Scientists have discovered a second image on the Shroud of Turin, an artifact believed by some to by the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. This second image appears on the rarely-seen back side of the shroud and appears to be nearly identical to the face image on the front of the shroud.
At the same time, the second image does not indicate that the shroud was a painting as some have speculated. Like the original image, this one is only burned into the topmost layers of the cloth – meaning that it could not have been painted on. Furthermore, textile samples from the 1st Century Jewish fort at Masada have matched the distinctive herringbone weave of the Shroud, suggesting a common origin.
The Shroud is an enduring mystery, despite a radiocarbon dating that placed its creation around 1290-1360 AD. The chances of a medieval forger being able to not only reproduce a 1st century cloth design with a distinctive weave that contained authentic pollen from the Dead Sea region, no less create an anatomically accurate representation of a crucified individual seems slim. The only way the Shroud could have been forged is if the forger actually crucified an individual and placed the body on an authentic 1st Century Jewish shroud.
The mystery of the Shroud remaind unsolved, but as the evidence continues to be gathered, the concept that the Shroud is a mere medieval forgery seems like an increasingly unlikely explanation.
In 2,000 years, will Jews be scratching their heads over the Baby Wipes of Ramallah?
Unlikely that a medieval forger would be able to recreate the cloth himself- however, that type of weave certainly could have still been in use in Palestine in the middle ages, and the time of the shroud’s creation dates to the Crusades. The thought that an Italian forger could have acquired such a shroud and used it in the creation of a forgery seems plausible.