A reader writes:
There are no images of coins on the shroud. Get over it. Yeah, there was that story of the K where a C should have been, it was kind of like a Readers Digest inspirational story and it convinced a lot of people. It wasn’t scientific.*
Yannick is completely right when he shoots down the whole premise logically. That there would be coins or even flowers makes no sense what so ever. Barrie, who studied this problem extensively, was also right when he said that the weave of the cloth was too course to support the purported detail. You don’t need to be a mathematician to see that this is so.
Those few people who see coins only see them on the 1931 photo which was technically beautiful for 1931. But was scientifically ridiculous. And then these few people who see these coins only see them after the 1931 photo has been serially contrast enhanced on orthochromatic film. Doing so randomly super-sizes the silver grains. It is like rubbing a crayon on a cement sidewalk and then looking for shapes in the mess you’ve made. When you do what they did to photos you can see anything. And if you did what they did again you would see different things. Did they ever go into a darkroom and try their experiment again to see if they could reproduce the same results? Of course not. It wasn’t scientific.
When I look closely at the 1931 photo of the Turin shroud I see a flying saucer. And not just any flying saucer. I see the same one that Leonardo da Vinci drew. Wow, will this spark some new conspiracy theories.**
Picknett and Prince where are you? You could combine “Turin Shroud: How Leonardo da Vinci Fooled History” with your book “Stargate Conspiracy.”
For those not familiar with the latter (it is not intended to be thought of as fiction) it is about the CIA and MI5 who are manipulating a secret cult of powerful and rich leaders, including leading scientists who believe that they are in direct contact with extraterrestrial intelligent beings from the star Sirius. These extraterrestrial beings are claiming to be the gods of ancient Egypt, the very gods responsible for the image of a face on Mars.
* Actually, the other way around. The lepta that some claim they see on the shroud were minted in Palestine. Nonetheless, they were Roman produced coins. The inscription of Tiberius Caesar would have been written in Greek as TIBERIOU KAISAROS. Was a C, as apparently seen on the shroud where a K was expected, a misspelling? This was a problem that seemed to preclude positive identification until an actual Lituus lepton was found with the aberrant spelling. Several have since been found. This anomaly seems to give credence to the coins identification. But why?
** It was a tank invention, not a flying saucer.
Excellent comment ! I think this whole thing of the pseudo-ghost images on the shroud have more to do with some people seeing what they WANTED to see than because of the Enrie photo. I think when someone has made up his mind and believe that there really is an image of an object on the shroud, his mind will play games with him and he will ALWAYS see this image no matter what photo he’s looking at.
If we use the logical arguments I’ve build up recently, I think that, if we don’t make any special assumption, the only thing that was present in the Shroud on friday night was a dead corpse !!!! AND NOTHING ELSE ! Except maybe some other small linen cloths that could have contained aloes and myrrh in powder to avoid bad smelling and delayed a bit the decaying of the corpse(on this particular subject, I really recommand anyone to read the wonderful book of doctor Pierre Barbet called “A doctor at calvary”). The presence in the shroud of matters like aloes and myrrh is logical in the context of a partial rite that needed to be completed on sunday morning… But, it’s just an hypothesis. The only thing we can be sure that was inside the shroud was a dead body !!!
Here, I just want to add a little comment that my friend Barrie Schwortz said to me the other day. I don’t think Barrie will be offended that I write his comment here. You’ll see, it is a very logical and intelligent comment regarding the questions of the coins on the Shroud. Here it is : “if they did use coins, they certainly would not have put a pagan Caesar coin on the face of the prophesized Messiah!” I completely agree with this argument ! For me, this reflection from Barrie is one more nail in the coffin of this coins issue !
I basically agree BUT I think that it is necessary to make a distinction between the issue of the flowers and the rest (coins, spounges and son on). The flowers were identified with the naked eye by an expert (Avinoam Danim, if you don’t know his CV or his work, just Google him) when examining directly and personally the Shroud. Coins, spounges and the rest have been identified using very dubtious and non reproducible methods based on images.
If you read carefully my first reflexion about this, I stated clearly that there’s is a possibility (even if I have great doubts to say at least) that those images (specially the flowers) could be really there. But, my point is this : Even if science prove one day that those images are there, that will never tell us WHEN they get there ! And if we go back to the context of the Jesus burial, it is pretty sure that those flowers would have been put on the Shroud at a later time and consequently, they have nothing to do with the burial of Christ. Honestly, would you put flowers on a dead body inside a shroud BEFORE the ending of the burial ritual and knowing that you have to comeback to the tomb in 2 days to do an anointing of the body ??? Seriously… I don’t see any reason at all to do a thing like that. So, if there is really some flower images on the Shroud, they were transfered to the cloth well AFTER the body image formation process and having nothing to do with Jesus burial… They just don’t make any sense at all in the case of an hurried kind of incomplete burial ritual on friday… And anyway, where is the exact reference to this kind of flower throwing on a dead body in the context of a first century jewish burial ??? I’VE NEVER seen anything at all about this. I think it’s a modern way to think… It’s not because we used flowers at our burial ceremonies that the first century jews did the same !!!! Again, I’ve never read any clear reference about this kind of use.
I have been thinking about the points raised here and still I think that the issue of the flowers is a completely different matter. Though I agree with the main sequence of logically linked events for a quick burial on Friday evening ,AND following the rationale on how everything could happen, I think that :
1.As I mentioned in a previous post, flowers were incorporated into the tomb because they were soaked with blood from the crucified man. Not for any other reason.
2. The Shroud was NOT wrapped around the body, which would need more time. A linen sheet was laid on the rock, the body was put over it and the other half of the sheet was put on the body. Very easy. This is compatible with a provisional and quick burial on Friday
3. The flowers were left around the body and together with, because due to the blood they held, for the Jewish conception they WERE PART of the body.
Regarding the coins and the rest I agree with the main considerations I have read so far in this blog
http://www.ShroudPlantBook.com.
http://www.shroud.com/danin2.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPde-j2XXRM&feature=player_embedded
http://www.shroudplantbook.com/
Regards
Your points on the subject are interesting. I totally agree with your point #2. For your point #1, I’m not so sure about that because Golgotha was just a big rock. I have great doubts about the fact that there was really flowers there. Also, you have to think that those flowers, to be soaked with blood, would have been just underneat the cross… Personally, I’m really not sure about this idea. For your point #3, I think that if there was some object covered with Jesus blood, the jews who took part of the burial would have wanted them to be buried with the corpse. It is true for clothing and thing like that. But flowers ? I’m not sure. Someone must find me a clear quote of this kind of use from the Talmud or from the Mishna before I believe in this. But, even if it was proven that the Jews took even the flowers that were soak with the blood of the dead to buried them with the body, I don’t see why they would have put those flowers or anything else soaked in blood inside the shroud before the end of the ritual on sunday. As I said, I think they could easily left them in another part of the tomb. I don’t want to bring this too far (because I have another interpretation) but some people (like Mark Guscin) have interpreted the empty tomb story of the gospel of John by thinking that the sudarium of Oviedo was left in another place inside the tomb. Obviously, if it’s true, this blood stained cloth wasn’t left inside the shroud on friday… Most probably, it was left in one corner inside the tomb. So why would that have been different for flowers, coins or any other objects ???
For the video you put here, what I always found fascinating about Avinoam Danin is that he is able to determine the EXACT SPECIE of a flower from a very faint image while there is over 270 000 different flower species in the world !!!!! Really, that’s what I call a feat !!! Truely, this man is an expert… ;-)
Personally I don’t give much credence to someone (the reader who wrote) who can mistake a tank for a flying saucer lol.By the way it was proven LDV’s tank was a bust.
i imagine the reference to a flying saucer was to illustrate that we easily misinterpret what we see when we are ill informed
Or when we really want to see what we want to see… ;-)