"Editorial and Contents," Shroud of Turin News, November 2018

Shroud of Turin News - November 2018
© Stephen E. Jones[1]

[Previous: October 2018, part #1] [Next: December 2018, part #1]

This is the November 2018 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. I have listed below linked news articles about the Shroud in November as a service to readers, without necessarily endorsing any of them.

Contents:
• "'Suddenly I Saw Eyes': Jesus' Face Discovered in Ancient Israeli Desert Church," Haaretz Daily Newspaper, Ruth Schuster Nov 12, 2018. In my reply to Joe Marino who alerted me (and Ian Wilson) to this, I wrote: "As you probably already know, here are other news articles on this discovery:
"‘Face’ of Jesus Christ Uncovered in 1,500 Year Old Church in Israel," The Epoch Times, November 13, 2018, Jack Phillips; "'Jesus' face' uncovered at ancient church in the Israeli desert," Fox News, 14 November 2018, James Rogers. But it doesn't sound Shroud-like:

"In contrast to the Western image of Jesus as someone with flowing long hair and, sometimes, a beard, the Shivta painting shows him in the Eastern style with short curly hair, a long face and an elongated nose, says Maayan-Fanar." ("'Suddenly I Saw Eyes': Jesus’ Face Discovered in Ancient Israeli Desert Church," Haaretz Daily Newspaper, November 12, 2018, Ruth Schuster)[2].

Wilson agreed in his reply:

"For the Israelis to make the Eastern/Western distinction is plain ignorant. There are plenty of western examples of the beardless type, stretching as far west as Spain and England, all dating before the sixth century ... It’s an interesting discovery to add to my collection of examples of the beardless type, but nothing to get too excited about!"[3].

Editorial
Rex Morgan's Shroud News: My scanning and word-processing of the 118 issues of Rex Morgan's Shroud News, provided by Ian Wilson, and emailing them to Barrie Schwortz, for him to convert to PDFs and add to his online Shroud News archive, continued in November up to issue #115, September 1999. [Right (enlarge).], i.e ~97% completed. Issues in the archive are up to #110, November 1998.

Media release: In November I completed the simplified version of my media release, "Were the Turin Shroud radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?", and a Microsoft Word version of it, and emailed the latter to news outlets which had in the past published favourable (or at least not unfavourable) Shroud articles. But to date I have had no response.

Posts: In November I blogged 5 new posts (latest uppermost): "Shroud-like Jesus in a stained glass window (c.1150) in Chartres Cathedral, France," - 29th; "Date index 2018: The Shroud of Turin blog," - 27th; "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Fifteenth century (1)," - 9th; "Date index 2017: The Shroud of Turin blog," - 8th and "`Editorial and Contents,' Shroud of Turin News, October 2018," - 5th

Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud: As previewed in October's Shroud of Turin News, on 6 November I both emailed and airmailed my "Open letter to Professor Christopher Ramsey." In that letter I proved by many examples that:

"... the Shroud of Turin existed not just 65 years [Pray Codex 1195], nor only 316 years [Constantinople 944], but at least 716 years [Edessa 544] before the earliest 1260 radiocarbon date of the Shroud! Therefore, the 1260-1390 radiocarbon date of the Shroud of Turin must be wrong and cannot be salvaged." [04Oct18a]

I concluded the letter to Prof. Ramsey with:

"I therefore respectfully request that you, Professor Ramsey, commence a process of consultation with your relevant colleagues. The result of which will be a joint communication to Nature advising that the 1260-1390 date of the Shroud in its 16 February 1989 paper, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," must be wrong, since it conflicts with the overwhelming weight of the historical and artistic evidence, and that therefore the paper be retracted." [04Oct18b]

But to date I have had no response, not even an acknowledgment of receipt. I emailed a covering email with a link to that post [see 05Nov18] to one of Prof. Ramsey's online email addresses, "christopher.ramsey@rlaha.ox.ac.uk," and it never bounced back. I also that day airmailed a printed copy of the blog page to Prof. Ramsay at the Oxford Radiocarbon Dating laboratory's postal address, so he must have received it by now, ~7 weeks later. I will charitably assume that Prof. Ramsay is consulting with his colleagues about requesting Nature to retract that 1989 paper.

Updates Apart from my media release above, there were no significant updates in the background of past posts in November.

Comments: There were no comments worth mentioning in November.

My radiocarbon dating hacker theory I continued blogging an October post on my hacker theory in November: my "Media release: Were the Turin Shroud radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?"

My book: I continued making progress in November, writing a dot-point outline of my book, "Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus!" on my smartphone using Gmail (see 09May17 and 06Jul17). The "7. History of the Shroud" chapter is becoming large (as expected for an object that is nearly 20 centuries old!), so I am faced with a decision: do I produce a thin, low cost book, that will sell many copies, but which leaves a lot out, or do a I produce a thick, comprehensive, but high cost book that might not sell many copies? Because it might be the last major Shroud book (the last two - Oxley's and Wilson's - were 8 years ago), I have decided on the second option. When I finish scanning Rex Morgan's Shroud News hopefully by late December, I will spend that time in writing my book manuscript on my word-processor.

Pageviews: At midnight on 30 November 2018, Google Analytics [Below (enlarge)] gave this blog's "Pageviews all time history" as 985,345. This compares with 823,009 from the same time in November 2017. That is 162,336 pageviews for the past 12 months, or an average of ~445 pageviews per day. At that rate (which will probably slow because of the intervening Christmas-New Year period) this blog may pass 1 million pageviews in January 2019! Google Analytics also gave the most viewed posts for the month (highest uppermost) as: "Editorial and Contents," Shroud of Turin News, October 2018," Nov 5, 2018 - 89; Re: Shroud blood ... types as AB ... aged blood always types as AB, so the significance of this ... is unclear," Mar 18, 2011 - 81; "Shroud of Turin depicts a Y-shaped cross?," Apr 6, 2014 - 81; "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: AD 30 to the present: 1st century and Index," Jul 24, 2016 - 74 and "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Fifteenth century (1)," - Nov 9, 2018 - 71.

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. Jones, S.E., 2018, "Re: 'Suddenly I Saw Eyes': Jesus’ Face Discovered in Ancient Israeli Desert Church," Email to Joe Marino, copy to Ian Wilson, 14 November 2018, 11:20 pm. [return]
3. Wilson, I., 2018, "Re: 'Suddenly I Saw Eyes': Jesus’ Face Discovered in Ancient Israeli Desert Church," Email to Stephen Jones, copy to Joe Marino, 15 November 2018, 7:39 am. [return]

Posted: 18 December 2018. Updated: 6 January 2019.