Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

McNeal’s Sudarium

And what is the sudarium, that McNeal mentions? Possibly it is many things. Was it another image, perhaps painted from the face on the tetradiplon-folded cloth in Edessa? There is another small facial image called the Image of Edessa in the Vatican Museum. Or was it Veronica’s Veil, a completely different icon with a completely different legend? It is not implausible that there were among Constantinople’s vast treasury of icons and relics many such images with independent of confused legends even as there are today.

Dictionaries define sudarium (or sudarion in Greek) as a sweat cloth. And thus it seems plausible to call the facial imprint from the Legend of Abgar and the Legend of Veronica a sudarium. But the word is also widely used to describe the other cloth in the tomb: “and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.” (John 20:7 NRSV)