Happy Easter

It's been cold and rainy here and I've spent most of the day in bed under the covers reading The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell. The novel deals with the Shroud of Turin, spinning a theory held by some that the reason there's no mention of the shroud before the middle ages is not that it's a medieval forgery but that it was taken to Edessa by one of the disciples and then made its way to Constantinople, later to be stolen by Catholic crusaders during the sack of that city in the fourth crusade and only then brought to Europe. But, the one thing these kinds of theories can't explain away is the date carbon testing has given the relic. As Mark Goodacre mentioned in a recent interview about the shroud ...

Vance Lipsey: Is there a better way to check the shroud than carbon dating? I've been told carbon dating is very inaccurate.

Goodacre: Actually, carbon dating is an excellent way to ascertain the date of an artifact. Many are disappointed, not surprisingly, that the shroud dated to between AD 1260 and 1390. I recall my own disappointment (but not surprise) on hearing the results back in 1988. But the scientists doing the carbon dating were not amateurs, and the samples were tested in three separate labs. Moreover, the carbon date cohered with other evidence that the shroud was a medieval forgery, like the fact that there is no evidence of its existence until the 14th century.

Cynthia Restivo: So I know the carbon dating was off, but wasn't it later shown that the piece of cloth used for the testing was a section that had been repaired after some fire damage or something? Which would explain why it dated different?

Goodacre: No, that's not been established. Those who defend the authenticity of the shroud often say the sample might have been taken from a part of the shroud that was repaired after it was damaged by fire in the 16th century. But this is special pleading. The scientists who took the sample knew what they were doing. Professor Christopher Ramsey noted that the unusual weave on the sample matched the weave on the rest of the shroud perfectly.

Strangely, both the people in the novel and people in real life seem not to care about the scientific evidence showing the shroud to be a fake. I don't understand that. But it's Easter and I'd rather think about what happened after Jesus left his burial shroud behind ....