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April 5, 2012 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
44:54
Edition 79 - Turin Shroud Update

This edition features British researcher Thomas de Wesselow who has made headlines in the UKthis week with his new book on the Turin Shroud The Sign. You may have thought you had heard all thereis to be said about it – you have not!

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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast.
My name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Thank you for returning to my show.
Thank you for the feedback that is still coming in about Edition 78.
I wanted to get another show out to you as soon as possible.
And I'm producing this at the start of the Easter period.
For a whole variety of reasons that ties in very neatly with the guest that I have now.
Here in the UK, an author called Thomas DeVesselo has made some headlines because of a book he's written and got out here in the UK and in America about the Shroud of Turin.
Now, before you start to yawn and say you've heard everything that there's been said and written about the Shroud of Turin, perhaps you haven't.
Because this man is not a researcher, he's not a mystery tracker of any kind.
He's actually a Cambridge academic.
He's an art historian.
And his specialty is the 14th century, which curiously is the period when the Shroud of Turin first appeared to most people's attention.
And he looks at this in a completely different way.
He has got some media coverage in the UK this week, and that is how I was able to make contact with him because he is being featured at the moment.
And so I thought I'd put him on the show.
First of all, I asked his publisher if he was available.
They said yes, and that's why we're doing this show now.
So edition 79, featuring Thomas DeVesolo, 14th century art historian from Cambridge, UK, a great seat of learning in this country.
I think you'll find what he's got to say very interesting, possibly controversial.
I would certainly like to hear from you your reaction to this.
If you want to tell me about this or anything to do with the show, go to the website www.theunexplained.tv www.theunexplained.tv.
There you can send me an email.
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You've sent me some really nice guest suggestions recently, and thank you for those.
I welcome all of your feedback, whatever it is.
Thank you for it, wherever in the world you are.
And if you'd like to make a donation to the show when you're there, at www.theunexplained.tv.
That will help this work continue.
You know that I want to expand it and continue it and develop it.
And I always want to be better.
That is the only yardstick that I've ever used for my career.
So I'm not saying that I'm, you know, God's gift to broadcasting or anything, really.
I don't set out to be that.
I just set out to do this and to improve.
Because if you think you've stopped learning, I think maybe in life you have a problem.
We never stop learning.
I've done broadcasting for years and I'm still learning every single day that I do it, let me tell you.
Thank you to Martin for the theme tune.
Martin, good to reconnect with you.
Thank you to Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool for getting the show out to you and for designing our superb website.
And above all, thank you to you for your continuing and ongoing support for the unexplained.
All right, let's get to Cambridge, United Kingdom now.
A man with, I would say it's a unique theory about the Turin Shroud.
Thomas de Vesilo, thank you for coming on The Unexplained.
Thank you very much.
Now, the Turin Shroud is literally a mystery wrapped in an enigma, very literally, isn't it?
It's something that many people have tried for centuries and centuries to explain.
And we like to think of ourselves in the current generation as having the technology to better explain it than perhaps has been attempted in the past.
What do you say?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly why people are fascinated by it, because it is so mysterious.
And it's quite extraordinary when you think about it, this object that has remained mysterious throughout the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century.
There aren't many objects, sort of middle-sized objects in the world that have sort of defied analysis like that.
And that does make it maybe not unique, but certainly extremely unusual.
I think that we have actually got enough scientific data about it now that we can probably explain it.
And I explain in my book, you know, how I think that we can probably explain it, although it's not entirely proven yet.
One of the problems is scientists haven't really had enough access to it.
And that would be another way, you know, that would be a real help as well.
Well, these are things I'd like to explore.
Before we do any of that, tell me about you, because you don't come from the background that many people in recent years have investigated this from.
They've been mostly scientists or mystery hunters or various oddballs of various kinds.
You're an art historian.
I'm a professional art historian, yeah.
I mean, that's how I got involved in it, because I became interested when I realized I watched a program in 2004 and it showed that there were still serious problems with the carbon dating that said it was medieval and also presented new evidence about the manufacture of the cloth.
So I thought this was all interesting.
I was sceptical, you know, like most people.
Most people just, you know, obviously dismiss it as one of those silly season subjects.
But I thought, you know, I'm an art historian and people say it's a medieval work of art or something.
Well, I should be able to study it and work out what it is.
And it was that that led me into it, very much looking at it as, you know, well, you know, I'm qualified to research this sort of visual image.
Yeah.
And I also should say that I'm not a Christian, actually.
I'm an agnostic.
Now, has that affected the standpoint that you come to this from?
Because I would guess that if you were a devout Christian, and there's nothing wrong with being one of those, you might want to be at one removed from this.
You might have a reverence for it that perhaps somebody who isn't a Christian doesn't have.
That may be the case.
I mean, I think there are a lot of good Christian researchers on the shroud as well, people who've done, who worked out an awful lot about it, who are devout Christians.
But I think maybe I have a slight detachment in that sense.
And I approached it really just as an intellectual puzzle.
For me, it was just the most wonderful.
I love mysteries.
Here's this extraordinary mystery that people say is a medieval fake.
It was such a wonderful thing to try and understand.
And that's what really brought me in.
Okay, for those people, I can't believe there are very many of them, but there might be some.
Those who are not clear on what the Turin shroud is or purports to be, can we explain that first?
Yeah, sure.
I'll describe it.
I mean, I think quite frequently people think it's just the face of Jesus.
It's not.
It's a huge linen shroud.
It's about 14 feet long and it bears a double image, a double imprint of a man front and back.
You can See his front and his back, and it's vanishingly faint, so you can't really see it.
When you get very close to it, it fades out of view entirely.
You have to stand about six feet away to actually be able to see the image.
And he's covered with blood marks, and these relate to the wounds of crucifixion.
So it's an extraordinary artifact, unlike anything else in the world that we have.
Totally unique.
The problem down the centuries is that it's been very hard for starters for anybody to pinpoint with any great accuracy when this thing first appeared.
Yeah, understanding, you know, tracing the history of the Shroud back through time is a really tricky business.
You know, like a lot of other sort of artefacts or works of art, tracing something's provenance requires finding documents that say it was in a certain place, and then you have to identify whether the document actually refers to it or not.
And it's all very tricky.
But it can be done.
And I think the frequent idea that it appears in the 14th century, yes, it does appear in the 14th century, but the idea that it didn't exist before then is based on an inadequate understanding of the documents that we can actually use to trace its history all the way back to ancient Edessa, a city in Mesopotamia.
We can trace it back through Constantinople and back to Edessa.
Which is fine, but of course there's a bit missing.
There's a very large chunk missing.
If this thing is what it has always claimed to be, or has been claimed to be, the burial shroud of Jesus Christ, then there has to be a little missing link there from the Holy Land to its appearance in Edessa.
Yeah, there's a little missing link of that's 500 years in between the events around the crucifixion until its appearance in Edessa.
And that's explained because the Shroud appears to have been walled up in a niche above one of the city gates of Edessa as an item of power to protect the city.
That explains that period.
But I should explain that one of the things I'm not doing in this book, I'm not recreating and retracing the entire history of the Shroud because that's too complex to do in this book as well.
Now, there might be those who would say, well, that's very convenient because that is integral to the story, isn't it?
Well, it's not actually, I mean, what I focus on in this book is authenticating the Shroud.
And authenticating it means paying very, very close attention to the material characteristics of the cloth itself and its visual characteristics and deducing from the artifact itself what its origin must have been.
And if you think about it, that's absolutely standard.
That's what we do with a lot of, if you think a lot of artifacts in museums, we don't know their history going back hundreds or thousands of years even.
Quite often they just pop out of nowhere, come out of someone's attic or something.
And the process of authentication is based on the object itself.
And the understanding exactly where it's been over the centuries is actually a slightly separate matter.
There was a bid, in fact, it was done, wasn't it, not that many years ago to take a little piece of it and carbon date it and also use that little bit of cloth to help to trace what this actual cloth might be and where it might have come from.
Have you used that as a basis?
The carbon dating done in 1988 is extremely problematic.
You know, a lot of mistakes happen in carbon dating and around the 1980s when that was done, there's documented an awful lot of problems with carbon dating.
Just to give you an idea, in 1989, the year after carbon dating, there was a trial of carbon dating labs right across the UK and it was discovered that only 20% of the labs were producing satisfactory results.
So it's very, very clear that something could have gone wrong with that carbon dating.
Either there was some form of contamination and that can cause misdates in the region of thousands of years.
Or possibly there was a mend made to the shroud in that corner which was sampled.
There's only one very tiny corner that was sampled and maybe that was the later medieval mend.
We don't know.
The trouble is that scientists haven't been allowed to look at the cloth again, so it's impossible to work out what went wrong with the carbon dating.
So what you're saying, Thomas says, it's much better to take a more holistic approach to the thing.
Absolutely, absolutely.
The carbon dating is one interesting test that has been done on the shroud.
There's an awful lot of other scientific evidence, and this is something people don't understand generally, I think.
In 1978, it was subjected to very extensive testing by a team of American scientists, and they found out an awful lot about the Shroud, and that's all published in peer-reviewed journals.
So there's an awful lot of science that we do know about the Shroud.
The carbonating is just one test, and it doesn't make sense in relation to anything else that we know about the Shroud.
There's not just the science, obviously.
There's also the analysis of the image as a cultural artifact, which can tell us an awful lot as well.
There's a lot of medical examination of the Shroud.
So medics have looked at the wounds that are depicted on the body, and they can tell exactly what happened to the man, and it all checks out as an authentic record or trace of an actual crucifixion.
Now, a lot of people in that era, and I don't want to trivialize this at all, not even slightly, were crucified.
That was a way of putting people to death.
This was commonly done, and the Bible tells us it was done in Jesus' case.
However, if that is the case, that lots of people are crucified, even if he was seen by some to be a special person.
Why do you think, and this is pure speculation, I know, would anybody want to keep this item?
Because, I think, of what it meant.
This was a unique image that appeared, and people didn't know what to make of it.
In those days, it wasn't just simply, oh, it's an odd stain.
Nowadays, we think of images as very sort of mundane things.
They're everywhere, and we don't really pay them much attention.
In those days, they are seen as potentially alive.
If you think of pagan idols that are everywhere in the ancient world, these are images that don't have to sort of jump up and run around for people to think that they're possibly conscious and able to influence things in the world around them.
And this is a completely standard way of thinking about images in the old days.
It's called animism.
And we don't really do it nowadays so much because we've learned to repress it because we live in a rational age.
But in the old days, that was completely standard.
And so people coming across this strange image on the interior of the burial cloth would have seen it as a potentially, as a sort of living double of Jesus himself, like his shadow or reflection, which were also seen as living doubles of the person.
And so they would have kept it because it seemed to signify to them Jesus' presence living again after his death.
And it was seen also as an extraordinary sign, a sign from God.
It was both things at the same time.
So it was very much something that would have absolutely fascinated them.
Now, scientists recently have told us a couple of things about the Turing crowd, and I just need to check out whether you agree with these.
And number one is that the image is quite unique because it is three-dimensional, and in those days, it wasn't possible to imprint onto a cart or a piece of canvas anything that looked like that.
And number two, isn't it a negative?
And that, too, is impossible to achieve, or would have been then?
Absolutely.
To take the negative image first, it's sort of best described as a negative image.
It's rather like a photographic negative, although it's not photographic.
And yes, one of the clearest reasons for saying this is not a medieval image is that no one in medieval times was producing negative images like that of any sort.
It's amazingly realistic.
When you see it in the photograph and you see the negative of the actual image that we have, you see this amazingly realistic depiction of Christ's face.
And no one was producing images like that in the Middle Ages, let alone reproducing them in this negative version, so that no one in the Middle Ages would actually have been able to appreciate the conception behind it, because they couldn't photograph it and look at the negative.
So that's probably the most extraordinary thing about the shroud.
Then the three-dimensional aspect is very interesting as well.
And this was deduced actually by a guy called Paul Vignor in 1902 and has recently been confirmed by computer analysis.
The intensity of the image is dependent upon a distance ratio between the cloth and the body lying underneath it.
So the nearer the body the cloth was, the more intense the image.
And after about two centimetres, it fades away to nothing.
And that's what determines the darkness of the cloth or its lightness.
It's a bit like a print in a way, but it also acts at a distance.
So what's been worked out quite recently, based on Vignon's work from 1902, is that it's actually a vaporograph.
It's actually an image caused by vapours rising from the body and interacting with the cloth.
Okay, to do your analysis, were you able to see the Shroud of Turin?
Presumably they let you have access to it.
No, unfortunately not.
No one has access to it.
It's only ever put on show, very rarely.
The last exhibition was in 2010, which was the first opportunity I had to actually go and see it.
But I had to line up with all the other pilgrims in the church.
And the closest I could get was about 10 feet away, just for a few minutes.
And that is just a fact, unfortunately, with the shroud, that people who study it...
Absolutely.
I mean, there's all sorts of ways in which we can continue research on it.
Ever since we've had photographs of the Shroud, we can use photographs to do an awful lot of research about the quality of the image and so on.
Obviously, to make real progress on its origin and so on, scientists do need to be able to get their hands on the cloth as well and to scan it and to sample it and look at it in all sorts of ways, which you can't possibly do unless you've actually got the cloth itself.
So as an arch historian, I can probably do a lot more work on it than a scientist can.
Scientists haven't got the cloth itself, they really are limited with what they can do.
Because you're used to dealing with textures and images in a way that they're probably not.
Yeah, we tackle it from different sides.
And this is a great thing about the shroud.
It's one of the sort of the most interdisciplinary things you can study.
People coming at from all angles have something to contribute.
No one discipline is going to unlock the mystery.
And in my book, I've tried to bring in as report and bring in as many different types of investigation as possible.
Did you start with the premise?
Was that premise, is this a fake?
Well, I suppose when I started looking at it in 2004, yes, that's why I got interested, because it's meant to be a 14th century fake.
And I'm an art historian who deals with the 14th century.
So I thought, right, well, this is a subject for me.
And it was looking at the evidence.
The more I looked at the evidence, the more I thought, you know, this doesn't make sense as a work of art of the Middle Ages.
And there are indications, clear indications, that it's older.
You know, there are clues in the documentary record and visual images I could see which seemed to represent it before the date of the carbon dating and so on.
So the evidence led me eventually to say to myself, there's only one rational way of understanding this cloth, and that is as the burial cloth of Jesus.
And it's not a miracle.
I don't think it's a miracle at all.
It is a perfectly reasonable way of explaining this as a chemical reaction between the body and the cloth.
And at what point did you come to believe that?
Well, in 2004, I began thinking about this seriously and realized that not only did it seem to be authentic, but it could also explain the Christian belief in the resurrection, its origin.
And when I understood that, I started working on that a lot.
And fairly soon, I amassed enough evidence to say to myself that I think this really is, you know, there is no other rational way of explaining it in my view.
And how do you think, being specific about it, we've talked generally about it, was the image, how do you think the image was imprinted in that way on that piece of cloth?
Well, there are effectively two superimposed images.
One is the blood image of the wounds and everything, and they are just made of blood.
And they were simply imprinted normally, as you would expect, Blood imprinted on linen.
Then the body was left in the cloth, and the burial was unfinished, which is why the image is quite undistorted.
It wasn't wrapped around the sides of the body, it was just loosely draped on top.
And that matches the gospel record when Jesus' burial is left unfinished on Friday night and the women come to complete it on the Sunday morning.
So he's left in the cloth for 36 hours.
During that time, the body starts to decompose, and gases, amions coming from the body then interact with the carbohydrate deposits on the surface of the cloth.
And that's in a type of reaction called a Mayar reaction.
And this has all been worked out very clearly by a chemist called Ray Rogers, who was an expert on the shroud.
And it seems to be a complete...
It hasn't been proved by actually recreating the conditions yet.
And that needs to be done.
So it's still the status of a hypothesis, but it does tick all the boxes and explains everything that needs to be explained.
Okay, so we have this image there.
And you're sure that that kind of process can produce that sort of three-dimensionality that we see?
It would produce one of these vapor graphs, yes, because the gases coming off the body would, obviously, where there was contact with the body, they'd be concentrated, and the concentration falls off steeply the further the cloth is from the body.
It can also explain, actually, there's a slight image on the reverse side of the cloth where the hair is, for instance, and that's been explained, you know, very, very difficult to explain that using any of the theories that exist so far, but Ray Rodders explained it with this theory because the hair would have concentrated the gases.
It would have acted like a sort of a mat where they would have collected, and the higher concentration would have dispersed through the cloth and would have interacted with carbohydrate deposits on the other side.
So little things like that suggest that this really was how it happened.
And what about the cloth itself?
What persuades you that it is as old as it purports to be?
If I just say one thing, there's the seam that connects the side strip to the main body of the cloth.
Now, this was examined for the first time by a textile restorer in 2002.
There was a secret restoration done, and she was in charge of it.
And she examined this seam for the first time.
No one had been able to get to the underside of the cloth before, so she was the first person to see it.
And she discovered that it's an exact match for, it's a very unusual type of needlework for a start, but it's an exact match for a seam discovered on a piece of cloth from first century Judea, from the fortress of Masada.
And that's the only other example in the world.
There's also an unusual type of selvage at the side of the cloth, and that again matches examples from Judea.
So its manufacture is entirely consistent with this idea that it's actually a first century cloth.
And you're comfortable with that?
Yes, yes.
Okay, well, that puts together a very nice hypothesis, doesn't it?
What about theories, the more wacko ones that we've heard over the last few years, that, for example, it was created by Leonardo da Vinci?
Yeah, well, I don't know where to begin, really.
Well, for a start, it's documented in France in 1355 or 1356, and that's just about 100 years before Leonardo's born.
Secondly, these Leonardo theories generally rely on the idea of him inventing a camera and producing a photograph in the 16th or late 15th century.
you know, no one was doing that in those days that the technology wasn't, And the image is not photographic.
If you analyze the way the image is, it's not dependent on the fall of light.
As I say, it's dependent on distance from a body.
And you get two very different types of image.
A photograph, for instance, you would have light falling on the feet.
The feet would be very clearly seen.
If you look at the front figure on the shroud, it hasn't got any feet at all.
So it can't be photographed.
The reason why it hasn't got any feet, by the way, is because the cloth was draped over the knee and then it was draped up and over the toes.
And so the cloth lost contact with the shin and the foot.
So it didn't register.
And as you said earlier, this process of creating that sort of imprint depends on the distance from the body to the cloth.
Absolutely.
That's what determines the intensity of the image.
It's a distance ratio.
It's not to do with light.
This is all starting to sound very credible.
What about the difficult part of this?
And, you know, we're recording this at Easter time, so of course it's particularly poignant and apposite that we should be talking about this now.
The resurrection.
Where does that leave?
I'm clear, you know, in my opinion, that the shroud itself, the discovery of this extraordinary image, which should have been seen as a sign of Jesus' presence after his death, is sufficient to account for the Christian belief in the resurrection.
So we don't need any other evidence, any other circumstances.
The shroud itself is sufficient.
How?
How is that?
Because the resurrection is the idea that Jesus comes back from the dead, and the shroud itself was seen as his living presence.
It's found in his tomb after his death, and that's where the risen Jesus is first seen according to the Gospels.
So that's a perfect match.
It's then taken out of the tomb, and you can look at all the accounts of the appearances of the risen Jesus that are given by St. Paul.
He's the most important witness because he writes first.
And then in the later Gospels, which are written down later, you can look at all the appearances that are listed and described, and they all make sense as stories which grew out of appearances, sightings of the Shroud.
And I explain all this in the book very clearly, how every single one of Every piece of evidence can be explained in terms of a sighting or appearance of the shroud.
And how would you be able to be sure that the shroud as we see it was not wrapped around the body until the point that the body of this dead person was interred?
Sorry, I think it was put around him after the crucifixion, and then he was taken to the tomb in it and buried in it.
So I do think that.
Is that the answer to your question?
No, because I was thinking of the word interred really as being a permanent process.
In other words, you're saying that he got up from there.
Right, yeah, in my view, what happens is you can tell from the shroud itself that the burial was unfinished because of the onset of the Sabbath on the Friday night.
They couldn't do any more work, so they had to leave the burial unfinished.
And the women came on the Sunday morning, Easter morning, to finish the burial.
That was their intention.
Right, so I'm sorry, I'm being really silly.
You said that earlier on, and that means that this process was unfinished, and there's only one way for that process to be unfinished, and that is for a resurrection.
Well, no, you see, what I think is that the women go to the tomb, and they go to complete the burial.
To complete the burial, they have to take the top section of the cloth off the body, which is still there.
And at that point, they see the image.
And it's because they see the image, which they immediately, you know, it would have been shocking.
This is like shit seeing a shadow or an extraordinary sign in the tomb.
And it was because of the discovery of the image that they interrupted the burial.
They went to find some of the others.
And St. Peter went to the tomb after them.
And they decided to remove this shroud.
I mean, this is why it's so extraordinary, because shrouds, obviously, are usually used to bind up a body and they decompose.
So that's why we have it.
We have it because they saw the image and they thought, this is a sign from God.
This is a sign of Jesus' living presence.
We have to retrieve it.
Though they would have used it, you know, they would have gone and got another shroud, and the physical body would have been buried in another shroud.
His spiritual body, which is signified by the shroud image, was retrieved from the tomb and shown to people elsewhere.
But where does that leave the resurrection?
Well, as I say, in my view, it didn't happen, that the resurrection was a belief based on the sighting and display of the shroud.
So in other words, if Jesus was what Christians believe he is and was, that is a calling card for him?
I wouldn't put it like that myself, you know, and I think Christians' conception of Jesus is ultimately based on their conception of Jesus as the divine Son of God is ultimately based on the shroud itself.
I think that is the root of Christology, the idea of Jesus as Christ.
I think it is actually still, even if you think of it in these sort of rational terms, it is still an amazing thing for Christians to contemplate, to have this extraordinary image, even if it is just a perfectly natural stain produced by his dead body.
It is still an extraordinary image, and not just for Christians, I don't think.
And I think it has poignancy and meaning for all of us, in a way, because it's a trace of an extraordinary death, a horrendous torture, and it does so encapsulate a lot of our humanity.
And you're saying it's special because of the amazing circumstances behind it and connected to it, and the fact that somebody thought it was important enough to take away and keep.
Those factors in themselves, if we didn't know anything else, makes this thing very special.
Yeah, I think it is very special.
And it shows us the cruelty and the torture.
It shows us what we're capable of doing to another member of our fellow species.
Especially when you look at the negative image, it's a very, very dignified figure as well.
And it speaks to us in that way.
So I think it's an amazing thing for everyone to contemplate, obviously especially for Christians.
But it is undoubtedly, I think, one of the most extraordinary and special images in the world.
I think it's a real shame that it has this sort of label of something that's just a silly season subject.
It's not silly.
It's an appalling object in some ways, shocking.
But it's also fascinating and poignant as well.
And people should be looking at this image as much as they're going to look at Michelangelo's and Raphael's.
And how does this image tie in with those images that you've just talked about?
How does it tie in?
Well, the image that we see, the person that we see, how does that relate to the images that traditionally we've seen through art?
Well, I think originally it did have an influence on art.
It did influence the depiction of Christ.
If you look at the image on the shroud, it does actually conform quite closely to our sort of general concept of what Christ looked like.
And I think that is because it was a major model for how Christ was represented through the centuries.
And so Michelangelo and the Renaissance masters, they pick up on this model as well and give it all sorts of variations and develop it.
But this idea of the bearded, noble-faced man does ultimately derive from the shroud.
You say you're not a Christian.
You didn't come at this from a Christian perspective.
If you have a spiritual side, and I'm assuming because you're doing this, you probably do.
What has this work that you've produced done for that spiritual side of you?
I'm an agnostic, and I don't know whether I'd say that I have a spiritual side.
I'm intensely interested in our humanity, and that is, I think, the thing which I've really got out of it from an emotional point of view, if you like.
Okay, what do you believe then, having done this, what do you believe, who do you believe Jesus was?
I believe Jesus was a man, like anyone else, and I don't believe that he had any particular powers, and that's what I've always believed about Jesus, and it hasn't changed because of the work I've done.
So you believe that he was a special person, a kind of leader, a sort of Martin Luther King-type character?
I think the best information we have about him actually is from the Shroud and I think from that you can see someone who was willing to die for his fellow men and women.
It's a noble figure and understanding who Jesus was from the Gospels is actually very, very difficult because they're very tricky historical sources.
I mean I hope that something that comes across from my book actually is how difficult it is to extract history from texts which are written maybe 60, 70 years after the events by people who have agendas.
And so it's very, very difficult to understand exactly who he was because our historical sources are so difficult.
And in that sense, that's another reason why the Shroud is special because you don't have to have the history filtered through the consciousness of followers and people who are putting forward their own agendas in the Gospels.
You have direct access to the figure of the man in his own image.
And I think that's a wonderful thing.
You're based in Cambridge.
It's a seat of learning, of course it is.
It's also a place of spirituality.
There are churches there.
There are senior church figures there.
You've had a certain amount of media coverage in the UK this week.
Have you had any reaction about this?
No, I haven't actually had any reaction.
You know, I'm doing this.
I ought to explain, you know, my focus really is this is a historical investigation of a moment in history.
And I, in a way, don't want to get too involved in trying to sort of think through what the theological implications might be or the church reactions might be because in a way I feel that's not my territory in a way.
You know, you may think that, and of course, I totally understand why you think that.
And if I'd done the work that you've done, I'd think that too.
But there are going to be people who will take a view about this because they always have.
I'm absolutely happy for people to disagree with me.
And if people think that it's right to see these events another way, that's fine by me.
I'm not trying to convert anyone.
And this is a book for people who are open-minded, who want to know what happened.
I invite them basically to read my book and make up their own mind.
This is how I think it happened.
But I'm not going to tell anyone, you know, you have to believe this or anything like that.
That's not how I believe.
And the interesting thing about you is you're using the tools of an art historian specializing in the period when this thing appeared to us, when we first were aware of it.
But you're not dismissing the science that's been done recently.
You're not dismissing all of it out of hand.
You're taking it into account.
Yeah, I mean, I try and take as much of the science into account as I can.
You know, I think, you know, some of the science is better than others.
And there is this real problem that a lot of it is quite old now.
I mean, the examination was done in 1978, the last really, you know, in fact the only really extensive testing of the shroud.
And so that was also published in the 1980s.
And since then, we haven't really had much new.
But I try and look at all the relevant science as I see it has been done.
That's absolutely crucial.
And you said earlier on that you think that it should be released more openly for further investigation to be done because it has been kept literally under wraps for so long.
And the last time it was on display was 2010, and you had to file past it like everybody else.
Well, I mean, I understand that it's an object of devotion, and it deserves respect in that sense.
So I quite understand why it is kept in a precious shrine and access to it is restricted.
I think that's absolutely right and proper.
But all I would say is that it would also, I think, be completely acceptable for it to be made available occasionally to qualified researchers, in particular scientists who really do need access to the cloth itself and textile restorers and people like that who can, just by examining the object, really further our knowledge of it.
I think it's such an important object in world history that we really do need to deepen our knowledge of it.
And what you're saying is that nobody of faith needs to be afraid of this because you're not dismissing the basis of Christianity.
You're not dismissing their beliefs at all.
In a way, you're providing just another way of looking at them.
Well, I mean, if you follow through my argument in the book, if you accept my argument in the book, then I am effectively saying that the resurrection didn't happen because we have a better explanation.
You know, I don't claim that it has to be believed by everyone, but for people who want a good historical explanation of what happened, which doesn't involve a miracle, then I can provide it.
People who look into mysteries and enigmas like this, quite often it fires them for life, and they can't leave it alone.
Are you one of those people?
I've always been interested in mysteries.
I think they're fascinating, but I'm not going to start going off and researching every mystery under the sun now because I've done this.
I'm passionate about art history and I'm passionate about paintings and trying to explain how they mean.
There's a lot of really, really fascinating problem pictures that exist that people don't know how they mean or what they're intended to mean, who painted them, things like that.
Those are issues that absolutely fascinate me and most of them have nothing to do with the shroud.
These days the answer to most things that are mysteries, certainly from history, is to throw $10 million worth of technology at them and see where you come at from there.
Your approach is completely different.
It's organic.
Do you think that we could use that approach in other things, perhaps?
I think that's a really good question.
I think myself that a lot of this book is basically about just rethinking, about saying, okay, we've got an awful lot of evidence, and we're pushing all this evidence into certain ways of thinking about it at the moment.
What happens if you just step back and try and take a completely different approach?
And suddenly, if you do that, all sorts of things, if you find a new way of looking at something, suddenly all the evidence stacks up in a new way and you can make real progress on issues in that way.
You can open up a completely new way of understanding and that's just as valid and important a way of tackling these issues as trying to add one more fact to the pile.
I've interviewed a few art historians, not very many in my career, I have to say.
I should interview a few more, I think.
But what I've noticed about the ones I have met is that they're individuals.
I'm not sure where the art historians gather together, share views and what have you.
But if you have heard the views of other art historians about this, what are they saying to you?
I've actually, because I've been working this book in secret, actually.
Yeah, now I've been working in secret, so I've actually sort of absented myself from the art history world for a few years now.
I'm just occasionally going along to the odd seminar and thing, and I haven't been talking about it.
So I think it's just, you know, it's emerged, you know, quite suddenly now, and it's a very difficult thing to take in what I'm saying.
You know, apart from all the stuff about, you know, the resurrection, the idea that the Shroud is a medieval fake is very, very, very entrenched, even though I don't think there's a shred of evidence to support it.
You know, apart from the carbon dating, which is problematic.
So coming out and saying these very, very new things, I think it's going to take a while for people to sort of sort out what they think of it.
So I'm not expecting any quick reaction, honestly.
But what you've said is, you know, at the very least, plausible.
And, you know, after so much theorizing, so many wacko theories that we've had over the years and so much written about this thing, to get something that's plausible, it's pretty good, isn't it?
Well, I hope so.
Yeah, I hope people will agree with you.
I mean, that would be really nice if people can see that this is an entirely rational theory.
I don't make any wild claims.
It's all explained in terms of science and art history and the archaeology of first century Palestine and medical arguments.
So it's all completely plausible and rational.
So I hope people will recognize that when they maybe get past a sort of a sensationalist idea, people will get through to actually just reading the book and saying, well, you know, it does generally add up.
Now you have a publisher.
Publishers like to promote books.
Of course they do.
And that's possibly one of the reasons you got in the newspapers this week.
Are you willing to, are you interested in going around the world to, I don't want to say, I'm trying to look for a word for promote, but it's the only word I have to promote the book.
I have to say that, to be honest, I'm quite a private person.
And I don't think you could have written a book in secret for this many years without being quite self-contained.
And I'm not really myself a publicity seeker.
It doesn't drive me.
I'm not interested in it.
I'm interested in understanding things.
And I like, honestly, to be honest, I like getting back to my desk and trying to work out the next problem, the next mystery.
That's what drives me.
I'm not interested in doing round-the-world tours or anything like that.
Now that you've walled yourself away, you've written this thing, it's been published, it's out there.
What do you do next?
Well, I mean, it's just a great relief actually getting off my chest in a way.
What do I do next?
I'm thinking about the next projects.
I've got several that I might do.
And maybe the reaction to this book will help me decide.
I'm still in that sort of, you know, it's very, very early stages now.
And to anybody who may say, who may have an almost fundamentalist Christian belief, they may say, this is an insult to us.
What would you say to them?
I just say, don't read it.
I'm quite happy for you to have a separate belief from me.
Don't say that, you know, it's immoral for someone else to want to understand the resurrection in rationalistic, scientific terms.
That's fine.
Live and let live is my philosophy.
And if everyone understands that, then we don't have a problem.
Remind us of the title of the book.
It's called The Sign.
And it's published by?
Published by Viking in England and Dutton in America.
All right, well, I mean, they're big publishing houses.
They must have taken you very, very seriously to put the money behind this thing.
Yeah, I mean, they do take me seriously.
And, you know, I had to show them my credentials and convince them initially that this was a serious project.
It's not some sort of fluffy, you know, sort of thing.
And yeah, so I had to convince them initially.
And that was hard, but I did it.
And they're now backing me to the hills.
And the American edition, is it going to be exactly the same as the British one, as far as you know?
It's got a different cover.
I know that.
But otherwise, it's exactly the same.
I suppose what I'm saying is that nobody anywhere has lent on you, even slightly.
No, absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
Well, that is amazing.
And thank you very much.
I found that very, very interesting.
You know, I've done other interviews about the Turin Shroud over the years, but this is a whole new way of looking at it.
And, you know, at least it's going to fire people's imaginations, I think.
Thomas DeVesolo, thank you very much for coming on The Unexplained.
Thank you very much indeed.
Well, there you have the thoughts of Thomas de Vesolo in Cambridge, United Kingdom, with what I think is a completely unique and different take on the Shroud of Turin.
Many people, scientists, people of learning and religion, have tried for centuries to explain what this thing is and what it means.
But you've just heard something completely different there.
I guess it may be controversial if you want to give me feedback about this.
Please do.
Go to the website www.theunexplained.tv, www.theunexplained.tv, and I would love to hear from you whatever you have to say and thank you again for your support.
Go to the website, tell me what you think about the show if you want to leave a donation there.
That'd be great too.
Thank you to Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot Liverpool for getting the show out to you as ever.
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Above all, thank you to you for supporting The Unexplained.
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