Chances that the Shroud of Turin images formed naturally?

In many ways a naturalistic explanation for the images is most satisfying. Like the stained patterns of leaf on a stone, like a fossil in clay of a prehistoric creature and like jagged tracing of lightening on the trunk of a tree, these sort of images can be explained scientifically. They are perfectly natural. We could then certainly say the images on the Shroud are images of a real man. And because of the wounds and the accompanying bloodstains forensic pathologists can see that the images are of a man who was scourged and crucified.

Is it Jesus? The wounds are consistent with the biblical narratives. Some wounds, like the whip marks, are consistent with a Roman flagrum, a whip with bits of iron or bone attached to thongs of leather. Crucifixion victims were regularly scourged. But the puncture wound to one side of the chest and the numerous small puncture wounds about the man's head—suggestive of a crown of thorns—are probably uncommon but consistent with the gospels.

There is nothing about the image that contradicts the gospels. For instance the man's legs appear not to have been broken. Breaking a victim's legs was a common practice of the Romans when there was a reason to expedite death. This was done so the victim could not raise himself up on his feet, something he needed to do to relieve the pressure on his chest so he could breath. This isn't proof but these are nonetheless compelling arguments that the images on the cloth belong to Jesus.

All significant investigation into how the images might have been formed by some perfectly natural means so far suggests that a simple process is all but impossible. Chemical reactions (or stains) caused by contact with the body would produce a grossly distorted image. Gaseous products from a body or funerary spices would seem to produce a diffused image lacking in detail. Radiant energy such as bodily heat lacks essential directional qualities.

However the images were formed, if by a natural process, it must have been by a complex combination of different systems acting together. Ray Rogers wrote:

The main problem surfaces when you look at the times necessary for color formation. If we must consider something less than about 30 hours, simple thermal reactions are highly improbable. The least stable impurities that could be expected on ancient linen (e.g., pentose sugars) would take much too much time at temperatures below 100C. . .  Maillard types of reactions can produce colors within the required times at the required temperatures. Can anyone think of other ways? I have been looking for possible reactions for 27 years.

Radiation alone won't do it. Simple thermochemistry alone won't do it. Simple gaseous diffusion alone won't do it. Lots of things alone won't do it. The trick is to find some combination of phenomena that WILL do it. Remember - - - it did happen.          

Note: the reference to 30 hours is not biblical. It is a rough approximation of the time before decomposition products would begin to damage and soon destroy the cloth. Such natural ravaging of the cloth did not occur.

If the images are formed by some natural process, it would require a complex process. Physicist John Jackson has observed that "mathematical analysis of image resolution suggested that no single, simple molecular-diffusion or radiation mechanism could produce the image observed."  Roger agrees. And Rogers proposes:

[A] combination of systems could offer an explanation, e.g., anisotropic heat flow by radiation from the body to the cloth, attenuated heat-flow in the cloth, gaseous diffusion, convection, surface properties of cloth, and the dependence of chemical rates on temperature.

Were it not for some significant characteristic of the images, this potential explanation (something of a chemistry equivalent of two wrongs make a right) might suffice. Rogers alludes to the problem:

A dead body at normal temperatures and humidity will produce reactive amines—absolutely. A primitive (Roman times) piece of linen that is contaminated with crude starch will react with the amines—absolutely. Some color will be produced. If the Shroud is truly old and it covered a dead body, the amine/saccharide colors ARE present. Can they have been produced in a distribution that reflects the characteristics of the body? Theoretically the answer is yes; however, a number of demonstrations are required to illustrate the problem to everyone's satisfaction. . .

Chance and Necessity:

The precision, the level of detail and the uncanny photo-like realism, when a complex system is considered, compels us to think about the seductive logic of chance and necessity. Necessity, here, is all of the circumstances that must come into play to create the images as they are. Chance is the questionable likelihood that all those circumstances would happen in concert.

If the Shroud is an authentic burial cloth of a much wounded crucified man (it is if it is not a hoax) then is it a lucky fluke that the images are so visually correct?  A truly natural explanation requires that a chemical reaction starts and ends. And this is key: The reaction must end sufficiently late for there to be discernible images. And, it must end early enough that the images are not oversaturated. Analysis of the images shows no saturation plateaus. Timing is everything. In photographic terms this is correct exposure. Is this mere luck?

It is not just correct exposure that is at play here. Good focus, suitable contrast and smooth and realistic gradations between light and dark areas also are important. (Resolution is better than 0.4 cm at a distance of 1.1 cm indicating the image production mechanism must be highly anisotropic).

Is it serendipitous that the highlights and shadows of this chemograph (think photograph) appear as though created by reflected light? This visual quality is essential for our minds to be able to see the images as realistic pictures with perceived three-dimensionality?

Just as there is nothing like the Shroud's images in the world of art, there is nothing like them in nature; after all dead men do not normally leave images of themselves on burial cloths. Nature, of course, is filled with naturally formed images. There are petrified fossils and fossil molds. And sometimes when plants and animals are trapped between layers of rock and decompose, they leave carbon imprints on the rocks. The carbon is all that is left of them. We know of the ghastly thermal shadows of things and people from the nuclear bomb at Hiroshima. Leaves stain rocks and sidewalks but also when pressed between pages in a book for decades create highly detailed images of themselves.

But the Shroud images seem different. Except for part of a foot they are extraordinarily complete head to foot images. The part of the foot missing from the images may have been beyond the cloth. Another possibility, for which there is some anecdotal evidence, is that cloth was trimmed for bits of relic souvenirs.

The images are at once like rare and exceptional art, yet so unlike art. They are like subtle photographs and yet so unlike photographs. However the images were formed, the process was quick. The cloth and the body were separated soon. For after about three days, fluidic decomposition products from the body would have stained and damaged the cloth. Soon the cloth would have rotted away. Furthermore, forensic experts tell us, the images show no visible signs of decomposition. This apparent early separation of the body and the cloth opens up a floodgate of possibilities that must be reconciled to any naturalistic explanation.

When we consider chance and necessity we are toying with anthropic bias reasoning. Bayesian views of improbability are the keystones of this reasoning. But an inescapable nugget that augments such reasoning, one that defies quantification, is the value of surprise.  No matter how much we might marvel that everything for a process might come together in all the right places—chemical solids and vapors, ambient temperature, humidity, the drape of the cloth—and start and stop at the right time, we cannot help but notice something. For until and unless other examples of such images on cloths that survived decomposition in a grave are found, we must say it is unique. The surprise is that this unique and improbable happenstance is not—as mere chance would mandate—of some random person in history. And so, the unexpected significance of a naturalistic solution can only enliven the sense— perhaps inchoate and neither causal nor consequential—that there is a miracle of sorts at play. The measure of a miracle is the result and not the process.

One possibility, the oldest one, is that the body was stolen. If the Shroud is genuine that seems unlikely. Would Jesus' followers have taken the naked body covered in blood without also taking the cloth that wrapped it? We must consider the Jewish beliefs of ritual impurity from contact with corpses. Blood shed in death was considered sacrosanct. If Jesus' very Jewish disciples had stolen the body, they almost certainly would have taken the bloody shroud along for internment. This would be so even if it was for burial in a charnel pit, the common grave of non-wealthy Jews in ancient Jerusalem. We must consider, as well, that observationally (forensically) the bloodstains appear unmolested.  Dried blood should have cracked and broken apart if the body was removed. And any blood that was still moist should have smeared if the body was unwrapped. 

Called the Swoon Theory, the argument that Jesus recovered from his wounds, comes up every now and then. It is an attempt to explain the post-resurrection appearances. Few biblical scholars take it seriously. The Shroud, if it is real, further refutes this theory. Medical experts who have studied the frontal and dorsal images of the man on the Shroud clearly see a man in rigor mortis. They believe, as well, that there is distinguishable evidence of postmortem blood flows. The severity of the trauma evidenced by various wounds visible on the Shroud—including the stabbing wound to the chest—is so serious that it highly unlikely that the man of the Shroud could not have survived long given the medical circumstances of the first century.

Other possibilities simply become implausible. For instance, why would the Shroud be in the wrong tomb? Or, why would the Shroud even exist if the entire story of an empty tomb is fiction?

Science is good at figuring out that with certain ingredients and certain conditions, certain processes will start and end. And it may well be that scientists will eventually figure out a complex process by which the images were seemingly so miraculously formed on the Shroud. Will scientist also be able to deal with the problem of how likely it is that all those right ingredients and conditions might have prevailed perhaps only once in history.
 

 

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Home Page & Introduction: The Shroud of Turin Story - A Guide to the Facts 2005

© 2004 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York