Controversial evidence that proves Jesus was real has been 'confirmed' as authentic

A part of the controversial Shroud of Turin, which is supposed to show the image of Jesus Christ, has been 'confirmed' to be authentic.

If you're wondering whether Jesus was a real guy, there's a lot of historical evidence pointing towards the fact that he existed around the time the stories about him said he did.

What might be slightly more in contention is whether or not he was the son of god, but that's a whole other kettle of fish we won't be diving into at the moment.

Instead, there's a question over whether or not something the man himself once possessed and is supposed to bear his image is the genuine article or not.

The Turin Shroud is supposed to be the burial cloth that Jesus was wrapped in after his crucifixion, and if so it would be a major Christian relic.

The Shroud of Turin is supposed to show an image of the face of Jesus (Stefano Guidi/Getty Images)

Of course, there's a massive problem with religious relics in that the market for them was incredibly popular, if you combined all of the reputed pieces of the 'true cross', the stake of wood Jesus was crucified on, then you'd have enough wood to make several crucifixes over.

As for the Shroud of Turin, biblical scholar Dr Jeremiah Johnston claims to have verified some of the blood on it as human.

According to the Daily Mail, he says that a test from the 1990s found that some blood on the shroud of Turin came back as type AB, which he says is 'present in only six percent of the population, confirmed as human and male'.

He also says the tests show the blood on the shroud comes both from before and after death, so it authentically belonged to a human man with type AB blood who got his blood on the cloth both before and after he died.

Even if the blood is genuinely human, there are plenty of other controversies over the Turin Shroud (Geography Photos/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

However, the Shroud of Turin remains highly controversial even if the blood on it is authentic human claret, since other analyses of the relic indicate it's nowhere near old enough to have belonged to Jesus.

In 1988, tests of the cloth found a 95 percent chance that it was actually made some time between 1260 and 1390, and given that we count the years based on Jesus himself, you can see how it'd be far too recent to be genuine.

So, even if it is proper human blood shed onto the cloth both before and after death, it doesn't definitively prove that the shroud was the cloth the man was wrapped in after his crucifixion.