Science vs. 'Shroud Science.' - Shroud of Turin

In what Time magazine called a "sort of resurrection," the Shroud of Turin controversy has risen once again. It was sparked by the reputed burial cloth's exhibition during April and May in Turin, Italy, the first public showing in two decades. It also marked the one-hundredth anniversary of the first photograph of the cloth's image - that of a man who appears to have been crucified like Jesus in the Christian gospels (Van Biema 1998).

Miraculous "Photograph"

The 1898 photographer's glass-plate negatives revealed a startlingly realistic positive image, with the prominences in highlight and the recesses in shadow. Therefore the image on the cloth, shroud advocates claimed, was "a perfect photographic negative." They insisted no artist could have painted such an image before the concept of photography. (Actually the image is only a quasi-negative, the hair and beard being the opposite of the features and giving the effect, when a positive is made, that Jesus was a white-bearded old man. [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED].)

With the photographs began the modern era of the shroud, prompting attempts to explain the image. Simple contact imprinting was soon ruled out due to the images lack of wraparound distortions, and a concept called "vaporography" was disproved when the postulated vapors were shown to produce only a blur. In time "the first Polaroid in Palestine" was ascribed by proponents to "flash photolysis," a "theory" that the image was produced by a miraculous burst of radiant energy at the time of Jesus' resurrection (Nickell 1988).

"Shroud Science"

With such notions came an unfortunate abuse of science. Whereas the scientific approach is to let the evidence lead to a solution, "shroud science" (or "sindonology") begins with the desired answer and then works backward, dismissing or rationalizing whatever arguments or evidence may be incompatible with it. It was therefore difficult to imagine that it was scientists who were so readily invoking a miracle. Unfortunately, the forty-some-member Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), which conducted the 1978 investigation of the shroud, was woefully unqualified for the task. Many members were operating out of their specific fields, and bad - certainly questionable - science was rampant. That situation continues in sindonology today.

The 1998 exposition was shrewdly timed to begin a week after Easter, and media coverage before and during the religious season was intense. In addition to a spate of new books, including Ian Wilson's The Blood and the Shroud, there was a flurry of newspaper and magazine articles as well as TV news segments. Alas, shroud science was well served by shroud journalism, whereby reporters' questions about authenticity were directed primarily to shroud proponents - rather like asking members of the Flat Earth Society about the curvature of the earth.

Perhaps the most used word during the shroud media blitz was "mystery." But honest journalists don't engage in mystery mongering. Instead, like all true investigators, they believe mysteries are meant to be carefully and fairly examined. In the case of the Shroud of Turin, the question of authenticity was long ago settled.

The Historical Record

To begin at the beginning, the Shroud of Turin contradicts the Gospel of John, which describes multiple cloths for Jesus's burial, including a separate "napkin" over the face, as well as "an hundred pound weight" of spices - not a trace of which appears on the Turin cloth. And nowhere in the New Testament is there mention of a remarkable portrait of Jesus having been left on his burial garment. In addition, no examples of the Shroud's particular herringbone twill weave date from the first century.

Although Jesus's body would have been ritually washed, as mandated by the Jewish Mishnah, the "body" imaged on the shroud was not cleansed (as shown by the dried blood on the arms). Some sindonologists attempt to circumvent the problem by citing a passage from the Code of Jewish law, but the supposed exception dates from some fifteen centuries after Christ and poorly applies to one who was buffed "as the manner of the Jews is to bury" (John 19:40).

Although there have been some forty Holy Shrouds - along with other "relics" of Jesus, including vials of his tears and countless pieces of the True Cross there is no record of the Turin cloth until the mid-1350s. At that time a French bishop, Henri de Poitiers, was suspicious of its utter lack of provenance, questioning why the early evangelists had failed to mention such a marvel or why it had remained hidden for thirteen centuries. The shroud's owner, a soldier of fortune named Geoffroy de Charny, never explained how he, a man of modest means, had acquired the most holy relic in all of Christendom (Nickell 1988).

According to a later bishop's report to Pope Clement VII, dated 1389, Henri discovered that the shroud originated as part of a phony faith-healing scheme. "Pretended miracles" were staged, said the report's author, Bishop Pierre D'Arcis, "so that money might cunningly be wrung" from unsuspecting pilgrims. "Eventually, after diligent inquiry and examination," he stated, Bishop Henri "discovered the fraud and how the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it, to wit, that it was a work of human skill and not miraculously wrought or bestowed." (Emphasis added.)