The Michael Knowles Show - New EVIDENCE: Head Cloth of Jesus FOUND? The Sudarium of Oviedo | Michael & Pt. 2

Episode Date: May 11, 2025

Is this the actual cloth that covered Jesus' face in the tomb? In Part 2 of this powerful episode of Michael &, Michael Knowles and his guest dive into the mystery of the Sudarium of Oviedo—a lesser...-known relic believed to be the head cloth of Jesus Christ.   But that’s just the beginning. They also explore: The Crown of Thorns, ancient coins used in burial customs that match the Gospel accounts, and he nails of the Crucifixion and how modern science is examining their origins   If you're fascinated by biblical archaeology, Christian relics, or historical evidence for the Passion, this episode is packed with stunning insight and analysis.   - - -   Today’s Sponsor:   Hallow - Put your relationship with God first. Head over to https://hallow.com/knowles for three months free today!   - - -   Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 The best part of waking up, a full cup of Folgers coffee and music on full blast. Shop Fulgers, K-cup, pods, and more at your nearest retailer. This debunks the Carbon 14 dating. This is a replica of the Sudarium of Obiedo. Jesus dies at around 3 p.m. on the cross. He's hanging there. He's dead. That is when they wrap his face with the Sudarium. It remains on his face until they bring the body in the tomb. taken off and Jesus is wrapped with the shroud. Or you already have your mind blown further, Michael. The shroud is not the only burial relic of our Lord. The other one, the other big one, is the pseudarium of Oviedo. Yes. And this is the headcloth. But I remember reading
Starting point is 00:01:08 that the pseudarium of Oviedo does not actually go all the way back to the first century, that actually it's just from the ninth century, according to radiocarbon dating. But what's a real rub for this claim is that we have a definitive history of the pseudarium going back to the sixth century. Yes. So we can actually just trace it in documents and in history. So then you say, well, hold on, if the radiocarbon dating was that wrong, and we know with certainty at least until the sixth century, then why do I believe the radiocarbon dating from the 80s, especially when there were all of these other methodological problems with it? Exactly. And we've brought the Sudarium a replica of it for your studio for this program.
Starting point is 00:01:51 Oh, marvelous. Can we... Absolutely. Thanks to my friend Doug Powell. It's coming right now. Thanks to my good friend, scholar, Doug Powell, who has brought his replica for us. This is a replica. And I've never seen this until today, Michael. This is a replica of the Sudarium of Oviedo. And I want you to meet Doug Powell. Doug, hey, how is it going? Michael? Nice to you. Yes, you as well. Thank you. Thank you. Wow, this is good. Who else did you bring back? Do we have any other relics? It's like a museum. It's like a clown car of scholar.
Starting point is 00:02:23 That's right. That's right. I should have known, though, that if one travels around with a full-scale replica of the Shroud of Turin, probably he's going to be the kind of guy who has the Sudarium of Odei-A. That's right. That's right. So, okay, this is supposed to be the headcloth. My first question, when I even learned about the headcloth, which, you know, was kept separately from the shroud, and they kind of have made their ways all around the world. Why would Christ's face be on the shroud?
Starting point is 00:02:54 Wouldn't it only be on the headcloth? Isn't the fact that Christ's face is on the shroud an argument against the shroud? It's not, Doug. Go right ahead. Well, if you read John's account of the discovery of the shroud, they also find the headcloth in a separate place. So there are other claws than the burial,
Starting point is 00:03:16 cloth around Jesus. And so the fact that there is a head cloth means there's another cloth, and the fact that there's no face on it means that it wasn't in contact with whatever made the image on the shroud, when the image got made. So it's separated at some point. And this is what is believed to be that cloth. And what I might add is so when was the cloth wrapped around his face? Yeah. Jesus dies at around 3 p.m. on the cross. He's hanging there. He's dead. Jewish sensitivities are such that even the blood that's dripping from the body would want to be collected and not just out on the ground. So that is when they wrap his face with the Sudarium, is when he's still on the cross, coming down from the cross, that it remains on his face
Starting point is 00:04:04 until they bring the body in the tomb where it is taken off and Jesus is wrapped with the shroud. Does that make sense? That does make sense. I've never, I've just never figured it out. out. That's never been presented to me before. But I suppose that would make sense because then you would also say, well, hold on, if it were just on the whole time or it was just part of the rapping. Why isn't there an image? 3D image like there is on the shroud. Why isn't there one on the Sudhir? And Doug, I wonder if you would talk about the correspondence of the blood type. Are you already to have your mind blown further, Michael? I am. Okay. Well, what you're looking at here is it's oriented. So this particular stain, you can see there's three areas of stains.
Starting point is 00:04:50 You have this one, this one, and this one. This area right here was in direct contact with a face that matches exactly the face on the shroud. It's a one-to-one correspondence. And if you line up the nose, if you register the nose, then this kind of concentrated area of blood is right around the mouth and the beard area, and you can see how it kind of hooks around like the beard does. And then this vertical area goes right down the bridge of the nose. And this would be on the forehead right here. This epsilon shape right here is the edge of this. And then you can see this blood stain corresponds here.
Starting point is 00:05:31 And there are a number of other ones. That one corresponds there. And so if you do an overlay, like if you outline this and you put it right onto that, it's an exact match in size, not just in size, but in blood type as well. First of all, scientists have been able to recreate this stain right here by taking a head, a glass head that is filled with blood mixed with pulmonary edema, which is the fluid that's generated in the lungs during asphyxiation or other kind of torture or judgment. duress. And that's the blood, that's the blood mixture that is on here, and that's also the blood
Starting point is 00:06:14 mixture that you see in different places on the shroud, like here. It's six parts pulmonary edema to one part blood. So that's what's coming out of the lungs. And so that's what's coming out of his mouth, the man who's had the pseudarium wrapped around him. So it matches like that. It's also type A, B, which is also the type on the shroud. It's also post-mortem blood. Right. And type AB is the rarest blood type. It's about three times more common in Mediterranean Jews than it is in Europeans. The Eucharistic miracles. Same. The type is always A.B. A.B. Pretty amazing. So the idea is that the pseudarium was affixed to the back of the head here. And if you look really close, you can see these holes where pins were putting. through to the hair, there is a ponytail shape funnel right here of his hair, and this is where it would have a fixed to, and this butterfly shape fits right onto the ponytail. And then you can see these
Starting point is 00:07:23 these blood, little pin points of blood wounds match this exactly, and then it would wrap around the front, so it gets around to the front and makes contact with the face, but it's not wrap all the way around the head because the face, scientists have figured out, is lulled forward and to the right like this. So they can't get it all the way around when he's on the cross. So they double it back and that's what creates that stain. So now it's folded back and they have determined his head was in this position for about 45 minutes to an hour. And then the body is taken down and laid face down with the feet slightly elevated, which causes the blood to go down the nose or down the nose and pull onto the forehead.
Starting point is 00:08:07 which is what makes that, and he's in that position for 45 minutes to an hour. And so that gives enough time for Joseph of Arimathea to go get permission to bury the body. And then the body is flipped face up for about five minutes, and there are actually finger marks where somebody has reached over the back of the head to pinch the nose shut, to hold the blood in, and the body's in that position face up for about five minutes. And so if you've ever been to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the space between Galgotha and, And the tomb is more than enough, you know, you can cover that in 90 seconds. And so that's where all the stains, that's how to make sense of the stains here.
Starting point is 00:08:49 So, okay, we know the pseudarium comes from at least the 6th century. No one disputes that. It's been in Oviedo, Spain, since Oviedo was founded at the end of the 8th century. And so it's been in the documentary evidence is that it enters Spain around 7-Eleven ahead of the Muslim invasion. Where was it, do we know where it was before 7-Ele? Well, the documentary evidence actually matches the pollen evidence. And you'll get to the pollen evidence on the shroud, but there's pollen on both the shroud
Starting point is 00:09:24 and the pseudarium. And the pollen on the pseudarium is from, so Oviedo is in the very northern part of Spain, kind of in the center of the coast, about 15 or 20 miles inland, in the mountains of Asturias. So there's pollen from around there. There's pollen from around Toledo, right in the middle of Spain. And then there's pollen from North Africa, probably the area around Alexandria, which is where the documentary evidence says it was after Jerusalem and before Spain. And then there's pollen evidence from Jerusalem.
Starting point is 00:09:58 So all of this, at the very least we would have to say, not only from knowing where it was in the church, but even beforehand, Holland and the documentary evidence that we're firmly in antiquity. Oh yeah. And call it whatever, you know, whatever I've read the sixth century. Though many people would say, no, no, it actually goes to the first century. Right. But I guess my point is, if we know for a fact that we can place this in antiquity and the skeptics of the Shrout of Turin are arguing that it's a medieval forgery, then how do the images match perfect? Did some medieval forger know about the Sudarium, maybe, and then just, even if it were possible to create the
Starting point is 00:10:44 image through artistic techniques, just managed to match it perfectly without anyone figuring it out? That's the fascinating thing. This may be the key to, in the case against the medieval dating of the shroud, the final piece of the puzzle is connecting these two things because we know of the existence of this definitely 600 years before the earliest date within the radiocarbon dating. So once we show this correspondence, and it's like I said, it's an exact match, that totally blows apart the idea that the shroud was created 600 years later. And Michael, I want your audience to appreciate it. I know of no other program that has a shroud museum quality licensed authentic replica along with the Sudarium that we're comparing right now that's going to live
Starting point is 00:11:35 forever. This is so helpful. I wish when I began learning about the shroud, I could have seen a video with two shroud scholars comparing the two. This debunks the Carbon 14 dating. Were you always shroud-pilled, for lack of a better word? No, I was always interested in it, but what I was unsure of was what the credible evidence was for it. And I studied in a master's program
Starting point is 00:12:05 under Gary Habermas, who's one of the leading experts in the historical evidence for the resurrection, and one day he just went off talking about the shroud, and he started listing all of these evidences that I've never heard before. And so he became my guide into the credible evidence, and Jeremiah is a good friend of Dr. Habermas as well. And so he was an early advocate for it. And in fact, one of the members of the Sturp team wrote two books with Dr. Habermass, was not on the Sturp team as kind of the theological guide for understanding the scientific evidence. So he goes all the way back to the Sturp team without being on it. And he's been in from the very beginning. So he was an excellent guide. I do find people who make really strong arguments,
Starting point is 00:12:55 not all the time, but sometimes they started out as real skeptic. Absolutely. You know, and it kind of gives them a bit more zeal. Doug, I'm sorry we don't have a chair for you. But in any case, Thank you for coming on and joining us. You're welcome. Who else do you have back there? I know. Peter's going to come out next from the pearly gates. Stay tuned until the end of the broadcast.
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Starting point is 00:14:24 finding content that is engaging and faith-filled can be a real blessing for your family. If you haven't given it a try yet, now is the time. Go to hallow.com slash Knowles, WWAS, for three months free. first thing that I want you to hold, this is very rare. This is not a reproduction. Don't let this get lost in your pockets. This is the temple tax coin. This is 14 grams. This is a full shekel. This would have paid for the temple tax for two. The temple tax was a half shekel. I want you to hold this. That is Tyrion silver, my friend, dating from the time of Pontius Pilate. In other words, that was in circulation from 26 to 36 AD. If you were a Jew or a Godfear coming to Israel, and by the way, this program is airing at Passover, so this could not be more relevant,
Starting point is 00:15:17 you had to change your currency into the Temple Tax, which was the Tyrion Silver Coin, 14 grams, and Jesus has the whip. He goes, and he sees the money changers. And it's just like you and I, we would never change our money in the airport because the rates are always bad. It was that times 100 at the southern steps of Jerusalem. That right there, also, Judas has paid 30 of those. This is it. This is the coin. That is the Tyrion silver coin.
Starting point is 00:15:50 Also, when Jesus performs a miracle and he says, he tells Peter to catch a fish, and there is the temple tax in the fish's mouth, it could have been that one. That and my Torah scroll are the two most valuable artifacts that we have in our possession of our organization. I wanted you to hold that because coins were the social media of the day, Michael. This is where if I have my triplets with me who are eight years old, and I'm trying to kind of answer your question about the artifacts. And this shows us that what the scriptures say matter. It really did happen.
Starting point is 00:16:23 Had we been there that day, we would have seen him. Even down to the make believe. Like the quotidian details of this coin. It's amazing how well-preserved it is. I know. That's what makes it exceedingly valuable as well. I have nickels that aren't as well-preserved from like 2004. And that's a full shekel at 14 grams. And so if you go to the Southern Steps today to the Jerusalem Archaeological Park, you can hold that in your hand and then imagine in your mind's eye what was happening during Passover that weekend and all of the factions and cultural fractions helping as well. I have another coin. Hold on to it. Just keep it over there by you. Now, in a hundred years,
Starting point is 00:17:02 I can use this coin to prove the resurrection of Jesus from a location standpoint. Okay. The Holy Sepulchre Church, without a doubt, archaeologically speaking, is the place that hell, where the edicule is inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the very spot where Jesus walked out of the tomb alive. How do we know that? Well, we need to thank Emperor Hadrian. I want you to hold this bronze coin. That's bronze. That was silver, Tyrion silver. This is bronze. I can tell because it's got, you know, it's a little more. And this is also very well preserved. This, again, not a replica. This is an actual from the second century bronze coin. This is currency. So Michael, if we time traveled and we've gone back to the second century right now, it would be a whole different era. And if we're in the city of Jerusalem, we would have to say, Michael, let's get the coins. We've got to figure out who the God is. What's this town even called? Where are we? So the coins teach us so much. Well, guess what? Hadrian, because of his hatred of the Jews. And he saw
Starting point is 00:18:01 Christianity as just a Jewish sect. He wipes out Israel during the Jewish uprisings. Remember, there are three great Jewish revolts culminating, of course, in Barcocca. But prior to that, Hadrian, this is why I never used the word Palestine. Palestine, which is a pejorative term against the Jews, was coined by Emperor Hadrian, no pun intended. And literally imprinted on that bronze coin is Aaliyah capitalina. He raises Jerusalem to the ground. He renames it Aaliyah capitalina, the city of Jupiter. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:37 Rather than calling it Jerusalem, he learns of this early venerated sight of this dying, rising God that early Christians who he thought were Jews worshipped. And what does he do? He actually demolishes it. He puts a temple to the God Venus and Jupiter at the site. of Galgatha and the tomb of Christ of the resurrection, thereby preserving it for us. Ah! Helene gets there 200 years later, Constantine's mom. So I can use one coin to prove the resurrection. That's called being hoisted with your own partard, I think. Yes, that's right.
Starting point is 00:19:09 When you accidentally preserve the site. Because that's another one. Unintended consequences. I want you to hold the replica of the crucifixion nail nine inches long. This is one of the most striking features that again smack of authenticity of the shroud. In early Christian art, we have the holes in the hands right here in the palms. But actually, of course, for the Greek scholars watching, which there are very few, God bless those of us who are watching, the same word in Greek is hand, palm, and wrist. The wrist, right, yeah. The shroud gets it right. Michael, I want you to see the shroud.
Starting point is 00:19:44 You can see the arms that are folded. Yeah, yeah. They come down in a V shape. And the penetration is perfectly in the wrists because, you know, that's. because a forger wouldn't have known this. If you crucified someone, you put it through the hands, it's not going to support those ligaments. Of course, because medieval art, renaissance, art,
Starting point is 00:20:01 really even art today. Takes license. Yeah, it takes license and places the wound in the hands. But I remember even when I was a kid, this was some good catechesis, pointed out, you know, really it's the wrist. If it would have been the hands, it would have just fallen off.
Starting point is 00:20:16 And that is consistent with the nail prints, the scars, the wrists of the crucified man of the shroud, and the feet. Wow. I guess this is the recurrent theme, is if it were a forgery, this would have had to be, I mean, it's sort of preposterous even to suggest, but it would have had to be the most detail-oriented forger ever. It'd get exactly the right dust, and it would have to be a miracle forgery. We'd have to go buy a lottery to get right if you were that person. And again, it just goes beyond the pill. This is, again, how much information is enough to be convinced?
Starting point is 00:20:56 And we don't stop there, if I may, Michael. Please. The flagrum. Flagrum. Yeah. I think it's the most understated verse in the New Testament, and Pilate had Jesus flogged. That's all the verse says. This is a Roman flagrum.
Starting point is 00:21:16 I wouldn't call it a cat of nine tales. That's kind of a modernism. This is a Roman scourge. Yeah, yeah. We know that the crucified man, as scholars counted up the amount of wounds, this is going to blow your mind. 372 wounds, over 120 lashes. Each lash would leave three impressions. You see the lead barbells, the dumbbells, the dumbbell-shaped bar, and you feel the weight of those.
Starting point is 00:21:45 So that we know that it would have had three. Right. That's kind of fitting, isn't it? You know, the tripartite. Exactly. God. So much of this is. is interesting. Or rather the three distinct persons in one divine unity of the godhead. So there's two executioners, as it were, scourging him. And Michael in our tour, who is the man of the shroud that we're doing across the country right now, we have an image. There is not a part of the body of Jesus that was not abused, traumatized, beaten, every aspect, front and back, even in the pelvic region. We don't have the lateral sides in the image. We only have the front and back. And so I estimate 700
Starting point is 00:22:33 wounds from the phlegrum alone on the crucified man of the cross. Even Mel Gibson didn't really come close in the R-rated Passion of the Christ. That's how bad it is. I don't think any of us could watch it. So Jesus, again, I'm going somewhere with this as a New Testament scholar. I'm not privileging this because of a religious bias. I am taking this to what I personally know of Jewish burial traditions and Roman crucifixion and execution. No one was crucified the way Jesus was crucified. He's crucified in a particularly heinous, demonic way. That makes him utterly unique as our Messiah who dies in our place. If you asked Pilate or, you know, some Roman centurion or something, hey, you know, how come you're crucifying this guy this way? Right. Especially after Pilate says, basically, this man's done
Starting point is 00:23:23 nothing wrong and I don't I wipe my hands of it and I don't want my wife's having nightmares and I don't you know by the way pious tradition yes set what says what says what says what says what says again this is just tradition there's no you know there's no scriptural basis for this but educate me the pious tradition says that so Pontius pilot who you know condemns our lord to death his wife has right problems you know I'm having dreams about this man don't you know get get washed of this man. And the sacred tradition says that the dream she has is hearing her husband's name chanted in every church in the world for 2,000 years during the creed. Wow. Crucified under Pontchus Pilate, suffered death and was buried. Wow. That gives me chills.
Starting point is 00:24:07 So again, it's a pious tradition. But I, I point this out in body of proof that Jesus was, why is he crucified? Because these are excellent questions we have to ask critically. What is it about Jesus? cause this particular hatred. Well, sure, there's a demonic influence behind it without a doubt, but there's also historical influence. Jesus is not the only messianic contender in the first century. I actually list all 10. We have 10 different men who stepped up and said, hey, I'm the son of God, follow me. In fact, two of them are mentioned in the book of Acts. They have much larger followings than Egypt. Remember the one who went out in the wilderness in Egypt? Another had a following a 4,000. So Jesus, though, I believe Pilot, who had a no-win job, by the way.
Starting point is 00:24:52 I mean, he would later get on the outs with Tiberius and die by suicide. So Pilot essentially takes out all of Roman anger on these messianic contenders in his mind that would come against the throne. And again, you have a lot of influence from the Essine Dead Sea Scroll community at this time as well. Remember, the Dead Sea Scrolls prophesied that some someday a messianic figure would come, would kill the Khatim, the Romans, would kill the Roman Empire. Yeah, right. And then set up rule today, right now, in the land of Israel. So one can imagine why Caesar and Pontchus Pilate were a little nervous. Right, right. These were fighting words. And so Jesus has put down the titulus. Have you seen the titulus in three languages?
Starting point is 00:25:39 Eesus, Basileos, you die on. Here is Jesus. Christ, the king of the Jews. Oh, yeah, Jesus, Nazareth, Rex Judeo. Yes. In Aramaic? I can't do the other ones. Only the Latin. In Latin.
Starting point is 00:25:53 I did the Greek. You did the Latin. Well done. So we just need an Aramaic now. Do we have any ancient Jews? We only have young Jews in the village. Another thing I would like to point out with your permission, Michael, is the spear, the lance. Doug pointed something out.
Starting point is 00:26:08 And I want to make sure it's not lost on the audience. Jesus, of course, Passover is happening. Jesus is on the cross. Pilot is shocked that he was so soon dead, if you recall. And yet, because of Jewish sensitivities, Pilot knows, I've got to get these dead bodies off the cross. You know, we've got a, this is a high Sabbath. This is the Passover. This is a major Jewish festival. Everything's at a powder cake. Wait, go break their legs. They go to break the criminals' legs. They don't break Jesus's legs because they see he's already dead. But just to make sure, if I may, I brought this. It was so fun. It was so fun getting this on American Airlines.
Starting point is 00:26:43 I can't bring my big lighting half the time. I want you to hold this, the weight of this spear. It's three and a half centimeters wide, just to make sure, again, back to the demonic way Jesus is killed, just to make sure he's really dead. Let's just go ahead and lance him in the heart. And what do we have on the shroud? Jesus is pierced in the side through rib five and six. It goes a few centimeters up. it breaks through to the heart, the chamber around the heart, blood and water. How would a forger know this?
Starting point is 00:27:17 Et cetera, comes out. And as Doug pointed out, that blood in the side wound is post-mortem blood. So if we wanted to fake it, Michael, let's just kill a guy in the process to make sure we really get the forgery right. In order, if you faked it, presumably, it would be living blood. Exactly. From a living man. Not post-mortem blood like this in the pseudarium. So are you, are you, are you, are you, Are you seeing the trails I'm leaving right now of evidence? I mean, it's hard to fathom. This is why I say, I believe in the authenticity of the shroud because I'm not irrational. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:52 Yeah, how much more... It's like, to those who have faith, you know, no evidence is necessary, and to those without faith, no evidence is sufficient. Right. Exactly. And I want to speak to that, and this is where your program is so important. The most dangerous place a person could get is when you stop seeking truth, when you stop learning truth because you then insert your own truth, which is relativism. Fascinatingly enough,
Starting point is 00:28:16 Jesus performs his greatest miracle in the last week. And he goes to Bethany each night during Passion Week, 1.8 miles from the city center of Jerusalem. I filmed inside the tomb of Lazarus. He performs a miracle in John 11, and he raises Lazarus from the dead. And there are still truth deniers, Jesus deniers, people that hate God, they hate the gospel, they hate truth, they salvation, they love Satan, and they say, oh, no, now we have to kill Lazarus and Jesus. We have to kill them again. Some people are so hardened in their disbelief. No evidence is enough. And that is a dangerous place to be. So one of the outcomes or applications of this interview is, we have to ask ourselves, am I still seeking truth? Am I seeking truth? Am I a truth seeker? Or have I created my own
Starting point is 00:29:04 truth? Am I foisting on some false narrative on my life? And why do I believe what I believe? These are all very healthy questions. Now, what I'm about to show you, Michael, leaves this question beyond all doubt, whether or not the man of the shroud is Jesus. If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it must be a duck, right? The crown of thorns, I was under the impression with some kind of wreath. Yeah, in art, right, it's just a little. Yeah, just something, again, just for right or wrong, influenced by ancient Christian tradition and art mainly. I'm in Jerusalem. Here I've published 250,000 words on the resurrection. I thought I'd learned everything there was to learn until I saw the crown of thorns. It not only took my breath away,
Starting point is 00:29:52 but Michael, I want you to hold this. And at risk of maiming myself. Yes, but it's worth it. This is the helmet of thorns. Yes. So I had heard, I remember reading or hearing at some point that actually it's like 3D, or not just 3D, but it's, you know, it goes around the whole head. The whole head. It is really like a helmet. Like a cap, a helmet. And so what do we see the correspondence with? These are three-inch Jerusalem thorns, excuse me, Bethlehem thorns. When they dry, they're as sharp as nails. I'm going to say to you what I said to my triple voice here, try to prick your finger on the end of one. You can see. I just did. This crown of thorns, the gospel of Mark, which is the early gospel, it says, and the Romans fashioned a crown of thorns and placed it on his head to humiliate him.
Starting point is 00:30:46 This is the king of the Jews. They placed this on his head, and what do we see on the shroud? 50 puncture wounds in the scalp. It would have caused profuse bleeding. And so when he goes, Echo homo, you can imagine crown of thorns, bloodstained. The scene would have been incomprehensive. It just occurs to me looking at this for people who will find it unfamiliar. That's not what the Crown of Thorns looks like. This is what an actual crown looks like. Actual crowns are not headbands. Right.
Starting point is 00:31:19 If you ever seen like the Crown of St. Stephen, whatever, you know, a crown in the UK. They look like this. Yes. They cover your whole head. Huh. And isn't that fascinating? This is what leaves it beyond all doubt to me. Speaking from a historical scholar's perspective, it could not be anyone other.
Starting point is 00:31:37 than Jesus of Nazareth. My friend Bruno Barbaris, who I will be with in just a few weeks in Turin, Italy, has assigned a probability to, is this anyone other than Jesus? And he's published his findings. Again, not a preacher, not a priest. He's a mathematician at University of Turin. The probability, the man of the shroud, according to mathematician Bruno Barbaris, is anyone other than Jesus, is one and two hundred billion. So I guess there's still a chance for the skeptics. Yeah, it is. You're saying there's a chance. But the connection being that the wounds from this particular crown of thorns match the man of the shroud in a way that a little laurel wreath or something wouldn't have. And leaves it beyond all doubt it's anyone other than Jesus of Nazareth. Because the other guys didn't get this.
Starting point is 00:32:28 No, no one did. We know of one in history who is crucified. This is one of one. Utterly unique. And again, you come back to the personal application of this is love in its most radical form for us. That? You know, when you handed it to me, I thought, oh, should I try it on? Yeah, exactly. I prefer not to, if possible. And there you go. And I love that this is the centerpiece of our interview. Yes. Yeah, exactly. What do you make of the claims of relics of the Crown of Thorns that go back a long way? When Notre Dame de Paris burned down some years ago, a priest ran in because there was said to be a piece of the true crown.
Starting point is 00:33:13 Do any of those claims convince you or no? They don't because they're unlike the shroud and that you just can't test it scientifically against anything. And so I'm not discounting it, but this is kind of my skepticism also oozing out of me again, and that when you ask me a historical question, I give you a historical answer and not a faith answer. I don't privilege it. And so the interesting thing about the Sudarium and the Shrout of Turin is in the Catholic Church, it is both an artifact and a relic. Meaning those are two of two.
Starting point is 00:33:43 There are no other relics that can also be scientifically studied. Interesting. Yes. Right. So what you're saying is, you know, like if someone, if you found out someday, you get up to the pearly gates, you find out, actually the crown, the thorns in Notre Dame, that actually was part of the crown. You'd say, okay. Yeah. But what you're saying here is you can know with certainty through natural reason that the shroud of Turin and the pseudarium of Orvieto are legit.
Starting point is 00:34:16 Jesus's grave clothes. They're actually Christ's grave clothes. Whereas with the other relics, you think, oh, is this a piece of, you know, St. Anthony's bone? Maybe. Maybe it is. But you just say, I can't test it. Right. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:34:30 And that is the fascinating thing about these two relics, the Sudarium and the shroud. You test them. It is the moment of resurrection. It's captured in history. Blinding light, aneal laboratories, 34,000 trillion watts of energy and one 40th of a billionth of a second. Otherwise, it would have scorched. I mean, think about that. This is what science can't reproduce is how this flash happened.
Starting point is 00:34:55 I speak to young people all the time about the shroud. It's the equivalent of 6.4 gigawatts. And you and I will remember the greatest movie of all time, 1985's Back to the Future. Doc Brown, 1.21 gigawatts to go back in time. So five times the amount of that energy to bring the body of Jesus back to life. We just can't quantify it. We can't reproduce it. We don't know how it occurred.
Starting point is 00:35:15 We just see the effect of it. Wow. That's an amazing approach to it because I've come across a number of relics. And some, you know, have really undeniable provenance. Right. This is St. John Biani's heart. Right. it would be hard for them to fake that.
Starting point is 00:35:31 Yes. Some, though, that go back to antiquity, I believe, as a matter of faith, I can believe in the relic, and maybe it's got good sort of oral history and provenance to it. But I can't, you know, as you say, I can't really test it. Wireless can feel like a world of traps, but not with visible. It's one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot, powered by Verizon for $25 a month. Taxes and fees included. Plus, for a limited time, new members pay just $20 a month for one year.
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