Tetradiplon
The Greek word tetradiplon literally means doubled in fours, which also means for our purposes folded into eight equally sized layers.
The Acts of the Holy Apostle Thaddeus, written in the early part of the 6th century, tells us that the Image of Edessa was formed when Jesus wiped his face on the linen cloth. The document refers to the cloth as a tetradiplon.
In 1978, John Jackson, a physicist at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, found persistent fold marks showing that the shroud had been folded as a tetradiplon.
It should be pointed out that the word tetradiplon, a perfectly good Greek word, seems not to exist in anything ever written in ancient Greek. Its use in the Acts of the Holy Apostle Thaddeus was confusing to historians. Historian Dan Scavone puts it in perspective when he writes, “in so many cases . . . obscurities such as this often become brightly lit when one inserts the Shroud into the context.”
- What is a tetradiplon and why is that important?
- Extract from the Acts of the Holy Apostle Thaddeus
- Himation
