On October 17^th 2005 I drove up to Dunedin to attend a lecture on the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. The lecture was one of several held around the country by Rev. Father Francois Laisney, a Dominican priest belonging to the Society of St. Pius X. He is the prior in Wanganui, New Zealand and he displayed a full size high-resolution photograph of the Shroud which he had brought over from Australia.

It was obvious to me that the only purpose of this travelling lecture was to provide devout Christians, especially Catholics, with reasons to believe that the Shroud of Turin was the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ. These reasons would revolve around discrediting the scientific evidence that show it is a medieval fake.

So were these reasons valid and is the Shroud anything more than a religious gimmick used by the Church to bolster the shaky faith of their gullible and insecure flock?

No and no. It's all a scam.

Introduction
Nature and the conspiracy behind the testing
The conspiracy evaporates
New evidence authenticates the shroud?
Comparing the carbon-dating and vanillin tests
Reasons to doubt the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin
Conclusion

In the second half of this essay I will give many reasons why the Shroud of Turin is considered a fake. However the main purpose of this essay is to discuss that part of Father Laisney's lecture that I believe imparted the most reassuring revelations for believers and the most disturbing for skeptics. Those revelations concerned the 1988 carbon-dating of the Shroud and the damming medieval date that was attributed to it.

Those revelations were false, and I will clearly show they were false.

During the lecture I did not challenge Father Laisney over many of his claims such as the anatomical perfection of the image, the alleged pollens, blood stains etc, since this merely becomes an argument between opposing scientific claims. However I must take exception at the comments he made regarding the 1988 carbon-dating of the Shroud and the Nature magazine article describing these tests. It is the results obtained by this carbon-dating that have led most of the world to accept that the Shroud is a medieval fake. Thus it was these tests that Father Laisney wished to discredit.

Father Laisney claims to have studied the shroud for many years. Nevertheless, I wish to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he has read an article produced by some unscrupulous zealot, and that this formed the basis of his talk regarding the controversy over the carbon-dating. Why? Because it is blatantly obvious that Father Laisney has never read the Nature article he referred to or else he would not have made such wild, erroneous claims. If it was not ignorance that motivated Father Laisney's lecture tour, then the only other option is deliberate deception. Like most of us Father Laisney probably doesn't bother to check all the references provided at the end of articles and simply trusts the integrity of the author. Unfortunately in this case Father Laisney has been seriously misled. Hopefully the following will cause Father Laisney to rethink his view regarding the carbon-dating conspiracy, or at least omit it from his future lectures in the fear that some of his audience may have actually read the Nature article or this essay. Also it is hoped that those present at his lectures where he pushed these erroneous views may realise that they also have been misled.

Nature and the conspiracy behind the testing

Father Laisney mentioned a 1989 Nature magazine article and how it threw considerable doubt on the results obtained, and especially the methods employed, when the Shroud was carbon-dated in 1988. The article Father Laisney referred to was "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin", from Nature, Vol. 337, No. 6208, pp. 611-615, 16th February, 1989. It was not until after his lecture that I obtained a copy of this article and compared it to his comments.
The complete Nature article "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin" can be found here on this pro-shroud website.

Among other things, Father Laisney claimed that the protocols agreed upon between the scientists and the Vatican included using seven labs, two different carbon-dating methods, two control samples, blind testing etc. Father Laisney then stated that the scientists went on to break every single protocol.

His most serious accusation however, was that of scientific fraud. Father Laisney stated that while numerous people witnessed and videotaped the sampling of the shroud, the laboratory scientists took the sample into a back room where they packaged them along with the control samples. Their activity in this room was unobserved. Father Laisney went to considerable length to place suspicion on the scientists' handling of these samples, implying that they were switched to produce a fraudulent result. On hearing this, several people in the audience near me happily accepted this revelation, one summing it up with "Ah, so that's how they managed it!"

On reading the Nature article that Father Laisney referred to, it is correct that the samples were packaged unobserved in the adjacent Sala Capitolare. However this unobserved packaging was performed by the Archbishop of Turin and Dr Tite of the British Museum. The scientists from the carbon-dating laboratories were not involved. So if fraud did occur in this backroom, it was committed by the Archbishop of Turin or by Dr Tite while being observed by the Archbishop of Turin. Yet everyone left his lecture, including me, believing that the scientists did the packaging, not the Vatican's representative, the Archbishop of Turin.

(Note: The following indented text prefaced by Nature: are the actual quotes from the Nature article.)

Nature: The samples were then taken to the adjacent Sala Capitolare where they were wrapped in aluminium foil and subsequently sealed inside numbered stainless-steel containers by the Archbishop of Turin and Dr Tite.

Nature: The procedures for taking the samples and treating the results were discussed by representatives of the three chosen laboratories at a meeting at the British Museum in January 1988 and their recommendations were subsequently approved by the Archbishop of Turin.

Nature: In October 1987, the offers from three AMS laboratories (Arizona, Oxford and Zurich) were selected by the Archbishop of Turin, Pontifical Custodian of the shroud, acting on instructions from the Holy See

In the following points I have summarised the items relating to the change of protocols and who instigated them. (The full Shroud chronology can be found in the 1998 book titled "The Blood and the Shroud" by Ian Wilson, a pro-authenticity shroud advocate)

• In February 1979: Rochester University's Professor Gove and colleagues write to Archbishop Ballestrero of Turin, formally offering to radiocarbon date the Shroud using their new AMS method.
• In September 1986 several radiocarbon dating laboratories meet in Turin and draw up a protocol utilising seven laboratories, which is submitted to the Pope and the Archbishop of Turin.
• In April 1987, the Archbishop of Turin's scientific advisor announces that only two or three labs will be involved.
• In July 1987, the seven laboratories write to the Archbishop of Turin urging him to reconsider.
• In October 1987, the Archbishop of Turin replies saying that the three labs have been chosen because of their experience in the field. The cardinal also advises the labs that certain other details of the 1986 protocol have been scrapped.
• In November 1987 the three chosen laboratories warn the Archbishop of Turin: 'As you are aware, there are many critics in the world who will scrutinize these measurements in great detail. The abandonment of the original protocol and the decision to proceed with only three laboratories will certainly enhance the skepticism of these critics'. The chosen three declare themselves 'hesitant to proceed', and request the matter be given 'further consideration'.
• In January 1988 Professor Gove and Dr. Harbottle write an open letter to the Pope …deploring the rejection of the seven-laboratory protocol.
• In January 1988 the Archbishop of Turin's scientific advisor and leading representatives of the Oxford, Arizona and Zurich laboratories met to discuss the best procedures to be adopted, which were subsequently approved by the Archbishop of Turin..
• In March 1988: Professor Gove writes to the Pope appealing to him to persuade the Archbishop of Turin to revert to the original protocol. His letter is ignored.
• On April 21, 1988, the sample is removed from the Shroud and the radiocarbon dating begins.

As the above timeline clearly shows, while there was debate over the reduction of labs from seven to three leading up to the testing, the bad guy in this episode was the Vatican, not the scientists as Father Laisney implied in his lecture.

Father Laisney also stated that two different carbon-dating methods were to be used, yet the Nature article clearly states why this would never have happened:

Nature: The size of the sample then required, however, was ~500cm, which would clearly have resulted in an unacceptable amount of damage, and it was not until the development in the 1970s of small gas-counters and accelerator-mass-spectrometry techniques (AMS), requiring samples of only a few square centimetres, that radiocarbon dating of the shroud became a real possibility.

Father Laisney stated that two control samples were to be used, but that the labs again broke the agreed procedures by using three control samples. Father Laisney also mentioned that the story behind the added control sample aroused suspicion but did not elaborate as to why. Once again the Nature article that Father Laisney referred us to states that the use of three control samples was agreed upon:

Nature: The procedures for taking the samples and treating the results were discussed by representatives of the three chosen laboratories at a meeting at the British Museum in January 1988 and their recommendations were subsequently approved by the Archbishop of Turin.

Father Laisney stated that blind testing was to be employed, but this agreement was broken.

It is correct that blind-test procedures were not used. The article does not make it clear whether this was decided before or after the sampling began, but it does make it perfectly clear why. A blind test only works if there is no visible difference between the samples. Since the shroud weave was noticeably different there was no point pretending that nobody would notice. Making them different would have reduced the effectiveness of the test, thus the results obtained were more reliable by not being a blind test. However, as the article notes, at one stage in the testing, two laboratories did convert to blind testing when it permitted:

Nature: The laboratories were not told which container held the shroud sample. Because the distinctive three-to-one herringbone twill weave of the shroud could not be matched in the controls, however, it was possible for a laboratory to identify the shroud sample. If the samples had been unravelled or shredded rather than being given to the laboratories as whole pieces of cloth, then it would have been much more difficult, but not impossible, to distinguish the shroud sample from the controls. (With unravelled or shredded samples, pretreatment cleaning would have been more difficult and wasteful.) Because the shroud had been exposed to a wide range of potential sources of contamination and because of the uniqueness of the samples available, it was decided to abandon blind-test procedures in the interests of effective sample pretreatment. …. Also, at two laboratories (Oxford and Zurich), after combustion to gas, the samples were recoded so that the staff making the measurements did not know the identity of the samples.

Nature: From these data it can be seen that, for each laboratory, there are no significant differences between the results obtained with the different cleaning procedures that each used.

Nature: The results, together with the statistical assessment of the data prepared in the British Museum, were forwarded to Professor Bray of the Istituto di Metrologia 'G. Colonetti', Turin, for his comments. He confirmed that the results of the three laboratories were mutually compatible, and that, on the evidence submitted, none of the mean results was questionable.

Nature: The results of radiocarbon measurements from the three laboratories on four textile samples, a total of twelve data sets, show that none of the measurements differs from its appropriate mean value by more than two standard deviations. The results for the three control samples agree well with previous radiocarbon measurements and/or historical dates.

It is unrealistic to believe that the laboratories would agree to perform the testing at an identical time. An understanding of the work involved in carbon-dating and the article's brief description of the methods used to clean and test the samples show that this would be impossible, and it would never have been agreed to by the labs. As to their comparing results, the article clearly states:

Nature: the three laboratories undertook not to compare results until after they had been transmitted to the British Museum. … On completion of their measurements, the laboratories forwarded their results to the British Museum Research Laboratory for statistical analysis.

It is important to note that no reputable pro-shroud advocates in their numerous books and websites make any of these unsubstantiated accusations towards the scientists that Father Laisney made. Granted they question the date of 1260-1390 CE, but none question the integrity of the laboratories as Father Laisney did. None accuse the labs of conspiracy, of fraud, of reneging on agreed protocols. They instead say that the shroud may have been contaminated by a layer of bacteria, or altered by the fire in 1532, or that radiation emitted by Jesus as he was resurrected altered the shroud, etc. These have all been shown to be false, but they are legitimate possibilities as to why the shroud dated to the Middle Ages.

The conclusion of the Nature article is very clear. There is no confusion, no debate, no controversy, no conspiracy:

Nature: Very small samples from the Shroud of Turin have been dated by accelerator mass spectrometry in laboratories at Arizona, Oxford and Zurich. As controls, three samples whose ages had been determined independently were also dated. The results provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval.

The Nature article "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin" can be found here on this pro-shroud website.

New evidence authenticates the shroud?

The media article advertising Father Laisney's lecture stated that:

"Although at one point dismissed as dating only from the Middle Ages, recent carbon dating on original parts of the Shroud fitted it to the time of Christ's death, organiser Robert Wansink said".

Unfortunately information about this new evidence has been very misleading.

• Raymond Rogers is a retired chemist, a Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

• Rogers said: "As unlikely as it seems, the sample used to test the age of the shroud in 1988 was taken from a rewoven area of the shroud."

• Rogers developed a new method of dating linen based on its vanillin content.

• Before radiocarbon dating could be used to date real materials, it had to be calibrated by using the technique on samples whose ages were independently known.

• Rodgers claims to have tested the sample removed for carbon dating, comparing them with samples from the rest of the shroud.

• Pro-shroud advocates repeat Ray Rogers assertion that the Shroud is much older than the carbon dating tests suggest.

Comparing the carbon-dating and vanillin tests

Many believers now uncritically accept the vanillin tests while still claiming that the carbon-dating tests are suspect. For many, religious bias causes them to blindly accept any claim, no matter how flakey, if it supports their cause. Likewise they will belittle the most respectable science if it is at odds with them. Remember that the Vatican only allowed carbon dating of the shroud because they knew it was widely respected and they were utterly convinced that it would return a favourable date. Science however is about the search for truth, no matter where it leads.

Imagine if it was reversed though, that the carbon-dating results gave a 1st century CE date and the vanillin tests returned a medieval date. Would believers still be saying that the carbon-dating results, while agreeing with their beliefs, are still suspect because of possible contamination by bacteria or the 1532 fire? Would they still insist that the vanillin test is more reliable, even though it gives the "wrong" date? I don't believe they would. They would simply say that the best scientific minds in the world have shown the shroud to be from the 1st century CE. End of story.

The following list compares attributes of both the 1988 radiocarbon tests and Rogers' recent vanillin tests. It is quite clear that they do not carry equal weight. That's not to say that Rogers' results are wrong, but let's imagine that these two groups were testing, not for the age of a shroud, but for a cancerous tumour in your child. Which group of tests would you have more faith in?

Thus concludes my view of the two main treads of his lecture, the 1988 carbon-dating and the recent chemical tests that challenge them. No doubt Father Laisney will insist that there are still other good reasons for believing in the authenticity of the shroud. If Father Laisney feels so inclined, perhaps he can compare them to the reasons below and see how they stand up.

Reasons to doubt the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin:

1. There is no mention of a miraculously imaged Shroud in the New Testament or any early Christian writings. Surely, given the desire for miraculous proof of the divine nature of Jesus, such a relic would have rated a mention.
2. The cloth is incompatible with New Testament accounts of Jesus' burial. John's gospel (19:38-42, 20:5-7) specifically states that the body was "wound" with "linen clothes". Still another cloth (called "the napkin") covered his face and head. In contrast, the Shroud of Turin represents a single, draped cloth (laid under and then over the "body").
3. The clear implication of all three synoptics is that the material was bound tightly round the body, yet the Shroud of Turin shows an image made by simply lying a linen shroud on top of the front of the body, over the head and down the back.
4. The shroud contradicts the Gospel of John, which describes the body being wrapped with "a hundred pound weight" of burial spices (myrrh and aloes) -- not a trace of which appears on the cloth, or any biochemicals known to be produced by the body in life or in death (from STURP's final report, 1981).
5. John 19:40 indicates that the burial was a normal one, following the Jewish traditions. Thus, Joseph of Arimethea would have washed the body. The body shown in the Shroud of Turin was not washed.
6. No examples of the shroud linen's complex herringbone twill weave date from the first century, when burial cloths tended to be of plain weave in any case. The weave was used in Europe in the Middle Ages.
7. The shroud has no known history prior to the mid-fourteenth century, when it turned up in the possession of a soldier of fortune who cannot or will not say how he acquired the most holy relic in all of Christendom.
8. The shroud surfaced in France exactly at the height of the 'holy relic' craze. Not one such relic has ever been proved to be genuine, and the faking of relics was rife at this time. There were between 26 and 40 "authentic" burial shrouds scattered throughout the abbeys of Europe, of which the Shroud of Turin is just one.
9. The earliest written record of the shroud is a Catholic bishop's report to Pope Clement VII, dated 1389, stating that it originated as part of a faith-healing scheme, with "pretended miracles" being staged to defraud credulous pilgrims.
10. The bishop's report also stated that a predecessor had "discovered the fraud and how the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it".
11. In 1390, Pope Clement VII declared that it was not the true shroud but could be used as a representation of it, provided the faithful be told that it was not genuine.
12. As St. Augustine lamented in the fourth century, Jesus' appearance was [and still is], completely unknown, and the shroud image follows the conventional artistic likeness. That is, the resemblance of the figure to medieval depictions of Jesus, and the image of Jesus in medieval Gothic art.
13. There is a lack of wrap-around distortions that would be expected if the cloth had enclosed an actual three-dimensional object like a human body. Thus the cloth was never used to wrap a body. If the image had been formed when the cloth was around Jesus' corpse it would have been distorted when the cloth was straightened out. The image would be wider and you would have an imprint of the sides of the body, not just the front and back. The hair hangs as for a standing, rather than reclining figure, and the imprint of a bloody foot is incompatible with the outstretched leg to which it belongs.
14. There are serious anatomical problems with the image. Jesus' face, body, arms, and fingers were unnaturally thin and elongated (like figures in Gothic art), his left forearm was longer than his right, and his right hand is too long. The man is impossibly tall, being 6ft 8in (2.03m). The head is disproportionately small for the body, the face unnaturally narrow and the forehead foreshortened, and ears lost. The front and back images, in particular of the head, do not match up precisely, and the back image is around 2 inches (5cm) longer than the front. The back of the head is wider than the front of the head. The Shroud image is, in fact, so unusually very long and narrow that one pro-Shroud pathologist suggested that Jesus must have had Marfan's syndrome!
15. The alleged blood stains are unnaturally picture-like. Real blood spreads in cloth and mats on hair, and does not form perfect rivulets and spiral flows. Also, dried "blood" (as on the arms) has been implausibly transferred to the cloth. It is absolutely certain that in the hour or so that passed before the removal from the cross, any blood which remained on the head, the back and the forehead, dried up and was congealed, because this is the natural behaviour of blood which leaves the body and is exposed to air. The alleged blood remains bright red, unlike genuine blood that blackens with age. All the wounds, though according to the Gospel accounts made at different times, appear as if still bleeding, even though blood does not flow after death. A corpse does not bleed. There are also problems in explaining how the blood flows transferred to the cloth while retaining their perfect detail.
16. There is no blood on the Shroud: all the forensic tests specific for blood have failed (although some investigators unrigorously concluded that blood was present after conducting numerous forensic tests for iron, protein, albumin, etc., which came up positive because these materials are indeed on the Shroud in the form of tempera paint).
17. "Blind" microscopic analyses show significant traces of paint pigment on image areas, thus proving the pigment red ocher was a component of the image. The "blood" was actually tempera paint. Real blood does not contain red ochre, vermilion, and alizarin red pigments.
18. Subsequently, the distinguished microanalyst Walter McCrone identified the "blood" as red ocher and vermilion tempera paint and concluded that the entire image had been painted.
19. The "bloodstains" are redder than other parts of the image. Bloodstains do not remain red over time. They turn black or dark brown. These "bloodstains" also have a chemical composition matching paint which was used in medieval times.
20. It is true that there are higher concentrations of iron and protein, as are found in blood, in the areas of the "bloodstains". But iron and proteins are also found in pigments. Iron oxide is often used as a red colouring. Iron oxide fades to yellow when dehydrated so much of the iron oxide has now faded to yellow.
21. There is also significant amounts of mercuric sulphide, which is a well-known pigment called vermilion - a red pigment.
22. There is no trace of sodium, chlorine or potassium, which blood contains in high amounts and which would have been present if the stains were truly blood.
23. Porphyrins are present in the area of the "bloodstains". These are found in blood, but they are also found in other animal and plant products, such as those used to make artists' pigments.
24. Claims that the blood in the "bloodstains" is type AB "are nonsense", according to Ray Rogers, a retired research chemist and member of STURP (Rogers 2004).
25. Evidence of human DNA in a shroud "blood" sample is meaningless. The scientist at the DNA lab, Victor Tryon, told Time magazine that he could not say how old the DNA was or that it came from blood. As he explained, "Everyone who has ever touched the shroud or cried over the shroud has left a potential DNA signal there." Tryon resigned from the new shroud project due to what he disparaged as "zealotry in science". Even the Archbishop of Turin and the Vatican refused to authenticate the samples or accept any research carried out on them.
26. The theory that the image was caused by contact with oils and spices can be discounted since these were not found on the shroud, also a cloth wrapped around the body would produce an expanded image of the body when flattened out. The image would also be blurred as the oils soaked into the cloth.
27. The theory that the image was caused by the projection of body vapours can also be rejected since vapours don't travel in straight lines, but disperse, so once again the image would be blurred, which it isn't.
28. The most popular theory by the pro-shroud groups is that the image was caused by a short burst of radiation caused by the resurrection, which also altered the C14 ratio, causing an erroneous carbon dating result. This too has been discredited because the fibres in the image areas show no additional degradation than the non image areas. Radiation would cause visible damage to the fibres (when viewed microscopically) and this is not evident. Radiation would also cause the image to penetrate the cloth, unlike the superficial shroud image that is observed. Also to receive the exact amount of radiation required to alter the date of the cloth to the medieval date of its first documented appearance would be a remarkable coincidence.
29. The Shroud image is NOT a true photographic negative but only an apparent one -- a faux-photographic negative. As with a true negative, light features such as skin are dark on it and light on the positive and shadows are light on it and dark on the positive. Unlike a true photographic negative however, dark features like the beard, moustache, hair, and blood are dark on it and light on the positive. The "positive" image shows a figure with white hair and beard, the opposite of what would be expected for a Palestinian Jew in his thirties.
30. It is likely that the Shroud was constructed using a rubbing technique on a bas-relief model. Joe Nickell demonstrated this using a bas-relief and the pigments and tools available in the Middle Ages (image on right).
    After experimenting with various techniques, the Shroud artist prepared a suitable mixture of pigments and tempera binder, moulded a wet linen sheet over the bas-relief he had constructed, and used a dauber (also termed a pounce or tamper) to apply the mixture to the surface of the linen. Methods for creating similar images are known and these methods were widely known in the Middle Ages. The statement that we cannot make such an image is simply false propaganda. Faux-negative images are automatically produced by an artistic rubbing technique. The July 2005 issue of Science & Vie (Science and Life) magazine also documents the making of a shroud by these medieval techniques.
31. The claims of pollen from Palestine supposedly found on the Shroud have been discredited as "fraud" and "junk science." The person who originally claimed to have found the pollen on the Shroud, Max Frei, a Swiss criminologist, once pronounced the forged "Hitler Diaries" genuine. The pollens were very suspicious, as pollen experts quickly pointed out - first of all, they were missing the most obvious pollen you would expect, which would be olive. There's not any! 32 of the 57 pollens allegedly found by Frei are from insect-pollinated plants and could not have been wind-blown onto the exposed shroud in Palestine. Similar samples taken by the Shroud of Turin Research Project in 1978 had comparatively few pollens. Cloth was often brought to medieval Europe from Palestine, so there is no strong support from the pollen anyway.
32. The claim that the image contains unique 3D information producing a perfect 3D image has been disputed by other mathematical modellers. However, since the image was probably produced from a 3D object, such as a bas-relief, 3D coding is completely natural and this claim adds nothing to the authenticity debate.
33. The shroud cloth was radiocarbon dated in 1988 to circa 1260-1390 CE by three separate laboratories. This date is consistent with the earliest documentary evidence of the shroud's existence. It is also consistent with a fourteenth-century bishop's report to Pope Clement VII that an earlier bishop had discovered the forger and that he had confessed.
34. The suggestions that modern biological contaminants were sufficient to modernise the date are also ridiculous. A weight of 20th century carbon equalling nearly two times the weight of the Shroud carbon itself would be required to change a 1st century date to the 14th century. Besides this, the linen cloth samples were very carefully cleaned before analysis at each of the carbon-dating laboratories.
35. The expression is strangely composed for someone tortured to death, and the hands are neatly folded across the genitals. A real body lying limp could not have this posture. Your arms are not long enough to cross your hands over your pelvis while keeping your shoulders on the floor. To achieve this the body can not lie flat, yet Jewish burial tradition did not dictate that a body must be hunched up so as to cover the genitals before wrapping in the shroud. The claim that rigor mortis had set in and thus caused the legs not to be straight is ridiculous, since the arms should also be contracted, plus the timing is all wrong for rigor mortis. The most obvious answer is that the artist knew the image would be displayed, and didn't want to offend his audience or have to guess what the genitals of Jesus would look like. It is also suspicious that Jesus is depicted assuming a pose that medievalists refer to as the venus pudica pose. This pose is associated with nudity and loss of innocence.
36. The Shroud is a 14th-century forgery and is one of many such deliberately created relics produced in the same period, all designed to attract pilgrims to specific shrines to enhance and increase the status and financial income of the local church. There were countless crucifixion nails, crowns of thorns, and lances. And there were burial shrouds. There were between 26 and 40 'authentic' burial shrouds scattered throughout the abbeys of Europe, of which the Shroud of Turin is just one. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, fragments supposedly cut from the True Cross were available in almost every church in Europe. A church in St. Omer claimed to have bits of the True Cross, of the Lance that pierced Christ, of his Cradle, and the original stone tablets upon which the Ten Commandments had been traced by the very finger of God! Three churches in France each professed to have a complete corpse of Mary Magdalene. Jesus' foreskin was preserved in at least six churches. Vials of Jesus' tears, vials of Jesus' mother's milk. One catalogue from that time includes the following: "A fragment of St. Stephen's rib; Rusted remains of the gridiron on which St. Lawrence died; A Lock of Mary's hair; A small piece of her robe; A piece of the Manger; Part of one of Our Lord's Sandals; A piece of the sponge that had been filled with vinegar and handed up to Him; A fragment of bread He had shared with His disciples; A tuft of St. Peter's beard; Drops of St. John the Baptist's Blood." Many churches vied to become known for the number and importance of their relics. As early as 1071 the cathedral at Eichstatt possessed 683 relics, while by the 1520s the Schlosskirche at Wittenburg had 19,013 and the Schlosskirche at Halle boasted more than 21,000 such objects. "About 1200, Constantinople was so crammed with relics that one may speak of a veritable industry with its own factories". Blinzler (a Catholic New Testament scholar) lists, as examples: "letters in Jesus' own hand, the gold brought to the baby Jesus by the wise men, the twelve baskets of bread collected after the miraculous feeding of the 5000, the throne of David, the trumpets of Jericho, the axe with which Noah made the Ark, and so on. . . " During the Middle Ages particularly, relic-mongering was rampant; and of course, there were no scientific means to test things, so all manner of things were sold as authentic. Including shrouds of Jesus.
37. The church conducts secret tests and suppresses unfavourable results: In 1969 the Archbishop of Turin appointed a secret commission to examine the shroud. That fact was leaked, then denied, but "At last the Turin authorities were forced to admit what they previously denied." The man who had exposed the secrecy accused the clerics of acting "like thieves in the night." More detailed studies -- again clandestine -- began in 1973. The commission included internationally known forensic serologists who made heroic efforts to validate the "blood," but all of the microscopical, chemical, biological, and instrumental tests were negative. The commission's report was withheld until 1976 and then was largely suppressed, while a rebuttal report was freely made available. Thus began an approach that would be repeated over and over: distinguished experts would be asked to examine the cloth, then would be attacked when they obtained other than desired results.
38. The group most famous for claiming the authenticity of the shroud is STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project), now disbanded. Unfortunately almost all of these were deeply religious, most of them were Roman Catholics; in fact, the leaders of the group, Jackson and Jumper, served on the Executive Council for the Holy Shroud Guild, a Catholic organisation that advocated the "cause" of the supposed relic. So having this group investigate the Shroud was a little bit like having the Flat Earth Society investigate the curvature of the Earth. STURP was comprised of 40 US scientists, made up of 39 devout believers and 1 agnostic. Knowing that the proportion of believers to agnostics is much different in scientific circles than it is in the general population, it has been calculated (Debunked! by Georges Charpak and Henri Broch) that the odds of selecting a group of 40 scientists at random and achieving this high ratio of believers is 7 chances in 1,000,000,000,000,000. In other words, the formation of this group is stacked and very biased towards authenticating the shroud, and therefore you must take their claims with an extremely large grain of salt.
39. From an historical perspective, many scholars have shown that there is no evidence that Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. Other than the New Testament of the Bible, there exists no other written document that mentions Jesus as an historical figure. The writings of Josephus and Tacitus that mention Jesus have been shown to be clear forgeries by the early church. At the end of an article by Frank R. Zindler - Did Jesus Exist? - he lists 38 other Jewish and pagan historians and writers who lived during the time, or within a century after the time that Jesus is supposed to have lived. If Jesus really did do all these miraculous things that the Bible attributed to him, it's surprising that none mentioned him. You can't crucify a man that doesn't exist, so even if the shroud did contain a crucified man, it wasn't Jesus.

    Recommended reading on an historical Jesus:
    'The Jesus Mysteries' by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy
    'The Pagan Christ' by Tom Harpur
    'Did Jesus Exist?' by G A Wells

40. The church has never claimed the shroud as an authentic relic, however it has not discouraged the myth. Father Mike Mahler from 'Cornell United Religious Works' states:

    "The Vatican has never made a statement about the authenticity of any relic, including the shroud. It is also highly unlikely that it will ever do so. Further information is found in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13, and Volume 18, page 476. The latter article raises many good points which create serious doubts about the authenticity of the shroud as Jesus' burial cloth, even if the shroud originated in the first century."

    Yet the Vatican has no problem verifying miracles. In 2002 the Vatican recognised the 1998 after-death-miracle on Monica Besra which has been attributed to Mother Teresa. This has been very controversial, with the doctor who first diagnosed Besra saying the church should not push Besra's case because it was medication, not a miracle that cured her. Her husband also supports the doctor's version of events. Doctors that are on record saying that it is a miracle did so anonymously and can not be traced. Besra's medical records containing sonograms, prescriptions and physicians' notes have been seized by the church. Besra is a 30-year-old tribal woman from Dulidnapur village. She is illiterate and speaks her tribal mother tongue only. Until recently she has not been a Christian, yet her statement is written in fluent English and shows familiarity with details of Catholic belief. It is obvious that the text has not been written or dictated by her. But Besra cannot be questioned, she has vanished.
    It is very damming that the Vatican will authenticate such a controversial case, contrary to medical advice, yet won't pass the same authority on the Shroud of Turin.
41. Even if the linen was produced in the 1st century CE, or if it did contain human blood and pollen from Palestine, and even if it had wrapped a crucified man, this in itself proves nothing about it being the burial cloth of Jesus. Everyone agrees that linen was common in 1st century CE Palestine, as was blood, pollen and crucified men. Claiming more than this is as silly as that claim from apologists that a 1st century CE boat has been excavated near the Sea of Galilee, reasoned that Jesus would have ridden in a boat like this, therefore this was "evidence" that Jesus existed! The most pro-shroud advocates could ever do is show that it was an authentic 1st century CE burial shroud of a crucified man. However, as shown above, Biblical details would still indicate that it didn't belong to Jesus. Unless of course, the Bible is wrong.

In this essay I have shown that claims made by Father Laisney regarding the dating of the Shroud of Turin are irrefutably false. Whether they were made deliberately to deceive or through ignorance was not determined.

I have also listed numerous reasons why the Shroud of Turin can not be, or is extremely unlikely to be, the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. For believers it's not just a matter of demolishing 2 or 3, or even 20 or 30 of these reasons, they must be able to clearly show that they are all flawed arguments. Since some use quotes from the Bible itself, for them to be false would mean that the Bible is in error also. Proving the Shroud authentic by proving the Bible wrong would be a backward step for the Church. If you can't have complete confidence in the Bible, you can't have complete confidence that Jesus even existed at all.

I am of the opinion that the Shroud of Turin is nothing more than a religious gimmick used by the Church to bolster the shaky faith of their gullible and insecure flock. I believe it is unlikely that Jesus the man even existed, let alone was crucified around 30 CE. Thus no evidence of Jesus has ever existed and this explains why the manufacture of fake relics has been necessary and rampant for the last 2000 years. That these relics could fool ignorant, superstitious, medieval peasants is understandable, but that modern educated people with libraries of knowledge and scientific and forensic tools at their disposal still believe in this forgery is both amazing and disappointing. For some it is a testament to the human mind's ability to delude itself. For others it is an example of the lengths they will go to in their attempt to deceive their followers.

Accepting the cloth as the burial shroud of Jesus Christ will remain the domain of faith, not science.

I will end with a quote from Joe Nickell, author of Inquest on the Shroud of Turin:

"We should again recall the words of Canon Ulysse Chevalier, the Carbolic scholar who brought to light the documentary evidence of the shroud's medieval origin. As he lamented, "The history of the shroud constitutes a protracted violation of the two virtues so often commended by our holy books: justice and truth."

I especially recommend The Skeptics Guide to the Paranormal by Lynne Kelly, and not just for her chapter on the shroud. The entire book is enlightening and well worth reading.

Authors:   John L. Ateo,   Rachel C.
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