The only aspect of this post which isn't shrouded is the shroud, which is an undoubted fake. The only question that remains, as Martin54 points out, is whether it's a fake fake.
First, nobody but nobody who is making a serious attempt to merge accounts, as you put it, is going to have the Magi in the stable. Half-assed Christmas legendry aside, anyone who actually reads the text knows that the Magi found Mary and Jesus in a house, and there's a strong, strong implication that he was no longer a newborn--probably more like between 1 and 2 in age. The star plays no role in the shepherd story, and in the Magi story its "guiding" is considerably more limited than you imply--the star seems to have appeared once (to get the Magi up and on the road, possibly using the terms of astrology rather than the Sunday School notion of a light traveling across the sky) and then again as they left Jerusalem, which is only 5 to 6 miles away. Assuming they were mounted, we're looking at maybe an hour, allowing for kerfuffle on both ends? So let's call it one error and a bit of misleading, shall we?
The whole point of my pastiche was to point out, at an absurd level, what the potential consequences are of simply conflating the various gospel accounts. Of course no "serious" person would go to such extremes.
Your outline of the travels of the holy family is essentially correct, though you leave out one jaunt to Jerusalem at age 40 days. I'm not sure why you consider this ... itinerary... so ridiculous. It strikes me as entirely possible, especially when you consider it took place over the course of several years. (Have you ever traveled with a very young child? Shudder)
But the whole point is that the accounts in Matthew and Luke are almost completely different. Just about the only thing that they have in common is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. IMHO, stitching together a single narrative from them undermines and muddles the different narratives that they are presenting.
As in I couldn't rationally possibly have been more specific as to why The Shroud™ is a fraud.
To my mind, you are equating "not genuine" with "fraud" - which implies a deliberate attempt to cheat people. I am not sure you have proved that.
It seems to me that there are a number of other options and until we get more clarity on HOW the Shroud was created, it is difficult to make a judgement on whether it was really a "fraud". Whilst it is possible that it was created specifically to fool the gullible and earn someone some money, it is also possible that the image may have been created naturally or accidentally and only afterwards became a focus for devotion.
Even if you accept that the dating of the Shroud is correct, you are still left with the puzzle that it is utterly unlike anything else being produced in that period.
I notice many "fake" and "irrationality" comments, but little justification. In my opinion, these ideas are coming from the philosophies of naturalism and so-called "rationalism" which hold that violations of the natural laws of the universe are not possible. Miracles, which by definition, violate nature's laws, never have taken place and never will.
So it is not the scientific discoveries which have been made about the Shroud that determine the naturalists' opinions. Those findings must be the illegitimate postulations of religious fanatics. Such allegations have been repeatedly made against the STuRP team by skeptics.
No pigments, paints, dyes or stains have been found on the fibrils [of the Shroud.]
It is clear that there has been direct contact of the Shroud with a body, which explains certain features such as scourge marks, as well as blood.
Thus, the answer to the question of how the image was produced or what produced the image remains, now, as it has in the past, a mystery.
We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist.
Prof. John Jackson was the leader of the STuRP team and one of the few Catholics on the team. Skeptics noticed that he wore a small cross on a chain around his neck and extrapolated that fact to mean that the whole STuRP team had a religious agenda.
Actually, the STuRP team expected to be able to solve the mystery of the Shroud's image in two or three days and then go home. That did not happen. STuRP's conclusions are the result of five days of evidence gathering with state of the art scientific equipment and of two years of analyzing that evidence with the support of many colleagues.
The STuRP team continues to be branded as religious zealots because they "failed" to determine how the Shroud's image was (supposedly) created in the 13th or 14th century.
As in I couldn't rationally possibly have been more specific as to why The Shroud™ is a fraud.
To my mind, you are equating "not genuine" with "fraud" - which implies a deliberate attempt to cheat people. I am not sure you have proved that.
It seems to me that there are a number of other options and until we get more clarity on HOW the Shroud was created, it is difficult to make a judgement on whether it was really a "fraud". Whilst it is possible that it was created specifically to fool the gullible and earn someone some money, it is also possible that the image may have been created naturally or accidentally and only afterwards became a focus for devotion.
Even if you accept that the dating of the Shroud is correct, you are still left with the puzzle that it is utterly unlike anything else being produced in that period.
First, nobody but nobody who is making a serious attempt to merge accounts, as you put it, is going to have the Magi in the stable. Half-assed Christmas legendry aside, anyone who actually reads the text knows that the Magi found Mary and Jesus in a house, and there's a strong, strong implication that he was no longer a newborn--probably more like between 1 and 2 in age. The star plays no role in the shepherd story, and in the Magi story its "guiding" is considerably more limited than you imply--the star seems to have appeared once (to get the Magi up and on the road, possibly using the terms of astrology rather than the Sunday School notion of a light traveling across the sky) and then again as they left Jerusalem, which is only 5 to 6 miles away. Assuming they were mounted, we're looking at maybe an hour, allowing for kerfuffle on both ends? So let's call it one error and a bit of misleading, shall we?
The whole point of my pastiche was to point out, at an absurd level, what the potential consequences are of simply conflating the various gospel accounts. Of course no "serious" person would go to such extremes.
Your outline of the travels of the holy family is essentially correct, though you leave out one jaunt to Jerusalem at age 40 days. I'm not sure why you consider this ... itinerary... so ridiculous. It strikes me as entirely possible, especially when you consider it took place over the course of several years. (Have you ever traveled with a very young child? Shudder)
But the whole point is that the accounts in Matthew and Luke are almost completely different. Just about the only thing that they have in common is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. IMHO, stitching together a single narrative from them undermines and muddles the different narratives that they are presenting.
But why make it absurd? You construct a straw man and rag on it. That gets us no forwarder in our discussion, it just shows that you like to mock what you dislike. It also has the disadvantage of making me do more work--you construct your straw man, I say that it is inaccurate, and you demand that I point out all the inaccuracies, which I do, and then you say it was just a joke. That's ten minutes of my life I won't get back, you rat.
As for "nothing in common," I suppose I'll be an idiot and sacrifice another ten minutes to this. You have three common characters, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. You have the birthplace (Bethlehem); the fact that the child is divine; the humble circumstances of the child's family; the fact that the birth was (socially speaking) "premature" and thus a possible source of scandal; the fact of Joseph's nonpaternity; the appearance and involvement of angels; the involvement of the Holy Spirit in the conception; the whole point about naming the child "Jesus"; Mary's virginity; the arrival of unexpected outsiders as visitors (unconnected with the family and not the sort of people they'd be expected to know, anyway). the identification of this child as the Messiah/Christ; the identification of him as the Davidic king of the Jews. There's probably lots more, but I'm tired now.
After Teddy Hall declared that his 14C lab had proven that the Shroud was medieval, that lab received a one million pound grant. The other 14C labs also had a serious financial stake in the purported outcome.
Prior to the analysis of the Shroud's 14C evidence, Prof. Phillips of Harvard's high energy physics laboratory wrote a letter to the British Museum in which he advised that a neutron radiation event could have enhanced the Shroud's 14C content and that the Museum ought to consider this possibility when it analyzed the Shroud's 14 C data.
Prof. Hedges of Oxford's 14C lab replied that to postulate a neutron radiation event would be equivalent to postulating a miracle and that the labs were not going to do that. Subsequently, the British Museum did not make any attempt to see if the Shroud's 14C data was a better fit for a neutron radiation event than it was for a date. In fact, the Museum had that data "massaged" so that it could pass the mathematical tests that are used to validate such evidence as indicating a date.
Scientific evidence sometimes has a footprint. For instance, the dirt that is found on the heel area of the Shroud is travertine aragonite, and it has a trace element signature that has only been found in one place in the world.
The Shroud's 14C evidence also has such a footprint: as the piece of the Shroud sample tested for 14C becomes closer to the Shroud's image, its 14C content increases.
Rucker projects that a sample taken from the center of the Shroud close to its image will have a very great 14C content, so much so that if a date were to be assigned it would have to be several millenniums into the future.
In 1988 the Church offered the 14C labs samples from the Shroud's center, but all of the labs declined to receive such samples for 14C testing. If such samples had been tested, we would not be having this conversation.
After Teddy Hall declared that his 14C lab had proven that the Shroud was medieval, that lab received a one million pound grant. The other 14C labs also had a serious financial stake in the purported outcome.
Do you know WHAT Teddy Hall is? I'm sorry, I'm on the edge of the pit of laughter. Sorry.
Prof. Hall was the head of Oxford's 14C laboratory. According to Wilson, he managed to set himself up as judge, jury, and executioner of the Shroud and was very proud of that so-called accomplishment.
I just keep getting confused. When we talk about it being a medieval forgery and someone says 14C I think it's a 14th century medieval forgery. It's not nitpicking. Good orthography prevents confusion and mistakes.
I just keep getting confused. When we talk about it being a medieval forgery and someone says 14C I think it's a 14th century medieval forgery. It's not nitpicking. Good orthography prevents confusion and mistakes.
My apologies. I used to use C14 for carbon-14 dating, but Alan started using 14C perhaps as C14 is a closer approximation to C14th!
After Teddy Hall declared that his 14C lab had proven that the Shroud was medieval, that lab received a one million pound grant. The other 14C labs also had a serious financial stake in the purported outcome.
Do you know WHAT Teddy Hall is? I'm sorry, I'm on the edge of the pit of laughter. Sorry.
No, give him that one. Edward Hall was known as Teddy:
After Teddy Hall declared that his 14C lab had proven that the Shroud was medieval, that lab received a one million pound grant. The other 14C labs also had a serious financial stake in the purported outcome.
Oxford’s Teddy Hall is a person?
And from whom did the lab receive a million pound grant?
Prof. Hall was the head of Oxford's 14C laboratory. According to Wilson, he managed to set himself up as judge, jury, and executioner of the Shroud and was very proud of that so-called accomplishment.
Teddy Hall is St. Edmund's College, Oxford. But yes, I'm sure Edward Thomas Hall, CBE, Hon. FBA, FSA, chemist and unequalled horologist of New College, Oxford was known as Teddy. Another of his so-called accomplishments was dispatching another fraud: Piltdown Man.
And who are you, to question the integrity of such a remarkable man and institution, by the way?
Oh and first class, @TurquoiseTastic, first class. The obvious only genius sees.
Prof. Hall was the head of Oxford's 14C laboratory. According to Wilson, he managed to set himself up as judge, jury, and executioner of the Shroud and was very proud of that so-called accomplishment.
Edward Thomas Hall,
And who are you, to question the integrity of such a remarkable man and institution, by the way?
Did you not notice my reference to Shroud Historian Ian Wilson? And I did not say that Prof. Hall lacked integrity. According to Wilson, Hall had a great prejudice against the idea that the Holy Shroud might be authentic, and he used that prejudice to poison the academic world against the Shroud.
I don't understand the neutron flux idea. Why would God perform a miracle that made it look as though the shroud were a fake?
An object analysis of the Shroud's 14C data results in that data not being able to pass the mathematical tests used to certify 14C evidence as being valid for dating purposes.
But the 14C labs together with the British Museum had an agenda to prove the Shroud a fake, so they averaged "outlier" data with the more central readings in order to allow the Shroud's data to pass statistical analysis.
There is an old saying, "Be careful what you ask for."
YHWH also arranged for the Shroud to appear in Western Europe without provenance.
The de Charney family would not reveal how they had acquired it other than to say "as a spoil of war" and "a reward for valor." Students of the Shroud have learned that the de Charneys had good reasons for their reticence, but the Shroud's enemies don't bother to study these things.
Rationalists and naturalists pride themselves on their "objective" minds. The miracles of the OT, such as the sun moving backwards by several hours, are impossible fairy tales. They deny YHWH's power and even His existence. They are opponents of YHWH and have been tricked by Him.
Prof. Hall was the head of Oxford's 14C laboratory. According to Wilson, he managed to set himself up as judge, jury, and executioner of the Shroud and was very proud of that so-called accomplishment.
Teddy Hall is St. Edmund's College, Oxford. But yes, I'm sure Edward Thomas Hall, CBE, Hon. FBA, FSA, chemist and unequalled horologist of New College, Oxford was known as Teddy.
Indeed, he went by the name "Teddy Hall". A colleague worked with him early in his (my colleagues) career when he was doing low background 14C analysis at Harwell, which would have been around the time of the Turin Shroud analysis. Though Teddy Hall was respected, and the lab in Oxford was doing good work, his was but one of the labs involved in the Shroud project and Teddy Hall himself was certainly not an unquestioned authority in 14C dating - his tendency to get side-tracked on interesting but unrelated projects tended to put him in the "eccentric outsider" category of academia, setting up his own instrumentation business was very unorthodox at the time (he developed early field survey magnetometry, a technique familiar to any fan of Time Team, using beer bottles and copper wire, or so the story goes). He was by all accounts a bit of a character, and I suppose it's possible he saw himself as "judge, jury and executioner" on the Turin Shroud dating, but it wouldn't be a position his peers would have given him.
[and, as an aside, I use '14C' because that's the order nuclear physicists would use, except we'd put the 14 in superscript which is a bit of a bother in this medium]
Prof. Hall was the head of Oxford's 14C laboratory. According to Wilson, he managed to set himself up as judge, jury, and executioner of the Shroud and was very proud of that so-called accomplishment.
Edward Thomas Hall,
And who are you, to question the integrity of such a remarkable man and institution, by the way?
Did you not notice my reference to Shroud Historian Ian Wilson? And I did not say that Prof. Hall lacked integrity. According to Wilson, Hall had a great prejudice against the idea that the Holy Shroud might be authentic, and he used that prejudice to poison the academic world against the Shroud.
I don't understand the neutron flux idea. Why would God perform a miracle that made it look as though the shroud were a fake?
An object analysis of the Shroud's 14C data results in that data not being able to pass the mathematical tests used to certify 14C evidence as being valid for dating purposes.
But the 14C labs together with the British Museum had an agenda to prove the Shroud a fake, so they averaged "outlier" data with the more central readings in order to allow the Shroud's data to pass statistical analysis.
There is an old saying, "Be careful what you ask for."
YHWH also arranged for the Shroud to appear in Western Europe without provenance.
The de Charney family would not reveal how they had acquired it other than to say "as a spoil of war" and "a reward for valor." Students of the Shroud have learned that the de Charneys had good reasons for their reticence, but the Shroud's enemies don't bother to study these things.
Rationalists and naturalists pride themselves on their "objective" minds. The miracles of the OT, such as the sun moving backwards by several hours, are impossible fairy tales. They deny YHWH's power and even His existence. They are opponents of YHWH and have been tricked by Him.
Is that critique from at least Oxbridge level peers?
Prof. Hall was the head of Oxford's 14C laboratory. According to Wilson, he managed to set himself up as judge, jury, and executioner of the Shroud and was very proud of that so-called accomplishment.
Teddy Hall is St. Edmund's College, Oxford. But yes, I'm sure Edward Thomas Hall, CBE, Hon. FBA, FSA, chemist and unequalled horologist of New College, Oxford was known as Teddy.
Indeed, he went by the name "Teddy Hall". A colleague worked with him early in his (my colleagues) career when he was doing low background 14C analysis at Harwell, which would have been around the time of the Turin Shroud analysis. Though Teddy Hall was respected, and the lab in Oxford was doing good work, his was but one of the labs involved in the Shroud project and Teddy Hall himself was certainly not an unquestioned authority in 14C dating - his tendency to get side-tracked on interesting but unrelated projects tended to put him in the "eccentric outsider" category of academia, setting up his own instrumentation business was very unorthodox at the time (he developed early field survey magnetometry, a technique familiar to any fan of Time Team, using beer bottles and copper wire, or so the story goes). He was by all accounts a bit of a character, and I suppose it's possible he saw himself as "judge, jury and executioner" on the Turin Shroud dating, but it wouldn't be a position his peers would have given him.
[and, as an aside, I use '14C' because that's the order nuclear physicists would use, except we'd put the 14 in superscript which is a bit of a bother in this medium]
¹⁴C there you go Alan! Excellent background... information, thank you.
I don't understand the neutron flux idea. Why would God perform a miracle that made it look as though the shroud were a fake?
An object analysis of the Shroud's 14C data results in that data not being able to pass the mathematical tests used to certify 14C evidence as being valid for dating purposes.* But the 14C labs together with the British Museum had an agenda to prove the Shroud a fake, so they averaged "outlier" data with the more central readings in order to allow the Shroud's data to pass statistical analysis.
There is an old saying, "Be careful what you ask for."
YHWH also arranged for the Shroud to appear in Western Europe without provenance. The de Charney family would not reveal how they had acquired it other than to say "as a spoil of war" and "a reward for valor." (Students of the Shroud now know that the de Charneys had good reasons for their reticence, but the Shroud's skeptics don't bother to learn these things.)
Rationalists and naturalists pride themselves on their "objective" minds. The miracles of the OT, such as the sun moving backwards by several hours, are impossible fairy tales. they deny YHWH's power and even His existence.
The miracle of the image on the Shroud contradicts rationalist and naturalist theologies and puts their adherents to shame. To bad that they are unable to see it.
An object analysis of the Shroud's 14C data results in that data not being able to pass the mathematical tests used to certify 14C evidence as being valid for dating purposes.* But the 14C labs together with the British Museum had an agenda to prove the Shroud a fake, so they averaged "outlier" data with the more central readings in order to allow the Shroud's data to pass statistical analysis.
It looks like the * there was pointing to some missing footnote. Do you happen to know what statistical tests would be applied to 14C measurements to validate the results?
I know in my work I very regularly get individual aliquots (small portions of the sample, we run very many such aliquots to check homogeneity of the results) which give a "too old" date. There are good physical reasons why this might happen, and there are various robust statistics, age models, and other statistical analyses that are conducted to generate a best possible age for the sample (including, of course, uncertainties and confidence limits). A statistical analysis that removes outliers could be entirely appropriate. It's not as though this would be the only sample with such outliers, statistical methods to account for them would be a routine part of 14C dating.
Prof. John Jackson was the leader of the STuRP team and one of the few Catholics on the team. Skeptics noticed that he wore a small cross on a chain around his neck and extrapolated that fact to mean that the whole STuRP team had a religious agenda.
Actually, the STuRP team expected to be able to solve the mystery of the Shroud's image in two or three days and then go home. That did not happen. STuRP's conclusions are the esult of five days of evidence gathering with state of the art scientific equipment and of two years of analyzing that evidence with the support of many colleagues.
It is not true that the researchers expected to solve the mystery in two or three days. If that were true they would not have arranged to have the shroud available for five days.
As I mentioned earlier, the idea for the research originated among scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They were studying the nature of images, and the image on the shroud was unique. The study was not carried out by the JPL, but many of the researchers belonged to the JPL.
Two of my friends were involved in the hands-on research. They took many photographs using highly specialized optical equipment. I never asked them what their specific research revealed.
My friends were Christians, but they pursued their work following generally accepted scientific research protocols.
That's what Heller said, "Two or three days," regardless of the five days allotted.
This assumes that the researchers were drawing conclusions as they went along. According to my friends, this is not the way it happened.
There was a list of tests that various researchers wanted to carry out. Five days were needed to carry out these tests. (If they had had more time, they would have carried out more tests.) No one intended to start drawing conclusions until they had all the data.
YHWH also arranged for the Shroud to appear in Western Europe without provenance.
If God wants everyone to think it’s a fake, who are you to defy his will?
Those with a bit of faith are gifted with more. for those who have none, even what theyhave will be taken away .. . .
Why does God want everyone to think it’s a fake?
This is starting to sound like one of those Nigerian prince scam emails, which are intentionally made to look suspicious so that only the especially gullible will respond with their bank account details.
YHWH also arranged for the Shroud to appear in Western Europe without provenance.
If God wants everyone to think it’s a fake, who are you to defy his will?
Those with a bit of faith are gifted with more. for those who have none, even what theyhave will be taken away .. . .
Why does God want everyone to think it’s a fake?
This is starting to sound like one of those Nigerian prince scam emails, which are intentionally made to look suspicious so that only the especially gullible will respond with their bank account details.
But he DID give me the $21,000,000.49! I just can't spend it at the moment.
Comments
The question rermains " How was it made ?"
To encourage the not-so-faithful, or to convert the faithless?
£
The whole point of my pastiche was to point out, at an absurd level, what the potential consequences are of simply conflating the various gospel accounts. Of course no "serious" person would go to such extremes.
But the whole point is that the accounts in Matthew and Luke are almost completely different. Just about the only thing that they have in common is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. IMHO, stitching together a single narrative from them undermines and muddles the different narratives that they are presenting.
To my mind, you are equating "not genuine" with "fraud" - which implies a deliberate attempt to cheat people. I am not sure you have proved that.
It seems to me that there are a number of other options and until we get more clarity on HOW the Shroud was created, it is difficult to make a judgement on whether it was really a "fraud". Whilst it is possible that it was created specifically to fool the gullible and earn someone some money, it is also possible that the image may have been created naturally or accidentally and only afterwards became a focus for devotion.
Even if you accept that the dating of the Shroud is correct, you are still left with the puzzle that it is utterly unlike anything else being produced in that period.
So it is not the scientific discoveries which have been made about the Shroud that determine the naturalists' opinions. Those findings must be the illegitimate postulations of religious fanatics. Such allegations have been repeatedly made against the STuRP team by skeptics.
Here is the summary of STuRP's conclusions:
https://shroud.com/78conclu.htm
No pigments, paints, dyes or stains have been found on the fibrils [of the Shroud.]
It is clear that there has been direct contact of the Shroud with a body, which explains certain features such as scourge marks, as well as blood.
Thus, the answer to the question of how the image was produced or what produced the image remains, now, as it has in the past, a mystery.
We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist.
Prof. John Jackson was the leader of the STuRP team and one of the few Catholics on the team. Skeptics noticed that he wore a small cross on a chain around his neck and extrapolated that fact to mean that the whole STuRP team had a religious agenda.
Actually, the STuRP team expected to be able to solve the mystery of the Shroud's image in two or three days and then go home. That did not happen. STuRP's conclusions are the result of five days of evidence gathering with state of the art scientific equipment and of two years of analyzing that evidence with the support of many colleagues.
The STuRP team continues to be branded as religious zealots because they "failed" to determine how the Shroud's image was (supposedly) created in the 13th or 14th century.
Even?
But why make it absurd? You construct a straw man and rag on it. That gets us no forwarder in our discussion, it just shows that you like to mock what you dislike. It also has the disadvantage of making me do more work--you construct your straw man, I say that it is inaccurate, and you demand that I point out all the inaccuracies, which I do, and then you say it was just a joke. That's ten minutes of my life I won't get back, you rat.
As for "nothing in common," I suppose I'll be an idiot and sacrifice another ten minutes to this. You have three common characters, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. You have the birthplace (Bethlehem); the fact that the child is divine; the humble circumstances of the child's family; the fact that the birth was (socially speaking) "premature" and thus a possible source of scandal; the fact of Joseph's nonpaternity; the appearance and involvement of angels; the involvement of the Holy Spirit in the conception; the whole point about naming the child "Jesus"; Mary's virginity; the arrival of unexpected outsiders as visitors (unconnected with the family and not the sort of people they'd be expected to know, anyway). the identification of this child as the Messiah/Christ; the identification of him as the Davidic king of the Jews. There's probably lots more, but I'm tired now.
Prior to the analysis of the Shroud's 14C evidence, Prof. Phillips of Harvard's high energy physics laboratory wrote a letter to the British Museum in which he advised that a neutron radiation event could have enhanced the Shroud's 14C content and that the Museum ought to consider this possibility when it analyzed the Shroud's 14 C data.
Prof. Hedges of Oxford's 14C lab replied that to postulate a neutron radiation event would be equivalent to postulating a miracle and that the labs were not going to do that. Subsequently, the British Museum did not make any attempt to see if the Shroud's 14C data was a better fit for a neutron radiation event than it was for a date. In fact, the Museum had that data "massaged" so that it could pass the mathematical tests that are used to validate such evidence as indicating a date.
Scientific evidence sometimes has a footprint. For instance, the dirt that is found on the heel area of the Shroud is travertine aragonite, and it has a trace element signature that has only been found in one place in the world.
The Shroud's 14C evidence also has such a footprint: as the piece of the Shroud sample tested for 14C becomes closer to the Shroud's image, its 14C content increases.
Rucker projects that a sample taken from the center of the Shroud close to its image will have a very great 14C content, so much so that if a date were to be assigned it would have to be several millenniums into the future.
In 1988 the Church offered the 14C labs samples from the Shroud's center, but all of the labs declined to receive such samples for 14C testing. If such samples had been tested, we would not be having this conversation.
Do you know WHAT Teddy Hall is? I'm sorry, I'm on the edge of the pit of laughter. Sorry.
My apologies. I used to use C14 for carbon-14 dating, but Alan started using 14C perhaps as C14 is a closer approximation to C14th!
No, give him that one. Edward Hall was known as Teddy:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/professor-edward-hall-9260740.html
And from whom did the lab receive a million pound grant?
Teddy Hall is St. Edmund's College, Oxford. But yes, I'm sure Edward Thomas Hall, CBE, Hon. FBA, FSA, chemist and unequalled horologist of New College, Oxford was known as Teddy. Another of his so-called accomplishments was dispatching another fraud: Piltdown Man.
And who are you, to question the integrity of such a remarkable man and institution, by the way?
Oh and first class, @TurquoiseTastic, first class. The obvious only genius sees.
An object analysis of the Shroud's 14C data results in that data not being able to pass the mathematical tests used to certify 14C evidence as being valid for dating purposes.
But the 14C labs together with the British Museum had an agenda to prove the Shroud a fake, so they averaged "outlier" data with the more central readings in order to allow the Shroud's data to pass statistical analysis.
There is an old saying, "Be careful what you ask for."
YHWH also arranged for the Shroud to appear in Western Europe without provenance.
The de Charney family would not reveal how they had acquired it other than to say "as a spoil of war" and "a reward for valor." Students of the Shroud have learned that the de Charneys had good reasons for their reticence, but the Shroud's enemies don't bother to study these things.
Rationalists and naturalists pride themselves on their "objective" minds. The miracles of the OT, such as the sun moving backwards by several hours, are impossible fairy tales. They deny YHWH's power and even His existence. They are opponents of YHWH and have been tricked by Him.
[and, as an aside, I use '14C' because that's the order nuclear physicists would use, except we'd put the 14 in superscript which is a bit of a bother in this medium]
Ian Wilson is not an historian.
Is that critique from at least Oxbridge level peers?
¹⁴C there you go Alan! Excellent background... information, thank you.
This whole thread is, I fear, an elaborate hoax - just like the shroud...
An object analysis of the Shroud's 14C data results in that data not being able to pass the mathematical tests used to certify 14C evidence as being valid for dating purposes.* But the 14C labs together with the British Museum had an agenda to prove the Shroud a fake, so they averaged "outlier" data with the more central readings in order to allow the Shroud's data to pass statistical analysis.
There is an old saying, "Be careful what you ask for."
YHWH also arranged for the Shroud to appear in Western Europe without provenance. The de Charney family would not reveal how they had acquired it other than to say "as a spoil of war" and "a reward for valor." (Students of the Shroud now know that the de Charneys had good reasons for their reticence, but the Shroud's skeptics don't bother to learn these things.)
Rationalists and naturalists pride themselves on their "objective" minds. The miracles of the OT, such as the sun moving backwards by several hours, are impossible fairy tales. they deny YHWH's power and even His existence.
The miracle of the image on the Shroud contradicts rationalist and naturalist theologies and puts their adherents to shame. To bad that they are unable to see it.
Those with a bit of faith are gifted with more. for those who have none, even what theyhave will be taken away .. . .
I know in my work I very regularly get individual aliquots (small portions of the sample, we run very many such aliquots to check homogeneity of the results) which give a "too old" date. There are good physical reasons why this might happen, and there are various robust statistics, age models, and other statistical analyses that are conducted to generate a best possible age for the sample (including, of course, uncertainties and confidence limits). A statistical analysis that removes outliers could be entirely appropriate. It's not as though this would be the only sample with such outliers, statistical methods to account for them would be a routine part of 14C dating.
It is not true that the researchers expected to solve the mystery in two or three days. If that were true they would not have arranged to have the shroud available for five days.
As I mentioned earlier, the idea for the research originated among scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They were studying the nature of images, and the image on the shroud was unique. The study was not carried out by the JPL, but many of the researchers belonged to the JPL.
Two of my friends were involved in the hands-on research. They took many photographs using highly specialized optical equipment. I never asked them what their specific research revealed.
My friends were Christians, but they pursued their work following generally accepted scientific research protocols.
But pathologically helpless.
Taken away...by whom?
That's not in Catch-22. Is it in Something Happened? I don't remember. Most likely in Good As Gold; I haven't read that. Must!
This assumes that the researchers were drawing conclusions as they went along. According to my friends, this is not the way it happened.
There was a list of tests that various researchers wanted to carry out. Five days were needed to carry out these tests. (If they had had more time, they would have carried out more tests.) No one intended to start drawing conclusions until they had all the data.
This is starting to sound like one of those Nigerian prince scam emails, which are intentionally made to look suspicious so that only the especially gullible will respond with their bank account details.
But he DID give me the $21,000,000.49! I just can't spend it at the moment.
Can I have one, too?