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Evidence Favors Shroud of Turin as Real Thing.
by Mary Jo Anderson
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During the 10 weeks that the Shroud was recently on display in Turin,
Italy, millions of people gazed at the tortured figure that some claim
is Jesus of Nazareth.
Scientific debate over the authenticity of the Shroud continues. At
the heart of the controversy is the validity of the carbon dating
performed on samples snipped from the Shroud in April 1988. All three
labs which tested the samples concurred: The Shroud was dated
1260–1390 AD.
Many in the academic and scientific community were stunned. Earlier
scientific examinations, medical and historical studies had placed the
Shroud in the first century. But additional evidence now calls into
question the process of carbon dating on certain materials--textiles
in particular.
A fascinating finding comes from Dr. Leoncio A. Garza-Valdes of the
University of Texas. The author of The DNA of God, Garza-Valdes notes
that a biopolymer coating manufactured by bacteria and fungus is
notoriously difficult to clean, and compromises any accurate dating of
the linen fibers that are coated with the material. Garza-Valdes
claims the coating is present on the surface of the Shroud.
Researchers who point to the Shroud as an authentic artifact of the
first century call into question a near religious fervor for the
accuracy of carbon dating. Famous and often hilarious examples are
cited that credibly argue that carbon dating may be among the least
accurate methodologies for assessing the age of the Shroud.
Dr. Wolfli, head of the Swiss lab that participated in the
carbon-14 dating on the Shroud, ran a C-14 test on his mother-in-law's
50-year-old tablecloth. The results of the C-14 test set the age of
the textile at 350 years old! The University of Arizona lab dated a
Viking horn as a "back to the future" anomaly: 2006 AD.
Other types of tests indicate the Shroud is the real thing. One
example of microscopic testing that supports the Shroud as authentic
is the 1978 sample of dirt taken from the foot region of the burial
linen.
The dirt was analyzed at the Hercules Aerospace Laboratory in Salt
Lake, Utah, where experts identified crystals of travertine argonite,
a relatively rare form of calcite found near the Damascus Gate in
Jerusalem.
It is a stretch, say researchers, that a 13th century forger would
have known to take the trouble to impregnate the linen with marble
dust found near Golgotha in order to fool scientists six hundred years
later.
Dating debates aside, some that would debunk the Shroud as a
medieval fraud claim that it is a painted image--a claim that is
quickly dispatched by simple investigations. The reddish oxide found
on the Shroud is not paint, according to x-ray fluorescent analysis.
Famous artists have attempted to paint in a manner that re-creates the
3-D effect seen on the Shroud, all to no avail. The linen has no brush
strokes, no pigments.
Furthermore, forensic evidence confirms that the red stains are
blood, type AB, and that this blood has elevated levels of bilirubin,
presumably caused by the trauma of scourging. Drs. John Heller of the
New England Institute and Alan Adler of Western Connecticut State ran
a series of blood studies. Pathologists confirmed their work.
Another historical cloth, the Sudarium of Oviedo, known from the
first century as being the face cloth of the entombed Christ, also
contains bloodstains--type AB.
Modern medical investigations have yielded a vast amount of
physiological information that was unknown in the Middle Ages. The
medical studies on the image of the "Man of the Shroud" reveal a
bloody and brutal death.
Careful review of the angles of the flow of blood from certain
wounds indicates an impossible accuracy for a painted, flat image.
Clearly, the image is derived from a real body. Enhanced
magnifications of the wounds on the back uncover dumb-bell shaped
pellet marks, consistent with the scourging whips used by Roman
soldiers, wounds that fall in precise relationship to the contours of
the body, over the shoulders and around the sides.
Most startling for a layman is the anatomical accuracy of the
"disappearing thumbs." On the Shroud image, the victim lies with his
hands crossed over the lower abdomen. The natural position would
expose at least one thumb. However, when a spike is driven through the
median nerve of the wrist, the thumb jerks back into the palm. French
surgeon Pierre Barbet asks, "Could a forger have imagined this?"
The Sudarium. The Sudarium of Oviedo is reportedly the other
linen cloth found in the tomb of Christ, as described in the Gospel of
John. The relic has been in Spain since 631 A.D.
John 20:5–7 records, "… he went into the tomb and saw the burial
cloths there and the cloth that had covered His head, not with the
burial cloths, but rolled up in a separate place."
Unlike the Shroud, the Sudarium, which covered the face of Christ
for a short time before the body was wrapped in the longer burial
cloth, does not carry an image of a man. Instead, the cloth, held
against a face of a man who had been beaten about the head, shows a
distinct facial impression and pattern of stains. Measurements and
calculations, digitized videos and other forensic evidence indicate
that the Sudarium of Oviedo covered the same head whose image is found
on the Shroud of Turin.
Part of Jewish burial custom was to cover the face of the dead,
sparing the family further distress. The sudarium, from the Latin for
"face cloth," would have been wrapped over the head of the crucified
Christ, awaiting permission from Pontius Pilate to remove the body.
Stains made at that time are from deep puncture wounds on the portion
of the cloth covering the back of the head, consistent with those
puncture marks found on the Shroud of Turin, theoretically made by the
crown of thorns.
A separate set of stains was made when the crucified man was laid
horizontally and lymph flowed out from the nostrils. The composition
of the stains, say the Investigation Team from the Spanish Center for
Sindology, is one part blood--type AB--and six parts pulmonary edema
fluid. This fluid is significant, say researchers, because it
indicates that the man died from asphyxiation, the cause of death for
victims of crucifixion.
Recently, Dr. Alan Whanger, professor emeritus of Duke University,
employed his Polarized Image Overlay Technique to study correlations
between the Shroud and the Sudarium. Dr. Whanger found 70 points of
correlation on the front of the sudarium and 50 on the back.
"The only reasonable conclusion," says Mark Guscin, author of The
Oviedo Cloth, "is that the Sudarium of Oviedo covered the same head as
that found on the Shroud of Turin." Guscin, a British scholar whose
study is the only English-language book on the Sudarium, said, "This
can be uncomfortable for scientists with a predetermined viewpoint; I
mean, the evidence grows that this cloth and the Shroud covered the
same tortured man."
The significance of the Sudarium to the Shroud, in addition to the
forensic evidence, is that the history of the Sudarium is undisputed.
Juan Ignacio Moreno, a Spanish magistrate based in Burgos, Spain,
asks the critical question. "The scientific and medical studies on the
Sudarium prove that it was the covering for the same man whose image
is [on] the Shroud of Turin. We know that the Sudarium has been in
Spain since the 600s. How, then, can the radiocarbon dating claiming
the Shroud is only from the 13th century be accurate?"
MARY TO ANDERSON writes from Orlando, Florida.
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