The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [54]
“So how did Rogers prove the 1988 carbon-14 sample was different from the main body of the Shroud?” Castle asked. “What was the methodology?”
Middagh answered slowly, trying to make sure he explained what Rogers had done so everyone in the room would understand. “In the paper Rogers published posthumously, he argued the 1978 STURP tests showed that the chemistry of the linen fibers taken from the main part of the Shroud differed from the 1988 radiocarbon samples in that the 1978 samples showed no sign of cotton having been interwoven with the original linen. In other words, the main body of the Shroud is completely made up of the original linen, with no cotton included in the weaving at all. Since linen is dye-resistant and cotton is not, the dye saturating the cotton was apparent to the eye under microscopic analysis, once interwoven cotton and linen fibers were compared. That there was dyed cotton in the 1988 sample proved to Rogers that the corner used to cut out the radiocarbon samples included the medieval reweaving. In other words, in the repairs made through the 1500s, sixteenth-century cotton was interwoven into first-century linen. That was the hypothesis that raised the possibility that the result of the carbon dating was wrong. The medieval cotton fibers interwoven into the sample could well have accounted for the carbon-14 test result that dated the Shroud somewhere around 1260 to 1390 A.D.”
“Weren’t there any samples for carbon-14 testing taken by STURP in 1978?” Castle asked.
“In 1978, the Church did not allow the STURP scientists to take samples for radiocarbon testing,” Middagh answered. “But Rogers applied a different test to determine the likely age of the linen in the main body of the Shroud. From the tests made on the Shroud’s linen, Rogers evaluated the rate of loss of vanillin in the linen fibers. Vanillin disappears in the thermal decomposition of lignin, a complex polymer that is in the cells of the flax plants used to make linen. The Dead Sea scroll linens, for instance, have lost all traces of vanillin. From this analysis, Rogers concluded that the linen in the main body of the Shroud also had lost vanillin. Hence the Shroud itself was much older than the carbon dating suggested, very possibly reaching back two thousand years to the time of Christ.”
“Why did Rogers wait so long after the 1988 radiocarbon tests were announced to publish his results?” Castle pressed. “I can understand why some in the Shroud research community may be having trouble with Rogers. I have to ask you again: How do you know Rogers didn’t just have a convenient change of opinion just before he died, as if he didn’t want to be on the wrong side of the bet just in case there was a God and the Shroud was authentic? Well-known atheists making similar conversions just before they die might not be as rare as you think.”
“If you knew Rogers, that is an especially good question,” Middagh said. “When Rogers was healthy, he was characteristically outspoken. Before his change of mind, Rogers had been famous for saying he did not believe in miracles that defied the laws of nature. So, when the carbon-14 results were first published, Rogers was happy to dismiss the Shroud as a hoax. Still, Rogers was a credible scientist and he published the results of his microchemical tests in a credible peer-reviewed journal, even if he published the results posthumously. In my mind, the questions Rogers raised still stand, at least until the Church allows other, more representative samples from the main body of the Shroud to be taken and carbon-14 tested.”
Morelli decided to jump in here, to support what Middagh was saying. “When Rogers published his results posthumously, it made a huge impact on the entire scientific community studying the Shroud, including me. When an outspoken expert like Rogers, who played a lead role in the 1978 STURP chemical analysis of the Shroud, publicly changed his mind on the accuracy of the radiocarbon dating, I began to doubt whether