But the Shroud of Turin is said to bear an image of Jesus Christ. We should take a closer look at some of these reactions. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Yves Delage, an eminent professor of anatomy and a well-known agnostic, read a paper to his colleagues in the French Academy in which he concluded that the man of the Shroud was Jesus Christ. He was greeted with derision and outrage. Every scientist who has seriously studied the Shroud has met with some version of this response.
Instinctive disbelief is a common reaction.
It is hard to believe that the actual burial garment of Jesus Christ, imprinted with a detailed image of his body, possibly reposes today in a cathedral chapel in Turin, Italy. The likely reason for instant disbelief is that the Shroud may have something to do with Jesus Christ, along with the suggestion, seldom entirely absent in a discussion of the Shroud, that something miraculous is involved in its preservation and its image. In short, the Shroud seems to offend something in the modern temperament. It touches a nerve. People who become hostile about the Shroud are often hostile to Christianity and to the man who is at the center of the Christian faith.