As we enter Holy Week today, my mind is drawn to the Shroud of Turin. I find the Shroud to be absolutely fascinating! It’s not that I’ve gone looking for anything I could get my hands on related to this great relic, but whenever I see something new about it, I’m unable to resist. My first contact with the Shroud came with an episode of Unsolved Mysteries in 1994, which unsurprisingly shared the information that the it must be a fake due to the results of radiocarbon dating. Even a non-practicing Catholic kid, like me, however, was unconvinced of these results due to the rest of the evidence and the inability to reproduce anything like it.
Modern technology has illumined the alleged burial shroud of Jesus, housed in the Turin Cathedral, but it also drawn out new challenges to its authenticity. The first photograph of the Shroud in 1898 revealed a surprising fact. The photographic negative produced a positive, meaning that the Shroud itself is a photographic negative! The same cannot be said for the blood on the image, which acts like anything else when it’s photographed. This realization deepened the mystery of the Shroud, though the allure seemed to deflate when radiocarbon, mentioned above, dating took place in 1988, pinpointing the age of the Shroud to the Middle Ages.
Yet, since then, we now know the faults of the dating, and besides, mountains of evidence has flowed in in favor of the Shroud’s authenticity. I reviewed one researchers findings in 2018, “Mounting evidence for the Shroud of Turin’s authenticity,” highlighting the work of Dr. John Jackson from the Turin Shroud Research Center in Colorado Spring. There were so many “aha” moments reading Jackson’s book, The Shroud of Turin: the long documentary evidence related to the Shroud, how it served as a model for Christian iconography throughout history, its unique weaving, the evidence of pollen from Jerusalem in the spring, the way the image was formed, and many other testaments to its age.
Having read this extensive research, and even new research that has come out since, I didn’t expect there to be major bombs to be dropped by a new book on the Shroud. But I was wrong. Gilbert Lavoie’s The Shroud of Jesus: And the Sign John Ingeniously Concealed (Sophia Institute, 2023) reveals a decades long search to understand the Shroud. It began by reading Dr. Pierre Barbet’s A Doctor at Calvary that revealed the accurate anatomical details of the Shroud. From there, he spoke with members of the STURP research group that had direct access to the Shroud in 1978, leading to collaboration with some of them, including Dr. Jackson.
Without direct access to the Shroud, you might wonder what he could uncover simply with their research. Using John’s Gospel, he follows the description of the Passion to show how it details line up directly with the Shroud, including even the clear liquid that flowed out of the puncture wound in his side and evidence of strain in the upper back from the weight pressing down upon it, consistent with carrying the Cross. He even explored details such as why the body was not washed of blood at burial at Jewish custom seemed to demand, finding ancient descriptions that required forgoing the washing in violent, sudden deaths. From there, he explored the flow of blood and how it would have established itself on the cloth, taking an even more interesting turn.
Tracing a blood stain off to the side of the image, without an existing explanation, he placed a cloth reproduction over his own body to discover that the side of the cloth dripped down around the elbow. Simply from following the blood stains and how the blood flowed across the body, he could deduce: “(1) The shroud cloth had covered the three-dimensional supine figure of a crucified man. (2) The blood marks were made by a contact process. (3) The image was not made by a contact process. (4) The man of the shroud died in a crucified position” (111). The original markings on the Shroud come from blood and other bodily fluids on a the linens draped around the body.
He followed the same process for tracing the origin of blood stains across the forehead of the figure. He traced the blood stains and cut off holes in their spot, and then wrapped the tracing around a model’s head. He realized that the blood stain that looks like it’s in the figure’s hair actually wrapped around the side of the head, indicating the cloth was wrapped around the face. “As I contemplated the facial image and the graphics of the blood marks, the chasm between the two grew deeper and wider until I could no longer look upon the shroud image in the same way” (85). This may seem like a minor detail, but it led Lavoie to an important conclusion: the blood stains do not match the image, but were impressed earlier and in a different shape. The linen wrapped around the body was flat when the extremely thin image was impressed upon it, turning the top layer of fibers yellow in a dehydrative process.
And here is the shocking revelation. Examining the flow of blood on the figure’s head as it wraps around the sides, and contemplating how the image seems to have been impressed when the cloth was flat, he realized the image does not show a man laying flat. He had photographed a bearded model both standing up and laying down to trace out the flow of blood, and the Shroud matched the upright model in many ways, including the posture and the way the light interacted with the face. Then, something hiding in plain sight become apparent: the figure’s hair falls downward, not back, which would bunch up if laying down flat. And yet, the figure is not standing, because we see his feet crossed and arms still folded. For the hair to flowing downward, and the other signs such as posture and lighting he match up, he must have been upright through another means.
Lavoie relates the significance of this finding: “I must admit that I was overwhelmed with the discovery of the upright man. It caused me to back out of the room in awe and respect for what the image of the man of the shroud was visually telling me. My first thought was that indeed this image is a reflection of the moment of his resurrection. It was a moment in direct contrast from all that I previously understood. Prior to that moment, I thought there was nothing on the shroud that could visually reveal that this man’s image was a reflection of his resurrection” (96).
The Shroud, therefore, seems to portray Jesus in the moment of the Resurrection as he is lifted off of the ground by the Father to be restored to life. It gives us evidence of the Crucifixion through the blood stains, and also the wounds on the body, but it also appears to give evidence for the Resurrection in this uplifting from the ground and the light that shone forth from the body to impress the image upon the linen.
The book concludes with a number of chapters drawing out the meaning of this great sign in light of the theology of John’s Gospel. “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself ” (John 12:32), pointing not simply to the Crucifixion but also to the lifting up that occurred in the Resurrection, which Jesus remakes humanity.
