Fringe theories about the Shroud of Turin
Diverse arguments have been made in various publications claiming to prove that the cloth is the authentic burial shroud of Jesus, based on disciplines ranging from chemistry to biology and medical forensics to optical image analysis.
[12] The highly-respected[13] journal Nature put it in 1989, when writing about the radiocarbon dating: "These tests provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval.
In several articles, Daniel Scavone, professor Emeritus of history at the University of southern Indiana, puts forward a hypothesis which identifies the Shroud of Turin as the real object that inspires the romances of the Holy Grail.
[26] To the contrary, Averil Cameron, expert of Late Antique and Byzantine History at the University of Oxford, denies the possibility of the Turin shroud being identified with the Image of Edessa.
[30][31] Currently in the Budapest National Library, it is the oldest surviving text of the Hungarian language, and it was created at least 65 years before the earliest carbon-14 date in the 1988 tests.
From the document, dated 1 August 1205 in Rome: The Venetians partitioned the treasures of gold, silver, and ivory while the French did the same with the relics of the saints and the most sacred of all, the linen in which our Lord Jesus Christ was wrapped after his death and before the resurrection.
[39] Unless it is the Shroud of Turin, then the location of the Image of Edessa since the 13th century is unknown but may well have been among the relics sold to Louis IX of France and housed in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris until lost in the French Revolution.
Based on this comparison Rogers concluded that the undocumented threads received from Gonella did not match the main body of the shroud, and that in his opinion: "The worst possible sample for carbon dating was taken.
"[49][50] Barrie Schwortz, a member of the original STURP investigation team, commented on Fanti's theory: "But it would be more convincing if the basic research had first been presented in a professional, peer-reviewed journal.
Others contend that repeated handling of this kind greatly increased the likelihood of contamination by bacteria and bacterial residue compared to the newly discovered archaeological specimens for which carbon-14 dating was developed.
Rodger Sparks, a radiocarbon expert from New Zealand, had countered that an error of thirteen centuries stemming from bacterial contamination in the Middle Ages would have required a layer approximately doubling the sample weight.
[51] Because such material could be easily detected, fibers from the shroud were examined at the National Science Foundation Mass Spectrometry Center of Excellence at the University of Nebraska.
[53] The Russian Dmitri Kouznetsov [de], an archaeological biologist and chemist, claimed in 1994 to have managed to experimentally reproduce this purported enrichment of the cloth in ancient weaves, and published numerous articles on the subject between 1994 and 1996.
[63] Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford University Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, took the theory seriously and agreed to collaborate with Jackson in testing a series of linen samples that could determine if the case for the Shroud's authenticity should be re-opened.
These initial tests show no significant reaction – even though the sensitivity of the measurements is sufficient to detect contamination that would offset the age by less than a single year.
Gove has written (in the respected scientific journal Radiocarbon) that: "Another argument has been made that the part of the shroud from which the sample was cut had possibly become worn and threadbare from countless handlings and had been subjected to medieval textile restoration.
They examined a portion of the radiocarbon sample that was left over from the section used by the University of Arizona in 1988 for the carbon dating exercise, and were assisted by the director of the Gloria F Ross Center for Tapestry Studies.
They found "only low levels of contamination by a few cotton fibers" and no evidence that the samples actually used for measurements in the C14 dating processes were dyed, treated, or otherwise manipulated.
[73] In 2010, statisticians Marco Riani and Anthony C. Atkinson wrote in a scientific paper that the statistical analysis of the raw dates obtained from the three laboratories for the radiocarbon test suggests the presence of contamination in some of the samples.
The most recent analysis (2020) concludes that the stated date range needs to be adjusted by up to 88 years in order to properly meet the requirement of "95% confidence".
[44] In a 2020 paper, pro-authenticity advocates Bryan Walsh and Larry Schwalbe stated of this test that "Rogers' method has limitations and his results have not yet been widely accepted.
Subsequently, after performing computerized analysis and microdensitometer studies, they reported finding additional inscriptions, among them INNECEM (a shortened form of Latin "in necem ibis"—"you will go to death"), NNAZAPE(N)NUS (Nazarene), IHSOY (Jesus) and IC (Iesus Chrestus).
A few non-plant and non-human sequences were also detected, including various birds and one ascribable to a marine worm common in the Northern Pacific Ocean, next to Canada.
According to the scientists, "such diversity does not exclude a Medieval origin in Europe but it would be also compatible with the historic path followed by the Turin Shroud during its presumed journey from the Near East.
Giulio Fanti, a scientist at the University of Padua, wrote an article on this subject with colleagues in 2005 that envisages electrostatic corona discharge as the probable mechanism to produce the images of the body in the Shroud.
[119] Congruent with that mechanism, they also describe an image on the reverse side of the fabric, much fainter than that on the front view of the body, consisting primarily of the face and perhaps hands.
Raymond Rogers criticized the theory, saying: "It is clear that a corona discharge (plasma) in air will cause easily observable changes in a linen sample.
They concluded that the rapid changes in the body image intensity are not anomalies in the manufacturing process of the linen but that they can be explained with the presence of aromas or burial ointments.
According to a recent study (2022) by Italian researchers (De Caro et al), who invented a new technique involving X-rays to date the material:[130] The experimental results are compatible with the hypothesis that the TS is a 2000-year-old relic, as supposed by Christian tradition, under the condition that it was kept at suitable levels of average secular temperature — 20.0–22.5 °C — and correlated relative humidity — 75–55% — for 13 centuries of unknown history, in addition to the seven centuries of known history in Europe.
To make the present result compatible with that of the 1988 radiocarbon test, the TS should have been conserved during its hypothetical seven centuries of life at a secular room temperature very close to the maximum values registered on the earth.A 2018 paper on the Shroud co-authored by De Caro and his colleagues was retracted by the journal PLOS One, because not only did their study lack sufficient controls to support their conclusions, but the provenance of the fibers used in the analysis was also questioned.
