The Shroud of Turin, the supposed burial wrapping of Jesus. Fact or fiction? For a number of years, the claims made about the shroud have troubled me. I am not a mystical person and am not drawn to nor interested in either Catholic or Evangelical mysticism or claims for the miraculous. Neither has much to offer the average believer in his daily walk.
Back to the shroud. As I considered the claims about the shroud, and studied photographs of it, my doubts grew. Over time, my questions about this relic coalesced into two groups: the biblical descriptions of Jesus’ burial and the image on the shroud itself.
First, an investigation of the biblical accounts of the burial of Jesus must be undertaken. We must consider the descriptions of Jesus’ burial garments, the manner of Jesus’ burial and the visit to the tomb by Peter and the other disciple.
What do we learn from the statements about the material in which Jesus was buried? Two words are used by the writers of the Gospel accounts to describe Jesus burial garments. In describing the burial clothes, Matthew, Mark and Luke used the Greek word sindôn, meaning “linen cloth” (used for clothing or for burial; cf. Mk. 14.51-52). John used the word othonion, meaning “linen cloth or wrapping.”
Now, one significant modification in this pattern is found in Luke’s account of Peter’s post-resurrection visit to the tomb. Luke said Peter, upon arriving at the tomb, stooped, looked into the tomb and saw the linen wrappings only. Interestingly, the word Luke used here for linen wrappings is the word othonion, not sindôn, which he had used in describing the linen material with which Joseph had wrapped the body of Jesus prior to the burial. Obviously, Luke understood othonion and sindôn to be synonyms. Thus, John’s us of othonion appears to be neither odd nor in conflict with the Synoptics.
As to how the linen material (othonion or sindôn) was used to prepare Jesus’ body for burial, in each of the Gospels, the Lord’s body is said to have been wrapped or bound in linen cloth. Three Greek words, translated bind or wrap, are used by the Gospel writers. Mark used the word eneileô meaning “to wrap in.” Matthew and Luke used the word entulissô, meaning “wrap in, fold or roll up.” John’s choice was deô, meaning “to bind or tie” (the word also can mean imprison). The linen material was not draped over Jesus’ body; his body was wrapped in this material. As we will see later in this article, the material was wrapped around his body in the same manner as a robe or cloak would be wrapped. In other words, Jesus was dressed for burial.
Equally significant are the descriptions of the disciples visit to the tomb and the statements about how the burial garments were found. The othonion, according to John, was “lying there.” The face-cloth was lying apart from the othonion, being folded up (entulissô). The face-cloth, translation of the word soudarion, was also one of the burial garments Peter saw. Lazarus was wearing a soudarion when Jesus called him from the tomb. The account of Jesus’ and Lazarus’s burial and resurrections show a face-cloth was a normal item used in Jewish burials, remaining on the body after burial.
The Shroud of Turin has no evidence of a face-cloth. The explanation given is the soudarion was removed before burial, so, it was found folded and lying to one side. One source stated the fact the face-cloth was lying to one side “point[s] to a short temporal use of the cloth and eliminate[s] the possibility of its contact with the body after burial. Jewish tradition demands that if the face of a dead person was in any way disfigured, it should be covered with a cloth to avoid people seeing this unpleasant sight. This would certainly have been the case with Jesus, whose face was covered in blood (my italics) from the injuries produced by the crown of thorns and swollen from falling and being struck. It seems that the sudarium was first used before the dead body was taken down from the cross and discarded when it was buried.”
If such is the case, why was the soudarion in the tomb at all? Why was it not discarded, being covered with blood, and thus unclean? Lazarus had his soudarion on when he emerged from his tomb, and he had been buried for approximately the same number of days as Jesus would be in the tomb. Why had Lazarus’s face-cloth not been taken off at burial? Jesus’ face-cloth’s being found in the tomb along with the linen burial garments, the description of Lazarus emerging from his tomb with his face covered by a soudarion and the absence of any trace of a face-cloth on the shroud raise serious questions about the shroud as Jesus’ burial garment and even the historicity of the shroud.
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