Maria da Glória of the Centro Português de Sindonologia challenged us with Why do we think it is an image of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin? It has been a great thread of discussion that should be read all the way through Maria’s comment #23 . . . and then some. If you haven’t been following it, do read it now. Note in particular where Maria writes:
[Bruno Barberis, author of «Shroud, carbon dating and calculus of probabilities»] considers seven aspects shared by the Man of the Shroud and Jesus of Nazareth, namely the wrapping of the corpse in a sheet,the head wounds, carrying the cross,crucifixion with nails, the side wound,the hasty burial, and time the corpse stayed in the sheet after burial, and concluded that only one in two hundred billion crucified people could satisfy ALL these conditions put together, in other words, the Man of the Shroud is indeed Jesus of Nazareth.
Even not agreeing with criteria Professor Barberis used we must remember that when romans crucified people corpses were usually left on the cross as a deterrent for by passers and the body either rot on the cross or was food for wild animals or birds of prey.
Even when the body was removed it was usually thrown into a ditch and only on rare instances if roman authority granted permission for burial, family members could bury the corpse, as Gospels account on Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus burial wrapping with a linen sheet. Most Jewish shrouds did not survive because of the effects of decomposition products from decaying bodies, the Shroud of Turin is one of the very few exceptions.
I really appreciate the comment of Maria about the fact that if the Shroud was done in the Middle ages by a fanatic who wanted to reproduced the Passion of Christ in order to produce a relic (what a crazy idea, but it’s there’s very a slim possibility there anyway that we can’t disregard completely), then you can bet your house that the images we see on the Shroud would have been very different. In the Middle ages, nobody knew that the Roman drove the nails in the wrist instead of in the palms. This fact alone is enough to understand that the Shroud came from the Antiquity instead of the Middle ages. And there’s also the very particular and typical wounds (with dumbell shapes) that came from a Roman flagrum that nobody in the Middel ages would have been aware of. I can keep on with others facts like that for a long time. Look at all the artistic depictions of the Passion of Christ made in the Middle ages and you’ll see that this burial cloth don’t come from this period of time…