© Stephen E. Jones[1]
This is part #2 of my multi-post response to Cserhati, M. & Carter, R., 2019, "Is the Shroud of Turin authentic? Or is it a forgery?" Creation.com, 16 August. See my reply comment of 22Aug19. As previously mentioned, I will confine my response to the article's "Summary" but refer to the main article as I do. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated. The article's words are bold to distinguish them from mine.
[Previous: part #1] [Next: part #3]
Morphology: Several features of the man in the Shroud 
appear to be distorted, In the main article Cserhati & Carter (hereafter C&C) claim the major instance of "distortion" is, "... the width of the right leg is twice that of the left leg above the knee on the frontal image, but not on the dorsal image" and they answer their own objection, "however this might be due to distortion of the Shroud image based on the way it was (presumably) draped across the body"[2]. But their claim is false that, "the width of the right leg is twice that of the left leg above the knee on the frontal image." As can be seen in this full-length image, the width of the legs above the knees (marked by flagrum wounds) is about the same. C&C are
[Right (enlarge)[3]. The man's right leg is the one on the same side as the speared in the side wound (Jn 19:33-34) [opposite], which is in the man's right side[4].]
confusing a longitudinal feature of the weave which runs down the Shroud, including between the legs, with the right leg itself!
and he is unusually tall, compared to the average height of a first-century Jewish man. In their article C&C cite pro-Shroud authors Mark Antonacci that the height of the man in the Shroud is 5 ft 10 in[5] and Thomas de Wesselow that it is 6 ft[6]. Both Antonacci and de Wesselow (and therefore C&C) seem unaware that STURP's John Jackson had in the 1970s experimentally established that the height of 
[Above (enlarge)[7]: "Dr John Jackson and colleagues with a life-sized mock-up or working replica of the Shroud [left], and volunteers recruited to 'fit' the cloth ... [right] ... Jackson ... found the closest 'fit' to the Shroud to have been ... 5 ft 11 in (180 cm)"[8].]
the man on the Shroud was 5ft 11 in. (180 cm)[9]. But to C&C "this doesn't matter much" because "people were shorter in times past" (which Ian Wilson disputes, pointing out that, "human height has changed relatively little during the last several thousand years" and "one of ten adult skeletons in a Jerusalem cemetery from Jesus' time was found to have been a six-footer"[10]) "and even today the mean height of Jewish males in different parts of the world is at most 1.71 m (5 ft 7 in)"[11] (which contradicts their first point)! C&C further undermine their argument by admitting that, "it is not inconceivable that Jesus was tall for his time" but then they fallaciously claim, "the height of the man in the Shroud makes it less likely that this really was Jesus Christ"[12]. If that were so then to be consistent C&C would have to say that it was "less likely" the Bible was correct when it states that Israel's first king Saul was, "From his shoulders upward ... taller than any of the people" (1Sam 9:2)! Jesus may well have been, like Saul, of above average height. In Jn 7:37, "Jesus," in the midst of a great crowd celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, "stood and cried out, `If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.'" The Greek histēmi translated "stood" means "was standing" not "rose to His feet"[13]. This implies (if not requires) that Jesus was indeed taller than average, otherwise most of the crowd could not have seen who the "me" was that they should come to!
Also, he was clearly not wrapped in the cloth, as the image does not show the sides of the head or body. C&C don't even mention this in their main article! C&C confuse two separate things: 1) the wrapping of the man's body in a burial shroud; and 2) the imprinting of an image of his body on that shroud. It does not follow that because only images of the front and back of the man's body was imprinted on the Shroud, not of his sides, crown of his head or soles of his feet, that he was not completely enveloped in the Shroud. STURP also showed experimentally in the 1970s that image density points on the Shroud relating to cloth-body distance conform to a single global mathematical mapping function[14] (below), proving that the Shroud 
[Above enlarge: "Correlation of image intensity on the Turin Shroud with the 3-D structure of a human body shape"[15]. That is, "the Shroud image is consistent with the drape that would be expected from a cloth covering a human body ... `the frontal image on the Shroud of Turin is shown to be consistent with a naturally draping cloth in the sense that image shading can be derived from a single global mapping function of distance between these two surfaces'"[16]]
did indeed fully wrap a real human body. C&C don't ask themselves why would a forger (or a Maillard Reaction - their preferred explanation - see future part #3) "not show the sides of the head or body"?
The only explanation which fits the facts is that the Shroudman's image was imprinted on the Shroud cloth by a burst of vertically collimated (straight up and down[17]) radiant energy. To conclude this part #2 I will confine myself to quotes from Antonacci's 2000 book, Resurrection of the Shroud, because C&C refer to him (albeit not to that book - see part #1 on C&C's inadequate references list):
"It is extremely difficult to imagine how the subtle shades of light and dark on the Shroud's body images could possibly have been obtained without using light or radiation. These body images are not saturated or diffused. The edges of the man's body at the sides, top, and bottom break off sharply. Furthermore, the agent, acting at a distance, barely penetrated the cloth. As one noted scientist who has studied the Shroud for more than two decades observed, `An agent acting at a distance with decreasing intensity is, almost by definition, radiation. The limitation of the cloth darkening to the outermost surface pointed to a non-penetrating, non-diffusing agent, like radiant energy ...'[18] ... A vertical beam or beams of light or radiation also best explains how the Shroud's body image was encoded through space in a straight line from the body to the cloth. STURP scientist John Heller [1921-1995] stated, `It is as if every pore and every hair of the body contained a microminiature laser'[19]. This vertical directionality of the Shroud body image has only been accounted for by methods involving radiation. As scientist Luigi Gonella [1930-2007] explained, `Whatever the mechanism might be, it must be such to yield effects as if it were a burst of collimated radiant energy'[20]"[21].
And the explanation that fits the facts of vertically collimated radiant energy imprinting the front and back image image of the man on the Shroud, but not his sides, the top of his head or soles of his feet, is
John Jackson's "Cloth Collapse" theory (see
18Jan12), as summarised by Antonacci:
"Jackson's [cloth collapse] theory predicts that the Shroud's images would be encoded if the body became insubstantial and emitted ultraviolet light. As the cloth fell through the body region, each point on the cloth would receive a radiation dose in proportion to the time it was within the region. The parts of the cloth that were over the highest points of the supine body (for example, the tip of the nose) would receive the longest dose of radiation, while the parts of the cloth over the lowest points of the body would receive the least. Thus, the intensity of all points on the resultant body image on the two-dimensional cloth would be directly correlated to the distance that they originally were from the surface of the three-dimensional body. Furthermore, since the draped cloth fell by gravity, all points of the resultant body image would have aligned vertically with the corresponding body point below it. Even those parts of the body that were not initially touching the cloth, such as the sides of the nose, would be encoded in a three-dimensional and vertical direction onto the cloth"[22].
Which is compatible (to put it mildly!) with the
resurrection of Jesus, as described by
Ian Wilson:
"Even from the limited available information, a hypothetical glimpse of the power operating at the moment of creation of the Shroud's image may be ventured. In the darkness of the Jerusalem tomb the dead body of Jesus lay, unwashed, covered in blood, on a stone slab. Suddenly, there is a burst of mysterious power from it. In that instant ... its image ... becomes indelibly fused onto the cloth, preserving for posterity a literal `snapshot' of the Resurrection"[23]!
To be continued in part #3 of this series.
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]
2. Cserhati, M. & Carter, R., 2019, "Is the Shroud of Turin authentic? Or is it a forgery?" Creation.com, 16 August. [return]
3. Latendresse, M., 2010, "Shroud Scope: Durante 2002: Horizontal," (rotated left 90°), Sindonology.org. [return]
4. Barbet, P., 1953, "A Doctor at Calvary," Image Books: Garden City NY, Reprinted, 1963, p.129; Borkan, M., 1995, "Ecce Homo?: Science and the Authenticity of the Turin Shroud," Vertices, Duke University, Vol. X, No. 2, Winter, pp.18-51, 26; Iannone, J.C., 1998, "The Mystery of the Shroud of Turin: New Scientific Evidence," St Pauls: Staten Island NY, pp.62-63; Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, p.42; de Wesselow, T., 2012, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," Viking: London, p.12. [return]
5. Antonacci, M., 2000, "Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY, p.116 [return]
6. de Wesselow, 2012, p.146 [return]
7. Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, pp.46-47 [return]
8. Wilson. & Schwortz, 2000, p.47 [return]
9. Ibid [return]
10. Wilson. & Schwortz, 2000, p.143 [return]
11. Cserhati & Carter, 2019. [return]
12. Ibid. [return]
13. Morris, L.L., 1971, "The Gospel According to John," The New International Commentary on the New Testament," Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, Reprinted, 1984, p.422. [return]
14. Heller, J.H. & Adler, A.D., 1981, "A Chemical Investigation of the Shroud of Turin," in Adler, A.D. & Crispino, D., ed., 2002, "The Orphaned Manuscript: A Gathering of Publications on the Shroud of Turin," Effatà Editrice: Cantalupa, Italy, pp.34-57, 35; Schwalbe, L.A. & Rogers, R.N., 1982, "Physics and Chemistry of the Shroud of Turin: Summary of the 1978 Investigation," Reprinted from Analytica Chimica Acta, Vol. 135, No. 1, pp.3-49, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co: Amsterdam, 1982, pp.7-8; Heller, J.H., 1983, "Report on the Shroud of Turin," Houghton Mifflin Co: Boston MA, p.138; Jumper, E.J., Adler, A.D., Jackson, J.P., Pellicori, S.F., Heller, J.H., Druzik, J.R., in Lambert, J.B., ed., 1984, "A Comprehensive Examination of the Various Stains and Images on the Shroud of Turin,"Archaeological Chemistry III: ACS Advances in Chemistry, No. 205," American Chemical Society, Washington D.C, pp.447-476, 451, 471; Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1990, "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson: Nashville TN, pp.32, 205. [return]
15. Jackson, et. al, 1984, "Correlation of image intensity on the Turin Shroud with the 3-D structure of a human body shape," Applied Optics, Vol. 23, No. 14, pp. 2244-2270. [return]
16. Wilson, I., 1985, "Some Recent Publications," BSTS Newsletter, No. 9, January. [return]
17. Whanger, M. & Whanger, A.D., 1998, "The Shroud of Turin: An Adventure of Discovery," Providence House Publishers: Franklin TN, p.118; Wilson. & Schwortz, 2000, p.35. [return]
18. Gonella, L., 1987, "Scientific Investigation of the Shroud of Turin: Problems, Results and Methodological Lessons," in "Turin Shroud-Image of Christ?," Cosmos: Hong Kong, pp. 29-40, 31. [return]
19. Heller, J., in McDonald, W., 1986, "Science and the Shroud," The World and I, October, pp.420-428, 426.[return]
20. Gonella, 1987, p.31. [return]
21. Antonacci, 2000, pp.212-213. [return]
22. Antonacci, 2000, p.220. [return]
23. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, p.251; Wilson, 1998, p.234. [return]
Posted 6 December 2019. Updated 16 August 2025.
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