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Thanks for the links. However, at best the research you link dates the Shroud to be somewhere between 1300 and 3000 years old.

Perhaps more research is needed to better date the Shroud to determine if it is authentic or a hoax.

Thanks for the links. However, at best the research you link dates the Shroud to be somewhere between 1300 and 3000 years old.

False. It dated a flawed SAMPLE, composed of original Shroud Material and a medieval patch from approximatelly 1500-1600 AD woven into the Shroud. This flawed sample invalidates any scientific conclusion about the age of the main body of the Shroud. All it shows is what the mixture dates to. This is a common problem with C14 testing. One MUST be sure your sample is exemplar of the thing to be tested. In this case, they did not. The question of the age of the Shroud is back in the area of undetermined.

That being said, there was an unauthorized C14 test done on a thread taken from an image area... it tested to First Century +/-50 years. The inventor of the C14 test technique used on the Shroud samples, Harry Gove, agrees the tests results are now invalid. When asked how old the original material would have to be IF it were mixed with a 50% pollutant from 1532AD—the most likely date for the patch work to have been done—to return a test date of 1350AD, Gove did some calculations and said "First Century."

Perhaps more research is needed to better date the Shroud to determine if it is authentic or a hoax.

True.

Or perhaps not.

The skeptics love to masturbate over the emotional investment "believers" have in the Shroud; neglecting to note that some of the members of STURP were initially skeptics and/or non-Christians; and completely running away from the emotional investment many skeptics and atheists have in needing to discredit the Shroud.

If the image were of a Roman Centurion picking his nose, the skeptics wouldn't be all over it with attempts to prove how it was faked; they'd be in the forefront of investigating the mechanics of how the image was formed. But the fact that the image happens to be of a dead man, and appears to corroborate the historicity of the gospels, and (possibly?) the Resurrection, sends them into paroxysms.

There is such a thing as just saying "we don't know for sure"; there is such a thing as saying "the image is there, but that need not indicate it is there by 'miraculous' means"--and if one does that, the 'need' to 'debunk' the Shroud goes away. Prompt, soothing, relief.

Cheers! Cheers!