Up until the present day, humanity has yearned to understand the unknown, to reach for the stars, to understand our world, and to know and validate the existence of God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
From a very humble beginning, the life and acts of Jesus Christ became the truth, the way, and the life, established through faith and the divine living light energy from the Holy Spirit.
The most significant events of Jesus’ life were His crucifixion on the cross and His resurrection on the third day after His death. The shroud of Turin is the burial clothes and the Sudarium of Oviedo is the burial facecloth of Jesus Christ.
It’s ironic that a death shroud would be the ultimate proof of Christ’s existence, given that Jesus’ entire human existence was about defining the way to achieving everlasting spiritual life in heaven.
Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, memorialized by the shroud and the Sudarium, does indeed authenticate the existence of Jesus Christ.
But skeptics do exist.
Dramatic improvements in human technology, especially over the past half century, have led to greater demands for scientific proof of the shroud’s authenticity, especially among scientists and secularists.
This despite countless stories of miracles and prophecies that occur frequently and can’t be explained by science, that have reinforced biblical truths throughout the centuries.
One of those truths is the authenticity of the shroud and the Sudarium.
In 1998, scientists attempted to determine the age of the Shroud by using carbon dating methods, which provided results that suggested that the shroud was a forgery from the 13th century.
This doubt lingered until recently, when in-depth scientific forensic analysis concluded that the shroud image was created by supernatural light.
Then, in 2022, state of the art x-ray dating proved the shroud to be authentic beyond a reasonable doubt. But what does the Bible say about the shroud?
John 20 verse 7 says: “and Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there. And the facecloth which had been on his head, not lying with the linen wrappings. But rolled up in a place by itself.”
This is the history of the discovery of the shroud and Sudarium by Simon Peter after he found that Jesus was no longer in his tomb.
Jesus had been resurrected and the shroud and Sudarium then became the remaining artifacts of his internment.
No record of what happened to the shroud and Sudarium after they were discovered is known though.
However, it’s clear that they were spirited away and protected from destruction by a cadre of his loyal disciples and followers.
This was to thwart the dark forces that wanted to eradicate any proof of Jesus’ existence.
Now let’s take a look at The History of the Shroud of Turin.
In the First Century AD, and after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Empire. Legend and folklore spoke of a mysterious cloth with healing power, bearing an image of Jesus that arrived in Edessa Greece around the first century AD. The Apostle Jude Thaddeus, one of the original disciples of Jesus Christ, is associated with bringing the cloth from Jerusalem to Edessa.
In the Early Second Century AD, Christian persecution was thought to be the reason why the cloth was hidden inside the fortified wall surrounding the city of Edessa.
In 525 AD, after a severe flood destroyed most of Edessa, the cloth was rediscovered when the walls, where the cloth had been hidden for over 400 years, were being rebuilt. The cloth became known as “The Image of Edessa” and was later called “The True Likeness of Christ not made by human hands.”
After that, All Orthodox icons of Jesus, and the image on Byzantine coins, dramatically changed to conform to the True Likeness of Jesus featuring his long hair, full beard, large eyes, and flattened nose, all similar to his image on the Shroud.
In 944 AD, The Byzantine Imperial Army invaded Edessa for the express reason of retrieving the cloth from the city, which had fallen to Islam. It was taken to Constantinople, which is now Istanbul, and presented to the Emperor.
In 1204 AD, Constantinople was invaded by the Fourth Crusade, and the cloth disappeared. Some historians believe, and 2009 Vatican research supports long-time rumors, that the Shroud was held in secret possession by the Knights Templar until 1356 AD, when the cloth was displayed in France and its Documented History Began.
In 1356, Geoffrey DeCharney made the first public exhibition of the Shroud in Lirey, France. Its believed that DeCharney’s ancestral family were leaders within the Knights Templar organization.
On December 4th, 1532, The Shroud was folded in 48 layers and stored inside a silver reliquary in Sainte Chapelle, Chambéry, France. A fire broke out, and drops of molten silver burned through the cloth’s outer folded edges. Miraculously the entire cloth was not destroyed, but the burning silver drops left distinctive linear markings that line both sides of the Shroud image.
On April 16, 1534, Chambéry’s nuns repaired the Shroud’s fire damage. The nuns sewed the Shroud to a backing cloth and sewed patches over the most seriously damaged areas. With repairs completed in May 1534, the Shroud was returned to the Savoys’ castle in Chambéry.
On September 14th, 1578, The Shroud arrived in Turin, heralded by a gun salute from local artillery. It has remained in Turin since that time, and is why it is called the Shroud of Turin.
During the Second World War from 1939 to 1946, the Shroud was secretly moved from Turin to Montevergine Abbey in southern Italy so that it could be hidden from Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. It remained there until 1946 when the Shroud was quietly returned to Turin.
From April 11th to 12th, 1997, a destructive fire broke out in Turin’s Guarini Chapel, which immediately threatened the Shroud housed in a bulletproof display case. A fireman, Mario Trematore, used a sledgehammer to break open the case and rescue the Shroud, preserving it for the future.
From April 19th to June 24th, 2015, the Shroud was displayed for the last time in public.
In our next podcast, we’ll discuss the history and forensic analysis of the Shroud of Turin.
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