The Shroud: Not a Painting, Not a Scorch, Not a Photograph

“One of my favorite testimonials as to the authenticity of the Shroud,” says Barrie Schwortz, an expert on the Shroud of Turin, “actually came from my Jewish mother.”

This June, Pope Francis will be making a pilgrimage to Turin, Italy, home of the famous Shroud of Turin, which many believe is the 2,000-year-old burial cloth of Jesus Christ. The pope’s June 21-22 visit will include time venerating the Shroud at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist. Francis will then visit the tomb of Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, buried in a nearby altar. The trip will also include a commemoration of St. John Bosco, founder of the Salesians and patron saint of youth who worked in Turin; this year marks the 200th anniversary of his birth. The papal visit will take advantage of April 19-June 24 exposition of the Shroud, which was last displayed in public in 2010.

The Shroud, which is a 14.5’ by 3.5’ linen cloth bearing the image of the front and back of a man who has been scourged and crucified, has been kept in Turin since 1578. Barrie Schwortz is one of the world’s leading experts on the Shroud. In 1978, Schwortz, a technical photographer, was invited to participate in the first ever in-depth scientific examination of the cloth, known as the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STRUP). A non-practicing Jew at the time, he reluctantly agreed to be part of STRUP, fully expecting the team to prove that the Shroud was a painted image from the Middle Ages. But after many years of study and reflection he came to believe in its authenticity.

Troubled by frequent inaccurate media reports on the subject, in 1996 Schwortz launched a website to share the true story of the Shroud and scientific research that had been performed on it. Two decades later he still makes Shroud presentations in the media and to a variety of groups, including seminarians in Rome.

CWR: What are some of the most compelling arguments that the Shroud is authentic?

Barrie Schwortz: Thirty-seven years ago, when I went to Italy with STRUP to examine the Shroud, I assumed it was a fake, some sort of medieval painting. But after 10 minutes studying it, I knew it was not [a painting]. As a professional photographer, I was looking for brush strokes. But there was no paint and no brush strokes.

For 17 years I refused to accept that the Shroud was authentic. The last argument holding me back was related to the blood. The blood on the Shroud is reddish, but blood on a cloth, even after just a few hours, should turn brown or black. I had a conversation with Alan Adler, a blood chemist, on the phone and I shared my reservation. He got upset and asked, “Didn’t you read my paper?”

He had found a high content of bilirubin on the Shroud, which explains why the blood on the Shroud is red. When a man is beaten and has had no water, he can go into shock and the liver starts pumping out bilirubin. It makes the blood stay red forever. It was the last piece of the puzzle for me. I had nothing left to complain about. Sometimes I wonder why I hadn’t asked Alan Adler that question 17 years before, but I guess I wasn’t ready for the answer back then.

Although this was the final evidence that convinced me, it is no one particular piece of evidence that proves the Shroud is authentic. The entirety of evidence indicates that it is.

One of my favorite testimonials as to the authenticity of the Shroud actually came from my Jewish mother. She was originally from Poland, and had only a high school education. She heard one of my lectures, and afterwards we were driving home. She was quiet for a long time—you have to worry when a Jewish mother is quiet—so I asked her, “Mom, what did you think?” She said, “Barrie, of course it’s authentic. They wouldn’t have kept it for 2,000 years if it wasn’t.”

Now that was an excellent point. According to Jewish law, a blood-soaked shroud would have had to have been kept in the grave. To remove it, in fact, you would have been putting yourself at risk because you were violating the law.

The most plausible explanation to me for the Shroud, both because of the science and my own personal background as a Jew, is that it was the cloth that was used to wrap Jesus’ body.

Schwortz: It would take hours to compose such a list. There seems to be a constant cacophony of nonsense being put out about the Shroud. One involves a medieval artist creating it by using three different photographic exposures and his own urine; I call that the “Shroud of Urine” theory. Now why would someone go to all that trouble when they simply could have painted an image?

The Shroud is a complex object, and a six-page article or 44-minute documentary—which must be entertaining—can’t do it justice. That’s why I created www.shroud.com so that people can review all the data and come to their own conclusion based on the facts.

Schwortz: It is literally a document of the Passion and the torture Jesus suffered. His face was severely beaten, and was particularly swollen around the eyes. I’m a fan of professional boxing; the facial image on the Shroud reminds me of a boxer who’s just lost a match.

The man has been severely scourged. Not only do we observe the wounds on the back, but the thongs wrapped around the body and hit the front as well. Forensically speaking, the image on the Shroud is more accurate than common depictions we see in art.

He has a spear wound on his side. His legs are not broken, as was typically the case with men who are crucified. His head and scalp are covered in wounds. Again, in art, we often see the Crown of Thorns depicted as a small circle resembling laurel leaves around Christ’s head. But that is not realistic. The soldiers actually took a thorn bush and smashed it down on his head.

We see the back of one hand, which indicates that the nails were driven not through the center of the palm, but an inch closer to the wrist. For a Roman soldier crucifying 20 or more people at a time, that makes sense. It’s the perfect place to drive a nail that will hold, and then you can move on to your next victim.

Regarding the feet, it’s impossible for us to judge if a single nail held both feet, or if nails were driven in each one. We have the actual remains of two crucifixion victims, and two nails were used in their feet.

CWR: Was he stretched out on the cross so that his arms were dislocated? And, had part of his beard been plucked out?

Schwortz: The forensic evidence tells us that he could have been stretched so that his arms were dislocated. And, we do observe a V-notch in his beard, indicating that it could have been plucked.

In the end, the forensic evidence indicates that the Gospel account is an accurate depiction of what happened during the Passion of Christ.

CWR: Some people have seen many other things in the Shroud, such as Roman coins covering Christ’s eyes.

Schwortz: Oh, yes. People see coins, flowers, and all kinds of other things that may or may not be there. Regarding the coins, on our STRUP team we had a NASA imaging scientist—a good Catholic, in fact—who indicated that the weave of the linen was too coarse to pick up the inscription of a coin. What we’re certain of is that we see an image of a man, and isn’t that what is important?

CWR: From your study of the Shroud, what kind of physical description of Christ can you offer us?

Schwortz: He was a well-built man; what we might describe as buff today. He had a strong upper body, a deep chest and good-sized shoulders. This makes sense, as he was a carpenter. At that time you’d have to go out and fell a tree, cut it up and carve it, all things which would require a lot of physical strength.

Regarding his height, it’s hard to tell. There is no defined edge of the image. It just fades out. The cloth, too, can be affected by humidity and stretched. That said, our best guess is 5’10” or 5’11”. So, he’d be a taller man for the time, but not so tall that the Gospel writers made note of it. In fact, we have the remains of Jewish men from the era that were over six feet.

Schwortz: It certainly looks like it. Orthodox Jews of the period wore their hair long.

Schwortz: It was a high-quality cloth that a man of high stature would have owned. It was probably made in Syria, and brought to Jerusalem on the back of a camel. Since it was imported, it would have been expensive. This is consistent with the Gospel account, which indicated that Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy man. He probably owned it and had been planning to use it for himself.

Before my own Jewish father died he planned out his entire funeral. It’s reasonable to believe that Joseph of Arimathea did the same. When Christ died he gave him his own shroud, planning to buy another one for himself at some later date.

Schwortz: Yes. In 1995, I was talking to a friend, and he said, “You know that Shroud thing you’ve been studying? It was a painting by Leonardo da Vinci.” I asked him where he got that information. He said, “My wife and I were at the grocery store, and we saw it in a tabloid at the check-out.”

Now Leonardo da Vinci was a pretty good artist, but we have documentation about the Shroud dating back 100 years before he was born. No one is that good! I remember writing myself a note: “Consider building a website.” I did, and I’ve been overseeing and adding to it ever since.

I realized long ago what a great privilege it was to be in that room in Italy with STRUP in 1978. But with that privilege came a responsibility. As I tell my audiences, I wasn’t in that room for me, but for you. I don’t know why God picked me to be there, but what better witness than a skeptic? I had no emotional attachment to or interest in the subject at the time.

Schwortz: We arrived a week early with 80 crates of equipment, which was seized for five days by Italian customs. We had a limited time to implement a 67-page test plan, and as we had lost five days of preparation, we weren’t certain we could run all of our tests.

The Catholic Church itself had very little involvement. The Church, in fact, didn’t own the Shroud at the time. King Umberto, Duke of Savoy (the former ruling family of Italy), whose family had owned the Shroud for six centuries, gave permission for us to study it. The Church in Turin was merely the custodian of the artifact.

We initially asked for 96 hours to study it, but we were allowed to see it about 120 hours. We were there to collect data, not draw conclusions. We were there to answer one simple question: how was the image formed? In the three years following we produced papers that were submitted to peer-reviewed journals. In the end, we could only tell how it did not get there. It was not a painting, it was not a scorch, and it was not a photograph.

Our team was composed of experts of a variety of faiths, from Catholics to total skeptics. We had Mormons, Evangelical Christians, and Jews. Our religious belief was not a criterion for being on the team. In fact, as a Jew, I felt uncomfortable being on the team and I tried to quit twice. One of my friends on the STRUP team, Don Lynn, worked for JPL and was a good Catholic. When I told him I wanted to quit because I was Jewish, he asked, “Have you forgotten that Jesus was a Jew?”

I told him I didn’t know much about Jesus, but I did know he was a Jew. He asked, “Don’t you think he’d want one of the Chosen People on our team?” He told me to go to Turin and do the best job I could, and not worry about being a Jew.

CWR: What effect have you seen the Shroud have on people? Schwortz: I’ve observed a broad range of responses. Some have no reaction, but for many others it revives their faltering faith. But, in the end, faith is not based on a piece of cloth, but is a gift of God stirred in the hearts of those who look upon it.

Didn’t carbon dating prove it was fake?

The 1988 Carbon Test, which were done by three prestigious carbon testing facilities, accurately tested what they were given to test. They reported an averaged creation date of 1350 AD, but the problem was that what they tested turned out to be not homogenous—i.e., not the same material—as the main body of the Shroud. One of the cardinal rules of Carbon 14 testing is that the sample being tested MUST be homogenous with the item intended to be dated. That cardinal rule was violated in the Shroud testing. . . and thus falsified any validity of the results from the test.

Here is an explanation I wrote in an earlier Shroud thread of what happened and the science that invalidated the C-14 test 16 years post testing. . . when it was discovered that the sampling protocols had been completely fouled up and the sample had been taken from the one place that the STURP scientists had identified should not be used as it was chemically different from the rest of the Shroud.

In 2004, Dr. Raymond Rogers conclusively proved... and had his work successfully peer-reviewed, found accurate, and published in prestigious scientific journals (which is something McCrone has NOT done)... that the sample used in the 1988 carbon dating was inconsistent with the main body of the shroud. Other scientists working from a different direction came to the same conclusion. The samples were NOT physically or chemically the same as the main body of the Shroud... ergo the 1988 C14 testing is proved invalid.

Dr. Rogers worked with photomicrographs and the remaining control sample retained from the five sub-samples cut from the original cutting from the Shroud.

I submit you haven't the foggiest idea what you are talking about. You have heard and repeated something that is untrue.

Chemist and pyrologist Raymond N. Rogers, (Sandia National Laboratory, University of California) and, independently, Dr. John L. Brown, (former Principal Research Scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute's Energy and Materials Sciences Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology), have done other research and tests and presented evidence in peer reviewed scientific journals that proved that:

The 1988 Carbon 14 Tests were accurate at the current state of the art - on what they tested.
The established, agreed sampling protocols were violated. This is well documented and is beyond contention. The sample cut from the Shroud came from only one area in contravention of the previously agreed protocols which required 8 samples from 8 areas. Instead a single sample from a single area was taken.
The sample that was taken was also taken from the one area all involved scientists had agreed should be avoided as it showed the most dirt and handling damage.
Another reason the area had been excluded as a sampling area was that it was the one area of the Shroud that generally fluoresced under ultra-violet light, indicating a non-similarity to the main body of the shroud which did not fluoresce.
The sample was cut from the corner of the Shroud where the "Raes sample" had been cut 14 years before.
The sample was approximately 1 cm by 7 cm in length and was cut parallel to the long side of the Shroud.
Approximately “…1 cm of the new sample had to be discarded because of the presence of different colored threads that were not similar to the main body of the shroud.” (Where did these foreign threads, interwoven into the sample, come from? - Swordmaker)
Five sub-samples of approximately 1cm x 1cm were cut from the remains of the single original sample cut from the shroud. (For clarity and understanding, let's designate them A to E alphabetically, from the selvage toward the center of the shroud).
The primary sample and the sub-samples were micro-photographed before being packaged and sent for testing.
Sub-samples A and E were sent to the Arizona C14 Lab, B went to Oxford, D to Zurich, and C was retained as a control for future investigation and was untested.
The sub-samples, although chemically cleaned were not microscopically examined or chemically tested, nor were the fibers compared to fibers from other areas of the Shroud by any of the labs.
The C14 Tests were completed and returned results that suggested an origin date for the flax that was in the cloth of 1260 to 1390 AD, with a degree of accuracy of plus or minus ~25 years on each sample.
This spread of possible origin dates of 180 years (1260 minus 25 to 1390 plus 25) should have raised a red flag as the material was supposed to be homogenous and should have all tested within a plus or minus ~75 year spread. In fact, none of the samples' range of confidence overlapped the range of confidence of another in a manner that statistically would indicate the samples were homogenous. This strongly suggested that the samples were, in fact, not homogenous.
Sample A tested younger than sample B which tested younger than Sample D which tested younger than Sample E. The closer the sample was to the center of the Shroud, away from the selvage, the older it tested.
Sample A and Sample E, the samples with both the youngest and oldest reported ages were both tested by the Arizona Lab.
Post C-14 testing and examination of microphotographs of the Primary sample showed a faint demarcation area running somewhat diagonally from the right side of the selvage end (A) to the leftward side of the sample closest to the main body of the shroud (E).
Examination of threads from the retained sample (C) show that threads on the left side of the sample have an "S" twist.
Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Right side of the sample have a "Z" twist.
Examination of threads taken from main body of the Shroud all have a "Z" twist.
Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the left side of the sample are somewhat (3-5%) thinner in diameter, on average, than threads from the average thread thickness of sample's right half or from the body of the Shroud.
Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the left side of the sample have Cotton intertwined with the Flax.
Examination of threads from right half of the sample (C) and from the main body of the Shroud have no Cotton intertwined with the Flax.
Examination of threads from the retained sample (C) show that threads on the Left side of the sample are encrusted with a plant gum containing alizarin dye extracted from Madder Root, a technique developed in 16th Century France.
Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Right side of the sample and from the main body of the Shroud are not encrusted with the dyestuff.
Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Left side of the sample contains up to 2% Aluminum. Chemical testing shows this Aluminum is from Alum (hydrous aluminum oxide), used after the 16th Century as a mordant, a drying agent for retting of cloth.
Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Right side of the sample and threads from the main body of the Shroud contain no Aluminum.
Chemical testing of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Left side of the sample Flax's Lignin shows significant levels of Vanillin (> 40%).
Chemical testing of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Right side of the sample and threads from the main body of the Shroud contain no Vanillin... indicating an age greater than 1300 years.

From an article in Thermochimica Acta: "A linen produced in A.D. 1260 would have retained about 37% of its vanillin in 1978. The Raes threads, the Holland cloth [the shroud's backing cloth], and all other medieval linens gave {positive results from] the test for vanillin wherever lignin could be observed on growth nodes. The disappearance of all traces of vanillin from the lignin in the shroud indicates a much older age than the radiocarbon laboratories reported."
Microscopic examination of the slightly diagonal demarcation area of the sample (C) shows spliced threads, clearly delineating the changes from Left to Right sides of the sample.
Skillful weavers in Europe in the 16th Century used a technique now called French Invisible Reweaving to repair tapestries and arras cloths. Contemporary reports state the method was close to "magical" in the ability to repair damaged cloth. This technique involved spinning and dying thread to closely match the original, splicing the new threads into old threads on the cloth, and reweaving the newly extended threads into the material to match the weaving of the original.
The diagonal demarcation line on the original sample is located so that sample (A)'s suspect (non-similar) threads compose approximately 60% of the sample material. Sample (B)'s suspect (non-similar) threads compose approximately 55% of the sample material. Sample (C)'s, 50% (non-similar) observed and tested. Sample (D)'s, 45%. And Sample (E)'s, (non-similar) 40%. Conversely, threads similar to the main body compose the following approximate percentages of the samples from A to E: 40%, 45%, 50%, 55%, and 60%.
The Shroud underwent repairs after the severe damage from the fire in 1532. Perhaps the corner where the Raes and 1988 C14 test samples were taken was also repaired.
Harry Gove, the inventor of the nuclear accelerator technique that was used to carbon date the Shroud, when asked "How old would a the polluting material have to be to skew the C-14 date of material known to be 1530 AD to show an tested age of 1350 if the polluting material composed 50% of the sample by weight?" He did some calculations and stated, "First Century, give or take 100 years."

The conclusion of the peer reviewed article in Thermochimica Acta states:

"The combined evidence from chemical kinetics, analytical chemistry, cotton content, and pyrolysis/ms proves that the material from the radiocarbon area of the shroud is significantly different from that of the main cloth. The radiocarbon sample was thus not part of the original cloth and is invalid for determining the age of the shroud."

Thus, the 1988 Carbon 14 Testing has been invalidated because the person who took the sample, literally, at the last hour, changed the agreed sampling protocols and took the sample from an area that had been patched, probably in 1532, with contemporary prepared linen thread that had been spun on a spinning wheel that had also spun cotton, then retted with alum, and dyed with alizarin dye from madder root, all done with 15th century technology. The tests were accurate for what they tested: a melange of old and newer material that gave the reported a date that is inaccurate for both the old and the new. It is merely coincidence that the false date of the combined old and new happened to coincide with the first display of the Shroud in Lirey France. The repaired area is not the same as the main body of the shroud and tests are invalid.

New C14 testing should be allowed because there are now a lot of loose samples available since the ill advised "restoration" where they cut away the burned edges around the scorches from the 1532 fire.

I can tell you that there was an unauthorized C-14 test done on one of the threads taken during the 1978 STURP examination and the results were 1st Century, with a degree of confidence of 50 years because the sample was so small.

May I suggest you forget the website you keep repeatedly linking and do some reading of the peer reviewed scientific and scholarly articles on the Shroud? They are mostly available from Barrie Schwortz's website Shroud.com. Barrie was the official photographer of STURP... and he is Jewish. Daniel Porter has put together some of the best and current data in a good popularization of the Shroud information which is more accessible than the scientific papers. Daniel Porter is Freeper Shroudie, and his series of Websites, including Shroudforum.com, Shroud Facts Check, and Shroud Story are an excellent resource based on the latest science.. not on the 30 year old, non-peer-reviewed data from McCrone who ignored agreed protocols on handling Shroud samples which resulted in compromised samples, published his "findings" in a non-peer-reviewed journal (his own vanity publication, "The Microscopist," of which he was both publisher and editor), refused to submit his work for peer-review, and has actually attempted to sabotage other researchers by first, dragging his feet, and then sending them samples that were NOT exemplar of the bulk of samples he had in his possession.

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