Freethought & Rationalism Archive

mountainman · 03-09-2010, 06:31 PM

religious forgery

This page considers forgery and fraud relating to religious texts and artifacts.

Here is a section about relics ....

Quote:

The Shroud is merely the most prominent of Western relics, which prior to the French Revolution included

* around 14 versions of the Holy Prepuce (at Antwerp, Coulombs, Chartres, Charroux, Metz, Conques, Langres, Anvers, Fécamp, Puy-en-Velay, Auvergne, Hildesheim, Santiago de Compostela and Calcata)
* three Holy Umbilical Cords,
* four Spears of Longinus,
* three Crowns of Thorns,
* a large number of Holy Toenail clippings,
* the rods used by Moses and Aaron,
* leftovers from the feeding of the 5,000,
* three arms of St Francis Xavier,
* the shirt of John the Baptist (and a mere three of his heads),
* phials of milk from the Virgin Mary,
* quantities of Christ's blood,
* His milk teeth
* some 204 bits of babies massacred by Herod

Huon · 03-10-2010, 12:36 AM

Besançon (ç is pronounced s) is a town of eastern France, north of Lyons.

The Holy Shroud of Besançon appeared around 1523. It was undoubtedly a copy of the shroud of Turin. It beared only one print, that of a naked man, tortured, face on. It was shown at Easter and at Ascension, at the cathedral Saint-Stephen, then, from 1669 at the cathedral Saint-John. Miracles happened. From the 16th century to the end of the 18th century devotion was very important.

In the report of the Convention dated 5 prairial an II (may 24th, 1794), inserted in the Moniteur for 1794 (Official record equivalent to Congressional report), page 557, it is reported that the Holy Shroud of Besançon had been sent to Paris on 27 floréal an II (may 16th 1794). It is written this : "We are sent not only that linen, finely worked by modern technique, but also the tracing or the cut mold which was used every year to renew the imprint, the preservation of which was admired as miraculous".

"On nous envoie non seulement ce linge ouvré et d'un travail moderne, mais encore le poncis ou le moule découpé qui servait à y renouveler chaque année l'empreinte dont on admirait la conservation miraculeuse".

Huon · 03-10-2010, 12:39 AM

"The Mandylion" is a cloth discovered in Edessa, now Sanli Urfa, Turkey. In 525 CE, Edessa was flooded by the river Daisan. It is said that during the reconstruction of the town, a cloth bearing a face image was found inside a door of the town. This cloth is mentioned by Evagrius Scholasticus in his Ecclesiastical History. It was declared "acheiropoïetos", "Not made by human hands". In later centuries it became known as "The Mandylion", "little handkerchief". Emperor Justinian (527-565) had a cathedral built at Edessa to preserve the Mandylion. Edessa was conquered in 609 by the Persians. In 944, emperor Romanus I Lecapenus (919-944) besieged Edessa and exchanged the Mandylion for a group of Muslim prisoners. The Mandylion was brought to Constantinople. In 1204, the Crusaders ransacked Constantinople, and many relics disappeared, among which the Mandylion.

Huon · 03-10-2010, 12:42 AM

The Shroud of Cadouin (182 km east of Bordeaux) has quotations from the Qur'an, written in koufi font. It was weaved for the vizier El Afdal, vizier of Fatimid Egyptian caliph El Mostali (1094 - 1101). Abul-Feda records that "the troops of egyptian caliph " captured Jerusalem from "Ilhghazi and Sokman…son of Ortok" in A.H. 489 (1096). The crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099. The koufi inscription was deciphered in 1934 by the Coptic Museum of Cairo, when a jesuit, father Francez asked for an examination.

Huon · 03-10-2010, 12:55 AM

Quote:

… the Sudarium of Oviedo may very well be the actual cloth mentioned in the empty tomb scene of the Gospel of John, verse 20:7: "And the napkin, that was about his [Jesus'] head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself" (King James Version). That "napkin" or face cloth is, in the original Greek text, a "soudarion" (Latin "sudarium"). If the relic is authentic, as I (John Loken) think it is, its existence today is nothing less than astounding.
<snip>
As Guscin (pronounced "Gus-kin") observes, the survival of that relic of Jesus' death, and its early history, seem strongly supported by certain details in passages of several ancient and early medieval texts. They include the 5th century Life of Saint Nino; the 4th or 5th c. Paraphrase of the Gospel of John by the poet Nonnos; an account of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in about A.D. 570; a passage by Ishodad of Merv in the 9th c.; and a 10th c. text relating an even earlier apocryphal story about Joseph of Arimathea that mentions a bloody "headband." Guscin reasonably concludes that these passages all refer to the same cloth, whose Christian protectors took it away from Jerusalem in 614 due to the threat of a Persian (non-Christian) invasion.
Guscin notes that the most important documentary source for the Sudarium's history from 614 onward is a 12th c. account by a Spanish bishop named Pelagius, who mentions blandly, and therefore rather credibly, that among the Christian relics kept in an ark (chest) at Oviedo since the 8th c. was "The Lord's Sudarium"....

:devil1:

Huon · 03-10-2010, 12:59 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamless_robe_of_Jesus

mountainman · 03-10-2010, 06:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Huon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamless_robe_of_Jesus

Quote:

According to one tradition, Helena, mother of Constantine the Great discovered the seamless robe in the Holy Land in the year 327 or 328 along with several other relics, including the True Cross. According to different versions of the story, she either bequeathed it or sent it to the city of Trier, where Constantine had lived for some years before becoming emperor. (The monk Altmann of Hautvillers wrote in the 9th century that Helena was born in that city, though this report is strongly disputed by most modern historians.)

Thanks Huon (again). Do you (or anyone else) happen to know of any index of these forgeries in the name of the most pure "christian traditions" by which we can, as analysis and statisticians get any handle on the approximate relative numbers of these manifest forgeries which have been thrust upon the populace of the ancient and modern world? Certainly they must number in the hundreds --- if not thousands.

As objective analysts we would them be able to tabulate a balance sheet of items of evidence which have been produced in support of the "christian traditions" which would clearly demonstrate, on the one side manifest forgeries and on the other side, cited evidence which is still be recognised as integrous evidence for the "Christian traditions".

On the integrous side of such a balance sheet, following various arguments presented in this forum, we might be inclined to cite evidence such as the Dura-Eurpos "house church". Anything more anyone?

At the conclusion of this exercise, it would on the surface appear that we would have thousands of manifest forgeries being balanced against one (or perhaps a handful??) of citations which are still capable of "being believed as possibly integrous". Quite an imbalance.

Huon · 03-11-2010, 01:06 AM

From newadvent :

Quote:

In several regions of Christendom there is honored under this name a pious matron of Jerusalem who, during the Passion of Christ, as one of the holy women who accompanied Him to Calvary, offered Him a towel on which he left the imprint of His face. She went to Rome, bringing with her this image of Christ, which was long exposed to public veneration. To her likewise are traced other relics of the Blessed Virgin venerated in several churches of the West. The belief in the existence of authentic images of Christ is connected with the old legend of Abgar of Edessa and the apocryphal writing known as the "Mors Pilati". To distinguish at Rome the oldest and best known of these images it was called vera icon (true image), which ordinary language soon made veronica. It is thus designated in several medieval texts mentioned by the Bollandists (e.g. an old Missal of Augsburg has a Mass "De S. Veronica seu Vultus Domini"), and Matthew of Westminster speaks of the imprint of the image of the Savior which is called Veronica: "Effigies Domenici vultus quae Veronica nuncupatur". By degrees, popular imagination mistook this word for the name of a person and attached thereto several legends which vary according to the country.

- In Italy Veronica comes to Rome at the summons of the Emperor Tiberius, whom she cures by making him touch the sacred image. She thenceforth remains in the capitol of the empire, living there at the same time as Sts. Peter and Paul, and at her death bequeaths the precious image to Pope Clement and his successors.

- In France she is given in marriage to Zacheus, the convert of the Gospel, accompanies him to Rome, and then to Quercy, where her husband becomes a hermit, under the name of Amadour, in the region now called Rocamadour (Rock-Amadour). Meanwhile Veronica joins St Martial, whom she assists in his apostolic preaching, especially in Limoges.

- In the region of Bordeaux Veronica, shortly after the Ascension of Christ, lands at Soulac at the mouth of the Gironde, bringing relics of the Blessed Virgin; there she preaches, dies, and is buried in the tomb which was long venerated either at Soulac or in the Church of St. Seurin at Bordeaux. Sometimes she has even been confounded with a pious woman who, according to Gregory of Tours, brought to the neighboring town of Bazas some drops of the blood of John the Baptist, at whose beheading she was present.

- In many places she is identified with the Haemorrhissa who was cured in the Gospel.

These pious traditions cannot be documented, but there is no reason why the belief that such an act of compassion did occur should not find expression in the veneration paid to one called Veronica, even though the name has found no place in the Hieronymian Martyrology or the oldest historical Martyrologies, and St. Charles Borromeo excluded the Office of St. Veronica from the Milan Missal where it had been introduced.

St. Charles Borromeo is a filthy bastard ! Veronica was a very good girl, she was present at the death of John the Baptist and at the death of JC. And the veronicas are beautiful flowers.:grin:

In Soulac, there are some more relics :
- the candle which was carried by an angel at the birth of JC,
- eight grains of wheat which were sowed and growed in one hour, when the Holy Virgin was fleeing to Egypt,
- and a silver cross, containing some wood of the True Cross.

Huon · 03-11-2010, 02:18 AM

In 817, Pippin I of Aquitaine, a grandson of Charlemagne, received a relic which was said to be the head of John the Baptist. This relic was recovered by a monk, named Felix, who went on boat to Alexandria in Egypt, and brought back the head to Angeriacum, (a roman villa), now Saint-Jean d'Angély, near La Rochelle. This relic helped the Franks against the Vikings during the IXth century. But it disappeared, probably during some plundering. And it reappeared miraculously in 1010.

The chronicler Adhemar de Chabannes writes "it is said that it is the head of the Precursor".

It is good for pilgrimages. Saint-Jean d'Angely is a halt for the pilgrims who go to Compostela in Spain.

The Calvinists destroyed the abbey in 1562, and the relics as well.
During the Revolution, it became a Temple of Reason.

Huon · 03-11-2010, 02:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

As objective analysts we would them be able to tabulate a balance sheet of items of evidence which have been produced in support of the "christian traditions" which would clearly demonstrate, on the one side manifest forgeries and on the other side, cited evidence which is still be recognised as integrous evidence for the "Christian traditions".

On the "other side" nothing at all... The christian traditions are built on legends, at least in France.

Saint Pothinus (Photinus) was the first bishop of Lyons and the first bishop in Gaul. Pothinus was sent from the Christian communities of Phrygia to Lyons and Vienne. A letter attributed to Irenaeus records his martyrdom in 177 under the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Irenaeus (b. 2nd century; d. end of 2nd/beginning of 3rd century) succeeded Pothinus.

It is not impossible that Pothinus was the leader of a Montanist group, that Irenaeus was an opponent to Pothinus, and that he hijacked the martyrdom of Pothinus in favor of the "orthodox" line.

A young girl slave (beautiful blonde, according to academic painters of the XIX c.), named Blandina, was martyrized in 177 with Pothinus.

Gregory of Tours states that Denis was bishop of the Parisii and was martyred by being beheaded by a sword. The earliest document giving an account of his life and martyrdom, the Passio SS. Dionysii Rustici et Eleutherii dates from c. 600, is mistakenly attributed to the poet Venantius Fortunatus, and is legendary.

The oldest christian vestige in Bordeaux dates around 260. It is the epitaph of a young woman, aged 20, named Domitia, citizen of Trèves (Trier, Deutschland). In 314, the first known bishop of Bordeaux is Orientalis.

03-10-2010, 12:36 AM	#2
Huon Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Bordeaux France Posts: 2,796	The Holy Shroud of Besançon Besançon (ç is pronounced s) is a town of eastern France, north of Lyons. The Holy Shroud of Besançon appeared around 1523. It was undoubtedly a copy of the shroud of Turin. It beared only one print, that of a naked man, tortured, face on. It was shown at Easter and at Ascension, at the cathedral Saint-Stephen, then, from 1669 at the cathedral Saint-John. Miracles happened. From the 16th century to the end of the 18th century devotion was very important. In the report of the Convention dated 5 prairial an II (may 24th, 1794), inserted in the Moniteur for 1794 (Official record equivalent to Congressional report), page 557, it is reported that the Holy Shroud of Besançon had been sent to Paris on 27 floréal an II (may 16th 1794). It is written this : "We are sent not only that linen, finely worked by modern technique, but also the tracing or the cut mold which was used every year to renew the imprint, the preservation of which was admired as miraculous". "On nous envoie non seulement ce linge ouvré et d'un travail moderne, mais encore le poncis ou le moule découpé qui servait à y renouveler chaque année l'empreinte dont on admirait la conservation miraculeuse".

03-10-2010, 12:39 AM	#3
Huon Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Bordeaux France Posts: 2,796	The Mandylion "The Mandylion" is a cloth discovered in Edessa, now Sanli Urfa, Turkey. In 525 CE, Edessa was flooded by the river Daisan. It is said that during the reconstruction of the town, a cloth bearing a face image was found inside a door of the town. This cloth is mentioned by Evagrius Scholasticus in his Ecclesiastical History. It was declared "acheiropoïetos", "Not made by human hands". In later centuries it became known as "The Mandylion", "little handkerchief". Emperor Justinian (527-565) had a cathedral built at Edessa to preserve the Mandylion. Edessa was conquered in 609 by the Persians. In 944, emperor Romanus I Lecapenus (919-944) besieged Edessa and exchanged the Mandylion for a group of Muslim prisoners. The Mandylion was brought to Constantinople. In 1204, the Crusaders ransacked Constantinople, and many relics disappeared, among which the Mandylion.

03-10-2010, 12:42 AM	#4
Huon Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Bordeaux France Posts: 2,796	The Shroud of Cadouin The Shroud of Cadouin (182 km east of Bordeaux) has quotations from the Qur'an, written in koufi font. It was weaved for the vizier El Afdal, vizier of Fatimid Egyptian caliph El Mostali (1094 - 1101). Abul-Feda records that "the troops of egyptian caliph " captured Jerusalem from "Ilhghazi and Sokman…son of Ortok" in A.H. 489 (1096). The crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099. The koufi inscription was deciphered in 1934 by the Coptic Museum of Cairo, when a jesuit, father Francez asked for an examination.

03-10-2010, 12:59 AM	#6
Huon Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Bordeaux France Posts: 2,796	Der heilige rock zu Trier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamless_robe_of_Jesus

03-11-2010, 02:18 AM	#9
Huon Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Bordeaux France Posts: 2,796	the head of John the Baptist In 817, Pippin I of Aquitaine, a grandson of Charlemagne, received a relic which was said to be the head of John the Baptist. This relic was recovered by a monk, named Felix, who went on boat to Alexandria in Egypt, and brought back the head to Angeriacum, (a roman villa), now Saint-Jean d'Angély, near La Rochelle. This relic helped the Franks against the Vikings during the IXth century. But it disappeared, probably during some plundering. And it reappeared miraculously in 1010. The chronicler Adhemar de Chabannes writes "it is said that it is the head of the Precursor". It is good for pilgrimages. Saint-Jean d'Angely is a halt for the pilgrims who go to Compostela in Spain. The Calvinists destroyed the abbey in 1562, and the relics as well. During the Revolution, it became a Temple of Reason.

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