Fabric

 

Oddly, historians don’t make much note of fabrics and garments.  Often when archeological sites are excavated, the cloth is rotted away.  But we know that clothing is highly important in human history. Neanderthals wore only animal skins loosely and thus could populate only southern Europe.  They were displaced by our ancestors. Egyptian slaves and poor classes worked nude in the hot desert climate.  But linen from flax was discovered.  The fibers are easy to extract and are some of the strongest known, thus allowing the development of thin, airy fabrics as well as ropes, a huge step in technology.  Hebrews and Mesopotamians raised sheep for wool, good for making clothes to protect against the weather. Hebrews were skilled in weaving and dying (think Joseph’s coat of many colors) and lived at the crossroads of Egypt and Mesopotamia, making them not only strategic but also rich, dealing in prized fabric, becoming highly skilled at commerce (think of Jesus’ many stories about money and business). Cloth was the economy’s backbone. Jesus’ tunic (inner garment) was woven without a seam (special loom used in Galilee near Nazareth) hence was so valuable the soldiers cast lots over it. So important was clothing to the Galilean economy that what you wore (or didn’t) indicated staus, mental state, spiritual state, and is an important part of the Bible.  The Demoniac that Jesus exorcised, was naked when possessed, but after his healing was noted by all when he was clothed.  The prodigal son is given the best robe and clean clothes indicating acceptance of the father. The guy who showed up at the wedding without a wedding garment immediately appalled the king. Yet the story doesn’t tell us what he lacked.  Have you ever heard a sermon explain it?

            Fabric changed history and affects our language. We ‘text’. If someone collapses mentally, they ‘unravel’. Stories are ‘pieced together’; lives ‘hanging by a thread.’ The last ice age ended only about 15,000 years ago. Fabric has been found that dates to 32,000 years ago. Dyed cloth as old as 20,000 years ago has been found. The Nazca lived in desert Peru and died out 2500 years ago, leaving mysterious massive drawings in the desert.  Wild speculation abounded until their magnificent colorful weaving was found. The cloth and laces prove that the figures were religious pathways inscribed in the desert. If you want to sew skins together to stay warm, you will need a good, tough needle made from sharpened bone as the Inuits do. The Egyptians were first to make widespread fabrics from linen but we have 8000 year old Indus Valley wool.  The Vikings probably had their breakthrough technology in becoming adept at wool.  Wool has micro-fibers (40 microns in Merino sheep), round with scales that interlock shedding water effectively.  Vikings used this to make warm, sea-resistant coats and sails that didn’t fail.  Wool was their leading export. Their marauding and exploration may well have been to find sufficient land for sheep. As a result, the sheep they brought to England made the English into shepherds and wool-making was the origin of the first Industrial Revolution in the 1600s. The later finding of cheap cotton after Whitney’s 1793 cotton gin gave rise to the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the water frame, and steam powered Jacquard looms. Fabric was the original airplane material, and nylon won WW II. Synthetics led to polymer science that changes our world.

            What’s the big deal about cotton and linen?  They are cool and sweat absorbent, allowing easier work. Cotton grows all over the world (ironically, Egyptian cotton is really from South America) but was extremely expensive due to the labor of separating seeds and fibers. Hence we are supposed to be impressed with the fact that the Persian queen had cotton clothes in the Book of Esther. Cotton took the world by storm in the 1800s—comfortable underwear! Labor intensive silk has the strongest natural fibers known.  A silk shirt of a Mongol warrior would not tear when struck by an arrow.  It wrapped around the invading arrowhead, allowing the warrior to pull out the arrow with less damage to the flesh.  Pants were also an invention of the Asiatic nomads that allowed better riding.

            By Jesus’ day, the Greek world had invaded Palestine.  Men and women wore a “chiton” a linen tunic fastened at one shoulder (Roman style) or 2 and with a waist belt. On top was usually a robe (with sleeves) or a cloak (square shawl) or a poncho-like ‘coat’.  When you threw off your outer woolen coat, you were said to be ‘naked’ (said of Peter when he dove in). When you washed your one valuable suit of clothing, it was when you took your monthly bath in the river. If a man needed to be bare-legged as he worked he ‘girded his loins’ by pulling the hem of his tunic between his legs and stuffing it in his belt behind his back. If you had a pocket sewn in, that was a ‘purse’. Priests wore an ephod, an apron-like garment that derives from one of the first Mesopotamian ways of dress. And so valuable was cloth, that an old garment was torn into strips of cloth for patching, and for entwining bodies of the dead or infants—‘swaddling cloths’. Lydia, “seller of purple goods” met Paul at the Thyatira river.  That’s where the snails were processed to make Thyrian purple dye, worth it’s weight in silver, which did not fade in cloth with age.  Cloth must have made a good conversation-starter for tent-maker Paul.  So truly, why don’t we learn more about fabrics and clothing? They allow better work, modesty, glamour, and explain many Bible stories.