New Biblical Documentary of Biblical Proportions
Speaking of the face of Jesus (see the last posting, the picture in it is from the History Channel’s “The Real Face of Jesus?”) I found this story in the Wall Street Journal interesting:
MALIBU, CALIF. – The king of reality television, Mark Burnett, is taking on God and the Bible. Specifically focusing on Genesis through Revelation, Burnett is working in conjunction with The History Channel to create a 10-hour scripted drama using live-action and computer generated imagery.
“This project is, in every sense of the word, epic,” said Burnett.
Although the biblical series won’t appear on The History Channel’s schedule until March 2013, it is already slated to air in five-parts.
“160 million people go to church and talk about the Bible, but I want to really look at what’s in it,” said Burnett.
The executive producer developed the series with his wife, Roma Downey, who will also star as the Virgin Mary. Although they are still casting, Burnett told the Journal that he’s culling actors from “Game of Thrones,” “Sex and the City” and “The Borgias.”
This is not the first time the History Channel has put forth a religious series. Last year, the network featured “The Real Face of Jesus?”, a documentary that followed graphic experts as they recreated Jesus’ face using technology and the Shroud of Turin, a holy relic.
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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
I wonder what his point of view is before going into this project?