Another Take on The Inquisitor’s Key by Jefferson Bass
Allen Hott has another take on The Inquisitor’s Key by Jefferson Bass
Brockton was called to France by his protégé, Miranda Lovelace, who had gone there for the summer to assist an old friend of hers who was working on an excavation in an anteroom that is situated beneath the Palace of the Popes. Miranda felt that Brockton would not only be a big help but would also enjoy the work as it was to be forensic and historic. It seems there is a belief (among some folks) that in effect the figure that was captured on the Shroud of Turin could have in fact been Jesus.
Of course there are also doubters since the Shroud was from the 1300’s and Jesus had been dead and resurrected long before that. However it appears that Miranda’s friend not only believes the theory but he also supposedly has the bones of the person’s body that was used as the model for “portrait” on the Shroud. Now the friend, Miranda and Brockton need to determine exactly or as exactly as possible the age of the bones.
[ . . . ]
Quite an interesting story with enough twists and turns to keep the reader occupied. It actually takes quite a while for the meaning of the title (The Inquisitor’s Key) to become evident. The ending seems to be completely unexpected but then again isn’t that what a mystery is supposed to do?
Leave a Reply
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
I wasn’t aware the Shroud was its own genre of fiction. Thanks.