Three Hard Facts
The Shroud may be a first century burial cloth of a Roman crucifixion. As such, given other evidence, it certainly seems to be the burial cloth of Jesus.
Fact: Cellulose fibers that make up the threads of the Shroud's cloth are coated with a thin layer of starch fractions, various sugars and other impurities. This chemical layer, which probably developed when the cloth was washed after weaving, is essentially colorless. However, in some places, this microscopically thin layer has undergone a dehydrative chemical change that appears straw-yellow. The chemical change resembles the change that would occur (and certainly did occur if the cloth is real) from reactive body amines (-NH2 group) and reducing saccharides in the layer. And it is this straw-yellow color that makes up the image; not paint, not dye, not photographic emulsion, and not miraculously changed linen fibers.
Fact: The carbon 14 dating that concluded that cloth was medieval was done on a medieval repair patch. The area of the cloth from which the carbon 14 samples were cut is very different from the rest of the cloth. The dark brown region, as seen with ultraviolet lighting (black light) was produced by the fluorescence of chemical compounds on the Shroud. It is the mended area. The place from which the carbon 14 samples were cut is in the dark brown area just above the tiny triangular white spot located on the bottom edge.
The carbon 14 area tests positive for vanillin (C8H8O3 or 4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde) when tested with phloroglucinol in concentrated hydrochloric acid. The rest of the cloth does not. Vanillin is produced by the thermal decomposition of lignin, a complex polymer, a non-carbohydrate constituent of plant material including flax. Found in medieval materials but not in much older cloths, it diminishes and disappears with time. For instance, the wrappings of the Dead Sea scrolls do not test positive for vanillin. Quantitative counts of lignin residues show some large differences between the carbon 14 sampling areas and the rest of the Shroud. Where there is lignin in the sample area it tests positive for vanillin. Other medieval cloths, where lignin is found, test positive. The main body of the Shroud, with significant lignin at the fiber growth nodes, does not have vanillin. The Shroud's lignin is very old compared with the radiocarbon sampling area.
Chemical analysis also reveals the presence of Madder root dye and an aluminum oxide mordant (a reagent that fixes dyes to textiles) not found elsewhere on Shroud. Medieval artisans often dyed threads in this manner when mending damaged tapestries. This was simply to make the repairs less noticeable. The presence of Madder root and mordant suggests that the Shroud was mended in this way.
M. Sue Benford and Joseph Marino, in collaboration with number of textile experts, identified clear evidence of medieval mending on the Shroud. A patch was expertly sewn to or rewoven into the fabric to repair a damaged edge. It was from this patch—quite likely nothing more than a piece of medieval cloth—that the samples were taken. From documenting photographs of the sample areas, the textile experts identified enough newer thread to enable Ronald Hatfield, of the prestigious radiocarbon dating firm Beta Analytic, to estimate that the true date of the cloth is much older—perhaps even 1st century.
Fact: The bloodstains are from real human blood. Different scientists working independently conducted immunological, fluorescence and spectrographic tests, as well as Rh and ABO typing of blood antigens that prove it beyond any doubt. And several experts in forensic medicine and blood chemistry conclude that the stains were formed by real human bleeding from real wounds on a real human body that came into direct contact with the cloth. Many of the stains have the distinctive forensic signature of clotting with red corpuscles about the edge of the clot and a clear yellowish halo of serum.
There is wide agreement that the bloodstains are from a man laying on his back with his feet at one end of the 14-foot linen cloth. The cloth was brought up over the man’s head to cover his face and the entire length of his body down to his feet. Bloodstains on one part of the cloth indicate a serious wound to the chest. The patterns of these stains show that blood likely flowed from the chest area, down the side of a prone body and pooled near the lower back. Mingled with the large bloodstains in this area are stains from what pathologists believe are clear bodily fluid, perhaps pericardial fluid or fluid from the pleural sac or pleural cavity. All of these findings suggest that the man received a postmortem stabbing wound in the vicinity of the heart.
In response to freeper scrabblehack's question.
The Sudarium of Oviedo and what it Suggests about the Shroud of Turin?
In the northern Spanish city of Oviedo, in a small chapel attached to the city's cathedral, there is a small bloodstained dishcloth size piece of linen that some believe is one of the burial cloths mentioned in John's Gospel. Tradition has it that this cloth, commonly known as the Sudarium of Oviedo, was used to cover Jesus' bloodied face following his death on the cross.
Numerous historic documents tell us that the Sudarium has been in Oviedo since the 8th century and in Spain since the 7th century. It seems, too, to have arrived from Jerusalem. Documents from the late Roman period and the early Middle Ages are often sketchy and prone to chronological mistakes, and those pertaining to the Sudarium are no exception. But from a multiplicity of sources, scholars have extracted core elements of historical certainty and plausibility sufficient for a fair degree of historical reconstruction.
We can be quite sure that the Sudarium came to Oviedo from Jerusalem, and there is some evidence it dates back to the 1st century CE. Its journey to its present location began in 644 CE. when Persians under Chosroes II invaded Jerusalem. To protect the Sudarium, it was moved out of the city to safety. We are uncertain of its route to Spain. It may have been first taken to Alexandria along with numerous other relics (real or otherwise, and stored in a chest or "ark") and from there, in succeeding years, along the coast of North Africa ahead of advancing armies. Some historians have suggested a more direct sea route to Spain, but forensic pollen evidence indicates that the Sudarium was in North Africa, just as the presence of other pollen spores evidences that it was at one time in the Jerusalem environs. Whatever the route, we know that after it arrived in Spain, it was kept in Toledo for about 75 years. For some time after it arrived, it was in the custody of the great bishop and an early-medieval scholar, Isidore of Seville. Then in 718, to protect it from Arab armies, which had invaded Spain only seven years earlier, it was moved northward with fleeing Christians. In 761, Oviedo became the capital of a northern, well-defended enclave of Christians on the Iberian Peninsula and it was to this city that the Sudarium was brought for safekeeping. It has been in Oviedo ever since.
The path of the Sudarium links its origin to the same time and place of the Shroud. Moreover, forensic analysis of the bloodstains suggests strongly that both the Sudarium and the Shroud covered the same human head at nearly the same time. Bloodstain patterns show that the Sudarium was placed about the man's head while he was still in a vertical position, presumably before he was removed from the cross. It was then removed before the Shroud was placed over the man's face.
In 1999, Mark Guscin, a member of the multidisciplinary Investigation Team of the Centro Español de Sindonología, issued a detailed forensic and historical report entitled, "Recent Historical Investigations on the Sudarium of Oviedo." Guscin's report detailed recent findings of the history, forensic pathology, blood chemistry, and stain patterns on the Sudarium. His conclusion: the Sudarium and the Shroud of Turin had been used to cover the same injured head at closely different times. Here are some highlights from Guscin's report:
It seems to be a funeral cloth that was probably placed over the head of the corpse of an adult male of normal constitution. The man whose face the Sudarium covered had a beard, moustache and long hair, tied up at the nape of his neck into a ponytail.
The man was dead. The mechanism that formed the stains is incompatible with any kind of breathing movement.
The man was wounded before death with something that made his scalp bleed and produced wounds on his neck, shoulders and upper part of the back.
The man suffered a pulmonary edema as a consequence of the terminal process. The main stains are one part blood and six parts fluid from the pulmonary fluid.
The only position compatible with the formation of the stains on the Oviedo cloth is both arms outstretched above the head and the feet in such a position as to make breathing very difficult, i.e. a position totally compatible with crucifixion. We can say that the man was wounded first (blood on the head, shoulders and back) and then 'crucified.'
On reaching the destination, the body was placed face up and for unknown reasons, the cloth was taken off the head.
The Sudarium contains pollen grains of Gundelia tournefortii, identical to that found of the Shroud that grows only east of the Mediterranean Sea as far north as Lebanon and as far south as Jerusalem.
The blood (stain symmetry, type and other indicators) on the Sudarium matches the blood on the Shroud.
In summary, Guscin wrote: