Forensic Scientists reveal what Jesus may have looked like as a 12-year old

Catholic News Agency ^ | February 12, 2005

[NYer]

Rome, Feb. 11, 2005 (CNA) - Forensic scientists in Italy are working on a different kind of investigation—one that dates back 2000 years.

In an astounding announcement, the scientists think they may have re-created an image of Jesus Christ when He was a 12-year old boy.

Using the Shroud of Turin, a centuries-old linen cloth, which many believe bears the face of the crucified Christ, the investigators first created a computer-modeled, composite picture of the Christ’s face.

Dr. Carlo Bui, one of the scientists said that, “the face of the man on the shroud is the face of a suffering man. He has a deeply ruined nose. It was certainly struck."  

 Then, using techniques usually reserved for investigating missing persons, they back dated the image to create the closest thing many will ever see to a photograph of the young Christ.

“Without a doubt, the eyes... That is, the deepness of the eyes, the central part of the face in its complexity”, said forensic scientist Andrea Amore, one of the chief investigators who made the discovery.

The shroud itself, a 14-foot long by 3.5-foot wide woven cloth believed by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus, is receiving renewed attention lately.

A Los Alamos, New Mexico scientist has recently cast grave doubt that the carbon dating originally used to date the shroud was valid. This would suggest that the shroud may in fact be 2000 years old after all, placing it precisely in the period of Christ’s crucifixion.

[CyberAnt]

"5 ft 1 inch"

You have to be kidding me. There are comments in the Bible which say Jesus had a commanding posture - which would indicate HE was quite tall and well built. There is no evidence to support their claim.

[CyberAnt]

But .. a "graven" image is something that is carved with a chisel - not an imprint on a cloth.

I don't know if it's the image of Jesus or not. I don't need that to believe in Jesus. HE lives in my heart and HE's very real to me.

Jesus said, "Blessed are those who believe and have not seen".

[Mark in the Old South]

When you do see His face I doubt you will like the result. Perhaps you might like to reconsider your post.

[Phsstpok]

what an unnecessary and hate filled post.

Jesus has one message and one message only. God forgives you. He did make the point, however, that you should be good to each other to avoid hurting anyone. Treat others as you would be treated yourself.

Cling to that thought. You'll need to believe in that comfort as you work out your self imposed guilt.

[lilylangtree]

Can't be Jesus because according to Isaiah 53, verse 2, "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him." Plus, in Isaiah 52, verse 14, when the Romans got through with Jesus, "As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men:"

Jesus, according to the Bible, was plain faced person so that no one would desire physically. His goodness came from within. The opposite of true is Satan. Satan has the outward beauty but evil and corruptness within.

[NYer]

You may find this interesting.

Pictures of Jesus from the Shroud of Turin?

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.

Why No One Can Fully Explain the Pictures on the Shroud of Turin

Abruptly, throughout the Middle East, and eventually throughout eastern Mediterranean Europe, pictures of Jesus became full frontal portraits with distinctive facial characteristics. Jesus now had shoulder length hair, an elongated thin nose, and a forked beard. Numerous other characteristics appeared in these pictures, and some of them were seemingly strange and of no particular artistic merit. Many portraits had two wisps of hair that dropped at an angle from a central parting of the hair. Many pictures showed Jesus with large "owlish" eyes. Paul Vignon, a French scholar, who first categorized these facial attributes in 1930, also described a square cornered U shape between the eyebrows, a downward pointing triangle on the bridge of the nose, a raised right eyebrow, accents on both cheeks with the accent on the right cheek being somewhat lower, an enlarged left nostril, an accent line below the nose, a gap in the beard below the lower lip, and hair on one side of the head that was shorter than on the other side.

Jennifer Speake who wrote a chapter, "Jesus in Art," in J. R. Porter's Jesus Christ: the Jesus of History, the Christ of Faith, observed:

Famous relics that claim to bear the true imprint of Christ's features include the controversial Shroud of Turin and the Holy Mandylion of Edessa; the iconography of both of these promoted the now conventional image of Jesus as a bearded man.

Keep in mind that many historians consider that the Shroud of Turin and the Holy Mandylion of Edessa to be one in the same. And keep in mind, too, that this iconography started some six centuries before the carbon-14-determined date for the Shroud.

Now with modern image analysis  we can clearly see that the pictures of Jesus in numerous works of art are most probably sourced from a single image; the Shroud of Turin. Some most notable and telling portraits include:

	Christ Pantocrator, an icon at St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai (550 C.E.)
	Byzantine Justinian II solidus, a coin (695)
	Icon of Christ at St. Ambrose, (now in Milan) (700s)
	Christ Enthroned, a mosaic in the narthex of Hagia Sophia Cathedral (850 - 900)
	Christ Pantocrator, a dome mosaic in a church in Daphni (1050 - 1100)
	Christ the Merciful, a mosaic icon now in a Berlin museum (1000s)
	Christ Pantocrator, an apse mosaic in Cefalu Cathedral, Sicily (1148)

The Chrysanthemum image found on the Shroud is particularly significant. What makes this so is not just the prominence and clarity of the image on the Shroud, but the fact that this flower is depicted accurately, as to its likeness and relationship to the face, on some early icons and coins. This includes the Pantocrator icon at St. Catherine's Monastery and the seventh century Justinian solidus coin.

In the 1930's, French Shroud scholar Paul Vignon described a series of common characteristics visible in many early artistic pictures of Jesus. The Vignon marking, as they are known, all appear on the Shroud suggesting that it is the source of later pictures of Jesus:
 

	A square U-shape between the eyebrows.
	A downward pointing triangle or V-shape just below the U-shape, on the bridge of the nose.
	Two wisps of hair going downward and then to the right.
	A raised right eyebrow.
	Large, seemingly "owlish" eyes. This may be the result of coins placed over the eyes.
	An accent on the left cheek and an accent on the right cheek that is somewhat lower.
	A forked beard. This may the result of a chin band tied around the head to keep the mouth closed.
	An enlarged left nostril.
	An accent line below the nose and a dark line just below the lower lip.
	A gap in the beard below the lower lip.
	Hair on one side of the head that is shorter than on the other side.

SHROUD STORY

[ValenB4]

That's a pretty bizarre joke. I rather doubt Christ will return as Old Man Winter or something that resembles a creature from a B-class horror movie.

[VOYAGER]

A tremendous amount of presumptive assumptions, not worth as much as the electricity it took to produce this message and shoot it onto this forum.

[monkapotamus]

They forgot to factor in his father, God, which may result in differences from what the average Joe looked like in that area.

---

This is what some forensic a nthropologists say he may of looked like.

[NYer]

There are tons of verses on this in the Bible - that is if what HE says matters to you. It's most unlikely that He would allow a graven image on HIMSELF to be left behind when He is so opposed to it.

If you search the scriptures, (cf. John 5:39), you will find the opposite is true. God forbade the worship of statues, but he did not forbid the religious use of statues. Instead, he actually commanded their use in religious contexts!

There are many passages where the Lord commands the making of statues. For example: "And you shall make two cherubim of gold [i.e., two gold statues of angels]; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end; of one piece of the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be" (Ex. 25:18–20).

David gave Solomon the plan "for the altar of incense made of refined gold, and its weight; also his plan for the golden chariot of the cherubim that spread their wings and covered the ark of the covenant of the Lord. All this he made clear by the writing of the hand of the Lord concerning it all, all the work to be done according to the plan" (1 Chr. 28:18–19). David’s plan for the temple, which the biblical author tells us was "by the writing of the hand of the Lord concerning it all," included statues of angels.

Similarly Ezekiel 41:17–18 describes graven (carved) images in the idealized temple he was shown in a vision, for he writes, "On the walls round about in the inner room and [on] the nave were carved likenesses of cherubim."

During a plague of serpents sent to punish the Israelites during the exodus, God told Moses to "make [a statue of] a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live" (Num. 21:8–9).

One had to look at the bronze statue of the serpent to be healed, which shows that statues could be used ritually, not merely as religious decorations.

[BMC1]

It's not a graven image unless you worship the image. In the early days of Christianity, pictures of biblical scenes and of God as a way of telling the stories of the bible because very few were able to read.

Because we are human, when we pray, we can conjure an image of God in our head. The human mind doesn't think in blank terms.

You may be the odd ball.

[mlbford2]

Geesh I hope not. Looks like Tuco from The Good , the Bad and the Ugly.

[RaceBannon]

(Isa 50:6 KJV) I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.

(Isa 53:2 KJV) For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

Those are the only two verses that I know of that discuss anything about what Jesus looked like.

He had a beard, and he was not handsome.

[RaceBannon]

What verses are you talkng about???

[rdcorso]

This is the face they created last night on the History channel.I wasn't happy with this show that was created in part by the BBC.They raised some claims that I think are totally ridiculous.They say that Jesus never existed.He didn't die on the cross but was saved instead because a Roman guard gave him a healing drug made out of some flower that allowed him to survive.They also claimed that there are several explanations that deal with his body missing from the tomb.They say he was never removed from the cross and was torn to pieces by wild animals.His body was thrown into a landfill or garbage dump.People stole his body in order to create the myth of him rising from the dead.I was amazed at the weight this program gave to these theories when the program was supposed to give the truth about Jesus.

[patriot_wes]

I can't believe it...He looks Jewish!

Shalom

[proudmilitarymrs]

thanks for the post. I do believe that the conjecture is quite amusing. Mere mortals and all, ya know? This is God we're discussing afterall.

[Clemenza]

Jesus looks alot like the actor from the movie "Real Genius."

[Nicholas Conradin]

If there is a professional society of forensic scientists, I think they have a reasonably good case for libel or slander, whichever is appropriate.

These "scientists" are creatively imaginative, or delusional

[Kolokotronis]

"There are tons of verses on this in the Bible - that is if what HE says matters to you. It's most unlikely that He would allow a graven image on HIMSELF to be left behind when He is so opposed to it"

Here's some news; the Iconoclast heresy was crushed finally in 843. The First Sunday in Great Lent is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy and commemorates the restoration of the icons to Churches and homes.