"The Shroud of Turin is either the most awesome and instructive relic of Jesus Christ in existence... or it is one of the most ingenious, most unbelievably clever, products of the human mind and hand on record."
Matthew 27:59-60 says: "Then Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a new linen cloth. "He put Jesus' body in a new tomb that he had dug in a wall of rock. Then he closed the tomb by rolling a very large stone to cover the entrance.
In this part three of my blog, we seek evidence of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin from the image on the cloth.
“THE LATEST STUDY OF THE TURIN SHROUD”, reports Jonathan Luxmoore, in this week’s edition of The Church Times, talks of “ bloodstains and markings on the Holy Shroud of Turin, corresponding to the brutal treatment of Christ described in Gospel accounts of his crucifixion.”
The study, published by the University of Padua, is by Professor Giulio Fanti,
co-ordinator of the international Shroud Science Group. Fanti, a professor of mechanical and thermal measurements, is the author of numerous works on the Shroud over 25 years, and is convinced of its authenticity.
“Bloodstained marks on the head consistent with a crown of thorns, blood marks on the hands and feet with crucifixion, and a bloodstain on the chest with the post-mortem spear wound that Christ received.”
“The presence of creatinine particles with ferritin, often a by-product of muscle contractions, provides microscopic confirmation of “very heavy torture”, he says. The right eye of the Shroud’s body image is “more sunken and apparently furrowed by a vertical mark”, indicating that the victim was “blinded by a blow to the head”, or wounded “by a thorn from the crown placed on Jesus’s head”.
The 11,300-word study, which includes medical and forensic images, concludes that the likely cause of Jesus’s “relatively early death on the cross” was “hemopericardia infarction”, brought on by kidney and liver failure from “flagellation and microcytic anaemia.
Findings published in 2020: The shroud bears the faint double image (ventral and dorsal) of a naked man who appears to have been crucified (together with burn marks and water stains resulting from fires, one in 1532). There is a puncture wound on his left wrist (his right wrist is hidden from view), and there are puncture wounds on his feet as if they were pierced by a nail or nails.
The back of the man is covered with over 120 scourge marks, apparently imposed by the Roman instrument of torture known as the flagrum (a whip with two or three thongs to which were attached small balls of lead).
There is a large puncture wound on the right side between the ribs from which blood and a watery serum have flowed. The image resides only on the top-most fibres of the threads with which the Shroud is woven, and it is a negative image. Although very faint when viewed as a positive, the image becomes much clearer when darks and lights are reversed and it is viewed as a photographic negative.
CARBON DATING in 1988 from a tiny corner of the Shroud estimated the sample to be between 1260 and 1390 AD, but it has been argued that the sample came from repaired cloth after the fire(s). If the medieval date is right, then this implies that the Shroud is a forgery, when all the scientific evidence we have other than this date implies that it is not a forgery.
The image on the Shroud was not drawn or painted - it is a negative image created at a time when photography didn’t exist, but it is not a photograph, it is not a contact print (parts of the Shroud that were not in contact with the body bear impressions as clear as parts that were in contact with the body).
The man in the Shroud had truly been subjected to horrific and mortal injuries; he has wounds associated with crucifixion, and the exit wound on the wrist contradicts depictions of the crucifixion in medieval art, reflecting the way in which men were crucified.
He is covered with scourge marks, clearly inflicted by the Roman instrument of the torture known as the flagrum, and he has puncture wounds on his head consistent with the wearing of a roughly prepared cap of thorns (rather than the elegant wreath of thorns depicted by medieval artists).
There is a large wound on his right side which matches a spear–wound, used by Roman executioners and from which post-mortem blood and a watery serum (visible only by ultraviolet fluorescence photography) have flowed.
The blood on the Shroud – that of a real man, group AB – contained a high level of bilirubin, a substance associated with severe physical trauma. There are no signs of decomposition, meaning that the body was removed from the Shroud within a few days. The Shroud contains traces of pollen from plants growing only in the area of Jerusalem, some of which have become extinct since antiquity, and there are microscopic traces of dirt at the foot of the man in the Shroud that only match limestone found in the area of Jerusalem.
THE IMAGE - Physicist, and founder of the "Shroud of Turin Research Project" (STURP), John P. Jackson, proposed that the images featured on the Shroud of Turin were produced by radiation emanating from the body in the Shroud at the moment of resurrection. Ian Wilson, in his work on the Turin Shroud, likened the effect to that of objects “photographed” on to other surfaces during the dropping of the bomb at Hiroshima. The Gospel account of that encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, when He says to Mary – “Don’t touch me” – perhaps because to have touched the newly-risen Christ might have been inadvisable?
“Currently, the known laws of physics cannot explain how a dead body could emit an intense burst of ultraviolet radiation. While it cannot be scientifically proved, it is reasonable to infer that there is some transphysical cause for the emission of this kind of radiation. After all, Jesus was not just raised from the dead, His body changed from a physical one to a glorified transphysical one. Remember, He was able to pass through solid doors, but He was not a ghost; the apostles touched Him, and He ate with them.
Some believe the shroud is the work of a talented medieval forger, but how could even the cleverest of medieval fakers have managed to get so many details right and to have produced, in photographic negative no less, an image that no artist of the time was even vaguely capable of creating?
For almost one millennium, countless Christians have venerated the shroud as the authentic burial garment of Jesus. The Catholic Church has never officially declared it to be the real burial shroud of Christ, although it does claim that this inexplicable icon is worthy of Christian devotion.
For centuries, the shroud has been kept in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. Throughout the years,after thousands of hours of scientific analysis, the shroud’s silent testimony of our Lord’s sufferings on the cross is finally being revealed – to the scientific community.
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