Wickham's musings from Chalke

 
There was another TV programme last night about the Turin Shroud and investigations into its origins.

I saw a programme about ten or fifteen years ago which concentrated on the carbon 14 dating and the conclusion that it was a mediaeval fake after AD 1300. Then there were questions about this. The piece of cloth used for the test was taken from a corner which had been used many times by human hands for lifting the shroud and the piece was taken from an area of the shroud that was not a part of the original cloth so the sample was probably contaminated by mediaeval DNA or other substances as well as being of a different date. Then someone pointed out that the shroud was exactly the same type of cloth and weave used by Gallileans of the period and a mediaeval faker probably wouldn't have either known this or been able to recreate the correct cloth. Then the face cloth (napkin) was found to have the same blood group, a fairly rare AB, as the shroud and shroud and face cloth markings match up when placed together. How would a mediaeval faker have known this? Coincidence?

This face cloth, the Sudarium of Oviedo, is well attested to since the eighth century and in Spain since the seventh century, so the TV program last night was debating whether the shroud was a fake from this period, or even that both were fakes from the first century AD since documents from this early period show details of a shroud with holes in the same places, so a faker several centuries later would have had to make a careful survey to reproduce them but would he have had such an opportunity?

My preference is that the shroud and the face cloth were fakes from one of the first centuries AD when people would have known how crucifixions were carried out and the procedures for handling the body afterwards.

I have serious doubts that the items could be the real ones. Consider the sequence of events. First Jesus was killed by a Roman soldier piercing his side so that he was dead or dying when taken down from the cross. Lowering the cross to the ground would have taken a few minutes if it was well jammed into a hole. Removing the nails would have taken quite a long time. The TV program yesterday showed a piece of heel bone with a nail though it from a crucifixion in Jerusalem at about the same time. The nail was about six to eight inches long and very thick. Nails would have been hammered in hard so removing them would be difficult. No doubt someone would have to get a hammer and bang the nails sideways many times to loosen them, with possible damage to the body not apparent in the shroud image.

The body was then taken to a tomb and washed. Since Jesus was dead his body wouldn't be bleeding any more and blood would have been washed off. However, the shroud and face cloth both have stains from live and dead blood (there is a difference, apparently). I don't see how wrapping the body in a shroud can cause bleeding with "live" blood unless Jesus was still alive several hours after being stabbed by the soldier.

This raises the old question of whether Jesus was in fact dead. He spent a long time on the cross and would hardly have been fit enough to get up and walk about for the next forty days talking to people.

See wikipedia Shroud of Turin for further details.