Is the Shroud of Turin a miracle or are Scientists wrong?

Answer 1

Another answer from our community:

Modern science has been proved to be wrong many times, but in this case they weren't. The phenomenon of the Shroud of Turin being made in medival times is false, because the body of Jesus didn't decay in the Shroud, thus not expelling the nutrients that scientists studied to detect the Shroud's age. The body of Jesus was found roughly three days after it being placed in the tomb to be gone. Scientists used the wrong method in finding the Shroud's age, so the ansewer is that scientists were wrong about the Shroud's age.

Answer 2

The Shroud of Turin has conclusively been proven to be a medieval relic.

Early history of the Shroud

The cloth now known as the Shroud of Turin first appeared about 1355 at a little church in Liry, in north-central France. Its owner, a soldier of fortune named Geoffroy de Charney, claimed it as the authentic shroud of Christ, although he was never to explain how he acquired such a fabulous possession.
According to a later bishop's report, written in 1389 by Pierre D'Arcis to the Avignon pope, Clement VII, the shroud was being used as part of a faith-healing scam: "The case, Holy Father. stands thus. Some time since in this diocese of Troyes the dean of a certain collegiate church, to wit, that of Lirey, falsely and deceitfully, being consumed with the passion of avarice, and not from any motive of devotion but only of gain, procured for his church a certain cloth cunningly painted, upon which by a clever sleight of hand was depicted the twofold image of one man, that is to say, the back and the front, he falsely declaring and pretending that this was the actual shroud in which our Saviour Jesus Christ was enfolded in the tomb, and upon which the whole likeness of the Saviour had remained thus impressed together with the wounds which He bore. . . And further to attract the multitude so that money might cunningly be wrung from them, pretended miracles were worked, certain men being hired to represent themselves as healed at the moment of the exhibition of the shroud."

D'Arcis continued, speaking of a predecessor who conducted the investigation and uncovered the forger: "Eventually, after diligent inquiry and examination, he discovered the fraud and how the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it, to wit that it was a work of human skill and not miraculously wrought or bestowed."

Comparison of the Shroud with expectation

First of all, the Shroud of Turin is inconsistent with John 19:39-40, 20:5-7, which specifically state that the body was 'wound' with linen clothes and a large quantity of burial spices ( myrrh and aloes). Still another cloth (the napkin) covered his face and head. In contrast, the Shroud of Turin represents a single, draped cloth without any trace of the burial spices.

Some shroud advocates suggested the image was produced by simple contact with bloody sweat or burial ointments. That is disproved by a lack of wraparound distortions. Also, not all imaged areas would have been touched by a simple draped cloth, so some sort of projection was then proposed. Others began to suggest that the image was 'scorched' by a miraculous burst of radiant energy at the time of Jesus' resurrection. However, the actual scorches from the 1532 fire [which damaged the Shroud] exhibit strong reddish fluorescence, whereas the shroud images do not fluoresce."

Scientific analysis

ln 1969 the Archbishop of Turin appointed a commission to examine the shroud. The commission included internationally known forensic serologists who unsuccessively used microscopic, chemical, biological and instrumental tests to validate the blood. Experts discovered reddish granules that would not even dissolve in reagents that dissolve blood, and one investigator found traces of what appeared to be paint. An art expert concluded that the image had been produced by an artistic printing technique.

Further examinations were conducted in 1978 by the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), a group whose leaders were on the Executive Council of the Holy Shroud guild, a Catholic organisation that advocated the cause of the supposed relic.

STURP pathologist Robert Bucklin claimed the images were anatomically correct, yet a footprint on the cloth is inconsistent with the position of the leg, the hair falls as for a person standing rather lying down, and the physique is unnaturally elongated (similar to figures in Gothic art).
Microanalyst Walter C. McCrone examined tape-lifted samples from the shroud and identified the supposed blood as tempera paint containing red ochre and vermilion along with traces of rose madder.

In 1988, three laboratories (at Oxford, Zurich, and the University of Arizona) used accelerator mass spectrometry to carbon-date samples of the linen. The results all stated that the linen was produced around 1250-1390 CE.

(Source: Joe Nickell, "Science Versus Shroud Science", Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?, pages 265-274 - with citations.)