A review of The Jesus Microbiome,An Instagram from the First CenturyBy Stephen J. Mattingly and Roy Abraham Varghesepublished by the Institute for MetaScientific Research, Texas The idea that the Shroud owes much of its interest to bacteria was first explored in a paper entitled “A Problematic source of Organic contamination of Linen”, by Harry Gove, […]
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The face that lies, eyes closed in death but very present in its immediacy, facing us in the negative of the Shroud of Turin, was envisaged by a craftsman in the late 13th or early 14th century. If there was a definitive likeness to follow, then he should best have followed it, or people would […]
Until a few years ago, I was as keen to believe in the authenticity of the Shroud as any devout authenticist, and had mounted two exhibitions to illustrate the evidence in favour of it. I had carried out some experimental confirmations of some ideas about the scourging and crucifixion, and had a letter about a […]
…Starting with a digression… This post is going to be a rant about unqualified and ignorant clerics pontificating on the science of the Shroud, about which they know next to nothing, while more or less ignoring any spiritual or theological benefit that contemplation of it might bring, which you might think is exactly the thing […]
In my previous post on the Chronological Gradient, I suggested that it could be explained by an area of contamination off the ‘top right’ of the sample, on the Holland backing cloth, which had carried over to the Shroud material itself. However, a more detailed examination of the measurements and the statistics derived from them […]
Larry Stally is the latest of a line of interpreters to discuss a supposed reference to the Shroud in St Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In The Crucified Christ Seen by the Galatians: A Literal Context for ΠΡΟΕΓΡΑΦΗ (Galatians 3.1), he discusses the first verse of chapter three, which runs: “You foolish Galatians! Who has […]
A recent paper by Pam Moon, suggesting that the ‘loros’, a sort of ceremonial stole worn by the Byzantine hierarchy, not only represented the shroud of Christ, but was specifically derived from the Shroud of Turin, recalls a shroudstory debate in which the loquacious and sporadically knowledgeable Max Patrick Hamon convinced me that a depiction […]
The very first we hear of the Shroud is in the indignant letter of Bishop Pierre d’Arcis to Pope Clement VII, written around 1390. Curiously, Geoffroy de Charny isn’t mentioned. The Dean of Lirey gets all the blame. This may be because the first public exhibition did not occur until after de Charny had died […]
Entering “radiocarbon” and “worst possible” into our favourite search engine brings up about 2000 hits. In the literature, and even more so in broadcast media, it is widely supposed that the people entrusted to select a single representative sample of the Shroud for radiocarbon dating first argued for a hour or so, and finally decided […]
The three laboratories chosen to radiocarbon date the Shroud were given samples which they cut into subsamples for dating. Oxford used three subsamples, Arizona used four and Zurich five. As we know the order in which the samples were originally placed on the cloth – Oxford nearest the end, then Zurich, then Arizona – an […]