The Shroud of Turin is in the news again, after some sophisticated scientific study of the aging of the linen cloth not only suggested that it is, indeed, two thousand years old, but proposed the most likely itinerary among those previously suggested, based on climatic factors, and assuming, I suppose, that the shroud is a genuine relic from Jesus’s time.
I first became aware of the shroud back in 1967, or even 1966, when I chanced upon a book about it in our local library. As I remember, the book’s main points were that an obscure relic kept in Turin, showing the faint yellow impression of a bloodstained man and purporting to be the burial shroud of Christ, had suddenly astonished the world when it was photographed by Secondo Pia in 1898. The negatives revealed a positive and three dimensional image remarkably similar to Byzantine icons of Christ, but far more natural.
The book explained how its documented history only went back to 1354, causing church historians in general to view it as a mediaeval forgery. However, scientists (or at least those open to the possibility) tended to accept its authenticity because of its anatomical accuracy, especially after of the work of surgeon Pierre Barbet, whose studies of corpses based on the shroud actually gave great insights into the nature and biological effects of Roman flogging and crucifixion, which could not have been known by a European mediaeval artist.
I was generally persuaded, and amazed, by the artifact, whilst cautious because it seemed not only to be absent from the New Testament, but from the entire tradition of the Church. As a new Christian, it did not affect my faith, except to bring home the harsh reality of the Lord’s sufferings and hint at the reality of the resurrection. I filed it away under “interesting,” though in 1968 I did have a brief, and positive, correspondence about it with a very bright chap I met on an ecology field course.
I came across a rather different scientific attitude in 1981 in the form of noted dermatologist Dr Sam Shuster, who wrote an article in World Medicine called “Failing the Shroud Test.” His thesis was that certain phenomena, such as the Turin Shroud, were so obviously fraudulent that gathering scientific evidence was superfluous. I replied in a letter that I preferred to wait for the Carbon 14 dating, to add to the recent textile and pollen analysis, and ended up by saying I’d applied the Shroud Test to Dr Shuster and his article, and both had disappeared in a puff of smoke. In retrospect, he had committed the common Enlightenment Project error of confusing “science” with his materialist metaphysical worldview, to which he was blind.
Anyway, the next month an unrelated article of mine was published in World Medicine, leading to my getting a column in it not long afterwards, so it ended well by kicking off my literary career. But in the event, Dr Shuster temporarily won the day, since Radiocarbon dating in 1988 concluded the cloth was a mediaeval forgery.
That didn’t end matters, though, and not only because many problems have emerged with that study (as documented at the useful, if rather unaesthetic, shroud website). For the controversy produced increasing studies of all kinds, which I think it is fair to say have shifted the balance towards authenticity. For example, an early sceptical study suggesting the presence of mediaeval paint has been overturned (except to its late author!), the image proving to be essentially a very superficial scorch mark, of mysterious origin. The bloodstains have been found, indeed, to be human blood of Group AB, rare in Europe but with a prevalence of 50% in ancient Jews) and recent studies have even found evidence of creatinine and bilirubin implying it came from a torture victim, as suggested by the shroud itself, of course.
Perhaps most impressive is the fact that a relic of entirely independent (and better documented) provenance, the Sudarium (or face-cloth) of Oviedo, matches the shroud both in the position of the bloodstains, and in the blood group. This cloth is, of course, mentioned in John’s gospel.
Even the dodgy provenance has become more plausible, bearing in mind that before photography, the faint image stain would seem less impressive. It appears that a relic such as that was in the possession of the emperor in Constantinople, obtained in the tenth century from a church in Beirut, which may well have been looted subsequently in the Crusades and hence made its way to France, and then to Italy. Thus the most recent study suggests the linen’s aging is consistent with an origin in Jerusalem, transfer to Beirut after the Roman destruction of that city in 69-70 (perhaps by Nicodemus or his heirs), thence to the Imperial Palace in Constantinople, and thence to its recorded history in Europe.
The shroud has, understandably, produced a range of theories on both sides from the highly probable to the highly implausible, and that range is reflected in the many YouTube clips generated in the recent news cycle. You can find them for yourself, and make your own judgement. But at this point I would like to add my own take on why it remains controversial (apart from obvious one that both materialists and traditionalists will tend to believe what they want to believe about an artifact apparently showing the truth not only of the death, but the resurrection, of Jesus Christ). My point, though, is that the shroud is controversial because, from whatever angle you view it, it is an anomaly.
Scientifically it is an anomaly. It is extremely unlikely, though not impossible, for the burial shroud of Christ to have survived 2,000 years. But for it to contain superficial scorch-marks instead of a body takes us into the realm of the supernatural, and for those scorch-marks to create a detailed human image, yet only visible in photographic negative, creates a sense of disorientation even for less sceptical scientists than Sam Shuster, even without the more esoteric findings of detailed research.
But it is no less an anomaly for the Christian who is persuaded, as I am, I confess, of its authenticity. Faith is based on hearing the testimony of the apostles to the risen Christ, and yet if the shroud with a mysterious image was kept by Nicodemus, or Joseph of Aramathea, or the apostles themselves, would not some hint of its existence have crept into the inspired record, or at least some tradition have survived that the cloth was seen and admired by pilgrims?
It would be nice to think that the early church was simply not bothered with such material evidence, but we know that the Holy Sepulchre was visited, and its location was remembered even after the Romans build a large temple over it. Peter’s house-church in Capernaum has been identified by pilgrims’ graffiti, so would Christians not have wished to see the shroud, too, had they know it existed?
I’m tempted to wonder if the very cult of relics might be indirect evidence that such visits did take place. Holy places and the tombs of saints were common in Judaism and most religions, but distributing the bones of martyrs or pieces of the True Cross is a pretty odd feature to develop in early Christianity. It certainly dates as early as the martyrdom of Polycarp in 155AD. Might the existence of the shroud, both as a significant object and, in a way, as a relic of the Lord’s body, have made such veneration something in the minds of Christians?
Be that as it may, given its lack of authoritative tradition and the late onset of its significance after 1898, it sits as much outside the received wisdom of Christianity as it does outside the received wisdom of science. From which, I suppose, one must deduce that God always has surprises in store for us.
I would like to close with one more observation, which may at least hint at a link with the biblical tradition. When God rescued Israel from slavery, their covenant was instituted through the law, contained (ideally) in the hearts and minds of the people and in the practices of the tabernacle/temple. But there were three artifacts, and only three, preserved from the early days for the people to remember. These were:
- The two tablets of the covenant, kept in the ark in the holy place. This reminded Israel that it was a covenant people.
- A piece of manna in a jar before the ark (which the writer of Hebrews suggests became a gold jar in the ark), to remind them that man does not live by bread alone, but by the word of God from heaven.
- Aaron’s staff that budded, also kept before the ark in the tabernacle. This miracle had validated the Aaronic priesthood as the only authentic mediator between Yahweh and his people.
It seems to me that the shroud can be seen in a similar light.
- The blood of Christ (such a potent symbol in Christianity) is, as Paul describes the Eucharist, the basis of “The New Covenant.”
- The body-image is a reminder that the body of Christ is, as he taught, the new “bread from heaven” (also represented by his word in Scripture).
- The signs both of death and of miraculous resurrection are signs validating the new priesthood of the risen Christ described in Hebrews, a priesthood that lives forever to intercede for God’s people.
And so the Shroud of Turin may indeed be an anomaly (or even, not impossibly, a fake). But what it symbolises is as integral to the Christian faith as those three objects were for the covenant of Moses.
