Not odd at all. Computer studies show that the Shroud facial characteristics underly a huge proportion of all icons of Jesus. This can be explained if it were true (as documents attest, corroborated by new documentary evidence for the whereabouts of the Shroud before 1300) that what we know as the Shroud is the relic called the Mandylon preserved in Edessa and then Constantinople and shown in its folded form (face only) on certain occasions. The iconographic tradition could be derived from the Shroud, hence the deeply embedded sense of what Jesus looked like could ultimately go back to the Shroud.
In evaluating historical artifacts, pedigree is among the most important. The Lincoln bed on display at the Chicago Historical Museum is authenticated in the commentary at the display primarily by arguing from pedigree records.
Did it ever occur to the Bible-only Christians that the explicit mention of two kinds of burial cloths in the “race to the tomb” scene in John’s Gospel is odd? Why did the writer mention so much in detail (1) that the cloths were still there, (2) that they were folded (3) that the shroud was distinct from the facecloth (sweat-cloth, put on the face as soon as possible after death in Jewish burial protocol)?
This all makes sense if the earliest (and I mean EARLIEST) Christians had in fact, snatched up those gravecloths and preserved them as the sole tangible physical “keepsakes” of their beloved Lord. They couldn’t grab hold of the cross—it “belonged” to the authorities; whether Helena discovered the actual buried in rubble cross 300 years later or not is a different question (not impossible for reasons I won’t go into here).
But the gravecloths were right there. It would be utterly incredible to think that the apostles, the women, the disciples did not grab them with every ounce of energy they possessed and keep them with a devotion beyond words.
And the gravecloths were small enough that they could be preserved even in the fiercest persecution. It would boggle the mind to think that the early Christians did not preserve them, were not willing to give their own lives to protect them.
That’s all just plain common sense. The writer of John’s Gospel did not, sadly, add “And these cloths are preserved to this day in the house of Jacob bar Simon, the chief sacristan of the Christian Church at Antioch” or something like that. The author didn’t bother to mention that these gravecloths were preserved in Christian hands. He thought it would be so obvious to anyone reading the gospel that the Christians preserved them. Moreover, if he had written who was in charge of them, at a time when Christianity was still illegal, he’d have been greasing the skids for their destruction or at least for the guardians of the relics to have a bigger battle to keep them safe.
But the most reasonable explanation for including that odd mention of the DETAILS of the position and condition of the gravecloths is that they were already being valued as relics at the time the gospel was written.
And the image on the gravecloths may not have been visible or fullly visible at first. It may have formed over time.
So the PEDIGREE of this particular artifact starts from the very beginning, which is an incredibly rare kind of pedigree for artifacts this old. The record after that has long gaps, but also very significant mentions of a cloth with an image of Jesus, mentions at regular intervals until the Shroud appears in the West in the 1340s.
As pedigrees go, over such a long time span, it’s a pretty decent one. No, it’s not as tight as the chain of evidence required in court for a crime that took place a year ago. But for a historical artifact purportedly this old, it’s not a bad pedigree of guardianship.
Did you ever think about the oddity of that “race to the tomb” story? It takes on a whole different light if the Shroud is authentic.
And the pedigree is only part of the evidence. The forensic evidence from the Shroud (pollen etc.) is vast and overwhelmingly consistent.
