Chapter 33: Divine Bioluminescence

So...was Jesus Christ a giant firefly?

Kidding -- but I do have my usual list of questions about bioluminescence because I cannot imagine that the tomb and surrounding area could have survived a normal blast of radiation.

And the image on the Shroud evokes, and seems to have assimilated, certain unique properties of light.

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Jesus the living light...

Was Christ a symbiotic organism that generated light by way of being carried inside the larger organism of God?

Did His internal chemistry convert to light energy rather than heat energy?

Did His body undergo an enzyme-catalyzed chemiluminescence reaction?

Did a luciferase enzyme oxidize a luciferin, thus leaving behind a kind of light-emitting biological pigment capable of “staining” the image onto the cloth of the Shroud?

Did luciferins share the use of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by ionizing radiation, thus creating light-emitting pigments that played a role in His cell signaling and caused cold light emission?

Did the presence of unpaired valence shell electrons cause the ROS to be highly reactive?

If less than 20% of the light energy of Christ during the Resurrection generated thermal radiation, did He adapt His genes to be turned on for light production at a high cell density in some kind of quorum sensing process?

Is the reason no one witnessed the light during the moment of His resurrection because the total light emitted by bioluminescence is not detectable by the human eye?

If the apostles had in their possession a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) camera, would they have been able to record (from an external vantage point) a digital image of His divine bioluminescence during the Resurrection?

Is the image on the Shroud a residue of a biological pigment unlike any other because of its Divine origin?

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Living organisms hold unique manifestations of biology and chemistry.

Certainly Jesus as the “Light of the World” could extend beyond all we profess to know about past, present, and future forms of life.

Perhaps He expresses unknown properties of a living organism beyond our ability to fathom...one who left behind trace evidence – of His living and suffering and dying and rising – in the imprint on the Shroud on Turin...