L2W,
Thanks for your response and use of Scriptures.
These were the passages that I too had always heard that taught us to "stay clothed."
But that's why I used the phrase "serious and honest" about studying this from the Scriptures... when studied seriously and truly honestly (being willing for the passages to NOT support our own presuppositions), I found that they failed to support any sort of nudity taboo.
Let me illustrate... by commenting on each of the scriptures you referenced.
Exodus 28:42
You shall make for them linen undergarments to cover their naked flesh. They shall reach from the hips to the thighs;
This is a command that the passage itself limits to the Aaronic priestly line. Not all Israel had to follow it... not all the Levites, even. And interestingly, it
only applied to the Aaronic priests
when they were serving at the altar. That's clear from Exodus 28:1-4. It is reiterated in Exodus 28:40-43.
So... this is
not a passage that teaches about clothing for all people at all time... it was just for the Aaronic priests and only while they were serving at the altar.
Exodus 20:26
And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it.’
This one was more general (applied to everyone), but when you ask some "why?" questions, the purpose and meaning is more difficult to nail down.
If this were a particular rejection of
any exposure of the body, then ALL steps should have been banned. Yet, it was only steps up to an altar. Why? The answer has to be something that is about the Altar and what's going on there.
And then, there's the meaning of the word "nakedness." Why would that word be used when the people weren't actually naked?
Let me address the second question first... The Hebrew word,
ervah is the word translated here as "nakedness." I've thoroughly studied this word's usage throughout the OT... and the consistent usage of it is that it's not just "simple exposure" of body parts, but also the
active usage of the exposed body parts... and that usage is usually
sexual.
Now the first question... why was the "steps" prohibition only applied to an altar? I think the answer here lies in the fact that the nations around Israel at that time engaged in orgiastic idol worship. God gave Israel a number of laws designed to contrast their worship of YHWH with the false worship of their neighbors.
So, the most compelling answer to the "why" questions is that God did not want the worship by lay people (or the priests) to even hint at being like the orgiastic worship of their neighbors.
This means therefore that these passages are
not about some sort of hostility that God holds towards the exposed human form, but about the purity of His people's worship.
1 Corinthians 12:23
And on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty,
First of all here, the word translated "unpresentable" doesn't actually mean that... the word is
aschema which really just means "ugly" for all practical purposes (
a =
not or
bad;
schema = design or
form). So... some body parts are not as visually attractive as others... we can all acknowledge that. And, to Paul's point, those "ugly" body parts have become all the more important to use because of their function.
But if you would suggest that this passage defends or commands the covering of those "ugly" body parts, then you'd also have to conclude that Paul is teaching that there are people in the body of Christ (the church) which also should be "hidden" and not acknowledged publicly. But
that notion is
exactly contrary to what Paul is teaching! He's actually suggesting that we bestow
greater honor (and acknowledgement/visibility) on people who would not get it naturally as a result of their function within the church!
So... this passage
cannot be teaching that certain body parts are "unpresentable" or must be covered.
Revelation 16:15
(“Behold, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!”)
The really odd thing about this passage is that rather than proving that public nudity is wrong, it actually proves that public nudity was pretty normal when Jesus spoke these words.
You see, people typically owned only a very few garments... many times, only one (and Jesus told people that if they had two, they should be willing to share with someone who had
none). And in order to not soil that one garment they had, when working in the fields (as in Jesus' word picture here), they typically worked nude while doing the hot and sweaty work. That way, they could just jump into a stream or river at the end of their work day, air dry, and put their clean clothes back on.
It evidently was also common enough that they didn't even bother taking their clothes with them to the fields where they were working... or else Jesus' words would make no sense. Why would Jesus need to tell people to keep their clothes with them while in the field if it was not pretty common for people to be working in the field without them?
It's also worth noting that the translation you quoted is adding something to the text when it says "keeping his garments
ON"... because the original text just says "keeping his garments"... meaning "keeping them close by" rather than back at the house where the thief is ransacking their belongings. Jesus was
not telling them that they had to work clothed, but that it was wiser to have your clean clothes close by while working naked! It wasn't a problem to be "exposed," it was a problem to get caught unprepared by the thief (THE point Jesus was trying to make) and for that to be obvious to everyone else because you're stuck wandering around without any clothes when you were
not working and when most everyone else
was clothed. Jesus' point?
Don't be unprepared. It was NOT a teaching about the morality of nudity.
I'm sorry for the long responses, but it so happens that these passages have been misused for so long to promote a nudity-taboo that it takes a bit more than "but that passage doesn't
really mean what you think it means." to make the case.
Oddly enough, it wasn't just these four passages that fell apart under close scrutiny and failed to support a biblical "nudity-taboo," but
EVERY passage
ever used to promote a biblical "nudity-taboo" teaching fell apart in the same way when subjected to honest interpretational scrutiny.
And one more point... it's very important to go beyond just the English translations of the Scriptures and look at the original language words, because the English translations sometimes introduce a bias of what the translator
thinks it means, rather than just what the original text says.
I've done a paper on the word
ervah in Hebrew that you can review if you like... it deals more fully with both of the first 2 passages you mentioned.
Nakedness in the OT
I've also done a paper that deals with last two passages... it exposed how modern translations have great difficulty in transparently translating passages that have anything to do with nudity unless it seems to portray an antagonism towards it. It is interesting to observe that the KJV is a lot less squeamish than the more recent translations.
Squeamish Translating
Read them and see if you think I'm not being faithful the the actual meaning of the Scriptural texts. If you feel I'm in error, I'm happy to hear any correction.
David