First things first. The "authenticity" or otherwise of the
Shroud of Turin does not have any implications for whether
or not Christ was real, or whether He was divine. If it was
a medieval forgery, it doesn't mean the stories aren't true;
if it really was made in the first century AD, it doesn't
mean they were. Until we find a reliable method of linking
the shroud with Christ Himself – a nametag stitched in it by
His mum, perhaps – the existence of a 2,000-year-old cloth
does not imply that a particular person who died around the
time it was made was the Son of God.
I mention this because today, we report that a group of
scientists – working, unexpectedly, for the Italian
sustainable energy agency ENEA – claim that the marks on
the cloth could only have been made by ultraviolet
radiation. They say that "When one talks about a flash
of light being able to colour a piece of linen in the same
way as the shroud, discussion inevitably touches on things
like miracles and resurrection," and that they "hope our
results can open up a philosophical and theological debate".
They do, however, say "as scientists, we were concerned only
with verifiable scientific processes."
The implication, of course, is that a divine light shone
when Jesus's body was resurrected, and that this emitted a
burst of high-frequency photons which burned an image on the
cloth around him. This possibility has been discounted in
the past by Raymond Rogers, a member of the Shroud of Turin
Research Project (Sturp) which examined the fabric in the
1970s, who said: "If any form of radiation degraded the
cellulose of the linen fibers to produce the image color, it
would have had to penetrate the entire diameter of a fiber
in order to color its back surface", but that the centres of
the fibres are unmarked. There are many hypotheses about how
the images could have been made, and they have each come in
and out of favour. Without wanting to be too cocky, when the
ENEA scientists say that radiation is the "only" way the
image could have been made, I imagine that many of their
fellow researchers will say it's the only way that they
managed it.
However it was made, if – as many have claimed – the Shroud
was made in the 13th century, then it isn't a relic of
Christ, for obvious reasons. Radiocarbon dating has
repeatedly placed the Shroud as medieval in origin –
specifically, between 1260AD and 1390AD. There have been
suggestions that the radiocarbon process got it wrong – but
this is unlikely, according to Professor
Christopher Ramsey of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator
Unit, one of three labs which carried out the
research. "We're pretty confident in the radiocarbon dates,"
he told me. "There are various hypotheses as to why the
dates might not be correct, but none of them stack up.
"One is that the samples were contaminated. But that
doesn't work, because to make an 2,000-year-old object
appear just 800 years old, about half the material would
have to be contaminant, and that's if it was all modern. If
it was older, it would have to be even more. Various tests
done at the time of the original measurements also suggested
that the material was fairly pure. It's also been
hypothesised that the patch we tested was a modern repair,
but most of us agree that's implausible, because the weave
is very unusual and matches the rest of the shroud
perfectly. Then there are more complicated notions, like
contamination with carbon monoxide, but tests have shown
that carbon monoxide doesn't react with the fabric under the
circumstances that you might expect."
Regarding the ENEA findings, he is similarly sceptical.
"Just because you can create similar results using an
ultraviolet laser, that doesn't mean it's the only way it
could have been made in the first place," he says. "There
are several possibilities, and it could just be a chance
effect due to a number of different phenomena. But in
archaeological science, being able to reproduce something,
doesn't imply that that's the technique used; it may simply
show that you've got a new technique you want to try out."
He adds that the confidence in the medieval result is such
that, were it not suggested to be a relic, there would be no
more discussion over its age.
So there remain questions about how the Shroud of Turin was
made, but there seems to be little reason to think that it's
anywhere near old enough to have been Christ's.
(Interestingly, John Calvin in 1543 already thought it was a
fake: he pointed out that according to the Gospel of St
John, two cloths were used to shroud Jesus, one on His body
and one on His face; he also suggests that it is strange
that none of those recording his death in the Gospels
mentioned a miracle "so remarkable as the likeness of the
body of our Lord remaining on its wrapping sheet".) It's a
fascinating and mysterious object, but it says nothing about
the questions of whether Christ was a historical figure,
whether He was the Son of God, or whether He rose from the
dead.
More importantly, I think, the rush to suggest that it does
is a bit undignified. The intelligent faithful don't need
trinkets like this to justify their belief, surely? We are
constantly told that science cannot disprove God; that it is
a non-scientific question, that the two fields of science
and religion are non-overlapping. But then, when something
which goes the other way occurs – something which might
suggest that one or other given Bible story is true –
suddenly all that goes out of the window. The Turin Shroud
is (almost certainly) fake. It makes no difference to
anything. Get over it.
