Like a silent witness to history, it rests, rolled in red satin in a jewelled box inside a lead case at the cathedral in Turin, Italy. It is a 14-foot linen burial cloth which bears the detailed front and back image of a naked man who has undergone a horrible death by crucifixion. A puncture wound is evident in his left wrist, as are severe scourge marks from head to foot. Some say it is a clever medieval forgery; others believe it is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
For Shroud researchers Dr. Alan Whanger and his wife Mary, a “mountain of evidence” points in just one direction. “We are convinced,” says Dr. Whanger, a psychiatrist and surgeon now retired from the Duke University Medical Center, “that this is indeed the image of Jesus and was left to us as a witness to His life.” After studying the Shroud for 15 years, the Whangers believe its unique properties provide scientific proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the very least, Dr. Whanger says, “it provides scientific proof that something so extraordinary happened that there doesn’t seem to be anything else in human history that would fit.”
That astonishing claim contradicts a well-publicized 1988 carbon-14 test that dated the Shroud to medieval times. But the evidence to support the Whangers’ contention includes:
• The Shroud is a photographic negative, meaning light and dark parts of the image are reversed, a unique condition recognized in 1898 when the Shroud was photographed for the first time.
• Computer imaging indicates that the Shroud has three-dimensional characteristics, considered impossible to reproduce artistically.
• Except for trace amounts unrelated to the image, no pigment exists on the Shroud to indicate it is an artistic forgery.
• The Shroud is anatomically correct, far surpassing medieval knowledge of the human body.
• While nearly all medieval artists inaccurately depicted Christ’s nail wound in His hand, the Shroud image shows a puncture wound in the wrist, the actual manner in which Roman crucifixions occurred.
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Face image on the Shroud of Turin
• Coins discovered over both eyes, using a NASA-developed image analyzer, have been identified as leptons, struck in Israel in AD 29.
• While the earliest Shroud documentation only dates to 1360, artistic renditions of the face of Jesus from the fifth century on bear striking resemblance to the Shroud face, indicating its earlier existence and acceptance as an image of Jesus Christ.
• Although the media trumpeted the 1988 test indicating the Shroud date to be between AD 1260 and AD 1390, many in the scientific community raised objections which did not earn equal time.
A chief concern raised by many, including the scientist who developed the carbon-14 dating process used for the test, was that the original protocol was scrapped. Instead of using seven labs to test seven separate samples, the test procedure was scaled back to three labs using three samples taken from the same section of the cloth. That section was highly contaminated and had been rewoven. Additionally, the carbon level in the cloth may have been affected by a 1532 fire which raised the temperature in the Shroud’s enclosure to 960 degrees centigrade. In contrast to the medieval origin determined by the 1988 test, a secret 1982 carbon-14 test yielded varying dates of AD 200 and AD 1000.
Through careful scrutiny and the image overlay technique they developed to analyze faint images on the Shroud, the Whangers have discovered a number of additional images to link the Shroud to Jesus Christ. These include: a large crucifixion nail, a Roman thrusting spear, a sponge on a long stick, a crown of thorns, flowers, and the title, “Jesus of Nazareth,” which was placed above the headm of Jesus on the cross.
One explanation for the appearance of these images is the Jewish burial custom that required anything having the life blood on it to be buried with the body. “This was a highly unusual burial,” Dr. Whanger says, “as the bodies of most crucifixion victims were merely tossed into a communal grave.”
The Whangers have clearly identified 28 flowers on the Shroud, all of which grow either in Jerusalem or Israel. Of those, all but one bloom during March or April.
Although part of the title is obscured, fragments of enough letters are evident in Greek and Latin to make its message clear. “Here we have, incredibly,” says Dr. Whanger,”… clear evidence that this is indeed the image of Jesus of Nazareth and His crime was being the King of the Jews.”
Since the Shroud’s unique characteristics seem to rule out a medieval
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artistic forgery, Shroud researchers puzzle over how the image became fixed on this linen burial cloth. Dr. Whanger believes the image was formed by two types of radiation: coronal discharge and soft-x radiation. Coronal discharge occurs with a high-voltage release of electricity. It has been estimated that energy roughly equivalent to that in a lightning bolt would be required to produce an image similar to that on the Shroud. Such a physical event, Mary Whanger says, “is not something that is possible for us to do in a laboratory today, much less 2, 000 years ago.”
The second, soft-x radiation, is indicated by skeletal features on the Shroud, only recently discovered by Dr. Whanger. Such an “x-ray” image (the preliminary evidence for which includes skeletal detail found on the hands and head), along with the coronal discharge, leads to a tantalizing theory. Dr. Whanger believes that, since blood clots are undisturbed, the body left the Shroud without being unwrapped. But how! He suggests that the body may have dematerialized, triggering a release of protons and neutrons and the resulting dual radiation shown on the Shroud. “This is rather extraordinary,” he says, “and it is not known how this is done. It would take one who knows how to put atoms together to know how to take them apart.”
The front image on the Shroud of Turin.
The Shroud is sometimes called the “fifth Gospel.” Mary Whanger agrees. “Very clearly, it shows the awful death, the suffering, the scourging, the agony of the crucifixion on it and yet, it also shows, remarkably, the evidence for the resurrection.”
Its unique attributes and remarkable preservation over centuries make it easy to believe, she says, that “the Lord had intended this cloth to be left here as a witness to Himself.”
(Reprinted with permission from Sound Wisdom, Vol. II, Issue 4, April 1994, published by Coral Ridge Ministries, P.O. Box 1940, Ft. Lauderdale FL 33302–1940.)