The Shroud Challenge — Who Do Men Say That I Am?

SEE HERE The Shroud of Turin is one of my personal research interests.  One of the most difficult questions about the Shroud of Turin is "What exactly is it?"  It contains a simply amazing image which turns out to behave like a photographic negative.  That strange enough?  But in addition the coloring that makes of the image appears to only exist in the first 200 to 300 nanometers of the tiny fibers that make up the threads.  It's been carbon dated to the 14th century but that doesn't really mean it is from the 14th century only that the carbon date came out that way.  At the time of the dating artists couldn't even make perspective images.  Cloth wrapping experiments have shown that it's almost certainly the result of a cloth wrapped body but that doesn't indicate how the image transferred to the cloth.  The image is an action at a distance image and encodes three dimensional information.

It seems appropriate to reflect on this image of a scourged, blood crowned, nailed through the wrists and feet, lifted up and pierced crucified man as we begin Easter week.  We live these nearly two thousand years later in a world no less conflicted and fraught with deception and human passions than that which existed in Roman dominated Jerusalem of the first century.  Indeed, we live in a world that despite its technological marvels has actually forgotten much of the wisdom it once had and life is given over to materialist and sensualist pleasures.  The Man from Galilee proclaimed himself Son of Man (a prophetic title), Messiah, Priest, and King.  He was executed in the most barbarous way asking for forgiveness for those whose passion for power had done this to him and with a psalm on his lips.  Pax vobiscum!