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For other authors named Janice Bennett, see the disambiguation page.

2 Works 119 Members 1 Review

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Janice Bennett is a member of the Spanish Center for Sindonology (CES), based in Valencia, Spain

Works by Janice Bennett

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I really wanted to like this book. But 2.5 out of 5 stars is all I could muster for it.

First, I want to know more about the Sudarium of Oviedo, a cloth that supposedly wrapped the head of Jesus as he was taken from the cross and moved to his tomb, but removed before he was enshrouded. See John 20:7. I would like to read Mark Guscin's The Oviedo Cloth (1998) and The History of the Sudarium of Oviedo (2004), but the former is selling (as of June 2020) for $750 and the latter for $350! It's a shame Guscin's works are so stupid expensive and not more widely disseminated. Why a standard press hasn't picked up his works, I don't know. (Standard presses have published Wilson and De Wesselow on the Shroud, why not Guscin on the Sudarium?)

Thus, this book is the most accessible and affordable one you can get on the Sudarium of Oviedo.

As someone intrigued by the Shroud of Turin, the subject of this book, the Sudarium of Oviedo, should also be fascinating. Basically, the stains on the cloth are blood and pulmonary fluid, just what you'd expect from a crucifixion victim. The stains indicate that the cloth was placed on a dead man's head while upright, then over his head while prone. This matches the positions Jesus would have been: on the cross and then on the ground before movement to the tomb. Why was a facecloth of such size used? Jewish beliefs necessitated that someone try not to touch blood and that as much blood as possible, as it was sacred, should remain with any dead body. Thus a cloth was used to stop blood from being touched and leaving the crucified man's body. This cloth's bloodstains also supposedly match the stains and face of the man on the Turin Shroud. And, furthermore, this Sudarium has a history dating back to the 600s in Spain. If its stains indeed match the Shroud of Turin's, it indeed invalidates the Shroud's troublesome carbon-dating.

The problem is this book is laid out in a weird way, cited in a weird way, and the author is in a weird way.

The good stuff.

Pages 73-74 summarize scientific tests carried out on the Sudarium; pp.75-77 indicate how the Sudarium would have been used, these go along with the nice colored plates, plates 13-17; pp. 78-79 state the reasons a carbon-dating of the cloth is suspect; pp. 84ff. indicate seventy supposed points of coincidence between the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo, concluding that both cloths covered the same victim and were nearly impossible to forge. Pages 94-98 talk about the importance of blood in Jewish thought and ritual, and why the Sudarium would have been used, and pp. 163-165 notes that the image on the Shroud and the blood on the Sudarium are unmentioned in the Gospels because Jewish prohibitions against idolatrous images and unclean blood was such that knowledge of these things would have hampered belief, proselytizing, and the cloths themselves (as pious Jews would have sought to destroy them).

These sections are very good summarizations of Spanish scientific tests carried out on the Sudarium, comparisons with the Turin Shroud, and Mark Guscin's work.

But, now to the bad stuff.

The author, Janice Bennett, is very Catholic, and the book relies too much on Catholic ritual, the Catholic catechism (see, e.g., p. 156), and Catholic history. I'm sorry, but the ritual practices around the Sudarium (Chapter 3) really have nothing to do with its veracity or not. Catholic legends about wolves and magic swords and crosses supposedly made by angels (Chapter 2) don't have anything to do with the Sudarium's authenticity. In fact, the whole raft of stuff stored with the Sudarium, supposedly for more than a millennium, are not good advertisements for the truthfulness of the Roman Catholic Church and its history or for the legitimacy of the Sudarium. I mean: thorns, earth from Mt. Olivet, a Judas coin, the Virgin's chasuble, the forehead of John the Baptist, his hair, the hands of Stephen, the hair of Mary Magdalene, the sandal of Peter, the sandal of Andrew (they couldn't find a pair?), et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It boggles and it degrades.

The chapter on the relic's movements from the East to Spain via the Mediterranean, and then the relic's peregrinations in Spain, are not as scholarly and evidential as they could or should be. (Compare with Ian Wilson's musings on the travels of the Shroud; or even Kings of the Grail by Margarita Torres Sevilla-Quiñones de León and José Miguel Ortega del Río, which surmises the grail cup travels from Jerusalem to Spain. These folks do better.)

Another issue. Bennett has a master's degree in Spanish literature, but her research skills are wholly lacking. Deplorable even. That she, or the editors at Ignatius Press, would approvingly cite as evidence the inept nineteenth century forgery The Archko Volume is a travesty (see pp.123-127). The entire book is now suspect. (Look it up on Wikipedia, The Archko Volume: The Archaeological Writings of the Sanhedrin and Talmuds of the Jews, Taken from the Ancient Parchments and Scrolls at Constantinople and the Vatican at Rome, Being the Record Made by the Enemies of Jesus of Nazareth in His Day: The Most Interesting History Ever Read by Man is a crude fake.) (Later [pp. 173ff.] she references approvingly Maria Valtorta's odd, inane, unbiblical The Poem of the Man-God [pp. 173-174: "The work is truly impressive.... ...a great part of the attraction was the belief that it had been divinely inspired, and... 'approved' by the Church. ...I personally had not noted any problems."].)

It's hard to take Bennett seriously after she cites this poor piece of pseudepigrapha as evidence.

Another weird quirk. A couple of times in the book, Bennett decides that English translations of the Bible are inadequate. Uber-Catholic she is, she only references Catholic translations: the New Jerusalem Bible, the New American Bible, the Navarre Bible, and the Douay–Rheims Bible. But anyway, she decides the English translations are not good enough. Does she use a "Protestant" translation (like the NIV, ESV, CEV, NASB, NRSV, NKJV, NET, etc.)? No. Does she translate it herself from the Greek? No. Does she reference any of the many literal transcriptions (like an Interlinear) or translations (like Young's Literal Translation) of the Greek into English? No. What does she do? She gives a Spanish translation of the verse and then translates that back into English.

You read that right.

The Bible is best understood if you take the Greek, move it to Spanish, then move it to English. Take an example of this at page 157-158. She decides that John 20:3-8 needs this Greek [to Latin Vulgate] to Spanish to English treatment. It is unnecessary and not what biblical scholars or exegetes do. (By the way, my Spanish Vida Internacional version and my Spanish La Biblia de las Américas version—I can read and translate Spanish okay—are nothing like the Spanish translation she cribs from one Luis García García, Doctor of Theology in Oviedo, and then translates into English.)

There are some good points to this book. The summaries of Mark Guscin's work and the scientific work of EDICES (Equipo de Investigacion del Centro Espanol de Sindonolgia) are valuable to have in English. The color plates showing the Sudarium and its use, supplied by EDICES, are good.

But, the vast amounts of fluff in the book; the unthinking repetition of Catholic ritual, dogma, and hagiographies; and the use of works of dubious validity, like The Archko Volume, detract from the scientific and exegetical thrust of the book. If you can buy this cheaply and you have a thing for books on the Shroud of Turin, get it. If you're looking for a proper, balanced, scholarly work on the Sudarium of Oviedo, look on the internet for free or wait until you win the lottery and can buy one of Guscin's works. Or wait until there is a better book.
… (more)
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tuckerresearch | Jun 17, 2020 |

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