New Scientific Analysis of the Shroud of Turin Might Be Revealing the Greatest Discovery in Human History

RomoloTavani. Getty Images.

I'll begin this by saying you don't have to be a Christian or even religious to acknowledge that the headline above isn't hyperbole. If you'd rather look at this story from a completely secular, materialistic point of view, you can still appreciate the significance. To some of us, it's The New Testament. To you, it could be Indiana Jones. Either way, it's potentially a discovery of unparalleled significance. 

The Shroud of Turin is nothing less than the most studied artifact in human history. And new scientific research might have just proven it's authenticity:

We'll return to the most compelling parts of that thread. But first here's some brief background and a description of the experiments that were just completed:

Daily Mail -  When it was first exhibited in the 1350s, the Shroud of Turin was touted as the actual burial shroud used to wrap the mutilated body of Christ after his crucifixion.

Also known as the Holy Shroud, it bears a faint image of the front and back of a bearded man, which many believers is Jesus' body miraculously imprinted onto the fabric.

But research in the 1980s appeared to debunk the idea it was real after dating it to the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after Christ's death.

Now, Italian researchers who used a new technique involving x-rays to date the material have confirmed it was manufactured around the time of Jesus about 2,000 years ago.

They say the fact the timelines add up lends credence to the idea that the faint, bloodstained pattern of a man with his arms folded in front were left behind by Jesus' dead body. 

Markings on the body also correspond with crucifixion wounds of Jesus mentioned in the Bible, including thorn marks on the head, lacerations on the back and bruises on the shoulders. …

In 1988, a team of international researchers analyzed a small piece of the shroud using carbon dating and determined the cloth seemed to have been manufactured sometime between 1260 and 1390 AD.  …

For the new study, scientists at Italy's Institute of Crystallography of the National Research Council conducted a recent study using wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS).

The technique measures the natural aging of flax cellulose and converts it to time since manufacture. …

Based on the amount of breakdown, the team determined that the shroud of Turin was likely kept at temperatures at about 72.5 degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of around 55 percent for about 13 centuries before it arrived in Europe.

If it had been kept in different conditions, the aging would be different. 

Also - Now, University of Padua professor Giulio Fanti has placed [the Shroud's blood] samples under modern-day microscopes capable of highlighting details down to the size of individual particles.

His study was published in Archives of Hematology Case Reports and Reviews, which peer-reviewed his research. …

Fanti says this suggests the cloth was used on someone with bloody injuries, rather than forged using ink, dye, paint or other techniques.

Traces of creatine were also identified in the shroud sample, which is released into the blood stream when a person undergoes muscle breakdown or some type of trauma.    

A few important points, especially about that 1988 study. In 2017 more research was done that discredited it. In fact, the same journal that published that report claiming the Shroud is a medieval fake published a retraction. 

The reason being that the portion of the Shroud they took a sample from in order to carbon date it (the upper left hand corner) had in fact been damaged and repaired somewhere in that 1260-1390 time frame. Cotton was found in he sample, which was common in Medieval France. But fabrics from the Holy Land in the 1st century - which the Shroud is - were linens. So the myth that the 1988 study busted a myth is, in fact, a busted myth. 

But that only scratches the surface of what recent data has revealed. Here's a very small sample of a three hour discussion with Fr. Andrew Dalton, who is one of many Shroud researchers. In fact, he says the subject is offered at all Pontifical institutions of higher learning. 

Among the other revelations he makes in the longer interview (that my son sent me; Dad Points to him) are;

--The images found on the cloth show no evidence of paint, dye, or brushstrokes of any kind. 

--In fact, they are only found on one side. The side that came in contact with the body. Meaning nothing soaked through. Except the blood stains. 

--Furthermore, the images on the cloth are only as deep as between 1/16th and 1/20th the thickness of a human hair. 

--One researcher spent over a year trying to find ways that some natural process could have imprinted the images into the fabric. Intense light, for example producing a photographic negative. And he was completely unable to reproduce any sort of effect that would do so. In fact, he determined that in order to generate that much light would take 3.4 trillion watts of energy. 

--The images are similar to a photographic negative. Which no one was aware of until the late 1800s, when an Italian photographer was permitted to take images of it. Only as he developed the film was that phenomenon discovered. Using a technology that wasn't invented until 500 years after some Medieval hoaxers allegedly figured out how to create this alleged fakery. 

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--Those images are also projected onto the linen with anatomically perfect 3-D accuracy:

--While showing wounds that are entirely consistent with the eyewitness accounts of the Crucifixion found in the New Testament, right down to the crown of thorns:

--As Dalton points out, crucifixion was a common punishment throughout the Roman Empire. But nowhere else in the historical record is there any mention of anyone else being tortured with a crown of thorns. Furthermore, the cloth believed to have been used to wrap Christ's head is at a church in Spain. It's covered with blood stains that appear to be amorphous. Until you lay it over the Shroud. In which case the stains on both garments line up perfectly. 

--As far as the dating of the Shroud, Dalton says the Church and researchers are working on a scientifically responsible way to determine it without doing further damage to the most valuable artifact in existence. And quotes Pope (and Saint) John Paul II when he said that the motivation here is to bring faith and reason together as the two wings of this research, and get to the truth, whatever it turns out to be. But until then, they have found grains of sand that are rare everywhere else, but common to the area around Jerusalem. As well as pollen:

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… from plants that are only native to that same area. And that only bloom in April and May. Meaning around Passover, when the Passion takes place. 

I'm not here to convert anyone. I just can't imagine anyone finding out about these discoveries and not being fascinated by them. Whether your interest is religious, scientific, archeological, metaphysical, or simply story telling. One of the great questions of the last two millennia are being answered by the most modern technologies ever devised by the human brain. That what we're seeing is a natural phenomenon the likes of which exists nowhere else. And perhaps brought about by a supernatural event. (Think of every Indiana Jones movie.) And with all due respect, you have to want to remain willfully ignorant to just dismiss it out of hand, without at least considering the magnitude of what all this could mean.

Case in point: Fr. Dalton also describes a French scientist - an agnostic - who saw the film negatives from those first photos taken of the Shroud and reported back to his colleagues that they were proof of its authenticity. After all, what other process could have produced it? And if it's not the Jesus of Nazareth as described in the Bible (and mentioned by Roman historian Tacitus, Jewish historian Josephus, and others) then who is it? And he was laughed out the room and completely ostracized. The point he made after was that if he had made the same claim about the burial shroud of Xerxes or some pharaoh, no one would have had a problem with it. Only arguing this one hypothesis will get you shunned by the scientific community. 

I know what I believe. And always have. But I am truly convinced I'd be looking at this the same way if the latest scientific research seemed to be confirming the reality of any other belief system. Whether it was the Ancient Greeks myths, the Mayan gods, the existence of Atlantis. Name it. It's deep in the human race to seek the truth. And not ignore it when it could be staring out at us from 2,000 years ago.

Thanks for reading. Now let's get back to the usual lowest common denominator nonsense.