Atheist who set out to prove the Shroud of Turin was fake reveals why he's now 'convinced' it's the cloth Jesus was buried in

Filmmaker David Rolfe was a self-professed atheist when he set out to make a documentary about one of the most revered religious artifacts in history - the Shroud of Turin.

With the 1978 movie, the photography expert set out to find a prosaic explanation as to how a blood-soaked imprint of a man matching Jesus Christ's description manifested onto the cloth relic.

Instead, he was so convinced of its authenticity he converted to Christianity and has since made several documentaries and published books on the shroud.

'I started off as an atheist, and then became an agnostic. And I'm now a Christian, because I cannot possibly understand anything else that could have produced that image,' said Rolfe.

The 14-foot-long shroud features a faint, brownish image of a five-foot, six-inch tall man with sunken eyes, wounds on various parts of his body that match the injuries suffered during Jesus' crucifixion. 

Rolfe, from England in the UK, has put up a $1 million prize for anyone who can recreate the shroud's image of a crucified man without showing traces of ink, paint or other agents.

Prominent research in the 1980s appeared to debunk the idea that the shroud was used to wrap Jesus' body because testing dated it to the Middle Ages, long after Jesus' death.

However, as DailyMail.com revealed this week, more recent analysis using modern X-ray techniques once again placed the cloth's origin back to the time of Christ.

Rolfe explained that the 1980 research focused on a small corner of the shroud which had been repaired some time between 1200 and 1400 due to wear and tear.

It was paraded by bishops throughout history during religious ceremonies in Turin, Italy, where it is housed.

This meant the fabric tested was older the the rest of the material, explained Rolfe. 

Rolfe has offered the British Museum - which was involved in what he called that 'flawed' analysis - $1 million to reproduce the shroud with its famous imprint.

'They haven't attempted, not even for a million dollars,' he said.

'I am convinced [the Shroud of Turin] is authentic, I personally have no doubt,' said Rolfe who recently released a new documentary called 'Who Can He Be?'

Last year, backed by his film company, Rolfe opened up the $1m prize to anyone who could reproduce the shroud with all of its 'characteristics.'

By 'characteristics' he means the imprint of the wounded man.

For some believers, including Rolfe, the outline Jesus' body was miraculously imprinted onto the fabric when he was resurrected over 2,000 years ago.

The shroud also does not show signs of ink or dye that would suggested it was a fake - no visible trace of any paint, ink, dye, stain or pigments. 

'Contestants must match both the pattern of bloodstains seen on the Shroud of Turin, and the composition of blood, including hemoglobin, bilirubin, immunoglobulin, and albumin,' according to the rules of the challenge.

'In addition, the largest blood stains should exhibit surrounding areas of ultraviolet fluorescence as noted on the Shroud. 

'When light and shade are reversed as in a photographic negative, the image must appear as a realistic and anatomically accurate representation of a body.'

Rolfe told DailyMail.com that no one in his native Britain had claimed the prize. 

'No one has come forward either from America to claim it,' he added.

'Once they realize what the actual image characteristics are on the cloth, they quickly realize that they can't reproduce it.'

More than 170 peer-reviewed academic papers have been published about the mysterious linen since the 1980s, with many concluding it to be genuine. Who the cloth relic belonged to is another matter, however.

Testing in the 1970s looked at whether the images were made through painting, scorching or other agents, but they none could be confirmed.

Another group of experts from the Institute of Crystallography announced in 2017 that they had found evidence that the shroud featured the blood of a torture victim.

They claimed to have identified substances like creatinine and ferritin that are usually found in patients who suffer forceful traumas.

The alleged findings contradicted claims the face of Jesus was painted on by forgers in medieval times.

The burial cloth has captivated the imagination of historians, church chiefs, skeptics and Catholics since it was first presented to the public in the 1350s. 

French knight Geoffroi de Charny gave it to the dean of the church in Lirey, France, proclaiming it as the Holy Shroud. 

Rolfe has become fascinated by the mystery of the shroud, not that he does not believe it to be real, but in that he hopes to provide more evidence to support his case.

In 1997, he asked Dr Robert Bucklin to conduct an autopsy using images of the shroud and the report was published before the scientist died in 2001.

'I took to him full-size photographs, both positive and negative, of the shroud,' said Rolfe.

'He carried out an autopsy based on the image and the wounds, showing [the mechanics of crucifixion].

'When you were crucified, you died of suffocation because you were nailed by your feet.'

He continued to explain that in this position, blood from wounds will trickle down the body a certain way, which was what Dr Bucklin had uncovered.

'Upon examining the chest, the pathologist notes a large blood stain over the right pectoral area,' the autopsy report reads.

'A close examination shows a variance in intensity of the stain consistent with the presence of two types of fluid, one comprised of blood, and the other resembling water.

There is distinct evidence of a gravitational effect on this stain with the blood flowing downward and without spatter of other evidence of the projectile activity expected from blood issuing from a functional arterial source.

'This wound has all the characteristics of a postmortem type flow of blood from a body cavity or from an organ such as the heart.

'At the upper plane of the wound is an ovoid skin defect which is characteristic of a penetrating track produced by a sharp puncturing instrument.'

The Bible states that a Roman soldier pierced Jesus' side to ensure he was dead on the cross before removing him.

Rolfe also mentioned that the autopsy identified three straight lines on the person's back, which aligns with Jon 12:1 which reads, 'Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.'

The Romans used a flagrum, which was a whip with three leather bands, each with a lead ball on the end.

'[The Roman flagrum] made a straight line of three and left as scars and blood marks on the back,' the filmmaker said.

'The detail is just amazing, you can actually calculate the height of the people who carried out flagellation by these marks on the cloth.'

Dr Bucklin's report determined the back image of the shroud showed 'traumatic injuries which extend from the shoulder areas to the lower portion of the back, the buttocks, and the backs of the calves.'

'These images are bifid and appear to have been made by some type of object applied as a whip, leaving dumbbell-shaped imprints in the skin from which blood has issued,' the scientist continued.

'The direction of the injuries is from lateral toward medial and downward suggesting that the whip was applied by someone standing behind the individual.'

Rolfe has made over 90 documentaries during his career but said his latest 'Who Can He Be?' made the biggest impact on him.

The filmmaker said he realized the Shroud of Turin was just like a photographic negative, which is created by energy in the form of light that shines on a specific paper to produce an image.

'In a way, that's what I saw in the shroud image, and especially the fact that it was a negative,' said Rolfe.

'There'd been a vast amount of energy and light would have been part of that and it wasn't a chemical reaction. It was a scorch, but basically it was very similar to what it might have been as I'd done in my own darkroom.'

He likened the scorched shroud to leaving an iron on a piece of clothing for too long.

Leaving the iron on for a few seconds will not leave a mark behind, but longer than that and the board will scorch that goes through the cloth.

Rolfe continued to explain that the iron only scorches the surface of the cloth when held for a split second and does not penetrate the other side.

'That's what you have on the shroud,' he said. 'It's only the top of the fiber of the shroud that is actually scorched. The rest of the fiber isn't scorched because [the burst of energy] was so powerful and fast.

'It could only be done by a process that we can't possibly understand because it was the thing that created Christianity. It was the resurrection. It was a dead man who came to life, and it was a miracle.'