A few years ago I read a ton of books on the Shroud of Turin. My faith didn’t depend on the Shroud being authentic but I believed it to be so. Now, a new study has shown that the Shroud does indeed date back to the first century.
Wow. That’s pretty big news. And how about that for timing? Right on Holy Thursday.
The Vatican Insider reports:
New scientific experiments carried out at the University of Padua have apparently confirmed that the Shroud Turin can be dated back to the 1st century AD. This makes its compatible with the tradition which claims that the cloth with the image of the crucified man imprinted on it is the very one Jesus’ body was wrapped in when he was taken off the cross. The news will be published in a book by Giulio Fanti, professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at the University of Padua’s Engineering Faculty, and journalist Saverio Gaeta, out tomorrow. “Il Mistero della Sindone” (The Mystery of the Shroud) is edited by Rizzoli (240 pp, 18 Euro).
What’s new about this book are Fanti’s recent findings, which are also about to be published in a specialist magazine and assessed by a scientific committee. The research includes three new tests, two chemical ones and one mechanical one. The first two were carried out with an FT-IR system, so using infra-red light, and the other using Raman spectroscopy. The third was a multi-parametric mechanical test based on five different mechanical parameters linked to the voltage of the wire. The machine used to examine the Shroud’s fibres and test traction, allowed researchers to examine tiny fibres alongside about twenty samples of cloth dated between 3000 BC and 2000 AD.
The new tests carried out in the University of Padua labs were carried out by a number of university professors from various Italian universities and agree that the Shroud dates back to the period when Jesus Christ was crucified in Jerusalem. Final results show that the Shroud fibres examined produced the following dates, all of which are 95% certain and centuries away from the medieval dating obtained with Carbon-14 testing in 1988: the dates given to the Shroud after FT-IR testing, is 300 BC ±400, 200 BC ±500 after Raman testing and 400 AD ±400 after multi-parametric mechanical testing. The average of all three dates is 33 BC ±250 years. The book’s authors observed that the uncertainty of this date is less than the single uncertainties and the date is compatible with the historic date of Jesus’ death on the cross, which historians claim occurred in 30 AD.
The tests were carried out using tiny fibres of material extracted from the Shroud by micro-analyst Giovanni Riggi di Numana who passed away in 2008 but had participated in the1988 research project and gave the material to Fanti through the cultural institute Fondazione 3M.
I plan to read more about this in the near future. I can’t wait to learn more.
This is the kind of thing that could have many people reconsidering their worldview. I’m excited.
March 28, 2013 at 5:50 am
More good news concerning The Good News !
March 28, 2013 at 8:47 am
'Final results show that the Shroud fibres examined produced the following dates, all of which are 95% certain and centuries away from the medieval dating obtained with Carbon-14 testing in 1988: the dates given to the Shroud after FT-IR testing, is 300 BC ±400, 200 BC ±500 after Raman testing and 400 AD ±400 after multi-parametric mechanical testing. The average of all three dates is 33 BC ±250 years. '
That is one amazing piece of statistics work done there.
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March 28, 2013 at 2:59 pm
Neat. I admit I'm not one who is concerned so much about the shroud or whether DNA can be found in the Eucharist. Jesus walked the earth. He is present here today in a way I can only imagine.
Still, I think it's pretty cool when multiple modes of evidence support these facts.
March 28, 2013 at 4:05 pm
You got spammed! Anonymous @ 2013.03.28 0940
March 29, 2013 at 12:43 am
Yes, my faith also does not depend on the Shroud. But I believe in it. It is beautiful (his similiarities with the death of Christ and its history to reach Turin).
March 29, 2013 at 2:32 pm
The fabric may indeed date back then. But it can still be a hoax as the forger could have bought such a cloth to make it appear authentic. Just saying, to keep believers from mistaking faith with naivete.
March 29, 2013 at 2:58 pm
….A hoaxer bought a cloth that was almost a century old, would be able to identify the same and then used it to make a fake burial shroud?
That is… well, if someone wants to call me naive for not assuming that is more likely than people preserving a holy relic, then they're reaching hard enough that they'll suggest aliens did it before considering it could be a first century burial shroud.
March 29, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Pardon, well over a millennia old, not century. Need to drink coffee before posting.
April 7, 2013 at 7:20 am
There are various opinions and researches of the shroud of Turin. Some people say that it is the genuine and some that it is the fake and the hoax. The fact is that the shroud of Turin doesn't present Jesus of the Bible. If we can find even one evidence, which disprove the shroud of Turin theory, so the whole story shall be invalidated. We can find a large number of evidence from the Bible, which show that the shroud of Turin cannot be the shroud of the Lord Jesus.
http://koti.phnet.fi/petripaavola/shroudofturin.html