Paper Chase: STURP’s Fascinating 1988 "Draft Protocol for Future Examinations of the Shroud of Turin"
Joe Marino writes:
At: http://freepages.religions.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wmeacham/sturp88.pdf is a STURP document titled "Draft Protocol for Future Examinations of the Shroud of Turin," dated 8 October 1988, less than 1 week before the announcement of the C-14 date: "1260-1390!" Because of the leaks, the document at one point lists the results between 1220-1410.
A later section has the following comments:
It goes without saying that this is a fascinating historical document and once again makes (at least me) shake my head that STURP, which had the most experience with the Shroud and was the group that did the most meticulous planning, was eliminated from the testing.
Indeed.
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Is the Shroud real? Probably.
The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins admits it is controversial. Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and archeologists. This is because there are significant scientific and non-religious reasons to doubt the validity of the tests. Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair. Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory. Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon dating results were published, recently wrote: “It’s fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever.” If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested – and some evidence suggests that – it is possible that the cloth is from the time of Christ.
No one has a good idea how front and back images of a crucified man came to be on the cloth. Yes, it is possible to create images that look similar. But no one has created images that match the chemistry, peculiar superficiality and profoundly mysterious three-dimensional information content of the images on the Shroud. Again, this is all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
We simply do not have enough reliable information to arrive at a scientifically rigorous conclusion. Years ago, as a skeptic of the Shroud, I came to realize that while I might believe it was a fake, I could not know so from the facts. Now, as someone who believes it is the real burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, I similarly realize that a leap of faith over unanswered questions is essential.
My name is Dan Porter. Please email me at DanielRobertPorter@gmail.com
Dan, I agree with you only partially. While the two first points of this document, truly look prophetic with what we know in 2012, the recent publication of the detection of a trend, clearly confirms independently and 24 years later that the labs did really implement correctly the C14 test. The question right now is whether this technique is appropiate to date the Shroud. In my view, there is solid evidence that it is not.
We have already talked about that subject. In my mind, C14 dating is just one tool among many other tools that are avalaible to date an object. And versus the Shroud, it is now clear that the C14 dating was not representative of the main body of the cloth. Right now, no one can be sure of the true age of the cloth (scientifically speaking), even if we have many good indication that it is a very ancient linen that can well be of the same era than Jesus of Nazareth…
No doubt STURP should not have been left out considering their scrupulous science, Dan.
Everything had been said more than 20 years ago.
Concerning the C14 datation :
Concerning the conservation of the Shroud :