John of Damascus

Herringbone in History

Herringbone twill has been found in fabric samples dating back as far as 400 B.C., among the mummified remains of a Celtic people found in ancient Hallstatt salt mines near present-day Vienna. Other herringbone cloth, made from horsehair, has been found in Ireland dating from possibly as early as the arrival of Celtic people on the island around 600 B.C.. Other complex twill patterns going back to at least 200 B.C. and probably earlier have been found with mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China. In Northern Italy a six foot long piece of linen cloth was found with twilling and lozenge patterning that is almost certainly from the third millennium B.C.. (17)

Linen itself has been around for a very long time and in diverse parts of the world. Fragments of Egyptian linen at the British Museum in London and the Bolton Museum in Lancashire are over 6,000 years old. The wrappings from the mummy of Rameses II, the pharaoh of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt, are linen, and are still very well preserved. In the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament, we learn that curtains of the Tabernacle were of fine linen. Aaron, the high priest, wore a linen coat and linen miter.

In other words, linen and twill cloth, even herringbone twill, has been around for a long time. We might reasonably suppose that herringbone twill linen was produced in the weaving centers of Alexandria, Antioch, Damascus and in other cities in Hellenistic and Roman antiquity. Claims from some skeptics that a three-over-one herringbone is too elaborate for Roman Palestine, or that a piece of linen could have lasted 2000 years is historically unsustainable.

(from page 140)

(from page 168)

John of Damascus and the Himation

John of Damascus, a priest and monk who served as an advisor to the Muslim Caliph of Damascus, was able from the relative safety of the Caliph’s court, to criticize the Leo III and iconoclasm. He wrote Apologetic Treatises against those Decrying the Holy Images, in 730, the same year that the pope excommunicated Leo.

Though it wasn’t the main thrust of his work, the Edessa Image was mentioned. He retells the legend of Abgar. The king, he tells us, sent envoys to obtain a likeness of Christ, a painting if necessary. Christ, who is “all knowing and all powerful took” a himation and pressed it to his face that his likeness might be on the cloth. The Greek word himation was a long rectangular cloth worn as sleeveless garment in ancient Greece and well into the middle Byzantine era. Similar to a toga, but shorter, it was often used as a garment in iconography of Christ or other biblical persons. This may be the first mention, among extant documents, of the Image of Edessa being such a large cloth.

(from page 168)

(from page 234)

Limestone Dust

Limestone dust has been found on the Shroud of Turin in the vicinity of the image which contains the feet as well as on the backside of the cloth. We might suppose that if the cloth actually contained the body of Jesus or a Roman-style crucifixion victim and if we assume that the victim walked to his crucifixion than we might infer that limestone dust was picked up on his feet and subsequently deposited on the cloth and that over time it became embedded. And if the cloth was used as a burial shroud in a tomb or cave in Jerusalem’s chalky, porous limestone outcroppings, then too, the embedded dust might have come from here.

Joseph Kohlbeck, a scientist at the Hercules Aerospace Center in Salt Lake, Utah, and Richard Levi-Setti of the famed Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, examined some of those dirt particles taken from the foot region of the shroud. Using a high-resolution microprobe, Levi-Setti and Kolbeck compared the spectra of dirt samples taken from the shroud with samples of a rare travertine aragonite found near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.

With a microprobe, scientists direct a beam of charged particles at a sample to obtain a reading of the precise elements in a mineral sample. By comparing two samples they can determine how similar they are.

The chemical signatures, the elemental composition of the shroud samples and the dust found near Golgotha, were identical except for some minute fragments of organic cellulous linen fiber that could not be separated from the shroud samples.

Kolbeck acknowledges that this is not absolute proof that the shroud was in Jerusalem and that there might be other places in the world--though none are known--where travertine aragonite has the identical trace chemical composition.

This was good. It said something about geography. Short of a conspiracy theory, of which there are many in the world of shroud literature and television productions, or a highly imaginative scenario, it seems likely but not absolutely certain that the Turin Shroud had been in Jerusalem at one time. That is, unless, of course, some pilgrim, let us say between about 1355 and 1978, had returned from Jerusalem and trampled on the shroud with the dirty boots he had been wearing while sightseeing. Or because some imaginative forger of fake relics had anticipated forensic science and ordered some limestone from Jerusalem, just to make sure we remained fooled in the 21^st century.

(from page 234)

(from page 243)

Vanillin as a Validation of Carbon Dating

It is not as good a way of dating a piece of linen as carbon dating. But the carbon dating was flubbed. And so for the time being this as good as it gets, scientifically. It really doesn’t tell how old the cloth is, only that it is at least 1300 years old and quite possibly older. It certainly existed when someone illustrated a burial shroud in the Hungarian Pray Manuscript with holes that resemble the poker holes on the Turin cloth. It certainly existed when the Image of Edessa was brought from Edessa to Constantinople. It certainly existed when Leo III was attempting to banish images of Christ and John of Damascus was objecting.