As calls grow for a new analysis of the Shroud of Turin, more research claims to support the theory that it may actually have been the same cloth that Jesus was buried in.
In a study quietly published by researchers in Italy, the team digitally restored body parts depicted in the fabric print, revealing details never seen before.
They found the thumb of the right hand In a unnatural position, indicating that the hand was probably in a “stressed” position that may have been a result of nerve damage caused by the crucifixion.
They say their findings suggest “important indirect evidence that the Shroud of Turin wrapped the body of a man who was crucified alive.”
A 2017 study digitally restored the hand region of the Shroud of Turin handprint, revealing the unnatural position of the right hand thumb that may have been caused by the crucifixion.
The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot-long piece of linen that features a faint image of the front and back of a man who Christians believe to be Jesus.
The cloth was first introduced to the public in the 1350s, when it was displayed in the small collegiate church of Lirey, a village in northern France.
Christians believe these wounds were miraculously imprinted on the shroud after Jesus rose from the dead, burned into the fibers by a blast of energy as he came back to life.
Experts have long debated the legitimacy of this claim; a 1988 landmark study dates its creation to the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after the birth of Christ.
But recent studies have raised doubts about the accuracy of those findings and offered indirect evidence in the opposite direction.
The little-known Italian study was published in 2017 in the journal Cultural Heritage Magazine but it was not made public at the time.
The research team at the Institute of Crystallography performed an ‘intensity histogram transformation’ – a type of digital analysis that improves the quality of an image – to restore and analyse the handprint region of the Shroud.
This highlighted new anatomical details and revealed that the thumb of the right hand was in an “unnatural” position, adjacent to the palm of the hand but located below it.
As a result, the thumb is almost entirely missing from the print, except for its protruding end.
This is important because scientists consider the absence of the thumbs to be one of the main indirect evidence that the Shroud was used to wrap the body of a man who was crucified alive, the researchers said in their report.
This is because crucifixion would have caused injury to the median nerves in the hands, forcing the thumbs into an unnatural, hidden position.
But crucifixion is not the only possible explanation for the lack of thumbs.
The absence of thumbs in the print on the Shroud of Turin is considered one of the main indirect evidence that the Shroud was used to wrap the body of a man who was crucified.
The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot-long piece of linen that features a faint image of the front and back of a man who Christians believe to be Jesus.
Other experts believe that the thumbs are not visible in the print simply because their natural position is in front of and slightly to the side of the index finger, which would create more distance between the thumbs and the Shroud.
This would mean that the footprint could have been made by a body lying in a relaxed, supine position, without the need for crucifixion.
But based on their analysis, the study’s authors say the thumb does not appear to be in its natural position.
Rather, it appears on an unrelaxed part within the palm of the hand and is almost entirely hidden by the index finger except for its tip: strong evidence of injuries consistent with crucifixion.
Still, many believe that the Shroud is not actually a biblical relic.
A 1988 historical study in the United Kingdom determined with “95 percent confidence” that the Shroud was made sometime between 1260 and 1390 AD, long after Christ’s resurrection.
This suggests that the Shroud is actually a medieval work of art.
This conclusion was reached after analyses carried out on a corner of the ancient fabric by three different laboratories: at the universities of Arizona, Zurich and Oxford.
But a more recent analysis has called these results into question, reviving the theory that the Shroud’s biblical significance may be legitimate.
A new review by researchers in France and Italy has revisited those 30-year-old findings and says it has uncovered discrepancies in the data that have not been made public and that raise questions about the definitiveness of the results.
Graphic designer Otangelo Grasso created a progression of what Jesus may have looked like based on the image on the Shroud of Turin.
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 cloth used to bury Jesus is older.
But Casabianca – who was an atheist until he began researching the shroud 20 years ago – said those factors could not be ruled out “without further analysis.”
After obtaining the raw data from the 1988 study, Casabianca found that the results varied over the decades.
One of Zurich’s estimates in the Nature study was that the cloth was up to 733 years old, but 595 years old in the raw data.
The Oxford shroud sample was between 730 and 795 years old, but the raw data contained estimates that were in error by up to 55 years.
The Arizona flax was between 591 and 701 years old, and the raw data show a difference of up to 59 years.
While that would still place the cloth in the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after Jesus, Casabianca said it raises questions.
He went on to explain that “the lack of precision seriously affects the 95 percent reliability,” suggesting it was no more than 41 percent.
What’s more, an engineer at the University of Padua in Italy recently used modern technology to reanalyze samples taken from the fabric in the 1970s and found tiny blood particles that showed signs of organ failure, trauma, disease and radiation.
This would be consistent with the agonizing story of Jesus’ crucifixion in the Bible, which details how he endured severe beatings, punctures, and nails driven into his hands and feet.
Materials typical of ancient Jerusalem are also said to have been discovered, suggesting the shroud may have originated in the region rather than Europe, where many skeptics think it was created as a medieval forgery.
This growing body of evidence has raised doubts about skeptics’ claims that the Shroud is a forgery, rekindling a long-standing debate over one of the most important relics in biblical history.
