Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?: Revised #4 (9)

Copyright © Stephen E. Jones[0]

[Index: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #8, #10, #1 (new series)]

This is Revised #4, part 9, of my series, "Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?" My previous post in this series was, "Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?: Revised #3." Earlier posts in this series were: part 1, part 2, part 3, "Summary," "My replies to Dr. Timothy Jull and Prof. Christopher Ramsey," "Further to my replies to Dr. Timothy Jull and Prof. Christopher Ramsey," Revised #1 and Revised #2 (Vignon markings).

As previously explained (see Revised #3), the reason I am documenting all this historical evidence of the Shroud of Turin's existence from the 13th century to the 1st century is to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Shroud is authentic and therefore the 1988 radiocarbon date of the Shroud as "mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390"[1] was wrong. But then the improbability that the Shroud, being 1st century, had a radiocarbon date of 13th/14th century would be, "astronomical"[2] and "one in a thousand trillion"[3]. Moreover, the midpoint of 1206-1390 is 1325 ±65 years[4]. Which is only 5 years before the predicted date of "1335, plus or minus 30 years" by Shroud sceptic Denis Dutton[5], and only 25 years before the then assumed 1350[6] date of the Shroud's first appearance in undisputed history at Lirey, France[7]. But then, as the agnostic Shroud pro-authenticist Thomas de Wesselow pointed out, it would be a "remarkable coincidence" (to put it mildly) that the Shroud is first century yet its wrong 1325 ± 65 years radiocarbon date result was so close to the date of the Shroud's historical debut[8]. But if anyone wished to discredit the Shroud by fraud, then 1325 ± 65 years is around the date that they would have sought to achieve[9].

[Above: Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory staff and Rochester's Prof. Harry Gove (second from right) around the AMS control console computer after it had, on 6 May 1988 displayed the alleged hacker's bogus radiocarbon age of the Shroud, "640 years"[10], which was then calibrated to "1350 AD"[11]. The alleged hacker, Timothy W. Linick (see below), is the one in black standing the most prominently in the foreground of the photograph.]

However, Ian Wilson who knows personally the carbon dating project leaders, considers it "absurd and far-fetched as it is unworthy" that they would have committed fraud, by switching samples[12]. But there is a type of fraud which seems not to have occurred to anyone previously, and which was rife in the 1980s, namely computer hacking[13]. When I have completed laying out this historical evidence for the Shroud's existence from the 13th to the 1st centuries, I will then post the evidence that:

1. the AMS control console computer at each of three radiocarbon dating laboratories, Arizona, Zurich and Oxford, were hacked, to replace the Shroud's 1st or early century dates, with bogus dates which clustered around 1325, after calibration; and


2. the hackers were Arizona laboratory physicist Timothy W. Linick (1946-89) assisted by German self-confessed hacker for the KGB, Karl Koch (1965–1989). They both died from suspected suicide within days of each other (details of Koch's death indicate he was executed by the KGB), and they both may even have died on the same day.

c. 1001a The Russian Orthodox cross uniquely has a footrest, or suppedaneum[14], angled with the left side higher than the right[15].

[Right: Russian cross, late 12th century[16].

This matches the Shroud, in that the man on the Shroud's left leg, (which when facing the Shroud appears to be his right leg because of mirror reversal[17]), appears to be shorter than the other[18].

This is due to his left foot having been super- imposed over his right[19], and both feet fixed by a single nail[20]. The man's left leg was therefore bent more and remained fixed in that position after death by rigor mortis[21].

[Left (click to enlarge): The man on the Shroud's apparent right leg (left leg because of mirror reversal) appears to be shorter than his right[22].]

This presumably is the source of the 11th century Byzantine legend that Jesus actually had one leg shorter than the other and therefore was lame[23].

As this form of the cross is universal among the Russians[24] it must date from at least the beginning of the national conversion to Christianity, when missionaries in 988 came from Constantinople[25].

One of the oldest churches in Russia, the 10th-century Byzantine style Shoana Church[26], near Karachayevsk, Russia, has a Russian cross

[Left (enlarge): Russian cross atop the 10th-century Byzantine style Shoana Church, Russia.]

with an inclined footrest. For different views of the church and its cross see here.

This is probably not the original 10th century cross, but it is reasonable to assume that there was originally a Russian cross where the current cross is. And because its inclined footrest would have matched the apparently shorter right (but actually left) leg of the Shroud(see above), this would be further evidence that the 1260-1390 radiocarbon date of the Shroud[27] is wrong!

c. 1001b Closely related to the Russian cross is the "Byzantine curve"

[Left: "Byzantine Crucifix of Pisa," ca. 1230[28]. Note that Christ's right leg (corresponding to the Shroud's left leg) is shorter than the other leg and His body is curved (the "Byzantine curve") to compensate.]

in Byzantine Christian iconography[29]. After the year 1000, a striking change occurred in Byzantine depictions of Christ on the Cross[30]. Christ's two feet were nailed separately at the same level but his left leg is bent (based presumably on the Byzantines realising that the Shroud's image is laterally inverted) which meant that Jesus' body needed to curve to His right to compensate[31]. This "Byzantine curve" became the established form of Eastern depictions of Christ at the beginning of the eleventh century and made its way also into the West and became the recognized form in Italy in the early mediaeval period[32]. As with the strange design of the Russian cross, so this strange belief that Jesus had to have a curved body on the Shroud because one foot was shorter than the other and the Romans would have crucified Jesus' feet at the same level[33], has its most likely common origin in the Shroud[34]. But then again that means the Shroud was known in the Byzantine world (the centre of which was Constantinople), in the year 1000, nearly three centuries before 1260, the earliest possible radiocarbon date of the Shroud[35]!

c. 990 Byzantine historian Leo Diaconus[36], or Leo the Deacon (c. 950-)[37], was a deacon in the imperial palace at Constantinople[38]. After 992 he began writing a ten-volume history of the Byzantine empire, in Constantinople, but he died

[Right: "The History of Leo the Deacon" [39].]

before he could finish it[40]. In his history [41], Leo wrote that the image of Jesus in the Abgar V (c. 4 BC - AD 50) story was imprinted on a peplos, a full-length robe[42]. This can only be the Shroud, in Constantinople, in the tenth century (see also below), nearly three centuries before 1260, the earliest radiocarbon date of the Shroud[43]!

958 In 958, a year before he died, Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennitus (905-959)[44], sent a letter of encouragement to his troops who were campaigning around Tarsus[45], telling them that he was sending them holy water that had been

[Left (click to enlarge): "Christ Crowning Constantine VII (945)": A piece of carved ivory dated 945, in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, depicting Christ having just crowned Emperor Constantine VII[46].]

consecrated by various relics of the Passion, including "the sindon which God wore"[47]. The actual Greek words are, theophoron sindonos, the "God-worn linen sheet"[48]. This is clear evidence that the sindon seen by Robert de Clari in 1203 (see Revised #1) was in the imperial relic collection by the mid-tenth century, a full 300 years before the earliest date indicated by the carbon dating of the Shroud[49]. Also, Constantine VII, who as we shall see, viewed up close the Image of Edessa on its arrival in Constantinople in 944, did not mention it in his 958 letter, which is inexplicable unless it and the full-length burial shroud were one and the same[50].

c. 950 A tenth-century manuscript, Codex Vossianus Latinus Q 69,

[Above: "Vossianus Latinus Q69 is a tract dating to the 10th century that translates a probable 8th century Syriac text describing the Edessa cloth as containing a whole-body Christ image"[51].]

preserved at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands[52], mentions an eighth-century Syrian report that Jesus had left an imprint of his whole body on a cloth which was preserved in the big Church of Edessa, Turkey[53]. Adding to Jesus' legendary reply to Abgar V, the codex reads:

"...If you really want to see what my face looks like, I am sending you this linen cloth, on which you will be able to see not only the form of my face but the divinely transformed state of my whole body" (my emphasis)[54].

This is an unmistakable reference to the Shroud[55] and reflects a changed understanding that the image was of the full body, not just the face[56]. And because of its Carolingian handwriting, the manuscript cannot date much later than the tenth century[57]. This supports Ordericus Vitalis 1130 variation of the Abgar story that, "...the Lord Jesus sent him [Abgar V] ... a beautiful linen cloth ... The image of the Saviour was miraculously imprinted on to it and shines out, displaying the form and size of the Lord's body..." (emphasis original)[58].

Continued in "Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?: Revised #5."

Notes:
0. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
1. Damon, P.E., et al., 1989, "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin," Nature, Vol. 337, 16 February, pp.611-615, p.611. [return]
2. Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, pp.6-7. [return]
3. Gove, H.E., 1996, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," Institute of Physics Publishing: Bristol UK, p.303. [return]
4. McCrone, W.C., 1999, "Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin," Prometheus Books: Amherst NY, p.1. [return]
5. Dutton, D., 2005, "Postscript," "Requiem for the Shroud of Turin," Michigan Quarterly Review 23 (1984): 243-55. [return]
6. Gove, 1996, p.264. [return]
7. Damon, 1989, p.611. [return]
8. de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London, p.170. [return]
9. Ibid. [return]
10. Gove, 1996, p.264. [return]
11. Gove, 1996, p.176H. [return]
12. Wilson, 1998, p.11. [return]
13. "Timeline of computer security hacker history: 1980s," Wikipedia, 30 April 2014. [return]
14. Bulst, W., 1957, "The Shroud of Turin," McKenna, S. & Galvin, J.J., transl., Bruce Publishing Co: Milwaukee WI, p.47. [return]
15. Barnes, A.S., 1934, "The Holy Shroud of Turin," Burns Oates & Washbourne: London, p.65. [return]
16. The Adoration of the Cross," Second half of the 12th century, "Christian Art: Icons, Murals, Mosaics," The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia, 2 April 2014. [return]
17. Barnes, 1934, p.64. [return]
18. Petrosillo, O. & Marinelli, E., 1996, "The Enigma of the Shroud: A Challenge to Science," Scerri, L.J., transl., Publishers Enterprises Group: Malta, p.196. [return]
19. Ibid. [return]
20. Barnes, 1934, p.64. [return]
21. Petrosillo & Marinelli, 1996, p.196. [return]
22. Latendresse, M., 2010, "Shroud Scope: Durante 2002 Vertical". [return]
23. Ruffin, C.B., 1999, "The Shroud of Turin: The Most Up-To-Date Analysis of All the Facts Regarding the Church's Controversial Relic," Our Sunday Visitor: Huntington IN, p.111. [return]
24. Barnes, 1934, p.65. [return]
25. Barnes, 1934, pp.65-66. [return]
26. "Shoana Church," Wikipedia, 3 May 2013. [return]
27. Damon, 1989, p.611. [return]
28. "Byzantine Master of the Crucifix of Pisa," Wikipedia, 3 April 2014 . [return]
29. Barnes, 1934, p.66. [return]
30. Barnes, 1934, pp.66-67. [return]
31. Barnes, 1934, p.67. [return]
32. Barnes, 1934, pp.67-68. [return]
33. Barnes, 1934, p.68. [return]
34. Petrosillo & Marinelli, 1996, p.195. [return]
35. Wilson, 1998, p.141. [return]
36. "Leo Diaconus," 2013, New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, 17 July. [return]
37. "Leo the Deacon," 2013, Wikipedia, 15 September. [return]
38. New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. [return]
39. Sullivan, D.F. & Talbot, A-M., eds, 2005, "The History of Leo the Deacon," Amazon.com. [return]
40. Ibid. [return]
41. Guscin, M., 2009, "The Image of Edessa," Brill: Leiden, Netherlands & Boston MA, p.161. [return]
42. Wilson, 1998, p.152. [return]
43. Wilson, I., 1991, "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London, p.3. [return]
44. "Constantine VII," Wikipedia, 30 April 2014. [return]
45. Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London, pp.168-169. [return]
46. Constantine VII, Wikipedia. [return]
47. Wilson, 1991, p.153. [return]
48. de Wesselow, 2012, pp.177-178. [return]
49. de Wesselow, 2012, p.178. [return]
50. Wilson, 1991, pp.153-154. [return]
51. Long, J., 2013, "The Shroud of Turin's Earlier History: Part Two: To the Great City," Associates for Biblical Research, March 20. [return]
52. Wilson, 2010, p.177. [return]
53. Petrosillo & Marinelli, 1996, pp.250-251. [return]
54. Guscin, 2009, p.207. [return]
55. Petrosillo & Marinelli, 1996, p.251. [return]
56. Wilson, 2010, p.177. [return]
57. Ibid. [return]
58. Ibid. [return]

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Posted 11 May 2014. Updated 8 March 2024.