On Easter Sunday I saw a very interesting documentary on one of my favourite relics – The Shroud of Turin - believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ and by others to be a very clever medieval fraud. The documentary was a non biased, non sensational investigation into the carbon dating of this intriguing artefact, and put forward a non conspiracy explanation for its medieval carbon dating results. I was enthralled.
Those who know me well are aware of my ongoing interest in the Shroud and my certainty that there was something wrong with the carbon dating. I actually had a conspiracy theory of my own which explained the results to my satisfaction, but I am pleased to know that there is an explanation that doesn’t involve any deliberate skulduggery.
I first found the Shroud in a book entitled “The World’s Strangest Mysteries” in 1966. At that time very little was known about the Shroud beyond the fact that it was a long piece of herringbone weave linen cloth which showed the front and back image of a crucified man; that it had a recorded history taking it back to 1354 when it belonged to Geoffroi de Charnay, Seigneur de Lirey; that it had survived a fire which could well have destroyed it in 1532 necessitating repairs by the Poor Nuns of St Clare – oh and the image was actually a negative. This fascinating discovery had been made by amateur photographer Secondo Pia, when he photographed the Shroud in 1898. He was so shocked when he held the glass negative up to the light and saw the positive face of the image on the Shroud, that he almost dropped the plate. There were numerous explanations about how the image had been transferred to the Shroud. One logical explanation blamed the chemicals in the man’s body reacting to chemicals in the Shroud – but no one knew for sure.
Then in 1973 and again in 1978 the Roman Catholic Church gave a group of scientists the opportunity to examine the Shroud. Now things got interesting.
There was the pollen expert who found spores which proved that the Shroud had been exposed to the open air in France, Italy, Turkey and Palestine – in fact two spores were found nowhere else but in Palestine.
There was the forensic pathologist who stated that the image was of a man aged between 30 and 35, 5ft 11 inches tall, weighing 178 pounds. The man had been beaten, with bruising on his cheek, a black eye and broken nose. There are wounds on his wrist and feet consistent with crucifixion. Although artists have Jesus nailed to the cross by the palms of his hands, this is impossible. The weight of the body would not be supported by the palms and the nails would rip through the flesh. The bones of the wrist would support the body. A nail driven through the wrist would damage the tendon to the thumb and the thumb would disappear behind the palm. There are no thumbs depicted on the Shroud. There is blood on his hair which indicated that something sharp had been woven around something resembling one of those rings that Arabs use to secure their head dress. There are two blood streams on the arms which indicated that the man on the Shroud had used his legs to lever himself up to take a breath. Hanging on the Cross creates pressure on the chest and breathing becomes difficult. Using the legs to lever the body up, extremely painful though it was, did allow the victim to breathe. To stop victims doing this, the Romans would break the leg bones to hasten death. The man on the Shroud did not have his legs broken. There is a wound on the man’s side which was inflicted post mortem because there is evidence of blood and serum flowing from the wound. There is swelling on the shoulders indicating the man carried something heavy within hours of his death and swelling on the knee indicative of a fall. The man had been scourged front and back with a Roman whip called a flagrum, which has three thongs ending in three metal balls per thong which gouged out the flesh. Two men whipped the victim – one on each side and the number of strokes was counted by the pathologist. Whoever the man on the Shroud was, he suffered exactly as Jesus had suffered.
There were the Scientists who used NASA’s VP-8 Image Analyser on the Shroud and discovered that the image was not only a negative but also had depth information which allowed the Analyser to create a 3D image. This meant that things previously unseen could now be examined. For example there is a depression in the beard that indicated that a chin strap had been tied around the head and there is a top knot in the man's hair, which apparently was fashionable 2000 years ago. Some even claim they saw coins on the eyes, but I’m not too sure about that.
It has been proven that there is no pigment, paint or brush strokes on the Shroud. One Scientist, Dr McCrone did say he had found some pigment in the form of iron oxide and red ochre on the Shroud during the 1973 tests. Sceptics believe iron-oxide was used to create the image on the Shroud and red ochre the blood stains. However other scientists insist that the image was not created with iron oxide or any other paint or pigment. Furthermore when placed under a microscope the image fragments and disappears, while magnifying a painting usually reveals more of the painting itself. Any iron oxide or other traces of paint has been explained as likely to be caused by contamination – possibly by putting paintings or statues against the Shroud to bless them. Despite numerous tests no one can give a definite explanation about how the image got onto the Shroud.
There is real human blood on the Shroud, including a lot of blood that is actually post mortem. The blood group has been determined – AB. As soon as I heard this I knew how explosive this was and it lead to my own conspiracy theory.
Once the Scientists had their way the Shroud looked more and more likely to be 2000 years old and the possible burial cloth of Jesus. Ian Wilson, in his book “Shroud of Turin” gave an account of the 1973 investigations and included a very plausible history of the Shroud prior to 1354. According to legend, around 30 A.D. King Abgar of Edessa in Turkey wrote to Jesus asking him to come and cure him of an illness. Jesus declined but promised a visit by one of his disciples. According to all Biblical accounts Jesus’ tomb was empty on Easter Sunday with the exception of the grave clothes. Imagine the disciples’ dilemma if they found those grave clothes had an image of their Lord imprinted on its surface. Grave clothes were unclean and should be destroyed but the image made that impossible, so the disciples devised a cunning plan. Thaddeus took the Shroud to Edessa where it was folded in such a way that only the face was visible and encased in a golden frame. This portrait of Jesus was presented to King Abgar who was cured and thus converted to Christianity. However, when Abgar died his sons returned to the old religion and the relic disappeared until 544 A.D. when the “Cloth of Edessa” was found hidden behind the stones above one of the gates. Until the discovery of this artefact Jesus had been depicted in many ways including a short haired, clean shaven Roman. After this date Jesus’ image was standardised. One of the earliest paintings, the Christ Pantocrator Icon at St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, appears to owe a lot to the Shroud. In 944 A.D. the Cloth of Edessa was forcefully removed to Constantinople where it was revered as the Mandylion. The Archdeacon of Hagia Sophia, Gregory Referendarius, describes the cloth as a full length cloth with blood stains. It remained in Constantinople until 1204 when the knights of the 4th Crusade decided to sack the city instead of travelling to the Holy Land. The cloth disappeared, stolen by the French according to a letter to the Pope. One theory is it was hidden by the Knights Templar who participated in the sacking of Constantinople. Certainly there were rumours that the Templars were worshipping some sort of image and this supposed heresy was a good excuse for Phillip IV of France to disband the order and burn its leaders at the stake in 1314. (Dan Brown puts another interpretation on this supposed heresy, but the Shroud historians claimed it first.) One of those leaders was called Geoffrey de Charney and it is interesting to note that the first recorded account of the Shroud was belonging to a Geoffroi de Charney forty years later. 
Thus it was that in 1988 the Shroud had a probable history and Science had discovered all sorts of interesting facts which tended to prove that the Shroud was Christ’s. All we needed was a carbon dating test to prove that it was indeed 2000 years old. What a shock to all believers when that longed for test dated the Shroud to between 1260 and 1390. Suddenly it was right there with the zillions of splinters from the true cross, the thousands of pieces from the crown of thorns and the hundreds of holy foreskins – it was a medieval fake. How could this be? Hadn’t science proved it to be a 2000 year old image of a crucified man? Because it was definitely science, not faith, that had turned me into a believer. Were those scientific tests flawed and if they were it called into question any other conclusions those tests had proved. I was flabbergasted. Later, I decided I knew why the tests had failed.
The Easter Sunday documentary re-examined the carbon dating and gave an explanation of why the results differed. Apparently the corner of the Shroud used for the carbon dating had been repaired probably sometime around the 1600’s. Cotton had been combined with flax, dyed to match the original material and then interwoven into the original material to produce a seamless mend. This had not been noticed by those taking the samples. It took two young Americans, convinced that the Shroud was authentic, to make this incredible discovery. They examined photos of the cloth and realised that there was a difference in the appearance of that corner of the Shroud. They took the image to experts in the textile fields who, not knowing they were examining photos of the Shroud, concluded the cloth had been mended. Eventually, Ray Rogers, the lead chemist on the 1978 project, was co-erced into re-examining the cloth. He had been reluctant to do so thinking the claims belonged to the lunatic fringe of claims that grew up after the carbon dating announcements To his surprise he concluded that the cloth had indeed been mended with a flax and cotton mix and it was this new section of the cloth that had been tested. He conducted other tests which should have been conducted at the time of the dating, but hadn’t been. Fortunately a small sliver of the test material still existed. Flax contains a natural polymer called vanillin which also decays over time. Old linen cloths like those found with the Dead Sea Scrolls have no vanillin. Medieval cloths still contain some vanillin. The section cut for carbon dating still has vanillin but threads taken from the original part of the Shroud by Rogers himself in 1978, have none. This could mean that the cloth was anywhere between 1,300 to 3,000 years old. After these tests the head of the Oxford Lab who had carbon dated one of the Shroud fragments reportedly said “One would have to be a member of the Flat Earth Society to believe the Shroud is genuine. I’ve just updated my membership.”
So there is hope for the believers after all. The Shroud will always be controversial and there will always be people who believe in it and people who will debunk it regardless of what proof for and against its authenticity is presented.
In the interest of fairness I will include one fascinating theory which surfaced a couple of years ago and which was also featured in a documentary over Easter. This theory claims that the Shroud was a work of art by that genius of genius’ Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo had been working for the Duke of Savoy, the new owner of the Shroud, at around the time the Shroud came into the Duke's possession. According to this theory, Leonardo used a technique called a camera obscura, where he hung up the linen and took a photograph of either a real body or a statue. Something that would need to remain motionless for days. The theorists even suggest that Leonardo used his own face for that of Christ’s. The documentary showed that creating an image using the camera obscura technique was possible - although the image was nowhere near as detailed as the Shroud and took almost a month to produce. I am sure that if anyone could fake the image using this method, Leonardo would be the man. However many of the features on the Shroud are invisible to the naked eye and have only become visible through modern technology. Would Leonardo go to all the trouble of using a chin strap? Would he have known that topknots were fashionable in Jesus’ time? Would he create exactly the whip marks, beatings etc on the Shroud or known exactly what type of whip was used to beat Jesus? He would have had to obtain a real body to beat and torture and also beat his own face and break his own nose into the bargain. Would he have insisted on using human blood, wouldn’t animal blood be more convenient? No one knew about the difference in blood groupings in medieval times. It is a fascinating theory and not implausible - but did it happen? No. I don’t think Leonardo was responsible. He was always treading a fine line with the Inquisition because of his experiments. I don’t think he would risk it. The theory is well thought out though.
Interestingly there is another cloth known as the Sudarium of Oviedo. This cloth has a definite recorded history and appears to have covered the face of a crucified man. In fact legend states that it was placed on the head of Jesus and tests indicate that it was placed there while he was on the cross. There is no image on the Sudarium but interestingly, the blood stains appear to match those which are on the Shroud if one image is laid over the other. Do the two cloths belong together? It would be interesting to see if those bloodstains are also AB.
I don’t think there will ever be a definite solution to the man on the Shroud’s identity but it is interesting to reflect and propose. The believer and sceptic camps will always be diametrically opposed and will always consider the other camp to be the lunatics. Information which doesn't support one or the other theory is usually ignored so I guess there will never be any definitive conclusion. However, wouldn’t it be wonderful if, by some miracle as yet unexplained, we have a photo of the man so many around the world idolise.
