Does the Shroud of Turin Show Expected Elongation of the Head in 2D?"

[abstract78]

So, as this nonsense has been resurrected let's look at the facts.

The evidence against the authenticity of the shroud:

1. Historical:
a) the lack of evidence for the shroud's existence prior to the mid fourteenth century
b) it's emergence during the 'holy relic' craze (along with about forty other such burial shrouds)
c) lack of mention of a miraculously imaged Shroud in any early Christian writings
d) the distinct changes in the shroud, fading of colour, since its first exposure
[...]

@catsmate See the image below, the shroud 3D scan always shows the head hanging forwards, which, as explained earlier, could account for the elongated arms. Do you know how they arrived at this conclusion? I wonder how the forger managed to create an image which would result in the head hanging forwards?

 

[dann]

The evidence against the authenticity of the shroud:
2. Physiological:
f) likewise the position of the body with hands folded across the genitals which simply isn't possible for a body lying flat (the arms aren't long enough)

????

 

[abstract78]

With reference to the image of the head tilted forwards;

ChqatGPT:
Normal Paintings Don’t Work in 3D Imaging. The Shroud’s image behaves more like a height map than a typical 2D image, suggesting it was created in a way that encodes depth information. If the Shroud is a forgery, the artist would have needed to anticipate how modern 3D imaging works centuries in advance, which seems unlikely.

Me:
are you 100% sure Normal Paintings Don’t Work in 3D Imaging?"

ChatGPT:
Yes, I’m highly confident that normal paintings don’t produce a proper 3D relief when processed with depth mapping techniques like the VP-8 Image Analyzer

So, the forger may have used an actual person to create the illusion, but he would have had to hang the head forward - this seems very unlikely he would have thought to do that. Unless the 3D imagine is wrong? I wonder what you guys think of this specific detail?

 

[theprestige]

With reference to the image of the head tilted forwards;

ChqatGPT:
Normal Paintings Don’t Work in 3D Imaging. The Shroud’s image behaves more like a height map than a typical 2D image, suggesting it was created in a way that encodes depth information. If the Shroud is a forgery, the artist would have needed to anticipate how modern 3D imaging works centuries in advance, which seems unlikely.

Me:
are you 100% sure Normal Paintings Don’t Work in 3D Imaging?"

ChatGPT:
Yes, I’m highly confident that normal paintings don’t produce a proper 3D relief when processed with depth mapping techniques like the VP-8 Image Analyzer

So, the forger may have used an actual person to create the illusion, but he would have had to hang the head forward - this seems very unlikely he would have thought to do that. Unless the 3D imagine is wrong? I wonder what you guys think of this specific detail?

I think it's antisocial to bring chatbots into a conversation between humans. I would certainly not draw any conclusions from claims made by ChatGPT. At least if you cite Wikipedia, we can track down the sources of the claim, if any. If you're going to allege the Shroud might be legitimate, I absolutely want you to bring primary sources, not the unsourced ramblings of a hallucination-prone autocomplete robot.

 

[JayUtah]

With reference to the image of the head tilted forwards;

ChqatGPT:
Normal Paintings Don’t Work in 3D Imaging. The Shroud’s image behaves more like a height map than a typical 2D image, suggesting it was created in a way that encodes depth information.

You don't get a height map by draping something over a 3D object and looking at the contact areas. ChatGPT is conflating two related but dissimilar concepts.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Crazy. I learned about the Shroud by 'Dr. John Campbell' who has a channel about Health -https://www.youtube.com/@Campbellteaching/videos - he suddenly drops a video about the Shroud which was totally unrelated to any of his previous videos. It really annoyed me because as an 'ex' viewer of his, I didn't sign up to be told about this, especially if it's a load of bollocks.

Dr John Campbell is an idiot.

He was a nurse trainer over here (I have, as a former senior nurse with involvement in training nurses, been highly critical of the standard of our nurse education and this berk exemplifies why); his PhD was in distance learning methods; he displays a large disregard for, or lack of knowledge of or both, scientific method, assessment of evidence and the like.

He has made a number of appearances in discussions around here and little of that was positive about either him or his abilities.

 

[abstract78]

Dr John Campbell is an idiot.

He was a nurse trainer over here (I have, as a former senior nurse with involvement in training nurses, been highly critical of the standard of our nurse education and this berk exemplifies why); his PhD was in distance learning methods; he displays a large disregard for, or lack of knowledge of or both, scientific method, assessment of evidence and the like.

He has made a number of appearances in discussions around here and little of that was positive about either him or his abilities.

Interesting, well he certainly has annoyed me. In truth, I do suffer with religious trauma and although I do not believe it, I have OCD which leads me to massively overthink and worry. I tried to stay away from anything religious but Dr John Campbell just triggered me with his gushing admiration of the shroud.

 

[abstract78]

You don't get a height map by draping something over a 3D object and looking at the contact areas. ChatGPT is conflating two related but dissimilar concepts.

I will look into this more and see what I can find. I think this is the crucial issue, if it is an artist who made the Shroud, then is it truly 3D "encoded" or are those claims overblown. I'll do some digging!

 

[abstract78]

I think it's antisocial to bring chatbots into a conversation between humans. I would certainly not draw any conclusions from claims made by ChatGPT. At least if you cite Wikipedia, we can track down the sources of the claim, if any. If you're going to allege the Shroud might be legitimate, I absolutely want you to bring primary sources, not the unsourced ramblings of a hallucination-prone autocomplete robot.

Point taken. I will research more and provide sources where possible.

 

[bobdroege7]

If it is a forgery, the forger got the crown of thorns wrong, or at least different from depictions of the crown of thorns from the period where it supposedly first appeared in France.

What, the dude in the shroud didn't have a crown of thorns like all the depictions I was subjected to in all my Catholic and Episcopalian abuse as a child?

A full cap of thorns rather than a ring like crown.

 

[JayUtah]

I will look into this more and see what I can find. I think this is the crucial issue, if it is an artist who made the Shroud, then is it truly 3D "encoded" or are those claims overblown. I'll do some digging!

The issue immediately at hand is that the correlation between the shroud image and the concept of a "height map" is clearly an AI hallucination. This is why I and others encourage you not to rely too heavily on its answers.

The purported ability to extract a contour from the variation in image intensity is an ongoing debate. I can explain in more detail why that effort is problematic. The issue here is that a "height map" does not encode 3D data in a way that is relevant to analyzing the image on the shroud. A height map would require us to consider the shroud as a canonical, normalized two-dimensional domain. But the draping of the shroud and the physics of how shroud authenticists purport the image to have transferred from the remains to the shroud is not consistent with that formulation.

 

[8enotto]

If you laid out a dead body in a chair of sorts that would hold it slightly comfortable the hands could reach the groin area.

Note no head tilting on the back image, and if it was magically imprinted with a laid down body on it why does the hair not fall to his back instead of handomely hanging down like he was standing? Why was the blood still red after two millennia and had not dried brownish like blood does?

Why does the face on the shroud look so much like self portraits of Leonardo DaVinci as found in his well documented notebook pages? Who also was in the area where it first appeared in the same time frame. And oddly had notes of a fisheye lense in his notebooks?

 

[catsmate]

Frankly the whole matter of the minutiae of the faking of the shroud is of little interest. The shroud is a fake, deliberately created to separate the gullible and religious from their money.

 

[bobdroege7]

I wouldn't say it was a fake, unless I knew how it was faked.

I don't know how it was faked, and neither does anyone else.

 

[theprestige]

I wouldn't say it was a fake, unless I knew how it was faked.

I don't know how it was faked, and neither does anyone else.

Stage magic has entered the chat.

Anyway, even if we're to be agnostic about the matter of fakery, I think we can be fairly certain it's a hoax. Which is to say, even if the markings on the shroud were made by natural means, it cannot possibly have been a Roman-era Judean burial shroud. It's simply not old enough. Those who promulgated the myth in medieval times may or may not have been perpetrating a hoax. Those who promulgate the myth in modern times are certainly perpetrating a hoax.

 

[8enotto]

I wouldn't say it was a fake, unless I knew how it was faked.

I don't know how it was faked, and neither does anyone else.

The process of making a similar image has been done in modern times. It was done using medival tools and technique from the 1300s. It is known how to do it.
A most likely suspect is known too.

 

[JayUtah]

I wouldn't say it was a fake, unless I knew how it was faked.

I don't know how it was faked, and neither does anyone else.

That goes into the analysis, but it doesn't end it.

Stage magic has entered the chat.

Not so fast. We generally take authenticity as the null hypothesis in history and archaeology and put the burden of proof on claims of fabrication or fraud. People who argue that the shroud is fake have the burden of proof. Now the question of whether this is the burial shroud of Jesus is largely intractable. But the claim that it's a first-century relic consistent with with the Jesus story is tractable.

When you go to a magic show, you're knowingly entering a context in which you know you're being fooled. The fact that you can't figure out how it was done is overshadowed by an a priori understanding that it's fake and that what you are meant to believe has happened really didn't happen that way. Therefore your analogy isn't very apt.

Oh, wait, it is.

We don't hear about the shroud until medieval times, long after any credible claim to provenance will have evaporated. And it emerges in a context of widespread relic-faking. Churches that can sport the best relics attract the most pilgrimage and therefore the most attention and commerce. Faced with the prospect that the authentic, one-true burial shroud of Jesus was silently preserved for 1,300 years and then suddenly appeared, versus the prospect that a fake shroud was produced at a time when everyone was industriously faking relics, it's safe to say these circumstances go a very long way toward satisfying the burden of proof. It's the equivalent of knowingly walking into a magic show.

We have a reliable method of dating that is independently executed by three different laboratories and confirms a date for the shroud that corresponds to when it first appears in the historical record. There is a shaky attempt to unseat that finding by means of questionably validated methods executed by a single arguably biased research team. That's a no-brainer. The inability to come up with falsifiable hypotheses for how it might have been faked is simply not as perplexing as all that. We don't have an encyclopedic understanding of methods and skills that were available.

 

[theprestige]

That goes into the analysis, but it doesn't end it.


Not so fast. We generally take authenticity as the null hypothesis in history and archaeology and put the burden of proof on claims of fabrication or fraud. People who argue that the shroud is fake have the burden of proof. Now the question of whether this is the burial shroud of Jesus is largely intractable. But the claim that it's a first-century relic consistent with with the Jesus story is tractable.

When you go to a magic show, you're knowingly entering a context in which you know you're being fooled. The fact that you can't figure out how it was done is overshadowed by an a priori understanding that it's fake and that what you are meant to believe has happened really didn't happen that way. Therefore your analogy isn't very apt.

Oh, wait, it is.

We don't hear about the shroud until medieval times, long after any credible claim to provenance will have evaporated. And it emerges in a context of widespread relic-faking. Churches that can sport the best relics attract the most pilgrimage and therefore the most attention and commerce. Faced with the prospect that the authentic, one-true burial shroud of Jesus was silently preserved for 1,300 years and then suddenly appeared, versus the prospect that a fake shroud was produced at a time when everyone was industriously faking relics, it's safe to say these circumstances go a very long way toward satisfying the burden of proof. It's the equivalent of knowingly walking into a magic show.

We have a reliable method of dating that is independently executed by three different laboratories and confirms a date for the shroud that corresponds to when it first appears in the historical record. There is a shaky attempt to unseat that finding by means of questionably validated methods executed by a single arguably biased research team. That's a no-brainer. The inability to come up with falsifiable hypotheses for how it might have been faked is simply not as perplexing as all that. We don't have an encyclopedic understanding of methods and skills that were available.

Thanks for giving my analogy a fair shake!

 

[Pacal]

If the image on the shroud is Jesus why would the head slump forward? If Jesus was resurrected and the resurrection event created the image. Then Jesus would likely have been laid flat on a slab in the tomb and his head not tilted up. So just why would a prone body generate such an image?

Of course it can be claimed that Jesus' head in the tomb was raised on a support, a cushion, folded cloth etc. Any evidence this was a practice at the time?

As for later I do know that resting the head of deceased persons on cushions etc., was a practice for some in the high Middle Ages, so that could also explain this aspect of the image.

This is assuming that this discovery is "real" to begin with.

Frankly the fact that Jesus' face, along with the rest of his body is NOT distorted in the image on the shroud, along with the carbon 14 dating results, the infamous letter talking about the artist confessing shortly after the shroud emerges into history, and of course all the other so-called shrouds, all point to one thing; the Shroud is overwhelmingly likely to be a fraud.

 

[arthwollipot]

The process of making a similar image has been done in modern times. It was done using medival tools and technique from the 1300s. It is known how to do it.
A most likely suspect is known too.

Here you go.

Scientist reproduces the Shroud of Turin with medieval materials – The History Blog

www.thehistoryblog.com