But aesthetics do not a theology make. They may reflect one, but as often they reflect the culture in which the onlooker has been raised.
Or in the case of Orthodoxy, the culture in which our great-great-great-great-great [long inhale] -great [passage of time] great-grandparents-in-the-faith were raised. Our ecclesial robes and other fittings are largely descended from courtly and occupational robes of the Byzantine court. And God help you if you suggest tossing them for something more modern (say, only 1000 years old).
Theologically speaking, I wonder what it would imply about the Resurrection if we concluded that it was the sort of event that would create a radioactive imprint upon the burial cloth.
Seems a little...materialist? Something in the vicinity of "a conjuring trick with bones"?
The thing is, EVERYTHING God does in this world is materialist in some way. If our science were far enough along, ... Why shouldn't his resurrection produce random detectable effects on the universe it became a part of?
While it's certainly true that the Incarnation is a definitive statement that God in Christ is fully involved in the material universe. The cloth Jesus was buried in would have been stained by whatever blood and sweat had not been cleaned away in the rush to complete the burial, and the oils and ointments used.
The problem comes with postulating some unknown material process that changed the cloth during the resurrection. Of course, by definition, resurrection is a non-repeatable event (at least, until the end times when everyone is raised if that's what you believe), the number of people who have been raised from the dead is very small, and none of those raised in the same way as Jesus (there's no suggestion that Lazarus didn't die at a later date, Jesus was raised to eternity). Why should resurrection result in a burst of radiation? Especially if the only reason to postulate that is that it would boost the 14C content of some fabric so that almost two millennia later some scientists get the wrong radiocarbon age. That sounds very similar to claims about fossils being created in-situ within rocks with isotope compositions that give an apparent age of millions of years despite a real age of only six thousand years, an act of God (creation or resurrection) deliberately designed to deceive honest seekers of truth. I'm sure God could raise his Son without radiation which has that effect.
How much and what mouldy inoculum would have had to be applied in 1250 to utterly overwhelm the 30 AD C14?
The mould could be more recent than that; the date would be an average of the cloth and contaminants (including mould) that was included. The scientists running the date would have been aware of this and tried their best to get a date from uncontaminated material - but if the contaminant was very modern it would have elevated 14C above modern and only a small amount would have totally thrown off the date - if it was pre-1940s contamination then more would be needed to give a medieval date for an authentic first century sample.
How could the mould be recent? On what growth medium? I used the term inoculum dubiously. Just generational handling sweat over 750 years? Including nuclear release 14C?
Theologically speaking, I wonder what it would imply about the Resurrection if we concluded that it was the sort of event that would create a radioactive imprint upon the burial cloth.
Seems a little...materialist? Something in the vicinity of "a conjuring trick with bones"?
The thing is, EVERYTHING God does in this world is materialist in some way. If our science were far enough along, you could have wired up Elijah or Isaiah and seen the visions happening in their brain cells real-time. Mary's pregnancy doubtless produced a certain amount of mess afterward (amniotic fluid etc.) Jesus' blood certainly got trampled into the mud around the cross. Why shouldn't his resurrection produce random detectable effects on the universe it became a part of?
I think maybe the real problem is that our cartoons etc. have taught us to think of "energy bursts" and the like as woo-woo foolishness--as cartoonish, in fact. It's our aesthetic sense that is offended, not our logic. One feels that Jesus should have been minimalist about his resurrection--the whole thing should have gone off without so much as scaring a sparrow, leaving no trace behind. And perhaps it did.
Or perhaps not.
No it's our logic. No other corpse reanimation in the Bible is accompanied by a corona discharge with or without neutron flux. He was minimalist about His resurrection. Nothing God does produces random detectable effects. Ever.
How much and what mouldy inoculum would have had to be applied in 1250 to utterly overwhelm the 30 AD C14?
The mould could be more recent than that; the date would be an average of the cloth and contaminants (including mould) that was included. The scientists running the date would have been aware of this and tried their best to get a date from uncontaminated material - but if the contaminant was very modern it would have elevated 14C above modern and only a small amount would have totally thrown off the date - if it was pre-1940s contamination then more would be needed to give a medieval date for an authentic first century sample.
How could the mould be recent? On what growth medium? I used the term inoculum dubiously. Just generational handling sweat over 750 years? Including nuclear release 14C?
I know the Shroud is currently kept in a sterile, sealed environment. But, that's a very recent innovation, before then it would have been open to the environment of the building. Lots of visitors with their breath, scope for the fabric to be moist and that's all that assorted microbes need to multiply on the surface and even within the threads of the fabric. Add in candles and oil lamps producing soot that could deposit on the surface of the Shroud before electric lights were available. And, sweat on the hands of all the people who have handled it as it was repaired, moved from storage to display and back again etc. I don't know when it was last stored outwith the controlled environment, but it was probably some point after 1945.
Theologically speaking, I wonder what it would imply about the Resurrection if we concluded that it was the sort of event that would create a radioactive imprint upon the burial cloth.
Seems a little...materialist? Something in the vicinity of "a conjuring trick with bones"?
The thing is, EVERYTHING God does in this world is materialist in some way. If our science were far enough along, ... Why shouldn't his resurrection produce random detectable effects on the universe it became a part of?
While it's certainly true that the Incarnation is a definitive statement that God in Christ is fully involved in the material universe. The cloth Jesus was buried in would have been stained by whatever blood and sweat had not been cleaned away in the rush to complete the burial, and the oils and ointments used.
The problem comes with postulating some unknown material process that changed the cloth during the resurrection. Of course, by definition, resurrection is a non-repeatable event (at least, until the end times when everyone is raised if that's what you believe), the number of people who have been raised from the dead is very small, and none of those raised in the same way as Jesus (there's no suggestion that Lazarus didn't die at a later date, Jesus was raised to eternity). Why should resurrection result in a burst of radiation? Especially if the only reason to postulate that is that it would boost the 14C content of some fabric so that almost two millennia later some scientists get the wrong radiocarbon age. That sounds very similar to claims about fossils being created in-situ within rocks with isotope compositions that give an apparent age of millions of years despite a real age of only six thousand years, an act of God (creation or resurrection) deliberately designed to deceive honest seekers of truth. I'm sure God could raise his Son without radiation which has that effect.
God can do precisely what he wants. That was the point I was driving at, actually. Me, I would rather prefer the resurrection left no (visible to us) physical clues. But then, that's my aesthetic choice.
...I dismissed and ridiculed your post on the last of the Popes, but the responses of some shipmates who I respect showed me that it needed to be taken seriously, at least as a phenomenon, an aspect of Christian belief.
So you need to take 'prophecy' of the last Pope seriously? And or the shroud? They speak of the psychology of religion, not Christianity distinctively.
I know the Shroud is currently kept in a sterile, sealed environment. But, that's a very recent innovation, before then it would have been open to the environment of the building. Lots of visitors with their breath, scope for the fabric to be moist and that's all that assorted microbes need to multiply on the surface and even within the threads of the fabric. Add in candles and oil lamps producing soot that could deposit on the surface of the Shroud before electric lights were available. And, sweat on the hands of all the people who have handled it as it was repaired, moved from storage to display and back again etc. I don't know when it was last stored outwith the controlled environment, but it was probably some point after 1945.
AIUI it was not usually on public display. Years went by when no one saw it, with the possible exception of the nuns. It was stored in metal boxes. The damage to the shroud happened when a very hot fire melted part of the silver box in which it was stored. It was also stored in a lead box for a time.
The STURP team had a very difficult time getting permission to examine it and there were many stipulations about what they could and couldn't do. The shroud was available for only 120 continuous hours. Several different researchers had to work at the same time. The shifts had to be choreographed to make sure the researchers didn't get in each others' way.
My impression is that those who had custody of the shroud kept it safe out of sight most of the time, and I'm sure the nuns did not handle it with sweaty hands.
I believe that the shroud shows the negative image of a crucified man who had been flayed and wounded by some type of spear. When this occured I cannot say.
As a nuclear scientist of thirty years experience (most of it in a department that has two 14C dating labs) maybe I should set up a website as well ...
For the record, my views are that the 14C dating was an imperfect job, conducted on a section of the Shroud that isn't ideal to answer the question of when the cloth was made. The main issues being whether the sample was contaminated by more recent material - threads from a repair or mould being possible, giving a younger age than the real age of the cloth. But, though this does put a question mark over the date, the balance of probability is that it's a later artefact (but could still be a few centuries earlier than the date reported).
In his book TEST THE SHROUD,2015, Mark Antonacci devotes a whole chapter to falsifying the "invisible reweaving" hypothesis. Textile experts carefully examined both sides of the Shroud in 2002 when its backing cloth was removed. They found no evidence of any "reweaving."
In 1988 the C-14 labs used standard cleaning procedures on their Shroud samples, and, at any rate, one would not expect mold or bacteria growth over the last 2000 years to skew the dating by 1300 years. This hypothesis is falsified.
As a nuclear scientist, I am sure that you are well aware that, if the Shroud's linen fibers have been subjected to a neutron flux, their carbon fourteen content has been increased. According to Rucker, the Shroud needs only a 16% increase in its C-14 content to have its purported age skewed to the 14th century.
Scientific evidence sometimes leaves a footprint. For instance, in 1978 the STuRP scientists noticed dirt particles on the Shroud. They identified it as travertine aragonite and were able to measure its trace elements. They then compared the "footprint" of this travertine to that of travertine found throughout the world. In only one place did they find travertine with matching trace elements.
The Shroud's C-14 evidence also has a footprint which is consistent with the hypothesis that the Shroud has been subjected to a neutron flux. As the part of the Shroud sample tested becomes closer to the image, its C-14 content increases.
In 1989 someone asked Prof. Tite why the facial image on the Shroud has such an amazing and well documented congruence with the face found on the sixth century icon of Christ from St. Catherines Monastery. Tite replied, "I don't know," and then laughed. Perhaps you can answer this question without laughing.
Both Marino and Antonacci report that the British Museum "massaged" the Shroud's C-14 data in order to have it pass the standard statistical analysis tests.
Several Shroud researchers have commented that, if the Shroud is indeed 14th century, then a better hypothesis than a medieval forger is that aliens deposited it on earth then.
It is that hard to reproduce. No one has been able to to it.
There are actually two kinds of image on the shroud. The figure is a negative image, but the bloodstains are positive. This indicates that the bloodstains were made by direct contact while the image of the figure was made in some other way
Well this doesn't make a whole lot of sense if aligned with a claim that it was Jesus' shroud. Because it's not generally claimed that first he got blood on it and then popped back at some other time to make the negative image.
The normal claim is that the bloodstains and the image are from the same event. Which seems a thoroughly reasonable claim - that both are the result of a body being wrapped in the material.
If the image was made in some other way than by direct contact, then this actually suggests it's a fake. That someone decided to deliberately do something with the shroud besides wrap a body in it.
I agree with LC about God being deeply involved with the material world, etc. I don't know what did or didn't happen.
I'm someone who *needs* mystery, so I don't have a drive to track down and explain *everything* to the smallest detail. I sympathize a little with people who work that way, but I don't work that way. And I don't necessarily think that God has to restrict her actions to known science.
Just playing around with ideas: I tend to think of the Big Bang (if that's what happened) like a seed germinating. BOOM! It bursts/explodes open, and grows and grows and grows.
So if there was a physical resurrection of Jesus, maybe it was something like that. He reportedly wasn't easy to identify at first glance, afterward; so maybe his remains dissolved/exploded into energy, revealing his resurrection body. (Physicists, don't laugh too hard at this: maybe the same energy slowed its dance and settled back down into a material form that was similar to its original, but a bit different.)
The miracle of the image of Jesus on His burial linen is not about His resurrection. Rather it is only proof that His corpse vanished from the inside of a sealed tomb as explicitly stated in the Gospel of Matthew.
In Matthew's Gospel Jesus promises that He will leave the world the Sign of Jonah, and He states, "For just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights."
Prof. Beate Kowalski concludes that "The sign of Jonah in Matthew's Gospel will remain an enigma." That "enigma" is. of course, the Shroud of Turin which is proof that Jesus was executed and buried exactly as reported. The reason that Kowalski dares not state this obvious hypothesis is that the academic world is still under the cloud of ridicule cast by the late Prof. Teddy Hall of Oxford's C-14 laboratory wherein he stated that any academic who still (in 1989) believed that the Shroud was authentic ought to join the Flat Earth Society.
The miracle of the image of Jesus on His burial linen is not about His resurrection. Rather it is only proof that His corpse vanished from the inside of a sealed tomb as explicitly stated in the Gospel of Matthew.
It is not remotely proof of any such thing. The fact that a body was at some point in time in contact with linen is not proof that the body vanished afterwards.
And to the extent that you are claiming that 'resurrection' and 'vanished corpse' are distinct things, you are making a claim that is not consistent with the Gospels. The Gospel of Matthew does not say "his body is gone", it says "he has risen". His body did not mysteriously vanish, he met the women soon after they had been at the tomb.
The miracle of the image of Jesus on His burial linen is not about His resurrection. Rather it is only proof that His corpse vanished from the inside of a sealed tomb as explicitly stated in the Gospel of Matthew.
How do we know his body disappeared from within a sealed tomb? When the women got to the grave, the stone had been rolled back. It doesn't say by whom, or in what order the events hinted at took place.
In 1978 the STuRP noticed that the body that the Shroud had covered had somehow been removed without disturbing the blood stains or tearing any of the Shroud's linen fibers. If you have ever tried to remove a cloth bandage from a clotted wound you know that such a removal tears the cloth and disturbs the blood clot.
The Gospel of Matthew states that, as the women approached the sealed tomb, an angel appeared who rolled away the stone and invited the women to look inside the tomb asking them to notice that Jesus' corpse was not in it.
We know that the Shroud's C-14 evidence is not indicative of a date. Fanti has proved that the Shroud was extant in the 6th century by its congruence with Byzantine gold coins.
Something must have happened to the Shroud to increase its carbon fourteen content. Various hypotheses such as "invisible reweaving" has been falsified. Nuclear engineer Robert Rucker has analyzed the Shroud's C-14 data and concludes that its enhancement is the result of a neutron radiation event that originated from the corpse it enveloped. (shroudreseach.net)
I see. Matthew and Luke once again contradict one another. Whether you think the stone was rolled before or after the women showed up depends on which Gospel you take to be telling the truth and which to be fibbing.
Nuclear engineer Robert Rucker has analyzed the Shroud's C-14 data and concludes that its enhancement is the result of a neutron radiation event that originated from the corpse it enveloped. (shroudreseach.net)
Has anyone conclusively demonstrated this, because a neutron flux that could increase the 14C concentration in the cloth by more than 10% would have a lot of other effects as well. There would be a host of other isotopes produced given that there's a lot more than just nitrogen in the cloth. There would be no doubting which hole in a hillside is the tomb of Jesus, it would have a very unique isotopic signature to a few cm into the rock. Of course, that would also mean that anything analysed for isotopic content to determine region of origin would also give an incorrect answer - so if you accept a neutron irradiation to alter the carbon isotope content then you're going to have to dismiss any other isotope ratios that point to a Judean origin. If you have a neutron irradiation that only changes carbon isotope ratios then you need a resurrection event that not only produced neutrons but also changed the physics of neutrons such that they only interacted with nitrogen.
The miracle of the image of Jesus on His burial linen is not about His resurrection. Rather it is only proof that His corpse vanished from the inside of a sealed tomb as explicitly stated in the Gospel of Matthew.
Though, it should be noted that the Shroud would disprove the resurrection as described in the Gospel of John where Peter enters the tomb and sees the cloth with a separate piece that covered the head by itself ... the Shroud showing body and face would be a different item from that described by John with a separate cloth that covered the face.
The miracle of the image of Jesus on His burial linen is not about His resurrection. Rather it is only proof that His corpse vanished from the inside of a sealed tomb as explicitly stated in the Gospel of Matthew. ....
... Prof. Beate Kowalski concludes that "The sign of Jonah in Matthew's Gospel will remain an enigma." That "enigma" is. of course, the Shroud of Turin which is proof that Jesus was executed and buried exactly as reported. The reason that Kowalski dares not state this obvious hypothesis is that the academic world is still under the cloud of ridicule cast by the late Prof. Teddy Hall of Oxford's C-14 laboratory wherein he stated that any academic who still (in 1989) believed that the Shroud was authentic ought to join the Flat Earth Society.
I agree with you that the shroud is intriguing. I would, though, advise anyone not to found their belief or disbelief on it. As evidenced by the discussion on this thread, opinion varies as to whether it is the original shroud, whether it's 'a.n. other' cloth from the late antique Near East or whether it's medieval. Unless it should turn out to be the original shroud, it's not even arguably 'proof', as you call it, of anything at all.
Since nobody knew what the facial imprint looked like until was photographed in the nineteenth century and the person developing the film saw the negative, the argument that it must have existed in the C6 because of its influence on how ikon writers represented Jesus's face is not that persuasive.
Unfortunately, as with economics, so with the shroud, a lot of people seem to choose which set of arguments to align themselves with by what they'd like to persuaded or dissuaded by.
I know the Shroud is currently kept in a sterile, sealed environment. But, that's a very recent innovation, before then it would have been open to the environment of the building. Lots of visitors with their breath, scope for the fabric to be moist and that's all that assorted microbes need to multiply on the surface and even within the threads of the fabric. Add in candles and oil lamps producing soot that could deposit on the surface of the Shroud before electric lights were available. And, sweat on the hands of all the people who have handled it as it was repaired, moved from storage to display and back again etc. I don't know when it was last stored outwith the controlled environment, but it was probably some point after 1945.
AIUI it was not usually on public display. Years went by when no one saw it, with the possible exception of the nuns. It was stored in metal boxes. The damage to the shroud happened when a very hot fire melted part of the silver box in which it was stored. It was also stored in a lead box for a time.
The STURP team had a very difficult time getting permission to examine it and there were many stipulations about what they could and couldn't do. The shroud was available for only 120 continuous hours. Several different researchers had to work at the same time. The shifts had to be choreographed to make sure the researchers didn't get in each others' way.
My impression is that those who had custody of the shroud kept it safe out of sight most of the time, and I'm sure the nuns did not handle it with sweaty hands.
So the yeah buts continue to oscillate. The contamination over time would tend to be uniform, so if the least visibly contaminated and unmarked sample gives 1325 +/- 65 then every other sample should be younger at most. Or the same. The fire damage and repair of 1532 and the repair of 1694 would have increased contamination particularly locally with patching. There'd have been trace 14C contamination from trace sweat and breath, but apparently that's enough? Reinforced by the C19th exhibition. A billion dollar experiment over a century would help, alongside a ten billion dollar millennium one. And they wouldn't prove the supernatural whatever else they proved.
As with all supernatural claims, overturning natural explanation is impossible.
The miracle of the image of Jesus on His burial linen is not about His resurrection. Rather it is only proof that His corpse vanished from the inside of a sealed tomb as explicitly stated in the Gospel of Matthew.
Though, it should be noted that the Shroud would disprove the resurrection as described in the Gospel of John where Peter enters the tomb and sees the cloth with a separate piece that covered the head by itself ... the Shroud showing body and face would be a different item from that described by John with a separate cloth that covered the face.
Oh YES! It takes a genius to see what's always been in plain sight.
Nuclear engineer Robert Rucker has analyzed the Shroud's C-14 data and concludes that its enhancement is the result of a neutron radiation event that originated from the corpse it enveloped. (shroudreseach.net)
Has anyone conclusively demonstrated this, because a neutron flux that could increase the 14C concentration in the cloth by more than 10% would have a lot of other effects as well. There would be a host of other isotopes produced given that there's a lot more than just nitrogen in the cloth. There would be no doubting which hole in a hillside is the tomb of Jesus, it would have a very unique isotopic signature to a few cm into the rock. Of course, that would also mean that anything analysed for isotopic content to determine region of origin would also give an incorrect answer - so if you accept a neutron irradiation to alter the carbon isotope content then you're going to have to dismiss any other isotope ratios that point to a Judean origin. If you have a neutron irradiation that only changes carbon isotope ratios then you need a resurrection event that not only produced neutrons but also changed the physics of neutrons such that they only interacted with nitrogen.
Nuclear engineer Robert Rucker has analyzed the Shroud's C-14 data and concludes that its enhancement is the result of a neutron radiation event that originated from the corpse it enveloped. (shroudreseach.net)
Has anyone conclusively demonstrated this, because a neutron flux that could increase the 14C concentration in the cloth by more than 10% would have a lot of other effects as well. There would be a host of other isotopes produced given that there's a lot more than just nitrogen in the cloth. There would be no doubting which hole in a hillside is the tomb of Jesus, it would have a very unique isotopic signature to a few cm into the rock. Of course, that would also mean that anything analysed for isotopic content to determine region of origin would also give an incorrect answer - so if you accept a neutron irradiation to alter the carbon isotope content then you're going to have to dismiss any other isotope ratios that point to a Judean origin. If you have a neutron irradiation that only changes carbon isotope ratios then you need a resurrection event that not only produced neutrons but also changed the physics of neutrons such that they only interacted with nitrogen.
Can lightning do all that?
Lightening can produce very small quantities of 14C; it creates very localised very high electromagnetic fields capable of accelerating ions to the high energies. You'd need all the lightening strikes on earth occurring in the same small place to create anything like enough 14C to produce a fake medieval date. But, like neutron fluxes there'd be lots of other reactions going on so you get more than just 14C produced. So, we're still in the situation where there'd be lots of other isotopes produced.
One point is that the image is not distorted. By whatever means it was produced, the cloth was lying flat at the time. That means it wasn't draped over a body.
The image of Jesus was pretty standardised by the late medieval period.
I don't know that it is the result of a deliberate deception. It could just be an artistic experiment that turned out unsatisfactory and then was misunderstood.
Nuclear engineer Robert Rucker has analyzed the Shroud's C-14 data and concludes that its enhancement is the result of a neutron radiation event that originated from the corpse it enveloped. (shroudreseach.net)
Has anyone conclusively demonstrated this, because a neutron flux that could increase the 14C concentration in the cloth by more than 10% would have a lot of other effects as well. There would be a host of other isotopes produced given that there's a lot more than just nitrogen in the cloth. There would be no doubting which hole in a hillside is the tomb of Jesus, it would have a very unique isotopic signature to a few cm into the rock. Of course, that would also mean that anything analysed for isotopic content to determine region of origin would also give an incorrect answer - so if you accept a neutron irradiation to alter the carbon isotope content then you're going to have to dismiss any other isotope ratios that point to a Judean origin. If you have a neutron irradiation that only changes carbon isotope ratios then you need a resurrection event that not only produced neutrons but also changed the physics of neutrons such that they only interacted with nitrogen.
Can lightning do all that?
Lightening can produce very small quantities of 14C; it creates very localised very high electromagnetic fields capable of accelerating ions to the high energies. You'd need all the lightening strikes on earth occurring in the same small place to create anything like enough 14C to produce a fake medieval date. But, like neutron fluxes there'd be lots of other reactions going on so you get more than just 14C produced. So, we're still in the situation where there'd be lots of other isotopes produced.
: ) understood Alan. For lightening I use The Body Shop Lightening Touch, but it's no good for anal bleaching, believe me. Doesn't sting as much as Domestos tho'.
'What would happen to a winding sheet soused in oils, unguents and spices; spikenard, olibanum, myrrh when 65l of pure vacuum happens inside it?
Not a lightning strike.'
somehow they were eliding from the corpse to the first Ascent in one go and invoking matter transmission, which as we all know from the original 79 doesn't show neutron flux and doesn't create vacuums, presumably it swaps space. Jesus must have ascended up the 4th dimension if he did so in the cave of course, but as the stone (lithon, neither petra or petros, make of that what you will) had been rolled away, maybe He popped out to launch and dematerialized on the way up as in His second Ascent.
This same senile duffer made a pig's ear if not and a dog's breakfast with dates later, but we'll mercifully draw a veil over that. As for his inverted use of inoculum and cognates.
Theologically speaking, I wonder what it would imply about the Resurrection if we concluded that it was the sort of event that would create a radioactive imprint upon the burial cloth.
Seems a little...materialist? Something in the vicinity of "a conjuring trick with bones"?
The thing is, EVERYTHING God does in this world is materialist in some way. If our science were far enough along, ... Why shouldn't his resurrection produce random detectable effects on the universe it became a part of?
While it's certainly true that the Incarnation is a definitive statement that God in Christ is fully involved in the material universe. The cloth Jesus was buried in would have been stained by whatever blood and sweat had not been cleaned away in the rush to complete the burial, and the oils and ointments used.
The problem comes with postulating some unknown material process that changed the cloth during the resurrection. Of course, by definition, resurrection is a non-repeatable event (at least, until the end times when everyone is raised if that's what you believe), the number of people who have been raised from the dead is very small, and none of those raised in the same way as Jesus (there's no suggestion that Lazarus didn't die at a later date, Jesus was raised to eternity). Why should resurrection result in a burst of radiation? Especially if the only reason to postulate that is that it would boost the 14C content of some fabric so that almost two millennia later some scientists get the wrong radiocarbon age. That sounds very similar to claims about fossils being created in-situ within rocks with isotope compositions that give an apparent age of millions of years despite a real age of only six thousand years, an act of God (creation or resurrection) deliberately designed to deceive honest seekers of truth. I'm sure God could raise his Son without radiation which has that effect.
Theologically speaking, I wonder what it would imply about the Resurrection if we concluded that it was the sort of event that would create a radioactive imprint upon the burial cloth.
Seems a little...materialist? Something in the vicinity of "a conjuring trick with bones"?
The thing is, EVERYTHING God does in this world is materialist in some way. If our science were far enough along, ... Why shouldn't his resurrection produce random detectable effects on the universe it became a part of?
While it's certainly true that the Incarnation is a definitive statement that God in Christ is fully involved in the material universe. The cloth Jesus was buried in would have been stained by whatever blood and sweat had not been cleaned away in the rush to complete the burial, and the oils and ointments used.
The problem comes with postulating some unknown material process that changed the cloth during the resurrection. Of course, by definition, resurrection is a non-repeatable event (at least, until the end times when everyone is raised if that's what you believe), the number of people who have been raised from the dead is very small, and none of those raised in the same way as Jesus (there's no suggestion that Lazarus didn't die at a later date, Jesus was raised to eternity). Why should resurrection result in a burst of radiation? Especially if the only reason to postulate that is that it would boost the 14C content of some fabric so that almost two millennia later some scientists get the wrong radiocarbon age. That sounds very similar to claims about fossils being created in-situ within rocks with isotope compositions that give an apparent age of millions of years despite a real age of only six thousand years, an act of God (creation or resurrection) deliberately designed to deceive honest seekers of truth. I'm sure God could raise his Son without radiation which has that effect.
God can do precisely what he wants. That was the point I was driving at, actually. Me, I would rather prefer the resurrection left no (visible to us) physical clues. But then, that's my aesthetic choice.
God obviously wants to leave no statistical trace of His grounding being and intervention within that.
Whether the Shroud of Turin is a medieval fake or not, it continues to attract, just like Jesus himself, the attention of both the pious and the curious.
A similar object of 'piety' is the 'heiliger Rock von Trier' (holy coat of Trier) which may or may not be the Tunica Christi brought back from the Holy Land by that relic finder, the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine.
It has ,like all these items, a complicated and unclear history with its first documented exposition being in 1196.
To jump to more or less modern times it was exhibited in the cathedral in 1933 and drew two million pious/curious people to see it.
Again it was exhibited in 1959 with 1.8 million people people coming in some way to venerate it.
The next and last showing was in 2012 when only just over half a million came to see it.
The ecclesiastical authorities have said that it has been 'repaired' so often that very little is left of what was originally there. It remains, however, an object of piety and just like many buildings and objects in that Roman city, Augusta Treviri/Treves/Trier, such as the Porta Nigra (Black Gate) a link with the past.
As a nuclear scientist of thirty years experience (most of it in a department that has two 14C dating labs) maybe I should set up a website as well ...
For the record, my views are that the 14C dating was an imperfect job, conducted on a section of the Shroud that isn't ideal to answer the question of when the cloth was made. The main issues being whether the sample was contaminated by more recent material - threads from a repair or mould being possible, giving a younger age than the real age of the cloth. But, though this does put a question mark over the date, the balance of probability is that it's a later artefact (but could still be a few centuries earlier than the date reported).
In his book TEST THE SHROUD,2015, Mark Antonacci devotes a whole chapter to falsifying the "invisible reweaving" hypothesis. Textile experts carefully examined both sides of the Shroud in 2002 when its backing cloth was removed. They found no evidence of any "reweaving."
In 1988 the C-14 labs used standard cleaning procedures on their Shroud samples, and, at any rate, one would not expect mold or bacteria growth over the last 2000 years to skew the dating by 1300 years. This hypothesis is falsified.
As a nuclear scientist, I am sure that you are well aware that, if the Shroud's linen fibers have been subjected to a neutron flux, their carbon fourteen content has been increased. According to Rucker, the Shroud needs only a 16% increase in its C-14 content to have its purported age skewed to the 14th century.
Scientific evidence sometimes leaves a footprint. For instance, in 1978 the STuRP scientists noticed dirt particles on the Shroud. They identified it as travertine aragonite and were able to measure its trace elements. They then compared the "footprint" of this travertine to that of travertine found throughout the world. In only one place did they find travertine with matching trace elements.
The Shroud's C-14 evidence also has a footprint which is consistent with the hypothesis that the Shroud has been subjected to a neutron flux. As the part of the Shroud sample tested becomes closer to the image, its C-14 content increases.
In 1989 someone asked Prof. Tite why the facial image on the Shroud has such an amazing and well documented congruence with the face found on the sixth century icon of Christ from St. Catherines Monastery. Tite replied, "I don't know," and then laughed. Perhaps you can answer this question without laughing.
Both Marino and Antonacci report that the British Museum "massaged" the Shroud's C-14 data in order to have it pass the standard statistical analysis tests.
Several Shroud researchers have commented that, if the Shroud is indeed 14th century, then a better hypothesis than a medieval forger is that aliens deposited it on earth then.
It is that hard to reproduce. No one has been able to to it.
Where does one start with this string of fallacies and unsubstantiated claims?
I'll dip in. I wonder where the travertine came from?
The answer to the facial congruence (I'm sure Quantico have software to measure that), with or without laughter, with I'm afraid, is the obvious one if there is any.
I blame the living rodent for misdirecting me in the matter of instantaneous matter transmission, perfectly dissected by orfeo:
The miracle of the image of Jesus on His burial linen is not about His resurrection. Rather it is only proof that His corpse vanished from the inside of a sealed tomb as explicitly stated in the Gospel of Matthew.
It is not remotely proof of any such thing. The fact that a body was at some point in time in contact with linen is not proof that the body vanished afterwards.
And to the extent that you are claiming that 'resurrection' and 'vanished corpse' are distinct things, you are making a claim that is not consistent with the Gospels. The Gospel of Matthew does not say "his body is gone", it says "he has risen". His body did not mysteriously vanish, he met the women soon after they had been at the tomb.
The miracle of the image of Jesus on His burial linen is not about His resurrection. Rather it is only proof that His corpse vanished from the inside of a sealed tomb as explicitly stated in the Gospel of Matthew.
Though, it should be noted that the Shroud would disprove the resurrection as described in the Gospel of John where Peter enters the tomb and sees the cloth with a separate piece that covered the head by itself ... the Shroud showing body and face would be a different item from that described by John with a separate cloth that covered the face.
This is the knock two of Alan's one-two punch, that pre-empts the entire fallacious yeah but superstitious litany.
The miracle of the image of Jesus on His burial linen is not about His resurrection. Rather it is only proof that His corpse vanished from the inside of a sealed tomb as explicitly stated in the Gospel of Matthew.
In Matthew's Gospel Jesus promises that He will leave the world the Sign of Jonah, and He states, "For just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights."
But it wasn't 3 days and 3 nights. It was more like 36 hours
@undead_rat But his corpse did not vanish! He rose from the dead. His body had holes in it. Thomas touched them.
The gospel does not say that Thomas touched them
No, but I'm sure if Thomas had done so he'd have found a very physically present Jesus with real wounds. The point is, Jesus wasn't a dis-embodied ghost but a physically raised being. Though, being able to appear inside a locked room is a neat trick that few can emulate (there are probably some magicians who manage it, or at least the reverse of getting out of a locked box).
I find it quite interesting that the Resurrection left Jesus scarred from His ordeal. God could certainly have healed the wounds that had been inflicted, but didn't. Imagine walking all that way to Emmaus with feet that a few hours earlier had had muckle great nails driven through them, and a gaping wound through your ribs where some Roman had stuck his spear. It would have been so much easier if those wounds had been healed.
I'm not going to watch some video by people I don't know and have no reason to respect. Give me a break.
It's a performance of the gospel song.
I think Mousethief maybe thought it was gonna be something like an old TV documentary with Leonard Nimoy claiming to have discovered the historical identity of the person who rolled the stone away.
Or is it the only other possibility. It's the genuine shroud of a rich approximate contemporary of Jesus from 63 BCE up to 70 AD, crucified by the Romans, so contaminated by late, C19th exposure that its 1325 +/- 65 14C dating is out by 1300 odd years?
Only a billion dollars and we can start to establish this vital question, bring it in by a sigma or two from the realms of simple fraud. If the date is accurate, then it's not from Jerusalem immediately prior to France. That was under Mamluk control at the time of 'Geoffroi de Charny [its owner who] ... participated in a crusade under Humbert II of Viennois in the late 1340s. Humbert was a terrible soldier and leader (1) and the crusaders signed a treaty with the Turks in 1348, despite the capture of Smyrna under a previous commander.'. It had found its way to Western Turkey I infer. 'The Second Smyrniote Crusade was against the Aydınids. It was intended to assist the recaptured Frankish port of Smyrna by responding to a January 1345 attack during a time of truce by the Turkish garrison upon Christians worshiping in the demolished cathedral. '. I s'pose Geoff could of taken a thousand mile trip to Jerusalem and back and bought it there. Whatever it is. It certainly isn't Jesus' shroud. Unless 'John' is wrong and it was a onesy.
@undead_rat But his corpse did not vanish! He rose from the dead. His body had holes in it. Thomas touched them.
The gospel does not say that Thomas touched them
No, but I'm sure if Thomas had done so he'd have found a very physically present Jesus with real wounds. The point is, Jesus wasn't a dis-embodied ghost but a physically raised being. Though, being able to appear inside a locked room is a neat trick that few can emulate (there are probably some magicians who manage it, or at least the reverse of getting out of a locked box).
I find it quite interesting that the Resurrection left Jesus scarred from His ordeal. God could certainly have healed the wounds that had been inflicted, but didn't. Imagine walking all that way to Emmaus with feet that a few hours earlier had had muckle great nails driven through them, and a gaping wound through your ribs where some Roman had stuck his spear. It would have been so much easier if those wounds had been healed.
Ah, but His friends didn't recognize Him, so He was wearing another body. And He must have had his gut, lung, bladder, coelom, bowels, liver, pancreas, spleen and stomach patched up pretty good, to Star Trek levels, to be able to walk. All that peritonitis. Blood poisoning. What little blood was left. Transfused too.
No, no, no, no, Das sei ferne von dir, as Luther's translation of Genesis 18:25 says. But the Second Person of the Holy and Indivisible Trinity encompassing all of infinite nature from eternity isn't limited to one set of clothes.
It might have been just His face he changed, because the one He wore over three days before was like a plate of Bolognese made with tagliatelle. And the psychology of His mates would have taken that in to account, 'It looks like Him! But the face is unmarred. And we watched Him die. Can't be.'. If they thought that far. Seeing even a familiar face in the 'wrong' context, we go with context and it niggles but we don't see it's our acquaintance, especially if they don't react likewise.
Are we now getting into the realms of thinking that Jesus' *resurrection body* was not, in fact, a human body at all?
Even though it looked like one etc. etc. etc.
In my case more of "it was a human body", but also God didn't do the full job on resurrection - back to life, healed enough to walk all the way to Emmaus but still carrying wounds. It's just an interesting set of strange things that gets my mind wandering. Was He left with wounds just so that He could show them off? Why would Jesus still wounded be more convincingly Jesus raised than Jesus with wounds all healed?
Comments
Or in the case of Orthodoxy, the culture in which our great-great-great-great-great [long inhale] -great [passage of time] great-grandparents-in-the-faith were raised. Our ecclesial robes and other fittings are largely descended from courtly and occupational robes of the Byzantine court. And God help you if you suggest tossing them for something more modern (say, only 1000 years old).
The problem comes with postulating some unknown material process that changed the cloth during the resurrection. Of course, by definition, resurrection is a non-repeatable event (at least, until the end times when everyone is raised if that's what you believe), the number of people who have been raised from the dead is very small, and none of those raised in the same way as Jesus (there's no suggestion that Lazarus didn't die at a later date, Jesus was raised to eternity). Why should resurrection result in a burst of radiation? Especially if the only reason to postulate that is that it would boost the 14C content of some fabric so that almost two millennia later some scientists get the wrong radiocarbon age. That sounds very similar to claims about fossils being created in-situ within rocks with isotope compositions that give an apparent age of millions of years despite a real age of only six thousand years, an act of God (creation or resurrection) deliberately designed to deceive honest seekers of truth. I'm sure God could raise his Son without radiation which has that effect.
How could the mould be recent? On what growth medium? I used the term inoculum dubiously. Just generational handling sweat over 750 years? Including nuclear release 14C?
No it's our logic. No other corpse reanimation in the Bible is accompanied by a corona discharge with or without neutron flux. He was minimalist about His resurrection. Nothing God does produces random detectable effects. Ever.
Sorry, 1950 years. The 750 assumes fraud.
God can do precisely what he wants. That was the point I was driving at, actually. Me, I would rather prefer the resurrection left no (visible to us) physical clues. But then, that's my aesthetic choice.
geez Martin, to use a minced swear.
AIUI it was not usually on public display. Years went by when no one saw it, with the possible exception of the nuns. It was stored in metal boxes. The damage to the shroud happened when a very hot fire melted part of the silver box in which it was stored. It was also stored in a lead box for a time.
The STURP team had a very difficult time getting permission to examine it and there were many stipulations about what they could and couldn't do. The shroud was available for only 120 continuous hours. Several different researchers had to work at the same time. The shifts had to be choreographed to make sure the researchers didn't get in each others' way.
My impression is that those who had custody of the shroud kept it safe out of sight most of the time, and I'm sure the nuns did not handle it with sweaty hands.
In 1988 the C-14 labs used standard cleaning procedures on their Shroud samples, and, at any rate, one would not expect mold or bacteria growth over the last 2000 years to skew the dating by 1300 years. This hypothesis is falsified.
As a nuclear scientist, I am sure that you are well aware that, if the Shroud's linen fibers have been subjected to a neutron flux, their carbon fourteen content has been increased. According to Rucker, the Shroud needs only a 16% increase in its C-14 content to have its purported age skewed to the 14th century.
Scientific evidence sometimes leaves a footprint. For instance, in 1978 the STuRP scientists noticed dirt particles on the Shroud. They identified it as travertine aragonite and were able to measure its trace elements. They then compared the "footprint" of this travertine to that of travertine found throughout the world. In only one place did they find travertine with matching trace elements.
The Shroud's C-14 evidence also has a footprint which is consistent with the hypothesis that the Shroud has been subjected to a neutron flux. As the part of the Shroud sample tested becomes closer to the image, its C-14 content increases.
In 1989 someone asked Prof. Tite why the facial image on the Shroud has such an amazing and well documented congruence with the face found on the sixth century icon of Christ from St. Catherines Monastery. Tite replied, "I don't know," and then laughed. Perhaps you can answer this question without laughing.
Both Marino and Antonacci report that the British Museum "massaged" the Shroud's C-14 data in order to have it pass the standard statistical analysis tests.
Several Shroud researchers have commented that, if the Shroud is indeed 14th century, then a better hypothesis than a medieval forger is that aliens deposited it on earth then.
It is that hard to reproduce. No one has been able to to it.
Well this doesn't make a whole lot of sense if aligned with a claim that it was Jesus' shroud. Because it's not generally claimed that first he got blood on it and then popped back at some other time to make the negative image.
The normal claim is that the bloodstains and the image are from the same event. Which seems a thoroughly reasonable claim - that both are the result of a body being wrapped in the material.
If the image was made in some other way than by direct contact, then this actually suggests it's a fake. That someone decided to deliberately do something with the shroud besides wrap a body in it.
I'm someone who *needs* mystery, so I don't have a drive to track down and explain *everything* to the smallest detail. I sympathize a little with people who work that way, but I don't work that way. And I don't necessarily think that God has to restrict her actions to known science.
Just playing around with ideas: I tend to think of the Big Bang (if that's what happened) like a seed germinating. BOOM! It bursts/explodes open, and grows and grows and grows.
So if there was a physical resurrection of Jesus, maybe it was something like that. He reportedly wasn't easy to identify at first glance, afterward; so maybe his remains dissolved/exploded into energy, revealing his resurrection body. (Physicists, don't laugh too hard at this: maybe the same energy slowed its dance and settled back down into a material form that was similar to its original, but a bit different.)
In Matthew's Gospel Jesus promises that He will leave the world the Sign of Jonah, and He states, "For just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights."
Prof. Beate Kowalski concludes that "The sign of Jonah in Matthew's Gospel will remain an enigma." That "enigma" is. of course, the Shroud of Turin which is proof that Jesus was executed and buried exactly as reported. The reason that Kowalski dares not state this obvious hypothesis is that the academic world is still under the cloud of ridicule cast by the late Prof. Teddy Hall of Oxford's C-14 laboratory wherein he stated that any academic who still (in 1989) believed that the Shroud was authentic ought to join the Flat Earth Society.
It is not remotely proof of any such thing. The fact that a body was at some point in time in contact with linen is not proof that the body vanished afterwards.
And to the extent that you are claiming that 'resurrection' and 'vanished corpse' are distinct things, you are making a claim that is not consistent with the Gospels. The Gospel of Matthew does not say "his body is gone", it says "he has risen". His body did not mysteriously vanish, he met the women soon after they had been at the tomb.
Why do we need proof of that?
The Gospel of Matthew states that, as the women approached the sealed tomb, an angel appeared who rolled away the stone and invited the women to look inside the tomb asking them to notice that Jesus' corpse was not in it.
We know that the Shroud's C-14 evidence is not indicative of a date. Fanti has proved that the Shroud was extant in the 6th century by its congruence with Byzantine gold coins.
Something must have happened to the Shroud to increase its carbon fourteen content. Various hypotheses such as "invisible reweaving" has been falsified. Nuclear engineer Robert Rucker has analyzed the Shroud's C-14 data and concludes that its enhancement is the result of a neutron radiation event that originated from the corpse it enveloped. (shroudreseach.net)
I'm not going to watch some video by people I don't know and have no reason to respect. Give me a break.
I agree with you that the shroud is intriguing. I would, though, advise anyone not to found their belief or disbelief on it. As evidenced by the discussion on this thread, opinion varies as to whether it is the original shroud, whether it's 'a.n. other' cloth from the late antique Near East or whether it's medieval. Unless it should turn out to be the original shroud, it's not even arguably 'proof', as you call it, of anything at all.
Since nobody knew what the facial imprint looked like until was photographed in the nineteenth century and the person developing the film saw the negative, the argument that it must have existed in the C6 because of its influence on how ikon writers represented Jesus's face is not that persuasive.
Unfortunately, as with economics, so with the shroud, a lot of people seem to choose which set of arguments to align themselves with by what they'd like to persuaded or dissuaded by.
So the yeah buts continue to oscillate. The contamination over time would tend to be uniform, so if the least visibly contaminated and unmarked sample gives 1325 +/- 65 then every other sample should be younger at most. Or the same. The fire damage and repair of 1532 and the repair of 1694 would have increased contamination particularly locally with patching. There'd have been trace 14C contamination from trace sweat and breath, but apparently that's enough? Reinforced by the C19th exhibition. A billion dollar experiment over a century would help, alongside a ten billion dollar millennium one. And they wouldn't prove the supernatural whatever else they proved.
As with all supernatural claims, overturning natural explanation is impossible.
Oh YES! It takes a genius to see what's always been in plain sight.
Can lightning do all that?
It's a performance of the gospel song.
The image of Jesus was pretty standardised by the late medieval period.
I don't know that it is the result of a deliberate deception. It could just be an artistic experiment that turned out unsatisfactory and then was misunderstood.
: ) understood Alan. For lightening I use The Body Shop Lightening Touch, but it's no good for anal bleaching, believe me. Doesn't sting as much as Domestos tho'.
When some idiot above said,
'What would happen to a winding sheet soused in oils, unguents and spices; spikenard, olibanum, myrrh when 65l of pure vacuum happens inside it?
Not a lightning strike.'
somehow they were eliding from the corpse to the first Ascent in one go and invoking matter transmission, which as we all know from the original 79 doesn't show neutron flux and doesn't create vacuums, presumably it swaps space. Jesus must have ascended up the 4th dimension if he did so in the cave of course, but as the stone (lithon, neither petra or petros, make of that what you will) had been rolled away, maybe He popped out to launch and dematerialized on the way up as in His second Ascent.
This same senile duffer made a pig's ear if not and a dog's breakfast with dates later, but we'll mercifully draw a veil over that. As for his inverted use of inoculum and cognates.
This. Alan's one of the one-two knockout punch.
God obviously wants to leave no statistical trace of His grounding being and intervention within that.
A similar object of 'piety' is the 'heiliger Rock von Trier' (holy coat of Trier) which may or may not be the Tunica Christi brought back from the Holy Land by that relic finder, the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine.
It has ,like all these items, a complicated and unclear history with its first documented exposition being in 1196.
To jump to more or less modern times it was exhibited in the cathedral in 1933 and drew two million pious/curious people to see it.
Again it was exhibited in 1959 with 1.8 million people people coming in some way to venerate it.
The next and last showing was in 2012 when only just over half a million came to see it.
The ecclesiastical authorities have said that it has been 'repaired' so often that very little is left of what was originally there. It remains, however, an object of piety and just like many buildings and objects in that Roman city, Augusta Treviri/Treves/Trier, such as the Porta Nigra (Black Gate) a link with the past.
Where does one start with this string of fallacies and unsubstantiated claims?
I'll dip in. I wonder where the travertine came from?
The answer to the facial congruence (I'm sure Quantico have software to measure that), with or without laughter, with I'm afraid, is the obvious one if there is any.
I blame the living rodent for misdirecting me in the matter of instantaneous matter transmission, perfectly dissected by orfeo:
This is the knock two of Alan's one-two punch, that pre-empts the entire fallacious yeah but superstitious litany.
I'm another one who gently puts the Shroud onto his *don't know and don't really care too much* pile.
The gospel does not say that Thomas touched them But it wasn't 3 days and 3 nights. It was more like 36 hours
I find it quite interesting that the Resurrection left Jesus scarred from His ordeal. God could certainly have healed the wounds that had been inflicted, but didn't. Imagine walking all that way to Emmaus with feet that a few hours earlier had had muckle great nails driven through them, and a gaping wound through your ribs where some Roman had stuck his spear. It would have been so much easier if those wounds had been healed.
I think Mousethief maybe thought it was gonna be something like an old TV documentary with Leonard Nimoy claiming to have discovered the historical identity of the person who rolled the stone away.
Anyway, cool tune. They're Aussies, I gather?
Ah, but is it a genuine fake?
Or is it the only other possibility. It's the genuine shroud of a rich approximate contemporary of Jesus from 63 BCE up to 70 AD, crucified by the Romans, so contaminated by late, C19th exposure that its 1325 +/- 65 14C dating is out by 1300 odd years?
Only a billion dollars and we can start to establish this vital question, bring it in by a sigma or two from the realms of simple fraud. If the date is accurate, then it's not from Jerusalem immediately prior to France. That was under Mamluk control at the time of 'Geoffroi de Charny [its owner who] ... participated in a crusade under Humbert II of Viennois in the late 1340s. Humbert was a terrible soldier and leader (1) and the crusaders signed a treaty with the Turks in 1348, despite the capture of Smyrna under a previous commander.'. It had found its way to Western Turkey I infer. 'The Second Smyrniote Crusade was against the Aydınids. It was intended to assist the recaptured Frankish port of Smyrna by responding to a January 1345 attack during a time of truce by the Turkish garrison upon Christians worshiping in the demolished cathedral. '. I s'pose Geoff could of taken a thousand mile trip to Jerusalem and back and bought it there. Whatever it is. It certainly isn't Jesus' shroud. Unless 'John' is wrong and it was a onesy.
Ah, but His friends didn't recognize Him, so He was wearing another body. And He must have had his gut, lung, bladder, coelom, bowels, liver, pancreas, spleen and stomach patched up pretty good, to Star Trek levels, to be able to walk. All that peritonitis. Blood poisoning. What little blood was left. Transfused too.
Even though it looked like one etc. etc. etc.
Do I espy a nice juicy Dualist heresy (aka alternative POV) entering the arena?
Yes to the different sets of clothes, though.