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

Vanillin as a Validation of Carbon Dating

It is not as good a way of dating a piece of linen as carbon dating. But the carbon dating was flubbed. And so for the time being this as good as it gets, scientifically. It really doesn’t tell how old the cloth is, only that it is at least 1300 years old and quite possibly older. It certainly existed when someone illustrated a burial shroud in the Hungarian Pray Manuscript with holes that resemble the poker holes on the Turin cloth. It certainly existed when the Image of Edessa was brought from Edessa to Constantinople. It certainly existed when Leo III was attempting to banish images of Christ and John of Damascus was objecting.

And if all this is so, the shroud that is now in Turin may well have existed when the words, “Peter ran with John to the tomb and saw the recent imprints of the dead and risen man on the linens” were made part of the Mozarabic Rite in Spain. Vanillin testing can’t tell us that. Inference can. It may well have existed when Abgar the Great was baptized. It may have existed at the time that the body of Jesus was buried in a tomb.