A Shroud of Evidence

From youth, one recalls—was it a half century or so ago?—hullabaloo over how the film negative of the Shroud revealed a powerful visage of a man, with scientists claiming it could only be cast on the cloth by something like an intense light flash, akin to a nuclear blast. Then came debunking claims—carbon-dating and somesortadevice-ograph ruling that the holy cloth was not ancient enough . . . which was followed by a debunking of the debunking, as new evidence revealed tiny seeds on the cloth aged nearly two millennia—natural to the region of Jerusalem—and that the previous carbon-dating was of fringe material added centuries later.