Not because he’s “wanted” or anything. (At least not anymore. And at least not in the affluent West, apparently.) But you know how sentimental Italians are, what with their devotion to the Gesù Bambino.
Using the image on the Shroud of Turin, Italian police (!) produced what they believe is a credible likeness of the child Jesus. From The Independent:
Using the Turin Shroud, the supposed burial cloth of Jesus, police investigators have generated a photo-fit image from the negative facial image on the material. And from this they reversed the ageing process to create an image of a young Jesus, by reducing the size of the jaw, raising the chin and straightening the nose.
The technique effectively reverses the method that Italian police use to generate current likenesses of criminals, including senior mob bosses, for whom new photo fit images are needed when they have been on the run for decades.
Such techniques were used to produce an image of Mafia boss of bosses Bernardo Provenzano, from a photo taken in 1959. Provenzano was eventually captured in 2006.
This image of Jesus as a young boy, and the methods used to create it, will be the subject of an upcoming programme on Italian television. But the exercise was done to mark the latest ostensione – a rare public display of the Shroud at Turin Cathedral.
I am an agnostic on the authenticity of the Shroud. I am wary of “relics” in general, given how many fraudulent claims* have been made over the centuries — not only as to their supposed miraculous powers but also as to their origins. Plus, it seems too neat a “proof” of the Church’s truth claims.
There is one intriguing detail. Most artistic renderings of the crucifixion show nails going through the palms of Jesus’ hands, which most Christians would have assumed to be accurate. The Romans, however, hammered the nails low down on the wrists, the so-called Destot’s space, where the small bones were more likely to hold the condemned man to the crossbar. The Shroud depicts the wound in roughly this spot.**
If you were fabricating a deliberate fraud, wouldn’t you reproduce what your audience was most likely to assume to be accurate?
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* “It is claimed that the head of St. John the Baptist is in Rome, although all histories show that the Saracens opened John’s grave and burned everything to powder. Yet the pope is not ashamed of his lies. So with reference to other relics like the nails and the wood of the cross—they are the greatest lies.” (Martin Luther’s Works, Vol. 54.131)
“In this town there was formerly, it is said, an arm of St Anthony; it was kissed and worshipped as long as it remained in its shrine; but when it was turned out and examined, it was found to be the bone of a stag. There was on the high altar the brain of St Peter; so long as it rested in its shrine, nobody ever doubted its genuineness, for it would have been blasphemy to do so; but when it was subjected to a close inspection, it proved to be a piece of pumice-stone. I could quote many instances of this kind; but these will be sufficient to give an idea of the quantity of precious rubbish there would have been found if a thorough and universal investigation of all the relics of Europe had ever taken place. …
“The same observations are applicable to the tale of the sheet in which the body of our Lord was wrapped. How is it possible that those sacred historians, who carefully related all the miracles that took place at Christ’s death, should have omitted to mention one so remarkable as the likeness of the body of our Lord remaining on its wrapping sheet? This fact undoubtedly deserved to be recorded. St John, in his Gospel, relates even how St Peter, having entered the sepulcher, saw the linen clothes lying on one side, and the napkin that was about his head on the other; but he does not say that there was a miraculous impression of our Lord’s figure upon these clothes, and it is not to be imagined that he would have omitted to mention such a work of God if there had been any thing of this kind.” (John Calvin, Treatise on Relics, 1543)
**There have been attempts to dispute exactly where the nails enter the hands/wrists on the Shroud, either to disparage the Shroud’s claim of “authenticity” or to bolster the “visions” of mystics who reported seeing wounds Christ’s palms. The definition of what constitutes the “wrist” versus the “hand” (versus the “palm”) goes back to Pierre Barbet’s “forensic” report on the crucifixion, A Doctor at Calvary, and later attempts to challenge his analysis.
Filed under: It's Like a Miracle, Religious Kitsch and Other Regifting Ideas, That Looks Nothing Like Me
