"News and Editorial," Shroud of Turin News, July 2019

Shroud of Turin News - July 2019
© Stephen E. Jones[1]

[Previous: May-June 2019, part #1] [Next: August 2019, part #1]

This is the July 2019 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. I have decided to post separate July and August issues, so I can get the July news `out the door' faster. I have listed below linked news article(s) about the Shroud in July as a service to readers, without necessarily endorsing any of them. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated.

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News:
• "Shroud of Turin: New Test Concludes 1988 `Medieval Hoax' Dating Was a Fraud," Townhall, July 21, 2019, Myra Kahn Adams:

"Thankfully now there is a new chapter in the 1988 dating debate. Raw data and documents from the original test that were `unavailable' (many scientists and researchers would say deliberately `hidden') were obtained in 2017 by Tristan Casabianca [Right[2]], a French researcher. In March, after two years of tests and analysis, Casabianca and his team of scientists published their results in the scholarly journal Archaeometry. This month, in an interview with the French publication L'Homme Nouveau ... Casabianca discusses how he obtained the documents, his team's methodology, and conclusion. Here is an excerpt:

"In 1989, the results of the shroud dating were published in the prestigious journal Nature: between 1260 and 1390 with 95% certainty. But for thirty years, researchers have asked the laboratories for raw data. These have always refused to provide them. In 2017, I submitted a legal request to the British Museum, which supervised the laboratories. Thus, I had access to hundreds of unpublished pages, which include these raw data. With my team, we conducted their analysis. Our statistical analysis shows that the 1988 carbon 14 dating was unreliable: the tested samples are obviously heterogeneous, [showing many different dates], and there is no guarantee that all these samples, taken from one end of the sheet, are representative of the whole fabric. It is therefore impossible to conclude that the shroud of Turin dates from the Middle Ages."

• "New data questions finding that Shroud of Turin was medieval hoax," Aleteia, John Burger, July 22, 2019:

"Casabianca said his work will help find answers beyond the research of the American chemist Raymond N. Rogers [1927–2005], who debunked the 1988 dating, because he had only the data published by Nature to work with. Rogers maintained that the three Shroud test samples used in 1988 were cut from an outer edge on a piece of the cloth added later as a repair because of frequent handling of the Shroud in public veneration."

• "Study of data from 1988 Shroud of Turin testing suggests mistakes," Phys.org, July 24, 2019, Bob Yirka:

"A team of researchers from France and Italy has found evidence that suggests testing of the Shroud of Turin back in 1988 was flawed. In their paper published in Oxford University's Archaeometry, the group describes their reanalysis of the data used in the prior study, and what they found ... In this new effort, the research team sued the University of Oxford [sic British Museum], which had the data, for access — and won. After studying the data for two years, the new research team announced that the study from 1988 was flawed because it did not involve study of the entire shroud — just some edge pieces. Edge pieces from the shroud are rumored to have been tampered with by nuns in the Middle Ages seeking to restore damage done to the shroud over the years."

• "The Shroud of Turin Is Not a Medieval Hoax After All?" Patheos, July 26, 2019, Gene Veith:

"Some critics noted that the three cloth samples were all taken from the same location, the outer edge of the cloth. It has long been known that the Shroud was often mended and repaired through the ages. In 2005, Raymond A. Rogers published an article [in] Thermochimica Acta that concluded, in the words of the abstract,

"The radiocarbon sampling area is uniquely coated with a yellow–brown plant gum containing dye lakes. Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true age of the shroud."

That there was younger carbon contamination and/or threads from a medieval repair included in the radiocarbon dating samples does not, of itself, explain why the first century Shroud had the `bull's eye' 1260-1390 = 1325±65 radiocarbon date. For an explanation of both, see my possible reconciliation of the carbon contamination and/or medieval repair theories with my hacker theory:

"But looking at the great variability of Arizona's C14 atom counts across its subsamples A1-A8 ... it has just now occurred to me that the carbon contamination and/or medieval repair theories and my hacker theory may not be incompatible. What if Linick's program did not substitute the C14 atom counts coming from the Shroud, but in a mathematically sophisticated way inflated them to 13th-14th century dates? If so, then the variability of the C14 atom counts could reflect actual carbon-14 variability across the Shroud sample, due to contamination and/or younger repair threads ... But the 13th-14th century dates of the Shroud samples would be due to Linick's program inflating that carbon-14 variability to 13th-14th century date levels!"

"One commenter on this blog, in an earlier post on the subject, said that the Shroud could not be genuine, since the Bible specifies that Joseph of Arimathea `bound' Jesus’ body in `linen cloths,' plural (John 19:40). But the synoptic Gospels say that His body was wrapped in a `linen shroud,' singular (Matthew 27:59, Mark 15:46, Luke 23:53). This is not a contradiction. One large shroud does not preclude the use of other cloths, which might have been used to `bind' the larger cloth that was wrapped around the body."

A clear answer to this common, though logically fallacious objection. See my longer answer at 11Jul12.

Editorial
Posts: In July I blogged only 1 new posts: "`News and Editorial,' Shroud of Turin News, May-June 2019 " - 30 July.

Comments: In July comments included:
• Under "Non-traditional #13: The man on the Shroud: The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic! ":

James

>Again I wanted to repeat … your site is quite amazing. I haven’t had time to see all of it yet… it has so much in it. Still your exposition seems careful and deliberate and thorough… it is very unique.

Thanks again. My obsession with detail is probably a personality fault. When I was doing my science degree, one of my lecturers complained that my pages of references were longer than most other students' assignments!

>One thing that has struck me from everything I have come across – well two things – about the Shroud that I frequently find little or no ‘discussion’ about. One is perhaps too obvious, the fact the Shroud is still around for us to examine. That seems by itself an amazing thing. [...]

Ian Wilson has made that same point:

"It is ironic that every edifice in which the Shroud was supposedly housed before the fifteenth century has long since vanished through the hazards of time, yet this frail piece of linen has come through almost unscathed." (Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, p.251)

"For a simple sheet of linen to have survived so much when so many solid buildings have been reduced to rubble ranks as nearly as extraordinary as the imprint itself. Somehow this ostensibly frail piece of linen has survived down the years to our own age when, uniquely in all history, we have the technology infinitely to duplicate its appearance for all posterity." (Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London, pp.293-294)

Updates In July, from memory, there were no significant updates in the background of my past posts.

Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud. In July, as can be seen above, I didn't blog any post on this topic: "4 June 1989: On this day 30 years ago in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud""

My book: [see 30Jul19] In July I continued writing Chapter 3, "The man on the Shroud" and in parallel a Word document "Problems of the Forgery Theory." As I mentioned at the end of my previous post:

"Also, with the end of this series, I want to start a new series: "Turin Shroud: the Evidence," which will supersede my unfinished series, "The Shroud of Turin."

This will also help me write my book by covering topics in advance of it.

Pageviews: At midnight on 31 July, Google Analytics [Below (enlarge)] gave this blog's "Pageviews all time history" as 1,085,419. This compares with 913,093 at the same time in July 2018. That is 172,326

pageviews over the 12 months to 31 May 2019, or an average of ~472 pageviews per day.

Google Analytics also gave the most viewed posts for July (highest uppermost) as: "Problems of the Turin Shroud forgery theory: Index A-F," Jan 20, 2016 - 253; "The Pray Manuscript (or Codex)," Jan 11, 2010 - 142; "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: AD 30 to the present: 1st century and Index," Jul 24, 2016 - 89; "Casabianca, T., et al., 2019, `Radiocarbon Dating of the Turin Shroud: New Evidence from Raw Data,' Archaeometry, 22 March" May 29, 2019 - 87 & "The Shroud of Turin: 2.6. The other marks (2): Poker holes," Mar 6, 2013 - 79.

Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission 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 title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. "Des chercheurs remettent en cause l’idée selon laquelle le Saint-Suaire daterait du Moyen-Âge," L'Homme Nouveau, July, 2019. [return]

Posted: 2 September 2019. Updated: 16 September 2019.