Saturday, June 23, 2018

6 May 1988: On this day 30 years ago in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud

© Stephen E. Jones[1]

This is part #11, "6 May 1988," of my series, "On this day 30 years ago in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud." For more information about this series, see part #1. I am still more than a month behind, but I will again catch up and then post each day in the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud as near to its 30th anniversary as possible. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated.

[Index #1] [Previous: 21Apr88 #10] [Next: 03Jul88 #12]

6 May 1988 At about 9:40am on Friday, 6 May 1988[2], Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory began the first of its four runs of radiocarbon dating its Shroud samples[3], which was also the first

[Above (enlarge): Photograph of those present at the Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating laboratory at 9:50 am on 6 May 1988[4] when the AMS computer terminal [left] displayed a date of the Shroud, which when calibrated, was "1350 AD" (see below). The alleged hacker, Timothy W. Linick (1946-89) [see 22Feb16], is in a black shirt standing prominently in the foreground[5]. The 1989 Nature paper in footnote 9 acknowledged that Linick wrote the 1986 paper which described in detail the AMS radiocarbon system at Arizona[6]. So it is significant that Linick is standing in front of his Arizona laboratory leaders and colleagues in this historic group photograph of the very first dating of the Shroud, because this is evidence that Linick was in charge of the AMS computerised dating process at Arizona laboratory and those present were acknowledging that. See also my 22Nov16 where Prof. Harry Gove (1922-2009) must have realised by September 1988 that Linick was the leaker of Arizona's first "1350 AD" date to David Sox (1936-2016) [see 30Dec15], but Gove (and presumably the other laboratory leaders) covered it up! See also 25Mar18.]

radiocarbon dating of the Shroud[7]. At about 9:50 am the AMS computer terminal screen displayed the year of the Shroud sample, which when calibrated for past variations of atmospheric carbon dioxide[8] by Arizona laboratory co-founder Douglas J. Donahue was announced by him to be "1350 AD"[9]. According to the AMS computer screen, the Shroud was only about 640 years old[10], and so it could not have been Jesus' burial shroud[11].

Here is Sox's 1988 description of that first 6 May 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud at Arizona [see 22Nov16]:

"At 9.50am what matters to the layman was available - the results of the measurements, the first carbon dating test on the Turin Shroud ... The night before the test Damon told Gove he would not be surprised to see the analysis yield a date around the fifth-century, because after that time the crucifixion was banned and a forger would not have known of the details depicted so accurately on the Shroud. Timothy Linick, a University of Arizona research scientist, said: `If we show the material to be medieval that would definitely mean that it is not authentic. If we date it back 2000 years, of course, that still leaves room for argument. It would be the right age - but is it the real thing?' Donahue's wife, who believed the Shroud was genuine, was going for 2000 years. So was Shirley Brignall [Gove's companion[12], who was a nuclear physicist[13] and an administrative assistant at Gove's Rochester University[14]. She and Gove had a bet. Gove said 1000 years although he hoped for twice that age. Whoever lost was to buy the other a pair of cowboy boots [see below]. The calculations were produced on the computer, and displayed on the screen. Even the dendrochronological correction was immediately available. All eyes were on the screen. The date would be when the flax used for the linen relic was harvested. Gove would be taking cowboy boots back to Rochester"[15].
Note: ■ The Introduction by Sox in his book, "The Shroud Unmasked" [right] in which this appears is dated "August 1988"[16], so the book had already been written by Sox well before the 13 October official announ- cement of the 1260-1390 dating results [see future "13Oct88"[17].

Paul Damon (1921-2005), with Donahue a co-founder of the Arizona laboratory, before the dating believed that the Shroud was "fifth-century [above], because after that time ... crucifixion was banned [by Emperor Constantine I in AD 337] and a forger would not have known of the details depicted so accurately on the Shroud"!

On the very same page of his book describing Arizona's first dating of the Shroud, Sox quoted "Timothy Linick [above], a University of Arizona research scientist"! Amazingly this seems not to have been noticed by any Shroud pro-authenticists, even by Bruno Bonnet-Eymard, who noted [Left [18].] that Linick, an Arizona laboratory signatory to the 1989 Nature report, had "died at the age of forty-two on 4 June 1989, in very unclear circumstances." But Gove and Linick's Arizona laboratory leaders would have noticed it and demanded that Linick `please explain' why he had breached his confident- iality agreement [see below].

■ Linick was an extreme anti-authenticist who would not have accepted that the Shroud was authentic even it it "date[d] ... back 2000 years" [above].

■ "The calculations were produced on the computer, and displayed on the screen" [above]. So they could have been the result of a computer hacking (allegedly by Linick), which installed a program on the AMS computer that intercepted Shroud sample dates coming from the AMS system and substituted them with computer-generated dates, which when calibrated and averaged, clustered around a year (1325), which was only a few decades before the Shroud had first appeared in undisputed history at Lirey, France in c.1355.

■ Gove had not told Sox the Shroud's "1350 AD" first radiocarbon date [later confirmed by Sox - see future], but Gove had told Sox that the Shroud's age was closer to 1,000 than 2,000 years [above]. So Gove also had breached his confidentiality agreement! [see below].

Here is Gove's 1996 description of that first 6 May 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud at

[Right (enlarge): Prof. Harry E. Gove (1922-2009), co-developer of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry radiocarbon dating[19].]

Arizona [see 22Sep15]:

"The first sample run was OX1 [an oxalic acid standard]. Then followed one of the controls. Each run consisted of a 10 second measurement of the carbon-13 current and a 50 second measurement of the carbon-14 counts. This is repeated nine more times and an average carbon-14/carbon-13 ratio calculated. All this was under computer control and the calculations produced by the computer were displayed on a cathode ray screen. The age of the control sample could have been calculated on a small pocket calculator but was not-everyone was waiting for the next sample-the Shroud of Turin! At 9:50 am 6 May 1988, Arizona time, the first of the ten measurements appeared on the screen. We all waited breathlessly. The ratio was compared with the OX sample and the radiocarbon time scale calibration was applied by Doug Donahue. His face became instantly drawn and pale. At the end of that one minute we knew the age of the Turin Shroud! The next nine numbers confirmed the first. It had taken me eleven years to arrange for a measurement that took only ten minutes to accomplish! Based on these 10 one minute runs, with the calibration correction applied, the year the flax had been harvested that formed its linen threads was 1350 AD-the shroud was only 640 years old! It was certainly not Christ's burial cloth but dated from the time its historic record began ... I remember Donahue saying that he did not care what results the other two laboratories got, this was the shroud's age. Although he was clearly disappointed in the result, he was justifiably confident that his AMS laboratory had produced the answer to the shroud's age. Like Donahue, I also had wished for a 2000 year age. That result would have been so much more exciting. Of course, it would not have proved the shroud was Christ's burial cloth but it certainly would have upped the odds. As a scientist, I would have (and did) bet it was not that old ... When the results of all three labs were finally averaged, the date of the flax harvesting came out to be 1325 AD ±33 years. "That agreed with this initial Arizona result obtained in ten minutes using a piece of the shroud cloth measuring less than 1/4" x 1/4" inch." It was a triumph for carbon dating by AMS if not for those who passionately believed it was the burial cloth of Jesus Christ or for those of us who wished it might have been. I had a bet with Shirley on the shroud's age-she bet 2000 ±100 years old and I bet 1000 ±100 years. Whoever won bought the other a pair of cowboy boots. Although my guess was wrong, it was closer than Shirley's. She bought me the cowboy boots. The reader, by now, will have guessed that despite the agreement I had signed [see below], I told Shirley the result that had been obtained that day. She and I had been associated with this shroud adventure now for almost exactly eleven years-there was no way I could not tell her. I knew she would never violate my confidence and she never did. Her disappointment in the result was deeper and palpably more poignant than mine. She has told me that, even now, her heart still tells her it is Christ's shroud"[20].
Note: ■ Gove also (with Sox above) states that "All this was under computer control" and "the calculations [were] produced by the computer" and it is those that "were displayed on" the AMS computer's terminal "screen" [above]! So they were not seeing the actual AMS system's date of the Shroud sample but what the AMS computer's program displayed it was! So again they could have been duped by a computer hacker (allegedly Linick), and in view of the overwhelming weight of the evidence that the Shroud is authentic, it is my theory that they were!

■ Gove's "At the end of that one minute we knew the age of the Turin Shroud" [above] is further evidence that they had been psychologically manipulated by the hacker's "1350 AD" date [see 22Feb16]. That is because, according to Gove, there was no need for Arizona, nor the other two laboratories, to do any further dating of the Shroud!

■ Gove's "the year the flax had been harvested that formed its linen threads was 1350 AD" [above] is a prime example of the "Law of the instrument," fallacy, popularly expressed in the saying, "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail":

"The concept known as the law of the instrument, otherwise known as the law of the hammer, Maslow's hammer (or gavel), or the golden hammer, is a cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool. As Abraham Maslow said in 1966, `I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail'"[21].
That is, Gove and his fellow nuclear physicists arrogantly assumed that they did not need to know where the Shroud actually was in 1350: owned by Geoffroy I de Charny (c.1300–1356), one of the most noble, most ethical, knights in France, who in 1350 was a prisoner of war in England [see 10Feb18]! As Ian Wilson pointed out, "all involved with the carbon dating ... were physicists" and in their arrogance, born of ignorance, their "instruments had spoken, and that was it":
"But if there was one feature of the British Museum press conference [of 13 October 1988] that particularly astonished, and frankly annoyed me, it was Professor Hall's flat assertion, on the basis merely of the averaged `1260-1390 AD' dates quoted ... that the carbon dates have overwhelmingly proved the Shroud's fraudulence. Effectively we are supposed to believe that on the basis of one single branch of science, nuclear physics (and all involved with the carbon dating, including Gonella and Tite, were physicists), every other scientific and historical contribution to the subject must now be tossed aside as totally worthless. As Hall admitted, it did not matter to him that there remained no clear explanation for how some hypothetical forger created the Shroud's image. The laboratories' instruments had spoken, and that was it"[22].
■ By his, "It was certainly not Christ's burial cloth but dated from the time its historic record began" [above]. Gove here showed that he and the other radiocarbon scientists had been psychologically manipulated by the hacker's "1350 AD" date, in that their usual scientific objectivity had been suspended so that they never considered how unlikely it was that: 1. "the flax had been harvested" in "1350 AD"; 2. the linen fibres had been separated from the flax by retting which takes many months; 3. the linen fibres were then spun into thread; 4. the thread was woven into a linen sheet; and 5. Jesus' image was forged onto that linen sheet, all in five years, because"the time" the Shroud's historic record began" was only 5 years later in 1355!

■ Further evidence of the psychological effect of the hacker's "1350 AD" date on the scientists' critical faculties was Donahue saying that, "he did not care what results the other two laboratories got, this was the shroud's age" [above]. But that was after only the first one of the four Arizona dating runs, and the other two laboratories were yet to start their dating! See above on Gove's similar suspension of normal scientific scepticism.

■ "Like Donahue, I also had wished for a 2000 year age. That result would have been so much more exciting"[above]. Gove is here either lying or more likely self-deceived. His sustained campaign to ensure that STURP had no part in the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud, and his objection to some STURP members wearing Christian crosses revealed Gove to be a virulent (if not fanatical) anti-Christian - see 27Apr87, 15Jun87 and 10Oct87. See also next where Gove would have accepted the Shroud was authentic even if it did have a 2000 year age. Besides, if Gove really had wished for a 2000 year age of the Shroud why didn't he `put his money where his mouth was'?

■ "Of course, it would not have proved the shroud was Christ's burial cloth but it certainly would have upped the odds" [above]. Gove here reveals that he too, like Linick, was an extreme Shroud anti-authenticist [see above], in that he would not have accepted that the Shroud was authentic even if it had "a 2000 year age"! Clearly no amount of evidence for the Shroud's authenticity would have sufficed for Gove (or Linick). They were therefore invincibly ignorant regarding the Shroud's authenticity:

"There does remain, nonetheless, a cast of mind which seems peculiarly closed to evidence. When confronted with such a mind, one feels helpless, for no amount of evidence seems to be clinching. Frequently the facts are simply ignored or brushed aside as somehow deceptive, and the principles are reaffirmed in unshakable conviction. One seems confronted with what has been called `invincible ignorance'"[23].

■ "When the results of all three labs were finally averaged, the date of the flax harvesting came out to be 1325 AD ±33 years" [above]. Either Gove couldn't do simple arithmetic (the midpoint of 1260-1390, which he agreed was the range of the Shroud's radiocarbon dating[24], is 1325 AD ±65 years)! Or did Gove deliberately falsify the range, to avoid the problem that 1325 + 65 = 1390 which is 35 years after Shroud first appeared in undisputed history in 1355?:

"Omitting to address the problems of the non-representative nature of the mediaeval mean, or the value of the entire statistical analysis, Gove instead somewhat characteristically resolved everything by simply falsifying the mean. Pretending, without showing his workings, to determine the mean with an extreme precision (1325 years ± 33 years), he distanced himself from all the objections made and others which went unsaid, not least by ignoring even mention of any statistical calculations. Having thereby disposed of the spread among the dates, he behaved as if issues such as the control samples and the question of their origin should similarly thenceforth be beyond dispute"[25].
■ "That agreed with this initial Arizona result obtained in ten minutes

[Left (enlarge): Extract from Table 1 in the 1989 Nature paper, showing the dates of each run at each laboratory of Sample 1, the Shroud[26]. The dates are years before 1950[27]. Thus the corrected mean of Arizona's first date was actually 1950-591=1359. As can be seen there was a very wide spread of the mean dates within each laboratory and across the three laboratories. Arizona's mean maximum was 701 and its minimum was 591, a spread of 110 years! Oxford's mean maximum was 795 and its minimum 730, a spread of 65 years. Zurich's maximum was 733 and its minimum 635, a spread of 98 years. For all three laboratories the maximum mean was 795 (Oxford) and the minimum was 591 (Arizona's first date), a spread of 204 years!]

using a piece of the shroud cloth measuring less than 1/4" x 1/4" inch." [above]. Gove doesn't consider how amazing it is, that the very first dating at Arizona, "1350 AD," agreed to within 25 years of the midpoint, 1325, of the average of all the other datings! Especially considering the very wide spread of all those datings: 204 years! (see above), and Arizona's 110 years. In fact the mean of Arizona's first date, 591±30 is not a typical one: it is the lowest of all the means. And because lowest is most recent, it is the upper limit of the dating's calendar years. It was pointed out in 1994 by a Victor de Vincenzo in the USA that if it was not for Oxford's inconsistently older dates, the dating would have overlapped even more the year 1355, when the Shroud first appeared in undisputed history:

"Father Peter Rinaldi ... was also disturbed by the inconsistencies of the 1988 results as published in Nature in 1989. The Arizona and Switzerland lab dates gave a later age (late 14th century) than the final published results. The Oxford lab dates came in late and conveniently low enough to skew the average of the three labs to an early 14th century date instead of a late 14th century date. Had the Oxford lab been consistent with the other two labs, the late 14th century results would clearly have made the whole procedure erroneous since we know that the Holy Shroud had to have been in existence in the early 14th Century since it was exhibited in 1355 in France"[28].
So presumably it was part of the design of the hacker's (allegedly Linick's) algorithm, that the Shroud's date could not go above 1350. See my 22Febr16 where I proposed that 1350 "was a `hard-wired' straight substitution ... for the actual Shroud date." See future "16Feb89" where this much wider than expected variability of the laboratories' results for the Shroud sample, which was even admitted in the 1989 Nature paper's Table 2 summary of Table 1, is inexplicable [13Jun14, 26Oct14, 11Feb15, 18Nov15 & 24Oct16] and indeed impossible [26Oct14, 03Jun15, 27Aug15 & 26May18] if the dates of the Shroud sample at each laboratory were real. But it is explicable if those dates were computer-generated by a hacker's (allegedly Linick's) program!

■ "It was a triumph for carbon dating by AMS if not for those who passionately believed it was the burial cloth of Jesus Christ ..." [above]. As Ian Wilson observed:

"... it would seem more and more evident that in the laboratories' eyes the Shroud was a hotly prized test for the AMS carbon-dating method, rather than the AMS method a cool, wholly impartial test for the Shroud"[29].
As for Gove's "... not for those who passionately believed it was the burial cloth of Jesus Christ," Gove died in 2009, so maybe he now knows (too late) how wrong he was?

■ "I had a bet with Shirley on the shroud's age-she bet 2000 ±100 years old and I bet 1000 ±100 years. Whoever won bought the other a pair of cowboy boots. Although my guess was wrong, it was closer than Shirley's. She bought me the cowboy boots."[above]. See also above where Gove had breached his confidentiality agreement (see below) by telling Sox that Arizona's first date of the Shroud was closer to 1,000 than 2,000 years ago. That meant that Gove twice breached his confidentiality agreement by first telling it to his companion Shirley Brignall. Wilson, commenting on this part of Sox's book, noted:

"We are yet again reminded of the soldiers casting lots for Jesus's clothing [Mt 27:35; Mk 15:24; Lk 23:34; Jn 19:24] at the foot of the cross..."[30].

■ "The reader, by now, will have guessed that despite the agreement I had signed [see below], I told Shirley the result that had been obtained that day. She and I had been associated with this shroud adventure now for almost exactly eleven years-there was no way I could not tell her. I knew she would never violate my confidence and she never did." [above]. Sox had already `outed' Gove on this ~8 years before [above]. If "there was no way" that Gove "could not tell" Brignall Arizona's first date of the Shroud (and presumably Gove did tell her it was "1350") then he should not have signed the confidentiality agreement. Gove is trying to justify his dishonesty by claiming that Brignall "would never" and "never did" violate his confidence (how would Gove know that?) is besides the point. Archeologist William Meacham pointed out:
"In sum, he [Gove] gave his word to his colleagues, as a scientist and a gentleman, and he broke it the very same day"[31]!
Before the dating Gove, who had been invited by Donahue to be present as an observer [see 25Mar18] arrived with Shirley Brignall in Tucson, Arizona on the afternoon of the day before, 5 May 1988[32]. Gove phoned Donahue who suggested he (not Brignall) be at the laboratory at 8am the next morning[33]. That evening Damon called at the motel that Gove and Brignall were staying and updated them on the sample removal, its cleaning and that Arizona had divided the total area of its Shroud samples (see 26May18 where due to a mistake in cutting, Arizona was given its sample in two pieces) "about 2 square centimetres (0.3 square inches) ... into four pieces each about 0.5 square centimetres or 1/4" x 1/4" in area" and stored them each in different places[34]. After the dating, Gove and Brignall were shown

[Above (enlarge): Photomicrograph of one of Arizona laboratory's remaining undated Shroud sub-samples, taken by former STURP photographer Barrie Schwortz in 2012[35]. As can be seen, it has no obvious contamination or foreign fibres. This looks like it may be a part of the sample that Gove saw, from a black-and-white photograph of it in Gove's book[36]. Of that sample Gove pointed out:

"If the shroud were actually first century and modern contamination produced the 14th century result this sample would have to be two thirds shroud and one third contamination"[37].]
one of Arizona's four subdivided pieces of its samples, which had been cleaned[38]. Of that sample he saw (which may have been a larger piece from which the above sub-sample was cut) Gove noted:
"After cleaning the shroud linen, it was still slightly yellowish in colour. The shroud sample could be readily identified. This was actually an advantage because it dispelled the concern that 14th century linen had been somehow substituted for shroud samples"[39].
However, this is further evidence for my hacking theory. See my 23Jul15 that, "Conventional explanations of the discrepancy [i.e. carbon contamination, bioplastic coating, invisible repairs] all fail."

At 8 am of the next morning, the day of Arizona's first dating, 6 May 1988, Gove arrived at the radiocarbon dating laboratory alone[40]. Gove had previously asked Donahue if Brignall could also attend the dating but that was refused[41]. Gove would be the only one present at Arizona's first dating of the Shroud who was not a member of the Arizona AMS group[42]. Donahue then asked Gove to sign a confidentiality agreement as follows:

"We the undersigned, understand that radiocarbon age results for the Shroud of Turin obtained from the University of Arizona AMS facility are confidential. We agree not to communicate the results to anyone-spouse, children, friends, press, etc., until that time when results are generally available to the public"[43].
Note that the confidentiality agreement prohibited communicating the Shroud dating results even to "spouses"! So, as mentioned previously, if "there was no way" that Gove "could not tell" Brignall, who was effectively Gove's spouse, what Arizona's first date of the Shroud was, then Gove, if he was a man of honour, should not have signed the agreement as he did (below). Let alone that Gove also told Sox before August 1988 when Sox's book was completed, that the result of Arizona's first first dating of the Shroud was that its age was closer to 1,000 than 2,000 years (see above)!

Gove continued:

"It had been signed by D J Donahue, Brad Gore, L J Toolin, P E Damon, Timothy Jull and Art Hatheway, all connected with the Arizona AMS facility, before I signed. My signature was followed by T W Linick and P J Sercel, also from the Arizona facility"[44].
So Gove would have had no moral authority to criticise Linick for not honouring his signing of the confidentiality agreement when Gove discovered by September 1988 [see above] that Linick had told Sox that the result of Arizona's first Shroud dating was "1350" [see 30Dec15], when Gove himself had told Sox that the result was that the Shroud's age was closer to 1,000 than 2,000 years!

Continued in the next part #12 of this series.

Notes
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. Gove, H.E., 1996, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK, p.264.[return]
3. Damon, P.E., et al., 1989, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," Nature, Vol. 337, 16 February, pp.611-615, 611. [return].
4. Gove, 1996, p.176H. [return]
5. Jull, A.J.T. & Suess, H.E., 1989, "Timothy W. Linick," Radiocarbon, Vol 31, No 2. [return]
6. Linick, T.W., et al., 1986, "Operation of the NSF-Arizona accelerator facility for radioisotope analysis and results from selected collaborative research projects," Radiocarbon, Vol. 28, No. 2a, pp.522-533. [return]
7. Gove, 1996, p.324; Meacham, W., 2005, "The Rape of the Turin Shroud: How Christianity's Most Precious Relic was Wrongly Condemned and Violated," Lulu Press: Morrisville NC, p.92. [return]
8. Sox, H.D., 1988, "The Shroud Unmasked: Uncovering the Greatest Forgery of All Time," The Canterbury Press: Scoresby, VIC Australia, p.146. [return]
9. Gove, 1996, p.264; 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.310; Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, p.9; Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London, p.308. [return]
10. Gove, 1996, p.264; Garza-Valdes, L.A., 1998, "The DNA of God?," Hodder & Stoughton: London, pp.163, 180. [return]
11. Gove, 1996, p.264. [return]
12. Antonacci, M., 2000, "Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY, p.183. [return]
13. Wilson, I., 1991, "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London, p.8. [return]
14. Gove, 1996, p.312. [return]
15. Sox, 1988, p.146. [return]
16. Sox, 1988, p.6. [return]
17. Wilson. I., 1988, "Recent Publications," BSTS Newsletter," No. 20, October, pp.18-19; Crispino, D., 1990, "Recently Published," Shroud Spectrum International, Nos. 35/36, June/September, pp.29-37, 30; Paci, S.M., 1990. "The Case is Not Closed!," Shroud News, No 60, August, pp.4-11, 8; Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta, pp.11, 109; Guerrera, V., 2001, "The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity," TAN: Rockford IL, p.134. [return]
18. Bonnet-Eymard, B., 2000, "The Holy Shroud is as Old as the Risen Jesus, IV. Caution! Danger!, The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the XXth Century, No 330, Online edition, May. [return]
19. Extract from, "Dr. Harry Gove Co-developer, Accelerator Mass Spectrometry," El carbono 14, por Manuel Carreira, Sabana Santa, 2013. [return]
20. Gove, 1996, pp.264-265. [return]
21. "Law of the instrument," Wikipedia, 22 April 2018. [return]
22. Wilson, I., 1988, "Editorial and The Carbon Dating Results: Is This Now the End?," BSTS Newsletter, No. 20, October, pp.2-10, 4. [return]
23. Fearnside, W.W. & Holther, W.B., 1959, "Fallacy the Counterfeit of Argument," Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs NJ, 25th printing, p.113. [return]
24. Gove, 1996, p.301; Gove, H.E., 1999, "From Hiroshima to the Iceman: The Development and Applications of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK, p.161. [return]
25. Van Oosterwyck-Gastuche, M.C., 1991, "The dating of the Shroud to the Middle Ages: Episodes in a game of technological bluff," BSTS Newsletter, 29, September, pp.7-14, 12. [return]
26. Damon, et al., 1989, p.612. [return]
27. Damon, et al., 1989, p.611. [return]
28. de Vincenzo, V., 1994, "12 reasons why I cannot accept the carbon-14 test results on the Holy Shroud of Turin," Shroud News, No 82, April, pp.3-13, 11 (typos corrected). [return]
29. Wilson, I., 1989, "Recent Publications: Archaeometry," BSTS Newsletter, No. 23, September, pp.14-19, 19. [return]
30. Wilson. I., 1988, "Recent Publications," BSTS Newsletter," No. 20, October, pp.18-19, 19. [return]
31. Meacham, 2005, p.93. [return]
32. Gove, 1996, p.259. [return]
33. Ibid. [return]
34. Gove, 1996, pp.259-260. [return]
35. "New Photographs Of Arizona Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory Samples," Shroud.com, November 21, 2012. [return]
36. Gove, 1996, p.265. [return]
37. Ibid. [return]
38. Gove, 1996, pp.259-260. [return]
39. Gove, 1996, p.260. [return]
40. Gove, 1996, p.262. [return]
41. Ibid. [return]
42. Ibid. [return]
43. Ibid. [return]
44. Ibid. [return]

Posted 23 June 2018. Updated 29 March 2023.

Friday, June 22, 2018

Date index 2007: The Shroud of Turin blog

The Shroud of Turin blog
DATE INDEX 2007
© Stephen E. Jones
[1]

This is the date index to my 2007 posts on this my The Shroud of Turin blog. The posts are listed in reverse date order (most recent uppermost). For further information on this date index series see the Main Date Index. [Previous: Main index. Next: 2008]


2007
19-Dec-07: TSoT: Bibliography "H"

[Right (enlarge): The front body image on the Shroud of Turin, Fortean Picture Library (no longer online). This was the photo in my very first post on this blog (see below).]

10-Dec-07: TSoT: Bibliography "G"
04-Dec-07: TSoT: Bibliography "S"
01-Dec-07: Shroud News - November 2007
26-Nov-07: TSoT: Bibliography "C"
24-Nov-07: TSoT: Bibliography "I"
18-Nov-07: TSoT: Bibliography "A"
14-Nov-07: TSoT: Bibliography "W"
09-Nov-07: TSoT: Bibliography "M"
06-Nov-07: TSoT: Bibliography "J"
02-Nov-07: TSoT: 1.1.1. Names of The Shroud of Turin
29-Oct-07: TSoT: 1.1. What is the Shroud of Turin?
29-Oct-07: Shroud News - October 2007
09-Oct-07: Shroud News - September 2007
29-Sep-07: Shroud News - August 2007
24-Aug-07: Pope Benedict XVI on the Shroud of Turin being "an image that has not been made by human hands"!
11-Aug-07: The Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus?: Bibliography
09-Aug-07: The Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus?: 1. Introduction
08-Aug-07: Bogus: Shroud of Turin? #10: The Shroud's blood and pollen closely matches the Sudarium of Oviedo's
06-Aug-07: The Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus?: Contents
03-Aug-07: Off-topic: Norton Antivirus froze my computer so I switched to AVG Free
29-Jul-07: Shroud News - July 2007
27-Jul-07: Leonardo: The Man Behind the Shroud? #5
25-Jul-07: Fr. Maurus Green's "Enshrouded in Silence" is now webbed
21-Jul-07: Leonardo: The Man Behind the Shroud? #4
13-Jul-07: Leonardo: The Man Behind the Shroud? #3
08-Jul-07: Leonardo: The Man Behind the Shroud? #2
06-Jul-07: Leonardo: The Man Behind the Shroud? #1
30-Jun-07: Introduction to my The Shroud of Turin (TSoT) blog!


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

Posted: 22 June 2018. Updated: 15 August 2021.

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

`I would like to point out an important mistranslation of a French expression in your post'

© Stephen E. Jones[1]

Mario, this is my belated reply in a separate post to your comment of 14 May under my 2014 post, "Lirey (1): Turin Shroud Encyclopedia." Your words (including where you quoted me) are in bold to distinguish them from mine.

Dear Stephen,

I would like to point out an important mistranslation of a French expression in your post. You wrote

"That would also explain Geoffroy II's explanation that the Shroud was "freely given" to his father and Geoffroy II's daughter Marguerite's explanation that it was "conquis par feu" ("conquered by fire"), i.e. obtained by conquest in battle, by her grandfather Geoffroy I."

The translation of "conquis par feu messire Geoffroy de Charny, mon grant père," (it is essential to gave the full quote to translate "feu" correctly) is unrelated to "fire". It is a well-known idiom in French that "feu", placed before the name of a person, is an adjective meaning "deceased". See for example http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/feu_feue_feus_feues/33448 for an explanation.

Thanks. You have explained that "feu" in this context does not mean "fire." (However see below that it could have been a deliberate double-meaning by Marguerite de Charny of "fire" and "deceased"). But you have left unexplained what she meant by "conquis." According to my wife's French-English dictionary, the "Concise Oxford Hachette French Dictionary" (2009), at page 127, "conquis" has an arrow to "conquérir," which in turn means, "to conquer," "to capture," "to win," "to win over." So the meaning is still that the deceased Geoffroy I de Charny (c. 1300–1356) possessed the Shroud by, or through, conquest.

The alternative, that Geoffroy I's granddaughter Marguerite de Charny (c. 1393-1460) "obtained the Shroud through the death of Geoffrey de Charny ... her grandfather":

"... the canons of the church in Lirey petitioned Marguerite to return the Shroud to them, as it belonged to them. Marguerite refused and in a deposition stated that the Shroud was "conquis par feu messier Geofroy de Charny." This is a curious phrase which has caused a degree of puzzlement to historians. An explanation has been suggested by Patrick Farrell of Rossshire in Scotland. His suggestion is that feu refers to Geoffrey de Charny and is the same as in the well-known phrase feu le roi, vive le roi, meaning `the king is dead, long live the king'. The derivative of feu in this sense is not `fire' but the Latin word fatutus meaning deceased. In this context conquis means no more than `obtained'[2]. The meaning of Marguerite's phrase would therefore seem simply to be that she obtained the Shroud through the death of Geoffrey de Charny; in other words it was hers by right of inheritance"[3].
is literally false since Marguerite did not inherit the Shroud from her grandfather, who died ~37 years before she was born. And it is meaningless if she meant that she inherited it from her father Geoffroy II, who in turn inherited it from his father Geoffroy I, since that would not have been in dispute by the canons of Lirey.

Marguerite therefore must have meant that her grandfather Geoffroy I de Charny's possession of the Shroud was his by right of conquest[4] and therefore not something that her late husband, Humbert de Villersexel (1385–1437) could have given away to the canons of Lirey:

"Following these ructions in 1389, interest in the cloth died down until 1418. During these years France was ravaged by war and invasion, and under the circumstances the canons of Lirey decided (or were compelled) to confide their treasures, including the cloth, to Humbert de la Roche-Saint Hyppolite [Humbert de Villersexel, Marguerite's second husband] on 6 July 1418 who gave them a receipt for `ung drap ou quel est la figure ou represéntation du suaire Nostre Seigneur Jesucrist, lequel est en ung coffre armoye des armes de Charny' (A cloth on which is a figure or representation of the shroud of our Lord Jesus Christ in a chest engraved with the arms of Charny') [see below]. Humbert died twenty-five years later in 1443 [sic], before he could return the shroud to Lirey. After vainly asking his widow Marguerite de Charny to return it, the dean and canons sued her in the Parlement of Dole. She replied that her late husband's receipt for the relics did not bind her in matters concerning 'le sanct suaire, lequel piece fut conquis par feu messire Geoffroi de Charny, mon grant père', and further, the relics in question would not be safe at Lirey, because it was vulnerable in these troubled times of war"[5].

[Above (enlarge)[6]: The bottom `third' of the Lirey pilgrim's badge showing the reliquary [chest] in which the Shroud was then kept. The coat of arms shields of Geoffroy I de Charny are on the right of the reliquary and that of Jeanne de Vergy is on its left[7]. See my 13Apr18.]

I therefore agree with the late Dorothy Crispino (1916-2014) and Ian Wilson that Marguerite was being deliberately ambiguous:

"... on 19 September 1356, at the disaster of Poitiers, Geoffroy de Charny was killed, holding aloft the Oriflamme until he fell. ... That the preux chevalier did receive the Shroud in connection with a battle seems implied in the statement of his granddaughter, Marguerite de Charny, who claimed that the Shroud was `conquered' by the late messire de Charny.4 A slightly different account was recorded in a Bull of Clement VII (1390) in which Geoffroy II attests that the Shroud was given to his father sibi liberaliter oblatam; freely or generously presented to him. The statements given by Geoffroy II (1389 & 1390) and by his daughter Marguerite (1443) are not necessarily incompatible. They might both be correct, each one but a glimpse of the whole story. They do agree in this: that the Shroud was personal property, legitimately acquired, and legitimately held by Geoffroy's heirs. Neither Geoffroy II nor Marguerite makes any mention of the place, the donor, the circumstances; these are still totally unknown. ... 4. Fossati's amputated quotation, `Conquis par feu' gives the impression that the Shroud had been taken in the fire of battle. The complete phrase, given by Perret, reads that the Shroud `Fut conquis par feu messire Geoffroy de Charny;' 'feu' in French have [sic] the two meaning of 'fire' and late, lately deceased'"[8].

"As for Margaret de Charny's already quoted 'conquis par feu' remark, this seems to have been almost deliberately enigmatic, as if she was either ignorant, or unprepared to divulge what she knew, of the real truth"[9].
That real truth was that Marguerite's ancestor, Othon de la Roche (c.1170-1234) had looted the Shroud during the 1204 Sack of Constantinople, and so the Shroud was the property of the Byzantine Empire (c. 330–1453), which then still existed (until 1453), and if the de Charnys admitted that truth then the Byzantine Emperor John V Palaiologos (1332–1391), who was then living in Chambéry, France, would demand it be returned, creating a diplomatic crisis for Pope Clement:
"The de Charnys could not divulge the provenance of the Shroud or openly declare it to be the true Shroud of Christ, because it was not rightfully theirs - or any other Westerner's. They would have risked having it confiscated. It was preferable to pay lip-service to the idea that it was a copy, maintain possession of the cloth and look for a future opportunity to promote its cause. The Shroud's problematic provenance also explains why Pope Clement VII permitted displays of the cloth to continue (to the dismay of Pierre d'Arcis), but only if it was publicly proclaimed to be 'a figure or representation of the Shroud of Our Lord', not the real thing. As a relative of the de Charnys, Clement almost certainly knew the cloth's provenance, but he could not allow it to be recognized as the true Shroud of Christ, for fear of causing a diplomatic incident. The Shroud was a cultural treasure that meant as much to the Greek emperors of Byzantium as the Elgin Marbles do to Greeks today, and it had been stolen from them in a looting campaign as brazen as any perpetrated by Napoleon or the Nazis. Nearly two centuries after the Fourth Crusade, the Sack of Constantinople was still an extremely sore point in Byzantium, and, if John V Palaiologos, the Byzantine emperor at the time, had heard that the priceless Sindon was being displayed in France, he would have made moves to recover it. Pope Clement would have been put on the spot, and the anticipated reunion of the Roman and Byzantine Churches, which was being actively discussed at the time, would have been put in jeopardy. Clement, then, had good reason not to acknowledge the real identity of the Shroud and to enjoin perpetual silence on Bishop d'Arcis as well"[10].
See my 02Apr16, 15Aug17 and 03Jul18.

The document "Pour scavoir la vérité", which you use I believe to state that Philip VI gave the Shroud to Geoffroy, states that the gift was due to Geoffroy's attempt to regain Calais. Why to claim otherwise? What is disproving that claim about Calais? I do elsewhere but I cannot see any reference in my 2014 post that your comment was under to the document "Pour scavoir la vérité" ("To know the truth"), except in footnote 50 above, where it is not about King Philip VI having given the Shroud to Geoffroy I. From memory I have only stated it in my post of 24May15 where I fully explain my reasons for thinking that. I do not claim that the "To know the truth" was correct in its claim that Philip VI gave the Shroud to Geoffroy I after the 1349 Battle of Calais. In fact I claim that Philip VI gave the Shroud to Geoffroy I (or had promised it to him) in 1343. See my 10Feb18 post.

Why do you think that the Shroud was in Besançon before 1349? There are no traces of a shroud with an image before 1523, as given by the documents of the chapitre of Saint-Jean still available today. There is also nothing about Besançon in my 2014 post that your comment was under, but I only just now realised that you are referring to my comment of 4 January 2015 under that post and above your comment. It would have helped if you had made that clear. Blogger only sends me the comment in isolation, it does not show me the previous comments under that post and I can't be expected to remember what I wrote in a comment 3½ years ago! As for why I think the Shroud was in Besançon in 1349, I am following (albeit not exactly-I propose that Geoffroy I had, or was promised, the Shroud ~6 years before 1349) Shroudie historian Dan Scavone's `missing years 1204-1355' Besançon theory (as I am sure you are aware):

"There are other suggested itineraries for the Shroud between Constantinople and Lirey, some quite plausible. All suffer from the same total lack of documentation in the form of direct reference to the Shroud. My personal choice -- though I would not object if Wilson's turned out to be correct -- is the infamous Besançon theory. I can only present it in outline. Its strength is that only the city of Besançon in Franch-Comte claimed to possess the Shroud from 1208 to 1349. The Templars did not, the Toucy family did not, the Smyrna and Cyprus leaders did not, Mary Margaret did not, the Hungarian royal family did not. The pertinent aspects of this thesis are that Burgundian knight Othon de La Roche acquired the Shroud after the Fourth Crusade. Its presence in Athens, where Othon became Lord in 1205, is indirectly attested by Nicholas of Otranto in 1205-6 and directly in a letter of Theodore of Epirus date August 1, 1205. Later Othon sent it home to the custody of the Bishop of Besançon. In 1349 the Cathedral of St-Etienne burned down and the Shroud disappeared. As most readers know, about 1353-55 the Lirey Shroud made its entrance in history from mysterious, or at least unknown, origins. Arguably, Jeanne de Vergy, of a prominent Besançon family, the new wife of Geoffroy I de Charny, appropriated the cloth and delivered it to Lirey and Geoffroy. True, there are no records of the Shroud so early (1208) in Besançon: but it is also true that the cathedral and its records were destroyed by fire in 1349 and French revolutionaries destroyed remaining religious records along with a painted copy of the Shroud in 1793. Today, town records go back only to 1412. If adequate records do not exist in Besançon, the reader should note again that the Shroud is not recorded anywhere from 1208-1355"[11].

"It is important to understand here that all the writers, from Chifflet to Vignon, who insist that Besançon never had the Turin Shroud because the replacement was only 8 feet long and held only a frontal image (which could be seen until 1793) are missing the point and wasting ink. ... Of course the 1375 cloth was not the real Shroud (already well-documented in Lirey by the D'Arcy memorandum)! The thrust of the Besançon case must go to its possession before 1349, for which there is actually some documentation in the report of Nicholas of Otranto and in the letter of Theodore of Epirus of August 1, 1205 which places the Shroud in Athens (not a copy, as some suggest). From Athens and Othon the long- enduring `smoking gun' of Besançon tradition says the cloth was sent to their city. Granted, the case for Besançon is virtually, an argument from silence, but not absolutely so, as we now see. If the Shroud was not in Besançon, it was somewhere else, in silence -- entirely and absolutely unattested by any document. All theories [about where the Shroud was between 1204 and 1355] are argumenta e silentio" (emphasis original)[12].

"On Besançon and other plausible theories for the Shroud from 1204 to 1355 The hypothesis, herein elaborated, which identifies the Turin Shroud in its early Lirey period (1355-1390) with the cloth previously used in the Easter liturgy at the Cathedral of St. Etienne at Besançon in the 13th and 14th century, has been thoroughly scrutinized by a number of excellent scholars of the Turin Shroud, among whom are Edward Wuenschel, Paul Vignon, and Paul de Gail. Their success in refuting the Besançon hypothesis (in its several forms) has appeared very strong, but never conclusive. Wuenschel was completely devoted to the Besançon possibilities until dissuaded by Vignon. The Besançon hypothesis has remained tantalizingly attractive. Indeed, de Gail complains at the persistence of modern scholars in entertaining the Besançon connection. Up to the present moment, all other theories -- many are very plausible -- of the Shroud's whereabouts, from its `disappearance' from Constantinople around 1204 until it came into the possession of Geoffroy de Charny in the 1350s, remain absolutely devoid of supporting documentation. Indeed, not one person or group to whose possession the Shroud as been imputed during this period has ever claimed to possess or even to know the existence of the Shroud in any known document? Meanwhile the Besançon theory has recently acquired a more reassuring collection of supporting evidences If the Shroud was not at Besançon where it has been claimed from ca. 1208 to 1349, it was somewhere else, absolutely unattested and undocumented" (emphasis original, footnotes omitted)[13].

"Even the present fresh approach to the Besançon thesis cannot produce certainty, but it has the merit of the following points. 1) It does not directly contradict any documentary evidence about the acquisition of the Shroud by Geoffroy I de Charny, for such documentation does not exist. Indeed, it may explain his mysterious ownership. 2) It establishes a possible location for the Shroud from 1204 to about 1349, and from 1349 to 1355. 3) This thesis can provide an account of the Shroud's departure from Constantinople and its arrival in the west. Finally, it corrects some imprecise interpretations of the available source material from Constantinople, Troyes, and Besançon. In short, the Besançon thesis is at the same time as plausible and as tenuous, as attractive and as frustrating, and as full of conjecture as any other hypothesis ..."[14].

"About ten years ago I reintroduced the often-voiced and as often resisted theory of the Shroud's sojourn in Besançon, a city straddling medieval France and the German Holy Roman Empire. ... the facts available today, some I personally uncovered, are much stronger than what was commonly known two generations ago when Vignon persuaded Wuenschel away from the same theory ... Documents that are stronger than most that deal with the Shroud point to Othon de La Roche, high-ranking knight of the Fourth Crusade, as receiving the fiefdom of Athens as his reward for service - and also the Constantinople Shroud. He was a native knight of Franche-Comte, capital city, Besançon. This city alone has claimed the Shroud during the 150 `lost' years, but its presence there is much debated. Let me summarize here the positive elements of this Besançon theory. In 1349 the St. Etienne (St. Stephen) Church burned down. The shroud lodged there was lost. In 1353-1354 Jeanne de Vergy, of a prominent Besançon family, wed Geoffroy I de Charny. One of the Vergys customarily held the post of seneschal of Besançon. We know only from the 1389 memorandum of Bishop d'Arcis that this Geoffroy I possessed the Shroud in Lirey by 1355. Geoffroy went to his death in 1356 never having announced this himself. Sometime later, Jeanne's family crest of appeared next to Geoffroy's on the Seine Medallion. She was his second wife, and her family's arms there is significant, suggesting a share in the Shroud's ownership. In 1376, when Jeanne's cousin Guillaume de Vergy was Bishop in Besançon, the city's lost shroud mysteriously reappeared there. Its authenticity was `proved' by raising a corpse back to life. This new shroud was a copy (the original is well-attested for twenty years already in Lirey) ... It had only the frontal image and was clearly only a painting. In 1389 d'Arcis had said an artist of `about thirty-four years' prior had admitted making the Lirey image. ... As a final note, in Besançon, on the frontier between France and Germany, the Vergys were in the party that wished the city to be a part of France. It would follow from the reconstruction thus far that Jeanne took the Shroud after the fire (1349-50) to King Philip VI, thus saving it for France, and he made it his wedding gift to his Porte-oriflamme Geoffroy I and his new bride. A text of 1525 that begins `To Know the Truth' (pour scavoir la Verite) and found at Lirey stated that `Philip had the Shroud,' and Dubarle has also accepted its implications: the Shroud as a royal gift to Geoffroy I. This hypothesis must yet pass sindonic peer-review. We know that the documents pertaining to a shroud in Besançon do not clearly go back to Othon, Franche-comptois knight who surely received the one in Constantinople in 1204; we also know that the archives of Besançon were destroyed once in the 14th c. fire and again during the French Revolution, when the second shroud was declared (rightly) to be an artwork and was torn into strips for bandages. Today the Besançon archives begin only in 1412, meaning that all or nearly all documents before that no longer exist. We are asked to accept here the smoking gun- evidence"[15].
There is more on this in Scavone's other writings, but it would make this post too long. Again note that I diverge from Scavone in his claim that Jeanne de Vergy personally took the Shroud out of the burned St. Etienne's Cathedral, Besançon in 1349. Rather, I claim that the de Vergys (presumably Bishop Guillaume [William] de Vergy) had transferred the Shroud to King Philip VI in c.1343 to prevent it being captured in an English invasion, and that the Besançon Cathedral fire of 1349 was an accident, which however enabled the de Vergys to `cover their tracks'.

Best regards,
-- Mario Latendresse
Thanks.

Notes
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. Wilson, I, 1998, "`Conquis par feu' - Another Shroud Mystery Solved?," BSTS Newsletter No. 48, December. [return]
3. Oxley, M., 2010, "The Challenge of the Shroud: History, Science and the Shroud of Turin," AuthorHouse: Milton Keynes UK, p.66. [return]
4. Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta, p.183. [return]
5. Currer-Briggs, N., 1995, "Shroud Mafia: The Creation of a Relic?," Book Guild: Sussex UK, p.35. [return]
6. Latendresse, M., 2012, "A Souvenir from Lirey," Sindonology.org. [return]
7. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, p.224D; ; Maher, R.W., 1986, "Science, History, and the Shroud of Turin," Vantage Press: New York NY, p.96; Wilson, I., 1986, "The Evidence of the Shroud," Guild Publishing: London, p.5; 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.127; Antonacci, M., 2000, "Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY, p.150; Tribbe, F.C., 2006, "Portrait of Jesus: The Illustrated Story of the Shroud of Turin," Paragon House Publishers: St. Paul MN, Second edition, p.42; Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London, p.221. [return]
8. Crispino, D.C., 1981, "Why Did Geoffroy de Charny Change His Mind?," Shroud Spectrum International, No. 1, December, pp.28-34, 29, 34. [return]
9. Crispino, D.C., 1981, "Why Did Geoffroy de Charny Change His Mind?," Shroud Spectrum International, No. 1, December, pp.28-34, 29, 34. [return]
10. de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London, pp.182-183. [return]
11. Scavone, D.C., "The History of the Turin Shroud to the 14th C.," in Berard, A., ed., 1991, "History, Science, Theology and the Shroud," Symposium Proceedings, St. Louis Missouri, June 22-23, 1991, The Man in the Shroud Committee of Amarillo, Texas: Amarillo TX, pp.171-204, 198. [return]
12. Scavone, 1991, p.200. [return]
13. Scavone, D.C., "The Turin Shroud from 1200 to 1400," in Cherf, W.J., ed., 1993, "Alpha to Omega: Studies in Honor of George John Szemler," Ares Publishers: Chicago IL, pp.187-225, 188-189. [return]
14. Scavone, 1993, p.190. [return]
15. Scavone, D.C., 1998, "A Hundred Years of Historical Studies on the Turin Shroud," Paper presented at the Third International Congress on the Shroud of Turin, 6 June 1998, Turin, Italy, in Minor, M., Adler, A.D. & Piczek, I., eds., 2002, "The Shroud of Turin: Unraveling the Mystery: Proceedings of the 1998 Dallas Symposium," Alexander Books: Alexander NC, pp.58-70, 66-67. [return]

Posted: 20 June 2018. Updated: 9 March 2022.

Main date index: The Shroud of Turin blog

The Shroud of Turin blog
MAIN DATE INDEX
© Stephen E. Jones
[1]

This is the Main Index to all my posts on this my The Shroud of Turin

[Right (enlarge): The front body image of the Shroud: Fortean Picture Library (no longer online). This was my first photo in my first post to this my TSoT blog.]

blog. Each year will will be a separate sub-index page with links to my actual posts in that year. [Next: 2007].


2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 & 2024.


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

Posted 20 June 2018. Updated 24 March 2024.

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Obituary (4): Dr. Alan Duane Whanger (17 July 1930 - 21 October 2017)

© Stephen E. Jones[1]

This is part #4 of my obituary of Dr. Alan D. Whanger (1930-2017). Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated. Previous parts in this series are part #1, part #2 and part #3. Next is part #5. See also "Flowers and Pollens - Council for Study of the Shroud of Turin", my 2013 "The Shroud of Turin: 2.6. The other marks (4): Plant images" and my 2014 "Lynne Milne's `A Grain of Truth: How Pollen Brought a Murderer to Justice' (2005)".

In 1985 Whanger noticed a flower on a Shroud photograph As previously mentioned in part #3 [see also 06Apr13], in 1985 Dr Alan

[Above (enlarge): A corona discharge image of a Chrysanthemum produced by Oswald Scheuermann (left), the image of a Palestinian Chrysanthemum coronarium flower on the Shroud (center) and a drawing of that flower on the Shroud (right)[2].]

Whanger noticed on a high-quality Shroud photograph given to them by Fr. Francis L. Filas (1915-85)[3] the image of a flower near the head of the man on the Shroud[4].

In 1983 Oswald Scheuermann wrote to Whanger about flower images near the face on the Shroud In 1983, Oswald Scheuermann [Right [5].], a German physics teacher with whom Whanger had been corresponding regarding coins over the eyes [see part #3], had mentioned in a letter to Whanger that there were flower-like patterns around the face of the man of the Shroud, but Whanger could not then seen them[6].

That first flower Whanger saw on the Shroud was a Chrysanthemum coronarium That first flower image Whanger saw on a Shroud photograph (hereafter simply "the Shroud") was (as he later identified-see below) Chrysanthemum coronarium (see above and below)[7]. Ian Wilson who is sceptical (as I am) of Whanger's

[Above (enlarge): A Chrysanthemum coronarium flower image near the head of the man on the Shroud, pointed to with my red arrow. This is on Shroud Scope[8], so readers can verify it for themselves. This is the clearest flower image on the Shroud[9] and is readily discernible with the unaided eye[10]. Chrysanthemum coronarium is a widespread Mediterranean species that grows in Israel and Jordan[11]. Also as can be seen above there are a lot of other flowers visible around the head of the man on the Shroud (see below).]

"Points of Congruence" claims [e.g. see 02Jan18] nevertheless had to admit this "flower-like shape" really was there "in the relevant sector of the Shroud":

"One `flower' ... which even I can acknowledge a flower-like shape in the relevant sector of the Shroud ... was the very first one that Alan Whanger had identified on the Shroud, the crown chrysanthemum or Chrysanthemum coronarium"[12]!
The Whangers began to see many other flower and plant images on the Shroud Once having seen this one flower image, Alan and Mary Whanger began to see a great many other flower and plant images (see below) on the Shroud[13].

[Above (enlarge): Drawings of the location of flower and plant images around the face of the man on the Shroud by Prof. Avinoam Danin (1939–2015)[14].]

In 1986 Whanger began identifying those other flower and plant images In 1986 Alan Whanger obtained a set of Michael Zohary's six-volume Flora Palaestina and began comparing its ~1900 drawings with flower and plant images he could see on the Shroud[15]. Starting with the drawings Max Frei (1913-83) had made of some of the 58 species of plants the pollen of which he had found on the Shroud[16], by 1989 the Whangers had tentatively identified from their flowers and parts 28 species of plants on the Shroud[17], including Chrysanthemum coronarium[18]:

"While there are images of hundreds of flowers on the Shroud, many are vague or incomplete. We feel Alan has identified, tentatively but with reasonable certainty, twenty-eight plants whose images are sufficiently clear and complete to make a good comparison with the drawings in Flora Palaestina. Of these twenty-eight plants, twenty-three are flowers, three are small bushes, and two are thorns. All twenty-eight grow in Israel. Twenty grow in Jerusalem itself, and the other eight grow potentially within the close vicinity of Jerusalem, either in the Judean Desert or in the Dead Sea area or in both. All twenty-eight would have been available in Jerusalem markets in a fresh state. Many would have been growing along the roadside or in nearby fields, available for the picking. A rather unique situation exists in that within Jerusalem and the surrounding twelve miles, four geographic areas exist with their differing specific climates and flora. Nowhere else are so many different types of species found so close together. Of these twenty-eight plants, Frei, working from the sticky tape slides, had previously identified the pollens of twenty-five of the same or similar plants. Twenty-seven of these twenty-eight bloom in March and April, which corresponds to the time of Passover and the Crucifixion"[19]!
In 1995 Prof. Danin saw "the flowers of Jerusalem" on the Shroud! In 1995 the Whangers visited one of Israel's leading botanists, Prof. Avinoam Danin (1939–2015) [Left (enlarge) [20].], at his home in Jerusalem[21]. They showed Danin some of their photographs of the flower images on the Shroud and within seconds of looking at them Danin exclaimed, "Those are the flowers of Jerusalem"[22]!

In 1997 Danin visited the Whangers' and agreed with most of their identifications In 1997 Danin visited the Whangers' home in Durham, North Carolina[23] and after a study of their photographs, agreed with most (22/28 = ~79%) of their Shroud plant species identifications:

"In 1997 during a visit to our home, Danin made a careful and detailed examination of our photographs and of the images on the Shroud. He stated that he agrees with confidence with twenty-two of the twenty-eight plant identifications that we had made. Of the remaining six identifications, he said that three are probably correct and the other three are possibly correct, but he could not identify them with certainty because the images are too fragmentary. In no case did he totally disagree with our original tentative identification or fail to see some imaging. Moreover, he discovered a large number of additional flower images that we had not found"[24].
By 1999 Danin had identified at least 13 species of plants on the Shroud In his 1999 "Flora of the Shroud of Turin" Danin lists 16 categories of plant-related images he found on the Shroud[25]. Below is my simplified table of 13 of them that are flowers or plants, based on Danin's Table 4[26]. Of these species Danin listed many

Images found on the Shroud of Turin
determined by A. Danin
No.FamilySpecies
1AsteraceaeChrysanthemum coronarium
2CistaceaeCistus creticus
3DipsacaceaeLomelosia (Scabiosa) prolifera
4FabaceaeHippocrepis unisiliquosa
5AnacardiaceaePistacia lentiscus
6AnacardiaceaePistacia atlantica or P. Palaestina
7ApiaceaeRidolfia segetum
8AsteraceaeGundelia tournefortii
9CapparaceaeCapparis aegyptia
10ZygophyllaceaeZygophyllum dumosum
11RhamnaceaeZiziphus spina-christi
12RanunculaceaeAnemone coronaria
13PoaceaeArundo donax

instances against some (e.g. No. 6 "Dozens"). Danin actually found "hundreds" of flower and plant images on the Shroud but he was primarily interested in those that were geographic indicators[27], i.e. found only in Israel and Jordan and especially around Jerusalem (see below).

Danin's geographic indicators Prof. Danin had already plotted in squares (quadrats) of 5 x 5 kilometres each the locations of many thousands of plant species in Israel[28]. During his 1997 visit to the Whangers' home (see above), Danin saw on their Shroud photo-graphs images of leaves of the Zygophyllum dumosum [Right (enlarge)[29].] shrub near flower images of that same species which the Whangers had correctly identified[30]. Danin realised that Z. dumosum on the

[Above (enlarge): Distribution map of the endemic species Zygophyllum dumosum which is confined to Israel, Sinai and Western Jordan[31].]

Shroud was a very important geographical indicator, because fresh leaves of that plant could only be brought to the Shroud from Israel, West Jordan, or Sinai[32].

Similarly, the thorn Gundelia tournefortii, the image of which was also found on the Shroud (see above table) has a distribution which is Middle Eastern, extending from western Turkey through Israel, Syria and northern Iraq, Iran and the southernmost fringes of the former Soviet Union[33]. The rock rose, Cistus creticus, the image of which is also on the Shroud (see table above) grows across the Mediterranean zone in western Israel with a desert boundary to the east of Jerusalem[34]. The only place on earth where people could bring

[Above (enlarge): Distribution map of the only place on earth where Gundelia tournefortii, Zygophyllum dumosum and Cistus creticus are all found growing together[35], the area around Jerusalem ("J" in green circle)[36].

fresh parts of the three species Gundelia tournefortii, Zygophyllum dumosum and Cistus creticus, is the area between Jerusalem and Hebron[37], a distance of a mere 20 miles (32 kilometres)[38]!

Danin's temporal indicators As well as being geographic indicators, some of the flower image species identified by Danin are also temporal (i.e. time of year and even time of day) indicators[39]. Below is my simplified table of the blooming months of the 8 plant species in Danin's Table 6[40].

Blooming time of Middle Eastern
species associated with the Shroud
SpeciesDecJanFebMarAprMayJun
Anemone coronaria+++++  
Capparis aegyptia+++++  
Chrys. coronarium   +++ 
Cistus creticus   ++++
Gundelia tournefortii   +++ 
Lomelosia prolifera   ++  
Ridolfia segetum   ++++
Zygophyllum dumosum+++++  

As can be seen in the above table, Zygophyllum dumosum in the stage of bloom seen on the Shroud indicates that it was cut between the months of December and April as this is the only season when both leaf types and flowers are found together on the plant[41]. The blooming time of Chrysanthemum coronarium is from March to May; that of Capparis aegyptia is between December and April; as is Zygophyllum dumosum's (as already mentioned); Cistus creticus blooms from March to June, and Gundelia tournefortii from March to May[42]. All these flowering period have in common the period between March and May, which was the very period of the year within which Jesus' Passover eve crucifixion (Mt 26:2; Jn 18:28,39; 19:14) occurred[43] (which was on 7 April 30, or 3 April 33)[44]. Capparis aegyptia is significant as an indicator for the time of day when its flowers were picked, since its flowering buds begin to open at about midday and gradually open until they are fully opened about half an hour before sunset[45]. Flowers seen as images on the Shroud correspond to them having been picked at about 3-4 pm[46], which corresponds to the time of the death of Jesus, "the ninth hour" (Mt 27:45-50; Mk 15:33-39; Lk 23:44-46), i.e. 3 pm[47].

Confirmation of Max Frei's pollen species Of the 28 species of plant images the Whangers' identified on the Shroud (see above), these were the same or similar to 25 species of pollen collected from the Shroud and identified by the pioneer Swiss forensic scientist, Max Frei (1913-83)[48]. Some of the plant images on the Shroud confirms the identification by Frei of certain Palestinian and Middle Eastern species

[Left (enlarge): Max Frei with STURP's Ray Rogers (1927–2005) looking on, using adhesive tape to take pollen samples from the Shroud in 1978[49].]

of pollen on the Shroud[50]. For example, Gundelia tournefortii was one of the more abundant pollen species that Frei identified on the Shroud and Danin and Baruch have confirmed that identification[51]. And significantly, one of Danin's Cistus creticus images occurs in the very same spot that Frei in 1973 found pollen which he identified as Cistus creticus on the Shroud[52]! Which is not to say that Frei's identification of pollens was perfect, but Whanger and Danin's flower and plant images identifications confirmed that Frei was mostly right:

"Carefully examining one of the Frei slides, researcher Paul Maloney discovered a cluster of many pollens from the same plant. These pollens were identified by palynologist Dr. A. Orville Dahl as Cistus creticus. ... Years earlier, Frei had identified pollens from this same plant on his sticky tape slides. At the time he took the sticky tape samples, he was unaware of the images of flowers on the Shroud, but it so happened that the tape Maloney was observing had been taken over the center of the same Cistus creticus flower that Alan had already identified. Thus Frei, Maloney with Dahl, and Alan, all working separately and at different times and using different methods, found the presence of Cistus creticus on the Shroud. Since Alan used Frei's pollen identification list to search for flowers bearing those pollens, most of the flowers that we identified do have pollens that were present on the Shroud. However, Alan did note some possible discrepancies between his identification by means of the images on the Shroud and Frei's identification by means of pollens. For instance, Frei identified a pollen as an Althea, but the closest match to the flower image that Alan could find was a rather similar plant named Alcea"[53].
Problems for anti-authenticism: (1) Frei was right! See above. As mentioned in my 22Aug14 post, leading anti-authenticists Steven Schafersman (quoted approvingly by the late Walter McCrone), employed the fallacy of circular reasoning to dismiss the dead Max Frei as a fraudster[53]. Because: 1) the Shroud is not authentic (they claimed); 2) Frei's Middle Eastern distribution of Shroud pollen would be strong evidence that the Shroud is authentic; 3) therefore Frei's Shroud pollen distribution must be fraudulent and Frei must be a fraudster:
"In a similar fashion, I will show that Max Frei's pollen data can be most reasonably explained by human fraud because the only other possible explanations are that the Shroud of Turin is authentic, that a miracle occurred, or both. Since we are pretty certain as scientists that the Shroud is not authentic and that miracles don't occur, human deception is the only explanation remaining"[54].
Schafersman does not consider the other explanation, namely that the "human deception" (i.e. self-deception) is on the part of him and his Shroud sceptic ilk! In particular his/their unproven and unprovable fundamental article of faith that Naturalism (`nature is all there is-there is no supernatural') is true and therefore "miracles don't occur". Helpfully, Schafersman explained why anti-authenticists must attempt to discredit Frei's Shroud pollen findings and Frei personally:
"Max Frei, a well-known forensic microscopist, was allowed to take sticky-tape samples from the Shroud of Turin in 1973. He reported his results in 1978 at the International Congress on the Turin Shroud ... Frei claims to have found the pollen of 49 different plants, 33 of which are xerophyte, halophytes, or mesophytes found in Israel (Palestine), Turkey, or both, and not in Western Europe. The remaining 16 are present in Italy and France ... Frei's pollen data, if true, would be superb evidence of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. The pollen data would demonstrate that, at the very least, the Shroud had been in Jerusalem, the Anatolian steppes, and Istanbul (many of the 33 Turkish and Palestinian plants are endemic to these three specific areas). Frei's data does not demonstrate, of course, that the Shroud is not an artifact: the blank cloth could have been transported and exposed through these regions before reaching France, or a Palestinian artist could have created the image before the journey began. However, these explanations are highly unlikely, and have no support in either history or iconography ... Frei's data is such excellent evidence because pollen almost invariably falls to the ground within 100 meters of the parent plant. This phenomenon is used in palynology and biostratigraphy ... because wind pollination is an inefficient process compared to insect pollination, and wind-transported pollen just doesn't travel very far. Therefore, finding such pollen on an object would indeed demonstrate that it was once in an area where such pollen was present ... Finally, the remarkably large number of Middle Eastern plant pollen, 33 species, appears to make it inescapable that the Shroud was once in the Middle East"[55].
But Frei was a Zwinglian Protestant[56] and therefore had no prior reason to believe that the Shroud was authentic (indeed the opposite):
"Frei, it seems, was initially sceptical of the Shroud's authenticity, as would be expected of a Zwinglian Protestant. What he saw under the microscope, though, changed his mind. As he analysed the plentiful pollen picked up by his sticky tapes, he began to realize that the Shroud could not have spent all its time in France and Italy. For, besides pollen grains from central European and Mediterranean lands, which could easily have blown onto the Shroud in the previous 600 years, he found large numbers of grains from much further afield. A significant proportion of these indicate, Frei says, that the Shroud was once kept in Turkey: 'According to the palynology, the Shroud must have been exposed to the open air also in. Turkey, since twenty of the verified species are abundant in Anatolia ... and four are abundant in the environs of Constantinople; these are completely absent from central and western Europe.' This is extremely interesting in relation to certain historical evidence, which suggests that, long before it was brought to Europe, the Shroud was kept in Constantinople and Edessa, a town in eastern Turkey. Furthermore, on the basis of finding pollen from thirteen species of halophytes - a genus specially adapted to living in salty environments, many of them exclusive to the Negev desert and Dead Sea area - Frei affirms that `in the course of its history (including its manufacture) the Shroud has been in Palestine'. Just as significant, in Frei's view, as the identification of individual species or genera is the overall proportion of Middle Eastern to European pollen grains: 'the Shroud must have stayed in Palestine or in Turkey, since plants that grow in these areas ... are dominant in the pollen spectrum'"[57].
Moreover, Frei's actions were not that of a fraudster. As I had previously [25Aug14] pointed out:
"The obvious test of Frei's integrity is that, unlike a fraudster, Frei patiently collected his data for 9 years, traveling to Palestine and Turkey several times to collect pollen to compare his Shroud pollen with, but he died before he completed his research. A fraudster would have pretended to identify his Shroud pollen quickly and published his findings early, so that he could soon gain fame and maybe fortune."
And [16May15 (footnotes added)]:
"That Frei was no fraudster is self-evident in the enormous amount of painstaking work he did over a long period of time, delaying publication for many years until he had gathered sufficient evidence. If Frei had been a fraudster he would have published quickly to enjoy the glory. Evidence that Frei was not a fraudster is evident in his admission that he had been unable to identify any pollens on the Shroud which supported its transfer from Constantinople to Europe:
`So far I have not found any evidence for the Shroud's presence in Cyprus or other regions touched during the transfer from Constantinople to France and Italy'[58].
If Frei had been a fraudster he would have manufactured that evidence. So there is no good reason to doubt Frei's main conclusion:
`The pollen-spectrum as described leaves no room for the hypothesis of a medieval fake painted in France. On the contrary, the pollen-deposits are a most valuable confirmation of the theory that the Shroud traveled from Palestine through Anatolia to Constantinople, France and Italy'"[59].

Problems for anti-authenticism: (2) A medieval forger would not not have depicted Middle Eastern flowers and plants on the Shroud Self-evidently a medieval forger would not have known about Middle Eastern flowers and plants, let alone depicted them with modern botanical accuracy and realism (even plant parts!). Nor would a medieval forger have known about the geographic distribution patterns of some of those plants around Jerusalem, nor their blooming seasons. Proof that Shroud sceptics have no good answer to this flower and plant evidence of Whanger and Danin is the misleading and even dishonest way that leading professional sceptic Joe Nickell dismisses it:

"Shroud of Rorschach. Following the suspicious pollen evidence were claims that plant images had been identified on the cloth. These were allegedly discerned from `smudgy' appearing areas in shroud photos that were subsequently enhanced. The work was done by a retired geriatric psychiatrist, Alan Whanger, and his wife Mary, former missionaries who have taken up image analysis as a hobby. They were later assisted by an Israeli botanist who looked at their photos of `flower' images (many of them `wilted' and otherwise distorted) and exclaimed, `Those are the flowers of Jerusalem!' Apparently no one has thought to see if some might match the flowers of France or Italy or even to try to prove that the images are indeed floral ..."[60].
Note that Nickell dishonestly conceals from his readers that the "Israeli botanist" was in fact Prof. Avinoam Danin (1939–2015), one of Israel's leading botanists and author of "Flora of Israel Online":
"Prof. Emeritus Avinoam Danin was a researcher and teacher in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for more than 50 years. The information accumulated in the website, as well as many of the photographs within it, were his work. During his excursions in Israel and neighboring countries he discovered 43 species and 3 subspecies new to science. Three additional species are named after him. His detailed phytosociological work is published in hundreds of articles, 7 books in English and 7 in Hebrew. On December 12, 2015, Avinoam Danin passed away at age 76 ..."[61]
But if Nickell had included Danin's name his readers could have Googled it and discovered that Nickell was misleading them. Also, Nickell's, "Apparently no one has thought to see if some might match the flowers of France or Italy or even to try to prove that the images are indeed floral" is a lie because Nickell knew that Whanger had positively identified the flower images on the Shroud as Palestinian species using Flora Palaestina (see above) and that their identifications were mostly confirmed by Prof. Danin. Indeed Nickell even quoted Danin's words, "Those are the flowers of Jerusalem!" when he saw Whanger's Shroud photographs (see above)! Nickell is thus included in the fulfillment of St. Paul's prophecy in 2 Timothy 3:13: "... impostors ... deceiving and being deceived"!

More evidence for Jesus' resurrection! For their images to be imprinted on the Shroud, the flowers and parts of plants discovered by Scheuermann, Whanger and Danin had to have been laid on the man's body under the Shroud:

"Some have wondered if perhaps the flowers may have been placed on the Shroud during its exhibitions for the public, and maybe that's where flower images and pollen came from. Indeed, flowers likely would have been placed there during showings or liturgical use. If so, certainly some of the pollen did come from those flowers. On his sticky tape samples from the Shroud, Frei found pollens which are characteristic of the areas around Edessa and Constantinople, places where the Shroud was located for hundreds of years. But ... it is not possible that large numbers of plants from Israel and other Middle East areas were brought to France and Italy in a fresh state for exhibitions there. Nor does it account for the presence of the corona discharge type images on the Shroud. It seems clear that flowers were indeed in the Shroud around the body, and that their images were imprinted on the cloth at the same time and in the same manner as the other images"[62].
While neither Whanger nor Danin (a Jew) did, as far as I am aware, claim specifically that these flower and plant images on the Shroud were produced by (and therefore evidence of) Jesus' resurrection, Scheuermann did. As previously mentioned in part #3, in proposing corona discharge to be the explanation of the Shroud's total body image (which included the flower and plant images), Scheuermann posited that the Shroud man was Jesus and the image on the Shroud was caused by His resurrection:
"Either there was a chain of coordinated processes of cause and effect due to laws that are still unknown or an inexplicable phenomenon of a supernatural kind left traces of a natural kind ... Consequently, it is high time now to completely record the primary aspect and add the phenomenon `resurrection' to the fact `corpse.' ... `Resurrection,' even if inexplicable, must not be excluded as a point of reference or an action principle ... It has to be admitted that we know hardly anything as to how that resurrection is to have taken place; but that does not exclude that it could have left palpable traces ... not only an empty tomb and all the attendant circumstances, but also a very informative image"[64].

Continued in the next part #5 of my obituary of Dr. Alan D. Whanger.

Notes
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. Danin, A., 1997, "Pressed Flowers: Where Did the Shroud of Turin Originate?: A Botanical Quest," ERETZ Magazine, November/December. [return]
3. Whanger, M. & Whanger, A.D., 1998, "The Shroud of Turin: An Adventure of Discovery," Providence House Publishers: Franklin TN, p.71; Whanger, A.D. & Whanger, M.W., 2008, "Aspects of the Shroud in Botany and Related Art," in Fanti, G., ed., 2009, "The Shroud of Turin: Perspectives on a Multifaceted Enigma," Proceedings of the 2008 Columbus Ohio International Conference, August 14-17, 2008, Progetto Libreria: Padua, Italy, pp.140-144, 140. [return]
4. Iannone, J.C., 1998, "The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence," St Pauls: Staten Island NY, pp.25,28; Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.71; Danin, A., Whanger, A.D., Baruch, U. & Whanger, M., 1999, "Flora of the Shroud of Turin," Missouri Botanical Garden Press: St. Louis MO, pp.7,9; Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.71; Danin, A., et al., 1999, p.7; Maloney, P.C., 1999, "A Contribution toward a History of Botanical Research on the Shroud of Turin," in Walsh, B.J., ed., 2000, "Proceedings of the 1999 Shroud of Turin International Research Conference, Richmond, Virginia," Magisterium Press: Glen Allen VA, pp.241-266, 251; Antonacci, M., 2000, "Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY, p.112; Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, pp.82-83; Guerrera, V., 2001, "The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity," TAN: Rockford IL, p.149; Milne, L., 2005, "A Grain of Truth: How Pollen Brought a Murderer to Justice," New Holland: Frenchs Forest, NSW, Australia, pp.94. [return]
5. "Oswald Scheuermann," Nuernberg Wiki, 9 November 2017. Translated by Google. [return]
6. Iannone, 1998, p.25; Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.71; Danin, A., et al., 1999, p.7; Maloney, 1999, p.251; Antonacci, 2000, p.112; Guerrera, 2001, p.149; Milne, 2005, p.93; Whanger & Whanger, 2008, p.141. [return]
7. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, pp.85-86; Guerrera, 2001, p.149; Whanger & Whanger, 2008, p.141; Oxley, M., 2010, "The Challenge of the Shroud: History, Science and the Shroud of Turin," AuthorHouse: Milton Keynes UK, p.258. [return]
8. Extract from Latendresse, M., 2010, "Shroud Scope: Enrie Negative Vertical," Sindonology.org. [return]
9. Danin, A., et al., 1999, p.16. [return]
10. Maloney, 1999, p.251. [return]
11. Danin, A., et al., 1999, p.16. [return]
12. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, pp.85-86. [return]
13. Whanger & Whanger, 1998, pp.71, 76; Whanger & Whanger, 2008, p.141. [return]
14. Danin, A., 2010, "`Holes' in the 3D-Image of the Body on the Shroud," Petrus Soons. Photo no longer online. [return]
15. Iannone, 1998, p.28; Whanger & Whanger, 1998, pp.75-76; Guerrera, 2001, p.149; Whanger & Whanger, 2008, p.141; Danin, A., 2010, "Botany of the Shroud: The Story of Floral Images on the Shroud of Turin," Danin Publishing: Jerusalem, Israel, p.8. [return]
16. Iannone, 1998, p.28; Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.77; Whanger & Whanger, 2008, p.141. [return]
17. Iannone, 1998, p.28; Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.78; Antonacci, 2000, p.112; Guerrera, 2001, p.149; Milne, 2005, p.94; Whanger & Whanger, 2008, p.141; Danin, 2010, p.8. [return]
18. Iannone, 1998, p.27. [return]
19. Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.78 (footnotes omitted). [return]
20. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.85. [return]
21. Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.79. [return]
22. Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.79; Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.85; Whanger & Whanger, 2008, p.142. [return]
23. Danin, 2010, p.12. [return]
24. Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.80. [return]
25. Danin, A., et al., 1999, p.17. [return]
26. Ibid. [return]
27. Danin, 2010, p.46. [return]
28. Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.80. [return]
29. Danin, A., 2013, "Zygophyllum dumosum Boiss," Flora of Israel Online. [return]
30. Danin, 2010, p.12. [return]
31. Danin, A. & Baruch, U., 1998, "Floristic Indicators for the Origin of the Shroud of Turin," Third International Congress on the Shroud of Turin, 5-7 June 1998, Turin, Italy, in Minor, M., Adler, A.D. & Piczek, I., eds., 2002, "The Shroud of Turin: Unraveling the Mystery: Proceedings of the 1998 Dallas Symposium," Alexander Books: Alexander NC, pp.202-214; Milne, 2005, p.94; Danin, 2010, p.17; Oxley, 2010, p.259. [return]
32. Danin, 2010, p.12. [return]
33. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.88. [return]
34. Danin, 2010, p.17. [return]
35. Danin, 2010, p.52. [return]
36. Danin, et al., 1999, pp.21-22. [return]
37. Danin, A., 1999, "Botanical Evidence Indicates `Shroud Of Turin' Originated In Jerusalem Area Before 8th Century," XVI International Botanical Congress, St. Louis, MO, Science Daily, August 3; Antonacci, 2000, p.112; Danin, 2010, p.54; Oxley, 2010, p.259. [return]
38. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.92. [return]
39. Danin, et al., 1999, p.18. [return]
40. Danin, A., et al., 1999, p.22. [return]
41. Danin, et al., 1999, p.18. [return]
42. Danin, et al., 1999, p.22. [return]
43. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.91; Whanger & Whanger, 2008, p.142. [return]
44. Doig, K.F., 2006, "Doig's Biblical Chronology: Part IV, The Crucifixion of Jesus." [return]
45. Danin, et al., 1999, p.22; Antonacci, 2000, p.113; Whanger & Whanger, 2008, p.142. [return]
46. Ibid. [return]
47. Mark 15:33-34, in Cole, R.A., 1989, "The Gospel According to Mark: An Introduction and Commentary," The Tyndale New Testament commentaries, Inter-Varsity Press Leicester: UK, Second edition, p.320. [return]
48. Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.78; Antonacci, 2000, p.112; Whanger & Whanger, 2008, p.142. [return]
49. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, pp.80-81. [return]
50. Tribbe, F.C., 2006, "Portrait of Jesus: The Illustrated Story of the Shroud of Turin," Paragon House Publishers: St. Paul MN, Second edition, p.278. [return]
51. Danin & Baruch, 1998, p.209; Milne, 2005, p.94; Oxley, 2010, p.258. [return]
52. Wilson & Schwortz, 2000, p.86. [return]
53. Whanger & Whanger, 1998, p.79. [return]
54. Schafersman, S., in McCrone, W.C., "Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin," Prometheus Books: Amherst NY, 1999, p.302. [return]
55. Schafersman, 1999, pp.303-304. [return]
56. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, pp.80; Wilson, I., 1986, "The Evidence of the Shroud," Guild Publishing: London, p.43; Ruffin, C.B., 1999, "The Shroud of Turin: The Most Up-To-Date Analysis of All the Facts Regarding the Church's Controversial Relic," Our Sunday Visitor: Huntington IN, pp.75-76; de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London, p.113. [return]
57. de Wesselow, 2012, pp.113-114 (endnotes omitted). [return]
58. Frei, M., 1982, "Nine Years of Palinological Studies on the Shroud," Shroud Spectrum International, No. 3, June, pp.2-7, 7. [return]
59. Ibid. [return]
60. Nickell, J., 2001, "Scandals and Follies of the 'Holy Shroud'," Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 25, No. 5, September, pp.17-20. [return]
61. "Avinoam Danin," Flora of Israel Online, 2015. [return]
62. Whanger & Whanger, 1998, pp.82-83. [return]
63. Green, J.P., Sr., ed., 1986, "The Interlinear Bible: One Volume Edition," [1976], Hendrickson Publishers: Peabody MA, Second edition, p.839. [return]
64. Scheuermann, O., 1986, in Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1990, "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson: Nashville TN, p.41. [return]

Posted 5 June 2018. Updated 13 May 2024.