On the Shroud of Turin, the bodily image is created in a different way than the blood stains. The cloth presents two distinct “layers” of data: natural blood evidence and a non-natural image, yet the two are in perfect anatomical registration. The human forensics pair to the supernatural image.
Blood vs. Image: One Artifact; Two Different “Events”
- Forensic and chemical studies show the blood on the cloth is real human blood (type AB), with hemoglobin, serum albumin, bilirubin, and UV-visible serum “halos” around many wounds, consistent with fresh traumatized blood from scourging, crucifixion, and a post-mortem spear wound.
- Those same investigations conclude the body image is not paint, dye, or stain: no pigment particles bound to the fibers, no brush strokes, no binder, no cracking over fold lines, and color confined only to the top fibrils of the linen.
- Critically, the blood was on the cloth before the body image, because the image “stops” at the edges of blood clots and never appears underneath them, which is nearly impossible to reproduce as an artistic forgery.
So the blood corresponds to an actual wounds on the corpse in contact with the linen, while the image corresponds to some later, non-contact (distance-coded) process when the body left the linen it was wrapped in.
Wounds that “Pair” with the Image:
- The blood flows line up point-for-point with the body image of a scourged, crucified man: over 100 scourge marks, scalp bleeding from a cap-like crown of thorns, wrist and foot nail wounds, and a lance wound between the ribs with separated blood and clear fluid consistent with pleural effusion after death.
- The directions of blood flow correspond to a body first upright on a cross, then horizontal in burial, matching classical crucifixion posture and movement.
- Modern forensic reviews emphasize that the presence, placement, and morphology of the bloodstains certify that a real, wounded human body lay in the cloth, while the ventral and dorsal images encode body–cloth distance information instead of simple contact transfer.
In other words, the forensic data (blood chemistry, flows, wound placement) say “real crucified corpse,” while the optical/physical data of the image say “not produced by any known artistic or physical mechanism.”
The Forensics Pair to the Supernatural:
Scientific teams have been able to describe what is there—real blood, anatomically and physiologically precise wound patterns, and a superficial, non-pigment image with 3D distance properties—but have not been able to reproduce how such an image could form under known natural processes.
That is why some researchers speak of a natural sequence (death, bleeding, burial) followed by an image-forming event that behaves as if it were a brief, vertically directed, non-contact radiation or energy burst from the body, something for which there is no established physical analogue.
Separate and Apart:
The Sudarium is the face cloth (handkerchief) the was put over the crucified victim's head & face as he was taken down from the cross. It would have been removed and placed to the side while the body was prepared for burial. In other words, while they are both in contact with the same body, they were not stained at the exact same moments and they have never been directly on the body at the same time.
Furthermore, the Sudarium was NOT on the body at the time of the formation of the image of the individual was created. This explains why the Sudarium ONLY has forensics data. There is no image!
Factoring in the Sudarium which has the blood stains without the image, strengthens the case beyond the shadow of any possible basis for doubt.
Together for the First Time
John 20 and the subsequent history line up exactly: two distinct cloths, separated in the tomb and then separated across centuries and geography.
The Shroud and Sudarium were separate in the tomb and for the last 2000 years have been stored in different locations.
Modern data collection, digital and scientific technology have made it possible for our generation (those alive in this modern age) to overlay the Shroud and the Sudarium for the first time.
Bringing the Sudarium (Oviedo face cloth) into view with the Shroud exactly reinforces the pattern I'm pointing to: natural, coherent blood forensics that dovetail with a non-natural image event.
What the Sudarium Adds:
- The Sudarium is a smaller linen cloth (about 84 × 53 cm) kept in Oviedo, used only on the face and head and bearing no image at all, only complex blood and serum stains.
- Its stains are consistent with a man who died upright of asphyxiation with pleural edema fluid exiting nose and mouth—precisely the expected pattern in crucifixion, including vertical and later horizontal body positions.
- Blood on the Sudarium is type AB, matching tests reported for the Shroud’s blood.
So here again, we have purely natural forensic data (blood, fluid, gravity, posture) without any image phenomenon.
Congruence with the Shroud’s face
- Detailed overlay and geometric studies find multiple congruences between the Sudarium’s facial stains and the Shroud’s face: matching nose length (~8 cm), alignment of beard/chin region, and thorn-related puncture stains at the nape of the neck.
- Comparative catalogues list dozens of distinct correspondences in anatomy, trauma patterns, and fluid flow between the two cloths, arguing they were in contact with the same head at different moments (on the cross and during/just after removal, then later burial).
- The Sudarium, used earlier and bearing only blood, naturally precedes the Shroud’s later, distance-coded image; its stains help reconstruct a continuous timeline of death, removal, and burial with consistent forensics across two independent artifacts.
The Cumulative Structure:
- Sudarium: blood and fluid only, no image, early application to the crucified head.
- Shroud: extensive blood PLUS a non-contact, 3D-encoded body image that forms after the blood has already transferred.
Together, They Make the Case:
Two separate linens, converging in the same AB blood type, same facial geometry, same crown-of-thorns and nape wounds, the same crucifixion physiology—yet only one cloth carries an inexplicable image. The more the forensics line up, the more the “normal” blood evidence seems to be framing a single, extraordinary, image-forming event.
One more thing—The Xylon.
Conclusion
The odds of so much forensic data matching with an unexplainably formed image are numerically beyond astounding.
The cloth’s forensics anchor us in a real, tortured, crucified man, while the mode and timing of the image formation point beyond ordinary causality. The wounds and blood “lock” the image to history, and the image’s physics press the mind toward a miraculous, one of a kind explanation.
The Shroud is the Sign of Jonah: Fully Real and Fully Supernatural.
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Consider these other thoughts concerning the Shroud of Turin.
