When the Homily is about Immunology

And Evening with PBS

Having two different PBS stations I was bouncing back and forth between two different episodes of the same show last night: Secrets of the Dead.

One episode was about an archeologist who was looking into the possible historical origin of the Amazon women legend. Apparently they found the grave of a "warrior princess" which might make the connection they were looking for. While it was interesting and I do not doubt any of their findings, what I did find interesting was the extent to which I believe the archeologist was really engagin in bad science. It seemed to me that she was far too emotionally attached to determining that the particular grave being exhumed would demonstrate a female warrior...she seemed positively giddy about proving it and with each arrival of more evidence to support her most desirous hypothesis I thought she might bust a seem. Folks, one ought not to be so emotionally attached to a hypothesis, and I think this is illustrative of the sometime hokiness of some branches of science (i.e. archeology and anthropology). Did I ever tell you about my art history class? Geesh, the ancient section was laughable in that they were absolutely convinced as to why those paintings were on the cave wall and also what the statue of the nude obese woman was all about. Sure.

The other episode was actually on the Shroud of Turin, and it was fascinating. Rather than ending the debate with the carbon dating results, they went much further even letting some scientists come on and explain why the dating may be wrong. I did not realize that there was real AB blood on the shroud (fairly rare for Europeans, less rare for Jews). Furthermore, there may be conncections between the shroud and something I'd never heard of: the Sudarium. A sort of face cloth that would have been put on Christ as he was being taken down and brought to his tomb - it is a rather plain looking piece of cloth with nothing at all dramatic about it - at least compared to the shroud (thus perhaps lending a certain amount of potential authenticity?) But it is covered in blood (again type AB) and other bodily fluids, but most importantly it has a much better documented history that takes it back to at least the early 7th century in Jerusalem (much older than the carbon dating on the shroud). Furthermore it appears that there is some coincidal staining that matches the shroud.

Intriguing. Though age would be a possible detriment, I do not believe it would be impossible to do some DNA testing on the blood from the shroud and the Sudarium to see the liklihood that we are dealing with the same individual here.