Shroud of Turin: image, faith and dating

The story or discovery

John 19 describes Jesus being buried with linen cloths. This passage helps explain interest in burial textiles. It does not identify an object surviving today: connecting a particular cloth with the account requires independent evidence. Read the scene before interpreting a later image or relic.

What the sources establish

The radiocarbon study published in 1989 dates the tested linen to 1260–1390.

Nature — Radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin (1989)

What needs distinguishing

Separate the age of the cloth, the formation of its image and the identity of the person depicted. An explanation for an image is not, by itself, a new date. When reading a scientific claim, ask what was measured, which sample was used and what uncertainty was reported. Spiritual significance is a further, different question.

A question to explore

What evidence would turn a resemblance into a historical identification?