From Shroud of Turin for Journalists: The Peculiar 3D Phenomenon of the Shroud of Turin Image
For simplicity, let’s confine our discussion to black and white pictures. The Shroud, after all, is monochromatic: brown and white actually.
Like any painting or photograph of a face or an entire human body (or for that matter a vase, apple or any three dimensional object) brightness represents light. Look at a full frontal picture of a man. The tip of his nose approaches white and the depth of the recesses of his eyes are darker. The roundness of his face from his cheeks towards his ears is progressively darker. At first glance, the face on the Shroud of Turin appears to be such a picture. It isn’t.
How do we know this? All regular pictures, be they paintings or photographs, represent light coming from some direction and being reflected towards our eyes. The eye of the painter or the camera lens is a proxy for our own eyes. The reason the recesses of a man’s eyes are darker than the tip of his nose is because less light gets to into the recess. Image analysis shows us that this is not so with the facial image on the Shroud. There is no direction to what seems like light. Something else is causing the lighter and darker shades. That is looks like light to us is an optical illusion.
Look at the black and white picture that looks like a smoke ring. We might think that this is light reflected off of the smoke. It is not. This is an analog data file of elevation, sometimes called a bump map in the world of computer graphics. With special computer software we can plot the data, the brighter and darker tones, as an elevation. That is exactly what we can do with the image on the Shroud of Turin: plot
it as an elevation.
Let’s be clear: You can not plot a regular photograph this way. Nor can you do so for a painting, even a brown and white painting. You can do so with a precise copy of the Shroud, however.
Not only does this show that the image on the Shroud is not a photograph or painting, it shows that something extraordinary occurred to form the image.
Elevation or Bump Map
Bump or elevation map. This is, like the image on the Shroud, an analog data file.
3D plot of the above bump map. Notice that brighter areas at 11, 2 and 7 o’clock on the bump map produce higher elevations.
Yeshua is the Son of God, and left His image on the burial cloth.
“You cannot plot a regular photograph this way”?
I do it all the time with a landscape generator.
take a look at my website.
Incidentally,
Hebrew law required cleansing of a body before burial.
There would have been no dirt, grime, sweat, or BLOOD
on Jesus when wrapped.
Incidentally,
People who were deemed worthy of being crucified were usually left on the cross to be eaten by birds. They were not given a proper burial, which is why Jesus did not recieve one. Not even the families of the deceased could take their dead. They were left out to rot. So it WAS something special when Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus, took Him and wrapped Him in a clean linen cloth, and placed him in the tomb. (Matthew 27:59-60)
If this does not convince you, I hope you would take notice to the fact that the new investigation done on the Shroud has concluded that the image is not of dirt or sweat. They have no idea what it is, and it is proven that the blood IS human blood. Also, even IF the body was cleansed, Jesus suffered so greatly that his wounds were extremely deep. Even after a traditional cleansing, the stains would still have been left. He most likely had little or no skin left on his back after the stripes he recieved. In the Old Testament, the sacrificial lamb’s back was skinned to insure it was as pure inside as it was out. As most of us understand and know to be true, Jesus is the eternal sacrificial lamb. To have no skin on your back and then be wrapped in a cloth would produce enormous blood stains.
My faith is not based on the Shroud of Turin. I think it is a haunting example of what Jesus suffered through. I also think it is interesting that it has stumped scientists. Even they have come to the conclusion that, if put in front of a jury, the Shroud of Turin would be voted authentic according to the information they have.
God has a sense of humor, and I believe in my heart that the Shroud is authentic. I believe that even if its not, God keeps it here as a reminder to us that we should be eternally greatful to Him.
Bodies don’t bleed after death.
In a previous History Channel special, a scientist proved the red stains to be red ochre, a medeivel pigment.
Actually, the heart doesn’t pump blood after death. But in fact bodies do bleed after death if they are moved about or the limbs are moved. And blood still under pressure from the previously beating heart is sometimes released in spurts. Don’t depend too much on television CSI; those are general statements. As for the scientist in the previous History Channel special, you are referring to Walter McCrone. His “proof” was visual observation through a microscope. In fact, Mark Anderson, who worked for him disagreed and ran Raman Spectrometry on McCrone’s samples. What McCrone saw was organic and thus could not be red ochre. Later tests at the Nebraska University center for Spectrometry proved also that there was no red ochre in the samples. BTW, it is a very ancient pigment and a very modern pigment. The correct statement is that it is a pigment used throughout history and known in medieval times.
A dead stiffening body with coagulated blood won’t express what the shroud shows, especially when it is
laid out and cleansed before final wrapping.
But, the shister who created the shroud knew he had to really “sell” the idea of Jesus’ burial shroud to his potential buyers of the “holy relic”. Some sort of animal blood carefully placed would seal the deal.
There are two types of tests for blood: preliminary and conclusive.
If the Police see a red stain, they often do a preliminary test for blood. It’s quick and simple and only determines if there is protein present in the specimen. If the preliminary test is negative,
they won’t bother doing the conclusive test for human blood.
I’m still waiting for the name of the conclusive test for human blood that they used; who analyzed the specimen, and at which CLIA certified laboratory
it was done. I fear that the shroud team did some
sort of preliminary test ( which would test positive
for any species of animal blood) and are trying to
pass it off as a definitive test. Surely, such a high
profile result would be published in a scientific journal. I haven’t seen it yet in the Journal of Pathology.