The Shroud of Turin dates to the time of Jesus . . . IF it was kept around 20-22.5 degrees C and relative humidity of 55-75% FOR THIRTEEN CENTURIES OF UNKNOWN HISTORY

https://nypost.com/2024/08/22/world-news/ai-recreates-possible-face-of-jesus-from-turin-shroud/

 

LOL, C'mon man.

Turin Shroud Study Claims Controversial Cloth Does Date to Time of Jesus

The authors said the results of their analysis were "fully compatible" with analogous measurements obtained from a linen sample whose dating, according to historical records, is A.D. 55-74, and consistent with the hypothesis that the Shroud is a 2,000-year-old relic.

The authors note that the results are only compatible with this hypothesis under the condition that the artifact was kept at suitable levels of average temperature (around 20-22.5 degree Celsius, or 68-72.5 degrees Fahrenheit) and a relative humidity of 55-75 percent for 13 centuries of unknown history, in addition to seven centuries of known history in Europe.

Head of Christ, Warner Sallman 1940

 

It would be odd for Jesus' opponents to say he wasn't yet fifty if he were actually only about thirty

 Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? 

-- John 8:57

Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased. And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli . . .. 

-- Luke 3:21ff.

George Weigel thinks the resurrection of Jesus made possible "the individual" in the West when it was really the example of Jesus

Rebels like Paul and Luther would be unthinkable without that example.

Catholics used to understand this. It is amusing that Weigel argues like a Protestant fixated on the resurrection instead of on the life and teaching of Jesus.

Who Invented the Individual? 

George Weigel, First Things

Before Christianity, immortality was a family concept: One lived on in one’s family. The Resurrection of Jesus and the promise of a “resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5) changed all that, as the individual human being became the locus of immortality—and thus the bearer of a unique, personal, “individual” dignity. 

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None of that would have been even thinkable were it not for the example of the supreme individuality of the forerunner as the "true man", whose vertical faith relation to God superceded [sic!] the social dimension and made it irrelevant:

 

And [the Pharisees] sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men.

 

-- Matthew 22:16

This aloofness of Jesus, if we may call it that, is one of the things which marks out the unique individual qua individual so characteristic of the figures we name "religious founders". For good or for ill, it is that attitude which triumphed in the West and has been democratized to an extreme degree, in large measure due to Protestantism. Positively it has evolved into what we call "leadership". Negatively it is what is known as "a Messiah complex".

The example of Jesus is not unalloyed.

The Jesus who instructs at minimum to invest with usury obviously isn't the same Jesus who instructs to lend expecting nothing in return

The idea that Jesus would countenance usury at all is preposterous, whether as a law-loving Jew or as an eschatological prophet of impending final judgment.

The sayings of Matthew 25 and Luke 19, the Parable of the Ten Talents, blessing usury clearly stem from the period of later church reflection on the delay of the parousia. They stress being adequately prepared for the future coming, which has been unaccountably delayed. Time is dragging on interminably. The sayings fail miserably even to imagine how such preparation is in conflict with the law. They give no thought to it. They cannot be "historical".

The same is true of Matthew 5 and Luke 6, though to a lesser extent. The sayings of the Sermon on the Mount have been colored by the delay, too, but are closer in spirit to the thought of the historical Jesus, for whom giving instruction about lending at all would have made no sense but who might have countenanced such a discussion because it was a burning topic in the law and the prophets. Lending at interest of any kind to a "brother" was simply forbidden, though obviously much abused.

Like the Sermon generally, instruction about lending is instruction about and for an interim which Jesus never imagined would come. What we observe here is community reflection, by a community which has already stopped liquidating all possessions in obedience to the call to discipleship and which still has worldly goods to lend. The community is reflecting on what Jesus might have said on the subject, given his high view of the law. Clearly the solution given in Matthew 5 and especially in Luke 6 to lend expecting no return, not even of the principal, is in conflict with the Parable of the Ten Talents (again, Luke has the keener take on Jesus' eschatology and its implications). But the solution does reflect the spirit of the call to discipleship, if not the practice: Sell that thou hast, give to the poor, come follow me. To this extent it is closer to the historical Jesus.

It is remarkable how incoherent is the tradition and its redaction on this point.

 

Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury ... from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

-- Matthew 25:27,29

Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury? ... from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.  

-- Luke 19:23,26

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. 

-- Matthew 5:42

Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. ... But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

-- Luke 6:30,35

If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.

-- Exodus 22:25

And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase. 

-- Leviticus 25:35ff. 

Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury: Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

-- Deuteronomy 23:19f.

LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? ... He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent.

-- Psalm 15:1, 5

He that hath not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any increase, that hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity, hath executed true judgment between man and man, Hath walked in my statutes, and hath kept my judgments, to deal truly; he is just, he shall surely live, saith the Lord GOD.

-- Ezekiel 18:8f.

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

-- Luke 14:33

Jesus, we hardly knew ye

If we owe it to him that we know so much,

it is perhaps long of his fond adorers

that we know so little more.

-- Joseph Glanville

Paul's ideas of imitation, from which we get Imitatio Christi, are quite contrary to the teaching and intent of Jesus

Paul's idea of imitation is a repudiation of Jesus' radical ideas of eschatological repentance, which involved flight from traditional social conventions in order to escape the imminently coming judgment. In point of fact Jesus' idea left nothing positive to imitate. This is why Schweitzer could speak of Jesus' ethic as a negation of ethics.

Paul's "way" on the other hand was a rationalization of those conventions after the failure of the eschaton and the impending failure of the parousia. Instead of rejecting traditional social roles he simply accepted them and invested them with new meaning.

For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. Therefore I sent to you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.

-- I Corinthians 4:15ff. (RSV)

And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit;

-- I Thessalonians 1:6 (RSV)

As ye know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children,

-- I Thessalonians 2:11

Paul is, in fact, all over the map on this, spilling a lot of ink on the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as fathers even though he knows we have but one father, God. He seems completely ignorant of the teaching of Jesus, which rejected all human fathers in favor of the fatherhood of God. Paul notably also does not use the language of "following" as found in the gospels ("come after me", "follow me"). Instead he speaks of mimesis, which in its turn is foreign to the gospels.

Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all, 

-- Romans 4:16

And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; 

-- Romans 9:10

As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes.

-- Romans 11:28

... all our fathers were under the cloud ...

-- I Corinthians 10:1

But ye know the proof of him [Timothy], that, as a son with the father, he hath served with me in the gospel.

-- Philippians 2:22

The whole thing degenerates into the familial as the pressure of the delay of the parousia re-invigorates traditional human social roles:

Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.

-- I Timothy 1:2

Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren;

-- I Timothy 5:1

To Timothy, my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

-- II Timothy 1:2

To Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.

-- Titus 1:4

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And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

-- Matthew 23:9

That Jesus conceived of the coming eschatological kingdom as a Jewish kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel is the simplest explanation of the evidence

There are but two survivals of the explicitly Jewish conception of the coming kingdom in the Gospels, without any thought of inclusion of Gentiles, in Matthew 19 and Luke 22.

But the choice of twelve disciples by Jesus as a function of this explicitly Jewish conception of the imminently coming kingdom as a kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel is also evidence. If the former nearly was expunged from the record, the tradition of the twelve survived because they did.

Those elements, the future Jewish kingdom and its twelve Jewish judges, are consistent with other surviving evidence of Jesus' original Jewish Gospel, for example with the charge in Matthew 10 and 15 not to go into the way of the Gentiles but to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, as well as with the scattered derogatory references to Gentiles, for example as dogs.  

Needless to say, a future Gentile kingdom would have required more judges than the twelve, and a Gospel to the Gentiles worked out to go with it. The latter was the innovation of Paul, not coincidentally a missionary Pharisee. The former never existed but for him.

And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. 

-- Matthew 19:28f.

Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 

-- Luke 22:28ff.

That this conception of a future Jewish kingdom was there from the beginning explains the many instances of the disciples' fascination with who would be greatest in that kingdom which survive.

Those discourses need not be historical in all their particulars. The failure of the Jewish kingdom to appear necessitated rationalization of the conception involved under and for the new circumstances. Hence the emphasis upon selfless servanthood in the light of the reinterpretation of Jesus' death as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 

-- Matthew 18:1

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

-- Matthew 23:11

And he came to Capernaum: and being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? But they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest.

-- Mark 9:33f. 

Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest.

-- Luke 9:46

Luke says the dispute among the twelve persisted even to the Last Supper, which is remarkably self-absorbed of them given the supposed gravity of the moment. It also suggests the lectures by Jesus all along didn't do them much good. It's almost as if the fact of the incipient nativism were a pretext for Luke's narrative invention. And then there's the irony that even in correcting the disciples' preoccupation with themselves, Luke still makes Jesus contrast the proper behavior with the improper behavior in terms of Jew vs. Gentile. 

And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.  

-- Luke 22:24ff.

But ye shall not be so.

It is easier to explain the more inclusive conception of the kingdom of God with Gentiles as a development from this original narrower one without Gentiles than the other way around. 

The narrower conception died hard, especially for example in the person of Peter, whom Paul accused of lingering hypocrisy about it in Galatians 2.

Luke, on the other hand, paints Peter in a more sympathetic light, in Acts 10, 11, and 15, showing how God himself miraculously intervened to change Peter's opinion about Gentiles.

But that Peter persisted in the nativism so long is the point. He didn't invent it. He got it from someone and stuck with it the whole time almost up until the moment he disappears from Luke's narrative never to be heard from again.