The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [52]
“Yes, I have been working on what’s going to turn out to be a two-volume treatise for more than a decade,” Middagh confirmed. “My working title, Behold the Face of Jesus, says it all. I am convinced the Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ. I have brought with me some digital images that I used in the book.”
“Father Middagh is a Benedictine priest and he works from a monastery located in White Plains, New York,” Duncan explained. “By training, Father Middagh is a Ph.D. chemist who has taught chemistry at the university level. With that introduction, Dr. Castle, could you give us a brief update on Father Bartholomew’s condition?”
“Yes,” Castle said as he opened his medical file. “Father Bartholomew rested comfortably last night. He still has not recovered consciousness, yet I expect he will do so soon. From the CT scan and MRI tests that I had run yesterday, Father Bartholomew’s wounds appear to be recovering remarkably fast, just as we saw with the stigmata on his wrists. We will know more in a few hours.”
“Thank you,” Archbishop Duncan said seriously. “Our prayers are with you, Dr. Castle, and with Father Bartholomew.” Smoothly, Duncan shifted his attention to the subject of the meeting. “Dr. Castle, the pope has asked Father Middagh to join us as a resource to you on the Shroud. I suspect you can ask Father Middagh any question about the Shroud that you like. Where would you like to begin?”
“I want to start with the radioactive carbon-14 dating of the Shroud,” Castle said immediately. He wanted to know if there was any proof the Shroud was a medieval fake. That would help him sort out whether there was any possibility Father Bartholomew was manifesting the authentic Jesus Christ, or just some medieval artist’s idea of what Jesus looked like. “If I am correct, three separate carbon-dating tests have shown the Shroud was made somewhere around 1260 to 1390 A.D. If those results are correct, that would make the Shroud a medieval fake—maybe one of the best forgeries ever done in the history of art forgeries, but a medieval fake just the same.”
“You are right about the carbon-14 tests,” Middagh said. “But there was an important study published posthumously in 2005 by Raymond Rogers, who was a chemist and thermal analyst at Los Alamos. That study gives us reason to doubt the reliability of the carbon-14 tests. Ray Rogers was the director of chemical research for the Shroud of Turin Research Project in 1978. He was a personal friend of mine for many years. A year before he died, he submitted a paper to a peer-reviewed scientific journal; it was published after he died. Rogers basically argued that the cloth samples taken from the Shroud to be used in the radiocarbon testing were not representative of the main part of the Shroud, on which the image resides. Rogers argued that the 1988 samples came from a part of the Shroud that had been expertly rewoven sometime in the Middle Ages to repair damage to the Shroud.”
“Was Rogers’s analysis scientifically convincing?” Castle asked.
“Not everyone in the Shroud research community was persuaded, especially since Rogers dropped his opposition to the Shroud just before he died of cancer,” Middagh answered honestly. “I had quite a few conversations with Rogers before he died and I am convinced he underwent a change of heart that was more than some sort of a religious conversion after he knew he was sick. Those who were on the Shroud of Turin Research Project in 1978 remember Rogers as one of the original skeptics. Then, when the original carbon-14 tests were conducted, Ray was very outspoken that the tests proved the Shroud dated from the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. At the time of the carbon-dating tests, Roger openly announced he was confident the Shroud had been fabricated somewhere around 1260 to 1390 A.D.”
“What changed his mind?” Castle asked.
“As I said, Rogers became convinced that the