Shroud of Turin's Authenticity Probed Anew

March 21, 2008 -- The Shroud of Turin, the 14- by 4-foot linen believed by some to have been wrapped around Jesus after the crucifixion, might not be a fake after all, according to new research.

The director of one of three laboratories that dismissed the shroud as a medieval artifact 20 years ago has called for the science community to reinvestigate the linen's authenticity.

"With the radiocarbon measurements and with all of the other evidence which we have about the shroud, there does seem to be a conflict in the interpretation of the different evidence," said Christopher Ramsey, director of England's Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, which carried out radiocarbon dating tests on the cloth in 1988.

Venerated by many Catholics as proof that Christ was resurrected from the grave, the yellowing cloth is kept rolled up in a silver casket in Turin's Cathedral.

Shroud Science: Chapter One

Scientific interest in the linen, which has survived several blazes since it was discovered, began in 1898, when it was photographed by lawyer Secondo Pia. The negatives revealed the image of a bearded man with pierced wrists and feet and a bloodstained head.

In 1988, three reputable laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson carried out radiocarbon tests on the cloth and declared it a brilliant, medieval fake produced between 1260 and 1390.

Nevertheless, the piece of linen made of fine, tightly woven herringbone twill has remained an unquestioned object of veneration. When it last went on public display in 2000, more than three million people saw it. Many more visitors are expected for next public display in 2025.

Shroud scholars, known as sindonologists, have always argued that no medieval forger could either have produced such an accurate fake or anticipated the invention of photography.

Yet, despite arguments and claims of revisionist scholars, all theories on how the radiocarbon tests could have been inaccurate have been rejected by the scientific community.

A Question of Contamination

In this latest chapter, Ramsey's call to revisit the subject follows tests taken by Ramsey, himself, to investigate a contamination hypothesis by John Jackson, a U.S. physicist who conducted the first major investigation of the shroud in 1978.