The what of what? Some of you may not know what I am referring to. Some of you may know exactly what I am talking about. The Shroud of Turin is the grave cloth that was claimed to be used for the burial of Jesus Christ. I love to hear about artifacts discovered that try to prove Jesus Christ or the Bible. There are some new thoughts about how it correlates with scripture that I read about this summer and I want to share with you.
The Shroud has been kept safe in various countries over the centuries, lastly in Turin, Italy. It is a large piece of linen with an image somehow burned onto it and blood stains throughout. In recent years, with the emergence of technology, it has been studied in greater detail. Rick Lanser, in his article “Further Ruminations on the Shroud of Turin”, has linked these studies with the study of the language of the scripture and the facts of the culture.
First, he covers what Digging for Truth’s John Long has brought out from his research. He states that “the blood stains correspond to a crown of thorns, angled streams of blood on the arms that accurately reflect how gravity would have affected their flow, dumbbell-shaped pockmarks front and back that match those on Roman lead-tipped whips, no indication of broken legs, wounds in the wrists rather than the palms, and a spear wound in the side were discussed.” The blood stains on the fabric are genuine human blood, type AB. No known mechanism can explain how the image could have been made by the hand of man.”
Next, he brings up how Barrie Schwortz, the official technical photographer of the Shroud of Turin Research Project pointed out that the image on the shroud was proven scientifically that it was “not a painting, not a scorch, not a photograph”. There is no known way that this image could have appeared on the ancient cloth. Barrie Schwortz however could not understand how old blood turns black or brown, but on this shroud it is red.
This concern then was brought to Alan Adler, “the world’s foremost blood expert” (how would you like that title?). His response was that there was great amounts of bilirubin in the blood which is the liver’s response to “torture as from the beatings, scourging, crown of thorns and crucifixion Christ experienced…blood of that nature stays red forever.”
There were also concerns about the dating of the fabric. In the 1980’s radiocarbon dating dated the shroud to the middle ages. Recently, there was Wide-Angle X-Ray Scattering testing done. This type of testing shows that the aging matches that of fabric found at Masada which would date to within the first century.
Ok, now on to the Biblical exegetical side of this… There has been a problem that some have found with this shroud in what scripture relates about what the cloth should be like. It says in John 20:6-7 that when Peter entered the tomb, he saw the linen cloths lying there and the handkerchief that would have been used for His head was folded and placed by itself. The research has been showing that the shroud is one large cloth.
The author of this article searches the Gospels to understand how the Greek terms for the grave cloths are used. There is a sindon which is a large ritually cleaned cloth used to cover the whole body. There is a sudarion which was a cloth smaller than a sindon commonly referred to as a sweat cloth. A third term used is keiriai which were wrappings used to bind hands and feet. And a fourth term othonia refers to linen cloth, but is plural. This was a general term used to include many cloths or gives more weight to the meaning of cloth. Well, Luke refers to sindon first (singular), then in 24:12 uses othonia (plural).
This article then refers to a small, blood stained cloth called the Sudarium of Oveido. It was a cloth kept at a cathedral in Oveido, Spain. This cloth has a historical association with the shroud and has now been shown that it also has the same blood type and pollen as that of the shroud. This shows that there could have been another small cloth laid in the tomb with the shroud. It is really neat what has been shown when this cloth was studied. They can now tell from the stains that this cloth was folded over and was used to blot the blood. From studying the makeup of the stains, researchers can tell that the man died in an upright position due to the mixture of blood and pleural oedema (what accumulates in the lungs during asphyxiation). From studying the stains, they can see the cloth was stained in intervals. The first being while the body was upright still on the cross, the second was made about an hour later when it was moved(taken down), and a third when it was lifted from the ground 45 minutes later.
There is another important supporting idea about this small cloth laying separately and folded when Peter entered the tomb. In Jewish culture, when someone dies, they typically wash the body and dress it in shrouds in a conventional way. When someone died a violent death though, all bloodstained items had to be buried with the body because of the belief in a bodily resurrection. The blood is part of the body and needed to be buried with it. This cloth would have needed to be buried with the body, but not necessarily wrapped around the head.
If you were to look this up online to see a picture of the shroud, you might immediately wonder why the image is so perfectly imposed on the cloth? It does not indicate that the body was “wrapped”. This article touches on what I was thinking in that the body was hastily put in the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea before the Sabbath. If they were to wrap the body, it would have been difficult for the women to come and finish preparing the body after the Sabbath.
This was a lot of information and a lengthy post. Thank you for bearing with me. I know that we don’t need all of these facts to prove to us that Jesus Christ died for us and was raised from the dead for our salvation. I am however grateful to those who search out the artifacts and dig to find ways to tangibly prove what we have read about in Scripture. It is yet another way to arm ourselves with the belt of Truth and the shield of faith. You know, in John 20:8, it says “Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.” This disciple may have looked at the same shroud that we have today, but he actually would not have seen the image we see. This image was on the underside of the fabric. His faith is more inspiring to me than all of this research. Thank you Lord for your Word of Truth and for the dedication of those who serve you today in this way.
Blessings,
Amy