Isn’t that the steering wheel from a 1953 Chevy Bel Air?
Phillip J. Long, who teaches full time at Grace Bible College in Grand Rapids, has an interesting article in his blog, Reading Acts. In Why Should We Care About Archaeology? he writes:
First, popular media tends to promote “sensational finds” which challenge the Bible. Most recently, James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici . . .
Second, we all want to be able to claim that “archaeology proves the Bible.” When archaeologists first started exploring what was then called Palestine . . .
Third, people in your congregations are smart and can check facts quickly. In the age of smart phones and iPads, anything you say from the pulpit can be checked on the internet instantly. For example, there is a persistent story that the wheels of the Egyptian chariots were found in the Red Sea near Nuweiba, in the Sinai. These stories come from one pseudo-scholar who has no proof of the claim other than his own underwater photographs, which are not even that clear. If you claim that this is a fact of history and members of your congregation double check on your claim, they will find that the evidence for the discovery is simply missing. I think most pastors would not cite the Shroud of Turin or some fanciful report of the discovery of a piece of the True Cross as “proofs of the Bible
Isn’t that the steering wheel from the 1953 Chevy Bel Air I drove in high school?
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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
Actually I watched a documentary that covered, amongst other findings the ‘chariot wheel find’ and it is almost certain it is an Egyptian chariot wheel, as it was compared to several wheels found in tombs; design, style and dimension wise it’s exact, but of course one cannot say it is from the Moses era or actual crossing of the nile story. but it is a chariot wheel. The author’s comparing the Shroud to evidence like this chariot wheel is or a piece of the cross is simply an absord comment.
The ’53 Chevy Bel Air came with 2 or 3 spoke steering wheels by the way lol.
R
My dad owned a ’53 Bel Air by the way. Forgot to mention that ;-)
R