[orionblamblam]

> The post immediately prior to yours (probably posted while you were writing your reply to me) addresses your statement in detail.

The info in the post starts from the position that the shroud is 2k years old, and works backwards from there to "prove" it. It provides zero evidence to refute the medieval age of the shroud.

> The fire had the potential to cause a chemical change in the type of fibers in the shroud,

Irrelevant. Chemistry has nothing to do with radiocarbon dating.

> binding carbon items from the atmosphere

Nope. Fire does not do that to any recognizable degree.


> The biological "sheath" was quite thick

As pointed out, it'd have to be several times the mass of the shroud itself. If that were the case, the face would be invisible under the much.

[shroudie]

Ben Witherington, a well-known, very conservative and respected biblical scholar, wrote that the carbon 14 tests are now significantly disputed. He cited the same material as presented by EternalHope. Until recently, that was the going hypothesis. You are right in saying that the mass of bioplastic would need to be significant. You said more by mass but actual calculations say by as much as 60% because the bioplastic has a moving average age.

The scorching proposal that high temperatures from a fire in 1532, which damaged and nearly destroyed the Shroud, enhanced the mix of radioactive carbon 14 and stable carbon 12 isotopes in the cloth is dubious but not completely eliminated. But experiments to test this idea have not been promising. Any change caused by the fire would likely be too trivial to be significant.

The data was not refuted until recently, and in the best of scientific method, not until a complete analysis could be completed. Even Harry Gove, inventor of AMS carbon 14 tools, was open to the possibility pending full investigation.

The evidence by numerous researchers including Bryan Walsh, M. Sue Benford and Joseph Marino, Anna Arnoldi of the University of Milan and Raymond N. Rogers, a Fellow of the University of California Los Alamos National Laboratory is now complete. Ron Hatfield of Beta Analytic has even estimated from the composite data that a 1st century date is a reasonable estimate.

Is the cloth really first century? I think so. Other evidence suggests it is. New carbon 14 testing would be a good solution, but it is one that I don't think the Turin authorities are about to entertain in the foreseeable future.

I really do believe that it is a burial cloth of a first century crucifixion victim. And if it is, it is easy and reasonable to infer that it is Jesus' burial cloth. It completely agrees with the biblical narratives of the Passion. Its fuzzy history is better than most history we have for an object such as the Shroud. I am convinced, and not lightly so.

The fact is there may be some bioplastic material and there may be some ion transfer due to the fire, but they are probably a minor factor. The reality is that the radiocarbon dating labs did not test the Shroud but a medieval patch.

Shroudie