Thread by @DrKatieTurner

If you are looking at any aspect of the New Testament in relation to Jewish dress behaviour in the Second Temple / NT period and you're not engaging with recent scholarship on this topic, you're in danger of replicating BAD tropes.

So, a hopefully helpful research 🧵...
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Loucille Roussin's "Archaeological Remains & The Evidence from the Mishnah" (1994)
+
Shaye Cohen's "Those Who Say They Are Jews and Are Not" (1993)
are two great places to start, but don't stop there.
2/12

Read also Dafna Shlezinger‐Katsman's chapter on 'Clothing' in the Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine
+
Orit Shamir's chapter on 'Dress' in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible & Archaeology.
In fact, read anything & everything by Shamir.
3/12

And:
-Steven Fine's "How do you Know a Jew When You See One?" (2013)
-Jonathan Roth's "Distinguishing Jewishness in Antiquity" (2005)
-and my, "The Shoe is the Sign: Costuming Brian & Dressing the First Century" (2014)
4/12

Definitely don't neglect @profjoantaylor's "What Did Jesus Look Like?" (chs 8+11 especially!), or her chapter on Mary Magdalene in the brand new, "Dress in Mediterranean Antiquity".

There you can also find Joshua Schwartz's "Clothes Make the Jew"

bloomsbury.com/uk/dress-in-me…
5/12

Make sure that you spend some time learning about the differences between Roman dress (and the cultural ideas expressed through their dress behaviour) and Greek dress. Although there was a lot of cross-over during the 1st century, there were important distinctions as well.
6/12

Veiling was one such notable dress practice: w/ origins in the E. Med & Levant, many varying expressions & differing meanings.
On this topic, see: @LloydLlewJ's "Aphrodite's Tortoise". Although it covers an earlier period, it is essential reading.

bloomsbury.com/uk/aphrodites-…
7/12

Be cautious in your use of the Talmud (some of the above-listed sources aren't always perfect on this). It cannot be relied on for info on 2nd Temple dress behaviour, esp. not the Bavli.
My chapter, "Textual Problems in Textile Studies" covers this: bloomsbury.com/uk/dress-in-me…
8/12

Please bear in mind that just bc *some* Jews today set themselves apart in their dress, doesn't mean all Jewish ppl do, or have always done so.
In antiquity, Jews were largely indistinguishable from their Greco-Roman neighbours (I'll do another thread on this!)
9/12

But also, Jews then (as now) were not homogenous. Clothing & dress behaviour are intimate expressions of one’s identity (culture, gender, theology, socio-economic status, etc) and we may dress to reflect specific ideologies or belief.
10/12

Jewish sub-group identity could be reflected in clothing choices (using a Greco-Roman dress framework). See:
Eiber Tigchelaar, The White Dress of the Essenes and the Pythagoreans (2003)
+
Ch 1 of Catherine Hezser's excellent "Rabbinic Body Language"
brill.com/view/title/343…
11/12

Clothing is central to the human experience. It’s important stuff + worth the historian’s time.
On Jewish dress in antiquity, there’s great scholarship to get stuck in to, some amazing material remains to explore, + a lot of misconceptions to over-turn.

Happy reading!

12/12

An addendum:
Most familiar Jewish dress traditions (eg. covering one's head) developed centuries after the 2nd Temple period, in response to / bc of:
-diaspora (as evidenced in the Bavli)
-Christian (or Islamic) hegemony
-modernity + the Enlightenment.
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When contemporary Jewish dress is projected back onto the Jews of antiquity, one constructs a Jewish culture frozen in time / stagnant / incapable of evolving--a very orientalist framing (so maybe read Edward Said also).
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