The Turin Shroud: The Image of Edessa created in c. 300-400 AD?

I believe that the Turin Shroud's history goes back into the past beyond Da Vinci and beyond the Templars and Crusaders. What I think happened most likely was that the Crusaders took it from Constantinople. The story of an image of Jesus on cloth being held by Christians goes back at least to 5th c. Edessa. The Byzantines recorded having such an image they got from Edessa.

What I would like to see is what sources if any talked about this shroud before c. 300 AD when Christianity became a religion patronized by Rome. I would want to see whether this shroud was just a pious fraud by the Byzantine empire or are their traces of it going back before then.



Map of the Roman province of Edessa (Wiki free use)

1. Wikipedia says about "Doctrine of Addai":

Quote:

The Doctrine of Addai is a Syriac Christian text, perhaps written about 400, which recites the Legend of the Image of Edessa as well as the legendary works of Addai and his disciple Mari in Mesopotamia.

2. Wikipedia says about the Image of Edessa:

Quote:

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. The image itself is said to have resurfaced in 525, during a flood of the Daisan, a tributary stream of the Euphrates that passed by Edessa. This flood is mentioned in the writings of the court historian Procopius of Caesarea. In the course of the reconstruction work, a cloth bearing the facial features of a man was discovered hidden in the wall above one of the gates of Edessa. http://ift.tt/2gIU9fV

A couple notes:

• The image of Adessa is said to have been "painted", not a miracle image.
• The story about the image being hidden due to a reversion to paganism and then rediscovered sounds credible to the extent that Christians in the city could reasonably want to keep an image for themselves about this. The idea that the image was totally lost and then rediscovered would seem unlikely. People would probably have an idea that the image was there, just that it wasn't being venerated due to the paganism of the emperors.

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

Quote:

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). Other 2nd century apocryphal books like the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles, Gospel According to Peter, and Mysteries of the Acts of the Savior all show a concern for the sindon’s whereabouts (Savio 1982: 11). 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).

OK, it's curious that the shroud was given to the servant, but it doesn't mean there was an image on it.

Gospel of Peter says:
"And having taken the Lord, he washed and tied him with a linen cloth and brought him into his own sepulcher, called the Garden of Joseph." I don't see anything particularly curious or notable about that regarding the cloth.

4. John 20 says:

Quote:

6 Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, 7 And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. 8 Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.

Some have theorized that what they saw in the linen clothes is something that made them believe. However, that seems speculative.

5. Eusebius writes in his late 3rd c. History about Jesus' contacts with King Abgar and the letter, so Biblical Archaeology is saying that the kind *could" have had the shroud at that point, even though the shroud is never mentioned in that letter:

Most historians agree that Christianity was a growing force in Edessa late in the 2nd century under the famous ruler Abgar VIII (“The Great”), with a church sanctuary dated there in 201 (Segal 1970: 24). But when the Edessan Christians wrote their history in the 3rd century, they remembered that the Gospel originally came to them in the 1st century from a Jerusalem disciple named Addai and to a King Abgar V, a known historical figure contemporary with Christ. Eusebius included in his Ecclesiastical History a brief late 3rd century version, reporting a famous letter from Jesus still kept in the Edessan archives (Eusebius 1991: 43-47). But later in the 4th century (or possibly early in the 5th) a Syriac writer penned a much expanded text. Known as The Teaching of Addai (hereafter TA) one small passage has Abgar, who is corresponding with Jesus by way of a messenger Hanan, instructing him to make a picture of Jesus:

• When Hanan the archivist saw that Jesus had spoken thus to him, he took and painted the portrait of Jesus with choice pigments, since he was the king’s artist, and brought it with him to his lord King Abgar. When King Abgar saw the portrait he received it with great joy and placed it with great honor in one of the buildings of his palaces (Howard 1981: 9 - 10).

Most modern scholars usually reject The TA as reliable history for a variety of reasons, but sometimes admit “a substratum of fact” (Segal 1970: 179–181). Wilson recognizes numerous “anachronisms and interpolations” more characteristic of Abgar VIII’s time than Abgar V’s but also concludes that many “elements of the story have an authentic period ring” (Wilson 1998: 165). As for the picture, this is the only certain place in antiquity that mentions the Edessa Image, and by itself would lead no one to dream that it was actually the NT sindon or Turin Shroud. Writers like the Edessan Church Father Ephrem in the 4th century show no knowledge of the picture, leading some scholars to believe there never was such an object in ancient Edessa (Drijvers 1998: 17). Others believe it was there, just not very famous (Drews 1984: 75). Historian Daniel Scavone opines that the story is “made up after the fact, when the real history was forgotten, to explain the presence of the Christ-picture in Edessa” (Scavone 1991: 180). What the TA may also suggest is that there was a distant memory in 4th century Edessa of a Christ picture coming to their city in an early evangelization, and if a lengthy history (like The TA) were to be written, contemporary readers might expect it to be included. However, because of persecution, it had to be hidden away and perhaps even lost, with only confused memories surviving by the 4th century (Wilson 1979: 129 – 130).
http://ift.tt/2llyiQO

It seems very speculative to draw the connection between Jesus' relations with Abgar V in the 1st c., or the apostles' relations with him, and getting a shroud to him of Jesus.
The apostles did go to Syria. Here is a map of Abgar's empire in Edessa:
http://ift.tt/2kAcblj

6. A USA Today article says that new Carbon Dating in 2013 gives a date of 300-400 AD. That would agree with the time when the first record of an Edessan shroud was reported:

Quote:

. Subsequent testing of fabric from an un-repaired section dated it to between 300 BC and 400 AD (see, for example, http://ift.tt/2kzXpet).

http://ift.tt/2llyiQO

Quote:

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 may have been skewed by contamination from fibers used to repair the cloth when it was damaged by fire in the Middle Ages, http://ift.tt/2kzXpet

Since the researchers are setting a date of 300-400 AD, it means they are not skewing their results to deliberately turn it into a 1st c. object.

7. Edessa was a major Christian center in AD 190 or earlier:

there is no doubt that even before AD 190 Christianity had spread vigorously within Edessa and its surroundings and that shortly after the royal house joined the church.[5] According to a legend first reported by Eusebius in the 4th century, Syriac King Abgar V Ukāmā was converted by Addai,[6] who was one of the seventy-two disciples, sent to him by "Judas, who is also called Thomas".[7] Yet various sources confirm that the Abgar who embraced the Christian faith was Abgar IX.[8][9][10] Under him Christianity became the official religion of the kingdom.[11] As for Addai, he was neither one of the seventy-two disciples as the legend asserts, nor was sent by Apostle Thomas, as Eusebius says.[12] He was succeeded by Aggai, then by Palout (Palut) who was ordained about 200 by Serapion of Antioch. Thence came to us in the 2nd century the famous Peshitta, or Syriac translation of the Old Testament; also Tatian's Diatessaron, which was compiled about 172 and in common use until St. Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa (412–435), forbade its use. Among the illustrious disciples of the School of Edessa Bardesanes (154–222), a schoolfellow of Abgar IX, deserves special mention for his role in creating Christian religious poetry, and whose teaching was continued by his son Harmonius and his disciples.

A Christian council was held at Edessa as early as 197.[13] In 201 the city was devastated by a great flood, and the Christian church was destroyed.[14] In 232 the relics of the apostle Thomas were brought from Mylapore, India, on which occasion his Syriac Acts were written.

http://ift.tt/2kzXjna
The Christians then could have brought the Shroud to Edessa by 190, or alternately it could have been a pious fraud done in the context of the religion's official sanction by the king. Abgar IX was an Armenian ruler of Edessa, who ruled in AD 177 to 212 and made Christianity the official religion there 100+ years before Rome made Christianity legal. The Shroud could reasonably have been brought to Edessa or manufactured there at that time or in the period leading up to its first mention of being in Edessa in c. 400 AD.

8. This skeptical article says that the shroud doesn't match the legends of Jesus wiping the cloth with his face (the Veronica story):

Quote:

Image of Edessa there were two or three stories, that it had been painted by the court painter of king Abgar or, more usually, that Christ himself had wiped his face with a cloth and the image had been imprinted. ... no one knowing the legend that gave the image its authenticity, as a cloth wiped by Christ himself on his face while he was alive, would have stared at the face we see the Turin Shroud and have believed that this was an image of a living man. We can assume that the image, if extant, in the sixth century, would have been brighter than it is now. It might have been possible to fold the Turin Shroud up to conceal the image of a naked lifeless body but this could hardly have been kept secret for long. The Turin Shroud is of a dead man, the Edessa image is, like all the other images of this time, a living Christ. ...one of the legendary accounts of the origins of the Image of Edessa in a sixth century text, the Acts of Thaddeus (or Jude). This gives a standard account of the image having been made by Christ himself

http://ift.tt/2kzQiTe

The article points out that one of the arguments in favor of the shroud is that supposedly all images of Jesus were beardless before the shroud was discovered in the 6th c. However, the article points out that actually there are depictions of a bearded Jesus from the late 4th and 5th c. at least.

Quote:

we have the earliest bearded Christ in the catacomb of Commodilla in Rome in about 390 and then a fine central image of a bearded Christ in the church of San Pudenziana of c. 405 (below).

Wikipedia image of c. 405 church depiction of Christ

This part just gets confusing:

a document called The Doctrine of Addai. This may date from the early fifth century and is one of hundreds of legendary accounts that develop the early history of Christianity. Addai is a disciple of Jesus who has miraculous healing powers. 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://ift.tt/2kzQiTe

I know there is also an apocryphal story from maybe 200 AD about Didymus Thomas the apostle traveling to Jesus with a "twin" Jesus, and it sounds alot like the Abgar story. 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.

9. Where does Markwardt get this claim that I underline:

Quote:

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. 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. http://ift.tt/2llpHxj

10.

Quote:

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 tran smitted by Ponzio Pilato ( Ref VI 32). ... Because of the state of the art of the available sources, we must consider the journey of the Cloth from Jerusalem to Edessa as speculative. Yet the “possibility” is, at least, not some “impossibility” to exclude.

http://ift.tt/2kzZ7MU

"Ponzio Pilato"? Is that a reference to Pilate?

The Carpocratians were in the islands to the west of modern Turkey. That's not Edessan.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2llE591