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The Turin Shroud is one of those impossible objects that fascinated me as a child, about when I was reading Chariots of the Gods and The Bible and Flying Saucers. At some point there was a QED or Equinox - you know back in the day when something fluffier was needed to balance Horizon - which was about carbon dating, although it stopped before it gave the results. (Had the test been carried out or not? I'm not sure.)
A test at some point suggested it was a medieval fake - or at least the linen dated from the fourteenth century with an error margin of sixty-odd years. That left the question of whether anyone had the technology to create the image at that time.
Last night a documentary presented by Rageh Omaagh suggested the shroud was of a much older vintage. Could it be that the scientific test "lied". Yes, lied. Personification, much. Yes, a test can be fabricated or faked or misinterpreted, but not lie. This was the opening salvo of a story based on inferences.
The known history of the shroud points to a first appearance in the 14th century, which neatly fits the Carbon 14 evidence. However, a second shroud is recorded as earlier than that, and too early to fit the scientific dating. Maybe the test lied.
Then there's a face mask, which I'd never heard of, which dates further back still - fifth century - and where the blood stains match the shroud. But this would make the shroud earlier still. (Or the two were faked at the same time.)
Finally, there's a strip of the shroud which has been torn off (and since reattached) and would have been used to wrap the body. If you wrap a mannikin in the shroud and offcut, and then somehow remove the dummy, it looks convincing to a first-century Bible scholar. Suddenly it sounds like escapology rather than resurrection.
The cloth shows evidence of the wounds on the head, in the side, in the wrists and the ankles, at the right point on the body, as demonstrated on the mannikin. Not that we know how tall the body would have been or their other dimensions.
The ankles and wrist wounds are interesting, as traditional iconography shows nails driven through the palm (which rips unless ropes are also used) and a different part of the ankle. One preserved bone, found in 1968, proves that Roman crucified in this way. H'mm. One piece of evidence - what if this was just the way that executioner did things?
By now they are talking about three shrouds, even though one of them is a posited one shown to a Bible scholar, which have to be the same shroud. As I recall there are enough fragments of the true cross to build an armada. It wouldn't surprise me if there were a number of shrouds.
So that leaves the scientific evidence. Omagh explained that 14C can get trapped/bond with Carbon monoxide and thus not start decaying initially. (I didn't quite follow this explanation - it struck me as nonsense at the time.) Could there have been something about the history of storing or being on display that has meant the shroud has this remarkable property? So far, apparently, they've not been able to reproduce this effect. And suprisingly the theory that a later addition to the cloth was the stuff that was dated was not mentioned.
I'm left as sceptical as ever - if there is this Carbon monoxide effect, then lots of other dating may be wrong. And of course, in the unlikely event of it being genuine, then enough metaphysical jiggery pokery could rewrite the atomes anyway. But it just felt like nonsense.
A test at some point suggested it was a medieval fake - or at least the linen dated from the fourteenth century with an error margin of sixty-odd years. That left the question of whether anyone had the technology to create the image at that time.
Last night a documentary presented by Rageh Omaagh suggested the shroud was of a much older vintage. Could it be that the scientific test "lied". Yes, lied. Personification, much. Yes, a test can be fabricated or faked or misinterpreted, but not lie. This was the opening salvo of a story based on inferences.
The known history of the shroud points to a first appearance in the 14th century, which neatly fits the Carbon 14 evidence. However, a second shroud is recorded as earlier than that, and too early to fit the scientific dating. Maybe the test lied.
Then there's a face mask, which I'd never heard of, which dates further back still - fifth century - and where the blood stains match the shroud. But this would make the shroud earlier still. (Or the two were faked at the same time.)
Finally, there's a strip of the shroud which has been torn off (and since reattached) and would have been used to wrap the body. If you wrap a mannikin in the shroud and offcut, and then somehow remove the dummy, it looks convincing to a first-century Bible scholar. Suddenly it sounds like escapology rather than resurrection.
The cloth shows evidence of the wounds on the head, in the side, in the wrists and the ankles, at the right point on the body, as demonstrated on the mannikin. Not that we know how tall the body would have been or their other dimensions.
The ankles and wrist wounds are interesting, as traditional iconography shows nails driven through the palm (which rips unless ropes are also used) and a different part of the ankle. One preserved bone, found in 1968, proves that Roman crucified in this way. H'mm. One piece of evidence - what if this was just the way that executioner did things?
By now they are talking about three shrouds, even though one of them is a posited one shown to a Bible scholar, which have to be the same shroud. As I recall there are enough fragments of the true cross to build an armada. It wouldn't surprise me if there were a number of shrouds.
So that leaves the scientific evidence. Omagh explained that 14C can get trapped/bond with Carbon monoxide and thus not start decaying initially. (I didn't quite follow this explanation - it struck me as nonsense at the time.) Could there have been something about the history of storing or being on display that has meant the shroud has this remarkable property? So far, apparently, they've not been able to reproduce this effect. And suprisingly the theory that a later addition to the cloth was the stuff that was dated was not mentioned.
I'm left as sceptical as ever - if there is this Carbon monoxide effect, then lots of other dating may be wrong. And of course, in the unlikely event of it being genuine, then enough metaphysical jiggery pokery could rewrite the atomes anyway. But it just felt like nonsense.
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