One of the most notable things that suggest the shroud is a fake: it looks exactly as one would expect from traditional medieval paintings depicting Jesus. The problem is that this visual depiction originated with medieval Christian art. This depiction of Jesus doesn’t go back to the earliest days of the Church. From the Bible, there is almost nothing indicating what Jesus looked like. The only thing mentioned is that he was a mason. (Often in modern times he is called a “carpenter”. However, the original Greek word used in the Bible could also mean “mason”. Given that lots of trees don’t grow in Palestine, and that ordinary construction was made out of rock, “mason” seems most likely his occupation.) Given that being a mason requires physical strength, Jesus likely was quite muscular.
The point: assuming the Shroud is real, it seems an incredible coincidence the image exactly matches what was invented by medieval Christian artists. Sort of like if an artist were to make a painting of me just based on reading this post, and that painting looked exactly like I do in real life.
I have no dog in this hunt, but I do recall reading at one time that if the substance of the image is paint, it would have been applied one fiber at a time with a brush no wider than a hair.
I have no cite for than information at all. Just something I remembered.
I had read that the image itself has the effect of being more like a photographic negative and that that is the reason that when the image is photographically reversed, it becomes even more visually profound.
Why would you respect a god who would violate his own laws in order to impress a crowd of goofs? He’d have to violate the natural laws of the universe to do a miracle. :dubious:
This is a statement I have often heard, but can’t understand why it is said. I could alter the image in photoshop, making it red & green with pink polka-dots, and it would be visually more profound, but so what? What does that prove about the original?
The implication is that medieval artists never saw a photographic negative, so couldn’t know how to make one. This has led to at least one theory that light-sensitive chemicals were used to expose a cloth for days to a man-like painting thru a camera obscura device. This theory has to explain why no one else was aware of or used light-sensitive chemicals in this manner for the preceeding or following centuries.
I believe it was Joe Nickell (sorry, no link handy to this one either) who took a bas-relief sculpture, covered it with colored dust-like pigment, stretched a cloth over it, then gently pushed it in the depressions with a soft, blunt brush. When removed, the cloth had a “negative” image on it. You don’t have to know the theory of photographic-chemical emulsions to produce such an image; it may be the natural outcome of a simple process.
Even if the Shroud could be shown to be associated with Palestinian pollen and marble, that wouldn’t prove anything either, would it?
It could just mean that the Shroud was stored among authentic Holy Land relics, and got contaminated by them. Which would be perfectly reasonable.
No, you’re thinking of Joseph, his (foster) father. Joseph was indeed described as a builder, and may well have worked more with stone than wood. But there’s no indication that Jesus followed in Dad’s footsteps.
Every novelist or playwright understands why this is a silly question. Miracles, like plot twists, must be judged by their effectiveness, not by their foreshadowing.
I checked, and you are right. However, given the typical custom at the time, it would seem rather unlikely that Jesus wouldn’t have been assisting Joseph in his work while young. Kids back then didn’t go to school every day. Thus, there likely would have been a time in the younger days of Jesus before he could support himself that he would have worked with Joseph.
The Bible is curiously mute as to exactly what Jesus was doing since early adulthood until he began his ministry around the age of 30. Surely the Apostles would have asked Jesus this. Yet either they kept this to themselves, or if they did tell others none of that got recorded; or if it ever was the writings were lost. Had Jesus worked as a mason like Joseph, this isn’t something that would have been seen as particularly worth writing about.
Ha! Everybody knows that he spent those years working for his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea (who was a tin merchant), in the faraway mythical island known to the Romans by the name Britannia.
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.
Putting aside AndrewT’s and others refutations for the moment, could you provide cites to back up your claim that this “would have been the first anatomically correct image ever painted”? It’s easy to image that Leonardo, who lived roughly a century later, would have been the first to be able to do so, but that’s more than likely a result of hagiography. There’s no reason to believe the feat could not have been accomplished in an era previous to Leonardo, even if we may not today have records to establish this.
In any event, I’ve seen a documentary in which some professors performed experiments – using nothing that would not have been available at the time – employing the concept of the camera obscura (similar in concept to a pinhole camera, but the image could be room-sized), a trick that had been known at least since the days of Aristotle and was thought to have been used by Bacon in 1300. It’s use as an aid in drawing (and perhaps (just) possibly some kind of vaguely photographic process) became known to various sages and luminaries (and eventually history) over time, but the idea was almost always kept as secret as possible and passed between them covertly, since these masters did not want it generally known that they used any aids at all.
The image produced would be what we would today call a photographic negative (although it would also, of course, have been upside-down). The documentary showed this would have worked quite well.
Finally, that the Shroud shows a piercing in the side of the model counts strongly against it being the New Testament’s “Jesus” (whom the evidence causes me to strongly doubt ever existed anyway). The cruci-fiction story, like most of the NT, is essentially a re-casted rewrite of Psalm 22 and a few other Judeo-mythical story elements, and is historically inaccurate in regards to known crucifixion methods in detail after detail. But one of the more blatant fictional rewritings of an Old Testament scripture into the New is at the hands of the author of the non-Synoptic Gospel known as “John”, which even conservative Christian scholars agree is the least historical of them all (that Gospel is merely “John’s” own theology forced back into his own re-fictionalization of the Markan fable): the detail of the piercing of Jesus’ side, which “John” alone describes. This comes not from history, but rather from Psalm 22:14.
The Shroud of Turin is clearly not an image of any historical “Jesus”.
No, they weren’t! We have copies of a few of the so-called “Infancy Gospels”, which describe Jesus’ childhood and young adulthood. There is the Infancy Gospel of Matthew, the Arabic Infancy Gospel, and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. They are at least as historically reliable as the canonical Gospels.
In them we find, for example, the youthful Jesus forming some kind of big mud puddle which he then miraculously made clear (what, that doesn’t seem very impressive to you?). He then made 12 sparrows out of the mud (but on the Sabbath (gasp!)) and miraculously made them into real (or at least animate) birds and commanded them to fly away. Another kid comes along (a Pharisee, of course), plays with a tree branch dipped into the water, and – BAM! – Jesus supernaturally murders him! Take that, you dirty Pharisee!
On another occasion, our cute little darling Jesus is walking with his foster Daddy in town, when another little boy running through the streets accidentally bumped Our Savior’s arm and – BAM! – Darth Jesus mystically murders him, too! Serves him right for jostling our precious Messiah’s itty-bitty arm, dontcha think?
Some of the people in the town weren’t too happy about Jesus’ reign of terror, and asked Joseph to talk to the Our Loving Lord and Son of God. Jesus’ response? He strikes them all blind! Really, what else could he do?
Just keep thinking safe, happy thoughts while singin’: “Yes, Jesus loves me, yes, Jesus loves me!”
Or he’ll send you into the cornfield!
Here’s something else to think about: the image on the shroud doesn’t match any conception I have about how a body would be wrapped up. Think about it - you have a narrow strip of cloth, maybe 3 ft. wide, that starts at the feet, goes up and over the head, down the back, ending at the feet again. Straight up, straight down. Is that really how 1st century Jews would wrap a body? No folding, no twisting, no joins where they maybe used a tie cloth, nothing like that? Simply up and down?
The straight up, straight down method of wrapping a body doesn’t match the way I think I’d wrap a body. I’d probably use a much wider cloth, folded lengthwise over the body rather than at the head. Put Jesus in the center, fold the left and right sides of the cloth over the body. Or start at one end and roll him up in it. Or any other of a number of ways, but I probably wouldn’t do anything that would result in a “up and back, head to head” sort of image, even if the cloth was trimmed later.
Do we know how 1st century Jews prepared their dead? I’ve read on these boards that modern-day Jews don’t embalm the dead (and even the women only “prepared the body” or “anointed the body” of Jesus - I don’t remember exactly which), but do today’s Jews use any sort of wrapping cloth? Do we know how they might have done it then? This type if information could give us more clues to the legitimacy of the shroud.
Snicks
Snickers–you’re assuming they had access to looms that were modern-sized. Chances are they could only make cloth a couple feet wide (they were still only making it that wide much later in history, into the 15-16th century at least). In that case, laying a long strip down on the table, laying the body on top of it, then folding the cloth, would be the quickest, easiest way to wrap a body. Nobody’d want to take a bunch of 6’ long sections of cloth and sew them together to get something with the dimensions of a bedsheet just so they’d have something to roll a dead body up in. Remember, no sewing machines, either.
This sounds good. However, the straight up and straight down method still doesn’t wash with me. Wouldn’t you try to gather the sides together in some manner (like with horizontal ties or such) to completely enclose the body, or would the drape of the fabric be enough? (I’m kind of thinking of, sadly, Braveheart here, where Mel’s wife is shrouded, but the body is completely enclosed. I realize this is neither a)reality or b)historically accurate, but that’s the image I have in my mind). Or would you swaddle the body by wrapping cloth around somehow (sort of mummylike?). Remember, this is your Christ - quick and easy probably wasn’t a concern.
And c’mon, Ethilrist, everyone knows that Mary and Jesus had enormous, wide fabric (usually blue) in which to clothe themselves - you’ve seen the pictures with the elegantly draped and folded cloth over their shoulders! 
Snicks
One thing to ponder is the presence of waaay too many relics from that era.
Mark Twain in his travels through Europe and the Holy Land encountered "A hogshead barrel of “true nails of the cross”, enough “pieces of the cross” to build a steamboat. Other accounts list 20 to 30 alleged “shrouds of Jesus”.
They can’t all be genuine.
No, but one could! 
I think that quick was a concern in this case. IIRC, the whole body procurement/interment had to be done quickly in order for those concerned to be finished by the start of the Sabbath:
Luke 23:54 - 56:
This is also the reason the women were on their way to the tomb a couple of days later – to finish the embalming job using the spices mentioned above.
RR