By Scott French, MD, FACEP
He is beaten, pierced, scourged and silent—and yet He looks back at us. The Shroud of Turin confronts the modern world with a question it cannot easily dismiss: Who is the man of the shroud?
In 2015, I went on a pilgrimage to Turin to view the shroud. I could see with my own eyes the image of a violent scourging, the wounds of an elliptical Roman lance that pierced the right chest and the profuse bleeding due to the crown of thorn wounds on the head. All the suffering as depicted in the Gospel accounts of our Lord’s passion is preserved in a mysterious image on the upper few microns of a linen burial cloth. It was immediately evident to me as an emergency physician that this body had endured unbelievable torture, and no artist or forgery could mimic the precision of the unique and brutal Roman crucifixion on the body. The shroud is silent, but the silence is deafening with the reality of the sacrificial suffering that Jesus endured to save us from sin and death.
Is the image on the shroud evidence that Jesus is true man and true God? Is the shroud evidence of a miraculous resurrection?
The shroud measures 14 feet long by 3 ½ feet wide and has a unique 3:1 Syrian herringbone pattern weave. It continues to be the most intensively studied scientific historical artifact.
The image itself is several microns in depth on the uppermost flax fibers of the linen burial cloth. Any paint, pigment, chemical, vapor rubs or scorching would not be confined to the outermost surface of the superficial flax fibers but would penetrate much deeper into the middle of the flax fibers. While the image is more visible on a photographic negative, the man on the shroud itself is not a photographic image.
The many ragged wounds resulted in extreme type AB blood loss to the point of death. Jesus’ words in the Scriptures echo this reality, “For this is my blood of the [new] covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Is 53: 4-6 and Jn 19:1). Interestingly, type AB blood is exceeding rare but is present in every Eucharistic miracle and is in approximately 8% of those of Jewish descent currently living in Israel.
The shroud image also demonstrates that the right side was “pierced” with a Roman lance (“pilum”) and blood and water flowed out as indicated in the Scriptures: Zec 12:10 and Jn 19:34-37.
The image of fingers of the hand appears to be elongated because we are seeing the bones of the hand. The image exhibits three-dimensional properties as deep as 3/16 of an inch. This 3D phenomenon was discovered during the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project using a VP 8 analyzer developed by Air Force Academy scientists for the 1969 lunar landing to determine the height of the mountains on the moon.
Forensic scientists and medical doctors agree that the image on the Shroud of Turin is a unique anatomically correct image of a young adult male in a state of rigor mortis (no decay/no corruption), which lasts some 40 to 48 hours (Ps 16:10, Acts 2:27,31, Acts 13:34-37).
There is no evidence of broken bones on the shroud image as predicted hundreds of years prior in the Scriptures (Ex 12:46 and Ps 34:21) and as recorded in the New Testament (Jn 19:36). There is ample evidence on the shroud of blows to the face resulting in swelling and broken nose cartilage, but not the short bone at the base of the nose (Mt 27:30, Mk 14:65, Mk 15:19).
The image demonstrates bruising/abrasion on the right shoulder where Jesus Himself carried the cross as well as on the knees when He fell carrying the cross (Jn 19:17).
The congruence with the image of the man on the Shroud of Turin and John’s eyewitness account is also reinforced when we see and read about the crown of thorn marks on the head of Jesus (Jn 19:2). Fossilized pollen fragments from the crown of thorns area on the shroud were recovered by Swiss botanist Max Frei, and the fragments match the thistle Gundelia Tournefortii, which is a plant with long thorns endemic to the Jerusalem area. It blooms in March and April.
Numismatists, those who study currencies and related items such as medals and coins, have identified partial imprints of Roman leptons (coins) on the eyelids of the image of the man on the Shroud, which was a common practice after death in first-century Judea. Sophisticated photographic techniques have revealed the image of a rare, misspelled variant of the Roman lepton minted in Judea in A.D. 29 during Pontius Pilate’s rein as governor.
Amazingly, there is evidence that “the napkin” referenced in Jn 20:7, which had been on Jesus’ head and “not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself,” touched the same face as the Shroud of Turin burial cloth. This “napkin,” the Sudarium of Oviedo, has a chain of custody dating back to A.D. 616 at Oviedo, Spain. There are 120 type AB blood stains on the head and face of the shroud: 70 on the front of the image and 50 on the back. Using advanced computer mapping technology, the 120 type AB blood stains of the crown of thorns area on the head match the 120 type AB blood stains on the Sudarium of Oviedo.
After in-depth research in recent years, the carbon-14 dating performed in 1988 has been deemed invalid as the three samples were taken from a section of the shroud that was burned and repaired in the 1532 fire of Chambery. The Poor Claire religious order documented the repair in 1535, and they used dyes, glue and cotton as repair materials rather than the original flax.
Within the past few years, a new more accurate way to date linen burial cloths using a wide-angle X-ray scattering technique was invented by Liberato De Caro and G. Fanti. Comparing the shroud to other linen burial cloths, this more modern technique places the Shroud of Turin dating to between A.D. 55 and 74.
There have been several theories proposed to explain how the “perfect” (every square inch) three-dimensional image was created. One theory proposes that an immense amount of light and/or radiation energy–several billion watts over 1/40 billionth of a second—created the image.
The latest theory of the shroud is a bit technical and goes further in explaining how the microns-deep image with 3D features was created and points to a supernatural resurrection. This theory is called the particle radiation hypothesis (PRH), which would also account for why blood stains are found deep within the image. This theory is gaining favor among scientists. It proposes that the image was formed by a spontaneous and simultaneous nuclear degeneration of every atomic nuclei from every atom of the body to create a shower of charged and uncharged particles. The charged particles (protons, alpha particles, deuterons) would stop at the uppermost fibers of the linen, while the uncharged particles, such as gamma rays, would pass through the linen cloth and out to the surrounding burial cave. The charged particles bombard the superficial fibers causing dehydration and oxidation. This breaks many bonds of the cellulose and reforms them into conjugated carbonyl bonds. The particle-induced carbonyl bonds result in the straw-yellow coloration of the image on the upper several microns of the flax fibers. This nuclear event would also explain the 3D information encoding relative to the distance between the cloth and the body. The closer the body was to the cloth, the darker the image.
Interestingly, this theory also fits with the transfiguration account on Mount Tabor where the Scriptures record that “His face shone like the sun, and His garments became white as light” (Mt 17:2). This account of the transfiguration is evidence that the light energy is emanating from every square inch of Jesus rather than the intense light shining down from heaven. This supernatural event is affirmed by a voice out of the cloud saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
From a medical standpoint, there is no natural explanation that the body could be separated from bloodstains without breaking or distorting the bloodstains. However, the particle radiation hypothesis does provide a potential answer. As the image on the shroud is undergoing nuclear disintegration, the resulting shower of particles would make the body physically transparent, allowing the linen shroud to collapse through the body and not distort the bloodstains.
It seems reasonable to me that God is giving us a visual record of the resurrection through a supernatural event that only He could orchestrate.
Learn more about the Shroud of Turin: othonia.org.
Dr. French is a board-certified emergency physician who works closely with Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer’s Magis Center
