Posted on 04/05/2009 12:20:47 PM PDT by BuckeyeTexan
Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated The Holy Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said today in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic’s missing years.
The Knights Templar, an order which was suppressed and disbanded for alleged heresy, took care of the linen cloth, which bears the image of a man with a beard, long hair and the wounds of crucifixion, according to Vatican researchers.
The Shroud, which is kept in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral, has long been revered as the shroud in which Jesus was buried, although the image only appeared clearly in 1898 when a photographer developed a negative.
Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican Secret Archives, said the Shroud had disappeared in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and did not surface again until the middle of the fourteenth century. Writing in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, Dr Frale said its fate in those years had always puzzled historians.
However her study of the trial of the Knights Templar had brought to light a document in which Arnaut Sabbatier, a young Frenchman who entered the order in 1287, testified that as part of his initiation he was taken to “a secret place to which only the brothers of the Temple had access”. There he was shown “a long linen cloth on which was impressed the figure of a man” and instructed to venerate the image by kissing its feet three times.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
That's right. Pilgrims deposited money with them in Europe, and then withdrew it when they reached the holy land.
Why didn’t you just google it?
Wpin, I think you are confusing me with Joe. You are addressing this comment to Swordmaker. I am NOT ignorant of history. The upper classes did indeed eat excellently in almost every period... unlike the peasantry... they got the largess of the land. They had diets that were varied and replete with proteins in meats and vegetables and carbohydrates. Depending on the area, often even the peasants ate well.
My point about Knights being short was that the research was based on measuring the ARMOR... which was a red herring... because the armor they were measuring was not armor for adult knights. The point being that before one can make conclusions, one better be sure the data one is using is adequate to make the conclusion. Joe's is not.
I am sorry, it had been a couple of days and I lost track...but I disagree with you on the diet of the knights...it was not always “excellent”, knights were not at a level of a king or queen, nor not necessarily the upper echelons of royalty who were relatively immune to famine. In any event, there were periods of severe famine that were regional...these caused different heights during the same time period for different regions. The variance would make an “average” hardly meaningful when trying to extrapolate that to “proving” the Shroud of Turin is a fake.
I am not at this time arguing the armor issue you brought up. I will perhaps later after I have spoken with my son who is a historian/archaeologist who specializes in the medieval era. I do wonder where you got your information regarding the “discovery” that the smaller armor was youth armor rather than for smaller adult individuals. Armor was very expensive in relative terms, not something one would dabble in. I would think youth would be much more likely to wear leather and/or chainmail or woven armor.
I confess to not understanding that we don't really know what were the "average heights" of various peoples at different historical times. I had "assumed" we do know those things, and that if we read somewhere that, for instance, knights averaged six feet and peasants about five feet, one group was this tall, other groups that tall -- that all this is known and easily referenced.
Turns out, from what I can find, that's not really true. Yes, different numbers are floating around, but they turn out to be based on nothing much.
But both logic and experience still tell us that children who grow up mal-nourished don't grow as tall as their well-fed neighbors.
And even something as simple as the height of the Shroud image cannot be universally agreed on by the so-called experts. The reports range from 5 ft 7 inches to 6 ft 1 inch.
So my argument here has NEVER been that the Shroud image's height necessarily makes it a fake. What I AM arguing is that if the Shroud image is relatively tall, compared to Jesus "average" contemporaries, that means he must have grown up in relatively priveleged circumstances.
Perhaps the boy-Jesus was not such a "marginal Jew" after all?
That is one possibility. A carpenter would have been a skilled tradesman, building houses, tables, chairs, cabinets, trading his skills for profit. With the title of carpenter, he would not be a mere laborer or a subsistence farmer. If anything, a skilled worker could be a member of the middle class.
I used to collect edged weaponry (actually, I still have a bit) and read well on the subject of arms and armor. Adult armor was generally used through out the adult's lifetime and was added to, repaired, replaced, etc., but seldom retired to a place of display. Not so armor that was outgrown. At worst, outgrown armor was handed down to a younger brother... but it would still be retained in its entirety, not scrapped and melted down as was the worn out armor of a well used lifetime of an older man that had seen numerous battles.
The relatively unscathed training armor of a cadet was more suitable for display and was retained. The old, often mis-matched, scarred armor of the elders was sent to the armory for either use as replacement parts or to be smelted down and remade... but only the Armor of Kings was likely to be retained for display... and the armor of the cadets that could be handed down but could also be displayed because it matched and was not scarred.
One of the strange thing noted among collectors was the dichotomy of the length of the surviving fighting swords and the size of the display armor... with their swords... they didn't match. The fighting swords were longer, man sized, while the display swords and armor were more aptly sized for teenage boys. The question arose why rusted swords found on battlefields and swords kept in racks in armories were longer than those found on display with a lot of complete sets of armor... this is one logical answer that seems to be true.
Years ago I read the word "carpenter" is mis-translated, and have been searching for something to confirm that. Here is the best I've found:
"Today I found out Jesus wasn’t really a carpenter, at least not as we understand the profession.
"Now obviously eventually Jesus’s chosen profession was of a “Rabbi” or teacher, so in that sense he wasn’t a carpenter regardless of translation. However, in his early years it is supposed from Mark 6:2-3 that he was, like his step-father, a “carpenter” as commonly translated.
"However, the chosen translation from the Greek word “tecton” to mean “carpenter” is a bit of a mis-translation. In fact, “tecton” (in Mark) or “tekton” (in Mathew) is more aptly translated into a word describing a “contractor”; specifically, contracting as a “builder” or “handyman”. Not necessarily having anything to do with wood in most of the jobs he likely took.
"He was basically a “Mr. Fix it”. You had something that needed mended/fixed, designed, or built and he was the guy to call.
"And note, this isn’t just referring to small jobs such as repairing a leaky roof or the like, though this type of thing would have likely been a part of what he did when bigger business was slow; but it also refers to such things as designing and building bridges, stone temples, etc. So perhaps by today’s notion of the profession, he’d more likely be called an “engineer".
Again, I say the question is: which end of the scale were Joseph & Jesus? Were they just some itinerant part-time handy-men, and Jesus a part-time teacher; or were they at the top end of their trade: the more prosperous builder--contractor--engineer?
If the Shroud image is considered authentic, and its height determined as at or "above average" for its time and place, then that suggests a rather prosperous upbringing -- as a minimum, there was steady work and good pay.
Historically speaking, such steady work on large projects was easily there to be had, of course, about an hour's walk from Nazareth, in Sepphoris. My point in all this is: does it make sense to consider Joseph & Jesus to be major contractors for the tetrarch of Galilee & Perea, Harod Antipas?
I thought I answered this question the last time you asked it, in post #222:
BroJoeK from #224: "To my knowledge, no DNA analysis has been attempted or is even possible on the Shroud image.
"If it were, we would expect ordinary human DNA, since both the Bible and Christian theology insist that Jesus was fully human."
I'm sure you know that from the beginning, orthodox Christian theology (as contrasted to, say, Arianism or Gnosticism) has always insisted that Jesus was not only fully divine, but also fully human. Therefore, if it were even possible to extract original DNA from the Shroud (which it most surely is NOT), then we would fully expect to find there fully human DNA.
Do you disagree?
I have continued to search for data regarding expected heights of ancient peoples, with some interesting results from several perspectives:
Heros are tall.
Six feet tall is considered "a giant of a man among the ancients."
Saul was selected because "he was a head taller than any of the others."
The Mayan king was six feet tall.
The six foot pharaoh was "a giant among ancient Egyptians."
A tall man is assumed to be "the ruler."
The Roman Emperor was "tall of stature."
An Egyptian woman of five feet tall.
Again, six foot tall considered aristocracy.
So, how tall is the Shroud image? The answers from supposed "experts" range all over the board. To understand just why, we're probably not going to find better explanations than those of Giulio Fanti°, Emanuela Marinelli & Alessandro Cagnazzo from 1999:
"Till now, the studies carried out have been based on more or less subjective hypotheses admitted also in consequence of the thesis that the various authors tried to show: some researchers favourable to the authenticity of the Shroud are inclined to provide the lowest values for the height, while those who are anti-authenticity are inclined to provide the highest values."The authors who believe the Shroud is false claim that the Man of the Shroud, about 1.80 m height [that's 5 ft 11 inches], was a giant compared to his contemporaries and therefore it wouldn’t have been necessary for Judas to give him the famous kiss to point him out in the group.
"However from recent excavations made in Rishòn Letziòn [2] it is evident that many Canaanitic men were very tall: many of them reach 1.75 m." [that's 5 ft 9 inches]
Fanti et al arrive at a Shroud image height of about 5 ft 9 inches. That's at the lower end of most "experts'" results, but still 4 inches taller than Fanti's reported "average" for all middle-easterners (5 ft 5 inches).
And careful reading of the Fanti report shows they "assumed away" at least six inches of the Shroud image's height. Naturally they say these are 100% reasonable, even testable assumptions. But they are assumptions none-the-less. Reasonable people could easily "assume away" less of the Shroud image's apparent height. That would leave us with an figure closer to the 6 feet that most other "experts" concluded.
Like other studies mentioned in other publications, the one at Rishòn Letziòn claiming "many Canaanitic men were very tall: many of them reach 1.75 m [5 ft 9 inches]," is not readily available for review & confirmation.
In summary:
Unusual height was recognized in the ancient world as an attribute of royalty. Six feet tall was considered a "kingly" height. And to reduce the Shroud image height below six feet requires certain assumptions which are not accepted by all "experts" on the subject.
So where does the New Testament tell us that Jesus was considered "kingly"? Only two places: All four gospels report Pilot's question and Jesus' answer, with two gospels mentioning Pilot's cross-sign saying, "This is the King of the Jews."
The only other place follows the feeding of the 5,000 in John 6:15: "Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself."
Remember, this is a crowd of ordinary people, whom we might reasonably assume would not even consider "mak[ing] him king by force," if Jesus did not, like Saul before him, in some sense "look the part."
In short: rather than being an argument against the Shroud's authenticity, a six foot tall image may suggest to us why the ancient authorities considered Jesus such a threat to them. It also suggests, of course, that some of our modern biblical scholars might be a bit off target.
“Pilot” = Pontius Pilate of course! Sorry.
Your knowledge is limited, then.
On the shroud image no it has not been because the image is not made of human residue, but on the blood stains it absolutely has been attempted.
DNA analysis has been attempted but the strands are so contaminated and broken that it has been unsuccessful to date. A lot of work on the blood was accomplished in the 1990s by some of the world's top experts on blood and its derivatives. Anyone who claims there is no blood on the shroud is ignoring the peer reviewed science and going with outdated, non-peer reviewed work that was done using techniques that just didn't work with blood that was so old. Over three dozen tests for blood, hemoglobin, Human antibodies, and primate antibodies have proved that the blood is blood and further more that it is human blood.
It is amusing to see Joe Nickell, a noted "scientist" with a degree in English Literature, and a failed stage magician, claim that world class experts in human blood and blood derivatives, including Dr. Bruce Cameron, whose double doctorate is specialized in Hemoglobins and its derivative, don't know what they are talking about when they say it's blood and try to tell them they are really looking at Red Ochre paint. Absurd.
Brain on automatic "Pilate"?
The root source of this information is a November 1998 B.A.R. article by Walter C. McCrone in which he says:
"Nearly 20 years ago the Catholic Church invited me to determine chemically what the image is on the Shroud of Turin."I obtained 32 samples from the shroud: 18 from areas where there are images (both of a body and of bloodstains) and 14 from non-image areas (some from clear areas that served as controls, others from scorch and water stains caused by a fire in 1532). The samples were taken with squares of sticky tape, each of which exceeded a square inch in area and held more than 1,000 linen fibers and any materials attached to the shroud.
"They were excellent samples. I used standard forensic tests to check for blood. I found none. There is no blood on the shroud.
"To determine what substances are present in the shroud images, I conducted tests based on polarized light microscopy. I identified the substance of the body-and-blood images as the paint pigment red ochre, in a collagen tempera medium. The blood image areas consist of another pigment, vermilion, in addition to red ochre and tempera. These paints were in common use during the Middle Ages."
So McCrone in 1998 is talking about tests he conducted in the late 1970s or early '80s. It would be interesting to learn how and why McCrone's tests were in error.
McCrone refused to submit his findings to peer-review, pubished his work only in his own vanity self-published in-house magazine The Microscopist actively attempted to prevent other scientists from having access to the samples. He is not an expert on blood, he is a chemical microscopist who based his findings on optical observation only. His work has NEVER been duplicated by any other scientist working with much more sophisticated equipment and has been falsified many times over by that more sophisticated equipment. . . including employees at his own McCrone Research Associates using Scanning Electron Microscopy which found no sign of the natural Red Ochre that McCrone claimed he saw in his optical Microscope.
His "standard forensic tests to check for blood" often will not work on blood that is even as old as twenty or thirty years old, according to many forensic pathologists, so why would you or McCrone expect them to work on 2,000 or even 700 year old blood? Unless you can get it to solubilize, the tests will not work and blood that old is VERY hard to solubilize... as Drs, Alder, Cameron, and Heller, who are experts on blood will tell you, and who have succeeded in solubilizing it AND performing definitive tests that prove that it is, indeed, blood that non-expert McCrone, a microscopist, who has his one optical microscope tool at his disposal was incompetent to use.
In science, it is usual, customary, and totally appropriate to toss out findings that have been falsified by later findings and/or failure to be replicated by peers. If it cannot be shown again, or a test cannot be shown to be repeatable, then it is likely NOT TRUE. McCrone's claim of Red Ochre and Vermilion paint in a 10% solution of Egg Albumin Tempura matrix is just such a claim... both non-replicated and falsified by previous and later findings. Ergo, it must be tossed out... and has been. It belongs in the dust bin of other scientific ejecta as flogiston, phrenology, and global warming. A list of McCrone's failures due to his allowing his atheistic biases to get in the way of his science:
1> McCrone's findings were never peer-reviewed because he refused to submit them for peer-review.
2> McCrone broke his signed agreement with the Shroud of Turin Research Project to submit his findings for peer-review before publication.
3> McCrone broke his contract to publish only in approved peer-reviewed scientific Journals by publishing without approval in his in-house vanity magazine, The Microscopist, edited and published by Walter C. McCrone, claiming it was peer-reviewed by McCrone Associate employees
4> McCrone's findings were never replicated by any other researcher. No other microscopist, either optical, or electron, has found the Red Ochre or Vermilion associated with the blood stains that McCrone claims is present. The evidence is that McCrone saw what he WANTED to see, not what was there.
5> McCrone's findings have been falsified numerous times, by numerous scientists, more qualified than McCrone, working IN THEIR FIELDS, with work that has been replicated, and confirmed by independent testing with different approaches using different tests.
6> Even McCrone changed his story so many times it had become a running joke among Shroud researchers as to what type of Iron Oxide McCrone was claiming he saw on the Shroud this year.
7> McCrone refused even his employees permission to see, or test the samples in his possession with more sophisticated equipment because, saying, (paraphrased) in multiple interviews, "I want to to re-establish the primacy of the optical microscope as a research instrument, and using the optical microscope to prove the Shroud nothing more than a beautiful painting will do that."
8> McCrone refused to return STURP Shroud samples loaned to him at the conclusion of his research to STURP control and threatened to sue when STURP reclaimed "his" samples, irrationally claiming they had become his personal property, because of his research and findings.
McCrone has been discredited completely on his claims of Red Ochre paint and Vermilion as the blood stain on the shroud... by such tests as X-ray photomicrospectroscopy... a much more specific test that looking through an optical microscope and saying, "Gee, that looks like Red Ochre and Vermilion." When an X-ray photomicrospectrograph says there is no HgS on there, there is NO Mercuric Sulfide on there... no matter WHAT Walter C. McCrone claims he sees through his little microscope. Or how many times in 1998 or how many times Joe Nickell writes that it is there... IT IS NOT THERE! Follow the science, not the popular press.
The X-Ray spectrograph work was done in the early '90s... but still disingenuous people WILL trot out McCrone claiming him as definitive proof that the Shroud's blood stains are Red Ochre and Vermilion paint... and Joe (I'm a skeptical inkwirer) Nickell will write it in another book in the last few years, ignoring the good science, and claiming McCrone (an Atheist) as the only TRUE scientist involved and everyone else a "pseudoscientist" doing research from faith bias, despite many of them being Jewish (Adler, Heller, Schwortz) or agnostic (Rogers, Brown) or others who are Christian of various faiths... and YOU, BroJoeK, will dutifully find a citation to present on FR as though McCrone's outdated, falsified claims bear some probative weight in the discussion. they simply do NOT because McCrone's findings have been falsified and belong in the GARBAGE.
Now, now, settle down, pal.
Remember, it was you who suggested Biblical Archaeology Review (B.A.R.) as an acceptable source for reliable data on the Shroud. I simply followed your suggestion -- actually it was issued in the form of a "command" -- and did thorough searches of B.A.R. and other Biblical Archaeology Society (B.A.S.) archives on the Shroud of Turin and related subjects.
These searches have now produced several lengthy, and if I may say so, fascinating, posts here adding a lot of perspective to the discussion.
In total, B.A.R. published a few pro-Shroud articles in 1986, a couple more anti-Shroud in 1998 and some final notes & comments (mixed pro & con) ending in 2001. Since then they have had nothing to say on the subject.
The 2002 B.A.R. review of the Popular Mechanics "face of Jesus" article took it as, well, amusing and possibly misguided, but also positive because at last here was a face that at least "looked middle eastern."
Why B.A.R. has not kept up with current Shroud developments & debates, I don't know of course. I got the sense from one 1998 editorial comment that, even then, they were reluctant to "weigh in" on a subject that was outside their area of core concerns: stuff dug out of the ground in and around Israel (i.e., Dead Sea Scrolls).
Finally, we might note there was a 12 year gap between the B.A.R. Shroud articles of 1986 and those of 1998. If we add 12 years to 1998, then perhaps we will soon learn what the scholars at B.A.R. think today of all that's happened in the Shroud debate since then?
Btw, I began subscribing to Biblical Archaeology Society publications in the late 1980s, and have very much enjoyed this opportunity to walk down their memory lane.
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