Paper Chase: Diana Fulbright’s “Akeldama Repudiation of Turin Shroud omits evidence from the Judean desert”
Hat tip: From a comment by DaveB of Wellington, New Zealand:
I discovered a fascinating paper by Diana Fulbright: “Akeldama Repudiation of Turin Shroud omits evidence from the Judean desert”. by Diana Fulbright, 2010; Shroud of Turin Centre, Richmond VA. Paper can be found at:
http://www.acheiropoietos.info/proceedings/FulbrightAkeldamaWeb.pdf
It is possible to download the paper, but only as a “secure” pdf. The security means that it is not possible to copy any of the text or graphics from this paper.
In December 2009, following the discovery of a sealed 1st c. Jewish tomb at Akeldama, when a “shrouded” body was discovered, it was widely proclaimed that the Turin Shroud could not be 1st c. as this single example was in simple weave. This inference is clearly an extremely weak deduction, with no statistical significance. It almost appears as if the body may not have been shrouded at all, but was merely wrapped in its own clothing, indeed with mixing of kinds, both wool and linen (apparently permitted for dead bodies under Mishna regs). The DFulbright paper is directed against the Akeldama assertions, citing several examples of herring-bone weave from ancient times, Even more complex patterns of weaving were found at Masada, including a diamond twill. The sash of Rameses III (1200 BCE) included a number of complex patterns, including a 3:1 herring-bone twill. It is apparent that weavers were quite capable of producing quite intricate patterns from ancient times.
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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
If you take a look at figure 7 of the Fulbright paper, you could have an inkling of what I really meant by the Turin Sindon stepped pyramid weave pattern I identified with that of the Pray Ms iconographic sindon lying (almost) flat on the raised-up or displaced tomb-lid.