The Michael Knowles Show

00:00:00.000 The shroud is an image of a crucified man with wounds that correspond to the brutality that

00:00:07.060 Jesus of Nazareth experienced. So why do you think it's real? They cannot explain how the image is

00:00:14.700 in the shroud. This is brand new for your program. I'm publishing right now with an archaeologist on

00:00:18.960 what I'm about to share. Do you have your phone with you by chance? Yes, I do. I want you to do

00:00:23.700 an exercise on camera with me if you don't mind. Okay. Look at the face of the shroud right here.

00:00:30.000 Every few years, there's a news headline that we've discovered what Jesus looked like. And every

00:00:46.520 time the left-wing media put up some picture of basically a gorilla and they try to pretend to us

00:00:52.020 that that is our Lord. But there is an answer to all of these headlines, namely that we might already

00:00:58.340 know what Jesus looked like because we have his burial cloth, the Shroud of Turin.

00:01:06.260 When I was a boy, I was told the Shroud of Turin was totally debunked. And then the debunking got

00:01:12.360 debunked. And I'm not an expert in any of this, but my guest today, Dr. Jeremiah Johnston, is an

00:01:19.300 expert. And we have not the original. That would be very impressive. But this is impressive enough.

00:01:23.880 We have a full-scale copy of the Shroud of Turin. Jeremiah, thank you for being here.

00:01:29.260 Michael, you're a warrior for truth. I love your program. And I'm just excited. We have breaking

00:01:34.140 news to cover. We have a lot. And we have some delicious details for the audience. So

00:01:38.220 people better get ready and buckle up. I can't wait. Also, you've been very kind to give me your

00:01:42.800 book, Body of Proof, The Seven Best Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus and Why It Matters

00:01:47.140 Today, which you can go get. You have all sorts of goodies that you brought here. So I want to take

00:01:52.940 it from the top. When I was a kid, I first of all thought the Shroud of Turin was just a Catholic

00:01:59.380 thing. It didn't occur to me. A lot of my Protestant friends, they're not that into relics.

00:02:05.120 They're not that into religious artifacts. Some of them have real theological disagreements with

00:02:08.880 even certain religious artifacts. And so it didn't occur to me that non-Catholics believe in the Shroud

00:02:14.840 of Turin. And then on top of that, even I, as a Catholic, as a kid, was told the Shroud of Turin

00:02:20.160 is fake. There was a study in the 80s. It debunked it. It's a medieval forgery. You got to be crazy to

00:02:29.060 think that goes all the way back to antiquity. So why do you think it's real? Based on the evidence,

00:02:35.060 because I'm not irrational, Michael, because 102 academic disciplines have spent over 500,000 hours

00:02:42.820 of scientific studies and published in peer-reviewed journals their findings. And because I'm not

00:02:48.760 irrational, I not only believe that the Shroud is authentic. It's not a medieval fake. It's not a

00:02:54.240 medieval forgery. And like you said, every time the media brings out a picture of Jesus, it's either

00:02:58.820 a gorilla or it's an effeminate male that does not smack of authenticity of a Jewish crucified man

00:03:05.080 of late Second Temple Judaism. And what we have in the Shroud, it gets everything right. Here's why this

00:03:10.120 is so important for the audience today. In one archaeological artifact, we have the death,

00:03:15.120 burial, and resurrection. It brings all three together. And speaking of non-Catholics, you bring

00:03:20.960 up a valid point. I used to be a skeptic of the Shroud. When I was sitting at Faculty of Theology in

00:03:26.840 Keeble College working on my 93,000-word thesis on the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus,

00:03:33.920 I was conditioned by Faculty of Theology. And I worked, I read in the Bodleian Library at Griffith

00:03:39.680 Papyrology Lab. I was conditioned that the Shroud is a fraud. That's just a Catholic hoax.

00:03:46.560 And so I paid no attention to the Shroud. In fact, there's early YouTubes of me where I'm being

00:03:51.880 interviewed about the evidences for the resurrection. I had a very highbrow Oxford answer,

00:03:57.340 UK answer. Oh, I deal in the evidence. I deal with the real world authenticity.

00:04:02.260 None of that superstition.

00:04:03.240 Exactly. And then I moved to Oxford in 2009, my wife and I and our daughter at the time. We only

00:04:09.100 had one child. And now we have five, by the way, including triplets. So I have a dog in the hunt

00:04:14.560 of why I'm interested in this. I go to C.S. Lewis' home. Have you been to the kilns?

00:04:18.640 The kilns, I have, yeah.

00:04:19.760 Have you been in Lewis' bedroom?

00:04:22.580 Yes.

00:04:22.780 In Lewis' bedroom, above the mantle in the room he slept in, there is a picture of the 1931

00:04:30.540 Henri photograph of the Shroud of Turin. Because Lewis, who of course is Anglican for the benefit

00:04:36.840 of our audience, not a Catholic, Lewis wanted to look at the picture of the man in the Shroud

00:04:41.920 every day to be reminded that our God has a face.

00:04:45.620 I didn't notice that. When I was there, I walked all around the house. I took notice that he and his

00:04:50.560 brother would ash their pipes, rub it into the car, kind of a bachelor's dad. I remember walking

00:04:55.680 by his bedroom where he died. They found him on the floor or something. And I didn't notice

00:05:01.180 that he had a picture of the Shroud.

00:05:03.180 And Lewis, according to Lewis, we have to be reminded our God does have a face. Jesus narrates

00:05:08.820 God to us. If we want to know who God is, we look no further than Jesus. And so scientists take

00:05:14.960 the Shroud seriously. And so I want to encourage people in this program to take the red pill with

00:05:19.740 this, Michael, because we're going to go down the trail together and the evidence is overpowering.

00:05:23.540 I believe the Shroud speaks for itself. It's the greatest mystery of all time because it speaks

00:05:29.360 to the greatest message of all time, the death, burial, and physical bodily resurrection of Jesus

00:05:33.980 Christ. I love that you make this point right off the top here because there are going to be people

00:05:39.460 say, well, who cares what Jesus looked like? Who cares? I've even heard from people, very faithful

00:05:46.520 people who say, oh, you know, look, there are depictions of Christ as black or Indian or this

00:05:52.720 or that. And sure, because there is neither Jew nor Greek or slave nor free, but all are one in

00:05:57.960 Christ Jesus, right? However, he does look like something because he's not just an idea and he's

00:06:06.980 not just an abstract spirit. In fact, the crux of the faith is that God, the Son of God,

00:06:15.780 and the divine logic of the universe enters into history and has a face and has a body and dies,

00:06:23.380 is executed by a real civil authority in history in a real place. And maybe there's even physical

00:06:29.240 evidence to that day of that event. And do you understand that Christianity, unlike Islam

00:06:34.420 or the other religions, or especially the made in America cults and religions, only Christianity says,

00:06:41.280 you can test our belief against history. Archaeology is Christianity's closest cousins. I love the

00:06:46.580 programs you do with archaeologists because, again, for those of us trying to pass on a faith to our

00:06:51.140 children, the Bible is about real people, real places, real events. I don't check my brain at the

00:06:55.740 door to become a follower of Jesus. It actually is a leap into the light. 228 times in the New

00:07:01.920 Testament, idon, the Greek word to see. Open your eyes and see the truth. Look, look, don't be

00:07:08.960 misbelieving, but believe. John 20, verse 8, John goes to the tomb that first Easter morning. We know

00:07:14.300 the day. I talk about this in my book, Body of Proof, Michael, April 5th, AD 33. According to the

00:07:19.960 Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, which, by the way, studied the Shroud, one of the 102 academic

00:07:26.000 disciplines that have studied the Shroud, sunrise that first Easter morning, April 5th, AD 33, would

00:07:31.260 have been 543 a.m. Mary goes to the tomb very early. It's still dark. Why? She's mourning the

00:07:36.180 dead. She walks into the tomb. She stoops down. She looks in. What does she see? She sees the linen

00:07:42.900 cloths lying there. And I believe when she goes to get Peter and John, this is brand new for your

00:07:49.060 program. I'm publishing right now with an archaeologist on what I'm about to share. It wasn't when they saw the

00:07:54.940 2,750-pound stone removed that they believed. It wasn't even when they saw that the tomb was

00:08:00.820 empty and there was no body that they believed. The scripture is very clear. There's an economy

00:08:05.560 of words in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We only have 89 chapters in the Gospels that cover parts

00:08:11.000 of 26 days of the life of Jesus. That's all we have. Remember, John said, if we wrote everything,

00:08:15.840 the libraries couldn't contain it. But these have been written so that you believe. John stoops down and

00:08:20.440 looks in and it says, when he saw the Athonia, the Sinden, the Sudarium, the shroud, he believed.

00:08:28.440 He saw and he believed. And what I'm publishing right now, I believe that the shroud had the face

00:08:34.080 of Jesus glowing on it. Why else could it not? Every time Jesus manifests himself, he always manifests

00:08:41.720 himself according to scripture in magnificent light. Think about Saul, the apostle. You just quoted him,

00:08:47.280 Galatians 3.28. You were quoting. He's on the way to Damascus. And I have filmed on first century roads

00:08:52.740 when it's hot in Israel and the sun is blazing. You probably have too. And yet he sees Jesus. And the

00:09:00.560 evidential narrative that we have in the book of Acts is that it was lighter than the noonday sun.

00:09:05.560 In Mark 9, when Jesus appears to the disciples, literally Jesus' body is glistening. Same thing we

00:09:12.080 see in the Old Testament. And so why would? And I want to make sure our audience, because I understand

00:09:16.840 people are hearing about the shroud for the very first time today. The shroud is an image of a

00:09:21.760 crucified man, the front and back of a badly traumatized, crucified man with wounds that

00:09:28.580 correspond to the brutality that Jesus of Nazareth experienced. The image, we believe, was formed

00:09:35.380 by 34,000 trillion watts of energy in one fortieth of a billionth of a second, according to Paul

00:09:41.680 DeLazzo, my friend at Aeneal Labs in Rome. This is the moment of resurrection. We have God, if you

00:09:49.480 will, in Jesus taking the first selfie. And it's the moment of resurrection. I've never heard it put

00:09:56.380 that way. It's helpful. This is why, when you say you have this thesis that what they see is this

00:10:03.140 is a glowing shroud or, you know, it's like, because whatever you want to say about the shroud,

00:10:10.840 we know that the image of the man on the shroud is not painted on. And it actually seems that it's

00:10:18.860 a kind of a photograph because it looks like a photographic negative. And so what you're saying

00:10:23.020 is, well, the image was produced by some kind of light. We at least know that. And so if you connect

00:10:29.880 that fact with what we know about the shroud, which at least some of us believe, yeah, to be the very

00:10:35.140 old cloth of Christ, then surely that would have some resonance with whatever was going on in the

00:10:42.120 moment that the apostles see that he's resurrected. And what caused me to move from skeptic to defender

00:10:48.940 of the shroud is scientists in the 21st century, the best scientists we have today, the Jet Propulsion

00:10:55.100 Laboratory, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos Labs, the Air Force Academy. I've already talked about

00:10:59.640 Aenea Labs in Rome, 102 academic disciplines. They cannot explain how the image is in the shroud.

00:11:07.460 The image is superficial, meaning if we get closer than eight feet to the shroud, it vanishes. You

00:11:12.560 can't see it because it is so superficial. Hold on, say that again. I don't quite get there.

00:11:15.960 If you get closer than eight feet to the shroud, the image vanishes because it's so superficial. In

00:11:21.220 other words, you have to stand eight feet or more away because the image is so superficial. And this

00:11:26.340 is specifically what science cannot reproduce. How do you get an image that's only on two or three

00:11:33.360 microns of each fiber within the herringbone weave that is there? It's not paint, as you rightly said.

00:11:41.720 And we can use the word proven. The STERP project, the Shroud of Trend Research Project, who had 120

00:11:48.820 hours, thanks to the Savoy family of Italy, probably your relatives in Italy, had a weekend with the

00:11:56.040 shroud where they then took three years to publish their findings, Michael. And we have proven, I use

00:12:01.660 that word according to science, it is not man-made. It is not pigment. There's no dye. It is not an

00:12:07.980 artwork. And so I want to help some of the fine Christians that you've brought up who are like,

00:12:11.720 hey, I don't need the shroud. Take it or leave it. I have my Bible. It's good enough for Paul. It's good

00:12:16.000 enough for me. That's all I need is the Bible. Well, can I just say something to my friends who

00:12:20.220 have that pious view? It wasn't enough for the writers of the New Testament. There would be no

00:12:26.700 New Testament had they not had these experiences. Acts 1-3 said, Jesus proclaimed himself to be alive

00:12:33.920 from the dead with many infallible proofs. And Luke's in Kippit, which is the beginning of his

00:12:38.820 narrative, he actually uses the word autoptes in Greek. It's the word we get autopsy from.

00:12:44.360 Paul, John, and there's a fascination too. I want to give people permission on your program to look

00:12:49.540 at the face of Jesus. Some Christians feel weird about looking at an AI-developed image of Jesus.

00:12:56.000 Is this idol worship? No. There is a fascination from nascent Christianity to current with seeing

00:13:02.720 the face of Jesus. 1 Corinthians 13-12, in that beautiful love chapter, Paul wants to see Jesus

00:13:07.780 face to face. Revelation 22-4, John wants to see Jesus face to face. I mean, the words of our Lord

00:13:13.880 himself. He who has seen me has seen the Father. Exactly. So it's okay. So I'm looking for evidence

00:13:20.660 for my faith. 1 Corinthians 15, Christianity puts the entire message, the entire worldview to the test.

00:13:27.960 1 Corinthians 15-19, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, people should feel sorry for us. But 1

00:13:33.800 Corinthians 15-20, this is Saul, Paul, he has risen from the dead. We know this based on the evidence.

00:13:40.920 Then he gives the kirigama, the appearance tradition, the empty tomb tradition.

00:13:44.480 When you say that the shroud encompasses the death, burial, and resurrection, you have all of this in

00:13:54.820 one event. It strikes me that the shroud, in a way, kind of unlocks the key to two different

00:14:01.460 religious errors. The error, well, there are multiple errors in these religions. But for Islam,

00:14:07.380 one of the chief errors is the denial of the crucifixion. They crucified him not, says the

00:14:12.120 Quran. And for Judaism, they deny the resurrection. They don't deny the crucifixion, but they deny the

00:14:16.760 resurrection. And in the shroud, you have evidence, and as you're saying, good evidence of both. So then,

00:14:24.720 let me just go back to my eight-year-old self. Yes. Which still, and I still, you know, maintain a critical eye

00:14:32.500 toward information that's presented to me. But certainly I did then. I was told 1987 or 1988, they

00:14:39.660 radiocarbon tested the shroud, and the shroud dates back to the 13th century or something like that. So, you know,

00:14:46.780 come on, where'd that come from? Absolutely. And it's more fun in the interview if you push back. So, because

00:14:50.760 otherwise I go on autopilot. So, I like this. Because so many of us, we wake up with an allergy

00:14:56.120 of skepticism every morning. And that's healthy. Again, I want to make sure that I learn from

00:15:01.020 everyone, but no one should think for me. This is why I have a ministry called Christian Thinker

00:15:04.760 Society. We love God with our heart, soul, and mind. So, you're asking great questions. 1978 is the

00:15:10.240 Sturt Project. So, the Stroud of Turn Research Project. They published their findings in 1983.

00:15:14.960 The Savoy family allows the carbon-14 dating to go forward. I want to also answer quickly,

00:15:22.380 if I may, it does not come under the control of the Holy See himself until 1985 after two years of

00:15:29.240 probate court. So, for evangelicals or Protestants or Greek Orthodox who may be watching your program,

00:15:35.020 they think, oh, that's just another Catholic relic. Well, it is a relic. It is an artifact.

00:15:38.960 But it's not just a Catholic artifact. That would be anachronistic to say that.

00:15:43.480 It does not come under the control of the living pope until 1985.

00:15:49.020 That's right. It was given as a gift to Pope John Paul II.

00:15:51.940 Exactly.

00:15:52.420 Pretty recent pope.

00:15:53.280 Yes, exactly. But yet, the Catholic Church hasn't really come out to say,

00:15:59.080 as a matter of fact, this is the Shroud of Turin. Or, excuse me, it is the burial cloth of Jesus.

00:16:04.840 So, I wanted to answer that. So, back to the carbon-14. So, 1988, it's carbon-dated.

00:16:08.840 The carbon dating is rife with problems, Michael. And I'm so glad to update your audience with this.

00:16:14.780 The British Library, the British Museum, where I've spent the equivalent of days,

00:16:20.220 suppressed the raw data of the carbon-14 dating for 29 years.

00:16:25.740 And I was reading the raw data last night to prepare for your show. Because I've got to be

00:16:31.080 on my A-game with Michael Knowles. The raw data is rife with errors. I'm not even sure that one of

00:16:37.980 the labs even tested the pinky of fabric that was cut from the cloth. So, if I may, above your left

00:16:46.280 shoulder in the top corner is the pinky-sized fragment that was cut from the cloth to supposedly

00:16:53.160 be carbon-dated. Now, excellent thinkers like Joe Marino have published rebuttals to the carbon-14

00:17:01.180 dating. And they believe that the fragment that was used is contaminated because he claims,

00:17:09.120 I'm quoting Joe Marino, I like to quote the sources, that there's cotton. This is a patched corner.

00:17:14.780 After it survives the fire of 1532. I mean, it's a miracle we have the shroud today. It survived

00:17:20.520 three fires. It's been doused with water. So, that holds a lot of weight with me. And then,

00:17:27.140 we can go down the rabbit trail. Seven labs were supposed to carbon-date it. Only three did.

00:17:32.260 The man that published it wrote on the chalkboard 1260 to 390, the gentleman who announced the findings

00:17:38.280 that it was a medieval hoax, he did something that scientists never do. He was anti-Catholic.

00:17:43.280 The carbon-14 data, when it was published, ardent atheists were the editors of the journal.

00:17:49.720 This was an absolute onslaught against the Catholic Church and against people of faith.

00:17:55.260 So, if you and I put on the table today all of the evidence that we have in favor, the 102 academic

00:18:00.700 disciplines, and by the way, we've dated the shroud in five other ways that are non-carbon-14 dating,

00:18:05.980 the only thing a skeptic would hold up and wave and say, oh, it's not authentic, is the carbon-14

00:18:12.580 dating, which has been proven to be erroneous. Yeah. So, what are the other ways that we've

00:18:16.880 dated this? Oh, this is fascinating. Are you ready to have your mind blown?

00:18:19.360 I am. So, part of the breaking news that you're aware of is two years ago, wide-angle x-ray scattering,

00:18:25.420 the Institute of Crystallography in Italy. And I would encourage people, download the Heritage

00:18:30.900 Journal for yourself. Read the data for yourself, and then you decide. The Institute of Crystallography,

00:18:38.460 Jewish burial traditions, which I happen to be an expert in, I can talk all day long about Jewish

00:18:43.200 burial traditions. The Gospels get it right. The way Jesus dies is buried. That's where I'm saying

00:18:48.660 this comes together. We have other burial shrouds. We have other linen burial shrouds from late Second

00:18:54.520 Temple Judaism in the time of Jesus, such as the Shroud of Masada, dated to AD 70, the invasion of

00:19:02.060 Titus. Think about that. So, this Institute of Crystallography, using a new technology called Waxus

00:19:09.240 Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering, compared the degradation, how long has the shroud been degrading?

00:19:17.460 Yeah. Based on the Masada shroud, and they showed correspondence, meaning that the shroud,

00:19:24.240 for lack of a better term, has been getting old for 2,000 years. That's just one of the datings.

00:19:28.980 Yeah. There's another, the lack of vanillin in the flax. So, linen comes from the flax. It comes from

00:19:36.340 the flax plant, and there's no vanillin in the linen cloth. One scholar says it takes 2,000 to 5,000 years

00:19:44.220 for a linen cloth to age to such an extent that there's no trace of vanillin in the chemicals.

00:19:50.980 So, you know, we have the tar can dress that is from 3,000 BC, 3,000 years older than the Shroud

00:19:58.020 of Turin. Linen will last forever given the right circumstances, okay? And so, there's no vanillin,

00:20:04.460 the wide-angle x-ray scattering, and there's other datings as well that have been widely published.

00:20:09.700 And this is where I bring in my expertise as well, Michael. Carbon-14 dating, 25% of the time,

00:20:15.280 is thrown out in scholarship and academic conferences. Well, there's actually a related

00:20:18.900 case here, which is, though it also raises questions about the Shroud, which maybe we'll

00:20:23.820 get back to. But the Shroud is not the only burial relic of our Lord. The other one, the other big

00:20:30.940 one, is the Sudarium of Oviedo. Yes. And this is the head cloth. But I remember reading that the

00:20:38.380 Sudarium of Oviedo does not actually go all the way back to the first century, that actually it's

00:20:44.640 just from the ninth century, according to radiocarbon dating. But what's a real rub for this claim is that

00:20:51.900 we have a definitive history of the Sudarium going back to the sixth century. Yes.

00:20:57.400 So we can actually just trace it in documents and in history. So then you say, well, hold on.

00:21:03.000 If the radiocarbon dating was that wrong, and we know with certainty, at least until the sixth

00:21:09.780 century, then why do I believe the radiocarbon dating from the 80s, especially when there were

00:21:14.260 all of these other methodological problems with it? Exactly. And we've brought the Sudarium,

00:21:19.100 a replica of it, for your studio, for this program. Oh, marvelous. Can we not on set right now?

00:21:24.880 Powell. It's coming right now. Thanks to my good friend, scholar, Doug Powell, who has brought his

00:21:31.180 replica for us. This is a replica. And I've never seen this until today, Michael. This is a replica of

00:21:39.040 the Sudarium of Oviedo. And I want you to meet Doug Powell. Doug, hey, how's it going? Michael?

00:21:44.140 Nice to meet you. Yes, you as well. Thank you. Wow, this is good. Who else did you bring back?

00:21:48.080 Yes. Do we have any other relics or anything back?

00:21:51.120 It's like a clown car of scholars. That's right. That's right.

00:21:53.680 I should have known, though, that if one travels around with a full-scale replica of the Shroud of

00:21:59.660 Turin, probably he's going to be the kind of guy who has the Sudarium of Oviedo. That's right.

00:22:03.820 That's right. So, okay, this is supposed to be the headcloth. My first question, when I even learned

00:22:10.140 about the headcloth, which, you know, was kept separately from the Shroud, and, you know,

00:22:16.500 they've kind of made their ways all around the world, why would Christ's face be on the Shroud?

00:22:23.820 Wouldn't it only be on the headcloth? Isn't the fact that Christ's face is on the Shroud

00:22:28.520 an argument against the Shroud? It's not. Doug, go right ahead.

00:22:32.960 Well, if you read John's account of the discovery of the Shroud, they also find the headcloth in a

00:22:41.480 separate place. So there are other cloths than the burial cloth around Jesus. And so the fact

00:22:49.540 that there is a headcloth means there's another cloth, and the fact that there's no face on it

00:22:54.940 means that it wasn't in contact with whatever made the image on the Shroud when the image got made.

00:23:01.220 So it's separated at some point, and this is what is believed to be that cloth.

00:23:05.680 And what I might add is, so when was the cloth wrapped around his face? Jesus dies at around

00:23:12.580 3 p.m. on the cross. He's hanging there. He's dead. Jewish sensitivities are such that even the

00:23:19.060 blood that's dripping from the body would want to be collected and not just out on the ground.

00:23:24.780 So that is when they wrap his face with the sudarium, is when he's still on the cross,

00:23:30.740 coming down from the cross, that it remains on his face until they bring the body in the tomb

00:23:36.240 where it is taken off and Jesus is wrapped with the Shroud. Does that make sense, the timing?

00:23:40.660 That does make sense. I've never, I've just never figured it out. That's never been presented to me

00:23:47.220 before. But yeah, I suppose that would make sense because then you would also say, well, hold on,

00:23:53.060 if it were just on the whole time or if it was just part of the wrapping, well, why isn't there

00:23:57.240 an image? 3D image. Right. Like there is on the Shroud. Why isn't there one on the sudarium?

00:24:01.740 And Doug, I wonder if you would talk about the correspondence of the blood type. Are you ready

00:24:05.420 to have your mind blown further, Michael? I am. Okay. Well, what you're looking at here is it's

00:24:14.280 oriented. So this particular stain, you can see there's three areas of stains. You have this one,

00:24:20.400 this one, and this one. This area right here was in direct contact with a face that matches exactly

00:24:28.480 the face on the Shroud. It's a one-to-one correspondence. And if you line up the nose,

00:24:34.100 if you register the nose, then this kind of concentrated area of blood is right around the

00:24:40.440 mouth and the beard area. And you can see how it kind of hooks around like the beard does.

00:24:45.940 And then this vertical area goes right down the bridge of the nose. And this would be on the

00:24:51.660 forehead right here. This epsilon shape right here is the edge of this. And then you can see this

00:24:58.860 blood stain corresponds here. And there are a number of other ones. That one corresponds there.

00:25:04.260 And so if you do an overlay, like if you outline this and you put it right onto that, it's an exact

00:25:09.480 match in size, not just in size, but in blood type as well. First of all, scientists have been able to

00:25:17.780 recreate this stain right here by taking a head, a glass head that is filled with blood mixed with

00:25:31.020 pulmonary edema, which is the fluid that's generated in the lungs during asphyxiation or other kind of

00:25:37.740 torture or duress. And that's the blood mixture that is on here. And that's also the blood mixture

00:25:44.900 that you see in different places on the shroud, like here. It's six parts pulmonary edema to one

00:25:50.120 part blood. So that's what's coming out of the lungs. And so that's what's coming out of his mouth,

00:25:56.140 of the man who had the sudarium wrapped around him. So it matches like that. It's also type AB,

00:26:03.720 which is also the type on the shroud. It's also post-mortem blood. And type AB is the rarest blood

00:26:10.920 type. It's about three times more common in Mediterranean Jews than it is in Europeans.

00:26:17.780 The Eucharistic miracles. Same. The type is always AB. AB. Pretty amazing. So the idea is that

00:26:25.760 the sudarium was affixed to the back of the head here. And if you look really close, you can see

00:26:33.240 these holes where pins were put through to the hair. There is a ponytail shape funnel right here

00:26:42.520 of his hair. And this is where it would have affixed to. And this butterfly shape fits right onto the

00:26:50.620 ponytail. And then you can see these, these blood, uh, little pin points of blood wounds match this

00:26:59.020 exactly. And then it would wrap around the front. So it gets around to the front and makes contact

00:27:04.960 with the face, but it's not wrapped all the way around the head because the face scientists have

00:27:10.680 figured out is lulled forward into the right like this. So they can't get it all the way around when he's

00:27:15.700 on the cross. So they double it back and that's what creates that stain. So now it's folded back

00:27:21.820 and they have determined his head was in this position for about 45 minutes to an hour. And

00:27:27.400 then the body is taken down and laid face down with the feet slightly elevated, which causes the

00:27:33.600 blood to go down the, up the nose or down the nose and pull onto the forehead, which is what makes

00:27:38.720 that. And he's in that position for 45 minutes to an hour. And so that gives enough time for Joseph

00:27:44.580 of Arimathea to go get permission to bury the body. And then the body is flipped face up for about five

00:27:50.280 minutes. And there are actually finger marks where somebody has reached over the back of the head to

00:27:56.300 pinch the nose shut, to hold the blood in as, uh, for about, and the body's in that position face up for

00:28:02.040 about five minutes. And so if you've ever been to the church of the Holy Sepulcher, the space between

00:28:06.660 Golgotha and the tomb is more than enough, you know, you can cover that in 90 seconds. Uh, and so

00:28:14.400 that's, uh, that's where all the stains, that's how to make sense of the stains here.

00:28:18.740 So, okay. We know the Sudarium comes from at least the sixth century. No one disputes that.

00:28:25.260 It's been in Oviedo, Spain since Oviedo was founded at the end of the eighth century. And so it's been

00:28:31.880 in, uh, the documentary evidence is that it enters Spain around 7-11 ahead of the Muslim invasion.

00:28:41.180 Where was it? Do we know where it was before 7-11? Well, we, the documentary evidence actually

00:28:47.680 matches the pollen evidence. And you'll get to the pollen evidence on the shroud, but there's pollen

00:28:53.340 on both the shroud and the Sudarium. And the pollen on the Sudarium is from, so Oviedo is at, in the

00:29:00.460 very northern part of Spain, kind of in the center of the coast, about 15 or 20 miles inland in the

00:29:06.680 mountains of Asturias. So there's pollen from around there. There's pollen from around Toledo,

00:29:11.780 right in the middle of Spain. And then there's pollen from North Africa, probably the area around

00:29:17.980 Alexandria, which is where the documentary evidence says it was after Jerusalem and before Spain.

00:29:24.180 And then there's pollen evidence from Jerusalem.

00:29:27.740 So all of this, at the very least, we would have to say, uh, not only from knowing where it was in

00:29:34.760 the church, but even beforehand, the pollen and the documentary evidence that we're firmly in

00:29:39.660 antiquity and call it whatever, you know, whatever I've read, the sixth century. Uh, though many people

00:29:46.660 would say, no, no, it actually goes to the first century. Right. But, but I guess my point is if we

00:29:51.700 know for a fact that we can place this in antiquity and the, the skeptics of the Shroud of Turin are

00:29:58.280 arguing that it's a medieval forgery, then how do the images match perfect? Did, did some medieval

00:30:06.020 forger know about the Sudarium maybe? And then, uh, just even if it were possible to create the image

00:30:14.780 through artistic techniques, just managed to match it perfectly without anyone figuring it out?

00:30:20.540 That's the fascinating thing. This is, this may be the key to, uh, the, in, in the case against

00:30:28.360 the medieval dating of the Shroud. The final piece of the puzzle is connecting these two things,

00:30:33.860 because we know of the existence of this definitely 600 years before the earliest date within the,

00:30:41.580 the radiocarbon dating. So once we show this correspondence and it's, it's, like I said,

00:30:46.920 it's an exact match, that totally blows apart the idea that the Shroud was created 600 years later.

00:30:53.320 And Michael, I want your audience to appreciate, I know of no other program that has a Shroud

00:30:58.740 museum quality licensed authentic replica along with the Sudarium that we're comparing right now

00:31:04.820 that's going to live forever. This is so helpful. I wish when I began learning about the Shroud,

00:31:10.520 I could have seen a video with two Shroud scholars comparing the two. This debunks the carbon-14 dating.

00:31:17.820 Were you always, uh, Shroud-pilled for last, lack of a better word?

00:31:21.660 Uh, no, I was, uh, I was always interested in it, but what I was unsure of was what the, uh, uh,

00:31:29.720 credible evidence was for it. Yeah.

00:31:31.980 And, uh, I studied in a master's program under Gary Habermas, who's one of the leading experts in

00:31:38.020 the historical evidence for the resurrection. And one day he just went off talking about the

00:31:42.240 Shroud and he started listing all of these evidences that I've never heard before. And, uh, and so he

00:31:49.680 became my guide into the credible evidence. And Jeremiah is a good friend of Dr. Habermas as well.

00:31:55.180 And, uh, so he was an early advocate for it. And in fact, one of the, uh, members of the Sturp team

00:32:02.500 wrote two books with Dr. Habermas, who was not on the Sturp team as kind of the theological, uh,

00:32:09.400 guide for understanding the scientific evidence. So he goes all the way back to the Sturp team

00:32:14.220 without being on it. Uh, and he's been in from the, from the very beginning. So he was an excellent

00:32:19.680 guide. I do find people who make really strong arguments, not all the time, but sometimes they

00:32:27.900 started out as, as real skeptics. Absolutely. Uh, you know, and, and it kind of gives them a bit

00:32:32.160 more zeal. Uh, Doug, I'm sorry, we don't have a chair for you, but in any case, thank you for

00:32:35.480 coming on and joining us. You're welcome. You're welcome. Who else do you have back there?

00:32:38.900 I know. Uh, Peter's going to come out next from the pearly gates. Stay tuned till the end of the

00:32:44.600 broadcast. Uh, so I'm, I'm trying to think of any good arguments against this. I mean, I guess

00:32:53.420 there's the general argument against relics and religious artifacts, which is, come on,

00:32:59.760 2000 years, like, come on, we don't keep track of things for that long, which is, I know now that I

00:33:07.520 say that, that's not a very good argument, but, but you're catching the zeitgeist of the day where I

00:33:12.820 am, I have tick tock theology. I am as dangerous as the last reel that I just saw. So, and I'm not

00:33:19.900 actually infected with knowledge. I've never actually learned how to think critically about

00:33:24.220 my faith or why I believe anything's true. Yeah. When you think that the two best sources for

00:33:29.500 Alexander the Great are Arian and Plutarch writing 400 years later, and nobody ever questions Alexander

00:33:34.480 the Great. There just seems to be a hyper skepticism about Christianity and Jesus in general that brings

00:33:39.980 out the ire of many people who hate God, they hate Christianity and they hate truth. Yeah. And this

00:33:46.500 is where I love your voice, Michael, because you are a warrior for truth. You teach your audience how to

00:33:51.940 think and then how to converse about what we think in a way that's cogent, effective, persuasive, and

00:33:58.160 doesn't back down. I am concerned about the next generation. And yet we have the greatest evidences of all

00:34:05.320 time at our fingertips. This is where the school of archeology and the core, the points of tangency

00:34:11.940 with archeology and the material culture come, they fit like a hand in a glove with the things that we

00:34:17.260 hold dear from the Christian faith. And yet most people go to Google instead of God's word. And they

00:34:21.660 just think that, oh, this is like a myth, like a fairy tale, like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. There's

00:34:28.000 nothing really persuasive about my faith. I want to be clear. Jesus's death by Roman crucifixion,

00:34:34.960 which we're about to look at in a way that very few people have ever seen in your audience.

00:34:39.420 I've had to travel the world to bring these artifacts to your program. Jesus's death by

00:34:44.960 Roman crucifixion is the best established fact of the ancient world. If we cannot believe that

00:34:50.200 Jesus died by Roman crucifixion, the only thing on par with that, historically speaking, are the Roman

00:34:55.820 emperors themselves. Let that sink in. And I mean, on par with that by the sources that we have for

00:35:02.020 Jesus's death. Okay. So then what are the sources? Because I'll hear this. I'll hear things like,

00:35:07.560 I remember before I was totally convinced, you'd hear things like there were 500 eyewitnesses to the

00:35:13.440 resurrection, which is now something that I say. But, you know, what's the evidence?

00:35:18.280 Right. The evidence is the letter written to the Corinthians by Saul of Tarsus that no serious

00:35:24.000 scholar doubts that Paul wrote it. I've been to Corinth where literally the church of Corinth was that

00:35:28.760 Paul's writing to. It's written in the early 80s, 50s. That tradition, though, rises up within six

00:35:35.380 weeks of the resurrection event itself, which is 20 years prior. You have 11 sources that talk of

00:35:41.140 Jesus's death by Roman crucifixion within a historically plausible, acceptable timeline of

00:35:47.040 100 years. So, of course, you have the biblical writings. You have Tacitus. You have Suetonius.

00:35:52.200 You have Roman authors talking about this Jesus guy, this Christos. Yes, there's variance in how

00:35:58.540 his name is spelled. Of course, just like there were variants about there was never a document

00:36:03.340 that didn't have a variant on it. There are variants in how my name is spelled. I go to

00:36:06.560 Starbucks. It's always E-A-L on my cup. Yes. That's not how I spell it. Before the invention of the

00:36:10.980 printing press, there was no carbon copy, photocopy, Xerox source, everything had variants. And so

00:36:18.920 those are taken very seriously by scholars and scholars of every stripe. And then I'm so excited. I want,

00:36:26.900 we can learn a lot from the material culture. I've brought some things that I'd like you to hold,

00:36:31.420 Michael, if I could have your permission. Happily. The first thing that I want you to hold,

00:36:36.120 this is very rare. This is not a reproduction. Don't let this get lost in your pocket. This is

00:36:42.520 the temple tax coin. This is 14 grams. This is a full shekel. This would have paid for the temple tax for

00:36:50.680 two. The temple tax was a half shekel. I want you to hold this. That is Tyrian silver, my friend,

00:36:56.940 dating from the time of Pontius Pilate. In other words, that was in circulation from 26 to 36 AD.

00:37:05.780 If you were a Jew or a God-fearer coming to Israel, and by the way, this program is airing at Passover.

00:37:12.940 Yeah. So this could not be more relevant. You had to change your currency into the temple tax,

00:37:20.100 which was the Tyrian silver coin, 14 grams. And Jesus has the whip. He goes and he sees the money

00:37:29.360 changers. And it's just like you and I, we would never change our money in the airport because the

00:37:32.820 rates are always bad. It was that times a hundred at the Southern steps of Jerusalem. That right there,

00:37:39.620 also, Judas has paid 30 of those. This is it. This is the coin. That is the Tyrian silver coin.

00:37:50.000 Also, when Jesus performs a miracle and he says, he tells Peter to catch a fish and there is the

00:37:54.860 temple tax in the fish's mouth. It could have been that one. That and my Torah scroll are the two most

00:38:02.000 valuable artifacts that we have in our possession of our organization. I wanted you to hold that

00:38:07.160 because coins were the social media of the day, Michael. This is where, if I have my triplets

00:38:13.340 with me who are eight years old, and I'm trying to kind of answer your question about the artifacts,

00:38:18.040 and this shows us that what the scriptures say matter. It really did happen. Had we been there

00:38:23.220 that day, we would have seen them. This is not just kind of make-believe.

00:38:26.220 Like the quotidian details of this coin. It's amazing how well-preserved it is.

00:38:31.820 I know. That's what makes it exceedingly valuable as well.

00:38:35.260 Yeah, I have nickels that aren't as well-preserved from like 2004.

00:38:38.640 And that's a full shekel at 14 grams. And so if you go to the Southern steps today,

00:38:43.460 to the Jerusalem Archaeological Park, you can hold that in your hand and then imagine in your mind's

00:38:48.140 eye what was happening during Passover that weekend and all of the factions and cultural fractions

00:38:54.000 helping as well. I have another coin. Hold on to it. Just keep it over there by you.

00:38:59.120 Yeah, yeah. Now, in a hundred years, I can use this coin to prove the resurrection of Jesus

00:39:06.280 from a location standpoint. Okay.

00:39:09.040 The Holy Sepulchre Church, without a doubt, archaeologically speaking, is the place that

00:39:14.860 where the edicule is inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the very spot where Jesus walked

00:39:20.880 out of the tomb alive. How do we know that? Well, we need to thank Emperor Hadrian. I want you to hold

00:39:26.200 this bronze coin. That's bronze. That was silver, Tyrian silver. This is bronze.

00:39:31.620 I can tell because it's got, you know, it's a little more around.

00:39:34.360 Right. And this is also very well-preserved.

00:39:36.080 This, again, not a replica. This is an actual, from the second century, bronze coin. This is

00:39:41.240 currency. So, Michael, if we time traveled and we went back to the second century right now,

00:39:45.780 it would be a whole different era. And if we're in the city of Jerusalem, we would have to say,

00:39:49.860 Michael, let's get the coins. We've got to figure out who the God is. What's this town even

00:39:53.540 called? Where are we? So, the coins teach us so much. Well, guess what? Hadrian, because of his

00:39:58.840 hatred of the Jews, and he saw Christianity as just a Jewish sect, he wipes out Israel during the

00:40:05.880 Jewish uprisings. Remember, there are three great Jewish revolts culminating, of course, in Bar Kokhba.

00:40:10.400 But prior to that, Hadrian, this is why I never use the word Palestine. Palestine, which is a

00:40:17.960 pejorative term against the Jews, was coined by Emperor Hadrian, no pun intended, and literally

00:40:25.560 imprinted on that bronze coin as Aliyah Capitolina. He raises Jerusalem to the ground. He renames it

00:40:33.300 Aliyah Capitolina, the city of Jupiter, rather than calling it Jerusalem. He learns of this early

00:40:40.780 venerated site of this dying, rising God that early Christians, who he thought were Jews,

00:40:47.140 worshipped. And what does he do? He actually demolishes it. He puts a temple to the god Venus

00:40:53.300 in Jupiter at the site of Golgotha and the tomb of Christ of the resurrection, thereby preserving it

00:40:59.320 for us. Aliyah gets there 200 years later, Constantine's mom. So, I can use one coin to prove

00:41:05.660 the resurrection. That's called being hoisted with your own petard, I think.

00:41:08.180 Yes, that's right. When you accidentally preserve the site. Because that's another one.

00:41:11.660 Unintended consequences.

00:41:13.340 We'll have more on the Shred of Turin in just a moment. First, though,

00:41:17.380 if you want to get the latest news, and if you want to understand what the news actually means,

00:41:20.940 you've got to come check out and subscribe to The Michael Knowles Show every weekday at noon

00:41:26.800 Eastern. I take you beneath the surface of daily political events to reveal their historical,

00:41:33.020 philosophical, even religious roots. That's quite fitting, given what we're talking about right now.

00:41:36.920 Catch it Monday through Friday, noon Eastern. Now back to Michael Land, The Shroud of Turin.

00:41:43.620 I've never been to the Holy Land. I've been invited and I've wanted to go.

00:41:48.020 That's because you need to go with Audrey and me, my wife.

00:41:50.060 Apparently. Yeah, yeah. Seriously. Well, it's better that than pulling up my Google.

00:41:54.320 Yes, that's right.

00:41:55.280 That's right.

00:41:55.820 But I've never known. I've heard conflicting reports as to whether or not the Church of the

00:42:00.520 Holy Sepulcher really is the Holy Sepulcher.

00:42:02.220 Well, is it okay if I'm transparent on your show for the audience? I love the Garden Tomb. I lead

00:42:06.780 tours there. I take you. So for the benefit of our audience, there's two sites. Non-Catholics

00:42:11.840 always go to the Garden Tomb because everything is magical about it. It's a garden. The tomb is there.

00:42:18.000 You take communion. It's worshipful. But even my good friend, who's the director of the Garden

00:42:22.840 Tomb, believes that it happened at the Holy Sepulcher Church. The tomb is 800 years older than the

00:42:27.920 time of Christ. It's just too early. And for evangelicals, now this wasn't my, this was not

00:42:34.400 my experience at the Holy Sepulcher Church, but some evangelicals go there and, you know, Michael,

00:42:39.400 if they're not used to the incense and…

00:42:42.540 Smells and bells.

00:42:43.600 The sincerity of worship. Because again, six different denominations. It's not just Catholics.

00:42:48.040 Six denominations. And I've filmed all over the Holy Sepulcher. Six denominations vie for control of

00:42:54.100 it. So, I mean, you have a lot of interesting things, worship rituals happening. Everything's

00:42:58.680 right about it archaeologically. It goes back to the first century. It's limestone. Speaking of that,

00:43:05.060 back to our signature piece. There is a limestone signature from the grottos, as you would call it,

00:43:13.340 of Jerusalem, from the tombs that appears on the shroud. Doug mentioned the pollen. I just had a

00:43:19.980 friend who became a Christian, 88 years of age. An Ivy League man, by the way, like you.

00:43:24.580 Well, yeah, okay. You're only diminishing his credibility.

00:43:27.480 Yeah, that's right. An executive, but a thinker. And when he listened to my lecture on just the

00:43:34.880 pollen, spores that are found on the shroud that bloom only in Israel in the time of Passover,

00:43:42.700 if you're a forger, how are you going to know that? How are you going to do that? And so,

00:43:46.960 there's pollen, but there's also a specific limestone signature from the soil of Jerusalem

00:43:54.620 that's on the shroud. And guess where it's at? I'm going to try not to choke up at this part. This

00:43:59.860 is so moving to me because we know Jesus carries the cross. We know this is the back right here of

00:44:07.780 the man of the shroud. There are additional abrasions on the shoulder. Can you imagine being

00:44:13.680 flogged and scourged? You're dehydrated. You have high levels of ferritin. You're experiencing organ

00:44:18.340 failure. Your creatinine is off. Your kidneys are shutting down. You're dehydrated. Then you're

00:44:23.260 asked to carry the cross at least a half mile to Golgotha. It weighs 125 pounds. Jesus only weighs

00:44:28.900 maybe 170 pounds and less after the loss of bodily fluids. He falls to the ground, Michael.

00:44:35.300 And the tradition is that Simon of Cyrene is tasked by the Romans to carry it. Accordingly,

00:44:42.420 the man of the shroud, there is soil in the feet, but there's soil all over the knees and then in

00:44:47.680 the tip of the nose. When Jesus falls, carrying the cross for us, he falls face down into the ground.

00:44:56.780 And there's even soil samples at the tip of the nose where he fell. Of course, he has a separated

00:45:01.680 septum, broken nose. All of the, and I'd like to share a little bit more. And I'm just praying right

00:45:08.840 now, even as I'm sharing with this, that those that are watching will realize the message of the

00:45:14.580 shroud ultimately is God's love for you and me. So we have an anxiety epidemic, as you know,

00:45:21.120 you've covered it. We have a loneliness, suicidal ideation. This time of the year causes many people

00:45:26.280 to reflect, does God really love me? I mean, how do I know? All you have to do is look at the cross

00:45:31.140 and what Jesus went through. St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans, but God demonstrated his

00:45:37.220 love for us. What a demonstration, Michael. You know, it's such a great, because even some people,

00:45:42.780 they don't like to look at the crucifix exactly, or, you know, the, even, I suppose, the man on the

00:45:48.640 shroud, this beautiful bronze statue you just gave me, or sculpture rather. And they say, no, well,

00:45:54.760 you know, Christ came off the cross and then he was resurrected. And so we don't, but, you know,

00:45:59.140 why would you want to look at the bloodied, tortured body of Christ? But the answer is

00:46:04.200 just as you say, because that's how much he loves you.

00:46:06.460 Exactly. It's, it is love in its most radical form. Michael, I could sit here today and tell

00:46:11.560 my wife, oh, I love you so much. But you know what I did before I flew here last night? Total

00:46:15.500 power move. I left a note on the pillow for her about her strong faith. And I got, and how much,

00:46:21.480 and a book that she's reading by Tom Wright right now about small, great, small faith and a great

00:46:26.200 God. And I just said, your faith is magnificent. I express and translate my love to my wife in a way

00:46:32.100 that she knows is unique. How does, how do we know God loves us? He translates his love for us in the

00:46:38.700 cross. And also there is such a lightweight view of sin today. We call it everything but sin, don't we?

00:46:47.280 Oh, that's, relativism has so permeated our culture. It's become completely dangerous to

00:46:53.040 have any beliefs because, well, that's your truth. We're not going to say that's wrong. No.

00:46:57.380 Sin disfigures the beautiful face of my Savior. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It disfigured his face. Jesus

00:47:04.340 said, and it's quoted in Hebrew, sacrifices and offerings you do not require, but a body you

00:47:09.780 prepared for me. When I look at the body, I think about all he went through and what sin costs God.

00:47:17.640 Sin costs God everything. It cost him his son. We have sons. I have four, you have three.

00:47:23.120 You can imagine you would never love someone enough, even the most righteous person, to

00:47:27.780 allow your son to die in their place. I want you to hold the replica of the crucifixion nail

00:47:33.600 nine inches long. This is one of the most striking features that, again, smack of authenticity of

00:47:40.160 the shroud. In early Christian art, we have the holes in the hands right here in the palms. But

00:47:46.140 actually, of course, for the Greek scholars watching, which there are very few, God bless those

00:47:50.540 of us who are watching. The same word in Greek is hand, palm, and wrist.

00:47:55.900 The wrist, right, yeah. The shroud gets it right. Michael, I want you to see the shroud. You can see

00:48:01.060 the arms that are folded. They come down in a V shape. And the penetration is perfectly in the

00:48:09.020 wrists. Because a forger wouldn't have known this. If you crucified someone, you put it through the

00:48:14.100 hands. It's not going to support those ligaments. Of course, because medieval art, renaissance,

00:48:17.460 art, really even art today. It takes license. Yeah, it takes license and places the wound in the

00:48:22.220 hands. But I remember even when I was a kid, this is some good catechesis, pointed out, you know,

00:48:28.920 really, it's the wrist. If it would have been the hands, it would have just fallen off. And that is

00:48:32.740 consistent with the nail prints, the scars, the wrists of the crucified man of the shroud, and the

00:48:39.200 feet. Wow. I guess this is the recurrent theme, is if it were a forgery, this would have had to be,

00:48:53.300 I mean, it's sort of preposterous even to suggest, but it would have had to be the most

00:48:57.460 detail-oriented forger ever. To get exactly the right dust, and it would have to be a miracle

00:49:03.540 forgery. We'd have to go buy a lottery ticket right if we were that person. And again, it just goes

00:49:07.740 beyond the pale. This is, again, how much information is enough to be convinced. Yeah. And we don't stop

00:49:12.980 there, if I may, Michael. Please. The flagrum. Flagrum. Yeah. I think it's the most understated verse

00:49:22.760 in the New Testament. And Pilate had Jesus flogged. That's all the verse says. This is a Roman

00:49:30.800 flagrum. I wouldn't call it a cat of nine tails. That's kind of a modernism. This is a Roman scourge.

00:49:38.860 Yeah. We know that the crucified man, as scholars, counted up the amount of wounds. This is going to

00:49:45.960 blow your mind. 372 wounds, over 120 lashes. Each lash would leave three impressions. You see the lead

00:49:56.080 barbells, the dumbbell-shaped bar, and you feel the weight of those. Yeah, yeah.

00:50:01.800 Well, so that we know that it would have had three. Right. That's kind of fitting, isn't it? Yes. You

00:50:08.420 know, the tripartite. Exactly. God. So much of this is interesting. Or rather, the three distinct

00:50:13.360 one divine unity of the Godhead. Yeah. So there's two executioners, as it were, scourging him.

00:50:22.160 And Michael, in our tour, who is the man of the shroud that we're doing across the country right

00:50:27.080 now, we have an image. There is not a part of the body of Jesus that was not abused, traumatized,

00:50:34.560 beaten. Every aspect, front and back, even in the pelvic region. We don't have the lateral sides

00:50:44.780 in the image. We only have the front and back. And so I estimate 700 wounds from the flagrum alone

00:50:52.660 on the crucified man of the cross. Even Mel Gibson didn't really come close in the R-rated

00:50:59.900 passion of the Christ. That's how bad it is. I don't think any of us could watch it. So Jesus,

00:51:05.260 again, I'm going somewhere with this as a New Testament scholar. I'm not privileging this

00:51:09.260 because of a religious bias. I am taking this to what I personally know of Jewish burial traditions

00:51:14.160 and Roman crucifixion and execution. No one was crucified the way Jesus was crucified. He's

00:51:20.540 crucified in a particularly heinous, demonic way. That makes him utterly unique as our Messiah who

00:51:27.860 dies in our place. Right now, download the Hallow app. What this means is you can join Jeff Cavins

00:51:33.740 and Jonathan Rumi on Hallow for a prayer experience unlike any other. The Holy Week in the Holy Land

00:51:38.840 is an immersive video prayer series where you will walk the sights of Christ's passion, death,

00:51:43.220 and resurrection alongside Bible scholar Jeff Cavins and Jonathan Rumi, who portrays Christ in the

00:51:48.580 chosen. This project was especially meaningful as Jonathan experienced the Holy Land for the first

00:51:52.980 time while preparing to film the crucifixion scenes. You will have the opportunity to pilgrimage

00:51:57.160 with Jonathan and Jeff going deeper in meditation and prayer on the last days of our Lord's sojourn

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00:52:06.360 Jerusalem, visit Caiaphas' house, walk the Via Dolorosa, stand at the foot of the cross at Calvary,

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00:52:30.060 Hallow Now and get three months for free. If you asked Pilate or, you know, some Roman

00:52:36.300 centurion or something, hey, you know, how come you're crucifying this guy this way? Right. Especially

00:52:41.480 after Pilate says, basically, this man's done nothing wrong and I don't, I wipe my hands of it and I

00:52:46.240 don't, well, my wife's having nightmares and I don't, you know, by the way, pious tradition. Yes.

00:52:50.240 What tradition says about the nightmare? No. Again, this is just tradition. There's no,

00:52:56.300 you know, there's no scriptural basis for this. Educate me. The pious tradition says that,

00:53:01.360 so Pontius Pilate, who, you know, condemns our Lord to death, his wife has problems. Right.

00:53:07.100 You know, I'm having dreams about this man. Don't, you know, get washed of this man. And the sacred

00:53:13.400 tradition says that the dream she has is hearing her husband's name chanted in every church in the

00:53:19.620 world for 2000 years during the creed. Wow. Crucified under Pontius Pilate. Suffered death

00:53:24.900 and was buried. Wow. That gives me chills. So again, it's, it's a pious tradition, but I,

00:53:30.360 well, I point this out in body of proof that Jesus wasn't, why, why is he crucified? Because

00:53:35.960 these are excellent questions we have to ask critically. What is it about Jesus that caused

00:53:41.560 this particular hatred? Well, sure. There's a demonic influence behind it without a doubt,

00:53:45.900 but there's also historical influence. Jesus is not the only messianic contender in the first

00:53:50.780 century. Yeah. I actually list all 10. We have 10 different men who stepped up and said, hey,

00:53:55.820 I'm the son of God. Follow me. In fact, two of them are mentioned in the book of Acts. They have

00:54:00.040 much larger followings than Egypt. Remember the one who went out in the wilderness in Egypt? Another

00:54:04.180 had a following of 4,000. So Jesus though, I believe Pilate, who had a no-win job, by the way,

00:54:12.020 I mean, he just, and he would later get on the outs with Tiberius and die by suicide. So Pilate

00:54:17.640 essentially takes out all of Roman anger on these messianic contenders in his mind that would come

00:54:25.220 against the throne. And again, you have a lot of influence from the Essene Dead Sea Scroll community

00:54:30.020 at this time as well. Remember the Dead Sea Scrolls prophesied that someday a messianic figure

00:54:36.180 would come, would kill the Ketim, the Romans, would kill the Roman Empire, and then set up rule

00:54:44.120 today, right now in the land of Israel. So one can imagine why Caesar and Pontius Pilate were a little

00:54:51.120 nervous. Right. These were fighting words. And so Jesus has put down the titulus. Have you seen

00:54:57.140 the titulus in three languages? Iesus, Basileus, you die on, here is Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews.

00:55:05.720 Oh yeah. Jesus, Jesus, Nazareneus, Rex, Judeorum. Yes. In Aramaic. I can't, I can't do the other

00:55:11.580 ones. Only the Latin. In Latin. I did the Greek, you did the Latin. Well done. So we just need an

00:55:16.320 Aramaic now. Do we have any, do we have any ancient Jews in the building? We only have young Jews in the

00:55:21.980 building. Another thing I would like to point out with your permission, Michael, is the spear,

00:55:26.980 the lance. Doug pointed something out and I want to make sure it's not lost on the audience.

00:55:30.780 Jesus, of course, Passover is happening. Jesus is on the cross. Pilate is shocked that he was so soon

00:55:37.300 dead, if you recall. And yet because of Jewish sensitivities, Pilate knows I've got to get these

00:55:41.600 dead bodies off the cross. You know, we've got a, this is a high Sabbath. This is the Passover. This

00:55:46.460 is a major Jewish festival. Everything's at a powder keg. Go break their legs. They go to break the

00:55:52.500 criminal's legs. They don't break Jesus's legs because they see he's already dead. But just to make sure,

00:55:58.120 if I may. Yeah, yeah. I brought this. It was so fun. It was so fun getting this on American Airlines.

00:56:04.820 I can't bring my Bic lighting half the time. I want you to hold this, the weight of this spear.

00:56:11.600 It's three and a half centimeters wide. Just to make sure, again, back to the demonic way Jesus is

00:56:17.520 killed. Just to make sure he's really dead. Let's just go ahead and lance him in the heart.

00:56:23.720 And what do we have on the shroud? Jesus is pierced in the side through rib five and six.

00:56:29.540 It goes a few centimeters up. It breaks through to the heart, the chamber around the heart,

00:56:35.420 blood and water. How would a forger know this? Et cetera. Comes out. And as Doug pointed out,

00:56:41.220 that blood in the side wound is post-mortem blood. So if we wanted to fake it, Michael,

00:56:47.660 well, let's just kill a guy in the process to make sure we really get the forgery right.

00:56:52.220 In order, if you faked it, presumably it would be living blood. Exactly.

00:56:57.440 From a living man. Not post-mortem blood like this in the Sudarium. So are you seeing the trails I'm

00:57:04.380 leaving right now of evidence? I mean, it's hard to fathom. This is why I say I believe in the

00:57:09.420 authenticity of the shroud because I'm not irrational. Yeah. Yeah. How much more? It's like to those who have

00:57:15.600 faith, you know, no evidence is necessary. And to those without faith, no evidence is sufficient.

00:57:20.480 Right. Exactly. And I want to speak to that. And this is where your program is so important.

00:57:25.440 The most dangerous place a person can get is when you stop seeking truth,

00:57:29.780 when you stop learning truth, because you then insert your own truth, which is relativism.

00:57:35.680 Fascinatingly enough, Jesus performs his greatest miracle in the last week. And he goes to Bethany

00:57:42.660 each night during Passion Week, 1.8 miles from the city center of Jerusalem. I filmed inside the tomb

00:57:48.220 of Lazarus. He performs a miracle in John 11 and he raises Lazarus from the dead. And there are still

00:57:54.460 truth deniers, Jesus deniers, people that hate God. They hate the gospel. They hate truth. They hate

00:58:00.700 salvation. They love Satan. And they say, oh no, now we have to kill Lazarus and Jesus. We have to kill

00:58:06.460 them again. Some people are so hardened in their disbelief. No evidence is enough. And that is a

00:58:13.940 dangerous place to be. So one of the outcomes or applications of this interview is we have to ask

00:58:18.960 ourselves, am I still seeking truth? Am I seeking truth? Am I a truth seeker? Or have I created my own

00:58:24.640 truth? Am I foisting on some false narrative on my life? And why do I believe what I believe? These are

00:58:29.580 all very healthy questions. Now what I'm about to show you, Michael, leaves this question beyond all

00:58:37.460 doubt, whether or not the man of the shroud is Jesus. If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like

00:58:42.600 a duck, it must be a duck, right? The crown of thorns, I was under the impression was some kind of

00:58:49.100 wreath, some kind of sweatband. Yeah, in art, right. It's just a little. Yeah, just something, again,

00:58:53.440 just for right or wrong, influenced by ancient Christian tradition and art mainly. I'm in

00:59:00.360 Jerusalem. Here I've published 250,000 words on the resurrection. I thought I'd learned everything

00:59:05.520 there was to learn until I saw the crown of thorns. It not only took my breath away, but Michael, I want

00:59:13.380 you to hold this. And at risk of maiming myself. Yes, but it's worth it. This is the helmet of thorns.

00:59:22.100 Yes. So I had heard, I remember reading or hearing at some point that actually it's like 3D,

00:59:31.780 or not just 3D, but it goes around the whole head. The whole head. It's really like a helmet.

00:59:35.940 Like a cap, a helmet. And so what do we see the correspondence with? These are three-inch

00:59:41.220 Jerusalem thorns, excuse me, Bethlehem thorns. When they dry, they're as sharp as nails. I'm going to

00:59:47.220 say to you what I said to my triplet voice here. Try to prick your finger on the end of one. You can see.

00:59:51.160 I just did. This crown of thorns, the gospel of Mark, which is the earliest gospel,

00:59:59.480 it says, and the Romans fashioned a crown of thorns and placed it on his head to humiliate him.

01:00:06.200 This is the king of the Jews. They placed this on his head. And what do we see on the shroud?

01:00:12.080 About 50 puncture wounds in the scalp. It would have caused profuse bleeding. And so when he goes,

01:00:18.900 echo homo, you hold the man. You can imagine crown of thorns, bloodstained. The scene would

01:00:25.660 have been incomprehensible. It also just occurs to me looking at this, for people who will find it

01:00:32.400 unfamiliar, that's not what the crown of thorns looks like. This is what an actual crown looks

01:00:36.820 like. Actual crowns are not headbands. Right. If you've ever seen like the crown of St. Stephen,

01:00:41.040 whatever, you know, a crown in the UK. They look like this. Yes. They cover your whole head.

01:00:46.280 Huh. And isn't that fascinating? This is what leaves it beyond all doubt to me. Speaking

01:00:52.480 from a historical scholar's perspective, it could not be anyone other than Jesus of Nazareth. My friend,

01:01:00.080 Bruno Barberis, who I will be with in just a few weeks in Turin, Italy, has assigned a probability

01:01:05.900 to, is this anyone other than Jesus? And he's published his findings. Again, not a preacher,

01:01:11.580 not a priest. He's a mathematician at University of Turin. The probability, the man of the shroud,

01:01:17.100 according to mathematician Bruno Barberis, is anyone other than Jesus is one in 200 billion.

01:01:24.080 So I guess there's still a chance for the skeptics.

01:01:26.260 Yeah, it is. You're saying there's a chance. Yes. But the connection being that the wounds from

01:01:34.520 this particular crown of thorns match the man of the shroud in a way that, you know,

01:01:41.380 a little laurel wreath or something wouldn't have. And leaves it beyond all doubt it's anyone other

01:01:45.660 than Jesus of Nazareth. Because the other guys didn't get this. No. No one did. We know of one

01:01:50.700 in history who was crucified. This is one of one. Utterly unique. And again, you come back to the

01:01:57.720 personal application of this is love in its most radical form for us. That, you know, when you handed

01:02:05.520 it to me, I thought, oh, should I try it on? Yeah, exactly. Give it a try. Actually, I'd prefer not to,

01:02:08.920 if possible. And there you go. And I love that this is the centerpiece of our interview. Yes.

01:02:17.540 Yes. Yeah, exactly. What do you make of the claims of relics of the crown of thorns that go

01:02:24.700 back a long way? Like when Notre Dame de Paris burned down some years ago, a priest ran in because

01:02:30.520 there was said to be a piece of the true crown. Do any of those claims convince you or no?

01:02:37.280 They don't because they're unlike the shroud in that you just can't test it scientifically against

01:02:42.640 anything. And so I'm not discounting it, but this is kind of my skepticism also oozing out of me again,

01:02:48.480 and that when you ask me a historical question, I give you a historical answer, not a faith answer.

01:02:52.640 I don't privilege it. And so the interesting thing about the Sudarium in the Shroud of Turin is in the

01:02:58.820 Catholic Church, it is both an artifact and a relic. Yeah. Meaning those are two of two. Yeah.

01:03:04.120 There are no other relics that can also be scientifically studied. Interesting. Yes. Because,

01:03:09.120 right, so what you're saying is, you know, like if someone, if you found out someday, you get up to

01:03:13.900 the pearly gates, you find out actually the crown, the thorns in Notre Dame, that actually was part of

01:03:20.340 the crown. You'd say, okay, yeah. But what you're saying here is you can know with certainty through

01:03:28.700 natural reason that the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Orvieto are legit. Jesus's grave clothes.

01:03:38.060 They're actually Christ's grave clothes. Whereas with the other relics, you think, oh,

01:03:42.780 is this a piece of, you know, St. Anthony's bone? Maybe. Maybe it is. But you just say,

01:03:49.320 I can't test it. Right. Exactly. And that is the fascinating thing about these two relics,

01:03:54.780 the Sudarium and the Shroud. You test them. It is the moment of resurrection. It's captured in history,

01:04:00.700 blinding light in the laboratories, 34,000 trillion watts of energy in one fortieth of a

01:04:07.620 billionth of a second. Otherwise, it would have scorched. I mean, think about that. This is what

01:04:11.880 science can't reproduce is how this flash happened. I speak to young people all the time about the

01:04:17.400 Shroud. It's the equivalent of 6.4 gigawatts. And you and I will remember the greatest movie of all

01:04:21.900 time, 1985's Back to the Future. Doc Brown, 1.21 gigawatts to go back in time. So five times the amount

01:04:28.320 of that energy to bring the body of Jesus back to life. We just can't quantify it. We can't

01:04:33.240 reproduce it. We don't know how it occurred. We just see the effect of it. Well, that's an amazing

01:04:38.080 approach to it because I've come across a number of relics and some, you know, have really undeniable

01:04:46.240 provenance. Right. This is St. John Vianney's heart. Right. It would be hard for them to fake that.

01:04:51.760 Yes. Some, though, that go back to antiquity, I believe is a matter of faith. Right. I believe in the

01:04:56.720 relic and maybe it's got good sort of oral history and provenance to it, but I can't, you know, as you

01:05:02.100 say, I can't really test it. Whereas with something like the Shroud, what's the argument against it?

01:05:11.060 Other than carbon dating, we've talked about the carbon dating thing and which appears to,

01:05:14.920 so if you, what would be the best argument you could make against the Shroud and or the Sudarium?

01:05:21.040 I couldn't make a cogent argument academically against the Shroud. I would have to appeal to

01:05:31.120 certain arguments from silence in certain times. That might be the strongest, an argument from

01:05:37.980 silence. Well, we should have more information about this. Why don't we see it appear more? But

01:05:44.140 again, when I understand when I'm infected with knowledge of history and I understand the miracle

01:05:50.400 it is that before the edict of Milan, AD 313, it's a miracle we have any fragments of the New

01:05:56.220 Testament and yet we have 5,000. I begin understanding, wow, it's a miracle that we have what we have. We

01:06:02.260 do in the Christian faith have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to artifacts. The only thing,

01:06:06.860 the skeptic who is YouTube smart or TikTok smart.

01:06:10.720 That's a good phrase. I've never, YouTube smart.

01:06:13.680 Yeah, they, the only thing they'll wave in our face is this erroneous carbon 14 dating. And we

01:06:20.220 don't use that in biblical scholarship. We don't use that to date anything because it destroys the

01:06:25.380 sample. It, you know, it destroys it. So, you know, my prayer is that ongoing research will be done,

01:06:31.840 but I have enough to be convinced that I wouldn't be sitting here today in your beautiful studio if I

01:06:36.300 didn't think this was the grave clothes of Jesus, if I didn't think the Sudarium was authentic.

01:06:40.240 When you look at the blood type, type AB blood, if there was ever a priestly bloodline,

01:06:45.660 it would be Semitic blood that less than 3% of the world's population has type AB blood.

01:06:51.540 When you think of Max Fry spending five years of his life studying the pollen spores,

01:06:56.140 and they're like breadcrumbs on the shroud. As I've already mentioned, they only bloom in springtime,

01:07:00.600 but there's also pollen that traces the antiquity of the shroud that antedates the carbon 14 dating.

01:07:06.780 We have pollen in the shroud from Edessa, where it appears in the early Byzantine time,

01:07:12.660 the 7th, 6th century. We have pollen from Constantinople, where it was, again, it seems

01:07:18.020 to always be advancing and escaping the Muslim invasions, the caliphates. And then into Greece,

01:07:24.280 we have it, we believe, in Athens. Then pollen, of course, from France, and then ultimately in Turin.

01:07:29.420 Now, other, why this program is so important today, what we're talking,

01:07:33.180 I don't know if you're aware, the Catholic Church held a press conference in the last few days,

01:07:38.240 and the shroud will not be on display this year for the Jubilee.

01:07:41.860 I'm going Italy this year, so it better be on display.

01:07:43.480 Exactly. So you need to call the Archbishop of Turin. It's not going to be on display.

01:07:48.020 They're doing a virtual thing. And it hasn't been on display since 2015 publicly.

01:07:54.520 I wonder, the first place my mind went, and maybe it's because you just mentioned the Muslim invasions,

01:07:59.240 are they afraid of some kind of attack, obviously?

01:08:02.840 Yes, and they're wanting to preserve it. There is some concern, Michael, that the image is vanishing,

01:08:08.140 that the image is going away. We don't know that the image will always be there. Again,

01:08:12.000 it's razor thin, 0.2 microns. It's superficial, the image itself. So this is as close as we're going

01:08:22.940 to get to the shroud on the Michael Knowles, Michael Ann broadcast. And what's fascinating

01:08:28.260 about it, too, do you have your phone with you by chance?

01:08:31.680 Yes, I do.

01:08:32.500 I want you to do an exercise on camera with me, if you don't mind.

01:08:35.440 Okay.

01:08:36.380 Open up settings. We can't help the Android people that are watching, but you want color inversion.

01:08:41.440 Yeah, yeah, settings.

01:08:42.100 Click on accessibility. Find accessibility. It should be near the top.

01:08:47.640 Accessibility, okay.

01:08:48.220 And then click display and text.

01:08:49.840 Display and text.

01:08:50.560 And then scroll down to classic invert. You can do this at home watching the Michael

01:08:55.160 Ann show. Do you have a, now open your camera.

01:08:58.380 Ooh, trippy.

01:08:58.840 Michael, yeah, I look crazy.

01:09:00.120 Trippy, man.

01:09:00.800 Look at the shroud. And you're going to see what Secondo Pia saw. Look at the face of the

01:09:05.760 shroud right here.

01:09:08.560 Oh, man.

01:09:12.380 I'm going to take a picture.

01:09:14.780 And you can trace the entire body. You're going to go down to the crown. You can go to the face,

01:09:19.660 the chest, but go down to the nail prints and the wrist. You'll see the abrasions on the arm.

01:09:25.100 You're seeing what Secondo Pia saw in 1898 in the dark room, where his two exposures took 14 minutes

01:09:32.280 and 20 minutes on glass plates. And he never more appropriately, Michael, uttered the following

01:09:37.380 three words when he saw the face. Oh, my God.

01:09:41.920 Not in vain. Not in vain.

01:09:44.620 Wow.

01:09:45.180 So you're seeing what you believe is the negative, Michael.

01:09:48.600 Yeah.

01:09:48.860 But it's really the photopositive.

01:09:50.340 Right, right.

01:09:51.560 And I want you to look at the face.

01:09:52.480 Because you can just see, I mean.

01:09:54.240 May I?

01:09:55.120 Please, yeah.

01:09:56.060 Do you see the hair?

01:09:56.800 Am I going to see your skeleton?

01:09:57.740 Yes.

01:09:58.580 Do you see the hair?

01:10:00.120 Yeah.

01:10:00.440 This is really cool. Revelation chapter 1, verse 14 says that Jesus' hair is white like wool.

01:10:08.500 And the resurrected man of the shroud has white hair, just like Revelation chapter 1 says,

01:10:13.420 Jesus in all his glory.

01:10:17.020 You can do this with your boys. If you see the shroud, even on the computer screen,

01:10:21.780 you could invert their tablets if they have one.

01:10:23.800 Yeah.

01:10:24.020 And you can have them see this. And by the way, while you have it in classic invert,

01:10:28.540 and it's color inversion for the androids, you can see the back. You can see the abrasions on

01:10:33.460 the shoulders that go at a diagonal shape down to the left shoulder. You can see all the whipping.

01:10:37.860 The blood really pops out, especially the post-mortem blood. And again, you're seeing it. It's like

01:10:44.600 you have x-ray vision right now. And this is the powerful part that kicked off modern scientific

01:10:50.920 exploration of the shroud. You say, J.J., when did the research begin? It began with Secando Pia in

01:10:56.540 1898 when this photo came out. And then more higher resolution for their time, the Henri 1930s

01:11:03.520 photos came out. And that's what C.S. Lewis has in his bedroom.

01:11:06.440 You know, I love these little winks of Providence. This might be a little bit of a bigger wink of

01:11:13.000 Providence, that when you mention something like his white hair, that that's a little wink.

01:11:17.640 You know, what does that mean? You know, the Christian view is so rich in symbols.

01:11:23.320 Yes, you better believe it.

01:11:25.260 You know, and even the notion that one would not be able to decipher

01:11:29.340 the shroud for 1800 plus years until photography is invented.

01:11:35.800 It's like God knew this would happen in the future.

01:11:38.340 Almost as if.

01:11:40.880 I'm calling it now a controlled revelation tied to technology as we get closer to the

01:11:45.820 second coming of Jesus Christ. We're getting closer every day.

01:11:49.840 And we shouldn't be surprised by, based on the archaeology, if the resurrection of Jesus

01:11:55.220 really happened, and we believe it did with all our hearts, there should be evidence like this.

01:11:59.520 Of course. Of course. And how do you fake it?

01:12:06.200 Yeah. And the cool thing for your audience is I know of no other program that has all the

01:12:10.940 artifacts, the sudarium, and the shroud all in one show, in one sitting. So my prayer is that this

01:12:16.600 broadcast will be used for years to come to set the record straight on the shroud.

01:12:21.760 So I have a Jewish friend who, you know, I try to have at least a few of those.

01:12:26.480 Yes. Absolutely.

01:12:27.340 A Jewish friend of mine says that the way in which the man of the shroud is buried is not how a Jew

01:12:36.740 of the first century would have been buried. And I don't know, you got to ask him how he thinks

01:12:42.740 he would be buried. But from your historical understanding, does that hold any weight or no?

01:12:47.380 No. Jesus is buried according properly, not honorably, but properly according to Jewish

01:12:52.820 burial traditions. He's buried by two members of the Sanhedrin. According to the mission of the

01:12:58.320 Sanhedrin, condemned a criminal to death. It was the Sanhedrin's responsibility to bury them.

01:13:02.640 What do we see in the eyewitness testimony embedded in the gospels? Two members of the Sanhedrin

01:13:06.940 request the body of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. So they're following Jewish burial

01:13:12.500 traditions. I would actually quote a friend, an atheist friend, an atheist Jewish archaeologist by the name

01:13:19.260 of Jody Magnus, who I quote and body of proof. She's an atheist. She's an archaeologist. She's

01:13:24.840 Jewish. And she says the gospels get it right according to Jesus' burial traditions. They get

01:13:30.740 it completely right. Jesus is buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb. The body is placed in a burial

01:13:37.280 shroud. We have the shroud at Masada. We have the man of the shroud that was discovered actually

01:13:43.440 buried with a individual who died who had Hansen's disease. You know, the Jesus deniers said the New

01:13:49.860 Testament was wrong, that there was no such thing as leprosy. And then they found the tomb of the shroud

01:13:54.760 in the old city of Jerusalem. And it was airtight when it was located, when it was discovered by James

01:14:02.160 Tabor. And what's fascinating, there was still flesh on the linen garments, on the linen burial clothes,

01:14:09.000 showing that the person had died of leprosy. So I would just kindly respond to your friend that

01:14:14.120 they need to read up a little bit more in Jewish burial traditions. I won't be that kind. I'll be

01:14:18.920 actually very blunt. You couldn't be more wrong. My same Jewish friend, he objects to the shroud

01:14:25.360 because he says that the Gospel of St. John describes our Lord as being wrapped in strips of linen and that

01:14:32.680 the burial tradition would have involved strips of linen, not a single cloth. So what do you say to that?

01:14:38.380 Well, I would open my Greek New Testament, again, very kindly with your friend.

01:14:42.140 And I would say there are three. My wife helps me be kind. It's one of my New Year's resolutions.

01:14:48.500 I would show him that athonia in Greek, which is fine linen, is used in the singular and plural

01:14:53.580 in all four of the Gospel accounts. Thinden is used in sudarium. Those are the three Greek terms

01:15:00.320 used to describe the linen garments that Jesus is buried in. The thinden, Michael, for your Jewish

01:15:06.760 friend, is like a pita that wraps the body. It is the complete cloth from back to front that wraps

01:15:13.140 over the body. The linen strips would then wrap around horizontally, keeping the feet together,

01:15:19.980 the hands together, and then sometimes even a jaw band because you don't want to

01:15:24.520 look like this when you die. And again, that is consistent with the burial traditions with Lazarus.

01:15:30.620 So there is no contradiction between what we see with the shroud and the athonia in singular

01:15:37.000 and plural in the New Testament, sindon and sudarium. Does that make that clear? It covers the arms,

01:15:44.060 it covers the feet, and it keeps the body together when the body begins to decompose. It doesn't fall

01:15:49.340 off the shelf, etc. Right. No, that does make sense. Also because there were just random strips

01:15:54.220 of linen. No. I don't know, you'd have like flesh peeking out. You would, and the Jews did not

01:15:57.800 practice mummification, okay? They practiced burying in a shroud. Yeah, because he had also said to me,

01:16:05.640 as he was preparing me for all of my skepticism about the shroud, he said, well, they just wouldn't

01:16:10.820 have had time. Between, you know, they take him off the cross at 3 p.m., they got to get ready for

01:16:16.380 the festivities of the evening. So they wouldn't have, but I thought, how long does it take to wrap

01:16:19.740 someone in a shroud? Not, about one minute. You're right, yeah. And the, Jesus is only buried 200 feet.

01:16:27.560 Remember, Joseph of Arimathea, his plot, as it were, his tomb, which was hewn into a rock quarry,

01:16:33.580 where I filmed at the Eticule, was on the main entrance in and out of town. A lot of people, too,

01:16:38.120 doubt the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, because they forget that Agrippa extended the walls of

01:16:43.660 the city, the old city of Jerusalem, in AD 44. So it would have been outside the city where Jesus

01:16:49.000 was crucified in Golgotha, overlooking the quarry. It's only 200 feet from where he was crucified.

01:16:54.640 So we can walk 200 feet, wrap a body in a shroud, and then I would remind your friend,

01:16:58.940 they would also have to become ceremonially clean themselves. They would have had to visit a mikvah

01:17:03.200 before sundown. So yes, they did it in haste, but it doesn't mean that

01:17:08.040 they didn't wrap the body properly. One of the notable features of the image,

01:17:12.520 it's not just that it's, you know, photo negative, but that it seems to, I've at least heard,

01:17:20.020 I don't really know the evidence for this, that it's like three-dimensional.

01:17:23.560 Correct. How's that?

01:17:25.620 Michael, you're hitting up a very fascinating aspect. In fact, the question you're asking right

01:17:30.200 now is what gave rise in 1976 to the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project. Two Air Force Academy

01:17:38.720 professors, physicist Eric Jumper and John Jackson, they're at the Air Force Academy as professors.

01:17:44.920 They have a VP8 image analyzer. You can look this up on YouTube and see how a VP8 image analyzer works.

01:17:51.180 It was designed by NASA to study the topography of surfaces of planets.

01:17:56.680 They take an image of the shroud and they use the VP8 image analyzer to analyze the shroud. And they

01:18:05.160 begin to notice there is a topography. There is 3D information encoded in the linen shroud that when

01:18:13.360 you look at it, you see the face of Jesus pop out in a 3D way, the man of the shroud. And nothing else

01:18:20.720 did that. When they put pictures of their children through the VP8 image analyzer, they're just

01:18:25.080 marred and sloppy and there's no definition. But when you, again, put the shroud back in,

01:18:31.220 there's 3D information. And that 3D information is what kicked off the scientific studies in 1978

01:18:38.580 that went on to prove that the shroud is not a man-made work of art. There's no pigment. There's

01:18:44.140 no dye. There's no paint. They can't explain how the image is there, but they know it's not man-made.

01:18:49.920 The VP8 image analyzer is fascinating. You know I'm a macro-snapping papist, so I'm not

01:18:55.320 concerned about religious imagery. But some of my more Puritan friends are. My more iconoclastic

01:19:02.920 friends are. And they might say that that's a violation. Absolutely. I've toured with the

01:19:10.860 shroud around the world, and this is a huge question. It's one of the main reasons that

01:19:14.800 Protestants are anti-shroud. They view it as a violation of the second commandment. Let's update the

01:19:19.540 audience. The second commandment says that you shall not worship any graven image. That's the

01:19:25.160 good King James Version. A graven image, by definition in the Hebrew, is a man-made image.

01:19:32.520 You create something and then you begin worshiping it. In all the years that I've been studying the

01:19:37.040 shroud now, I've never seen anyone worship the shroud. I've seen them kneel around it and pray.

01:19:42.260 They're not praying to this as an object. It is a reflection of Jesus that is enhancing their

01:19:48.540 faith and their understanding of the gospel, much like when you and your wife go to Israel with me.

01:19:53.000 It will enhance your understanding of the gospel to walk in the very footsteps of Jesus. It will again

01:19:59.560 show the credibility of the scriptures. These are real people, real places, real events. We can't say

01:20:05.740 that enough, especially modernity in our postmodern era. These events really occurred. And so it is not a

01:20:13.580 violation of the graven image command. Because think about Peter and John. They would have been

01:20:19.800 more sensitive to it than you and me. They're Jews. Right? And yet they see the shroud and then

01:20:26.800 they believe. It wasn't a graven image. It smacked of the authenticity. And so many people in our

01:20:33.220 audience, there were Thomases. And we don't want to put them down either because they desire evidence.

01:20:38.600 Yeah, yeah. They're like, hey, Thomas wasn't there. Can you imagine the first Sunday when Jesus

01:20:42.920 appears? He's MIA. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, in Thomas's defense, you know, when our Lord says

01:20:49.720 that he's going to go die in Jerusalem. Yeah, St. Thomas says, let's go. That's right. He was ready

01:20:54.040 to. And yet none of the disciples, and I point this out on body of proof, expected the Messiah to die the

01:20:59.280 way he did, let alone rise from the dead. Isaiah 53, and we see that interpretation today,

01:21:06.400 but that was not a widely held interpretation in the time of nascent Christianity or the Judaism

01:21:11.740 of the first century. And what do we see with Thomas? He says, unless I see the nail prints,

01:21:17.360 unless I see the side, what I love about Jesus, and it gives us hope because we wake up with this

01:21:23.100 allergic reaction of skepticism every day, Jesus doesn't shame Thomas for his doubts. He sharpens him.

01:21:29.840 Yeah. And he says, Thomas, don't be doubting, but bro, check it out. Check out my side,

01:21:33.880 check out my wrists, and Thomas in Greek, ha theos, ha curios, my God, my Lord, my Lord,

01:21:40.840 and my God. This is the background of my iPad is the Caravaggio doubting Thomas. Yes. He's got his

01:21:49.360 eyes wide open. And you need to touch the shroud before you leave, Michael. Happily. Yes. One time I

01:21:55.160 was on a show, I was on Tim Pool's show actually, and someone said, what do you think Jesus looked like?

01:22:04.380 You know, let's see, this color, that. So we know, you know, he looked, let me describe some like

01:22:08.520 modern Arab trader or something. You know, I was like, no, I actually think he looks like the guy

01:22:12.300 in the shroud. That's good. To me, I think he looks actually exactly like the guy in the shroud.

01:22:16.620 But so what is, what does the guy in the shroud look like? He looks like a Jewish man from the first

01:22:21.940 century, five foot 11 inches, 170 pounds. He would have had a long beard. He would have taken the vow of

01:22:29.520 the Nazarites. So we estimate that his beard grew 21 inches during his three and a half year

01:22:34.660 ministry. He had a long beard. Might have even come down to here. The beard is plucked. Some

01:22:40.040 shroud deniers take an ultra realistic wooden exegesis from Isaiah that he was beyond recognition.

01:22:48.240 His beard was plucked, meaning that it would look like mine, clean shaven. That is not the force of

01:22:52.940 the Hebrew, a plucked beard. I used to have a beard before it all went gray when I had triplets,

01:22:58.940 Michael. So I used to have a nice full beard. And I remember those babies of mine, if they would even

01:23:02.800 pull one hair, one whisker out, it killed. And yet there is this inverted V of Jesus's beard,

01:23:09.900 the man of the shroud, the face of the shroud being plucked from the front. And so again, that doesn't

01:23:15.420 mean he's clean shaven as we are right now. It just means that there were aspects of his beard that

01:23:20.800 were plucked. And again, showing correspondence. He has long hair. Again, Nazarite vow. Others will

01:23:26.060 erroneously bring up 1 Corinthians 11. A man shouldn't have long hair, which Paul wrote to

01:23:31.060 the Corinthian church. And we forget that we have to see Jesus through the eyes of the first century.

01:23:36.160 He's a Jewish man. He is a man of his time in Judaica. Of course he would have had long hair.

01:23:41.120 Of course his beard would have grown. He would have looked like many of the other rabbis of his era.

01:23:45.700 Yeah. Because I guess there will be, there are right now watching this show, people who say,

01:23:53.460 yeah, but you know, I don't know. It's a little, it's just, I would have to believe things that I

01:24:01.760 don't want to believe necessarily. Right. If this is true, then I would have to believe that

01:24:08.240 a man was resurrected. A man who claimed to be God was resurrected. And I would have to believe

01:24:17.520 that Christianity is true if this is real. And I'm just not willing to go there. And so I guess

01:24:21.340 what I would ask that person who I know is watching right now is, okay, I get it. You don't want your

01:24:27.860 whole view of everything to be changed and improved immensely.

01:24:32.000 Yes. And worldview upgrade. Yeah. Worldview upgrade to the truth. But okay, I get it. I get

01:24:37.620 that that's very disorienting. But what's your explanation? Right. I'm all ears. Give me,

01:24:47.240 I'm all ears. I was, I was a big skeptic for like a decade. I'm all ears. I haven't heard a good one.

01:24:56.160 And that's a profound question because what are the implications, Michael,

01:24:59.920 since the resurrection happened? Well, it validates everything Jesus taught. We've already said we

01:25:06.300 have aspects of 26 days of the life of Jesus recorded in the 89 gospels. His teaching changes

01:25:12.060 the world. The Christian movement becomes the greatest force for good on planet earth,

01:25:15.820 which is fascinating. Just the blessing that the Christian faith has been to women. In the early

01:25:21.900 church movement, the Christianity is two thirds female by 80, 80, 50 years after the resurrection.

01:25:27.300 The Christianity's closest competitor was the cult of Mithra, which was a male only cult,

01:25:32.960 very popular in the Roman legions. Christianity already quoted Galatians 3, 28. There's neither

01:25:37.920 Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female. We're all one in Christ Jesus. This message shook

01:25:43.220 the Roman empire, this message of unity and freedom in Jesus Christ. And this whole notion that God loved

01:25:49.520 us. We hear a passage like John 3, 16, for God to love the world. And we think, oh, I've heard that.

01:25:54.400 We see it at football games, whatever. That was a message no one had ever heard in the first century

01:25:59.020 before that God loved someone. The Roman deities were capricious. They were vindictive. They were a

01:26:04.600 lot like us. We made those Roman deities in our own image. We like to get back at people. We like to play

01:26:09.780 games with people. But this God of the Bible comes along and he treats Jesus Christ as if he lived

01:26:16.560 our lives so that he could treat us as if we live Jesus's life. That's the beauty of the gospel.

01:26:22.760 And Michael, if it sounds too good to be true, you're beginning to understand what grace really

01:26:27.660 is. Yeah, yeah, of course. Of course. And if it sounds too good to be true, look at the evidence.

01:26:33.940 Exactly. I get it. It does sound too good to be true. Maybe. But it means to, it goes even deeper.

01:26:42.020 Well, it goes sort of endlessly deep. But if the shroud is real,

01:26:46.420 it vindicates the teachings of Christ, as you say. Validates them in every way.

01:26:52.520 On everything. It means everything. It means the things that you, it means the parable of the

01:26:57.920 talents that you have trouble understanding. Yes, good Samaritan.

01:27:00.200 It means the good Samaritan. Who is my neighbor.

01:27:02.240 Yeah. It means hell and the possibility of going to hell. Right.

01:27:08.220 It means grace and redemption. It means how we cooperate with God's grace. It means everything

01:27:14.060 he told us, even the really hard sayings. You know, probably the best example of it, when

01:27:19.640 our Lord says, my flesh is true food. And whoever does not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink

01:27:27.720 his blood has no life in him. And the Jews debate among themselves and they don't like it. And then

01:27:32.600 a bunch of the disciples don't like it. And they go away. And then our Lord turns to St. Peter and

01:27:38.640 he says, you don't go away. And he says, Lord, to whom should we go? Where do we go? You have the

01:27:42.280 words of life. Whom would we see? And, but you, you got to kind of put yourself in the shoes of the

01:27:48.360 Jews and the disciples who, that's a, that is a hard saying. And our Lord says, this is a hard saying.

01:27:54.160 But if, and it's not, I mean, again, I'm not in any way trying to make an idol out of the

01:27:58.800 shroud. I'm trying to take the shroud on the evidence that is presented to me using my natural

01:28:04.900 reason, at least at first. So, but you know, the natural evidence is pretty good. And so based,

01:28:12.940 if that's true, like that's hard saying is true too. Right. And you have, and you have to believe

01:28:17.100 that hard saying. You have to reckon with it. And here's the thing about truth, why I love your

01:28:20.760 program. Truth has to make us miserable before it sets us free. John eight, you will know the

01:28:27.340 truth and the truth will set you free, but the truth will make you miserable. And this is true

01:28:31.300 in life. I've been on a weight loss program and the truth of me needing to be, I've been on a

01:28:35.420 weight loss program. I've been on the, I had triplets and I enjoy eating the cred. But the truth of my

01:28:42.260 doctor made me miserable at first. You need to lose weight. You're going to take 10 years off your

01:28:45.680 life if you don't get it. So how much more should spiritual truth first make us miserable before it

01:28:51.040 sets us free? And that's what people have to grapple with. Yes. It might make you miserable for a

01:28:55.460 moment and then it will set you free. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one,

01:29:02.220 that is the definite article in English. And I understand Latin doesn't have a definite article,

01:29:06.180 but I am the way, the truth and the life. You cannot have peace with God and no truth. Truth is

01:29:12.120 personified. I spell truth, J-E-S-U-S, through Jesus. That is the worldview. I see truth now.

01:29:18.000 And no one comes to the Father except through me. Except through Jesus. You have to, if you.

01:29:21.220 It is an exclusive claim. Yeah. If you take, if you are convinced by this evidence, and I mean,

01:29:29.980 we were talking about AB blood. Yes. The, there are, for people who, you know, read about these things,

01:29:37.460 maybe in the paper, there are sometimes claims of miracles, you know, Eucharistic miracles in

01:29:41.640 particular. And sometimes it's like fungus or something. You know, sometimes there's a totally

01:29:46.720 natural explanation and it's, it's not blood. It was like a red kind of mold or, okay, that can be

01:29:51.460 the case on a unconsecrated host or who knows. But sometimes they test the host, the consecrated host,

01:29:59.040 and sometimes it's blood and cardiac tissue. Exactly. And what's really, it shouldn't be shocking,

01:30:06.440 I guess. It's all right. But it's always AB blood. Always. From a man from the Middle East.

01:30:14.840 Right. Every time. You can't fake that. And who would know that before with these Eucharistic

01:30:19.560 miracles? Also, to quote my good friend, Craig Keener, dear friend, he's the one who helped

01:30:24.320 inspire me to write Body of Proof. He wrote a two-volume work on miracles. There's been more

01:30:29.620 documented miracles since 1975 than the previous thousand years combined. Again, back to this

01:30:36.120 controlled revelation as we, and this is a, this is a classicist writing his two-volume work on

01:30:40.680 miracles, Craig Keener. Miracles are happening. Now, what do I think about the shroud? I think the

01:30:46.300 shroud is a natural effect of a supernatural event. Yes. Yes. Moment of resurrection. I think

01:30:51.160 it's just simply a natural effect of this. Right. Because, because I almost wanted to correct,

01:30:55.520 or have a caveat in what I was saying when I said it's natural. Because everything I'm

01:31:02.900 inferring from the shroud is natural. But a person emitting this unfathomable amount of light at the

01:31:09.960 moment of his resurrection in the body is, there's a supernatural aspect to that. Absolutely. And this

01:31:16.880 is the, and the interesting thing about the light, the light emanates from the entire body. Not just the

01:31:21.900 heart or the face or the head, the bolt comes from the entire body. Yeah. That's why you have this

01:31:26.200 contiguous image. Yeah. You've left me basically speechless, which is very rare. It's very rare. It's

01:31:32.640 the title of my book, the only book I have with words. But one simply has to, and I suspect this will

01:31:38.140 be the case for people watching this, even those who are shroud-pilled, who have, as I was, every single

01:31:46.340 new fact you learn. This happens to me sometimes, certainly has, since my reversion a lot, where

01:31:53.820 something happens, you know, some coincidence, some little wink from heaven, some sometimes a little

01:32:00.720 more shake your shoulders from heaven. And you are struck with the reminder that, oh right, it's all real.

01:32:10.520 Right. That's right. Oh right. But even I, I go to church on Sunday. I, I try to confess my sins.

01:32:17.660 Right. Sometimes I'm a little slow on that. I say my prayers. I, you know, I really believe in,

01:32:22.340 I assent to it with my intellect. I, you know, I really do believe in it. And, and yet sometimes

01:32:28.100 you just confront some evidence or something happens. You say, oh, oh yeah, I forgot. It's all real.

01:32:35.660 That's right. Well, and you know what, you're in good company saying that Michael, because even Paul

01:32:41.260 in his mountain peak passage of first Corinthians 15, where he talks about the evidence for the

01:32:46.560 physical bodily resurrection of Jesus, it's the most respected chapter in the 260 chapters in the

01:32:51.380 new Testament by scholars. He begins chapter 15 of one Corinthians saying, now I want to remind you

01:32:57.380 brothers and sisters of the gospel that I preach to you in which you believe in, in which you stand.

01:33:03.240 And then he gives the Kyrgyzma that Christ died for our sins, according to the scripture,

01:33:08.120 that he was buried and that he rose again on the third day, according to scripture,

01:33:12.100 and that he was seen. And he goes into the appearance tradition. We all need reminders.

01:33:16.520 We're so forgetful of the great price that Jesus paid for us. And the beauty of this broadcast today

01:33:23.360 is it brings living hope to us. Hope has a name. It's Jesus, but it is a living hope. It's a hope that

01:33:30.560 according to scripture is an undying hope. It's a hope that never fades. 1 Peter 1.3, 1 Peter 1.3

01:33:36.860 says that blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with a living

01:33:41.760 hope because of the fact of Jesus's resurrection. So, you know, this Easter season, as people are

01:33:47.300 watching this, this may be their first Easter season without a loved one. Maybe they've buried a

01:33:52.540 child. And the beauty is we can talk about our loved ones who have died in Christ. We can speak of

01:33:57.720 them in the present tense. They're more alive today than they've ever been before. This is why I love

01:34:02.100 your program that we've had time to get to the implications. The implications are what Paul wrote

01:34:06.480 to the church at Thessaloniki, where I was just at recently. Yes, we grieve for our dead, but we

01:34:11.220 don't grieve as one without hope because Christ died for our sins and rose again. We will see them

01:34:16.760 someday. So yes, we can grieve, but we grieve in hope. I like that too, because yeah, we don't have to

01:34:22.580 not be human. Like we don't have to be slappy, happy idiots. No, exactly. We can, you can grieve.

01:34:28.920 Jesus wept for Lazarus knowing he was going to raise him from the dead. Death was never part of

01:34:34.060 God's original creation for us. It was a disruption. That, the implications part of it is that that's

01:34:45.900 the reminder. Maybe I'll have to put that on repeat for myself when I go back to this, because I think

01:34:51.620 like, if you just look at it and say, huh, wow, okay, I'm persuaded by the shroud. Pretty wacky, huh?

01:34:57.040 Boy, that's pretty. No, but do you know what that means? Michael, it means that there was a moment on

01:35:05.360 the cross. We don't know when exactly, but you were on his mind. Your sin was there and he did it

01:35:13.040 loving you. And if you were the only one who ever believed, nothing would change. He still would

01:35:18.980 have gone through it all. That's the beauty of grace. Jeremiah, thank you for, I got to demand

01:35:25.960 more of my guests. Now you've really raised the bar on bringing the goods. You brought the goods,

01:35:32.680 Jeremiah. Thank you very much. You're a scholar and a gentleman. You as well. I think probably,

01:35:38.280 probably a little more so than me. What did you say? 95,000 words? 93,000. I don't want to

01:35:44.080 overstate. One of my books doesn't have any words. This book, Body of Proof, The Seven Best Reasons to

01:35:49.420 Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus and Why It Matters Today. Go get it. Happy Easter.

＂It’s The Face of Jesus＂ Michael & The Shroud of Turin ｜ Dr. Jeremiah Johnston

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