because of the amount and the longitude. Everything that could been inside should have gone away.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Did you mean “latitude”? Hawaii has a more tropical climate because it is near the equator, not because it’s near the prime meridian. Or did you mean “longevity”? Either way, you can’t expect all oils to evaporate quickly like water, even in a warm or arid climate. It’s true that there are some oils used in paint that dry quickly, but there are other oils that do not dry out, even after a long time.
The previous person was killed and tortured, the icon disappeared. The murderers were not found. It would be quite crazy idea, knowing this story, to make this mystification. To put your life under risk for what? For stupid hoax? You must be crazy to do it.
Or greedy. How about for money? Fame? There are known examples of hoaxes with motives like these.
And this person (current keeper) serves in police
A policeman might be even less afraid of criminals trying to kill him, because he already has to deal with them.
If I would need to do such a hoax, I would put some source of myrrh inside, and refill it periodically. It can be done of course. I could even believe that it can be done such that observer, taking the icon, would not notice any difference from the usual icon. But is it possible to avoid X-rays somehow? They travel by plane, I bet they do not put icon into luggage (it is too precious). So they must go with it as hand luggage. There the custom, using X-rays, observe small vessels inside the icons and asks what is it. And it is done, the hoax is over.
If I needed to perform such a hoax, I wouldn’t have to modify the icon at all. The Roman Catholics tend to use statues instead of icons, and they have examples of those weeping too. I heard of one case where someone was caught applying the “tears” with a squirt gun. You don’t need to carve channels or secret compartments for a hoax. It’s enough to have a spray bottle and vegetable oil, which are available for purchase pretty much anywhere. And if you use a non-drying oil, you don’t even have to re-apply it! It will stay “wet” long after water would have dried out.
-different myrrh-streaming icons, as long as it passed the check by church officials not only on the local level
I don’t trust church officials any further than I can throw them. They have a fundamental conflict of interest. Their loyalty is to the Church, not the truth. The fact that someone is a priest makes me even less likely to trust them. The Roman Catholics have been rocked by child sexual abuse scandals which have been all over the news in this country, and worse, they attempted to cover them up to maintain the Church’s reputation. A cursory web search reveals the Eastern Orthodox seem to have similar problems for similar reasons. The Churches cannot be trusted to be honest with us.
These officials are clearly not rationalists (if they were, I would not expect them to be religious!) I don’t expect most of them to even be scientists. But even if they were, scientists can still be deceived.
I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Did you mean “latitude”? Hawaii has a more tropical climate because it is near the equator, not because it’s near the prime meridian. Or did you mean “longevity”? Either way, you can’t expect all oils to evaporate quickly like water, even in a warm or arid climate. It’s true that there are some oils used in paint that dry quickly, but there are other oils that do not dry out, even after a long time.
Or greedy. How about for money? Fame? There are known examples of hoaxes with motives like these.
A policeman might be even less afraid of criminals trying to kill him, because he already has to deal with them.
If I needed to perform such a hoax, I wouldn’t have to modify the icon at all. The Roman Catholics tend to use statues instead of icons, and they have examples of those weeping too. I heard of one case where someone was caught applying the “tears” with a squirt gun. You don’t need to carve channels or secret compartments for a hoax. It’s enough to have a spray bottle and vegetable oil, which are available for purchase pretty much anywhere. And if you use a non-drying oil, you don’t even have to re-apply it! It will stay “wet” long after water would have dried out.
I don’t trust church officials any further than I can throw them. They have a fundamental conflict of interest. Their loyalty is to the Church, not the truth. The fact that someone is a priest makes me even less likely to trust them. The Roman Catholics have been rocked by child sexual abuse scandals which have been all over the news in this country, and worse, they attempted to cover them up to maintain the Church’s reputation. A cursory web search reveals the Eastern Orthodox seem to have similar problems for similar reasons. The Churches cannot be trusted to be honest with us.
These officials are clearly not rationalists (if they were, I would not expect them to be religious!) I don’t expect most of them to even be scientists. But even if they were, scientists can still be deceived.