Scientist says new tests show Shroud of Turin could be older than first thought

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (RNS) - A New Mexico scientist said the Shroud of Turin - the linen cloth that many believe was used for Jesus' burial - could be 1,300 to 3,000 years old, which puts it in the same time frame as Christ's death.

The shroud had been deemed a hoax after Vatican-approved tests in 1988 at three separate laboratories dated the shroud from between 1261 and 1390.

But Raymond Rogers, a retired scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said those tests were inaccurate because they sampled a 16th century patch from the shroud, not the original material.

Rogers, writing in the Jan. 20 issue of the chemical journal Thermochimica Acta, said chemical compounds such as lignin and vanillin would drop over time, but should be easy to spot in a 700-year-old cloth. Neither was found in the 1988 tests.

"The disappearance of all traces of vanillin from the lignin in the shroud indicates a much older age than the (1988) radiocarbon laboratories reported," he wrote.