This report is my initial response to the controversy and publicity recently generated by the publication of the journal article by Ray Rogers cited above. It contains my initial thoughts and is subject to change. Please feel free to forward it and cite it using Web citation format, but it is subject to change and will soon be expanded into a journal article for official publication that will contain references and illustrations. For several reasons, I had to write this present version quickly and informally, and it may contain errors that, if present, will be corrected. Please contact me if you find errors at the email address below. The most recent version of this paper will always be on the Web at http://www.skeptic.ws/shroud/articles/rogers-ta-response.htm.

Introduction: An Exercise in Pseudoscience

Ray Rogers, a retired chemist who formerly worked at the Los Alamos national laboratory, recently published a pro-authenticity Shroud of Turin paper in a legitimate and peer-reviewed chemistry journal,Thermochimica Acta (hereafter TA). The Rogers paper makes two claims: First, the piece of the Shroud linen that was age-dated using radiocarbon technology in 1988 was actually a much-younger patch of cloth that allowed the radiocarbon labs to reach an incorrect medieval date. Second, using his own age-dating method, Rogers claims that the Shroud is actually much older than the early 14th century radiocarbon date. This paper has created a minor media frenzy, since it is the first pro-authenticity Shroud paper published in a legitimate scientific journal in about two decades. For this reason, and quite understandably, observers perceive that Rogers' paper must be exceptionally reliable. Unfortunately, these observers would be wrong. This response examines the scientific issues and elucidates the reasons why the Rogers paper fails in its claims in every instance.

In past years, Rogers has published many pro-authenticity papers in various pro-authenticity and pseudoscientific journals, symposia, and websites devoted to the Shroud of Turin, and the public press justifiably took no notice, since private publishing outlets for UFOs, astrology, creationism, and other pseudoscientific topics are numerous (and fill supermarket newsstands and pseudoscience conference book tables). Mainstream media writers know that such privately-published pseudoscientific outlets contain no data or findings that possess legitimate scientific value, and ignore them. The well-know Shroud of Turin website at http://www.shroud.com, for example, has published seven of Rogers papers in the last three years, including two in which Rogers examined the same evidence, made the same analysis, and reached the same conclusions that he did in the TA paper (one of these papers apparently had been published previously in an obscure journal, but I cannot determine if the others were). These papers justifiably received no attention by the mainstream media. It is only when he was able to get a pro-authenticity Shroud paper published in a legitimate scientific journal that public attention was given to his claims. The real story in this controversy is not the mistaken age of the Shroud of Turin, but the misjudgment of a science journal editor and the breakdown of its peer review process.

There is a very recent similar example in which a legitimate biology journal published a paper about intelligent design creationism; as with the present case, the journal had never treated this topic before, but the editor was suitably pliable. He claims he was not biased, but it is clear from his abundant written justifications after the fact that he was indeed biased (but apparently not religiously so; the issue is more complicated, and to understand it you have to be knowledgeable about the details of alternative theories of evolution and biosystematics). And it appears he sent the creationist ID paper to very friendly unnamed reviewers who he knew in advance would approve it (no official associate editor was used for the peer review; any evolutionary biologist actually familiar with the content and context of the submitted paper would have rejected it). As is typical with creationist ID papers, it contained plenty of legitimate and reliable scientific information and had the veneer of scientific respectability, but it also contained subtly illogical arguments, speciously misused data, and omitted the vital scientific information that completely refuted its pdeudoscientific conclusions. It should never have been accepted for publication by the editor. The editor later resigned and the journal's officers, elected councilors, and past presidents published a statement saying that the paper was "inappropriate," had "no credible scientific evidence supporting it," and "does not meet the scientific standards" of the journal. Rogers' paper in TA has characteristics identical to the ID pseudoscience paper in almost every detail. I believe that a future investigation will reveal that his TA paper's editorial history will also be similar, and I further suspect that there will also be similar editorial board repercussions.

Ray Rogers is a member of STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project, an organization totally composed of believers in the authenticity of the Shroud) and accepted the authenticity of the Shroud from the very beginning of their work in the middle 1970s. He accepts all the shoddy work that STURP passed off as science two and three decades ago. As is well known, STURP's analyses on image formation, identity of the blood, sticky tape pollen, and history were hopelessly incompetent and unscientific, despite their claims and posturing to be rigorously scientific. There is no real blood of any kind on the Shroud. Both the image and "blood" were applied by an artist. These facts were conclusively proved beyond even a shadow of doubt by microscopic chemist Walter McCrone, whose microscopic analysis revealed the presence of abundant iron oxide (red ochre) and cinnabar (vermilion) pigments on the Shroud. He published the photographic and chemical evidence in his papers and book. I have microscopically observed these pigments myself on Shroud fibers and can attest to this fact (see below). Joe Nickell first showed that the quality of the Shroud image could not be a direct image transfer by any natural mechanism from a human body due to inevitable distortion, and so must be an artistic rendition, and he demonstrated an easy way that the Shroud could be created by molding a linen cloth over a bas relief carving or cast. I was the first to point out numerous inconsistencies and logical lapses involving the Shroud's speculative history, elongate Gothic body shape, Palestinian pollen fraudulently applied to sticky tape samples, supposed but non-existent photographic negative quality, and other anomalous features, and to explain how the STURP members went wrong. All of these facts are by now well known among informed scientists and are completely accepted.

There are many other avenues of evidence that prove the Shroud is a late medieval artifact. The Skeptical Shroud of Turin website at http://www.skeptic.ws/shroud/ mentions all of them in several papers and a PowerPoint presentation by myself and others. In brief, every competent and honest scientific investigation of the Shroud of Turin has proven that it is a medieval artifact, a reproduction or representation of the Shroud of Jesus Christ (not a medieval fake, but a 1st century fake!). Ray Rogers and his STURP colleagues continue to pursue their Shroud pseudoscience, in opposition to empirical evidence, logical reason, and skepticism--the hallmarks of legitimate science. In violation of good scientific practice and honesty, Rogers's TA paper completely ignores all of this evidence that refutes his analysis and conclusions. Rogers' paper is an exercise in pseudoscience and should not have been published in Thermochimica Acta. The editor of that journal should be ashamed. So should the STURP "scientists," but I don't expect that to happen soon.

At the beginning of his paper, Rogers states that the early 14th century radiocarbon date "came as a surprise in view of the technology used to produce the cloth, its chemical composition, and the lack of vanillin in its lignin," and the date "does not agree with observations on the linen-production technology nor the chemistry of fibers obtained directly from the main part of the cloth in 1978 [references cited]." This is nonsense: First, the two references he cites are STURP papers that were written with an obvious pro-authenticity bias and lack of scientific objectivity; although published in legitimate scientific journals, their methods and conclusions are suspect and I claim they are exercises in pseudoscience; McCrone conclusively refuted the conclusions of these two papers in his book. Second, these papers contain no data or analysis to support a 1st century date using any scientifically-recognized age determination method. The methods Rogers cites--observations of linen-production technology, chemistry of fibers, and amount of vanillin in lignin--are, unlike radiocarbon dating, useless in accurate and precise age determination. At most, they would allow suggestions of age, and suggestions are notoriously unreliable and subject to bias, which is the case here. Rather than Rogers being surprised at the late medieval date of the Shroud, we are the ones who should be surprised at such obvious credulity on the part of a trained scientist, and that his specious arguments have been published in a legitimate scientific journal. I am more than surprised; I'm shocked, shocked!

Rogers' paper is not science, but classic pseudoscience: it is an example of nonsense-mongering and overreaching, of willingness to use any method, no matter how scientifically unsupported and disreputable, to confirm one's apriori beliefs. I can't understand how this clumsy, invalid, and totally illogical paper passed peer review in a legitimate scientific journal. Actually, I can understand how this lapse happened. When an author submits a paper on a topic that the journal has no history of dealing with, it is not uncommon for the editor to ask the author to suggest peer reviewers. I believe that Rogers simply suggested the names of a few of his fellow Shroud pseudoscientists who he knew would provide favorable reviews. These individuals probably had legitimate reputations in their non-Shroud research, and thus had some scientific legitimacy, and the Thermochimica Acta editor accepted their names without objection. I suspect that the TA editor, having no way to independently judge the veracity and competence of these reviewers, went along with their favorable reviews (this needs to be confirmed by an investigation; it is possible that the editor himself was biased, as in the example recounted above). Rogers' paper has nothing to do with the usual topics covered in TA; he could have submitted his paper to a dozen journals for all we know before finding one whose editor was incompetent or lazy enough to not understand why Rogers' paper was pseudoscience and thus deserved to be rejected outright.

Rogers' Analytical Methods: Deception and Illogic

In his paper, Ray Rogers relies on papers that were neither peer-reviewed nor published in legitimate scientific journals for his belief that the radiocarbon date was taken from a patch ingeniously rewoven into the Shroud linen so that its presence could not be detected. The authors of these papers, M. S. Benford and J. G. Marino, claim that a patch of 16th century material with a weave identical to the Shroud's was undetectably spliced into the 1st century Shroud to give it a 13th century date. But this is nonsense. It is certainly a remarkable coincidence that, according to these authors, their claimed rewoven patch--when combined with "original" Shroud cloth in the proportions subjectively determined by unnamed "textile experts" looking at photographs!--just happens to give an early 14th century date, the same as the date actually measured by radiocarbon dating! Amazing. But in fact the mixture of 16th and 1st century cloth would give a date much younger than the 14th century (about 7th century). The date obtained by the separate university radiocarbon labs exactly matches the date obtained by independent historical analysis, i.e. the early 14th century date when the Shroud first appeared and is believed by Shroud skeptics to be created by a late medieval artist, thus mutually supporting both dates. Benford and Marino submitted their ridiculous speculations in a paper to the scientific journal Radiocarbon, but it was justifiably rejected after peer review. Now, Rogers uses the same mistaken and incompetent speculations to support his conclusions in a paper that was published in a different scientific journal, Thermochimica Acta. I conclude that peer review failed this time for this journal.

As pointed out by Antonio Lombatti (personal communication), editor of Approfondimento Sindone, the skeptical international journal of scholarship and science devoted to the Shroud of Turin, only after one month of careful study on where to cut the linen samples for dating were the samples removed from the Shroud. This process was observed personally by Mons. Dardozzi (Vatican Academy of Science), Prof. Testore (Turin University professor of textile technology), Prof. Vial (Director of the Lyon Ancient Textiles Museum), Profs. Hall and Hedges (heads of the Oxford radiocarbon dating laboratory) and Prof. Tite (head of the British Museum research laboratory). There is no way these scientists and scholars could have made such an error and failed to see that the cloth samples they removed was really from a patch, "invisibly" rewoven or not.

Detailed photographs of the area from which the sample was removed clearly reveal that there was no patch there. (How could Benford and Marino's unnamed "textile experts" observe the correct proportions of 1st century and 16th century threads from the "patch" using photographs, while the legitimate experts named above--using both photographs and personal examination of the actual Shroud!--miss seeing that there was a patch there in the first place?) There is no 16th century patch in the area from where the ¹⁴C samples were removed; patches can be found only where the fire had burned the linen in 1532, and of course there is the Holland backing cloth. Both the patches and Holland cloth have weaves completely different from the Shroud's distinct herringbone pattern, which was easily identifiable by the radiocarbon dating scientists when they processed the cloth sample. Benford and Marino laughably publish a photo of a historical Shroud replica that they claim shows a missing corner section that was later patched; but this photo is a low-resolution JPEG image and the "missing corner" is really an artifact produced when low-resolution JPEG images are magnified beyond their true size! This anecdote just further illustrates their incompetence.

The tiny patch threads that Rogers analyzed are suspect: there is no official record of the supposed removal or donation of the radiocarbon dating sample threads or the Raes sample threads Rogers claims to possess (personal communication, Antonio Lombatti). "I received samples of both warp and weft threads that Prof. Luigi Gonella had taken from the radiocarbon sample before it was distributed for dating. Gonella reported that he excised the threads from the center of the radiocarbon sample" (p. 190). If Gonella's statement is true, then he seriously violated the protocols of sample removal and performed an irresponsible act. Furthermore, to receive threads of this spurious sample at this late date suggests that the threads are suspect and not to be trusted as really being from the sample sent out for radiocarbon dating. Rogers' entire argument rests on his analysis of these two tiny threads and the addiitonal Raes sample threads he claims to possess. I have no evidence to disprove Rogers' claim that the Raes sample fibers--supplied to him by Luigi Gonella and supposedly taken from the original Raes sample adjacent to the radiocarbon samples--are from the Shroud ("I received 14 yarn segments from the Raes sample from Prof. Luigi Gonella . . . "; p. 189). But I question this claim also, since this was also undocumented and unsanctioned. The samples used by the academic radiocarbon labs to date the Shroud, on the other hand, were officially removed, witnessed, and sanctioned. Are Rogers' two tiny threads truly from the same sample as the ones used for radiocarbon dating? If not, Rogers' entire argument is invalid, since Rogers' claim is that the radiocarbon samples have completely different chemical properties than the main part of the Shroud, and he purports that his two tiny threads are representative of the radiocarbon-dated samples. He could only know this if the threads he tested were actually from the same sample used for radiocarbon dating, and we must trust the words of Rogers and Gonella for this (for Rogers' word, see below).

The alleged differences between the Raes sample and the main Shroud samples that Rogers elucidates include (1) different amounts of vanillin (main Shroud absent, Raes sample present), (2) cotton fibers and madder root dye in the Raes sample, but none in the main Shroud samples, and (3) the Raes fibers have been "dyed" with some chemical, but not the fibers of the main Shroud. Rogers is incorrect about all of these. For the different amounts of vanillin, see below. It has long been known that cotton fibers occur elsewhere in the Shroud, being observed by several investigators including Italian textile experts and Walter McCrone. I don't doubt that cotton fiber impurities made their way into the flax used to make the linen cloth; it would be difficult to keep them separate, and contrary to Rogers, such fibers are found throughout the Shroud. As for madder root dye, McCrone detected rose madder pigment on the Shroud's blood areas and reported this. It is reasonable to believe that this pigment could have ended up anywhere on the Shroud, including a non-blood area. Finally, the entire Shroud is covered by a coating of very thin tempera protein paint used by the artist as a binder; its oxidation over time gives the Shroud its characteristic sepia color (very slightly yellowish-brown; natural linen is white). The tempera binder was not used as a paint but to shape or mold the linen over a bas relief carving or cast, and was used to bind the loose particles of red ocher pigment when still damp. Rogers identifies this as a "dye" only on the Raes threads, but in fact all Shroud fibers have this thin tempera coating and characteristic color, as is readily perceived by simply viewing the photographs. Rogers identification of a colored "dye" is the first admission by a STURP member that fibers of the Shroud have been painted or coated.

Rogers' new method of using the amount of vanillin in a sample to determine its age is useless and incompetent. According to Rogers, the vanillin in known Shroud fibers is missing, but the Raes "patch" fibers do possess vanillin from his tests. Thus, he concludes that the amount of vanillin (a breakdown product of flax over time) can be used to age date his samples, and because "the Shroud and other very old linens do not give the vanillin test, the cloth must be very old," thus making it "very unlikely that the linen was produced during medieval times." But this is nonsense: to demonstrate the efficacy of his new dating method and thus prove his claim of age discrepancy, Rogers first must date his Shroud samples by independent methods and must demonstrate the effectiveness of his method using other independent samples, and he fails to do both of these! Rogers refers to the presence of vanillin in "all other medieval linens," but he provides no evidence to support this statement.

There are some curious anomalies in Rogers' paper that deserve attention. Rogers states, "STURP was not allowed to take radiocarbon samples in 1978; therefore, it was useful to devise independent methods for age determination to test the validity of the published data [in Damon, 1989]. Are we to believe that STURP foresaw, eleven years in the future, that the independent (of each other and especially of STURP) academic radiocarbon labs would find that the Shroud was created in the early 14th century, and STURP must therefore devise independent methods for age determination to test the validity of that date? Of course, that's nonsense; STURP had never devised such tests in 1978, and Rogers developed his new method long after the famous 1989 paper in Nature, and did so only after he had become convinced by others that samples of a clever invisible patch had been dated by colossal error. During the years following the 14th century date, believers in the authenticity of the Shroud came up with over a dozen ways by which the radiocarbon scientists could have gone wrong. Readers will no doubt be knowledgeable about the absurdity of these ad hoc and overreaching explanations, and Rogers himself understood that all would never be taken seriously by legitimate scientists (some examples were contamination of the linen by a bioplastic coating, bacteria, fungi, chemicals released during the fire, etc.) But Rogers temptation to believe was too strong, and he allowed himself to be seduced by one particular suggestion: the skillfully and invisibly rewoven patch in the very spot from which the radiocarbon samples were taken and with exactly the correct proportions of threads of the correct age to give the aberrant early 14th century date.

Of course, we scientists must always be grateful to STURP for allowing us to get the correct radiocarbon date in the first place: STURP's overwhelming certainty of the authenticity of the Shroud--derived from the massive self-deception of believing their own bogus scientific data and illogical conclusions!--gave the Catholic Church the confidence it needed to permit dating the Shroud and proving once and for all that it was 1st century in origin. Members of STURP literally convinced the Catholic Church to proceed with the radiocarbon dating program, allowing truly neutral, skeptical, and mostly secular scientists (and thus completely different in character from STURP personnel) to get their hands on a piece of the Shroud and subject it to a real scientific test. If the Church thought it might get a 14th century date, it would never have permitted the sampling and dating, since its goal has always been to milk the Shroud for its faith-strengthing qualities. For over a decade, STURP has been attempting to make up for their error and get back in the good graces of the Church. I always smile when Rogers and the other believers in the Shroud's authenticity suggest another dating experiment. As they well know, it will never happen!

Several times Rogers refers to the lack of vanillin in all "samples from anywhere on the shroud," and "there was absolutely no coating with these characteristics [the colored encrustations, alizarin dye, red lakes, and swelling gum] on . . . the main part of the shroud." But how could he know this, since he apparently did not perform his "home laboratory" tests for vanillin and coatings on samples from the main part of the Shroud. After careful reading of his paper, I could find no place in which he reports his data of such tests beyond claiming that it is true. Nor do the two STURP references he cites report on such tests, including the all-important presence or absence of vanillin. Walter McCrone, on the other hand, found proteinaceous termpera binder and abundant colored particles on the main part of the Shroud, especially in the blood and image areas. I think Rogers found some of the protein coating material and pigment on his tiny threads and leaped to the false conclusion that this was different from the rest of the Shroud. Therefore, the rewoven patch hypothesis must be correct!

All truly scientific dating methods, including radiocarbon dating, have a level of evidentiary support and verification--which scientists refer to as using controls and replication--that Rogers' new method of vanillin concentration does not. Instead, Rogers concluded--using the questionable sources of Benford and Marino--that the supposed "patch" first existed and was therefore younger than the rest of the Shroud before he developed his new dating method. Then he developed his new but faulty dating method so that it would validate his apriori belief! Rogers did test his method by aging lignin samples at elevated temperatures for 24 months, but this is laughably inadequate. He was not able to adequately calibrate his exponential decay curve, an essential part of any proxy chemical dating method. Nor was he able to eliminate or correct for the many different temperatures and environmental conditions the Shroud has been exposed to during its existence, all of which would explicitly make his chemical method useless. As is well known, the Shroud has been exposed to several fires, boiling in water, and perhaps even boiling in oil. The boiling treatments were used by skeptical individuals in a pre-scientific age to test the authenticity of the Shroud and other supposed Shrouds, of which there were several dozens. That the Shroud of Turin was subjected to at least one water boiling is discussed in several books that relate its history; fake Shrouds would have their paint boiled off, but the Shroud of Turin was apparently the only Shroud to pass the boiling test, because its creator used an unusual and clever method to make sure it that was quite sturdy; its image was originally much brighter and visible, but the boiling left the pale, ghostly image we have today that must be photogaphed through a filter to reveal the image with sufficient contrast. In conclusion, there is no reason to accept Rogers' vanillin-in-lignin method as a valid technique for age determination.

Jay Ingram, writing in the Toronto Star, discusses a topic with which I was not familiar. Ingram interviewed Clint Chapple, a biochemist at Purdue University, and Malcolm Campbell, a botanist at the University of Toronto. Chapple points out that it was odd that Rogers used a powerful and precise technique, pyrolysis mass spectrometry, to assess the carbohydrates in the cloth, but didn't choose to apply that technique to the vanillin. This was odd because the incredible accuracy of this technique as applied to vanillin is scientifically well-documented. "I've published using this method and have this instrument in my own lab. The method would have easily revealed the presence (or absence) of degradation products like vanillin had the author been seriously interested in testing his hypothesis," Chapple says. Instead, Rogers used a staining technique that reveals the presence of vanillin if you get a color change. But this is a qualitative, not a quantitative test.

Malcolm Campbell states that, "in biological sciences, a scientist would be hard-pressed to get their paper published if they ever attempted to quantify vanillin on the basis of this staining technique." Staining is a rough guide to the presence of vanillin and cannot detect very small amounts. (In fact, the pyrolysis mass spectrometry was conducted by STURP in 1981 when they had access to the facility, but Rogers only had his kitchen laboratory, so a poor and inadequate staining technique was all he could manage.) Campbell and Chapple identified other flaws in the paper, such as the same lack of controls and replication that I describe above. As Ingram writes, "these should have been enough to deter the editors of Thermochimica Acta from publishing it. Why didn't they? Maybe they were unfamiliar with the chemistry of linen and its breakdown products; maybe they have a soft spot in their heart for the shroud. Who knows?" Ingram concludes, "the incident just underlines the fact that the Shroud of Turin will never go away, and believers will try anything, including arguments masquerading as science, to prove its authenticity."

Ray Rogers and STURP

For over twenty years I have claimed that arguments based on science and technology that purport to demonstrate the Shroud's authenticity are nothing more than pseudoscience, and pro-authenticity Shroud advocates are pseudoscientists. This includes Ray Rogers and all the other STURP members with the exception of Walter McCrone, a former member of STURP and the single individual with scientific integrity and professional competence among them. The item above from Jay Ingram, describing Rogers use of a highly precise instrument for one test but not using it for the more important one--instead using a clumsy and inadequate method that appreciably gives the desired results--is essentially the story of STURP. Through the years, STURP members have used a battery of highly accurate and precise instruments and methods, but also clumsy and laughably incompetent techniques, to reach fantastic and ultimately false and prejudiced conclusions. Every aspect of the Shroud and its study by STURP has examples of this.

For example, STURP published several papers that concluded that real blood was present on the Shroud, but all their precise tests for protein, iron, albumin, and other substances proved nothing of the kind. Two groups used specific tests for blood and published the results, both finding none. The first was the 1973 Italian Commission, who used at least six sensitive tests for blood, blood species, and blood type; all were negative. The second was the late Walter McCrone, then working with STURP, the world's leading chemical microscopist, an expert in forensic chemistry, and the person best qualified on the planet at that time to use microchemical forensic tests for blood on tiny samples. His articles in The Microscope and book, Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin, contain his negative results with full documentation. STURP, however, continues to mendaciously ignore and impugn these results. I suspect that the STURP pseudoscientists actually did first use their own specific tests for blood, but when they were negative, they unethically suppressed them and published instead their highly technical and instrument-intensive methods that, with convoluted, labored, and illogical reasoning, gave them the conclusions they desired. These mistaken results were then published in technical journals with sympathetic editors that never dealt with microscopic forensic methods of this type before.

Another example was the elaborate instrumentation, experimental equipment, and contrived methods used by STURP investigators to achieve an image transfer from a human body to cloth that had the necessary "photographic negative" quality noticed early in the previous century and the "three-dimensional coding" noticed more recently. The alleged photographic negative effect is in reality not a true photographic negative, but the Shroud image has greater tonal densities in high-relief areas and lower tonal densities in low-relief areas. The so-called 3-D coding gives the Shroud image a 3-D quality when processed through image analysis software that converts tonal gradations to a third axis--height. All of this elaborate equipment and painstaking testing was a useless waste of time and unnecessary expense, since, as I demonstrated many years ago, the photonegative quality of the Shroud image is not a true photographic negative but a faux-photonegative. Both this and the alleged 3-D coding are completely natural and easily attributed to the tonal gradations in pigment application by the artist, using either a bas relief rubbing (suggested by Joe Nickell and my favorite explanation, which I explained automatically creates a faux-photonegative image with tonal gradations such as the Shroud possesses) or a direct faux-negative, tonal-gradation painting (Walter McCrone's hypothesis, which he believes is a simpler explanation, but which I consider to be more complicated and requiring more skill on the part of an artist).

The most notorious case of the incompetent misuse and nonuse of scientific instruments by STURP remains their examination and explanation of the Shroud image. STURP used energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDS) to analyze the Shroud surface, and found calcium, iron, and protein in the Shroud "blood," thus "confirming" in their minds the presence of blood. Unfortunately for STURP, as McCrone points out, blood also contain potassium and chlorine in high amounts, and their absence means that this was not blood. Again using EDS, STURP did detect iron and calcium, but not protein, in the non-blood image areas, and claimed this was due to an alkaline iron salt precipitation that occurred naturally during the linen retting process. They also concluded that the lack of protein was evidence that McCrone's tempera binder hypothesis was incorrect. But EDS is not sensitive enough to detect the small amount of protein present; McCrone used more sensitive methods to reveal its occurrence. Calcium is present due to the linen and water residues, and iron is present due to iron oxide pigments.

Now, here's where the story really gets good. McCrone frequently complained that anyone with a simple polarizing microscope (an essential tool of forensic microscopy and visible with him in many photographs) could easily see and identify the abundant (millions) of tiny red ochre pigment particles that coat all the fibers in the image and blood areas. Undoubtedly, STURP members did see these abundant and colorful orange to red particles on the Shroud image and blood fibers--but never on the Shroud non-image fibers--but, against all reason and evidence, decided they were naturally-occurring alkaline iron precipitates and then ignored them! To this day, STURP members continue to ignore the pigment particles, just as Aristotelian geocentrists ignored the moons of Jupiter in Galileo's time. McCrone and even STURP published abundant photomicrographs that clearly show these particles, but only McCrone took the next essential step and identified them as red ochre, an iron oxide pigment made from the mineral hematite (blood rock). This is the pigment that forms the Shroud image, and it along with vermilion pigment (the mercury sulfide mineral cinnabar) and rose madder pigment make up the blood images on the Shroud. Red ochre/iron oxide/hematite is easily identified by its color and by crossing the polarizing filters of the polarizing microscope and examining the refractive index of a particle. Hematite has a very high refractive index, blood low, and they are easily distinguishable using the proper technique. This technique is known to every forensic microscopist, optical mineralogist, and rock petrologist (I am an expert in the last category, and studied optical mineralogy to become a petrologist). But STURP members never used this simple and powerful technique. They apparently never observed the Shroud sticky tape sample fibers with a polarizing microscope; if they had, they would have no trouble identifying the bright orange and red particles as red ochre/iron oxide/hematite, not "blood sherds" or "alkaline iron precipitate," which is what they called them.

STURP persistently claimed that the Shroud image was not a painting, even though it was clear from the evidence that it is. In his TA paper, Rogers continues this deception. He states that the results of the "pyrolysis/ms analyses proved to be consistent with an array of independent observations and data [references a STURP paper], showing that the image was not the result of an applied material. With that conclusion established, the dozens of pyrolysis/ms data sets can now be reanalyzed to compare samples from the radiocarbon area with samples from the main cloth." In fact, Rogers' "conclusion" was never "established," but quite the opposite, and it is therefore not permissible to use the old 1981 pyrolysis/ms data in the way he does in the 2005 paper. Any scientist-reviewer with even a tiny bit of knowledge about the two decade-old Shroud controversy would have known that the Shroud is an artisic creation and that Rogers' claim here was not valid, and thus reject the paper.

I visited Walter McCrone's laboratory in Chicago several times over the years. In 1980 and 1981, I was able to observe several Shroud fiber samples using one of McCrone's polarizing microscopes. While not trained in forensic microscopy, I am an expert sedimentary petrologist and skilled with geological, biological, and micropaleontological microscopy; much of my academic research involved the study of microfossils, I currently consult in the petroleum industry using sedimentary petrology, and I assist my biologist wife with her zoological photomicrography and image analysis; I have six microscopes of various types in my house and access to several others at the local university and geological consulting lab where I work. Using crossed polars and Becke line movement, I quickly and easily identified the thousands of tiny particles I saw as the mineral hematite using its characteristic color and high index of refraction as criteria; this was a mineral I had observed hundreds of times before. Hematite is finely ground to make the pigment red ochre, which has been used throughout human history as the most common red pigment. The particles are definitely not blood shards or alkaline iron precipitates (such as iron sufide, iron carbonate, or iron nitrate); they are unquestionably iron oxide. I also observed some vermilion pigment particles, the mineral cinnabar; McCrone told me this was often used by medieval artists to represent blood. I saw no pollen grains on the slides I examined (I only studied a few), and McCrone told me they were rare. There were other particles in addition to the abundant linen fibers and red ocher particles which I could not identify; McCrone told me these were other pigments, wax, soil, and other particles.

STURP's Response to Critics

Over the years, I have repeatedly pointed out inconsistencies, logical lapses, and hoaxes in STURPS's and other pro-authenticity believers' reasoning, methods, and evidence. STURP gradually responds to my critiques indirectly, refusing to mention my name or cite my papers. I pointed out that the Christ figure's body, limbs, and fingers were unnaturally elongated, even deformed (amazingly, I was apparently the first person to describe this!); STURP members eventually claimed that Jesus had Marfan's syndrome or suffered skeletal deformities (odd for God on Earth, but there you are). I was the one who claimed that Max Frei's pollen findings were a hoax, since his sticky tape samples had abundant pollen and cotton fibers from his gloves, and STURP's samples had neither; the nonsensical response was that Frei took his sticky tape samples with more force than did STURP, thus actually getting the pollen from inside the fibers. However, they've never explained the presence of the cotton fibers, which I believe got mixed in with Frei's secreted pollen grains when he covertly touched his pollen stash and then pressed his tape sample with his fingers before applying it to the Shroud. I pointed out that the pollen was at least half-derived from insect-pollinated plants and could not have been wind-blown onto the exposed Shroud in Palestine; the response was that visitors to Jesus' funeral benevolently placed flowers on his Shroud and the pollen fell out! For every critique, the Shroud believers--endowed with immense emotional involvement in its authenticity--come up with some bizarre response or overreaching justification. This process would be sad if the stakes were high, but since it's just the Shroud of Turin, the process is hilarious.

Ray Rogers (left) and Walter McCrone (right) at their respective polarizing microscopes.
(Photo credits: Rogers from www.shroud.com, the Shroud of Turin Site by Barrie M. Schwortz; McCrone from www.mcri.org, the McCrone Research Institute Site.)

Now here's the latest. In the past I have pointed out that the STURP "scientists" never used a polarizing microscope to examine their Shroud fiber samples, for if they did, they would have been able to easily identify the iron oxide particles. I even used pictures in my talks of them in front of expensive and elaborate biological microscopes, which are not the polarizing microscopes used for mineralogical, petrographical, forensic, and chemical analysis that McCrone, I, and thousands of other scientists use. Therefore imagine my surprise a week ago when I visited Barrie Schwortz's Shroud of Turin website athttp://www.shroud.com/ and saw a photo of the smiling visage of Ray Rogers in front of his polarizing "petrographic microscope"! Now, why does a chemist need a petrographic microscope? How long has he had it? Did he get it to use with the Shroud samples, or did he get it recently for the purpose of indirectly refuting me once again! Well, to me this is an example of overreaching yet again, for if Ray actually knew how to use his microscope--of which he appears to be quite proud, exactly mimicking the well-known photo of Walter McCrone!--he would be able to place one of his fiber samples from a Shroud image or blood area under it, add the immersion fluid of proper density, cross the polars, focus up to move the Becke line, and determine that the thousands of tiny orange and red particles he sees covering the fibers have a high index of refraction, revealing them to be iron oxide. That he has apparently neglected to do this reveals Ray Rogers to be either incompetent or mendacious, and thus not deserving of the esteemed designation of microscopist.

Coincidently, in his book McCrone refers to the STURP chemists' "incompetence in light microscopy" (p. 157). McCrone further relates (p. 124) that Rogers, along with John Jackson and Eric Jumper, visited McCrone in 1980 and conned him out of his Shroud sample slides. They deceived McCrone, complaining that he took the better half of the samples, that they needed them for testing, and telling him they would replace his slides with the others they had, but later refused to do so. STURP then had their lawyers write to McCrone and demand all STURP samples be returned (because McCrone still had a few left over slides, all eventually returned). STURP now has all their original Shroud sticky tape fiber samples somewhere, and either Paul Maloney or Alan Whanger has Max Frei's sticky tape slide samples somewhere. As far as I know, no non-STURP or skeptical non-pro-authenticity microscopist has been allowed to study either of these sets of samples since Walter McCrone many years ago. STURP has thus kept the lid on the evidence that conflicts with their pro-authenticity beliefs by disparaging or ignoring McCrone's analytical results, and making it difficult or impossible for others to examine the evidence themselves to reach their own conclusions. If McCrone did not have the reputation as the greatest analytical chemical microscopist in the history of microscopy and a man of the highest integrity, we scientists would be in trouble.

As it is, educated, informed, and rational individuals don't believe the Shroud is authentic, tend to look on the controversy with either disgust or boredom (as I certainly do), and wish to get on with their lives. The Shroud of Turin is, after all, a notorious religious relic of the Catholic Church, and thus should be regarded with the same skepticism and contempt as other such relics. If any competent person were to examine the Shroud sticky tape fiber samples--and there must be many thousands of such individuals in this country--it would be elementary to confirm that the fibers are covered by millions of tiny red ochre pigment particles. I challenge Ray Rogers to let me, or someone else equally competent, or best, several individuals who have the knowledge to identify red ocher/iron oxide/hematite particles, examine the STURP and Frei sticky tape, slide-mounted, sample fibers, perhaps at a public joint conference devoted to the microscopic investigation of the Shroud of Turin. We can bring our own polarizing photomicroscopes, take digital photos, and I will help Ray learn to use his own polarizing petrographic microscope!

A Shroud Re-creation

I have received word that the Shroud has been re-created by a method compatible with early 14th century technology and artistic method, just as Walter McCrone, Joe Nickell, and I have always maintained. This re-creation will be published in the March, 2005, Books and Culture magazine. I have now learned the details by visiting the ShadowShroud website at http://www.shadowshroud.com. I had assumed that the re-created Shroud would have all the necessary attributes of the Shroud of Turin: sepia-colored cloth, false photonegative and 3-D encoding properties, pale and ghostly red image, bright red blood rivulets, authentic-looking scourge and puncture markings, distortion-free image of a scoured, crucified, and then-dead Jesus, abundant red ochre pigment particles in the image and blood areas, etc. It indeed had some of these, but not the others.

The re-creators did not use either the Nickell or McCrone methods as I hoped they would. Instead, they used a very simple bleaching method. The re-creators painted a sheet of glass with an image of Jesus's face using oil paint, placed the glass over a linen cloth, and allowed the sun's rays to bleach the linen around the painting (thus lightening it), and leaving a very life-like, dark, and photonegative image of the original painting. A negative of the linen photonegative produces a positive, just as with the Shroud of Turin, and this is illustrated. The results are remarkably similar, for the re-creation has both the photonegative and 3-D encoding properties that the Shroud possesses. The re-creators used image analysis software to produce a 3-D image from their positive image on the linen. Their photonegative image, positive image (negative of the negative), and 3-D image are remarkable similar to their respective images of the original Shroud of Turin, and all are clearly illustrated on the ShadowShroud site.

The only problem is that the re-creators claim that their method produces a "true photonegative," but unfortunately it does not (however, neither did the method used to create the Shroud of Turin, which is why the re-creation is so similar). Instead, as with the Shroud of Turin, the result is a faux or false photonegative, with the beard, hair, and moustache all white (or light); obviously, they should be dark if the positive was from a "true photonegative." Jesus was not an albino, no matter what skeletal defects he may have had. Once again, the topographically-higher parts of the face--the forehead, chin, cheekbones, beard, moustache, hair, etc.--are lighter than the other parts, thus giving the positive image of the re-creation a remarkably life-like appearance, but not a true positive from a true photonegative. It is obvious, from observing the photo of the original oil painting on glass on the website, that the artist painted the topographically-higher parts of the face with a thicker or more opaque application of oil paint, as any artist would draw it to give the image a life-like appearance. Consequently, the evidence of artifice is readily apparent in the re-creation, as it is with the original Shroud of Turin.

I have always thought that the Shroud of Turin would be very easy to re-create, but no one has attempted it because either (1) it would reveal the ease of reproducing a Shroud of Turin and thus serve to debunk the magic and mystery that the current Shroud possesses, or (2) the evidence that already exists that the Shroud is an artifact is so overwhelming that it isn't worth anyone's time and expense to reproduce it. No. 2 is certainly my reason for not making a Shroud. And so far, no one has indeed taken the time and expense to duplicate it.

Forensic Science CSI to Explain the Pictures of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin

The Forensic Science CSI Quest for the Historical Jesus
The Longest Running Forensic Science CSI in History

Sometimes the CSI evidence doesn't make sense even to the best CSI or CSI fan. It is like finding the body of a scuba diver in a tree in the desert outside Las Vegas.

CSI? Was a crime committed? If the Shroud of Turin is fake, then many centuries ago someone forged these pictures of Jesus on the cloth and we should be able to figure out how it was done. If the Shroud is the real burial cloth of Jesus, as many believe it is, we should be able to figure out how the pictures of Jesus came to be on this cloth?

Is it fair to call the images pictures of Jesus? If the Shroud of Turin is fake, then certainly the forger intended us to think of the images as pictures of Jesus. We can call them pictures of Jesus just as we do for any artistic picture of Jesus. If the pictures are a natural phenomenon, as some scientists believe, or if they are miraculous pictures, then we are on safe ground calling thempictures of Jesus.

This site is not about religion. It is about CSI methods, Crime Scene Investigation thinking. It's about forensic science applied to solving the enigma of these pictures of Jesus. The term CSI is used as a shorthand expression for forensic science explanations.

It's important because, frankly, millions of people believe the Shroud is genuine and the pictures are really of Jesus. But it is also important because millions of others think it is a fake. Until recently the prima facie case for forgery seemed strong. Now, for the first time, we have some new CSI data. Much of it didn't come to light until 2004. And because of this new information, the enigma of the pictures of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin becomes even more intriguing and perhaps more difficult to solve. The fan of CSI, the student of forensic science, and all of us should be challenged to try and figure out what is going on here.

Let's be clear. Let's be clear in forensic science CSI terms. No one has figured out how these pictures came to be on the cloth; not if it was faked and not if it is real.

The prima facie case was:

• In 1389, a French bishop claimed that an artist confessed to painting the pictures. Did the bishop lie? The discovery of a picture of a very faint second face on the back of the cloth suggests that he did. Modern forensic science proves that he did.

• In 1978, Walter McCrone, a world renowned forensic science microscopist, reported finding paint particles. Was he mistaken? A battery of CSI-style forensic tests, suggests that he was. They include ultraviolet spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, thermography, pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry, laser microprobe Raman analyses, and microchemical testing. No evidence for pigments (paint, dye or stains) was found anywhere on the Turin Shroud. The pictures were not painted.

• In 1988, three highly reputable radiocarbon dating laboratories conducted carbon 14 tests on snippets of material cut from the cloth. All three labs concluded that the cloth originated between 1260 and 1390 CE. But now, as reported by the Associated Press, theAmerican Chemical Society, Nature Magazine, The New York Times and BBC), the labs were given invalid samples. No one is questioning the quality of the testing performed in these labs. But this is a classic CSI sampling failure.

The Big CSI Picture - Pictures of Jesus on the Shroud

Look carefully at the following picture. You will notice two pictures of Jesus on a fourteen-foot long piece of linen. They are ghostlike pictures lying head-to-head with the top picture upside down.

The 2004 Forensic Science CSI Bombshell - The Second Face Picture

When, in April 2004, the peer-reviewed, scientific Journal of Optics reported the discovery of a second face on the back of the Shroud it caused a firestorm of new interest in the Shroud. The Associated Press, the BBC and CNN fed the story around the world and newspapers wrote stories about it.

The big CSI question was how did the picture get there. It is in perfect registry with face picture on the front of the Shroud. What that means is that if you push a pin through some specific part of the face, it will emerge on the other side in the same part of the face. But if you take that pin and pull back some of the fibers in the thread, you will not find any image on those fibers. The pictures of Jesus are on the surface only. Nothing had soaked through to form the picture on the back of the cloth. In CSI terms: the pictures are superficial.

We need to look a bit closer at the fibers to see if there is a clue.

A CSI Microscopic Picture of the Fibers

As the forensic scientist notices, the cellulose fibers that make up the yarn (thread) are from the woody stems of flax plants. The fibers are about about 15 microns thick. By comparison, a typical human hair is about 100 microns in diameter. About 70 to 120 fibers are spun together to make the linen yarn used to weave the cloth. You can clearly see the fibers, the yarn, and the weave of the cloth in this picture.

Notice that some of the fibers have a golden, caramel color. It is this color that actually produces the pictures of Jesus that we see on the Turin Shroud. The big forensic science CSI question: what is that caramel colored stuff?

It should be noted that, mistakenly, at different times during the last 25 years, different forensic science researchers have assumed that it was either a change of color to the fibers themselves or a pigment that coated the fibers. But those CSI assumptions have been proven wrong.

Another CSI Picture - Phase-Contrast Microscopic View

It turns out that a very thin, clear film coats some of the fibers. And in some places, and only in some places, this film has changed color.

Spectral analysis and wet chemistry, typical tools of the forensic science CSI, reveal that it is comprised of starch fractions and saccharides.

The coating is only between 200 and 600 nanometers thick. That is thinner than the invisible anti-glare coating on modern eyeglasses. It is as thin as the wall of a soap bubble.

This chemical film, where it has changed color, is consistent with a melanoidin, something that is produced by an amino/carbonyl reaction. It seems to be the same chemistry; the same browning process that give baked cookies and beer their brownish color.

The film, whether clear or colored, is only found on the outermost fibers of the thread and only on the sides of the thread that face outward on both sides of the cloth.

Another important fact is that this carbohydrate film can be removed from the fibers by reducing it with diimide or by pulling it away with adhesive tape. When the coating is removed, the fibers are clear (or at least as clear as ancient cellulose fibers can be). The forensic science CSI conclusion must be that the pictures of Jesus are contained in the coating.

Throughout the centuries, as the Shroud of Turin was unfurled for public display and folded or rolled up for storage, microscopic bits of the filmy substance certainly must have flaked away. And that can be seen in the picture above. In fact, when the Shroud was examined in 1978, pieces of the coating, pieces of the picture of Jesus, were pulled away when adhesive tape was rubbed on the Shroud to collect particulate samples for forensic science research. Today, countless tiny bits of these pictures of Jesus, even whole fibers of the Shroud's cloth, are on microscope slides in laboratories around the world.

The Filmy Substance of the Pictures of Jesus

This coating was not applied mechanically. There is little question about that. If it were applied as a thick, viscous liquid, there would be a thick coating, just as if the pictures were painted with an oil paint. If it was applied as a thin liquid, the liquid would have soaked into the thread. Capillary action would moved the carbohydrate solution deep into the thread.

There is, however, a way to apply this coating to the cloth so that it only coats the outermost fibers at the crowns of the yarn. By washing the cloth in water that contains trace amounts of starch and various saccharides and then allowing it to dry, just such a coating will form.

It turns out that the distribution of the carbohydrate substance found on the Shroud of Turin fits an evaporation-deposit model.

Interestingly, this fits a description, right out of history, of how linen was made in the first century. Pliny the Elder tells us that during weaving, threads on the loom were lubricated with crude starch to make weaving easier and to prevent fraying. The starch was then washed out by rinsing it in suds from the Soapwort plant and the linen cloth was spread out across bushes to dry.

Even with rinsing, trace amounts of starch and the numerous saccharides found in Saponaria officinalis (Soapwort) would have remained in the wet cloth.As the cloth dried, moisture would wick its way to the surface carrying with it dissolved starch and saccharides. The dissolved material would concentrate at the surface and remains on the outermost fibers as the moisture evaporated into the air.

It is important to further note that during drying, the side of the cloth that faces sun and gets more air circulation will have a greater concentration of starch and saccharides and this may be important information in understanding the very faint second face on the backside of the cloth.

Raymond Rogers, a Fellow of the University of California, Los Alamos National Laboratory, a charter member of the Coalition for Excellence in Science Education and a chemist who has published many scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, has tested this concept. Using primitive linen (not modern linen which has been sized) he applied crude starch (not modern refined starch) and washed it in Saponaria officinalis. He dried it flat just as linen would have been dried in Pliny's time. He was able to duplicate the type of coating found on the Shroud's fibers.

Pictures of Jesus Formed by Browning

Ray Rogers with Anna Arnoldi of the University of Milan have hypothesized that a complex but well documented, naturally occurring chemical reaction may explain all of the known image chemistry of the Shroud of Turin. They have documented this in the scientific, peer-reviewed journal Melanoidins (Vol. 4, Ames J.M. ed., Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg, 2003, pp.106-113, "The Shroud of Turin: An Amino-Carbonyl Reaction (Maillard Reaction) May Explain The Image Formation").

In summary, Rogers and Arnoldi have suggested a reaction in which a carbonyl group of saccharides reacts with an amino group producing N-substituted glycosylamine. The unstable glycosylamine undergoes Amadori rearrangement, forming ketosamines, which then form nitrogenous polymers and melanoidins.

Rogers has conducted numerous experiments to show that this would work. Additional papers by Rogers in support of this include: "The Chemistry of Autocatalytic Processes in the Context of the Shroud of Turin," "Pyrolysis/Mass Spectrometry Applied to the Shroud of Turin" and "Scientific Method Applied to the Shroud of Turin: A Review (with Arnoldi)."

Why This Picture Forming Idea Might Work

Slowly, two ghostlike, bleary pictures would almost certainly take form if this is really a burial cloth. Shortly after death amine vapors of cadaverine and putrescine would come forth from the body and react with the coating on the fibers if that coating was in fact there. The pictures might not be visible right away. They might for some time be only latent pictures that would emerged later as chemical reactions ran their coarse over time. It all depends on many factors including ambient temperature, humidity, the concentration levels of starch and saccharides, the body chemistry of the deceased person, timing (how soon after death was the person buried in a shroud), body washing, etc. But some form of Maillard browning would occur.

The amine vapors would also diffuse through the cloth and come in contact with the evaporation surface coating on the other side of the cloth. And this may help us further understand the picture of a second face on the back of the cloth.

But this is not a tidy explanation. For one thing, vapors coming off of a body will diffuse and go off in all directions. Yet we have, at least on the front of the cloth, very distinct, properly focused, properly exposed pictures. This is a problem if we imagine that the pictures were formed by gaseous emissions. We'll examine this problem shortly.

The chemical process, that would certainly occur, would continue until the reactants were exhausted or until the body and the cloth were separated. And that is the other part of the problem. We can assume that the cloth and the body were separated at some time. How can we not assume this. But we must also realize that it must have happened soon, before fluidic bodily decomposition products formed and ravaged the pictures and the cloth. Soon after exposure to decomposition products, the cloth would rot away along with the body.

This raises another interesting problem. The chemical reaction needed to be long enough for a picture to form and not so long that the picture was oversaturated. In photographic parlance, we have a picture that is not underexposed or overexposed. How likely is that?

Patterns of Discontinuity in the Jesus Pictures

If we look at the pattern of the brownish color in the pictures of Jesus we notice that it is not uniform. There are distinct discontinuities. Along any single fiber there may be a stretch of color, then a clear stretch, and then some more color. Moreover, one fiber may have color while the one next to it may not; and so forth in alternating or seemingly erratic patterns.

In looking at the Shroud, if we step back from the pattern of discontinuous bits of caramel-brown, our eyes see average colors. Where there are many bits of color we see a darker shade. Where there are fewer bits we see a lighter shade. While we can understand how this visual blending works, just as we know how pictures are formed from pixels in newspapers (halftone) and inkjet printers and computer screens, it is hard to understand how a chemical reaction from diffusing vapors could produce this visual (so-called) pixelated (and ironically pixilated) characteristic.

Step back farther and a bleary, ghostlike picture of Jesus appears on the Shroud.

The Beginning of the Forensic Science CSI of The Shroud, Before We Called it Forensic Science and When Sherlock Holmes Defined CSI

In 1898, an amateur photographer, Secondo Pia, took a picture of the Shroud with a large wooden box camera. Back in his darkroom, he examined the glass-plate negative by holding it up to the light. He was so startled by what he saw that he almost dropped to negative, which would certainly have shattered thus losing one of the greatest pictures ever taken. What Pia saw was a positive, realistic looking picture of a man. Pia's negative was a positive and the Shroud, or so it seemed, was a negative.

The ghostlike picture on the left show how the picture of Jesus appears on the Shroud. When photographed with a film camera something quite startling emerges. If we look at negative before making a print we see a realistic picture of a man.

Thus began the longest running Forensic Science CSI in history: how to explain these pictures of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin. From that day three schools of thought emerged. Then, as now, those schools of thought persist. Forensic science has yet to fully explain these enigmatic pictures. They are:

• Fake, the work of some masterful crafter of fake relics
• Natural, pictures explainable by forensic science
• Miraculous pictures of Jesus, beyond explanation and properly not something that can be explored by science.

We will examine the first two possibilities:

If We Wish to Think These Are Fake Pictures of Jesus

If we want to believe that the Shroud is not genuine then we have to consider some basic questions. How did the faker of relics accomplish this and produce these pictures of Jesus.

1) How did a faker of relics alter the chemical properties of the carbohydrate coating to create the color and how did he do so with such artistic precision -- on both sides of the cloth?

2) The history of art is the story of the evolution of styles, techniques, methods and technology. Every work of art and fakery is no exception. Every form of art and craft has its precedents. When a new technique is discovered it is exploited. Over time every worthwhile technique is refined and improved. Where are the precedents for pictures such as those that we find on the Shroud? Where are the other works in this once-upon-a-time new-found technology? Are we to imagine that some genius invented a new way to create pictures and that a single picture was made and the technology was lost to history?

3) How did  a faker of pictures create a suitable negative picture hundreds of years before the discovery of photographic negativity? How did he know that he had it right? How, without a camera and film, could he test his work? The negativity is extraordinarily precise and correct. Was he simply lucky?

The bigger question is why? What was his purpose? What was his motive? If we are to ask why he created an extraordinarily complex chemical picture, in negative, we must ask some other questions.

• Why a negative image when a positive image would be more convincing? Keep in mind that gradual tone negative pictures were unknown in the Middle Ages.
• Why did he go against conventional expectations of his era? Why did he create a picture with wounds from nails that went through Jesus' wrists? All art and all expectation throughout medieval Europe showed Jesus nailed to his cross through the palms of his hands.
• Why is Jesus shown completely naked, unlike in all artistic depictions everywhere throughout the history of Christianity?

Despite many attempts to do so, no one has found or invented an artistic or crafty technique that can reproduce even a few of the characteristics of the pictures. That does not mean, that in the future, someone will not find a method to create such pictures. But even if someone does so, the tenacious question will remain: How likely is it that there would be such a one-of-a-kind work of art for which there are no known precedents; created by methods that were never again exploited?

Any method that might be devised must be scientifically credulous, fit into the history of art, and conform to the cultural expectations in which the technology was supposedly employed. If not, it will be seen as newly invented art designed to mimic an otherwise unexplained natural process or a supernatural event. The skeptic has a dilemma. To believe that the Shroud is fakery he or she must rely on an underlying belief that transcends forensic science as we know it today.

Are They Natural Pictures of Jesus? The Forensic Science CSI Must Consider the Problem of Chiaroscuro

Lean over and look down into a perfectly still, smooth-surfaced pool of water and you will see a perfectly formed picture of yourself. But drop a pebble into the water, or wait for a breeze to ripple the surface, and the picture becomes indistinct, fuzzy and unclear.

The image in the pool of water, when rippled, looks like an out-of-focus photograph. But that really isn't the case. In a naturally reflected picture, your eyes are the lenses that provide focus. The reflection surface is wrinkled and causes reflected light to go off in different directions. It distorts the resolution of the image but it doesn't defocus it. While the analogy is not a perfect one it suggests a potential problem for a natural image explanation.

The pictures on the Shroud are not only very well focused but highly resolved. It is almost certain that in the first century a piece of linen was naturally wrinkled, that it even had creases from folding. This is something that would certainly distort the resolution of the image.

A reflecting pool was certainly mankind’s first mirror.  Eventually man would learn to make other mirrors, first by polishing stone or metal and eventually by fixing metals such as mercury, tin or silver to pieces of glass. Of course, the glass had to be smooth and flat. If the glass was wavy or curved, any reflected picture would be highly distorted. We see this when we look into the special mirrors in carnival funhouses. Again there is an analogy that relates to the pictures on the Shroud of Turin. It is hard to imagine how any process could form an essentially undistorted image if the cloth was draped across a human form.

What assumption can we make about how Jesus’ body was positioned on the limestone shelf in the tomb? How flat was the shelf? Was it smooth or rough-hewn? We don’t know. Was the cloth smoothed out?

In placing Jesus’ body on the shelf was the cloth pulled about, rippled in places and even creased in places? We can’t know. How closely did the cloth follow the contour of Jesus’ body? Was it pulled like a bed sheet? Did loving hands smooth it across the body? Did it stick in places to still wet blood or to remaining water from some washing? Were there flowers resting on the cloth weighing it down or under the cloth propping it up?

Image analysts and forensic pathologists argue that the image on the cloth is of a man with his knees bent slightly and with his head tilted forward as though resting on a pillow that was under the cloth. Assumptions about the shape of the cloth and how closely it followed the contours of Jesus’ body are difficult if not impossible to make. If wrapped closely, wide and grotesque distortion would result. But even if draped loosely, the distortion caused by the surface terrain of the cloth should be evident.

It becomes extremely difficult to imagine an image that was not very much distorted by shapes and wrinkles no matter how the image was formed. This is perhaps the most intuitively strong argument for thinking the image is the work of an artist. It would be a powerful argument were it not for the chemistry of the image and some of the other rather odd qualities of the pictures.

There is another problem that we must consider. Scientists refer to it as saturation. In the parlance of photography we might say that the pictures of Jesus are surprisingly not underexposed or overexposed. This means if the pictures are the product of a chemical reaction, the reaction ran long enough but not too long. What stopped the reaction at just the right time, everywhere on the pictures?

There would need to be sufficient chemical reaction time and concentrations of reactants to cause highly discernable pictures. Similarly the reaction must end sufficiently early to avoid over saturation which would washout image detail. Computerized image analysis shows no saturation plateaus or washout anywhere in the image. In simple terms, the chemical process ended late enough to form a discernable image and early enough so it was not ruined.

Reactant exhaustion is one thing that would have ended the process. Another would have been separation of Jesus’ body from the cloth at just the right time. And we do know that if a natural process formed the pictures, the cloth at sometime had to have been separated from the body.

Another problem is diffusion. If we accept the hypothesis that chemical changes to the carbohydrate coating on the Shroud’s fibers was caused by amine vapors, we must recognize that vapors diffuse and scatter when they come off of a body. Heavy amines molecules do not diffuse as greatly as those of lighter gases. Nonetheless they go isotropically in different directions. So precise are some of the features on the Shroud’s pictures that one pundit likened vaporous formation to painting a perfect copy of the Mona Lisa with aerosol spray paint.

Chiaroscuro

The pictures seem spectacularly like chiaroscuro images; pictures created by reflected light. When we look at the pictures on the Shroud, and particularly the face, we see seemingly three-dimensional pictures on a flat two-dimensional plane, much as we do when we look at a photograph or a conventional painting of a person -- and just as we do when we look at a reflection in a smooth pond or a flat mirror. The cheeks, as they curve around from the front of the face, seem to recede into shade. The hollows of the eyes are evident from their darker tones. The tip of the nose is white and stands out. This is how reflected light works on the human face. Unless we are an artist or a photographer, we probably don’t think about the patterns of light in pictures. But our mind nonetheless puts it all together for us when we look at a person or a picture of a person. And the Shroud, to our way of perceiving pictures, to our anthropic bias, does look like a picture of reflected light.

How do we imagine that given so many chemical reaction variables . . .

• wrinkles

• the shape of the cloth

• diffusion

• ambient temperatures

• humidity

• body chemistry

• a likely uneven distribution of evaporation-model coating

• other trace impurities

. . . that nature will be so kind as to produce such near perfect chiaroscuro pictures of Jesus quite by accident -- pictures of arguably the most important person in history?

Thus the forensic science CSI to explain the pictures of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin continues.

Please give a link to this web site:

Title: A Forensic Science CSI to Explain the Pictures of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin

URL: http://www.historicaljesusquest.com

Thank you.

Since the publication of The Da Vinci Code, which (it should be remembered) is a novel, the link between Rennes-le-Château and Jesus Christ is solidly linked with the enigma of Saunière, if only because of the court case that has ensued, between Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh on the one hand and Dan Brown’s publisher on the other. Let us note that this link – between Jesus and Rennes-le-Château – was originally not a part of the puzzle, when Robert Charroux and Gerard de Sède were writing about the mystery of the enigmatic priest. Both works speak of a treasure – a physical treasure – or the transmission of a type of message that is destined for our time. This “transmission” is specifically aligned with a secret that is linked with Saunière and which presents a lost dimension of the history of France; at the time, it appears that there is no connection with the Church or a major revelation about the Church’s history. It’s important to remember this, for what is now, wasn’t necessarily at first.

Certain “funerary” knowledge

To illustrate the various phases of this evolution, we will use Saunière’s model. For sure, we know that knowledge of a “hidden Christian tradition” existed at the time of Saunière’s – and many centuries before. The Cathars and their specific beliefs, which later were proven to coincidence with portions of forgotten – lost – gospels is a point in hand. 
But we will use Saunière’s model. There ,we find a reference to “Tomb of Christ”. Do we need to take this type of information literally, or is it merely a name that is placed there as a mask for what is truly hidden on that location? Irrelevant of this extremely important question, we can merely note that Saunière himself decided to use these words to identify two important locations that he found near Perillos: For one location, he uses “Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea”, for the other, “Tomb of Christ”. 
The model was revealed to the general public in 1995. Between Andre Douzet’s recovery of the model and 1995, only ten-odd people were aware of its existence. In 1995, this changed and since, many are aware of the model, what it contains, including its anomalies… as well as its potential. 
Making a link between Saunière and the “Tomb of Christ”, before the revelation of the model in 1995, is therefore quite impossible to “guess”. Let us note that originally, there was no link between a major mystery that involved Mary Magdalene, Christ and the origins of Christianity on one hand and the mystery of Rennes-le-Château on the other. That link should normally only become available with the revelation of Saunière’s model. So did it? The answer, intriguingly, is “no”. 

Before the model

Originally, the “mystery of Rennes-le-Château” was mainly the “mystery of Saunière”. And this mystery involved a treasure, of some sort, but deemed to be monetary wealth. After all, this priest accumulated a tremendous wealth in an extremely short period of time, without an identifiable cause or reason. The “Christ dimension” was added by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln in their “Holy Blood, Holy Grail”, published in 1982. The authors are one of the prime instruments that promote the legend that Mary Magdalene has come to France to spend the final years of her life. Though this tradition exists in France, the authors add a new component: that she was accompanied by a child, the child of Jesus… and thus perhaps even by Jesus himself, dead or alive. To this, they add that the Merovingian kings that ruled France were the descendants of this “Jesus’ bloodline”, something that remains, almost a quarter of a century later, totally unproven. Nevertheless, their work begs the question whether or not this implies that there is a possibility to find a Tomb of Christ somewhere in France… if not in the region of Rennes-le-Château, or linked with the enigma of Saunière. 
The next book that is of interest is written by S.P. Simon, in 1990. It is titled "L’or du temple et le tombeau du Christ – L’Énigme de Rennes-le-Château révélée”, published by L’égrégore/Curandera, in Voreppe, Isère. It straightforwardly uses the “Tomb of Christ” in its title and identifies it as the revelation of the enigma of Rennes-le-Château.
The author’s real name is apparently someone named Gruaz. During the construction of his thesis, he uses the prophecies of Nostradamus and arrives at the conclusion that Jesus’ body is located in Rennes-le-Château. According to this author, Jesus – Christ – will return with the gold of the Temple, which he has been guarding for the past 2000 years, through which he will fulfil the prophecies. The author isn’t the inventor of this hypothesis: in fact, it is based on the famous “Dossiers Secrets” by Lobineau. 
Again, we need to underline that at the time, Saunière’s model hadn’t yet been recovered. It will only fall in André Douzet’s hands in 1994. 
Let us look at another book, “Occident Tradition Secrète”, in 1994, in Paris, by Guy Trédaniel. Its author is Paul Poesson. He states that Jesus comes from Egypt and that he studied in Alexandria. This type of information is also found in Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince’s 1997 book, The Templar Revelation, which also speaks about the “true identity of Christ”. It is this book that will become the main inspiration for The Da Vinci Code, which appears in 2003. 
Poesson concludes that a group of people, all of whom were involved in some way or another in the Passion of Christ, came to France: Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Lazarus, etc. Using a methodology that cannot always be described as logical, he uses the inscription of the tombstone of Marie de Nègre, found in Rennes-le-Château and used by most authors on the subject, to arrive at the following conclusion: “Sept nobles, dans l’embarras, Marie noire d’Arles, d’Opoul deux avens, sept, 681, ils reposent dans une grotte.” We note an intriguing reference towards Opoul, which of course is now Opoul-Perillos, and which is of course the territory parts of which have been depicted on Saunière’s model. We also note the presence of “two caves”, which coincides with the model. In short, he states that these seven bodies can be found in a cave. But before we jump too high, we need to note that he does not locate this cave in Opoul-Perillos, but elsewhere: near the source of la Salz, located above Sougraigne, in a valley that ascends from Rennes-les-Bains. Nevertheless, Opoul is mentioned and the location of the tomb is, according to Poesson, discovered by following the axis between Opoul-Perillos and Rennes-le-Château.

So? In short, we note that in 1990, one author states that the Tomb of Christ is at the centre of the enigma. In 1994, a curious “coincidence” allows for the entry of the name of “Opoul”. Most logically, it is clear that the theory presented by S.P. Simon is but the “logical” next step of the hypothesis presented by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln. And as for the entrance of “Opoul”, that is done by a play on words of Hautpoul, and that play of words had been done in the 1980s by Brian Innes.

After Saunière’s model

1996 saw the publication of “The Tomb of God”, by Richard Andrews and Paul Schellenberger. The authors approach the problem from a typically “English” perspective: they resort to “sacred geometry”, to arrive at the conclusion that the Tomb of Christ can be found at Pech Cardou. We note that this mountain is found in the immediate vicinity of Rennes-le-Château, thus remaining close to the core area of the mystery of Saunière. Poesson nevertheless went further from “ground zero”, and places his tomb east of Rennes-les-Bains. We should underline that at the same moment in time, André Douzet too thinks that the landscape that is represented on the model could be found in the immediate vicinity of “ground zero”: the region of Rennes-le-Château. 
It was between 1995 and 1997 that, thanks to the creation of the “mirror image” of the model, the true landscape of the model is revealed as being located on Perillos… Opoul-Perillos. 
That same year, 1997, Christian Doumergue in his book "Rennes-le-Château, Le Grand Héritage. L’Enigme du Sphinx” argues that the Saunière’s notes clearly indicate that Saunière discovered a tomb in 1891, which he believes was the Tomb of Christ – or rather: Jesus. To arrive at this conclusion, he makes use of the model, even though he supposes that the tomb is located in the Rennes-le-Château area. Still, his hypothesis is the first to argue that Saunière discovered “a” tomb of Christ.

The Priory’s quest

We have already noted that De Sède himself liked to “change” certain elements when it comes to Christ and certain stones. In our opinion, his book and the Priory’s publicity campaign need to be seen as just that: a campaign, aimed at gathering public momentum… as to its purpose: a quest, for answers, and more information. We have already seen that De Sède had direct links with Pierre Plantard and the latter’s Priory of Sion. 
As to Pierre Plantard: he claims he is a descendant of the Merovingian kings, through a forgotten king, Dagobert II. And at the start of his campaign, Plantard speaks about an important sacred treasure, but also of a tomb! In “Circuit”, he speaks about a treasure that is located underneath the Roc Negro, between Rennes-le-Château and Rennes-les-Bains. In “Le Serpent Rouge”, there are other references towards a tomb that is perhaps that of Mary Magdalene. 
In his analysis of the writings of the Priory, Christian Doumergue states: “The evoked sanctuary […] does not consist of a single sepulchre of Mary Magdalene, but also contains other tombs, which holds bodies that are mummified. Furthermore, next to these tombs is a treasure to which more than one has come to take a few items out.”
In 1985, in the magazine “Le Trésor de Sion”, the Priory – its publisher – makes an intriguing reference towards the tomb of a Jew who is “like a Pharaoh”. Christian Doumergue adds that this seems to imply “that they seem to identify the dead person with Christ”, before concluding: “It appears that the final message of the Priory of Sion is that the tomb of Christ and of Mary Magdalene can be found in the vicinity of Rennes-les-Bains.”

A play on words and a passage to Arcadia

It’s possible. It’s all possible. At the same time, since the 1970s, or more precisely, the year 1973 with Gerard de Sède’s publication of “La Race Fabuleuse”, the “Tomb of Arques” (which is actually not located on the territory of Arques) is gaining more popularity. The tomb is specifically promoted as being integral to the enigma, via the famous painter Nicolas Poussin. That “link” is made via the inscription ET IN ARCADIA EGO, which means “And In Arcadia, I…” The sentence is incomplete, which should suggest that there is a possibility of a code – an anagram. Anagrams and codes, as we all know since the publication of The Da Vinci code, are integral and greatly loved by the Priory. Nevertheless, when it comes to ET IN ARCADIA EGO and the “Tomb of Arques”, we are faced with a puzzle that is not of the Priory’s making: the Priory fabricated the parchments and references to Merovingians. They are integral to their campaign, which resulted in de Sède’s 1967 publication, “L’Or de Rennes”. In 1973, we are six years post publication of his book and nine years post the publicity campaign that was the “Dossiers Secrets”. It is only now (1973) that the Tomb of Arques enters the framework. 
Let us look at ET IN ARCADIA EGO and wonder whether it is indeed an anagram and whether the “Tomb of Arques” is indeed another clue… which is not of the Priory’s making, for it is clear they had no direct hand in this. If there is a clue, then it was handed directly to Gerard de Sède. But did this pioneer understand the importance of what he got? Apparently, the answer is no.

To start with Andrews and Schellenberger: they discovered that the phrase could become another phrase, though it’s not a true anagram. These authors add the word “SUM” to the phrase, as that word is implied in the sentence: “And in Arcadia I… (am)” This leads to a new phrase: “Arcam Dei Tango Iesu” – “And I touch the tomb of God – Jesus”. As mentioned, this is not a true anagram, as we need to add an implied word… and though likely, it is not 100% sure that the missing word has to be “sum”; it could e.g. be “and in Arcadia I lived.” Other researchers have nevertheless arrived at a veritable anagram: “I TEGO ARCANA DEI” – “Go! I hide the Secrets of God.” 
Is this the coded message of Poussin? Is it “The Poussin Code”? Is this an inroad into the secret that the Priory and its leaders were trying to discover? Furthermore, can we argue that it is “the Secrets of God” that Saunière was trying to find, trying to identify on his model, by labelling it “Tomb of Christ”? Let us note that apart from Saunière, it was the royal notary Courtade who, at the time of Poussin, indicated the same site in his register as “Royal and Sacred Tomb”. Even though this “royal” may not be Merovingian, is there a question of a “return”? And does it hint that Plantard knew something, but not the totality?

When Arques transforms into Perillos

But what are we to make of the fact that the “Tomb of Arques” is actually located on the territory of the community of Peyrolles? And Peyrolles is linguistically oh so close to “Perillos”… so much so that people repeatedly ask whether there is a connection there. 
Isn’t it intriguing therefore that “someone” adds a dimension to the puzzle: The “Tomb of Arques”, which is actually the “Tomb of Peyrolles”. This when we now know, but not in 1973, that there is a “Tomb of Christ” in Perillos (using phrasing used by Saunière), or, in general, a “Tomb of Perillos”. Is it evidence that someone knew more than they were saying, or, to rephrase the question: did someone know more than the Priory, but were they toying with the enigma by inserting oblique references and coded messages? 
Saunière placed his order for the model in 1916. The Tomb of Arques was added to his mystery in 1973. The model’s existence is revealed in 1995. But shortly afterwards, certain people make contact with André Douzet. They claim that they are members of an organisation that knew – or had known – about the existence of this model… and this for many years, if not generations. They waited for the moment when Saunière would recover the model from the model maker and hand it over to them. But this never happens, as Saunière dies before the work was accomplished. 
Those strange people, are they the ones that introduced the coded reference of a “Tomb of Arques” into the puzzle of the Priory? In short, just like they approached André Douzet following his revelation of Saunière’s model, did they approach Plantard and/or De Sede between 1967 and 1973, and did they equally reveal their knowledge about a hidden dimension? 

 

Legend: Mary Magdalene was of the district of Magdala, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where stood her families castle, called Magdalon; she was the sister of Lazarus and of Martha, and they were the children of parents reputed noble, or, as some say, royal descendants of the House of David. On the death of their father, Syrus, they inherited vast riches and possessions in land, which were equally divided between them.  Lazarus betook himself to the military life; Martha ruled her possessions with great discretion, and was a model of virtue and propriety, -perhaps a little too much addicted to worldly cares; Mary, on the contrary, abandoned herself to luxurious pleasures and became at length so notorious for her extravagant lifestyle that she was known through all the country round only as 'The Sinner'. Allegorical interpretation of scripture: Sinners were people devoted to the god, Sin. Moses spent 38 of 40 years in the Wilderness of Sin, the land where the god, Sin, was worshipped. Sinai is the feminine form of Sin; therefore, Mount Sinai can be called "the mountain of the goddess," feminine counterpart of Sin. "Mary Magdalene" represented the Great-Goddess-Mother-Queen, wife of "Jesus." Historically, she was the daughter of Juba II, the black-skinned King of Mauretania and wife, Queen Cleopatra Selene (daughter of Antony and Cleopatra). Mauretania is from mauro, which means black; Magda means greatest. Mauro Magda, literally black greatest can be translated as "The Greatest Queen with black skin" from the land of Mauretania. The name, "Mary Magdalene," was chosen so that her historical identity could be discovered when Luke-Acts and Revelation are interpreted allegorically.

Legend: Her discreet sister, Martha, frequently rebuked her for these disorders and at length persuaded her to listen to the exhortations of Jesus, through which her heart was touched and converted. The seven demons which possessed her, and which were expelled by Jesus, were the seven deadly sins common to us all. The struggles of these seven principal faults are; first, Gluttony or the pleasures of the palate; secondly, Fornication; thirdly, Covetousness, which means Avarice, or, the love of money, fourthly, Anger; fifthly, Dejection; sixthly, "Accidie," which is the sin of spiritual sloth or sluggishness; and seventhly, kenodocila which means ego, foolish pride or vain glory.

 

On one occasion Martha entertained the Saviour in her house, and, being anxious to feast him worthily, she was  'cumbered with much serving.' Mary, meanwhile, sat at the feet of Jesus, and heard his words, which completed the good work of her conversion; and when, some time afterwards, be supped in the house of Simon the Pharisee, she followed him thither and she brought an alabaster box of ointment and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with ointment - and He said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.'

 

Fact: Seven in Hebrew is Shabbat. Shabbat Hamalka represented the feminine side of Yahweh - his consort, and she is of extremely ancient origin. Sometimes called Asherah, Shekhina, etc., this goddess is a combination of Queen, Bride, and Goddess. The word translated as "demons" can be, and is, translated as "Angels" in other biblical verses.

Allegorical interpretation of scripture: The referenced "anointing scene" harkens to the Old Testament, Song of Solomon. King Solomon and his "Black and Beautiful Sister-Bride" sing a love song as they profess their everlasting love. Many myths of "gods and goddesses" describe them as "Sister-Bride, Brother-Groom." Many ancient goddesses had black skin. Black king of Libya, Juba II, married a second time; his second wife was Glaphyra, widow of Alexander III, son of Herod the Great and Jewish princess, the Hasmonean Mariamme. With that marriage, Juba's children with Selene and Glaphyra's children with Alexander became "Brothers and Sisters." When Juba's eldest daughter married Glaphyra's eldest son, they became, "Sister-Bride, Brother-Groom."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Magdalene was one of the most devoted of his followers, always by his side and 'ministered to him of her substance.' She attended him to Calvary, stood weeping at the foot of the cross, and was the first to see the Christ risen. Extra-biblical and Gnostic traditions about Mary Magdalene holds that she was the wife of Jesus and pregnant with his child at the time of his death, a fact which was omitted by later revisionist editors of the Gospels. Interpreted allegorically, Luke-Acts reveals their marriage, a daughter, and two sons.

There is good argument which supports the idea of their marriage. Bachelorhood was very rare for Jewish males of Jesus' time, being generally regarded as a transgression of the first mitzvah (divine commandment): "Be fruitful and multiply". Mary Magdalene appears with great frequency (especially as compared with other women in the Gospels) and is shown as being a close follower of Jesus.

In the scene of the wedding at Cana, the names of the nuptial couple are not mentioned, but Jesus acts as a groom would be expected to act at such a wedding. Mary's presence at the Crucifixion and Jesus' tomb is consonant with a role as grieving wife and widow.

After the Crucifixion she watched by his tomb, and was the first to whom he appeared after the resurrection; her unfaltering faith, mingled as it was with intense grief and love, obtained for her this peculiar mark of favor. It is assumed by several commentators that Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene because she, of all those whom he had left on earth, was his beloved and in most need of consolation: The disciples went away unto their own; but Mary stayed without the sepulcher and wept.

Mary Magdalen by Da Vinci. Note she is holding a thin "veil" over her reproductive area and a red cloth in her left hand. She was the "bleeding woman" whose bleeding stopped when "power went out from" Jesus. A woman's bleeding stops when she becomes pregnant..

Legend: Tradition relates that afterwards in Italy, Mary Magdalene visited the Emperor Tiberias (14-37 AD) and proclaimed to him about Christ's Resurrection. According to tradition, she took him an egg as a symbol of the Resurrection, a symbol of new life with the words: "Christ is Risen!" Then she told Tiberias that, in his Province of Judea, Jesus the Nazarene, a holy man, a maker of miracles, powerful before God and all mankind, was executed on the instigation of the Jewish High-Priests and the sentence affirmed by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Tiberias responded that no one could rise from the dead, anymore than the egg she held could turn red. Miraculously, the egg immediately began to turn red as testimony to her words. Then, and by her urging, Tiberias had Pilate removed from Jerusalem to Gaul, where he later suffered a horrible sickness and an agonizing death.

Allegorical interpretation of scripture: After the "Passover Pageant," designed to merge the Jewish "Messiah" with the Greco-Roman "Dying-and-Resurrected gods" (Dionysus, Osiris, etc.), the woman who played the role of "Mary Magdalene" accompanied her husband, the man who portrayed "Jesus," to Alexandria, Egypt. "Jesus" became the Alabarch of Alexandria; "Mary Magdalene" assumed one of the names carried by her famous grandmother, Cleopatra Thea Philo Pater (wife of Marc Antony), which were probably the names she also carried. Using the name, Philo, and claiming to be a man, "Mary Magdalene" became famous as the philosopher and chief proponent of merging of Judaism with Greek Philosophy. She also promoted the allegorical interpretation of scripture, the only method by which their story could be told.

Legend: Suggestions of commentators and legend continues her story. Fourteen years after the ascension, Lazarus with his two sisters, Martha and Mary; with Maximin, one of the seventy-two disciples, from whom they had received baptism; Cedon, the blind man whom our Saviour had restored to sight; and Marcella, the handmaiden who attended on the two sisters, were by the Jews set adrift in a vessel without sails, oars, or rudder; but, guided by Providence, they were safely borne over the sea till they landed in a certain harbor which proved to be Marseilles, in the country now called France.

The people of the land were pagans, and refused to give the holy pilgrims food or shelter; so they were fain to take refuge under the porch of a temple and Mary Magdalene preached to the people, reproaching them for their senseless worship of  idols; and though at first they would not listen, yet being after a time convinced by her eloquence, and by the miracles performed by her and by her sister, they were converted and baptized. And Lazarus became, after the death of the good Maximin, the first bishop of Marseilles.

These things being accomplished, Mary Magdalene retired to the cliffs not far from the city. It was a frightful barren wilderness and in the midst of horrid rocks she lived in the caves of Sainte-Baume; there for thirty years she devoted herself to solitary penance for the sins of her past life, which she had never ceased to bewail bitterly. During this long seclusion, she was never seen or heard of, and it was supposed that she was dead.

Assumption of Mary Magdalene, by José Antolinez

She fasted so rigorously, that but for the occasional visits of the angels, and the comfort bestowed by celestial visions, she might have perished. She was given the Holy Eucharist by angels as her only food. Every day during the last years of her penance, the angels came down from heaven and carried her up in their arms into regions where she was ravished by the sounds of unearthly harmony, and beheld the glory and the joy prepared for the sinner that repenteth. One day a certain hermit, who dwelt in a cell on one of those wild mountains, having wandered farther than usual from his home, beheld this wondrous vision-the Magdalene in the arms of ascending angels, who were singing songs of triumph as they bore her upwards; and the hermit, when he had a little recovered from his amazement, returned to the city of Marseilles, and reported what he had seen. Allegorical Interpretation of scripture: "Mary Magdalene" spent the remainder of her life in various locations including: Alexandria, Rome, Emesa, and Greece using a variety of aliases.

Chapel on the cliff above the Caveat St. Baume where Mary Magdalene is believed to have been carried to heaven by angels.

Legend: According to Church tradition, Mary Magdalene remained in Rome until the arrival of the Apostle Paul, and for two more years still, following his departure from Rome after the first court judgment upon him.

Allegorical interpretation of scripture: Paul was never an "apostle" but remained the arch-enemy of Jesus and all he attempted to teach and to do. "Jesus" and "Mary Magdalene," using aliases, lived in Rome from 41 until 54. They filled powerful positions under Emperor Claudius and were responsible for the many innovations that improved the lives of Roman citizens, including the poorest and most vulnerable. Both their sons served as "Procurator of Judea." (One from 46 to 48; the other from 51 to 60.)

Legend: From Rome, Mary Magdalene, moved to Ephesus where she unceasingly labored the holy Apostle John, who with her wrote the first 20 Chapters of his Gospel (John 1-9, John 10-20). There the saint finished her earthly life and was buried. Mary was transported miraculously, just before she died, to the chapel of St. Maximin, where she received the last sacraments. She died when she was 72.

Allegorical interpretation of scripture: "Mary Magdalene" and "Jesus" traveled to Ephesus and may have lived there when she wrote "The Gospel of John." However, her work was "over-written" by a later author who called himself "John" and corrupted much of her original work. "Mary Magdalene" was also known as "Io Anna," the feminine form of  "John." Io and Anna are both names of goddesses.

In 899 the Emperor Leo VI transported her alleged relics to a monastery in Constantinople. It was not until the tenth century that devotion to Mary Magdalene, the composite saint, took root in the west.

 

Allegorical interpretation of scripture: "Mary Magdalene"was buried in her family's mausoleum in Mauretania. She is called, "The Roman Woman," and the mausoleum is called, "the tomb of the Christian woman." For more information on this tomb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Mausoleum_of_Mauretania

About 1050 the monks of Vézelay, an abbey recently reformed and affiliated to Cluny, began to claim her body, brought, they related, from the Holy Land either by a ninth-century saint, Badilo, or by envoys dispatched by their founder. A little later a monk of Vézelay believed that he had detected in a crypt at St. Maximin in Provence, carved on an empty sacrophagus, a representation of the unction at Bethany. The monks of Vézelay pronounced it to be Mary Magdalene's tomb from which her relics had been translated to their abbey. Thus the erection of one of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture was made possible by pilgrims to a spurious relic.

 

Magdalene's tomb at Vezelay The tomb of "The Roman Christian Woman," Mary Magdalene

The Mary Magdalene Reliquary (above left) is located in a crypt beneath the Basilica to Mary Magdalene in Saint Maximin de Provence, France (above center) where Mary Magdalene is purportedly buried.  The reliquary contains what  many believe is Mary Magdalene's skull (above right).

The Provençals, however, took full advantage of this development and outstripped Vézelay by pilgrimages to three places henceforward associated with Mary Magdalene. One of these was St. Maximin, where the crypt still contains sacrophagi attributed to the Magdalene, St. Maximin and St. Sidonius. The representation of the anointing has, however, disappeared.

Another is the Sainte Baume, a grotto in the face of a cliff, where Mary Magdalene is said to have spent long years in penance and ecstatic contemplation, whose detail was suggested by the life of the penitent Mary of Egypt.

The third is a church on the coast, built and fortified against pirates in the twelfth century. Dedicated originally to St. Mary (our Lady) of the Sea, its title became The Three Marys of the Sea--'Les Saintes Maries de la Mer." A legend originating about the year 1200 informs us that Mary Magdalene, driven out to sea by the Jews, landed there together with Mary, mother of James, Mary Salome, her sister Martha, their maid Sara, Lazarus, Maximin, one of the seventy-two disciples, and Sidonius, the man born blind. In fact Maximin and Sidonius were saints of Auvergne, the latter being the fifth century man of letters and bishop; Lazarus was a fifth century bishop of Aix; Martha, the two Martyrs and Sara were Persian martyrs of the fourth century whose relics were brought later to southern Gaul.

Detail of Mary Magdalene in Da Vinci's 'Last Supper'

In legend and artistic representation Mary Magdalene is often depicted with flowing red hair and grieving at the loss of her beloved. At once sensuous and spiritual, she made a powerful appeal to the Baroque mentality, as she became a typical figure of devotion, literature and art.

THE FACE IN THE SHROUD

Posted: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 5:00 PM by Alan Boyle

History Channel

Click for video: A computer graphic shows Jesus' body underneath the Shroud of Turin, as reconstructed for "The Real Face of Jesus" on the History Channel.  Click on the picture to watch an MSNBC video about the program.

Does the Shroud of Turin show the "real face of Jesus"? That claim is impossible to judge, even though it serves the title of a documentary about the 3-D analysis of the Shroud of Turin premiering tonight on the History Channel. What can be said is that the centuries-old image wasn’t just painted freehand. Computer analysis of the imprint on the shroud suggests that it had to be left behind by someone draped in cloth.

"Is this the artifact of a real person or not? Definitely it is," Ray Downing, the digital illustrator at the center of the show, told me today.

Downing worked with specialists on the shroud to come up with a photorealistic representation of the man whose body's imprint appears faintly on a famous 14-foot-long length of linen. For some Christians, the stain serves as the miraculous snapshot of their risen Lord. For most scientists, it is a cleverly done fake from the 13th or 14th century, but nothing more.

	History Channel
	A rough computer model shows the 3-D face imprinted on the Shroud of Turin.

Back in 1988, carbon-14 dating tests were conducted on a sample from the shroud in an effort to determine whether the cloth was created in Jesus' time. The verdict from three laboratories was that the cloth was produced in medieval times. But the shroud's fans have insisted that the sample was actually taken from a patch, rather than from the original linen. Just this month, a chemist proposed a new series of non-destructive dating tests that would give an estimate for the entire cloth.

From a marketing perspective, the timing of the History Channel show couldn't be better: Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the Christian holy days that mark Jesus' death and resurrection, are just a few days away. What's more, the shroud is due to go on display for six weeks at Turin Cathedral, starting April 10. The last time the relic was exhibited, a decade ago, more than 3 million people came to Turin to see it. More than a million reservations have been received already for next month's viewing.

Have scientists been wrong about the shroud? Downing noted that historical records referring to the shroud predate the current carbon-14 estimate. "We know the carbon-14 [test] is wrong," he said. "The question is, how wrong are they? The further back you go, the less likely it is that anybody could have faked it."

History Channel

Digital illustrator/animator Ray Downing and John Jackson look at a high-quality  replica of the Shroud of Turin, displayed at Jackson's research center in Colorado.

But the dating debate isn't the focus of Downing's work: Rather, he concentrated on what the shroud shows. Could the faint outlines preserved in the cloth match up with the outlines of a specific person? Downing found that they could, and he drew up a 3-D image that fit the data.

"It's just like how a police investigator will question an eyewitness, and from that information he can draw a complete sketch," Downing said. "The shroud is a silent witness. It's like the witness in an investigation."

Downing started out with high-resolution photographs of the shroud from the Holy Shroud Guild and the Shroud of Turin Research Project. "Between the two of them we were able to come up with a good image," he said.

He also consulted with John Jackson, a physicist who has come to specialize in studying the shroud at his research center in Colorado. Once all the imagery was computerized, Downing used software to massage the 2-D data into 3-D imagery.

History Channel

A computer reconstruction shows a body image that matches up with the faint  imprint seen on the Shroud of Turin. The imagery was used to develop 3-D models.

3-D visualizations of the face in the shroud have been done before, but Downing found that the data couldn't be matched up with a realistic representation if he just added another dimension to the shroud's flat plane. The image looked more like a reflection in a funhouse mirror - and that's because the cloth had to be draped around the body's form to produce a match.

Downing said the cloth "encoded" the 3-D data on a 2-D surface. "It's as if there is an instruction set inside a picture for building a sculpture," he explained in a news release.

By manipulating the computer model, Downing matched up the shroud's imprint with anatomical features drawn from more than 100 human scans. "The nose might have come from here, the nostrils from there," he told me. The result is a realistic illustration, based on the data encoded in the shroud.

History Channel / Ray Downing

Illustrator Ray Downing tweaked graphic representations of human models to come up with a realistic 3-D image of the person whose imprint is on the Shroud of Turin.

Downing said the depiction shown in the History Channel program represents his best effort to put flesh and bones on the shroud's imprint - and he would argue that it's the best effort anyone has made. "This is the closest one, anatomically," he said.

Over the years, not everyone has agreed that the shroud can fit a realistic form. Joe Nickell, a paranormal investigator for Skeptical Inquirer magazine, told an interviewer a decade ago that if the draping effect is taken into account, the body beneath the shroud would have to have been "unusually narrow ... so very long and narrow that one pro-Shroud pathologist suggested that Jesus must have had Marfan's syndrome."

If Downing's analysis played it straight, the shape beneath the shroud is at least plausibly human. But is it Jesus? Or some anonymous person from the first or the 13th century? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below, before or after the show airs.

Update for 8:18 p.m. ET March 30: In a follow-up telephone interview, Skeptical Inquirer's Joe Nickell noted that questions have surrounded theShroud of Turin since the 14th century, when it showed up in France. Nickell suggests that the shroud could have been forged by applying a red ochre pigment to the linen, then modeling it on a body with a bas-relief mask over the face.

Nickell said an Italian chemist, Luigi Garlaschelli, used the recipe to create a shroudlike replica. "He made a 'shroud' using the theories of mine that I told you, then artificially aged it by baking, and then he washed it to remove the pigment - and voila! There was the yellow stain," Nickell said. The effect was similar to the effect seen on the Shroud of Turin.

You can read more about Garlaschelli's experiment here and here.

"There are two approaches to this," Nickell told me. "There's ordinary science, and then there's what I call shroud science. Ordinary science starts with evidence, and lets the evidence lead wherever it will. This is the approach used by a 'CSI' team. Shroud science is quite different, and it starts with the answer. They start by saying, 'This is the shroud of our Lord,' and then they take whatever steps they need to get to that answer."

Nickell is skeptical ... not only about the Shroud of Turin, but also about the prospects for settling the shroud debate to everyone's satisfaction.

"Shroud science is backward from ordinary science," he said. "It's very discouraging to me that the media have been so willing to give it a pass."

Update for 2:50 p.m. ET March 31: I've been wading through thousands of comments on this item - an exercise that has revealed once again how fallible mortals (and software) can be. I apologize to those whose messages I have not approved, either because I just couldn't get to them or because they struck a slightly wrong or redundant chord. I also apologize to those who may take offense at some of the messages that were approved. Thanks to all of you who wrote in - and whether you're Christian or Jew, Muslim or Buddhist, of some other faith or of no religious faith at all, have an uplifting week!

More on the Shroud of Turin:

Did Jesus Die on a Stake ?

Did Jesus Die on a Stake ?

Many scholars believe that Jesus died on 
an upright Stake rather than a "cross" -

According to a literal translation of the bible
Jesus died on a "tree" or "stake" - and NOT
on a cross.   Both of the words used to describe
his execution "stauros" and "xylon" are literally
translated as tree or stake, and never had any 
other meaning.  The word "cross" did not appear
in any Bible translation, until Rome adopted the
Cross of the pagans.


"his body shall not remain all night upon the tree,
but thou shalt surely bury him the same day; 
for he that is hanged is accursed of God..."
(Deuteronomy 21:23)(ASV)-BibleGateway

"A stauros was a mere stake, and horrible to contemplate,
it was used in the cruelest fashion to execute criminals
and other persons..."
- Jesus: God, Man, or Myth (The Truth Seeker, 1950)

FIRST - LET'S  LOOK  AT  WHAT  
THE  APOSTLES  HAD TO SAY :

If a contemporary artist had stood before the dying Jesus
on Golgotha,  he might have left us an authentic portrayal
of that highly significant event.  But no artwork of this kind 
is in existence,  and certainly later tradition is not conclusive. 
Nevertheless, we do have the recorded words of an eyewitness.

Who was he?

As Jesus looked down from that implement of torture and death, 
he saw "the disciple whom he loved,"  the apostle John. 
To him Jesus committed the care of his mother, Mary. 
(John 19:25-30)

So, John was there.
He knew whether Jesus died on a cross or not.

What did John Say ?

To designate the instrument of Christ's death,
John used the Greek word "stawros".
(John 19:17, 19, 25)

In classical Greek, 'stawros' denotes the same thing 
that it does in the common Greek of the Christian Scriptures -
primarily an upright stake or pole with no crossbar.

'stauros': "Literally an upright stake, pale, or pole...
As an instrument of execution."
-The Jnterpreter's Dictionary of the Bible

"The Greek..... 'stauros', properly signified a stake, 
an upright pole, or piece of paling, 
on which anything might be hung,
or which might be used in impaling [fencing in]
a piece of ground....
Even amongst the Romans the crux
(from which our cross is derived)
appears to have been originally an upright pole,
and this always remained the more prominent part."
-The Imperial Bible Dictionary.

Most of the time, the noun stauros (stake)
and the verb stauroo (impale) 
are used in connection with Jesus Christ's death.
These two words appear 74 times in the New Testament.

The New Testament uses the word  'tree' five times
to refer to Christ's death. The references are found in 
Acts 5:30, 10:39, 13:29, Galatians 3:13 and 1 Peter 2:24.

In rendering Deuteronomy 21:22, 23 ("stake") 
and Ezra 6:11 ("timber"),  the translators of the Septuagint Version 
employed the Greek word xylon,   the same term that Paul used 
at Galatians 3:13.   It was also the one employed by Peter,
when he said that  Jesus "bore our sins in his own body 
upon the stake."  (1 Pet. 2:24)

^"When they had carried out all that was written about him,
they took him down fromthe tree and laid him in a tomb."
(Acts 13:29)(NIV)-BibleGateway

"We are witnesses of everything he did 
in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. 
They killed him by hanging him on a tree."
(Acts 10:39)(NIV)-BibleGateway

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law 
by becoming a curse for us,  for it is written : 
"Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."
(Galatians 3:13)(NIV)-BibleGateway


"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, 
so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; 
by his wounds you have been healed. "
(1Peter 2:24)(NIV)-BibleGateway

"The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead--
whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. "
(Acts 5:30)(NIV)-BibleGateway

CROSS - IS A WRONG TRANSLATION
OF  "STAUROS"

"The New Testament word  'cross'  is an incorrect 
translation of the Greek word stauros. The word 
"stauros" referred to any upright wooden stake 
firmly fixed in the ground. A stauros could serve 
a variety of purposes as, for example, a pole in 
a picket fence. The word stauros also represented
a pointed stake used for impalement of human beings.
This was an ancient form of punishment used to 
publicly display the bodies of executed criminals."
-The New International Dictionary 
of New Testament Theology 

"It is not a little misleading upon the part of our teachers 
to translate the word 'stauros' as 'cross' - when rendering 
the Greek documents of the Church into our native tongue...
that was... not the primary meaning of the word
in the days of the Apostles."
-The Non-Christian Cross, by J. D. Parsons (London, 1896)
Pp. 23, 24

"A tradition of the Church which our fathers
have inherited, was the adoption of the words 
"cross" and "crucify."  These words are nowhere 
to be found in the Greek of the New Testament. 
These words are mistranslations,  a "later rendering,"
of the Greek words stauros and stauroo."
-The New International Dictionary 
of New Testament Theology 


NOW -  LET'S LOOK AT WHAT THE SCHOLARS
HAVE TO SAY :

Was Christ Hung on a Cross ?

TO MANY millions of people the answer to this question 
seems as simple as the three-letter word "Yes". 
To serious students of both ancient history and the Bible 
the answer is even simpler, as simple as the two-letter word "No!"

It is common knowledge in this enlightened age that the Bible 
was not first set down in English. Consequently, to settle the question
as to whether Christ was hung on a cross or not -  it is necessary 
to consult the original Hebrew and Greek languages in which the Bible 
was originally written.  Manuscript copies of the original accounts, 
some of which copies date back to within fifty years of the originals, 
are available to scholars.  Besides these, the original words are defined 
and explained in dictionaries or lexicons written in modern English.
And, in addition, there are dependable encyclopedias, histories, etc., 
to which reference can be made.

"It may come as a shock to know 
that there is no word such as 'cross' 
in the Greek of the New Testament. 
The word translated 'cross' 
is always the Greek word [stau·ros'] 
meaning a 'stake' or 'upright pale.' 
The cross was NOT originally a Christian symbol;
it is derived from Egypt and Constantine." 
-Dual Heritage-The Bible and the British Museum

"There is not a single sentence in any of 
the numerous writings forming the New Testament,
which, in the original Greek,
bears even indirect evidence 
to the effect that the stauros used 
in the case of Jesus was other than 
an ordinary stauros; 
much less to the effect that it consisted, 
not of one piece of timber,
but of two pieces nailed together
in the form of a cross."
- The Non-Christian Cross;
John Denham Parsons

"If Jesus had been executed, mythically or historically,
it would NOT have been with outstretched arms on a 
cruciform structure.  Cutner reports that scholars 
have been aware of the error but have been unable to 
resist the TRADITIONAL MISTRANSLATION.
In the 18th century - some Anglican bishops recommended 
eliminating the cross symbol altogether, but they were ignored. 
There is no cross in early Christian art before the middle of the
5th century."
- Jesus: God, Man, or Myth (The Truth Seeker, 1950)

"Another...tradition of the Church
which our fathers have inherited,
was the adoption of the words 'cross' and 'crucify'.
These words are nowhere to be found
in the Greek of the New Testament." (Koster, p. 29). 
-Koster, C.J. Come Out of Her My People. Johannesburg, RSA: 
Institute for Scripture Research, 1998.

"Homer uses the word 'stauros' - of an ordinary pole or stake, 
or a single piece of timber.  And this is the meaning and usage 
of the word throughout the Greek classics. 
It never means two pieces of timber placed across one 
another at any angle, but always of one piece alone. 
Hence the use of the word 'xulon'  [which means a timber]
in connection with the manner of our Lord's death, 
and rendered tree in Acts 5:30; 10:39; 13:29; Gal. 3:13; 
and 1 Pet. 2:24. 
. . .There is nothing in the Greek N.T.  even to imply two
pieces of timber. . .  The evidence is thus complete, 
that the Lord was put to death upon an upright stake, 
and not on two pieces of timber  placed at any angle." 
- The Companion Bible,
published by the Oxford University Press.
On page 186 in the "Appendixes"

Prophecy Points To A  "TREE" - 
NOT A  Cross

"you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. 
Be sure to bury him that same day, 
because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse. "
(Deuteronomy 21:23)(NIV)-BibleGateway

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law 
by becoming a curse for us,  for it is written : 
"Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."
(Galatians 3:13)(NIV)-BibleGateway

Hence the Jewish Christians would hold as accursed and hateful 
the stake upon which Jesus had been executed. 
Says the celebrated Jewish authority, Moses Mai.mon'i.des, of the 12th century: 
'They never hang upon a tree which clings to the soil by roots; 
but upon a timber uprooted, that it might not be an annoying plague: 
for a timber upon which anyone has been hanged is buried; 
that the evil name may not remain with it and people should say, 
"This is the timber on which so-and-so was hanged."    
So the stone with which anyone has been stoned; and the sword, 
with which the one killed has been killed; and the cloth or mantle 
with which anyone has been strangled; all these things are buried
along with those who perished.' "
- (Apud Casaub. in Baron. Exercitat. 16, An. 34, Num. 134)

" 'Consequently since a man hanged was considered 
the greatest abomination- the Jews also hated more than other
things the timber on which he had been hanged, so that they covered it
also with earth, as being equally an abominable thing.' "
- Kalinski in Vaticinia Observationibus Illustrata, page 342

MODERN  DAY  CHRISTIANS  -  TREAT  THE  CROSS -
IN  THE  SAME WAY - AS  THE  PAGANS  DID  IN  ANCIENT  TIMES

"'In the Egyptian churches, the cross was a pagan symbol of life
borrowed by the Christians and interpreted in the pagan manner'."
-The Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, vol. 14, p. 273

"It was not until Christianity began to be PAGANIZED
that the cross came to be thought of as a Christian symbol."
- Babylon Mystery Religion; Ralph Woodrow (pg 50)

"STAUROS denotes, primarily, an upright pole 
or stake...Both the noun and the verb stauroo,
to fasten to a stake or pole, are originally 
to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical
form of a two-beamed cross. The shape of the latter
had its origin  in ancient Chaldea (Babylon),
and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz
(being in the shape of the mystic Tau, the initial
of his name)... By the middle of the 3rd century A.D.
the churches had either departed from,  or had travestied,
certain doctrines of the Christian faith.  
In order to increase the prestige of the apostate 
ecclesiastical system pagans were received into 
the churches apart from regeneration by faith,
and were permitted largely to retain their pagan 
signs and symbols.  Hence the Tau or T, in its 
most frequent form, with the cross piece lowered,
was adopted..."
-Vine's Expository Dictionary 
of New Testament Words

"crosses were used as symbols of the 
Babylonian Sun-god...It should be stated 
that Constantine was a Sun-god worshipper...
The evidence is thus complete, that the Lord 
was put to death upon an upright stake,
and NOT on two pieces of timber placed 
at any angle."
-Dr. Bullinger, The Companion Bible,  appx. 162

Wasn't it a Roman Custom
To execute Evildoers on Crosses ?

Not Always !

-  read the evidence below -

"A stauros was a mere stake, and horrible to contemplate,
it was used in the cruelest fashion to execute criminals
and other persons...It was sometimes pointed and thrust
through the victim's body to pin him to earth; or he was
placed on top of the stake with it's point upwards so that
it gradually pierced his body; or he was tied upon it 
and left exposed till death intervened; and there were
other methods too. There is not a scrape of evidence 
that a stauros was ever in the form of a cross or even
of a "T" shape......"
- Jesus: God, Man, or Myth (The Truth Seeker, 1950)

"Beside scourging, according to the gospel accounts,
only the simplest form of Roman crucifixion comes into 
consideration for the infliction of punishment upon Jesus,
the hanging of the unclad body on a stake. . .Anything other 
than a simple hanging is ruled out by the wholesale manner 
in which this execution was often carried out : 2000 at once by Varus"
-- (Jos. Ant. XVII 10. 10), by Quadratus (Jewish Wars II 12. 6),
by the Procurator Felix (Jewish Wars II 15. 2), 
by Titus (Jewish Wars VII. 1)." - P. W. Schmidt ; pp. 387-389

"Crosses must have been commonly of the simplest form 
(Stakes - without crossbeam), because they were used
in such marvellous numbers. Of Jews alone, Alexander 
Jannaeus crucified 800, Varus, 2000, Hadrian, 500 a day;
and the gentle Titus so many that there was no room 
for the crosses, nor crosses for the bodies."
-Smith's Dict. of the Bible.

The Latin word used for the instrument  on which Christ died was 'crux'
which, according to Livy, a famous Roman historian
of the first century C.E.,  " it means a mere stake. "

The 'crux simplex' was a 
"a mere stake 'of one single piece WITHOUT transom [crossbar]. " 
-The Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, 
and Ecclesiastical Literature

"Trees were not everywhere available  at the places chosen 
for public execution.  So a simple beam was sunk into the ground.
On this the outlaws, with hands raised upward and often also 
with their feet, were bound or nailed....Jesus died on a simple death-stake."
- Das Kreuz und die Kreuzigung (The Cross and the Crucifixion), 
by Hermann Fulda, Breslau, 1878,  p.109,  pp. 219, 220

"Lipsius and other writers speak of the single upright stake 
to which criminals were bound as a cross,
and to such a stake the name of crux simplex has been applied."
- The Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th Edition

" 'In Livy,' even crux means a mere stake "
- Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible " 

DID EARLY CHRISTIANS
USE A CROSS IN THEIR WORSHIP ?

NO !

"The representation of Christ's redemptive death  on Golgotha 
does not occur in the symbolic art of the first Christian centuries. 
The early Christians, influenced by the Old Testament prohibition 
of graven images, were reluctant to depict even the instrument 
of the Lord's Passion."
-New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), Vol. IV, p. 486

"There was NO use of the crucifix 
and NO material representation of the cross."
-A History of the Christian Church (New York, 1897),
J. F. Hurst, Vol. I, p. 366.

"Most scholars now agree that the cross,
as an artistic reference to the passion event(Jesus' death), 
cannot be found prior to the time of Constantine."
--Archaeological Evidence of Church Life 
Before Constantine (1985), 
by Professor Graydon F. Snyder, page 27

An early Christian wrote this to the pagans -
thus showing the early Christian attitude
toward their pagan Crosses.

"Crosses, moreover, 
we neither worship - nor wish for. 
You, indeed, who consecrate gods 
of wood, adore wooden crosses 
perhaps as parts of your gods. . ."
-(The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4, p. 191) 
Minucius Felix - 3rd Century

"It was not until Christianity began to be PAGANIZED 
that the cross came to be thought of as a Christian symbol."
- Babylon Mystery Religion; Ralph Woodrow (pg 50)

IN  CONCLUSION :

Regardless of whether Jesus died on a Stake or a Cross -
we must be careful not to place his instrument of execution
as something sacred.  We must not idolize it, nor pray before it,
nor adore it as something wonderful.  For the Bible warns us about
idolatry and also says that the instrument of Christ's death was
an abomination.

What really is important is the fact that Jesus remained faithful
to Jehovah God, even up to death.

"Jesus was humble. He obeyed God..."
(Philippians 2:8)(CEV)-BibleGateway

"He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death...." 
(Phil. 2:8) 

Instead of idolizing a cross - we should show our appreciation 
for everything that Christ has done for us,  and will do for us
in the near future.

Surely, the instrument of Jesus' suffering and death would not merit
reverence, worship, or adoration any more than would the gallows
on which a beloved one might have died unjustly.  Moreover, 
God's Word prohibits such veneration, for it says, "flee from idolatry" 
and "guard yourselves from idols." (1 Cor. 10:14; 1 John 5:21).