Shroud of Turin stirs new controversy

A Colorado couple researching the shroud dispute radiocarbon dating of the alleged burial cloth of Jesus, and Oxford has agreed to help them reexamine the findings.

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- The tie that binds John and Rebecca Jackson is about 4 feet by 14 feet, woven of herringbone twill linen. It once led to their romance; years later, it still dominates their thoughts and fills their conversations.

It brought Rebecca, an Orthodox Jew, to the Catholic Church; it led John to suspend himself from an 8-foot-tall cross to study how blood might have stained the cloth. Together, the two have committed to memory every crease, scorch mark and unexplained stain in their years-long pursuit of the mystery: In 1988, science seemed to put that question to rest.

Radiocarbon dating by three separate laboratories showed that the shroud originated in the Middle Ages, leaving the "shroud crowd" reeling. Shroud skeptics responded, "We told you so." The Catholic Church admitted that it could not be authentic. Many scientists backed away.

But John Jackson, one of the shroud's most prominent researchers, was among those who insisted that the results made no sense. Too much else about the shroud, they said, including characteristics of the cloth and details in the image, suggested that it was much older.

LA Times weighs in on the Shroud with a fairly well written neutral article on Dr. John Jackson and Oxford re-opening the 1988 C14 controversy—PING!

Doesn't mention Dr. Raymond Rogers 2005 proof that the C14 Shroud samples were adulterated by 16th Century repair materials, but still fairly well balanced.

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The Oxford C14 Lab will be testing Dr. Jackson's theory that Linen in the presence of burning Carbon forming Carbon Monoxide may exchange Carbon atoms within existing molecules, thereby skewing the dates of later C14 tested linens. They will not be testing any Shroud material at all, but instead working with other linen known to have been in fires and with linen that they will purposely expose to burning Carbon with known mixtures of Carbon isotopes.

Dr. Jackson does not accept the peer reviewed and independently confirmed results of the late Dr. Raymond N. Rogers, a Chemist specializing in pyrolosis, that the samples taken from the Shroud for the 1988 C14 tests in violation of the agreed sampling protocols were an average 50-50 combination of older original Shroud linen and newer linen added in a repair probably done after 1652 which accounts for the skewed dating.

Dr. Rogers found that the sample materials were not similar to the main body of the Shroud. Unlike the main body threads, the sample incorporated linen threads that were spun with flax fibers that had Cotton fibers intermixed, had been dyed with a madder root dye, and retted with a mordant that incorporated Alum (aluminum) that was only in use after the 16th Century. Threads taken from the main body of the Shroud did not exhibit these characteristics.

The samples taken from a corner of the Shroud that had been agreed, by the scientists planning the C14 tests, must be avoided because of observed differences under ultra-violet light, were cut from the Shroud from that single location, rather than from the eight agreed different areas.

Photomicrographs of the now destroyed-in-testing-samples, and of the sole remaining control sample retain from destructive C14 testing show that they contain differing threads on the left side then the threads on the right side, It is thought that the threads on the Right were added in a repair job done in the 17th Century by a method called French Invisible Reweaving in which new threads are prepared that closely match any original material, then are carefully hand spliced to each original thread of the cloth and then hand-rewoven to match the existing cloth. This technique, developed in France in the early 1600s, was used to invisibly repair arrases, tapestries, and expensive clothing so that the repair could not be detected.

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