The Shroud of Turin remains one of the most revered Christian relics, despite naysayers and studies questioning its legitimacy. Enshrined in Turin Cathedral, Italy, the bizarre facial features etched into the ancient fabric are said to be of Jesus Christ himself. But a controversial 1988 study has cast doubts over the burial shroud after radiocarbon testing dated the sheet back to somewhere between the years 1260 and 1390 – more than 1,000 years after Jesus is said to have died. Now, 30 years later, a team of Oxford University-based researchers have ruled out the 1988 finds, citing flaws in the stud
The Shroud of Turin is widely believed to have been a piece of cloth used to cover the body of Christ after his crucifixion.
Over the years, the shroud has been at the centre of fierce debate concerning its authenticity.
As early as the year 1390, Bishop Pierre d’Arcis in Lirey, France, wrote a letter to Pope Clement VII, to inform him the shroud was a fake.
In 1988, Pope John Paul II allowed a team of international researchers to analyse the shroud to settle the debate once and for all.
Researchers from the US, the UK and from Switzerland took samples of the cloth for radiocarbon dating.
READ MORE: Catholic Church HITS BACK after Turin Shroud ‘fake’ claims
The pieces of cloth were all dated back to the 13th and 14 centuries, leading the scientists to conclude the shroud was forged in the Middle Ages.
The results were widely reported and published in the journal Nature.
But a new paper published in the Oxford University journal Archaeometry has challenged the validity of the methods used in the original study.
The 1988 dating was done on small snippets of the shroud taken from the edges of the cloth.
In the new study, however, researchers argued the method was flawed because it did not analyse the shroud as a whole.
The news study was penned following a successful lawsuit to gain access to the original data collected in 1988.
READ MORE: Demands for investigation into Jesus’ burial cloth to be REOPENED
The study’s authors wrote in their paper: “In 1988, three laboratories performed a radiocarbon analysis of the Turin Shroud.
“The results, which were centralised by the British Museum and published in Nature in 1989, provided ‘conclusive evidence’ of the medieval origin of the artefact.
“However, the raw data were never released by the institutions. In 2017, in response to a legal request, all raw data kept by the British Museum were made accessible.
“A statistical analysis of the Nature article and the raw data strongly suggests that homogeneity is lacking in the data and that the procedure should be reconsidered.”
The researchers believe in order to prove whether the shrine is real or not, the entire cloth needs to be analysed.
READ MORE: Shroud of Turin SHOCKING revelation DISMISSES link to Jesus Christ
According to Turin Cathedral, the cloth was made in a pattern dating it to Egyptian times and features the image of “a man who suffered the death of crucifixion”.
In 2015, Pope Francis praised the Shroud of Turin as a Christian “icon of love”.
He said in Turin: “The icon of this love is the shroud, that, even now, has attracted so many people here to Turin.
“That shroud draws to the tormented face and body of Jesus, and at the same time, directs toward the face of every suffering and unjustly persecuted person.”