I will.
True that. Hugh told Jabba not to pay attention to the limestone claims because it can't prove the cloth came from Jerusalem. In flagrant disregard of that, Jabba not only said that it could but offered numerical probabilities that it could -- p = 0.95 that an authentic shroud would have limestone, but only p = 0.50 that a fake one would. No justification given for these numbers, only flagrant evasion.
While backpedaling away from his pseudo-statistical buffoonery, Jabba said he might have been taken in by pro-authenticity sources. And what does he do? He posts those questionable sources as evidence! Not only do we have his own wavering faith in those sources to contend with, we have their patent misrepresentations.
Whether artist's gesso or incidental contamination from the ubiquitous limestone building materials, his sources' rampant speculation and clear misrepresentation of the rarity of the material are pretty blatant.
This bit is particularly telling:
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/sn029Jun85.pdf
(2) Calcium is found covering the Shroud with predominance on the back, non-image side of the cloth. It was that side which would have been on the bench or ledge in the tomb (see the reconstruction of Christ's tomb). Calcium from the area of the "bloody foot" was compared to calcium (limestone) samples taken in Jerusalem near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site for the tomb of Christ, both samples matched.
Note the claim that there is a "predominance" of "calcium" on the "non-image side of the cloth...which would have been on the bench or ledge in the tomb..."; and that this "calcium" was compared to "(limestone)" taken from a tourist site in Jerusalem and found to "match".
1. In reality, the "calcium" on the CIQ is CaCO
3. Gesso is a preparation of chalk dust, limestone dust, or marble dust (all CaCo
3); the claim that CaCO
3 from one place can be found to be a "match" to CaCO
3 from another is the claim that O
2 from one place can be said to "match" O
2 from another.
2. Notice also that the "source" of the "matching "(limestone)" is the "traditional" site of the "tomb"...
which does not even pretend to take into account that the city of Jerusalem and its environs were razed to the ground. There is no reason at all to believe that the modern tourist site of the "Holy Sepulchre" can be taken to be the tomb in which the body of the HJ was said to be said to be laid after his crucifiction (and in which the resurrexion to the MJ is said to be said to have occurred); the site was "identified" by Empress Helena after a woman was "miraculously cured" by touching the "true cross", one of three "discovered" when digging up Hadrian's Wall.
3. Further, the side of the manifestly medieval linen upon which a "predominance" of "calcium" is claimed to be found is...yes, that's right...the side upon which the CIQ would have been in contact with any box it were kept in, or any table it were displayed upon, or any wall it were hung against. The "predominance" of "carbon" indicates that the CIQ was not stored, or displayed, face-down or face-in. Surprise.
And this is to be taken as evidence of "authenticity"...
