The Shroud of Turin
By scientist and priest Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

Aside from the Gospel narratives, there are several relics traditionally related to Christ's Passion, and one -especially mysterious- that is most probably the sheet that wrapped Christ's body in the tomb until the moment of the resurrection. This is the Turin Shroud, the most extensively studied archaeological object in all antiquity.

There are on this cloth the expected bloodstains from a Roman scourging and crucifixion, as well as the unexpected puncture wounds of a thorny head covering and a side wound from a spear thrust after death. From those and other anatomical considerations proper of forensic medicine, one can say that the only reasonable explanation of the blood markings is the use of the cloth to wrap the body of a person who suffered all the tortures described in the Gospel for the Passion of Christ, and no other known candidate can believably be suggested.

The fact that the cloth was preserved and considered worth of veneration, when we know the obsessive concern of Jews for legal impurity, even from just touching the outside of a tomb, leads us to think that something extraordinary happened that made the Shroud no longer the burial cloth of a dead person, but rather a precious relic of a living Master. Details of the way Peter and John saw the linens on the morning of the Passover Sunday are also indicative that something very strange made them believe that the empty tomb was not the result of an improbable theft (by whom?) but rather of a mysterious disappearance of their beloved Lord.

Still, whatever we see in the Turin Shroud, even considering it as the real burial cloth of Christ, shows only a dead body. But the unique feature found in this relic is the full size image, front and back, of the entire body, so that not only the bloodstains but the full anatomy is clearly visible, especially in high contrast photographs, where the imprint on the cloth has the tones reversed as if we were working with a photographic negative.

This image defies explanation, and nobody has succeeded in reproducing anything like it even with the most modern technology. There is simultaneously amazing detail and a dependence of intensity from cloth-to-body distance that allows a three-dimensional reconstruction, something impossible with any known photographic or painting technique.

Hypothesis based on the diffusion of gases from the body to the cloth cannot explain detail and simple contact cannot explain either the 3-D effect or the lack of serious anatomical distortions. Supposed unknown radiation (that really nobody can logically suggest should be present) would have to be emitted either isotropically or in collimated beams, explaining either the 3-D effect or the detail, but not both by any single process.

Drs. Fanti and Whanger have proposed a "corona discharge" phenomenon, that in an almost direct contact could affect the linen, without any properly called radiation traveling a varying distance from body to cloth. No reason is given to expect the high voltages required for this effect to occur; still less, for the fact that the corona discharge would take place only along vertical paths (there is no side image). Dr. Jackson, using still the word "radiation", suggests a vacuum UV that is rapidly attenuated in air, thus allowing for the change in intensity of the image as a function of distance.

And instead of a collimation of emitted beams, he proposes that -at the moment of the resurrection- the body became "mechanically transparent" in such a way that the cloth fell through the body and was affected by the UV at different levels, but by successive contact or nearly so. No reason is advanced to indicate that such an emission of UV should take place, but if it did appear, it would affect the linen in the way we actually observe (at least for the upper part of the Shroud).

Dr. Rogers determined by chemical tests that the color that forms the image (a very weak straw color) resides only in an extremely thin layer on the outside fibrils of each linen thread. This color can be dissolved with diimide and leaves perfectly white cellulose. A similar color can be obtained by Maillard reactions when polysaccharides are affected by reactants containing amine groups that are to be expected in gases from a corpse, even without real corruption. Banding and differences in color in contiguous threads would be attributed to varying amounts of the sizing present in different batches of thread. He did admit that this process by itself could not explain the detail we observe in the image.

Without entering into chemical or physical debates as to the merits of each proposed mechanism, it might be a positive step to find a reason why some kind of energy should be associated with the resurrection and how it might contribute to the formation of the image. The only thing that comes to mind is the change from being in the physical environment of space and time to a new existence without those parameters.

If space and time properties are real, they must imply something physical in the object that is affected by that physical framework. Therefore it is plausible to expect that leaving that way of existing will imply, to use a simple language, the "shedding" by the body of whatever anchored matter into this normal physical universe. This should be some unknown type of energy that, like any other, could in some way affect its surroundings in some minimal way.

The energy should be similar in its superficial effects to the corona discharge, but probably acting just by successive contact, that would be expected -following Dr. Jackson- if the body ceases to be in space and thus presents no resistance to the weight of the covering. If the process is not instantaneous (no physical process occurs in zero time) then the cloth can fall a small distance while the energy is still available, and its presence would facilitate the chemical reactions that produce the surface color but without altering the cellulose of the threads.

This would also apply to images of non-body objects that are very close to the body itself. The atmospheric pressure tending to produce a suction when the body disappears should also help to explain the image in the back portion of the Shroud. No special treatment of the cloth is required to explain the negative effect of the image: any set of stains, whatever their origin, can be photographed and will produce a reversed image on a photo-sensitive material.

But true photographic images are made by an optical system projecting an image of something external that has varying degrees of reflectivity, like a painting or a drawing or just a simple arrangement of different objects, without an effect that would depend upon the distance of the sources.

We are still very far from a total explanation of the Turin image. And it is doubtful that a similar image might ever be produced with complete correspondence to the original. It might be the only visible trace of the unique event that is the transformation of a human corpse into the living body that will no longer be subject to death.