Shroud of Turin contains marks consistent with Christ's spear wound, says study

A new study has indicated that the Shroud of Turin, which is believed to be the burial shroud of Christ, has marks of a spear wound that is consistent with the one inflicted on Jesus when he was hung on the cross.

The study was released by researchers from the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM) in Spain last week, Church Militant reported.

The report details the tissues and organs that would have been pierced by the spear in its "hypothetical trajectory," and it notes that whoever inflicted the wound had experience with a weapon, based on the fact that the object went deftly between the victim's ribs at precisely the right spot in the first instance.

The researchers also presented the latest forensic evidence that suggests that the Shroud of Turin and the Shroud of Oviedo were from the same period and that they covered the same person.

The Shroud of Oviedo, which has been housed in the cathedral town of Oviedo in northern Spain since the 11th century, is believed to be the cloth that was wrapped around the head of Christ. Although not as famous as the Shroud of Turin, it has attracted similar devotion, which prompted some discussions about its authenticity.

Alfonso Sánchez-Hermosilla, one of the lead researchers, said that the report "not only reaffirms that both garments involved the same person, but also that, when already a corpse and standing upright, the person suffered a penetrating wound."

Sánchez-Hermosilla said that the bloodstains they examined on the Shroud of Oviedo have not been previously studied, adding that they had been attributed to marks caused by flogging wounds.

The researchers also found that not all of the stains were from a living person. Some of it became invisible when it was placed under an infrared filter, which Sánchez-Hermosilla says is a sign that the blood came from a cadaver, not from a living man.

An analysis of the wound indicated that it had been given to someone who was standing upright, and further examination revealed why there are certain stains coming from the nose and mouth.

"[W]hen passing through the right lung, the weapon also made its way through the intraparenchymal airways and, as a consequence, part of the organic fluids mentioned were thus opened in an upward trajectory as a result of the intrathoracic pressure caused by the kinetic energy that the advance of the weapon transmitted to the corpse," Sánchez-Hermosilla explained.

"These fluids traveled through the upper airways and finally they were also emitted by the mouth and nose of the corpse, causing new spots in these areas in the Shroud of Oviedo," he added.

The Shroud of Turin and Oviedo have been previously dismissed as forgeries, but they came to be accepted as authentic after carbon dating conducted on the Turin shroud, which yielded the wrong date, was found to be faulty.

Another study conducted by the Italian ENEA, the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development noted that the image on the cloth cannot be reproduced with the current state of science.

The report stated that the total power required to instantly color the surface of the linen that corresponds to the size of an average human body would be 34 thousand billion watts. The most powerful light source available on the market only goes as high as several billion watts.