Mentions of Turin Shroud or Image of Edessa before 400 AD?

[rakovsky]

1. The shroud at the tomb:
Matthew 27:59 says about a shroud in which Jesus' body was wrapped: And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth

The Biblical Archaelology website says about early concern for Jesus' shroud:

The second century apocryphal Gospel According to the Hebrews, considerably respected by early Christian writers, had a passage reporting Jesus giving his shroud to “the servant of the priest,” or as some scholars amend the text, “to Peter” (Sox 1978: 45 – 6). ... As a young girl being educated in 4th century Jerusalem, Saint Nino was told by her learned teacher Niaphori of a tradition of it being given to Peter (Humber 1977: 75).

There is no mention of an image on that shroud, only the possibility that Peter or the Christians were holding onto it as a relic.

2. The shroud or image before it showed up in Edessa

According to Irenaeus, around the year 180 , the Carpocratians owned icons of Christ that were believed to be authentic ( Adv Haer I 25.6). Hyppolitus from Rome tells that the model for gnostic representations of Christ corresponded to an image transmitted by Ponzio Pilato ( Ref VI 32).
https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/duemaggioReisnerENG.pdf

The reference to the image being transmitted by Pontius Pilate brings to mind a bit the story of the Servant getting the shroud. At least, that could explain how it got to Pilate. The Carpocratians were mostly based in the islands off to the west of what is now Turkey.

Hippolytus of Rome (170 – 235 AD) was the most important 3rd-century theologian in the Christian Church in Rome, where he was probably born.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippolytus_of_Rome

Here is what Hippolytus says about them in his book "Refutation of all Heresies":

And they make counterfeit images of Christ, alleging that these were in existence at the time (during which our Lord was on earth, and that they were fashioned) by Pilate.

Irenaeus writes in "Against Heresies":

They also possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; while they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles.

This could have been associated with an early 3rd c. pro-Christian emperor:

the new Emperor Alexander Severus (11 March 222–235). Not only Severus' court filled with Christians but he is reported to have learned the golden rule, "Do unto others as thou wouldst have them do unto thee" and he adopted it as his motto, inculcating it upon his subjects whenever they were about to inflict a wrong on any one (ibid. Ælius Lampridius, li.). He caused this maxim to be inscribed also upon his palace and upon public buildings (ibid.). In his private chapel (lararium), where he was accustomed to pray every morning, he had, besides the images of Apollonius, Orpheus, and Jesus, also an effigy of Abraham (ibid. chap. xxix.).

...
When you read these... Church stories you can't mistake Berenice for anyone other than Berenice the wife and sister of Marcus Agrippa. She's portrayed as walking around with the future Emperor Titus holding a picture of Christ.
...
Marcia happens to be the influential Carpocratian in Rome who happened to be connected to a portrait of Jesus that came from the time of Berenice.

http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2010/ ... -were.html

When we recognize that there were pro-Christian emperors in Rome and Edessa before Nicea, it opens up more the possibility that some traditions, shrines' locations or relics could have been legitimately passed down through those generations among the Christians, and not that the Christians were all wiped out along with any legitimate traditions that haven't survived in the extant 1st c. writings.

Eastern Christian churches have had a very old practice of carrying and displaying cloths on Good Friday that are liturgically treated as Jesus' burial shroud and they have an image of Jesus' corpse on them. The Liturgy of St. James is considered 4th c. AD and to have originated in Jerusalem. But I don't know know hold old this Good Friday practice has gone on for.

I have no idea where K. Markwardt gets the underlined information cited in the Turin Shroud FAQ:

There was, throughout the city’s history, a strong tradition that the apostle Thomas and a disciple variously named Addai, Thaddeus Jude (of the biblical 72 or 70) went to Edessa after the death of Jesus. This is legend and it is more likely that, as historian Jack Markwardt writes:

. . . Avircius Marcellus, the Bishop of Hieropolis, was summoned to Rome, where he was introduced to Abgar’s wife, Queen Shalmath, that he then travelled to Antioch, where he was joined by Palut and provided with the Shroud, identifiable as the historically-documented sacred Christ-icon which had been taken from Palestine to Syria, and that he then proceeded to Edessa, where he displayed the imaged relic to the king and baptized him into the Christian faith, thereby resulting in the Shroud’s commemoration, in legend, as the Portrait of Edessa.

http://greatshroudofturinfaq.com/Defini ... dessa.html

Markwardt goes on the suggest us that the shroud was then brought back to Antioch where it remained until sometime in the 6th century. It was, Markwardt believes, concealed above the city’s Gate of the Cherubim in A.D. 362 where it remained until about 540.

3. The shroud as it was in Edessa.

Christian tradition says an apostle Addai spread Christianity to Edessa. For reference, here is Abgar V's 1st c. empire in Edessa, Syria/northern Iraq:


By 190 AD there was a Christian community in Edessa, and about that time the king, Abgar IX, accepted Christianity.

I believe that the Truin shroud can be traced to Edessa. The Turin shroud came from France where French crusaders had probably brought it from Constantinople. And the Byzantines reported bringing Edessa's image from Edessa to Constantinople.

USA Today mentions tests of the Turin shroud dating it to 300 BC - 400 AD.

The new test, by scientists at the University of Padua in northern Italy, used the same fibers from the 1988 tests but disputes the findings. The new examination dates the shroud to between 300 BC and 400 AD, which would put it in the era of Christ.

It determined that the earlier results [dating it to the 14th c.] may have been skewed by contamination from fibers used to repair the cloth when it was damaged by fire in the Middle Ages,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/worl ... y/2038295/

Even if it is not actually Jesus' shroud, the Turin shroud could still be the Edessa shroud. Some writers say that the Turin shroud has had its image painted onto the shroud, whereas other propose other explanations.

The Doctrine/teaching of Addai talks about the Image of Edessa. This document is from c. 400 AD and is Syriac. Wikipedia says about it:

The report of an image, which accrued to the legendarium of Abgar, first appears in the Syriac work, the Doctrine of Addai: according to it, the messenger, here called Ananias, was also a painter, and he painted the portrait, which was brought back to Edessa and conserved in the royal palace.

... Doctrine of Addai [Thaddeus], c. 400, which introduces a court painter among a delegation sent by Abgar to Jesus, who paints a portrait of Jesus to take back to his master:

"When Hannan, the keeper of the archives, saw that Jesus spoke thus to him, by virtue of being the king's painter, he took and painted a likeness of Jesus with choice paints, and brought with him to Abgar the king, his master. And when Abgar the king saw the likeness, he received it with great joy, and placed it with great honor in one of his palatial houses." (Doctrine of Addai 13)
...
The later legend of the image recounts that because the successors of Abgar reverted to paganism, the bishop placed the miraculous image inside a wall, and setting a burning lamp before the image, he sealed them up behind a tile; that the image was later found again, after a vision, on the very night of the Persian invasion, and that not only had it miraculously reproduced itself on the tile, but the same lamp was still burning before it; further, that the bishop of Edessa used a fire into which oil flowing from the image was poured to destroy the Persians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_of_Edessa

Note: The image of Adessa is said to have been "painted", not a miracle image.

A skeptic writes about the Doctrine of Addai:

After Christ’s death he visits Abgar in Edessa and Wilson quotes from the Doctrine as follows:

‘And when Addai came up and went to Abgar, his nobles standing with him, and in going towards him, a wonderful vision was seen by Abgar in the face of Addai. At the moment that Abgar saw the vision, he fell down and worshipped Addai. Great astonishment seized all those who were standing before him, for they saw not the vision which was seen by Abgar.’

So Addai’s face is transformed but no one but Abgar can see it. Addai shows he is miraculous (he is after all a disciple of Christ), Abgar that he has some special status so that he alone can see the transfigured face. A fairly typical feature of such texts. So what has this to do with the Shroud of Turin? Well, according to Wilson, the transformed face of Addai IS the Shroud of Turin! Wilson lost me here because I cannot see the connection between Addai’s transformed face and a burial shroud with an image of a dead man on it. Wilson tries to improve his case by going on a further five hundred years, to the tenth century, and then finds a document that reports the legend as it had been embellished to show that a wonderful vision was sent out by an image that was ‘covering’ Addai. These are legends, not historical narratives and they cannot be taken as such. There is nothing to suggest that this is a burial shroud especially when the word ‘covering’ would equally apply to the living Christ on the Image of Edessa cloth. It is surely a later addition to the legend of Addai so as to include the Image itself which is not, of course, and never had been anything to do with a burial shroud.

http://llanoestacado.org/freeinquiry/sk ... /index.htm

This reminds me of the apocryphal story from maybe 200 AD, Acts of Thomas, about Didymus Thomas the apostle traveling to India with a "twin" Jesus. In both stories, people looked at the Addai or Thomas and saw Jesus. To conclude from this that Addai or Thomas were traveling with the shroud is a bit speculative though.

Do you happen to know anything else about stories of images of Jesus written before 400 AD?

[Ben C. Smith]

Do you happen to know anything else about stories of images of Jesus written before 400 AD?

From Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.25.6:

Others use signs upon themselves, branding their disciples in the posterior parts of the right earlobe. Whence also Marcellina, who came to Rome under Anicetus, and, since she was of this doctrine, she led multitudes astray. They call themselves gnostics, and they also have images, some of them painted, others moreover fabricated from different kinds of material, and they say that a form of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus was among men. And they display them with images of the philosophers of the world, to wit, with the image of Pythagoras, and [that of] Plato, and [that of] Aristotle, and [those of] the rest. And they also make different kinds of observations of these [images], similarly as do the gentiles.

Hippolytus, Refutation 7.20 (or 7.32 in Miller or in Wendland):

Certain of these [heretics]* cauterize their own disciples in the back parts of the lobe of the right ear. And they prepare images of Christ, saying that they were made at that time by Pilate.

* In context, possibly Carpocratians.

From Epiphanius, Panarion 27.6:

And there came to us now somehow a certain Marcellina, who had been deceived by them, and she despoiled many in the times of Anicetus the bishop of Rome, the one [standing] in the succession of Pius and those before him. .... And thereafter happened the beginning of the so-called gnostics. And they have images painted lifelike in color, but also which are [made] of gold and silver and the rest wood, which they say are reliefs of Jesus and that these were made by Pontius Pilate, that is, the reliefs of this very Jesus when he lived among the race of men. And they hold these things in secret, but also [those of] certain philosophers, of Pythagoras, and of Plato, and of Aristotle, and of the rest, with which philosophers they also place the others, the reliefs of Jesus, and after they set them up they worship them and enjoin the mysteries of the gentiles.

From Antonius Placentinus, a pilgrim to the holy land:

We prayed in the praetorium where the Lord was given a hearing, where the basilica of Saint Sophia is, before the ruins of the temple of Solomon, below the street which runs to the fountain of Siloam following the porch of Solomon. In the basilica itself is the seat where Pilate sat when he gave the Lord his hearing. There was also a quadrangular rock which was standing in the middle of the praetorium, on which the defendant would be raised who was being heard, so that he might be heard and seen by the whole populace; on this [rock] the Lord was raised up when he was heard by Pilate, where his vestiges still remain. His image, which depicts him as if alive and which is positioned in this same praetorium, traces out a beautiful foot, though a bit slender since [it has] a normal stature, a beautiful face, hair curled under, a well-formed hand, long fingers.... And the rock itself is overlaid with gold and silver.

Ben.

[andrewcriddle]

........................................................
This could have been associated with an early 3rd c. pro-Christian emperor:

the new Emperor Alexander Severus (11 March 222–235). Not only Severus' court filled with Christians but he is reported to have learned the golden rule, "Do unto others as thou wouldst have them do unto thee" and he adopted it as his motto, inculcating it upon his subjects whenever they were about to inflict a wrong on any one (ibid. Ælius Lampridius, li.). He caused this maxim to be inscribed also upon his palace and upon public buildings (ibid.). In his private chapel (lararium), where he was accustomed to pray every morning, he had, besides the images of Apollonius, Orpheus, and Jesus, also an effigy of Abraham (ibid. chap. xxix.).

...
When you read these... Church stories you can't mistake Berenice for anyone other than Berenice the wife and sister of Marcus Agrippa. She's portrayed as walking around with the future Emperor Titus holding a picture of Christ.
...
Marcia happens to be the influential Carpocratian in Rome who happened to be connected to a portrait of Jesus that came from the time of Berenice.

http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2010/ ... -were.html

See Alexander Severus

1 Before I tell of his wars and his campaigns and his victories, I will relate a few details of his private every-day life. 2 His manner of living was as follows: First of all, if it were permissible, that is to say, if he had not lain with his wife, in the early morning hours he would worship in the sanctuary of his Lares, in which he kept statues of the deified emperors — of whom, however, only the best had been selected — and also of certain holy souls, among them Apollonius, and, according to a contemporary writer, Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, and others of this same character and, besides, the portraits of his ancestors.

This is from the Augustan Histories and is probably sheer fantasy.

Andrew Criddle