Just when you think the Shroud of Turin debate couldn’t get any wilder, boom, two new research papers drop.

One claims to debunk the Shroud.

The other might have just vindicated it.

And the timing is suspiciously perfect.

So, first you’ve got a study that says the shroud’s image is more consistent with a a medieval artist pressing cloth onto a carved plate, a sort of bob relief, then wrapping it around a real human body.

However, the author admits that he didn’t even try to explain the shroud’s photographic characteristics or the blood stains.

More on that in a little bit.

Enter paper number two.

This one takes major aim at a huge skeptical theory that the blood marks came from a freshly washed corpse that sort of oozed fluids after death and then puts that theory to the test in the lab.

If this new research is right, it doesn’t just dent that theory, it absolut it absolutely obliterates it.

which means the shroud just got a whole lot harder to fake.

In this video, we’re going to pit these two studies against each other.

One that seems to undermine the shroud and another that might have just actually saved it.

And then we’re going to ask the big question, does this actually settle the shroud debate once and for all.

Stay tuned.

Before we unravel the rest of this mystery, hello, I am Cameron Bertusi, and this is Capturing Christianity, where we explore the evidence, the arguments, and even the history behind the Christian faith.

If you want to see more investigations like this one, where we put big claims under the microscope of reason, make sure that you hit subscribe.

It’s also free and does help out the channel a lot.

And if you like the fact that we don’t just uh cover things up, we actually dig in until we find the truth laid bare, then consider supporting us on Patreon.

Without your help there, we cannot keep producing these highquality videos that challenge bad arguments and highlight good evidence.

Links are in the description, and thank you so much for your support.

All right, back to the Shroud.

Before we get to the new research that might vindicate the Shroud, let’s talk about the other paper that just came out, the one that supposedly debunks it.

This study by a 3D artist and researcher named Moras argues that the shroud’s image is more compatible with a medieval artist pressing the cloth onto a carved low relief plate or a sculpture a bar relief rather than it being draped over an actual human body.

He built a full 3D model digital model of a man simulated cloth draping over it and then compared it to the cloth draping over a compressed low relief version.

The result, the bar relief produced a very clean, better bounded image closer to what we see on the shroud itself.

Now, here’s where my main push back on this research comes in.

And I did an entire video on this already, linked in the description.

Moras’s model only measures contact geometry.

It doesn’t even attempt to explain the shroud’s most famous features, its photographic negative quality, and its mysterious 3D image encoding.

And crucially, something I didn’t even get into in my last video, it completely ignores the blood.

In fact, Moras openly admits that blood chemistry and transfer were completely outside the scope of his work.

And that’s exactly where this new study comes in because it dives head first into the blood evidence.

And what it finds is, well, let’s just say it’s not very good for skeptics.

All right, now let’s get to the study that has Shroud researchers buzzing.

This one comes from Dr.

Kelly Kur, an immunologist who decided to put one of the most persistent skeptical explanations for the shroud’s blood marks to the test, the so-called bodywashing hypothesis.

Now, if you’ve never heard of this hypothesis, don’t worry.

Here’s why it’s so popular among skeptics.

One of the striking things about the shroud is that the blood marks, whether from the crown of thorns on the head, the scourging, or uh even the side wound, are unusually sharp and well- definfined.

The edges aren’t smeared and blurred like you might expect.

They look almost stamped onto the cloth.

And that’s not what you’d expect if someone had wrapped a bloodcovered body in linen right after death.

Fresh blood on a body that’s been handled, moved, and and wrapped would probably be kind of messy.

Enter Frederick Zugabe.

I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that correctly.

He’s a forensic pathologist.

Along with a few other people, they proposed a fix.

Maybe the body had been sort of quickly rinsed before being placed in the shroud.

The idea was that a short post-mortem wash would remove the surface smears in clotted mess, leaving only wounds that could still ooze in very tight patterns.

Then, as the body was handled or jostled, those wounds might release post-mortem fluids, serum, and partially degraded blood that would seep onto the linen in these sort of neat, tight impressions.

Now, on paper, this sounded like a plausible enough theory to gain some traction in the shroud dialectic.

But there was a huge problem, a massive problem for this theory that that that came out.

For decades, ultraviolet photography of the shroud had shown these sort of faint fluorescent halos around many of the blood marks.

And these halos were consistent with serum exidate, the clear yellowish fluid that seeps out when a clot sort of retracts back in after it dries.

And under normal postmortm conditions, when blood coagulation is impaired, those halos don’t form.

So, if the washing hypothesis is true and we’re dealing with mostly post-mortem oozing, then why do we see these little halos around the blood marks? That’s the question that Kirst decided to answer in the lab recently.

She ran a series of experiments designed to mimic post-mortem conditions, low pH, acidic blood chemistry, and impaired clotting versus normal living blood.

She tested what happened when blood dried naturally and what happened when partially clotted blood was pressed against another surface as would happen if a body were wrapped in cloth.

Now, here’s what she found.

Okay, normal blood, blood that could still clot, formed visible serum halos as it dried.

And when the blood was partially clotted and pressed against the surface, the halos transferred right along with the main stain.

When she tested post-mortem like blood simulated with anti-coagulants and low pH, it did not produce halos.

No matter how she dried it, no matter how she pressed it, there was no fluorescent borders.

So, here’s a translation of that.

The chemistry of post-mortem blood, blood after death, is fundamentally different from the chemistry of clotted real wounds.

And if you don’t have the right kind of living blood, you don’t get those neat serum rings, those halos that the shroud clearly shows.

That is a direct hit to Zugabe’s washing hypothesis because if the body had been washed previously, the blood that then transferred onto the cloth afterward would have been mostly post-mortem seepage, exactly the type that Kierce found, does not produce those little halos.

Here’s conclusion, and this is where things get pretty interesting, the majority of the shroud’s blood marks were transferred from wounds that were still clotted or semic-lotted, not from late postmortem oozing.

And this has huge, I cannot underscore that enough, huge implications.

It means that if this were a hoax, the forger didn’t just smear on some old blood.

They would have needed an actually living or recently deceased human body with wounds in the exact same locations and with the exact same trauma patterns described in the Gospels.

Okay, just think about what this would entail.

All right, you’d have to scourge a victim in a way that matches Roman flagagillation marks.

You’d need to puncture their scalp in a way consistent with the crown of thorns.

You’d have to drive nails through this person’s wrists, through their feet.

You’d even have to spear their side in a way that produces both blood and clear serum because that’s what we see on the cloth.

You’d also need to make sure that their body was in a state where those wounds still contained partially clotted blood that would leave those little halos.

Oh, and then after you do all of this, you’d still need to figure out how to later produce an image that has a perfect photographic negative quality, an intensity to distance correlation that works in 3D imaging software and is only on the topmost fibers of the linen with no pigments, no dyes, and no paint, which is something that still baffles modern scientists.

In other words, if this was some sort of forgery, the person responsible wasn’t just some medieval trickster, okay? They would have had to have been a skilled executioner and more brilliant than any contemporary artist or scientist because even today with all of our technology, we cannot reproduce the shroud’s image.

That’s why Kirst’s paper matters today.

It doesn’t solve the mystery of the shroud.

It doesn’t tell us exactly how the image was formed, but it does knock out one of the major naturalistic explanations for the blood marks.

And when you take that off of the table, the path for the hoax hypothesis gets a whole lot narrower.

Before we break out the confetti over Kirstis’ findings, we’ve got to pump the brakes for just a second.

Okay, there are a couple things that you need to know, things that skeptics are likely to bring up.

First, the journal where Kirst published her paper, the International Journal of Archaeology, isn’t exactly a household name in the world of top tier science.

It’s not listed in the major scientific databases.

doesn’t have an impact factor and doesn’t follow the same kind of rigorous peer-review process as say a respected forensic or material science journal.

This doesn’t mean that her research is bad, but it does give critics an easy soundbite.

If the evidence was so strong, why not publish it somewhere prestigious? But secondly, and more importantly, this is not the first time the washing hypothesis has been put under the microscope.

And the earlier tests were already very brutal for this hypothesis.

Back in 1980 and 1981, several highlevel studies by Gilbert and Gilbert, Pelicori, Miller, Heler, and Adler looked at the blood areas on the shroud using ultraviolet fluoresence and chemical testing.

These weren’t fringe publications.

We’re talking about applied optics and other highly respected outlets.

Their findings under UV light, you can clearly see those faint halos or serum around the blood clots, perfectly intact.

If the body had been rinsed, those halos would have been smudged or washed away completely.

Pelicori and Miller even described them as precisely defined, exactly what you’d expect from clots retracting naturally, not what you’d expect after a quick hosing down.

Heler and Adler took it a step further with chemical analysis, detecting hemoglobin and bile pigments, compounds that easily break down in water.

So, in other words, if the body had been washed, those chemicals shouldn’t be there in the form that they are.

Gilbert and Gilbert spectral data also lined up with the profile of real aged blood, not fake or reapplied stuff.

So, while Kerissus’ paper is a welcome contribution and keeps the conversation alive, it’s building on a foundation that was already really strong.

Okay, the washing hypothesis didn’t just get dented by these classic studies.

It already got steamrololled.

Okay, if the shroud is a forgery, then whoever made it didn’t just have access to a freshly crucified corpse somehow.

Okay, they had to be both a master executioner and centuries ahead of the best artists and scientists that we have today.

So, where does all of this leave us? All right, on the one hand, we have a brand new study that experimentally undercuts the washing hypothesis.

But on the other, we have decades old peer-reviewed research that has already dealt that theory a fatal blow.

Put together though, the case against the washing hypothesis is now stronger than ever.

And remember, okay, ruling out washing doesn’t just remove one theory.

It removes one of the most plausible sounding ways skeptics have tried to explain the shroud’s neat, undisturbed blood marks without invoking something, let’s say, extraordinary.

The only realistic alternatives left require a scenario so bizarre, so implausible that it literally strains Credulli, an executioner/forger with perfect anatomical knowledge, access somehow to a freshly crucified corpse and the ability to produce an image we still can’t replicate with modern science.

That’s why this new paper matters.

that may not have been published in the most prestigious venue, but it joins a growing pile of evidence, making the shroud one of the most confounding artifacts in history.

Whether you think it’s authentic or not, one thing is absolutely certain.

Science has yet to give us a compelling natural explanation that fits all of the facts.

Oh, and by the way, Christianity is true.