A bunch of news articles have come out recently saying that new research has proven the shroud of Turin is 2,000 years old and so it is Christ's actual burial shroud.

And some people have used AI to try to flesh out what Jesus looked like based on the image on the shroud.

The image, for those of you who are listening by podcast, looks a little like Mormon Jesus,

but you might also say it looks like the Christ Pantocrater icon, an early six century painting of Jesus.

But in today's episode, I need to talk about people who are getting really weird about what Jesus looked like.

And I also want to talk about legitimate questions regarding Jesus'

physical appearance that raise theological questions. Before I do that though, I want to say

that I am not weighing in on whether the shroud of Turin is authentic or not and so that this is not of its own, and people are free to accept or not accept the authenticity of the

shroud. I would however caution people to not be overly confident in the

latest research. You don't want to overplay your evidence. This research is

based on wide- angle x-ray

scattering technology and that technology to use for dating is really new. It's only

been cited a handful of times prior to this paper. Moreover the study gets a date of 2,000 years old in the shroud

by assuming that the shroud of Turin stayed between 68 and 72 degrees and 55%

humidity for 2,000 years, which is a pretty big assumption.

So that's just my caveat about this new shroud research.

But what I find more worrying is people who get so attached to this image of Christ

that they end up saying really awful things. Here's the post that got nearly 2 million

views on X. Remember when British forensic experts and Israeli

archaeologists claimed that Jesus was this hideous brown guy? Now that the

shroud of Turin has been confirmed authentic, AI has been used to determine

what Jesus actually looked like and it matches how he was always

...