Number 37: February 27, 2006



The Olympic games have ended and Turin, or Torino, will go back into being just another post-industrial city. The world had heard of Turin before, as it is home to the car manufacturer Fiat. Also, housed in the Cathedral of San Giovanni Batista, in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, is a 14-foot-long linen cloth with the image of a wounded, wiry, bearded man on it. It is encased in a huge, climate-controlled steel box under bulletproof glass. According to tradition, the crucified Christ was wrapped in this cloth when God raised him from the dead.



Matthew 27:59:

And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth [sindōn].



The clean linen cloth that Joseph utilized for the burial was just a sheet of fabric, not regular grave wrappings that were usually used to wind the trunk, head, and limbs of the deceased. There was no anointing the body with spices and oils. There was no ceremonial wrapping in grave clothes. All of Joseph’s actions indicate that he felt burial rites were unnecessary. He was a disciple of Jesus, not just a casual observer. He may have been the only one who actually believed Jesus Christ’s words concerning his death and subsequent resurrection.



John 19:39 and 40:

And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.



Then took they [Nicodemus and his servants] the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.



Nicodemus “wound” [deo, bound] the body, not “wrapped” [entulisso] it as it says in the other three Gospels. Nicodemus wound the body of Jesus with the spices in linen clothes. Here the Greek word for “linen clothes” is othonion, meaning “bandages or wrappings, grave clothes.” Jesus actually was buried twice. First, by Joseph of Arimathaea, a good man who was a member of the council, the Sanhedrin; but one who didn’t agree with their deeds. Later, Nicodemus and his men who used the spices and the “correct” grave clothes in which to give Jesus a “proper” burial.



Each man worked independently of the other. Joseph and his servants, after receiving permission from Pilate, took the body of Jesus down from the cross, rolled it in a sindōn, and put it in a nearby sepulchre which had been prepared for the occasion. Then they rolled the stone to the opening of the sepulchre and left. Nicodemus and his servants, after Joseph of Arimathaea and the women had left the garden, came to the sepulchre and wrapped the body properly in grave clothes, and anointed it with spices.



If the shroud is genuine, it would have to be the linen cloth that Joseph used because Nicodemus used smaller grave wrappings. This negates it was the shroud Jesus was wrapped in at the time of his resurrection. The Bible does not tell us what became of Joseph’s linen cloth, but Nicodemus was the last man with it, so maybe his descendants sold it to the Church 1300 years later on Ebay.