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Forensic Scientists reveal what Jesus may have looked like as a 12-year old
Catholic News Agency ^ | February 12, 2005

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: christ; christchild; forensic; godsgravesglyphs; holycrap; jesus; medievalhoax; pantocrator; science; shroud; shroudofturin; sudariumofoviedo; veronicaveil; wrongforum
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To: Mathemagician; Kolokotronis
Show me the passage that says God is one being with three personae.

"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." - 1 John 5:7

"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." - Matthew 28:19

Is the Bible the "pillar of truth" in the Christian religion?  No.  According to the Bible Itself, the Church is the "pillar of truth" (1 Timothy 3:15), not the Bible. 

Is private interpretation of the Bible condoned in the Bible Itself?  No, it is not (2 Peter 1:20).  Was individual interpretation of Scripture practiced by the early Christians or the Jews?  Again, No (Acts 8:29-35).  The assertion that individuals can correctly interpret Scripture is false.  Even the "founder" of Sola Scriptura (Martin Luther), near the end of his life, was afraid that "any milkmaid who could read" would found a new Christian denomination based on his or her "interpretation" of the Bible.  Luther opened a "Pandora's Box" when he insisted that the Bible could be interpreted by individuals and that It is the sole authority of Christianity.  Why do we have over 20,000 different non-Catholic Christian denominations?  The reason is individuals' "different" interpretations of the Bible.

Is the Bible to be taken literally - "word for word?"  No.  The Bible doesn't state anywhere that It should be taken literally.  The Bible was written by different authors with different literary styles at different times in history and in different languages.  Therefore, the writings should be interpreted with these circumstances in mind.

Did Jesus Christ write down any part of the New Testament with His own hand?  No, He did not.  If the Bible was to be the sole authority of the Church, shouldn't the Founder have written down His Own teachings?  Shouldn't He have at least stated something similar to the following:  "the written works of My disciples will be the authority upon which My Church is based?"

Did Jesus Christ with His own mouth instruct any of His disciples to "write down" any of His teachings?  No.  With the exception of the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) by St. John the Apostle, Jesus Christ gives no such instructions to any of His disciples or Apostles.  In fact, only the Apostles Peter, John, James, Jude and Matthew were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write Scripture.  Why were the other seven not inspired of the Holy Spirit to "write" if the "written" Word of God is the only authority to be followed in the Christian religion?

Like Kolokotronis, I too am off to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. Please ponder some of these questions.

221 posted on 02/13/2005 6:53:09 AM PST by NYer ("The Eastern Churches are the Treasures of the Catholic Church" - Pope John XXIII)
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To: Cronos; All
[I to am using the Catholic Encyclopaedia as source}
I find Arianism, this particular "chapter" quite interesting. I would like to request a continuence while I gather my thoughts on the matter. I do personally believe one of the major difficulties as the church was being organized was the translations between Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Egyptian and Farsi.
The drift of all he advanced was this: to deny that in any true sense God could have a Son; as Mohammed tersely said afterwards, "God neither begets, nor is He begotten" (Koran, 112).Such is the genuine doctrine of Arius.
I do believe there is some proverb about a finding a truffle once in a while. To extrapolate a linkage between Arianism and Islam based upon a verse would be akin to some future historian finding congruence between revolutionaries in 2091 and French revolutionaries based upon the motto of "Liberte, Egalitie, Fraternite". It's a false comparison. More will follow.
With respect,
onc
222 posted on 02/13/2005 9:21:51 AM PST by olde north church (Powerful is the hand that holds the keys to Heaven.)
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To: olde north church

Bear in mind while reading and thinking on this apparent connection between Mohammedanism and Arianism that Mohammed was influenced by all kinds of people, Jews and Christians primarily and the Christians were almost all Arians or Nestorians.


223 posted on 02/13/2005 10:35:05 AM PST by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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To: Kolokotronis; All
Bear in mind while reading and thinking on this apparent connection between Mohammedanism and Arianism that Mohammed was influenced by all kinds of people, Jews and Christians primarily and the Christians were almost all Arians or Nestorians.
I wasn't trying to make any connection between the two. I was saying exactly the opposite, there is no linkage between the two. Please go back and reread my connected posts.
224 posted on 02/13/2005 11:04:26 AM PST by olde north church (Powerful is the hand that holds the keys to Heaven.)
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To: olde north church

Oh, I understand. That's why I suggested you look at the known religious influences on Mohammed.


225 posted on 02/13/2005 11:08:01 AM PST by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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To: Kolokotronis
My Greek great-grandmother would too; she was convinced that Christ was a Greek boy on His mother's side! :)

Strange, I have a relative who is convinced He was Irish with red hair! :^)

226 posted on 02/13/2005 11:19:54 AM PST by Swordmaker (Tagline now open, please ring bell.)
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To: lupie
God's Truth always wins out in the end.

Couldn't agree with you more... we'll find out directly from the source.

227 posted on 02/13/2005 11:21:12 AM PST by Swordmaker (Tagline now open, please ring bell.)
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To: NYer

Very good. I've almost come to believe your argument since encountering so many "experts" on the Bible with so many different ideas of what it is saying. Very frustrating to say the least.


228 posted on 02/13/2005 11:30:48 AM PST by WVNan
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To: Swordmaker

She might be my Irish great grandmother who believed the same thing! :)


229 posted on 02/13/2005 11:38:04 AM PST by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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To: NYer; Kolokotronis; Cronos
Excellent post NYer! Thank you.

Mathemagician, God is a Being. That being has Wisdom, Word and Spirit. That much is obvious. They are all Divine separate but interconnected entities of one Being we call God. These are His Energies, through Which He has made Himself known to us; His essence remains unknown and incomprehensible. God made us (and only us humans) in His Image: mind, word and soul. Just as they are creative Expressions of one Being, God, your mind, word and your soul are expressions of you -- one being.

You trust only the Bible? Which Bible? And where does it say in the Bible that only the Bible should be trusted? Show me!

230 posted on 02/13/2005 1:46:30 PM PST by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: NYer; Mathemagician; kosta50

Bravo, NYer!


231 posted on 02/13/2005 1:49:10 PM PST by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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Comment #232 Removed by Moderator

To: WVNan; NYer

"Very good. I've almost come to believe your argument since encountering so many "experts" on the Bible with so many different ideas of what it is saying. Very frustrating to say the least."

Well, that's why in the Roman West and especially in the Orthodox East we have relied so heavily on the Holy Tradition or "what the Church has always and everywhere believed". Interpretation of the Sacred Scripture is the province of The Church, which is infallible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, not, at least for Orthodoxy, any individual believer, be he Pope, Patriarch, Bishop, priest, preacher or the guy down the street at the local C-store.


233 posted on 02/13/2005 1:57:52 PM PST by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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Comment #234 Removed by Moderator

To: Mathemagician

"I reply that you shouldn't be looking for someone to tell you what to think; you should be reading the Bible for yourself. It's much harder. It's much less comforting. But it's the only responsible way to approach such an important matter."

I'm not infallible. The Church is. In such an important matter I want to be right.


235 posted on 02/13/2005 6:23:07 PM PST by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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To: Mathemagician; WVNan; kosta50; Cronos
I reply that you shouldn't be looking for someone to tell you what to think; you should be reading the Bible for yourself. It's much harder.

Reading Holy Scripture is an excellent exercise and should be practiced daily. In my Maronite Catholic Church, when the priest has finished reading the Gospel, he elevates the Bible and proclaims - "This is the Truth!"

The problem resides in personal interpretations which, as I have already pointed out, result in conflicting understandings and hence, discordance amongst christians. All of this has been done for you, based on texts written in their original format - Koine Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, etc. Why reinvent the wheel?

Christ established one Church with one set of beliefs (Eph. 4:4–5). He did not establish numerous churches with contradictory beliefs. To see which is the true Church, we must look for the one that has an unbroken historical link to the Church of the New Testament. Catholics are able to show such a link. They trace their leaders, the bishops, back through time, bishop by bishop, all the way to the apostles, and they show that the pope is the lineal successor to Peter, who was the first bishop of Rome. The same thing is true of Catholic beliefs and practices. Take any one you wish, and you can trace it back. This is just what John Henry Newman did in his book An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

He looked at Christian beliefs through the ages. Starting with the nineteenth century (he was writing in 1844), he worked backward century by century, seeing if Catholic beliefs existing at any particular time could be traced to beliefs existing a century before. Back and back he went, until he got to New Testament times. What he demonstrated is that there is a real continuity of beliefs, that the Catholic Church has existed from day one of Church history, that it is in fact the Church established by Christ.

Newman was not a Catholic when he started the book, but his research convinced him of the truth of the Catholic faith, and as the book was finished he converted.

The Bible also tells us that private interpretation is not to be the rule for understanding the Bible. Peter declares this to be a matter of prime importance, saying, "First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation" (2 Pet. 1:20). Later he warns what can happen if a person ignorantly approaches Scripture on his own or is unstable in clinging to the apostolic teachings he has received. He states of Paul’s letters, "There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures" (2 Pet. 3:16). Private interpretation and instability in clinging to the doctrines passed down from the apostles can thus result in one twisting the scriptures to one’s own destruction.

The Bible also denies that it is sufficient as the Church’s rule of faith. Paul acknowledges that much Christian teaching is to be found in the tradition which is handed down by word of mouth (1 Cor. 11:2, 2 Tim. 2:2). He instructs us to "stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter" (2 Thess. 2:15). We are told that the first Christians "devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching" (Acts 2:42), which was the oral teaching that was given even before the New Testament was written.

236 posted on 02/13/2005 7:01:00 PM PST by NYer ("The Eastern Churches are the Treasures of the Catholic Church" - Pope John XXIII)
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To: Mathemagician; Kolokotronis; NYer
I reply that you shouldn't be looking for someone to tell you what to think

The Church is a collective knowledge of the faith that was passed on to the Apostles and then on to their successors.

The faith did not get "better" as the time progressed. The whole purpose of Ecumenical Councils and Church Fathers, to this day, is to safeguard the perfect faith handed down by our Lord Jesus Christ from getting a "makeover" according to how each person feels, lest we lose what the original looked like.

Just because everyone can read physics doesn't mean everyone will understand it. It is the ultimate arrogance of human pride to say that we should not look for someone to tell us what to think. No one is trying to tell you what to think, but how to think. And, by yourself, you have no way of knowing if what you think is what you should be thinking. The Bible is not the sole source of knowledge of the faith, but a part of the collective knowledge known as the Holy Tradition. The Bible and the Holy Tradition are not in conflict but in concert.

You must understand that until fairly recently, the Bible was not available to the general population, and then it wasn't afordable for a long time. You also must understand that there are diozens of versions of the "Bible" and that various translations and combinations are part of corruptable human tradition.

That in itself makes it clear that sola scriptura was a physical impossibility until recent days and that to say that only the Bible is a valid reference (which one?) is to say that almost 2,000 years of Christianity was in apsotasy. Talk about arrogance, never mind being unable to prove such an assertion by any means.

237 posted on 02/13/2005 7:07:59 PM PST by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: NYer; Mathemagician; WVNan; Kolokotronis; Cronos

I am glad you are posting these verses, because -- while well known -- they are rotuinely bypassed at Protestant sermons.


238 posted on 02/13/2005 7:11:32 PM PST by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: NYer

Bravo again NYer!


239 posted on 02/13/2005 7:15:05 PM PST by Kolokotronis (Nuke the Cube!)
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To: Swordmaker

I never saw this thread. Thanks!


240 posted on 02/13/2005 8:59:33 PM PST by Vets_Husband_and_Wife
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