Reflection on the Crucifixion from the Gospel according to John

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/041020.cfm
John 18:1—19:42

On Good Friday, we remember the crucifixion and death of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  All too often I will recite the words “was crucified, died and was buried” without as much as a thought about what that means.  So today we will reflect on the crucifixion of Jesus and use the Shroud of Turin as a guide.

There is a lot of information regarding the shroud on the web site www.shroud.com.  The site was started and is run by Mr. Barrie Schwortz of Florrisant, CO and is the most comprehensive site in the world on research that has been done on the shroud.  He was the photographer for the first scientific study of the shroud in 1978 and has taken most of the photos you commonly see of the shroud.  He is Jewish and initially thought that they would go to Italy, determine it was a fraud in two or three days, and return home.  After weeks of examining the shroud it was determined that it was not a fraud.  The image on the shroud is unique in every way and there is no other historical artifact like it.  The image has been studied by a host of scientists, doctors and forensic pathologists.  Their conclusion is that this is an actual image of a man who was scourged, crowned with thorns, beaten, crucified, and pierced with a lance after death.  Just to be clear, the Catholic Church has never declared that the shroud is the actual burial cloth of Jesus.  There will be more on why the shroud was not considered a fraud a little later.

At this point it would be good to mention that there were actually two cloths.  In John 20:6-7 it says,

“And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself.” 

There is a cloth in Oviedo, Spain that is purportedly the cloth that covered Jesus head.  If you are interested, you can visit the website www.shroud.com/guscin.htm.  Unlike the Shroud of Turin, the Sudarium (Latin for sweat cloth) has a well recorded history showing it to be in Spain since 631 AD. Before that there are written records reporting that the Sudarium was hidden in a cave near Jerusalem.  When the Persians invaded, the wooden case containing the Sudarium was moved across North Africa and then into Spain.  The Sudarium is a linen cloth measuring 2-¾ feet by 1 ¾ feet.  It has multiple blood stains and stains of edema.  It was a Jewish custom that if the face of the deceased was disfigured the head would be covered.  The blood type on the Sudarium is AB which is not common in Europe but quite common in the Middle East.  The blood type on the shroud is also AB.  The edema is fluid that flowed through the nose from the lungs when the body was moved.    When the victim was taken down from the cross, the pressure on his chest caused the fluid in the lungs to come out through his nose.  There is no image on the Sudarium like there is on the shroud.  However studies have shown that there are 124 blood stains that overlay perfectly with blood stains on the Shroud of Turin.  At one point someone held the head of the victim and two marks show up where fingers pressed the Sudarium against the nose of the victim.  The length of the nose on the Sudarium is exactly the same length as the nose of the victim of the Shroud of Turin.  Also, there are numerous pin holes on the Sudarium that could have been caused by thorns.  The blood stains on both the Sudarium and the shroud are red.  Normally blood turns black or brown when it dries.  However, if a person is under extreme duress and has experienced a large loss of blood, the liver begins pumping bilirubin into the blood stream and the blood stains will remain red. 

There was a lot of controversy on the dating of the shroud.  Carbon dating of a sample of the shroud showed it to be made around the 13th century.  Although Carbon dating is considered fairly accurate, it does have problems with contamination.  Also, the sample used for dating was taken from the edge of the shroud which is now know to be an area that was expertly repaired.  Dr. Fanti from the University of Padua used a non-destructive test using infra-red spectrometry and found the cloth to date at 50 AD +/- 200years.  More research needs to be done on other parts of the shroud to do a better job of dating the cloth.  Interestingly, there are painted icons that date back to around 400 AD that show elements of the shroud.  One shows a crease across below the face of Jesus just as it is on the shroud. Others show swelling around one of the eyes just as it appears on the shroud.  So, the dating of the shroud is still up in the air.  However, all of the other evidence of the image itself seems to point directly at this being the burial cloth of Jesus.

The study of the shroud in 1978 was inspired by Dr. John Jackson.  He was working for the Air Force in Los Alamos when he took a photo of the face on the shroud and put it into a VP8 image analyzer.  The analyzer converts a 2D photo into a 3D photo by using the light intensity of the features.  When he put the photo from the Shroud into the analyzer a 3D image of a face appeared. This showed that there was a lot more to the shroud image than was originally believed.  From there, the idea of the 1978 examination began.  Books have been written and many studies have been done on the Shroud since then. 

We will use a photo of the shroud to help us walk through the crucifixion of Jesus.  If you are reading this go to www.shroud.com and click on “Examine the Shroud of Turin”.  In John’s gospel we are told that Pilate tried to talk the Jews out of crucifying Jesus but the crowd would not relent.  So in John 19:1 it says Pilate had Jesus scourged.  Roman scourgings were done with a flagrum .  It has two or three strands of leather tipped with pieces of bone or metal.  Scourging was generally considered a form of execution.  The whip would strike the victim and then tear the skin.  When they were filming the scourging in the movie “The Passion of the Christ” one of the strands missed the metal plate behind the actor, Jim Caviezel, and hit him on his side.  It left a 14 inch tear on his side.  He said the pain was so intense that it knocked his breath out.  If you look at the dorsal image of the shroud there are lash marks on the victim from his neck to his ankles.  There are approximately 135 tears of the skin from the scourging of the victim.  The pain must have been incredible and there must have been a lot of blood loss in the process.  The Roman soldiers were probably told not to kill the victim.  Although, looking at the victim’s wounds on the shroud, he must have been close to death.

Going on with the gospel we find in John 19:2-3 that Pilate has Jesus crowned with thorns and then mocked and beaten.  On the shroud image we can see blood coming from the top of the victim’s head.  The inspection of the shroud showed the crown was actually more like a cap covering the entire top of the head and extending down to the nape of the neck.  From the blood pattern it appears the crown of thorns was driven into his head.  From the image we can see swelling around the eyes and cheeks from a beating.  There was no mercy shown to the victim.

Finally, in John 19:16-19, we are told that Jesus carries the cross to His crucifixion.  The image on the shroud shows signs of rubbing going from the upper right shoulder across the back and down to the lower left back from carrying the cross.  The weight of the cross would have been on the very part of his upper back where the skin was already torn and bleeding.  Jesus continues being driven up mount Golgotha until he collapses from loss of blood. Simon is then enlisted from the crowd to carry the cross the rest of the way up the mount. 

There he is crucified.  The actual crucifixion is done with the victim laying on the cross.  The shroud shows that the nails were driven into the base of the palm where there is a space between the bones of the hand.  If the nails were driven into the palm of the hand the flesh would have torn away.  If the nails were driven into the wrist an artery would have been cut and the victim would have died too quickly.  The base of the palm provides the strength to hold the victim to the cross without breaking any bones. If you look at the hands on the shroud you will see the thumbs are folded under the palm of the hand.  Nails being driven into the base of the base of the palm would have severed the nerve going to the thumbs causing excruciating pain.  You can see that the thumbs are not visible on the image of the shroud.  Once the nerve going to the thumbs is cut the thumbs collapse into the palm.  In medical cases where someone has had that nerve severed, the pain is said to be so intense that morphine provides no relief.  The image also shows nail holes where the feet of the victim were nailed to the cross.  Again, no bones are broken.  Once the victim is secured to the cross, the cross is lifted and dropped into a hole in the ground.  You can only imagine how much pain the jolt of the cross being set would cause. Hanging on the cross the victim’s lungs fill with air. In order to exhale the victim of crucifixion would have to press up with his feet.  Over time, his lungs and pericardial sac would start filling with fluid.  Breathing would become more and more difficult.  Eventually the victim would drown in his own body fluid.  The Romans were masters of torture and execution. 

In John 19:31-37 we are told that Jesus tastes a bit of wine offered to Him and dies.  Because it was close to the Sabbath the Romans wanted the prisoners to die so they could take them down.  They broke the legs of the prisoners to the right and left of Jesus.  This would result in quick death from suffocation and loss of blood.  Jesus was already dead so they did not break His legs.  Instead they plunged a lance into His side.  The size of the wound on the shroud is consistent with the width of a Roman Lance.    From the placement of the wound the lance would have pierced the pericardial sac and heart.  From the wound flowed blood and water.  Both blood and body fluid, edema, are shown consistently with all the major wounds on the shroud, including the wound from the lance.  With the flow of the blood and water you could say that Jesus truly did empty himself.  All that was left was the empty shell where our savior once dwelt.

One interesting aspect of the shroud is that the story it tells does not stop with the death of the victim.  The image of the man was formed after the blood stains.  We know this because the image appears on top of the blood stains.  This brings up several enigmas regarding the image on the shroud.

1.      The photo image of the victim on a linen cloth could only have been made by several billion watts of UV light lasting only 1/40 of a billionth of a second.  We know of no known source that could have emitted this type of radiation in ancient history.

2.      The image is only on the upper fibrils of the cloth and appears on both the front and back of the cloth but nothing in the middle of the cloth.  It does not penetrate into the cloth.  The fact that the image appears on both sides of the cloth means that the cloth must have collapsed through the body at some point.  We know of no physical means in which this could have occurred.

3.     The image can produce a perfect full body 3D image of the person wrapped in the shroud.  This could not be caused by vapors from the body or from chemical reaction from contact with the body since the cloth was not in contact with the entire body but could have been produced by a large burst of UV light.

4.     The image on the shroud not only shows the features of the body of a crucified man but also shows internal images of the man like an x-ray.  On close examination of the shroud the researchers found that they could not only see the man’s hands but also the bones within the man’s hands.

I have had to reduce this section in the interest of time and space.  You can read a bit more detail at the following website. 

https://magiscenter.com/how-did-shroud-turin-get-image/.

So, we have been guided by the shroud through the scourging, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus the entire crucifixion of Christ through the resurrection by simply meditating on the image left on the Shroud of Turin.