Question for Mythicists: Did Jesus Wear Clothes?

[Secret Alias]

I realize that there is a difference between accepting a story didn't happen/wasn't real and contemplating the attested notion of a god descending from heaven. But I've wondered from time to time - did Jesus wear clothes? The reference to Mary or the woman tugging at the hem of his 'garment' is clearly supernatural. The term in Aramaic is also used of supernatural beings:

I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment (לבושה) was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool

What is the evidence that Jesus was clothed in the gospel?

[Giuseppe]

Herod surely realized that Jesus missed something.

[Secret Alias]

The soldiers put clothing on him.

[lsayre]

Did the rather odd Jesus who wandered the streets of Jerusalem for roughly four years while lamenting his endless diatribe of "woes" (such as “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!”, and “Woe, woe to Jerusalem!”) wear clothes?

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

What is the evidence that Jesus was clothed in the gospel?

Mark 5:27ff; 6:56f & syn. par.

When the woman heard about Jesus, she came up through the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak. 28 For she kept saying, “If only I touch His garments, I will be healed.”

And wherever he went—into villages, towns or countryside—they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.

Mark 15:20

And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him.

[Secret Alias]

When the woman heard about Jesus, she came up through the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak. 28 For she kept saying, “If only I touch His garments, I will be healed.”

Right but clearly the 'garment' is supernatural. Right? You're missing the part about 'power' being contained in the 'garment.'

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Right but clearly the 'garment' is supernatural. Right?

Right! But it only means that the robe also has a symbolic meaning. It doesn't mean that Jesus was naked. It is explicitly said that he wore robes.

[Secret Alias]

Also on Mark 15:

The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. 17 They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. 18 And they began to call out to him, “Hail, king of the Jews!” 19 Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. 20 And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.

The Gospel of Peter however mentions no removal of clothes before the purple is put on:

And they clothed him with purple and sat him on a chair of judgment, saying: 'Judge justly, King of Israel.' And a certain one of them, having brought a thorny crown, put it on the head of the Lord. And others who were standing there were spitting in his face, and others slapped his cheeks. Others were jabbing him with a reed; and some scourged him, saying, 'With such honor let us honor the Son of God.' And they brought two wrongdoers and crucified the Lord in the middle of them. But he was silent as having no pain. And when they had set the cross upright, they inscribed that THIS IS THE KING OF ISRAEL. And having put his garments before him, they divided them up and threw as a gamble for them.

The implication here is slightly different. I would read this as him being stripped of the purple before he was crucified. It is by no means certain but I think it is implied. At the very least the 'dividing up' of his garments is a theme borrowed from Psalm 22 which means he was crucified naked.

As Tertullian writes:

Evidently the statement that his raiment was divided among the soldiers and partly assigned by lot, has been excised by Marcion, because he had in mind the prophecy of the psalm, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots. So he will have to excise the Cross as well, for the same psalm is not silent about it: They pierced my hands and my feet. The whole of what followed is to be read there. Dogs are come about me, the council of the wicked hath laid siege against me: all they that saw me laughed me to scorn: they have spoken with their lips and wagged their heads <saying>, He trusted in God, let him deliver him.i What now of the evidence of his garments? Have the benefit of your falsifying: Christ's garments are the whole psalm. See also how the powers of heaven are shaken: it was their Lord who was dying. If his rival had been in distress the whole heaven would have blossomed out with lights, the sun would have leaped up with his rays, the day would have preferred to remain bright, gladly looking on while Marcion's Christ was crucified. These proofs would have been at my disposal even if they had not been prophesied. I will clothe the heaven with darkness, says Isaiah.

Marcion clearly had something else. But there is undoubtedly the intimation that a naked man was robed and then disrobed before being crucified again naked or alternatively (less likely) that he had clothes, his being stripped of them before receiving the purple went unmentioned and then he was crucified wearing the purple while his original clothes stood in a pile echoing a Psalm which originally foretold a naked suffering servant.

[Secret Alias]

Justin, Tertullian and others certainly understood that Jesus was crucified naked because Psalm 22 portrayed a naked suffering servant. In case you want to belabor the implication of Psalm 22:

Conceive of the Lord Jesus as a helpless, unarmed, naked man, cast into the midst of a herd of infuriated wild bulls. http://www.romans45.org/spurgeon/treasury/ps022.htm

[billd89]

The soldiers put clothing on him.

The Garment of Shame? 'Somebody told me, you had a boyfriend ...'

“A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind” (Mark 14:51–52).

Has anyone here read this odd book, to recommend? It's not been mentioned... Paul LeValley's Seekers of The Naked Truth: Collected Writings on the Gymnosophists and Related Shramana Religions [2018].



Musical diversion: