While science and scholarship have demonstrated that the
Shroud of Turin is not the burial cloth of Jesus but instead a
fourteenth-century forgery, shroud devotees continue to claim otherwise.
In medieval Europe alone there were more than forty “True Shrouds,”
although the Turin Cloth uniquely bears the apparent imprints of a man,
crucified like Jesus in the gospel narratives. Unfortunately, the alleged
“relic” has not fared well in various scientific examinations—except those
conducted by Shroud partisans like those of the Shroud of Turin Research
Project (STURP), whose leaders served on the executive council of the
pro-authenticity Holy Shroud Guild.
The following facts have been established by various
distinguished experts and scholars:
·
The shroud contradicts the Gospel of
John, which describes multiple cloths (including a separate “napkin” over the
face), as well as “an hundred pound weight” of burial spices—not a trace of
which appears on the cloth.
·
No examples of the shroud linen’s
complex herringbone twill weave date from the first century, when burial cloths
tended to be of plain weave in any case.
·
The shroud has no known history prior
to the mid-fourteenth century, when it turned up in the possession of a man who
never explained how he had obtained the most holy relic in Christendom.
·
The earliest written record of the
shroud is a bishop’s report to Pope Clement VII, dated 1389, stating that it
originated as part of a faith-healing scheme, with “pretended miracles” being
staged to defraud credulous pilgrims.
·
The bishop’s report also stated that a
predecessor had “discovered the fraud and how the said cloth had been cunningly
painted, the truth being attested to by the artist who had painted it”
(emphasis added).
·
Although, as St. Augustine lamented in
the fourth-century, Jesus’ appearance was completely unknown, the shroud image
follows the conventional artistic likeness.
·
The physique is unnaturally elongated
(like figures in Gothic art), and there is a lack of wraparound distortions
that would be expected if the cloth had enclosed an actual three-dimensional
object like a human body. The hair hangs as for a standing, rather than
reclining figure, and the imprint of a bloody foot is
incompatible with the outstretched leg to which it belongs.
·
The alleged blood stains are
unnaturally picture-like. Instead of matting the hair, for instance, they run
in rivulets on the outside of the locks. Also dried “blood” (as on the arms)
has been implausibly transferred to the cloth. The blood remains bright red, unlike
genuine blood that blackens with age.
·
In 1973, internationally known forensic
serologists subjected the “blood” to a battery of tests—for chemical
properties, species, blood grouping, etc. The substance lacked the properties
of blood, instead containing suspicious, reddish granules.
·
Subsequently, the distinguished
microanalyst Walter McCrone identified the “blood” as red ocher and vermilion
tempera paint and concluded that the entire image had been painted.
·
In 1988, the shroud cloth was
radiocarbon dated by three different laboratories (at Zurich, Oxford, and the
University of Arizona). The results were in close agreement and yield a date
range of a.d. 1260–1390, about
the time of the reported forger’s confession (ca. a.d. 1355).
Those who defend the shroud as authentic offer explanations
for each damning piece of evidence, but these often veer toward pseudoscience
and pseudohistory. For example, they offer various objections to the
radiocarbon date, suggesting that it could have been altered by a fire in 1532,
or by microbial contamination, or by imagined medieval repair in the sampled
area—even by a burst of radiant energy from the Resurrection! However, none of
these claims has merit. Clearly beginning with the desired answer, shroud
enthusiasts work backward to the evidence, picking and choosing and
rationalizing to fit their belief—a process I call “shroud science.”
Some researchers have even claimed to see—Rorschach-like in
the shroud’s mottled image and off-image areas—a plethora of objects that
supposedly help authenticate the cloth. These include “Roman coins” over the
eyes, “flowers of Jerusalem,” and such crucifixion-associated items (c.f. John,
ch. 19) as “a large nail,” a “hammer,” “sponge on a reed,” “Roman thrusting spear,”
“pliers,” and other hilarious imaginings including “Roman dice.”
Also reportedly discovered were ancient Latin and Greek
words, such as “Jesus” and “Nazareth.” Even shroud author Ian Wilson (The Blood
and the Shroud, 1998, p. 242) felt compelled to state: “While there can be
absolutely no doubting the sincerity of those who make these claims, the great
danger of such arguments is that researchers may ‘see’ merely what their minds
trick them into thinking is there.”
In contrast, the scientific approach allows the
preponderance of objective evidence to lead to a conclusion: the Shroud of
Turin is the work of a confessed medieval artisan. The various pieces of the
puzzle effectively interlock and corroborate each other. In the words of
Catholic historian Ulysse Chevalier, who brought to light the documentary
evidence of the Shroud’s mid-fourteenth-century origin, “The history of the
shroud constitutes a protracted violation of the two virtues so often commended
by our holy books, justice and truth.”
Joe
Nickell, Ph.D., is Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. He is author of numerous
investigative books, including Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (Prometheus
Books, 1983, 1998) and Detecting Forgery (University Press of Kentucky, 1996).