The Shroud of Turin is a large piece of ancient linen, about 14 feet long and 3½ feet wide. On it is a faint image of a man who was whipped, crowned with thorns, crucified, and pierced in the side. The bloodstains and wounds match exactly what the Gospels describe about Jesus’ crucifixion.
What makes the Shroud unique is that the image is not painted or drawn - it’s only on the very top fibers of the cloth, like a photograph burned in by light. When the cloth is viewed as a photographic negative, the image suddenly becomes clear and detailed, even showing 3D information.
In 1978, STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project), with a team of about 30 American scientists from various disciplines (physics, chemistry, engineering, medicine, and more) traveled to Turin, Italy, to study the Shroud of Turin directly for the first time with modern scientific equipment.
Over a five-day period in October 1978, they performed non-destructive tests -including photography, spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence, and microscopic analysis - to determine how the image on the cloth was formed. STURP concluded that the image was not painted, dyed, scorched, or photographically produced, but they could not explain how it was created. Their findings remain a cornerstone of Shroud research.
In 1988, the Shroud was Carbon-14 tested, and three different labs concluded in was a 14th-century hoax.
The Shroud has been studied for over 100 years, and no one has been able to explain how the image could have been made by a 14th-century forger. It requires technologies that don’t exist even in our day, and certainly did not exist in the 14th Century. Some tests date it back to the time of Christ, and there is a strong historical trail that links it to early Christian communities.For me, it is the actual burial cloth of Jesus, and it is even a kind of photographic record of His resurrection. The Carbon-14 dating has been effectively debunked for many reasons.
The late Edward T. Hall, who was head of the Oxford University lab (one of the three labs that dated the Shroud in 1988), famously claimed, “Someone just got a piece of linen, faked it up, and flogged it.” It appears that science has proven that to be one of the most ridiculous claims ever made. And, apparently, David Rolfe considers it ridiculous too.
At the end of his newest documentary, Who Can He Be?, filmmaker David Rolfe challenged Oxford University, or anyone, to recreate the Shroud of Turin image using only medieval tools and techniques from the 14th century. He has backed up the challenge with the offer of one million dollars to anyone who can succeed. Should be an easy task if all you have to do is get a piece of linen, fake it up, and flog it. However, the offer, which was made in 2022, has gone unclaimed.
Scientific Dating Evidence
In 2013, Professor Giulio Fanti and journalist Saverio Gaeta published a book presenting the results of chemical and mechanical tests that strongly support a 1st-century origin for the Shroud. According to an article by Andrea Tornielli of Vatican Insider, the study involved three new tests (two chemical and one mechanical):
"The first two were carried out with an FT-IR system (Fourier Transform InfraRed Spectroscopy), one 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.
"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 tests were carried out using tiny fibres of material extracted from the Shroud by micro-analyst Giovanni Riggi di Numana who passed away in 2008 but had participated in the 1988 research project and gave the material to Fanti through the cultural institute Fondazione 3M."
In 2011, another scientific study on the Shroud concluded that the image was created by a flash of supernatural light, stating: "It couldn’t be a medieval forgery." More recently, wide-angle X-ray scattering studies have provided further insights into the Shroud’s physical properties. Based on this analysis, researchers assigned the fabric a date range of between 300 B.C. and A.D. 400, placing it squarely within the historical window of Jesus’s crucifixion.
Image Formation Studies
In Who Can He Be?, Dr. Paolo Di Lazzaro detailed what it would take to recreate the image on the Shroud of Turin. Dr. Di Lazzaro and his team were able to create a small image using pulses of ultraviolet light that replicate the superficiality of the Shroud image. They determined that:
"The ultraviolet light necessary to create this image exceeds the maximum power released by all ultraviolet light sources available today. It would require a pulse having a duration shorter than forty-billionth of a second and an intensity of the order of several billion watts to discolor the cloth without penetrating and destroying it."
I have no doubt that the Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth, and in less than forty-billionths of a second, it recorded the most important event in history: the resurrection of the Son of God. Nothing else explains that image.
Habermas and Forensic Insights
New Testament scholar and philosopher, Dr. Gary Habermas, is best known for his apologetic work and the development of the "minimal facts" approach to evidence the resurrection of Jesus. Dr. Gary Habermas spoke about the Shroud in his course, The Resurrection of Jesus at Online Christian Courses. He discussed the Shroud a few times during the course, and in Session 19 he recounted something a Yale professor (who had been on the Shroud team) said. He told Dr. Habermas:
"The image on the shroud appears to be the image we would see if, in every pore of the skin, we had a micro laser, and it was scorching the cloth simultaneously - from the inside out." Then he paused and said, "If the kind of energy it takes to create the shroud image were converted to nuclear energy, it would have leveled the city of Jerusalem."
Habermas also talked about how he will be giving a lecture on the Shroud, and he will be showing slides and someone will say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, go back to that slide!" And we go back and look, and this is a chiropractor or medical doctor or dentist (he says it's happened with all of them), and they'll say, "I read X-rays for a living. Those are teeth!" And they'll explain that the Shroud is being backlit, and it's bringing the teeth up.
Habermas used to say in his early lectures that scientists didn't know if the radiation was something coming into the body or something going out, and these medical doctors and dentists and chiropractors would all say, "I can answer that question for you. That’s coming out." They know because it's bringing the image of the teeth through the lips and through the beard; so it has to be coming out of the body. The body in the Shroud is dead, but something incredible is happening with that body. Dead bodies do not irradiate cloth, but this one did.
Coin and Gold Dust Evidence
In recent days the Daily Mail has been re-circulating an older line of evidence: a bronze follis coin minted in Constantinople between AD 969–976. The coin bears a striking resemblance to the facial image on the Shroud of Turin. Historian Justin Robinson argues the engraver copied directly from the Shroud when it was publicly displayed in Constantinople. Features such as the forked beard, the parallel strands of hair on the left side, and even a subtle facial "cross" shape match the Shroud with uncanny precision. Inscriptions on the coin read "God with us" and "Jesus Christ, King of Kings," reinforcing not only its sacred purpose but who the engraver believed he was depicting.
Robinson also highlights problems with the 1988 carbon dating, noting the tested corner was a repaired area heavily handled and exposed to fire damage, making it unreliable. In other words, they tested a complex patch job, one that was accomplished with a technique known as "Invisible Reweaving."
More significantly and more recently, Italian researchers Giulio Fanti and Claudio Furlan analyzed microscopic gold particles found on the Shroud. These particles chemically match Byzantine coins minted between the 7th and 12th centuries. Unlike the coin-image debate, this is not about interpreting patterns but about hard, physical residue. The presence of Byzantine gold dust points strongly to the Shroud's presence in Constantinople centuries before the 14th-century date suggested by Carbon-14 dating.
Unique Features Skeptics Can’t Explain
Even skeptics have a hard time with the Shroud, pointing out that there are specific key characteristics of the image that any theory must account for:
1. The image is a photographic negative. 2. There is a 3D property to the image (the further away a part of the body was from the cloth the fainter that part appears). 3. The image is visible only in the very upper fibres of the cloth (it does not go all the way through to the back of the cloth). 4. When standing close to the cloth the image is not visible. It is only visible when standing a few feet away. 5. The blood flows on the cloth have been shown to be 100% anatomically correct based on modern physiology. 6. There are no pigments or dyes used to create the image. 7. The blood is human and contains extractable DNA samples.
It is very hard to put together a theory that can satisfy all of those items.
In this short space we have seen some of the best modern research: We have Fanti’s chemical/mechanical dating, Di Lazzaro’s ultraviolet light experiments, Habermas’s theological and anecdotal insights, and the medical/dental observations. These are multiple, independent lines of evidence that the Shroud in not medieval, and it bears witness to something beyond natural explanation.
All three of these independent tests put the Shroud between 300 BC and AD 400, which is the exactly right window of time. That by itself undermines the C-14 test.
The X-ray scattering studies confirm earlier studies. We have consistent results that fall in the 1st-century range.
When different sciences converge, it’s hard to dismiss.
The superficial nature is significant. Only the top fibrils were affected, and there is no penetration into the threads. That is not something a medieval artist could have achieved.
Then there are the energy requirements. Di Lazzaro’s team makes clear it would take physics we still don’t have today. It would take extreme, instantaneous UV radiation, and that is well beyond any natural or human-made process.
Then there is the negative image and the 3-D encoding. That is unique in all of history. A “forger” in the 13th century couldn’t have even imagined these properties much less accomplished them.
The forensic evidence is another strong factor. Modern physiology confirms anatomical accuracy of the blood clotting, serum separation, and placement - including post-mortem blood flows.
The human DNA that has been extracted is consistent with Middle Eastern origin.
Multiple tests, including STURP’s original findings, show there are no pigments or dyes on the cloth. The image wasn’t painted, dyed, or burned by fire.
Pollen and dust trace the cloth’s path from Jerusalem to Edessa to Constantinople to France and then to Italy. We have a logical historical trail.
The coin comparisons may not be “new,” but when paired with the physical gold-dust evidence, they reinforce the same conclusion: the Shroud was venerated in the Byzantine world long before the 13th - 14th century. Far from being a medieval forgery, these lines of evidence strengthen the case for the Shroud's authenticity.
The Shroud has had a powerful cross-cultural impact. Even people outside of Christianity have trouble explaining the unique features of the cloth by naturalistic means. That alone makes the Shroud a “problem” for materialism.
The resurrection is the only coherent explanation for the existence of the Shroud. Yes, Doubting Thomas, in less than forty-billionths of a second, it recorded the most important event in history: the resurrection of the Son of God. It is a theological truth. The Shroud isn’t just evidence of death, it's evidence of a transformation. As Dr. Habermas relayed from that Yale professor: it looks like energy emanated from inside the body, enough to scorch linen but not destroy it. That is consistent with resurrection - and nothing else.
The Sudarium of Oviedo
But wait, there's more. There is the link between the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo. The Sudarium has a continuous history in Spain since the 7th century. If it covered the body of Jesus, and it is linked to the Shroud, then the C-14 dating is even further undermined.
Research strongly suggests the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo once covered the same body: namely, Jesus of Nazareth. Scholars like Mark Guscin have studied the Sudarium extensively, and here are the key points of overlap:
Same rare blood type: Both cloths contain type AB blood, rare worldwide but more common in Jewish populations. That is consistent with a 1st-century Middle Eastern origin.
Matching bloodstains: Flow patterns and stain locations correspond - forehead wounds, nose and mouth stains, and blood on the back of the head all align between the two cloths. Both also show pleural fluid, typical of crucifixion victims who die of asphyxiation.
Forensic agreement: Overlays of digital analysis confirm that the stains on the Sudarium map exactly to the wounds visible on the Shroud's face and head.
Pollen evidence: Both contain pollen types that are native to the Jerusalem region, strengthening the case for their shared origin.
History: Again, the Sudarium has a continuous record in Spain since at least the 7th century, while the Shroud's early history is less clear but linked to the same part of the world.
The Deeper Meaning
Here is the deeper meaning: The physical evidence underscores what Scripture already tells us: Jesus truly suffered. The nails driven through His wrists crushed the medial nerves, pulling His thumbs inward, as we see on the Shroud image. His scourged back was dragged across rough wood as He pushed against the nails in His feet to strain for another breath. His shoulders were out of joint. His lungs were filled with fluid. Crucifixion was designed for maximum agony and is the origin of the word excruciating.
But Jesus endured more than physical torment. He carried the sins of the world. My sins. Your sins.
The good news is He didn't stay on the cross or in the tomb. He rose, appeared to His disciples, and promised to return. Until that day, we are called to occupy. We are called to live faithfully and share the gospel with a world in need.
The Shroud and the Sudarium are not just relics. They are silent witnesses that point to the greatest reality of all: He is risen. He is risen indeed.
