the sweat cloth rolled up?

Originally posted on March 23, 2008 – by Andre Piet

This morning I spoke in The Hague about the linen wrappings that Jesus left behind in the tomb at His resurrection. I showed that when John (together with Peter) arrives at the opened tomb early in the morning, he is only convinced of Jesus’ resurrection at the moment he enters the tomb. Upon arriving at the tomb he had initially only seen the wrappings lying there and had seen nothing special in them, because he thought that Jesus was lying in them. The wrappings had been prepared with a mixture of spices of more than 30 kilograms and in the course of days had become hard and had taken on the shape of the body. Only when John entered the tomb and saw the head section lying separately from the body, did it dawn on him that the burial shroud was empty!
Like a butterfly, the Prince of Life had left the cocoon of wrappings.

It is unfortunate that most translations obscure John’s and Peter’s discovery of the empty cocoon. In John 20:7 the NBG translation reads that the sweat cloth from Jesus’ head was lying in a place by itself, rolled up. The idea behind this rendering is that Jesus would have rolled up the sweat cloth after His resurrection. The Greek word used here (entulisso; Str. 1794), however, points in a very different direction. The word occurs two more times in the NT, and both times in connection with the burial of Jesus:

Matthew 27:59
And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in clean linen…

Luke 23:53
And after taking it down, he wrapped it in linen…

Peter and John did not see the sweat cloth rolled up, but wrapped. That wrapping did not take place on the day of the resurrection, but already three days earlier. Hardened by the spices, the two men saw the sweat cloth not rolled up but as a hard, wrapped form. But now in a place by itself… empty!

Delen: