Thread by @DrKatieTurner

Yesterday, I came across this infographic made for National Geographic, as part of the promotion for Killing Jesus (2015).
Here's why everything on it is wrong.
A 🧵

Let's start w "Pharisees":
"Pharisees were afforded the luxury of wearing fine fabrics like silk and linen."
"Afforded the luxury"? What does this mean? Pharisees weren't paid a salary from some central body, nor were they given permission to wear things prohibited to others.
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As for silk:
Of 1000s of Roman-era textiles discovered in Israel (& surrounding area), *none* are silk. Only a very tiny minority of ppl in the Greco-Roman world wore silk.
And linen: While linen could be a luxury item (w/ the right skill) it wasn't necessarily so.
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Here are some textile remains, just for fun!
1. Red tunic sheet (1/2 tunic) with blue clavi (vertical stripes), Nahal Hever, c. 134/5 CE
2. Child's under-tunic, linen Nahal Hever, c. 134/5 CE
3. Linen garment fragments, incl. a button, Qumran, c. 1st C
4/

Some more:
1. Tunic fragment (red wool w/ light blue bands), Masada, c. 70 CE
2. Tunic sheets (undyed wool w/ purple clavi), Nahal Hever, c. 134/5 CE
3. Tunic fragment (undyed wool), Dura Europos: artgallery.yale.edu/collections/ob…
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The 'pharisee' depicted isn't wearing anything remotely accurate. Dark clothing was reserved for mourning + strikingly few examples survive from the period. There is *no* evidence men covered their heads + they certainly didn't veil...
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(veiling was assoc. w/ women, wantonness, + effeminacy).
In general, Jewish ppl during Jesus' time dressed in a Greco-Roman manner: Wide, sleeveless tunics (falling below the knee for men, longer for women). Rectangular mantles (himation / pallium) wrapped over top.
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White was most fashionable + wool was the most common textile fibre (by a mile).
Garments found in the Judean desert match representations in art (both non-Jewish and Jewish), including the clothing depicted in the spectacular Dura-Europos synagogue.

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Next, Roman Officers: "A colored cloak, or chlamys, was part of a Roman officer's uniform, though not nec limited to military."
Kinda. Officers wore a paludamentum (as on this bust of Commodus, Getty 92SA48), similar to a chlamys.
But that's NOT what the Roman is wearing.
9/

The man in the image seems to be wearing a toga (or a pallium) over a tunic. The tunic is correct in its construction, but wrong in decoration. No border decoration at the collar during the 1st century.
& while the red colour is ok, the main tunic colour is...not.
10/

Lower Class: "Commoners typically wore simple tunics made from undyed wool."
Look at all that fabric!! Do you know how much time/money it would take to construct this? Typically, the more money, the more fabric. Enslaved ppl + other poor labourers wore short tunics.
11/

In this fresco from the Dura-Europos synagogue, the figures carrying items wear tunics shorter that the elite men + are w/o any wrapped outerwear (tunics only).
This is consistent w elsewhere in the Roman world. As in this Roman fresco of two enslaved men preparing a feast.
12/

Undyed wool was worn by everybody + didn't always = poor clothing.
The elites preferred white. The whiter + finer the wool, the more expensive. Undyed wool could be made white w/o expensive bleaching, allowing lower classes to emulate elite fashions. (Juvenal III.175-8)

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Elite: "Only the elite could afford dyes for colourful outerwear."
This is the other side of the "Lower Class" coin, and equally wrong. While the elite could certainly afford more long-lasting dyes + a wider range of colours, dyes were not restricted to elites.
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Finally, "No matter gender or social class, the ancient people of this time typically wore leather sandals."

Well, yeah, ok, I'll give them that one.
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It's incredibly common for films/tv to market their depictions of the biblical world as "accurate", supported by "historical research". But they never are.

I genuinely want to know what research they think they're doing, because I can't figure it out.

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Tl;dr Jewish ppl of the Greco-Roman world (Judea + Galilee included!) dressed in a Greco-Roman fashion. Getting Jewish clothing right, means getting Greco-Roman fashion right. Killing Jesus, and NatGeo's little infographic, failed on both.
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If you want to learn more about first-century clothing + why it matters, here's a helpful thread I made earlier:

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And if you want to take a crack at one of the other infographics they made, here they are...each one as flawed as the last:
beutlerink.com/nat-geo

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