New Study Suggests Shroud of Turin Could Be 2,000 Years Old!

New research suggests the Shroud of Turin may be 2,000 years old, challenging previous studies that dated it to the medieval period. 🌐 #News #AncientHistory #Faith

ST. PAUL, MN – A group of Italian scientists has added new fuel to the ongoing debate about the Shroud of Turin, a linen cloth believed by some to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ.

In their research, published in the journal Heritage, the team conducted dating tests on a sample of the Shroud and suggested that it could be around 2,000 years old.

The Shroud, which has long attracted significant attention, bears a faint image of a man that some claim is Jesus, imprinted on the cloth in a miraculous manner. While the study does not directly address whether the artifact was used in Jesus’ burial, the researchers found its age to be consistent with the period in which Jesus lived.

This study challenges earlier findings that pointed to the Shroud being a medieval creation. The Shroud of Turin is one of the most thoroughly studied artifacts in history, with various research offering differing conclusions.

While some studies have supported the idea that the Shroud could be authentic, the prevailing scientific view still considers it a medieval artifact, possibly a forgery.

Back in 1389, the Shroud was declared a forgery by the Bishop of Troyes, Pierre d’Arcis, who claimed to have identified the artist responsible. Despite this, the debate over its authenticity has persisted, with no consensus reached.

One key study from the late 1980s used radiocarbon dating to estimate that the linen dates back to between A.D. 1260 and A.D. 1390, aligning with the Shroud’s first recorded appearance in France in the 1350s. These findings suggested it was not the burial cloth of Jesus.

However, the authors of the Heritage study, led by Liberato De Caro of the Institute of Crystallography in Italy, argue that earlier tests might have been compromised by contamination. They used a new method, Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering, to analyze the structural degradation of ancient linen threads from the Shroud.

The results, they say, are “fully compatible” with measurements from a linen sample dated between A.D. 55-74, supporting the idea that the Shroud could be a 2,000-year-old relic.

The researchers caution that their findings are dependent on the Shroud having been kept in optimal conditions—temperatures of 68-72.5 degrees Fahrenheit and relative humidity of 55-75 percent—over the past 13 centuries of unknown history, in addition to its known history in Europe over the last seven centuries.

Given the differences with previous radiocarbon dating studies, the researchers emphasized the need for further X-ray analysis on additional samples from the Shroud to verify their conclusions.