Saint Peter's Bones

[Jenny A]

You have raised this objection on more than one occasion...what proportions do you find to be problematic, Jenny?

I have a 35" sleeve, and I can position my hands as shown on the shroud WITHOUT dislocating my shoulders as would have happened to Jesus during the hours he spent on the cross.

Do you have medical evidence to suggest that the body is somehow out of proportion? If so, who did the research?

In an exhaustive article on the shroud, archaeologist William Meacham cited 12 studies confirming the physiological accuracy of the Shroud. Meacham wrote:

"Scientific scrutiny of the Shroud image began in 1900 at the Sorbonne. Under the direction of Yves Delage, professor of comparative anatomy, a study was undertaken of the physiology and pathology of the apparent body imprint and of the possible manner of its formation. The image was found to be anatomically flawless down to minor details: the characteristic features of rigor mortis, wounds, and blood flows provided conclusive evidence to the anatomists that the image was formed by direct or indirect contact with a corpse, not painted onto the cloth or scorched thereon by a hot statue (two of the current theories). On this point all medical opinion since the time of Delage has been unanimous (notably Hynek 1936; Vignon 1939; Moedder 1949; Caselli 1950; La Cava 1953; Sava 1957; Judica-Cordiglia 1961; Barbet 1963 ; Bucklin 1970; Willis, in Wilson 1978; Cameron 1978; Zugibe, in Murphy 1981). This line of evidence is of great importance in the question of authenticity and is briefly reviewed below.

"The body was that of an adult male, nude, with beard, mustache, and long hair falling to the shoulders and drawn at the back into a pigtail. Height is estimated at between 5 ft. 9 in. and 5 ft. 11 in. (175-180 cm), weight at 165-180 lb. (75-81 kg), and age at 30 to 45 years. Carleton Coon (quoted in Wilcox 1977:133) describes the man as "of a physical type found in modern times among Sephardic Jews and noble Arabs." Curto (quoted in Sox 1981:70, 131), however, describes the physiognomy as more Iranian than Semitic. The body is well proportioned and muscular, with no observable defects."

Source:

The Authentication of the Turin Shroud:
An Issue in Archaeological Epistemology
by William Meacham - Archaeologist
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY - Vol. 24 - N° 3 - (June 1983)
Published by the University of Chicago Press
Copyright 1983 by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

If you regularly draw the human body (and I do) the problems are obvious.  Here is a summary of some of those problems:  The Shroud of Turin: The Great Gothic Art Fraud — Because If It's Real the Brain of Jesus Was the Size of a Protohuman's!  Here are a few excerpts:

First it is ridiculously tall:

The shroud is 4.4 m (14 ft) long (at least before the 2002 restoration). The total height of the shroud figure cannot be directly measured from the front view because the feet are indistinct and their posture uncertain, but it is not possible for the figure to be significantly under 1830 mm (6 ft) because the lower legs would then be overly short relative to the upper legs and to the body as a whole. The rear view shows both the top of the head and the heels, and provides a height a little over 1860 mm (6 ft 1 in). The proportions of the trunks and legs are normal and represent a fit person whose muscles are well, but not excessively, developed, and who lacks excess body fat. Body mass for a person of this height and form should be in the area of 75-80 kg (165-175 lbs). The considerable height of the shroud figure is a significant problem because it is tall even by modern First-World standards, and it is well above the norm for a person living in the Roman-occupied Middle East. If Jesus were of these dimensions he would have towered over most of those around him and would have been easily identified by those searching for the dissident, yet there is no mention of this feature in the testaments.

It has a really abnormally sized head for it's overly long body:

That the shroud head is too small is visually obvious when it is compared to normally proportioned humans on the same scale. The dimensions of the small and narrow head of the shroud are about nine-tenths the male norm. This may not sound like much, but because of the square-cube law modest differences in dimensions result in big changes in volume, so the capacity of the cranium was at least 30 percent below expectations.

That is a common beginning artist misdrawing even today:

A standard convention of Gothic art was too elongate the body relative to the head, there are innumerable examples of the distortion which was commonly applied to images of Jesus. Body elongation is a means of increasing the impressive majesty of the person being represented. In contrast an overly large head looks juvenile. This illusion was used by Leonardo in his classic but not accurate Ideal Man, and is still exploited in comic book super heroes.

But the real problem to an artist's eye is a common problem among beginning portrait artists.  The forehead is way too short.  This is a mistake many new artists make.  We just can't believe how long the forehead is in comparison to the rest of the face (your eyes are actually in the middle not toward the top of your face check it out) and the artist who produced the shroud makes this mistake.

In normal humans the head from the top to the eyebrows is over a third to over 40 percent of total head height, or 80 to 100 mm (3 to 4 in). In the shroud figure the top of the cranium is about one forth overall head height, around 60 mm (2.5 in). Having done some work in the evolution of brain size, some calculations were warranted. In modern adult male humans the volume of the brain averages 1250 cc with a minimum of 1050 cc (Allen J et al., 2002 Amer. J. Phys. Anthropol 118:341-358). This is why adult male heads are genetically forced to be so large, especially above the face; they have to be in order to accommodate such big brains.