El Jesús histórico (I). Introducción.
Tengo la intención de iniciar aquí una especie de digresión sobre el tema del lienzo de Turin. Cuando se discute sobre este asunto, es frecuente encontrarse con personas que dan por sentado que el hombre retratado en el lienzo de Turin, sea éste verdadero o falso, existió y que la imagen refleja los pormenores de su muerte y entierro (dejemos por el momento la resurrección). Esta es una suposición que ha sido admitida sin pestañear no sólo por conspicuos creyentes, sino por algunos de los autodenominados agnósticos que se han referido al tema. (Que realmente lo sean o no, es otra cuestión).
¿Pero existió realmente Jesús de Galilea? ¿Fue ejecutado por las autoridades romanas ‒o por los judíos, como dicen Pablo y Lucas? ¿De la forma en que está reflejado en los evangelios y que más o menos recoge el sudario turinés?
Medallón esmaltado del siglo XI. Metropolitan Museum.
Estas y otras preguntas similares tienen difícil respuesta. Al menos, son objeto de disputas, no siempre pacíficas, entre historiadores y teólogos. Durante los últimos años he leído algunas cosas al respecto, he tomado parte en algunos debates-trifurca a través de Internet y algo he aprendido. No soy un experto, ni mucho menos, pero por formación, profesión y afición creo que algo puedo decir que no sea demasiado insensato. Ésta y otras entradas que seguirán son un intento de poner en orden mis ideas, de forma que puedan servir como orientación a las personas que, sin querer entrar en las peleas de las que hablaba ni leer una extensa bibliografía, quieran saber lo que yo sé y preguntarse las cosas que yo me pregunto. Sin más pretensiones.
La sombra en el sudario 
(Apologies for writing in my own language David)
I was truly impressed by your description of sindonology (and sindonologists) in the previous posting, which is probably where this comment should have been posted.
The next venue for ‘sindonology’ (under the guise of science needless to say) is Pasco, Washington State, USA in July,. As I’ve no doubt you are aware it’s co-sponsored by Bob Rucker and Mark Antonacci.
Having recently (and laboriously) completed a critique of the 33 challenges laid at the door of us sindonology sceptics at the back of his 2000 book, I then discovered that Bob Rucker has now added 19 of his own challenges to prospective attendees at the Pasco jamboree (how’s that for a preemptive strike!)
They can be found on this link:
http://www.shroudconference2017.com/what-is-the-shroud-of-turin-.html
Any thoughts, David?
(Shame we no longer have Dan Porter’s site on which to exchange views, despite my occasional complaints re its black hole like nature – where much that was new went in, but precious little of lasting value came out).
Cheers
Colin Berry
https://shroudofturinwithoutallthehype.wordpress.com/
PS: Apols. I omitted to say it was Mark Antonacci’s 2000 book…
Thank you for your comment, Colin. You are welcome. You know that my English is not very good but I am sure that many people in Spain can read it without any problem.
I read your blog from time to time with pleasure but you are right about the hole left by Porter’s blog. I did a hommage entry: https://sombraenelsudario.wordpress.com/2015/12/16/the-last-picture-show-by-dan-porter/. It was a good place to be informed about the big deeds of the sindonology.
Thank you for the links also. I will take a look at them.
See you somewhere in the Web.
«See you somewhere in the Web».
Yes, indeed starting here on your site David!!!! I personally have more time now for searching the wider web for new thinking re the Shroud. That’s because I’ve now settled firmly on my «Model 10″ (flour-imprinting») as the likely, indeed probable means by which the body imprint – yes IMPRINT – was created, followed by thermal development and a final image-attenuating wash with soap and water.
Thus far the model has attracted almost zero interest, not even from David Rolfe, despite his earlier «Enigma Challenge» to scientists (well, one in particular, «RD», with additional bogeyman status and qualifications). But then what chance does my homely model with kitchen ingredients stand alongside uv excimer pulsed laser beams, corona discharges, neutrons etc etc?
Time then to draw a line under the patient model-testing, and go into wholehearted Shroudie proselytization mode with Model 10! I’m planning a new website (prob for late Spring) that will deliver what I consider a coherent explanation for why the Shroud first appeared when and where it did (beware of earlier ‘sightings’) and importantly how and why the proposed flour-imprinting technology was deployed to produce a total ‘one-off’ The rest as they say is history, the kind that has incredibly baffled generations of ‘scientists’ for well over six centuries, despite an armoury of 20th/21st century gee-whizz technology. Note the inverted commas around ‘scientists’. There’s science and there is science….
PS: I’ve just spotted this comment you left on the International Skeptics’ Forum, David:
«The most recent «sceptical» hypothesis about the image are that it is the remains of an ancient painting that has lose almost all pigments but has coloured the fabric by acids action (Garlaschelli and Charles Freeman). Other traditional explanations don’t have the same chances (solar impression or superficial burnt).»
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?s=5f4775107c7ee9345b8a951c464e8c4f&p=11719916
Many moons ago I promoted a model that could also be described as a «superficial burnt» image, attempting to link it in symbolically or metaphorically with the burning at the stake in 1314 of the last of the Templar Grand Masters, Jacques de Molay . But I dropped that idea with the fairly recent discovery by a French jogger of the Machy mould for a variant of the Lirey pilgrims’ badge, depicting a Veronica-like facial imprint that could be seen as making a definitive link with the biblical crucifixion. Machy is the next village along from Lirey in Champagne country, of course
Eight models on I’m still pushing a thermochemical contact-imprinting mechanism, with features in common with Rogers’ Maillard process, but a two-step mechanism using medieval white flour to supply both reducing sugars and amino functions for a Maillard reaction, generating yellow or brown high-molecular weight melanoidins in the secondary oven-heating stage as image pigment. The latter is formed initially as a liquid at high temperature in the medieval (bread-baking?) oven, which I believe can account for the peculiar microscopic properties of the image (so-called half-tone effect, discontinuities etc).
I’m sorry to see that it’s not only authenticity-promoting shroudologists who fail to keep abreast of current developments, albeit communicated in real time via the ephemeral internet, but the sceptical fraternity that assembles on your forum David. Sadly there seems to be a monotonous recycling there of stale outdated thinking. Where’s the spirit of adventure, of going boldly, Star Trek style, where no man has been before etc etc?
Kind regards
Colin
(apols once again for my lack of Spanish, except that is on holidays for «una cerveza por favor»)
Colin: I think it would be very interesting if you take part in the International Skeptics Forum debate. You would defend your work better than I can.
May I have a beer also, please?
Interesting, maybe David. But mutually rewarding? Not if past experience is anything to go by (I did contribute briefly to the Skeptics site some 3 years ago or so but gave up in despair!).
You might be interested in a comment I posted yesterday to Paul Andruss’ lively and entertaining «Odds n Sods’ site (his last but one post took the Shroud as its subject). I’d normally give a link, especially as the comment ends by saying «you read it here first!» but, frustratingly, some 24 hours later the comment is still awaiting moderation.
As theories go, it’s a bit of a longshot, and, yes, it’s self-indulgently linked to my flour imprinting Model 10 (which you may or may not agree with, or which, for all I know, leaves you cold) but it’s guaranteed original. Either way, your opinion, any opinion, favourable or otherwise would be welcome.
Here then is yesterday morning’s sudden brainwave in its entirety.
«Hello again Paul. I hope you won’t mind if I now use your site – and possibly your social media contacts too – for a kite-flying exercise, the kite in question being a mere 3 hours old!
It began with me googling (bible flour). I got to wondering this morning if there might be some clues as to why medieval ‘forgers’ of the Turin Shroud might choose to use white breadmaking flour as an imprinting medium.
Suppose I said there was a chapter in the Bible that mentions not only my white flour, that additionally mentions cooking oil (also an important ingredient in my imprinting medium) AND fire AND white linen as well? That would be asking too much, right, to have 4 vital components in my medieval manufacturing scenario not only in the Bible, but in a particular chapter thereof?
Well, guess what? There is. See Leviticus, third book after Genesis and Exodus in the Old Testament, Chapter 6!
It’s about the procedures/rituals that have to be followed by those who have confessed their sins to a priest, and who are required under Jewish law to make a sacrifice.
Chapter 6 is targeted at poorer folk who can’t afford animal sacrifices, who are told to bring along cheaper food, “finest flour” especially – some to be used as a burnt offering, the rest to be baked into unleavened (i.e. non-yeasted) bread for the presiding priest and hopefully his family especially!
Here are two key verses (New International Version):
15. The priest is to take a handful of the finest flour and some olive oil, together with all the incense on the grain offering, and burn the memorial portion on the altar as an aroma pleasing to the LORD.
Wow! That’s three of the ingredients – flour, oil and fire. What about the 4th? Linen?
Guess what? It comes 5 verses earlier in the same chapter :
As before, the New International Version:
10. The priest shall then put on his linen clothes, with linen undergarments next to his body, and shall remove the ashes of the burnt offering that the fire has consumed on the altar and place them beside the altar.
(Yes, the white linen has special ritual significance, given what we read in the following verse):
11.Then he is to take off these clothes and put on others, and carry the ashes outside the camp to a place that is ceremonially clean.
This comment is already too long, Paul, so I shall end here, except to propose an entirely new explanation for the Turin Shroud. Might it have been intended initially to symbolize the crucifixion of Jesus as an Old Testament style sacrifice of Son by Father, intended as an expiation of someone else’s , i.e. mankind’s sins.
That explains why the technology was customized, a one-off. It was a gesture on the part of those powerful, privileged folk who commissioned it (the Lirey-based de Charny family certainly, based on the Lirey Pilgrim’s badge, but conceivably under instructions from the highest in the land, King John the Good as well, no less. Those two battle-hardened knights were linked via their self-created chivalrous Order of the Star, said to have been de Charny’s idea, modelled on England’s Order of the Garter).
You read it here first!
Listen ye here now, you authenticity-promoting imaging via nuclear or electromagnetic radiation obsessed tunnel vision shroudologists. You may get away with ignoring my site, basically because I’m uninclined at this stage to involve the MSM (or even so-called ‘peer-reviewed’ journals, read chum-reviewed in many instances). Will you dare ignore Paul’s and others’ internet sites too?»