Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

[Barry Karr <SkeptInq@AOL.COM>]

PBS "Secrets of the Dead" Buries the Truth About Turin Shroud

Friday, April 9, 2004

Joe Nickell, Senior Research Fellow, Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal

Although science and scholarship have demonstrated that the Shroud of Turin
is a medieval fake, die-hard shroud enthusiasts continue to claim otherwise.
Just in time for Easter 2004 viewing, a PBS television documentary that
aired Wednesday, April 7, gave them a forum to state their conviction that
the image on the cloth is a first-century picture--miraculous or
otherwise--of Jesus' crucified body.

As part of the Secrets of the Dead series, the "Shroud of Christ?"
presentation was a study in pseudoscience, faulty logic, and the suppression
of historical facts. Omitted were mention of the contrary gospel evidence,
the reported forger's confession, and the microanalytical analyses that
showed the "blood" and "body" images were rendered in tempera paint.
Unsubstantiated claims were presented as fact, and the radiocarbon
results--which dated the cloth to the time of the forger's confession--were
treated in straw-man fashion: presented as virtually the sole impediment to
authenticity.

Knowledgeable skeptics were avoided. Instead, viewers were subjected to the
astonishingly absurd notion of an art historian named Nicholas Allen that
the image was "the world's first photograph." (The technique was supposedly
invented to make a fake shroud and then conveniently lost for subsequent
centuries!)

The intellectual incompetence or outright dishonesty of the show's producers
is matched only by that of the PBS executives who foisted it on a credulous
Easter-season audience.

The following facts are an antidote to that scientific and historical
revisionism:

- The shroud contradicts the Gospel of John, which describes multiple cloths
(including a separate "napkin" over the face), as well as "an hundred pound
weight" of burial spices--not a trace of which appears on the cloth.

- 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 shroud has no known history prior to the mid-fourteenth century, when
it turned up in the possession of a man who never explained how he had
obtained the most holy relic in Christendom.

- The earliest written record of the shroud is a 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.

- 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" (emphasis added).

- Although, as St.Augustine lamented in the fourth century, Jesus'
appearance was completely unknown, the shroud image follows the conventional
artistic likeness.

- The physique is unnaturally elongated (like figures in Gothic art), and
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. 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.

- The alleged blood stains are unnaturally picture-like. Instead of matting
the hair, for instance, they run in rivulets on the outside of the locks.
Also, dried "blood" (as on the arms) has been implausibly transferred to the
cloth. The blood remains bright red, unlike genuine blood that blackens with
age.

- In 1973, internationally known forensic serologists subjected the "blood"
to a battery of tests-for chemical properties, species, blood grouping, etc.
The substance lacked the properties of blood, instead containing suspicious,
reddish granules.

- 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.

- In 1988, the shroud cloth was radiocarbon dated by three different
laboratories (at Zurich, Oxford, and the University of Arizona). The results
were in close agreement and yield a date range of A.D.1260-1390, about the
time of the reported forger's confession.

Defenders of the shroud's authenticity have rationalizations for each
damning piece of evidence. For example, they assert that microbial
contamination might have altered the radiocarbon date, although for an error
of thirteen centuries, there would have to be twice as much contamination by
weight as the cloth itself! Beginning with the desired answer, they work
backward to the evidence, picking and choosing and-all too often-engaging in
pseudoscience.

In contrast, the scientific approach allows the preponderance of
evidence to lead to a conclusion: the shroud is the work of a medieval
artisan. The various pieces of the puzzle effectively interlock and
corroborate each other. In the words of Catholic historian, Ulysse
Chevalier, who brought to light the documentary evidence of the
Shroud's medieval origin, "The history of the shroud constitutes a
protracted violation of the two virtues so often commended by our holy
books, justice and truth." []

For more information on the Shroud of Turin and other allegedly miraculous
images of Jesus of Nazareth, visit the new "Miraculous Self-Portraits of
Jesus?" Feature Exhibit on the Skeptiseum (www.skeptiseum.org).

Joe Nickell, Ph.D. is CSICOP's Senior Research Fellow and an expert on the
Shroud of Turin. He is author of Inquest on the Shroud of Turin (Prometheus
1983, 1998) and numerous articles, including "Blooming 'Shroud' Claims"
(Skeptical Inquirer, Nov./Dec. 1999) and "Pollens on the 'Shroud': A Study
in Deception" (Skeptical Inquirer Summer 1994).