The story of the shroud of Jesus Christ. Shroud of Turin: scientific investigation

For several centuries, in the cathedral of the Italian city of Turin, a large canvas 4.3 m long and 1.1 m wide has been kept. Blurry spots of brown tones appear against its yellowish-white background - from a distance, in the arrangement of these spots, the vague outlines of a human figure and a male face with beard and long hair. Tradition says that this is the Shroud of Jesus Christ Himself.

For the Western European citizen of the second half of the 14th century. she appeared “from nowhere” in the town of Lirey near Paris, on the estate of Count Geoffroy de Charny. The death of the count hid the secret of her appearance in France. In 1375 it was exhibited in the local church as the true Shroud of Christ. This attracted many pilgrims to the temple. Then doubts arose about its authenticity. The local bishop Henri de Poitiers reproached the rector of the temple for presenting it as the original Shroud of Christ. His successor, Pierre d'Arcy, received permission from Pope Clement VII to exhibit the Shroud as an ordinary icon, but not as the true burial shroud of the Savior.

One of the heirs of the Count de Charny gave the Shroud to her friend the Duchess of Savoy, whose husband, Louis I of Savoy, built a beautiful temple for the relic in the city of Chambery. Subsequently, the Savoy dynasty reigned in Italy.

Although false shrouds were shown in different cities, only this one was perceived by the mass popular consciousness as true. It burned three times and miraculously survived. To remove the soot and make sure it wasn’t painted, they boiled it in oil several times and washed it, but the image remained.

In 1578, the elderly Archbishop of Milan, Charles Borromeo, canonized by the Catholic Church, went from Milan to Chambery in the winter to venerate the Holy Shroud. To save the elder from crossing the winter Alps, the Shroud was brought out to meet him. The meeting took place in Turin, in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, where, with the blessing of the bishop, she currently rests. In the 18th century The revolutionary troops of France under the command of Bonaparte destroyed the cathedral in Chambery, where the shrine was once kept, and Turin found itself aloof from all the turbulent events and still preserves the shrine of the entire Christian world.

History of the Shroud

The history of the Shroud is complex and eventful. The most important of them for believers is the burial and resurrection of Christ, and for everyone - its appearance to the godless world on the threshold of the twentieth century.

In 1898, a international exhibition religious art. They also brought the Shroud from Turin, presenting it as a poorly preserved creation of ancient Christian artists. The shroud was hung high above the arch, and before the exhibition closed they decided to photograph it. On May 28, archaeologist and amateur photographer Secondo Pia took two photographs. One negative turned out to be spoiled, and the other, 60x50 cm in size, was put into the developer in the evening of the same day and became numb: against the dark background of the negative, a positive photographic portrait of Christ the Savior was revealed - a Face with an unearthly expression of beauty and nobility. Secondo Pia sat all night in reverent contemplation, without taking his eyes off the portrait of Christ the Savior, who so unexpectedly appeared in his house.

“The Holy Shroud of Christ,” he reflected, “in some unimaginable way itself is a photographically accurate negative; and even with great spiritual content! This Holy Shroud, this amazing human-sized negative, is much more than a thousand years old. But our newly invented photography is only 69 years old!.. Here, in these brown prints from the Holy Sepulcher, lies an inexplicable miracle” (2).

What was the meaning of the appearance of the Holy Shroud of Christ in late XIX V.?

It was a time when humanity was moving away from faith. Science became a worldview, and the belief developed that in the future, and soon, using mathematical formulas it would be possible to calculate the movement of all particles of the universe in time and space. The formula “science has proven” was often used in conversations. In a conversation with Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov), one very self-confident young man said: “Do you know, Vladyka, that science has proven that there is no God?” The Metropolitan replied: “King David wrote thousands of years ago: The speech of a fool in his heart is not God” (3).

From the second half of the 19th century. Anti-Christian protests in noble and intellectual salons, lecture halls and the press noticeably intensified. The works of Protestant theologians, professors and associate professors (Strauss, Ferdinand and Bruno Bauer), who denied the deity of Jesus Christ, also became widespread. Leo Tolstoy cut the Gospel according to his own understanding, whose cherished dream was to found a new religion. The image of a sentimental moralist, fornicator and favorite of women was painted by Renan in his once very popular book “The Life of Jesus”. He, like Tolstoy, denied the Divinity and miracles of Christ. Our outstanding spiritual writer Bishop Mikhail (Gribanovsky) called his work “The Gospel of the Philistines.” The success of these and other similar works is explained by the fact that many in society, in their earthly complacency and human pride, did not want to accept the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and His miracles, which the deterministic science of the 19th and early 20th centuries was unable to explain. The myth of Christ was believed to have originated around historical figure Jesus of Nazareth is an old idea, dating back to the first centuries, in particular from Celsus.

But the pinnacle of all this anti-Christian supposedly scientific literature were the works of the professor of theology and history Draves. He argued that there was no Jesus of Nazareth, that Christ and other gospel characters like Pilate, etc. - these are mythical personalities without any real historical prototypes, that Christ is a folk myth about the Sun. His book met with a joyful and sympathetic reception in wide circles of society. For a long time Soviet publications and schools stated: science has proven that Christ is a myth.

Using the Draves method, the witty Frenchman Prevost proved with even greater logical convincing that Napoleon is a French folk myth about the power and incinerating power of the Sun. Indeed! He rose in the east of France (born on the island of Corsica), set in Atlantic Ocean(died on St. Helena), had twelve marshals, which means twelve signs of the Zodiac. He even resurrected - the famous 100 days of Napoleon. They believed Draves, - some perceived Prevost’s work as a parody of Draves’s work, - Napoleon was too close, - for most this work remained unknown. The sophisticated and caustic Celsus (late 2nd century), in his major work against Christianity, did not dare to assert that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist: Jesus Christ was too close for his era. In all the anti-Christian literature of the last two or three centuries, the only thing new is the complete denial of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, and at the same time that of Pilate.

Thus, it can be argued that the discovery of the image of Christ on the Shroud of Turin is a miracle that meets the needs of the time: “You claim that Jesus of Nazareth, Christ is a myth, but I appear to you to support your wavering faith,” it seems to say Christ who loves us.

Secondo Pia perceived the appearance of Christ on a photographic plate as a miracle. He sat in reverence before the Image that appeared to him all night: “Christ has come to our house.” On that memorable night, he clearly understood that the Shroud was not made by hands, that not a single artist of antiquity, without any ideas about the negative, could have drawn it, making essentially an almost invisible negative.

Later, the Shroud of Turin was repeatedly photographed in various rays of the spectrum from X-ray to infrared radiation. It was studied by criminologists, forensic experts, doctors, art historians, historians, chemists, physicists, botanists, paleobotanists, and numismatists. International Sindological congresses were convened (from the word sindone, which means shroud).

The Shroud is not made by hands

The belief that the Shroud of Turin is not made by hands, is not the work of an artist, and bears signs of great antiquity has become universal among scientists of different views and nationalities. Picky criminologists did not find anything on the Shroud that would refute the gospel story about the suffering, death on the cross, burial and resurrection of Christ; her research only complements and clarifies the narratives of the four evangelists (4). Someone called the Shroud of Turin the “Fifth Gospel.”

The Shroud of Turin confirms the truth of the saying of the English thinker Francis Bacon (1561-1626), that little knowledge moves away from God, and great knowledge brings us closer to Him. Many scientists, based on a careful and comprehensive study of the Shroud, recognized the fact of the resurrection of Christ and from atheists became believers. One of the first was an atheist and freethinker, professor of anatomy in Paris Barbier, who understood, as a doctor and surgeon, that Christ came out of the Shroud without unrolling it, as He passed through closed doors after the resurrection. Only a few specialists who studied the Shroud did not accept the resurrection of Christ due to extra-scientific reasons: there was no resurrection because it cannot exist at all.

And during this growing triumph, at the end of 1988, a sensational message appeared: according to the radiocarbon method, the age of the Shroud of Turin is only 600-730 years, that is, it should be dated not to the beginning of the Christian era, but to the Middle Ages - 1260-1390. The Archbishop of Turin accepted these results and stated that neither he nor the Vatican had ever considered St. The Shroud was a relic, but they treated it like an icon.

Many sighed with relief and gloating: “The myth has been dispelled.” Although it has been repeatedly proven that the Shroud is not made by hand, attempts have again been made to attribute it to the brushes of Leonardo da Vinci or some other great artist (5). In addition, the Shroud reflects such anatomical details human body, which were not known to medieval masters. Finally, there are no traces of paint associated with the image on the Shroud of Turin. Only in one place on the edge was it slightly stained with paint, perhaps when Dürer wrote a copy from it in 1516.

The idea arose that medieval Christian fanatics staged the burial of Christ with one of their fellow believers and thus obtained a miraculous image. Even atheists did not pay attention to this idea because of its absurdity.

In connection with radiocarbon dating, the following questions arise: 1) are the initial analytical data and the calculations made from them correct; 2) how the results of the latter relate to all other data directly or indirectly related to the problem of the origin and age of the Shroud of Turin.

The first fact that clearly speaks in favor of the ancient Middle Eastern origin of the Shroud is the fabric itself - it is linen, woven in a 3 by 1 zigzag pattern. Such fabrics were made in the Middle East, in particular during the 2nd-1st centuries. BC and until the end of the 1st century. according to R.H. and received the name “Damascus”. In earlier and later times they are unknown. They were expensive. The use of Damascus for the Shroud testifies to Joseph’s wealth, as noted in the Gospel (“a rich man from Arimathea” - Matthew 27:57), and his respect for the Crucified One. flax, several cotton fibers of the Western Asian type were found in the fabric.

Accepting radiocarbon calculations of the age of the Shroud and its late Christian European origin, we are obliged to explain where and how it appeared in the 13th-14th centuries. fabric made by a method lost over a thousand years ago. What kind of scientific potential must the “hoaxers” of the Middle Ages have had to provide for all these details, including even the use of cotton threads, which grow only in Western Asia?

The ancient age of the Shroud is confirmed by the imprints of coins that covered the eyes of the Deceased. This is a very rare coin, the “Mite of Pilate”, minted only around 30 AD, on which the inscription “Emperor Tiberius” (TIBEPIOY KAICAPOC) is misspelled: CAICAPOC. Coins with this error were not known to numismatists until the publication of photographs of the Shroud of Turin. Only after this were five similar coins discovered in different collections. “Pilate’s Mite” dates the oldest possible date for the burial to the 30s. according to R.H. It is impossible to assume that the counterfeiters of the Middle Ages figured out (and even physically could) use rare coins of the 1st century to make a forgery. with the rarest of errors.

Thus, the nature of the fabric and the imprint on the Shroud of the “mite of Pilate” make it possible to determine its age between about the thirties and the end of the 1st century. according to R.H., which fits well into the chronology of the New Testament.

Antiquity of the Shroud

The antiquity of the Shroud is also evidenced by the detailed accuracy of the ritual of Roman execution through crucifixion and the Jewish funeral ritual, which became known as a result of archaeological excavations only in recent decades. The remains of a certain Johann, described in detail in the work of J. Wilson, are of particular scientific value. Of course, they did not have such knowledge in the Middle Ages. Some details were presented differently in the Middle Ages; in particular, driving nails not into the palms, as is depicted on icons, including medieval ones, but into the wrist. Let us note that the mark of the nail on the Shroud exactly corresponds in shape and size to the shape and size of the nail kept in the Church of the Holy Cross in Rome and, according to legend, is one of the nails with which Christ was crucified. To create a forgery, did the forgers really study nails from different eras and different purposes, or, knowing about the nail from the Church of the Holy Cross, drew the corresponding wounds or made similar nails to crucify their victim?

Opponents of the ancient origin of the Shroud usually appeal to the alleged absence of any reliable historical references to the Shroud before 1353, when it was exhibited in the temple of the town of Lirey. However, in Byzantium, unlike Western Europe, they knew well about it and treated it as the greatest shrine. Numerous historical documents testify to this. In the ancient Mozarabic liturgy, which, according to legend, dates back to the holy Apostle James, the brother of the Lord, it says: “Peter and John hurried together to the tomb and saw on the shrouds clear traces left by the One who died and rose again.”

According to legend, the Shroud was kept for some time by the holy Apostle Peter (6), and then passed from student to student. In the writings of the pre-Constantine era, it is practically not mentioned, because it was too large a shrine and information about it could serve as a reason for the pagan authorities to search for it and lead to its destruction. At that time, all objects of Christian worship were frequently destroyed, especially books and, first of all, the Gospels, which were hidden in secret places and brought into prayer meetings for reading only on short time {7}.

After the triumph of Christianity under Emperor Constantine, references to the Shroud are quite numerous.

It is known that the sister of Emperor Theodosius II, Saint Pulcheria, in 436 placed the Shroud of Christ in the Basilica of the Most Holy Theotokos in Blachernae, near Constantinople. Saint Braulin, Bishop of Zaragoza, mentions the Holy Shroud in his letter.

In 640, Arnulf, Bishop of Gaul, in describing his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, mentions the Holy Shroud and gives its exact measurement. About the stay of the Holy Shroud in Jerusalem in the first years of the 9th century. Epiphanius of Monaco testifies. Return of the Holy Shroud from Constantinople to Jerusalem in the 7th century. apparently connected with the development of iconoclasm in Byzantium (635-850) and the danger of its destruction.

At the end of the 11th century. information about the Holy Shroud from Constantinople appears again. Emperor Alexius Comnenus, in a letter to Robert of Flanders, mentions that “among the most precious relics of the Savior are the Funeral Cloths found in the Tomb after the Resurrection.” There is also a mention of the “bloody Shroud of Christ” in the “Catalog of Constantinople Relics” by the rector of the Icelandic monastery Nikolai Somundarsen for 1137. According to the testimony of Bishop William of Tire, in 1171 Emperor Manuel Komnenos showed him and King Amorin I of Jerusalem the Holy Shroud of Christ, which was then kept in the Basilica of Boukleona in Constantinople.

Of particular value is the message of Nicholas Mazarite, who saved the Holy Shroud from fire during the riot of the imperial guard in 1201. “Funeral Robes of the Lord. They are made of linen and still smell fragrant with the anointing; they resisted decomposition because they covered and clothed the naked, myrrh-strewn Body of the Infinite in death.” Mazarite was struck by the fact that Christ on the Shroud was completely naked - no Christian artist could take such liberty.

Evidence of the disappearance of the Shroud from Constantinople during the defeat of the city in 1204 by the crusaders is given by the chronicler of the IV Crusade, Robert de Clary: “And among others there was a monastery known under the name of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Blachernae, where the Shroud with which our Lord was wrapped was kept. Every Friday this Shroud was carried out and raised for worship so well that it was possible to see the Face of our Lord. And no one, be it Greek or Frank, knew what happened to this Shroud after the defeat and plunder of the city.”

After the disappearance of the Shroud from Constantinople, its history is full of events. Now she found herself in obscurity, now she appeared from nowhere; she was kidnapped and burned repeatedly. All the vicissitudes of her fate have now been traced in detail by historians (8).

A study of the composition of pollen collected from the fabric of the Shroud of Turin and studied by the botanist Frey, with a report in Albuquerque in 1977, confirms the presence of the Holy Shroud in Palestine and its transfer to Byzantium and Europe. The pollen composition is dominated by either Palestinian forms proper, or those found in addition to the environs of Jerusalem and in neighboring countries (39 species out of 49). European forms are represented by single species. Frey's findings are in good agreement with historical information about the movement of the Shroud. The corresponding maps have been published in scientific publications.

The results of these studies exclude the European origin of the Shroud of Turin. It is impossible to assume that medieval falsifiers, having no idea about modern palynological analysis (the study of spores and pollen) and fearing revelations by descendants, traveled from Europe to Jerusalem and collected pollen from plants growing only in the vicinity of this city.

Thus, based on the entire body of evidence, summarized in five points, the age of the Shroud of Turin is dated very clearly: from 30 to 100 AD, and its Middle Eastern origin cannot be in doubt. This is contradicted only by the data of calculations of its age based on radiocarbon analysis.

Let us consider the reliability and validity of the radiocarbon chronology method in relation to the Shroud of Turin. Let us first note that gross errors in determining the concentration of C14 in her tissue are excluded: the analyzes were carried out by three independent laboratories equipped with modern equipment and staffed by highly qualified specialists. The only question that can arise is about the reliability of the radiocarbon chronology method itself and the possibility of its application to such an object as the Shroud of Turin.

The radiocarbon dating method was developed in the mid-50s. V. Libby and is based on measuring the activity of carbon C14. The latter, according to modern concepts, is formed in high layers of the atmosphere as a result of the action of cosmic rays on nitrogen atoms N14. Oxidized to C14O2, it enters the general carbon cycle. Due to good mixing of the atmosphere, the content of the C14 isotope in different geographical latitudes and at different absolute levels it is almost the same.

During photosynthesis, C14, along with other carbon isotopes, enters plants. When an organism dies, it stops extracting new portions of carbon from the air. As a result, due to radioactive decay, the ratio of C14 to stable carbon isotopes in his tissues changes. Since the decay rate is a constant value, then by measuring the content of this isotope in total number carbon, the age of the sample can be calculated using the appropriate formulas.

The results of such a calculation will be plausible under the following assumptions:
• the isotopic composition of the atmosphere during the life of the sample was close to the modern one;
• the isotopic system of the sample at that time was in equilibrium with the atmospheric one;
• the isotope system of the sample after the death of the organism was closed and did not undergo any changes under the influence external factors local or temporary significance. These three assumptions are the boundary conditions for the applicability of the radiocarbon chronology technique.

However, there are a number of factors that planetarily or locally influence the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and in plant and other tissues, and therefore complicate and limit the use of the radiocarbon method in chronology.

Artificial or natural radio emission. Neutrons released in nuclear and thermonuclear reactions, as well as cosmic rays, act on N14 and convert it into radiocarbon. From 1956 to August 1963, the content of C14 in the atmosphere doubled. A sharp increase in C14 began after thermonuclear explosions in 1962. Changes in the strength of the Earth's magnetic field affect the intensity of bombardment of its atmosphere by cosmic rays, which affects the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere and vegetation.

Changes in solar activity also affect the C14 content according to an inverse relationship.

There is a connection between the concentration of C14 and supernova explosions, and the study historical documents and tree rings showed significant changes in its content over time. Even meetings were convened on the problem of “Astrophysical phenomena and radiocarbon.” The influence of volcanic gases near their outlets on the specific content of C14 was noted by L.D. Sulerzhitsky and V.V. Cherdantsev (9).

Fuel combustion has a significant impact on the C14 content in the atmosphere. Thus, the combustion of fossil fuels, that is, very ancient fuels formed many millions of years ago, during which almost all radioactive carbon C14 decayed, leads to a decrease in its specific concentration in the atmosphere (the so-called Suess effect). As a result, due to the combustion of fossil fuels, the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere will decrease by 20% by 2010. And when soot from the combustion of newer objects penetrates into ancient objects, the age of the first ones, determined by the radiocarbon method, turns out to be less than the actual one.

Since it is often very difficult to take into account all the factors that can disturb the state of isotopic systems (not only carbon ones), in geology, for example, where isotope chronology methods are used very widely, an entire control system has been developed to obtain reliable methods for determining age. In a number of cases, age calculations using radiochronological methods give clearly absurd values ​​that contradict the entire available body of geological and paleontological data. In such cases, the obtained “absolute chronology” figures must be disregarded as clearly unreliable. Sometimes the discrepancies between geochronological determinations by different radioisotope methods reach tenfold values.

Shroud. Doubts and questions

In 1989, the British Science and Technology Council tested the accuracy of radiocarbon dating (see New Scientist, 1989, 8). To evaluate the accuracy of this method, 38 laboratories from around the world were involved. They were given samples of wood, peat, carbon dioxide salts, the age of which was known only by the organizers of the experiment, but not by the analysts. Satisfactory results were obtained only in 7 laboratories; in the rest, errors reached two, three, or more multiples. When comparing data obtained by different researchers and using various variations of identification technology, it became clear that errors in determining age are associated not only with inaccuracies in determining the radioactivity of a sample, as was previously thought, but also with the technology of preparing the sample for analysis. Distortions in diagnostics occur when the sample is heated, as well as during certain methods of its preliminary chemical treatment.

Everything suggests that age calculations using the radiocarbon method must be treated very carefully, be sure to compare the results obtained with other data.

From the above reasoning, it is clear why among specialists who use radiochronological data in their daily work, radiocarbon dating of the age of the Shroud of Turin raises many doubts and questions.

The boundary conditions for the applicability of radioisotope chronology were formulated above. Let us consider to what extent they are observed in relation to the Shroud of Turin, given its history.

The history of the Shroud documents events in which its fabric was supposed to be contaminated with younger carbon. In 1508, the Shroud was solemnly brought out for worship by the people and, in order to prove its authenticity (that the Shroud is “still the same,” unwritten), they boiled it in oil for a long time, heated it, washed it and rubbed it a lot, but they could not remove and destroy the prints. In this case, contamination could occur due to oil carbon; In addition, as a result of heating, the equilibrium of the isotope system could be disrupted. The Shroud burned repeatedly, or at least caught fire in 1201, 1349, 1532, 1934. Traces of these fires are clearly visible on it, including even traces of drops of molten silver burning through the fabric.

In this case, contamination of the Shroud could have occurred due to carbon deposited on it in the soot from objects of different ages burning around it. However, as calculations show, in order to shift the isotopic ratios of the tissue of the beginning of our era so much that at present its age would be rejuvenated by 1200-1300 years, in the 16th century. it was necessary to replace 20-35% of its composition, which neither boiling nor fires could do.

Physicist J. Carter suggested that the image on the Shroud is the result of its radioactive irradiation by the body of the deceased. Through experiments, he managed to obtain similar prints on the canvas. Question: What causes the radioactivity of the Shroud? It was hypothesized that it was caused by the Resurrection of Christ, which was accompanied by some kind of nuclear processes. Of course it wasn't an explosion atomic bomb, after which shadows of disappeared objects remained on the walls of buildings. As a result of these processes, Christ was resurrected into new flesh: he began to pass through “closed doors,” which he had not done before, etc. This assumption is also supported by the fact that what is invisible on the Shroud with the naked eye becomes visible in photographs (10 ).

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If indeed the Resurrection of Christ was accompanied by some kind of nuclear reactions, then the isotopic ratios of the Shroud should be disrupted in the direction of a significant increase in the C14 content, that is, when trying to date it using the radiocarbon method, an error in the direction of a sharp “rejuvenation” of age is inevitable. With this assumption, the appearance of the image and the sharp enrichment of the tissue with the indicated isotope are a consequence of the same cause - the Resurrection.

A number of researchers have expressed doubts about the reliability of the results of determining the age of the Shroud of Turin using radiocarbon chronology methods, sometimes offering very dubious explanations for the supposed rejuvenation of the tissue.

The following conclusions logically follow from the materials under consideration:

The fabric of the Shroud of Turin is a material that is by no means favorable for radiocarbon dating, since it cannot be considered throughout its history as a strictly isolated system that was not subjected to external influences. The study of fabric and coin prints makes it possible to date the age of the Shroud with sufficient certainty in the range of 30-100 years. according to R.H. The Shroud of Turin is of Middle Eastern rather than European origin. The sharp enrichment of the canvas of the Shroud of Turin C14 and the appearance of the image, based on modern scientific ideas, most likely is a consequence of radiation at the moment of the Resurrection of Christ.

The last of the four conclusions should naturally raise doubts among the unbelieving reader. Yes, and believing Christians are accustomed to believing that the fact of the Resurrection of Christ is an object of pure faith, purely internal religious experiences, which can hardly have a natural scientific explanation. However, the Shroud of Turin bears strong evidence of the Resurrection of Christ.

As the forensic medical examination of the Shroud established, the body of the Deceased had many intravital bleeding wounds from the crown of thorns, from beating with whips and a stick, as well as post-mortem effusions from perforation by a spear, which, according to doctors, pierced the pleura, lung and damaged the heart. In addition, there are traces of the outpouring of blood at the time of the removal from the cross and the placement of the Most Pure Body on the Shroud.

The terrible traces of bodily suffering were miraculously captured on the Holy Shroud. Christ was beaten a lot. They beat me on the head with sticks and broke the bridge of my nose. By studying the Shroud, scientists were able to determine even the thickness of the stick that damaged the Sufferer’s nose. Thanks to forensic medical examination, we know about the torment of Jesus Christ even more and in more detail than they are told about in the Gospel.

What does the Shroud say?

They also beat Him with whips. As the Shroud testifies, two warriors were scourged: one tall, another lower. Each whip in their hands had five ends, in which sinkers were sewn in so that the lashes would grip the body more tightly, and, when pulled away from it, they would tear the skin. According to forensic experts, Christ was tied to a pole by his upstretched arms and beaten first on the back, and then on the chest and stomach.

After finishing the beating, they laid him on Jesus Christ heavy cross and ordered to carry him to the place of the upcoming crucifixion - Golgotha. This was the custom: the condemned themselves carried the instruments of their painful execution.

The shroud imprinted a deep mark from the heavy beam of the cross on the right shoulder of Christ. Christ, physically exhausted and exhausted, repeatedly fell under the weight of His burden. During the fall, his knee was broken, and the heavy beam of the cross hit His back and legs. Traces of these falls and blows are imprinted, according to expert testimony, on the fabric of the Shroud. Forensic medical experts came to the conclusion that in less than 40 hours the post-mortem process stopped, because otherwise the preservation of blood stains, lymph, etc. would have been significantly different: by the fortieth hour of contact, all prints would have blurred beyond recognition. From the Gospel we know that Christ was resurrected 36 hours after His burial.

Forensic scientists and doctors noticed that the body of the Crucified One was separated from all blood clots, from all hardenings of ichor and pericardial fluid, without disturbing any of them. And every doctor, every nurse They know how difficult it is to remove bandages from dried wounds. Removing bandages can be a very difficult and painful process. Until recently, dressings were sometimes considered worse than surgery. Christ came out of the Shroud without unrolling it. He came out of it the same way as after the Resurrection he walked through closed doors. The stone from the tomb was rolled away not for Christ, but so that the myrrh-bearing women and disciples of the Lord could enter the tomb.

How could the disappearance of the Body from the Shroud occur without its unfolding and the tearing of the wounded body from the cloth? It was this fact-question that made the atheist and freethinker professor of comparative anatomy I. Delage and the atheist professor of surgery P. Barbier believe in Christ and become apologists and preachers of the Shroud. Having become acquainted with the research materials, the unbelieving Sorbonne professor Ovelag plunged into deep thought and suddenly whispered with an enlightened face: “My friend, He really has risen!” Having begun to study the Shroud, the unbelieving Englishman Wilson became a Catholic in the process of his research. Thus, both medical forensic and isotopic studies of the Shroud of Turin lead to the recognition of the fact of the Resurrection of Christ. Does everyone accept this?

Forensic, criminological evidence of the Resurrection is accepted by the overwhelming majority of Sindologists. Some experts believe that the Resurrection could not have happened because it is completely impossible. They believe that to explain the intactness and non-unfolding of the Shroud at the moment of removal of the Body from it, other rationalistic (that is, materialistic-atheistic) explanations are necessary.

As has been shown, radiocarbon chronology cannot be applied to the Shroud of Turin as it contradicts the entire complex of well-connected historical data on its age. The high content of C14 in it, as well as the image itself, in our opinion, along with other data, testify to the resurrection of Christ.

There is a deep meaning in the aphorism: “The empty tomb of Christ was the cradle of the Church.” The Savior never spoke about His suffering and death without mentioning His Resurrection.

The preaching of the apostles is, first of all, a sermon about the Risen Christ. In his first sermon on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, the Apostle Peter said: This Jesus God raised up, of which we are all witnesses (Acts 2:32). And then Paul wrote: If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is also in vain (1 Cor 15:14).

Having experienced the crucifixion and death of their Teacher, the apostles, seeing the risen Christ and meeting Him repeatedly, overcame depression and confusion and were filled with very complete joy. With ardent faith, solid knowledge, personal experience, and the grace of the Holy Spirit received on the day of Pentecost, they brought to the world the preaching that Christ is truly risen and His commandments. He... revealed Himself alive through His suffering with many true proofs,” testifies the Apostle Luke, who, after carefully examining everything, first described everything in order (Luke 1:3).

And here are the conclusions of lawyers and historians. Edward Clarke writes: “I have undertaken a careful examination of the evidence surrounding the events of the third day of Easter. This evidence seems indisputable to me: working in the Supreme Court, I... happen to make verdicts on the basis of evidence that is much less convincing. Conclusions are drawn from evidence, and a truthful witness is always artless and tends to minimize the effect of events. The Gospel testimonies about the Resurrection belong precisely to this kind, and as a lawyer I accept them without reservation as the reports of truthful people about facts that they could confirm” (11).

The author of the three-volume work “History of Rome”, Professor T. Arnold, a sophisticated subversive historical myths and errors, states: “The satisfactory evidence of the life, death and Resurrection of our Lord has been proven repeatedly. They meet the generally accepted rules by which reliable evidence is distinguished from unreliable evidence” (12).

Another researcher, Professor Edwin Selvin, emphasizes: “The resurrection of Christ from the dead on the third day in complete preservation of body and spirit is a fact that seems as reliable as any other confirmed by historical evidence” (13).

To the Apostle Thomas, who doubted His Resurrection, Christ showed the wounds from the nails on his hands and the wound in His ribs and said do not be an unbeliever, but a believer. Thomas exclaimed: My Lord and God! Jesus said to him: You believed because you saw Me; Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed (John 20:29). After all, they are given spiritually experienced heartfelt knowledge of the risen Lord, the victory of life over death, and comprehension of the Eucharist.

Having spent many years collecting materials about the Shroud of Turin and understanding the reasons for the abnormally high content of C14 in its fabric, the author of these lines felt that the words of Christ spoken to the Apostle Thomas no longer applied to him: ... blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed (John 20:29) . I put my fingers into the wounds of the nails and my hand into His side.

And it seems that after so much evidence from both the ancients and the Shroud of Turin, only the one who tries to explain everything in the world with his limited and sinful mind, the one who does not want to know anything, the one whom God prevents from living according to his thoughts, can not recognize the Resurrection of Christ. passions and pride. The famous Bakunin, the idol of youth at the end of the last century, said: “If God exists, He must be banned.”

Shroud. Prohibitions

The shroud was also prohibited. For decades, there has been no public information about her in Soviet Union not received. It was not even mentioned in anti-religious lectures. The first publication about her in the journal “Science and Religion” (1984, #9) appeared only after the editors received “provocative” letters from readers. It contained many fundamentally important omissions. In subsequent years, many small articles are published in the aforementioned journal, as well as in other domestic and foreign publications, in which the most incredible and unfounded explanations are given to individual isolated facts, and the entire body of known data is ignored. One author claims that “the negative was made by lightning,” another that the image arose due to the serious illness of the crucified man, and the third that as a result of the activity of microbes, ignoring the results of studying the “burn effects of tissue.” The idea of ​​an unknown genius artist, the inconsistency of which has been repeatedly emphasized, is extolled again and again. It was argued that the image arose as a result of some bionic or psychic energy according to N.K. Roerich and the yogism of the Deceased. They write something about extrasensory perception. The absurd opinion has already been mentioned that in the Middle Ages, Christian fanatics crucified a certain person to perform a ritual and obtain an image, although nothing is known about such a practice in history. A completely incredible idea arose that Christ did not die on the cross, and He was taken down alive, which is why sweat and human energy imprinted on the Shroud. Jesus of Nazareth, a great ambitious man and actor, in order to leave His name for centuries, decided to do something unusual: he deliberately went to the cross, acted out death and His resurrection. But what about the unexpanded Shroud that amazed Barbier and others? And not only with this.

The unreality of such a point of view was understood by David Friedrich Strauss, who denied the Divinity of Jesus Christ and His resurrection. He wrote:

“It cannot be that a person who was kidnapped from a tomb in a half-dead state, who could not stand on his feet due to weakness, who needed health care, bandages, treatment, and who was in the grip of physical suffering, would suddenly make such an impression on his disciples: the impression of a man who conquered death, the Lord of Life - and it was precisely this impression that became the basis of all future sermons. Such a revival could only weaken the impression He made on them in life and death. At the best, it might impart some elegiac note, but it could in no way transform their grief into enthusiasm, nor raise their respect for Him to religious adoration.”

Just as they did not and do not accept Christ, so they do not accept His Holy Shroud, which clearly testifies to the suffering and Resurrection of our Lord. Some, having seen and studied it, accept faith, while others invent all sorts of false and untenable explanations just to justify their rejection of Christ.

Our faith is not in the Shroud, not in rational knowledge, but in the heart, in reverence and spiritual experience. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” The Shroud is needed for Thomas the Unbeliever. And for those who reject God, she is an unpleasant thorn that must be forgotten. There are people who demanded to stop publishing materials about the Shroud of Turin.

When we Orthodox Christians respond to the jubilant Easter exclamation “Christ is Risen!” We answer “Truly he is risen!”, we testify to our faith, and in the chant “Having seen the Resurrection of Christ,” we testify to our religious, spiritual experience. He is in our worship, our prayers and life, He is in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

LITERATURE

Arutyunov S. A., Zhukovskaya N. L. Shroud of Turin: a body imprint or an artist’s creation? // Science and Life, 1984, ? 12, ss. 102-111.
Butakov N. A. Holy Shroud of Christ. Jordanville (USA), 1968.
Gavrilov M. N. Shroud of Turin: Description and scientific explanation. Brussels, 1992. Isotope Geology. M., 1984.
Isotope dating of vulcanization and sedimentation processes. M., 1985.
Priest Gleb Kaleda. The Holy Shroud and its significance for Christian consciousness and spiritual life // Moscow Church Bulletin, 1991, ? 2.
Priest Gleb Kaleda. The Shroud of Turin and its age // Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, 1992, ? 5.
Libby V.F. Radiocarbon method for determining age // Proceedings of the International Conference on the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy. T. 16. Geneva. M., 1987, pp. 41-64.
McDowell, J. Undeniable evidence (Historical evidence, facts, documents of Christianity). M., 1990.
Radiocarbon. Sat. articles. Vilnius, 1971.
Shroud of Turin // Logos, 1978, ? 21/22, ss. 93-115.
Turkham, Henry. Is the Shroud kept in Turin genuine? Brussels, 1965. Beecher P. A. The Holy Shroud of Turin // Irish Eccl. Rec., 1938, ser. 5, vol. 25, pp. 49-66.
Nydal R. Increase in radiocarbon from the most recent series of three nuclear tests // Nature, 1963, vol. 200, pp. 212-214.
Waliszewski, St. Calun Turynski Dzisial. Krakov, 1987.
Wilson I. The Shroud of Turin. N.Y., 1979.

NOTES

(1) Epigraph translated by Bishop. Cassian (Bezobrazova).
(2) S. Pia published his memoirs of photographing the Shroud of Turin in 1907. Excerpts from them have been quoted by various authors.
(3) Reference to Ps 13:1.
(4) This is noted by all researchers of the Shroud of Turin. Stanislav Waliszewski compiled a table of comparisons between the gospel narratives and the “evidence” of the Shroud of Turin (hereinafter, see the list of references on p. 27).
(5) The authors of such notes in popular magazines do not think about how a medieval artist could paint an image in the form of a negative, when there were no ideas about photography yet, not to mention the psychological and technological difficulties of painting shadows as light; for whom he wrote, what goal he pursued when he embarked on a conscious mystification, as if anticipating all the laws and rules of photography.
(6) Saint Nina, the enlightener of Georgia, spoke about this.
(7) There is an opinion that the Shroud of Jesus Christ was kept for a long time in Edessa (modern southeastern Turkey), with the descendants of King Abgar (Abgar).
{8} Chronological table history of the Shroud of Turin from the 30s. I century before the Sindological conference in 1977 in Albuquerque (USA) gives in his great job J. Wilson.
(9) See collection of articles “Radiocarbon” (Vilnius, 1971).
(10) Let us recall that radioactivity was discovered by Becquerill thanks to traces on an unexposed photographic plate.
(11) McDowell, J. Undeniable evidence (Historical evidence, facts, documents of Christianity). M., 1990, p. 175.
(12) Ibid.
(13) Ibid., p. 174.

Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences V. SURDIN.

For centuries, this inconspicuous piece of fabric has haunted believers and non-believers, scientists and clergy, journalists and criminologists. From time to time, disputes flare up about what the Shroud of Turin actually is - a Christian shrine or a fake? A miraculous work or an artist's canvas? No one doubts that this is a document of the era, but it is not clear which one? Doubts are being expressed: is it possible to restore true story subject? The journal “Science and Life” has already addressed this topic more than once (see No. 12, 1984; No. 3, 1989; No. 5, 1996). The controversy continues unabated; Not only theologians, but also scientists participate in them. We bring to the attention of readers an article (with minor abbreviations and changes) from the bulletin “In Defense of Science,” published by the commission to combat pseudoscience and falsification of scientific research of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Science and life // Illustrations

Shroud of Turin. A negative photographic image looks like a positive one.

Image of the head in a positive photo (right) and in a negative photo (left).

Photograph of one of the supposed blood stains on the shroud (right).

Preparation of the shroud for the 1998 exhibition.

Tab. 1. Dating results of the Shroud of Turin.

Just a few years ago, I had no idea about the enormous scale of the debate that unfolded around the Shroud of Turin. All this was very far from my profession - astronomy. But, as it turned out, the focus of the Shroud of Turin intersected not only historical and theological, but also scientific problems. In this article I will briefly talk about them, as well as about some historical and detective episodes accompanying the scientific investigation of this phenomenon.

MYSTERIOUS BLANKET

In the Italian city of Turin, in the Church of St. John, a piece of linen 4.36 m long and 1.09 m wide is kept, in which, according to legend, Jesus Christ was wrapped after being taken down from the cross. The fabric seems to be saturated with pollen and seems to outline faint outlines of flowers, leaves and other parts of plants. On the fabric there are two plain reddish-brown images of a person (front and back views). Without a doubt, the depiction is of a man about 1.8 m tall. Judging by the wounds on the head, arms and legs, it can be concluded that he suffered crucifixion. The nature of the wounds depicted suggests that the man was wearing a wreath of branches with thorns, that he was beaten with sticks and whips, and that he was pierced in the side with a spear. All these tortures, according to the New Testament, were endured by Jesus.

For centuries the painting was the property of the Savoy dynasty. The earliest information about it dates back to approximately 1350: there is written evidence that the owner of the painting was the French knight Geoffroy de Charny, who participated in the Crusades. In 1453, his granddaughter, Margaret of Charny, sold the coverlet to Louis and Anne of Savoy, who first kept it in Chambery and then in Piedmont. In 1532, during a fire, the cover was damaged by molten silver. In 1578 it was transported to where it is kept today - to Turin. In 1983, after the death of the last king of Italy, Umberto II, the shroud came into the possession of the Catholic Church.

The mysterious painting aroused distrust even at the time when it was first presented to the public. This happened in 1355, when Geoffroy de Charny gave the shroud to be displayed to the public in the parish of Liray, southeast of Paris. Soon the place was flooded with pilgrims. In honor of the event, special medallions were made.

Doubts about the authenticity of the shroud are evidenced by archival documents collected by the French priest Ulysses Chevalier and published in 1900 in the essay “A Critical Study of the Origin of the Holy Shroud of Liray-Chambery-Turin.” They say that there was an artist who created the mysterious painting, and that the owner of the shroud could not provide plausible information about how he acquired the shroud. The following fact is also cited: in 1389, the French bishop Pierre Darcy reported to the pope that the church was profiting from a veil painted in a “cunning way.”

WHO IS PICTURED ON THE CANVAS?

In the 20th century, the shroud was exhibited for public viewing several times; her last shows were held in 1978, 1998 and 2000. After the 1978 exhibition, limited research access to the shroud was allowed. Then a group of scientists, mainly from the United States, carried out the first comprehensive examination of the relic. It was concluded that the shroud depicts a real figure of a man subjected to lashing and crucifixion. The blood stains were noted to contain hemoglobin. For believers in the historical authenticity of the shroud, this became a powerful argument in favor.

However, the Catholic Church has never done official statement regarding the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. During the public display of the Shroud in Turin on May 24, 1998, Pope John Paul II said: “The Shroud challenges our intellect. She reveals her innermost message only to those who are closest to her with their humble and at the same time lively mind. Its mysterious glow raises questions about the origin and life of a historical figure - Jesus of Nazareth. And since this has nothing to do with questions of faith, the church cannot take upon itself the courage to answer them. She entrusts science with the task of investigating what happened to the linen in which, according to legend, the body of our Savior was wrapped. And the church insists that the results of the study of the shroud be presented to the public. She invites scientists to work with a sense of inner independence and at the same time with attention to the feelings of believers.”

However, many believers treat the Shroud of Turin as a holy relic. For the 1998 exhibition, several books were published, the authors of which tried to prove the authenticity of the veil in the sense of its involvement in the biography of Christ. These researchers call the shroud the word “Sindon”, and themselves - Sindonologists. "Sindon" is a word of Greek origin that originally meant a piece of cloth that could also be used as a shroud, which distinguishes it from a face scarf for wiping away sweat. (Another interpretation of this name is based on the supposed place of origin of the shroud, which was called Sidon.) Among supporters of the authenticity of the shroud, the main role is played by the STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) group from the USA, created in the 1970s by John Jackson and Eric Jumper.

Sindonologists believe that after being taken down from the cross, Jesus was placed on a blanket, in which he was then wrapped. Therefore, the outline of the body was imprinted on the canvas. Salzburg theology professor Wolfgang Waldstein offers another explanation. He claims that Christ “left his church an image: since there were no press photographers then, he performed a miracle. At the moment of his resurrection on Easter morning, he produced a flash of light, a flash of enormous energy."

To prove that it is Jesus Christ who is depicted on the veil, Sindonologists refer to a large number of signs that are consistent with biblical information. Fans of the shroud also point to other objects with the image of Christ that existed before the 14th century: coins, medallions... They are convinced: the similarity of the depicted faces of Christ proves that even before the 14th century the Shroud of Turin was used as an original for making coins and other works of art.

However, skeptics disagree. If you look closely, they say, the similarity between ancient images of Christ and the imprint on the shroud is not that great. The only coincidence is that everywhere a long-haired, bearded man is depicted. In addition, the question arises: was the bedspread itself created based on some artistic original? In other words, all coincidences can be explained by the commonality of traditions and the desire to preserve them. Even the great theologian Augustine complained that there was no way to know what Jesus looked like. Over time, artists' ideas about the appearance of Christ changed. Until the 3rd century, Jesus was depicted with short hair and no beard. And only later did images of a bearded, long-haired Christ appear. The image on the Shroud of Turin corresponds quite accurately to the traditions of 14th century art. The fact that single-color images were fashionable at the time strengthens the assumption that we are dealing here with the work of an artist.

Of course, art historical analysis is a delicate and ambiguous matter. However, such an analysis was carried out by an Italian commission created in 1973. She concluded that it was "the work of an artist." Art historians believe that the appearance of the image on the shroud corresponds to the ideas accepted after 1300. Historians agree with them; they note that in biblical times, Jews buried their dead with their arms crossed over their chests. Hands folded over the genitals, as depicted on the shroud, first appeared in paintings from the 11th century and were a concession to the prudery of the time. The dead in the time of Christ were buried naked, circumcised and shaved, which also does not correspond to the image on the shroud.

IMAGE TECHNIQUE

The question of how the image was obtained is, of course, the most important. Research in this direction began more than a hundred years ago. A member of the Turin city council, lawyer and amateur photographer Secondo Pia photographed the Turin canvas on May 28, 1898 using a camera on 50 (60 cm) plates. Developing the plates in a darkroom under red light, he noticed a stunning effect: on the negative, all the details were visible much more more clearly than on the positive. The negative itself looked like a positive photograph, which suggests that the image on the shroud is precisely a negative. Many contemporaries did not trust Pia and considered the young art of photography to be charlatanism. But today, the discovery of Pia serves as the main argument among sindonologists supernaturalism of the shroud.

The negative effect can be explained without involving supernatural forces. A painting technique known as "negative image" was used in the Middle Ages. Everyone knows that if you press paper against a coin and rub it with a pencil, you can get a “negative” of the coin. If you use a bas-relief (or a real human body) as a “positive”, then obtaining such an image using the then existing means looks quite probable. However, the image on the Shroud of Turin is not a true negative. If it was a real negative, the dark hair and blood should have looked light in the negative.

In addition, if we accept the hypothesis that the Shroud of Turin actually recorded the original body of Christ, then a number of absurdities are striking:

When the blanket lies on the human body, it adheres to the surface of the body. Consequently, if you remove and lay out the bedspread, the usual proportions of the body will be distorted in the image. For example, the imprint on the part that envelops the face will be wider than the face as we see it from the front. But there are no such distortions on the shroud;

There are absolutely no empty spaces that should appear due to folds. The image is too smooth to be genuine;

The imprint of bloody feet on the bedspread does not geometrically correspond to the position of the legs. The feet of a lying person are usually pointed upward, but here the soles of the feet are on the blanket, and then the knees should be bent;

The hair of the man depicted on the Shroud of Turin does not fall down, as is the case with a lying person, but frames his face, as in paintings;

Hands and fingers of different lengths; so, one arm is 10 cm longer than the other;

The blood flows as it does in the paintings of second-rate painters: along a small groove, and does not clot, which would be natural. Anyone who has ever had blood on their clothes knows what stains form. Over time they turn black. And the “blood” on the bedspread is still red.

In the book “Jesus did not die on the cross” (1998), journalists E. Gruber and H. Kersten tried to provide experimental evidence that the image could be obtained by the “evaporation” method. Kersten, having been in the sauna, smeared himself with oil and lay down under a linen blanket. An imprint of one side of his body appeared, but without facial features. Judging by the photographs in the book, the print clearly shows that it was taken from a three-dimensional original, for example, there is a definite extension in the hip area. There are no signs of “three-dimensionality” on the Shroud of Turin.

BLOOD OR PAINT?

This question is considered by many to be the most important, but it is also the most confusing. Two chemical analyzes of the fabric and the substance on it were undertaken with the consent of the Catholic Church back in the 1970s. The first analysis was carried out by an Italian commission in 1973 and concluded that it was “the work of an artist.” A reddish granular substance was found on the tissue. All special blood tests were negative.

During the second analysis, in 1978, experts placed 32 adhesive strips on the shroud and then carefully tore them off: 14 strips were taken from the areas of the shroud located around the image of Jesus, 12 strips were glued to the image itself, and 6 were on the “bloody” areas. spots. The strips were cut into two pieces, and one set was given to microanalyst Walter McCrone and the other to Ray Rogers, who examined the particles of matter and fibers of the bedspread adhering to the strips.

McCron found no traces of blood. But he managed to find iron oxide (ferrous ochre) and cinnabar. The old masters obtained this second component from mercury sulfide and used it as a scarlet pigment. Ferrous ocher is only present in the image area itself and is not present in the control areas of the bedspread. And mercury sulphide paint is found exclusively in “bloody” areas. The fact that cinnabar was often used to depict blood in 13th- and 14th-century painting reinforces the idea of ​​the veil as a work of art. All this strengthened McCron's opinion that the bedspread had been in the artist's studio. But since he considered the antique origin of the bedspread to be possible, he concluded that the paint was used additionally for a more expressive restoration of the yellowed stains left by the body on the bedspread. In his 1999 book The Shroud of Turin, McCron gives the following: funny case: His wife, also a researcher, was studying a glue strip from an old French painting. The results of her analysis were so similar to the results of the analysis of the shroud that McCron initially assumed that the wife had accidentally mixed up her stripes with stripes from the shroud in the laboratory. After all, the painting under study was precisely from the country where the Shroud of Turin suddenly appeared in the 14th century. Facts gradually persuaded McCron to believe that the shroud was a man-made product.

However, work on the chemical analysis of the shroud continued: Victor Tryon from the University of Texas in 1998 announced that he had discovered blood on the Shroud of Turin. This was previously stated by Alan Adler and John Geller, members of the STURP group. In fact, they provided evidence of iron and protein on the tissue. But these substances are part of tempera, a water-soluble paint made from egg yolks and iron-containing pigments. The decisive factor here is the fact that no other essential components of blood could be found on the tissue, for example potassium, which is three times more abundant in the blood than iron. However, later reports appeared that traces of DNA were found on the bedspread. The presence of DNA can, of course, indicate the presence of blood, but this is a very weak witness. After so many people have handled the bedspread over the centuries, it would be a miracle if there were no traces of human touch left on it.

I think you will agree with me that the history of research into the Turin blanket is fascinating, like a true detective story. It combines the finest scientific techniques of physicists, biologists and even botanists: fabric, dyes and tiny particles pollen stuck in the threads of fabric and capable of indicating the route of travel of the fabric. From the huge number of publications, it is difficult to single out reliable and unbiased ones, since research is influenced by the tension associated with the clash of interests of fanatics and scientists, church and science. The above is only a small part of what I learned about the Shroud of Turin during a short time my interest in her. Anyone interested in the details of her story can easily find them in the literature. And if you use the Internet and type two words into a search engine - “Shroud of Turin”, then the computer will rain down megabytes of information on you. The purpose of this article of mine is different...

When I first became acquainted with the “Turin problem,” I, as a normal graduate of the physics department of Moscow State University, immediately asked myself: “Is it really impossible to objectively measure the age of the canvas and thus try to solve the problem of falsification in one fell swoop? If the painting is not 2000 years old, then it has no connection with biblical stories - it is a fake. And if it is 2000 years old, then it is truly a unique historical monument worthy of attention and deep study.” Having asked myself this question, I quickly discovered that I was not the only one “so smart”: it is the problem of the age of the Turin painting that is now considered the most important and attracts the attention of both serious and not entirely serious scientists.

AGE OF THE CANVAS

Modern scientific methods offer many ways to date a historical monument: physical-chemical, archaeological, art history, theological (correlating biblical texts with the image on the canvas) and others. But to me, as a natural scientist, the physicochemical radiocarbon method, based on the decay of a radioactive carbon isotope and long ago adopted by historians and archaeologists, seems most reliable. The gist of it is this. In the earth's atmosphere, carbon atoms are present in the form of three isotopes: 12 C, 13 C and 14 C. The light isotopes 12 C and 13 C are stable, and the heavy isotope 14 C is radioactive, with a half-life of 5730 years. However, its content in the Earth's atmosphere remains approximately constant (one atom of 14 C per 1000 billion atoms of 12 C), since the isotope 14 C is constantly formed in the atmosphere from nitrogen atoms under the influence of cosmic rays. Plants, animals and other organisms that maintain gas exchange with the atmosphere absorb 14 C and during life contain it in approximately the same proportion as the earth's atmosphere. But when an organism dies, its exchange with the atmosphere stops, 14 C is no longer absorbed by tissues and its content begins to slowly decrease as a result of radioactive decay. If you measure the ratio of 14 C to 12 C in a sample, you can determine the age of the sample, more precisely, the time that has passed since its death. The fewer 14 C atoms left, the older the object.

Of course, the detailed technology for applying the method is not so simple. In principle, if the initial 14 C content was known, the age of the sample could be directly calculated based on the law of radioactive decay. But first you need to make sure that the sample is not contaminated with later carbon. Then you need to take into account that the atmospheric content of 14 C fluctuates, since hard cosmic radiation is not constant; in addition, there are variable sources of carbon (for example, volcanoes, and in modern world- combustion of coal and oil), affecting the relative content of 14 C. To get rid of these inaccuracies, the method is calibrated using wood samples whose age is accurately known from their growth rings.

Thus, age determination occurs in three stages:

1. The sample is cleaned from random, later impurities.

2. The content of carbon isotopes is measured and, using the decay law, the so-called radiocarbon age (tied to 1950) is calculated, which is calculated in “yr.BP” (years before present) values. But this radiocarbon age is not considered as the true age of the sample, but acts only as a measure of the 14 C content. And it does not matter that instead of the real half-life of 5730 years, the so-called Libby half-life is used (named after the creator of this method, Willard Libby), taken equal to 5568 years.

3. Based on the radiocarbon age, using a calibration curve, the calendar date of the sample is determined, which is given in the usual values: years AD or BC.

All these details have long been known to specialists; Isotopic ratios are calibrated across the entire historical time scale using confidently dated samples, including historical sites. The radiocarbon dating method has no fundamental problems.

It is this method that can most accurately determine the age of the linen Shroud of Turin, as historians and archeologists do in relation to all similar monuments of animals and plant origin. In the 1970s and 1980s, scientists repeatedly asked the shroud's owners for permission to conduct precise dating. However, they were refused on the pretext that the research required using a large amount of bedspread fabric. Indeed, in those years, the measurement of the 14 C isotope was carried out using the traditional method, determining the radioactivity of the sample using a decay counter. But since the activity is low, samples of relatively large mass were required: in relation to textiles - 20-50 grams, and the fabric would have to be crushed. However, then the isotope ratio began to be determined by mass spectrometry, based on the separation of individual atoms in electric and magnetic fields. The sensitivity of mass spectrometry is very high, so it is enough to have a strip of fabric measuring 7 (10 cm) to make 12 measurements. This circumstance facilitated the decision by the Catholic Church in 1988 to determine the age of the shroud.

Initially, seven laboratories were selected for research. Their list is recorded in the so-called Turin Protocol. However, then friction began between scientists and clergy, and the number of laboratories was reduced to three. The researchers feared that possible random errors in the study of one of the samples would give reason to doubt the reliability of the research (seven samples would significantly increase the reliability). Fortunately, all three laboratories obtained similar results, which indicated that the veil originated between 1260 and 1390. We will return to this later.

However, due to deviations from the Turin Protocol, which the church insisted on, the sampling procedure was changed. Scientists were not allowed to be present when the tissue was taken, continuous and documented identification of samples was not carried out, and the procedure was not recorded with a camera. All this inevitably led to doubts. Although the fear that a random deviation from one of the three laboratories would compromise the overall result was not justified, the lack of a flawlessly executed study protocol still gives rise to various speculations (see Table 1).

But let's get back to the research. So, a sample of the shroud measuring several square centimeters was divided into three parts and sent to three independent scientific institutions: to the geophysics laboratory of the University of Arizona (USA); to the Laboratory of Archeology and History of Art at the University of Oxford, which carried out this work jointly with the research laboratory of the British Museum (UK); and also to the Institute of Physics in Zurich (Switzerland). In each of these laboratories, the samples were divided again, purified in different ways, and their carbon composition analyzed. A total of 12 measurements were made. Comparing the results of the three laboratories gave a radiocarbon age of 691% 31 yr.BP (see table). The calendar age obtained using the calibration curve indicates: with 95% probability, the time of origin of the samples lies between 1262 and 1312 or 1353 and 1384 years (here the objective ambiguity of the calibration curve appeared). The age of 2000 years is practically excluded. Let me remind you that the earliest reliable information about the shroud dates back to approximately 1355. None of the radiocarbon dating participants doubt the medieval origin of the shroud. The result strongly supports the hypothesis that the Shroud of Turin is the work of a 14th-century artist. It would seem that the scientific study of the shroud should end here; but, as it turned out, it’s too early to put an end to this story.

IS IT POSSIBLE TO AGING THE SHROUD OF TURIN?

When I decided to write about the latest scientific research on this historical monument, I did not imagine that I would have to conduct an absentee debate with the luminaries of Russian criminology. However, it is difficult to call this a dispute. Judge for yourself...

In 2001, the journal “Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences” published an article “On the issue of dating the Shroud of Turin.” Its authors: Fesenko Anatoly Vladimirovich - Doctor of Technical Sciences, Head of the Institute of Forensic Science; Belyakov Alexander Vasilievich - director Russian Center Shroud of Turin; Tilkunov Yuri Nikolaevich - candidate of chemical sciences, head of department at the Institute of Forensic Sciences; Moskvina Tatyana Pavlovna - Candidate of Chemical Sciences, Head of Department of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. This article expresses doubt about the accuracy of the radiocarbon dating of the shroud carried out by specialists from England, the USA and Switzerland.

The authors of the article indicate that the shroud, which suffered from a fire in 1532, according to historical data, underwent restoration, during which it could have been soaked in vegetable oils and thus introduced into its composition fresh organic material that could significantly change the ratio of carbon isotopes, and therefore reduce it radiocarbon age. Our criminologists have experimentally shown that the method of preparing shroud samples for radiocarbon dating, used, in particular, by Oxford specialists, does not ensure complete removal of dried vegetable oil from the shroud fabric. If from 7.0 to 15.6% oil was added to the fabric (relative to its initial mass), then after processing there could still be from 1.8 to 8.5% oil left in it. This result looks quite plausible, although I cannot judge the accuracy of the numbers. However, the authors of the article further claim that even 5-7% of oil is enough to “shift” the radiocarbon date of the manufacture of the shroud from the “initial” (which the authors a priori consider the year of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ) to the medieval date obtained in the above-mentioned foreign laboratories.

Agree - amazing result! Did the specialists of the three world centers “miss” this possible source of error? Of course not: just open their work to see that they took this possibility into account. Listing the various sources of error that affect the accuracy of radiocarbon dating, they point out that when measuring textile samples, the main danger is contamination, especially from fat, oil or soot, that is more recent than the sample itself. The fact that different samples in each laboratory were cleaned using different methods (including ultrasound), and the results of individual measurements were in good agreement with each other, suggests that the role of contamination was insignificant. In addition, if the shroud was made in the 1st century, then even 10% contamination with oil in 1532 gives an error of about 280 years old, that is, it “rejuvenates” the shroud to the 3rd-4th centuries AD, but not to XIV century. If the fabric was made in the 14th century, then 10% oil contamination in the 16th century would reduce its radiocarbon age by only 40 years. And finally, in order to rejuvenate the shroud by 1300 years - from the era of Jesus Christ to the mid-14th century - it is necessary to saturate the fabric with an amount of oil whose weight is several times greater than the weight of the fabric itself. And this is obvious nonsense.

So what is the find of Russian criminologists? How did they manage to rejuvenate the shroud by 13 centuries with no more than 7% oil contamination? And it’s very simple: they did this through a gross mathematical error, writing the isotope ratio equation in such a form, as if at the moment of contamination only the radioactive carbon isotope 14 C got into the fabric of the shroud, and not a natural mixture of all carbon isotopes! It's hard to believe that this is an accidental mistake. From this equation, the authors calculate what the radiocarbon date of birth of the shroud, created in the early 1st century, would have been if there had been a certain percentage of unaccounted oil contamination (see Table 2).

It was no coincidence that we identified contamination at 8.7%; As we see, it is with this content of unwashed oil that, according to the calculations of our criminologists, the radiocarbon age of the shroud would coincide with the date of its contamination. It doesn’t take much of a scientist to understand that such rejuvenation is only possible if the substance of the ancient tissue is completely replaced by fresh organic substance produced in 1532. Completely, not 8-9%. The last columns of the table look like complete fantasy: with 11.5% contamination produced in the 16th century, the fabric of the shroud should be made today! Well, then she found herself in the era of Jesus Christ... You can’t do without a time machine here!

To tell the truth, I am sorry that our criminologists were not able to have their say in the world “shroudology.” After all, there are probably competent specialists among them, and the task is certainly interesting for them. But how could experienced experts fail to notice such an obvious mistake? I won’t guess, I’m an astrophysicist, not a detective.

For the sake of objectivity, we can recall that in the discussion around the shroud, mistakes and even pitfalls were made before. For example, in 1989, physicist Thomas Phillips of Harvard University's High Energy Laboratory suggested that at the moment of Christ's resurrection, his body emitted a powerful pulse of thermal neutrons (and why not - what do we know about the physics of the resurrection?). At the same time, some nuclei of the 13 C isotope, capturing neutrons, could turn into 14 C nuclei, thus “rejuvenating” the fabric of the shroud from the point of view of radiocarbon studies. Although it was clear to everyone that this idea belonged to the category of “Physicists are joking,” it was carefully analyzed by experts. Arguments have been found, such as the normal isotopic composition of other chemical elements in the tissue, that completely reject this hypothesis.

Sometimes one hears reproaches that serious scientists are trying to brush aside the problem of the Shroud of Turin, that science is not able to unravel the nature of this historical monument. This is strange to hear: any document of the 14th century (and even more so of the 1st century!) is infinitely valuable for science, for the history of culture. That is why scientists are so meticulously striving to establish its authenticity. To establish the true, and not the mythical, history of the Shroud of Turin is the goal of scientific research. Unfortunately, this cultural monument never fully fell into the hands of scientists. But even the little that qualified researchers have been able to do is mentioned by some “commentators” in passing or with obvious distortions. I am sure that over time the mystery of the Shroud of Turin will be solved: scientists have also uncovered not such secrets!

LITERATURE

Arutyunov S., Zhukovskaya N. The Shroud of Turin: a body imprint or an artist’s creation // Science and Life, 1984, No. 12, p. 102.

The face on the shroud // Science and Life, 1996, No. 5, p. 49.

Surdin V.G. Error in solving an elementary problem // Bulletin of the RAS, 72, 2002, No. 6, p. 543-544.

The Shroud of Turin is the creation of an artist // Science and Life, 1989, No. 3, p. 157.

Fesenko A.V., Belyakov A.V., Tilkunov Yu.N., Moskvina T.P. On the issue of dating Shroud of Turin// Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2001, No. 10, p. 915-918.

Chernykh E.N. Biocosmic “clocks” of archeology // Nature, 1997, No. 2, p. 20-32.

Damon P. E., Donahue D. J., Gore B. H., Hatheway A. L., Jull A. J. T., Linick T. W., Sercel P. J., Toolin L. J., Bronk C. R., Hall E. T., Hedges R. E. M., Housley R., Law I. A., Perry C., Bonani G., Trumbore S. ., Woelfli W., Ambers J. C., Bowman S. G. E., Leese M. N., Tite M. S. Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin // Nature, 1989, v. 337, p. 611-615.

G ove H . E. Relic, Icon or Hoax - Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud. - Institute of Physics Publishing. London, 1996.

Gruber E. R., Kersten H. Das Jesus-Komplott. - Langen Mueller, Muenchen, 1992.

Nickell J. (1998a) Inquest on the Shroud of Turin.- Latest Scientific Findings. Prom. Books., Amh., NY.

For the observer, the Shroud of Turin is a piece of ancient canvas (4.3 x 1.1 meters) with a rather vague image of a naked body appearing on it in two projections - from the front with hands folded in front and legs lying flat and from the back - located in such a way as if a person was laid on the lower part of the canvas with his head towards the center, then the fabric was folded in half and covered with it over the body.

The image on the Shroud of Turin is not bright, but quite detailed; it is given in one color - yellowish-brown, of varying degrees of saturation. With the naked eye you can distinguish facial features, beard, hair, lips, fingers. There are traces of blood on the Shroud of Turin, which left numerous wounds on the body. Streams of blood seem to run down the forehead and along the long strands of hair. Bruises from the blows of the whips cover the entire chest, back and even legs. On the wrists and feet there are marks similar to stains of congealed blood leaking from nail wounds. There is a large stain on the side, apparently caused by a deep wound that reached the heart.

Photo of the shroud in ultraviolet rays

It is believed that the image on the Shroud of Turin arose when the body of Jesus Christ, in accordance with the Gospel narrative, was laid in a burial cave. At the same time, His body lay on one half of the Shroud of Turin, and the other half, thrown over His head, covered Him from above.

Christians call a piece of linen fabric the “Fifth Gospel” - because on it, as if in a photograph, the face and body of Christ were amazingly imprinted. Each of the many wounds of Jesus, each drop of blood shed for the salvation of mankind was imprinted!

– This message, which is almost two thousand years old, visibly testifies that everything that is written in the Gospel is true! – says the director of the Russian Center for the Shroud of Turin, physicist Alexander Belyakov. – It brings people the good news of the Savior, of victory over death...

...What militant atheists did not do, trying to declare a unique relic a fake! They stupidly insisted that it was just an artist’s drawing. The examination refuted this version: there really is a mirror imprint of the body on the fabric. Another argument of the skeptics also burst miserably - that a person smeared with paint was wrapped in cloth. There is not ocher on the canvas, but blood. It was possible to detect its components: hemoglobin, bilirubin and albumin. By the way, an increased level of bilirubin indicates that the person died under stress, under torture. The blood group was determined to be IV (AB). Based on the set of chromosomes in leukocytes, the sex was determined - male.

Digital technology has made it possible to recreate the face of Christ

But the strongest argument to prove the authenticity of the shroud was found by experts from the Institute of Forensic Science of the FSB of the Russian Federation - they established that the radiocarbon analysis of the age of the fabric, which was done twenty years ago by laboratories in the UK, USA and Switzerland, to put it mildly, was inaccurate. According to Doctor of Technical Sciences Anatoly Fesenko, who led the research, foreign experts “rejuvenated” the relic by more than a thousand years because they did not take into account the most important circumstance. In the Middle Ages, a terrible fire occurred in the cathedral where the shroud was kept, and soot particles settled on the fabric. Therefore, the instruments recorded not the age of the fabric itself, but the fragments of carbon compounds adhering to it...

The latest research at Oxford has confirmed that the FSB experts were right - the shroud was indeed woven during the life of Christ.

By order of the Vatican, for the first time, an accurate photograph with a resolution of 12.8 billion pixels was taken from it. It depicts the silhouette of the Savior’s body and his appearance down to the smallest detail. The most modern technologies have made it possible to study the greatest shrine in detail.

Scientists photographed thousands of fragments of fabric, and then, like pieces of a puzzle, they used them to create a picture of the shroud on a computer.

Under high magnification, stains of the sacred blood of Jesus are visible

– We stitched together 1600 frames, each the size of credit card, and created a huge photo. It is 1,300 times larger than a photograph taken with a digital camera with a resolution of 10 million pixels, explains Mauro Gavinelli. – Thanks to new technologies, you can see every thread, every detail...

Christ's funeral vestments are rarely unfurled before the faithful. The shroud is kept folded in a silver casket. Over the entire past century, she was taken out only five times! The last time she exhibited before pilgrims in Turin was in 2000. And the next one – in 25 years.

The Shroud of Turin is kept here

Now everyone will be able to look at the many times enlarged image of the Savior, miraculously reflected on the linen cloth - scientists plan to post the digital photo on the Internet. And everyone will be able to join in its study - it will be an amazing day for humanity! People will see with their own eyes the imprint of the body of Jesus Christ.

The Shroud of Turin began to be studied exactly 120 years ago - and precisely thanks to photography. The linen cloth was then photographed by Italian lawyer Secondo Pia. Having developed it, I looked at the negative. And he instantly realized that the lens had captured something that the eye could not see - the imprint of the body of a bearded man whose wrists and feet were pierced. And his face is like on the icons of Christ!

The herringbone linen, woven from Mediterranean linen mixed with Egyptian cotton, retains the image of Jesus wrapped in it - in full height, in the front and in the back. Here is a description made from the image by forensic experts:

“Hair spread out randomly on the cloth, a small beard and mustache. The right eye is closed, the left one is slightly open. There is a drop of blood above the left eyebrow. The nasal bone was broken from a blow on the left side. On the left side of the face above the cheekbone, there are traces of swelling. There is a blood stain to the right of the mouth.”

WHAT IS THE SHROUD

All four canonical Gospels tell us about the Shroud of Jesus Christ. Thus, in the Gospel of Mark we read: Joseph came from Arimathea, a famous member of the council, who himself expected the Kingdom of God. He dared to enter Pilate and asked for the Body of Jesus... He bought a shroud and took Him off, wrapped him in the shroud and laid Him in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock; and rolled the stone to the door of the tomb. Surprising as it may seem, we have good reason to believe that this Shroud, in which Joseph and Nicodemus buried the body of Christ, has survived to this day. In the distant city of Turin in northern Italy, in the Catholic Cathedral, high above the altar, protected by bulletproof glass and an alarm system, sealed in a precious ark, hidden from the eyes of prying eyes, until recently the Shroud of the Savior was kept, which mysteriously bears the image of His crucified body .

To the impartial observer, the Shroud of Turin is a piece of ancient cloth just over four meters long and a meter wide. On this fabric there are two full-length images of a naked male body, located symmetrically to each other, head to head. On one half of the Shroud there is an image of a man with his hands folded in front and his legs lying flat; on the other half - the same body from the back. The image on the Shroud is dim, but quite detailed; it is given in one color: yellowish-brown of varying degrees of saturation. With the naked eye you can distinguish facial features, beard, hair, lips, fingers. Special observation methods have shown that the image completely correctly conveys the features of the anatomy of the human body, which cannot be achieved in images made by the hand of the artist. On the Shroud there are traces of blood flowing from numerous wounds: traces of bruises on the head from the thorns of the crown of thorns, traces of nails in the wrists and feet, traces of blows from whips on the chest, back and legs, a large bloody stain from a wound in the left side. The entire set of facts obtained during the study of the Shroud by scientific methods testify, in agreement with the Gospel narrative, that the image on it arose when the body of Jesus Christ lay in a burial cave on one half of the Shroud, and the other half, wrapped over the head, covered His body from above .

"THE FIFTH GOSPEL"

In 1998, Turin solemnly celebrated the 100th anniversary of the beginning of scientific research on the Shroud. At the end of the last century, a little over a hundred years ago, the professional photographer and pious Christian Secundo Pia was first allowed to take photographs of the Shroud of Turin. In his memoirs about this event, he wrote that while processing the resulting photographs in the darkness of the darkroom, he suddenly saw how the positive image Jesus Christ. His excitement knew no bounds. He checked and double-checked his discovery all night. Everything was exactly like this: a negative image of Jesus Christ was imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, and a positive one can be obtained by making a negative from the Shroud of Turin.

Scientists were allowed to approach the Shroud several times and examine it using modern scientific methods. For physicists, biochemists, criminologists, and medical scientific experts, the Shroud became a kind of scroll, written in a language understandable only to specialists and telling about the execution of Jesus Christ. The Gospels mention that Jesus Christ was scourged before his crucifixion, but only the Shroud “tells” us how cruel it was. There were two soldiers who scourged Jesus Christ, and their scourges had metal ends, as was customary in the Roman army. There were at least forty blows, and they covered the entire back, chest and legs. The Gospels say that the executioners placed a crown of thorns on the head of Jesus Christ, but we also “learn” from the Shroud that this was not only a method of humiliation, but a continuation of torture. The thorns of the crown of thorns were so strong that they pierced the vessels on the head, and blood flowed abundantly through the hair and face of Jesus Christ. Examining the Shroud, experts recreate the events that are written about in the Gospels - the strangulation of the Savior, His carrying of the cross, His fall under the burden from exhaustion.

There are not isolated cases when a scientific specialist, due to his professional duties, began to study the Shroud of Turin, came to the conclusion about its authenticity and through this turned to the Gospel and to Christ. It seems that it was not without the Providence of God that the Shroud of Christ was preserved until our rational 20th century, in order to appear as a kind of “Fifth Gospel” for those who cannot believe if they do not see. In 1898, thanks to the invention of photography, it became possible to transform the vague negative image on the Shroud into the expressive face of Jesus Christ. Thanks to the interdisciplinary research of many scientists, we can now ourselves, together with the Shroud, witness the Calvary events of two thousand years ago.

RESCUE OF THE SHROUD

In the summer of 1997, when the world community was preparing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of scientific research on the Shroud, a terrible fire occurred in the Turin Cathedral. The room where it was stored was completely burned out. However, the fireman managed to break the bulletproof glass with an ordinary sledgehammer: he himself said that he suddenly felt Herculean strength within himself. If he had been a minute late, the Shroud would not have been saved. According to the official version, the cause of the fire was a wiring fault. And the temple was undergoing restoration, it was being prepared for the congress, and that’s all construction works in such a place were controlled very carefully. There was even a version of arson, but there was no evidence of this. Local residents say that Turin is located in a kind of triangle, surrounded by centers of Satanism.

Description of the shrines of Constantinople in a Latin manuscript of the 12th century
Firstly, the following relics are located in the Grand Palace in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. A holy plate on which there is the face of Christ, but not painted [by the artist]. Christ Jesus sent him to Abgar, king of Edessa, and when King Abgar saw the holy face of Christ, he immediately became healthy from his illness<...>crown of thorns,<...>shroud and burial cloth<...>
Translated from the Latin by L.C. Maciel Sanchez
From the collection " Miraculous icon"

RESEARCH GOALS AND RESULTS

Scientific research in 1978 had three objectives. The first is to find out the nature of the image, the second is to determine the origin of the blood stains, and the third is to explain the mechanism of the appearance of the image on the Shroud of Turin.

Research was carried out directly on the Shroud, but did not destroy it. Spectroscopy of the Shroud was studied in a wide range from the infrared spectrum to ultraviolet, fluorescence in the X-ray spectrum, microobservations and microphotography were carried out, including in transmitted and reflected rays. The only objects taken for chemical analysis were the tiny threads that remained on the adhesive tape after it touched the Shroud.

The results of direct scientific research on the Shroud of Turin can be summarized as follows. Firstly, it was discovered that the image on the Shroud was not the result of any dyes being added to the fabric. This completely excludes the possibility of the artist participating in its creation. The change in color of the image is caused by a chemical change in the cellulose molecules that make up the fabric of the Shroud. The spectroscopy of the tissue in the face area practically coincides with the spectroscopy of the tissue in places where it was damaged by the fire of 1532. The entire complex of data obtained suggests that chemical changes in the structure of the tissue occurred as a result of reactions of dehydration, oxidation and decomposition.

Secondly, physical and chemical studies confirmed that the stains on the Shroud were blood. The spectroscopy of these spots is radically different from the spectroscopy in the face area. It is noticeable in the microphotographs that traces of blood remained on the Shroud in the form of individual drops, in contrast to a uniform change in the color of the fabric in the area of ​​the image. The blood penetrates deep into the tissue, while changes in the tissue due to the appearance of an image on it occur only in the thin surface layer of the Shroud.

Another remarkable detail that the 1978 researchers discovered. It was proven that blood stains appeared on the Shroud before the image appeared on it. In those places where blood remained, it seemed to shield the tissue from changes in its chemical structure. More sophisticated but less reliable chemical studies prove that the blood was human and its type was AB. In photographs of the Shroud, traces of blood appear very similar in color to the image itself, but when scientific methods are used, their completely different nature is revealed.

Thirdly, already in research in 1973, interesting results were obtained about the presence of pollen from various plants on the Shroud. Studies of microthreads made it possible to detect on them pollen of plants characteristic only of Palestine, Turkey and Central Europe, that is, precisely those countries where the historical path of the Shroud was supposed to pass. This is how natural science research merges with the research of historians.

As for the discovery of traces of coins and other objects on the Shroud, I deliberately avoid this topic. It should be said that the author of the hypothesis about the presence of coins in front of the eyes of the Man depicted on the Shroud was Dr. Jackson. He made this assumption to explain the enlarged shape of the eyes. Jackson later abandoned his hypothesis, but ardent enthusiasts, with great desire and great exaggeration, began to see something that apparently did not exist.

Fourth important discovery associated again with the name of Dr. Jackson. At one time, as a military pilot and optical physicist, he used computer programs designed to analyze aerial photographs in order to reconstruct the three-dimensional shapes of objects to study the Shroud. Working with a model of the Shroud, he experimentally measured the distance between the Shroud and the human body on volunteers, and compared the data obtained with photographs of the Shroud of Turin.

As a result of these studies, he discovered that the intensity of the color on the Shroud is in a simple functional relationship with the distance between it and the surface of the body. Thus, the statement that we have a negative on the Shroud is only a first approximation to the truth. More precisely, on the Shroud the distance between the body and the Shroud is conveyed through the language of color intensity. Knowing this dependence, Jackson was able to reconstruct the three-dimensional shape of the human body using the Shroud. Until the 1978 research, Jackson's discovery was a strong argument against the man-made nature of the image on the Shroud of Turin.

Direct scientific studies of the Shroud of Turin were able to answer the first two questions: about the nature of the image and about the nature of the blood stains on it. However, attempts to explain the mechanism of the appearance of the image on the Shroud encountered insurmountable difficulties.

HYPOTHESES AND GUESSES

The Shroud witnessed not only the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but also His Resurrection. After Saturday The disciples and apostles saw the resurrected Jesus Christ, but in the sealed cave with Him there was only the Shroud, which alone “saw” how the Resurrection took place. A thorough examination of the fabric of the Shroud showed that the image on it is not the result of any added dyes. The characteristic yellowish-brown color of the image on the Shroud is the result of a chemical change in the tissue molecules. Such a change in the chemical structure of tissue can occur when it is heated or when it is exposed to radiation of various natures in a wide range of energies from ultraviolet to mid-X-ray. By measuring the degree of color saturation (darkening) on ​​the Shroud, scientists found that it depended on the distance between the fabric and the body it covered. Thus, to consider that there is a negative image on the Shroud is the first approximation to the truth. To put it more strictly: on the Shroud, the language of color intensity (darkening) conveys the distance between it and the body that it covered.

Apparently, the first hypothesis about the possible mechanism for the appearance of the image on the Shroud dates back to the tenth century and belongs to Archdeacon Gregory from the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Then, before the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, the Holy Shroud was kept in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Archdeacon Gregory made the assumption that the miraculous image arose, literally, “due to the perspiration of death on the face of the Savior.” Modern scientists, in model experiments and theoretical calculations, as well as through computer modeling, have explored all hypotheses about possible processes that could cause a change in the chemical structure of the Shroud’s fabric and thereby create an image on it. However, the data obtained from studies of the Shroud turned out to be sufficient to refute all the proposed hypotheses.

The proposed hypotheses can be divided into four classes: the Shroud is the work of an artist’s brush, the image on the Shroud is the result of direct contact with an object, the image on the Shroud is the result of diffusion processes, the image on the Shroud is the result of radiation processes. These hypotheses were subjected to theoretical and experimental studies. It has been shown that contact mechanisms and the artist's hand can convey the fine details of an object, but they are not able to create an image that conveys the distance between the fabric and the object by the intensity of the darkening. On the other hand, diffusion and radiation processes, taking into account absorption in the medium, can create images that carry information about the smoothly changing distance between the object and the tissue, but they are not able to create images with the required resolution, i.e. high degree in the transfer of detail, which we find in the image on the Shroud.

The image on the Shroud has characteristics that, taken together, cannot be simultaneously explained by any of the hypotheses proposed so far, and to explain the appearance of the image on the Shroud we need to turn from old to “new physics.”

In all previously proposed hypotheses, it was assumed that the factor that influenced the fabric of the Shroud was of a natural nature. At the same time, some scientists believed that its source was also natural. Others, on the contrary, believed that this natural factor was a consequence of another supernatural event - the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The research carried out clearly leads us to the conclusion that this unknown factor itself was not of a natural nature, that is, it did not obey the laws of physics - the laws of diffusion or the laws of the propagation of light. Apparently, this unknown factor was some kind of energy of direct action of God. At the moment of the Resurrection, this energy filled the body of Jesus Christ, protruding beyond its boundaries, or surrounded His body, repeating its shape. This energy of God's action may have been similar to that in which the power of God was manifested, as we read about it in the Old Testament. When God led the people of Israel out of captivity in Egypt, He walked before them in a pillar of fire. When Elijah was taken up into heaven, Elisha saw what appeared to be a chariot of fire that picked up Elijah and carried him away. The Shroud apparently “tells” us that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ took place in a fiery body of Divine power and energy, which left a burn in the form of a miraculous image on the fabric of the Shroud. Thus, the Shroud depicts not only the body of Jesus Christ, crucified and died on the cross, but His Body after the Resurrection.

DATING PROBLEMS

Another insoluble problem that faced scientists was dating the Shroud using the radiocarbon method to the 14th century. To explain the dating results, a hypothesis was proposed about a change in the isotopic composition of carbon in the fabric of the Shroud as a result of nuclear reactions caused by hard radiation of an unknown nature. However, nuclear reactions begin to occur at such high energies that the fabric of the Shroud becomes completely transparent, and such radiation will not be able to explain the appearance of an image in a thin surface layer about 10 microns thick.

Then another explanation was proposed. The change in the isotopic composition of carbon in the Shroud occurred due to the chemical addition of “younger” carbon from the atmosphere by cellulose molecules, of which the fabric of the Shroud mainly consists.

This could have happened in 1532, when the Shroud was badly damaged by a fire in the cathedral of the French city of Chambery. The silver ark where it was kept melted, the temple premises were heavily smoked - and in these conditions the Shroud remained for several hours. Dr. Jackson commissioned the Biopolymer Research Laboratory in Moscow (directed by Dr. Dmitry Kuznetsov) to conduct experimental studies to study the chemical addition of carbon from the atmosphere by cellulose molecules. These studies were carried out in 1993-1994. They showed that cellulose in the fire of 1532 actually chemically absorbed carbon from the atmosphere. The world community has come out of a state of shock from the recent results of dating the Shroud to the 14th century. However, experiments soon showed that the amount of added carbon was only 10-20% of the amount that could change the dating from the 14th century to the 1st century.

It would be easy to answer the difficulties that have arisen that the image on the Shroud appeared miraculously and therefore natural scientific research methods are not applicable to it. Yes, a miracle and the will of God are undoubtedly present here. But if the image on the Shroud appeared simply to create the face of Jesus Christ, then one would expect a greater resemblance to a color portrait than to a monochrome negative. It is more natural to assume that the image on the Shroud arose, although not without the providence of God, but still as a consequence of another miracle, namely the Resurrection of the Lord. At the moment of the Resurrection, miraculous events occurred that gave rise to processes that further developed naturally according to the laws of nature. Natural scientific research methods, of course, cannot explain a miracle, but they can indicate that the cause of a particular event was a miracle.

Alexander Belyakov

The phenomenon of the Shroud of Turin has been revealed. Was Christ's body wrapped in it after death?

Scientists who deny the very fact of God's existence are sometimes faced with mysteries for which science is unable to find an explanation. For skeptics who are sure that it is just a regularly repeated lightning strike, the Shroud of Turin remains the most mystical Christian phenomenon. Is the face of the Creator really imprinted on her or is the story about her a beautiful fairy tale on a biblical theme?

History of the Shroud

The Shroud is mentioned in all four books of the Gospel. The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, with slight discrepancies, speak of a four-meter-long linen cloth in which Joseph wrapped the body of Jesus Christ after he was taken down from the crucifixion. After the miraculous resurrection of Christ, the same piece of fabric was found in the tomb. On it, the imprint of a male silhouette is barely visible with wounds in the area of ​​​​the feet, head, arms and chest.

“When evening came, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also studied with Jesus; He came to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered the body to be given up; and, taking the body, Joseph wrapped it in a clean shroud and laid it in his new tomb, which he carved out of the rock; and, having stopped big Stone to the door of the tomb, he left"

The first suspicions that the story of the shroud was nothing more than a fantasy were provoked by church fashion in Byzantium in the 11th century. Among the priests there, altar covers with the image of Christ began to be popular - essentially, copies of that same funeral shroud. In every church in Constantinople one could find several such covers.

For the first time in history, the original Shroud of Turin became known in 1353. The French knight Geoffroy de Charny displays the shroud for veneration on his estate near Paris, willingly showing it to everyone and telling the story of the canvas. In 1345 he took part in a campaign against the Turkish yoke, where in battle he managed to get his hands on a Christian shrine. Geoffrey's find was appreciated by the royal family: with their money, a church was built around the shroud and pilgrimages to it were established.

Sharni managed to quickly become rich and pass the shroud on to his descendants when the English invaded the estate. They took her to Switzerland and sold her at a profit to the Dukes of Savoy. The noble family invited specialists from the Vatican to examine the shroud. their verdict was:

“An ordinary drawing with no value.”

In 1983, the dukes transferred the shroud to Turin - its owner was the Vatican, which many years ago considered it a useless piece of fabric.

Shocking results of the shroud study

So, the shrine is a linen cloth with two male images. Criminologists believe that the person wrapped in it became a victim of violent death, before which he was tortured by scourging. On one half is his face with folded hands and legs lying together. On the other is the back of the same person with bruises. Their research confirmed that the imprint on the fabric appeared when dead body wrapped in it.

The version of criminologists forced us to extract records from the dusty Vatican library about a case that occurred at the end of the 19th century. Photographer Secondo Pia took several photographs, and when the negative was developed, he saw a clear imprint of Jesus Christ. Moreover, on it the minor nuances of the face were more noticeable than on the fabric itself.

“While working with film negatives in the darkness of the darkroom, I suddenly saw how a positive image of Jesus Christ began to appear on the photographic plate. Since then the excitement knew no bounds. I checked and double-checked my discovery all night. Everything was exactly like this: a negative image of Jesus Christ was imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, and a positive one can be obtained by making a negative image of the Shroud of Turin.”

Have the skeptics been able to prove otherwise?

In 1988, the only case in history was recorded when Rome allowed a small piece of the shroud to be cut off for examination. He was divided into three parts and sent to different parts of the world: to the University of Arizona in the USA, the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, and the University of Oxford in the UK. Scientists agree that the fabric was created between 1275 and 1381. The diagonal way of weaving it, in their opinion, confirms the impossibility of its creation in ancient times - this method was invented in the Middle Ages. They were unshakable in the diagnostic results, because the latest technologies were used for it: ultraviolet scanning, spectroscopy and radiocarbohydrate dating.

Inexplicable events related to the Shroud of Turin

Doubt the accuracy modern technology compel the reasoning of historians and archaeologists. While scientific instruments were proving that the shroud was made of cotton, scientists missed important property this fabric. Cotton is susceptible to rotting, so fabric with imprints simply would not survive to this day - unlike linen. All fabrics created in the Middle Ages were mixed: wool or cotton was added to them. Did it make sense for counterfeiters to make a special loom for weaving from 100% flax?

The Shroud can be called the “Fifth Gospel,” if only because analysis confirms that the traces on it are stains of human blood. In the forehead area there are visible imprints of vascular blood streams. They could have arisen from the crown of thorns: its thorns cut into the skin, pierced it and caused profuse bleeding. The blood is mixed with ancient microorganisms and pollen from plants that grow exclusively in Palestine, Turkey and Central Europe.

The fact that the image is presented in yellow-brown tones is explained by an amazing hypothesis. Such a color can be imparted to fabric only by chemical deformation of tissue molecules that occurs when heated or exposed to ultraviolet radiation. This once again confirms the fact that the Shroud of Turin witnessed not only the death, but also the resurrection of Jesus.

In 1997, the shroud proved its sacred power. During preparations for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the first scientific study of the Turin shrine, a serious fire occurred. One of the firefighters felt an incredible surge of strength. He managed to break the fireproof and bulletproof glass of a sarcophagus with fabric without much effort, which is beyond the power of an ordinary person. How else can you call this event if not the miracle of the Shroud of Turin?