ST LUKE'S "ICON OF MARY" FORGERY FRAUD.
St Luke's Icon of Mary
This laughable icon is yet another forgery that may have fooled peasants for over a thousand years or more, but not the "little flock" or remnant of true believer's in Jesus. It is my belief the average man in the street, who is not indoctrinated into such churches as the various Orthodox Churches or Catholicism, when they see the evidence, will also discard this icon as the obvious forgery it really is! I want to make it plain that one of my objectives on this website is to challenge such forgeries as the St Luke's Icon of Mary until the Orthodox church and its teachers do a sudden highly predictable u-turn and say something like "we never said it is the actual painting!!! we always said it is just a copy!!!" Let us wait and see......
note: the author of this website does not believe it is right to make pictures of God or gods, and therefore the icon of Mary and Jesus has the painting of Jesus (God in the flesh) erased from it. You can see it on the link below, along with the text quoted further down on this page
link:
note: I believe a picture of God is forbidden and is always an idol, as the scriptures expressly forbid such. A picture of a saint is not necessarily an idol, as we are all called to be saints (Romans chapter 1), however pictures of saints that are used in an idolatrous way become idols. So this photo to me is not an idol, or just about all Evangelicals, but to just about all Eastern Orthodox it becomes an idol the way they use them.
REFUTATIONS:
1) Jesus has a book in his hand, when at the time of Jesus very few books even existed, they used scrolls almost exclusively.
2) Mary has the sign of the cross on her head, 30 years before Jesus was crucified. Yet another anachronism. It is true Luke is supposed to have painted the icon in 60 AD, but Mary is with Jesus as a baby in the icon.
3) The hand sign of two fingers held together, shown by both Mary and Jesus, looks like another probable anachronism, this time an artistic symbolism anachronism, I will have to research when the hand sign was first used in icon paintings historically.
4) St Luke is said to have painted her from memory, so the picture is very like her. How is it like her? when her nose and face are stretched and extended in the usual manner of later icon images? Are they saying that it was St Luke who created the almost trippy, alien, weird facial distortion painting style used by nearly all iconographers? And thus to get an image of what Mary really looked like we must get an art expert to visually back translate the icon to see what she would look like in the real world?
EASTERN ORTHODOX TRADITION:
quote:
St. Luke painted this Icon of Mary (about the year 60 AD) while she was staying with St. John the Apostle. According to tradition, when St. Luke “wrote” the Icon, he accurately rendered the Blessed Virgin’s authentic facial features.
The Icon was written directly onto a three foot by five foot cedar plank, believed to be part of a table that Jesus had originally hand crafted during his time in Nazareth. When Mary went to stay with St. John, in Ephesus (a town located in southwestern Turkey) the table evidently made the trip, as well.
Lost for over 200 years, the Icon was discovered by St. Helena (mother of Emperor Constantine) in Jerusalem, buried near the True Cross, on or about the year 326 AD.
The title of the Icon is Salus Populi Romani (“Protectoress of the Roman People”). It is the only major Icon attributed to Saint Luke (who is also the writer of the Gospel bearing his name, “the Acts of the Apostles” and most of St. Paul’s epistles.)
St. Luke is also believed to have been a physician (medical doctor).
Tradition and history informs us that St. Luke’s Icon has resided in St. Mary Major Basilica, Rome, for about 1,700 years.
Links:
https://russianicons.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/another-icon-myth-icons-painted-by-st-luke/
http://www.serfes.org/orthodox/icon.htm