ingliz wrote:A Mandylion of Edessa is to be found in the Pope's private Redemptoris Mater Chapel (formerly the Matilda Chapel) in the Vatican.
Another is known to have been sold to Louis IX of France (1214-1270) and disappeared in the chaos of the French Revolution.
There is the Holy Face of Genoa donated to the doge, Leonardo Montaldo, by the Byzantine Emperor John V Palaeologus.
And now you are saying yet another Mandylion is the Shroud of Turin?
It seems the Edessans were doing a brisk trade in the Holy towels of Jesus back in the day.
Perhaps. But remember that the original image was claimed to be made by God and by the blood and sweat of Jesus. Today the Shroud of Turin is the only artifact that fits that description.
ingliz wrote:Hands over the genitals is not a Jewish burial practice but it was commonly seen in Christian burials of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries pointing to it being likely that the Turin Shroud was made then.
I know the skeptics are going to claim a lot of things in an attempt to discredit the authenticity of the Shroud as the burial cloth of Jesus. But don't forget that Jesus was stripped of his clothes to be crucified, so it would seem likely, considering the traditional modesty of Israel, that those placing Jesus in the tomb would cover his private parts. Also remember, those that buried Jesus the Christ could also be referred to as Christians. If this is abnormal, then there are other things abnormal that point to the Shroud image being that of Jesus.
Examples of abnormal crucifixion procedures to which both Jesus and the man who was buried in the shroud were apparently subjected include the following:The severity of the beating, the sharp objects pressed into the scalp, the side wound (instead of broken ankles), featuring a post-mortem flow of blood and watery fluid. Further, neither was thrown into a common grave or left to the vultures, as was normal, but both were wrapped in linen and buried individually, although still hastily.
Of these “common oddities,” I think that the scalp punctures and side wound are the most irregular. After all, why crown a man who is being crucified as a common criminal? And of all of the possible forms of coup de grace in order to insure the death of the victim, why would both have the same sort of side wound, along with the same attending features? The individual, hasty burials are also out of the ordinary.
In fact, the correspondence between the two is so close that someone might even be tempted to postulate the thesis that someone was purposefully (and sadistically!) crucified precisely in order to look like Jesus. So on this view, the similarities are accounted for by a “copy-cat” scenario.
But interestingly, it is precisely this procedure that creates its own major problems. The cloth would have to mimic the presentation in the Gospels in order to be deemed the burial garment of Jesus, yet this fails to explain why the wrist wounds are not located in the palms, as depicted in Medieval times. Indeed, art historian Phillip McNair states that of the hundreds of examples of Medieval crucifixion art that he has observed, not a single one portrays the wounds in the wrists. Further, the pierced scalp of the man in the shroud arguably represents an object that covers the entire skull, not the tiny wreathlet of Christian art. With cases like these, the very exceptions themselves are disconfirming, since they so clearly militate against the scenario that the cloth was faked in order to mimic Jesus’ death. Exceptions like those on the shroud point away from the copy-cat scenario.
Next, what about any possible pointers from the shroud to Jesus’ resurrection? Actually, there are a few interesting implications regarding this possibility. First, the body wrapped in the shroud apparently did not decompose. Numerous medical investigators have argued that the man is dead, due to several indicators like the presence of rigor mortis. Yet, scientific testing has not discovered any evidence of decomposition on the cloth. The implications here seem clear: the absence of bodily decomposition means that the body was not in contact with the cloth for a prolonged period of time.
So the body was separated from the material after a comparatively short period of time. As Robert Bucklin states, “None of the research done on the Shroud image has produced any evidence that there has been cellular changes such as might be expected as the result of a long postmortem interval.”
The second intriguing implication concerns the body’s removal from the cloth. We just noted that the lack of decomposition indicates that the body did not remain in the cloth very long. However, the body does not appear to have been moved by conventional means, either, due to the condition of the bloodstains, which are anatomically correct, including precisely outlined borders, with blood clots intact. If the cloth had been pulled away from the body, the blood clots would have smeared or broken.
Third, the nature of the image on the shroud now comes prominently into focus. While it may be said that no image-creating technique has been clearly established, the leading candidate still seems to be that it is most similar to some kind of radiation. In a little-publicized survey by Robert Wilcox of the 1978 scientific investigators, most did not give a specific answer concerning the cause of the image. Of the seven who did, five said that they thought it fit into the category of radiation.
Some would go a step further and relate such a scorch to the resurrection of Jesus, as well, although comparatively few have published these views. Robert Bucklin is an exception. He said, “a few of us have openly expressed our opinions that there is support for the resurrection in the things we see on the Shroud of Turin.” Elaborating, Bucklin added, “When this medical information is combined with the physical, chemical, and historical facts, there is strong evidence for Jesus’ resurrection.”
Fourth, the closer the correspondence between the shroud and the Gospels, the closer we can attempt to tie the shroud phenomena to an historical investigation of Jesus’ resurrection. If the shroud is thoroughly consistent with reliable Gospel accounts, one might attempt an argument that it also corresponds on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection. If the shroud is an authentic archaeological artifact and perhaps the actual burial garment of Jesus, thereby corresponding so minutely to His death, could we push on to His resurrection, too, especially in light of the strong historical evidence for this event?
https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/habermas.pdf