professor markensteyn unleashes a monster

The writer Mark Steyn has a rather interesting article on his normally light hearted little blog which I recommend you all take a look at.
It's a reprint of one he wrote about the Shroud of Turin a decade ago for a magazine.
The Shroud of Turin is a cloth bearing the shadowy image of a man.
Some believe it to be the cloth used to wrap Jesus' body after the crucifixion, and that the image has been miraculously imprinted on it as a sign to the generations.
Steyn's view is that the shroud has been proven to be of recent origin through a carbon dating test.
He suggests that those who have asserted the dating process is in error should instead focus on the extraordinary and still unexplained nature of the image itself.
I stress the Steyn article is republished from one he wrote ten years ago, and he may now harbour different feelings about the shroud's possible authenticity.
Anyway in typical Steyn fashion he's brought back into the limelight a most curious plot twist.
At a certain stage in the 1990's a writer called Lynn Picknett attempted to infiltrate the world's most respected group of shroud researchers.
(I say she was infiltrating. Steyn is more neutral in his assessment.)
Lynn Picknett had much to gain from such an infiltration.
She was seeking credibility, credentials and academic respectability among those involved in Bible related studies.
Lynn Picknett is most famous for writing works of pseudo scholarship in partnership with London accountant Clive Prince, denying the divinity of Jesus, asserting that he had married Mary Magdalene, postulating that he fathered her children, and implying that this bloodline of Jesus survives to this day.
She sued Dan Brown for plagiarism when The DaVinci Code went platinum. She lost the case and rightly so, but there's no doubt Brown based his story on some of her speculations.
There's also no doubt that those speculations have been around since Adam was a boy.
Well you know what I mean.
A ten year old girl walked up to me at my brother's ordination to the priesthood in 1998 and said: "How do you know Jesus wasn't married to Mary Magdalene."
The little girl should have sued Dan Brown as well.
She was more intellectual in her arguments than Picknett, Prince or Brown himself.
Although that wouldn't be too hard.
But I digress.
By infiltrating the shroud group Lynn Picknett intended to improve her non existent credibility as a Biblical scholar and shroud researcher. She was already on the money making trail with regular appearances on poorly produced television documentaries.
While infiltrating the shroud group she supposedly had an affair with one of the most academically respected shroud researchers, Ian Wilson.
Wilson is a high brow collossally erudite British scholar who claims to have had a Catholic conversion while researching the shroud.
I have recommended one of his books on this site, with the proviso that I don't entirely trust him.
By this I meant he's a bit of schlub.
In the book of his which I recommend, he includes nude pictures of himself in the shroud pose.
Part of the research of course.
But still a bit of a schlub.
I say the same thing about Jim Cavaziell who played the Lord in Mel Gibson's film version of the gospel.
Cavaziell is also a bit of a schlubb.
A damn fine actor.
Just don't let him talk without a script.
Because he's a schlub.
But I digress.
Again.
Lynn Picknett whose life's work has been to discredit the Christian faith, infiltrated the shroud group, had an affair with Wilson, and then got turfed out when her agendas became clear to other group members.
Afterwards Ian Wilson revealed that she had been involved in occult practices.
Lynn Picknett for her part accused Wilson of endorsing a mystic nutjob who claims to channel the spirit of Jesus and who also claims the Lord told him the shroud was genuine.
Folks, it's better than a Dan Brown book.
And unlike The DaVinci Code, this actually would make a great film!