I find the Shroud of Turin an interesting discussion, in part because people reveal their assumptions pretty soon in the discussion.
I have the following basic opinions regarding the Shroud of Turin:
1) I do not need physical relics to believe the Gospel, or have a personal relationship with my Lord Jesus Christ;
2) The Shroud of Turin has been conclusively dated back to at least 1578 (
with historical references as far back as 1354). That of course does not prove the authenticity of claims by those who believe it is the burial linen of Christ, but it does impact what we can know about the thing, and it also speaks to questions about how it was made;
3) Tests done in 1898 observed that the image has the character of photographic negatives rather than positives, which matters since the Shroud definitely predates the invention of photography;
4) Tests in the 1970s could not support claims that the images were made with paint or pigments, scorches or other known agents. Critics have never been able to demonstrate how the image was created;
5) In 1978 the Vatican approved Carbon-14 testing of the Shroud material by three laboratories. All three produced results saying the fabric was made between 1260 and 1390. However, criticism of the testing methodology has disputed this finding, especially since the material tested may have come from material used to repair the fabric during the medieval period;
Sampling error? | NatureMicroscopical Investigation of Selected Raes Threads from the Shroud of Turin Analytical Results On Thread Samples Taken From The Raes Sampling Area (Corner) Of The Shroud Cloth 6) Raymond Rogers argued that the presence of vanillin confirms the age:
"The fact that vanillin cannot be detected in the lignin on shroud fibers, Dead Sea scrolls linen, and other very old linens indicate that the shroud is quite old. A determination of the kinetics of vanillin loss suggest the shroud is between 1300 and 3000 years old. Even allowing for errors in the measurements and assumptions about storage conditions, the cloth is unlikely to be as young as 840 years"Studies on the Radiocarbon Sample from the Shroud of Turin 7) It should also be noted that the Shroud was often handled by priests during displays, and this could cause bacterial contamination affecting the apparent age of the fabric;
C-14 Debate from alt.turin-shroud 8) There has been debate since 1988 regarding the data and methods used in the C-14 testing, including claims that data was
selectively used,
Regression analysis with partially labelled regressors: carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin | Statistics and Computing | Springer Nature Link that raw data is in place different from data presented in the final report,
Tristan Casabianca, Emanuela Marinelli, Giuseppe Pernagallo & Benedetto Torrisi, The Radiocarbon Dating of the Turin Shroud: New Evidence from Raw Data - PhilArchive and that since different fabrics were used (
those repairs over time again), and the main image was in a central place not allowed for the testing, the report should at least have noted the potential for inconclusive or disparate findings;
An instructive inter-laboratory comparison: The 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin - ScienceDirect 9) a 2022 Italian study used a new method, x-ray dating, which does not destroy fabric and therefore could be applied to the whole fabric, and their report found that the linen was consistent with the time of Christ.
X-ray Dating of a Turin Shroud's Linen Sample Now this debate could be seen as evidence of the authenticity of the Shroud, although in fact it only addresses the possible age of the fabric. It does not, for example, clarify how the Shroud - if real - found its way from Christ's tomb to a European church. It does not explain why there are no references to the Shroud prior to the fourteenth Century. It does not explain the purpose to creating such an artifact.
So for now, what we are seeing here is a strange thing we can discuss, but which should not drive our faith or belief in Christ.
