Perennis

As some readers may be aware, the Shroud of Turin has been an interest of mine for many years. This morning I received a fascinating link from my bishop, Lewis Keizer of the Home Temple regarding new information on the Shroud. Dr. Keizer has been a Shroud scholar for many years and this new information vindicates his previous theories on the Shroud.

There have been several problems facing those who feel that the Shroud is an authentic relic from the time of Jesus. First has been the infamous 1988 radiocarbon dating, which showed an apparent date for the Shroud of between 1260 and 1390 CE, making it a medieval forgery. A number of researchers have cast doubt on the dating procedure. In one of my earlier posts linked below, Raymond Rogers of Los Alamos labs gave convincing evidence that the samples that were submitted to radiocarbon testing were actually part of the medieval patches which were used to repair the cloth after a fire damaged it. Other tests, such as the absence of vanillin in the cloth, show its age to be much greater.

The second problem is a gap in the apparent history of the Shroud between the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the Shroud’s sudden appearance in Turin in the middle of the 14th century. Before the Crusades, there is legendary record of a cloth containing an image of Jesus which was traced to the city of Edessa, where it was brought to King Apgar by a mysterious disciple of Jesus after Jesus’ death. The cloth was eventually brought to Constantinople by the Emperor, but connecting it with the Shroud and its appearance in Europe was conjectural.

But according to the new article linked below, researchers in the Vatican Secret Archives uncovered such a connection in the testimony compiled at the heresy trials of the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar were present at the sack of Constantinople, where the Edessa cloth disappeared. When the Shroud appeared in Turin, it was in connection with the DeCharney family – Geoffrey DeCharney having been the second in command of the Knights Templar. Some historians speculated that the Kights Templar had made off with the Edessa cloth, and that it became a secret relic in their possession, possibly used in their initiations.

The newly released testimony of a young French recruit of the Templars is that he was brought to a secret room during his initiation into the order in 1287, and shown a long linen cloth with the figure of a man impressed on it. He was instructed to venerate this relic. This gives strong support for the Templar connection and strengthens the historical chain of evidence linking the Shroud back to Constantinople, to Edessa, and finally Palestine.

Links:

News Item:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6040521.ece

My previous posts on the Shroud

http://pathstoknowledge.com/2006/07/27/shroud-of-turin-dating-error/

http://pathstoknowledge.com/2006/07/27/second-image-on-the-shroud/

Bishop Keizer’s presentation on the Shroud

http://www.wisdomseminars.org/Sh/Presentation_Files/index.html

Bishop Keizer’s links:

www.hometemple.org

www.wisdomseminars.org

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I find this of interest because it asserts that many scientists have a bias against the supernatural, which I must confess is a bias I share. Thinking of how my bias affects your fruitless efforts to persuade me of the validity of OBEs and NDEs….

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/25/AR2007102502991.html

Tale From the Crypt
An ordinary man working in a mortuary experiences the unexpected.

Reviewed by Ron Charles
Sunday, October 28, 2007; Page BW03

GHOST

By Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman’s new novel, Ghost, does not contain a werewolf, a vampire or Patrick Swayze. It may not even contain a ghost. No knife-wielding ventriloquist’s doll carves up these chapters. If you’re looking for hell hounds, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Ghost is by no means the scariest supernatural tale you could read on Halloween — King is still king — but it may be the smartest, and for that reason it ends up being a hell of a lot more unsettling than a horde of flesh-eating zombies.

A theoretical physicist, Lightman is equally comfortable haunting the humanities — indeed, he was the first professor at MIT to receive appointments in both realms. Although he doesn’t believe in God, a lifetime of studying the heavens has given him an infectious sense of wonder; philosophical questions about the nature of reality hover over all his work and are a preoccupation of his fiction. Einstein’s Dreams (1993), his first novel, contained a series of fantastical fables about how time might be experienced in other worlds. And now in his fifth novel, he concentrates on the most fundamental issues of epistemology without ever using any off-putting terms like, say, “epistemology.” Instead, Lightman explores the liminal state between knowledge and belief in an eerily quiet ghost story.

The time and place are never specified; details suggest a Western city, maybe 20 years ago. The book begins: “I saw something. I saw something out of the corner of my eye.” The narrator is distraught, dizzy, on the edge of panic. A week ago, he “saw something impossible,” and a friend has recommended he write it all down. “I don’t believe in supernatural phenomena,” he insists. “I don’t believe in magic or hyperkinesis or spirits. . . . Logic is what holds it all together. . . . My hands are shaking. I’m going to go lie down.”

After this feverish first chapter, the novel switches permanently to the third person — a very measured, thoughtful third person — and we hear the story of what happened to David Kurzweil, a 42-year-old divorced man who lost his mid-level job in a bank and, out of financial necessity, took a temporary position at a mortuary. It’s a tenuous story, impressionistic, almost spectral, that barely drifts forward but remains fascinating throughout. Lightman draws this strange place with a quirky mixture of warmth and the macabre. The family-run funeral home is led by a sweet, agoraphobic man who treats his customers with respect and compassion. The building itself seems slightly surreal, “an endless warren of rooms, some of them hidden and accessible only by interior doors, some without windows.” Of course, a funeral home is the perfect place for a ghost story — something of a clich¿, really — but it offers special attractions to a theoretical physicist writing fiction. Here, after all, under the extreme pressures of grief and loss, the ordinary rules of emotional reality don’t apply, time slows down, and the elemental properties of character are revealed.

But nothing particularly creepy happens during David’s first few months on his new job, nothing haunted or ghostly. Until one day while he’s sitting with a casket in what’s called the slumber room. Lightman tells us that it lasted “for only five seconds.” He provides no other details until much later in the story, but just that tiny drop of ectoplasm added to the solution of David’s dull life transforms his relations with everyone he knows. “How could he expect anything to stay the same after what’s happened?” Lightman writes. “The world has been cut in half.”

His girlfriend brushes it off, his employer gently suggests he see a psychologist, but other colleagues are thrilled by the news. “You are like . . . a god, or something,” one of them tells him. Soon a reporter calls and wants to interview David. The story, full of exaggeration and silly speculation, incites a media circus that mortifies the mortician but causes business to soar. Despite his vagueness, his unwillingness to make any claims about what he saw, David becomes a cause celebre among devotees of the supernatural and a scandalous embarrassment to his scientific friends at the university.

At this point, the philosophical questions rise up in a series of cleverly drawn encounters with experts. Two reasonable-seeming officials from the Society for the Second World come to speak with David about his experience. They introduce him to a scientist who uses computers and mathematics to quantify psychic powers. “We don’t want to leap to any conclusions,” Dr. Tettlebeim says with faux skepticism. “We must treat such correlations with some caution.” But soon he points to an unusual row of numbers and announces, “Here is stark evidence of the force of the mind.”

There’s not really any doubt about Lightman’s loyalties in this debate. His description of an annual meeting of “truth seekers” is a brilliant piece of satire, complete with crazy field reports and kooky evidence decorated with scientific lingo. Beneath the comedy, though, one senses Lightman’s sympathy with that deep human desire for transcendence. “There has to be another world,” one of the attendants tells David, “because there has to be something after we die. Death can’t be the end.” Lightman is wise enough to hear that sentiment echoing down through the millennia, and he has no intention of dismissing it simply because it can’t be confirmed with a microscope.

But what’s more surprising is Lightman’s willingness to expose the dogmatism of his colleagues. In one particularly damning scene, the university scientists display their unwillingness to consider radical interpretations no matter what the evidence. Like the charlatans they oppose, they’re willing to repress and distort anything that doesn’t confirm their conclusions. Courted by believers on both sides, poor David remains helplessly suspended between irreconcilable concepts of reality.

These are heavy questions, to be sure, the kind of philosophical conundrums that might fuel a provocative all-night discussion in the dorm but usually doom a novel. The salvation here is Lightman’s graceful touch and his tender insight into David’s plight. No matter what your position on things that go bump in the night, you’ll be left haunted by his question to a skeptical friend: “If you saw something supernatural, what would you do?” Admit it, you don’t know. And that’s spooky. *

Ron Charles is a senior editor at Book World. He can be reached at charlesr@washpost.com.

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The BBC reports that scientists have recreated some of the altered perceptions that happen during an out-of-body experience (OBE)

While I’m sure this is valuable research, as someone who’s had OBE’s, the experience described in this experiment is fundamentally different from an OBE. In the experiment, the illusion is created by matching a physical stimulus (feeling one’s back being stroked with a stick) with an incongruent visual stimulus (watching a back being stroked with a stick). In a real OBE, physical stimulus of any kind tends to reorient the body awareness and bring the whole experience to an end. It is necessary to minimize physical sensations. Further, it is not simply a matter of a sudden reorientation of perspective. One can feel the whole process of LEAVING the body, with attendant, unique and often very vivid sensations. Also, the whole QUALITY of perception in an OBE is radically altered. One doesn’t simply see one’s body from a different angle. Every perception is vivid and intensely real in a way never experienced in normal consciousness. The quality of inner consciousness also has a totally unique quality which is difficult to describe. About the closest I can come is to say that it feels like the mind is full of liquid light.

None of this sounds remotely like what the researchers are describing.

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Something I read recently inspired me to comment a bit on the much neglected subject of a realized eschatology in the teaching of Jesus. As I’ve commented much earlier:

(http://perennis.pathstoknowledge.com/kingdom_god) For every statement Jesus makes that COULD be interpreted as pointing us toward hoping for a future kingdom and a future coming – there are as many, if not more, that point to the kingdom of God being right here, right now, in the innermost heart of every person.

From many clear parables and clear teachings – from the entire Sermon on the Mount – it is completely clear that Jesus expects his teaching to utterly transform a person in the here and now. He even tells his disciples to “take no thought for the morrow” – a teaching that seems incompatible with scanning the headlines for the latest news of the Antichrist and analyzing the Bible for letter sequences that will warn us of the coming disasters.

The future is, in general, the province of the ego. It is in the non-existent future (for only the NOW really exists) that we will finally be fulfilled, finally find happiness, finally have “enough” etc. And, in the Christianized version of this game, it is only in the future that we will experience God’s grace, live in God’s presence, and be rescued from the future fires of hell. Earth life becomes simply a prelude. Choose Jesus and, some day, in the future world, he’ll save you from hell and reward you.

But the fact it, “hell” is right here and now. Humans live in prisons of their own making, suffering punishments of their own devising. Happiness eludes them. As the Buddha’s first noble truth teaches – life is suffering. There is sickness, injustice, greed, violence and death. There are also milder forms of suffering connected with feeling unfulfilled, unloved, unappreciated. This is not to say that all of us live in unremitting misery. There are, after all, levels in hell, and glimpses of joy. But taken as a whole, our species must obviously be diagnosed as profoundly unhappy and rather psychotic. In the last century alone, we endured two world wars, countless local conflicts, numerous episodes of genocide and atrocity involving nearly 100 million people. Global poverty increased and millions starved to death while millions in wealthier countries turned to drugs, alcohol, gambling or the mindless pursuit of consumer goods to dull their suffering. It is estimated that about 34% of the U.S. population will suffer clinical depression at some point in their lives.

Leaving aside the question of a future hell – a transformational understanding of Jesus’ teaching offers to save us from the hell we’re already in. It’s not a matter of Jesus punishing us for not accepting him. We’re already doing a fine job of punishing ourselves. But the Kingdom of Heaven can indeed be within us. Suffering can end. Joy can be our continual state. This is not something to be paid for with years of privation and mortification. It is right in front of our eyes. Or rather, right behind them.

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In the collection of sources that went into the Bible, there were several different perspectives regarding Satan and the role of evil in the world. In fact, the book of Job is an all-out argument right in the pages of scripture between several of these competing views. Israel was in a unique position to experience and ponder the problem of evil because they lived in a land that was a crossroads between Egypt on one side and Asia and Mesopotamia on the other. During much of their history they were constantly conquered or invaded by one ambitious empire after another.

Before this period, God’s attitude toward Abraham and his descendents is one of unqualified benevolence:

Now Yahweh said to Abram, Get out of your country, and from your relatives, and from your fathers house, to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you. All of the families of the earth will be blessed in you. (Genesis 12:1-3 WEB)

God continues to bless Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in spite of their personal failings and problems.

The “Prophetic” View

As Israel began to experience repeated conquests by their neighbors, a religious question arose. If God promised to bless Israel and give them their land as a possession forever (see Gen 13:15), why were they often conquered and subjugated by their neighbors? The answer that developed has been called the “Prophetic” view of good and evil. God blesses Israel when they obey him, but he is prepared to punish them when they do NOT obey him.

Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you shall listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God, which I command you this day; and the curse, if you shall not listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which you have not known. (Deuteronomy 11:26-28 WEB)

Remember that Deuteronomy was written long after the fact. The Deuteronomist (possibly Jeremiah) was looking back at Israel’s history from the perspective of repeated periods of suffering. Also notice that the blessings and curses are entirely physical, in there here-and-now. For example:

“I command you this day to love Yahweh your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, that you may live and multiply, and that Yahweh your God may bless you in the land where you go in to possess it.” (Deuteronomy 30:16 WEB)

The reward for obedience to God was not heavenly happiness. It was life, possessions, and posterity. Physical prosperity and happiness was the sign of God’s favor. Physical misfortune was the sign of God’s displeasure.

Also at this time, the concept of “Satan” began to occur in scripture. We are used to thinking of the serpent in the garden of Eden as the first appearance of Satan, but this is a later association. In the primitive original story, the serpent is only a serpent. “Satan” originally meant simply “adversary”. For example, in 1 Samuel 29:4, The Philistines are worried that if they take David into battle with them against Israel (David is serving the Philistines at that time) he will turn on them in battle and become a “satan” (an adversary).

God sends angels as “satans” to either oppose or test various individuals. In Numbers 22, for example, God sends an angel as a “satan” against Balaam, to prevent him from cursing Israel.

Gods anger was kindled because he went; and the angel of Yahweh placed himself in the way for an adversary [Hebrew = “satan”] against him. Now he was riding on his donkey, and his two servants were with him. (Numbers 22:22 WEB)

In one case, God himself acts as the “satan”. We read:

Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel. (1 Chronicles 21:1 WEB)

But in a parallel version of the text, we read:

Again the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them, saying, Go, number Israel and Judah. (2 Samuel 24:1 WEB)

Was it Satan, or Yahweh, who moved David to number Israel? It was God, acting as an adversary (satan) against David. He was, in other words, testing David.

Satan as God’s Prosecutor.

By the time the book of Job is written, the view is beginning to shift again. There have been various religious reforms in Judah and Israel, and even during periods of religious righteousness, the people continue to suffer from invading armies on several sides. Physical misfortunes don’t seem to be confined only to the wicked. The good suffer also. The book of Job addresses this issue.

Job, whom we are told is an entirely righteous man, suffers horrible calamities. He looses his children, his livestock, his health. His friends, echoing the prophets and the book of Deuteronomy, insist that if Job is suffering, he must have done something to anger God.

Is it for your piety that he reproves you, that he enters with you into judgment?
Isnt your wickedness great? Neither is there any end to your iniquities. (Job 22:4-5 WEB)

What Job’s friends don’t know, of course, is that Job is suffering at the hand of “Satan”. Instead of being just an occasional role filled by whatever angel is convenient, however, the role of “Satan” now seems to be a full-time position. Satan is seen as the chief prosecutor of the court of heaven. He is still an honored member of the “sons of God”, the highest angels. But his role is now to seek out unrighteousness and bring it to God’s attention for punishment, and to test even the righteous with trials.

Now it happened on the day when God’s sons came to present themselves before Yahweh, that Satan also came among them. Yahweh said to Satan, Where have you come from? Then Satan answered Yahweh, and said, From going back and forth in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. Yahweh said to Satan, Have you considered my servant, Job? For there is none like him in the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil. Then Satan answered Yahweh, and said, Does Job fear God for nothing? Haven’t you made a hedge around him, and around his house, and around all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will renounce you to your face. Yahweh said to Satan, Behold, all that he has is in your power. Only on himself don’t put forth your hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of Yahweh.
(Job 1:6-12 WEB)

We see here the beginnings of what will come to be called the “Apocalyptic” worldview. The good can expect to suffer in this life as a test of their faith. God will eventually make things right. In Job God shows up personally in the last chapter in a “personal” apocalypse, and makes everything right. But Job also begins to hint at the fact that not everything may end up justly resolved in this life. The unwarranted suffering of the righteous may require rewards AFTER this life.

For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: (Job 19:25-26 KJV)

These rewards are still seen in terms of a physical resurrection. They are still physical rewards – but postponed until the resurrection.

The Apocalyptic View

After the Babylonian captivity, the returning exiles rebuilt Jerusalem in a spirit of religious purification and reform. The Torah was codified and followed rigorously. And yet in spite of unprecedented religious purity and righteousness, Judea soon experienced some of the worst persecution of its history at the hands of the Seleucid Empire. Antiochus, ruler of the Empire, prohibited Jewish religious practices, and punished any demonstrations of Jewish piety with unprecedented cruelty. Jewish scriptures were burned and even women and children tortured and killed for refusing to sacrifice to pagan idols.

During this period, the “Apocalyptic” worldview came to full flower. It seemed obvious that a righteous God would not willingly order such atrocities toward the pious simply as a test. Borrowing perhaps from the Zoroastrian dualism to which they had been exposed by the Persians, the Jews began to see Satan not as the prosecuting attorney of heaven – but a fallen angel in total rebellion against God. This idea of fallen angels begins to appear in Daniel, which was written at the time of the persecutions of Antiochus. An angel is sent to Daniel, but is delayed due to having to fight off the “prince” (a fallen angelic governor) of Persia.

But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; but, behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me: and I remained there with the kings of Persia. (Daniel 10:13 WEB)

This is also one of the first mentions of Michael the Archangel. The introduction of angelic names and hierarchies – also a favorite topic of the Persians, would proliferate in later years.

Daniel is also filled with apocalyptic visions. God would eventually destroy the kingdoms of the world and set up his own. Until then, the righteous could expect persecution, because of the evil angelic powers – but God would reward them in the resurrection. For example, in 2nd Maccabees, an inter-testamental writing from this period, we read of seven brothers who were tortured to death for refusing to violate religious law. He says to his tormenters:

So when he was ready to die he said thus, It is good, being put to death by men, to look for hope from God to be raised up again by him: as for thee, thou shalt have no resurrection to life. (2 Maccabees 7:14 KJVA)

We begin to see that God will not only reward the righteous in the resurrection, but punish the wicked. This theme is amplified in another intertestamental writing, 1 Enoch.
Then I looked and turned myself to another part of the earth, where I beheld a deep valley burning with fire. To this valley they brought monarchs and the mighty. And there my eyes beheld the instruments which they were making, fetters of iron without weight (or of immeasurable weight) Then I inquired of the angel of peace, who proceeded with me, saying, For whom are these fetters and instruments prepared? He replied, These are prepared for the host of Azazeel, that they may be delivered over and adjudged to the lowest condemnation; and that their angels may be overwhelmed with hurled stones, as the Lord of spirits has commanded. Michael and Gabriel, Raphael and Phanuel shall be strengthened in that day, and shall then cast them into a furnace of blazing fire, that the Lord of spirits may be avenged of them for their crimes; because they became ministers of Satan, and seduced those who dwell upon earth. ( 1 Enoch 53: 1-6)
Here we have the concept of a hell of burning fire. Satan also has been “promoted” to the head of the fallen angels.

The Gnostic View

Things continued to be difficult for the Jews under the Roman Empire, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD. This event crushed the hopes of the most pious Jews. In a world that at times seemed utterly evil, some of the Jews began to question the wisdom of God in permitting such a situation. Combining influences of earlier philosophies, Jewish and Christian Gnostics took the next step past the apocalyptic viewpoint. The righteous suffered, said the Gnostics, not because evil was a test permitted by a good God, and not because a powerful fallen angel was on the loose opposing a good God. The righteous suffered because the God who had created the material world itself and all the powers that controlled it was an EVIL God (or at best, an incompetent one). This “Demiurge” had been created by a cosmic accident. He had incompetently created the world and ruled over it, demanding worship and obedience. To a number of these Gnostics – Satan basically WAS the God of the Old Testament. Satan had created the world and given the Old Testament law – demanding worship as the one and only God.

But above him was a TRUE God, of complete goodness and pure light. The true God, taking pity on the tortured creation of the Demiurge, had sent messengers into the world to show the way to escape from the clutches of the evil God of the material world.

The Apocryphon of John describes this incompetent creator:

"Now the archon who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas, and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, 'I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.”

The Gnostic equating of Satan with the Demiurge or god of this world has it’s echos even in the New Testament writings

I will no more speak much with you, for the prince of the world comes, and he has nothing in me. (John 14:30 WEB)

For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the worlds rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
(Ephesians 6:12 WEB)

in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them. (2 Corinthians 4:4 WEB)

We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
(1 John 5:19 WEB)

The Gnostic view also regarded the next life as entirely spiritual. The physical world was evil, and so a physical resurrection made no sense.

Summary

To review, then, the conception of Satan has undergone considerable change in Biblical and extra-biblical writings, going hand in hand with a change in worldview and the perception of Evil. These changes can be summarized as follows:

The conception of Satan:

Primitive: An occasional role of God or his angels.
Prophetic: God’s official prosecutor.
Apocalyptic: A cosmic rebel against God.
Gnostic: The evil or incompetent creator of the world.

Conception of evil:

Primitive: An occasional fact of life.
Prophetic: God’s punishment.
Apocalyptic: Part of Satan’s civil war.
Gnostic: The primary nature of the material world.

Conception of rewards/punishments

Primitive: Earthly – unconditional
Prophetic: Earthly – conditional
Apocalyptic: Future earthly – conditional
Gnostic: Future spiritual – conditional
 

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