Content area
Full Text
When the Shroud of Turin went on display this spring for the first time in 20 years, it made the cover of Time magazine with the blurb "Is this Jesus?" In BAR, we summarized the controversy that has enshrouded this relic, venerated for centuries as the burial cloth of Jesus ("Remains to Be Seen, " Strata, July/ August 1998, p. 13).
Following Time lead we reported that although radiocarbon tests have dated the shroud to 1260-1390 A.D., no one has been able to account for the shadowy image of a naked, 6-foot-tall man that appears on the shroud. With bloodstains on the back, wrists, feet, side and head, the image appears to be that of a crucified man. The details-the direction of the flow of blood from the wounds, the placement of the nails through the wrists rather than the palms-display a knowledge of crucifixion that seems too accurate to have been that of a medieval artist.
But two of BAR savvy readers have objected to our assessment. The following articles suggest there is no reason to doubt that the image, as well as the cloth, was produced in the Middle Ages. -Ed.
Nothing puzzles and intrigues the sindonologist-the student of the Shroud of Turin-more than the supposed mystery of how the image on the shroud was made. "It doesn't look like any known work of art," they say. The implication is that its creation was somehow miraculous, perhaps caused by a sudden burst of cosmic energy as the cloth came into contact with the dead body of Jesus. But in fact, it is simply historical ignorance of what the shroud really is (or at least, what it purports to be) that leads these people to wrongheaded notions. The Shroud of Turin is not, by definition, a work of art but instead belongs to the long and revered tradition of sacred objects that are at once relics and icons.
Such objects first appeared during the sixth century, in the Holy Land; in Greek they are called acheiropoietai (singular, acheiropoietos), which means "not made by human hands." They are called this because they are (apparently) contact impressions of holy bodies. They have become relics through physical contact with the sacred, and they are icons...