Does the ‘Side Strip’ on
the Holy Shroud of Turin Relate to the Width of the Burial Couch in
Christ’s Tomb in Jerusalem?
Bernard A Power
Introduction
One of the many mysteries
of the Holy Shroud of Turin is the
presence of the so-called ‘side
strip’ - an 8 centimeter wide and
approximately 4 meter long strip of
linen - carefully sewn onto one of the long sides of the ancient cloth. (Fig.
1).
The 8 cm wide side strip
The lance wound in
the right side of the Body
Fig. 1. The Holy Shroud (negative
print) showing the ‘side strip’
The side strip is made of the
same batch of linen cloth as the rest of the Shroud. Some of the linen weave features match the
main cloth to which it is now attached. Thus the Shroud and the attached side
strip were apparently originally one piece of cloth, then were cut apart, and
now are reattached.
It is generally agreed that
the change was made to assure
that, with the side strip reattached in the present position, the
Shroud’s image thereby becomes centred
and balanced on the cloth for public
display. Without the side strip, the Shroud’s image would be about 8
centimeters off- centre on the cloth.
This raises the question:
What could be the reason why the image was originally off- centre on the Shroud
in the first place?
The present paper gives a
possible explanation for this original imbalance of the image, and presents evidence
to support it. Essentially, the explanation rests on a discrepancy between the
width of the Shroud itself and the width of the stone burial couch in the Tomb
on which the Body of Christ was laid and
wrapped in the Shroud after his crucifixion [1].
The Width of the Holy Shroud
The Shroud’s overall width is
110 centimeters [2].
The Width of the Burial Couch in the Tomb in the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
The actual stone burial
couch, hewn out of the rock, is not visible, as it is today covered with a
protective cladding of marble after a number of reconstructions made over the
centuries [3,4].
The burial Tomb was located
in the time of the Emperor Constantine, who erected a church enclosing both it
and the nearby Hill of Calvary (
The following quotations will
give an idea of the appearance and dimensions of the stone burial couch in the
tomb:
(a) “Opposite ………is a smaller
door, through which by stooping low, one may enter in a quadrangular chamber
about 6 feet wide, 7 feet long and 7 ½ feet high, On the north side, about two feet from the
floor and extending the full length, is a marble slab covering the sepulchral
couch. Floors, walls and ceiling have
also been covered with marble slabs…………Pierotti declares that when he made his
studies of the Sepulchre he succeeded in seeing the native rock in two
places. Breydenbach tells us that in the
fifth century it was still exposed. And Arculpf, who saw it in the seventh
century, described it as red and veined with white and hearing the marks of
tools” [3].
(b) “The
present width of the tomb slab is 0.94 m “[4].
“Maximo’s description (1897)
suggest that on top and in front of the burial couch there were two layers of marble
cladding. If the outer layer comprised
the marble slab still visible today , the inner layer may be the mediaeval
cladding, which in that case was simply left in position and covered up by
Boniface of Ragusa in 1555 – it is probably still there”[4].
“The benches were probably
each about 2 m long and 0.8 m wide.” [4]. [Biddle’s reasoning about the width
of the burial bench or couch here seems to be that the burial couch inside the
marble cladding must be smaller than the present top slab dimensions. This is true for the length of the couch, but
not for the width of the top slab, which could be the same width as the couch
it covers by being simply displaced away from the back or north wall of the
tomb by the thickness of the marble
cladding on the wall. Thus the couch could be the same width as the present top
slab covering it, that is to say, 94 cm.].
The Relative Widths of the Linen Shroud and the Burial
Couch
The Shroud’s width, being 110
centimeters, is therefore greater than
the width of the burial couch on which it was presumably laid out to receive
the dead body of Christ. The extra width
is 16 centimeters if the couch is 94 cm
wide ( 110-94 = 16).
If now the Shroud is spread
out on the burial couch more or less flush against the back wall of the tomb,
then the Shroud being wider will
overhang down the side of the couch by about 16 cm (Fig. 2). Then, with the
body of Christ laid out and centred on the couch, it will necessarily be off-centre on the cloth, and so any image of the body transferred to
the Shroud would also be off-centre, as is observed [5].
If the present marble top
slab in the Tomb is the same width as the original burial couch it covers, then
the amount of the overhang would at the burial have been approximately 16 cm,
since the width of the Shroud, 110 cm, minus the width of the slab, 94
cm, equals 16 centimeters.
To centre the image, it then would only be necessary to cut off 8 cm from the one side (i.e. one half of the 16 cm overhang) and sew
it back onto the other edge and so to form the side strip which is observed on
the Shroud..
Width of top
marble slab covering the burial couch is 94 cm
Shroud overhang of 16 cm on stone burial couch which
is 16 cm narrower
(Shroud
width 110 cm – 94cm = 16 cm)
Fig. 2.
Position of the Body and the enveloping Shroud which would account
for the off-centre image on the Shroud
References and Notes
1. The fact that the body
of Jesus, after his death by crucifixion
in
Matthew 27: 57-61 “
So Joseph of Arimathaea took the body, wrapped it in a clean shroud and put it
in his own tomb”.
Mark
Luke 23: 50-56: “…Joseph
asked for the body of Jesus. He then took it down, wrapped it in a shroud and
put it in a tomb which was hewn in stone.”
John 19: 40-42; 20:3-10: “
They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths
following the Jewish burial custom. At
the place… a new tomb…They laid Jesus there.”
“
So Peter set out with the other disciple ( John) to go to the tomb. They ran
together but the other disciple running faster than Peter reached the tomb
first; he bent down and saw the linen cloths lying on the ground, but did no go
in. Simon Peter who was following now
came up, went right into the tomb, saw the linen cloths on the ground, and also
the cloth that had been over his head, this was not with the linen cloths but
rolled up in a place by itself. Then the
other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in; he saw and he
believed. Till this moment they had failed to understand the teaching of
Scripture that he must rise from the dead.”
2. The
Shroud’s width of 110 cm is the accepted value over the past century. In 2002,
repairs to the Shroud were made and the linen
cloth was deliberately stretched,
so that its dimensions are now
slightly larger.
3. A.L.
McMahon. “The Holy Sepulchre”. Catholic
Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia Press,
N.Y. Vol. VII p 426, 1913.
4. The Tomb of Christ, Martin Biddle, Sutton
Publishing,
5. After a century of study, fraud theories for
the origin of the Shroud have one by one been examined and discarded,
while the overwhelming mass of evidence for authenticity from dozens of scholarly and scientific
disciplines has accumulated. Today, fraud is no longer an acceptable
proposal. [See Main Page ].
One may therefore, in the
case of the side strip, ask: Why would
any forger who wanted to be believed go ahead and deliberately create an ‘off-centre’ image ?
The answer is obvious.
6. A little reflection will make it clear that,
with the lance wound being on the right side of the body [Fig.1), then the new theory presented here also
requires that the Body of Christ must
have been placed in the tomb with the head
away from the entrance door in
the Tomb’s east wall (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3.
Entrance door is on east side of the Tomb: the Body of Christ lay on the
stone burial couch along north wall of Tomb.
For a printable download of this article
click here : (The Side
Strip.pdf)
Copyright © 2004
Bernard A. Power