[Sacajaweau]

Unless the shroud gets up and walks on water, no matter what the date, it still doesn't prove that the image is Jesus. To carry it a little further, doesn't anyone think it's funny that it's a common "conceptual image" of Jesus?

[PMCarey]

To carry it a little further, doesn't anyone think it's funny that it's a common "conceptual image" of Jesus?

Not really. Since the shroud was an object of veneration, if the public believed that it truly represented the image of Christ, then the shroud would affect how artists of that time would portray Jesus. So the question becomes which came first: the veneration and popular acceptance of the shroud as the image of Christ or the image of Christ in the artwork of the time?

[csuzieque]

Doesn't look Jewish to me. Thought it was Di Vinci's handiwork...

[Terabitten]

To carry it a little further, doesn't anyone think it's funny that it's a common "conceptual image" of Jesus?

I'm that rarest of birds, one who doesn't have an opinion on the shroud either way. It won't change my faith one iota if it's fake, or if it's true.

You pose a good question, but I'd have to ask - where did the conceptual images *come* from? :D

[Sloth]

To carry it a little further, doesn't anyone think it's funny that it's a common "conceptual image" of Jesus?

Yep, way too perfect traditional Euro-centric 'Jesus' image. For all we know he looked like an Mid-Eastern Don Rickles.

[finnigan2]

" To carry it a little further, doesn't anyone think it's funny that it's a common "conceptual image" of Jesus?"

- An interesting question and one for which there is a plausible explanation.
It has been noted that early Christian churches, especially those in and around Byzantium, often had paintings or murals in their churches which look remarkably similar to the image on the Turin shroud. Also, the historical trail of the shroud supposes that it traveled to Constantinople where it was kept until pirated away by Crusaders in the middle ages and eventually found it's way to Turin.
The plausible explanation is that the early Christian churches in the middle east had access to the shroud (the image at that time being much clearer) and copied it as best they could in their local places of worship so a common conceptual image developed in that region - based on the shroud.
Of course, the paintings of Jesus that were produced in Europe after the Renaissance have a different common conceptual image based on artists making copies based on versions done by the old masters who they admired and tried to copy.

[Mercat]

"a common conceptual image"

By that I assume you mean that it looks like the velvet pictures. :-D

Actually, the explanation of that is simple. He was extremely important to the people who knew him. They would have passed on information about how he looked. If the shroud had been around and seen by members of the early church, it would have served as a template. Finally, there is the Holy Spirit.

[NYer]

doesn't anyone think it's funny that it's a common "conceptual image" of Jesus?

Fake or real, the pictures on the Shroud of Turin are pictures of Jesus. If the Shroud is fake, then the artist intended us to believe that the pictures are pictures of Jesus. If the Shroud is real, and the pictures are the product of a natural phenomenon or a miracle, then they are almost certainly pictures of Jesus.

There are no descriptions of Jesus' appearance in the New Testament. Nor are there any reputable descriptions in any known early Church sources. St. Augustine of Hippo made a point of this when he wrote his monumental works in the fifth century. Yet, starting in the sixth century a new picture, a new common appearance for Jesus emerged in eastern art. We see it today in all manner of pictures of Jesus: icons, paintings, mosaics and Byzantine coins. This common picture quality seems to have started in the Middle East about the same time that the Image of Edessa was discovered. Prior to this time, pictures of Jesus were mostly of a young, beardless man, often with short hair, often in story-like settings in which he was depicted as a shepherd.

SHROUD STORY

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