If Calvin calls it black, I call it white . Joking aside, the radiocarbon dating evidence is near as dammit certain evidence that the Shroud is a medieval fake. I was listening to some eminent physicists talking about the science of carbon dating on Radio 4 the other day, and only the most dyed-in-the-wool flat-earther would even attempt to refute it. It has been suggested that the portion of the Shroud on which the tests were done is a medieval repair of the authentic original, but this has been comprehensively refuted.
Personally I don’t see why people are so exercised about the Shroud. There are hundreds of supposed relics of Christ knocking around. Maybe some are real. Maybe even the Shroud. For me, it seems obvious that God has deliberately left the question of Christ’s divinity and resurrection unproven and unprovable, in the scientific sense. As is indeed the case with His very existence. God demands faith, not simple assent.
Paint your face black, right round to your ears. Wrap it with a white towel, unwrap, and lay the towel flat. Now imagine what this “image” would look like. Wouldn’t your ears be over 30cm apart?
Well, the two guys who invented the two standardized radiocarbon dating methods aren’t flat earthers (at least one of them isn’t Christian either), and they think (or recently thought) that the dating test was semi-botched, enough so that they want a recheck according to better criteria.
The radiocarbon dating is, so far as I’ve ever heard or read, the only ‘abundance’ of evidence the Shroud is a medieval forgery, and plenty of technical scientists have challenged that for various entirely scientific reasons. The only actual abundance of evidence otherwise points in the direction of the Shroud being genuine. (Although some of that evidence is of better quality than others.)
Regarding wrapping the head: that would be true, but this type of burial shroud isn’t used for wrapping the head (although GosJohn mentions something else left behind in the tomb that might have been for that purpose. Whatever it was and wherever it is now, it isn’t the Shroud and isn’t with the Shroud.) On the contrary, one of the major pieces of evidence in favor of the figure having been made (somehow) by a human body, including the head, is that the spatial coordinates of things on the Shroud are 3D encoded in a fashion that fits the shroud draped around the body and face. Many experiments have been done on this, which is why forgery theorists attempting to reproduce the construction of the Shroud are required to match the 3D encoding results (and not just any 3D encoding results but the specific kind found on the Shroud). If they can’t, their method is demonstrably proven false or at least in need of significant upgrade.
There are exactly no easy explanations for the Shroud; even people convinced by the radiocarbon dating, run into huge brick walls trying to figure out how it could have been made in medieval times, when we have very little idea how to reproduce making it now with modern technology. Even if it’s a forgery it’s a fascinating puzzle.
I completely agree Jason. Whether its provenance be supernatural or not, the Shroud is an extraordinary artefact.
What I meant by my initial comment was that only a dedicated flat-earther (or perhaps that ought to be young-earther ) would attempt to deny the science of radiocarbon dating itself. It’s entirely possible - although I would say not very likely - that the testing process for the Shroud was flawed.
It does appear to be the case that ‘other’ types of evidence are inconclusive to say the least.
To arrive at any kind of answer, we must first face this fact: Jesus was a divorced man.
Now how can that be? First, look at the Scriptures as a whole. They depict a Love Story, between God and His Intended (Israel). God pledged His troth to His future bride, in promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. At the proper time, He came to Egypt for His bride, brought her to His holy mountain (in Midian, not Sinai) and took corporate Israel as His wife there. If you don’t believe me, consider that many years later, God was willing, in order to make a point, to depict Himself as a bigamist, the Husband of two wives, Israel and Judah. In response to their unfaithfulness, and in accordance with His own Law, God divorced them one after the other, and sent them packing. Yet, God stated that He still loved them, and would, in the fullness of time, take them both again as His wife (stick of Ephraim + stick of Judah).
Now, in case you are going to say it was God the Father that did all that - don’t be so quick! At the burning bush (again, in Midian), God told Moses who He was: YHWH. This is usually translated/transliterated as “Yahweh.” However, if we go back to the very ancient pictorial meanings of the letters of the Hebrew alephbet, we see that the tetragrammaton really means “Behold the Nail, Behold the Hand.” It is Jesus, and therefore Jesus was the Husband of Israel & Judah.
With that said, I’ll leave the OP’s question unanswered.