The True Likeness

Regular readers of this blog have known for some time that the Shroud of Turin is the real deal.

In fact, a surfeit of physical and historical evidence – including a compelling logical chain of custody – makes denying that the shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus the much more dubious claim. Absurd, even.

A tip of the hat to @Pinesap3wasc on Twitter who drew my attention to yet another solid source of evidence for the Shroud’s authenticity; this time, artistic.

First, to put what I’m about to show you in context, we have to look back at the earliest depictions of Christ.

Here’s a fresco of Jesus healing the paralytic. It dates from the first or second century AD.

Check out this other fresco, this  time of Jesus the Good Shepherd, from the second century.

A couple of commonalities that stand out in these two images are:

1. Jesus is clean-shaven.
2. He looks Roman.

Those two pieces of artistic license aren’t unusual. Different peoples have depicted Christ in their image every time a new nation is evangelized.

What is interesting is that if we’re honest, the two pictures above look weird. Much less recognizable than Asian or African renditions of Our Lord which still show Him with long hair and a beard.

I’d even wager that most people, if shown the above two images, wouldn’t identify them as depictions of Jesus unless told what they were.

Now look at this:

The subject of this icon needs no introduction.

It might be the most famous image of Jesus ever.

The name of that particular icon is Christ Pantocrator, from St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai.

Scholars originally dated it to the 13th century. Who can blame them? After all, it resembles medieval depictions of Jesus to a T.

But we’ve since learned that the icon is much older, dating to the 550s.

And it’s just one example of the “true likeness” style of iconography, which had its origins more in the classical Near East than in Rome.

It probably began in the East, where some earlier art historians had recognized the important role played by the greater Syrian region in Christian art. O. M. Dalton observed “It was the Aramaeans [Syrians] who counted for most in the development of Christian art” compelling Hellenistic views to yield to Semitic modes of expression. This especially included “the cities of Edessa and Nisibis, where monastic theology flourished …” (Dalton 1925: 24-25). This was an important key to their influence:

Edessa … where have we heard that name before?

Oh, yeah. Edessa was the city northeast of Antioch which became a major pilgrimage site thanks to the holy image that resided there.

Which fits in with the timeline of Peter taking the Shroud with him to Antioch, where it stayed until being gifted to the King of Edessa in the late 2nd century.

If this chain of custody holds true, it means the iconographers of Edessa had the Shroud to use as a reference – informing the “true likeness” style, including the Christ Pantocrator icon.

Lest you think that’s a bit of a stretch, feast your eyes on this:

A good example of this new “true likeness” is St. Catherine’s Monastery’s famous 6th century encaustic (painting on wax) Christ Pantocrator. The Pantocrator, “Christ Enthroned” and sitting in majesty as ruler of the world, was an important artistic type and preferred means for depicting him at this time. Shroud researchers Dr. Alan Whanger and wife Mary developed a photo comparison technique for overlaying one picture on another and then counting the actual “points of congruence” (PC’s) between the two (see Applied Optics, 15 March 1985: 766 – 772). Applying an overlay of the Shroud face onto the St. Catherine’s Pantocrator the Whangers counted 170 PC’s, and when they expanded the search to areas around the faces of both, over 250 PC’s (Whanger 1998: 19 – 20; see also Wilson and Miller 1986: illus. 23 – 25).

250 points of congruence.

That’s five times the number needed for acceptance as evidence in court.

Then we have anomalies like the Shroud creases showing up in the icons.

Debunkers have their work cut out for them explaining away those.

The striking likeness between the icon of Christ Pantocrator and the Shroud of Turin lends a new interpretation to Galatians 3:1.

O senseless Galatians, who hath bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been set forth, crucified among you?

For the folks in the nosebleed seats, Galatia was in Asia Minor.

So was Antioch.

What’s more, the context of that quote from that Epistle was Paul’s fraternal correction of Peter for private conduct at variance with his public teaching in regard to Gentile Christians.

Paul even mentions that his meeting with Peter took place at Antioch.

So if the proposed Shroud timeline holds up, it would have been with Peter in Antioch at the time of Paul’s writing. Which means it’s possible that Peter had indeed set an image of the crucified Christ before the Galatians’ eyes while they visited him or he visited them.

One last twist of history to demonstrate Our Lord’s perfect sense of humor: Galatia is named after the Gauls, who’d established a colony in Asia Minor during Hellenistic times. These were the same Celtic people after whom the Romans named the province of Gallia, aka current-year France. The Shroud timeline tracks its long journey from Jerusalem to Antioch to Edessa to Constantinople to Athens, and from there to Besançon and the lands of House Savoy, including Turin.

Which means the Shroud wound up in the hands of the French over a millennium after St. Paul wrote a rebuke for falling into error despite seeing the Shroud … to the French.

For another epic tale of Christian French noblemen redeeming their honor, check out my mech adventure saga: