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To: Swordmaker

These quotes are a blind alley.
579- that refers to the gospel account, and it’s a stretch to see this as referring to anything other than the ancient equivalent of seeing a bed with the imprints of someone recently there still present.

The fallacious “Pope Stephen” quote. Quoting from an excerpt of a book published by Ian Wilson that’s searchable on the net: “For instance, interpolated sometime before 1130 into the text of a sermon attributed to the eighth-century Pope Stephen III was the following remark concerning the `holy face’ of Edessa: `For this same mediator between God and men, in order that in all things and in every way he might satisfy this king [i.e. Abgar] spread out his entire body on a linen cloth that was white as snow. On this cloth, marvellous as it is to see or even hear such a thing, the glorious image of the Lord’s face, and the length of his entire and most noble body, has been divinely transferred ... [italics mine].’” That’s in reference to the Abgar legend, and according to “Stephen” it was done by the living Christ in answer to a request by Abgar for an image, and hence could not possibly refer to the Shroud of Turin with its dead Jesus.

I just read the Gregory sermon and the image it describes was clearly only of a face, supposedly created while he wept in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Of what very little I could find on this, Codex Vossianus Latinus Q69 is supposedly describing a cloth given by Christ to King Abgar, at least according to a citation of the original book in Wikipedia, in which case it obviously relates to the false “Pope Stephen” quote of a cloth the living Christ sent to Abgar. I do not understand why the pro-Shroud sites are so circumspect about this.

The Hymn of the Pearl is irrelevant, and while I’m on the subject, a positing of a 1st century date for it is very fringe.

We’re again left with the 14th century French bishop, who was clear that the Shroud of Turin had no past beyond a few decades — not to mention there being an identifiable maker who admitted doing the job.


280 posted on 02/28/2008 5:30:33 PM PST by SpringheelJack
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To: SpringheelJack
The fallacious “Pope Stephen” quote. Quoting from an excerpt of a book published by Ian Wilson that’s searchable on the net: “For instance, interpolated sometime before 1130 into the text of a sermon attributed to the eighth-century Pope Stephen III was the following remark concerning the `holy face’ of Edessa: `For this same mediator between God and men, in order that in all things and in every way he might satisfy this king [i.e. Abgar] spread out his entire body on a linen cloth that was white as snow. On this cloth, marvellous as it is to see or even hear such a thing, the glorious image of the Lord’s face, and the length of his entire and most noble body, has been divinely transferred ... [italics mine].’” That’s in reference to the Abgar legend, and according to “Stephen” it was done by the living Christ in answer to a request by Abgar for an image, and hence could not possibly refer to the Shroud of Turin with its dead Jesus.

I see... so sometime before 1130 AD, some prescient nobody inserted the phrases into the 8th Century sermon... somebody who KNEW that in 1260 to 1390 AD, an anonymous hoaxer would make a fake shroud with near miraculous secret processes and added a description of it to an much older obscure document so that it could be found in the 20th Century to provide bona fides to the 14th Century fraud. Right.

Spring, the Agbar legend is just that... a legend that has several varied forms that have developed over the years. Like many legends, it may have some kernels of truth but at this late date it is impossible to determine which version is closer to that truth. Why do you think an 8th Century Pope would have the absolute truth of what he may or may not have been talking about....

What is certain, if we are to believe Ian Wilson (and he is not infallible and has retracted some of his statements when further research proved his conclusions wrong), is that someone BEFORE 1130, i.e., more than 130 years before the earliest possible C14 date (1260AD) for the creation of the Shroud, was describing a cloth with a full length image on it... not just a face.

I also find it amusing you criticized someone for apparently using Wikipedia as an authoritative source and you are doing the same thing...

284 posted on 02/28/2008 7:46:10 PM PST by Swordmaker (We can fix this, but you're gonna need a butter knife, a roll of duct tape, and a car battery.)
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To: SpringheelJack; grey_whiskers
I just read the Gregory sermon and the image it describes was clearly only of a face, supposedly created while he wept in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Just the face? I don't think so.

"For these are the beauties that have made up the true imprint23 of Christ, since after the drops fell, it was embellished by drops from his own side. Both are highly instructive – blood and water there, here sweat and image. Oh equality of happenings, since both have their origin in the same person. The source of living water can be seen and it gives us water, showing us that the origin of the image made by sweat is in fact of the same nature as the origin of that which makes the liquid flow from the side."
Which "side" is that, Jack? The one below the eye? No, it's pretty obvious that Gregory is describing a body... not a face.

By the way, it's also pretty obvious why you didn't link to the original page where you found Ian Wilson's writings... it must be because the entire page contains many more earlier literary references to a full body IMAGE on the Image of Edessa at the time the Shroud was added to the inventory in Constantinople and the Image of mysteriously Edessa dropped.

Just one example:

". . . a comparatively humble knight from Picardy in France, Robert de Clari who, as a member of the Fourth Crusade in 1203, toured Constantinople as a guest after having helped depose the Byzantine usurper Alexius III. Goggle-eyed at the wonders he saw around him, out-dazzling anything in western Europe, de Clari wrote an account of it, a History of those who Conquered Constantinople, which survives in a single manuscript in the Royal Library, Copenhagen. In this he noted: `... about the other marvels that are there [in Constantinople] ... there was another church called My Lady St Mary of Blachernae, where there was the shroud [sydoines] in which [lit. where] Our Lord had been wrapped, which every Friday raised itself upright, so that one could see the figure of Our Lord on it [lit. there] ... above].' Particularly in the light of the shroud carbon dating, for us this is one of the most crucial documents of any we have considered. Writing in the third person, Robert de Clari insisted `he may not have recounted in as fair a fashion as many a good author would have done, yet he always told the strict truth,' and there is nothing in his book to suggest otherwise. Authoritatively and unequivocally he tells us that as early as 1203 there existed in Constantinople a shroud with an imprint of Christ's body - thus corresponding in all essential features to the one that carbon dating and Bishop d'Arcis would have us believe was so cunningly forged in France a century and a half later." (Wilson, I., "Holy Faces, Secret Places: The Quest for Jesus' True Likeness," Doubleday: London, 1991, pp.155-156)

287 posted on 02/28/2008 9:59:04 PM PST by Swordmaker (We can fix this, but you're gonna need a butter knife, a roll of duct tape, and a car battery.)
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