Scientists are calling for a new analysis of the Shroud of Turin amid mounting evidence that challenges the idea that it is a fake.
There are also claims that bad data was used in a landmark 1988 British study that found the shroud to be a Medieval forgery and not the cloth in which Jesus was buried.
A recent review by researchers from France and Italy has revisited that 50-year-old findings and claims have found discrepancies in the data that are not made public and raise doubts about the definitiveness of the results.
Tristan Casabianca, a French independent researcher, who made the findings, told DailyMail.com that the findings do not confirm that the shroud is older or the burial cloth used to lay Jesus to rest.
But Casabianca – who was an atheist until he began investigating the shroud 20 years ago – said these factors could not be ruled out ‘without further analysis.’
The study was a 1988 study that radiocarbon dated a piece of the shroud. It is depicted as a sample container containing a piece of fabric
Graphic designer Otangelo Grasso made an advance on what Jesus might have seen based on the image of the shroud
A 1988 study used a technique known as carbon dating to determine the age of the controversial Shroud of Turin.
The team determined with ’95 percent confidence’ that the relic was made between 1260 and 1390 AD, long after Christ’s resurrection.
The conclusion was reached after the analysis carried out on the corner of the ancient fabric by three different laboratories – at the universities of Arizona, Zürich and Oxford.
But after getting the raw data, Casabianca found different results over the decades.
One of Zürich’s estimates in the Nature study suggests that the fabric is up to 733 years old, but 595 years in the raw data.
The Oxford Shroud samples were between 730 and 795 years old, but the raw data showed an estimate missing by 55 years.
The Arizona linen is between 591 and 701 years old, with raw data showing a difference of up to 59 years.
Although it would still place the cloth in the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after Jesus, Casabianca said it raises doubts.
He goes on to explain that ‘the lack of precision greatly affects the 95 percent reliability,’ which represents no more than 41 percent.
Anything lower than 60 percent indicates that there is a lot of disagreement or inconsistency in the results, according to a 2019 study published in Archaeometry.
‘We can say with certainty that the 1988 radiocarbon dating process led to a failure,’ said Casabianca, who is an independent researcher in France.
‘You have to close the book, and just open a new chapter. This failure could have been avoided with better protocols.’
The raw data obtained by Casabianca show decades of diversity than those published in the Nature study. Red is the change made by the lab between the raw radiocarbon date and the radiocarbon date cited in the Nature article.
The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot long linen cloth that features a faint image on the front and back of a Christian believer in Jesus.
The 1988 research was conducted in three laboratories: the University of Arizona, Zürich in Switzerland and the University of Oxford in England. Each lab receives a strip of the original cut piece, which is then reduced to a small size for research
But Dr AJ Timothy Jull, who worked on the 1988 analysis, told DailyMail.com that even if the team did the analysis again, ‘The results would be the same, but the data would be less scattered.’
Dr. Jull is part of a team at the University of Arizona.
“Zürich is close to us, but Oxford is a bit different,” Dr Jull said.
‘But it doesn’t change the result. Others use this argument to say that there is something wrong with the measurements, Casabianca is trying to do this.’
The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot long linen cloth that features a faint image of Jesus Christ on the front and back.
The cloth was first presented to the public in the 1350s when it was exhibited in a small collegiate church in Lirey, a village in northern France.
Christians believe that these wounds were miraculously revealed on the burial shroud after Jesus rose from the dead, burned to the core by a burst of energy when he resurrected.
Some believe that this is a medieval forgery, which was determined by Dr. Jull and his team in the 1980s.
The piece was cut from the bottom edge at the back of the shroud, which experts say was not repaired in the Middle Ages.
However, research conducted in 1988 revealed that the radiocarbon dating of the shroud was done correctly.
The cloth was first presented to the public in the 1350s when it was exhibited in a small collegiate church in Lirey, a village in northern France.
A 1988 study saw scientists take 10 mm to 70 mm pieces of the shroud from the corners, which were cut into smaller pieces and distributed to different laboratories.
Co-author Emanuela Marinelli, an independent researcher in Italy, told DailyMail.com: ‘The sample does not represent the full fabric because it is different (from other angles).
‘Research (1988) found dating more or less 150 years, so it cannot be said that the age of all 14 feet cloth.
‘But for us, there is a statistical analysis that is a reason to reject for carbon dating.’
This technique estimates the age of organic matter based on the amount of radioactive isotopes of carbon in it.
The results were collected and collated by London’s British Museum, which held the raw data until Casabianca and his team issued a legal request under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the raw information for the first time.
“I received a reply from the British Museum with more than 200 pages of documents,” Casabianca said.
‘Our access to documentation held in the British Museum archives shows that statistical analysis is supported by documentation.
‘There, we found that the samples were contaminated (including cotton fibers and mischief). This suggests that the sampling is less than optimal, at least.’
Dr Jull told DailyMail.com that he did another one in 2010 to characterize a sample of the shroud, finding ‘strange pieces of cotton.’
