For centuries, Christians have believed the relic is from the days of the New Testament – and now scientists have evidence to support this.
A team of Italian scientists have come up with evidence which they say dispels centuries of speculation on the most disputed holy relic in Christendom. In fact, they claim to have produced evidence which proves what the faithful have long believed – that the Turin Shroud did indeed once cover the body of Christ.
Measuring 4.3 metres (14 feet 3 inches) long and 1.1 metres (3 feet 7 inches) wide, the cloth bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man whom the faithful insist is Christ. It appears to show the back and front of a gaunt, bearded man with long hair and sunken eyes, his arms crossed on his chest. There appear to be blood stains emanating from wounds in his wrists, feet and side.
For hundreds of years it has been regarded by many as a mediaeval hoax. But Professor Liberato De Caro team have cast new light on the artefact, indicating it dates back 2,000 years after all, to the days of the New Testament. All thanks to an X-ray micro-imaging machine in the Professor's laboratory on the Adriatic coast of Puglia.
“It’s a sort of radiography, similar to the type of scan that you would do on a bone to see if there is a fracture. But this X-ray penetrates the material very deeply to analyse it at a microscopic level,” Prof De Caro says.
When the fibre was analysed by the powerful X-ray machine, the scientists were astounded at the result that emerged. The Shroud did not originate, as has long been thought, in the 13th century, but from 1,300 years earlier.
Personally, he thinks the Shroud is genuine. “If I had to be a judge in a trial, weighing up all the evidence that says the Shroud is authentic and the little evidence that says it is not, in all good conscience I could not declare that the Turin Shroud is mediaeval. It would not be right, given the enormous quantity of evidence in favour of it. It correlates with everything that the Gospels tell us about the death of Jesus of Nazareth.”