not twisted or splayed outward, and the knees were not raised much.
Regarding Robinson’s claim that the blood has been determined to be of “human” type, you are right that he was wrong to say so. But the contrary view proposed at length by Kelly Kearse has not long been known in the field, only since around 2012 (?), and it is still disputed by some researchers (Italians and Spaniards especially). You and I both happen to believe Kelly’s findings that, chemically speaking, the blood cannot (yet) be determined to be human blood and could conceivably be some other animal blood. However, I for one would definitely prefer to see more than just one blood expert make that claim (including some non-Christians, please). I do not understand the lack of additional blood expert attention to this crucial question.
Regarding the question of “which came first on the Shroud, the blood or the human image,” you limit your question/criticism to the chemical experiments of Drs. Heller and Adler. But what about the evidence of the “off-elbow” blood in this regard? It was first pointed out by Dr. Lavoie as indicating two different wrapping configurations for the shroud cloth at the time of the burial/entombment. The first involved a slight tuck of the shroud under the upper arms, at which time that blood dribble from the forearm to the elbow area soaked into the cloth. Then some minutes later the cloth was apparently untucked and moved into a flatter configuration. Lavoie suggested that this adjustment happened because the body went vertical or rose upright, supernaturally, a claim which I and most other researchers do not accept. Instead we account for the flatter configuration of the top sheet as due to several objects (sacks of spices, bouquets of flowers? etc.?) having meanwhile been placed under the edges of the top sheet, thus moving that elbow blood dribble several inches away from the body, after which time the image then formed, making that blood “off image.” So, yes, blood first, image second, it seems. (And the image would thereby have been projected or received on the nearly flat cloth virtually undistorted.)
Regarding Max Frei, STURP, and the pollen question, it is true, as you say, that he was not a member of STURP. Robinson was mistaken. But that seems a tiny mistake. Frei was indeed there in Turin and examined the Shroud during those same several days in October 1978 that the STURP team was there. They were all working together in that room. Then, your characterization that Frei “failed dismally” in his pollen identifications seems too sharp and destructive in my opinion. He was using 1970s technology and what he saw with it apparently did seem to include Palestinian pollens, even some from the Jerusalem area. You deny any such at all and say some were only identifiable as coming more widely “from Morocco to Syria.” Yes indeed, and thereby NOT from Northern France or Belgium as would fit your medieval shroud artistic creation theory. I’ve repeatedly written so here and elsewhere for the past two years (see my comments on one of your blogposts of early 2024, maybe your “Cesspits, Sewers….”?).
On the “rock traces … dirt … feet” question and Robinson’s claim that they show the “same chemical characteristics” as particles gleaned from the Golgotha boulder in the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, you may be too sharp in your quick “which isn’t true” rejection. If the particles have at least several of the same chemical characteristics and could very well be consistent with other dust from the neighborhood of Golgotha, that should surely count as evidence. After all, not every rock in Jerusalem has been chemically analyzed yet. Nor ever will be. The evidence seems ambiguous. But yes, Robinson claimed too much.
I’m only half way through your post, but will stop here. Apologies for this somewhat rushed treatment. But maybe it will help a bit.
In general, Hugh, your post seems mostly very accurate in noting Robinson’s many mistakes and exaggerations. Thank you for that! But your corrections themselves sometimes leave much to be desired.
John L.
“…it would be nitpicking to go through every little inaccuracy all over again.”
Hugh Farey is antithetical to Stephen E. Jones.