Shroud skeptics continually claim the Turin shroud is a medieval forgery, a cunningly crafted work by a mysterious artist.
“We can be virtually certain that the Shroud of Turin is a hoax that was originally created in France in around the 1350s AD by an artist trained in the Gothic figurative style as part of a faith-healing scam.”
https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/ … ly-a-hoax/
“Scholarship and science have proven the Turin “shroud” a fake”
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive … ic-author/
“This note is intended to describe why, from an artistic and anatomical perspective, the shroud image is an embarrassingly obvious fraud committed by a Gothic artist following the standard conventions of his time.”
https://infidels.org/kiosk/article/the- … otohumans/
“There was a multi-million-pound business in making forgeries during the fourteenth century. Someone just got a bit of linen, faked it up and flogged it.” – Edward Hall
https://www.academia.edu/26328443/Is_th … Photograph
“Walter McCrone, a chemist and expert in microscopy, conducted an independent analysis of samples borrowed from the Shroud by the STURP team in 1978. He reported that there was evidence consistent with pigments in the samples — a sign that someone had drawn at least parts of the image. His conclusion was that the Shroud had been created by a talented artist sometime in the Middle Ages.”
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sc … al-forgers
“These results suggest that a talented artist carefully studied the New Testament and other artists’ painting of Christ. He then thought about a shroud image in terms of a dark tomb. Instead of the usual portrait with normal light and shadow, he assumed that the image could only be produced by body contact with the cloth. He painted directly on the cloth to image the body-contact points (forehead, bridge of the nose, cheekbones, mustache, beard, etc., over the entire body, front, and back). This automatically creates a negative image.”
Walter McCrone
https://www.academia.edu/3986571/A_DETA … PRETATIONS
“An Italian scientist says he has reproduced one of the world’s most famous Catholic relics, the Shroud of Turin, to support his belief it is a medieval fake, not the cloth Jesus was buried in.”
https://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/1 … in.shroud/
So, the overwhelming consensus from skeptics is the shroud is a medieval work of art by an unknown artist.
Meanwhile, there many been many scientists studying the shroud. So much so that it is considered “The World’s Most Analyzed Artifact”.
https://www.museumofthebible.org/newsro … d-artifact
“The Shroud of Turin is the single, most studied artifact in human history.”
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jres/109/2/j92cur.pdf
To get a glimpse of the scope of scientific work that has been done on the shroud, Barrie Schwortz has been collecting papers and books written on the shroud and both lists are quite extensive:
https://www.shroud.com/papers.htm
https://www.shroud.com/booklist.htm
Shroud Spectrum International was a peer reviewed journal dedicated solely to the study of the Shroud of Turin.
https://www.shroud.com/spectrum.htm
There have been many conferences on the shroud.
https://www.shroud.com/confrncs.htm
So much scientific research has occurred that it is a scientific field in its own right – Sindonology.
“The study of the Shroud of Turin.”
https://www.definitions.net/definition/sindonology
“the scientific study of the Shroud of Turin.”
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sindonology
“the scientific study of the Shroud of Turin.”
https://www.wordreference.com/definition/sindonology
What other artifact has generated so much scientific literature, books, and meetings?
But, if the shroud was a medieval artwork, there is practically no references to it in any art literature, art studies, art classes, art books, or art museums. It should rightly be considered an artwork centuries ahead of its time (photorealism, pixelation, halftone imaging, airbrush technique, projection technique, blood painting technique, unknown imaging technique, etc), but there is silence from the art community.
This lack of attention from the art world is even admitted by shroud critic Hugh Farey:
It is curious therefore that it has received so little interest from art historians. Only one has published a study of any length, and although several others have mentioned it in passing, they have characterised it as one thing or another without any serious consideration.
https://www.academia.edu/35960624/THE_MEDIEVAL_SHROUD
If the shroud was truly a medieval artwork, the above facts would make no sense. Why should scant attention be made to it by the art community, but it would be the most scientifically analyzed artifact? It is a pioneer in many aspects of art techniques centuries before others have discovered or used them. Yet it is not credited by the art community as being the first of its kind. There is practically dead silence from the art community on the shroud.
However, if the shroud was authentic, then it make sense, because it is not artwork, but is the burial shroud of a crucified man from the first century and can thus be scientifically studied. And so much so that it is universally recognized as the world’s most studied artifact.
This observation alone practically proves the authenticity of the shroud to me. It would make no sense otherwise.
https://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1106931#p1106931