What Jesus might look like, according to the Shroud of Turin and AI

An ancient linen cloth that some people believe to be Jesus’s burial shroud is in the news again, for reasons old and new.

The old reason has to do with the age of the Shroud of Turin, which bears the faint image of a man who has been crucified, and which some people consider a clever fraud and others see as physical proof of Jesus’s resurrection.

The new is a striking image of Jesus that artificial intelligence generated using the shroud as a guideline.

The image was created by a British tabloid, The Daily Express, using the AI tool Midjourney, which generates illustrations from prompts. The image quickly caught fire on social media.

While some people scoffed and said AI had produced a European Jesus, others noted the resemblance between this image and others that have been drawn of Christ throughout the ages, including those in Orthodox icons .

Meanwhile, numerous news outlets have reported this month on a 2022 study that concludes that the linen cloth is approximately 2,000 years old, dating it roughly to the time of Jesus. Previous studies have concluded the linen shroud is much younger, with one dating it between the years 1260 and 1390, close to the time that it emerged.

According to a report in Relevant magazine, the latest team to analyze a sample from the shroud used a technique called wide-angle X-ray scattering to examine the threads and their degree of structural degradation. Their findings revealed that the sample’s age was “fully ‘compatible’ with linen dating back to A.D. 55-74, suggesting that the Shroud could actually be a relic from the time of Jesus,” Emily Brown reported.

The researchers suggest that other studies using carbon dating could have been flawed due to contamination, because slight variations could produce different results, and it’s unknown what conditions the shroud was kept in prior to its existence becoming public knowledge.

They note “that for their results to align with a 2,000-year-old artifact, the Shroud would have needed to be kept in stable environmental conditions — around 68-72.5°F with 55-75% relative humidity — for over 13 centuries of its unknown history. These precise conditions, they argue, could explain why the Shroud’s radiocarbon dating appeared younger if it had been exposed to more volatile conditions later,” Brown wrote. The researchers have called for further investigation.

It’s unclear why a two-year-old study is making news this week, but the AI image could be responsible — The Daily Express made mention of the study in its article on the image.

The actual shroud is maintained in a climate-controlled case at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. While some have said that the authenticity of the shroud as Jesus’s burial cloth can no longer be disputed, the Catholic Church has not taken a position on the matter, and it is rarely open to public viewing. That doesn’t dampen the public’s interest in the shroud, however — there are traveling exhibits of shroud replicas and an international symposium on it planned next year in St. Louis, Missouri. There has also been reporting that the Catholic Church will offer public viewing of the shroud in 2025, but dates have not been announced.