Archeological Review

Gary Viken

We intuitively trusted Biblical Archeological Review, when in the November-December 1998 issue; it carried two articles on the shroud. One by Walter McCrone merely restated his findings of paint particles and his conclusion that it was a painting. The other by Gary Vikan, the Director of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland, revisited the carbon 14 dating, the d’Arcis Memorandum, and argued that the shroud was produced for the lay brotherhoods of Francis of Assisi . . .

 . . . that his piety and his cult of self-mortification engendered. These Christians appreciated and understood Jesus’ wounds in a very physical way. This is the world of the holy shroud; these are the people for whom it would have held special meaning; and these, certainly, are the people for whom it was made . . . these medieval Christians would have understood that the nails must have gone through Jesus’ wrists in order to hold the body to the cross (although in medieval art these wounds are invariably in the palms). And their cult images would match this physical understanding of crucifixion, even to the point of adding human blood . . .  All of which is to say that the indication of nail holes in the wrists and what some claim is the presence of blood on the linen need not add up to a miracle.

Is there any basis for this claim? The best Vikan can do is to assume that medieval penitents are comparable to modern-day Spanish American Catholic penitents in New Mexico who practice self-mortification and self-crucifixion, very much incorrectly. He also claims in his article that there are many images like those of the shroud. That is true if we allow for paintings that are not negatives, are not height-fields that produce 3D representations in 2D space.  Vikan is right if we also ignore the medically accurate bloodstains and images resulting from inexplicably caused chemical changes to the linen.

Biblical Archeological Review

It is interesting to note that in a preface to the Vikan article, the editors of Biblical Archeological Review acknowledged the problem with the mysterious images and some of the forensic pathology. They wrote:

. . . although radiocarbon tests have dated the shroud to 1260-1390 A. D., no one has been able to account for the shadowy image of a naked 6-foot-tall man that appears on the shroud. With bloodstains on the back, wrists, feet, side and head the image appears to be that of a crucified man. The details - the direction of the flow of blood from the wounds, the placement of the nails through the wrists rather than the palms - displays a knowledge of crucifixion that seems too accurate to have been that of a medieval artist.

The real keystone of Vikan’s argument was a simple appeal to common sense. And because it may resonate with our worldview, we intuitively trust his polemics. He imaginatively and fictively quotes students of the shroud and then interprets what they think:

 ‘It doesn’t look like any known work of art,’ they say. The implication is that its creation was somehow miraculous, perhaps caused by a sudden burst of cosmic energy as the cloth came into contact with the dead body of Jesus.

We intuitively trust him though there is no truth in this statement. In fact, most shroud researchers, to their credit, avoid metaphysical or supernatural interpretations and stress the point that science and objective history cannot provide such explanations. Most students of the shroud are highly critical of those few who posit unfounded hypotheses to support a miracle.