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

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.

"If you re-read carefully, he certainly does not contradict the Old Testament. You will notice that he said, "Moses suffered you...but from the beginning it was not so." What is he referring to? He tells us: Adam and Eve. Quoting what? Ah, yes! The Torah! Your efforts to prove that Jesus contradicted the OT are doomed, because he didn't."

Quite the contrary.
Please go and read Deuteronomy.
The law of divorce is spelled out there. And there is no qualifying language that says "Well, God didn't intend THIS part of the Torah to be His Law, but the rest of it is." The Jewish divorce law is part of the Torah, which is highest law in Judaism (Jews do not believe that all parts of Scripture have equal authority.)

Jesus does indeed say that the divorce laws of the Torah are Mosaic tradition, but that is his own innovation. Since he was God, of course he can say that the Jewish tradition, recorded in the Torah, is not the intention of God. And if one steps away from the Bible and looks to the true authority behind it, God, one can see that Jesus certainly has the authority to correct the Torah. But the point is that the Torah says one thing, and Jesus says that what the Torah says is not God's intent. So, the Jewish "tradition" being referred here is a part of the written Bible itself.

Likewise, the dietary restrictions. Now, God is said to have said, in the Torah, don't eat this and don't eat that, because it renders a man ritually impure, is unclean, etc. But JESUS says that NOTHING that a man puts into his mouth renders him unclean.
Once again we have Jesus not just interpreting the Torah, but actually changing the rules that were imposed in it. Before Jesus, no Jew (or anyone else) could read the Torah and say "well, divorce and kashrut are merely TRADITIONS. They appear to be the Law of God alongside everything else there." It's Jesus who tells us that these laws of the Torah are not God's law but human traditions. The Bible itself contains human traditions which AREN'T God's intent, and Jesus points two of them out: divorce and kashrut.

Since Jesus was God, we can see clearly that these things in the Old Testament don't apply. But if we DON'T accept Jesus is God, but we DO accept that the Torah was handed down by God, as Jews do, then there is no way to tease out kashrut or the giving of gets from the rest of The Law. It's all the Law, and it's all from God, and none of it is from Tradition. Jesus says different, and he's only right if he has the authority to say so.

The OT says God says pork makes you unclean.
The OT also says that you can't look at God and live.

Jesus says that nothing you eat makes you unclean.
And Jesus says he's God, but his apostles weren't struck dead by the sight of him.

There are plenty of contradictions between the OT and the NT, and indeed that was Jesus' whole problem with the Jewish authorities, and my whole problem with your approach. They asked him: By what AUTHORITY do you say these things which contradict our law? The response is that he was God incarnate.
I ask you by what AUTHORITY you assert that the NT doesn't contradict the OT. Is the uncleanliness of pork and shellfish in the Torah handed down by God or isn't it?
Does Jesus say that nothing makes you unclean by eating it or not?
How is this not a contradiction?
It is one of many.
Marriage and kashrut are good, explicit cases.
It was not, and is not, that all the Jews before Jesus and to this day didn't know how to read. It was that Jesus gave an authoritative decision on some things, and his decision contradicts their texts. He claims to be God in his reinterpretation. That either settles the case, if it's true, or makes him a blasphemer if it's not but the Torah was given by God. Or it makes the Jews and Jesus both nuts, relying on fantasy and non-existent authority.

What is not included in the set of realistic reading of the texts is that God never said "Don't eat pork because it is unclean" to the Jews. He did in the Torah.
Jesus said different.
That is a flat contradiction.

Ditto for divorce.

Just because everyone can read physics doesn't mean everyone will understand it. It is the ultimate arrogance of human pride to say that we should not look for someone to tell us what to think. No one is trying to tell you what to think, but how to think. And, by yourself, you have no way of knowing if what you think is what you should be thinking. The Bible is not the sole source of knowledge of the faith, but a part of the collective knowledge known as the Holy Tradition. The Bible and the Holy Tradition are not in conflict but in concert.

Touché

It's kind of ironic that certain Protestants would even bother with seminaries. Heaven forbid an educated man tell an uneducated man what to think.

Also, it strikes me as rather self-contradicting to tell another man, "don't let others tell you what to think." I mean, really.

It's been my experience that those who push the do-it-yourself approach tend to harbor a belief already denounced as heresy by the Church.

Feel up to a game of "Spot the Modalist?"

But RobRoy, here is the difference.

Please just ponder this. There's no need to argue with me about it.

Suppose, for an instant, that the Shroud is NOT a fake or a forgery, but was actually what Jesus left in his tomb when he was resurrected. It has a powerful image on it - an awesome image. Anyone looking at it is astonished by it and wonders if it's real.

Consider, even, the comment in the Gospel of John. John looks in and sees the empty tomb and the wrappings. He waits for Peter. Peter goes in. John goes in and sees the wrappings, AND HE BELIEVES.

If the Shroud is the real burial shroud of Jesus, and that powerful image was burnt into it by the Resurrection and left in the tomb, Jesus MEANT for his apostles to find it.
He didn't leave ANY written words at all, but he DID leave the Shroud with that incredible image on it (assuming it is real).

God never does anything superfluous.
So,just assume for a minute that the Shroud of Turin actually is the burial shroud of Christ, and that the startling image burnt into it was left there by the Resurrection of Christ.
If it really was, then please remember that it was GOD who left that shroud there, in that tomb, for the apostles to find. He INTENDED for us to have it. It is NOT a graven image at all, if it was made by God, and God does not do things to no purpose.
When one thinks that WHAT John saw was the Shroud, and that the Gospel records "And he believed" at that instant gives us an indication of WHAT Jesus INTENDED that Shroud to do to his followers, to give them stunning evidence, so that they would believe.

Of course if the Shroud is a forgery made by human hands, that is all bunk.

But if it actually the burial Shroud of Jesus, then that image was burnt into that shroud by God and we were MEANT to find it.

Jesus didn't leave one written word, but if the Shroud is real, he DID leave that.
I am uncomfortable denigrating the record of a miracle which Jesus intended to leave to us. I think we need to treat it as a great mystery, left by God for us. God does nothing unintentional. If that Shroud is authentic, God didn't leave it by accident. He left it as a powerful, awesome record of what he did in that tomb.

I think that we should respect God's judgment...if it's real. And then focus our science on deciding whether it's real or nor.

The Bible does not refer to the Bible in the Bible.
It refers to Scripture, a rather nebulous and not fully defined term in the First Century. The Torah and the Prophets was defined. But the "Bible"? Not defined.

Nor does the Bible say "Bible alone".

You say it does.

The Bible is made by human hands.
You are insisting it is the totality of revelation.
It does not say so. (What about the miraculous healings at Lourdes?)
By denying the Church, which the Bible refers to a lot, but insisting the Bible is the Uber Authority, which it nowhere says, aren't you making a graven image out of the Bible itself, and worshipping it?

Earlier, you cited to Josephus, I believe.
Certainly the Jews of the Temple did not take your approach to the Scriptures. Nobody did, really, until Luther. And Luther didn't claim any divine revelation.

This passage states that anything spoken contrary to the scripture is darkness. Scripture therefore supercedes any other authority; if a Pope contradicts scripture, "it is because there is no light in him."

This passage doesn't forbid interpretation or explanation of Scripture. It just forbids teachings that contradict Scripture.

Scriture commends the Bereans for checking the Apostles' teaching against scripture--even though the Apostles were working miracles to attest their message! You mean to tell me that the Pope, who doesn't even work miracles, should be held to a lower standard? Puh-lease.

Nope, the Pope cannot teach in contradiction to Scripture. He can, however, interpret and explain Scripture where the meaning is not wholly clear.

Even an angel does not have authority to contradict the message already laid down. How much less authority should man's tradition hold? If an angel is accursed for contradicting the Gospel, the punishment can hardly be less on a Bishop who does so.

(Shrugs) Again, you miss the point: Interpretation and clarification of the Bible is perfectly legitimate so long as it does not contradict Scripture.

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