The other week, Deacon Mark Roberti, Heartland Stewardship director, gave a presentation on the Turin Shroud, a mysterious cloth believed by many to be the burial sheet of Jesus. Learning something about this controversial subject sent me scurrying in search of further enlightenment. Having now reached the point at which I know that it will take years to become an expert "sindonologist," I am ready to share what little I found out. (Shroud researchers call themselves "sindonologists." The term is from the Greek word "sindon," -- cotton, linen or silk cloth, used in the gospel of Matthew 27: 59-60 to describe the shroud of Jesus.)

The Turin Shroud is a rectangular, mostly linen sheet about 14 feet long and 3 feet wide. It bears a 3-D image of a man about 5 feet 9 inches tall with long hair and a beard. There is considerable evidence suggesting Knights Templar brought the shroud from Constantinople after the city was sacked in 1204, but only its late medieval and modern history is certain: It surfaced in Lirey, France, in 1357, when the family of Geoffrey de Charny, descended from a Knight Templar, permitted it to be displayed in the church there. Later it came into the hands of the royal Italian House of Savoy, was moved to Chambery and came in 1578 to the north Italian Cathedral of Turin. It became the property of the government of the Catholic Church in 1983.

Otherwise, the Turin Shroud is a mystery. Nobody knows exactly when, where, why or by whom it was made. Some non-believers think it is a hoax, produced to draw pilgrims to the Lirey area. Still others are of the opinion that it is a work of art. But none of these conjectures have so far been capable of scientific proof. Whatever the orientation of researchers, be they believers, skeptics, art historians, or scientists striving for objectivity, nobody can come up with a hypothesis, let alone a theory, that can account for everything about the shroud.

There are two main paths of inquiry. The first is to try to determine the age of the shroud. Biblical scholars and art historians examine correspondences between the shroud, burial garments in the Old and New Testaments, references in other texts that might reflect knowledge of it, and, above all, illustrations in early texts and a headcloth -- the Sudarium of Jerusalem, now in Ovieto, Spain -- which is alleged to date from the fifth century and has stains similar to those on the shroud. There are, indeed, some startling resemblances, but they are not necessarily evidence of early existence of the Turin Shroud. It seems just as reasonable to conjecture that the shroud was modeled later according to this "shroud tradition."

The results of carbon-14 dating done in 1988 by the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit seemed decisive: It showed that the samples dated from about 1260 to 1390, or, just about the same time the shroud as we know it appeared. Unfortunately, there is now convincing evidence that the samples were taken from a late medieval mend in the cloth.

The second important line of inquiry is attempting to determine how the shroud was made. Analysis of the chemical composition and patterning of some of the discolorations on the shroud shows that they are, in fact, consistent with human blood. On the other hand, all that is known about the image of the man is what it is not: it is not a photograph; it is not painted; it is not a chemical reaction.

If you would like to become a student of sindonology, be on guard. There is a great deal of hokum out there. The article in Wikipedia is a good start. Yahoo has a list of Web sites with short descriptions of their content. The Web sites of the Third Dallas International Conference on the Shroud of Turin (2005) and the Ohio State Shroud Conference (2008) present the results of rigorously objective scientific investigation. Happy hunting.

Ruth Firestone is a supporter of music and theater in Hays. rfiresto@fhsu.edu.