Shroud of Turin: Is this Jesus?

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and It has been a while.

I did put out a video a couple of days ago entitled apologetics 101

I was feeling kind of 101 ish, you know putting out some introductory stuff.

I sometimes I hear folks who listen to my channel They really enjoy the content, but sometimes it's a little

Advanced we do cover some things like transcendental arguments and preconditions of intelligibility and the philosophical problem of the one in the many

I get it So I figured you know what? Let me make something introductory and put it out there and hopefully some folks could could benefit from it

So I hope that was useful to folks. Oh, I'm happy to be back again. I think we're gonna have more of a consistent

Schedule coming up I have Doug Powell on with me here today to talk about the

Shroud of Turin I have on Friday the what's the date on Friday?

It's the 29th I'll be having two gentlemen who are deacons at the Apologia Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

I think it's Phoenix, Arizona. It's in Arizona It's a church where James White attends, right? There are two deacons who?

Apology a church hosted a debate between them and two Mormons So we're gonna talk a little bit about how to apply presuppositional apologetics to Mormonism So I'm really excited to have those gentlemen on on Friday and then the next week.

I'll be having my good friend Braxton Hunter on to talk about worship music

Modern worship music doesn't matter, you know with respect to the types of songs that we sing.

So that's gonna be a super interesting You know topic perhaps. We'll be talking a little bit about theology behind music

I'll also be on a Matt Slick's show Matt Slick is the president of CARM Christian apologetics research ministry, and I will be

Talking with Matt about the problem of the one in the many So he invited me on his show to talk about that and I'm not sure if it's gonna be live or not

But whenever it's up, I'll let folks know if you want to follow Follow me around as I am invited to speak on other other platforms

And I don't remember the date but someone I was on a show It was a last week or a week before that to talk about presuppositional apologetics, but we ended up talking about Calvinism and so I forgot the name of the show if those guys who had me on are listening.

I apologize But they've invited me back on To talk about Calvinism. And so I'm excited to be able to do that on their show

I don't know the date, but when I find out I will let folks know post it on Facebook and social media I also am planning to do my epic

Calvinism live stream where I'm gonna attempt to drink lots of coffee Energize myself and go through all five points of Calvinism.

So it's gonna be pretty long We're gonna go through total depravity unconditional election limited atonement irresistible grace perseverance of the

Saints and I'm just gonna blab about it And I don't know how long it's going to be Hopefully it'll be a big chunky episode, but will be useful for folks

I know whether you love Calvinism or you hate Calvinism It is always an interesting and fun topic to talk about so looking forward to that Well without further ado,

I would like to introduce my guest today Doug Powell Doug Powell is a

Christian apologist. I've had him on before I don't know how many episodes ago was a little while ago, but I had him on before Doug is a

Christian apologist He's an author a graphic designer programmer and recording artist He's appeared on late night with Conan O 'Brien

CNN and PR World Cafe Primetime America a white horse in stand to reason and sound reason his books include the best -selling

Holman quicksource guide to Christian apologetics Resurrection eyewitness an interactive book on the minimal facts argument for the historical evidence for the resurrection and Jesus Eyewitness an interactive book on the life of Christ is also a contributor to the apologetic study

Bible and the apologetic study Bible for students In addition Doug is the designer of the resurrection eyewitness iPad app.

It's been out for a while I'm not sure if it's still available. But when it was available, I'm not sure if it still is it was pretty awesome

I had it. It was it was really helpful I have here as a recording artist Powell has released nine albums including the apprentice princess sorcerer

Which gives the transcendental argument for God as told as a magic show and set to music Doug holds a master's in apologetics from Biola University now if you're interested,

I know folks who follow my channel we place a great emphasis upon presuppositional apologetics and so Doug is also a

Presuppositionalist, so I thought it would be fun to have a presuppositionalist talk about a topic that is typically used by Evidentialist and even that they do it cautiously because we know the

Shroud of Turin is a very controversial Controversial topic so without further ado I'm looking forward to getting into the weeds on this topic with Doug and so I would like to invite

Doug on the screen With me, how's it going? Great. Thanks for having me. You're on now.

I gave you no warning. I just thrusted you on All right. Well, did I did I miss anything?

I remember giving the introductions on you a while back and sometimes information goes out of date a little bit.

So No, I guess that's none of that has expired but I've got a couple songs on the new

Alan Parsons record. That'll be out later this summer Okay, and and my son was on Jimmy Fallon last night.

He plays soccer mommy What was the topic? It was well using a band called soccer mommy and they played their new single shotgun.

Nice. Awesome. Very cool Rock -and -roll, okay

Okay, so you play instrument. Do you dance at all? Are you a dancer? No, no rock musicians don't dance

Okay. Well, that's fair. Well, I'm Puerto Rican and I'm supposed to know how to dance but I can't Because I'm Puerto Rican when

I dance even if it's bad people think it's actually dancing because it's like well, he's Hispanic That's that's got to be a move.

So yeah. Well, I mean the Sharks were great dancers in West Side Story All right, well we're gonna be talking about the

Shroud of Turin today and Maybe maybe we'll come to some conclusion

You know Doug could share his thoughts as to what he thinks about the shrouds authenticity

But for folks who who have been living under a rock or maybe have never heard of it

Let's kind of go through some basic beginner questions and then kind of go into more detail So, why don't you describe for folks who may not know what what is the

Shroud of Turin? And why is it a big deal for a lot of people? The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth.

It's about fourteen and a half feet long and three and three -quarters feet wide and it is in Turin Italy in the

Cathedral of st. John the Baptist and It has been in Europe since at least the year 1355 and it has been believed

Beginning at least then to have been the cloth that was wrapped around Jesus's body when he was when he was buried

And what makes it so fascinating is there's there's a lot of stains and stuff on it, but Among the stains there is kind of this vague

Shadowy form of a man and it's and you see both the front and the back of the man because of the way the shroud was wrapped around him and It's just this indistinct thing and nobody can

Really figure out how the this image got on there. So It gets

Displayed kind of rarely. It's there's no set schedule for its display. It's not permanently on display

So there will be exhibitions every you know Ten or so years and and you get a very short time in front of it

After you stand in line for hours, and then you can't really see a whole lot. So it's actually best examined in in photos

Do you have a photo of it? You'd like to share on the screen? I can make it big if you if folks want as a matter of fact,

I do And it looks like this. So what you're looking at here is so the top image is how it appears

To the naked eye. So if you were to go see it, I guess the next time it's on display is 2025

I think but the top image is what you would see with the naked eye and on the left side the left half

Of it you can see the front side of a body of a man laid out with the feet against the short side of the edge of the cloth and the head right in the middle and then the

Right side is the starting with the head it goes back down to the feet again So it's been draped over the top of the head of the man in the shroud so it's as if the shroud were laid on a burial bench and that a body was laid on top of it and then

The other half of the cloth was folded on top of it. What you see below is a negative image and this is

What makes the shroud? really fascinating there are There are okay.

I'm I'm a Presbyterian Presbyterians are not supposed to like relics, right? And Calvin has a whole treatise against relics and he even goes directly after the shroud at one point and I've been to the

Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul and I went into this this wing called the the sacred chamber and the chamber of sacred relics and I saw things like a stick that's supposed to be

Moses's staff and A cooking pot that belonged to Abraham and the sword of King David and the turban of Joseph and things like that and they're they're clearly

Not authentic things. Okay. It's like a carnival sideshow in there and these are Mainly what relics are like purported relics.

They're either so outlandish that they're they're not plausible to be polite and Even if you do come across something that might be authentic that is like possibly authentic There's no way you could prove it.

You couldn't really investigate for it How would you ever know that like that staff was Moses's?

I mean what what could you possibly test for and the what makes the Shroud of Turin unique is that it is

Investigatable you can do scientific tests on it to That that can't be done on any other relic except one there's an exception and I'll talk about that but that the

Shroud is unique among relics because it is an object of scientific investigation and in fact, it's the most studied

Artifact in the world. That's its reputation anyway so but the site the age of scientific investigation started when it was photographed for the first time and Back for those who are too young to remember this back in the days before digital photography

When you took a picture of something it was it It created a negative on the film in the camera

It was the opposite image everything that was dark that you took a picture of turned light everything that was light turned dark

And then you had to take it into a darkroom and process it with chemicals and then reverse the image again to get a print

So when this was photographed for the first time in 1898 the guy took his glass plate negative into the darkroom and processed it and that bottom image is what he saw the bottom image is the negative of The Shroud and this is really startling because not only is it counterintuitive because the reverse

It's a positive image. You shouldn't be looking at a positive image in a

Photographic negative because what it means is that the image of the body on the

Shroud? To the naked eye is a negative image, which it doesn't make any sense.

So First off it's just unexpected and that startled the guy

But even more startling is the fact that there's so much more detail and clarity when you look at this in Negative and it turns out that the the man in the

Shroud Has suffered all of the wounds that you read about Jesus suffering in the

Gospels And so now this kicks off the age of scientific investigation of the Shroud that is it that makes it so fascinating Because now it's just it's not just tradition or legend, but now you could really look into it regardless of your religious presuppositions

So I'm sorry here here. This might be a little clearer for those who are looking at it for the first time

So you can see the the close -up of the body As it's as if it were standing upright in front of you and then that's that famous image of the face

So what you're looking at on the right is the negative image So, there you go, sorry to interrupt you no worries

It's what's fascinating I think is if if it is legitimate, I mean we have then a photograph of Jesus But yeah legitimate that that's as incredible.

Yeah so now you did say that the that on the the cloth there there's evidence that the the the person who

Was wrapped in that cloth suffered some of the same injuries that are consistent with with Jesus How do you see that when you look is this through testing or is it can you see it straight from the cloth that there's?

Evidence of maybe piercing in the in the wrists or or bruising on the head or anything like that? How did they determine that well here?

Well, here it is. Here's a kind of created a wound map here So here's what can be seen

Just by examining the photograph At the starting at the top you have this strange wound pattern at the top of the back of the head that wraps around to the front of the head and this would correspond to what you would

Think you'd see In terms of wounds from a crown of thorns if the crown of thorns was not

Shaped like a wreath but more like a dome or a helmet set on top of his head there is evidence that the

Shoulders have abrasions on it, which would correspond to carrying a cross beam and also scraping against the cross beam if When if this person had been crucified all these little kind of Tiny hash marks are

Correspond to scourge marks now Roman scourge was done with a phlegm that could take two different kinds of shapes

One would be like you see in the passion of the Christ Where at the end of the leather tongs you have sharp objects like glass or metal or rocks or something like that?

Or it could be done with these dull Almost like sinkers on a on a fishing line where it's

Lead balls that are paired up and so they leave this almost kind of barbell or dumbbell

Shape and this is what the man on the shroud has so he would have been

Scourged with these dull weights that left at least 200 visible marks on the back and 150 plus on the front and they would have penetrated

Well, they would have created a number of contusions before eventually penetrating the skin and that's what you're seeing there the the rear end on the

Left side when you're looking at the the the left image here. That's the back side

The rear the man's rear end isn't flattened out which indicates he's in rigor mortis

So he's been dead for 12 to 36 hours and then if you look around on the front side, you can see that there is a

Large wound in his right side that corresponds with the spear wound that you read about in the

Gospels You can see on the wrist the one visible wrist There is a large wound where that would correspond with where a nail goes on a crucifixion victim right at the base of the palm top of the wrist and you can see that From the wrist to the elbow on both arms

You see this trail of blood that goes from the wrist back toward the elbow at about a 20 degree angle

Which corresponds to the arms in the position of a crucifixion? You also see that the one visible hand there with where you should see a thumb.

There's no thumb That's because in a crucifixion the nail through the wrist causes nerve damage that makes the thumb turn inward

So it wouldn't be visible in this position and look how long the arms are.

They're like they're Unnaturally long arms and the reason is because the shoulders are probably dislocated which is what happens to a crucifixion victim

The body can't sustain the weight so the arms just the shoulders dislocate and that means in order to Exhale and once they get the in order to get the pressure of the chest off the lung

So that the victim could exhale and get another breath of air They have to push up on the nails going through the feet or the heels and that's what you see in the

At the bottom there on both the front and the back you can see that there's this wound to the foot

So you can see it corresponds very closely to everything you read about in the

Gospels Okay. Wow. Okay, so And I'm thinking in terms of the the wounds of Christ the piercing of the side the scourging the crown of thorns

Was it normal practice to beat a person who is going to be crucified?

I mean did they normally just crucify people and that was horrible just by itself I mean or was it

Unique that someone was kind of severely beaten beforehand prior to that because I guess someone could say well

Let's suppose it's a legitimate cloth and you know, that person has similar wounds

Who's to say that that's not someone else who was just beaten and killed in a similar way that Jesus was

Probably more times than not the victim was scourged beforehand in order to weaken them

So that they didn't last as long on the cross If you were well hydrated and in good shape and well fed and got crucified

Then you know putting a nail through your wrist is not going to kill you you die from all sorts of other things it would be through hypovolemic shock or dehydration or you know, there's a number of things that that kind of conspire and Like I said if you're in good shape you could last upwards of a week on the cross so they to discourage someone would

Significantly hasten their death when they got on the cross and so that that is what happened more times than not

But it's not just the the scourging beforehand that would

Okay, if the question is How many people suffered these wounds? I mean lots of there were tens of thousands of people who were crucified

By the Romans. So how common would it be to have these kind of wounds and this question was answered by Gary Habermas who's one of the leading experts in the world on the historical evidence for the resurrection and He wrote a book two books actually with a guy named

Ken Stevenson Who is the PR guy for a group of scientists called the Shroud of Turin Research Project?

They were called STIRP for short and the STIRP team is who did the most extensive scientific investigation of the shroud ever allowed

Which was done in 1978 and so Habermas and Stevenson together in two different books in the 80s calculated the odds of just seven of the wounds and Then they did that in order to calculate the probability that it could be anybody other than Jesus So they don't even try to account for all the things we just talked that we just talked about or everything that you could

See on the on the shroud, but just seven things They looked at the crown of thorns and they they assigned that a probability of 1 in 400 because you got to figure the crown of thorns was there to mock

Jesus for being king of the Jews and how many people were Executed for being claiming to be the king of something probably not many and given that there were tens of thousands of people

Executed by the Romans that's probably pretty conservative there is no indication of Decomposition meaning there's no fluid coming out of the nose or the mouth or any other orifices.

There's no sign of future putrefaction, so that's there's They gave that a 1 in 10 the spear moon.

They gave 1 in 27 there I mean if you think about it, I don't want to be too graphic But there's a lot of places they could have speared the body to see if the if the man on the cross was dead or not

Not just that place, but they wouldn't even you didn't even have to use a spear to do that There's all sorts of implements you could have used to do that.

So 1 in 27 probably pretty conservative crucified without ropes because the arms were dislocate

It was sometimes the arms would sometimes be tied with ropes onto the cross beam as well

To secure the body because that the wrist would sometimes pop off the nail heads There's no indication that that happened to the man in the shroud or any indication that happened to Jesus in the gospel accounts

Scourge marks they gave 1 and 2 you got a you know They probably more than half of the people who were crucified around that time were scourged beforehand.

So that's probably pretty conservative No broken legs, they gave that 1 in 3 Jesus was crucified between two other people who both had their legs broken

But his were not so that's 1 in 3 and then the most conservative one is the buried in a linen shroud

Which they gave 1 in 8 that's super conservative because remember if there are tens of thousands of people being crucified by the

Romans in history think about how in If the only archaeological evidence we have of any crucifixion victim is we have four skeletons of Crucified people two of them still had nails going through the heel bones and And and only one of them's from the first century in Judea One of them was found a few months ago from the second century in Roman Britain.

So it's it was very rare Very rare to give the body back they were either left on the cross to rot during times of insurrection or they were put in a common grave and So to give the body back was highly unusual

It happened far less than 1 out of 8 times But they gave it 1 in 8 when you multiply just these seven things together

The odds that it's anybody other than Jesus is 1 in almost 83 million Wow, that's interesting.

It's okay. So if you could pop yourself up back on the screen there you got the image there I don't want to ask the question while looking possibly at Jesus Okay, so I Know that there's a first of all, let me say this if anyone has any questions for Doug He will be taking questions if there are any so just make sure you preface your question with the word question so that I could

Differentiate them. Um, also if you think this is a load of bunk ask a question

This is this is interesting, you know, I'm sure we know we can not be a hundred percent sure about these sorts of things

But I mean, it's an interesting topic and there are some people who? Who think it's legitimate want to hear the the arguments of both sides?

So if you have a question or a critique or an objection or anything like that Feel free to ask them in the comments and and just preface your question comment or whatever

With the word question or comment or argument or objection or whatever the case may be all right, so The natural skeptical response is this is a forgery right this can be you know

Easily forged now if you can put yourself We know as presuppositional list when we engage with unbelievers and we're arguing worldviews, right?

We argue that the the only legitimate way to critique someone is to hypothetically jump into their worldview and do an internal critique

Right. Um, so perhaps you can do that here if you could step into the shoes of the skeptic

Knowledgeable skeptic who's aware of the studies and these sorts of things. Can you spend a few moments?

Going through how you would debunk this Based upon some of the best arguments out there against its legitimacy and then after that perhaps we can go into some of the specific studies and and Strongest pieces of evidence that people actually think this is legitimate

Well, it's probably better to do the The remainder of the evidence first and then talk about potential theories and the reason is because there are all sorts of kind of like The you know common -sense theories that you could put forward just based on what you've seen right now

But it doesn't come up close to accounting for the evidence That was particularly developed by the stirp team and the reason why that's important is because the stirp team does this group of scientists from 1978 and they were a group of 30 33

American scientists and they get sometimes sometimes they're mischaracterized as a group of Christians who just went over there to verify what they already decided

They were gonna believe that this was authentic and it's that's not true.

Okay, not the majority of these 33 Scientists were

Self -identified as Christians, but they didn't all agree on what that meant. There were Roman Catholics.

There were Protestants. There were conservatives There were liberals. There were Christians who thought this was fake.

There were Christians who thought it was legitimate. There were a couple of Agnostics there were a couple of Jewish men on this and so it wasn't a monolith lithic thing

And these these scientists were all PhD or equivalent like terminal degree level

Experts in their field and they worked at highly respected places like Sandia National Labs, Los Alamos National Labs Caltech JPL Air Force Academy weapon and the

Air Force weapons lab and these were these were serious guys who went over there to do serious scientific work and at the end of the exhibition in October 1978, they were given a hundred and twenty continuous hours to Conduct a number of tests as many as they could hundred and twenty continuous hours five straight days non -stop, so they had to work in shifts that was highly planned out and So they they they collected all this data they did all this photographic evidence

They hauled a ton of gear over there and then over the next four years They published their findings and they published their findings in over 20 different peer -reviewed scientific journals so they wrote as scientists for scientists in a way that other scientists could interact with and like said, they're peer -reviewed so This they're not writing for Christians these this isn't like they didn't have a blog and they didn't publish it in Christianity Today and they didn't publish it in like Newsweek magazine or the

Discovery Channel or something and there's nothing wrong with any of those outlets, but they're not academic peer -reviewed

Environment so and that's what they were doing okay, so they were writing as scientists for scientists not as Christians for other

Christians and and they determined that The shroud was

You know that the main? Question is what made the image on the shroud and the answer is they don't know

There's there there they couldn't determine it they could determine what the physical properties of the image but not the cause that the physical properties are the effect of but they were able to determine that the image was not made by paint stain dye scorching oils

Pigment of any kind Spices nothing. There was no No natural or known

Artistic process that could have produced this image and they came they arrived at that For in a couple different ways number one the blood on the well, first of all there

You'll still to this day read from skeptics that the

What appears to be blood on the shroud is is actually paint that there is paint on the shroud

So first thing to know is it is blood. It is human blood and it's type a

B Type a B is common in the Middle East and not common in Europe Second thing is that there is

Which is relevant because the earliest knowledge that we have of the shroud is in the 1300s

So someone could say oh, you know in France or whatever But the fact is someone that is in the

Mediterranean area is relevant there Correct. Yeah, so, I mean that's not knowledge that any

Any medieval forger could have known let alone forged if they forged they

I mean, how do you forge that? You'd have to like It it'd be gross to forge it

They but there they there is paint on the shroud the the the problem with the argument

That it created the image Well, I'll tell you the rest of that argument in a second, but the the paint on the shroud isn't just on the image area

It's on the off image area and it's only in in minute trace amounts and That's important because what we know

Is that in the Middle Ages there were a number of copies made of the shroud and they were laying They were laid on top of the shroud in order to kind of certify them or bless them or make them official and it makes more sense that they would have contaminated or left trace elements from the copies on the linen than the other way around because the

Image was not painted on the shroud. And here's how the scientists know that This is a linen cloth and the linen threads aren't a linen thread isn't just one thing a linen thread is

Made up of two or three hundred kind of fibrils twisted together micro fibers as it were called fibrils and the image area is

Created by a change in the chemical composition of the outermost fibrils of the thread

What that means is that? only the most superficial Fibrils had this chemical change that darkened them and paint stain dye pigment oils all of that stuff scorching would have

Penetrated deeper into the thread. It would not have just stopped on the outermost fibrils and The other thing is that the darker the chemical change was the composition change was

Indicates the distance from the material to the body beneath it so the darker it is the closer it was to the body and the

Less distinct it is the farther away from the body So if it's laying over the face and it's touching the nose

It's going to be dark there But as it as it bends around the side and it doesn't quite touch but it's really close

It's less distinct and that means there's three -dimensional information encoded into the

Into this the dent the change in the density of the chemical composition So you could actually create a three -dimensional model of the body based on that information alone

And in fact, the scientists did do that before they ever got to turn they did it in 1976 and it's one of the most famous images of the shroud

So the the other thing to notice about the image even when you're looking at it With the naked eye is that the image isn't distorted now if the if the image was created by Contact with the body and there was like stains like blood or a paint or dye or something like that on the body and that's what

Transferred to the cloth in order to make the image that would only look correct when the cloth was

Formed in the shape and contours of the body underneath it But as soon as you flatten out it would be distorted, right?

It would look right if it's bent around the face But as soon as you flatten it out, it would be distorted and when you look at the shroud in in the in the

Like you normally view it like that. It's not distorted. Okay, so it's not

From from the the image isn't made by contact. So the

The the properties of the image are very mysterious. They don't know how it's done

They only know how it's not done and it's not done by any known artistic means or or any

Natural means now there are people who've been able to replicate a Pretty good facsimile of the shroud

Using stuff that would have been around in the Middle Ages Whether that kind of process would actually have been known to anybody at the time

Is up for debate But at the same time it also does not capture all of the characteristics in the shroud only some of them enough to ballpark

It which is impressive, but it still doesn't account for all the attributes that you see on the shroud Okay, so okay.

So so how might Obviously not everyone believes it's genuine and not everyone agrees with the legitimacy of the points

You just made in terms of the conclusions one can draw So, what are some of the more stronger arguments against the authenticity of the shroud?

Well, the the strongest one, of course, the famous one is that in the mid 80s?

the stirp team proposed another round of tests and Because they they there was so much progress made in 1978 so there was another

Couple dozen tests that were going to be done one of which was the radiocarbon or the carbon -14

Dating test and that became see and that was going to determine the age of the cloth itself and that became such an important thing to figure out it got treated as its own thing and there was a the archbishop of Turin who's the custodian of the shroud and A representative of the

Vatican and several stirp team members came up with a list of protocols in order to conduct a test the radiocarbon test and they

The protocols were they were going to take seven different samples from the shroud from at least three different areas

They would be shared with seven different labs and the labs would Do one of two different methods for radiocarbon dating and that's what was agreed on and then when the time came in 1988 to take a sample of the

To do the test from the archbishop of Turin who is the custodian?

unilaterally changed his mind and Did not follow the protocols.

He never explained why he doesn't have to answer to anybody on this But he allowed instead of seven samples

He allowed one sample to be taken and that one sample was divided into three and shared with three labs not seven and they all used the same method not the

Second one as well and six months later in October 1988 when the date came back it was dated to about 1260 to 1390 so it was announced that it was a medieval fraud and That's that that is where things stand on the on the on the testing directly on the shroud because that's when the the church pivoted from examination to Conservation and they've just preserved it and not allowed any more testing to be done on it since that time

Interestingly enough there was enough material that the STIRP team had to work with that there were there was one of the

PhD chemists from Los Alamos a guy named Raymond Rogers continued to work on this issue and in 2004

I believe he published a peer -reviewed paper in an academic journal force for chemists that conclusively proved that The material that was tested in 1988 was not original to the main material of the shroud and so what he did is

Part of of what the the STIRP team protocol was What what what?

part of what it said was don't use a Sample from the top left corner

Because that has a high likelihood of contamination now in this the bottom half of the slide you're looking at the

Main body of the shroud is kind of in the bottom right hand corner here And and so Raymond Rogers this chemist had a thread from 1978 from this main body of the shroud and then he had access to a thread taken in that top left corner for in 1973 and he compared the two now the 1973 thread turned out to be cotton coated in plant gum and dyed and the the sample from 1978 was

Linen not cotton. Okay linen comes from flax not the cotton plant It doesn't have any plant gum on it and there's no dye on it

So this area this kind of this whitish corner Triangular shape from the 1973 sample thread area that area right there that cloth has at least either a mixture of cotton and linen in it and that Was important because then he

Contacted somebody who had a remnant from the 1988 Sample material and that 1988 radiocarbon sample material you could see is adjacent to that 1973 area and that thread was examined and it turns out that the what was tested in 1988 is cotton and it's coated in plant gum

It is not the same as the main body of the shroud So it doesn't mean that the shroud is authentic It doesn't mean that the shroud is from the first century all it means is that whatever was tested in 1988 is not from the main body of the shroud and therefore cannot be used to date the shroud with any sort of authority now he proved that another way in 2002 he had another paper that used photographic evidence to show there was a difference in the

Chemical composition of the sample area from the main body of the shroud and that's what you see up above There's an x -ray and there's a transmitted light photograph so like being shown through the backside of the shroud and you can see that this denser area is where the 1988 carbon dating

Sample was taken from and that is different from the main body of the shroud So it looks like it appears to be that there is additional

Material in that That one section of the shroud and we don't know where it came from.

You know, the shrouds been in a lot of several fires and there's been

Patches added to it There's a been a backing cloth added to it and there may have been other repairs using something

Called an invisible weave that could account for this We just don't know the one thing that has been proven is that whatever was tested in 1988 is not from the main body of the shroud

The problem is that in 1988 when that date was announced it was a big press conference and it was kind of this

You know is it was it was revealed as a popular news item not a

Peer -reviewed scientific thing. There's nothing wrong Then nobody is accusing the the the 1988

Radiocarbon testers those scientists of doing anything wrong that what they but that what they were given

Just wasn't from the main body of the shroud. So But this the these two reports from Raymond Rogers, which are peer -reviewed in an academic journal

Are not in a popular magazine and therefore they don't they don't get the press

So that's where we are so So when we're talking about the testing of the the outers the the outer edges, right?

They haven't they haven't tested anything within within near the image itself No and that was the whole point of taking seven different samples from at least three different areas is you'd get a variety of Places to kind of check and reconcile with each other and that's that's what didn't happen and not only that but they took it from The most contaminated area on the shroud that they could say they could tell why?

Good no one no one knows why the the archbishop never explained why

But it's not like he's some evil villain I mean, it's frustrating to us, but you got a figure he pro

I'm certain that he believes this is authentic so if it's authentic he's not going to want the anything missing from the main body of the shroud and he probably like Was like I don't want to be the guy who had like some snippet cut out of the middle of the thing

So here just take it from the area that I least care about Well, the reason why you care about that area is because it's the most contaminated area

So you can you know, you can see why he might do that So I don't want to paint him as a bad guy, but at the same time you're just like, oh

It would seem to me if you want to really be more sure if it's authenticity that you grant that you know

Yeah, but but then you risk Destroying or damaging the very thing that you want to preserve and authenticate

Right, so Interesting. All right. Well, oh, let me throw you let me throw another one at you because okay, we're cool

All right. So during the 1978 test they the

Archbishop invited one other scientist to participate and he is a criminologist named

Max Fry from Sweden and or Switzerland, sorry, and he

He was a well -known criminologist and he had this kind of Sherlock Ian method that he came up with of placing people at crime scenes by comparing the plant life from around that area with Pollen he pulled from their clothes using sticky tape.

So they they let him come down With his sticky tape and he just used standard gift wrap wrapping tape.

It's crazy it's just like, you know, like the stuff you use for Christmas presents and and he took like 38 different samples that were able to Collect pollen he did it took some in 73 and he took the rest in 78 and he was able to come up He was able to identify

Over 50 different kinds of pollen on there and this is really important because the pollen

Not only did he identify but it's associated with certain locations In fact, it's associated that you can come up with an itinerary.

It's Northwest Italy, it's southeast France. It is the area around Istanbul and the area there's a

There's pollen from Palestine and particular to the area around Jerusalem and the pollen from around Jerusalem is

In bloom, which only happens in March and April Now that's again.

That's something that's that's crazy. That's something that that There's no

Middle Evil forger medieval forger would have come up with you know So it what makes this even more fascinating is when you look at the possible documentary evidence

Supporting the history of the existence of Jesus a burial shroud prior to its arrival in Europe.

It corresponds Exactly with the documentary evidence this is the places where history says the shroud was and That's based upon the analysis of the pollen that was that's the the scientific evidence of the pollen corroborates the documentary evidence of the shroud if the but of course, it's not going to be called the

Shroud of Turin prior to Well it getting to turn right before I got there, you know, it wasn't in Turin until the later 1500s but it showed up in Europe in 1355 so it existed before that and before that it was

Probably what is known as the image of Edessa? And when you trace back the history of the image of Edessa, it comes from Constantinople and before that it was in Edessa Turkey, which is now

Stanley Urfa or just Urfa and the history according to Eusebius of that traces it all the way back to Jerusalem So now there's a lot of different legends surrounding the image of Edessa and and contradictory versions of the stories and different permutations of it

But the basic contours of it have the shroud being taken to Edessa by either one of Jesus 70 disciples that he sent out or by the apostle

Thaddeus He appears before the before the King King Abgar who had invited

Jesus there to heal him of leprosy But Jesus couldn't come so he ends up after their resurrection sending

Thaddeus or one of the others 70 to Abgar The shroud is taken with this person.

They let they lay it over Abgar and he's healed and he becomes a

Christian as a result of it, but his grandson becomes reverts to paganism and What Abgar had done was he had folded up the shroud probably put it in a box with so that its face was was what

Was on the outside so you could see the face and the box had a window cut out of it So you can see the face and he probably set it in a niche above the city gate of Edessa because that's where the pagan

Idols would would be kept where you would pay tribute as you entered into the city So after Abgar became a believer, he took the idol down He put the image of Edessa up there and then his son was also a believer and left the image of Edessa up there

But his grandson reverted to paganism. And so the priest Decided that he didn't want to risk this being torn down or damaged and so he bricked it up he walled it up and its memory was

Preserved but the actual location of it was lost and it stayed lost for a couple of hundred years until the year 544 and that's when the

Persian army laid siege to Edessa and during the siege the Bishop of Edessa claims of received a vision and an angel told him to go get the shroud out of the wall and told him

Where to get it and so he opened up the wall. There's the shroud and he lifted it up and started walking around the city and he got to a certain point in the city and There were a bunch of copper pots around there and they all started rattling and that's how the people of Edessa Came to the realization that the

Persians weren't only laying siege by you know to the city They weren't just encircling it

They were tunneling underneath the city so they could come up in the middle of it and so the people of Edessa dug a hole into the tunnel poured in some oil lit it on fire and Killed the

Persians and that's how they broke the siege and survived so the image of Edessa became very famous in 544 and it was kept there for 400 years and then it was taken to Constantinople and it was kept in a church in Constantinople Until 1204 when the city was sacked during the fourth

Crusades and the Crusaders I mean it just disappears for about 150 years and that's when it shows up in Europe So there's there's some debate about how it gets there

I'll tell you the most compelling story is that when it is first displayed in France.

It's in 1355 in Leary France and it's by a guy named

Jeffrey de Charny and in so if that's like says 1355 in 1204 there was a there was a

Duke from Vincennes in France or not a Duke, but a knight in the

Crusades his name was Othon de la Roche and He was at Constantinople the

Constantinople when it was sacked and then he was made the Duke of Athens and then he returned home to Byzantine France and his great -great -granddaughter married

Jeffrey de Charny and So that would explain how it gets into the you know how it gets to his possession

And in Byzantine France in the Delaroche castle to this day There's a little chest that says this is what the the shroud of Jesus was kept in so you you have this connection there

That's that's fairly plausible. That's why on that pollen map I actually have the location of Athens tapped down there and the reason why it disappears from the record for 150 years is because right after the the the sacking of Constantinople The Pope made it illegal to display or sell relics without the church's permission and so I mean he was the one who who hushed everybody up if you had something because so many of the relics that ended up in Europe were stolen from Constantinople during the

The sacking of it in 1204. Hmm. That's fascinating man

It's interesting and especially with the with the pollen with the the way that it's tested and this the images and the details

It seems like all of these things converging it I can see how someone can be very intrigued, you know, maybe it's not a you know

You can't can't know a hundred percent, but it definitely I understand why people will say wait a minute. This is this is pretty interesting

Yeah, it's like a cumulative case is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent Wow Well, you've given a lot of people a lot of a lot of information to chew on I want to get to some of The questions we have some questions here.

Oh, can I do one more piece of corroborated? Go for it. Go for it.

All right. There's one more piece of evidence. That's super fascinated I believe and it is called the iconographic theory and the idea is this that there is in early

Byzantine icons, there is a Remarkable correspondence in the features that you see

In all the icons and it appears very suddenly in the middle of the 6th century all of a sudden

There's this standard depiction of Jesus and they all have at least 15 odd features like a little triangle in the in in his brow and The way that The tunic goes across his chest and the part in his hair exactly where it is

And there's a little wisp of hair usually there's a fork in his beard, you know there's a bunch of things like that, but what makes that remarkable is that before the middle of the 6th century

Jesus was depicted in a wide variety of ways so here are just here's a quick sample of the earliest depictions of Jesus between the 2nd century and the early 6th century so and I could

I just like randomly grabbed some here, but There there are a bunch of other ones.

I could have grabbed but he's Sometimes he's a repurposed Roman God. He's a good shepherd.

He's a fisherman. He's got long hair. He's got short hair Sometimes in that top left one.

He's got a magic wand. It's a short staff Doing a miracle and and in some of the early icons and catacombs

Paintings when when miracles being produced By Jesus, he's got him a short staff or a magic wand and there are so many different ways of portraying

Jesus that Augustine even complains about it and then suddenly in the middle of the 6th century

Jesus is standardized and that's it corresponds with the recovery of the image of Odessa in 544 and There it you can see there is there are a number of features that are across the board on all of them and they actually are on the image of the the face in the shroud as well and There was a this this was first Recognized in the 1930s by a

French biologist, but in the 70s and 80s, there was a British historian named Ian Wilson who really started developing this theory pretty significantly and there was a psychiatrist a doctor and at Duke University who took this very seriously and started comparing the oldest one of the oldest icons with the face of the man on the shroud and So he

He he found that there were about a hundred and seventy five exact Correspondences between these two images.

He called them points of congruence the image on the the right that icon is dated to 556 years after the sack of After the the siege of Odessa was broken and the recovery of the image that icon the the

Christ Panacraner icon it comes from st. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of the traditional

Mount Sinai and the monks there told Dr. Wanger that it was painted from the burial shroud of Jesus and so what what this guy did is

He took slides of each of these images and he projected them on the exact same spot on the wall

And he had a polarizing filter on each land and then he held a polarized filter in his in his hand and he was able

To isolate areas where they hit exactly together because I mean there's some resemblance looking at it side -by -side

But you wouldn't think that the one on the right was copied from the one on the left necessarily, but check this out

Okay, so here's here's obviously the base image and I took

Using Photoshop Ran a filter on it and combine the images and this is the correspondence now

Stare at the tip of the nose stare at the tip of the nose and watch everything fill in the eyes seem to kind of open up the eyebrows hit exactly the

The hair hits exactly It's pretty incredible. Check this out.

I did another one It looks like looks like the same image and it's just worn away a little bit.

So like I said, there's a hundred and 75 points of congruence here. He didn't do it with just that image.

He also did it with a Coin from 695 call a solidus, which is the oldest coin that has

Jesus's face minted on it and he found a hundred and Forty points of congruence

I believe on that It's pretty incredible. So the the point of course is that there's something happened in the middle of the sixth century that made people the people who are creating icons and depicting

Jesus believed that they had an exemplar of an authentic image of Jesus that they needed to try to adhere to and And the best explanation for that is the recovery of the image of Edessa and that you know would only be the case if they believed it was authentic and again, that is just another little point in this this

Accumulative case for the shroud that it existed prior to the radiocarbon date.

Hmm Okay, that's that was I like that though the image how you kind of did that there that's fascinating now if Before we go to the questions.

I want maybe you can kind of give because I'm my thumbnail It's a is this Jesus now, obviously, we can't know a hundred percent right and it's gonna be debated until Jesus comes back, right?

Like it was me. You know, I don't know. I do that is a great Jesus impression

I Told you it's me. It was me, you know What if you can give us your take

With everything that you've considered in your own study of the evidence of the things that you've heard in terms of counter arguments and things like that What percentage would you say is your level of confidence that it is?

Most likely the cloth of Christ and the image there is is in fact Jesus or not

Where do you stand there based upon your Yeah, and again, you just this is an estimate percentage

I mean, obviously we don't know but where do you stand in light of in light of the evidence as you see it? I think it's a pretty compelling case and I think it's far more likely to be authentic than not authentic if you want me to like assign a

Percentage to it. I'm probably 90 or higher but the

If it proves to be fake or Inauthentic in any way nothing changes in my theology the truthfulness of Christianity does not stand or fall on the

Authenticity of the shroud, you know that I believe that there was a burial shroud

Absolutely, whether this is it or not. I don't know 100 % but if this isn't it it's it's

It's got enough similar, I mean it's got everything that you would expect to see on the authentic one.

So Until there is a better explanation or any explanation really for that image

I think it's got to be kept as a live option and right now it's more alive than than dead

Wow, okay. Excellent. Thank you for sharing that. I hope you guys are enjoying this cover.

It's super fascinating I mean, this is an area that I really never spent a lot of time and I've known about the the shroud

I think I've watched a couple of documentaries years ago But I haven't really been following along, but I've always found it fascinating.

So we have some questions here and Doug I'm gonna go with our

Hypothetical objection here to theological objection. Maybe you want to speak to this Scott Terry, thank you so much for your $20 super chat.

That was really generous of you Thank you so much, but Scott says Theological objection if God hates graven images

Why would he violate his law by leaving a graven image and then he puts in parentheses love the shroud just playing devil's advocate a bit

Oh, there's no devil's advocate. This is I'm so glad you asked that question So I said first of all,

I apologize. I didn't realize I had my white noise machine going on this whole time It sounded like I was flying in a jet and I was trying to figure out where it was

You were flying a jet and do it in doing this livestream, I'm pretty impressed So the one of the guys one of the photographers who was on the stirp team was both a scientific a technical photographer and a documentary photographer

His name is Barry Swartz. If you're interested in shroud, you want to dig deeper Barry is the guy who runs the most credible

Clearinghouse for all shroud data and that shroud calm he keeps all the kooky stuff off there not all of the theories and Evidence on there agree with each other

But at least it's all serious talk and he lets all the pseudoscience.

He keeps it all from there What's fascinating about Barry is that first of all the images that I showed you

I got from him He took the image of the shroud. We've been looking at He's the

I guess it's been officially photographed three times and I I think that's right and his his is the

One from 1978. So I have a full -size replica of the shroud

I got it from him all the images I had of the stirp team I got him from him If you want to see the stirp team in action go to shroud comm and check out his his stuff

You can see all the best images at Barry's place Barry was raised in Orthodox Jew.

He's no longer a practicing Jew I do not know what his religious belief is

I believe if anything and I don't want to mischaracterize him and I'm and so I apologized very in advance if anything

It would probably be broadly spiritual, okay, so he gives talks on the shroud and He told me he was given a talk about 10 or 15 years after the stirp investigation and somebody asked him if he believed it was

Jesus and He said I don't know I haven't come to a conclusion on that and He got home or he got in the car to go home and his mom had been in the audience that night

His mom is an Orthodox Jew fully, you know practicing observant Orthodox Jew and she said

Barry, of course, it's authentic and he said mom, what are you talking about? You're an Orthodox Jew and she said

There's no reason for them to have kept it unless it was authentic and he started thinking about it

And remember who found it you're talking about Peter and John who were observant Jews.

They were Orthodox Jews they were trying to keep the law as closely as possible and the the the guy with the

Scott is Absolutely, right there is an image on the shroud of a man and in the first century

Jewish mindset that violates the second commandment of a graven image

Okay, so an image on the shroud is Something they very much would not have

Wanted to been a part of the other interesting thing is it broke it didn't break just that commandment

It broke another Jewish law Which was it would have separated the there's blood on the shroud by taking the shroud out of the tomb

They would have separated the blood from the body and in Jewish tradition the blood

It contains the soul the lifeblood contains the soul So when a

Jew dies a violent death, they collect the blood and bury it with the body

So if they die a violent death They they bury the clothes the bloody clothes with the body if there's blood on the ground

They collect as much dirt as possible and they bury it with the body and this is true to this day And and it's also

Passover. So by going in there and fooling around with burial clothes and stuff. They would have made themselves

Ceremonially unclean so none of this story actually makes sense in less unless they walked in and And there's an image on the cloth

But it's an image not made by human hands because that's what the second commandment is against is making an

Image by human hands and this is actually the start of an entire genre of Christian art card are called archipoieta

Which is an image not made by hands And so if the caveat is it's an image not made by hands and you can't separate the blood from the body

If there is no body And so it would make sense of both of those things

Hmm and that comes from Barry's Jewish mom. Isn't that great? So here's the best part of this is now

Barry Believes it's Jesus, but he's not a Christian. He believes it is

Jesus, but he doesn't believe in Jesus, right? Okay, interesting. Thank you for that. Awesome.

And thank you Scott. Great question Lauren Stanley says short answer No, Jesus had a separate headcloth

John 26 through 7 while the turn shroud is all one piece. How would you speak to that? That is

I'm so glad it's like I've got plants in the audience okay, so The when remember when

I started I said that what makes the shroud unique is that it is the only relic that could be

Investigated scientifically with one other exception. Here's the other exception.

This is called the Sudirium of Oviatto Oviatto is a town in Spain.

It's about 15 miles from the north coast right in the middle and and this is

This is a Sudirium Oviatto is the town Sudirium is The name of a cloth

I mean, it's just what a cloth was called a sweat cloth is what it is and in first century Roman world

There were you just carried this around in the hot arid areas and the tradition is

That this cloth was wrapped around Jesus's head as he died on The cross and was buried with him.

Now. We don't usually picture Jesus on the cross with his head wrapped. It sounds really freaky

But it's it's not like this would have been on his head the entire time It would have been on it placed around his head as he approached death

And the reason is the very reason I just explained you got to bury the bot the blood with the body

And so this was built to catch the blood as he started spewing it

As the pressure built up in his lungs and he was taking longer and longer at times before he could exhale

You know the pressure being released once he once he pushed up on the nails and his ankles was so forceful he was spewing blood and so once that starts happening they wrap the cloth around his face and what you're looking at are blood stains and But it's not just blood stains.

It's blood stains mixed with pulmonary edema in a six -part pulmonary edema to one -part blood

Ratio and that is what's produced in the lungs when a body is undergoing torture or extreme stress such as Asphyxiation which is one of the ways in which you die in crucifixion and you can see that there are these kind of concentric stains growing out from the center there so right in the center is where his nose would have been the tip of his nose and So the blood is getting caught and all the facial hair there

And if you look over on the bottom left corner, there's this kind of scarab shape this scarab stain and that is where that would have been on the back of the head and probably where the

The long hair or the ponytail the mountain in the shroud There's some debate as to whether he had long hair or just a ponytail

But that's that's the width of the hair at that point as it's pinned to it and just above it

You can see that weird viny pattern of stains and that corresponds to a lot of the wounds

That you might expect to see and left by a crown of thorns and there's pinholes right there that would

Indicate this it was pinned to the back of the head then it was wrapped around the front So that's the stain right in the middle and then it had to be folded back for a little bit on the right side

And that's why you get this mirror image this almost Rorschach II type of image the blood on this on the

Sudarium is type a B which once again is found in It was common in the

Middle East but not in Europe also the blood on the shroud is both post -mortem and Life blood there's only post -mortem blood on the shroud

This one has lifeblood so they know was placed on the on Someone's body when they were alive and remained there after This person was dead.

They also had Max Frye come down and to to Oviato in 1979 and he found over 30 types of pollen from it and he determined that the pollen was from Spain North Africa and the area around Jerusalem and now this is important because the documentary evidence of the

Sudarium of Oviato is that it It follow it goes from Jerusalem it was

Well here, let me just so we're not staring at that thing okay, so the idea the the history of the

Sudarium of Oviato is that The there was a chest a wooden chest

Made by the disciples of the Apostles They placed some relics in it including the face cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus So that's what you see in John 20 now, it's taken off when he's when he's buried

So it's it's not on his head during the resurrection. So if the reservoir let's say we assume the resurrection is

What causes the image that's why there's no image on this thing? Okay, it was only on his head

While he was on the cross and then when he was taken down from the cross It was on his head all the way into the grave so in order to get those stains you have to have the body in three positions one is like this so the

It gets the the cloth doubles back a little bit because they can't wrap it all the way around his head

And he's there for 45 minutes to an hour like that And then there's another one where he's on laying face down on his forehead and with the feet

Elevated and that makes the blood run down the bridge of the nose and pull on to the forehead and he's that way for 45 minutes to an hour which gives

Joseph of Arimathea time to go get permission to bury the body and Then the body is flipped face up for five minutes or less as it's taken to the tomb they get to the tomb

They throw the the face cloth aside because it's not found with the the other burial clothes

Okay, it's found in a separate place. So that makes sense of John 20 so the burial the this face cloth the pseudarium was placed in this chest and in the the mid 6th century or so there was a

Pilgrim named Antonius Martyr who went through the Holy Land and he went out to where John the Baptist did his ministry

And there was a cave there along the Jordan River that had seven nuns who were guarding a chest and This chest is said to have the face cloth of Jesus in 614

The Persians came to sack Jerusalem. So it got moved to North Africa probably

Alexandria in 616 the Muslims moved into northern

Africa and so it was put on a boat and sent to Carthage Spain or Cartagena, Spain and immediately taken to Seville and then in 657 the

Muslims moved into Spain so it was moved north to Toledo and in 711 the Muslims had continued to move north into Spain and so it was taken all the way to the northern

Spain Mountains of Asturias, that's what the region was and that King was able to repel the

The Muslims and he attributed the ability to do that to the protection offered by the relics in the chest

So he founded the town of Oviedo he built a cathedral and he put the chest in there and Three times a year

Good Friday, and then there's two feast days in September on the 14th and 21st they pull out the

Sudarium and they hold it up as they give the benediction and it is so the

Historical documents the documentary evidence again supports the pollen evidence found by Max Frye and what's important about this is the the correspondence of the

Sudarium with the shroud Be another great piece of evidence that the shroud is older than what is indicated by the radiocarbon day because the the

Sudarium has been in Oviedo or At least in Asturias since 711 uncontested

Wow, that's incredible People are throwing up football questions for you

About this. So here Here is the the head that where the heads is on the shroud of turn you can see

I've got the the wound cloth cluster of the back of the head marked out and then that darker stain

Which is what looks like indicates the long hair and if you lay the Sudarium on top of it

Look at the wound cluster. Look at those dark blood stains. Look at how the Sudarium fits To write on it and look at the the scarab shape it hits right on that ponytail

Okay and then if you look over at the face You can see the blood go right down the bridge of the nose and pool on the forehead if You if we go up close

This is the main stain and where it's going to hit on The on the face now look at the little three -shaped squiggle of blood on the shroud

That is the right hand side of that blocky stain of blood that's going to end up on the forehead

So check this out Here's the overlay it fits perfect and you can see the two

Kind of spots of blood over on the top right side of the head right here. Watch them grow

Because that's the blood added on the Sudarium right there And you can see the kind of that bloom of blood caught in the facial hair all over that so it

There's a there's a kind of a startling correspondence between those two cloths That is incredible.

Oh my goodness. All right, so let's let's move along here We'll try to move quickly through some of the questions.

There's I Suppose there's so much information so that you can go into any different levels of depths and answering the questions

But let's try to move through quickly as we can so we can get to as many as possible Truth is beautiful asks didn't the carbon dating give the wrong date second.

What is the number one reason you think it's real? so kind of just Address the carbon dating real quick And then you're kind of main if you can pick one main thing you think is the most powerful piece of evidence in your opinion

The carbon dating did not give the wrong date What happened was the carbon dating was a material that wasn't from the main body of the shroud.

And so There's there's two. I don't want to I don't want to Disparage the scientists who did this work

They're their reputation rests on doing accurate good work and this is these are world -class labs and world -class scientists

My dad's a scientist and he actually knows These are acquaintance of one of the people who did the work

So, you know, I know these aren't these aren't guys with an agenda other than doing excellent work

So there's I don't believe there's anything wrong with the date They came up with I think it's wrong to portray it as being from the main body of the shroud.

That's what was demonstrated Okay, as far as the most compelling a

Single piece of evidence. I always love the pollen stuff. I think that's pretty amazing. That's pretty cool

All right. Let's see here. Thank you for that Okay, yeah truth is beautiful also asked how did they rule out pigment

Pigment would permeate the fibrils of the thread more than Just on the superficial layer.

They did not find any pigment at all Let alone on on any layer on it if they had found pigment on it

It would have penetrated more deeply than just the outermost fibrils of the thread. Hmm.

All right. Thank you for that I'm going in order. So truth is beautiful asked a couple of questions I'm just kind of going down the list but question

What if the hoax what if the hoaxters? Well, that sounds to that seems to beg the question that they were

If they were hoaxers and they crucified a man in the 1300s as Jews did travel

Okay, well You're let's say that that did happen

Just because they crucified a man All that would do would give them a road map to Accurately copy the wounds, but it wouldn't account for how that image got on the cloth because just because because they know because they

Let's say they did actually crucify someone that still doesn't explain how the image got on the cross.

It doesn't explain the pollen and and You wouldn't get very much out of it ultimately it wouldn't explain the iconographic evidence that you have there is

There's there's one thing I didn't talk about there are Let's say All right, do you see okay, there's these weird triangle marks pairs of triangles that comes from a

Fire that it was in in the 1600s. So the shroud has spent a lot of its history folded up and It was in a it was in a metal box

That was in a cathedral that caught on fire and the metal box Dripped onto that one corner and the way it was folded meant that it burned through 16 holes and there's patches on those holes, but in between the holes if you look on the between the

Left two pairs of holes and right two pairs of holes You can see that there's this series of L shaped holes that are they like form a 7 or an

L There is an image from the year 1195 called the

Hungarian prey manuscript that is a depiction of the women at the tomb finding nobody but finding an empty shroud and On the shroud they have this weird pattern of four holes making this

L shape now That's a good 75 years earlier than the earliest date in the radiocarbon dating and Again, another reason just from artistic evidence that the shroud existed prior to the radiocarbon date

I mean, there's just it's it's just one thing after another after another. That's why it's a cumulative case

There's no one thing that's kind of a knockdown drag out But that's the kind of thing that isn't explained by saying well

What if in the Middle Ages they found they just got a Jewish guy and they they crucified him?

That doesn't explain anything Let's say they crucified a Jewish guy and then they put pigment all over him and then then

Tamp down the cloth on top of them. It doesn't explain the non -distortion of the image

It doesn't explain the the chemical change only on the outermost fibrils of the thread

It doesn't explain the image at all Actually, all it would explain is how they got an exemplar of what to copy

Not how they accurately copied anything because it doesn't it doesn't give them a method for replicating the shroud

Okay. Thank you very much. Excellent Let's see here Slam RN asks, can you ask about the holographic image in the shroud?

What's up with the holographic image in the shroud? I Don't know. I guess I'd have to ask for to define the terms

Okay. All right. Well if you define the term slam RN and I'll catch your question again,

I'll Repost it here. Let's see here Sorry, I have an art degree and a theology degree

So that that may be a completely accurate way of asking the question and it's just outside of my ability to understand it

Yeah, no worries. No worries. Truth is beautiful has asked a bunch of questions Some of them were kind of indirectly answered but here's and here's another one if the

Apostles made holy icons to bow During the Roman persecutions before 300 and they protected scripture

Why didn't they protect holy icons or the Romans mentioned them? It's a That's just the way the sentence is structured.

I don't know if you understand what I I'm not making any claim that the

Apostles made icons But for argument's sake let's say they did well there were periods of time in the church where there were movements against the existence of icons and they were destroyed or painted over or purged or whatever and this is one of the reasons why the

Monastery at st. Catherine's at the foot of the traditional Sinai is so important is because it is so remote and Because it was protected by both

Christian and Muslim rulers for various reasons it has the largest collection of icons in the world and so You know you that a lot

We would have far more icons whether or not you ascribe any

Theological importance to them or not there were far more than we have now and that's because there were times when there were

Movements within the faith to get rid of them. Mmm. All right slam

RN. Thank you so much for your $2 super chat That's the question about the holographic image. So if you can kind of define your terms there, maybe he can tackle that question

But thank you for the super chat greatly appreciate it Let's move down moving along It did it to do

This is super interesting. You're doing an excellent job Doug. I never doubted you. I knew you knew you're gonna do a great job

No, oh slam I didn't ignore it. I'm just going down the order so I got your super chat.

Thank you so much Let's see here I got it.

Okay. I think that was the last one. There were a couple of other ones, but there were Kind of repeats.

So, all right. I think this is a good place to stop. There is so much more I'm sure information one can go into What is a good resource for people to kind of look up if they want to dig a little deeper into this?

I meant to have this In front of me. I'm gonna go grab it real quick. Hold on.

No, no worries. I'll tell it. I'll tell a joke I'm just kidding You got are you in your house or a library

Are you at home or in a library this is my home this is my office

Yeah, is that because I saw I thought that was just one bookshelf behind you But you kind of went and it looked like like multiple bookshelves

I could go I can go over here That's pretty intense nice and I got

I have another little alcove over here on this one. Yeah, I have another little Impressive some people like to see that.

Some people like to see the the you know people's books in the back I used to have a bunch of books in my background people. Thank you.

Did you read all of those books? No, I didn't If you want to read a book on the shroud

Probably the best one I think is helpful is this one the shroud of Turin you can tell that I I have done a little better reading on this one

So it's the Shroud of Turin, A Critical Summary of Observations, Data, and Hypotheses, and it's by John Jackson.

He is the PhD physicist who was the leader of the Shroud of Turin Research Project, and you can order this book at shroudofturin .com,

or you just go to shroudofturin .com, check it out. But what's great about this book, it's not written in any sort of narrative style.

I mean, this guy writes like a physicist, and what he does is he organizes all of the data, and he categorizes it, and then he also rates it.

So there's class A data, class B, class

C, class D. Class A is the one that is most accepted and most verified, and all the stuff

I talked about today is class A level. There's class B stuff where it looks like there's a pretty good reason, a lot of good evidence for it, but more work needs to be done.

There's class C, which is, there's some work to be done, but it's probably iffy.

And then there's the don't go there stuff, and that's class D. So he rates it all.

So if you want to go like, oh, I've heard there were coins on the eyes, okay. It's a fascinating, fascinating argument, and there's interesting evidence around it, but more work needs to be done.

So that gets rated as like class B. One of the things that he does is he goes through every single serious theory for the image formation, and then he compares it to all of, he has all of, on this grid, this kind of spreadsheet thing, he's got all the attributes that they have been able, that they need to account for, that were derived from the 1978 examination, and then they compare it with all the different methods that have been proposed for creating the image.

And all of them fail. All of the natural and man -made methods fail.

There's one hypothesis that seems to account for everything, and he did come up with that.

So that's the model that's being looked at right now. It's called the fall -through radiation hypothesis, and this hypothesis, okay, remember,

I'm not a physicist. I'm not trained in science. I'm just going to try to give you a popular version of it, but the fall -through radiation hypothesis is that a form of ultraviolet radiation emitted from the body as it dematerialized and the cloth fell through it as the body dematerialized, okay, a form of ultraviolet radiation emitted from the body as it dematerialized, allowing the cloth to fall through it.

According to John Jackson, that would account for all of the features of the image of the body that we see on the shroud.

Of course, now that's not a natural process, and so you can't test it by replication or observation.

It has to be tested theoretically, and that's about as good as you got right now.

That's the only one that would account for all the attributes as we know them. Yeah. Doug, this was super interesting.

I'm definitely going to go back and listen to this episode very carefully. This is really great.

Thank you so much for sharing this. I mean, is this the sort of stuff that you, when you do your presentation, you kind of, is there a recorded presentation somewhere on YouTube that someone can kind of see the whole thing, or is it kind of something you go when you're invited and you give a presentation on this?

Yeah, this is what I do when I go and I'm invited, and I give this all the same stuff, but I have not recorded it yet.

I have meant to record it twice, and then I get so distracted before I start that I forget to hit record. So, rookie.

Here's what Truth is Beautiful says. He says, you gave the strongest case for the shroud I've heard. I'm not convinced, but I think it's possible.

It's from the 500 time period. That's fair, but that's, I mean, it's interesting. The intriguing thing is that strong arguments can be given, and I think that makes this kind of an interesting topic of discussion and debate, and if anything, hopefully it gets people just interested, more interested in the person of Jesus.

I mean, and the ultimate analysis, like, we have the scriptures. I mean, we can know a lot about Jesus by reading the

New Testament. Of course, this is just an extra cherry on the top if it's legitimate, and based upon what you said, the evidence sounds pretty convincing.

I'd have to go back and listen to it again, but super fascinating stuff, Doug. Thank you so much for sharing this.

I appreciate it. Oh, thanks for having me. I had fun. Well, I had fun both times, so we have to find another topic to get you back on.

So, I really appreciate your time, man, and folks, if you guys have enjoyed this discussion, you guys, if you could do me a solid and like the video, share it, and there was someone who asked a question about the app

I had mentioned at the beginning. Is that app still available, or is that no longer available? It's not.

Trying to keep up with all the iOS updates is for people who are passionate about code, and I'm just not that person.

So, sorry. All right. Well, I had it when it was around, and it was pretty cool.

So, you know - It's a book. You can get the book form of it. So, it's available at apologia .com.

You can get a physical book, or you can get, if you buy it as a

Kindle or on the iBooks store, then it's a print replica of that book, but there's no more interactions or anything like that in it.

All right. There's actually eight of those now in that series. But the apps are gone. Sorry.

Yeah. Well, that's cool because there's a lot of pictures, and so it's really good to use with like teenagers and kids and stuff like that to look at, because it's very artistically made.

So, I enjoyed it when it was out. But that's all for this episode, Doug. Thank you so much.

And everyone, thank you so much for your questions and kind of going along with us for an hour and a half. Looking forward to my next live stream, which is on Friday at 9 p .m.

That will be a topic covering presuppositional apologetics applied to Mormonism.

So, please join me then on Friday. And of course, I'll just keep folks updated for future live streams.

So, once again, thanks, Doug. And until next time, guys, take care and God bless. Bye -bye. Thank you.