What Would Jesus Wear? Dress in the Synoptic Gospels
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WHAT WOULD JESUS WEAR? DRESS IN THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS by Erin Kathleen Vearncombe A dissertation submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Department for the Study of Religion University of Toronto © Copyright by Erin Kathleen Vearncombe 2014 What Would Jesus Wear? Dress in the Synoptic Gospels Erin Kathleen Vearncombe Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Department for the Study of Religion University of Toronto 2014 ABSTRACT For early followers of Jesus, the body was not a “fixed” entity, yet bodily fixity was a constant concern. The primary way to “fix” the body, or to negotiate and locate identity, was through dress. Dress in the ancient Mediterranean context enabled a different kind of embodied knowledge than contemporary conventions of dress, and in order to understand passages in the synoptic gospels that use items of dress in the flow of their narrative, these garments must be examined in context. The first chapter of this dissertation outlines a methodology of dressed bodies that integrates bodily experience with social practice. This methodology provides the framework for subsequent discussion. The second chapter examines the preponderance of cloaks in the gospels, particularly the gospel of Mark, from a material perspective, arguing that cloaks are not symbolic of inner or other meanings, but are constitutive of meaning in and of themselves. The third chapter focuses on absent clothes and naked bodies, specifically the absent clothes of the disciples according to Jesus’ instructions for their travel and work. Jesus commands the disciples to go naked in a dressed society, to identify with a typically rejected state. Finally, chapter four focuses on Mark 14:51-52 and the mysterious flight of the naked man into the night, arguing that it not so mysterious after all: the young man, losing his cloak at the violent scene of Jesus’ arrest, leaves it behind in order to flee, joining many other ancient ii men and women who lost their cloaks in similar situations. When the realities of ancient dress are taken into account, occurrences of dress in the gospels make new sense. The gospel writers use dress as the material means to concretize the identity and qualities of Jesus and his followers. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am most privileged to have had the opportunity to work with Dr. John S. Kloppenborg. He is the best doctoral advisor a graduate student could ever hope to have: supportive through difficult times and challenges; quick with detailed, constructive feedback; eager to provide opportunities for professional development; and always able to hone in on that one weak point in the paper you were hoping you had hidden well enough. He has led me from places of anxiety, insecurity or bafflement to places of confidence and discovery. His balanced, thoughtful direction has provided a map, but has left enough space to ensure that I learn to use that map and find the destination myself. I would like to offer my most sincere thanks to Dr. Kloppenborg for working with me through two graduate degrees; working with him has been an honour. Thanks are due in many places: to the members of my committee, Dr. Pamela Klassen and Dr. Judith Newman, for your feedback and support; to Dr. Alison Keith and Dr. Gildas Hamel, reviewers for my final oral examination; to the members of the Context Group for reading versions of two of these chapters, especially Eric Stewart for his response; to the program chairs of the Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament unit of the Society of Biblical Literature, for the opportunity to present this work at SBL Annual Meetings; to the members of the Colloquium for the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity group at the Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, especially Alicia Batten and Callie Callon for responding to my work; to Amy E. Fisher and Maria Dasios for their help with proof-reading and general confidence- boosting; to Richard Ascough and Zeba Crook for their ongoing support; to family, to special friends, and to Pax. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction . .1 Chapter 1: Is the Body More than Clothing? . 11 Chapter 2: Meaning “Uncloaked”: The Himation in the Gospels . 64 Chapter 3: Absent Clothes, Naked Bodies . 116 Chapter 4: Cloak and Dagger: The Special Case of Mark 14:51-52 . 168 Conclusion . 195 Bibliography . .204 v INTRODUCTION The show ran for ten years, so it must have been popular. The Learning Channel’s What Not to Wear was a “reality” television show airing in the United States and Canada from 2003 – 2013, based on a UK series of the same name.1 What Not to Wear pulled in ratings for a decade, yet every single episode was the same. Two cranky New York City fashion stylists, working alongside a team of glamorous hairdressers and makeup artists, transform a hapless, drab participant, usually nominated for the show without their knowledge or consent, from ugly, sad duckling into graceful, happy swan according to the stylists’ “rules” of fashion (detail at the narrowest part of the body to draw attention and emphasize narrowness; v-shaped necklines elongate the neck; one can work with the shape of the body through dress instead of just accepting it). No one leaves unhappy, untransformed; no one leaves with frumpy sweatpants still in tow. Makeover participants boast the same delighted refrain: “I finally feel like my outside matches my inside,” or some variation of, “Now my appearance fits my self, matches me.” As What Not to Wear’s fundamental theme, this sentiment has resonated with audiences. The “makeover” as a genre appears in countless iterations, but the premise seems to remain the same: appearance should match personality, should match “self.” The outside should “look like” the inside. This equivalence of outside and inside as expressed on TLC’s What Not to Wear is relatively harmless compared to what Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wissinger call the “aesthetic labour” of fashion models. Aesthetic labour, defined as “particular 1 The US show also aired in Spain under the title ¡No te lo pongas! (“Don’t put it on!”); in Portugal and Brazil it was titled Esquadrão da Moda (“Fashion Police”). 2 Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wissinger, “Keeping Up Appearances: Aesthetic Labour in the Fashion Modeling Industries of London and New York,” The Sociological Review 54.4 (2006): 774 – 94. Entwistle 1 ‘embodied capacities and attributes’ … that enable employees to ‘look good and sound right’ for the job,” involves the cultivation of embodied dispositions that allow one to be accepted into and succeed in a workplace.2 This labour could involve a relatively simple action such as a woman learning how to walk in high-heeled shoes or hiring a personal stylist, or become extreme, as in the case of fashion modeling.3 Models must actively turn their bodies into commercial products, products that must be sold in five minutes or less, that present an entire commodified “package” of body plus image, or body plus an interesting, sellable “self.” Entwistle and Wissinger write, “[t]he aesthetic worker does not merely manufacture an aesthetic surface, but projects and produces a particular ‘self,’ in the form of ‘personality,’ as part of their aesthetic labour and… the implications of this labour are physical and emotional.”4 The maintenance of body as self and product is constant, as models could run into potential employers at any time: “the freelance aesthetic labourer cannot walk away from the product, which is their entire embodied self.”5 This embodied self includes dress as a vital component, dress which includes items of clothing as well as hairdressing, skin (tattoos, piercings), cosmetics, nails, etc. Despite the silliness of the television program and the extremity of the fashion industry, the examples draw attention to a current focus of research on dress: dress as embodied practice. Dress is not simply communicative or representative of identity, but is constitutive of identity. Far from being superficial or frivolous, dress is a key element in 2 Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wissinger, “Keeping Up Appearances: Aesthetic Labour in the Fashion Modeling Industries of London and New York,” The Sociological Review 54.4 (2006): 774 – 94. Entwistle and Wissinger here quote from C. Warhurst and D. Nickson, Looking Good, Sounding Right: Style Counselling in the New Economy (London: The Industrial Society, 2001), 13, 2. 3 On “power dressing,” or “dressing for success” in the workplace, see Joanne Entwistle, “ ‘Power Dressing’ and the Construction of the Career Woman,” 208 – 19 in Fashion Theory: a reader, ed. Malcolm Barnard (Routledge Student Readers; London and New York: Routledge, 2007). 4 Entwistle and Wissinger, “Keeping up appearances,” 777. 5 Entwistle and Wissinger, “Keeping up appearances,” 791. 2 the negotiation of self and social world. Defined as any modification or supplementation of the body used in social interaction and the orientation of identity, dress is significant across social and historical contexts; every known human culture structures and is structured by certain conventions of dress.6 Dress is something that individuals choose to express personality or even passing whims, though this choice is limited within a prescribed range of agency. Social, political and economic norms influence individual behaviour, and dress is also partly the expression, through repeated practice, of these norms. Joanne Entwistle states: “dress is an embodied practice, a situated bodily practice that is embedded within the social world and fundamental to microsocial order…. individuals/subjects are active in their engagement with the social and …dress is thus actively produced through routine practices directed towards the body.”7 Dress is so essential to our bodily experience of being-in-the-world that we do not often think about why we get dressed in the way that we do every morning.