Copyright © Stephen E. Jones[1]
This is part #35, "The Shroud is consistent with the man being Jesus," in my series, "The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic!" For more information about this series, see the "Main index #1" and "Other marks and images #26." See also "The Shroud of Turin: 3. The Bible and the Shroud." Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated.
[Main index #1] [Previous: The Shroud is consistent with the Bible #34] [Next: The Shroud man and Jesus were beaten #36]
- The Bible and the Shroud #33
- The Shroud is consistent with the man being Jesus #35
The man on the Shroud is consistent with him being Jesus[2].
[Above (enlarge): "`Crucifixion,' sculpture in wood according to research carried out on the Holy Shroud" by Italian artist Giulio Ricci (1913-95)[3].]Some of the parallels between the Gospel evidence and the Shroud evidence are summarised below in table form[4] (see a different table in part #34):
| Gospel evidence | Verses | Shroud evidence |
| Jesus was repeatedly struck in the face. | Mt 26:67-68; 27:30; Mk 12:4; 14:65; 15:19; Lk 22:63-64; Jn 18:22; 19:3 | The man has bruises and swellings around both eyes, both cheeks, the nose, and the chin. |
| Roman soldiers scourged Jesus. | Mt 27:26; Mk 15:15; Jn 19:1 | The man's body, except for the face, arms and feet, bears the marks of a severe scourging by a Roman flagrum. |
| Soldiers plaited a crown of thorns and put it on Jesus' head. | Mt 27:29; Mk 15:17; Jn 19:2 | There are numerous puncture wounds in the man's scalp. |
| Jesus initially was forced to carry his own cross. | Jn 19:17 | Smudging of the scourge wounds on the right shoulder and back indicate that the man had carried a heavy object. |
| Jesus' cross had to be carried for him, indicating He stumbled and fell under its weight. | Mt 27:32; Mk 15:21; Lk 23:26 | There are cuts and bruises on both knees, indicating falls on a hard surface. |
| Jesus was nailed to the cross through His hands and feet. | Lk 24:39; Jn 20:20, 25-27. | The Shroud shows a man pierced through the wrists and feet. |
| Jesus was already dead on the cross so His legs were not broken. | Jn 19:31-33 | The man in the Shroud died on the cross and his legs were not broken. |
| A soldier pierced Jesus' side with a spear, to ensure that He was dead, and out came blood and water. | Jn 19:34 | There is a large wound in the side of the man's right chest and a mixture of blood and fluid had flowed from it. |
| Jesus was buried in a linen shroud. | Mt 27:59; Mk 15:46; Lk 23:53 | The Shroud is linen and bears the imprint of a man which matches the Gospels' description of Jesus' suffering, death, burial and resurrection! |
Leading Shroud sceptics admit that the Shroudman is either Jesus or an artistic depiction of Him - see Fr. Herbert Thurston (1856–1939) and Steven Schafersman (quoted approvingly by Joe Nickell) in "#34."
But an agnostic, Yves Delage (1854–1920) [see "1900a"], Professor of Zoology at the Sorbonne, Paris, considered and rejected that the Shroud was a painting (see next) and concluded that the Shroudman actually was Christ:
"Should I speak of the identity of the person who left his image on the shroud? ... On the one hand we have the shroud, probably impregnated with aloes-which brings us to the East outside Egypt-and a crucified man who had been scourged, pierced on the right side and crowned with thorns. On the other hand we have an account - pertaining to history, legend and tradition - showing us Christ as having undergone in Judea the same treatment as we decipher on the body whose image is on the shroud. Is it not natural to bring together these two parallel series and to refer them to the same object? Let us add that, in order that the image should be produced and not later destroyed, it is necessary that the body should remain in presence of the shroud at least twenty- four hours, the time necessary for the formation of the image, and at most a few days, after which there supervenes putrefaction which destroys the image and finally the shroud. Now this is precisely what tradition - more or less apocryphal, I admit - asserts to have happened to Christ who died on Friday and disappeared on Sunday ... I consider Christ as a historical person, and I see no reason why anyone should be scandalised if there exists a material traces of his existence"[5].However, having shown that the Shroud image was not a painting (see next), and refusing to accept that it was a result of the supernatural resurrection of Jesus, the agnostic Delage, was left with "some physico-chemical phenomenon" as the explanation:
"For these and many other reasons which need not be specified, there results the conviction that the image on the shroud is not a painting made by the hand of man, but that it has been obtained through some physico-chemical phenomenon"[6].Problem for the forgery theory. (See previous three: #31, #32 and #34). The agnostic Yves Delage (see above), Professor of Zoology at the Sorbonne, Paris, then and now one of the world's leading universities, gave his reasons why the Shroud image is not a painting:
• The unknown 14th century artist would have been greater than the Renaissance (14th-17th century) painters:
"At first sight it would seem that the image on the shroud is ... a painting made for the purpose of a pious fraud. But when this hypothesis is examined with care, we see that it must be rejected for the following reasons: (1) As the shroud is authenticated since the fourteenth century, if the image is a faked painting, there must at this epoch have existed an artist-who has remained unknown-capable of executing a work hardly within the power of the greatest Renaissance painters"[7].• It would have been impossible for a 14th century forger to paint the Shroud image in negative:
"While this is already very difficult to admit for an image painted as a positive, it becomes quite incredible in the case of a negative image, which lacks all aesthetic character in this form and assumes its value only when lights and shades are reversed, while strictly respecting their contours and values. Such an operation would be almost impossible except by photography, an art unknown in the i4th century. The forger, while painting a negative, must have known how to distribute light and shade so that after reversal they would give the figure which he attributed to Christ, and that with a perfect precision: for we know how little is required to change a beautiful head into a caricature, especially when its beauty is due to the expression"[8].• Why would a 14th century forger have depicted the Shroud image in negative, when it could not have been appreciated by his contemporaries?
"I add this argument whose force will be felt on reflection: Why should this forger have taken the trouble to realise a beauty not visible in his work and discernible only after a reversal which only later was made possible? He was working for his contemporaries and not for the twentieth century and the Academy of Sciences" (emphasis Delage's)[9].• The Shroud's negative image could not have been the result of a colour reversal because (amongst other things) it is in monochrome:
"The idea that the image could have been painted in positive and changed to negative, as has happened to certain paintings on cloth and certain frescos, is contradicted inter alia by the fact that the image is in monochrome and consequently could not have undergone two inverse modifications from clear to shadow and from shadow to clear"[10].• The Shroud's image has no outline [see #14], which is alien to the art of the 14th century:
"(2) The image results from the juxtaposition of graded tints, without definite delineation or sketching, like a badly focussed photograph: a procedure quite alien to the artistic conceptions of the fourteenth century"[11].• The image is realistic, perfect and has no artisic style [see "#16"]:
"(3) The image is strongly realist, impeccable, without defect or omission: only imperfectly does it take account of tradition. it is neither schematic nor conventional: characteristics not to be found in any of the artistic productions of this epoch nor to such an extent in those of any epoch"[12].• The dumbbell shaped scourge marks were made by a Roman flagrum
[Right (enlarge): Reconstruction by Delage's colleague Paul Vignon (1865-1943)[13], of a Roman flagrum from the scourge marks on the Shroud[14]. One similar to this was recovered in the 19th century from the Roman city of Herculaneum[15] which, with its neighbour Pompeii, was buried in the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD 79[16].]
with thongs ending in heavy weights [see 15Jul13], unknown in the 14th century:
"(b) The marks of the flagellation in the form of a dumb-bell, such as might be made by a flagrum with thongs ending in hard heavy masses of the same form, analogous to those in certain archaeological museums. It would be interesting to know if people of the 14th century knew this construction of the flagrum: if they did not. this is a further proof. And the convergence of these marks, downward on the back, crosswise on the thighs, upward on the calves, towards a point where the executioner's hand could be! A forger does not think of all that. To be convinced, one need only examine the pictures of the epoch: and yet these artists had an equal desire to represent the truth"[17].• The Shroudman's image is non-traditional:
"(3) The image ... only imperfectly does it take account of tradition ... (a) The loins, perhaps the genital region, naked: which would have been considered most irreverent. The bishop or the prior who might have ordered the shroud from a monastic or lay artist would not have failed to require the addition of a loin-cloth. For we must place ourselves in the epoch in which the fraud might have been carried out; the shroud destined to enflame the zeal of the faithful should not at the same time shock their feelings or scandalise them. This is so true that the loin-cloth has been added to certain copies. (d) The hands pierced through the wrist and not through the palm, in conformity with the anatomical requirements and against tradition"[18].It is remarkable that the first arguments against the Shroud being a painting, and for the Shroudman being Jesus, were made by by Delage, an agnostic! Clearly Delage had no pro-Christian bias, rather the opposite. There could be no stronger proof that the Man on the Shroud is Jesus, and not a forger/artist's depiction of him, than that the first to argue this, on purely scientific grounds, was the agnostic, Yves Delage (1854–1920), Professor of Zoology at the Sorbonne, Paris!
I will expand on the items of evidence in, "The Bible and the Shroud #33," in future posts in this series.
Notes
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference citing my name, its subject heading, its date and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. Wilson, I., 1979, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, pp.46-53; Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1981, "Verdict on the Shroud: Evidence for the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Servant Books: Ann Arbor MI, pp.122-124. [return]
3. Ricci, G., 1978, "The Way of the Cross in the Light of the Holy Shroud," Center for the Study of the Passion of Christ and the Holy Shroud: Milwaukee WI, Second edition, Reprinted, 1982, p.61. [return]
4. Robinson, J.A.T., " The Shroud of Turin and the Grave-Clothes of the Gospels," in Stevenson, K.E., ed., 1977, "Proceedings of the 1977 United States Conference of Research on The Shroud of Turin," Holy Shroud Guild: Bronx NY, pp.22-30, 22-23; Robinson, J.A.T., "The Shroud and the New Testament," in Jennings, P., ed., 1978, "Face to Face with the Turin Shroud," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, pp.69-81; Wilson, 1979, pp.46-53; Stevenson & Habermas, 1981, pp.43-54,121-128; Wilson, I., 1986, "The Evidence of the Shroud," Guild Publishing: London, pp.44-45; Ruffin, C.B., 1999, "The Shroud of Turin: The Most Up-To-Date Analysis of All the Facts Regarding the Church's Controversial Relic," Our Sunday Visitor: Huntington IN, pp.40-46; Antonacci, M., 2000, "Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical, and Archeological Evidence," M. Evans & Co: New York NY, p.119; Guerrera, V., 2001, "The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity," TAN: Rockford IL, pp.31-40. [return]
5. Delage, Y., 1902, "Letter to M. Charles Richet," Review scientifique, 31 May, in O'Rahilly, A. & Gaughan, J.A., ed., 1985, "The Crucified," Kingdom Books: Dublin, pp.76-77, 79. [return]
6. Delage, 1902, p.74. [return]
7. Delage, 1902, p.72. [return]
8. Ibid. [return]
9. Delage, 1902, pp.72-73. [return]
10. Delage, 1902, p.73. [return]
11. Ibid. [return]
12. Ibid. [return]
13. Vignon, P., 1939, "Le Suaire de Turin devant la Science, l'Archeologie, l'Histoire, l'Iconographie, la Logique," Masson: Paris, p.56. [return]
14. Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., 2000, "The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence," Michael O'Mara Books: London, p.56. [return]
15. de Wesselow, 2012, p.144O. [return]
16. "Herculaneum," Wikipedia, 14 July 2021. [return]
17. Delage, 1902, p.73. [return]
18. Ibid. [return]
Posted 28 July 2021. Updated 1 January 2024.
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