Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

About five years ago archaeologists studying the remains of a 7th century church in Sinope, Turkey, on the southern coast of the Black Sea, found a small stone box. Inside the box was a splinter of wood. This type of splinter, inside such a box, was a venerated feature of many churches through the High Middle Ages where it was regarded as a "piece of the True Cross," the cross on which Jesus was crucified. The 7th century dating of THIS find puts it a good deal earlier than most analogous splinters, though. Legend holds that it was Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, who on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land discovered the True Cross, and all the splinters that eventually found themselves to churches around Europe (enough to have rebuilt the whole city of Jerusalem, according to cynics) were said to have come from this Cross. Sort of like the use of two fish to feed multitudes? The historic significance of the find doesn't turn on whether one believes th...

On July 23, here,  I referenced three books about religious matters. I knew nothing more about them than what I got from a book catalog, and a bit of surmise. But one of them in particular intrigued me and in the meantime I have purchased the book. Here's what I wrote at the time. Thomas de Wesselow, THE SIGN: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection Dutton 2013. De Wesselow, an art historian by trade, contends that the famous shroud is not a work of art or a fraud but an authentic burial cloth from first century Palestine. Also, he contends that the shroud was central to the origins of Christianity. He seems not to believe in the orthodox Christian account of events -- he is skeptical that the tomb was found empty or that Jesus later appeared to his disciples and ascended into heaven, etc. But he does believe that the early Christians believed in the resurrection with sufficient ardor to be martyred for it. So ... what convinced them? A mysteri...