The Shroud of Turin is back in the news. Many of the content creators I follow have been claiming the Shroud is real, in light of recent studies using x-rays to analyze the plant fibers of the Shroud.
I think the most egregious is the "face of Jesus" made by asking a generative AI to create a face based on the Shroud of Turin. If you ask a generative AI to generate an image of a face, it literally must create an image of a face. And that's what they got. They got an image of a face. It'd be curious to see, if they kept asking it the same thing, how different the faces would be. I'm guessing broadly similar, but notably different. Especially if you asked Google's Gemini.
I have always been dismissive of the Shroud. My point has been, the eyewitness evidence of Jesus' burial and resurrection is inconsistent with the Shroud of Turin, so that even if the Shroud is miraculous and from the 1st century, it just means it's a miraculous 1st century burial shroud of some other guy. I want to stress, this is a rhetorical position. The Shroud is not miraculous, and is not 1st century; I'm simply emphasizing that I do not need to know its date or means of creation to know it is not the burial cloth of Jesus.
I made a kind of flippant post recently. However, the Shroud of Turin is actually a highly studied religious artifact, and maybe warrants more than such a brief dismissal. So I thought I'd take some time to go into more depth on it.
The Shroud of Turin
The Shroud of Turin is a large linen sheet, about three feet across and fourteen feet long. On one side of the Shroud, only, is an image of a human figure, usually called simply the Man of the Shroud. The cloth was apparently placed on the ground, the man placed atop it, then the rest of the Shroud draped over the man's front, so that the man is contacting the cloth only on one side of the fabric. The cloth can be split roughly in half, and the dorsal side of the man appears on the first 7 feet, and the anterior side on the other 7 feet of the cloth's length.
The hypothesis is that the man left an imprint of his body on the cloth, which is the image we see. This image is what I will call the primary image.
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| The Primary Image |
The primary image is not the one you usually see in news articles or reports, but for at least the first seven hundred years (if not 1800 years) is the only image anyone saw. It is a slightly darker beige coloration on top of the aged beige linen. It shows a lanky man with wounds corresponding to the reported wounds of Jesus, such as piercings and apparent blood stains on the wrists, the ankles, the side, and the head. Lines across the image, and especially the back, suggest stripes from flogging. He has the gaunt face, forked beard, and long hair of popular medieval iconography. His arms are crossed over his genitals; this is a position incompatible with a relaxed human figure, and is either an artistic concession to modesty, or (as believers in the Shroud suggest) is due to rigor mortis holding the body with shoulders slouched and legs bent.
The image was not made by painting with pigment. The image marks the fibers of the cloth by less than a hairsbreadth, and the image has no signs of brush strokes (called directionality) or other strokes indicating any kind of brush moving laterally across the surface of the cloth to leave the image. Most pigments usually cover the entirety of the first layers of fibers, and to be painted would leave something like brush strokes. However the image was made, it was not made by an artist painting an image using pigments, as is clearly the case with other icons such as the Face of Genoa or the Virgin de Guadalupe.
There are bloodstains on the cloth, and there is reason to believe that the bloodstains were applied first. The image does not seem to exist underneath the blood stains, which suggests the bloodstains were not added on top of the finished image. This would be odd if the image were drawn onto the cloth in some way, as it would require very careful planning from any artist, for a detail that would appear irrelevant and only be detectable hundreds of years later.
The image also shows what is sometimes called three dimensional information. It is darker in places where the Shroud was in closer contact with the man (the back, the tip of the nose), and lighter in places where the Shroud would not have touched the skin, or touched the skin less closely (the eye sockets, the area under the chin). This 3D information can actually enable fairly detailed reconstructions of the figure depicted.
These facts have led to the widespread interest and scientific research into the Shroud.
The Forger and the Texas Sharpshooter
There are many precise facts about the Shroud that have been discovered. For instance, the image is highly superficial and only penetrates 500 nm into the cloth fibers. Proponents of the Shroud often point to this fact among the list of astounding facts that have to be explained. How would a medieval forger be able to make an image only 500 nm into a cloth and not stain the entire fiber?
This is an informal fallacy known as the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. The name comes from a man who shoots a bunch of bullets at a wall then draws a target around the bullet holes. The bullets were there first, but it gives the impression he was actually aiming for and hitting the target drawn later. So too with the Shroud. Listing a bunch of precise details and asking how a forger would know to make something so precise, fallaciously implies he was aiming for those details. For any hypothetical forger, the main relevant details were these:
- the Shroud depicts a figure that people would recognize as Jesus, including wounds in the expected places
- the Shroud doesn't use any pigmentation or paints that might give the image away as a painting
The hypothetical forger or artist is absolutely not interested in how many nanometers deep the image penetrates. That the image is this deep or that deep is not a detail anyone was aiming for. It is therefore largely irrelevant to proving or disproving anything about the Shroud to note how deep the image penetrates into the cloth.
The Shroud has been measured in so many ways, and we know a ton of information about it. But most of that information is irrelevant to its authenticity. For the first 700 years (at least) of the Shroud's existence, all anyone ever saw of the Shroud was the primary image. That is all anyone cared to produce.
The following observations, however, do need to be explained:
- how was the primary image formed without any apparent artificial pigment or dye?
- how did the primary image line up the wounds, especially the blood stains, with the body?
- how did the creation of the Shroud lead to a photonegative image?
- how did the creation of the Shroud imprint 3D information in the image?
The original hypothetical forger or artist was not interested in creating a photonegative with 3D information, but this is the most scientifically striking detail about the Shroud, and what draws so much attention to it. These details then also need some plausible explanation.
In just the opposite way, the coincidence of the wounds on the Shroud with the wounds of Jesus is unremarkable, in the same way it's unremarkable that the wounds suffered by the character of Jesus in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ match the wounds of Jesus. Anyone wishing to make the image of the Shroud knew what to aim for. If the Shroud is made to imitate a crucified Jesus, then of course it's going to match up with the Passion scene. That's not a proof of its authenticity; that's simply describing what the Shroud is purporting to be.
The Photograph-of-Resurrection Hypothesis
The standard belief of popular piety around the Shroud is what I will term the Photograph-of-Resurrection hypothesis (POR). It may have some other name, but I will use this one. This is what most Roman Catholics in the pews at a church believe, along with most of the priests and nuns. And those Christians of other denominations who believe in the Shroud, or at least are open to it, are largely considering it because of the POR hypothesis.
In the POR hypothesis, the Man of the Shroud is in fact Jesus of Nazareth. The wounds on the Man are in fact the wounds suffered by Jesus of Nazareth during the scourging, crucifixion, and post-mortem impalement with a spear. This hypothesis believes some form of radiation -- maybe light, possibly electron discharge, or something even more bizarre -- radiated out from the body of Jesus at the moment of his resurrection from the dead, and this radiation imprinted the Shroud with a photonegative image of how Jesus looked just as he was returning to life. The image that is left on the Shroud has been called by one faithful Shroud scholar the "natural byproduct of the supernatural Resurrection" (see pg 20 here)
There are vanishingly few believers in the Shroud who will say it was made some other way. For instance, prior to Secondo Pia's photo, no Christians believed the Shroud to be a photonegative made by radiation from the Resurrection. They probably believed it was made either by sweat or some other residue left by Jesus' body on the cloth, or by a miraculous imprint when he was placed in the cloth. Today, almost no one will say that the Shroud touched Jesus at some earlier point but not at the Resurrection; or that the Shroud never touched Jesus and it only miraculously acquired this image at a later date (as argued for certain other alleged relics).
The explanation of the faithful is instead almost exclusively the POR. The Shroud is a photograph of how Jesus looked at the instant of the Resurrection, caused by miraculous radiation emanating from his body, leaving a photonegative imprint.
Eliminating the Impossible
We know a hundred-and-one ways that won't work to create the image on the Shroud. It's not painted, it's not drawn, it's not scorched, it's not a camera obscura, it's not usual dyes, it's not UV lights, etc. and etc. We still don't know how to recreate the image, and we keep eliminating alternatives.
There is a famous quote from Sherlock Holmes: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Believers in the Shroud point to this idea. Granted, the Resurrection of Jesus is, a priori, a difficult explanation to accept. But after we've considered so many other possibilities, and ruled them all out, at some point we have to accept that the POR is the only explanation remaining.
I don't disagree. When we have ruled out alternatives, we have to accept what remains. We cannot keep clinging to the impossible explanations. As I will argue below, the Photograph-of-Resurrection hypothesis can also be ruled out, on the basis of Apostolic witness and church history.
The Alternatives and Authenticity
On a topic with this much study and uncertainty, it is important to avoid simplistic thinking.
When we speak of the Shroud being "authentic", we are usually considering two, and only two, alternatives. To be "authentic" means the Shroud is the cloth Jesus was wrapped in at the moment of the Resurrection, and to be "inauthentic" means the Shroud was fabricated by a deliberate fraudster for the purpose of deceiving people, for some kind of political or financial gain.
This will usually simplify even further. Either the POR hypothesis is true, or the Shroud is a 13th century forgery.
But these are not the only two options.
It is possible, for instance, that the Shroud is "authentic" but misunderstood. Consider one option: the Shroud is an icon deliberately created by an Eastern Orthodox artist in the late 9th century, somewhere in Byzantium, for the purpose of display in a church. In its original context there was no deception about it, and it is an authentic Byzantine icon. Removed from its context, say by a knight from France during the 4th Crusade, the Shroud is now misunderstood as not an icon made by an artist, but as an actual relic.
Under the above hypothesis, the Shroud is not a forgery. It wasn't created pretending to be the real burial shroud of Jesus of history. But it is also not the real burial shroud of Jesus of history.
Here is a video of an egyptologist explaining this possibility of the Shroud's origin.
This is just one possible third option. Many, many more possibilities exist, some more far-fetched than others. For my purposes, however, I am really only interested in showing that the POR hypothesis cannot be true. To the other hypotheses, I am largely agnostic. The Shroud is interesting to most people precisely for the reason that it might be a scientific proof of the Resurrection, and bear the real face of Jesus as he truly looked in history. I will show below that it is not.
The Burial and Resurrection of Jesus
The crucifixion of Jesus is the central fact of history, and divides history into two parts: before and after. Very shortly on the "after" side, Jesus' body was removed from the cross to be buried. The Jews had strict prohibitions and commands on the treatment of human remains, and though the Romans had no qualms with how the corpses of criminals were handled, the Jews were pretty scrupulous.
According to the eyewitness accounts, Jesus' body was taken down from the cross out of a very Jewish concern that a hanged body not be left out over a holy day. It was received by a Pharisee named Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy disciple of Jesus, who prepared the body for burial. It is possible that there was some amount of rush in the preparation to finish before the holy day, but this would not manifest as deliberate deviation from tradition. We are to understand that Joseph revered Jesus, at a minimum as a wise religious teacher. He would have taken every care to make sure Jesus' body was handled in an appropriate and reverent way, consonant with the practices of Judaism at the time, to the extent possible.
When he was first taken down, Joseph wrapped Jesus in a linen sheet. This event is reported in all four Gospels: Matthew 27:57-60, Mark 15:42-46, Luke 23:51-53, John 19:38-40. These four accounts are complementary, even though they differ in the amount of detail they relate.
Matthew and Mark both report only that Joseph wrapped the body in a sheet and placed it in the tomb. I will be quoting from the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible from the Vulgate into English, as this is an authorized translation used by Roman Catholics. This is translated from Latin, but the original is Greek. For some key words, I will put the corresponding Greek/Latin in brackets. In Matthew's gospel, we read
"And Joseph taking the body, wrapped [ἐνετυλιξεν/involvit] it up in a clean linen cloth [σινδονι/sindone]. And laid it in his own new monument, which he had hewed out in a rock. And he rolled a great stone to the door of the monument, and went his way."
with a similar account in Mark's gospel,
"And Joseph buying fine linen [σινδονα/sindonem], and taking him down, wrapped [ἐνείλησεν/involvit] him up in the fine linen [σινδονι/sindone], and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewed out of a rock. And he rolled a stone to the door of the sepulchre."
The most important word I have highlighted in Greek here is σινδον, with its corresponding Latin sindon, which means a large, thin linen sheet. Under any affirming hypothesis, the Shroud of Turin is this fine linen cloth in these verses. I am quoting the Roman Catholic Douay-Rheims which translates it as "linen," but the evangelical ESV translates more resolutely as "shroud." This word is where we get "sindonology," the field of study of the Shroud of Turin. This word appears in two forms which just stress its role in the sentence (σινδονα is the object Joseph bought, σινδονι is the way Joseph wrapped him).
I have also picked out a few verbs. In Matthew, the verb ἐνετυλιξεν. In Mark, the verb ἐνείλησεν. These both mean "wrapped," as is written there, but could be simply rolling the cloth over the body. The Latin for both is "involvit," the past tense of "involvo", which also means to wrap, cover, or envelop. These verbs could describe the way the Shroud covers the Man of the Shroud.
If taken by themselves, these verses sound like Jesus was buried wrapped inside a linen shroud, consistent with the Photograph-of-Resurrection hypothesis.
Luke relates a similar account of the burial,
"And taking him down, he wrapped [ἐνετυλιξεν/involvit] him in fine linen [σινδονι/sindone], and laid him in a sepulchre that was hewed in stone, wherein never yet any man had been laid."
As before, Josephus takes down Jesus' body, wraps it in a shroud, then lays it in the tomb. Unlike Matthew and Mark, Luke follows it up with an extra piece of information. Chapter 23 ends with the burial, and chapter 24 begins with the witness to the Resurrection. The women witness it first and relate what had happened to the other disciples. Peter, upon hearing, goes to investigate:
"But Peter rising up, ran to the sepulchre, and stooping down, he saw the linen cloths [ὀθονια/linteamina] laid by themselves; and went away wondering in himself at that which was come to pass."
The word used for the linen cloths, ὀθονια, is different than the word used for the linen cloth just prior. Firstly, ὀθονια is plural (singular ὀθονιον), meaning there are multiple linen cloths. Secondly, while a σινδον is a large sheet that can loosely wrap a body, an ὀθονιον is a thin strip of linen like a bandage.
Notice this shift of language.
Within Luke's gospel, somewhere between being taken down from the cross, and rising from the dead, the clean linen that Joseph used to wrap him has gone from a large, singular shroud, to multiple thin bandages.
John's gospel helpfully clarifies any possible confusion over how Jesus was buried. He relates,
"And after these things, Joseph of Arimathea (because he was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews) besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave leave. He came therefore, and took the body of Jesus. And Nicodemus also came, (he who at the first came to Jesus by night,) bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. They took therefore the body of Jesus, and bound [ἔδησαν/ligaverunt] it in linen cloths [ὀθονίοις/linteis], with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury."
So according to John's gospel, Jesus was not buried wrapped in a shroud, but bound with thin linen bandages (ὀθονιον, the ending indicating plural bandages as the means of the binding). This is the most detailed image of the burial. It is not contradicting the others, but expanding what happened. The Greek verb δεω has the strong connotation of restraint, not merely covering or wrapping but tying down. Likewise the Latin verb ligo used in the Vulgate, is for tying, binding, or otherwise restraining. John confirms this later with a fuller recounting of what Peter saw at the tomb:
"Peter therefore went out, and that other disciple, and they came to the sepulchre. And they both ran together, and that other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And when he stooped down, he saw the linen cloths [ὀθόνια/linteamina] lying; but yet he went not in. Then cometh Simon Peter, following him, and went into the sepulchre, and saw the linen cloths lying [ὀθόνια/linteamina], And the napkin [σουδάριον/sudarium] that had been about his head, not lying with the linen cloths [οὐ μετὰ τῶν ὀθονίων κείμενον/non cum linteaminibus positum], but apart, wrapped up into one place."
We see the same word ὀθονιον, with different endings for its place in the sentence (the objects being seen, or the objects the napkin is not among). The napkin (σουδάριον/sudarium) is a different piece of cloth from the ὀθόνια. The ὀθόνια that bound Jesus are in one place, the napkin in the other. Some will claim when it says Peter saw the "linen cloths", it is referring to the Shroud (one cloth) and the napkin (two cloths). Instead, the plural linen cloths are being reckoned separately from the additional napkin. The napkin is expressly not lying with the plural linen cloths. Peter sees the linen cloths, and sees the napkin not lying with the linen cloths.
Notice these differences. At first, Jesus was wrapped in a shroud. Later, he was bound in linen cloths. We went from a singular linen cloth to plural linen cloths. We went from a word conveying a large sheet, to a word conveying a thin bandage. We went from a verb conveying loose wrapping or enveloping, to a verb conveying binding or tying.
The napkin itself is an important piece of fabric in the history of relics, with several cloths around the world claiming to be this cloth, one of which is the Sudarium of Oviedo.
Matthew and Mark were not eyewitnesses to this part of the Gospel account, and the exact burial method is not the focus of either of their writings; Mark is largely interested in recording the deeds of Jesus, while Matthew is largely interested in recording the teachings. They give a summary of what occurred here.
Luke's purpose is to collect the reports from eyewitnesses. He relates the same brief burial account, and includes the extra bit of information about Peter running to the tomb. Luke interviewed witnesses and got their precise wording. When Peter ran there, he saw thin bandages. That's what the eyewitnesses reported.
John writing later wishes to set the record straight. John was there. He got to the empty tomb before Peter, and John saw the cloths first, and John saw when Peter went in and saw the cloths. John knows by this point the extent of preparation Joseph and Nicodemus made, two wealthy men who nonetheless made themselves ritually impure over the Passover for the sake of their Master, and John wants us to know they did this. John knows what the cloths were, and he knows how Jesus was buried, and John tells us Jesus was buried bound in thin linen bandages, after the manner of the Jews.
Not only does John specify how Jesus was buried, but John gives another account of Jewish burial in his account of Lazarus. When Jesus hears of the death of his dear friend Lazarus, he goes to the place of his burial and ensures all those there that whoever believes in him will not perish but live eternally.
"When he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth. And presently he that had been dead came forth, bound [δεδεμένος/ligatus]feet and hands with winding bands [κειρίαις/institis]; and his face was bound about with a napkin [σουδαρίῳ/sudario]. Jesus said to them: Loose him, and let him go."
The word κειρίαις is another Greek word referring to a thin strip of cloth. The burial of Lazarus is consonant with the burial of Jesus as reported in both John and Luke. They are both bound with thin strips of cloth, and their faces separately wrapped. John did not include these details of how Lazarus was buried for no reason.
Following the four-fold account of the Gospels, from less detail to more detail, the order of events is that Joseph of Arimathea took the body of Jesus from the cross, had it wrapped in a fine linen shroud after taking it down, then brought him to a freshly cut stone tomb to be buried. Once there, he and his colleague Nicodemus made every effort at a dignified burial, bringing excessive amounts of the anointing spices, and they tore the linen shroud into strips in order to wrap the body of Jesus in the way customary to the Jews. Their binding may have been incomplete or partial, these strips may not be the usual strips used (ὀθονίοις vs. κειρίαις), but they did not just leave him wrapped in a single sheet. The eyewitnesses to the Resurrection, running to the tomb, observe these strips of linen cloth simply lying empty on the floor, in their places, with no body inside.
This account of the burial of Jesus from the four Gospels is not consistent with the Shroud of Turin. At the moment of the Resurrection, Jesus was not wearing a shroud, but was wrapped in thin strips of linen and his head wrapped separately. From this alone, we can know that the Shroud of Turin is not the burial shroud of Jesus. It might be something else, but it is not the garment Jesus was wearing at the moment of the Resurrection.
The Photograph-of-Resurrection hypothesis is not a possible explanation for the Shroud. When you have eliminated the impossible, then you are stuck with the explanations that remain, even if they seem improbable.
The Image of Edessa and the Shroud Before Turin
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| The Mandylion of Edessa |
The first reports we have of the Shroud come from France in the late middle ages. This leaves proponents of the Shroud in the position of having to explain what the Shroud was doing and where for this intervening history.
There are many hypotheses, but the one I've heard the most, and which sounds more plausible, ties the Shroud to the Image of Edessa and the legend of King Abgar V.
During the time of Jesus' earthly ministry, there was a king of the nearby Edessa named Abgar, the fifth of his name. According to the legend, Abgar suffered from some disease, and sent a letter to Jesus asking him to come to Edessa to heal him. Most interestingly, according to this legend, Jesus wrote a letter in response. The extant text of the supposed letter politely declines, but Jesus promises to send a disciple to Abgar to heal him. Later, according to the early legend, Thaddeus of Edessa is sent, heals the king, and Abgar becomes one of the first Christian monarchs.
The full text of the letter with Jesus' reply is, as quoted by Eusebius (AD 265-339):
"Blessed are you who have believed in me without having seen me. For it is written concerning me, that they who have seen me will not believe in me, and that they who have not seen me will believe and be saved. But in regard to what you have written me, that I should come to you, it is necessary for me to fulfill all things here for which I have been sent, and after I have fulfilled them, thus to be taken up again to him that sent me. But after I have been taken up, I will send to you one of my disciples, that he may heal your disease and give life to you and yours." (Book 1 Ch 13),
The letter supposedly from Jesus is very interesting, and how I first heard of Abgar V. I'll be frank, the letter sounds like Jesus, or at least someone who knows Jesus' teachings very well. If it were authentic, then I would think the letter would be by definition part of the canon of Scripture: it was literally written by God. (And this is, I think, the best argument for its non-authenticity)
As Eusebius records the events, there is no image. There is only a letter. Abgar is healed when Thaddeus of Edessa is later sent to him, and converts to Christianity.
We know that in AD 384, a famous pilgrim named Egeria stayed in Edessa. She was given a tour, and the bishop made a point to show her the original letter and the gate where the messenger Ananias entered with the letter. She recounts a story of how, during a siege by the Persians, the letter is read out loud and the recitation of it drives the enemies away. By AD 384, neither Eusebius nor Egeria is aware of an Image of Edessa, only of a letter.
Shortly after Egeria, however, another work in the 4th or 5th century called the Doctrine of Addai (another name for Thaddeus) is published giving more detail of the correspondence between Abgar and Jesus, and now it includes the image. The messenger is given a name, Ananias in Greek or Hannan in Syriac. Ananias is sent out with a group on some other business. Their route takes them through Jerusalem. They encounter Jesus, his healings, and his teachings. When they return they encourage their king to ask Jesus for help with his illness. Abgar sends Ananias back to Jerusalem with his letter asking Jesus to come see him. Ananias finds Jesus, delivers the letter, and receives Jesus' response.
But now a new deviation appears. Before leaving with Jesus' response, being in charge of official archives, Ananias decides to paint a picture of Jesus:
When Hannan, the keeper of the archives, saw that Jesus spake thus to him, by virtue of being the king's painter, he took and painted a likeness of Jesus with choice paints, and brought with him to Abgar the king, his master. And when Abgar the king saw the likeness, he received it with great joy, and placed it with great honour in one of his palatial houses.
He succeeds in capturing the likeness, and brings the image back to Abgar, who cherishes the image. It is stored in the palace.
Later, after Ananias has returned with the letter and painting and after the Resurrection, Thomas the Apostle sends Thaddeus to Abgar. Abgar is then healed, as Jesus had promised by his letter.
This is the historical origin of the Image of Edessa, better known in the East as the Mandylion. It was an image painted by a messenger from Edessa. If it existed, it was so unremarkable, neither Euseubius nor the Bishop of Edessa in the time of Egeria bothered to mention it, if they even knew of it. It has no miraculous power of healing, and no miraculous origin. It was made by the human hands of Ananias, a messenger of King Abgar V. If it were still extant, it would be invaluable as a contemporary depiction of Jesus, but it would not be miraculous in origin, and it would have nothing to do with his death or burial.
This is the original introduction of the Mandylion into the record. But this is not the Mandylion that would become so important to Eastern devotion. The Mandlyion that would come to be venerated in the East was not painted by Ananias, nor by any human hand, but made miraculously by God.
In the later legend of the Image of Edessa, in the iteration that would stick, Ananias is simply unable to capture Jesus in a painting, as he cannot render the divine light in his paints. The image is made after Jesus presses his face into a cloth (a mandulion in Greek), which leaves behind a miraculous replication of his face. This image is acheiropoieton, a word meaning not made with human hands, but made by God. There are several other relics claiming this status, but the Image of Edessa was the most important. The first hint of the image being an acheiropoieton is from a church historian Evagrius , writing of the siege of Edessa by the Persians:
"In this state of utter perplexity, they bring the divinely wrought image, which the hands of men did not form, but Christ our God sent to Abgarus on his desiring to see Him." (IV.XXVII)
It is no longer the reading of the letter that drives away the Persians, but the presentation of this divinely wrought image.
As the story develops, it becomings increasingly, hauntingly cool. It is the miraculous Image, and not any disciple of Jesus, that effects the healing of Abgar V, resulting in his conversion. The king of Edessa converts to Christianity, but later kings in the line revert to paganism and begin persecuting the Christians in the kingdom. The Christians hide the Image inside the walls of the palace to protect it from being destroyed. It is placed inside a hollow of the wall, with a burning lamp in front of it, then walled over with a facade. The hidden image was forgotten for centuries. Later, during the siege of the city by the Persians, the Image is rediscovered. It is found because, over the time of its immurement, the Image has miraculously projected and imprinted a copy of itself onto the wall tiles that had covered it. Tearing down the false wall, the lamp inside is miraculously still burning. The original Image is still within the hollow of the wall, and exuding miraculous oil. From the oil a fire is kindled, and the miraculous fire defeats the siege works of the Persians.
It is a fascinating story, with echoes of 2 Maccabees 1:18-36. I like the image of the face being so insistent on being found, almost like it's staring through the wall, imprinting itself on the tile outside. An object claiming to be those wall tiles would become its own relic, also with this status of acheiropoieton.
The Image of Edessa would become the most important icon in Eastern devotion. An entire genre of relics developed, the acheiropoieta, "made without hands." It became the prototype for all Eastern depictions of Jesus. There are many works claiming to also have a miraculous image of Jesus' face imprinted on them. They can't all possibly be real, as Jesus looks different in all of them, and in most of them he looks like a man painted by a medieval artist. But according to legend, all of these other images took their inspiration from the Image of Edessa, taking that as the divinely-approved face of Jesus, trying to imitate it as much as possible.
The Image of Edessa was eventually moved to Constantinople, the capitol of the Byzantine Empire.
In the Fourth Crusade, the Western forces became so completely overrun with avarice, that upon learning they would not get to raid and sack the encroaching Saracens, instead just sacked and raided the people they were supposedly trying to help, the Byzantines. The Pope had already granted a pre-emptive plenary indulgence to the crusaders for any sins they may commit on the way, so there was very little he could say after the fact. The result is the then-recent schism of East and West became effectively permanent and insurmountable.
In the raids, many sacred icons were stolen from Eastern churches and brought back to Western Europe. The Image of Edessa was one of them, and here it goes missing from history.
The most common origin for the Shroud of Turin in popular discourse is, that that Image of Edessa was one of these stolen relics, and it later turned up in Europe in the possession of a French knight.
This is where the Image of Edessa legend shifts once again. Many believers in the Shroud assert that this artifact known as the Image of Edessa is the same that we today call the Shroud of Turin. For most of the Shroud's history it was folded up in such a way that only the face was visible; but when unfolded, then the entire body was exposed. When the Image was first introduced into the legend, it is first a simple painting of Jesus, then becomes a miraculous imprint made by Jesus, while Jesus was in his earthly ministry. But now it is his burial shroud, meaning there was no artist and Jesus had already died and risen when the Image was made.
This is how the Shroud is traced through history to the time of Jesus. A disciple of Jesus was entrusted the burial shroud of Jesus to bring to King Abgar V, the image is hidden inside a hollow of a wall for centuries, rediscovered later, brought to Constantinople, then stolen in the Crusades and brought to Western Europe, until it winds up in the possession of the Savoy family.
However, it is all a clear development and embellishment of the story, in a manner almost directly contradictory to the legend's origins.
The original focus of the legend is the letter of Jesus. In the early accounts, this letter is the only part of the story even mentioned. We would expect Eusebius or Egeria to mention something as important as the miraculously-imprinted face of Jesus in their discussion of the correspondence of Abgar V and Jesus. The letter of Jesus is notable for actually sounding consonant with the Jesus of the Scriptures. I don't know that he wrote this letter and he probably didn't, but it was definitely written by someone familiar with the sayings of Jesus. In particular the words: "blessed are you who have not seen."
The original letter blessed Abgar V for believing without seeing. The later legend is Jesus giving Abgar V a miraculous image so he can see and believe. This isn't only a development; this is a direct contradiction of the original legendary material.
Assuming the legend of King Abgar V relates a true historical event, then the historical core would be that King Abgar V wrote to Jesus asking him to heal him, and a later disciple of Jesus visited King Abgar V and healed him. The detail of the image, though later the most important detail, is not present in the earlier accounts, and is formed in contradictory and increasingly supernatural ways as the story evolves. Whatever the image is needed to be, it seems to become.
If an image were ever made of Jesus and given to King Abgar, then the early account is most probable: Ananias did his best to paint how Jesus looked, and he did a decent enough job to please Abgar, but not so spectacular a job that anyone remembered the picture. They forgot about it, or neglected to mention it, because it wasn't seen as important. It's an ordinary, human painting, and that also explains why it wasn't mentioned in early accounts. The picture had no supernatural powers, either; the power to drive back the Persian besiegers originally lay with the letter.
But it we take the Image material from the later legend seriously, the Image of Edessa still cannot be the Shroud of Turin. The Image of Edessa was made by Jesus during his earthly ministry, before the crucifixion. The Shroud of Turin is supposed to have been the supernatural imprint of the post-crucifixion Jesus onto the linen cloth. It is not merely that the Image of Edessa was only the face of Jesus while the Shroud is a whole body image. It is that the object that became the Image of Edessa and the object that became the Shroud of Turin have contradictory provenances. The same cloth cannot both be a canvas Jesus took from a painter from Edessa to miraculously impress with a perfect rendering of his face, and at the same time be a fine linen cloth Joseph of Arimathea wrapped around the dead body of Jesus miraculously impressing it with radiation from the Resurrection.
Those both cannot be how the same image got on the same cloth.
The connection to the Fourth Crusade and Byzantium is still a reasonable origin for the Shroud. It is possible that the cloth which came to be known as the Shroud of Turin, was earlier in its life known as the Image of Edessa, or known as some other relic or icon used in the Byzantine Empire, and that Western soldiers stole it during the sack of Constantinople.
What is ruled out, however, is that either the Shroud or the Image of Edessa actually go back to Jesus. Tying the Shroud to the Image of Edessa is not a possible way to tie the Shroud to Jesus, as neither has provenance tying it back to Jesus.
Some Remaining Supernatural Explanations
I am a Bible-believing Christian. I believe in miracles. I believe Jesus rose from the dead on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. I just don't believe the Shroud is a miracle. According to the Scriptures, there was no shroud present when Jesus rose from the dead.
But just because the Photograph-of-Resurrection hypothesis can be ruled out, doesn't mean there aren't other possible supernatural explanations for the Shroud. They just aren't as compelling.
Part of the compelling nature of the Shroud and the POR hypothesis is that, though it involves a miracle producing the image, the image made is secondary to the miracle. The image is a side-effect. It is the "natural result of the supernatural Resurrection." The cloth happened to be there, and happened to record the radiation from the Resurrection. It is parsimonious in a sense that many other alleged relics are not. This is what makes other relics less compelling; they have too much miraculousness in them.
One miraculous explanation could be that the Shroud is the same shroud that initially wrapped Jesus' body, it received the imprint just by touching the body of Jesus (maybe by a natural substance like sweat, or a supernatural influence on the fabric), and then was taken off of Jesus when he was bound in the thin linen strips. The problem here is this requires a second miracle to make the image, as a human body will not naturally make an image like the Shroud's when laid on a linen cloth. It's not as parsimonious, and therefore less compelling. This explanation also has the burden of needing to prove provenance. Joseph took the cloth, then what did he do with it? Where was it for 1200 years? This burial shroud cannot be the Image of Edessa, so what was it before it was the Shroud of Turin?
Another explanation could be that the Shroud never came anywhere near Jesus, and that it simply miraculously received the image on it one day. This is not as compelling, but this is the proposed origin story for most alleged acheiropoieta. The Virgin de Guadalupe has no connection to the actual Mother Mary. The image is not claimed to have been left there by Mary touching the cloth during her earthly life. It simply appeared there, more than a thousand years later. The problem here is that this again requires a second miracle to make the image. It's even less parsimonious, as it doesn't explain how the image formed, or why this cloth out of all cloths in the world received the image. This explanation, however, gets around the issue of provenance. Whenever and wherever it first materialized, that's when it started to exist; no need to tie it back historically to the time of Jesus.
While these are not as compelling explanations as the POR hypothesis, they are miraculous explanations that affirm the Shroud as an accurate and miraculous depiction of Jesus as he looked at his death. Since the POR hypothesis can be eliminated as impossible, then we are left with the hypotheses that remain. These two miraculous hypotheses are not strictly ruled-out. They would just need to be evidenced somehow.
I think the first explanation, that the Shroud is the shroud used by Joseph that was taken off the body before burial, is very unlikely to be true, as there is no historical provenance for how it arrived to the modern era. I think the second explanation is very unlikely to be true, as all of the other icons claimed to have originated in this way are obvious products of human artists (and not always skilled artists). So I don't believe either of these. But they aren't strictly disproven, either. So if you'd like to believe in a miraculous origin for the Shroud, these remain.
Another Remaining Improbable Explanation
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer.
Let me offer an improbable explanation. Sometime after Nicaea II and the resurgence of iconodoulia, the Shroud was created by a very skilled artist using a novel technique of staining a fabric with the imprint of a bas-relief statue. This artist could have been in the Byzantine Empire prior to the 4th Crusade. This artist could have been in France in the 12th century. It is possible the artist had no intention of deception, and only wanted to make a highly detailed depiction of how Jesus' body might have looked on the cloth.
This is an improbable explanation, in that we're not sure what kind of technique exactly imprinted the image. We do know that laying a sheet of fabric over a bas-relief carving painted with an acid, and slowly rolling the fabric against the statue, will produce images very similar to the Shroud in its most striking features. We just haven't reproduced everything exactly.
Above is a side-by-side photonegative of the real Shroud of Turin with the reproduction made by Garlaschelli using a process like the one I'm describing (see here). One of them is the reproduction. Show this to ten Shroud believers, and tell me if they can tell which is the real one. Can you?
Not knowing exactly the technique, does not make this technique impossible. This explanation therefore has not been completely ruled out. This is the explanation I will stick with.
Yet Another Remaining Improbable Explanation
Towards the end of this, many will still want to insist that the Shroud is too supernatural to be the work of human hands. There are too many precise scientific details that line up with the Resurrection. It simply cannot be a forgery. It cannot even be a pious production of devotional art. It has to be a miracle.
Here's another possible -- improbable, but possible -- explanation: the Shroud was created by demonic forces, who used dark magic to enchant the cloth with an image that Christians would mistake for their Lord. They did this to lead people astray, so that they came to focus on this cloth image and "icons not made by human hands", instead of the Word of God in the Scriptures.
This isn't my position. It's just a position. And it's neither impossible nor ruled out. The Photograph-of-Resurrection hypothesis has been ruled out. The Image-of-Edessa hypothesis has been ruled out. But the Demonic-Deception hypothesis is still there for consideration. If we are going to insist the Shroud is supernatural, we would be wise to note there is not only one supernatural power.
In Conclusion
The most popular hypothesis for the Shroud is that the image is a photonegative, formed by some kind of radiation from the body of Jesus during the moment of Resurrection. I've been calling this the POR hypothesis. As I've shown, Jesus was not wearing a shroud at the moment of his Resurrection; he was wrapped in multiple thin bandages. Therefore, this hypothesis for the Shroud's image cannot be true.
The most popular and likely historical provenance for the Shroud that seeks to trace it back to the time of Jesus, is that the Shroud is the same cloth formerly known as the Image of Edessa. As I've shown, the Image of Edessa is a later addition to the legend of its origin, and therefore almost certainly the image was created later in time than our first accounts of the interaction of Jesus and Abgar V. If Jesus did correspond with Abgar V, the original correspondence did not include any sort of depiction of Jesus, or if it did contained only an unremarkable painting. Even believing the later legends, the Image of later legend was formed in a manner completely inconsistent with the Shroud (that is, not by contact with the corpse of Jesus). Therefore, this hypothesis for the Shroud's historical origin cannot be true.
For the origin of the Shroud's image, we must discard the painting hypothesis, the camera obscura hypothesis, the UV light hypothesis, the scorching hypothesis, and many more, on the basis of them being impossible, no matter how much we want these hypotheses to hold. We must also discard the Photograph-of-Resurrection hypothesis, because it is also impossible.
There are many remaining hypotheses. About these, I am largely indifferent.
One remaining hypothesis is that it was created using an unknown artistic technique, hundreds of years after Jesus. This might sound doubtful given all of the astounding details often listed about the Shroud. But it's also not completely ruled out. I suggest sticking to this hypothesis, then.
The Shroud of Turin is not the burial shroud of Jesus, and likely has no connection to Jesus at all. It does not contain a miraculous image of him formed at the Resurrection. We don't know exactly how it formed. But we know a hundred-and-two ways it could not be formed. And it could not have been formed by covering his body at the moment of Resurrection.
