But I did NOT misrepresent your arguments. I said -- correctly, accurately and truthfully -- that you have carefully selected your data, and that most studies of the Shroud image's height show a wider range -- up to 6'2".
Your response here defending your careful selections is 100% appropriate. Your criticism of me for "misrepresenting" you is not, pal.
swordmaker: "Your conclusion of 6'2" from Piczek is from the EXTREME top of the range of possibility and is extrapolated from her "give or take 1 inch" for linen stretch and shrinking" to her estimated range"
The following is quoted from Isabel Piczek:
"To my knowledge, in Shroud studies only three researchers addressed the question with solid authority:"In the early 1960's, Professor Lorenzo Ferri studied at length and in depth the question of the height of the Man of the Shroud. He spent decades with these studies and created, with special permission of the Vatican, a full size statue of the Shroud which is very correct. He has been quoted as saying that "The body of Christ could not have been fully stretched out in burial." And again, "The measuring of the body (by scientific methods) did not allow for the body being in a slightly hunched position."
Professor Ferri held that the man of the Shroud was 6'1" to 6'2". Professor Ferri looked at this problem from the structural-sculptural point of view.
"Dr. Robert Bucklin, M.D., spoke on television and elsewhere about the height of the Man of the Shroud. He gave his opinion as a medical expert, not as a forensic pathologist. He judged the man to be 5'11½".
"The third person to study this problem with authority is myself...."
So, by my count, this makes six who have in one form or another "studied" the question of the shroud's height:
For whatever it's worth, the average of these numbers is around 5'11.5".
swordmaker: "The evidence is overwhelming that Jews of the 1st Century were NOT 5.4" tall which you were arguing then, which I refuted with evidence... and which you again were arguing again without proof yesterday, even though I had presented the facts last April that refuted that as untrue."
Let me suggest to you that this is very important question, going right to the heart of much modern scholarship. My hobby, my "thing" if you will, is history and have several books here (authors: Sanders, Borg, Yancy, Crossan) addressing the question: historically speaking, who was Jesus?
The answer, in short, might be summarized by the phrase "marginal Jew," meaning someone from outside the "mainstream" of 1st century Jewish culture (a man from Galillee) and also marginal economically. For example, the word usually translated "carpenter" actually means anyone involved in construction -- from day laborer to contractor.
Now, life today is tough enough for those who live at the margins economically. In ancient times it was literally a daily struggle for existence. For such people, the question of "our daily bread" was a matter of life and death. So, did Jesus the man live this life, or did he somehow look down on it from above?
Many modern scholars suggest that Jesus lived the marginal life, which means that he did not always receive his "daily bread," which further suggests that whatever the "average" height of ancient Jews may or may not have been, Jesus would fall at the lower end of the range.
Therefore, if we see evidence that Jesus was not only average in height, but above average, it raises questions about: just how economically "marginal" Jesus' early life really was?
A relatively tall, robust & strong Jesus makes sense in terms of someone who could be imagined by his contemporaries as a "King of the Jews." But it also suggests that Jesus' early life may not have been quite as marginalized as some of our modern scholars have concluded.
swordmaker: "You presented as truth, as though a 5'10" Jew from the 1st Century were somehow an impossibility, making the case that man on the Shroud could not be from that area, despite being presented with the scientific facts before. That shows willful intent to ignore the evidence in favor of untruth."
You misread my words.
I have not challenged your report of "...5 foot 9 3/10±1 inch... average height that a recent survey of male skeletons found to be the case in data from the excavations collected from all 1st Century Palestinian Jewish cemetery Ossuaries..." -- even though I haven't yet google-found the confirming data.
What I have argued is:
swordmaker: "you even posted that clownish picture from Popular Mechanics that was shot down by Anthropologists when it was first published as proof claiming the short stature."
Not as "proof," but as evidence that not everyone agrees with you, pal. The question I addressed by that "clownish picture" is: what did a typical 1st century Semite look like? It allows us then to compare all the various images of Jesus and ask, how likely is this image correct?
Of course, I am no artist, but it seems to me that any artist worth his or her salt could easily take that "clownish picture" and convert it into one which looks as heroic or saintly as you might like. The important point would be to retain its "Semetic appearance." The question then remains: does the Shroud image look more Semitic or is it as "Curto ...describes the physiognomy as more Iranian than Semitic." ".
Are you willing to argue that an Iranian - Persian - Indo-European - "Aryan" Jesus is even possible? I'm not.
Yes, I have "carefully selected" my arguments. I selected them to only include those based on science.
Science works by building on and improving what has done before, or by falsifying and superseding the work that went before it. It does not work by finding a consensus and averaging previous erroneous opinions.
In this instance accurate data was collected and falsified the previous hypotheses and superseded their conclusions. The conclusions of previous researchers should therefore be discarded and no longer be considered as having any value in the discussion, unless you can show a legitimate reason to do so.
You seem to think that all arguments should be given equal weight and keep including such conclusions as those of Picknett and Prince (1994) for example along with truly qualified conclusions... and then average their conclusions with the others. Science does not work that way... by consensus. Even Isobel's work was not "science."
Professor Lorenzo Ferri is a professor of ART, a sculptor... not a scientist. He was engaged by the Vatican to created a three dimensional lifesize representation of the image on the Shroud based on his impressions from observations and photographs. His c.1960s conclusion of the height of the figure is subjective and not definitive and is based on measurement estimates from previous work done by Gedda, which I have already addressed. Art is interpretive, and is not based on exact measurements.
I have attended conferences where the late Dr. Robert Bucklin, M.D. (1916-2001), presented papers on the forensic examinations of the Shroud... and the amusing thing is that when he spoke about the height of the man on the Shroud he quoted Isobel Piczek's figures of 5' 10" to 5' 11 1/2" for the height... making her quotation of his estimate quite circular!
Bucklin was a stickler for accuracy in his work and reporting. At the time he made those comments, that was the best data available. If Bucklin had actually done a "study" of the subject, he would have said so and spoken AS an expert in his field of Forensic Pathology on which he usually was speaking when he was talking about the Shroud, giving data on how he came to that conclusion. That the height was not part of the forensics which he addressed, as she mentions in her citation, speaks volumes that it was not part of an actual study he did. Needless to say, Dr. Bucklin's comments predated the work of Fanti, Marinelli, et al, and do not represent the current knowledge on the subject, which I am sure he would have acknowledged in his talks had he lived to be aware of them or been well enough to speak at conferences in the two years after Fanti did their research and published their definitive findings in 1999.
Finally, since Gedda, only Fanti, Marinelli, et al, have published a scientific paper that is capable of replication and testing, that is objective, with a clear explanation of their methods and demonstrations of their approach, and their work can be duplicated by other scientists to see if their conclusions are reasonable. It has been tested by peer-review and undergone scrutiny... something the others have not. So far, it has not been falsified, as have Piczek's, Gedda's, Picknett's and Prince's idiotic 6'8", and many others who have really not done much more than look and estimate from eyeball.
As to the "marginal" Jew's skeletons... are you maintaining that they were NOT buried? What happened to them? Did they just melt away, dissolve to dust, leaving only the tallest, best fed examples? I doubt it. Were their separate cemeteries for poor Jews throughout Israel for poor Jews that have somehow gone undiscovered while only the well fed Jews cemeteries have been discovered? With the Talmud being quoted as saying that the ideal height for a male Jew is 4 ells (176 cm — 5' 9.3"), even 6 feet is just within one sigma of normal height distribution with that as the mean.
Of course, I am no artist, but it seems to me that any artist worth his or her salt could easily take that "clownish picture" and convert it into one which looks as heroic or saintly as you might like. The important point would be to retain its "Semetic appearance." The question then remains: does the Shroud image look more Semitic or is it as "Curto ...describes the physiognomy as more Iranian than Semitic." ".
Are you willing to argue that an Iranian - Persian - Indo-European - "Aryan" Jesus is even possible? I'm not.
Whow, you certainly do like to latch onto outlying data points to use to argue your points, don't you?
. Curto is such an outlying datum... one commented that the image looks more Iranian that Semitic... and you impute to me the willing to argue that Jesus is "Aryan?" Good Grief. Are you assuming a purity of breed to the Jews of Israel of the First Century, or do you admit the possibility that the blood lines might, just might, have been mixed down through the ages through sojourns in Egypt, Canaan, Babylon, and a few wanderings in the Wildernesses... and the visits of the milkman while Moishe was out tending the flocks?