Shroud of Turin: the devil in the details?

Russ Breault is not one for conspiracy theories, espe­cially when it comes to the most famous empty tomb in history.

“Some people say Jesus woke up, hooked up with Mary Magdalene and moved to France. Well, I don’t think so,” he said, taking a not-so-subtle swipe at the Da Vinci Code (book and film).

Breault is an acknowledged in­ternational expert on the Shroud of Turin and recently spoke to Catholic Voice via Zoom from the United States about “CSI Jerusalem,” his 40-year quest on the Shroud’s trail.

Today, that flax cloth with its herringbone weave still resides in the little chapel next to Italy’s Turin Cathedral, enigmatic as ever with its image of an adult, bearded male apparently bearing the wounds of scourging, cruci­fixion and a crown of thorns.

Testing over the years has shown real blood on the cloth, with real male DNA, with no evidence of pigment or brush strokes that could be expected from an artist.

Much work has gone into how the image was formed with theories suggesting an intense, brief burst of radiation or light was involved.

For Breault, he’s most fascinated by what he sees as a slight misalignment between the pattern of bloodstains, most notably the scourge marks, and the image.

“Had this been the work of an artist, he would have applied the image first, and then applied the blood marks according to where the image was,” said Breault. “But that is not the order of events. The blood was on the cloth first, followed by the image.”

He believes the misalign­ment proves there are two separate sets of images. One was from direct contact with the body and a later image by some other process that probably involves light.

Whether it’s about the blood, dust particles, pollen spores, DNA profiling, the herringbone weave, 3D imaging, the history trail, or a host of other disciplines, experts, believers and sceptics have all weighed in on the Shroud.

“The body would have stiffened within a couple hours of death due to rigor mortis and after 24-36 hours would have relaxed again. This is the most logical explanation for the misalign­ment as Jesus was only in the tomb about 36 hours before the resurrection.

“It fits perfectly,” Breault said.

But less perfectly, perhaps, for those who support 30-year-old radiocarbon dating results. In 1988, three small samples from one corner of the Shroud were sent to labs in the US, the UK and Switzerland for analysis of carbon decay in the fibres.

The results came back dating the cloth to between 1260 and 1390 AD, well over a thousand years after the time of Christ.

It was an “ah ha” moment for the sceptics. This proves it’s a fake, they said, a medieval forgery, a work of art perhaps from Leonardo Da Vinci!

The results initially put a damper on further research but the Shroud and its mysteries were not to be denied.

With the release in 2017 of the 1988 measurement data and advances in computing technol­ogy, new studies have taken place to build on earlier work over the decades.

Whether it’s about the blood, dust particles, pollen spores, DNA profiling, the herringbone weave, 3D imaging, the his­tory trail, or a host of other disciplines, experts, believers and sceptics have all weighed in on the Shroud.

Russ Breault is just one in the midst of the international debate. Another is fellow American researcher Bob Rucker, who also spoke to Catholic Voice.

Rucker brings his perspective as a retired nuclear engineer in studying the artefact. Like others, he believes an intense burst of radiation was responsible for the Shroud’s image.

But he also believes – criti­cally – this radiation changed the structure of the atomic structure of the Shroud’s cloth fibres by creating new, fresh carbon atoms. According to Rucker, these new carbon atoms could have shifted forward the Shroud’s dating using radiocarbon techniques by thousands of years, depending on where they were located on the cloth.

Recent peer-reviewed research, he says, proves the cloth samples used in 1988 are not representa­tive of the rest of the Shroud and that the radiocarbon results should be rejected.

That’s a fascinating proposition. If widely accepted, it will turn the spotlight brightly back onto the cloth’s first century AD origins and to the source of the great intrigue. As Scully and Mulder might have said in the X-files, “the truth is out there” somewhere.

The Vatican will be interested in the truth, too, but avoids going down any speculative rabbit holes or test tubes. Though it has no official position on the cloth, several popes have prayed before it, includ­ing Pope Francis who, in choosing his words carefully, described it as an “icon of love”.

Russ Breault, however, has his own way of understanding the Shroud.

“We have been bought, purchased, redeemed and ransomed,” he said.

Quoting Matthew 20:28 that Christ gave his life “as a ransom for many”, Breault calls the Shroud a “receipt” – an itemised account – of that ransom having been paid.

“You know what they say – the devil is in the detail. Not with the shroud.”

“God is in the detail,” Breault said.

For further information on Bob Rucker’s forensic approach to the Shroud, see: www.shroudresearch.net

For Russ Breault and the Shroud, see: https://shroudencounter. com/