Radiocarbon 14 Dating of The Shroud of Turin - Books Discussing The Carbon-dating

Books Discussing The Carbon-dating

There are two books with detailed treatment of the Shroud's carbon dating, including not only the scientific issues but also the events, personalities and struggles leading up to the sample taking. The books offer opposite views on how the dating should have been conducted, and both are critical of the methodology finally employed.

In Relic, Icon or Hoax? Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud (1996; ISBN 0-7503-0398-0), Harry Gove provides an account of the interaction between Prof Carlos Chagas, chairman of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and Cardinal Ballestrero, with Gove and Gonella. He provides a detailed record of meetings, telephone conversations and correspondence.

The Rape of the Turin Shroud by William Meacham (2005; ISBN 1-4116-5769-1) devotes 100 pages to the carbon dating. Meacham is also highly critical of STURP and Gonella, and also of Gove. He describes the planning process from a very different perspective (both he and Gove were invited along with 20 other scholars to a conference in Turin in 1986 to plan the C-14 protocol) and focuses on what he claims was the major flaw in the dating: taking only one sample from the corner of the cloth. Meacham reviews the main scenarios that have been proposed for a possibly incorrect dating, and claims that the result is a "rogue date" because of the sample location and anomalies. He points out that this situation could easily be resolved if the Church authorities would simply allow another sample to be dated, with appropriate laboratory testing for possible embedded contaminants.