As corrected by Ibn Ezra, the sacrificial offering (i.e. the suffering servant) shares his place of death with the wicked רשע (the two killed on either side of the suffering servant --and the word for "wicked" רשעים is plural in the text) and also with the rich עשר (which is singular in the text עשיר); he hangs between two convicted criminals in his death, but is buried in the tomb of a single rich man of Arimathea (Joseph) when he's interned in the rock (Arimathea's stone sepulcher). Ironically, the cross set between the two "wicked" רשע criminals has indeed become a "shrine" במתין of no small import (a "shrine" is a tomb where prayers and supplication to a deity are offered). It's often cast in gold, silver, and has precious stones embedded. Likewise the rock where his body was lain has become the shrine known as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
It's the latter of the two shrines that segues into Isaiah's prescient perception of the Shroud of Turin since in the first few centuries CE there was great excitement in various places, most notably Edessa, about a image on cloth that, get this, was
"acheiropoietos": it was made, as it were,
without hands. Elements of this cloth, this shroud, were so unique, particularly at the time (the first centuries of the current era) that everyone viewing it was aware that whatever the image was, however it was made, it was, as the archives of the time state it:
acheiropoietos ---made without hands.
Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the beastly image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.
Daniel 2:34.
We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands ἀχειροποίητος.
Mark 14:58.
In his introduction to the Zohar, Professor Arthur Green implies that early on there were aspects of Christian teaching, symbolism, and activities, that orthodox Jews found extremely appealing. Green states that much that's in the Zohar is an attempt to bring some of the power of some of the Christian symbols back into the Jewish fold. When this sacred cloth that was
acheiropoietos ---made without hands --- was being passed around and viewed by hundreds and even thousands of persons, some no doubt Jewish, it was quite a spectacle, such that Jews, perhaps having read the only verse in the NT other than Mark 14:58 (quoted above) that uses the Greek phrase
acheiropoietos (
ἀχειροποίητος), that is to say Colossians 2:11, they came up with their own version of a sacred cloth with an image created by sacred blood.
In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands ἀχειροποίητος, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.
Colossians 2:11.
As fate would have it, or rather as historical accounts point out, Jews came up with their own holy cloth which they often hung on the synagogue door when a ritual circumcision was taking place. In this practice, the cloth used to soak up the blood of the a previous ritual circumcision became a holy relic ----so holy in fact, that it was often used to create the wimple that surrounded the holy Torah scroll of the synagogue. It was also draped over the synagogue door announcing that a circumcision was taking place inside. In an irony of truly biblical dimensions, the the Torah scroll, which is the closest thing to an incarnation of God's word within orthodox Judaism, is wrapped in a sacred shroud ornamented with blood.
John
