Arguably the most intriguing and controversial religious relic in the world, the Shroud of Turin, is facing major scrutiny from new 3D findings published in the academic journal Archaeometry. CBN’s Raj Nair spoke with Shroud expert Dr. Jeremiah Johnston to break down the controversy.
RAJ NAIR: All right, my brother, let’s get right to the controversy. What is in this new finding?
DR. JEREMIAH JOHNSTON: Yeah, well, I just kind of laugh when it’s being so boisterously said that the shroud has been debunked. What we’re discussing is a Brazilian designer that used a free software that anyone could use, a free 3D software, to attempt to prove that the shroud could never have been wrapped on Jesus’ body. That was the big finding. And of course, that was what was published, rightly as you mentioned, in the Journal of Archeometry. However, media has just absolutely gone ablaze saying that, oh, the shroud, based on this finding, did not cover the body of Jesus. The shroud has been debunked. Anyone who has spent two minutes studying the shroud begins to laugh because this is not a scientific study. This isn’t even a new finding.
The STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) team in 1978, which consisted, Raj, as you know, of 33 of the world’s greatest scientists, most of which who were not believers, concluded that the shroud could not have been caused by contact with the body through a scorch or through a bas-relief. And so what Cicero Moraes, the Brazilian designer, is saying, he essentially took a low relief sculpture and he used all this in 3D modeling, okay? And he wrapped the shroud around it and he said, well, this would have caused the mask of Agamemnon effect. Jesus’ body would not have looked so sharp. It would have been so much more distorted. And that’s what his 3D model is pointing out, except he completely ignores the chemistry. He completely ignores all the forensic aspects of what we now know of the shroud. And so it really is laughable to think that this would call into question any of the scientific findings.
It’s interesting that when this big article was released was right during the international conference on the Shroud of Turin in St. Louis, Missouri, where I and many other thinkers, scholars, and those that actually read and create the science and actually attest to it, we were actually studying and having the conference when this thing came out. So the timing is intriguing as well.
NAIR: So in your opinion, this whole 3D statue thing just doesn’t fit the bill?
JOHNSTON: Oh, it doesn’t hold water, not just in my opinion. Let me be very clear. In the scientific findings of the 1978 STURP project, the Shroud research team proved that the image in the cloth that you are showing visuals of, the image in the cloth could not be created through physical contact using a low relief sculpture. It proved that, not through scorching, not through heat. It proved there is no pigment, there is no dye. This is not a man-made image. That is what the scientist proved.
And so the fact, I give Cicero credit, he’s come out with a novel approach while ignoring all of the forensic data saying, hey, it couldn’t have happened. And again, that’s not how we do science. That’s not how we do scholarship. That’s not how I do scholarship. I always, always reproduce my opponent’s findings in their best possible light. That certainly did not happen. He essentially ignored all of the science about the shroud formation and said, oh, here’s how it could have happened. And again, any of us who’ve read about it just kind of laugh about it.
And it gives us a neat opportunity to remind people that the shroud is the most studied artifact in the world. It’s not just a relic, it’s an artifact because you can study it with the physical sciences. But Raj, just to remind you and your amazing audience, it’s also the most lied about artifact in the world. This is an artifact that outside of scripture, it attests to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In many ways, the shroud is the fifth gospel and no other artifact does that. It tests to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus outside of scriptures. And I think that’s why it’s always talked about and always interested in these different claims.
***Please sign up for CBN Newsletters to ensure you receive the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***
NAIR: Well, that’s actually my next question is why do you think there’s such pushback, not just from academia, but both you and I are evangelical Protestant Christians, however you want to call it. And I feel like for folks from a Roman Catholic perspective, Greek Orthodox perspective, it’s not that hard to get on board. But I feel like, and I get it, there’s this pushback of relics. You go to Italy, you go to Spain, like this is the crown of, so you’re like, all right, relax. But I think the question is why do you think there is such a hesitancy amongst evangelicals to believe this is an actual, this is what it claims to be? And then also there’s all these misunderstandings of what the shroud is because people say, well, there’s a burial cloth. What about this? What about that? Can you clear some of that up for us?
JOHNSTON: Raj, you’re asking all the right questions. One of the reasons that evangelicals are reticent to understand the shroud is because we have the dumbest Christians of all time in our churches. We have the most inept sermons that have ever been preached in our sermons. So Christians who do not know the Bible to begin with, then hear that there’s evidence from the material culture, and they don’t know what to do with this. And then there are some overly pious evangelical Christians who will say to me, ‘Dr. Johnston, my faith is so sound, I don’t need evidence for my faith.’ And I always listen respectfully, Raj, and then I remind them, you have a better faith than any of the New Testament writers had. Make sure that your faith as an evangelical is not more pious than the authors of the New Testament.
I can guarantee you, unless Thomas saw Jesus alive after he was dead, that’s John 20; unless Mary could have exclaimed, ‘I have seen the Lord’; unless John and Peter saw Jesus’ linen cloth lying there, that’s John 20, verse 8, they saw and they believed; ‘unless they could see these evidences so powerfully in front of them, there isn’t a word of the 138,000 Greek words of our Greek New Testament that would have been written. And so let’s make sure we actually have a faith with recourse to Scripture. The Bible is about real people, real places, real events.
So that means we shouldn’t be surprised that there could be an actual burial cloth that wrapped Jesus’ body that science can’t explain. The best scientists in the world, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Los Alamos Laboratories… men and women who are working on the Mars project, who I have met with from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, they’re working on sending men and women to Mars, and they say, ‘Jeremiah, we still have no idea how this image was formed in the Shroud of Turin.’ That’s pretty amazing science. And that’s what we would expect if Jesus did physically, bodily rise from the dead in which we believe that.
NAIR: Wow. Wow. You touched on so many things there, brother. I agree completely. The idea that our faith isn’t just blind faith, which I actually think is a beautiful thing, right? I think faith looks less like blind faith and more like trust, more like, ‘I believe in Your faithfulness, more like I have seen, I’ve touched. It’s real. It’s true. You really did rise from the grave,’ which I already know the comment section is going to get a little spicy with that one. But I think it’s a great discussion.
JOHNSTON: And it’s one that we have to have. Eidon is the Greek word ‘to see.’ Guess how many times it’s used in the New Testament? 186 times. Guess how many times it’s used in the Resurrection chapter of John 20? Eleven. No one is ever commended for having a blind faith or a faith in their own faith. They’re commended for the object of their faith. And the object of our faith is the resurrected Jesus Christ. The facts of the gospel that Jesus died and rose again and that people had experiences with him after he came out of that tomb alive. That’s why the Christian faith exists.
NAIR: All right. So last question. I always want to ask you this. Let’s say, let’s just say, even the doubters, let’s just say the Shroud of Turin really is the burial cloth of Jesus. What does that mean?
JOHNSTON: Well, I believe that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus because I’m not irrational. And therefore, that is just another layer of evidence outside of scripture that proves that Jesus physically, bodily rose from the grave. This was no spiritual resurrection. People did not see a phantom or a ghost. This was a physical, bodily resurrection that defies science.
We believe that something powerful happens at the moment of resurrection, not only in Jesus’s life, but in our future resurrection, that allowed his body to appear and disappear in rooms at will. He could be in different places. His body was otherworldly and it was un-die-able. And that should give everyone watching this video hope because John 14:19 says, because Jesus lives, you and I will live also. Every shred of evidence for Jesus’s resurrection proves our own future resurrection. And that fires me up. And so if it’s real, it’s just another layer of evidence that validates everything Jesus said and did.
NAIR: Let’s go. Dr. Jeremiah Johnston, my brother, thank you so much, my friend, and God bless.
