The Shroud of Turin

Some scholars may suggest that the Christian religion does not rest upon its relics and artefacts but on the Bible and its many witnesses, profecies, moral standing, ethical stories, validated places and individuals to bring us to live as Christians. This is true. But it is also true that the relics and artefacts can strengthen the validation of the Christian faith. The Shroud of Turin is such an artefact. It will bring You closer to Jesus Christ, his authenticity and sufferings his last night alive. Get to know more about it.

The shroud of Turin is the scientifically most investigated artefact to this day. The results keep on accumulating. 102 Academic disciplines have spent over 500 hours of scientific studies, published in peer reviewed journals their findings. It is now clear that it is NOT a medieval forgery, it was repaired in medieval times but only in the corners and outskirts of the shroud due to worn out parts from handling tare. The original shroud linen composition dates to year 5 to 60 AD wich would correspond to the murder of Jesus on top of Golgatha, Jerusalem 33 AD. It is also documented that the extensive wounds on the body of Jesus, inflicted by the brutal torture of the Roman soldiers, can be detected on the shroud itself and they agrees with the Bible's account of what kind of injuries Jesus suffered at different lokations on the body and also how and with which weapons they were manifested.

The documented history of the shroud dates back to 1354, when it began to be exhibited in the new collegiate church of Lirey, a village in north-central France. The shroud was denounced as a forgery by the bishop of Troyes, Pierre d'Arcis, in 1389. It was acquired by the House of Savoy in 1453 and later deposited in a chapel in Chambéry, where it was damaged by fire in 1532. In 1578, the Savoys moved the shroud to their new capital in Turin, where it has remained ever since. Since 1683, it has been kept in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, which was designed for that purpose by the architect Guarino Guarini and which is connected to both the royal palace and the Turin Cathedral. Ownership of the shroud passed from the House of Savoy to the Catholic Church after the death of the former king Umberto II of Italy in 1983. The shroud is a long piece of linen cloth stored in St:John the baptist Cathedral in Turin in a long stainless steel box large enough to hold the shroud of Turin as it lies flat (15 x 4 feet flat and 4-5 feet high) and it is filled with argon gas, an inert gas, to minimize oxidation and dehydration of the fabric.

The nature and history of the shroud have been the subjects of extensive and long-lasting controversies in both the scholarly literature and the popular press. In 1988, radiocarbon dating by three independent laboratories established that the shroud dates back to the Middle Ages, between 1260 and 1390. The radiocarbon dating of the shroud is accepted as valid by experts, it continues to generate significant public debate. Defenders of the authenticity of the shroud have questioned the radiocarbon results, usually on the basis that the samples tested is from the edges of the fabric and have been contaminated or taken from a repair to the original fabric in medival times approximately between the years 1260 to 1390. (The samples were taken from the repairs of corners and ends of the shroud, not the original Linen and the composition of fabric that was carbon dated was from a combination of cotton/linen intertwining wich was not present at the time of Jesus at 33AD).

The Sudarium of Oviedo

I will mention the Sudarium just briefly in this chapter since there is a special chapter about this linen fabric describing this artefact in more detail. The sudarium of Oviedo is a face linen cloth fabric that has the alleged history of being the complementary fabric to the shroud. It supposedly covered Jesus face for a short period of time between the krucifixion time, the dismantling of Jesus from the cross, the relatively short transport of the body (approx 200 - 300 feet to the tomb under Golgatha. The sudarium bares trace of Jesus blood (Bloodtype AB, wich in total (AB+(5 %), AB-(0,5 %)) amounts to ca: 5,5 % of the world population). The analysis could also determine the AB blood to be from a male wich, given an approximate 50 % reduction for male vs female AB blood, should take down the number to match just under 3 % of the world population. This blood analysis (type AB) is coherent with the samples from the shroud and additionally its stains and patterns are in exact coherence with the shroud geometrics and the biblical story of the wounds and inflictions of Jesus. It strongly points to the fact that the Sudarium covered the same face at the same time as the shroud manifest. Scientific investigations of the Sudarium has shown pollen samples from all places of its journey dating back to the time of Jesus with pollen from Jerusalem, Alexandria Egypt, Toledo and Oviedo Spain were it arrived ca: 718 Ad.

Back to the Shroud again. The Catholic Church has claimed for centuries that the shroud is a forgery, but the dismantling of this conclusion is slowly and gradually dissolving with the advent of technological development in the late 19th century and into this day. Secondo Pia's photograph of the shroud in 1898, this some 60 years after Alphonse Giroux developed the first Camera. The first photographic camera developed for commercial manufacture was a daguerreotype camera, built by Alphonse Giroux in 1839. in 1898 it involved wery large glass plates cover the shrouds size and to register the lighter. Secondos images on the glass plates showed as a positive wich unmistakenly meant that the shroud image was a negative. Many could now seriously begin to question the Catholic Church and the Vatican's absolute denial of its authenticity. The human image on the shroud can be discerned more clearly in a black-and-white photographic negative than in its natural sepia colour. It became obvious that it was not any painting since it would not produce any negative image. This was to much for the vatican who accused him of somehow faking the pictures.

In 1931, Giuseppe Enrie repeated and confirmed Secondo Pia´s photographic results. In May 1931 the Shroud's owner, King Victor Emmanuel 3rd of Savoye, agreed to have a new series of photographs made on occasion of a Shroud exposition that was held that year and the photographer that would make these photographs was a professional photographer, GIUSEPPE ENRIE.

A brief summary of the major historical Investigations.

1898, Secondo Pia´s photography of the shroud, mentioned in the text above, leaving a positive photographic remnant image on the glass deducting the shroud as an actual fotographic negative. No painting technique known to man could produce such result in medieval times much less in the time of Jesus 33 AD.
1931, Giuseppe Enrie, a professsional photographer repeated and confirmed with more sharpness and clarity Socondo Pia´s photographic results.
1938, Paul Vignon, University of Paris, observed a image on the Shroud varied inversely with the cloth-to-body distance (closer = darker); image density proportional to distance of body to cloth – could not scientifically prove yet.
1950s: Leo Vala, London professional photographer performed first 3D experiments he called front projection Transflex Process, using two positives of the 1931 Shroud photographs of the head, made by Giuseppe Enrie – projected 2 positive images on bed of clay creating a matrix for a sculpture of the face.
1973, Barbra M. Sullivan 3D qualities experiments publishing her results in the National Review in article: "Reading the Shroud of Turin: Climax Approaching" She was the first to show that the entire shroud image had 3D properties, not just the face.
1974, Paul Gastineau from France, made a negative relief mold - https://shroud.com/pdfs/ssi18part3.pdf – using his equipment, examined every single point with a concentrated light source, measurements of the quantity of light which transmitted to another part of the instrument containing a white-hot point which engraved the image into a soft material, thus visualizing this hidden information and obtaining a three dimensional face This technique consisted in having every single point on the Enrie photograph of the face examined using his own equipment and a concentrated light source; the measurements of the quantity of light which was more or less reflected was transmitted to another part of the instrument , which contained a white-hot point that at the same time engraved the image into a soft material, thus visualizing this hidden information and obtaining a three dimensional Sindonic face.
1976, two scientists, Captains John P. Jackson and Eric Jumper, a physicist, of the Air Force Academy requested Interpretation Systems Incorporated donate a then $25,000 - https://shroudnm.com/docs/SEAM-VP8-Presentation.pdf - VP8 Image Analyzer analog computer, manufactured in 1972. Delivered by Pete Schumacher, VP8 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP8_Image_Analyzer - production engineer. They used this analog computer to make a brightness map of the Shroud of Turin one line at a time, foot to head. After conducting a series of measurements of image density and comparing the cloth-to-body distance with these intensities on different locations of the Shroud image, they created a graphic record with a microdensitometer, of the relationship of the image intensity with the cloth-to-body distance and came to the conclusion that PAUL VIGNON'S observations were correct. This brightness map reveals a 3D image when processed with the VP8 – https://www.shroud.com/78strp10.htm - the brightness data encoded on the Shroud image is not a process of photography
1976, Peter Schumacher, Optical engineer contributed additional VP8 microdensimeter measures. He had developed the Interpretation System VP-8 Image Analyzer. This is an analog video processing device which processes monochromatic images (2D images) and converts the various luminance levels into a hypothetical height corresponding to those luminance levels, thus forming a vertical relief. The primary interest to Shroud of Turin research was the isometric projection display which mapped the brightness variations within the video images. The VP-8 image analysis revealed that a photograph of the Shroud image was "spatially encoded", i.e., it possessed depth information and resulted in anatomically correct 3D images of the face and the body. So now they had the scientific proof that the observations of Paul Vignon were correct. It is important to note, that they experimented with lots of photographs of faces and other images, including paintings, and that the result always was a distorted image, with flattening of the relief, including the arms within the chest and the nose pressed into the face. They also concluded that there seemingly was no forgery involved, because their 3D images showed absolutely no brush stroke marks, which an artist would have produced.
1978, Giovanni Tamburelli of Turin Italy, engineer. Did computer research in the seventies of last century and obtained remarkable 3D images of the face and the body. He also produced an artistic version of the face using special filters (recursive) that eliminated the irregularities in the face (wounds and swellings), and called it "the probable photograph of Jesus Christ" At the II International Congress held in Turin in 1978, he presented his paper entitled "New Developments in the Elaboration of the Sindonic Image", which he had prepared with the collaboration of Giovanni Garibotto. One of the illustrations accompanying this paper is on the cover of the first Spectrum (Dec. 1981); others were published in Spectrum #2, with his article, "Reading the Holy Shroud ... with the Aid of the Computer".
1978, Nello Balossino, engineer & scientist. Balossino was a key member of Tamburelli's Shroud research team and when Tamburelli died in 1990, Balossino continued with Shroud computer processing studies in Turin University's Department of Information Technology. - https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrLAkJVIWJpHwIAJvbUEYpQ;_ylu=Y29sbwNpcjIEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1769248341/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2ftheshroudofturin.blogspot.com%2f2021%2f08%2fbalossino-n-turin-shroud-encyclopedia.html/RK=2/RS=v8iJqN04LcX3T1_UzfvZFmUNZQ4 - By applying computerised filters, Tamburelli and Balossino removed the overlying marks of torture on the above three-dimensional image of the Shroudman's face and obtained an underlying three-dimensional image [Left (enlarge) of his "natural face. But they overlooked that under the Shroudman's lips are xray images of his teeth. So their obviously distorted mouth area is not what what the face of the man on the Shroud would have looked like. Tamburelli and Balossino also confirmed that Jackson and Jumper were correct in their 1976 discovery that the two "buttonlike" objects over the Shroudman's eyes, revealed by the VP8 Image Analyzer (see above), were Pontius Pilate (r. c. 26–36 AD) lepton coins [18Apr20a]; and that Fr Francis Filas (1915-85) was correct in discovering a Roman lituus, part of the "Tiberius Caesar" (r. 14–37 AD inscription of a Pontius Pilate lepton coin over the right eye [18Apr20b] Three-dimensional computer enhancement of an Enrie 1931 negative photograph of the right eye on the Shroud face and numismatist Mario Moroni's slide from his presentation to the 1991 St. Louis Shroud Symposium.
1979, Dr. Alan Whanger Dr. Whanger showcased the many remarkable large features of the Shroud's images. Whanger worked with about 30 very high-grade second generation photographs made from photographs taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931, which show remarkable details not readily seen in later photographs because of deterioration of the images and yellowing of the fabric The following was shown: A. How they can date the origin of the Shroud images to AD 30 by a Jewish lepton coin dated AD 29 imaged over the right eye, and a statue self-dated to AD 31, totally contradicting the 1988 carbon dating result of between 1290 and 1360. B. The remarkable congruencies between the bloodstains on the Shroud and those on the traditional Sudarium (face cloth) that has been in Oviedo, Spain since the 9th century. C. The work of Dr. Max Frei, a Swiss investigator who took sticky tape samples from the Shroud in 1973 and 1978 for microscopic study, especially for identification of the pollen grains. In 1988 the Whangers helped acquire Dr. Frei's entire extensive collection which is now in their custody in Durham/Raleigh. Photographs of and from this unique collection will be shown. D. The value of careful detailed examination of high-quality photographs and other materials by showing images on the Shroud of hundreds of flowers (many identified by the late Israeli Professor Avinoam Danin, world authority on the botany of the Near and Middle East) and of all of the implements and materials used in the Crucifixion, including two Crowns of Thorns. E. The combined work of several researchers, including the husband and wife Whanger, showing that the Shroud images resulted from complex vertically collimated radiation coming from both within the body and from the body surface at the moment of Resurrection.
1979-2010, Aldo Gurreschi, photographer. The studies done by ALDO GUERRESCHI and Prof. ALAN WHANGER that resulted in the development of the photo relief technique are also worth mentioning. What they did was as follows. By placing one film over and on top of another, one negative and the other positive, and then off-setting the films in relation to each other, they were able to create an effect of alternating light and shadows of the image that gave the impression of relief, in this case pseudo-relief. By offsetting the films to the right or the left or more to the top or the bottom, they created a very impressive, detailed pseudo 3D of the face and the body.
2000, Giulio Fanti (Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Padua) and Shroud scholar Emanuela Marinelli (Collegamento pro Sindone) published the result of a study based on the analysis of the three dimensionality of the body image. " A Study of the Front and the Back body enveloping based on 3D information ". Their conclusion was, that the man was not enveloped with bandages. The sheet was simply laid on the outstretched body, which was in a position equal to the one taken on after the death on the cross because of the rigor mortis, except for the arms where the rigor mortis was "broken".
2005, Dr. Petrus Soons, aware of the fact that there was hidden 3D information in the grayscale of the image of the body of Jesus, used this information, and with his team of experts he recreated the body in 3D in the computer, and this information was then used to create Holograms (3D images in LIGHT) of the Shroud including the 3D image of the face and the front and the back of the body. In 2006 these holograms were produced with the original measurements (200 x 100 cm) in the Shroud. They also produced Anaglyph 3D images and 3D Lenticulars for use in conferences and expositions. Lenticulars are basically 3D photographic images covered with a plastic sheet containing thousands of little lenses and they show the 3D remarkably well. - https://shroud3d.com/ -.
2010, Ray Downing, produced for the History Channel a documentary titled: "The Real Face of Jesus". He showed in this movie the 3D characteristics of the Shroud image and how he could reproduce an artistic version of the face of Jesus based on the 3D information in the grayscale of the image. The reactions on this documentary were very positive. The physicist John Jackson was one of the experts on 3D in this production.
The computer studies confirm the 3-dimensional origin of the Shroud image and show a lot of details that previously had not been seen in the photographs of Enrie and others. We can expect much more from these computer studies in the future with more powerful and faster computers and specially the 3D computer techniques that are evolving also at a great speed.

After this discovery, the technical development of measuring instruments and apparatus has reached more advanced heights and today we can state that enough information and knowledge about the shroud has been uncovered to assert both its authenticity and its historical fingerprint.

The Cold Laser Investigations released 2024.

Cold laser energy studies in recent years have confirmed that this detailed imaging of the shroud could only have been achieved by a huge lightning-like energy explosion under precisely set time and energy conditions. It was never a painting. The image was produced by an energy exposure equivalent of 34 trillion watts for 1 in a 40 billionths of a second. Had the energy been more or less set, or had the time been more or less set, it would have evaporated or left no image at all. To our knowledge, there were no advanced laser instruments, nuclear physicists, biologists or scientists at this point in history capable of producing this event. We cannot reproduce this event with today's technological means, only observe these conditions and settings.

Vacuum Ultraviolet Radiation research has been executed for many years by the Italian research institute ENEA (the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, a public body aimed at research, technological innovation and the provision of advanced services to enterprises, public administration and citizens in the sectors of energy, the environment and sustainable economic development) trying to replicate the shroud´s image. They blasted linen fabrics with excimer lasers and they found that a very specific short wave length ultra violet laser light could mark the linen in the exact same way as the shroud. It only marks a change in color on the very top layer of the linen fiber, just about 200 nanometers deep (200 billionths of a meter) without burning the rest. But here is the problem, to get that image on a human sized cloth you would need a burst of radiation equivalent to 34 trillion watts of vakuum uv light. To put that into perspective, that is more power than any searched light on earth and it is comparable to a nucluear event but without the heat. It is also a pulse of energy shorter than 40 billionths of a second. If the pulse was any longer the cloth would have vaporized. If the pulse was any weaker the image would never had formed. The energy and time parameters had to be exactly set for it to form the image. There are no traces of decomposition of a physical body in the shroud, instead the new energy fingerprint suggest that it dematerialized. Mass converted directly to energy.

(((To fully comply with scientific principles; experiments, phenomena and events should not only be observable and detectable, they should also be repeatable in order to be tested. But today we do not yet possess the technical development and technical equipment to be able to repeat and test what the current level of technical equipment demonstrates regarding the impact of the energy imprint in the Shroud of Turin. We cannot repeat the event today because our technical development is not sufficiently advanced. However, it is sufficiently developed to define the amount of energy and time frames to detect that such an event impact is the cause of the impact and imprint in the Shroud of Turin.)))

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