Jackson, John

Walter McCrone

One the flip side of the authenticity debate is the claim that one scientist, the late Walter McCrone (1916-2002), found red ochre (hematite) and vermilion (mercuric sulfide), common medieval paint pigments, and thus was able to argue that the shroud was painted. But that claim has since been proven wrong. Scientists—and we should probably only consider those who have actually looked at shroud fibers with microscopes and advanced scientific instruments—are quite certain about the chemistry of the images, and they are not made up of inorganic compounds McCrone identified through the lens of his microscope. The images are the result of a chemical change either to the fibers themselves or to some organic material on the fibers that was there before the images were made.

An analogy is in order. If you have a personal computer, you probably have an inkjet printer attached to it. When you print a picture, tiny droplets of ink are deposited onto the paper through tiny nozzles in a print head that passes over the paper. This is applied color. But it doesn’t really matter how color is applied with a paint brush, a pallet knife, drizzled on as Jackson Pollock did on his canvasses, powdered on as makeup is sometimes applied, or ink-jetted on. And it doesn’t matter if the colorant is paint, lipstick, dye or ink. The operational word is applied.

But there different types of printers that are inkless. Images are formed by a color producing chemical change to the media or to a coating on the media. One common type of inkless printer is a thermal printer. Thermal printers are often found in ATMs, cash registers and older fax machines. Paper that is coated with thermal sensitive chemical passes under a print head that heats tiny regions of the paper resulting in a chemical change that is evident by the change of color. This is not to imply that the images on the shroud were produced by heat. Many things can cause a color producing chemical change including other chemicals. Old newspapers that have become yellow, leaf stains on concrete, rust, these are all examples of color producing chemical changes.

Beliefnet

The site bills itself as the largest unaffiliated spiritual web site on the Internet.  Spiritual perhaps, but definitely a business. Beliefnet now is part of the News Corporation that includes Fox Television; over 100 newspapers such as The Times (of London), the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post; the website MySpace and the television show American Idol. Beliefnet has created itself into vast multi-overlapping magestias for cyber warriors from various traditions, beliefs and peculiarities, all having to do in some way with faith. Visit the site and you will find thousands upon thousands of people debating, questioning and explaining. They are Christians and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and Wiccans and Atheists and Chicken-Soup-for-the-Soulers. Everything is organized into groups and subgroups and fragments within each because there are so many varieties and beliefs. There are conservatives and liberals. There are rigid adherents to denominational intricacies and live-and-let-live and what-ever-makes-sense-to-you proponents.  Dig deep enough and you will find arguments akin to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and does the tune change the results.  

There are plenty of celebrity participants on Beliefnet. Michael J. Fox did an interview about his battle with Parkinson's disease and how it increased his sense of spiritually and gratitude. Michael Jackson wrote a moving essay for Beliefnet. “What I wanted more than anything was to be ordinary,” he wrote. “The Sabbath was when I could be.” Atheists Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have appeared in interviews with Laura Sheahen, Beliefnet’s senior religion editor.

There are countless interactive public interviews with many of the leading theologians and Biblical scholars. An interactive public interview is similar to a radio talk show in which telephone callers ask questions of guests.  On Beliefnet, the callers type in questions and the guest replies by typing a response. One such interview was with John Dominic Crossan.

As one might expect, there is plentiful discussion about the scientific quest for God on Beliefnet, and much of it can be very interesting until a extremist fundamentalist, be he a Christian or an Atheist, imposes himself into a discussion and saturates the dialog with  proclamations. “The Bible says. . .”

One of the more interesting areas of discussion that has spilled out from academia and the all so commonly disquieting Eastertide season of television specials. It is the quest for the historical Jesus.  Who was this man, Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians proclaim is the Son of God? Is there more to the story than what we know from the three synoptic gospels, the theologically rich Gospel of John, Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Paul and others evangelists? In the context of what we know about 1st century Palestine and its people, is it believable? And in the context of a scientific worldview, is it believable? And nothing is more central to the story than the subject of the resurrection? Did it happen?

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.

In this place He rises again

What, possibly, could Nicholas have meant when he wrote, “In this place He rises again”? Is this mere metaphor? Perhaps. But recall that Robert of Clari said that at St. Mary’s, “And on every Friday that shroud did raise itself upright so that the form of Our Lord could clearly be seen.”

John Jackson, who in 1978 found the fold marks showing that the shroud had been folded as a tetradiplon, proposed that the shroud might have been pulled up out of a box from the centermost fold like an upside down Roman shade. Jesus would appears to be rising from his tomb. It is by no means a farfetched idea. Byzantine emperors had thrones that were raised by secret mechanical devices intended to awe visitors. We can imagine similar devices for relics.

The Lepton

The word lepton means small or thin, and in Roman occupied Palestine, a lepton was always a low value coin, usually the smallest available denomination of a local currency. The Roman lepton was informally called a mite in the Greek-speaking parts of the Roman Empire; this use is seen in the New Testament.

Some researchers have identified images of lepta (coins), minted by Pontius Pilate for use by the Jewish population in Palestine, over both eyes of the Shroud of Turin face. But is the identification valid? Most shroud researchers, while agreeing that the Shroud of Turin is likely genuine, seriously doubt this identification.

In 1978, scientists, including John P. Jackson and Eric J. Jumper, while working with NASA's VP-8 (3D) Image Analyzer, discovered what appeared to be raised button-like shapes over each eye.

Gabriel Quidor

As early as 1913, Gabriel Quidor, a French scientist, devised a mechanical densitometer for measuring the grayscale values in Pia’s photograph and translating them into a sculptured model. And in 1974, Paul Gastineau, another French scientist, prepared a 3D relief, also from carefully measured grayscale values. But it was Bill Mottern at the Sandia Labs, along with John Jackson, an Air Force officer, who lifted this notion into the world of science, to demonstrate in a quantifiable, repeatable sense that if the image was created from a corpse lying beneath a shroud, then there might be a direct relationship between the distance of the cloth from the body in places and the shade of gray in the image. They had already done some work with a device called a densitometer, similar to devices used by Quidor and Gastineau with promising results. It was, however, a new, more sophisticated piece of equipment that would show definitive results.

VP-8 Image Analyzer

The Interpretive Systems VP-8 Image Analyzer had been invented in 1972. In 1976, Peter Schumacher delivered a system to the home of Eric Jumper, also with the Air Force. Jackson was there as Schumacher set up the machine and verified that it was properly calibrated. Then, as Schumacher tells it:

Jackson placed an image of the Shroud of Turin onto the light table of the system. He focused the video camera of the system on the image. When the pseudo-three-dimensional image display ("isometric display") was activated, a "true-three-dimensional image" appeared on the monitor. At least, there were main traits of real three-dimensional structuring in the image displayed. The nose ramped in relief. The facial features were contoured properly. Body shapes of the arms, legs, and chest, had the basic human form. The result from the VP-8 had never occurred with any of the images I had studied, nor had I heard of it happening during any image studies done by others.

I had never heard of the Shroud of Turin before that moment. I had no idea what I was looking at. However, the results were unlike anything I have processed through the VP-8 Analyzer, before or since. Only the Shroud of Turin has produced these results from a VP-8 Image Analyzer isometric projection study. (41)

It was probably the most significant discovery about the shroud’s image since Pia took his famous photograph. Certainly it was a defining moment that spurred on more research. But it wasn’t, like Pia’s moment in his darkroom, an epiphany or totally new discovery. It was scientific confirmation of a hypothesis.

John Jackson on Complexity of Image

Physicist John Jackson has observed that "mathematical analysis of image resolution suggested that no single, simple molecular-diffusion or radiation mechanism could produce the image observed."  Roger agrees. And Rogers proposes:

[A] combination of systems could offer an explanation, e.g., anisotropic heat flow by radiation from the body to the cloth, attenuated heat-flow in the cloth, gaseous diffusion, convection, surface properties of cloth, and the dependence of chemical rates on temperature.

Were it not for some significant characteristic of the images, this potential explanation (something of a chemistry equivalent of two wrongs make a right) might suffice. Rogers alludes to the problem:

A dead body at normal temperatures and humidity will produce reactive amines—absolutely. A primitive (Roman times) piece of linen that is contaminated with crude starch will react with the amines—absolutely. Some color will be produced. If the Shroud is truly old and it covered a dead body, the amine/saccharide colors ARE present. Can they have been produced in a distribution that reflects the characteristics of the body? Theoretically the answer is yes; however, a number of demonstrations are required to illustrate the problem to everyone's satisfaction. . .