What did Jesus wear?
And why does it matter?

What if the image of Jesus you’ve always carried… isn’t historically accurate—and what his clothing actually looked like could completely change how you understand his identity, message, and the world he lived in?

If asked to imagine Jesus, most people will produce a similar set of characteristics: a beard; long, flowing, uncovered hair; a plain, long-sleeved, ankle-length tunic; possibly an additional garment wrapped around his body. But does this typical image reflect the historical figure and what he would have worn? If not, what would he have worn, and why should we think about this question at all?

Clothing, how you arrange your clothing on your body, what you accessorize with, and how you style your hair reveal aspects of your social and cultural location: your wealth, belief system, gender, marital status, occupation, relationship to power, political ideology. More precisely, your clothing and dress communicates what you want others to think about you relative to this list of characteristics. Clothing tells the rest of the world something about you before any words are spoken. In other words, it is an intimate form of communication. The communicative power of dress was understood by Jesus, Paul, the authors of the Gospels, and by the earliest Christians.

For this reason, studying their clothing and dress behaviour provides invaluable insight into statements they made, behaviours they engaged in, and their broader social and cultural contexts. This lecture will look at Jewish clothing and dress behaviour during the Second Temple Period, exploring what this aspect of material culture can tell us about Jesus, his compatriots, and what it meant to "live Jewishly" in the Greco-Roman world.

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