The Shroud of Turin is Real.

For most of my life I was always under the impression that the Shroud of Turin was a fraudulent work of art made by the famous Leonardo da Vinci. I vaguely remember seeing a National Geographic headline on the magazine rack in the checkout stand at the store when I was a kid. It had a picture of the Shroud of Turin on the cover and the headline questioned if it was a medieval forgery. There were television shows as well and investigative reports from the early 90’s that claimed the radiocarbon dating of the shroud was from between 1260-1390 AD which consequently meant it was a medieval forgery. As far as I was concerned the science was settled. How can anyone argue with that? But a few years ago I was listening to a podcast at work wherein the guest was discussing a series of pieces of evidence for the Shroud of Turin. This particular guest was one of the few distinguished experts who belonged to the scientific team (STURP) who were given the privilege to examine the shroud in 1978 in Turin, Italy. What he revealed about the shroud was astonishing. The cognitive dissonance began to disappear but I still had questions. The more I looked into this subject the more clearly I began to see the truth of the matter, even though nothing has been proven in regards to definitive evidence. The hardest part I found was the dispelling of scientific agendas, pride in regards to disproven studies, and dishonesty in keeping with false narratives. Who doesn't like a bit of drama though?

Over a period of 3 years and 150,000 man hours, the Shroud of Turin was examined by many doctors, scientists, medical examiners, and other experts from places such as Los Alamos National Scientific Laboratories, U.S. Air Force Weapons Laboratories, Brooks Institute of Photography, Nuclear Technology Corporation, Sandia Laboratories, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and multiple universities. The consensus among these experts is that it was not a fraudulent masterpiece by an artist or a group of paid conspirators during the medieval period. Rather, it was an image left by a real man.

“In archaeology, if there are ten lines of evidence, carbon dating being one of them, and it conflicts with the other nine, there is little hesitation to throw out the carbon date as inaccurate due to unforeseen contamination.” -Eugenia Nitowski

Quick Summary The Shroud of Turin seems to show a combination of the properties of an X-ray image, a 3D holographic image, and a negative image used in photography.

The picture on the cloth displays an extremely brutalized and crucified man with puncture wounds, blood stains and a crown of thorns, which are consistent with the gospels of the bible.

It was proven to not be a counterfeit or a masterful work of art as some skeptics like to say. The science behind the shroud is jaw-dropping, yet most people still consider it to be a fake!

The biggest reason for this is because of the flawed carbon dating techniques that were used.

The experts who were part of the shroud team, most notably Barry Shwortz are outspoken in their belief that this is a genuine man who was savagely beaten and crucified and died some 2,000 years ago. Who could this possibly be?

The Impossible Blood

The Shroud of Turin has blood stains all over it. The blood was proven to be of human origin and was shown to be AB type.

Usually blood oxidizes and turns brown after a very short time. But the blood on the shroud was found to be red! It was still red after 2,000 years! This caused certain people to doubt the authenticity of the shroud because surly blood breaks down and loses color even after one hour of the body being dead. But the official blood pathologist, Professor Alan D. Adler (1931-2000), Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Western Connecticut State University informed his colleagues that when a person is tortured over a prolonged period of time the liver begins to pump a substance called bilirubin into the blood stream in very high doses. When this happens the blood will stay red forever! This is consistent with how Jesus was treated leading up to his crucifixion. He was savagely beaten, tortured, dehydrated, and crucified and went into shock before he died. I’m sure there were very high concentrations of bilirubin in his bloodstream before his death.

The Impossible Image

The picture on the Shroud of Turin was somehow topographically encoded onto the cloth like a 3D image. Additionally, it's a perfect negative image of a man, just like what you would find on plastic film from an old camera.

In 1898 the first photographs of the shroud were revealed. It showed the properties of a negative image which when reversed showed a much clearer and defined picture of a man that had been tortured and killed. The lights and the darks were reversed just like a photographic imprint.

Interestingly, this wasn't a fully direct contact image. Instead, certain parts of the image were made indirectly up to a distance of 4cm. The direct contact images were darker while the distance coded images were lighter. As the distance between the body and shroud increased the image grew more faint. This distance coded information gives the shroud a three dimensional appearance.

Additionally, the image on the shroud only penetrates through half of the very top fibers of the cloth. The only thing that goes through all the fibers is the blood.

Why is this the only burial shroud in the whole entire world that has ever displayed a perfect resemblance of a person? Why can’t the shroud be replicated? What caused this to happen?

Could it have been something like a short, intense burst of energy that emanated from within the body at the point of resurrection which would have in turn hit the inside of the shroud that covered his body and changed the chemical structure of the cellulose fibers of the cloth, imprinting an image which gives us the picture we see today? Was it something to do with harmonic resonance? Was it the vibrational frequency of an outside force that somehow interacted with the DNA inside this man which caused him to come to life again? Honestly, I think we'll never know because whatever mechanism that created this image had to be some type of miracle or a technology that we can't even begin to understand.

Kosher Fibers

The shroud is kosher according to Jewish law because there are no mixed fibers that were used in the weaving of the shroud. Jewish law and custom forbid the mixing of fibers in clothing. (see Lev. 19:19) The material used is 100 percent flax.

The only part of the shroud that is not flax is found in the bottom left corner of the shroud. This corner was a later patch that was sewn on after a fire almost destroyed it in the 13th century. Subsequently, this is the exact same spot that they decided to do a radiocarbon test! How foolish to pick this spot! Or maybe I should say…how convenient!

Radiocarbon Dating Protocols Were Extremely Flawed. In 1988 this same small corner of the cloth was used for the radiocarbon dating. This one sample was cut into 3 individual pieces. Each piece was sent to 3 different labs around the world. Each strip showed that the dating varied significantly. On each sample cloth one end showed much earlier dates while showing decades later on the other end of each sample. This meant the dating wasn't homogeneous throughout the whole sample when comparing all three.

Additionally, there was no Control sample piece that was cut out and used from a completely different section of the shroud. Any scientist will tell you that you need a Control sample with any type of experiment if you want to get a valid result. But this didn’t happen! Again…how convenient!

It was also recognized that before it was decided to cut out this particular part of the burial cloth, that this section of the shroud had already been manipulated a long time ago and showed signs of reweaving in the past. But for some reason this location on the shroud was chosen. To be fair, it wasn't chosen by the examiners but by a special administrator in charge of the whole project appointed by the Vatican. Like really? Cmon!

When all three samples were finally tested the radiocarbon dating of this corner of the cloth showed it dated between 1260-1390AD. These samples were not characteristic of the main part of the shroud. The parts that were tested belonged to a cotton patch that was spliced and sewed into the original shroud. Scorch marks indicate this was due to a fire that happened sometime around the carbon dating period. That is why the radiocarbon dates are over a thousand years after Jesus of Nazareth. It is because they tested the section of the shroud that had been patched and reweaved after a fire had partially destroyed it sometime around the 13th century! Interestingly, two other fires almost destroyed it in 1532 and 1997 but both times it was miraculously saved. Put out the candles guys!

Ray Rogers, Director of Chemical Research for STURP and Chemist from Los Alamos National Labs and member of the original scientific team that studied the Shroud of Turin concluded that no dyes were used in the main part of the shroud but the small test sample that was used for carbon dating had dye on the fibers. He explained that the wrong samples were used for dating because they chose a damaged area and that radiocarbon dating protocols were not performed correctly at time of testing.

“The radiocarbon sample was thus not part of the original cloth and is invalid for determining the age of the shroud” -Ray Rogers

On a side note there's a recent Wikipedia article that is still using studies which rely on some very dishonest findings and “facts” which clearly disagree with the actual team that directly studied the shroud. It had me pulling the hairs out of my head.

Was It Faked Art? The Shroud of Turin portrays Jesus as being fully naked. (Although his hands were laid across his groin area.) This isn't consistent with Christian artwork portrayed throughout the middle ages which always depicted Jesus covered in some way and thereby obscuring his groin. Paintings and sculptures during this time period were always very modest and cleaned up, showing very few blood marks. But the photographic image of Turin is brutally honest and unrelenting in its cruelty, showing horrendous scourge marks, blood everywhere throughout the cloth, bruising and swelling on the skin, lesions, lacerations and deep puncture wounds throughout the body, deep wounds in the wrists and feet and puncture marks ringed around the head.

The shroud shows the wrists were punctured and not his hands. This is important because during the Middle Ages paintings of the crucifixion show Jesus hanging from spikes driven through his hands, not his wrists. But historians and archaeologists will tell you that this is exactly how the Romans crucified criminals during the time of Jesus.

Though they have tried many times, experts in a myriad of fields still cannot replicate the strange properties of the Shroud of Turin. To think, even in the 21st century with all of our technology it still cannot be recreated!

Some conspiracy theorists claim Leonardo da Vinci created the Shroud of Turin but we see in old artwork that the shroud was exhibited at least 100 years before Leonardo da Vinci.

Researchers who worked directly with cloth have proved that no paint pigmentation or pigmentation binders were found, no scorching was used, no photography and no trace of silver salts used with photography was found.

The red liquid (blood) soaked all the way through the cloth yet the image is only found on the very tips of the top fibers. This has never been done in the history of art!

It would be impossible to fake the shroud, let alone apply 20th century negative imaging techniques to be used in sophisticated cameras hundreds and hundreds of years before photography was even invented. I mean, unless time travelers really exist. But if you believe this then your faith is greater than mine!

What else can I say? This amazing piece of cloth will continue to be controversial. For some it will mean nothing because it proves nothing other than something that can’t be proven without provable evidence because science is the end all be all. But for others it is more evidence of eternity and one more miraculous impossibility from God and one more indicator at something which they clearly know and understand yet cannot put into words in this life. It's another stone that science forever stumbles upon and yet a stone that builds others up. It is the visible image of the invisible God!