Should anyone wonder what I think about the images of coins let me be clear: IMHO, there are no images of coins over the eyes. I can’t see them and I don’t believe it is possible that the images could be there.
THIS IS GOOD NEWS: Barrie Schwortz, according to the Late Breaking News at shroud.com has added…
The Dating of the Shroud of Turin from Coins of Pontius Pilate by Francis L. Filas, S.J. – 2nd Edition, Updated to June 1982. Although not widely accepted, this theory is nonetheless a part of Shroud research and has been referenced by a number of Shroud authors, so we thought it important to archive it on Shroud.com. Our thanks to Richard Bernatchez for sharing it with us.
In addition, in the archives of Holy Shroud Guild, you can find:
- Discover Pilate’s Lepton Coin: Father Filas’ Story by Giorgio Bracaglia and
- Father Filas’ correspondence to S.T.U.R.P. Father Otterbien and more,
Should anyone wonder what I think about the images of coins let me be clear: IMHO, there are no images of coins over the eyes. I can’t see them and I don’t believe it is possible that the images could be there. SEE Dear Stephen E. Jones in this blog.
Want more on the “not widely accepted [coin] theory”? These are a representative sampling of blog postings on this topic.
If you look close enough, you can actually see the pupils of the eyes. The right pupil is more easily seen as the eyelid is open just a bit more than the eye on Jesus’ left side. That is what grabbed me when I first noticed it some time back and my Guardian Angel told me what I was staring at.
I still remember the look of my father
after he died: he had not his eyes
truly closed, thus: not completely
closed (ie: maybe his eyes were
closed only for about a seventy-five percent).
And this fact appeared evident
some hours after the first manual
closing of his eyelids, after his death.
And so… Now I wonder how
had been the eyes of Jesus after his death.
I beg you to also consider the possible
changes about the facial posture
after the use of the Sudarium of
Oviedo (thus: after the terse
treatment of the corpse [post mortem])
and the deposition into the tomb for
the “provisional sepolture”.
Here I want to specify my position and
I state that after what I heard to say from
Professor Gonella (he had been
questioned in Milan by a man who
I did not know, after the presentation
of the book he had done with Riggi)
I’m very skeptical on the issue of coins …
— — —
>…Wacks still said in THE AUGUR No 35 (1982)
“It is impossible to determine precisely
the Judaean coin that might have caused
the image on the Shroud since no one
coin design – inscription, motif, and their
relative positions – exactly matches the
Shroud coin image. It is this third vital
factor positioning – that Filas neglected
to take into account when he computed t
he mathematical probability of the coin
image being the lituus coin of Pontius Pilate.
If it is taken into account the probability
becomes infinitesimal.
To prove his case, Filas must prove
the existence of a lituus coin of Pontius
Pilate with an error in spelling and an
entirely new positioning of the inscription.”… …
Taken from:
“SHROUD NEWS – A Newsletter about
the Holy Shroud of Turin” by Rex Morgan
(Author of “Perpetual Miracle”)
Issue No. 15, September 1982
Link:
https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/sn015Sep82.pdf
>…“It is conceivable that a portion of
the barley design might extend high
enough to cause the upright line
following the ICA, but the chance
of this happening is remote,” Wacks contends. …
>…If the Shroud coin image was caused
by a coin of Coponius or Ambibulus, it
would cause no problems concerning
the dating of the Shroud to the time
of Jesus, Wacks points out, since
coins circulated for decades and
longer in the ancient world. …
Link:
http://www.amuseum.org/book/page27.html
So,
I ask:
How far are you arrived in your research
on this controversial subject?
Haralick spent about 6 months doing
a variety of digital enhancements to
the photographs publishing his findings
in 1983 in a 66-page monograph,
“Analysis of Digital images of the Shroud of Turin”…
I think using the same amount of time
we would not work on an issue as
controversial and uncertain (= the coins
over the eyes, etc.), but we could
work with ATR-FTIR, DRIFTs, SERS,
AFM, CFM, AFM-Raman, etc. and
so we would come to some
interesting conclusions about
the Shroud of Turin…
Father Heinrich Pfeiffer mentioned a photograph of the “coin” on the Shroud that had been sent to Ari Kindler of the Eretz Museum in Tel Aviv and the response:
https://www.academia.edu/14795646/An_interview_with_Professor_Heinrich_Pfeiffer_SJ
Che Guevara died with his eyes fully open after he was shot dead in the Bolivian jungle. He said he was the opposite of Jesus, and sounded a bit like General George Patton when talking about an enemy. He wrote to his mother:
“I am not a Christ or a philanthropist. I am all the contrary of a Christ. I fight for the things I believe in, with the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other man dead so that I don’t get nailed to a cross or to any other place.”
The identification of the coin over the right eye rests on a lituus, a shepherd’s crook shape, and the letters UCAI, which can form part of the inscription around the outside. However, in the case of every single lepton I can find on the internet, the letters CAI (or more usually KAI) invariably appear to the right of the vertical line of the staff and over the curl of the crook, while on the Shroud they are (if they are there at all) to the left of the vertical line. This is well discussed at http://www.amuseum.org/book/page27.html.
Hugh thanks for the reference link to the coin discussion. The principal authority cited (Wacks), seems prepared to concede the presence of the coins but could not agree with its main advocate Fr Filas that it was a Pontius Pilate coin with the lituus which he says was not issued until after August 30 AD post-dating the April 7, 30 AD date often proposed as the date of the crucifixion. This is the date that Meier favours, however a date in 33 AD is also admissible when the lituus coins would have then been available. However the reference also suggests that an earlier coin issued would fit the case, viz:
“If the Shroud coin image was caused by a coin of Coponius or Ambibulus, it would cause no problems concerning the dating of the Shroud to the time of Jesus, Wacks points out, since coins circulated for decades and longer in the ancient world. The coins of Coponius and Ambibulus are among the most common of all Prefect and Procurator issues … and they were struck only about 20 years before Jesus’ crucifixion. ”
Personally I don’t see the coins, but that may be my lack of perception. It is interesting that Wacks is prepared to concede an earlier coin may be there, and his main difficulty seems to be in agreeing to Fr Filas’ interpretation, that it is a lituus coin rather than with the fact(?) of the coins. I would be inclined to ignore the authors’ contention that Jews viewed the coins with disfavour because they hated Pilate. I’d be certain that they used the coins in everyday transactions without a moment’s thought. [The pharisees had no difficulty in producing a so-called hated coin of the tribute to show Jesus when asked.]
There may be coins there or there may not. Assertions either way have been contentious, relying on subjective perceptions. Much of the problem seems to be that the resolution of the image being limited to the crowns of the threads does not permit a definitive answer. Those who have asserted their presence may possibly be seeing pareidolia. Those who deny their presence may lack the necessary perception. I doubt that the matter will ever be resolved because of the inherent graininess of the image. Nor does image enhancement, such as smoothing and blurring resolve the matter, as any positive results may merely be an artefact of the process. Even the very clear image of a man’s face on the planet Mars was no more than a trick of nature from mountain shadows, a pareidolia.
I don’t think that denial of the coins on eyes should rest on claims that it was a pagan practice and unlikely to be practised in Jewish burials. Charon’s obol to pay the ferryman was a single coin placed in the mouth, not two coins on the eyes. The eyes might be thought to be the windows of the soul, and so placing coins on the eyes of the dead could be considered as a mark of respect to their privacy, whether or not it was a common practice.
The coin(s) are an important data treasure concerning the nature of the image formation process, the energy responsible. The energy passed through the coins, interacting with those atoms enough to leave an image with surprising resolution on a linen cloth. WOW!
Dr Haas (SMU) said to me back in 1990 that many ion ratios could be examined the next time a REAL sample(s) is made available. The clues to the nature of the event are just waiting to be discovered.
I meant isotope, not ion.