Stephen E. Jones

Shroud of Turin quotes: Unclassified quotes: May 2007

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The following are quotes added to my Shroud of Turin unclassified quotes in May 2007. See copyright conditions at end.

[Jun, Jul, Aug (1), Aug (2), Sep , Oct, Nov, Dec]

1/05/2007
"Jewish Burial Customs. The first point of comparison is the cloth itself. The gospels say that Jesus was 
buried in a cloth (or cloths); the Shroud of Turin appears to be a burial cloth which medical experts say once 
held a dead body. The image reveals a man lying on his back with his feet close together. His elbows 
protrude from his sides and his hands are crossed over the pelvic area. We can ascertain that the linen sheet 
was wound lengthwise up the front and down the back of the corpse. ... Is this kind of burial compatible with 
the New Testament reports? It is at least compatible with Jewish customs as we know them from extrabiblical 
sources. Recent archaeological excavations at the Qumran community found that the Essenes buried their 
dead in the way represented on the Shroud. Several skeletons were found lying on their backs, faces 
pointing upward, elbows bent outward, and their hands covering the pelvic region. The protruding elbows 
rule out an Egyptian-type mummified burial. Also very instructive is the Code of Jewish Law, which 
discusses burial procedures in its `Laws of Mourning.' It instructs that a person executed by the 
government was to be buried in a single sheet. This is another parallel with the Shroud." (Stevenson, K.E. 
& Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," 
Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, p.46. Emphasis original)

1/05/2007
"Although the New Testament's description of typical first-century Jewish burial customs is not overly 
detailed, it does give the general features. The body was washed (Acts 9:37) and the hands and feet were 
bound (John 11:44). A cloth handkerchief (Greek, sudarion) was placed `around' the face (John 11:44; 
20:7). The body was then wrapped in clean linen, often mixed with spices (John 19:39-40), and laid in the 
tomb or grave. The Code of Jewish Law adds that the Jews usually shaved the head and beard completely 
and cut the fingernails before burial. However, the gospels tell us that Jesus' burial was incomplete. Because 
the Sabbath was about to begin, he was removed from the cross and laid in the tomb rather hurriedly. This is 
why the women returned to the tomb on Sunday morning. They had prepared spices and ointments for 
Jesus' body, and they went to the tomb to apply them (Luke 23:54-56). It is not often noticed why the women 
went to the tomb. They certainly did not expect Jesus to rise (Luke 24:3-4; John 20:12-15). Rather they came 
in order to finish anointing Jesus' body with the prepared spices (Luke 24:1; Mark 16:1). They were worried 
about who would help them to move the stone from the entrance of the tomb so that they could finish the 
job begun before the Sabbath (Mark 16:3)." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: 
Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, pp.46-47)

1/05/2007
"The gospels do not say to what extent the burial had been left unfinished. The New Testament says that 
Jesus was wrapped in linen with spices and a handkerchief after the custom of the Jews (John 19:40), but it 
does not say that his body was washed. At least to some degree, the anointing with spices was incomplete 
because the women returned to the tomb to complete the process. The scripture does not state specifically 
what other parts of the burial process were unfinished, if any. Although apparently a Jew, it appears to some 
that the man of the Shroud was not buried in accordance with the complete ritual of Jewish burial. He was 
laid in a shroud, as Jews were, but his body was unwashed. Stains of what looks like blood are visible on the 
body image and on the cloth itself. Neither was his hair trimmed. Despite what looks like a hurried burial, he 
was wrapped in a shroud of good linen. However, the wrapping in linen is consistent with first-century 
Jewish custom." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and 
Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, p.47)

1/05/2007
"The Wrapping. It is quite difficult to determine from the gospels the precise method used to wrap Jesus' 
body in the cloth since the four evangelists use several different Greek verbs to describe the process. Mark 
15:46 states that Jesus was wrapped (eneilesen) in a linen sheet. Matthew 27:59 and Luke 23:53 describe 
the body as being wrapped, or folded (enetylixen) in the linen cloth. John 19:40 says that Jesus was 
bound (edesan) in linen clothes. These Greek words are similar, yet they do not reveal the exact method 
utilized." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and 
Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, p.47. Emphasis original)

1/05/2007
"McDowell and some others detect a problem in John's word to describe the `binding' of the body. 
[McDowell, J. & Stewart, D., "Answers to Tough Questions Skeptics Ask About the Christian Faith," Here's 
Life: San Bernardino CA, 1980, pp.165-166] They suggest that Jesus' body was wrapped tightly like an 
Egyptian mummy, a procedure which would not have yielded an image such as the one on the Shroud. 
However, the mummy idea largely rests on variant readings in the extant manuscripts of John's Gospel. One 
late manuscript uses a verb in 19:40 which suggests a tight binding of the body. The accepted verb, 
however, is edesan; a verb which means to `wrap' or `fold' and which is quite compatible with the 
synoptic verbs. The idea that Jesus was tightly bound like a mummy is also incompatible with John's earlier 
description of the way Lazarus emerged from the tomb after Jesus raised him from the dead (John 11:44). 
Lazarus, who was buried according to Jewish custom, was able to proceed from the tomb by his own power, 
although he was impaired and had to be `unbound.' He had his hands and feet bound, as was the custom, 
but he was not completely wrapped up. [Wuenschel, E.A. "The Shroud of Turin and the Burial of Christ," 
Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vols. 7 & 8, 1945 & 1946] In other words, the type of wrapping depicted in the 
Shroud is compatible with Jewish burial technique. In particular, the burial methods depicted both in the 
Essene cemetery and described in the Code of Jewish Law favor the Shroud. Along with the Lazarus 
account, these sources convince us that the type of wrapping demanded by the Shroud was at least 
practiced in Israel in Jesus' time, and may even have been the most popular practice. At any rate, it cannot 
be asserted that Jesus must have been buried as a mummy." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on 
the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, 
pp.47-48. Emphasis original)

1/05/2007
"The Grave Clothes. Another issue concerns the difference in the words chosen by the gospel writers to 
describe the grave clothes that Jesus was wrapped in. The synoptic evangelists say that he was wrapped 
in a sindon, a Greek word meaning a linen cloth which could be used for any purpose, including burial. 
John, on the other hand, says Jesus was wrapped in othonia, a plural Greek word of uncertain meaning. 
Othonia is sometimes translated as `strips of linen,' a meaning that would seem to be incompatible with a 
fourteen-foot-long shroud covering the front and back of the body. However, it is likely that othonia 
refers to all the grave clothes associated with Jesus' burial-the large sindon (the shroud), as well as the 
smaller strips of linen that bound the jaw, the hands, and the feet. This interpretation of othonia is 
supported by Luke's use of the word. He says (23:53) that Jesus was wrapped in a sindon, but later (24:12) 
that Peter saw the othonia lying in the tomb after Jesus' resurrection. Luke, then, uses othonia as a 
plural term for all the grave clothes, including the sindon. Furthermore, as seen earlier, Jewish burial 
customs do not support the idea that John's othonia refers to the wrappings of a mummy. Jews did not 
wrap up their dead like mummies, but laid them in shrouds, as indicated by the Gospel of John, the Essene 
burial procedures, and the Code of Jewish Law. John himself insists that Jewish customs were followed 
Jesus' case (19:40). Thus, there is good scriptural evidence that Jesus was laid in the tomb wrapped in a 
shroud. Therefore, the gospels refer to the grave clothes in both the singular and the plural. When a single 
cloth is spoken of, it is obviously the linen sheet itself. However, since Luke (or early tradition) had no 
difficulty in using the plural (24:12) to describe what he earlier referred to in the singular (23:53), the term 
`clothes' may still refer to a single piece of material. On the other hand, if more than one piece is meant, 
`clothes' is most probably a reference to both the sheet and the additional strips which were bound around 
the head, wrists, and feet, as indicated in John 11:44 (cf. John 19:40). Interestingly enough, bands in these 
same locations can be discerned on the Shroud of Turin. At any rate, it is a reasonable conclusion that at 
least one major linen sheet is being referred to in the gospels." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict 
on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 
1981, pp.48-49. Emphasis original)

1/05/2007
"Another apparent problem crops up in the descriptions of the grave clothes the disciples saw in the tomb 
on Easter morning. Both Luke and John describe grave clothes in the tomb. Luke says that Peter went inside 
the tomb and saw the othonia-the generic term for all the grave clothes, including the shroud and the 
smaller pieces used to bind the jaw, hands, and feet. John, however, gives a more detailed description of 
what he and Peter saw, and he introduces another term into the grave clothes listing. When they went into 
the tomb, they saw the othonia lying on the ground, but also the sudarion lying rolled up in a place by 
itself, apart from these othonia. John adds the detail that the sudarion had been "around the head" of 
Jesus. Sudarion means `napkin' or `sweat cloth.' It is, at any rate, a rather small piece of cloth. If it had 
been placed over the face of Jesus in the tomb, no image of Jesus' face would have appeared on the Shroud. 
Since the Shroud of Turin bears the image of a face, the reference to a sudarion seems to challenge the 
authenticity of the Shroud. Indeed, some Christians have pointed to this passage as evidence that the 
Shroud is incompatible with scripture. However, a number of scripture scholars do not think that the 
sudarion was a napkin or cloth placed over Jesus' face. The Mishnah instructs Jews to tie up the chin of 
the corpse (Shabbath 23;5). The Code of Jewish Law also commands the practice of binding the chin. 8 
Lazarus' napkin was wrapped "around" his face (Greek, perideo), a position that is more consistent with 
the jaw being tied shut. Additionally, John's observation that Jesus' napkin was found "rolled up" (Greek, 
entulisso) in the empty tomb corresponds closely to the cloth being used to bind the jaw. John A.T. 
Robinson, the British New Testament scholar, gives the most plausible explanation for the sudarion. He 
says it was probably a jaw band, a piece of linen rolled up into a strip, placed under the chin, drawn up 
around the face, and tied on the top of the head. Its function was to keep the jaw shut before rigor mortis set 
in. [Robinson, J.A.T., "The Shroud of Turin and the Grave-Clothes of the Gospels," in Stevenson, K.E., ed., 
"Proceedings of The 1977 United States Conference of Research on The Shroud of Turin," Holy Shroud 
Guild: Bronx NY, 1977, p. 24] Not only does the New Testament not state that the napkin was placed over 
the face so as to cover it, but the combination of `wrapped up' and `around the head' (John 20:7; cf. 11:44) 
fits what is depicted in the Shroud. Jaw bands are used for this purpose today and there is every reason to 
believe that they were used in first-century Palestine. There is evidence for just such a jaw band on the 
three-dimensional image of the face of the Shroud. The hair of the man seems to be separated from the 
cheeks. The hair or the left side of the face hangs out over the edge of an object probably the chin band. 
[Jackson, J., et al., "The Three-Dimensional Image on Jesus' Burial Cloth," in Stevenson, Ibid., p. 91]" 
(Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of 
Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, pp.49-50)

1/05/2007
"Why did the Gospel of John include this detail about the sudarion? The author seems to attach great 
importance to it. He describes the burial cloth on the ground and the sudarion rolled up in a place by 
itself, and then adds that this discovery caused belief. It is not easy to tell from the Greek exactly what it was 
about the placement of the grave clothes that caused belief (John 20:9), but Robinson has a plausible 
interpretation of what is being described here. We are told that the disciples entered the tomb and saw the 
shroud and the other linen cloths lying flat. But the sudarion was apparently still in its twisted oval 
shape, the way it had been when tied tightly around Jesus' head to keep the jaw closed. Something about 
this scene convinced them that grave robbers could not have stolen the body, as Mary Magdalene had 
reported after she discovered that the stone had been moved away from the tomb. Until this moment, the 
gospel explains, the disciples had not understood that Jesus would rise from the dead. Now, looking at the 
grave clothes, they believed." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for 
the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, pp.50-51. Emphasis 
original)

4/05/2007
"If genuine, the Shroud is a record of a burial, a Jewish burial that reputedly took place nearly two thousand 
years ago of none other than Jesus Christ. Among the key questions therefore to be considered are the 
extent to which it is compatible with known Jewish burial customs of the time and, above all, the specifically 
recorded burial of Jesus Christ. In entering this field, we come upon one of the most difficult areas of Shroud 
studies. From the rise of the Herodian dynasty to the first half of the second century A.D., Jewish burial 
custom would seem to have been first to wash the body, a practice normal in most cultures. Then it was 
dressed in clean linen clothes, generally the white garment worn by the deceased for festivals, and bound at 
the chin, wrists, and feet. Such a custom would seem to be quite explicit from the description of the raising 
of Lazarus in which we are told, `The dead man came out, his feet and hands bound with bands of stuff and 
a cloth round his face. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, let him go free"' (Jn. 11:44). So far this seems 
reasonable enough. Had Lazarus been swathed in bands, mummy fashion, it would have been impossible for 
him to move at all. Instead he appears to have been at least able to shuffle forward at the command `Come 
out,' requiring only the chin, hand, and foot bindings to be severed for him to resume normal life." (Wilson, 
I., "The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 1978, p.38)

4/05/2007
"Some of the details visible on the Shroud are consistent with such practices. As in Jewish custom we can 
be reasonably sure that the man of the Shroud was laid out flat and intact in some sort of prepared tomb. ... 
The position of the body with the hands across the pelvis is also identical with Jewish burials of the Essene 
sect ... in the area of Qumran. We can also detect that, as in Jewish custom, the man of the Shroud seems to 
have been bound at head, hands, and feet. On the Shroud there is a distinct gap between the frontal and 
dorsal images of the head, almost certainly indicating the presence of a chin band tied around the face. At 
the region of the wrists we may perceive that there is an apparent break in the blood flow immediately to the 
left of the covering hand. A binding cloth or cord at this point would almost certainly have been 
functionally necessary to counteract the effects of rigor mortis, which according to some medical opinion 
would have tended to return the arms to the original crucifixion position. In the area of the feet, the possible 
presence of a similar cord or binding cloth is less obvious, but there is a blank in the image at precisely the 
most likely position." (Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 1978, p.39)

4/05/2007
"As we have already mentioned, it was normal for Jews to be buried in clothing, more specifically the white 
garments they wore for festivals. In the case of Jesus we would not necessarily expect this, as we know his 
clothing was taken from him at the time of crucifixion. But many authors have pointed out. that we would 
certainly not expect the fourteen-foot sheet that we find preserved in Turin. Here again we are in a hornets' 
nest of controversy over gospel interpretation that exists quite independently of the Shroud. It all stems 
from apparent conflicts of information between the synoptic writers and St. John. The synoptics speak only 
of the sindon purchased by Joseph of Arimathea (Mt. 7:59; Mk. 15:46; Lk. 23:53). This is often translated 
as shroud, although it should be pointed out that it does not have a specifically sepulchral meaning. St. 
Mark, for instance, used the same word to describe the garment lost by the young man at Gethsemane who 
fled at the arrest of Jesus (Mk. 14:51, 52). St. John, on the other hand, does not use the word sindon, but 
instead says the body of Jesus was wrapped in othonia. And in his account of the discovery of the linens 
in the empty tomb again he uses the word othonia (which he describes as lying at the scene), and refers 
also cryptically to a mysterious soudarion, rolled up and lying in a place by itself (Jn. 20:7) . The precise 
meanings of othonia and sindon in their gospel context have been hotly debated. Some have 
contended that othonia (which is a plural form) means linen bands and that Joseph must have torn up the 
sindon into strips to wind Jesus mummy-style. Quite neutral exegetes such as Pere Benoit have pointed 
out that it would surely have been easier for Joseph to purchase ready-made bandages rather than tearing 
up a large sheet for this purpose. The most balanced modern view is that othonia means cloths in general, 
which could incorporate shroud and bands." (Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: 
London, 1978, pp.41-42)

4/05/2007
"What of the soudarion, literally a `sweat cloth'? Some have thought of this as simply the headcloth or 
chin band-which is clearly what the soudarion mentioned in the story of Lazarus as `round his face' (Jn. 
11:44) was. Others have argued that it may have been our Shroud, on the grounds that the description of it 
as having been `over his head' (Jn. 20:7) could well refer to the manner in which we know the Turin Shroud 
was used. In support of this argument we may note that in the Lazarus account St. John uses the word 
peri ('round' or `about'), in contrast to epi ('over'), in the case of Jesus, leaving open the possibility that 
a different arrangement (and different size of cloth) is being described. St. John makes special mention of 
Jesus' soudarion being `not with the othonia but rolled up in a place by itself,' which certainly might 
suggest a cloth larger and more important than a mere chin hand; but as many maintain adamantly that a 
soudarion could not be anything larger than a handkerchief-sized piece of cloth, it seems unwise to be 
dogmatic. The conclusion to be drawn is that from exegetical studies alone we can be sure of nothing, that 
of themselves they can neither prove nor disprove that the Shroud is genuine. It does seem worthwhile at 
least to consider the various possibilities raised by the gospel accounts for what the Shroud might have 
been among the linens Peter and John found in the empty tomb on the first Easter Sunday." (Wilson, I., 
"The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 1978, pp.42-43)

4/05/2007
"Q. Doesn't the Shroud conflict with Scripture? a) John 20:5-7 mentions linens and at the very least 
implies there were a minimum of two cloths. Many have suggested that the linens were `strips,' however the 
Shroud is merely one piece of cloth. ... A. All of the other scriptural issues were dealt with heavily in 
Verdict. The answers to these apparent discrepancies are as follows: First, the Gospels use the following 
words to describe the Shroud: Sindon burial sheet, winding sheet, shroud; sudarion-sweat cloth, face 
cloth, handkerchief; othonia linens. One way for the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) to be 
in harmony with John is if a burial method like the one depicted on the Shroud was used. John mentions a 
cloth that was described as `around his head' and about the face of Lazarus (John 20:7; 11:44). The word is 
sudarion, used in burial to bind the jaw against the effects of rigor mortis. There is evidence on the 
Shroud that a sudarion was used, though the whereabouts of any such cloth has long been unknown. 
The Shroud is a pure linen garment with some evidence that the head, hands, and feet were bound, most 
likely with other `linens.' The synoptics describe a linen sheet-a single cloth. Most likely, the sheet was more 
significant to the synoptic writers than other funerary cloths. Since the Jewish burial custom allowed the use 
of cloths to bind the hands and feet as well as the jaw, the total picture matches Jewish burial customs 
exactly and explains clearly why the synoptics only mention a sindon and John mentions othonia. 
Second, John's use of othonia has led to a widely held belief that Jesus was wrapped like an Egyptian 
mummy. But such a procedure doesn't conform to what is known of first-century normal Jewish burial ritual. 
Nor does it match what was previously mentioned in the Word, to wit, that Joseph of Arimathea had 
purchased a winding sheet and wrapped Jesus in it (Mark 15:46). Even John used the word edesan, which 
is translated wound in the KJV but literally means `enfolded.' Enfolded would also match the burial custom. 
Being wrapped with strips of cloth would not. In other words, othonia in John should be understood to 
mean that Jesus' dead body was enveloped from head to feet in one burial cloth, not wrapped like a mummy 
with numerous strips of cloth." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "The Shroud and the Controversy," 
Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN, 1990, p.149-150. Emphasis original)

4/05/2007
"Test Results Leaked Before any official announcement of the carbon-dating test results, The Times in 
London reported on 27 August 1988 that Oxford scientists had leaked the results. Several weeks later, still 
ahead of any official announcement, the press mercilessly blasted the Shroud's repute. The Times carried a 
front-page story on 18 September, captioned: `OFFICIAL: THE TURIN SHROUD IS A FAKE', without 
disclosing the name of its official source. The New York Times headline on 22 September was: `TEST 
SHOWS SHROUD OF TURIN TO BE A FRAUD, SCIENTIST HINTS'. The New York Post wrote on 28 
September: `SHROUD OF TURIN LEGEND IN TATTERS: Carbon Tests Date it to the 14th Century'. None of 
these respected newspapers published any corroborating details. Intent on exploiting the news value of the 
leak, the media went overboard in sensationalising an unconfirmed report that the Shroud was carbon-dated 
only back to the Middle Ages. The Vatican's response to these blaring headlines was eagerly awaited by 
many of the world's Christians who believed the Shroud had covered the body of Christ. On 13 October, at a 
press conference in Turin, Cardinal Ballestrero stated the Church's acceptance of the laboratories' results, 
but he qualified his statement by saying, `the problem about the origin of the image and its preservation still 
remain to a large extent unresolved'. This measured reaction was ignored by the mainstream media. 
England's Daily Telegraph blatantly misreported the Cardinal with the headline `TURIN SHROUD IS A 
FORGERY, SAYS CATHOLIC CHURCH'." (Whiting, B., "The Shroud Story," Harbour Publishing: Strathfield 
NSW, Australia, 2006, p.242. Emphasis original)

5/05/2007
"Spokesman and popularizer though he may be, Wilson remains above all a scientist enraptured by the 
mysteries of life. The Pheidole project, he says, represents a `celebration' of this most abundant group of 
ants. Cataloging them comprehensively, he says, was a step toward unraveling the unsolved problem of 
why some species are `so profusely evolved'; the work itself was `the taxonomist's equivalent of figuring out 
the hemoglobin molecule.' Lest graduate students fear there are no more such challenges, Wilson is ready 
with dozens. Bacteria and archaeans, he writes, are `the black hole of biological systematics.' Only about 
6,000 have been formally recognized-despite the potential threat and benefit they represent to human health 
and commerce-but that many, `almost all new to science, can be found in only a few grams of rich forest soil.' 
Nematode worms, he says, account for four of every five animals living on Earth-and are so abundant that if 
the planet's surface vanished, its `ghostly outline' could still be made out in the biomass of nematodes, 
almost all of species unknown." (Rosenberg, J.S., "Of Ants and Earth: E.O. Wilson's view of life takes in all 
things small and great," Harvard Magazine, March-April 2003)

5/05/2007
"A potentially much more viable explanation has been pioneered by Mexican-born Dr Leoncio Garza-Valdès of 
San Antonio, Texas who, although a paediatrician by occupation, has had a life-long passion for microbiology. 
At a Shroud conference in Rome in 1993 he presented a paper suggesting that a natural, plastic-like biofilm, 
comprising millions of micro-organisms, had accumulated on the Shroud's surface, much in the manner of the 
build-up of a coral reef' Although little studied except by professional microbiologists, such biofilms 
unquestionably exist very widely on innumerable surfaces in nature, including our skins, our intestines and even 
inanimate rock in the form of the so-called `desert varnish' that covers weathered boulders. Garza-Valdès' startling 
suggestion was : that, because many of the micro-organisms comprising the Shroud's biofilm remain alive, their 
mass could easily have skewed the radiocarbon dating, thereby giving a much too recent reading. Unlikely 
though such a hypothesis might sound, Garza-Valdès had good reason for advocating it. As a collector of 
ancient Mayan jades, he had discovered a very similar biofilm on one specimen in his collection, the Itzamna Tun, 
which had been used in Mayan blood-letting rituals. When scrapings of the blood were sent for radiocarbon 
dating, the laboratories' pre-treatment or cleaning procedures should have removed any contamination, but, as 
Garza-Valdès discovered, the living bacteria coating these and the rest of the jade successfully resisted the 
solvents, as a result of which they caused the Itzamna Tun to be radiocarbon dated as some seven centuries 
younger than its true age as reliably known from its : artistic style. Inevitably, such a finding led him to consider 
its possible relevance to the Shroud carbon dating. Accordingly in April 1993 he visited Turin, where he met up 
with Professor Giovanni Riggi, the microanalyst who had been responsible for cutting off the sliver of the Shroud 
for carbon dating in 1988. As Garza-Valdès discovered, Riggi had personally retained some excess fragments 
which he had trimmed off from the sample of the Shroud that was divided between the radiocarbon-dating 
laboratories. And, when he viewed these fragments under the microscope, he immediately found himself staring 
at much the same biofilm as he had observed on the Itzamna Tun blood, except in this instance significantly 
thicker. As he was keenly aware, if such a film had not been removed prior to the radiocarbon dating process, 
then it might easily have skewed the Shroud's dating, exactly as had happened with his Mayan jade. Riggi gave 
him some Shroud fragments to take back to the United States, and he accordingly tried on them the very same 
chemical cleaning procedures that the official Nature scientific report on the Shroud dating [Damon, P.E., 
et al., "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin, Nature, Vol. 337, 16th February, 1989, pp.611-615] 
described the radiocarbon-dating laboratories as having used on their Shroud samples. As he discovered, even 
when the cleaning solvents were used at extra strength, they hardly affected the contaminating `plastic' biofilm, 
instead doing rather more damage to the linen itself. And, although the radiocarbon-dating laboratories have 
calculated that for the Shroud's date to have been skewed by thirteen centuries a contamination layer amounting 
to an astonishing 60 per cent of the entire sample is needed, Garza-Valdès regards this sort of proportion as 
perfectly feasible. For it is a matter of firm record that the sliver of Shroud that was taken for the 1988 radiocarbon 
dating was snipped from its top left- hand corner, one of the two corners by which it was traditionally held up for 
exposition over the centuries. In countless engravings of Shroud expositions back through history, bishop after 
bishop can be seen clutching the Shroud at this very point. Now, as microbiologists are fond of demonstrating, 
microbes from even the cleanest hand will grow impressive colonies in an agar dish in a matter of days. So, if 
there is any point on the Shroud on which the maximum amount of microbiological contamination could be 
expected to have accumulated, it would have to have to have been these corners." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 
"The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, pp.98-100) 

5/05/2007
"Although most scientists would rightly feel that this was overoptimistic, the highly respected 
microbiologist Prof. Stephen Mattingly, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, 
having similarly studied the Shroud samples under the microscope, shares much of Garza-Valdès' optimism. 
While careful not to become too embroiled in the Shroud debate, he fully supports the view that a 
substantial microbiological biofilm is present: `There is no doubt that the Shroud has a major layer of 
microbial contamination on and within the cellulose fibres.' [Mattingly, S., e-mail to Dr. John Jackson, 
December 1999] Mattingly further supports Garza-Valdès' contention that this contamination was not 
removed by the laboratories' cleaning procedures, pointing out that the radiocarbon laboratories left 
themselves wide open to their result being challenged by their failure to perform either a preliminary or a 
post-test chemical analysis of the samples that their AMS radiocarbon-dating process had to destroy. In 
Mattingly's words, `This is the first step in quantitative analysis in college chemistry. I can remember my lab 
instructor sending me back to the bench because the recovery mass of my unknown did not agree with the 
known value.' Had the radiocarbon-dating laboratories performed such a chemical analysis, then the 
presence of contaminating material to the tune of 60 per cent would have become very readily apparent in a 
way that no optical method could provide. But, focused as they were on their own science of nuclear 
physics, they assumed that they were testing pure Shroud and nothing else, and therefore worked blind. 
Although Professor Hall said in 1989 that he would be amazed if even 1 per cent contamination remained on 
the cloth, Mattingly rejoins: `I can assure you that you cannot look at any object and assume that it is 
appreciably free of microbial contamination. You might be surprised to know that every square millimetre of 
your skin is coated with a substantial layer of micro-organisms. They are contributing, along with your gut 
microbial flora, in a significant way to your overall body mass.' [Ibid.] Were a proper chemical analysis of 
Shroud samples conducted, certainly any from the area sampled for radiocarbon dating, what should be 
revealed is the presence of muramic acid. In Mattingly's words, `If it is present, this is proof that bacteria are 
present. Muramic acid is only found in nature in the cell walls of bacteria. It is widely used as a marker for 
the presence of bacteria. The quantitative level of muramic acid can then be used to estimate the mass 
contribution of bacteria to the overall mass of the linen.' [Ibid.] Mattingly's overall assessment is that, since 
micro-organisms make up 80 per cent of the mass of living organisms on the earth today, `why they should 
not comprise more than 50 per cent of the weight of a centuries-old linen should not be a major leap in 
credibility'. To demonstrate this, shortly before the March 2000 Symposium he cultured his own skin 
bacteria in his laboratory, concentrated these in pellet form and then repeatedly smeared the mixture over a 1 
gram square of linen until the combined weight of linen plus bacteria reached 2.30 grams. Having thereby 
achieved a 57 per cent degree of contamination, he heated the bacteria to render them harmless, then sent 
the result to Drs Adler, Jackson and myself, together with an untreated sample as a `control'. As he pointed 
out in a covering note, because of the coating's artificial and now sterile nature it cannot be considered a 
replication as such of that on the Shroud. Instead the clear message of his samples is that a 57 per cent layer 
of coating is nothing like as obvious and obtrusive as non-microbiologists expect it to be. And, because the 
radiocarbon laboratories failed to conduct a proper chemical analysis of the samples they destroyed, no one 
can deny that such a coating could have been present and have seriously affected the dating result. In 
the light of Prof. Mattingly's comments, the confident claims made by the radiocarbon-dating laboratories in 
their Nature report of 1989 that they had `conclusively' shown the Shroud to date from the Middle Ages 
may be considered effectively to lie in tatters" (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated 
Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, pp.102-103. Emphasis original)

5/05/2007
"As was pointed out, even before the radiocarbon dating, by Dr Bob Otlet of the Harwell Laboratory, Oxford 
and its two companion AMS laboratories had had little experience of dating linen before they worked on the 
Shroud. Furthermore linen, because of the huge surface area presented by its multitudinous fibres, appears 
to be peculiarly subject to contamination that can seriously skew its dating, as is evident from the Egyptian 
mummy linen anomalies, quite apart from the Shroud. So the whole phenomenon of contamination peculiar 
to linen undoubtedly needs to be further explored, not least in the interests of archaeology in general, as 
well as those of the Shroud. Then, when the technology has been found to eliminate microbiological biofilm 
satisfactorily from any radiocarbon-dating reading, hopefully there can be a fresh dating of the Shroud, 
using a sample held back in 1,988 for this very purpose. If and when this can be done, Mattingly confidently 
predicts: `I promise you the presence of the biofilm [once removed] will dramatically change the radiocarbon 
date.' (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: 
London, 2000, p.103)

6/05/2007
"But some scientists have persisted. In 1999 Avinoam Danin, a botanist at the Hebrew University of 
Jerusalem, stated at the 16th International Botanical Congress that he found pollen grains on the shroud 
from plants that could only be found in and around Jerusalem, placing its origins in the Middle East. Further 
comparison of the shroud with another ancient cloth, the Sudarium of Oviedo (thought to be the burial face 
cloth of Jesus), revealed it was embedded with pollen grains from the same species of plant as found on the 
Shroud of Turin. The Sudarium even carries the same AB blood type, with bloodstains in a similar pattern. 
Since the Sudarium has been stored in a cathedral in Spain since the eighth century, the evidence suggests 
that the Shroud of Turin is at least as old." (Trivedi, B.P., "Jesus' Shroud?: Recent Findings Renew 
Authenticity Debate," National Geographic, April 9, 2004)

6/05/2007
"Professor Danin and another Israeli colleague, Uri Baruch, a pollen expert, say pollen grains found on 
another Christian relic, the sudarium of Oviedo, believed to be the cloth that covered Jesus' face, proves the 
shroud of Turin dates back further than the fourteenth century, the date concluded by the highly 
controversial carbon-dating tests. Professor Danin says his findings can't prove the image on the shroud, of 
a man about six foot tall with long hair, a beard and bloodstains from his hands and feet, was in fact that of 
Jesus." (Goldin, M., "Science gives hope to shroud believers," ABC, 5 July, 1999)

6/05/2007
"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)

6/05/2007
"In the late 1970s, he was quick to see the value of the revolutionary new method of radiocarbon dating then 
being developed (called accelerator mass spectrometry or AMS dating) and became fully committed to 
establishing the method at Oxford. In the early days of setting up the AMS facility at Oxford, he could be 
found crawling inside the accelerator tank, or discussing design modifications, or even sweeping the floor. 
Such total involvement got its reward especially in his participation in the dating of the Shroud of Turin in 
1988. Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero, the Archbishop of Turin, had authorised the removal of samples of the 
shroud for testing by three laboratories: in Arizona, Zurich - and Oxford. Hall's laboratory dated its sample to 
between 1260 and 1390. The mix of good science, intricate instrumentation, the attention of the world's 
press, the ambivalence of the religious authorities and sheer importance of the outcome for so many people 
appealed to him immensely; he also took pleasure in, as he saw it, the debunking of any conviction that 
could not be rationally demonstrated. `There was a multi-million- pound business in making forgeries during 
the 14th century,' he bluntly told a British Museum press conference. `Someone just got a bit of linen, faked 
it up and flogged it.' And again, `Some people may continue to fight for the authenticity of the shroud, like 
the Flat Earth Society, but this settles it all as far as we are concerned." (Hedges, R., "Obituary: Professor 
Edward Hall,"  The Independent, August 16, 2001)

6/05/2007
"But while the debate over the Shroud's DNA therefore necessarily remains far from resolved, a major new 
development, also with its own bearing on the Shroud `blood', concerns a relic with its own authenticity 
controversies, the so-called sudarium of Oviedo. Although this bears bloodstains, like those on the Shroud, 
with every semblance of authenticity, because these are not accompanied by any similarly meaningful body 
image I have long shied from taking any interest in them - until a recent development. This was the 
emergence of a new, serious researcher on the subject, Mark Guscin, a British-born classicist resident in 
Spain, with an excellent book The Oviedo Cloth [Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: 
Cambridge UK, 1998], the first on the subject in the English language, published in 1998. In this he shows 
that historically the Oviedo cloth's origins can with reasonable plausibility be traced back to early first-
millennium Jerusalem, having been moved from there to Spain in the seventh century apparently to keep it 
safe from the Persian invasions of that period. By early in the ninth century, due to Arab incursions into 
southern Spain, it had quite definitely moved north to Oviedo, since the cathedral's still extant camera 
santa or holy room was specially built for it at that time. And in 1075 it was similarly reliably recorded as 
being taken out of its still extant arca or chest in the presence of King Alfonso VI. Its certain history, 
therefore, significantly antedates that of the Shroud. It is also free of the early accusations of forgery that so 
dog the Shroud." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara: 
London, 2000, pp.77-78)

6/05/2007
"But exactly like the Shroud, far more revelatory than the Oviedo cloth's history is its self-documentation. 
Although it bears no photograph-like `body' image in the manner of the Shroud, Mark Guscin and his 
Spanish colleagues have very convincingly demonstrated that its `blood and body fluid' stains exhibit 
shapes so strikingly similar to those on the Shroud that there has to be the strongest likelihood that both 
were in contact with the same corpse. Two groups of stains particularly indicate this. The first are what I 
would call the nasal stains, which appear to derive from a nose and mouth soaked in bloody fluids. These 
are repeated mirror-image-style, apparently because of the cloth having been partly doubled on itself. 
Forensic analysis indicates that they consist of one part blood and six parts pulmonary oedema fluid. This 
finding is therefore strikingly consistent with the strong body of medical opinion that the man of the 
Shroud's lungs would have filled with fluid caused by the scourging. They are also very compatible with 
gospel writer John's observation that at the conclusion of Jesus' crucifixion `immediately there came out 
blood and water' (John 19: 34), as from the same oedematous fluid, when a lance was plunged into Jesus' 
chest. In the case of the Oviedo cloth's back-of-the-head group of bloodstains, if these are photographed to 
the same scale as their equivalent on the Shroud, and then matched up to each other, there are again enough 
similarities to indicate, in Dr Alan Adler's words, `that these two cloths were in contact with the same 
wounded body'. [Adler, A.D, "Updating Recent Studies on the Shroud of Turin," in Orna, M.V., ed., 
"Archaeological Chemistry: Organic, Inorganic and Biochemical Analysis," American Chemical Society: 
Washington DC, 1996, p.226], 1996, p.226]" (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated 
Evidence," Michael O'Mara: London, 2000, p.78)

6/05/2007
"If the Oviedo cloth really is genuine, what might its function have been? As envisaged by Guscin and his 
colleagues, whoever `wore' it seems to have had it, partly folded back on itself, wrapped around the left side 
of his face, then pinned to the hair at the back of his head, arguably while hanging upright as if on the cross. 
This actually accords very readily with known Jewish scruples concerning leaving the face of any dead 
person exposed, scruples which, however strange they might seem, are hardly any different from the 
continuing practice even in our own time of covering the face of anyone who has just died in hospital or is 
lying at the roadside dead from a road accident. That this is how the cloth was deployed is in fact very clear 
from the holes that it still bears from the pins that would have been used to hold it in position. According to 
Guscin and his colleagues, experiments involving the time it takes for blood and pulmonary fluid stains to 
differentiate have determined that the individual who had this cloth affixed to his head must have lain on the 
ground for some forty-five minutes, arguably after having been taken down from the cross. However, the 
cloth would have had to be removed by the time he was laid in the Shroud." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The 
Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara: London, 2000, pp.78-79)

6/05/2007
"Exactly as with the Shroud, blood samples suitable for DNA analysis have been taken from the Oviedo 
cloth. In 1994 the American Shroud researcher Dr Alan Whanger visited Oviedo and, with full ecclesiastical 
approval, took three sets of samples, each consisting of one thread from a bloodstained area and one from 
an adjoining blood-free area as control. After sealing and labelling, these were taken to a freezer at the 
Spanish Ministry of Justice in Madrid where, at the time of writing, they still await official approval for the 
testing to take place. Obviously, if the DNA from the Shroud and the Oviedo sudarium happened to match, 
even though the segments are fragmentary, this would be the most powerful possible evidence that the two 
cloths once wrapped one and the same person. But other matches are already known." (Wilson, I. & 
Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara: London, 2000, p.79)

6/05/2007
"Exactly as in the case of the Shroud, whoever bled onto the Oviedo cloth was of the same comparatively 
rare AB blood group. Furthermore, as we are about to discover, there are similar uncanny parallels with the 
Shroud in respect of the microscopic detritus in the Oviedo cloth's otherwise unstained areas." (Wilson, I. & 
Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara: London, 2000, p.79) 

6/05/2007
"Analysis of the floral images, and a separate analysis of the pollen grains by botanist Uri Baruch identified 
a combination of plant species that could be found only in March and April in the region of Jerusalem, 
Danin said. Danin identified a high density of pollen of the tumbleweed Gundelia tournefortii. The analysis 
also found the bean caper. The two species coexist in a limited area, Danin said. `This combination of 
flowers can be found in only one region of the world,' he said. `The evidence clearly points to a floral 
grouping from the area surrounding Jerusalem.' An image of the Gundelia tournefortii can be seen near 
the image of the man's shoulder. Some experts have suggested that the plant was used for the `crown of 
thorns.' Two pollen grains of the species were also found on the Sudarium of Oviedo, believed to be the 
burial face cloth of Jesus. Danin, who has done extensive study on plants in Jerusalem, said the pollen 
grains are native to the Gaza Strip. Since the Sudarium of Oviedo has resided in the Cathedral of Oviedo in 
Spain since the eighth century, Danin said that the matchup of pollen grains pushes the shroud's date to a 
similar age. Both cloths also carry type AB blood stains in similar patterns, Danin said. `The pollen 
association and the similarities in the blood stains in the two cloths provide clear evidence that the shroud 
originated before the eighth century,' Danin said. The location of the Sudarium of Oviedo has been 
documented since the first century. If it is found that the two cloths are linked, then the shroud could be 
even older, Danin said. The 1988 study used carbon dating tests. Danin noted that the earlier study looked 
at only a single sample, while he used the entire piece of fabric." ("Study dates Shroud of Turin to before 8th 
century," CNN/AP, August 3, 1999)

6/05/2007
"By analyzing the images of plants and actual pollen that transferred to the Shroud, scientists led by 
botanist Avinoam Danin of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem lent weight to those who believe it to be 
Christ's burial cloth. `This combination of flowers can be found in only one region of the world. The 
evidence clearly points to a floral grouping from the area surrounding Jerusalem,' Danin said in a 
presentation Monday to the International Botanical Congress. Colleagues determined several of the floral 
and pollen species found on the Shroud bloomed in what is now Israel between May and March, and that 
another must have been picked in the Judean Desert or the Dead Sea Valley between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on 
the day they were placed on the Shroud. A type of pollen from a thistle visible near the shoulder of the 
man's image on the Shroud was believed to be the plant used for Jesus' crown of thorns, the researchers 
said. Two pollen grains of this same species were also found on the Sudarium of Oviedo, which is widely 
viewed as the burial face cloth of Jesus. The Sudarium has been traced to the 1st Century, and both it and 
the Shroud carry type AB blood stains. `There is no way that similar patterns of blood stains, probably of 
the identical blood type, with the same type of pollen grains, could not be synchronic -covering the same 
body,' Danin said. `The pollen association and the similarities in the blood stains in the two cloths provide 
clear evidence that the Shroud originated before the 8th Century.'" ("Botanists Shed New Light On Shroud 
Of Turin," Yahoo!/Reuters, August 4, 1999)

7/05/2007
"Another argument, also advanced by some high-level scientists, has been that if there were anything 
thermonuclear to the circumstance by which the crucified body image was created on the Shroud, then this 
in itself, by adding to the cloth's low-level radioactivity levels, could have made the Shroud appear younger 
than its true age. A letter from Dr Thomas J. Phillips of Harvard University's High Energy Physics 
Laboratory, published in the very same issue of Nature which carried the formal report of the radiocarbon-
dating findings, commented: `If the Shroud of Turin is in fact the burial-cloth of Christ ... then according to 
the Bible it was present at a unique physical event: the resurrection of a dead body. Unfortunately this 
event is not accessible to direct scientific scrutiny, but ... the body ... may have radiated neutrons, which 
would have irradiated the Shroud and changed some of the nuclei to different isotopes by neutron capture. 
In particular some carbon 14 would have been generated from carbon 13. If we assume that the Shroud is 
1950 years old and that the neutrons were emitted thermally, then an integrated flux of 2 x 10^16 neutron 
cm^-2 would have converted enough carbon 13 to carbon 14 to give an apparent carbon-dated age of 670 
years [i.e. fourteenth century].' [Phillips, T.J., "Shroud Irradiated With Neutrons?," Nature, Vol. 337, 16 
February, 1989, p.594]" (Wilson, I., "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred 
Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1998, pp.232-233)

7/05/2007
"A similar view has been expressed by the pioneering British nuclear physicist Dr Kitty Little, now retired 
from her career at the UK's Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Oxfordshire. She has recalled 
an experiment that she conducted back in the 1950s in which she irradiated a range of fibres, including 
several different cellulose ones, in a research reactor called BEPO: `At the time BEPO was being run at only 
three MW, so that the temperatures were in the range 70° to 90° centigrade. This meant that I was obtaining 
radiation effects without the complication of heat effects.' Little observed the fibres to change with only 
relatively low-grade heat to the very same colour reported of the Shroud image, something of which at that 
time she had no knowledge. In her own words: `[The] cellulose fibres turned to the straw-yellow colour that 
has been described for the image of the Shroud...' Even more interesting, however, was that the very same 
radiation particles which produced this effect were necessarily also accompanied by neutron emission. And 
as she has explained, this would inevitably have resulted `in the formation of extra carbon 14 on the sheet, 
the whole of it', this extra carbon tending quite categorically and specifically `... to make the apparent age of 
the fabric appear more recent than it really is ...'" [ Little, K., "The Holy Shroud of Turin and the Mystery of 
the Resurrection," Christian Order, April 1994, p. 226]" (Wilson, I., "The Blood and the Shroud: New 
Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1998, p.233)

7/05/2007
"This explanation, proposed completely independently of each other by Drs Phillips and Little, potentially 
accounts both for how the radiocarbon dating could have erred and for how the crucified body image could 
have been formed on the cloth, all in one neat single package. It is also a view to which I can hardly object, 
given that twenty years ago, when I wrote my 1978 book, I specifically suggested the image came to be 
formed by some such nuclear-type blinding flash from the body. As I then hypothesised: `In the darkness of 
the Jerusalem tomb the dead body of Jesus lay, unwashed, covered in blood, on a stone slab. Suddenly 
there is a burst of mysterious power from it. In that instant the blood dematerialises, dissolved perhaps by 
the flash, while its image and that of the body becomes indelibly fused onto the cloth, preserving for 
posterity a literal "snapshot" of the Resurrection.' [Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Victor Gollancz: London, 
1978, p.211]. The great difficulty in such a hypothesis, whether it comes from me or from a trained scientist, 
is that it demands that 2000 years ago something far beyond the normal order happened to the body of 
Jesus as it lay in apparent death. That something of this kind indeed happened has of course been claimed 
by Christian believers throughout those 2000 years." (Wilson, I., "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence 
that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1998, pp.233-234) 

7/05/2007
"A Nuclear Radiation Theory At an international conference on the Shroud held in Richmond, 
Virginia, in June 1998, Dr August Accetta from Huntington Beach, California, presented a paper entitled 
`Experiments with Radiation as an Image Formation Mechanism'. This referred to an experiment he 
conducted with John Jackson and Dr Kenneth Lyons, in which he himself was injected with the radioactive 
compound methylene diphosphate and then subjected to nuclear radiation imaging to ascertain if the 
resultant body image would bear any characteristics similar to photographs of the Shroud image. A dosage 
of the radioactive compound measured to produce a six-hour `half-life' gave sufficient time for the 
compound to be absorbed by Accetta's body and to bind to his bones and tissues, while he assumed a pose 
similar to the man of the Shroud, under a gamma camera which was set to `photograph' the photons 
radiating from his body at timed intervals. The experiment was successful in producing a full-body radiation 
image, which, similar to the Shroud image, was monochromatic and had no outline. When viewed through 
the VP-8 Image Analyzer, the radiation image of Accetta's body revealed similar three-dimensional 
characteristics to the Shroud image. In summarising their experiment, Accetta, Jackson and Lyons stated: 
`We believe the nuclear medicine model is the best currently available to aid in our understanding of the 
Shroud image. We feel our results effectively demonstrated plausibly that the Shroud image resulted from an 
organized emission and/or organized collection of radiation from the body and/or cloth respectively.' 
[Accetta, A.D., "Nuclear Medicine and Its Relevance to the Shroud of Turin," Sindone 2000, Shroud 
Conference in Orvieto, Italy, August 2000 While their experiment proved nothing, it could be suggested that 
the Shroud image might have been caused by a form of nuclear radiation that emitted from Christ's body at 
the moment of His resurrection." (Whiting, B., "The Shroud Story," Harbour Publishing: Strathfield NSW, 
Australia, 2006, pp.181-182. Emphasis original) 

7/05/2007
"Theory: The Image Is a Scorch. The scientific team arrived in Turin in 1978 already suspecting that the 
image on the Shroud could well be some kind of scorch. The scorch theory had become the leading 
candidate for image formation partly because other theories seemed improbable and partly because the 
image looked like a scorch in photographs available before 1978. Cellulose yellows in the first stages of 
burning. If the heat and timing are carefully controlled, an experimental scorch can yellow cellulose fibers the 
way those on the Shroud are yellowed. Furthermore, a known scorch-the burns from the 1532 fire-lay right 
on the cloth, and the image resembled it. Analysis of color photographs prior to 1978 indicated that the 
image and the fire scorch have similar optical properties. A scorch has several other properties which the 
Shroud image also possesses. The image was not affected by the heat of the 1532 fire or by the water 
thrown on the Shroud to extinguish it. Neither heat nor water would affect a scorch in any way. The 1978 
observations largely confirmed this pre-1978 theorizing. The ultraviolet and visible light reflectance tests 
showed that the image and the fire scorches reflected light in a similar way. ... However, the optical 
properties of the Shroud image and the fire scorches are not identical. The fire scorches are visually redder 
than the body image, and the two areas of the cloth fluoresce somewhat differently under ultraviolet light. 
The team thought that these differences would be present if scorches had occurred under different 
conditions. In 1532, the Shroud was burned while sealed inside a metal box. Such a scorch, occurring in a 
substantially oxygen-free environment, would be visibly redder and would have different fluorescent 
properties than a scorch which occurred in the presence of oxygen. Indeed, Vernon Miller and Samuel 
Pellicori demonstrated this fact experimentally. They burned cellulose in an oxygen-depleted environment, 
and the scorch this experiment produced fluoresced in a way similar to those of the fire-damaged areas of 
the Shroud. It thus seemed probable to many members of the team that the image on the Shroud is a scorch, 
slightly different than the known scorches on the Shroud, but a scorch nonetheless. If the image was a 
scorch, how did it get on the cloth? This question proved to be very difficult to answer in scientific terms. 
The problem was finding what the Schwalbe and Rogers summary of research called a `technologically 
credible image transfer mechanism.' This was the main objection to the scorch hypothesis before 1978, and it 
remained the major objection after the testing and analysis were completed. Not all of the scientists agree 
with the scorch thesis, and many members of the scientific team stopped well short of imagining that a 
corpse emitted enough light and heat to scorch a burial shroud. Indeed, the team's summary of research 
classified the scorch hypothesis in the category of artificial-image theories. In other words, a chief issue for 
some was attempting to view the Shroud image in strictly natural terms. ... this may not be fully possible." 
(Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of 
Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, pp.90-92. Emphasis original)

8/05/2007
"In conclusion, natural hypotheses have failed to explain the Shroud's image and are untenable at this time. 
... Thus, neither fakery nor natural hypotheses are viable. Murphy remarked in 1981 that `it is STURP[Shroud 
of Turin Research Project]'s conclusion that none of the forgery theories is tenable. Neither are any of the 
"natural phenomenon" hypotheses.' ... At this point, science is unable to explain the Shroud's image 
completely. On scientific grounds, the cause of the image is an enigma. In the words of the STURP report 
delivered at New London, `The answer to the question of how the image was produced, or what produced 
the image, remains now, as in the past, a mystery.' As Heller asserted, `100 thousand to 150 thousand 
scientific man-hours have been spent' studying the Shroud, utilizing the best scientific instruments, and yet 
the image still remains a `mystery.' In spite of this conclusion, by the early to mid 1980s, numerous scientists 
had indicated their view that the image was best explained by a scorch theory of some sort. Even Mueller, a 
critic of the Shroud, pointed out in 1982: `Nationwide, at least, most members still seem to regard the 
dehydrated-cellulose image as a probable low-temperature scorch, and the image as having been somehow 
"projected" across space onto the cloth. This is, of course, the old radiation-scorch hypothesis in thin 
semantic disguise.' Wilcox's 1982 article series, largely based on his interviews with twenty-six scientists 
from the 1978 investigation, confirmed some of Mueller's suspicions. Noting that possibly the most 
important single finding of STURP was the oxidized, dehydrated, and conjugated nature of the linen fibrils. 
Wilcox decided to ask the scientists he interviewed what they believed to be the cause of the image. Only 
seven ventured a specific answer. Two of them, Pellicori and German, favored the latent-image version of the 
contact theory" even though STURP declared that contact theories are `totally incapable' of explaining 
crucial portions of the image. The other five scientists who answered Wilcox's query indicated their view 
that the image was a scorch . Even though a sample of seven scientists is admittedly very small (about 27 
percent of those questioned), it is nonetheless quite significant that those who did answer believed the 
scorch hypothesis fit the facts better than any other. However, the interesting question here is, how can a 
dead body under a cloth produce such a scorch on linen?" (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "The Shroud 
and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN, 1990, p.128-129) 

8/05/2007
"Oddly enough, the Shroud opponents have actually helped to make our case. Certainly the need to resort to 
a denigration of the scientists on the basis of their religious preferences shows a decided bias on their part. 
In addition, if critics feel the need to declare Jesus a myth, are they not actually suggesting that the Shroud 
evidence indeed matches the Gospel narratives of Christ's passion and death? At least a few of them are 
willing to admit this in print. For example, Schafersman states, `Stevenson and Habermas even calculate the 
odds as 1 in 83 million that the man of the shroud is not Jesus Christ ... a very conservative estimate. I 
agree with them on all of this. If the shroud is authentic, the image is that of Jesus. Otherwise, it's an artist's 
representation... ." [Schafersman, S.,  "Science, the Public, and the Shroud," Skeptical Inquirer, B, 
1982:41, italics added]" (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas 
Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN, 1990, pp.196-197. Emphasis original)

8/05/2007
"On the other hand, on a purely logical basis, if a completely natural process caused the Shroud image, why 
are there no others known in the entire world-especially since the Egyptians left us so many burial linens? 
Numerous sindonologists who believe in a natural process are troubled by this fact." (Stevenson, K.E. & 
Habermas, G.R., "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN, 1990, 
p.201. Emphasis original)

8/05/2007
"When Habermas and I have made the statement that the image-formation process was probably some form 
of `scorch' that most likely occurred at the moment of resurrection, it was simply our best shot at describing 
the facts as they were then known and understood. As late as 1986, Luigi Gonella, who serves as a scientific 
advisor in Shroud testing to the Archbishop of Turin, put it this way: `The `3-D characteristic' brought 
forward the hypothesis of a radiation burst among the imageformation mechanisms to be investigated. This 
hypothesis, vastly misunderstood, elicited much attention from the media and has often been dubbed 
`miracolistic,' though it was nothing of the kind. Rather it is the obvious reaction of a physicist faced with 
the structural features of the Shroud image: the agent acting at a distance with decreasing intensity is, 
almost by definition, radiation. The limitation of the cloth darkening to the outermost surface pointed to a 
non-penetrating, non-diffusing agent, like radiant energy; the absence of plateaus pointed to an effect 
limited by the exposure time (hence a `burst') and not by saturation of the receiving material; whatever the 
mechanism might be, it must be such to yield effects as if it were a burst of collimated radiant energy. 
[Gonella, L. `Scientific Investigation of the Shroud of Turin: Problems, Results, and Methodological 
Lessons,' Paper delivered at the 1986 Hong Kong Symposium, p.31] The only thing that has changed since 
this statement was made is that it has been demonstrated that any known or heretofore postulated form of 
`scorching' mechanism will not match all the known Shroud image characteristics. The image does not 
fluoresce, burn through, damage the fibrils, or blur as all known methods of scorching do. We readily admit 
all of these facts and still stand by our original judgment because it still best fits the known facts. The 
Shroud does not exist in a vacuum. On the contrary, if the medical and scientific evidence confirms the 
biblical record in every other detail, we conclude that the only remaining detail is also accurate: Jesus Christ 
rose from the dead and the image on this cloth is in some as-yet-unknown way connected with that event. 
Whether it was the effect of body chemicals over a period of time, an effect that has escaped our duplication 
attempts, or some high-energy, high voltage transformation for which we lack both name and knowledge, 
that historical episode-the resurrection of Jesus Christ-is the single most feasible explanation for the image 
on the Shroud." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson 
Publishers: Nashville TN, 1990, pp.204-205. Emphasis original)

8/05/2007
"The scientists of STURP [Shroud of Turin Research Project] even conclude the following concerning the 
image-formation process: `The cause, then, of the yellowing is chemically altered cellulose consisting of 
structures formed by dehydration, oxidation, and conjugation products of the linen itself.... This conclusion 
is supported by laboratory simulations using controlled accelerated aging processes that produce the same 
spectral reflectance curves as the body-only image areas and the background areas on the Shroud.... It is 
important to note that this chemistry is similar to the chemistry that causes the yellowing of linen with age. 
The fact that we can see the body image tells us that the body image is due to a more advanced [cloth] 
decomposition process than the normal aging rate of the background linen itself. For this reason, we will 
from this point on refer to the chemistry of the body-only image as advanced [cloth] decomposition.' 
[Schwalbe, L.A. & Rogers, R.N., "Physics and Chemistry of the Shroud of Turin, A Summary of the 1978 
Investigation," Analytica Chimica Acta, Vol. 135, 1982, pp.3-49]" (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 
"The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN, 1990, p.205. Emphasis 
original)

8/05/2007
"The STURP [Shroud of Turin Research Project] scientists go on to state: `The Shroud's mapping 
relationship, however, poses the strongest objection to a contact mechanism. Contact mechanisms have not 
been able to produce a convincing cloth-body distance relationship. In fact, taken alone, this mapping 
function seems to suggest some kind of "projection" mechanism, because there seems to be image present 
even where it does not appear to have been possible that the cloth was in contact with the body. We are left 
to identify what kind of `projection' mechanism, and this we have been unable to do. Simple molecular 
diffusion and "radiation" models, for example, fail to account for the apparent resolution of the image as we 
understand it.... We really do not have a satisfactory, simple explanation for how the body image got on the 
cloth. We think this fact is underscored by the fact that to our knowledge no other image on any cloth-grave 
cloth or art form-like the body image on the Shroud is known to exist today. If another example were to exist, 
our task of identifying the origin of the body image would be much simplified. ' [Schwalbe, L.A. & Rogers, 
R.N., "Physics and Chemistry of the Shroud of Turin, A Summary of the 1978 Investigation," Analytica 
Chimica Acta, Vol. 135, 1982, pp.3-49] Immediately following that remark, the members of STURP began a 
discussion of whether or not the Shroud might be Jesus'. To put all of the above in common English, they 
concluded that the Shroud image is caused by an unknown form of `advanced decomposition' of the cloth, 
which seemed to `project' from body to cloth-a process which has thus far eluded all attempts at 
duplication. The image is unlike any art form and also has no natural counterpart." (Stevenson, K.E. & 
Habermas, G.R., "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN, 1990, pp.205-
206. Emphasis original)

8/05/2007
"It seems as if physics and chemistry [would have] provided better explanations of the formation of the 
image nowadays ... and yet, the genuine arrangement of simultaneous and successive causal steps that 
formed this expressive and informative image cannot be attributed to a series of coincidences. Neither was it 
possible for human beings to produce such an image.... Consequently, one cannot help reaching the 
following conclusion: A Dead Man Rose from the Dead and Left Behind His Image as an Evidence for 
Posterity." [Scheuermann, O., "Shroud," West Germany, June 1986]" (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 
"The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN, 1990, p.208. Emphasis 
original)

8/05/2007
"An analysis of pollen grains and plant images places the origin of the `Shroud of Turin,' thought by many 
to be the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth, in Jerusalem before the 8th Century. The authenticity of the 
Shroud has been debated for centuries, with a 1988 carbon dating process placing it in the Middle Ages. 
Botanist Avinoam Danin of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem determined the origin of the Shroud based 
on a comprehensive analysis of pollen taken from the Shroud and plant images associated with the Shroud. 
The review of plant and pollen evidence is being published by the Missouri Botanical Garden Press as Flora 
of the Shroud of Turin by Danin, Alan Whanger, Mary Whanger , and Uri Baruch. The peer-reviewed 
publication will be available in late summer. Danin presented his research findings at a lecture series held in 
conjunction with the XVI International Botanical Congress. More than 4,000 scientists from 100 countries 
are meeting in St. Louis this week to discuss the latest research on plants for human survival and improved 
quality of life. Held only once every six years, the International Botanical Congress last met in the United 
States in 1969, when it was held in Seattle, Washington. Danin's analysis suggests that flowers and other 
plant materials were placed on the Shroud of Turin, leaving pollen grains and imprints of plants and flowers 
on the linen cloth. In addition to the image of a crucified man, the cloth also contains faint images of plants. 
Tentatively identifying the plant images through a method of image comparison known as Polarized Image 
Overlay Technique (PIOT), Alan and Mary Whanger have reported that the flowers were from the Near East 
region and that the Shroud originated in early centuries. Analysis of the floral images by Danin and an 
analysis of the pollen grains by Uri Baruch identify a combination of certain species that could be found 
only in the months of March and April in the region of Jerusalem during that time. The analysis positively 
identifies a high density of pollen of the thistle Gundelia tournefortii which has bloomed in Israel between 
March and May for millennia. An image of the plant can be seen near the image of the man's shoulder. It has 
been hypothesized by the Whangers, who have researched the Shroud for decades, that this is the plant 
used for the `crown of thorns' on Jesus' head." (XVI International Botanical Congress, "Botanical Evidence 
Indicates `Shroud Of Turin' Originated In Jerusalem Area Before 8th Century, " Science Daily, August 3, 
1999)

8/05/2007
"Two pollen grains of this species [Gundelia tournefortii] were also found on the Sudarium of Oviedo, 
widely accepted as the burial face cloth of Jesus. The location of the Sudarium has been documented from 
the 1st Century and it has resided in the Cathedral of Oviedo in Spain since the 8th Century. Both cloths 
also carry type AB blood stains, although some argue that ancient blood types are hard to interpret. What is 
clear is that the blood stains on both cloths are in a similar pattern. `There is no way that similar patterns of 
blood stains, probably of the identical blood type, with the same type of pollen grains, could not be 
synchronic covering the same body,' Danin stated. `The pollen association and the similarities in the blood 
stains in the two cloths provide clear evidence that the Shroud originated before the 8th Century.' Danin 
stated that this botanical research disputes the validity of the claim that the Shroud was from Europe during 
the Middle Ages, as many researchers had concluded in 1988 based on carbon-14 dating tests. The authors 
do not question the accuracy of the carbon-14 dating test which was done on only a single sample taken 
from one highly contaminated corner of the shroud, he said. However, their research looked at pollen grains 
and images from the entire piece of fabric and compared them with a fabric that has a documented history." 
(XVI International Botanical Congress, "Botanical Evidence Indicates `Shroud Of Turin' Originated In 
Jerusalem Area Before 8th Century, " Science Daily, August 3, 1999)

8/05/2007
"Another plant seen in a clear image on the Shroud is of the Zygophyllum dumosum species, according 
to the paper. This is a native plant with an unusual leaf morphology, displaying paired leaflets on the ends 
of leaf petiole of the current year during the beginning of winter. Gundelia tournefortii and Zygophyllum 
dumosum coexist in a limited area, according to Danin, a leading authority on plants of Israel. The area is 
bounded by lines linking Jerusalem and Hebron in Israel and Madaba and Karak in Jordan. The area is 
anchored toward the Jerusalem-Hebron zone with the addition of a third species, Cistus creticus, 
identified as being placed on the Shroud through an analysis of pollen and floral imaging. `This combination 
of flowers can be found in only one region of the world,' Danin stated. `The evidence clearly points to a 
floral grouping from the area surrounding Jerusalem.' Danin stated that the evidence revealing these species 
on the Shroud suggests that they were placed with the body prior to the process that caused the formation 
of images on the cloth." (XVI International Botanical Congress, "Botanical Evidence Indicates `Shroud Of 
Turin' Originated In Jerusalem Area Before 8th Century," Science Daily, August 3, 1999)

8/05/2007
"According to Danin, his findings corroborate the following sequence of events:
Laying the body on the linen;
Placing flowering plants and other objects along with the body;
Folding the cloth over the body;
Initiation of the process that caused the formation of the images."
 (XVI International Botanical Congress, "Botanical Evidence Indicates `Shroud Of Turin' Originated In 
Jerusalem Area Before 8th Century, " Science Daily, August 3, 1999)

8/05/2007
"Images of Capparis aegyptia flowers, which display a distinctive pattern during daylight hours, have 
also been seen on the Shroud. The process of buds opening ceases when the flowers are picked and no 
water is supplied. The images of these flowers on the Shroud suggest they were picked in the Judean Desert 
or the Dead Sea Valley between 3 and 4 p.m. on the day they were placed on the Shroud." (XVI International 
Botanical Congress, "Botanical Evidence Indicates `Shroud Of Turin' Originated In Jerusalem Area Before 
8th Century, " Science Daily, August 3, 1999)

8/05/2007
"The images of the flowers on the Shroud are also depicted in art of the early centuries, according to the 
upcoming publication. Early icons on some 7th century coins portray a number of flower images that 
accurately match floral images seen on the Shroud today, according to PIOT analysis by the Whangers. The 
researchers suggest that the faint images on the Shroud were probably clearer in earlier centuries." (XVI 
International Botanical Congress, "Botanical Evidence Indicates `Shroud Of Turin' Originated In Jerusalem 
Area Before 8th Century, " Science Daily, August 3, 1999)

8/05/2007
"Botanical investigation of the Shroud began with Max Frei's 1973 observations of pollen grains on the 
Shroud, which he sampled by means of sticky tape. Frei took a second set of 27 sticky tape samples from the 
Shroud during the scientific study in 1978. In 1979 he took 46 sticky tape samples from the Sudarium of 
Oviedo. In 1983 faint floral images on the Shroud linen were noted by O. Scheuermann, and subsequently in 
1985 by the Whangers. Botanist Avinoam Danin began collaborating with Shroud researchers Alan and 
Mary Whanger in 1995. They were joined by Israeli pollen expert Uri Baruch in 1998. Frei's Shroud botanical 
collections were acquired in 1994 by the Council for Study of the Shroud of Turin (CSST) and became the 
resource for this study which analyzed 313 pollen grains." (XVI International Botanical Congress, "Botanical 
Evidence Indicates `Shroud Of Turin' Originated In Jerusalem Area Before 8th Century, " Science Daily, 
August 3, 1999)

8/05/2007
"The burial cloth known today as the Shroud of Turin is a linen rectangle measuring 4.35 meters by 1.1 
meter. It has been kept in the city of Turin (Torino), Italy, since 1578. In 1694, the Shroud was placed in a 
special chapel within the Italian cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Except for a brief period during World War 
II when the cloth was moved elsewhere for safety, the Shroud remained in this cathedral until the night of 
April 11, 1997, when a raging fire necessitated its removal. The Shroud was not damaged, and was kept 
elsewhere in the city until it again was placed in the cathedral for public display from April 18 through June 
14, 1998." (XVI International Botanical Congress, "Botanical Evidence Indicates `Shroud Of Turin' 
Originated In Jerusalem Area Before 8th Century, " Science Daily, August 3, 1999)

8/05/2007
"While there have long been historical, literary, and artistic claims that the Shroud represents the authentic 
burial cloth of Jesus, there has been little scientific evidence to support this. In 1988, carbon-14 dating of a 
single sample from a corner of the Shroud was identified to be from 1260 to 1390 A.D., leading to the 
widespread conclusion that the entire Shroud was from the Medieval period." (XVI International Botanical 
Congress, "Botanical Evidence Indicates `Shroud Of Turin' Originated In Jerusalem Area Before 8th 
Century, " Science Daily, August 3, 1999) 

11/05/2007
"Either way, the deduction must be that, if the Shroud image was formed neither by human artifice nor by 
ordinary natural means, it must have been by some unknown image-forming process. It is in attempting to 
define something of the nature of this third alternative that we arrive at the Shroud's paramount mystery. ... 
With regard to the image-forming process itself .. A far more promising suggestion has been that the image 
is some form of scorch, the color being the sepia of the first stage of the oxidation process preliminary to 
actual burning. ... This idea gained credibility ... at the 1973 exposition. On close study of the Shroud color 
there seemed a great similarity between the character of the scorches from the 1532 fire and the tones of the 
body image. Just over three years later the validity of this subjective impression was demonstrated 
scientifically at Albuquerque. ... Spectroscopically `body,' `blood,' and burn-mark features all recorded the 
same intensity. ... the implication for future research was self-evident-the Shroud image had pronounced 
similarities to a scorch. The obvious question is how a genuine dead body, cold in the tomb, could produce 
some kind of burning or radiance sufficient to scorch cloth, acting in so controlled a manner that it dissolved 
and fused blood flows onto the cloth, yet created at the same time the perfect impression of a human body? 
The concept is mind-boggling. Yet, if the evidence already presented for the Shroud's authenticity is to be 
believed, something along these lines appears to be the only explanation." (Wilson, I., "The Turin 
Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 1978, pp.207-209. Emphasis original)

11/05/2007
"Not far from anyone's minds at the Albuquerque conference was the idea that it might have been some kind 
of thermonuclear flash-a singularly appropriate speculation, considering that they were sitting not two 
hours' drive from the site of the first atomic-bomb test at Alamogordo in 1945. Adding some weight to this 
speculation were some unexpected photographic properties of the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, 
as attested by Hiroshima author John Hersey: `The scientists noticed that the flash of the bomb had 
discolored concrete to a light reddish tint, had scaled off the surface of granite, and had scorched certain 
other types of building materials, and that consequently the bomb had, in some places, left prints of the 
shadows that had been cast by its light. The experts found for instance, a permanent shadow thrown on 
the roof of the Chamber of Commerce Building (220 yards from the rough center) by the structure's 
rectangular tower; several others in the look-out post on top of the Hypothec Bank (2,050 yards); another in 
the tower of the Chugoku Electric Supply Building (800 yards); another projected by the handle of a gas 
pump (2,630 yards) .... A few vague human silhouettes were found, and these gave rise to stories that 
eventually included fancy and precise details. One story told how a painter on a ladder was monumentalized 
in a kind of bas-relief on the stone facade of a bank building on which he was at work, in the act of dipping 
his brush into his paint can; another how a man and his cart on the bridge near the Museum of Science and 
Industry, almost under the center of the explosion, were cast down in an embossed shadow which made it 
clear that the man was about to whip his horse ... ' [Hersey, J., "Hiroshima," Penguin: Harmondsworth UK, 
1946, pp.104-105] The correspondence of these radiation images with the phenomenon on the Shroud itself 
is, of course, by no means total. The Shroud was, after all, seemingly scorched from within rather than from 
without, and by a process of necessity far more controlled than the blast from an atomic bomb." (Wilson, I., 
"The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 1978, p.209. Emphasis original)

11/05/2007
"Nevertheless the impression is inescapable that, rather than a substance, some kind of force seems to have 
been responsible for the image. This is suggested by the information in the 1973 commission's report that 
the image affected only the topmost surface of the fibers, and whatever created it had neither seeped nor 
penetrated the fibers and was insoluble and resistant to acids. Whatever formed the image was powerful 
enough to project it onto the linen from a distance of up to four centimeters (according to Jumper and 
Jackson), yet gentle enough not to cause distortion in areas where there would have been direct contact. 
This factor is particularly obvious on the dorsal image, where the cloth would have received the full weight 
of the body. The concept of a force is implicit from the manner in which the image seems to have been 
created with a marked upward/downward directionality, without any diffusion, and leaving no imprint of the 
sides of the body or the top of the head. Also the image-forming process seems to have shown no 
discrimination between registering the body surface, the hair, the blood, and even inanimate objects-i.e., the 
two coins discovered by Jackson and Jumper. All would seem to have been imprinted on the cloth with the 
same even intensity, and with only the most minor color variation in the case of the blood. The idea, then, of 
some form of thermonuclear flash being the force in question is obviously more than idle speculation. Dr. 
Jumper certainly treated it seriously, arguing that, as any diffusion process would have involved penetration 
of the fibers, and as any remotely lingering laser beam would have caused destruction, whatever created the 
image must have been some extremely high intensity, short duration burst, acting evenly upward and 
downward. Thermal chemist Ray Rogers of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, who attended the 
conference, said very much the same thing, using the words `flash photolysis,' and speaking of a mere 
millisecond of time. In the absence of definitive analysis of the Shroud stains, this concept may be as near 
as scientists can bring us to whatever created the Shroud image." (Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Book 
Club Associates: London, 1978, pp.209-210. Emphasis original)

11/05/2007
"It is certainly awesome enough, but there are additional factors to be borne in mind that are unique to this 
one cloth in Turin. Other shrouds have survived, some from Egyptian tombs dating from many centuries 
before the time of Christ. A few, including those of known martyrs, bear imprints-but nothing approaching 
the perfect photographic likeness of the Shroud of Turin. If a similar imprint had appeared on the shroud of 
an Egyptian pharaoh or a Chinese emperor, it would be considered just some freak of nature, and dismissed 
with little further thought. But it occurred, from all that one can determine, only on the shroud of Jesus of 
Nazareth, a man reputed to have worked miracles and to have risen from the grave. The Gospels are quite 
explicit that Jesus was a man with a power, a power he is specifically recorded to have felt drawn from him, 
as in the case of our now-familiar woman with the issue of blood who touched the hem of his robe. It was 
perhaps manifestation of this power which took place at the Transfiguration-the extraordinary incident 
described by three gospel writers when, on a high mountain, the aspect of Jesus' face changed and he 
appeared in brilliant light, his clothing `dazzlingly white' and `as lightning' (Mt. 17:1-8, Mk. 9:2-8, Lk. 9:28-
36)." (Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 1978, pp.210-211)

11/05/2007
"Even from the limited available information, a hypothetical glimpse of the power operating at the moment of 
creation of the Shroud's image may be ventured. In the darkness of the Jerusalem tomb the dead body of 
Jesus lay, unwashed, covered in blood, on a stone slab. Suddenly, there is a burst of mysterious power from 
it. In that instant the blood dematerializes, dissolved perhaps by the flash, while its image and that of the 
body becomes indelibly fused onto the cloth, preserving for posterity a literal `snapshot' of the 
Resurrection. However the image was formed, we may well be entranced by the fourteen-foot length of linen 
in Turin. For if the author's reconstruction is correct, the Shroud has survived first-century persecution of 
Christians, repeated Edessan floods, an Edessan earthquake, Byzantine iconoclasm, Moslem invasion, 
crusader looting, the destruction of the Knights Templars, not to mention the burning incident that caused 
the triple holes, the 1532 fire, and a serious arson attempt made in 1972. It is ironic that every edifice in which 
the Shroud was supposedly housed before the fifteenth century has long since vanished through the 
hazards of time, yet this frail piece of linen has come through almost unscathed. Frustratingly, the Shroud 
has not yet fully proven itself to us-not uncharacteristic of the gospel Jesus, who at certain times seems 
almost deliberately to have made his presence obscure, as in his post-Resurrection appearance to Mary 
Magdalen when she mistook him for a gardener, and in his walking, shortly after, as an unrecognized 
stranger with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. But one cannot help feeling that it has its role to 
play, and that its hour is imminent." (Wilson, I., "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], 
Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, 1979, pp.250-251) 

12/05/2007
"Doubts about the validity of a vapor transport mechanism being responsible for the image began to nag at 
me after examining some of the results of our three-dimensional studies. The first hint of doubt came with 
the discovery of images over the eyes which appear to be coins. It is hard to imagine an organic stain 
mechanism acting to form not only images of the body but also of inert objects such as coins. Another 
question is `why did the hair images follow the exact same law of intensity versus distance as did the body 
image?' ... The final problem, which sets my doubts running wild was the important discovery of the 1969 
Scientific Commission that the image was only a surface phenomenon. In the remainder of this paper I will 
present some of the passages from the Commission report and the results of our three-dimensional work 
which caused me to try to explore the problem further; describe a rather crude experiment I performed; 
present my attempt to quantify a diffusion process for molecules being transported through space from a 
body to a cloth; draw some conclusions based upon my analysis and the results of this paper; and finally 
mention briefly some observations on radiation as a possible cause of the image on the Shroud." (Jumper, 
E.J., "Considerations of Molecular Diffusion and Radiation as an Image Formation Process on the Shroud," 
in Stevenson, K.E., ed., "Proceedings of the 1977 United States Conference of Research on The Shroud of 
Turin," Holy Shroud Guild: Bronx NY, 1977, pp.182-183)

12/05/2007
"Observations on Radiation Some very simple radiation experiments were performed by John Jackson and 
myself prior to this conference and the following was found: 1. Images could be formed of varying 
intensities up to at least the intensity of those found on the Shroud without saturation. 2. Unless actual 
ignition took place only slight spreading of the image occurred. 3. It appeared that if the image was formed 
by a radiation process the intensity of the radiation would have to have been very high. This conclusion 
was based on the fact that while the actual laser flux used was not quantified in every case, in the short time 
of cloth exposure to the laser there was an image on the reverse side of the cloth almost as dark as the one 
which appeared on the front. Post Conference Note: Dr. Rogers showed me a piece of cloth which he 
exposed to a rapidly moving torch which clearly exhibited an image which was present only on the front of 
the cloth." (Jumper, E.J., "Considerations of Molecular Diffusion and Radiation as an Image Formation 
Process on the Shroud," in Stevenson, K.E., ed., "Proceedings of the 1977 United States Conference of 
Research on The Shroud of Turin," Holy Shroud Guild: Bronx NY, 1977, p.187. Emphasis original)

12/05/2007
"While it does indeed seem possible that a molecular transport process over reasonably long periods of time 
(a minute or longer) would set up a molecular concentration gradient which could form some sort of 
intensity pattern interpretable as an image, it seems very unlikely in my mind that molecular transport could 
have formed the image we find on the Shroud. This opinion is based on the observations of stain spreading 
I made in the simple experiment, the fact that the stain on the Shroud does not penetrate even the surface 
fibers of the cloth and the fact that the Shroud image is nowhere saturated. While it cannot be concluded 
that radiation caused the Shroud image, in the specific areas of stain spreading and saturation, radiation 
cannot be ruled out." (Jumper, E.J., "Considerations of Molecular Diffusion and Radiation as an Image 
Formation Process on the Shroud," in Stevenson, K.E., ed., "Proceedings of the 1977 United States 
Conference of Research on The Shroud of Turin," Holy Shroud Guild: Bronx NY, 1977, p.188)

13/05/2007
"So, given that one interpretation of Jesus' resurrection is a dematerialization of the atoms of his physical 
body, what about the Shroud's imprint having been caused by some kind of atomic radiation from this 
event? In the Second World War bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the intense light from the atomic 
bombs' fireballs imprinted eerie images of people and objects on walls. Yet, however compelling this might 
sound, it cannot be a valid parallel to the Shroud image, since in the bombing instances it was the people's 
bodies blocking the light which created permanent shadows on the walls behind them, whereas in the case 
of the Shroud the light would appear to have come from the body itself, which was responsible for its 
unique, non-directional, self-lighting characteristics. Based on this kind of thinking, the Harvard physicist 
Dr Thomas J. Phillips [Phillips, T.J., "Shroud irradiated with neutrons?," Nature, Vol. 337, 16 February 
1989, p.594], in the wake of the 1988 radiocarbon dating, made the intriguing suggestion that, had Jesus' 
claimed resurrection involved a radiation of neutrons, it could explain at a stroke both the Shroud's `scorch' 
image and the skewing of its carbon 14 content." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The 
Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, p.128)

13/05/2007
"Dr John Jackson has elaborately theorized that the Shroud's image was formed when the cloth collapsed 
through a body that became `mechanically transparent', arguably in the course of the resurrection of Jesus 
described in the Christian gospels, the body's internal structures thereby intervening to form the image. 
[Jackson, J., "Is the image of the Shroud due to a process heretofore unknown to modern science?," Shroud 
Spectrum International, Vol. 34, March 1990] Dr Thaddeus Trenn, director of the Science and Religion 
Course at the University of Toronto, Canada, has formulated a theory of `weak dematerialization', whereby if 
some kind of energy were generated in the man of the Shroud's body to overcome the pion bonding holding 
the nucleons together, there would occur `dematerialization associated with spontaneous pion decay'. 
[Trenn, T., "The Shroud of Turin: Resetting the Carbon-14 Clock," in van der Meer, J.M., ed., "Facets of 
Faith and Science," Vol. III., Ancaster ON, Canada, 1996] Former Kodak technician Kevin Moran, again 
favouring a `resurrection' event, has spoken of the image-making process as the result of 'high-energy 
particles' being involved in a `collision event at the absolute speed of light'. [Moran, K.E., "Microscopic 
Observations on the Max Frei 1978 Samples," Private communication, 25 June 1995] Yet the problem with all 
these `nuclear' scenarios is that, invoking as they do Jesus' resurrection as a real historical event, they 
prompt such scientists as the Oxford radiocarbon-dating laboratory's Dr Robert Hedges to comment: `If a 
supernatural explanation is to be proposed, it seems pointless to make any scientific measurement on the 
Shroud at all.' [Hedges, R.E.M., "Shroud irradiated with neutrons?," Nature, Vol. 337, 16 February 1989, 
p.594]" (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: 
London, 2000, pp.128-129)

13/05/2007
"Furthermore ... one of the Shroud image's additional properties seems to be that of X-ray characteristics, 
particularly in the case of the bones in the hands, as first observed in the early 1980s by Michigan chemistry 
professor Dr Giles Carter, followed in 1995 by Dr Alan Whanger and his wife. So what nuclear radiation 
process could possibly account for these as well as all the Shroud image's other properties? At which point 
enter Dr August Accetta, a youthful physician based in Huntington Beach, California. So convinced of the 
Shroud's authenticity that he has founded a special Shroud Centre to further Shroud researches and public 
education on the subject, Accetta has likewise been fired to go where no researcher has ever gone before on 
the subject, with a view to proving positively how the Shroud image could derive from some nuclear 
radioactive event. Using himself as a guinea pig, and working in collaboration with Dr Kenneth Lyons and 
Dr John Jackson, Accetta allowed himself to be injected with methylene diphosphate, a mildly radioactive 
compound with a six-hour `half-life' that he routinely uses in his medical work to show up internal organs. 
[Accetta, A., "Experiments with Radiation as an Image Formation Mechanism," Shroud of Turin 
International Conference, Richmond, Virginia 18-20 June 1998] Having allowed time for this compound to 
bind itself to his bones, tissues and body organs Accetta then assumed the Shroud pose, while a gamma 
camera was deployed to `photograph' the photons radiating from his body. This was set to fire at timed 
intervals which Accetta and Lyons knew from their experience would register the body elements at different 
intensities relative to the degree of the methylene diphosphate's absorption and dispersal through them. 
The results obtained proved quite astonishing, indeed little short of sensational. First, it was conclusively 
demonstrated that a full-body radiation image could be produced by this means, without the application of 
any paints or dyes, which replicated all the Shroud image's monochromatic characteristics. Second, the 
image had the same collimated, or straight-up, straight-down character as that of the Shroud's imprint, 
though in fairness it should be said that a collimator in the set-up ensured this, since otherwise the radiation 
would have spilled out at all sides. Third, apart from its being slightly more distinct against its background, 
the image had the same lack of outline as that on the Shroud. Fourth, the image shared the Shroud's 
otherwise seemingly unique lack of any light focus. Fifth, the Shroud's X-ray properties were strikingly 
replicated, spectacularly in the case of the hands, in which the metacarpal bones and phalange or finger 
bones could clearly be distinguished with a most compelling similarity to these same bones on the Shroud. 
Sixth, when viewed via the VP-8 Image Analyzer, Accetta's body exhibited the same three-dimensional 
properties as that on the Shroud imprint, the limbs being particularly similar. One of the Accetta process's 
few differences from the Shroud was that it produced images of some of the body's internal organs, most 
notably the kidneys. Another difference was that Accetta's head, unlike the rest of his body, appeared very 
distorted on the VP-8 Image Analyzer, seemingly because of the high volume of radiation emitted from its 
lower two-thirds, a problem that he expects to eliminate in future experiments. As Accetta is the first to 
acknowledge, he cannot claim to have been able to replicate all the Shroud's characteristics exactly, nor 
indeed did he expect to. A quite spectacular achievement on his part, however, is that he very genuinely has 
been able to reproduce some of those characteristics sufficiently closely for some kind of nuclear radiation 
explanation for the Shroud's image to be considered seriously, more so than anyone might previously have 
dared contemplate." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael 
O'Mara Books: London, 2000, pp.129-130)

21/05/2007
 "A few weeks before the Shroud was shown on television in 1973, three experts had been invited by 
Monsignor Caramello to study the photographs of the Shroud taken by Judica-Cordiglia in 1969 and to give 
their opinion on whether the photographs were true pictures of the structure of the linen and the markings 
on it. One of these was Dr. Max Frei, a noted Swiss criminologist, chosen because he had published an 
article on the faking of photographs in 1955. ... Frei has established an international reputation for himself by 
the analysis of microscopic substances. From 1948 until his retirement in 1972, Frei was head of the Zurich 
Police Scientific Laboratory and worked on the analysis of many important crimes and accidents ..." (Wilson, 
I., "The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 1978, pp.60-61) 

16/05/2007
"It was on October 4, 1973, during his work notarizing the photographs of the Shroud taken by Cordiglia in 
1969, that Frei noticed that the surface of the cloth was covered with minute dust particles. He therefore 
asked for permission to remove some of the particles for analysis, and Cardinal Pellegrino gave his 
permission. On the night of November 23, with the Shroud still hanging vertically in the frame used for the 
television exposition, Frei took his samples from the bottom zone to the left and right, and from the side 
strip. His method was absurdly simple: He pressed small pieces of clean adhesive tape onto the surface of 
the linen, then sealed these into plastic envelopes and put them into the modest satchel that he carries 
constantly with him. ... Back in his laboratory in Zurich, Frei surveyed the dust he had collected under the 
microscope. His trained eye immediately identified mineral particles, fragments from hairs and fibers of 
plants, spores from bacteria and nonflowering plants such as mosses and fungi, and pollen grains from 
flowering plants-all consistent with the sort of microscopic debris the Shroud could be expected to have 
accumulated over the centuries. Being chiefly a botanist by training, Frei found the pollen to be of the 
greatest interest. As he was aware, pollen grains have an extremely resistant outer wall, the exine. Although 
so small as to be virtually invisible to the naked eye, these grains can and do retain their physical 
characteristics for literally hundreds of millions of years, being immune to almost any form of destruction. 
As Frei was also aware, when viewed under the electron microscope pollen grains vary so considerably in 
physical characteristics that, thanks to careful classification of the different types over the years, it is 
possible to identify with certainty the precise genus of plant from which any grain has been derived. Frei 
realized that identification of the plants from which the pollen on the Shroud had been derived could lead to 
important deductions about the geographical regions in which the Shroud had been. On the one hand, it 
might confirm that the Shroud had never been outside the western Mediterranean region in which it is 
known to have been kept since the fourteenth century. On the other, it might reveal that the Shroud had at 
some stage been in other regions, the identification of such regions obviously providing important pointers 
to the Shroud's early history." (Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 1978, pp.61-62)

16/05/2007
"During 1974 and 1975 ... Frei carefully examined each pollen grain he had removed from the Shroud, and 
cross-matched it against his files of known varieties. It was an incredibly delicate task. Each grain has a 
different appearance according to the aspect from which it is viewed, there being an equator and poles just 
like the earth, and the manipulation of such minute samples requires great dexterity even with special 
instruments.... One of the complications of the method is that many plants are common to virtually all areas 
in which the Shroud might have been kept in the course of its history. Another complication is that plants 
that originally had one specific regional derivation are today found all over the globe. A typical example of 
this is the famous cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani). Frei actually found pollen from this on the Shroud, 
theoretically most valuable evidence for the Shroud's provenance in Palestine. But it cannot be regarded as 
specific. The same species of cedar has been planted in parks and gardens throughout the whole 
Mediterranean area during the last few centuries. Fortunately, Frei had a breakthrough. As he analyzed the 
grains one by one, he came upon some that he could identify with certainty and that he realized had to be 
significant. They were from typical halophytes, plants common to the desert regions around the Jordan 
Valley and unique in one respect: They are specifically adapted to live in a soil with a high content of 
sodium chloride, such as is found almost exclusively around the Dead Sea. Among these were desert 
varieties of Tamarix, Suaeda, and Artemisia. In Frei's own words: `These plants are of great 
diagnostic value for our geographical studies as identical desert plants are missing in all the other countries 
where the Shroud is believed to have been exposed to the open air. Consequently, a forgery, produced 
somewhere in France during the Middle Ages, in a country lacking these typical halophytes, could not 
contain such characteristic pollen grains from the desert regions of Palestine.' [Frei, M., Report to film 
producer David Rolfe, January 1977]" (Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 
1978, pp.62-63. Emphasis original)

16/05/2007
"Max Frei, a well-trained scientist, is a cautious individual, very conscious that a great deal rests on his 
findings. ... But today his early skepticism about the authenticity of the Shroud is gone, a fact that he admits 
not without emotion. .... Without having completed his research, he nevertheless is certain that the pollen he 
collected from the Shroud includes that of six species of exclusively Palestinian plants, and what he 
describes as a `significant number' of plants from Turkey, mostly from the Anatolian steppe. [Frei, M., Talk, 
London symposium on the Turin Shroud, September 17, 1977] In addition there are pollens of eight species 
of Mediterranean plants consistent with the Shroud's known history in France and Italy. In his own words: 
'These permit the definite conclusion that the Holy Shroud is not an adulteration.' [Frei, M., Press release, 
Zurich, March 8, 1976]" (Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Book Club Associates: London, 1978, p.63)

16/05/2007
"What does it mean to us? According to Frei, we can be certain that at some time in its history the Shroud 
was exposed to the air in Palestine and Turkey. This does, of course, confirm the independent findings of 
the Belgian Professor Raes, that the Shroud contains cotton of undoubted Middle Eastern provenance. As 
we know that the Shroud was never in the East from the fourteenth century on, its years in Palestine and 
Turkey must have been before the fourteenth century." (Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Book Club 
Associates: London, 1978, pp.63-64)

16/05/2007
"In 1973, Max Frei, a Swiss criminologist, was asked to authenticate the photographs taken of the Shroud in 
1969. Frei, a botanist by training, noticed pollen spores on the cloth and received permission to sample them. 
Over the next few months, Frei laboriously separated the different spores, photographed them, and matched 
them to their plants by reference to botanical texts and catalogues. Frei identified spores from forty-nine 
different plants. Some of these plants grow in Europe, hardly a surprise since the Shroud has often been 
exposed to the open air in France and Italy, and would have picked up local air-borne pollen spores. But 
thirty-three of these plants grow only in Palestine, the southern steppes of Turkey, or the area of Istanbul. 
The Shroud has never left Europe since its appearance in Lirey in 1357. Frei's meticulous work strongly 
indicates that the Shroud was exposed to the open air in Palestine and Turkey at some point in its history-
just as Wilson's Mandylion-Shroud theory suggests. Frei indicated that the overlay of the pollen grains 
convinced him that the Shroud has a first-century origin, although this cannot be absolutely proven by the 
pollen analysis." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and 
Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, p.26)

16/05/2007
"Two other studies also bear on the Shroud's pre-1357 existence. Gilbert Raes, a professor at the Ghent 
Institute of Textile Technology in Belgium, inspected some threads removed from the cloth by a scientific 
team in 1973. He concluded that the weave of the linen was a type common in the Middle East in the first 
century A.D. ... Raes also observed something very interesting: traces of cotton among the linen fibers. He 
thought the cloth had been woven on a loom also used for cotton. Cotton, of course, is grown throughout 
the Middle East, but not in Europe. [Raes, G. "Examination of the 'Sindone,' " Report of the Turin 
Commission on the Holy Shroud, Screenpro Films: London, 1976, pp.79-83] Raes' finding was supported by 
Silvio Curto, associate professor of Egyptology at the University of Turin and a member of the commission 
of Italian scientists who examined the Shroud in 1973. `The fabric of the Shroud,' Curto said, 'can date 
back to the time of Christ.' [Curto, S., "The Turin Shroud: Archaeological Observations Concerning the 
Material and the Image," Ibid., 1976, pp. 59-73] If the Shroud is a fraud, a European forger would have had to 
have gone to the enormous trouble of procuring a cloth from the Middle East for his work, one which 
contained microscopic traces of cotton in the weave and pollen spores from non-European plants. He would 
have had no motive to do this because the science of his age could not have determined the place of origin 
of the cloth. In addition, such an act would have ignored the age of the cloth." (Stevenson, K.E. & 
Habermas, G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant 
Books: Ann Arbor MI, 1981, p.26)

17/05/2007
"The final study bearing on the Shroud's age is a result of the 1976 experiments showing that the Shroud 
has three-dimensional data encoded within it. ... John Jackson and Eric Jumper, the physicists who 
discovered the three-dimensional image, noted objects placed over the eyes of the man buried in the 
Shroud. They suggested that these objects might be coins. If so, they said that the ancient coin which was 
of the same size as the `buttonlike' images was the lepton of Pontius Pilate, minted between 14 and 37 A.D. 
[Jackson, J., et. al., "The Three-Dimensional Image on Jesus' Burial Cloth," in Stevenson, K.E., "Proceedings 
of the 1977 United States Conference on the Shroud of Turin," Holy Shroud Guild: Bronx, 1977, p.90] Francis 
Filas, professor at Loyola University in Chicago, says that the images are indeed coins, and that the coins 
are leptons. He says that computer enhancement and analysis of the images reveals that the objects have 
twenty-four coincidences of dimensions, location, selection, order, and angles `fitting only a coin issued by 
Pontius Pilate between 29 and 32 AD. [Filas, F.L., "The Dating of the Shroud of Turin from Coins of Pontius 
Pilate," Private monograph, 1980] This lepton is decorated with an astrologer's staff and four Greek letters ... 
. Some Shroud experts are taking a wait-and-see attitude on this point, but Filas' evidence strongly indicates 
a first-century origin for the Shroud. Studies of remains in first-century Jewish cemeteries confirm that the 
Jews placed coins over the eyes of the dead. [Hachilili, R., "Ancient Burial Customs Preserved in Jericho 
Hills," Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1979, pp. 28-35.]" (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, 
G.R., "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: 
Ann Arbor MI, 1981, pp.27-28. Emphasis original)

17/05/2007
"Pollen Perhaps the most significant work on the identification and origin of pollen on the Shroud was 
done by the late Dr. Max Frei, who founded the scientific department of the Zurich Police and whose 
doctoral thesis was on the flora of Sicily. Dr. Frei was present with STURP during the 1978 studies, primarily 
because he had previously identified key pollens that definitely placed the Shroud in both Palestine and 
Turkey at some time in the past. Though many pollens on the Shroud could be attributed to those areas, 
such as in the famous cedars of Lebanon, Frei only selected those pollens that are still unique to each 
specific area. In my [Stevenson's] opinion, the significance of the pollens cannot be overestimated. For 
example, certain desert halophytes that he found on the Shroud led Dr. Frei to say: `These plants are of great 
diagnostic value for our geographical studies as identical plants are missing in all other countries where the 
Shroud has been exposed to the open air. Consequently a forgery, produced somewhere in France during 
the Middle Ages, in a country lacking these typical halophytes, could not contain such characteristic pollen 
grains from the desert regions of Palestine.' [Frei, M., Report to film producer David Rolfe, January 1977] The 
pollen analysis confirmed in scientific detail the history that Ian Wilson had developed from scattered 
references and artistic comparisons. According to Wilson, at some time in its history, the Shroud was 
exposed to the open air in Palestine and Turkey-precisely where it should have been if it and the Mandylion 
cloth are, in fact, one and the same. It is certainly doubtful that a medieval forger could have known, let 
alone produced, a cloth with just the right pollen spread." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "The 
Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN, 1990, p.63. Emphasis original) 

17/05/2007
"With all these things in mind, how do we link the cloth of Edessa with the Shroud of Turin? One of the 
most incontrovertible pieces of supportive evidence for Wilson's theory is the pollen analysis of Max Frei ... 
It is especially convincing in that it strongly suggests both longevity and authenticity. After all, it is 
possible, though not very likely, that a forger could have been wise enough to order a cloth from Palestine, 
even that he might have ordered an `old' cloth from Palestine. But to suppose he could have ordered a cloth 
woven in the Middle East and then specified that the cloth must be exposed to open air in the areas of both 
Turkey and Istanbul to ensure the proper pollen spread boggles the imagination. Anyway, the existence of 
pollen would not be discovered for at least another six hundred years. Moreover, the historical path of the 
Shroud would not be reconstructed for nearly eight hundred years. Religious relics were forged frequently 
with no such sensitivity to detail. Many churches claimed ownership of the same relic, and in the case of the 
Shroud itself, notoriously poor copies were held in esteem in various places. To imagine that with this relic 
and only this relic there was sudden inspiration of heretofore unrecognized and unheralded genius is truly 
clutching at straws." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas 
Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN, 1990, pp.77-78. Emphasis original) 

17/05/2007
"In 1973, when the Shroud was brought out for a brief examination by a predominantly Italian group of 
scientists, Swiss criminologist Dr. Max Frei dabbed strips of sticky tape onto the cloth's surface in an 
endeavor to obtain samples of its dust, dust that he anticipated would include pollen grains. The special 
interest of pollen grains is that they have an exceptionally hard outer shell, the exine, which can last literally 
millions of years. What is very important is that this shell differs markedly in appearance according to the 
type of plant it has come from, enabling anyone analyzing pollen dust on, say, a murder suspect's clothing, 
to tell in what type of surroundings the garment has been worn. As recognized by Dr. Max Frei, this 
technique has a special value in respect of the Shroud. If the Shroud really was forged in France in the 
fourteenth century, then identification of exclusively French and Italian pollens would effectively confirm 
this. If, however, pollen grains from quite different regions were discovered, then these could be a powerful 
aid to understanding the cloth's earlier origins. Handling pollens for microscopic examination is a delicate 
and time-consuming business, but, from the samples he took in 1973 and a further batch in 1978, Frei 
managed to identify pollens from no fewer than fifty-eight varieties of plant, before his death in early 1983. 
The varieties of plant told their own striking story of the markedly differing geographical regions with which 
the Shroud had historically been associated, as is quite evident from the chart ... Careful study of the table 
reveals, as might be expected, a substantial number of plant species that grow widely in France, Italy, and 
the general Mediterranean area. If pollens of these species alone had been found, there would be no 
justification for believing the Shroud to have been kept anywhere other than the places it is known to have 
been since the 1350s. In the case of one pollen, Oryza sativa, or rice, it is even possible, with some 
confidence, to name the specific town. Vercelli, where the Shroud is historically known to have been 
exhibited in 1494 and 1560, is Europe's principal rice-growing center. But as is also evident from the list, a 
similarly substantial number of pollens derive from steppe plants most commonly found in eastern Turkey. 
Two, Atraphaxis spinosa and Prunus spartioides, are virtually specific to this, while a further group, 
but most notably Epimedium pubigerum, suggest some historical association with Istanbul, the former 
Constantinople. ... Desert plants, most notably halophytes, specially adapted to grow in the exceptionally 
salty soil around the Dead Sea, also feature prominently in the list, along with no fewer than seven plants 
characteristic of Near Eastern rocky hills and other high places. It is obvious that the Shroud has been in a 
region typical of, if not identical with, the terrain in which the historical Jesus moved. But by far the greatest 
significance of the table is the preponderance of plants typical of, and in some cases effectively exclusive to, 
the environs of Jerusalem. The European representation is outweighed, the only reasonable inference being 
that it was somewhere in the Jerusalem region that the Shroud received its most prolonged exposure to the 
open air, pollens of course having less opportunity to migrate to the cloth as it hung in European churches 
or lay locked in their reliquaries. As Frei argued, the Shroud therefore must have once been in the very 
region it has to have been if it wrapped the body of Jesus: the land we today call Israel." (Wilson, I., "The 
Evidence of the Shroud," Guild Publishing: London, 1986, pp.38,43) 

18/05/2007
"Accordingly, between 16 and 18 June 1969, Turin's then archbishop, Cardinal Michele Pellegrino authorized 
a small group of Italian scientists, together with one photographer, to make a preliminary, observation-only 
survey, principally to check on its condition. This was followed on 24 November 1973, immediately after the 
television exposition of that year, by a one-day examination by a secretly convened `commission of experts'. 
This commission's composition was again almost exclusively Italian, although a Belgian textile specialist, 
Professor Gilbert Raes, was permitted to remove a snippet of the linen for textile examination purposes, and a 
Swiss criminologist, Dr Max Frei, was allowed to apply twelve strips of sticky tape to different parts of the 
Shroud's surface, and to take these away for analysis." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The 
Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, p.67)

18/05/2007
"However, by far the most exhaustive scientific examination to date was to occur five years later ... Early in 
1978 Fr Peter Rinaldi, the Italian-born, New York-based pastor who had facilitated my viewing in 1973 
informed America's Dr John Jackson and his fellow researchers that Ballestrero had given the green light for 
them to conduct such an examination some time around the six-week period of the Shroud's public 
expositions (the first in forty years), which were being held between 27 August and 8 October of that same 
year. Under the dynamic leadership of nuclear systems specialist Tom D'Muhala, an impressive team of 
some two dozen American specialists calling themselves the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) had 
for two years been quietly developing a scientific test plan to examine the Shroud, with Barrie Schwortz as 
one of the two official photographers. ... The Shroud's overall dimensions were measured, then its thickness 
was gauged with a micrometer and determined at 0.343 mm, or just a little heavier than shirt cloth. Dr Max 
Frei then took a new set of sticky-tape samples, which will be described in detail in the next chapter. Then, 
with the aid of Poor Clare nuns, one of the Shroud's sides was unstitched from the backing cloth sewn on to 
it in 1534, allowing parts of the normally inaccessible underside to be viewed for the first time in four 
hundred years." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara 
Books: London, 2000, pp.67-68) 

18/05/2007
"WHEN I LEFT TURIN on 24 November 1973 after my first-ever viewing of the Shroud, it was in complete 
ignorance that on that very same day the cloth was being examined in great secrecy by the members of 
Cardinal Pellegrino's special `commission of experts'. Equally unbeknown to me, one of those experts was 
the Swiss criminal investigator Dr Max Frei, whose specialty was to press sticky tape onto a fabric's surface 
in order to sample its dust, then to identify the territory within which the fabric had been moved by 
identifying the species of plants represented by the pollen grains found among that dust. It was a technique 
Frei had pioneered for obtaining evidence from suspects' clothing in the course of his forensic 
investigations. Accordingly it was an extraordinary surprise and delight for me when three years later came 
news that Frei had discovered on the Shroud pollens of plants peculiar to Israel and Turkey, very strongly 
indicating that the Shroud had at one time been kept in these locations. This potentially corroborated my 
own ten-yearlong historical researches, at that time largely unpublished and unknown, showing that the key 
to the Shroud's pre-1350s history seemed to be in what is today Turkey. It also raised the question of what 
further light Frei's botanical science might be able to shed on the mystery of the Shroud's early history. In 
great excitement I contacted Dr Frei and that same summer travelled to meet him at his home in Thalwil, near 
Zurich, Switzerland. There he told me that he needed to make field trips to Turkey and Israel in order to 
pursue his researches further, as a result of which he and I one year later visited these locations in the 
company of film-maker David Rolfe. In the course of these travels I personally observed Frei collecting a 
variety of botanical specimens. Then in October 1978, as part of the STURP scientific examination, he took a 
further twenty-six sticky-tape samples from the Shroud's surface, with Barrie Schwortz photographically 
documenting each removal. Yet, although he worked most methodically, beginning with the back-of-the 
body end and working round the cloth, his ostensibly amateur-looking procedures, particularly his use of 
`dime store' sticky tape, and the fact that he massaged this deep into the Shroud's surface, raised more than 
a few eyebrows among the more high-tech-minded STURP Americans working alongside him - despite his 
method of obtaining pollen ultimately proving hundreds of times more successful than STURP's." (Wilson, 
I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, 
pp.81-82. Emphasis original)

18/05/2007
"Unruffled, Frei kept up a friendly correspondence with me, making clear that his work with the tiny pollen 
grains demanded much time and patience, and that, when his researches were complete, he had every 
intention of publishing them in the form of a fully definitive scientific report. Sadly, however, he was never 
able to achieve this; in January 1983 he died of a sudden heart attack. Five and a half years later, almost 
unnoticed amid the attention given to the carbon dating, his entire collection of Shroud sticky tapes, along 
with his unpublished manuscript, passed to the United States, ceded by his widow, Gertrud, who hoped that 
her husband's work might thereby be carried on. On 23 July 1988 examples from this tape collection were 
formally viewed on video-linked microscopes at a meeting at the Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia. 
At this meeting Dr Walter McCrone, who was specially invited to attend, acknowledged that quantities of 
pollen grains, whatever their age and geographical derivation, were undeniably present on these tapes. The 
Shroud researcher Paul Maloney, then acting as the collection's custodian, later reported on the preliminary 
statistical analysis that he had personally conducted: `Eighty-eight pollen grains were counted in 
approximately 2 square centimetres on a dorsal `sidestrip' tape ... A hundred and sixty-three grains Were 
counted on the same size area on a tape from the left arm, but an astounding circa 300 grains were counted 
on a tape taken from near the face in a comparative size area. [Maloney, P., "The Current Status of Pollen 
research and Prospects for the Future," at "Symposium Scientifique International sur le Linceul de Turin," 
Paris, 7-8 September 1989]" (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," 
Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, p.82)

18/05/2007
"As a further complication, and partly as a result of Paul Maloney's indisposition, the care of Frei's sticky 
tape collection fell to Shroud researcher Dr Alan Whanger. In 1985 Whanger had noted a faint image in the 
background of the Shroud that he perceived as that of a chrysanthemum. From this he proceeded to see 
elsewhere in the Shroud's background a quite bewildering variety of other flowers, many of which he 
identified as of Middle Eastern origin. He further reported seeing numerous other objects both on the man of 
the Shroud's body, and in the cloth's ostensibly plain background. These included `two lepton coins of 
Pontius Pilate, one over each eye; two desecrated Jewish phylacteries [prayer boxes], one on the forehead 
and the other on the left arm, an amulet of Tiberius Caesar, a crucifixion nail, a Roman spear, a crown of 
thorns, a sponge tied to a reed [John 19: 29], a large hammer, a pair of pliers, two Roman scourges ... two 
sandals, a scoop ... two brush brooms, a pair of dice, a coil of rope, several letters on the title or titulus [the 
`King of the Jews' placard of John 19: 19], and possibly partial images of the cloak, the tunic and two more 
nails'. [Whanger, A., CSST News, July 1998] All of these objects, as well as the `flowers', Whanger argued 
(and continues to argue), must have been placed within the Shroud at the time of the man's burial, somehow 
becoming imprinted onto the cloth in much the same manner as the body. [Whanger, M. & A., "The Shroud 
of Turin: An Adventure of Discovery," Providence House: Franklin TN, 1998] ... For such reasons Barrie 
Schwortz and I, along with many others who favour the Shroud's authenticity, dismissed Alan Whanger's 
insights as having too much of a `faces in clouds' character to be considered in the same scientific league as 
the pollen evidence. Yet, in fairness to him, in the case of the flower images in particular there are some very 
good reasons to be wary of too readily dismissing his insights. During the preliminary examination of the 
Frei sticky tapes in Philadelphia in 1988 it became evident that pollen grains were not only present in 
quantity on these tapes, but also that there was a surprising additional detritus of plant parts and other 
floral debris. For instance, on just one tape, 4bd in Frei's notation, no less than forty-five shreds of plant 
parts have been reliably observed, including one whole anther full of pollen. This strongly suggested that at 
least some of the pollen Frei found on the Shroud came to be there not by mere chance (i.e. as grains borne 
by the wind and by insects, as Frei for one had supposed), but that instead actual whole flowers must at 
some time have been laid on the cloth's surface." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The 
Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, pp.83-84)

18/05/2007
"However, as early as 1984, when he was still in good health, Paul Maloney began corresponding with 
Dr Avinoam Danin of the A. Silberman Institute for Life Sciences at Jerusalem's Hebrew University 
about the Frei tapes. Danin is an acknowledged world authority on the flora of Israel, and much to 
Maloney's surprise and satisfaction, he responded with considerable courtesy and lack of 
dismissiveness, despite his academic eminence and his unswerving Jewishness. This encouraged Alan 
Whanger, in company with his wife Mary, to call upon Danin (who in the meantime had become 
Professor) during a visit to Jerusalem in September 1995. As guests at his home they showed him some 
of their photographs of the portions of the Shroud on which they `see' flowers, whereupon, after less 
than twenty seconds' perusal Danin exclaimed `Those are the flowers of Jerusalem!' One `flower' that he 
had no difficulty perceiving (and with regard to which even I can acknowledge a flower-like shape in 
the relevant sector of the Shroud), was the very first one that Alan Whanger had identified on the 
Shroud, the crown chrysanthemum or Chrysanthemum coronarium. Danin further noted, to the side 
of the man of the Shroud's right cheek, several flowers of rock rose or Cistus creticus. Despite 
having remained oblivious throughout his life to any flower images on the Shroud, Dr Max Frei found 
this rose represented among the pollens from a sticky tape, 6bd, taken from the centre of this very 
same area. Two years later, upon visiting the Whangers at their North Carolina home, Danin observed 
on a Shroud photograph an image that he regarded as most interesting of all - that of a bouquet of bean 
caper plants, namely Zygophyllum dumosum. As he has remarked: `During rainy winters this species 
sprouts leaves whose petioles look like sausages with two leaflets at their head. When summer comes, 
the leaflets drop and only the petiole is left. The petioles shrink slowly during the summer ... The only 
species of Zygophyllum that exhibits this behaviour is Zygophyllum dumosum'. [Danin, A., 
"Pressed Flowers." Eretz Magazine, November/December 1997, p.37] The overwhelmingly important 
feature of this discovery is that Zygophyllum dumosum grows only in Israel, Jordan and the Sinai. 
The northernmost extent of its distribution in the world coincides with the line between Jericho and the 
sea-level sign on the road leading from Jerusalem to Jericho. Westwards it does not reach as far as the 
Suez Canal, southwards it peters out before St Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai desert, and eastwards 
it extends no further than the longitude line of the Jordanian capital, Amman." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, 
B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, pp.85-86)

18/05/2007
"Then Alan pointed out to us some of the different flower images. In various instances, as in the case of the 
chrysanthemum, a flower-like shape was undeniably there. The problem was that, when other areas of the 
cloth image were viewed the same way, all sorts of shapes were discernible that might be construed to be 
flowers, some conforming to the Whangers' interpretations, others not. Rightly or wrongly, therefore, Judith 
and I could only reject them. Yet it was impossible to dissociate totally from this very marked difference of 
opinion whatever might be learned in tandem to it from the Frei sticky-tape collection. Normally stored in a 
bank vault, it had been specially brought out for us and we found it comprised albums with carefully ordered 
slots for each different sample, each mounted within a glass slide. At the original sampling each tape had 
been carefully folded back on itself to hermetically seal in its contents, and it was quite obvious which 
section Frei had handled as `lead' tape and which he had pressed directly against the Shroud, thus 
confounding claims that the pollen was just modern contamination." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin 
Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, pp.87-88)

18/05/2007
"Judith and I were also introduced to the computer-linked microscope in which Alan Whanger has invested 
in order to study these tapes. For demonstration purposes one of Frei's Shroud tapes was placed under the 
microscope, and the Whangers and Philip Dayvault encouraged me to explore its non-lead areas for the 
pollen grains it bore. For me the immediate surprise was to find just what a complete universe of such debris 
can exist on one insignificant-looking piece of sticky tape. It was possible to travel across the tape for what 
seemed miles, viewing it both through the microscope and on the linked computer-screen. ...Then at last 
there appeared a circular-shaped pollen grain, quite unmistakable, and large as pollen grains go. As was 
immediately revealed by cross-comparison with images of pollen grains stored in the Whanger computer, 
this was Gundelia tournefortii, a plant that Max Frei had already identified on the Shroud, and which 
Danin had reported as present on the Shroud in abundance pollenwise, and also in image form. Since 
Gundelia's pollen is normally insect-borne, Dr Uri Baruch, an Israel Antiquities Authority palynologist, 
had seriously doubted Danin's claims, having had personal experience of collecting all too few grains of this 
type during field trips to various sites in the Judaean Mountains and Judaean Desert. Because of this 
scepticism Baruch, like ourselves, had visited Whanger's basement some eighteen months earlier. From this 
he satisfied himself that Gundelia pollen grains are numerous on the Frei tapes, and therefore that whole 
flowers from Jerusalem's environs must have been directly laid on the Shroud's surface. In which regard, the 
highly significant feature of Gundelia tournefortii, as both Danin and Baruch emphasise, [Danin, A., 
Whanger, A.D., Baruch, U. & Whanger, M., "Flora of the Shroud of Turin," Missouri Botanical Garden 
Press, St. Louis MO, 1999] is that, exactly as in the case of Zygophyllum dumosum, it does not grow in 
Europe. Its distribution is distinctively Middle Eastern, extending from western Turkey through Israel, Syria 
and northern Iraq and Iran, with just some spillage into the southernmost fringes of the former Soviet Union. 
Whatever might be the truth concerning the plant images, therefore, in this basement room in North Carolina 
I was looking at near proof positive that the Shroud must have been in the land of Israel at some time in its 
history. It was evidence hugely supportive of the cloth's authenticity, and thereby rendered as so much 
waste paper all the unworthy allegations against Dr Max Frei." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin 
Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, pp.88-89)

18/05/2007
"Yet, in the case of Gundelia, even this finding was far from all. For, as Whanger's and Danin's 
quantitative study of the pollen representation has revealed, among the by no means exhaustive 313 pollen 
grains that they had analysed as part of their programme, no fewer than ninety-one were identifiable as 
Gundelia; the plant comprised nearly one-third of the pollens found and `logged' on the Frei sticky tapes, 
and an extraordinary 44 per cent of all those so far classified. One immediate corollary of this is that very far 
from Holy Land or Middle Eastern pollens being an insignificant proportion of all those present on the 
Shroud, they represent in fact a quite disproportionately huge amount. It is as if the six hundred years that 
the Shroud has definitely been in Europe have counted for very little in terms of pollen representation. In the 
same context another important fact concerning Gundelia tournefortii is that it is insect- rather than wind-
pollinated. In the case of many plants this has meant that they are not represented on the Shroud. For 
instance, the mainly insect-pollinated olive, though widespread both in the Near East and in western Europe, 
has furnished not a single specimen in the Frei collection. This is because it would have required an insect 
to have been on an olive tree just before landing on the Shroud during one of its open-air expositions; a 
very rare chance indeed. So for Gundelia pollen to be so strongly represented has to mean either that a 
whole swarm of insects flew from Gundelia plants to land on the Shroud - highly unlikely - or that at some 
time some person or persons unknown deliberately laid flowering Gundelia tournefortii plants on it. ... But 
it is quite definite that whoever did this has to have done so somewhere within the Middle Eastern 
geographical area where the plant is known to grow, an area specifically including Jerusalem. They also 
have to have done so at a time of the year when Gundelia is known to bloom, and therefore produce 
pollen, a time that botanists quite independent of Danin [Kupicha, F.K., "Gundelia," in Davis, P.H., "Flora of 
Turkey," Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, Vol 5, 1984, pp.325-326] can narrow to between March and 
May. So is it mere coincidence that this was the very period of the year within which Jesus' Passover-linked 
crucifixion occurred?" (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael 
O'Mara Books: London, 2000, pp.89-90)

19/05/2007
"In unison, both Whanger and Danin identify on Whanger's life-size black-and-white Shroud photos a 
Gundelia inflorescence on the man of the Shroud's right shoulder. The STURP ultraviolet photos had first 
shown up a striated feature in this area that was initially supposed to be a furrowing of the shoulder from 
the thongs of the scourge," and on the evidence of photographs alone I saw little grounds for changing this 
opinion. But at the March 2000 viewing of the Shroud I was very close to Danin as we were ushered into the 
Cathedral sacristy. Indeed, he had brought binoculars, and kindly lent me these while we both waited for 
those who were standing in front of us to give way Then, as we were able to get within touching distance of 
the Shroud, the spontaneity of his reaction was quite infectious. As his eyes focused on the shoulder area, 
in almost childlike delight he recognized, as only one of his so specialized botanical expertise could, the 
Gundelia inflorescence's presence on this. ... Quite obvious was that for Danin, the world's leading expert 
on the flora of Israel, here, on this piece of cloth displayed in a northern Italian Cathedral side-room, was 
utterly unqualified recognition of a plant that he positively knew to come from the environs of his own 
Jerusalem. And in my observing this recognition, I could only bow to his very special `eye' for such things - 
as he subsequently explained to me, a `gift' from his childhood. The natural daylight lighting Turin 
Cathedral's sacristy was clear and even, and as, during the two hours allotted to us, my eyes continued to 
rove the Shroud's surface, quite apparent was that flower images are not just an aberration of black-and-
white photographs. Faint flower-like shapes are quite definitely there on the cloth itself, and while no doubt 
many can deservedly be dismissed as merely of the `faces in clouds' variety, the `hard' evidence of the 
pollens, combined with my first-hand observation of Danin's very special eye at work, now persuades me to 
believe that some at least are `real'." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated 
Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, pp.91-92. Emphasis original)

19/05/2007
"For, whatever anyone else may make of Danin's botanical `eye', what cannot be emphasized enough is that 
the location-type evidence, even from the pollens alone, is quite overwhelming. As Uri Baruch found, there 
are some instances in which he cannot be as specific about plant species as Frei was, but instead refers to a 
plant type. Possibly Frei may have been a little over-enthusiastic in his identification in these cases, or 
(since his death robbed us of ever knowing his full insights), it may have been because he found a way to 
manipulate the specimen in order to see it better. Either way, such differences are essentially minor, and the 
sceptics' slurs on Frei's memory are proved to be unfounded. As Danin sums up, particularly from 
superimposing the known distribution sites of Gundelia tournefortii, Zygophyllum dumosum and 
Cistus creticus, together with three further specific pollen types confirmed to be on the Shroud, 19 
[Lomelosia (Scabiosa) prolifera (L) Greuter et Burdet, Cistus incanus-type and Cistus 
salvifoliustype] the very narrow geographical region that all these plants share in common is the mere 
twenty miles between Hebron and Jerusalem. [Danin, A., "Micro-traces of plants on the Shroud of Turin as 
geographical markers," in Scannerini, S. & Savarino, P., eds, "The Turin Shroud: Past, Present and Future," 
International scientific symposium, Turin, 2-5 March 2000," Effatà: Cantalupa, 2000, pp.495-500] So the 
conclusion is inescapable, in the very teeth of the radiocarbon dating, that at some time in its history the 
Turin Shroud positively must have been in the same environs in which Jesus of Nazareth lived and died." 
(Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 
2000, p.92. Emphasis original)

19/05/2007
"In which regard, bearing in mind the Turin Shroud's several intriguing parallels with the Oviedo cloth, as 
noted in the last chapter, it is of further interest that not long before his death Dr Frei took sticky-tape 
samples from the Oviedo cloth, just as he had from the Shroud. What he found was pollens representative 
of Israel, North Africa and Spain, exactly in accord with the cloth's known history. And among those Israel 
pollens was, yet again, Gundelia tournefortii." (Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The 
Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, p.92)

19/05/2007
"In fact, pollens are by no means the only potentially tell-tale elements to be found in the samples of the 
Shroud's dust trapped on the Frei and STURP sticky tapes. There is fly-ash from Turin's twentieth-century 
industrial pollutants. There are fibres from the red silk covering and blue satin surround. There are scraps 
from ecclesiastical vestments that once brushed against the cloth. There are silver, gold and iron particles 
from the various caskets in which it has been stored. There are paint fragments from the frescoed rooms in 
which it has been displayed, and from the artists' facsimiles pressed against it. All of these offer fleeting 
glimpses of moments in the Shroud's history through the centuries. Perhaps the most tantalizing glimpse of 
all, however, came from reflectance spectroscopy work carried out by the husband-and-wife team Roger and 
Marty Gilbert in the course of the 1978 STURP examination. As they ran their equipment up and down the 
man of the Shroud's image the spectra they obtained proved relatively regular except when they reached the 
sole of the foot imprint on the back-of-the-body half of the cloth. Suddenly the spectra changed 
dramatically. Something in the foot area, and particularly around the heel, was giving a markedly stronger 
signal than elsewhere, but what? When optical physicist Sam Pellicori was summoned to view the area 
under the portable microscope the answer proved as chilling as it was obvious. Dead-pan, Pellicori 
pronounced, `It's dirt!' As might have been expected in an individual who had had even his sandals taken 
away from him, the man of the Shroud had dirty feet. During the March 2000 Turin sacristy viewing I and 
others, even with the unaided eye, could see the Shroud is significantly dirtier at the soles of the feet than 
anywhere else on the cloth, this dirt very visible underlying the serum-haloed bloodstains that otherwise 
coat the same soles. So had the Gilberts stumbled upon the very dirt from the streets of Jerusalem that had 
blackened the feet of Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago? In fact analysis of particles of limestone 
also found adhering to the Shroud have been identified by optical crystallographer Dr Joseph Kohlbeck as 
travertine aragonite that spectrally has a `signature' strikingly similar to limestone samples from ancient 
Jerusalem tombs, taken by archaeologist Dr Eugenia Nitowski. [Kohlbeck, J.A. & Nitowski, E.L., "New 
Evidence May Explain Image on Shroud of Turin," Biblical Archaeology Review, July-August 1986, 
pp.18-29] From such a variety of different directions, there is therefore the most striking evidence that rather 
than being a `cunning painting', some time in its history the Shroud really was used somewhere in the 
environs of Jerusalem to wrap the dirty and bloody corpse of a man who had just been crucified." (Wilson, I. 
& Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, 2000, p.92)

27/05/2007
"The Pollen We have seen that historical testimony fits in with what we know about the sudarium, and 
there is no reason to doubt the historicity of the few references that exist. Its stay in Jerusalem and its route 
through the north of Africa can be further confirmed by studying pollen found on the cloth. As is well 
known, this method of study has also been used on the Turin Shroud, and the pollen found coincides with 
the historical route of this cloth through Edessa, Constantinople, France and Italy. Some have doubted the 
credibility of the conclusions reached from the pollen, but without putting forward solid reasons. They ask 
why no pollen from the numerous olive trees of Palestine was found. It is true that this absence is curious, 
but the absence of one species does not annul or invalidate the presence and testimony of the many others. 
From the pollen found, it is undeniable that the Shroud was in Palestine, Edessa and Constantinople. Most 
people who have read any book about the Shroud will be familiar with the name Dr Max Frei, the Swiss 
criminologist responsible for the pollen studies related to the Shroud. Before Dr Frei died, he also analysed 
pollen samples from the sudarium in Oviedo. The results perfectly match the route already described. He 
found pollen from Oviedo, Toledo, north Africa and Jerusalem. There was nothing relating the sudarium to 
Constantinople, France, Italy or any other country in Europe." (Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," 
Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 1998, p.22. Emphasis original)

27/05/2007
"The Stains The only markings visible to the naked eye on the sudarium are stains, so these should 
clearly play the central role in studies of the cloth. The main stains consist of one part blood and six parts 
pulmonary oedema fluid. This is very significant because it helps confirm that Jesus died from asphyxiation. 
It is the generally accepted opinion that people who were crucified died from asphyxiation: with the body 
hanging, its weight supported by the wrists nailed to the cross, it was virtually impossible to breathe. For 
this reason, to prolong the life and consequently the torture of a crucified person, support was sometimes 
placed either under his feet or between his legs, so that as long as some strength was left in his body, he 
could elevate it for a gasp of air. This movement caused excruciating pain on turning the wrists round the 
nails, but while the man's strength lasted, the urge to breathe overcame this pain. This is why breaking a 
crucified man's legs was, in fact, a merciful thing to do. It made it impossible to push the body upwards, and 
so the man would not be able to breathe and death would come quickly. When a person dies in this way, 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. It is precisely this kind of stain that forms the central group of stains on the sudarium. 
These stains are superimposed on each other, i.e. after the first stain was formed, enough time passed for it 
to dry before the cloth was stained again, leaving the borders of each stain clearly visible. By reproducing 
the mixture of blood and the fluid from the oedema, and having a specially modelled head made to recreate 
the flow of this liquid through the nostrils, Dr Jose Villalain, professor of Forensic Medicine at the 
University of Valencia, was able to calculate the time elapsed between the formation of each superimposed 
stain. In keeping with the Jewish tradition of covering the disfigured face of a dead man, the sudarium would 
have been pinned to the back of Jesus' head and wrapped over his face and nose before the body was taken 
down from the cross. This caused the first central stain on the sudarium. There was then a time lapse of one 
hour, during which time the body was still on the cross. It was then taken down and laid probably at the foot 
of the cross, for another forty-five minutes. When the body was picked up and moved again, on being 
carried to the tomb for burial, the sudarium was again held to Jesus' nose to absorb the fresh flow of liquid." 
(Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 1998, pp.23-24. Emphasis original)

27/05/2007
"The stains on the sudarium also show that when the cloth was impregnated with blood, it was folded over 
although not in the middle. The blood was so abundant that it stained all four sides of the folded cloth, so 
there is a fourfold stain in a logical order of decreasing intensity. When the body was lying on the ground 
face down, the liquid flow was so heavy that the stains on the part of the cloth farthest away from the face 
(i.e. the part that had direct contact with the hand that was holding the cloth to the face) are more extensive 
than the other. Numbered from one to four, Face One is the side that was in direct contact with the face, and 
Face Two is the reverse side if this. As the cloth was then folded back over itself, Face Three is on the same 
side of the cloth as Face Two, and Face Four on the same side as Face One. It is clear which part of the cloth 
was in direct contact with the face because actual dried blood, like scabs, is visible under the microscope." 
(Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 1998, pp.25-26)

28/05/2007
"The most striking thing about all the stains is that they coincide exactly with the face of the image on the 
Turin Shroud. The first fact that confirms the relationship between the two cloths is that the blood on each 
belongs to the same group, AB. If the blood or each cloth belonged to a different group, there would be no 
sense in pursuing the comparative investigation, and little meaning in any further points of coincidence. 
This test is the starting point for all the others, and the results are positive. Blood of the group AB is also 
very common in the Middle East and rare in Europe. According to Monsignor Ricci's method of numbering 
the stains on the sudarium, the main group, corresponding to the liquid which came out of the nostrils, 
receives the number 13. The length of the nose which produced this stain has been calculated at eight 
centimetres, just over three inches, which is exactly the same as the length of the nose on the Shroud. In a 
case like this, it is very easy for sceptics to say that the investigators have just come up with the 
measurement they needed, but this is not a scientific or rational argument. The only to be expected, if, as 
seems obvious, both cloths covered the same face. Nobody would be surprised, for example, if we had two 
gloves that belonged to Napoleon, and the size of the hand that used each one was calculated to be the 
same. This would be the obvious measurement." (Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: 
Cambridge UK, 1998, pp.27-28)

28/05/2007
"This, however, is not the only point of coincidence between the nasal areas on the two cloths. Both of 
them, especially the Shroud, contain a high concentration of ground particles and dust in this area. When a 
man was being led to the place of crucifixion, he had to carry the horizontal bar of the cross, which was 
probably tied to his outstretched arms and placed across the back of his neck. This meant that whenever he 
fell, which would have been often after being whipped and with such a weight to carry, he could not protect 
his face from the impact of the fall. This also explains why this nose was swollen, slightly displaced and 
bleeding." (Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 1998, p.28)

28/05/2007
"Perhaps the most obvious fit when the stains on the sudarium are placed over the image of the face on the 
Shroud, is that of the beard; the match is perfect. This shows that the sudarium, possibly by being gently 
pressed onto the face, was also used to clean the blood and other fluids that had collected in the beard. 
Stain number 6 is also evident on all four faces of the sudarium. If stain 13 is placed over the nose of the 
image on the Shroud, stain 6 is seen to proceed from the right hand side of the man's mouth. This stain is 
hardly visible on the shroud, but its existence has been confirmed by Dr John Jackson, who is well known 
for his studies on the Shroud using the VP-8 image analyser. Using the VP-8 and photo-enhancements, Dr 
Jackson has shown that the same stain is present on the Shroud, and the shape of the stain coincides 
perfectly with the one on the sudarium. The gap between the blood coming out of the right hand side of the 
mouth and the stain on the beard is mapped as number 18. This gap closes as the stains get progressively 
more extensive on faces 1, 2, 3 and 4 while at the same time they are less intense. Stain number 12 
corresponds to the eyebrows of the face on the Shroud. As with the beard, this facial hair would have 
retained blood and this would have produced the stains on the sudarium when it was placed on Jesus' face. 
There is also blood on the forehead, which forms stain number 10 on the sudarium." (Guscin, M., "The 
Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 1998, p.28) 

28/05/2007
"The only surprising detail here is the absence of the well-known stain on the Shroud in the form of an 
inverted three. This Shroud stain has played an important part in the history of the Shroud. After the 
discovery of the Shroud in Edessa, artistic representations of Christ changed and had many points in 
common with each other and with the Shroud. Artists mistook this bloodstain for hair, and this is clear from 
the numerous images of Christ showing various strands of hair in the middle of the forehead. Its apparent 
absence from the sudarium is certainly strange. Monsignor Ricci suggests that the short time the sudarium 
covered the face of Jesus was not long enough for this blood to be absorbed. This explanation is quite 
feasible if the blood had already clotted, as in this case more time would have been necessary for the cloth 
to absorb the blood. In fact, there are two spots of blood on the sudarium which, allowing for two different 
positionings of the cloth on the face, correspond to the top of the cloth on the inverted three stain, the 
actual wound from which the blood flowed. This is because the blood was more liquid at its point of origin 
on the forehead, and so could stain the sudarium even though it was only in place for a short time. The rest 
of the blood on the forehead stained the larger Shroud as well, as the direct contact was much longer." 
(Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 1998, pp.29-30)

28/05/2007
"Strangely enough, the area corresponding to the forehead on the sudarium is surprisingly free of 
bloodstains, whereas the same area on the Shroud is covered with blood. An interesting explanation for this 
has been proposed by Dr Alan Whanger from the University of Duke, North Carolina. He suggests that if 
the sudarium was used to cover Jesus' face from the foot of the cross to the tomb, the crown of thorns could 
still have been present on his head, restricting contact in this area. However, there is a stain in this area, 
number 10, which must have been produced by some kind of contact. There are smaller blood stains on the 
left of the reverse side of the cloth, the side that was in direct contact with Jesus's face. It would seem that 
this part of the sudarium was in contact with the back of Jesus' head. These stains too coincide with those 
on the Shroud." (Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 1998, p.30)

28/05/2007
"The image of the back of the man on the Shroud is covered with wounds from the scourging he received 
before being crucified. The wounds on the man's back are obviously not reproduced on the sudarium, as 
this had no contact with it. However, there are thick bloodstains on the nape of the man's neck, showing the 
depth and extent of the wounds produced by the crown of thorns. This crown was probably not a circle, as 
traditional Christian art represents, but a kind of cap covering the whole head. The thorns were probably of 
the species ziziphus vulgaris, a long, hard and sharp thorn which would produce deep and painful 
wounds. The stains on the back of the man's neck on the Shroud correspond exactly to those on the 
sudarium." (Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 1998, pp.30,32)

28/05/2007
"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)

28/05/2007
"The only biblical reference to the sudarium is the one already discussed, in the gospel of John. We are told 
that this cloth had been over Jesus' head, and the seemingly natural conclusion from this is that it was over 
Jesus' head at the same time as the Shroud, when Jesus was buried. However, John does not exactly say 
this, he simply says that the sudarium had been over his head, without specifying when. There are various 
reasons that make it impossible for the sudarium to have covered the dead body of Jesus in the tomb." 
(Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 1998, p.33)

28/05/2007
"One of the greatest mysteries about the Shroud is how the image was formed - and this mystery has not 
been solved. We know how it was not formed. It was definitely not painted, as there are absolutely no traces 
of any kind of paint, (except for tiny particles left by painted copies when they were pressed to the Shroud 
in order to `sanctify' the copy) and there is no direction in the outline, which is impossible on a painting. 
Also, nobody could have painted a perfect negative before negatives and photography were even known 
about. Various people have thought that the image was created by a mixture of body heat (another reason 
why they need Jesus to be alive in the tomb), gases and the spices which were present. However, all their 
attempts to reproduce the image using these methods have either resulted in total failure or in grotesque 
caricatures of the volunteer under the linen. Nobody has been able to reproduce anything even remotely 
similar to the image on the Shroud. What we do know about the image is that it appears to have been 
scorched into only the top few fibres in each thread, has no direction and its intensity was directly 
dependent on how far from the actual body the cloth was. This is why the throat is not shown on the image-
the cloth would have been stretched from the chin to the chest, not tucked into every fold of the body. This 
eliminates the possibility of the sudarium being on the face under the Shroud, as this would have prevented 
the image from being formed on the Shroud, and it would presumably have caused it to be formed on the 
sudarium. As the face image on the Shroud is just as clear as the rest of the body, and as there is no image, 
only blood, on the sudarium, we can confidently state that the smaller cloth was not placed between the face 
and the larger cloth in the tomb." (Guscin, M., "The Oviedo Cloth," Lutterworth Press: Cambridge UK, 
1998, pp.33-34)

28/05/2007
"Listen to most physicists talking about the accuracy of carbon dating, and you may be led to believe that it 
is about as inviolable as the high-society world of 1912 thought the Titanic unsinkable, and that therefore 
the shroud dating result should be accepted without question. But listen to many an archaeologist, the 
actual users of carbon dating, and it is a different story. Years before the submission of the shroud to 
carbon dating, Bill Meacham, an American archaeologist with the Hong Kong Museum of History warned of 
the dangers of regarding carbon dating as an arbiter on the shroud. [Meacham, W., "On Carbon Dating the 
Turin shroud," Shroud Spectrum International, 19, June 1986, pp. 15-25] Among a long list of individuals 
whom Meacham chided for putting too great a reliance on carbon dating was myself, who in 1978 rather 
rashly and over-confidently wrote that it should settle `once and for all ... the question whether or not the 
shroud is a fourteenth-century forgery.' [Wilson, I., "The Turin Shroud," Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1979, 
p. 264] The fact is that for any layman one of carbon dating's most misleading features is the seemingly very 
precise margin of error claimed: in the case of the shroud a quoted 95 per cent probability or `confidence 
limit' for it dating sometime between 1260 and 1390. Too rarely understood is that these margins represent 
hypothetical statistical concepts, rather than necessarily the actual parameters of the true date. For there can 
be no doubt that even the most recent archaeology is littered with examples of such widely variegated 
results that the quoted margins of error can only be regarded as very seriously misleading. One example 
concerns the massive Bronze Age volcanic eruption of the Aegean island of Thera, or Santorini, which 
overwhelmed the port of Akrotiri and other settlements on Thera itself, and may well also have precipitated 
the demise of the Minoan civilization of Crete, sixty miles away. Historically the event has been thought to 
have happened circa 1500 BC. But when organic materials preserved by the eruption were carbon dated, 
the dates calculated produced more confusion than clarification. According to the present-day excavator, 
Professor Christos Doumas: `The application of the radio-carbon method of dating ... has unfortunately not 
been a success ... During the decade 1967-77 a whole series of samples were processed ... and a wide range 
of dates acquired ... Samples taken were divided into two classes: long-lived (charcoal or wood) and short-
lived beans, grains, shrubs), and in both cases dates have been produced for the destruction of Akrotiri 
with discrepancies ranging from about 1100, plus or minus 190 years BC, to 2590, plus or minus eighty years 
BC. Some specialists think that the discrepancies may be due to gas emanating from the volcano.' [Doumas, 
C.G., "Thera, Pompeii of the Ancient Aegean," Thames & Hudson: London, 1983, p.139]. " (Wilson, I., "Holy 
Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London, 1991, pp.172-173)

28/05/2007
"Another example concerns one of the British Museum's most recent acquisitions, Lindow Man ... the well-
preserved upper torso of a neatly-manicured man in his mid-twenties who in 1984 was unearthed in a 
peatbog in Cheshire, England, and who appears to have been the victim of a Celtic human-sacrifice ritual. 
According to a 1986 report in the British journal, Current Archaeology: `... there are continuing problems 
over his [Lindow Man's] date. Three sets of radiocarbon dates have been obtained. Firstly there are those 
obtained by conventional methods from the peat that surrounded him, which has been dated both by 
Harwell and by the British Museum at dates around 300 BC, and this is the date they are adopting for 
publication. The other dates are done by the two new super-duper small measurement laboratories at 
Harwell and at Oxford, which can date minute samples of the body itself, of the hair, bones and skin. 
However, whereas all the Oxford samples come out consistently in the 1st century AD, all the Harwell 
samples come out consistently in the 5th century AD. At one time they thought that the difference might be 
due to the differing pre-treatment at the laboratories, so they swapped samples following pretreatment, but 
the resulting measurements came out within the respective series for each laboratory. The archaeological 
world waits with bated breath to see how this problem is resolved. ["The British Museum Exhibition," 
Current Archaeology, Issue 101, Vol. IX, No. 6, August 1986, p.163] In fact, the problem still remains 
unresolved. In the British Museum's very latest publication on radiocarbon dating, Dr Sheridan Bowman, 
the new keeper of the Museum's Research Laboratory remarks: `This is surely a mystery equal to that of the 
motive for the murder itself' [Bowman, S., "Radiocarbon dating," British Museum Publications: London, 
1990, p.52]. And needing maximum emphasis in respect of this is that all the sets of radiocarbon dates, 
fourteen centuries apart in the case of Thera and eight centuries apart in the case of Lindow Man, have their 
own margins of error quoted at plus or minus circa one hundred years. Even just these two examples give 
the lie to the radiocarbon laboratories' stated margins of accuracy having anything like the precision they 
claim for them." (Wilson, I., "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: 
London, 1991, pp.173-174) 

28/05/2007
"But the deep-seatedness of the problem is further evidenced from numerous examples in archaeology in 
which archaeologists have been given radiocarbon dates they have been unhappy with, but have had 
insufficient alternative data to be able to prove that the dates are wrong. The well-known British 
Egyptologist, Dr Rosalie David, for instance, cites Egyptian Mummy 1770 in her department's collection at 
the Manchester Museum, a mummy which she and colleagues very scientifically unwrapped in 1975 [pl. 32, 
above]. When she sent the bones and the bandages of the mummy off for dating, the British Museum 
radiocarbon laboratory produced the astonishing calculation that the bones were eight hundred to a 
thousand years older than the bandages. [David, R., "Mysteries of the Mummies: The story of the 
Manchester University investigation," Cassell: London, 1978]. This caused Dr David to be torn between two 
hypotheses: first, that the mummy had perhaps been rewrapped eight hundred to a thousand years after 
death; the second that perhaps something in the resins and unguents used in mummification had acted in an 
as yet undetermined manner that interfered with a correct carbon-dating reading. But to complicate the issue 
yet further, just at the time of this book being prepared for publication, the British Museum laboratory 
disclosed that there was a system error in all the datings it issued between 1980 and 1984 - inclusive of its 
work on Mummy 1770. [Bowman, S.S.E., Ambers, J.C. & Leese, M.N., "Reevaluation of British Museum 
radiocarbon dates issued between 1980 and 1984," Radiocarbon, Vol. 32, No. l, 1990, pp.59-79] Apparently 
this was due to non-allowed-for evaporation in the modern control samples routinely used during this 
period. They stated that although in most cases the error amounted to only two or three hundred years, they 
were unable to issue any correction in the case of the Manchester Mummy - making yet more difficult Dr 
David's choice between the two alternatives." (Wilson, I., "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' 
True Likeness," Doubleday: London, 1991, pp.174,175)

28/05/2007
"That such examples are not mere isolated anecdote, but that there are some more fundamentally flawed 
aspects to carbon dating than yet conceded by the physicists, has been further demonstrated recently in an 
inter-comparison trial commissioned by Britain's Science and Engineering Research Council. Thirty-eight 
laboratories agreed to take part, representing both the conventional Libby method and the up-to-date 
accelerator mass spectrometer one, and each were given artefacts of dates known to the organizers, but 
unknown to the laboratories. The shock finding of this totally scientific trial was that the laboratories' actual 
margins of error were on average two or three times greater than the margins they claimed. Of the thirty-eight 
laboratories, only seven produced results that the organizers of the trial considered satisfactory, with those 
laboratories using the new accelerator mass spectrometer technique faring particularly badly. [Coghlan, A., 
"Unexpected errors affect dating techniques," New Scientist, 30 September 1989, p.26] Somewhat 
shamefully, the Oxford laboratory (who of course worked on the shroud), adroitly avoided getting caught up 
in this controversy by declining to take part. In this light their subsequent claim that the errors `should be 
laid at the doors of the laboratories that produced them' [Hedges, R., Director, Radiocarbon Accelerator 
Unit, University of Oxford, Letter to New Scientist, 14 October 1989, p. 69] can only be regarded as ringing 
more than a little hollow - somewhat akin to an athlete claiming he could have won an Olympic gold medal if 
only he had entered the race." (Wilson, I., "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," 
Doubleday: London, 1991, p.175)

28/05/2007
"What seems unavoidable, as has been candidly pointed out by Professor Murdoch Baxter of the Scottish 
Universities Research and Reactor Centre, East Kilbride, is that `other unaccounted-for sources of error 
occur during the processing and analysis of samples [italics mine].' [Coghlan, A., "Unexpected errors affect 
dating techniques," New Scientist, 30 September 1989, p.26] Just what those unaccounted for sources of 
error might be is undoubtedly the hardest question to answer. Quite definite is that there are varieties of 
contamination that can affect the reliability of carbon-dating readings. Although pre-treatment, involving 
cleaning of materials to be carbon dated, is standard procedure, and was certainly carried out with maximum 
possible thoroughness in the case of the shroud samples, doubts surround the extent to which this 
procedure can ever be 100 per cent effective, particularly in the case of highly porous materials, such as 
linen, which do not have the advantage of being able to be independently cross-checked by 
dendrochronology. As again remarked by Dr Sheridan Bowman, in her recent British Museum publication 
on radio-carbon dating: `Many materials used for preserving or conserving samples may be impossible to 
remove subsequently: do not use glues, biocides, ... [etc.]. Many ordinary packing materials such as paper, 
cardboard, cotton wool and string, contain carbon and are potential contaminants. Cigarette ash is also 
taboo.' [Bowman, S., "Radiocarbon Dating," British Museum Publications: London, 1990, p.56]" (Wilson, I., 
"Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London, 1991, pp.175-176. 
Emphasis original)

28/05/2007
"In the light of such concerns, the shroud's known history, that is, its universally accepted history 
subsequent to the mid-fourteenth century, provides an almost copy-book case of an object seriously 
unsuitable for carbon-dating. Quite aside from it having been subjected to centuries of smoke from burning 
candles, an equivalent surely to cigarette smoke, well-known also, not least from the scorches and patches it 
carries to this day, is that the shroud was involved in a serious fire in 1532. In this latter it came so close to 
destruction that the silver of its casket melted, destroying one corner of the cloth as it lay folded inside. 
Knowing that this process could only have happened at temperatures in excess of 960°C, silver's melting-
point, Manchester textile specialist John Tyrer has remarked: `In these circumstances moisture in the shroud 
would turn to steam, probably at superheat, trapped in the folds and layers of the shroud. Any 
contaminants on the cloth would be dissolved by the steam and forced not only into the weave and yarn, 
but also into the flax fibres' very lumen and molecular structure ... [They would] become part of the 
chemistry of the flax fibres themselves and would be impossible to remove satisfactorily by surface actants 
and ultrasonic cleaning.' [Tyrer, J., British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, 20 October 1988, p.11] 
Furthermore, two years after the fire the shroud was sewn onto a backing made up from three portions of 
sixteenth-century holland cloth. Inevitably this linen must contain carbon with equally as much 
contamination potential as the paper, cardboard and cotton wool mentioned by Dr Bowman. And it has now 
been in the closest contact with the shroud for over four hundred and fifty years." (Wilson, I., "Holy Faces, 
Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London, 1991, pp.176-177)

28/05/2007
"Another area of concern derives from the fact that the sample as used for the 1988 carbon dating was taken 
from one edge of the shroud, precisely where the cloth would have received maximum handling from being 
held up during its many expositions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nor would this have been 
the only contamination danger from such occasions. In 1615, for instance, St Francis de Sales was one of 
three bishops who held up the shroud before the people on a very hot day, and recorded how he was 
embarrassed to see perspiration from his forehead drip onto the shroud. Who knows how many similar 
instances have gone totally unrecorded?" (Wilson, I., "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True 
Likeness," Doubleday: London, 1991, p.177)

28/05/2007
"Yet the force of these and similar contamination arguments has been fiercely contested by Professor 
Edward Hall, the recently-retired director of the Oxford laboratory. He has argued: `Calculations show that a 
modern contamination amounting to 65 per cent of the mass of the shroud would be necessary to give a 
date of 1350 to a fabric originally dating from the time of Christ ... We believe that any such contamination 
would have been less than 0.1 per cent.' [Hall, E.T., Letter to Textile Horizons, January 1990] The weak 
point of Hall's argument, however, is that there still undoubtedly has to be some serious and as yet 
unaccounted-for explanation for the substantial discrepancies already noted in recent carbon datings like 
Lindow Man. Furthermore the Zurich laboratory is reliably known to have erred by up to a 1000 years in its 
dating of a sample during the inter-comparison trial conducted by the British Museum in 1985, an error that 
was apparently due to their failure to remove a certain unidentified source of contamination.' [Burleigh, R. et 
al., "An Inter-comparison of some AMS and Small Gas Counter Laboratories," Radiocarbon, Vol. 28, 1976, 
pp. 571-577] So on the basis of Professor Hall's calculations, are we to suppose that a laboratory as 
scrupulous as Zurich could have left some 50 per cent contamination in this instance?" (Wilson, I., "Holy 
Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London, 1991, pp.177-178. Emphasis 
original)

28/05/2007
"Also to be discounted is the argument that the credibility of the shroud carbon dating is hugely reinforced 
by having been arrived at by three theoretically independent laboratories. This is totally vitiated by the fact 
that as users of Gove's accelerator mass spectrometer technique all three laboratories are clones of each 
other. Furthermore, instead of having received samples taken from different areas of the shroud, they all 
received sections of a single portion taken from one edge of the cloth. Effectively they were almost bound to 
achieve the same result, a weakness of the original decision on the choice of laboratories as made in Turin." 
(Wilson, I., "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London, 1991, 
p.178)

28/05/2007
"All this is not to argue that contamination was the source of an error in the carbon dating, if indeed such 
an error occurred. Other possibilities have been cited, including the idea that if the image on the shroud was 
caused by the release of some form of energy at Jesus's resurrection, then this same energy-release may 
have altered the shroud's carbon 14 isotope content to make it appear younger than it is. In the words of one 
correspondent to the British journal New Scientist: `If energy released in the resurrection process 
activated an extra 18 per cent of carbon 14 compared to that present naturally in the cloth, the shroud, 
although being 2000 years old, would appear to be only 650 years old. And it is certainly possible to 
produce that amount of carbon 14 via a short burst of high energy.' [Kelly, B., Letter to New Scientist, 
22 September 1988]" (Wilson, I., "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," 
Doubleday: London, 1991, p.178)

28/05/2007
"Whether, therefore, there has or has not been some error in respect of the shroud carbon dating, what is 
undeniable is that the process of carbon dating, despite all the ultra-scientific precision with which it is 
associated, can and does err in its results. It should be regarded as tool, not arbiter, and should never be 
mistaken for the latter. As has been very cogently remarked by the former Biblical archaeologist Dr Eugenia 
Nitowski: `In any form of enquiry or scientific discipline, it is the weight of evidence which must be 
considered conclusive: In archaeology, if there are ten lines of evidence, carbon dating being one of them, 
and it conflicts with the other nine, there is little hesitation to throw out the carbon date as inaccurate ...' 
[Nitowski, E., Private communication]" (Wilson, I., "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True 
Likeness," Doubleday: London, 1991, pp.178-179)

29/05/2007
"The Evidence of Carbon-dating At this period opinion hardened on both sides. Demands were 
increasingly heard for the cloth to undergo what was seen by many as the ultimate and definitive test, the 
dating of the cloth by measuring its carbon-14 content. Tiny amounts of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 
are absorbed by all living things, and over time this decays at a fixed rate; calculating the rate of decay of 
the carbon-14 in an object theoretically permits the approximate time in history in which the object was alive 
to be fixed. Popularly, the accuracy of radiocarbon dating was held to be more or less absolute, and 
supporters and detractors of the Shroud alike believed that the test would settle the argument once and for 
all. The Church finally agreed to the test. In April 1988 tiny samples of the cloth were taken, and forwarded 
to laboratories in Tucson, Arizona, in Oxford, and in Zurich, in Switzerland. With the Shroud samples went 
fragments of other ancient fabrics, whose ages were already known, to act as controls. The tests were co-
ordinated by Dr Michael Tite of the British Museum. By the autumn all three laboratories had completed 
their work, and on 14 October the result was announced simultaneously in Turin, by Cardinal Ballestero, for 
the Church, and in London, by Dr Tite, for the three laboratories. The flax from which the linen of the Shroud 
had been woven had been harvested some time between 1260 and 1390. Around the world, the Turin Shroud 
was denounced as a `forgery' by the media." (Hulse, T.G., "The Holy Shroud," Weidenfeld & Nicolson: 
London, 1997, p.28. Emphasis original)

29/05/2007
"Almost immediately these tests, which should have settled the matter, themselves became a matter of 
controversy. The results had been leaked weeks before 14 October and persons not authorized to participate 
at the testings had been admitted: in both instances breaking the protocol agreed to beforehand. Far from it 
having been a blind testing, Dr Paul Damon of Tucson admitted that the distinctive weave of the Shroud 
had made it easy to recognize. For many, the most disturbing aspect of the whole thing was perhaps the glee 
with which certain scientists publicly exulted over the downfall of the Shroud. As Professor Hall of the 
Oxford laboratory told the press on 14 October, `There was a multi-million-pound business in making 
forgeries during the fourteenth century. Someone just got a bit of linen, faked it up, and flogged it'. No 
mention of the unique and inexplicable nature of the image, which has never been reproduced satisfactorily. 
If nothing else, this contemptuous, and contemptible, statement demonstrates how thoroughly certain 
upholders of a rigid scientific orthodoxy had been rattled by the mystery of the Shroud. In fact, it rapidly 
became clear that, apart from the scientists directly involved, almost no one was satisfied with the tests. 
Many believers found that the results did not disturb their belief, and said so; others felt that the tests 
themselves were faulty or improperly conducted (though there is no evidence to substantiate this), and 
wanted a re-testing - especially after it became widely known that all the radiocarbon dates published with 
the authority of the British Museum between 1980 and 1984 had been incorrect." (Hulse, T.G., "The Holy 
Shroud," Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 1997, pp.31-32)

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