"The Shroud" Book Review and Verdict: Yep, It's Real

It was the late 1970s. There was a newspaper on the kitchen table. I gave its Shroud article a quick glance. I thought, even in that brief newspaper treatment, that I'd immediately discover the fact that proved the Shroud of Turin to be a moldy, embarrassing relic of a bygone era, the Catholic version of Bigfoot.

The newspaper article let me down. It introduced facts that boggled my mind. The Shroud of Turin can be described as a photographic negative. How did someone in the Middle Ages create a photograph? More importantly, why?

Teams of scientists from disciplines I'd never heard of were subjecting the Shroud to tests I had also never heard of, and they were not triumphant in denouncing an obvious fake; rather, they were in awe.

After much reading, writing, asking questions, and a lengthy conversation with STURP photographer and online archivist Barrie Schwortz, I am now 97% certain that the Shroud is authentic. We may all be missing something, but given the amount of research that's been done on the Shroud, I think there's only a three percent chance that it is a fake.

Ian Wilson's book "The Shroud: Fresh Light on the 2000 Year Old Mystery" is one of the sources of data that have convinced me. If you are at all interested in the Shroud of Turin, you must have this book. It's a one-volume encyclopedia.

"The Shroud" is a fascinating book by any measure. The Shroud of Turin has been rigorously tested by scholars in a wide array of disciplines; Wilson's book reflects that scholarship, traveling throughout time, space, and multiple ultra-modern laboratories, darkrooms, museums, archives, remote monasteries, obscure archives, hushed but impassioned clerical offices, and politically yeasty university campuses.

Readers learn about radiocarbon dating, identification of marble from Jerusalem, the Crusades, the Knights Templar, and ancient v. medieval textile fashions and manufacture. Readers visit a land that time has forgotten: the ancient, Christian Middle East. Indeed, Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey were once devoutly Christian. Caliph Muawiya, an immensely important figure in early Islam, actually had his hands on the Shroud of Turin, and is responsible for damage to it. The book touches on Islamic - Christian conflict occurring in the present day. One of Wilson's pieces of evidence was an ancient mural in a Macedonian monastery. The mural was destroyed by Albanian Muslims in a series of vicious desecrations extending from 2001-2002.

Wilson has an eye for the gem-like anecdote; you read of a wedding that took place as the bride's brother died in the next room; he received a fatal jousting injury while entertaining the crowds before the ceremony. Another aristocrat died of drinking cold wine after a hot hunt. Reading this book was an addictive pleasure and an intellectual adventure.

A measure of the rigor that Wilson and other Shroud proponents exercise is Wilson's treatment of new claims by Barbara Frale. As Wilson's book was going to press, Frale claimed that she alone had access to a document that could strengthen the link between the Shroud and the Knights Templar. Wilson included her claims in his book, with a proviso that he had not seen her evidence. After he did so, he assessed that evidence as unconvincing, and he said as much in a carefully worded publication on Barrie Schwortz's site.

This scholarly scrupulosity is, alas, not reflected on the side of Shroud detractors, as Wilson makes clear. The denunciation of the Shroud as fake after the 1988 radiocarbon dating was decidedly not scholarly. No other artifact would have been treated in a similar manner. Case in point: radiocarbon dating mistook the date on the linen wrappings of a mummified ibis by 550 years. No one jumped up and claimed that the date on the ibis was wrong; rather, they understood that radiocarbon dating made a mistake. The Shroud was not treated in a similar manner because militant atheists with an agenda masquerading as neutral scientists so desperately wanted to discredit the Shroud. They failed, and their failure is exposed in Wilson's chapter on the fiasco of the radiocarbon dating.

Wilson works through a massive amount of data. This is the kind of book that makes you grateful for the existence of the internet. You will want to read this book with Barrie Schwortz's Shroud website your constant companion. There you can find the full texts of the peer-reviewed articles Wilson cites.

The evidence Wilson works through includes the following: Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, a textile expert, attests that the Shroud is consistent with the size, quality, and stitching technique of the ancient world, not of the Middle Ages. Swiss criminologist Max Frei found Middle Eastern pollen on the Shroud. Physicians and other observers familiar with anatomy, going back centuries, attest to the Shroud's accurate depiction of Roman flagellation and crucifixion. Sampling of the foot area of the shroud image showed the presence of travertine aragonite, a form of marble typical of Jerusalem. There is more.

Wilson then walks the reader through a detailed, proposed history of the Shroud lasting two thousand years. Wilson makes a very strong case that what we today call the Turin Shroud was once known to history as the Image of Edessa. He argues that the notorious and shameful sack of Constantinople in 1204 by wayward Crusaders was the event that transferred the Image of Edessa, in Turkey, to Western Europe.

The Knights Templar, Wilson reports, were known throughout Europe for their banking and their fortresses. They were very good at storing valuables and secrets. The Knights Templar became too powerful and they were interrogated, tortured, and purged. The last Templars were burned at the stake. The victims included Geoffrey de Charny. The first man in recorded history to display what we now call the Shroud of Turin was another man named Geoffrey de Charny. There may be some connection, Wilson argues.

Thomas de Wesselow is a non-believer. His book "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection" pushed me very close to believing in the authenticity of the Shroud. De Wesselow's treatment of the blood stains on the Shroud is masterful. Wilson's book sealed the deal, for me. Read it. I really cannot imagine any intelligent person not being fascinated by this book, and awed by its implications.

Public Shaming and Saggy Pants

True story.

I was on a bus traveling from the suburban supermarket back to Paterson, the urban ghetto.

I was not really alert, just drifting off into no-mind as I do on buses.

I just turned my head and dead smack dab in front of my nose was the underwear-clad buttocks of a young African American male.

Again, I was not really alert, so I didn't hide my reaction. My jaw dropped and I stared, in a politically incorrect way, as if to say, "Omigod look at that kid's underwear! His ass is sticking right out of his pants!"

Again, because I wasn't really alert, I didn't stop myself from rolling my eyes dramatically and kind of going "Huh."

And, guess what. Because I wasn't alert enough to hide my reaction, the kid actually pulled his pants up!

I was amazed.

Maybe public shaming is not such a bad idea.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's Genius, and His Religious Beliefs

I'm a huge fan of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and listen to him regularly. He was, of course, a Muslim. I understand isolated words of his songs because I spoke Nepali, which is related to Urdu, and it's easy to make out bits of Arabic prayer ("there is no God but Allah" in Arabic, for example), but for the most part I pay no attention to the lyrics. 

In any case I think NFAK's genius transcends his faith. His gift is not about Islam, to me. It's about something much bigger. 

I was just listening to a youtube video and saw that it had subtitles. One of the subtitles moved and surprised me. "Why do Hindus and Muslims fight?" The audience made approving noises. 

I re-watched the video and paid more attention to the subtitles. NFAK is expressing ideas straight out of the psalms: God is omnipresent; all creation is witness to God; creation yearns for God: Psalm 19, Psalm 139, Psalm 42.  

I googled "Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan religious beliefs" and found a page that quotes the lyrics of one of his songs. I find these lyrics immensely moving. They speak of one finding God in a temple, another in a mosque:

"One lover was in the temple and another in the mosque

but to me, immersed in the joy of love, both seemed same

Chanting on rosary, the name of Shyam [Lord Krishna], I become him.

I am worthless except that

I surrender to the name of my beloved, all the time." (source)

Wishing We Learned About Atrocity Besides The Holocaust and The Atlantic Slave Trade

I've spent only about half an hour, this Saturday morning, listening to NPR talk radio, in three disconnected bursts of about ten minutes each.

In that half hour of disconnected and distracted NPR talk radio listening, I've heard three separate news features, each several minutes long – relatively long in talk radio terms – devoted exclusively to the German Nazi Holocaust of European Jews.

By "exclusively" I mean no mention was made of non-German Nazis or other evil states from that era like Stalin's Russia or Tojo's Japan. No mention was made of the Nazis' other victims: no Poles, no handicapped people, no Gypsies, no priests or nuns, no homosexuals, no Jehovah's Witnesses, no western POWs, no Slavs, no Russian POWs, no communists.

A new movie opens this weekend, "The Book Thief." The film is based on the phenomenally bestselling adolescent novel of the same title. It's about a German family that hides a Jewish man during WW II. He befriends the family's adopted daughter, a little German girl. Almost everybody dies in the end. Stephen Holden, The New York Times critic, called "The Book Thief" "A shameless piece of Oscar-seeking Holocaust kitsch."

NPR also devotes a huge amount of airtime to white supremacy and black victimization. And of course "Twelve Years a Slave" will compete with "The Book Thief" at this year's Academy Awards.

This is hard to say. It's the kind of statement that might enrage people and will be easily distorted and misunderstood.

I want people to know about and understand the Holocaust. My father was a sergeant, one of millions of American combat soldiers who risked their lives to defeat the Axis. I honor him and the millions of others. The boys at Normandy Beach inspire me no end.

I have a huge amount of respect for the Civil Rights Movement.

At the same time, I really wish Western culture did not continue to treat German Nazis, or white supremacists, as if they were the only bad guys who ever existed, and the Holocaust, and the Atlantic Slave Trade and Jim Crow as if they were the only atrocities that ever happened.

We live in a finite world, and time is finite. NPR has only so many broadcast hours per day. Hollywood will produce only so many Oscar-bait feature films per year. High school students will study only so many events.

The Holocaust. The Atlantic Slave Trade – "The Book Thief." "Twelve Years a Slave."

I wish other atrocities received attention as well, and I wish this for a reason.

I read once that probably no one will ever read all the documents devoted to the Cambodian genocide. No one cares enough to do so. Many of the perpetrators of that genocide died in their sleep, or are alive, free, and comfortable today.

We need to understand that Communists commit atrocity as well as fascists and white Southerners. We need to understand that non-Western people commit atrocities as well as white European males in high shiny boots or with Southern accents.

Will Durant, one of the most famous historians who ever lived, said that "The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within."

K.S. Lal alleges that the loss of Hindus in the Muslim conquest of India ran to 80 million lives. Others say that this number is inflated. Okay, what's the real number?

Why have so few even heard of this atrocity? Why do so few know of the Arab Slave trade, which dwarfed the Atlantic Slave Trade, and which still exists?

We need to understand what happened in India in order to understand what some have called the most likely site of the breakout of nuclear war: the border between Muslim Pakistan and largely Hindu India. We don't. We don't understand that part of the world to our misfortune. Is anyone happy with US - Pakistan relations?

The larger history of Jihad would equip Americans to understand the world they live in now. I am Polish-American. I know of 1683. I know what the date September 11 means. I've never met a non-Polish American who knows what that date means. Their country was attacked on September 11, a date that goes back to 1683, and Americans are clueless.

We say that the Holocaust teaches us "Never again," but, if we learned that lesson, how exactly did we apply it during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, called the world's fastest? And, speaking of Africa, why do we not cover the war in the Congo, the "No Living Thing" campaign in Sierra Leone, Darfur, slavery in Mauritania?

If atrocities concern us, why do we not cover the one hundred million Untouchables in India, Amartya Sen's claim that there are 100 million missing women and girls in Muslim, Hindu, and Confucian Asia, the mistreatment of Native Americans in Central America?

All right, I'm Polish American. Why do so few Americans know anything about what happened to non-Jewish Poles during WW II?

And they should know. The Holocaust is exploited by unscrupulous educators to convince young people that Christianity = Nazism. I know "educated" adults who are convinced that this is true; they "learned" it in school.

Nazism announced itself as the cancellation and death knell of Christianity. If people knew the genocidal force that Nazism exerted against Catholic Poland, if people knew of the Catholic priests rounded up, tortured, and slaughtered, selling Nazism as anti-Christian propaganda would become impossible.

People should know. They don't.

If I ruled the world … If I had a magic wand … education and media would be focused on teaching the next generation about atrocity per se, about what Rwanda and Germany and Cambodia and Katyn and Otranto have in common. Of course students would learn about the German Nazi Holocaust of Europe's Jews and the Atlantic Slave Trade, but they would learn of other events, other victims, other perpetrators, and they would be better equipped to face the modern world.

I greatly admire Jews and African Americans for telling their story. I reject any criticism of Jews or African Americans for telling their story. I say to member of my own ethnic group, Americans of Polish descent, don't criticize Jews and Blacks. Emulate them. If you want people to know your story, tell it to them.

What students learn in school is intensely politicized. Politics is not the best friend of truth.

Quiz: Which of the following killed the most people? If you don't know, you just proved my point. 

"The Shroud: Fresh Light on the 2000-Year-Old Mystery" by Ian Wilson; An In Media Res Report. Full Review Later

I'm reading Ian Wilson's 476-page, 2010 book "The Shroud: Fresh Light on the 2000-Year-Old Mystery." I'm about three quarters of the way through the book. Even though I haven't finished it yet, I want to talk about it before I post a review.

This is one of the most fascinating books I've ever read. I am getting up early, at four, say, and going to bed late, in order to get in reading time that I can't scrimp from my daily schedule. When I wake up, I reread the pages my foggy brain read before I fell asleep. I use a highlighter pen to be sure to pick up all the arcane information.

I remember the very first moment I was introduced to the Shroud of Turin, decades ago. It was the late 1970s. There was a newspaper on the kitchen table of the house I grew up in. I gave its Shroud article a quick glance. I thought, even in that brief newspaper treatment, that I'd immediately discover the fact that proved the Shroud of Turin to be an embarrassment, a moldy relic of a bygone era, the Catholic version of Bigfoot.

The newspaper article let me down. It introduced facts that boggled my mind. The Shroud of Turin can be described as a photographic negative. How did someone in the Middle Ages create a photograph? More importantly, why?

Teams of scientists from disciplines I'd never heard of were subjecting the Shroud to tests I had also never heard of, and they were not triumphant in denouncing an obvious fake; rather, they were in awe.

Wow.

I didn't think about the Shroud for a long time after that newspaper article. Contrary to atheist stereotypes, Catholics generally don't think much about it. It is, rather, scientists who do. They do because it confounds them, and they want to solve the puzzle.

When the carbon dating came out in 1988, I was living in Poland, participating in the riots that helped bring down the Soviet Empire, and the Shroud was the last thing on my mind.

It wasn't till a televised documentary in the late 1990's that a friend recorded and sent to me (thank you Don Freidkin) that I really got bitten by the Shroud bug. I read two Shroud books, one by Mark Antonacci (review here) and an earlier book by Ian Wilson (review here.)

I loved both of those books but they left me fifty percent convinced that the Shroud was what its adherents say it is, and fifty percent willing to be convinced that we were missing something terribly obvious and it really wasn't all that.

I watched documentaries on youtube. Barrie Schwortz, Shroud expert, Orthodox Jew, and STURP photographer, allowed me to grill him long distance in an interview that lasted over an hour, during which Barrie insisted, "After years of study, I am absolutely certain that the Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ."

Thomas de Wesselow's book "The Sign" pushed me ever closer to believing that the Shroud is genuine. Interesting, because de Wesselow is not a believer. (Review of his book here.)

The book that is pushing the needle to 99% certainty is the one I'm reading now, and can't wait to talk about, even though I'm not finished with it yet. Ian Wilson's "The Shroud: Fresh Light on the 2000-Year-Old-Mystery."

The book is fascinating. Addictive reading. I wish I could push the world away and just hole up until I finish it, reading chapters twice in a row, once for the general idea, then again to highlight and ponder. Then I'd want to go to Goggle and read up more on all the historical, scientific, and art scholarship Wilson references.

The book is richly illustrated with both black and white diagrams and color plates. The images run from science to art history. There are building plans and tenth century frescoes and Christian mosaics rescued from Muslim marauders by being buried under centuries of pigeon dung (really).

There are obscure manuscripts holed up in isolated Syrian monasteries.

This research references a world most of us never think of at all – the Ancient CHRISTIAN Middle East. Yes, that's right. Before the Muslim Conquest, the Middle East was a devoutly Christian place.

Byzantium. Christian Jerusalem. Christian Turkey and Iraq.

Muslims typically destroyed "infidel" images venerated by Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. That process is still ongoing. The Bamiyan Buddhas are one famous example, but one of the artworks Wilson references is in Europe and was destroyed in recent years by Muslim Albanians. Muslims Turks are also continuing the destruction of Christian artifacts.

The Shroud was not destroyed. Caliph Muawiyah himself, one of the most important figures in early Islam, is recorded as having tested a Christian image by fire, and found it worthy. Wilson makes the case that that very image is what we know as the Shroud of Turin.

The book references hard science as well. One can differentiate various types of marble through scientific tests of dust-size marble particles. As one Shroud website discusses this evidence:

"Experts at the Hercules Aerospace laboratory in Salt Lake, Utah, carried out a study of a sample of dirt taken from the foot region of the Shroud. They identified crystals of travertine argonite, a relatively rare form of calcite found near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. Would a mediaeval forger have taken the trouble to impregnate the linen with marble dust from the ground near Golgotha? Hardly" (source).

Part of me still stares at the Shroud, pages through the evidence, and says, "This cannot be. It's too perfect. That a photographic image of Jesus would gain worldwide recognition during the era of photography. That that image survived the Sack of Constantinople, the Muslim Conquest, three separate fires, dousing with water … "

Another part of me, and it's moving closer to 99% of me, says, "The evidence is in. Occam's Razor demands that this be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ."

And that just blows one's mind, does it not?

What It Meant To Me Today To Be A Christian

A little story about what it meant to me today to be a Christian.

For the most part my dead left ear is not obvious when I move, but when I change direction in a crowded place it becomes obvious. I shake and it's hard for me to keep my balance.

I got on a bus and the bus driver, rather than letting me take my seat before driving off – which most do – I carry a cane, they see that, they allow the time – the bus driver peeled out.

I was left unstable and fighting for balance. I struggled, obviously.

There IS a seat right near the door that is reserved for handicapped patrons. Anyone sitting there is supposed to surrender it if a handicapped person gets on.

An African American girl, about twenty, with elaborate, expensive braided hair, was yakking away on her cell phone. She could have easily surrendered the handicapped seat; there is a sign behind the seat advising passengers to do just that.

The girl could have easily moved. There were plenty of seats.

I stood for a long time, white knuckles gripping the handrail, struggling not to fall. I was trembling. My cane was hanging useless on the moving bus.

Finally the bus stopped for a red light and I was able to move again, to take a seat further back.

Here's the politically incorrect part: my observation is that African Americans and Hispanic Americans, pretty much the sole passengers on Paterson buses, do not regularly surrender their seats to the elderly or handicapped on Paterson buses.

This is in stark contrast to the Poland I lived in in 1988-89, where there was a race as soon as an even borderline older person got on the tram. Young men would pop up to offer the woman or handicapped person their seat. It was a point of honor and pride.

It shocks me. Big, strong guys, muscular, in sports attire, can be in the seats near the door, and a little old black lady, frail as a bird, dangling a cane can get on, and no one moves. They expect her to stand. Often it's me or some other demographically atypical passenger who seats her.

I don't understand this. I don't like it.

Anyway.

I sat behind the girl with the expensive hair and cell phone and stared daggers at the back of her head. I thought obscene words that I will spare you. I really hated her.

I did that for several seconds.

Then I thought, and I thought this, did not feel it, "You are a Christian and this is not allowed to you."

And so I stopped. Immediately.

Stopping didn't feel natural. My hatred, anger, and condemnation felt totally natural. I had a whole bucket-load of obscenities all primed for this girl and ready to roll down the chute.

I stopped.

Okay, what am I supposed to do?

Think of Jesus. On the cross. "Father, forgive them." If he can say that in that circumstance, you can say it in response to this girl's minor offense.

I said it, in my head. I forgive.

That's not enough, the little voice said. And all those verses about praying for your enemy rolled down the chute, instead of the swear words.

Pray for your enemies.

I did. I prayed for her.

I gotta tell ya – NONE of this changed how I felt. I felt condemnation. I was SURE that this girl was cruel and stupid.

And so I had a talk with myself. "You THINK you know what is going on in her head. You are so certain that she spitefully refused to move. You are wrong. You have NO IDEA what is going on in her head. You know nothing of her life. Stop projecting what you think she is into her. Your savior told you not to judge. This is what he meant. You do not know her. Her mind is not your business. Just forgive her, pray for her, and let go your arrogant thoughts of who she is and why she did what she did."

And I did. Because Jesus modeled this.

***

A few weeks back, I was walking across a parking lot. I turned my head, and saw a man and his wife SCREAMING at me with real hatred and condemnation.

"You knew! You knew! You knew I was trying to park here, you idiot! How could you be so stupid! Bitch!"

Huh? I stood, shocked, scared, staring at this screaming man and wife, my mouth agape.

I am deaf on my left side. This guy came up on my left and expected me to jump out of his way. I didn't and he barely missed running me over.

He judged me. He was certain that I am a really terrible person. He was certain that I had heard his car, and just waltzed into "his" space in order to torment him.

Not so. I am deaf, and that was my birthday, which I spent alone, and I was lost in unhappy thoughts.

Given that that man was so wrong in his judgment of me, how could I give in to my temptation to judge this girl?

***

That's it. I did not save the world today. I did not wash any lepers. Nothing in my observable behavior changed. But my inner thoughts changed, exactly because I am a Christian.

Millions, maybe billions, of people are making similar choices every day. Millions of Christians are saying, "Okay, I could kill this person, but I won't, because God doesn't want me to."

And I know other persons of faith, of other belief systems, are making similar choices. I *know* Muslims who make similar choices. Who decide to behave honorable in order to honor their own belief system.
***
I posted this because my Facebook friend Sandy posted anti-Christian material. This happens a lot. Many of my friends post anti-Christian material on Facebook. I just wanted to say, this is what it meant to me today to be a Christian.

SATAN!!!! And Protestants. And Catholics. And of course some Jews. Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, Admittedly, as an Afterthought.

I'm Catholic. Through Facebook, I've been exposed to some of the inner thought processes of my fellow Christians, Protestants.

There is an aspect of Protestant thought that does not work for me. More times than I am comfortable with, my Protestant friends attribute events and actions to Satan. These haven't been Lutherans or Episcopalians, but rather Protestants based in the Southern US.

We Catholics don't really do this. If someone behaves badly, we say, "Oh, he's weak / mean / deluded / drunk / vengeful." What have you.

For Catholics, if our cars won't start, we think first of a mechanic, rather than Beelzebub under the hood. If the weather turns, we get the rain gear out of the closet, rather than looking for clouds shaped like horns and tail. If someone gets cancer, we phone an oncologist.

The frequent allusions to Satan trouble me. I don't find them helpful or illuminating. They strike me as a bump on the road to solutions, rather than a guidepost on the road to solutions.

I'm mentioning this now because I saw a post attributing the behavior of adults who had been abused as children to Satan. Associating adults who had been abused as children with Satan is a choice I'd avoid. I wouldn't even use the words in the same sentence.

The author of the post was saying that "Many victims of child abuse never leave their victim mode behind. They continue playing the victim, finding comfort in that role because it's all that is familiar. Satan loves to keep people in victim mode."

I found that statement to be without support and potentially harmful. It seemed to me that making an unsupported, negative generalization about an entire group of innocent victims could be rendered bulletproof to critique by attributing the alleged "victim mode" to Satan.

Imagine how this works in a debate. The first debater says, "You are merely saying what you are saying because Satan is making you say it. I am here to save your soul."

And the opponent says, "No, no, YOU are saying what you are saying because Satan is making YOU say it and I am here to save YOUR soul."

And the first debater replies, "No, no, that you disagree is just greater proof that Satan is steering you around. Let me save your soul. Agree with me."

The arrogance of those who invoke Satan to make their points is made clear.

But it's more than a bit spooky, and a bit arrogant, to invoke Satan. It goes against consensus reality. Consensus reality is that reality we can all agree on because we can all see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, smell it, test it, measure it, and name it.

You can't test for Satan. You can't prove Satan. By invoking Satan, you reserve to yourself the right to name a reality that no one else can see. Rather kingly, if not Godlike. Or merely nuts.

I do invoke Satan, but  r a r e l y  and only after much thought. After ten years of study, I concluded that Satan had something to do with the horrors of Hitler / Stalin / Tojo / Auschwitz / Nanking / Kolyma, but that was really only after ten years of study, and I don't bring it up much.

I'm open to being shown to be wrong on this one. Until then, I'm going to continue being glad that I was raised Catholic.

There is a historical reason for this caution in invoking Satan. We are all mindful of what occurred between c. 1400-1700. People decided that some were "witches" -- in league with Satan -- and once you decide that, all normal rules of evidence, rational debate, and decent treatment are called off. After all, your opponent is Satan. If your opponent is Satan, you can treat the human being in question in a horrible way, by burning that person at the stake. We Christians avoid that extreme by insisting on evidence based decisions about our fellow humans.

After I posted this on Facebook, I realized that though I've had Jewish friends all my life, including secular Jews and observant Orthodox Jews, I've never heard a Jewish friend attribute events or actions to Satan. The same is true for Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu friends, but I have spent less time with them, so I feel less confident making the generalization.

Jesus Arm Wrestling Satan

Etienne Dinet Le Messager de Satan

FW Murnau. Faust