The Shroud of Turin, purported by many to have been the burial cloth that once covered the body of Jesus at the time of his burial, remains one of the most controversial relics in all of history.
For centuries, the shroud was believed to preserve rare historical evidence of the seemingly miraculous events described in the New Testament. However, by the 20th century, a growing number of scholars had come to believe the shroud’s origins were likely to be far more recent: perhaps the result of a clever forgery produced sometime in the Middle Ages.
Now, according to the findings of a new genetic study, it seems the lingering questions over the shroud and its origins are far from being settled, revealing a wide range of encounters the Turin Shroud has had with humans, animals, and other objects, and offering new clues about the environments that it met over time.
Obscure Origins
The mysterious shroud, which has remained a curiosity to scholars for centuries, has been preserved in Turin, Italy, since the late 16th century. The relic depicts the ghostly image of what appears to be a male human body, as well as evidence of markings that indicate blood in the positions on the body that are traditionally consistent with New Testament accounts of the injuries Jesus bore at the time of his crucifixion.
Over the decades, studies have sought to help determine the true origins of the unusual relic, leading to a range of theories about its provenance. After centuries of debate among scholars, in 1978, scientific efforts to determine the shroud’s origins were undertaken, which included samples with remnants of DNA that its woven material has collected over time.
Ultimately, testing completed in 1988 suggested that the shroud most likely dated to no earlier than the 13th century, although the debate over its history has continued.
Reopening the Debate
Now, in a new international study effort led by Italian scientists, recent genetic studies involving the original samples collected in 1978 are helping to shed additional light on the complex nature of the interactions the shroud has had with its environment over the centuries.
The team, whose findings appear in a new preprint paper that appears on the bioRxiv website, reports that their analysis showcases the preservation conditions of the shroud over time, as well as interactions it has had with its environment that reveal “its biological complexity through rigorous DNA and metagenomic analyses.”
According to the study’s authors, “The possible existence of the Shroud prior to the first documented information places the long journey of this artifact into a Middle or Near East geographical context, with a potential historical age preceding the Sacking of Constantinople in
1204.” Sometime later, scholars believe the shroud was moved to a new location in Western Europe, before it resurfaced again near the French commune of Lirey in the early to mid 1350s.
Some of the questions about the shroud’s journey throughout the centuries is evidenced by the genetic material it carries, and through analysis, the study’s authors hoped to learn about the kinds of environments where it had been kept, dividing the chronological history of the relic into a “pre-1204” period that it was believed to have been kept in the ancient Near East, and what the team refers to as “a plausible ‘post-1353’ location in western Europe.”
“These two hypothetical temporal and spatial differentiations may be reflected in the variation of DNA data obtained from the Shroud,” the study’s authors say.
Hellbound and Down 