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

by Harry E. Gove

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0750303980
• ISBN13: 9780750303989
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: CRC Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Highly readable but biased account

I had to write a review if only to correct the record. Harry Gove has written a highly entertaining book about the Carbon Dating or the Shroud ostensibly but it is far more a record of Harry Gove's desire to use the Shroud dating as a poster child for AMS (Accellerated Mass Spectrometry). In the process he manages to come across as a single minded and determined individual with a very large ax to grind. He trashes STURP as "true believers" whatever those are, and fails to note the contradictions in his own positions as he careens through the book. Someone who wants to find out something about the Shroud of Turin or even much about AMS should go elsewhere. This is a book all about Harry Gove on a quest and he trashes anyone that disagrees with him. I like to keep this book next to The Rape of the Turin Shroud by William Meacham which is a useful counterbalance to Gove's venom. If you are interested in this fascinating time in the history of the Shroud of Turin than you can't miss the book. But don't buy it expecting anything like impartiality or dispassionate objectivity. It is a book about Gove on a mission. It's fun and entertaining but what you find out is how Gove judges everyone regardless of whether he has any competence to make the judgment or not -- usually he doesn't. Nevertheless a fun, entertaining and riotous frolic through the complex ways of science and religion in a skeptical era.

Informative and surprisingly easy to read and understand

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.