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

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

[Previous: October 2019, part #1] [Next: December 2019, part #1]

This is the November 2019 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. I have listed below linked news article(s) about the Shroud in November as a service to readers, without necessarily endorsing any of them. My comments are bold in square brackets.

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News:
• "Shroud of Turin: Interview with Researcher Who Debunked the 1988 `Medieval' Dating," Townhall, Myra Kahn Adams, 3 November 2019 ... In mid-July, I wrote a piece that was popular with Townhall readers headlined: "Shroud of Turin: New Test Concludes 1988 `Medieval Hoax' Dating Was a Fraud." The headline reflected the conclusion of French researcher Tristan Casabianca [Right [2]] and his team of scientists, who in March published their results in the scholarly journal Archaeometry titled: "Radiocarbon Dating of the Turin Shroud: New Evidence from Raw Data." In 2017, Casabianca took legal action to obtain the raw data used in the controversial 1988 radiocarbon dating test on the Shroud of Turin — data that had been deliberately sequestered for three decades. Disputed by scientists from day one, the test results concluded with "95% confidence" that the Shroud ... was dated between 1260 and 1390. Shroud scientists are optimistic that Casabianca's breakthrough, obtaining and retesting the 1988 raw data with contrary results, will increase pressure on the Vatican to authorize new comprehensive 21st century Shroud testing. The following interview was conducted by email from Casabianca's home in Paris, France ... `I realized how much the radiocarbon test's medieval date conclusion still resonated within the Shroud scientific community and negatively impacted public opinion — despite newer evidence dating the cloth to the First Century. And, since nearly 30 years had passed, I wanted to try to put an end to this dating controversy ... I thought: What actions were never taken to obtain the raw data? Thanks to my legal background, the answer was obvious: A request based on the Freedom of Information Act ... More intriguing is that since March, the authors and institutions of the Nature article ... have been invited to reply, and, as of this writing, have not ... I am highly confident that in the next few years, the failure of the Turin Shroud radiocarbon dating will largely be admitted by scientists ...'" [See my comment below after the next article.]]

• "The Shroud of Turin Was Declared a Fraud. New Research Has Some Asking for a Retrial," The Daily Beast, 24 November 2019, Candida Moss ... In the 1980s, carbon testing led to a guilty verdict for the Shroud of Turin as a fraud. But researchers who pursued a legal case for the original data say it's far from certain ... For the past 600 years [sic] Christians have venerated the Shroud of Turin as a precious relic ... even proof of the reality of the resurrection. Then, in 1988, three laboratories based at top universities performed radiocarbon analysis of some of its threads. The results were collected and collated by the British Museum in London and published in a splashy article in the prestigious Nature magazine that claimed to offer definitive proof that the Shroud was a medieval fraud. Oddly the original data was unavailable to researchers. But in 2017, a legal request under the Freedom of Information Act obtained the raw information for the first time. Their results, published recently in Archaeometry, show that the issue of the dating of the Turin Shroud is far from settled ... most people thought that the radiocarbon dating would be the silver bullet that would either confirm the inauthenticity of the Shroud or dispel Shroud doubters once and for all. Vatican agreement for testing took decades to obtain and then, finally, in 1987, laboratories in Arizona, Oxford, and Zurich were selected to perform independent tests. On April 21, 1988, a sample was taken from one corner of the cloth and distributed to the three sets of scientists. The resulting publication declared that there was `conclusive evidence' that the linen of the shroud dates to 1260-1390 CE with 95 percent confidence in those results. Since 2005, however, a growing number of scholars have questioned the results of the now 30-year-old tests. Some claimed, for example, that the area tested was a portion of the cloth that was repaired and that the tested strands reflect those repairs ... The fact that testing only used samples from one corner of the cloth makes it impossible to know if this is a claim is correct or not. Oddly, though, neither academic institutions involved or the British Museum would respond to requests for the original raw data that were held in their archives. (The British Museum also did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.) It was only when Tristan Casabianca made a request under British law that he received a favourable reply. According to his co-authored article in Archaeometry, the British Museum `made all its files ... available' to his team. What Casabianca and co-authors ... discovered is that the results were less conclusive than the Nature article suggests ... What should interest everyone is how hard it was for researchers to obtain copies of the raw data produced during the radiocarbon testing. The British Museum had repeatedly denied requests for the raw data. Bioarchaeologist Dr. Kristina Killgrove, who was not involved in working on the Turin Shroud, told The Daily Beast that `it makes some sense to release info to researchers who want to check it / build on it (and not to release data completely publicly). But to refuse to release data is a big red flag.' Making data available publicly is important Killgrove added, because `replicability is the cornerstone of science, and science can't progress without the publication of raw data.' ... It's also easy to understand why people of faith might be concerned by the strange reluctance of scientists to release their results in full. Perhaps new testing is needed to put the debate to bed once and for all ... [Since the evidence is overwhelming that the Shroud is authentic, and therefore 1st century, its 13th-14th century radiocarbon date, must be the result of fraud, i.e. a computer hacking! Moreover, the Nature article itself is fraudulent [see 15Jul18, 17Feb19 & 29May19], as the laboratories and the British Museum's refusal to release their raw data until the latter was forced to, shows they know it was. So what first must happen is that the Nature article be retracted [see 04Oct18, 29Nov18, 18Dec18, 10Mar19 & 29May19].]

Editorial
Posts: In November I blogged four new posts (latest uppermost): "AMS: Turin Shroud Encyclopedia," - 10th; "Contents: The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus! #2," - 9th; "News and Editorial," Shroud of Turin News, September 2019," - 5th; "Cover: The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus! #1," - 4th.

Comments: Comments in November included:
• November 1, 2019 at 7:46 AM My reply to an anonymous comment under my "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: Sixteenth century (1)" post asking me to not forget to inform readers about my book progress when writing my editorial. I replied that, '... I always do. I have a permanent "My book" section in my monthly Shroud of Turin News posts and as mentioned in the August issue, "my target date for publication of my book is 2025" when "The next public viewing [of the Shroud] is scheduled ..."

• November 2, 2019 at 7:37 AM My reply to a Charles P Arnold, Jr under my 2008 post, "Are the three Hebrew letters on the Shroud tsade-'aleph-waw: `you will come out'?" which was, "... `lamb' makes

[Above (enlarge): 3D hologram showing three Hebrew or Aramaic letters under the beard of the man on the Shroud: "The Shroud of Turin: The Holographic Experience," Missouri Botanical Garden, 2008. These are more clearly seen with red and green anaglyph 3D `spectacles'. ]

no sense" and "... speculating what the three Hebrew or Aramaic letters on the Shroud may mean is missing the main point which is, `they ARE Hebrew or Aramaic letters'"! That is because a medieval forger: 1) would be unlikely to know Hebrew or Aramaic letters, unless he was Jewish; 2) if he did know Hebrew or Aramaic letters, a medieval forger would be unlikely to depict them on his forged Shroud because his medieval European mostly Gentile contemporaries would be unlikely to recognise them; and 3) if a medieval forger did depict three Hebrew or Aramaic letters on his forged Shroud, he would be unlikely to chose three with an obscure meaning, but would more likely chose letters which spelled the Hebrew or Aramaic equivalent of "Jesus" or "Messiah," etc.

Updates In November there were no significant updates in the background of my past posts.

Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud. As we saw above, I blogged one post, "AMS: Turin Shroud Encyclopedia" on the Shroud's 1988 radiocarbon dating.

My book: On 31 October I ceased writing my word-processed book, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus!" when I found that I was getting too bogged down with fine details, such that I had become increasingly worried that at almost (now) 73 years of age, I may never finish it. So I decided to start writing my book online, with the aim of eventually basing a word-processed version on that. Also, if I never finished my online book, at least I would have placed some of it in the public domain! So on 4 November I posted "Cover: The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus! #1" (below) followed by "Contents:

[Above (enlarge): The no longer planned but actual cover of my online book!]

The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus! #2" on 9 November. I intend that every second post will be a section of my book.

Pageviews: At midnight on 30 November, Google Analytics [Below (enlarge)] gave this blog's "Pageviews all time history" as 1,122,980.

This compares with 985,345 at the same time in November 2018. That is 137,635 pageviews over the year, or an average of ~377 pageviews per day.

Google Analytics also gave the most viewed posts for November (highest uppermost) as: "Introduction #2: The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic!," Jul 9, 2015 - 236; "`according to John chapter 20, Jesus was wrapped in linen cloths (plural) ... If Scripture is correct ... lets throw out the shroud'," Jul 11, 2012 - 115; "`Or the artist of the fake shroud knew of the Pray Manuscript and incorporated these signs into his forgery?'," May 19, 2012 - 98; "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: AD 30 to the present: 1st century and Index," Jul 24, 2016 - 82 & "Problems of the Turin Shroud forgery theory: Index A-F," Jan 20, 2016 - 81

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. "Amazon.fr: Tristan Casabianca: Livres, Biographie, écrits, livres audio, Kindle," 2019. [return]

Posted: 11 December 2019. Updated: 11 October 2021.