Stuart Kelly writes a devastating book review of ‘The Sign’ in the Scotsman:
The material about the Shroud raises sufficient doubts for further work to be undertaken. The material about the Resurrection story is, frankly, bonkers. I half-hoped that Terry Jones, in drag, would burst in and shout “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very manky blanket!”
Are there any good reviews?
Sadly, it is very much as the reviewer says. As I have said elsewhere, it is tragic in fact that he did not talk to other academics in the field before embarking on this lonely enterprise. He presents himself as a Sherlock Holmes among art historians yet even his chapters on the authenticity and possible history of the Shroud show no sign of any independent critical thought. He simply takes authors such as Ian Wilson without question even though there are massive problems in say, seeing the ‘open-eyes’ Mandylion as the ‘closed eyes’ Shroud (he assumes they are the same). He describes the Carbon-14 dating as ‘one of the greatest fiascos in the history of science’ ,yet fails to provide any sustainable reason for any ‘fiasco’ between the time of the cutting off of the sample and the announcement of the medieval date- the idea that a cardinal would gang up with the representative of the British Museum to swap samples (p.171)after the selection had been made is simply ludicrous.
I actually ended up feeling quite concerned for him. As a freelance researcher myself I know how easy it is to get a mad idea that fails as soon as it is tested against academic opinion. I now feel that he has blown any chance of an academic career after what appears, in his biography ,to have been a great start..
Charles your ‘open eyes’ to ‘closed eyes Shroud’ point is simply nonsense! Wilson has covered the reasoning for this in his books quite well and is easily understandable. If one understands when these Mandylion paintings were created, the artists did not have the pleasure of seeing the Shroud image in the ‘positive’ as we do today. They did not in most probability get to see the Shroud image face in bright light or natural sunlight. It is more likely they were viewing the Shroud in the semi-darkness of a candle lit cathedral. When the Shroud face is viewed without any aids it is quite reasonable to mistake the eyes as being opened>IF one can forget the negative we are accustomed too and realize the actual ‘faintness’ of the Shroud when viewed in real life. So Wilson’s assumption is quite reasonable and most likely the truth of the matter. Furthermore some here must also realize the blood, if viewed in ‘real life viewing’ is basically indistinguishable from the body image. One must also accept if the Shroud was folded in eight and partially covered, these artists would have no conception of it being a burial cloth. All these points very reasonably explain the ‘open to closed eye’ interpretations found in artistic renditions.
As for the C14 fiasco, it was a nooby mistake by de Wesselow to not back his statements with links to evidencial documents but maybe he expects the reader will reasearch on thier own! If one does research the c14 fiasco and there are many many papers to study. One would question much about the whole process which occurred and one of these processes was the ‘breaking of evidence’ when the Shroud sample cut from the Shroud was taken to a different room (out of site from the camera) and anyone else. This IS highly suspicious! and against protocol. There are dozens of other issues just as important and suspicious as this, if one is to ‘RESEARCH’ in depth.
R.
I wonder if the writer is aware that Oxford was warned by one of the companies it was working with that there was cotton carbon dating the the sample? And my God, I am a Catholic but if the writer has mapped out the various intrigues and cabals that are still endemic in the Vatican, than he really has a book to write.
Here’s one hypothesis (or wild guess):There maybe elements in the Vatican who are jealous of their power and who might think that the revelation of the authenticity of the Shroud and the demand for scientific access to it threatens their ability to control “the story.” Someone ought to make Alan Toffler’s “The Third Wave” required reading in the Seminaries or perhaps in the “College of Cardinals.” We are in the information age. Those who wield power in an attempt to control information, end up destroying their power. Are there people in the Vatican who are trying to control the information about the Shroud? Perish the thought.
To your last question John, I think so, and their actions of the last view decades leads one to this conclusion.
R
Ron. Thanks for your response.1) The Edessa face, as copied after 944, is nothing like the Shroud face – it has no markings of any suffering. This is because 2) The legends, and they are,of course ,legends relating to the Edessa image all say that it is an image taken from the living face of Christ. You have the problem of what is asserted to be a burial shroud to have become described as something completely different and linked in to a different set of legends. 3) Preservation of cloth. Ancient cloth can be preserved in the arid climate of Egypt,as known from many examples. Around Jerusalem it is destroyed by damp except in very rare circumstances. in Edessa, the modern Sanliurfa in south-eastern Turkey, the winters are very damp- it rains on average every other day in January. You would have a very real problem in preserving cloth from say 100 AD to 944. 4) We have no idea what the Turin Shroud, if it existed at all then, would have looked like in the tenth century, if the image was stronger , the closed eyes could not have been missed.
The major problem with de Wesselow’s argument is his confusion over the many different shrouds, relics in Constantinople in 1204. It is estimated that there were 3,600 relics in Constantinople and the Pharos chapel, well protected within the imperial palace, had the imperial collection of relics, many of which were connected to the life , Passion, Crucifixion,etc. of jesus . So you start with his swaddling clothes, you have part of the Cross, the Crown of Thorns, a phial of his blood, the tunic in which he walked to Calvary, the Holy Lance, a robe of the Virgin and many, many more. There are also some burial sheets which are said to have smelled of myrrh and have been of cheap cloth- as there is no sign of any ointment ,etc on the Turin shroud and it is of a very fine weave , this can’t be it. Anyway we have a record of these relics from the Pharos chapel going to the Sainte-Chapelle of Louis IX in Paris ( he had bought the Crown of Thorns from the Pharos Chapel and it was housed here together with other relics from the Pharos chapel). A burial shroud of Jesus is listed in the Sainte-Chapelle inventory and a container with it inside is shown in an engraving of 1790. So we can be pretty sure that the Pharos sheets are these. In a listing of the Pharos relics, the Mandylion is listed as a SEPARATE item, but it disappears after that and we only know of it from the copies that show the open eyes and with no sign of the sufferings on the Turin Shroud.
Then among the 3,6000 city relics, there is another shroud . This was at the Blachernae Chapel right at the other end of the city. This was a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary that was endowed with relics in the fifth century. It was a vulnerable position , just outside the city walls and by the shore. It is described as having a burial shroud of Christ that was full size and which was exhibited every Friday. This also disappeared in the disastrous sacking of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204 and some have argued that this is the only conceivable candidate for the Shroud of Turin.
OK so Far? Well, de Wesselow argues that the Pharos sheets and the Mandylion are one and the same, despite them being listed separately. He then argues that the Pharos sheets were taken from the Chapel to the Blachernae Chapel. There is no documentary evidence of this. It would be unlikely for the imperial family to have surrendered one of its relics to such a vulnerable place as the Blachernae and anyway the Pharos sheets can hardly be the same as the single shroud of Blachernae. The simplest explanation is that we have two relics that disappeared, the Mandylion and the Blachernae Shroud, and one which survived and went to Paris ( the Pharos sheets). De Wesselow’s argument that they are all one and the same simply does not work.
Carbon 14 Dating. Let us assume (unless you want to claim otherwise) that when the samples arrived at the three laboratories they were correctly tested. You will no doubt have read the Nature report on the 1988 testings. You will see that a sample of the Shroud was cut away after it was confirmed in front of the British Museum rep and the reps from the laboratories that it was of the same weave as the rest of the cloth. This was an open process. The samples were then carefully sealed. You are claiming that the British Museum rep. Dr. Tite and the cardinal then collaborated in swapping the Shroud sample with a piece of cloth from the fourteenth century. I am afraid such a collaboration is ludicrous and unless the match was very close , the reps from the laboratory would surely have spotted something when they unpacked the sample.Still de Wesselow seems to entertain this.
So you have two alternatives. 1) The sample was so contaminated that,although first century, the mix of contamination was such that it came out as fourteenth century. Yet contamination is a common problem and the laboratories each cleaned their samples. They each used their own methods but the dating still agreed with each other. As de Wesselow admits ‘ Some of these [contamination] theories are more plausible than others, but none has gained widespread acceptance, let alone been proven’.The Oxford lab did a test on one theory put forward by John Jackson that the contamination was by carbon monoxide and found that this had no effect on samples. So if even de Wesselow cannot give support to any contamination theory, why should any one else?
20 The added patch. No one spotted that the sample was any different from the rest of the weave. Flury-Lemburg, who was meant to be the textile expert, said that an extra weave could not be added without it being spotted (which is why she refused to endorse the ‘added patch’ theory. Raymond Rogers was using samples that were not scientifically attested as genuine (you can spot this from his own report on this) so, when placed against the sample used by the labs, they can hardly stand up. (One of the great mysteries is how his essay ever got accepted as supposedly peer-reviewed -he did not, of course, provide any carbon-14 dates to support the age of the Shroud.)
So this is why many people take the view that there is no sufficient reason to challenge the carbon-14 dating by the three labs in 1988. The Shroud has been so mauled around, pieces taken off by sellotape, the controversial cleaning of 2002, that it is unlikely that anyone else will be allowed a go at it but I suspect that any carbon-14 dating would come up with the same dates. It is hard to see how, even if there were problems in the testing, they could be so significant to end up with a date 1300 years earlier.
No.I don’t know how the image was created. I am waiting for a scientific resolution which will obviously be the right one and everyone can calm down a bit!
Charles I wasn’t making any statement toward deWesselows views, but specifically to you calling Wilson’s hypothesis as being complete assumptions due to eyes showing on Mandylion renditions vs.Shroud renditions. I have not read deWesselow’s book and most likely won’t bother either.
As for the C14, I suggest too you there is alot of information you probably have not covered and some of your statements give me the impression you’ve been reading some very unscrupulous writings. Never assume anything especially that the 3 labs followed proper protocols and achieved proper readings. Also do not assume that c14 is infallible, far from it. Further reading on your part is essential here and I’ll add take heed of the credentials of the authors of such writings.
R
Ron, I first came across radio-14 dating when I was working as an archaeological assistant at the British School in Rome in 1966. Everyone knew about the problems of contamination,etc back then!
There is a very good recent survey in Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn’s Archaeology, Theories, Methods and Practice, Thames and Hudson, 2012 edition, pages 136-147.
The problems about Carbon-14 ,and de Wesselow is misleading here, concern things like soaking in water that gives an earlier date and problems with calibration on objects earlier than 1000 BC. So there are problems and certain objects will be rejected for Carbon-14 but when it works it works. None of these apply to the Turin Shroud.
I have to disagree with your assumption that all three respected international radio-cabon labs all collaborated in such a way that they produced a fourteenth century result. After all they are scientific institutions, depend on academic credibility for their survival and had no reason to fudge a date. I can’t believe that it would matter to them whether it was 14th century, 5-6th century ( the date when these images are first reported) or first century – or even 1000 BC! They were simply scientists getting on with their job and taking care ( as you can see in the Nature report) to make sure that any possibility of contamination was removed.
I am not sure what you mean by ‘unscrupulous writings’. Whose? Where might I have come across them? I am an historian who has written a long book on medieval relics and who usually can spot a poor source a mile off!
Charles your not getting the point here, you keep going too the contamination view point, there is alot more to proper c14 then cleaning.If you really have experience as you say, you should know this and you should be more aware then I the proper procedures in the sampling of materials. Furthermore, I’m not saying that all the labs collaborated to come to a pre-determined date.Don’t put words in my mouth. Try reading some of the literature ‘challenging’ the Nature ‘supposed’ peer-reviewed paper. Many can be found at http://www.shroud.com
R
Ron, I simply do not understand what your point is because you do not make a clear case for overthrowing the presumption that the 1988 dating is the best we have. The shroud.com site is dedicated to the idea that the Shroud is authentically first century ( so far as I can see) and one has to read a lot of articles from other sources to get a fuller picture (e.g the Max Frei pollen analysis is now seen to be fraudulent but I doubt whether this is covered in shroud.com -please prove me wrong but I am still having it quoted at me as if it were accepted). The real problem is that articles against the 1988 dating are full of insinuations that are not in themselves enough to cause doubts about the 1988 dating. There are many hypotheses floating around about the samples none of which seems to have gained much support. So please present your case clearly. The Oxford people have made clear they are quite open to reassessing their results if they are given direct evidence to challenge them. As an example of their readiness to respond, they tested out, for instance, John Jackson’s theory of carbon monoxide contamination for the Shroud and showed that c.m. did not affect the dating. But until clear evidence is provided against the 1988 dating one can hardly expect the labs to drop everything and retest. Those who want to argue against the 1988 testing must get their act together with a coherent consensus about what went wrong. Lots of individual researchers coming up with their own pet theories gets us nowhere.
De Wesselow is not much help here because his critique of Carbon -14 dating is simply a muddle and he cannot himself provide any clear reason for challenging the 1988 testing. Yes, don’t bother to read the book. There are too many obvious gaps in his argument that the Shroud is authentic and it would not convince anyone coming to the subject for the first time.
Please point me to documents with “evidence” that Frei’s work has been found to be fraudulent. Forget de Wesselow, he is only an Art Historian, anything else he says he’s picked up elsewhere. Again forget the ‘contamination’ issue for the C14 as in water, CO etc; Try reading more on C14 itself! …..Obviously you are of the assumption that any documents found at shroud.com will be bias. Did you even try to find any documents written specifically against the ‘Nature’ paper?…I doubt it. Where are YOU getting your information from? Can you list your sources for refutting Ray Rogers paper, a (peer-reviewed paper)??? …I smell something here and it ain’t Kosher.
Seriously who could trust Oxford to re-evaluate their own work, what are you NEW? There is plenty of evidence to refute the c14, especially if one understands the basics of c14 testing, it’s proper procedures and protocols. I don’t think you know or understand these, otherwise you wouldn’t be so ‘trustfull’ in a single result. Yes I said SINGLE has that is exactly what was used. Actually I don’t think you understand anything about C14 dating, strickly based on your recent comments. I question any credentials you have openly offered also….again I smell something here.
Again, please tell us were you have gotten your information from and state it clearly.
R
The articles by Steven Schafersman on both Frei and Rogers are a good starting point- you can find them online. The problem with both Frei and Rogers is that there was no scientific checking of where they got their samples from (only hearsay) and there is evidence that Frei added in his pollen to one of his notorious pieces of sellotape. No one ever got so much pollen off the shroud as he did and it was not uniformly spread -most of it from one piece of sellotape that appears, on later inspection, to have been tampered with! ( Moreover much of his pollen came largely from insect-born pollen which could not have drifted onto the shroud – the assumption is that he added it in without realising that this would give him away!) Also both of them appear to have worked alone unsupervised so there is no way of having an independent check on their work. (This is crucial in the Frei case because we know he was reprimanded by the Swiss police for his misuse of evidence in his police work.) This is not science that meets any sort of protocol and I am surprised that you haven’t spotted that when it seems such a concern of yours. As Schafersman says, it is extraordinary that Rogers’ paper got through the net.
Please read these articles carefully- it seems quite clear that you were not aware of them.
You still have not given me a clear reason why i should reject the 1988 testings- just vague assertions about lack of protocol et,c which, as I have said, makes it all the more surprising you do not apply the same standards to Frei and Rogers. ( i do not wish to cast any aspersions on the good name of Rogers but he can hardly be taken seriously if he gets a couple of fibres via a Vatican rep, who was never authorised to take any samples from the shroud and must have done so secretly- perhaps you trust the Vatican more than you do the Oxford lab.)
I think further discussion is fruitless. I assume we both agree that another Carbon-14 testing would be worthwhile- I doubt whether it will revise the position by 1300 years.
I’ve read schaferman and he makes alot of unqualified assumptions in his writings. Frei’s samples were taken from the Shroud in 1978, the reason he found more pollen is basically due to his method of retrieving them from the Shroud, he basically used tape and not with a pressure sensitive tool as everyone else, meaning he got deeper/further into the threads of the linen, no mystery there. Just as Scafersman can question Rogers peer-reviewed paper I and many others can question how possibly the Nature paper got thru the peer-review without being scrapped. You may want to read Remi Van Haelst’s paper; Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin; The Nature report. This may open your eyes to some serious issues with the Nature paper itself and the tests done by all labs and their unfounded conclusions. Remember another thing here; your schaferman has never studied anything to do with the Shroud, he’s never had access to anything, yet from a distance can refute people with probably far more knowledge and experience then he in their respective fields. Rogers was a professional, highly qualified and honoured in his field of study. Shame on schaferman and you to belittle/accuse a man of such standing, especially when he cannot respond. Your completely wrong about the pollen also, you got it backwards, it was NOT insect born pollens in many of the cases. Maybe you should read Denin’s book also.
I agree with you on one thing; further discussion is fruitless.
R