While the literary sources provide excellent historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, there is a less apparent, but still significant pathway from the non-literary artifact known as the Shroud of Turin to Jesus. Yet, the shadow of the 1988 carbon-14 testing remains a sufficient roadblock that we must answer decisively before we can do much more than talk to ourselves in the “shroud community.”

Now the carbon-14 issue has been resolved. And new startling discoveries since 2004 make the Shroud of Turin seem very real. Please read The Sugar Coated Shroud of Turin and the Resurrection of Jesus or jump to a topic:

	Is this a Picture of Jesus? The Shroud of Turin Described		How the pictures might have formed. Shroud of Turin's Strange Coating of Saccharides Turned Brown
	Picture of Jesus in Edessa. History of the Shroud of Turin from Edessa to Constantinople		Carbon 14 Dating Problem Resolved. The Carbon 14 Dating of the Mended Corner of the Shroud of Turin
	Startling, Mysterious, 3D Picture. Inexplicable 3D Optical Illusion Phenomenon		The Variegated Cloth. Fooled by the Variegated Shroud of Turin Background Noise
	Sixth Century Picture. Christ Pantocrator Icon and the Shroud of Turin		Was the Shroud of Turin Described? Voices from the Past that Described the Picture of Jesus
	Medical Perspective: Forensic Pathology of the Pictures on the Shroud of Turin		Some say many things: the Shroud was painted or that it was created by Leonardo da Vinci.
	And don't miss this essay: Shroud of Turin ??? by Danusha V. Goska		See also: God, Christ: Questions & Faith

Two Pictures of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin

The Other Picture of Jesus on the Shroud: The Second Face

The secular, peer-reviewed scientific Journal of Optics of the  Institute of Physics reported that a faint picture of a second face was discovered on the back of the Shroud of Turin (April 14, 2004). 

This picture of a second face was directly behind the face on the front of the cloth as though paint or stain had soaked through. But when we probe between the two facial pictures, when we look at the interior of the threads, when we examine individual fibers, we discover that nothing has soaked through. The pictures of the faces are thin and superficial to the extreme outer surfaces of the Shroud.

This is an extraordinary scientific mystery!

How thin are these pictures?

Picture this: Slice a human hair lengthwise, from end to end, into 100 long thin slices, each slice  a tenth of the width of a single red blood cell. The pictures of Jesus on the Shroud, at their thickest, are this thin. In fact, these pictures of Jesus are thinner than most bacteria.
 

Christianity Today Article

Writing in the December 2004 issue of Christianity Today, Gordon Govier argued that new evidence reopens debate about the controversial Shroud of Turin.

Hardly! The debate has been raging for years, unabated. What the second face picture does is clarify what scientists having been saying lately about how the pictures may have been formed. It supports scientific hypothesis being discussed in other peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Pictures of Jesus in a Thousand Fibers

When the cloth was made, fibers, one-fifth the thickness of human hair, were hand-spun together into linen thread. These fibers, scientists now know, hold the key to how pictures of Jesus were recorded on the cloth whether by God, a faker of relics or by an accident of nature. Look carefully at the picture shown here. This is a single thread from the Shroud of Turin. The fibers are cellulose vegetable matter from a flax plant. It is on their surface that the pictures are stored.

Notice a golden caramel color on some of the fibers in the adjacent picture. That color is a tiny bit of a picture of Jesus. It is not paint, dye or stain. That is a proven fact. So what is it?

Since 1978, it was widely reported that the change of color was a change within the fiber; that somehow part of the fiber had turned brown. That isn't the case. Instead, it is a change of color, in various places, to a thin filmy substance that coats some of the fibers. To drive home two important points: 1) the filmy substance only coats some of the fibers and 2) only in some places has the substance changed color.

Chemists know what this filmy substance is. And they also know what chemistry is needed to cause it to change color. The change, visual bits of color, here and there, when viewed at a distance are pictures of Jesus.  The pictures on the Shroud of Turin are chemical pictures -- plural because there are two pictures: one of Jesus' front and one of Jesus' backside.

Two pictures of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin

The Filmy Substance That Holds the Pictures of Jesus

The substance is a dried carbohydrate mixture of starch fractions and various saccharides (sugars). It is as thin (180 to 600 nanometers) as the wall of a soap bubble. It is thinner than the invisible glare proof coating on modern eyeglasses.

The coating is only found on the outermost fibers of the thread. In fact, it is only found where the fibers are close to the surface of the Shroud's cloth. In other words, the fibers inside the thread, deep in the cloth, do not have this filmy substance.

Another important fact is that the carbohydrate coating can be removed by scraping or by pulling it away with adhesive tape. Over the years, as the Shroud of Turin was folded and unfolded, rolled up and unrolled and spread out across rough surfaces, microscopic bits of the filmy substance certainly flaked away. In fact, when the Shroud was examined in 1978, pieces of the substance -- pieces of the pictures -- were pulled away when adhesive tape was rubbed on the Shroud to collect particulate samples for research. Today, countless tiny bits of these pictures of Jesus, even whole fibers of the Shroud's cloth, are stuck to microscope slides and sampling tapes in laboratories in the United States.

Scientist have a pretty good idea about how the the coating got there. It wasn't brushed on or wiped on as one might apply sizing to a canvas before painting. Had that been the case, the starch and sugar mixture would have soaked at least part of the way through the Shroud. Fibers inside the thread would have been coated. Capillary action would have pulled the mixture into the middle of the threads. 

So how did the coating get onto the fibers? It turns out that the distribution of the carbohydrate substance fits an evaporation-deposit model. Interestingly, this model dovetails exactly with the way linen was made during Jesus' era as described by Pliny the Elder (23 to 77 AD).

If the cloth  was rinsed in a solution that contained dissolved starch and saccharides, and if the cloth was then dried in the air, the coating we find on the Shroud of Turin would have formed just as it is. We know from Pliny that during weaving, threads on the loom were lubricated with crude starch to make weaving easier and to prevent fraying. The starch was then washed out by rinsing it in suds from the Soapwort plant. But the starch wouldn't have been washed out completely. Trace amounts of both starch and the numerous saccharides found in the natural soap would have remained in the wet cloth. As the cloth dried, moisture wicked its way to the surface carrying with it starch and saccharide molecules. The dissolved material would have concentrated at the surface and remained on the fibers as the moisture evaporated into the air. This is certainly how the coating formed on only the outermost fibers.

Browning of the Pictures of Jesus

In some places the coating has turned a golden brown. This is the result of a chemical change: the formation of a complex carbon-carbon double molecular bond within the coating. There are two ways this could have happened chemically: 1) caramelization, whereby heat caused molecular breakdown into other volatile compounds and 2) a Maillard reaction in which a carbonyl group of sugars reacted with an amino group producing N-substituted glycosylamine. An unstable glycosylamine undergoes Amadori rearrangement, forming ketosamines, which then form nitrogenous polymers and melanoidins. Voila, pictures of Jesus.

There is a problem with caramelization. The amount of heat required for browning would also heat the cellulose fiber sufficiently to change its crystalline structure and cause it to change color as well. That has not happened. Where a picture bearing bit of coating is removed, either with adhesive or with a reducing agent such as diimide, the fiber beneath is clear and un-ablated.

A Maillard reaction seems more promising because of the presence of amines needed for a Maillard reaction. Of course, it didn't need to be Jesus; at least chemically. It could have been any recently deceased person.

Patterns of Discontinuity in the Pictures of Jesus

The pattern of the brown color is not uniform. Scientist refer to the way the brownish tint is distributed in the pictures as discontinuities of color. Along a single fiber there may be a stretch of color, then a clear stretch, and then some more color. Moreover, one fiber may have color, the one next to it may not, and so forth in alternating or seemingly erratic patterns.

In looking at the Shroud, if we step back from the pattern of discontinuous bits of caramel-brown, our eyes see an average color. Where there are many bits of color we see a darker color. Where there are fewer bits we see a lighter color. We can see this effect by looking at this graphic-picture from across the room.

Step back farther and a bleary, ghostlike picture of Jesus appears on the Shroud. This is exactly how the picture of Jesus is recorded (the picture on the left is as it appears on the Shroud).

Then, with a film camera, we photograph the ghostlike picture. If we look at negative before making a print we see a startling, realistic picture of a man (as we see in the picture on the right).

An interest theory about how some bits of melanoidins from a chemical reaction formed into a picture of Jesus is an essay, The Shroud of Caiaphas at The Shroud of Turin Story.

The Other Picture of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin

The second face picture reinforced the hypothesis that the pictures on the Shroud are the result of a very natural, complex chemical reaction such as a Maillard reaction.

It is important to note that there will be two evaporation-model chemical coatings on the cloth. The side of the cloth that faced the sun and dried the fastest will have a dominant coating of starch fractions and saccharides from the soap. The other side will have a lesser coating. Both sides will react to amines since some of the vapors will diffuse through the cloth. Indeed, we should expect to have a more distinct image on one side of the cloth and a less distinct image on the other. And we do! That is the significance of the discovery of a second facial picture on the Shroud.

Fake Pictures of Jesus?

If we want to believe that the Shroud is not genuine then we have to consider some basic questions. How did the faker of relics accomplish this.

How did a faker of relics alter the chemical properties of the carbohydrate coating to create the color and how did he do so with such artistic precision -- on both sides of the cloth?

The history of art is the story of the evolution of styles, techniques, methods and technology. Every work of art, and fakery is no exception, has precedents. When a new technique is discovered it is exploited; and over time it is refined and improved. Where are the precedents for pictures such as those that we find on the Shroud? Where are the other works in this new-found technology? Are we to imagine that some genius invented a new way to create pictures, that one picture was made, and the technology was lost to history?

How did  he create a suitable negative picture hundreds of years before the discovery of photographic negativity? How did he know that he had it right? How, without a camera and film, could he test his work? The negativity is extraordinarily precise and correct.

The bigger question is why? What was his purpose; his motive? If we are to ask why he created an extraordinarily complex chemical picture, in negative, we must ask some other why questions.

Why did he go against conventional expectations of his era? Why did he create a picture with wounds from nails that went through Jesus' wrists? All art and all expectation throughout medieval Europe showed Jesus nailed to his cross through the palms of his hands. Why is Jesus shown completely naked, unlike in all artistic depictions everywhere in every era?

Despite many attempts to do so, no one has found or invented an artistic or crafty technique that can reproduce even a few of the characteristics of the images. But that does not mean, that in the future, someone will not find a method to create such images. But if someone does so, a tenacious question will remain:

How likely is it that there would be such a one-of-a-kind work of art for which there are no known precedents; created by methods that were never again exploited?

Any method that might be devised must be scientifically credulous, fit into the history of art and conform to the cultural expectations in which the technology was supposedly employed. If not, it will be seen as newly invented art designed to mimic an otherwise unexplained natural process or a supernatural event. The skeptic has a dilemma. To believe that the Shroud is fakery he or she must rely on an underlying belief that transcends scientific fact.

Chiaroscuro Pictures of Jesus

Lean over and look down into a perfectly still, smooth-surfaced pool of water and you will see a perfectly formed picture of yourself. But drop a pebble into the water or allow a breeze to ripple the surface and the image becomes indistinct, fuzzy and unclear. It looks like an out-of-focus photograph. But the focus is not really off. In a naturally reflected picture, your eyes are the lenses that provide focus. The reflection surface is wrinkled and causes reflected light to go off in different directions. It distorts the resolution of the image. While the analogy is not a perfect one it suggests a potential problem for a natural image explanation. (It is no less a problem for those who advance theories about radiation or some mysterious force leaving a picture on the cloth as a body miraculously passes through the cloth).

The images on the Shroud are not only very well focused but highly resolved. It is almost certain that in the first century a piece of linen was naturally wrinkled, that it even had creases from folding. This would affect picture resolution.

A reflecting pool was certainly mankind’s first mirror. The pictures of reflected light, and that is what they were, must have seemed miraculous or magical. Eventually man would learn to make other mirrors, first by polishing stone or metal and eventually by fixing metals such as mercury, tin or silver to pieces of glass. Of course, the glass had to be smooth and flat. If the glass was wavy or curved, any reflected picture would be highly distorted. We see this when we look into the special mirrors in carnival funhouses. Again there is an analogy that relates to the pictures on the Shroud of Turin. It is hard to imagine how any process could form an essentially undistorted image if the cloth was draped across a human form.

What assumption can we make about how Jesus’ body was positioned on the limestone shelf in the tomb? How flat was the shelf? Was it polished smooth or rough-hewn? We don’t know. Was the cloth smoothed out? In placing Jesus’ body on the shelf was the cloth pulled about, rippled in places, even creased in places? We can’t know. How closely did the cloth follow the contour of Jesus’ body? Was it pulled smooth? Did loving hands, in places, smooth it across the body? Did it stick in places to still wet blood or to remaining water from some washing? Were there flowers resting on the cloth or under the cloth? Image analysts and forensic pathologists argue that the image on the cloth is of a man with his knees bent slightly and with his head tilted forward as though resting on a pillow that was under the cloth. Assumptions about the shape of the cloth and how closely it followed the contours of Jesus’ body are difficult if not impossible. If wrapped closely, wide and grotesque distortion would result. But even if draped loosely, the distortion caused by the surface terrain of the cloth should be evident.

It becomes extremely difficult to imagine an image that was not very much distorted by shapes no matter how the image was formed. This is perhaps the most intuitively strong argument for thinking the image is the work of an artist. It would be a powerful argument were it not for the chemistry of the image and some of the other rather odd qualities of the pictures.

There is another problem that we must consider. Scientists refer to it as saturation. In the parlance of photography we might say that the pictures of Jesus are surprisingly not underexposed or overexposed. This means if the pictures are the product of a chemical reaction, the reaction ran long enough but not too long. What stopped the reaction at just the right time, everywhere on the pictures? There would need to be sufficient chemical reaction time and concentrations of reactants to cause highly discernable images. Similarly the reaction must end sufficiently early to avoid over saturation which would washout image detail. Computerized image analysis shows no saturation plateaus anywhere in the image. We can see this by looking at 3D plot of the images and noticing that there are no plateaus. In simple terms, the chemical process ended late enough to form a discernable image and early enough so it was not ruined.

Reactant exhaustion is one thing that would have ended the process. Another would have been separation of Jesus’ body from the cloth at just the right time.

Another problem is diffusion. If we accept the hypothesis that chemical changes to the carbohydrate coating on the Shroud’s fibers was caused by amine vapors, we must recognize that vapors diffuse and scatter when they come off of a body. Heavy amines molecules do not diffuse as greatly as those of lighter gases. Nonetheless they go isotropically in different directions. So precise are some of the features on the Shroud’s images that one pundit likened vaporous formation to painting a perfect copy of the Mona Lisa with aerosol spray paint.

The pictures seem spectacularly like chiaroscuro images; pictures created by reflected light. When we look at the pictures on the Shroud, and particularly the face, we see seemingly three-dimensional pictures on a flat two-dimensional plane, much as we do when we look at a photograph or a conventional painting of a person -- and just as we do when we look at a reflection in a smooth pond or a flat mirror. The cheeks, as they curve around from the front of the face, seem to recede into shade. The hollows of the eyes are evident from their darker tones. The tip of the nose is white and stands out. This is how reflected light works on the human face. Unless we are an artist or a photographer, we probably don’t think about the patterns of light in pictures. But our mind nonetheless puts it all together for us when we look at a person or a picture of a person. And the Shroud, to our way of perceiving pictures, to our anthropic bias, does look like a picture of reflected light.

How do we imagine that given so many chemical reaction variables -- wrinkles, the shape of the cloth, diffusion, along with some factors not addressed in this essay including ambient temperatures, humidity, body chemistry, a likely uneven distribution of evaporation-model coating, other trace impurities, etc. – that nature will be so kind as to produce such near perfect chiaroscuro pictures of Jesus, quite by accident; a picture of arguably most important person in history?

The Shroud of Turin Story - A Guide to the Facts
Early History - Forensic Evidence - The Pray Codex -
The Sudarium - A Picture Gallery of Facts -
Carbon 14 Dating -  Three Dimensionality - Optical Illusions

Where Have All the Skeptics Gone:
The Shroud of Turin for Journalist

Latest Information on the Carbon 14 Dating