"News and Editorial," Shroud of Turin News, December 2018

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

[Previous: November 2018, part #1] [Next: January 2019, part #1]

This is the December 2018 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. I have renamed it "News and Editorial" to better reflect its order and what it is. I have listed below linked news articles about the Shroud in December as a service to readers, without necessarily endorsing any of them.

News:
• "Riccardo Levi-Setti, Holocaust survivor who uncovered trilobites and subatomic particles, dies at 91," Washington Post, November 20, 2018, Harrison Smith. I had missed this in November:

"He also used the instrument to examine fibers in the Shroud of Turin, the purported burial shroud of Jesus, uncovering traces of limestone that may have come from Jerusalem — grist for believers in the cloth’s authenticity." [see 27Dec18 & 22Mar13]

• "Megan Fox fulfills her lifelong dream of becoming Indiana Jones in Travel Channel series," USA Today, 3 December 2018, Patrick Ryan:

"Fox: ... I would love to be able to retest the Shroud of Turin (the alleged burial cloth of Jesus Christ). It was tested in the '80s and I don't think that the testing was handled well, but also the advancements in technology have been so great that there's a lot more we could do if we could get permission from the Vatican to take that."

• "Jesus 'death mask' is REAL – expert makes bombshell claim on Turin Shroud," Daily Star, 4 December 2018, Henry Holloway:

"... the Turin Shroud – is not a Medieval fake and scientific investigations into the mysterious cloth must be reopened, an expert has claimed. ... Turin Shroud scholar David Rolfe has spent forty years investigating the length line of linen which is alleged to contain an imprint of the body of Jesus. It is said the cloth ... was the burial shroud which Christ was wrapped in after the crucifixion. Scientists have dismissed the shroud as a forgery, claiming radiocarbon dating puts only as old as the 14th century, 1400 years after Jesus is said to have been executed in Jerusalem. Rolfe – who produced a documentary on the shroud The Silent Witness – has called for the case to be reopened .. He disputes the accuracy of the dating, claiming the details are too precise to have been faked, and has previously said there is a `strong case' for the shroud being real. The shroud even turned him into a Christian, he claims."

• "Shroud of Turin SHOCK: Demands for investigation into Jesus’ burial cloth to be REOPENED," Daily Express, Sean Martin, 5 December 2018.
• "Shroud of Turin mystery: New film being made about supposed burial cloth of Jesus," Christian Post, 5 December 2018, Stoyan Zaimov.

Editorial
Rex Morgan's Shroud News: In December I completed scanning and word-processing the final two issues of Shroud News, nos. 117 January 2001 and 118 December 2001. There were no issues of Shroud News in 2000 and only those two issues in 2001. Issues in Barrie Schwortz' archive are still up to #110, December 1998, but he emailed me that there will be a Shroud.com update on 21 January 2019, which will include those remaining issues.

I thank Rex Morgan who almost single-handedly wrote, published and distributed internationally those 118 issues over a 21 year time span from September 1980 to December 2001. Rex once described Shroud News as his life work, so he can now know in his declining years that his life work has been preserved in perpetuity. I also thank Ian Wilson who provided me the 118 issues of Shroud News, and Barrie Schwortz who converted my Microsoft Word files and jpg images into PDFs and published them on his Shroud.com website. Above all, I thank Jesus, the Man on the Shroud, for keeping my aged computer, scanner and body going!

I recently came across a 2014 criticism of me on Dan Porter's now closed blog, by an anti-authenticist Andrea Nicolotti, for not including page numbers in the British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter issues no. 1-42 and Shroud News:

"Andrea Nicolotti on August 13, 2014 at 11:39 am. I do not understand why you you lose so much time to comment things, usually meaningless, that Jones writes. It is a mystery to me. By the way, I think he did a good job with the scans of the newsletters, but unfortunately missing something fundamental: the page numbers of the original. So his work, for quoting with scientific purposes, it is useless, because it is necessary in any case to check on the printed copy."

The word-processor files I emailed to Barrie Schwortz of both the BSTS Newsletter #42-1 backwards and Shroud News included page numbers and it was Schwortz's decision to not include them. As should have been evident to Nicolotti because BSTS Newsletters #43-73 were already online in Schwortz's archive when I started scanning issues #42-1 backwards on 14 August 2011 and those issues don't have page numbers. But if anyone, including Nicolotti and his anti-authenticist ilk, needs to know the page numbers of an article in those above issues that I scanned, I will be happy to supply them.

Media release: I still have had no response from the news outlets to my emailed Microsoft Word version of my media release, "Were the Turin Shroud radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?," not even an acknowledgment. So I presume they all found my hacker theory too difficult to `digest.' Especially because it renders false every other pro-authenticist explanation of why the 1st century Shroud has a 13th-14th century radiocarbon date.

Shroud Conference, Canada, August 2019 "Science, Theology and the Turin Shroud," Conference August 14-17, 2019. Redeemer University College, Ancaster, ON, Canada.

Then on 30 December I received an email from a Robert A. Rucker, as follows:

"I would like to announce the 2019 International Conference on the Shroud of Turin entitled “Science, Theology and the Turin Shroud” and call for abstracts for oral or poster presentations to be made at the conference. This conference will take place on Wednesday Aug. 14 to Saturday Aug. 17, 2019, at Redeemer University College, 777 Garner Rd E, in Ancaster, ON, Canada. For details on abstract format, submission, and conference registration, please visit the conference website at: http://custance.org/conference. This conference is being organized by Dr. Gary Chiang. Please forward this announcement to others that might be interested. All my best to you. Bob Rucker"

I was thinking of submitting a new, referenced, version of my Media Release as a paper to be read in my absence at that conference, but I have now realised that Rucker is a proponent of the Neutron Flux theory, which my Media Release states is "highly implausible" (footnotes omitted):

"Also highly implausible are theories that just the right amount of neutron flow, or carbon contamination, or a `bioplastic coating', or medieval repairs, 'just happened' to shift the radiocarbon date of the 1st century Shroud 13-14 centuries into the future to the 'bull's eye' date 1325."

So I doubt that my paper would get a fair hearing in my absence, assuming it even got accepted!

Therefore I will put into practice my New Year's word, "patience"! Our pastor suggested that instead of a New Year's resolution, we each seek a New Year's word from the Lord, and "patience" came strongly to my mind. So I assume that "patience" is Jesus' word for me in 2019.

Posts: In December I blogged 3 new posts (latest uppermost): "Dirt #30: Other marks and images: The evidence is is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic!" - 27th; "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Twelfth century (2)" - 20th & "`Editorial and Contents,' Shroud of Turin News, November 2018" - 18th.

Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud. I still have had no response to my "Open letter to Professor Christopher Ramsey."

Updates Updates of past posts in the background included splitting my "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Twelfth century" into two parts, part (1) and part (2), which was a new post. Into part (1) I inserted Roberto Falcinelli's discovery of Shroud-like features in three c.1151 stained glass windows in Chartres Cathedral, France (see one of them below).

[Above (enlarge). Photograph of the "Crucifixion panel," in the "Window of the Passion and Resurrection," Chartres Cathedral, emailed to me by Prof. Roberto Falcinelli. In this "Crucifixion panel," Jesus is depicted with a realistic reversed `3' or epsilon (ε) bloodflow on his forehead [see also 29Nov18b], and also a nail wound in his right wrist [see 23Sep17 and 29Nov18c], both exactly as on the Shroud!].]

In my Chartres Cathedral stained glass windows post I made the point that:

"This discovery by Prof. Falcinelli of a realistic depiction of the Shroud's reversed `3' bloodstain ... in one of three Shroud-like depictions of Jesus in c.1150 stained glass windows in Chartres Cathedral, is at least as significant as the `poker holes' in the Pray Codex [see 21Aug18] in proving the Shroud pre-dated by at least a century its earliest 1260 radiocarbon date. That is because while sceptics can try to dismiss the Pray Codex as merely symbolic, they cannot so dismiss the Chartres Cathedral's literal reversed `3'! And there are at least thirteen unusual features in common between three of these stained glass windows and the Shroud ... compared with the Pray Codex's at least fourteen [see 04Oct18a]. Yet I had not heard about it until I read that item in my scanning of Shroud News ..."!

Comments: 08Dec18 under my post, "Shroud-like Jesus in a stained glass window (c.1150) in Chartres Cathedral, France," an anonymous commenter sent me a link to an anti-Shroud article by anti-authenticist and former Editor of the BSTS Newsletter, Hugh Farey. I focused on Farey's admission:

'Although I am well aware of all the arguments for authenticity, here I assume from the start that the Shroud is medieval."

My response included, "Unless he repents, Farey will receive from Jesus, the Man on the Shroud, his just reward," followed by Bible verses in my past comments where, "... Jesus made it clear that the severest punishment was reserved for those who had received the most light, but chose to deny it"

My radiocarbon dating hacker theory As can be seen above, I blogged no new post on my hacker theory in December.

My book: I continued making progress in December, writing a dot-point outline of my book, "Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus!" on my

[Right (enlarge): The planned cover of my book.]

smartphone using Gmail (see 09May17 and 06Jul17).

Then on Christmas Day, having the night before on Christmas Eve emailed the last issue no. 118 of Shroud News to Barrie Schwortz, copy to Rex Morgan (see above), I commenced writing the word-processed, first draft of my book! As previously mentioned I will use the time saved on not scanning and word-processing Shroud News to write my book.

Pageviews: At midnight on 31 December 2018, Google Analytics [Below (enlarge)] gave this blog's "Pageviews all time history" as 998,352. This

compares with 832,506 from the same time in December 2017. That is 165,846 pageviews over the past 12 months, or an average of ~454 pageviews per day. Last month I predicted that "at that rate ... this blog may pass 1 million pageviews in January 2019." And in the early morning of 3 January, pageviews did pass 1 million!

Google Analytics also gave the most viewed posts for the month (highest uppermost) as: Re: Shroud blood ... types as AB ... aged blood always types as AB, so the significance of this ... is unclear," Mar 18, 2011 - 147; "Shroud-like Jesus in a stained glass window (c.1150) in Chartres Cathedral, France," Nov 29, 2018 - 109; "`The Turin Shroud is a fake ... and it's one of 40': Antonio Lombatti" Jun 15, 2012; "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: AD 30 to the present: 1st century and Index," Jul 24, 2016 - 97 and "Introduction to my The Shroud of Turin (TSoT) blog!," Jun 30, 2007 - 86.

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]

Posted: 5 January 2019. Updated: 16 February 2019.