Easter Sunday is not a “fixed” Sunday;
it does not always fall on the same calendric Sunday,
but is generally accepted as the first Sunday after the first full moon
which occurs on or soonest after the vernal equinox (that is, on
[or a day or two before] March 21. So, because the actual
astronomical equinox from year to year can occur at
different times in this three-day window, the Easter
Sunday celebration date can vary, depending upon
which Christian sect is doing the computation.
different times in this three-day window, the Easter
Sunday celebration date can vary, depending upon
which Christian sect is doing the computation.
But let’s not get all tangled up in calendrical esoterica. The question is, did Jesus rise from the dead or not? If he did, Christianity is built on a solid rock. If he didn’t... well... not so much. This is why any actual physical/scientific evidence is so important, and the Shroud (and Sudarium) might prove the rock is solid. Let us begin with the shroud itself.
Though it cannot so far be conclusively proved nor disproved, many believe the burial cloth in which Jesus’ body was wrapped has survived to this day; now known as the Shroud of Turin. The Shroud is a linen cloth kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. It bears the image of a man who, according to medical experts, appears to have suffered physical trauma in a manner consistent with crucifixion. The origins of the Shroud and its image have for decades been the subject of intense debate among scientists, theologians, historians and researchers.
Believers contend the Shroud is the cloth placed around the body of Jesus Christ at the time of his burial, as was Jewish tradition at the time; and that the face of the image is the actual impression of the face of Jesus. Just as with the mystery of God’s existence, believers accept the Shroud as a matter of faith. Some believers think scientific methods will never advance to a level sufficient for understanding the image formation on the Shroud, since these true believers think it was miraculously and divinely produced by – and at the very moment of – Jesus’ Resurrection.
The cloth itself is roughly 14 feet long, by about three and one-half feet wide, woven in a herringbone twill composed of flax fibrils. Its most distinctive characteristic is the faint, brownish image of a front and back view of a naked man with his hands folded across his groin. The two views are aligned, head-to-head, along the midplane of the body (the image below shows the shroud in two side-by-side parts for clarity – the shroud is actually one piece with the two top edges joined together in one long sheet where the front and back views of the head nearly meet). The man has a beard, moustache, and shoulder-length hair parted in the middle. He is muscular and rather tall for the time, possibly up to 6 feet, 2 inches.
Both sides of the debate use science and historical documents to make their case. In fact, as we shall see, the Shroud is probably the single most studied artifact in human history! Skeptics contend that the artifact postdates the Crucifixion of Jesus by more than a millennium. In the year 2000, fragments of a different burial shroud from Jesus’ time were discovered in a tomb near Jerusalem. That shroud was composed of a simple two-way weave, unlike the complex weave of the Turin Shroud. Based on this discovery, researchers stated that the Turin Shroud did not originate from Jerusalem during the time of Jesus.
However, according to textile expert Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, a seam in the cloth corresponds to a fabric found only at the fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea, dating to the First Century (Jesus-era Jerusalem). Further, the weaving pattern, 3:1 twill, is consistent with First Century Syrian design. Flury-Lemberg stated, “The linen cloth of the Shroud of Turin does not display any weaving or sewing techniques which would speak against its origin as a high-quality product of the textile workers of the First Century.”
However, according to textile expert Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, a seam in the cloth corresponds to a fabric found only at the fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea, dating to the First Century (Jesus-era Jerusalem). Further, the weaving pattern, 3:1 twill, is consistent with First Century Syrian design. Flury-Lemberg stated, “The linen cloth of the Shroud of Turin does not display any weaving or sewing techniques which would speak against its origin as a high-quality product of the textile workers of the First Century.”
The history of the Shroud from the 16th Century forward is well recorded. Giulio Clovio was a Renaissance illuminator, miniaturist, and painter who worked in Italy. He was also a priest, and considered the greatest illuminator of the Italian High Renaissance, arguably the last notable artist in the long tradition of the illuminated manuscript. Sometime around 1540, Clovio created a miniature representation of what was seen upon the Shroud, leading us to believe that the Shroud housed in Turin today is the same one which existed in the middle of the 16th Century.
In 1902 Yves Delage, a French professor of anatomy published what may be the first study on the Shroud. Delage declared the image of the body anatomically flawless, and argued that the features of rigor mortis, wounds, and blood flows were evidence that the image was formed by direct or indirect contact with a corpse. Several other medical studies were performed between 1936 and 1981 agreeing with the finding of Delage, however these were all indirect studies without access to the Shroud itself. In 1978, a detailed examination of the actual Shroud was carried out by a team of American scientists. The team, known as STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project), found no reliable evidence of forgery. How the image was formed, they declared, was “a mystery.”
Reddish brown stains with the appearance of blood are found on the cloth. These suggest various wounds which, according to proponents, when correlated with the yellowish image, are consistent with the pathophysiology of crucifixion, and biblical descriptions of the death of Jesus. Markings on the linen include round wounds on one wrist (the other is hidden by the folding of the hands), and small punctures around the forehead and scalp such as would be caused by a crown of thorns. There appear scores of linear wounds on the torso and legs, consistent with the distinctive wounds caused by a Roman flagrum. There is swelling of the face from severe beatings, streams of blood down both arms, and large puncture wounds in the feet as if pierced by a single spike. Other researchers, including Alan Adler, identified the reddish stains as type AB blood and interpreted the iron oxide as a natural residue of hemoglobin. Blood type AB has been assumed to have relatively recent origin, perhaps only as early as 700 AD, but even this date is controversial within the scientific community due to principles of blood inheritance and co-dominance.
Heller and Adler further studied the stains and identified hemoglobin; establishing, within scientific certainty, the presence of porphyrin, bilirubin, albumin, and protein. Working independently, pathologist Pier Baima Bollone, concurred with Heller and Adler’s findings and identified the blood as AB blood group. Subsequently, STURP sent blood flecks from the cloth to a lab at the State University of New York (SUNY) devoted to the study of ancient blood. Dr. Andrew Merriwether at SUNY stated that no blood typing could be confirmed, and that the DNA was badly fragmented. He stated that it is almost certain that the spots are blood, but no definitive statements can be made about its nature or whether it is male, or from the Near East. Skeptics cite other forensic blood tests whose results dispute the authenticity of the Shroud, claiming that the blood could belong to a person handling the shroud, and that the apparent blood flows on the shroud are unrealistically neat. Of course, there is at this time no way to conclusively prove that while the image may be “real” (rather than painted, for example), it could of course be an image of a man, not Jesus, which was somehow created in the Middle Ages.
In 1999 Mark Guscin investigated the relationship between the Shroud and the Sudarium of Oviedo. The Sudarium, according to the Gospel of John, is a much smaller cloth, most likely a large napkin, which had covered the head of Jesus, just before his body was covered by the Shroud. The Sudarium is also reported to have type AB blood stains. Guscin concluded that the two cloths covered the same head at two distinct, but close moments of time. Avinoam Danin concurred with this analysis, adding that the pollen grains in the Sudarium match those of the Shroud.
The story of the Sudarium itself is rather interesting in the context of Jerusalem in the time of Christ. The Gospel of John (20:7) tells us that the linen cloth, which was placed over the face of Jesus, was not just thrown aside like the shroud. Rather, it was found already neatly folded, and placed separate from the shroud. While it was still dark, on the morning of the third day after Jesus was crucified – which today’s Christians celebrate as Easter Sunday – Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found the stone covering the entrance rolled away. She ran to tell Jesus’ disciples, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and I don’t know where they have put him!” Disciples ran to the tomb to investigate. (John 20:6-7) Then Simon Peter, who was behind them, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the linen Shroud lying there, as well as the cloth which had been around Jesus’ head. The Sudarium was neatly folded up, separate from the linen.
To understand the great significance of this folded cloth, we note Hebrew tradition of that time. It had to do with a master and his servant, and every Jewish boy knew this tradition. After a servant set the dinner table for his master, making sure it was to his master’s satisfaction, the servant would wait, just out of sight, until his master had finished his meal. The servant was not to touch the table until his master indicated he had indeed finished his meal.
If his master rose from the table, wadded up his napkin and tossed it onto the table, the servant would thereby know to clear the table. The wadded napkin meant, “I am done.” But if his master rose from the table, folded his napkin, and laid it neatly beside his plate, the servant would not touch the table. The folded napkin meant, “I am coming back.”
To Jesus’ disciples, the folded cloth we have come to call the Sudarium was a deliberate sign that their own Master “was not finished,” and would return to continue his work. Thus, the Shroud and Sudarium are not simply holy relics, nor just symbols of the life, death and Resurrection of Christ. If authentic, they represent physical evidence of the divinity of Jesus. Which of course is why so much energy has been directed at proving or disproving their authenticity.
After years of discussion, the Vatican permitted radiocarbon dating on portions of a swatch taken from a corner of the Shroud. Independent tests in 1988 at the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology concluded that the Shroud material dated to 1260-1390 AD, with 95% confidence. This 13th to 14th Century dating matches the first appearance of the Shroud in Church history. But while once generally accepted by those who consider the Shroud to be inauthentic, the carbon-dating results have since been questioned in peer-reviewed journals by Raymond Rogers in Thermochimica Acta, and by M. Sue Benford and Joseph G. Marino in Chemistry Today. To be clear, doubts were raised not about the quality of the radiocarbon testing itself but regarding the nature of the sample which was taken for testing. In 2010, three professors of statistics wrote in a scientific paper that the statistical analysis of the raw dates obtained from the three laboratories suggests “the presence of an important contamination in the 1988 TS samples.”
Joseph Kohlbeck from the Hercules Aerospace Center in Utah, and Richard Levi-Setti of the Enrico Fermi Institute examined some dirt particles from the Shroud surface. The dirt was found to be travertine aragonite limestone. Using a high-resolution microprobe, Levi-Setti and Kolbeck compared the spectra of samples taken from the Shroud with samples of limestone from ancient Jerusalem tombs. The chemical signatures of the Shroud samples and the tomb limestone were found identical except for minute fragments of cellulose linen fiber that could not be separated from the Shroud samples.
In 1997 Avinoam Danin, a botanist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reported that he had identified the type of Chrysanthemum coronarium (Cistus creticus and Zygophyllum) whose pressed image on the shroud was first noticed by Alan Whanger in 1985 on the photographs of the Shroud taken in 1931. Danin reported that the outlines of the flowering plants would point to March or April and the environs of Jerusalem. In a separate report in 1978 Danin and Uri Baruch reported on the pollen grains on the cloth samples, stating that they were appropriate to Spring in Israel. Max Frei, a Swiss criminologist who initially obtained pollen from the Shroud during the STURP investigation, stated that of the 58 different types of pollens found, 45 were from the Jerusalem area, while six were from the eastern Middle East, with one pollen species growing exclusively in Constantinople, and two found in Edessa, Turkey. Mark Antonacci argues that the pollen evidence and flower images are inherently intervowen and strengthen each other.
NASA researchers Jackson, Jumper, and Stephenson report detecting the impressions of coins placed on both eyes of the image after a digital study in 1978. Low-denomination bronze coins, known as mites or leptons (meaning small), were minted by Alexander Jannaeus, King of Judaea as far back as the First Century BC. The two-lepton coin on the right eyelid of the image on the Shroud was probably coined under Pontius Pilate in the year 29 or 30 AD – just a few years before the Crucifixion; the coin on the left eyelid was minted in 29 AD.
In 1979, Piero Ugolotti discovered Greek and Latin letters written on the cloth, near the face. These were further studied, in 1997, by André Marion, professor at the École Supérieure d’Optique, and his student Anne Laure Courage, at the Institute in Orsay. Subsequently, through computerized analysis and microdensitometer, other writings were found, among them INNECEM (a shortened form of the Latin “in necem ibis,” roughly meaning “you will go to death”), NNAZAPE(N)NUS (Nazarene), IHSOY (Jesus) and IC (Iesus Chrestus). The partial letters IBER are thought to be part of “Tiberius,” but may instead be EBER (meaning Hebrew).
On April 6, 2009, the London newspaper The Times reported that Dr. Barbara Frale, an official Vatican researcher, had uncovered evidence that the Shroud had been kept and venerated by the Knights Templar since the sack of Constantinople in 1204. According to the account of one initiate in the Order, veneration of the Shroud appeared to be part of the initiation ritual. The article also implies that this ceremony may be the source of the “worship of a bearded figure” that the Templars were accused of at their 14th Century trial and suppression. Frale further asserts that under contemporary Jewish burial practices, within a Roman colony such as Palestine, a body buried after a death sentence could only be returned to the family after a year in a common grave (though the gospels report that Jesus was buried in a tomb provided by Joseph of Arimathea); therefore a death certificate was glued to the burial shroud, usually stuck to the face, to identify it for later retrieval. Frale’s reconstruction of the text reads: “In the year 16 of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, Jesus the Nazarene, taken down in the early evening after having been condemned to death by a Roman judge because he was found guilty by a Hebrew authority, is hereby sent for burial with the obligation of being consigned to his family only after one full year.” Frale further argues that the use of three languages was in line with the multi-lingual practices of Greek-speaking Jews in a Roman colony.
The Catholic Church has neither formally endorsed nor rejected the shroud. In the Church's view, whether the cloth is authentic or not has no bearing whatsoever on the validity of what Jesus taught nor on the saving power of his death and resurrection. Pope John Paul II stated in 1998 that “Since we’re not dealing with a matter of faith, the church can’t pronounce itself on such questions. It entrusts to scientists the tasks of continuing to investigate, to reach adequate answers to the questions connected to this Shroud.” Pope John Paul II showed himself to be deeply moved by the image of the Shroud and arranged for public showings. In his address at the Turin Cathedral in 1998, he said, “The Shroud is an image of God’s love as well as of human sin... The imprint left by the tortured body of the Crucified One, which attests to the tremendous human capacity for causing pain and death to one’s fellow man, stands as an icon of the suffering of the innocent in every age.” In 2000, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that the Shroud of Turin is a truly mysterious image, which no human artistry was capable of producing. In some inexplicable way, it appeared imprinted upon cloth and claimed to show the true face of Christ, the crucified and risen Lord.”
I find the following particularly intriguing. Since 1930, several researchers (J. Jackson, G. Fanti, T. Trenn, T. Phillips, J.B. Rinaudo and others) endorsed the flash-like irradiation hypothesis which American chemist Giles Carter called “The Resurrection Event.” It was suggested that the relatively high definition of the image details can be obtained through the energy source (specifically, protonic) acting from inside. The Russian researcher Alexander Belyakov proposed an intense, but short flash-like source, which lasted some hundredths of second. The Canadian researcher Thaddeus J. Trenn theorizes that the image was formed by bombardment of pions and muons, released after a so-called weak dematerialization. Others suggest X-radiation or a burst of directional ultraviolet radiation may have played a role in the formation of the Shroud image. From the image characteristics, several researchers suppose that the radiant source was prevalently vertical.
It might be evident to the reader that theories which in the past might have been deemed fantasy, enter the realm of possibility as time and science advance hand-in-hand.
Looking at the Shroud, whether one believes it to host the actual image of Christ, or another tortured man, or even nothing more than a Renaissance artist’s crafty depiction of the Crucifixion, one cannot help but be moved to great sadness. Christian’s belief that a human being could have suffered such torture in the name of saving our immortal souls is humbling. This – this – may be the true value of the Shroud.
