Posted on 01/26/2005 10:37:01 PM PST by neverdem
Early riser.
Previous tests were carried out as you speculated--bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated. And the Accelerater Mass Spec is still destructive, but the sample size needed is very small---probably a single thread would do.
While I am somewhat skeptical of Orthodox and Catholic "miracles" attributed to the bodies of the 'Saints' and 'Marian' visions, if true as the article indicates, the appearance of the AB blood type in the 'Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano' in the 8th century is indeed eerie, given what we know about the Suderium and the Mandylion (aka Shroud).
Little doubt that Jesus had Type AB blood, or what he looked like to those with an open mind.
I only learned about it within the last five years. I'm a 42 year-old cradle Catholic. Sad, isn't it?
Listen fellow FReeper, don't resort to the leftist tactic of victimhood. I could care less that the Catholics have it, the muslims could have it for all I care. If people want or need some sort of proof, so be it. Doesn't make it right. It is something that is unnecessary, and frankly can lead to worship of the object, versus worship of God and Christ.
That pretty much leaves aliens with technologies unimaginable to us as the only "scientific" explanation, though their motives are hard to fathom.
He would have to use only technology that was available in the 13th Century. The problem is that much of this knowledge has been lost. Another question is why they would produce the image that exists rather than a positive one like that of the Virgin of Guadalpe
If you go back and look at all of the evidence related to the Shroud, you'll find (even before this latest piece of evidence was made known) that the probability of someone creating this on their own back in the 11th or 12th century was extremely remote. In particular, there is no question that the Shroud was "created" using a process that is identical to photography, when in fact photography was not invented until the 19th century. The notion that someone would develop a primitive form of technology 700 or 800 years earlier than this -- without leaving any other evidence of it for this period of time -- seems so highly improbable that I would consider it an "article of faith" that can't possibly be substantiated.
It's worth noting that the Shroud of Turin did not attract much attention around the world until the end of the 19th century. The reason for this is simple: the Shroud itself did not seem to be all that spectacular -- it was an ancient piece of fabric with what appeared to be the image of a man on it. What changed all of this was the advent of photography. An Italian photographer named Secondo Pia received permission to photograph the Shroud during one of its rare public displays, and while he was developing the film he produced a negative that had far more detail than the original image (the dark image of the Shroud that you often see in pictures is the negative, not the original).
The implication of this was immediately clear to Pia: The "negative" he was looking at was actually the real image, and the "original" image on the Shroud was actually the negative -- which meant that whatever process was used to produce that image was identical to a photographic process that the world had only discovered recently!
The Shroud may actually be fake, but it certainly is not a "proven fake." The Shroud cannot possibly be "proven" to be a fake until someone can figure out how the image got there. Even those scientists who insist that it was a forgery are at a loss to explain how someone in the 12th century could possibly have created something that human beings cannot even create today.
Perhaps the most compelling evidence in favor of the Shroud's authenticity is the evidence surrounding what is known as the "four-finger" phenomenon on the image. While most artwork from the Middle Ages depicting the Crucifixion shows Christ nailed to a cross with nails driven through his hands, the image on the Shroud does not show this. Instead, it clearly shows nail wounds in the wrists, which is exactly how a person would have been nailed to a cross -- because nails driven through the middle of the hand would not support the weight of a human body without tearing through the hand. Point #1: If someone in the 12th century was intent on making a realistic forgery of Christ's burial shroud, then why would he depict the crucifixion in a manner that did not match the prevailing view of how the crucifixion occurred?
More importantly, the hands shown on the image appear to only have four fingers -- leading to speculation that perhaps the person whose image was on the Shroud had his thumbs cut off before "burial." The reality is that the image is anatomically correct, because driving a nail through the wrist between the two bones of the forearm (the radius and the ulna) damages one of the key nerves in the wrist and produces a reflexive reaction in which the thumb is drawn across the palm in such a way that it is not visible from the back of the hand. Point #2: I find it extremely unlikely that a forger in the Middle Ages would have known such minute detail about human anatomy that he would have been able to replicate the results of this reflexive action.
One of the most serious flaws in the argument that the Shroud was created by someone in the 12th century is this: Almost no anatomic detail is visible in the image unless you get further than 15 feet away from it. If someone HAD "painted" it, he/she would have had to have used a paintbrush over 15 feet long!
Then why did God perform this miracle?
Wow, outstanding post, AC. I'm bookmarking this thread because of your post.
I'll be back later today. I need to do a lot of things.
Or any other subject for that matter, thanks.
Have a great weekend -- hope to see you here later.
You know that it is a miracle? You know, God has control of this world, and always has, but he allows many things to happen while the devil has his time here on earth. Once again, we need to focus on the reason we are all saved, not other idolatrous objects.
Oh it's because you're a Fundie. Thanks for clearing that up.
All the evidence points to it. There is no evidence against it.
You know, God has control of this world, and always has, but he allows many things to happen while the devil has his time here on earth. Once again, we need to focus on the reason we are all saved, not other idolatrous objects.
It's possible to focus on the reason we are all saved and to also study the greatest Christian relic.
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