Shroud of Turin May Be Real, Scientists Say : Artifacts: They say radiocarbon dating was skewed by fire damage to garment, which also bears similarities to other religious icons from the time of Christ.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. —  The Shroud of Turin, purportedly Christ’s burial garment, has inspired the faithful for centuries. But seven years ago, radiocarbon dating put it at 700 years old, and it seemed that faith must yield to science and admit it might be a forgery.

But a Russian biochemist now says the radiocarbon findings are wrong--that the process was marred by a failure to consider smoke damage to the garment--and the shroud is at least 1,800 years old.

An American scientist working with him says there may be other evidence that points to an origin around the time of Christ, including its similarities to other religious icons from that period.

The yellowed cloth bears the faint image of a man with thorn marks on his head, lacerations on his back, puncture wounds on his hands and feet and a severe wound on the right side.

Believed to have been seized by Crusaders in 1203-1204 in Constantinople, the shroud first appeared publicly in Liley, France, in 1357.

It was moved from Chambrey, France, to Turin, Italy, in 1578 after being scorched by fire. It was not until this century that science cast the first doubt on its authenticity.

*

Three years ago, physicist John Jackson created the nonprofit Turin Shroud Center in Colorado to establish a research base for tackling the shroud’s mysteries.

“We would like to be able to answer the questions of how the image got there and authenticate who the man in the shroud was,” he says. “Now we may have the capability to examine that rationally, not on a basis of faith, but in a scientific pursuit.”

Jackson--a former university professor and scientist at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory--is now helping coordinate Dr. Dmitri Koutsentsov’s studies of the shroud at Sedov Biopolymer Laboratories in Moscow, aided by a grant from the Fourth World Foundation.

He believes Koutsentsov’s theory that the radiocarbon dating done in 1988 was skewed because the tests failed to take into account the effect the fire had on the shroud more than 500 years ago.

“Koutsentsov has shown that fire conditions take carbon from the air and chemically bond it to the fiber,” he says. “That carbon is younger than the cloth and if you don’t take that into account, you get a date too young.”

*

Moreover, he says, there is too much other evidence to the contrary, including archeological evidence and samples taken in 1978 when Jackson and 29 other scientists examined the shroud firsthand in Turin.

Jackson says the imprint itself appears to date from two millennia ago.

Rebecca S. Jackson, the center’s associate director and Jackson’s wife, grew up an Orthodox Jew and has studied Jewish ethnology for more than 30 years.

She says the shroud is made of linen with traces of cotton but no wool, in compliance with Jewish law of Christ’s era.

In Jewish measure it comes to exactly 2 cubits by 8 cubits, a neat dimension, rather than 14 feet, 3 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches in modern measure.

As to theories that the image was painted in medieval times, Rebecca Jackson says: “The forger would have had to been an expert on Jewish cultural subtleties,” unlikely for a European Gentile.

Using computer imaging, Jackson has used transparent color photographs of the shroud to make full-size three-dimensional figures of the man in the shroud, attempting to determine how the body was wrapped and whether the shroud can be linked to icons of the early Eastern Orthodox Church.

“You have a lot of things coming together . . . what with the crown of thorns, the wound in the side, all the blood marks mentioned in the Scriptures, no more, no less. And the icons,” Jackson said.

“Put that all together and to my mind, if this cloth really dates to the first century, and comes out of the Middle East, it would have to be the shroud of Jesus.”