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Hosted by Leonard Nimoy, the segment explores the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, a linen cloth many believe is the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ bearing his image.
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00:00This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.
00:15The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.
00:30Locked in a cathedral in Turin, Italy, is the Holy Shroud.
00:40Millions of pilgrims have journeyed from around the earth to view what they believe is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
00:52Today, scientists are using modern technology to investigate the authenticity of this ancient relic.
01:02A young skeptic, however, has come forward with a claim he can prove the Shroud is a fraud.
01:09Is this the face of Christ or a forgery perpetrated by some unknown genius?
01:18Three and a half million people came to Turin, Italy, in late 1978.
01:33Each day, they lined up patiently in the hot sun, waiting for one brief glimpse of the most controversial relic in all of Christianity.
01:43The Holy Shroud of Jesus Christ.
01:46While they waited in the streets of Turin, vendors hawked cheap imitations of the face on the Shroud.
01:59This commercialism was reminiscent of the Middle Ages, when phony fragments of the true cross were peddled all over Europe.
02:07The Shroud would be displayed for six weeks and then locked away for a half century or longer.
02:15It was literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
02:16It was literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
02:20The Holy Shroud, an old piece of linen, fourteen feet, three inches long.
02:26Between the stains, burn marks, and patches, the image of a man, his hands crossed in death.
02:34The image on the Shroud is extremely faint.
02:38It tends to fade into the weave of the cloth.
02:41Blood stains at the head and at the hands are hard to see.
02:46Before the cloth was damaged by water and fire, however, the image must have been much easier to make out, as this reconstructed copy shows.
03:01A professor of theology from Chicago's Loyola University, the Reverend Francis Phyllis had to wait 30 years for his first glimpse of the relics.
03:16He was already a renowned expert on the Shroud, having studied the only material available, photos and documents.
03:25It was a stunning experience to see the Shroud beyond anything I've ever had in my life.
03:30I've heard of people having stunning experiences, but I know now what people mean when they say I cannot describe it.
03:36The most surprising element to the Shroud is that these stains are faint, vaporous, gaseous-like.
03:43And the farther away you get, the more clearly you see the Shroud.
03:46I had the privilege of seeing it inches away, which most people didn't.
03:50And I can tell you, when you're on top of the image, you see practically nothing.
03:54In 1978, Phyllis was in Turin with a select team of American scientists.
04:04They performed many tests on the Shroud, attempting to determine how the print of a body got onto this old piece of linen.
04:13Could it be the actual body of Christ?
04:21The early history of the Shroud is hidden in the Gospels and in old legends.
04:26Several times, the Bible refers to the burial linens of Christ.
04:31One passage in particular has mystified scholars.
04:35Mary looked into the tomb and saw two men in white cloth where the body of Jesus had lain.
04:43A description of the double image on the Shroud?
04:46Perhaps.
04:50The burial cloth could have been draped like this, producing separate images of both the front and back of the body.
05:00The legend of Veronica may be a clue to the early existence of the Shroud.
05:05Saint Veronica took pity on Jesus' sufferings and wiped his face with her veil.
05:11Miraculously, an image of his face appeared on the cloth.
05:17The words, Vera Icon, mean true image.
05:22And when the Shroud is folded in a certain way, it looks exactly like the traditional image of Veronica's veil.
05:32Yet, there is no historical record of Veronica.
05:37Edessa is a small town in Turkey.
05:44Legend says that Thaddeus, one of the first disciples, took a miraculous image of Jesus to the king of Edessa.
05:53The king was cured of leprosy and converted to Christianity.
05:58Then, during a wave of persecution against the new religion, the cloth vanished.
06:05Four centuries later, workmen repairing the city gate made a startling discovery.
06:14Sealed into the wall, the miraculous image had remained untouched for 400 years.
06:21Stories of the miraculous image of Jesus filtered back to Europe and actually prompted the Crusades.
06:28Of course, no single historical object can be held responsible for the hysteria which sent thousands of knights and children off to the Middle East.
06:37But they had one goal in mind, capture the Holy Land and bring the famous religious relics back to Europe.
06:44The Crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204.
06:48However, the Shroud, with the image of Christ, had again vanished.
06:54About 600 years ago, the Shroud shifted from legend to history.
06:59In 1352, it was discovered in Lyrae, France.
07:03But there is no record as to how it came to be here.
07:11The linen was almost destroyed one night during an accidental fire in a nearby church.
07:17The image itself was barely touched by the fire.
07:30The Shroud finally came to rest in the Cathedral of St. John in Turin, Italy,
07:36and is now kept under triple lock and key in a steel and asbestos box.
07:41Fearful of further damage, church officials allow it to be shown only once or twice a century.
07:51The face on the Shroud may be a clue to the remarkable consistency of Christian art.
08:06The Gospels say not a single word about the appearance of Jesus.
08:10We would expect artists to portray him in a million different ways.
08:14But this is not the case.
08:19Painters learn from their masters.
08:21And the masters, in turn, learn from their teachers.
08:24Even the most brilliant detective should become lost in a tangled web of art history,
08:30extending back for 2,000 years.
08:33Was there a single original source for the face of Jesus?
08:49Was it the face on the Shroud?
08:52The Shroud would probably have been all but forgotten, except for an amazing discovery in 1898.
09:04Secando Pia, a lawyer and amateur photographer, was given permission to make the first photo of the holy relic.
09:13He was overly cautious, knowing he wouldn't have a second chance.
09:20In the morning, the Shroud would again be locked away for many years.
09:25He worked very late that last night of the exposition.
09:37Alone in his dark room, Pia waited nervously for an image to appear on his glass plate negative.
09:47At first, he thought something had gone wrong.
10:06His negative didn't look like a negative.
10:09Secando Pia said,
10:11I was the first man since the apostles to see our Lord's actual face.
10:17His discovery was to trigger intensive scientific investigation.
10:26In the 20th century, we all recognize the look of a photographic negative.
10:32Light and shade are reversed.
10:35Faces have a strange appearance.
10:37A print made from the negative looks normal.
10:41The most puzzling fact about the Shroud of Turin has not yet been explained by science.
10:48The image on the cloth looks just like a photographic negative.
10:53The eyes seem open and staring, like a medieval icon.
10:59When we take a picture of this image, however, a wealth of accurate details suddenly appears.
11:06The eyes are seen to be closed in death.
11:10The body contours become clear.
11:14In other words, the Shroud itself is a sort of photographic negative.
11:22Dating from centuries before the invention of photography.
11:26Before anyone had seen or even imagined what a negative image would look like.
11:31The Shroud is something like the corpse in an Agatha Christie mystery.
11:36You've got it on your hands.
11:37Whether you like it or not, you've got to explain it.
11:39If you don't like it, then you have to explain what put the marks there.
11:43And remember, not just photographically negative marks, but also the transferred blood stains from the various wounds in this man's body.
11:52Using life-sized photos of the Shroud, anatomists reconstructed the face of the figure.
12:01He was, the report, 5'11", and weighed 180 pounds.
12:13Christian art has always shown nail wounds in the hands of Christ.
12:17The Shroud, however, seems to indicate blood spurting from the wrist.
12:25Pathologists set out to test both versions of the crucifixion.
12:29Experimenting with cadavers, they drove nails into the palm and hung the body from a scale.
12:39They were surprised to find that flesh in the palm simply tore away, unable to support the weight of the body.
12:49Then they experimented with nails through the wrist.
12:54Here, the tendons and ligaments could easily support the weight.
12:59The Shroud image was accurate.
13:03Even the U.S. Air Force contributed.
13:06Utilizing sophisticated computers which can enhance faint images, scientists produced a three-dimensional portrait of the Shroud face.
13:16Color of a cloth image is like a scorch produced by a miraculous burst of heat or radiant energy.
13:24As of the moment, we have to take the word of the experts in physics and related sciences
13:30who think the best theory from the electronic experimentation would lead to some type of radiation.
13:36Joe Nickel, an artist and private investigator, claims he can prove the Shroud is a fraud.
13:43It's a simple technique using simply hot water and cloth and a low relief or bas-relief,
13:50which during the 14th century in France were commonplace.
13:54Every artist could whip out these bas-reliefs for the church architecture.
14:01What you do is you mold the cloth while it's hot and while it's wet to the bar relief.
14:10And to do this, you begin to use your fingers to press and force the cloth to the features so that it begins to take on the relief of the features.
14:24And as you continue to work this, say, after you get a good start on it, perhaps every half hour or so as it begins to dry,
14:33when you finish, you will have the cloth tightly molded to the bas-relief.
14:40It will fit it rather like a mask.
14:45Since the Gospel of John refers to the burial spices myrrh and aloes,
14:51and since aloes has a potent staining property, I decided to try that.
14:57I first tried just the aloes, and it's a little too potent.
15:00It tends to smudge.
15:01So if you tone it down with the myrrh, it works beautifully in about a 50-50 mixture,
15:06and it does not penetrate the fibers of the cloth, just as the imagery on the shroud does not penetrate the fibers of the cloth.
15:13A homemade dauber, cotton, piece of cloth, piece of tape.
15:18Just apply it very sparingly, and just very, very lightly begin to stroke down the, down the plaque.
15:36With this experiment, Nickel produced an image of similar color and tone to the face on the shroud.
15:43His final test was to subject his image to the process of negative, positive photography.
15:59The results divide into about three categories.
16:02Under technique, it allows the artist to view his work as he progresses.
16:06It's consistent with the opinions of two official shroud commission members
16:10that it was an artistic printing technique, probably using a model or molds.
16:15And, of course, it's consistent with 14th century technology.
16:18The pigment is a light brown color, deceptively similar to a scorch.
16:23It doesn't penetrate the fiber bundles, and doesn't leave brush marks.
16:28It doesn't look like a painting.
16:30Under imagery, of course, it's a perfect negative, produced in an era that had no foreknowledge of photography.
16:35You needn't desire a negative image, it simply automatically produces a negative image.
16:40Altogether, there are more than 50 points of similarity between this technique and the imagery on the shroud.
16:47I think it's conclusive.
16:48This is wrong on at least two dozen counts, of which I can mention only a few here.
16:53First of all, there were three million, three hundred thousand people at Turin during the exposition.
16:58Again and again, people in the crowd commented,
17:01Now I can see forgery is so impossible, because these marks themselves are so gaseous, so hard to see.
17:07Then we would say, why would any medieval forger put nail wounds here in the wrist,
17:12contradicting the medieval tradition that the nail had been in the palm?
17:15Still another factor, we must not forget that Dr. Max Fry, the Swiss criminologist, took off the shroud 48 different pollens, microscopically identified,
17:27and 13 of them come from plants that are botanically identified, that are indigenous, native, that is only to ancient Palestine, and growing in Israel right now.
17:36In October 1978, a chance arose to resolve this question of forgery.
17:44Thirty American scientists were given four days of uninterrupted access to the shroud.
17:50No motion pictures were allowed, but these stills were taken while the scientists were utilizing techniques such as X-ray,
17:59infrared, ultraviolet, and minute particle sampling.
18:03Their results will certainly generate more controversy.
18:09Unfortunately, the one test which could eliminate the possibility of forgery has not been allowed.
18:16Radiocarbon measurement could show how old the cloth of the shroud is.
18:22The only hitch, you have to burn a piece.
18:26In Rome, Contessa Marie Antoinette Nicastro, an advisor to church officials, was shocked by the American scientists' request.
18:40Experiment carbon-14.
18:43The Contessa believes the shroud is vitally important to both science and faith.
18:48But the permanent loss of such a large sample would be too great a sacrifice.
18:54The scientists' request was denied.
18:57A solution to this impasse between the church and science was recently proposed by a nuclear physicist from Rochester, Dr. Harry Gove.
19:07The conventional technique would need a piece of cloth about the size of a man's handkerchief,
19:14whereas our technique could do it with a single thread about eight inches long.
19:20Dr. Gove has adapted a nuclear accelerator to date extremely small samples of organic material.
19:28He feels he has already proven the accuracy of this technique.
19:32We got a sample of Egyptian mummy cloth, linen cloth, which is similar to the shroud material.
19:39And its historical date is known, and it was also dated by the conventional technique.
19:44And we measured it, and we got an age of 2,050 years with an error of about plus or minus 80 years.
19:52And that agrees with both of the other measurements.
19:55So we feel pretty confident we can do it.
19:59Is the shroud 600 years old and therefore a forgery, or 1,900 years old and possibly authentic?
20:10Never before have church officials sacrificed even the smallest piece of a holy relic for scientific testing.
20:19However, a new wave of open communication is sweeping through the church, led by Pope John Paul II.
20:27The ultimate decision to burn a piece of the shroud may rest with this man.
20:32The shroud, safely locked away, is once more out of reach.
20:38It is not expected to be seen again for at least another generation.
20:42Perhaps in the time of our grandchildren, we will discover if the shroud is the burial cloth of Christ.
20:50Can there be scientific tests as for the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ?
21:01As for the resurrection, I think we should note that the resurrection of Jesus is a dogma of Christianity
21:06that by definition is a miracle and therefore beyond human comprehension.
21:10No scientific law could be involved in that case.
21:13That is a question of religious faith.
21:15As for the crucifixion, however, this is a historical fact subject to our own laws of human life.
21:21And therefore, the shroud can be used to give us evidence of a crucified Jew 2,000 years ago.
21:27And of course, mathematically, this would lead to the identification with Jesus Christ.
21:31The disciple Thomas was the first skeptical scientist.
21:35He asked for proof of the resurrection.
21:37Jesus obliged.
21:39And then reminded him,
21:41Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
21:48Coming up next, In Search Of continues with an exploration to find the remains of John the Baptist.
21:53Then, agents hunt for the brilliant mastermind of a mass convict escape on FBI, The Untold Stories.
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22:06Veterans.com, a place where veterans, their families, and others can connect, share stories, and pass on the legacies of all American veterans.
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