In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Matthew 5:16

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

the REAL Face of Jesus

I saw this ABC News clip about an upcoming documentary called, The Face of Jesus which would be airing on The History Channel.

 The team starts with the Shroud of Turin and from it they begin to find and process their data.  They know the person who was wrapped the Shroud was crucified.  They know the body of that person had a wound in the side with coincides with where the bible says Jesus was lanced while hanging on the cross (John 19:34). This body is covered with scourge marks from a Roman flagrum (example can be seen in image with the orange background) also called a cat O nine tails (example can bee seen in image with the pink background) and this lines up with the Shroud having approximately 120 marks where this "whip" wounded the person who eventually would be buried in the Shroud. The are several scriptures that talk of Jesus being beaten for us and there are also scriptures that were foretold by the Prophet Isaiah that the messiah would be beaten as well.  (See Isaiah 52:14 and Isaiah 53:4-5 in the old testament and then see John 19:1 and I Peter 2:24.)

The backside of the Shroud (the Shroud was wrapped from the feet of the body up the back of the person and then over their head, covering their face and then down the front side of the body ending again at the feet) is covered in blood stains from the top and back of head indicating this person suffered from injuries that would align with wounds caused by wearing a crown of thorns.  Again, this lines up with the biblical account of the death of Jesus. (See John 19:2)

The technology used in the History Channel documentry was fancinating and incredible.  They needed to pull a facial image from this thousand-year-old cloth and recreate it in 3D.  This was extraordinary.  The image in the Shroud is so subtle that a person really has to stand back about 10 feet or so to be able to connect all the markings in the fabric into something that is recognizable.

No one has ever taken this flat piece of cloth and tried to reconstruct it the way that it would have when it hung over the corpse of Jesus.  They took all the data they could and then began the reconstruction process of a 3D image.  They go into the process of  trying to reconstruct things like the eyebrows of the corpse as they were missing from the Shroud (the image is so faint) and they knew that the person had eyebrows so they used the added science need with forensics to create these. It was fascinating as they showed the steps that were used and the time that was involved in the creating of this documentary.  A follow-up story by ABC News 2  the next day actually shows the image above and gives another quick overview of the whole process.  If you are interested in purchasing the actual show you can at: History Channel documentary.  In the end, the showed this image, what they say is the face of the Shroud of Turin and many think is the face of Jesus Christ himself.

 I also understand that there are many another "faces of Jesus" found from taking the Shroud and starting there.  The BBC has done their own recreation as well as a British Team reconstructed his face.   I found a site entitled the Real Face of Jesus with some more information if you are interested.  I felt I would also share, as you know, that there are numerous images of what people think Jesus looked like so therefore nothing is iron-clad but there are is much interest as ever in what our Savior looks like.

The Face of Yahshua is a better clip of the Discovery Channels two part series but not as inclusive as these: Part One and Part Two.  A fact sheet regarding the Real Face of Jesus is full of information that you may find informative.  And finally, here is a series of images that show the different faces of Jesus found on YouTube called "the True Face of Jesus".

My personal favorite image is the image of the face of Jesus that the History channel has just released. I tend toward toward that one but I wanted to fair and balanced in all the information out there.