More and more on the Vignon markings on coins
Stephen Jones continues his four proofs:
The faces of Jesus on these coins are of two types: an earlier "Syrian Christ" and a later more Shroud-like Jesus. [ibid] Features on the coins which are very similar to the face of the Man of the Shroud include: long wavy shoulder-length hair, a long forked beard, moustache, and a small tuft of hair on the forehead, and no ears visible. [2] As can be seen above, there are at least twelve out of fifteen Vignon markings on the Christ face of this coin that are also found on the Shroud of Turin: "… (2) three-sided `square’ between brows, (3) V shape at bridge of nose, … (6) accentuated left cheek, (7) accentuated right cheek, (8) enlarged left nostril, (9) accentuated line between nose and upper lip, (10) heavy line under lower lip, (11) hairless area between lower lip and beard, (12) forked beard, (13) transverse line across throat, (14) heavily accentuated owlish eyes, (15) two strands of hair." [3] See part #2 (1) .
. . .
Since these coins are datable to about AD 692, and the Shroud is the original because what are physical flaws in its cloth have been meaninglessly represented [7] – see part #2 (1) – in Byzantine art works between the sixth and twelfth centuries, this means that the Shroud must have been in existence at least five centuries before the earliest AD 1260 date ascribed to it by the 1988 radiocarbon dating. [8] Therefore that "medieval … AD 1260-1390" radiocarbon date of the Shroud [9] simply has to be wrong!
This is great stuff.
It comes to mind that we need a single sheet pictorial inventory of the most significant Byzantine coins so we can stare at them all together.
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Is the Shroud real? Probably.
The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins admits it is controversial. Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and archeologists. This is because there are significant scientific and non-religious reasons to doubt the validity of the tests. Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair. Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory. Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon dating results were published, recently wrote: “It’s fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever.” If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested – and some evidence suggests that – it is possible that the cloth is from the time of Christ.
No one has a good idea how front and back images of a crucified man came to be on the cloth. Yes, it is possible to create images that look similar. But no one has created images that match the chemistry, peculiar superficiality and profoundly mysterious three-dimensional information content of the images on the Shroud. Again, this is all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
We simply do not have enough reliable information to arrive at a scientifically rigorous conclusion. Years ago, as a skeptic of the Shroud, I came to realize that while I might believe it was a fake, I could not know so from the facts. Now, as someone who believes it is the real burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, I similarly realize that a leap of faith over unanswered questions is essential.
My name is Dan Porter. Please email me at DanielRobertPorter@gmail.com
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