Continuing from part 1 and part 2, this is part 3 of Rev. Albert Russel `Kim” Dreisbach Jr. (1934-2006)'s "overwhelming preponderance of evidence" in favor of the Shroud's authenticity. See part 1 for information about this series. My comments are in bold.
THE PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE
John Tyrer. Chartered Textile Technologist. Associate of the Textile Institute and Associate of the Manchester College of Technology(UMIST)
"It would be reasonable to conclude the linen textiles with `Z' twist yarns and woven 3/1 reversing twill similar to the Turin Shroud could have been produced in first-century Syria or Palestine ... Turning from the ancient world to medieval Europe, ... it appears that linen textiles similar to the Shroud have not survived in any number from the early fourteenth century" (Shroud Spectrum International, No. 6, March, 1983, p. 38.).
" The arguments against the Shroud being a contact print are; that the image would suffer lateral distortion due to the fabric's draping around the sides, and that the imprint would be only two tones, like a brass rubbing. There is no lateral distortion in the Shroud image and it shows remarkable gradations and subtleties in shading. It must be remembered that in 1350, it would be at least another generation before printing, woodcuts and engravings would be introduced into Europe." (Ibid., p. 41.).
The late Dr. Max Frei-Sulzer, palynologist. Founder and Director of the Scientific Service of the Criminal Police of Zurich, Switzerland.
Dr. Frei identified 58 separate types of pollen which he had taken directly from the Shroud by applying a special adhesive tape to its threads. Dr Frei concluded that pollen grains from the Shroud from biblical Palestine, the Anatolian steppe, and those from plants indigenous to the area of Constantinople
"are so numerous compared to the species from Europe that a casual contamination or a pollen transport from the Near East by storms* in different seasons cannot be responsible for their presence. The predominance of these pollen types must be the result of the Shroud's stay in such countries where these plants form part of the normal vegetation. A transport by migrating birds or contamination of desert plants by pilgrims can be excluded because they had no possibility of direct contact with the Shroud." (Unpublished manuscript by Max Frei-Sulzer. The Pollens on the Shroud of Turin., p. 14).
* i.e. no single exposure can account for all the pollens as plants germinate at different seasons of the year.
"A by-product of my microscopical studies of the Shroud must be seen in the discovery that none of the pollen grains is covered with tempera This is strong evidence against the suggestion that the Shroud is a painted fake." (Ibid. p. 15.).
"It is a cloth that has been in Palestine, Turkey, France and Italy. These data confirm the geographic part of its history, which is the only aspect verifiable with the palynographic method." (Max Frei-Sulzer. "A Contribution to the Study of the Problem of Authenticity of the Shroud based on Microscopic traces." Zurich; 3Aug76, p .14.).
Dr. Joseph Kohlbeck, Chief Chemist and optical crystallographer, Hercules Aerospace Division, Salt Lake City, Utah.
In comparing the dirt from the foot area of the Shroud with limestone samples from tombs near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, Dr. Kohlbeck discovered that:
"(When) we ... examined a calcium sample from the shroud taken from the area known as the 'bloody foot' ... (it) showed a larger concentration of calcium carbonate than other areas. The calcium carbonate turned out to be aragonite, not the more common calcite - and exhibited small amounts of strontium and iron.
Further analysis was conducted by Dr. Ricardo Levi-Setti, of the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago, who put both Shroud and Jerusalem samples through his high-resolution scanning ion microprobe and produced graphs; these graphs revealed that the samples were an unusually close match ... aragonite with these traces can no doubt be found elsewhere in the world as well as in Jerusalem. On the other hand, those who claim the shroud is a 14th century forgery need to explain how the aragonite got there"· (Joseph A. Kohlbeck and Eugenia L. Nitkowski. "New Evidence May Explain Image on Shroud of Turin; Chemical tests link Shroud to Jerusalem." Biblical Archaeological Review. July/August 1986, Vol. XII, No. 4, pgs. 23-24.)
[Above (enlarge): Prof. Ricardo Levi-Setti (1927–2018)'s scanning ion microprobe comparisons of Jerusalem limestone (black) and limestone on Shroud (red)[KN86]. As can be seen above, from their spectral patterns, the Shroud foot and Jerusalem tomb limestone samples were a very close match [WI98, 106; WS00, 93; DT12, 114 See 27Dec18].
Prior to the. 6th. century, only vague. and widely varied "portraits" of Christ (i.e. usually a beardless youth, Appello-like, often depicted as a shepherd) are known to the art historian. Yet
"at one given point, the sixth century, the features of Christ in art were brought into focus, as if by an invisible decree. The hair became long and center-parted, the beard established and decisively forked, the nose longer and more pronounced, the eyes deeper and their pupils larger, and the whole countenance set in a rigidly front-facing attitude. There is an authority about it that seems to suggest that someone, somewhere suddenly knew what Jesus had looked like ... (and more amazing) It is surely a remarkable coincidence that the Shroud likeness was followed so exactly." (Ian Wilson, The Shroud of Turin. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1979, pgs. 102-103.)
Since the pioneering work of Vignon, Sandhurst, Fr, Maurus Green and Wilson himself with this Iconographic Theory, Dr. Alan Whanger and his wife Mary have developed an amazing "Polarized Image Overlay Technique", a new image comparison method which allows for even more precise methods of pain-by-point comparison of images. In studying the Face of Christ on a gold Byzantine solidus struck ca. A.D. 692-695, the Whangers discovered over 70 points of "congruity" or similarity with the Shroud's facial image - a discovery even more amazing when one considers that the solidus is approximately the. size of a US. nickel. ["However, I regret to say that, as congenial as this is to Shroud pro-authenticists (including me who had cited it in the past), Whanger's PC argument has several major flaws (some of which he tacitly admitted above), that invalidate it." (02 Jan18). It isn't that there is not congruity between Justinian II (r. 685-95 & 705-11)'s gold solidus coin and the Shroud-there obviously is (see below). But Whanger's claiming a precise, large, number of points of congruity is hopelessly subjective:
"We called these points of congruence (PC). This was carefully and meticulously done, and we [Alan and Mary Whanger] did not draw in anything unless we both could see and be certain that it was really there"[WW98, 19].As can be seen below, Jesus' face on the Justinian II c. 692 gold solidus coin bears a striking resemblance to the face of the man on the Shroud[PM96, p.195; SD89, 84-85].
[Above (enlarge): Comparison of positive (left) of the Shroud face (enhanced)[SSF] and a Justinian II 692 gold solidus coin cropped). By my count there are at least 12 out of 15 Vignon markings on Jesus' face on this coin that are also found on the Shroud of Turin[11Feb12 & 24Jan17]. It is obvious that the engraver of this late 7th century coin based his design on the face of the man on the Shroud: ~568 years before the earliest 1260 radiocarbon date of the Shroud! And ~663 years before the Shroud first appeared in 1355, in undisputed history, at Lirey, France!]
In fact, this study "throws up so many areas of congruity, including even the matching of Christ's neckline on the coin portrait with a persistent accidental crease on the Shroud, that to Whanger it has seemed self-evident that the Shroud must somehow have served as inspiration for the Byzantine coin. Exploring other Byzantine images, he alighted on the intriguing sixth- century Pantocrator icon from Sr. Catherine's monastery, Sinai ... (ca. A. D. 550-590) ... Following a painstaking study undertaken with his wife, Mary, Whanger claims the identification of no fewer than one hundred and seventy points of congruity between the Shroud image and the sixth-century icon. To them, and to many who have studied their work, it seems irrefutable that artists at least as early as the sixth century somehow had available to them either the Shroud, or a detailed copy of it, seven centuries before, according to Dr. McCrone, the image was devised by some cunning medieval artist." Ian Wilson. The Mysterious Shroud. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1986, p.110.).
Shroud scholars are well aware that the Image of Edessa/Mandylion/Shroud of Turin was rediscovered in a niche above Edessa's west gate following a near disastrous flood in, 525. [This was Ian Wilson's 1978 theory, based on the 945 "Official History of the Image of Edessa" but it suffers from multiple implausibilities:
• The Shroud (as the Image of Edessa "four-doubled" tetradiplon), was according to the 945 Official History [see "945c"] fastened to a board and hung over Edessa's main gate in all weather (which varied from freezing snow in Winter to 40°C heat in Summer) for ~25 years, from ~AD 32 when Edessa's King Abgar V (r. 4 BC-AD 50) was healed by Jesus' disciple Thaddeus to the reign in 57 of Abgar V's pagan younger son Ma'nu VI (57–71) [08Jan19].
• According to the "Official History" after the pagan King Ma'nu VI began to reign in 57, to ensure its safety, "the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ not made by hand" was bricked up inside the public gate of Edessa, and then completely forgotten for almost five centuries until its discovery in 544 [see "544"] during the Persian King Khosrow II (590-628)'s Siege of Edessa. However, this story is most implausible. Did not Ma'nu VI, or any of his guards or officials, notice that the Image of Edessa they were seeking to destroy, was where it had previously been but only behind fresh brickwork? [24Jul16]. Did not a maintenance worker, or anyone, go inside Edessa's main gate wall structure for almost five centuries from ~57-544?
• Likewise Ian Wilson's theory, based on that "Official History" story, that the Image of Edessa/Shroud was discovered in 525, during the rebuilding of Edessa's flood damaged wall[WI79, 254], suffers from the same multiple implausibilities above and it does not even have the support of the "Official History" that the Image of Edessa/Shroud was discovered during the 544 Persian siege of Edessa! [07Dec16].
Thus, those who argue for a "medieval" (sic) date have the seemingly impossible task of explaining how sixth century artists were able to copy so exactly a work which was not produced until the 14th century. Even if we allow Dr. Richard Luckett's theory that the Shroud of Turin was produced from an actual human corpse It wasn't Luckett. Dr. Richard Luckett (1945-2020) was a Cambridge University librarian. On 26 August 1988, while the carbon dating was still in progress, he leaked to the London Evening Standard newspaper that, "a date of 1350 `looks likely'" (which was in fact the very first date of the Shroud by Arizona laboratory[GH96, 264]):
"The furore began after Dr Richard Luckett, a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, wrote in the Evening Standard yesterday [26 August 1988] that a date of 1350 `looks likely' for the 14ft piece of linen, which bears the imprint of the face, the thorns, and wounds of Jesus’s body. He referred to laboratories as `leaky institutions'. A fragment of the shroud is being radiocarbon-dated at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at Oxford"[RT15].But apart from a further, "I had an absolutely marvellous leak from one of the laboratories and it wasn't Oxford"[GH96, 279] (which meant the leak was either from Arizona or Zurich), Luckett said nothing else about the Shroud. Prof. Harry Gove (1922-2009), the informal leader of the 1988 radiocarbon dating laboratories, said of Luckett that he was, "a man I had never heard of before or since"[GH96, 282]. Ian Wilson deduced, and publicly stated, that the source of the leaks to Luckett and columnist Kenneth Rose (1924-2014) was David Sox (1936-2016) [24Jun14; 19Jan16; 22Feb16; 22Nov16; 15Aug17; 06Aug18 & 03Aug19]. Gove realised that Luckett's "1350" date must have "come from someone who was present at Arizona during the first measurement":
"I must say I wondered about Luckett's date of 1350 because it was the date Donahue announced to me when I was present at the first radiocarbon measurement on the shroud in 6 May 1988. Of course, it also corresponds very closely to the shroud's known historic date. However, I still assumed Luckett had said he got the number from Oxford. When I read that he claimed he got it from one of the other two labs I worried that it might have come from someone who was present at Arizona during the first measurement"[GH96, 279].And Sox `just happened' to have worked as a teacher for at
[Right: Photograph of Linick and report that "He died at the age of forty-two on 4 June 1989, in very unclear circumstances ..." (my emphasis)[BB00].This is consistent with my theory (see "My theory that the radiocarbon dating laboratories were duped by a computer hacker") that the KGB executed confessed KGB hacker Karl Koch (1965–89) between 23 and 30 May 1989[21Jul14; 02Jun16; 17May15; 27May19; 03Feb21], and police publicly identified the body as Koch on 3 June 1989, and the KGB executed Linick a day later on 4 June 1989[05Jul14; 17May15; 31Mar15; 30Jun15; 03Aug19; 30Dec15; 22Feb16; 02Jun16; 30Jul16]; where their murders by the KGB were made to look like suicides to stop them revealing that the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud as 1260-1390 (1325 ±65) was the result of a KGB-sponsored computer hacking by Linick, aided by Koch[05Jul14; 13Dec14; 31Mar15; 22Feb16; 02Jun16]; 30Jul16; 03Feb21].]
least 12 years from 1978 to 1995 (which included 1988) at the same American School in London with Anthony Linick who was a half-brother of Arizona physicist Timothy Linick (1946-89)[22Feb16; 03Aug19]. And, according to my hacker theory, Timothy Linick was both the leaker to Sox of Arizona's first "1350" radiocarbon date of the Shroud and also the hacker who wrote a program which substituted the actual Shroud radiocarbon dates of Arizona, Zurich and Oxford, with bogus computer-generated dates, which when combined and averaged, yielded a radiocarbon date of 1260-1390 or 1325 ±65 years. See above which is from 21Mar23.
- "custom crucified" if you would and subject to the same "passion" as the historical Jesus of Nazareth - the fabricator this macabre "medieval 'shroud" would have had to select for a victim one whose physiography was an exact duplicate of the one meticulously rendered by icon painters from at least 6th century onwards. It was the British Museum's Michael Tite who claimed that (albeit in 2020 but presumably he had also said it in 1988):
"Rob Walker spoke to Professor Michael Tite, who supervised the testing process, during the BBC's Witness History podcast ... `I don't believe it was the Shroud, but I believe it is highly probable that there was a body in there – it was the time of the Crusades and an appropriate way to humiliate a Christian would be to crucify him.'"[HC20].But: • The only crusade compatible with the 1260-1390 radiocarbon date of the Shroud was the "Ninth" or "Lord Edward's crusade (1271-72)." And it would have been well-known in that small crusade if the Muslims had crucified a crusader in imitation of Jesus, but there is no record of it. • The Muslims would have had to be experts in Roman crucifixion. • Where did the Muslims or the victim's fellow crusaders, get a ~4.4 x ~1.1 metre (~14.4 x ~3.6 feet) fine linen cloth to wrap the crusader victim in? • How was the crusader victim's image imprinted on that cloth? For starters! See 09Sep23.
V. UNIQUE 3-D CHARACTERISTIC OF THE SHROUD'S IMAGE
Dr. Luigi Gonella, Professor of Physics at Turin Polytechnic, Scientific Advisor to the Archbishop of Turin and Supervisor of the 1978 testing program.
"(While) making measurements on Shroud photos looking for-correlations in the spatial distribution of the image brightness, (American physicists John Jackson and Eric Jumper [Jumper is an engineer] discovered that) ... the shading structure of the Image. was found to be well correlated with the cloth-body distance of a Shroud-like cloth draped over a man laying in the picture shown by the Shroud. This 'three-dimensional characteristic' is a measured structural feature of the Shroud image which appears quite unique and must be accounted for by an acceptable theory of image formation. The main point is that three-dimensional information is encoded in the image structure; this is unheard of in paintings or photos ... a 3-D brightness mapping of a normal portrait results in evident, unavoidable distortions and plateaus. To get such a structure by eye-hand coordination, especially in a low-contrast image, appears to be technically impossible, Moreover, the Fourier analysis of the Shroud image shows a random spectrum of spatial frequencies without any preferred direction, another feature inconsistent with handwork." (Luigi Gonella. "Scientific Investigation of the Shroud of Turin - Problems, Results, and Methodological Lessons," Turin Shroud – Image of Christ, Hong Kong: Cosmos Printing Press, Ltd, 1986, pg. 31.)
THE PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE (cont.)
VI. MEDICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Pierre Barbet, M.D. Surgeon and student of the Shroud for over three decades. Author of A Doctor at Calvary. In arguing against the Shroud being a mediaeval forgery, Dr. Pierre Barbet made the following observations:
A) "No artist would have been able to imagine for himself the minute details of those pictures (i.e. the exact markings of `the bloodstained pictures (which) were clearly not drawn by the hand of man'), each one of which portrayed a detail of what we now know about the coagulation of blood, but which in the 14th century was unknown." (Pierre. Barbet, A Doctor at Calvary, New York; Image Books, 1963, pg. 1)Alan Adler, Ph.D. Professor of Chemistry at Western Connecticut State University, and member of STURP.
B) "Never has any artist wished to make an entirely naked crucifix. Now this is just what we shall find on the shroud. Could a forger possibly have conceived such an abnormal idea, and one which is so shocking to all our artistic traditions of decency and reverence?" (Ibid., p. 68.)
C) "Though the Shroud clearly depicts the nails in the center of the wrists, most artists unfamiliar with the subtleties of the original Greek took "hand" (i.e. which included the wrist and forearm) to mean only the "palm.""We shall see, however, that the Bolognese artists of the XVIth century were the first to recognise ... that this crucifixion in the palms of the. hands was an impossibility (Ibid. p. 103). (Note: Msgr. Paleotti, the Archbishop of Bologna, after seeing the Shroud in 1578 in the company of St. Charles Borromeo on its initial arrival in Turin from Chambéry in France, wrote a detailed description of it in 1598, perhaps the first such description to appear in Bologna. "Attached to it there is a very minute copy of the shroud showing the bloodstained images with their colours. It is in places the work of the most marvellous intuition, for one has to remember that the author can have known very little about anatomy." (Ibid. p.111.)D) Nails driven through the wrists damage the nerve responsible for flexing the thumb inward towards the palm. "That is why, on the shroud, the two hands ... only. show four fingers, and why the two thumbs are hidden in the palms. Could a forger have imagined this? Indeed, so true is this that many ancient copyists of the shroud have added the thumbs; in the same way they have separated the feet and shown their forward faces with two nail holes; but none of this is to be seen on the shroud." (Ibid. p. 9.)Today we know that a nail through the palm would not have supported the weight of the body and would have torn itself out of the "hand." However, such experiments proving this point "belong not to the Middle Ages but to the Renaissance - to that very XVIth century which saw the flowering of anatomical studies." (Ibid, p. 12.)
E) "The evidence for blood taken from the `wound' areas of the image is quite strong. Contrary to what has been claimed by our detractors (Note: Dr. Walter Mccrone argues that the Shroud is a forgery, painted by a medieval forger delicately applying water colors), the image and the bloodstains categorically are not composed of iron oxide pigment in a collagen binder. Iron is of course present in the blood areas in a slightly higher proportion than in normal blood, as would be expected in the traumatic conditions suggested by the nature of the wounds. The amount of iron is, however, quite small ... The material we were testing gave the right reflection spectrum for blood, and it gave the right transmission spectrum. It gave a positive hemochromagen test, which is the standard test for blood. It gave positive detection of bile pigments, positive demonstration of protein, positive indication of albumin, it did respond to the protease tests, and it did match the controls prepared in the lab ... Finally, we did immuno-chemical tests for whole human serum and for globulin ... In sum, our testing showed that the substance composing the bloodstains on the Shroud is a blood-derived material; it is definitely from primate blood, and it is the exudate of a wound." (Alan D. Adler, "The Origin and Nature of Blood on the Turin Shroud (Excerpts). Turin Shroud - Image of Christ? Hong Kong: Cosmos Printing Press, Ltd., 1986, p. 57.)Note: For those who would argue that the Shroud, though not a painting, is still a medieval forgery effected by crucifying an actual human victim bearing all the wounds of the historical Jesus of Nazareth, note that none of the blood clots/scabs is smeared or broken. Even with the invention of teflon in the 20th century, one would be hard pressed to explain how·the cloth was removed from a body, where the blood had completely penetrated that cloth without disturbing those clots in any way.
VII. HISTORY
In his brilliant reconstruction of the Shroud's history identifying the Image of Edessa/Mandylion/Shroud of Turin as one and the same artifact, Ian Wilson notes that the grave cloth was disguised by doubling it in four, the face only appearing behind a trellis work overlay in an unusual landscape (i.e. as opposed to portrait) orientation with the long axis running horizontally. Dr. Robert Drews notes that in all of Greek literature, the unique word to describe this folding, tetradiplon, is used only two times - in both instances referring to the Mandylion/Shroud.
"Thus, two literary documents that are fundament in the. evolution and spread of the Mandylion's story - the late sixth century Acts of Thaddaeus, which seems to have been where the story first appeared, and the tenth-century 'Monthly Lection' - speak of the icon as a cloth `folded four times'" (Robert Drews. In Search of the Shroud of Turin. Totowa, N.J.: Roman & Allanheld, 1984, p.40.)
Using this historical "clue'' as the basis for more rigorous examination by the hard sciences, Dr. John P. Jackson (Kaman Sciences Corporation and formerly on the. Physics Faculty of the U.S. Air Force Academy) decided to make observations directly - from the Shroud to determine if Wilson's theory should be refuted or substantiated.Using raking light photographs (i.e. grading angle illumination) of the Shroud taken by Vernon Miller of the Brooks Institute of Photography during the on-site testing of the. Shroud in 1978,
[Left (enlarge). See 08Dec22. Ancient foldmarks on the Shroud at one-eighth intervals. This is further proof beyond reasonable doubt that the Shroud is not the work of a medieval forger, and therefore is Jesus' burial shroud mentioned in the Gospels (Mt 27:59; Mk 15:46; Lk 23:53. See 19Oct12 & 18Jul20). It was only in 1978 that Ian Wilson first published his discovery that the Image of Edessa was the Shroud "doubled in four" (tetradiplon)[WI78, 99-100], so a medieval forger would have no reason to include fake foldmarks at one-eighth intervals, two of which, labelled C and D, frame the Shroud head, in landscape aspect, exactly as it appears in copies of the Image of Edessa!]
Dr. Jackson concluded that his research:
"indicates that on the Shroud are foldmark deformations which, in a preliminary sense, occur at locations roughly consistent with Wilson's Mandylion/Shroud hypothesis. Especially noteworthy is the foldmark that occurs at Location-C … (which) by itself suggests that the Shroud was once folded at least in eighths since it is located one-eighth of the Shroud's fourteen foot length from the center axis of symmetry … In addition, this foldmark intersects the patchwork and waterstain regions of the 1532 fire in such a way that it appears to predate the patchwork and probably the fire. As such, this structure appears to be a genuine centuries-old foldmark and therefore a plausible candidate for a Mandylion foldline." (John P. Jackson. "Foldmarks as a Historical Record of the Turin Shroud," Shroud Spectrum International, No. 11, June 1984, p. 27.)
Recent scholarship has recently uncovered a document further substantiating the identification of The Image of Edessa/Mandylion and Shroud as one and the same artifact. In a sermon delivered by Gregory the Archdeacon and Referendarius of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople on August the 16th, A.D. 944 - one day after the arrival in that city of the Image of Edessa - Gregory carefully describes how the cloth was laid out on the emperor's throne and even crowned with the emperor's crown. In the following passage from that sermon, Gregory's description of the "blood and water" from the wound in the "side" provide us with the first written documentation that the Image of Edessa/Mandylion was more than simply a Face masked by a trelliswork grid:
"The splendor instead - and let everyone be inspired by this narration - has been impressed uniquely by the drops of agony sweat, sprinkled from the face that is the origin of life, dripped down like bloody drops, and from God's finger. These are truly the beauties that produced the coloring of Christ's imprint, which has been further embellished by the drops of blood sprinkled from his own side. Both of them are plenty of truth: blood and water there, sweat and image here. What a resemblance of events! Such things come from the One and the Same,' (Vatican Greek Codex 511, 149, v 26. Emphasis added.)Note: Other documents tell us that on the night of its arrival in Constantinople (A.D. 15Aug944) the future Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus was able to discern the image while Stephen and Constantine Lecapenus sons of the reigning Emperor Romanos, find it "extremely blurred." A contemporary account, the De Imagine Edessena , describes the image as a "moist secretion without coloring or artificial stain," and that it did "not consist of earthly colors," (Cited by Wilson, The Shroud of Turin, op., cit., p. 255.)
ONCE AGAIN, ALL REASONABLE EVIDENCE POINTS TO THE ACTUAL SHROUD HAVING BEEN SAVED AND PRESERVED THROUGH THE CENTURIES AT LEAST UNTIL A.D. 1204 WHEN IT DISAPPEARED FROM CONSTANTINOPLE DURING THE SACK OF THAT CITY BY THE 4TH CRUSADE. ONE IS LEFT WITH AN INTERESTING QUESTION: IF THE SHROUD CURRENTLY HOUSED IN TURIN'S CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST IS NOT THE AUTHENTIC SHROUD, THEN WHAT IS IT? ALL THE PREPONDERANCE OF·EVIDENCE ASSEMBLED FROM THE VARIOUS FIELDS OF SINDONOLOGY POINTS TO ITS AUTHENTICITY. ONLY THE RECENT C-14 DATING ARGUES AGAINST SAME. COULD IT BE THAT WHAT NEEDS TO BE "TESTED" IS THE C-14 DATING PROTOCOL ITSELF?
THE PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE (cont.)
VIII. C-14 TESTING
A) Given that no detailed and extensive chemistry has ever been conducted to determine the kinds of contaminants on the Shroud are present, methods of such detection, and methods of their removal complete with scientific controls of same (Note: The same Zurich lab in a 6-lab inter-lab comparison study of sample linens used as a "dry run" and presented at the Radiocarbon Conference in Trondheim, Norway in June of 1985, produced an "outlier" of 1,000 years difference from the 5 other labs all because of improper cleansing/preparation of the sample, and
B) Given that there was no peer review by the radiocarbon community of the. 3-lab plan prior to the radiocarbon tests, and
C) Given that the accelerator laboratories (e.g. Arizona, Oxford and Zurich) were not controlled by an alternative· method, namely the small proportional, counter (i.e., Brookhaven, Long Island, NY and Harwell, England) the latter having more experience in radiocarbon dating of archaeological artifacts than the combined experience of all of accelerator laboratories chosen added together), and
D) Given that there was no random selection of sampling sites, that at least two other sites should have been carbon dated, that such sample as was tested came from the single most contaminated place on the Shroud (i.e. from an edge, most exposed to the elements and most frequently handled during expositions over the centuries), that sites beneath the patches, effectively protected from contamination since April 17, A.D. 1534, were bypassed for testing, and
E) Given that there was in actuality no "blind testing" as agreed to by the participating labs in their original protocol, each test sample from the Shroud having been delivered to each laboratory completely intact and thus easily identifiable by its 3/1 twill weave pattern, and each control sample (i.e. cloths from the 1st, 11th and (ca. 1300) centuries) identified as to the century within which its date should fall,WE THEREFORE HOLD THAT THE RADIOCARBON DATES RECENTLY ANNOUNCED AS "MEDIEVAL" (SIC) MUST BE REJECTED ON SCIENTIFIC GROUNDS AND THAT FURTHER SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY SHOULD BE CONTINUED AND ENCOURAGED UNTIL SUCH TIME AS THE SHROUD OF TURIN CAN BE EXPLAINED IN TERMS OF A 14TH CENTURY CONTEXT AND/OR A NEW ROUND OF RADIOCARBON TESTING GUARANTEED BY RIGOROUS SCIENTIFIC CONTROLS, CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED ON THE CLOTH.
(IX. POSSIBLE EFFECTS OF THE RESURRECTION ON C-14 DATING).
The above argument should probably only be used with Christian audiences, and is unlikely to be acknowledged by "hard" scientists who, in addition to rejecting the "Resurrection" certainly have no data base for comparison with this singularly unique, historical event.In an article by Nick Rufford, Science Correspondent, on page 1 of the London Sunday Times, August 7, 1988, he states:
"Those convinced that the shroud really was Christ's burial cloth. could argue that the same burst of energy which created the image also irradiated (i.e. effected by radiation) the cloth. That would make the cloth appear younger than its true age."One could go on to contend that not all (i.e. Shroud vs. the control sample), 1st century samples are the same if exposed to different sets of circumstances (i.e. Resurrection vs. normal). Thus, trying to date the Shroud by comparing it with a known 1st century sample is like comparing apples and oranges -· that is to say, both are "fruits'", but after that all similarity ends.
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]
Bibliography
DT12. de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London.
GH96. Gove, H.E., 1996, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK.
HC20. Hoare, C., 2020, "`There WAS a body inside' Shroud of Turin oddity discovery exposed in Bible breakthrough," Daily Express, 27 May.
KN86. Kohlbeck, J.A. & Nitowski, E.L., 1986, "New evidence may explain image on Shroud of Turin," Biblical Archaeological Review, Vol. 12, No. 4, 23-24.
PM96. Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta.
RT15. Radford, T., 2015, "From the archive, 27 August 1988: Turin Shroud leak starts unholy row," The Guardian, 27 August.
SD89. Scavone, D.C., 1989, "The Shroud of Turin: Opposing Viewpoints," Greenhaven Press: San Diego CA.
WI78. Wilson, I., 1978, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," Doubleday & Co.: New York NY.
WI79. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition.
WI98. Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY.
Whanger, M. & Whanger, A.D., 1998, "The Shroud of Turin: An Adventure of Discovery," Providence House Publishers: Franklin TN.
WS00. Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London.
Posted 21 December 2023. Updated 10 January 2024.
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