Finished Desire of The Everlasting Hills last night—or rather, gave up on it, when he started defending the Turin Shroud, and on the most absurd sorts of arguments. According to Cahill, the depiction of the body on the shroud is so realistic (on the basis of a single photograph) that it could not possibly have been drawn on the shroud, therefore it’s genuine. It never occurs to him that there’s an alternative possibility (such as, that it is a burial shroud for one of the many other people who have died).
Another example of what drives me crazy about Cahill: he argues that the depiction of Jesus’ life in the Gospel of John must draw from eyewitness accounts because it is much more detailed and precise than the other Gospels, in some ways. The other Gospels mention people complaining about something, but John puts the words into a particular person. But as anyone who has seen a historical fiction film knows, more detail is probably indicative of a farther distance between the event and the depiction. Such accuracy is characteristic of a later writer trying to add vividness to an account about which only general outlines are known, and hence of the unreliability of that account. But Cahill comes to precisely the opposite conclusion. Why? Because he wants to. And this passes for serious historical writing? Unfortunately, it’s just as full of myth-swallowing as How The Irish Saved Civilization, which is only slightly better—in part, because it’s shorter.
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