The Turin Shroud is the most famous relic in the world. Millions believe that it is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ bearing his crucified and bloodied image. The cloth is kept at Turin in Italy. The cloth is an enigma. Many say it is a miracle. But in fact the greatest mystery is who the cloth depicts for the man whose face is on the Shroud is not Jesus Christ.
There is DNA to be found on the cloth. The Institute of Legal Medicine in Genoa in 1995 speaking of the DNA taken from the foot bloodstains delivered the shocking result that both male and female DNA were found. There was speculation that it may have come from women who handled the cloth such as the Poor Clare nuns. Cardinal Saldarini thought it would be very unlikely if any DNA from the time of the crucifixion were to be found.
Others feel that as the samples were so minute you would expect no significant DNA from females.
Some think that Jesus had female DNA for his mother had no sperm to make him, and perhaps female blood was used for the cloth. If it is menstrual blood then we must ask if some kind of mockery was intended.
The blood has not fitted how human blood should behave. Whatever it is, it is not human blood. If you want to meet those who say it is blood half way then call it alien or synthetic blood! It does not look like it was put on the cloth by contact with a corpse at all.
Quick Facts
# The cloth carries blood marks. It seems the blood is not real. It does not behave as blood should on the cloth. And the pattern is wrong in the real world. In other ways it is too perfect.
#The blood should not be bright red - the excuse that it stays red if a person undergoes a traumatic death though possible is still too far fetched and overlooks the fact that all the blood is red and that some of the wounds were inflicted before the crucifixion. We should see at best red blood and dark blood. The shade is too uniform.
# Samples of the "blood" have been taken. There is controversy about the genuineness of the blood samples: "Archbishop of Turin Cesare Nosiglia insists they cannot be authenticated as having come from the Turin cloth". Admittedly the samples look very odd for allegedly 2000 year old blood. Believers have excuses for why they are so red on the cloth but one would think they should change a lot when hacked off the cloth. They have an artificial appearance. If they are odd then what else is odd about them? How real are the "explanations" for how odd they are? Are they really just guesses?
# The "real blood" hype was instigated by discredited John Heller and Alan Adler.
# Other oddities are how unreliable Adler, who is unreliable with what he wants to find, found no protein where you just had a Jesus image but did find it in the blood areas. The image not being a contact print and the blood being one would be unimaginable. It would be a sheer contradiction.
#DNA proof that it is blood is absent as even pro-shroudists admit. The DNA from the blood area can be explained by people touching the cloth through the years."One issue that is raised in such experiments is that of DNA contamination, i.e. did the DNA that was sequenced truly originate from blood cells present on the cloth; or might there also be contribution from so-called touch DNA: DNA transferred by contact from other persons directly or indirectly through a handled object that came in contact with the cloth. Because the abovementioned genes are not exclusive to blood cells, but are also found in numerous other cell types, including skin, this remains somewhat of an open issue" https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/kearse1.pdf.
# Is the blood human? "While most tests support the conclusion that the blood is (at least) of primate origin, there is only a single (brief) serological study that extends this conclusion to a human origin. The current paper evaluates the empirical evidence that the blood on the Shroud of Turin is of human origin. While the majority of serological data support the idea that the blood is (at least) primate, only a single (brief) study directly addresses the issue of the human nature of the bloodstains." Forensic tests have failed to show that it is real blood and real human blood at that.
#There is a lot of sodium, chlorine and potassium in real blood. There is none of them in the shroud blood.
#The blood is picture-like. It does not matter if it is blood or not. It is a warning sign that it does not look like real world blood but like a picture of blood.
#The blood should not be so well organised on the cloth. Where are the smears? If it is real blood, it is still not Jesus' for it would be one messy image if it were after all he allegedly went through. The person put the blood on and hung the cloth up to dry. That cannot be denied. It is clear the cloth may even have been originally meant to have been taken as an icon rather than a fake shroud for a faker had no reason to worry about avoiding smears.
#The shroudman's head was supposedly wrapped in the Sudarium of Oveido prior to burial in the Shroud. But the Sudarium does not have reddish blood!
#The research proving that the same person was wrapped in both is based on fantasy. The Sudarium should have smeared the blood a lot but there is no smearing on the face of the Shroud man.
#Jesus could not have bled after death. Some of the marks could be explained without it being bleeding- eg seeping out of wounds from previous bleeding - but others can't. There are too many bleeding wounds.
#The dried blood on the arms is displayed as been wet when it transferred to the cloth.
#There is believed to be no image behind the blood so the blood went on first so how did the image manage to line up so well to the borders established by the blood? The cloth should have moved just by the body sinking a bit and should have sank itself.
#The strangeness of the shroud is unsurprising considering we have nothing similar to compare it to. There are odd blood miracles but nothing like this on linen. Believers like to talk about the strangeness and argue it shows Jesus probably lay in the cloth. But that is illogical. Nothing is normal about the shroud and we are to believe a normal man was laid in it? It is too odd to say it was a real shroud.
# The country that may have made the "blood" was into going to extremes to produce blood relics. The medievals did have a lot of religious tricks up their sleeves. Dried blood relics that can turn to liquid again are suspiciously common in Italy. Turin is in Italy!! Consider how there are too many liquifying blood "miracles" in and around Naples and which are consequently are suspected as fraud by even devout Catholic researchers. It has been found that if you use blood and take iron rich compounds from Mount Vesuvius you will get a solid mass that can turn to liquid again if you shake it. Some say the blood of Januarius is different for it does not always turn to liquid again. But maybe it depends on the age of the blood and until it is tested we won't know exactly what is in it.
The lessons of this are that instead of just using crude trickery, the Church and its cronies went all out to progress in science and fake miracles. Magic tricks would be easier but that was not enough for them. It explains the mentality that would have led to something like the Turin Shroud being created. Also, if the blood on it is odd that ties in nicely with other fake relics related to blood that are odd too.