Shroud of Turin News, 2023

© Stephen E. Jones[1]

[Previous: June - December 2022] [Next: 2024]

This is the fourteenth and final installment of my Shroud of Turin News 2023. See previous why I had fallen behind and why I need to catch up. The articles' words are bold to distinguish them from mine.

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"Is the Shroud of Turin authentic? A new 'investigation' reopens the debate," Le Monde, Laurent Testot, 1 January 2023. The writer Jean-Christian Petitfils put the Holy Shroud back on the loom. In his work, he mixes history, science and esotericism in the hope of proving that the cloth did indeed wrap the body of Christ after his crucifixion. See 11May24a. The Shroud of Turin would appear to be a miracle in the literal sense of the term ... In his latest book, Le Saint Suaire de Turin. Témoin de la Passion de Jésus-Christ ("The Holy Shroud of Turin. Witness to the Passion of Jesus Christ") [Right (enlarge)], presented as a "definitive investigation," the historian Jean-Christian Petitfils traces the path of the cloth ... Petfils is a very significant French scholar: see his 15 books on Amazon.com! His `coming out' in favour of the Shroud's authenticity could have a big impact in France! For the author, the shroud is a miracle and science confirms it. Which is true! See 11May24b. In contrast to the Catholic Church, which has cautiously ruled that the object is an image or an icon ... That is, a fake! This is an example of what I had previously stated (11May24c), of the Vatican's duplicity (two-facedness) in its refusing to confirm that the Shroud is Jesus' burial sheet, sceptics cite that as evidence that the Shroud is a fake, when by its actions in spending the equivalent of millions of US dollars preserving the Shroud and exhibiting it to millions of people, the Vatican clearly does believe that the Shroud is Jesus' burial sheet! the author firmly defends: 1) that we are dealing with a true "relic," dating from the beginning of the Christian era, 2) that the cloth held the body of a supplicant victim? who could in all logic only be Jesus Christ. Bravo M. Petitfils! Jesus said, "So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven" (Mt 10:32). And the same presumably applies to his burial shroud, upon which he imprinted his image and has preserved down through the ages, against all the odds. Readers who immersed themselves in his biography of Jesus ... already knew what to expect from Mr. Petitfils' opinion on the Shroud of Turin: "The Shroud of Turin is the cloth that apparently wrapped the body of Christ. It represents the frontal and dorsal imprint, inverted, of a man of Semitic type, scourged, violently struck in the face, bloody, crowned with a band of thorns, crucified according to Roman techniques, with nails on the wrists and feet, bearing a wound on the right side. In other words, the wounds of The Passion. It is an impressive image, acheiropoietic (not made by human hands), almost indelible, isotropic (i.e., without directional effect), which one has never managed to reproduce, even in the laboratory, by the most varied techniques." Indeed it is! So how could a medieval forger have produced the Shroud if modern 20th and 21st century science and technology has been unable to?

"Documentary on Shroud of Turin to be released this November," Aleteia, J-P Mauro, 8 February 2023. The film will explore many aspects of the Shroud of Turin and its history, seeking to determine once and for all if this was the burial cloth of Christ ... A documentary examining the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, believed by many to be the cloth in which Christ was buried, will be released this November. The film, [Above (enlarge). Click here to watch the video.] The Shroud: Face to Face, is by Robert Orlando, who wrote a book of the same title on the topic. It is expected to explore many aspects of the Shroud, while debunking the failed attempt to carbon date the cloth in 1988. ... Orlando ... compared the documentary's investigative style to that of the ever popular True Crime genre. ... He explained that the content will include recent discoveries regarding the image on the Shroud, which can only be seen in photographic negative. These include the determination that the head wounds inflicted on the image cover the whole head, suggesting that the Crown of Thorns may have more resembled a helmet. This is not recent - see my 2013 "3.5. The man on the Shroud and Jesus were crowned with thorns" and my 2022 "The Shroud man and Jesus were crowned with thorns #38." It was also determined that the man in the shroud's shoulder was dislocated, which experts suggest could have been caused by one of Christ's falls, and would explain why the Romans allowed Simon of Cyrene to help Jesus carry the cross I wasn't aware of, or had forgtten, this:

"The man seems to have had a dislocated shoulder (inferred from the right shoulder being lower than the left on the back-of-the-body image)"[WI98, 26]

"And so is fulfilled the prophecy of the 22nd Psalm which Jesus drew attention to while hanging on the cross when He quoted the first verse: `My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' This same Psalm goes on to give a graphic description of the scene of crucifixion (not invented until 900 years after David wrote the Psalm, which states among other things: 6. But I am a worm, and not a man, a reproach of men, and despised by the people. 7. All who see me sneer at me (see Luke 23:35); they separate with the lip, they wag the head, saying, 8. commit thyself to the Lord; let Him deliver him; let Him rescue him, because He delights in him (see Luke 23:35,37). ... 14. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted in me, 15. My strength is dried up, like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; and Thou dost lay me in the dust of death. 16. for dogs (Hebrew for gentiles, Romans) have surrounded me; a band of evildoers has encompassed me; they pierced my hands and my feet. 17. I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me; 18. they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots" (my emphasis)[Jn 19:24][MA87, 9-10].

... While an attempt has been made to carbon date the Shroud of Turin, the results of the test were contended. Those who took the sample of the cloth reportedly chose a spot that had been repaired after fire damage in the 16th century. Because of this, the dating results of 700 years old have been discredited. The problem with this Medieval Repair Theory, and all Shroudie theories which attempt to explain how the first century Shroud has the `bull's eye' 1325 ±65 radiocarbon date, is that, as the physicist Frank Tipler (1947-) pointed out, for carbon contamination to shift the 1st century radiocarbon date of the Shroud 13 centuries into the future, to 1260-1390, the mid-point of which, 1325 ±65, `just happpens' to be 30 years before the Shroud entered undisputed history in 1355, would be a miracle:

"If the radiocarbon date is ignored, there are quite a few reasons for accepting the Shroud as genuine ... But ... what must be answered before the Shroud can be accepted as genuine - is why the radiocarbon date is exactly what one would expect it to be if the Turin Shroud were actually a fraud. A very plausible history of the Shroud from A.D. 30 to the present has been constructed ... However, the first time the Shroud is agreed by all scholars to have existed is 1355, when a French squire, Geoffrey de Charny of Lirey, in the bishopric of Troyes, petitioned the Pope to display it as the unique burial cloth of Jesus. ... A few decades after de Charny's death, the bishop of Troyes denounced the Shroud as a fake and said that he knew the name of the forger, who had confessed. So if the bishop and later skeptics were correct, we would expect the linen of which the Shroud is made to date from the time of the forgery. That is, the middle of the fourteenth century. When the radiocarbon date was discovered to be between 1260 and 1390 (95 percent confidence interval), most scientists (including myself until a few years ago) were convinced that the Shroud had been proven a fraud. If bacterial or other contamination had distorted the date, we would expect the measured radiocarbon date to be some random date between A.D. 30 and the present. It would be an extraordinary and very improbable coincidence if the amount of carbon added to the Shroud were exactly the amount needed to give the date that indicated a fraud. That is, unless the radiocarbon date were itself a miracle ..." (my emphasis)[TF07, 178-179]

The only viable explanation why the first century Shroud has a 1325 ±65 radiocarbon date is my Hacker Theory! All other Shroudie explanations why the first century Shroud has a 1325 ±65 radiocarbon date have an implied, but hidden conclusion, "... therefore the Shroud has a 1260-1390 (1325 ±65) radiocarbon date." But then the non sequitur (L. "it does not follow") would be obvious. ... Father Robert J. Spitzer [1952-], Jesuit scholar ... believes that the Shroud of Turin is genuine. He hailed the film for its educational value ... "This is the way, I think, to get the message out, and in a compelling way that doesn't force people, that allows them to make a decision for themselves," [he] said ....the filmmakers of The Shroud: Face to Face say it should be released in November 2023. Learn more about this exciting documentary at the movie's official website.

"The Mystery Man: An exhibition that has done `a lot of good'," Aleteia, Daniel Esparza, 24 March 2023. The exhibition presenting the first hyper-realistic, science-based sculpted reconstruction of the Man in the Holy Shroud closed last week in Salamanca and now begins a global tour. According

[Artisplendore - The Mystery Man (enlarge)]

to biblical tradition, only Joseph of Arimathea and a few women saw Jesus' tortured, broken, wounded, naked body after his death on the cross. As well as Joseph of Arimathea (Mt 27:57-60; Mk 15:43-46; Lk 23:50-53; Jn 19:38-42), they were Nicodemus (Jn 19:39), and "Mary Magdalene and the other Mary" (Mt 27:61). The "other Mary" was Mary the mother of James the younger and Joseph (Mt 27:56; Mk 15:40,47; 16:1; Lk 24:10). She was "the wife of Clopas" (Jn 19:25). Jesus appeared to Clopas and presumably his wife Mary on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-31). The early church historian Hegesippus (c.110-180) identified Clopas as a brother of Jesus' `father' Joseph[WJ84, 36-38]! At least, that was the case before "The Mystery Man," an exhibition presenting the first hyper-realistic What does "hyper-realistic" mean? It is either realistic or it isn't!, science-based sculpted reconstruction of the Man of the Holy Shroud, While this is helpful in conveying the horror of Jesus' sufferings, the bleeding scourge wounds on the dead Jesus are not Biblically realistic. First, the type of Roman flagrum which matches the Shroudman's dumbbell-shaped scourge wounds had three leather thongs and

[Right (enlarge): Roman flagrum reconstructed by Paul Vignon (1865-1943) from the Shroud-man's scourge wounds. A flagrum similar to this was later recovered from the Roman city of Herculaneum, which, with its neighbour Pompeii, was buried in the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD 79.]

two lead balls (plumbatae) spaced near the end of each thong, which self-evidently were designed to cause internal bleeding so that the scourged crucifixion victim would experience agony but not die prematurely from loss of blood (see 27Dec21). Second, after Jesus was scourged (Mt 27:26; Mk 15:15; Jn 19:1), the Roman soldiers put a purple robe on him (Mt 27:28; Mk 15:17; Jn 19:2), which would have absorbed what blood there was from the scourging. Then after Jesus was crowned with thorns (Mt 27:29; Mk 15:17; Jn 19:2), the soldiers stripped Jesus of the robe and put his own clothes back on him and led him away to crucify him (Mt 27:31; Mk 15:20). This second change of Jesus' clothes would have absorbed what undried blood, if any, from his scourging that remained on Jesus' body. Finally, at the site of crucifixion, Jesus clothes were stripped off him again (Mt 27:35; Mk 15:24; Lk 23:33-34; Jn 19:23). As Oxley pointed out, when Jesus clothes were removed, any blood on His body, which would have become stuck to His clothes, would have been torn away, "like a giant plaster strip"[see 30Sep15a]:

"Following the scourging and his being dressed in a purple robe for the purpose of mockery, Jesus had had his clothes restored to him. He did not make the journey to Calvary naked. This, however, must have led to another source of extreme pain. On arrival at Calvary Jesus was stripped of his clothing. His cloak or tunic would have stuck to the blood covering his body. It must have been torn off his body prior to crucifixion, like a giant plaster strip attached to his whole body"[OM10, 165]

Third, which explains the lack of blood on the Shroudman's scourged back (below):

[Above (enlarge[LM10a]): The back of the man on the Shroud, showing the lack of bleeding of the scourge wounds, which are skin lacerations, each terminating in a circular indentation caused by a scourge's lead ball, in the centre of which is a tiny scratch-like bloodstain[AM00, 76].]

which closed last week after being on display for five months in the new cathedral of Salamanca in Spain. It will now start touring the globe, and will be taken to international events such as the World Youth Day in Lisbon (2023) and the coming Rome Jubilee (2025). The Mystery Man opened last October. Centered around a hyper-realistic reconstruction of the body of the Man in the Holy Shroud, the traveling exhibition is the result of 15 years of research into the Holy Shroud of Turin ... The hyper-realistic sculpture is 179 centimeters (almost 5 ft 9 in) tall. It weighs 75 kilos (165 lbs) and is made from a latex and silicone alloy, with real human hair. Some of its details can be only seen up close. ... During these five months, more than 70,000 people have visited The Mystery Man. ... (Slideshow) The Mystery Man: A reconstruction of the Man in the Holy Shroud. Launch the slideshow.

"Clues and Evidence," S4 Ep3: Shroud of Christ?: Secrets of the Dead, PBS, April 21, 2023 ... Stephen J. Mattingly, a Professor of Micro-biology [Right (enlarge): Professor Mattingly at work in his laboratory ...] and Immunology at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio, also doubts the 1988 radiocarbon results — though he blames not fire, but microbes This adds to the cacophony of mutually exlusive Shroudie attempted explanations why the first century Shroud had a 1260-1390 (1325 ±65) radiocarbon date. But see Tipler's point above that it would be "a miracle" "if the amount of carbon added to the Shroud were exactly the amount needed to give the date that indicated a fraud," i.e. 1325 ±65. Only my Hacker Theory (other than Tipler's "miracle" - he does believe that it was!), explains why the first century Shroud has a 1260-1390 (1325 ±65) radiocarbon date"! ... In the case of the Shroud of Turin, says Mattingly, the younger contaminants were bacteria. "You might imagine that over hundreds of years or several thousand, the Shroud has come in contact with many thousands of species of bacteria and fungi and some were able to grow for short or long periods of time," he explains. Is this true? The Shroud has been kept rolled up in total darkness for long periods of time, e.g. between expositions: 1898 to 1931 (~33 years), 1931 to 1973 (~42 years), and 1978 to 1998 (~20 years). Can bacteria and fungi keep growing in total darkness with no external inputs of water or nutrients? Can they even survive? That STURP found no evidence of them indicates that they cannot survive. "Some of these organisms would be more recent and be incorporating more recent radiocarbon material. The microbes are not digesting the linen, they are eating one another so to speak. Again, is this true? And if the bacteria and fungi are "eating one another" then there would be no increase in carbon! It would be a closed system. From as long as they can grow and incorporate carbon dioxide, which many microbes can do, they are actually making the Shroud appear more recent as time continues." Not unless new carbon is continuously entering the system from outside it, which is no the case with the Shroud, having been sealed off in total darkeness between expositions for several periods of multiple decades. If the bacteria and fungi died in between, they would have to start from scratch again. ... Mattingly and his colleague Leoncio Garza-Valdes [1939-2010] This is a recycled 2004 (i.e. 20 years ago) article, which I had saved a copy of but it is no longer online. Garza-Valdes died in 2010 and Mattingly is evidently no longer a professor at the University of Texas. have found several different species of bacteria colonizing pieces of the Shroud, including some organisms that had never been seen before. STURP's Ray Rogers (1927-2005) stated that, after extensive tests which would have detected a film of bacteria and fungi which was all over the Shroud and responsible for its image, STURP did not find any:

"The primary emphasis by STURP before Turin was testing whether the image had been painted, as claimed by Bishop d'Arcis. That emphasis made it necessary to search for all possible vehicles/media and pigments that could have been added to the cloth. We tested for all of them ... Al Adler, John Heller, and I did a battery of sensitive chemical spot tests on the fibril samples from the Shroud ... STURP observations do not agree with Mattingly's thesis, and he should have addressed and explained those disagreements. He did not test his hypothesis against all pertinent data. ... Biological materials, e.g., proteins, contain elements other than C, H, and O. Spot tests with iodine-azide reagent showed sulfur compounds in the blood areas on the shroud, but there were none in non-image areas. None of us ever saw a coating on any shroud image or non-image fibril. We did not detect any of the elements you would expect to find in an autotrophic organism, although the x-ray fluorescence runs were sensitive enough to detect the iron in the blood. Porphyrins and other pigments would have appeared clearly in the reflectance spectra. Pyrolysis-MS was the most sensitive test used. ... We would certainly have detected the `N-acetyl groups and several amino acids' mentioned by Mattingly; however, pyrolysis-MS did not find any nitrogen or sulfur compounds in pure image on non-image fibrils. Laser Raman is another extremely sensitive analytical method, and it did not detect any spurious materials. STURP concluded that the image could not be a painting, because nothing had been added to the cloth. That was the major finding of STURP. There is no `bioplastic polymer' on the surface of the Shroud"[RR02].

They tested samples from an outside strip of the cloth removed during the 1988 dating effort. Giovani Riggi, the scientific caretaker of the Shroud at the time, kept the strip and later provided samples to Mattingly and Garza-Valdes. "The Catholic Church did not sanction the removal and

[Above (enlarge)[WI10, 88]: Extract of a composite photograph of the Shroud sub-samples, cut from the Shroud on 21 April 1988. Their different textures are explained by some having been photographed from the underside. The sub-samples given to the laboratories to carbon-date were: a and d Arizona, b Zurich and c Oxford. e was retained by the Turin Archdiocese. To the right of the laboratories' sub-samples a, b and c are trimmings removed by Turin's Giovanni Riggi (1935-2008) and retained by him. The bottom right-hand triangular piece was that which was given to Prof. Gilbert Raes (1914-2001) in 1973 to study and returned to Turin by him in 1977. The sample provided by Riggi to Garza-Valdes, and through him to Mattingly, came from the trimmings on the far right. As can be seen, they are not representative of the rest of the Shroud and far from the image and blood areas. By my calculations from a Shroud photo, the area of the trimmings are about (3 x 1 x 100)/(265 x 68) mm = 0.017% of the area of the Shroud! It is therefore an unsound extrapolation by Mattingly and Garza-Valdes to base their "bioplastic coating" theory about the entire Shroud on these tiny edge trimmings!]

giving< of the material to us and would not certify that the pieces were authentic. Nevertheless, we know that they are authentic," Mattingly says.

Intriguingly, one of the microbe species seems to be producing an unusual material that coats the linen threads "with a brittle plastic-like material that made the linen difficult to cut, much like trying to cut through dry pasta," Mattingly says. STURP certainly wouldn't have missed this, if it was there. "It appears that this polymer may have actually helped preserve the Shroud linen through time." Linen does not need help in its preservation: linen cloths have been found which are many thousands of years old, yet are in a "perfect state of preservation":

"For example, the Tarkhan dress, considered to be among the oldest woven garments in the world and dated to between 3482 and 3102 BC, is made of linen. ... When the tomb of the Pharaoh Ramses II, who died in 1213 BC, was discovered in 1881, the linen wrappings were in a state of perfect preservation after more than 3000 years. ... In the Ulster Museum, Belfast there is the mummy of 'Takabuti' the daughter of a priest of Amun, who died 2,500 years ago. The linen on this mummy is also in a perfect state of preservation" (footnotes omitted)[LNW].

Similar coatings on other artifacts — the linen wrappings on mummies, for example — could also be affecting their radiocarbon ages. It is up to Mattingly to show that linen wrappings on Egyptian mummies have a bacteria and/or fungi biofilm coating which is affecting their radiocarbon ages. He hasn't because we would have heard about it-remember this is a 20 year-old article from 2004 (see above)

Mattingly also suspects that bacteria are responsible for the Shroud's ethereal image. His idea is that as the crucified man was dying, bacteria such as the common skin microbe Staphylococcus epidermis would have colonized and multiplied in his bloody wounds, creating a thin layer called a biofilm. A biofilm can soak up water like a sponge. After the man died and his body was washed, The Shroudman's body was not washed: see my post of 30Sep15b. If it had been, there would be no reversed `3' bloodstain on man's face (below).

[Above (enlarge): The reversed `3' or epsilon bloodstain on the Shroud man's forehead, as well as other blood trickles from the crown of thorns punctures in the man's scalp[LM10b].]

Being on the man's face, these bloodflows would surely have been washed first, if the man's body had been washed. Moreover, the reversed `3' bloodstain did not ooze out after the man had been washed because he was then alive since the bloodflow followed the furrows of his forehead as its muscles contracted in pain[WI79, 37; AM00, 26; OM10, 171; WI10, 35]. ... Over time, the degradation of the microbes would have produced a faint yellow imprint of the face and body that slowly darkened like a photographic image. "I have observed the drying of bacteria on surfaces before and noticed that they leave a straw yellow color similar to that observed with the Turin Shroud," he says ... A "straw yellow color" is only one of the at least eleven major features of the Shroud. Mattingly (and anyone who claims to have replicated the Shroud) needs to replicate all eleven! From my book: "Chapter 17: How was the image formed?"

"In the end, any attempt at duplicating the image on the Shroud of Turin must match all of its physical and chemical properties, not just a select few" (emphasis original)(Schwortz, 2000)[SB00].

"Major features Any explanation of how the Shroudman's image was formed must explain all the Shroud's major features[SB00] (see "[Chapter 5:] The man's image"). Claimed replications of the Shroud which do not include each and every major feature of the Shroud, are a type of `straw man' fallacy[SMW]. That is, they present a claimed replication of the Shroud which does not truly replicate it, and then falsely claim that they have replicated the Shroud!

Major features of the Shroud include: 1. Double body image; 2. Negative; 3. Three-dimensional; 4. Non-directional; 5. Superficial; 6. Uniform colour; 7. Faint; 8. No added colour (paint, etc); 9. Blood is real and human; 10. Blood was on the cloth before the image; and 11. X-rays of hands, teeth, etc."

To test his theory that a biofilm of fungi and bacteria is the Shroudman's image[SL03; SF98], Mattingly could have replicated the conditions of Jesus' burial on a freshly dead pig and seen if a fungi and/or bacteria biofilm formed on the pig's body within 3 days (if Mattingly denies the Shroudman is Jesus to buy more time[SL03], then he has the problem that the probability that the man is someone else is at least "1 in 83 million"[SH81, 128; NJ87, 141), which replicated the major features of the Shroudman's image: 1. Double body image The pig's front and back, head to head, image must have been imprinted on its linen shroud. It must not have exhibited wrap-around distortion since the Shroud image does not:

"Schwortz cautions that there seem to be discrepancies between Mattingly's image [I don't have this photo but I am taking steps to get it] and the shroud. For instance, the image of Mattingly's face is distorted by the wrap-around effect of the cloth, but the image on the shroud is not"[SL03].

2. Negative A positive photograph of the pig must have been a photographic negative, such that its negative is realistic and life-like, as the Shroud image is. 3. Three-dimensional. The negative of Mattingly's pig photograph must have appeared in three-dimensional relief on a VP-8 Image Analyzer, as it does on the Shroud. But Mattingly's theory fails by his own admission, that the three-dimensionality of his image relies on "bacteria accumulating [on] ... the ... man's body":

"If he is right, his theory could clear up some long-standing mysteries about the image: its striking three-dimensional quality, which he accounts for by varying densities of bacteria accumulating in the nooks and crannies of the dying man's body"[SL03]

I had assumed that that "dying" was an error by the journalist and should have read "dead" but in the 2004 version of this, which seems to be no longer online, it has:

"Mattingly also suspects that bacteria are responsible for the Shroud's ethereal image. His idea is that as the crucified man was dying, bacteria such as the common skin microbe Staphylococcus epidermis would have colonized and multiplied in his bloody wounds, creating a thin layer called a biofilm."

Jesus was crucified at 9am on Easter Friday and died at 3pm (Mk 15:25, 33-37) = 6 hours. Between Jesus' death at 3pm Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday at 6am is: Friday 3pm - midnight = 9 hours + Saturday = 24 hours + Sunday midnight-6am = 6 hours; a total of 39 hours. Adding 6 hours between Jesus' crucifixion and death, is a total of 45 hours that Mattingly has for his bacteria to multiply and create the Shroudman's front and back, head to head, image! He would need to show that that is feasible under Biblically realistic conditions. Mattingly's image's three-dimensionality by bacterial accumulation conflicts with the Shroud image being superficial. The Shroud image contains three-dimensional information, but it is not physically three-dimensional, so it is also extremely superficial. For

[Left enlarge[WI10, pl. 8a]: Three-dimension-ality of the Shroud image as revealed by the VP-8 Image Analyzer [SB97].]

example, the Shroud-man's image on a flat two-dimensional Enrie 1931 Shroud photo, under a VP-8 Image Analyzer, displays in three-dimensional relief:

"[John] Jackson had never heard of a VP-8 [Image Analyzer], but when he drove over to Sandia, he took photos of the Shroud with him. [Bill] Mottern ... put forward a really dumb idea. `Why,' he suggested, `don't we put the photos of the Shroud into the VP-8?' Never loath to try a new idea, Jackson agreed. All in all, it should have been a stupid waste of time, for a flat photo will, and can, give only a warped picture. They placed the Shroud photo in the VP-8 and twiddled the dials, focus, and rotation. Suddenly, both men saw, swimming up from the electronic fog of the screen, a perfect three-dimensional image of a scourged, crucified man. Impossible! Ridiculous! Outrageous! Yes. But it was there. The two scientists just stared. The positive photograph of the man in the Shroud had the appearance of a two-dimensional face. The VP-8's three-dimensional image was as stunningly different from the photograph as a statue is from a painting. The long hair, full beard and mustache, the serenity on the face of a badly battered, crucified man, came alive, giving Jackson and Mottern the eerie impression that they were gazing at an actual face of a man, not at a painting or a sculpture. Finally, Jackson took a deep breath. `Bill,' he said, `do you realize that we may be the first people in two thousand years who know exactly how Christ looked in the tomb?'"[HJ83, 39-40]

4. Non-directional. Mattingly's pig image must have appeared all at once, from no direction, as the Shroud image did. So Mattingly's bacteria/fungi image cannot have grown across the pig's body surface. Mattingly's:

"and, perhaps most damning of all for the artist hypothesis, the complete absence of brushstrokes. `Bacteria do not need a paintbrush,' he says"[SL03]

misses STURP's point: The Shroud man's image has no directionality at all! Mattingly's bacteria and fungi would need to multiply and in so doing move across his pig shroud's surface. And that movement is as directional as an artist's paintbrush! 5. Superficial. The image of Mattingly's pig must have been extremely superficial, 0.2 of a micrometre, as the Shroud image is (11Nov16). But the diameter of a Staphylococcus epidermidis bacterium is 0.5–1.5 micrometers which is already more than twice as thick as the Shroud image, and "Staphylococcus epidermidis ... forms white, raised, cohesive colonies about 1–2 mm in diameter after overnight incubation" which are at least 5 times thicker than the Shroud image! 6. Uniform colour The uniform straw yellow colour of the Shroud image is due to dehydration, oxidation and conjugation of cellulose molecules. It seems most unlikely that Mattingly's biofilm would have exactly that straw yellow colour. 7. Faint. The man on the Shroud's image is extremely faint and cannot be seen close up. This may also apply to Mattingly's biofilm. 8. No added colour (paint, etc). According to Ray Rogers, what STURP meant by this is that "nothing had been added to the cloth" including a "bioplastic polymer" (see above). 9. Blood is real and human. For the purposes of Mattingly's test of his theory with a freshly dead pig, real pig's blood would be acceptable. But in the 2004 version of this, Mattingly said that "the common skin microbe Staphylococcus epidermis would have colonized and multiplied in his bloody wounds," so presumably they would have consumed the pig's blood. 10. Blood was on the cloth before the image See "No image under blood." See previously that Mattingly's bacteria is the image and it would have consumed the blood. 11. X-rays of hands, teeth, etc. There is no way that bacteria and/or fungi could generate an x-ray image of Mattingly's pig's paw bones, teeth and skull (see "X-rays #22)." So by my count, Mattingly's pig Shroud replication experiment, had he tried it, would have scored only one out of the eleven Shroud's major features: 1. Double body image 0; 2. Negative 0; 3. Three-dimensional 0; 4. Non-directional 0; 5. Superficial 0; 6. Uniform colour 0; 7. Faint 1; 8. No added colour (paint, etc) 0; 9. Blood is real and human (pig's allowed) 0; 10. Blood was on the cloth before the image 0; and 11. X-rays of hands, teeth, etc. 0"; Total 1! I have taken this trouble to evaluate Mattingly's resplication of the Shroudman's image because in my book, "Chapter 17: How was the image formed?," I will similarly evaluate all claimed replications of the Shroud.

"Interview with Mechthild Flury-Lemberg," S4 Ep3: Shroud of Christ?, Secrets of the Dead, PBS, April 21, 2023. Mechthild Flury-Lemberg [1929- age 95!] [Right: "Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, a master textile restorer, came out of retirement for the conservation of the Shroud"] began to spin and weave wool shorn from the sheep on her family's post-World War II German farm at the tender age of 16, "for fun," she says. She never imagined that the hobby, which led to a career in textile conservation, would also eventually lead her to head the restoration of one of the most cherished and mysterious relics in Christendom

[Left (enlarge): Full-length double image of the man on the Shroud after the 2002 restoration[SU14]. "Thirty triangular patches, sewn by nuns of Chambery, France, in 1534, after a fire damaged the relic in 1532, were removed from the shroud. Also removed was the `Holland cloth' sewn on the reverse of the shroud 450 years ago to preserve it."[SU14].]

— the Shroud of Turin — or that her examination would produce new evidence that the famed linen dates to the first century A.D., to the time of Christ. (See future below<). Flury-Lemberg studied weaving at an academy in Hamburg, Germany, then earned degrees in the history of art from universities in Kiel and Munich. She then worked for three decades as head of the textile department of the Abegg Foundation in Riggisberg, Switzerland before she retired in 1994 (she came out of retirement for the restoration of the Shroud). ... Ancient textiles like the Shroud of Turin, which ... dates to the first century A.D., are quite rare and generally badly preserved. "The textiles handed down to us are normally grave garments, found in burial sites," she said. "They were wrapped about a dead body and stayed in a chemical climate which forced their oxidation. We rarely find well-preserved linen or silk fabrics." The Shroud of Turin is so remarkably preserved, she says, because "this cloth was not kept in a tomb. The crucified man was only for some hours wrapped in that linen." I hadn't heard of this evidence for the good condition of the Shroud before. ... "It is the fascination of my profession to discover hidden information by staying and `talking' with the object during conservation," she says. "The same is true for the Shroud of Turin." ... Flury-Lemberg had originally been approached back in the early 1980s to try to date the Shroud by analyzing the structure of the cloth. She refused, "because," she says, "it is impossible to get a serious result dating a textile by textile analysis alone." ... And yet, when Flury-Lemberg finally did agree to head the restoration and conservation of the linen in the summer of 2002, the Shroud had a far different story to tell her. She first noticed that the entire cloth was crafted with a weave known as a three-to-one herringbone pattern. "This kind of weave was special in antiquity because it denoted an extraordinary quality," she says. I also hadn't heard before this "extraordinary quality" claim about the Shroud's three-to-one herringbone weave pattern. (Less fine linens of the first century would have had a one-to-one herringbone pattern). That same pattern is present on a 12th century illustration that depicts Christ's funeral cloth, which, she says, is "extremely significant, because it shows that the painter was familiar with Christ's Shroud and that he recognized the indubitably exceptional nature of the weave of the cloth." By this, Flury-Lemberg meant the 1192-95 Pray Codex:

"It was good, therefore, in David Rolfe's recent Shroud documentary, to see Dr. Mechthild Flury-Lemberg pointing out in the lower of its two scenes the tiny holes faintly visible on the shroud and on the herringbone decorated lid of the box-like sepulchre, seemingly representing the Turin Shroud's still mysterious pre-1532 burn holes"[WI08].

[Left (enlarge[PCW].): "The Entombment of Christ (above) and Three Marys [sic] at the tomb (below).

"The most conspicuous and peculiar features of this composition are the large, ornate rectangles beneath the figures. ... an empty sarcophagus, but no sarcophagus was ever painted with crosses and zigzags like this. It is the zigzags that give the game away. ... they look like an attempt to imitate the herringbone weave of the Shroud. The artist has struggled to work out the design, but the stepped-pyramid pattern that fills the upper rectangle clearly evokes the visual effect of the Shroud's three-to-one twill weave ..."[DT12, 179].]

Flury-Lemberg also discovered a peculiar stitching pattern in the seam of one long side of the Shroud, where a three-inch wide strip of the same original fabric The sidestrip (see 24Aug15). was sewn onto a larger segment. The stitching pattern, which she says was the work of a professional,

[Left (enlarge): Sketch of unusual stitching found on cloth fragments at the first-century Jewish fortress of Masada[WI10, 74], which is "identical to that found on the Shroud and nowhere else" (my emphasis)[DT12, 109].]

is surprisingly similar to the hem of a cloth found in the tombs of the Jewish fortress of Masada. The Masada cloth dates to between 40 B.C. and 73 A.D. The evidence, says Flury-Lemberg, is clear: "The linen cloth of the Shroud of Turin does not display any weaving or sewing techniques which would speak against its origin as a high quality product of the textile workers of the first century." On the other hand, the Shroud does not display any weaving or sewing techniques which would speak for it as a product of the textile workers of the Middle Ages! Elsewhere, Flury-Lemberg has stated that, "the shroud is not a medieval fake":

"In my opinion, the shroud is not a medieval fake. The parallels I have found indicate that it could have existed at the same time as Jesus Christ and in what is now Israel"[FJ00].

Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]

Bibliography
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DT12. de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London.
FJ00. Follain, J., 2000, "Fresh evidence could date Turin shroud to Christ," The Sunday Times, London, 12 March..
HJ83. Heller, J.H., 1983, "Report on the Shroud of Turin," Houghton Mifflin Co: Boston MA.
LM10a. Extract from Latendresse, M., 2010, "Shroud Scope: Durante 2002 Vertical," Sindonology.org.
LM10b. Extract from Latendresse, M., 2010, "Shroud Scope: Face Only Vertical.," Sindonology.org.
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PCW. "Pray Codex," Wikipedia, 19 December 2023.
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SB00. Schwortz, B.M., 2000, "Is The Shroud of Turin a Medieval Photograph?: A Critical Examination of the Theory," Shroud.com.
SF98. "A shroud of doubt," BBC, 17 April 1998.
SL03. Spinney, L., 2003, "Shroud of germs," The Guardian, June 12.
SH81. Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1981, "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI.
SMW. "Straw man," Wikipedia, 16 January 2024.
SU14. "Image of Full 2002 Restored Shroud," High Resolution Imagery, Shroud University, 2014.
TF07. Tipler, F.J., 2007, "The Physics of Christianity," Doubleday: New York NY.
WI79. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition.
WI98. Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY.
WI08. Wilson, I., 2008, "II: Nicholas of Verdun: Scene of the Entombment, from the Verdun altar in the monastery of Klosterneuburg, near Vienna," British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, No. 67, June. .
WI10. Wilson, I., 2010, "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved," Bantam Press: London.
WJ84. Wenham, J.W., 1984, "Easter Enigma: Are the Resurrection Stories in Conflict?," Paternoster: Exeter UK, Reprinted, 1987.

Posted 4 June 2024. Updated 19 June 2024.