Christianity is filled with stories of great treasures and relics from the time that Jesus walked among the Jews and the Gentiles alike. The Holy Grail is one such myth, telling of the cup Jesus drank from at the Last Supper which has been said to do everything from never spill to granting life eternal. The Spear of Destiny, the lance thrust into Jesus’s side at his crucifixion, is said to bring any man that wields it victory until the day he loses it and his life as well. These are just a few examples of relic stories, but perhaps the biggest story is laid at the feet of the Shroud of Turin, supposedly the authentic burial cloth of Jesus. Sadly all of these stories have one thing in common … they’re just stories.
Examine the claims about the Shroud of Turin. It contains a ghostly image of a man who appears to fit the popular image of Jesus. It looks very old, and it is endorsed by the church (or was at one time) as an authentic relic. It first appeared around 1390, long after the end of the Knights Templar and the quelling of the Assassins, and it traveled from France to Turin, Italy where it came to stay. Now ignoring the fact that there were dozens of supposedly true shrouds floating around throughout history, there are some questions about the Turin shroud that bear asking.
Let’s hit the big one first; the image. Now, the image seen in the Shroud of Turin looks like it was painted on a flat surface, and it lacks some of the distortion you’d expect to see from something that had rested on a 3-D person. But time and distortion can have effects on a relic, and it was partially exposed to a fire in 1532. However what this doesn’t explain is the fact that Jesus looks just like the popular Gothic portraits; a tall, angular man with Caucasian features. As the source material in the Bible states Jesus was a Jew from the Middle East, and looked entirely different from this. He should have had a heavy beard that conformed to the look of the time, and features that look different from more modern interpretations.
Beyond the image not fitting with what should, realistically be there the Shroud doesn’t really measure up to the biblical description. Jesus was buried in a shroud yes, though it was said to be weighted down with 100 pounds of herbs, and that there were several lengths of wrapping including a napkin over his face. The Shroud of Turin, while bearing an image, doesn’t seem to have hit the other biblical notes. Not the least of these is the fact that nowhere in the Bible is a big deal made out of the linen that Jesus was buried in, because like the spear and the cup they were just objects. Nothing magical or spiritual.
If you move on to the harder science, the Shroud comes under even more fire. The weave and material it’s made of do not match up to historical examples archaeologists have found of burial shrouds in the time Jesus was supposed to have lived. It is of a much higher quality and complexity than even the wealthy could afford, because it hadn’t yet been invented. This style of weave, along with radio carbon dating performed by the great laboratories of the world such as the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, put the Shroud solidly in the 14th century… right around the time that it was first reported. Additionally the pigments (and the are pigments) found in the Shroud don’t imply blood, but rather an elaborate hoax being created with paint and aging techniques available to a 14th century craftsman.
It is the history that is perhaps the most damning. There is no record of the Shroud before the time when it was first reported. Unless of course you count records that the church knew the Shroud of Turin was a phony, mostly due to the confession from the artist who had made it as a way to swindle gullible pilgrims. However despite the fact that the church was informed the Shroud was a fake it endorsed it as authentic. Perhaps this is because relics help keep faith, or because the Shroud was more useful as a symbol even if it wasn’t real, but the choice was made to keep the mystery.
This isn’t an uncommon thing either. Modern day Christianity is full of rumors and half truths that have no backing in histoy or in the Bible. The modern image of hell comes from the poet Dante, the name Lucifer comes from a translation error and even the idea of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture comes not from the Bible but from a woman in 1830s Scotland. With so much mixing of pop culture and interpretation, it can sometimes be hard to tell what’s in the Bible unless you actually crack the book open and give it a good read.
“7 Famous ‘Unsolved’ Mysteries (Science Solved Years Ago),” by Pauli Poisuo and M. Asher Cantrell at Cracked
“Voice of Reason: The Truth Behind the Shroud of Turin,” by Joe Nickell at Live Science