Shroud of Turin - Scientific Controversies Getting Closer to Resolution

The Shroud Turin Project in 1978 examined the Shroud of Turin, and made numerous findings that helped support that indeed this was a very remarkable object.

"The group not only found no pigments, dyes, paints or other clear evidence of fraud, but also ruled out Vignon’s theory that chemicals produced by the body had created the image. They also made another peculiar discovery: the image had not penetrated the cloth, but was confined to the fabric’s top layers." (National Geo blog.) 

However, soon after the carbon dating of 1988 by the Shroud Turin Project which supposedly fixed this as a midievel creation of about 1232 AD, I read a Scientific American article that was ready to prove how the shroud was done by a fraud. Forgotten were the limits established in 1978 on what possibly could explain how this was created such that it technically could not have been conceived prior to the modern era.

Undaunted, Scientific American published an article which tried to explain how an image of a crucified man could be imprinted on the Shroud, but be invisible to the naked idea unless a reverse negative camera image was developed in the 20th century. One would have to take a body, hang it in the bright sun, and use the linen as a photographic film that would store the image on some as yet unknown chemicals. The expert could not even recreate the process, but only could suggest how the photographic plate was created by someone anxious to commit fraud.

I shrugged in disbelief that anyone can imagine how a pre-modern could conceptualize such a fraud. For it meant whoever did it understood the process of photography, and could turn linen into a piece of negative film,  and then store the undetecable image on linen, and would never be seen until the invention of photographic negative film. As one article explains:

"Furthermore, and more baffling is the image of a crucified man is a photo negative and a “positive image” is only reflected when a photo is taken.This astounding fact was discovered by an amateur photographer named Secondo Pia in 1898. Pia asked to photograph the Shroud using the “new technology” of photography and was shocked when he developed the film." ("Latest Shroud of Turin News," RedState 9/22/2014.)

I repeat: the first ability to see the man's image was by a negative made in 1898. How could one plan a fraud 600 years before it could succeed? And how could a person 600 years ago know the invention to find his fraud would come 600 years later?

As Science Journal at page 236 in 1978 in "The Mystery of the Shroud Challenges 20th Century Science" wrote:

"Those who have seen the shroud report that the image, which is a sepia tone, with a slightly darker color forming the 'blood spots,' is extremely subtle--almost indistinguishable with the naked eye. ...But in photographic negative, the image is unmistakeable. Subtlety sharpens into clarity."

It made no sense to me ever that someone would commit a fraud no one had the technical ability to see for six hundred years. The Science Journal I just quoted discussed the weakness in every possible explanation on how such an image could have been formed. All theories break down because the image is perfectly as intense on the front as the back, which means two equally impressive negatives were formed on linen on the front and back at the very same time. So any imagination on how it happened from one side must explain how it equally was photographed from the other side. This is where the theories of how it was created break down. See Id., at page 238. Of course, the Scientific American article of 1988 claimed it was created by turning the hanging body around, and imprinting the image on the other side of the burial cloth that was hung at some distance from the body, using the sun to 'snap' a picture. But how this can be done has never been replicated.

Of course, Scientific American was undaunted by any doubts, and insisted its proofs show it was a "14th Century fake" (see link), but only if you can believe a 14th century person imagined to make an imprint of a man invisible to the naked idea to defraud people 600 years later when negative photography was first invented.

It is amazing how much reliance was placed upon that small carbon reading from an edge of the shroud. We now know that sadly it was taken from a portion that was stiched and glued on in a small corner, and thus it had resins from the 14th Century. Hence, Scientific American has too assuredly made its claims.

Two Major Developments

1. Blood Stain Analysis 2014

Now a major new analysis has been made to prove the blood-stains are not painted on, but show all the chemical signatures of a person who died by crucifixion, and yet was buried in the cloth but never suffered putrefacation 40 hours after death -- "consistent with a resurrection." This 9/22/2014 report by Adrae van Der Hoeven is linked at a very scholarly online resource -- Acamedia.edu - at this link.

In Van Der Hoeven's opening summary, he explains:

That there is a pinkish red bloodstain on the image of probably afirst-century Jewish

That there is a pinkish red bloodstain on the image of probably afirst-century Jewish

That there is a pinkish red bloodstain on the image of probably a first-century Jewish petalon, fits the high-priestly burial of Jesus Christ in the Shroud of Turin by Joseph of Arimathea. That the Shroud shows no signs of putrefaction of the dead body, which would have started about 40 hours after death, and that the dumbbell-shaped scourge marks on both halves of the Shroud are not smeared, means that the dead body and its image-bearing Shroud separated in an extremely delicate way that did not smear the moist fibrinolysed blood clots on the scourge wounds, which were still dry when the dead body was wrapped into the Shroud. This fits the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ. (Page 1.)

 So when you look at it lengthwise without a photographic negative, you can see nothing of the man image, but you can see spots that appear to be blood (but you must disregard the burned / cinged areas), and now are confirmed to be blood:

2. Latest Dating from University of Padua Study 2013-2014

The RedState article from 9/22/2014 continues:

 Italian scientist and renowned Shroud researcher Giulio Fanti [released in 2013] his book, The Mystery of the Shroud.

Fanti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Padua in Italy. His 2013 research book scientifically debunked the infamous and controversial 1988 carbon-14 dating that supposedly “proved” the cloth only dated back to the Middle Ages — more specifically between the years 1260 and 1390.

Now in 2014, Professor Fanti has a new book (only in Italian at this moment) and the title translates into English as, Turin Shroud: First Century A.D.

According to the book’s press release, “The new dating methods are published in prestigious international journals and no one has yet pointed out methodological errors.”

This Shroud dating research project costing $75,000 (54,000 Euro) was funded by Padua University. The funding made it possible to “develop alternative methods of dating the Shroud based on mechanical and opto-chemical analyses after obvious calibration.”

Here is a more simple explanation of the dating methods if you are not a scientist.

The research examines the rate at which the microscopic fibers comprising linen cloth are known to decay.

Fanti studied ancient linen cloths of undisputed ages by chemically and mechanically observing the strength of their microscopic fibers. Then he compared the fiber’s rate of decay to linen known to be both older and younger than the fibers found on the Shroud of Turin.

The press releases states: “The results of these studies have produced dating all mutually compatible with a date of 33 BC with an uncertainty of plus or minus 250 years at a 95 percent confidence level.”

Since the generally accepted date of Christ’s crucifixion is 33 AD then this date range of 280 BC to 220 AD places the first part of the 1st century squarely in the middle.

That timing is also compatible with the fact that a “fine linen cloth” which was to become Christ’s burial shroud could have been produced and purchased by a ‘rich man” named Joseph of Arimathea according to the Gospel accounts in the New Testament.

Additionally, the man in the Shroud does not have any broken bones.

Conclusion

The story of the Shroud is finally coming together. This shows sometimes a detective investigation requires re-visiting what looks like a cold case, and hard-and-fast, to see fundamental flaws of sampling, and incomplete analysis.