Daniel Scavone on the Tetradiplon reference in the Act of Thaddeus
Historian Daniel Scavone on the Tetradiplon reference in the Act of Thaddeus writes:
In the 6th c. the Greek apocryphal book called the Acts of Thaddeus (=Greek for Addai) retold the Abgar legend with two important alterations. First, the image was heralded as miraculously imprinted on a cloth by Jesus himself (acheiropoietos) but still during his ministry. Second, the cloth is described as much larger than needed for a cheiromaktron or a face-towel. In this version, Abgar’s agent, in Greek named Ananias, could not capture the likeness of the Lord because of its dazzling brilliance, so Jesus compliantly washed his face and wiped off on a cloth which was oddly called a tetradiplon, (“four-doubled” = eight layered). Then, “having imprinted his image on the sindon he gave it to Ananias.” The operative word sindon is the N.T. synoptics’ word for large burial shroud. A sindon folded in eight layers, a single exposed panel of which could present a life-sized face, is large indeed.