No Gilbert. The “medieval ages” are generally taken to have started in the 5th century, with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The 6th century is thus well into the medieval period. More importantly, it is half a millennium after Jesus’ lifetime – so offers no probative evidence whatsoever.
There is no evidence supporting the claim that the ‘Shroud of Turin’ was the Image of Edessa.
There is therefore no evidence that this shroud was ever in Edessa.
Given that the earliest version of the tradition, that of Eusebius, does not mention an image, and the tradition is highly mutable, there is scant evidence that the Image of Edessa even existed.
The Image of Edessa=Shroud of Turin claim is nothing but a deluded Shroud-crank fantasy.
This leaves you with the image of the Catacomb of Commodille as a bare, unexplained, contextless outlier – itself dating from 3 centuries after Jesus’ life, so offering no probative evidence.
We are also left with your apparent inability to engage with credible and scholarly sources, like Joan Taylor, on Jesus’ appearance, and your repeated insistence on inflicting credibility-free and inexpert sources like Marino (who in turn cites equally credibility-free and inexpert sources, in a crank echo chamber) on us in their place.
Unless and until you can either marshal credible evidence, or at least credible expert opinion, to support your claims, your claims, be they on the Shroud, Covid, Intelligent Design, or whatever other claims you have been drawn to, will be continued to be viewed as nothing more than empty rhetoric, devoid of any serious content.
Gil. You are the one expecting us to take Joseph Marino’s word for it on Jesus’ hairstyle (who in turn expects us to take Albert Dreisbach word for it – it’s Shroud cranks all the way down there), and to take your word for it that the Shroud was the (largely imaginary) Image of Edessa.
For you to then cite the Royal Society motto back at us is frankly, absurdly hypocritical. It is the same level of chutzpah as killing your parents and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you’re an orphan.
If you are uncomfortable citing the opinions of, and the credible evidence cited by, credible experts, then you are welcome to offer your own credible evidence – that was after all my first and favored option:
As it is, you seem to be following a path analogous to the old legal maxim:
If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell
You have neither credible evidence nor credible expert opinion, so you are “pounding the table and yelling like hell”, metaphorically speaking, in order to obfuscate your lack of a case.
