[Houghton M.]

“It gives more space to them than it does to Joseph the adoptive father of Jesus or to thre-fourths of the apostles.”

Correction. There is more space given to Joseph. But the cloths receive more space than many of the apostles. Indeed, more space than Peter’s wife (who is never mentioned but whose existence is properly inferred from the mention of Peter’s mother-in-law. Yet, on the basis of the existence of Peter’s unmentioned wife, an immense edifice of married apostles has been built.

I’d say the mention of the burial cloths exalts them, compared to a lot that never gets mentioned in the gospels. What happened to Joseph after Luke ch. 2?

[Sudetenland]

I believe you are placing far too much emphasis in the narrative on the cloth. You distort the importance of the cloth as mentioned. The importance of the cloth is the fact that he was wrapped in the cloth before burial. It was proof to those attendant that...basically one minute he was there and the next he was not.

Sort of an "I personally wrapped him in this cloth...and now he's gone and all I have is this cloth."

The important fact here is that he was gone, not that there was a cloth. The important fact was that he rose from the dead, not that he left the cloth behind.

Sort of a forest for the trees concept. I think in focusing on the cloth, you run the danger of forgetting Him and his transcendence.

I believe that to be the danger of all of the so-called holy relics...they inevitably engender dependence on the physical rather than the spiritual and to refocus us on the material forgetting Christ and what he taught.

In the story, the cloth is irrelevent.