``Where
the Bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be;
even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church'' Ignatius of
Antioch, 1st c. A.D
The Burial Cloths of Our Lord:
The Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo
The Shroud of
Turin and the lesser-known Sudarum of Oviedo are the two most
amazing, literally awesome relics in the History of Christendom. No,
I'll go further: they are the most amazing ever artifacts in the
History of the universe. The Shroud of Turin, in particular, having
been studied in
great depth, has left scientists puzzled -- has even turned once
skeptical scientists from atheism to Christianity.
What are these marvelous
relics? Where do they come from? What is their History? What makes them
so
special, so intriguing, so scientifically baffling? And what do they
reveal about the One who was enshrouded in them? Answering those
questions is what this page is all about.
The History of
the Shroud and Sudarium
After Lord
Christ was crucified, His Body was taken down from the Cross and, per
Jewish custom (and modern Western custom), His
Face was covered with a cloth known as "the
Sudarium." Then He was wrapped
in a 14 feet long, 3˝ feet wide linen shroud -- a sindon -- provided by
Joseph of Arimathea.
Because it was the Sabbath, the traditional Jewish burial rituals had
to wait until the next day. On that next day, the cloths were removed,
and the women cleansed His Body and anointed Him with spices and
ointments -- ointments made of aloes and myrrh, as foreshadowed by the gifts of the Magi. His Body was then
re-wrapped in the shrouds.
The Shroud and Sudarium are mentioned in all four
Gospels. Here is how SS. Matthew and Mark write of them:
The Gospel
According to St. Matthew, Chapter 27:57-60
And when it was
evening, there came a certain rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, who
also himself was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate, and
asked the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded that the body should be
delivered.
And Joseph taking the body, wrapped it up in a clean linen
cloth. And laid it in his own new monument, which he had hewed out in a
rock. And he rolled a great stone to the door of the monument, and went
his way.
The Gospel According to St. Mark, Chapter 15:44-47
But Pilate
wondered that he should be already dead. And sending for the centurion,
he asked him if he
were already dead. And when he had understood it
by
the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph.
And Joseph buying fine linen, and taking him down, wrapped
him up in the fine linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewed
out of a rock. And he rolled a stone to the door of the sepulchre. And
Mary Magdalen, and Mary the mother of Joseph, beheld where he was
laid.
But the last two Gospels say much more. Here are their recountings,
with my emphasis in bold:
The Gospel According to St. Luke, Chapter 23:50-56, 24:1-11
And behold there
was a man named Joseph, who was a counsellor, a good and just man, (The
same had not consented to their counsel and doings;) of Arimathea, a
city of Judea; who also himself looked for the kingdom of God.
This man went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. And taking him
down, he wrapped him in fine linen, and laid him in a sepulchre that
was hewed in stone, wherein never yet any man had been laid. And it was
the day of the Parasceve, and the sabbath drew on.
And the women that were come with him from Galilee, following
after, saw the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And returning,
they prepared spices and ointments; and on the sabbath day they rested,
according to the commandment.
And on the first day of the week, very early in the morning,
they came to the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had
prepared. And they found the stone rolled back from the
sepulchre. And going in, they found not the body of the Lord
Jesus.
And it came to pass, as they were astonished in their mind at
this, behold, two men stood by them, in shining apparel. And as
they were afraid, and bowed down their countenance towards the ground,
they said unto them: Why seek you the living with the dead?
He is not here, but is risen. Remember how he spoke unto you,
when he was in Galilee, Saying: The Son of man must be delivered into
the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise
again. And they remembered his words.
And going back from the sepulchre, they told all these things
to the eleven, and to all the rest. And it was Mary Magdalen, and
Joanna, and Mary of James, and the other women that were with them, who
told these things to the apostles.
And these words seemed to them as idle tales; and they did
not believe them. But Peter rising
up, ran to the sepulchre, and stooping down, he saw the linen cloths
laid by themselves; and went away wondering in himself at that which
was come to pass.
The Gospel According to St. John, Chapter 19:38-41, 20:1-9
And after these
things, Joseph of Arimathea (because he was a disciple of Jesus, but
secretly for fear of the Jews) besought Pilate that he might take away
the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave leave. He came therefore, and took
the body of Jesus.
And Nicodemus also came, (he who at the first came to Jesus
by night,) bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred
pound weight. They took therefore the body of Jesus, and bound it
in linen cloths, with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.
Now there was in the place where he was crucified, a garden;
and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein no man yet had been
laid. There, therefore, because of the parasceve of the Jews,
they laid Jesus, because the sepulchre was nigh at hand.
And on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalen cometh early,
when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre; and she saw the stone taken
away from the sepulchre. She ran, therefore, and cometh to Simon Peter,
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith to them: They
have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where
they have laid him.
Peter therefore went out, and that other disciple, and they
came to the sepulchre. And they both ran together, and that other
disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And when he
stooped down, he saw the linen cloths lying; but yet he went not in.
Then cometh Simon Peter,
following him, and went into the sepulchre, and saw the linen cloths
lying, And the napkin that had been about his head, not lying with the
linen cloths, but apart, wrapped up into one place. Then that
other disciple also went in, who came first to the sepulchre: and he
saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the scripture, that
he must rise again from the dead.
In the last two
Gospels, it's made clear that seeing the Shroud and Sudarium left SS.
Peter and John in a state of wonder. It wasn't the otherwise empty tomb
that had that effect; they knew it would be empty; St. Mary Magdalen had
told them it was. And they'd assumed, as Mary Magdalen had assumed,
that "they had taken away the Lord out of the sepulchure." But
upon encountering the cloths, they "saw, and believed"; they
realized that Jesus had risen from the dead, something they hadn't been
expecting.
Provenance
What happened to those two burial cloths after the Resurrection is a
crucial issue in demonstrating that the Shroud of Turin is not a
medieval hoax, as so many want
to believe. Many doubters reject that the Shroud is genuine
because of Carbon-14 testing that made headlines in 1988. That testing
dated the Shroud to the 14th century, and some think it's the final
word. But the problems with the test
are these:
1. There was a
great fire in the chapel in which the
Shroud was kept for a time, a fire that resulted in the Shroud itself
becoming
scorched, a fact that could easily skew Carbon-14 test results.
2. In 1532, after the fire in the chapel that kept
the relic, repairs were made to some parts
of the Shroud by nuns, who patched it in thirty different
places. The tiny samples used by those who conducted
the Carbon-14 test were, according to Dr. Ray Rogers, Los Alamos
Scientific Laboratory chemist, taken precisely from those medieval
patches. From his 2005 paper in the professional journal ThermoChimica
Acta, "Pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry results from the sample area
coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations prove that the
radiocarbon sample was not part of the original cloth of the Shroud of
Turin. The radiocarbon date was thus not valid for determining the true
age of the shroud."
In other words, to sum up, they tested the wrong part of the Shroud, a
fact verified again in 2019 by further analysis of the original study.
French
researcher, T. Casabianca, author of the paper "Radiocarbon
Dating of the Turin Shroud: New Evidence from Raw Data" (pdf), had
this
to say in an interview with L'Homme
Nouveau:
In 1989, the
results of the shroud dating were published in the prestigious journal
Nature: between 1260 and 1390 with 95% certainty. But for thirty years,
researchers have asked the laboratories for raw data. These have always
refused to provide them. In 2017, I submitted a legal request to the
British Museum, which supervised the laboratories. Thus, I had access
to hundreds of unpublished pages, which include these raw data. With my
team, we conducted the analysis. Our statistical analysis shows that
the 1988 carbon 14 dating was unreliable: the tested samples are
obviously heterogeneous, [showing many different dates], and there is
no guarantee that all these samples, taken from one end of the sheet,
are representative of the whole fabric. It is therefore impossible to
conclude that the shroud of Turin dates from the Middle Ages.
Later, chemical tests were carried out by University
of Padua laboratories and verified that the Shroud is a 1st century
artifact. This research, published in 2013, used Fourier Transform
Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy, giving the results
of 300 BC + 400 years and 200 BC + 500 years respectively.3
And in 2024, the Institute of Crystallography of the National
Research Council conducted research which once again dated the shroud
to the time of Jesus.
But some
people just remember the (of course) gloating newspaper headlines
regarding the erroneous Carbon-14 testing, and the problems with the
testing are ignored,
especially by those who don't want to believe in the Shroud's
authenticity, or who, laboring under the dictates of scientism, reject
that possibility on principle.
Because all of this is so, focusing on the History of
the Sudarium is most
important, because its provenance is much more clear than that of the
Shroud. Then, if the Sudarium can be shown to pre-exist the medieval
era, and if it can be shown
to have been
concomitant with the Shroud of Turin, then even the most
skeptical-minded will finally have to concede that the headlines
relating to the 1988 Carbon-14 test
were erroneous. The only real stumbling block to accepting the
fact
that the Shroud of Turin is, in fact, at least a 1st century burial
shroud, if not the burial shroud of the Lord
Jesus Christ Himself, crumbles away to dust.
And both of the above are true: the Sudarium is ancient, and it had been in contact with the Shroud
of Turin. So I begin this section on provenance by talking about the
Sudarium of Oviedo.
Provenance of the
Sudarium
The first written record of the Sudarium comes from the 12th century Liber Testamentorum, a book written
by Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo. In it, he writes of how Christ's followers
had made an ark, out of oak, to hold various relics, the Sudarium among
them. This ark was kept in Jerusalem for 500 years until Muslims attacked the
city in A.D. 614. A
Christian Palestinian priest named Philip took the ark and fled with it
to Alexandria, Egypt. But the Muslims warred their way there, too, and
so it was taken to Seville, Spain. The ark was then taken to Toledo in
A.D. 657, where it remained until A.D. 711 or 718. The discrepancy in
dates is due to a second text, Chronicum
Mundi, written by the Bishop of Tuy. Pelayo's text gives
the latter date and the Bishop of Tuy's text gives the former date as
being when the ark was taken from Toledo to Monte Sacro in Asturias.
In any case, the ark stayed one step ahead of Muslim invaders, always
being
carried off to safety before it could be destroyed. But then began the
Reconquista, the taking back of Spain from Muslim jihadists. Alfonso
II,
King of Asutrias, conquered the Muslims in his area, and then ruled
from Oviedo, where he built the Cathedral of San Salvador to hold the
ark. Christians made pilgrimage to
revere the Sudarium, typically while journeying to Santiago de
Compostela to revere the relics of St. James. A medieval
saying of the
time was,
Qui a este a Sainct Jaques
Et n’este a Sainct Salvateur
A visite le serviteur
Et a laisse le seigneur.
Who has been to St. James
And not to San Salvador
Visits the servant and
Neglects the master.
Summary: The
Sudarium of Oviedo is most definitely not a medieval artifact. It has a
long History,
going back to Jerusalem.
The Provenance of
the Shroud of Turin
The History of the Shroud, or the "Sindon," is much less clear-cut.
The "Pray Codex," a manuscript written between A.D. 1192 and 1195 and
now
kept in the National Széchényi Library of Budapest, Hungary, contains a
Missal, along with a Mystery Play and secular
material, but
what's of interest here is its depiction of the Burial and Resurrection
of Lord Christ. In the part of the picture that depicts His Burial, His
Body is shown as His Body is shown on the Shroud -- e.g., hands over
the groin, etc. That's not much
evidence in itself; there are only so many ways a body can be laid out,
and
modesty invites the covering of the genitals. But Christ's thumbs are
not visible in this illustration, reflecting their not being visible on
the Shroud, and, more importantly, the Resurrection portion of the
illustration, at the bottom, shows a
shroud that is very similar to the Shroud of Turin, from the
herringbone weave of the linen to the L-shaped pattern of four holes,
which
perfectly matches those found on the Shroud:
Click to
enlarge
Close-ups of the
L-shaped patterns on the Pray Codex illustration and on the Shroud:
One Sir Geoffrey de Charny is said to have acquired the Shroud when
on a Crusade in Constantinople (now Istanbul), but however he obtained
it, it was then that the Shroud enters into textual History. By at
least April of A.D. 1349, Sir Geoffrey had the Shroud in his possession
in Lirey, France. There it was highly venerated, with pilgrims
journeying from afar to see it. The badge
worn by those pilgrims bore
the following image, as drawn by Arthur
Forgeais in 1865:
After the death of Sir Geoffrey's son, his daughter, Margaret, took
possession of the Shroud. Then, upon her death, she left it to the
House
of Savoy.
Between 1473 and 1578, the Shroud was taken all over Europe by members
of the House of Savoy, moving with them as they traveled about, each
move Historically accounted for. It was
while it was in the House of Savoy's care, in A.D. 1532, while
kept in
a chapel in Savoy's capital, Chambéry, that the fire that damaged the
Shroud took place. Melted silver dropped onto the Shroud, which was
folded, producing the large, symmetrical burn holes that are easily
visible.
Poor Clare nuns tried to repair the Shroud by patching it, those
thirty patches they used undoubtedly being the source material used in
the
Carbon-14 testing that so
many think disproves the Shroud's authenticity.
Then, in 1578,
it was taken to Turin, Italy, where it now resides.
The Science of
the Shroud and the Sudarium
In this
sub-section, I'll reverse the order of things and look at the Shroud
first.
The Science of the
Shroud of Turin
On May 28, 1898, an Italian lawyer and photography hobbyist named
Secondo Pia took a picture of the Shroud. What he saw after developing
the image shook up the world: it was revealed that the Shroud acts as a photographic negative,
which, when photographed, shows a "positive" image. Here is Signor
Pia's original photograph, the picture that inspired the entire field
of "sindonology," or the scientific study of the Shroud of Turin:
Click to enlarge
Scientists began
taking the Shroud seriously. Yves Delage, professor of anatomy at the
esteemed Sorbonne in Paris, examined the photographs of the entire
Shroud and presented his conclusions to the Academy of Sciences, an
incident described in I. Wilson's "The Evidence of the Shroud":
Yves Delage,
professor of anatomy at the Paris Sorbonne, gave a lecture to the
French Académie des Sciences in which he claimed that the Shroud body
image and wounds are physiologically so flawless and meaningful that he
found it impossible to believe they could be the work of an artist. To
the scandal of his rationalist colleagues, who had always known him as
an agnostic, Delage said he found no difficulty in believing that the
body wrapped in the Shroud was that of Jesus.
He told the
Academy, simply, "The man of the shroud was the Christ."
In 1950, a surgeon, Dr. Pierre Barbet, who'd also been a battlefield
surgeon during WWI, wrote, "A Doctor at Calvary" which reveals what he
determined about the Man Who was wrapped in the Shroud. You can read this book in pdf format here.
Interestingly, the Man on the Shroud was nailed through His wrists, not
the palms of His Hands. This is especially noteworthy because artistic
depictions of the Crucifixion invariably show the nails going through
His Hands. Further, there is Historical and anatomical evidence that
crucifixion would have had to have been conducted by nailing through
the wrists. Driving nails through the palms of the hands would result
in their tearing through the flesh, whereas when driving the nails
through the wrists, the bones of the wrists would prevent that.
Over 100 whip marks are shown on the Shroud along with the wounds
consistent with those that would have been made
by the Crown of Thorns.
The Blood on the cloth lies under the image of the Man. In other words,
the Man's Blood saturated the cloth just after death, and the image of
that
Man was formed at a later time.
In
1972, Peter Schumacher of Interpretations Systems Incorporated (ISI)
invented the VP8 Image Analyzer, an analog computer that computes
brightness maps seen as imaging. This computer is -- or at least was
at the time -- used by NASA to map the terrain of planets. In 1976, Air
Force
Captains and Air Force Academy Professors John Jackson (professor of
Physics) and Eric Jumper (professor of Thermodynamics),
together with photographer William Mottern and along with
Schumacher, used this computer to analyze the Shroud and
found something startling. This is what they discovered when they
analyzed
an image of the Shroud, in the words of Schumacher:
When
the pseudo-three-dimensional image display (“isometric display”), was
activated, a “true-three-dimensional image” appeared on the monitor. At
least, there were many traits of real three-dimensional structuring in
the image displayed. The nose ramped in relief. The facial features
were contoured properly. Body shapes of the arms, legs, and chest, had
the basic human form. This result from the VP-8 had never occurred with
any of the images I had studied, nor had I heard of it happening during
any image studies done by others. I had never heard of the Shroud of
Turin before that moment. I had no idea what I was looking at. However,
the results are unlike anything I have processed through the VP-8
Analyzer, before or since. Only the Shroud of Turin has produced these
results from a VP-8 Image Analyzer isometric projection study...
...The
Shroud image induces a response in the isometric display of a VP-8
Image Analyzer that is unique. Each point of the Shroud body image
appears at a proper “elevation”. Is this due to the distance the cloth
was from a body inside it? Is this due to the density of the human body
at various points in the anatomy? Is it a result of radiant energy?
These questions cannot be answered by the VP-8 Image Analyzer. However,
the related theories can be rightfully posed. The isometric results
are, somehow, three-dimensional in nature. The displayed result is only
possible by the information (“data”) contained in the image of the
Shroud of Turin. No other known image produces these same results.
If one
considers the Shroud image to be “a work of art” of some type, then one
must consider how and why an artist would embed three-dimensional
information in the gray shading of an image. In fact, no means of
viewing this property of the image would be available for at least 650
years after it was done. One would have to ask, (assuming this is a
“natural result” in some style or type of art), “Why isn’t this result
obtained in the analysis of other works?”...
...I cannot explain, nor can I confirm, the results of the Carbon
dating tests. I can only claim that the image on the Shroud of Turin
required a human body that had been tortured as Christ was tortured,
and murdered as Christ was murdered. I can claim that the body is not
there, but the image is there.4
In March of
1977, Jackson, Jumper and Mottern formed the Shroud of Turin Research
Project, Inc. (STURP). Joining them were nuclear physicist Tom
D'Muhala, thermal chemist Raymond N. Rogers, Don Lynn of the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, biophysicist John Heller, photographers Vern
Miller and Barrie Schwortz, optical physicist Sam Pellicori, electric
power experts John D. German and Rudy Dichtl, forensic
pathologist Robert Bucklin, and many others. In 1978, they were given
unprecedented access to the Shroud, and after
two years of study, they gave the official summary of their findings in
1981. The text of that summary:
No
pigments, paints, dyes or stains have been found on the fibrils. X-ray,
fluorescence and microchemistry on the fibrils preclude the possibility
of paint being used as a method for creating the image. Ultra Violet
and infrared evaluation confirm these studies. Computer image
enhancement and analysis by a device known as a VP-8 image analyzer
show that the image has unique, three-dimensional information encoded
in it. Microchemical evaluation has indicated no evidence of any
spices, oils, or any biochemicals known to be produced by the body in
life or in death. It is clear that there has been a direct contact of
the Shroud with a body, which explains certain features such as scourge
marks, as well as the blood. However, while this type of contact might
explain some of the features of the torso, it is totally incapable of
explaining the image of the face with the high resolution that has been
amply demonstrated by photography.
The basic problem from a scientific point of view is that
some explanations which might be tenable from a chemical point of view,
are precluded by physics. Contrariwise, certain physical explanations
which may be attractive are completely precluded by the chemistry. For
an adequate explanation for the image of the Shroud, one must have an
explanation which is scientifically sound, from a physical, chemical,
biological and medical viewpoint. At the present, this type of solution
does not appear to be obtainable by the best efforts of the members of
the Shroud Team. Furthermore, experiments in physics and chemistry with
old linen have failed to reproduce adequately the phenomenon presented
by the Shroud of Turin. The scientific concensus is that the image was
produced by something which resulted in oxidation, dehydration and
conjugation of the polysaccharide structure of the microfibrils of the
linen itself. Such changes can be duplicated in the laboratory by
certain chemical and physical processes. A similar type of change in
linen can be obtained by sulfuric acid or heat. However, there are no
chemical or physical methods known which can account for the totality
of the image, nor can any combination of physical, chemical, biological
or medical circumstances explain the image adequately.
Thus, the answer to the question of how the image was
produced or what produced the image remains, now, as it has in the
past, a mystery.
We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a
real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of
an artist. The blood stains are composed of hemoglobin and also give a
positive test for serum albumin. The image is an ongoing mystery and
until further chemical studies are made, perhaps by this group of
scientists, or perhaps by some scientists in the future, the problem
remains unsolved.
[R]esults...do
not exclude the possibility that the body image on the Shroud was
generated by a burst of UV or VUV radiation, in agreement with the
Jackson theory of image formation. However, more investigations are
still necessary to unveil the origin of the body image on the Shroud,
which still represents a “challenge to the intelligence”.
And while the
image of the Man is on the very surface of the Shroud,
the Blood stains soak through the linen, saturating it through and
through.5 The blood type
found on the Shroud, AB, 6 is the rarest blood type,
existing in 4% of the global population, and even less commonly in
Europe -- but, interestingly, was apparently once common in Jerusalem:
in 1977, a study was made to determine the blood types of 68 skeletons
found in and around Jerusalem and determined to be Jewish. These
skeletons were between 1,600 and 2,000 years old, and of the 55 whose
blood types could be determined, more than half were of the otherwise
rare AB blood group. 7
The Blood
shed for us, for the remission of sins!
This particular Blood stain is
from a wound
on His back, the result of scourging.
The blood type on the shroud matches the blood type found in various
Eucharistic miracles, such as that of Lanciano.
In June of 2017, in the paper “New Biological Evidence from Atomic
Resolution Studies on the Turin Shroud," published in the journal PlosOne,
Elvio Carlino, a researcher at the Institute of Crystallography,
working under the auspices of Italy’s National Research Council and the
University of Padua’s Department of Industrial Engineering, writes of
his discovery that the Shroud contains high levels of certain
nanoparticles visible only since recent developments in the field of
electron microscopy. High levels in a human body of these specific
nanoparticles -- creatinine (a by-product of the breakdown of creatine
phosphate in muscles) and ferritin (a protein) -- are indicative of
severe trauma and a lack of oxygen. University of Padua professor
Giulio Fanti said simply, "the presence of these biological
nanoparticles found during our experiments point to a violent death for
the man wrapped in the Turin Shroud."
Because of its age and History of public exhibitions, there is a lot of
DNA contamination of the Shroud. Gianni Barcaccia, one of the
Italian researchers who examined the Shroud for DNA evidence, said that
the mitochondrial DNA most present, though, was from the Middle East, a
type that is "rare in western Europe, and it is typical of the Druze
community, an ethnic group that has some origin in Egypt and that lives
mainly in restricted areas between Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, and
Palestine." 8
Analysis of the pollen found on the Shroud shows a Palestinian origin,
before the 8th century.9 See footnote 3 on this site's Mary Gardens page
for more information about and pictures of the flowers and other
plants whose pollen was
found on the Shroud.
The Science of the Sudarium of Oviedo
Studies on the
Sudarium only began in A.D. 2000.
Pollen analysis of the Sudarium shows the same Palestinian origins as
the Shroud of
Turin10
while
reflecting their differing journeys into Europe, with the Sudarium
having African pollen which the Shroud does not, and the Shroud having
pollen from Turkey which the Sudarium does not.
More importantly, the Blood on the Sudarium is of the same rare type as
that
found on the Shroud -- AB -- and the "[b]loodstains on the
Sudarium show geometric correspondence to those
on the Shroud of Turin, consistent with the idea that they wrapped the
same
person."11
Catholic World Report explains,
Alan Whanger,
professor emeritus of medicine at Duke University, found similarities
in the blood stains on the two cloths by using a polarized image
overlay technique. He noted 70 congruent patterns on the face and more
than 50 on the back of the head and neck. Furthermore, when the image
on the Shroud was placed over the stains on the Sudarium, there was an
exact correlation between the stains on the Sudarium and the image of
the beard of the man on the Shroud.12
The book, "The
Oviedo Cloth," by Mark Guscin, reveals the evidence of the Crucifixion,
as recorded by the Sudarium of Oviedo:
The main stains
consist of one part blood and six parts pulmonary oedema fluid. This is
very significant because it helps confirm that Jesus died from
asphyxiation. It is the generally accepted opinion that people who were
crucified died from asphyxiation…. When a person dies this way his
lungs are filled with fluid from the oedema. If the body is moved or
jostled, this fluid can come out through the nostrils.
It is precisely this kind of stain that forms the central
group of stains on the Sudarium. The stains were superimposed on each
other, i.e. after the first stain was formed, enough time passed for it
to dry before the cloth was stained again, leaving the borders of each
stain clearly visible.
Summary
Pollen and
textile evidence reveals that the Sudarium and the Shroud originated in
Palestine and took different routes to Europe. While the Shroud was
carbon dated to the 14th century, there are very good reasons for
doubting that result, and Historical and all other scientific evidence
indicates a much older date of origin.
The Sudarium and Shroud covered the same person, and together they
describe
a 5'9" tall, 175 pound, muscular, bearded, mustachioed, long-haired
Semitic man
with the rare Type AB Blood who'd been scourged, beaten, crucified by
having nails driven through His wrists and feet -- two nails through
the wrists, one through both feet -- and by enduring a puncture wound
through the right hemithorax, entering through the fifth intercostal
space and exiting next to the spine and right shoulder blade.13
From this wound flowed two types of fluid, one being Blood, the other
serous, resembling water.
His left foot sat on top of His right
foot when He was crucified. His thumbs are not visible, having been
flexed as in reaction to nerve damage. Blood flow from the wrists is
directed toward the elbows, indicating His arms had been in an upright
position.
Both the right and left shoulder blades were abraded, consistent with
the Man's having been forced to carry a heavy object that rubbed
against His Flesh there as He
walked.
His Body is covered with at least 120 whip marks, made by a
flagrum-style implement (a whip with many barbed strands), and His head
shows
numerous pucture wounds, as would occur after having been crowned with
a crown of thorns.
He died from asphyxiation, His Heart giving out,
causing His lungs to
fill with fluid which exited His Body through His nostrils. When He
died, His Head was lying against His right arm.
As with
Christ in Sacred Scripture, His legs were unbroken, unlike the legs of
most others executed by crucifixion (breaking of the legs was
done to make the condemned die more quickly since it took away the
possibility
of their being able to push themselves up by their legs in order to
breathe more easily).
Rather than being left on the Cross as most victims of crucifixion
were, His Body was removed per Jewish customs.
His Face
was covered by the Sudarium. Later, the burial cloths were removed, He
was annointed, honored with flowers, and then re-covered with the
cloths. Both of these cloths
reveal the same Blood staining patterns which are made with Blood of
the
same rare blood type.
The means by which the image came to be on the Shroud -- said image
being on top of the
Blood stains and, so, being formed later
than the stains -- are
unexplained
-- perhaps unexplainable -- by science (for a summary of the existing
science, see the pdf file "List of evidences of
the Turin Shroud").
BBC
Documentary: The Shroud of Turin
Discovery
Channel Documentary: The Shroud of Turin
Museo della
Sindone
via San Domenico
28
10122 Turin
Museum
Hours:
Open daily from
8:00-12:00 and 3:00-7:00
Please note that the Shroud
itself is only displayed rarely, but the museum contains replicas and
all sorts of artifacts and displays relevant to sindonology.
1 "Errors are
Feared in Carbon Dating," New York Times. By Malcolm W. Browne.
Published: May 31, 1990. URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/31/us/errors-are-feared-in-carbon-dating.html.
Retrieved October 8, 2016.
2 "Radio Carbon Dating," by: Grahame
Johnston - Updated: 15 May 2016. URL:
http://www.archaeologyexpert.co.uk/radiocarbondating.html. Retrieved
October 8, 2016.
3 "Non-destructive dating of ancient flax
textiles by means of vibrational spectroscopy" by Giulio Fanti, Pietro
Baraldi, Roberto Basso, and Anna Tinti. "Vibrational Spectroscopy"
67:61–70ˇ July 2013. The paper ends with the words, "Image-fibers of
the TS present a very corrugated PCW that can be related to a SCW
shrinking,
probably due to an intense source of radiation. Both Corona Discharge
and Excimer Lasers experiments
performed to color modern flax fibers are able to reproduce this
behavior, thus confirming the hypothesis
of a TS body image formation related to an intense burst of energy."
4 "Photogrammetric Responses From The
Shroud of Turin," by Peter Schumacher. URL:
https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/schumchr.pdf
5 A Detailed Critical Review of the
Chemical Studies on the Turin Shroud: Facts and Interpretations," by
Thibault Heimburger, M.D.. URL:
https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/thibault%20final%2001.pdf
6 "Blood on the Shroud of Turin" An
Immunological Review," by Kelly P. Kears. URL:
https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/kearse.pdf
And when it was
evening, there came a certain rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, who
also himself was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate, and
asked the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded that the body should be
delivered. 
But Pilate
wondered that he should be already dead. And sending for the centurion,
he asked him if he
were already dead. And when he had understood it
by
the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph.
And behold there
was a man named Joseph, who was a counsellor, a good and just man, (The
same had not consented to their counsel and doings;) of Arimathea, a
city of Judea; who also himself looked for the kingdom of God.
This man went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. And taking him
down, he wrapped him in fine linen, and laid him in a sepulchre that
was hewed in stone, wherein never yet any man had been laid. And it was
the day of the Parasceve, and the sabbath drew on. 
And after these
things, Joseph of Arimathea (because he was a disciple of Jesus, but
secretly for fear of the Jews) besought Pilate that he might take away
the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave leave. He came therefore, and took
the body of Jesus. 
