The face of an image created by a 14th century artist

Well, this should be the heading for this article published in The Age. Instead we get "Technology and shroud give Christ a new face", with the byline "Scientists recreate image of Jesus - and he's nothing like the Renaissance depictions." Ummmm, it's extremely like a Middle Ages depiction of Jesus, because that's when it was created. All the evidence points to this. Check out this powerpoint presentation (12MB) outlining the evidence. Some one even created their own shroud using techniques that were available in the middle ages.

The shroud was carbon dated back in the 1980's and that showed that it was made around 1300. Now the believers come up with all sorts of arguments to say that the dating is all wrong. The usual claims are:

1. The guys doing the dating got it wrong. But three separate labs all got the same answer. There were also other fabrics sent as controls. The labs had no idea which fabric was part of the shroud. Each piece of fabric was correctly dated.

2. The pieces of shroud given to the labs were from a damaged section and so the dates are misleading. Let's think about this for a moment. The Vatican themselves were the guys in charge of removing the pieces. Why would they want to take a piece from a damaged section? Well, if they knew it wasn't genuine, then they could keep the controversy going. So that would mean it's a fake. If they believed it to be genuine, then surely they would want the science to back up their claim. They would be extremely careful to pick a pristine part of the shroud for analysis. Then the dating is correct and it's still a fake.

And as per usual, before the test the believes said that they would recognise the results of the carbon dating. And then was the tests were done, they didn't recognise the results. That's a classic example of being dogmatic and closed minded and not accepting the evidence.

If they were so concerned that the dating was wrong, let's retest. You would think that would be a pretty simple thing to do. But guess who doesn't want to do it. Wny? For the same reason that it was created in the first place. There's no business like the relics business.