Praying for proof on Shroud of Turin

Like many people, I don't believe the Shroud of Turin was Jesus Christ's burial cloth when he was entombed prior to his resurrection. But I would like conclusive proof that we are right. The age-old controversy about the shroud's authenticity was rekindled last month when five Italian scientists investigating the mystery for several years released their report. Working at Enea - Italy's government-owned National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development - they concluded that the image of a man, supposedly Christ, on the famous bolt of linen could not be replicated. In other words, the shroud is not a medieval forgery as many believe. The report challenges what scientists under the Shroud of Turin Research Project (Sturp) had concluded in the 1980s through radiocarbon dating. They had taken tiny samples of material from the shroud, which is 4.4 metres by 1.1 metre, and tested them at labs in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson in Arizona. The results showed the cloth was made between AD1260 and AD1390, which made the shroud image a fake. However, it turned out that some of Sturp's work had been clumsy. From the start, many experts doubted the validity of the radiocarbon dating tests for a number of good reasons. The cloth samples all came from the same part of the shroud: at the fabric's edge, gripped by hundreds of greasy fingers during ceremonies over the centuries and thus contaminated with 'biogenetic varnish' - a layer of bacteria and fungi by-products. The Sturp scientists did not study the contamination to see if it would affect their results. Yet an inquiry in the early 1990s on fragments of the leftover fabric used for the same tests showed this 'varnish' accounted for more than half of the fabric's weight. Further, the material tested in 1988 was not actually part of the original shroud, but was a patch sewed on during medieval times to cover a hole, according to a more recent consensus by specialists. But the Sturp study did come up with some useful findings. It found no traces of pigments or colours, and established that the image was not made by heating or printing. The stains were human blood, which left shading patterns containing remarkable 3-D information, unlike drawings or paintings. Further, the colouring that forms the outline of the image on the shroud is mysteriously shallow. It penetrates a very superficial part of the linen fibres - thinner than one-fifth of a thousandth of a millimetre - which could only have been achieved through an unknown process of oxidation. There is no image beneath the blood stains, leading scientists to think that the blood was deposited first, followed by the image. The only way to replicate such an image would be to use a flash of light. The Italian scientists in the Enea study agreed that it would be theoretically possible to create such an image using an excimer laser, a technology that affects exceptionally fine layers of material and leaves the rest intact. But simulating the entire shroud image using the laser would require billions of volts of installed power - more than what is available anywhere today. And even if this amount of energy became available, the laser could not reproduce all the details, such as the soft tonal changes among the different yellow hues in the coloured fibres. The imprint on the cloth is so vivid that a detailed forensic analysis of the corpse is still possible. The figure on the shroud is the negative image of a naked adult male, approximately 30 to 45 years old, 175-180cm tall and weighing 75-81kg. He had a beard, a moustache, with hair parted in the middle and an unbound pigtail - its strongest Jewish feature. The corpse could have remained in contact with the fabric anywhere between a few hours to several days. In that time, the cloth somehow captured a wealth of detail that no medieval forger could have known, while the process of his crucifixion tallied almost exactly with descriptions in the Gospels. The marks of flogging are consistent with the shape of the metal pellets the Romans had embedded in their whips - the memory of which was lost during the Middle Ages. Even more telling is the fact that long nails were driven through the man's wrists, not through the palms - a practice forgotten after the fall of the Roman empire. It was certainly unknown to medieval and Renaissance painters and sculptors, as seen in their works. It is even possible to identify the kind of spear used to penetrate the crucified man's chest and exactly where it was thrust in. The spot was not on his torso, as shown in all the old paintings, but under his armpit, in keeping with Roman procedure. The spear shape, as we can glean from archaeological finds, matches those issued to the militia of Jesus Christ's era. It was a lancea (lance) point - not the hasta (spear), pilum (javelin) or hasta veliaris (short spear) used by Roman infantry. Moreover, an analysis of the pollens found on the Shroud of Turin's surface seems to point to an Asiatic origin of the fabric, perhaps Lebanon or Syria. If we can accept that the cloth is 2,000 years old, then we may speculate about it being brought to Europe via Turkey's ancient capital, Constantinople, perhaps hidden in the luggage of an unknown crusader. Many hoped that Benedict XVI, when he became pope, would allow fresh scientific analysis of the Vatican-owned shroud through non-destructive means. But soon after his election, those hopes were dashed due to stiff resistance within the church and a part of the scientific community. In the meantime, conspiracy theories flourish along The Da Vinci Code lines, and novels delve into the mystery. If there is a conundrum crying for a solution, surely this is it. Angelo Paratico is a novelist, journalist and entrepreneur based in Hong Kong. His latest book, Ben, is an Italian-language fictionalised account of the last days of Benito Mussolini