Jesus' Seamless Tunic: A Symbol of Unity
Stepping into the Wardrobe of Jesus
In the Gospels, we are told very little about what Jesus wore.
Every so often, there is a fleeting glimpse into his wardrobe: the ‘edge’ of his cloak, the disciples’ Cynic-like dress, his parodic rental of kingly robes. Yet when it comes to detailed description, almost everything is left to the imagination.
That is, until we come one of the final scenes of the Fourth Gospel.
In John’s crucifixion, we are afforded an extended look at Jesus’ clothing. Like the Synoptic Gospels - Matthew, Mark and Luke - John tells us that Jesus’ garments were divided on the cross. But unlike the Synoptics, John unpacks this division:
‘Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his clothes (ta himatia) and divided them into four parts, to every soldier a part, and the tunic (kai ton chitona). Now the coat was without seam, woven whole from the top down.’
What is this mysterious tunic? And why does John describe it in such detail?
The most immediate explanation is that John was soberly unpacking a biblical prophecy. In the Greek text of Psalm 22, which John cites a verse later, the righteous sufferer has his clothes (plural) divided and lots are cast for his (singular) garment (v.19 LXX).
It is true that this passage illustrates the fulfilment of scripture. Yet such fulfilment does not explain why John has described the garment in the precise way he has. Nor does it explain what this garment may have evoked to his readers.
Ecclesiastical Unity
One of the oldest interpretations of the tunic was as a symbol of Church unity. See, for example, Cyprian of Carthage:
‘… So truly because Christ’s people cannot be torn apart, his tunic, ‘woven without seam,’ and holding fast together, has not become divided amongst its owners. The description ‘unable to be split (united, linked together),’ reveals the concord that holds together the unity of our people who have put on Christ. By the sign and seal of the tunic Christ has declared the unity of his Church.’ (De Unitate, Ch. 7.)
Despite centuries of interpreting the robe in this way, several modern exegetes have turned a critical eye towards this reading:
For example, Craig Blomberg follows Douglas Moo in asserting that “John makes nothing of this detail and neither should we.”1
Meanwhile, Craig Keener and J. Michaels argue that the ecclesiastical interpretation falters on the ground that the tunic - the symbol of unity - is taken away from him.2
Metaphorical Madness
In reading the literature during my doctoral research, it struck me that those most inclined to disavow the tunic’s symbolic meaning are almost always American conservative evangelicals.
Why are these readers most inclined to divest the tunic of its symbolic meaning?
I suspect, in part, there is a concern among these scholars to see the tunic as a glimmer of the author’s “eyewitness memory.” To give it a firm symbolic meaning might pose a threat to the firm conviction that the Gospel is an eyewitness text.
But there is another concern which is more relatable: a fear that an allegorical interpretation is a pandora’s box, the opening of which would permit all manner of symbolic fancy to pervade our interpretation of the Gospel.
Leon Morris betrays this concern. He opines that the ecclesiastical interpretation is a "trifle fanciful.” And he immediately draws our attention to Cyril of Alexandria’s (symbolic) interpretation of the tunic as the Virgin Birth, which is rather fanciful.
Yet neither issue should concern us. There is no reason why we cannot maintain (with the majority of commentators) that the Gospel is sourced by an eyewitness and see such details as pregnant with symbolic meaning, if we are warranted to do so.
There is also no good reason why tenuous symbolic readings should preclude strong ones. Indeed, the very fact that the Virgin Birth is judged as a weak rendering of the seamless tunic implies a set of criteria by which it could be judged to be poor.
The only question, then, is whether there is a strong case to consider the seamless tunic as a symbol of the unity of the Church. Accepting that some symbolic readings can be weaker than others, is there any good symbolic reading of the tunic?
In the rest of this post, I shall argue that the reading is stronger than many think.
Re-Enchanting the Seamless Tunic
Three arguments stand out for reading the tunic as a symbol of Unity.3
First, Unity is a theme in the Gospel of John.
Just a few chapters before we are introduced to Jesus’ tunic, Jesus explicitly prays for the Unity of the Church. He asks that ‘they would be one, just as you and I are one,’ asking God to guarantee the unity of the Church and future believers.
This ties into a theme of Unity throughout the Gospel: Jesus has already claimed that there will be one flock and one shepherd (10:17); that he and the Father are one (10:30); that he would die so that he would gather all of the children of God who were scattered (11:52); that when he is ‘lifted up’ he would gather all to himself (12:32).
In Jesus’ tunic, we find three different ways in which the tunic is a Unity: (1) it is seamless; (2) it is woven all the way through; and (3) it is not divided by the soldiers.
Second, the fact that the tunic is woven ‘from above’ answers Jesus’ prayer for Unity.
If the tunic is a symbol of the undivided church, we have an explanation for why it is woven ‘from above,’ namely, that the Church is undivided because of God.
One might riposte that John is merely describing the structural design of the tunic.
Yet readers of the Greek will notice that the term ‘from above’ (anōthen) is used twice before in John - and in both instances, it has both a symbolic as well a literal meaning.4 This tips off readers to a symbolic rendering in this instance, as well.
The idea that God is the one who, ‘from above’, assures the unity of the garment, parallels Jesus’ prayer to the Father to guarantee the unity of the Church.
Third, the four Gentile soldiers plausibly symbolise the Church.
Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, we are explicitly told that soldiers divided Jesus’ clothes into four parts, implying that there are four soldiers.
Why has John told us that there are four soldiers? On a literal plane, Craig Keener notes that four soldiers was half of a contubernium, a standard Roman unit. Such a number was typically dispatched for a task such as crucifixion.5
Still, one suspects, once again, that some symbolism is also at play in the soldiers. The number four is often used as a symbol of completeness in biblical texts. We might think of the four winds of the four winds of the earth.
There are two reasons why I think that four is probably functioning as a symbol of completeness here as well. To start, John loves numeric symbolism. He has already used it twice in the Gospel, with six water jars and one-hundred and fifty-three fish.6
But perhaps even more importantly, Jesus has already promised that when he is ‘lifted up’ - an image of the Crucifixion - he ‘will draw all people to myself’ (12:32).
Who are ‘all’ these people who are drawn to Christ?
They are surely the four soldiers, the whole Church, who each have a share or part (meros) in Christ (cf. 13:8). The seamless tunic slots into this interpretation nicely, representing the symbolic Unity which will be preserved among them.
Finally, other garments are used in similar texts to symbolise Unity.
If John is using Jesus’ seamless tunic as a symbol of the Unity of the Church, he is not alone in using an untorn garment as a symbol of Unity.
To take a scriptural precedents, in 1 Kings the prophet Adijah tears his new garment as a sign of the Lord’s tearing apart of Israel (11:30).
And to offer a contemporary example, Philo provides an exegesis of a High Priestly garment as a symbol of the Logos, which holds all things together in Unity.
The idea, then, that John is here using a garment as a symbol of Unity is attested both in scriptural and a contemporary Second-Temple Jewish source.
A Seamless Interpretation…?
Let us now put the picture together:
Jesus’ seamless tunic - emphasised in three ways as undivided - serves as a symbol of the Unity of the Church, a Unity which is wrought ‘from above’, in answer to Jesus’ prayer just moments before his death. This tunic is thus undivided by the four soldiers, representing the worldwide Church, all of whom are called and have a ‘part’ in Jesus when he is ‘lifted up’, as Jesus had formerly prophesied (12:32).
The strengths of this reading are that it: (1) makes sense against John’s theme of unity; (2) explains the threefold emphasis on unity of the garment; (3) makes sense of the term, anōthen, which always has a symbolic as well as a literal meaning; (4) makes best sense of John’s use of numbers; and (5) has a precedent in relevant texts.
Wonderfully, we can also see that it makes sense of the primary datum which commentators take to count against the view: namely, that the garment is taken away from Jesus. For on this view, the garment is taken away so that it can be undivided in the symbol of the worldwide Church: the four soldiers.
The interpretation may not - like any metaphor - be strictly seamless. We might prefer, for example, to see Jews and Gentiles at the cross, when Jesus is ‘lifted up’, or find a confession of faith the soldiers (á la Mark 15). Perhaps we would also like a more explicit verbal link to unity, earlier in the Gospel.
Yet there are various ways to return to a theme, and it is not unlike John to convey his meaning ironically. To paraphrase another evangelist, the troop ‘know not what they do’ in crucifying Jesus and unwittingly preserving a symbol of the Church’s unity.
So where does this leave the interpretation? Not all will be persuaded. Yet I hope to have shown that the reading is not as implausible as many have seen it.
Before we make a final judgement, however, we need to take a look at another symbolic interpretation of the tunic: the idea that Jesus is wearing high priestly dress.
Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel (Leicester, UK: Inter-Varsity Press, 2001), 251; Douglas J. Moo, The Old Testament in the Gospel Passion Narratives (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1983), 255-256.
J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), 953; Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic, 2012), 1140.
In what follows, I am largely indebted to De la Potterie, “La tunique sans couture, symbole du Christ grand prêtre?,” Bib 60 (1979): 255-269.
Jesus teaches Nicodemus that he must be born ἄνωθεν, ‘from above’ (3:3, 7), following which he claims that ‘the one who has come from above (ὁ ἄνωθεν) is above all’ (3:31). Jesus uses the same term in his conversation with Pilate, when he claims that Pilate has no authority which has not been given to him ‘from above’ (ἄνωθεν) (19:11). It is striking that in both of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus and with Pilate, ἄνωθεν is used with a plain (literal) and a deeper (spiritual) meaning. Whilst Nicodemus thinks that being born ἄνωθεν means being physically born again and Jesus’ words to Pilate may be construed as Pilate gaining authority ‘from above,’ by his Roman superiors, the phrase has a spiritual meaning in both instances. Nicodemus must be born spiritually, and Pilate has been given his power by God, who in unity with Jesus is in control of Jesus’ death.
James L. Jones, “The Roman Army” in The Catacombs and the Colosseum: The Roman Empire as the Setting of Primitive Christianity, 187–217, eds Stephen Benko andJohn J. O’Rourke. (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson, 1971), 193-194 cited in Keener, John, 1139.
On these numbers, see, for example, C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978), 191; R. Alan Culpepper, "“Designs for the Church in the Imagery of John 21:21-24” in Imagery in the Gospel of John: Terms, Forms, Themes, and Theology of Johannine Figurative Language, eds. Jòrg Frey, Jan G. Van Der Watt, Ruben Zimmermann (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 369-402 (386-402).