Posted on 02/12/2005 11:59:27 AM PST by NYer
Rome, Feb. 11, 2005 (CNA) - Forensic scientists in Italy are working on a different kind of investigation—one that dates back 2000 years.
In an astounding announcement, the scientists think they may have re-created an image of Jesus Christ when He was a 12-year old boy.
Using the Shroud of Turin, a centuries-old linen cloth, which many believe bears the face of the crucified Christ, the investigators first created a computer-modeled, composite picture of the Christ’s face.
Dr. Carlo Bui, one of the scientists said that, “the face of the man on the shroud is the face of a suffering man. He has a deeply ruined nose. It was certainly struck."
Then, using techniques usually reserved for investigating missing persons, they back dated the image to create the closest thing many will ever see to a photograph of the young Christ.
“Without a doubt, the eyes... That is, the deepness of the eyes, the central part of the face in its complexity”, said forensic scientist Andrea Amore, one of the chief investigators who made the discovery.
The shroud itself, a 14-foot long by 3.5-foot wide woven cloth believed by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus, is receiving renewed attention lately.
A Los Alamos, New Mexico scientist has recently cast grave doubt that the carbon dating originally used to date the shroud was valid. This would suggest that the shroud may in fact be 2000 years old after all, placing it precisely in the period of Christ’s crucifixion.
And what origin for the belief of one achieving Heaven/Nirvana through belief/pure thought/actions, etc.?
I would say that nmh's argument is a valid point but one which other posters have shown the correct way, far, far, better than I have. I would also note that what he's said about people eventually worshipping the graven images is also correct -- no matter what the intention, the temptation to worship this images in place of God is always there. I would note that the Church does not in itself pray to the images
Again, Math, if you do not mind me asking: which church do you belong to that would promote such beliefs?
Simple? So is Exodus 25, which flatly commands the creation of graven images atop the holiest object in the Jewish religion. So is 1 Kgs 7:25, which describes the bronze sea in Solomon's temple, which sat on 12 graven images of oxen. So is 1 Kgs 6:23-29, which describes the graven images of cherubim which Solomon placed within the sanctuary. So is 1 Kgs 10:19-20, which describes the graven images of lions on either side of Solomon's throne.
Do you want me to go on? The Jews have never understood the first commandment to be a blanket prohibition on the making of all images, not in a religious context, or in any other context, either. They understand it to be a prohibition of the making of images of false gods, which it is, and a prohibition on the making of images of the true God ... which it isn't, for Christians, because Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God for us (Colossians 1:15).
As our Greek friend explained above, the Muslim-inspired heresy of iconoclasm was crushed by the second council of Nicaea over 1000 years ago. Since then as before, Christians use sacred images.
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Correct, Nicaea II had nothing to do with it.
It was three councils around the year AD 400, in Hippo, Rome, and Carthage. I fail to see how that gets you off the hook.
Furthermore, the task of the council was not to imprimatur the New Testament, but to distinguish it from forgeries--a purely forensic task.
This is simply ahistorical nonsense. There were a number of quite worthwhile and nice books read as Scripture in the early Church -- the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle of Pope St. Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas, etc.
They weren't "forgeries" at all, and it wasn't a merely "forensic" decision to determine that they were to be left out of the canon. And it wasn't a merely "forensic" decision to decide to include other books that were controversial, like Revelation.
The implication that the Church therefore supercedes scripture is absurd, although perfectly orthodox Catholic teaching.
Maybe you should let Catholics teach "perfectly orthodox Catholic teaching," and not try to tell us what we believe, hmm? The Church certainly doesn't "supercede" Scripture, she obeys it. But she also, historically, recognized what was Scripture and what wasn't.
Meanwhile, no decision of any pope or council is of any interest to me, least of all the decision to condemn sola scriptura as a heresy.
Sola scriptura, not being found in the Bible, condemns itself as heresy.
That's flatly untrue. In fact there were translations of the Scriptures into many languages, including English and its ancestors, long before 1582. Their possession was not "forbidden," either.
Vernacular bibles were hard to get, though, because books were expensive prior to printing and a Latin Bible would be salable to a much wider audience than any Bible in a vernacular dialect.
The reading of Scripture in the vernacular was frowned upon in England at the time of the Reformation, but England was not the whole church.
Of course! He was a 6'4" Aryan adonis! There could be no doubt of his divinity as he walked the streets of Jerusalem surrounded by those squat, swarthy, smelly middle-east types. It must have looked like John Wayne leading the montagnards in the Green Berets!
There is a second piece of cloth that bears the same blood as the Shroud of Turin.
It has been at Oviedo, in Spain, and documented to have arrived there in the 6th Century.
The two pieces of cloth exist, and they both bear the same blood.
Few have heard of the Oviedo Cloth, but it is as real as the Shroud of Turin, and it is something of a "clincher", since it definitely predates the medieval period, and has the same man's blood on it as the Shroud.
"Josephus Flavious (spelling) said something similar about Jesus - not attractive."
Josephus Flavianus makes no comment on Jesus of Nazareth's appearance whatsoever. None. He only mentions Jesus once in his writings, and writes more about James, Jesus' brother, than about Jesus.
The Council of Nicaea did not fix the canon of the Bible.
Obviously I know his work... and it failed peer review. His work on the shroud has NEVER passed peer review and in fact his findings have been completely discredited by others with much more expertise than his, using much more descerning equipment.
McCrone, an optical light microscopist, claims to find elements that pyrolysis mass spectrography cannot find.
Which to believe... a guy who say, "Gee, that looks like it might be Red Ocher (Iron Oxide) paint" when he looks at a microscope image, something no one else but he sees, and whose results are only published in his own personal vanity press? Should I believe a man who admitted that his identification of iron-oxide was based on neither chemical testing nor physics -based testing but conisted simply of looking through his microscope and seeing particles that seemed to have the appearance and crystalline characteristics of iron-oxide? Should I believe a man who looked at those samples he had THROUGH THE STICKY TAPE THEY WERE ATTACHED TO and thereby introduced error in his conclusions claiming things that were not there when the samples were removed from the sticky tape???
Or should I believe the results produced by a sophisticated piece of equipment, operated by one of the world's renowned experts in the field, capable of finding compounds down almost to the molecular level, who reports that although there is some Iron Oxide, that it is randomly distributed over the entire shroud and never in sufficient quantities to be visible? Should I mention THIS work was peer reviewed and published in a legitimate scientific journal? Yeah, I think I should.
Gee, should I believe a guy who says "There is no blood on the Shroud and that the blood stains are painted on using vermillion, a compound of Mercury"? A guy who, at various times claimed that the blood images are: 1) simply iron oxide particles, 2) simply "post-1800s iron oxide particles, 3) iron oxide particles derived from the earth and available for tens of thousands of years, all in a prteinaceous medium, i.e. liquid earthy iron-oxide paint , and 4) liquid earth iron-oxide paint and liquid mercury-sulfide (HgS) paint.
Or should I go back to other tests, say the pyrolysis mass spectrometer tests, much more discriminating that what can be seen through a light microscope, that show that what vermillion (HgS) exists on the shroud is again, random, insufficient to be visible, and not associated with the blood stains. Or should I instead take the testimony of chemist Dr. Alan Adler and biophysisicst Dr. John Heller, experts on blood and blood fractions, who state categorically, again in peer reviewed scientific Journals that the blood stains consist of hemoglobin. Aside from light microscopy, Heller and Adler also tested for hemochromagen (positive), cyanmethemoglovin (positive), bile pigment bilirubin (positive), and proteolytic enzymes (positive), human specific protein albumin (positive), presence of serum halos around stains (positive), and immunilogical determination that the blood is of primate origin. Perhaps I should use Yale University's Dr. Joseph Gall's secrtophotometer tests that should the blood absorbing light in 410 nanometer... a test that he states is "specific" for blood as "nothing in nature that absorbs light at four hundred ten nanometers that strongly". Or perhaps we should accept the word of Dr. Bruce Cameron, whose "double doctorate is dedicated to hemoglobin in all its many forms", who on reviewing the test results stated "You both should know what it is. It's old acid methemoglobin."
Perhaps we should look at McCrone's non-cooperation with other scientists investigating the Shroud? When instructed to provide sticky tape slides with "blood" on them to J. Heller, months later, after repeated requests, McCrone finally sent four slides with ONE (1) microscopic dot he claimed might be blood... circled and commented with "Good Luck!" Adler and Heller were forced to spend months working with a spot so small that it was difficult to see under a microscope. Later after the researcher in charge finally went to McCrone's business and retrieved the other samples, it was discovered that McCrone had apparently deliberately sent bad samples because he had in his possession threads that were literally red with blood. How about the fact that McCrone refused for over a year to allow his OWN COLLEGUES and EMPLOYEES in his business to conduct electron microscope studies? He even admits this:
"By January 1980 [i.e., by about 1 year after receiving Shroud slides], O had prepared two technical papers for publication.... Only then, did I allow the electron optics group at McCrone Associates to examine the "Shroud" fibers and tapes. I prevented them from doing this earlier because I )selfishly) wished to see polarized light microscopy solve the "Shroud" problem without assistance."
Or perhaps his refusal to allow peer-review of his work... all showing a "scientist" who did not use the scientific principles who may have known his work would not stand up to peer-review.
Now, should we believe a microscopist who claims the Shroud was PAINTED when we now know what the image is composed of... and the image exists on a coating that is 1/100 thinner than a human hair! It is NOT paint of any kind, and certainly not the "dilute iron-oxide solution in albumin" that McCrone claims to have seen.
I suggest, that YOU don't know Walter C. McCrone.
I take their admonishment for what it is worth... a warning from someone concerned with the status of my soul. Although I disagree with their concern, I appreciate it.
It would be nice if people DID read the latest research and realize their points have long since been refuted. It is one of the reasons I keep the Shroud Ping list... to help educate people of what HAS been learned both on the authenticity and hoax sides of the discussion.
I don't think that the shroud qualifies as a 'graven image'.....and I'm not even properly a Christian.
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