Saturday, September 22, 2012

My critique of Charles Freeman's "The Turin Shroud and the Image of Edessa: A Misguided Journey," part 10: "The Image of Edessa" (6)

Here is part 10, "The Image of Edessa" (6), of my critique of historian Charles Freeman's, "The Turin Shroud and the Image of Edessa: A Misguided Journey," May 24, 2012 [page 8]. See previous part 9.

[Above (enlarge): "The Vignon markings-how Byzantine artists created a living likeness from the Shroud image. (1) Transverse streak across forehead, (2) three-sided `square' between brows, (3) V shape at bridge of nose, (4) second V within marking 2, (5) raised right eyebrow, (6) accentuated left cheek, (7) accentuated right cheek, (8) enlarged left nostril, (9) accentuated line between nose and upper lip, (10) heavy line under lower lip, (11) hairless area between lower lip and beard, (12) forked beard, (13) transverse line across throat, (14) heavily accentuated owlish eyes, (15) two strands of hair." (Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," 1978, p.82e).]

Freeman continues with his attempts to "poison the well" against historian Ian Wilson's theory that the Image of Edessa/Mandylion is the Shroud of Turin folded eight times (see my Tetradiplon and the Shroud of Turin) by the prejudicial "bizarre" and "enthusiasts":

An even more bizarre explanation comes when Wilson tackles Byzantine art. Seventy years ago a Frenchman, Paul Vignon, noted that the bearded face on the Turin Shroud has some of the characteristics of Byzantine art. All kinds of measuring was done and some enthusiasts found as many as sixty resemblances.

Again Freeman, "fails to tell his readers relevant material which might undermine his case, weak though it already is" (Freeman's own, hypocritical, pot calling the kettle black, criticism of Wilson in this paper). Paul Vignon was not merely "a Frenchman," but he was also a Professor of Biology and an artist. And they were not merely "some of the characteristics of Byzantine art" which Vignon discovered, but at least fifteen (15) unique markings on the Shroud (see above), which are all found (although no icon has all fifteen), on Byzantine depictions of Christ's face, from the 6th century onwards:

"This said, however, even from much this same early time there is actually one further even more compelling indicator that the Image of Edessa was one and the same as our Shroud. The seventh century saw another wave of Pantocrator-type depictions of Christ, which we have shown to be based on the Image of Edessa. One of these can be found in the little-visited St Ponziano catacomb in Rome's Transtevere district ... It is of exactly the same type as the Pantocrator icon at St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai that we earlier established as having been painted under the influence of the Image of Edessa. However, it features one highly important extra detail: on the forehead between the eyebrows there is a starkly geometrical shape resembling a topless square. Artistically it does not seem to make much sense. If it was intended to be a furrowed brow, it is depicted most unnaturally in comparison with the rest of the face. But if we look at the equivalent point on the Shroud face ... we find exactly the same feature, equally as geometric and equally as unnatural, probably just a flaw in the weave. The only possible deduction is that fourteen centuries ago an artist saw this feature on the cloth that he knew as the Image of Edessa and applied it to his Christ Pantocrator portrait of Jesus. In so doing he provided a tell-tale clue that the likeness of Jesus from which he was working was that on the cloth we today know as the Shroud. Seven decades ago Frenchman Paul Vignon identified another fourteen such oddities frequently occurring in Byzantine Christ portraits ... likewise seemingly deriving from the Shroud. Among these is a distinctive triangle immediately below the topless square. But like a Man Friday footprint of the Shroud's existence six centuries before the date given to it by carbon dating, the topless square alone is enough. (Wilson, I., "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," 2010, p.142).

[Above: Bust of Christ from the catacomb of St. Pontianus, Rome: Catacomba di Ponziano, Wikipedia, 31 January 2012. Note the Vignon marking on this 7-8th century mosaic, a three-sided `topless square' between the eyebrows (see below).]

As Wilson correctly points out, this Vignon marking no. 2, the three-sided `square' or `topless square', which is merely part of a flaw or change in the Shroud's weave (see below) was slavishly copied by Byzantine artists, from the 6th century onwards. And just as Robinson Crusoe's discovery of Man Friday's footprint on the seashore was conclusive proof that there was another human being on the island, so this topless square Vignon marking no. 2, which is on almost all (if not all) of the hundreds of Byzantine depictions of Christ's face since the 6th century, is alone conclusive proof that the Shroud existed as the Image of Edessa in at least the 6th century in the Byzantine world.

[Above (enlarge): ShroudScope "Face only Vertical" online Shroud photograph showing the three sided `square' or `topless square' Vignon Marking no. 2, superimposed on 7th-8th century bust of Christ from the catacomb of St. Pontianus, Rome: ShroudScope and Wikipedia.]

As the late evolutionary biologist Prof. Colin Patterson pointed out, copyright courts rule that it is "proof `beyond reasonable doubt'" of plagiarism if two or more works share the same error, and also that the original is the work in which the shared error is a physical flaw in the text:

"An interesting argument is that in the law courts (where proof `beyond reasonable doubt' is required), cases of plagiarism or breach of copyright will be settled in the plaintiff's favour if it can be shown that the text (or whatever) is supposed to have been copied contains errors present in the original. Similarly, in tracing the texts of ancient authors, the best evidence that two versions are copies one from another or from the same original is when both contain the same errors. A charming example is an intrusive colon within a phrase in two fourteenth-century texts of Euripides: one colon turned out to be a scrap of straw embedded in the paper, proving that the other text was a later copy." (Patterson, C., "Evolution," 1999, p.117).
The `topless square' is a physical flaw or change in the weave of the fabric of the Shroud of Turin and so it has no intrinsic artistic

[Above: Closeup of face of the Man on the Shroud, showing that the `topless square' is part of a flaw or change in the Shroud's weave which runs all the way down the face (and in fact appears to run down the entire length) of the Shroud: ShroudScope "Durante 2002 Vertical"]

significance whatsoever. So those hundreds of Byzantine depictions of Christ's face from the 6th century onwards which have the `topless square' in exactly the same location it is on the Shroud, were copied from the Shroud, as the Image of Edessa. Just as a single human footprint in the sand, below the last high tide mark, proved to Robinson Crusoe beyond any reasonable doubt that he was no longer alone on his island, so the `topless square' alone (although there are 14 other Vignon markings) on hundreds of Byzantine icons since the 6th century is "proof `beyond reasonable doubt'" that the Image of Edessa is the Turin Shroud and so the latter already existed from at least the 6th century. Therefore, Freeman (and his ilk), who deny this "proof `beyond reasonable doubt'" of the authenticity of the Shroud based on the Vignon markings, are simply WRONG!

Freeman continues with his already failed quest to show that the Image of Edessa or Mandylion, is not the Shroud of Turin folded eight times, mounted on a board and framed so that only Christ's face was visible.

This is all interesting but Wilson goes on to make the absurd suggestion that this was because Byzantine art was born from the Image of Edessa, also known to Wilson as the Turin Shroud!
This is another false "straw man" statement by Freeman, that Wilson claimed that "Byzantine art was born [in the sixth century] from the Image of Edessa." Wilson did not claim that there was no Byzantine art until the Image of Edessa (the Shroud of Turin "doubled in four") was rediscovered in the sixth century. In fact Wilson explicitly stated that there was Byzantine art before the sixth century. What Wilson actually stated was that Byzantine art underwent "a quite extraordinary change in how artists portrayed Jesus's likeness, which happened very soon after the Image of Edessa cloth came to light ... in the art of the sixth century there occurred a remarkable transformation in the way Jesus was depicted":
"But why should we believe that this Image of Edessa cloth was our Shroud? The main clue lies in a quite extraordinary change in how artists portrayed Jesus's likeness, which happened very soon after the Image of Edessa cloth came to light ... right up until at least the end of the fifth century the portrayals of Jesus lacked any authority, most representation depicting him beardless ... there was a general lack of any awareness of what he looked like. But in the art of the sixth century there occurred a remarkable transformation in the way Jesus was depicted. Just two of several surviving examples will serve to illustrate this. The first is a 'Christ Pantocrator' icon painted in encaustic - a wax technique, the recipe for which became lost after the eighth century - that is preserved in the remote monastery of St Catherine in the Sinai desert ... The second is a relief portrait of Christ on a silver vase that was found at Homs in Syria, and is now in the Louvre in Paris ... Firmly datable to the sixth century, both are authoritative, definitive versions of the distinctive likeness that today we instinctively recognize as Jesus Christ. And if we compare these front-facing likenesses with the face as visible on the Shroud before any discovery of the hidden photographic negative, there is a very uncanny resemblance: the same frontality, the same long hair, long nose, beard, etc. It is as if someone has studied the Shroud's facial imprint and for public consumption has very carefully crafted an interpretative official likeness from this in the guise of Christ Pantocrator - the 'King of All'." (Wilson, 2010, pp.133,135).
So again, either Freeman has not actually read the above in Wilson's latest book as he implied he had (under a different subtitle) in this paper:
"Despite many years of research de Wesselow uncritically accepts much of the work of the veteran Shroud researcher Ian Wilson whose latest volume, The Shroud, Fresh Light on the 2000-year-old Mystery, Bantam Books, 2011, is used here."
(which would be scholarly incompetence), or he has read the above, but is concealing it from his readers and in its place telling them something else which Wilson did not say (which would be scholarly dishonesty).

Freeman continues with his careless approach to historical accuracy:

Wilson makes some vague points about a new period in art at this time and finds a reference to two wandering Georgian monks with contacts with Edessa in the 530s who may have painted images.
They were not "Georgian monks" but "Assyrian monks" who "travelled to Georgia specifically to paint interpretative versions of their charges [which included the Image of Edessa] for the newly founded churches there":
"Tradition in Georgia, the former republic of the old Soviet Union, has long held that some time around the mid 530s twelve Assyrian monks left Mesopotamia and travelled north to found several monasteries in Georgia. Present-day tour groups to Georgia can follow in these missionary monks' footsteps, and in Georgia's capital Tbilisi there is a very badly worn sixth-century Chris Pantocrator icon, the Anchiskhati - an almost exact counterpart to the one at St Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai - which is thought to have been brought to Georgia by this mission ...

[Right ( (enlarge): "The Ancha Icon of the Savior, known in Georgia as Anchiskhati ... is a medieval Georgian encaustic icon, traditionally considered to be ... imprinted with the face of Jesus Christ miraculously transferred by contact with the Image of Edessa (Mandylion). Dated to the 6th-7th century ... The icon derives its name from the Georgian monastery of Ancha in what is now Turkey, whence it was brought to Tbilisi in 1664. The icon is now kept at the National Art Museum of Georgia in Tbilisi" ("Ancha Icon," Wikipedia, 20 August 2012. If you click on the image to enlarge it and then look closely, you will see that this "6th-7th century" icon, based on the Image of Edessa, also has (like many other Byzantine icons) the `topless square' Vignon marking no. 2, exactly where the Turin Shroud has the original, being part of a physical flaw or change in its weave (see above).]

The quite remarkable new insight from one of the recently discovered Georgian documents from Sinai is what it tells of the activities of two of these Assyrian monks, Theodosius from Edessa and Isidore from Edessa's sister city Hierapolis. Theodosius is specifically described as 'a deacon and monk [in charge] of the Image of Christ' in Edessa. As Georgian scholars recognize, this Image can be none other than our Image of Edessa, thereby confirming Evagrius's information that this was an extant historical object by this time, one evidently sufficiently important to have its own `carer'. Theodosius's companion Isidore was apparently responsible for a tile image belonging to Edessa's sister city Hierapolis. Both monks travelled to Georgia specifically to paint interpretative versions of their charges for the newly founded churches there. Never before have we been afforded a glimpse of who lay behind the rash of Christ portraits that appeared in the sixth century. It is quite evident from the Georgian document that they were Assyrian artist-monks from Edessa and its environs who saw themselves as missionaries or icon evangelists for the newly revealed 'divine likeness' that had been so recently rediscovered in Edessa." (Wilson, 2010, pp.135-136).

So again, for someone who claims to be a historian, albeit only a "freelance" one, who seems to hold (or to have held) any university position, his current position being merely "head of history at St Clare's, Oxford" a boarding school:
"Charles Freeman Charles Freeman is a scholar and freelance historian specializing in the history of ancient Greece and Rome. He is the author of numerous books on the ancient world including The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason. He has taught courses on ancient history in Cambridge's Adult Education program and is Historical Consultant to the Blue Guides. He also leads cultural study tours to Italy, Greece and Turkey. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He lives in Suffolk, England. ... In addition to a law degree, he holds a master's degree in African history and politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and an additional master's degree in applied research in education from the University of East Anglia. In 1978 he was appointed head of history at St Clare's, Oxford." ("Charles Freeman (historian) ," Wikipedia, 11 May 2012).
Freeman is remarkably careless with historical facts, at least regarding the Shroud of Turin.

To be continued in part 11, "The Image of Edessa" (7). I never did continue this series, having bigger fish to fry than Freeman!

Posted: 22 September 2012. Updated: 2 October 2021.

11 comments:

maest said...

Stephen:
La mejor IMAGEN que puede usted encontrar sobre los signos 1-2-3 de Vignon está en el mosaico del alto del ábside de "Sant'Apollinare in classe".

Paul Vignon no podría haberlo visto, pues se precisa una MAGNÍFICA fotografía a causa de la gran altura......
Le doy el link de una MAGNÍCA fotografía, la número 5, es de gran resolución y aumenta haciendo el click sobre ella.

http://pepetoideas.blogspot.com.es/2011/01/san-apolinar-in-classe-los-bellos.html

Saludos

Carlos Otal

webmaster de http://lasabanaylosescepticos.blogspot.com.es/

Stephen E. Jones said...

Google translates this from Spanish as:

>The best picture you can find on the signs of Vignon is 1-2-3 in the top of the apse mosaic of "Sant'Apollinare in classe".
>
>Paul Vignon could not have seen, as a magnificent photograph is required because of the high altitude ......
>
>I give the link a photograph MAGNÍCA, number 5, is doing great resolution and increases the click on it.
>
>http://pepetoideas.blogspot.com.es/2011/01/san-apolinar-in-classe-los-bellos.html
>
>regards
>
>Carlos Otal
>
>http://lasabanaylosescepticos.blogspot.com.es/ webmaster

I clicked on the link http://pepetoideas.blogspot.com.es/2011/01/san-apolinar-in-classe-los-bellos.html and there is indeed a great photo of the sixth century "the top of the apse mosaic of "Sant'Apollinare in classe" (Ravenna). It clearly shows the topless `square' Vignon marking no. 2, plus several others. Readers are urged to check it out for themeselves.

Thanks Carlos.

Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.

Anonymous said...

'The Triumphal Arch Mosaics (San' Apollinare in Classe)

'The mosaics on the upper part of the triumphal arch (or choir arch) date from the 9th century. Against a dark background are the symbols of the Four Evangelists in flight, with a bust of Christ in the center. The winged ox, symbol of St. Luke, is quite unusual: rather like a Picasso painting, its head is very distorted, with the nostrils shown frontally but the rest in profile.' (From a guide to the church)'

The Christ shown here is very much later than the sixth century.

Stephen E. Jones said...

Anonymous

>'The Triumphal Arch Mosaics (San' Apollinare in Classe)
>
>'The mosaics on the upper part of the triumphal arch (or choir arch) date from the 9th century. ...
>
>The Christ shown here is very much later than the sixth century.

Thanks. But the "sixth century" part was not essential to my argument.

Which was that "the top of the apse mosaic of "Sant'Apollinare in classe" (Ravenna)... clearly shows the topless `square' Vignon marking no. 2, plus several others."

Stephen E. Jones

Flagrum3 said...

Question; I am aware that Vignon first noticed these markings in his extensive study of Byzantine paintings, frescos etc; But, when it came to him observing these markings on the Shroud, did he observe them from the actual Shroud or from photographs of the Shroud?...Can these markings in actuality, be seen on the Shroud itself when viewed in real-life as a painter would view it?

I've done some research on the matter and from what I've found, or haven't found, I believe Vignon was observing the markings only from the Pia photos and not from the Shroud itself. I am correct in this thinking? and if so, how sure can we be about this?

Thanks,

F3

Stephen E. Jones said...

Flagrum3

>Question; I am aware that Vignon first noticed these markings in his extensive study of Byzantine paintings, frescos etc; But, when it came to him observing these markings on the Shroud, did he observe them from the actual Shroud or from photographs of the Shroud?...

Both. I answered a similar question under part 8 of this series:

---------------------------------
Wilson elsewhere that you can see the Shroud features "readily enough" if you stood back beyond "touching distance":

"If you stood back you could make it out readily enough: a bearded face, a pronounced chest, crossed hands, legs side by side, together with, as one looked up at the back-of-the-body image, a long rope of hair, taut shoulders and buttocks, and soles of the feet. But the image colour was the subtlest yellow sepia, and as you moved in closer to anything like touching distance ... it seemed virtually to disappear like mist. Because of the lack of outline and the minimum contrast to the ivory-coloured background, it became wellnigh impossible to `see' whatever detail you were trying to look at without stepping some distance back again." (Wilson, I., "The Blood and the Shroud," 1998, p.4).

[...]

>So if one is observing the cloth today can one see the Vignon markings?

Yes, if you step back about a metre or more. And some of the Vignon Markings are not part of the image, e.g. the reversed 3 bloodstain on the forehead, the topless square above the nose is a flaw in the Shroud's weave and the `neckline' is a crease in the fabric.

>Do we know if Vignon took his markings from looking at the cloth without any enhancement of it?

Vignon studied Byzantine icons and compared them with Secondo Pia's 1898 photos, and later with Giuseppe Enrie's 1931 photos, of the Shroud. He saw the Shroud at the 1931 [should be 1933] exhibition and may have seen it at the 1898 exhibition.
---------------------------------

[continued]

Stephen E. Jones said...

[continued]

>Can these markings in actuality, be seen on the Shroud itself when viewed in real-life as a painter would view it?

Yes. See above. Some of them, e.g. the reversed 3 (a bloodstain) mand the topless square (a flaw or change in the weave), are not part of the image and would always have been just as visible as they are today.

>I've done some research on the matter and from what I've found, or haven't found, I believe Vignon was observing the markings only from the Pia photos and not from the Shroud itself. I am correct in this thinking?

No. Apart from Vignon also saw and studied the 1931 Enri photos, which are reproduced in his 1939 book (see below) Vignon saw the Shroud in person at the 1933 exhibition:

"Born not far from Turin, and a graduate both of Fordham University, and of Turin's Don Bosco International Theological Institute, Father Rinaldi acted as an interpreter during the 1933 exposition of the Shroud, rubbing shoulders at that time with such pioneer researchers as Paul Vignon and Dr. Pierre Barbet, and, of course, seeing the Shroud at close hand." ("Father Rinaldi's Golden Jubilee," BSTS Newsletter No. 12, January 1986).

>and if so, how sure can we be about this?

See above. And in his "Le Saint Suaire de Turin: Devant La Science, L'archéologie, L'histoire, L'iconographie, La Logique," 1939, on pp.11-12, scanned by me and translated from French by Google, Vignon records at the 1933 exhibition his seeing the Shroud for an hour, in a group of 20, and then seeing it "for ten minutes and almost in broad daylight" with "true tones ... noticeable":

"In 1933, Time no longer being a science, meditation was his turn. I did not forget the emotion that gave us a view of the whole cloth, when, between eleven o'clock and midnight, the cathedral finally liberated from the crowd, only twenty people were there. The Shroud belonged to all of us! But the bottom line is that our farewells the Shroud, we saw it for ten minutes and almost in broad daylight, true tones this time noticeable: the closing procession arrested on the steps of the cathedral to leave a Enrie time to make one last photograph superior, is not it, everything the minutes (Fig. 6). Look at this photograph. See various operators (including our colleague Dr. Barbet, seen from behind) take pictures at their leisure. Judge by the desire or the authorities were having shows in the Shroud under the most liberal and best. Right, His Eminence Cardinal Fossati maintains itself on the board which is nailed the Shroud. Right again, in the foreground, the knight Enrie monitors its aid."

Stephen E. Jones

Stephen E. Jones said...

>"In 1933, Time no longer being a science, meditation was his turn.

This was Google's translation of Vignon's French: "En 1933, l'heure n'etant plus a la Science, la meditation eut son tour." Presumably it would be better translated: "In 1933, it was no longer the time for Science, but the turn of meditation."

>I did not forget the emotion that gave us a view of the whole cloth, when, between eleven o'clock and midnight, the cathedral finally liberated from the crowd, only twenty people were there. The Shroud belonged to all of us!

This indicates that Vignon, in a group of only 20, had about an hour to study the whole Shroud.

>But the bottom line is that our farewells the Shroud,

The French is "Mais l'essentiel est que, pour nos adieux au Linceul,". My wife who is studying high school French, says this should be, "But the essential is that, at our farewells to the Shroud ..."

>we saw it for ten minutes and almost in broad daylight, true tones this time noticeable:

So any claim that Vignon could not see the Vignon markings on the Shroud are false. He had about an hour to study it up close in the well-lit cathedral and then ten minutes in almost broad daylight where he could distinguish its true tones.

The caption under the photo (Fig. 6) on page 11, says this was at, "Le 15 octobre 1933, a quatre heures de l'apres-midi" or "October 15, 1933, four o'clock in the afternoon," according to Google translate.

>the closing procession arrested on the steps of the cathedral to leave a Enrie time to make one last photograph superior, is not it, everything the minutes (Fig. 6).

Presumably this should be, "the procession stopped ... to allow Enrie ..." That is Giuseppe Enrie, a professional photographer who had already in 1931 taken a complete set of black and white photographs of the Shroud (see ShroudScope).

The "is not it, everything the minutes (Fig. 6)" is obscure. The French is "n'est-ce pas, a tout proces-verbal (fig. 6)." So presumably Vignon means "is it not?" referring to Enrie's superior photograph.

And in his "everything the minutes (Fig. 6)," the French "proces-verbal" means "minutes of a meeting" according to my wife's French-English dictionary. So perhaps it is referring to the caption under Enrie's photograph of the Shroud on the steps of Turin cathedral.

[continued]

Stephen E. Jones said...

[continued]

>Look at this photograph. See various operators (including our colleague Dr. Barbet, seen from behind) take pictures at their leisure.

So again, Vignon, with his perception honed by years of studying Byzantine depiction of Christ's face, would have had no difficulty in confirming that the Vignon markings really were on the Shroud.

>Judge by the desire or the authorities were having shows in the Shroud under the most liberal and best.

The desire of the Turin authorities to display the Shroud freely and its best was evident in this photograph.

>Right, His Eminence Cardinal Fossati maintains itself on the board which is nailed the Shroud. Right again, in the foreground, the knight Enrie monitors its aid."

Vignon's point seems to be that Turin's then Archbishop Cardinal Fossati publicly associated himself with the authenticity of the Shroud. This was significant back then because the Shroud was then not owned by the Catholic Church but by the House of Savoy and due to the misguided (and dishonest) efforts of Catholic intellectuals, such as Ulysse Chevalier (1841-1923) and Vignon's contemporary Fr. Herbert Thurston (1856-1939), the Shroud was not then regarded by most Catholics as authentic.

The term "knight" before "Enrie" in the French is "le chevalier." This seems to suggest that Enrie was a member of the French nobility.

Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.

Flagrum3 said...

Stephen, thank-you for the indepth response to my questions.

Anyways, it looks like your critique of Freeman is going to have to continue even further, as he has just released another paper entitled; 'Tetradiplon; The Mystery Solved?' ...I'm sure you'll get a kick out of this one. I wouldn't know where to start myself, as there is just so much conjecture and much of the same little tricks as found in his previous works.

Thanks again,

F3

Stephen E. Jones said...

Flagrum3

>Stephen, thank-you for the indepth response to my questions.

Thank you.

>Anyways, it looks like your critique of Freeman is going to have to continue even further, as he has just released another paper entitled; 'Tetradiplon; The Mystery Solved?'

Thanks for the tip-off, but I had already seen the notification of that on Dan Porter's blog. I've embedded a link to Freeman's article in the above.

>...I'm sure you'll get a kick out of this one.

From my brief reading of it, it mostly rehashes Freeman's failed arguments which I have (and am) refuting in my "My critique of Charles Freeman's ..." series.

>I wouldn't know where to start myself, as there is just so much conjecture and much of the same little tricks as found in his previous works

One of Freeman's "little tricks" in it is his continued fallacious assumption that in the Acts of Thaddeus (which is a 6th century revision of the 4th century or earlier Doctrine of Addai, and used the words tetradiplon and sindon of the cloth for the first time), that Jesus wiping His face on the cloth and His image being imprinted on it is literally true:

"The author of the Acts of Thaddeus only uses the word tetradiplon of the cloth BEFORE it was handed to Jesus and there is no hint that it was refolded tetradiplon afterwards."

But neither Freeman, nor Wilson, nor me, nor anyone (as far as I am aware) believes that actually happened. So how can the order of events of something that didn't actually happen, but just was the best explanation that 4th century Christians could think of how Jesus' face image could have been imprinted on the Edessa Cloth, be appealed to as a refutation of Wilson's theory that the Image of Edessa was actually the Shroud, doubled in four (tetradiplon)?

Freeman also repeats his failed explanation of a cloth doubled in four, i.e. folded eight times.

His Shroud `skeptics' readers (i.e. true believers in the Shroud's inauthenticity) will no doubt be taken in by Freeman's fallacious and dishonest (because they conceal from Freeman's readers information which would undermine Freeman's thesis) arguments.

Freeman and his Shroud `skeptics' readers are just another example of `the blind leading the blind' with the final result (if they don't repent) of both leader and followers falling into the pit together:

Matthew 15:14. "Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit."

Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.