Interview With Barrie Schwortz

Welcome to my interview with Barrie Schwortz.

Barrie Schwortz was the Official Documenting Photographer for the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), the team that conducted the first in-depth scientific examination of the Shroud in 1978. Today, he plays an influential role in Shroud research and education as the editor and founder of the internationally recognized Shroud of Turin Website (www.shroud.com), the oldest, largest and most extensive Shroud resource on the Internet, with more than fifteen million visitors from over 160 countries.

In 2009 he founded the Shroud of Turin Education and Research Association, Inc. (STERA, Inc.), a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation, to which he donated the website and his extensive Shroud photographic collection, as well as many other important Shroud resources, in order to preserve and maintain these materials and make them available for future research and study. He currently serves as the President of STERA, Inc.

Highlights From The Interview

Highlights from the podcast include:

• Stories behind researching the Shroud of Turin
• How Barrie Schwortz is involved in with shroud.com
• More information on STURP

Transcript

Hi, everybody, I’m Guy Powell, and welcome to the next episode of the backstory on the Shroud of Turin. Please visit GuyPowell.com and sign up for more episodes. I am the author of the upcoming book, The Only Witness, which is a historical fiction, tracing the story of the Shroud, over the last two millennia. Today we’ll be speaking with Barry Schwortz, he is one of the preeminent researchers on the Shroud of Turin. For those of you that are familiar with STURP, he was one of the team members that were able to research the Shroud, in the Royal Palace in Turin, Italy in 1978. But before we get started, I wanted to tell a short story. I used to live in Germany, and one of the most impressive things I’ve ever experienced, was my visit to the doc cow concentration camps right outside of Munich, Germany. Now by impressive, I don’t mean positive. I mean, it made this incredible impression on me. And it’s more akin to the German translation of imponierend. And, it made this impression on me and in an incredibly negative way. And be honest with you, I will never ever go back. I can barely look at a movie on any of the visits that people take or show on Auschwitz or Birkenau or wherever it happens to be. Well, viewing the Shroud, for me is similarly impressive, both negatively and positively. The Shroud, shows and witnesses the scourging with the flagellum, over 100 times the suffering the wounds, and then lastly, the death, possibly, probably by asphyxiation, but it could have been something else as well. On the positive side, though, the Shroud, assuming its authenticity is the only witness to the resurrection. It is the most studied artifact in the world. And it’s these two reasons that led to the effort expended on understanding this truly wondrous relic, both by STURP and by scientists around the world.

So, let me welcome Barry Schwartz. He’s, of course an amazing photographer. And that’s kind of how he started in this business. But he was the official documentary photographer for the Shroud of Turin Research Project, also known as STURP as the team that conducted the first in depth scientific examination of the Shroud, in 1978. Today, he plays an influential role in Shroud, research, and education as the editor and founder of the internationally recognized Shroud of Turin website, which is www.Shroud.com. It is one of the oldest, largest and most extensive Shroud, resources on the internet, with more than 15 million visitors from over 160 countries. In 2009, he founded the Shroud of Turin Education and Research Association, also known as STERA, a nonprofit 5013 C. corporation to which he donated the website and his extensive Shroud, photographic collection, as well as many other important Shroud, resources in order to preserve and maintain these materials and make them available for future research and study. He currently serves as the president of STERA, Inc.

 Barry welcome, and so good to have you today with me,

Barrie Schwortz

It’s my pleasure to be here Guy. I’m glad to be able to participate with you in your new venture of doing these podcasts.

 Guy Powell

Thank you Barry and really looking forward to doing this with you and also with others. So, tell us tell us more about the story of how you got involved in the Shroud, originally.

Barry Schwortz

Well back in the 1970s. I was in Santa Barbara, California and I operated a commercial photographic studio. But primarily focused more I mean. We did advertising and that kind of thing. But a lot of my work was scientific, medical or technical. And I worked with organizations like Raytheon and GM, Delco, and Burroughs, and many of the medical device manufacturing companies. So, I have a pretty strong technical background.

And then I was approached in I guess this would have been 1975, late, mid late 1975, by a company in Santa Barbara, that was a contractor to Los Alamos National Laboratories. And they had a project where they needed a photographic consultant, someone who had access to a darkroom and had darkroom skills to produce five books of images from what was then highly classified Motion Picture films, above ground atomic explosions, mushroom clouds. And what they found was because they had these amazing computers at that time, beyond what any of the rest of us could even imagine then, big Cray water-cooled monsters. They were able to extract new data from these old unclassified films how to reclassify the films and so they needed to extract this information I had to in the darkroom, super impose kilometer scales and all kinds of other information. And then these books were presented to what was then the Atomic Energy Commission, now the DOE, Department of Energy, and all military groups. So, I did that project. It lasted seven months, and I worked with a gentleman named Don Divan. Well, a few weeks after we finished, the phone rang again and it was Don Divan again. And when you’re self-employed and the phone rings, you’re always praying, hey, that’s the next job, I hope. And so Don called me up and he said, No, he said, Not exactly.

He said, “What do you know about the Shroud of Turin. And I laughed, I said, but I’m Jewish, and Don laughed and said, “so um, I remember, Don was one of the other Jewish members of our team. And he explained to me that he and a number of other researchers from Los Alamos and Sandia Labs had taken a device called a VP-8 image analyzer, which you input a black and white, with a black and white video camera, and it displays the results on a green screen monitor. And what it does is it takes the lights and darks of the image and stretches them into 3d space proportionate to each other. Well, if you go back to the early parts of the 20th century, Shroud, scholars, then were predicting that there might be some depths or spatial or 3D information encoded in the image, but they had no way to prove it. In the 1960s, a photographer and artist named Leo Valla, projected an image onto a block of clay and sculpted a 3d face of the man of the Shroud, which turns out was quite accurate. But in 1976, when they submitted a photograph of the Shroud to this device, that was the first time in history that a scientific instrument confirmed that there was spatial, or depth or 3D information encoded into the density of the Shroud image. And as soon as I saw that, I knew well, it can’t be a photograph or an artwork, because we photographers can’t do that. We can imply depth with highlights and shadows, but we’re not encoding any distance information into our photographs. So, that caught my interest. So, when he explained to me that they were looking for a photographer, they’re going to put a team together. He said, “would you like to be a part of that?” And I said, “no, I didn’t want to get involved.” And he assured me that it was science. And so, I kind of relented. I was very curious about that image property. But to be very candid, I was also thinking, free trip to Italy.

Guy Powell

So, some good wine.

Barry Schwortz

Yeah, well, I’d never been to Europe, and this was an opportunity. So, I said, Yes. But a few weeks later, two other gentlemen joined our team. We worked in regional groups. I was in California at the time. And so, two gentlemen from the Jet Propulsion Lab joined our team, Don Lynn, who is head of Imaging on Voyager, Viking, Mariner, and Galileo projects, and John Lore. And Don Lynn was a good Catholic man. And a couple of weeks into it, I was again feeling and maybe I shouldn’t be a part of this. It seemed so far above me. I wasn’t a scientist. As you know, some of these guys were just amazing scientists. And I remember saying to them, maybe, maybe I shouldn’t be a part of this. And Don Lynn my hero from the JPL looked at me, he said, “have you forgotten that the man in question is a Jew?”

 And I should know, I knew that. He says, “oh, you don’t think God wants one of his chosen people on our team?” And I laughed. “No, I never thought that.”And he said, “listen, stop complaining. Go to Turin. Do the best job you can do. God doesn’t tell us in advance what the plan is. But one day, you’ll know.”

That’s what kept me on the team. And here it is. 43 years later, and I’m still doing it. So, that was what brought me on board the Shroud of Turin Research Project.

Guy Powell

Interesting story. And 43 years later, how it has changed so many lives, and certainly including yours, and including everybody that was on the STURP team. Wow.

So, tell us what was it actually like in the Royal Palace there in Turin?

Barry Schwortz

Well, you know, people immediately think of a scientific examination. They think of a laboratory with stainless steel tables, and, you know, white enameled stuff and beakers. And it’s a 400-year old, creaky old building, kind of musty tapestries hanging on the walls that were 400 years old. So, dust was an issue. There were frescoes on the ceiling, and every time a truck or a bus went by the palace, the building would vibrate, and you could see the particulates sort of floating down. It was not the best, but it was what we were given to do. And we adapted. What amazed me, and I can say this, speaking of my fellow team members, even though I’ve worked with scientists and researchers, over the years, I had never met a more dedicated group of empirical people than this group of scientists. They absolutely were dedicated to doing this. So, they sat in, and we spent 17 months in advance of going to Turin, just to plan out our experiments that were all put into a test plan that was submitted to the then owner of the Shroud King Umberto, who was illegally the owner at that time. And it was King Umberto who gave us permission to examine the Shroud, not the Catholic Church, because it wasn’t owned by the Catholic Church. It was owned by the king. And so, the people in Turin were known as the custodians of the Shroud. And so, when King Umberto gave us the Yes, go ahead. People in Turin, weren’t too thrilled because they’d been studying the Shroud, for years, they’d never been given this kind of access and permission. And suddenly, this group of American Scientists from big name laboratories are there, so there was a certain level of resentment, which I understand that they didn’t feel too thrilled about having us there. But I mean, they were lobbying to stop us until the Shroud, was brought in the room. But in the end, that didn’t stop us. And considering during that 17-month period, they had to anticipate every possible problem that might be encountered and be prepared to deal with those problems should they arise. And sure enough, a number of them almost on a daily basis did and the thoroughness of their preparation still amazes me at how they were able to anticipate what possibly could go wrong. And provide a way of dealing with that should it arrive. One of the best examples is the steel table that we used that was constructed specifically for this purpose to attach the Shroud to it, with magnets, so it wouldn’t damage the cloth with pinholes or clamps or something like that. And once the table arrived in Turin, they found that it had oxidized that the steel had a white powdery surface on it, that would come off. You could rub it off on your hands, and obviously couldn’t put the Shroud on that. They anticipated that and they brought with them – remember, we had two guys from NASA, they brought several rolls of gold foil mylar – the same stuff that you see inside the cargo bay of the space shuttle, or on satellites, very expensive stuff. And we had to cover the panels of our table with that gold foil mylar. But the fact that they anticipated that could be a problem and brought a solution with us. Sure enough that we needed to use. I mean, that just is a small example of how thorough their planning was to go in. This wasn’t just a bunch of guys going, okay, let’s hop on an airplane and go look at the Shroud. This was the most thorough examination and planning of any scientific project that I’ve ever been a part of.

Guy Powell

So, a real tough, real tough question for you then. So, you were there 120 hours straight. Was there a plan to sleep for anybody or was everybody awake the whole time?

Barrie Schwortz

Well, being the only documenting photographer, we were there 120 hours and I was in the room approximately 113 hours. I did have to go back to the hotel and take a shower and get an hour to sleep on one or two occasions. So, I wasn’t there and sadly, because of that, I did miss documenting one of the experiments in depth the way I did all the others. And that to this day, I kind of have regretted that, but you know, you can only stay awake for so long. And especially when you’re in a, you know, another culture, another country, different languages. We didn’t get to enjoy much of Turin. But what we did do is an amazing examination of that. Amazing.

 Guy Powell

Yeah, it’s really impressive. So, what do you think is the one most valuable outcome that came out of that?

Barrie Schwortz

Well, I think if I were to look at everything that we did, I think maybe the most important single piece of information is the fact that we found no traces of paint, pigments, binders, or any kind of artistic medium that might lead to this being some kind of an artwork. And the same is true of photography, because there was a belief that some of the silver, that when it was in a fire in 1532, that some of the silver from the casket it was in may have dripped onto the cloth burning some of those holes. So we’re also looking for silver. And that was a double-edged sword. Because if the Shroud, were made photographically, which some people suggested, then we would have found silver all over the cloth, more so in the image less so in the outer, you know, outside of the image, we found zero silver, except for one microscopic, literally microscopic bead of what apparently had been molten silver, perhaps again, from that fire. That’s the only silver we found anywhere. So, there’s one or two gentlemen out there people out there who claim the Shroud, is made photographically, and they don’t understand that when you fix a photographic image, it removes all the unused silver and what remains is the silver that forms the image. So, if the Shroud, had been made photographically, we would have found silver everywhere. And since that theory is that they soak the cloth in the silver solution, it would have penetrated into the fibers, it would have been overwhelming in the amount of silver, we’d have found. We found zero silver. So, it’s not a photographic image, although it has one or two properties, like a photograph. Yeah, but it has other properties, unlike any photograph ever made.

Guy Powell

Well, that 3D imaging story that you told was about the VP8, that that kind of goes totally against what you would otherwise get an A in a, you know, in a regular photograph in a 2d photograph.

 Barrie Schwortz

Yeah, in my present in my presentation, I actually show a VP8 image of a couple of kids just to show you the difference. And of course, it’s all distorted and flat, you don’t get any natural relief of the human form, which is what you got on the VP8 with the Shroud image, the actual relief of a human form, like a bar relief. And so we know that there was some interaction between a cloth in the body to form that image, we still don’t know the mechanism that was our intent, our primary purpose, to answer the question, how was the image formed? In the end, we couldn’t come up with an answer because you get the chemistry, right. The physics is wrong. The physics right, the chemistry is wrong. So, we came back unable to answer that question. And of course, we came back with 1000 new questions, too. So, it was the way it is, isn’t it? Yeah. Always. That’s how science works.

Guy Powell

So, you were in the presence of the Shroud, in that room in the Royal Palace. So, what was it like in there? What kind of feelings came to you as you were in there?

 Barrie Schwortz

Well, I think if you look at the actual story of what happened when we arrived in Turin, a week early, before the end of the public exhibition, which was commemorating the 400th anniversary of the thing in Turin, 1578, and 1978. So, we got there, and it was still on public display. And our goal was to be able to take our time unpack the equipment, set it up, calibrate everything, and have a week of preparation before the Shroud was actually taken off public display and brought to us for examination. We got there. And we found out upon arrival, that all 80 crates of our equipment had been seized by Italian customs and they weren’t going to let it loose. And we found out later that the reason was we had an Xray machine with us, a very low power Xray. And unfortunately, on the outside of the crate, they had to put a radiation sticker because it’s an Xray machine. And that apparently put the fear of God into the Italian customs folks. So, they seized their equipment. It took like five and a half days of negotiations and I don’t know if this is true or not, but rumor has it that the Archbishop of Turin put the cathedral up as collateral to let our equipment loose. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I have never been able to verify that myself. But that was a story that apparently, the Archbishop went and spoke to the customs folks. And then they eventually released it to us. But it was now down to like a day and a half prior to the end of the public exhibition when they were going to bring us the Shroud. So, from that moment forward, when the equipment arrived on a dump truck of all things, to the Royal Palace, we had to then unpack, unload all that equipment and carry it up a couple of flights of steps up to where we were going to do the exam, and unpack all these wooden crates and pull out the instruments and start to calibrate. We didn’t sleep for that day and a half at all. We literally worked around the clock, and when they brought us the Shroud, we were still getting our equipment finalized. And covering those panels at the table. We hadn’t even finished covering those panels of the table with mylar when the Shroud, was laid out before us.

Guy Powell

So, you actually then it was not only 120 hours, it was a couple of days. In addition to that as you were getting set up and everything. Oh, man. So, let me let me change subjects a little bit on you here. And one of the significant events that took place with the Shroud, was with Sekondo Pia, tell us a little bit about that.

Barrie Schwortz

Well, in 1898, an Italian lawyer who was also, I guess we call them an amateur photographer, back in 1898, there weren’t that many amateur photographers, obviously, using a large view camera – the kind you have to put a dark cloth over your head and look at the image upside down on the glass back. He was given the opportunity to make the first actual photographs, authorized photographs of the Shroud. And the problem was even though there was electricity in the Royal Palace, in 1898 Palace after all, it fluctuated. And so, the lighting he was using fluctuated along with the voltage in the palace, and his first set of exposures were wrong. And he had to go back a second time using just big cameras, big as me. He had to photograph the Shroud, through glass, which means he had to deal with the surface reflections on the glass. And he was not working with the high-quality photographic technology that we had in 1978. He was working with what was then very new technology. And he managed to make these first photographs. And of course, we always look at that moment as the beginning of the scientific era of study of the Shroud, because for the first time ever, people outside of the northern part of Italy, where you know, Turin is in the Piedmont district, for the first time, people outside of that area could actually see this picture, and they could reproduce it in publications, books and magazines. And that’s when the real interest in the Shroud, globally began. Now, again, it was still reasonably restricted because nobody had ever done an examination of it. But there were researchers in France, and of course in Italy, who were already avidly studying the Shroud. Here Barbet, the medical doctor, who wrote a book, A Doctor at Calvary. That was the first time that a medical expert had looked at the Shroud, and said, Look, this is authentic. This is a real body. This isn’t an artwork. The blood flows have been determined to be actual real blood flows, not painted on, as some of the skeptics have said, Because look, a forensic pathologist who deals with crimes every day knows what looks real and what’s fake. And Bucklin who was also a forensic pathologist, Dr. Bucklin who was on our team, he’s the guy they based the TV show Quincy on, and he was an advisor to the Quincy producers for that program. So, we had really credible experts on our team, not just a bunch of guys who wanted to go, you know, look at the Shroud, but people who had the qualifications to perform the kind of tests that were necessary for us to try and determine how that image was formed.

Guy Powell

Yeah, just amazing. So, just curious, are those plates from Sekondo Pia, are they still existent? Or are they lost?

Barrie Schwortz

No, they’re still in existence. Of course, they’re archived and put away to be preserved, and there are duplicates of those. Which you couldn’t tell the difference unless you’re an expert. duplicate of those plates are on display at the Shroud Museum in Turin.

Guy Powell

And are those plates the same resolution as what you have today?

 Barrie Schwortz

N, no, no. Technologies have evolved dramatically since then. And of course, we’re talking about photography. And we’re talking about film. And I’ll tell you how things have changed. It was some years ago, maybe four or five years ago, I was in Canada lecturing to school kids, you know, fifth, sixth, seventh graders, something like that. 12 and 13 year olds, and a kid put up his hand, he says “Excuse me, Mr. Schwartz, you keep talking about film? Is that a USB device?” And what that shows you is just how much has changed in a very short period of time. You know, there was a time where you couldn’t walk down any street anywhere on the planet without seeing a yellow Kodak sign somewhere? Well, I was in Jerusalem in 2013. And in the Old City, and I saw a little shop and it had a Kodak sign. I made a photograph of the Kodak. Sorry, realizing we’re not going to be seeing those much anymore. Yeah. They’re gone.

Guy Powell

Yeah, my dad bought stock in Polaroid so well, early on when it first came out.

Barrie Schwortz

Yeah. Well, that wouldn’t have been a bad idea at the time. But now obsolete as well. Yeah, exactly. All digital now. And you know, a 10 or 12 year old kid, if you think back what he can remember back to when he was five or six years old. He wouldn’t know what film is because film isn’t used anymore, except on very rare occasions. And in the fine art photography area. They’re still making certain films and papers, because Fine Art photographers are still making prints the analog method, but most everything else is digital. And look, digital was not viable until they made image centers that had higher resolution than the best films we had in 1978. So, now, we have 50 and 100 megapixel image centers, Hasselblad cameras, perfect example, which are way better than anything we could do on film.

Guy Powell

And you can stitch them together to get like multi 100 or multi 1000 megabyte images, it’s pretty impressive.

Barrie Schwortz

Just as an example, we make a life size replica of the Shroud. The file that that’s made from is 400 megabytes. And that’s why the details are all there because of the resolution that we have. And my photographs of the Shroud. I photographed the Shroud, one at a time, the ventral image and the dorsal image separately with some overlap. 20 years later, when I put them in Photoshop, put them together only took a few minutes. And we created that 400 megabyte image from which we can make life size images of the Shroud, with beautiful resolution.

Guy Powell

They are incredible. When I saw the one that you sent me, it is as impressive as, as I was talking about about, you know, Dachau, except now in the positive sense. And just, it’s really impressive.

Barrie Schwortz

What’s interesting is that when you go to turn to see the actual Shroud, on display, you’re never any closer than about three or four meters from it. And you’re looking through big, thick, bulletproof glass, people have problems because they bring their phones and try and take pictures of the Shroud, and the infrared sensor in your phone, the focusing mechanism bounces off the surface glass, and you quite can’t get it in focus, because you’ve got a few inches of that glass in front of the Shroud. And it’s reflecting and measuring off the surface of the glass. So, people say to me, “Well, every photo I took of the Shroud, was out of focus.” And I said that’s because you happen to shoot through glass, and not just a thin pane of glass. But thick enough glass, that the distance between the surface of the glass and the actual Shroud, is enough to throw your focus of your film of your camera off.

Guy Powell

Well, if I ever get to actually visit in person, which I absolutely have on my bucket list. I will figure out some way to take advantage of that.

Barrie Schwortz

Remember the auto focus. You can do that in a phone. It’s built in, where that’s why I still walk around with the big Nikon 35 mil SLR digital. And that allows me much greater control over and I can turn the autofocus off and focus actually on the Shroud. So, again, look, I’m glad I’m retired, because otherwise I’d be competing with every human being on the planet that owns a telephone.

 Guy Powell

Yes, that is true. Although I will admit a nice camera does do a good job. But let me just change the subject a little bit. Then we had I think it was 1987 was the radiocarbon testing. Yeah, the infamous picture. I’ve got it in my book the 1260 to 1390 exclamation point. And so do you ever think that that will be refuted enough so that that the proponents of that test will actually believe the new test.

Barrie Schwortz

Well that image you’re describing are referred to as The Three Stooges. And I always refer to the exclamation point after the two dates as a new form of scientific notation. He said with his tongue deep in his cheek. Look, the radiocarbon dating was obviously a major setback. And the folks who did the radiocarbon dating had a very intentional purpose in mind. And that was to use the Shroud, to promote their technology, which they have done dramatically well, so they were successful in what they wanted to do. Radiocarbon dating is a multi-billion-dollar industry now. So, and every time even if it’s got nothing to do with this reality of radiocarbon dating is mentioned. They always say that was what was used to debunk the Shroud of Turin. Debunking the Shroud, “the Shroud is a fake” obviously makes a better headline than saying, hey, new science has shown that the radiocarbon dating was wrong. And we now have six peer reviewed scientific papers, incredible scientific journals, proving that the radiocarbon dating date that they achieve could not have been accurate for any other place on the Shroud, except for the sample they took. And here’s quickly why they cut a strip. And if you look at the dates that were achieved along that strip, it wasn’t consistent. It was hundreds of years from one end of that strip to the others. So, how can you take any point of that uneven dated area and apply that to anywhere else on the class, you can’t? Now we didn’t really know that for a fact, because for 27 years, the three labs and the British Museum, which was the overseer, held all the data, refused to release the raw data, which is highly unusual in the scientific world. Once your paper is published, you can release the raw data, because the scientific method says repeatability is important. So, you release the data so other researchers can kind of try and see if they can achieve the same results. That’s the scientific method. That’s how it works. And so, when and maybe the most ironic part of the once a gentleman named Tristan Casabianca, a French researcher, is also a legal student, went to England and used the Freedom of Information Act forced the British Museum to release the raw data. So, remembering that one of the three labs was Oxford that did the dating on the Shroud, Tristan Casabianca collects the data brings on Emanuela Marinelli, who’s a well-known Shroud scholar for the last 40 years, and several experts in statistical analysis. And they evaluated this raw data, and they came to the conclusion, there’s absolutely no way that the sample chosen, and the results from that sample could be used to date any other place on that Shroud. Period. And ironically, that article was published in a journal called archaeometry, which is published by Oxford. So, I always thought there was a certain irony that the radiocarbon dating comes out from one of the labs is from Oxford, and 40 years later, 30 years later, a paper in archaeometry, a journal published by Oxford disputes the radiocarbon dating based on access to the raw data. Now, the problem is that the Shroud is not a fake does not make as good a headline and Shroud is a fake. So, yes, it will take many years, it’s already taken, what 30 years just for some of the media to now say, well, they dated the Shroud, in 1988. But new data shows that maybe they were wrong. It’s not exactly a definitive claim. But we’re getting towards the point where people do recognize that there was in fact, questions about that radiocarbon dating, and its accuracy.

 Guy Powell

Yeah. Well, you know, it’s interesting. I heard at the Museum of the Bible the other day, they did a presentation with Russ Breault, Joe Marino and two others.

 Barrie Schwortz

Dr. Cheryl White and Father Peter Mangum. Three of them are board members of Sarah. Yeah, exactly. And I think we have to make Father Peter, an honorary board member, just so we can say all of them were board members. I spoke with Cheryl yesterday.

 Guy Powell

I’ve been meaning to reach out to her. But in any case, he mentioned his book on the refutation of the radiocarbon carbon dating so I’m very interested in reading it. I just got the book.

 Barrie Schwortz

Is that the 800 page one,

 Guy Powell

It is a 835 page tome.

 Barrie Schwortz

It looks like it’s much more of a reference. Yeah. Then a narrative, but there is some narrative as well. As a matter of fact, it’s Joe who would probably be the next editor of Shroud.com if something happens to me. And a lot of the material that you see showing up on each update of Shroud.com, Joe’s a guy who digs it out and sends it to me, as well, he spent 35 years working at Ohio State University in the library. So, who better than a guy who’s an expert in the library didn’t know how to find and research now. I’m very grateful to Joe, he’s, he’s the guy who makes our updates as big as they are.

 Guy Powell

Fantastic. Yeah, it’s sharp guy. I’ve talked to him and I look forward to interviewing him as well. So, one of the other things that I find curious about the proof of the authenticity of the Shroud, – but a lot of people say, well, the Shroud, only first appeared in I think it’s a 1300 or so. And then from then on, there was a lot of exhibitions of it, and it was displayed and whatever and stuff like that.

 Barrie Schwortz

From that point. It’s documented up to that.

 Guy Powell

But documentation is written, so to speak. But it would seem like some of the coins, like the Justinian coins, and some of the other ones from the six hundreds, all the way through the nine hundreds, where the image of Jesus changes from, I don’t know what you call it, a fictitious image to one that really does match the image on the Shroud.

 Barrie Schwortz

In the earliest days, the depictions of Roman emperors and Jesus were bald with a laurel wreath around the head. And so artists have taken that idea and converted the laurel wreath to a crown of thorns. And that’s the way our artists have typically depicted the crown of thorns over the centuries. Yeah, and yet, in reality, the bloodstains cover his scalp. You couldn’t tell a Roman soldier listen, before you execute this criminal. Weave in the crown. So, he looks good up on that cross. You know, I don’t think that happened. I think that was the purpose. They took a thorn bush and they smashed it on his head to humiliate him even further, because he had proclaimed himself leader among us.

 Guy Powell

So, I think you’re kind of saying the same thing. To me those coins that have so many, so many similarities to the image on the Shroud. Those coins are kind of proof that it existed at least in the six hundreds.

 Barrie Schwortz

Yeah, and I think there’s other evidence. In the historical record, there’s where Cheryl White would be. She’s a professor of history. And that’s my weakest part. But there are other points in history, there was a cloth called the Mandylion is not made by hand, meaning not an artwork that ostensibly showed the body of Jesus. There was the Abgar legend where the Shroud was brought to King Abgar who was suffering from a disease and it cured him. Although the Catholic Church has never attributed any miracles to the Shroud, just as a point of reference. But those coins and not just the coins, but if you go back to the early days of the Orthodox Church, you can go back and look at that. You’ll see iconography starting in about the fourth century. The famous one is the Christ Pantocrator. And you can superimpose one over the other, and they’re so close that you can’t deny that one was based on the other. And look, the first depiction of Jesus was with a split beard that we see on the Shroud, is I think, 285 AD in the Duomo in the catacombs in Rome, a fresco on the ceiling, and it shows Jesus and it shows him looking like the man of the Shroud. That’s the first evidence I think we have of a depiction of Jesus that seems to be based on the image of the Shroud. But because there are gaps in that history. It’s very easy for skeptics to say, “Well, you can’t prove that.” And you know, from a historical point, or historian’s point of view, you need documentation before you can make those leaps of faith. And yet at the same time, there’s enough information I think, in the historical record, that implies this. Remember, this cloth kind of violates a bunch of laws anyway, certainly Jewish laws, right because it has blood on it which means it must be buried with the body and it has a depiction of a man that a billion people believe to be the Son of God, both of which are forbidden by Jewish law. So, they couldn’t come running out of the tomb saying, look what we got. They couldn’t do that. They had to hide it. And it had to be protected. So, where was it for 225 years, until somebody obviously saw it and used it as a model for a fresco? And the answer is it was probably hidden away and perhaps even forgotten, for a lpng period of time.

 Guy Powell

I think that that’s exactly what happened. It was hidden away and forgotten. Or hidden away, the person died and, and then nobody knew. And then all of a sudden, it shows up again, and they find it.

 Barrie Schwortz

There’s an article in a couple of papers by a professional photographer from Turin. They’re on Shroud.com, look it up, read his papers, he believes the Shroud was rolled up and put it into a tall clay jar, and probably put in a room filled with clay jars off in the corner somewhere. And that’s a perfect way to hide it in plain sight, basically. And he showed by creating a Shroud, and putting it into a container like that, and allowing a little water to condense in the bottom. There are water stains on his mock up that are almost identical to the water stains on the Shroud. So, there’s a pretty good piece of information there that points to the fact that at some point in time it was stored that way.

 Guy Powell

So, just curious, the Shroud, itself, the cloth. Is there a hem? Or is it as a selvage on the end? Or what is on the edges?

 Barrie Schwortz

There’s like a seam or a selvage I guess I’m not an expert in textiles, of course. And there are others who are far more export than I am that have written about this. And again, you can find this, I would suggest to anyone listening or watching when you go to Shroud.com. It’s gotten so big that you know, after a couple of years of building the site, I could not find things that I was looking for. And I knew I’d put somewhere. So, there’s now an internal search engine that only searches within Shroud.com. So, if you go to Shroud.com and you’re looking for something specific, and you know how to use a search engine, which is on the opening, front page of Shroud.com, and I guarantee you’ll find just about anything you’re looking for, and more of it than you probably want.

 Guy Powell

And I have done that. I’ve been all over that site, there is a ton of stuff there. So, we’re just about out of time. But why don’t you tell us a little bit about STERA the Shroud of Turin Education and Research Association and, what the mission is and where it is?

 Barrie Schwortz

Well, look, once I got to a point with the website, for the first 14 years, I was paying for it out of my own pocket, and my pocket got pretty empty. So, it got to a point after I moved here to Colorado, that I thought, you know, I can’t afford to keep doing this, if I don’t have some external support. And I’m, as a self-employed guy for 50 years, I’m not used to asking people to give me money, okay. But I felt that it was essential. And the other thing is this. I’m going to be very candid in this interview and say that there were some people because I’m Jewish, thought that I was doing this specifically about money. And I felt that the best thing I could do to prove that was not true, was to give up the ownership of all of it. So, when I formed STERA legally, we got a lawyer, and we legally transferred the ownership of the website and all of my photography and all the other materials I’ve collected over to STERA. So, none of it goes to me. If I were to die STERA would continue on with our board of directors, they’d have to find somebody to replace me, obviously. And it would take about three or four people to do all the stuff I do, but they’d be able to do that. And that was a way of showing the world, if you will, that look, I’m in this not for the obvious reason. It’s not about making money. For me, I felt that being in that room was a great privilege that I had been given. And I felt that that privilege brought with it an obligation that I wasn’t there for me. I was there for you. And because of that I felt building this website making this material readily available to everybody free. Like if we wanted to make money we’d allow advertising on that website with a couple million visits a year, we’d be rolling in the dough compared to what we are. But I felt right from the beginning that advertising would be inappropriate on this site. Even though many people come from the scientific point of view. Many others come from a spiritual, religious or theological point of view. And the last thing I want to do is have ads popping up in their face. So, no advertising on Shroud.com. Never had it. Never will, as long as I’m alive, that won’t be there. But that also removes one revenue stream that any other nonprofit would. And they’re raking in the bucks with advertising as well. I don’t want to do that. I want people to go to Shroud.com and have the experience of studying this object. And as it says on that front page and the opening paragraph, given the facts, you have to make up your own mind about this.

 Guy Powell

Yeah. And I think that’s great. And I really appreciate that and, and really understand the mission and, and, separating out the site from the monetary that makes a lot of sense. So, Wow. So, thanks. Thank you. I can’t thank you enough. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Barry. That was awesome. It’s always awesome. Every time I talk to you, whether it’s in this interview or on the phone, I’m picking up things and I’m going Man, I wish I had known this. You know, lots of good stuff really, really good.

 Barrie Schwortz

Well, you realize we’ve barely scratched the surface today.

 Guy Powell

I know. And I mean, you’ve got so much stuff out there on the Shroud.com. I’ve been out there number, of times and every time I start reading, I have one question I want to get answered. And I read about 50 other ones, so much so that I gotta stop, because it’s so it’s just so fascinating.

 Barrie Schwortz

I’m just gonna say do send me a link once you get this posted so that I put it on Shroud.com so others can see it.

 Guy Powell

Absolutely. Thank you very much, we’ll definitely do that. But also a message to the viewers, please absolutely go to www.Shroud.com. And you’ll then get to see all of the stuff that we’ve talked about, and all the stuff that Barry has researched and has come to his possession and, he’s now got up on the Shroud. And I know he’s forgotten more than all of us probably know. So, really appreciate your time.

 Barrie Schwortz

Being the editor of Shroud.com and interacting with all the top scholars in the world on the study of the Shroud, you’re bound to learn something.

 Guy Powell

Exactly, exactly. Well, same here, I definitely learned something. And then hopefully for our viewers, they’ve learned something as well. So, anyway, stay tuned for other videos in this series on the Backstory of the Shroud of Turin. And otherwise, please visit my sight GuyPowell.com. GuyPowell.com, and then sign up to receive more episodes. Thank you so much Barry and really, really appreciate it. Thank you.

 Barrie Schwortz

Truly my pleasure guy. Thank you and congratulations on starting something good.