The Shroud of Turin – New Evidence for Jesus

Below is a third blog in a series that may be called Science and the Bible. The first and second episodes are summarized here before jumping into the new blog:

Episode 1: Fossils floating along the Seabed in Kansas a very long time ago.

This segment is about the age of the earth. Since about 1960, one group of Christians have argued that the earth is not any older than 10,000 years. They based The argument is based on a literalist interpretation of Genesis chapter 1, where it says God created the earth in seven days, which are taken to be seven literal days.

In contrast, science has done many, many studies that prove the earth is about 3 billion years old – and the universe began at the big-bang about 14 billion years ago.

The article above, which I wrote, is about primitive life forms that lived and died close to a seabed in Kansas 300 million years ago – the Pennsylvanian period. This doesn’t mean the Bible is wrong. Since proven science has to come from God, we have to be wary of overly literalist interpretations of Bible pages.

Click on the link above to read the full story.

Episode 2: Why it’s Easier to Believe in Angels — The Destruction of Sodom.

Several records of angels exist in the Bible, and these mystical beings may challenge even devout people’s truth. But it is easier to accept angels as intuitive truth if they are connected to Biblical stories that have been verified by science. Here is one such famous Bible story.

A recent study by an independent team proves beyond doubt it was a meteor airburst that destroyed Sodom and surrounding towns about 1650 BCE. The meteor blew up before reaching ground and that’s why it’s called an airburst. No crater was left behind.

The city, and Sodom was a big city, was annihilated into a layer about 4-5 feet thick that has been fund to contain charcoal, shocked quartz, melted gold, silver and nickel, melted pottery and mudbricks, seeds, and small human bone fragments.

Two angels in the form of men entered Lot’s home in Sodom. The Bible records a terrifying story of men from the city gathering at the home and wanting to gang-rape the angels. This was thwarted when the angels blinded the antagonists.

Intuitive truth: Since the rest of the Bible story has been confirmed by archeology and cometary scientists, the simplest conclusion is that the two angels were true as well.

Episode 3: The Shroud of Turin.

The Shroud is famous because it’s a burial shroud that has an image of a crucified man on it. It shows nail prints in hand and feet, crown of thorns, a spear point in the side, whip lacerations on the back, and shoulder bruises that could have come from carrying a heavy cross. These markings are consistent with the Bible record about the death of Jesus. But a concerted study done in the 1970s and 1980s by several scientists led to controversial results.

This photograph was taken in 1931 by Giuseppe Enrie. In 1898, Secondo Pia had become the first to photograph the Shroud. Both men discovered that their negative plate produced an image which was a positive (Right). Source: public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Back in 1978, 33 scientists from the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) analyzed the cloth for five continuous days working around the clock. After three years of studying the results, all scientists agreed upon the following statement:

“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. The blood stains are composed of hemoglobin and give a positive test for serum albumin.”

But in 1988, laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Arizona carbon-dated the Shroud to lie between 1260 and 1390. This argued that the Shroud was a medieval fake.

But on the other hand, some pollen grains in the shroud could only have come from the Jerusalem area.

A few years ago, Philip Wiebe told me he believed the shroud was an image of Jesus. Philip was on faculty at Trinity Western University in Canada, where he taught in the theology department. He said he had studied all the scientific evidence and concluded the carbon dating age must be in error. “Too much evidence matches the Bible record,” he said. Philip has since passed away, but a recent article on the Shroud appears to support his belief.

Here are the main points from the article:

The Shroud of Turin is kept in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.

A new dating technique, based on X-rays instead of carbon, is more reliable said the chief scientist, Dr. Liberato de Caro. It’s called WAXS, and like an x-ray of a hand or a foot it can see deterioration over time. A millimeter-sized piece of the shroud was x-rayed and compared with a piece of cloth from the siege of Masada (55-74 AD), and showed good agreement. This means the burial shroud is about 2,000 years old, and consistent with Jesus’ period of life and death.

The chief scientist explained that the previous carbon dating was flawed because the shroud was contaminated by years of handling by humans as it was passed around. The WAXS technique is not affected by such contamination.

The shroud was not painted, according to tests, and the blood on the shroud is from a male and is Type AB+, which is rare but most commonly found in the Middle East.

Last, how was the image formed? The colors of the human image only exist on the outermost layer of cloth fibers. They penetrate only a fraction of the width of a human hair. According to the scientists, the only way to create an image like this is by a burst of high energy. Scientists were able to replicate a scorch mark image like this by using a very short burst of ultraviolet light from an excimer laser.
This last point is fascinating to me. As a physicist, I wonder about the resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead.

But more important is the scientific evidence contained within the Shroud of Turin. Most of the evidence points to a crucified man about 2,000 years ago. The evidence can’t say with certainty it was Jesus, but the bodily markings on the Shroud are consistent with the Bible record. A bodily resurrection would be a huge motivation to keep the Shroud safe and secure for all time, and make it the most famous of all Bible relics.

The Gray Nomad.
I wish you all the best as you enjoy the changing of the seasons. In early November, northern New Mexico had one of its largest snowfalls ever. The storm just sat there and spat at us for more than two days. I had 4” of snow at my house, but in the foothills of Albuquerque they received a lot more.
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And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away.
[Matthew, chapter 27]