An Unshrouded Mystery

Although it might be difficult to remember it these days, the idea of fake news was not started by President Trump. It’s been going on for some time in all aspects of human life, including the religious one. One of the things of interest to humanists (at least this one) is any story debunking facts or artifacts purporting to support belief in an all-powerful deity. In this case, the revelation relates to one of the most famous Catholic artifacts of all time: the Shroud of Turin.

The Turin shroud, says Wikipedia, “is a length of linen cloth bearing the negative image of a man who is alleged to be Jesus of Nazareth.” While the Catholic Church has never said yay or nay to this assertion, it has done things that have lent credence to the claim, one pope calling it “a mirror of the Gospel.” The first mention of the shroud, which is kept at the Turin Cathedral, naturally, occurred in the 1350s and even then there was an intense debate over its authenticity.

Last July, Adam Lusher, a writer for the UK newspaper The Independent, tried to put the arguments to rest for good in his article “628-year-old fake news: Scientists prove Turin Shroud not genuine (again).” Lusher’s piece is subtitled with this pronouncement: “Forensic analysis of possible bloodstains suggest marks could only have been made by someone adopting different poses, not dead Messiah lying still in tomb before the resurrection.”

Lusher notes that this is not the first offering of proof of the shroud’s inauthenticity. To whit:

• In 1390, Bishop d’Arcis wrote to Pope Clement VII saying the “shroud was ‘a clever sleight of hand’ by someone ‘falsely declaring this was the actual shroud in which Jesus was enfolded in the tomb to attract the multitude so that money might cunningly be wrung from them.’”
• In 1988, carbon dating showed the shroud to be from the medieval rather than the Biblical era.

He then describes the latest debunking effort by forensic scientists who studied the apparent bloodstains on the shroud. Get this. They “used a living volunteer and real and synthetic blood to try to simulate possible ways that the apparent bloodstains could have got onto the shroud.” They found that “the supposed blood spatters seem to have fallen vertically and almost randomly from someone who might well have been standing over the cloth, rather than lying in it.”

The Independent‘s author also chronicles many of the other arguments over the years for and against the shroud being the one wrapped around Jesus. The fact that the debate is still going on today reminds us (or me, anyone) of this trope about humans: people believe what they want to believe. The museum where the shroud is kept still gets many visitors each year–some likely out of curiosity, some out of a desire to see or be closer to what they regard as evidence for their faith.

My take on all this is what is all the fuss about? No harm, no foul seems to apply here. Unless someone is really trying to “wring money cunningly from someone,” why not let it be?

All this to-do does make me curious, however. If I happened to be at Turin Cathedral, I would like to ask one of those who believe two questions. First, why do you think the shroud is the one that wrapped Jesus after the crucifixion? Second, why is it important for you to believe it was his? The answer to the second question would likely be the more interesting one and, in true critical thinking fashion, help me better understand how powerful such artifacts can be for some and why no amount of debunking can persuade them to think otherwise. What could be more humanist than that?

(Published originally on TNTBAD, January 22, 2019.)