(17) The Next Quest For The Historical Jesus: Textiles, Sustenance, and Economy by Janelle Peters
In Matthew we read:
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?[ 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. (Matthew 6:25-34)
One of the important things Peters looks at in the ancient world of Jesus is clothing. She writes:
Although not necessarily part of the historical Jesus’s intention when giving the saying not to worry, clothes indicated social identity in antiquity, and the earliest stories of Christ followers make use of clothing to illustrate heavenly order. The woman with hemorrhages is able to touch Jesus’s cloak tassels in order to pull power from his body. Other healed individuals evidently also go after the cloak of Jesus, and they receive healing for their initiative through faith. The transfiguration changes the robes of Jesus into both elite and heavenly robes, giving Jesus a new identity like Christians “put on” a new identity at baptism. Believers may give items such as extra cloaks as alms, indicating the value of clothing and the limited nature of material wealth among early Jesus followers. Just before Jesus’s crucifixion, individuals run around naked (Mark 14:51–52), prefiguring perhaps Jesus’s unwinding of the burial cloths that bound him in the tomb. Soldiers at Jesus’s execution gamble over his clothes. Possible angels appear in his tomb fully clothed after his resurrection.
The image of the naked young man in Mark is one of the core uses of imagery regarding the resurrection. Just as Jesus is executed as a criminal who is later deemed righteous through God resurrecting him (“was raised” in Paul means something God is doing to Jesus, not something Jesus is doing to himself), Jesus’s followers are as guilty as the naked Adam in the eyes of the world (all fled at the arrest), yet the naked young man reappears in the tomb clothed in glory and vindicated through Jesus’ resurrection.
Bibliography
Peters, Janelle. Textiles, Sustenance, and Economy in Crossley, James; Keith, Chris. The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus (pp 477-494). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.