[DallasDeb]

I personally believe that the earlier tests performed on the shroud were falsified, perhaps deliberately, perhaps inadvertantly. It was known that there were later stains on the parts tested. There is quite a bit of other evidence, such as embedded pollen, that the shroud is much older than that.

You are correct about the pollen--it is a kind of flax (I think) that was prevalent in the Middle East at the time of Jesus.

Around the time of the most recent dating (the date they are now trying to confirm/debunk)--1300 to 1400--there was a fire in the church that was protecting the shroud. The fire damaged some of the shroud. Nuns who were responsible for the shroud repaired it using current year fabric. I believe that the scientists who are interested in correctly dating the shroud think they were given a wrong sample or, at least, not enough samples for testing the entire object.

[Cicero]

Yes, a lot of these facts came out fairly soon after these scientists released their results. They have been known for years, but I guess they didn’t want to admit they had screwed up.

I confess I wonder now whether they’ll find some new way to falsify their data, because it’s pretty clear that they found what they wanted to find.

[Swordmaker]

You are correct about the pollen--it is a kind of flax (I think) that was prevalent in the Middle East at the time of Jesus.

Linen is flax... ALthough there might be some flax pollen on the Shroud it is not the indicative pollen from the Middle East. Dr. Avinoam Danin, a botany professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a leading authority on the flora of Israel, along with Dr. Uri Baruch, a pollen specialist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, found

• Chrysanthemum coronarium
• Zygophyllum dunosum
• Gundelia tournefortii
• Cistus creticus
• Capparis aegyptia

"The last four plants on the Shroud are significant because, as Danin and Baruch report, '[the assemblage] occurs in only one rather small spot on earth, this being the Judean mountains and the Judean Desert of Israel, in the vicinity of Jerusalem.'"