Evidence mounts for Shroud’s authenticity
On Easter Day, Anglican Curmudgeon A.S. Haley posted a lengthy item about the Shroud of Turin, arguing that best current evidence strongly suggests that the shroud is the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ. I did not see that post until yesterday, via a link at Lent & Beyond.
I have known about the Shroud since I became a Christian in the early 1980s, but my interest dissipated after the radiocarbon dating of 1988, which concluded that it originated between 1260 and 1390. Despite that finding, however, scientific research and historical investigation have continued. Several experts now say the radiocarbon dating was invalid because fibres were analysed from a part of the shroud that was repaired during the Middle Ages.
Also, earlier this month a researcher at the Vatican found documents suggesting that Knights Templar acquired the shroud during the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and brought it back to France at that time. That would predate the earliest estimate yielded by radiocarbon dating.
Anglican Curmudgeon mentions many peculiar and puzzling features of the shroud and its image. No one can explain how an artist of the Middle Ages could have created it. No one today knows how to re-create it. The image has been shown to exhibit characteristics of a hologram. The cloth contains blood stains that were placed there before the image itself.
All of this recent evidence leaves less and less ground for the skeptics to stand on, and is appropriately celebrated this Easter Day of 2009. The Shroud turns out to be, in effect, a first-century video clip, or (more accurately) an extended exposure over a span of thirty odd hours, culminating in the event that led to the Empty Tomb. It is a negative that has taken mankind some twenty centuries to learn how to develop for detailed viewing, and the more in-depth the examination of it, the more amazing the level of detail which it reveals.
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“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” said Sherlock Holmes. As the evidence mounts for the genuineness of the Shroud, Christians may draw on increased support for their faith, even if faith ultimately rests on much more than mere evidence. To be able to reduce other logical possibilities to insignificance after all this lapse of time is indeed a gift to us from the first century, and represents the proper use of such an intimate artifact, as the evidence allows. It is not so much that the Shroud needs to be venerated. Rather, the point is that its ability to emerge enhanced, and further strengthened, from all the disputes over its authenticity merits all the attention thus far bestowed upon it. God’s Easter miracle is alive and well in the ongoing revelation which the Shroud represents for us today.
My faith does not stand or fall with the authenticity of the shroud, but I do find the accumulating evidence very persuasive. The Shroud of Turin could well be the cloth used to wrap the crucified body of Jesus placed in the tomb and which he left behind when he arose from the dead and walked out of the tomb on the first Easter morning.
The official site of the Shroud of Turin is here. Read more here and here. Wikipedia has a length entry with links to other sites pro and con.
A professor of nuclear engineering at UFT used to attend our church (he died a few years back) and was convinced that the shroud was authentic.
He had various theories – I only understood half of them – on how the image was formed and remained convinced even in the face of the carbon dating evidence.
Like you, my faith doesn’t depend on its authenticity, but it has great potential for being a pretty convincing piece of evidence for Christ’s resurrection.