Did God Take The World’s First Selfie in 33 A.D.
GUEST ARTICLE
By Jeremiah Johnston & Doug Powell
A recently discovered medieval document is being hailed as the earliest written mention of the Shroud of Turin. Its author, Nicole Oresme, the learned Bishop of Lisieux, writing around 1370, claims the Shroud is a forgery. Some have rushed to seize on this fragment as if it were a fatal blow to the Shroud’s authenticity.
But is it?
To treat this new discovery as proof that the Shroud is a forgery means ignoring the massive wealth of evidence that indicates its authenticity.
Historian Nicolas Sarzeaud’s recent article uses Oresme’s passage as basis for rejecting the Shroud. However, the facts reveal more fallacy than forgery.
In the ongoing debate about the Shroud’s authenticity, the question is what this discovery actually means. Imagine a set of scales. On one side rests the enormous weight of historical, scientific, and forensic evidence pointing to the Shroud’s authenticity. On the other side, we now place this solitary note from a skeptical medieval bishop.
So does this new discovery tip the balance? The answer is a resounding no — and here’s why.
Reason # 1 – The Inexplicable Image
Picture yourself in 1370. You live in a pre-scientific, pre-photographic world, and your thoughtful approach to faith makes you skeptical of the mania for relics at that time. You hear reports of a mysterious cloth bearing the image of a crucified man, said to be Jesus.
What would you think? Most likely, your first reaction would be, “Someone must have painted it.” And as a product of his time, that is exactly what Oresme assumed.
But Oresme had no access to modern science — or to the groundbreaking work of the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project.
After an exhaustive investigation, STURP concluded that the image was not created by pigment, stain, dye, paint, or any known artistic method. In fact, the image itself isn’t made of any substance that rests on top or is embedded in the weave of the cloth — it is a discoloration of the linen fibers themselves. When the Shroud is backlit, the image disappears, something no painting could replicate. Even more remarkably, the image is not the result of brush strokes; it is a photographic-negative-like image encoded with three-dimensional information.
This means that whatever makes the image was not deposited on the cloth and that the image was not made by contact with a body, statue, or brush.
Oresme had no framework for scientific thought and how to interpret such a phenomenon. In his world, images came only from the hand of an artist. The Shroud has revealed itself as an exception to the rule. In our world, the Shroud has defied every artistic or technological explanation. What seemed “obvious” in the 14th century has proven scientifically untenable today.
Reason #2 – Corrupt Corroboration
In Sarzeaud’s assertion that the Shroud is a forgery, he relies heavily on the previously oldest known mention of the Shroud, which is known as the d’Arcis Memorandum, written around 1390, in which Pierre d’Arcis, Bishop of Troyes, claimed the Shroud was painted. He includes the entire memo as evidence that the Shroud was considered a forgery as soon as it was first exhibited 35 years earlier. Although this is corroboration, Sarzeaud presents the memo without mentioning the controversy surrounding it.
Sarzeaud fails as a historian and treats this as if it were a straightforward confirmation of Oresme’s skepticism. But the reality is far murkier.
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First, there isn’t just one memo. Second, even within the memorandum, d’Arcis admits that his charge was based on hearsay: His predecessor supposedly knew the name of the forger but never revealed it. Modern scholarship has highlighted these inconsistencies, but Sarzeaud neglects to mention them. In other words, what he presents as solid corroboration rests on fragile ground.
As historians, we must do better and not overreach in presenting the evidence as Sarzeaud has done.
Reason #3 – Earlier Does Not Equal Better
We share Oresme’s skepticism of relics. I’ve visited the Saxony hometown of Johann Tetzel (1465-1519), the Dominican friar infamous for selling indulgences in the early 16th century. He was commissioned to raise money for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Tetzel became notorious for a jingle he reportedly used in his preaching to stir people to buy indulgences: “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
Oresme was thinking, writing, and standing firm for Christian truth in a time rife with spiritual manipulation, and this influenced his overreaction to the Shroud. By the 14th century, Europe was rife with dubious relics. Skeptical observers like Oresme often dismissed any new devotional object as fraudulent.
But what Oresme lacked — and what we now possess — is the benefit of centuries of scientific progress.
It is true that Oresme’s fragment pushes the written record of the Shroud back to around 1370. And yes, having a mention of the Shroud so close to when it first appeared in Europe is noteworthy. But it doesn’t mean it carries more weight than other evidence.
In fact, given the advent of the age of science and the technological advances since Oresme’s day, there is far more and far better evidence now than there was then.
Think of it this way: Knowledge accumulates like compound interest. Every decade of careful research into the Shroud — microscopy, spectroscopy, blood chemistry, pollen analysis, and digital imaging — adds layers of data. To elevate a lone medieval opinion over the wealth of evidence gathered since 1978 is to confuse proximity with authority. Oresme’s comment is historically interesting, but evidentially it is a footnote, not a verdict.
Reason #4 – The Forgery Claim Falls Apart
The fatal flaw in relying on this new document and the d’Arcis Memorandum as proof that the Shroud is a forgery is that the dots don’t connect.
If the Shroud were obviously painted, as Oresme assumed, then why have the best scientists in the world — equipped with electron microscopes, chemical analysis, and cutting-edge imaging technology — failed to detect any paint, pigment, or dye responsible for the image?
RELATED: New evidence indicates Shroud of Turin shows EXACT moment of resurrection
Stefano Guidi/Getty Images
Dr. John Jackson, physicist and leader of the STURP team, cataloged 17 unique characteristics of the image on the Shroud — features that any genuine explanation must account for. Countless attempts to reproduce the image have fallen short. Photographs, paintings, and scorchings may imitate some features, but none replicate them all.
The Shroud’s image remains, scientifically speaking, an unsolved phenomenon.
This is the Achilles’ heel of the forgery theory: What was “obvious” to a 14th-century skeptic has been thoroughly disproven by modern analysis. The image is not a painting. The claim collapses under scrutiny.
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Both links in this article contain viable evidence that the Shroud of Turin was indeed the burial cloth of Jesus. And that his resurrection through the shroud was God taking the first selfie in history.
Another amazing confirmation that we might believe.
