March 19, 2025 • 57 mins
The most studied artifact in history might be exactly what believers claim - the burial shroud of Jesus Christ. New scientific analysis reveals evidence of an energy burst beyond modern technology, blood with properties matching severe torture, and an image that defies explanation. Did this cloth capture the moment of resurrection? This new documentary is a deep dive into the latest evidence for 2025.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
War of the worlds.
Martian invasion hoax.
Surgeon's photo of Nessie.
Hoax.
Alien autopsy. Hoax.
Some hoaxes are pretty easy to spot,but the most studied artifact in history
that people have been calling a hoaxfor 700 years
is proving to be a tougher nut to crack.
Welcome to the InBetween.
(00:21):
I'm Carol Ann, and we are talking abouta simple piece of cloth bearing the image
of a man that no scientist has been ableto figure out how it got there.
We are diving deepinto the Shroud of Turin.
(00:42):
Just a little disclaimer right off the top
that it is not my intentionto ruffle any feathers with this topic.
Like any other strangeand mysterious topic on this channel.
My only goal is to shed lighton the weirdness in this world.
So whatever side of the fence you're on,just be nice to each other
down in the comment section.
(01:02):
Also, some people say Turin.
Others say Turin. Potato. Potato.
Tomato. Tomato.
I watched one Shroud expertsay it both ways in the same interview.
So I'm just going to default to Turin.
So for those of you who may notbe familiar with the Shroud of Turin,
it's a roughly 14.5ft by 3.5ftpiece of flax linen cloth,
(01:27):
with an imprint of the frontand back of a naked man that is venerated
by millions of Christians around the worldas the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
Wow. That's not controversial or anything.
It's not like provingor disproving the authenticity of this one
piece of cloth has ramificationsfor all of humanity or anything.
(01:52):
But regardless of whether you thinkthe Shroud is the real deal or not,
there's no denying thatthis particular length of cloth exhibits
some seriously weirdand mysterious properties.
So what do we know about the Shroud?
Well, there are accounts of a folded clothwith an image imprinted on it
being delivered to King Abgar of Edessa,
(02:13):
which is now known as Şanlıurfain modern Turkey,
following Jesus's promise to himto send a disciple to heal him.
Some people claimedthis imprinted cloth was the Shroud.
The legend says that as Abgar’sdescendants turn back to paganism,
the Bishop of Edessa hidthe cloth in the city wall
(02:35):
where it was uncovered centuries later.
It was then sent to Constantinopleas a holy relic of the Eastern
Orthodox religion, where it was seizedby members of the Fourth Crusade
in 1204.
Some theorize that it made its wayinto the hands of the Knights Templar,
(02:58):
who then brought it back to France,where it stays hidden until 1353.
That's when it pops up for everyone to seein a little chapel in Lirey, France.
The feudal lord of the area that includedLirey is a knight by the name of Geoffroi
de Charny, who may or may not havehad ties to the Knights Templar.
(03:19):
Okay, so everything up tothis point is pretty much conjecture.
We have no proof of the historyor what researchers call provenance
of the Shroud, until this date of 1353.
At this point,the Shroud is displayed and purported
to be the actual burial cloth of Jesus.
(03:40):
All is well until about 1390,when the area Bishop
Pierred’Arcis writes a letter to then anti Pope
(when the French decidedthey wanted their own pope) Clement
the Seventh, saying, “Hey,we have this really
big burial cloth here on displaythat people think was Jesus's.
But I have a letter from the bishopbefore me that says that he found the guy
(04:03):
who made it,and the guy confessed to painting it.
What do I do?” Clementsays, “Go ahead and keep showing it.
Just make sure that you make it clearto everyone that it's a fake.” So
the Shroud remains a relic of the chapelfor a few more years,
until the granddaughter of Geoffroide Charny,
Marguerite de Charny, decides to take it.
(04:26):
The people of Lirey say, “Give it back.”Marguerite says, “Make me,”
and then gives it to Louis,the Duke of Savoy.
It stays in their family chapelin Chambery, survives
a fire that leaves scorch marksfrom molten silver in several places,
until 1578, when the Savoy family decidesto move to Turin, Italy,
(04:48):
and bring the Shroud with them,where it has lived ever since.
It should be noted that in 1506,Pope Julius the Second does a 180
and gives the okay for the venerationof the Shroud as a true relic of Jesus.
Why he does this,or what information might he have
had that led him to this about face,nobody knows.
(05:11):
In any case, the Shroud remainsthe property of the Savoy family
until 1983,when it is bequeathed to the Vatican
by the last King of Italy, Umbertothe Second, upon his death, but physically
stays in the chapel that was builtspecifically for it in Turin.
Thereit would survive another fire in 1997.
(05:34):
The Shroud is now kept in a bulletproofglass case
filled with argon gasto keep it from further deterioration.
It is not on display every day.
Last time it was on publicdisplay was 2015.
But if you go to the chapel of the HolyShroud within the Turin Cathedral,
you can see the case where it iskept, just not the Shroud itself.
(05:58):
Now, this piece of cloth, it'spretty much treated
as just a matter of faith,just like all of the supposed
bits of the crossyou find in churches everywhere.
Until an accidental discovery in 1898.
For the occasion of the 400thbirthday of the Turin Cathedral,
(06:18):
the city planned a sacred art exhibitionand arranged to have a guy named Secondo
Pia, the local photography expert, shoot
the first ever pictures of the Shroud.
When he goes back to his darkroom laterthat day, he gets the shock of his life.
Instead of a mostly brown negative image
(06:38):
of the mostly yellow piece of linen,
his negative revealsnot just a full face, but a full body,
full of visual detailthat had never been seen before.
Of course, tons of people said he either
didn't know what the hellhe was doing, or worse, that he faked it,
(06:59):
until another professional photographernamed Giuseppe Enrie
also took photos of the Shroud in 1931and got the same result.
The result of both of those photographsis the realization
that when looking at the Shroud,we are not looking at a positive image.
We are looking at a negative image.
(07:20):
The real image can only be seenwhen looking at the negative,
and that negative showing the positiveimage
is the iconic vision of the Shroudthat most people know today.
Besides not knowing that he would bethe first to photograph the face
that many Christians believeis the face of Christ, Secondo Pia
(07:41):
also did not knowthat he would inadvertently create
a new branch of scientific studycalled Sindonology, which is the name
specificallyfor the scientific study of the Shroud.
The word sindon being Greek for Shroud.
Scientists from a multitude of disciplinesstart
theorizingabout the origin of the Shroud image.
(08:03):
But other than studying the photographand its negatives,
there's not really a lot they can do.
The Shroud is off limits.
But by the 1960s, the Turin archdiocese,who were its acting custodians
at the time,
they start to think, well, hey,
maybe we should figure out the best wayto preserve this thing.
So they form an 11 member committee,some members of which are scientists
(08:27):
who, between 1969 and 1973,
try to figure out what they need to do.
And that when the firstfabric samples are taken.
But things really get going in 1977,when the Shroud of Turin Research
Project or STURP, which is a 33 member
(08:48):
multidisciplinary team of scientists
representing a multitude of countries
and a multitude of religious beliefs,including mostly believers
but skeptics as well, is given120 hours of access
to the Shroud to collectas much information as they can get.
(09:09):
Rumor has it that the night beforethe testing was to begin,
the scientists were gathered at the hotelbar, relishing their free trip
to Italy, thinking it'sgoing to take them all of a day to prove
this thing is a hoax.
Even the believers.
But they are wrong.
After a day,they’re more stumped than ever.
(09:30):
The scientists work in shifts to maximize
every hour before the 120 hours is up.
This includes tape samples and vacuumsamples to collect trace evidence
and every kind of photographyyou can imagine.
The information gathered isthen taken home to be analyzed.
Takes them another three yearsto come out with a conclusion.
(09:52):
What did they decide?
They have no idea.
In their final report, they say.
“We can conclude for nowthat the Shroud image
is that of a real human formof a scourged, crucified man.
It is not the product of an artist.
The blood stains are composedof hemoglobin
and also give a positive testfor serum albumin.
(10:15):
The image is an ongoing mystery.
And until furtherchemical studies are made,
perhaps by this group of scientistsor perhaps
by some scientists in the future,the problem remains unsolved.”
Of course,
that is far from the end of the story.
There are lots of disagreements over
(10:36):
testing proceduresand interpretation of the results,
which certainly is not a big surprisegiven the diverse nature of the group.
In the fall of 1987, the Vatican says,
okay, let's try this again and approvestesting for the one test
not performedby the team in 1978, radiocarbon dating.
(10:58):
So in April of 1988,a small section of cloth from
one of the Shroud corners is carefully cutaway,
divided into three, and sentto three different carbon dating labs.
The results rock the Christian world.
The three labs announced in October of 88that they have come to the conclusion
(11:20):
that the date of the cloth fallsin a range from 1260 to 1390 A.D..
Believers are heartbroken.
Skeptics elated.
And the news makes headlinesaround the world in lightning speed.
As for the skeptics and a lot of believersas well, that's where the story ends.
(11:41):
But does it? Really?
If you answered yes,then I know you are new to this channel,
because on The InBetweenthere is always more to the story.
Now I'm going to throw out a caveatright now.
There is no wayto cover everything about the Shroud.
There are over a thousand booksand almost as many, if not more, research
(12:05):
papers on all aspects of this topic
from both believers and skeptics alike.
So I cannot cover every bit of data,
but instead I'm going to highlightthe arguments that stuck out to me
the most about the Shroud research,both for and against its authenticity.
I will lay out chips from both sides
(12:27):
on the table,leaving you to decide for yourselves.
But I will tell you right up frontthat I am leaving
the one bit of informationthat blew my mind personally, for last.
But before I start laying all of that out,
since we're on the subjectof getting balanced information,
(12:48):
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no matter whatwe personally believe going in.
When it comes to news stories,that's doubly important.
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(14:41):
Let's just not consume news.
Let's analyze it, question it,
and demand the full picture.
Okay, back to the Shroud.
So I'm going to take the elephantin the room,
the nail in the coffin for the skeptics.
The carbon dating.
When you read the fine print.
(15:01):
Turns out it isn't as cut and driedas it sounds.
Okay.
Crash course on radiocarbon dating.
All living things on Earth contain carbon.
Both carbon 12 and carbon 14.
Carbon 12 is stable.
Carbon 14 is not and decays over time.
When that organism is no longerliving the carbon 12 in their system
(15:25):
stays the same.
But the carbon 14 continuesto decay into nitrogen.
And after 5730 years,
only half of the original level of carbon14 is still present.
So by comparing the amount of carbon14 still present in the test sample
compared to the level of carbon 12,scientists can figure out how old it is.
(15:48):
This is the test that was performedon samples of the Shroud.
Scientists at Oxford University,the University of Arizona
and the Swiss Federal Instituteof Technology all independently
tested samples of the clothand came to a consensus
that the cloth was producedbetween 1260 and 1390 A.D..
(16:09):
But as is often the case,the devil is in the details.
Warning.
You better get comfortable withyour beverage of choice for this story.
Carbon dating was not part of the testsconducted by the STURP team in 1978
because the Vatican would not
allow any testthat would be destructive to the Shroud.
(16:31):
Carbon dating would have requireda sample of the fabric.
But after the team releasestheir conclusion of all of the tests
they did run, they decide,why not see if we can do some more?
So they submit a list of 26 more teststhey want to run.
Carbon dating being on that list.
(16:51):
Their proposal is approvedby then Cardinal Ratzinger,
who would later become Pope Benedictthe 16th,
and many months of meetingsand planning take place
between the Vatican, severalof the original STURP members,
some new scientists and several carbondating labs.
From the get go,there are issues in the group.
(17:15):
The carbon dating people think there'sreally no reason to perform
any of the other test.
Carbon dating would answerthe only relevant question.
The scientists think thatthe carbon daters
are only interested in the fameand funding that they are bound to get.
And the carbon daters think the scientists
are just a bunch of religious zealots.
(17:37):
Harry Gove, from the radiocarbondating laboratory
at the University of Rochester,goes so far as to say this.
“Almost without exception,there were people
who honestly believe it's Christ's Shroud.
It's a well-known fact that scientistscan produce whatever result they want.
If you believe that passionatelyin something, you can steer the results.
(18:01):
My God, we've all been guilty of that.”
In the end, the carbon daters win the day.
And all other teststhat the Vatican had approved
are canceledwith the exception of the carbon dating.
Now, through these many monthsof planning, a protocol
for how the carbon dating process would godown had been established.
(18:24):
Seven different laboratorieswould do the testing.
Two different methods of carbondating would be used.
The old methodthat has an established track record,
and the new method that hasn't been around
as long but needs a much smaller sample.
The test will be supervisedand coordinated
by DoctorMichael Tate of the British Museum.
(18:47):
Samples of the Shroud will be takenfrom at least three different spots.
The STURP team, who practically know
every fiber of the Shroud already,will be the ones to decide
where the samples will come fromand do the cutting.
Each laboratory will test three samples -one of the Shroud,
(19:08):
and two othercontrolled samples of different ages.
Only the test supervisorwill know the age of the control samples,
so he can check the accuracyof each laboratory's dating process.
It's a blind test.
The samples are all going to look alike,so that laboratories running the test
won't be able to tell which sampleis the Shroud and which are the controls.
(19:32):
The laboratories are to maintainstrict secrecy and not tell anybody
about the results, except anyoneauthorized by the British Museum.
All the labs will do the test at the sametime, and without exchanging information.
Three institutions the British Museum,the Metrological Institute of Turin
(19:53):
and the Pontifical Academy of Scienceswill be the ones to analyze the results.
And finally,after the results have been analyzed,
the analyzers will meetwith the radiocarbon
labs to make surethat they all are in agreement,
and then communicatethose results to the Vatican.
That seems pretty thorough to me.
(20:15):
But it takes about a hot minute for thingsto start unraveling.
First, the STURP guysare suddenly cut out of the loop.
Someone else is going to choosethe locations and cut the samples.
Then the Vatican decidesit's only going to be
one sample instead of three.
Then they decide to use only three labsinstead of seven,
(20:38):
of which the University of Rochesteris not one.
Sorry, Harry.
And they're all going to use the newer,
less established of the two carbondating methods.
Well, aren't we off to a great start?
But on April 21st, 1988, test supervisorMichael Tite,
(20:59):
people from the Catholic Church,people from the three carbon
dating laboratories - which if youremember, end up being Oxford University,
the University of Arizona and the SwissFederal Institute of Technology
photographers and a camera crewwho are there to document
the entire operation,all gather at the Turin Cathedral.
(21:20):
Two textile specialists are chosen
to decide from where on the Shroudthe sample should be taken.
One of those experts pointsto the bloodstain
caused by the wound in the sideand asks, “What's that large brown patch?”
Eventually,
they decideto cut a piece from the corner,
(21:40):
like the corner that has been grabbedand stretched
by probably dozens of different peopleover the years of exhibitions.
The cornerthat is also pretty close to the area
that's been burned awayby the fire in 1532 and stained
by the water used to put out that fire,which most likely left
(22:01):
nice little deposits of dust,blood and other contaminants.
The textile experts picked the worstpossible area.
Okay, so the sample is cut and divided
into three roughly equal pieces,one for each lab.
Michael Tightthen brings out the control samples,
(22:22):
which have a different weave pattern.
But instead of unravelingall of the samples, he leaves them as is,
meaning it is now very easy to figure outwhich one is from the Shroud.
There goes the blind testing protocol.
The samples are weighedand put into numbered
(22:42):
metal cylinders,which will go to the three testing labs.
Oh, and remember that camera crew hiredto film the whole thing?
they don't film this part,so there's no way to verify
which samples go into which containers.
Not to mention that Michael Tite decidesat the last minute
(23:03):
to throw in a fourth sample - Some threadfrom a cape from Saint Louis of Anjou.
which is knownto be dated to the 13th century.
They don't have metal cylinders
for the extra samples,so they just get put into envelopes.
Each lab is given their medal cylinders
and their envelopeand are asked to sign a receipt.
(23:24):
The receipt liststhe ages of the control samples.
So now they don't even have to botherlooking
at the weave to figure outwhich sample is the Shroud.
It’s just written right there for them.
This is like the Three Stooges convention.
Whoa whoawhoa whoa But it gets even better.
(23:46):
The weight of the samplesthe labs receive don't all
match the recorded weight of the samplesthat were taken from the Shroud.
They were supposed to all performthe test at the same time,
but Arizona does theirs in May, Zurichin June, and Oxford does theirs in July.
At first, they seem to do a decent jobof sticking to the secrecy protocol
(24:08):
and reject a request from the Vaticanto send one of their people to watch.
But Zurich thinks it'sperfectly reasonable
to let in an entire BBC documentary crew.
And remember our friendHenry from the University of Rochester?
Well, he manages to twist the armof someone in the Arizona lab to let him
(24:30):
watch the process, as long as he signsa non-disclosure agreement.
Harry and his assistanthave made a bet for a pair
of cowboy bootson the outcome of the tests.
The assistant thinks the resultswill be from the time of Christ,
but Harry thinks it's going to come backas dating to medieval times.
The ink is not even dry
(24:54):
on the paper with the resultsbefore Harry breaks his NDA
by phoning his assistantto claim his shiny new boots.
In Oxford, two weeks before
the results are announcedto even the church, a book entitled
“The Shroud Unmasked (25:12):
Discovery of the Greatest Forgery of All Time”
is already on the presses.
Hey. When confronted
about this breach of secrecy protocol,
the guy in charge of the Oxford lab,
Professor Edward Thomas Hall, says,
(25:32):
“I think it was a hopeless prospectto keep the results secret.
You couldn't with the bestwill in the world.” Okay,
So the tests are completedand given to Michael Tite
at the British Museum, but no one else.
The other two institutionswho are also supposed to analyze
the data,are completely cut out of the process.
(25:56):
The statistical analysis is completedby the people
from the British Museumunder the watchful eye of Michael Tite.
And the results are announcedat a press conference,
including both Professor Halland Michael Tite in October of 1988,
with Professor Hall not mincing words
about his thoughts on the matter,stating, “There was a multi-million
(26:20):
pound business in making forgeriesduring the 14th century.
Someone just got a bit of linen,faked it up and flogged it.
Some people may continue to fightfor the authenticity of the Shroud, like
the Flat Earth Society, but this settlesit all, as far as we are concerned.”
Nice exclamation point.
(26:41):
whileI'm not going to go deep into the data
that was publishedto back up their conclusions
since that's way above my pay grade,I will highlight just one little tidbit.
When doing these kinds of statisticalanalyzes,
statisticians come up withwhat's called the significance level.
That's a measureof the reliability of the results.
(27:01):
So the higher the better.
The British Museum doesn't actually
publish that number, but using their own
published data, that significance levelfor the Shroud’s test
comes out to 4.176,
which they then round up to five.
(27:21):
Which is importantbecause anything under five
is written off as completely unreliable.
But it gets worse.
Despite numerous requests over the years,
they never give up the original data.
That is until a French lawyerfinally cuts through the red tape
with the British versionof our Freedom of Information Act request,
(27:44):
and gets all of the data in 2017.
Turns out that the labs actually performed
more tests than what was reported.
And when you addin those test results to the pool,
the results get even less reliable.
Kind of makes that quote from Harry Gove,that it's a well
(28:05):
known fact that scientists can producewhatever result they want,
even more interesting, doesn't it?
Now, with all of that dirty laundrybeing aired and throwing some serious
shade on the validity of the carbondating results,
it still begs the question,
“Why don't the resultspoint back to the first century?” Well,
(28:28):
there are a multitude of theoriesout there that talk about various
different kinds of contaminationthat could be taking place.
Excessive handling,excess carbon deposits from the fire,
or even laboratory cleaning proceduresof the sample before testing.
But one American couple,Joseph Morino and Sue Benford,
(28:48):
not scientists, just Stroud hobbyists,
managed to find something no one else has.
Looking at the pictures of the Shroud,they noticed that
the weave pattern in the areawhere the samples were cut was ever
so slightly misalignedfrom the rest of the cloth.
Following their hunch,they sent the pictures to three
(29:11):
textile expertswho all say, yup, that's a reweave.
So the couple publishes their research,with their conclusion being that the area
that the samples came from is an areathat was repaired from the fire damage.
The responsefrom the scientific community?
Amateurs.
Enter a guy named Ray Rogers,an original member of the team
(29:35):
who has pretty much had it up to herewith crazy Shroud theories,
who reads about thisnew patch area theory and blows a gasket!
He sets out on a mission to prove themwrong, but figures out, they’re right.
Taking a close look at the samples,he discovers fibers that are cotton,
(29:58):
which the Shroud is made of flax.
And these fibers are dyed,which the main part of the Shroud is not.
So he confirms that the area was rewovenwith thread, at least partially containing
cotton fiber, and then dyed to make itmatch in color to the rest of the cloth.
(30:18):
Hats off to the nuns in 1532,who did their job
so well that the repair was allbut invisible to the naked eye.
Roger then goes backand looks at the ultraviolet
pictures taken by his team in 1978.
And there it is.
That area of the clothdoes not fluoresce in the same way.
(30:40):
It's not the same cloth.
And of course,that's exactly where the sample was taken.
Okay, I knowthat was a long way to go to get here,
but I thought it was importantto deflate that elephant and show
that the carbon dating argumentisn't necessarily the end all,
be all mic dropthat it has been portrayed as.
(31:04):
to make room for different information.
So now that we have some mental space,
let's look at some of the other arguments.
Just so you know, after looking at allof this stuff, I am still on the fence.
So if I sound like I'm fightingfor one side or the other, it's only
because I like to play devil's advocate
(31:26):
and I don't like itwhen people tell me what to think.
So when I approach a topic like this one,I usually go to Wikipedia
and check out what they have to sayjust to get a basic lay of the land.
I know, I know. Wikipedia!
But then I start clicking outside linksand going down rabbit holes from there.
(31:48):
That'sexactly what I did for this route as well.
Thank God I did.
If you just readwhat Wikipedia says, in my humble opinion,
they go out of their way to only talkabout the aspects of this mystery
that they can say have been debunked.
But the rabbit holes actually lead me
to a place that's just the opposite.
(32:11):
Okay, so there are so many disparate areasto cover
that I don't really know where to start.
So let's just start with the cloth itself.
It's made of woven flax,very common for the era.
Remember, if this is the actual burial
cloth of Jesus, we're talkingabout the early first century.
(32:32):
Biblically speaking, 33 A.D.
It is woven in what is called a 3 to 1herringbone pattern.
Some historians saythat particular pattern was not available
at the time,and only surfaced in medieval times.
However, according to Stephen E.
Jones of TheShroudofTurin.blogspot,who admits that there are no samples of
(32:54):
herringbone twill weave in linen yetknown from the first century or earlier,
there are examples of thatsame weave pattern in silk and wool
from the third centuryin Syria and Britain,
and in wool in the early second century,from the Roman
fort of Krokodiloin Egypt's Eastern Desert.
(33:15):
So we know it'snot just a medieval times thing.
And if they're making it in Egyptto the south and in Syria to the north,
and Jerusalem is pretty much a big tradinghub, does it seem logical
that some of that fabriccould have made its way to market there?
But wouldn't a piece of cloththat old have disintegrated by now?
(33:36):
Not necessarily.
The Tarkhan dress namedfor the Tarkhan Cemetery in Cairo, Egypt,
where it was found in 1913, is an over
5000 year old woven linen garment
that is the world'soldest piece of woven clothing.
Another interesting tidbitis that at the beginning
(33:57):
I said the cloth was roughly 14.5by 3.5ft.
Well, more accurately, it's 14.3 by 3.6ft.
Kind of a random number, right? Nope.
Back in those trading marketsof the early first century,
the international standard unit of lengthwas the Assyrian standard cubit,
(34:19):
which measure somewherebetween 21.4 and 21.6in.
The Shroud’s
odd measurementsturn out to be exactly two
by eight Assyrian standard cubits.
Now, make no mistake,
this would have beena very expensive piece of fabric.
(34:40):
But according to the Bible, Jesus’sbody was claimed and taken care of by two
very wealthy benefactors,Joseph of Arimathea
and Nicodemus, who would easily
have had the meansto buy that piece of fabric.
Now let's look at this from the medievalforgeries side of the coin.
(35:00):
According to our man, Professor Hall,there were tons of people in medieval
times looking to make a quick buckby forging religious artifacts.
But that particular piece of fabricwas rare in medieval
times as well,so would still have been expensive.
Why would a forger spenda good chunk of his future margin
(35:22):
on expensive fabric, when no one'sgoing to be the wiser anyway?
Not to mention that the Assyrian standardcubit
was not discovered to be the standarduntil the 19th century,
and it never mentions in the Biblehow big the Shroud was.
So how would a forger knowhow big to make the cloth?
(35:43):
All right,
let's leave that tidbit to the sideand talk about what is on the cloth.
The entire length of the clothcontains the front and back images
of a man measuring somewherebetween five foot seven and six foot two,
as if the man was laid down on the clothand the rest of
the cloth was brought up over his headto cover his front side.
(36:05):
The image itself seems to comefrom excessive yellowing of the fabric.
In addition, there are scorchmarks and holes that are documented
to have come from the 1532 fire and dark
reddish and brown stainsthat look an awful lot like blood stains.
Now, obviouslypeople have been studying this
(36:26):
for a while, but the study gets moreand more intense as technology improves.
The invention of photographybrought us those stunning negative images
with detailsthat can't be seen with the naked eye.
And something called theVP-8 Analyzer brought us 3D.
(36:48):
The VP-8
Analyzer is a computer developedin the early 70s that can assign
3D valueto the brightness range of a photo.
I have no ideawhat it was actually developed for,
but when you show it a regular old photo,
you get a result something like this...
or this.
(37:09):
But when you show itthe negative of the Shroud,
you get an almost complete 3Dimage of the face imprinted on the Shroud.
And it is this image, producedaround 1976, that is responsible
for the inception of the Shroud of Turin
Research Project, STURP.
(37:30):
So the Shroud is not a picture,because a picture does not contain
enough brightness informationto construct a full 3D image,
but according to the STURPguys, it's also not a painting.
No evidence of brushstrokes or residue of
eitherinks or dyes can be found on the cloth.
Well, almost none.
(37:51):
One of the original STURPmembers, Walter McCrone,
whose work in forensicchemical analysis helped discover
the forgery of the famous Vinlandmap, begs to differ.
His analysis from particlestaken from some of the 32 sticky tape
samples taken from the Shroud in the 1978testing fest,
(38:11):
showed that the image imprint was painted
with a diluted mixtureof iron oxide and gelatin,
while the blood stains were paintedwith mercury sulfide and gelatin.
He did not see any signs of blood proteinsin the samples.
However,he was pretty much alone in his analysis.
(38:34):
Other members of the team said theyabsolutely could identify signs of blood.
McCrone said, “You don't see what I seebecause you don't know what you're
looking for, and your instruments Aren'tas good as mine?
Eventually, McCrone gave back all of hissticky tape samples and quit the team,
but went on to write articlesand give lectures on his pigment theory.
(38:59):
Now, I'm not even going to pretendto know the intricacies of his arguments,
but considering that blood sampleswere eventually collected
and typed as being AB,I'm not sure how we can stay
with the determination that it's paintand not blood.
Now, the other STURP guys weren't sayingthat they didn't see any signs
(39:21):
of pigment on the cloth, just not enoughto constitute the image being a painting.
Their hypothesisfor their being pigment at all
is that in medieval times, replicas
of holy relics were often copied.
The artist would set upnext to the original and copy it,
and then touch the copy to the original,with the belief
(39:42):
that the holiness of the originalwould transfer to the copy.
So if painters were rubbing their copiesonto the Shroud,
it makes sensethat some pigment would be transferred.
So if you believe the STURP groupthat the Shroud is not painted,
let's revisit that confessionthat Bishop Pierre d'Arcis’s
predecessor got from the artist.
(40:05):
If the confession says he painted it,and we know it wasn't painted,
to what exactly would he have beenconfessing?
Might be important to keep in mind that.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
The Medieval Inquisitionhad only ended less
than 100 yearsbefore the supposed confession.
(40:26):
The Medieval Inquisition was focusedmainly in France,
where this confession was given,and was carried out by the local bishops.
You think people were inclinedto say no to the bishop?
No. I'm sure they would have confessedto anything.
Not to mention that confessingto creating a forgery of a holy
(40:49):
relichad to have some serious consequences.
But there's nothing about the confessoror any punishment given in church records.
All right, let's get back to the blood.
The blood that is on the Shroudcan't be proven to be or not
be Jesus's bloodsince we have no DNA comparison sample.
(41:11):
But numerous samples were DNA typed.
The results werekind of all over the board.
(41:51):
At one point, the claim was made that
pollen and limestone were both foundthat are specific to the Jerusalem region.
But there have been a few papers releasedsince then questioning the methodology
of those studies, so we're not goingto include that information here.
But then again, who am I kidding?
I think every paper writtenabout this topic, no matter what side
(42:14):
it's beenon, has been refuted by somebody.
I love it.
It's like a cage match for nerds.
same to me.
This is Anyway, up to this point,the evidence has been
pretty circumstantial to varying degrees.
And without going out holy by millennia,there's even more.
(42:34):
Traces of the myrrh and aloessaid to have been used
in his burial have been foundon the Shroud.
The legs of the man on the Shroudwere not broken,
as is usually the casefor those who are crucified.
Blood patterns on the shouldersand back line up with the story
of Jesus carrying the cross beamto his crucifixion site.
(42:55):
Blood stains on the wrist and feetcorrelate with actual crucifixion
practice, with nailsgoing through the wrists instead of
through the hands, asis common in medieval art depictions.
The woundssustained by the man on the Shroud
completely align with biblical accounts.
And forensic blood flow analysts sayall the blood flow patterns on the cloth
(43:20):
match the descriptionsgiven of the last hours of Jesus's life.
The crucifixion of Jesusis said to have been
particularly brutalas far as crucifixions go,
and the man on the cloth looks likehe has been through the wringer.
His eye looks almost like it'sswollen shut,
(43:42):
his nose looks to be broken,
and the streaks of 120 scourge
marks cover his entire body.
He has a wound on his right side,where it is
said that a Roman soldierpierced it with a lance.
He has blood trickling down his head,
where it issaid a soldier placed a crown of thorns.
(44:05):
The man on the cloth matches
the biblical stories to a tee.
Now to give the skeptics their due.
The image on the Shrouddoes have some issues.
The armsand the fingers on the hand are too long.
The proportions of the face aren'tquite right, and the placement of his arms
(44:26):
seems very unnatural for a personlaying in a prone position.
Although by the time that he isput into the tomb,
rigor mortis would have been setting
in, so who knows howthat would affect his position.
And there are plenty of other tidbits,like coins on his eyes
and flowers around his headthat I honestly can't see.
(44:50):
But feel free to jump downthat rabbit hole as well.
So up to this point,
we've been kind of nibblingaround the edges, but we are finally
at the point where we can really diginto the heart of the arguments
that put this whole affair on my weirdnessradar.
First, let's talk about somethingI had never even heard
(45:12):
of (My Catholic familyis not going to like hearing that.)
until I started researching the Shroud,the Sudarium of Oviedo.
Sudarium being the wordfor the traditional Jewish burial
cloth, and Oviedo being the town in Spainwhere the cloth is said to be kept.
So back in Jesus's day,Jewish law said that
(45:32):
bodily fluidsneeded to be buried with the body.
Once Jesus had died on the cross.
Someone would have wrappeda cloth around his head
to make surethat none of those fluids were lost.
The Sudarium is that cloth.
Not to go too deep into the weeds,
scientists have establishedexactly how this 34 by 21 inch cloth
(45:56):
was wrapped on his head andthey've identified 70 points of similarity
between the blood stains on the Sudariumand those found on the Shroud of Turin.
But the one that isthe most interesting to me
is a blood trickleon the forehead of the man on the Shroud.
Now people way smarter than I havefigured out exactly how the cloth
(46:20):
was wrapped around the head,and how each grouping of stains got there.
And this forehead stain on the Sudarium
is the exact same patternas the blood trickle on the Shroud.
But even better is this little detail.
Imagine you have a small amount of bloodtrickling slowly over
(46:41):
time down your forehead.
The edges will begin to dry,but the spot at the bottom of the trickle
will stay wet the longestand form a little drop right?
Now imagineputting a cloth over your head.
That cloth is going to soak upthe wet blood
at the end of the trickle,and leave a clean spot right?
(47:03):
Well, the Sudarium shows a spotwhere blood was soaked up
and the matching wound on the Shroud showsthe clean spot.
It's a little hard to see with the imagesavailable, but almost every photo
I've seen the middle of the blooddrop at the end of the trickle is clean.
(47:23):
Now, the reason the Sudarium is importantto the Shroud debate is because
while the provenance for the Shroudonly goes back to the mid 14th century,
the Sudarium can be dated back to 614 A.D.
So if the Sudarium and the Shroudcan be proven to come from the same event,
that destroys the medieval forgerynarrative.
(47:45):
Also notethat the Sudarium has the same dust
mixture around the nosethat was found in the corresponding
nose area of the Shroud,and the same blood type AB.
Now AB blood is kind of rarein the rest of the world,
with only about 4% of the populationhaving it in the U.S.,
(48:05):
but it's a little more commonin the Middle East at about 5%.
More common, but still only 5%.
So what are the oddsthat two random ancient cloths
would have blood stainsof the same AB blood type?
1 in 400 or .25%.
(48:26):
Seriously?
But let's go back to the Shroud.
Remember me saying that no one knows
how the imprint of our Shroud mangot there?
They know it's not paint.
They know it's not dye.
Well, it turns out that they do knowwhat makes the imprint.
They just don't know how it happened.
The imprint is formed by the yellowingof the flax fibers that make up the cloth.
(48:52):
The yellowing is from rapid aging,so they just don't know why those areas
would have aged any differentlythan the rest of the cloth.
Another thing they do knowis that the blood staining present on
the Shroud was there before the rapidaging of the yellowed areas,
because the same changes to the fibersis not present in those areas,
(49:13):
and the blood stainsgo all the way through the cloth
like they were soaked up into the fibers.
But the rapid aging effectis very superficial.
It's only presenton the very outer layer of the fibers,
but the fibers that are yelloware yellow all the way
around the circumference,not just the side facing out.
(49:37):
And the yellowing is on a fiberby fiber basis.
One fiber might be yellow,while the next to it is not.
in. Keep in mind,we are not talking about each thread.
We are talking about each individual fiberthat makes up each thread.
Also, the staining on the Shrouddoesn't just contain blood.
(49:58):
It contains blood serum.
Anyone who's ever had a serious woundcan tell you that even after it
stops bleeding,it can still leak a clear fluid.
That's blood serum.
Well,some of the blood stains on the cloth show
an outline of this clearserum called a serum halo.
And they can tell that it's actually bloodserum
(50:20):
by the way,it fluoresces under a UV light.
If they were just water stains,say from the fire,
they wouldn't show up under UV light.
Now it's been shown that there are otherliquids that also fluoresce the same way.
But this puts the medieval forgerytheory in trouble again.
How would a 14th centuryforger know what liquids to use
(50:44):
to create the correct UV fluorescence,
when UV is centuries from being a thing?
Another interesting thing about the bloodstains is that they are very red
for being that old.
Blood usually darkens to eithera dark brown or even black over time.
This, of course, leads many people to seethat the red color has to be paint.
(51:06):
But testing of the bloodshowed a high bilirubin count -
the same thing that causes the yellow skinthat comes with jaundice.
And bilirubin has a preservative effect,
keeping blood from breaking downand turning that dark color.
And recently, even more testinghas confirmed the presence of high levels
(51:26):
of creatinine and ferritiniron in the blood.
Levels of bilirubin, ferritiniron and creatinine in the blood are known
to go through the roof in peopleunder extreme duress, experiencing
muscle trauma and impairedkidney function, like someone would be
if they were being torturedand beaten to a pulp.
(51:49):
The latest testing to hitthe news recently is some new
testing done of the flax fibersthat make up the cloth.
The new test, called WAXS or Wide AngleX-ray
Scattering, was performed by the Instituteof Crystallography in Italy.
The test is looking for a substancecalled Vanillan,
(52:10):
which is a natural partof the cellulose structure of the fiber.
It turns out that Vanillan decaysat a predictable rate,
so it's kind of like a carbon dating testusing Vanillan instead.
They're testingshows that the Vanillan levels
in the Shroud fibersmatch fibers from other burial shrouds
known to have come from the Jewishuprising of Masada
(52:33):
between 66 and 74 A.D..
Sounds like a slam dunk, right?
Well, not exactly.
To get to its currentlevel of Vanillan degradation,
the cloth would have had to be keptat a temperature of about 72°F,
with a relative humidity of roughly 55%
for the first 13 centuriesof its existence.
(52:56):
Interesting.
It's possible, but not likely.
- and this is fascinating to me -
this same test also disprovesthe medieval forgery theory.
To get to the level of Vanillan depletionshown in the test,
the Shroud would have had to have been outin the sun in Mali, Africa,
(53:19):
literally Timbuktu,for its entire 700 year existence.
Because that's the only placehot enough to age it that quickly.
Now, I told you at the beginningof all of this
that I was saving the best for last.
And I am about to make goodon that promise.
I know this is going to blow your mindbecause it has absolutely blown mine.
(53:43):
This one bit of information mightjust be enough to make me a believer.
If you look at the pictures of the Shroud,
either the positive or the negative,
it's pretty easy to see that there'sa lot of shading happening in the image.
We know we're not dealing with pigments.
So let's say you're drawing somethingwith a pencil that requires shading.
(54:06):
How would you do that?
Well, you would probably apply more pencil
lead where you wantthe picture to be darker.
And less pencil lead in the lighterareas, right?
If you were to transferthat idea to the Shroud,
that would mean more of thisyellowing aging effects
in the darker areas,and less in the lighter ones.
(54:29):
But that is notwhat is happening on the Shroud.
The darker colored areas are notthe result of a change in color intensity.
Instead,it is the result of a larger or smaller
amount of colored or aged fibersper unit area.
It's called the halftone effect,and it's the same way newspapers
(54:53):
used to print picturesbefore the days of digital printing.
I don't even know how to wrap my headaround that one.
So what on earth, or maybe beyond Earth,could do something like that?
Well, believersand some scientists have a theory.
They are speculating that if you followbiblical teachings about the resurrection,
(55:16):
perhaps there was a massive particleradiation burst
from whatever was lying insidethose layers of cloth,
changing the very molecular composition
of the Shroud fibers.
This radiation burst would account formany of the unusual features of the cloth.
Like the fact that only the topmost layersof the yellowed fibers are affected,
(55:41):
why the bloodstains still appear so red,
the extra carbon 14 moleculesthat throw off the carbon dating,
the fact that the density of the imageis the same on both the front
and back images, and even the oddproportions of some of the body parts.
And scientists have already runexperiments where they bombarded
(56:02):
a piece of flax linen similarto that of the Shroud with protons,
and were left with a piece of clothbearing the exact same
rapid aging characteristicsthat are present in the Shroud.
Or others think maybe it was UV radiation.
Tests conducted using UV rays also
replicated the same changes to the fibers.
(56:25):
One interesting note.
The UV testing that was doneused a laser pulse that lasted only
1/40,000,000,000 of a second
and required billions of watts of power.
If you expand those calculationsto what would be necessary
to imprint the entire Shroud,that would require
(56:47):
14,000 lasers operating simultaneously
using 34 trillion watts of power.
Of course,if this is the true resurrection,
I think God would be able to musterall the energy he needs.
(57:09):
I am dead
serious when I tell you that I honestlydon't know where to go with this one.
The skeptic in medoesn't want to believe it.
And there's certainly plenty of evidencethere to support a medieval forgery.
But some of these findingsare so literally
awe inspiringand I just can't let them go.
(57:30):
But no matterwhat side of the fence you're on,
hopefully you at least learn some thingsyou didn't know before.
Now, if you're readyfor more unexplained weirdness
of the Divine kind,this is the video for you.
Just click it.
You won't be disappointed.
Be careful out there
(57:50):
and I will see youhere again, on The InBetween.
War of the worlds.
Martian invasion hoax.
Surgeon's photo of Nessie.
Hoax.
Alien autopsy. Hoax.
Some hoaxes are pretty easy to spot,but the most studied artifact in history
that people have been calling a hoaxfor 700 years
is proving to be a tougher nut to crack.
Welcome to the InBetween.
(00:21):
I'm Carol Ann, and we are talking abouta simple piece of cloth bearing the image
of a man that no scientist has been ableto figure out how it got there.
We are diving deepinto the Shroud of Turin.
(00:42):
Just a little disclaimer right off the top
that it is not my intentionto ruffle any feathers with this topic.
Like any other strangeand mysterious topic on this channel.
My only goal is to shed lighton the weirdness in this world.
So whatever side of the fence you're on,just be nice to each other
down in the comment section.
(01:02):
Also, some people say Turin.
Others say Turin. Potato. Potato.
Tomato. Tomato.
I watched one Shroud expertsay it both ways in the same interview.
So I'm just going to default to Turin.
So for those of you who may notbe familiar with the Shroud of Turin,
it's a roughly 14.5ft by 3.5ftpiece of flax linen cloth,
(01:27):
with an imprint of the frontand back of a naked man that is venerated
by millions of Christians around the worldas the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
Wow. That's not controversial or anything.
It's not like provingor disproving the authenticity of this one
piece of cloth has ramificationsfor all of humanity or anything.
(01:52):
But regardless of whether you thinkthe Shroud is the real deal or not,
there's no denying thatthis particular length of cloth exhibits
some seriously weirdand mysterious properties.
So what do we know about the Shroud?
Well, there are accounts of a folded clothwith an image imprinted on it
being delivered to King Abgar of Edessa,
(02:13):
which is now known as Şanlıurfain modern Turkey,
following Jesus's promise to himto send a disciple to heal him.
Some people claimedthis imprinted cloth was the Shroud.
The legend says that as Abgar’sdescendants turn back to paganism,
the Bishop of Edessa hidthe cloth in the city wall
(02:35):
where it was uncovered centuries later.
It was then sent to Constantinopleas a holy relic of the Eastern
Orthodox religion, where it was seizedby members of the Fourth Crusade
in 1204.
Some theorize that it made its wayinto the hands of the Knights Templar,
(02:58):
who then brought it back to France,where it stays hidden until 1353.
That's when it pops up for everyone to seein a little chapel in Lirey, France.
The feudal lord of the area that includedLirey is a knight by the name of Geoffroi
de Charny, who may or may not havehad ties to the Knights Templar.
(03:19):
Okay, so everything up tothis point is pretty much conjecture.
We have no proof of the historyor what researchers call provenance
of the Shroud, until this date of 1353.
At this point,the Shroud is displayed and purported
to be the actual burial cloth of Jesus.
(03:40):
All is well until about 1390,when the area Bishop
Pierred’Arcis writes a letter to then anti Pope
(when the French decidedthey wanted their own pope) Clement
the Seventh, saying, “Hey,we have this really
big burial cloth here on displaythat people think was Jesus's.
But I have a letter from the bishopbefore me that says that he found the guy
(04:03):
who made it,and the guy confessed to painting it.
What do I do?” Clementsays, “Go ahead and keep showing it.
Just make sure that you make it clearto everyone that it's a fake.” So
the Shroud remains a relic of the chapelfor a few more years,
until the granddaughter of Geoffroide Charny,
Marguerite de Charny, decides to take it.
(04:26):
The people of Lirey say, “Give it back.”Marguerite says, “Make me,”
and then gives it to Louis,the Duke of Savoy.
It stays in their family chapelin Chambery, survives
a fire that leaves scorch marksfrom molten silver in several places,
until 1578, when the Savoy family decidesto move to Turin, Italy,
(04:48):
and bring the Shroud with them,where it has lived ever since.
It should be noted that in 1506,Pope Julius the Second does a 180
and gives the okay for the venerationof the Shroud as a true relic of Jesus.
Why he does this,or what information might he have
had that led him to this about face,nobody knows.
(05:11):
In any case, the Shroud remainsthe property of the Savoy family
until 1983,when it is bequeathed to the Vatican
by the last King of Italy, Umbertothe Second, upon his death, but physically
stays in the chapel that was builtspecifically for it in Turin.
Thereit would survive another fire in 1997.
(05:34):
The Shroud is now kept in a bulletproofglass case
filled with argon gasto keep it from further deterioration.
It is not on display every day.
Last time it was on publicdisplay was 2015.
But if you go to the chapel of the HolyShroud within the Turin Cathedral,
you can see the case where it iskept, just not the Shroud itself.
(05:58):
Now, this piece of cloth, it'spretty much treated
as just a matter of faith,just like all of the supposed
bits of the crossyou find in churches everywhere.
Until an accidental discovery in 1898.
For the occasion of the 400thbirthday of the Turin Cathedral,
(06:18):
the city planned a sacred art exhibitionand arranged to have a guy named Secondo
Pia, the local photography expert, shoot
the first ever pictures of the Shroud.
When he goes back to his darkroom laterthat day, he gets the shock of his life.
Instead of a mostly brown negative image
(06:38):
of the mostly yellow piece of linen,
his negative revealsnot just a full face, but a full body,
full of visual detailthat had never been seen before.
Of course, tons of people said he either
didn't know what the hellhe was doing, or worse, that he faked it,
(06:59):
until another professional photographernamed Giuseppe Enrie
also took photos of the Shroud in 1931and got the same result.
The result of both of those photographsis the realization
that when looking at the Shroud,we are not looking at a positive image.
We are looking at a negative image.
(07:20):
The real image can only be seenwhen looking at the negative,
and that negative showing the positiveimage
is the iconic vision of the Shroudthat most people know today.
Besides not knowing that he would bethe first to photograph the face
that many Christians believeis the face of Christ, Secondo Pia
(07:41):
also did not knowthat he would inadvertently create
a new branch of scientific studycalled Sindonology, which is the name
specificallyfor the scientific study of the Shroud.
The word sindon being Greek for Shroud.
Scientists from a multitude of disciplinesstart
theorizingabout the origin of the Shroud image.
(08:03):
But other than studying the photographand its negatives,
there's not really a lot they can do.
The Shroud is off limits.
But by the 1960s, the Turin archdiocese,who were its acting custodians
at the time,
they start to think, well, hey,
maybe we should figure out the best wayto preserve this thing.
So they form an 11 member committee,some members of which are scientists
(08:27):
who, between 1969 and 1973,
try to figure out what they need to do.
And that when the firstfabric samples are taken.
But things really get going in 1977,when the Shroud of Turin Research
Project or STURP, which is a 33 member
(08:48):
multidisciplinary team of scientists
representing a multitude of countries
and a multitude of religious beliefs,including mostly believers
but skeptics as well, is given120 hours of access
to the Shroud to collectas much information as they can get.
(09:09):
Rumor has it that the night beforethe testing was to begin,
the scientists were gathered at the hotelbar, relishing their free trip
to Italy, thinking it'sgoing to take them all of a day to prove
this thing is a hoax.
Even the believers.
But they are wrong.
After a day,they’re more stumped than ever.
(09:30):
The scientists work in shifts to maximize
every hour before the 120 hours is up.
This includes tape samples and vacuumsamples to collect trace evidence
and every kind of photographyyou can imagine.
The information gathered isthen taken home to be analyzed.
Takes them another three yearsto come out with a conclusion.
(09:52):
What did they decide?
They have no idea.
In their final report, they say.
“We can conclude for nowthat the Shroud image
is that of a real human formof a scourged, crucified man.
It is not the product of an artist.
The blood stains are composedof hemoglobin
and also give a positive testfor serum albumin.
(10:15):
The image is an ongoing mystery.
And until furtherchemical studies are made,
perhaps by this group of scientistsor perhaps
by some scientists in the future,the problem remains unsolved.”
Of course,
that is far from the end of the story.
There are lots of disagreements over
(10:36):
testing proceduresand interpretation of the results,
which certainly is not a big surprisegiven the diverse nature of the group.
In the fall of 1987, the Vatican says,
okay, let's try this again and approvestesting for the one test
not performedby the team in 1978, radiocarbon dating.
(10:58):
So in April of 1988,a small section of cloth from
one of the Shroud corners is carefully cutaway,
divided into three, and sentto three different carbon dating labs.
The results rock the Christian world.
The three labs announced in October of 88that they have come to the conclusion
(11:20):
that the date of the cloth fallsin a range from 1260 to 1390 A.D..
Believers are heartbroken.
Skeptics elated.
And the news makes headlinesaround the world in lightning speed.
As for the skeptics and a lot of believersas well, that's where the story ends.
(11:41):
But does it? Really?
If you answered yes,then I know you are new to this channel,
because on The InBetweenthere is always more to the story.
Now I'm going to throw out a caveatright now.
There is no wayto cover everything about the Shroud.
There are over a thousand booksand almost as many, if not more, research
(12:05):
papers on all aspects of this topic
from both believers and skeptics alike.
So I cannot cover every bit of data,
but instead I'm going to highlightthe arguments that stuck out to me
the most about the Shroud research,both for and against its authenticity.
I will lay out chips from both sides
(12:27):
on the table,leaving you to decide for yourselves.
But I will tell you right up frontthat I am leaving
the one bit of informationthat blew my mind personally, for last.
But before I start laying all of that out,
since we're on the subjectof getting balanced information,
(12:48):
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no matter whatwe personally believe going in.
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(14:41):
Let's just not consume news.
Let's analyze it, question it,
and demand the full picture.
Okay, back to the Shroud.
So I'm going to take the elephantin the room,
the nail in the coffin for the skeptics.
The carbon dating.
When you read the fine print.
(15:01):
Turns out it isn't as cut and driedas it sounds.
Okay.
Crash course on radiocarbon dating.
All living things on Earth contain carbon.
Both carbon 12 and carbon 14.
Carbon 12 is stable.
Carbon 14 is not and decays over time.
When that organism is no longerliving the carbon 12 in their system
(15:25):
stays the same.
But the carbon 14 continuesto decay into nitrogen.
And after 5730 years,
only half of the original level of carbon14 is still present.
So by comparing the amount of carbon14 still present in the test sample
compared to the level of carbon 12,scientists can figure out how old it is.
(15:48):
This is the test that was performedon samples of the Shroud.
Scientists at Oxford University,the University of Arizona
and the Swiss Federal Instituteof Technology all independently
tested samples of the clothand came to a consensus
that the cloth was producedbetween 1260 and 1390 A.D..
(16:09):
But as is often the case,the devil is in the details.
Warning.
You better get comfortable withyour beverage of choice for this story.
Carbon dating was not part of the testsconducted by the STURP team in 1978
because the Vatican would not
allow any testthat would be destructive to the Shroud.
(16:31):
Carbon dating would have requireda sample of the fabric.
But after the team releasestheir conclusion of all of the tests
they did run, they decide,why not see if we can do some more?
So they submit a list of 26 more teststhey want to run.
Carbon dating being on that list.
(16:51):
Their proposal is approvedby then Cardinal Ratzinger,
who would later become Pope Benedictthe 16th,
and many months of meetingsand planning take place
between the Vatican, severalof the original STURP members,
some new scientists and several carbondating labs.
From the get go,there are issues in the group.
(17:15):
The carbon dating people think there'sreally no reason to perform
any of the other test.
Carbon dating would answerthe only relevant question.
The scientists think thatthe carbon daters
are only interested in the fameand funding that they are bound to get.
And the carbon daters think the scientists
are just a bunch of religious zealots.
(17:37):
Harry Gove, from the radiocarbondating laboratory
at the University of Rochester,goes so far as to say this.
“Almost without exception,there were people
who honestly believe it's Christ's Shroud.
It's a well-known fact that scientistscan produce whatever result they want.
If you believe that passionatelyin something, you can steer the results.
(18:01):
My God, we've all been guilty of that.”
In the end, the carbon daters win the day.
And all other teststhat the Vatican had approved
are canceledwith the exception of the carbon dating.
Now, through these many monthsof planning, a protocol
for how the carbon dating process would godown had been established.
(18:24):
Seven different laboratorieswould do the testing.
Two different methods of carbondating would be used.
The old methodthat has an established track record,
and the new method that hasn't been around
as long but needs a much smaller sample.
The test will be supervisedand coordinated
by DoctorMichael Tate of the British Museum.
(18:47):
Samples of the Shroud will be takenfrom at least three different spots.
The STURP team, who practically know
every fiber of the Shroud already,will be the ones to decide
where the samples will come fromand do the cutting.
Each laboratory will test three samples -one of the Shroud,
(19:08):
and two othercontrolled samples of different ages.
Only the test supervisorwill know the age of the control samples,
so he can check the accuracyof each laboratory's dating process.
It's a blind test.
The samples are all going to look alike,so that laboratories running the test
won't be able to tell which sampleis the Shroud and which are the controls.
(19:32):
The laboratories are to maintainstrict secrecy and not tell anybody
about the results, except anyoneauthorized by the British Museum.
All the labs will do the test at the sametime, and without exchanging information.
Three institutions the British Museum,the Metrological Institute of Turin
(19:53):
and the Pontifical Academy of Scienceswill be the ones to analyze the results.
And finally,after the results have been analyzed,
the analyzers will meetwith the radiocarbon
labs to make surethat they all are in agreement,
and then communicatethose results to the Vatican.
That seems pretty thorough to me.
(20:15):
But it takes about a hot minute for thingsto start unraveling.
First, the STURP guysare suddenly cut out of the loop.
Someone else is going to choosethe locations and cut the samples.
Then the Vatican decidesit's only going to be
one sample instead of three.
Then they decide to use only three labsinstead of seven,
(20:38):
of which the University of Rochesteris not one.
Sorry, Harry.
And they're all going to use the newer,
less established of the two carbondating methods.
Well, aren't we off to a great start?
But on April 21st, 1988, test supervisorMichael Tite,
(20:59):
people from the Catholic Church,people from the three carbon
dating laboratories - which if youremember, end up being Oxford University,
the University of Arizona and the SwissFederal Institute of Technology
photographers and a camera crewwho are there to document
the entire operation,all gather at the Turin Cathedral.
(21:20):
Two textile specialists are chosen
to decide from where on the Shroudthe sample should be taken.
One of those experts pointsto the bloodstain
caused by the wound in the sideand asks, “What's that large brown patch?”
Eventually,
they decideto cut a piece from the corner,
(21:40):
like the corner that has been grabbedand stretched
by probably dozens of different peopleover the years of exhibitions.
The cornerthat is also pretty close to the area
that's been burned awayby the fire in 1532 and stained
by the water used to put out that fire,which most likely left
(22:01):
nice little deposits of dust,blood and other contaminants.
The textile experts picked the worstpossible area.
Okay, so the sample is cut and divided
into three roughly equal pieces,one for each lab.
Michael Tightthen brings out the control samples,
(22:22):
which have a different weave pattern.
But instead of unravelingall of the samples, he leaves them as is,
meaning it is now very easy to figure outwhich one is from the Shroud.
There goes the blind testing protocol.
The samples are weighedand put into numbered
(22:42):
metal cylinders,which will go to the three testing labs.
Oh, and remember that camera crew hiredto film the whole thing?
they don't film this part,so there's no way to verify
which samples go into which containers.
Not to mention that Michael Tite decidesat the last minute
(23:03):
to throw in a fourth sample - Some threadfrom a cape from Saint Louis of Anjou.
which is knownto be dated to the 13th century.
They don't have metal cylinders
for the extra samples,so they just get put into envelopes.
Each lab is given their medal cylinders
and their envelopeand are asked to sign a receipt.
(23:24):
The receipt liststhe ages of the control samples.
So now they don't even have to botherlooking
at the weave to figure outwhich sample is the Shroud.
It’s just written right there for them.
This is like the Three Stooges convention.
Whoa whoawhoa whoa But it gets even better.
(23:46):
The weight of the samplesthe labs receive don't all
match the recorded weight of the samplesthat were taken from the Shroud.
They were supposed to all performthe test at the same time,
but Arizona does theirs in May, Zurichin June, and Oxford does theirs in July.
At first, they seem to do a decent jobof sticking to the secrecy protocol
(24:08):
and reject a request from the Vaticanto send one of their people to watch.
But Zurich thinks it'sperfectly reasonable
to let in an entire BBC documentary crew.
And remember our friendHenry from the University of Rochester?
Well, he manages to twist the armof someone in the Arizona lab to let him
(24:30):
watch the process, as long as he signsa non-disclosure agreement.
Harry and his assistanthave made a bet for a pair
of cowboy bootson the outcome of the tests.
The assistant thinks the resultswill be from the time of Christ,
but Harry thinks it's going to come backas dating to medieval times.
The ink is not even dry
(24:54):
on the paper with the resultsbefore Harry breaks his NDA
by phoning his assistantto claim his shiny new boots.
In Oxford, two weeks before
the results are announcedto even the church, a book entitled
“The Shroud Unmasked (25:12):
Discovery of the Greatest Forgery of All Time”
is already on the presses.
Hey. When confronted
about this breach of secrecy protocol,
the guy in charge of the Oxford lab,
Professor Edward Thomas Hall, says,
(25:32):
“I think it was a hopeless prospectto keep the results secret.
You couldn't with the bestwill in the world.” Okay,
So the tests are completedand given to Michael Tite
at the British Museum, but no one else.
The other two institutionswho are also supposed to analyze
the data,are completely cut out of the process.
(25:56):
The statistical analysis is completedby the people
from the British Museumunder the watchful eye of Michael Tite.
And the results are announcedat a press conference,
including both Professor Halland Michael Tite in October of 1988,
with Professor Hall not mincing words
about his thoughts on the matter,stating, “There was a multi-million
(26:20):
pound business in making forgeriesduring the 14th century.
Someone just got a bit of linen,faked it up and flogged it.
Some people may continue to fightfor the authenticity of the Shroud, like
the Flat Earth Society, but this settlesit all, as far as we are concerned.”
Nice exclamation point.
(26:41):
whileI'm not going to go deep into the data
that was publishedto back up their conclusions
since that's way above my pay grade,I will highlight just one little tidbit.
When doing these kinds of statisticalanalyzes,
statisticians come up withwhat's called the significance level.
That's a measureof the reliability of the results.
(27:01):
So the higher the better.
The British Museum doesn't actually
publish that number, but using their own
published data, that significance levelfor the Shroud’s test
comes out to 4.176,
which they then round up to five.
(27:21):
Which is importantbecause anything under five
is written off as completely unreliable.
But it gets worse.
Despite numerous requests over the years,
they never give up the original data.
That is until a French lawyerfinally cuts through the red tape
with the British versionof our Freedom of Information Act request,
(27:44):
and gets all of the data in 2017.
Turns out that the labs actually performed
more tests than what was reported.
And when you addin those test results to the pool,
the results get even less reliable.
Kind of makes that quote from Harry Gove,that it's a well
(28:05):
known fact that scientists can producewhatever result they want,
even more interesting, doesn't it?
Now, with all of that dirty laundrybeing aired and throwing some serious
shade on the validity of the carbondating results,
it still begs the question,
“Why don't the resultspoint back to the first century?” Well,
(28:28):
there are a multitude of theoriesout there that talk about various
different kinds of contaminationthat could be taking place.
Excessive handling,excess carbon deposits from the fire,
or even laboratory cleaning proceduresof the sample before testing.
But one American couple,Joseph Morino and Sue Benford,
(28:48):
not scientists, just Stroud hobbyists,
managed to find something no one else has.
Looking at the pictures of the Shroud,they noticed that
the weave pattern in the areawhere the samples were cut was ever
so slightly misalignedfrom the rest of the cloth.
Following their hunch,they sent the pictures to three
(29:11):
textile expertswho all say, yup, that's a reweave.
So the couple publishes their research,with their conclusion being that the area
that the samples came from is an areathat was repaired from the fire damage.
The responsefrom the scientific community?
Amateurs.
Enter a guy named Ray Rogers,an original member of the team
(29:35):
who has pretty much had it up to herewith crazy Shroud theories,
who reads about thisnew patch area theory and blows a gasket!
He sets out on a mission to prove themwrong, but figures out, they’re right.
Taking a close look at the samples,he discovers fibers that are cotton,
(29:58):
which the Shroud is made of flax.
And these fibers are dyed,which the main part of the Shroud is not.
So he confirms that the area was rewovenwith thread, at least partially containing
cotton fiber, and then dyed to make itmatch in color to the rest of the cloth.
(30:18):
Hats off to the nuns in 1532,who did their job
so well that the repair was allbut invisible to the naked eye.
Roger then goes backand looks at the ultraviolet
pictures taken by his team in 1978.
And there it is.
That area of the clothdoes not fluoresce in the same way.
(30:40):
It's not the same cloth.
And of course,that's exactly where the sample was taken.
Okay, I knowthat was a long way to go to get here,
but I thought it was importantto deflate that elephant and show
that the carbon dating argumentisn't necessarily the end all,
be all mic dropthat it has been portrayed as.
(31:04):
to make room for different information.
So now that we have some mental space,
let's look at some of the other arguments.
Just so you know, after looking at allof this stuff, I am still on the fence.
So if I sound like I'm fightingfor one side or the other, it's only
because I like to play devil's advocate
(31:26):
and I don't like itwhen people tell me what to think.
So when I approach a topic like this one,I usually go to Wikipedia
and check out what they have to sayjust to get a basic lay of the land.
I know, I know. Wikipedia!
But then I start clicking outside linksand going down rabbit holes from there.
(31:48):
That'sexactly what I did for this route as well.
Thank God I did.
If you just readwhat Wikipedia says, in my humble opinion,
they go out of their way to only talkabout the aspects of this mystery
that they can say have been debunked.
But the rabbit holes actually lead me
to a place that's just the opposite.
(32:11):
Okay, so there are so many disparate areasto cover
that I don't really know where to start.
So let's just start with the cloth itself.
It's made of woven flax,very common for the era.
Remember, if this is the actual burial
cloth of Jesus, we're talkingabout the early first century.
(32:32):
Biblically speaking, 33 A.D.
It is woven in what is called a 3 to 1herringbone pattern.
Some historians saythat particular pattern was not available
at the time,and only surfaced in medieval times.
However, according to Stephen E.
Jones of TheShroudofTurin.blogspot,who admits that there are no samples of
(32:54):
herringbone twill weave in linen yetknown from the first century or earlier,
there are examples of thatsame weave pattern in silk and wool
from the third centuryin Syria and Britain,
and in wool in the early second century,from the Roman
fort of Krokodiloin Egypt's Eastern Desert.
(33:15):
So we know it'snot just a medieval times thing.
And if they're making it in Egyptto the south and in Syria to the north,
and Jerusalem is pretty much a big tradinghub, does it seem logical
that some of that fabriccould have made its way to market there?
But wouldn't a piece of cloththat old have disintegrated by now?
(33:36):
Not necessarily.
The Tarkhan dress namedfor the Tarkhan Cemetery in Cairo, Egypt,
where it was found in 1913, is an over
5000 year old woven linen garment
that is the world'soldest piece of woven clothing.
Another interesting tidbitis that at the beginning
(33:57):
I said the cloth was roughly 14.5by 3.5ft.
Well, more accurately, it's 14.3 by 3.6ft.
Kind of a random number, right? Nope.
Back in those trading marketsof the early first century,
the international standard unit of lengthwas the Assyrian standard cubit,
(34:19):
which measure somewherebetween 21.4 and 21.6in.
The Shroud’s
odd measurementsturn out to be exactly two
by eight Assyrian standard cubits.
Now, make no mistake,
this would have beena very expensive piece of fabric.
(34:40):
But according to the Bible, Jesus’sbody was claimed and taken care of by two
very wealthy benefactors,Joseph of Arimathea
and Nicodemus, who would easily
have had the meansto buy that piece of fabric.
Now let's look at this from the medievalforgeries side of the coin.
(35:00):
According to our man, Professor Hall,there were tons of people in medieval
times looking to make a quick buckby forging religious artifacts.
But that particular piece of fabricwas rare in medieval
times as well,so would still have been expensive.
Why would a forger spenda good chunk of his future margin
(35:22):
on expensive fabric, when no one'sgoing to be the wiser anyway?
Not to mention that the Assyrian standardcubit
was not discovered to be the standarduntil the 19th century,
and it never mentions in the Biblehow big the Shroud was.
So how would a forger knowhow big to make the cloth?
(35:43):
All right,
let's leave that tidbit to the sideand talk about what is on the cloth.
The entire length of the clothcontains the front and back images
of a man measuring somewherebetween five foot seven and six foot two,
as if the man was laid down on the clothand the rest of
the cloth was brought up over his headto cover his front side.
(36:05):
The image itself seems to comefrom excessive yellowing of the fabric.
In addition, there are scorchmarks and holes that are documented
to have come from the 1532 fire and dark
reddish and brown stainsthat look an awful lot like blood stains.
Now, obviouslypeople have been studying this
(36:26):
for a while, but the study gets moreand more intense as technology improves.
The invention of photographybrought us those stunning negative images
with detailsthat can't be seen with the naked eye.
And something called theVP-8 Analyzer brought us 3D.
(36:48):
The VP-8
Analyzer is a computer developedin the early 70s that can assign
3D valueto the brightness range of a photo.
I have no ideawhat it was actually developed for,
but when you show it a regular old photo,
you get a result something like this...
or this.
(37:09):
But when you show itthe negative of the Shroud,
you get an almost complete 3Dimage of the face imprinted on the Shroud.
And it is this image, producedaround 1976, that is responsible
for the inception of the Shroud of Turin
Research Project, STURP.
(37:30):
So the Shroud is not a picture,because a picture does not contain
enough brightness informationto construct a full 3D image,
but according to the STURPguys, it's also not a painting.
No evidence of brushstrokes or residue of
eitherinks or dyes can be found on the cloth.
Well, almost none.
(37:51):
One of the original STURPmembers, Walter McCrone,
whose work in forensicchemical analysis helped discover
the forgery of the famous Vinlandmap, begs to differ.
His analysis from particlestaken from some of the 32 sticky tape
samples taken from the Shroud in the 1978testing fest,
(38:11):
showed that the image imprint was painted
with a diluted mixtureof iron oxide and gelatin,
while the blood stains were paintedwith mercury sulfide and gelatin.
He did not see any signs of blood proteinsin the samples.
However,he was pretty much alone in his analysis.
(38:34):
Other members of the team said theyabsolutely could identify signs of blood.
McCrone said, “You don't see what I seebecause you don't know what you're
looking for, and your instruments Aren'tas good as mine?
Eventually, McCrone gave back all of hissticky tape samples and quit the team,
but went on to write articlesand give lectures on his pigment theory.
(38:59):
Now, I'm not even going to pretendto know the intricacies of his arguments,
but considering that blood sampleswere eventually collected
and typed as being AB,I'm not sure how we can stay
with the determination that it's paintand not blood.
Now, the other STURP guys weren't sayingthat they didn't see any signs
(39:21):
of pigment on the cloth, just not enoughto constitute the image being a painting.
Their hypothesisfor their being pigment at all
is that in medieval times, replicas
of holy relics were often copied.
The artist would set upnext to the original and copy it,
and then touch the copy to the original,with the belief
(39:42):
that the holiness of the originalwould transfer to the copy.
So if painters were rubbing their copiesonto the Shroud,
it makes sensethat some pigment would be transferred.
So if you believe the STURP groupthat the Shroud is not painted,
let's revisit that confessionthat Bishop Pierre d'Arcis’s
predecessor got from the artist.
(40:05):
If the confession says he painted it,and we know it wasn't painted,
to what exactly would he have beenconfessing?
Might be important to keep in mind that.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
The Medieval Inquisitionhad only ended less
than 100 yearsbefore the supposed confession.
(40:26):
The Medieval Inquisition was focusedmainly in France,
where this confession was given,and was carried out by the local bishops.
You think people were inclinedto say no to the bishop?
No. I'm sure they would have confessedto anything.
Not to mention that confessingto creating a forgery of a holy
(40:49):
relichad to have some serious consequences.
But there's nothing about the confessoror any punishment given in church records.
All right, let's get back to the blood.
The blood that is on the Shroudcan't be proven to be or not
be Jesus's bloodsince we have no DNA comparison sample.
(41:11):
But numerous samples were DNA typed.
The results werekind of all over the board.
(41:51):
At one point, the claim was made that
pollen and limestone were both foundthat are specific to the Jerusalem region.
But there have been a few papers releasedsince then questioning the methodology
of those studies, so we're not goingto include that information here.
But then again, who am I kidding?
I think every paper writtenabout this topic, no matter what side
(42:14):
it's beenon, has been refuted by somebody.
I love it.
It's like a cage match for nerds.
same to me.
This is Anyway, up to this point,the evidence has been
pretty circumstantial to varying degrees.
And without going out holy by millennia,there's even more.
(42:34):
Traces of the myrrh and aloessaid to have been used
in his burial have been foundon the Shroud.
The legs of the man on the Shroudwere not broken,
as is usually the casefor those who are crucified.
Blood patterns on the shouldersand back line up with the story
of Jesus carrying the cross beamto his crucifixion site.
(42:55):
Blood stains on the wrist and feetcorrelate with actual crucifixion
practice, with nailsgoing through the wrists instead of
through the hands, asis common in medieval art depictions.
The woundssustained by the man on the Shroud
completely align with biblical accounts.
And forensic blood flow analysts sayall the blood flow patterns on the cloth
(43:20):
match the descriptionsgiven of the last hours of Jesus's life.
The crucifixion of Jesusis said to have been
particularly brutalas far as crucifixions go,
and the man on the cloth looks likehe has been through the wringer.
His eye looks almost like it'sswollen shut,
(43:42):
his nose looks to be broken,
and the streaks of 120 scourge
marks cover his entire body.
He has a wound on his right side,where it is
said that a Roman soldierpierced it with a lance.
He has blood trickling down his head,
where it issaid a soldier placed a crown of thorns.
(44:05):
The man on the cloth matches
the biblical stories to a tee.
Now to give the skeptics their due.
The image on the Shrouddoes have some issues.
The armsand the fingers on the hand are too long.
The proportions of the face aren'tquite right, and the placement of his arms
(44:26):
seems very unnatural for a personlaying in a prone position.
Although by the time that he isput into the tomb,
rigor mortis would have been setting
in, so who knows howthat would affect his position.
And there are plenty of other tidbits,like coins on his eyes
and flowers around his headthat I honestly can't see.
(44:50):
But feel free to jump downthat rabbit hole as well.
So up to this point,
we've been kind of nibblingaround the edges, but we are finally
at the point where we can really diginto the heart of the arguments
that put this whole affair on my weirdnessradar.
First, let's talk about somethingI had never even heard
(45:12):
of (My Catholic familyis not going to like hearing that.)
until I started researching the Shroud,the Sudarium of Oviedo.
Sudarium being the wordfor the traditional Jewish burial
cloth, and Oviedo being the town in Spainwhere the cloth is said to be kept.
So back in Jesus's day,Jewish law said that
(45:32):
bodily fluidsneeded to be buried with the body.
Once Jesus had died on the cross.
Someone would have wrappeda cloth around his head
to make surethat none of those fluids were lost.
The Sudarium is that cloth.
Not to go too deep into the weeds,
scientists have establishedexactly how this 34 by 21 inch cloth
(45:56):
was wrapped on his head andthey've identified 70 points of similarity
between the blood stains on the Sudariumand those found on the Shroud of Turin.
But the one that isthe most interesting to me
is a blood trickleon the forehead of the man on the Shroud.
Now people way smarter than I havefigured out exactly how the cloth
(46:20):
was wrapped around the head,and how each grouping of stains got there.
And this forehead stain on the Sudarium
is the exact same patternas the blood trickle on the Shroud.
But even better is this little detail.
Imagine you have a small amount of bloodtrickling slowly over
(46:41):
time down your forehead.
The edges will begin to dry,but the spot at the bottom of the trickle
will stay wet the longestand form a little drop right?
Now imagineputting a cloth over your head.
That cloth is going to soak upthe wet blood
at the end of the trickle,and leave a clean spot right?
(47:03):
Well, the Sudarium shows a spotwhere blood was soaked up
and the matching wound on the Shroud showsthe clean spot.
It's a little hard to see with the imagesavailable, but almost every photo
I've seen the middle of the blooddrop at the end of the trickle is clean.
(47:23):
Now, the reason the Sudarium is importantto the Shroud debate is because
while the provenance for the Shroudonly goes back to the mid 14th century,
the Sudarium can be dated back to 614 A.D.
So if the Sudarium and the Shroudcan be proven to come from the same event,
that destroys the medieval forgerynarrative.
(47:45):
Also notethat the Sudarium has the same dust
mixture around the nosethat was found in the corresponding
nose area of the Shroud,and the same blood type AB.
Now AB blood is kind of rarein the rest of the world,
with only about 4% of the populationhaving it in the U.S.,
(48:05):
but it's a little more commonin the Middle East at about 5%.
More common, but still only 5%.
So what are the oddsthat two random ancient cloths
would have blood stainsof the same AB blood type?
1 in 400 or .25%.
(48:26):
Seriously?
But let's go back to the Shroud.
Remember me saying that no one knows
how the imprint of our Shroud mangot there?
They know it's not paint.
They know it's not dye.
Well, it turns out that they do knowwhat makes the imprint.
They just don't know how it happened.
The imprint is formed by the yellowingof the flax fibers that make up the cloth.
(48:52):
The yellowing is from rapid aging,so they just don't know why those areas
would have aged any differentlythan the rest of the cloth.
Another thing they do knowis that the blood staining present on
the Shroud was there before the rapidaging of the yellowed areas,
because the same changes to the fibersis not present in those areas,
(49:13):
and the blood stainsgo all the way through the cloth
like they were soaked up into the fibers.
But the rapid aging effectis very superficial.
It's only presenton the very outer layer of the fibers,
but the fibers that are yelloware yellow all the way
around the circumference,not just the side facing out.
(49:37):
And the yellowing is on a fiberby fiber basis.
One fiber might be yellow,while the next to it is not.
in. Keep in mind,we are not talking about each thread.
We are talking about each individual fiberthat makes up each thread.
Also, the staining on the Shrouddoesn't just contain blood.
(49:58):
It contains blood serum.
Anyone who's ever had a serious woundcan tell you that even after it
stops bleeding,it can still leak a clear fluid.
That's blood serum.
Well,some of the blood stains on the cloth show
an outline of this clearserum called a serum halo.
And they can tell that it's actually bloodserum
(50:20):
by the way,it fluoresces under a UV light.
If they were just water stains,say from the fire,
they wouldn't show up under UV light.
Now it's been shown that there are otherliquids that also fluoresce the same way.
But this puts the medieval forgerytheory in trouble again.
How would a 14th centuryforger know what liquids to use
(50:44):
to create the correct UV fluorescence,
when UV is centuries from being a thing?
Another interesting thing about the bloodstains is that they are very red
for being that old.
Blood usually darkens to eithera dark brown or even black over time.
This, of course, leads many people to seethat the red color has to be paint.
(51:06):
But testing of the bloodshowed a high bilirubin count -
the same thing that causes the yellow skinthat comes with jaundice.
And bilirubin has a preservative effect,
keeping blood from breaking downand turning that dark color.
And recently, even more testinghas confirmed the presence of high levels
(51:26):
of creatinine and ferritiniron in the blood.
Levels of bilirubin, ferritiniron and creatinine in the blood are known
to go through the roof in peopleunder extreme duress, experiencing
muscle trauma and impairedkidney function, like someone would be
if they were being torturedand beaten to a pulp.
(51:49):
The latest testing to hitthe news recently is some new
testing done of the flax fibersthat make up the cloth.
The new test, called WAXS or Wide AngleX-ray
Scattering, was performed by the Instituteof Crystallography in Italy.
The test is looking for a substancecalled Vanillan,
(52:10):
which is a natural partof the cellulose structure of the fiber.
It turns out that Vanillan decaysat a predictable rate,
so it's kind of like a carbon dating testusing Vanillan instead.
They're testingshows that the Vanillan levels
in the Shroud fibersmatch fibers from other burial shrouds
known to have come from the Jewishuprising of Masada
(52:33):
between 66 and 74 A.D..
Sounds like a slam dunk, right?
Well, not exactly.
To get to its currentlevel of Vanillan degradation,
the cloth would have had to be keptat a temperature of about 72°F,
with a relative humidity of roughly 55%
for the first 13 centuriesof its existence.
(52:56):
Interesting.
It's possible, but not likely.
- and this is fascinating to me -
this same test also disprovesthe medieval forgery theory.
To get to the level of Vanillan depletionshown in the test,
the Shroud would have had to have been outin the sun in Mali, Africa,
(53:19):
literally Timbuktu,for its entire 700 year existence.
Because that's the only placehot enough to age it that quickly.
Now, I told you at the beginningof all of this
that I was saving the best for last.
And I am about to make goodon that promise.
I know this is going to blow your mindbecause it has absolutely blown mine.
(53:43):
This one bit of information mightjust be enough to make me a believer.
If you look at the pictures of the Shroud,
either the positive or the negative,
it's pretty easy to see that there'sa lot of shading happening in the image.
We know we're not dealing with pigments.
So let's say you're drawing somethingwith a pencil that requires shading.
(54:06):
How would you do that?
Well, you would probably apply more pencil
lead where you wantthe picture to be darker.
And less pencil lead in the lighterareas, right?
If you were to transferthat idea to the Shroud,
that would mean more of thisyellowing aging effects
in the darker areas,and less in the lighter ones.
(54:29):
But that is notwhat is happening on the Shroud.
The darker colored areas are notthe result of a change in color intensity.
Instead,it is the result of a larger or smaller
amount of colored or aged fibersper unit area.
It's called the halftone effect,and it's the same way newspapers
(54:53):
used to print picturesbefore the days of digital printing.
I don't even know how to wrap my headaround that one.
So what on earth, or maybe beyond Earth,could do something like that?
Well, believersand some scientists have a theory.
They are speculating that if you followbiblical teachings about the resurrection,
(55:16):
perhaps there was a massive particleradiation burst
from whatever was lying insidethose layers of cloth,
changing the very molecular composition
of the Shroud fibers.
This radiation burst would account formany of the unusual features of the cloth.
Like the fact that only the topmost layersof the yellowed fibers are affected,
(55:41):
why the bloodstains still appear so red,
the extra carbon 14 moleculesthat throw off the carbon dating,
the fact that the density of the imageis the same on both the front
and back images, and even the oddproportions of some of the body parts.
And scientists have already runexperiments where they bombarded
(56:02):
a piece of flax linen similarto that of the Shroud with protons,
and were left with a piece of clothbearing the exact same
rapid aging characteristicsthat are present in the Shroud.
Or others think maybe it was UV radiation.
Tests conducted using UV rays also
replicated the same changes to the fibers.
(56:25):
One interesting note.
The UV testing that was doneused a laser pulse that lasted only
1/40,000,000,000 of a second
and required billions of watts of power.
If you expand those calculationsto what would be necessary
to imprint the entire Shroud,that would require
(56:47):
14,000 lasers operating simultaneously
using 34 trillion watts of power.
Of course,if this is the true resurrection,
I think God would be able to musterall the energy he needs.
(57:09):
I am dead
serious when I tell you that I honestlydon't know where to go with this one.
The skeptic in medoesn't want to believe it.
And there's certainly plenty of evidencethere to support a medieval forgery.
But some of these findingsare so literally
awe inspiringand I just can't let them go.
(57:30):
But no matterwhat side of the fence you're on,
hopefully you at least learn some thingsyou didn't know before.
Now, if you're readyfor more unexplained weirdness
of the Divine kind,this is the video for you.
Just click it.
You won't be disappointed.
Be careful out there
(57:50):
and I will see youhere again, on The InBetween.
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