Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

The Persistent Creases

There is another kind of crease that affects linen: a persistent crease. Linen fibers have great tensile strength. That is why linen has been used, not only for clothing and burial shrouds, but for sailcloth, rope and as layers in body armor. It is no match for modern synthetic Kevlar, and it won’t stop a bullet, but it did help reduce the impact of swords and spears among ancient warriors. But the same thing that makes linen thread strong reduces it flexibility. The fibers can be easily broken by folding. Fold a piece of linen repeatedly in the same place or leave it folded and under pressure for a period of time and the fibers break. When this happens the damage is irreversible. The crease thus formed remains. It will remain for centuries. It will remain as long as the cloth exists. The crease is said to be persistent.

John Jackson, a physicist from Colorado tried raking light on the shroud in 1978 and discovered many folding creases. Some were particularly distinct and ran across the width of the cloth. If you follow the this-way-and-that-way patterns of persistent creases that Jackson found; folding the cloth in half where the heads of the two body images almost meet in such a way that the two body images are on the outside and visible; and then you continue to fold the cloth following the direction of the other fold marks, you end up with a folded cloth that is eight layers thick. It is a stack of material roughly 3½ feet wide and 1¾ feet high. The face from the front body image, and only the face, is centered right in the middle of this stack of cloth. It looks like a facial portrait. But most facial portraits are not found on a surface that is seemingly twice as wide as it is tall. Examine the archives of facial portraits from antiquity to the present and almost all them are on backgrounds that are taller than wide. If you have ever worked with digital photographs on a computer you know the difference between portrait and landscape orientations. This face, when seen on a folded cloth that follows the persistent creases, is on a landscape surface.