NOT in the Bible, yet most people know the story anyway

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kbot
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NOT in the Bible, yet most people know the story anyway

Post by kbot » 04-27-2011 06:54 PM

While recovering from my recent surgery I've been watching some tv and reading. With the Easter season having just passed, a lot of what was on tv revolved around the Christian observence of Easter. Don't know how many of you here know this, but the popular story regarding St Veronica/ Veronica's Veil is not in the Bible. Yet, if you're a Catholic at least, you know the story: while on the road to be crucified, Christ was met by a small group of women who were crying. Christ stopped and, spoke a few words of encouragement, enjoining the women not to cry for Him, but for Jersusalem. One woman, named Veronica, gave Christ a towel of sorts) to wipe his bloodstained face. After passng the cloth back to Veronica he continued on his march. Afterwards, when Veronica looked at the cloth was when she noticed the imprint of his face on the cloth. If you are a Catholic, and say the Stations Of the Cross, the sculptures in the church depict this scene.

Yet, as I said, the event does not appear in the Bible. But, it is universally known. How can this be?

There are a series of books that did not make it into the Bible.

The story of Veronica and her veil appear in a number of these apochryphal books, as well as another story concernig a king named Abgar, who lived in a town north of Jerulsalem called Edessa.

The king had a disfiguring disease, but had heard about Christ and sent an envoy to Jerusalem, asking that Christ either come to Edessa for a cure, or send other means. Christ sent a cloth, with instructions that it nhot be opened until given to the king. When the envoy unrolled the cloth in the presence of the king, he was miraculously cured. This particular story comes from one of the earliest texts of one of the earliest Christian churches. Later, St Thaddeus, one of the original twelve disciples, went to Edessa. The cloth stayed in the city for a few centuries before moving to Constantinople, where it stayed for a few hunderd more years before being moved to Rome after the sack of the city by the Crusaders.

On a trip to Rome some years ago, I asked a tour guide in the Vatican if the cloth known as Veronica's Veil is hidden in the Vatican. After a number of denials, the tour guide did finally admit that the cloth is there, behind a column. In fron of the column, is a large statue of a women holding open a large cloth.

While the story "did not make it" as a valid story in the Bible, the story is nonetheless, well-known. And, as for "Veronica", this comes from the words "Vera" ( "true"- Latin) ande "Icon" ("image"-Greek)

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Post by Bobbi Snow » 04-27-2011 09:46 PM

These Bible Stories are totally unfamiliar to me, and believe me, Kbot - I was spoon-fed all that crap up until I was about 5 years old. They continued to coerce me to believe everything in The Bible to be absolutely TRUE... but it just didn't seem "logical" to me for reasons that are (at this time) not applicable.

However, a few years back I did finally become aware that there are many Books (NOT in the King James version, and some in the Catholic version) that have been preserved, which didn't make the "Constantinople Cut" - which gives me a little more comfort for the Other Books I have since bought and read.

Thank you for posting this.
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Post by kbot » 04-28-2011 06:12 PM

Apparently when King James decided to translate the Bible from Latin into English, he also decided to just remove some books from the tradition Roman Catholic Bible - in addition to giving his interpretation of the Latin, which wasn't very good to begin with. So, the Protestant Bible is shorter than the Catholic Bible.

That being sad, there are a number - hundreds, that didn't make it into the Roman Catholic Bible. Years ago, I had gone to a used book store in Boston with my Mom, and I saw a twelve volume set, published in the mid 1880s, that contained a large portion of these books. This was compiled well before the Nag Hammadi finds and the Dead Sea Scroll finds. The book title is called The Ante-Nicene Fathers, and contains a wealth of scriptures - some accepted by some of the ten Catholic Churches scattered throughout the MidEast and Eastern Europe, and some obvious forgeries.

I just found it interesting that a non-Biblical story could be so well known, even though it had no basis in the Bible, and that it is in reference to an object that even the Vatican acknowledges as real.....

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Post by Swerdloc » 04-28-2011 06:44 PM

kbot wrote: Apparently when King James decided to translate the Bible from Latin into English, he also decided to just remove some books from the tradition Roman Catholic Bible - in addition to giving his interpretation of the Latin, which wasn't very good to begin with. So, the Protestant Bible is shorter than the Catholic Bible.


I'm not sure how much Latin, if any, King James I knew; at any rate, the translation was done not by him but by scholars at his behest, and was based heavily on already-existing English translations of the Bible at the time, such as the Tyndale Bible and the Bishops' Bible. The reason it is shorter than the Catholic Bible is that it was based, not on Latin, but on the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, and on the Septuagint version compiled in the couple of hundred years before Christ and in use by Jewish scholars. It did not contain several books, usually called the Apocrypha, that had been added by the Catholic Church.

(The Bible was not written in Latin--it was translated into Latin by St Jerome, just as King James's scholars translated it into English. Until recent years, official Catholic translations into vernacular languages had to be done not from the original Hebrew and Greek, but from Jerome's Latin version.)

There were a great many books that never made it into the Biblical canon, which did not get really firmly set until after the Council of Nicea. And there are also many traditional stories--like that of Veronica--that have persisted through the years. Ian Wilson, who has done a lot of writing about the Shroud of Turin, believes that the Mandylion of Edessa was actually what is now known as the shroud, folded in four so that only the image of the head showed.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint
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Post by kbot » 04-29-2011 07:19 PM

Swerdloc wrote: There were a great many books that never made it into the Biblical canon, which did not get really firmly set until after the Council of Nicea. And there are also many traditional stories--like that of Veronica--that have persisted through the years. Ian Wilson, who has done a lot of writing about the Shroud of Turin, believes that the Mandylion of Edessa was actually what is now known as the shroud, folded in four so that only the image of the head showed.

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

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


I've read about both the Shroud of Turin as well as the alleged Veronica's Veil in the Vatican. While Wilson makes a good point, the fact remains that while the Shroud can be occasionally viewed as a large single unfolded cloth, the same can also be said regarding the veil at the Vatican, albeit much smaller than the Shroud. The Vatican typically displays the veil after Easter:

Snippet:

There is certainly an image kept in St Peter’s Basilica which purports to be the same Veronica as was revered in the Middle Ages. This image is stored in the chapel which lies behind the balcony in the south west pier which supports the dome.

Very few inspections are recorded in modern times and there are no detailed photographs. The most detailed recorded inspection of the 20th century occurred in 1907 when Jesuit art historian Joseph Wilpert was allowed to remove two plates of glass to inspect the image. He commented that he saw only "a square piece of light coloured material, somewhat faded through age, which bear two faint rust-brown stains, connected one to the other".[10]

Nevertheless, the face is still displayed each year on the occasion of the 5th Sunday of Lent, Passion Sunday. The blessing takes place after the traditional Vespers at 5.00 pm. There is a short procession within the basilica, accompanied by the Roman litany. A bell rings and three canons carry the heavy frame out on the balcony above the statue of St. Veronica holding the veil (Photograph). From this limited view no image is discernible and it is only possible to see the shape of the inner frame.

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

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