[discostu]

IMHO people focus too much on this "photographic negative" aspect. Anybody that's done wood carving has done the exact same thing (in general in wood carving you cut away everything that isn't the picture, ie you make a "photographic negative"). Because it resembles something in our modern world we discuss it in those terms and people say it's "miraculous" that this "predicted" that thing. But wood carving predates Christ, the idea of working with the shadow rather than the object has been around a very long time.

Personally, the biggest vote agaist the Shroud for me is that the image in it looks like the Church art of the time: ie that the image looks like a shallow faced Western European, not like a full faced Mid-Easterner. Jesus was a green crescent Jew, he wouldn't have looked like somebody from France or England. If the Shroud didn't look just like the depiction of Jesus on the Cross I'd be much more tempted to believe it's veracity.

Finally I don't think the Shroud, or any other relic, has any bearing on the veracity of the religion itself. I could make false artifacts of Rome but that doesn't mean the Roman Empire never existed. Same thing here, so what if the Shroud is a fake, the item wasn't known (assuming it's real) for over 1000 years after Christ's death, the religion did well without it. If it proves to be a fake I don't see that as a challenge to the main tenants of the faith.

[eastsider]

I'm not familiar enough with anthropology either to make any personal judgment concerning the ethnic features of the face in the shroud or to comment on how anthropologists see past facial hair, bruises, etc. Having read the book written by one of the scientists on the 1978 research project, I'd be interested in hearing Dr. D'Muhala speak in Raleigh on March 27 (see RightOnLine's post #22).

As for the effect the actual burial cloth of Jesus might have on one's Christian faith, it seems to me that our faith rests on the eyewitness of men who we believe not because their story has any verisimilitude with any of our common experience, but because these men chose death rather than deny that they had seen Jesus of Nazareth alive after he had been laid in the tomb. Ultimately, no tests can ever conclusively "prove" the authenticity of the shroud or come close to the testimony of the apostles.

Still, if nothing else, the search for a tangible artifact associated with the resurrection keeps one focused on the physical and temporal reality of the event, whereby Christian faith transcends philosophical speculation.

[Antoninus]

Personally, the biggest vote agaist the Shroud for me is that the image in it looks like the Church art of the time: ie that the image looks like a shallow faced Western European, not like a full faced Mid-Easterner.

Funny you should say this... Do a quick web search of Byzantine art of the 5-10th century, particularly images of Christ as Pantocrator. Now compare that to the image on the Shroud of Turin... And remember, the theory is that the Shroud was in the hands of the Byzantine Greeks for hundreds of years before showing up in Europe after the Fourth Crusade.