October 12, 2023 • 33 mins
This show is with Barrie Schwortz who participated in an amazing mission with elite scientists to verify the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin and has been featured on Gaia TV and many other programs discussing this amazing artifact. Barrie runs theShroud.com website: "The Shroud of Turin is a centuries old linen cloth that bears the image of a crucified man. A man that millions believe to be Jesus of Nazareth. Is it really the cloth that wrapped his crucified body, or is it simply a medieval forgery, a hoax perpetrated by some clever artist? Modern science has completed hundreds of thousands of hours of detailed study and intense research on the Shroud. It is, in fact, the single most studied artifact in human history, and we know more about it today than we ever have before. And yet, the controversy still rages."
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SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
Welcome to Ashley On, your one-stop podcast where
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SPEAKER_02 (00:25):
Hello and welcome to the show.
Today's show is with BarrySchwartz.
Barry runs Shroud.com, which isa website dedicated to the
Shroud of Turin.
He is a professionalphotographer and was on a
mission several years ago, andwe'll talk about it in the show,
with several experts, veryrenowned scientists who led an
(00:45):
expedition to examine the Shroudof Turin and try to determine
whether you know, it's historyand whether or not it's, uh,
it's a valid that it's, thatit's not, uh, you know, been
photographed or reproduced insome way or is fake in some way.
And so they were sent on amission to kind of debunk that
or to find out the truth.
Um, very interesting and a greatprogram, um, that, that we talk
(01:10):
a lot about, you know, his, histechnical process.
And then also just the, youknow, the, the, the overall, um,
political situations associatedwith the Shroud of Turin when it
comes to religious artifacts.
So it's a really good interviewand very interesting.
Hope you enjoy the show.
Thank you.
As always, this show is broughtto you by packedwithlife.com,
(01:33):
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mushrooms so check it out now atpackwithlife.com oh barry
schwartz welcome to the showthank you for joining us today
SPEAKER_01 (02:06):
thanks for having me on ashley the
SPEAKER_02 (02:09):
shroud the shroud of turin um that's the topic today
and i'm very fascinated aboutthis and um before i i butcher
the uh the explanation i'm justgoing to turn it over to you why
don't you just start by tellingour audience um A little bit
about yourself and then howyou're an expert in this subject
(02:34):
matter.
And we'll go from there with ourconversation.
SPEAKER_01 (02:37):
Okay, well, I'm going to go on the assumption
that people know what the Shroudof Turin is.
It's a sheet of 14 and a halffoot long sheet of linen cloth
that bears the full ventralfront and dorsal back image of a
crucified man.
It's got bloodstains fordecades.
crucifixion wounds, spear woundin the side, blood stains on the
(03:02):
head from a cap or crown ofthorns, and crucifixion wounds
in the feet as well, and alsoscourge wounds that cover not
only the back of the body, whichartists over the years have
depicted, But in real life, ifyou're scourging somebody from
behind and you take a baby stepcloser, those thongs of that
(03:22):
whip's gonna come around andit's gonna hit the front of the
body.
And we see that on the shroud.
So it's forensically really moreaccurate than any of the
artworks depicting the scourgingof Jesus that have been done
through the centuries.
My involvement with the shroudcame because I'm a professional
photographer and I operated astudio in Santa Barbara,
(03:43):
California at the time.
And I was approached by a localcompany that was a contractor to
Los Alamos NationalLaboratories.
They needed somebody withdarkroom skills, photographic
skills.
And I had several darkrooms atour studio.
And I did a seven-month projectwith this local company as a
(04:04):
contractor or subcontractor toLos Alamos National
Laboratories.
And it was about atomic bombs,so I can't really tell you much
more about it because it's allclassified.
But I spent seven months doingthe project with a gentleman
from that company that wascontracted at Los Alamos.
(04:26):
We finished that project, andjust within maybe just a few
weeks later, the same gentlemancalled me back, a man named Don
Devan, Don Devan called me upagain.
And when you're self-employedand the phone rings, you're
always hoping it's the next job.
So I called, so Don called meand I'm thinking, well, maybe
another project for Los Alamos.
(04:47):
And he said, well, not exactly.
He said, what do you know aboutthe Shroud of Turin?
And at that moment, I kind oflaughed.
I said, but Don, I'm Jewish.
And Don laughed and said, so ami remember he was one of the
other jewish guys on the team souh he explained to me he was an
(05:07):
imaging scientist and heexplained to me that they had
done a test with a shroudphotograph in an instrument
called a vp8 image analyzerwhich basically black and white
video camera inputs the imageinto the device it displays it
on a green screen monitor Andthe device allows you to take
(05:28):
the lights and darks of theimage and stretch them into
vertical 3D space, proportionateto each other.
Well, normal photograph, you getthis distorted, jumbled, grossly
distorted faces and stuff.
They put the shroud image inthere and got the natural relief
of a human form, 100%accurately.
And they decided that that was aunique enough property that they
(05:52):
should put a team together andsee if they could get permission
to go to Turin and examine theshroud and try and determine how
that image was formed.
Historically, people said, oh,it's a painting or it's a scorch
or it's made photographically.
Some people even said byLeonardo da Vinci, amazingly
enough, nevermind the fact thatthe shroud was being publicly
(06:13):
displayed a hundred years beforeda Vinci was born.
I mean, he was a great artist,but he wasn't that good.
So, so, um, So they basically,they wanted to put this team
together.
Many of the experiments thatneeded to be performed were
photographic experiments.
And so he asked me if I would bewilling to be a participant in
(06:36):
something like that.
And frankly, I said, Not really.
No, I don't think I'd want to dothat because I didn't want to
get involved in something thatwas perhaps religious oriented.
I don't have anything againstreligion.
I was raised in a half Jewish,half Italian neighborhood, so
Catholics and Jews side by side.
So I didn't have any problemwith that.
It's just that I wasn'tknowledgeable in those areas.
(07:00):
And he reminded me, he said,look, this isn't about religion.
Nobody cares what your religiousbackground is.
We're asking you to participatebecause of your skills as a
professional photographer.
And we're there to study theimage and determine how it was
formed.
We're not there to determine ifit was Jesus or if it proved the
(07:22):
resurrection or anything likethat.
Those are all items that wererelegated to people of faith.
We were there to do science andexamine the shroud.
So although I said no initially,I ultimately agreed,
particularly on his word, thatthis was going to be about
science.
And he proved to be 100%correct.
(07:44):
There was never a whole lot ofreligious talk about the Shroud.
I mean, we worked with the HolyShroud Guild, which was by then
only three of four priests hadbeen promoting the Shroud in the
United States since the 1950s.
And the reason we worked withthem is that one of those
priests, Father Peter Rinaldi,was a close personal friend of
(08:05):
King Umberto II, the legal ownerof the shroud in 1978.
And so he was our liaison withnot only the king, but with the
Turin custodians.
The people in Turin wereformally and officially the
custodians of the shroud.
So it was in their care.
(08:25):
And the king had brought it toTurin in 1578.
And it had been in Turin forover 400 years, right around 400
years at that point in time.
In fact, there was a publicexhibition in 1978 to
commemorate the 400thanniversary of the Shroud being
in Turin.
And it was at the end of thatpublic exhibition that our team
(08:48):
was ultimately given permissionto examine the Shroud.
And we spent five days andnights literally around the
clock working to do ourphotography and our spectral
analysis and chemical analysisand tape sampling and X-ray
fluorescence analysis.
So we did all these scientifictests all based on determining
(09:10):
What comprised the image?
Was it a painting, a scorch, aphotographically made image?
And ultimately, our primarypurpose was to answer that
single question, how is theimage formed?
And after all our work, we spent17 months preparing, five days
and nights on site with theshroud in front of us.
(09:31):
And then almost three yearsafter we came back and reviewing
all of our data and writing itinto scientific papers and
publishing that in peer-reviewedjournals.
And after all that, we reallycouldn't answer the one question
we went to ask, which is, how isthe image formed?
We could tell you what it's not.
(09:51):
We've proven it's not apainting.
There's no painter pigmentresponsible for the image.
We've proven thatscientifically.
It's not a scorch.
I won't go into technicaldetails, but one or two of our
experiments proved it was notthe product of a high
temperature event.
It's not a photographically madeimage because you need a light
(10:12):
sensitive material or chemicalcompound to create a light
sensitive image.
And historically that's alwaysbeen silver or salt silver salts
and there were no traces ofsilver anywhere on that cloth if
it had been madephotographically then the image
would be made comprised mostlyof silver and there would be
(10:32):
plenty of silver around it inthe background maybe of lower
quantity in the end there was nosilver anywhere on that shroud
so we could exclude Photographyis a mechanism for creating the
image.
So in the end, we could tell youwhat it's not, but we don't know
of a mechanism to this day thatcan create an image with the
(10:54):
chemical and physical propertiesthat we documented on that piece
of cloth.
SPEAKER_02 (10:59):
Wow.
That's quite the story.
So what...
SPEAKER_01 (11:03):
You asked.
SPEAKER_02 (11:05):
No, it's great.
It's fascinating that...
Number one, there's somethingthat's been passed around that
long of time.
It's easy for the Senate to say,well, it's probably just a fake
or something that somebody cameup with.
I deal
SPEAKER_01 (11:23):
with them on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_02 (11:26):
So what do you say to that person?
SPEAKER_01 (11:29):
Look, there's plenty of peer-reviewed science in
highly regarded journals, notmagazine articles, not books,
not blogs, not websites, notpodcasts.
Peer-reviewed scientificjournals, some of the finest
journals of the day, thatpublished our work.
And you don't get your work intoapplied optics and journals of
that caliber unless you haveyour act together.
(11:52):
And we did.
I mean, if you look at who theguys were on our team, there
were representatives from LosAlamos National Laboratory,
Sandia National Laboratories,the Air Force Weapons
Laboratory, Jet PropulsionLaboratory in Pasadena, two of
our team members, both of themsort of my heroes, especially
one of them, Don Lin.
(12:13):
He was head of imaging for NASAon the Voyager, Viking, Mariner,
and Galileo projects.
And he was a member of our team.
The other gentleman, John Lohrfrom Jet Propulsion Lab, spent
his last days before he passedaway scouting the solar system
for asteroids that might be on apath towards Earth to protect
(12:36):
our planet.
So these were high quality, highcaliber scientists, not just a
bunch of wackos as some of theskeptics like to proclaim.
These were first rate empiricalscientists, so much so that I
learned empiricism from theseguys.
I mean, I've worked with lots ofresearchers over the years None,
(12:58):
none have been as empirical, ashonest, and true to the science
as the guys that I dealt with onthe Shroud of Turin Research
Project, the team that wasformed for us to do our work.
And so I'm very grateful to havethat opportunity.
You got to remember, I don'thave a science degree.
I have a Bachelor of Arts degreein photography, although I have
(13:21):
a strong technical background,which is what obviously got me
involved here.
These are hardcore scientists.
So when people demean them andsay, oh, they're just a bunch of
religious wackos.
Not really.
And we should all be gratefulthat Los Alamos and Sandia
Laboratories and the Air ForceWeapons Lab didn't hire a bunch
of wacko crazy people or theycould have blown the planet up
(13:44):
by now.
So, you know, these were allhigh caliber scientists.
SPEAKER_02 (13:49):
Oh, that's great.
Thanks for sharing that.
They kind of knew what they weredoing.
SPEAKER_01 (13:54):
Yeah.
More so than I ever imagined.
SPEAKER_02 (13:56):
Yes.
So what was the, what was thefabric made out of?
Like, what is the, what does itfeel like?
I don't know if you can touchit, but describe the fabric of
the.
SPEAKER_01 (14:06):
Yeah, the fabric is a three over one herringbone
weave.
I'm trying to remember what the,I'm not a textile expert, so I
don't always have these words atthe tip of my tongue.
SPEAKER_02 (14:19):
That's okay.
SPEAKER_01 (14:20):
But it's a very kind of a complicated weave.
This would have been anexpensive piece of cloth.
It's made of pure linen, whichis from the flax plant.
Jewish law forbids the mixing ofthe kind, it's called, so that a
burial shroud of somebody ofhigh caliber, and in this case,
(14:40):
this would have been somebody ofcertainly high caliber, Must be
pure linen, could have no mixingof wool or cotton in with it.
And consequently, this wouldhave been an expensive piece of
linen.
Now, according to the gospelaccounts, it was provided to
Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea.
(15:02):
They didn't tell us much aboutJoseph other than he was a
wealthy man.
And that makes sense because healready had a tomb.
Consequently, he already had ashroud and it would have been an
expensive shroud, a propershroud for somebody of high
caliber.
And so he made that available towrap Jesus's body.
And so that's consistent withwhat we know.
(15:23):
And consequently, I'm confidentthat this is the cloth that
wrapped the historical Jesus.
Now, people have said to me,well, wait a minute, you're not
even a Christian.
How can you believe that andstill not be a Christian?
And the answer is very simple.
(15:43):
Everything that was done, and ifyou read what's in the New
Testament describing what tookplace in that tomb, it's, to me,
as soon as I read that passage,I immediately recognized it as
an authentic first centuryJewish burial.
And here's why.
You know, when he was taken offthe cross, Just like we do
(16:07):
today, they covered his face.
He was deceased.
They covered his face.
We still do that to this veryday.
And that probably goes backthroughout human history that
when somebody dies, we covertheir face.
Well, the cloth that they usedto cover his face as they took
him off the cross and broughthim to the tomb had his blood
and pleural fluids from hislungs soaked into the cloth.
(16:28):
Not an image, just his blood andpleural fluids.
Jewish law says anything with adecedent's blood must be buried
with the body.
So when I read that, and ittalked about that second cloth
folded and separate, but kept inthe tomb, authentic Jewish
burial.
because only the Jews put somuch value on the blood that
(16:51):
even to this day in Israel, ifthere's a terror attack and
people are blown up, they haverighteous men with clean claws
sopping up the blood and keepingit with the body so that they
can be buried.
And I think the concept is thatJews believe in the
resurrection, where it comesfrom the Old Testament, but they
believe the body needs to be asintact as possible, and they put
(17:13):
so much value on the blood thatthey made it a rule, a law, if
you will, that anything with thedecedent's blood must be buried
with the body.
So when I read that in the NewTestament, the first thing I
said was, well, that's anauthentic Jewish burial, because
only the Jews would do that.
And so what we have is somethingthat's like a document of what
(17:33):
was done to him.
The bloodstains came onto thatcloth by direct contact with the
body.
They're forensically accurateaccording to a whole slew of
forensic experts who've studiedit.
And so what we have is anartifact of Jesus.
And so even as a Jewish man, Ican accept the historicity of
(17:56):
Jesus of Nazareth.
I mean, his life, I mean, he'sgot more impact in the world
today than when he was alive.
And so why wouldn't we have anartifact of his?
It makes sense that somebody ofsuch importance, that somebody
would take a great risk inrescuing that cloth out of the
(18:18):
tomb and preserving it.
Because if you got caught doingthat, you might be the next one
on a cross.
And that certainly theiconoclasts would have destroyed
that cloth.
And of course, The image itselfis unique because it's not a
contact image.
I mean, contact is part of it.
(18:38):
But there's imaging taking placeat a distance of up to about
four centimeters between thecloth and the body.
For example, if I'm laying on myback and I cross my arms over my
torso, I'm going to lift thecloth away from my torso where
the hands are crossed.
And the image around the handsis more faint because the
distance is greater.
(18:59):
So you can actually see thateffect on the cloth.
And so there's plenty ofevidence that this wrapped a man
who had been scourged andcrucified and crowned with a cap
of thorns.
And when people say, well, howdo you know it's Jesus?
Well, we know that the Romanscrucified lots of people and
they scourged lots of people.
They might have even speared abunch of people.
(19:21):
but only one man that we know ofin all of recorded history that
the Romans dealt with, wherethey crowned him with a crown or
cap of thorns to furtherhumiliate him.
because he had proclaimedhimself king of the Jews.
Oh, so you're the king, huh?
Well, here's your crown.
And of course, his scalp iscovered with wounds from a
really sharp thorn bush.
(19:42):
Now, they didn't weave a prettylittle circular crown the way
artists have depicted it overthe years.
They just took a nasty thornbush and smashed it down on his
head.
And you can see the wounds allover his scalp.
So everything about it tells methat of all the people who've
lived on this planet, it makesvery good sense to me logically
that something of his would bepreserved through the centuries
(20:06):
and cared for and from aChristian point of view,
certainly have significantmeaning for our faith.
So I see it as an object offaith for millions of people,
but it's also an object ofcuriosity, an object of science,
an object of history.
And we did recently, Joe Marino,who's a Shroud scholar, called
(20:30):
me up and said, look, I'm goingto write an article on the
different disciplines that areinvolved in the study of the
Shroud, because most peoplethink it's very simple and
you're done.
I had estimated maybe 30different disciplines before he
wrote the article.
When he finished the article, hewas up to 104 disciplines and
sub-disciplines that have beendirectly or indirectly involved
(20:51):
in the study of the Shroud ofTurin.
So it's far more complicated andcomplex an issue than most
people realize.
But those of us who've beeninvolved with it from a
scientific point of view havehad the opportunity to see all
the different disciplines thathave been necessary to be
involved in the study of thiscloth to try and answer some of
(21:12):
the questions.
And many of the questions stillremain unanswered.
You have to remember, we did oneset of in-depth tests 45 years
ago.
It's now 45 years later.
Technology has advanceddramatically in 45 years.
We would love to see anothergo-round of tests that could
(21:33):
perhaps further our knowledge ofthe shroud and at the same time
verify the data and conclusionsthat our team formed based on
our preliminary examination.
Our goal was to go back and doit a second time, but church
politics got in the way for thesecond go-round.
And in the end, we were nevergiven permission to come back
And ironically, no one has beengiven permission to do any
(21:57):
further examinations of thatcloth since then, since 1970.
SPEAKER_02 (22:02):
Who owns it now?
SPEAKER_01 (22:04):
It's owned by the living Pope.
It was owned by King Umbertountil 1983, and it had been in
his family for over fivecenturies.
Instead of leaving it to his sonthe way his predecessors had
done, he decided it shouldbelong to one person not to the
church as an institution.
If he left it to the church, itwould take 130 cardinals to vote
(22:27):
on anything.
And he knew that that doesn'tnecessarily bode well.
And so he decided it should bein the hands of one man, decided
it would be the living pope,would be the legal owner of the
shroud.
He died in 83.
The will was probated andfinished by 85.
And Pope John Paul II became thefirst legal owner of the Shroud
outside the Savoy family in over500 years.
(22:51):
Upon his passing, of course, itwent to Benedict and then from
Benedict now to Francis.
And so Pope Francis is the legalowner, but not the church as an
institution.
The Pope as an individual is thelegal owner of the Shroud.
SPEAKER_02 (23:08):
Very interesting.
Yeah, okay.
So what, based on what you sawand what people have estimated
from that, what was the size ofJesus?
Like what, do they have anestimate on how big?
SPEAKER_01 (23:22):
Yeah, no, that's a common question.
And here's a couple of thingsyou have to remember first.
Starting off with the fact thatthis is a herringbone woven
cloth, twill, that was the wordI couldn't remember earlier.
A herringbone twill, that's thedescriptive term for it.
you can stretch that clothliterally a couple of inches in
any direction just because ofthe way it's woven.
(23:45):
So right off the bat, you have aproblem.
If you smooth it out and youpull it too much in one
direction or the other, you caneasily distort the image.
So that's one problem.
The other problem is this.
Unlike an artwork, which wouldhave a very defined edge,
because an artist usually startswith an outline and then fills
it in, The shroud image fadesout.
(24:06):
Remember, we talked about theimage being a function of
distance.
And as the distance around theedges of the image increased,
the image just fades into thebackground.
There are no distinct edges.
So there's no place easily wheredo you start and end your
measurements.
So the best we can do is anapproximate value.
(24:26):
5 foot 10, 5 foot 11 is theapproximate value.
But Think about this.
In 2002, they did a restorationof the shroud, removed the
patches, got rid of many of thecreases, steamed it, smoothed it
out.
It's now seven centimeterslonger than it was when I
photographed it in 78.
And what impact did that have onthe image?
(24:49):
Right.
So it's quite possible that thatkind of a measurement can never
be as precision as we would ifwe had an actual body to measure
in front of us.
SPEAKER_02 (25:02):
So what, you know, one of the, you know, I
appreciate hearing your personalperspective and the work that
you guys have done.
And I've reviewed, you know, allof that kind of stuff.
And I'm a believer as well.
The question that I have,though, and I wonder if you can
just lend some perspective tothis would be why if, you know,
(25:23):
they obviously didn't like thisperson.
very much at all.
Jesus, the character, right?
I mean, we...
Why would they allow him to havea traditional Jewish burial of
someone of importance when theyjust...
SPEAKER_01 (25:41):
I'm not a New Testament scholar, but I think
that's reasonably made clear inthe New Testament that I guess
it was...
Sorry, I've forgotten his name.
The representative of theemperor there in Jerusalem...
who authorized them to give hima burial for Joseph of Arimathea
(26:01):
to collect the body and give hima burial.
And they didn't specify whetherit could be a Jewish or
non-Jewish burial.
By then it was irrelevant.
They had already killed him.
SPEAKER_02 (26:11):
Okay.
I didn't know that.
So that's in the Gospels
SPEAKER_01 (26:14):
itself.
Yeah, it's in the Gospels.
Again, I'm not a biblicalscholar, so I'm sorry that I'm
not well-versed there.
SPEAKER_02 (26:21):
No, no, it's fine.
I'm not either.
SPEAKER_01 (26:24):
But it is mentioned that, and I'm so frustrated,
it's what happens when you getold, you know, you start
forgetting things.
Can't think of his name, butit'll come to me later in the
interview, I'm sure.
Yep,
SPEAKER_02 (26:37):
yep.
SPEAKER_01 (26:37):
That's the way it works.
SPEAKER_02 (26:39):
So what about...
What about your feelings?
How did you feel?
You go and you're experiencingthis.
You're not overly religious, yousay.
You've got a background aroundCatholicism.
SPEAKER_01 (26:54):
I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home.
SPEAKER_02 (26:57):
Oh, you were?
Okay.
Pretty Jewish then.
What was your feeling with theshroud?
Can you shed some light on that?
SPEAKER_01 (27:06):
Look, I did not have nearly...
the kind of an emotionalresponse to it that any
Christian obviously would.
I knew about it.
I knew of it.
But I did not have thatemotional attachment to it.
But I'm sure that there wereseveral, at least several of the
other team members who wereChristians deep in their faith
(27:27):
that would have probably hadmore of an emotional response to
it than I did.
You have to understand this.
We spent 17 months planning togo over there.
Then when we got there, 80crates of our equipment that
we'd shipped over were seized bycustoms.
We were there a week early tounpack and set everything up.
(27:47):
And for five and a half days,they wouldn't release our
equipment to us.
So we were pretty stressed outby the end of that.
We were there a week early toget everything set up.
And we were one day and a halfbefore the shrouds to be brought
to us where they finally deliverall these 80 crates of
equipment.
So now we had to unpack themall, move them all into the
royal palace where we did theexaminations and unpack all
(28:11):
these crates and set up all theinstruments and calibrate
everything.
So we were down to the wire.
So I think that we all had tosomewhat set aside our emotional
responses because we had such aresponsibility of getting this
put together and gettingeverything ready.
So when the shroud was broughtto us, we'd be prepared and
(28:31):
ready to go.
We had spent an inordinateamount of time in the planning
stages.
The one thing we didn't figureis that One of the pieces of
equipment we had with us was alow power x-ray machine and a
very low power because x-rayscould be harmful to an old sheet
of linen.
(28:51):
And the problem with that was onthe crate, that that x-ray
machine was in was a radiationsticker.
And that radiation stickerapparently put the fear of God
into the Italian customs peoplebecause that was the primary
reason they held all of ourequipment.
It took some convincing and fiveand a half days before they
(29:11):
ultimately released theequipment, or that would have
been the end of the whole deal.
So it was touch and go.
Listen, there wasn't a day thatwent by.
Sometimes multiple times duringa day when a crisis would come
up and we would have toimmediately drop everything and
solve that issue.
And that, that was continuous.
It happened throughout thatwhole 17 months.
(29:34):
It happened throughout the timewe were in Turin.
So we were ultimately, you know,under a lot of pressure.
And so I think it wasn't untilwe got started, things started
settling down.
We started, uh, doing our testplan, which was detailed in five
minute increments.
(29:55):
It's a big, long piece of clothso we could have several
experiments going simultaneouslyat different parts of the cloth.
So once we got all that up andrunning and organized, I think
things calmed down and I'm surethat it was then as things got
quieter and a little moreintense that I'm sure that more
of the members of the team mighthave had time to consider it
(30:17):
from more of an emotional orspiritual point of view.
But we were there to do scienceand I would say that the
majority of that team probablyhad less of an emotional
reaction to it than one ofcuriosity and science and
hopefulness of some of thesetests answering the questions
(30:38):
that we were there to answer.
SPEAKER_02 (30:41):
Did it look brittle or frail in any way, being so
old, or brittle or
SPEAKER_01 (30:47):
frail in any way?
It was surprisingly more pliablethan I expected.
But also remember this, most ofthe ancient things that we find
came out of the ground.
They were buried and they had tobe unearthed.
And so being buried in theground, that environmental
(31:09):
factor can obviously cause harmand degradation of a cloth.
Where this had been preserved,it was never actually in the
ground.
It had been preserved, hiddenaway, taken good care of.
The Savoy family had it rolledup on a dowel in a wooden
reliquary box, which theytraveled with and would unroll
(31:32):
it and show it to people.
But it was in better shape thanI expected it might be, but it
was still heavily damaged by afire in 1532.
And there were triangular shapedpatches that had been sewn in
two years later by the poorClare nuns in 1534.
And then they sewed a backingsheet onto the entire cloth and
(31:54):
sewed everything down to thatbacking sheet just to add some
substance to it because it hadbeen pretty severely damaged by
the 1532 fire.
So it was in pretty good shapeconsidering what it had been
through and how old itostensibly was.
SPEAKER_02 (32:12):
Well, very interesting.
I, I'm, uh, Really glad thatyou're able to join and talk
through this with us today.
Are you, is there anything elseyou'd like to share that I
didn't ask and maybe I shouldhave?
SPEAKER_01 (32:21):
No, look, I mean, I always leave it up to the host
to fire away and I'll do my bestto answer every question.
And listen, I'm one of the fewguys that you can get on your
program here that if you ask mea question and I don't know the
answer, I'm going to say that.
I'm going to say, I don't knowthe answer to that.
I'm not good at faking it, okay?
(32:42):
And if you're going to be honestand be truthful, there are some
times where the truthful answeris we don't know.
And that's how the image wasformed.
That was the primary question wewanted to answer.
And although there's still a fewtheories that might be viable
and some that have been provenor disproven, the only correct
answer is how's the imageformed?
(33:02):
We don't know.
That's the honest answer.
SPEAKER_02 (33:05):
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SPEAKER_00 (33:41):
Thanks for listening to Ashley on Nothing But The
Truth for a better you and me.
Welcome to Ashley On, your one-stop podcast where
we talk about health andwellness, spirituality and all
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Stick around as we delve deepinto innovations to support a
better world.
SPEAKER_02 (00:25):
Hello and welcome to the show.
Today's show is with BarrySchwartz.
Barry runs Shroud.com, which isa website dedicated to the
Shroud of Turin.
He is a professionalphotographer and was on a
mission several years ago, andwe'll talk about it in the show,
with several experts, veryrenowned scientists who led an
(00:45):
expedition to examine the Shroudof Turin and try to determine
whether you know, it's historyand whether or not it's, uh,
it's a valid that it's, thatit's not, uh, you know, been
photographed or reproduced insome way or is fake in some way.
And so they were sent on amission to kind of debunk that
or to find out the truth.
Um, very interesting and a greatprogram, um, that, that we talk
(01:10):
a lot about, you know, his, histechnical process.
And then also just the, youknow, the, the, the overall, um,
political situations associatedwith the Shroud of Turin when it
comes to religious artifacts.
So it's a really good interviewand very interesting.
Hope you enjoy the show.
Thank you.
As always, this show is broughtto you by packedwithlife.com,
(01:33):
your source for functionalmushrooms.
Lots of great information thereand links to awesome products
that support natural healing,new neuron growth in your brain.
Think about that for a second,growing new neurons, probably
pretty important thing to do.
Lowers inflammation and providesnatural energy without caffeine.
Just so many benefits tofunctional mushrooms like lion's
(01:55):
mane, cordyceps, chaga, turkeytail, those sorts of functional
mushrooms so check it out now atpackwithlife.com oh barry
schwartz welcome to the showthank you for joining us today
SPEAKER_01 (02:06):
thanks for having me on ashley the
SPEAKER_02 (02:09):
shroud the shroud of turin um that's the topic today
and i'm very fascinated aboutthis and um before i i butcher
the uh the explanation i'm justgoing to turn it over to you why
don't you just start by tellingour audience um A little bit
about yourself and then howyou're an expert in this subject
(02:34):
matter.
And we'll go from there with ourconversation.
SPEAKER_01 (02:37):
Okay, well, I'm going to go on the assumption
that people know what the Shroudof Turin is.
It's a sheet of 14 and a halffoot long sheet of linen cloth
that bears the full ventralfront and dorsal back image of a
crucified man.
It's got bloodstains fordecades.
crucifixion wounds, spear woundin the side, blood stains on the
(03:02):
head from a cap or crown ofthorns, and crucifixion wounds
in the feet as well, and alsoscourge wounds that cover not
only the back of the body, whichartists over the years have
depicted, But in real life, ifyou're scourging somebody from
behind and you take a baby stepcloser, those thongs of that
(03:22):
whip's gonna come around andit's gonna hit the front of the
body.
And we see that on the shroud.
So it's forensically really moreaccurate than any of the
artworks depicting the scourgingof Jesus that have been done
through the centuries.
My involvement with the shroudcame because I'm a professional
photographer and I operated astudio in Santa Barbara,
(03:43):
California at the time.
And I was approached by a localcompany that was a contractor to
Los Alamos NationalLaboratories.
They needed somebody withdarkroom skills, photographic
skills.
And I had several darkrooms atour studio.
And I did a seven-month projectwith this local company as a
(04:04):
contractor or subcontractor toLos Alamos National
Laboratories.
And it was about atomic bombs,so I can't really tell you much
more about it because it's allclassified.
But I spent seven months doingthe project with a gentleman
from that company that wascontracted at Los Alamos.
(04:26):
We finished that project, andjust within maybe just a few
weeks later, the same gentlemancalled me back, a man named Don
Devan, Don Devan called me upagain.
And when you're self-employedand the phone rings, you're
always hoping it's the next job.
So I called, so Don called meand I'm thinking, well, maybe
another project for Los Alamos.
(04:47):
And he said, well, not exactly.
He said, what do you know aboutthe Shroud of Turin?
And at that moment, I kind oflaughed.
I said, but Don, I'm Jewish.
And Don laughed and said, so ami remember he was one of the
other jewish guys on the team souh he explained to me he was an
(05:07):
imaging scientist and heexplained to me that they had
done a test with a shroudphotograph in an instrument
called a vp8 image analyzerwhich basically black and white
video camera inputs the imageinto the device it displays it
on a green screen monitor Andthe device allows you to take
(05:28):
the lights and darks of theimage and stretch them into
vertical 3D space, proportionateto each other.
Well, normal photograph, you getthis distorted, jumbled, grossly
distorted faces and stuff.
They put the shroud image inthere and got the natural relief
of a human form, 100%accurately.
And they decided that that was aunique enough property that they
(05:52):
should put a team together andsee if they could get permission
to go to Turin and examine theshroud and try and determine how
that image was formed.
Historically, people said, oh,it's a painting or it's a scorch
or it's made photographically.
Some people even said byLeonardo da Vinci, amazingly
enough, nevermind the fact thatthe shroud was being publicly
(06:13):
displayed a hundred years beforeda Vinci was born.
I mean, he was a great artist,but he wasn't that good.
So, so, um, So they basically,they wanted to put this team
together.
Many of the experiments thatneeded to be performed were
photographic experiments.
And so he asked me if I would bewilling to be a participant in
(06:36):
something like that.
And frankly, I said, Not really.
No, I don't think I'd want to dothat because I didn't want to
get involved in something thatwas perhaps religious oriented.
I don't have anything againstreligion.
I was raised in a half Jewish,half Italian neighborhood, so
Catholics and Jews side by side.
So I didn't have any problemwith that.
It's just that I wasn'tknowledgeable in those areas.
(07:00):
And he reminded me, he said,look, this isn't about religion.
Nobody cares what your religiousbackground is.
We're asking you to participatebecause of your skills as a
professional photographer.
And we're there to study theimage and determine how it was
formed.
We're not there to determine ifit was Jesus or if it proved the
(07:22):
resurrection or anything likethat.
Those are all items that wererelegated to people of faith.
We were there to do science andexamine the shroud.
So although I said no initially,I ultimately agreed,
particularly on his word, thatthis was going to be about
science.
And he proved to be 100%correct.
(07:44):
There was never a whole lot ofreligious talk about the Shroud.
I mean, we worked with the HolyShroud Guild, which was by then
only three of four priests hadbeen promoting the Shroud in the
United States since the 1950s.
And the reason we worked withthem is that one of those
priests, Father Peter Rinaldi,was a close personal friend of
(08:05):
King Umberto II, the legal ownerof the shroud in 1978.
And so he was our liaison withnot only the king, but with the
Turin custodians.
The people in Turin wereformally and officially the
custodians of the shroud.
So it was in their care.
(08:25):
And the king had brought it toTurin in 1578.
And it had been in Turin forover 400 years, right around 400
years at that point in time.
In fact, there was a publicexhibition in 1978 to
commemorate the 400thanniversary of the Shroud being
in Turin.
And it was at the end of thatpublic exhibition that our team
(08:48):
was ultimately given permissionto examine the Shroud.
And we spent five days andnights literally around the
clock working to do ourphotography and our spectral
analysis and chemical analysisand tape sampling and X-ray
fluorescence analysis.
So we did all these scientifictests all based on determining
(09:10):
What comprised the image?
Was it a painting, a scorch, aphotographically made image?
And ultimately, our primarypurpose was to answer that
single question, how is theimage formed?
And after all our work, we spent17 months preparing, five days
and nights on site with theshroud in front of us.
(09:31):
And then almost three yearsafter we came back and reviewing
all of our data and writing itinto scientific papers and
publishing that in peer-reviewedjournals.
And after all that, we reallycouldn't answer the one question
we went to ask, which is, how isthe image formed?
We could tell you what it's not.
(09:51):
We've proven it's not apainting.
There's no painter pigmentresponsible for the image.
We've proven thatscientifically.
It's not a scorch.
I won't go into technicaldetails, but one or two of our
experiments proved it was notthe product of a high
temperature event.
It's not a photographically madeimage because you need a light
(10:12):
sensitive material or chemicalcompound to create a light
sensitive image.
And historically that's alwaysbeen silver or salt silver salts
and there were no traces ofsilver anywhere on that cloth if
it had been madephotographically then the image
would be made comprised mostlyof silver and there would be
(10:32):
plenty of silver around it inthe background maybe of lower
quantity in the end there was nosilver anywhere on that shroud
so we could exclude Photographyis a mechanism for creating the
image.
So in the end, we could tell youwhat it's not, but we don't know
of a mechanism to this day thatcan create an image with the
(10:54):
chemical and physical propertiesthat we documented on that piece
of cloth.
SPEAKER_02 (10:59):
Wow.
That's quite the story.
So what...
SPEAKER_01 (11:03):
You asked.
SPEAKER_02 (11:05):
No, it's great.
It's fascinating that...
Number one, there's somethingthat's been passed around that
long of time.
It's easy for the Senate to say,well, it's probably just a fake
or something that somebody cameup with.
I deal
SPEAKER_01 (11:23):
with them on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_02 (11:26):
So what do you say to that person?
SPEAKER_01 (11:29):
Look, there's plenty of peer-reviewed science in
highly regarded journals, notmagazine articles, not books,
not blogs, not websites, notpodcasts.
Peer-reviewed scientificjournals, some of the finest
journals of the day, thatpublished our work.
And you don't get your work intoapplied optics and journals of
that caliber unless you haveyour act together.
(11:52):
And we did.
I mean, if you look at who theguys were on our team, there
were representatives from LosAlamos National Laboratory,
Sandia National Laboratories,the Air Force Weapons
Laboratory, Jet PropulsionLaboratory in Pasadena, two of
our team members, both of themsort of my heroes, especially
one of them, Don Lin.
(12:13):
He was head of imaging for NASAon the Voyager, Viking, Mariner,
and Galileo projects.
And he was a member of our team.
The other gentleman, John Lohrfrom Jet Propulsion Lab, spent
his last days before he passedaway scouting the solar system
for asteroids that might be on apath towards Earth to protect
(12:36):
our planet.
So these were high quality, highcaliber scientists, not just a
bunch of wackos as some of theskeptics like to proclaim.
These were first rate empiricalscientists, so much so that I
learned empiricism from theseguys.
I mean, I've worked with lots ofresearchers over the years None,
(12:58):
none have been as empirical, ashonest, and true to the science
as the guys that I dealt with onthe Shroud of Turin Research
Project, the team that wasformed for us to do our work.
And so I'm very grateful to havethat opportunity.
You got to remember, I don'thave a science degree.
I have a Bachelor of Arts degreein photography, although I have
(13:21):
a strong technical background,which is what obviously got me
involved here.
These are hardcore scientists.
So when people demean them andsay, oh, they're just a bunch of
religious wackos.
Not really.
And we should all be gratefulthat Los Alamos and Sandia
Laboratories and the Air ForceWeapons Lab didn't hire a bunch
of wacko crazy people or theycould have blown the planet up
(13:44):
by now.
So, you know, these were allhigh caliber scientists.
SPEAKER_02 (13:49):
Oh, that's great.
Thanks for sharing that.
They kind of knew what they weredoing.
SPEAKER_01 (13:54):
Yeah.
More so than I ever imagined.
SPEAKER_02 (13:56):
Yes.
So what was the, what was thefabric made out of?
Like, what is the, what does itfeel like?
I don't know if you can touchit, but describe the fabric of
the.
SPEAKER_01 (14:06):
Yeah, the fabric is a three over one herringbone
weave.
I'm trying to remember what the,I'm not a textile expert, so I
don't always have these words atthe tip of my tongue.
SPEAKER_02 (14:19):
That's okay.
SPEAKER_01 (14:20):
But it's a very kind of a complicated weave.
This would have been anexpensive piece of cloth.
It's made of pure linen, whichis from the flax plant.
Jewish law forbids the mixing ofthe kind, it's called, so that a
burial shroud of somebody ofhigh caliber, and in this case,
(14:40):
this would have been somebody ofcertainly high caliber, Must be
pure linen, could have no mixingof wool or cotton in with it.
And consequently, this wouldhave been an expensive piece of
linen.
Now, according to the gospelaccounts, it was provided to
Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea.
(15:02):
They didn't tell us much aboutJoseph other than he was a
wealthy man.
And that makes sense because healready had a tomb.
Consequently, he already had ashroud and it would have been an
expensive shroud, a propershroud for somebody of high
caliber.
And so he made that available towrap Jesus's body.
And so that's consistent withwhat we know.
(15:23):
And consequently, I'm confidentthat this is the cloth that
wrapped the historical Jesus.
Now, people have said to me,well, wait a minute, you're not
even a Christian.
How can you believe that andstill not be a Christian?
And the answer is very simple.
(15:43):
Everything that was done, and ifyou read what's in the New
Testament describing what tookplace in that tomb, it's, to me,
as soon as I read that passage,I immediately recognized it as
an authentic first centuryJewish burial.
And here's why.
You know, when he was taken offthe cross, Just like we do
(16:07):
today, they covered his face.
He was deceased.
They covered his face.
We still do that to this veryday.
And that probably goes backthroughout human history that
when somebody dies, we covertheir face.
Well, the cloth that they usedto cover his face as they took
him off the cross and broughthim to the tomb had his blood
and pleural fluids from hislungs soaked into the cloth.
(16:28):
Not an image, just his blood andpleural fluids.
Jewish law says anything with adecedent's blood must be buried
with the body.
So when I read that, and ittalked about that second cloth
folded and separate, but kept inthe tomb, authentic Jewish
burial.
because only the Jews put somuch value on the blood that
(16:51):
even to this day in Israel, ifthere's a terror attack and
people are blown up, they haverighteous men with clean claws
sopping up the blood and keepingit with the body so that they
can be buried.
And I think the concept is thatJews believe in the
resurrection, where it comesfrom the Old Testament, but they
believe the body needs to be asintact as possible, and they put
(17:13):
so much value on the blood thatthey made it a rule, a law, if
you will, that anything with thedecedent's blood must be buried
with the body.
So when I read that in the NewTestament, the first thing I
said was, well, that's anauthentic Jewish burial, because
only the Jews would do that.
And so what we have is somethingthat's like a document of what
(17:33):
was done to him.
The bloodstains came onto thatcloth by direct contact with the
body.
They're forensically accurateaccording to a whole slew of
forensic experts who've studiedit.
And so what we have is anartifact of Jesus.
And so even as a Jewish man, Ican accept the historicity of
(17:56):
Jesus of Nazareth.
I mean, his life, I mean, he'sgot more impact in the world
today than when he was alive.
And so why wouldn't we have anartifact of his?
It makes sense that somebody ofsuch importance, that somebody
would take a great risk inrescuing that cloth out of the
(18:18):
tomb and preserving it.
Because if you got caught doingthat, you might be the next one
on a cross.
And that certainly theiconoclasts would have destroyed
that cloth.
And of course, The image itselfis unique because it's not a
contact image.
I mean, contact is part of it.
(18:38):
But there's imaging taking placeat a distance of up to about
four centimeters between thecloth and the body.
For example, if I'm laying on myback and I cross my arms over my
torso, I'm going to lift thecloth away from my torso where
the hands are crossed.
And the image around the handsis more faint because the
distance is greater.
(18:59):
So you can actually see thateffect on the cloth.
And so there's plenty ofevidence that this wrapped a man
who had been scourged andcrucified and crowned with a cap
of thorns.
And when people say, well, howdo you know it's Jesus?
Well, we know that the Romanscrucified lots of people and
they scourged lots of people.
They might have even speared abunch of people.
(19:21):
but only one man that we know ofin all of recorded history that
the Romans dealt with, wherethey crowned him with a crown or
cap of thorns to furtherhumiliate him.
because he had proclaimedhimself king of the Jews.
Oh, so you're the king, huh?
Well, here's your crown.
And of course, his scalp iscovered with wounds from a
really sharp thorn bush.
(19:42):
Now, they didn't weave a prettylittle circular crown the way
artists have depicted it overthe years.
They just took a nasty thornbush and smashed it down on his
head.
And you can see the wounds allover his scalp.
So everything about it tells methat of all the people who've
lived on this planet, it makesvery good sense to me logically
that something of his would bepreserved through the centuries
(20:06):
and cared for and from aChristian point of view,
certainly have significantmeaning for our faith.
So I see it as an object offaith for millions of people,
but it's also an object ofcuriosity, an object of science,
an object of history.
And we did recently, Joe Marino,who's a Shroud scholar, called
(20:30):
me up and said, look, I'm goingto write an article on the
different disciplines that areinvolved in the study of the
Shroud, because most peoplethink it's very simple and
you're done.
I had estimated maybe 30different disciplines before he
wrote the article.
When he finished the article, hewas up to 104 disciplines and
sub-disciplines that have beendirectly or indirectly involved
(20:51):
in the study of the Shroud ofTurin.
So it's far more complicated andcomplex an issue than most
people realize.
But those of us who've beeninvolved with it from a
scientific point of view havehad the opportunity to see all
the different disciplines thathave been necessary to be
involved in the study of thiscloth to try and answer some of
(21:12):
the questions.
And many of the questions stillremain unanswered.
You have to remember, we did oneset of in-depth tests 45 years
ago.
It's now 45 years later.
Technology has advanceddramatically in 45 years.
We would love to see anothergo-round of tests that could
(21:33):
perhaps further our knowledge ofthe shroud and at the same time
verify the data and conclusionsthat our team formed based on
our preliminary examination.
Our goal was to go back and doit a second time, but church
politics got in the way for thesecond go-round.
And in the end, we were nevergiven permission to come back
And ironically, no one has beengiven permission to do any
(21:57):
further examinations of thatcloth since then, since 1970.
SPEAKER_02 (22:02):
Who owns it now?
SPEAKER_01 (22:04):
It's owned by the living Pope.
It was owned by King Umbertountil 1983, and it had been in
his family for over fivecenturies.
Instead of leaving it to his sonthe way his predecessors had
done, he decided it shouldbelong to one person not to the
church as an institution.
If he left it to the church, itwould take 130 cardinals to vote
(22:27):
on anything.
And he knew that that doesn'tnecessarily bode well.
And so he decided it should bein the hands of one man, decided
it would be the living pope,would be the legal owner of the
shroud.
He died in 83.
The will was probated andfinished by 85.
And Pope John Paul II became thefirst legal owner of the Shroud
outside the Savoy family in over500 years.
(22:51):
Upon his passing, of course, itwent to Benedict and then from
Benedict now to Francis.
And so Pope Francis is the legalowner, but not the church as an
institution.
The Pope as an individual is thelegal owner of the Shroud.
SPEAKER_02 (23:08):
Very interesting.
Yeah, okay.
So what, based on what you sawand what people have estimated
from that, what was the size ofJesus?
Like what, do they have anestimate on how big?
SPEAKER_01 (23:22):
Yeah, no, that's a common question.
And here's a couple of thingsyou have to remember first.
Starting off with the fact thatthis is a herringbone woven
cloth, twill, that was the wordI couldn't remember earlier.
A herringbone twill, that's thedescriptive term for it.
you can stretch that clothliterally a couple of inches in
any direction just because ofthe way it's woven.
(23:45):
So right off the bat, you have aproblem.
If you smooth it out and youpull it too much in one
direction or the other, you caneasily distort the image.
So that's one problem.
The other problem is this.
Unlike an artwork, which wouldhave a very defined edge,
because an artist usually startswith an outline and then fills
it in, The shroud image fadesout.
(24:06):
Remember, we talked about theimage being a function of
distance.
And as the distance around theedges of the image increased,
the image just fades into thebackground.
There are no distinct edges.
So there's no place easily wheredo you start and end your
measurements.
So the best we can do is anapproximate value.
(24:26):
5 foot 10, 5 foot 11 is theapproximate value.
But Think about this.
In 2002, they did a restorationof the shroud, removed the
patches, got rid of many of thecreases, steamed it, smoothed it
out.
It's now seven centimeterslonger than it was when I
photographed it in 78.
And what impact did that have onthe image?
(24:49):
Right.
So it's quite possible that thatkind of a measurement can never
be as precision as we would ifwe had an actual body to measure
in front of us.
SPEAKER_02 (25:02):
So what, you know, one of the, you know, I
appreciate hearing your personalperspective and the work that
you guys have done.
And I've reviewed, you know, allof that kind of stuff.
And I'm a believer as well.
The question that I have,though, and I wonder if you can
just lend some perspective tothis would be why if, you know,
(25:23):
they obviously didn't like thisperson.
very much at all.
Jesus, the character, right?
I mean, we...
Why would they allow him to havea traditional Jewish burial of
someone of importance when theyjust...
SPEAKER_01 (25:41):
I'm not a New Testament scholar, but I think
that's reasonably made clear inthe New Testament that I guess
it was...
Sorry, I've forgotten his name.
The representative of theemperor there in Jerusalem...
who authorized them to give hima burial for Joseph of Arimathea
(26:01):
to collect the body and give hima burial.
And they didn't specify whetherit could be a Jewish or
non-Jewish burial.
By then it was irrelevant.
They had already killed him.
SPEAKER_02 (26:11):
Okay.
I didn't know that.
So that's in the Gospels
SPEAKER_01 (26:14):
itself.
Yeah, it's in the Gospels.
Again, I'm not a biblicalscholar, so I'm sorry that I'm
not well-versed there.
SPEAKER_02 (26:21):
No, no, it's fine.
I'm not either.
SPEAKER_01 (26:24):
But it is mentioned that, and I'm so frustrated,
it's what happens when you getold, you know, you start
forgetting things.
Can't think of his name, butit'll come to me later in the
interview, I'm sure.
Yep,
SPEAKER_02 (26:37):
yep.
SPEAKER_01 (26:37):
That's the way it works.
SPEAKER_02 (26:39):
So what about...
What about your feelings?
How did you feel?
You go and you're experiencingthis.
You're not overly religious, yousay.
You've got a background aroundCatholicism.
SPEAKER_01 (26:54):
I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home.
SPEAKER_02 (26:57):
Oh, you were?
Okay.
Pretty Jewish then.
What was your feeling with theshroud?
Can you shed some light on that?
SPEAKER_01 (27:06):
Look, I did not have nearly...
the kind of an emotionalresponse to it that any
Christian obviously would.
I knew about it.
I knew of it.
But I did not have thatemotional attachment to it.
But I'm sure that there wereseveral, at least several of the
other team members who wereChristians deep in their faith
(27:27):
that would have probably hadmore of an emotional response to
it than I did.
You have to understand this.
We spent 17 months planning togo over there.
Then when we got there, 80crates of our equipment that
we'd shipped over were seized bycustoms.
We were there a week early tounpack and set everything up.
(27:47):
And for five and a half days,they wouldn't release our
equipment to us.
So we were pretty stressed outby the end of that.
We were there a week early toget everything set up.
And we were one day and a halfbefore the shrouds to be brought
to us where they finally deliverall these 80 crates of
equipment.
So now we had to unpack themall, move them all into the
royal palace where we did theexaminations and unpack all
(28:11):
these crates and set up all theinstruments and calibrate
everything.
So we were down to the wire.
So I think that we all had tosomewhat set aside our emotional
responses because we had such aresponsibility of getting this
put together and gettingeverything ready.
So when the shroud was broughtto us, we'd be prepared and
(28:31):
ready to go.
We had spent an inordinateamount of time in the planning
stages.
The one thing we didn't figureis that One of the pieces of
equipment we had with us was alow power x-ray machine and a
very low power because x-rayscould be harmful to an old sheet
of linen.
(28:51):
And the problem with that was onthe crate, that that x-ray
machine was in was a radiationsticker.
And that radiation stickerapparently put the fear of God
into the Italian customs peoplebecause that was the primary
reason they held all of ourequipment.
It took some convincing and fiveand a half days before they
(29:11):
ultimately released theequipment, or that would have
been the end of the whole deal.
So it was touch and go.
Listen, there wasn't a day thatwent by.
Sometimes multiple times duringa day when a crisis would come
up and we would have toimmediately drop everything and
solve that issue.
And that, that was continuous.
It happened throughout thatwhole 17 months.
(29:34):
It happened throughout the timewe were in Turin.
So we were ultimately, you know,under a lot of pressure.
And so I think it wasn't untilwe got started, things started
settling down.
We started, uh, doing our testplan, which was detailed in five
minute increments.
(29:55):
It's a big, long piece of clothso we could have several
experiments going simultaneouslyat different parts of the cloth.
So once we got all that up andrunning and organized, I think
things calmed down and I'm surethat it was then as things got
quieter and a little moreintense that I'm sure that more
of the members of the team mighthave had time to consider it
(30:17):
from more of an emotional orspiritual point of view.
But we were there to do scienceand I would say that the
majority of that team probablyhad less of an emotional
reaction to it than one ofcuriosity and science and
hopefulness of some of thesetests answering the questions
(30:38):
that we were there to answer.
SPEAKER_02 (30:41):
Did it look brittle or frail in any way, being so
old, or brittle or
SPEAKER_01 (30:47):
frail in any way?
It was surprisingly more pliablethan I expected.
But also remember this, most ofthe ancient things that we find
came out of the ground.
They were buried and they had tobe unearthed.
And so being buried in theground, that environmental
(31:09):
factor can obviously cause harmand degradation of a cloth.
Where this had been preserved,it was never actually in the
ground.
It had been preserved, hiddenaway, taken good care of.
The Savoy family had it rolledup on a dowel in a wooden
reliquary box, which theytraveled with and would unroll
(31:32):
it and show it to people.
But it was in better shape thanI expected it might be, but it
was still heavily damaged by afire in 1532.
And there were triangular shapedpatches that had been sewn in
two years later by the poorClare nuns in 1534.
And then they sewed a backingsheet onto the entire cloth and
(31:54):
sewed everything down to thatbacking sheet just to add some
substance to it because it hadbeen pretty severely damaged by
the 1532 fire.
So it was in pretty good shapeconsidering what it had been
through and how old itostensibly was.
SPEAKER_02 (32:12):
Well, very interesting.
I, I'm, uh, Really glad thatyou're able to join and talk
through this with us today.
Are you, is there anything elseyou'd like to share that I
didn't ask and maybe I shouldhave?
SPEAKER_01 (32:21):
No, look, I mean, I always leave it up to the host
to fire away and I'll do my bestto answer every question.
And listen, I'm one of the fewguys that you can get on your
program here that if you ask mea question and I don't know the
answer, I'm going to say that.
I'm going to say, I don't knowthe answer to that.
I'm not good at faking it, okay?
(32:42):
And if you're going to be honestand be truthful, there are some
times where the truthful answeris we don't know.
And that's how the image wasformed.
That was the primary question wewanted to answer.
And although there's still a fewtheories that might be viable
and some that have been provenor disproven, the only correct
answer is how's the imageformed?
(33:02):
We don't know.
That's the honest answer.
SPEAKER_02 (33:05):
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(33:26):
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SPEAKER_00 (33:41):
Thanks for listening to Ashley on Nothing But The
Truth for a better you and me.
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