Shroud of Turin's age miscalculated?
Questions raised over 'faulty' carbon-dating tests

The mystery of the Shroud of Turin, a 14-foot-long cloth that many thought may have been the burial cloth of Jesus until scientists reported radiocarbon dating established it as no older than Medieval times, is being resurrected.

John Jackson, a physics lecturer at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, has convinced scientists who performed the age tests on the cloth housed in Turin, Italy, since the 1500s to consider his suggestion that those tests may have been faulty, according to a report in the Denver Post.

The cloth long has posed mysteries because of its age and its negative image of a bloodstained and battered man who had been crucified. Believers claim it to be the miraculous image of Jesus, formed as he rose from the dead.

That theory, however, took a serious blow in the late 1980s when scientists including those at an Oxford University laboratory performed the age-dating process on a fragment of the material and came up with the results that it was no older than the 13th or 14th century, more than a millennium after New Testament times.

But now Jackson, who runs the Turin Shroud Center of Colorado, a research organization, reports he has convinced Prof. Christopher Ramsey, head of the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, to test Jackson's hypothesis that carbon monoxide contamination could have skewed the test results by more than 1,000 years, the Post said.

The new tests will not involve actual portions of the shroud, but similar samples of linen, and are to determine whether the various conditions to which the shroud has been exposed, including outdoor exhibitions and the extreme heat of a 1532 fire that left the material scorched, would have changed the results, the Post report said.

Jackson told the newspaper that even nominal contamination from environmental carbon monoxide could have affected the dating results.

"Science still has much to tell us about the shroud," Jackson told the newspaper. "If we are dealing with the burial cloth of Christ, it is the witness to the birth of Christianity. But my faith doesn't depend on that outcome."

Ramsey said there simply are questions that need to be answered about the cloth.

David Rolfe, the director of a new documentary called "Shroud of Turin" told the newspaper that it either is authentic or a centuries-old hoax that today's state-of-the art science cannot decipher.

The cloth is in the custody of the Vatican, which stores it in a protective chamber of inert gases in Turin's Cathedral of St. John. History reveals it was exhibited in France about 1360 by Georrfrey de Charney, a French knight who owned it then. It last was shown in 2000.

Jackson led a research team in 1978 given access to the shroud and tests showed it was not painted, dyed or stained. The source of the faint brown discolorations that make up the negative image of a man never yet has been identified, he told the Post.

It wasn't until the invention of photography centuries after the early exhibitions that a clearer positive image was revealed.

The original carbon dating at Oxford was duplicated at the same time in Zurich and at the University of Arizona in Tucson, officials said. Yet the newspaper reported Jackson has assembled evidence contradicting an age of only 800 years or so.

Among the findings he cites:

Bloodstains on the shroud are real, and the blood has not been degraded by heat.

Historians say the stains are consistent with crucifixion, including puncture wounds from thorns and scourge marks from a Roman whip.

A puncture wound in the man's side is consistent with a Roman spear. And the wound marks showing nail holes through the wrists and heels are consistent with Roman crucifixion.

A textile restorer, Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, in 2002 announced the stitching found in the material had been seen in material from only one other source: the ruins of Masada, a Jewish settlement destroyed in A.D. 74. And the herringbone weave was common in the First Century but rare in Middle Ages.
Further, the newspaper reported, historians note the shroud's onetime owner, de Charney, was married to a direct descendant of a crusader from France who participated in the sacking of Constantinople.

On Jackson's website, he also notes that tests have revealed pollens on the shroud from plants that grow only in the Middle East. He also addresses the carbon-dating issue.

"We presently think that the most fruitful avenue of research is that inspired by some scientists in Russia who have reported seeing major shifts in the radiocarbon date of linen samples that have been incubated at modest temperatures… This research is interesting because we know that the shroud endured a significant thermal event during a fire in 1532 while in Chambrey, France. The entire cloth has yellowed and in some places scorched and burnt."

The research site continued, "Thus, based on the Russian studies, it is logical to suspect that the 1532 fire altered, perhaps significantly, the radiocarbon date of the shroud."

WND reported in 2000 that evidence already was appearing calling into question the process of carbon dating on certain materials – textiles in particular.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=64881

I'm not sure I'm convinced, as I don't foresee Yehoshua creating a relic and indirectly supporting idolatry.

Scientists: Relic authenticates Shroud of Turin
Exhaustive tests show sacred cloth much older than carbon-14 date

By Mary Jo Anderson

OVIEDO, Spain -- Scientists and forensic specialists gathered in Oviedo, Spain, this week to examine an obscure relic that many have claimed authenticates the Shroud of Turin -- believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

The Sudarium of Oviedo is reportedly the other linen cloth found in the tomb of Christ, as described in the Gospel of John. The relic, whose dramatic history is intertwined with the Knights Templar, Moors, El Cid, saints and bishops, has been in Spain since A.D. 631.

Meanwhile, in Turin, Italy, the last pilgrims of the Jubilee Year are winding their way past the Shroud of Turin before the exhibit closes on October 23.

Verses 5-8 of the 20th chapter of "The Gospel According to St. John" records, "... he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths, but rolled up in a separate place." This head cloth, the sudarium, has become the focus of increasing debates over the validity of the carbon-14 tests on the Shroud of Turin. The carbon-dating tests set the age of the shroud in the 13th century, which would make the Shroud of Turin a pious icon at best, a clever fraud at worst.

However, the scientific community is divided over the shroud dates because -- with the exception of the carbon dating tests -- medical, artistic, forensic and botanical evidence favors the authenticity of the shroud of Turin as the burial cloth of Jesus.

One example of microscopic testing that supports the Shroud as authentic is the 1978 sample of dirt taken from the foot region of the burial linen. The dirt was analyzed at the Hercules Aerospace Laboratory in Salt Lake, Utah, where experts identified crystals of travertine argonite, a relatively rare form of calcite found near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. It is a stretch, say researchers, that a 13th century forger would have known to take the trouble to impregnate the linen with marble dust found near Golgotha in order to fool scientists 600 years later.

The debate over the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin is elevated by the new discoveries resulting from the studies on the Sudarium of Oviedo. Unlike the Shroud, the Sudarium, which covered the face of Christ for a short time before the body was wrapped in the longer burial cloth, does not carry an image of a man. Instead, the cloth, held against a face of a man who had been beaten about the head, shows a distinct facial impression and pattern of stains. The cloth is impregnated with blood and lymph stains that match the blood type on the Shroud of Turin. The pattern and measurements of stains indicate the placement of the cloth over the face.

These patterns have been extensively mapped to enable researchers to compare the markings and measurements with those of the Shroud of Turin. These measurements and calculations, digitized videos and other forensic evidence indicate that the Sudarium of Oviedo covered the same head whose image is found on the Shroud of Turin.

Part of Jewish burial custom was to cover the face of the dead, sparing the family further distress. The sudarium, from the Latin for "face cloth," would have been wrapped over the head of the crucified Christ awaiting permission from Pontius Pilate to remove the body. Stains made at that time indicate a vertical position with the head at an angle. There are stains from deep puncture wounds on the portion of the cloth covering the back of the head, consistent with those puncture marks found on the Shroud of Turin, theoretically made by the caplet of thorns.

A separate set of stains, superimposed upon the first set, was made when the crucified man was laid horizontally and lymph flowed out from the nostrils. The composition of the stains, say the Investigation Team from the Spanish Centre for Sindology, who began the first sudarium studies in 1989, is one part blood -- type AB -- and six parts pulmonary oedema fluid. This fluid is significant, say researchers, because it indicates that the man died from asphyxiation, the cause of death for victims of crucifixion.

Recently, Dr. Alan Whanger, professor emeritus of Duke University, employed his Polarized Image Overlay Technique to study correlations between the Shroud and the Sudarium. Dr. Whanger found 70 points of correlation on the front of the sudarium and 50 on the back.

"The only reasonable conclusion," says Mark Guscin, author of "The Oviedo Cloth," "is that the Sudarium of Oviedo covered the same head as that found on the Shroud of Turin." Guscin, a British scholar whose study is the only English language book on the Sudarium, told WorldNetDaily, "This can be uncomfortable for scientists with a predetermined viewpoint; I mean, the evidence grows that this cloth and the Shroud covered the same tortured man."

Guscin also points to pollen studies done by Max Frei of Switzerland. Specific pollens from Palestine are found in both relics, while the Sudarium has pollen from Egypt and Spain that is not found on the Shroud. Conversely, pollen grains from plant species indigenous to Turkey are imbedded in the Shroud, but not the Sudarium, supporting the theory of their different histories after leaving Jerusalem.

The significance of the Sudarium to the Shroud, in addition to the forensic evidence, is that the history of the Sudarium is undisputed. While the history of the Shroud is veiled in the mists of the Middle Ages, the Sudarium was a revered relic preserved from the days of the crucifixion.

A simple cloth of little value, other than that it contained the Blood of Christ, the Sudarium accompanied a presbyter named Philip and other Christians fleeing Palestine in 616 A.D. ahead of the Persian invasion. Passing through Alexandria, Egypt, and into Spain at Cartegena, the oak chest containing the Sudarium was entrusted to Leandro, bishop of Seville. In 657 it was moved to Toledo, then in 718 on to northern Spain to escape the advancing Moors.

The Sudarium was hidden in the mountains of Asturias in a cave known as Montesacro until king Alfonso II, having battled back the Moors, built a chapel in Oviedo to house it in 840 AD. The most riveting date in the Sudarium's history is March 14, 1075. On this date, King Alfonso VI, his sister and Rodrigo Diaz Vivar (El Cid) opened the chest after days of fasting. This official act of the king was recorded and the document is preserved in the Capitular Archives at the Cathedral of San Salvador in Oviedo. The King had the oak chest covered in silver and an inscription added which reads, "The Sacred Sudarium of Our Lord Jesus Christ."

Juan Ignacio Moreno, a Spanish magistrate based in Burgos, Spain, asks the critical question. "The scientific and medical studies on the Sudarium prove that it was the covering for the same man whose image is [on] the Shroud of Turin. We know that the Sudarium has been in Spain since the 600s. How, then, can the radio carbon dating claiming the Shroud is only from the 13th century be accurate?"

Examine the Shroud of Turin online.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17660

"Creating a relic" - you make it sound like it was something preconceived. Potentially ANYTHING could become a relic - the relic-creation occurred later. Do we dismiss the cross, or claim Yah'shua was indirectly supporting idolatry, because there are claimed relics of the cross (some of which might be genuine)? I don't think that is a good case for dismissing scientific evidence.



DR said:

I'm not sure I'm convinced, as I don't foresee Yehoshua creating a relic and indirectly supporting idolatry.

I suppose you're right. Its no different than snapping a photo of Him if He were ministering in an era when cameras existed.

Lev/Christopher said:

"Creating a relic" - you make it sound like it was something preconceived. Potentially ANYTHING could become a relic - the relic-creation occurred later. Do we dismiss the cross, or claim Yah'shua was indirectly supporting idolatry, because there are claimed relics of the cross (some of which might be genuine)? I don't think that is a good case for dismissing scientific evidence.

DR said:

I'm not sure I'm convinced, as I don't foresee Yehoshua creating a relic and indirectly supporting idolatry.