Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud (Hardcover)

~ Harry E Gove (Author) "Shroud aficionados entering the Cathedral of John the Baptist in Turin are confronted, outside the Royal Chapel, with a full-size, colour photograph of the Turin..." (more)
Key Phrases: shroud dating, shroud sample, date the shroud, British Museum, Turin Shroud, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a very readable and worthwhile book." -- De La Salle University, Philippines

"This extraordinary book recounts the drama and intrigues involved in carbon dating the Shroud of Turin with a frankness usually found only in the pages of a diary. Required reading." -- Dorothy Crispino, Editor and Publisher, Shroud Spectrum International

"This is a fascinating and unusual book; it is a very personal memoir; and it provides a rare window into the sometimes surprising workings of both science and religion." -- D Allan Bromley, Professor of Science and Dean of Engineering, Yale University and President Elect of the American Physical Society

This extraordinary book recounts the drama and intrigues involved in carbon dating the Shroud of Turin with a frankness usually found only in the pages of a diary. Required reading.
-Dorothy Crispino, Editor and Publisher, Shroud Spectrum International

This is a fascinating and unusual book; it is a very personal memoir, and it provides a rare window into the sometimes surprising workings of both science and religion.
-D. Allan Bromley, Professor of Science and Dean of Engineering, Yale University and President Elect of the American Physical Society

… a very readable and worthwhile book.
-De La Salle University, Philippines

… a very readable and worthwhile book.
-De La Salle University, Philippines

Product Description

Interest in the Turin Shroud continues to the present day even though it was finally carbon dated in 1988 and shown not to be of an age consistent with Christ's burial. Scientifically, the age of the shroud cloth is of little consequence, but to the general public, it is of considerable significance.

The author Harry E. Gove is a co-inventor of accelerator mass spectrometry and was responsible for its use in establishing whether the Turin Shroud could have been Christ's burial cloth. Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud presents an eyewitness account of the events that culminated in the final determination of the age of the linen cloth of the Turin Shroud and some of the subsequent reactions to the results. The book discusses the application of accelerator mass spectrometry to the carbon dating of the Turin Shroud using samples only a few square centimeters in area and weighing only a few tens of milligrams.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis; 1 edition (January 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750303980
• ISBN-13: 978-0750303989
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,333,277 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative and surprisingly easy to read and understand, February 14, 2002

By	Kali "bengaligirl" (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

I have always been fascinated by the Turin Shroud. When it was finally carbon dated and sadly proved to be a fake (or is it a fake, even now there are doubts?) I felt immense sadness even though I am not of the Christian faith.
In the early 1970s onwards Professor Grove set about with a group of fellow scientists, religious zealots, curious hangers-on and an assortment of faithful doubters to use this new technique in a scientific manner to prove the worth of carbon dating. And what better than a piece of historical enigma to use this new discovery on other than the Turin Shroud?
This book follows Professor Grove through the many years of negotiation it took before the Vatican finally allowed the controversial experiment to go ahead.
In parts this book is highly technical but Professor Grove manages to make himself and the theory behind Carbon dating understood. He is never sentimental but I picked up on a quiet unspoken faith he has in both the scientific and the religious and he comes across as man who somehow manages to balance these diametrically opposed modes of thought in a coherent and sensible way..
This is both a good read, surprisingly quite humorous in parts as well as being a technical masterpiece which anyone with a leaning toward academia will appreciate. Worth getting out from your local library if the cost is too prohibitive.

2.0 out of 5 stars Where is the academic detachment?, May 13, 2009

By	Historiograf (Basel) - See all my reviews

If it weren't for its considerable entertainment value, I wouldn't give this book more than one star. Given that it has been written by an academic person, one ought be able to expect from the author some minimal standards of objectivity. Unfortunately, from almost A to Z this book does not meet the requirements. Beginning with the quite untrue statement in the foreword (de facto refuted by Gove in his 1998 book "From Hiroshima to the Iceman"), that the STURP group (Shroud of Turin Project, the US scientists that undertook an investigation on the Shroud in 1978) had tried in vain to block the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud before attempting to jump on the bandwaggon, right up to the fantasy allegation in the last chapter that Turin has arranged for the secret dating of an additional piece of the Shroud in the aftermath of the test of 1988.

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, but it simply must be said that the author of this book has dwelled all too often on the level of plain polemics.
His judgement on the work done by STURP, for instance, and on their motivations, is highly one-sided. Would STURP ever have bothered to resort to the services of a Walter McCrone if they had been hell-bent from the outset on proving the Shroud genuine?
What he says about STURP as a group, may be true for some of its members, but even there Gove resorts to exaggeration and distortion. Thus he calls the author of "Verdict on the Shroud" an "abrasive character", on account of a clash they had in Turin in 1978, conveniently forgetting that it was he himself who opened the hostilities. Also he is scoffing about the alleged statement in that book of there being a chance of 83 millions to One that the Shroud is the genuine shroud of Christ, not comprehending (or not wanting to comprehend) that the calculation alluded to (meant as a rough estimate) does NOT constitute a general probability statement, but applies only in the case of the theoretical eventuality that the Turin Shroud represents a genuine first century crucifixion, which in itself is quite improbable from a purely theoretical point of vue.

What appears most irritating to me is that one cannot even rely on Mr. Gove when he is dealing with his own field of interest. His comments on the preliminary C14 tests of 1983/84 run be the British Museum are just as biased as the rest of the book (though the other way around), clearly glossing over the reality. Not just one single outlier result has come out of these tests, as Gove seems to be indicating, but as many as four of them (cf. "Radocarbon", Vol. 28, 2A, 1986), plus a number of other unsatisfactory results. Of course, it would have been quite disastrous to reveal the whole truth!
Concerning the dating of the Shroud itself, Goves "AD 1325 plus/minus 33 years" (with 68% confidence) is quite at odds with the figures given in the official report on it in "Nature" (Vol. 337, February 1989): "AD 1273-1288". As if Gove had attempted to close the gap between the REAL mean date - 1281, NOT 1325!! - to the alleged first historical appearance of the Shroud in 1353... Does this not, to quote Gove in his own words about STURP, "suggest something less that scientific dispassion"?

Historiographer, Switzerland

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Gove whining about the Vatican not accepting his protocol, July 31, 2007

By	Joseph T. Reinckens II (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Harry Gove developed the method of radiocarbon dating that was used to date the Shroud of Turin. He was a professor at the University of Rochester. Compared to world-class scientific universities like MIT, it would essentially be considered a third-rate institution in that field.

Gove proposed a protocol to test the Shroud. The Vatican approved a different proposal. Basically the choice of protocol was largely a matter of Vatican politics. Gove was foolish enough to think that because he invented the test method he could go toe-to-toe with the Vatican in political wrangling by using the media (in the 1970's) and have a chance of winning. This book is basically Gove whining about how his protocol was better and should have been adopted. It's primary contribution is details of the various meetings. However, since even the protocols suggested at the various meetings were ultimately not approved, it is really just a waste of time.