Published: 08.11.2021.
This famous piece of cloth is 4.36 m long and shows an imprint of a 1.81 m tall man. Although many people doubt it, there are really interesting reasons why one should see the shroud as authentic.
Here are some interesting facts and quotes about the shroud of Turin.
STURP
The only thorough scientific examination was the STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project, Inc.) in 1978. As shroud.com states: “no serious study of the Shroud of Turin can ignore the immense volume of scientific facts determined from the 1978 data”.
It concluded in October of 1981 that the image was not painted, the image had “unique three-dimensional information encoded in it”, none of the experiments on old linen cloth could replicate the result.
Their final conclusion is also telling: “there are no chemical or physical methods known which can account for the totality of the image, nor can any combination of physical, chemical, biological or medical circumstances explain the image adequately […] We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist.”
In other words, STURP couldn’t find a natural explanation for the image.
Two additional discoveries
In 1973, the Swiss botanist and criminologist Max Frei-Sulzer took samples of the dust on the shroud with adhesive tape. (He invented this method in criminology, called Klebbandverfahren.) He found many pollen grains and analyzed them.
His conclusion: “The presence on the Shroud of pollen of 29 plants of the Near East, and especially of 21 plants that grow in the desert or the steppes, directly leads to the hypothesis that the Shroud, now preserved in Turin, in the past was exposed to open air in countries where these plants are part of the normal vegetation. (…) Three-quarters of the species found on the Shroud grow in Palestine, of which 13 species are very characteristic or unique of the Negev and the Dead Sea area (halophyte plants). The palynology thus allows us to say that during its history (including manufacturing) the Shroud resided in Palestine. This result does not explain the presence of pollen of steppe plants that are missing in Palestine or are extremely rare there. According to palynology, the Shroud must have been exposed to open air in Turkey because 20 of the found species are abundant in Anatolia (Urfa, etc..) and four around Constantinople, and are completely lacking in the Central and Western Europe.”
He also observes that these results don’t allow for dating the shroud, since most of these plants still grow in those locations. (M. F REI , Il passato della Sindone alla luce della palinologia, in La Sindone e la Scienza, Atti del II Congresso Internazionale di Sindonologia, Turin, October 7-8, 1978, Ed. Paoline, Turin 1979, p 198., quoted in https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/marinelli2veng.pdf)
Some people have called into question his results, as expected, but they didn’t find any serious flaw with his work.
The initially more skeptical chemist Raymond N. Rogers concluded from the age of the vanillin, that the shroud is more than 1300 years old.
Historical objection
Some people object why there was not much mention of the shroud earlier in history. There are some historical references from the 13th, 12th and 10th centuries, for those see the article http://factsplusfacts.com/shroud-of-turin-history.htm.
Carbon dating objection
The most common objection presented in the media is that the Shroud was carbon dated in 1988, yielding a result from 1260-1390 (Damon et al., 1988).
As covered on this site already, carbon dating is not really a reliable technique for dating artifacts.
In addition, the sample was cut off from a part of the Shroud, which was likely an addition from after the fire of 1532 (link). Raymond N. Rogers explains that the chemical composition of the sample was different from the rest of the shroud; only one sample was taken; the scientists didn’t examine the sample with a microscope. Also, the sample they had taken was less fluorescent than the rest of the cloth, and another scientist discovered plant gum, aluminum and a dye in the carbon dated sample, things which are not present in the rest of the Shroud. (p. 4-6)
He concludes: “The sample chosen for dating was totally invalid for determining the true age of the Shroud.”
There is no way to reproduce something like this shroud with modern technology.
Resources
https://shroud.com/78conclu.htm
https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/marinelli2veng.pdf
https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/rogers5faqs.pdf
http://factsplusfacts.com/shroud-of-turin-history.htm