


Deesis/Hagia Sophia
A youtube on the History Channel's new computer image from the Shroud of Turin can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X-v53WYwYI I have always thought the Shroud images were a dead ringer of the Pantokrator, gold coins from Justinian's reign, etc. (see below), but wow, this new image really looks like Christ Pantokrator to me. What do you guys think?
ICONOGRAPHIC IMAGES OF JESUS
Pantocrator or Pantokrator (Παντοκράτωρ) is the title used by the LXX to translate the Hebrew title El Shaddai ( אל שדי); Christians ascribed the title to Jesus.
The most common translation of Pantocrator is "Almighty" or "All-powerful” Pan, "all" + κρατος, “strength”; omnipotent; it may also be understood as denoting Ruler/Sustainer (κρατεω "to sustain”).
In the NT παντοκράτορος is used once by Paul (2 Cor 6:18, of the Father) and 9X in the book of Revelation, also of the Father (παντοκράτορος or παντοκράτωρ). Rev 21:22 says of the New Jerusalem, “I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb, are its temple.” The Father and the Son are its temple –Gk. singular!
What did Christ look like? During the sixth century a variety of images of Jesus were said to be derived from an image "not made with hands"/αχειροποίητα; cf. Mk 14.58; 2 Cor 5:1). Comparing the images below, notice how the photo of the Shroud of Turin, the image of Christ from a gold coin during the reign of Justinian II (dating between AD 692 and 695), the Pantokrator icons from Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (built under the personal supervision of Emperor Justinian I), and the monastery at traditional Mt. Sinai etc. all look similar.
The Eastern Orthodox Church still observes a feast commemorating the transfer from Edessa to Constantinople of a relic known as the Holy Mandylion "not made by hands"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_of_EdessaIan Wilson suggested the theory that the object venerated as the Mandylion from at least the sixth century was in fact the Shroud of Turin, folded so that only the face was visible and enclosed in a frame (Wilson, Ian,
The Turin Shroud: The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ?). A tenth century codex, Codex Vossianus Latinus Q 69 refers to an eighth-century description of an imprint of Christ's entire body left on a canvas kept in a church in Edessa: "King Abgar received a cloth on which one can see not only a face but the whole body" (in Latin: [non tantum] faciei figuram sed totius corporis figuram cernere poteris). Subsequent studies attempting to date the Shroud still remain highly controversial and subject to divergent interpretations.






