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Here is a brief overview of the major scientific findings: the Shroud is a long, linen sheet about 4.36 meters long by 1.1 meters wide. Jesus would have been laid down on top of the Shroud, and then it would have been folded over Him. Interestingly, the frontal image is a little short, and the cloth covers only part of the right foot.
The Shroud is made of linen. Linen making has been known for the last nine thousand years with Galilee being an important manufacturing center of the cloth. This cloth is also very durable: Egyptian linen wrappings on mummies at least 4,000 years old survive to this day, which means the Shroud could have been produced at the time of Christ.
The weave is a herringbone pattern with the twist of the yarn being a "z" twist (meaning the spindle was rotated clockwise). The cloth also has a high thread count, which produced a fine cloth. Although such cloth was not common, it was not unusual at the time of the Lord especially in the Middle East area. Moreover, cotton fibers particular to the kind of cotton found in Palestine are also present in the linen cloth.
Pollen evidence also places the origins of the Shroud in the Middle East. Pollen, because of its outer shell, the exine, can survive literally tens of thousands of years. Dr. Max Frei of the University of Zurich and founder of the Zurich Criminal Police's Scientific Service found pollen, spores, and molds common to the habitats of the places where the Shroud had been reported. He also found pollen from halophytes, plants typical of the desert regions around the Jordan Valley and adapted to live in the soils with the high salt content found almost exclusively around the Dead Sea area.
The Shroud depicts the image of a man, slightly under six feet tall, who suffered the brutal death of crucifixion. The wound marks evidenced by blood stains correspond with the sufferings our Lord endured as accounted for in the Gospel. Nail wounds appear at the feet (with the sole of the right foot having a full and very bloody imprint since it was placed beneath the top of the left foot) and wrist (one hand covers the wrist of the other hand). Note that unlike most artist's depictions, the victim of crucifixion was nailed in the wrist between the radius and ulna so that he could hang securely on the cross; nailing through the palm of the hand would not have provided such support.
Interestingly, the nail at the wrist would have penetrated a nerve and caused the thumb to snap into the palm. The thumbs of the man in the Shroud are hidden due to this nailing.
The Shroud does show a wound to the side, as where the soldier's lance would have pierced the heart of our Lord. The spear passed through the fifth and sixth ribs, and pierced the pericardium and the right auricle, causing the flow of blood and pericardial fluid.
Blood stains around the forehead and nape of the neck could be attributed to the crown of thorns.
Blood stains also appear across the back, alternating right and left shoulders, and on the buttocks due to scourging. The scourge wounds fan-out, which makes sense since the flagellum used by the Romans had two or three leather throngs with small lead balls or hooks at the end to gouge the flesh of the victim. Clearly, the victim was whipped very methodically, and over 120 wound sites are present.
The blood is definitely human blood. The STURP team determined that the stains were human blood of the AB group. This finding has been corroborated by others: Professor Pierluigi Baima Bollone, Professor of Medicine at the University of Turin, reported in 1978 that the blood stains were indeed human blood with traces of aloes and myrrh and belonging to the group AB. French geneticist Professor Jerome Lejeune also concluded that the blood sample he obtained was human hemoglobin.
Another intriguing point is that the blood marks on the Shroud are clear and red, not dark brown as typical of dried blood. Also the blood stains are complete without signs of flaking off. Dr. Gilbert Lavoie suggested that what appears on the Shroud is more an exudate from clotted wounds rather than whole blood. Likewise, Dr. Alan Adler explained that the torture, scourging, and crucifixion suffered by the man produced a hemolysis (break-up of red blood corpuscles), which would produce the lasting red color of the exudate.
Next week we will continue a review of the research, particularly that dealing with photographic studies.
Shroud
of Turin (part 1)
Shroud
of Turin (part 2)
Shroud
of Turin (part 3)
Shroud
of Turin (part 4)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Saunders, Rev. William. "Shroud of Turin (Part 2)." Arlington Catholic Herald.
This article is reprinted with permission from Arlington Catholic Herald.
THE AUTHOR
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Father William Saunders is dean of the Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College and pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish in Sterling, Virginia. The above article is a "Straight Answers" column he wrote for the Arlington Catholic Herald. Father Saunders is also the author of Straight Answers, a book based on 100 of his columns and published by Cathedral Press in Baltimore.
Copyright © 2003 Arlington Catholic Herald