I was intending to go into Western Australia's State library tomorrow to see if I could download Fanti, et al.'s "Non-destructive dating of ancient flax textiles by means of vibrational spectroscopy" paper in the journal Vibrational Spectroscopy, as mentioned on Dan Porter's Shroud of Turin Blog.
In trying to work out how I would find it online at the library, I found the page "Vibrational Spectroscopy | Articles in Press | ScienceDirect.com"
About half-way down that table of contents page I found Fanti, et al.'s article, with a PDF download link.
I clicked on the link thinking it would pop-up a message saying I had to pay for the article. But much to my surprise it downloaded a PDF of the full text of the article:
with the proviso that it is unedited and the final published version may be different:
The paper is about Fanti, et al.'s testing by FT-IR (Fourier Transform Infra-Red) spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy of the correlation between the age and spectral properties of ancient flax textiles:
Abstract The possibility to define a two-way relationship between age and a spectral property of ancient flax textiles has been investigated in the present paper employing both FT-IR and Raman analyses on selected samples dated from about 3250 B.C. to 2000 A.D.
Thirteen samples of ancient flax textiles were tested (NOT including any from the Shroud of Turin) and Fanti, et al. concluded that there was a positive correlation between the age of ancient flax textiles
[Above: Figure 3 at page 27 of Fanti, et al.'s article, which seems to show a strong, positive correlation between the age of ancient flax textiles and their spectral properties.]
and their spectral properties. Which made it possible "to make a rough dating of ancient flax textiles":
The resulting calibration curves give the possibility to make a rough dating of ancient flax textiles, but future calibration based on a greater number of samples, coupled with ad-hoc cleaning procedures, will significantly improve the accuracy of the method. This procedure should be capable to remove the pollutants, but not to damage the chemical characteristics of the flax fiber. Therefore, this non destructive method could be an alternative to others, such as the more accurate radiocarbon dating, that is in the narrower range of ±50 years or less, but that both requires destruction of textiles and has higher costs.
Once this new method of dating ancient flax (and presumably other) textiles is established, there could be no reasonable objection to the non-destructive dating of flax samples from the Shroud of Turin using vibrational spectroscopy.
Indeed, Fanti has already done that, and found that, according to "FT-IR testing", the Shroud is dated 300 BC ±400" (i.e. 700 BC-AD 100) and "200 BC ±500 after Raman testing" (i.e. 700 BC-AD 300):
"New scientific experiments carried out at the University of Padua have apparently confirmed that the Shroud Turin can be dated back to the 1st century AD. This makes its compatible with the tradition which claims that the cloth with the image of the crucified man imprinted on it is the very one Jesus’ body was wrapped in when he was taken off the cross. ... The new tests carried out in the University of Padua labs were carried out by a number of university professors from various Italian universities and agree that the Shroud dates back to the period when Jesus Christ was crucified in Jerusalem. Final results show that the Shroud fibres examined produced the following dates, all of which are 95% certain and centuries away from the medieval dating obtained with Carbon-14 testing in 1988: the dates given to the Shroud after FT-IR testing, is 300 BC ±400, 200 BC ±500 after Raman testing and 400 AD ±400 after multi-parametric mechanical testing. The average of all three dates is 33 BC ±250 years." (Andrea Tornielli, "New experiments on Shroud show it’s not medieval," Vatican Insider, 26 March 2013).
This is consistent with the overwhelming prepponderance of the evidence, that the Shroud of Turin really is Jesus Christ's burial sheet, and is yet another nail in the coffin of the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud as "mediaeval ... AD. 1260-1390."
Stephen E. Jones
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3 comments:
Hello again Stephen,, great article. It seems like this method has some merit to it , and like you said the majority of the evidence is in favor of authenticity.
I'm just as interested in seeing Fanti show the chain of evidence he has to prove that the fibers he tested were from a container that has the archbishop Ballestrero's seal on it.
He also said he has eyewitness accounts that will prove it.
His tests will also bring this dating method into the limelight as a possible method to date ancient textiles without destroying parts of them.
Bippy123
>Hello again Stephen,, great article.
Thanks. I prayed for your parents this morning.
>It seems like this method has some merit to it , and like you said the majority of the evidence is in favor of authenticity.
I expect those whose job is dating old linen (and perhaps other) cloths will embrace Fanti's spectroscopy method.
But that will represent a dilemma for Shroud anti-authenticists. If Fanti's method is reliable for dating other ancient linen cloths, and becomes widely used, why shouldn't it be reliable for dating the Shroud of Turin?
They can hardly say that the Shroud was contaminated and that prevented a true date being determined by spectroscopy because that would also invalidate the C-14 1260-1390 date.
Clearly both can't be right: the linen of the Shroud was grown between AD 1260 and 1390 (C-14) and between -700 and 300 (FT-IR and Raman spectroscopy.
I predict that eventually the 1988 C-14 dating of the Shroud as "mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390") will enter the philosophy of science textbooks as a classic case of scientific fraud, at least by "making results appear ... more definitive than they really are, or selecting just the `best' data for publication and ignoring those that don't fit":
"The term `scientific fraud' is often assumed to mean the wholesale invention of data. But this is almost certainly the rarest kind of fabrication. Those who falsify scientific data probably start and succeed with the much lesser crime of improving upon existing results. Minor and seemingly trivial instances of data manipulation-such as making results appear just a little crisper or more definitive than they really are, or selecting just the `best' data for publication and ignoring those that don't fit the case-are probably far from unusual in science. But there is only a difference in degree between `cooking' the data and inventing a whole experiment out of thin air." (Broad, W.A. & Wade, N.J., "Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science," 1982, p.20).
>I'm just as interested in seeing Fanti show the chain of evidence he has to prove that the fibers he tested were from a container that has the archbishop Ballestrero's seal on it.
All he has to do is STATE it. Science has to (and does) assume the honesty of a scientist unless there is evidence to the contrary.
Besides, there were three other names on the paper: "Pietro Baraldi," "Roberto Basso" and "Anna Tinti".
Also, Fanti knows the Vatican could at any time allow new samples be taken from the Shroud, and if they produced a markedly different result from his then his reputation would be in tatters.
>He also said he has eyewitness accounts that will prove it.
He doesn't need them, but it will help responding to sceptics, not that it will satisfy them. NOTHING would!
>His tests will also bring this dating method into the limelight as a possible method to date ancient textiles without destroying parts of them
Agreed. Although Fanti's journal article above did say the textile samples had to be cleaned, so probably they would have to be separated from the main body of the cloth they are from.
But at least the sample remains available for checking, unlike C-14 dating which burns its samples down to their pure carbon constituent.
[continued]
[continued]
PS: I am still working on my post about the coins over the eyes of the Man on the Shroud and I hope to finish it by this weekend.
There is NO reasonable doubt that there is a lituus (Roman astrologer's staff) and at least the letter "A", over the right eye of the man in Shroud.
It is particularly clear in the 1931 Enrie sepia photo of the Shroud man's face in Vignon's "Le Saint Suaire de Turin: Devant La Science, L'archéologie, L'histoire, L'iconographie, La Logique" (1939). Readers will be able to see them for themselves in the scanned copy of that right eye area, enlarged 300%, which I will post.
The lituus, as a central motif, was only shown on lepton coins minted by Pontius Pilate (the Roman Governor of Judea from AD 26-36), between AD 29-32. And Jesus was crucified either in AD 30 or 33.
That a Roman lituus and four letters "UCAI", which are part of a Pontius Pilate lepton's inscription "[TIBER]IOUCAICAROC" ("Of [Tiberius] Caesar") could just happen to be over one of the eyes on the Shroud, in just the right location and angle, by pure chance, when in reality they are merely linen weave imperfections, etc, the late Fr. Francis Filas showed would be of the order of 1 chance in 6.2273 x 10^42, i.e. 1 in more than 6 with 42 zeros after it.
And that a medieval forger did it is effectively impossible, because no one in medieval Europe (or even Palestine) would:
1) think that first century Jews would put coins over the eyes of their dead (but there is evidence that they did);
2) know about, or use, the lepton, which was just a crude bronze Jewish (not Greek or Roman outide of Judea) coin of little value (Mk 12:42; Lk 12:59; 21:2); and
3) be able to imprint such tiny details (the letters are about 1.8 mm high) in NEGATIVE, on linen, and why WOULD he, when they were not seen before the late 1970s?
This alone (but there is plenty of other evidence also) PROVES beyond REASONABLE doubt that:
1) the Shroud of Turin IS Jesus' burial sheet and bears His image;
2) the image formation process had to be able to imprint an image not only of a human body, but also of flowers (see previously) and COINS.
Stephen E. Jones
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