Pictures of Jesus

Fake or real, the pictures on the Shroud of Turin are pictures of Jesus. If the Shroud is fake, then the artist intended us to believe that the pictures are pictures of Jesus. If the Shroud is real, and the pictures are the product of a natural phenomenon or a miracle, then they are almost certainly pictures of Jesus.

No one can fully explain how these pictures were formed. Look carefully and you will see two pictures of Jesus, a picture of his front side and a picture of his backside.

More Pictures of Jesus on the Shroud.

When a second face was discovered on the back of the Shroud (reported in the peer-reviewed, scientific Journal of Optics , April 14, 2004) news outlets including the Associated Press, the BBC and CNN said that the discovery of a picture of a face  reignited the controversy about the Shroud's authenticity. It did not. The controversy has been raging, unabated. The picture of a second face simply adds new fuel to the fire.

More accurately, the picture of an additional face posed a difficult question: What could be better understood about the Shroud from this discovery? It seemed to support a hypothesis that the Shroud's pictures are the result of a very natural, complex chemical reaction between amines (ammonia derivatives) emerging from a body and saccharides within a carbohydrate residue that covers the fibers of the Shroud.  If that is so, is it possible that we really have pictures of Jesus, even ones that were formed by chance; by some rare fluke of nature?  And can we really rule out a miraculous picture?

Understand that many reasonable people cannot believe that the Shroud of Turin is authentic or that the pictures of Jesus are real. Why?

Others, who have looked at the chemistry and the physics of the pictures on the cloth, find that there may be a plausible hypothesis for the pictures. But it is an untidy explanation. There is something about the pictures that doesn't make sense. And what doesn't make sense is that the science seems to walk up to the edge of a miraculous explanation even as it argues that a miracle doesn't make sense.
 

Pictures Written on Fibers

To understand the pictures we need to understand how the cloth was made starting with the thread of the cloth.

The threads are made from flax fibers that are but one-fifth the thickness of human hair. They were spun together by hand. Scientists now know that these fibers -- there are between 70 and 120 fibers in each thread -- hold the key to how pictures of Jesus were recorded on the cloth.  Look carefully at the picture shown here. This is a single thread from the Shroud of Turin. It is on the fibers of the thread, cellulose vegetable matter from a flax plant that the pictures are recorded.

Notice a golden caramel color on some of the fibers in the above picture. That color is a bit of the picture of Jesus. In fact, this specific picture is from the tip of the nose. It is not paint, dye or stain. That is a proven fact.

Since 1978, it was widely reported that the of color was the result of a change to the fiber itself; that part of the fiber had turned brown. But that isn't really the case. What has changed color is a thin filmy substance that coats the outermost fibers at the surface of the cloth.

Chemists know what this filmy substance is. And they have a good idea of the chemical reaction needed to cause it to change color.

The changed color are as visual bits of color, which when viewed at a distance form the pictures of Jesus.  The pictures on the Shroud of Turin are chemical pictures of Jesus.

 

The Filmy Substance of the Pictures of Jesus

The substance is a dried carbohydrate mixture of starch fractions and various saccharides (sugars). It is as thin (180 to 600 nanometers) as the wall of a soap bubble -- thinner even than the invisible glare proof coating on modern eyeglasses -- thinner even than the ink deposited on a sheet of paper by an ink jet printer.

The coating is only found on the outermost fibers of the thread. In fact, it is only found where the fibers are close to the surface of the Shroud's cloth. In other words, the fibers inside the thread, deep in the cloth, do not have this filmy substance.

Another important fact is that the carbohydrate coating can be removed by reducing it with diimide or by pulling it away with adhesive tape. Over the years, as the Shroud of Turin was folded and unfolded, rolled up and unrolled and spread out across rough surfaces, microscopic bits of the filmy substance certainly flaked away. In fact, when the Shroud was examined in 1978, pieces of the substance -- pieces of the pictures -- were pulled away when adhesive tape was rubbed on the Shroud to collect particulate samples for research. Today, countless tiny bits of these pictures of Jesus, even whole fibers of the Shroud's cloth, are stuck to microscope slides and sampling tapes in laboratories in the United States.

Scientist have a pretty good idea about how the the coating got there. It wasn't brushed on or wiped on as one might apply sizing to a canvas before painting. Had that been the case, the starch and sugar mixture would have soaked into the cloth capillary action would have pulled the mixture into the middle of the threads.  That didn't happen.

So how did the coating get onto the fibers? It turns out that the distribution of the carbohydrate substance fits an evaporation-deposit model. Interestingly, this model dovetails exactly with the way linen was made during Jesus' era as described by Pliny the Elder (23 to 77 AD).

If the cloth  was rinsed in a solution that contained dissolved starch and saccharides, and if the cloth was then dried in the air, the picture-bearing coating we find on the Shroud of Turin would have formed just as it is.

We know from Pliny that during weaving, threads on the loom were lubricated with crude starch to make weaving easier and to prevent fraying. The starch was then washed out by rinsing it in suds from the Soapwort plant. But the starch wouldn't have been washed out completely even with rinsing. Trace amounts of starch and the numerous saccharides found in the natural soap would have remained in the wet cloth. As the cloth dried, moisture wicked its way to the surface carrying with it starch and saccharide molecules. The dissolved material would have concentrated at the surface and remained on the outermost fibers as the moisture evaporated into the air.

You can demonstrate this to yourself by a simple experiment. Using primitive linen (not modern linen which has been sized) coat it with crude starch (not modern refined starch). Wash it in Saponaria officinalis, the soap produced from the Soapwort plant. So that you can see the results add some dye to wash water to act as a visual marker. Lay out the cloth to dry on something like a bush so that air circulates to both surfaces. You will be able to clearly see how the film has formed on the outermost, evaporation-surface fibers.

 

Pictures Formed by Browning

In some places the clear coating has turned a golden brown. This is the result of a chemical change; the formation of a complex carbon-carbon double molecular bond within the coating. There are two ways, known to modern chemistry, that this could have happened: 1) caramelization, whereby heat causes molecular breakdown into other volatile compounds and 2) a Maillard reaction in which a carbonyl group of sugars reacts with an amino group producing N-substituted glycosylamine. The unstable glycosylamine undergoes Amadori rearrangement, forming ketosamines, which then form nitrogenous polymers and melanoidins. Voila, pictures of Jesus, if this is what happened.

There is a problem with caramelization. The amount of heat required for browning would also heat the cellulose fiber sufficiently to change its crystalline structure and cause it also to change color. That has not happened. Where a picture bearing bit of coating is removed, either with adhesive or with a reducing agent such as diimide, the fiber beneath is clear and un-ablated.

A Maillard reaction seems more promising because of the presence of bodily produced amines needed for a Maillard reaction. Of course, it didn't need to be Jesus; at least chemically. It could have been any recently deceased person.
 

Patterns of Discontinuity

The pattern of the brown color is not uniform. Scientist refer to the way the brownish tint is distributed in the pictures as discontinuities of color. Along a single fiber there may be a stretch of color, then a clear stretch, and then some more color. Moreover, one fiber may have color while the one next to it may not, and so forth in alternating or seemingly erratic patterns.

In looking at the Shroud, if we step back from the pattern of discontinuous bits of caramel-brown, our eyes see an average color. Where there are many bits of color we see a darker color. Where there are fewer bits we see a lighter color.

Step back farther and a bleary, ghostlike picture of Jesus appears on the Shroud. This is exactly how the picture of Jesus is recorded. There is no question about this.

The ghostlike picture on the left show how the picture of Jesus appears on the Shroud. When photographed with a film camera something quite startling emerges. If we look at negative before making a print we see a realistic picture of a man. 

The Picture of Jesus on the back of the cloth

It is important to note that there will be two evaporation-model chemical coatings on the cloth. The side of the cloth that faced the sun and dried the fastest will have a dominant coating of starch fractions and saccharides from the soap. The other side will have a lesser coating.

Both sides will react to amines since some of the vapors will diffuse through the cloth. Indeed, we should expect to have a more distinct image on one side of the cloth and a less distinct image on the other. And we do! That is the significance of the discovery of a second facial picture on the Shroud.

But wait! Could this not have been done by some ingenious crafter of fake relics?
 

If We Wish to Think it is a Fake Picture of Jesus?

If we want to believe that the Shroud is not genuine then we have to consider some basic questions. How did the faker of relics accomplish this.

How did a faker of relics alter the chemical properties of the carbohydrate coating to create the color and how did he do so with such artistic precision -- on both sides of the cloth?

The history of art is the story of the evolution of styles, techniques, methods and technology. Every work of art and fakery is no exception. Every form of art and craft has precedents. When a new technique is discovered it is exploited. Over time the technique is refined and improved. Where are the precedents for pictures such as those that we find on the Shroud? Where are the other works in this new-found technology? Are we to imagine that some genius invented a new way to create pictures, that a single picture was made and the technology was lost to history?

How did  he create a suitable negative picture hundreds of years before the discovery of photographic negativity? How did he know that he had it right? How, without a camera and film, could he test his work? The negativity is extraordinarily precise and correct. Was he simply lucky?

The bigger question is why? What was his purpose? What was his motive? If we are to ask why he created an extraordinarily complex chemical picture, in negative, we must ask some other questions.

• Why a negative image when a positive image would be more convincing -- keep in mind that gradual tone negative images were unknown?
• Why did he go against conventional expectations of his era? Why did he create a picture with wounds from nails that went through Jesus' wrists? All art and all expectation throughout medieval Europe showed Jesus nailed to his cross through the palms of his hands.
• Why is Jesus shown completely naked, unlike in all artistic depictions everywhere throughout the history of Christianity?

Despite many attempts to do so, no one has found or invented an artistic or crafty technique that can reproduce even a few of the characteristics of the images. But that does not mean, that in the future, someone will not find a method to create such images. But if someone does so, the tenacious question will remain: How likely is it that there would be such a one-of-a-kind work of art for which there are no known precedents; created by methods that were never again exploited?

Any method that might be devised must be scientifically credulous, fit into the history of art and conform to the cultural expectations in which the technology was supposedly employed. If not, it will be seen as newly invented art designed to mimic an otherwise unexplained natural process or a supernatural event. The skeptic has a dilemma. To believe that the Shroud is fakery he or she must rely on an underlying belief that transcends scientific fact.
 

Are They Natural Pictures of Jesus?

Lean over and look down into a perfectly still, smooth-surfaced pool of water and you will see a perfectly formed picture of yourself. But drop a pebble into the water, or wait for a breeze to ripple the surface, and the image becomes indistinct, fuzzy and unclear.

The image in the pool of water, when rippled, looks like an out-of-focus photograph. But that really isn't the case. In a naturally reflected picture, your eyes are the lenses that provide focus. The reflection surface is wrinkled and causes reflected light to go off in different directions. It distorts the resolution of the image but it doesn't defocus it. While the analogy is not a perfect one it suggests a potential problem for a natural image explanation.

The images on the Shroud are not only very well focused but highly resolved. It is almost certain that in the first century a piece of linen was naturally wrinkled, that it even had creases from folding. This is something that would certainly distort the resolution of the image.

(Incidentally, it is no less of a problem for those who advance theories about radiation or some mysterious force leaving a picture on the cloth as a body miraculously passes through the cloth).

A reflecting pool was certainly mankind’s first mirror.  Eventually man would learn to make other mirrors, first by polishing stone or metal and eventually by fixing metals such as mercury, tin or silver to pieces of glass. Of course, the glass had to be smooth and flat. If the glass was wavy or curved, any reflected picture would be highly distorted. We see this when we look into the special mirrors in carnival funhouses. Again there is an analogy that relates to the pictures on the Shroud of Turin. It is hard to imagine how any process could form an essentially undistorted image if the cloth was draped across a human form.

What assumption can we make about how Jesus’ body was positioned on the limestone shelf in the tomb? How flat was the shelf? Was it smooth or rough-hewn? We don’t know. Was the cloth smoothed out?

In placing Jesus’ body on the shelf was the cloth pulled about, rippled in places and even creased in places? We can’t know. How closely did the cloth follow the contour of Jesus’ body? Was it pulled like a bed sheet? Did loving hands smooth it across the body? Did it stick in places to still wet blood or to remaining water from some washing? Were there flowers resting on the cloth weighing it down or under the cloth propping it up?

Image analysts and forensic pathologists argue that the image on the cloth is of a man with his knees bent slightly and with his head tilted forward as though resting on a pillow that was under the cloth. Assumptions about the shape of the cloth and how closely it followed the contours of Jesus’ body are difficult if not impossible to make. If wrapped closely, wide and grotesque distortion would result. But even if draped loosely, the distortion caused by the surface terrain of the cloth should be evident.

It becomes extremely difficult to imagine an image that was not very much distorted by shapes and wrinkles no matter how the image was formed. This is perhaps the most intuitively strong argument for thinking the image is the work of an artist. It would be a powerful argument were it not for the chemistry of the image and some of the other rather odd qualities of the pictures.

There is another problem that we must consider. Scientists refer to it as saturation. In the parlance of photography we might say that the pictures of Jesus are surprisingly not underexposed or overexposed. This means if the pictures are the product of a chemical reaction, the reaction ran long enough but not too long. What stopped the reaction at just the right time, everywhere on the pictures?

There would need to be sufficient chemical reaction time and concentrations of reactants to cause highly discernable images. Similarly the reaction must end sufficiently early to avoid over saturation which would washout image detail. Computerized image analysis shows no saturation plateaus or washout anywhere in the image. In simple terms, the chemical process ended late enough to form a discernable image and early enough so it was not ruined.

Reactant exhaustion is one thing that would have ended the process. Another would have been separation of Jesus’ body from the cloth at just the right time. And we do know that if a natural process formed the images, the cloth at sometime had to have been separated from the body.

Another problem is diffusion. If we accept the hypothesis that chemical changes to the carbohydrate coating on the Shroud’s fibers was caused by amine vapors, we must recognize that vapors diffuse and scatter when they come off of a body. Heavy amines molecules do not diffuse as greatly as those of lighter gases. Nonetheless they go isotropically in different directions. So precise are some of the features on the Shroud’s images that one pundit likened vaporous formation to painting a perfect copy of the Mona Lisa with aerosol spray paint.

The pictures seem spectacularly like chiaroscuro (pronounce)  images; pictures created by reflected light. When we look at the pictures on the Shroud, and particularly the face, we see seemingly three-dimensional pictures on a flat two-dimensional plane, much as we do when we look at a photograph or a conventional painting of a person -- and just as we do when we look at a reflection in a smooth pond or a flat mirror. The cheeks, as they curve around from the front of the face, seem to recede into shade. The hollows of the eyes are evident from their darker tones. The tip of the nose is white and stands out. This is how reflected light works on the human face. Unless we are an artist or a photographer, we probably don’t think about the patterns of light in pictures. But our mind nonetheless puts it all together for us when we look at a person or a picture of a person. And the Shroud, to our way of perceiving pictures, to our anthropic bias, does look like a picture of reflected light.

How do we imagine that given so many chemical reaction variables -- wrinkles, the shape of the cloth, diffusion, along with may factors not addressed in this essay such as ambient temperatures, humidity, body chemistry, a likely uneven distribution of evaporation-model coating, other trace impurities, etc. -– that nature will be so kind as to produce such near perfect chiaroscuro pictures of Jesus quite by accident: a picture of arguably the most important person in history?

 

Historical Picture - The Jesus of History

Could pictures of Jesus on a burial cloth offer new clues about why Christianity exploded? Could a picture of Jesus on his cloth explain some of the early liturgy, some of the theology, some of the unanswered questions such as what it was that the Beloved Disciple saw when he peered into the tomb. Might it even give new meaning to the appearance stories?

Starting in the sixth century, pictures of Jesus seem inspired or even copied from a single source.

What did Jesus look like? Amazingly, there is no description of Him in the New Testament or in any contemporary source.  Yet, in hundreds of pictures, icons, paintings, mosaics, drawings and coins, there is a common quality that enables us to identify Jesus in works of art. Shroud scholar and historian Ian Wilson theorizes that a common set of facial characteristics became the norm following the discovery of the Edessa Cloth concealed in the city's walls in 544 CE. 

Apparent Shroud-inspired pictures of Christ are noticeable on coins struck in 692 CE during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian II. The distinctive front-facing appearance of Jesus on the Shroud is also found on numerous icons, mosaics and frescos from the sixth century on. The most startling example is the Christ Pantocrator icon at Saint Catherine's Monastery, reliably dated to 550 CE. 

In the 1930's, French Shroud scholar Paul Vignon described a series of common characteristics visible in many early artistic pictures of Jesus. The Vignon markings, as they are known, all appear on the Shroud suggesting that it is the source of later pictures of Jesus.
 

• A square U-shape  between the eyebrows. 
• A downward pointing triangle or V-shape just below the U-shape, on the bridge of the nose.
• Two wisps of hair going downward and then to the right.
• A raised right eyebrow. 
• Large, seemingly "owlish" eyes. This may be the result of coins placed over the eyes.
• An accent on the left cheek and an accent on the right cheek that is somewhat lower.
• A forked beard. Dr. Whanger (see below) has suggested that this may the result of a chin band tied around the head to keep the mouth closed.
• An enlarged left nostril. 
• An accent line below the nose and a dark line just below the lower lip. 
• A gap in the beard below the lower lip. 
• Hair on one side of the head that is shorter than on the other side.
  

 

Here is the issue: The outermost fibers of the cloth are coated with a thin film of starch fractions and saccharides. In places, bits of this coating have turned straw-yellow because of a chemical change. That is how the images are recorded, plain and simple. But it is not so simple. While heavy volatile amines coming from a body would have caused this chemical change (that is certain), it is puzzling that the images are focused and properly exposed. See:  The Hypothetical Shroud of Caiaphas

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© 2004 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York