Shroud of Turin
The face on a religious card is a detail of the image of an apparently crucified man on the Shroud of Turin, which many believe is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Actually it has no record before the mid-fourteenth century, at which time a bishop reported that it was part of a faith-healing scam and that the forger had confessed. Modern scientific tests reveal that the "blood" and body image were done in tempera paint, and radiocarbon testing gives the cloth's date of manufacture as ca. 1260 - 1390.
Left of the postcard is "The Photo Crucifix" which, according to a label on the back, is based on the "true photograph" of Jesus represented on the shroud image. When the image was first photographed in 1898 it was discovered that the darks and the lights were approximately reversed, and the shroud believers began to claim the image was "a perfect photographic negative." However, the reversed, supposedly positive image--as shown at right--depicts white hair and beard, rather that the dark hair expected of a Palestinian Jew in his thirties. (See Joe Nickell, Inquest on the Shroud of Turin, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998; see also Joe Nickell, "Science vs. Shroud Science," Skeptical Inquirer, July/August 1998, pp. 20-22.)
