FOREWORD
The Shroud is very unlikely to be a genuine burial cloth of Jesus imprinted by his body and/or his blood:
If a human body were wrapped in the cloth, one would expect significant distortions in the image because the cloth would drape and stretch in complex ways over a 3‑D form.
The fact that the image lacks those distortions (and instead matches what would happen if the cloth were laid over a low relief) argues against the body‑wrapping scenario.
The image’s physical/chemical properties (superficial fiber discoloration, no pigment, 3‑D encoding) are incompatible with a simple body‑contact imprint or paint.
The blood evidence, though intriguing, is ambiguous and does not uniquely tie the cloth to Jesus or to a body imprint process. In fact, if the image formed after the blood stains, then the body‑imprint hypothesis is further undermined.
THE ARGUMENT
The Turin Shroud is the most famous relic in the world. Millions believe that it is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, bearing his crucified and bloodied image. The cloth is kept at Turin in Italy. The cloth is an enigma. Many say it is a miracle. But in fact, the greatest mystery is who the cloth depicts, for the man whose face is on the Shroud is not Jesus Christ.
The cloth does not fit the New Testament indications that Jesus was put in strips of cloth. Those cloths would have contact marks. There is no proof that the cloth does. The image is not consistent with a contact print. And the blood is too picturelike.
The Turin image shows parts of the man's body that could not have touched the cloth. And there is a light yellow substance that sits on the fibres, making the image on one side, and it sometimes appears on the other as well, without passing through the cloth. This happens mostly with the face image, which is another indication that the cloth really just cares about Jesus' face the most, as it would if it were a forgery. It is not a contact print, for parts of the body that would have been inches away from the cloth and could not have touched it show up clearly. And there would be tell-tale creases. So the cloth has no hard or soft evidence that it involved a real body or depicts a real man, as opposed to a statue or something—never mind Jesus. The cloth is meant to appear as a contact print, but it fails. It is meant to fool the untrained eye of pilgrims. The artist knew nobody would generally get up very close to see. The artist of the Shroud perhaps made the image vague to help avoid detection or to prevent sceptics in the Church from ruling the day. A fraud has to be rigged up to survive being exposed. Many do. The cloth is really about appealing to ghouls who want an image of death and blood and gore. It gives no indication that Jesus miraculously rose from the dead.
The Bible says that the resurrection is the most important thing Jesus did. If God were giving us a miraculous image of Jesus, it would be a miraculous picture of his corpse transforming into the glorious and perfected Christ, and something that was a complete mystery to science. The Turin Shroud is Genuine by Rodney Hoare states that there is nothing miraculous about the Shroud, though certain things are impossible to be worked out about it (page 130). Inexplicable is not miraculous. There are billions of odd things we cannot explain, and that does not entitle us to hail them as miracles.
Jesus was allegedly wrapped in the Shroud of Turin. Despite all the strange things that seem to be in the favour of its genuineness, the supporters choose to ignore proof on the cloth itself that nobody was ever wrapped up in it. THE TOP OF THE HEAD ITSELF IS NOT SEEN! If the image had been wrapped around a head, you would not see this effect. The cloth should show blood marks and images as if it were wrapped around a head. Instead, it looks as if the back and front were put on separately, with no connection in between. There should be a connection if the cloth covered a body. It is like somebody taking a photo of you from the front and then one from the back and putting them together, with the head on each photo touching. It is not a natural effect when you have a cloth that a man was supposedly wrapped up in, and which went over the top of his head.
Herman Toro, way back in 2004, declared that the image on the Shroud is not a true negative. Also, the anatomy is riddled with problems. The proportions are, his word, ape-like. The way the man lies is not possible in the real world. "The figure does not satisfy the geometric conditions of contact formation." There are more impossibilities than that. For a corpse in a hot country, it should have maggots. Rapid decay, especially for such a traumatised body, would have been expected. Where are their imprints? There are no signs at all of any deterioration. If so, the image appeared instantly. Contact prints don't do that. If you want to be a fantasist and say that Jesus never decayed, remember that does not help much.
The New Testament cloths would not necessarily have had an image of Jesus, but you would expect them to be messy and have contact prints. The Turin Shroud is a forgery, for it cannot be counted among those cloths.
APPENDIX:
We have presented a reasonable plausibility argument that the Shroud image must
result from a contact process. Woodblock or intaglio techniques known to be in
use in the 14th century in Europe and in France account for all of the visible
attributes of the Shroud image, including the 3-D effect, reversed contrast, the
resolution, uniformity between the frontal and dorsal images, and the extensive
detail observed. By Dr. Acetta.
My comment is that the Dr. is very generous here. The uniformity he mentions is imperfect. So is the 3-D. The flaws in the image increase the likelihood of such a method being used.