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This is the January-April 2022 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated. The articles' words are bold to distinguish them from mine.
"Turin Shroud Scholar: Reexamination of Historical Texts Point to Cloth's Early Existence," Cision PR Newswire, Joseph Marino, 12 April
"One of the most famous references to the burial linens of Jesus is called the `Hungarian Pray Manuscript,' which is reliably dated to AD 1192 -1195 (which places it at least sixty-five years before the beginning date of the AD 1260-1390 date range assigned to the Shroud by the three labs that dated it in 1988 — it was possibly depicted decades before the manuscript was actually published.) One of the images from the manuscript is shown above. The top portion of the image depicts Jesus with his arms and hands placed in the same pose as seen on the Shroud; another similarity is that it shows four fingers but no thumb. The bottom portion of the manuscript shows what appears to be a representation of the Shroud's distinctive three-over-one herringbone weave, a match to the `L-shaped burn holes' found on the Shroud, and a correspondence of a rectangular cloth being wrapped lengthwise around the body. Additionally, a very curious feature is seen: look behind the woman's right arm on the left of the group of 3 three. One can clearly see a facial image. The only reasonable conclusion one can make is that the artist is trying to convey that there is a facial image on the linen."[3].]
2022 ... Joseph Marino debunks skeptics who say there is no mention of the Shroud before the 1350s ... Marino, ... has just published an article that compiles numerous historical references to Jesus' burial linens from the second century through the first half of the 14th century. Turin Shroud Scholar: Reexamination of Historical Texts Point to Cloth's Early Existence Turin Shroud Scholar: Reexamination of Historical Texts Point to Cloth's Early Existence ... Marino's new 45-page article, "Documented References to the Burial Linens of Jesus Prior to the Turin Shroud's Appearance in France in the Mid-1350s" ... adds to the growing body of evidence indicating the Shroud of Turin could be the actual burial cloth of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Thanks to Joe for this article. Chapter 9 of my book, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus!," is "Prehistory of the Shroud (AD30-1355) and I needed to find references to the many quotes I had seen proving that the Shroud has existed since AD 30. Also thanks to Joe for tipping me off about Jack Markwardt's, "The Hidden History of The Shroud of Turin" (2022), which I have ordered just now. As a sample of what readers will find in the article, in the sixth century, nearly a thousand years older than the carbon date, an ancient liturgical text translates John 20:5 [Jn 20:3-8] in the following manner: Peter and John ran to the tomb and saw the recent imprint of the dead and risen man on the linens.[4] This is from the 6th century Mozarabic Rite, composed by Bishop Leader of Seville (c. 534-601) after he had been exiled to Constantinople from 579 to 582. It has been suggested that Leander saw the Shroud in Constantinople. But the Shroud, as the Image of Edesssa "four-doubled' (tetradiplon), did not arrive in Constantinople from Edessa until 944 (see "944b"). So this is evidence that the ecclesiastical elite in Constantinople and Edessa were aware that behind the face only Image of Edessa was the full-length folded Shroud. There are one or more references for each century from the 2nd through the 14th, clearly demonstrating the existence of the Shroud from right after the time of Jesus through its appearance in France in the mid-14th century. A former Benedictine monk, Marino has studied the Shroud for 45 years. Wow!
"The $1m challenge: "If the Turin Shroud is a forgery, show how it was done," The Observer, Joanna Moorhead, 17 Apr 2022 ... Expert on
[Above (enlarge)[4]: David Rolfe holds up a negative image of the face on the Turin Shroud: "They said it was knocked up by a medieval conman, and I say: well, if he could do it, you must be able to do it as well." Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer]
revered relic calls on British Museum to back up the results of its disputed carbon dating tests. It was one of the most eagerly awaited scientific announcements of all time, and it pitted the world of faith against the world of rational thought, under the glare of the media. This is Naturalism's (nature is all there is - there is no supernatural) false dichotomy and strawman fallacy. If the contest is set up between "the world of faith" and "the world of rational thought" then it's over before it starts! But the shoe is on the other foot. It's the so-called "world of faith," the Shroudies, who are appealing to the evidence, which is overwhelming, that the Shroud is the burial sheet of Jesus! And it's the so-called "world of rational thought," the sceptics, who are clinging to one discredited test! So when cutting-edge carbon-14 tests found that the Shroud of Turin was a forgery, it seemed like the final chapter for a relic that had been revered for centuries as the cloth in which Christ's body had been wrapped when he supposedly rose from the dead at the first Easter almost 2,000 years ago. There is no "supposedly" about it. Even without the Shroud, the evidence is overwhelming that Jesus rose from the dead at the first Easter almost 2,000 years ago. See for example, "10 Concise Pieces of Evidence for the Resurrection [of Jesus]." But one man – David Rolfe, a film-maker whose documentary The Silent Witness had brought the shroud into the public eye in modern times, and who had converted to Christianity as a result of his research – wasn't prepared to give up on it. He was convinced the carbon dating, carried out in 1988 under the direction of the British Museum and Oxford University, had been flawed. And now he claims he has the evidence to prove it. This week sees the release of a new film, Who Can He Be?, in which Rolfe argues that, far from the shroud being a definite dud, new discoveries in the past few years have again opened the question of its authenticity. So convinced is Rolfe that he's issuing a challenge worth $1m to the British Museum. "If … they believe the shroud is a medieval forgery, I call on them to repeat the exercise, and create something similar today," he says ... They said it was knocked up by a medieval conman, and I say: well, if he could do it, you must be able to do it as well. And if you can, there's a $1m donation for your funds." Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory's Director, Prof. Edward Hall (1924-2001), after his laboratory had been part of the 1260-1390 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud, famously claimed that:
"There was a multi-million-pound business in making forgeries during the 14th century ... Someone just got a bit of linen, faked it up and flogged it"[5].If a 14th century "someone" could just get "a bit of linen" and "fake" the Shroud, then it should be child's play for 21st century science to do it! That it hasn't, is proof beyond reasonable doubt that the Shroud was not faked in the 14th or any century! ... The British Museum is less willing to get involved this time around. "Any current questions about the shroud would be best put to those who currently care for it in the royal chapel of the cathedral of Turin," a spokesperson said. What a cop out! It was the British Museum's Michael Tite who wrote the 1989 Nature article which claimed that the Shroud was dated "1260-1390"[6]. As the late Mark Oxley (1949?-2021) asked, "Could a fourteenth century forger ... produce an artifact that can still not be replicated by ... twenty-first century science?":
"The Shroud presents many challenges. It challenges those who claim it is a mediaeval forgery to replicate it. Nobody has yet been able to do so with any credibility. This must be an argument in favour of its authenticity. Could a fourteenth century forger, with the limited scientific knowledge of his time, really produce an artifact that can still not be replicated by all the wonders of twenty-first century science?"[7].Clearly the answer is NO!
"New Scientific Technique Dates Shroud of Turin to Around the Time of Christ's Death and Resurrection," National Catholic Register, Edward Pentin, 19 April 2022. Italian scientist Liberato De Caro ... is claiming a new technique using X-ray dating shows the Holy Shroud of Turin to be much older than some scientists have stated, and that it does in fact coincide with Christian tradition by dating back to around the time of Christ's death and resurrection ... [See 04Apr22] ... Working with a team of other researchers ... De Caro of Italy's Institute of Crystallography of the National Research Council in Bari used a "Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering" method to examine the natural aging of cellulose that constitutes a sample of the famous linen cloth. They concluded that their peer reviewed research shows the Holy Shroud is compatible with the hypothesis that it is much older than seven centuries old — the conclusion reached in 1988 using carbon dating techniques — and is around 2,000 years old.
This is compatible with other scientific tests of the Shroud's age:
• Vanillin content: "between 1300- and 3000-years old":
"The fact that vanillin can not be detected in the lignin on shroud fibers, Dead Sea scrolls linen, and other very old linens indicates that the shroud is quite old. A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests that the shroud is between 1300- and 3000-years old. Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years"[8].If the Shroud was 1300 years old in 2004 (when Rogers wrote his article) its linen would date from ~AD 704. If it was 3000 years old in 2004, its linen would date from ~996BC. That is a range of ~996BC - ~AD 704, or ~146BC ± 850 years. Jesus' crucifixion was in AD 30, which was ~176 years after ~146BC, and the Shroud's flax would have been harvested and its linen woven before AD30.
• FT-IR: "300 BC ±400 years"[9], i.e. 700 BC - AD 100.
• Raman spectroscopy: "200 BC ± 500 years"[10], i.e. 700 BC - AD 300.
• Mechanical: "AD 400 ± 400 years"[11], i.e. AD 1 - 800.
This is summarised in the following table (vanillin rounded to nearest 50):
| Test | Max/Min | Range |
| Vanillin | 150 BC ±850 | 1000 BC-AD 700 |
| FT-IR | 300 BC ±400 | 700 BC-AD 100 |
| Raman | 200 BC ± 500 | 700 BC-AD 300 |
| Mechanical | 400 AD ± 400 | AD 0 - AD 800 |
So all four tests yield a date range in which Jesus' death in AD 30 falls!
The research started in 2019 ... We finally applied the new X-ray dating technique to a sample of the Shroud of Turin, and the findings of the research were published in the international journal Heritage after about a month of preparation and revision, during which our work was evaluated and peer reviewed by three other independent experts and the journal's editor. Here is the article's abstract (my emphasis):
"Abstract On a sample of the Turin Shroud (TS), we applied a new method for dating ancient linen threads by inspecting their structural degradation by means of Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS). The X-ray dating method was applied to a sample of the TS consisting of a thread taken in proximity of the 1988/radiocarbon area (corner of the TS corresponding to the feet area of the frontal image, near the so-called Raes sample). The size of the linen sample was about 0.5 mm × 1 mm. We obtained one-dimensional integrated WAXS data profiles for the TS sample, which were fully compatible with the analogous measurements obtained on a linen sample whose dating, according to historical records, is 55–74 AD, Siege of Masada (Israel). The degree of natural aging of the cellulose that constitutes the linen of the investigated sample, obtained by X-ray analysis, showed that the TS fabric is much older than the seven centuries proposed by the 1988 radiocarbon dating. The experimental results are compatible with the hypothesis that the TS is a 2000-year-old relic, as supposed by Christian tradition, under the condition that it was kept at suitable levels of average secular temperature—20.0–22.5 °C—and correlated relative humidity—75–55%—for 13 centuries of unknown history, in addition to the seven centuries of known history in Europe. To make the present result compatible with that of the 1988 radiocarbon test, the TS should have been conserved during its hypothetical seven centuries of life at a secular room temperature very close to the maximum values registered on the earth (my emphasis)"[12]This is the fifth scientific test which is consistent with the Shroud being Jesus' burial cloth! Why should one dating technique, radiocarbon dating, be privileged over five scientific dating techniques? Especially when that one scientific dating test of the Shroud, radiocarbon dating, is inconsistent with the vast majority of other evidence for the Shroud's 1st century date, and the other five tests are consistent with that other evidence? … … The first published paper from 2019 demonstrated the reliability of the new X-ray dating technique on a series of samples, taken from linen fabrics ranging in age from 3000 BC to 2000 AD (see black, red, green and blue curves in the figure below ... These curves
[Above (enlarge)[13]: Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS) curves. The green "2000 years" curve is from a linen sample recovered from the Jewish fortress Masada which was conquered by the Romans in AD 74 and never occupied again. The orange curve is from a Shroud sample. As can be seen, the Shroud sample's WAXS curve very closely matches that of the 1st century Masada sample!]
show that the sample of the Shroud of Turin (orange curve in the picture) should be much older than the approximately seven centuries indicated by the radio-dating carried out in 1988 ... The reliability of the new X-ray dating technique on a series of samples, taken from linen fabrics ranging in age from 3000 BC to 2000 AD (see black, red, green and blue curves in the figure below). These curves show that the sample of the Shroud of Turin (orange curve in the picture) should be much older than the approximately seven centuries indicated by the radio-dating carried out in 1988 ... The technique of dating linen by X-ray is non-destructive. Therefore, it can be repeated several times on the same sample ... The technique using X-rays requires very small tissue samples, with linear dimensions even smaller than 1 mm, and this is an advantage compared to radio-dating, which usually requires much larger samples and is destructive ... The Shroud of Turin challenges science, and each new piece of research could clarify part of the complex puzzle this relic represents. For example, the Shroud's image has yet to find a definitive explanation from those who have studied it, an explanation shared by the entire scientific community. It is unrealistic to expect that "the entire scientific community," who are mostly non- and even anti-Christian, would ever accept that the Shroud's image is that of Jesus at the instant of His resurrection. - It is as if a photographic plate had been imprinted by radiation! (my exclamation mark).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. "File:Hungarianpraymanuscript1192-1195.jpg," Wikimedia Commons, 28 June 2021. [return]
3. Marino, J.G., 2022, "Documented References to the Burial Linens of Jesus Prior to the Shroud of Turin's Appearance in France in the Mid-1350s," Academia.edu, pp.1-47. [return]
4. Marino, 2022, pp.18. Also Bulst, W., 1957, "The Shroud of Turin," McKenna, S. & Galvin, J.J., transl., Bruce Publishing Co: Milwaukee WI, pp.113 n.10 & 125 n.91; Green, M., 1969, "Enshrouded in Silence: In search of the First Millennium of the Holy Shroud," Ampleforth Journal, Vol. 74, No. 3, Autumn, pp.319-345; Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, p.93; Scavone, D.C., 1989, "The Shroud of Turin: Opposing Viewpoints," Greenhaven Press: San Diego CA, p.76; Guscin, M., 1998, "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, p.17; 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.55-56; Guerrera, V., 2001, "The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity," TAN: Rockford IL, p.42. [return]
4. Moorhead, J., 2022, "The $1m challenge: `If the Turin Shroud is a forgery, show how it was done'," The Observer, 17 April . [return]
5. "Obituaries: Professor Edward Hall," Independent, 16 August 2001. [return]
6. Morgan, R., 1990, "Interview With Dr. Michael Tite by Orazio Petrosillo and Emanuela Marinelli, 8 September 1989, during the Paris Symposium," Shroud News, No 59, June, pp.3-9, 7. [return]
7. Oxley, M., 2010, "The Challenge of the Shroud: History, Science and the Shroud of Turin," AuthorHouse: Milton Keynes UK, p.xii. [return]
8. Rogers, R.N., 2005, "Studies on the Radiocarbon Sample from the Shroud of Turin," Thermochimica Acta, Vol. 425, Nos 1-2, 20 January, pp.189-194, 192. [return]
9. Tornielli, A., 2013, "New experiments on Shroud show it's not medieval," Vatican Insider, 26 March; Squires, N., 2013, "Turin Shroud 'is not a medieval forgery'," Daily Telegraph, 30 March; Fanti, G. & Malfi, P., 2015, "The Shroud of Turin: First Century after Christ!," Pan Stanford: Singapore, p.204. [return]
10. Fanti & Malfi, 2015, p.208. [return]
11. Fanti & Malfi, 2015, p.246. [return]
12. de Caro, L., et al., 2022, "X-ray Dating of a Turin Shroud’s Linen Sample," Heritage, 5(2), pp.860-870, 860. [return]
13. Pentin, E., 2022, "New Scientific Technique Dates Shroud of Turin to Around the Time of Christ's Death and Resurrection," National Catholic Register, 19 April. [return]
Posted 22 May 2022. Updated 27 October 2024.
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