The Turin Shroud

The Shroud of Turin is a famous Christian relic and is claimed to be the burial cloth that was wrapped around the body of Jesus Christ afters his death. Others claim that the shroud is the faded remnant of a magnificent portrait of the Christina Saviour painted to attract pilgrims (& thus funds) to a new church in Turin.

McCrone et al carried out research upon the shroud designed to establish if either of these was correct.

According to Dr. Walter McCrone and his colleagues at McCrone Associates, the 3+ by 14+ foot cloth depicting Christ's crucified body may be an inspired painting produced by a Medieval artist just before its first appearance in recorded history in 1356. The faint sepia image is made up of billions of submicron pigment particles (red ochre and vermilion) in a collagen tempera medium. Dr. McCrone determined this by polarised light microscopy in 1979.

The shroud showing where samples were taken.

Research included careful inspection of thousands of linen fibres from 32 different areas, characterisation of the only coloured image-forming particles by colour, refractive indices, polarised light microscopy, size, shape, and microchemical tests for iron, mercury, and body fluids. The paint pigments were dispersed in a collagen tempera (produced in medieval times, perhaps, from parchment). It is chemically distinctly different in composition from blood but readily detected and identified microscopically by microchemical staining reactions. Forensic tests for blood were uniformly negative on fibres from the blood-image tapes.

There was no blood detected in any image area, only red ochre and vermilion in a collagen tempera medium. The red ochre is present on 20 of both body- and blood-image tapes; the vermilion only on 11 blood-image tapes. Both pigments are absent on the 12 non-image tape fibres.

The Electron Optics Group at McCrone Associates (John Gavrilovic, Anna Teetsov, Mark Andersen, Ralph Hinsch, Howard Humecki, Betty Majewski, and Deborah Piper) in 1980 used electron and x-ray diffraction and found red ochre (iron oxide, hematite) and vermilion (mercuric sulphide); their electron microprobe analyser found iron, mercury, and sulphur on a dozen of the blood-image area samples. The results confirmed Dr. McCrone's results and further demonstrated that the image was painted twice: once with red ochre, followed by vermilion to enhance the blood-image areas.

The carbon-dating results from three different internationally known laboratories agreed well with his date: 1355 by microscopy and 1325 by C-14 dating.

There were suggestions (from outside McCrone's group) that the Chambery fire (1532) may have changed the carbon date of the cloth. There were further suggestions that modern biological contaminants may have been sufficient to modernise the carbon dating result.

Besides this, the linen cloth samples were very carefully cleaned before analysis at each of the C-dating laboratories.

There have been other, more recent, tests carried out by Professor Avinoam Danin who suggested that the shroud had traces of:

• Two species of pollen grain (Gundelia tournefortii and bean caper) that only co-exist near Jerusalem in a limited annual time frame (Easter).
• Blood of type AB.

Plus there is comparative evidence gained from another cloth ("believed" to be the burial face clothe of the christian figure "Jesus Christ"). This cloth is also claimed to have blood, type AB, on it.

• The image on the shroud appears to be made up of "billions of sub-micron pigment particles (red ochre and vermilion) in a collagen tempera medium" which was determined using polarised light microscopy. Note: this included careful inspection of thousands of linen fibres from 32 different areas.
• Forensic tests for blood did not only fail to reveal the presence of blood of type AB but failed to indicate any presence of blood at all.
• Further tests such as micro-chemical tests for iron, mercury, body fluids and refractive indices were carried out.
• The paint pigments were dispersed in a collagen tempera that is chemically distinctly different in composition from blood but readily detected and identified microscopically by microchemical staining reactions.
• Another team used electron and x-ray diffraction and found red ochre (iron oxide, hematite) and vermilion (mercuric sulphide)
• The same teams electron microprobe analyser found iron, mercury, and sulphur on a dozen of the "blood-image" area samples.
• Carbon-dating results from three different internationally known laboratories agreed well with his date: 1355 by microscopy and 1325 by C-14 dating.
• Danin's group indicated that there were pollen grains from Gundelia tournefortii and the bean caper (two species that only co-exist near Jerusalem at Easter).
• Danin's group also indicated that there was blood of type AB on the cloth and compared it with another similar cloth claimed to be the face shroud of Christ.

Professor Avinoam Danin who carried out the work is from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one might be tempted to wonder if a Hebrew University or resident professor of it has some vested interest in finding that the Shroud is somehow associated with the Christian figure "Jesus Christ".

I have been able to find no scientific journals that Professor Danin's research was published in.

Suggestions that a fire in 1532 (the Chambery fire) changed the date of the cloth is ludicrous as samples for C-dating are routinely and completely burned to CO2 as part of a well-tested purification procedure. Further suggestions that modern biological contaminants were sufficient to modernise the date are also ridiculous. A weight of 20th century carbon equalling nearly two times the weight of the Shroud carbon itself would be required to change a 1st century date to the 14th century. In any case the linen cloth samples were very carefully cleaned before analysis at each of the C-dating laboratories.

The evidence appears to be on the side of the earlier McCrone tests. It would seem much more likely that the Shroud of Turin is, as claimed by the McCrone group, a beautiful painting created about 1355 for a new church in need of a pilgrim-attracting relic.