The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth that bears the image of a man that clearly wasn’t having a good day because he has depictions of wounds caused by thorns, whipping, nails, etc… which some think makes it an exceptionally good match to Jesus after his death around 30 CE.
The history of the linen cloth however can only be traced back to medieval times, starting in the year 1357 where it first appears when the widow of the French knight Geoffroi de Charny displayed it in a church at Lirey, France.
Curiously, when the Shroud was Carbon 14 dated by three separate independent labs in 1988, it came back with a date range of 1260-1390 in which the year 1357 fits nicely.
What also fits in nicely is the fact that the Shroud first turns up in Europe at a time when middle age relics (not talking about couch potatoes) were big business. For example, it’s been said that at that time there were enough splinters from the cross being sold to build dwellings for an entire town.
Also popular were pieces of cloth from Mary’s clothing, bones from the “earliest saints,” and items that had been touched or worn by a “saint.”
These relic forgeries were either directly sold or contributions were collected during displays (some were traveling displays).
Lately the Catholic Church has decided (whoops) that the sample of linen they gave scientists to Carbon 14 test was accidently samples of a patch used to repair the Shroud after a fire in 1532 instead of the actual linen.
Since then, the Church has curiously declined requests to give scientists samples of the “real” linen for Carbon 14 dating.
There are a few problems with the “oops..patch nevermind…”
- The carbon dating, which is very accurate, dated the linen to back before 1390, not at the time of 1532 when the Shroud was first repaired. This would mean that the “patch cloth” would have had to also happen to come from that time frame which would have made the patch at least 150 years old when applied, which is unlikely.
- The sampling was from an extreme corner of the Shroud which was not likely repaired.
- I’ve personally seen film footage of the sampling taking place and there didn’t seem to be anything different about the weave or any indications of an applied patch on that extreme corner of the Shroud linen from the rest of the linen.
- The sampling was witnessed by Robert E. M. Hedges from Oxford University who verified that the Shroud linen had a unique weave and the sampling also contained this same unique weave.
To sum up part I: The Shroud was carbon 14 dated back to the time that it first appeared in Europe when there were a large amount of relics being faked to swindle people out of their hard earned money.
The conclusion is that the Shroud was most likely just another relic forgery from that time.