By Walid Shoebat (Shoebat Exclusive)

If I had to someday defend the Bible in a court of law, and at the end of the trial, after all of the evidence has been presented, witnesses and experts questioned here would be my closing arguments:

Your Honor, Opposing Council, Members of the Jury. To the point when the Opposing Council accused, argued and asked as to how can we believe in all the miracles? How do we prove beyond doubt that Moses tossed his staff and that the magicians challenged him to only have the staff-serpent of Moses gobble up all the fakes?

May I present the results of one DNA evidence titled “The Shroud of Turin”.

The Shroud, in a way, like the Staff of Moses, turned into a serpent since the story of that relic gobbled up whatever fake imitations and challenges all the naysayers, magicians, scientists and lawyers concocted.

Like the Staff of Moses, the Shroud was also called a fake by some scientists who scrutinized it, artists who tried to replicate it, yet they all failed miserably to discredit it.

It even tells the story of Jesus Himself; He too is called a fake, yet the Shroud tells of a story of His crucifixion and resurrection. The Shroud of Turin is the story of every slandered Christian, for I too was called a fake and a fraud to only withstand my accusers for years to come.

The opposing Council offered deceptive explanations even presenting a false premise that Leonardo da Vinci created the image with a primitive medieval room-sized camera, they stated that the chemicals needed to make photographs existed in Leonardo’s day. Yet when that was proven false since the opposing Council never presented any evidence that Leonardo Da Vinci or anyone during the middle ages knew how to use such chemicals for photography, they then claimed it was easily manufactured by attempting to create replicas through heated elements which all failed miserably since the pigment on the Shroud of Turin was never made by any heated elements.

If the Shroud of Turin was a fake, how come no man on earth was able to replicate it?

Archive negative image of the Shroud of Turin is shown next to one recreated by an Italian scientist in Pavia

The attempts by modern magicians never stopped.

In 1988 they said it was a fraud after doing carbon-14 dating of scraps of the cloth carried out by labs in Oxford, Zurich and Arizona declaring it to be from 1260 to 1390, to later find out there was cotton in only the sample taken to be carbon tested and that there was no cotton in the rest of the shroud! As it appeared, the location on the shroud where the sample was taken are later repaired spots, the worst possible place they could have gotten the samples (1)

Newer evidence even shattered the “fake claim” when non-carbon-14 scientific tests on the Shroud of Turin which dates the cloth to ancient times, to the first century, debunking such earlier experiments that dated it only to the Middle Ages.

Then they said it was still a fake when a tomb discovery at Akeldama (Field of Blood) with a newfound first century shroud that was simply woven linen and wool textiles and by that they supposedly debunked the Turin Shroud which by contrast, is made of a single textile woven in a complex twill pattern claiming that this type of cloth was not known to have been available in the region until medieval times. (2)

Then that was debunked as the newly discovered burial textiles from the recently discovered “tomb of the shroud” at Akeldama typify those used in Jerusalem during the first century is over-reaching, without foundation and contradictory to other abundant archaeological evidence burial cloths with Twill-weave textiles, shroud fragments, and intact or nearly intact shrouds which have been excavated at various sites. One example were twill-weave textiles from the Cave of the Warrior near Jericho (produced 6,000 years ago), the Qumran caves, Masada, as well as in pieces of linen from Palmyra in eastern Syria, made during the 1st–3rd centuries AD (3) which were just as complex as the Shroud of Turin. That even the type of weave, the herringbone pattern of the Turin Shroud also existed, which absolutely nullify such objections and we know from the Gospels that Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man and it was he who provided the intricate Shroud used to bury Jesus (Mt 27:57-61). (4)

Then they said that Leonardo Da Vinci, a genius artist must have manufactured it, so the fake magicians concocted a new story to refute all this, to later be proven false. For Leonardo da Vinci or any medieval forger to concoct his prank, he would have to have known the weaves, textiles of Israel in the first century and somehow find one and send it on a fieldtrip to Jerusalem and stick to it 47,000 to 94,000 pollen grains, all of which included Gundelia tournefortii (an extremely fearsome-looking thorn used for the crown of thorns), Zygophyllum dumosum and Cistus creticus, which came from the very narrow geographical region of mere twenty miles between Hebron and Jerusalem.

The medieval forger would also have to obtain Spectrographic chemical analysis of travertine aragonite calcium, found on the Shroud’s fabric, which can only be found in a specific area in ancient tombs specific to only Jerusalem and no where else in the world (5)

Gundelia Tournefortii

Not only that the medieval forger had to be ahead of the game learning how to be an ancient textile expert, he would also have to take this cloth on a fieldtrip to expose the cloth to open air in the areas of both Turkey and Istanbul where it was said that the historic shroud traveled, to ensure the proper pollen spread from such areas as to confirm the Shroud’s historic path.

So besides him being an ancient textile expert, historian, and theologian he would have to also be a botanist and know about the necessity to have an existence of pollen which would not be discovered for at least another six hundred years, in an age when such relics were forged frequently with no such sensitivity to detail including notoriously poor copies of the Shroud itself that were held in esteem. (6)

But besides being an expert of ancient textiles, history, theology and botany, the forger would also have to know about ancient artifacts to know everything about another linen cloth called the Sudarium Christi, or the Face Cloth of Christ in the Cathedral of Oviedo in northern Spain to get all the blood stains perfectly match the one on the Shroud.

It would probably be a better argument to say that the Shroud of Turin was a forgery of the 20th century instead, since only a forger from our recent times would have to add in a wow-factor, become a scientist and understand forensic pathology (besides all the other things) to know he needs to get blood stains from a crucified man which appear on both the Sudarium and the Shroud with blood and pulmonary oedema fluid, to make it consistent with death by crucifixion since the main stains, as was discovered consist of one part blood and six parts pulmonary oedema fluid since people who were crucified died from asphyxiation from crucifixion which would result in lungs that are filled with the fluid from the oedema which can come out through the nostrils and is precisely the type of stain that is found on the Sudarium and the Shroud, which coincide exactly with the face of the image on the Shroud.

But besides having to be an ancient textile expert, botanist, theologian, historian and forensic scientist, the medieval forger in Europe also had to be a top skilled crime investigator in which he had to first confirm the relationship between the two cloths and to use blood type AB on both cloths (7) and also had to know that AB blood type was a rare blood type that is only common in the Middle East (about 3% of the world population unlike in Europe which such type is rare) in which he had to make sure this blood was on both the Shroud and the Sudarium.

For years, the scoffers pointed that the blood on the shroud was simply red paint applied by the medieval forger since the color of the blood on the Shroud is bright red instead of the oxidized color. As it turned out, the red color was a result of high concentration of the pigment bilirubin, consistent with someone dying under great stress or trauma, which made the blood color on the Shroud bright red instead of the oxidized color of blood stains found during normal bleeding.(8)

But besides being a brilliant investigator, historian, theologian, ancient textiles expert and forensic scientist, this forger would have to also have to know about aerospace imaging to know how to make the image on this fake Shroud be made by a sudden blast of high-energy radiation. Leonardo da Vinci, if one accepts the argument that he knew how to create a camera, would also have to know all about lasers which were obviously not available in medieval times.

The medieval forger, besides being a historian, investigator, botanist, and forensic scientist also needed to be an ancient coin expert to know that he needs to use the right coin to place on the eyes two dilepton lituus, a coin minted by the Procurator Pontius Pilate between 29 and 32 A.D.

To create even a more of a wow-factor, the forger would have to have the Shroud produced in a true 3-D image, unlike anything ever obtained from ordinary photographs or paintings when subjected the Shroud images to a new state-of-the-art VP-8 Image Analyzer in which the Shroud produced a true 3-D image, unlike anything ever obtained from ordinary photographs or paintings. (9)

The only way to manage to replicate the Shroud was by scorching equivalent linen material with high-intensity ultra violet lasers to replicate the colouring on the shroud. Such technology, say researchers from the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Enea), was far beyond the capability of medieval forgers, whom most experts have credited with making the famous relic.

And in case there was any doubt about the preternatural degree of energy needed to make such distinct marks, the Enea report spells it out: “This degree of power cannot be reproduced by any normal UV source built to date.”

And for an even more amazing wow-factor, the medieval forger would also have to know some undiscovered science, which we do not know yet, or even worse, in which we do not even know if we will ever discover, since we know what that pigment on the Shroud is not, yet we do not know what it is.

In conclusion, the forger would also have to know how to create a miracle since the only probable conclusion is that the Shroud is the result of radiation from the body that glowed as a result of a mysterious resurrection.

So, could the forger be that brilliant, even perhaps so brilliant as to be Lucifer himself?

If so, why would Lucifer want to confirm a crucifixion when the whole purpose of Lucifer according to the Bible is to deny Father, Son and Crucifixion (1 John 2:22)?

Indeed, the Shroud of Turin proves that there is a God (who creates what is authentic) and it also proves that there is also Lucifer (who imitates and attempts to replicate what God does).

In other words, why is there so much effort to refute Moses, the Shroud, the Bible and the Crucifixion, if such stories are myths that never existed?

But if the Shroud is of Jesus, why would God allow an icon of Jesus to be established? Wasn’t God an iconoclast just as the Muslims claim and is why they historically destroyed all such symbols of Christianity as the Cross and the sacred images?

I realize that the Opposing Counsel provided Protestant expert witnesses and even some Catholics who would view the Shroud with suspicion. They said that even John Calvin said that anyone who promotes such a shroud is “convicted of falsehood and deceit”. (10)

They complain that the Shroud distracts from the Bible and has distracted Christians from more important things.

But I say that such icons are not a disease as some say, the real disease is that people at times go too far or too little when they get into various theological arguments of this kind. The Shroud icon is authentic and authenticity can build faith, not doubt.

The Shroud points to Christ just as sure as a photograph or set of fingerprints. (11) Its an icon of Christ and if God desired we never use icons, why would He make one of Himself?

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him. (Col 1:15-19)

I rest my case.

REFERENCES
(1) Raymond Rogers was part of the original team who first studied the shroud in-depth scientifically, see scientific journal, Termochimica Acta, 2005.
(2) Archaeologist Shimon Gibson. M. Milstein, “Shroud of Turin Not Jesus’, Tomb Discovery Suggests,” National Geographic News, December 17, 2009.
(3) Wilson 1978, Antonacci, p. 98–99; Wilson 1978, fourth page of plates following p. 130.
(4) http://www.acheiropoietos.info/proceedings/FulbrightAkeldamaWeb.pdf

(5) The presence of Calcium Carbonate (limestone dust) on the Cloth was noted by Dr. Eugenia Nitowski (Utah archaeologist) in her studies of the cave tombs of Jerusalem.

(6) Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., “The Shroud and the Controversy,” Thomas Nelson: Nashville TN, 1990, pp.77-78. http://creationevolutiondesign.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html .

(7) The blood type was confirmed by Dr. Baima Ballone in Turin and confirmed in the U.S.
(8) Blood chemist Dr. Alan Adler (University of Western Connecticut) and the late Dr. John Heller (New England Institute of Medicine) Drs. Victor and Nancy Tryon of the University of Texas Health Science Center found X & Y chromosomes representing male blood and “degraded DNA” (approximately 700 base pairs) “consistent with the supposition of ancient blood.”

(9) Wilson 2010, pp. 21–22; Jackson 1977, pp. 74–94; Jackson 1984, pp. 2247–2249; Antonacci, p. 7, Figures 4–5.

(10) John Calvin, 1543, Treatise on Relics, trans. by Count Valerian Krasinski, 1854; 2nd ed. Edinburgh: John Stone, Hunter, and Company, 1870; reprinted with an introduction by Joe Nickell, Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2009.
(11) Meacham, online p. 2.