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This is the second installment of my resumed Shroud of Turin News from June 2022. I have a lot less time now than I had in 2022, as I am now almost every day writing my book,"Shroud of Turin: Burial Sheet of Jesus!" (see 06Jul17, 03Jun18, 04Apr22, 13Jul22 & 8 Nov 22). However, I need to keep up-to-date with Shroud news articles for my book. So I will now only post the bare minimum of each important Shroud news article and briefly comment on it. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated. My words are bold to distinguish them from the articles'.
Lanser, R., 2022, "Further Ruminations on the Shroud of Turin," Associates for Biblical Research, 5 June. A recent episode of ABR's Digging for Truth program presented an interview with John Long,
[Right (enlarge)] who has been researching the Shroud of Turin for the past 40 years. He presented an overview of features seen in its mysterious image, showing how they are consistent with Scripture's description of the agonies Christ endured in the crucifixion. Such details as blood stains corresponding to a crown of thorns, angled streams of blood on the arms that accurately reflect how gravity would have affected their flow, dumbbell-shaped pockmarks front and back that match those on Roman lead-tipped whips, no indication of broken legs, wounds in the wrists rather than the palms, and a spear wound in the side were discussed. The blood stains on the fabric are genuine human blood, type AB. No known mechanism can explain how the image could have been made by the hand of man. Taken together, these factors argue strongly that the Shroud covered the crucified body of Christ Indeed! ... Turning now to exegetical matters ... In the gospel of John chapter 20 verses six and seven we see specifically that John talks about how Peter entered the tomb and that "he saw the linen cloths lying there" — vs 6, and then in vs 7 it says "and the handkerchief that had been around his head not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself." Now from what I've seen of the shroud and any research that's been done, to this point ... the shroud is one piece including the head. That does not match up with the scripture. Scripture clearly states that the linen cloth was folded together in a place by itself. It doesn't. It says "the face cloth" (soudarion) was "rolled up in one place by itself." (Jn 20:7). I do not believe that the shroud is real, simply because it does not match up with scripture. First, as I have posted previously (e.g. 11Jul12 & 08May18), this commits an error of logic, that if there were two (or more) cloths in the empty tomb, one of them cannot be the Shroud! Second, it assumes that the Shroud (sindon) was in the empty tomb, when none of the Gospels says it was. As Beecher rightly pointed out, "After the resurrection there is no mention of the Sindon as having been found in the tomb":"The three Synoptic Evangelists, Saints Matthew, Mark and Luke, tell us that Joseph of Arimathea wrapped the body of Our Lord in a Sindon (Matt. xxvii. 59; Mark xv. 46; Luke xxiii. 53). The Sindon was a large white linen sheet that covered the entire body. The Evangelists carefully distinguish between it and the sudarium (napkin), which latter was in shape and size like a handkerchief, and was used for the head. In addition, as we know from St. John (xix. 40), linen cloths (ta othonia) were used, with spices, according to Jewish custom. After the resurrection there is no mention of the Sindon as having been found in the tomb. St. John tells us that Peter `saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin that had been about his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but apart, wrapped up into one place' (xx. 6,7). And St. Luke tells us that `Peter rising up, ran to the sepulchre, and stooping down, he saw the linen cloths laid by themselves' (xxiv. 12)"[BP28, 16].Likewise Bulst:"Most interpreters of Scripture, Catholic and non-Catholic, take the Sindon of the Synoptics as a large cloth and distinguish it from the cloths mentioned by John: the Othonia, taken to be bandages, and the Sweat Cloth … The most serious difficulty in this interpretation is that John makes no mention at all of the Sindon, the largest of the cloths and the one here under discussion - neither at the burial of Lazarus or Jesus, nor at the discovery of the cloths on Easter morning. No satisfactory solution for this startling silence has as yet been proposed. His reticence cannot be accidental, for John puts great value on the different cloths and their arrangement in the tomb, especially in his account of their discovery on Easter morning ..."[BW57, 83-84]The "satisfactory solution" for this "silence," which is not "startling," is that John 20:6-7 explicitly says that what Peter and John saw in the empty tomb was the othonia i.e. "strips of linen" (Jn 20:6) and the soudarion i.e. "face cloth" (Jn 20:7), not the sindon "Shroud". See my 06Nov14 that the sindon wasn't in the emtpy tomb because the resurrected Jesus took it with him, as Beecher concluded:
"But the fact that St. Luke does not now mention the Sindon, which had occupied his attention previously, but speaks of cloths [othonia] instead, would indicate that the Sindon was not in the tomb. And this is very significant in connection with what St. Jerome tells us, on the authority of the Gospel to the Hebrews (a work from which he often quotes), namely, that Our Lord kept His Sindon with Him when He arose from the dead"[BP28, 17]."The Shroud of Turin defies its sceptics," William West, 12 July, 2022. Even though it failed a carbon-dating test 40 years ago, new findings suggest that the scientists were wrong ... In April 2022 new tests on the Shroud of Turin — believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ — dated it to the first century. See below. This dating contradicted a 1980s carbon dating that suggested the Shroud was from the Middle Ages. Some people would have been surprised, but not anyone who had been following the build-up of evidence indicating the Shroud is authentic. A total of four tests have now dated the Shroud to the first century. It was already four (see 22May22b):
| Test | Max/Min | Range |
| Vanillin | 150 BC ±850 | 1000 BC-AD 700 |
| FT-IR | 300 BC ±400 | 700 BC-AD 100 |
| Raman | 200 BC ± 500 | 700 BC-AD 300 |
| Mechanical | 400 AD ± 400 | AD 0 - AD 800 |
So all four tests yield a date range in which Jesus' death in AD 30 falls!
In addition, an immense body of other evidence suggests the cloth, which appears to carry an image of Jesus’s crucified body, is genuine ... Only days before the new dating results were announced, one of the main players in the drama, British filmmaker David Rolfe, issued a million-dollar challenge to the British Museum to replicate the Shroud.
[Above (enlarge): David Rolfe holds up a negative image of the face on the Turin Shroud. See 22May22a.]
The Museum oversaw the carbon tests on the Shroud and Rolfe explained: “They said it was knocked up by a medieval conman, and I say: ‘Well, if he could do it, you must be able to do it as well. And if you can, there’s a one-million-dollar donation for your funds.’” ... You would think if anyone could copy the Shroud, the British Museum could. It certainly has the resources: around a thousand employees, including research scientists, links to major universities — and I’m sure the museum would not refuse outside help. So, was Rolfe’s bet risky? Those familiar with the evidence would say no. Given all we now know about the Shroud of Turin, and the fact that no one has ever been able to copy it or even explain how it was made, Rolfe’s million dollars appears safe. A 22 February 2024 article in The Catholic Weekly said:
"After almost two years of no response from the British Museum, the challenge is being extended to the United States by the National Shroud of Turin Exhibit ..."!The most recent verification of its authenticity came in April this year 2022. A member of Italy’s National Research Council, Dr Liberato de Caro, used a new X-ray technique designed specifically for dating linen. He used a method known as wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS), which he says is more reliable than carbon dating. See 22May22c:
"The first published paper from 2019 demonstrated the reliability of the new X-ray dating technique on a series of samples, taken from linen fabrics ranging in age from 3000 BC to 2000 AD (see black, red, green and blue curves in the figure below ... These curves show that the
[Above ( enlarge[PE22]): Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS) curves. The green "2000 years" curve is from a linen sample recovered from the Jewish fortress Masada which was conquered by the Romans in AD 74 and never occupied again. The orange curve is from a Shroud sample. As can be seen, the Shroud sample's WAXS curve very closely matches that of the 1st century Masada sample!]
sample of the Shroud of Turin (orange curve in the picture) should be much older than the approximately seven centuries indicated by the radio-dating carried out in 1988." This makes it a total of five tests which have now dated the Shroud to the first century!
He said this was because carbon dating can be dramatically wrong due to contamination of the thing being dated… These days, if anyone asks me if I really think “that Shroud thing” could be Jesus’ burial cloth with his image on it, all I can say is: given the evidence, I can’t think what else it could be. I am open to being talked out of this view, but so far nobody has managed to do it. Whatever your own view, following the trail of evidence is possibly the most fascinating and rewarding journey you will ever undertake. This is partly because the case for the Shroud does not hinge on a single fact — certainly not on the radiocarbon date. It involves many interlocking facts — a big picture painted by intriguing details. My experience is that the Shroud asks more unanswerable questions than anything on the planet. Excerpted from Riddles of the Shroud with permission. William West William West is a Sydney journalist. …
To be continued in the third installment of this post.
Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
BP28. Beecher, P.A., 1928, "The Holy Shroud: Reply to the Rev. Herbert Thurston, S.J.," M.H. Gill & Son: Dublin.
BW57. Bulst, W., 1957, "The Shroud of Turin," McKenna, S. & Galvin, J.J., transl., Bruce Publishing Co: Milwaukee WI.
PE22. Pentin, E., 2022, "New Scientific Technique Dates Shroud of Turin to Around the Time of Christ's Death and Resurrection," National Catholic Register, 19 April.
Posted 11 May 2024. Updated 13 May 2024.
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