Science and the Shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin is a sheet of white linen of hearing-bone weave 14 _ by 3 _ foot linen cloth that is reputed to be the burial cloth that cover Jesus after the crucifixion. Its geographical path throughout history has been traced by identification of at least six pieces of pollen only found in Jerusalem at the time of Christ, embedded in the linen. There are also eight burn marks, four on each side, shaped like a wedge which have occurred in icons that have been dated to the early centuries of Christianity.

In 1898, the Church in Turin was about to relegate the Holy Shroud to a museum. A picture was taken of the cloth for catalogue purposes by Secondo Pia. He found that the image of the Shroud was, in fact, a negative. It looks exactly like a typical negative of a black and white photo. A medieval forger could not possibly have conceived of producing a detailed negative, substituting lights for darkness, with all the subtle variations involved. Historically no other picture of any subject has ever been discovered with these same photographic qualities. Scientists are in general agreement that they would be unable to produce such an image with today’s technology.

The image has the anatomical precision of a graphic detail of death by crucifixion. This is apparent in the rivulets of human blood running from the feet, wrists and side. The Shroud also shows clear evidence of more than 160 wounds from a severe scourging with a weighted whip, a large wound in the side of the chest as from the thrust of a spear, and streams of blood in the hair and on the brow from a crown of thorns which was a unique torture invented to mock Christ. We therefore have a picture with photographic accuracy which shows in detail the Passion of Jesus, which parallels the Gospel accounts of the Passion in every detail.

Experiments

Scientists at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs were stunned when they placed a photograph of the face of the Shroud in a VP8 computerized image enhancer that had been designed for the Mariner Space Program. The Shroud picture mysteriously contained encoded information which produced an uncanny three-dimensional image. It is therefore possible that the image of the Shroud contains X-ray information. This is not possible with any ordinary photographic technique and certainly could not be duplicated by a forger, medieval or contemporary.

These relief pictures reveal the existence of two small disks on the man’s eyelids. These disks have been identified through high magnification as coins which were minted by Pontius Pilate in Palestine between October 28 A.D. and October 31 A.D.

Investigators working with computers from the Viking Space Mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasedena, California established that the image was not made by pigments, and appears to be strictly a surface phenomenon similar to a scorch. Because of this, scientists theorize that the image resulted from a very brief but intense burst of radiant energy called "flash photolysis," of unknown origin but certainly like no other. It somehow emanated from the body under the cloth. The Resurrected Christ is usually pictured in just such a transcendent light. Scientists now believe the Shroud is indeed the burial cloth of Jesus; thus it appears the picture was formed at the very moment of the Resurrection. If the body in the Shroud had decayed in the normal manner, or even remained in the Shroud for more than a few days, the Shroud would have been discolored and eventually itself have decayed.

Professor Max Frei, Director of the Scientific Laboratory of the Swiss Police, detected and identified 48 classes of pollen on the tissue of the Shroud. Some belong to plants, long extinct, which flourished in first century Palestine; some to plants from Syria, Anatolia, Constantinople; some from France and Italy. Thus, the new branch of microbotanics, called Palinology, has fixed the date and itinerary of the Holy Shroud in its origins and migrations.

Carbon Dating

Carbon dating of the Shroud is now being reevaluated because of the many problems that can throw the test off by thousands of years. The findings of the 1988 carbon dating are now generally dismissed by scientists as unreliable. It is clear that the lack of methodological rigor deployed during these dating tests has resulted in its losing its credibility. The Russian scientists who conducted the Carbon tests will not even defend their findings any longer.

"What do these marks show us?" and "Why are we the only generation privileged to see the marks like this?"

History of the Holy Shroud

Some years before St. Thomas the Apostle left for India, in the city of Edessa in northwestern Mesopotamia, about 350 miles north of Galilee, King Abgar had been stricken by a dread disease, probably leprosy. He had heard of Jesus and His healing miracles. He sent a message to Jesus, begging for a cure.

When the message arrived, Jesus had already ascended into heaven. So the apostles decided to send instead the apostle Jude with the Holy Shroud. The cloth seems to have been folded and decorated so that it showed only the portrait-like image of the Holy Face of Jesus.

Jude brought the Shroud to Edessa. King Abgar was cured and baptized, and Jude established Christianity in Edessa. The Shroud remained there. But in 57 A.D. a persecution of Christians broke out. The portrait-like Shroud was hidden away for safekeeping in a hollow place in one of the city gates, so well hidden that its whereabouts were soon lost. It was not rediscovered until the sixth century, when an earthquake damaged the walls and revealed the hiding place. By this time Edessa was once again Christian, and the Shroud was enshrined in its main church.

Edessa was in the territory conquered by the Moslems, but the Arabs had not harmed the Shroud since they honored Jesus as one of their prophets. The Shroud was still regarded as a miraculous portrait and not known to be the burial cloth of Christ.

In the year A.D. 943, the Byzantine Emperor Romanus Lecapenus wanted to bring the miraculous portrait to Constantinople. He persuaded the Moslem emir to release it to him by promising Edessa perpetual immunity from attack. This event was most providential. Two centuries later, Edessa was sacked by the Turks who would surely have destroyed the Shroud if it had remained there.

The portrait was installed in the royal chapel in Constantinople but never shown to the general public. At some point someone finally unfolded the cloth and realized that it was a shroud and not just a portrait. We know this because there was dramatic change in representations of Jesus’ burial, showing the Shroud.

During the sack of Constantinople in 1204 the Holy Shroud disappeared from public view and reappeared around 1356 in the possession of the DeCharney family in Lirey, France where it remained until 1453 when it came into possession of the House of Savoy in 1453.

In 1532 a fire engulfed the chapel of Sainte Chapelle in Chambrey, France, where the Shroud was kept, and it came dangerously close to being destroyed. The fire was so intense that part of the silver on the reliquary holding the Shroud melted, and a drop of molten silver fell on a corner of the folded linen. This set one of the Shroud's edges on fire, burning through all of the folds before it was doused with water. When the Shroud was opened up, the characteristic geometric set of scorch marks visible today were seen, and yet the part of the Shroud containing the image was scarcely touched by the fire. The burned material was later repaired by sewing linen patches over it. In 1578 it was taken to its current location in Turin, Italy.

Until April of this year, the Shroud was wrapped in red silk and kept in a special silver chest in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud in Turin’s Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. On April 11, 1997 the chapel was destroyed by a fire. By the heroic efforts of firefighters the Shroud of Turin was saved from destruction in the blaze.

The Vatican has said Pope John Paul will bestow special citations upon the firefighters who risked life and limb to rescue the relic believed to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, bearing a miraculous image of his body after death. Mario Trematore was hosed down by his fellow firefighters as he entered the burning building, with chunks of marble and fiery debris, falling around him. He used a sledgehammer to break the four layers of bulletproof glass protecting the silver box containing the linen shroud. After collapsing outside the chapel, Trematore said: "God gave me the strength to break the glass."

The Shroud will be placed on public display from April 18 to June 14 of next year, as part of the celebrations leading up to the Jubilee Year 2000. The Shroud will again be on display during the Jubilee Year itself.

Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini of Turin in consultation with law-enforcement officials, has declined to reveal where the Shroud is being kept in the aftermath of that fire, as authorities seek to determine the cause of the blaze. Some speculation in Italy has suggested that the fire was deliberately set, perhaps in an effort to destroy the Shroud.

Cardinal Saldarini, for his part, acknowledges that he is personally convinced that the Shroud is the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ-- that it is, as one scientist put it, "a fifth Gospel," telling the story of the Lord's passion.

Other science articles from Volume VI (1997-98) of St. Joseph Messenger:

Who Said the Earth is Flat? The Real Galileo Conflict
The Miraculous Tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Mystical Phenomena Vexes Modern Science