Turin Shroud: Mystery solved?

by Gunther Simmermacher · Published September 10, 2010 · Updated March 16, 2012

THE SHROUD: The 2,000-year-old mystery solved, by Ian Wilson. Bantam Press, London. 2010. 370pp.

Reviewed by G�nther Simmermacher

Suddenly in the 1350s, a large linen cloth bearing the front and back image of a man�s body appeared in a church at the village of Lirey in northern France. Almost instantly it was accepted by many as the burial shroud mentioned in Matthew (27:59-60), Mark (15:46) and Luke (23:53). The Lirey church quickly became a site of pilgrimage and the Shroud a revered relic.

The incredulity about the Shroud�s provenance is, for the most part, a fairly modern phenomenon, and those who believe that the image on the cloth is a medieval forgery were led to believe that their view had �won� when Church-commissioned radiocarbon testing in 1988 dated the cloth to about 1260-1390.

Australia-based writer Ian Wilson has been on the pro-Shroud front for many years (indeed, it was the Shroud that occasioned his conversion to Catholicism), writing a best-seller on the subject in 1978, a decade before science intervened. This is an updated and apparently thoroughly reworked version of that book.

In its subtitle, The Shroud excitably proclaims: �The 2000-year-old mystery solved�. We may ascribe such a declaration to hyperbole, for it will not put to rest a bad-tempered debate whose practitioners are not shy to engage in ad hominem attacks (of which Wilson has attracted his share).

What Wilson does offer is well-researched and sober conclusions in support of the Turin Shroud�s authenticity as the probable burial cloth of Christ.

In the book, Wilson presents a persuasive case on why the 1988 test samples might have been compromised, even discounting the common pro-Shroud defence that the samples came from medieval repairs. He does his case no favours, however, by describing the tests in emotive and prejudicial terminology, such as in the prefix �notorious�.

Wilson spends a lot of time showing why the image on the Shroud cannot be a forgery and why experiments that have sought to replicate the image may be dismissed. He answers several common objections � some patently thumbsucked, such as the absurd proposition that the Shroud was forged by Leonardo Da Vinci himself � with reference to documents, known practices and sometimes just plain logic.

The fact is that as yet no science and no experiment has demonstrated irrefutably just how the image was transferred to the cloth (and, obviously, no science can document the physics involved in Christ�s resurrection).

The author explains in some detail how the image on the Shroud is consistent in anatomical and medical detail with that of a crucified man, right down to the positions of the splattered blood marks on the cloth.

Much of that knowledge, Wilson suggests, is modern and could not possibly have been known to a 14th century forger who would have been an �accomplished student of archaeology as well as photography and medical science�.

With that in mind, Wilson issues a rather too unequivocal challenge: �The Shroud has either been deliberately faked as the Shroud of Jesus or it is the genuine article. There is no viable option in between.�

Of course, the Shroud could be the burial cloth of a crucified 1st-century man other than Jesus, but much of the evidence provided by the cloth coincides with the Gospel�s Passion account, right down to the crown of thorns.

The heart of the book advances the rather novel theory that the lost Image of Edessa from modern-day Turkey and the Turin Shroud are one and the same item. Wilson�s body of evidence to support the Shroud�s putative journey from Jerusalem to Edessa to Constantinople to Lirey to Chamb�ry and finally to Turin is imposing. It surely will require a massive effort of research to puncture Wilson�s account, if not his conclusions.

It is intriguing that Swiss criminologist and botanist Max Frei found 58 different types of pollen on the Shroud, of which 45 were from the Jerusalem area, one specific to Constantinople, and two to Edessa. Alas, Frei died before completing his research.

The Image of Edessa showed only a face which, according to contemporary tradition, was �not made by hands�. Wilson argues that the Edessa cloth showed only a face because of the manner in which it was folded, thereby obscuring the rest of the image�s body (he produces a history of folding practices to support that notion).

The Shroud is valuable alone as a history of the Edessa cloth, which might have influenced the development of the artistic depiction of Christ as a long-haired, bearded man. Tantalisingly, the Edessa tradition makes reference to an exchange of letters between the city�s king in apostolic times and Jesus himself.

Readers will have to decide whether contemporary depictions of the Edessa image, many of which are reproduced in the book, correspond with the face on the Turin Shroud. To my mind, the resemblance is not uncanny.

The Image of Edessa disappeared before what we know as the Turin Shroud turned up in France, courtesy of the crusader knight Geoffrey de Charny. In the interim, Wilson more than just speculates, the Shroud might have been held by the Knight Templars (there�s a titillating suggestion that the Shroud was in fact, the Holy Grail).

Wilson�s history of the Image of Edessa and the Turin Shroud is detailed and dense. He draws well from preserved records, and is fair in acknowledging doubt where it reasonably exists.

At many junctions, however, inference is the only available tool. Despite the wealth of documented fact, where there is speculation there cannot be an indubitable case. This does not suggest that Wilson�s case is not compelling, but the mystery is not solved, regardless of the cover�s breathless tagline.

Nonetheless, Wilson has made a comprehensive and cogent case for the Shroud�s provenance as an ancient relic whose unique image of a crucified man cannot be scientifically explained. He has damaged many of the positions held by Shroud sceptics (notably in his demolition of the oft-quoted 14th-century �D�Arcis Memorandum�).

The onus is now on those who believe the Turin Shroud to be a medieval hoax to challenge Wilson�s case by engaging with it. Mere reference to a disputed radiocarbon test and vague speculation about how a forger conceivably could have perpetrated his fraud simply will not cut it.

But even for the reader not particularly concerned with the authenticity of the Turin Shroud, Wilson�s book is a thoroughly entertaining sojourn into rarely visited areas of history.