Shroud of Turin

Fake or real? Neither?

Suppose it was a stage prop from a passion play. Take a fresh piece of linen. Wrap the actor playing Jesus in it. If the scene was very realistic, there might be a little bit of blood. In any case the fabric will pick up sweat and body oils. Now pack it away for a century or so. The oils can oxidize, and mark the fabric. Now let somebody find this and try to figure out what it is.

This would seem to explain the origin easily enough. So what could we check to test this hypothesis?

• Smear a volunteer with dye and wrap him in a sheet. Unwrap it and see if the facial highlights on the sheet show the same pattern as the shroud. Do you get smearing?
• Do body oils oxidize to leave such marks on linen? Looking at old fabric samples should be able to tell us that.
• Did old passion plays leave their props in the church? Did they include the wrapping of the body? The latter we could answer from looking at existing scripts, the former isn't really answerable. I'd think if the church had the storage space they'd be willing to keep this kind of thing.
• Would wrapping an actor in this kind of fabric for a couple of minutes be apt to suffocate him? If no, then this might work. If yes, then they probably didn't do it and this would have been a burial shroud for somebody--but then why retrieve it?

Of course, the same sort of thing could be worked to create a fake relic. Lightly paint a statue of Jesus, carefully wrap it in fabric, and voila! Although I'd think they'd do Veronica's instead: they'd be easier to make and need less fabric.