Shroud of Turin claims, Some venerate it as the burial cloth of Christ. To others, the Turin Shroud is nothing more than a medieval hoax.
Now, science has come down on the side of the believers.
Researchers have dated a sample of the 14ft linen sheet to anything between 300BC to 400AD.
They used forensic tests to compare fibres from the shroud with a range of ancient fabric samples. And they discovered that the material could have been made in Jesus’s lifetime.
Their results contradict a landmark 1988 study, spearheaded by the British Museum, which used carbon dating to examine the cloth.
It said the shroud, which has an imprint of a bearded man with wounds consistent to being nailed to a cross, was actually made in the Middle Ages – more than 1,000 years after the Crucifixion.
But scientists at Padua University believe the original results could have been skewed by centuries of water and fire damage.
The shroud, which is one of Catholicism’s most controversial relics, was once described by Pope John Paul II as ‘an icon of suffering in every age’.
The findings are in a new book called Il Mistero della Sindone (The Mystery of the Shroud) which is published on Good Friday.
The authors, Professor Giulio Fanti, an expert in mechanical and thermal measurement at the University of Padua’s Engineering Faculty and journalist Saverio Gaeta, examined fibres from the Shroud and compared them to samples of cloth dating back to between 3000BC and up to the modern era to contrast them and see if it is a Medieval forgery.
Read more: MailOnline
