Evidence favors Shroud of Turin as Real Thing
By Mary Jo Anderson - WorldNetDaily
During the 10 weeks that the Shroud was recently on display
in Turin, Italy, millions of people gazed at the tortured
figure that some claim is Jesus of Nazareth.
Scientific debate over the authenticity of the Shroud
continues. At the heart of the controversy is the validity
of the carbon dating performed on samples snipped from the
Shroud in April 1988. All three labs which tested the
samples concurred: The Shroud was dated 1260-1390 AD.
Many in the academic and scientific community were stunned.
Earlier scientific examinations, medical and historical
studies had placed the Shroud in the first century. But
additional evidence now calls into question the process of
carbon dating on certain materials--textiles in particular.
A fascinating finding comes from Dr. Leoncio A. Garza-Valdes
of the University of Texas. The author of The DNA of God,
Garza-Valdes notes that a biopolymer coating manufactured by
bacteria and fungus is notoriously difficult to clean, and
compromises any accurate dating of the linen fibers that are
coated with the material. Garza-Valdes claims the coating is
present on the surface of the Shroud.
Researchers who point to the Shroud as an authentic artifact
of the first century call into question a near religious
fervor for the accuracy of carbon dating. Famous and often
hilarious examples are cited that credibly argue that carbon
dating may be among the least accurate methodologies for
assessing the age of the Shroud.
Dr. Wolfli, head of the Swiss lab that participated in the
carbon-14 dating on the Shroud, ran a C-14 test on his
mother-in-law's 50-year-old tablecloth. The results of the
C-14 test set the age of the textile at 350 years old! The
University of Arizona lab dated a Viking horn as a "back to
the future" anomaly: 2006 AD.
Other types of tests indicate the Shroud is the real thing.
One example of microscopic testing that supports the Shroud
as authentic is the 1978 sample of dirt taken from the foot
region of the burial linen.
The dirt was analyzed at the Hercules Aerospace Laboratory
in Salt Lake, Utah, where experts identified crystals of
travertine argonite, a relatively rare form of calcite found
near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.
It is a stretch, say researchers, that a 13th century forger
would have known to take the trouble to impregnate the linen
with marble dust found near Golgotha in order to fool
scientists six hundred years later.
Dating debates aside, some that would debunk the Shroud as a
medieval fraud claim that it is a painted image--a claim
that is quickly dispatched by simple investigations. The
reddish oxide found on the Shroud is not paint, according to
x-ray fluorescent analysis. Famous artists have attempted to
paint in a manner that re-creates the 3-D effect seen on the
Shroud, all to no avail. The linen has no brush strokes, no
pigments.
Furthermore, forensic evidence confirms that the red stains
are blood, type AB, and that this blood has elevated levels
of bilirubin, presumably caused by the trauma of scourging.
Drs. John Heller of the New England Institute and Alan Adler
of Western Connecticut State ran a series of blood studies.
Pathologists confirmed their work.
Another historical cloth, the Sudarium of Oviedo, known from
the first century as being the face cloth of the entombed
Christ, also contains bloodstains--type AB.
Modern medical investigations have yielded a vast amount of
physiological information that was unknown in the Middle
Ages. The medical studies on the image of the "Man of the
Shroud" reveal a bloody and brutal death.
Careful review of the angles of the flow of blood from
certain wounds indicates an impossible accuracy for a
painted, flat image. Clearly, the image is derived from a
real body. Enhanced magnifications of the wounds on the back
uncover dumb-bell shaped pellet marks, consistent with the
scourging whips used by Roman soldiers, wounds that fall in
precise relationship to the contours of the body, over the
shoulders and around the sides.
Most startling for a layman is the anatomical accuracy of
the "disappearing thumbs." On the Shroud image, the victim
lies with his hands crossed over the lower abdomen. The
natural position would expose at least one thumb. However,
when a spike is driven through the median nerve of the
wrist, the thumb jerks back into the palm. French surgeon
Pierre Barbet asks, "Could a forger have imagined this?"
The Sudarium. The Sudarium of Oviedo is reportedly the other
linen cloth found in the tomb of Christ, as described in the
Gospel of John. The relic has been in Spain since 631 A.D.
John 20:5-7 records, "ƒ he went into the tomb and saw the
burial cloths there and the cloth that had covered His head,
not with the burial cloths, but rolled up in a separate
place."
Unlike the Shroud, the Sudarium, which covered the face of
Christ for a short time before the body was wrapped in the
longer burial cloth, does not carry an image of a man.
Instead, the cloth, held against a face of a man who had
been beaten about the head, shows a distinct facial
impression and pattern of stains. Measurements and
calculations, digitized videos and other forensic evidence
indicate that the Sudarium of Oviedo covered the same head
whose image is found on the Shroud of Turin.
Part of Jewish burial custom was to cover the face of the
dead, sparing the family further distress. The sudarium,
from the Latin for "face cloth," would have been wrapped
over the head of the crucified Christ, awaiting permission
from Pontius Pilate to remove the body. Stains made at that
time are from deep puncture wounds on the portion of the
cloth covering the back of the head, consistent with those
puncture marks found on the Shroud of Turin, theoretically
made by the crown of thorns.
A separate set of stains was made when the crucified man was
laid horizontally and lymph flowed out from the nostrils.
The composition of the stains, say the Investigation Team
from the Spanish Center for Sindology, is one part
blood--type AB--and six parts pulmonary edema fluid. This
fluid is significant, say researchers, because it indicates
that the man died from asphyxiation, the cause of death for
victims of crucifixion.
Recently, Dr. Alan Whanger, professor emeritus of Duke
University, employed his Polarized Image Overlay Technique
to study correlations between the Shroud and the Sudarium.
Dr. Whanger found 70 points of correlation on the front of
the sudarium and 50 on the back.
"The only reasonable conclusion," says Mark Guscin, author
of The Oviedo Cloth, "is that the Sudarium of Oviedo covered
the same head as that found on the Shroud of Turin." Guscin,
a British scholar whose study is the only English-language
book on the Sudarium, said, "This can be uncomfortable for
scientists with a predetermined viewpoint; I mean, the
evidence grows that this cloth and the Shroud covered the
same tortured man."
The significance of the Sudarium to the Shroud, in addition
to the forensic evidence, is that the history of the
Sudarium is undisputed.
Juan Ignacio Moreno, a Spanish magistrate based in Burgos,
Spain, asks the critical question. "The scientific and
medical studies on the Sudarium prove that it was the
covering for the same man whose image is [on] the Shroud of
Turin. We know that the Sudarium has been in Spain since the
600s. How, then, can the radiocarbon dating claiming the
Shroud is only from the 13th century be accurate?"