Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

Mark Guscin

In 1999, Mark Guscin, a member of a multidisciplinary team of scholars who studied the cloth, issued a forensic and historical report entitled, “Recent Historical Investigations on the Sudarium of Oviedo.” Guscin’s report detailed recent findings of the history, forensic pathology and stain patterns on the Sudarium. In a summary, rich with interpretation and a clear tie-in to the Shroud, Guscin wrote:

There are many points of coincidence between all these points and the Shroud of Turin - the blood group, the way the corpse was tortured and died, and the macroscopic overlay of the stains on each cloth. This is especially notable in that the blood on the Sudarium, shed in life as opposed to postmortem, corresponds exactly in blood group, blood type and surface area to those stains on the shroud on the nape of the neck. If it is clear that the two cloths must have covered the same corpse, and this conclusion is inevitable from all the studies carried out up to date, and if the history of the Sudarium can be trustworthily extended back beyond the fourteenth century, which is often referred to as the shroud’s first documented historical appearance, then this would take the shroud back to at least the earliest dates of the Sudarium’s known history. The ark of relics and the Sudarium have without any doubt at all been in Spain since the beginning of the seventh century, and the history recorded in various manuscripts from various times and geographical areas take it all the way back to Jerusalem in the first century. The importance of this for shroud history cannot be overstressed.