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Microchemists say 1988 dating of Shroud tested a newer patch, not the "much older" original
Continuing good news for those who believe in the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin—a retired chemist from the Los Alamos National Laboratory has published a peer-reviewed study declaring invalid the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the cloth (which dated it between 1260 and 1390).

The problem, writes Raymond N. Rogers, in the January 20 issue of Thermochimica Acta, is that the 1988 study tested a sample from a medieval patch, not the shroud itself.

"The radiocarbon sample had been dyed, most likely to match the color of the older, sepia-colored cloth," Rogers told Discovery News. "The sample was dyed using a technology that began to appear in Italy about the time the Crusaders' last bastion fell to the Mameluke Turks in 1291. … The radiocarbon sample cannot be older than about 1290, agreeing with the age determined by carbon-14 dating in 1988. However, the shroud itself is actually much older."

How much older? That's hard to tell, Rogers wrote.

The fact that vanillin can not be detected in the lignin on shroud fibers, Dead Sea scrolls linen, and other very old linens indicates that the shroud is quite old. A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggests that the shroud is between 1,300 and 3,000 years old. Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years.

"The presence of a patch on the shroud doesn't come as a surprise," says Discovery News. "The linen cloth has survived several blazes since its existence was first recorded in France in 1357, including a church fire in 1532. Badly damaged, it was then restored by nuns who patched burn holes and stitched the shroud to a reinforcing cloth that is now known as the Holland cloth."

Rogers also notes in a side comment that the apparent blood stains probably are blood of some sort: "Incidentally, the pyrolysis/ms spectra of samples from apparent blood spots showed hydroxyproline peaks at mass 131, a pyrolysis product of animal proteins." Here's that in a bit more plain English.

Scalia: 'Be fools for Christ'
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has been on a kind of speaking circuit of late. His American University debate with fellow justice Stephen Breyer (video) over whether foreign courts should be cited in American judicial decisions has received a fair bit of media attention, but the emphasis in his more recent speeches has been religion.

In a dinner address for the Ave Maria School of Law yesterday, Scalia discussed the three-prong "Lemon test" created by the Court in determining whether a law or practice unconstitutionally "establishes religion." Scalia didn't support throwing out the Lemon test, The Ann Arbor News reports.

"They are the means by which judicial arbitrariness is checked." But they must be rooted in the Constitution, he said. And when the Constitution itself is unclear, jurists must default to "the settled practices that the text represents." …

Scalia cited a 1970 Supreme Court case involving tax exemptions for houses of worship in New York. "Such exemptions had been around forever," said Scalia, but they don't pass the three tests because the houses of worship had gotten what amounted to favored treatment. Still, the court let the exemptions continue, pointing to long-standing history and tradition. "Those historic understandings are the raw data from which the rules should be constructed," Scalia said.

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January (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49