TURIN SHROUD MAN DOES NOT HAVE JESUS' PHYSICAL CONSTITUTION

The Turin Shroud allegedly carries the print of Jesus' corpse. The resulting image is the centre of a huge body of research.  The body is very athletic with lean muscle. And its facial skin is too good for somebody that was out in the terrible sun of Palestine all the time. 

The muscular build has been verified in Ian Wilson’s The Blood and the Shroud.

Jesus was so busy preaching, hiding and praying according to the gospels that he could not have had the muscular physique of the Shroud man. He said he had nowhere to lay his head and went out without taking food with him. He had no food when he multiplied the loaves and fishes. You need to live a healthy life and eat five or six protein based snacks a day to develop muscle as well as spending hours working out. The Hollywood hunk style body of the Shroud-man is fully proven in Ian Wilson’s book, The Blood and the Shroud.

Jesus was living rough and the belief that he was John the Baptist resurrected is telling.  When so many people believed that Jesus was John the Baptist (Luke 9:19) and when John lived on locusts and wild honey (Matthew 3:4) it only makes sense if Jesus looked like John.  John ate dirt and lived in rags and had no home.  He would have been roughly the same age as Jesus.  He would have suffered ill health and been emaciated and his skin would have been savaged by the sun.  Don't underestimate how important the bad skin is.  Jesus looking like John means the Shroud man image is a trick. Jesus would have looked very emaciated and aged.

The Bible Jesus could not carry his cross far. If he was the Shroud man then weaker men did better than the Shroud man. That makes no sense for Shroud man was strong and tall and muscled. So Jesus was not a muscle man.
 
And a man as muscled as the Shroud man could not have died in three hours like the gospels say Jesus did. Pilate was extremely surprised that Jesus died so soon - the gospel of Mark says that. Pilate had to get the death checked. Shroud believers might say that the reason for the surprise was that such a strong man as Jesus died so fast. But Mark didn't indicate anywhere that Jesus was that strong and it is unusual for anybody to die so fast on a cross. He simply meant Jesus should have lasted longer and this was irrespective of how strong or average his constitution and build were. Jesus was not the Shroud man.
 
Don’t blame the scourging for the fast death. All who were to be crucified had to be scourged first. And having plenty of muscle protects the body a lot when you are being scourged. The Romans did not want the embarrassment of getting Simon of Cyrene to help Jesus and it was planned for the criminal to carry it all the way. Don't then say that they were extra brutal with Jesus. And the purpose of Jesus’ crucifixion was to humiliate him so the Romans could not have scourged him too much in case he would die prematurely. Jesus’ scourging would not have been that severe because it was not a prelude to crucifixion if Pilate planned to save his life according to the gospels. The fact that the man on the cloth shows over 100 lashes of a scourge that made holes in the body and took lumps of flesh with it indicates that he suffered more than the real Jesus would have. He was not Jesus Christ.
 
The height of the man which is about six feet is thought to indicate that he could not have been Jesus for people were short in those days. But the remains of long-dead people that tall exist and refute this argument.

Edward 1 of England was the same height as the Shroud-man. Magdalene said in John that she could carry Jesus by herself so Jesus was a tiny man. This man is too big. Jesus was supposedly born into a poor family and had to work hard and had a lot of stress. It is likely that in this poverty he would have had stunted growth. 

Jesus was able to survive for long periods without food which may indicate anorexia but certainly shows he was not used to food. He applied Isaiah 53 to himself though that chapter describes a man called the servant growing up like a shoot out of parched earth who has nothing attractive about his appearance and has no stately bearing. A shoot that comes out of parched earth looks burned and weak. Jesus hinted that he was weak and sickly. The chapter says that the man was familiar with suffering so he probably had a lifelong ailment. The early Church applied the chapter to Jesus too and it was their favourite prediction from the Old Testament about Jesus. This proves they had no image like that of the Turin Shroud. The early Church and the apostles applied Isaiah 53 to Jesus showing that if they had a cloth with a muscled and strong Jesus on it there was only one thing it could be – a fake. Isaiah 53 says that as the people were shocked at the servant not looking human at all so they will be astonished at him in future. This shows that extreme suffering and disfigurement belonged to the subject. Now the people who seen Jesus nailed up didn’t see anything to shock them – they were used to seeing criminals on crosses for days with the sun peeling their skin off and the birds plucking at them and eating their eyes out. But Jesus only suffered three hours. And the Shroudman didn’t have great disfigurement. Jesus died on the cross so soon that Pilate was amazed at it according to the Mark gospel. Though Pilate had known of thousands of crucifixion victims some of whom would have died quickly Jesus must have died exceptionally quickly.

It would mean that the gospels lied about the length of time Jesus suffered on the cross. Perhaps Jesus may have been very small and weak by nature so that he couldn’t stand up to the sufferings of the cross.

The face of the man in the Shroud does not fit the well-nourished muscular body. The face is emaciated. http://www.skepticalspectacle.com explains that it is an optical illusion caused by the way the cloth was bleached! But it could be that the face was imperfectly put on with a lot of the face missing from the image. The hair was then put on leaving a very wide gap between the face and the hair. But if you look at the picture of the Shroud you see that the face is indeed gaunt. It is not an illusion. The face is unnaturally thin and long. The high thin cheekbones should be shown to the hairline. They are not. The face should be shown better than the hair for the face was nearer the cloth while the hair should be flattened out and further away. The hair is also too tidy.

Would the buriers of Jesus have fussed with the hair of a corpse and when they were in a hurry to get away for the feast was nigh? The face doesn’t go with the muscular body. Body building affects the face and fills it out. The man could not have been Jesus for not only is the head separate from the body it doesn’t even belong to the body!

The earliest Christian descriptions of Jesus stated that he was a small man with a deformed back. The back problems were probably believed to have come from using bad posture when he was a carpenter. The early Christian apologist and writer Tertullian who died about 225 AD declared that Jesus did not have a normal human shape.

In Luke 4, Jesus went to preach in the synagogue of Nazareth and promised to do healings. The congregation were so astonished and amazed at the fine things he was teaching they started to exclaim, “Is this Joseph’s son?” They meant that nobody believed there was anything impressive about Joseph’s son and that his teaching so well was a shock. They would have known Jesus well for he lived and worked in Nazareth. Jesus said, “I totally expect you to quote the saying to me". The context shows that the congregation couldn’t understand how a man who was so obviously sick himself could promise healing when he couldn’t heal himself. He then explained that his own country he was not accepted as a prophet and that was why there were no miracles there. So they couldn’t believe a sick man was promising healing. Whatever it was, it was an illness that was plain to be seen. It was a deformity.

Some say that his use of the proverb, ‘Physician heal yourself’, does not refer to Jesus having some grave sickness or deformity but to the fact that he wasn’t healing his own in Nazareth but was in other places. But Luke was writing for non-Jews who wouldn’t have understood that usage. They would have taken it to refer to Jesus himself. When Luke didn’t indicate that it meant anybody other than Jesus, Jesus was who it meant. The words have to refer to a doctor who heals others but not himself.

After saying “Physician heal yourself,” Jesus immediately went on to say, “You will be saying that I must do in my own country the things that we have heard you do in Capernaum.” Does this support their interpretation? No for it could be a different subject.

Revelation 1.13 describes Jesus appearing in a vision with paps or mastos (a Greek word). Paps or mastos was rarely used of men unless they had feminine breasts (page 211, The Pagan Christ). It described the breasts of women. Jesus then suffered was thought to have suffered from a condition that gives men breasts like women. Christians will answer that the vision was symbolic and there is some symbolism in the vision’s appearance. But would a Christian describe Christ in such a way if it were not true? The breasts were mentioned to convince readers that the vision was really of Jesus. They have no symbolic significance because they are mentioned in a passing way – like something that didn’t need to be said. The Shroud man did not have breasts that looked feminine.
 

The evidence that the shroud man is not Jesus is overwhelming.