Age Test on Shroud Due by End of Year

Carbon-14 dating tests on the Shroud of Turin may not be done until the end of the year, the University of Arizona said this week.

The shroud, which is in the Cathedral of Turin, Italy, is believed by some to be the burial cloth of Jesus because of a faint image on the linen of a bearded, bloodied man. One hypothesis has been that the image was caused by some burst of energy at the moment of Resurrection, but no scientific consensus has developed on how the image was formed.

The test, at most, could determine whether the linen was a hoax perpetrated in the Middle Ages, when the first historical records of the shroud appeared. If the age of the linen is found to coincide with Jesus’ lifetime in the early 1st Century, religious and scientific authorities agree that it would still not prove that the shroud was that of Jesus.

The Vatican-approved plan to permit the scientific test was disclosed in the fall of 1986 and it was thought then that the results would be known by Easter, 1988.

But to date, scientists at the university’s National Science Foundation-Arizona Accelerator Facility for Radioisotope Analysis have not been told yet when they can pick up the postage-stamp sized sample from the 14-foot-by-4-foot linen cloth. “We expect that it could be any time between now and November,” said Janet Bingham of the university’s office of public information.

The findings at Arizona, England’s Oxford University and Zurich’s ETH University will be sent to the Vatican, which will decide when to announce the results.

A volunteer group of American scientists that conducted tests of the shroud in 1978 said it found no evidence of a hoax, but also concluded that a carbon-14 dating test was essential.