There's Something about that Face

“I’ve just seen Jesus,” I whispered as I gazed into his face.

No, I was not in a deep meditative trance; I was not half-awake at an Easter sunrise service. I was watching television: the History Channel has produced a wonderfully intriguing program, “The Real Face of Jesus,” a two hour documentary featuring the work of digital artist and scientist Ray Downing, president of Macbeth Studios, who, by using information encoded into the Shroud of Turin---the blood stained linen cloth that many claim was the burial wrapping for the crucified Christ--- recreates the face and bloodied body of Jesus, transforming it into a 3D image. The program aired twice last week, Holy Week, and can be seen several more times this month.

Downing’s computer enhanced Jesus is a very Jewish, swarthy, Middle-Eastern Jesus, not the typical, lily- white, Renaissance Jesus. “I have a lot of information about that face and my estimation is we're pretty darn close to what this man looked like," Downing told ABC News. The shroud, Downing reminds his listeners, wasn't hanging on a wall; it was wrapped around a corpse. “That's the crux of the problem - the face is hidden in there," he said. How so? According to Downing, “The presence of 3-D information encoded in a 2-D image is quite unexpected, as well as unique. It is as if there is an instruction set inside a picture for building a sculpture." Researchers “lifted” the blood and isolated it on computer imagery so that it would sit “in air” on a transparent background. Downing claims his technique of computer imaging actually uncovered what substance created the image on the shroud and enabled him to see for the first time the actual face of Jesus.

But what about the 1988 carbon 14 dating that proved the Shroud to be a medieval forgery? The accuracy of that test has been called into question. Some scientists, including Christopher Ramsey of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, as well as Shroud of Turin Research Project scientist John Jackson, contend that the findings are inaccurate because of the multiple fires the shroud endured. Carbon monoxide, bacteria, and other contaminants have further distorted the carbon 14 dating. According to Jackson, a 2 percent contamination is capable of skewing results by 1,500 years.

Other scientists, including Raymond Rogers of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, believe that the outer section of the shroud, the part used for carbon 14 testing, is not the same fabric that makes up the rest of the cloth; it was a material used to repair the damaged outer edge of the shroud during the Middles Ages.
Also intriguing, and lending support to the authenticity of the shroud, are the findings of Vatican research scholar, Dr. Barbara Frale, whose work is published in a new book, La Sindone di Gesu Nazareno (The Shroud of Jesus of Nazareth). Frale believes she has discovered, in the secret archives of the Vatican, the burial certificate of Jesus. In letters barely visible to the naked eye, the words on the shroud read, “Jesus the Nazarene,” or “Jesus of Nazareth.” Like the image of the man himself, the letters are in reverse and only make sense in negative photographs. Palestine was a Roman colony during the time of Jesus and someone buried with a death sentence could only be returned to the family after a year in a common grave. A death certificate was therefore attached to the burial shroud for identification purposes. This was apparently the case with Jesus, even though he was buried not in a common grave but in the tomb offered by Joseph of Arimathea.
Dr Frale maintains that the text could not have been written by a medieval forger because the words did not refer to Jesus as Christ but as "the Nazarene". This would have been "heretical" in the Middle Ages, since it defined Jesus as "only a man" rather than the Son of God.

Whatever one believes about the authenticity of the shroud, it cannot be denied that it continues to baffle scientists. How is it, for instance, that the wounds of the dead man correspond, even in light of modern medical science, to the wounds descriptive of Jesus? Further, the image was produced without paint. And blood has been verified on the shroud.

The Vatican has no official position on the shroud. Pope John Paul II said in 1998 that the church “entrusts to scientists the task of continuing to investigate,” but that the shroud nonetheless has deep religious meaning.

But not everyone is on board the shroud train. In 2009 Italian scientist Luigi Garlaschelli, for instance, claimed to have reproduced the shroud and declared that “this could be done with the use of inexpensive materials and with a quite simple procedure.” There are and always will be skeptics.
Just like on the first Easter morning: John, the disciple, for one, was apparently too afraid , or still too overcome with doubt, to step inside the tomb and investigate the linen wrappings lying there; Simon Peter, surely shaking with each step—partly for fear and partly in hope---raised an eyebrow (I think), saw the burial cloth… and believed.
They saw; they believed. Jesus told Thomas, who demanded more, “Blessed are those who believe without seeing.”
Christians cherish those post-resurrection words of Jesus, even as, ( hoping for scientific proof?), they look at the digital enhanced image of that face… that face that comes to us, authentically, only by faith. How else, after all, would there be anything eternally significant about that face?
Life Matters by David B.Whitlock, Ph.D., is published weekly. You can visit Dr. Whitlock’s website, www.davidbwhitlock.com or email him at doctordavid@windstream.net.