Good Friday

The next group of wounds that call for our attention, although not blood flows as such, offer not the slightest cause for questioning the credibility built up so far. These consist of numerous small marks, clearly visible on the photographic negative, peppering both the back and front of the body from the shoulders downward, excluding only the head, forearms, and feet. Each is about 1.5 inches long, they are more numerous on the dorsal image, and their number, because some are so indistinct, has been variously estimated from 90 to 120.

It takes little deduction to identify what these marks are. Close inspection of both positive and negative reveals that they are distinctly dumbbelled in shape and are grouped generally in threes, spreading out from a horizontal axis across the loins, fanning upwards on the shoulders from either side, downwards from the right on the legs. We are clearly dealing with a whipping, the thongs of the instrument in question being evidently studded with twin balls of metal designed to cause maximum pain. Doctors define the wounds caused as contusions and again have noted that they are physiologically accurate.

As even the layman is able to appreciate, the very pattern of these marks carries conviction of authenticity. We are able to see that all blows were delivered from behind. The wounds on the front of the body seem to have been caused by the weapon having been aimed to whip round onto the upper chest and the front of the thighs. We are able to deduce the height at which the executioner’s hand was raised. We have good grounds for the speculation that because the center from which the blows radiate on the right side is a little higher than the corresponding center on the left, there were two men carrying out this flogging, the one on the right being a little taller than his companion and having the somewhat sadistic tendency to lash his victim’s legs as well as the back.

- excerpt from The Shroud of Turin, by Ian Wilson, page 24