OT and silly: Death certificate is imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, says Vatican scholar
Jack Linthicum
From Times Online
November 20, 2009
Death certificate is imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, says Vatican
scholar
Richard Owen in Rome
A reproduction of the Shroud is displayed in the Shroud museum in
Turin
(Claudio Papi/Reuters)
A reproduction of the shroud. The original is regarded by many as a
medieval forgery
A Vatican scholar claims to have deciphered the "death certificate"
imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, or Holy Shroud, a linen cloth
revered by Christians and held by many to bear the image of the
crucified Jesus.
Dr Barbara Frale, a researcher in the Vatican secret archives, said "I
think I have managed to read the burial certificate of Jesus the
Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth." She said that she had reconstructed
it from fragments of Greek, Hebrew and Latin writing imprinted on the
cloth together with the image of the crucified man.
The shroud, which is kept in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral and
is to be put in display next Spring, is regarded by many scholars as a
medieval forgery. A 1988 carbon dating of a fragment of the cloth
dated it to the Middle Ages.
However Dr Frale, who is to publish her findings in a new book, La
Sindone di Gesu Nazareno (The Shroud of Jesus of Nazareth) said that
the inscription provided "historical date consistent with the Gospels
account". The letters, barely visible to the naked eye, were first
spotted during an examination of the shroud in 1978, and others have
since come to light.
Some scholars have suggested that the writing is from a reliquary
attached to the cloth in medieval times. But Dr Frale said that the
text could not have been written by a medieval Christian because it
did not refer to Jesus as Christ but as "the Nazarene". This would
have been "heretical" in the Middle Ages since it defined Jesus as
"only a man" rather than the Son of God.
Like the image of the man himself the letters are in reverse and only
make sense in negative photographs. Dr Frale told La Repubblica that
under Jewish burial practices current at the time of Christ in a Roman
colony such as Palestine, a body buried after a death sentence could
only be returned to the family after a year in a common grave.
A death certificate was therefore glued to the burial shroud to
identify it for later retrieval, and was usually stuck to the cloth
around the face. This had apparently been done in the case of Jesus
even though he was buried not in a common grave but in the tomb
offered by Joseph of Arimathea.
Dr Frale said that many of the letters were missing, with Jesus for
example referred to as "(I)esou(s) Nnazarennos" and only the "iber" of
"Tiberiou" surviving. Her reconstruction, however, suggested that the
certificate read: "In the year 16 of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius
Jesus the Nazarene, taken down in the early evening after having been
condemned to death by a Roman judge because he was found guilty by a
Hebrew authority, is hereby sent for burial with the obligation of
being consigned to his family only after one full year". It ends
"signed by" but the signature has not survived.
Dr Frale said that the use of three languages was consistent with the
polyglot nature of a community of Greek-speaking Jews in a Roman
colony. Best known for her studies of the Knights Templar, who she
claims at one stage preserved the shroud, she said what she had
deciphered was "the death sentence on a man called Jesus the Nazarene.
If that man was also Christ the Son of God it is beyond my job to
establish. I did not set out to demonstrate the truth of faith. I am a
Catholic, but all my teachers have been atheists or agnostics, and the
only believer among them was a Jew. I forced myself to work on this as
I would have done on any other archaeological find."
The Catholic Church has never either endorsed the Turin Shroud or
rejected it as inauthentic. Pope John Paul II arranged for public
showings in 1998 and 2000, saying: "The Shroud is an image of God's
love as well as of human sin. The imprint left by the tortured body of
the Crucified One, which attests to the tremendous human capacity for
causing pain and death to one's fellow man, stands as an icon of the
suffering of the innocent in every age." Pope Benedict XVI is to pray
before the Shroud when it is put on show again next Spring in Turin.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6925371.ece
Whiskers
[...]
> Some scholars have suggested that the writing is from a reliquary
> attached to the cloth in medieval times. But Dr Frale said that the
> text could not have been written by a medieval Christian because it
> did not refer to Jesus as Christ but as "the Nazarene". This would
> have been "heretical" in the Middle Ages since it defined Jesus as
> "only a man" rather than the Son of God.
[...]
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6925371.ece
Humpph. So there were no people in the middle ages who weren't heretics
or Jews or Moslems or Zoroastrians or ...? And of course no-one then
would have known the possible wording of a 1st-century Roman label on the
remains of an executed prisoner, let alone dared to fake one.
But holy relics and miracles can be good earners.
--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~
Jack Linthicum
Tom McDonald
I am reading a book by Frale on another topic. She works, or
worked, in the Vatican's Secret Archive, and appears (appeared)
to have access to some pretty good information.
Do you, or does anyone else, know her reputation for scholarship?
Granted this Shroud business seems far-fetched; but that doesn't
necessarily mean *she's* out there.
Does it?
--
Tom
When Tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing;
When friends rejoice, both far and near,
How can I keep from singing.
Horace LaBadie
Tom McDonald <tmcdon...@charter.net> wrote:
> Whiskers wrote:
> > On 2009-11-20, Jack Linthicum <jackli...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >> Some scholars have suggested that the writing is from a reliquary
> >> attached to the cloth in medieval times. But Dr Frale said that the
> >> text could not have been written by a medieval Christian because it
> >> did not refer to Jesus as Christ but as "the Nazarene". This would
> >> have been "heretical" in the Middle Ages since it defined Jesus as
> >> "only a man" rather than the Son of God.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6925371.ece
> >
> > Humpph. So there were no people in the middle ages who weren't heretics
> > or Jews or Moslems or Zoroastrians or ...? And of course no-one then
> > would have known the possible wording of a 1st-century Roman label on the
> > remains of an executed prisoner, let alone dared to fake one.
> >
> > But holy relics and miracles can be good earners.
>
> I am reading a book by Frale on another topic. She works, or
> worked, in the Vatican's Secret Archive, and appears (appeared)
> to have access to some pretty good information.
>
> Do you, or does anyone else, know her reputation for scholarship?
> Granted this Shroud business seems far-fetched; but that doesn't
> necessarily mean *she's* out there.
>
> Does it?
She has the Knights Templar mixed up in a lot of things, even the Shroud.
Tom McDonald
Templars *were* mixed up in a lot of things. They were very
involved in trade, withing Europe and the Middle East and between
Europe and the Middle East; as well as owning and operating vast
properties in Europe and elsewhere, fighting Muslims and banking.
Odd that the banking business was what brought them down, come to
think of it. (I guess that's why they say, "Cherchez la dinero".)
Can you say more about her and the Templar business, especially
as it might go to her credibility?
Jack Linthicum
One of the "Barbara Frale" google sites is "mined"
These seem okay.
http://www.arcadepub.com/book/?GCOI=55970100792980&fa=author&person_id=446
Horace LaBadie
Tom McDonald <tmcdon...@charter.net> wrote:
I have zero interest in both subjects, but as I understand it, the
provenance of the shroud doesn't begin until more than 40 years after
the Templars were abolished.
Jack Linthicum
Not only is the Turin thing a fake it's a bad fake. Although the idea
that having a single example can prove a general practice is dangerous
in any scientific research.
2,000-Year-Old Burial Shroud Disproves Turin Artifact
The new object dates back to the time of Christ's crucifixion
By Tudor Vieru, Science Editor
16th of December 2009, 09:04 GMT
A photo showing the Shroud of Turin, with what some say is the face of
Jesus displayed
Enlarge picture
The city of Jerusalem has recently revealed another of its mysterious
buried treasures to archaeologists, when the experts have been able to
uncover a burial chamber that was last used about the time that Jesus
Christ was crucified. Inside the chamber, the scientists discovered a
body wrapped inside a shroud, which dated back more than 2,000 years
ago. They say that the new shroud again disproves the Turin artifact,
which has been proven to be nothing more than a con many times over.
This is the first time that such a shroud is discovered in Jerusalem.
Others have been unearthed over the years in the Holy Land, but never
from around, or inside, the city. The body was discovered in an old
burial cave at the outskirts of Jerusalem's Old City, and
archaeologists say it provides a clear window into the rituals used by
the people of the time when it came to bury their dead. They also add
that the main reason why both the body and the funeral bandages were
preserved is the fact that the cave was completely sealed off. This
happened because the victim suffered from leprosy, and died of
tuberculosis, the experts say.
This was proven by extensive DNA testing of the remains collected from
the site. The people of the time had no method of determining the
severity of the victim's conditions, but they knew that the complete
isolation was the only way to keep the infection from spreading.
According to historians, there were several instances in which ancient
Rabbinical texts mentioned people who got out of their tombs and
called for help. This was a common occurrence, as the individuals did
not have the accurate medical testing methods of determining whether
someone was dead or not, which we employ now.
But the thing about the new shroud is that it throws even more doubt
on the authenticity of the Turin artifact. The experts were amazed to
find that the newly discovered body was wrapped in two separate pieces
of fabric, one for the body, and an individual one for the head. The
Turin shroud is made from a single piece, which now does not appear to
have been the practice at the time. The two separate pieces appear to
have actually had a very practical purpose, experts explain to The
Daily Mail.
“There was a separate wrapping for the head itself, which was very
important because when they brought someone to burial they would place
the head wrapping separately on the face in case the person wasn't
actually dead and woke up again, they would be able to blow off the
face wrapping and shout for help,” Shimon Gibson, who is a senior
associate fellow at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological
Research, in Jerusalem, says.
He adds that the Turin shroud is also made with a twill weave. “The
twill weave is known from this part of the world only from the
medieval period, so we're talking about something that's from the
Middle Ages. But the Jerusalem shroud confirmed another local practice
which casts even more doubt on the Turin artifact. It wasn't one
continuous sheet. What our shroud shows is that the practice of having
a separate shroud or wrapping for the body and for the head was common
practice,” he adds.
The story in the Gospel, which places Jesus' apostles in front of his
tomb after three days, in fact originates from the widespread habit of
relatives returning to their loved ones' burial chambers three days
after the alleged death, to see if they were indeed dead, or still
living.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/2-000-Year-Old-Burial-Shroud-Disproves-Turin-Artifact-129870.shtml