Hello, After a careful reading of the account in John I believe you will find the scriptures explain there were two cloths. One was a head piece and the other for the body. The Shroud according to the Bible could not be the face of Jesus. The Shroud could be truly an imprint of a real person but it can not be Jesus. What do you think?
Let’s first check this one.
The Synoptics (Matthew, Mark and Luke) all say that there was a
sindon, in the singular.
And evening having come, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also himself was discipled to Jesus. He, having gone near to Pilate, asked for himself the body of Jesus; then Pilate commanded the body to be given.
And having taken the body, Joseph wrapped it in a clean sindon and laid it in his new tomb which he had hewn in the rock; and having rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, he went away. And there were there Mary the Magdalene and the other Mary, sitting opposite the burial.
And now evening having come, seeing it was the Preparation (that is, the fore-sabbath), Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent council-member, who also himself was waiting for the kingdom of God, came, boldly entered in to Pilate, and asked the body of Jesus. And Pilate wondered if He were already dead; and having called near the centurion, asked Him if He were now dead, and having known from the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph.
And he, having brought a sindon, and having taken Him down, wrapped Him in the sindon, and laid him in a tomb that had been hewn out of a rock, and he rolled a stone unto the door of the tomb. And Mary the Magdalene and Mary of Joses were seeing where He is laid.
And behold, a man named Joseph, a council-member, was a man good and righteous - he had not consented to their counsel and action - from Arimathea, a city of the Judeans, who also himself was waiting for the kingdom of God; he, having gone near to Pilate, asked the body of Jesus;
and having taken it down, he wrapped it in a sindon and placed it in a tomb - stone-hewn, where no one was yet laid. And the day was Preparation, and Sabbath was dawning.
The problem of course is John’s account, which has Jesus being buried in
othonia (‘linen cloths’ or ‘linen wrappings’), in the plural. By contrast, the word
sindon does not appear in John. Ian Wilson wrote:
Here again we are in a hornets’ nest of controversy over gospel interpretation that exists quite independently of the Shroud. It all stems from apparent conflicts of information between the synoptic writers and St. John. The synoptics speak only of the
sindon purchased by Joseph of Arimathea (Mt. 7:59; Mk. 15:46; Lk. 23:53) - This is often translated as shroud, although it should be pointed out that it does not have a specifically sepulchral meaning. St. Mark, for instance, used the same word to describe the garment lost by the young man at Gethsemane who fled at the arrest of Jesus (Mk. 14:51, 52). St. John, on the other hand, does not use the word
sindon, but instead says the body of Jesus was wrapped in
othonia. And in his account of the discovery of the linens in the empty tomb again he uses the word
othonia (which he describes as lying at the scene), and refers also cryptically to a mysterious soudarion, rolled up and lying in a place by itself (Jn. 20: 7). The precise meanings of othonia and sindon in their gospel context have been hotly debated. Some have contended that
othonia (which is a plural form) means linen bands and that Joseph must have torn up the sindon into strips to wind Jesus mummy-style. Quite neutral exegetes such as Pere Benoit have pointed out that it would surely have been easier for Joseph to purchase ready-made bandages rather than tearing up a large sheet for this purpose. The most balanced modern view is that
othonia means cloths in general, which could incorporate shroud and bands.
What of the
soudarion, literally a “sweat cloth”? Some have thought of this as simply the headcloth or chin band-which is clearly what the
soudarion mentioned in the story of Lazarus as “round his face” (Jn. 11:44) was. Others have argued that it may have been our Shroud, on the grounds that the description of it as having been “over his head” (Jn. 20:7) could well refer to the manner in which we know the Turin Shroud was used. In support of this argument we may note that in the Lazarus account St. John uses the word
peri (“round” or “about”), in contrast to
epi (“over”), in the case of Jesus, leaving open the possibility that a different arrangement (and different size of cloth) is being described. St. John makes special mention of Jesus’
soudarion being “not with the
othonia but rolled up in aplace by itself,” which certainly might suggest a cloth larger and more important than a mere chin hand; but as many maintain adamantly that a
soudarion could not be anything larger than a handkerchief-sized piece of cloth, it seems unwise to be dogmatic.
