Shroud of Turin

First can I guide you to internet sites that thoroughly tackle the evidence of modern material and ancient material being in the C14 tested samples:-Page not found – Shroud of Turin Blog and especially http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/textevid.pdfThere seems to be good grounds therefore for doubting the accuracy of the 1988 C14 test results as representative of the oldest parts of the cloth. The oldest part tested appears to have a date of 200AD.Next can I make my own observation on the available images of the cloth as seen on the internet:-I would say that there are 2 very different images on the cloth and I believe I can see a clear demarcation line between them. Can anyone else?Firstly there is the face. To me this is a negative image of a face lit from above - picking out the hair, brow ridges, nose, top lip and so on, but leaving the recesses dark - such as the eyes and the crease between the cheek and top lip. Most importantly this image terminates in a curved line at the neck. I have not to date seen this remarked on anywhere else. If this image is a chemical change in the surface of the cloth then it could have been created by a camera obscura throwing a "bleaching image" onto damp linen (See Not Found (#404) - Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc. for a discussion of the known effects of light and damp and other simple agents on linen.) There a number of pages detailing how such an image could have been produced in ancient times, even possibly using iodine. See This website was recently revamped for an example.Secondly there is the rest of the body. This seems to be a contact image. I cannot comment on the exact nature of its formation, but I would surmise that sweat absorbed by the cloth could have changed the browning of the surface of the cloth.So why 2 different images? Well, I offer the following line of thought. Imagine you are a medieval archivist in possession of ancient biblical texts that need hand scribing and also of an ancient cloth bearing supposedly Christs image. There are many instances where the scripture texts have been subtly altered over time to better suit the message that it was thought it should be giving. So with the cloth. The body looks OK, but the face is all distorted, over wide. To stir faith a better image is needed. So artists are called. They bleach out the old bad image and cleverly put a new image on that really looks like a human face. The old blood marks might have been on the distorted face, but have now been found located over the hair on the new image. Everyone is happy until modern science tries to unpick the tangled history.

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Richard
London, UK

Thankyou for bringing my attention to the paper on the carbon dating of the Turin Shroud at Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin. Look at Fig 1. in this page. You will note that the Shroud sample dating has a qualitative difference from the other 3 control samples in that the standard deviations do not overlap.Papers by Remi Van Haelst, an industrial chemist, and Bryan J Walsh, Shroud of Turin Center, Richmond Virginia USA criticise the supposed homogeneity of the tested samples and highlights the statistical problems of the wide scatter of data in the lab results. They point out that the original data and the published data are not concordant and statistical errors were made. Fuller analysis indicates that the data is consistent with the different samples having different amounts of C14 in them. This is prima facie evidence of the tested samples not representing the whole shroud.Testore (one of the two present textile experts defends his opinion in response to the allegation:- I examined carefully the cloth all along the warp and filling of the threads concerned, without noticing any splicing. (Testore). Note that no chemical or microscopic investigations were documented to characterize the sample, only macroscopic appearance.Moving on to the current view - Raymond N. Rogers, a member of the original investigation group published a paper in 2002 detailing his microscopic analysis of the shroud and the samples taken. He detailed many differences between the tested sample and the fibres and analysis of the rest of the shroud. He presented his paper to a conference in Turin in 2001/2002 . As a result of that the custodians of the Shroud made a complete change in policy, no longer referring to the original investigating group but appointing an independent textile expert Dr. Flury-Lemberg of Switzerland to assess and advise on the care of the shroud.Mechthild Flury-Lemberg said it could be almost 2,000 years old. She has found its manufacture to be identical to 1st century linen cloth with features unknown to Medieval Europe. This agrees with the anlysis of Raes some time before.So, the current view of its custodians and experts is that this is a first century object.

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Richard
London, UK