Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the face of Christ on coins especially during the Byzantine period. It provides a series of details of Christ’s face that have a close correlation with the face of the Shroud. The book includes a probabilistic calculation applied to a coin depicting the face of Christ and a quantitative analysis based on image processing which shows that these faces were copied from the Shroud. It also provides a new argument that demonstrates the strong influence that had the Shroud in the Byzantine period from 692 AD up to the fall of Constantinople in 1204. The Shroud must have already existed in 692, when the emperor Justinian II coined the first face of Christ, in agreement with the fact that the Shroud is Jesus’ burial sheet showing His image formed during the Resurrection.