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"Take a good look at the picture. The face isn't as long and slender as it may first appear,"

Swordmaker tried to make the same point by posting the following images -- the second being a computer enhanced version of the original photo:

I frankly don't know what to make of the enhanced image. Seems to me what can and should be done is some "reverse engineering." Produce from the Shroud image an accurate model, or models if they are needed. Compare the models' dimentions to those of an "average" Semite, Indo-European and any other ethnic group that might seem appropriate.

Understand that within any ethnic group there is always a range of dimentions, with standard deviations and outliers. All of that considered, what group does the Shroud image most resemble?

And on Swordmaker's issue of whether Jesus' ancestry might include some none Semitic progenators, others have made an extraordinarily good point on this:

The New Testament cites at least two occasions of proof-positive that Jesus was not some unusual looking outsider amongst the Jews. The most famous, of course, was the kiss of Judas necessary to identify which of the group was Jesus. This tells us that Jesus could not be easily distinguished from other Jews by his physical appearance.

It may tell you that, but it doesn't tell me that. Even if Jesus did look different than the rest of the "group," I'm not sure why that would be an indicator to the apprehenders.

Understand that within any ethnic group there is always a range of dimentions, with standard deviations and outliers. All of that considered, what group does the Shroud image most resemble?

I'm not trying to be flip here, but I think your method would suffer an aneurysm if tried to compare Moe Howard, Curly (Babe) Howard, or Larry Fine to, oh say, Tony Curtis (Bernard Schartz) let alone how they, individually, would compare to any given "group."

The New Testament cites at least two occasions of proof-positive that Jesus was not some unusual looking outsider amongst the Jews. The most famous, of course, was the kiss of Judas necessary to identify which of the group was Jesus. This tells us that Jesus could not be easily distinguished from other Jews by his physical appearance.

If 30-40% of the population were of the same genotype as what is now referred to as noble arabs or Sephardic jews, then yes, a kiss might very well be necessary to distinguish him from a fairly large group of similar people.

And on Swordmaker's issue of whether Jesus' ancestry might include some none Semitic progenators, others have made an extraordinarily good point on this:

You claim that sephardic jews are non-semitic? Where did I claim that? Noble arabs are a semitic genotype...