Shroud of Turin Bloodstains Likely Fake, Not of Jesus Christ: Forensic Experts

Bloodstains found on the shroud of Turin burial cloth, believed by many to have once wrapped the body of Jesus Christ, are likely fake, according to new research reported in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

In June 2017, researchers at the Institute of Crystallography found traces of blood on the 14-foot-long relic, with initial analysis of the particles discovering "a scenario of great suffering, whose victim was wrapped up in the funeral cloth."

The nanoparticles uncovered were found to not be typical of the blood of a healthy person.

The Journal of Forensic Sciences report on July 10 revealed that the bloodstain patterns were analyzed in a type of crime scene scenario. In the test, researchers found that the linen seems to have been patched with bloodstains from a standing model, and not from a crucified man or a facedown corpse.

"This is the kind of forensic work done all the time in police investigations," forensic scientist Matteo Borrini from Liverpool John Moores University told BuzzFeed News.

"Even a crucified or hanging person should leave a distinct blood pattern on the cloth, which would be fascinating information to have."

Borrini, a Roman Catholic, said that he carried out the investigation with the aid of chemist Luigi Garlaschelli of the University of Pavia in Italy, initially looking to determine whether the blood patterns match the crucifixion of a person in a T-shaped or Y-shaped manner.

The researchers pumped blood onto a model at the wound points found on the shroud and studied the angle in which gravity pulled the liquid down.

The bloodstains did not match up with any pose, however, with the evidence suggesting that a standing model was used to imprint the patterns for the hands, the chest, and the back.

"This is just not what happens to a person on a cross," Borrini said, noting that the comparison model displayed very different blood angle patterns than the shroud.

He said that his own faith doesn't rely on the legitimacy of the shroud, however.

"The church itself would like to know what things are real, and what are not," he added. "This isn't the Middle Ages anymore."

Jonathyn Priest of Bevel, Gardner and Associates Inc. in Norman, Oklahoma, who is a bloodstain pattern expert, said that while the science and the methodology used in the study were sound, they may not be accounting for when the body was moved such as being carried and prepared for burial.

Priest also told BuzzFeed that the amount of blood from the wrists on the shroud would "more than likely" have needed the heart to have been beating at the time the bloodflow formed, however.

"The fact that flowing bloodstains exist at all on a deceased body that was reportedly cleaned also raises questions," he added.

Besides the blood stains, the imprints and the age of the cloth itself continue to fascinate believers around the world.

In 1988, radiocarbon measurements suggested that the shroud was a forgery made somewhere between 1260–1390 A.D., but later research found that the fibers tested at the time were from a patch added later on the shroud, and not part of the original cloth.

DNA sequencing tests in 2015 found pollen and dust particles from the shroud belonging to plants from South America, the Middle East, Central Africa, Central Asia, China, and other regions.

The Catholic Church has never declared the shroud to be a genuine religious relic, but regards it as an icon, attracting millions of people when it is put up for public display at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, where it is kept.

Some years ago there was a forensic pathologist who did studies on how fluids would have spread on the body of someone tortured and crucified as per the gospels. Alas I don’t recall his name and when this was. He found the fluid patterns on the Shroud fit this quite well, whereas depictions of the same in art over the centuries did NOT fit it well. He concluded the blood spatter patterns on the Shroud were very strong evidence it had once covered, if not Christ then someone treated as Christ was reported to have been treated. So now there is this ‘scientific’ study claiming the opposite. I’m skeptical and would like, at least, for someone to compare the two studies.

Of many many examples no other human remains have ever been found to produce an image. Remains decompose and soil the cloth. Natural mummies, bodies buried in hot dry areas where the body dedicated, do not leave images. On the DNA issue, the blood stains are highly degraded. Burial garments were considered ritually unclean. Jews would not have preserved used burial
Clothes unless they had a really good reason to do so.

I'm not an expert in this, but I learned that red blood cells do not have nuclei, hence mitochondria, so other ways to get DNA is better. Actually, my statement was not quite right. I was thinking of dried blood in the Turin shroud. Here is a little more on the DNA aspect:

Source: Where do DNA samples come from?

Excerpt:

"Red blood cells do not have any DNA, as they lose their nuclei (the compartment in a cell that contains the DNA) as they mature. So the DNA in your blood is in your white blood cells. To get at it, scientists first spin a small sample of your blood at high speed, to separate the cells from the blood fluid. Next, they release the DNA from the cells using a detergent and a special enzyme. Finally, they add alcohol, which makes your DNA appear as sticky blob in the mixture."

I do not know that the stains on the shroud would have DNA, but dried skin cells ought to. Just thinking from a layman's viewpoint.

DNA sequencing tests in 2015 found pollen and dust particles from the shroud belonging to plants from South America, the Middle East, Central Africa, Central Asia, China, and other regions.

Was the shroud under the care of the Vatican prior to those tests? Don't tourists come from all over the world to the Vatican City, carrying particles on their clothing an hair that get carried by the breeze in Italy? Don't birds fly over the Vatican and drop droppings on the ground that are then transferred onto peoples' shoes and walked elsewhere? Can't particles find their way into the heating and ventilation systems of the researchers? Just how forensic were the researchers -- did they wear hair coverings and latex gloves at all times? Were their hospital gowns made in China?

>> A washed body that doesn’t have a beating heart, and which had a serious blood loss before death, isn’t going to leak as you think it would, if at all. <<

Jesus wounds persisted after resurrection; he tells Thomas to put his finger into the holes in his hands. Therefore, once his heart began beating again, it’s entirely reasonable to expect his wounds to resume bleeding.

>> Why do you depend on what a particular piece of cloth may (or may not) indicate? <<

That’s a baseless and offensive presumption.

“Jesus wounds persisted after resurrection; he tells Thomas to put his finger into the holes in his hands. Therefore, once his heart began beating again, it’s entirely reasonable to expect his wounds to resume bleeding.”

That may be, but if that’s the case, then either he would not have been wearing the shroud, or it would have moved as he moved, smearing blood and other fluids all over the shroud and ruining the image. So, again, we are back to the issue of how a dead body with no blood being pumped through it, and which had been severely dehydrated and which bled out a lot before death, and which was washed prior to the shroud being put on it, could have so much blood leaking from it that it produced a detailed image. Bottom line: I simply do not believe that the Shroud of Turin is what it is claimed to be.

My conclusion above does not even attempt to pass judgement on whether Jesus was divine or not. It is simply a discussion about whether a particular piece of cloth can be linked to him. I am sorry that you seem to feel insulted, but it is a simple observation (mine, and others’) that so many people who so passionately defend the claim that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus seem to be basing their faith in Jesus on the validity of this claim. If you don’t, then good for you, you are a thinking person, as well as a person of faith. If someone does tie together those two factors, then I have to question their faith. Frankly, anytime I see people so passionately defending the shroud, I am immediately on notice that they are placing enormous faith in a material object. While I cannot speak for Him, I think that God would be disappointed that many people don’t place their faith in Him.

>> That may be, but if that’s the case, then either he would not have been wearing the shroud, or it would have moved as he moved, <<

Seriously? My point wasn’t that he was wearing the shroud when he met Thomas! The point was only that the wounds persisted after the resurrection. He resurrected, he bled, he put aside his clothes, he appeared to his disciples.

>> Frankly, anytime I see people so passionately defending the shroud, I am immediately on notice that they are placing enormous faith in a material object. While I cannot speak for Him, I think that God would be disappointed that many people don’t place their faith in Him. <<

Your own base presumptions are evidence of nothing but your own biases. I could just as easily write, “Frankly, it’s astonishing to me that God would leave us a physical testament of the historical nature of the resurrection, and so-called ‘Christians’ would be so hateful of the Church which He established on Earth, that they would attack the evidence like a pack of rabid dogs.” Are there ‘Christians’ that argue against the historicity of the Resurrections? Yes. Am I one of them? Heavens, no. And how dare you assume I would be?

“Seriously? My point wasn’t that he was wearing the shroud when he met Thomas! The point was only that the wounds persisted after the resurrection. He resurrected, he bled, he put aside his clothes, he appeared to his disciples.”

Yes, seriously.

We are talking about the validity (or lack thereof) of the claim that the Shroud of Turin was Jesus’ burial shroud. The blood stains are supposed to support that contention - and all that I was pointing out was that if he was bleeding AFTER being resurrected, then that either would NOT have stained the shroud with blood or, if he was still wearing it, it would have messed up the bloodstains with new blood. That is ALL that I was saying - i.e. I’m trying to show via logic that (IMHO) the shroud could not be what many claim that it is.

WRT biases - yes, of course I have them. So do you, so does every single person on Earth. I laid mine out in front (unlike many others - and I do NOT mean you). BTW, my intent in doing so was to call out those who SEEM (in my view) to be relying on a material item to prove to them that their faith is valid. I think that this is an error - faith is, by its nature, not subject to scientific verification. FYI, I am assuming NOTHING about you.

I can’t believe I have to spell this out further.

>> We are talking about the validity (or lack thereof) of the claim that the Shroud of Turin was Jesus’ burial shroud. The blood stains are supposed to support that contention - and all that I was pointing out was that if he was bleeding AFTER being resurrected, then that either would NOT have stained the shroud with blood...<<

HE WAS IN THE SHROUD, WHEN HE WAS RESURRECTED AND BEGAN TO BLEED AGAIN. Unbelievably, you seem unable to shake the presumption that he had already undressed before he began to bleed.

>> or, if he was still wearing it, it would have messed up the bloodstains with new blood. <<

The previous contention was that there would not have been bloodstains if he was dead while wearing the shroud. Ergo, no blood stains “to mess up.”

Also, when you recognize your presumptions come from bias, the rational solution is not to shout your biases from the rooftops, but to recognize that people may not share your viewpoint, but try to use that realization to counter your natural biases and account for those biases as best you can. That likely means shutting up when your biases impugn the motivations of others.

The shroud shows bloodstains consistent with a person who was laying still (a rather natural condition for someone who is dead). If he was resurrected and started bleeding again while still wearing it, then there would have been smeared bloodstains all over the thing - it wouldn’t look like it does now.

WRT bias, my ONLY bias is that I think that the shroud is a forgery - and before this story came out, I was open to it being real. The story convinced me that it isn’t what it has been represented to be.

Which, again, says nothing whatsoever about Jesus - it ONLY addresses a claim about a particular piece of cloth.

>> The shroud shows bloodstains consistent with a person who was laying still (a rather natural condition for someone who is dead). <<

Actually, no. You didn’t read the article very carefully, did you? The article says that the blood stains are NOT consistent with someone who was lying still. Rather, they are consistent with someone who was standing up. Why was Jesus standing still? I dunno, maybe he was praying.

If it weren’t the shroud, it would have been MUCH easier to have worked with someone lying down. How many people with huge gashes in their sides, and holes through their feet and hands, and a circle of wounds around their heads are going to be standing up on their own? About one, and pretty certainly only one.

>> WRT bias, my ONLY bias is that I think that the shroud is a forgery - and before this story came out, I was open to it being real. The story convinced me that it isn’t what it has been represented to be. <<

Don’t be so disingenuous. You seem awfully committed to the notion it was fake, despite barely being familiar with the article. And your initial comments had nothing to do with the article, just attacking people who believe in it.

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