A controversial linen shroud – regarded by some to be the one Jesus was buried in – has baffled the world for more than centuries.

When it was first exhibited in the 1350s, the Shroud of Turin was touted as the actual burial shroud used to wrap the mutilated body of Christ after his crucifixion.

Also known as the Holy Shroud, it bears a faint image of the front and back of a bearded man, which many believers is Jesus’ body miraculously imprinted onto the fabric.

But research in the 1980s appeared to debunk the idea it was real after dating it to the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after Christ’s death.

Now, Italian researchers who used a new technique involving x-rays to date the material have confirmed it was manufactured around the time of Jesus about 2,000 years ago.

They say the fact the timelines add up lends credence to the idea that the faint, bloodstained pattern of a man with his arms folded in front were left behind by Jesus’ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ body.

The Bible states that Joseph of Arimathea wrapped the body of Jesus in a linen shroud and placed it inside the tomb.

Matthew 27:59-60 reads: ‘Then Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a new linen cloth. He put Jesus’ body in a new tomb that he had dug in a wall of rock. Then he closed the tomb by rolling a very large stone to cover the entrance. After he did this, he went away.’

The burial cloth has captivated the imagination of historians, church chiefs, skeptics and Catholics since it was first presented to the public in the 1350s.

French knight Geoffroi de Charny gave it to the dean of the church in Lirey, France, proclaiming it as the Holy Shroud.

It has been preserved since 1578 in the royal chapel of the cathedral of San Giovanni Battista in Turin, Italy.

The cloth appears to show faint, brownish images on the front and back, depicting a gaunt man with sunken eyes who was about 5ft 7 to 6ft tall.

Markings on the body also correspond with crucifixion wounds of Jesus mentioned in the Bible, including thorn marks on the head, lacerations on the back and bruises on the shoulders.

Historians have suggested that the cross he carried on his shoulders weighed around 300 pounds, which would have left contusions.

The Bible states Jesus was whipped by the Romans, aligning with the lacerations on the back, who also placed crown of thorns on his head before the crucifixion.

In 1988, a team of international researchers analyzed a small piece of the shroud using carbon dating and determined the cloth seemed to have been manufactured sometime between 1260 and 1390 AD.

This technique used the decay of a radioactive isotope of carbon (14C) to measure the time and date objects containing carbon-bearing material.

Some experts have said that the linen’s authenticity should no longer be disputed, claiming it was made from flax grown in the Middle East and features a helmet-style crown of thorns on the man’s face.

However, others have held on to the notion that it is fake due to the 1988 radiocarbon dating analysis conducted at three different laboratories, which all determined it was only seven centuries old.

For the new study, scientists at Italy’s Insтιтute of Crystallography of the National Research Council conducted a recent study using wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS).

The technique measures the natural aging of flax cellulose and converts it to time since manufacture.

The team studied eight small samples of fabric from the Shroud of Turin, putting them under an X-ray to uncover tiny details of the linen’s structure and cellulose patterns.

Cellulose is made up of long chains of sugar molecules linked together that break over time, showing how long a garment or cloth has been around.

To date the shroud, the team used specific aging parameters, including temperature and humidity, which cause significant breakdown of cellulose.