THE SHROUD OF TURIN

In discussing scientific epistemology, I pointed out that science does not proceed through a simple process of elimination. We do not simply suggest a number of hypotheses, eliminate those we can, and then accept whichever one is left. Yet just such an approach is at the heart of much of the pseudoscience surrounding the so-called Shroud of Turin.

Some presume that this 14-foot by 3½-foot piece of cloth is the burial garment of Jesus Christ. It is further asserted by some that the image on the cloth of the front and back of a man, apparently killed by crucifixion, was rendered not by any ordinary human agency but by miraculous intervention at the moment of Christ’s resurrection (Stevenson and Habermas 1981a, 1981b; Wilson 1979). Some of the scientists who participated in the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) in 1978 reached such a conclusion (Weaver 1980).

Unfortunately, the approach of many of the STURP researchers was not consistent with scientific methodology. In essence, they considered a limited number of prosaic explanations for the image on the shroud (oil painting, watercolors, stains from oils used to anoint the dead body). They applied high-tech equipment in testing these hypotheses and found none of the explanations to their satisfaction. They ended up suggesting that the image was actually a scorch mark created by an inexplicable burst of radiation (Stevenson 1977). Though, officially, STURP did not conclude that the image had been miraculously wrought, Mueller (1982) points out that STURP’s “burst of radiation” from a dead body would most certainly have been miraculous.

Some STURP members (in particular, Stevenson and Habermas 1981a) were forthcoming in explicitly concluding that the image must have been the result of a miracle. They further maintained that the image is that of a person bearing precisely the wounds of Christ as mentioned in the New Testament (scourge marks, crown of thorns, crucifixion nail holes, stab wound). They finally concluded that the image on the shroud is, in fact, a miraculously wrought picture of Jesus Christ.

Not all were convinced by STURP’s official argument or the more religious claims of Stevenson and Habermas. One member of the original STURP team (he subsequently resigned) was the world-renowned microscopist Walter McCrone. McCrone and his associates examined more than eight thousand shroud fibers and collected data on thirty-two so-called sticky-tape lift samples—samples collected on a clear adhesive-coated tape that had been in direct contact with the shroud (1982). McCrone and his team used a number of techniques, including high-power (between 400x and 2500x) optical microscopy, to examine the physical characteristics of the image and ostensible bloodstains and used x-ray diffraction, polarized light microscopy, and electron microprobe analysis in determining their chemical makeup (McCrone 1990).

McCrone found that, far from being an enigmatic or inexplicable imprint on the cloth, the shroud body image and the supposed bloodstains contained evidence of two distinct artist’s pigments made and used in the Middle Ages. The image itself showed the existence of red ochre, a common historical component of paint (McCrone 2000). The bloodstains showed the presence of a synthetic mercuric sulfide, a component of the artist’s red pigment vermillion. The particular characteristics of the vermillion pigment found on the shroud are consistent with a type made in Europe beginning about a.d. 800. According to McCrone, the alleged bloodstains produced only negative results when a series of standard forensic blood tests were applied. From this he concluded that there was no blood on the shroud, only an artist’s red pigment.

Joe Nickell (1987) has suggested a plausible artistic method for the production of the shroud. This involved daubing powdered pigment on cloth molded over a bas-relief of a human being. His method seemed to explain the curious fact that the image on the shroud appears more realistic in negative reproductions; that simply is a product of the technique of image manufacture (as in a grave rubbing). This technique has been used by European artists for 700 years, and his replica of the face on the shroud bears a strong resemblance to the original.

Walter McCrone’s (1996) approach uses the simplest technique. He asked the artist Walter Sanford to paint on linen an image of the man on the shroud with a very dilute iron-oxide tempera paint, a formula McCrone produced based on his analysis of the paint residue he found on the shroud. The “negative imaging,” the lack of absorption into the fibers of the linen, and the three-dimensional features of the Turin shroud were faithfully reproduced by Sanford and McCrone. McCrone’s painted shroud and the Turin shroud look virtually identical in a naked-eye comparison; in addition, McCrone (2000) has demonstrated that a microscopic comparison (between 400x and 1500x ) of his painted shroud and the Turin shroud shows a very close match.

So, was the shroud daubed, brush-painted, or projected into existence? Ultimately, the answer to this question is not so important. Whatever process may have been used, it is clear that any assertion that the process that produced the image on the shroud is mysterious or miraculous and cannot be replicated using mundane artistic techniques is simply false.

Testing the Shroud

It must be admitted that if the image on the shroud is miraculous, it is, of course, beyond the capability of science to explain it. Nonetheless, we can apply scientific reasoning concerning the historical context of the shroud. In other words, if the shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus, and if the image appeared on the shroud through some inexplicable burst of divine energy at the moment of resurrection, then we might expect to find that

1. The shroud was a regular part of Jewish burial tradition.

2. The shroud image was described by early Christians and, as proof of Christ’s divinity, used in proselytizing.

3. The Shroud of Turin can be historically traced to the burial garment of Christ mentioned in the New Testament.

4. The Shroud of Turin can be dated to the period of Jesus Christ.

We can test these implications of the hypothesis of the shroud’s authenticity.

1. Was the shroud a regular part of Jewish burial tradition?

The story begins with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Whatever one’s perspective concerning the divinity of Jesus, a few things are indisputable. Christ was a Jew and one among a handful of alleged messiahs about 2,000 years ago. As such, from the perspective of the Roman occupiers of Israel, Christ was one in a series of religious and political troublemakers. The Romans dealt harshly with those who directly or indirectly threatened their authority. Crucifixion — execution by nailing or tying the offender to a wooden cross in a public place — was a way of both eliminating the individual and reminding the populace of the cost of defying Roman rule.

As a Jew, Christ would have undergone a Jewish burial ceremony. In fact, the Gospel of John clearly states that Jesus was to be buried in the “manner of the Jews” (19:40). At the time, this would have involved scrupulously washing the body and anointing it with oils, shaving the face and head, and wrapping the body with a burial shroud of linen. According to halacha (Jewish law), burial ordinarily should occur within twenty-four hours of death or soon thereafter.

According to the New Testament, Christ was removed from the cross and placed in a cave whose entrance was sealed with a large rock. Christ is then supposed to have risen from the dead, and his body disappeared from the cave.

Taking an anthropological perspective, analysis of Jewish burial custom suggests that a burial sheet or shroud is to be expected in the case of the death and burial of Christ. But what should that shroud look like? Old Testament descriptions of shrouds seem to imply that the body was not wrapped in a single sheet (like the “winding sheets” used in burials in medieval Europe), but in linen strips, with a separate strip or veil placed over the face. In the Gospel of John, there is a description of the wrapping of Jesus’ body in linen cloths and a separate face veil.

The image on the shroud has “blood” marks in various places. Shroud defenders have pointed to these supposed blood marks in an attempt to authenticate the shroud, comparing the wounds on the image to those of Christ as described in the New Testament. But there is a problem with this interpretation. If the image on the shroud is really that of Jesus produced through some supernatural agency, then the body of Christ could not have been ritually cleaned. Yet this would have been virtually unthinkable for the body of a Jew. Such ritual cleansing of a dead body is an absolute requirement for Jews, even on the Sabbath — Christ died on Friday around sundown when the Jewish Sabbath begins — when all other work would have been halted. The marks alleged to be Christ’s actual blood, therefore, contradict the claim that the body of Jesus was wrapped in the shroud; he would already have been ritually cleaned for burial before being placed in his burial cloths.

Further, if the Turin shroud is authentic, then the cloth itself should be of a style consistent with other shrouds and other cloth manufactured 2,000 years ago in the Middle East. However, textile experts have stated that the herringbone pattern of the shroud weave is unique, never having been found in either Egypt or Palestine in the era of Jesus Christ (Gove 1996:243).

In sum, there are significant inconsistencies between what the burial garments of Jesus should look like and what the Gospel of John says it looked like on one hand and the actual appearance of the Shroud of Turin on the other.

2. Was the shroud image mentioned in the Gospels?

The Gospel of John states specifically, “took they the body of Jesus and wound it in linen cloths” (19:40). When the disciples entered the tomb, Jesus was gone but his burial garments were still there. Again, the Gospel of John provides a short but succinct description: “And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but wrapped together in a place by itself” (20:7). This description matches Jewish burial custom — but not the Shroud of Turin.

Certainly the Gospels were not averse to proclaiming the miracles performed by Christ. A miraculous image of Jesus would have been noticed, recorded, and, in fact, shouted from the rooftops. But though the burial linens are seen and mentioned in John, there is no mention of an image on the cloth. In fact, there is no mention of an image on Jesus’ burial garments anywhere in the New Testament. This is almost certainly because there was no image.

3. Can the current shroud be traced to the burial of Jesus?

With the preceding argument in mind, can we nevertheless trace the burial linens of Jesus mentioned in the New Testament to the shroud housed in the cathedral in Turin? The answer very simply is no.

The very earliest mention of the current shroud is a.d. 1353. Between the death of Jesus and a.d. 1353, there is no historical mention of the shroud and no evidence that it existed. It makes little or no sense, if indeed a shroud existed with a miraculous image of Christ on it, for it to have gone unnoticed and unmentioned for more than 1,300 years. Applying Occam’s razor, a more reasonable explanation might be that the shroud with the image of Christ did not exist until the fourteenth century.

The history of the shroud after 1353 is quite a bit clearer. It has been described in an excellent book, Inquest on the Shroud of Turin, by science writer Joe Nickell (1987). A church named Our Lady of Lirey was established in 1353 to be a repository for the shroud, and it was first put on view there a few years later. It was advertised as “the true burial sheet of Christ,” and admission was charged to the pilgrims who came to view it (Nickell 1987:11). Medallions were struck (and sold) to commemorate the first display of the shroud; existing medallions show an image of the shroud.

The Church in Rome took a skeptical approach to the shroud. As a result of the lack of reference to such a shroud in the Gospels, Bishop Henri de Poitiers initiated an investigation of the shroud, and a lengthy report was submitted to the Pope in 1359. The report pulls no punches; it concludes that the shroud was a fake produced to make money for the church at Lirey. It was even discovered that individuals had been paid to feign sickness or infirmity and to fake “miraculous” cures in the presence of the shroud. The report goes even further, mentioning the confession of the forger: “the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it, to wit, that it was a work of human skill and not miraculously wrought or bestowed” (as quoted in Nickell 1987:13).

As a result of the Church-sponsored report, Pope Clement VII declared that the shroud was a painted cloth and could be exhibited only if (1) no candles or incense were burned in its presence, (2) no honor guard accompanied it, and (3) the following disclaimer was announced during its exhibition: “It is not the True Shroud of Our Lord, but a painting or picture made in the semblance or representation of the Shroud” (as quoted in Nickell 1987:17).

Even with the disclaimer, the shroud attracted pilgrims and believers. The shroud became an article of commerce, being bartered for a palace in 1453. In 1578 it ended up in Turin, Italy, where it was exhibited in the sixteenth through twentieth centuries.

4. What is the age of the shroud?

Even if the Shroud of Turin turned out to be a 2,000-year-old piece of cloth, the shroud-as-miracle would not be established. It still could be a fraud rendered 2,000 years ago—or more recently on old cloth. However, a final blow would be struck to any hypotheses of authenticity if the cloth could be shown to be substantially younger than the time of Jesus. Recent analyses have shown just this.

The Church agreed to have three radiocarbon dating labs date the shroud. A postage-stamp-size sample was cut from the shroud. That is all that was needed for all three labs to date the cloth using accelerator mass spectrometry, a very precise form of carbon dating requiring very small samples (see Gove 1996 for a detailed description). A textile expert was on hand to make certain the sample was removed from the shroud itself and not patches added later to cover holes burned in a fire in a.d. 1532. Also, the entire process was videotaped to preserve a chain of evidence from the shroud to each of the labs. In this way, everyone would be certain that the labs actually received material cut from the shroud, and not material substituted for some nefarious purpose. Each lab was also provided with three control swatches: one small piece from each of three fabrics of known age that they also dated. This was done to determine the accuracy of the dates from each of the labs on known cloth, providing a measure of accuracy for a cloth of unknown age (the shroud). Furthermore, none of the labs knew which fabric sample was which; this was a blind test. In that way, no one could knowingly replace the actual shroud sample in an attempt to make it appear to be older (by replacing it with a sample known to be 2,000 years old) or younger (by replacing it with a sample known to be much more recent than 2,000 years old) than it actually is.

The shroud dates determined from all three labs indicate that the flax from which the shroud was woven was harvested sometime between a.d. 1260 and 1390 (Damon 1989; Nickell 1989; Vaughan 1988:229). These dates correspond not with the time of Jesus but with the first historical mention of the existence of the shroud.

How accurate is this date? In all certainty the date is very accurate. In dating the samples of known age, the labs were virtually perfect, and there is no reason to believe their shroud dates are any different. Some have claimed that the shroud sample was contaminated, but Harry Gove, the physicist who is the “father” of the radiocarbon dating technique used, has determined that for a 2,000-year-old cloth to have enough contamination to make it appear to date to the fourteenth century a.d. the sample would have to be at least one-third pure contamination and only two-thirds cloth (1996:265)—an unlikely situation and one that would have been clearly visible to the naked eye. Though Raymond Rogers (2005) of Los Alamos National Laboratories suggests that the test revealing a medieval radiocarbon date was conducted, not on an original piece of the shroud linen, but on a much more recent patch used to fix the artifact after it had been damaged in a fire, his interpretation, though interesting, has not been verified; textile experts involved on site in the actual selection of material to radiocarbon-date were satisfied at the time that the piece extracted for analysis was part of the original cloth. Those involved with the original dating would be more than happy to redate the shroud using additional samples (Trivedi 2004), but whether that will occur is uncertain.

Writer John Frodsham (1989:329) maintains that although the shroud cannot have been the actual burial garment of Jesus, it may be a fourteenth-century miracle, the image appearing as a sign from God, “perhaps in response to fervent prayers, during an epoch noted for its mysticism, when the Black Death was raging throughout Europe.” This is an interesting hypothesis, though perhaps European peasants dying in the tens of thousands might have better appreciated a more utilitarian miracle on God’s part—say, elimination of the Black Plague—than an image on a piece of linen.

By Kenneth Feder in "Frauds, Miths, and Mysteries : Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology" 8th.edition, McGraw-Hill,USA, 2014, excerpts pp.309-316. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.