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This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.

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The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily

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the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

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Locked in a cathedral in Turin, Italy is the Holy Shroud.

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Thousands of pilgrims have journeyed from around the earth to view what they believe

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is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

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Today, scientists are using modern technology to investigate the authenticity of this ancient

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relic.

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A young skeptic, however, has come forward with a claim he can prove the Shroud is a

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fraud.

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Is this the face of Christ or a forgery perpetrated by some unknown genius?

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Three and a half million people came to Turin, Italy in late 1978.

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Each day, they lined up patiently in the hot sun, waiting for one brief glimpse of the

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most controversial relic in all of Christianity, the Holy Shroud of Jesus Christ.

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While they waited in the streets of Turin, vendors hawked cheap imitations of the face

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on the Shroud.

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This commercialism was reminiscent of the Middle Ages, when phony fragments of the true cross

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were peddled all over Europe.

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The Shroud would be displayed for six weeks and then locked away for a half century or

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longer.

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It was literally a once in a lifetime opportunity.

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The Holy Shroud, an old piece of linen, 14 feet three inches long, between the stains,

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burn marks and patches, the image of a man, his hands crossed in death.

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The image on the Shroud is extremely faint.

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It tends to fade into the weave of the cloth.

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Blood stains at the head and at the hands are hard to see.

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Before the cloth was damaged by water and fire, however, the image must have been much

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easier to make out as this reconstructed copy shows.

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A professor of theology from Chicago's Loyola University, the Reverend Francis Phyllis, had

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to wait 30 years for his first glimpse of the relic.

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He was already a renowned expert on the Shroud, having studied the only material available,

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photos and documents.

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It was a stunning experience to see the Shroud beyond anything I've ever had in my life.

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I've heard of people having stunning experiences, but I know now what people mean when they

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say I cannot describe it.

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The most surprising element of the Shroud is that these stains are faint, vaporous, gaseous

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like, and the farther away you get, the more clearly you see the Shroud.

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I had the privilege of seeing it inches away, which most people didn't.

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And I can tell you, when you're on top of the image, you see practically nothing.

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In 1978, Phyllis was in touring with a select team of American scientists.

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They performed many tests on the Shroud, attempting to determine how the print of a body got onto

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this old piece of linen.

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Could it be the actual body of Christ?

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The early history of the Shroud is hidden in the Gospels and in old legends.

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Several times, the Bible refers to the burial linens of Christ.

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One passage in particular has mystified scholars.

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Mary looked into the tomb and saw two men in white cloth with the body of Jesus head

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laying, a description of the double image on the Shroud, perhaps.

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The burial cloth could have been draped like this, producing separate images of both the

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front and back of the body.

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The legend of Veronica may be a clue to the early existence of the Shroud.

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Veronica took pity on Jesus' sufferings and wiped his face with her veil.

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Miraculously, an image of his face appeared on the cloth.

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The words Vera Icon mean true image.

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And when the Shroud is folded in a certain way, it looks exactly like the traditional

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image of Veronica's veil.

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Yet, there is no historical record of Veronica.

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Edessa is a small town in Turkey.

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Legend says that Thaddeus, one of the first disciples, took a miraculous image of Jesus

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to the king of Edessa.

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The king was cured of leprosy and converted to Christianity.

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Then, during a wave of persecution against the new religion, the cloth vanished.

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Four centuries later, workmen repairing the city gate made a startling discovery.

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Sealed into the wall, the miraculous image had remained untouched for 400 years.

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Stories of the miraculous image of Jesus filtered back to Europe and actually prompted the crusades.

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Of course, no single historical object can be held responsible for the hysteria which

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sent thousands of knights and children off to the Middle East.

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But they had one goal in mind, capture the Holy Land and bring the famous religious relics

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back to Europe.

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The crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204.

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However, the Shroud, with the image of Christ, had again vanished.

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About 600 years ago, the Shroud shifted from legend to history.

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In 1352, it was discovered in Lyres, France, but there is no record as to how it came

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to be here.

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The linen was almost destroyed one night during an accidental fire in a nearby church.

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The image itself was barely touched by the fire.

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The Shroud finally came to rest in the Cathedral of St. John in Turin, Italy and is now kept

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under triple lock and key in a steel and asbestos box.

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Fearful of further damage, church officials allow it to be shown only once or twice a

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century.

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The face on the Shroud may be a clue to the remarkable consistency of Christian art.

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The Gospels say not a single word about the appearance of Jesus.

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We would expect artists to portray him in a million different ways, but this is not the

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case.

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Teachers learned from their masters and the masters in turn learned from their teachers.

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Even the most brilliant detective should become lost in a tangled web of art history extending

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back for 2,000 years.

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Was there a single original source for the face of Jesus? Was it the face on the Shroud?

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The Shroud would probably have been all but forgotten except for an amazing discovery

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in 1898.

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Secondo Pia, a lawyer and amateur photographer, was given permission to make the first photo

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of the Holy Relic.

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He was overly cautious, knowing he wouldn't have a second chance.

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In the morning, the Shroud would again be locked away for many years.

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He worked very late that last night of the exposition.

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Alone in his dark room, Pia waited nervously for an image to appear on his glass plate

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negative.

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At first, he thought something had gone wrong.

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His negative didn't look like a negative.

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Secondo Pia said, I was the first man since the apostles to see our Lord's actual face.

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His discovery was to trigger intensive scientific investigation.

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In the 20th century, we all recognized the look of a photographic negative.

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Light and shade are reversed. Faces have a strange appearance.

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A print made from the negative looks normal.

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The most puzzling fact about the Shroud of Turin has not yet been explained by science.

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The image on the cloth looks just like a photographic negative.

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The eyes seem open and staring, like a medieval icon.

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When we take a picture of this image, however, a wealth of accurate detail suddenly appears.

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The eyes are seen to be closed in death.

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The body contours become clear.

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In other words, the Shroud itself is a sort of photographic negative

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dating from centuries before the invention of photography,

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before anyone had seen or even imagined what a negative image would look like.

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The Shroud is something like the corpse in an egg at the Christie Mystery.

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You've got it on your hands, whether you like it or not, you've got to explain it.

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If you don't like it, then you have to explain what put the marks there.

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And remember, not just photographically negative marks,

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but also the transferred blood stains from the very spoons in this man's body.

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Using life-sized photos of the Shroud,

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anatomists reconstructed the face of the figure.

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He was the report 5'11 and weighed 180 pounds.

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Christian art has always shown nail wounds in the hands of Christ.

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The Shroud, however, seems to indicate blood spurting from the wrist.

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Pathologists set out to test both versions of the crucifixion.

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Experimenting with cadavers, they drove nails into the palm and hung the body from a scale.

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They were surprised to find that flesh in the palm simply tore away,

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unable to support the weight of the body.

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Then they experimented with nails through the wrist.

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Here, the tendons and ligaments could easily support the weight.

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The Shroud image was accurate.

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Even the U.S. Air Force contributed,

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utilizing sophisticated computers which can enhance faint images.

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Scientists produced a three-dimensional portrait of the Shroud face.

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Color of a cloth image is like a scorch, produced by a miraculous burst of heat or radiant energy.

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As of the moment, we have to take the word of the experts in physics and related sciences

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who think the best theory from the electronic experimentation would lead to some type of radiation.

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Joe Nicol, an artist and private investigator, claims he can prove the Shroud is a fraud.

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It's a simple technique using simply hot water and cloth and a lower leaf or bar relief,

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which during the 14th century in France were commonplace.

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Every artist could whip out these bar reliefs for the church architecture.

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What you do is you mold the cloth while it's hot and while it's wet to the bar relief.

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And to do this, you begin to use your fingers to press and force the cloth to the features

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so that it begins to take on the relief of the features.

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And as you continue to work this, say after you get a good start on it, perhaps every half hour or so as it begins to dry,

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when you finish, you will have the cloth tightly molded to the bar relief.

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It will fit it rather like a mask.

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Since the Gospel of John refers to the burial spices, myrrh and aloes,

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and since aloes has a potent staining property, I decided to try that.

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I first tried just the aloes and it's a little too potent, tends to smudge.

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So if you tone it down with the myrrh, it works beautifully in about a 50-50 mixture

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and it does not penetrate the fibers of the cloth, just as the imagery on the Shroud does not penetrate the fibers of the cloth.

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A homemade dauber, cotton, piece of cloth, piece of tape, just applied very sparingly

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and just very, very lightly began to stroke down the plaque.

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With this experiment, Nicol produced an image of similar color and tone to the face on the Shroud.

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His final test was to subject his image to the process of negative positive photography.

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The results divide into about three categories.

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Under technique, it allows the artist to view his work as he progresses.

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It's consistent with the opinions of two official Shroud commission members

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that it was an artistic printing technique, probably using a model or molds.

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And of course it's consistent with 14th century technology.

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The pigment is a light brown color, deceptively similar to a scorch.

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It doesn't penetrate the fiber bundles and doesn't leave brush marks.

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It doesn't look like a painting.

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Under imagery, of course, it's a perfect negative produced in an era that had no foreknowledge of photography.

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You needn't desire a negative image, it simply automatically produces a negative image.

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Altogether, there are more than 50 points of similarity between this technique and the imagery on the Shroud.

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I think it's conclusive.

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This is wrong on at least two dozen counts, of which I can mention only a few here.

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First of all, there were 3,000,000 people at Turing during the exposition.

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Again and again, people in the crowd commented,

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now I can see forgery is so impossible because these marks themselves are so gaseous, so hard to see.

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Then we would say, why would any medieval forgery put nail wounds here in the wrist

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contradicting the medieval tradition that the nail had been in the palm?

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Still another factor, we must not forget that Dr. Max Frey, the Swiss criminologist,

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took off the Shroud 48 different pollens, microscopically identified,

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and 13 of them come from plants that are botanically identified that are indigenous,

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native that is only to ancient Palestine and growing in Israel right now.

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In October 1978, a chance arose to resolve this question of forgery.

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30 American scientists were given four days of uninterrupted access to the Shroud.

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No motion pictures were allowed, but these stills were taken while the scientists were utilizing techniques

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such as X-ray, infrared, ultraviolet, and minute particle sampling.

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Their results will certainly generate more controversy.

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Unfortunately, the one test which could eliminate the possibility of forgery has not been allowed.

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Radiocarbon measurement could show how old the cloth of the Shroud is.

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The only hitch, you have to burn a piece.

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In Rome, Contessa Marie Antoinette Nicastro, an advisor to church officials,

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was shocked by the American scientists' request.

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They asked us to experiment carbon-14.

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Contessa believes the Shroud is vitally important to both science and faith,

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but the permanent loss of such a large sample would be too great a sacrifice.

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The scientists' request was denied.

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A solution to this impasse between the church and science was recently proposed by a nuclear physicist from Rochester, Dr. Harry Gold.

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The conventional technique would need a piece of cloth about the size of a man's handkerchief,

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whereas our technique could do it with a single thread about eight inches long.

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Dr. Gold has adapted a nuclear accelerator to date extremely small samples of organic material.

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He feels he has already proven the accuracy of this technique.

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We got a sample of Egyptian mummy cloth, linen cloth, which is similar to the Shroud material,

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and its historical date is known, and it was also dated by the conventional technique,

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and we measured it and we got an age of 2,050 years with an error of about plus or minus 80 years,

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and that agrees with both of the other measurements, so we feel pretty confident we can do it.

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Is the Shroud 600 years old and therefore a forgery, or 1,900 years old and possibly authentic?

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Never before have church officials sacrificed even the smallest piece of a holy relic for scientific testing.

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However, a new wave of open communication is sweeping through the church, led by Pope John Paul II.

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The ultimate decision to burn a piece of the Shroud may rest with this man.

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The Shroud, safely locked away, is once more out of reach.

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It is not expected to be seen again for at least another generation.

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Perhaps in the time of our grandchildren, we will discover if the Shroud is the burial cloth of Christ.

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Can there be scientific tests as for the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ?

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As for the resurrection, I think we should note that the resurrection of Jesus is a dogma of Christianity

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that by definition is a miracle and therefore beyond human comprehension.

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No scientific law could be involved in that case. That is a question of religious faith.

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As for the crucifixion, however, this is a historical fact subject to our own laws of human life,

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and therefore the Shroud can be used to give us evidence of a crucified Jew 2,000 years ago.

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And of course, mathematically, this would lead to the identification with Jesus Christ.

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The disciple Thomas was the first skeptical scientist. He asked for proof of the resurrection. Jesus obliged.

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And then reminded him, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

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Coming up next in search of continues with an exploration to find the remains of John the Baptist.

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Then, agents hunt for the brilliant mastermind of a mass convict escape on FBI, The Untold Stories.

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Log on at veterans.com, a new website brought to you by The History Channel.

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Veterans.com, a place where veterans, their families and others can connect, share stories,

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and pass on the legacies of all American veterans.