The St. Louis Shroud Conference of 2014 was an outstanding success. A total of 162 people attended. Most were from the United States, as one might expect. But there were attendees from Australia, Canada, England, France, Hong Kong, Italy and Spain, as well.
Whether or not we were able to attended, we all benefit from new material emerging because of the conference. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Joe Marino and his committee. It takes a lot of work, diplomacy and imagination to manage such a successful conference. Thank you.
And we need to thank the authors of so many wonderful papers and presentations. How much we learned! Thank you.
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Joseph G. Marino ChairmanJoseph Marino is a leading expert on the Shroud of Turin. He has researched, written and lectured extensively on the Shroud since 1977. He currently works at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Since the mid-1980s, Joe has worked extensively with many of the top sindonologists in the world. Much of his work has been in conjunction with the late Sue Benford. Both Joe and Sue performed exceptional work on researching the Shroud, and bringing its message to the world. |
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Mark AntonacciMark Antonacci is an attorney and author of The Resurrection of the Shroud (New York: M. Evans and Co., 2000) the most comprehensive book to date on the Shroud of Turin. |
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Laura ClarkLaura is a security professional, specializing in surveillance detection training and consulting. She is a professional speaker and author. Her publishing company, Cradle Press, offers several books about the Shroud of Turin, all available on major online bookstores. |
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Chuck NeffChuck Neff, Executive Producer of the Salt River Production Group, has more than 35 years of experience in the television, radio, and video production industries. He has worked as a news reporter, anchorman, and producer with NBC News in Chicago, as well as TV and radio stations in St. Louis, Denver, and Terre Haute. |
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Keith PleinKeith Plein is a veteran sales and marketing consultant, working for nearly 40 years in a Fortune 100 company. As President of his own firm, he brings his unique contributions to the Salt River Production Group, where he also serves as the group’s Director of Sales and Marketing. His career has spanned a series of diverse industries, including automotive, commercial transportation, agriculture, housing, and aviation. |
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John SchulteJohn Schulte has been following the Shroud of Turin for more than three decades. A retired architect, John travels extensively throughout the Midwest to make presentations on the Shroud. He has also written comprehensively on many of the details seen on the Shroud. Most notably, John has performed broad research on the blood seen on the back of the man depicted in the Shroud image. |
Note: Pictures and bios shamelessly copied from the conference website.
Thanks Dan. I’m sure the website wouldn’t mind the theft to inform your readers. :o)
I am curious to know something more about the conference
held in Saint Louis.
In the meantime, I have two lines to send …
— — — —
Kurzweil, step by step toward artificial consciousness …
[and then see also the discussion on the Evolution and the words of Louis (October 12, 2014) on: Fanti, Teilhard de Chardin, (Saint) John Paul II, Benedict XVI …]
and then the Enigma (solved)…
>The Age of Intelligent Machines is a non-fiction book about artificial intelligence by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil . This was his first book and the Association of American Publishers named it the Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990…
>Kurzweil surveys the philosophical, mathematical and technological roots of artificial intelligence, starting with the assumption that a sufficiently advanced computer program could exhibit human-level intelligence. Kurzweil argues the creation of humans through evolution suggests that humans should be able to build something more intelligent than themselves …
Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Intelligent_Machines
>The Age of Spiritual Machines is a non-fiction book by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil about artificial intelligence and the future course of humanity. First published in hardcover on January 1, 1999 …
>Kurzweil predicts machines with human-level intelligence will be available from affordable computing devices within a couple of decades, revolutionizing most aspects of life …
>To build an artificial brain requires formulas, knowledge and sufficient computational power, explains Kurzweil. He says “by around the year 2020” a $1,000 personal computer will have enough speed and memory to match the human brain, based on the law of accelerating returns and his own estimates of the computational speed and memory capacity of the brain…
Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzweil#The_Age_of_Intelligent_Machines_.281990.29
>How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed is a non-fiction book about brains, both human and artificial, by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. First published in hardcover on November 13, 2012
>Kurzweil writes that the neocortex contains about 300 million very general pattern recognizers, arranged in a hierarchy…
>A digital brain with human-level intelligence raises many philosophical questions, the first of which is whether it is conscious. Kurzweil feels that consciousness is “an emergent property of a complex physical system”, such that a computer emulating a brain would have the same emergent consciousness as the real brain…
Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Create_a_Mind
— —
Kurzweil spends most of his time thinking about the inevitable unification of man’s brain and computers, an event he described in detail in his 2005 book, The Singularity is Near.
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is a 2005 non-fiction book about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near
So…
How To Create a Mind: Can a marriage between man and machine solve the Shroud Enigma ?
Perhaps with the artificial consciousness will be solved the Enigma.
What is your opinion ?
I want to understand your ideas about the future. Please, explain…
— — —
Sorry,
here I want to add few lines :
Dear Charles Freeman
(reference: the message of October 14, 2014 at 12:30),
Please, explain us what are the exact reasons for “the lack of validity in his methods”. IMHO that message (of October 14, 2014) was an attack too hard against a researcher who has spent years trying to do something…
I am not a fanatic of the work of the Engineer Fanti and I can agree about the “manifest problems over his dating methods” (by Fanti), if you are able to explain where are the exact pitfalls (for example : bacterial and fungal attacks, degradation of the areas affected by the heat during the fire of 1532, etc. , etc.). In any case he published two books… and is not the first comer in the field of studies on the Shroud!
It is not so much myself you must question, Piero. The publication of Fanti’s dates was a classic case of how news operates today. ( See Nick Davies’ book Bad News.) A story is released – in this case just before Easter. Newspapers reprint it in order not to miss out without doing any research on Fanti, or the mathematics and science behind the story. Then they do the sums, realise that you cannot have three such different dates from a credible method of dating, that changing one date but not the others doss not work, and that it is meaningless to average three dates when only one at the most ( and maybe none of them) Is valid. So the story is no longer taken seriously but no one apologises for printing it without checking it first.
It is then not surprising that Fanti can find no supporters in the mainstream academic world and rude people called him Professor Fantasy.
There is a real problem about Shroud research in general. It is very isolated from the real world . Was there any attempt at the St. Louis conference to invite a wider sceptical audience or was there just the assumption that the case for authenticity was so obvious there was no need to bother?
Jack M. whose paper I look forward to reading does seem to have realised that much of the history of the Shroud does need to be rethought even if he has to frighten the audience by posting up a ten foot picture of me!
Excuse me for my two posts … maybe my poor style of intervention has been affected in some way of my health problems. In fact I have an abscess in my mouth and other problems after surgery for a inguinal-femoral hernia repair
I recently saw a picture:
Part of the longitudinal section of a human tooth. The image of this section of healthy tooth was obtained from the slide with a Victorian microscope using polarized light …
But we know that it can work even with the advanced microscopy …
If you want to see the truth you have to work with SPM techniques on linen fibrils!
I hope to be able to intervene a little better later…
None of this gushy off-beam posting is Dan Porter’s nuanced somewhat world-weary
laid-back prose style. (What’s the opposite of being on steroids? Being on Sanatogen?) Nope, he didn’t pen a single word of it.
Maybe just as well, given the flatulent content.
Sorry Colin, now I take a little ‘space for me and my speeches …
I think you could show us something interesting with a simple experiment…
I’m going a bit ‘off topic, but I think I will be understood by Colin, the investigator …
— —
First of all:
Thanks to Mario Latendresse we got an explanation about the paper by Fazio and others …
Three or four months : there was a good period to work.
Now I ask :
How is possible to further simplify the question?
Here a rough attempt.
First of all we have to sketch an analysis in order to define the presumed
“Stochastic + deterministic process”.
So …
We can try to consider two main aspects of the presumed process:
1) random walk of cadaveric emissions = stochastic process or not ?
2) constrained arrival on sheet of cadaveric emission by IR and subsequent
chemical attraction by reactive sugars = deterministc process or not ?
Is it possible to simplify the problem in this manner in order to study the probabilistic model ?
What is the probability level of reaction for cadaveric emissions on linen sheet ?
This is a key-point. What do you expect to see on linen if the level of cadaveric emissions is low ?
— —
In any case we need a very simple experiment in order to answer the question :
How is the gradient on linen ?
In the past, discussing the issue, I indicated a very simple experiment in order to simulate
(with a model) the presumed action of cadaveric gases on linen.
We have to start with a linen treated with Lead Acetate (White)
submitted to H2S (gas) in order to obtain the PbS (Black).
I have not a Lab at disposal…
I think that Colin Berry (a chemical scientist) is able to do that easy work,
an experiment that seems to be useful to show the mechanism of a reactive gas on a treated textile.
— —
At the end I want to remember that we have to examine the problem in a careful manner, step by step.
I don’t endorse the cadaveric gas theory, simply I want too see what happens on similsindonic linen.
Was Allan Mills able to do that ?
I saw what appeared in the book by Knight and Lomas and, frankly, that image is too far from the Shroud!
— —
Here an example for the IR action on cadaveric emissions (rough simulation): if we are not able to show what happens with a plastic dolly (filled with hot water) coated with an adequate thickness of wet (= sweat + cadaveric amines) skin and covered with linen sheet, then we have to try with another object or another system.
I have several doubts about the resolution of inherent images.
Probably this problem requires a long work of calibrations…
————————————————————
Mills indicated that :
there is no sign of an organic coating on the Shroud.
Where is the source for that claim?
Where are the inherent analyses?
I believe that Mills based its opinion on spectroscopic controls.
No direct advanced microscopic controls… (= SPM controls).
Mills proposed
>the short-lived radical “singlet-oxygen” as the active species initiating a latent image on the linen thread.
(Sources : “The Image on the Shroud of Turin:Clues from the Volckringer and Russel Effects”, 2003 and “Image formation on the Shroud of Turin : the reactive oxygen interrmediates hypothesis”, 1995)
— —
… and, of course, all this has nothing to do with hydrogen sulphide (H2S) of that
“simple experiment” (the model to show in order to understand the action of the gas on a textile surface) brought before the attention of the chemist …
Thanks for your kind attention.
Make no mistake. The St;Louis conference revealed the febrile, wild-eyed face of Shroudology like none other before it…
Shame this site’s host was suckered in…
I think that what it really reveal is the presence of a pro-shroud clique that contribute heavily to discredit the credibility of Shroud science… But that’s just a personal opinion.
But my main comment – a response to Piero’s second comment – is still missing, despite sending a second and third time. Why? Buggy software. Maybe, Maybe not.
PS: Have just spotted “Note: Pictures and bios shamelessly copied from the conference website.”.
Do you not think that should have been at the start, Dan, not right at the end, where it could be so easily be missed…?
The marketing of the Shroud, 2010?
Puts one in mind of the Ford Edsel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel
OK, so it had an engine and four wheels…
Stateside Shroudology is the pits. If anyone is any doubt on that score, they need look no further than St.Louis, 2014.
6 pestering, tempermental comments from Colin Berry out of 9 so far on this post, and he’s the one calling Shroudologists febrile.
Ha!
Colin, have you tried using Maalox?
Oh dear. You are showing your age, Paulette. Chemical anti-acid remedies like the one you mention, based on aluminium and magnesium hydroxides, were introduced about 60 years ago and caused no end of side effects.
Then the H2-receptor antagonist like cimetidine and ranitidine were introduced, sophisticated rational drug therapy, acting at the sites of acid secretion. Now we have an entirely new class of proton pump inhibitors like omeprazole, acting via an entirely different mechanism, even more sophisticated with fewer side effects.
My problem is not stomach acidity. It’s the gut feeling of disgust at seeing the wholesale prostitution of science to push an agenda.
St.Louis managed to plumb new depths in pushing that agenda.
“St.Louis managed to plumb new depths in pushing that agenda.”
It seems that some people are able to make some definitive comment about the St Louis conference without having any knowledge of the content of the papers.
For me, several papers were very interesting:
– Spectroscopic Analyses Of Fibers From The Shroud Of Turin–What Do They Mean?
– Speculations On The 14th Century Origins Of The Turin Shroud.
– Study Of Shroud Feature Evidence Using Video And Photogrammetric Analysis Methods
– The Mandylion Or The Story Of A Man-Made Relic by my friend Sebastien Cataldo (with the help of Yannick)
– The Future Of Research On The Shroud *
– Hypothesis That Explains The Shroud’s Unique Blood Marks And Several Critical Events In The Gospels
– A Critical (Re)Evaluation Of The Shroud Of Turin Blood Data: Strength Of Evidence In The Characterization Of The Bloodstains *. A particularly clear and interesting paper by Kelly Kearse.
– The Hypotheses About The Roman Flagrum: Some Clarifications
– Modern Scholarship And The History Of The Turin Shroud
– The Full-Length History Of The Turin Shroud
– Constantinople Documents As Evidence Of The Shroud In Edessa
– Maybe my own paper: The Origin Of Rogers’ Raes And C14 Samples
– And the open discussion: Future Testing Of The Shroud
The authors can be found here: http://www.stlouisshroudconference.com/app-get-involved/program.
There were at least 11 papers that, in my opinion, were well informed.
Most importantly, I have seen several people with opposite opinions discussing peacefully over a glass of wine.
Friendship and respect were the key-words of the Conference.
Dan wrote: “We all owe a debt of gratitude to Joe Marino and his committee”
Yes.
You call it a “conference”, Thibault, yet there was no discussion allowed after each paper. That’s not a conference. It’s a marketing exercise. Just don’t look too closely at what’s being sold, though Joe Marino’s bio gives a clue:
“Both Joe and Sue performed exceptional work on researching the Shroud, and bringing its message to the world.”
What a travesty. What a mockery of science…
For once, I tend to agree with Mr. Berry… How many Shroud “conférences” have been done since the STURP examination? A ton! And what is the outcome of all those things? Not much frankly… After all these “conferences”, I wonder why there never been one serious global test plan proposal that could have been submitted to the Turin authorities for a new series of tests. I’m not aware of even just one! To me, all these “conferences” are like watching a one man show after the other, after the other, after the other… And I still wait to see one real concensus effort coming out of this…
I think this clearly demonstrates the bias of CB. Without even attending the confrence or having access to the papers he is making his own judgment. Agenda driven bias at its best.
By such comments, CB has embarrassed himself, his allies, and members of this blog. Of course, he has no idea that he has done so — and has no capacity for embarrassment, anyway.
Reminder: it’s called :
“Shroud of Turin Blog
Latest news and views on the Turin Shroud”
There’s nothing in that title to suggest that the site exists for the benefit of true believers in the Shroud’s authenticity, or to “protect them from embarrassment”, whatever that means. If it did, or I so much as suspected that were its true purpose then (a) I wouldn’t be here, even offering occasional comments, caustic or otherwise and (b) it would serve no useful purpose in being online, accessible to all and sundry without password-protection.
It’s an open-to-anyone site. So kindly cease sounding as if you were some kind of stakeholder in the site with the right to dictate the tone of the proceedings. [Insult removed].
My mission was made clear when I set up my sciencebuzz site in 2005 – to expose media dissemination of pseudo-science wherever and whenever I found it. Shroudology is 90% pseudoscience; the St.Louis so-called conference, allowing no questions to speakers, has just dumped a whole new critique-free truckload.
Corpses as neutron-emitting, image-imprinting sources? Yeah, right.
I have removed an unnecessary insulting remark from the latest comment by Colin Berry.
Yes, but inserting “Insult removed” means that late arrivals will have to speculate as to what I said, and in all probability imagine the “insult” to be greater than was the case (especially as I phrased it as a question for consideration).
Time methinks to take another holiday from this site and its trolls (especially in view of Mike M’s recent obnoxious slurs my experimental competence, claiming that I worked without protocols, controls, proper documentation etc). You let that past, didn’t you Dan Porter? One rule for me… (My recent experiments not only compared linen treatments in butted edge-to-edge test samples, but also examined systematic temperature variation, albeit with no numbered scale. When did anyone here last see that being done?).
I say enough is enough – for the time being at any rate. I’ve said all I need to say about that travesty of a “conference” that made no provision for conferring.
To drastically reduce and even cure stomach acidity, better just eat two bio bananas a day and drink 2-4 ounces of organic, stabilized, aloe vera juice every day (with or withou trusted herbs). Don’t you rely on drug therapy with side effects.
“The Conference was an outstanding success”. I agree with Dan and Thibault. It was very well organized and the speakers were mostly on time. I think the only thing I didn’t like was the lack of Q&A. I think allowing for a 10-15 minutes discussion after each presentation would be very positive. I understand the volume of papers presented wouldn’t allow for that but I think the presentations could’ve been bundled together by subject (e.g. history of the shroud/Mandylion) then followed by a Q&A that covered those presentation. There was some repetition to the extent that some speakers just had to jump over a lot of slides knowing this has been discussed many times before. I didn’t like the presentations that were simply read by someone else, I immediately lose interest in those. My favourite ones were by Russ Breault, he is a very engaging speaker. Also Ray Schneider, A. Silverman, K. Kearse, E. Marinelli, Flavia Manservigi, Dan Scavone, Bob Siefker, J. Markwardt and Offcourse last but not least, Barrie’s shortest talk ever. The discussion forum should’ve been in the beginning of the day because I was very tired by then and didn’t get a chance to contribute. Other wise I was proud to be part of the professional bunsh of shroud enthusiasts who actually were willing to travel to see for themselves the papers rather than trash them from overseas.
Hats off to Joe Marino & the committee. I enjoyed the presentations & the discussions both inside & outside the conference room. Also, the opportunity to meet many people. My only regret is not taking a selfie with Dan Porter.
I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet you, Kelly. I would have enjoyed meeting you and the many others that were able to be there. I had a previous engagement I could not reschedule.
Thought for the day…question for Colin, Hugh etc.
If a scorch off a bas relief for public display (and profit), why the lack of loin cloth?
Exposing buttocks (heretical)
Why the super realistic kink in the leg? (on the dorsal)
Why the odd and nonsensical (in terms of art history) blood along the lower back
Thoughts?
Doesn’t stack up for me
Good questions.
1) Nudity is not heretical. Not even Jesus’ nudity. I think this is a question of social convention and taboo. I haven’t quantified this, but I guess that a naked Jesus occurs more often in books than it does in public display. The biggest taboo, however, was (is) not nudity but genitalia, and with few, perhaps deliberately provocative, exceptions (eg Michelangelo), even when Jesus is clearly nude, some diaphanous wisp of material, or the angle of his legs, or his hands, preserve his modesty. Buttocks, I think, were not a problem, but rarely appear – on anybody – because a picture of someone shows his front, not his back. Obviously, if a decision were taken to have a front-and-back portrait (which is, I agree, probably unique in early art) of a naked man, then buttocks would be inevitable.
2) I see no kink. I see what I would expect if somebody wanted to show one foot placed over another, and the shroud wrapped up over the heel of the lower foot.
3) The blood chain is, I agree, an oddity. It was often supoosed in earlier times to represent the chain or rope with which Jesus was tied to the pillar. I wonder what its ends looked like before the 1532 fire (if it was there then). However it makes no sense from an authenticist point of view either; dribbles of blood trickling from one side of the cloth to the other – where from, and how?
When something seem to me to be better explained by a 13th century origin than a 1st (such as the heads meeting in the middle), or by a 1st century origin than a 13th (such as fragments of the pollen data), then I place that bit of evidence on the relevant side of the balance. Where it doesn’t seem to fit either (such as this blood belt), I suspend judgement.
Hugh item 3), ‘blood chain an oddity’??: Previously much discussed here, but not an oddity. A little homework resolves it.
Barbet, ch 8, re ‘Journey to the tomb’, section D; Probably five bearers, two carrying patibulum (~176 lbs), two supporting trunk using sheet twisted as band under lower thorax, fifth at feet, body in rigor mortis. Barbet’s description of blood flow on back is consistent with this scenario. Authenticist point of view does make sense, it’s only a problem for non-authenticists!
Perhaps Yannick and Colin can organize the anti-St. Louis conference. I can appreciate your criticisms of the conference, but talk is cheap gents. To quote the kids today, “be the change you wish to see”. Reading from the Book of Lamentations gets us nowhere.
I recognize that these kind of conferences can stimulates some researches about the Shroud and also creates some partnership. For these reasons, my critic is not all black. But I prefer by far seeing papers about the Shroud published in serious and well-recognized peer-reviewed journals and I still wait to see a concensus about a new global test plan for a future direct research coming out of these conferences. The fact that this never happen, even though there are maybe 1 or 2 conferences like that every year is what really bugs me.
Clearly a vast amount of material was covered in the four days of the conference. Thibault’s list is indicative. It would seem that with only half an hour for many of the papers, the effort was mainly on summary presentation, rather than on any deep consideration or opportunity for much debate or full discussion. That will no doubt come, when all papers become available or are completed.
In particular I shall be keen to compare the two papers by Scavone and Markwardt, to see how they might be resolved. Both have been major contributors in the past to a closer understanding of how a credible history of the Shroud might be constructed, despite the difficulties, the lack of a clear trail, and much controversy.
MCNP Analysis of Neutrons Released From Jesus’ Body In The Resurrection by Robert Rucker – I think Mr. Rucker’s hypothesis that a very small fraction of neutrons in the body of Jesus were emitted from the body as it disappeared in the resurrection is the best hypothesis out of all the previous hypothesises. I am waiting to read more on his paper.
Most probably this is the best hypothesis to explain the Glorified body according to Gospels.
So far other hypothesises such as Painting, Scorch, Earth Quake Neutrons release, Corona Discharge etc. have failed to explain properly, the formation of the image on the Shroud of Turin
Thank you very much for the organisers of St. Louis Conference. Otherwise we never get a chance to hear this type of hypothesis.
Neutrons have been already proposed long ago by Rinaudo in France and this hypothesis have been set aside rapidly by Ray Rogers who, unlike Rinaudo and a bunch of others proposers, have seen the Shroud image up close and personal in Turin and spent many years afterward analyzing it [removed some all caps]… I recommand you to read Rogers’ book in which you’ll find a section where he analyzed all these high-energetic proposals in order to conclude that they do not fit at all with what he observed on the Shroud and especially the fact that the structure of the image fibers are no more damaged by radiations than the non-image fibers… Note: you should buy Rogers’ book in PDF version. It’s cheaper! ;-)
Re the neutrons released from Jesus’ body in the resurrection to have his bloodied bodied recorded on his large burial wrapping, methinks (like a few others) not only the Shroud but the tomb and a large part of Jerusalem would have been destroyed in the so-called ‘imaging process’, which is not the case as the shroud and Jerusalem still exist…
Not at all! If God wanted to resurrect via a miraculous nuclear explosion he surely could have done, but miraculously restrict the effects of the explosion to a faint image on a piece of cloth. Or perhaps he did destroy Jerusalem, and then miraculously restored it before anybody noticed they’d been temporarily annihilated. That’s the trouble with dabbling in the pseudo-science of miracles; there are no constraints to what a supernatural power could get up to.
Sampath Fernando wrote: “Most probably this is the best hypothesis to explain the Glorified body according to Gospels.”
Reminder for Nando: According to John’s Gospel Mary Magdalene did mistake Yeshu’a for a gardener i.e. an everyday man NOT an angel /divine messenger or a man with a ‘Glorified body’… Don’t you make too much of the Gospels, please.
Hey MPH: You apppear amazingly unaware of the details of the NT. Mary Magdalene clearly did not recognize Jesus because she was looking for His body, not looking for Him, which is why she did not recognize the gardener. And Jesus in that form did not yet have a glorified body, as he told MM not to touch Him because He had not yet ascended to the Father.
Nabber,
Are you kidding? I can read the facts reported in the Gospels all right as far as they are reliable as such.
I am NOT ‘amazingly unaware’ of the fact Mary Magdalene did not recognize Jesus’. On this very blog I even provided an explanation regarding the way Second Temple period gardener look like along with a sensible reason why Mariam Magdalene mistook her master for the gardener!
Nabber, methinks YOU haven’t got the foggiest notion of what Second Temple period gardener looked like…
Methinks too Sampath Fernando was just referring to Jesus’ resurrection and his apparitions to his disciple after his death.
Besides, if you advocate the TS image process is supernatural, this implies Yeshu’a resurrected not just physically but with a new or ‘glorified body’.
Last but not least, could you tell me WHAT ‘a glorified body’ really is and WHEN exactly Yeshu’a mortal body turned into a ‘glorified body’ since you seem to know about Yeshu’a’s?
The Gospels also state that Jesus could change his appearance after the resurrection event.
That’s why I always say that the Resurrected Christ didn’t looked like the Shroud man at all since his closest friends were not able to recognize him after his Resurrection. This was done to respect their liberty and that’s in sync with the God jésus revealed through his ministry and particularly during his Passion. It’s interesting that, in order to recognize him, they always had to see some sign, whether it was his voice (which probably was the same as it was before his death), his stigmatas of the Passion, the breaking of the bread or the miraculous fishing… This particular fact shows how different he surely was! Personally, I think that, along with his voice, he probably only kept the same eyes he had before his death and all the rest was different. After all, the eyes are the mirror of the soul!
And when we push the reflection further, we came to understand that this particular fact that the Resurrected Christ changed his appearence so much that his closest friends were not able to recognize him without any signs is a great indication that these account are historically accurate and true, because if the story of the Resurrection was a hoax done by some disciples, they would have make believe that they had absolutely no problem to recognize him and that they had no boubt about it. The fact that this is precisely the opposite that happen is a great sign of truth. And this particular fact is also a great piece of evidence to reject the idea of a mass hallucination, because the imagination of people would have lead them to see Jesus just like he was before his death.
When we reflect upon these accounts with logic while taking into account all the known data, we end-up thinking that the most probable answer is to believe they’re true. The same thing is also true when it comes to the authenticity of the Shroud.
Hi Louis !
Why on earth, could not Yeshua’s ‘change of appearance’ be just physical? What about his post-Passion relative disfiguration? What about a possible very rapid alopecy/psilosis due to post-violent (apparent or real)-death-and- return-to-(apparent or real)-physical-life?
Yeshu’a might even have looked younger without his beard and moustache…
Reminder: oftentimes in the resurrected Christ late Antique and Medieval iconography, Yeshu’a looks like a moustacheless, beardless and younger.
Typo: Yeshu’a looks like a moustacheless and beardless youngman.
Hi Max
I didn’t get you. What ate you implying?
Sorry, I meant “are” above.
I’m starting to think that he has been seeing this lately:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NJf4HWsIaFI
I fail to see why there would be a sudden onset of alopecia due to the violent death. Telogen effluvium, which is the alopecia mostly related to extreme stress and strain takes time to become apparent and alopecia areata, which may have a link to stress, is limited to patches.
Is he implying that there was radiation involved in the Resurrection? Even if we assume that there was, I doubt that Jesus was suffering from radiation poisoning for obvious reasons.
Lastly, due to cultural and religious reasons I doubt that he would have shaved.
I also rule alopecia totalis, which some medical literature classifies as an extreme form of alopecia areata, because I doubt that such an extreme change would not be noted by the witnesses. Besides the fact that it would contradict the depictions cited by Max.
If Max is implying that Jesus never really died, I can vouch that he did not go to Kashmir:
https://www.academia.edu/7893085/The_Quest_for_Jesus_in_Shroud_research
I believe in the Resurrection for other reasons than just an empty tomb.
Eric,
Firstly, I have never seen God-King;Rise of Xerxes.
Secondly, this idea occurred to me in 1988 (i.e. more that a quarter of a century ago not ‘lately’)
My question: how many cases have you ever studied/heard of POST-VIOLENT (apparent or real)-death-and- return-to-(apparent or real)-physical-life very rapid medio-facial (that is partialis not totalis) psilosis/alopecia?
Reminder: e.g. postpartum hair loss – severe, RAPID, localized hair loss that can develop into bald spots.
Louis, I am not implying Yeshu’a never really die. Scientifically AND spiritually it shall remain an open question.
BTW, as they manipulated manure, Second Temple period gardeners were HAIRLESS (i.e. wore no beard and no moustache and most of the time were bald or nearly bald) so that e.g. Jerusalem Temple priests (in their preoccupation with the Halakah laws of impurity and defilement) could recognize them from afar.
I know my literature and I know the pathology of these conditions. Thus, I discussed the two plausible (or at least more common) causes of alopecia in a healthy individual that has undergone an extreme amount of stress. Take note that I had already stated that alopecia areata is limited to patches; a very notable variation is alopecia barbae, which would be close to what you describe as a diffuse localized hairloss. But, alas, I have yet to see a case where the entire beard just suddenly falls off and the patches seen in these conditions would not leave someone completely unrecognizable.
IMO, postpartum alopecia is a bad analogy for your point. It is usually notable between the 2-4 month mark and thus shares the same problem that I mentioned with “regular” telogen effluvium: It seems “sudden”, but it is actually a process that only becomes notable some time after it’s genesis.
Neither of these are apparent within hours, such as would have been the case in the example of Jesus/MM. Most of the those cases are related to severe illnesses that carry other visible symptoms, all of which would have been noted by the disciples. And, of course, there is also radiation poisoning, which would carry a nasty arrangement of symptoms.
Also, for the record, I have never attended someone that died a violent death and then came back days later and doubt that any MD has. But can offer an informed opinion.
…and avoid defilement.
And again, I believe that we should rule out alopecia totalis or alopecia universalis due to the fact that the change would be extreme. We are talking about no hair anywhere, no eyelashes or eyebrows… Nothing. Such a change would have been discussed as it would have make Jesus look very sick and vulnerable as opposed to Glorified.
Eric,
Re ‘an informed opinion’, since Mary Magdalene mistook Yeshu’a for the gardener AND Second Temple period gardeners were moustacheless and beardless (and most of time bald or nearly bald as they used to shave their heads), if Yeshu’a has not lost any hair, how then could you account for Mary Magdalene having mistaken her master for the gardener and not an angel while recognizing and angel for an angel? Waiting for your reply.
Eric,
And what about ‘post-oppressaem et ad-vitam-reditum’ (post apparent/real violent death and return to life) alopecia/psilosis?
Max, effluvium brought by trauma is not really different in terms of systematic hair loss to any other. For example, interruption of the hair cycle following a very serious, life threatening septic shock will not be apparent immediately. It may seem that way to the patient because when the hair starts falling, it comes out in clumps and -naturally- s/he will perceive it as a sudden onset, when it is not. Severe trauma also carries other complications, including endocrine ones, that contribute to hair loss, but alas, in a systemic way.
Even in cases where the hair loss is actually immediate, think chemotherapy for example, it takes around a week to start falling out and although quicker than in these other kinds of hair loss, it is still falls out systematically.
What I’m trying to say is that unless he was suffering an extreme case of radiation poisoning (I have read of cases where such symptoms were readily visible within hours) or a very serious disease that was already affecting him for some time, it is unlikely that he would have experienced extreme hairloss in a couple of days -especially localized hair loss- and that diffuse hair loss is not enough to make somebody a “complete stranger”.
“Severe trauma” = cardiac arrest, systemic shock, strokes, etc.
Hi Eric,
In a case of ‘oppressae et ad-vitam-reditus’ i.e. (apparent/real) violent death and return to life, I STILL think very rapid dramatic alopecia at least in medio facial region (loss of beard and moustache blood encrusted hair ) is a real possibilty and could explain the reason why Mary Magdalene mistook Yeshu’a for the gardener (and Not an angel).
BTW you still haven’t answer my question: since Mary Magdalene mistook Yeshu’a for the gardener AND Second Temple period gardeners were moustacheless and beardless (and most of time bald or nearly bald as they used to shave their heads) and if Yeshu’a has not lost any hair as you claim, how then could you account for Mary Magdalene having mistaken her master for the gardener (i.e. a man with a hairless face not say bald or nearly bald) and not an angel while recognizing and angel for an angel?
Besides Second Temple period hairless-faced gardeners were draped in their sindon/achiton (or inner garment) as workwear…
What about the real alternative possibility of Yeshu’a’s long inner shroud or sindon missing in the tomb and him appearing — not stark naked to Mary Magdalene! — but draped in it like a gardener?
This could account for Yeshua appearing to the Magdalene wearing a sindon as if stained with red earth in the manner of a gardener.
Reminder two: RED earth staining a sindon does look like bloodstains and is best earth for fruit trees and vegetables.
Just think of a hairless (i.e. at least with no moustache and beard any longer) Yeshu’a draped in his bloodstained sindon/shroud AND all the pieces of the Yeshu’a’s -first-appearance-to-Mary-Magdalene puzzle fit together.
Still methinks if you “miss that”, you just cannot really account for Mary Magdalene identifying the divine messengers/angels as divine messengers/angels yet mistaking at first sight her very own master for the gardener… Shall I repeat in Second Temple period, gardeners wore no moustache and no beard and were partially or totally bald. As they manipulated manure, STP gardeners were HAIRLESS so that Judeans and especially priests on their way to the Jerusalem Temple andin their preoccupation with the Halakah laws of impurity and defilement, could easily recognize them from afar and avoid impurity and defilement.
Hmmm…
While I remain unconvinced that the loss would have been that rapid, I guess that there is also a possibility that the tug, pulling and friction of removing the blood from the hair could have resulted in several areas losing some hair… Just not enough to make him unrecognizable.
I actually agree with the possibility that he was wearing that piece when meeting MM. Nudity would have been most distracting when trying to convey a message to an already shocked witness.
Just like you and everybody else, the only thing that I can do to explain the gospel is to speculate. Let’s try out my creativity then…
Depending on the translation, Matthew 28:3 states that either the “appearance” or more specifically the face of an angel was like “lighting”. Daniel 10:6 supports this. All of this suggests that they were extraordinarily luminous, blindingly so. There is not way to misidentify and angel with something earthly, thus why she easily recognized the angel. So then.. Why didn’t she know her own teacher? My guess would be that her eyes were still adjusting to the shade following the encounter with the angel. And when Jesus appeared she was still unable to clearly discern his features, which combined with the clothing, could explain the confusion. After all, the duration of flash blindness has been associated with the intensity of the light source.
Other options may be that he was standing in an angle where his face may have been obscured or was maybe wearing something that cloaked his face (if he was found alive, I guess that he may have been considered a fugitive; although I am not personally by this one) or that MM, completely shocked by the absence of a body dismissed the angel as a grief induced hallucination and tried to rationalize his presence by identifying him as someone that she would expect: a gardener.
* There is no way to misidentify an angel with something earthly
In another occasion Jesus told like this –Matthew 22:30 – At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
That is why I support Mr. Rucker’s hypothesis about the disappearance of the body.
The TRUE fact in John’s Gospel is Mary of Magdalene is reported to have seen an angel already in the tomb AND a gardener coming from outside. She DID NOT mistake her master Yeshua’s for an angel but for… a gardener!
This makes a world of a difference. Mary Magdalene could tell the difference between an angel and a gardener, which means Yeshua’s looked like a gardener i.e. a human being NOT an angel! First she thought he was the gardener and THEN (by means of his voice calling her by her surname) she finally recognized Yeshu’a not as an angel but as her master (rabbuni)…
Methinks there are many red-flags in your (and Nabber’s) interpretation of the John’s Gospel resurrection scene.
Max, I can understand your point of view. But if it comes to that point, do you identify what you call “G-od” as YHVH? If yes, what certainty do you have that Moses existed and received divine revelation?
I have told this to people who denied much of what is in the NT to apparently validate just the OT revelation:
https://www.academia.edu/7471223/Jesus_was_not_buried_in_Talpiot_-_Part_III
Do I identify “G-od” as YHVH?
To me G-od, YHWH/Adonaï, D-eus, Th-eos etc are all words that refer to the power of manifestation of the infinite intelligence of life in the human being and in all the manifest world.
The subtitle for Shroud Encounter is “CSI Jerusalem–The Case of the Missing Body”. The apostles were not hallucinating when they reported numerous encounters with a resurrected Jesus that involved eating, touching, and conversing. The apostles all (except John) went to their deaths for their testimony. What was their testimony? That Jesus who the Romans crucified has risen from the dead. They were eye witnesses. Nobody dies for a lie. The body was not stolen. Who stole it? Not the apostles–what would be the motive? Not the Romans or the Jews–their motive was to discredit Jesus not to affirm his deity. Any theory that does not also explain how this body disappeared is pointless. The only alternative is that it is indeed the work of an unknown medieval artist who predated Leonardo DaVinci by several hundred years and no one knows who he is or how he did it and he never did anything else of any significance.
Max, both the human being and the manifest world are finite. Have you read Schopenhauer?
Louis, my reply to you question (Do I identify “G-od” as YHVH?)
“To me G-od, YHWH/Adonaï, D-eus, Th-eos etc are all words that refer to the power of manifestation of the infinite intelligence of life in the human being and in all the manifest
world.”
The human being’s body is G-od’s Temple. Louis haven’t you read the NT?
From Yannick:
>>For once, I tend to agree with Mr. Berry… How many Shroud “conférences” have been done since the STURP examination? A ton! And what is the outcome of all those things? Not much frankly… After all these “conferences”, I wonder why there never been one serious global test plan proposal that could have been submitted to the Turin authorities for a new series of tests. I’m not aware of even just one! To me, all these “conferences” are like watching a one man show after the other, after the other, after the other… And I still wait to see one real concensus effort coming out of this…<<
The authorities in Turin and Rome are the problem here, not the people who hold Shroud conferences. What would you like "Shroudies" to do, call Danny Ocean, organize a heist, and steal the Shroud so that they can do more tests on it? I think we've got the plot for "Ocean's 14"…
Barberis was clear I think about the fact that the authorities will never allow a new series of tests unless a serious multi-disciplinary group of experts in their own fields got together and submit a real serious global test plan in the way STURP did back then. I think a Shroud conference could be a good place to start working on this but, unfortunatelly, even though there were a lot of conferences in recent years, I still wait for this to happen…
Colin wrote “yet there was no discussion allowed after each paper. That’s not a conference. It’s a marketing exercise. Just don’t look too closely at what’s being sold, though Joe Marino’s bio gives a clue:
“Both Joe and Sue performed exceptional work on researching the Shroud, and bringing its message to the world.”
What a travesty. What a mockery of science.”
There were so many papers that there was no time for discussion after each paper. That’s different than “no discussion was allowed.” You denigrate the conference, approximately 40 speakers and over 150 attendees (including from 7 other countries besides the United States) just because I believe the Shroud has a message. What pettiness. What grasping for straws.
“There were so many papers that there was no time for discussion after each paper. ”
That kinda says it all – simple cause and effect.
I once organized a Dietary Fibre conference at FMBRA, Chorleywood, UK way back in the 80s. Admittedly it was only a 1 day affair, but I was able to fill most of the slots by personal invitation to those whom I could be certain had something new and useful to say – big hitters like David Southgate, Hans Englyst etc.
It would never have occurred to me to organize a conference that left no room for discussion after each paper. Conference = Confer-ence – a place where people get to confer. Online open-to-all interaction is interesting as an adjunct – but cannot serve as a substitute, especially if there’s no guarantee that a speaker will respond, or do so in the manner he/she would address questions from the floor to a room full of experts, possibly with one or more media folk in attendance, scribbling notes..
That’s my last word on the matter, at least on this site. I shall deal with further points, constructive or otherwise, on my own site, as I did yesterday with the recent comments posted here on shroudstory some 6 days ago regarding own experimental programme. Nuff said.
I meant to mention that in lieu of having no time for questions and answers, the conference site has a discussion forum where anyone can make comments and ask questions of the speakers. There’s no guarantee that all the speakers will participate, but at least it’s generally more substantial than a one-time 10 minute session at the conference. Go to http://www.stlouisshroudconference.com, click on the “Get Involved” tab and then “Discussion.”
I would have enjoyed attending, Joe. I’m glad it sounds like it was chocked full. I look forward to reading its papers.
Colin wrote “It would never have occurred to me to organize a conference that left no room for discussion after each paper.”
That kinda says it all. It wasn’t your conference.
Here’s a complementary comment concerning the one I wrote yesterday in which I was talking about the fact that Jesus’ disciples were unable to recognize him after his Resurrection without the help of a sign given by him.
Because I like to go deep in my reflection of what I found in the Gospels, I propose you this « spiritual » reason for why Jesus didn’t had the same appearence that he had during his earthly life : It was a sign given to the disciples for them to understand that, from that moment on, they must always try to see Jesus in all the human beings they will encounter. In other words, this was a sign given to them to understand that Jesus (God) is hidden in the heart (or the soul or whatever the word you want to call it) of every person and lives there spiritualy (which is the most profound meaning of Matthew 25).
To me, along with the fact that God never want to force faith, that’s the main reason for why Jesus had a new appearence (still human, but different) when he encountered his disciples after his Resurrection.
I also want to say that when we consider the facts globally (including the probable fact that some disciples decided to take Jesus’ burial shroud from the tomb and preserved it), we’re lead to conclude 2 important things : 1- The empty tomb is an historical fact (because even Jesus’ ennemy never denied that his tomb was empty on Easter morning and, obviously, no one ever found out the missing corpse afterward) and 2- Right after Jesus’ death and burial, there were many of his disciples who were totally convinced that he was still alive, but in a different way. Here, the probable fact that they kept and perserved carefully his burial cloth covered with bloodstains (even though it was a legal impurity for a Jew to touch a cloth that had been in contact with a dead) is a great piece of evidence (at least for me) of the fact that they must have been highly convinced of his Resurrection on Easter day.
Note : These 2 important conclusions don’t mean that Jesus’ Resurrection is, in itself, an historical fact, but these conclusions are great indicators for us to undertstand that the apostolic testimony concerning Jesus’ death, burial and Resurrection must be consider very serious and as having a potentially high value. In other words, this post-Resurrection testimony is surely not a joke, not a hoax, but on the contrary, came from men and women who were totally convinced that what they said was true.
Now, is it possible that an unknown person stole the body of Jesus from the tomb (while leaving his burial shroud there) and make them believe he was still alive (maybe by using someone who looked a bit like Jesus and by making him appear to them on some occasions)? Yes, it is possible to think that. But that’s surely not the most probable conclusion to draw in face of all the facts and pieces of evidence we got…
Here, it’s a bit like the image on the Shroud, which we can still think that it came from a « natural » forgery where the forger would have used a real crucified body to make a false Christian relic, even though the corpus of facts and data leads us to conclude that such a scenario is far-fetched (even if it is theoretically possible) and there’s another scenario that really seems to be much more probable, i.e. that the image on the cloth came from a natural interraction between the real crucified body of Jesus of Nazareth and his own burial cloth…
In sum, I think that if we analyze the situation without bias or preconcieve notions, while taking account of all the pertinent data and observations, we can say that, in the case of the Resurrection of Jesus as well as in the case of the Shroud, it is much more easy to conclude that these are just what it was reported to be (i.e. the Resurrection of Jesus is a true event and the Shroud is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus) than to start building far-fetched scenarios, just to contradict the official claims that were made…
While reading this previous paragraph, some people (those who don’t know me that much) could find strange that I consider the Resurrection of Jesus to be « probable » in face of all the data, observations and testimonies we have and, at the same time, that I don’t make a direct link between the formation of the body image on the Shroud and this supernatural event. First, I would say that there is nothing in the corpus of data coming from the Shroud that leads me to believe in such a direct link. We don’t find anything in all the STURP papers that have been published in peer-reviewed journals that suggest such a thing and there is nothing also in all the later analyses done by Ray Rogers and Alan Adler afterward. And secondly, this is important to remember (and I think most people here are completely unaware of this) that, historically, what have been officially reported in the case of the Shroud is that it was the authentic burial cloth of Jesus showing the image of his dead body at the time he was placed inside it. Effectively, the belief that the image was caused directly by some burst of energy coming from Jesus’ corpse at the exact moment of his Resurrection is a real modern heresy, which originates from the unability of the STURP team to find one clear and definitive solution for the image formation, as well as the very curious C14 results published in 1989 (the « scientific journey » of John Jackson is the most obvious example that illustrate this), while all the other data were pointing in direction of authenticity. Look, you just need to read papers or books that were written about the Shroud before that era to understand easily that the body image formation was almost never associated directly with the Resurrection of Christ, even by the researchers (like Vignon and Barbet for example) who concluded, just like me, that this Shroud is authentic. When you read these « ancient » publications about the Shroud (you can also read an article of Peter Rinaldi, which have been published on this blog last year), you note easily that it was evident for these writers that the image on the Shroud was directly related to the dead body of Christ and not to his « glorious body »! After having studied carefully all the pertinent data and observations related to the cloth and the image, I came out convinced that their conclusion about that was good and that the scenario of an image directly caused by the Resurrection event was an Hollywoodish and heretic idea.
One last thing I would like to say about Jesus’ Resurrection is this : I think the error would be to focus on the own personal Resurrection of Jesus, while forgetting (or not understanding) that, in the most profound way, these appearance of the Resurrected Christ were mainly intended to make us understand that his Resurrection is ours too! In other words, I truly believe that the best way to look at Christ’s Resurrection is to see in this event an insurance of our own personal Resurrection that will come for sure at the « end of our time » here on earth! In sum, it is the « heritage » that God saved for us from all eternity… And I think we must do the same kind of « reading » for all the important events in the life of Christ that we find in the Gospels, whether it be his transfiguration, his baptism, his suffering passion, etc. In other words, in these events, we must see our own transfiguration that will surely come after our physical death, our own baptism that has been done a first time by God at the moment he created us and which will be redone in a more complete way at the time of our physical death, our own suffering passion here on earth, which will eventually be transfigured into eternal life and hapinness after our physical death, etc. It’s like Jesus is saying to us : Stop looking at me personally and look at what has been lovingly prepared by God for YOU from all eternity! I think that’s one of the main reason why Christ didn’t appeared to his disciples for a long period of time after his Resurrection and choosed to disappear completely to their eyes after that short period of time. Or else, they would have been even more tempted to only watch the Resurrected Christ without thinking that his own Resurrection was also ours!
Eric, relying mostly and too much methinks on Daniel’s (Daniel 10:5-6) vivid description of an angel: “I looked up and there before me was A MAN DRESSED IN LINEN (my upper cases), with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like topaz, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude”, you wrote (re the angels at and in Yeshu’a’s tomb:
“They were extraordinarily luminous, blindingly so” and Mary was so much bedazzled she just could not even recognize her own master AND YET mistook him for the gardener implying she could not mistook him for any of Yeshua’s disciples who might have come over as well to the tomb (besides John and Peter). You explanation neither fits logic and John’s gospel narrative.
When Mary Magdalene saw Yeshu’a on that early morning, most likely she was sitting on her knees still weeping at the low cave-tomb opening and looking in. She turned her head as Yeshu’a’s body draped in a sindon was silhouetted against the rising sun between two columns with two more pillars projecting from either side of the monumental/main entrance. She could have mistaken him for a divine messenger too according to ‘your speculation’, which is definitely not the case: she mistook him for a gardener implying ‘the man she saw’ looked an everyday man weaing a red earth stained sindon draped as workwear and his face was hairless (if not to say bald or nearly bald).
Besides the word for angels can refer here either to divine messengers or mere human messengers (e.g. Yeshu’a’s secret disciples from Essenean background) or else divine messengers resembling human form.
Indeed if in in Heb. 1:14, we are told angels are not composed of physical matter but are spirit beings created by G-od; the true fact remains angels can resemble human form when G-od permits or wills it (see Gen. 19) and when they appear in a human form in the Bible, they are always a man even if angels are neither male of female and they appear as such NOT TO FRIGHTEN real human beings, which is in drastic contrast with ‘your speculation’. Reminder the angel’s word in the tomb: “Don’t be afraid!”.
Thus what do you make of the fact Second Temple period gardeners’ face was hairless? NOTHING!
What do you make of the fact the resurrected/glorified Christ Late Antique and Medieval iconography depicts him with no hair and no moustache at times while depicting him with a beard and moustache before resurrection and glorification ON THE SAME iconographic program (see e.g. the famous Hungarian Pray Ms bifolium)? NOTHING!
This is not serious refutation.
On Matthew 28:3, actually (more on that later). And I was quite clear that it was speculation, which I decided to elaborate on your request while we were discussing what I can actually debate, the pathology of trauma related hairloss and the speed of its onset. But since you insist…
MPH: “Eric, relying mostly and too much methinks on Daniel’s (Daniel 10:5-6) vivid description of an angel: “I looked up and there before me was A MAN DRESSED IN LINEN (my upper cases), with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like topaz, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and his voice like the sound of a multitude””
A: I’m not exactly sure why you are emphasizing the clothing, when the obvious characteristics that would support a luminous being are his description of the face and eyes, which are associated with lightning and fire. Daniel provides a fancy, yet detailed description of an angel, and implies that it was luminous. Matthew 28:3 provides a very similar description of the very being that appeared to the guards and women: “His appearance (face in some translations) was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow.” Implying that both were allegorizing the “lightning” part is a worst defiance to logic than taking it to literally mean that angels emit an intense luminosity akin to lightning.
MPH: “(…) you wrote (re the angels at and in Yeshu’a’s tomb: “They were extraordinarily luminous, blindingly so” and Mary was so much bedazzled she just could not even recognize her own master AND YET mistook him for the gardener implying she could not mistook him for any of Yeshua’s disciples who might have come over as well to the tomb (besides John and Peter). You explanation neither fits logic and John’s gospel narrative.”
A: I did not say “bedazzled”, which implies disorientation and impairment of several senses. No, I said that she would have been experiencing “flash blindness” of the kind that people adjusting to a sudden change in lighting experience. The effect can last several days, and no, in most cases it does not mean that the person is entirely blind but rather just visually impaired. Why not mistake him for an apostle? The clothing. I already noted my agreement on this point.
MPH: “When Mary Magdalene saw Yeshu’a on that early morning, most likely she was sitting on her knees still weeping at the low cave-tomb opening and looking in. She turned her head as Yeshu’a’s body draped in a sindon was silhouetted against the rising sun between two columns with two more pillars projecting from either side of the monumental/main entrance. She could have mistaken him for a divine messenger too according to ‘your speculation’, which is definitely not the case: she mistook him for a gardener implying ‘the man she saw’ looked an everyday man weaing a red earth stained sindon draped as workwear and his face was hairless (if not to say bald or nearly bald).”
A: Again, I agree on the clothing. Not the baldness. My speculation does not say or imply that she would mistake somebody wearing that, with the divine messenger that the women had seen and who is described as wearing clothing that was “white as snow” (Matt. 28:3).
MPH: “Besides the word for angels can refer here either to divine messengers or mere human messengers (e.g. Yeshu’a’s secret disciples from Essenean background) or else divine messengers resembling human form.”
A: Are you completely ignoring Matthew 28:3? Just like Daniel’s, this angel had an appearance (or face, depending on the translation) “like lightning”. Clearly not adopting an human facade. Furthermore, he made his supernatural nature very obvious when he appeared following a quake, moved the heavy stone by himself and sat on it. No one present would mistake it for a human, ever.
MPH: “Indeed if in in Heb. 1:14, we are told angels are not composed of physical matter but are spirit beings created by G-od; the true fact remains angels can resemble human form when G-od permits or wills it (see Gen. 19) and when they appear in a human form in the Bible, they are always a man even if angels are neither male of female and they appear as such NOT TO FRIGHTEN real human beings, which is in drastic contrast with ‘your speculation’. Reminder the angel’s word in the tomb: “Don’t be afraid!”.”
A: Max, you are contradicting both the physical description given in Matthew 28:3 and the fact that Matthew 28:4 states that the guards were horribly scared: “The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.” Clearly the reason why he had to say “Do not be afraid” to the women was due to his supernatural appearance and actions, both of which would have been fiercely intimidating.
“Thus what do you make of the fact Second Temple period gardeners’ face was hairless? NOTHING!”
A: Of course not, you requested me to bring up an alternative answer to the baldness issue and I did.
“What do you make of the fact the resurrected/glorified Christ Late Antique and Medieval iconography depicts him with no hair and no moustache at times while depicting him with a beard and moustache before resurrection and glorification ON THE SAME iconographic program (see e.g. the famous Hungarian Pray Ms bifolium)? NOTHING!”
A: You of all people should be aware of the identifications with pagan deities and the influence that could have on the way that people that never saw him visualized him. Just take Sol Invictus’ classical appearance, remember the Mausoleum M depiction of Christ as a fusion of himself and the pagan deity, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti and Christmas… And voila, a perfect recipe for people depicting Jesus the as the clean shaven Sol Invictus during those early centuries. The human Jesus would be depicted as your “average” Jewish man, while the Resurrected form would resemble the “divine” look of Sol Invictus. The example of Sol Invictus is the most obvious due to the known interaction between his cult and early Christianity, but the same could be said for Apollo and several of the Hellenistic/Roman deities.
“This is not serious refutation.”
A: It was meant to be speculation, I went on the tangent on your request. I was perfectly comfortable trying to explain why hair loss would not have been evident in the short time between the Resurrection and MM seeing him.
Typo: most likely she (Mary Magdalene) was sitting on her knees OR SQUATTING
More typo: she could not HAVE MISTAKEN him for any of Yeshua’s disciples etc.
Eric ,
Then again you explanation does not fit the reported facts (see the Four Gospels) and facts of experience.
1/- Had Mary Magdalene really seen an angel in its heavenly form i.e. as described in Daniel’s ‘fancy description’ (Daniel 10:5-6) and not in a human form AND IN THE TOMB:
– firstly she would have fallen on her face instantly
– secondly she should have not even noticed “the gardener” looming behind her in the rising sun (most likely between two monumental cave-tomb entrance columns) as she was squatting at the low tomb opening looking in and consequently she should not have had to adjust to a sudden change in lighting experience since lighting was both within (an alleged “luminous angel” in the tomb) and without (Mary Magdalene turning her head and facing the rising sun).
2/ Re Matt 28: 1-4 we read: “Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.
– firstly you most misleadingly mix up THREE DIFFERENT EPISODES as Matthew (for dramatic emphasis’ sake) mixes two episodes into one namely the resurrection per se that occurred in the middle of the night (AND NOT at dawn!) with an angel descending from heaven (that is from outside the tomb AND NOT from the inside!) and Mary Magdalene coming at the tomb toward dawn first WITH OTHER WOMEN AND THEN with Mary Magdalene’s RETURN to the empty tomb by herself and seeing an angel IN the tomb.
– Besides ‘the Archangel of Lightning’ as Anthropomorphic Personification trope was currently used in popular ancient Jewish culture for literary dramatic emphasis. To mistake literary device for fact is just naive.
– thirdly, shall I endlessly repeat, in the Bible and Rabbinic literature, angels are spiritual beings without bodies of flesh and bones THOUGH they apparently have the ability to appear in human form (Gen. 19:1-22). Reminder: physical Matter is the lowest vibration of spiritual Energy (or Spirit) and spiritual Energy (or Spirit) is the highest vibration of physical Matter
3/ you wrote: “it is unlikely that he (=Yeshu’a) would have experienced extreme hairloss in a couple of days -especially localized hair loss- and that diffuse hair loss is not enough to make somebody a “complete stranger”.
Question one: when was it last you medically studied or hear of a moustached, bearded and long-haird man returned to life/resurrected after experiencing a very traumatic/violent death to totally rule out the possibility of a case of ‘post-oppressaem-et-ad-vitam-reditum’ quick extreme alopecia (loss of beard and moustache and partial loss of Yeshu’a’s long hair blood encrusted hair)?
Had you ever gotten long hair and worn a moustache and beard and one day had to have all your hair shaved on the head and all around the mouth in a place with no mirror and all of a sudden, while passing from a place with no mirror to a place with a mirror, been brought face to face with your own new reflection in the mirror, you could have not even recognized yourself at first sight and should have needed a time to adapt and become familiar with your new face image! Even a very good friend from childhood could not have recognized you unless you would have addressed him using his surname. Once I made this very disturbing experiment. I could not even recognize a very good friend of mine from childhood just standing in front me as he had no moustache no beard any longer and wear very short hair, which I was not familiar with!
Most likely, this could explain why Mary Magdalene was unable to recognize her own master as she mistook him for a hairless-faced, sparse-haired and red-earth encrusted bare-footed gardener draped in his red earthstained sindon used as workwear.
You also wrote: “You of all people should be aware of the identifications with pagan deities and the influence that could have on the way that people that never saw him visualized him.”
In the specific case of the Hungarian Pray Ms bifolium I gave as an example, most likely the illustrator did SEE the crucifixion victim image on the Constantinople Sindon. Still it is reported by eyewitnesses “the ‘not-made-by-hand’ image of Christ and G-od, draped with a white/pure linen cloth he had worn, was sufficiently in lieu of the vision of the Lord coming into the flesh to those who had not corporally seen him”. Too bad you of all people are amazingly unaware of the corroborating 944-1207 CE testimonies and eyewitness descriptions of the TS image.
Your refutation is still not serious and does not fit with the Gospels, the known (in terms of facts of experience) and the most comprehensive and logical explanation for Mary Magdalene mistaking her own master for the gardener.
Addendum: In Matthew 28, his personification of lightning as natural/supernatural phenomenon (‘The Archangel of Lightning’) is a figure of speech (trope)
Yahweh’s manifestation (=theophany) is accompanied by thunder and lightning.
If you are referencing Barachiel (which BTW deals with one being in particular, not *all* angels) we must remember that the relevant book is believed to have been written after Christianity was already flourishing, see Evan et al.
Did the gardener have eyebrows? That’s the key!
MPH: “Eric ,
Then again you explanation does not fit the reported facts (see the Four Gospels) and facts of experience.
1/- Had Mary Magdalene really seen an angel in its heavenly form i.e. as described in Daniel’s ‘fancy description’ (Daniel 10:5-6) and not in a human form AND IN THE TOMB:
– firstly she would have fallen on her face instantly
– secondly she should have not even noticed “the gardener” looming behind her in the rising sun (most likely between two monumental cave-tomb entrance columns) as she was squatting at the low tomb opening looking in and consequently she should not have had to adjust to a sudden change in lighting experience since lighting was both within (an alleged “luminous angel” in the tomb) and without (Mary Magdalene turning her head and facing the rising sun).”
A: Yes, but Daniel 10:11 clearly states that to effectively convey a message, these beings are able to command somebody to stand up despite being shaken to the core. Not only that, but simply a glimpse of such an extreme form of light would suffice (Did you know that temporary blindness is seen commonly in those adjacent to actual lightning strikes, even when they never “saw” the actual bolt? Also, abolt only lasts a few milliseconds.) and we know that Daniel was able to see him and did not fall until spoken to. Also, Ezekiel 1:28 states that he was permitted a glimpse of The Lord himself before falling down. In any case, I don’t think that she would have continued to look at it for long, just enough to identify it as an angel (a glimpse of the divine). Lastly, even if the angel was disguised, it is still highly likely that she would have fallen to the floor in reverence as soon as she realized who he was and would have been instructed to stand up, so it would still play out the same way.
Um, No. The rising sun hardly illuminates to the extent that the eyes would not need to adjust if suddenly faced with something that irradiated “like lightning”. Lightning is several times more radiant than the actual sun, and hotter as well. Lightning may cause instantaneous damage to the retina, which is something that the sun will take its sweet time to do. If you were struck by a freak bolt in the middle of the day with the sun shining at its max, you would still experience flash blinding. Finally, I don’t think that the need to explain atmospheric scattering is relevant here, but there is a *reason* why we can enjoy sunrise and sunset.
MPH: “2/ Re Matt 28: 1-4 we read: “Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.
– firstly you most misleadingly mix up THREE DIFFERENT EPISODES as Matthew (for dramatic emphasis’ sake) mixes two episodes into one namely the resurrection per se that occurred in the middle of the night (AND NOT at dawn!) with an angel descending from heaven (that is from outside the tomb AND NOT from the inside!) and Mary Magdalene coming at the tomb toward dawn first WITH OTHER WOMEN AND THEN with Mary Magdalene’s RETURN to the empty tomb by herself and seeing an angel IN the tomb.”
A: First, I did not “mix up” anything, these are different scenes of the same sequence and thus relevant to each other. The difference is only a few hours, Max. Second, there is no reason to assume that this was not the same being, since the women left, it would be most ineffective to return and then come back without delivering his message (and complete his divine mission). Simply remaining in the vicinity was more likely. Third, as explained above, the time of the day would make no difference in regards to flash blindness, as explained in the reply above.
MPH: “Besides ‘the Archangel of Lightning’ as Anthropomorphic Personification trope was currently used in popular ancient Jewish culture for literary dramatic emphasis. To mistake literary device for fact is just naive.”
A: “Currently” as in “first century current” is completely besides the point, since the description matches that of Daniel ages before. Allegorizing that may be a mistake on your behalf, especially since we are simply told that this was a messenger and is not identified as somebody higher up in hierarchy like say, Michael (who may warrant a “trope”).
MPH: “(…) thirdly, shall I endlessly repeat, in the Bible and Rabbinic literature, angels are spiritual beings without bodies of flesh and bones THOUGH they apparently have the ability to appear in human form (Gen. 19:1-22). Reminder: physical Matter is the lowest vibration of spiritual Energy (or Spirit) and spiritual Energy (or Spirit) is the highest vibration of physical Matter”
A: Perhaps you could clarify this argument, because I am sure that this was addressed in my last reply. And not only that, I used the term “human facade” well aware that they are not made out of flesh and blood. The fact of the matter is that the only description of the being adjacent to the tomb near the time of the Resurrection is describing a supernatural appearance.
MPH: “3/ you wrote: “it is unlikely that he (=Yeshu’a) would have experienced extreme hairloss in a couple of days -especially localized hair loss- and that diffuse hair loss is not enough to make somebody a “complete stranger”.”
A: Now this I can debate!
MPH: “Question one: when was it last you medically studied or hear of a moustached, bearded and long-haird man returned to life/resurrected after experiencing a very traumatic/violent death to totally rule out the possibility of a case of ‘post-oppressaem-et-ad-vitam-reditum’ quick extreme alopecia (loss of beard and moustache and partial loss of Yeshu’a’s long hair blood encrusted hair)?”
A: I already answered that no body has ever attended or studied any case of actual resurrection. However, let’s assume that it was so. Did you know that a good portion of your hair is already ready to fall? This is called the telogen phase and throughout it this hair is essentially just resting there, it could fall out at any moment, yet it generally does when the cycle is either ready to restart and go back to the anagen (growth) phase or when it is interrupted, as you are implying. Well now, when trauma interrupts the cycle and sends most of the hairs into a premature telogen phase, this means that these hairs are left without “replacements” and hair loss becomes apparent. However, the problem with that is -as mentioned above- that regardless of the reason for the interruption of the cycle (and death followed by Resurrection would be just that, a prolonged interruption of all body functions) said hair loss is systematic and will not become apparent until *at least* a few days after. You are suggesting that the sheer trauma would accelerate this to a few hours, but can’t provide any example of this happening either.
MPH: “Had you ever gotten long hair and worn a moustache and beard and one day had to have all your hair shaved on the head and all around the mouth in a place with no mirror and all of a sudden, while passing from a place with no mirror to a place with a mirror, been brought face to face with your own new reflection in the mirror, you could have not even recognized yourself at first sight and should have needed a time to adapt and become familiar with your new face image! Even a very good friend from childhood could not have recognized you unless you would have addressed him using his surname. Once I made this very disturbing experiment. I could not even recognize a very good friend of mine from childhood just standing in front me as he had no moustache no beard any longer and wear very short hair, which I was not familiar with!”
A: Well, of course. Had he actually *shaved* his face/head clean this could be easily explained. But this was one of the very first things that I addressed. Culturally this was unlikely, to this day the Halakha addresses shaving in a particular manner. Then there is the Nazarite Vow, but also the drinking of wine to consider.
MPH: “Most likely, this could explain why Mary Magdalene was unable to recognize her own master as she mistook him for a hairless-faced, sparse-haired and red-earth encrusted bare-footed gardener draped in his red earthstained sindon used as workwear.”
A: …
MPH: “You also wrote: “You of all people should be aware of the identifications with pagan deities and the influence that could have on the way that people that never saw him visualized him.”
In the specific case of the Hungarian Pray Ms bifolium I gave as an example, most likely the illustrator did SEE the crucifixion victim image on the Constantinople Sindon. Still it is reported by eyewitnesses “the ‘not-made-by-hand’ image of Christ and G-od, draped with a white/pure linen cloth he had worn, was sufficiently in lieu of the vision of the Lord coming into the flesh to those who had not corporally seen him”. Too bad you of all people are amazingly unaware of the corroborating 944-1207 CE testimonies and eyewitness descriptions of the TS image.”
A: Not at all, I am well aware of the parallels to the shroud in the Codex since it has been discussed here time after time. I never denied that the author saw the shroud, as a matter of fact I assume that he did. What *I did* imply is that the reason why his hair would be depicted differently afterwards is because the author would feel the need to illustrate the divinity of the Resurrection by replacing the bearded, “traditional” Jewish man, depicted in the shroud with something that reflected a known pagan deity as a metaphor of ascension, from man to God. Pagan influence lingered way after the cults disappeared, the author of the codex should have been well aware of these earlier depictions and hence why he choose them to illustrate this metaphor.
Regardless, in either case a few things are certain:
I- No first century artist is known to have painted an image of Christ after seeing him Resurrected first hand. This entire debate would be settled if such a piece emerged.
II- No oral tradition has been recorded directly stating that the change involved Jesus’ hair.
III- There is no way that the Codex’s author saw the Resurrected Christ in person and if he actually saw the shroud, then that would actually put more weight on the theory that the variation in the depictions was either metaphorical or represented something that is not to be taken literally.
MPH: “Your refutation is still not serious and does not fit with the Gospels, the known (in terms of facts of experience) and the most comprehensive and logical explanation for Mary Magdalene mistaking her own master for the gardener.”
A: Has it occurred to you that maybe we just have different interpretations of the gospels? So far I have not found any trouble rebuffing your arguments back, if mine were so flawed it would not have been this easy. And again, your own comprehensive explanation is still speculative, just like mine.
Eric, you wrote:
“So far I have not found any trouble rebuffing your arguments back”.
Methinks the main flaw in your argument is encapsulated in the very fact you STILL can mistake lightning for an angel. Myself I see ‘angels in clouds’ with or without lightning!
Employing an established analogy (i.e. “Like lightning”) is not a “mistake”. If I say that something was as “bright as the sun”, it may very well be, but that doesn’t mean that it is actually *the* sun. When someone says that something was “like lightning”, I infer that it was extremely luminous and akin to lightning, enough to cause flash blindness, not that it was literally lightning.
But then again, this was merely a tangent and deviation from the original medical argument. If we have reached the point of going around in circles for a week, then maybe it is time to just let it die.
Eric, don’t you (mis)take the Bible TOO literally and mishmash fairytale with medical matters, please!
Well then, let’s go back to the medical matters…
Can you cite me some literature backing down your point about notable hair loss that takes place in a couple of hours following severe trauma?
If you are not interested in debating that, I am not really interested in continuing to exchange barbs… I have seen the neverending coin debates and will not continue digging up an old thread to continue a circular argument.
If you want to go on, back it up.
I mean, you certainly did your home work. Didn’t you?
On fairy tale, I did. Re people resurrecting? I didn’t (not enough cases to study).
Well, that’s an ambiguous reply. Is that your way of saying that the ‘quick microwave’ alopecia is undocumented? If so, how does it differentiate itself from run of the mill speculation? Besides being “obvious” and “logical” in the opinion of an individual?
The scarcity of cases has never been an obstacle to -at the very least- make a footnote in medical literature. There are several diseases that are on record as affecting less than a dozen individuals. So, if someone lost his/hers hair in a few hours following extreme trauma, it is out there.
Since the Resurrection basically brought all of the cells to their previous function (this is actually the first time that I have encountered thought of an “imperfect/incomplete” Resurrection), there is no reason to believe that they would behave in odd ways. Except, of course, someone is speculating.
The shorud depicts a man with full hair, so if it is real, that is a problem for your theory. You are assuming that it is real, but depending on third party depictions made by individuals that were never in contact with the Resurrected Jesus. Even if it actually happened, we have no idea of proving or disproving it, since nobody made any direct references to his post-Resurrection follicular proficiency, you cling to a single account to create this extraordinary house of cards. Colin would call this non-falsifiable idea something like “pseudo medicine”, so maybe you should consider yourself lucky that I refrain from calling it a fairytale and instead prefer the more subtle “speculation”.
The only difference between my “fairy tale” and yours is that I readily admit that it is nothing more that speculation, nothing more than a thought exercise, while you claim that yours is the truth based on something as subjective as it appearing to be “logical”. Don’t you think that Charles considers the same arguments that you deride “logical”?
Do you now see why this argument is circular and remains so?
Max, my point is that I know that you consider this the simpler explanation. If MM mistakes Jesus for a gardener, then he surely looked exactly like one. Why else would she make such a mistake, right? But you should have made contact with an M.D., a good dermatologist would have sufficed, when you first elaborated this hypothesis. By not doing so, you took Occam’s razor, pointed it towards yourself and committed intellectual harakiri. You have been fooling yourself for too long, and I honestly believe that you are too intelligent for that.
Eric,
In other words, how many cases of people returning
to life/resurrecting after violent death have you
studied as far as alopecia is concerned? NONE.
What about the real possibility the tug, pulling and friction of TOTALLY removing the encrusted blood from the hair could have resulted in TOTALLY losing moustache and beard hair and partially losing eyebrow and head-brow hair making Yeshu’a look like a hairless faced gardener?
Are you aware the TS man’s hair was as hard and stiff as cardboard and his eyebrows, moustache and beard all encrusted with dried blood? Methinks you’re amazingly UNAWARE.
You wrote: “The only difference between my “fairy tale” and yours is that I readily admit that it is nothing more that speculation, nothing more than a thought exercise, while you claim that yours is the truth based on something as subjective as it appearing to be “logical”.
I’m not telling ‘fairy tale’ at all. YOU are (re lightning you most naively mistake for an angel!). First read Jewish popular literature as far as the so-called ‘Archangel of Lightning’ is concerned (actually it refers to a very old deity!) before passing comment.
Besides re preoccupation with impurity then arising from a concern for defiling at the contact of
gardeners used to handle manure, how long will you TOTALLY overlook the FACT Second Temple period gardeners had a hairless face and their head was clean shaved or half shaved to be easily spotted from afar?
This is NO fairy tale at all!
You also wrote: “The shorud depicts a man with full hair, so if it is real, that is a problem for your theory.”
This is not a problem for me but for YOU as Yeshu’s is reported to have appeared in flesh and bones, not as a ghost and even ate with his disciples! You have no CLEAR logical explanation to provide for Yeshu’a returning to life/resurrecting NOT in spirit but in his physical body and STILL not being recognizable at first sight by most if not all of his disciples.
I don’t think that you are even reading my replies. Several of these are already addressed in long and winded comments above and I grow tired of your rethoric. The age of the Third book of Enoch, which is the most prominent work depicting Barachiel, has been heavily debated as Evans notes.
Just like everybody here, I am aware of the fact that the face in the shroud is covered in blood, but that is a moot point, I have yet to see anyone losing most of his/her hair due to tug and pulling… And that includes all kinds of blood, you name it and we have it. Don’t you know that in most cases, the only part that is actually cleaned while attending a patient is the wound and its adjacent areas? In some cases, the other blood remains there for several hours until the patient is stabilized and the remaining blood can be washed. The tug and pull can remove *some* hair, yet no extreme form of alopecia occurs, you don’t even need to contact an M.D. to tell you this, an experienced R.N. has plenty of experience dealing with such messes.
What I do believe is that you have never worked with a trauma survivor. You concepts on alopecia are simply erroneous. I am starting to think that you are not only unaware of the pathology of post-traumatic alopecia, but common medical practice as well.
Nevertheless wasting time debating speculation, either mine or yours is pointless and I admit that it was my fault going on a tangent on your request. When the others say that you never offer any references, they are right. The fact that you insist on discussing your unique interpretation of the gospel proves to me that you know that there is no literature to back up those claims. Your entire argument is built on mud and will continue to sink, until you can prove them wrong by citing something (anything!) legit. Can you do that? Otherwise, just stop trying to push the same arguments over and over, I’m not buying them.
To sum it up, you do believe in fairy tale and wants us to believe it is on medical ground; This is not serious!
Re what Second Tmple period gardener looked like, see e.g. Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem zur Zeit Jesu, 1923. They sed to wear a sadin (heb for gr. sindon) or inner garment draped as workwear. I am no speculating, YOU are.
How long shall I repeat Second Temple period gardeners had a hairless face and hairless forehead (i.e., a receding hairline – gibeach) to be seen from afar? See the rabbinic literature.
A receding hairline – gibeach as opposed to the uncleanliness of bald patches (nesokin).
Second Temple tanners who were used to handling dog’s-dung as ingredient of tan, had a hairless face and forehead too.
Max, I think that you need to work on your English comprehension. I state numerous times that the flash blindness scenario is speculation, a tought exercise. I do not believe in it, and I most certainly do not want anybody to believe it either, that is not the idea. The point of the exercise was to help illustrate just how far someone could take a single reference, mix it up with supporting sources, create a fringe hypothesis and debate it coherently. The fact that you keep gravitating towards it and trying to put me on the defensive actually proves that you are aware that the only thing supporting the “instant baldness” is your association of an image (the way gardeners looked) with an account that does not go into further detail in order to explain why that happened.
The irony of the issue is that you claim that I take the bible “to literally”, yet you have created a medically unsound hypothesis based on an event depicted only by John. You know that gospel has several contrasts with the synoptic gospels; some even suggest that John 21 implies that it was written from a second hand account. So, maybe you are placing all of your eggs in a single basket. I would not let my interpretation of the other -congruent- gospels waver due to it and would most certainly not risk my reputation like you are.
BTW, I am not arguing about the way that Temple gardeners dressed… I am arguing that you believe that for someone to mistake somebody else that person must look *exactly* the same way.
And finally, I think that if you wanted somebody to take this idea seriously, you should have contacted somebody qualified to provide an expert’s assessment. Your hypothesis fails on medical grounds and hence, it is not a “serious argument”. I know that you know this, but you clearly dislike criticsm of your ideas. Maybe that is why you have so many “unpublished” papers? You don’t like peer reviews? Only you can answer that. The fact of the matter is that your hypothesis is unsustained, pure speculation that directly contradicts medical literature and until you can prove otherwise, I am no longer interested in more mumbo jumbo about a mysterious new form of alopecia.
This will be my last post discussing the matter until you can cite me (any!) medical literature supporting your hypothesis. Only then we can get “serious” about this topic.
* rhetoric
As a real possibility and in light of the post-resurrectionem Gospels’ narratives, methinks along with moustache and beard total alopecia and spot baldness on the brow (through systematic rubbing), partial or total eyebrow alopecia could have resulted from extremely stressing violent death followed by return to physical life + tugging, pulling and friction of removing the encrusted blood from the hair.
Reminder: when I mean alopecia here, I mean post-oppressaem-et-ad-vitam-reditum quick extreme alopecia PLUS (NOT ONLY) tugging, pulling and friction of removing the encrusted blood from the hair (with or without water).
Eric,
You wrote:”This will be my last post discussing the matter until you can cite me (any!) medical literature supporting your hypothesis. Only then we can get “serious” about this topic.”
Which means you don’t want nay just cannot discuss the matter :
1/neither on Rabbinic/Talmudic literary ground
2/ nor on Second Temple period History and archaeological ground
3/ or fairly current fact of experience ground (the fact of not being able to recognize at first sight somebody who is very familiar to you just because he shaved up his beard and moustache and partially or totally shaved his head too).
In other words you want to discuss the matter on medical ONLY that s where you think your are comfortable).
To reduce the apparition of Yeshu’s to Mary Magdalene to the cross section of medical literature; THIS is NOT serious!
Now I have asked you the question: “how many cases of people declared dead of a violent death and returning to life/resurrecting have you studied or heard of as far as alopecia is concerned?” I am still waiting for you reply to that very simple question.
If your answer is NONE (which is most likely!) how then can your medical opinion be reliable or even serious? It just cannot.
…while being on ‘your own ground’ yourself think you are the most comfortable! Why are you asking me to citing some medical literature when yourself, irrespective of alopecia, are totally incapable, in all the medical literature, to cite just ONE post-oppressaem-et-ad-vitam-reditum or violent-death-and-return- to-life known or reported case?