Think about this for a moment.

Whoever removed that burial cloth from the tomb took a risk nearly as great as Jesus Himself. Possessing it meant exposure, arrest, or death. This was not the act of someone salvaging the belongings of a forgotten neighbor. It was the act of someone who believed the man buried in that tomb was worth everything—the prophesied Messiah.

That single question lies at the heart of one of the most enduring mysteries in human history: the Shroud of Turin.

Few people have studied this enigmatic relic more closely than Barry Schwortz. What he discovered over decades of investigation would challenge scientists, historians, skeptics, and believers alike. Modern science has examined the shroud exhaustively, yet it still struggles to explain what it is—or how it came to be.

And once the evidence is understood, it becomes difficult to look at the shroud the same way again.

An Accidental Witness

In 1978, Barry Schwortz did not believe in the Shroud of Turin.

A highly skilled photographer specializing in medical and technical imaging, Schwortz assumed the shroud was nothing more than a medieval painting. That was the prevailing assumption at the time, and he shared it fully. When he was invited to join the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), he initially declined. He couldn’t see how his background applied. To him, it sounded like a curiosity, not a calling.

He later admitted his attitude was childish. At the time, he saw the invitation as little more than a free trip to Italy.

Yet something nudged him to reconsider.

In the end, he accepted—and stepped into one of the most rigorous examinations ever conducted on a religious artifact.

Six Days That Changed Everything

STURP was not a casual endeavor. For five days and nights, a team of experts in physics, chemistry, spectroscopy, and imaging worked around the clock, executing an aggressive and comprehensive test plan.

Schwortz photographed every detail of the shroud under every imaginable condition.

Almost immediately, something felt wrong—in the sense that nothing fit.

There were no brush strokes.
No pigments.
No dyes.
No signs of burning.
No photographic process that could explain it.

The image was not on the threads of the cloth but on the outermost fibrils—something no known artistic technique could accomplish, especially in the Middle Ages.

The more Schwortz examined it, the less it behaved like anything human hands could make.

“Why Am I Here?”

The turning point came when Don Lynn, a senior imaging scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory—who had worked on the Voyager and Galileo missions—joined the team.

Schwortz, deeply impressed by Lynn’s credentials, finally asked a question that had been bothering him.

“Why am I on this team as a nice Jewish guy?”

Lynn replied without hesitation: “So was Jesus.”

Schwortz laughed. At the time, that was probably all he knew about Jesus.

Then Lynn added something that stopped him cold:

“Maybe God wanted one of His chosen people on the team.”

Lynn advised him simply to go to Turin, do his very best work, and trust that the larger purpose would reveal itself in time.

Schwortz stayed.

He never left.

Eliminating the Impossible

Over the next three years, STURP systematically dismantled every conventional explanation for the image:

Not a painting – no pigments, binders, or brushwork

Not a scorch – no heat damage

Not a photograph – no known technology could produce it

Not a bas-relief – no distortion consistent with contact methods

And yet, the image existed—three-dimensional, anatomically precise, encoding spatial information no artist could have known.

When the team published their findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals, their conclusions survived intense scrutiny.

The image formation mechanism remained unidentified.

Science had reached its limit.

The Blood That Wouldn’t Darken

Still, Schwortz remained unconvinced.

For nearly 18 years, he resisted the conclusion that the shroud was authentic. One detail troubled him deeply: the blood was still red. Old blood should darken quickly. This one fact seemed to contradict everything.

Then came a phone call from Dr. Alan Adler, a fellow Jew and one of the world’s leading blood chemistry experts.

Adler explained that the blood on the shroud contained exceptionally high levels of bilirubin—a substance produced in massive quantities when a body undergoes extreme trauma, shock, and torture.

Crucifixion-level trauma.

Blood saturated with bilirubin never darkens.

In that moment, the final piece fell into place.

Schwortz recalled a line from Sherlock Holmes:
When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains—however improbable—must be the truth.

Applying Occam’s Razor, he reached the only conclusion left standing.

The shroud was real.

It was the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth.

A Mission Takes Shape

As the years passed, Schwortz grew increasingly disturbed by how the media portrayed the shroud—distorting facts, promoting sensational claims, and ignoring the science.

Then, in 1996, a friend casually mentioned reading that the shroud was a photograph made by Leonardo da Vinci—information sourced from a grocery store tabloid.

That moment changed everything.

Schwortz realized the public had almost no access to reliable information. In response, he created Shroud.com, which would become the world’s largest and most comprehensive resource on the Shroud of Turin—launched long before Google existed.

Millions would eventually visit the site.

A Legacy, Not a Crusade

In 2009, Schwortz founded the nonprofit Shroud of Turin Education and Research Association (STERA) to ensure the preservation of decades of data for future researchers.

He funded the work personally for 14 years before transitioning it to a nonprofit—without advertising, without agendas, and without compromise.

People often asked why a Jewish man would dedicate his life to the Shroud.

His answer was simple: “To preserve the data. To let the evidence speak.”

Faith, Science, and an Unexpected Question

Schwortz never set out to preach. He simply presented information.

But eventually, people began asking a different question.

“What do you believe?”

At age 50, he was forced to confront something he had avoided his entire life. Raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, he had long rejected organized religion altogether.

Yet as he reflected, something unexpected emerged.

“I was shocked to discover,” he later said, “that God had been there the whole time—just waiting for me to turn around.”

He never claimed conversion. He never demanded belief. He simply shared what he knew.

And allowed others to decide.

Barry Schwortz often jokes about the irony of it all—a Jewish man lecturing seminarians about the Shroud of Turin, respected by Christians, Muslims, skeptics, and atheists alike.

Perhaps that is why his testimony carries such weight.

He did not seek faith.
He did not defend a tradition.
He followed the evidence—wherever it led.

And it led him to a mystery that still stands, untouched by explanation, quietly challenging the modern world to reconsider what it thinks it knows.