I have a two hundred year old book with numerous end pages. If I draw George Washington on one of those pages with two hundred year old ink, is the drawing 200 years old?
If you scorch the outermost fibers of a linen cloth to varying degrees such that when analyzed using a NASA terrain analyzer they reveal a three-dimensional image of a man; and if the same cloth contains type AB blood matching the Sudarium of Oviedo and the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano, I'd be more impressed.
Only if your hand is 200 years old! *Grins*
Sac, do you have any 200 year old ink?
>> I have a two hundred year old book with numerous end pages. If I draw George Washington on one of those pages with two hundred year old ink, is the drawing 200 years old? <<
No-one here is asserting that the fact alone that the shroud is 2,000 years old proves that it must be Jesus. The fact that it was supposedly much younger than that was simply offered as a rebuttal to what had previously been put forward as proof of its authenticity, without explaining away the prior "proof." The fact that the basis for the alleged rebuttal actually supports authenticity certainly is strong eveidence.
That brings to mind an Isaac Asimov short story (title forgotten) in which the author's uncle (Schlemmelmayer or
some similar name) is a frustrated inventor.
His crowning achievement is something which can create matter from energy to reproduce atomically identical copies of past material--but due to the enormous E=mc**2 conversion factor,
the item must be very light.
The uncle decides to concentrate on bringing back a very rare signature from one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence (maybe the Constitution, I forget). But no one believes the authenticity of the signature. The doubt is summed up succinctly in the following line (paraphrased here):
"And if XXX has been dead for two hundred years, you Godforsaken dumperlump, how can his name on a new piece of parchment be found?"
Cheers!