Decoding The Past: Unraveling the Shroud

History Channel Airs New Shroud of Turin Documentary

December 19, 2005:

9:00PM EST
8:00PM CST
7:00PM MST
9:00PM PST

And December 24, 2005

Description from the History Channel Website:

Decoding The Past: Unraveling the Shroud

For centuries the Shroud of Turin has been a touchstone of faith for millions. Many believe it is the primary evidence of the way Jesus Christ died on the cross. But is it real or a clever forgery? Did Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci play a trick on the Roman Catholic Church? We bring you the latest theories and the most current tests, some commissioned especially for the program. Despite centuries of scrutiny from scientists, theologians, and art historians, the linen cloth with the faint image has remained a three-and-a-half by fourteen foot enigma. Like a mirror, for some it has reflected what we know; for others, what we believe. cc

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shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin for Journalists: Where have all the skeptics gone? How new peer-reviewed science redefines the controversy as one between scientists and the Papal custodians in Turin.

New Tests Prove 1988 Carbon 14 Dating Invalid: Shroud of Turin Shown to be Much Older.

Thermochimica Acta (Volume 425 pp. 189-194, by Raymond N. Rogers, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California) - The article is available on Elsevier BV's ScienceDirect® and the American Chemical Society's ChemPort

New Analysis Confirms Second Face: Raises Questions About Other Images on the Shroud

Why No One Can Fully Explain the Pictures on the Shroud of Turin: Why nothing makes sense.

The Shroud of Caiaphas: A forensic science mystery.

The Ray Rogers FAQ Statements of fact that can be proved from the scientific observations.

Mozarabic Rite What does a 6th century rite from the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain have to do with the Shroud of Turin? A summary of Shroud history.

Great Links: New information on many sites and streaming video interviews and the 3rd International Dallas Conference with 11 new papers, news about a new History Channel documentary coming soon

What's Wrong with the Shadow Shroud? You can make a glass of nerve toxin look like lemonade. That doesn't make it lemonade. The Shadow Shroud is that much unlike the real Shroud of Turin.

The Shroud of Turin and the Skeptical Inquirer: "Imagine slicing a human hair lengthwise into 100 long thin slices, each slice one-tenth the width of a single red blood cell. The images on the Shroud of Turin, at their thickest, are this thin."

The Second Face What does an announcement by the Institute of Physics in London mean?

Shroud of Turin Facts Gallery

Chemistry What do we know about the chemical nature of the images?

Carbon 14 Tests They conclude for a medieval provenance. Are they wrong? It seems so. According to National Geographic News, the Discovery Channel, the New York Times, UPI, etc. there is now definitive chemical evidence that the test samples were cut from a medieval repair patch.

Image Formation Were they created by 1) a faker of false relics, 2) a miraculous event, or 3) some perfectly natural phenomenon?

FAQ Facts and dubious claims

GLOSSARY Terms and Data

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Shroud Description

The cloth

The Shroud of Turin is a single piece of linen cloth measuring about 14 feet by 3½ feet. The weave is a 3 over 1 herringbone weave. The Shroud is bloodstained and shows faint ventral and dorsal images of a man who, by the wounds that are visible, appears to have been crucified. He seems to be in burial repose.

The bloodstains

The bloodstains on the Shroud of Turin are composed of hemoglobin and give a positive test for serum albumin. Numerous tests confirm this.

The images

The Shroud of Turin's images are superficial and fully contained within a thin layer of starch fractions and saccharides that coats the outermost fibers of the Shroud. The color is a caramel-like substance, probably the product of an amino/carbonyl reaction. Where there is no image, the carbohydrate coating is clear. There is also a very faint image of the face on the reverse side of the Shroud of Turin which lines up with the image on the front of the cloth. There is no image content between the two superficial image layers indicating that nothing soaked through to form the image on the other side.

Until recently, it was widely believed that the images on the Shroud of Turin were produced by something which resulted in oxidation, dehydration and conjugation of the polysaccharide structure of the linen fibers. This is incorrect. The coating, whether imaged or clear, can be reduced with diimide or removed with adhesive leaving clear cellulose fiber.

The images as they appear on the Shroud of Turin are said to be negative because when photographed the resulting negative is a positive image.

The Turin Shroud was examined with visible and ultraviolet spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, thermography, pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry, lasermicroprobe Raman analyses, and microchemical testing. No evidence for pigments (paint, dye or stains) or artist's media was found anywhere on the Shroud of Turin.

More Stuff

updated 2005

Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant and Evangelical Christians — conservative and liberal — are beginning to realize that there is something not easily understood about the Shroud of Turin.

The Shroud of Turin evidence is poignantly contrary to the expectations of believers and skeptics alike. But at the same time it is auspiciously not too fantastic for modern sensibilities.

Together, a conspectus of its history and valid scientific evidence suggest that the Shroud of Turin is a genuine burial cloth of a Roman-style crucifixion victim.

Valid is emphasized because much that is reported in polemic books and websites—by believers and skeptics alike—is junk science.

If the Shroud of Turin is a burial cloth, then historical records are sufficient to infer that the Shroud's enigmatic images of a naked, much wounded man are of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Shroud of Turin is certainly much older than the now discredited radiocarbon date of ca 1260-1390. This is supported by chemical evidence.

The superficial conjugated carbon bonds—the microscopic chromophores of the Shroud of Turin's images—possibly result from a Maillard reaction between reactive body amines and residual starch fractions and saccharides in natural soap. We need only turn to Pliny the Elder to see how ancient linen was made to find supporting evidence.

Science cannot rule out a miracle but it can and does rule out fakery.

If genuine, then the Shroud of Turin is unquestionably the oldest historical document pertaining to the life and death of Jesus. If genuine, it is pictorial and forensic evidence that gives credence to the the passion story.

And if genuine, this piece of ancient linen, the Shroud of Turin, offers new insights in the quest for the historical Jesus and new ways to scrutinize contemporary biblical exegesis.

Is the Shroud evidence of the resurrection? Possibly, but perhaps only indirectly. Clearly, if the Shroud of Turin is a burial cloth, the body it wrapped was separated from it soon after burial and before decomposition products could have ravaged the cloth. Forensic science, applied to the Shroud, argues against the polemics of swoon theory or a stolen body.

Ray Rogers, a Fellow of the University of California, Los Alamos National Laboratory, a chemist who has scientifically examined the Shroud—in Turin—and studied the object for more than 27 years, wrote:

with some legitimacy, we might put up a strong case for a First Century shroud with an image best explained as being that of a crucified man. Isn't that enough? Remember that there weren't any Christians or Christian fanatics (e.g., Templars) in the First Century. There wasn't anyone around so warped that they would crucify a person to create a relic, and the technology did not exist to produce an adequate fake.

Perspective: My name is Dan Porter. I am the author of this website.

Biblical scholar and Anglican bishop, John A. T. Robinson wrote in Honest to God: "All I can do is try to be honest, honest to God and about God and to follow the argument wherever it leads." I have tried to make this my guiding principle in exploring the
Turin Shroud.

JOHN A. T. ROBINSON
SURPRISE »

I am a lifelong Episcopalian with one foot firmly planted in liberal theological views and the principles of Progressive Christianity and one foot planted in conservative thought and traditional orthodoxy. I am a member of:

St. John's Episcopal Church, Tuckahoe, Yonkers, NY

While I personally believe in the Resurrection of Christ, I have no opinion about its physical or spiritual nature. I don't interpret the Gospels as literal or linear accounts of the life of Jesus. I believe the Gospels were written to elicit faith and as such are truer than they could be as mere historical narratives. But the accounts, starting with Jesus' arrest and ending with the discovery of the empty tomb, seems very historical.

If the Shroud of Turin is real, as I have come to believe, it confirms the Passion story and lavishes new verisimilitude upon the Resurrection. It could be that we have a picture of Jesus.