© Stephen E. Jones[1]
Dimensions of the Shroud
This entry has been superseded by "Dimensions of the Shroud" in my new Turin Shroud Encyclopedia.
This is entry #7, of my "Turin Shroud Encyclopedia," about the dimensions (i.e. measurements) of the Shroud cloth. See the Main Index "A-Z" for information about this series. As mentioned in my comment under my post, "Shroud of Turin: Turin Shroud Encyclopedia":
"I intend to grow my Encyclopedia organically, i.e. I will next add entries about key words in my latest post, e.g. "shroud," "Turin," "Lirey," "de Charny, Geoffroi," and " de Vergy, Jeanne" etc."So this post is an expansion on that entry #3's, "The Shroud of Turin ...is a 437 x 111 cms (~14.3 x 3.6 ft) rectangular linen sheet."
[Main index] [Entry index] [Previous #6] [Next #8]
Dimensions determined. Prior to 1998, the most commonly cited dimensions of the Shroud were 14 feet 3 inches long by 3 feet 7 inches wide[2] (434.3 x 109.2 cms)[3]. In that year ancient textiles specialist Dr. Mechthild Flury-Lemberg determined that the true dimensions of
[Above: From left to right: Swiss textiles expert Mechthild Flury Lemberg, Sister Maria Clara Antonini of the Poor Clare nuns[4] and Don Giuseppe Ghiberti, Turin diocesan official in charge of the 1998 exhibition[5], finish preparing the Turin Shroud April 16 for display to the public on Sunday April 19, 1998[6].]
the Shroud are 437 centimetres long by 111 centimetres wide (about 14 feet 4 inches by 3 feet 8 inches)[7]:
"Dr. Flury-Lemberg and New Textile Findings The first speaker was Dr. Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, a former curator of the Abegg Foundation textile museum, Switzerland, whose theme was 'The Shroud fabric, its technical and archaeological characteristics'. It was Dr. Flury-Lemberg who, immediately prior to the 1998 exposition, had the task of preparing the Shroud for its display and housing in the new three ton Italgas container constructed for it, working side by side with Sister Maria Clara Antonini of the Poor Clares. Because the plate for the new container had been made slightly too small, Dr. Flury-Lemberg gained permission to remove the blue surround that had been sewed on in the 19th century. The intention behind this surround had been to save the Shroud from the repeated handling at the edges to which they had been subjected throughout the long centuries when it was the custom to hold it up before the populace. However, the surround had ever since prevented examination of the same edges, thereby hindering totally accurate calculation of its dimensions. Now the dimensions have been authoritatively determined by Dr. Flury-Lemberg as 437 cm long by 111 cm wide." [8]
after she, to prepare the 
Shroud for the 1998 exposition[9], removed the Shroud's blue satin protective hem[10] which had been sewn onto the cloth by Princess Clotilde of Savoy in 1868[11].
The thickness of the cloth is about one third of a millimetre[12] (0.345 mm [13]), slightly thicker than shirt cloth[14], and its weight is approx- imately 2.45 kgs (about 5½ lbs)[15].
[Right (click to enlarge): Shroud showing missing pieces at each end of the sidestrip[16].]
Missing pieces. There are two pieces missing at each end of the 8 cms (3½ inch) sidestrip[17] (see right). The first is 14 x 8 cms (5½ by 3½ inches) at the front left feet end and the second is 36 x 8 cm (14 by 3½ inches) at the back left feet end[18]. However, as can be seen (right) the missing pieces do not change the length or width of the Shroud.
Cubits. In August 1989, an expert in early Syriac, Ian Dickinson, from Canterbury, England[19], reflected on the Shroud's then commonly accepted measurements of 14 feet 3 inches by 3 feet 7 inches[20]. They seemed odd to him by modern standards but he wondered what they would be if the Shroud was measured in 1st century AD Jerusalem, by the cubit[21].
There were various cubits in use in Jesus' time, including one for use in the Jerusalem Temple[22]. There was also a cubit of the market place, known as the Assyrian cubit, which was the one most widely one used, being the international standard of that time for merchants of the Near East[23]. This common cubit of commerce was carried along with the Assyrian language, Aramaic, which was the common language of trade and diplomacy from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea, and had become the language of the Jew (Jn 5:2; 19:13,17,20; 20:16), which Jesus spoke[24]
[Above: Page 67 of "Inductive Metrology: Or, The Recovery of Ancient Measures from the Monuments," by William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1877), showing the Assyrian cubit was 21.6 inches (~54.9 cms)[25] (see below).]
Petrie & Oppert. During the 19th century the archaeological pioneer, Sir Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) and Assyriologist Julius Oppert (1825–1905), took many measurements of ancient buildings in Babylon (which Assyria had annexed in the 9th century BC)[26]. Petrie and Oppert found the length of the Assyrian cubit to be almost 21.5 inches, since refined by other archaeologists to be 21.6 ±0.2 inches[27] (54.9 ±0.5 cms). In fact according to page 67 of Petrie's book above, he himself accepted 21.60 inches as the mean length of the Assyrian cubit. And this is what the Shroud conforms to, taking the lower limit of 21.4 inches[28] (54.4 cms):
| 21.4 inches x 8 | = | 171.2 inches | |
| Shroud recorded length | = | 171.0 inches | |
| 21.4 inches x 2 | = | 42.8 inches | |
| Shroud recorded width | = | 43.0 inches |
Now 171.2 inches is 434.8 cms, and 43.0 inches is 109.2 cms, which are very close to the Shroud's 437 cms by 111 cms. Indeed, those latest, most accurate dimensions of the Shroud are even closer to the Assyrian cubit's middle value of 21.6 inches or 54.9 cms. Dividing 437 and 111 cms by 54.9 cms equals 8 (7.96) cubits and 2 (2.02) cubits, respectively!
Guralnick. Archaeologist Eleanor Guralnick claimed that from measuring slabs and figures from ancient Assyrian capitals Khorsabad and Nineveh in Iraq, from the reigns of Sargon II (r. 721–705 BC), Sennacherib (r. 705 – 681 BC), and Ashurbanipal (r. 668–627 BC), she derived new standard lengths of three different cubits from the Late Assyrian period[29]. They were, the Standard Cubit (51.5 cms), a Big Cubit (56.6 cms), and a "Cubit of the King" (55 cms)[30]. Despite Guralnick's standard cubits having been derived from a smaller sample set than Oppert/Petries', what Guralnick called the "Cubit of the King" (55 cms) appears to be Oppert/Petrie's "Assyrian Cubit" (54.9 cms), as highlighted in the table below.
[Above: Comparison of Oppert/Petrie's and Guralnick's three Assyrian cubits in relation to the dimensions of the Shroud of Turin. As can be seen, Guralnick's "Cubit of the King" (55 cms) is very close to Oppert/Petrie's "Assyrian Cubit" (54.9 cms), and the 437 cms long by 111 cms wide dimensions of the Shroud equal 8 by 2 of those cubits of Guralnick and Oppert/Petrie.]
Medieval forger? The Bible mentions cubits (Gn 6:16; Ex 25:10,17,23; 26:13,16; 30:2; 36:21; 37:1, 6,10,25; Dt 3:11; Jdg 3:16; 1Ki 6:16; 7:24,31,35; 2Chr 4:3; Eze 40:5,12,42; 42:4; 43:13,14,17; Mt 6:27; Lk 12:25) but does not say how long they were. So it is highly unlikely that a medieval forger would even know about the Assyrian standard cubit[31], and even if he did, it is even more unlikely that he would bother obtaining a first century fine linen shroud of those dimensions, especially given that fine linen then ranked with gold in value[32]. And that is assuming that he could obtain one, let alone one with the Shroud's three-to-one herringbone twill linen, of which the Shroud is the only one remaining in existence[33].
Doubled in four And finally, as Ian Wilson has pointed out:
"Such conformity to an exact 8 by 2 Jewish cubits ... correlates perfectly with the `doubled in four' arrangement by which we hypothesized the shroud to have been once folded and mounted as the `holy face' of Edessa[see below], for the exposed facial area of this latter would have been an exact 1 by 2 Jewish cubits[34].
[Above: Tetradiplon and the Shroud of Turin illustrated: The full-length Shroud of Turin (1), is doubled four times (2 through 5), resulting in Jesus' face within a rectangle, in landscape aspect (5), exactly as depicted in the earliest copies of the Image of Edessa, the 11th century Sakli church, Turkey (6) and the 10th century icon of King Abgar V of Edessa holding the Image of Edessa, St. Catherine's monastery, Sinai (7).]
Proof the Shroud is authentic. So even the dimensions of the Shroud of Turin are among the many proofs beyond reasonable doubt that it is authentic. That is, the very burial sheet of Jesus, bearing the image of His beaten (Mt 26:67-68; 27:30; Lk 22:64; Jn 18:22; 19:3), scourged (Mt 27:26; Mk 15:15; Lk 23:16; Jn 19:1), crowned with thorns (Mt 27:29; Mk 15:17; Jn 19:2,5), crucified (Mt 27:35,38,44; Mk 15:24-27,32; Lk 23:33; Jn 19:16-18), died (Mt 27:50; Mk 15:37,39; Lk 23:46; Jn 19:30), legs not broken (Jn 19:32-33), speared in the side (Jn 19:34), wrapped in a linen shroud (Mt 27:59; Mk 15:46; Lk 23:53; Jn 19:40), buried in a rock tomb (Mt 27:59-60; Mk 15:46; Lk 23:53; Jn 19:38-42) and resurrected (Mt 28:1-6; Mk 16:1-6; Lk 24:1-6; Jn 20:1-9) body!
Notes
1. This post is copyright. No one may copy from it or any of my posts on this my The Shroud of Turin blog without them first asking and receiving my written permission. Except that I grant permission, without having to ask me, for anyone to copy the title and one paragraph only (including one graphic) of any of my posts, provided that they include a reference to the title of, and a hyperlink to, that post from which it came. [return]
2. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, p.21. [return]
3. "4.34m x 1.09m." Currer-Briggs, N., 1995, "Shroud Mafia: The Creation of a Relic?," Book Guild: Sussex UK, p.11. [return]
4. Wilson, I., 2000a, "`The Turin Shroud – past, present and future', Turin, 2-5 March, 2000 – probably the best-ever Shroud Symposium," British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, No. 51, June. [return]
5. Wilson, I., 2000b, "Recent Publications," British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, No. 51, June. [return]
6. Brkic, B., 2010, "Hitler had designs on the Shroud of Turin; Indiana Jones fans are not surprised," Daily Maverick, 8 April. No longer online [return]
7. By my calculation assuming 1 inch = 2.54 cms. [return]
8. Wilson, 2000a. [return]
9. Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, p.18. [return]
10. Whiting, B., 2006, "The Shroud Story," Harbour Publishing: Strathfield NSW, Australia, p.177. [return]
11. Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, p.64. [return]
12. Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta, p.161. [return]
13. "345 ± 22 µm." Schwalbe, L.A. & Rogers, R.N., 1982, "Physics and Chemistry of the Shroud of Turin: Summary of the 1978 Investigation," Reprinted from Analytica Chimica Acta, Vol. 135, No. 1, 1982, pp.3-49, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co: Amsterdam, 1982, p.43. [return]
14. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.68. [return]
15. Iannone, J.C., 1998, "The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence," St Pauls: Staten Island NY, p.1. [return]
16. Shroud Scope, "Durante 2002, Horizontal" (rotated vertical). [return]
17. Iannone, 1998, pp.1-2. [return]
18. Wilson, 1998, p.67. [return]
19. Wilson, I., 1991, "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London, p.181. [return]
20. Dickinson, I., 1990, "The Shroud and the Cubit Measure," BSTS Newsletter, Issue 24, January, pp.8-11, p.8. [return]
21. Ibid. [return]
22. Dickinson, 1990, p.9. [return]
23. Ibid. [return]
24. Dickinson, 1990, pp.9-10. [return]
25. Petrie, W.M.F., 1877, "Inductive Metrology: Or, The Recovery of Ancient Measures from the Monuments," Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, Reprinted, 2013. Google books. [return]
26. Dickinson, 1990, p.10. [return]
27. Ibid. [return]
28. Ibid. [return]
29. Guralnick, E., 1996, "Sargonid Sculpture and the Late Assyrian Cubit," Iraq, Vol. 58, pp.89-103, p.89. [return]
30. Ibid. [return]
31. Wilson, 1991, p.181. [return]
32. Dickinson, 1990, p.11. [return]
33. Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London, pp.74-75. [return]
34. Wilson, 1991, p.181. [return]
Posted: 8 September 2014. Updated: 20 August 2018.
Wow, excellent post Stephen. Im still learning something new every day when it comes to the shroud. I will definitely link this post to the God and science forum as I believe they will really be interested in this information.
ReplyDeleteGod Bless you and your family my friend
Bippy123
bippy123
ReplyDelete>Wow, excellent post Stephen.
Thanks.
>Im still learning something new every day when it comes to the shroud.
So am I!
>I will definitely link this post to the God and science forum as I believe they will really be interested in this information.
Thanks. It is so simple and easy to understand, the dimensions of the Shroud being 8 by 2 of the cubit that was the trade standard unit of Jesus' day.
Clearly it is 8 x 2 (or 4 x 1) something because the Shroud's ratio of length to width is ~4:1 (437/111 = 3.94).
It is not based on medieval European units of measurement because they were just feet and inches, which go back to the Romans ("Measurement in the Middle Ages - University of Tulsa").
So presumably the only explanation an anti-authenticist would offer (assuming he offers one at all) is that either: 1) the hypothetical unknown medieval forger used a 1st century linen cloth, which was (unknown to him) 8 x 2 Assyrian standard cubits, but that would mean abandoning the AD 1260-1390 C14 date;
or
2) the forger SOMEHOW knew about the Assyrian cubit being the standard unit of length in the 1st century and cut his ~AD 1325 linen sheet to equal 8 x 2 of them, since it is unlikely there were any medieval linen sheets of the odd dimensions 14 ft 4 in. by 3 ft 8 in, which just coincidentally equalled 8 by 2 Assyrian cubits, the common standard trade units of Jesus' time.
But presumably NO ONE in Europe knew what length the 1st century standard Assyrian cubit was, until the 19th century when Petrie and Oppert worked it out.
So this would be just another SUPERHUMAN ability the forger would have had to possess.
I am considering stating a post which will be basically a two-column table headed "AUTHENTIC" and "FORGERY" which will compare the evidence and arguments for the Shroud's authenticity versus what I assume are the best counter-evidence and arguments for a medieval forger having faked that item. I would add new items as I thought of them. But it would become buried under new posts, unless I regularly referred to it.
I have started a draft of that post, with "Dimensions of the Shroud" being the first entry. I will use a Superman logo with an "F" in place of the "S" that I found on the Web!
The Bible mentions cubits (Gn 6:16; Ex 25:10,17,23; 26:13,16; 30:2; 36:21; 37:1, 6,10,25; Dt 3:11; Jdg 3:16; 1Ki 6:16; 7:24,31,35; 2Chr 4:3; Eze 40:5,12,42; 42:4; 43:13,14,17; Mt 6:27; Lk 12:25) but none of those verses say how long they were. I will add this to my post above.
>God Bless you and your family my friend
Thanks, and you.
Stephen E. Jones
---------------------------------
Reader, if you like this my The Shroud of Turin blog, and you have a website, could you please consider adding a hyperlink to my blog on it? This would help increase its Google PageRank number and so enable those who are Google searching on "the Shroud of Turin" to more readily discover my blog. Thanks.
Orange
ReplyDeleteI deleted your comment about the Bari Conference because it was both "offensive" and "sub-standard" (see my policies below).
It was "offensive" because it implied I was hiding something. But I was simply not aware of the Bari Conference. On Googling "Bari Shroud Conference" (without the quotes) I see it was discussed on Dan Porter's blog. But I don't read Porter's blog and haven't done so since 8th May - over four months.
I have now Google translated and saved a Vatican Insider article on the Bari Conference:
"Shroud, new research in an international conference in Bari," Vatican Insider, July 11, 2014.
which doesn't say much.
Also, I have now found a link on Shroud.com to it, which I was unaware of:
-----------------------------------
Shroud Workshop in Bari, Italy - Official Website
A conference titled, Workshop on Advances in the Turin Shroud Investigation will be held in Bari, Italy, on September 4-5, 2014. The event is being sponsored by the IEEE Italy Section, the Technical University of Bari, Italy and the University of Bari "Aldo Moro," Italy with the technical co-sponsorship of the CIS (International Center for Turin Shroud Studies), Turin. The event is being organized by the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering of the Technical University of Bari, Italy. Visit the Official Workshop Website for the Call for Papers, deadlines, a complete list of committee members and sponsors, information about the venue and accommodations and much more. You can still receive the discounted early registration rate if you register before July 31, 2014. (See the conference website and the earlier article below for further details). Posted June 7, 2014
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And your comment was "sub-standard" because it did not explain what (if anything) at the Bari Conference had to do with the topic of this post, "Dimensions of the Shroud." I can see nothing in the Bari Conference program at the end of the above links on the topic of "Dimensions of the Shroud."
If anyone (pro- or anti- authenticity), wishes to comment on my blog, they must comply with my policies. Otherwise, as my policies state, their comment will not appear.
Feel free to re-submit your comment in the language of polite discourse (not in the nastiness that is normal on Internet forums these days), and it will appear.
Stephen E. Jones
-----------------------------------
MY POLICIES Comments are moderated. Those I consider off-topic, offensive or sub-standard will not appear. Except that comments under my latest post can be on any Shroud-related topic without being off-topic. I reserve the right to respond to any comment as a separate blog post.
>Feel free to re-submit your comment in the language of polite discourse (not in the nastiness that is normal on Internet forums these days), and it will appear.
ReplyDeleteAnd also explaining what the Bari Conference had to do with the dimensions of the Shroud. Otherwise your new comment, even if it was not "offensive," would still be "substandard."
It would also be "off-topic" but I allow a comment on any Shroud-related, in my current post.
If you were trying comment about the Bari Conference, that was not in relation to the dimensions of the Shroud, that is OK, but then state clearly, in non-offensive language, the point(s) you are trying to make.
Stephen E. Jones
Bippy123
ReplyDelete>Thanks again Stephen. This is yet another piece of the puzzle in the mountain of evidences that point towards authenticity and the problem just keeps getting worse every year for the skeptics of the shroud .
Agreed. How many nails can the coffin of anti-authenticity take?!
>I had an email discussion about many if these evidences with an atheist who claimed he was open minded enough to listen to the evidences .
I debated Creation/Evolution from 2004-2005 against all comers and I never met a truly open minded atheist. They would say they were, but I used to ask them: "what evidence could I provide to you that would convince you that God exists?" and no atheist ever answered me.
I added "could I provide to you" after atheist replied: "If God came to me in person and spoke to me unmistakeably, then I would believe in him".
But even then they wouldn't. They would assume they were hallucinating.
>Once I was done he said (and I'm. It kidding lol ) that he believes that since this image was beyond even 21st century science to replicate that someone from the future created the shroud in the future and brought it back into the ancient past to fool us into believing it was the authentic burial cloth of Christ.
He might as well have said that extraterrestrials (or fairies) secretly created the Shroud.
It is always possible to dream up an ad hoc explanation that cannot be falsified. That is, even if it was false it could not be shown to be false.
That atheist's self-image no doubt is that he is open-minded but he is deceiving himself. If he was truly open-minded he would follow the evidence wherever it leads and not invent unfalsifiable, pseudo-explanations.
>At ths points I was left speechless (first time in 30 years I was left speechless , and that was a high school crush I had on a girl lol).
>
>I then told him to take a deep breath and examine what he just told me . That was the end of that supposed open minded discussion .
Pascal once acutely observed that the problem in believing in God was not intellectual but emotional. Atheists don't want to believe in God, so they keep raising the bar to prevent them having to believe.
>But one atheist I did have a 5 month shroud discussion with did convert to agnostic with future possibilities . His Christian girlfriend must have been happy to hear this :)
Great. But an agnostic is still just as lost without Christ as an atheist. Perhaps even more so. As the late arch-atheist Madelyn Murray O'Hare correctly observed: "Agnostics are atheists with no guts"!
I was an atheist, then I became a deist, and then a Christian.
I rejected agnosticism because it's not a position on the external Universe, but just about the agnostic's inner mind (or rather emotions and will).
[continued]
[continued]
ReplyDelete>On a side note stephen, I'm really hoping that Giulio Fanti gives us more information on his dating tests, the peer reviewed journal he has submitted them to as well as his chain of evidence for the seal of then archbishop ballestero's container.
I don't know anything about that (like the Bari Conference). It is a downside to not reading Dan Porter's blog that I miss out on a lot of Shroud news.
But the upside of saving time and not being character-assassinated by anti-authenticists on Porter's blog (while Porter does nothing to restrain the assassins-presumably because he enjoys it!), outweighs the pro-authenticist news I temporarily am missing out on.
The problem is that I don't feel that I could read Porter's blog without being drawn into commenting on it again. But then the character-assassination would pick up where it left off.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, is guarding (and guiding) my heart and mind in Christ Jesus in this (Php 4:7).
>Hopefully he will be talking about this as he is one of the presenters at the conference , but his presentation will be about the second more feint facial image found on the back stitched end of the shroud
That will be interesting. It is one of the predictions of Jackson's "Cloth Collapse Theory" that there would be a faint front face image on the back image of the Shroud.
I have recently scanned Jackson's article on it in Shroud Spectrum International Issue #34, March 1990: "Is the Image on the Shroud Due to a Process Heretofore Unknown to Modern Science?" and it blew me away the depth of Jackson's thinking and research. It hopefully will appear on the Shroud Spectrum International, site in Shroud.com's next update. But I have not finished scanning it, so it might just miss out if Barrie Schwortz posts an update in the next week.
http://www.stlouisshroudconference.com/program/about-the-second-image-of-face-detected-on-the-turin-shroud
Thanks. Hopefully the full papers of this St Louis (and the Bari) Conference will become available online eventually.
Stephen E. Jones
Thank Again Stephen. I have been discussing the carbon dating with an atheist and he said that in 2010 timothy Jull pubisheed a paper in radiocarbon in which he said that he examined microscopically a leftover piece from the arizon lab and he didn't find any spliced cotton, dye or any foreign substance added to the piece .
ReplyDeleteHow do I respond to thi9s statement? Did jull really have a piece from that corner are and did he examine it microscopically? and was this peer reviewed?
Can you point me to any info critical of the jull paper from 2010.
God bless
Bippy123
I think I got part of the answer stephen. It seems like Tim Jull was an editor of the journal that accepted his work. I believe that this makes it very suspect to be considered a truly peer reviewed paper.
ReplyDeletebippy123
ReplyDelete>... I have been discussing the carbon dating with an atheist and he said that in 2010 timothy Jull pubisheed a paper in radiocarbon in which he said that he examined microscopically a leftover piece from the arizon lab and he didn't find any spliced cotton, dye or any foreign substance added to the piece .
Yes. See my post, "My theory that the radiocarbon dating laboratories were duped by a computer hacker #5" where I have a photo of the undated part of Arizona's original 1988 Shroud sample. As my reference to it states, the photo was taken by Barrie Schwortz, "New Photographs Of Arizona Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory Samples," Shroud.com, November 21, 2012.
>How do I respond to thi9s statement?
Agree with it! Because it is the truth. And also it supports my "the radiocarbon dating laboratories were duped by a computer hacker" theory, which in dot-point form is:
• The evidence is overwhelming that the Shroud is authentic, i.e. first century;
• Therefore the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud as "mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390" was wrong.
• But the improbability that the Shroud could be actually be 1st century, yet C14 date to 1260-1390, is "about one in a thousand trillion" (Gove, 1996, p.303).
• Conventional pro-authenticist explanations of the discrepancy (e.g. contamination with younger carbon; an invisible reweave with 16th century cotton; and neutron flux), all fail. Because the Shroud sample would have to be 60% contamination (when it clearly isn't-see the photo of the undated Arizona sample) to shift the C14 date of the first century Shroud forward to the 13th/14th century); and for a neutron flux to do it would be a miracle (and a deceptive one at that)!
• The midpoint of 1260-1390 is 1325 +/- 65, i.e. only 25-30 years before the Shroud first appeared in undisputed history in the 1350s at Lirey, France.
• Therefore some kind of fraud is the the only plausible explanation of how the 1st century Shroud `just happened' to have a have a C14 date only 25-30 years before it first appeared in undisputed history in the 1350s.
• However, conventional fraud, e.g. sample switching, doesn't work. The Shroud's weave is distinctive, so substituting a 14th century sample for it would b discovered. It would need the connivance of staff in the 3 labs. And they would have too much to lose if their fraud was discovered.
• But computer hacking is a type of fraud that no one had previously considered. And computer hacking was rife in the 1980s, with universities (as the three C14 labs were), having lax computer and physical security.
• The entire C14 dating process was under the fully automatic control of the powerful DEC computer system in each of the three labs. If a hacker wrote and installed a program on each of the three labs' AMS computer, which program replaced the Shroud's 1st century C14 dates with computer generated dates that clustered around 1325, that would explain, as no other theory does, how the 1st century Shroud of Turin had a C14 date of 1325 +/- 65.
[continued]
[continued]
ReplyDelete• A plausible candidate for the hacker was Arizona physicist Timothy W. Linick. Linick wrote the paper on the AMS C14 "measurement procedures for ... Arizona" (see Nature 1989 paper), so he was intimately familiar with the workings of the AMS "DEC computer system" at Arizona (and presumably also Oxford and Zurich labs, which were clones of each other). Also, Linick was inexplicably quoted in anti-authenticist David Sox's 1988 book, as being anti-authenticist and by implication in direct contact with Sox, contrary to his signed agreement not to communicate on the dating with anyone outside the lab. Sox in turn leaked Arizona's first run "1350" date to the media. The simplest explanation is that Linick leaked Arizona's "1350" date (which itself was a too-good-to-be-true computer-generated date) to Sox.
• A note under Table 2 in the 1989 Nature paper states: "An initial inspection of Table 2 shows that the agreement among the three laboratories for samples 2, 3 and 4 [non-Shroud controls] is exceptionally good. The spread of the measurements for sample 1 [the Shroud] is somewhat greater than would be expected from the errors quoted." This is saying that across the 3 labs, the agreement in C14 ages of the non-Shroud control samples was "exceptionally good." But for the Shroud samples, the "spread of the measurements" across the 3 labs was "greater than would be expected." But that is impossible if the Shroud samples were real dates. That is because each lab's Shroud and control samples came from the same tiny `postage stamp' sized pieces of cloth, sub-divided in 3 between the 3 labs. And in each lab's C14 dating runs the Shroud and control samples were all on the same ~29 mm (~1.1 inch) diameter carousel wheel, and they were each rotated through the same caesium beam for 1 minute each. So there is no way that across the 3 labs, the agreement in C14 dates of "samples 2, 3 and 4" (non-Shroud controls) could be "exceptionally good" yet the "spread of the measurements for sample 1" (the Shroud) was "greater than would be expected." The only way that this could happen, is for the Shroud sample dates to be not real cloth dates, but computer-generated.
• Linick was found dead, aged 42, in Tucson Arizona on 4 June 1989, of "suicide in mysterious circumstances." Three days before, on 1 June 1989 in Hannover, Germany, police publicly identified a charred body body as that of a hacker, Karl Koch, who had almost a year before confessed to selling computer secrets to the Soviet Union. Koch's death was made to look like suicide, but that was impossible because the gasoline fire that killed him was controlled in a tight burnt circle, presumably by fire extinguishers, in dry scrub. It is assumed that the KGB killed Koch, since no one else would have, especially in such an elaborate way. But there seemed to be no known reason why the KGB would kill Koch, so many months after Koch had confessing his hacking for them, and yet Koch's fellow confessed hackers for the KGB were not killed. But if Koch and Linick were secretly involved in hacking the C14 dating of the Shroud for the KGB, the KGB would have killed both without hesitation and tried to make it look like suicide, to prevent them from talking.
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ReplyDelete• An explanation that fits all the facts above, is that Linick, when he learned in October 1987 that the number of C14 labs had been cut from 7 to 3, Arizona, Oxford and Zurich, which all used the same AMS C14 method, he approached the Soviets with an offer to write and install a program on each of the 3 labs' AMS computer, which would ensure the Shroud would C14 date to just before the 1350s. To the officially atheist USSR, which in the late 1980s was on the verge of collapse (it did collapse in November 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall), with about 100 million Christians, the vast majority of them Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholics who had for centuries venerated the Shroud, a 1st century C14 date of the Shroud would have been perceived as a huge threat. So the Soviets would have accepted any such offer of `insurance' by Linick.
• But while Linick could install his program on Arizona lab's AMS computer, he probably needed help installing it on Oxford and Zurich's AMS computers. Enter Koch who was an expert in hacking into such DEC computer systems. And at that time hackers, including Koch, were aware of, and had exploited, a huge security flaw in DEC's VMS operating system which enabled a hacker to log on to the system, grant himself System Manager status and install any program he wished, including Linick's alleged program. Because of the uniform structure of the Shroud's C14 dating regime, imposed by Dr. M. Tite of the British Museum, Linick could have written a program that would operate automatically, intercepting C14 dates coming from the AMS dating machinery and if they were from the Shroud, substitute those real dates with bogus computer-generated dates, which when calibrated, would cluster around 1325. The program could also have been written so as to erase itself if no more dates came from a Shroud sample after (say) 3 months, leaving no trace that it was ever there.
The Fence-Sitter can (and no doubt will) continue to scoff at this as a "conspiracy theory," but let him propose an alternative theory, which explains such a wide range of facts.
I am quietly confident that my theory is basically correct and that it will over time be further supported, if not confirmed. If my theory is correct, there must be a lot of people who know (or suspect) that I am on the right track.
I am in the process of summarising my theory in a "...hacker #10"post, which explains why I wanted to write it out in dot-point form.
>Did jull really have a piece from that corner are and did he examine it microscopically?
Yes. You can see for yourself it is not sixty percent (60%) contamination which it would have to be for contamination with younger carbon and invisible reweave pro-authenticity explanations for the Shroud being authentic, yet having a C14 date of 1260-1390.
>and was this peer reviewed?
As you said, it was in Radiocarbon, i.e. Freer-Waters, R.A. & Jull, A.J.T., 2010, "Investigating a Dated Piece of the Shroud of Turin," Radiocarbon, Vol 52, No 4, which presumably was peer reviewed.
>Can you point me to any info critical of the jull paper from 2010.
I don't know of any. And I agree with it. My only criticism is, what I wrote in my above " hacker #5" post:
"If the Arizona laboratory is confident that the "mediaeval...AD 1260-1390" radiocarbon date of the Shroud was correct, why doesn't it radiocarbon date this sample? I predict that if it did, the date would not be 13th-14th century, but rather 1st (or an early because of irremovable and invisible younger carbon contamination which has become absorbed into the Shroud's linen fibres) century date. That would be a test of my theory.
I hope this has helped (albeit probably not in the way you expected)!
Stephen E. Jones
Bippy123 said...
ReplyDelete>I think I got part of the answer stephen. It seems like Tim Jull was an editor of the journal that accepted his work.
Yes. Timothy Jull is the Editor of Radiocarbon.
>I believe that this makes it very suspect to be considered a truly peer reviewed paper.
No. Most, if not all, scientific journals presumably have Editors who are preeminent experts in that field, as Jull is.
And they appoint other preeminent experts in that field to carry out peer-review of papers submitted to their journals. What is "suspect" about that? How else could it be?
While I have only read the free abstract:
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"Investigating a Dated Piece of the Shroud of Turin Rachel A Freer-Waters, A J Timothy Jull
Abstract
We present a photomicrographic investigation of a sample of the Shroud of Turin, split from one used in the radiocarbon dating study of 1988 at Arizona. In contrast to other reports on less-documented material, we find no evidence to contradict the idea that the sample studied was taken from the main part of the shroud, as reported by Damon et al. (1989). We also find no evidence for either coatings or dyes, and only minor contaminants.
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it seems reasonable to me.
Especially since Barrie Schwortz was allowed to photograph the undated Shroud sample:
"New Photographs Of Arizona Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory Samples," Shroud.com, November 21, 2012
and in that photo it certainly looks like it has "no evidence for either coatings or dyes, and only minor contaminants."
As I wrote above, it would require 60% of the Shroud to be younger carbon contamination to shift the C14 date of a 1st century cloth 14 centuries into the future.
As I also wrote above, all conventional pro-authenticity explanations of how the 1st century Shroud had a 14th century C14 date (new carbon contamination, 16th century reweaving, neutron flux) fail.
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ReplyDeleteMy theory that the radiocarbon dating laboratories were duped by a computer hacker is, as far as I am aware, the ONLY viable explanation of how the 1st century Shroud of Turin had a claimed 14th century C14 date.
As Sherlock Holmes pointed out to Watson, "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?":
"`How came he, then?' I reiterated. `The door is locked, the window is inaccessible. Was it through the chimney?' The grate is much too small,' he answered. `I had already considered that possibility.' `How then?' I persisted. `You will not apply my precept,' he said, shaking his head. `How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? We know that he did not come through the door, the window, or the chimney. We also know that he could not have been concealed in the room, as there is no concealment possible. Whence, then, did he come?' `He came through the hole in the roof,' I cried. `Of course he did. He must have done so. If you will have the kindness to hold the lamp for me, we shall now extend our researches to the room above, - the secret room in which the treasure was found'" (Doyle, A.C., 1923, "The Sign of Four," Penguin: London, reprinted, 2001, pp.42-43).
My "hacker" theory may SEEM improbable, but all the other pro- authenticity theories which seek to explain how the 1st century Shroud was C14 dated to 1325 +/- 65, e.g. contamination, invisible reweaving, neutron flux, etc., are, when they are examined more closely, FAR MORE improbable (if not IMPOSSIBLE) than my "hacker" theory.
Stephen E. Jones
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