New EVIDENCE: Head Cloth of Jesus FOUND? The Sudarium of Oviedo | Michael & Pt. 2
Is this the actual cloth that covered Jesus' face in the tomb? In Part 2 of this powerful episode of Michael &, Michael Knowles and his guest dive into the mystery of the Sudarium of Oviedo—a lesser-known relic believed to be the head cloth of Jesus Christ.
But that’s just the beginning. They also explore: The Crown of Thorns, ancient coins used in burial customs that match the Gospel accounts, and he nails of the Crucifixion and how modern science is examining their origins
If you're fascinated by biblical archaeology, Christian relics, or historical evidence for the Passion, this episode is packed with stunning insight and analysis.
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That is when they wrap his face with the Sudarium.
It remains on his face until they bring the body in the tomb where it is taken off and Jesus is wrapped with the shroud.
Are you ready to have your mind blown further, Michael?
The shroud is not the only burial relic.
The other big one is the Sudarium of Oviedo.
And this is the headcloth.
But I remember reading that the Sudarium of Oviedo does not actually go all the way back to the first century, that actually it's just from the ninth century, according to radiocarbon dating.
But what's a real rub for this claim is that we have a definitive history of the sudarium going back to the 6th century.
So we can actually just trace it in documents and in history.
So then you say, well, hold on.
If the radiocarbon dating was that wrong...
And we know with certainty, at least until the 6th century, then why do I believe the radiocarbon dating from the 80s, especially when there were all of these other methodological problems with it?
Exactly.
And we've brought the Sudarium, a replica of it, for your studio, for this program.
Oh, marvelous.
Absolutely.
Thanks to my friend Doug Powell.
It's coming right now thanks to my good friend, scholar Doug Powell, who has brought his replica for us.
This is a replica, and I've never seen this until today, Michael.
This is a replica of the Sudarium of Oviedo.
And I want you to meet Doug Powell.
Doug, hey, how's it going?
Michael?
Nice to meet you.
Yes, you as well.
Thank you.
Wow, this is good.
Who else did you bring back?
Do we have any other relics?
It's like a clown car.
That's right.
I should have known, though, that if one travels around with a full-scale replica of the Shroud of Turin, Probably he's going to be the kind of guy who has the sudarium.
That's right.
So, okay, this is supposed to be the headcloth.
My first question, when I even learned about the headcloth, which was kept separately from the shroud, and they kind of have made their ways all around the world, why would Christ's face be on the shroud?
Wouldn't it only be on the headcloth?
Isn't the fact that Christ's face is on the shroud...
It's not.
Doug, go right ahead.
Well, if you read John's account of the discovery of the Shroud, they also find...
The head cloth in a separate place.
So there are other cloths than the burial cloth around Jesus.
And so the fact that there is a head cloth means there's another cloth.
And the fact that there's no face on it means that it wasn't in contact with whatever made the image on the shroud when the image got made.
So it's separated at some point.
And this is what is believed to be that cloth.
And what I might add is, so when was the cloth wrapped around his face?
Jesus dies at around 3 p.m. on the cross.
He's hanging there.
He's dead.
Jewish sensitivities are such that even the blood that's dripping from the body would want to be collected and not just out on the ground.
So that is when they wrap his face.
With the sudarium is when he's still on the cross, coming down from the cross.
That remains on his face until they bring the body in the tomb where it is taken off and Jesus is wrapped with the shroud.
Does that make sense?
That does make sense.
I've never, I've just never figured it out.
That's never been presented to me before.
But I suppose that would make sense because then you would also say, well, hold on, if it were just on the whole time or if it was just part of the wrapping.
Well, why isn't there an image?
3D image, like there is on the Shrad.
Why isn't there one on the Sudara?
And Doug, I wonder if you would talk about the correspondence of the blood type.
Are you ready to have your mind blown further, Michael?
I am.
Okay, well, what you're looking at here is it's oriented so this particular stain.
You can see there's three areas of stains.
You have this one, this one, and this one.
This area right here was in direct contact.
With a face that matches exactly the face on the shroud.
It's a one-to-one correspondence.
And if you line up the nose, if you register the nose, then this kind of concentrated area of blood is right around the mouth and the beard area.
And you can see how it kind of hooks around like the beard does.
And then this vertical area goes right down the bridge of the nose.
And this would be on the forehead right here.
This epsilon shape right here is the edge of this, and then you can see this blood stain corresponds here, and there are a number of other ones.
That one corresponds there.
And so if you do an overlay, like if you outline this and you put it right onto that, it's an exact match in size, not just in size, but in blood type as well.
First of all, scientists have been able to recreate this stain right here by...
By taking a head...
A glass head that is filled with blood mixed with pulmonary edema, which is the fluid that's generated in the lungs during asphyxiation or other kind of torture or duress.
And that's the blood mixture that is on here, and that's also the blood mixture that you see in different places on the shroud, like here.
It's six parts pulmonary edema to one part blood.
So that's what's coming out of the lungs.
And so that's what's coming out of his mouth.
The man who had the sudarium wrapped around him.
So it matches like that.
It's also type AB, which is also the type on the shroud.
It's also post-mortem blood.
And type AB is the rarest blood type.
It's about three times more common in Mediterranean Jews than it is in Europeans.
The Eucharistic miracles?
Same.
The type is always AB.
AB.
Pretty amazing.
So the idea is that the Sudarium was affixed to the back of the head here, and if you you look really close, you can see these holes where pins were put through to the hair.
There is a ponytail shape funnel right here of his hair, and this is where it would have affixed to, and this butterfly shape fits right onto the ponytail.
And then you can see these little Little pinpoints of blood wounds match this exactly, and then it would wrap around the front, so it gets around to the front and makes contact with the face, but it's not wrapped all the way around the head because the face, scientists have figured out, is lulled forward and to the right like this, so they can't get it all the way around when he's on the cross.
So they double it back, and that's what creates...
That's stained.
So now it's folded back, and they have determined his head was in this position for about 45 minutes to an hour.
And then the body is taken down and laid face down with the feet slightly elevated, which causes the blood to go down and up the nose, or down the nose, and pool onto the forehead, which is what makes that.
And he's in that position for 45 minutes to an hour, and so that gives enough time for Joseph of Arimathea to go get permission to bury the body.
And then the body is flipped face up for about five minutes, and they're actually...
Finger marks where somebody has reached over the back of the head to pinch the nose shut to hold the blood in.
And the bodies in that position face up for about five minutes.
And so if you've ever been to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the space between Golgotha and the tomb is more than enough.
You can cover that in 90 seconds.
And so that's how to make sense of the stains here.
So, okay, we know.
The Sudarium comes from at least the 6th century.
No one disputes that.
It's been in Oviedo, Spain since Oviedo was founded at the end of the 8th century.
The documentary evidence is that it enters Spain around 7-11, ahead of the Muslim invasion.
Do we know where it was before 7-11?
The documentary evidence actually matches The pollen evidence.
And you'll get to the pollen evidence on the Shroud.
But there's pollen on both the Shroud and the Sudarium.
And the pollen on the Sudarium is from...
So Oviedo is in the very northern part of Spain, kind of in the center of the coast, about 15 or 20 miles inland in the mountains of Asturias.
So there's pollen from around there.
There's pollen from around Toledo, right in the middle of Spain.
And then there's pollen from North Africa, probably the area around Alexandria, which is where the documentary evidence says it was after Jerusalem and before Spain.
And then there is pollen evidence from Jerusalem.
So, all of this, at the very least, we would have to say...
Not only from knowing where it was in the church, but even beforehand, the pollen and the documentary evidence, that we're firmly in antiquity.
Oh, yeah.
And call it whatever, you know, whatever I've read, the 6th century.
Though, many people would say, no, no, it actually goes to the 1st century.
Right.
But I guess my point is, if we know for a fact that we can place this in antiquity, and the skeptics of the Shroud of Turin are arguing that it's a medieval forgery.
Then, how do the images match perfectly?
Did some medieval forger know about the Sudarium, maybe, and then just, even if it were possible to create the image through artistic techniques, just managed to match it perfectly without anyone figuring it out?
That's the fascinating thing.
This may be the key in the case against...
The medieval dating of the shroud.
The final piece of the puzzle is connecting these two things because we know of the existence of this definitely 600 years before the earliest date within the radiocarbon dating.
So once we show this correspondence, and it's, like I said, it's an exact match, that totally blows apart the idea that the shroud was created 600 years later.
And Michael, I want your audience to appreciate, I know of no other program.
That has a Shroud museum-quality licensed authentic replica along with the Sudarium that we're comparing right now that's going to live forever.
This is so helpful.
I wish when I began learning about the Shroud, I could have seen a video with two Shroud scholars comparing the two.
This debunks the Carbon-14 dating.
Were you always Shroud-pilled, for lack of a better word?
No, I was always interested in it, but what I was unsure of was what the credible evidence was for it.
And I studied in a master's program under Gary Habermas, who's one of the leading experts in the historical evidence for the resurrection, and one day he just went off talking about the Shroud, and he started listing all of these evidences that I've never heard before.
And so he became my guide into the credible evidence.
And Jeremiah is a good friend of Dr. Habermas as well.
So he was an early advocate for it.
In fact, one of the members of the STIRP team wrote two books with Dr. Habermas, who was not on the STIRP team, as kind of the theological guide for understanding the scientific evidence.
So he goes all the way back to the STIRP team without being on it.
And he's been in...
From the very beginning.
So he was an excellent guy.
I do find people who make really strong arguments, not all the time, but sometimes they started out as real skeptics.
Absolutely.
And it kind of gives them a bit more zeal.
Doug, I'm sorry we don't have a chair for you, but in any case, thank you for coming on and joining us.
You're welcome.
Who else do you have back there?
Peter's going to come out next from the pearly gates.
Stay tuned until the end of the broadcast.
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The first thing that I want you to hold, this is very rare.
This is not a reproduction.
Don't let this get lost in your pocket.
This is the Temple Tax Coin.
This is 14 grams.
This is a full shekel.
This would have paid for the temple tax for two.
The temple tax was a half shekel.
I want you to hold this.
That is Tyrian silver, my friend, dating from the time of Pontius Pilate.
In other words, that was in circulation from 26 to 36 AD.
If you were a Jew or a God-fearer coming to Israel, and by the way, this program is airing at Passover, so this could not be more relevant.
You had to change your currency into the temple tax, which was the Tyrian silver coin.
14 grams.
And Jesus has the whip.
He goes and he sees the money changers.
And it's just like you and I, we would never change our money in the airport because the rates are always bad.
It was that times 100 at the southern steps of Jerusalem.
That right there.
Also, Judas has paid 30 of those.
No, this is it.
This is the coin.
That is the Tyrian silver coin.
Also, when Jesus performs a miracle and he tells Peter to catch a fish and there is the temple tax in the fish's mouth, it could have been that one.
That and my Torah scroll are the two most valuable artifacts that we have in our possession of our organization.
I wanted you to hold that because...
Coins were the social media of the day, Michael.
This is where, if I have my triplets with me who are eight years old and I'm trying to...
Kind of answer your question about the artifacts.
And this shows us that what the scriptures say matter.
It really did happen.
Had we been there that day, we would have seen them.
Even down to the quotidian details of this coin.
It's amazing how well-preserved it is.
I know.
That's what makes it exceedingly valuable as well.
I have nickels that aren't as well-preserved from like 2004.
And that's a full shekel at 14 grams.
And so if you go to the southern steps today, to the Jerusalem Archaeological Park, you can hold that in your hand and then imagine in your mind's eye what was happening during Passover that weekend and all of the factions and cultural fractions helping as well.
I have another coin.
Hold on to it.
Just keep it over there by you.
Now, in a hundred years, I can use this coin to prove the resurrection of Jesus from a location standpoint.
Okay.
The Holy Sepulchre Church, without a doubt, archaeologically speaking, is the place where the eticule is inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the very spot where Jesus walked out of the tomb alive.
How do we know that?
Well, we need to thank Emperor Hadrian.
I want you to hold this bronze coin.
That's bronze.
That was silver, Tyrian silver.
This is bronze.
I can tell because it's got a little more around.
And this is also very well preserved.
Again, not a replica.
This is an actual, from the second century, bronze coin.
This is currency.
So, Michael, if we time-traveled and we went back to the second century right now, it would be a whole different era.
And if we're in the city of Jerusalem, we would have to say, Michael, let's get the coins.
We've got to figure out who the God is.
What's this town even called?
Where are we?
So the coins teach us so much.
Well, guess what?
Hadrian, because of his hatred of the Jews, and he saw Christianity as just a Jewish sect, he wipes out Israel.
During the Jewish uprisings, remember there were three great Jewish revolts culminating, of course, in Bar Kokhba.
But prior to that, Hadrian, this is why I never use the word Palestine.
Palestine, which is a pejorative term against the Jews, was coined by Emperor Hadrian, no pun intended, and literally imprinted on that bronze coin as Aliyah Kapitalina.
He raises Jerusalem to the ground.
He renames it Aliyah Capitolina, the city of Jupiter, rather than calling it Jerusalem.
He learns of this early venerated site of this dying, rising God that early Christians who he thought were Jews worshipped.
And what does he do?
He actually demolishes it.
He puts a temple to the god Venus in Jupiter at the site of Golgotha and the tomb of Christ of the resurrection, thereby preserving it for us while Pauline gets there 200 years later, Constantine's mom.
So I can use one coin to prove the resurrection.
That's called being hoisted with your own petard, I think.
Yes, that's right.
When you accidentally I want you to hold the replica of the crucifixion nail nine inches long.
This is one of the most striking features that, again, smack of authenticity of the shroud.
In early Christian art, we have the holes in the hands right here in the palms.
But actually, of course, for the Greek scholars watching, which there are very few, God bless those of us who are watching, the same word in Greek is hand, palm, and wrist.
The shroud gets it right.
Michael, I want you to see the shroud.
You can see the arms that are folded.
They come down in a V shape.
And the penetration is perfectly in the wrists.
Because?
A forger wouldn't have known this.
If you crucified someone, you put it through the hands, it's not going to support those ligaments.
Of course, because medieval art, renaissance art, really even art today.
It takes license.
Yeah, it takes license and places the wound in the hands.
But I remember even when I was a kid, this is some good catechesis, pointed out, you know, really it's the wrist.
If it would have been the hands, it would have just fallen off.
That is consistent with the nail prints, the scars, the wrists of the crucified man of the shroud, and the feet.
Wow.
I guess this is the recurrent theme, is if it were a forgery, this would have had to be, I mean, it's sort of preposterous even to suggest, but it would have had to be the most detail-oriented forger ever to get exactly the right dust.
It would have to be a miracle forgery.
We'd have to go buy a lottery ticket right if we were that person.
And again, it just goes beyond the pale.
This is, again, how much information is enough to be convinced.
And we don't stop there.
If I may, Michael.
Please.
The flagrum.
I think it's the most understated verse in the New Testament.
And Pilate had Jesus flogged.
That's all the verse says.
This is a Roman flagrum.
I wouldn't call it a cat of nine tails.
That's kind of a modernism.
This is a Roman scourge.
We know that the crucified man...
A scholar has counted up the amount of wounds.
This is going to blow your mind.
372 wounds.
Over 120 lashes.
Each lash would leave three impressions.
You see the lead barbells, the dumbbell-shaped bar, and you feel the weight of those.
Yeah, yeah.
So we know that it would have had three.
Right.
That's kind of fitting, isn't it?
Yes.
The tripartite.
Exactly.
God.
So much of this is interesting.
Or rather, the three distinct persons in one divine unity of the Godhead?
Yeah.
So there's two executioners, as it were, scourging him.
And Michael, in our tour, who is the man of the shroud that we're doing across the country right now, we have an image.
There is not a part of the body of Jesus that was not abused, traumatized, beaten.
Every aspect, front and back.
Even in the pelvic region.
We don't have the lateral sides in the image.
We only have the front and back.
And so I estimate 700 wounds from the phlegm alone on the crucified man of the cross.
Even Mel Gibson didn't really come close in the R-rated Passion of the Christ.
That's how bad it is.
I don't think any of us could watch it.
So Jesus, again, I'm going somewhere with this as a New Testament scholar.
I'm not privileging this because of a religious bias.
I am taking this to what I personally know of Jewish burial traditions and Roman crucifixion and execution.
No one was crucified the way Jesus was crucified.
He's crucified in a particularly heinous, demonic way.
That makes him utterly unique as our Messiah who dies in our place.
Pilot, or some Roman centurion or something.
Hey, how come you're crucifying this guy this way?
Especially after Pilot says, this man's done nothing wrong, and I wipe my hands of it, and my wife's having nightmares.
You know, by the way, pious tradition.
What tradition says about the nightmare?
No.
Again, this is just...
There's no scriptural basis for this.
Educate me.
The pious tradition says that...
So Pontius Pilate, who condemns our Lord to death, his wife has problems.
I'm having dreams about this man.
Don't get washed of this man.
And the sacred tradition says that the dream she has is hearing her husband's name chanted.
Wow.
Wow.
That gives me chills.
So again, it's a pious tradition.
Well, I point this out in body of proof that Jesus wasn't...
Why is he crucified?
Because these are excellent questions we have to ask critically.
What is it about Jesus that caused this particular hatred?
Well, sure, there's a demonic influence behind it without a doubt, but there's also historical influence.
We have 10 different men who stepped up and said, hey, I'm the son of God, follow me.
In fact, two of them are mentioned in the book of Acts.
They have much larger followings than Egypt.
Remember the one who went out in the wilderness in Egypt?
Another had a following of 4,000.
So Jesus, though, I believe Pilate...
Who had a no-win job, by the way.
And he would later get on the outs with Tiberius and die by suicide.
So Pilate essentially takes out all of Roman anger on these messianic contenders in his mind that would come against the throne.
And again, you have a lot of influence from the Essene Dead Sea Scroll community at this time as well.
Remember, the Dead Sea Scrolls prophesied.
That someday a Messianic figure would come, would kill the Ketim, the Romans, would kill the Roman Empire, and then set up rule today, right now, in the land of Israel.
So one can imagine why Caesar and Pontius Pilate were a little nervous.
Right.
These were fighting words.
And so Jesus has put down the titulus.
Have you seen the titulus in three languages?
Iesus, Basileus.
You die on, here is Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews.
Oh yeah, Jesus Nazareneus, Rex Judeorum.
Yes.
In Aramaic?
I can't do the other ones.
Only the Latin.
In Latin.
I did the Greek, you did the Latin.
Well done.
So we just need an Aramaic now.
Do we have any ancient Jews?
We only have young Jews in the building.
Another thing I would like to point out, with your permission, Michael, is the spear, the lance.
Doug pointed something out, and I want to make sure it's not lost on the audience.
Of course, Passover is happening.
Jesus is on the cross.
Pilate is shocked that he was so soon dead, if you recall.
And yet, because of Jewish sensitivities, Pilate knows, I've got to get these dead bodies off the cross.
This is a high Sabbath.
This is the Passover.
This is a major Jewish festival.
Everything's at a powder keg.
Go break their legs.
They go to break the criminal's legs.
They don't break Jesus' legs because they see he's already dead.
But just to make sure, if I may.
I brought this.
It was so fun.
It was so fun getting this on American Airlines.
I can't bring my Bic lighting half the time.
I want you to hold this, the weight of this spear.
It's three and a half centimeters wide.
Just to make sure, again, back to the demonic way Jesus is killed.
Just to make sure he's really dead.
Let's just go ahead and lance him in the heart.
And what do we have on the shroud?
Jesus is pierced in the side through rib five and six.
It goes a few centimeters up.
It breaks through to the heart, the chamber around the heart, blood and water.
How would a forger know this?
Et cetera.
Comes out.
And as Doug pointed out, that blood in the side wound is post-mortem blood.
So if we wanted to fake it, Michael, let's just kill a guy in the process to make sure we really get the forgery right.
In order, if you faked it, presumably it would be living blood.
Exactly.
From a living man.
Not post-mortem blood like this in the Sudarium.
So are you seeing the trails I'm leaving right now of evidence?
I mean, it's hard to fathom.
This is why I say I believe in the authenticity of the Shroud, because I'm not irrational.
Yeah.
Yeah, how much more?
It's like to...
To those who have faith, no evidence is necessary.
And to those without faith, no evidence is sufficient.
Right, exactly.
And I want to speak to that, and this is where your program is so important.
The most dangerous place a person can get is when you stop seeking truth.
When you stop learning truth, because you then insert your own truth, which is relativism.
Fascinatingly enough, Jesus performs his greatest miracle in the last week.
And he goes to Bethany.
Each night during Passion Week, 1.8 miles from the city center of Jerusalem, I filmed inside the tomb of Lazarus.
He performs a miracle in John 11, and he raises Lazarus from the dead.
And there are still truth deniers, Jesus deniers, people that hate God, they hate the gospel, they hate truth, they hate salvation, they love Satan, and they say, oh no, now we have to kill Lazarus and Jesus.
We have to kill them again.
Some people are so hardened in their disbelief.
No evidence is enough.
And that is a dangerous place to be.
So one of the outcomes or applications of this interview is we have to ask ourselves, am I still seeking truth?
Am I seeking truth?
Am I a truth seeker?
Or have I created my own truth?
Am I foisting on some false narrative on my life?
And why do I believe what I believe?
These are all very healthy questions.
Now what I'm about to show you, Michael, leaves this question...
Beyond all doubt, whether or not the man of the shroud is Jesus.
If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it must be a duck, right?
The crown of thorns, I was under the impression was some kind of wreath.
Yeah, in art.
Right, it's just a little.
Yeah, just something, again, just for right or wrong, influenced by ancient Christian tradition and art mainly.
I'm in Jerusalem.
Here I've published 250,000 words on the resurrection.
I thought I'd learned everything there was to learn until I saw the crown of thorns.
It not only took my breath away, but Michael, I want you to hold this.
And at risk of maiming myself, yes, but it's worth it.
This is the helmet of thorns.
Yes, so I had heard, I remember reading or hearing at some point that actually it's...
It's like 3D.
Or not just 3D, but it goes around the whole head.
The whole head.
And it's really like a helmet.
Like a cap.
A helmet.
And so what do we see the correspondence with?
These are three-inch Bethlehem thorns.
When they dry, they're as sharp as nails.
I'm going to say to you what I said to my triple voice here.
Try to prick your finger on the end of one.
You can see.
This crown of thorns, the Gospel of Mark, which is the earliest Gospel.
It says, and the Romans fashioned a crown of thorns and placed it on his head to humiliate him.
This is the king of the Jews.
They placed this on his head, and what do we see on the shroud?
Fifty puncture wounds in the scalp.
It would have caused profuse bleeding.
And so when he goes, echo homo, you hold the man.
You can imagine crown of thorns, bloodstained.
The scene would have been incomprehensible.
It also just occurs to me, looking at this, for people who will find it unfamiliar, that's not what the Crown of Thorns looks like.
This is what an actual crown looks like.
Actual crowns are not headbands.
If you've ever seen the Crown of St. Stephen, a crown in the UK, they look like this.
They cover your whole head.
And isn't that fascinating?
This is what leaves it beyond all doubt to me.
Speaking from a historical scholar's perspective, it could not be anyone other than Jesus of Nazareth.
My friend Bruno Barbaris, who I will be with in just a few weeks in Turin, Italy, has assigned a probability to, is this anyone other than Jesus?
And he's published his findings.
Again, not a preacher, not a priest.
He's a mathematician at University of Turin.
The probability the man of the shroud, according to mathematician Bruno Barbaris, is anyone other than Jesus is one in 200 billion.
So I guess there's still a chance for the skeptics.
Yeah, there is.
You're saying there's a chance.
But the connection being that the wounds from this particular crown of thorns...
Match the man of the shroud in a way that a little laurel wreath or something wouldn't have.
And leaves it beyond all doubt it's anyone other than Jesus of Nazareth.
Because the other guys didn't get this.
No.
No one did.
We know of one in history who was crucified.
This is one of one.
Utterly unique.
And again, you come back to the personal application of this is love in its most radical form for us.
That?
You know...
When you handed it to me, I thought, oh, should I try it on?
Yeah, exactly.
Actually, I'd prefer not to, if possible.
And there you go.
And I love that this is the centerpiece of our interview.
Yes.
Yeah.
Exactly.
What do you make of the claims of relics of the Crown of Thorns that go back a long way?
Like when Notre Dame de Paris burned down some years ago.
A priest ran in because there was said to be a piece of the true crown.
Do any of those claims convince you or no?
They don't because they're unlike the shroud in that you just can't test it scientifically against anything.
And so I'm not discounting it, but this is kind of my skepticism also oozing out of me again in that when you ask me a historical question, I give you a historical answer, not a faith answer.
I don't privilege it.
The interesting thing about the Sudarium and the Shroud of Turin is, in the Catholic Church, it is both an artifact and a relic.
Meaning, those are two of two.
There are no other relics that can also be scientifically studied.
Interesting.
What you're saying is, if you found out someday, you get up to the pearly gates, you find out, actually, the crown, the thorns in Notre Dame, that actually was part of the crown.
You'd say, okay, yeah.
But what you're saying here is, You can know with certainty through natural reason that the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Orvieto are legit.
Jesus' grave clothes.
They're actually Christ's grave clothes.
Whereas with the other relics, you think, oh, is this a piece of St. Anthony's bone?
Maybe.
Maybe it is.
But you just say, I can't test it.
Right, exactly.
And that is the fascinating thing about these two relics, the Sudarium and the Shroud.
You test them.
It is the moment of resurrection.
It's captured in history.
Blinding light in the laboratories, 34,000 trillion watts of energy in one-fortieth of a billionth of a second.
Otherwise, it would have scorched.
I mean, think about that.
This is what science can't reproduce, is how this flash happened.
I speak to young people all the time about the Shroud.
It's the equivalent of 6.4 gigawatts.
And you and I will remember the greatest movie of all time, 1985's Back to the Future.
Doc Brown, 1.21 gigawatts to go back in time.
So five times the amount of that energy to bring the body of Jesus back to life.
We just can't quantify it.
We can't reproduce it.
We don't know how it occurred.
We just see the effect of it.
A number of relics.
And some, you know, have really undeniable provenance.
Right.
This is St. John Bianni's heart.
Right.
It would be hard for them to fake that.
Yes.
Some, though, that go back to antiquity, I believe, as a matter of faith, I believe in the relic.
And maybe it's got good sort of oral history and provenance to it.
