Pints With Aquinas - The Shroud of Turin is AUTHENTIC w/ Fr. Andrew Dalton

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

Matt speaks with expert on the shroud of Turin, Fr. Andrew Dalton LC, about ... you guessed it, Jesus and the Shroud of Turin, and why it's authentic and what that means. Official Website: shroud.com Post-Grad Certificate: https://en.othoniainternational.org/copia-di-diplomado-2 Pray on Hallow (FREE TRIAL): https://hallow.com/matt Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/

Mute your phone, mute your computer. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. I'm here today with Father Andrew Dalton, who is an expert on the Shroud of Turin. And I'm really pumped to learn about this because it was awesome to meet you several weeks ago in Rome and to have you give me and the Batuzanator, Cameron Batuzi, a tour. I was really blown away, so I'm so pumped about this episode.

Yeah, there's everything in that exhibit. I wish we could transport ourselves there, but I think it's gonna be cool also just to chat it out and have a conversation. There's lots of stuff on the Shroud already online, but I think a conversation allows to kind of tease out some things that maybe people watching will also want to ask about. So, I hope that works. For those who aren't aware of you, who are you?

Oh yeah. I'd love to know about your expertise in this and how long you've been studying it. Okay. Yeah, so my name is Father Andrew Dalton and I'm an American priest that's living in Rome. I teach at a Pontifical University and one of the things that I teach is shroud studies Specifically the biblical theology of the passion of Christ according to the shroud of Turin So it's kind of like the pastoral and spiritual of but also the theology the theology that accompanies The sufferings of Christ as we know them by the shroud of Turin so we can unpack that more but I by the Shroud of Turin. So we can unpack that more,

but I was there in Rome studying philosophy and theology and bumped into the Shroud. I really didn't think that I would specialize in this. My background was in engineering though. Like my strong subjects in school when I was a kid were maths and sciences. And then I just kind of derailed all that to join the priesthood when I was 20 years old.

And yeah, collided with this shroud expert who had written dozens of books on the shroud, spent over 30 years studying it. And her name is Emanuela Marinelli and she came to our university and this priest friend of mine said, you have to hear her speak. And I said, look, I got places to go, things to do. I'll sit in for a little bit, but I'll probably have to sneak out after a few minutes. And I was glued to my chair. She was absolutely riveting.

I quite literally lost sleep that night. I was so excited to hear about this. I was like, how in the world am I 10 years a seminarian? And I've never heard this stuff. Like the world needs to know it. And so I stayed long, I think like three hours with Emanuela. We've since become friends and have appeared on television together, etc. We're quite close. This is now like 11 years later, probably, because

that was the first generation of the postgraduate certificate in shrouds. Do you know you could study shroud for a year in a pontifical university people don't know how much there is out there but this is the most studied archaeological object in the history of the world say that again for people the most studied archaeological object in the history of the world and so when it comes to historical events like the what you're looking for is monumentum et documentum, right? That you have a monument and a document. And of course, we're all familiar that there are documents telling about Jesus' passion,

but many people don't know about the shroud, at least to the degree that one can know. And so here's what happened with Emanuela. I stayed talking with her, she said, wait till you come back next week because there's a physicist who will be speaking. If you lost sleep last night, buckle up. And he was just that way. His name is Paolo. Paolo di Lazzaro. He spent five years, this guy, just trying to reproduce by ultraviolet light on a linen, just playing with the variables of light, you know, amplitude, frequency, duration of exposure, so that he could recreate an image like that

of the man of the shroud on another linen. And this guy made himself famous when he published an article saying that the amount of energy you would need to recreate a similar image would be 34,000 billion watts. And of course, you've probably bumped into this on the internet now, but what does that look like? Well, it's not a matter of what it looks like so much as I mean what looks like do well

Here's the trouble see this is why it took five years right because he took different these different variables of light trying to Reproduce something caramel colored on a on a linen. Yeah, but it was frustrating because he got either nothing or just charred the linen altogether, which obviously we don't have. I really wanna get into that, but I know we wanna go into that in depth. So let's, can we just start right basically? So when did you actually first see the shroud?

Was it after you heard this lecture? And then tell people what the shroud is, give them the basic definition for those who are like, I think I know what it is. But sure. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot there. We'll go slow. Sure. So I first bumped into this exit. I say the shroud talk by Marinelli. I want to say that was 2000 and oh, gosh, is it 11? The first year that we started.

I'm going to I'm going gonna think back to that but I Lost sleep I told you and met these these different experts They were wanting to explain What the what the shroud is who the man of the shroud is and what significance it had all part of a Pontifical University's program to like give you a panoramic view of shroud study, so interdisciplinary. But the basic premise is that we've been reverencing this cloth down through the ages as the burial shroud that wrapped the body of Jesus. So again, Jesus of course is on the cross on Good Friday, but he's taken down and then laid in the tomb. Well, when

he's laid in the tomb. Well, when he's laid in the tomb, he's wrapped in these clothes. We should spend some time in that passage of John where it's written about. But before, just to kind of lay it all out, the church proposes to have exactly that. At least that's what's on display in Turin, that is four and a half hours north of Rome by the fast train You can go and see this relic which is on display in the cathedral there And that's to say it's inside of a case and only on special occasions They take it's out of a double case like in inert gas and constant temperature and pressure

Never exposed to more than 50 lux of light. We want to preserve this thing for future generations exposed to more than 50 lux of light. We want to preserve this thing for future generations. Now so I started to meet those guys, the authorities, the ecclesial authorities in Turin a few years later. So now I'm on Othonia as part of this non-for-profit, this international group for shroud study. And so I go there regularly. We just had a meeting a few weeks ago, but they have a Shroud Museum, they have an international study of Shroud studies, and they provide many of the experts

that teach at our Pontifical University. So at the one hand, you had this like hub of study, like the minds that were involved in probing this document to understand its mysteries. And the other side, you had these museums that would kind of showcase or create a space of experience with the shroud. Those are two different kind of questions, right? Some people just know the image and they dive into prayer and contemplation through that. And that's one way to experience the shroud for sure.

But another is to like roll up your sleeves, get the experts on scene to study the physics, the chemistry, the biology, the forensic medicine, and then the history, the art history. There are, like I say, so many different... So lead me where you want to lead me. No, that's good. And we're going to get into all the objections to why the Shroud may not be authentic. But when do we first have evidence in literature of the existence of the shroud? Yeah, if you want to follow the paper trail back, back or even icon trail, there might be images of it. Right.

So you're going to get different answers depending on what database you're looking at. But so many people point to the year 1354, because that was when it was on display in the hands of a certain Geoffroy de Charny in France, in Lyrae, and he, and this we have his stamp, we have his seal, family crest, nobody doubts that in 1354 what he was looking at and what was on display is the shroud, as we call it today, the Shroud of Turin. Prior to that, there's evidence, but it is controverted evidence. Like you say, it'll be things like icons. So the typical one is the Mount Sinai Pentacrator in St. Catharines. And there...

Can we throw up the image of the shroud just so people can kind of see what we're talking about? Yeah. In fact, I should, I should describe what you're looking at there because it's not immediately obvious. Which one is that? Yeah so let's look at first do slide six okay and I think at the the top of the the picture you'll see a kind of tan or beige picture. Would you be able to tilt that a yeah, sure. And we'll zoom in on some of the best. Thank you. That's more than perfect. You don't have to give it much. Yeah, that's OK.

So at the top, you see this is a really long cloth. It's hard to see, perhaps in our computer screen, how wide this is. But this is 14 feet, so 13 foot, seven inches, to be exact. And then three foot 7 is is its height so that's like 4.4 meters by 1.1 meters and What you see on the left side of the of the linen is the frontal image of the body, right? And then on the right side is the dorsal image of the body So it actually wrapped all the way around. In fact, there's another picture that I've got in here

Let me pull up so it just this will explain way around. In fact, there's another picture that I've got in here. Let me pull it up. So it just, this will explain very easily. Here we go. Go to slide 13. This is just a painting, but it shows this angel holding up in the clouds, the linen, and just below the shroud is at the foot of the cross,

you have Jesus wrapped in in this cloth It's simply to depict kind of a didactic photo So you can understand how he was lying both on top of the body and then it's so long that it wraps around the back Of his head over his face and over his stomach So now when you unfold it you get on what is in the the hands of the angel there When was that painting produced? This is much later. I want to say it's the 16th or maybe 17th century, but it's simply a good way of visually understanding that it's only the

inside of the cloth. Many people don't know this, that the shroud is colorized. It's imaged on only one side of the cloth. So it's the side that touches his body. And in fact, it's so superficial that if you were. And in fact, it's so superficial that if you were to just gently graze with a razor blade, you would erase the image of the man forever. This is what Paulo de Lázaro discovered. If I can just dive a little detail because this is so interesting. If you ask the question, like, what's the depth of penetration of coloration on the surface of the shroud? The answer is mind boggling.

It's 200 to 500 nanometers, which is that's not even a number that I can fathom. So I give this example of a human hair like take a single human hair. Imagine you could very carefully with your scissors, cut it in half along its long end and discard that half. And now with what what remains try to cut it in half again Do that four or five times until you're left with? 1-16th or 1-20th of the width of a human hair That's the that's the depth of penetration as you say that is on one side of the shroud But not on the other so if you were using some instrument to paint or

Imprint this image you would likely see it on the other side. That's right. There's nothing soaked into the fibers. In fact, that was one of the main questions. That was one of the main theories on the table when this gets tested. I'm sure we'll get into those testings in a moment. But one of the theories was that this was a painting and so this was pigment, either

organic or inorganic. Maybe it's a dye, maybe it's an ink of some sort. And so they had made a list of the chemical properties of all of the pigments known to man throughout history, and they do a certain test called pyrolysis mass spectroscopy that would not only find it, but identify its chemical composition. While sweeping the whole shroud, you don't find any of that not a single dose of dot or drop of pigment organic or inorganic no varnish no dye no directionality whatsoever with which some liquid is applied to the cloth and again it doesn't soak into the

fibers it's like the blood stains do you can see them on the other side a great experiment is to just take transmitted light like a regular bulb, walk to the other side of the shroud and you'll see the blood stains because now they'll be backlit. Yes. And you'll see them all the more, but guess what you won't see? The image of the man. The body's image of the man. It just disappears. It's so superficial and so frail that it's overpowered by just simple light on the other side.

And so this is what we're unable to produce today, even artificially, even after all this study, even of the 2023 now, we don't have a micro laser capable of delivering a micro burn this precise. And so the obvious question is, how in the world did this come into being? Like what's the genesis of this enigmatic image? Before we get further,

I know that people are gonna come in with these thoughts of wasn't this disproved? So it might be helpful to show why that isn't the case before we go on to kind of assuage people's. Right. Let's do that. Okay. So slide three, here shows some pictures.

This is probably what you saw on front page news in 1988. Look at that. Pictures of Dr. Michael Teich. That must front page news in 1988. Look at that. Pictures of Dr. Michael Tice. That must frustrate you so much. Yeah. Looking at that. Can you see the 1260-1390 exclamation part?

That's the exclamation part that really, it just screams academic excellence and propriety, doesn't it? Yes. These same guys with this very composed stance with their arms folded before these like, you know, pillars. Yeah, it just says these same guys got, what's the number? I'm going to forget like how many million in sterling they got for their new museum. Like the next day, it's a matter of the public record.

The moment this was published, they were able to build their new laboratory. Some stuff was very fishy from the start, but it's just the case that across the world, front page news everywhere was the Turin Shroud was proven to be a medieval fake. It tells us nothing therefore about Jesus' sufferings. It can't be considered a relic, et cetera, et cetera. And so if you still believed that the Shroud was real after this point,

you might as well believe that the earth is flat. You're about the same category. And my heart just goes out for those people who are serious students, the ones who had dedicated hundreds of thousands of hours, especially the team from STIRP in 1978. These guys had published already over 20 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles.

They knew from the start to be suspicious of this. But what I like and this I would lead with this now is that as of 2017 we have a published article that shows that the conclusions from 1988 are no longer sustainable. So I should say that again the very publication Archaeometry out of Oxford, that first published this that published that read 1260 to 13 It said that conclusion can no longer be sustained and so I'm sure that hit the front page is all right Not no exactly. So as though it is a matter of mainstream science So if you want to find in the literature, you're gonna bump into this the the French researcher who published this article is Tristan

Casablanca another friend of ours who teaches at our university and he he goes into all the details This is a fascinating story But I want to say it was in 2017 that according to the Freedom of Information Act These laboratories were compelled by law to release the raw data that shows how heterogeneous were their individual results because there was Oxford, Zurich, and Arizona. Those were the three laboratories. And the idea was that they were going to publish independently and that their particular results, but that didn't happen.

They lumped them together and gave us this big arc, 1260 to 1390, 95% sure that this is the time period from which the shroud hails, and so it's fake. But the bottom line is that they use a sample from the top left corner of the shroud, which we know to be anomalous. It's just not representative of the rest of the Shroud. And we knew that and we had proof of that 10 years prior.

You'd think somebody would have the sense... Do you think they knew that? Well, they ought to have known that much we know. We knew though this, that in the moment that they're cutting the sample, eight centimeters of the most prized relic in all of Christendom, and of course you know that with carbon dating, you carbonize it as you destroy, you put into a fire basically,

this cloth never to be seen again. And so you'd think you'd be very careful. Like compare that to the STIRP team, the Shroud of Turn Research Project of 1978. For a whole year, they prepare just so all of their tests will be non-invasive, non-destructive. And yet here, we're about to destroy forever eight centimeters and they don't know where they're gonna take the sample

two hours prior to the experiment. And it's all on video tape. In Italy, there was a documentary that came out just telling this whole fiasco and it's called La Notte della Sindone. It's the night of the shroud. And you know who does the narrating, if I'm not mistaken, is the same actress. I'm gonna forget her name now, who plays the devil in The Passion of the shroud. And you know who does the narrating, if I'm not mistaken, is the same actress.

I'm gonna forget her name now, who plays the devil in The Passion of the Grace. Yeah. So it's got some, it's got some fun imagery there. It's a little, yeah. A little on the nose. Yeah, exactly. It's a little edgy, but the fact is,

I can understand why some people were upset. But here's the thing, even if you think that those laboratories did good science, and I'm willing to be benevolent and say as much, even if they did perfect science, they did so on a sample that tells us literally nothing about the rest of the shroud. Like you could look at the chemical composition,

like you can see a map, what's called a brightness map from the UV fluorescence, like turn off the lights shine UV capture what fluoresces and it tells you about the chemical composition of the cloth It's all uniform. It's all like orange hues, maybe a little yellow little red, but it's not forest green But that's exactly what color it is in that top left corner Like a little kid in kindergarten can point to that and say, look mom, that part is different. And yet this is where these, you know, world renowned scientists are using to date the shroud. So why not take another piece of the shroud and carbon date that? Wouldn't that be enough to prove what you want to prove?

Yes, except that you can imagine that after this very embarrassing episode, many people are hesitant to go that way. I think the church would remember it's the church that's paying for this. Cardinal Ratzinger at the time was saying, yeah, these are protocols. Absolutely. Let's do seven samples, seven laboratories. About how much does that cost? Yeah, I have no idea that I didn't see. But, um, and sadly that got reduced to first three samples and then one, and then they published together against their own protocols. Were these fellows alive when it got retracted?

That I don't know because yeah here we are 30 years later. So 2017, yeah it's like. Oh that's when the same publishing outfit retracted it. Yeah it may even be 2019 by the time that gets published. 2017 I think is when the first research is done. And then, but it's worth looking up, even on the internet you can find, or in shroud.com. That's like the mecca of all scientific data. What's it called, the shroud?

Shroud, no, just shroud.com. Do you want to put that in Thursday? Yeah, so that's led by Barry Schwartz, who is the teacher. So right after, I was telling you, I met Emanuella, then Paolo, and then Barry, Barry Schwartz. He's got a white ponytail. Have you seen this guy? A big white beard. He's super fun. He's Jewish. And so he was my buddy. When he came to Rome and he gave

an extended course on shroud studies, because he was up close and personal with the cloth in 1970 as technical photographer. You have to realize that this is all the people that came together from the highest powered laboratories across America when they discovered that the shroud encodes 3D information. So in addition to the fact that the man's body is anatomically perfect, that it acts as a photo negative, we'll put a little bookmark on that. And then when it encodes 3D information, this is what's going to mobilize these laboratories across the states to then petition the royal family in the Savoy in Turin to study hands-on the shroud

for five days, 120 consecutive hours. What did that look like? And well, here's a picture. And so if you want to see when they bring 80 crates of the most state-of-the-art material overseas to study. We just want to answer one question which is to what number is that? Oh sorry yeah so this is what does that say 11? 11. 11. So this is the team on the top left corner this is

John Jackson here looking at the shroud which is mounted on this like stainless steel like they brought overseas so that Everything it was by magnets. So it's not to like prick or on like destroy in any way. Everything was to be non-invasive They almost create a international scandal when they can't get through customs with all this state-of-the-art material. But the question isn't religious at this point. It's really important to highlight that it's simply you've got Catholics and Protestants and atheists and Jews and agnostics and everything else under the Sun. Their only question is to answer by what mechanism, by what means was this image produced because we've never seen anything like it and to this

day we've never been able to reproduce anything like it, especially at the microscopic level. So that really does invite the question, right? If it's not a painting, if it's not a scorch, if it's not a rubbing, if it's not a camera escuda, right? Some sort of medieval photography, well then what in the heck is it? Wow. And their conclusion. So this is something, sorry. Sorry, just to tell you what they came home with is more questions than answers.

Wow. Because they don't tell you what it is. They tell you what it's not. They say it's not human artwork. It's not made by... It's like via negativa. Exactly. They leave open this question of how it's made. And so that really does leave room for the theory that many, of course, Christians have proposed is what if it's the natural effect of a supernatural event? What if it's after the resurrection or in the moment of the resurrection whatever that looks like that produced this image So some things even from a scientific or empirical point of view point in that direction. So for example the the blood stains Compared to the body image. So here's here's a question that I like to ask is like if you are con artists if you're a forger

If you're if you're trying to Present to the world an image that you made but make it look real What would you do? Would you would you paint the body first and then paint the blood stains? Or would you first start with the blood stains and then after the fact probably the first way exactly So what happens if you do the blood stain for like the head and your neck needs to be like two foot long right? That just doesn't work, right? So it's clear that any artist would start with the body and then add the blood on top, but that's not the case.

So the shroud is actually not imaged wherever there's blood. So the blood was there first and it's protecting those fibers because underneath those blood stains, there's no imaging of the shroud. And this of course we found about out in the modern era because shroud science is born in the 20th century. That's when we really started to study this thing after the first photograph. Maybe that's something we should talk about because it's worth saying. I think if I can go back to, let's go back to this slide here, well, I'll tell you what, right here. This is slide four, it's a picture of Secondopia.

This is the amateur photographer that snapped the first photo of the shroud in 1898. This is about 60 years after the invention of these first dectilographs, this is a monstrous machine. You can see it on, if you go to tour and you, they have it on display in the museum there. And this guy, I love this, like, what if you're the family that owns

the burial shroud of Jesus, and you like to add a little pageantry to your family wedding or baptism, you just, I'll whip out that burial shroud of Jesus. Did you get that photo up? Oh, you got it, yeah. Of Secona Pia? Yeah, so this is the guy that after 15 minutes of developing the

film goes into the dark room. And in this next slide, slide three, that is just, this is, this is great. This is the one everyone's seen. Yeah. So this is an image of the face. Now we're zoomed in on the face. I'm on the right side of the screen. Number three? Number five. It's the juxt right side of the screen. You get that number three? Number five. It's the juxtaposition of the two facial images on the right. It's the positive image, the linen itself in beige. And if we're honest, like, okay, I can kind of make out a face. Like there's two eyes, there's a nose, something like a mustache and a beard if I'm kind of

creative and I squint a little bit. But if we're honest, like it's hard to make out the details. But Sekondupiya was the first one to ever lay eyes on the photonegative. And so he goes to the dark room and after a time this very slowly this image comes to fruition. Yeah. And so he sees like the, for example, I like to mention the eyes because if I were would ask you just pointing at the positive image The one of the linen like where the boundaries of the eyeballs You might be very inclined to like do like a Bart Simpson kind of thing where you have these big bulging eyebrows

Because it seems like these are these are the outlines to the to the eyes And that explains by the, many icons that show, again and again, Jesus with all of these same characteristics, one of them being these bulging eyes. But when you get to the negative of that, all of a sudden you see a very clear, intelligible human face that this is marking the subtle contours around the eye sockets,

the details of the separation of the lips, you've got this swelling in the cheeks, you've got a separated septum. If you come two thirds down the nose, you can see that the cartilage has been separated according to the American scientists. The beard has been plucked. Wow.

You are kidding. You can see things like the arterial blood that flows near the temple, It's from the the frontal vein That's here at the at the center of the forehead. We could go on and on about some of these details Keep doing it. Well, we well we well but what I want to say Yeah now is that the first thing to be noticed in 1898 was that this was too good to be true I see instead of applauding second opia They accused it pointed fingers at him to say,

come on, where did you really get this? And it's not until 1931, some three decades later, that Giuseppe Enri, now a professional photographer, working on orthochromatic film, which produces some of the most beautiful photos to this day because of the kind of colors that we find. It's these kind of warm hues that you find on the shroud. In any case, he does this experiment of photographing

the whole length of the shroud and sees that indeed the shroud is a photo document. It's when you take the negative of the shroud that you don't arrive at a negative, the negative is the positive image, which suggests, and this is the mind-boggling part Right is that what is the shroud then a photo negative? Tell me how that works 19 centuries before the invention of photography. We have a photographic Effect in the linen itself and so it's gonna be Yves Delage who in Paris picks up on this

just noticing the anatomical perfection of this body and that the pathologies that this man suffered are just right on a thousand different details and they correspond to what we know about of Jesus' sufferings. And so he writes, this is an agnostic, he's not a believer, right? But he writes a paper saying that the man of the shroud is Jesus of Nazareth and they laugh him out of the scientific community. They won't publish his paper in the minutes and so he has to lament to his friend that, you

know, if I were writing to, if I were writing about Xerxes or some pharaoh or something, no one would have had any trouble. But they're scandalized for some reason that I found a trace of Jesus of Nazareth's existence. But he's like, why is that a problem? I don't get it. And yet to this day, we see that anything related to Christ is a sign of contradiction. Because you brought up a point a moment ago that needs to be, I think, re-emphasized that at this point, we're not, you don't have to believe this is a supernatural artifact. That's right.

And so someone could agree that this is the shroud that covered the body of Jesus Christ and still not believe that Christ rose from the dead, that Christianity is true. Exactly. I'm so glad you brought that up. It's kind of like, well, even if it is authentic, so what? Like what does that show us? And I know some people online get very enthusiastic and they go so far as to say that they think the shroud is like a proof of resurrection. I actually am more cautious than that. I do think it's a sign of resurrection. I think that it's certainly compatible and even kind of knocks at the door of your heart saying,

come on, explain me. knocks at the door of your heart saying come on Explain me but at the very least, you know so much is like having the right questions sometimes we start with a certain bias a sort of like predisposition to answer just one question and a lot of the talk and a lot of ink is spilt on Radiocarbon dating and is it authentic? I think the better question to ask is, who is this man? Like, just here's the data, explain it, right? It's there, it demands an explanation. That's a better starting point.

Just gather all the data and see where it leads. You don't have to start with the conclusion of Christianity or not, or the opposite, right? You can actually just be open to where- It's like a philosophical argument for God's existence. Like the world exists, something exists. Now explain that. It's exactly that.

It's exactly that. And I think that we have gone both wrong in both directions, either from a bias of scientism that a priori excludes the possibility of miracles and the resurrection, or on the other hand kind of begins with, yeah, that's, we already know that now, what do we even need science for in the first place? And I think both of those are wrong, like I much prefer what Pope St. John Paul II would say in his first line of the encyclical Fides et et ratio, where he says, faith and reason are two wings by which the human spirit ascends to the contemplation of the truth.

I'm like, here's the perfect case study for that. Just try it out. Faith and reason. Come with your instruments. Come with your X-ray, your infrared, your ultraviolet, your spectroscopy, your paralysis mass spectroscopy, your ultraviolet, your spectroscopy, your pyrolysis mass spectroscopy, your sticky tape samples, your blood samples, bring it on just like that's what the church was inviting us to do. But there's a letter, a very powerful one from Pope Saint John Paul II actually,

and he was inviting researchers, even non-believers, to press, to probe, just leave your bias at the door just like everybody everybody else, and just let's see where it goes. And what we find out, of course, is that it's a mirror of the gospel. Is that it actually, at so many levels, coincides with the gospel story we've always heard recounted. It's just now we have a fifth witness. It's not Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, it's the shroud testifying to these, to the passion. Yeah, I want to get to that. I want to get to how the shroud mirrors the Gospels. But I guess a few questions first.

Is there any credible scientist today making claims about this shroud being inauthentic or dating back to maybe the Middle Ages? And what is their best argument? The best argument is carbon dating. There's no doubt that when you're talking about a linen, which is organic material, the gold standard is carbon dating. Like there are other means of dating, like with a vanilla or with if, of course, if there are evidence of coins, that's one way you could also look to the icons to see if there's the Sudadium, in other words, third parties, the

other types of artifacts that would in some sense kind of meet the itinerary, the provenance of the shroud. So, for example, just to make this practical, the Sudadium is the head cloth that covered the body of Christ according to John chapter 20. Well, we have that. It's in Spain. And the blood stains are extremely amorphous, and yet they, when juxtaposed onto the shroud, align.

Oh my goodness. And the qualities of the blood is very specific, right? So you've got a proportion of blood to water that indicates lung edema, and that's someone who's been scourged, someone who's been severely beaten, suffers exactly that. But this is the one that really gets me. If you look to the blood stain, the rivulet of blood, and we looked at the face a moment ago, perhaps we can pull up that same slide that shows that kind of reverse

three-shape rivulet or an epsilon, and then the base of it, there's a little droplet. There's a little circle. I love this because the rim is outlined on the shroud. If you look to the pseudodium, you get this same blood stain, but what's empty on the shroud is filled up on the other. Have you got it up there? And so that's just one example. You could read up on the work of,

I think his name is Alejandro Hermosillo from Valencia. There's a shroud studiesoud Studies over there, and there's a Center for Shroud Studies. And he's done some work on the comparative analysis of the Shroud on the one hand and the Sudadium on the other. But we know the provenance of the Sudadium. It was on display in 611, I want to say, certainly the beginning of the seventh century.

And so the Shroud, if it covered the same body, is at least as old as that, right? And so we talked already about the Mount Sinai Pantocrator from the 6th century as well. There's many other icons from the later medieval period. So these are other ways of dating the shroud. But I want to say, and this just I think is, this is just the fact, like when it comes to organic material, there's no better way to date it than radiocarbon dating. So why isn't an objection, well then carbon date it again. If you're so intent on showing that this is authentic, then the church shouldn't be afraid

to... Well, that's right. Especially if you have more of an understanding of what may be a newer part of the shroud. Is that what was that the problem? Yeah. So we could get into that. So that top left corner is exactly where you'd grab the shroud.

Like if you wanted to put on display and we have like lithograph images of this where the bishop is with his bare hands just holding up the shroud for hours. And that's what you literally do. You imagine like making your pilgrimage across Italy to land just so you could have a few brief moments. Yeah. And this is what always happened whenever there was a public display. You know, just pick it up.

Yeah. And people would march from across Europe. Nightmares of this, don't you? You just wake up at night in a cold sweat. But imagine the soil, the wear and tear on the top of the corner. OK, so it's not that it was a newer part of cloth. Well, here, let me finish that story. So because of the wear and tear, it's very likely that it needed to be repaired in the 16th century.

So there was a fire in 1532 and these nuns basically tended to the shroud after the fact. Did they add a strip of new material? This is one of the theories. There's a fun little story behind this. There's this woman who's watching TV. Her name is Sue Benford. She's not a scientist. She's a librarian, if I'm not mistaken. She's since passed away, but she's watching this on TV and she says, that face convinces me that's Jesus. I got to study this thing. So get this, she gets a picture, like a blown up image of the textile

and then shows it to textile experts. And again and again, without knowing what they're looking at, they simply describe what they see. A misaligned weave. They tell her about French invisible weave. The idea is that you would put one thread or one cloth next

to another and without putting like a seam in between the two cloths, what you create was called a splice. You would unravel the threads on the one end, do the same on the new cloth, and then just splice the threads together so that it looks like one piece. It's very expensive, it's very difficult, but it was known and we have books about it in the 16th century. The problem is that the new material is gonna be white with respect to the linen that has yellowed over time. And so they added a plant gum that's new organic material

now in order to make it all uniform color. And so this was studied long after the fact, even after Sue Benford presents a paper in Orvieto at one of these Shroud Congresses, and it gets published on the most scientific website online, which is shroud.com. And this is when the head chemist of the STIRP, the Shroud of Turin Research Project, his name is Ray Rogers, he gives Barry Schwartz a call and says, what are you doing publishing this paper from the lunatic fringe on our scientific website? And he was like, well, Ray, I mean, she follows the scientific method. I think the people ought to know what a good hypothesis is, and hey, if it needs to be scrutinized and destroyed,

well, let it be so. And he's's like I'm gonna prove it wrong in five minutes. He's like, well Ray go ahead, you know, they hang up the phone Imagine this Ray was at stirp again in 1978 I'm not sure what year this is But I want to say around 2000 somewhere there because Ray Rogers is dying of cancer This guy's like racing against the clock to prove his this theory But what happens when he hangs up the phone is he goes back to I guess his little manila folder or whatever We've got a little strip of of the shroud He went home with a sample of the shroud that he could put under a microscope and examine and he finds

Cotton of course the shroud has no cotton. It's all linen, but he says I can't believe I'm saying this Barry calling him back now It's all linen, but he says I can't believe I'm saying this Barry calling him back now But I think she's right and so Barry Schwartz will like race against the clock all that the time he's got left on this earth to present one last paper and show and arguing in favor of this theory of French invisible weave basically that although the shroud be from the first century There was a strip that's from the 16th century basically that although the shroud be Because I don't know if you know I should explain for our listeners how radio carbon works Please and for me. Yeah, so anybody any of us that are alive and breathing are Taking in oxygen and replenishing our carbon all the time So if you look at a table of elements, you're gonna see the periodic table You're gonna see that it's carbon 12 because of the number of protons that it has but there are other

Isotopes to other flavors of carbon if you like. C14 is radioactive so it sheds those extra protons over time at a known rate. So we know the half-life, how long it takes for this C14 to shed this extra material. And so 5,370 years I want to say is the half-life of C14, which simply means I take a sample, I shove it in a machine, I calculate the molecules that are there, and I get an exact date of when that plant died, or when that person died in the case of, you know,

human biological material. But it simply means that the flax from which linen comes was chopped down in the first century, simply means that the flax from which linen comes was chopped down in the first century, it stopped replenishing its carbon, and now we can get an exact date. But what they didn't tell you in 1988 was that each of these laboratories, again, Arizona, Zurich, and Oxford,

they got different dates. And even Arizona, because it got two strips, it got an initial strip and they're like, oops, sorry guys, we short-changed you. Let me snip off another little sliver. So it's only two centimeters away, perhaps on the cloth. And yet there's some 200 year difference between Arizona one and Arizona two, the two samples. And this, they didn't tell you that as you move left to right across the shroud, you go from an older date to a younger date. And so if it's 1240 and then 1440 within a couple of centimeters, like what's the date when I move 4.4 meters to the right?

Like is it a date in the future when I get over there? They didn't tell you any of this. They just said, oh, we're sure it's from the Middle Ages. It was just really disappointing now now that we all the data is out and so I think you're absolutely right everybody's on the same page we want to do it again but I think the international accurate is commentating how within okay some have said maybe they were wrong but even even that so they're not wrong by that much. Like, if you didn't have this theory of the French invisible weave,

you would have to theorize some sort of contamination, whether by fire or by some fungus of sorts, or there'd have to be introduced a significant amount of organic material from another period in order to skew it that much because it's precise to within a few years. It's not a matter of like 200 years or something like that. It is precise. But after this-

So do you think if this carbon dating was allowed to take place that would settle the argument? I mean, I think it would be helpful- Settle the argument as opposed to when it was- Yeah. If it's done right, yes. I think we should have followed the protocol that we initially established.

Seven different samples from different areas of the shroud. Obviously, you're gonna destroy, and therefore you wanna be careful about where you choose to draw the threads from. And as time advances, so does the technology. So maybe we can destroy less material, and in such a way that you wanna preserve us above all the body image.

And this is a relic, so you don't want to be haphazard about just... What's interesting is even if you take that theory that this is a medieval invention, which as we've said has been debunked, but even if you took that theory, you're still left to explain how the hell do you produce an image like this? Well, that's right. Even now, let alone in the Middle Ages. And this is the question I like to ask my friend Barry Schwartz, because he's not a believer, and yet he travels the world

talking about the authenticity of the shroud. So what does he think it is? Well, this is what I ask, and I say, well, because he likes to give this great analogy, which I follow. Like he says, I think it's a Sherlock Holmes episode, or a little short story or something, where Watson says, hey or no Sherlock to Watson says Watson if you've got four theories or five theories in all the hounds of Baskerville, I think oh look at that

Oh all of the theories have been because yes, it's the hellhounds of Baskerville Yes, it's impossible you you just like satisfied decades of my searching for that because I forgot that But I love the the reference so It's something like this. Like if there are five theories on the table and four can be Discarded or disproved you can know Watson that the one that remains is surely true. And so it helped me whatever whatever when when What is impossible is removed whatever is left is left however improbable must be true Give this guy a raise. All right, okay Those are how much money you're making but if that's your producer like that's fantastic. So no way Neil could have done

By the way at the end of this but um, so the the naturalistic Theories have been discarded. We know that it's not a painting. We know that it's not a scorch because of the ultraviolet fluorescence. We know that it's not a camera score. There are no highlights. There are no shadows. There's, like I said, there's nothing impressed upon the cloth.

There's no directionality, no brushstrokes. So if we're unable to reproduce it with any of these means and by the way I would be much more convinced if all of these dump debunkers were on the same page because look if it's a painting It's not a scorch if it's a scorch. It's not a rubbing if it's a rubbing right a photograph It's like guys choose figure out which one it is, but it's not a form. Yeah, exactly But the other thing is if all of those fail and we can say this with I use the word prove Sparingly, but I use it here. We can prove that it's not any of those things. And so if all those naturalistic Yeah

Theories fail this is where the Christian can reason. Well, how about another idea? What's Barry's answer? Oh, well, he'll just shrug his shoulders and I think that's fair Like I like if you want to be it Jewish No, no, that is to say it. You'll say no. I don't know this about no is that well he holds out He says we can't explain it today. It's not that it's in Explainable, this is what the atheists do about the world. I just haven't informed. I got the wrong Which one was it? Sign of four. Mm hmm. I got to do some reading. Well, that's good.

I learned something here today, so I'm happy. But I guess where was it going with that? The he shrugs his shoulders. He shrugs his shoulders. He says there will be an answer. There is one now. And that's a fair. That is I respect that. I respect that.

The one who says like, OK, you brought me to the brink. The the limits of my own. I agree. It's not paint. I agree agree it's not whatever. Exactly and I can't explain it today but maybe tomorrow we will. So why why okay fair enough. But I want to say this is that we're all at the end of the day more than a empiricists. Yes as a scientist, qua-scientist, I'm gonna say I can't explain this. Yeah. But I'm a man. I have all my faculties, and I have to, at the end of the day, say,

yea or nay, what do I think? And thereafter, take in all that I know. And I think this really does bring to the fore the question of the interplay between faith and reason. It's like reason brings you to the shore and you've been walking and now it's time to swim. But it's like, how much evidence do you need? Like, if I could just take one element just to highlight this, if we were to make a list of all of those candidates, all those people who were crowned and crucified, there's exactly one person on that list and that's Jesus of Nazareth.

If there are other people that were crowned and crucified, and it may have been the case, but nobody ever wrote about it. And so what's the probability that it's not Jesus? When you have this unique combination of sufferings, that you have nail wounds in the feet and in the hands, a pierced side, evidence that he carried the cross, that he was nailed to the cross, that he was crowned with thorns, that he was punched in the face. All of this is here. And then you pile on other things like pollen that is consonant with the flora that blossoms between April and May within a radius of, I think, five kilometers to Jerusalem.

And then you have soil. Soil is a very elaborate kind of hoax. Yes. No, I want to shake this guy's hand. Like, yes, like, who is this guy? Like this guy, the guy on the shroud. Let's worship him. Absolutely. Yeah. If it's a fake, we need to like

develop a following of whoever faked it, obviously, to some degree, because he's a genius. Yeah, he's beyond genius. So just to give an example of this, like there's soil. There's soil on the feet and knees and nose. It's terrible to think about what that implies for the via crucis. Like when he fell, he fell flat to his face and some 75 to 125 pounds came crashing down on a head crowned with thorns. The forensic doctors don't agree on much but they agree that those thorns penetrate through the skin to the bony plate below. And so that on the, exactly, amen to that. But from a scientific point of view we can

study this soil that's on the feet, knee, and nose, and determine its chemical composition. We know that it's calcium carbonate with a touch of strontium, and we know further it's crystalline structure to be travertine aragonite, which is an extremely rare crystalline structure. And yet, according to one geologist it matches the soil of the grottoes of Jerusalem like a fingerprint she says and So again if it is fabricated in France in the Middle Ages What in the world is it doing with soil from Palestine there right on?

Precisely in those areas where you'd have contact with the ground. And so it's really it's the cumulative force of all of these different elements. I don't think it's any one thing that kind of like hammers it home. Sure, some are more important than others, some elements are more important than others, but it really is bringing together the convergent evidence that is again and again, consonant with what we know from scripture and what has been passed down and received by our tradition. Mason.

Who's the leading academic that would call this into question? And what does he say in response to this publisher retracting the original debunking of it? Adi. Well, some have said, so Nicoletti is a book that just came out by my want to say Baker or Baker academic. I'm going to forget the title of the book. Sorry. But there have been all kinds of debunkers along the way. In Italy, a big one is Garla Skelly. But there are, you know, YouTube videos that you can easily find that that will go into this, but they're basically holding on to the idea that this is a medieval fake and that the carbon dating, though it wasn't definitive, if we were to do it again, I bet you'd get the same kind of 13th century outcome. And so, because remember, in 2017, what was shown was simply that you can't reach this conclusion.

It might be by other ways we can reach that conclusion. It's simply that with the data that was used in 1988, it doesn't bring you to this conclusion. In other words, it's a non sequitur, right? You would need to do it again. But it does leave open the question. So it may be the case that we like maybe tomorrow and this wouldn't be a problem. Some people have pretended that Christians are out there saying that the case for Christianity rests upon the authenticity of the shroud.

Like we would sleep easy tonight if we got a new test saying, hey, you know what? The shroud is medieval and it doesn't tell us anything about the suffering. I think that would be kind of unfortunate. Like, I'm glad that there's – Mason Hickman There's no way you would sleep easy if that was discovered, especially given what you've just shared about the pollen and the soil. Jason Krohn Well, okay, fair enough. I would be disappointed. But that is to say – Mason Hickman But it wouldn't – Jason Krohn It wouldn't shake my faith in Christianity.

Mason Hickman It wouldn't shake the foundations of the faith. Jason Krohn So, our faith rests upon eyewitness testimony. And what I think is really cool, I mean, obviously we have Mary Magdalene, we had those first apostles, they tell their story, some 500 saw him at one time risen from the dead. And so these people, when they had nothing to gain and everything to lose, they went to their death professing faith in the resurrection. When it was known to be false that people rise from the dead, like nobody in the ancient world believed such a thing that people come back from the dead to live new, glorified,

resurrected lives. Like that's the premise and thesis of NT Wright's big book on the resurrection, right? Christianity came into a world where its central premise was already known to be false, and yet a whole swath of the society went on board and changed their day of worship from Saturday into Sunday because, evidently, they thought something happened on Easter Sunday. And so, whether it's true or whether or not, what you can't deny is that they believed it to be true. And so now you have to account as a historian, like, why in the world would they believe this? And so what I think is cool is that those were eyewitnesses to the living Jesus. But if you were to ask, okay, who saw the moment

that cadaver became a glorified, divinized human body? Nobody was there. Mary Magdalene gets up early, but not early enough. She's late, she slept in, he's gone, the tomb is empty. And so the shroud becomes the silent witness to that event, which I think is amazing because of course, when she goes to the tomb, I know we call it an empty tomb, but what you read about is that it's not empty. In fact, it's what they find there that when they find it, the way that they find it, they begin to believe. And so,

I think it's so powerful that in John 20 verse 8, it says, John saw and believed. And this is where I want to take him by the lapels and be like, slap him across the cheeks a little bit. What did you see so that you believed? This is the first distinctive Christian faith attested anywhere in the scriptures. And it's why not? Why can't that just mean he saw an empty tomb? Well, what you described, can we pull that up actually? Because that's worth talking about. This is such a good question. Oh, you'll look up the scripture. Yeah, let's read that. Because I think this has not been given nearly enough attention in the scholarly literature And also with regard to shroud studies and so I'm glad for the question

I'm just gonna pull up my Bible here and Check it out in Greek just those who are watching right now If you're a local supporter go to Matt fred dot locals calm we've got a private chat going on so you can join that and ask questions and I Will be sure to ask father your questions at some point in the episode. Do you want me to ask some of this review already looked it up? I don't know.

No, no, I'm ready. So this is John chapter 20 and this we know well because it's what we proclaim on Easter Sunday is the first day of the week. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb early while it's still dark and sees that the stone's been taken away. And so she goes and tells Simon Peter and the beloved disciple, that's John, and says, they've taken away the Lord, he's not in the tomb. I don't know where they laid him. So Peter and John go running. And in verse four, it says they're running together, but John goes faster. I guess Peter is a little older, a little slow, maybe a little extra pounds on the gut. I don't know, but he he didn't get there first John does

I love this detail in verse 5 John bends down says he stoops He stoops and the reason this is significant is because it coincides with what we know from archaeology in first century tombs interesting There's a stairwell down that leads to an ante chamberamber and then against the wall, like on a shelf, much like in the catacombs if you've been there, you'll see that's where the body would lie. And so Simon Peter goes in first. But first it's John who sees from a distance the linen cloths. That's the word that I'm reading. I'm reading from the ESV. If you get into different translations, you're going to get different vocabulary here. But the linen cloths, notice the S at the end.

It's because in the... So read it from the scriptures, it says what? In verse five, in stuping to look in, he saw the linen cloths. So it's blepe kemonata othonia. So he sees the othonia, that's a neuter plural, and that's why we add S to the, it's burial cloths or linen cloths. And the question is, what in the world was that?

Especially since in the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we get a different word. We get the word syndone, which is shroud, like a long sheet that covers. So it's a syndone in Mark, I think, 15. Remember that young man that mysteriously is like, runs away naked when they tear away his tunic or whatever? That's a sindon, that's a shroud.

So it's evidently something big enough to cover a body. But the point is here, that John, from a distance, he doesn't go in but he gets low because now he gets a good angle to see deep inside and what he sees from a distance is this linen cloth okay that's interesting but what happens next Simon goes in like I can just imagine Johnson after you Holy Father like he waited for it for Peter and now Peter steps down that the threshold of the where the The stone would have been rolled away into the antechamber and he tells us what he sees

Coming into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths That's the second mention of this word Othonia and look at this He saw the linen cloths lying there in other translations. It adds Funny words like lying on the ground but I'm here in the Greek and I can tell you that it does nothing of the sort it just says Theore ta othonia keimena he saw the linen cloths lying and it's also interesting to note that he changed the verb to see in English we're gonna get three times he saw he saw and he saw, and he saw. But

in John's language, he changes vocabulary, and I think that's intentional. It seems that there's a crescendo in light. He's seeing, but we're seeing more and more. So in the first moment, what does Peter see extra that John didn't see? Well, he sees the linen cloths lying and the face cloth, that's the sudarium, which had been on Jesus' head, it tells us, not lying with the linen cloths, that's a third mention in three verses of the same exact word, Othonia, but folded up in a separate place. And you're like, come on, John, there are a thousand details I wish I could know about the Passion of Christ. Like, how big were the th thorns where did they pierce him in the side how many scourge marks um but it's like relegated to a subordinate clause and

then he keeps on going but boy when it's time to tell you about the dirty laundry in the tomb like he's going on and on about it and that got to catch your attention like what is the, what is the purpose? What is the purpose here? Where is he going with this discourse? And finally in verse eight, he comes to the climactic conclusion to say, then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first,

that's John, right? He also went in and he saw and believed. And it's not blepo, that was the first verb. It's not theoreo, that's the second verb that Peter sees. But now it's horao, that he saw and believed. And so especially being used in conjunction with the verb to believe, there's the sense that there's sight that is natural and then there's sight that is supernatural. There's seeing and then they're seeing, right? And these are the

first baby steps towards that fundamental belief that, yeah, it founds the rest of our faith. We take Paul seriously anyway when he says, if Christ isn't raised, your faith is in vain. Like, it all rests upon this. And here's the testimony, bearing its witness, he saw. What did he see? There's a detail here. I wish I could jump in one of those time machines with Michael J. Fox or whatever and reconstruct the scene of what exactly they saw. There's lots of fun theories out there. We can get into that if you want. But what I do know is this, that it's because he saw what he saw and others the condition of the empty tomb. And it's what's quoted in the catechism if I'm not mistaken

It's what is it 460 or no, it's thinking 640 I sometimes get dyslexia on these things But it says that it's the condition of the empty tomb that led them to belief and so whatever they saw it Was it was it started with something visible something sensible? And so this is where I want to go to the text and say, okay, what clues do you got for me here? Anything? And there is something and it's fundamental.

It's not much, but it may just be all we need. I come back to that funky sentence that is translated with such difficulty. He saw the linen cloths lying there. And I told you in Spanish, for example, they say lying on the ground. We read this in our liturgy in Spanish. I think that's unfortunate because it doesn't say on the ground as if the point were to say it's not on the staircase. It's not on the

sill where his body lay. No, it's on the ground. No, that's, that's pulled that out of thin air. It doesn't say that nor does it say lying there as if to say not here, but there. The word there is not in the Greek. It's just not there. It's just not there. But it does say that they're lying. And the word kemena can mean lying flat. So if the body has dematerialized,

I don't like that term, but it communicates what I'm trying to get at. If the body is no longer there, such that the cloth that's surrounded can now collapse, the result might be described as a cloth lying like a balloon that's lost its air. It's got nothing inside and so that it can collapse. I see. Add one more detail. The fact that it's a plural and not a singular. It's not a shroud, but it's here. It's the linen cloths.

Okay, so what else do we know here? According to the American scientists, if you look to the beard, there's a depression in the beard, evidencing a strap that would have kept the mouth closed so that after rigor mortis relaxes, you wouldn't have a mouth just gaping wide open. It would be tight closed. Likewise, there's a strap evidently over the ankles but below the knees

that's keeping the legs together. And so it seems that the man is taller on the front of the cloth than he is if you were to measure from the back because there's a fold in the cloth because of this strap. And so some have theorized that in addition to the sindon, which is that long sheet that kind of folds above and below the body, you have these other strips that bring together at certain points and contain the body. This is really interesting if you know John 11, because that's when Jesus calls Lazarus out of the tomb and he gives him a command You remember what he says I'm trying my blind time. There it is. So evidently there's something to untie And so could be interesting could it be that something similar is here in Jesus's case that

John who was there at the foot of the cross on Friday and now he's back on Sunday morning and he sees what he saw before except Nobody and so he might have described it in this way. The bottom line is this, what we have in the text says that it's not that he crucified his intellect when he came to believe, no, he departed from something that was intelligible and then carried it forward when he came into an encounter with Jesus. And that's where this itinerary ends. It moves from seeing certain details that are fuzzy and at a distance,

then we come up close and personal, and then we get the vision of faith, but then it climaxes in encounter when Mary Magdalene encounters the Lord. And that's where our faith journey ends too. You know, it's like, come press and probe, like study the shroud, but don't be unbelieving, but believe. See with faith. Holy mackerel! Okay, so I know you want to draw out a lot of things from scripture, but can we get to some questions? You bet. But before we do that, can I tell people to go check out? Hello dot com slash Matt.

It is the number one Christian. Matt Fradd, I think I think Matt works as well. H a l l o w dot com slash Matt Fradd. You're right. Thursday. Matt Fradd, check him out because it's the number one Catholic app on the interwebs. I think it might be the number one Catholic app on the interwebs. I think it might be the number one Christian app. Don't quote me.

It's a bloody fantastic app and it'll help you to pray. And I know a lot of people for your New Year's resolution said you'd like to do that more. What's cool about Hallow is it'll help you do that. And it's really well produced. And if you go to Hallow.com slash Matt Fred, the link is in the description below and sign up there. You'll get a three month free trial, which is just ridiculous.

So after the end of those three months, if you don't agree with me that it's as good as I'm saying, you can unsubscribe and you won't pay a cent, but it'll help you. It'll lead you through the rosary. It has nighttime stories, bedtime stories. You can listen to it, has stories for your children lead you through the rosary. It has nighttime stories, bedtime stories you can listen to. It has stories for your children that you can play for them at night. It really is absolutely excellent and a hundred percent Catholic. So if you want to pray the rosary, if you want to know how to meditate in a Catholic

fashion, please check it out. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Click the link in the description below. Sign up there. That way they know that I sent you and you'll get those three months for free All right, can I sign up on the website so that you? If you I know a lot of people in the communities don't want to give them More money to Apple or Google than they need to so if you sign up on the website then Apple and Google don't get a cut Through the payment processing on your phone

Thank you. All right, so Heidi thanks for being a local supporter says who is dragging their feet on the proper dating of it who has to approve it? So I think that goes back to the question of okay, we did carbon dating, but it was on it But so if a new carbon dating thing would actually prove it Whose permission do we got to get right? So as of 1983? The shroud was bequeathed from the royal family to the person of John Paul the second because he is the successor of Peter So it is as of 1983. That's like recent history. That's like yesterday in the grand scheme Yeah, so now it is the property of Francis.

So of course he has a delegate in Turin, is the archbishop there in Turin, and he also has people under him that tend to the nitty gritty. But I think what would need to happen is that the scientific community would have to reach a kind of consensus in order to suggest, like, hey,

this is not just what needs to be done, but the exact way in which it needs to be orchestrated so that the community at large can be confident that the results are credible. And so after the fiasco of 1988, nobody's like just itching to do this. And I just want to say that we're in a great place right now to talk about the shroud. And we need more people. I love what I do. I love that I get to go around the world

talking about the shroud. And I have in China and Hong Kong and Singapore and the Philippines and throughout Europe and here in the States. But I wish I didn't have to in a way. Like I wish there were other people that would get on board and do this. So thank you by the way for the platform to share this.

But people need to know that they can get educated on this. Do a postgraduate certificate in shroud studies from Othonia. It's in Spanish, it's in Italian and it's in English. And learn about it, share about it, bring it to your parish, bring it to your catechism classes. People need to hear this. You never know who can benefit from this kind of discourse. I think it's really sad that we've kind of dumbed down our catechesis.

Our strategizing for evangelization has often been like more carpets in our chapels and more electric guitars and that kind of thing. What if we were to like turn up the volume on the intellectual side of Christianity? I think some people need to hear some of these details and you never know who can be helped. I've certainly seen it again and again in young people. So we'll put a link to this Athonia. Yeah. So if people want to do a post-grad certificate in this, they can. While I'm on the topic, I know you have a new podcast that's about to drop and I want

people to know about it before we get to more questions because I know you, I know Father Michael, you're two of the most brilliant and charming priests I've ever met. So I cannot wait until your podcast starts. We're going to put a link in the description below to your podcast, Those Two Priests. Those Two Priests. I know you don't have any videos yet, but I want to tell everybody, click that link. Do we have a link?

We'll have a link up there soon, and subscribe to their podcast. So once you guys start dropping videos. And thank you for the idea. It's athonyinternational.org, right? Yeah, I'll give you the exact link to the postgraduate certificate, because what we have is the Science and Faith Institute,

which is under the big umbrella of this Pontifical University and it's complicated. So I'll just get you the direct link and put it in the description for those who want to follow along. But yeah, thanks for that word about the podcast. I'm excited about that. It's not going to be only shroud related. The idea is that we're just going to have conversation as two priests that want to shoot the breeze with people Who from different as much like much like you do here quite honestly, but I think I'm excited for it, too I think it's gonna be good. So we're just building the studio now and it's a little bit right Bob right with you guys That's great. Okay

Vespers says do we have any other? extant burial shrouds or similar textiles from that time period? For example, when the tomb of St. Peter was discovered, there were bits of purple cloth and we know that his bones were wrapped in a purple cloth when the original basilica was built. Are there other grave shrouds like this? Nothing like this is the answer to the question. The shroud is an absolute unicum for these three reasons and it's worth Repeating that the shroud bears an image of a man An image that is anatomically perfect. That's one

Two that it acts as a photo negative where the grayscale is inverted and then three that it encodes three-dimensional information There's not a single other cloth that is any of those characteristics. Are there other burial cloths? Yeah, even predating the shroud, but also from the period. I think right there in Jerusalem, like a stone's throw from this Holy Sepulcher, just to the south, like towards Gehenna, there's a cave that is called something like the Field of the Shroud because of some cloths that that were found and I'm sure there are many others that we could point to. I don't have them off the top of my head. But this is extremely rare. Obviously, if you have a decomposing body next to a linen cloth, it's going to decompose much more rapidly. One of the things that is surprising about the shroud is that there are no signs of decomposition or putrefaction anywhere on this body, which to my mind harkens back to Psalm 16, right? Where, do you remember Acts of the Apostles chapter 2 when Peter quotes the Psalm and says, you will not allow your beloved to

see corruption? Of course, he's using the scriptures to talk about the resurrection of Christ. Now he's applying this verse to Jesus, but it also applies neatly to what we know about from the shroud, that there's no signs that rigor mortis has been relaxed, there's no signs that out of the nose and mouth that pneumonia gas exited out of these passages. And you would expect that. It would be a very different and gruesome image

that you would find if a dead body had stayed in contact with a trap longer than 40 hours that's when that's when rigor mortis relaxes But somewhere between 30 and 36 hours, of course If you if you zoom in on the on the blood stains, especially at the wrists, which are very crisp and neat in their In their limits in their contours, it shows that this is dried blood that is re-softened by a process called fibrognalysis ever so slowly, but it's a ticking clock. It tells us how long that blood stain is in contact with the cloth so as to create this stain.

And the answer that the scientists give us is that somewhere between 30 to 36 hours after initiation, fibrognosis was interrupted. And so what that means is that not only did the body not extend beyond rigor mortis, which never relaxed, but the body is no longer in contact with the cloth beyond the 30 or maximally the 36 hour mark. So we're talking, if you do the math with me a little bit, if Jesus is tucked away in the tomb before the third star in the sky appears when the Sabbath rest descends upon

them, it's probably, let's say it's 6 p.m. 30 hours later is midnight on Easter Sunday, 6 a.m. is, you know, six hours later, they're in the wee small hours of Easter Sunday, they're telling us somewhere between midnight and 6 a.m., the body is no longer in contact with the cloth. And so, again, this is where I say it certainly leaves room to say the least for the Christian hypothesis. And so, what do we make of it? What sense do we make of it? So to answer the question of the person, do we have any other cloth?

Yeah, you can look to things like, is it a Z or is it an S twist? Things like that. Do they know what to do with three to one herringbone weave? Yes, these kinds of things we know but to my mind that's lower down on the chain, right? I mean the more important aspects that that count, let's say, they all have to do with the image and there we just find nothing, nothing remotely close. Even when we engineer them, knowing all the characteristics today at a microscopic level, they're not they're not close. I would love to see the closest representation of the shroud that we've been willing to put off. I'll show you some. Oh, you've got some? Yeah.

Oh, my goodness. I'm pumped. OK, so there was there was while you look that up, there was some comedian. I forget if it was Brian Regan, who said that we don't get a sense of just how good these athletes are at the Olympic Games, because they're all running next to each other and they're all really good. So what we need to do is get some fat guy like me from the stands and have them run alongside. So I'm excited to see the comparison between what we've been able to accomplish. No, it's great I love these guys when they try

Yeah, I'll pull it up for you now. I'm scrolling. So let's go to what which one does that say? 60 60 of 63 so this is one there's some more as we scroll down, but let's do 60 So there are some that have said that the shroud it's really bad They call it instead of the shroud of Turin I'm sorry Lord to say it but the shroud of urine have you heard this before? Because what you can do is get this emulsion on a cloth you pass clever But I might because I'm a dad, so dad jokes appeal to me.

Anyway. So the theory here is that if you have a dark room, something like with a kind of photographic effect, they said, what if you had a body out in the sunlight and then passing through this prism, see this little hole in the wall on the top right? And then what would happen is it would be projected, the image would project now upside down and it would create a photo negative and it works like the amazing thing is it actually does

Produce the image of the body you could put a statue out in the Sun and it'll do that There's a I think it's National Geographic that has this guy in a white lab coat. I'm gonna forget his name I know it's nickels. I think nickel Joe nickel I want to say Joe nickel, but he's a magician by trade, but he dresses up with a fancy white coat to to Present his theory to you Which I'm at the end of the day super happy about because what he produces though It's impressive is nothing like the shroud because it has clear highlights. Look at the top of the feet Mm-hmm. Look at the top of the hands and that at the top of the hands, and then the shadow under the chin,

and under the hands. There are no highlights and shadows anywhere on the shroud. And they don't tell you this in the National Geographic version, but that image can only last a matter of days. You expose it to sunlight and it just disappears. And you have to think about, imagine a human body anatomically perfect

in the sun for four days, that's how long you need in order to project the image. What does that body look like after four days? Like the flesh is still hanging on the body, I don't know. And you have to turn it around and do it again for another four days to get the back of the body. Again, this is not gonna show up in the literature, but that's, or the, cause when you're making it you have to realize

that when you're watching a Documentary you gotta who's paying for that documentary and what what is their interest? It's not the same as peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that have to sustain the scrutiny of their peers in order to then Okay, so that's one that's a that's if the shroud were a photograph a kind of camera oscura, made by Leonardo da Vinci, they say, right, in the 13th century or thereabouts. No, never mind that he's born like 100 years later, but that's a minor detail. The other one here is Garla Scheli, here in the center, the middle, a kind of drawing. But again, we don't have anything soaked into the fibers. There are no brush strokes. There's Garlazkeli here in the center, the middle kind of drawing.

But again, we don't have anything soaked into the fibers. There are no brush strokes. There's no directionality. There's no way. I mean, impressive as it might be. It's still in 60, but at the bottom center, the black and white, I believe that's Garlazkeli's image. This is a...

Yeah, that looks, that looks almost almost I thought that was the real way oh no no no so the one on the right I'll bring up the other the original to so you can compare and contrast but again it's the chemical aspects the chemical composition and the the microscopic level that's where these utterly fail these aren't surface phenomenon there Remember we can only penetrate the 2 to 500 nanometers. They're not even remotely close at that level. Even if you think like artistically they're convincing. This one is Emily, oh gosh I forgot her last name, it's like Cumming or something like that. But who thinks that it's a rubbing? You ever do that in kindergarten where you put a leaf under a paper and you're like,

pshh, with a crayon, you know? So it is impressive that it's also way too accurate and it looks like a medical drawing or something like that. It's impressive, but again, it just doesn't have the characteristics. What's really enigmatic about the shroud is that even though it's been exposed to water, indeed like soaked in water, such that there are water stains, there are water stains on top of the body image and they don't obscure or dilute or mess up in the least the body image.

Neither do the fire. What you can see, and we should pull this up for the crowd here. Let's go to those first slides I can't remember. What was it like number four? So that shows these here. There's a good one number six that shows the The triangles that you see yeah here here and here they're kind of these symmetrical patterns. It's because the shroud was folded up Mmm, of course if there's four dividing lines So fold it in half right there in the center, then fold what remains in half, and then half again so that the face is what remains. That would have been most interesting to those who wanted to show it off or venerate the shroud. And then,

of course, you fold it along the long axis, and then you get the four-folded garment. In fact, that's one of the names in history that we know of a linen cloth that bears the image of the Savior, the Tetra Diplon. It just means the four-folded linen corresponds to the four folds we find on the shroud. But that's what creates these symmetrical patterns because the shroud, once folded, is inside of a silver casing, and that, in the fire, melts down and sing silver casing and that in the fire melts down and singes the outer edges of the folded cloth. And so the result is this, the, the fire, however, did not destroy the body image. The high temperatures didn't mess up.

That that's absolutely the case with every painting that we know. Um, the same could be said about scorching. Like one of the theories was that you take a statue, heat it up, put a cloth on top, and then like singe it, right? That would be a scorch. But again, it's the scientific data that's important here. If you look at the ultraviolet fluorescence, that would tell you where there's a scorch. And it's impossible that this is a scorch. Not improbable, but utterly impossible. So again, we can discard all of those attempts at reading the shroud are so unlike what we actually have

that we should be able to say thanks, but no thanks. Like this is not a feasible way of thinking about the way the shroud image came it came to be That's a good question yeah, so if you were to take a picture of me with your camera It's obvious that the picture would show my white collar as white and my black jacket as black. So color doesn't correspond to distance information because indeed the camera is equally distant to the white as it is to the black. This is not the case with the shroud.

The shroud is monochromatic. It's all one hue. But think of like pointillism. So think of like imagine you had one magic marker and it's orange Let's say and you want to give the impression of certain dark areas and certain light areas What you do is you draw more dots in less space to give the impression Yeah of a deeper a darker hue and then you just spread out those dots in order to give the impression of a lighter shade And that's what you have on the shroud. So where there's contact with the cloth And then you just spread out those dots in order to give the impression of a lighter shade.

And that's what you have on the shroud. So where there's contact with the cloth, like where the nose sticks out or the chin sticks out, it's touching the cloth in such a way that the shroud is more densely colorized here at the nose. But imagine now the Adam's apple. It's going to be slightly distant to the cloth because it's draped over the chin and now that gap means that there's less Colorization less densely colorized Hue and this means for the scientists that there is an inverse proportion

Between the density of image and the distance to the camera which in this place is the cloth So the bottom line is that they can look at the brightness map of the shroud, put it through the VP8, which maps eight shades of gray, and now it's translating two-dimensional information, which is the cloth is 2D, obviously, or it's flat. But now if I can put it through the VP8 image analyzer, which I didn't describe, so let's do that. This is slide number nine. This is showing Eric Jumper and John Jackson, and the instrumentation on the right is the VP8 image analyzer.

This was used by NASA, by the way, to map the topography of distant planets that we didn't travel to, but we could know the hills and the valleys just by a special form of photography. And if I scroll down to the next slide, I guess this would be 10, you can see on the right what the VP8 image analyzer renders. Obviously, there's interference because of the cloth and the weave and the thread.

But the contours of a human face are clear, like the nose sticks out in such a way that corresponds to a human face. This is not the case with any other photograph. You take a picture of me, my face, slip it under the VP8, my nose might go inside instead of out. Like, it makes no sense. On the shroud, however, it corresponds to the contours of a human body.

And so this is what was noticed by these two American scientists of the United States Air Force Academy. And when they notice it, it's so mind-blowing to them that this is what sparks the Shroud of Turin research project. This is why they go overseas with all that state-of-the-art equipment when they see that this... We can build a statue based on the mathematical information that is contained in that cloth, even though there is some artistic license like for the eyebrows and things like that. But the rest, for example, the chin is close to the sternum.

Why? Because the head was hanging on the cross, right? And so if it looks like his head is raised as if a pillow is underneath, it's not. The body is in rigor mortisis and he's maintained the same position as he held on the cross. Likewise with the knees, like you might think, oh, there's some triangular support under the knees. No, it's just that his knees were bent on the cross. So that's how they were when he was wrapped.

And that's how they remain. Exactly. So they're going to force the hands down, obviously, And that's how they remain. Exactly. So they're going to force the hands down, obviously, in order to carry him from the execution site about 140 feet, if I'm not mistaken, down Calvary and into this cave, which is the garden. I love this little aspect, little often missed. But Jesus is buried in a garden and there he's laid to rest and it's from that place that the new Eden is constructed right that the Jesus is it's risen from the dead and read in this way gives us access into Eden so there's a little spiritual reading for you that is remarkable an explanation for the newest objection to the

authenticity about the angle the blood marks would have had to have been made from hmm I'm not sure what the questioner is referring to. That's your question? Yeah. Okay, well then I can... I did a touch of research to the newest objections. Okay, so there are some reconstructions that will even show the way the blood flows. Sometimes I feel like this is exaggerated, however, because Baima Bologna is a forensic doctor in Italy.

There were two in America, Heller and Adler, who studied the blood stains in, I want to say, the 1980s to determine certain characteristics of the blood. But Baima Bologna suggests that the scourge marks, and we have some 360 of them, so some 240 scourge marks on the back, 120 on the front. And it's every area. I just assumed that he was scourged just on the back.

That's what I would have thought. But it's not, it's from the clavicle to the ankles, front and back. Was Mel Gibson inspired by the shroud? Oh yeah, oh yeah. And now in some ways, however, he tells that he, what's the saint that- Gemma or no?

No, no, no, no, that has- Whatever you mean. These visions- Private revelations. Private revelations. And so he tells that he what's the saints that Gemma or no, no, no, no, no, that has you mean these private revelations, private revelations. And so he tells that in an interview, someone will tell you in the live chat in three seconds. So you just shout it out when it's there. Catherine, yeah, and Emmerich. There we go. There we go. That's the one.

And so in an interview, he says how he took inspiration from some of that. And he also also from kind ofavaggio paintings in some points now he tells you his point is to drive you over the edge Emotionally like he wants to bring you to the brink of like can you even look at this? It's so he wants that he wants it to be an emotive response and so he does drum up certain details like for example Jesus carries the t-cross which would weigh something like 300 plus pounds. I'm so glad you brought this up. Okay. Based on the shroud and based what we know historically, he carried the pitbullum, the

cross, that is only the horizontal beam that weighs some 57 or 75. I know in pounds is like 75 to 125 pounds is what we postulate that, but he carried it in just the same way as men who work on the railroad who carry a similar type of beam. Across their shoulders? No, favoring the right shoulder. Okay. One-third of the weight would have been about in front of him, two-thirds behind, and they would rest at something like this so that you have excoriation on the right shoulder and then again on the left shoulder blade precisely the the scapular that sticks out That's what's braided against as he as he jostles his position as he falls to the ground a 10 centimeter square

excoriation on the left shoulder blade a little further down and closer to the spine and so I've heard that Padre Pio said that was the most painful portion of his stigmata the shoulder wound exactly. I've heard that too Yes, I've heard that too, yes, I've heard that too. Now, and that was, again, is private revelation. But I do want to just sift out two kinds of things. So I think one thing is a saint's private revelation. Another thing is a historical archeological object. And they don't necessarily coincide.

So I've got a lot in my mind right now and I wanna answer his question too, but I've just gotta go to the stigmata because this is a case in point, right? Many stigmatists have the nail wounds in the center of the palms, and yet on the shroud, it's in desto space. I'll pull it up just so we can have a graphic that,

but if you look like under the muscle in the thumb, you'll have, if you were to bend bend so put your thumb and pinky together right bend down like 90 degrees and now under the muscle in your thumb you'll get a little divot at least some of us have this okay you have this I've got a I'm not sure there's the camera I've got this like 10 degrees right in the center that's where there's a that's where the nail went in and it penetrated out 1.5 centimeters higher on the opposite side. And so according to a French surgeon by the name Pierre Barbet, who writes a book called A Doctor at Calvary, he does this experiment on fresh cadavers.

Sorry for the macabre detail here a little bit. No, let's do it. It's really worth just to understand like so much of my- That's the kind of science I want to give my body to. Give your body to? Yeah, to kind of like- For science. Yeah. To understand more about the crucifixion. Okay, I'm glad to see you, not me.

No. No, because this is bad news. Seriously, when the bad news about putting the nail here is that there are two nerves that pass just through the spot It's the ulnar nerve and the median nerve and they don't control It's not just that they control the movement of your fingertips But they're their sense nerves that are gonna send shock waves of pain through your central nervous system I meant once I'm dead. Oh, what's your dad?

Oh, yeah, I was someone to crucify me now. No, no, no, okay I was gonna think of you as a hero, but not you just dropped down a notch. That would have been an idiot. So we've got really good reason. I think it wasn't through the palms of the hands. Right. And so this has been asked like Jesus, if the shroud were authentic, surely we would see that the nail wounds would be in the hands. Are you going to tell me that all those stigmatists, Padre Pio included were wrong? And and thanks be to God, it's the stigmatists themselves who answer Peter included, were wrong. And thanks be to God, it's the stigmatists themselves who answer this question, so I don't have to. And they say, look, don't think that this is how he was fastened historically. He must have been

fixed in a more permanent way. But when you see the stigmatists, you immediately understand those are the wounds of Jesus, which is exactly the point. Like, for our sake, for understanding, like Paul... If your wrists were bleeding. Well, Paul would say, he's like, look, I bear the marks of Christ, right? So there's this sense of, there's a credibility because he is sharing, he's filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, to use the words of Colossians 1.24, right? There's something like, okay, Christ the head

in heaven is glorified, he's suffering no more, but in his mystical body, he continues to suffer. How do you convey that idea? If all of our artwork, if all of our churches have down through the centuries depicted Christ crucified with the nail in the hands, it's the way to communicate effectively, even if it's not historically true, that those are the wounds that you participate in the wounds of Christ, is to put the nail wounds

in here in the palms. But we know, and Pierre Barbet tested this in the 1930s and then publishes in the 50s, if you put a nine-inch nail with a square cross section through this portion of the palm, after just 10 minutes and with a little shove, it comes right through what is just soft tissue. There's no transversal support here. There's no way it could sustain the weight of a human body, not even half the weight of a human body. And in fact, we know from the first century literature that you could be crucified for

some two weeks and not die. Do you know that in some instances, they would, little variations of crucifixion could be employed so you could give a little sedile, a little seat, so that some of the weight could be redistributed in such a way that even if the crows had come and pecked out your eyes, you're still alive. You're not bleeding that much on the shroud.

It's when they take out the nail, now the faucet is opened, now the blood can flow. You're not actually bleeding that much. Just to remind you, I never answer your question about the blood flows, and I'm getting there. So this is important to say, that even if the scourge marks aren't penetrating the skin so that blood is flowing out, that's what Mel Gibson exaggerates. He uses the scorpione like this. Have you remember that scene where the- The shells tied into the leather straps shells and like bone, class, or something.

I don't know. It was like metal shards that would kill you and in short time. But what we see on the shroud is actually much more credible. We have these scourge marks. I was telling you, front and back. We can even tell you the directionality with which they fall. Imagine this for the con artist theory. If you look at the mid-body range, all of these scourge marks land perpendicular to the main axis of the body, but if they fall towards the feet or towards the head, that is towards the

extremities, it's always at an oblique angle. And we can draw the arc, so we can know that there are two lictores, two men scourging, one on either side of the body, pivoting from one fixed point, so we can see their half circle, we can see this arc. And that's why the patterns land as they do, but it means that one guy was evidently taller than the other because his arc was longer than the other. This was discovered in the 1980s like

somebody's gonna draw a circle around every single one of these scourge marks. You actually have that here. I'd love to throw that up if we can. We definitely will and so it's Monsignor Ritchie who looks at this directionality but what I was gonna say is it's not sure it's a debated point whether these scourge marks actually penetrate the skin So let's go to slide 22. That's the the passion of the Christ Mel Gibson has this very dramatic scene I always have to pull away at this point Like do you remember when it like latches on to the skin and you're like waiting for it to buy like I can't I can't watch

That scene it's just too much But what we see on the shroud is more like this, the very next slide, 23. We have a picture of a Roman flagrum and this is the instrument of torture that has three leather straps, at least that's the postulate, just because they're groups of three. At the end of these elastic leather straps we have these lead balls that are going to leave these scourge marks. You can see this pattern, which I've created in black again and again, all over the shroud. I think it's Peter Jackson from Stirp that will count these, and others have published on the same point to say that it's some 240 on the back and 120 on the front, which means

a total of 360 divided by 3 means a hundred and twenty lashes that is three times as many as the Old Testament scriptures allow so don't confuse a Roman scourging with a Jewish flogging they're utterly distinct the the Jewish flogging is in the synagogue with leather straps and it never exceed exceeds 39 lashes. Do you remember, I think it's in 2 Corinthians 11 where Paul says, five times I suffered the 40 minus one. That was the upper limit because you're not to treat your brother like a beast, he says, and I think he quotes Deuteronomy there. But of course, they have no concern.

We're not in the synagogue, we're not using a Jewish flog. This is the Roman flag room. And each one of these marks is the equivalent of a third degree burn, as far as the damage that it does to the human body, even if it doesn't perforate the skin. So look, you could fall off a motorbike and be six weeks late up in a hospital.

Maybe you didn't shed a drop of blood, but it's no less painful. And as far as your circulatory system is concerned, that is blood loss even if it's a hemorrhage under the surface of the skin. So if you look at some hyper-realistic versions of The Man of the Shroud, they'll show blood stains, like each one of these oozing blood. And that may be a little a little much it may be the case it may not be the case but this by my baloney argues that this is what's called echymosis that is like a What do you call that a cardinal in Spanish a bruise a bruise like where it gets? Discolored on the surface of the skin even if it doesn't perforate the skin

In any case I was going about the directionality. There's definitely in the crown of thorns, even if it doesn't perforate the skin. In any case, I was going about the directionality. There's definitely in the crown of thorns, right? The crown is in the vertical position, so it's now accumulating. You have this cap of thorns. Do we have an image of that? Oh yeah, let's look at that. That's important.

Okay, so that's gonna be right before. What? Is that the same one that's in Notre Dame? Notre Dame in Paris? It's Saint-Chapelle actually is the if I'm not mistaken Saint-Loup, yeah here we go This is going to be, okay tell you what

go to 26 This is just a picture that shows how we've often imagined the crown of thorns as a wreath Oh sorry it is 27. Yeah, 27. But again and again we've seen pictures like these where there's like a circle, a circlet that goes around the ears leaving the top of the head

exposed. And if you are a con artist trying to convince people that this is Jesus, you'd be inclined to do something like this on the shroud. But in this case, the shroud dares to deviate from the sacred norm here. It gives us instead a cap of thorns. So just go to the very next slide. And what we see is that it covers every area of the head. So we have some 30 to 50 puncture wounds

that have little rivulets of blood. If you scroll down to slide 29, some have reconstructed what they think the cap of thorns would look like using the Zesophis spinacristi. That's the species of plant that has these thorns that are three quarters of an inch long. The very Latin name. How difficult would that have been to make? Well, there are different versions of this

that look like somebody spent three hours weaving. And I'm not convinced that a Roman centurion is gonna make this beautiful braid before he puts it neatly on Jesus' head. So I think it's much more likely that he just kind of lopped off a mess of thorn, took a pliant branch or wicker that you see here in the slide 29,

and then bound together that mess of thorn, and then with his spear and sword just pressed it on his head. And so these thorns, although supple when green, when they dry, they're like nails that just pierce through the skin. And so that's what the helmet looks like. It's interesting that the Greek word for crown is Stefanos So if you have any friends named Stephen, you know what that comes from. It's crown But the crown in the first century and in the literature that we get in the also in the Old Testament Of course is going to be translated into the Greek as well in the Septuagint The Stefanos was what was on the head of the priest and what did the priest's crown look like? Well, we can read about that. I think it's in Exodus towards the end

You're gonna see how it's covering the entire head And so even though in the Middle Ages our crowns sure they were you know These circles around like a ring on top of the head in the first century You could well imagine that something like that would be called a crown And so so what I go to in the next slide, if you see it's slide 30, these are just pictures. Now the intensity has, the contrast has been turned up to see these blood stains at the nape of the neck. So of course the suppliant branch is going to get, there's going to be this pooling effect as the blood drips down from the head according to gravity. It's going to now drip down the back of the neck

And so this is what you see these kind of like see how that is flowing down and towards the center So that is an area where you would have expected a great accumulation of blood and and so it is that you see that on the shroud some have said and I I wish I could see exactly, that at the shoulder that there is evidence of a blood stain that goes in the opposite direction. So some have suggested that when he was scourged, he was leaning over such that blood could flow.

It looks like it's for up, but because of his position at the time, it's actually flowing down. That is one thing I'm not sure. I know that the bit about blood flowing from the scourge wounds is contested So I'd have to see further details about that, but I think this is so Hard to reproduce Especially at the wrist the blood the flow of blood

Yes, so let's let's look at that because this I want to go to way down to the point of crucifixion where we see the wounds in the hands and I must have gone past it because this is his death. Here we go. Yeah, so there's a bifurcation in the bloodstain here. I'm looking at slide, does that say 39? 39. So of course Jesus is hanging from the cross. So when he's on the ground, he would be at a 90 degree angle. And I'll tell you what, let me go through the whole process for you. Go to slide number 37. And so the stipes, like that's the vertical beam, it's already planted in the ground, ready to, because this is the execution site. This is Mount Calvary. And they were ready to receive those

who would be put to death. And so what you were carrying had pre-established holes, and it had a fixture to receive the patibulum, the horizontal beam. And so all the centurion had to do is lay the victim out flat, stretch out his hands 90 degrees to his body, take a nine inch nail in one hand, a hammer in the other, you know, drive it into the wrist and it would go through the hole and now fix his hand to the cross.

He'd get to the other side and he'd have to make the wrist line up with a pre-established hole. If it doesn't reach, he makes it reach by dislocating the shoulder and then driving in the nail. And so that is what some have suggested about the man of the shroud, dislocated shoulder. And then he's made to stand up in the vertical position. And we seldom think about this transition don't we? So two men would grab either end. What number is that? This is 38. Okay sorry. Yeah and so he's now hoisted up and plopped down on the

vertical piece and now he hangs from 90 degrees he sags 25 degrees and for at least a moment all of the weight of his body is hanging on those two nails in his hands and it's only when they put a nail in his feet that they can redistribute the weight. But let me look to slide 39 because this is what shows how there's a blood flow from the wrist and there's a bifurcation pattern here of about five to seven degrees. And this is very strange. Like, why do we have two flows of blood? And the answer is that in this position, you can't breathe out. What you need to do, because what's happening is as you're in this position, your pleural cavity, so you have this pleura, is this double membrane that envelops your lungs,

and it fills with body fluid as you slowly asphyxiate. You would asphyxiate quite quickly if your hands were together. Do you know that the Nazis knew this? If you want to hang someone from the rafters and kill them quickly, just hang them with your hands together and that stretches out these intercostal muscles, the muscles that control your breathing between the ribs, and you can't exhale. This is where the victims start kicking the air so that they spontaneously they want to breathe. They can't help it. But of course when you're on the cross, this is a debilitating factor if not a cause of death because now the hands are spread out and so you last longer.

They were protracting on purpose your agony by giving you a nail in your feet that actually allows you to sustain the weight of your body. Now you can press down on the nail in your feet, pull and twist on the nail in your hands, kind of throw your hip in such a way that now your muscles can relax and you can breathe out at last. But you can't hold that position for any length of time. And so when your muscles are on fire, you collapse again until you can't stand anymore and you have to push up. So what I'm trying to suggest is that there are two positions of your hands.

Even though there's an ulnar nerve and the median nerve that I told you are when exposed in World War II, there were soldiers who had a median nerve exposed and if they didn't get morphine, some preferred to commit suicide than to endure the excruciating pain. And that is, by the way, the exact word for this. Do you know that the word excruciating comes from excruciatus out of the cross? In other words, that's the root, the crux. So this was a pain that is so unique, it gets its own word. It was engineered to be the sumum suplicium. That's what the Romans thought the cross to be, the highest of all punishments.

They were going to put you on display in a prominent area where there were passers-by all the time. So as to say, don't do what this guy did or get ready to suffer the same. And so he would be agonizing in front of your eyes. And in this way, if that were me, I wouldn't want to budge a millimeter, but you have to, to breathe, you can't help it. So it's these self-inflicted pains as he's going up and down.

Can you imagine if that's what it is to breathe, what is it to speak? Like I always thought, this is what helps me about the shroud actually. It's like, it's not because I have some morbid fixation with pain or like blood and guts and things. I don't believe me. But this is the most radical love the world has ever known.

To steal an expression from Pope Ratzinger. Joseph Ratzinger said that before he spoke, I think. But this is divine love on display in a language that is appropriate for, like when you translate divine love into human language, words just won't do. This is Jesus stretching out his hands wide on the cross as if to say, this is how much I love you.

And he stretches out his arms and he dies. But if to speak, like there he is praying for his persecutors When he's feeling this he's saying father forgive them. They know not what they do There's a little detail that I've got to throw this in there This is the Bible nerd coming out of me But please do you know that when we studied this part where Luke quotes the Psalms where Jesus from the cross quotes? That Psalm that says into your hands. I commend my spirit.'" He says, "'Father forgive me, above all father forgive me.'"

It's introduced with not the verb, he said in the simple past, but instead, elegan means he was saying. It's an imperfect and it suggests that perhaps that he was repeating this like a refrain in a song, "'Father forgive them, father forgive them, they don't know what they do. Giving to us an excuse for what we're doing. I wonder if we're worthy of that excuse, by the way, but there he was praying for us anyway.

And I think this is why I've come to love the shroud, is that I really think it draws me, I've seen enough crucifixes to be inured to it, to be desensitized to it. It's jewelry, it's decoration for my living room, you know, and I can sip tea as I look at the cross. But this shakes me out of my complacence and says, you know, look at what I suffered for you.

Look at my disfigured face. This is what I endured for your sins, Andrew, to say. And not just mine and not just those sins from today, but he's taking upon himself all sins from the dawn of time to the end of the age. And this is the bitter cup that he's drinking to the dregs. And look at what it looks like, you know, when he could have snapped his finger or like waved a wand and said, you know, abracadabra, I save you, you know, suffer a paper cut or something. Right. But why this? or something, right? But why this? And yet, and he would say in John 10 verse 18, he says,

No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I've got the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again. So he's got the power to endure anything and he's showing it in this way. He's stepping into a very unique set of sufferings and he knows it and he says amen anyway. Like why, why in the world would you do that? into a very unique set of sufferings and he knows it and he says amen anyway. Like why in the world would you do that? I don't know, no human no matter how heroic that would step into such a thing and yet there he is doing it for us. Do you know what really, can I insert something?

I know you probably have comments too but this took me like a year and a half of studying the shroud to have this dawn upon me. It's significance but I needed the help of the shroud. have this dawn upon me, it's significance, but I needed the help of the shroud. It's the agony in the garden. Jesus says three times, let this cup pass from me. But then of course, yeah, it's not my will, but yours be done. Do you remember the detail that only Luke gives us? He's the doctor, and the doctor is going to say, do you remember? He sweated blood.

Yes. So here's how he puts it. He was in such agony, and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground. Do you know you can read peer-reviewed scientific journal articles on a phenomenon called hematidrosis? This is when your subcutaneous capillaries become distended and burst. Not because anybody's beating up on you, but simply

because the fear of death, the idea that what he was about to face is present to him such that his blood vessels explode. This is the hemorrhage underneath the surface of the skin that now exits out of the adjacent sweat pores, creating little drops of red blood on the surface of the skin leaving the biggest organ in your body sensitive to touch in a new way so that even if you blow air over the surface of the skin like just after having suffered hematotrosis that would register in your body as physical pain and So that is the preambles that's before we've even begun the physical sufferings. And so that is the preambles, that's before we've even begun the physical

sufferings. And so I always ask this question, what's the first physical violence that men did to Jesus that night of his passion? And it occurs to me that after that prayer, after that suffering of his sweating blood, it's when Jesus hears the sounds of those bearing torches and clubs, and they're crying out his name, and he says, If it's Jesus you seek, it is I, you know, I am, and Ego, Amy, and Judas comes close, and with a big smile, and a nonchalance that is chilling, would say, Hail, Rabbi! But literally the word is rejoice. How ironic is that? Because with a kiss now and with a big smile He says, hail, Rabbi, but with that kiss says, I hope you die. Because that's the first, that's the first domino to fall. It's gonna

begin a chain of events, dominoes that culminate in crucifixion. But it was that kiss that registered in his body as physical pain because of the hamatredros, and that's highly appropriate. Go check out Psalm 55 because we read this as priests often on Fridays in the Liturgy of the Hours, but it says something like this, had my enemy betrayed me, I could bear his taunts, but it was you, my intimate friend, my close companion. You know, his words are like butter, I think it says. You know, but... It's like javelins. Yes, exactly. And that's what was happening to Jesus. His intimate friend gave him a greater suffering than Punch's pilot when he kissed him. When he kissed him because, you know, we pegged

that on Punch's pilot, poor guy. There's only five guys in our in our creed You know father son Holy Spirit I think the Blessed Virgin Mary gets it in there The other one who gets mentioned is this punches pilot this procurator Why because it's a peg in history for the one on the one hand He's gonna say look I find no cause in him. I don't want to put him to death So why does he well because there's a mob outside pumping their fists in there saying, crucify and crucify him. And they're the ones saying, look, because of his blasphemy, that's why he's got to be put to the cross. It wasn't because he was an insurrectionist.

It wasn't because he didn't pay the temple tax because he claimed to be the Messiah and the Son of God. And that the Sanhedrin cannot abide. You know, Caiaphas rends his garments and says, you've heard the blasphemy from his own lips. Go and cart him off to Pontius Pilate. And that the Sanhedrin cannot abide. You know, Caiaphas rinses garments and says, you've heard the blasphemy from his own lips, go and cart him off to Pontius Pilate. And Pontius Pilate says, look, I wash my hands. I don't want anything to do with this. It's on you, not me.

Of course, he gives the green light, but when he does, he puts the sign, Jesus, King of the Jews. What I have written, I have written. And so it went down in history that Jesus went to the cross with the cause of his death, because the titulus was supposed to be what incriminated you. This is why you're here.

Well, in history, it went down in history because Jesus will say, I am the King of the Jews. He would also say, my kingdom the king of the Jews. He would also say, I am, my kingdom is not of this world. If it were of this world, you know, my angels, God, I could snap my finger. I could just call out with a word and, you know, the father would send 12 legions of angels. Jesus could add a thought, just make all the, that wood of the cross, those nails just dissolve in thin air. But he doesn't. He endures it on purpose and to show us his love. I think, I want to say this, that Shakespeare has a poem that we would memorize in high school,

and it's a love poem, it's a sonnet, I'm going to forget the number, but it ends like this. Shakespeare says, doubt that the stars are fires, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love." And as beautiful as those words are, I'm sure many a young lady has swooned to hear something like that, the fact is they are just words. And so Jesus, it's interesting, right? In the scriptures, it's not full of, I love you, I love you, I love you, but what he does is show it. And he shows it in such a way that we can't possibly doubt because

I mean think of those who love you most who has ever endured anything like this Jesus is gonna take the full brunt of our sin and shame and dies the most ignominious death imaginable and From that place shows us that he loved us in a way that is like no other. And I think that's why we need to contemplate the cross. I don't end this route. I don't think it's extra. I think we need, there's a contemplation here that says, if you want to go deep into my heart, if you want to grow in holiness, I'm gonna steal a line from Pope St. John Paul II's Crossing the Threshold of Hope, where he says, there is no Christian holiness without devotion to the Passion.

Just like there is no Christian holiness without the contemplation of the cross or something to that effect. But the bottom line is that this isn't just decoration for our living room. We need to meditate on this stuff. And that's what I would invite people to do because no matter how much we talk, we'll never do it, we'll just scratch the surface. But the heavy lifting has to happen in silence, where we look to that face, when we look to that body, and then we ask, who are you, Jesus? Why do you take all this upon yourself? Why, how much do you love me? I feel moved by the Holy Spirit, I think, to say that there are people watching right now who want to give their life to Jesus Christ. They haven't up until this point. They've kept God or Christianity up on the chalkboard and they've been looking at arguments

for and against. Would you please lead them in a prayer to accept the person of Jesus Christ as their Savior? I would, yeah. Praise God. Lord Jesus, we call upon your Holy Name. There you told us wherever two or three are gathered in your holy name, there you are in our midst.

And so Lord, for sure we're gathered together by the dozens, perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands, and we call upon your name in praise, in worship, and we call upon your blessing. We just wanted to say, Lord, thank you for enduring the cross. Thank you for showing just how much you loved us, that you took on a mortal nature, you took on our human nature in order to die, to save us out, to bring us out of hell and

into the dominion of Christ the King. And so Christ the King, we come before you, before your throne. And we ask that you be enthroned in our hearts now Because you are King of heaven and earth you have Take up your throne in my heart so that you can rule in my words in my gestures in all all my deeds I'm because I want you to reign as King want your glory to shine through my broken humanity and Perfect as it may be to make manifest your love on earth as it is in heaven. Amen. Amen. Okay. Let's see. I got a ton of questions.

I saw one really good one. Please go with that. Somebody asked father if there were similarities between the shroud of Turin and the Tilma of Guadalupe or yeah our lady of Guadalupe. Yeah there have been studies on that in fact in Rome. If you don't mind I'd like to read it just because this person even though they're a local supporter also gave me a $20 tip to read this so thank you Emilio it's very kind of you. Have there been any comparisons between shroud and St. Juan Diego's tilma with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe? I've heard that the image is also incredibly thin on the tilma and I was wondering if there is any similarities Yeah, some have noticed these similarities especially at the face and the hands because if you remember there you have the Virgin who's wearing clothes

So there are aspects that have said to be parallel or similar analogous in some way that have said to be parallel or similar, analogous in some way, so much so that there was a Congress in Rome at one point that brought some researchers together and it was called the Two Linens and they were highlighting some of these aspects. Now I have to be fair, there is not nearly the same level of research done on the Tilma as on the Shroud of Turin. And so it remains to be seen just to what extent this is the case. But we can see certain things that seem to be similar. Certainly many have, there's surprising aspects on the Tilma.

I'm not an expert in that, so I don't want to speak to that. I'll leave that to others. I know this, that the Tilma has been treated, has been painted. So, for example, the certain rays around the angel, around the body of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that have clearly been add-ons. And so layers of protection have called into question whether it's even possible to test the tilma in the same way or to the same degree as we've done on the shroud. And so while that is a wish, it remains in the future.

We can't say definitively that these characteristics are the same, but that some have suggested that we have kind of photonegative quality or three-dimensional qualities. I don't want to speak dogmatically about that, but I do think it's interesting that obviously, I mean, how many people have have converted through that Tilma through the miracle that we celebrate there in December and and that, I mean, upon the millions we're talking like more than we lost in the Protestant Reformation

have come back to the faith through our lady there in Mexico. So go marry exactly. Um, but, um, that, oh, I was going to say, I think I just lost my train of thought. If it comes to me, I'll let you know. Yeah, no worries. All right. Let's see what else we have here. Um, Lucy eight, four, five says, does the back of the shroud show that his backbones were exposed? The back of the dorsal image, in other words words on the right side, does it show that his backbone, no it does not. So some have suggested that there is, what do they call this, like volumetric information. I should say on the shroud, I'll explain. So there are two theories from the physicists about how the image was impressed upon the cloth, for lack of a better word.

But one is that light emanated out of the body in the moment of resurrection and that light produced what we now see on the shroud. The other theory is that the cloth collapsed into the body as the body became mechanically transparent. That's the word that they use. That is to say, like a window pane is transparent and light passes through, well, so the cloth passed through the body, both on the top and on the back.

That is, I know, very hard to imagine, but that's what some have suggested, that almost like a vacuum is created in the moment of resurrection, so that the cloth, both on the top and on the bottom, is sucked into the body. And that in that process, as it penetrates some four centimeters in towards the body, it actually captures three-dimensional information.

I'm not going to weigh in on that. I just want to let people know that these are two theories that are out there and that if that's the case, we may have even information that goes into the body. But no, I don't think we can say that we like we have exposed like vertebrae. No that that I've never heard defended in a way that scientists have picked up on anyway. Kyle Whittington says I've heard that the blood samples are all AB though I've conflicting claims on whether it's positive or negative has the blood type being tested and how accurate can that test be after 2000 years. Good question and that's exactly right. Some have weighed in to say yes it is AB and some have gone in other words some tests have been done on the blood I think I mentioned Heller and Adler in the United States and Baima Bologna in Italy, and others have written on this subject.

Some assert more than others, as is often the case in any area of science. And so a certain immunologist by the name of Dr. Kelly Kursk, he teaches for our program, and I think he rightly cautions us to say, look, if we want to be really, really precise of what could be the case, we could even include certain primates, certain tests, like it would include humans and certain other primates fall into that same class. He's not suggesting that the blood is that of a monkey or something like that. He's simply saying that further tests would need to be done in order to pinpoint precisely human blood and

then go on to do its blood type. It is interesting that on the Sudarium and in other Eucharistic miracles we've seen the blood type to be AB. So if these certain scientists are right, who have gone out on a limb perhaps to say that there's evidence enough to be AB blood, I do find it fascinating that we have these, we can compare and contrast with these other samples. Of course, the best thing would be to just knock on a door in Jerusalem, and be like, hey, where's the file on Jesus?

I want to go to the hospital and retrieve his blood sample. We obviously don't have that, right? So what's the next best thing? It seems to me the Sudarium and retrieve his blood sample. We obviously don't have that. So what's the next best thing? It seems to me the Sudatium and Eucharistic miracles. But I understand if certain people are going to discard those other things and not hold that. Let me ask you, what are some things that proponents of the shroud are saying that you wish they would stop saying? I could imagine whenever very enthusiastic religious people like, you know, very enthusiastic religious people get together, they start drawing things out that aren't there at all.

And they might make scientific studies. Yes. No, we get that a lot. And in fact, like was Trump twenty, twenty four. So that was in the fibers. How actually is there? Yes. OK, so I would clear that up. But you Q's signature was in there. Trust the plan. Yeah, no, in fact, there's some really funny there. It said trust the plan Yeah, no, in fact, there's some really funny pictures. Have you ever heard of party dolia?

This is what when you look to a cloud or like a grilled cheese sandwich or like a root with a Like gnarly roots on a tree People see faces sure mickey mouse is in the clouds or words Yes, well that was real that was that was real but this is so but do the test now on religious people Tell people like crumple up a sheet of paper give it to religious people and then and then tell them. This is an ancient Papyrus, what do you see and it's exponential how much more they see in that instance? Yeah, so people have seen sailing ships. They have seen flowers. They have seen Rope they have seen words like lamb and other names for Jesus and

I'm very skeptical of these things knowing that pareidolia is out there And so one of the one of the things to, it may or may not be the case, coins. Some have suggested that there are coins over the eyes. And there's a certain priest by the name of Phyllis, F-I-L-A-S, who proposed this. But if you zoom in, you can actually see letters which look like, if I remember, UCAI. This is supposed to correspond to what would be UK or Kappa AI because on the lepton, there's a coin that was minted in 29 AD that has like a scepter or ladle on it,

and it has the inscription of a Pontius Pilate, or excuse me, Tiberius Caesar. It's the name, so it's the end of Tiberiu, Caesarus or something like that, that is seen on this small little coin. And there was a problem with the theory is that it was misspelled. So it was a C instead of a K or vice versa, yes, C instead of a K. And yet there it was, the misspelling. But then after the fact, they found the coin

with the so-called misspelling, further corroborating the theory that this coin was indeed over the eyes. I don't say this because I think it definitive. I do think it's interesting and it's worth further study. But if it's the case that we have a coin that is indeed minted in the year 29, that is a nice peg to put it in the first century.

But because the weave is, you're gonna get a interference on the image because the weave, when you're going on the loom over and under these threads, it's not a perfectly flat piece of paper that we're projecting upon. And so is it possible to really perfectly flat piece of paper that we're projecting upon. And so is it possible to really see the edge of a letter like the letter U on a bullet?

Or might we be seeing what we want to see? Knowing that pareidolia is a phenomenon, we have to be very careful. What we don't want to do is do such sloppy science that the debunkers can easily say, look, if that's the kind of science you're doing, let's throw the whole thing out. And they throw the baby out with the bathwater. So what I want to do is, and this is what I think the Othonia exhibit does well,

and I think the postgraduate certificate was careful to do from the start, is like, we need to do a kind of curating of the data that's out there. Let the physicists speak about physics. Let the chemists speak about chemistry. Let the image experts, you know, talk about that area, the historians, etc. etc. so that we can bring together all of this data and make it available to a broad audience that gets scrutinized so that we can know, like, with what degree of certainty these things are. You know

what a good resource is? That you can find also at Amazon? John Jackson has, he's the physicist, or yeah, physicist from the Shroud of Turin Research Project and he, for like 20-something bucks, you can get a summary of like the main conclusions and the source material that is referenced so that in like 100 pages, you can get a lot of the

data on the shroud. I was gonna ask you that what's the single best book you would recommend? Yeah that's a good one that's a good one for learning about STRP. The thing is the shroud is a universe like it is depends what what type of science you want to know about. Yeah. Because if you want to know about coming at Mount Everest like how do I exactly do I approach exactly which is why we wanted to create the diploma so that we could give you a panoramic view to the one who's being introduced,

but in such a way that is pedagogical and that it doesn't fixate on the minutia, you know, major on the minors without even getting, because it's so, to my mind, a good example of this is the carbon dating. How many of these documentaries spend long hours talking about something that in the end tells us nothing about the actual shroud and leaves out all this other stuff. So if you're talking about forensic medicine, I think you've got to know Pierre Barbet,

I mentioned, a doctor at Calvary. It's been translated into every language. Zoghabe is a modern forensic doctor that kind of follows up, but some have called it like footnotes on Barbette. But then there's the whole area of like what the Pope's have said, how tradition has received it, how historians, right? So you know it's a good podcast by my friend Dr. Cheryl White and Father Peter Mangum from Shreveport, Louisiana. They do a great job. They have a beautiful exhibit, one of the biggest in the United States, by the way. But they have a podcast with a little, if

you want to go deeper into some of this stuff, it's a nice introduction anyway into the shroud. Thank you. K. Silla says, I saw a television special about the true face of Jesus that reconstructed what Jesus may have looked like based on the shroud and also went into a lot of the recent science Father was discussing here. Is he familiar with the program? And if so, what's his opinion? It was a big part of what brought me back from faith deconstruction slash postmodernism and solidified my mom's and my faith in the resurrection. Yeah. Well, I think I've seen that. What's the name of it again? A true, it was the face thing.

Let me find it. The true face of Jesus. The true face. Maybe we could look that up to see if it's a I want to say if it's Robert Downing or something like that is that the name of the guy I might be wrong about the name but if I if I remember he's not a Christian he's kind of like a gnostic but he's really good about the technology so at that point anyway he had made one of the most hyper realistic reconstructions of the face taking the shroud as his starting point he's gonna try to reduce the noise like all the interference that comes from the weave just to give you the

face as face but he was really fixated on the physicality of it and so he uses uses... you find it? Sorry, I found all of the things in the History Channel. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, so that's probably the one. It made a big splash when it came out. And we met at the Museum of the Bible. So about... Ray Downing. Nice guy. I like him quite a lot, I have to say. We went out for dinner after the fact, but we met at the Museum of the Bible two years ago when there was a exhibition there, a temporary exhibit. So say a little prayer. We need a national museum here in the United States, and maybe you can work on that. In fact, there's a filmmaker by the name of Robert Orlando that is making some material now. I hope it gets, makes a big splash splash and I hope it does a good job. I've not seen it yet but he's bringing some major scholars like Ben Witherington III and Dale Allison made major Mathian exegete Mark Goodacre. So gosh I hope I I hope it's okay that I'm

saying oh I know it is okay actually because it's online so I saw publicity of his of his film so I know it's safe to say that But and he interviewed me just what two days ago in Houston So I I'm hopeful that it's gonna be awesome and that'll get the word out even even further But there are people that come from different vantage points and Ray Downing is certainly one of them. He's not a Christian He's not perfect, but he has a certain devotion. There's, I think Ray, what did I say? Barry Schwartz is a good example.

Barry wears an image of the man of the shroud on a necklace around his neck every single day. He says this man is an image of charity, is an example of what heroism looks like. Okay, he's not a believer or maybe not all the way, not yet, but we we can pray for that too, by the way. And yeah, I love that. So I think it's worth knowing that people like Ray give us good help into visualizing the image, even if they're not, you know, the best go-to for Orthodox theology. Sure, sure.

Doc Forte says, given that tests of the shroud since the 2000s, Raymond FTIR, Flax, have conclusively shown an origin around the first century AD. Are you surprised that more modern apologists don't bring it up when debating atheist religious skeptics who argue that Jesus did not exist? I didn't get the part of it. I don't bring it up when debating atheists, religious skeptics who argue that Jesus did not exist. I didn't get the part about the book. I don't fully understand either. Given that tests on the shroud since the 2000s, and then he's given three examples, have conclusively shown an origin around the first century, A.D.

But that's not the case. It's not the case. We don't have definitive proof that the shroud is from the first century. It's an open question. Remember, I think might have been people might have been confused to say in 1988 they they proved supposedly that it's from the 13th century and then okay since the 2000s we proved that that conclusion was false but that only means that we don't know when the shroud is

dated to. It doesn't prove that the shroud is from the first century. We would need to do a further test to determine that. OK, there's someone knocking on the door and it might be the mailman or it might be my kid, but either way, given enough time, they will leave. It's a weird knock too. I know nobody on the live stream can hear this because I'm watching the audio levels to make sure, but it is like they are starting purposely very soft and then crescendoing, stopping every and they're still going.

They're still going. It's not like a distant hammer. Should I check? I mean, we're live. They can. Do you want to check? Yeah, thanks. Just shout at them for me. Yeah. Say, Matt said you should be ashamed of yourself No, it's probably my kid

Nice job not hitting the camera. A lot of people do that. It's very frustrating I Liam Liam did text me and ask where you were and I was like Dude, did you even bother to check the one thing he would be doing? Let's see, I this person says anyone else super emotional listening to this. Amen. Somebody asked a really interesting question that I don't know.

A father will have the answer to no one there. Oh yeah. We have someone working on the roof. I bet that's what it is. Oh, there you are. Distant hammer. But I'm glad to hear. I'm glad to know that they can't hear it. Somebody asked. Thank you. hammer but I'm glad to hear I'm glad to know that they can't hear it somebody asked thank you if you had done any research into orthodox icons that appear to not be painted by humans I have no idea what they're talking about

yeah I know what they're talking about they're talking about what's called the a kid a poeta so in Greek there's a word yeah so it's just from the word it's just from the word heroes which is hand from the word, jeros, which is hand. And it mean, and the ah is the alpha privative. So it's like not made by human hands. It's the verb to make the word hand. Like with the English letters. Oh, so English transliteration,

it would be something like A-C-H-E-I-R-O-P-O-I-E-T-A, I think. A C H E I R O P O I E T A I think I can't pronounce it So but there are these images that are called the not made with human hands Because they're following a prototype which is understood to be not made with human hands. So the theory actually goes that because there are some 250 points of coincidence between these images, so if you go into the courtroom and let's say I want to accuse you of a heinous crime, like you stole my relic in Rome and you go like

off to the Bahamas or something and I need to make an image of you and hold you accountable in court, my drawing better match up to your real face by 50 points of coincidence. But we have some 250 points of coincidence between some of these icons and the shroud itself. And they're really counterintuitive artistic traits. Like, for example, there's a you between the eyebrows in many icons.

There's a horizontal line that cuts across the throat, or like bulging eyebrows I told you about, or accentuated cheeks, swollen cheeks. My favorite one though is together, the mop of hair. You know, it's like why does Jesus always have to have this massive hair? Like why, why not? Why doesn't somebody do something different? And, and, or the best is the wisp of hair, like right here at the center. And of course, can we maybe pull up these icons? You bet. Talking about this, that might be helpful. I've got some here. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah we have some on a slide but while we're looking for that I just want

to ask people if you think that this interview is helpful and would be helpful to the faith of others please consider sharing it on Facebook or Twitter or just tell your mother-in-law about it or your son about it or let's let's spread the word because I think this is really powerful. Yeah, I'm trying to find the picture, but I'm sure... You mentioned the Virgin at the wall? No? No, well, there's several different icons. I mentioned earlier the Pantocrator of Mount Sinai, St. Catharines, that is one of the most ancient.

But oh gosh, I can't believe I don't have this in here. I definitely have the slides. Oh, yes, right at the beginning. I have three of them anyway. So what slide number is it? Eight, eight. Yeah. So there is St. Catharines on the far left. I want to say this is Cefalu on the far right.

I think this one in the middle is from the 12th century and I can't remember where it's from, but I have the notes on it elsewhere. But it's just a good example of just how in different places and in different times again and again, now these, some of these are mosaics or paintings, but we could multiply this by five. And if you go to an Othoni exhibit,

you'll see the shroud in the center and you'll have like nine images all around the side. And this is one of the things that was studied very early on. I want to say it's Paul Vigno who enumerates something like 13 to 15 characteristics here, but that are again and again, the same. Like, look, for example, see, you think this is all inspired by the shroud and the head yes oh that's exactly the theories that you know there's they're looking at the shroud and because this is a divine prototype they can't diverge they can't do something different they're gonna they'll open the eyes um so of course on the shroud we have closed eyes and it's a riff so correct me if I'm wrong

But these they are painted by humans, but they're just like making as faithful replicas of the shroud as possible Exactly. So it's not that They're divine. They're there's another miraculous images exactly, but they're called this because they're images exactly but they're called this because they're following the Akhira Poyitta and so there's a similar I think mindset as you get with like paintings of the shroud people re like they said that we have reconstructions of the shroud in painting format and it's like signed like we we have documentation saying, and they would sanctify the new shroud by placing it on the old shroud.

And so by placing it into context, it's kind of like the idea with relics, you know, it's like, okay, this glove, it's not Padre Pio, but it touched Padre Pio. And so we hold onto it as a third class relic. Okay, so something similar with a shroud, the shroud was seen as like the archetype and then by

association these others, these other images, whether icons that were painted or mosaics or other cloths that were then going to be draped in in other chapels elsewhere, they would be holy because of their coming into contact with the shroud. Very good. All right, my goodness, so many questions coming in. What do you mean when you say anatomic perfection? You've said that several times. Yeah, so this was one of the first things to be noticed. Like one thing that artists will do when they want to draw

the human body is study the proportions of the head. For example, what is the unit the head is like one eighth of the total height of the man or the distance between the eyes as related to the tip of the nose or to the extremes of the mouth or the distance to the ears. And so models, let's go all the way back to the Greeks about like what are the proper proportions so that when we make statues and draw pictures we do so according to the like real human body. It's not a cartoonish drawing. You get to ask like who in the 13th century was doing anything remotely close? Like not even in impressionism centuries later were we doing something like photo negativity?

But then photo negativity with hyper realism like no that that's what I'm trying to say is that so the When they were looking at basically measurements of the body on the one hand That is that they're the right proportion of the different individual elements to the whole, at the micro level and at the macro level, and then also with regard to pathologies above all. So, for example, the side of the chest is perforated. So we have a four centimeter double edged blade that leaves a kind of oval slit. Let me show you just so I can give an example. I'm going to pull up a slide here from the piercing of the silencing. Right? This is important to show that he dies on the cross, right? Because

you can't have a resurrection if you didn't have a death before. So it's really important. Like some of our Muslim friends Will say Jesus was nurse back to health He was brought to the brink of death perhaps but he didn't actually die look at slide 44 It shows a Roman lancia that pierces the right side of the chest right between the fifth and sixth rib a distance of about 10 centimeters or 3.5 inches to the heart. And so it's going to penetrate the pleura and then all the way to the heart, such that outflows blood and water. Remember that detail in John's gospel?

And an eyewitness has testified and he knows his testimony is true, outflows blood and water. Well, this is a detail that shows up on the shroud. But look at this next slide quick. 45 is the dying gall. This is from the third century BC and this soldier has been struck in between the fifth and sixth rib On the right side of the chest in the exact same position statue Yeah, yeah, so this statue you can see it is on Capitoline Hill in Rome and he's contemplating his own death He knows that is coming just moments away. Wow, and he's so Examining what's coming out of him or is that the point of him looking down like that or is it just him?

I think it might the dying gall I think it's at him preparing for death but what I find fascinating is that we know that the weaponry existed and that the strategy was Employed so that when you'd have the Roman Lancia, you would jab with your left hand. Your sword might have been in your right hand, but apparently with the long spear, you want to distance and you're trained to strike the heart. And so when you do so, if you're using your left hand,

it's very likely that you strike the right side of the victim. And that's what we see in the dying gall, and it's what we see on the shroud. And there's not a great angle, I know in some like Zeffirelli movies, like Jesus is like 30 feet in the air or something. It's not the case. It's enough that you're six inches off the ground

as long as you can't stand up, right? And so he's actually like right in front of us. And so that the angle is relatively flat, or relatively, it's not like he's reaching up high in the sky. And so a double-edged blade leads this kind of bloodstain. Look at number 46. And you can see that black dot is like the hole

where the spear goes in. And then look how there, it's like pressurized blood that spurts out out leaving these empty spaces because of the pressure. Now you have to imagine so he's already been dead which means that the heart is not pumping anymore which means that the denser portions of the blood are settling to the base of the heart. So the heart is like the size of a clenched fist so if you pierce that through what's going to flow out first is going to be corpulous blood, which is red But then outflows

Cirrus blood that is plasma. And so if there's separated blood, it means that he's been dead for at least 30 To 60 minutes because that's how long it takes once the heart stops for now the blood to settle and separate So this isn't this isn't blood that was shed during life, it's post-mortem blood, which is exactly what the scriptures recount. And of course they do so in terms that are super simple, outflow of blood and water, but it corresponds to what we see. Of course we couldn't see it with the naked eye. In 1978, though, remember these guys from the Stirp Project, they're not looking with the naked eye in 1978 though. Remember these guys that from the stir project

They're not looking with the naked eye. It's all because you can't see water. You can see the blood just fine But if you shine UV and capture what fluoresces there's like a halo around this blood stain So that's the very next slide 47 shows that of course. I've only I can't show you UV because it's ultraviolet. All right, it's ultraviolet But what it was here is that there's evidence of a around the outline evidence of serum So this is the kind of level of detail that I'm saying that we're on Have you ever looked at a picture for of the circular system as depicted in the 1200s? It's laughable like we just didn't know the intricate musculature

that surrounds an artery as opposed to a vein or how vein, venous blood flows out of the frontal vein as opposed to the arterial blood at the side. These are the kinds of things that I'm saying are anatomically perfect. I see. We have a skeptical question here. Why does the carbon dating accidentally correspond to the very narrow window of time in history where the shroud first appeared in written history, if it's supposed to be some accident?

Well, because even if well, that's sorry. I thought that was a follow up question. Yeah, because there's an intelligent, intelligible, plausible hypothesis that explains that namely that there is first century material blended with 16th century material such that you have a gradient go moving left to right such that you have The theory is that the one to the far left has more first century material and less 16th century material as you move to the right you get more 16th century material such As you move to the right, you get more 16th century materials such that you go something like 1240 to then 1340 and 1440. Okay, so there's a plausible explanation for that. But look, I want to say even if you don't accept the theory of French invisible weave, which seems to be, to my mind, I think it's the best thing on

the, that's my personal opinion. I'm happy to call it an opinion we've not proved French invisible weave we got plenty good evidence for it the the Los Alamos Jet Propulsion Laboratory that inherited Ray Rogers splice showed how it was indeed a splice showed how at the intersections of the threads if you remove them there's a white strand why because there's a plant gum that soaked into the fibers left and right of the intersection but where there's a white strand. Why? Because there's a plant gum that's soaked into the fibers left and right of the intersection, but where there's crossing over, they're unable to see how the plant gum didn't penetrate into that which is covered, which makes perfect sense. So in other words, we're introducing new organic material that makes sense of the data that's there. So I think that there's simply, and moreover,

it corresponds to exactly what we knew from 10 years prior that that upper left corner is heterogeneous with regard to its chemical composition. So that simply points to that that's an anomalous portion of the shroud. Well that's exactly what we know about that portion of the shroud. So it's perfectly plausible. If he wants to say, is it some coincidence that it's from 1260 and then we have a paper trail that points back to 1354? Look, I want to ask him about 1192. I want to ask him about the Hungarian prey codex. Everybody understands that this is the shroud. So check this out. This

is slide 57. This is a Prey Codex that dates precisely to the years 1192 to 1195. And we know that because not all... Slide 57. Slide 57. Yeah, that's it. So this Prey Codex, as the name suggests, contains prayers, contains musical notation, and so we're able to date it very precisely to those years. But it's a cartoon. It's like a comic strip from the 12th century, which I think is amazing. So can you see the top scene here where these men with beards are anointing the body of Christ?

And we know it's the body of Christ because see, his halo has the cross in it. These two guys have beards. I guess this guy doesn't have a beard. That must be John, I guess on the far right. But the detail that counts for the shroud is that you see how the body's on top of this long linen. And then there's further details, specifically the hands. So most of us have five fingers, I'm pretty sure.

And yet this guy has four. And on the shroud, guess what? You can't see the thumbs. And the the reason so clearly the thumbs are underneath the index fingers and some have suggested that it's because that the nails penetrate through these nerves that the knee collapse yeah exactly this guy as a reef be that as it may you can't see the thumbs on the shroud and neither on the Hungarian prey codex But that's not even the best part if you go down to scene 2

You're gonna see that these women who are carrying their flasks ready to anoint a body that isn't there are surprised by the angel Who says you know pointing his finger? Why do you look for the living amongst the dead? He's not here He's been raised and so you have instead that cloth one more time. That same cloth that you saw in scene one, it's now portrayed once again on the lower portion of that picture. But this time we get further details that show the weave. And the weave is exactly the pattern

that we see on the shroud. It was called a herringbone weave. This is achieved on the loom by going over three and then under one thread, over three and under one. It's called a three to one herringbone weave. And so we get these, it kind of looks like a pyramid on the left I've zoomed in to show you. See how there's like diagonal lines that go up

and then they go down into the right. So it looks kind of like, if you're a little creative, like the spinal cord of a fish and that's why it gets this name herringbone weave, but that's not all It's I just it's the again the convergence of all these elements. There's more So just look up above and you see in the shape of like a seven four holes They've been called it's a misnomer, but we call them the poker holes as if somebody took a hot poker It's more likely that something like charcoal fell on them

Maybe in a right of who knows. But in any case, it's fire. It's the effect of heat on the shroud. And it left these holes in the shape of a seven and then in the shape of an L, depending on which way you're looking, right here about three quarters down to the right. And they're here on the shroud in exactly, I'll point them out on this black and white zoomed in version. It looks like one, two, three, four holes there. And then again, one, two, three, four in the shape of a seven. And so nobody doubts, nobody doubts that this Hungarian prey goddess is referencing the shroud of

Turin and keep in mind it's an 1192. That's 70 years prior, the oldest date that was allowed by the 1988 carbon dating. And so some have said, it's off, but it's 80 years. First of all, you told me you were 95% sure, and you're wrong, clearly. But then there's no like, hey, let me explain this shroud to you.

It's simply taking for granted that you know what this is. It's like, how long must it have been in existence to just kind of nonchalantly present this image without any need of explanation? It's not coming out of nowhere. In other words, there's centuries of devotion that preceded it. Also, the very idea of poker holes

means that there was some instance of veneration, most likely for the shroud, such that there was that this harm to the shroud came to be. So that's at least one good question that ought to be raised when someone comes from that angle. But then I want to say, okay, explain to me me the Sudharyam explain to me that that that That it's these anomalous very amorphous shapes bloods in that coincide Explain to me that the blood has these these unique qualities that it shows that a man that has lunged emma That there we have these icons down through the centuries. What about the coins? What about the veneration and this we should talk about the history, huh? Because we didn't do this, but this is like

shroud ABCs a little bit. Where was the shroud and when? Okay, so we know it ended up in Turin, but where did it start? In Jerusalem, in the year 33 AD or thereabouts that Jesus died and laid in the tomb. According to a legend of Abgar, there's a king in Edessa who hears about Jesus, this miracle worker, down south, and because of his leprosy, he says, I wish he could come to me. I guess it's that is Jude who proposes the next thing, next best thing, because he goes north with the shroud, and when Abgar venerates this face, he's healed of his leprosy and converted to Christianity. And so there's a pocket of Christians there in Edessa, but that is reversed as soon as Abgar's son takes the throne, reverts to paganism, and starts persecuting the Christians who go into hiding along with the shroud, which is buried in the city walls.

And so it's not until there's a flood in 525 that they now need to reconstruct those city walls. And they find the Shroud, they rediscover it in 544. Now granted, at this time it's not called the Shroud of Turin. It's going to go by other names, obviously. The question is, does it correspond to what today is called the Shroud of Turin? And it seems that that's the case. What was it called? Mandillion is one of the names. We have other images, image of Odessa. And so what the historian needs to do

is look at these different documents and say, okay, this is what we know about this cloth. Does it correspond? Could it be the shroud? Are there good reasons to say so? And some will say yes, and some will say no. And there's room for the debate, for sure. That's the controversial history. But it's good to know at least the pegs that people

are pointing to. So after 544 it stays until 944 in Edessa but that's when Romanus I who's the emperor in Constantinople wants to bring together all of the relics of Christ's passion into his house basically under his roof. And so there it goes and stays for almost three centuries, but in 1204 there's the fourth crusade and so you have crusaders from Europe that basically sack and pillage in Constantinople and take home a little souvenir of the shroud. And so this is what's called the open years. Between 1204, the Fourth Crusade, and 1354, where was the shroud? We don't know,

but when it does pop up, lo and behold, it's in the hands of those who have ties to the Knights Templar. Again, not everybody is on the same page about the the Crusaders and their connection with the shroud, but this is one of those theories and so I think it's a What's the guy's name that I like is a is it Jack? Mark I'm gonna get his name wrong. Maybe you could look this up, but mark I want to say Markourt or something like that it has a book and you could I think enumerate something like 15 or 20 Maybe more theories about what occurred during the missing years, 1204 to 1354. But- So it's for those at home, just to kind of sum this up, it's not as if we have the shroud

being spoken about in the Bible, and then the next time we hear about it is in the 13th century. Exactly. It's something that dates back, what's post-biblical, when do we first hear about- Well, I think the Abgar legend is the earliest. Which is roughly- Exactly. It's something that dates back, what's post biblical, when do we first hear about? Well I think the Abgar legend is the earliest. Which is roughly. Well that would date, what's I think pertinent to say is that it's one of the twelve that is moving the shroud. So I don't know when we can date the legend because, but I'm sure yeah, that's something that people could look up.

The hidden history of the shroud of Turin by Jack Mark Ward Markort. Yeah, exactly. So M. A R K W a R D T right so I've not actually read his full book I heard him speak in an international Congress one time and I thought it was fascinating like this guy in a matter of short matter of few minutes presented 15 theories of the missing years and Apparently there are more and so and I'm open to that. Like this is what historians do, this is what scientists do. They propose theories, they fish for data and let the best man win kind of thing, right? So let's put it on

the table, let's get it all out. I know Ian Wilson is one who wrote a book that got a lot of play, but I also know that he's not followed up to kind of respond to criticisms, and so some have called into question his theory. And so that's fine, you know, let that debate take place, and I'll let the historians do that. Dr. Schellar White is someone who teaches in Louisiana and has been to archives in Italy. We traveled together to Chambéry and to Lirey, or not to Lirey, but to Chambéry, and to Turin. And so I'm hopeful that they'll find more manuscripts, more attestation, but what we have, I think, is enough to take seriously, at the very least, the shroud.

It's like, especially things like the soil. That one really gets me. It's like, what are we gonna do with that, that this travertine aragonite, the calcium carbonate with just the strontium that we know matches the grottos of Jerusalem. Pollen, that's another one that gets people big time. I mean, what we'd really need is pollen

ingrained in the bloodstain. Pollen that, so we have some 113, if I'm not mistaken, of the, what's it called? Tournefortii or something like that. There's a plant, I'm trying to remember it's a Latin name, but it's escaping me right now, but Glodia, it's like Glodia tourneforti or something like that.

But 113 that were identified, so there was Max Fry was a criminologist, a Swiss criminologist who does like sticky tape samples, puts them under a microscope to identify like what species of plant. And we're not talking like one or two, but again, over a hundred of the same that blossom in April and May right there in and around Jerusalem. So I think stuff like that is, it needs accounting for. Yeah. You already, did you want to keep going?

Are there any confirmed miracles associated with the shroud? Yeah, maybe people asked me about that or or or you mentioned one already with the leprosy, but right. Yeah, so that that was that was one that goes way back and some have called that a legend. And even if it is, even if there are legendary aspects to it, it may have a historical base, even if we're unsure. It's like, how far does the historical basic extend? I understand if people want to call that into question, like, was there

truly a miraculous healing of his leprosy? Like, I don't know, but that's what was passed down for sure. What I will say is this, that it's not to be underestimated. You know, when Jesus talks about throwing a mountain into the sea, or let this mulberry tree be uprooted for those who have faith. I don't know about you, I've not thrown any mountains into the sea lately, and yet I know that God moves mountains. And for me, the biggest mountain, more impressive than Mount Everest itself, is when he moves the human heart from disbelief into belief.

And that's where I think the shroud is most powerful that many people and I've seen it in my in the flesh, right? I'll tell you a story one in particular. So there was a group that came from Spain. It was a girl school. This girl was a senior. I want to say she's 17, 18 years old and she was known for being that gadfly in class that would ask the you know, the consecrated women. That was me. I was the gadfly when I was 17. You know, all these annoying questions like, you know, what about this? What about that? And the skeptic for this and that. So she comes to Rome and we do a shroud tour along with her

class. And the next day the consecrated women ask, you know, there's all these priests with all their degrees, you know, why don't you ask them your tough questions? And she said, you know what, after yesterday's talk at the shroud, I don't think I need to. And so this was the kind of discourse she evidently needed to hear, and that helped her. So you never know what you're removing. I am always so impressed with the kinds of questions that I get. So sometimes I'll lead young people through our exhibition on the Shroud, and then just take follow-up questions. And I've done this with medical doctors, with bishops, with nuns, with first communion or confirmation classes. It is amazing the questions that come.

Sometimes they have nothing to do with the shrouds. Like, I thought it was just giving like a scientific discourse or a historical one, and they'll come back and be like, well, what about prayers to the saints? And what about purgatory? And you realize that the gears are turning upstairs and they're meeting like, Whoa, this is real. Jesus risen from the dead. So helps with these other issues.

Yeah. So exactly. We just removed a major boulder that was an obstacle. And now what does this mean? What does it wait? But there's this other obstacle. And so that comes surging to the surface. And so I think there's, that's the, that's a real tool of evangelization that we have here it awakens something in people It's a kind of discourse. We've not heard the the reason the number one reason our young people are saying they can't believe is Science and so give them science, right? And what they're gonna see is that it's not only compatible but faith and science are mutually illuminating And so but they need to see one case study like probe all the science that's here is that it's not only compatible, but faith and science are mutually illuminating.

And so, but they need to see one case study, like probe all the science that's here. And what you're gonna see is that it is intelligible. And yet it brings us to considerations of Christ's death and resurrection. And now we're talking about the core of our Christian faith. And this is why, when I tour, I tour, I don't like that word,

but when I'm invited to speak in a parish or, I've even done this in, and one time my favorite spot was Hong Kong on the 29th floor of like JP Morgan. I think there was like one Catholic in the crowd, but the rest were non, some Protestants, but it was like, sheik and Buddhist and just non-believers. But they were mesmerized by just the sheer science of it, like, explain this

mystery to me. And I was like, where else do I get the chance to talk about Jesus and the core mysteries of our faith, the incarnation and the resurrection, which points to His divinity. Like, the divinity of Christ and His incarnation, this is like everything. And we're able to talk at length. It's like, I can't talk a homily past seven minutes without getting tomatoes thrown at me, but we can go what two three hours easy on the on the shroud and and the questions come. Who is this man? Why did he suffer? What does it mean? And I think that's that needs to be played up a whole lot more if we take seriously the work of evangelization. be played up a whole lot more if we take seriously the work of evangelization. Jay Lata says, oftentimes Jesus is portrayed on the cross with a loincloth. But is that historically accurate? Can we any evidence of a loincloth or otherwise in this realm?

No, none whatsoever. In fact, it's just the opposite that in the moment of scourging, we know him to be naked because the wounds that are in the pelvic region are just as deep as everywhere else in the body So there was no loincloth and that's on purpose right there putting you on display They're they're going to the crossroads just outside the city gate where plenty of people would see you and you'd be humiliated And so that's the whole point now. I want to be careful here I know that because this is the kind of thing that I hate to say and I hate to not say at the same time because I think that

You you don't want to if Jesus suffered it It's for a reason like Jesus stepping into these sufferings it occurs to me to say that um Pope st. John Paul the second in his theology other body There's a whole chapter on the original nakedness right and I think there's something to be Thought about pondered more deeply I don't pretend to have the best answer or the definitive answer But the fact that Jesus is naked is I think for obvious reasons we put a loincloth in our churches Okay, so I don't think that needs any explanation

but if it's true that he was naked in the moment of scourging. And I can't imagine that those who are doing these kinds of tortures are concerned to give it back to him once he's put to the cross. So it is possible though, by the way, to answer Jay's question. It could be that after the fact, they put on that loin cloth, but we have no evidence of that.

And so, but what is the, I think the deeper question is, what is the meaning that he was naked? And I think what's happening here is that Jesus is shown to be a new Adam and he's stepping into the knot that Adam and Eve tied with their disobedience and from that place with his loving obedience to the Father is pouring out the love that unties the knot. But he's not from a distance saying like, hey, I'll suffer a little, you know, paper cut and then just say by fiat or by some decree or something, some type of penal substitution or juridical declaration that atones us by some just moral imputation or something. It is not the case. He's taking the full effects of our sin and on upon himself. Do I like to say, I'm glad, can I expand on the answer here a little bit?

Because this, it goes into the crown of thorns, but I think it's what's, I just get a lot of light out of it. I think it does speak to the question in a way. Okay. So at the foot of the cross, people are shouting, the Pharisees are saying, if you are the Christ and the son of the cross people are shouting the Pharisees are saying if you are the Christ and the son of God show it come down and we'll believe in you which is like hey, that's a good deal Jesus Like you've got your chance. Why not? But this is where I want to point to the crown of thorns and see like if you look with the eyes of the scientist You'll see something but it's bit shallow. You'll see something like okay, those thorns were three-quarters of an inch long, they penetrate every area of the surface of the skin, they penetrate through the skin into the

bony plate, etc. etc. But that's like, I could sum that up by saying, ouch. Like, okay, it hurt, it's a lot of pain, it's ugly, but what does it mean, right? And this is where you got to go to the scripture and you'll get much more insight. The first time thorns appear in the scripture are in Genesis 3, right after the fall. So there are all kinds of fruit trees good for eating in Genesis 1 and 2. There are no thorns, but after they eat of the forbidden fruit, the Lord God appears to But after they eat of the forbidden fruit the Lord God appears to Adam and says because you have listened to your wife and eaten of the fruit of which I said thou shall not eat of it

Cursed be the ground because of you. So just pause there to note that this is a Cosmic curse as an effect of man's sin and the curse takes a very particular shape because the Lord God goes on to say thorns and thistles shall it bear for you, the ground will come, and by the sweat of your brow shall you have bread to eat, etc. Right? But I find that fascinating that the fallout of the fall, the consequence of the original sin, is a curse that takes a very particular shape. Thorns, or to be more precise, thorns and thistles, which is the exact vocabulary, by the way, that reappears in the first sermon of Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, where he says, beware of false prophets.

They are like ravenous wolves dressed in sheep's clothing, and the apostles are like, well, great, Jesus, how am I going to pick them out in the crowd? They look just like the rest. And he says, you'll know them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? Thorns and thistles, it's the exact same vocabulary and in the exact same context. In other words, he's not talking about agriculture with grapes and figs. It's a metaphor for moral evil, thorns and thistles. The chaos and the disobedience, the sin is cast in these terms. Put two and two together and what do you get? That Jesus knew that according to the biblical motif, thorns stood for sin, just that he would, he knew that he would be crowned with thorns.

And so, I think that without even opening his mouth, but simply by wearing the crown, what he's communicating to all standing by is, I'm the sin bearer. I bear the sins of the world. Which is exactly the reading you would get if you understood from the Old Testament too, that it's the high priest that would communicate the sins of the people by putting his hands on the head of the scapegoat, not just anywhere, but on the head. And now this this goat would go out into the wilderness to die. So it was a liturgical representation of this transfer of our sins to him.

He's cast out. Jesus is outside the city gate according to Hebrews and they're put to death So it's coming together, isn't it? The thorns there's one expression from the psalm that says let one's evil return upon His head so when what goes around comes around and when it comes around, where does it land on your head? So the of course Jesus according to Isaiah He is the suffering servant, but we laid on Him the sins of us all. By His stripes we were healed. So, there is a kind of exchange here, but Jesus is that vicarious victim who in our stead takes the curse that is according to our punishment. This is where Genesis 22 comes into play,

because there you have Isaac who is led up a mountain. On the third day Abraham is told which mountain it is, Mount Moriah. There he's given a test of God and he's to offer his only son, his beloved son, Isaac, as a holocaust, as a whole burnt offering. And they get there and there they are, the only beloved son is carrying the wood of the cross up the mountain. Which by the way begs the question, how old was Isaac? Certainly he's not four years old if he's carrying the wood for the sacrifice. According to the rabbinic tradition, he's 30 years old or thereabouts. This is fascinating because you know the rest of the story. In the moment that the knife would fall and Abraham would offer as a holocaust his only beloved son, the angel

stays his hand and says, now that I know that you fear God, do no harm to the boy. Abraham wheels around to see a ram, not a lamb, even though that was the question that was asked. Up the mountain, Abraham is like, okay son, here we go. Dad, here's the wood for the sacrifice. Where's the lamb? And Abraham says right there in the passage, God will provide the lamb. And yet he doesn't, not on that day, because the moment the angel appears, Abraham spins around to find a ram. But this is the detail that's so often missed. With its horns caught in a thicket, its its head the head of this

vicarious victim is wrapped in thorn and it will be sacrificed as the beloved son is spared that's the exact language now that reappears in Romans by the way Paul thought of this too in other words that's not the so also real quick I want to ask if he was 30 Abraham had to have been like 120. Yeah, which means at a certain point Isaac was not Being of like Isaac could Abraham couldn't have overpowered Isaac, right? Like at a certain point Isaac was laying his life. Well, that's exactly what the rabbinic tradition says the Akedah This passage Genesis 22 is called the Akedah, the binding, the binding of Isaac.

But they say that, and you can read Targum's about this, that he was a willing victim, that he must have been. So he was strong, as you say, Abraham was feeble and old. How is it that if he wasn't a willing victim, how did he get bound in the first place? Of course, this is to move beyond the biblical text. So I want to say that, too. But it is fascinating to see that Jews to this day understand that Isaac was a willing victim. But that's not the end of the passage.

The end of the passage, if you read down to the down the page, is when they rename this mountain and they rename it Yahweh Yireh, which means the Lord will provide. That's sometimes not caught in context or in translation, but the Lord will provide what? Read up just a few verses and it was clear God will provide a lamb, but he didn't, which is exactly why it left room for John the Baptist in page one of John's Gospel to say, behold the Lamb of God. He goes on to say, who takes away the sins of the world. John 1, 29. Okay, so now fast forward to Good Friday where you have this Lamb of God on a tree and with the crown of thorns suggesting that he's rhyming typologically both with Genesis 3 in one way and in Genesis 22 in another as

They're saying come down and we'll believe you that's exactly like saying You've got divine muscle flex, right? You got the power show it You know one of the words for power is horn We use this expression in often like the horn of our salvation means a mighty Savior in translation So horn is a metaphor for for power in the Old Testament often like the horn of our salvation means a mighty savior in translation so horn is a metaphor for for power in the Old Testament so remember it's the horns that are wrapped in a thicket there in Genesis 22 so to Jesus is horns metaphorically speaking of course are wrapped in a thicket that is to say you

want to see power guys if that's what you're asking for I'll show you power I'll die and on the third day rise But for the time being my horns are wrapped in a thicket By the way that imagery is easily understood if you just consider like a ram when he attacks he charges with his horns If you want to defend yourself you charge right back and is that the way? Jesus battles satan. It's like you take a blow. I'll punch back harder. No, of course not Jesus is God. Satan is his creature. There is no way the darkness can battle the light. I think that's the appropriate metaphor. All of the... it's like Jesus is saying,

empty your fury on me. Spend all your strength on me, Satan. Concentrate on one point, all of your fury, and I will take it upon myself. I will drink that cup. But know this, like when you bury me in the land of the dead and light comes shining out of the darkness, know this, that the battle has been definitively won. Jesus is the victor. This is Christus Victor theology, that Jesus concentrates upon himself all the consequences of sin, he bears it in his body, and then rises victorious such that

we are victorious to the extent that we are in Christ. So that's our only wish is to be in him so that we can participate in his glory. But what he's doing on the cross, and this is what I think is so fascinating, this is why we need the Scriptures, because if I were to look with the eyes of a scientist, all I could see is a man being executed, okay, with crowns that are yay long, a crown of thorns that are so long. But what I think He's saying more deeply is that I'm revealing myself to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, who opens up paradise, who gains access. It's like Jesus is facing those fiery swords of those cherubim gaining access back into Eden, and this is a new Exodus, right?

But we're not led back into the land of milk and honey. We're going to the Trinity. That's where this ends as Jesus ascends to the Father and sits at the right hand in glory. That's the new Exodus. That's his end point. That's what's been wrenched open, right? If you remember, the Exodus ended, the first Exodus, when they crossed the Jordan and that was parted, right? A Jordan River. When Jesus is baptized, what is rent omen? According to Mark, chapter 1, what is schizod, torn open? The heavens, such that the voice of the Father comes spilling out and so does the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, as if to say the Trinity,

the life of the Trinity, the life of God Himself, that's the paradise that we're going back into. But now, of course, Jesus, when He dies, what does every evangelist highlight in the very next sentence? He breathes His last period. The curtain of the temple is torn. That's the cosmic inclusio between Mark 1 and what is it, Mark 15 or 16? 15 I suppose. But as if to say, I am gaining access into new holy of holies and if you're with me, you share in it too. And so gosh, it's the theology that I want to get into. I lament a little bit that so much of shroud studies has been super saturated with scientific and that's good. I want the science too, but it's a both end.

It's not an either or we need to have really hang on to both and together to put them into dialogue. Yeah. I almost feel bad having to ask questions less lofty than what your answer. I'm so grateful for that. That was beautiful. Frankie Mercado just gave us a super chat. He said, Hi, Father Andrew, I am a science undergraduate student at the University of Notre Dame. Is there any way that I can intern under you for the summer and study the newest research on this? Because this stuff is so cool. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, listen, please sign up for the summer and study the newest research on this because this stuff is so cool. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, listen, please sign up for the postgraduate certificate.

We have I wish we had hundreds of people subscribing every year, but we don't. We have like a couple dozen and I just think there's so much more to be done. I am not a scientist. Like I did two years at Georgia Tech and then I began studying, you know Humanities and Latin and literature and philosophy and theology. So I you know, I dabble into the science I'm sorry to disappoint there, but I am NOT an expert I quote the experts when I can you know, if I know that it's this physicist or that I'll try to cite my sources So that people can look into it for themselves But quite honestly we need scientists also with a faith perspective that can go into the different areas and you know give their expertise to what is an ongoing study. So I think a good starting point would be

for those who are more serious, you can say it's super cheap by the way. Like I'm embarrassed at how cheap it is for one year to get access to these videos from these leading experts from all over the world. But look, we're not trying to make money off the thing with the idea is that you go out and spread the good news about this. So get it, get the postgraduate certificate videos, learn from the scientists themselves, and then dive deep into shroud.com because what you're gonna find is like if you want to specialize in things like the blood, you really need to go into all the literature on that. If you

want to study something like art history, that's a complete different corpus of literature. And so but and so get your starting, get your bearings, get like a holistic holistic point of view and then dive deep. We have another skeptical question. You may have responded, but feel free to take another swipe at it. He says, there were three laboratories with three different samples that conducted tests on the shroud and all converged within the same range, 1200 to 1300. Are we to believe all three labs received samples

from the same top left patch that was known to newer, known to newer, known to newer compared to the rest? Known to be newer. Oh, okay. When compared. Perhaps that's what he meant. Was known to be newer.

Can you read that full sentence again? Sure. Okay, here we go. Are we to believe that all three labs receive samples from the same top left patch that was known to be newer compared to the rest of the shroud? Yes, we do know that.

No, there's no doubt that we know that. Yes, next question. That's the answer. We have it on videotape. We know where they cut the sample. They cut eight centimeters. They kept four centimeters on reserve. Those four centimeters were diced up and given to Arizona 1, then Oxford and Zurich, and then Arizona 2. Four centimeters were then sent. Those four different samples were sent to the individual laboratories and they gave their individual results, but they did so when they published collectively.

And then, so we have on reserve that other four centimeters. So the patch that was sampled, we know exactly where it was taken from. We know it to be heterogeneous with respect to the rest of the shroud. That's what I would want to say. All right, well, look, I think we've gone over three hours now, so you have anything else you want to add?

Gosh, what would I want to end with all of this? I suppose that I think it needs to be highlighted that when we look to the face of Christ, we contemplate Him in His death, but if it's the case that it's the resurrection that made this image, we're also aware that the body that is so bruised and battered, that face which is so disfigured, is also about to rise and in this instant rising. And so those eyes are gonna open and that's our destiny to face to face Vision of our Lord. That's what we long for as Christians now We're in this, you know valley of tears in this land of exile and we await face to face vision We need the help of this image

I believe to contemplate his face and to long to see him alive because that's what we're made for Like Augustine says you made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. No matter what the world can offer, it can't offer anything like this, what Christ has to, our inheritance is His because we're co-heirs with Him so long as we believe. And so that's the invitation I would give. And look, I'm happy for the skeptics to come. I want like Jesus with St. Thomas the skeptic to say, come, press and probe. Put your hand Thomas in my side, press and probe.

Hey, you scientists, come with your microscopes and all your x-ray and infrared and all the rest, study the shroud, but don't be unbelieving, but believe. In other words, that's the invitation to this encounter with Christ to see him with eyes of faith, because that's where we'll meet him. Final question, three plus hours in, what is your personal opinion of what created that image? So I think that the shroud is the natural effect of a supernatural event. It's my personal opinion that the miracle isn't so much the shroud

Although I know some people use that language I much prefer to say that I think the miracle is the resurrection when that corpse became a living Glorified divinized body and there was something about and that's whatever light effects might have accompanied such an event Which I don't pretend to be able to Describe or much less reproduce artificially. But if somebody does want to volunteer to die and rise again, let me know. I'll hook you up with some physicists. We can do some comparative analysis. But that's what I think. I think that in the moment of the resurrection, you know, there's even some verses in Hebrews that use some luminous, like in a flash of light,

obviously it's metaphorical language, but could it be the case? Look, we get all kinds of luminous imagery in the transfiguration, don't we? Like, you know, when Jesus is up on the mountain and his face is reading like the sun, right? Or in his dazzling white and Luke's words, exactly. And so what I love about that is that the glory of his divine person was shining through his humanity. It didn't eclipse it, it didn't destroy His humanity, but it did perfect it. And that's what I think awaits us too, is that God is by His grace, He's going to make us what He is. That's why He became what we are, right? To use the words of our first theologians to describe how soteriology works. There's a divine exchange by which he was immortal, takes on our mortal nature so that in our nature he can heal it. And what he didn't

assume, he didn't heal. So he assumed our full nature and he showed it to be the case, most radically, in his death. But then when he rises, he shows his divine person. And that's what we're contemplating. Every scene of the gospel, by the way, is that there's a divine person who is operating behind whatever human actions you might be seeing, you know, healing a leper or walking on water or calming the storm. It's like a divine person is doing those deeds, is forgiving those sins. And we contemplate his presence here because that's the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. There's a translation in human language that doesn't diminish in the least His Divine Presence. It manifests it. Our cosmos awaits

the new day when we too, when all the cosmos is reborn, is regenerated. Of course, we await the Parasite, but it's already here in one sense. He's inaugurated because in his person, in Christ the head, he has reached consummate glory. In the church, that glory is inaugurated but not consummated and so we wait that day. Amen. And whoever that person was, who was unbelieving and prayed that prayer of acceptance to Christ, let us know who you are so we can pin that comment to the top of the comment section. Thank you. And invite prayers for that person, right? Exactly.

Yeah. Thank you kindly for being on. This has been outstanding. I'm so grateful that you've dedicated this much attention to this topic so that you can help us. So yeah, thank you, Father. Thank you, Thursday. Do you want to mention one more time your upcoming podcast? Oh yeah, one more time.

Can't hurt. Yeah, so come check us out at the two priests, those two priests. I gotta get on my, those two priests. Link in the description. In the description, go check us out at the two priests, those two priests. I guess I'm a link in the description. Go check it out. Yeah. I can't wait to be a subscriber. It's going to be terrific.

So glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever. Amen.