Guy: [00:00:00] Hey, I am Guy Powell, and welcome to the next episode of the Backstory on the Shroud of Turin. If you haven't already done so, please visit guy powell.com and sign up for more of these episodes. I am the author of the book, the Only Witness, which is a Christian historical fiction tracing a possible history of the shroud over the last two millennium.
I. Today I am speaking with, uh, Steven Jones. And, uh, let me tell you a little bit more about him. He's a longtime shroud researcher, probably one of the longest, and he's located down in Perth, Australia, although so, a great spot to be. And, uh, he's been blogging on the shroud for over 20 years. He's interested in Christianity, the life of Jesus, and of course the shroud.
And you can find his, uh, [00:01:00] blog. At the shroud of turrin.blog spot.com, the shroud of turrin.blog spot.com. So, uh, Steven, how does, uh, how's things going? Tell us a little bit about yourself and, uh, how you got involved with the shroud of Turin.
Stephen: Yeah, thanks, uh, guy. Um, I was 39 years a Christian. I'm an evangelical Protestant, and I, if I had heard about the shroud I had, I.
I can't remember it, but in 2005 I saw a book in a secondhand bookstore called Verdict on the Shroud by Gary Habermas and Stevens Ken Stevenson. And 'cause I knew that, uh, Gary Habermas was a sound, the evangelical philosopher, I bought the book and I was amazed at the amount of evidence there is for the shroud and, uh.
Pretty well when I finished the book, I was persuaded by the evidence that the shroud is Jesus. Barry was shroud.
Guy: [00:02:00] Yeah, it is certainly one of the, uh, better books. And, uh, I, I, I've spoken with Ken and, um, I haven't yet interviewed, uh, Gary Hover Moss, but it's hoping to be able to see him and, uh, you're so right, there are so many, uh, pieces of evidence that really point to the shroud.
Um, and of course there's, there's always the skeptics out there, but nevertheless, so where do you see as your special expertise as a Shroud scholar and researcher?
Stephen: No special expertise. I've, um, the shroud's such a vast subject that nothing can really prepare you for it. Um, it's got issues of theology, history, um, uh, science, but basically I've, um, always been interested.
Obviously been a Christian for, uh, now almost 60 years. And, um, I'm very interested in the Bible and Bible science. Um, and, um, I did ended up doing a, a science degree. So all this sort of helps to, um, prepare for it, [00:03:00]
Guy: uh, yeah, absolutely. It, it sure does. And, um, uh, so what kind of, uh, what you said, uh, bible sciences, so, uh, tell us a little bit more about that.
What do you mean by that?
Stephen: I, I came from a non-Christian home and after the first, um, and always have been interested in science, um, you know, as even as a kid. And, um, so in the end I had to think about how's it all fit? And I bought, um, a book by Bernard Ram, uh, a long time ago, uh, Christian View of Science and Scripture, and he said it's like two books.
Uh, science is Nature as God's Book of Nature and Scripture as God's book of Scripture. And they've got the same author, therefore they must ultimately agree. And that's been a big help to me. So I've been, been interested in Bible science. Um. And, um, uh, for the time I blogged on internet or I was in intelligent design movement, um, I made a creation evolution, but in then the [00:04:00] shroud is really what I focused on.
Guy: So was it the, uh, shroud that, um, got you to, uh, become a Christian, or uh, was it No. A handful of things.
Stephen: No. I was a Christian 40 years before I discovered the drought, and I can't remember if I thought about it at all. I. If I did, I would've thought another fake relic. I'm being a Protestant, I'm not into, uh, Catholic theology all that much, but um, you know, certainly become much more aware of the history of the shroud, um, since then, yeah.
Guy: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Um, and I think you're right. I think the, um, you know, the shroud is not necessarily something that, uh, can convert you. Certainly it can, but it, it, it certainly is kind of one of those check boxes, which is just kind of interesting, I think, and, uh, and can certainly add to your Christian faith and realized then what, uh, Jesus suffered, uh, and just suffered so greatly, uh, for, you know, for us and for the redemption of, of all of us.[00:05:00]
Stephen: Yeah. Well. So I think by the books, this calls it the Fifth Gospel because it fills in other details. The gospels really goss over pretty much the terrible, uh, what scouring is and what crucifixion is, and it certainly adds to your understanding of Roman crucifixion and what the terrible suffering. I, it is really hard to believe that God would choose that method, but he did.
And it's just, you know, amazed that's what they, why they say. Eef. Paul says, Eve of the death of the cross. So, you know, we, we don't understand what that means, but they did back in the first century.
Guy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's for sure. And the, um, and there's no question, you know, there's some, uh, folks that believe that he didn't die on the cross, but in my mind, and certainly what the shroud, he died and, uh, you know, and, and that means.
Stephen: I think there was one survivor of crucifixion. They cut him down, but he probably died [00:06:00] anyway of wounds, but no one survived crucifixion.
Guy: Yeah. Yeah, there's no way. Plus all of the, uh, you know, the beating and the, uh, the flogging and the Oh yeah. I mean the number of, uh, the number of scars that he has on his, uh, on his hands and back and legs and everywhere where he was just flogged, you know, over a hundred times.
Yeah.
Stephen: Well, you couldn't fight fake death from the cross because you're gonna be continually raising yourself up to breathe. Then slumping down and you couldn't fake it. If you stopped doing that for a minute, you die of asphyxiation. So that, that's why it was Absolutely, you could not fake being dead on the cross.
Guy: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And then you had the Roman soldiers that are there to watch over you and make sure you died, because if, if they didn't die, then as a Roman soldier you would be killed.
Stephen: Well, they're experts at crucifixion, obviously. Yeah.
Guy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Their, uh, expertise. Uh, and they [00:07:00] certainly knew exactly how to do it, that's for sure.
So now you've been, uh, writing on this, uh, theory that you have. It's called, uh, my Hacker Theory. Uh, tell us about that.
Stephen: In, in 2007, I, I used, just going back a bit, in the 1990s, I was a system administrator of a wide area network of hospital computers. And, um, I read this book about, um, way before I was even an interest in the shroud, uh, by Clifford Sto about the, um, cooker's egg.
It was about, um, hacking in the 1990s or 1980s. And, um, when I read the, um, in David Sox's book about, um, the radiocarbon dating, it just said all this was under computer control and it suddenly tweaked to me, well, hang on. Uh, with the a MS, which is called Accelerator Mass spectrometry, that's a fully computerized system that the computer does it all.
And so all you have to do is, [00:08:00] uh, a hacker could get, get between the, um, computer behind the actual dating machine and the display on the screen, and the, the size would see this dating, but it's not the actual dating that's going on in the machine. So a hacker could easily alter the program. And that's what I, that was my theory.
That was about 2007. But it wasn't until 2014 that I really started, uh, looking at that seriously. 'cause it was, I had a lot to learn and I just assumed that everybody knew the answer. But as I went along further, I discovered lots of theories about how the radio radiocarbon date could be so wrong. A first century shroud has got a 14th century radiocarbon date.
So how did that be? But I've come to the conclusion, the only theory that fits the facts is it was actually a hacker. Uh, and I've identified two hackers, which is possible that, you know, there was a Timothy Lin, he was a, um, physicist at Arizona, [00:09:00] uh, radio Carman, Danny Laboratory, and a Carl Cock is known to be a hacker for, for the KGB over in, um, Germany.
And, uh, because the problem is that the. Radio a MS system is not online. So Uhlin it could easily do Arizona because that was his computer, but, uh, or his laboratory. But, um, it's not hard. I you just foray those a MS machines. All we have to do is insert a tape and load it up. And so all we have to is get someone to do it for you.
And that's my theory that, uh, this guy called Carl Co did it. Both were, had this unusual suicide. Cox one definitely was murder. It was impossible that he could have. He was found, his body was found burnt by gasoline, uh, burned by gasoline, and yet it was in a dry forest. So someone put the fire out, but he couldn't put his own fire out.
But Timothy Lennick, he was murdered, that [00:10:00] he was found dead of suicide. The day after Cox, uh, was announced that the body was burned was Cox. So my theory is that the KGB. It was so successful for the KGB to, uh, do this because in, in the, if you go back to 8 18, 90 18, 9 89, the Soviet Uni collapsed in 1888.
It was on the verge of collapse. They had a lot of Roman Catholics and GR and Russian Orthodox, hundreds of millions of people in the Soviet Union who believed Australia was authentic. But obviously the official thing was, it's not. So it was really a big threat to them. So Lin approached the, um, Soviet Embassy in, in San Francisco, which was a known, uh, hub of, uh, uh, what do you call it, um, Soviet, you know, getting recruiting.
Yeah. Um, and, and he'd offered them, I can give you a, a date just before the drought appeared in history in 30 [00:11:00] 55. Uh, gimme a lot of money. They would've jumped at it. Um, it doesn't actually mean they ever gave him the money 'cause they murdered him and probably didn't pay him the money. It probably said the meeting was to give him the money and he, they, they murdered him, saved them the money.
So, yeah. So, uh. So I ramble on bit.
Guy: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. That's an interesting, um, interesting hypothesis. And, um, you know, you wonder how, uh, uh, because the, I don't know, I personally, I think the, um, the dating, I. The actual technology of the dating was probably correct. Um, I think the, the real challenge is on the samples, but I hadn't, you know, now that you're bringing up and, uh, about the, uh, you know, possibly hacking the, uh, a, the, the accelerator, mass spectrometer, uh, machines, you see most,
Stephen: most strategies.
They're not from the IT world. Um, I'm from, I was a, um, I used to be a hospital administrator and they recruited me to, um. [00:12:00] I oversee this network and I, I, I ended up, um, becoming a member of the health department IT branch. And so I, you know, it was pretty obvious to me that, that this is something that could happen, but it, it, it doesn't, the average, um, shroud, you know, author is, um, into, uh, science or into history, but not hack, not, um, computer computers and, um, you know, can understand why they are a bit reluctant to accept this.
But let's face it, they've been going at this for about 30 odd years trying to explain it, and they've all got these multiple theories, which I've shown that don't hold water. And, uh, the hacking theory does hold water, but it's unusual. It's, you know, it's a, it's a conspiracy theory. Obviously the KGB conspired today.
We think conspiracy theories are all automatically wrong, but they're not. Watergate was a conspiracy theory, but tend to be true. And the movie conspiracy theory, the theory turned to be true. So, yeah, it's, it's, and I [00:13:00] certainly not, don't have the hallmarks of conspiracy theory 'cause I'm not, if, if I'm fu I don't then flick over some new thing.
I stick with my mm-hmm. Argument and, uh, no one's proved me wrong. So, uh, you know, I'm happy to, quite confident this is, and lots of things have come. It'll be in my book. I have a chapter in my book called. A laboratory stoop by a hacker. And I'm actually right at the very moment doing a update of my hack Ethereum in a nutshell.
Um, so I'm sort of bringing it all together in a more compact form. I.
Guy: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, uh, you have some, uh, some thoughts on the, um, on the actual dating and the results, uh, that came out. Uh, let's talk about, uh, let's talk about that.
Stephen: Um, yeah, well, the, um, in the, uh, it was funny announced in the 1989 Nature, February the 16th Nature article.
Um, and I've actually, um, I showed you some of the, uh. The problem, the, the, the hacker. [00:14:00] It, it supports my hacker theory because the, um, I could just show you this, um, I showed this before. People can see this. That's the, uh, table one of the nature article. And the, the interesting thing about that is the, that sample one is, uh, is the shroud, and you've got Arizona, Oxford, and Zurich.
Uh, the interesting thing is that their first date, Arizona's date of 5 91, uh, which works out the 5 91 plus or minus 30. I'll just show you another thing. Here's here is the more simple form. Um, whoops. Can you see that? Yep. Um, so I'll have to read it. So, Arizona's date, which works out be 1359. Is the most recent of all the laboratory date that was necessary for the hacker to do that?
I'll explain that in a minute. Oxford's date, uh, first run date was the mo [00:15:00] least recent oldest of all the laboratories, dates and Zurich's. First date was the most recent, it recent or older, I can't remember now, of Zurich states. The chance of all this happening by chance is, uh, one in 60. So there, you know, it's very unlikely it's, and I'm gonna eventually write to nature and say, here's this curious fact.
This first date of each of theories is significant. And this fits the theory that a hacker used those dates as the anchor point of his theory. And I've always done a bit of work on it. Sorry if I'm rambling on, but I've actually, I believe I've, uh, reverse engineered his algorithm. But basically you start with that number, um, and you start with start date, target, target date, and you use, uh, random numbers you can pretty well generate.
It's guaranteed to end up being the date it was going end up with, uh, [00:16:00] 1260 to 30 90. So I'll be right. I'll be doing more of my blog with that reverse engineering, but it's really, it's in the nature article. It's really a weird thing that no one seems to have noticed that this first. Each laboratory's first run was unusual.
Arizona's was the most recent. Oxford was the least recent, and Zurich was, I believe, the least recent of Zurich's. But you almost ignore Zurich, the three laboratories because the hack had to start off with this cycle. It's the important date of 1350, which, uh, convinced everyone straight away, uh, because he was leaking this date.
And everybody when they saw it, that's it, you know, which was not, you know, they were so convinced by it. He always didn't need any further evidence. But because he started with his most recent date, he had to balance Oxfords and Zurich's with least recent dates. So, you know, I'll say I've already done a bit of this on my blog, and, um, I'll, um, do a bit, do a bit [00:17:00] more to prove that you can actually reverse engineer the.
The, uh, dating by a simple method because what the problem was, the machines were not online, so he had to write this program. It operate automatically. So, so they just keep feeding these states in. It would just simply do the same thing. It would just wonder how many times you did it, it would end up arriving at this, um, using this method of random number within limits.
So it's pretty well foolproof and, uh. Hmm. And, uh, you know, it's this, it's, so I'll be writing to nature pointing this out, but you can't. All you can do is say with nature is say, this is something really unusual. What's the explanation? Because. They won't listen to you any.
Guy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know. And especially since, uh, many of the original authors in that, uh, article, the nature article from February, 1989, uh, which yeah.
Published the results and then you had that table, so that's interesting. So, um,
Stephen: so [00:18:00] most of them are either dead or retired. Uh, it's just, so 30, uh, it was 89. It's 11 plus 36 years ago.
Guy: Yeah. So it's,
Stephen: they've, they've all long past, moved past that.
Guy: Yeah. Whether they're, uh, dead or retired, they're certainly, uh, no longer, uh, in the business of science and, and things like that, I would imagine.
Stephen: Yeah. But if I reverse prove that the, the algorithm, I can reverse engineer it. That's as good as confession. Yeah. 'cause you can't get past that. Um, yeah, so I'm working on that. Um, I've already done a bit of a, in Excel, a bit of an example. And I've pretty well worked out how it could happen and, you know, uh, I'll be posting on that eventually.
Guy: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, so if they hacked those machines, then uh, does that mean that they, subsequent measurements that they did on other, other items, not the shroud, but other items would also be
Stephen: now incorrect? No. Carbon dating, um, and the, the control [00:19:00] samples were dated really well is there's actually in the nature article.
As a mission that the, that the controls were, were all very close together and genuine, but they, the shroud sample was way apart, way a range of about 204 years from the same sample taken within millimeters or centimeters of each other had a range of 200, 200 odd years. So obviously something weird is going on and um, you know, it's just, yeah, it's the purpose there in the article itself.
Um, and it wasn't, I mentioned it wasn't peer reviewed, um, because, um, professor Hall of Oxford was retiring in a few months and he was an extremely wealthy man. His grandfather had struck gold in Queensland, uh, Australia, and um, so he was funding the Oxford Laboratory outta his own money. But he had this, uh, 45 rich friends who were gonna dunk 1 million [00:20:00] pounds.
To, uh, endow a chair of Oxford Radiocarbon dating, uh, so that it could continue being funded by this endowment. And so they were in a big hurry to put out this article, and, and Michael tight from British Museum admitted it, instead of putting the art, putting the date of the, uh, experiment in a proper radiocarbon dating, uh.
Journal he put in nature was like a popular science thing. Yeah. And it wasn't peer reviewed. He almost admitted, admitted that. And, uh, so it's really this paper that's supposed to be so important. It's never been, never been repeated, never been peer reviewed. It just survives because it fits the skeptical view of the world.
The shrouds gotta christianity's, gotta be false. The shrouds. And then among Christians, they, lot of them think the shroud's false. So it's really hard to sort of break through this idea that, that God has done something absolutely amazing that we would [00:21:00] not, I think it's one of the Philippians that says he can do that.
Colossian might be, he can do five or. Well, we can sending you utterly what we can ask or think. And I've got that in my book that, um, you know, we, it's, I I want Christian friends to say, no, it can't be right. They think that God, and it's a major, it's a miracle. Um, this Roy Max Morgan said it's a perpetual miracle.
You can see like water being turned outta wine on these that you can see a miracle just by blogging. You can these that a miracle. That cannot explain sites, can't explain it. And, and so forth. Yep. I better say that one. I keep raving on.
Guy: No, that's all right. So the, um, uh, what you're saying is that, uh, we have a, we have three machines, Oxford, Zurich, and, um, and, uh, Arizona.
And, uh, they measured the, uh, so one thing you said, which was fascinating, is they're
Stephen: identical machines. They're actually [00:22:00] identical machine and identical computer programs. Hmm. Um. Provided by this company. I can't think of the name at the moment, general ix. And they're identical. So all you need to do is write a program that works on one machine and get someone to install the program on the other two.
Yeah. And, uh, so it'd be Charles, play for the KGB. Um, I mentioned in that, um, book by Clifford Sto, he said laboratories didn't bother locking their doors. Uh, because I mean, the ones that were, you know, very special, uh, classified information they did. But these ones were not. And they, there was actually a big, uh, hack, a big fault in the program.
They didn't bother patching 'cause it suited there just to jump on the machine and log in. Um, so yeah, it was, but it'd been very easy with KGB to certainly next program on the other two computers. They, yeah, the middle of the night. They could get their way in. My son could pick locks. So, um, you know, the, it would be Charles play for 'em to [00:23:00] do it.
Um, right. Not very hard at all. Yeah.
Guy: Well, but, uh, so, uh, yeah. Interesting. I, that they were all exactly the same machine now. Yeah. Um, but what you said as well was, uh, on the, um. On the control, the, uh, difference in the measurements were significantly lower than the difference in the measurements of the, uh, the shroud.
Stephen: Yeah. When you do any size of experiment, you're supposed to have a control to make sure that you have these samples of known date. And if the only income dating is pretty close to the known date, you know, you're on the right track. So all the controls are three, uh, two of 'em, three of 'em. They were all pretty good.
They dated pretty accurately, so you know that the system was working, but the shroud date was way a 200 year gap between the, um, and that's all there on the nature article. Um, it's suppressed a bit. They were not very candid, but you can easily [00:24:00] work it out. Um, and, um, it's obviously, it just should not have been, it, it didn't pass peer review because it wasn't peer reviewed.
It just was published and everybody thought that's it.
Guy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, in such a, uh, such an important, at least to the, you know, the Christian world and certainly the, uh, the shroud, you know, world, that such an important article and such an important measurement, uh, because up until then, you know, radiocarbon dating was, uh, really thought of as being the gold standard in measuring.
Stephen: Yeah. Well, you
Guy: know, archeological fines,
Stephen: cover game, Scott. Problems, but no one's challenging. It's broadly accurate. I mean, it, it can, if you can get carbon contamination, it can throw the date way out. So it's not, yeah, a hundred percent accurate, but no one's really challenging it. In general. It is just that in the dating of the drought, I might would admit there's actually a problem of dating.
Um, linen. Linen is composed of [00:25:00] millions of little tubes and carbon di. Carbon dioxide, which Carbon 14 has a think as carbon, 14 dioxide. It's the soluble water. So it is the chance of this, of carbon getting into these tubes and not being able to get it out again. Makes it problematic when you could ever really date linen accurately.
And there have been some really weird dates of, of linen, so whether the, I don't think the would've dated first century anyway. Might have dated fourth century or something like that because of this problem of unremovable carbon. Um, so, but fourth century would be pretty good.
Guy: Well, yeah, and the, uh, it's interesting that, um, uh, that the dispersion or whatever it is that you call it, of the measurements of the shroud material are significantly different than those of the sample.
And, uh, yeah, it's
Stephen: there in the nature article. I've, I've blogged about a lot on my, um, [00:26:00] if people log into my blog, I've got a newcomer, start here, a link, and, and you follow that through you, you'll get a pretty good. Background of the shroud, including the carbon dating. So, uh. But it's a very big subject and very hard to, um, you know, it's probably other, the problems it takes a little bit of thinking about.
Guy: Yeah. And how people to think. Now you mentioned the, uh, the peer review process. Tell us, uh, well tell us what that is and then tell us how the nature article, uh, did not follow up that traditional peer review article.
Stephen: Peer review is a protection mechanism by science to make sure that, um, a claim that's in a scientific paper is, is correct.
And, and so they send it off to three other, or three or four other experts in that field. Uh, and anonymously they reply. These, these are problems of the, uh, paper and the author often corrects that, and then it's published. So there's this, there's a sort of [00:27:00] a correcting mechanism in science. But it's got problems.
One of the problems with ca, the carbon dating, the accelerated mass spectrometry, a MS is a very small group and they're all nuclear physicists. They all know each other. It'd be pretty hard for someone to anonymously say visible, I think, and they say we know who that is. So it's a problem of of rate carbon dating that, um, it, but it can be done.
I mean, there probably, there are good. Peer review going on. But the nature article was never peer reviewed. Uh, a MS was very, was only just in its beginnings back in 89, 88, um, I can't remember. It was when it was first, um, 77, I think it was first, um, successful. So it's only, you know, 11 years or something before 80.
So it was really quite early and, uh, to get a group of experts familiar with it, you know, there, there would've been only a handful who could do it. So [00:28:00] it really wasn't peer reviewed. It's really a, it should be withdrawn. It's a, it's a, you know, so many problems with the paper that if, if they were interested in, um, truth, they would withdraw it, which would be amazing if that happened.
Uh, because they, they've, they've called, um, uh, some, uh, a guy in England, I can't remember his name at the moment. Uh, but he, uh, got, um, maybe, maybe it wasn't the evening himself, but he got the British Museum at a Freedom Information Act. Yeah. Got all Tristan custody to be all data and he found out it was all, um, they certainly couldn't claim that it was within, uh, uh, what was it?
Um, 60%. 95% accuracy. Yeah, it riddled with errors. Um, and, uh, you know, so, uh, it really should be withdrawn. It was, uh, I would mention they could do it again. They could, there is a sample in Arizona that never got dated that could be dated. And I have mentioned to you about the future that they could date [00:29:00] pollen, uh, way back.
Um, I can't remember the year I did it. I actually proposed, I read to the USGS geological survey that they could date pollen, which turns to be false, but they can do it, but they need a lot of pollen. And so I proposed date, why not date the strats pollen? Because pollen is almost impervious to, um, contamination.
It's almost indestructible. It's a very tough little particle. Right? And, uh, but it turns out, um, at that stage they didn't, they couldn't date. They needed a large, too much sample of pollen, but it, it's getting to the stage when, um, they are dating pollen. And there is actually a lot of, uh, pollen in the Max Fry collection, which the last I heard was under Alan Weger, but he died.
And whatsoever happened to it, but there's possibly if, if once, if carbon data gets down to it can date a reasonable, made 10,000 [00:30:00] grains of pollen and the fry sample has got 10,000 grains of pollen, it could be dated and that would be a slam dunk. Because it's, you know, you can't really argue contamination with pollen.
Mm-hmm. It, it'd be a very accurate, uh, so, uh, we'll wait and see if that ever happens, but it would certainly be, I mentioned it would be delicious irony. If carbonating end up proving that the carbonating of the trial was false, you know,
Guy: well, on the, uh, yeah, exactly. But on the, uh, peer review process, just going back to that a second.
Stephen: Yeah.
Guy: Um, you know, one thing that I think is true is that even if there, if the paper was peer reviewed, um, quite often they only get the paper. To read. They don't necessarily get the raw data.
Stephen: Yeah. This is the problem. It's a, when I did my science degree, uh, we did a philosophy of science unit. And it's one of the problems with science is this idea that science is self-correcting, but you need a lot of money to do a sort of [00:31:00] experiment.
They gotta apply for a grant. Uh, and most authors are more interested in their own theory than proven somebody else's theory is wrong. Only some very. Large, say biomedical papers, do they want to review it? So yeah, no one has ever gone back and redone it. Um, and I doubt they could. I mean, I mentioned before the Vatican, the Vatican's got a day job running a big tour and is 2 million Catholics figure that our, you know, some, some countries or states, they haven't got time to be doing this sort of stuff.
One of the problems is, um, you know, a shroud. It, it generates so much controversy and we probably, the crowd world is now so divided. You'd be battling to get some sort of, um, like a stir. Remember Stir was the Strat Research Project, and back in the uh, eighties, they had developed quite a consensus and so the Vatican [00:32:00] allowed them to date the rou, but.
Today you'd never, I doubt you'd never get that consensus. Um, so it's probably never gonna happen. But there are parts of the shroud that are out there in the public. The, uh, pollen's out there in the public. The Vaticans given approval to take the pollen, the, uh, sample a one of Arizona. The, uh, Vatican had already approved that.
So there are, uh, and Professor Fanti in Italy is doing things like. Examining the shrouds dust and stuff like that. He, so he's, a lot is happening in, you know, in a, without having to date the shroud itself. They can date material that's come from the shroud and all and all that has continually shown that the shroud does cover the area of the first century.
It doesn't come up to exactly the first century. But it spans three or four different tests span the area of the first century. It certainly does not span the 14th century. [00:33:00]
Guy: Yeah. You know, and it's, it's funny, um, you know, if you think about a, um, you know, having witnesses in a, in a jury trial, you know, for something, if, uh, if they all came up with exactly the same answer and exactly the same wording, then you would think that they, they would be collusion.
And so one of the things too is, um, you know, there have been so many different tests, uh, on the age and then recently the, uh, the waxes, the wide area x-ray scattering. Yeah. And, um, all of them have different bands of error. I. Which is what you would expect. Some of them are a little bit newer, some of 'em a little bit older, and whether the band is close or not, you know, it's uh, when, when you're talking about something like, uh, like this, you would expect that you would expect that there's gonna be differences.
Well, this is what makes
Stephen: it the, the shroud dated 1260 or 1390. The midpoint of that is, is 1325, which is 30 years before the shroud first appeared in history. I [00:34:00] mean, it goes right back. It's, but. Basically no one disputes that the shroud appeared in 1355 and, um, the, the, the carbon dating dated 1325. So it's really too good to be true.
I mean, the no one thought before the dating, even the people doing the dating didn't think it would date that accurately. And so it's really too good to be true. It's, you know, it's a definitely a. Part of the proof of it being a hacking is such a good date. You expect, um, a guy, a professor, um, Tipler said it's a miracle and he actually believes it wasn't me.
He is a strange. Phy physicists, but he think God actually produced the shroud date, which was a bit ridiculous. But it's more likely to say that humans, well, I'm not claiming the laboratories knew about it. I, I think they've suspected it, but my, my, the chapter of my book will be, were the laboratory [00:35:00] duped by a computer hacker.
I, I'm not at. Uh, accusing laboratories of being crooked or something. Although I think a, after the event, they did realize Arizona had been hacked, but they probably thought, well, how come, how could Zurich and Oxford, uh, be hacked? So they probably thought it was, this is in, uh, professor Gove, uh, who was the leader of the radio carbon dating.
He, um, said that he suspected someone in Arizona leaked this 1350 date. But he said what doesn't matter. But I'm, um, just in my recent, uh, blog post, I'm pointing out to this photograph of Lin standing in front of everybody. Uh, they took a historic photograph of the dating after being successful according to their idea, and they took a photo of lyric lyric right in the front of everybody.
To acknowledge that he was in charge of the computer programs [00:36:00] and that he had, they got, they acknowledged that he was the one who proved the rou was medieval. Um, but so he gave over taking that photo and he couldn't do another one. So, so he is got that photo in his book. So he hardly mentioned line at all.
One, one line, one leave sentence. So that's proof to me that he knew that line had done it. But he didn't want ruin the whole thing, so, uh, yeah, it was, yeah.
Guy: Well, one thing too is all of the politics, um, that were even between the scientists and, and I like, uh, actually, I like your, uh, your point about the, uh, you know, if it is the KGB, then, um, you know, with the, with that right there.
Where they need to prove that Christ did not exist, you know, that it was a fraud and, and everything. And because they had outlawed religion. And so, uh, you know, that's kind of a, an interesting, you know, political thing at that kind of, at, at the national level. Yeah. [00:37:00]
Stephen: I mean, the Soviets back in the old, if you're old enough to remember the Soviet users, you and I probably are, you know, they, they ran an extent, extensive.
Um, you know, the, uh, for example, Carl Co. Marcus Hess and one other were involved in a selling, hacking into, uh, computers America, other places and selling the information to the Soviet Union who were trying to catch up to America in science. And they did it by stealing secrets. And so they were paying him handsomely for this information.
So if Line had have said to them, look, I could give you the state shroud's date, you know, just before it appeared in history, what's it worth? They would've probably paid a million dollars, but so he never got the million dollars. They probably killed him rather than pay him. Um, but you know, so yeah, so I would just mention that somebody might say, oh, this is defamatory, he died.
Um. Nine plus, that's [00:38:00] 11 plus 36 years ago, so he'd been dead 36 years. So was cock. You can't defame a dead person. He was actually separated from his wife when it happened, so that since she's now died as well. So there's no one being defamed and I, you know, I didn't know about the shroud until 2005 and he'd already died in 89, so it's no.
No case that I'm being Li Liber. I'm saying this because I think it's true and supporting with evidence, but I've got no ax to grind about him personally. I think I feel sorry for him in a way.
Guy: Right, right, right. Alright. All right. So, uh, before we, uh, close, uh, you have a book coming out, uh, called the, uh, shroud of Turrin, the Burial Sheet of Jesus.
Uh, tell us a little bit about that.
Stephen: Yeah, it's got an exclamation mark. Yeah. Ed Wilson put out possibly the greatest shroud book of all time in 1378, called the. Cloth of Jesus question mark. That was [00:39:00] in the 1970s when question mark was appropriate. I may mentioned in my book, I sort of, I'm not really stealing his, his title, but, um, there's no copywriter book titles, but I, it, it's is I, I put exclamation that was called shroud read, bur Read of Jesus Exclamation Mark, because the evidence now is overwhelming that the shroud is the burial seat of Jesus.
Guy: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, you go through all of the evidence that, uh, that's available. Do, and do you include then, uh, the recent, uh, uh, wax access, uh, data?
Stephen: Yeah. It's all in my blo all on my blog. Um, if you go into my blog, and usually if you search for the term and put strategy read blog in your search term, it'll come up and it's, I I would say I've blog a lot of, a lot of stuff over the years.
Um, my blog, it's just recently passed, 2 million page views. And if you worked that out per day, it's a lot of viewing. Um, I'm, I'm [00:40:00] myself amazed how many people view this route, my blog, but, um, must be my blog goes into, um, Russia. It's been blocked in China and it goes into Poland. So there's places close, you know, I say in Russia itself, it's going into there and it's like a bit like the gospel, but it, but it, you know, it's not, not the gospel.
Guy: Yeah. Well that's fascinating that, uh, I mean, 2 million views is a, is a lot. It takes a lot. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So good. You know, kudos to you that, uh, you've been able to, uh, you know, do that. So, um. Uh, anything else you'd like to talk about before we, uh, break? You had a, a picture of, I just mention
Stephen: that?
Yeah, I mentioned that. Um, one of my discoveries is I'll, I'll show you the book really, that rather than the picture that, um, in the cico, can you see this book? Uh, just that close. See that? Yeah. Uh, picture on the top left, right hand corner. I can't remember. [00:41:00] It's, yep, yep. I see it. Jesus. In the cans of Rome uhhuh.
Just leave there for a moment. Uh, that's, it was in the deepest part of the category of Rome time, of Nero, which is about AD 65. Um, that's only 30 odd years after Jesus was crucified. And, uh, Arthur called Hefe when he did this category. It was last night he was there. It was pit dark, but he had a candle and he sketched this picture of Jesus and he had him with a.
In profile, uh, Strad, like in profile. Um, and it's got a white cloth over his shoulder. The, um, it's there on my blog. Anyway, I, I claim that this is the earliest first century photograph. Get back tracking a bit in the book of Romans, Romans 16 Paul List. A lot of Christians who he knew were in, originally in Jerusalem, who [00:42:00] were now in Rome.
So there were, there were a lot of Christians in Rome who knew Jesus. One of the theories is, in fact, Saint Peter himself may have done that, um, uh, uh, fresco. It's called a fresco. It's it's art on a limestone or rock picture. It's very heavy, deteriorated. Uh, he, he sketched it when the, that cica was first open.
But, uh, a lady called Sylvia. I can't remember if she went in and photographed it and proved that it's still there. It's very deteriorated. It's all in my blog. And, um, surprising that the shroud world hasn't picked this up. This is like the holy grail. This is really a shroud like depiction of Jesus.
That'd be enough itself in the first century, but it's also got a white cloth over his shoulder. There's nothing in the Bible says Jesus wore a white cloth. He was stripped naked. When he was crucified. So the only thing he would've had [00:43:00] o over him was his shroud. Um, so I claim that this is actually a picture.
And, and also I'll get back to the, those who've seen the, uh, what was it called? The Christ, the, uh, passion of the Christ. If you remember the resurrection scene, the, the only way he can show someone the resurrected in profile, if he comes up, you don't realize it, but in the, in the movie, uh, Jesus. Comes up in profile and, uh, he, um, so, and, and Ian Wilson, who was against Hefe, a bit of this was an odd man out fresco showing Jesus in profile.
It's obvious it's Jesus in profile at the time of resurrection. Yeah. With a shroud over his shoulder. It's like you, well, the other thing that's, it's good to be true, but it's there. Uh, I've seen this book I've got, I just showed you Yeah. A very old book. Um.
Guy: Well, the other thing that's uh, unique about
Stephen: didn't realize what he was doing.
He, in fact, no one's actually realized. Even Rex Morgan had that in his [00:44:00] book, he didn't realize that's the shroud over Jesus shoulder. Yeah. Yeah. So I claimed that as one of my discoveries. Yeah.
Guy: Well, the other thing about that image is that, uh, he has a beard and, uh, Jesus, uh, in, in, uh, in all depictions, other than this one, was never with a beard.
He was shown as a young man without a beard and without all Yeah. With different hair until, uh, as I recall the third century
Stephen: was he was like, Apollo. Yeah. A young, uh, sun God sort of thing. And the early Christians didn't like the idea of Jews being crucified, and they'd rather focus on the idea that he'd been resurrected.
Yeah. And it wasn't until a while later, the sixth century, which is the 500 and something ad that you start, I think 5 44, you start seeing depictions of Jesus that a failed light. Yeah. In fact, the picture you've, we've all got. In our minds of what Jews look like comes from the shroud. Absolutely. Someone picture of the shroud say, [00:45:00] who's that?
And they say, Jesus, even though doesn't know that it's um, of course they think it's a fake, but, but in fact, there's no reason to think it's a fake at all.
Guy: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Steven, this has been, uh, really awesome and, uh, really, uh, a couple of very interesting, uh, theories and a couple of interesting facts and, uh, definitely appreciate your time today.
Um, thank you. And yeah. And so, uh, the, uh, where you can reach Steven and his blog so you can hopefully get him over the 3 million mark. He's at the shroud of turrin.blog spot.com and, uh, for the audience, uh, please stay tuned for any other videos in this series on the backstory of the shroud of Turin. And if you'd like to go to, uh, guy powell.com and sign up for more episodes.
Steven, uh, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Stephen: Thank you very much going.
Guy: Yeah, it's been awesome. Thank [00:46:00] you.