What many believe is the burial cloth of Jesus, better known as the Shroud of Turin, is back in the news and not just because it is the start of Easter weekend.
A new book released today based on an extensive scientific study by Professor Giulio Fanti and journalist Saverio Gaeta, dates the Shroud of Turin to around the time when Jesus was crucified, which was thought to be 30 AD. These experiments were conducted at the University of Padua in Italy and debunk carbon dating experiments in 1988 that dated the Shroud to around 1500 AD.
However, the carbon dating has been questioned by many in the scientific community for decades since it was an outer piece of the Shroud that was tested — a piece that was added later after the Shroud survived a cathedral fire in the 1500’s. This same fire scorched the Shroud and left the distinctive burn marks on the outer edges as seen on the Shroud image above.
Here are scientific details about these new findings in the book as reported by the Vatican Insider:
What’s new about this book are Fanti’s recent findings, which are also about to be published in a specialist magazine and assessed by a scientific committee. The research includes three new tests, two chemical ones and one mechanical one. The first two were carried out with an FT-IR system, so using infra-red light, and the other using Raman spectroscopy. The third was a multi-parametric mechanical test based on five different mechanical parameters linked to the voltage of the wire. The machine used to examine the Shroud’s fibres and test traction, allowed researchers to examine tiny fibres alongside about twenty samples of cloth dated between 3000 BC and 2000 AD.
The new tests carried out in the Universityof Padua labs were carried out by a number of university professors from various Italian universities and agree that the Shroud dates back to the period when Jesus Christ was crucified in Jerusalem. Final results show that the Shroud fibres examined produced the following dates, all of which are 95% certain and centuries away from the medieval dating obtained with Carbon-14 testing in 1988: the dates given to the Shroud after FT-IR testing, is 300 BC ±400, 200 BC ±500 after Raman testing and 400 AD ±400 after multi-parametric mechanical testing. The average of all three dates is 33 BC ±250 years. The book’s authors observed that the uncertainty of this date is less than the single uncertainties and the date is compatible with the historic date of Jesus’ death on the cross, which historians claim occurred in 30 AD.
Stay tuned because this could be a major breakthrough providing more proof that the Shroud of Turin really is the burial cloth of Jesus.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member