There are calls for a reanalysis of the Shroud of Turin, and more research supports the theory that it may be the cloth in which Jesus was buried.
In a study quietly published by researchers in Italy, the team digitally restored body parts imaged on the fabric print, revealing never-before-seen details.
They found the right thumb in a unnatural position, indicating that the hand was probably in a ‘tense’ position, which could be the result of nerve damage caused by the crucifixion.
According to them, their findings provide “important circumstantial evidence that the Shroud of Turin enveloped the body of a man who was crucified alive.”
A 2017 study digitally restored the hand region of the Shroud of Turin imprint, revealing the unnatural position of the thumb of the right hand that may have been caused by the crucifixion
The Shroud of Turin is a four-meter-long piece of linen with a vague image of the front and back of a man who Christians believe is Jesus.
The canvas was first shown to the public in the 1350s, when it was displayed in the small collegiate church of Lirey, a village in northern France.
Christians believe that these wounds were miraculously left in the shroud after Jesus rose from the dead. When he came back to life, the fibers of his body were seared by a blast of energy.
Experts have long debated the legitimacy of this claim. A groundbreaking 1988 study dates its creation to the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after the birth of Christ.
However, recent studies have cast doubt on the accuracy of those findings and provide indirect evidence in the opposite direction.
The little-known Italian study was published in 2017 in the Journal for Cultural Heritage but was not announced at the time.
The research team from the Institute of Crystallography performed an ‘intensity histogram transformation’ – a type of digital analysis that improves the quality of an image – to restore and analyze the hand area of the Shroud imprint.
This revealed new anatomical details and made it clear that the thumb of the right hand was in an ‘unnatural’ position: next to the palm, but below it.
As a result, the thumb is almost completely missing from the print, except for the protruding end.
This is significant because scientists consider the absence of thumbs to be one of the most important pieces of circumstantial evidence that the shroud was used to wrap the body of a living crucified man, the researchers said in their report.
This is because crucifixion would damage the median nerve of the hand, causing the thumbs to end up in an unnatural, hidden position.
But crucifixion is not the only possible explanation for the missing thumbs.
The absence of thumbs on the Shroud of Turin’s imprint is considered one of the most important pieces of circumstantial evidence that the Shroud was used to wrap the body of a crucified man.
The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot-long piece of linen with a faint image of the front and back of a man who Christians believe is Jesus
Other experts believe that the thumbs are not visible in the print because their natural position is in front of and slightly to the side of the index finger. This would create more distance between the thumbs and the Shroud.
This would mean that the impression could have been made by a body lying in a relaxed, supine position, so crucifixion was not necessary.
But based on their analysis, the study authors say the thumb does not appear to be in its natural position.
Instead, it is in a non-relaxing position in the palm of the hand and is almost completely hidden by the index finger, except for the tip of it. This is strong evidence for injuries consistent with crucifixion.
Yet many believe that the shroud is not actually a relic from the Bible.
A groundbreaking 1988 study in the United Kingdom established with “95 percent certainty” that the shroud was made sometime between 1260 and 1390 AD, long after Christ’s resurrection.
This suggests that the shroud is in fact a medieval work of art.
This conclusion was reached after analyses were performed on a corner of the ancient tissue by three different laboratories: at the universities of Arizona, Zurich and Oxford.
But a more recent analysis has cast doubt on their results, reviving the theory that the shroud’s biblical meaning could be legitimate.
A new study by researchers from France and Italy has revisited these 30-year-old findings and claims to have discovered discrepancies in the data that have not been made public and that raise doubts about the definitiveness of the results.
Graphic designer Otangelo Grasso created a progression of what Jesus might have looked like based on the image on the shroud
Tristan Casabianca, an independent French researcher who made the discovery, told DailyMail.com that his findings do not confirm that the shroud is older or that the burial cloth on which Jesus was buried is older.
But Casabianca — who was an atheist until he began examining the shroud 20 years ago — said these factors could not be ruled out “without a new analysis.”
After Casabianca collected the raw data from the 1988 study, he found that the results varied across decades.
According to an estimate from Zurich in the Nature study, the cloth was up to 733 years old, but in the raw data it was 595 years old.
The Oxford Shroud sample was between 730 and 795 years old, but the raw dates contain estimates that are off by up to 55 years.
The Arizona linen was between 591 and 701 years old, with the raw data showing a difference of as much as 59 years.
Even if this would mean that the cloth was made in the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after Jesus, it raises doubts, according to Casabianca.
He further explained that “the lack of precision seriously affects the reliability of the 95 percent,” suggesting it was no more than 41 percent.
In addition, an engineer from the University of Padua in Italy recently used modern technology to reanalyze samples of the substance taken in the 1970s, finding tiny blood particles that indicated signs of organ failure, trauma, disease and radiation.
This would match the gruesome account of Jesus’ crucifixion in the Bible, which describes in detail how he was severely beaten, stabbed, and had nails driven into his hands and feet.
Materials characteristic of ancient Jerusalem were also found, suggesting that the shroud may have come from that region rather than Europe. Many skeptics believe it is a medieval forgery.
This growing body of evidence has cast doubt on skeptics’ claims that the shroud is a fake, reigniting a long-running debate over one of the most important relics in biblical history.