A Rather Silly Blog

Shroud of Turin Lecture

2012-02-25T07:16:00.003-08:00

Hello everyone,

So roughly a week ago I compiled all the posts I've done on here together into a lecture format for a hopeful upcoming presentation I'll be giving on the Shroud of Turin and its acting as evidence for the Resurrection. This contains not only all the material I've done with revisions and some additions, but two new sections on the work of Walter McCrone vs Adler and Heller, but a brief reconstruction of the Shroud's journey throughout history. While it is still only in a draft form, it takes about an hour and a half for me to read out loud, which may be a little long. I'm really looking for feedback so that this can be as best as it can be. Thank you, and please look at it via the link!

The Argument From the Shroud [Lecture]

The Argument From the Shroud 3-A: 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?'

2012-01-29T11:37:00.000-08:00

At this point in the argument I am going to assume that theShroud of Turin is indeed the burialshroud of Jesus Christ. The posts up to this point have largely been ajustification for this assumption. The real excitement about the Shroud is whenwe start to examine it in the light of Pascha.

There already existsvoluminous studies on the Resurrection and what the apostles saw, largely inthe camps of criticism and apologetics. My contention all along is that theShroud adds unprecedented weight to the claims of the apologists, not onlyconfirming the written record of the Gospels but giving us a primary documentwhich supplies us with far more information than we had previously.

Why then, a Resurrection?Couldn't we just say that the image of Christ was made via a naturalisticprocess and that as eerily and unique it may be (eerily perhaps because of it's uniqueness) it does not prove theResurrection? Yes and no.

Yes in the sense thatI am not arguing that this proves theResurrection. I don't know if I can do that, or if anyone can do that, but whatI will say is that it makes it seem logically possible. So much so to the pointwhere I believe that the Resurrection is a more powerful explanation for boththe events surrounding Easter and the Shroud than any naturalistic one.

No in the sense thateven if there were to be a purely naturalistic explanation for the image, itwould be irrelevant to what I just claimed. I will elaborate on this furtherwhen I talk about the properties of the Shroud and how they pertain to thedifferent image forming hypotheses. However, first we must lay the context ofthe claim.

To explain the rise ofearly Christian belief, there are some key factors that any hypothesis musttake into account. I will essentially be touting the typical evangelicalapologetic given by figures such as William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, etc.

Firstly, the apostlesof Christ claimed to have seen their Rabbi after His death and believed that Hewas truly Risen from the dead. I am putting emphasis on 'Risen' as there havebeen many theories that the early Church did not believe in a bodilyresurrection, but that such a dogma came later and was anachronistically forcedupon earlier writings.[1]However, scholars such as N.T. Wright have shown this to be an erroneous claim.[2]In a similar vein, there's been many (bad) attempts to show that Christ wasjust a copycat savior from preexisting mythology. However, the very concept ofthe bodily resurrection – the word 'anastasis' – flew in the face of everythingthat the Hellenic world imagined.[3]Also, there have been many works that have debunked such theories, such as theapologetics of James Patrick Holding, or Edward L. Winston's criticism of thepopular internet movie 'Zeitgeist'.[4]

Yet, the visionsthemselves wont convince most skeptics. After all, people have visions ofthings frequently, and in an ancient world that did not have the sciencespeople had to of been more prone to beduped by hallucinations, right?

While the assertionmay seem reasonable to us in our post-modern age, the ancients were actuallyquite skeptical themselves of any kind of vision or hallucination.[5]But rather than delve too deep into this subject, there is a key point I'd liketo make. In the ancient world, whenever someone saw a recently departed personit was their soul that came back to talk, or a vision of some kind. Never was it the entire person, both body and soul, whoreturned.[6]To the pagan mind this was pure foolishness; the body was something that wasshed after death. This is why the Greeks found Christianity to be “foolishness”as St. Paul says, and why many of them laughed at him when he preached therisen Christ.

Secondly, coupled withthis message was the fact that Christwas Risen. While many, though not all, Jews believed in the resurrection of thebody, the idea that the resurrection had already begun was what was so uniqueabout the message.[7] This did notsit with the ideas of the Jews that everyone would be resurrected at once – noone would resurrect before anyone else. Yet, as the disciples clearly preached,Christ was Risen – the resurrection had begun.

Thirdly, the emptytomb. Some contest that the empty tomb is a legendary embellishment . Mark'sgospel in the earliest copies we have, ending with the women telling “no one”what they saw seems to fit with this. Indeed, the later gospels seem to becovering up this error by saying that they did tell the apostles, trying to fix an obvious blunder. For indeed if the empty tomb were true, why would the womendisciples tell no one?

Yet, there areproblems with this train of thought. If the tomb was indeed a legend, why havefemale disciples be the ones who discover it? Female testimony in Jewish law wasnon-existent – they simply were not seen as reliable witnesses. True, thedisciples did verify their message for themselves, not solely relying off theirtestimony (in fact they distrusted them from the outset). Yet why, if inventinga story, have the women disciples be the ones to discover it at all? Perhapsits supposed to be a reversal of sorts: while the men ran away after Christ'sarrest, the women stayed. Where it was Eve who first disobeyed, it was thewomen who now first believe. While this is certainly true, and is even how itis seen in the Tradition of the Orthodox Church, why are we to believe thatsuch a theological premise was to be invented, one with much profundity, butthat then the disciple who inaugurated it completely botched everything up bysaying they told “no one”? Is such a blatant error consistent with one whocould 'invent' such a theological reflection?

Furthermore, ashistorian N. T. Wright points out, the empty tomb is a necessary condition for explaining the Paschal story.[8]If the Apostles only had visions of a risen Jesus, this alone wouldn't ofbrought them to their belief; like I said previously, despite our normalassumptions, the ancient world had a firm grasp on the difference betweenreality and visions. As Wright points out, “the response to reported visions ofthis kind might of course have been, in the ancient as in the modern world, toquestion the mental balance, or perhaps the recent diet, of the witnesses.”[9]To add on to this, visions of those recently departed were always seen as asign “that the person was dead, not that they were alive”, yet the claim of theearly Church was that Christ wasalive.[10]Had the apostles only seen visions, they, like most of the ancient world, couldhave just written them off. However, it is – as Wright again points out – thatthe visions had a “Jesus who was appearing...in bodily continuity with thecorpse that had occupied the tomb”.[11]

Now, when we look atthe Shroud we must remember that anyhypothesis about the image and the end result of Christ's body has to alsoaccount for all the other data I just went over. It's no good if a theory canaccount, for example, the source of the image but have no way of explaining theempty tomb. First, let's see some of the things the Shroud seems to vindicatein our previous apologetic.

First, the empty tomb.My reason for this is how else should we have access to the Shroud unless theApostles found it as they describe in their accounts? Now skeptics may arguethat it was indeed recovered but not necessarily from an empty tomb. However,the travertine aragonite located at Christ's feet on the Shroud has an incredibly “similar [signature] tolimestone samples from ancient [Judaic] tombs”.[12]This obviously does not prove the empty tomb, but it is certainly powerfulevidence for it's validity.

Second,a historical Jesus. The reason I mention this is that though 'Jesus-myth'theories are not generally given the time of day, certain works and views byauthors such as Earl Doherty and Richard Carrier as well as serious laymen suchas Neil Godfrey are gaining more of an audience. However, if we're acceptingthat the Shroud of Turin did indeed wrap Jesus Christ, then the idea that Hewas a myth is soundly gutted.

So then, how can weexplain the empty tomb, the rise of early Christian beliefs, and the image onthe Shroud? The first theory we can look at is that the body was stolen fromthe tomb. Immediately though, we run into problems because of the blood clotson the Shroud. Vignon noted that these clots “showed the characteristics ofauthentically dried or 'clotted' blood – separation of serum and darkercellular mass”.[13] Though afew of the stains had broken borders, “most were smooth” indicating “they mustfirst have dried and separated on a non-absorbent surface, such as the skin ofa corpse, before being transferred to the cloth.”[14]This would be possible due to the sweat released by Christ during His torture,which then would have lingered longer if His body was placed in a coolenvironment such as a tomb[15](hence giving even more evidence to the fact that the empty tomb was not adeveloped legend). However, the perfect quality in which the wounds aretransferred are the real problem for the stolen body theory; if the body wasstolen from the Shroud we would not see the perfection we do – instead thingswould have been messy and haphazard.[16]This makes sense as a wound that hadn't fully clotted yet would have smeared onthe Shroud while one that had clotted to the linen would have broken a-new. Wesee neither of these on the Shroud, though.

Second, the Shrouddoes away with 'swoon theory', or the idea that Christ didn't die on the Cross.This is very hard to take seriously even without the Shroud, and most skepticsdon't hold to it. However, there is no doubt of its invalidity when we rememberthat the image of Christ on the Shroud is in rigor mortis. The reason I bringthis up is for a more inter-religious apologetic than a theist-atheist one. Tomy understanding, most traditional forms of Islam hold that Christ never diedwhile on the Cross. This seems to fly directly in the face of said claim. Theimplications spell themselves out.

Third, the idea thatChrist was buried in a common grave. The first problem with this theory is theaforementioned data of both the limestone and the blood. Any theory that claimsthat Christ was buried instead in a common grave has to deal with these facts.Second, the weave as I had mentioned in my second post was only one that couldbe purchased by those with wealth. Why, if Christ was going to be subjected toa common grave, would someone have bothered to bury such an expensive clothwith Him? Such a cloth makes sense if the story about St. Joseph of Arimatheais true, but doesn't seem to be the case if it is false.

One may opt thatChrist was wrapped in the Shroud and then buried in a common grave after wardsrather than a tomb (or just reburied). Again, this fails to deal with theevidence we have (the clots and our possession of the Shroud), but even if thiswere not the case we run into a different problem. The body would havenecessarily had to of been formed by contact in this case since there wouldhave been no proper environment for gasses to diffuse as perfectly as one seeson the Shroud in this naturalistic hypothesis. Let me extrapolate:

One set ofnaturalistic theories that attempt to explain how the image was made comes fromgases that proceed death. The most popular theory is the Maillard reactionproposed by Raymond N. Rogers. The theory in brief states “that [the] colour[on the Shroud] can be produced by reactions between reducing sugars, left onthe cloth by the manufacturing procedure, and amines deriving from thedecomposition of a corpse.”[17]This is because “decomposing bodies start producing ammonia and amines...fairlyquickly, depending on the temperature and humidity [of their surroundings]. Theammonia and many of the amines are volatile, and they rapidly undergo Maillardreactions with any reducing saccharides they contact.”[18]However, as Fanti and others pointed out, “the imageresolution and the uniform coloration of the linen resolution seem to be notcompatible with a mechanism involving diffusion.”[19]Even if this weren't the case though,such a reaction would take at least a day[20],hence making us run into the problem of the blood clots once again.[21]

The image on theShroud could not have been made by contact with the body for a few reasons.Firstly, there are areas on the image that would not be visible if the imageformation resulted solely from contact. In other words, there had to be somekind of vertical projection from the body in order to create the image in theseplaces, whether we want to say gas, radiation, light, etc. Furthermore,“thermography proved that the emittance of the image was the same in all areas.The entire image formed by the same mechanism. Spectra and photographyconfirmed this observation.”[22]

Secondly, as I hadpreviously mentioned the Shroud when analyzed by a VP-8 image analyzer comes upas a 3-Dimensional image, meaning it maps the distance of the Shroud from thebody.[23]This would not be the case if the image was formed by contact since all areasof the body would have to be on an equal plane, and thus the VP-8 analyzerwould have showed it as all being level instead of 3-Dimensional. However, forthe image to have been 3-Dimensional in the first place there had to be spacebetween the Shroud and the body as that is how a 3-Dimensional image is made insuch a case as this.[24]This is because of the aforementioned reasons – if the cloth had been touchingthe skin directly then any place where the cloth was touching would be equal indistance to another area in which the cloth was touching. For example, if thecloth was touching Christ's nose at two points, they would be at the same levelin a 3-Dimensional image. However, this is not found to be the case. Theimplication then is that somehow the cloth wasn't touching Christ's body duringthe image formation process.

I've derailed a bitfrom my initial point which is that if thebody had been buried somewhere other than the empty tomb and wasn't a reburial,then the image must have been formed by contact since this seems to be the onlynaturalistic explanation. However, we know the image wasn't formed by contact.Hence, the theory is inadequate.

Fourth, what ifChrist's body had simply rotted away and the Shroud was taken later on. There'sa whole bunch of problems with this to begin with, for instance why the Apostles would even bother to think their Saviorhad risen if they removed the Shroud from His decayed body. However, these reasonsare irrelevant when we remember that there are no signs of putrefaction on theShroud of Turin. The image was made and the body was removed before any signsof liquid decomposition kicked in, which at such a temperature would have beenroughly 30 hours.[25]

So far, naturalisticexplanations for what happened to Christ's body while forming the image havenot fared well. This, of course, isn't even taking into account the Apostle'svisions, or their twist in Second Temple Judaic belief: that the Resurrectionhad already happened to an individual. There is, of course, a theisticexplanation.

Every Pascha, orEaster, in the Eastern Orthodox Church there is a certain troparion that issung: “Christ is risen from thedead, trampling down death by death,and on those in the tombs bestowing life!” This message, that Christ isrisen, or in Greek, Christos Anesti, is what I believe can explain all of whatwe have covered. The Resurrection of an individual, the inexplicable image, themissing body, the empty tomb, the appearances to the Apostles, etc. TheResurrection is a far superior explanation to any of a naturalistic origin.

But aren't I saying“God did it?”. Well, I believe He did doit, but my point is not to just throw my hands up because of this incredibleimage and stop thinking. My point is that all the data is better explained ifwe allow ourselves to admit that Christianity could be true than if we apriori rule it out. That is why at the verybeginning of these essays I said one must keep an open mind and be open to thepossibility that Christianity may be true, and that “Truly, He is risen!” –“Alithos Anesti!”

Furthermore, anaturalistic explanation does not necessarily discount the Shroud as evidencefor the Resurrection. For instance, let's say that there was some sort of gastheory that could fit all the parameters required and could occur fast enoughso that the body could be stolen before the clots were too hardened. We stillhave the problem of either robbers or re-burialists having to remove the clothin such a way that there is no signs that it was removed – an incredible feat,maybe even impossible. But even if this wasdone, that doesn't mean it necessarily happened. Even if we had such evidence, which we don't, thebody still could have been in the tomb and then resurrected.

This is why I will notgo as far as to say the Shroud of Turin proves the Resurrection. It, if accepted as Jesus' burial shroud, can onlyact as evidence. However, what I do submit is that this evidence in itshistorical context is good enough for a Christian to be logically justified inhis or her belief that Christ is Risen. I don't see how, unless God is ruledout a priori, a non-theist canhonestly look at all what we have covered (which isn't close to the full body of literature) and think that theChristian is somehow deluding himself or is using wishful thinking.

As some may or may notknow, I used to be an atheist, and I was a fan of the new atheist movement.Admittedly I avoided the literature of Dawkins, Hitchens, etc (though I'mhoping to get to them) because I had heard that they attack a fundamentalistview of Christianity – the most vocal in this country. It makes sense as when Ido hear from such areas, their own biblical hermeneutic seems to be that of afundamentalist Sola Scriptura –something completely foreign to an Orthodox praxis. Many atheists, thoughcertainly not all, that I knew personally had never heard of let alone read ofWilliam Lane Craig or Alvin Plantiga. “The Kalam Cosmological argument? Themodal Ontological argument? Isn't philosophy just a bunch of rubbish?” Theirony, of course, is that the empirical method was born from epistemologicalassumptions – from philosophical thought.

This isn't to justattack the new-atheists or skepticism; I understand why it exists having lived through it, and the examplethat many of us Christians give – whether or not we are Orthodox – can be quiteappalling and hypocritical. Many of us, as Archbishop Lazar Puhalo of the OCApoints out, act just as self-righteous (if not more) than the pharisees.However, an often forgot fact is that the Christendom is made of sinners.Obviously we're battling the passions – we wouldn't be Christians if we were not[26].

But to return to mypoint is to end this series (though I may revisit it someday). I have given thereason as to why I believe in Christ's Resurrection. I also believe, since Imust be firm, that any Christian could use this as their reason for believingand be justified in doing so. I thank you all for your time and patience inthese essays.

"If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fairand radiant triumphal feast. If any man be a wise servant, let him rejoicingenter into the joy of his Lord. If any have labored long in fasting, let himnow receive his recompense. If any have wrought from the first hour, let himtoday receive his just reward. If any have come at the third hour, let him withthankfulness keep the feast. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let himhave no misgivings; because he shall in nowise be deprived therefor. If anyhave delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, fearing nothing. If anyhave tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at histardiness; for the Lord, who is jealous of his honor, will accept the last evenas the first; he gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even asunto him who has wrought from the first hour.

And he shows mercy upon the last, and cares for the first;and to the one he gives, and upon the other he bestows gifts. And he bothaccepts the deeds, and welcomes the intention, and honors the acts and praisesthe offering. Wherefore, enter you all into the joy of your Lord; and receiveyour reward, both the first, and likewise the second. You rich and poortogether, hold high festival. You sober and you heedless, honor the day.Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast.The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let noone go hungry away.

Enjoy ye all the feast of faith: Receive ye all the richesof loving-kindness. Let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal kingdomhas been revealed. Let no one weep for his iniquities, for pardon has shownforth from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior's death has set usfree. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending intoHell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. AndIsaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered, when itencountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished.It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. Itwas embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fetteredin chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, andencountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is yourvictory? Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and thedemons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen,and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. ForChrist, being risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who havefallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen."

- The Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom[27]

[1] i.e., the whole Gnostic revival in biblicalacademia – though there position is probably different than how I phrased it

[2] cf. N. T. Wright The Resurrection of the Sonof God, Chapter 13

[3] Ibid, pp. 32-84. I know that this is a grandsweeping of many works, but I do not have room in this essay to engage with allthe material. There were a few exceptions to this claim, but Wright deals withthese in his book.

[4] cf. http://www.tektonics.org/copycathub.html;http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/zeitgeist/

[5] cf. N. T. Wright The Resurrection of the Sonof God and Dale Allison ResurrectingJesus

[6] Wright, pp. 83

[7] Wright, pp. 689

[8] Ibid, pp. 687. A necessary condition is “something that has to be the case forthe conclusion to follow: it is a necessary condition of my computer workingproperly that the house be connected to an electricity supply.”

[9] Ibid, pp. 690

[10] Ibid, pp. 690-1. It's hard to emphasize how radical the idea that Jesus was alive once again was in apagan setting.

[11] Ibid, pp. 692

[12] http://creationevolutiondesign.blogspot.com/2007/06/bogus-shroud-of-turin-7-dirt-on-feet-of.htmlciting Wilson, I. & Schwortz, B., "The Turin Shroud:The Illustrated Evidence," MichaelO'Mara Books: London, 2000, p.92

[13] Robert K. Wilcox, The Truth About The Shroudof Turin. pp. 15

[14] Ibid, 15-16

[15] Ibid, 16

[16] Ibid, 77

[17] Raymond N. Rogers, THE SHROUD OF TURIN: ANAMINO-CARBONYL REACTION

(MAILLARDREACTION) MAY EXPLAIN THE IMAGE FORMATION. pp. 1

[18] Ibid, pp. 6

[19] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin#cite_note-ReferenceA-133referencing G. Fanti et alii, Microscopic andMacroscopic Characteristics of the Shroud of Turin Image Superficiality, Journal of Imaging Science and Technology—July/August2010—Volume 54, Issue 4, p. 040201-6. I know it isn't good to cite things fromWikipedia, but I'm, at least currently, not willing to pay $20 for the articlejust to get the citation first hand. There are some posters on Dan Porter'sblog who don't necessarily see this as completely ruling out Rogers' theory, but that his discovery is justpart of the puzzle.

[20] Rogers, THE SHROUD, pp. 4. I'm more or less inferring this point ratherthan Rogers' having of stated it himself.

[21] It's also worth pointing out that, for thosewho are interested, theology doesn't allow for the corruption of Christ's bodyby death. The lack of any signs of putrefaction back this up which make meponder if the Maillard reaction would even be viable theologically. This isn'tas much a point to my argument as a thought done out loud.

[22] Raymond N. Rogers, FREQUENTLY ASKEDQUESTIONS (FAQs). pp. 16

[23] Joseph Amalraj, Evidence of “Resurrection ofJesus” in the Shroud of Turin. pp. 1http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/evidenceAmalraj.pdf I'ma bit weary in including this information, not because of Amalraj, but becauseI'm not sure if it's been peer-reviewed or if there are any critiques of it.Nevertheless, food for thought.

[24] Ibid, pp. 1

[25] Ibid, pp. 1

[26] Or we'd already be saints and the charge ofself-righteousness would be non-existent

[27] http://oca.org/FSsermons-details.asp?SID=4&ID=10

Update and an Apology

2012-01-24T17:34:00.000-08:00

Dear (few existing) readers,

I just would like to apologize again for the time between each essay. My current job with inner city youth takes up a large chunk of my day, and with my free time at home I try and give a good amount of it to my religious life. Hence, when the weekend comes, sometimes the last thing I want to do is research and write (Arkham City is just too much fun).

That said, I've been finishing up the final essay of the series which deals with the Shroud in the light of the Resurrection. This is very out of order to what I had initially stated. There's a few reasons for this. The first is the aforementioned schedule of my current life. The second is that, truth be told, I've grown slightly tired of using the Shroud as an apologetic tool -- not because I think its ineffective, but because my interest is theology and dogma and it's ecumenical implications. This blog, in all my arrogance, was originally made with such things as its intent (though I now, and thanks be to God for it, realize I was way in over my head (and arrogant) to think I could write about such subjects knowing as little as I do). I don't want to be caught up with the Shroud forever. The third is that any historical reconstruction I'd post would essentially be a giant 'Cliff Notes' version of Ian Wilson's book (much like the first essay was). For anyone wishing for a historical reconstruction, I highly suggest you buy it if you have a Kindle. If not, Robert Wilcox's book is a good substitute. That said, expect an update within the week!

Joe Nickel -- c'mon guy

2012-01-01T17:03:00.000-08:00

SoI'm sure that everyone who keeps up to date on the Shroud has heardabout the recent experiments by ENEA which were able to reproduce thesuperficiality of the Shroud image using bursts of light. My point inwriting this though is to show the blatant fallacious writings ofskeptic Joe Nickell, who is repeating the same false facts that Iheard far too many Shroud skeptics tout:

“Giventhe tremendous evidence against the 'shroud' — itsincompatibility with Jewish burial practices, lack of historicalrecord, bishop's report of the forger’s confession, thestill-bright-red 'blood' which failed forensic serological tests, thepresence of pigments and paints throughout the image, threelaboratories' radiocarbon dating of the cloth to the time of theconfession (1260–1390), and much additional evidence — it wouldseem that Di Lazzaro is straining at a gnat and attempting to swallowa camel. Let him produce a shroudlike image according to whatevertheory he can muster, and we'll talk again.”

Let'sbreak this down line by line.

“Itsincompatibility with Jewish burial practices” is patently false.Ian Wilson shows in his book how the word the synoptic writers (Mark,Matthew, and Luke) use – sindon– refers not to a burial cloth but just a general linen cloth.Furthermore, even though John said he saw 'the soudarionwhich had been over His head', the word he used for over – epi– doesn'tnecessarily mean that it had to cover only Christ's head, but that itcould have covered His entire body as well (which is reinforced withwhat Jewish law mandated: that one who had blood pour forth fromwounds would be wrapped in a sovev,acloth that would wrap an entire body in the same way that a soudarioncould).¹

Whilethe “lack of historical record” is true ina sense,the history of the Shroud has been reconstructed through varioushints in records, alluding to an image of the Savior being venerated.We know of this happening in Constantinople all the way back toEdessa since the Shroud is probably what we knew as the Image ofEdessa.²

The“bishop's report of the forger's confession” has long been seenas suspect because of power struggles surrounding the parties.People, unfortunately, can lie.³

“Thestill-bright-red 'blood' which failed forensic serological tests”has been shown to be utterly false by the works of Adler and Heller,and can be read about in the article by David Ford that I posted onthis blog earlier.

“Thepresence of pigments and paints [found] throughout the image” hasalso shown to be false. See the above mentioned article.

The“three laboratories' radiocarbon dating of the cloth to the time ofthe confession (1260–1390)” are useless once we factor in thatthe piece that they tested was most likely a re-weave.

…Whelp.

1cf. Ian Wilson The Shroud: Solving the 2000-year-old Mystery. Chapter 4: Window on the Passion

2cf. the above or Robert K. Wilcox's The Truth About the Shroud of Turin

3cf. the above mentioned

The Argument From the Shroud 2-A: The Carbon Dating

2011-12-23T09:47:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that I wasn't entirely sure if I should writethis essay. There already exists many other presentations on thissubject and I felt that perhaps I could save time if I had simplylinked to one of them instead of writing my own. However, since Ialready have all the notes in front of me, I figure that at least forthe sake of my own writing I should follow through. With this said,at the end of this post I'll link some of the other presentationsthat I've mentioned (though only Dan Porter's comes to mind at themoment).

Carbon Politics

There has been perhaps nothing more hindering for those whobelieve that the Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial shroud ofJesus Christ than the carbon dating tests of the 1980's. It's easy tounderstand why; the Shroud stands out as if it is almost proofof the central miracle of Christianity – the Resurrection. The weaveof antiquity, the dirt particles and possible pollen data that linksthe Shroud to 1^stcentury Jerusalem, it's absolute correlation with the Gospel accountsof the Crucifixion, and it's still mysterious and seeminglyexplanation-defying image can leave many a Christian, myselfincluded, with a strong reassurance that Christ is truly Risen.

Yet, when the Shroud was finallydated, it seemed that all this evidence was moot. The dates came inand the Shroud was Medieval in origin: ‘1260-1390!’¹as is seen scribbled behind Doctors Michael Tite, Robert Hedges andProfessor Edward Hall.²

It's as if on the last 100 yards of arace a wall suddenly materialized in front of you, halting all themomentum of the final dash. It didn't make sense: all of the evidencepointed towards a date of antiquity and yet the carbon dating flew inthe face of it all.

This, of course, is the firstproblem with the carbon dating, or rather how one usescarbon dating. Any piece of evidence in science must be utilizedalongside the entire bodyof evidence – one piece cannot overturn all of the evidence unlessthe latter group is found to be faulty in some way. So in the case ofthe carbon dating of the Shroud, it alone can not nullify what wealready know (the herringbone weave, the dirt, the pollen [though Ihave yet to get to these two], etc). On the flip-side, we cannotimmediately discard the radiocarbon dating because it doesn't matchup with either the evidence that we do have or our own apriori convictions. Itis fitting then to evaluate the carbon dating in order to spot anymishaps of procedure. There needs be some exposition to all of this.

First, what is radiocarbondating? Taken from Ian Wilson's The Shroud:

“Theprinciple behind it [carbon dating] is that all living things, animalor vegetable, take in the very mildly radioactive isotope carbon 14,but only while they are alive. When they die this isotope ‘decays’,or loses its radioactivity, at a steady rate relative to the stablecarbon 12. Libby’s brilliant achievement, for which he was awardeda Nobel Prize, was to develop a form of Geiger counter to measurethis decay in organic materials such as bone from an ancientskeleton, or wood from some historic boat, or linen from what hadonce been a flax plant. As if from an atomic clock, Libby’s countercould ‘read’ the date on which the once living organism died.”⁴

Theearly years of carbon dating were not as refined as they are today;there are certain adjustments that are performed in every procedurethat are now done routinely that were not when it was firstdeveloped.⁵At this period of time using it to date the Shroud was specificallyadvised against by top scientists in the field of expertise.⁶

However,in June of 1977, AMS, accelerator mass spectroscopy, wasannounced.⁷It was to be a more efficient way to carbon date material, bothrequiring a smaller sample size and having roughly the same precision indating.⁸Even here, though, scientists felt it was too soon to use the methodon an object such as the Shroud of Turin.⁹

Thoseof the Libby camp purported that they too were working on a newversion, one that was just as efficient as AMS.¹⁰Furthermore, the Libby laboratories had decades of experience – theAMS laboratories did not.¹¹The Shroud, due to it's legendary status, became the prize crown inthis “bloody war”¹²between Libby and AMS advocates.¹³It seemed to not be as much about the science as it was about beingthe victor.

Whenthe then owner of the Shroud, “ex-King Umberto of Italy”, died in1983, the cloth changed owners to none other than Pope John Paul II.¹⁴Debate soon ensued in the Vatican on how to appropriately test thedate of the Shroud.¹⁵Though Professor Carlos Chagas had put forth 7 laboratories, a rangethat would utilize both the “old Libby method” and “the new AMSmethod”, Cardinal Ballestrero's reduced list of 3 AMS laboratorieswon out.¹⁶The justification for the latter's was that the listed laboratorieshad the most experience in the field.¹⁷This fact, however, was entirely false, as “the rejected Harwellalone [had] vastly more experience than all three of the chosen[labs] put together.”¹⁸

The Inadequacy of the Choice

One may not care that the AMS laboratories won out. Indeed,though a laboratory may be young and inexperienced, such facts cannotbe used to rule out their results. However, the situation only seemsto get worse the more we learn.

The area of the cloth that was chosen to be tested wasn't decidedupon before it's viewing by the lead scientists Luigi Gonella andGiovanni Riggi. They argued on spot what area of the cloth should beused.¹⁹Such lack of planning could hardly be called scientific. After this,the

“approved ‘referee’ of the exercise Dr MichaelTite of the British Museum, together with Cardinal Ballestrero, thentook the three portions to a side room where, with no camera present,they placed them, together with the pre-arranged ‘controls’, intosealed canisters carefully labelled for the laboratoryrepresentatives to take away with them. A 135-milligram portion ofthe sliver that was surplus to the laboratories’ requirements wasleft over.”²⁰

After the tests, the now infamous results were reported, leading the world to believe that the Shroud of Turinwas another medieval fake. However, as we can see already, theexperiments' procedure didn't seem to be the meticulous and rigorousprocess that science is known for. This is even more evident when westart to view the quotes of many of those involved with the Shroud.For instance, the same scientist Giovanni Riggi said: “I wasauthorized to cut approximately 8 square centimetres of cloth fromthe

Shroud…This was thenreduced to about 7 cm because fibres of other origins had become

mixed up with the originalfabric …”.²¹Similar comments were made by “Italian author Giorgio Tessiore”,“Professor Edward Hall” (who was also the head of the Oxford Labat the time of the testing), “Professor Raes” and. “Dr. AlanAdler”.²²

Dr. Adler's contributionwas especially significant as he showed there was a difference in“chemical composition” between “the radiocarbon samples” and“the non-image samples that comprise the bulk of the cloth”. Thatthe sample was not representative of the cloth was further supportedby the work of “statistician Bryan Walsh” who “showed that thedata indicated that there was a 97.7% chance that the C-14 subsamplesthemselves are from different populations...” He also found thatthere was more C-14 the further distance away “from the edge of theShroud”. Furthermore, the work of Van Haelst showed that the samplefailed to pass the Chi Square test, scoring above a 6 (a 6.4 specifically) insteadof below. This indicated that “the subsamples cannot be...fromthe same representative sample.”²³

Manyhypothesis were put forward as to why the Shroud turned up with amedieval date. Anything from chemical contamination, radiation,sabotage, and after-effects due to a miracle were put forward. Theywere all subsequently shot down for either lack of evidence, or fornot being provable by science.

However,in the year 2000, Joseph G. Marino and M. Sue Benford put out thepaper “EVIDENCEFOR THE SKEWING OF THE C-14 DATING OF THE SHROUD OF TURIN DUE TOREPAIRS” in which they argued that the Shroud was “patchedwith medieval material”,causing the subsequent date in the C-14 testing.²⁴Besides giving many quotes which supported their hypothesis (including all the above cited), they also provided the results of 3blind analysis experiments in which all 3 subjects separatelyagreed that their was an anomaly where the Shroud cloth and thepurported re-weave connected.²⁵They also supplied a historical reason as to why such a re-weavewould have been done.

However, it wasn't until2005 that the re-weave hypothesis became as widespread and acceptedas it did. This is thanks to the work of chemist Raymond N. Rogers.

Raymond N. Rogers

When Benford and Marino presented their paper, STURP memberBarrie Schwortz, the person behind www.shroud.com ²⁶,was shocked: “...this is the first credible, easy-to-understandexplanation that does not require a miracle or some unknown science.I was excited.”²⁷Needless to say, Schwortz received permission from the authors topost their paper on his website – it didn't take long before hereceived a quite heated call from his friend and STURP chemist Raymond N. Rogers. Rogers claimed that the two were “'shroudies'”– those of the “'lunatic fringe'”.²⁸

However, when he ran his own tests on some “strands of the Raessample” he found that “clearly distinguishable cottonfibers begin appearing amongst the linen fibers” which had to have“been spliced in” since “there was no cotton elsewhereinterwoven with the linen.”²⁹Rogers took another look at “the 1978 ultraviolet and X-ray photos”and noticed that in the corner from where the sample was taken, thecolor as well as the contrast stood out compared to the rest of theShroud, indicating a difference in chemical makeup.³⁰

Looking at his samples in greater detail, Rogers found there wasan “'encrustation' on the unraveled cotton fibers” that wasn'tfound elsewhere on the Shroud. Furthermore, the seemingly recklessway in which it was encrusted clued Rogers in that it “had beenapplied as a liquid and had flowed down the threads”. This,combined with the presence of “madder root in a gum arabic base”was evidence that it had been dyed. This makes complete sense withBenford and Marino's hypothesis; since linen is very resistant todye, anyone trying to match the color of a reweave would dye thepatch so it looked similar to the rest of the Shroud.
In addition to all this, Rogers found what appeared to be asplice in the very area that “Benford and Marino believed...thepatch to be.”³¹

Calling Scwhortz back, Rogers admitted “'they'reright. I've found a splice...There's nothing like that anywhere elseon the shroud.” He then turned to Dr. John L. Brown, a proficientforensic chemist who used to work for Georgia Tech ResearchInstitute's Energy and Materials Sciences Lab. “Using differentmethods and technology” Brown confirmed Rogers' observations, andalso noted that in areas “where 'the weave was tight enough,' thedye 'did not penetrate.'” This indicates that the dye was poured onafter, compatible with a re-weave.³²To quote Brown: “this was 'obvious evidence of a medieval artisan'sattempt to dye a newly added repair [in order]³³to match the aged appearance of the remainder of the shroud.'”Rogers' findings were verified yet again by Robert Villarreal of LosAlamos labs.³⁴“Using new high-resolution microscopes, a variety of spectroscopyand spectrometry, they found both the cotton in the sample and the'cocoon shaped brown crust' holding the threads together.”³⁵Villarreal's statement is poignant:

“Apparently, the age-dating process [1988 Carbon14]³⁶failed to recognize one of the first rules of analytical chemistrythat any sample taken for characterization of an area...mustnecessarily be representative of the whole....Our analyses of thethree thread samples taken from the Raes and C-14 sampling cornershowed that this was not the case. What was true for the [corner]³⁷was most certainly not true for the whole.”³⁸

As for another way of dating the Shroud, Rogers usedthe compound vanillin which “is found in flax, the plant from whichlinen is made.”³⁹This compound “is known to dissipate slowly over centuries”. Forexample, the wrappings which covered the Dead Sea Scrolls, known tobe about 2000 years old, “have lost all their vanillin – as hasthe overall shroud.” Rogers tested “Raes samples” as well as“samples of the Carbon 14 cut sent to him by ProfessorGonella...and pieces of linen backing” that were “known to havebeen sewed [onto the Shroud] in the sixteenth century”. He “foundsignificant amounts of vanillin in each.” In other words, the areathat was purported to be a re-weave was consistent in its vanillinwith other items of a medieval origin but not the Shroud itself. Thisfurther indicates that said area is indeed a re-weave. While the lackof vanillin on the Shroud by no means automatically points to a dateof antiquity (since there are many variables that could affectvanillin content) the significant differencebetween the two do suggest different origins.

The results of theCarbon-14 datings done in 1988 are simply not acceptable when we takeinto account all of the above. The haphazard selection process whichlead to a inadequate sample skewed the results. Thus, a medievalorigin of the Shroud cannot be posited viably.

1Ian Wilson The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved, 2010. Kindle Locations 1747-1748

2Ibid, kl. 1746

3Image found on http://shroud2000.com/ImageGallery/Set2/115_15.jpg

4Wilson, kl. 1677-1681

5Ibid, kl. 1682-1683

6Ibid, kl. 1686-1688

7Ibid, kl. 1692-1693

8Ibid, kl. 1693-1694

9Ibid, kl. 1695-1699

10Ibid, kl. 1702-1703

11Ibid, kl. 1703-1704

12Ibid, kl. 1704-1705

13Ibid, kl. 1704-1706

14Ibid, kl. 1707-1708

15Ibid, kl. 1709-1711

16Ibid, kl. 1714-1717

17Ibid, kl. 1715-1717

18Ibid, kl. 1718

19Ibid, kl. 1723-1724

20Ibid, kl. 1728-1731

21Joseph G. Marino and M. Susan Benford EVIDENCE FOR THE SKEWING OF THE C-14 DATING OF THE SHROUD OF TURIN DUE TO REPAIRS, 2000. pp. 1 citing Riggi di Numana, Giovanni: 1988. Rapporto Sindone. Milano: 3M Edizioni. English translation by John D’Arcy (unpublished).

22Ibid, pp. 2

23Ibid, pp. 3

24Ibid, pp. 1

25Ibid, pp. 4. Subjects were Thomas Ferguson & Co. Ltd, David Pearson, and Louise Harner

26Authors note: Easily the best website on the Shroud of Turin on the internet

27Robert K. Wilcox, The Truth about the Shroud of Turin: Solving the Mystery, 2010. pp. 214

28Ibid, pp. 215

29Ibid, pp. 215-216

30Ibid, pp. 216

31Ibid, pp. 217

32Ibid, pp. 218

33Wilcox's brackets

34Ibid, pp. 220-221

35Ibid, pp. 221

36Wilcox's brackets

37Wilcox's brakets

38Ibid, pp. 221-222

39Ibid, pp. 218

Sorry for the delay

2011-11-06T13:33:00.000-08:00

Title post describes it all. Been pretty busy with work, but I've read and will soon begin to work on the next section of my Shroud of Turin series. I'm trying to incorporate more sources this time around, so hopefully it will be of higher quality.

The Argument From the Shroud - Further Reading (1-D)

2011-10-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

While I am currently researching and compiling for the next essay, I wanted to post two papers that address some issues surrounding the Shroud. The reason for this is that these essays have compiled so much data and have such a better hold on the subject that I feel it would be pointless for me to create an essay for each of the subjects.

The first paper deals with the blood on the Shroud and the controversy surrounding the faulty research of Walter McCrone. It is a technical paper and a bit long, but well worth the read.

The second paper deals with many of the posited image formation theories (especially those related to forgery) and systematically shows why each of them fail. It goes over theories such as:

The Shroud was a painting
The Shroud was a photograph
The Shroud was a bleaching
The Shroud was a rubbing
The Shroud was a scorching
The Shroud was a 3D block print

The paper also summarizes the problem with the carbon dating results as well as a suggested timeline for the history of the Shroud. Enjoy!

The Shroud of Turin's 'Blood' Images: Blood, or Paint? History of Science Inquiry by David Ford

Summary of Challenges to the Authenticity of the Shroud of Turin by Richard B. Sorensen

Mention at Dan Porter's blog

2011-10-05T18:27:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Just want to give a quick thank you to Dan Porter who had a link to my previous post on the Shroud of Turin. I've been a very big fan of Dan Porter's work for at least a year, and used him as a reliable reference before that. Thanks a ton, Dan!

The Argument From the Shroud - The Anatomy of the Man (1-C)

2011-10-01T18:58:00.000-07:00

In this post I'll be covering theanatomy of the man on the Shroud while attempting to show that theimage depicts that of Jesus Christ (regardless of authenticity). Ishould note now that one cannot provewho the image belongs to, but when all the facts are accounted for wecan easily infer that it depicts Jesus Christ.

Weshall start from the top and work our way down. The first noticeablewounds are those on the crown of the man; they correlate to thepuncture wounds that would have been made by a crown of thorns suchas depicted in the gospel of St. Mark: “And they twisted a crown ofthorns, put it on His head, and began to salute Him, 'Hail, King ofthe Jews!'”.¹In reality the crown is more akin to a cap²,thus going against artistic norms and therefore common-folkexpectations.³Already we should ask: why would a medieval forger go against theexpected norms if he were forging the Shroud to trick others?⁴However, this did not seem to stop people from believing theauthenticity of The Shroud in the medieval era, but it is stillsomething worth pondering about.

Movingto the face we immediately see the damaged nose and swollen rightcheek.⁵The wounds here seem to be too general as to identify exactly whatcaused them, though blows from fists seem to fit.⁶This would correlate with the accounts of both Luke 22:63⁷and Matthew 26:67:

“Now the men whobeheld Jesus mocked Him and beat Him. And having blindfolded Him,they struck Him on the face and asked Him, saying, 'Prophesy! Who isthe one who struck You?'” Luke 22:63-64

“Thenthey spat in His face and beat Him; and others struck Himwith the palms of their hands,saying, 'Prophesy to us, Christ! Who is the one who struck You?'”Matthew 26:67-68⁸

Theman's hair is of longer length and fashioned into a braid while hisbeard is both short and forked.⁹It is worth noting that this hairstyle was not from “Greco-Romanculture” but is Judaic.¹⁰Likewise, the beard was “highly regarded...as a manly adornment”in Jewish culture.¹¹

Therealso seems to be a square imprint in the middle of the man'sforehead¹²as well as a 'V' mark between his eyes.¹³Paul Vignon, the man who first observed the Shroud, noted that “80percent” “of Byzantine icons”¹⁴of Christ had this same 'V' shape amongst other identifyingcharacteristics, suggesting that “the shroud face and the face onthe icons had more than a casual link to one another”.¹⁵This important observation will be covered in another section.

Furthermore,the face of the man was identified by anthropologist T. Dale Stewart(who frequently identified people's race via bones for the FBI) asbeing “that of a white man” whose origin could be eitherPalestinian or Greek.¹⁶Furthermore, Carlton S. Coon, a highly “distinguished ethnologist”identified the man of the Shroud as having “a physical type foundin modern times among Sephardic Jews and noble Arabs”.¹⁷

Movingdown to the torso area we see that the body of the man is covered inwhip marks which indeed relate to the Gospel accounts.¹⁸The device used to make these wounds was none other than the Romanflagrum, adumb-bell-whip which was usually fitted with small sheep bones andtwin pellets of lead – such specificity has been identified on theShroud.¹⁹There are around 100 individual dumb-bell marks²⁰– something that would have been completely unfeasible for anartist to replicate with such accuracy so many times (as Vignonhimself remarked)²¹,let alone as a photographic negative.

Thenakedness of the man is also historically accurate as we know fromthe accounts of Philo of Alexandria in which he reports thatcrucifixion victims were stripped naked before flogging.²²This seems at first to be a contradiction between the Gospel accountsand the Shroud, as both in the books of St. Matthew and St. Mark,Jesus' own clothes were put back on him after he was beaten. However,we also read in all four Gospel accounts how Christ's garments weredivided amongst the Roman Soldiers who then casted lots for them.Thus Christ's clothes were stripped off Him at some point, againshowing a correlation between the Gospel accounts and the Shroud ofTurin.

Lookingon, there is noticeable chaffing of the shoulders²³most likely from carrying the patibulum(crossbeam) on which the man was to be crucified (a common Romanpractice).²⁴This is reported in the Gospel of St. John when the beloved disciplewrites: “And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called thePlace of a Skull, which iscalled in Hebrew, Golgotha” (John 19:17).²⁵There is also damage to the man's knees, presumably from fallingwhile carrying his patibulum.²⁶If the man on the Shroud is indeed Jesus Christ, this would makesense as St. Simon of Cyrene had to help Him carry His cross asreported in the Gospels of Saints Matthew, Mark and Luke²⁷:

“Now as they cameout, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled tobear His cross.” (Matthew 27:32)

“Then theycompelled a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, the father of Alexanderand Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by, tobear His cross.” (Mark 15:21)

“Nowas they led Him away, they laid hold of a certain man, Simon aCyrenian, who was coming from the country, and on him they laid thecross that he might bear itafter Jesus.” (Luke 23:26)²⁸

Nextare the wounds in the wrists – not the hands. This, as most peoplecan figure, again goes contrary to traditional Christian art²⁹where Christ is depicted as being nailed through his hands to thecross. Now this doesn't necessarily rule out the fact that the manwas crucified through his hands as we only can see the exit wounds³⁰.Regardless, this does not run contradictory to the account given inthe Gospel of St. John³¹as the word St. Thomas uses for “hand” includes the wrist area inthe original Greek.³²The blood from the wrist also moves in a way that does not seemcorrect with the way the arms are positioned.³³This is because the blood flowed in such a way only if the man's armswere positioned at a 65 degree angle – an angle that is completelycompatible with crucifixion.³⁴

Lastlywe'll look at a particular wound in the man's chest which has an“elliptic shape to its top edge”.³⁵Such a wound could have been caused by a bladed weapon of some kind.³⁶Ian Wilson further elaborates:

“TheGreek word the author used for ‘lance’ in this passage waslonche, the Latin equivalent was lancea; Archaeologically we knowquite a lot about the lancea. With a long leaf-like blade thickeningand rounding off towards the shaft, it was just the kind ofgeneral-purpose weapon that would have been standard issue for thesmall contingent of auxiliaries who took direct charge of Jesus’scrucifixion (pl. l1b). In the Landesmuseum in Zurich there areseveral good examples with essentially exactly the same ellipticbreadth to the blade that we can see on the Shroud.”³⁷

Thearea targeted is where Roman soldiers were trained to stab since itis the arm in which their enemy would be holding their weapon and nottheir shield³⁸(as seen in the “Dying Gaul” statue).³⁹This relates to the account in the Gospel of St. John when Jesus isstabbed with the Lance of Longinus: “But one one of the soldierspierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water cameout.” (John 19:34) Furthermore, the area in which the wound appears“showed [a] separation of blood parts, including serum”.⁴⁰

Furthermore,the blood flows on the Shroud are surprisingly realistic and again goagainst usual artistic depiction; the “flows follow the naturalcontours of the body” while “artists...usually depicted suchflows in straight lines or stylized droplets”.⁴¹Itis worth noting that such a torture technique was not typical ofeither Roman practice or that of any other culture and that Jesus isthe only one known to have received said torture⁴².

Thereare other facts that we could go into (as well as further elaborationon the ones discussed here) but I think that this is sufficient toestablish vast correlations between the man on the Shroud and JesusChrist. There is no other person in history or legend that hassuffered all these wounds in the same exact matter, and the perfectcorrelation makes it highly plausible to reason that this man is atleast a depiction of Jesus Christ. To invent any other characterwould seem to be completely illogical as they would be nothing morethan pure fiction⁴³compared to the person of Christ, who even if one does not accept hishistoricity, must submit to the fact that there is a long oral andwritten tradition about Him. Thus, at this point, I put forward thatwe can reasonably deduce two things:

The man on the Shroud is a depiction of Jesus Christ
The Shroud does not seem to have been any kind of medieval forgery

If weagree with these two premises (as I argued in this and my last essay)then I think we can start to consider the fact that this indeed isthe Shroud of Jesus Christ and that the image was made from his body(whether by natural or supernatural means). However, at this point weneed to show at least some kind of a timeline that the Shroud couldbe traced back through (though, as I showed in my first essay, wehave good reason to believe that this Shroud dates from antiquity).But even before that, we need to answer the elephant in the room:

What went wrongwith the Carbon Dating?

1Ian Wilson The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved, 2010. Kindle Locations 955-957. All Scripture quotations are NKJV from The Orthodox Study Bible

2Robert K. Wilcox The Truth About The Shroud of Turin, 2010. pp. 17

3Ibid.

4Ibid.

5Robert Bucklin, M.D., J.D., An Autopsy on the Man of the Shroud http://shroud.com/bucklin.htm

6Wilson, kl. 947-948

7Ibid., kl. 5834

8Wilcox, pp. 18

9Bucklin

10Wilcox, pp. 144

11Ibid.

12Bucklin

13Wilcox, 101.

14Ibid, pp. 101

15Ibid, pp. 100

16Ibid., pp. 143, 146

17Ibid., 147

18Wilson, kl. 965-967

19Ibid., kl. 977-980

20Ibid, kl. 982-983

21Wilcox, pp. 18

22Wilson, kl. 974-975

23Ibid., kl. 988-989

24Ibid., kl. 995-996

25Ibid., kl. 989-991

26Wilcox, pp. 19

27Wilson, kl. 991-993

28Ibid., kl. 5849

29Wilcox, pp. 17

30 Frederick T. Zugibe, M.D., Ph.D., Pierre Barbet Revisited, http://www.shroud.com/zugibe

31Wilson, kl. 1006-1008

32Ibid., kl. 5852. “So he said to them, 'Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25)

33Bucklin

34Ibid.

35Wilson, kl. 1048-1049

36Ibid., kl. 1049

37Ibid., kl. 1052-1056

38Ibid., kl. 1060-1062

39Ibid., kl. 1062-1064

40Wilcox, pp. 19

41Ibid., pp. 16

42Wilson, kl. 959-960, 962-964

43Ibid., pp. 26 “But those who wish to attribute the shroud to another person are in the same condition as ourselves with respect to the other difficulties, with this difference – that their person is a pure invention without any mention in history, tradition or legend.” - Prof. Delage

The Argument From the Shroud Index

2011-08-29T07:49:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Part 1: It's Characteristics
A) The Shroud Itself
B) The Image's Characteristics
C) The Anatomy of the Man
D) Further Reading

Part 2: It's History
A) The Carbon Dating

Part 3: Pascha
A) 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?'

The Argument From the Shroud - The Image's Characteristics (Part 1-B)

2011-08-28T21:45:00.000-07:00

Please read the post not on the home page (where you can see multiple posts at once) but only on its own page (you can only see the post). If you choose to read it with other posts available the hyperlinks for the footnotes won't work correctly.

This post will move on to the properties of the body image. When I mean properties, I'm referring to UV waves, chemical tests, etc; any kind of anatomical analysis will be saved for another post.

Note: Supposedly Joe Nickell, infamous Shroud skeptic, has been able to manually reproduce such an image using available painting techniques (see his book), however comments alone already start to show that his claims are false (he is also not well regarded in the area of Shroud Research), though at the same time others seem to defend his claims. The problem with Nickell, though, is that he relies off of Walter McCrone's non-peer-reviewed research which has been thoroughly debunked -- but I'm getting off topic now (just remember, continue to research for yourself!).

Photographic Negative

The first thing we should notice is that the Shroud is a photographic negative. This was discovered by Secondo Pia , an amateur photographer, when he was developing pictures of the Shroud that were commissioned by the Vatican.¹ What this means is while one can see the image of a man on the Shroud, the image's lifelike qualities do not show up until one sees the negative of the image. We already need to ask: how could a painter do this when the concept of photographic negativity did not come until well after the middle ages?² If a relic-forger really wanted to stump people it would make far more sense to paint it as a positive, something that people would identify with.³

However, this alone doesn't prove anything as people did indeed believe that the Shroud was the genuine burial cloth of Christ long before Secondo's discovery. Even still, the sheer amount of detail, as we'll see more in the anatomical section, would be incredibly hard for an artist to replicate in the form of a negative, let alone both the front and the back body images as well as hundreds of years before photography.

Second Face

Another startling discovery about the Shroud is the 'second face' discovered by Fanti and Maggiolo.⁴ On the backside of the Shroud which was not able to be accessed for some time, actually contains the face of the man on the front side in a much fainter image which can be seen with “Gaussian filters, Fourier transforms and template matching”.⁵ Furthermore, the properties of the image on the back, specifically the superficiality of the image (discussed below) is exactly the same on the front's, meaning that both images were produced by the same unknown process.⁶

Superficiality

The image on the Shroud is superficial; in other words, the image only colors the top of the threads.⁷ This is opposed to paintings in where paint would seep through multiple levels of the fibers when applied⁸ Furthermore, the image-bearing fibers:

“do not penetrate the cloth, nor do they exhibit any capillarity or absorptive properties. They are more brittle than their non-image counterparts, as if whatever formed them lightly corroded them. They are uniform in coloration. They are not cemented together, neither are they ‘diffused’ as they would be if they derived from some dye or stain. They do not ‘fluoresce’ or reflect back any light. Most emphatically, they are not made by any pigment.”⁹

Furthermore, “biophysicist John Heller (d. 13 December 1995) and chemist Alan Adler (d. 11 June 2000) concluded that the body image consisted simply of prematurely-aged linen” and not of any kind of paint pigment.¹⁰ Also, wherever there was blood, the fibers lacked these very characteristics – in other words the painter would have had to put the blood on first and then paint the negative¹¹.

3D-Properties

The image also exhibits 3D-image properties when analyzed by a VP-8 Image Analyzer, a device that uses levels of white and black to make “a vertical relief”.¹² However, photographs usually do not encode this information since they only record shades of light and nothing about distance.¹³ Hence when photographs are normally put into a VP-8 image analyzer they come out “almost invariably collapsed and distorted” since “the VP-8” was not “designed or intended to produce any ‘true’ 3D display, only a semblance of it”.¹⁴ When the Shroud was put through though, a “consistent ‘true’ 3D effect was produced”, one whose very contours were visible.¹⁵ The inventor of the VP-8 Image Analyzer, Peter Schumacher, said:

“‘A “true three-dimensional image” appeared on the monitor . . . The nose ramped in relief. The facial features were contoured properly. Body shapes of the arms, legs and chest and the basic human form . . . I had never heard of the Shroud of Turin before that moment. I had no idea what I was looking at. However, the results are unlike anything I have processed through the VP-8 Image Analyzer, before or since. Only the Shroud of Turin has [ever] produced these results from a VP-8 Image Analyzer.’”¹⁶

The Painting Hypothesis

So our medieval forger now not only has produced a photographic negative without using paint, was able to create a “ghost” image that mirrored the front side of the Shroud, was able to paint both the front and the back of the man without any visible mistakes, was able to do all of this after blood had been put down on the Shroud, but he was also able to encode 3-Dimensional properties into the Shroud that are not found in other works and would not have been able to be appreciated for another 650 years.¹⁷ Furthermore, this man would have had to paint the Shroud without any signs of brush strokes¹⁸ as well as at a distance, for the man on the Shroud can only be seen when viewed from afar; up close, the image is not visible¹⁹.

The theory that the Shroud is a painting is less credulous the more we pour into the science; when the Shroud underwent it's first detailed examination by Paul Vignon, he concluded that “The impressions on the Holy Shroud are produced by chemical action, largely without absolute contact between the body and the cloth. Of this we have no doubt.”²⁰ What Vignon, an amateur artist himself, failed to find was any signs of paint²¹. Furthermore, Vignon tried making a replica himself, but found that whenever he tried to simulate the wear and tear that the Shroud had gone through, the paint would fall off, leaving his image significantly different than that of the Shroud's, let alone the vast information the Shroud contains in its image²² (more on this in later sections). Yves Delage, professor of Vignon, would go on to give his presentation on the Shroud “to the French Academy of Sciences” stating that there were no signs of paint or artistic preparation²³, and that the Shroud was the genuine Shroud of Christ.²⁴ He personally believed that the vaporograph theory was what made the image on the Shroud.²⁵

A further problem for the painting hypothesis is that linen is a tough substance to paint on, especially because it is water resistant.²⁶ To consider what we have learned thus far as well as all the anatomical information that is to come and to then say it was all painted on such a difficult substance seems highly unlikely. Furthermore, the darker colored “lines” which make up the image are roughly “1/100th the width of a human hair”, something that is impossible to have been painted by an artist manually.²⁷ There is also a lack of definite edges and an artistic style, something that we'd expect to see if the Shroud was a painting²⁸ as well as foreshortening, an artistic concept which was not used until the Renaissance.²⁹

Footnotes:
¹ Robert K. Wilcox The Truth About The Shroud of Turin, 2010. pp 3
² The concept of negativity did exist prior to the medieval ages, but it was different than today's. Cf. Izabel Piczek The Concept of Negativity Through the Ages vs. The Negative Image on the Shroud http://shroud.com/piczek3.htm
³ Wilcox pp. 11
⁴ http://www.shroudstory.com/faq-second-image.htm citing Fanti & Maggiolo 2004
⁵ Ibid
⁶ Wilcox pp. 229-230
⁷ Ian Wilson The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved, 2010. Kindle Locations 1252-1253; Evidences citing Evans 1978; Pellicori 1981, p. 4
⁸ Personal discussion with Dr. Fotios Papadimitrakopoulos, associate Director, Institute of Materials Science Professor, Chemistry at the University of Connecticut
⁹ Wilson, Kindle Locations 1253-1256
¹⁰ David Ford, The Shroud of Turin's 'Blood' Images: Blood, or Paint? A History of Science Inquiry, 2000. pp. 2 citing Jumper et al., 456; Murphy, 65; Lavoie, 58-9; Heller (1983), 200.
¹¹ Wilson, Kindle Locations 1261-1262
¹² Ibid, Kindle Locations 533-534
¹³ Ibid, Kindle Locations 534-535
¹⁴ Ibid, Kindle Locations 536-537
¹⁵ Ibid, Kindle Location 538
¹⁶ Ibid, Kindle Locations 545-550, citing Schumacher, 1999
¹⁷ Ibid, Kindle Locations 553-554
¹⁸ Fanti, G. et al, Evidences for Testing Hypotheses About the Body Image Formation of the Turin Shroud , citing Lorre 1977, pp. 9 http://shroud.com/pdfs/doclist.pdf
¹⁹ Kilmon, J., The Shroud of Turin: Genuine artifact or manufactured relic?, The Glyph, the journal of The Archaeological Institute of America, San Diego, Vol 1, No. 10 (Sept 1997); No. 11 (Dec 1977); No. 12 (March 1998). Reproduced at http://www.historian.net/shroud.htm
²⁰ Schneider, R. The Shroud of Turin: A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma – Shroud Science, Slide 12 https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AcPCQzmpKvr2ZG1xbmo4d18wZnNnbm01Zmc&hl=en&authkey=CN-wtYoL&pli=1citing The Shroud of Christ by Paul Vignon, 1902. pp. 154 English Version
²¹ Wilcox, 11
²² Ibid
²³ Schneider, R. Slide 13
²⁴ Wilcox, 28. Interestingly enough, Delage experienced a giant backlash for his conclusion and reprimanded the Academy, feeling that if it were not Christ that was in question, no one would bother to challenge his conclusion (Delage himself was not a Christian).
²⁵ Schneider,R. Slide 13. A brief explanation of this theory is on Slide 14 of the same presentation.
²⁶ Sorensen,R. Summary of Challenges to the Authenticity of the Shroud, pp.3 http://shroud.com/pdfs/sorensen2.pdf
²⁷ Ibid
www.shroud.com/piczek3.htm for the lack of artistic style
²⁸ Ibid
²⁹ Ibid, citing Is the Shroud of Turin a Painting?, www.shroud.com/piczek.htm

Update

2011-08-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

For the negative percentage of the population that have ever heard of this blog or, even more startling, read anything from it,

As one can see I've been quite absent, which is the opposite of what I promised, and for which I do apologize. Work has this nasty way of cutting into things (and a dose of lethargy never helps, either). As of recent I've moved so I could accept a job offer for the next 10 months. As such I have no plans to stop my work on the Shroud: full steam ahead, so to speak (and by 'full steam' I mean the little train who thought he could).

I also just want to remind all that this project is not aiming for academic quality: I simply do not have the time to pour that far into all the peer reviewed (and non-peer-reviewed) material. I highly suggest that if I peak your interest you continue to research the Shroud for yourself. I suggest both Ian Wilson and Rober K Wilcox's books (links below).

Expect the next part up in a matter of days.

Ian Wilson's book

Robert K. Wilcox's book

The Argument From the Shroud - The Shroud Itself (Part 1 A)

2011-06-01T07:46:00.000-07:00

Before anything else I'd just like to point out that I have gotten most of my information here (23/24ths of it) from Ian Wilson's book “The Shroud: Solving The 2000-Year-Old Mystery”. I highly recommend this book, though I add to such a recommendation that I disagree with Wilson's views on the medieval re-weave – but that's for another post.

Though it is inevitably the image on the Shroud that concerns us, the physical properties can be very telling in and of themselves. The Shroud of Turin is roughly 14.5 feet long by 3.5 feet wide and is made out of yellow linen.¹ Linen is made from the flax of Linum usitatissum which “is native to a region from the eastern Mediterranean to India”.² More importantly, linen was used greatly for clothing “in ancient Egypt...[and] the ancient classical world, including Rome and Palestine”.³ The Shroud has a “'Z' twist”, meaning that “whoever held the original spindle” in its production “rotated it clockwise”.⁴ This is significant as it rules out an ancient Egyptian origin as their linen had the reverse twist.⁵

Interestingly, the Shroud was probably once part of an even larger sheet, evidenced by a “seam that runs the Shroud's full length, just under three and a half inches below its top edge”.⁶ This assertion, made by Dr. Flury-Lemberg, is backed up by the selvedge (“the weaver-finished edging at the left and right sides of a piece of fabric as it comes off the loom”)⁷ at the top and bottom edges of the Shroud.⁸

Most exciting of Dr. Flury-Lumberg's discoveries was on the backside of the cloth at the location of the mentioned seam; the “highly unusual technical characteristics” of the seam had only been seen by her in one other set of textiles – those “found at Masada, the historic Dead Sea fortress”, which dates to the first century.⁹

The actual weave of the Shroud is a “three-to-one herringbone twill”, a very “rare and expensive...work”, one characterized “of a highly skilled professional” if made before the Industrial Revolution.¹⁰ We know that such a weave was used in pre-medieval times from silk weaves found in Syria, Holborough, “Trier, Conthey, Riveauville and Cologne”.¹¹ However, there has not been a medieval parallel of such a weave.¹² More parallels with a “three-to-one twill” date even closer to Christ's time with the discovery of textiles at the “Roman fort of Krokodilo.”¹³ The textiles there have been dated between 100 and 120 C.E.¹⁴

Some of the damage on the Shroud also indicates how it has been folded in the past; one comes from a series of “'triple-burn-hole' fire damage” marks that are repeated on the Shroud four times.¹⁵ This set of burn-marks are mirror images of one another when the Shroud is folded in four.¹⁶

Another set of marks are those of water stains which many had assumed were there from when the Shroud caught fire in 1532.¹⁷ What is significant is that a second set of earlier water stains were identified by Dr. Flury-Lumber and “Italian photographer Aldo Gurreschi” independently.¹⁸ These marks do not correlate to the 1532 fire damage as the folding pattern is different.¹⁹ Nor do they correlate to the previously described burn-holes as there was no attempt to extinguish the flames that made those holes.²⁰ The only found way for these marks to have been formed is when the Shroud is folded in an “accordion-type folding arrangement”²¹, a style found in antiquity such as the liber linteus.²² The water stains were replicated when Gurreschi placed a cloth folded in this fashion into a replica of the jar the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in.²³ It was then replicated again in 2004 for a documentary using the same method.²⁴

Obviously we can't over-state our case here at this point. Thus far it seems very likely though that the Shroud was constructed in a time closer to, and possibly in, the time of Christ compared to the medieval era. This alone of course doesn't prove anything as a forger could have simply used a cloth preserved from this time period. However, as we will see in the next section, the idea of a forgery is going to become a lot harder to accept.

There is one very significant thing about this though; if the cloth can only be identified with ancient techniques, then this suggests (not disproves) that something with the carbon dating went wrong.

¹ Robert K. Wilcox, The Truth About The Shroud of Turin, pp. 2
² Ian Wilson, The Shroud: Solving The 2000-Year-Old Mystery, Kindle Location 1451
³ Ibid, 1452
⁴ Ibid, 1454
⁵ Ibid, 1455
⁶ Ibid, 1469-1470
⁷ Ibid, 5904-5905
⁸ Ibid, 1470
⁹ Ibid, 1488-1489
¹⁰ Ibid, 1512-1515
¹¹ Ibid, 1531-1534
¹² Ibid, 1526
¹³ Ibid, 1535-1538 citing from Sheffer and Granger-Taylor, 1994
¹⁴ Ibid, 1539-1540 citing from Sheffer and Granger-Taylor, 1994
¹⁵ Ibid, 1596-1603
¹⁶ Ibid, 1603-1604
¹⁷ Ibid, 1606-1609
¹⁸ Ibid, 1609-1611 citing Flury-Lemberg, 2003, pp.42–7
¹⁹ Ibid, 1611
²⁰ Ibid, 1611-1612
²¹ Ibid, 1612-1614
²² Ibid, 1626-1627 citing Soric, A. Rendic-Miocevic et al, Katalog Pisati Etruscanski, Muzej MTM Zagreb, 1986
²³ Ibid, 1632-1635
²⁴ Ibid, 1643-1644 citing Secrets of The Dead IV: The Shroud of Christ which aired on PBS in the U.S.A.

The Argument From The Shroud - Introduction

2011-05-31T17:24:00.000-07:00

I still remember the moment when I finally admitted to myself that I was now a Christian. Standing in the shower around midnight I was pouring over all the facts I had remembered that weekend. The mysterious image, the corona discharge theory, the empty tomb, etc. As I stood there I finally had the courage to come to two conclusions that in years past I thought I may never utter:

“So, you really believe that the Resurrection is the only way to explain all this?”
“Yes, I do.”
“So, then you're a Christian now.”
“I guess I am.”

I finished my shower and for the first time of my life I made the sign of the cross (right to left, mind you).

The purpose of this blog series is to make a case for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ via the Shroud of Turin. Ideally, if I get into academia, I'd like to turn this into a full blown book. However, for the sake of the blog here I'm going to be much more reserved.

A note: this argument needs one assumption to get off the ground: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ could be a possible explanation for what happened Eastern morning in the year 33 C.E. Since I have always considered the christian worldview to possibly be true a priori, I ask that those who wish to know why I converted also hold to this possibility as well. On a side note, I can say with past experience as both an atheist and a misotheist that God is not, emphatically not, the tyrant that so many make Him out to be¹, so this, in my view, should not prevent one from conversion if (and I doubt this if) they end up being convinced by my argument.

The ease of my conversion came from my alacrity to know and study all things Eastern Orthodox as it seemed to be an anomaly from everything I had previously known about Christianity (which, admittedly, was little). By no means did my approbation for Orthodoxy (it single-handedly stopped my hatred for God and Christianity) make me convert – a lie, no matter how beautiful, is still a lie.

The moments leading up to conversion are arduous and erratic; one certainly does not want to be capricious in such an exigent decision (as you may be able to tell, I'm currently studying for the GRE). However, once one takes the first step off the cliff and finds that the air beneath them has firmness, and that the conclusion is not as inured as one might think (quite the opposite, actually) life becomes a lot easier (and harder). But for me, I had to know that I would not plummit once I stepped off, or at least have good reason why to not think so. I knew that there would be no way that I could have all my questions answered ahead of time. Christians, believe it or not, do struggle with the problem of evil, or how God acts in the Old Testament. Yes, Job can be quite a tough read. The laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are harsh, and furthermore we know that despite this it was the same God who said “whosoever shall smite thee on they right cheek, turn to him the other also"² and “thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them."³ We are also painfully aware of the fragmented state of Christendom – St. Paul himself, though, said this would happen.⁴

It is in the face of these doubts and worries that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."⁵ It is faith – trust in the God of Abraham, a communal relation with the Holy Trinity – that sustains us. But this is not the faith that people usually fulminate against. That is more akin to epistemological belief – not trust. To St. Paul this kind of faith was a given: “for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal God head."⁶

It is thus here that the famous Shroud of Turin comes in. I personally believe (with reason, of course) that the Shroud is the burial shroud of Jesus Christ and that when it is put into the context of Easter morning 33 C.E. it heavily supports the hypothesis that Jesus Christ did indeed rise from the dead. Thus, in this argument, I will hope to show this process of thought.

The series of posts will be as such:

Part 1 will be a description of the Shroud, noting many of the particular characteristics of the image as well as the cloth. It is in this part that I will argue that the man on the Shroud, regardless of fact or forgery, depicts Jesus Christ. It is also throughout this first part that I'll address forgery theories and why all of them fail.

Part 2 will be a historical reconstruction of the Shroud's history, noting its probable time line from present to the empty tomb. It is also here that I'll address the carbon dating issue that has plagued the Shroud.

Part 3 will be an examination of many popular theories for explaining the empty tomb and see how they match up with the data we have on the Shroud, and then make the claim that the Resurrection best accounts for all this data. I'm assuming most skeptics come in with a binary view of Christianity – it is either true or it is not. There is no 'middle-ground' where Jesus was Resurrected by some other means. Either way, I'll still cover this line of though (albeit briefly).

I'm not under any delusions; I'm sure most people will walk away away either unconvinced or have too much apathy towards the subject to care. Still, as long as I show that one can indeed rationally believe in the Resurrection and thus Christianity, then it's something. And who knows, maybe I'll even convince a mind or two.

Or maybe not.

By the way, two good books on the Shroud of Turin are Robert K. Wilcox's "The Truth About The Shroud of Turin: Solving The Mystery" and Ian Wilson's "The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved" (although I personally disagree with the latter's assessment of the re-weave theory)

¹ I, for my self, blame this largely on Reformed theology, especially Calvinism, as well as just bad explanations by those preaching from the pulpit
² Matthew 5:39
³ Deuteronomy 7:2
⁴ 1 Corinthians 11:9
⁵ Hebrews 11:1
⁶ Romans 1:20 -- found at bible.cc

NOTE: All versions used either the KJV or the NKJV and were found on either http://bible.cc/ or http://www.biblegateway.com/

New Project

2011-04-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

Hello my 1 to 2 readers,

This summer I'm going to be composing and writing a work on the resurrection of Jesus Christ with the added features of the Shroud of Turin. This obviously is going to postpone or even end any work I was doing on the Ever Virginity of the Theotokos, but inter-Christian debates have been largely uninteresting to me as of late. Though I want the full work to be of scholarly quality, the stuff I'll be posting here will be condensed versions (or maybe not). Expect more updates from now on as I do intend to actually use this blog.

Filioque

2011-03-22T00:15:00.001-07:00

An old, yet very interesting, article on the filioque here

Shroud Science

2011-03-07T00:02:00.001-08:00

Those who know me know that my conversion to Christianity came because of my personal research into the Shroud of Turin. As such, the Shroud means a lot to me as it has allowed me to stay firm in my belief in rough times -- times where I may have otherwise gone back to being a non-theist. A website here deals with some basic science on the Shroud. I haven't read the entire presentation yet, but from what I've read thus far it all seems familiar and valid.

The Biblical Doctrine of Salvation

2011-03-02T07:35:00.000-08:00

An excellent mammoth of a post by Seraphim can be found over at Orthodox Apologetics dealing with the Orthodox view of salvation versus the (Reformed) Protestant view. His explanation of Romans 9 is simply incredible.

The Language of Ecumenism

2011-01-27T12:45:00.000-08:00

"Once the Communists came to power, they skillfully used the means of seduction toward the Church. The language of love and the language of seduction are the same. The one who wishes a girl for a wife and the one who wishes her for only a night both say the words, 'I love you'. Jesus has told us to discern between the language of seduction and the language of love, and to know the wolves clad in sheepskin from the real sheep. Unfortunately, when the Communists came to power, thousands of priests, pastors, and ministers did not know how to discern between the two voices."

- Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured For Christ, p. 15

The Eastern Orthodox Conception of Heaven and Hell

2011-01-18T09:08:00.001-08:00

Before I was a Christian I read this article while exploring Orthodoxy, and as of practically everything in Orthodoxy, it made a lot of sense compared to what I grew up hearing.

http://aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html

Some links on the Theotokos

2011-01-17T08:35:00.000-08:00

While I have full intentions of finishing my paper on the Theotokos, I realize that I'm not even close to being qualified to talk about such a subject, especially in the depth that is required. As such, I'm posting some links to some lectures/articles dealing with Mary from an Orthodox perspective. Note that I haven't fully read or listened to all of these, so I cannot guarantee the content of all of them. Seraphim's (Kabane52) post is something that I've read though, and Fr. Thomas Hopko is probably one of the best theologians that American Orthodoxy has produced. Also note that some of them use some polemical language.

Who is the Theotokos by Fr. Thomas Hopko

Mary According to the Bible by Seraphim

The Orthodox Veneration of Mary the Birthgiver of God by Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco

A Response to Sarah's Article

2011-01-17T07:37:00.000-08:00

This note is a response to the article Sarah posted called: Biblical Issues Regarding Fornication (Singles Sexuality). In the article, the author contests from a few linguistic studies and un-cited (and usually wrong) historical information that the teaching that most Christians have is not supported by the bible but is just the interpretation of the Church (her seeming to mean the Roman Catholic church). I know the main point of this is to respond to the sexuality issue, but I want to clarify something about the Church before we begin that always bothers me when people get it wrong.

The author begins by saying “True Biblical theology begins not with Church tradition and dogma but with the biblical texts themselves”, something that just strikes me as inane. In the early Church there was no established New Testament, and there wouldn't be for about another 300 years. It was the Tradition and theology of the Church that was used to determine what would be canonical and what would not. This obviously is an entirely different conversation, but it always irks me when people are quick to dismiss the Church (not suggesting that you guys are, but the author of this article seems to) when they don't understand the full history (this author might, but some of the strawmen shown here inclines me to think otherwise). It just amazes me that the author wants to find the context in which the early Church was writing, but doesn't mention Polycarp, Ignatius or Clement.

Linguistic Arguments

Anyway, let's begin with the few linguistic arguments that the author brings up. The first passage at hands is I Corinthians 6:9.

"Do you not know the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites"

The author points out that the word for 'fornicators' is porneia. The first problem is minor: the word is actually pornoi (πόρνοι ) (1) which is the “Nominative Plural Masculine” form of pornos (πόρνος ) which roughly means “a male prostitute” (2). The word pornoi also occurs in Revelation 22:15 (3):

“But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie”.

Here the words 'sexually immoral' is translated from pornoi. Here's my point with all this: even if I grant the use of pornoi in I Corinthians 6:9 as referring to the sexual idolatry regarding the temple of Athena found in Corinth, why does the word all of a sudden always carry that very connotation when used in all passages? Surely St. John wasn't referring to only temple prostitution in Revelation 22:15 as there is nothing at a quick glance that would lead me to believe so. In fact all the different tenses of pornos seems to refer to a general sexual immorality, both in St. Paul's letters and in Revelation (4, 5, 6). So when the author refers to I Corinthians 7:8-9 and says that St. Paul is only talking about fornication with temple prostitutes, their exegesis seems to be incredibly off. Also, in I Corinthians 6:9 St. Paul mentions idolaters as those who are not allowed into the Kingdom of Heaven. If the real sin of sleeping with the temple prostitutes was idolatry and not sex, then why even mention the fact that the sin was sexual, why bother to single it out? I guess the author could say that it was because it was also prostitution as well as idolatry, and that it wasn't the fact that the person had sex outside of marriage, but because they paid for the sex and did it with idolatrous connotations rather than connotations of love. Because, even though St. Paul condemns prostitution, the author only takes it to mean sex without love. It seems to be too far-fetched for me, given the wide use of the Greek words to begin with.

The author uses Galatians 5:19-23 to try and show how porneia (πορνεία ) only means prostitution. Porneia does have relation to a “selling off” (7) of some kind, but also has wider connotations (8). But even if it was restricted in this case to prostitution, this doesn't mean that all of a sudden sex outside of marriage is alright.

A few more comments before I move on. Firstly, the author at one point puts Jesus against the law of the OT, telling us that “It seems that if we apply Jesus' teaching of love over legalism, responsible Christian sexuality is much more an example of Christ's loving desire for us than the traditional biblical values of many wives, concubines as breeders, and capturing women in battle for soldiers' sexual pleasure!” The irony, of course, is that it is the Word of God who speaks in the Old Testament, and that Christ came to fulfill the law and not to destroy it.

The point of Biblical Marriage

The fundamental problem with the author's article though lies in their incorrect view on marriage in the New Testament. Real quickly we see this misunderstanding as the author says “Marriage is certainly not needed today since birth control is available and many feel they can be more effective without the legal burden of marriage. Marriage had to do with ownership not love. I can't imagine anyone getting married who hasn't first lived together many years!”. The idea that NT marriage had to do with ownership and not love is incorrect, and blatantly so. One only needs to read St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, which is recited at every first Eastern Orthodox marriage:

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become on flesh”. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.”

Notice, firstly, that the relationship here is monogamous. There's no indication that the polygamy in the OT carried over into the NT, and as far as I can tell from the writing of the Apostolic Fathers thus far, there's been no indication of polygamy. Secondly, love. Love is the binding force in marriage, a love that resembles Christ and His Church; both the OT and the NT used marriage language to indicate God's relationship with His chosen people, the Old and the New Israel. For the author to say that “Marriage is certainly not needed today” not only undermines the sacrament of marriage, but undermines the entire relationship between God and His Church.

Understanding that a husband and his wife become “one flesh”, something that has been established ever since Adam and Eve, it seems – regardless of the multiple connotations of pornoi – that premarital can't be holy. All actions Christians are supposed to do are meant to Glorify God and bring us closer to Christ. Sex itself is a representation of Christ taking His Bride, the Church. As such, how can one merge with a flesh outside of marriage, and still glorify Christ? How can one take a false Church, become one flesh with it, and truly say that they represented Christ taking His Bride? This is related to why St. Paul says in his First Letter to the Corinthians:

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.”

As Fr. Alexander Schmemann points out in “For The Life Of The World” (which I suggest everyone to read, regardless if they are Orthodox or not) that marriage is “not to be blessed and 'solemnized' – after a rehersal and with the help of the photographer – but restored. This restoration, furthermore, is in Christ...” (82). To somehow merge into one flesh outside of marriage and think that it is totally acceptable is against everything that St. Paul teaches us in his epistle, based on marriage alone. This obviously is not going to be the best reply, but I think it is sufficient enough for now.

1 - http://biblos.com/1_corinthians/6-9.htm
2 - http://strongsnumbers.com/greek/4205.htm
3 - http://concordance.biblos.com/pornoi.htm
4 - http://concordance.biblos.com/pornois.htm
5 - http://concordance.biblos.com/pornos.htm
6 - http://concordance.biblos.com/pornous.htm
7 - http://strongsnumbers.com/greek/4202.htm
8 - http://concordance.biblos.com/porneia.htm
9 - “For The Life Of The World” by Alexander Schmemann, page 82. Copyright 1963
10 - All biblical quotes from The Orthodox Study bible: New Testament and Psalms. NKJV

A Defense of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary Part I

2011-01-17T07:30:00.000-08:00

I want to note that before you begin reading that this is the first of probably many notes I'll be writing on this subject. A particularly good blogpost can be found in the references by Seraphim who I am thankful for personally messaging me some information when I asked him. I'm purposely trying to avoid polemics and harsh language as you are all my friends and are Christians.

God Bless you all,

- Nick

A Defense of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary Part I

As the celebration of the Nativity of our Lord approaches, a topic that had never really given me concern before began to arise in some of my conversations: the ever-virginity of Mary. Now, I know that those of my friends tagged in this note that, for a lack of a better word, are Protestant, probably don't see this as an issue one way or another. However, I'm writing this to explain why the Orthodox Church believes that Mary indeed was an ever-virgin and why that matters. This short defense will primarily be referencing Scripture as I know using the Holy Tradition would bring in a plethora of other questions. Also, being short, this is by no means a full defense of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary and will only cover basic ideas.

Matthew 1:25

The Theotokos (Greek for 'god bearer') has been a controversial figure ever since the Protestant reformation as Roman Catholics were accused of worshiping Mary. Though early reformers such as John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli affirmed the perpetual virginity of Mary (1), the dogma eventually came to be questioned and rejected by many other Protestants. The first key verse that is usually brought up to support this claim is in Matthew 1:25:

“and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son.”

The first word in question is “till”, as it seems to imply that after Christ was born Mary would go on to have sexual relations with Joseph (1). However, this is merely an issue of translation; the word “till” in Koine Greek is ἕως ὅς, the transliteration being heós hos (2). The word heós in Greek means “till, until” and functions as a primary particle (3). The word hos is a primary pronoun that makes a reference as to what the primary particle is affecting (4). The word heós is used multiple times throughout the New Testament, and while meaning until, it implies that the action will go beyond the stated event (5). For instance, in Matthew 28:20, our Lord says:

“and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age”

Note that where it says “even” it is again heós (6). Yet, we don't believe that at the end of the age Christ will not be with us, for He is with us unto ages of ages, for all eternity as He reigns in the Kingdom of Heaven (7). The same word is also used in the Greek Septuagint (Genesis 8:7; Deuteronomy 34:6; II Kings 6:23) and has the same meaning, that the event at hand will continue on afterward (8). Hence the linguistic argument of the word “till” in Matthew 1:25 cannot be used to show that Mary had sexual relations after her marriage. In fact, if we follow the logic of the word heós as seen in the other passages, this seems to be evidence for the ever-virginity of Mary.

The second word in question is “firstborn”, which in Greek is πρωτότοκος, prototokos (9, 10). The word again has a very different connotation in Greek than it does in English; whenever we use the word firstborn in English, we usually imply that more children came after (11). However, in Greek the word does not necessarily carry the same implication (11). Prototokos was often used in the Greek Septuagint in order to show the authority of a figure (12). In Psalm 89:27, the passage reads:

“'Also I will make him My firstborn'”

This passage would make little sense in the way prototokos is used referring simply to birth order. Instead it was used to assert the power of the coming Messiah (13). Thus I've hopefully shown that the linguistic argument in Matthew 1:25 doesn't work due to translations.

The Holy Innocents

One argument that I have heard comes, again, in the book of St. Matthew. When Herod learns of the betrayal of the three wise men, he orders for the death of all male children the age of 2 or under in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:13-16). The argument given is that if Joseph's children were from a previous marriage, why is the Scripture silent of them on their trip to Egypt? The answer is simple enough; assuming that Christ's brothers and sisters are indeed older than him, then they were probably old enough so that Herod's orders wouldn't affect them. Hence one can assume that the children weren't taken since they could remain at a relatives, giving Mary and Joseph more maneuverability while going to Egypt (having that many kids with you is only going to slow you down that much more).

The Brothers and Sisters of Christ

Another common argument given against the perpetual virginity of Mary is the mentioning of the Lord's brothers and sisters in verses such as Matthew 12:46 and Mark 6:3 (14):

“While He was still talking to the multitudes, behold, His mother and brothers stood outside, seeking to speak with Him”
“'Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?'”

The problem here is obvious: if Jesus Christ had brothers, then how could Mary be an ever-virgin (15)? However, the bible uses the word brother in far more ways than a only literal blood-brother (15). For instance, Genesis 12:5 says:

“So Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's son and all their possessions and every soul they acquired in Haran, and they departed for the land of Canaan. Thus they came to the land of Canaan.”

The word translated for “his brother's” is the word אָח, whose (16) transliteration is “ach” (17). Now in Genesis 13:8 (18) we read:

“So Abram said to Lot, 'Let there be no strife between you and me, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen; for we are bretheren.”

The word for “are bretheren” is again ach (19). Hence we see that the Hebrew word in the OT used for brother can have multiple meanings and is not only subjected to a literal brother (20). This is again seen in Genesis 29:12 and 1 Chronicles 23:22 (21). Now, the Greek Septuagint translates this word as ἀδελφός , adelphos (22), which means brother in either a literal or figurative fashion (23). This same word is used in Matthew 12:46 for the word “brothers” (24) and Mark 6:3 for the word “brother” (25). However, as I explained, this word has more than just the literal meaning for brother, so it could very well mean step-brother (the position of the Orthodox Church) (26).We even see a similar use of language in the gospel of St. Luke when St. Joseph is referred to as Jesus' father in Luke 2:48:

“So when they saw Him, they were amazed; and His mother said to Him, “Son, why have You done this to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously.”

Obviously St. Joseph is not the actual father of Jesus, for He is the only-begotten Son of the Father, the head of the Holy Trinity (27).

This brings me into my next point: let's grant for the sake of the argument that brothers and sisters of Christ were indeed born by the Virgin Mary. The biggest problem comes in the end of St. John the Theologian's gospel (28). John 19:26-27 says:

“When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing by, He said to His mother, 'Woman, behold your son!'”

The customs of the time required that the eldest son take care of his mother if the husband died (9). Yet here Jesus is delegating the task to St. John, something that would be against the law if he shared the same mother with His brothers and sisters (30). However, this behavior makes complete sense if He was the only Son of Mary as it would be His duty to find a caretaker for His mother before His death (31). Seeing as Christ cannot break the law because he came “to fulfill” the law (Matthew 5:17), it makes more sense to have the reading that Christ's brothers and sisters were of Joseph's previous marriage.

Ending Thoughts

Such a discussion is by no means complete, though I hope I've shared a few things here. I'll probably be updating this paper over time: particularly I'd like to give more examples of prototokos. I'd like to go over typology as well as words within prophecies to further back up the ever-virginity of the Theotokos, but as of the current moment I think I'll wait until after Christmas. I also want to eventually touch on the theology of the matter, why her virginity is so important -- but that is something that I myself still need to research.

Footnotes
1 - http://www.eastern-orthodoxy.com/Mary_files/Mary.htm
2 - http://biblos.com/matthew/1-25.htm
3 - http://strongsnumbers.com/greek/2193.htm
4 - http://strongsnumbers.com/greek/3739.htm
5 - http://www.eastern-orthodoxy.com/Mary_files/Mary.htm
6 - http://www.eastern-orthodoxy.com/Mary_files/Mary.htm
7 - http://orthodox-apologetics.blogspot.com/2010/07/mary-according-to-bible.html
8 - The Orthodox Study Bible: Ancient Christianity Speaks to Today's World
9 - http://www.eastern-orthodoxy.com/Mary_files/Mary.htm
10 - http://biblos.com/matthew/1-25.htm
11 - http://www.eastern-orthodoxy.com/Mary_files/Mary.htm
12 - http://www.caic.org.au/jws/theology/col1_15.htm
13 - ibid
14 - http://www.eastern-orthodoxy.com/Mary_files/Mary.htm
15 - ibid
16 - http://biblos.com/genesis/12-5.htm
17- http://strongsnumbers.com/hebrew/251.htm
18 - http://www.eastern-orthodoxy.com/Mary_files/Mary.htm
19 - http://biblos.com/genesis/13-8.htm
20 - http://www.eastern-orthodoxy.com/Mary_files/Mary.htm
21 – ibid
22 - http://apostolic.interlinearbible.org/genesis/12.htm
23 - http://strongsnumbers.com/greek/80.htm
24 - http://biblos.com/matthew/12-46.htm
25 - http://biblos.com/mark/6-3.htm
26 - http://www.eastern-orthodoxy.com/Mary_files/Mary.htm
27 - http://orthodox-apologetics.blogspot.com/2010/07/mary-according-to-bible.html
28 - http://www.eastern-orthodoxy.com/Mary_files/Mary.htm
29 – ibid
30 – ibid
31 - http://orthodox-apologetics.blogspot.com/2010/07/mary-according-to-bible.html

Introduction

2011-01-17T07:27:00.000-08:00

Hello,

I guess just a few words about this blog. 1) I'm going to try and not use it for my personal musings, as it'll inevitably lead me to pride. 2) This blog will deal mostly with religious reflections, specifically Eastern Orthodox Christianity. I'll be posting, I believe, a great deal here instead of spamming my facebook with notes. The reference of facebook also means this will be generally a private blog as I'm not even going to claim that I know enough to be a learned talker on such matters. If you want that, go to Energetic Processions or Pious Fabrications.