He wrote in a comment a few hours ago:
… Someone please tell Ian Wilson so that he can revise his text for any new edition of the Shroud. This should go along with his correction of the illustration of tetradiplon as you cannot translate it as ’doubled in four’ alongside an illustration showing it doubled to make eight ( alas a mistake repeated in the video that Barrie has just posted).
Better leave out the tetradiplon issue altogether as it only refers to the cloth BEFORE Christ wiped his face with it and there is no indication in the text that it was refolded as such afterwards. Having ploughed my way through 150 examples of Greek words where tetra was added, the most likely translation is doubled four times- which is exactly the way they folded the Parthenon cloth as seen in the Parthenon frieze in The British Museum. But that would cut through the face of the Man on the Shroud and so would destroy Wilson’s argument. Better just to edit all this out to save Wilson further loss of credibility among the Byzantine experts.
Click on the image or follow this link: http://www.shroud.com/videos/tetradiplon.mp4 to see the video. It’s pretty short.
He’s deluded. Only a fuss-budget would quibble about tetradiplon. If one could see 8 sections, which one could, any common man would say tetradiplon — what would you expect him to say upon seeing 8 sections — tri-diplon?
At U.S. military academies, there is an Honor Code. “Quibbling” is still considered as breaking the Honor Code, i.e., lying.
Nabber- the only reason why this minor point was raised at all is that Wilson used it to shore up his argument that the Image of Edessa and the Turin Shroud are one and the same. Some people may have been taken in-probably not many as it is quite clearly wrong- but some. Not many would have gone back to the original text to check whether Wilson was right in saying that tetradiplon referred to the cloth after Christ had wiped his face on it.
Yes, tridiplon would do nicely to describe a cloth that has been folded double three times and if that had been the word used I would have been with Wilson., but the most likely translation is a futher doubling to make four and thus bring it into line with the four times doubled cloth of the Panathenaia.
Re the circular halo and my copyright ;-),
On March 10, 2012 at 10:14 am and September 18, 2012 at 3:00 pm, I wrote about one of my sindonological findings (synthesis mine with typos):
“As early as 1994 & 1998, I detected a faintly lighter discoloration vast circular area all around the Shroud face not only on high contrast enhanced orthochromatic, traditional silver & extensive digital Sindon overall photographs but also in situ cathedralis torinensis by my standing at a distance between 15 to 30m away from the relic (an observation I made in the presence of a French notary, Maître Christian Louf, and that was to be confirmed by Israeli botanist, Avinoam Danin by Avinoam Danin in may 2011). This was the visual fact/archaeological evidence left by the Holy Face of the Holy Sindon reliquary vast circular central opening as a “monstrance” in Constantinople with its vast central pearl-rimmed oculus or opening made of a rock crystal for beholders to see the Holy Face only through it (“and the rock was Christ”). The flat-table-reliquary was protected in a emerald-green samit and placed in an ark-shaped like scrinium as the Ark of the New Covenent.”
It’s a strange word, tetradiplon, and I’m not sure that it’s real meaning is numerical at all. Let’s assume, for a moment, that the Mandylion/Image of Edessa were not large pieces of cloth folded up ‘tetradiplon’, then what is the significance of the word? Why should the precise way in which a cloth was folded be at all interesting? Was it perhaps simply a numerical way of expressing the term ‘many layered’ (rather as Jesus’s ‘not seven times but seventy times seven times’ was not an encouragement to stop forgiving after 490 attempts, but meant ‘a very great many times’). Was a multi-layered ‘towel’ particularly expensive or high quality, so that giving Jesus a tetradiplon towel was not really a reference to its folding pattern but its quality, and, by extension, the respect due to the recipient. Anybody any ideas?
Well, Hugh,the Panathenaic cloth was ritually folded in a way that saw it doubled four times -the layers can be seen in the British Museum marbles. So here we have an actual example of a cloth treated with respect that was certainly tetradiplon.So I don’t think you are far off when you say that to label a cloth as tetradiplon you are giving it status and this would have been appropriate for a cloth handed to Christ..
Just as the Panathanaic cloth was left unfolded after it was placed on the statue of Athena, so too the text here makes no mention of any refolding once it had its face of the living Christ on it. Again it is worth repeating that as the grave cloths are mentioned later in the same text, this could not possibly be the Shroud.
When I was originally researching this I found references to the pallium with which a new priest was invested also being a folded cloth. Alas I could find no reference to the folds being tetradiplon but as many pagan rituals were transferred into Christianity ( Jerome had a big moan about that) it is not impossible.
But tetradiplon is clearly irrelevant if one is trying , quite without any foundation to my mind, to link the Image of Edessa to the Turin Shroud!!!
Methinks both Charles and Wilson are confusing the Constatinople Sindon with the Constantinople Mandylion ;-)
Reminder: the Holy Face of the Holy Mandylion in Constantinople was kept in a large flat sliding box about 40 x 60cm and the empty reliquary housed at Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (un grand coffret de 22 pouces sur 15 pouces soit 59,554cm x 40,605cm, d’argent doré sur âme de bois, peu épais, muni d’un couvercle à glissière qui coulissait pour laisser apparaître la relique)
Typo: LATER housed at Sainte-Chapelle in Paris