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The Shroud and the Controversy
From scientific, medical, historical, archaeological and biblical vantage points, the authors give new evidence that further supports the claim that the image on the famous Shroud of Turin is the crucified Christ. Photos.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
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May 8, 2021
A Photograph of the Resurrection
In 1988 the Western world held its collective breath as the Shroud of Turin was subjected to carbon-14 dating tests, supposedly to once and for all determine if it was a fake. When the announcement was made that the Shroud had been dated to the mid-fourteenth century A.D., many of us assumed that it was settled: the story was over. Science had rendered its verdict and only "faith" could lead people to believe otherwise.
The authors of "The Shroud and the Controversy" wrote their book two years later, in 1990, declaring that in fact the jury is still out on the subject. We discover that there is much more to the story. The problem is that what was being reported was that the Shroud was dated with 95 percent accuracy to between 1260 and 1390, and many reports added that it was obviously a forgery, when according to the authors, "nothing could be further from the truth." They stress that "carbon-14 is not nor should be the acid test of the Shroud's possible authenticity." They are not questioning the overall validity of C-14 as a test for age, but that cloth is notoriously difficult to date because of the potential for all sorts of contaminants. Cloth of known date was dated in preparation for the Shroud carbon dating and in some of the tests the dating was off by several hundred years.
What could contribute to error in dating the Shroud? Dr. Garza-Valdes has popularized the hypothesis that the Shroud has a "bioplastic" covering that comes from mold and fungus. This covering is visible only microscopically and is not removed by normal cleaning methods. He sent a cloth of known origin for C-14 testing to one of the laboratories that dated the Shroud, and they were off by 600 years. He then went to Turin where he was allowed to look at the cloth with a microscope, and he said that the same bioplastic covering was on the Shroud.
The site selection from the Shroud itself may have been part of the problem. The samples were all taken from the bottom of the Shroud, only a few centimeters from a repair site due to the 1532 fire. The test sample may have been an added strip of cloth and not part of the original Shroud. Regarding the test methodology itself, a true scientific double-blind study was never conducted. Though there were dummy samples, the labs knew which samples were which. There was no publication or peer review of the method and the results before the results were proclaimed to the public.
Finally, there was an earlier dating than the 1988 one. At that time (1982) the Shroud was dated to the first century, but that date was not well received by scientists because it was done secretly and it was not done with normal scientific protocols (but then neither was the 1988 dating).
Carbon-14 dating aside, then, there are other reasons for dating the Shroud to the first century. First, both eyes appear to have coins on them. No detail is visible until image enhancement is utilized, and then some, but not all, of the researchers claim they can see the letters U,C,A,I on what looks to be a lepton of Pontius Pilate, which would have been minted between A.D. 29 and 32. These would represent a misspelling of Tiberias as the correct spelling would have been U,K,A,I. Seven more actual leptons of Pontius Pilate have been found that have the same misspelling. In fairness this evidence is controversial because not everyone agrees on what can be seen: some see random shapes and noise.
A more solid piece of evidence that places the Shroud at least earlier than the 14th century is the fact that it clearly shows that the nails were driven through the wrists. We know now that this is where the Romans did in fact place them, and that nails placed through the palms could not support the weight of the body and would tear through. However this was not known in medieval times; because there is no Greek word for "wrist", the word for "hand" was used to indicate the whole area of the hand and wrist. Medieval artists always depict the nails in the hands of the crucified Jesus, not in his wrists. In fact, there are some fake shrouds from the Middle Ages: though apparently copies of the Turin Shroud, every one of them moves the nails to the palms. One Shroud researcher, William Meacham, is confident enough to conclude that this "puts the Shroud in the years of crucifixion - a date from 150 B.C. to A.D. 350."
So what about the bold claims that the Shroud is obviously a forgery? One of the authors, Kenneth Stevenson, was part of the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP). In contrast to the 1988 carbon dating debacle, the work of STURP was "heavily documented, independently confirmed, (and) peer reviewed". According to the authors, "the single most significant conclusion of STURP was that the Shroud image cannot possibly be a painting" or even "the work of a human hand." The painting theory is "a dead issue."
This can be claimed with confidence because the image is actually a negative image, just like on photographic film. The details do not become apparent until one views the image as a negative. Nobody could have painted that prior to the advent of photographic film, even if evidence of paint or a reproducible mechanism of painting could be found. And none has.
What can we say about the image? For one thing, it has features like an image produced by an X-ray because you can see teeth underneath the lips, and you can see the bones in the hands.
And further, it turns out that subjecting a photograph of the Shroud to a VP-8 image analyzer reveals that the image is three-dimensional. What shows up is cloth to body distance: the closer the cloth was to the body, the darker the image, and the further away, the fainter the image. So although the cloth touched only high points in the body such as the forehead, the nose, and the chin, other areas are also shown, such as the eye sockets, the throat, and the ribcage. This means that whatever created this image had to jump across space. It is now believed that the image on the Shroud was caused by a radiation burn from more than one kind of radiation. The problem is, you don't get radiation from a dead body. About the only thing known for sure is that nobody has been able to duplicate the image.
But even if this is a first century artifact, are there any indications that it might be Jesus? Although it is clear that the man in the Shroud was crucified, and that he was dead (rigor mortis is evident), the key is to look for the things both Jesus and the man in the Shroud have in common that were not normal crucifixion practices. First, the Shroud shows that something was pressed down on the man's skull that caused bleeding: Jesus' crown of thorns comes immediately to mind. Second, it was unusual practice that a crucifixion victim was first almost beaten to death, and yet this is just what happened to both Jesus and the man in the Shroud. Well over one hundred scourge marks have been identified on the Shroud, by what can be identified as a Roman flagrum.
Third, Jesus was pierced in the chest, rather than having his legs broken, which would have been normal practice in order to hasten death. The Shroud also shows no sign of broken legs, and a chest wound shows a watery serum, indicating that in all likelihood a spear went through the pericardium. Fourth, generally a crucifixion victim was thrown into a common pit, but both Jesus and the man in the Shroud were given careful, though hasty, burials. Fifth and most interestingly, the Gospels tell us that Jesus was resurrected without any bodily corruption having taken place. The Shroud also shows absolutely no decomposition stains, not even microscopic ones. What this means is that the body could not have been in contact with the Shroud for more than a couple of days, or such signs of decomposition would most certainly have been evident.
So where does this leave us today? In a 1981 book, Verdict on the Shroud, the authors shared a high confidence that the Shroud was in fact that of Jesus. In the newer book, in light of the 1988 carbon-14 dating, Ken Stevenson remains just as convinced, but Gary Habermas has some doubts: he gives himself a confidence rating of around seventy percent. We cannot wave away the carbon-14 results but it is good to be aware of the problems and limitations of its application in this particular case.
Habermas reminds us, having written on the resurrection of Jesus in other books, that the Shroud could be a good witness to the resurrection but even so, it is the weakest epistemically. We cannot say for sure that the man in the Shroud is Jesus, despite what the probabilities are. The best evidences are found in the pages of the New Testament. One does not have to grant their inspiration to utilize them as historical documents.
Conservative and liberal scholars alike agree that there are several undisputed facts regarding the life and death of Jesus: his death by crucifixion, the discovery of his empty tomb, his disciples' belief that he rose and appeared to them, and their changed lives from defeated inaction to bold proclaimers of the resurrection, even unto their own deaths. Habermas argues that the best explanation for these undisputed facts is that God rose Jesus from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is already on solid historical ground, and the evidence of the Shroud may add something if it is real, but takes away nothing if it turns out to be something else.
____________________________________
Postscript (13 years later – May 2021):
Robert (Bob) Rucker is a nuclear engineer, working in the industry for about 40 years in advanced nuclear reactor design. He has also been researching the Shroud of Turin full-time since 2014. Though not a contributing author to this book, he recently did a join lecture with one of them (Habermas), and hypothesized that if what caused the image was a burst of neutron radiation from the body, this by itself could account for the medieval carbon-14 date. Nitrogen-14 atoms on the Shroud (trace amounts of which have been detected) would absorb a neutron, immediately release a proton, and then become a brand-new carbon-14 atom. This would skew the date from the true date of 30 A.D. to an apparent date of 1260.
Based on this new information, I am persuaded, more so than when I first reviewed the book in 2008, that the Shroud, while not technically a photograph of the Resurrection, is nevertheless a radiation burn of the effects of this event.
In 1988 the Western world held its collective breath as the Shroud of Turin was subjected to carbon-14 dating tests, supposedly to once and for all determine if it was a fake. When the announcement was made that the Shroud had been dated to the mid-fourteenth century A.D., many of us assumed that it was settled: the story was over. Science had rendered its verdict and only "faith" could lead people to believe otherwise.
The authors of "The Shroud and the Controversy" wrote their book two years later, in 1990, declaring that in fact the jury is still out on the subject. We discover that there is much more to the story. The problem is that what was being reported was that the Shroud was dated with 95 percent accuracy to between 1260 and 1390, and many reports added that it was obviously a forgery, when according to the authors, "nothing could be further from the truth." They stress that "carbon-14 is not nor should be the acid test of the Shroud's possible authenticity." They are not questioning the overall validity of C-14 as a test for age, but that cloth is notoriously difficult to date because of the potential for all sorts of contaminants. Cloth of known date was dated in preparation for the Shroud carbon dating and in some of the tests the dating was off by several hundred years.
What could contribute to error in dating the Shroud? Dr. Garza-Valdes has popularized the hypothesis that the Shroud has a "bioplastic" covering that comes from mold and fungus. This covering is visible only microscopically and is not removed by normal cleaning methods. He sent a cloth of known origin for C-14 testing to one of the laboratories that dated the Shroud, and they were off by 600 years. He then went to Turin where he was allowed to look at the cloth with a microscope, and he said that the same bioplastic covering was on the Shroud.
The site selection from the Shroud itself may have been part of the problem. The samples were all taken from the bottom of the Shroud, only a few centimeters from a repair site due to the 1532 fire. The test sample may have been an added strip of cloth and not part of the original Shroud. Regarding the test methodology itself, a true scientific double-blind study was never conducted. Though there were dummy samples, the labs knew which samples were which. There was no publication or peer review of the method and the results before the results were proclaimed to the public.
Finally, there was an earlier dating than the 1988 one. At that time (1982) the Shroud was dated to the first century, but that date was not well received by scientists because it was done secretly and it was not done with normal scientific protocols (but then neither was the 1988 dating).
Carbon-14 dating aside, then, there are other reasons for dating the Shroud to the first century. First, both eyes appear to have coins on them. No detail is visible until image enhancement is utilized, and then some, but not all, of the researchers claim they can see the letters U,C,A,I on what looks to be a lepton of Pontius Pilate, which would have been minted between A.D. 29 and 32. These would represent a misspelling of Tiberias as the correct spelling would have been U,K,A,I. Seven more actual leptons of Pontius Pilate have been found that have the same misspelling. In fairness this evidence is controversial because not everyone agrees on what can be seen: some see random shapes and noise.
A more solid piece of evidence that places the Shroud at least earlier than the 14th century is the fact that it clearly shows that the nails were driven through the wrists. We know now that this is where the Romans did in fact place them, and that nails placed through the palms could not support the weight of the body and would tear through. However this was not known in medieval times; because there is no Greek word for "wrist", the word for "hand" was used to indicate the whole area of the hand and wrist. Medieval artists always depict the nails in the hands of the crucified Jesus, not in his wrists. In fact, there are some fake shrouds from the Middle Ages: though apparently copies of the Turin Shroud, every one of them moves the nails to the palms. One Shroud researcher, William Meacham, is confident enough to conclude that this "puts the Shroud in the years of crucifixion - a date from 150 B.C. to A.D. 350."
So what about the bold claims that the Shroud is obviously a forgery? One of the authors, Kenneth Stevenson, was part of the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP). In contrast to the 1988 carbon dating debacle, the work of STURP was "heavily documented, independently confirmed, (and) peer reviewed". According to the authors, "the single most significant conclusion of STURP was that the Shroud image cannot possibly be a painting" or even "the work of a human hand." The painting theory is "a dead issue."
This can be claimed with confidence because the image is actually a negative image, just like on photographic film. The details do not become apparent until one views the image as a negative. Nobody could have painted that prior to the advent of photographic film, even if evidence of paint or a reproducible mechanism of painting could be found. And none has.
What can we say about the image? For one thing, it has features like an image produced by an X-ray because you can see teeth underneath the lips, and you can see the bones in the hands.
And further, it turns out that subjecting a photograph of the Shroud to a VP-8 image analyzer reveals that the image is three-dimensional. What shows up is cloth to body distance: the closer the cloth was to the body, the darker the image, and the further away, the fainter the image. So although the cloth touched only high points in the body such as the forehead, the nose, and the chin, other areas are also shown, such as the eye sockets, the throat, and the ribcage. This means that whatever created this image had to jump across space. It is now believed that the image on the Shroud was caused by a radiation burn from more than one kind of radiation. The problem is, you don't get radiation from a dead body. About the only thing known for sure is that nobody has been able to duplicate the image.
But even if this is a first century artifact, are there any indications that it might be Jesus? Although it is clear that the man in the Shroud was crucified, and that he was dead (rigor mortis is evident), the key is to look for the things both Jesus and the man in the Shroud have in common that were not normal crucifixion practices. First, the Shroud shows that something was pressed down on the man's skull that caused bleeding: Jesus' crown of thorns comes immediately to mind. Second, it was unusual practice that a crucifixion victim was first almost beaten to death, and yet this is just what happened to both Jesus and the man in the Shroud. Well over one hundred scourge marks have been identified on the Shroud, by what can be identified as a Roman flagrum.
Third, Jesus was pierced in the chest, rather than having his legs broken, which would have been normal practice in order to hasten death. The Shroud also shows no sign of broken legs, and a chest wound shows a watery serum, indicating that in all likelihood a spear went through the pericardium. Fourth, generally a crucifixion victim was thrown into a common pit, but both Jesus and the man in the Shroud were given careful, though hasty, burials. Fifth and most interestingly, the Gospels tell us that Jesus was resurrected without any bodily corruption having taken place. The Shroud also shows absolutely no decomposition stains, not even microscopic ones. What this means is that the body could not have been in contact with the Shroud for more than a couple of days, or such signs of decomposition would most certainly have been evident.
So where does this leave us today? In a 1981 book, Verdict on the Shroud, the authors shared a high confidence that the Shroud was in fact that of Jesus. In the newer book, in light of the 1988 carbon-14 dating, Ken Stevenson remains just as convinced, but Gary Habermas has some doubts: he gives himself a confidence rating of around seventy percent. We cannot wave away the carbon-14 results but it is good to be aware of the problems and limitations of its application in this particular case.
Habermas reminds us, having written on the resurrection of Jesus in other books, that the Shroud could be a good witness to the resurrection but even so, it is the weakest epistemically. We cannot say for sure that the man in the Shroud is Jesus, despite what the probabilities are. The best evidences are found in the pages of the New Testament. One does not have to grant their inspiration to utilize them as historical documents.
Conservative and liberal scholars alike agree that there are several undisputed facts regarding the life and death of Jesus: his death by crucifixion, the discovery of his empty tomb, his disciples' belief that he rose and appeared to them, and their changed lives from defeated inaction to bold proclaimers of the resurrection, even unto their own deaths. Habermas argues that the best explanation for these undisputed facts is that God rose Jesus from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is already on solid historical ground, and the evidence of the Shroud may add something if it is real, but takes away nothing if it turns out to be something else.
____________________________________
Postscript (13 years later – May 2021):
Robert (Bob) Rucker is a nuclear engineer, working in the industry for about 40 years in advanced nuclear reactor design. He has also been researching the Shroud of Turin full-time since 2014. Though not a contributing author to this book, he recently did a join lecture with one of them (Habermas), and hypothesized that if what caused the image was a burst of neutron radiation from the body, this by itself could account for the medieval carbon-14 date. Nitrogen-14 atoms on the Shroud (trace amounts of which have been detected) would absorb a neutron, immediately release a proton, and then become a brand-new carbon-14 atom. This would skew the date from the true date of 30 A.D. to an apparent date of 1260.
Based on this new information, I am persuaded, more so than when I first reviewed the book in 2008, that the Shroud, while not technically a photograph of the Resurrection, is nevertheless a radiation burn of the effects of this event.
August 17, 2024
THE "VERDICT ON THE SHROUD" AUTHORS RECONSIDER THEIR POSITIONS
Kenneth Stevenson was, from 1978 to 1981, the official spokesperson for the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP); he is currently pastor of a church. Gary Habermas (born 1950) is Professor of Apologetics and Philosophy and chairman of the department of philosophy and theology at Liberty University, and is a foremost evangelical apologist who has written many books such as 'The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus,' 'The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ,' etc. This book is a follow-up to their earlier 'Verdict on the Shroud.'
This book was written in 1990, after the 1988 carbon-14 testing of the Shroud seemingly dated it to the 14th century. But they note in the first chapter, "Has carbon-14 completely settled the issue? We think that while the date DOES present a very serious objection, a great deal of other new material has not received much attention in the press... a number of eminent scientists, archaeologists, physicians, and scholars from other disciplines join us in our caution... we believe that the evidence for its authenticity is still supported by strong arguments." (Pg. 13) They add, "The results of the dating do present a serious challenge to any pro-Shroud enthusiasts, including to us... But it would be quite premature to assert that there are no significant scientific challenges to the specific dating technique that was used... caution is due in light of the current confusion." (Pg. 13)
They confess, "While I [Habermas] have become more skeptical in light of the recent data, Stevenson remains as convinced of the Shroud's authenticity as when our initial conclusions were published in 1981." (Pg. 14) They also admit, "in Verdict we made some mistakes... The primary one was underestimating the way a book written for public consumption could be misinterpreted and twisted. Second, in our excitement, perhaps we were too strong in our espousal of the scorch theory as we understood it at the time. Also we were perhaps premature in shooting for the definitive book." (Pg. 43-44)
Later, Stevenson concedes, "the weakest link is the very sketchy references in the Bible... On the other hand, Habermas is not bothered by the lack of either biblical references or a known image-formation mechanism. For him, the chief issue remains the question of the Shroud's past, including the results of the 1988 C-14 tests." (Pg. 166-167)
They observe, "some pathologists have recently raised valid questions on the washing of the body. Since Jesus was alive for much of His time on the cross, His body would literally have been covered with blood. Even small wounds bleed profusely when the heart is beating. So how could the wounds and blood flows on the Shroud be so perfectly outlined? How was the blood kept from smearing during burial? Or if it WAS washed first, did the dead body bleed, even from smaller wounds? And even if all the blood stains occurred after His body was washed, why does some of the blood flow uphill if Jesus was buried on his back? Some researchers view several of these questions ... as indications that Jesus' body was washed before burial." (Pg. 115)
This honest book is "must reading" for anyone seriously studying the Shroud.
Kenneth Stevenson was, from 1978 to 1981, the official spokesperson for the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP); he is currently pastor of a church. Gary Habermas (born 1950) is Professor of Apologetics and Philosophy and chairman of the department of philosophy and theology at Liberty University, and is a foremost evangelical apologist who has written many books such as 'The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus,' 'The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ,' etc. This book is a follow-up to their earlier 'Verdict on the Shroud.'
This book was written in 1990, after the 1988 carbon-14 testing of the Shroud seemingly dated it to the 14th century. But they note in the first chapter, "Has carbon-14 completely settled the issue? We think that while the date DOES present a very serious objection, a great deal of other new material has not received much attention in the press... a number of eminent scientists, archaeologists, physicians, and scholars from other disciplines join us in our caution... we believe that the evidence for its authenticity is still supported by strong arguments." (Pg. 13) They add, "The results of the dating do present a serious challenge to any pro-Shroud enthusiasts, including to us... But it would be quite premature to assert that there are no significant scientific challenges to the specific dating technique that was used... caution is due in light of the current confusion." (Pg. 13)
They confess, "While I [Habermas] have become more skeptical in light of the recent data, Stevenson remains as convinced of the Shroud's authenticity as when our initial conclusions were published in 1981." (Pg. 14) They also admit, "in Verdict we made some mistakes... The primary one was underestimating the way a book written for public consumption could be misinterpreted and twisted. Second, in our excitement, perhaps we were too strong in our espousal of the scorch theory as we understood it at the time. Also we were perhaps premature in shooting for the definitive book." (Pg. 43-44)
Later, Stevenson concedes, "the weakest link is the very sketchy references in the Bible... On the other hand, Habermas is not bothered by the lack of either biblical references or a known image-formation mechanism. For him, the chief issue remains the question of the Shroud's past, including the results of the 1988 C-14 tests." (Pg. 166-167)
They observe, "some pathologists have recently raised valid questions on the washing of the body. Since Jesus was alive for much of His time on the cross, His body would literally have been covered with blood. Even small wounds bleed profusely when the heart is beating. So how could the wounds and blood flows on the Shroud be so perfectly outlined? How was the blood kept from smearing during burial? Or if it WAS washed first, did the dead body bleed, even from smaller wounds? And even if all the blood stains occurred after His body was washed, why does some of the blood flow uphill if Jesus was buried on his back? Some researchers view several of these questions ... as indications that Jesus' body was washed before burial." (Pg. 115)
This honest book is "must reading" for anyone seriously studying the Shroud.
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