Shroud studies

hello warm welcome to this talk now something different today I want to think about something I've been thinking about for the past few months and kind of feel like I know so many of you now even though of course I don't personally but I just wanted to share my my thinking on this it's about the shroud of churin which is a shroud in the Cathedral of churin in Italy and this is so fascinating and I've been looking at it for a few months now it's an overlap between science pathology medicine all aspects of science with with history and it's the image of a crucified man let me just show you it uh here this is um this is from the shroud. com site now this is one of the definitive sites on the Shroud in fact probably the definitive site on the Shroud um you can see that there the cloth has been damaged it was burnt in a fire but we can Al we'll also see the image of this man of the Shroud on it it's about 14t long this this artist fact now um it is completely fascinating um if you haven't got time to watch this video I think the evidence for this being the actual burial shroud of of of Jesus Christ himself is is quite convincing but of course I don't tell you what to think you'll have to look at it for yourself why don't more people know about this well John Calvin here um he was a Protestant uh Theologian of the past and he wrote this book saying that the relics were the shr particularly was a forgery and he was quite influential in the Protestant World um and the the secular world isn't particularly interested in it so while this has got some Traction in the Catholic World very little Traction in in the Protestant World which is a great pity uh we don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water yes a lot of these relics socalled were just a part of a a medieval racket of course it it was a making money thing like selling selling indulgences but um there does seem to be some genuine relics as well and the Shroud seems to be one of those now here's the picture that you actually see if you look at the Shroud itself this is taken from the 1978 uh exploration scientific investigation and this is from the photographer Veron Miller available on shroud photos. com and this is what you actually see on the Shroud and it's a photo negative so already I think we can probably see the uh the head the eyes the nose the mouth mouth the mustache the beard marks blood stains these are being confirmed to be human blood on on various parts from the what would be the we would assume to be the crown of thorns um The Scourge marks that are on many parts of the body and this is what we actually see when you look at the Shroud itself but it turns out that this is a photo negative on an original linen cloth but the point is linen is not a photosensitive material and it's a negative negative and of course it's centuries before photography was enveloped um developed photography only starts I don't know about 1830s or something like that way way before that and yet we have this uh photographic negative here on the Shroud now um it wasn't known of course this was a negative until uh photography was developed so when photography was developed uh the first guy to photograph this uh as a as a positive was a sondia French photographer 1898 and he saw that this was so he took a picture of the negative and uh then it became a positive and he was the first person to see as a positive and you can see a lot more features in the positive light so we have this mystery already of of how do we get this photo negative image on a shroud centuries before photography was uh even thought about out and uh the image is on a non-photographic sensitive material so already it becomes really quite intriguing as to what this what this artifact is and who the man on the Shroud is so that's that picture there now if we look at again um if you compare this this is why it gets really interesting compare this with ancient prophecies in ancient scriptures um so this is the prophecy of Isaiah just as that there are many who had appalled at him his appearance was disfigured beyond that of any human being his form was mod Beyond human likeness so what we have to remember is this is a picture of death uh the man on the Shroud is uh is dead he's in rig mortis and is badly beaten up that's completely unequivocal so much pathology attests to this some of which we'll we'll look at um so this is an image in death is is perhaps the key thing to remember but it it is consistent with uh ancient ancient writings now not only is there an image on the Shroud the image is actually codes three-dimensional information now um in other words the gray scale on the image contains three-dimensional information now if you take a picture of yourself and put it under what's called a 3D image analyzer it'll just be a complete mess but when you do that with a shroud it comes to life and this was first done again in 1978 now this was done using what's called a vpa image analyzer um it takes um eight the original one took eight uh scales of gray and trans transform that into three-dimensional information now this was actually developed by NASA a NASA Associated scientist to look at planets uh to work out what creators went down and what Hills went up to give threedimensional topographical information from astronomical photographs but when they put the Shroud image under that quite a bright idea to do that quite incredibly it was seen to have 3dimensional information and you get this face emerging uh the face of the dead man of the Shroud here uh emerging and likewise all parts of the body have this three-dimensional uh data on it um and again quite unique so there's things here which are completely unique the image on a non-photographic material the linen cloth that actually encodes three-dimensional information uh so the Intrigue only grows as we learned more about it um but let's go on um that's the three-dimensional coded information there's another one there another one generated I think that's generated by a more recent uh image generator but that three-dimensional information is all encoded in the gray scale of the uh of of the original image it's all encoded there so the information in uh in that picture there is all coded for in uh the original the original uh picture that I showed you uh here in negative and in positive there so we have the strange coding of three-dimensional information and uh the face of the man of the Shroud starts to become recognizable well clearly recognizable as a human as a human face now um the linen cloths again are attested to in in in the New Testament uh this is Joseph this is Joseph of arthia took the body wrapped it in a clean Ling cloth placed it in his own new Tomb theut out of the rock that's in the gospel so this linen cloth and as we'll see the head cloth as well is clearly mentioned in the ancient scriptural texts um and again you've got this fascinating tie up between the current science and and the ancient or the New Testament documentation it really becomes quite an intriguing object to start to study I I stress I am by no means an expert I'm merely sharing my my current thinking which is immensely Limited but I just felt I wanted to share uh share my thinking so um this is so the cloth is the body was wrapped in it longitudinally so so here here we see the frontal image and then the cloth was wrapped over the top of the body and this is the back of the image so again here we see clearly see the marks from the blood marks from the crown of thorns the blood has been tested it is human blood um and we see the scorge marks on the front and we see the scorge marks the excessive scorge marks these big artifacts here are from the fire so this it was back I can't remember the precise date I've got it written down later on 1590 or something there was a fire so those marks there but fortunately the Shroud was rescued and interesting to note the image itself we don't know if the image has become dimmer as a result of the fire but the image is still clearly discernable with all the uh the encoded negative and threedimensional information is all still there clearly visible despite the the fire the fire marks on the lining cloth here we see the frontal image here we're looking at the negative so this is what you actually see when you look at the Shroud you see the negative image and uh here we see the positive image what we're looking at here um now it's actually a very difficult topic to to study this because whoever this man on the Shroud is uh the it's definitely a human being on the Shroud it's anatomically perfect uh his suffering is is beyond imagining um so what we actually see here is uh we see the scorge marks on the front going down onto the legs uh we see the scorge marks there in positive on the legs on the uh on the chest and on the arms and we actually see the marks here of the nail of uh the nail of crucifixion um we see four fingers here these are blood marks on the arms and these blood marks are consistent with the body being in a in a crucifixion uh position the pathology here uh does add up in really quite uh alarming ways really Roman crucifixion was not through the palm of the hand it was through the wrist um it's it's hard to think about but the nail would go through the median nerve that causes retraction of the thumb that's why you only see the fingers uh of course the median nerv is motor and sensory that the the suffering that this would generate is is completely beyond comprehension but we see it clearly uh in the image there consistent with the Roman practices and many uh met many reconstructions of demonstrated this as well carried out by innumerable surgeons and and Pathologists the Shroud is actually the most studied uh archaeological artifact on the planet it's just amazing that more people haven't heard about it now so that's the negative that's the positive of the front uh the legs the lower part of the legs again we see the folded arms uh the victim is of course uh naked um crucifixion Roman crucifixion would have been carried out the humiliation of the victim was part of the uh part of the process whatever you want to call it um victims would be crucified naked um here we see the folded hands here the legs with the scorge marks on the legs the whole body is is is scourged with a Roman Whip and we see it there in in positive as well we do see the burn marks from the from the fire um again we see the strips of linen attested to in in the scriptures this one's from Luke's gospel bending over he saw the strips of linen lying there by themselves went away some people uh say well the strips why why have we only got one strip um there will be other there will be other bits that that tied the Shroud together and and we'll see later there's also a head piece which has been identified as as well um here we see a bit more detail these are all from shroud pictures.

com uh this is the negative from the back this is the crown of thorns these are the blood stains the human blood in negative and in in positive and again we see the scorge marks and we also see bruising on the uh on the shoulder blades which we'll see what that's about in a minute so high definition pictures uh available for free download thankfully for the photographers who who made it freely available uh here we see the full body image in in positive uh we see the whole body it's of a young fit very physically fit uh man in very good shape um young man in good shape we see it from the front with the scorge marks and we see it from the back marks on the crown of thornn the scorge marks that go down over the buttocks down onto the legs in high contrast negative I think what the photographers there has actually beefed up the uh the contrast a bit so it's easier to see but all this information is genuinely there um and as I say these photos go back to 1978 so we're in a pre-digital age here but they are professional quality pictures now um from the image on the Shroud we see that the man of the Shroud has a broken nose a swollen face part of the beard has been plucked out tearing wounds produced by the scoring wounds from the crown of thorns bruises on the shoulder which we believe if if this is indeed Jesus of Nazareth um from carrying the weight of a cross again it's consistent knee injuries from repeated Falls nail wounds from Roman crucifixion and an oval wound between the fifth and the sixth rib on the right hand side and again um these are the wounds that have been known about from the uh from the sufferings of Christ himself let's just look at these briefly um so if we take those features there that have been complet completely demonstrated from the shoud um the broken nose swollen face um for example Matthew says they spat on him they took the staff and struck him on the head again and again so clear evidence of head trauma in the uh in the ancient New Testament scriptures part of the beard plucked out is not mentioned in the New Testament but it is a prophecy in Isaiah um so we're kind of seeing this long-term historical consistency uh part of the beard pulled out there from the prophecy in Isaiah uh tearing wounds produced by the scoring this is uh he pilot had Jesus flogged so we know that the scoring uh took place in the uh in the gospel accounts Crown of Thorns is clearly attested to again in in several scriptures uh bruises on the shoulder um John's gospel says jesus carried his own cross to begin with went to the place of the sko which in arama is called Golgotha so he started off carrying the cross or probably the the cross member of the Cross rather than the whole cross and uh the bruises on the shoulder are there as he would struggle with the weight of that large wooden wooden beam the injuries have been clearly identified Again by the surgeons and Pathologists who've examined the image on the Shroud um KNE injuries from repeated Falls uh the gospels don't talk about this directly but they do say that um so Jesus looked like he started carrying the cross himself and then someone else carried it for him a man called Simon of uh Simon of s sirene um had to carry it for him presumably because of the repeated fall so that's putting two and two together it probably does make fall um so help in carrying the cross wounds on the right side uh when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead they didn't break his leg so it's too horrendous to think about the the The Jewish Sabbath the Passover Sabbath actually was coming up and the Jews didn't want people on the cross during that period of time um so what would happen is the Roman Roman authorities will break the legs of the victims now to breathe in the crucifixion position you can only do so by pushing up through your feet otherwise you can't breathe out so if you broke the legs of the victim the the legs would be biomechanically inactive the uh the victim would no longer be able to push up to be able to breathe then they would asfixiate which I assume would be considered a merciful thing thing to do it's quite it's quite horrendous Beyond description but with Jesus they didn't he had this wound in his side now the wound in his side does seem to be consistent with Roman military training that to kill people uh it's it's a way that the Romans inflicted a wound it would go from the right side through through through to the heart and there's evidence that that did in fact happen from the pul Redeemer and the per the plural fluid that came out that's when when it talks about water and blood coming out from the wound to again completely consistent with the uh the pathology as a result of the trauma that had been uh torture that had been inflicted so it looks like a standard uh Roman wound military have this if you want to I talked to someone who was in British Special Forces or whatever some rum group in the Army and they they're taught specific ways to to kill people simple as that uh so this appears to be a standard Roman way to make sure that someone was was dead um wound in the right side again it is clearly there on the uh on the Shroud now um the linen cloth itself is interesting of course let's look at that somewhat now as well um this is a 35 mm color transparency 32 times magnification and this is the weave so the plain shroud cloth where there is no blood or image so this is the shroud uh photographed from the 1978 team and uh this is an area of the Shroud from the nose actually uh the yellow fibers are the building block of the image so we can see here that there's these fibers now these are the this is the big lining fiber and this is the smaller fi rules or whatever that make it up and this dark a bit so if we just look back so that's what it looked like without the image that's an area without the image and this is an area with the image and the image is just this very superficial area this this decolored area on top and it's very very narrow the yellowed fibers were only between um uh there microne between two 250 nanometers so this is very superficial so0 2 to. 5 of a micrometer in thickness the the burning here and of course no one knows how this image was produced I mean a big part of the 19 78 the sturp team the shroud of Trin research project team was working out how this image was created and they expected to go and look at it and find the paint marks from Leonardo D Vince's brush or whatever and say it's a painting there forget it and if that had been the case that that we would have forgotten it but the these these markings here constitute a remarkably um anatom well totally anatomically accurate uh image of this young man of the Shroud with the clear pathological evidence of the the the torture and the the execution that was used and and uh it's just marked by these very superficial um this very superficial image and no one knows how this image got there now people do talk about it it does appear to be a some kind of the main theory is it's some kind of radiation effect that there was an episode of radiation uh exposure um that um was very intense but but very very short now of course there's been thousands millions of shrouds through history but this is the only one with an image on it um I'm afraid I've seen a lot of shrouds and um uh you don't see images on it I did see an image a death image once um um a patient had died and uh the the B had leaked out of a of a wound and they had the hand underneath the uh underneath them between themselves and the mattress and the B had left like this perfect handprint it was really quite Eerie perfect handprint in bile but that was just the handprint just in bile um on the mattress it really quite strange to see but that's the only thing I've seen in my entire career and of course you know there is no whole body Images this is a unique completely unique image and this is how it's generated remarkably thin superficial uh burning so po Point 2 to.