David Yount writes in the Abilene Reporter News:
Despite the medieval mania for collecting purported relics associated with Jesus, no Christian presumes to have a notion of his actual appearance. Had the Shroud of Turin been proved to be the authentic cloth in which he was buried, it still would have offered few clues. In the Roman catacombs, Jesus is depicted as clean-shaven; later artists persuaded themselves that by giving him a beard he would appear older and wiser.
If no one bothered to record his human appearance, what attracted people to him? When he chose his apostles, they immediately dropped everything — including work and family — to follow him.
Perhaps the attraction is at least partly related to the lack of a clear record, and the imaginative possibilities that enables.
Yount wrote: “Had the Shroud of Turin been proved to be the authentic cloth in which he was buried, it still would have offered few clues.” That has to be one of the dumbest comments I’ve ever seen. If the Shroud were real, it would offer few clues to what he looked like??? That’s like saying the Mars’ Rover is of little help in analyzing the surface of Mars. Some writers don’t even seem to have a basic needed factor
: common sense.
That’s funny, Joe. I was thinking that and when I clicked reply in the e-mail but you beat me to it! :o) I was also thinking if he did a study of representations of Christ before the rediscovery of it (clean shaven boyish face) after the Edessa flood (more like the Shroud image), he might have some food for thought.