Shroud of Turin Proved Real?

 

The Shroud of Turin is one of the most remarkable objects in the world. It is a piece of flax linen fourteen feet long and three and a half feet wide. It was originally carbon dated to the 13th to 14th century. Fragments of pollen trapped in the fabric match species native to the Holy Land indicating it comes from there. It was owned by a number of French aristocrats and kept in a series of churches until it was badly burned by fire. Soon after that, in 1578, it was moved to the royal chapel of the cathedral of San Giovanni Battista in Turin, Italy, hence its name; where it has been kept ever since. What makes the Shroud amazing it that it has on it an image of a tall man with a beard and long hair. The man has wounds on his wrists and forehead and these correspond with what looks like bloodstains on the cloth. The front and back on the man are visible vertically on the cloth indicating that it was wrapped around him from head to toe; this is the traditional way to shroud a corpse in Jewish funeral rites. Obviously this man matches the biblical description of Jesus Christ and in fact the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke describe how, after his crucifixion, Joseph of Aramathea officiated the burial of Jesus and wrapped his body in a shroud. The Shroud's fame only really took off in 1898 when it was photographed and the negative revealed a positive image of the man, meaning that the image itself was a photographic negative. Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, of Rennes le Chateau fame, claim that it is an unrecorded experiment in early photography by Leonardo da Vinci. They say that the face of the man resembles portraits of Leo indicating that he modelled himself. Although Leonardo was undoubtedly a very clever man who was interested in optics, there is no trace of conventional photographic chemicals on the shroud. The oldest known permanent photograph was taken over three hundred years later in 1826. The original carbon dating done in 1988 has always been called into question and now a new test has been done using "WAXS", wide-angle X-ray scattering. This reveals the age of the cellulose in the linen. The cloth is actually much older than was previously thought, about two thousand years old; so it was made at the time of Christ. Of course just because the cloth is old enough to be Jesus' shroud doesn't mean necessarily that it is. Source: https://metro.co.uk/2024/08/20/scientists-analysing-cloth-jesus-buried-in-make-huge-breakthrough-21454792/. New analysis on the marks thought to be bloodstains also supports the authenticity of the Shroud. They have chemicals in them matching those of blood from somebody who died of shock and trauma, which was the cause of death from crucifixion. According to the Gospels Jesus' received wounds where the man in the image has them. The forehead ones were caused by the crown of thorns put on his head as mockery for him being declared "King of Jews". Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13765919/shroud-turin-jesus-cloth-confirms-biblical-story.html.
 
When I brought this up on Facebook somebody replied that it had to be fake because the image was that of a white man. This is despite the fact it shows no skin colour; the long hair and beard match the traditional form of Jesus in the ecclesiastical art of Europe. These pictures also often show Jesus with pale skin. Of course Jesus would not have looked like that. Racially he was the same as the indigenous population of the region today, the Palestinians and the Sephardic Jews. In other words he would have been brown with shorter black hair. My correspondent showed me some old Egyptian Coptic pictures of Jesus and they show him this way. However it could be that Jesus styled his hair and beard to make himself look more Greek or Roman. That might have given him some status the same way that modern British men drive a particular car. I'm not sure about the Shroud of Turin. It remains enigmatic and fascinating. One thing's for sure, there are only two possibilities. Either it is one of the most extraordinary and unusual works of art and/or technology every devised; or it is the most incredible holy relic the world has ever seen. Both possibilities are exhilarating.
See here for more information: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2020/04/third-rail-radio-programme-83.html.
And: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2014/03/ben-emlyn-jones-on-mind-set-podcast-45.html.