How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

[otseng]

From the On the Bible being inerrant thread:

How can you trust something that's written about god that contradictory, contains errors and just plain wrong at times? Is there a logical way to do so, or do you just want it to be god's word so much that you overlook these things like happens so often through the history of christianity?

The Bible can still be God's word, inspired, authoritative, and trustworthy without the need to believe in inerrancy.

For debate:
How can the Bible be considered authoritative and inspired without the need to believe in the doctrine of inerrancy?

While debating, do not simply state verses to say the Bible is inspired or trustworthy.

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Thread Milestones

• Case study of Hezekiah
• Start discussing global flood / Flood Model summary
• Recap arguments of authority of the Bible
• Start discussing Tower of Babel / Tower of Babel summary
• Start discussing archaeology / Philosophy of science / Origin of alphabet / End of discussion on archaeology
• Start discussing cosmology / Concluding cosmology
• Start discussing Shroud of Turin / Summary top TS imaging theories / Created DefendingChristianity.com and TS subforums / Shroud of Turin summary
• Start discussing Bible and resurrection
• Start discussing the Messiahship of Jesus / Messiahship of Jesus wrap up
• Start discussing Old Testament ethics
• Summary argument of atheism and morality / God basis for objective morality
• Start discussing genocide / Genocide summary argument
• Start discussing slavery / Slavery summary argument
• Start discussing homosexuality / Homosexuality summary argument
• Old Testament ethics summary argument

[oldbadger]

Why on earth would they cart such a massive amount of ointment to the tomb if they had no intention of using it? That makes no sense. If the body was anointed it would have taken a fair amount anyway and there would have to be some residue in the fabric.

G-Mark tells that Magdalene brought spices etc after the Sabbath, G-Luke tells that she brought spices before the Sabbath, and G-John tells that it was Nicodemus who brought masses of spices that night, so during the Sabbath. I trust G-Mark the most, I think.

Now, if any ointments or spices were used then traces could be detected, and since G-John tells that Joseph of A brought the finest linen then the shroud would need to be of the finest Palestinian grown, thinned, spun and woven linen. Absence of any mention about these factors would damage any claims for it being genuine, I guess.

[otseng]

You said ""Supposing the TS was actually dated to 1260-1390,...." What else would I be referring to? I specifically responded to you saying:
"Supposing the TS was actually dated to 1260-1390, it still leaves several questions unanswered -- who did it and how did the image on the cloth get created?"
Perhaps you should read my response in that context.

The 1260-1390 dating is from the 1988 C-14 testing. So when you mentioned "if that date was established", that implies you have counter-arguments to my refutation of the dates from the C-14 testing.

The shroud is made from the linen yarn. They are inseparable. If the linen yarn originated in the 1300s then the shroud would have to be a fake. The dating of the fabric puts it in the 1300s more or less, and although it may be disputed it has not been refuted.

If the linen was dated to 1300s, yes it would be evidence it is a fake. However, I've already argued the C-14 dating to put the linen in the 1300s is invalid.

Why on earth would they cart such a massive amount of ointment to the tomb if they had no intention of using it? That makes no sense. If the body was anointed it would have taken a fair amount anyway and there would have to be some residue in the fabric.

It's anybody's guess. But we do know the preparation of the body was not completed. That's why the women came to the tomb on Sunday, to finalize the preparation. There's no textual evidence what got completed and when it got completed.

[otseng]

This is an example of a Christian writer misquoting Jewish scripture, apparently to make it look like Jesus fit the messianic framework.

Don't necessarily agree, but we can investigate that later.

It isn't about what mechanism you or anyone else proposes. The whole idea of the Shroud of Turin is that some miraculous force put an image of Jesus on the cloth, and there isn't any image in a crucial place where there should be if a three-dimensional body was involved. You can play "he said-she said" between experts and would-be experts over the dating of the cloth, but the absence of an image where there would have to be one isn't an issue which can be brushed aside or obscured with murky references to "cloth-to-body angle".

Actually, I think the theory of image formation that I'll be presenting does account for it.

Is there supposed to be some convenient excuse for there being no image where the cloth supposedly wrapped over the head when there's such clear and highly celebrated imaging everywhere else the cloth was supposedly close to the body? Are we all supposed to just ignore such a glaring discrepancy and take your word that it isn't an issue?

Note that lack of imaging is not only at the top of the head; it's at places where there is a significant angle relative to the surface the body was lying on, which includes the ears and sides of the body,

The logical impossibility here is that some extranormal force would be deliberately used to put a realistic image on a piece of fabric and fail spectacularly at making the image consistently realistic.

No idea was you're claiming here. Again, I haven't even proposed any mechanism yet, so I have no idea what you're attacking.

[otseng]

The bas-relief scenario is far more plausible than that.

I responded in post 1955 with:

Don't know how many of you are old enough to remember this but you may want to take a look, paying particular attention to 13:48-17:00.

I assume you are referring to the "bas-relief" technique by Joe Nickell.

Nickell and others contend the Shroud is a 14th-century painting on linen, suggested through the 1988 radiocarbon dating. One of Nickell's many objections to the Shroud's authenticity is the proportions of the figure's face and body. Both are consistent with the proportions used by Gothic artists of the period and are not those of an actual person.[38] Experts on both sides of the controversy have tried to duplicate the Shroud using medieval and modern methods. Claimants to the Shroud's authenticity believe the image could have been produced at the moment of resurrection by radiation, electrical discharge, or ultraviolet radiation; Nickell created a credible shroud using the bas relief method and contends that forgers had equivalent materials available during the 14th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell

If he used paint in his bas-relief, there is no evidence of paint used to form the image. If he used a scorch technique, then it would fluoresce under ultraviolet light imaging, but this is not detected on the shroud except for the 1532 burn marks and the poker holes. Also, by pressing the cloth onto a statue, when it is pulled off and pressed flat, it would have major distortions, which we do not see on the shroud. Though it might have a photo-negative effect, it would not have 3-D encoding. Also doubtful his image is only on the top few fibrils of the cloth. Further, he failed to even try to simulate the blood stains. These are just a few of the problems that come to mind with his claim.

I also noted:

There is no stain on the TS. The coloration is only due to dehydration-oxidation of the linen, much like when linen is exposed to light. Also, is it only affecting the top one or two fibrils in the cloth? Is it producing a half-tone effect?

"Although no single theory adequately accounts for all of the observations, it is
concluded that the image is the result of some cellulose oxidation-dehydration reaction
rather than an applied pigment."
https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/Physics%20C ... 0OCRsm.pdf

For attempts to do a bas-relief through scorching, evidence is against this as well.

One of the most important arguments against the scorch is related to UV fluorescence. It is well
known that the UV/Vis fluorescence photography of the TS shows that the body image does not
fluoresce while the light scorches emit a reddish fluorescence. Miller and Pellicori performed several
experiments using the same equipment as in Turin.

The fundamental mechanisms involved in color production by any kind of scorch are clear. At a given
temperature above a certain threshold, the color of the portions of fibers in narrow contact with the
hot material immediately begins to change. In the same time, the heat propagates along the fiber
and, probably, between adjacent fibers. But the key parameter is the very low diffusivity of linen:
there is a steep color gradient. In this sense, scorching can be seen as an almost perfect “contact-
only” image formation process. No contact, no color.
The Turin shroud image is continuous: on the face, all the anatomical parts are seen, including for
example the sides of the nostrils. There is no “hole” (taking into account the “banding effect”). Of
course the lack of image in some areas (the areas surrounding the hands for instance) does not prove
that the TS image is a contact-only image. Thus, a forger using the scorching technique would have to
put the linen in contact with all the parts of the bas-relief.
The color of the TS image fibers is everywhere the same: a pale yellow. This does correspond to what
I called a very light or a light scorch. This is obtained on a small surface at low temperature.
At thread level, the TS image color distribution is continuous: all the threads are colored. Because the
scorch mechanism is a contact-only mechanism, this can only be obtained by an intimate contact, i.e.
a relatively high contact pressure.
Consequently, in theory, in order to obtain an image resembling the TS image, a forger would have to
use a bas-relief, to heat it uniformly in a narrow range of low temperature, to apply it firmly on all
parts of the bas-relief and to control the contact pressure and the contact-time.
Let’s assume that after some trials, he would have succeeded in this task. Even in this case the above
table shows the fundamental differences with the TS image characteristics as seen through the
microscope.
The main arguments ruling out the scorch hypothesis can be summarized as follows:
- It is simply impossible to obtain an “image” made only of pale yellow fibers.
- A color gradient between the horizontal highest part and the oblique lateral parts of the threads is
always observed and particularly obvious in very light and light scorched areas.
22- If on a given flat area a faint yellow superficial color can be obtained, the color distribution does not
match that of the TS image: most of the threads are colorless and the gradient at thread level is
obvious. Applying a higher contact pressure result in a color distribution more uniform (more threads
are colored), a less obvious gradient (although detectable) and finally an image distribution that is
more similar to that of the TS image, although clearly different. But in this case, several fibers at the
topmost parts of these threads are burned. A higher contact pressure is the only way to obtain
shading. Even with a one millimeter high relief (the nose for instance), the contrast with the adjacent
parts is much too high with respect to the TS image (as shown by Jackson) and this fact is explained
by the observations through the microscope.
- the consequence is that a light scorch does not show truly the halftone effect observed on the TS
image: in the more colored areas, shading is not obtained by a higher density of only pale yellowed
fibers, but by a higher density of more colored fibers, with a wide range of colors: from brown-dark
burned fibers to few pale yellow fibers with the gradient described above.
- No striation or bundles of more colored fibers are seen in any scorched areas.
- The “signature” of a scorch is found in all kind of scorches, even in very light and light scorches:
even at the lowest temperature, some protruding burned fibers are observed and many small
opaque brown to dark burned pieces of fibers are easily found everywhere in the sticky-tape
experiments. This was not the case for the direct observations with the microscope on the Shroud in
1978 or on the sticky-tapes.
All these differences are related to the fundamental properties of color distribution resulting from
the scorching of any linen fabric, i.e. the fact that a scorch is a contact-only mechanism associated
with the very low heat conductivity of linen and the spatial geometry of the fabric. This is inevitable.
The TS image is not a scorch, even a light scorch. In fact, this old hypothesis is very easy to rule out
definitively as the body image formation mechanism with some basic experiments and a microscope.

https://shroudofturin.files.wordpress.c ... per-en.pdf

[otseng]

Yes, it says 100 pounds of spices were brought to the tomb, but it does not state if all the spices were used, so it's conjecture how much was on the body during burial.

I know, but I was asking about any lab reports.

Here is one research on the detection of myrrh:

Recent research with immunofluorescence methods has also
demonstrated the presence of traces of aloes and myrrh. These traces occur both in areas
corresponding to bloodstains and in other areas as well.

The present immunological investigations have
also confirmed the presence of aloes and myrrh in Shroud samples. The fact that the density
of the blood traces, aloes and myrrh is highest where there are bloodstains and decreases in
the other areas, lends support to a connection between the blood's preservation and the
presence of such plant preservatives. What is more, the demonstration of traces of aloes and
myrrh adherent to fibrils removed from areas corresponding to the body imprints leads us to
suppose the existence of a connection between these substances and the formation of the
images.

https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ssi13part3.pdf

So far I have read that this item dates back about 700 years so it is short by One thousand Three hundred years....no?

Are you referring to the 1988 C-14 dating?

I read about the Oxford dating, is all.

And I already refuted the C-14 dating in post 1984.

I think it would be very easy to list your evidences in one clear concise post, but so far I have not read any evidence of yours about the shroud.... nothing.

The charge I have produced no evidence is completely baseless. There is so much evidence I've produced, it would not fit into a single post.

You can do this, review my summary argument in post 1984 of refuting the C-14 dating. This will link to the specific arguments which will have the links to the details with evidences with references.

Also, my arguments so far is not the TS is the burial cloth of Jesus. The only thing I've argued so far is it is not a work of art but an actual body was involved. As I present more evidence of the blood, then I'll be arguing it is the body of Jesus.

And so you have acknowledged the fact that many many artifacts have been discovered which were intended to bolster faith in the people.

Yes, many other Catholic relics exist.

A list of evidences on a single post would in my opinion present the strongest possible proposal that this shroud might be one that covered Jesus.

We've already spent over 50 pages discussing the TS. It's not possible to reduce this into a single post. It could be reduced into a single book though, which I guess I might have to write some day.

I have already written that I have not seen any presence of faith in your posts, apart from where you wrote that you do believe in a resurrected Jesus and this shroud.

OK.

I wrote to you previously:- Yes. If your opinion is not based upon any faith then you won't have much to grasp at all......at this rate. So I take it back..... you will not be left with anything imo, if you cannot prepare a clear and concise list of evidence.

All I'd be doing is compiling all the evidence I've already been producing. Is that what you want me to do?

That's the problem with this shroud, it seems to be about One thousand two hundred years out of date with the claims.

Again, review my summary argument in post 1984 of refuting the C-14 dating.

If you have valid counter-arguments with evidence, please present them. Otherwise my refutation of the 1988 C-14 dating stands unchallenged.

Now, if any ointments or spices were used then traces could be detected, and since G-John tells that Joseph of A brought the finest linen then the shroud would need to be of the finest Palestinian grown, thinned, spun and woven linen. Absence of any mention about these factors would damage any claims for it being genuine, I guess.

I have no idea what you are arguing about. Absence of mention in the Bible about what would show it's not genuine?

[brunumb]

You said ""Supposing the TS was actually dated to 1260-1390,...." What else would I be referring to? I specifically responded to you saying:
"Supposing the TS was actually dated to 1260-1390, it still leaves several questions unanswered -- who did it and how did the image on the cloth get created?"
Perhaps you should read my response in that context.

The 1260-1390 dating is from the 1988 C-14 testing. So when you mentioned "if that date was established", that implies you have counter-arguments to my refutation of the dates from the C-14 testing.

OK. I give up. I give up. Bye!

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to otseng in post #2103

Note that lack of imaging is not only at the top of the head; it's at places where there is a significant angle relative to the surface the body was lying on, which includes the ears and sides of the body

There wouldn't be any "angle relative to" the top of the head and the cloth going over the top of the head. They would be in direct contact. Nothing between them. No impediment.

So why isn't there an image there?

And the surface the body was lying on has nothing to do with it since it's supposed to have been the body producing the image.

The logical impossibility here is that some extranormal force would be deliberately used to put a realistic image on a piece of fabric and fail spectacularly at making the image consistently realistic.

No idea was you're claiming here. Again, I haven't even proposed any mechanism yet

Why not?

You've been the one insisting on sticking to the topic of the TS. Well, this is the topic of the TS, so come across with the goods if you have them.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to otseng in post #2105

And I already refuted the C-14 dating in post 1984.

I'm still seeing a discrepancy between the numbers in these links and the posts they take me to, but this link takes me to the post in which you make that silly argument about 40,000-year-old coal deposits.

Every time you claim to have "refuted" the C-14 dating, it reminds me of this:

Rogers took 32 documented adhesive-tape samples from all areas of the shroud and associated textiles during the STURP process in 1978. He received 14 yarn segments from Luigi Gonella (from the Department of Physics, at the Polytechnic University of Turin) on 14 October 1979, which Gonella told him were from the Raes sample. On 12 December 2003, Rogers received samples of both warp and weft threads that Luigi Gonella claimed to have taken from the radiocarbon sample before it was distributed for dating. The actual provenance of these threads is uncertain, as Gonella was not authorized to take or retain genuine shroud material, but Gonella told Rogers that he excised the threads from the center of the radiocarbon sample.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarb ... d_of_Turin


And there's this:

In 1987, carbon dating at three prestigious laboratories agreed well with his date: 1355 by microscopy and 1325 by C-14 dating. The suggestion that the 1532 Chambery fire changed the date of the cloth is ludicrous. Samples for C-dating are routinely and completely burned to CO 2 as part of a well-tested purification procedure. The suggestions that modern biological contaminants were sufficient to modernize the date are also ridiculous. A weight of 20th century carbon equaling nearly two times the weight of the Shroud carbon itself would be required to change a 1st century date to the 14th century (see Amount of Modern Biological Contaminant Required to Raise the Date of a 36 A.D. Shroud). Besides this, the linen cloth samples were very carefully cleaned before analysis at each of the C-dating laboratories.

https://www.mccroneinstitute.org/v/64/t ... d-of-turin

And while I've been unable to find the link again, I remember another source stating that testing a combination of material from the 1st century and from the 16th century should result in a dating to the 7th century, which would still be far too late for the TS to be authentic.

[oldbadger]

Recent research with immunofluorescence methods has also
demonstrated the presence of traces of aloes and myrrh. These traces occur both in areas
corresponding to bloodstains and in other areas as well.

The present immunological investigations have
also confirmed the presence of aloes and myrrh in Shroud samples. The fact that the density
of the blood traces, aloes and myrrh is highest where there are bloodstains and decreases in
the other areas, lends support to a connection between the blood's preservation and the
presence of such plant preservatives. What is more, the demonstration of traces of aloes and
myrrh adherent to fibrils removed from areas corresponding to the body imprints leads us to
suppose the existence of a connection between these substances and the formation of the
images.

https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ssi13part3.pdf

I only had enough time to research this one report which you showed.

It is all important (imo) that any scientific research and forensic examination is carried out by detached laboratories.
The very first information that examiners should extend is about their own background in order to show impartiality.

I accessed the above report by the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) and then researched the publishers, Indiana Center for Shroud Studies, R. 3, Box 557, Nashville, Indiana 47448, U.S.A. As I read the report I noticed that various scientists did not trust it and they claimed that STURP was composed of 'religious zealots who were out to prove the Resurrection of Jesus' in return, STURP claimed that all those people were 'anti-religionist'.

None of the scientists on any side of the results could be shown as detached.
At this point I gained interest in one of the two authors of this report...... Joseph G Marino and further investigation showed that he is 'an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who worked in the Vatican diplomatic service' who was a Monk at some time.

There seem to be too many researchers with agendas, some keen to disprove the shroud, some keen to prove it. I have come across this condition many times where Forensic Expert Witnesses all specialised in the same subject matter will counter each other, on either side of court cases. Thus it is difficult to trust in any of them.

All I am left with is my own opinion, and since there is a vast time gap between Jesus and this shroud, and since I do believe that he survived execution at that time....... I personally cannot form any positive opinion about the reality or otherwise of this cloth.

[boatsnguitars]

If the linen was dated to 1300s, yes it would be evidence it is a fake. However, I've already argued the C-14 dating to put the linen in the 1300s is invalid.

So, your argument is an Argument from Ignorance. If one test doesn't claim 1300, then you get to claim 30CE?

Nope.