Posted on 02/25/2008 12:33:54 PM PST by BGHater
The Oxford laboratory that declared the Turin Shroud to be a medieval fake 20 years ago is investigating claims that its findings were wrong.
The head of the world-renowned laboratory has admitted that carbon dating tests it carried out on Christendom's most famous relic may be inaccurate.
|
|
|
|
|
Professor Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, said he was treating seriously a new theory suggesting that contamination had skewed the results.
Though he stressed that he would be surprised if the supposedly definitive 1988 tests were shown to be far out - especially "a thousand years wrong" - he insisted that he was keeping an open mind.
The development will re-ignite speculation about the four-metre linen sheet, which many believe bears the miraculous image of the crucified Christ.
The original carbon dating was carried out on a sample by researchers working separately in laboratories in Zurich and Arizona as well as Oxford.
To the dismay of Christians, the researchers concluded that the shroud was created between 1260 and 1390, and was therefore likely to be a forgery devised in the Middle Ages.
Even Anastasio Alberto Ballestrero, the then Cardinal of Turin, conceded that the relic was probably a hoax.
There have been numerous theories purporting to explain how the tests could have produced false results, but so far they have all been rejected by the scientific establishment.
Many people remain convinced that the shroud is genuine.
Prof Ramsey, an expert in the use of carbon dating in archeological research, is conducting fresh experiments that could explain how a genuinely old linen could produce "younger" dates.
The results, which are due next month, will form part of a documentary on the Turin Shroud that is being broadcast on BBC 2 on Easter Saturday.
David Rolfe, the director of the documentary, said it was hugely significant that Prof Ramsey had thought it necessary to carry out further tests that could challenge the original dating.
He said that previous hypotheses, put forward to explain how the cloth could be older than the 1988 results suggested, had been "rejected out of hand".
"The main reason is that the contamination levels on the cloth that would have been needed to distort the results would have to be equivalent to the actual sample itself," he said.
"But this new theory only requires two per cent contamination to skew the results by 1,500 years. Moreover, it springs from published data about the behaviour of carbon-14 in the atmosphere which was unknown when the original tests were carried out 20 years ago."
Mr Rolfe added that the documentary, presented by Rageh Omaar, the former BBC correspondent, would also contain new archeological and historical evidence supporting claims that the shroud was a genuine burial cloth.
The film will focus on two other recorded relics, the Shroud of Constantinople, which is said to have been stolen by Crusaders in 1204, and the Shroud of Jerusalem that wrapped Jesus's body and which, according to John's Gospel, had such a profound effect when it was discovered.
According to Mr Rolfe, the documentary will produce convincing evidence that these are one and the same as the Shroud of Turin, adding credence to the belief that it dates back to Christ's death.
Note the link on response #218.
When is your book going to be available?
These are all compelling bits of evidence to indicate what you and I believe to be the case.
But we can never be 100% sure. At any rate, if you believe, you believe.
the separate cloth was laid over the face, followed by the Shroud - thus the image would most likely have permeated both at the same time
Well, I guess we both have to agree we disagree which is perfectly reasonable for two intelligent people to do.
But again, the scientific evidence which refutes the possible authenticity of the shroud is limited to the carbon 14 test. These tests are, as I maintained, subject to operational error on the part of the sampling and testing methods. A new series of samples taken from parts of the Shroud which were not Medieval additions to the original material would certainly be beneficial to putting this whole issue to rest - assuming steps were taken to address other issues of concern about the impact of other factors on the results.
Right
like bypassing the determined prejudices and determinations to dismiss the authenticity of the Shroud for personal and organizational bias - There are some powerful entities determined to denigrate the Shroud...powerful dark entities...
Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!
1. It would destroy part of the shroud.
2. The church (guided by Ratzinger instead of Pope John-Paul II), IMO, would not risk it being exposed again as a fraud.
Besides, if there were a re-test, the same old argument of testing procedure being flawed would again resurface.
Another example was the elaborate instrumentation, experimental equipment, and contrived methods used by STURP investigators to achieve an image transfer from a human body to cloth that had the necessary "photographic negative" quality noticed early in the previous century and the "three-dimensional coding" noticed more recently. The alleged photographic negative effect is in reality not a true photographic negative, but the Shroud image has greater tonal densities in high-relief areas and lower tonal densities in low-relief areas. The so-called 3-D coding gives the Shroud image a 3-D quality when processed through image analysis software that converts tonal gradations to a third axis--height. All of this elaborate equipment and painstaking testing was a useless waste of time and unnecessary expense, since, as I demonstrated many years ago, the photonegative quality of the Shroud image is not a true photographic negative but a faux-photonegative. Both this and the alleged 3-D coding are completely natural and easily attributed to the tonal gradations in pigment application by the artist, using either a bas relief rubbing (suggested by Joe Nickell and my favorite explanation, which I explained automatically creates a faux-photonegative image with tonal gradations such as the Shroud possesses) or a direct faux-negative, tonal-gradation painting (Walter McCrone's hypothesis, which he believes is a simpler explanation, but which I consider to be more complicated and requiring more skill on the part of an artist).
http://www.freeinquiry.com/skeptic//shroud/articles/rogers-ta-response.htm
I already know about Glastonbury. It’s a late legend invented around 1250. A story with no history prior to 1250 of an event that supposedly happened in 50 is not trustworthy history.
But let me assert that ad hoc, overreaching, counter-arguments to McCrone's conclusions--such as (1) some of the iron oxide particles came from blood iron, (2) most of the red particulate matter is from the blood on the Shroud, (3) most of the red particulate matter is "intimately associated with the image areas because shards of this material have broken off the blood areas and, since image area is always folded against image area, there occurred a translocation of the shards from the blood areas to the non-blood image areas," and (4) the presence of pigment particles on the shroud is due to paint chips falling off the frescoed ceiling and walls of the room use for the Shroud examination--are so far beyond the pale that they are a mockery of analytical thinking. Such explanations are pseudoscientific attempts to keep the possibility of authenticity alive in the minds of supporters who lack the ability to think critically. There is no blood on the Shroud: all the forensic tests specific for blood have failed18 (although some investigators19 unrigorously concluded that blood was present after conducting numerous forensic tests for iron, protein, albumin, etc., which came up positive because these materials are indeed on the Shroud in the form of tempera paint). Old blood is not bright red, and no amount of bilirubin20 can explain that away. Real blood mats on hair, and does not form perfect rivulets and spiral flows. Real blood does not contain red ochre, vermilion, and alizarin red pigments. Real blood and its organic derivatives have refractive indices much less than red ochre or vermilion, and they can be easily distinguished using Becke line movement under a light microscope. McCrone's examination of the red particles on the Shroud samples revealed no blood or blood derivatives.
http://www.freeinquiry.com/skeptic/shroud/as/schafersman.html
The STURP scientists find no pigment particles at 20-50x (I used 400-2500x). They find no cementation of the fibers nor evidence of capillary flow. There is no way, at 50x, that anyone could recongnize the red particles as Fe2O3 and as red ochre or the HgS as a ninth century vermilion, and no way anyone could see that the pigment particles are cemented into an organic matrix and to the fibers. The amounts of pigments and medium on the body-image areas and some of the blood-image areas, barely visible microscopically, demonstrate that the absorption spectroscopy on 1-cm2 areas by Pellicori9 and others could not have detected them. Heller and Adler10 acknowledge the existence of Fe2O3 and Hgs in blood image areas
http://www.freeinquiry.com/skeptic/shroud/as/mccrone.html
You’re simply begging the question. There’s no evidence to connect those Edessa reports to the shroud, which was just of a face like the St. Veronica legend.
The Shroud of Turin has a clearly 14th century history, and was recognized as an item with only a recent history by the bishop who wrote a letter in 1389 denouncing it as a forgery. He said he had identified the man who made it, who had confessed.
There are abundant records from the Christian era, and even with documents that haven’t survived like the writings of Papias there are references to its existence and quotations from it. Nobody mentioned the Shroud of Turin. They mentioned the Edessa shroud, of a face, they mentioned apocryphal legends like Jesus’s letter to Agbar, but nothing at all about the Shroud even though there was intense curiosity about Jesus and the early Church.
On what do you base this assertion?
I disagree. Faith doesn't mean no evidence. (I'm saying this as a general statement - I don't believe the shroud is real either.)
Says who and what are his/her credentials?
Scholars are now postulating that Jesus and his 'father' Joseph may well have found much lucrative work there.
What scholars?
Remember, he went to, and received from, Pilot permission to take Jesus' body for burial. Law restricted that privilege only of kin of a crucified "criminal"
Who says this was the law then, and what is that person's credentials?
You still don't understand the problems. Greek literature doesn't exist prior to the Iliad. There's the Dark Ages, then Homer, then the later poets and eventually historians. It's conceivable that Homer may reflect a dim memory of a city and a war, since in the few hundred years that intervened between the destruction of Troy and the Iliad there was nothing else in which such a memory could have found expression. Not so with Joseph and Glastonbury.
There's a vast sea of literacy in between Joseph's time and the monks revising Malmesbury. If any valid knowledge survived, it should have been mentioned by Eusebius, by Bede, by William, by many others. That it wasn't is powerful evidence that the monks simply didn't know what they were talking about. If there's no assertion that Joseph traveled to the tin mines of Britain prior to 1250 then there's nothing to discuss.
Well, actually, I believe the Shroud is genuine.
I thought man was saved by faith alone, through Christ’s sacrifice.
Those are all good points, but I think there should be a retest anyway.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.