"H": Turin Shroud Dictionary

Turin Shroud Dictionary
© Stephen E. Jones[1]

"H"

This is page "H" of my Turin Shroud Dictionary. If I add to it in future I will split this page into "Ha-Hm" and "Hm-Gz," etc. For more information about this dictionary see the "Main index A-Z" and page "A."

[Index] [Previous: "Gr-Gz"] [Next: "I"]

[Habermas, G.] [hacker] [Hall, E.] [Haralick, R.] [Hedges, R.] [Heller, J.] [Hebron] [history] [hoax?] [hologram] [Homs vase] [hot statue]

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[Above (enlarge): Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory staff and Rochester laboratory's Prof. Harry Gove (second from right) around the AMS control console computer terminal[2], after, or before it had, on 6 May 1988 displayed the alleged hacker's bogus radiocarbon age of the Shroud, "640 years"[3], which was then calibrated to the `too good to be true' date "1350 AD"[4]. The alleged hacker, Timothy W. Linick, is in the black shirt[5]. See future entry "hacker"]

Habermas, Gary R. (1950-). Gary Habermas is a Professor of Christian Apologetics (defence of Christianity). Habermas has coauthored books on the Shroud: "Verdict on the Shroud" (1981) and "The Shroud and the Controversy" (1990), with STURP's Ken Stevenson. Habermas [Right: Ratio Christi] included a section on the Shroud in his book, "Ancient Evidence for the Life of Jesus" (1984); and also in Habermas, G.R. & Miethe T.L., ed., "Did Jesus Rise From The Dead?" (1987), as well as in Elwell, W.A., ed., "Evangelical Dictionary of Theology" (1990). Search "Shroud" on Habermas' website, GaryHabermas.com, for his many articles on the Shroud. Also Google "Habermas Shroud" (without the quote marks) to find his Shroud articles and videos, including a brief online video, "Could the Shroud of Turin really be the actual burial garment of Jesus?" I already had a number of Habermas' works on Christian apologetics, and I knew him to be a sound, evidence-based, evangelical Christian philosopher, when in 2005 I found his book, "Verdict on the Shroud" in a secondhand bookstall. Which is why I set aside my Protestant prejudice that the Shroud was just another fake Roman Catholic relic, and bought and read it. And having read it, I accepted then provisionally, and later fully, that the Shroud is indeed the very burial sheet of Jesus, bearing His crucified and resurrected image! See my first introductory post to this blog.

hacker. In 1988 three radiocarbon dating laboratories, Arizona, Zurich and Oxford, all using the same AMS method, dated a postage stamp sized sample of the ~4.85 m² Shroud a combined calibrated average of "AD 1260-1390". But: 1) the evidence is overwhelming that the Shroud is authentic; 2) the probability that the Shroud being 1st century yet has a 1260-1390 radiocarbon date, is "astronomical," "one in a thousand trillion;" "totally impossible'" and "a miracle"; 3) The midpoint of 1260-1390 is 1325 +/- 65, which 'just happens' to be about 30 years before the the Shroud first appeared in undisputed history in Lirey, France, in c. 1355. Therefore some form of fraud is the only viable explanation. However, conventional fraud such as the laboratories switching the Shroud sample for a 13th-14th century control sample are highly implausible. Not only were the laboratory leaders honest, they already believed the Shroud to be medieval, and the Shroud's distinctive weave meant that any substitution would be readily detected. But there is a type of fraud that was rife in the 1980s, particularly in then poorly secured universities, in which the three

[Left: The alleged hacker, Arizona physicist Timothy W. Linick, who was found dead of suspected suicide on 4 June 1989, a day after German hacker Karl Koch's burnt body was publicly identified as his by German police on 3 June 1989!]

radiocarbon dating laboratories were: computers hacking. The AMS radiocarbon dating process at the three laboratories was fully under computer control. Also there was a agreed common system of identifying Shroud and control samples across the three laboratories. Moreover it was announced well beforehand that only three AMS laboratories: Arizona, Zurich and Oxford would date the Shroud. So a hacker (allegedly Arizona laboratory physicist and AMS computer expert, Timothy W. Linick), could have installed a program on each of the three laboratories which checked if a sample was from the Shroud and if so, substituted its date with a computer-generated date, which when combined and averaged across the three laboratories, would yield a radiocarbon date of 1260-1390, i.e. 1325 +/- 65. Evidence that the Shroud samples' dates were computer-generated is contained in Table 2 of the 1989 Nature paper where it is admitted that:

"the agreement among the three laboratories for samples 2, 3 and 4 [non-Shroud control samples] is exceptionally good. The spread of the measurements for sample 1 [the Shroud] is somewhat greater than would be expected from the errors quoted." (my emphasis)

That is, the three laboratories closely agreed with each other on the dates of the control samples, but disagreed significantly on the dates of the Shroud samples. But this is impossible if the Shroud samples were real, because at each laboratory Shroud and control samples were on the one ~26 cm (~1 inch) carousel wheel and irradiated together by the one caesium beam. If there were problems with the dating at a laboratory, its Shroud and control samples would wrongly agree together. That the control samples across the three laboratories agreed closely showed that there were no problems with the dating itself at each laboratory. So the unexpectedly wide spread of the Shroud samples' measurements between the three laboratories can only be explained by the Shroud samples' dates not being real but computer-generated, by a hacker's (allegedly Linick's) program. See future entries "Koch," "Linick" and "radiocarbon dating." See also my three series starting on 23Jul15; 02Dec14 and 24May14.

Hall, Edward T. Edward (Teddy) Hall (1924–2001) was the founding Director of the Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory, having established it in 1955 with his own considerable inherited private wealth. In 1953 Hall confirmed by X-ray fluorescence that Piltdown Man's skull and jaw had different ages and therefore was a scientific fraud. In 1988 Hall's Oxford AMS radiocarbon dating laboratory, together with its counterparts at Arizona and Zurich, radiocarbon dated the Shroud. Hall, together with Dr Michael Tite of the British Museum and Oxford laboratory's Dr Robert Hedges, on 13 October 1988, in front of a blackboard on which was written, "1260-1390!" announced at a press conference in the British Museum that the three laboratories' combined average date of the Shroud was 1260-1390. [Right] Hall (falsely) told reporters present that:

"There was a multimillion pound business in making forgeries during the fourteenth century. Someone just got a bit of linen, faked it up and flogged it."

On 16 February 1989, the science journal Nature carried a paper, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," of which Hall was a signatory. Hall later admitted that as an agnostic, he was relieved that the Shroud dated medieval, as "I don't want ... to have to change my ideas," i.e. become a Christian:

"Professor Hall, who heads the Oxford research laboratory in archaeology and the history of art, said he was not disappointed in the result. 'I have to admit I am an agnostic and I don't want at my time of life to have to change my ideas.'".

Doubtless this was true of almost all those who did the radiocarbon dating, so they would be easily duped by a computer hacker (allegedly Timothy W. Linick) in their midst, who `confirmed' what they, as agnostics/atheists, wanted to believe. In not wanting "to have to change" their "agnostic ... ideas," they forgot Feynman's "first principle" of good science, "you must not fool yourself-and you are the easiest person to fool," and so fell victim to "cargo cult science":

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself-and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists"[6]

Haralick, Robert M. (1943-) is Professor in Computer Science at the City University of New York (CUNY) and one of the leading figures in computer vision, pattern recognition, and image analysis. In 1977 Jackson, et al. reported that they had discovered using a VP-8 Image Analyzer, in three-dimensional relief, images of two button-like objects, one over each eye of the man on the Shroud. Presumably they were coins placed over the eyes of the dead man to ensure they remained closed, a practice common to many ancient peoples, including Jews, as coins found in first century Jewish skulls attest. They were the same size and shape as a Jewish lepton coin (the "widow's mite" - Mk 12:41-44, Lk 21:1-4 KJV), which were only struck during the reign of Roman Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate (r. AD 26–36), who had sentenced Jesus to death (Mt 27:24-26; Mk 15:15; Lk 23:23-25; Jn 19:14-16) in AD 30. Jackson, et al. realised that if the coins were Pontius Pilate leptons, they would be a unique way of dating the Shroud to the time of Jesus. In 1979 Fr. Francis L. Filas (1915-85) [see "Filas, Francis L."], had identified on an enlargement of a high quality copy of one of Giuseppe Enrie's 1931 photographs of the Shroud face, the tiny letters "UCAI" on the `button' or disc over the right eye. Filas theorised that the letters were a variant misspelling of the inscription, "TIBERIOUKAICAROC" ("of Tiberius Caesar") on a Pontius Pilate lepton. Soon after Pontius Pilate leptons with the "UKAI" misspelling were found. Filas also identified on the image of the right eye's disc a prominent central lituus, or astrologer's staff, which was only ever on coins struck during the reign of Pontius Pilate. Since the letters were in the correct angular rotation, proportion and position relative to the lituus, and the improbability was then about 1 in 6.2 x 10⁴² that they were just random quirks of the weave, Filas therefore claimed that the image over the right eye was a Pontius Pilate lepton. And that was proof beyond reasonable doubt, that they Shroud was the very burial sheet of Jesus! Moreover, while Filas was unable to identify letters on the disc over the left eye, he was able to identify on it a a simpulum (ladle) and a sheaf of barley ears, which was uniquely the design of the Julia lepton, struck only in AD 29 in honour of Tiberius' mother who died that year. In 1983 Filas commissioned Haralick, then Director of the Spatial Data Analysis Laboratory of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, to do a computer image analysis of Filas' Enrie photographs. Filas also gave Haralick a Pontius Pilate lepton [Left [7]] and a 1978 STURP colour photograph of the Shroud. After about 6 months of carrying out a variety of digital enhancements to the photographs, in 1983 Haralick published his findings in a 66-page report, "Analysis of Digital images of the Shroud of Turin." This included (my emphasis):

A number of digital enhancements were performed on imagery digitized from the 1931 Enrie photographs of the Shroud and a 1978 S.T.U.R.P. photograph taken by Vernon Miller. The enhancements provide supporting evidence that the right eye area of the Shroud image contains remnants of patterns similar to those of a known Pontius Pilate coin dating from 29 A.D.

... Thus, in the enlargement of the right eye image we find supporting evidence for a bright oval area: a shepherd's staff pattern as the main feature in the bright area; and bright segment patterns just to the side and top of the staff pattern, which in varying degrees match to the letters OUCAIC.

... This evidence cannot be said to be conclusive evidence that an image of the Pontius Pilate coin appears in the right eye of the Enrie Shroud Image ... however, the evidence is definitely supporting evidence because there is some degree of match between what one would expect to find if the Shroud did indeed contain a faint image of the Pilate coin and what we can in fact observe in the original and in the digitally produced images.

Haralick thus gave independent, expert support to Filas' identification of the image of the disc over the right eye of the man on the Shroud as a Pontius Pilate lepton, minted in AD 29!

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Notes:
1. This post is copyright. Permission is granted to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this post. [return]
2. Gove, H.E., 1996, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK, p.176H. [return]
3. Gove, 1996, p.264. [return]
4. Ibid. [return]
5. Jull, A.J.T. & Suess, H.E. , 1989, "Timothy W. Linick," Radiocarbon, Vol 31, No 2. [return]
6. Feynman, R.P., 1985, "Cargo Cult Science," in "`Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!': Adventures of a Curious Character," Unwin Paperbacks: London, Reprinted, 1990, p.343. [return]
7. Iannone, J.C., 2015, "Summary of Scientific and Historical Evidence on the Authenticity of the Holy Shroud," NorthStar Production Studios: Nashville, TN. [return]

Posted: 27 August 2015. Updated: 16 August 2021.

Sidestrip #5: The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is Jesus' burial sheet!

SIDESTRIP #5
Copyright © Stephen E. Jones[1]

This is "Sidestrip," part #5 of my series, "The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is Jesus' burial sheet!"

[Main index] [Previous: Weave #4] [Next: Selvedge #6]

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1. A linen cloth #2
4. Sidestrip

Sidestrip. The sidestrip is a strip of linen about 8 cms (3½ inches) wide along its left-hand side of the Shroud (looking at it with its frontal image in the lower half and the man upright), and joined by a single seam[2]. The strip is incomplete at each end, with 14 cms (5½ inches) and 36 cms (14 inches) missing at the bottom and top left hand corners respectively[3]. The sidestrip is made from the same piece of cloth as the Shroud, since unique irregularities in the weave of the main body of the Shroud extend across the side strip[4].

[Right (enlarge): The sidestrip can be seen running the entire left hand side of the Shroud, except for missing pieces at each end[5].]

Seam. The sidestrip is joined to the main body of the Shroud by a single seam[6] which is 4-5 mm wide[7]. The sewing thread of the seam is also linen[8]. In preparing the Shroud for its 1998 exposition, ancient textiles conservator, Dr. Mechthild Flury-Lemberg (1929-), removed the blue satin surround[9] that had been sewed on by Princess Clotilde of Savoy (1843–1911) in 1868[10]. Flury-Lemberg was the first person since the 16th century to see between the underside of the Shroud and its linen backing cloth sewed on in 1534 by Chambéry's Poor Clare nuns after the 1532 fire[11]. In 2000 Flury-Lemberg reported that she had discovered,

[Left (enlarge): Seam joining the sidestrip (left) and the main body of the Shroud (right), near its left hand corner[12].]

"a very special, almost invisible stitching with which the edges were finished" which is visible only on the Shroud's under-side[13]. In her forty years of working on historic textiles Flury-Lemberg had only once before found an "essentially

[Right: enlarge: Drawing of `invisible seam' found on cloth fragments at the first-century Jewish fortress of Masada[14], which is "identical to that found on the Shroud and nowhere else"[15].]

identical" type of stitching: that found in first-century textiles at Masada, the Jewish fortress overrun by the Romans in AD 73[16] and never occupied again[17].

Problem for the forgery theory. That the Shroud has almost invisible stitching in its seam that is identical to stitching found elsewhere only at the Jewish fortress of Masada, which was last occupied in AD 73, is yet another (see #1, #3 and #4) problem for the forgery theory. Since a medieval forger would be most unlikely (to put it mildly) to even know about almost invisible first century Jewish stitching; and even if he did know about it, he would be even more unlikely to go to the trouble of adding it to his forgery (what use would almost invisible stitching be to a forger?); and even if he wanted to use it, he would be most unlikely to have the high degree of skill needed to do such stitching.

So again the forgery theory would need to resort to the pre-1988 fall-back position of the late leading anti-authenticist Walter McCrone (1916-2002), that "a first century cloth could have been found and used by a 14th century artist to paint the image":

"A carbon-dating test would be final if it led to a date significantly later than the early first century. A first century date, on the other hand, would remove almost all obstacles to universal acceptance of the `Shroud' as authentic. Only the careful objective scientist might still point out that a first century cloth could have been found and used by a 14th century artist to paint the image"[18].

But, leaving aside whether that would be "objective," for anti- authenticists to claim that a medieval forger forged the Shroud's image on a 1st century cloth would, as we saw in parts #3 and #4, be admitting that the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud claim was wrong in its claim that:

"... the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390 ..."[19].

Continued in part #6, "Selvedge."

Notes
1. This post is copyright. Permission is granted to quote from any part of this post (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this post. [return]
2. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, p.21; Schwalbe, L.A. & Rogers, R.N., 1982, "Physics and Chemistry of the Shroud of Turin: Summary of the 1978 Investigation," Analytica Chimica Acta, Vol. 135, No. 1, p.41; Adler, A.D., 1998, "Concerning the Side Strip on the Shroud of Turin," in Adler, A.D. & Crispino, D., ed., "The Orphaned Manuscript: A Gathering of Publications on the Shroud of Turin," Effatà Editrice: Cantalupa, Italy, 2002, pp.87-91, 87; de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London, p.109. [return]
3. Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta, p.162. [return]
4. Schwalbe & Rogers, 1982, p.42. [return]
5. "Shroud of Turin," Wikipedia, 17 August 2015. [return]
6. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, p.21. [return]
7. Schwalbe & Rogers, 1982, p.41. [return]
8. Wilson, 1979, p.70. [return]
9. Wilson, I., 2000, "`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]
10. 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.189. [return]
11. Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, p.22. [return]
12. Extract from Latendresse, M., 2010, "Shroud Scope: Durante 2002: Vertical," Sindonology.org. [return]
13. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.22. [return]
14. Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London, p.74. [return]
15. de Wesselow, 2012, p.109. My emphasis. [return]
16. Wilson, 2010, pp.71-74. My emphasis. [return]
17. Wilson, 2000, ibid. [return]
18. McCrone, W.C., 1999, "Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin," Prometheus Books: Amherst NY, p.141. [return]
19. Damon, P.E., et al., 1989, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," Nature, Vol. 337, 16th February, pp.611-615, p.611. [return]

Posted 24 August 2015. Updated 18 July 2024.

The 1260-1390 radiocarbon date of the Turin Shroud was the result of a computer hacking #2

Copyright ©, Stephen E. Jones[1]

[Index: #1, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10 & #11]

Introduction. Continuing from part #1 with this part #2 of my concluding summary of the evidence that the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin as "mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390"[2] was the result of a computer hacking, allegedly by Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory physicist Timothy W. Linick (1946-89)[3], aided by Karl Koch (1965–89)[4], on behalf of the former Soviet Union, through its agency the KGB. I will list the main headings as bullet-points, linking them back to my previous, "My theory ..." posts on those topics. The next post in this series is part #3.

■ Computer hacking was rife in the 1980s [#10(3) & #3]. As can be seen from the extract [right (enlarge)] of Wikipedia's "Timeline of computer security hacker history" [5], the year the Shroud was radiocarbon dated, 1988, was a peak year for early computer hacking against poorly secured university, government and corporate computer systems.

■ Computer and physical security was poor at universities in the 1980s. [#10(3) & #3]. Clifford Stoll, an astronomer turned computer Systems Manager at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California[6], who had earned his PhD at Arizona University in 1980[7], documented from personal experience in his 1989 book, "The Cuckoo's Egg" [Left], that computer security was lax at universities in the 1980s:

"Our laboratory's computers connect to thousands of other systems over a dozen networks. Any of our scientists can log into our computer, and then connect to a distant computer. Once connected, they can log into the distant computer by entering an account name and password. ... the only thing protecting the networked computer is the password, since account names are easy to figure out ... most people use their names on computers)" (my emphasis)[8].

Stoll recounted that it was easy to hack into computers at "universities where no security was needed" (both computer and physical):

"Every few months, I'd hear a rumour about someone else's system being invaded; usually this was at universities ... Sure, it's easy to muck around computers at universities where no security was needed. After all, colleges seldom even lock the doors to their buildings" (my emphasis)[9].

■ The German hacker ring. [#10(3) & #3] Stoll detected and helped catch a German hacker Markus Hess [right [10]] (alias Urmel) [11], who had been dialing in from Germany through a pre-Internet network called Tymnet to universities in the USA[12]. From universities Hess could enter military networks[13], due to their also lax security in the 1980s [14]. Hess hacked into about "400 U.S. military computers"[15] and had for several years been "selling the results of his hacking to the Soviet KGB"[16]. Hess was an associate of Karl Koch (alias Hagbard Celine) [left [17]], who was also "involved in selling hacked information from United States military computers to the KGB"[18]. Hess, Koch and Hans Heinrich Hübner [below right [19]](alias Pengo)[20], were key members of a German hacker ring loosely affiliated with the Chaos Computer Club[21]. Hübner and Koch later came forward in mid-1988 and confessed their hacking for the KGB to the West German authorities [22] under an espionage amnesty, which protected them from being prosecuted if they cooperated fully[23].

■ Karl Koch's `suicide'. [#10(3) & #3] However, about a year later, on 1st June 1989 [#10(8)], Koch's burnt body was found, after what evidently was a murder made to look like suicide, presumably by the KGB (or the East German Stasi[24] on the KGB's behalf), "in order to keep him from confessing more to the authorities," while neither Hübner, who also had confessed, nor any of the others in the German KGB hacker ring, were harmed:

"Koch was found burned to death with gasoline in a forest near Celle, Germany. The death was officially claimed to be a suicide. However, some believe there is little evidence supporting suicide and many believe that Koch was killed in order to keep him from confessing more to the authorities. Why Koch would be targeted, and not Pengo [Hübner] and Urmel [Hess], is unknown. Koch left his workplace in his car to go for lunch; he had not returned by late afternoon and so his employer reported him as a missing person. Meanwhile, German police were alerted of an abandoned car in a forest near Celle. When they went to investigate, they found an abandoned car, that looked like it had been there for years, as it was covered in dust. Near to the car they found a burned corpse (Koch). His shoes were missing and have never been found. There was a patch of burned ground around him, which although it had not rained in some time and the grass was perfectly dry, was controlled in a small circle around the corpse. It is thought to be highly unlikely that this type of controlled burning could have been achieved by Koch himself which leads many to believe that his death was not suicide." (my emphasis)[25].

Continued in part #3.

Notes
1. This post is copyright. Permission is granted to quote from any part of this post (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this post. [return]
2. Damon, P.E., et al., 1989, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," Nature, Vol. 337, 16th February, pp. 611-615, p. 611. [return]
3. Jull, A.J.T. & Suess, H.E., 1989, "Timothy W. Linick," Radiocarbon, Vol 31, No 2. [return]
4. "Karl Koch (hacker)," Wikipedia, 5 May 2015. [return]
5. "Timeline of computer security hacker history: 1980s," Wikipedia, 14 August 2015. [return]
6. "Clifford Stoll," Wikipedia, 28 June 2015. [return]
7. Stoll, C., 1989, "The Cuckoo's Egg Tracking a Spy through the Maze of Computer Espionage," Pan: London, reprinted, 1991, p.ii. [return]
8. Stoll, 1989, p.8. [return]
9. Stoll, 1989, p.12. [return]
10. Jangra, A., 2013, "Famous Hacks that made Headlines," 20 August. [return]
11. "Markus Hess," Wikipedia, 18 August 2015. [return]
12. Stoll, 1989, pp.27-28. [return]
13. Hafner, K. & Markoff, J., 1991, "Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier," Corgi: London, reprinted, 1993, p.221. [return]
14. Stoll, 1989, pp.50-51. [return]
15. "Markus Hess," Wikipedia, 2015. [return]
16. "The Cuckoo's Egg," Wikipedia, 19 November 2014. [return]
17. "WikiFreaks, Pt. 4 `The Nerds Who Played With Fire'," The Psychedelic Dungeon, 15 September 2010. [return]
18. "Karl Koch (hacker)," Wikipedia, 2015. [return]
19. Guasch, J.A., 2011, "Interview with Hans Hübner (Pengo)," February 18. (See English translation following the Spanish original). [return]
20. "Hans Heinrich Hübner," Wikipedia, 20 July 2015. [return]
21. "Karl Koch (hacker)," Wikipedia, 2015. [return]
22. Clough, B. & Mungo, P., 1992, "Approaching Zero: Data Crime and the Computer," Faber & Faber: London & Boston, p.183. [return]
23. "Karl Koch (hacker)," Wikipedia, 2015. [return]
24. Clough & Mungo, 1992, p.185. [return]
25. "Karl Koch," Wikipedia, 2015. Footnotes omitted. [return]

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Posted: 19 August 2015. Updated: 27 February 2024.

"... why the radiocarbon date is exactly what one would expect it to be if the Turin Shroud were actually a fraud"? (Tipler, 2007)

Here is a quote by physicist Frank J. Tipler (1947-) in his, "The Physics of Christianity" (2007) [right], in which he states that, "...there are quite a few reasons for accepting the Shroud as genuine" so "It would be an extra- ordinary and very improbable coincidence [indeed "a miracle"] if the amount of carbon added to the Shroud [by "bacterial or other contamination"] were exactly the amount needed to give the date [in "the middle of the fourteenth century"] that indicated a fraud":

"If the radiocarbon date is ignored, there are quite a few reasons for accepting the Shroud as genuine ... But ... what must be answered before the Shroud can be accepted as genuine - is why the radiocarbon date is exactly what one would expect it to be if the Turin Shroud were actually a fraud. A very plausible history of the Shroud from A.D. 30 to the present has been constructed ... However, the first time the Shroud is agreed by all scholars to have existed is 1355, when a French squire, Geoffrey de Charny of Lirey, in the bishopric of Troyes, petitioned the Pope to display it as the unique burial cloth of Jesus. ... A few decades after de Charny's death, the bishop of Troyes denounced the Shroud as a fake and said that he knew the name of the forger, who had confessed. So if the bishop and later skeptics were correct, we would expect the linen of which the Shroud is made to date from the time of the forgery. That is, the middle of the fourteenth century. When the radiocarbon date was discovered to be between 1260 and 1390 (95 percent confidence interval), most scientists (including myself until a few years ago) were convinced that the Shroud had been proven a fraud. If bacterial or other contamination had distorted the date, we would expect the measured radiocarbon date to be some random date between A.D. 30 and the present. It would be an extraordinary and very improbable coincidence if the amount of carbon added to the Shroud were exactly the amount needed to give the date that indicated a fraud. That is, unless the radiocarbon date were itself a miracle ..." (Tipler, F.J., 2007, "The Physics of Christianity," Doubleday: New York NY, pp.178-179. My emphasis bold. Italics emphasis original).

Further in the book, Tipler wrote:

"... in 1988 on the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud. What originally convinced me that the Shroud was a fake was the fact that the date obtained was precisely that expected if the Shroud were a medieval forgery. The Shroud first appeared in France in 1355, and the Arizona laboratory obtained a radiocarbon date of 1350. It seems incredible that later contamination came in exactly the right amount to give an exactly incorrect date. Unless the contamination ... were a miracle." (Tipler, 2007, pp.216-217. My emphasis bold. Italics emphasis original)

I certainly don't agree with much of what Tipler writes (including that he really does think that God would work a deceptive miracle), but he at least does recognise the problem that, if the Shroud is authentic, as the overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates, then it would either be "a miracle" (or a fraud of some kind which Tipler doesn't even consider), for it to have a radiocarbon date of "AD 1260-1390," the mid-point of which is 1325 ±65, a mere ~25 years before the Shroud first appeared in undisputed history in Lirey, France in c. 1355.

Another pro-authenticist who also does recognise the problem of the first century Shroud having a radiocarbon date of "1325 ± 65 years" is the agnostic art historian, Thomas de Wesselow, who considers fraud in the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud to be a real possibility, because of that date:

"The third possibility is that a fraud was perpetrated, that genuine Shroud samples were deliberately swapped with cloth of a later date. ... Most sindonologists regard these fraud theories as plainly incredible. Some, like Ian Wilson, refuse to contemplate such `unworthy' accusations. However, scientific fraud is by no means unknown, as the editors of science journals are well aware. ... One important consideration weighs in favour of the possibility of deception. If the carbon-dating error was accidental, then it is a remarkable coincidence that the result tallies so well with the date always claimed by sceptics as the Shroud's historical debut. But if fraud was involved, then it wouldn't be a coincidence at all. Had anyone wished to discredit the Shroud, '1325 ± 65 years' is precisely the sort of date they would have looked to achieve." (de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," p.170. My emphasis).

But I don't agree with de Wesselow and others that the fraud was by conventional sample-switching (see my "Accusations of conventional fraud (e.g. sample-switching) fail").

Those pro-authenticists who do not accept my proposal that, "The 1260-1390 radiocarbon date of the Turin Shroud was the result of a computer hacking," but instead propose that carbon contamination, a bioplastic coating, a medieval repair, a neutron flux, etc, `just happened' to be "in exactly the right amount" to shift the Shroud's 1st century radiocarbon date ~14 centuries into the future, so as to "give [the Shroud] an exactly incorrect date," respectfully need to take a reality check:

"a corrective confronting of reality, in order to counteract one's expectations, prejudices, or the like." ("reality check," Dictionary.com)

Because what they are proposing, whether they realise it or not, is a miracle, and a deceptive miracle, directly or indirectly by God at that.

Posted: 18 August 2015. Updated: 6 November 2020.

Shroud of Turin News - July 2015

Shroud of Turin News - July 2015
© Stephen E. Jones[1]

[Previous: June 2015] [Next: August 2015]

This is the the July 2015 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. I will add excerpts from Shroud-related news articles to this post, latest uppermost, with the articles' words in bold to distinguish them from mine. See the April 2015 issue for more information about this re-started series.

Contents:
"The Shroud the Pope and the `Strip of Cloth'," Patheos, by Fr. Dwight Longenecker, June 23, 2015.
"Pope Francis Pope Francis praises Turin shroud as an 'icon of love'," The Guardian, 22 June 2015.

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"The Shroud the Pope and the `Strip of Cloth'," Patheos, by Fr. Dwight Longenecker, June 23, 2015. Can the main stream media get any

[Right: The Shroud face positive (left) and negative (right). But because the negative is a photographic positive, the Shroud image must be a photographic negative-at least ~600 years before the invention of photography! (see below]

dumber than when they try to report on religion? This article at CNN reports on Pope Francis' recent visit to Turin where he prayed before the Shroud.

"Pope Francis prayed Sunday before the Shroud of Turin, a strip of cloth that some believe was used for the burial of Jesus Christ. The shroud appears to bear the image of a man who resembles paintings of Christ."

"A strip of cloth..."?? It's that last line, "The shroud appears to bear the image of a man who resembles paintings of Christ." - not only is it badly written but it reveals that the writer knows next to nothing about the shroud itself - which is one of the most extensively researched relics of Christianity. I don't disagree, but Fr. Longenecker can hardly blame secular journalists for knowing "next to nothing about the shroud" [sic] when the leader of his own Roman Catholic denomination, Pope Francis, by calling the Shroud a mere "icon," (see below) gives the appearance of knowing next to nothing about the Shroud! I've written here about the shroud. Here are some of the basic points shroud doubters have to answer:

1. The image of the man on the cloth: the image is not a stain. It is not painted on the shroud. It is not burned on in a conventional manner. Instead it is an image seared on to the cloth with some technology that has yet to be explained. That seems a strange word, "technology" to use, if the Shroud's image was (as Fr. Longenecker himself agrees - see "the body vanished from within it" below), a "snapshot" of Jesus' resurrection:

"Even from the limited available information, a hypothetical glimpse of the power operating at the moment of creation of the Shroud's image may be ventured. In the darkness of the Jerusalem tomb the dead body of Jesus lay, unwashed, covered in blood, on a stone slab. Suddenly, there is a burst of mysterious power from it. In that instant the blood dematerializes, dissolved perhaps by the flash, while its image and that of the body becomes indelibly fused onto the cloth, preserving for posterity a literal `snapshot' of the Resurrection." (Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin," p.251).

Not only can they not reproduce the image using medieval technologies, they can't reproduce it with modern technology. With "modern technology" scientists might be able to reproduce the image on the Shroud, but it would required a battery of excimer (ultraviolet) lasers outputting a "total power of ... 34 thousand billion watts"!:

"Instead, the results of ENEA `show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence'. `However, ENEA scientists warn, `it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm² 17000 cm² = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )'." (Tosatti, M., 2011, "The Shroud is not a fake," Vatican Insider, 12 December).

2. The 3-D capabilities of the image - the image of the man on the shroud can be read by 3-D imaging technology. Paintings fail this test. Indeed! Stevenson and Habermas point out that, "the three-dimensional effect [of the Shroud's image] is the Waterloo ["final, crushing defeat"] for all artistic theories":

"In short, though none of the Shroud opponents would willingly concede this point, the three-dimensional effect is the Waterloo for all artistic theories. That same effect has been scientifically demonstrated and subjected to the best peer review. And it still stands." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1990, "The Shroud and the Controversy," p.32).

3. The Positive-Negative Image - the image is a photographic negative. That means when a traditional photograph is taken what should be the negative appears as a positive image. If it is a medieval painting how did they do that and why? See the Shroud's positive and negative images above. Since even the concept of photographic negativity was unknown until the discovery of chemical photography in the early 19th century, a medieval forger could not even think about forging the Shroud as a photographic negative, let alone do it.

4. The anatomical accuracy - not only is it an accurate image of a dead man but the image is distorted as it should be if it was laying over a real body and the body vanished from within it. I am not sure that "distorted" is the right word, but Jackson, et al, found that, "the frontal image on the Shroud ... is ... consistent with a naturally draping cloth [and] can be derived from a single global mapping function of distance between these two surfaces" (see diagram below):

"the frontal image on the Shroud of Turin is shown to be consistent with a naturally draping cloth in the sense that image shading can be derived from a single global mapping function of distance between these two surfaces" ("Some Recent Publications," BSTS Newsletter, No. 9, January 1985)

[Above: Diagram in Jackson, et. al, 1984, "Correlation of image intensity on the Turin Shroud with the 3-D structure of a human body shape," Applied Optics, Vol. 23, No. 14, pp. 2244-2270.]

This shows that a single process created the Shroud's image. But no medieval forger would know about a "global mapping function" and even if he did, no artist/forger could paint, etc., a whole human body in a single process (let alone in negative)!

5. The historical accuracy to crucifixion - the wounds are all consistent not only with Roman crucifixion, Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (c. 272–337) abolished crucifixion across the Roman Empire in 337 and writers in the Roman era, including the New Testament, gave little details of what crucifixion involved, presumably because: 1) it was so horrible; and 2) everyone then knew those details because crucifixion was public and common. So a medieval forger ~1000 years later would not know the historically accurate details of Roman crucifixion that the Shroud reveals. but the details of Jesus' particular crucifixion like the crown of thorns, no broken bones the scourging and the wound in the side. And although the particular details of Jesus' crucifixion: crowning with thorns, which was unique to Jesus to mock His claim to be King of the Jews (Jn 19:31-33) were unusual (Mk 15:44), they could have been gleaned from the gospels. But then a medieval forger, reading that the nail wounds were in Jesus' "hands" (Lk 24:39-40; Jn 20:20, 25, 27), would have put nail wounds (plural) in Jesus' palms where all medieval artists who depicted Jesus' crucifixion did, not a nail wound (singular) exiting from the back of Jesus' wrist, where the hand is strong enough to support a man's body without the nail tearing through it.

6. Geographical accuracy - pollen from the shroud is not only from the Jerusalem area, but from Turkey and the other places the shroud is supposed to have resided, See my Turin Shroud Dictionary entry "Frei-Sulzer, Max." While sceptics have tried to discredit Frei, by focusing narrowly on his identification of a few of his species, Frei's broad findings of pollen on the Shroud still stand unrefuted: 1) a minority of European pollen; 2) many halophyte (salt-loving) pollen species which don't grow in Europe but do grow around the Dead Sea; and 3) confirmation of Frei's identification of Jerusalem pollen species by images on the Shroud of flowers and plants of the same species by one of Israel's leading botanists, Prof. Avinoam Danin. dust from the area on the shroud by the knees and feet is from the area of Jerusalem. Limestone dust on feet of the man on the Shroud is the comparatively rare travertine Aragonite found in Jerusalem area. Moreover, the chemical signature of trace elements strontium and iron, and no lead, of that Shroud limestone dust very closely matches Jerusalem limestone.

7. The accuracy to Jewish burial customs - the shroud shows details perfectly consistent with first century Jewish burial customs. Jewish law required that a Jew who had died a bloody death (as Jesus did), should not be washed, but covered with a sovev, a single, all-enveloping sheet, to as far as possible, keep the body and its life-blood together. The double-body length Shroud conforms perfectly to that requirement of Jewish burial law. There are even microscopic traces of the flower that would have been used in the burial They are not "microscopic" nor are they "traces." They are normal size and some of them, e.g. a chrysanthemum, can be seen with the naked eye over the Internet (see my "2.6. The other marks (4): Plant images". Their images are consistent with having been formed by a coronal (electrical) discharge. So all forgery theories need to explain how and why a medieval or earlier forger also imprinted images of Palestinian flowers on the Shroud! - flowers that grew locally and were known to be used for burial. And which bloom in and around Jerusalem between March and April. Which is consistent with the death of Jesus which was in April AD 30!

8. The blood and the image - the blood was on the shroud first. The image happened later. Chemistry professor the late Alan D. Adler (1931-2000) found there was no image under the blood on the Shroud:

"While treatment of the body image fibers with proteases yielded no changes even after several hours of treatment, in less than 20 minutes it removed the coating of the serum coated [bloodstained] fibers to reveal a smooth and uncorroded surface. This interesting observation suggests that the blood marks were on the cloth before the image producing process took place and protected the blood mark areas from this process. This further confirms that there were two separate processes involved in generating the images seen on the Shroud of Turin. Any proposed image forming mechanism must account correctly for both sets of images." (Adler, A.D., c. 2000, "Chemical and Physical Aspects of the Sindonic Images".

This is consistent with Jesus' scourging and crucifixion followed by His resurrection ~36 hours later (Mt 27:26-28:6; Mk 15:15-16:7). But it is not consistent with the work of an artist/forger who would first paint, etc, the image and then add blood on or around the image (as all attempted modern replications of the Shroud do, e.g. Luigi Garlaschelli). If it was painted (there is not evidence of paint anywhere) the two would be part of the same faked image If the forger did not use real blood (wrong for starters because the blood on the Shroud is real blood type AB), then the image would be under the faked `blood'. But it is clearly humanly impossible for a forger to have applied blood to the Shroud first and then consistently added the image around the blood (let alone in negative). This is yet another proof beyond reasonable doubt that the Shroud is authentic.

9. The type of cloth The cloth is consistent with fabrics from first century Israel, but not with medieval Europe. This is not strictly true. There is one example of a herringbone twill woven fragment of linen from the 14th century, so it cannot be claimed on the basis of the weave alone that the Shroud could not have been woven in the Middle Ages. A forger would have had to not only forge the image in some as yet undiscovered way, but would have had to have detailed knowledge of linen weaves of the first century and then not only reproduce it, but age it convincingly. That wouldn't work anyway. Ancient textile expert Mechthild Flury-Lemberg in 1998 discovered that the unusual stitching of the Shroud's sidestrip and its selvedge (woven edges) have only been found elsewhere at the first century Jewish fortress Masada, which was wiped out by the Romans in AD 63 and never re-occupied. So a forger would still have had to find a first century Jewish linen sheet to forge the Shroud. But then that would invalidate the 1988 radiocarbon dating of Shroud as "mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390" (see next).

10. The age of the cloth - The 1987 carbon 14 tests They were in 1988. are now believed to have been taken from an area of the cloth that was not simply patched in the middle ages but patched with a difficult to detect interweaving and the carbon 14 tests were therefore compromised. Convenient, easy to understand, and widely accepted, but it is nevertheless wrong. See my "Conventional explanations of the discrepancy all fail." The latest technology and testing suggests a date for the shroud between 200 BC and 200AD. Go here for news of Professor Fanti's test in 2013. A better source for Fanti's tests is:

"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. ... The research includes three new tests, two chemical ones and one mechanical one. The first two were carried out with an FT-IR system, so using infra-red light, and the other using Raman spectroscopy. The third was a multi-parametric mechanical test based on five different mechanical parameters linked to the voltage of the wire. The machine used to examine the Shroud's fibres and test traction, allowed researchers to examine tiny fibres alongside about twenty samples of cloth dated between 3000 BC and 2000 AD ... 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. The book's authors observed that the uncertainty of this date is less than the single uncertainties and the date is compatible with the historic date of Jesus' death on the cross, which historians claim occurred in 30 AD. The tests were carried out using tiny fibres of material extracted from the Shroud by micro-analyst Giovanni Riggi di Numana who passed away in 2008 but had participated in the 1988 research project and gave the material to Fanti ..."(Tornielli, A., 2013, "New experiments on Shroud show it's not medieval," Vatican Insider, 26 March).

The only piece of evidence from the shroud which doesn't match up is the 1987 carbon testing. And that is because:

"... the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin as `mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390' was the result of a computer hacking, allegedly by Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory physicist Timothy W. Linick (1946-89), aided by Karl Koch (1965–89), on behalf of the former Soviet Union, through its agency the KGB."

See my new, incomplete series, "The 1260-1390 radiocarbon date of the Turin Shroud was the result of a computer hacking" and my previous complete series, "My theory that the radiocarbon dating laboratories were duped by a computer hacker" When considering evidence and you have nine items which fit with the known facts and fit with each other, but you have one piece of evidence which does not fit, it is common sense to challenge that one piece of evidence and reject it or try again to see why it doesn't fit. It is routine for archaeologists to order a radiocarbon dating of an artefact but then reject that date as a "rogue" result if it does not fit in with all the other evidence about that artefact. The difference in the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud was that, unusually, the laboratories were both the clients and the testers. In this the Vatican made a huge tactical mistake. It should have insisted that it was the client and that it was free to reject the date if it did not agree with all the other evidence about the Shroud. This is what Fanti's research has done and proven that the 1987 tests were faulty. STURP member Ray Rogers had already done that in 2005, when he showed that the vanillin content of the Shroud's linen is too low for the 1260-1390 radiocarbon date, and is consistent with a 995 BC - AD 705 date:

"The Shroud of Turin is much older than suggested by radiocarbon dating carried out in the 1980s, according to a new study in a peer-reviewed journal. A research paper published in Thermochimica Acta suggests the shroud is between 1,300 and 3,000 years old. ... Raymond Rogers ... a retired chemist from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, US ... analysed and compared the sample used in the 1988 tests with other samples from the famous cloth. ... These tests revealed the presence of a chemical called vanillin in the radiocarbon sample and in the Holland cloth, but not the rest of the shroud. Vanillin is produced by the thermal decomposition of lignin, a chemical compound found in plant material such as flax. Levels of vanillin in material such as linen fall over time. 'Older date' `The fact that vanillin cannot be detected in the lignin on shroud fibres, Dead Sea scrolls linen and other very old linens indicates that the shroud is quite old ... A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests the shroud is between 1,300 and 3,000 years old.'" ("Turin shroud 'older than thought'," BBC, 31 January, 2005).

Here is what Rogers wrote in Thermochimica Acta in 2004, which was published in 2005, about the Shroud being "between 1300- and 3000-years old" based on its vanillin content [see 01Dec07, 12Feb08, 27Mar13, 02Apr13 & 02Jan14]:

"The fact that vanillin can not be detected in the lignin on shroud fibers, Dead Sea scrolls linen, and other very old linens indicates that the shroud is quite old. A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests that the shroud is between 1300- and 3000-years old. Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years." (Rogers, R.N., 2005, "Studies on the Radiocarbon Sample from the Shroud of Turin," Thermochimica Acta, Vol. 425, Nos 1-2, 20 January, pp.189-194, 192)

If the Shroud was 1300 years old in 2004, its linen would date from ~AD 704. If it was 3000 years old in 2004, its linen would date from ~996BC. That is a range of ~996BC to ~AD 704, or ~146BC ± 850 years. Jesus' crucifixion was in AD 30, which was ~176 years after ~146BC, and the Shroud's flax would have been harvested and its linen woven before AD30.

Atheists often ask for evidence for the existence of God. They are not sincere because atheism is the apriori metaphysical position that there is no God I debated atheists on creation/evolution pre-Internet, and then Internet, forums for over a decade from 1994 to 2005, and I used to ask atheists: "what evidence could I give you on this forum that would convince you that there is a God?" Apart from "If God personally appeared to me I would believe in him" (which I could not arrange for them and they agreed that even if God did appear to them they would dismiss it as a hallucination) most refused to answer my question but a few were honest and said that no evidence would convince them that there is a God. As this 2002 article pointed out, most Internet atheists do "not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him" and have "a preoccupation with Christianity" (i.e. they are really anti-Christians):

"Hopping around their web world, one quickly gets the impression that there are two basic types of atheist. The first is the sincere, scholarly atheist, the type who walked away from the Unitarians when they got too evangelical. The Maine Atheists Union typifies this bunch. They want to `think freely' and `live free,' and one of their main precepts reads: `Nobody has all of the answers and nobody ever will. Take the time to get as close as possible to the truth.' The other group is like Orwell's embittered specimen from `Down and Out in Paris and London,' `the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.' These shrill types can be found in places like MSN's God is a Lie! chat community and, of all places, high school. ... What do they all have in common? For one thing, a preoccupation with Christianity. Look around the precincts of atheism and you'll see lots of slogans like `The Religious Right is neither,' but you'll never see `Taoism is for dummies.' Or, for that matter, much anti-Judaism or anti-Islam sentiment ..." (Last, J.V., 2002, "You Gotta (Dis)Believe," Weekly Standard, 30 July)

that I think the Shroud of Turin is the most convincing evidence available if they want scientific, archeological, historical, physical proof. The Shroud is an acid test for atheists. The evidence is overwhelming that the Shroud is authentic but atheists continue to reject it and trot out the same few discredited arguments: 1) Pierre d'Arcis' mere hearsay painter; 2) the false claim that there is no history of the Shroud before the 1350s; and 3) the 1988 radiocarbon date of 1260-1390 which is patently false, because as, Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory's Prof. Christopher Ramsey, who was involved in the 1988 dating and was a signatory to the 1989 Nature article, admitted:

"There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the Shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow and so further research is certainly needed. It is important that we continue to test the accuracy of the original radiocarbon tests as we are already doing. It is equally important that experts assess and reinterpret some of the other evidence. Only by doing this will people be able to arrive at a coherent history of the Shroud which takes into account and explains all of the available scientific and historical information." (Ramsey, C.B., "Shroud of Turin," Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, 23 March, 2008, Version 152, Issued 16 June 2015)

So the planned answer of atheist Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) to God when he meets Him, "Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?":

"Attributed to Russell in the New York Times article So God's Really in the Details? (May 11, 2002) by Emily Eakin, where she writes: `Asked what he would say if God appeared to him after his death and demanded to know why he had failed to believe, the British philosopher and staunch evidentialist Bertrand Russell replied that he would say, 'Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence.' Actually, the quote is slightly inaccurate. The original source of this line comes from an article by Leo Rosten published in Saturday Review/World (February 23, 1974) which features an interview with Russell. There, Rosten writes: `Confronted with the Almighty, [Russell] would ask, "Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?"'" ("Bertrand Russell - Wikiquote," 15 August 2015)

won't work because in 1898, when Russell was ~26, it was worldwide news that the Shroud was a photographic negative. And even less would the "not enough evidence" defence work for atheists today! Which no doubt is Jesus' reason for imprinting His image on His Shroud such that its miraculous (literally) properties would become even more apparent in our scientific age, "So they are [even more] without excuse" (Rom 1:20). Why? because an atheist must insist on the natural world being a closed system. Miracles are not allowed. Not even one miracle is allowed. That's Naturalism: `Nature is all there is - there is no supernatural, including God. Because if there is a miracle, then there is an intelligent being outside and beyond the closed natural system. So if it can be shown that one miracle has occurred, then God must exist, and the most astounding miracle would be the resurrection of a dead person and the only person that happened to was Jesus Christ, and the evidence from the shroud is increasingly intriguing and points to exactly that. As I pointed out in one of my comments:

"Ockham's Razor again: Jesus is the only person of whom it is credibly claimed that He was resurrected. The Shroud of Turin is credibly claimed to be Jesus' burial shroud and it only has an image of a body that has wounds and bloodstains consistent with the Gospels' description of Jesus' suffering and death. The simplest explanation is that the Shroud of Turin is Jesus' burial shroud and the body image on it is Jesus' caused by His resurrection." (Jones, S.E., "Comment: `Gn-Gq': Turin Shroud Dictionary," 13 June 2015).

Of course doubters exist and the debate continues. That's all healthy, well and good, but the more closely you look at the shroud the more difficult it becomes to question its authenticity. Up to a point, "debate [is] ... healthy, well and good." But when God has graciously provided ample evidence in the Shroud to unbelievers of not only His existence, but His amazing love for mankind in the sacrificial, horrific, death on the cross of His Son Jesus, and that love of God is continually spurned, then then the doubters will have only themselves to blame when they stand before Jesus, the Man on the Shroud, at the Last Judgment (2Cor 5:10; Mt 16:27; 25:31-32; Ac 10:42; 2Tim 4:1, 1Pet 4:5) and receive from Him their just deserts (Mt 25:31-34, 41-46) for rejecting Jesus' rightful reign over them (Lk 19:11-27). [top]

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"Pope Francis Pope Francis praises Turin shroud as an 'icon of love'," The Guardian, 22 June 2015 ... Pope Francis paused in silent prayer before the shroud of Turin on Sunday ... Later, after

[Above: Pope Francis touches the shroud of Turin. Photograph: Giorgio Perottino/Reuters]

celebrating mass in a packed Turin square, Francis shared his thoughts on the cloth as he spoke of the love Jesus had for humanity when being crucified. "The icon of this love is the shroud, that, even now, has attracted so many people here to Turin," Francis said. As I pointed out in my June Shroud of Turin News:

"An `icon,' in Roman Catholic theology is merely a humanly created representation of the real thing:

"ICON ... from the Greek eikon meaning image, is a word now generally applied to paintings of sacred subjects or scenes from sacred histories" ("Icon," New Catholic Encyclopedia 2003. My emphasis)

as opposed to `relic' which is the real thing:

"RELICS The material remains of a saint or holy person after his death, as well as objects sanctified by contact with his body." ("Relics," New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2003)"

So by continuing to refuse to confirm or deny that the Shroud is authentic, and in fact calling the Shroud an `icon,' Pope Francis, and the Vatican, is sending a mixed message that the Shroud could be a fake. Pope Francis himself might well believe that the Shroud is a fake, but the Vatican, by its actions: 1) spending the equivalent of many millions of dollars protecting the Shroud; and 2) displaying it to many millions of people, clearly believes the Shroud is authentic.

"The shroud draws [people] to the tormented face and body of Jesus and, at the same time, directs [people] toward the face of every suffering and unjustly persecuted person." This is damming the Shroud with faint praise and reinforces that Pope Francis really does think (wrongly) that the Shroud is just another fake icon. But the evidence is overwhelming that the Shroud is authentic, and therefore the image on the Shroud IS "the tormented face and body of Jesus"! Again, I am not being anti-Catholic in this but pro-truth and pro-Shroud (which is the same thing)! ... [top]

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Notes:
1. This post is copyright. Permission is granted to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this post. [return]

Posted 11 August 2015. Updated 12 May 2024.

Topic index: The Shroud of Turin blog: "S-Z"

I have abandoned this Topic Index because it was too time-consuming.

This is page ("S-Z") of a topic index in alphabetic order of my posts to this my The Shroud of Turin blog. It was formerly page "A-Z" but it

[Above: Exact fit of the face on the Sudarium of Oviedo (right) and the Turin Shroud (left). (Bennett, J., 2001, "Sacred Blood, Sacred Image," pl.20).

"The most striking thing about all the stains [on the Sudarium of Oviedo] is that they coincide exactly with the face of the image on the Turin Shroud." (Guscin, 1998, "The Oviedo Cloth," p.26. My emphasis).

This `two factor authentication' is proof beyond reasonable doubt that the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo once covered the bloodstained head of the same dead man.]

grew too large and so I split it off from now pages "A-G," "H-M," and "N-R." See page "A-G" for more information about this topic index. This index is complete up to and including 28 Mar 12 (partly).

[A-G] [H-M] [N-R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Z]

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S [top]
Sagan, Carl: 07Aug11
Sainte Face de Laon: 23Apr12
Sanford, Walter: 01Nov08
Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Pantocrator: 16Feb12
Savarino, Silvano: books: "The Turin Shroud" (2000): 25Feb10
Savoy, house of: 14Jul09, 08Oct09; acquired Shroud 1453: 11Jan11, 07Oct11
Scavone, Daniel: 30Jan11
: 22Dec11; "none so blind ...": 22Dec11; true believers Shroud's in-authenticity: 22Dec11
Schafersman, Steven: 03Apr08, 26Nov08, 08Dec09, 18Mar11, 06Jan12
Schwartz, Lillian: 14Jul09
Schwortz, Barrie: BSTS Newsletter online: 02Nov11; Jew: 09Oct07, 04Jun10: STURP: 03Apr08
science: good v bad: 07Aug11; Shroud: 08Dec09; unable to explain: 04Jun10; naturalistically: 28Oct11; religion: non-overlapping?: 06Jan12
Science & Vie: 01Nov08
scorch: 21Jul07, 04Oct10; 03Mar12
serum albumin: 27Jul07
Shroud of Turin: importance: 07Oct11; what is: 04Oct10, 28Oct11
Shroud of Turin News (my): 2008: 10Oct08, 01Nov08, 13Dec08; 2012: 04Feb12, 07Feb12
Shroud of Turin Research Project (see "STURP")
Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus!: 04Oct10; PowerPoint: 04Oct11, 04Oct11, 10Oct11, 18Oct11, 28Oct11, 01Nov11, 14Nov11, 22Nov11, 14Dec11, 10Jan12
Shroud News (my): 2007: 29Jul07, 29Sep07, 09Oct07, 29Oct07, 01Dec07; 2008: 02Jan08, 22Mar08, 24Mar08, 03Apr08, 07Jun08 [continued as Shroud of Turin News]
shrouds: 07Jun08, 17Dec09
sindonology: 05Jan11; sindonologist: 17Apr10
Sistine chapel: 09Oct07
skeptics: see "sceptics"
societies: 02Jan08
solidus, coin: 23Feb12
Soons, Petrus: 01Nov08, 07Nov08
soudarion: 26Jun08, 11Jan11
spices: 01Nov08, 11Jan11
St Catherine's, Sinai: 29Jul08; Christ Pantocrator: 07Feb12, 16Feb12
statue: hot: 03Mar12; cold: 03Mar12
Sternberg, Richard: 22Dec11
Stevenson, Kenneth: 17Jun08; "My White Linen White Paper": 07Feb12
studied: 03Apr08, 12Apr08, 17Jun08, 04Oct10
STURP: 09Oct07, 01Apr08, 25Jun08, 04Jun10; 22Dec11, 18Jan12; not painting: 22Dec11; sticky tapes: 07Aug11
Sudarium of Oviedo: 04Oct10, 06Jan12, 15Jan12; blood type AB: 18Mar11; matches Shroud: 08Aug07, 17Jun08, 08Dec09, 04Jun10
superficial: 21Jul07, 27Jul07, 04Oct10; extremely: 04Jun10, 04Feb12; "one fifth of a thousandth of a millimeter": 22Dec11, 06Jan12, 04Feb12, 03Mar12, 28Mar12

T [top]
Templars: 29Oct07, 14Apr09
Templecombe: 29Oct07, 14Apr09
tenth century: 08Dec09
three-dimensional: 21Jul07, 21Jul09, 08Dec09
Thurston, Herbert: 06Jan12, 11Feb12
Tipler, Frank: 29Sep07
Tite, Michael: 28Feb08, 03Apr08, 13Dec08
Tomb: empty: Peter & John at: 11Jan11; Shroud recovered from: 11Jan11, 30Jan11; guards: 11Jan11
Tryon, Victor: 18Mar11
Tunkel, Victor: 11Jan11
Turin: Cathedral (see "Cathedrals"); Shroud: since 1578: 08Oct09, 04Oct10, 28Oct11, 14Nov11; 22Dec11; wartimes except: 1706: 14Nov11; 1939-46: 14Nov11
twelfth century: 24Aug07, 13Dec08

U [top]
ultraviolet: 22Dec11; laser: 22Dec11
Umberto II, of Savoy: bequeathed Shroud to Pope in 1983: 08Oct09, 07Oct11

V [top]
Vala, Leo: 18Oct11
vanillin: 12Feb08, 08Dec09
Vatican: believes Shroud authentic: 04Jun10; refuses to confirm it: 08Oct09, 04Jun10, 11Jan11; double-talk: 04Jun10; facing both ways: 04Jun10; pretense: 22Dec11
Vignon markings: 25Jul07, 29Jul08: radiocarbon dating wrong: 15Jan12, 11Feb12, 16Feb12, 23Feb12, 18Mar12, 23Apr12; topless square: 18Mar12
Vignon, Paul: 25Jul07, 11Feb12, 18Mar12
Villarreal, Robert: 10Oct08, 15Jan12
Vinland map: 07Aug11
VP-8 Image Analyzer: 21Jul09, 08Dec09

W [top]
Walsh, Bryan: 03Apr08
Walters, Guy: 17Apr10
water stains: 22Nov11
weave: 17Dec09; herringbone: 01Nov11; twill 3:1: 01Nov11
Whanger, Alan: 08Aug07, 01Dec07, 21Jul09, 16Feb12, 23Feb12
Wehrkamp-Richter, Reginald: 04Feb12
Wilcox, Robert: books: "The Truth ..." (2010): 12Mar10
Wilson, Ian: 11Feb08, 17Apr10; books: "Blood and ...", 07Aug11; "The Shroud" (2010): 04Feb10, 17Apr10, 16Nov10; "The Turin Shroud" (1978): 22Dec11; British Society for the Turin Shroud: Newsletter: 02Nov11; radiocarbon dating: 02Nov11
Witherington, Ben: 04Oct10
wool: 17Dec09
worship of?: 12Apr08
wounds: 04Jun10, 14Dec11: arms: 22Nov11; back: 22Nov11, 14Dec11; chest: 14Dec11; hands: 14Dec11; head: 22Nov11, 14Dec11; feet: 22Nov11, 14Dec11; face: 14Dec11; legs: 22Nov11, 14Dec11; side: 22Nov11, 14Dec11
writing?: 01Nov08; Hebrew: 07Nov08

X [top]
xrays: 29Oct07, 01Dec07

Z [top]
Zurich C14 laboratory: 28Feb08
Zygophyllum dumosum: 01Nov08, 22Nov08

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Created: 29 June 2015. Updated: 2 May 2021.