Scientists in Italy made headlines this week after claiming that the famous Shroud of Turin dates back to the time of Jesus some 2,000 years ago.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has reimagined what the son of God actually looked like based on the precious relic that is said to contain an imprint of the face of Jesus Christ.
The AI-generated result showed that Christ was white, with large blue eyes, a trimmed beard and traces of thorns on his face.
For some historians, the Shroud of Turin - kept in a chapel in the centre of the northern Italian city - is one of Christianity's most sacred relics.
"The cloth is said to be the burial shroud that wrapped the crucified Christ when he was laid in the tomb," said Tim Andersen, a scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who was not involved in the new study.
When first exhibited in the 1850s, the Shroud of Turin was billed as the actual burial shroud used to wrap Christ's mutilated body after his crucifixion.
Also known as the Holy Shroud, it bears a faint image on the front and back of a bearded man, which many believe is the body of Jesus miraculously imprinted on the cloth.
Research in the 1980s seemed to disprove the idea that it was genuine, dating it to the Middle Ages, hundreds of years after the death of Christ.
But Italian scientists, using a new technique that involves X-rays to date, have confirmed that the material was produced at the time of Jesus, some 2,000 years ago.
The surprising findings lend credence to the idea that the pale, bloody image of a man with his arms folded in front of him was left behind by the dead body of Jesus. | BGNES
