Some of the material in this essay is obsolete. Please refer to the
Shroud of Turin Story Home Page

The
Resurrection
Problem
and the
Shroud of Turin

By Daniel R. Porter

1. Introduction
2. "Ann, You're Nuts"
3. What we need to know 
4. The newer evidence
5. The resurrection problem
6. Vetting
7. Acceptance
8. Textile studies
9. Plant images and pollen
10. Travertine aragonite
11. Sudarium of Oviedo
12. The Image of Edessa
13. Jesus in art
14. A negative that is not a negative
15. Other visual characteristics
16. The most intriguing characteristic
17. A picture of a million words
18. How were the images formed ? 
19. Appendix: Carbon 14, etc.

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Part 15:  Other Visual Characteristics of the Shroud

On a level better understood by those of us who understand simple chemistry and the basics of Newtonian physics (what we can see and measure), there are a number of very important characteristics of the Shroud worth exploring.

• Tonal changes from light areas to dark areas are exceedingly smooth and gradual. Artists sometime describe this as lacking outline. We see this when the Shroud is viewed up close. When we look at the image from less than about a six-foot distance, the image seems to completely disappear. It does not disappear, but our visual senses cannot easily discern it. To many, this had seemed a most mysterious property. But there is nothing mysterious about it. It has to do with the way our brain interprets what our eyes see. Though we are not consciously aware of it, our minds automatically create the semblance of boundaries and shapes from changes in color and tone. So subtle are the gradual shifts of tone on the Shroud that if we get close enough, thus stretching our field of view, changes in tonality are imperceptible. Step back, and the tonal shifts become tolerably narrow enough for our brains to discern the pattern. Paintings, and other hand produced works of art, do not display this characteristic for the simple reason that the artist must stand close to apply his or her paint or colorant. Artists - because they must - consciously or unconsciously, create outlines. The Shroud has none. It is beyond imagination to think that an artist could apply colorants so precisely and so gradually as to be viewable only from a distance of more than six feet.
  
• The image is, what scientists call, superficial. By this they mean that the image is only in the very topmost, microscopically thin surface of the cloth. The bloodstains, on the other hand, have soaked into the cloth. Move a fibril-containing image with a probing needle and we see that the fibril directly beneath it has no image information.
  
• Despite the fact that the image shows gradual tonal change, the image is completely in focus. This could not be so if a vapor or if conventional scorching heat produced the image. Vapors diffuse and scorching heat emits in all directions. Either way, a fuzzy and foggy image would result.
  
• Scorching, which changes the chemical nature of linen, also produces various chemical byproducts that are detectable with ultraviolet light. Scientists have clearly demonstrated that scorching heat did not produce the image. Early theories that the image was created with a hot statue have been completely ruled out.
  
• The image is completely free of directionality. Don Lynn and Jean Lorre at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory scanned detail photographs of the Shroud with a microdensitometer and analyzed the data for directionality within the image. None was found except in the weave of the cloth. It would be physically impossible to create an image by hand that does not show some evidence of directionality. Not only is there no mechanical directionality, there is no directionality from a light source, as would be present in a photograph.
  
• There is no image on fibers where blood or serum is present or where dried blood has flaked off. This suggests that the blood was on the cloth before the image was created and that the blood or serum inhibited image formation.
  
• The image is collimated to the plane of the imaged body. This means, simply, that the frontal image is a precise distance representation of the body directly below it along straight up and down lines perpendicular to the body's horizontal plane. It is similarly so for the dorsal image, resting as it does on the cloth. Physicist John P. Jackson discovered that image only occurs where the cloth was no farther away from the body than 3.5 centimeters. There is, as a consequence, no sideways or angled image formation from the sides of the body or the top of the head.

Dan Porter is an Episcopalian and a member of Trinity Church, Wall Street, in New York City. He may be contacted by email at porter@shroudstory.com or by mail at 20 McIntyre Street, Bronxville, NY 10708. 

(c) Copyright 2001, Daniel R. Porter. All Rights Reserved. This article may be reproduced in full for any non-commercial purpose without further permission.