Wednesday, December 19, 2007

TSoT: Bibliography "H"

This is the Bibliography "H" page for authors' surnames beginning with "H" of books

[Left: Dr. John H. Heller's, "Report on the Shroud of Turin" (1983). Heller is a biophysicist and was a member of the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP). This is his report of STURP's investigation of the Shroud October 8-13, 1978. The `tagline' quotes below (bold emphases mine) are all from this book.]

that I will probably refer to in my book outline, "The Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus?"


THE SHROUD OF TURIN: BURIAL SHEET OF JESUS?
© Stephen E. Jones


CONTENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY "H"

Heller, J.H., 1983, "Report on the Shroud of Turin," Houghton Mifflin Co: Boston MA.
Hoare, R., 1978, "Testimony of the Shroud," St. Martin's Press: New York NY.
Hoare, R., 1995, "The Turin Shroud Is Genuine: The Irrefutable Evidence," [1984], Souvenir Press: London.
Hulse, T.G., 1997, "The Holy Shroud," Mysteries of the Ancient World, Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London.
Humber, T., 1978, "The Sacred Shroud," Pocket Books: New York NY.
Hynek, R.W., 1951, "The True Likeness," Sheed & Ward: New York NY.

Stephen E. Jones, BSc. (Biology).
My other blog: CreationEvolutionDesign


"In 1978, I had never heard of the Shroud of Turin, let alone seen a picture of it. When I did, I was surprised. I thought I would see something analogous to all the paintings and statuary of Jesus that I had ever seen. ... This was different. It was anything but artistic. In addition, everything was reversed. Its images were like photographic negatives, with black and white, left and right, reversed. The cloth was also very bloody, with the `nail holes' in the wrong place; they were in the wrists, not in the palms. There were large scorch marks and burn holes down both sides of the fabric. The man was nude, his hands folded over the groin. I did not know at the time that the photograph I was looking at had been enhanced; the actual images were so faint that they could not be seen from up close, but only at a distance of about one or two yards. Yet if one was too far away, they faded into the background of the cloth. I could not imagine a more unlikely object for veneration. Then I was shown photographic negatives of the Shroud, which made the human images become positive. This helped considerably by showing a man in a way familiar to our perception." (Heller, J.H., 1983 , "Report on the Shroud of Turin," Houghton Mifflin Co: Boston MA, pp.1-2).

"About a month later I read a report by Dr. Robert Bucklin, the deputy coroner and forensic pathologist of Los Angeles County. Dr. Joseph Gambescia, a pathologist in Pennsylvania, concurred in the findings. Forensic pathologists specialize in causes of violent death, and it was this report which first caused my eyebrows to rise a bit. I have, tucked far away in my background, an M.D., though I do not use it much. I had also spent eight years on the faculty of Yale University School of Medicine: two in pathology and six in internal medicine. The forensic report said (with some translation from the medical jargon): `Irrespective of how the images were made, there is adequate information here to state that they are anatomically correct. There is no problem in diagnosing what happened to this individual. The pathology and physiology are unquestionable and represent medical knowledge unknown 150 years ago.' That, I thought, is a remarkable statement." (Heller, J.H., 1983, p.2).

"`This is a 5-foot, 11-inch male Caucasian weighing about 178 pounds. The lesions are as follows: beginning at the head, there are blood flows from numerous puncture wounds on the top and back of the scalp and forehead. The man has been beaten about the face, there is a swelling over one cheek, and he undoubtedly has a black eye. His nose tip is abraded, as would occur from a fall, and it appears that the nasal cartilage may have separated from the bone. There is a wound in the left wrist, the right one being covered by the left hand. This is the typical lesion of a crucifixion. The classical artistic and legendary portrayal of a crucifixion with nails through the palms of the hands is spurious: the structures in the hand are too fragile to hold the live weight of a man, particularly of this size. Had a man been crucified with nails in the palms, they would have torn through the bones, muscles, and ligaments, and the victim would have fallen off the cross.' I had never known or thought of that, but, of course, that is just what would happen." (Heller, 1983, pp.2-3).

"`There is a stream of blood down both arms. Here and there, there are blood drips at an angle from the main blood flow in response to gravity. These angles represent the only ones that can occur from the only two positions which can be taken by a body during crucifixion.' That made physiological sense to me." (Heller, 1983, p.3).

"`On the back and on the front there are lesions which appear to be scourge marks. Historians have indicated that Romans used a whip called a flagrum. This whip had two or three thongs, and at their ends there were pieces of metal or bone which look like small dumbbells. These were designed to gouge out flesh. The thongs and metal end-pieces from a Roman flagrum fit precisely into the anterior and posterior scourge lesions on the body. The victim was whipped from both sides by two men, one of whom was taller than the other, as demonstrated by the angle of the thongs.'" (Heller, 1983, p.3).

"`There is a swelling of both shoulders, with abrasions indicating that something heavy and rough had, been carried across the man's shoulders within hours of death. On the right flank, a long, narrow blade of some type entered in an upward direction, pierced the diaphragm, penetrated into the thoracic cavity through the lung into the heart. This was a post-mortem event, because separate components of red blood cells and clear serum drained from the lesion. Later, after the corpse was laid out horizontally and face up on the cloth, blood dribbled out of the side wound and puddled along the small of the back. There is no evidence of either leg being fractured. There is an abrasion of one knee, commensurate with a fall (as is the abraded nose tip); and, finally, a spike had been driven through both feet, and blood had leaked from both wounds onto the cloth. The evidence of a scourged man who was crucified and died from the cardiopulmonary failure typical of crucifixion is clear-cut." (Heller, 1983, pp.3-4).

"The description read like a modern coroner's report of a violent death. The parallels between Bucklin's report and the Gospel accounts were obvious. The departures from convention - the size of the man, the form of the crown, anterior scourging, two men, flagrum, wrist holes, all the accurate pathological physiology - gave the Shroud an aura of verisimilitude." (Heller, 1983, pp.2-4).

"The VP-8 image analyzer has at its heart a computer. It was designed for the space program. .... The VP-8 is so programmed that it interprets `darker' as farther away. It can take the signals coming in from Saturn, for example, and show them on its television screen as a 3-D picture of a planet. In contrast, let us take a picture of a man whose face is illuminated from a light to the right of him. The left part of his face is in some shadow. Put this photograph in the VP-8, and you will see a grossly distorted face, with the darker part of the countenance farther away and the bright part in the forefront. Indeed, any photograph of a man or a statue or a landscape - which are, after all, flat or 2-D results in a badly contorted image on the VP-8 screen. It is only when actual depth or remoteness is shown by less light that the VP-8 can produce a 3-D picture. The description of `less or more light' depends on the number of quanta or photons of light. Jackson had never heard of a VP-8, but when he drove over to Sandia, he took photos of the Shroud with him. Mottern asked him why he wanted to use the Wratten filters. Jackson, always ready to chat about his baby, launched into the story of the Shroud. Obligingly, the Sandia scientist brought out the filters. And then he put forward a really dumb idea. `Why,' he suggested, `don't we put the photos of the Shroud into the VP-8?' Never loath to try a new idea, Jackson agreed. All in all, it should have been a stupid waste of time, for a flat photo will, and can, give only a warped picture. They placed the Shroud photo in the VP-8 and twiddled the dials, focus, and rotation. Suddenly, both men saw, swimming up from the electronic fog of the screen, a perfect three-dimensional image of a scourged, crucified man. Impossible! Ridiculous! Outrageous! Yes. But it was there. The two scientists just stared. The positive photograph of the man in the Shroud had the appearance of a two-dimensional face. The VP-8's three-dimensional image was as stunningly different from the photograph as a statue is from a painting. The long hair, full beard and mustache, the serenity on the face of a badly battered, crucified man, came alive, giving Jackson and Mottern the eerie impression that they were gazing at an actual face of a man, not at a painting or a sculpture. Finally, Jackson took a deep breath. `Bill,' he said, `do you realize that we may be the first people in two thousand years who know exactly how Christ looked in the tomb?'" (Heller, 1983, pp.39-40).

"Rogers' review began by stipulating that, for an appropriate scientific study of the Shroud, all possible hypotheses should be stated. Then, after each hypothesis was framed, it must be scientifically tested. The three proposed hypotheses were: 1. The Shroud is a painting. 2. It was produced naturally, by chemicals or volatile products from a body, or fluids produced by a combination of processes involving organic reactions and/or materials. 3. Rapid heating might be the cause of the images. Those were the three specific possibilities as Rogers saw them. Of course, there was no mention of any miraculous creation or a by-product of Resurrection; that type of thing is totally outside the purview of science. Scientists are in the data business or, as they phrase it, mass, energy, time, and so on. And after all, the Shroud was not a mythic object like the Holy Grail, but an actual linen cloth with images on it. It was made up of atoms and molecules, which science can measure." (Heller, 1983, pp.84-85).

"Rogers went on to say that if the images were painted (or printed or stained or dyed), they would have been done with colored materials. What colors were available in the fourteenth century, when the Shroud first came to light, or before? First, they had to be inorganic or organic. These two terms are general convenience categories for chemists. Inorganic materials usually contain a metal salt, like arsenic oxide, zinc sulfide, or sodium chloride. Organic substances contain carbon. ... Organic substances are usually divided into two classes, one, such as protein, starches, and fats, formed by biological processes, the other more usually made by synthesis. ... Because of the fire that the Shroud had been exposed to, there must have been a temperature gradient, from the hottest portion, where the molten silver burned holes through the folds of fabric, through the area of scorch, to that portion of the linen which was relatively unaffected. The gradient of temperature, Rogers had calculated, went from about 900°C to well below 200°C. If an inorganic color had been used on the Shroud, it would have had a binder of some type to make the color stick to the fabric. The binders most often used were egg white, gelatin, milk products, and oil. Any of these would have changed color along the line of the heat gradient. But the Shroud showed no color change of this kind, as evidenced by the color photographs that were available. Organic or biological colors could be ruled out by the same reasoning, for anything organic would have changed in hue; it would be darker, lighter, discolored. But there was no evidence of this kind of change, which seemed to rule out the use of any familiar coloring agent." (Heller, 1983, pp.85-86).

"There was also a serious problem with hypothesis number 2, reactions produced naturally by a body acting on the cellulose of which linen is made. In 1973, when an Italian team examined the Shroud with microscopes, they saw that the color of the images of the man was contained in the crests of the topmost microfibers. Assume that your arm is a single thread of the Shroud. The hairs on top of your arm would be equivalent to the topmost microfibers of the linen. Imagine that the color of the images is confined to the crowns of those arm hairs, with no indication of capillary action nor any evidence of diffusion. That would immediately rule out liquids and vapors. Further, the intensity of color did not seem to vary from one microfiber to the next. The front and back images appeared to have the same intensity of color, even though the body had clearly been lying on its back. Had the images resulted from body chemicals, the back image should have been more intense or saturated than the front one. This also was not the case." (Heller, 1983, pp.85-86).

"As for hypothesis number 3, that the images were produced by rapid heating, there was no imaginable physical mechanism that could produce a 3-D image by heat." (Heller, 1983, p.86).

"Then Roger and Marty Gilbert came on line for a twenty-four hour run with the reflectance spectroscopy. After they had measured the background (the off-image areas), they were to begin at the foot and work up the body to obtain spectra, in the hope of developing some understanding of the nature of the images. Once they obtained the initial series of spectra on the heel, they began slowly to move up the leg. The spectra were totally different. .... By the time the Gilberts had reached one knee, all the spectra were alike, except for the heel. `What,' wondered Eric, `is peculiar about the heel?' He called in Sam Pellicori, who rigged the macroscope and slid it down the support system until it was right over the heel. He looked at it carefully under full magnification, and after a long examination turned to Eric and said, `It's dirt.' ... Deep into and between the threads dirt particles could be seen. Thoughts rocketed through Jumper's mind. What could be more logical than to find dirt on the foot of a man who has walked without shoes? Obviously, no one was crucified wearing shoes or sandals, so he was barefoot before they nailed him to the cross. There is not enough dirt to be seen visually, so it follows that no forger would have put it there, because artists aren't likely to add things that cannot be seen. It is only because of the anomalous spectra that the team looked at the heel macroscopically. Could it be a genuine grave cloth? What other explanation could there be? It was a single data point, but Eric and Sam realized it was not a trivial one." (Heller, 1983, p.112).

"As Pellicori and Evans continued their macroscopic examination, and took photomacrographs of everything with different magnifications, certain salient points became clear. The body images were straw-yellow, not `sepia,' as all the accounts stated. The yellow did not vary significantly in either shade or depth. In short, it was essentially monochrome, with the color only on the crowns of the microfibers of the thread. Where one of these fibrils crossed over another, there was a white spot on the underlying one. Some microfibers looked like yellow and white candy canes, the white area resulting from one thread crossing another and protecting the underlying area from the image-making process. The straw-yellow fibers showed no sign of capillarity - the principle that makes ink spread on blotting paper. If the corner of a blotter is put into an ink drop, fluid is sucked up into it. Liquid goes into polysaccharide fibers (paper, cotton, rayon, and linen) by capillary action. The absence of capillarity is evidence that no fluid was used. By definition, paint has a liquid base. When the base is water, usually a starch or a protein is added as a suspending agent. If, then, paint had been used on the Shroud, the fibers should have adhered to one another and matted together. An oily vehicle would have had the same effect. But neither matting of fibers nor adhesion between them was seen on the Shroud image." (Heller, 1983, pp.112-113).

"However, wherever there was a bloodstain in the image area, there was matting and capillarity, as would have to be the case with actual blood, which is a mixture of water, cells, and blood proteins. Finally, there was no meniscus effect in the images, but, again, there was in the areas where there was blood. A meniscus can be seen in a glass of fluid, such as water. Where the fluid touches the glass, it curves up: this is the meniscus. Lack of it in the images was further evidence that a liquid paint was not used, but its presence in the bloodstained areas posits fluid." (Heller, 1983, p.113. Emphasis original).

"With all this in mind, Adler and I began a gedankenexperiment to see what would be required of an artist. As mentioned earlier, you cannot see the man in the Shroud unless you are one or two meters away. An artist cannot paint if he cannot see what effect his brush is producing. Our putative artist, then, must have had a paintbrush one to two meters long. It must have consisted of a single bristle, since it painted single fibrils that were 10 to 15 microns in diameter. The finest paintbrush bristles I know of are sable, and a sable hair is vast in diameter compared with a linen fibril. In addition, the artist would have had to figure out a paint medium that had no oil or water, because there were no indications of capillarity. Now, to see what he was painting he would have needed a microscope with an enormous focal length that would permit the brush to operate under it. The physics of optics preclude such a device, unless it is attached to a television set. In this case, it would have had to be a color TV, for the straw-yellow is too faint to register on black and white. Another constraint the artist must have-dealt with is the limit of the human nervous system. No one can hold so long a brush steady enough to paint the top of a fibril. One would need a twentieth-century micromanipulator, which would have to work hydraulically at a distance of one to two meters. It would have to be rigged to a device called a waldo, which is an invention of the atomic era. Also, the artist would have to know how many fibrils to paint quantitatively, and do the whole thing in reverse, like a negative." (Heller, 1983, p.202).

"Our hypothetical artist obviously must have used blood - both pre-mortem and post-mortem. And he had to paint with serum albumin alongside the edges of the scourge marks. Since serum albumin is visible only under ultraviolet, not white light, he had to paint with an invisible medium. If an artist had painted the Shroud, the blood must have been put on after the images. We decided to check that point. We took some blood- and serum-covered fibrils from a body image area. If the images were there before the blood, and if we removed the blood, we could expect to see straw-yellow image fibers. We prepared a mixture of enzymes that digest blood and its proteins. When all the blood and protein were gone, the underlying fibrils were not straw-yellow; they were ordinary background fibrils. This was strong evidence that the blood had gone on before the images. It suggested that blood had protected the linen from the image-making process. Surely this was a weird way to paint a picture." (Heller, 1983, pp.202-203).

"Finally, I told Adler that, ignoring whatever artistic method might have been used, the artist would have had to crucify somebody to get the pathophysiology just right. Emperor Constantine had outlawed crucifixion in the fourth century. Western and Byzantine art depictions of crucifixions are medically incorrect. Our presumptive artist, however, knew what was correct, and outside of crucifying a few people to get the anatomy and pathophysiology right, he could hardly have come by this arcane knowledge. I recognize that human capability can incise a page of text on the head of a pin, that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, probably on his back by candlelight, and that man can accomplish extraordinary works of genius. But these works have to be within the limits set by the laws of physics and chemistry. How could a man create reversed, monochrome images with numerical data encoded with acid or heat? " (Heller, 1983, pp.203-204).

"How could a man create reversed, monochrome images with numerical data encoded with acid or heat? Along with the rest of the team, we tackled this question. It is in our nature and our training to refuse to accept the mystical as an explanation of an object. The Shroud is an object - palpable, measurable. Well, we had measured, and done so in extenso. We would just have to persevere until we had the answer to the question `How did the images get there?'" (Heller, 1983, p.204).

"Adler and I had reached the conclusion that the images could not have been made by artistic endeavor. Jackson, Jumper, and Ercoline had tackled the problem by asking the same question in a slightly different way. Could the images have been made by eye/brain/hand? Their approach was physical, as opposed to chemical. They began by analyzing the 3-D images in the VP-8. It is only when actual depth or remoteness is manifest by less light that the VP-8 can produce an authentic 3-D picture. Could an artist produce a 3-D image? There are paintings that were made from the Shroud itself by some of the masters. In the VP-8, they are dimensional disasters. To take experimentation and measurement one step further, Jackson, Jumper, and Ercoline obtained the services of some police artists, who copied the Shroud as faithfully as they could. The results in the VP-8 were badly contorted. Then they had the artists draw from the 3-D VP-8 images. Again, the VP-8 images were seriously aberrant." (Heller, 1983, p.207. Emphasis original).

"At this point, the investigators took a different tack. They procured a life-size plaster bust of a bearded man. A photograph of the statue put in the VP-8 produced a badly misshapen image. They coated the bust with phosphorescent paint, and the outcome was worse. Ingeniously, they contrived an experiment to encode brightness and dimness as authentic distance dimensions. They took the bust, still with the phosphorescent coating, and submerged it, nose up, in a large container of dilute black ink. The nose, which was closest to the top of the inky solution, was brighter; the eye sockets and the hairline, darker. A photograph of the surface of that liquid, when placed in the VP-8, produced an authentic 3-D image of the head. They then went on to test the hypotheses based on the hot statue, block print, engraving, and bas-relief transfer. All resulted in seriously deformed images. They carried their analysis further. They went to a stereometric laboratory, where they placed a volunteer of the same stature and weight as the man in the Shroud on a glass-topped table. They crawled beneath to make measurements and photographs and saw that the weight of the man caused a flattening of certain areas. Over the shoulder blades there were two bilaterally symmetrical, almost trapezoidal flat areas, just as seen in the VP-8 image of the back. There was also flattening of both buttocks, thighs, and calves. One leg made an impression identical with that seen in the VP-8. The other did not. Jumper looked at the front image of the VP-8 and saw that one knee was slightly raised. They raised the knee of the volunteer so that the sheet covering him showed the same amount of prominence. There was a proportionate marginal rounding of the thigh and calf of the partly flexed leg, and now the subject's back and the VP-8 back image were alike. To my knowledge, these nuances could not have been known by anyone who did not do the glass-table experiment." (Heller, 1983, pp.207-208. Emphasis original).

"Nor was this the end of it. On the hands there appear only four digits. The thumbs are missing. It may not be `artistic,' but it is neurological. If a spike is driven through the wrist between the radius and ulna, it is likely that the ulnar nerve will be damaged, which will cause the thumb to flex acutely into the palm of the hand. Rigor mortis would keep it that way. The fingers in the Shroud image are longer than average, but they are still within the normal range (Gaussian distribution). This may be reasonable anatomy, but it is not, I suggest, reasonable for an artist. One wrist is not seen on the Shroud. When the volunteer crossed his hands and flexed the thumb of the upper hand, the cloth tented at about a two-inch distance from the lower wrist. All the above, including the blood and wound pathophysiology, require knowledge not known until the nineteenth century and demand artistic information available only from inside the Shroud covering both sides of a corpse. The conclusion of the physical scientists was that the Shroud could not be the result of eye/brain/hand. They had come to the conclusion that Adler and I had reached through a different route." (Heller, 1983, p.208).

"Sam Pellicori, a champion of the body-contact hypothesis, had done some interesting experiments. In three separate experiments, he had placed oil, lemon juice, and perspiration on his fingers. Then he placed linen on top of his hand and pressed it gently to his flesh. He then placed the cloth samples in an oven at low temperature to produce an accelerated aging effect. In each case there was indeed a yellowing of the contact area. He had brought the linen samples with him. The team examined them and, although there was a surface effect, several of us insisted that we could see some capillarity in several of the fibrils, which is not the case on the Shroud. We all agreed with Sam that the torso of the man had had to be in contact with the Shroud, or the transfer of the scourge marks would not have appeared as they did. For example, there were many such lesions that were invisible in white light and could be seen only in the UV. The hemoglobin and serum ooze could have come only from direct contact. However, the recessed areas of the face could not have been in contact with the cloth, as proved by the VP-8 images and the Shroud-body distance data. Pellicori agreed that that was still a problem for his hypothesis. It was not a problem, but rather the problem." (Heller, 1983, pp.209-210. Emphasis original).

"However, as a group we raised every reasonable and even unreasonable chemical hypothesis and scenario. One by one, each was destroyed. There seemed no apparent or even remote chemical mechanism produced by a body with and without anointing oil that could explain the image formation." (Heller, 1983, p.210).

"How were the images of the man conveyed to the linen? Virtually the only mechanism left was radiation, which we then examined. The first candidate was ionizing radiation. .... Ionizing radiation produces alkaline oxidation, not the acid form. ... Furthermore, most ionizing radiation is very hard or penetrating. As such, it will not be attenuated by air. If the man was, by some unknown mechanism, emitting radiation, the rays from the noncontact areas - the space under the nose and the eye sockets, for example must have been partly absorbed by air before they hit the cloth. Otherwise, we would have no distance information in the VP-8. In addition, radiation from a source radiates in all directions (isotropic), as it does from a light bulb. The only time it is unidirectional and parallel is when it comes from a laser. ? visible light causes no chemical change in linen .... Ultrasoft X rays and radiowaves are attenuated by water, but that got us nowhere. We had just about exhausted the electromagnetic spectrum." (Heller, 1983, p p.210-211).

"We turned once more to heat. A hot bas-relief - of all the models measured by the physicists - gave some distance information, but it was seriously flawed. When the bas-relief was hot enough to cause the recessed areas to show on linen, the hot spots, like the tip of the nose, burned through the cloth. Considering the heat conductivity of linen - wet or dry - the mechanism did not work." (Heller, 1983, p.211).

"We had now reviewed all the new and the old experiments. The only possible mechanisms were molecular transport and radiation, and we had just demolished both of them. This was extremely unsettling." (Heller, 1983, p.211).

"I came across a group of woodcut prints of dozens and dozens of clerics, each holding the Shroud. (Small wonder that there was such a melange of fibrils on it.) As we burrowed further, we found that at least sixty artists - Van Dyke and Rubens among them - had painted the Shroud from `life.' We already knew the proclivity of viewers of the Shroud to touch something to the cloth. It was a safe bet that some of these artists had placed their finished work on the Shroud. An artist painting in the same room as the Shroud would be enough to explain such microscopic `accidentals' as a speck of vermilion from a palette or brush. ... If we added this spatter factor to the fact that many artists touched their finished product to the Shroud, the finding of such accidentals is not only logical, but virtually mandatory." (Heller, 1983, p.212).

"We began our presentation. One by one, we gave our short talks with slides, graphs, spectra, and tried to make them intelligible to the nonscientist. Everything that had been done was included, from mathematical models, VP-8 and physical experiments, to pathology. ... We all wanted to be very careful that we did not overstate anything. We were extremely cautious to make no statement of any kind that could not be supported by the data. Bit by bit, the complex story involving optics, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine unfolded. Most of the questions were excellent. Adler was asked how he could answer McCrone's claim that there was no blood, but merely a mixture of red ocher and vermilion. Adler flashed on the screen the following table from our paper. Table 5 Tests confirming the presence of whole blood on the Shroud 1. High iron in blood areas by X-ray fluorescence 2. Indicative reflection spectra 3. Indicative microspectrophotometric transmission spectra 4. Chemical generation of characteristic porphyrin fluorescence 5. Positive hemochromogen tests 6. Positive cyanomethemoglobin tests 7. Positive detection of bile pigments 8. Positive demonstration of protein 9. Positive indication of albumin 10. Protease tests, leaving no residue 11. Positive immunological test for human albumin 12. Microscopic appearance as compared with appropriate controls 13. Forensic judgment of the appearance of the various wound and blood marks Then, after explaining each item briefly, Al said, `That means that the red stuff on the Shroud is emphatically, and without any reservation, nothing else but B-L-O-O-D!'" (Heller, 1983, pp.215-216. Emphasis original).

"Many people in the audience and in the press asked, in more ways than I thought were possible, whether the scientific evidence indicated that the Shroud was the authentic burial cloth of Jesus. We thought we had answered this question as many times as it was asked. Finally, Ray Rogers took the floor. `In science, you're entitled to any hypothesis you choose, including the one that the Shroud was made by elves from the Black Forest. But if you don't have a test to examine that hypothesis, it's not worth anything. We do not have a test for Jesus Christ. So we can't hypothesize or test for that question.' It did not work. The question still came, over and over: `But do you think it is authentic?' We would reply, `That's not a scientific question. We're here to present the scientific findings. We can't answer that question. ... At that point, one of the real people asked, `Have you found anything that would preclude the Shroud's being authentic?' `No.' And that question is not a trivial one. Nothing in all the findings of the Shroud crowd in three years contained a single datum that contravened the Gospel accounts. The stigmata on the body did not follow art or legend. They were of life. They were medically accurate evidence of a man who had been scourged with a flagrum-type device, both front and back, by two men; who had carried something rough and heavy across his shoulders, which had been bruised; who had had something placed on his head that had caused punctate bleeding wounds over the scalp and forehead; who had lesions on nose and knee commensurate with a fall; who had been beaten about the face; who had been crucified in the anatomically correct loci, the wrists; whose blood running down the arms had drips responding to gravity at the correct angles for the position of the arms in a crucifixion; whose legs appeared unbroken; who had an ellipsoid lesion in the side, whence cells and serum had come, and, lying on the cloth, had post-mortem blood dribbling out of the wound and puddling along the small of the back; whose lacerating scourge marks were deep enough to be bloody, with serum albumin oozing at the margins; whose feet had been transfixed with a spike and bled; and on the soles of whose feet there was dirt. All in all, it is a startling medical documentary of what was described so briefly in the Gospels. Nor was there anything else on the Shroud that would negate the actual presence of a scourged, crucified man lying in that linen." (Heller, 1983, pp.216-217. Emphasis original).

"Then, of course, there came the other question that we had been wrestling with for nine months: `How did the images get on the cloth?' We answered by discussing all the possibilities we had been able to conjure up: And then we explained that we had had to reject all of them, one by one. `Where,' we were asked, `does that leave you?' `We just do not know!' And that is the nub of it. No member of the team had worked in a vacuum. When confronted with a problem, he would discuss it with other colleagues at his own or other institutions. Each of the forty STURP members must have consulted at least ten other investigators who were not part of the Shroud team. Thus, at least four hundred scientists had added their input. In addition, all of us had given lectures before meetings of Sigma Xi, the scientific society to which most research scientists belong, at chapter meetings of the American Chemical Society, at universities across the country and their alumni groups, such as MIT's, at meetings of other scientific societies - from physical engineering to the medical sciences. From all of these we had received contributions of knowledge and suggestions. But on the subject of how the body images got on the Shroud, every suggestion had been invalidated by the data. The Shroud remains, as it has over the centuries, a mystery." (Heller, 1983, p.218).

"So where does all this huge amount of science leave us? The Shroud of Turin is now the most intensively studied artifact in the history of the world. Somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 scientific man-hours have been spent on it, with the best analytical tools available. The physical and chemical data fit hand in glove. It is certainly true that if a similar number of data had been found in the funerary linen attributed to Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, or Socrates, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind that it was, indeed, the shroud of that historical person. But because of the unique position that Jesus holds, such evidence is not enough." (Heller, 1983, p.219).

"The images are the result of dehydrative acid oxidation of the linen. The blood is human blood. How the images got on the cloth is a mystery. We would love to have the answer to this mystery, to explain the science of it. If it turns out that some form of molecular transport we have not been able to fathom is the method whereby the images of the scourged, crucified man were transferred to the linen, we shall have solved only another little micropart of the puzzle. We do know, however, that there are thousands on thousands of pieces of funerary linen going back to millennia before Christ, and another huge number of linens of Coptic Christian burials. On none of these is there any image of any kind. A few have some blood and stains on them, but no image. The Shroud bears the images of a man who has had incredible, violent damage done to his body, yet whose face is filled with serenity and peace. It is an extracanonical witness to what happened to Jesus Christ, whether the man in the Shroud was Jesus or not." (Heller, 1983, p.220).

Monday, December 10, 2007

TSoT: Bibliography "G"

This is the Bibliography "G" page for author's surnames beginning with

[Left: Physics professor Harry E. Gove's book, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud" (1996). See PS below.]

"G" of books that I will probably refer to in my book outline, "The Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus?"


THE SHROUD OF TURIN: BURIAL SHEET OF JESUS?
© Stephen E. Jones

CONTENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY "G"

Garza-Valdes, L.A., 1998, "The DNA of God?," Hodder & Stoughton: London.
Gove, H.E., 1996, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK.
Guerrera, V., 2000, "The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity," TAN: Rockford IL.
Guscin, M., 1998, "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK.

PS: See `tagline' quotes below (bold emphases mine). These include quotes from Gove's book, in which Gove reveals himself to be implacably hostile to the Shroud being the burial sheet of Jesus, but he nevertheless was strongly critical, before the event, of the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud. Gove's "blow-by-blow chronicle of the events leading up to, and immediately following the Shroud radiocarbon dating" (Wilson, BSTS Newsletter, 45, June/July 1997), contains clues which in my opinion, are evidence of scientific fraud in radiocarbon-dating the Shroud to the too good date ~AD1350 (i.e. "the time its historic record began" - Gove). But as is evident from the last two `tagline' quotes below by Mark Guscin, that date must be wrong, by at least ~7 centuries. Yet how could radiocarbon-dating be that wrong, and still arrive at the `perfect' date, ~AD1350?

Posted: 10 December 2007. Updated: 3 September 2016.


"The evidence I have found has broad implications. For example, my research has clarified many puzzles about the age of the Shroud, particularly the 1988 radiocarbon dating, whose proponents concluded that the Shroud does not date from the time of Jesus of Nazareth. I now know that this conclusion was mistaken, but the reasons were not apparent back in 1988. I have discovered on the Shroud what I call a bioplastic coating, a type of clear encasing that is invisible to the unaided eye. Today, it looks to viewers like a shiny lamination, which is why some eyewitnesses say the Shroud has a surprising `surface sheen'. It is not, however, a manmade coating; it is actually composed of millions of living microbiological organisms that have formed over time, somewhat like a coral reef. This is a natural process I had earlier noted while doing research an other ancient artefacts. When the scientists used carbon dating on Shroud samples in 1988, they did not realize that they were dating, as one entity, both the original ancient fabric and this living bioplastic coating. Their mistaken result was off by centuries. My conclusion, based on evidence I have gathered, is that the Shroud of Turin is not a medieval fake, as was suggested, but is quite possibly a relic of the time of Jesus of Nazareth." (Garza-Valdès, L.A., "The DNA of God?," Hodder & Stoughton: London, 1998, pp.2-3).

"This led to a fruitful research programme in microbiology and DNA studies conducted on the white blood cell remnants present in the blood globules from the occipital region. I explained my problems with the blood to Dr Victor Tryon, Director of the Center for Advanced DNA Technology at UTHSC at San Antonio, where a technique known as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is regularly used for establishing the DNA make-up of samples. Dr Tryon knew that the sample we were using came from the Shroud of Turin. One cannot hide the purpose of research when depending on the advice of an expert in the field. But Nancy, Dr Tryon's wife, who actually ran the samples through the PCR equipment, was not aware of the origin of the sample. ... Tryon advised that we try cloning the easiest of the genes that could be obtained from ancient blood, the betaglobin gene. What we were not sure of was whether the blood ... would be too degraded for cloning. Fortunately, our fears were unfounded, and Nancy was able to clone the blood sample and amplify it. A blood globule from the five tiny collections on the Scotch tape was used, and the betaglobin gene segment from chromosome 11 was cloned. This proved conclusively that there was ancient blood on the Shroud. We could not, of course, tell from whom it had come, nor whether that person had Semitic blood. ... Nor could we ascertain how old the blood was. Obviously there was the possibility of contamination and the possibility that blood from someone other than the crucified victim happened to fall on the part of the Shroud from which the sample was taken. But it is certainly more likely that the blood came from the Man on the Shroud, rather than a bystander, in view of the fact that the sample was taken from the back of the head, from the area where the crown of thorns would have damaged the head of the victim." (Garza-Valdes, 1998, pp.40-41).

"G. Riggi was happy with the news I imparted by telephone, as was everyone in Dr Tryon's laboratory. But at this stage, all we could say about the blood was that it was ancient, because of the degree of degradation of the small amount of blood we found on our sample, and that it had come from a human being or high primate. Nothing more. The next stage of the research was to uncover evidence that could have been regarded as controversial, and that was to be followed by another stage with even more potential for sensationalism. ... In order to establish the sex of the individual, one can look for the testes-descending gene, which is positive only in the male. If you don't find it, however, you cannot conclude that your sample is from a female: it may be that something went wrong during the testing procedure. Another way to determine the sex is to clone the genes amelogenin-X and amelogenin-Y, and that is what Dr Tryon advised. Again he was right; the PCR technique enabled us to isolate the amelogenin-X gene from chromosome X and the amelogenin-Y gene from chromosome Y. ... we had proved that the blood on the Shroud had belonged to a human male." (Garza-Valdes, 1998, pp.41-42).

"Shroud aficionados entering the Cathedral of John the Baptist in Turin are confronted, outside the Royal Chapel, with a full-size, colour photograph of the Turin Shroud. That will have to satisfy their curiosity. The shroud itself is stored, elaborately coffined, on an altar behind a triply locked iron grill in the cathedral's chapel. It is only displayed to the public on special occasions every forty years or so. The photograph shows an altogether impressive and beautiful stained linen cloth the colour of old ivory, 14' 3" long and 3' 7" wide. It bears the faint front and back imprint of a naked crucified man with hands folded modestly over his genitals. The image depicts all the stigmata of the crucifixion described in the Bible including a large blood stain from the spear wound in the side. The linen weave is a three to one herringbone twill. A seam or tuck divides the main body of the shroud from a 6" side strip of the same weave which runs almost the entire length of the cloth. A backing cloth of basket weave covering the entire back area of the shroud is exposed at both ends of this side strip where pieces of the side strip have either been removed or never existed." (Gove, H.E., "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK, 1996, p.1).

"The most notable feature of the shroud is the sixteen patches that were applied symmetrically in pairs to the front of the shroud in 1534, two years after it was damaged in a fire that occurred in the chapel in Chambery, France, where the shroud was stored in a silver chest. Gouts of molten silver burned through the shroud, fortunately outside the image, in a symmetric fashion due to the way in which it was folded in the chest. The shroud was doused with water before the fire damage could spread to the image. This near catastrophe, however, did yield some interesting scientific information. Silver melts at a temperature close to 1800°F. Because the shroud was folded inside the chest, there had to be a considerable variation of temperature at various points on the image ranging from something near this high temperature to ones approaching normal room values. Yet there was essentially no change in the appearance of the image from one region to another. Since many art pigments volatilize at temperatures well below the melting point of silver, those that could have been used, if it is a painting, are rather limited.' (Gove, 1996, pp.1,3).

"I believed STURP's members to be so convinced it was Christ's shroud that I was determined to prevent their involvement in its carbon dating, if that were ever to come about. I feared the most important measurement that could be made on the shroud would be rendered less credible by their participation. Fortunately in this I was successful." (Gove, 1996, pp.6-7).

"It is well known to scientists that one can sometimes obtain a desired scientific result by subconscious manipulation of the technique or the data. It is a human flaw that must be carefully guarded against. It is most easily circumvented by not having preconceived notions of what the answer should be." (Gove, 1996, pp.8-9).

"In a letter postmarked 15 April 1987 Sox sent me a clipping from the London Times dated 15 April 1987, that was titled 'Science and the Shroud'. It was based on an interview with Professor Edward Hall of Oxford University. Hall asked the reporter to imagine a path about 130 yards wide made of a single layer of sand stretching from the Earth to the Moon. Our task, he explained, was the equivalent of finding a grain of sand in that path that differed slightly from the other grains. That was a measure of the problem being undertaken by seven laboratories in Europe and America sometime in the coming months." (Gove, 1996, p.184).

"I listed the changes in the Turin Workshop Protocol being proposed by Ballestrero, clearly on the advice of Professor Gonella. 1. Five AMS and two small-counter laboratories reduced to three AMS laboratories. 2. No independent textile expert designated to remove the shroud samples. 3. Laboratory representatives not permitted to witness shroud sample removal. 4. No suggested involvement by laboratory representatives in the final data analysis. 5. No official involvement by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at any stage. Professor Chagas invited to participate merely as a guest of the Cardinal of Turin." (Gove, 1996, p.218).

"The draft letter to the pope read as follows: `Your Holiness: Following your specific instructions, representatives of scientific laboratories specializing in the technique of carbon dating small samples met in Turin on 29 September-1 October 1986, to discuss the protocol to follow should you permit the dating of the Holy Shroud of Turin. The workshop was held under the joint sponsorship of His Eminence Cardinal A Ballestrero and of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. At the end of this workshop a detailed protocol was arrived at that was agreed upon by all participants. The two main guiding principles were: 1. Removal of a minimum amount of Shroud material. A total of 122 square centimetres (less than 0.03 per cent of the total surface of the Shroud) will suffice for all the laboratories. 2. Absolute scientific credibility. It was unanimously decided that, to improve the statistical credibility of the analysis, a minimum of seven laboratories should perform the dating. It is important to note that they use different techniques." (Gove, 1996, p.218).

"In a letter dated 10 October 1987 to all the workshop participants, Cardinal Ballestrero has ordered substantial modifications to the original protocol. In particular, the number of laboratories is reduced, without any explanation, to three. ... `It is our collective impression that Cardinal Ballestrero has received very unwise scientific advice. The proposed modifications will confirm the suspicion of many people around the world that the Church either does not want the Shroud dated or it wants to have it done in an ambiguous way. The procedure that the Cardinal of Turin is suggesting is bound to produce a result that will be questioned in strictly scientific terms by many scientists around the world who will be very skeptical of the arbitrarily small statistical basis when it is well known that a better procedure was recommended. Since there is great world expectation for the date of the Shroud, the publicity resulting from a scientifically dubious result will do great harm to the Church. ... Rather than following an ill advised procedure that will not generate a reliable date but will rather give rise to world controversy, we suggest that it would be better not to date the Shroud at all'." (Gove, 1996, pp.218-219).

"The fourth enclosure was the proposed press release. It outlined the events up to Ballestrero's rejection of the Turin workshop agreement and his selection of only three labs to carbon date the shroud. It was an expanded version of the proposed letter to the pope. The concluding paragraph read: `The new procedures suggested to the Cardinal of Turin and that he has now embraced, will, if implemented, yield a result for the date of the Shroud that will certainly be vigorously challenged by the world scientific community for their flimsy statistical basis. We urge the Cardinal of Turin to seek scientific advice from an unimpeachable source that was available to him from the very beginning, but that he chose to ignore, namely the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which enjoys worldwide respect in the world scientific community. Only with the best advice of world experts on carbon-14 dating can a scientifically credible date for the Shroud of Turin be arrived at.'" (Gove, 1996, p.219).

"On 3 November 1987, Hall told me that he would not sign the letter to the pope. ... He said that if all three labs got the same result then of course everything would be fine, but he agreed there was some risk. ... He thought representatives from the labs must be at least in the next room when Tite supervised the cutting, and that they should receive the samples right there and then. He was particularly concerned that the British Museum be protected against the charge that Tite substituted samples. That charge could be made if there were no witnesses other than Turin authorities when the sample was taken under Tite's supervision. (In the event, that was what happened and such a charge was later made.)" (Gove, 1996, pp.220-221).

"The letter [to Cardinal Ballestrero] read: `Your Eminence: ... we are concerned to learn that a decision has been made to limit the number of participating laboratories to three. We are in agreement with the conclusions reached at the workshop held in Turin in September-October 1986, that is: "a minimum amount of cloth will be removed which is sufficient to (a) insure a result that is scientifically rigorous and (b) to maximize the credibility of the enterprise to the public. For these reasons, a decision was made that seven laboratories will carry out the experiment..." `We believe that reducing the number of laboratories to three will seriously reduce "the credibility of the enterprise" which we are also anxious to achieve. As you are aware, there are many critics in the world who will scrutinize these measurements in great detail. The abandonment of the original protocol and the decision to proceed with only three laboratories will certainly enhance the skepticism of these critics. While we understand your desire to use a minimum amount of material from the Shroud, we believe that the increased confidence which would result in the inclusion of more than three laboratories in the programme would justify the additional expenditure of material. Although improvements in statistical errors resulting from including more measurements might not be great, the possibility of the occurrence of unrecognized non-statistical errors would be substantially reduced. For example, if only three laboratories participate, and one of them obtains a divergent non-understandable result, the entire project could be jeopardized, but if results from a larger number of laboratories are available, a divergent result could be more easily recognized as such and can be treated appropriately in a statistically accepted manner. Clearly it is the reduction of unrecognized non-statistical errors in measurements that leads to increased confidence in the final result. We would very much like to take part in the programme to determine the age of the cloth in the Shroud, but we are hesitant to proceed under the arrangement in which only three laboratories would participate in the measurements. We urge that the decision to change the protocol of the Turin workshop and to limit participation to only three laboratories be given further consideration. Respectfully...' This letter spelled out in the most transparently unambiguous way the reasons for having the measurements made by more than three labs. It would add little or nothing to the statistical accuracy of the final result but it would provide a remedy for a rogue result by one laboratory as it had in the case of the British Museum's interlaboratory comparison." (Gove, 1996, pp.222-223).

"One of the next things I did-another last-gasp effort-was to write a letter to Sir David Wilson, the Director of the British Museum, dated 27 January 1988. I enclosed a copy of the press release issued by the British Museum following the 22 January meeting. I said that I had no reservations whatsoever concerning Dr Tite's honesty, integrity and credibility as a representative of the British Museum in this enterprise. However, there were many people who were overly suspicious of the entire operation. The situation was particularly exacerbated by the fact that the head of one of the three laboratories to be involved, Professor E T Hall of Oxford, was also on the board of directors of the British Museum. I pointed out that the original protocol called for a third person to be involved in both the certification and data analysis, namely the president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences or his representative. I said that Dr Chagas was such a distinguished scientist that if both he and Dr Tite had been involved and if the original seven labs had participated, the enterprise would have been as credible as possible. I was astonished that Wilson would permit the British Museum to risk having its reputation called into question in what had become a somewhat shoddy enterprise." (Gove, 1996, p.242).

"On 25 April at 11 am, Harbottle called. He had learned from Otlet that the shroud samples had been removed on 21 April 1988. Hall had flown into London on 25 April with the samples in hand and he received a lot of publicity. The archbishop had been, according to Harbottle, furious about Hall's trying to commercially capitalize on the venture. Harbottle also said that the BBC were going to film the measurements at Zurich. He said that, according to Otlet, there was no possibility this time of any outliers because the three labs would consult together so the answers would come out the same. I must say I thought that Otlet was being either paranoid or surprisingly cynical." (Gove, 1996, p.252).

"The 24 March 1988 edition of Nature contained another letter from Denis Dutton. He expressed the worry that nobody had come forward with procedures to secure the authenticity of the samples. He deplored the reduction of the number of labs to three. Shut out from the tests would be Dr Harry Gove of the University of Rochester and Dr Garman Harbottle of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, as well as the Saclay laboratory of France and the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. Of equal importance was the fact that the Vatican officials in charge of the test had still not come forward with procedures to secure the authenticity of the samples-procedures, for example, to make it impossible for ancient mummy linen to be surreptitiously introduced into the chain of evidence. Dutton is clearly an eminent and respectable man but he was certainly snatching at straws here. I don't think anyone in the seven carbon dating labs ever worried that there might be a substitution of Egyptian linen for the shroud-at least I certainly did not." (Gove, 1996, p.248).

"Eight of the ten samples in this first historic load were OX1, OX2, blank, two shroud and three controls. ... Damon said the 1/2 cm^2 shroud sample being used in this 6 May run had a red silk thread in it as well as some blue threads or fibrils and they had been removed. There was absolutely no problem in identifying the shroud-it was finely, closely hand woven (the weave was not as even as it would have been if done by a machine) and it was the unmistakable shroud herringbone weave." (Gove, 1996, p.263).

"The first sample run was OX1. Then followed one of the controls. Each run consisted of a 10 second measurement of the carbon-13 current and a 50 second measurement of the carbon-14 counts. This is repeated nine more times and an average carbon-14/carbon-13 ratio calculated. All this was under computer control and the calculations produced by the computer were displayed on a cathode ray screen. The age of the control sample could have been calculated on a small pocket calculator but was not-everyone was waiting for the next sample-the Shroud of Turin! At 9:50 am 6 May 1988, Arizona time, the first of the ten measurements appeared on the screen. We all waited breathlessly. The ratio was compared with the OX sample and the radiocarbon time scale calibration was applied by Doug Donahue. His face became instantly drawn and pale. At the end of that one minute we knew the age of the Turin Shroud! The next nine numbers confirmed the first. ... Based on these 10 one minute runs, with the calibration correction applied, the year the flax had been harvested that formed its linen threads was 1350 AD-the shroud was only 640 years old! It was certainly not Christ's burial cloth but dated from the time its historic record began." (Gove, 1996, p.264).

"I received a letter dated 1 June 1988 from Monsignor Giovanni Tonnucci, Charge d'Affaires at the Apostolic Nunciate to the USA in Washington as follows: `Dear Professor Gove ... For your information, I am also enclosing a copy of the statement which appeared in the 2 May 1988 issue of the English-language weekly edition of L'Osservatore Romano. With every good wish, I remain sincerely yours.' The article was titled 'Samples of Shroud of Turin taken for scientific dating'. It stated that three samples of cloth from the main body of the Shroud were removed on 21 April 1988. The total weight was approximately 150 milligrams comprising a strip measuring about 1 cm by 7 cm. It stressed the procedures followed to ensure blindness and described the three control samples. The ones supplied by the British Museum were stated to be a fabric of the first century AD and the other of the eleventh century AD while a fourth sample, the source of which was not given, was said to be dated about 1300 AD. It gave the names of the two textile experts who were present, Professor Franco A Testore of the Polytechnic of Turin assisted by M. Gabriel Vial of the Historical Museum of Fabrics of Lyon, and said the entire operation was videotaped and documented photographically. What really surprised me was the fact that the ages of the control samples were given in this news report and they actually corresponded to the results on the three control samples later obtained by the three laboratories. The article appeared even before Arizona carried out their measurements, although I am sure Damon and Donahue were not aware of it (the first Arizona measurement, at which I was present, was carried out six days after the article appeared). However, both Zurich and Oxford made their measurements considerably later and people in those two labs might have been aware of L'Osservatore Romano article." (Gove, 1996, pp.269-270).

"Meanwhile, the story that the Shroud of Turin was a fake was getting increased attention from the press. The original rumour that the shroud was medieval appeared in the article by Kenneth Rose in the London Sunday Telegraph. Aside from a naive statement from Ballestrero that the labs would not know which of four samples was the shroud, there was not much reaction to the Rose report. However, this changed when the 27th August 1988 edition of the Washington Post carried a story by Tim Radford of the Guardian that "The furor began after Dr Richard Luckett of Cambridge University wrote in the Evening Standard yesterday that a date of 1350 'looks likely' for the 14-foot piece of linen which appears to bear the imprint... of Jesus. He also referred to laboratories as "leaky institutions".' ... Somehow the impression had been created that the 'leaky institution' Luckett referred to was Hall's Oxford Laboratory because the Washington Post quoted Gonella as saying `Frankly we in Italy feel we have been taken for a ride. I am amazed that there should be indiscretions of this sort from a university like Oxford. We had expected different behaviour from a laboratory of this reputation.' ... A friend of mine who was visiting Mexico sent me a clipping from the 27th August edition of the Mexico City News. It quoted the report carried by the Evening Standard on 26 August and provided a few more details from that report. The Evening Standard report claimed that Oxford had found the shroud to be a fake which dated only to 1350 AD. It gave no attribution for its report but quoted Dr Richard Luckett of Magdalen College, Cambridge as saying `I think that as far as seems possible the scientific argument is now settled and the shroud is a fake'. ... Oxford had completed their measurements during the first week of August and had sent them to the British Museum. Hall certainly knew the Oxford result at the time of the leak and may also have known the overall result that was to be published in Nature." (Gove, 1996, pp.277-278).

"The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle also carried the story on the front page of their 27th August edition under the headline 'UR (University of Rochester) scientist rejects story of relic's age'. The subhead read 'London paper claims tests show Shroud of Turin a fake'. The report read: `The ... London Evening Standard yesterday reported, without attribution, that radio-carbon tests at Oxford University showed the shroud was made about 1350. ... ' ... The article stated that Luckett, whose university is an ancient rival of Oxford, was not connected with the tests but had been associated with investigations of the shroud's history. `He wrote in a separate article in the Evening Standard that laboratories "are rather leaky places" but did not elaborate.' ... An Associated Press story appeared in the 9 September 1988 issue of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle headlined 'Shroud's age remains secret Oxford research chief says', with the subhead 'He claims forgery report was just a guess'. Teddy Hall was quoted to this effect in the Oxford Mail. The article went on `But Dr Richard Luckett, a Cambridge University professor, said he stood by his word, adding, "I had an absolutely marvellous leak from one of the laboratories and it wasn't Oxford." Luckett, last month, said tests at Oxford showed the shroud was made in 1350. ... I must say I wondered about Luckett's date of 1350 because it was the date Donahue announced to me when I was present at the first radiocarbon measurement on the shroud in 6 May 1988. Of course, it also corresponds very closely to the shroud's known historic date. However, I still assumed Luckett had said he got the number from Oxford. When I read that he claimed he got it from one of the other two labs I worried that it might have come from someone who was present at Arizona during the first measurement." (Gove, 1996, pp.278-279).

"Peter Rinaldi ? wrote to his shroud friends that this had been a busy and difficult time for him. `I doubt if the cause of the Shroud ever went through more trying times than it did during the last year. Surely you must know by now that the scientists, using the ultimate test, the carbon-14 analysis, have dated the origin of the Shroud to the 14th century AD. This would mean, of course, that the Shroud is not the burial cloth of Christ.'... He continued: `Let me say, first of all, that not all the experts accept the results of the test. Some of them are actually calling for a new test on good scientific grounds. I was intrigued by what one of them told me: "Valid or not, the results of the carbon-14 test in no way solve the mystery of Christ's image on that cloth. The test has not said the last word on the Shroud".' He recounted how, `Shortly after the results of the carbon-14 tests were announced, a friend met me in front of the Turin Cathedral. Placing his hand on my shoulder, he said mournfully: "I feel terribly sorry for the Church and for you". "You can't be serious," I told him. "Do you really think the Church will fall apart because the Shroud may not be what many of us supposed it to be? The Church has nothing to fear from the truth, provided, of course, it is backed by solid facts... .I might be persuaded to accept the results of the test only when someone will demonstrate beyond all question, how a medieval artist produced so extraordinary an image as that of the Shroud".'" (Gove, 1996, pp.292-293).

"ONE cloth which can contribute a great deal to the study of the Shroud of Turin and its authenticity is the Sudarium of Oviedo. This cloth has been kept in Spain since the seventh century and housed in the cathedral of Oviedo, a town in the north of Spain, since the eleventh century. The sudarium is a piece of bloodstained cloth woven with the same type of thread as the Shroud. The cloth bears no image and measures two feet nine inches by one foot nine inches. It is believed by many to be the face cloth or napkin that covered the face of Christ when He was taken down from the Cross. The sudarium is mentioned in the Gospel of St. John: `Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin [Gk. soudarion], which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself' (John 20:6-7). According to Jewish burial traditions, it was considered impertinent to show the disfigured face of a dead man. Therefore, a sweat cloth or a napkin was placed over the face and was then discarded at the tomb." (Guerrera, V., "The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity," TAN: Rockford IL, 2000, p.41. Emphasis original).

"The history of the sudarium is better documented than that of the Shroud of Turin. Much of our information on the cloth comes from the writings of Bishop Pelayo, who was bishop of Oviedo in the twelfth century. According to his Book of the Testaments of Oviedo and the Chronicon Regum Legionensium, the sudarium was preserved in Jerusalem up to the year 614, when the city was conquered by the Persian King Chosroes II, who reigned from 590 to 628. [Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Redwood Books: Trowbridge UK, 1998, p.14] At that time a priest by the name of Filipo took the cloth and other relics, which were kept in a cedar chest to Alexandria for safekeeping. When Chosroes conquered Alexandria in 616, the cloth was taken across the north of Africa to evade the advancing Persians. The cloth was then brought to Spain via Cartagena where Saint Fulgentius, bishop of Ecija, received the chest, or holy ark, along with the fleeing refugees. In turn, he entrusted the holy ark containing the sudarium to Saint Leandro, Bishop of Seville. Leandro once lived in Constantinople from 579 to 582 and may very well have seen the Shroud itself. Evidence for this can be gleaned from a verse in the Mozarabic Liturgy for Easter Saturday which is associated with Leandro. In the Illatio we read: `Peter ran to the tomb with John and saw the recent imprints of the dead and risen one on the cloths.' [Ibid., p.17] This makes for another interesting connection between the Shroud and the sudarium." (Guerrera, 2000, pp.41-42).

"Saint Isidore later succeeded Saint Leandro as Bishop of Seville. One of Isidore's disciples was Saint Braulio, Bishop of Zaragoza (585-651). In the eighteenth century, twenty-four of his letters were discovered in Lyons. In one of his letters written in 631 to a priest named Tayo, Braulio says: `But at that time they knew about many things that happened but were not written down, as one reads concerning the linen cloths, and the sudario with which the Lord's body was enveloped, that it was found, but one does not read that it was preserved. For I do not believe that it was ignored, with the result that these relics were not kept by the Apostles for future times, and other things of that sort. [San Braulio de Zaragoza, in Migne, J.P., ed., "Patrologia Latina," Vol. 80, Buffer, T., trans., Apud Editorem: Paris, 1850, col. 689] Isidore was eventually succeeded by Saint Ildefonso, who had been his student. When Ildefonso was appointed Bishop of Toledo in 657, he took the chest with him where it remained until 718. With the invasion of the Moors at the beginning of the eighth century, the chest containing the sudarium was taken farther north to Asturias, according to some authors, to avoid destruction. It was here that it first became designated as the `holy ark.' Initially it was kept in a cave now known as Monsacro, six miles from Oviedo. In 840, King Alfonso II commissioned a special chapel in the cathedral, called the Camara Santa, to house the holy ark. The fact that the sudarium has been in the region of Asturias from ancient times cannot be disputed. On March 14, 1075, the holy ark was opened on the occasion of a visit by King Alfonso VI. Also present were his sister Urraca Fernandez and Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid. At this time a list was made of its contents. The King ordered that the chest be silver-plated to honor the precious relics. The bas relief includes images of Our Lord, the Twelve Apostles and the Four Evangelists. This work was finally realized in 1113. An inscription on the reliquary reads: `el Santo Sudario de NS.J.C.' (`the Holy Sudarium of Our Lord Jesus Christ')." (Guerrera, 2000, pp.42-43).

"Much of the scientific research on the sudarium has been carried out by the Equipo de Investigacion del Centro Espanol de Sindonologia (EDICES) under the direction of Guillermo Hernias and Dr. Jose Villalain of the University of Valencia. They first studied the sudarium in late 1989 and early 1990. ... During their studies they excised minute samples of the cloth and also tested pollen and dust from its surface. Previous research on the cloth had been carried out by Monsignor Giulio Ricci and Dr. Max Frei, who took pollen samples from the Shroud of Turin. Frei conducted similar pollen tests on the sudarium and found pollen from Jerusalem, Oviedo, Toledo and North Africa, consonant with the ancient account of the sudarium's itinerary. [Guscin, 1998, p.22] Of the thirteen pollens that were found, eight were on both the Shroud and the sudarium. [Whanger, A.D. & Whanger, M.W., "A Comparison of the Sudarium of Oviedo and the Shroud of Turin Using the Polarized Image Overlay Technique," Sudario del Señor: Universidad de Oviedo, 1996, p.380] There is no evidence on the cloth of any pollen which is indigenous to Turkey, Constantinople, France or Italy, which are believed to be the locations along the route the Shroud traveled. Subsequent pollen studies conducted by Dr. Carmen Gomez Ferreras, a biologist at the University of Complutense in Madrid, found pollen from three genera of plants identified as quercus, pistacia and tamarix, which are native to the region of Palestine. [Ferreras, C.G., "El Sudario de Oviedo y la Palinologia, " Sudario del Señor, p.86]" (Guerrera, 2000, pp.42-43).

"Stain Marks Perhaps the most obvious

[Right (click to enlarge): Perfect match of overlay of the face of the Shroud of Turin on the Sudarium of Oviedo, Wikipedia]

characteristics of the sudarium are its numerous stain marks. Scientific analysis has shown that the main stains are composed of one part blood and six parts of pulmonary oedema fluid. [Guscin, 1998, p.22] It has also been established that when a person dies by crucifixion, "his lungs are filled with the fluid from the oedema. If the body is moved or jolted, this fluid can come out through the nostrils." [Ibid., p.23] This finding is consistent with the manner in which the man on the Shroud died. The remarkable aspect about the bloodstains on the sudarium is that they match exactly the shape and form of the face of the man on the Shroud. Dr. Alan Whanger, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and his wife Mary, developed the polarized image overlay technique which, in order to make comparisons, allows for two images to be superimposed using polarized filters. When they applied this technique to the sudarium and the Shroud, they found over seventy-five congruent blood stains on the facial portion of the two cloths and fifty-five congruent blood stains on the back of the head and neck. Consequently, Dr. Whanger believes that these one hundred thirty points of congruence between the sudarium and the Shroud provide overwhelming evidence that both linens touched the same person. In a court of law, only forty-five to sixty points of congruence are needed to establish a facial identity. Professor Avinoam Danin, a botanist from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the world authority on the flora of the Near East, said: "There's no possibility that this cloth in Oviedo and the Shroud would both have the same blood stains and these pollen grains unless they were covering the same body." [Danin, A., The Holy Shroud Guild Newsletter, December 25, 1999, p. 3] Also noteworthy about the facial characteristics of the two cloths is that both exhibit typical Jewish features: a prominent nose measuring eight centimeters or a little over three inches, and high cheek bones. What is more, the beard of the sudarium matches that of the Shroud perfectly. There is also a high concentration of dust in the nasal area suggesting that the man may have fallen on his face." (Guerrera, 2000, pp.44,47. Emphasis original).

"Dr Alan Whanger has studied the points of coincidence and relationship between the Shroud and hundreds of Byzantine paintings and representations of Christ, even using coins, from the sixth and seventh centuries. This was done using a system called Polarised Image Overlay Technique. His conclusion was that many of these icons and paintings were inspired by the image on the Shroud, which means that the Shroud must have been in existence in the sixth and seventh centuries. This coincides with Ian Wilson's theory that the Shroud was `rediscovered' in Edessa just before this. Dr Whanger applied the same image overlay technique to the sudarium, comparing it to the image and blood stains on the Shroud. Even he was surprised at the results. The frontal stains on the sudarium show seventy points of coincidence with the Shroud, and the rear side shows fifty. The only possible conclusion, according to this highly respected scientist, is that the sudarium covered the same face as the Turin Shroud. If this is so, and taking into account that it is impossible to deny that the sudarium has been in Oviedo since 1075, it casts a great shadow of doubt over the results of the Shroud's carbon dating." (Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 1998, p.32).

"Carbon 14, Again We are faced with a choice. There are two irreconcilable conclusions, one of which must be wrong. All the studies on the sudarium point to its having covered the same face as the Shroud did, and we know that the sudarium was in Oviedo in 1075. On the other hand, the carbon dating specialists have said that the Shroud dates from 1260 to 1390. Either the sudarium has nothing to do with the Shroud, or the carbon dating was wrong - there is no middle way, no compromise. If the sudarium did not cover the same face as the Shroud, there are an enormous number of coincidences, too many for one small piece of cloth. If there was only one connection, maybe it could be just a coincidence, but there are too many. The only logical conclusion from all the evidence is that both the Oviedo sudarium and the Turin Shroud covered the same face. As we have already seen from the Cagliari congress, there are also many inherent reasons why the Shroud cannot be fourteenth century, reasons that nobody has been able to disprove, and only one that suggests a medieval origin-carbon dating. Those who believe in the carbon dating have never been able to offer any serious proof or evidence to explain why every other scientific method practised on the Shroud has given a first century origin as a result, most have not even tried. It can hardly be considered rational or scientific to blindly accept what conveniently fits in with one's own personal ideas without even taking into consideration what others say. And after all, carbon dating is just one experimental method compared with dozens of others, and it stands alone in its medieval theory. If both the sudarium and the Shroud date from the first century, then the carbon dating must be mistaken, and it is the duty of those who believe in the dual authenticity of the cloths to show why carbon dating has shown the Shroud to be first century. Those who have attempted this can be broadly divided into two bands, those who think that the particular process of the Shroud's carbon dating was a fake, a deliberate deception by the scientists involved, and those who believe that the whole process of carbon dating is not as reliable as it is made out to be, and is far from infallible." (Guscin, 1998, pp.64-65).

"However, let us suppose for a while that the results obtained from the carbon dating of both the sudarium and the Shroud are accurate, and neither cloth ever touched the body of Jesus. In that case, the following story would have to be true. Sometime in the seventh century, in Palestine, after reading the gospel of John, a well known forger of religious relics saw the opportunity of putting a new product on the market - a cloth that had been over the face of the dead body of Jesus. This forger was also an expert in medicine, who knew that a crucified person died from asphyxiation, and that when this happened, special liquids fill the lungs of the dead body, and can come out through the nose if the body is moved. The only way he could get this effect on the cloth was by re-enacting the process, so this is exactly what he did. He crucified a volunteer, eliminating those candidates who did not fulfil the right conditions - swollen nose and cheeks, forked beard to stain the cloth, etc. When the body was taken down from the cross, he shook it around a bit with the help of a few friends, holding the folded cloth to the dead volunteer's nose so that future generations would be able to see the outline of his fingers. He even stuck a few thorns in the back of the dead man's neck, knowing that relic hunters would be looking for the bloodstains from the crown of thorns. Being an eloquent man, he convinced people that this otherwise worthless piece of cloth was stained with nothing less than the blood and pleural liquid of Christ, and so it was guarded in Jerusalem with other relics, and considered so genuine and spiritually valuable that it was worth saving first from the invading Persians and later from the Arabs. A few hundred years later, some time between 1260 and 1390, another professional forger, a specialist in religious relics too, decided that the time was ripe for something new, something really convincing. There were numerous relics from various saints in circulation all round Europe, bones, skulls, capes, but no, he wanted something really original. Various possibilities ran through his mind, the crown of thorns, the nails from the crucifixion, the table cloth from the last supper, and then suddenly he had it - the funeral shroud of Jesus! And not only that, but he would also put an image on the Shroud, the image of the man whom the Shroud had wrapped! The first step was difficult. Being an expert in textile weaves, (one of his many specialities, the others being pollen, Middle East blood groups, numismatism of the years of Tiberius, photography, Roman whips, and electronic microscopes) he needed linen of a special kind, typical of the Middle East in the first century. Once this had been specially ordered and made, he folded it up before starting his work, as a neighbour had suggested that such a cloth would have been folded up and hidden in a wall in Edessa for a few hundred years, so the image would be discontinuous on some of the fold marks. Leaving the cloth folded up, he travelled to Oviedo in the north of Spain, where he knew that a forerunner in his trade had left a cloth with Jesus' blood stains. On obtaining permission to analyse the sudarium, he first checked the blood group - AB of course, common in the Middle East and relatively scarce in Europe - then made an exact plan of the blood stains (carefully omitting those which would have already clotted when the sudarium was used) so that his stains would coincide exactly. After his trip to Oviedo, he went on a tour of what is now Turkey, forming a composite portrait of Jesus from all the icons, coins and images he could find. After all, he needed people to think that his Shroud had been around for over a thousand years, and that artists had used it as their inspiration for painting Christ. He didn't really understand what some of the marks were, the square box between the eyes, the line across the throat, but he thought he'd better put them on anyway. He didn't want to be accused of negligence, because he was an internationally famous forger and had a reputation to maintain. Once he was back home, he somehow obtained some blood (AB, naturally) and decided to begin his work of art with the blood stains, before even making the body image. Unfortunately, he miscalculated the proportions, and the nail stains appeared on the wrist instead of on the palms of the hands, where everyone in the fourteenth century knew that they had been. `Well', he thought, `it's just a question of a few inches, nobody will notice.' Now, even the omniscient author is forbidden to enter in the secret room where the forger `paints' the image of Christ, a perfect three dimensional negative, without paint or direction. His method was so secret that it went to the tomb with him. After a few hours, he opened the door, and called his wife, who was busy preparing dinner in the kitchen. `What do you think?' `Not bad. But you've forgotten the thumbs' `No, I haven't. Don't you know that if a nail destroys the nerves in the wrist, the thumbs bend in towards the palm of the hand, so you wouldn't be able to see them?' `But didn't the nails go through the palms?' `Well, yes, but I put the blood on first, and didn't quite get the distance right' `Oh, in that case ... and what about the pollen?' `What pollen?' `Well, if this Shroud has been in Palestine, Edessa, and let's suppose it's been in Constantinople too, it's going to need pollen from all those places.' Our forger loved the idea, got the pollen from all the places his wife had indicated, and delicately put it all over his Shroud. And then, the final touch. Two coins from the time of Christ, minted under the emperor Tiberius, to put over the man's eyes. Our man had a sense of humour too - he decided that the coins would be included in the image in such a way that they would only be visible under an electronic microscope. Such a story, even without the embellishments, is more incredible than the Shroud's authenticity." (Guscin, 1998, pp.84-88).

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

TSoT: Bibliography "S"

Here is the Bibliography "S" page for authors' surnames beginning with "S" of books that

[Left: Stevenson & Habermas' "Verdict on the Shroud" (1981), which in January 2005 was the first book on the Shroud of Turin that I had ever read. However, the `tagline' quotes below (bold emphases mine) are only from Scavone's book.]

I will probably refer to in my book outline, "The Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus?"


THE SHROUD OF TURIN: BURIAL SHEET OF JESUS?
© Stephen E. Jones


CONTENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY "S"

Scavone, D.C., 1989, "The Shroud of Turin: Opposing Viewpoints," Greenhaven Press: San Diego CA.
Schwalbe, L.A. & Rogers, R.N., 1982, "Physics and Chemistry of the Shroud of Turin: Summary of the 1978 Investigation," Reprinted from Analytica Chimica Acta, Vol. 135, No. 1, 1982, pp.3-49, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co: Amsterdam.
Sox, H.D., 1978, "File on the Shroud," Coronet: London.
Sox, H.D., 1981, "The Image on the Shroud: Is the Turin Shroud a Forgery?," Unwin: London.
Sox, H.D., 1988, "The Shroud Unmasked: Uncovering the Greatest Forgery of All Time," The Lamp Press: Basingstoke UK.
Stevenson, K.E., ed., 1977, "Proceedings of the 1977 United States Conference of Research on The Shroud of Turin," Holy Shroud Guild: Bronx NY.
Stevenson, K.E., 1999, "Image of the Risen Christ: Remarkable New Evidence About the Shroud," Frontier Research Publications: Toronto ON.
Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1981, "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI.
Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1990, "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN.

Stephen E. Jones, BSc. (Biology).
My other blog: CreationEvolutionDesign


"What Is the Turin Shroud? In the summer of 1978 three million tourists visited Torino (Turin), Italy. They had come from all over the world to wait in line and to look upon a linen cloth which had been in Turin for more than four hundred years. They knew that the cloth had not been shown to the general public for almost fifty years and that this would likely be its only display in their lifetime. As they entered the cathedral of St. John the Baptist they could see a large, narrow cloth measuring 14.3 feet long by 3.5 feet wide. It was flood-lit and was mounted in front of the main altar at the far end of the church. Gradually, as they neared the altar, they began to notice on the cloth an extremely faint, reddish-colored, life-sized image of a bearded man. The man looked strikingly like traditional images of Jesus Christ. Indeed, the cloth known as the Shroud of Turin is thought by many people to be the actual burial wrapping of Jesus. Both the front and the back of the body can be seen on the cloth. From either end the figure appears feet-head, head-feet. This tells us that he may have been placed on one half of the cloth. The other half would then have been pulled over the front of the body. There are stains on the body that resemble blood stains from an ancient Roman scourging and crucifixion with nails. On the front, there are trickles of blood on the man's forehead, a large stain on his right side, and stains from a wound in one wrist. (The other hand cannot be seen.) Both arms show blood runoffs from the hands to the elbows. On the back can be counted about 120 small stains which conform to the shape of a Roman whip. More blood trickles are seen on the back of the head. The feet are bloodied from apparent nail wounds. In short, the wounds on the image of the Shroud conform to the story of Jesus' crucifixion as told in the Gospels." (Scavone, D.C., 1989, "The Shroud of Turin: Opposing Viewpoints," Greenhaven Press: San Diego CA, pp.6,8. Emphasis original).

"The mystery surrounding the Shroud began in the year 1389. That year, the Bishop of Troyes in France, wrote a long letter to Pope Clement VII ... . The Bishop, Pierre d'Arcis, complained in this letter that a knight named Geoffroy de Charny (whom we will call Geoffroy II) had placed a large cloth in his local church in Lirey, France. Geoffroy II was claiming that the cloth was Jesus' burial cloth and that the image on it was that of Jesus' crucified body. Many people, d'Arcis continued, were visiting the church to see this sheet, and they were making donations. He charged that Geoffroy II was doing this for money. Though Bishop d'Arcis had not seen the cloth, he thought it could not be the actual cloth which had covered Jesus' body because the Bible does not mention an image on the shroud of Jesus. He was also angry because Geoffroy had not asked his permission to display the cloth, but had gone over his head directly to the Pope's representatives. He had gotten permission from them. The letter went on to say that `about 34 years ago' Geoffroy's father (whom we shall call Geoffroy I), had first placed the so-called Shroud in the Lirey church. `About 34 years ago' would mean about the year 1355, since Bishop d'Arcis's letter was written in 1389. ... According to d'Arcis's letter, Geoffroy I had been forced to remove his Shroud by an earlier Bishop of Troyes. His name was Henry of Poitiers. Henry had conducted an investigation around 1355, and the `artist who had cleverly painted it' had come forth and confessed. .... The busy Pope, Clement VII, regarded d'Arcis's letter as a nuisance. ... he ordered the priests at Lirey to refer to it as merely a `copy or representation' of Jesus' shroud. He then ordered Bishop d'Arcis never to speak about the matter again." (Scavone, 1989, pp.12,14).

"Did an Artist Paint the Shroud? In spite of the Pope's casual treatment of it, d'Arcis's letter raises many questions. One would think, for instance, that the artist's confession d'Arcis mentioned would have closed the book on the mystery of the Shroud of Turin. Surprisingly, however, it only adds to it: The figure of the man on the Shroud is anatomically perfect. Yet, neither doctors nor artists of the period around 1355 knew enough about the human body to represent it so perfectly. As we will see later, the flows of blood on the Shroud man are natural and accurate. From numerous paintings we know that artists of that time did not know how to depict realistic bleeding. Also, the figure is naked, but artists of that time normally did not show the human body naked. And Jesus was never depicted unclothed. Who, then, was this genius who was so original as to be the first to draw the human body nude and was so far ahead of his time in his knowledge of human anatomy? Bishop d'Arcis did not name him. Shouldn't he have been well known? Next, d'Arcis's phrase `about 34 years ago,' raises questions. Apparently he did not have an official dated document before him. His letter frequently used the expressions `it is reported' or `they say.' His information was mostly hearsay evidence. What documents, records, or other evidence do we have today of Bishop Henry's supposed investigation of 1355 ('about 34 years ago')? None. Today only one letter exists from Bishop Henry to Geoffroy I, first owner of the Shroud. In this letter Bishop Henry is not angry and he is not suspicious. Its date is May 28, 1356. So it was written just about the time when he was supposed to be accusing Geoffroy of displaying a false relic. Yet the letter praises and blesses Geoffroy I for his work in promoting the Christian faith. There is no reference at all to the Shroud or to any investigation." (Scavone, 1989, pp.14-16. Emphasis original).

"Even though the Bible is silent about what happened to the Shroud after Easter, there are other documents of an unofficial nature which do point to the Shroud's survival after Easter Sunday. In the second century (about 100-200 A.D.), several accounts were written about the life of Christ. ... The usual word for these books is `apocryphal' or `hidden' books. But because they were excluded from the Bible does not mean that they are utterly false. .... As books actually written in the second century, they are valuable source materials for that time. Most importantly, these texts say that Jesus' shroud was removed from the tomb and saved.Writers of the second century, therefore, knew of the existence of this sheet in their own day. The first of these apocryphal books is called the Gospel of the Hebrews. The author is anonymous (unknown) as is the case with all these apocryphal books. We have only fragments from it, for most of it has been lost over the centuries. One key surviving passage says, `After the Lord gave his shroud to the servant of the priest [or of Peter; the actual word is not clear], he appeared to James:' The Acts of Pilate is another apocryphal book of the second century. It states that Pilate and his wife preserved the shroud of Jesus. It suggests that they were sorry for their part in his death and were now Christians. These two books, along with the Gospel of Peter, The Acts of Nicodemus, and The Gospel of Gamaliel, show us that second century writers knew about the Shroud in their day. They disagree about who saved it from the tomb, but they agree that it had been saved. The silence of the `official' Biblical stories about the preservation of the shroud is countered by these books." (Scavone, 1989, p.74).

"The Jerusalem Documents The Shroud record is again silent for nearly two centuries. These are centuries of persecution of Christians. The earliest martyrs died for their faith during this period. The Shroud may have continued to be hidden away for its own protection. The next reference to it comes in the biography of a young girl named St. Nino. She had visited Jerusalem during the time of Constantine. Constantine (312-337 A.D.) was the first Christian to rule the Roman Empire. It was he who put an end to the religious persecution of Christians. He also decreed that death by crucifixion should be outlawed. St. Nino took a great interest in the relics of Jesus' Passion (the sad events from the Last Supper on Thursday, through Good Friday, to Easter Sunday). These relics included the nails that pierced his hands and feet, the crown of thorns, the wood of the cross, the sponge with vinegared wine, the lance point that pierced his side, and, of course, his burial sheet. Jesus' shroud, she reported, had been preserved by the wife of Pilate, who then gave it to St. Luke who hid it away. After some time, St. Peter found it and kept it. St. Nino's account is proof that in fourth-century Jerusalem people still knew of the Shroud's existence." (Scavone, 1989, p.75. Emphasis original).

"After St. Nino ... There is still more evidence for the Shroud of Jesus in Jerusalem ... 1) Around the year 570 a pilgrim to the Holy Land, Antonius of Placentia, wrote of seeing a cave on the banks of the Jordan River. In it were seven cells, or rooms. In one of the cells was found `the sudarium which was upon Jesus' head:' 2) Not much later, St. Braulion of Saragossa, Spain (585-651) also saw in Jerusalem the `linens and sudarium in which the Lord's body was wrapped.' He adds something which might be good to keep in mind: `There are events of which the Gospels do not speak ... such as preserving the burial sheet.' 3) Next comes the wording to the `Mozarabic Liturgy.' ... This text was originally written in the sixth century, so it is contemporary with Antonius and Braulion. The lines which intrigue the student of the Shroud read, `Peter ran with John to the sepulcher. He saw the linens and on them the recent traces of the death and resurrection.' Could this be the first hint that the surviving grave wrapping showed an image? 4) About a hundred years later, around 680, Arculf, a French Bishop, visited Jerusalem. He relates a story he had heard. The sudarium, sometimes called the linteamen (linen), was taken from the tomb after the resurrection by a Christian ... Arculf says that he himself had seen and kissed this linen. It was eight feet long. This is much shorter than the Turin Shroud (14.3 feet), and Arculf does not hint at any image. The only way of identifying Arculf's shroud with that in Turin is to suppose Arculf saw the cloth folded in half: Eight feet is roughly half the size of the Shroud of Turin. It is not so easy to explain the absence of imprint. Wouldn't he have mentioned it if he had seen it? The historical records placing the Shroud in Jerusalem are not very persuasive. They may refer to some cloth other than the real burial sheet of Jesus. However, they cannot be discounted completely, especially Arculf's story. They do represent part of the Shroud mystery." (Scavone, 1989, pp.76-77. Emphasis original).

"We have seen that the Shroud has been tested and studied by many different scientists and historians and still it is as much a puzzle as ever. But there was one more test that remained to be done: to attempt to learn the date of the Shroud by the Carbon-14 (C-14) method. ... Experts hoped that by performing the C-14 test on the Shroud of Turin, the test would show the age of the cloth within thirty to two hundred years. As the test was planned, some C-14 specialists were pessimistic that it could produce an accurate date. They feared that too much contamination had occurred over the centuries. In the case of the Shroud, C-14 transfers from fourteenth, fifteenth, or even twentieth century hands could spoil the reading. Other C-14 experts believed that the cloth could be cleansed of its contamination and the test would give an accurate date for the Shroud. But all agreed that C-14 was not infallible. Nevertheless, on April 21, 1988, three pieces about the size of postage stamps were cut from the Shroud. The removal was done under the authority of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome and the British Museum. The bits of Shroud material were hand-delivered to representatives of the University of Arizona, Oxford University in England, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at the University of Zurich. The labs were also given bits of material from other `dummy' cloths whose dates were known. None of the pieces was labeled so that, theoretically at least, the labs could not know which pieces were from the Shroud. In September 1988, the results were leaked to the press. The Shroud had been carbon-dated to a time around 1350. Scientists whose research had seemed to support the Shroud's authenticity immediately challenged the C-14 findings. They came up with several objections to the way the testing had been carried out. They argued that the three labs had been given pieces of cloth taken from a much handled, much contaminated corner of the Shroud. Since only threads were needed, different parts of the Shroud could and should have been included, such as the `pristine' material next to the charred areas under the patches. Another major objection was that all three labs had agreed to use the same newly developed and relatively untested cleansing solvent. Since the contamination from centuries of handling is the most important obstacle to an accurate C-14 date, this procedure seemed to critics to be extremely careless. The C-14 tests, therefore, did not put an end to the controversy over the Shroud. In fact, the mystery of the famous cloth was even more profound than be fore. As Luigi Gonella, scientific advisor to the Archbishop of Turin noted, there remained the question of how the image was formed. Also, how could one explain the numerous artistic and historical references which seemed to point to the Shroud as the genuine burial cloth of Jesus? How could one explain the fact that early portraits of Jesus seem to contain features found on the face of the man of the Shroud? How did pollens from the Holy Land get onto the Shroud? How shall we explain Constantine VII's description of the Edessa Mandylion in 944 as a `moist secretion not made with, artists' paints,' a description which precisely describes the Shroud? If the Shroud was really the burial wrapping of some person centuries later than Jesus, why has it not disintegrated as burial clothing does if left on the corpse for more than thirty-six hours? The questions surrounding Christianity's greatest relic did not end in 1988. As with all the other tests, theories, and documents, C-14 has added but one more piece to the great puzzle of the Shroud of Turin." (Scavone, 1989, pp.102-105).