The Shroud of Turin, long revered by some as the burial cloth of Jesus, has sparked a centuries-long debate over its authenticity.
Recent research has added weight to claims that the mysterious image may be genuine.
Last year, Brazilian 3D designer Cicero Moraes suggested the Shroud could only have been created using a low, flat sculpture, dubbing it a medieval masterpiece.
Moraes compared how cloth drapes over a human body with a bas-relief sculpture, leading some to call it a forgery.
A team of scientists has now debunked that theory, pointing out flaws in Moraes’ digital reconstruction, including reversed features, inaccurate body proportions, and reliance on a single old photograph.
They also noted the reconstruction used cotton instead of the Shroud’s linen, further weakening the bas-relief claim.
Most importantly, the researchers said the Shroud’s extreme superficial image and confirmed bloodstains could not have been replicated using medieval techniques.
These findings strengthen the case that the Shroud of Turin may indeed be the burial cloth of Jesus.
Moraes’ analysis showed that the images on the Shroud of Turin (center) could only have been produced by laying the cloth over a flat sculpture (right) rather than over a human body (left)
However, Moraes has published a rebuttal to the February study, saying its criticisms misunderstand its scope.
Moraes said his study is a strictly methodological investigation into how bodies deform when projected onto fabric.
Experts note that the debate highlights a larger point: while modern digital tools can shed new light on ancient mysteries, extraordinary claims still demand both technical rigor and solid historical context.
The latest study was published by three specialists, Tristan Casabianca, Emanuela Marinelli, and Alessandro Piana, who have been researching the Shroud for years.
Beyond the technical criticisms, the researchers also challenge the theory’s historical credibility.
They argued that Moraes links unrelated artworks across different eras to speculate how a medieval artist might have created the image.
However, none of the examples show a naked, post-crucifixion Christ depicted both front and back, the Shroud’s most distinctive feature.
The researchers noted the experiment could have been informative if the digital reconstruction had been accurate, but they say it was plagued by methodological flaws.
They questioned why Moraes relied on a single 1931 photograph instead of using newer high-resolution images, noting that multiple photos would have produced a more reliable model.
Further concerns were raised over the use of generic cotton instead of linen, the actual material of the Shroud, and the failure to account for factors such as fabric thickness, density and weave structure.
The Shroud image itself is incomplete and distorted by the body’s position, complicating reconstruction, and arbitrarily resizing the sculpture may have skewed the results.
Now, a team of scientists has debunked that theory, pointing out numerous flaws in Moraes’ digital reconstruction
Given the number of variables involved, the critics concluded that a more rigorous sensitivity analysis would be needed to properly test the bas-relief hypothesis.
Moraes defended his findings, insisting the project was a technical experiment on how cloth deforms around a human form.
But the clash underscores a larger reality in the Shroud debate: cutting-edge digital tools may offer new insights, yet sweeping claims still require rock-solid historical and scientific proof.
The February study also argued that Moraes’ theory is not new, noting that similar bas-relief ideas were examined and rejected in the early 1980s, while French scientist Paul Vignon explored cloth distortion effects more than a century ago, in 1902.
In 1988, scientists took a 10 mm by 70 mm piece of the Shroud from the corner, which was cut into smaller pieces and distributed to the different labs for carbon dating.
This technique uses the decay of a radioactive isotope of carbon (14C) to measure the time and date of objects containing carbon-bearing material.
The results determined that the cloth had been manufactured sometime between 1260 and 1390 AD.
Marinelli previously told Daily Mail: ‘The sample was not representative of the full cloth because it is different [from one corner to another].
The experts argued that the bas-relief theory cannot account for two defining features of the Shroud: the extreme superficiality of the image, less than a thousandth of a millimeter deep, and the multiple independent confirmations of bloodstain
‘The [1988] study found dating was more or less 150 years, so it is impossible to say the age of the entire 14-foot cloth.
‘But for us, it was the statistical analysis that was the reason to reject carbon dating.’
She and her colleague Casabianca obtained the raw data from the 1988 research, finding that the results varied by decades.
One of Zürich’s estimates in the Nature study said the cloth was up to 733 years old, but 595 years in the raw data.
Oxford’s shroud sample was between 730 and 795 years old, but the raw data featured estimates that were off by up to 55 years.
Arizona’s linen was between 591 and 701 years old, with the raw data showing a difference of up to 59 years.
Even though that would still place the cloth in the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after Jesus, Casabianca said it raises doubts.
He continued to explain that ‘the lack of precision seriously affects the reliability of the 95 percent,’ suggesting it was no more than 41 percent.
Anything lower than 60 percent suggests that there is a lot of disagreement or inconsistency among the results, according to the 2019 study published in Archaeometry.
‘We can say with confidence that the 1988 radiocarbon dating process led to a failure,’ said Casabianca, who is an independent researcher in France.
