Theodora Pappas sent us all a link to her paper titled “Beyond Imagination: Evidence of Rigor Mortis and Cadaveric Spasm on the Shroud of Turin” published in the Medical & Clinical Case Reports Journal (Dec. 2024). The paper focuses on details in the Shroud image that she believes reflect signs of post-mortem bodily conditions such as rigor mortis and cadaveric spasm. Specifically, she interprets the angle of the arms and the position of the hands and feet as consistent with a man who died suspended in crucifixion and whose muscles stiffened in that position.
The central argument is that these forensic features, preserved in the cloth, suggest that the image reflects a real, deceased body, not the work of an artist.
But what does this really tell us?
In one sense, Pappas’s forensic observations raise valid questions. If the Shroud image does contain realistic anatomical details—like post-mortem stiffness—then it is certainly possible the image came from contact with a real corpse. But the paper does not present or propose any image-formation mechanism. There is no chemical, physical, or environmental explanation for how these bodily features became encoded into the cloth. That leaves open several possibilities:
If the C14 dating of the Shroud is wrong, and if this is indeed the image of Jesus’ corpse, could the image have formed naturally through an unknown chemical process, perhaps similar to the Maillard reaction as proposed by Raymond Rogers? Such a process could have occurred, say, while awaiting permission to bury Jesus or later inside the tomb after the entrance was closed.
A natural image might also have formed as part of a gruesome medieval reenactment of the crucifixion—a time when such cruel acts were sadly not unheard of. Michael Tite, who oversaw the 1988 radiocarbon dating, said in a 2016 BBC interview:
… I think it is highly probable there was a body in there. It was the time of the Crusades. A very appropriate way of humiliating a Christian would be to crucify him, like Christ. I think that is a very real possibility. And then the cloth is put over the body and sort of bodily fluids resulting from the stress of a crucifixion react and cause this discolouration and ultimately a certain degree of decay in the Shroud.
Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan, a Christian and former Roman Catholic priest at DePaul University, once remarked:
I wonder whether it was done from a crucified dead body or from a crucified living body. That is the rather horrible question once you accept it as a forgery.
Could a medieval process have produced the image we have yet to fully understand—such as a dust painting proposed by Drs. Emily A. Craig and Randall R. Bresee, University of Tennessee forensic researchers, or a woodblock print as suggested by Dr. Joseph Accetta?
Could this have been a miracle—or an image caused by an energetic byproduct of a miraculous event such as the Resurrection?
Or is it simply something we haven’t yet imagined?
If the C14 dating is wrong, could this even be the legendary “not made by human hands” image of Gnostic or Syrian Orthodox origin—an early Christian devotional object of a kind we scarcely understand? Lines from the Gnostic Hymn of the Pearl often come to mind. One particularly evocative line from the version translated by Hans Jonas reads:
It seemed to me suddenly to become a mirror-image of myself: myself entire I saw in it, and it entire I saw in myself, that we were two in separateness, and yet again one in the sameness of our forms… And the image of the King of kings was depicted all over it.
This vision of mirrored identity and divine imprint captures something of the mystery that many see in the Shroud—whether they interpret it through faith, imagination, or inquiry.
Pappas’s paper does not address these alternative hypotheses. Instead, it seems to invite the reader to infer that realism implies authenticity, and authenticity implies a miraculous or ancient origin. But that inference is far from conclusive. If the image does record signs of trauma and bodily rigidity, it may point toward a natural origin just as easily as a supernatural one. That alone undercuts any definitive claim of a miracle.
In short, this paper is interesting not because it proves the Shroud’s authenticity or miraculous origin, but because it reinforces the reality that we still don’t know how the image was formed. And when mystery is interpreted only through the lens of belief, it can easily be mistaken for proof.
This leads to a broader concern.
Yes, Christians are called to evangelize. And if an artifact—any artifact—can help someone come to better understand or appreciate the Gospel message, that’s worth celebrating. But the Shroud of Turin is not just any artifact. It’s a highly controversial object whose authenticity is still being debated by scientists, historians, and theologians alike.
That’s where I think the Sign From God group risks doing harm. The ethical dilemma is this: Is it wise—or responsible—to base evangelization efforts in something so questionable? Does it do justice to the Gospel to lean on an artifact that may one day be thoroughly discredited or simply fade into irrelevance?
There’s a kind of spiritual buyer’s remorse that can come when someone’s new faith is built on shaky evidence. When they begin to question the artifact, they may also begin to question the faith that was tied to it. This isn’t just bad strategy—it can be damaging to souls.
Jesus warned us about building on weak foundations. At the close of the Sermon on the Mount, he offered a striking image:
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock… And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand… and great was the fall of it. (Matthew 7:24–27)
To build someone’s faith on the uncertain foundation of a debated relic is, I fear, like building on sand. When the storms of doubt, disappointment, or further scholarship come—and they will—the house risks collapse.
Christianity, from its beginning, has always been a religion grounded in faith, supported by Scripture, enriched by tradition, and deepened by the lived experiences of saints, mystics, and scholars across the centuries. Faith, in this context, is not belief based on artifacts—it is trust that leads to belief despite the inability to prove.
Pappas’s paper is a reminder of how little we truly know. I think the Papal leadership of the Catholic Church has been wise not to take a position on authenticity. It helps to remember that about one in three American Catholics and one in three mainline American Protestants do not believe in a bodily resurrection. Maybe someday the Catholic Church will authorize new C14 tests. What if they produce the same results—that the Shroud is medieval? If the Shroud does prove to be medieval, then Pappas’s paper will still have value: it could guide our search for medieval techniques and practices that may explain the image. I highly recommend it for thoughtful reflection and dialogue. It is well organized and well written.
The paper is available here: https://urfjournals.org/open-access/beyond-imagination-evidence-of-rigor-mortis-and-cadaveric-spasm-on-the-shroud-of-turin.pdf
“Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan, a Christian and former Roman Catholic priest at DePaul University, once remarked: I wonder whether it was done from a crucified dead body or from a crucified living body. That is the rather horrible question once you accept it as a forgery.”
Even though I’ve been out of high school for decades, I still remember from algebra class that when one set out to prove a theorem to be true, one could use the tactic of assuming the theorem to be true as part of the proof.
One also cannot prove the Shroud to be a forgery by assuming at first that it’s a forgery.
I reviewed Teddi’s claims about rigor mortis in an article called “Rigor Mortis” at medievalshroud.com a short while ago, but did not discuss the section on whether the image is 3D. However, I looked at the 3D characteristics of the Shroud much earlier, in “3D or not 3D,” and I don’t think I’ve got more to add to that.
Please read Sworn to Secrecy, available at http://www.theshroudcodes.com. It would be ineresting to receive your reactions to the debate on authenticity avoided by the papacy. Two final tests are required to break the impasse. Join in to request a papal decision on the following open questions: (1) Identifying the nature of the eye-covering by high resolution photography; (2) Mitochondrial DNA testing of blood samples selectively taken from severe wound areas that would have contained billirubin. These two recommended tests can do no further damage to the Shroud.
Hi Don,
Good of you to contribute, even if mostly just to sell your book. I’m sure it’s excellent, but I’m afraid I doubt if it will add anything to what I already know about the Shroud, its history and its science, so I won’t be buying it. You are certainly correct that more investigation of the cloth could produce valuable new evidence, although paradoxically, I don’t think either of the tests you suggest will be especially helpful. More radiocarbon, I think, would be my first choice, and better isotopic analysis of the linen would be my second.
Carry on the good work!
Best wishes,
Hugh
Hi, Dan,
Thanks for taking the time to read and review my paper. As mentioned before, I’m up to my eyeballs in work. I’ll let my paper speak for itself as I think between it and the somewhat lengthy discussions that Hugh and I had (on his website with his review of my paper), I think things are covered pretty well. I do, however, want to re-emphasize the footnotes that I have in this paper regarding VP-8 information that I spent A LOT of time getting to the bottom of what the situation is with the VP-8 claims–especially including the situation regarding its use by NASA. Why did I spend so much time getting to the bottom of that question with total proof from government documents and government websites? Because there is a lot of misinformation about it and debunkers have needed some debunking and non-debunked claims needed some fine-tuning. And, the reason why I wanted to get to the bottom of it was to show the importance and use of the VP-8. Also, the footnote on photo negativity has some scholarship which I think is brand new and it deepens our understanding of what we are seeing in the image and the literal photographic negative of the image. When I write about things, I try my best to actually understand them as I think it brings deeper value to my appreciation of what all is involved with the body image. Understanding some important aspects of photography (which I discuss in that LONG footnote) makes the body image even more interesting (at least to me!) I sure wish our dear Barrie were here to discuss this with us. Anyhow, just wanted to add that.
Thanks, again,
Teddi
Hi Teddi,
Thanks again for your thoughtful paper and the time you clearly put into the VP-8 research. Since you’ve emphasized the importance of clarifying the historical record—and since much of the conversation around the VP-8 has veered into myth-making—I’d like to offer a few reflections in response.
1. Misunderstanding What the VP-8 Actually Does
It’s important to acknowledge what many people familiar with the VP-8, including NASA personnel, have long understood: the VP-8 does not extract or analyze true spatial data. It assigns vertical displacement based solely on image brightness—translating lighter tones into higher “altitudes” and darker ones into valleys. This creates the illusion of topography, but it’s not measuring distance or depth from an actual surface. Modern digital tools that simulate VP-8 behavior (e.g., 3D Builder or custom grayscale mappers) do the same thing—and their output confirms that the “3D” effect is a product of tonal distribution, not embedded distance.
Unfortunately, this nuance is often lost in how the VP-8 has been portrayed, especially in some Shroud literature. Among Shroud enthusiasts, the result has too often been hyped as if the machine detected actual encoded information, when in reality, it produced a visual interpretation of brightness, not depth. NASA never endorsed the VP-8 for such a purpose, and certainly not as a method of validating ancient images.
2. “Spatial Data” Is Not Encoded—It’s Implied
A popular refrain—often repeated without scrutiny—is that the Shroud image “contains spatial data.” But this assertion is an overreach. If we say that tonal gradations correspond in some way to spatial features, that’s an observation, not evidence of encoded data. In fact, the VP-8 has shown similar responses to non-Shroud images when their tonal patterns happen to mimic shallow topographical gradients. This makes the notion of “encoding” both misleading and unnecessary. The effect can emerge naturally from how light interacts with material or how an artist shades a surface.
3. The Problem with Dismissing Comparative Images
Relatedly, your paper references Alan Adler’s rejection of images like the “Kentucky Dust” painting, on the grounds that they mimic the Shroud and therefore are disqualified as comparisons. But this is circular logic. If mimicking the Shroud can result in similar VP-8 effects, then it suggests that the effect is reproducible—not that it confirms authenticity. The “uniqueness” argument doesn’t hold if imitation yields similar output.
4. The 3D Plot Was Inevitable—Not Miraculous
Some had already suspected as much. With enough time and patience, someone could have produced a similar 3D-like plot using a ruler, a light meter, and graph paper—manually mapping brightness values to elevation. Then came the VP-8 Image Analyzer, a bulky box of analog circuitry initially developed for technical imaging applications. When a photograph of the Shroud was run through it in 1976, it seemed to produce a coherent relief. The conclusion by some enthusiasts? That the image contained actual “spatial data.” But this was an over-interpreted and over-guessed conclusion, unsupported by later evidence or broader technical understanding.
5. A Final Note on Balance
I say all this not to diminish the visual intrigue of the VP-8 result or the sincerity of your efforts, but to bring clarity to what’s often muddled in layers of uncritical enthusiasm. If the Shroud image is remarkable, let it be so on firmer ground—not through the misinterpretation of a 1970s imaging device. I’d love to see more comparative modeling—side-by-side renderings of Shroud imagery and modern photographs—to explore what really is, and isn’t, distinctive.
Best regards,
Hi, Dan,
I’ll let the very, very precise wording that I used in my paper’s footnotes stand. I provide important citations for it, and I think that gives the best description of things. Regarding the plot that you say that someone might have made, I am recalling that I believe Eric Jumper (probably with John Jackson’s help) did exactly that–and I seem to recall that this was done BEFORE they put the body image through the VP-8! I think I might have read this in John Heller’s book.
Also, there’s no need for NASA to endorse the VP-8’s use for the Shroud just like a company that manufactures hammers does not need to endorse or approve of a hammer’s use in an unexpected way (like hitting someone over the head) in order for the use to still be within the actual functional use of the tool. The hammer’s function still works whether it’s on a nail going into wood or a skull.
Best regards,
Teddi
Among the multitudinous double footnotes to Teddi’s Rigor Mortis paper, the exact words “undistorted anatomical” occur three times, in connection with a “natural,” “human” “form” revealed by the VP-8 analyser. I have no idea what Teddi means by this. To me, a 3D representation of the undistorted anatomy of a human looks a bit like a human when viewed from any direction, and you only have to tilt the VP-8 (or any similar) image more than 50° or so to see that it is wholly unrecognisable as the profile of a human head. It has the undistorted anatomical accuracy of a face run-over by a steamroller. But perhaps the phrase means something different from my interpretation.