Considering the Ukrainians built the ship, they knew exactly where to hit it. The Russians didn’t need that cross splinter; they needed an invisibility cloak!! Or rather, they needed to disappear completely. The ship has now fulfilled that role.
Also, never mind the cross splinter, or the shroud! Those pieces are moot. I’VE got a piece of the STONE that was rolled from the TOMB right here in my hand! Oh wait, never mind…I just threw it in the ocean too.
I am very upset both that I had to read this far to see a “rise again in three days” joke and that I got here an hour too late to make one myself!
Maybe it wasn’t diluted enough.
and it’s still skipping.
Love the look of the cross dropper. Evil flying monkeys inbound…
For the right buyer, I have an NFT of a sliver of the True Cross.
Hm. True Cross Yacht Club?
This is a good brief history of where all the true cross relics came from. At this point in time it might be hard to trace back each true cross relics people claim to have but very old, as in centuries old, churches probablly do have pieces of what people believe are the true cross that was discovered in 326 CE or AD.
The only thing that might be a problem is how the historian of the time decided of the three crosses they found which one was the true cross.
The historian Rufinus (c. 340-410) reveals that in order to discern which cross was Jesus’, (Saint) Helena (who was on a mission to find Jesus stuff) had a dying local woman brought to the site. The ill woman touched two of the crosses, but nothing happened. Then she touched the third – and she recovered. The true cross of Jesus had been revealed.
So, if you believe that story, the relic on the ship probablly wasn’t legit because it did not protect the ship. But, why would Jesus protect the Russians and what they are up to? So I guess that’s not a good test.
Classic three-card monte scenario.
Also: why wouldn’t the Romans just recycle the crosses from the previous batch of condemned prisoners instead of going through the trouble and expense of making new ones each time?
Sounds unhygienic. Like swabbing the arm of a condemned prisoner with alcohol before giving them a lethal injection, you have to respect the niceties.
“Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”
“Hey guys, lets store our jesus memorabilia on our guided missile cruiser!”
Story checks out.
Tell JC there is a “little blue pill” for that
They would. Unless people tore it down for souvenirs and relics after the fact.
Or the Romans could have burned them to prevent that from happening.
It really is impossible to tell where a sliver of wood came from…
Though I will say, I have seen some reliquaries (I can’t recall if any of them had parts of the cross), but some of them have parts of saints, bits of their clothing (or a whole robe of St Francis), links of chain that bound Peter, etc… and it really does illicit a feeling of a connection to the past… even if I know that not all of the relics are authentic.
A quick search suggests that with most crucifixions the bodies were left to decay on whatever they were tied or nailed to, they were not buried. So maybe they couldn’t reuse anything. I did find that they reused nails to save costs and there is only one archeological find of a heel bone with a nail embedded in the bone. The wood on the nail was from an olive tree so the speculation is they may have used olive trees for mass executions.
The whole history is barbaric and difficult to read about. I can not believe what humans have done to each other throughout history and even what humans are still doing to each other today.
Maybe it is time to wipe us all out and start from scratch.
Their obvious mistake was to try floating on water rather than walking on it.
Apropos of little: years ago a friend of mine would have this little saying, a bit schadenfreude, whenever one of us would faceplant or come a cropper in any way:
“God done that.”
Well, if what I remember about Roman crucifixion techniques isn’t now horribly out of date, the crucifixion site was used over and over again. Basically, they shoved some heavy timbers in the ground, just vertical posts, then had the condemned haul the cross-piece to the site – yes, all those wannabe martyrs you see hauling around complete crosses are doing it wrong. Once on site, the condemned lashed to the crosspiece by the wrist, and the crosspiece was hauled up and affixed with lashings to the post, and then to the post by the ankle. The general use of nails is unsupported by the archeological evidence, and if used would have ripped through hand, foot, wrist and ankle bones, so would have had to have been used through the forearm and lower leg if for whatever reason the Romans decided to use expensive, hard to remove iron nails instead of rope. The watered down vinegar offered was actually a common drink of the era, and as early Christians would be well aware, death from crucifixion was not fast, making Jesus’s rapid demise and equally rapid resurrection a trifle . . . off.
Yes, I had an interesting Sunday School teacher back in the day.
Onward Christian Soilders! 
Actually, if the Church would let scientists have a few micrograms from it, it wouldn’t be. Genetics can tell us the species, carbon dating the age, and isotope analysis can tell us where it was grown, often to within a few kilometers. Which is why the Church only allows scientists to examine their miraculous items when it has plausible deniability.The Shroud of Turin sample that was carbon dated, for example, has been repeatedly claimed by the Church to have been contaminated, part of a repair, or just done wrong rather than admit its a fake.
