Many will probably remember the incident several years ago when the image of the Virgin Mary was allegedly discovered in a grilled cheese sandwich. It was sold on eBay to an online casino for $28,000 in November 2004. Welcome to the Christianity of white trash America.
But Christians aren’t the only one to spot religious images in the goings about of their everyday life. Islam has the same phenomenon, although as icons and images are blasphemous in Islam, all of the instances of such “images” are of Arabic words, not pictures. Here are three more famous instances.
An Oscar fish found in an aquarium in England supposedly bears the word ‘Mohammed’ on one side and ‘Allah’ on the other.
An eggplant which was cut in half to reveal the name ‘Allah’ inside.
An egg with a series of brown ridges that appeared to spell out ‘Allah’ in Arabic, photographed in Cape Town in 1998.
About Curzon
Lord George Nathaniel Curzon (1859 - 1925) entered the British House of Commons as a Conservative MP in 1886, where he served as undersecretary of India and Foreign Affairs. He was appointed Viceroy of India at the turn of the 20th century where he delineated the North West Frontier Province,
ordered a military expedition to Tibet, and unsuccessfully tried to partition the province of Bengal during his six-year tenure. Curzon served as Leader of the House of Lords in Prime Minister Lloyd George's War Cabinet and became Foreign Secretary in January 1919, where his most famous act was
the drawing of the Curzon Line between a new Polish state and Russia. His publications include
Russia in Central Asia (1889) and
Persia and the Persian Question (1892).
In real life, "Curzon" is a US citizen from the East Coast who has been a financial analyst, freelance translator, and university professor; he is currently on assignment in Tokyo.
I don’t get the title. Is the suggestion that the image on the Shroud of Turin is accidental, or a mental projection?
I have never heard anyone raise this possibility. The most popular views are that it is (a) miraculous or (b) a forgery.
A person could write a book about the photoshopping/projecting going on in the Muslim world regarding “Allah” and “Muhammad” showing up in the natural world. Sure, God wants to sign his name… but his Prophet? What gives?
tdaxp: without insulting my Roman Catholic readers or family members, I thought carbon dating proved that it was medieval cloth, and due to its history, if anything, it a visage of a crucified Knight of the Templar deemed a heretic by Rome.
It appeared to have the visage and body of Jesus Christ on it, and was thus was believed to be what it is now claimed to be, but as it is eye-of-the-beholder belief, it is thus neither miraculous nor forged but the equivalent of the eggplant photo above, believed by the viewer to be holy.
“it a visage of a crucified Knight of the Templar deemed a heretic by Rome.”
I think that it is supposed by some to have been used in the initiation rituals (almost certainly untrue, as what we know about them were confessed by people who were not executed, telling their torturers exactly what they wanted to hear). The Templars wouldn’t have been crucified as heretics (in the same manner as Jesus) – they were burned or died under torture.
Correct about the carbon dating though. It is probably a late medieval forgery (in the novel Baudolino, Umberto Eco hilariously has his crusader characters stumble into a workshop where they are churning out heads of John the Baptist).
M-Bone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_de_Molay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffroy_de_Charney
So they were definitely burnt at the stake. The Molay / Shroud of Turin story comes from the bountiful imagination of Christopher Knight -
http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Article/Who%20Built%20the%20Moon.html
Knight doesn’t have any period evidence that Molay was tortured in that way. When carbon dating proved that it couldn’t have been Jesus, these guys came along and picked a famous figure from the new period in order to sell books.
“carbon dating proved that it was medieval cloth, and due to its history, if anything, it a visage of a crucified Knight of the Templar deemed a heretic by Rome”
The Shroud is a mysterious object. It is not clear how the image got on the cloth. Nor is there any explanation for how or why a medieval artist would have made the image a photographic negative. As to carbon dating, the shroud’s exposure to fire fouled up the accuracy of any C14 dating.
Also, “forgery” suggests that someone is claiming it is something it is not. The Catholic Church has no official position on the Shroud as an image of Christ. It is simply a mysterious object, believe about it whatever you want.
As for me, I tend to think it is miraculous, for reasons which will not interest this readership. But if it were proven otherwise tomorrow, it would have no impact on my religious (Catholic) belief.
Curzon,
Science never prooves anything. It merely (and only provisionally) rejects or fails to reject hypotheses.
It is a tool of limited if revolutionary potential, like a knife.
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As an arabic reader and an ex-muslim I can tell you that the world allah written in arabic can have slightly different forms depending on calligraphy/handwriting.
It can pretty much look like anny swiggly of form -||| and can be interpreted as sayign “allah” ..
The a in allah already looks like the l in arabic, followed by another l and a makes it look something like this ||||
the “h” which can be almost like a circle can also be written as slightly bumped horizontal “dash”. .
this leaves a looot of rooom for interpretation and can make various drawings and markings look like the word.
What kind of egg is that?
This is one possible explanation for the shroud.
http://www.shadowshroud.com/index.htm
Kale, interesting.
But, still, why would anyone do it?
Unless we find previously undiscovered documents explaining it, we will never really know for sure what the Shroud is, who made it, or why.
TDAXP: We can agree that a ‘scientific explanation’ is always provisional, but to claim it has limited potential is to damn with very faint praise. The fact that we do not (yet) have a fully mechanical explanation for the brain, or perceptions of beauty or faith, etc. does not obviate the fact that we do have very good ‘Natural Selection’ explanatory hypotheses that allow rational experimentation…. which will continually lead to further knowledge.