Secret Alias wrote: ↑Sat Jul 11, 2020 8:40 pm
Another strange passage in the final journey to Jerusalem. Jesus gets them to find a particular donkey. Mark adds:
And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their himatia on him; and he sat upon him.
Yes with rich people there were layers of clothing. But as we saw with the beggar, poor people like the disciples had one layer of clothing.
As we saw with the beggar? Stephan has claimed that beggars did not wear layers of clothing in antiquity. As far as I can recall, the only supporting evidence he offered for this sweeping claim was that Isaiah 58.7 (and patristic allusions to Isaiah 58.7) used the word naked to describe the poor in this post:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7008&p=110046&hilit=bdag#p109950
To which I responded in this post:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7008&p=110046&hilit=bdag#p110046
While I covered more ground in the full post, I'll recap just two points in this post. First, Stephan fails to distinguish among the different senses of gymnos in Greek.
γυμνός, ή, όν (Hom.+; also s. Just. A I, 37, 8 γυμνὸν σκέπε [ref. Is 58:7]; Mel.)
① pert. to being without covering
ⓐ lit. naked, stripped, bare (PFay 12, 20; Gen 2:25, 3: 7, 10f al.; Job 1:21; Mel., P. 97, 739 γύμνῳ τῷ σώματι) Mk 14:52 (Appian, Bell. Civ. 5, 140 §582 γυμνοὶ … ἔφευγον; TestJos 8:3 ἔφυγον γυμνός); Ac 19:16 (cp. Philo, In Flaccum 36); Rv 3:17; 16:15; 17:16. περιβεβλημένος σινδόνα ἐπὶ γυμνοῦ who wore a linen garment over his naked body (Tyndale: ‘cloothed in lynnen apon the bare’) Mk 14:51 (for the subst. τὸ γυμνόν=the naked body cp. Lucian, Nav. 33 τὰ γυμνά). πόδες (Euphorion [III b.c.] 53, 1 Coll. Alex. p. 40; Jos., Ant. 8, 362) Hs 9, 20, 3.
ⓑ fig. uncovered, bare (cp. Diod S 1, 76, 2; Themistocl., Ep. 16 p. 756 H. γ. ἀλήθεια; Lucian, Tox. 42, Anachars. 19 ὡς γυμνὰ τὰ γεγενημένα οἱ Ἀρεοπαγῖται βλέποιεν; Heliod., Aeth. 10, 29 w. ἀπαρακάλυπτος; Job 26:6; Philo, Migr. Abr. 192; Jos., Ant. 6, 286; Ar. 13, 5 αἰσχύνην; Mel., Fgm. 9, 19 P. a bared sword) Hb 4:13. Of the soul, whose covering is the body: naked 2 Cor 5:3 (cp. Pla., Cratyl. 20, 403b ἡ ψυχὴ γυμνὴ τοῦ σώματος, also Gorg. 523ce; 524f; Aelian, HA 11, 39. Artem. 4, 30 p. 221, 10f the σῶμα is the ἱμάτιον of the ψυχή; 5, 40; M. Ant. 12, 2 of the divine element in man, ‘which God sees without any covering’.—Of the νοῦς: Herm. Wr. 10, 17). S. on this EKühl, Über 2 Cor 5:1–10, 1904; JUbbink, Het eeuwige leven bij Pls, Groningen diss. 1917, 14ff; WMundle, D. Problem d. Zwischenzustandes … 2 Cor 5:1–10: Jülicher Festschr. 1927, 93–109; LBrun, ZNW 28, 1929, 207–29; Guntermann (ἀνάστασις 2b); RBultmann, Exeg. Probl. des 2 Kor: SymbBUps 9, ’47, 1–12; JSevenster, Studia Paulina (JdeZwaan Festschr.) ’53, 202–14; EEllis, NTS 6, ’60, 211–24. γ. κόκκος a naked kernel 1 Cor 15:37, where an adj. is applied to a grain of wheat, when it properly belongs to the bodiless soul which is compared to it; s. σπέρματα γ. 1 Cl 24:5 and AcPlCor 2:26.
② pert. to being inadequately clothed, poorly dressed (Demosth. 21, 216; BGU 846, 9; PBrem 63, 30; Job 31:19; Tob 1:17; 4:16) Mt 25:36, 38, 43f; Js 2:15; B 3:3 (Is 58:7).
③ pert. to being lightly clad, without an outer garment, without which a decent person did not appear in public (so Hes., Op. 391, oft. in Attic wr.; PMagd 6, 7 [III b.c.]; 1 Km 19:24; Is 20:2) J 21:7 (Dio Chrys. 55 [72], 1 the ναύτης wears only an undergarment while at work).—Pauly-W. XVI 2, 1541–49; BHHW II 962–65; RAC X 1–52.—B. 324f. M-M. TW.
Note that BDAG places Isaiah 58.7 in the the second sense, "inadequately clothed, poorly dressed," as opposed to the sense of Mark 14.52 "naked, stripped, bare."
Second, I cited the case of Odysseus' beggars disguise in the Odyssey, which describes him as having a tunic, a cloak, and a deerskin over that, and that in this and other cases, beggars clothes were depicted as tattered and filthy, but nothing excluded them having both tunics and mantles.
Stephan has chosen to ignore the counterargument and continue to insist that poor people did not wear layers of clothing in antiquity (which would exclude wearing both a tunic and a mantle).
Saul (1 Sam 19:24), takes of his outer garments (himatia) and is called gymnos; so is Peter in John 21:7:
Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” τὸν ἐπενδύτην διεζώσατο ἦν γυμνός and jumped into the water.
There seems to be only one layer of clothing on these people.
This is a non-sequitur. Stephan is again not differentiating among the various different definitions of gymnos found in standard Greek lexica (e.g., BDAG, TDNT, Liddel-Scott). He seems to be assuming that only the first sense of "naked, stripped, bare" applies. BDAG identifies the use of gymnos in John 21.7 as the third sense, "lightly clad, without an outer garment," and many translators and commentators accept this. But supposing that we take Peter to be literally nude - we do not know if Peter put on all his normal clothing when he saw the Lord and jumped into the water. (I am less familiar with the Samuel case).
In Joan Taylor's study -
Stephan quotes Joan Taylor as though she supports his case for Jesus' nudity, when if fact she disagrees with it.
Taylor: The ambiguity allows for us to imagine a completely naked Jesus with a linen cloth wrapped around his waist, using his only clothing to wash his disciples' feet, but also a Jesus more decently clad with a linen cloth wrapped around him instead of two mantles, keeping his tunic on ... seen, in the other Gospels when Jesus asks the Twelve to go out in his stead around Galilee, he specifically stated, ‘Don’t put on two tunics’ (Mark 6:8; Matt. 9:10; Luke 9:3)
Taylor lays out two possibilities, so Stephan quotes her to show that she allows his theory is imaginable, but then he uses ellipsis to excise her conclusion as to which possibility is more likely:
Taylor: Overall, given there is no explicit mention of Jesus stripping naked, the latter seems preferable. (Joan Taylor, What Did Jesus Look Like? (2018) p. 188).
Taylor again:
As an idea of how Jesus dressed, there is the image of Moses by the burning bush in the third-century Dura Europos synagogue (Wing Panel 1; Figure 75).76 Moses is shown with the same kind of undyed mantle and short tunic we have already found on Jesus in catacomb art and in the baptistery of Dura Europos, though here the distinctive tallith is not as clearly defined as in other Moses scenes there. In imagining Moses, the artist imagined a man people would consider authoritative, charismatic, knowledgeable and philosophically adept. Moses has a slight beard. He has taken off his sock-sandals. If we think of a model for this kind of representation it seems to have been the Jewish sages and Graeco-Roman philosophers of the world in which these paintings were done. It is reasonable to assume that Jesus could be placed in the same category, wearing similar clothing. Matt. 20:16, 19:31; Luke 13:30).
Taylor plainly says Jesus is depicted wearing both a tunic and a mantle, as is Moses in the depiction at Dura Europos.
I don't think it is at all a stretch to imagine that Jesus and his disciples had one layer of clothing on and that when they took over or had taken off them one layer of clothing they were naked underneath.
It may not overtax Stephan's imagination to picture this, but he has not given any adequate argument to permit the conclusion that this is what the author of Mark intended his audience to picture.
Clement says in Can the Rich Man be Saved:
Therefore on hearing those words, the blessed Peter, the chosen, the pre-eminent, the first of the disciples, for whom alone and Himself the Saviour paid tribute, Matthew 17:27 quickly seized and comprehended the saying. And what does he say? Lo, we have left all and followed You. Now if by all he means his own property, he boasts of leaving four oboli perhaps in all, and forgets to show the kingdom of heaven to be their recompense. But if, casting away what we were now speaking of, the old mental possessions and soul diseases, they follow in the Master's footsteps, this now joins them to those who are to be enrolled in the heavens. For it is thus that one truly follows the Saviour, by aiming at sinlessness and at His perfection, and adorning and composing the soul before it as a mirror, and arranging everything in all respects similarly.
There is a similar assumption that the disciples were beggars and penniless - hence Peter's statement in the Question of the Rich Man.
The quotation from Clement is meant to show that the disciples were poor. But then he moves to his faulty assumption that the poor did not wear, or were not pictured as wearing, both a tunic and a mantle.
It is not unthinkable or even controversial to suggest that once chapter 10 ends (which is quite soon after Peter's statement) when they take off their himatia they are considered gymnoi for all intents and purposes. As such Jerome's nudus nudum statement necessarily applies to them too.
It is not unthinkable in the sense that Stephan has been able to think it. I think the only reason it has not caused more controversy in the scholarly literature is that it hasn't been seriously entertained in the first place. On the subject of Jerome's nudus nudum - well Stephan has not actually quoted and discussed it yet, he has merely claimed that it supports his conclusion. I suppose as long as he doesn't actually put forward an argument, the un-made argument will be safe from criticism.
I'm not sure there's much point in continuing to engage with someone who suppresses counter-evidence, as Stephan has with me and with Joan Taylor.