“We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist.” [emphasis added]
I’ve read every major work available in English on the shroud. There have been all kinds of efforts made to replicate the image through various processes including placing the cloth on heated surfaces and exposing it to certain chemicals, etc. none of them worked. And it’s true that the carbon 14 test was performed on a contaminated and partially restored area of the cloth. It’s also true that, while it is continuously documented since the 1300’s, it appears to be depicted in the “Pray Manuscript,” circa 1200. Also some very early Christian art appears to depict the man in the shroud per the hair and beard style and one eye larger than the other —- on the shroud image that would be because the eye is swollen from the beating. It’s also true that the weave of the cloth is consistent with high quality cloth from first century Palestine, and that many samples of pollen have been lifted from it from plants that grew in Judea, but not in Europe.
Some of my Protestant brothers and sisters think that only faith matters and this physical proof is not important. Fine, but I think the only reasonable conclusion is that the shroud is exactly what its proponents claim it is. At the very least, the passage from the article I posted at the beginning is pretty incontrovertibly true
Explain the long hair. It’s pretty clear in a Bible men are to have short, neat hair.