Queries & Comments

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There Are Ladies Present

Regarding the many shameless quips published in Queries & Comments, such as “BARboy,” a play on Playboy (Queries & Comments, BAR 24:06), I kindly remind you that there are women in your audience who have not forgotten how to blush.

Does Absence of Evidence Equal Evidence of Absence?

Your articles on the status of tenth-century Jerusalem seem to have aroused a flurry of letters opposed to the position of Margreet Steiner. As I am no archaeologist, I won’t presume to weigh in on the merits of this case. But I was struck by Professor Kenneth Mull’s announcement (Queries & Comments, BAR 24:06) that it is a “basic principle” of archaeological method that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” This is surely not—at least I hope it’s not—a basic principle, because it’s clearly false. Whether or not the absence of evidence for X is (good) evidence for the absence of X depends, in part, on whether there ought to be evidence for the presence of X. And that, in turn, depends upon whether there are good explanations for the absence of evidence, even if X was present.

Archaeologists reason from absence of evidence to absence of cause all the time. I take it, for example, that the lack of evidence for Israelite habitation in the Sinai during the Late Bronze/Iron Age is taken by many archaeologists to be evidence that there were no extensive Israelite settlements there during that period. If there were, we would expect evidence of them. It seems to me that if there were a bit less impassioned Scripture-thumping and a bit more careful reflection on the part of some of your readers, the level of discourse could be raised.

Masada

How Did They Survive in the Desert?

I thoroughly enjoy and appreciate your magazine. The scholarly articles are enormously stimulating and greatly enhanced by the exquisite photography.

The November/December 1998 issue focused on new questions about Masada (“Questioning Masada,” BAR 24:06). Forgive my naïveté, but could one of the authors explain how such large groups of besieged Jewish rebels sustained themselves for up to three years on those arid and mountainous fortress plateaus? How and where did they get their drinking water? Also, what would have been their typical diet, and how would they have either grown their food or circumvented the Roman garrisons and siege walls to smuggle food into their enclaves with the regularity, and in the abundance, needed to sustain so many of them for so long?

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Joseph Zias responds:

Masada was not taken seriously by the Romans until probably the last year of he First Jewish Revolt (72/73 A.D.). According to Josephus, the Zealots were free to leave the fortress and even to rampage and to kill and plunder their fellow Jews from nearby Ein Gedi who refused to take part in the revolt. The Roman siege wall was probably constructed after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Water was no problem because the Zealots probably had control of the water cisterns below and because there were numerous water cisterns atop Masada. The storage facilities atop Masada, both in the northern and western palaces, were vast and could supply food for hundreds of people over a considerable time. Also, the Zealots may have stocked the site during the years 66–70 A.D., when the Romans were busy fighting rebellious Jews elsewhere in the Galilee and Judea.

Bones of Contention

I have read Yigael Yadin’s popular book on Masada from cover to cover, and I have bought into his conclusions about the three skeletons in Herod’s northern palace: that the trio were Masada’s last Zealot defender and his family. Despite Joseph Zias’s article, I am not ready to abandon Yadin’s theory.

(1) Yadin found the remains of the three bodies below a level of destruction debris that included an ash layer. Josephus records that the Zealots set fire to the buildings they used for accommodation. From Yadin’s description, it appears these bodies were on the floor and steps of the bathhouse. If they were Roman remains from a later period, dragged in by carnivores, they would not have been found in this situation. Animals, like soldiers, do not make work for themselves; they would have dragged the carcasses above the destruction layer and devoured them there.

That the remains escaped detection by the Romans is also quite easily explained. At the time of the initial cleanup of bodies, Herod’s royal bathhouse was burning. It was at a lower level, and the Romans would have had to brave dense smoke to get down to it. As a soldier, I know that the breed never does more work than is absolutely necessary. As for digging out a burnt building for fun and getting one’s uniform all dirty, forget it! Thus, for the 38 years of Roman occupation, the remains lay undetected.

(2) Zias tells us that the leg bones that were discovered were left by jackals. I’m sorry, but I don’t see any animal dragging a pair of legs complete with feet to a new location under a debris pile. From what I have read, these are the leg bones of one individual. It makes more sense to argue that a pair of legs remained after jackals had carried off the rest than it does to say they were carried in by them.

(3) Zias claims that the skeletal remains were of two males, one aged about 40 and the other about 22. Yadin says his skeletons were a male about 20 and a female, of presumably about the same age. Zias does not mention the child. I have to award the balance of probability to Yadin, since the braided hair indicates a female and not a child.

The sex of Zias’s skeletons must at best remain conjectural. From what I was taught in military medical school, a positive identification of sex is only possible from the pelvic bones, and Zias implies that Dr. Nicu Haas, Yadin’s specialist, did not have them. Even if one has the pelvic bones, it is still possible to misidentify the sex.

“He who alleges, must prove his case.” Joseph Zias has not proved his case.

Joseph Zias responds:

I, too, was initially enthralled by the saga of Masada as told by Josephus and as interpreted by Yadin. The mass-suicide narrative of the Zealots certainly made my adrenaline flow. Over the years, however, I came to realize that I could not accept Yadin’s version of events.

The remains at Masada are not those of Jewish Zealots but of Roman soldiers and citizens. The Roman legions were atop Masada for at least 103 years, while the Jews were there, at best, for 7.

The remains found in the bathhouse of the northern palace stand the least chance of being Jewish. First, Josephus writes that the Jews collected and burned their possessions before committing suicide, whereas the sandals, textiles and armor showed no signs of burning. Second, Jews do not bury the dead with possessions.

Yadin states in his monograph that the armor scales were found next to the male skeleton, giving the impression that here we have the remains of the last defenders; actually this armor is scattered throughout four loci, one of which (locus 16) is some distance away and not in the bathhouse at all. Furthermore, Yadin, quoting Josephus, relates that the last man “with the force of his hand, ran his sword entirely through himself, and fell down dead near to his own relations.” If this is the last man with his kith and kin, then where is the sword? Not only is there no sword in the locus, skeletally there is little of this individual, according to Haas’s report, except his legs. Moreover, this “last and final act of defiance,” dramatic as it sounds, has been shown by scholars to be suspiciously similar to numerous other accounts in the Roman world. In ancient times, plagiarism, particularly of “best-sellers,” was the norm.

Reverend Deverall, like all of us who were enthralled by the narrative, believes that three individuals were found here, whereas the most they might be are the partial remains of three individuals. The woman appears to be represented by her hair wrapped in a kerchief only, without a skull or a postcranial skeleton. Recently we were able to locate in the Masada files the photograph of one cranium, which appears to show a male of about 18. In sum, all we have to go on is the braid of a woman of indeterminable age, the lower limb of an adult male whose age is also indeterminable and what appears from photographs to be the skull of an 18-year-old male otherwise only partially represented skeletally. Of particular interest is the glaring discrepancy in the ages given in the Haas-Yadin field notes and in the later written report by Haas to Yadin. Haas originally notes a woman of about 18, a young man of 18 to 20 and a child, hoping perhaps, as Yadin 012does, to make the reader feel that we have a family here. In the unpublished report to Yadin, Haas has one of the men listed as 35 to 40.

Reverend Deverall suggests that the individuals committed suicide at the bathhouse and that hyenas carried off the torso, leaving the legs and feet behind. But it is precisely the long bones (arm and legs) that are of most interest to hyenas. My hypothesis accounts for the several pairs of sandals found in the locus—the hyenas brought back to their temporary shelter the most favored parts of the body, the lower limbs of several individuals.

Bringing Roman Military Customs to Bear

In his revisionist zeal to defame and ridicule Israel’s most illustrious archaeologist, a solemn state funeral ceremony and the long-cherished Masada tradition, Joseph Zias unwittingly confirms, rather than debunks, the fact that the skeletal remains found at Masada are almost certainly those of Masada’s Jewish defenders and not Roman soldiers, as he purports. Had Zias been more familiar with first-century A.D. Roman soldiers and their burial customs, he would have realized this.

Romans of the first century A.D. were universally cremated. Until the adoption of Christian burial practices, Roman skeletons in the archaeological record are practically nonexistent. The only exceptions are the occasional discoveries of covertly buried Roman murder victims and bodies entombed by natural disasters, the most notable being the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. (The scarcity of Roman skeletal remains is why the 1982 Herculaneum “beach and boat house” discovery was so important.)

Furthermore, a “proper burial” was extremely important to the Romans, and particularly so for Roman soldiers, as their impressive grave stelae attest. During this period of Roman history, the lowliest auxiliary soldier was very well paid by ancient standards, and archaeology shows that even these men had impressive monuments erected to their memory. (These stelae were often an exact likeness of the deceased and are very important to the study of Roman military equipment and costume.) So obsessed were Roman soldiers with their burials that they had monthly allotments deducted from their pay to ensure they would receive a proper burial and monument. Would Roman soldiers who died at Masada be buried there in a cave as Zias suggests? Definitely not. Their bodies would have been cremated in Roman fashion and their ashes collected and carried back to their home base to be buried among their comrades in a military cemetery or possibly even returned to relatives somewhere in the empire.

Another point that strongly disputes the theory that these are the bodies of “Roman soldiers and their women,” as Zias suggests, is the fact that Roman soldiers could not be married during this time period. It was not until the early third century A.D. that Roman soldiers were legally allowed to marry. This is not to say that Roman soldiers of the Great Great Jewish Revolt period did not have unofficial wives or girlfriends, but the women certainly would not have resided on the premises of a military fortress like Masada! If members of the Masada garrison had female companions, they would have been at a settlement off base, far enough away to be overlooked by their officers, to be visited only while off duty. This was perhaps the most disciplined army in world history, in which merely sleeping on guard duty could invoke a death sentence.

The most plausible explanation is that the cave served as the burial place for the Jewish defenders of Masada—not those defenders found by the Romans in the aftermath, but those who died during the siege and were buried by their fellow defenders. Burying the deceased in caves was a long-established Jewish custom, and considering that Masada was completely surrounded by the Romans, this would have been the most likely place for the defenders to bury their dead. The cave would have been far enough from the defenders’ living areas to avoid the stench of decomposition, and far enough from the Roman lines to allow the bodies to be carried there in relative safety. The condition of the skeletons can also be easily explained by this hypothesis. The undisturbed skeleton probably belonged to a defender who died very early in the siege. Due to the Roman siege wall that surrounded Masada, no large scavengers like jackals or hyenas could have reached the burial cave. This allowed the body to be reduced to dry bones free from the larger predators that could disturb the skeletons. The skeletons ravaged by animals were probably those that were buried during the latter stages of the siege. Once Masada was captured, the siege wall and camps would have been abandoned, and scavenging animals from the desert floor would again have been able to prowl around Masada. Perhaps only the more recently interred corpses 014were fresh enough to attract the attention of predators, leaving the earliest burial unmolested.

It is only the presence of the pig bones found in the cave that casts doubt on the otherwise almost certain probability that the remains interred there belonged to Masada’s Jewish defenders. If these pig bones had been discovered deposited in pottery vessels as a grave offering (and there is absolutely no evidence that they were), there would be credence to Zias’s theory. However, these bones were merely strewn about and intermingled with partially eaten human bones in a cave that obviously served as the long-time lair of jackals or hyenas. The quantity of animal feces found in the cave confirms that it was inhabited by scavengers over a long period of time—a period that probably coincided closely with the Roman occupation, a period in which these scavengers could expect steady meals of discarded garbage (including pig bones, of course), thrown out by the garrison. That the animals would drag the bones into the security of the onetime burial cave and current animal lair is only to be expected.

The skeletal remains found in the Northern Palace ruins are probably the only ones at Masada directly related to the mass suicide recounted by Josephus. The presence of a female body and fragments of a Jewish prayer shawl indicate that they are almost certainly Jewish. The remains probably represent a family group that left the company of the others to die alone in the final hours. These bodies were not thrown over the precipices by the Roman cleanup details because they were likely concealed by collapsed walls and ceilings, caused by the fire in the palace buildings set by the defenders shortly before the final Roman assault.

Why were the rest of the bodies not found? In their cleanup operations, the occupying Romans would probably have irreverently flung them over the casemate walls like so much garbage, and the desert scavengers would have made short work of them. Contrary to the opinions stated in Nachman Ben-Yehuda’s article in the same issue (“Where Masada’s Defenders Fell,” BAR 24:06), the notion that the Romans would have given the rebels either a reasonably decent Jewish burial (a mass grave) or a Roman one (cremation) is only wishful thinking. After the years of deprivation and misery the defenders had inflicted on their besiegers, the Romans would have certainly exacted their last revenge with this ultimate desecration of the Jewish remains.

More ridiculous than the claim that these are the bones of Roman soldiers is the absurdity of the revisionist archaeologists and historians who dismiss the entire Masada suicide account as a story fabricated by Josephus himself. What these people do not seem to realize is that Josephus was not by any means the sole chronicler of the Jewish War in general or of Masada in particular. It only seems so today because his account is the only one that has survived reasonably intact. Dozens of Roman officers present at the siege, not the least being Governor Flavius Silva himself, would have written both their personal memoirs and official military reports. These reports and the memoirs of the more important officers would have been deposited in archives and libraries, where they would be available to historians. Undoubtedly, there were a great many eyewitness accounts of what really happened at Masada available to public scrutiny in Jospehus’s time. at Masada available to public scrutiny in Jospehus’s time. Additionally, the bulk of the Roman soldiers present at Masada, and certainly the 5,000 Roman citizens of Legio X Fretensis, were literate men. Very many of them likely read The Jewish War by Josephus as well as the accounts of other historians and officers, though these have since been lost. It would have been impossible for Josephus to fabricate such a tale of mass suicide in light of the thousands of witnesses who were actually there.

I also feel compelled to make minor corrections to the box entitled “Roman Warfare” (“Governments-in-Exile,” BAR 24:06). First, the illustrated helmet is not made of bronze, as the article states, but is almost entirely made of iron (only small trim pieces are made of a cupric alloy, possibly bronze, but just as likely the common Roman zinc-copper alloy “orichulum,” which we know as brass today). Second, the metal scales found at Masada and illustrated in the article are not made of “cast” sheet metal, which would have made the armor far too heavy. The scales were made of bronze sheet metal hammered very thin and then stamped with metal dies that embossed the rim and created the medial ridge. This gave the scales great strength despite their thinness. They would have been worn in an overlapping fashion rather than side by side as illustrated.

After his initial identification of the Masada remains as those of the Jewish defenders, Yigael Yadin did indeed have his doubts, which he never formally made public and preferred to cover up. The revisionists may justifiably condemn him for this, but for this alone. When all the facts are examined, we find that Yadin’s first impressions were correct—the skeletons were indeed those of the Jewish defenders, and the Josephus account of the Masada suicides was not a legend, but historical fact.

Joseph Zias responds:

I did not wish to defame or ridicule the work of Yigael Yadin, with whom I worked and who I highly respected. However, my obligation to the profession is to point out the problems with the credibility of his flawed interpretation. As for what Mr. Peterson terms “The long-cherished tradition of Masada,” I would point out that until the beginning of Zionism in the 19th century, the story of Masada was ignored by Jews—rightfully so, in my opinion. How one could regard the last defenders of Masada as heroes is difficult to understand considering their cowardly past. The individuals accorded a State funeral in 1969 never helped their brethren in the siege of Jerusalem; to make matters worse, according to Josephus, prior to the Roman siege they killed 700 of their fellow Jews from Ein Gedi. Hardly the stuff that heroes and martyrs are made of.

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However knowledgeable Mr. Peterson may be with those Roman burial customs in Europe, he is totally misinformed regarding the eastern Mediterranean. Roman burial customs varied widely from place to place, as Mr. Peterson can learn from Arnold Toynbee’s monograph Death and Burial in the Roman World. As Nock noted, outside the Greek fringe of cities cremation for civilians was sporadic and incidental (“Cremation and Burial in the Roman Empire” Harvard Theological Review 19, pp. 321–359). Quoting a colleague who had excavated hundreds of burials in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, Nock mentions that no evidence of cremation was found. Thus what was normative in Rome was rare in the Levant and in Egypt. While Peterson’s description of impressive grave stelae for Roman soldiers may be accurate for the western Mediterranean, they are extremely rare in our region.

Furthermore, wood in the eastern Mediterranean is not as plentiful as in Europe, so it is not a surprise that cremated remains are seldom found. Near the Dead Sea, wood is even rarer; this, coupled with the fact that cremation was rarely practiced in the region except by the Philistines and the Phoenicians, argues against the Romans introducing this custom, particularly at a time when the Roman world was in transition from cremation to inhumation.

After the Jewish Revolt, the Romans were atop Masada for at least another 40 years, so it is very possible that a small number of men, women and children who were not necessarily combatants lived and worked at Masada. The site was occupied for close to 150 years, both before and after the Revolt. There had to be a burial place near the site but outside the casemate walls. The southern cave (locus 2001–2002) is one of the few areas on the plateau that can be used for that purpose.

Peterson’s assumption that the southern cave was long inhabited by hyenas is totally unsubstantiated and falls into the category of trying to fit the facts to a preconceived theory. It’s true that based upon photographic and skeletal evidence predators were there; however, to assume that they were there for extended periods scavenging pig bones leftover by the Romans is simply absurd. Access into this cave is difficult and dangerous, and if one falls from the sharply sloping ledges, death is certain. Hardly the place for a refuse dump or a long-term hyena lair, as it lacks springs or other fresh water sources.

The incomplete skeletal remains recovered in the Northern Palace, where according to Josephus, the mass suicide took place, stand the least possible chance of being the remains of Jewish defenders, aside from the fact that the area could not accommodate 960 individuals as Josephus described. Of the three “individuals” Peterson alludes to, one must remember that the woman is represented by her hair only! According to the photographic archives, the only skull found in the loci seems to be that of an 18-year-old male. And how they estimated the age of the girl to be 16 to 18 is beyond me, since it’s not possible to age a skeleton on the basis of hair. In fact, owing to its excellent preservation, I’m not sure that the hair is from the period of the siege. Where is the hair of those individuals buried in the southern cave?

Peterson’s association of the armor, found in the Northern Palace but scattered throughout four loci, with the male represented by lower limbs only is difficult to accept. Second, the armor is not the type usually worn under battle conditions, but rather the thin metal armor worn by Roman generals and reserved for parades. Its appearance in the Northern Palace is difficult to explain and may represent the spoils of war from the pre-Revolt period, when the Jews captured the site from the Roman legions garrisoned there.

Peterson’s unquestioning acceptance of both the narrative by Josephus and Yadin’s interpretation as absolute truth regarding the events atop Masada shows the need by some to believe rather than to know. Scholars such as Shaye Cohen have shown that Josephus’s description of events at Masada, particularly the suicide, is difficult to be believed. In a scholarly critique, ironically in a festschrift to Yadin, Cohen shows that the narrative was copied from other sources—the suicide motif appears in 16 narratives from the Greco-Roman world! Embellishment, plagiarism and exaggeration were the norm for many writers of the period. Historical truth was often sacrificed for dramatic effect. Silva knew this and, as Cohen relates, probably was not bothered by it. True, the Roman siege occurred, but the embellishments of the Greco-Roman world continue today.

What Hanukkah Celebrates

As tonight we will be lighting the fifth candle of Hanukkah, I would like to comment on a small point mentioned in “Governments-In-Exile,” by Ze’ev Meshel (November/December 1998). Meshel writes that the festival of Hanukkah celebrates the revolt by Mattathias and his family and their defeat of Antiochus.

This is not so. The festival of Hanukkah celebrates the miracle by which a jar of oil found in the desecrated Temple burned in the menorah for eight days (instead of the one that it normally should have lasted) until fresh oil was prepared. The Jewish religion does not normally glorify war. I know that this is only a small point, but it is fundamental to the celebration of Hanukkah. It is not a celebration of man over man, but our thanks to the Almighty for the miracle.

Shroud of Turin

BAR Debunked

Well, now that you have successfully debunked the Shroud of Turin, it becomes necessary to debunk you. Please cancel my subscription ASAP.

The Chinks in Their Armor

One of the outstanding attributes of BAR is the airing of both sides of controversies. I am an archaeological chemist and a professor emeritus who has carried out research related to the shroud, and I would like to make several points.

(1) The carbon 14 test: I accept the test date of 1325 A.D. ± 65 years as having about a 95 percent probability of being correct. However, 5 percent uncertainty for an object having the potential importance of the shroud is intolerably large. More testing must be done. In any chemical analysis, if the sampling is faulty, then the results are highly questionable. Such is the case for the shroud because careful procedures for sampling and testing were ignored in favor of sampling the shroud from its most contaminated area, where it had been handled frequently and where threads from a side panel were woven into the sample. Add to this the possibility that previous attempts at conserving the shroud may have included the application of organic materials. Linen fibrils are hollow, and if organic material diffused slowly into the fibrils over a long period of time, a thorough cleaning just before C-14 testing would not remove the interior contamination. However, a large amount of contamination would be necessary to skew the date from about 30 A.D. to 1300 A.D.

(2) According to “The Shroud Painting Explained,” by Walter McCrone, (November/December 1998), “There is no 017blood on the shroud.” Professor Alan Adler, a chemist highly skilled in this area of testing, states that the stains on the shroud were from blood. Do you believe a highly skilled microscopist (McCrone) or a highly skilled chemist (Adler)? McCrone found the presence of mercury (from the pigment vermilion) by X-ray fluorescence. XRF happens to be my specialty, and I wrote to McCrone years ago pointing out a misinterpretation of the mercury lines. There is far less mercury present than McCrone believes. Mercury is probably present due to artists touching their paintings with the shroud.

(3) McCrone believes that the image of the body is primarily iron oxide in a collagen tempera medium. Adler and others have shown that at least 90 percent of the iron present on the shroud is bonded to cellulose and is not present as colored iron oxide. Further, Adler has explained the coloration of the body image as due to dehydrative oxidation of cellulose. If even very low concentrations of iron are present in water that is used to ret linen (soaking to decompose the nonfibrous materials), linen will react chemically with this iron, and the iron will be bound to the cellulose. Other scientists and I have found that iron catalyzes the dehydrative oxidation of cellulose, producing a coloration similar to that found on the shroud. Certain highly colored threads, and in particular one outstanding dark thread, run vertically in the shroud and are colored much darker than surrounding threads. The obvious explanation is that these threads probably contain relatively high of iron (this could be tested easily) compared with their neighbors, and iron caused these threads to darken more when the image was formed. Certainly these dark threads were not painted by an artist. Also the body image penetrates only a minute distance into the linen. It seems impossible that a painter could reproduce this, particularly because the image is fuzzy and vague and can only be recognized from a distance of several feet.

(4) One of McCrone’s shroud paintings was tested by a chemist in my presence, and several tests proved this painting to be unlike the Shroud of Turin, thus debunking the debunker.

(5) Swiss and Israeli scientists have found pollen particles on the shroud from plants found only in the region of Israel. It is most unlikely that these particles could have been transferred by wind from Israel to France or Spain, where the shroud was “made” according to Gary Vikan (“Debunking the Shroud: Made by Human Hands,” BAR 24:06).

(6) Some correct three-dimensional information is present in the shroud image. When artists tried to make sketches containing three-dimensional information, only grossly distorted 3-D images resulted when tested with special instrumentation. An artist in the 14th century could not even conceive that a painting could incorporate 3-D information, let alone be able to produce such a painting.

(7) McCrone claims there is a complete absence of any mention of the shroud before 1356. The Mandylion, a relic showing the face of Jesus Christ on a cloth, was famous for centuries and was displayed many times to the public. Many believe that the Mandylion, which disappeared when Constantinople was sacked in 1204, is indeed the shroud (this is the hypothesis of the British historian Ian Wilson). If so, then the shroud was mentioned frequently throughout history.

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(8) Vikan writes, “The shroud is in no way unique in appearance among its object type.” Other art historians vehemently disagree with Vikan. It is my understanding that the others feel the concept and style of the shroud are unique. If Vikan does not agree with this, he should produce photographs of the other shrouds or objects that he talks about.

(9) Of the 14th-century bishops’ letters to the Pope claiming the shroud was a fake, Vikan says, “The competition for [relics and pilgrimages] … was intense. And stealing and forgery were both part of the business.” Perhaps false reports that a competitor’s relic was a fake was also “part of the business.”

(10) There are icons predating 1300 A.D. and coins made before 1000 A.D. that have the same details as the facial image of the shroud; these could have influenced a later painter. But if the shroud were copied from some previous representation of Christ, why is it unique in showing nail holes through the wrists and a totally naked figure of Christ, both front and back?

In fairness to both sides of this controversy, I believe that BAR should have an article written by some of the “pro-shroud” experts, and I think that it would be great if BAR would fund a project by McCrone to reproduce the image of the Shroud of Turin (the face only would be sufficient, plus some bloodstains). Then let others, such as Professor Adler, test the McCrone shroud and publish the results. Finally, I hope that BAR will lend its weight toward convincing the Vatican that the shroud must be tested further. Incidentally, in 1978 some scientists who studied the shroud thought they would make short work of it and prove it was a fake. They failed.

Walter McCrone responds to this and the following letters at the end of this section.—Ed.

The Case Is Far from Closed

While I am not a scientist, I must take issue with the articles “Debunking the Shroud,” (BAR 24:06) by Gary Vikan and “The Shroud Painting Explained,” (BAR 24:06) by Walter McCrone. According to Vikan, the shroud “has to look the way it looks” in order to fool people into accepting it as genuine. This is not evidence that it is not genuine. If the shroud were real, it would also look genuine. Similarly, the fact that there were many other fakes is not evidence that the shroud is a fake. While there may be many fake Van Goghs out there, it does not prove that the real ones are fakes.

On the shroud we find many previously unknown details of the scourging and crucifixion, not just the evidence, mentioned in the article, that nails went through the wrist. For example, the “full cap” rather than “crown” nature of the thorns, the almost entire body coverage of the scourges (those of a known Roman scourge, the flagrum taxillatum) and the width of the side wound (on the shroud the wound is 1.6 inches, which matches the maximum width of known ancient Roman lances). There are other details on the shroud that are hard to imagine as the work of a forger: a bruised left kneecap, broken nasal cartilage, a large contusion around the right eye socket and cheekbone, and multidirectional blood flow consistent with the changing position of the body during the agony of crucifixion. There are also indications of clotted blood and fresh bleeding on the shroud, just as you might expect if some time had elapsed between the beating and the crucifixion.

How can Walter McCrone be so sure, based on 32 sticky tape samples, that “there is no blood on the shroud,” especially since others have found blood? Specifically John Heller and Alan Adler, who found iron, characteristic porphyrin fluorescence, +hemochromogen tests, +cyanmethemoglobin tests, +bile pigments, +protein (specifically albumin), correct forensic appearance, indicative reflection and micro spectrophotometric transmission spectra when examining the shroud (“A Chemical Investigation of the Shroud of Turin,” Canadian Society of Forensic Science Journal 14:3 [1981], pp. 81–103). All indicate the presence of blood.

An excellent rebuttal of McCrone’s analysis of the shroud can be found in The Shroud of Turin and the C-14 Dating Fiasco: A Scientific Detective Story, by Thomas W. Case (Cincinnati: White Horse Press, 1996).

Unanswered Questions

Thanks for the scholarly pieces by Gary Vikan and Walter McCrone debunking the Shroud of Turin. It is good to see BAR weigh in on the subject, not surprisingly on the negative side. However, I don’t think either of the articles is going to be the final word on the subject.

Vikan’s article suffers from excessive faith in carbon 14 testing and his inattention to all the mysteries of the shroud, including the pollen spores on it and the three-dimensional characteristics of the image. The presence on the shroud of massive amounts of pollen spores found only in the Middle East is a strong argument against Vikan’s theory, since the shroud, during the portion of its history we’re sure of, has never traveled to the Middle East. And the greater part of Vikan’s article—his discussion of the creation of medieval “relics”—begs the question. Such a discussion has nothing to do with the history of the shroud—unless one starts with the presupposition that Vikan’s theory is correct!

As for McCrone, his data aren’t new, and his results have been strongly attacked ever since he first published them. True, McCrone can claim—with some justification—that his critics are hardly disinterested observers. But there is also reason to question Mr. McCrone’s own objectivity and disinterestedness in view of some of his public statements on the matter. Walter Sanford’s artwork is interesting and looks remarkably similar to reproductions of the Shroud of Turin. But is it three-dimensional? If not (as I suspect), how does Mr. McCrone account for that characteristic in the image on the shroud?

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The Biblical Evidence

Have the shroud investigators looked at the Scriptures? John 20:6–7 tells us that when Peter went into Jesus’ tomb he found that the cloth about Jesus’ head was not lying with the linen clothes but was wrapped up in a place by itself. Therefore Jesus’ burial cloth was at least two pieces, not one like the shroud. In all the articles and TV programs I’ve seen on the shroud, I’ve never heard these verses quoted.

Scientists Take Note

The shroud is Jesus’ gift to those who need scientific evidence. It’s too bad that these people opt for the pseudoscience that supports their beliefs rather than going where the real evidence points!

The Testimony of a Crusader

Gary Vikan mentions that the Shroud of Turin has been dated to 1260–1390 A.D. and that in 12th-century Constantinople there were two iconic burial shrouds. While working on my doctoral dissertation, I came upon a description of one such shroud, by Robert de Clari, a knight from Picardy and a participant in the Fourth Crusade. Upon his return to Picardy, in about 1205, he composed, in French, a chronicle that contains the following passage, given here in translation: “There was a Church which was called of My Lady Saint Mary of Blachernae, where there was the shroud (syndoines) in which Our Lord had been wrapped, which every Friday, raised itself upright so that one could see the form (figure) of Our Lord on it, and no one either Greek or French, ever knew what became of this shroud (syndoines) when the city was taken [by the Crusaders]” (Robert de Clari, La Conquête de Constantinople, ed. Ph. Lauer [Paris, 1924], p. 90, 11.42–50). The word syndoines (with a final s denoting subject case) is a quite normal development of Latin sindonem from Greek sindon, “shroud.” The reason that this passage of Robert’s chronicle did not catch the attention of students of the shroud is this: An English translation (by E.H. McNeal, New York, 1936) does not translate syndoines and gives “features” for figure, which suggested that Robert meant the image of the face of Jesus [which would have made the object one of a number of Veronica’s Veils—Ed.]. In the 15th century, figure could not mean anything but “outline” or “form.” (French figure acquired the meaning “features” or “face” only in the 18th century.) Another English translation (by E.N. Stone, Seattle, 1939), much less known but more nearly correct, offers “shroud” for syndoines and “form” for figure. Indeed, Robert could not possibly have been talking about the True Image of St. Veronica, but about the wrapping of a body, i.e., a shroud. I have published a more detailed account of Robert’s statement in Shroud Spectrum International (March 1982).

The Dismal Science

Gary Vikan argues that the Shroud of Turin could easily have been forged in the Middle Ages, as the knowledge of crucifixion that is portrayed on that object was available from the ritual practices of groups like the Penitentes. He is certainly right in his belief that the shroud was forged, but he need not resort to such obscure groups to explain this arcane knowledge. Though crucifixion was outlawed in the late Roman Empire, it continued widely in other societies of which medieval Europeans had intimate knowledge, most notably in the Muslim world. The most famous instance is perhaps that of the great Sufi mystic al-Hallaj, who was crucified in Baghdad in 922, but crucifixion continued to be used for criminals and political prisoners. Thus details of crucifixion were easily available to any European who had traveled to the Islamic world during the Crusades.

Bad Dates

Your recent articles about the Shroud of Turin do not do justice to the controversy. Gary Vikan claims that “the shroud is in no way unique in appearance among its object type.” If that were true, then Vikan could have given us one or two examples.

One of the first noticed oddities of the shroud is that it resembles a photographic negative, although it was produced before the development of photography. So the presumed forger would have lacked both means and motive to produce such a cloth. Perhaps Vikan can begin his demonstration by showing us some other medieval negatives.

The photographic nature of the shroud is so clear that two prominent shroud debunkers, Picknett and Prince, explain the shroud as secret, primitive photography by Leonardo Da Vinci. Alas, Da Vinci was born a hundred years too late to account for the shroud. Too late, unless, of course, Da Vinci also dabbled in secret, primitive time travel.

A visit to a library or bookstore will reveal at least half a dozen other oddities of the shroud, a number of which cannot be explained by the forgery theory.

However, Vikan does not seem to wish to prove his case by exhibiting to us other objects that are inexplicable in the same ways as the shroud. Instead, he simply relies on the radiocarbon dating of the shroud.

For whatever reason, he seems to be unaware that several Mesoamerican and Egyptian artifacts have been wrongly dated by radiocarbon dating. The story of their bad dating is told in The Blood and the Shroud, by Ian Wilson. Some objects, linens among them, accumulate a microscopic layer of living bacteria. This layer of bacteria is very easy to miss and resists cleaning methods commonly used before radiocarbon dating.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water

Those of us who have kept abreast of the Turin Shroud research over the last 30 years can only shake our heads in pity as Walter McCrone trots out his tired old iron-oxide-and-gelatin-paint horse once again, ignoring the basic scientific fact that the fibrils that make up the image area on the cloth show no trace of any pigment material whatsoever. All of the other chemists and physicists who have examined these fibrils under powerful microscopes, plus infrared and ultraviolet rays, agree that the image fibrils are darkened due to severe oxidative dehydration, i.e., they were shriveled by heat, just as a quick, light scorching (or acid burning) of the linen would have produced.

The explanations of McCrone (and well-intentioned but ill-informed commentators like Gary Vikan) are even less believable than the possible authenticity of the shroud. Come on, Walter, put that old horse out to pasture!

Negative Proof

I can hardly believe that an intelligent man like Walter McCrone could have given as 066an example a painting by his artist friend Walter Sanford—a painting in the positive! Did you all forget that the Shroud is in the negative? Photography wasn’t even invented until the 19th century, so how could the Penitentes have painted a full portrait in the negative? Come on, you men—start thinking.

God left a photograph of himself taken at his resurrection.

Jesus said, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

I dare you to print this letter.

P.S. I love your magazine!

Walter C. McCrone responds:

Any objective chemist would be convinced by my detailed articles¹ and book, Judgement Day for the Turin Shroud,² in which I argue that the shroud is a beautiful medieval painting. I am expert in using microscopical methods to identify the pigments, media and supports for each paint used in a painting. I have examined several hundred paintings, by artists from Giotto to Pollock, submitted to me by dealers, auction houses and collectors in order to authenticate them.

When I began my study of the 32 sticky tapes taken from body-image, blood-image, scorched and clean areas of the shroud, I looked for body fluids, especially blood. However, I immediately saw thousands of tiny red ochre particles in the image areas. The more I looked at these tapes, the more I became convinced that the image was paint. Subsequently, I found a second red pigment with the red ochre, but only in blood-image areas. I tested for blood by several recognized forensic tests (benzidine, luminol, Teichman, phenolphthalein and sulfuric acid plus ultraviolet fluorescence). I might add that I am a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and have worked on, and testified in court on, forensic cases.

I and an artist friend of mine have prepared shroudlike images on linen using diluted blood as a paint and examined sticky tapes from those images. There were no particles of blood, much less red particles. Dried blood is brown and present on my dilute blood-painted shroud tapes as a continuous brown gel-like smear. My colleagues at McCrone Associates used X-ray fluorescence and X-ray and electron diffraction on the samples, which confirmed my research in every respect.

I object 100 percent to all pro-shroud claims:

• Carbon dating—three world-class laboratories in the United States, England and Switzerland analyzed clean shroud samples and three other known-date cloths with agreement on all four cloths, and they did a good job of cleaning the samples. Only a few pro-shroud individuals disagree with their conclusion: 1325 +/- 65 years.

• Blood tests—I stand by my claim that there is no blood on the shroud. Anyone claiming there is is guilty of wishful thinking and speaking from their belief in a first-century shroud.

• Mercury—the presence of mercuric sulfide as the pigment vermilion (in a form invented by alchemists in about 700 A.D.) is proved microchemically, by X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence. All of the seven blood-image tapes showed thousands of vermilion pigment particles dispersed on the linen fibers.

• Iron oxide (red ochre) as image—neither Adler nor anyone else has shown that 90 percent of the iron is bonded to cellulose and is not present as colored iron oxide. This ludicrous statement is an out-and-out misrepresentation of the facts. Anyone making such a statement is either not a microscopist or is incompetent or lying. The explanation of the shroud image as due to dehydrative oxidation of the cellulose is balderdash—absolutely impossible; 99 percent of the iron on the shroud is readily visible to a microscopist as micron-sized red particles of high refractive index bound to the linen with a dried gelatin paint medium.

• Pollen—Max Frei has been shown to have misled all of us with his report of 54 different species of pollen, all from the Near East, on the shroud.³ There were very few pollen grains on his tapes (I examined them very carefully).

• Three-dimensional images—I taught a noted Chicago portrait artist, Walter Sanford, to paint “shrouds” with convincing 3-D and negative images.

• History of the shroud—there is no credible evidence for the shroud before 1356, and the bishop at the time said he knew the artist who painted it.

I can’t go on. Some people believe so strongly in a real Christ’s shroud that they “see” anything that would be there if real. From my experience as a painting authenticator, the shroud is authentic—a beautiful and inspired authentic painting.

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A Note on Style

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), used by some of our authors, are the alternative designations for B.C. and A.D. often used in scholarly literature.

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