In this episode of From the Void, we delve into the enigmatic Shroud of Turin, a relic that intertwines faith and science in a profound mystery. Join us as we explore whether the Shroud is truly the burial cloth of Jesus or an elaborate hoax. Our guest, Nora Creech, a member of Athonia, shares her expertise on the shroud's history, the scientific studies it has undergone, and its significance in Christianity.
We trace the shroud's murky history from its first appearance in France in the 1350s to its current home in Turin, Italy. Nora discusses the peculiarities of the shroud's fabric and the mysterious image of a man imprinted on it—a figure that challenges the boundaries of what we know about ancient artifacts.
Discover the advances in technology, from early photography to modern scientific analyses, that have attempted to unlock the secrets of this ancient cloth. Will science finally uncover the truth behind the Shroud of Turin, or does the answer remain in the realm of faith? Tune in to find out.
Guest Links:
00:00:01 --> 00:00:07 From the darkest reaches of space, to the deepest corners of your mind,
00:00:08 --> 00:00:11 welcome to From the Void.
00:00:15 --> 00:00:19 According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word faith can mean allegiance
00:00:19 --> 00:00:23 to duty or a person, belief and trust in and loyalty to God,
00:00:24 --> 00:00:28 firm belief in something for which there is no proof, something that is believed
00:00:28 --> 00:00:30 especially with strong conviction.
00:00:30 --> 00:00:34 When we talk about faith specifically as it pertains to Christianity.
00:00:35 --> 00:00:36 Certain things immediately come to mind.
00:00:37 --> 00:00:40 One of the biggest ones would be the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
00:00:41 --> 00:00:44 The very idea that this man who lived thousands of years ago,
00:00:44 --> 00:00:48 who preached and traveled with a group of followers, was brutally killed by
00:00:48 --> 00:00:54 crucifixion, was buried, and then rose from the dead sounds like something out of a fantasy movie.
00:00:55 --> 00:00:59 And yet, it's a central tenet of Christianity. But to really believe in the
00:00:59 --> 00:01:02 unbelievable, it again comes back to that word, faith.
00:01:02 --> 00:01:05 The belief and trust in something for which there is no proof.
00:01:05 --> 00:01:08 Or at least very little proof in the traditional sense.
00:01:08 --> 00:01:13 In Christianity, you have the Bible, an ancient collection of holy writings from which to refer.
00:01:13 --> 00:01:16 But beyond that, there isn't a ton of additional evidence.
00:01:17 --> 00:01:20 There are a few ancient historians who recorded a few things here and there,
00:01:20 --> 00:01:26 but this is an age long before cameras were invented or 24-7 news channels or social media.
00:01:26 --> 00:01:30 So when potential physical evidence is uncovered, it's a huge deal,
00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 and also very heavily scrutinized.
00:01:33 --> 00:01:38 And that's what we're here to talk about today, the discovery of the Shroud of Turin.
00:01:38 --> 00:01:43 Is the Shroud of Turin the actual burial shroud that Jesus was wrapped in after
00:01:43 --> 00:01:48 they took him down off of the cross, or is it an elaborate hoax?
00:01:49 --> 00:01:52 Both believers and skeptics have their arguments, but can science ultimately
00:01:52 --> 00:01:56 settle the debate? This week I welcome my guest, Nora Creech.
00:01:56 --> 00:02:01 Nora is part of Athonia, the international organization responsible for educating
00:02:01 --> 00:02:05 people about the Shroud through exhibits, educational initiatives,
00:02:05 --> 00:02:06 conferences, and lectures.
00:02:07 --> 00:02:10 She's an experienced lecturer on the history, science, and pastoral implications
00:02:10 --> 00:02:14 of the Shroud and was kind enough to give us a little of her time.
00:02:14 --> 00:02:20 Welcome to this week's mystery, the mystery of the Shroud of Turin on From the Void.
00:02:21 --> 00:02:30 Music.
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 Okay, welcome to the podcast. Very excited to have my guest on this week,
00:02:34 --> 00:02:37 Nora Creech. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today.
00:02:37 --> 00:02:41 Thank you, John. I'm excited to be here. Well, before we kick it off,
00:02:41 --> 00:02:45 because I think this is a really fascinating topic as we kind of discussed before
00:02:45 --> 00:02:48 we started recording, tell folks a little bit about your background and how
00:02:48 --> 00:02:50 you came to be connected with the Shroud of Turin.
00:02:51 --> 00:02:57 So I became interested in the Shroud back in 1978. And that is a very important
00:02:57 --> 00:03:01 year in terms of the Shroud because it was the first and only time that there
00:03:01 --> 00:03:04 was a multidisciplinary study of the Shroud.
00:03:04 --> 00:03:09 And as it turns out, a member of my church community was one of the scientists
00:03:09 --> 00:03:12 who was a part of that scientific study.
00:03:13 --> 00:03:18 And so when he came back from his time in Turin, he started giving talks in
00:03:18 --> 00:03:19 our community in Colorado.
00:03:19 --> 00:03:24 And my father was very interested in the Shroud. And so my dad and I would go together.
00:03:24 --> 00:03:29 We'd go listen to Rudolf Dichtel give his talks.
00:03:29 --> 00:03:33 And so it's been a lifelong interest of mine, really, starting when I was a
00:03:33 --> 00:03:34 teenager in high school.
00:03:34 --> 00:03:39 Oh, that's a really cool connection. So tell people, because this goes back
00:03:39 --> 00:03:42 well before, obviously, the 70s.
00:03:42 --> 00:03:46 We've had possession of this shroud for a very long time.
00:03:46 --> 00:03:51 So tell people, kind of give them the background on when was this artifact first
00:03:51 --> 00:03:54 discovered, where, and that sort of thing.
00:03:55 --> 00:03:59 So the history of the Shroud before the 1350s is murky.
00:03:59 --> 00:04:03 So there are a lot of people who are actively working on this,
00:04:03 --> 00:04:07 historians who are actively researching where the Shroud was,
00:04:07 --> 00:04:11 how it ended up in various places in its history before the 1350s.
00:04:12 --> 00:04:17 Starting in about the middle of the 1350s, the history of the Shroud is very, very well documented.
00:04:18 --> 00:04:22 It showed up in a little village in Lirey, France for the first time,
00:04:22 --> 00:04:26 and it was being put on public exposition during that time.
00:04:27 --> 00:04:31 And the family that owned it would never say how they came to own it.
00:04:31 --> 00:04:34 So that's why there's this kind of murkiness in its past.
00:04:35 --> 00:04:38 But since 1350, its history is well known.
00:04:38 --> 00:04:43 The family that owned it, it passed down in their family line for a few generations.
00:04:43 --> 00:04:48 And then it was procured by the Savoy family.
00:04:48 --> 00:04:54 And the Savoy were the ruling family of the northern part of Italy and the southern part of France.
00:04:54 --> 00:05:00 They were a very powerful, wealthy, influential family. And they owned the Shroud for centuries.
00:05:01 --> 00:05:08 And in 1578, they moved the Shroud to their kind of government headquarters,
00:05:08 --> 00:05:09 which was in Turin, Italy.
00:05:10 --> 00:05:14 And it's an interesting thing. They built their palace, and then they built
00:05:14 --> 00:05:18 the cathedral, and in the middle they built a chapel to house the shroud.
00:05:18 --> 00:05:24 And so the shroud was moved there in 1578, and it has been in Turin,
00:05:24 --> 00:05:29 Italy, all of that time, except for it did leave during World War II for safekeeping.
00:05:29 --> 00:05:34 So the Savoy family owned the shroud all the way up until 1983,
00:05:34 --> 00:05:39 and that is the time when the deposed king, King Umberto II,
00:05:39 --> 00:05:43 He was the last king of Italy. He was deposed during World War II.
00:05:44 --> 00:05:48 And upon his death, he gifted the Shroud to the person of the Pope.
00:05:49 --> 00:05:52 And so the Pope at that time was Pope John Paul II.
00:05:52 --> 00:06:00 And so then now it's passed down. So technically, the owner of the Shroud today is Pope Francis.
00:06:01 --> 00:06:07 And it's housed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy to this day.
00:06:08 --> 00:06:13 Interesting. So talk a little bit about, so obviously this initial family comes into possession of it.
00:06:14 --> 00:06:18 You know, again, as you said, kind of murky details in terms of how and where they located it.
00:06:18 --> 00:06:23 But what do we know for a fact as of that kind of starting point?
00:06:24 --> 00:06:25 Before the 1350s?
00:06:27 --> 00:06:32 Or just like whatever the earliest date is, like, what do we know for certain about the artifact?
00:06:32 --> 00:06:37 Well, the burial cloth of Jesus is mentioned in all four Gospels.
00:06:37 --> 00:06:43 And so there is a burial cloth that is brought to the cross by Joseph of Arimathea.
00:06:44 --> 00:06:51 He's noted as a rich man, and it's noted as a fine piece of cloth that is what
00:06:51 --> 00:06:53 is used to wrap the body of Jesus.
00:06:53 --> 00:07:00 Then we see again in the Gospel of John in chapter 20, after the resurrection,
00:07:00 --> 00:07:05 that John and Peter go into the tomb, and we often call it the empty tomb,
00:07:05 --> 00:07:08 but it really wasn't empty because the burial cloth was there.
00:07:09 --> 00:07:14 And John describes seeing the burial cloth and then also the face cloth that
00:07:14 --> 00:07:16 was folded up in a separate place by itself.
00:07:16 --> 00:07:21 And he's very clear. He says, he saw and believed.
00:07:21 --> 00:07:26 So John is talking about himself in this understanding that came to him at this
00:07:26 --> 00:07:30 moment in the tomb that he finally understood what Jesus was saying,
00:07:30 --> 00:07:32 that he had to rise from the dead.
00:07:32 --> 00:07:38 So those are really the earliest mentions of what today we call the Shroud of
00:07:38 --> 00:07:40 Turin. We could call it the burial cloth of Jesus.
00:07:41 --> 00:07:45 And from there, there's theories about where the cloth was.
00:07:45 --> 00:07:52 There's a strong theory that it went to Antioch with some of the disciples when
00:07:52 --> 00:07:55 they fled Jerusalem because Antioch was a safe place for Christians.
00:07:55 --> 00:07:58 It was sort of the birthplace of Christianity.
00:07:58 --> 00:08:03 There was a big Christian community there. So there's some theories that it was there.
00:08:03 --> 00:08:10 There's also a legend that goes back to the king of Edessa, which is in modern-day Turkey.
00:08:10 --> 00:08:15 And that was another place where Christianity became very strong.
00:08:15 --> 00:08:21 And there's a legend that a cloth bearing the face of Jesus was brought to the
00:08:21 --> 00:08:26 king of Edessa and that it was safeguarded there for many centuries.
00:08:26 --> 00:08:30 There's also very strong evidence that the Shroud was in Constantinople,
00:08:31 --> 00:08:35 that it was taken from Edessa to Constantinople at some time in its history.
00:08:36 --> 00:08:39 And, of course, at that time, Constantinople was the center of the Christian
00:08:39 --> 00:08:46 world, and it was filled with wonderful, great, beautiful, valuable things.
00:08:46 --> 00:08:50 And then, of course, there was the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople
00:08:50 --> 00:08:55 and this terrible tragedy in the family of Christendom.
00:08:56 --> 00:09:01 And after that time, there's what is called the missing year.
00:09:01 --> 00:09:08 So if the cloth that we think today is the burial cloth of Jesus was in Constantinople,
00:09:08 --> 00:09:14 it disappeared in 1204 after the sack of Constantinople.
00:09:14 --> 00:09:20 And then this cloth later appears in this small village in Lire, France.
00:09:21 --> 00:09:26 So, as I said, it's very murky, and there are a lot of people piecing it together,
00:09:26 --> 00:09:31 but it's still at the point of a lot of disagreement among scholars about what
00:09:31 --> 00:09:36 path it took, who owned it, how it came to be in different places at different times.
00:09:36 --> 00:09:42 Yeah, and that's interesting that there are, we can point back to earlier references to such a cloth.
00:09:42 --> 00:09:47 And so it tends to lend a little credibility to the fact that,
00:09:47 --> 00:09:51 well, people did believe that this existed somewhere. And so now that we have
00:09:51 --> 00:09:54 this cloth, it seems to match some of the descriptions out there.
00:09:54 --> 00:09:58 Talk a little bit about the physical makeup, because a big piece of it is,
00:09:58 --> 00:10:01 hey, this is a cloth from thousands of years ago.
00:10:02 --> 00:10:07 And how did it survive all of those years? Because a lot of those materials
00:10:07 --> 00:10:09 would have deteriorated in a lot of cases.
00:10:09 --> 00:10:15 So it's made of linen, and linen is an organic material. It comes from the flax plant.
00:10:16 --> 00:10:21 So linen has been discovered in a lot of the Egyptian tombs.
00:10:21 --> 00:10:26 And so there's linen that's even well older than the 2 years of the shroud.
00:10:26 --> 00:10:30 However, the thing that makes the shroud really unique is that it's in this
00:10:30 --> 00:10:35 herringbone twill, which is a three-over-one pattern.
00:10:35 --> 00:10:38 And the thing that's most similar to that today would be your Levi's jeans.
00:10:38 --> 00:10:42 They're a herringbone twill. and so
00:10:42 --> 00:10:45 in in the first century that would have
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 been extremely valuable to produce
00:10:48 --> 00:10:52 because it was much more sophisticated than a one-to-one one-over-one
00:10:52 --> 00:10:58 weave and there have been other linen cloths discovered that are the age of
00:10:58 --> 00:11:03 the shroud and there have been other herringbone weave cloths found but there
00:11:03 --> 00:11:09 has not been another single cloth that is both linen and a herringbone weave from that time period.
00:11:09 --> 00:11:12 So it's a very unique artifact.
00:11:12 --> 00:11:16 It's also very enormous. People are always really surprised by how big it is.
00:11:16 --> 00:11:19 It's over 14 feet long and three and a half feet wide.
00:11:20 --> 00:11:26 And so in terms of its physical structure, for someone to own a piece of fabric
00:11:26 --> 00:11:30 like that during the time of Christ, it would have taken a very wealthy person,
00:11:31 --> 00:11:34 as Joseph of Arimathea is described as being.
00:11:34 --> 00:11:39 Yeah, that's really interesting. And of course, I think the piece that we haven't
00:11:39 --> 00:11:43 talked about yet that's the most interesting about this cloth is that it has
00:11:43 --> 00:11:46 this very unique image sort of burned into it.
00:11:46 --> 00:11:49 So talk about that, because obviously that is the big
00:11:49 --> 00:11:56 piece of this mystery here. Yes. So the Shroud of Jesus, or the Shroud of Turin.
00:11:56 --> 00:11:58 Again, it's this enormous piece of cloth.
00:11:58 --> 00:12:03 And when you look at it, the things that will catch your eye are there are burn
00:12:03 --> 00:12:07 marks on it, because throughout its history, it's endured some fires.
00:12:07 --> 00:12:12 It's also endured some water that perhaps was used to put out the fire,
00:12:13 --> 00:12:15 or maybe just was a part of the environment it was in.
00:12:15 --> 00:12:18 So there's burn marks, there's water stains.
00:12:18 --> 00:12:21 And then And there's a lot of blood on the shroud.
00:12:21 --> 00:12:26 And so we can talk more about the blood, but that will also catch your eye.
00:12:26 --> 00:12:28 It still has retained its bright red color.
00:12:29 --> 00:12:33 And then if you look closely, you will see that there is a very faint image
00:12:33 --> 00:12:39 of a man. And the thing that is so fascinating is it's the head-to-head image.
00:12:39 --> 00:12:44 So going to one side is the frontal image of the man, and then going to the
00:12:44 --> 00:12:47 opposite side is the back image of the man.
00:12:47 --> 00:12:50 So you have to picture that the cloth was laid out flat.
00:12:50 --> 00:12:55 The man in death was put at one end of the cloth, and then it was wrapped over
00:12:55 --> 00:13:01 his head so that the image is a head-to-head image on the inside of the cloth.
00:13:02 --> 00:13:07 And the particulars of the man are what is so interesting and fascinating because
00:13:07 --> 00:13:11 he was capped with thorns, he was scourged,
00:13:11 --> 00:13:16 tortured with the Roman flagrum, he was nailed through his wrists and through
00:13:16 --> 00:13:20 his feet, and he also has a spear wound to his side.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:25 And the size and shape of that wound exactly matches the Roman lancia,
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 which was used by the Roman soldiers during the first century.
00:13:28 --> 00:13:31 So there there's this very very
00:13:31 --> 00:13:38 faint image it's only about 15 darker than the background of the linen so it's
00:13:38 --> 00:13:43 it's difficult to see it's kind of it's been described as a watery image but
00:13:43 --> 00:13:49 it's a light sepia color and very indistinct when you view it with the naked eye.
00:13:50 --> 00:13:54 Yeah, it's interesting because obviously someone noticed it enough to the point
00:13:54 --> 00:13:57 where they've clearly been able to enhance it with photography.
00:13:57 --> 00:14:01 So you can see it a little more, a little additional contrast there.
00:14:02 --> 00:14:06 Well, let me explain that because it's actually not enhanced with photography.
00:14:07 --> 00:14:12 What happened was, I told you the Savoy family owned the Shroud.
00:14:12 --> 00:14:18 And in 1898, the city of Turin was participating in a big arts event across all of Italy.
00:14:18 --> 00:14:21 And so they wanted to have the the
00:14:21 --> 00:14:24 shroud be put on display as a part of this arts event and
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 so they had an amateur photographer come
00:14:27 --> 00:14:31 and photograph the shroud it had never been photographed before photography
00:14:31 --> 00:14:38 was brand new thing and so they hired this man named secunda pia and he came
00:14:38 --> 00:14:42 and set up his photography equipment and of course back then it was a huge box
00:14:42 --> 00:14:49 with a small aperture and so he made his exposure onto his glass plate,
00:14:49 --> 00:14:54 which was treated with a material to make it receptive to the image.
00:14:54 --> 00:14:58 But then he had to take this glass plate, take it home, and put it into his
00:14:58 --> 00:15:00 developing solution in his darkroom.
00:15:00 --> 00:15:06 And so when he did that, he, and the idea is this developing solution creates
00:15:06 --> 00:15:07 a photographic negative.
00:15:07 --> 00:15:11 And then from the negative, you put the photo paper on it and you get your positive image.
00:15:12 --> 00:15:17 So Secundepia put his photographic plate into this developing solution.
00:15:18 --> 00:15:25 And as he lifted the plate out, he saw the face on the shroud in amazing clarity.
00:15:26 --> 00:15:32 And he said in his notes, in his diary, that he nearly dropped the glass plate
00:15:32 --> 00:15:34 because it was so shocking to him what he saw.
00:15:35 --> 00:15:40 Because a normal photographic negative, the lights and the darks are reversed.
00:15:40 --> 00:15:44 And so it's very difficult to see. But in the case of the shroud,
00:15:44 --> 00:15:51 it appeared that what you see with the naked eye is acting like a photographic negative.
00:15:51 --> 00:15:57 So when he produced a photographic negative, a negative plus a negative equaled a positive image.
00:15:57 --> 00:16:00 So it wasn't an enhancement it was
00:16:00 --> 00:16:04 just a natural part of the photography process that
00:16:04 --> 00:16:06 when he viewed that photographic negative for the
00:16:06 --> 00:16:10 first time he saw with amazing clarity the image
00:16:10 --> 00:16:17 of the face of the man on the shroud and so that was in 1898 and and as you
00:16:17 --> 00:16:22 said this is the great mystery so first of all how did this very murky image
00:16:22 --> 00:16:27 get on this organic piece of linen cloth from 2 years ago?
00:16:28 --> 00:16:31 And then how does it act like a photographic negative?
00:16:31 --> 00:16:38 And so this was in 1898, and it began the modern era of scientific study on the shroud.
00:16:38 --> 00:16:44 And from there, many more mysteries about the shroud were discovered, which we can discuss.
00:16:45 --> 00:16:50 Yeah. And there's been some things in the news, even as recent as I think within the last year.
00:16:50 --> 00:16:54 So yeah, talk about that a little bit, So because before we get into the modern era,
00:16:55 --> 00:17:00 there was even some disagreement in terms of the authenticity of it going back
00:17:00 --> 00:17:02 to, and this is one of my favorite parts of Catholic history,
00:17:02 --> 00:17:06 by the way, like the division in the two popes era.
00:17:07 --> 00:17:12 So you've got the 1300s, 1389, the Bishop of Troyes, in a message to anti-Pope
00:17:12 --> 00:17:17 Clement VII, I believe it was, is arguing that it's an artistic rendering.
00:17:17 --> 00:17:23 But then you've got Pope Julius II, who reverses that position in the 1500s.
00:17:23 --> 00:17:27 So even within the Catholic Church, there's been some debate over the authenticity.
00:17:27 --> 00:17:31 But again, this kind of leads into what we're getting to, the modern times.
00:17:31 --> 00:17:37 Like they didn't really have the technology to perform any kind of real tests either way.
00:17:37 --> 00:17:41 So it's kind of like you just kind of rolled with one opinion or the other,
00:17:41 --> 00:17:46 you know, and then just kind of went based off of whatever historical evidence you could point to.
00:17:46 --> 00:17:50 And so talk about, I believe it is, and obviously you can correct me on this, but.
00:17:51 --> 00:17:56 The 1970s, I think, if I remember correctly, sort of was the first time where
00:17:56 --> 00:17:59 they really started to put it to the test.
00:17:59 --> 00:18:04 Yeah, so that's exactly right. So there were some, they were in the Air Force,
00:18:04 --> 00:18:11 and they were a group of friends who worked together, and they were very interested in the Shroud.
00:18:11 --> 00:18:17 And they wanted to investigate its physical and chemical properties from a scientific
00:18:17 --> 00:18:20 perspective. And this was in, I believe, 1976.
00:18:20 --> 00:18:26 And they had access to a machine that was called a VP8 image analyzer.
00:18:27 --> 00:18:30 And at the time, that was the ultimate in technology.
00:18:30 --> 00:18:34 Today, it looks like your grandpa's old stereo equipment. but
00:18:34 --> 00:18:37 it was an analog device and it could
00:18:37 --> 00:18:40 take lights and darks and then create like
00:18:40 --> 00:18:44 almost like a terrain map or a three-dimensional graph of
00:18:44 --> 00:18:50 the image based on the lights and darks in the image so they took the photograph
00:18:50 --> 00:18:56 of the shroud and put it into this vp8 image analyzer and a typical photograph
00:18:56 --> 00:19:03 would leave a very very distorted image on the from the vp8 but in the case of the shroud,
00:19:03 --> 00:19:07 it created almost like a three-dimensional image of the man of the shroud.
00:19:08 --> 00:19:15 So they were able to see that the image on the shroud actually wrapped the face of a real human being.
00:19:15 --> 00:19:20 The cloth draped around the shoulders and the knees and the feet of an actual
00:19:20 --> 00:19:25 three-dimensional figure to create the image. It wasn't just, it's not flat.
00:19:26 --> 00:19:32 Sometimes if you've ever seen like those death masks that they are very distorted
00:19:32 --> 00:19:36 because they're wrapped around the face, and then when they flatten them out, they're distorted.
00:19:37 --> 00:19:40 But in the case of the shroud, the image created is.
00:19:41 --> 00:19:48 Very lifelike because the way the image was created came directly from inside
00:19:48 --> 00:19:51 the body itself and wasn't applied on the outside.
00:19:52 --> 00:19:56 And I'll send you some pictures to try to illustrate what I'm talking about.
00:19:56 --> 00:20:04 So this group of scientists, they were so intrigued by this discovery that the
00:20:04 --> 00:20:09 shroud contained what appeared to be three-dimensional information actually
00:20:09 --> 00:20:11 encoded in it And remember,
00:20:11 --> 00:20:20 it's just so remarkable that this is on a piece of fabric, and the image itself is so superficial.
00:20:20 --> 00:20:23 It doesn't penetrate into the fabric of the shroud.
00:20:23 --> 00:20:31 So all of this three-dimensional type of information was available on this piece of fabric.
00:20:31 --> 00:20:35 And so they were so fascinated by this that they formed the Shroud of Turin
00:20:35 --> 00:20:39 Research Project team. And it was a group of scientists.
00:20:39 --> 00:20:42 They were mostly Americans, but it was an international group.
00:20:43 --> 00:20:48 And I believe there were about 24 or 25 of them who actually traveled to Turin.
00:20:48 --> 00:20:52 And it was after an exposition of the Shroud in 1978.
00:20:53 --> 00:20:57 And following the exposition, the Shroud was brought directly to this team.
00:20:57 --> 00:21:00 And they had set up their own laboratory to
00:21:00 --> 00:21:04 examine the shroud and they were given five days five
00:21:04 --> 00:21:09 days and nights 120 hours and they could perform any test on the shroud as long
00:21:09 --> 00:21:14 as it didn't hurt the shroud in any way it could not be destructive and so what
00:21:14 --> 00:21:20 they ended up doing was a lot of photography a lot of x-ray photography micro
00:21:20 --> 00:21:23 photography photography under different kinds of lighting.
00:21:23 --> 00:21:27 And then they also took some, we call it sticky tape samples.
00:21:27 --> 00:21:32 So they just literally put tape onto the surface of the fabric and lifted it
00:21:32 --> 00:21:35 off to see what they could see under the microscope.
00:21:35 --> 00:21:43 So that was in 1978. And that really, as I said earlier, that was the only multidisciplinary
00:21:43 --> 00:21:47 study, in-depth scientific study of the shroud that has ever occurred.
00:21:47 --> 00:21:51 Wow, that's really interesting that I'm almost sort of surprised by that.
00:21:51 --> 00:21:53 Considering the intrigue of it.
00:21:54 --> 00:21:58 But so talk about what were their initial findings as of the 70s?
00:21:58 --> 00:22:01 And we can kind of talk, you know, as we get further into history here.
00:22:01 --> 00:22:04 But what did they initially find? What were some of it? Because obviously,
00:22:04 --> 00:22:07 as you mentioned, there's a lot of different unique qualities to this.
00:22:07 --> 00:22:08 There's sort of that photographic imagery.
00:22:09 --> 00:22:13 And then there's also the purported bloodstains in the areas where,
00:22:13 --> 00:22:18 you know, we see within the text of scripture that it sort of matches the accounts,
00:22:18 --> 00:22:20 you know, portrayed in the Bible.
00:22:20 --> 00:22:24 So talk about some of what are the things that they noticed, you.
00:22:25 --> 00:22:29 So this was a scientific quest, and they had two goals.
00:22:29 --> 00:22:33 One is they wanted to understand what we call the bloodstains.
00:22:33 --> 00:22:35 They wanted to understand, was that blood?
00:22:35 --> 00:22:40 What are the components of those stains? And then the second thing was they
00:22:40 --> 00:22:43 wanted to understand the image. What made the image?
00:22:44 --> 00:22:49 What is the image formed out of? Just understand the properties of the image.
00:22:49 --> 00:22:53 And one of the more famous members of that team was a man named Barry Schwartz,
00:22:53 --> 00:23:00 And he was the documenting photographer for the STIRP team, and also a man from the Jewish faith.
00:23:01 --> 00:23:06 And he had so many great stories about his time with STIRP.
00:23:06 --> 00:23:10 But he said he thought, hey, this sounds like a free trip to Italy,
00:23:10 --> 00:23:13 because he figured they would go in, they would look at the shroud,
00:23:13 --> 00:23:18 and in 15 minutes, they would say, oh, this is a painting or a rubbing or some
00:23:18 --> 00:23:20 sort of something that he could explain.
00:23:20 --> 00:23:23 And he said, the more they looked at it, the more they studied,
00:23:23 --> 00:23:28 the more they realized this was an image that is unlike any other image that exists.
00:23:29 --> 00:23:34 And so after their five days of study, the team brought all of their results
00:23:34 --> 00:23:36 home and then they continued to study.
00:23:36 --> 00:23:40 And then they brought in additional scientists for the STIRP team.
00:23:40 --> 00:23:47 And they looked at things under the microscope and they put all of their best
00:23:47 --> 00:23:50 scientific heads together to come up with some kind of a conclusion.
00:23:50 --> 00:23:54 And their ultimate conclusion was that there's no brushstrokes,
00:23:55 --> 00:24:00 there's no defined edges to this image, there's no dyes, no paints,
00:24:00 --> 00:24:03 no stains, no evidence of there being a rubbing.
00:24:04 --> 00:24:09 And so they said, all we can say at this point is that the way the image was
00:24:09 --> 00:24:11 formed remains a mystery.
00:24:11 --> 00:24:18 And they said it's up to another team of scientists in the future to understand how this image was made.
00:24:19 --> 00:24:24 So what they discovered about the image is that it's only two microns thick,
00:24:24 --> 00:24:28 which I can't even visualize two microns.
00:24:28 --> 00:24:32 But if you take a human hair and cut it in half and throw away half and then
00:24:32 --> 00:24:38 cut the half remaining in half again and throw that away, that is about the depth of two microns.
00:24:38 --> 00:24:45 So it's so superficial. The image does not penetrate into the fabric of the
00:24:45 --> 00:24:52 shroud. It doesn't even penetrate the cell wall of the flax that makes up the linen fibers.
00:24:52 --> 00:24:54 So it's completely superficial.
00:24:54 --> 00:24:58 And it doesn't penetrate through the fabric in any way.
00:24:58 --> 00:25:03 It's only lying on the very surface of the fabric itself. So they discovered.
00:25:03 --> 00:25:12 That, and they discovered that it is a chemical change in the fibers in the
00:25:12 --> 00:25:13 area where the image exists.
00:25:13 --> 00:25:19 So it's actually like almost a premature aging of the fibers in that area.
00:25:19 --> 00:25:24 And that's what they were able to discover. It's not something that was applied
00:25:24 --> 00:25:29 to the linen. It was actually a chemical change in the fibers themselves.
00:25:28 --> 00:25:36 Music.
00:25:37 --> 00:25:41 Thank you for listening to from the void if you enjoyed this episode or any
00:25:41 --> 00:25:45 of the prior episodes please consider rating reviewing and subscribing so you
00:25:45 --> 00:25:49 don't miss a single new episode and sharing with a friend we'll be back next
00:25:49 --> 00:25:51 week with the conclusion of my
00:25:51 --> 00:25:55 interview with norah creech and until then you've been listening to from.
00:25:55 --> 00:27:23 Music.
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