You'd have to be a couple of communion wafers short of a requiem mass to think the famous shroud of Turin was anything other than a fake, but plenty of folk with a desperate need to believe unlikely things do in fact assert it's legitimacy. Of course it helps to be Catholic. Not too many Baptists or Mormons seem overly convinced.Now there's a claim from Charles Freeman, reported in The Guardian, that the shroud originated as a stage prop for medieval Easter pageants.
It has the ring of truth.
The whole idea of Jesus' existence must have been in question at the time of the hoax of the shroud of Turin. Anybody with a little sense would know that if there was anything that Jesus owned or touched in his whole life it would have been saved, cherished and worshiped by the early church. Unfortunately for the Xians, there is NOTHING! Not even a sandal or a lock of hair. Then there are all his brothers and sisters, what happened to them? Where are their descendants? The church couldn't keep up with that family? Baloney! Jesus didn't exist.
ReplyDeleteAlong the same line: the book of Matthew tells us that when Jesus was crucified large numbers of dead people came back to life and walked the streets of Jerusalem. Whatever did these people do the next day, the next week, the next year? You never hear a word about a single one of them. I would think this would have made big news, and be written in dozens of histories. But no ... they all just drop forever from the pages of history.
DeleteThere are perfectly good answers to the concerns raised here. First of all, God made sure that anything Jesus touched or had was destroyed so that no one could have anything of that sort to venerate. Same thing with his siblings: they just disappeared. You see, when you're dealing with God things and people can just appear and disappear, so there's always an answer. The same principle applies to British-Israelism: it's true, but the evidence has just disappeared. As for the people who came back to life in Jerusalem, what sort of shape do you think they were in after being dead for who knows how long? Haven't you ever seen The Walking Dead? Those people would have been in an advanced stage of decomposition and would have looked just like zombies. They would have been killed just like on TV. Which means they weren't around long, because you just can't have zombies running around town. They disappeared too.
DeleteScience cuts both ways. Far be it from me to consider Dna evidence as totally debunking British Israelism, but then to turn around and reject what test data scientists have provided regarding the Shroud of Turin. To be honest, I'm much more interested in other perhaps more promising artifacts, such as James' possible ossuary. But the research has got to be kept real. No "Rood Awakening" quality stuff.
ReplyDeleteWe should also consider the possibility that because of extreme persecution, the majority of Jesus' family members or other noteworthy individuals who could have been singled out and persecuted, may have gone underground.
BB
I believe the shroud is a fake. Like the petrified Viking book that I saw in a small town in central Texas. I paid a few dollars to see it and it was a natural rock that resembled a boot. Maybe it is a theatrical artifact that found its way into church circles through misrepresentation. The image is of the traditional European Christ. I understand that some estimate the Turin image to be of a person nearly six feet tall. The facial features are fine and the hair is long. In the time of Christ, Palestinian Jews were around 5' 1" on average, gracile and weighed about 110 pounds. I would expect Christ to look like that and not have long hair. This is the same erroneous image that Europeans still use to depict Christ.
ReplyDelete-- Neo
ReplyDeleteRegarding the authenticity of the shroud, Gavin writes, "Not too many Baptists or Mormons seem overly convinced."
Yep.
One's perception of a proffered "archaeological find" as being real is usually filtered through what the current beliefs of the individual are, and whether the "find" supports those beliefs.
Evangelical Christians tend to get excited about the "possible finds" that seem to pop up at Eastertime every year (like ossuary finds, etc), when the 'marks' are most ripe for believing such nonsense.
As expected, the belief in Joseph Smith accurately translating the Egyptian papyrus pieces he purchased into the Book of Abraham is still accepted as a real and accurate effort by most Mormons, even though that has been revealed to have been a complete hoax.
For such people, the 'need to believe' trumps the examinations by the best experts in the field. It reminds me of those who think that Genesis' explanation of origins can be reconciled with scientific evidence.
I've witnessed that some 'ex-WCG-turned-mainstream-Christians' are disposed toward believing hoky things, too - presumably from having a psychological need carried over from the time when the WCG taught hoky history about the Stone of Skone, their "we have the inside knowledge" on history and prophecy, etc.
From such folks I've even been given a 'heads-up', because of rumored archaeological "finds" (of course around Eastertime) about "just-discovered tombs", and also about far-out prophecies like that of a super Christian revival just about to happen along the Interstate 35 corridor in the USA (a prophecy by a preacher which made the rounds in evangelical circles a few years ago).
People don't necessarily fall for such things because of having a low IQ, as some people tend to think is the case. There are are certainly both "marks" and "smarks".
There are many people- encompassing a wide variety of intelligence levels- who are drawn to all sorts of beliefs and crackpot "finds" which validate those beliefs.
The shroud of Turin is only one of many examples which tingle the "Spidey sense" of many people who are convinced that God has given them mighty powers of discernment- (and that their conclusions from that 'God-powered discernment' just happen to accentuate their own currently held beliefs).
Holy Christian coincidence, Batman!
Awesome. But, one question. What does Batman have to do with the adiabatic lapse rate of lemur feces outgassings over Madagascar?
DeleteBB
There is an alternate explanation for why no artifacts from the life of Christ were passed on. That would be that the early church rejected the use and conservation of personal artifacts of prominent leaders in worship. We know Paul and the other apostles are historical but there are no artifacts from them either. Perhaps, conditions of preservation are just too poor in general. We have none of the artifacts from the early Messianic figures that arose at the time of Christ in Palestine. I believe the pre-occupation with artifacts came much later on in history.
ReplyDelete-- Neo
Actually, we don't "know" that Paul and the "other apostles" are historical. Outside of the NT, they simply don't exist except for the early church fathers and some of them didn't exist either. I don't accept that the early church wouldn't have conserved personal artifacts as that has always been part of the whole culture of the time. I do think that fake artifacts became important later because of not having real artifacts to prove their bogus story.
DeleteWith "evidence" like this, how can Christianity fail? Oh hold on, it is failing, critically, in its former glorious epicenter, Europe - the land of closed church buildings. In this connection I was once walking the gloomy streets of an English city at night when I passed alongside an impressive masonry edifice that was once an Anglican church. It was quiet except for a mysterious intermittent sound clearly originating from this haunting structure [it's Halloween, so the story can be told]. Bravely believing there would be a rational explanation, I continued on until being surprised by an open side door, fluorescent light, snooker tables, and that sound of ball strikes! It's our challenge in the post-Christian world to think of new uses for these impressive spooky buildings.
ReplyDelete“Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” –Mark Twain
ReplyDelete“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” –Mark Twain
Perhaps Da Vinci's Demons on Starz might give us the best provenance of where the Shroud of Turin comes from.
There are no perfectly good answers to DNA evidence, Radio Carbon Dating, archeology, linguistics and history except to accept that silly kook ideas by superstitious undereducated sociopaths are just plain wrong.