The purple robe
Dafyd
Hell Host
in Kerygmania
A question came up in conversation here, and I thought I'd put it to the group.
Mark and John both say that the Roman soldiers put a purple robe in Jesus along with the crown of thorns. Purple was of course a royal colour, because murex dye was extremely expensive. It seems unlikely that Roman soldiers would even have a murex dyed robe let alone use one to mock someone any more than they'd use an actual golden crown.
So were there other cheaper dyes they could have used which could be referred to by whatever Greek word Mark and John are using?
Matthew says the robe is scarlet. Does the Greek word overlap in colour, or is he tidying up?
Mark and John both say that the Roman soldiers put a purple robe in Jesus along with the crown of thorns. Purple was of course a royal colour, because murex dye was extremely expensive. It seems unlikely that Roman soldiers would even have a murex dyed robe let alone use one to mock someone any more than they'd use an actual golden crown.
So were there other cheaper dyes they could have used which could be referred to by whatever Greek word Mark and John are using?
Matthew says the robe is scarlet. Does the Greek word overlap in colour, or is he tidying up?
Comments
And as @Lamb Chopped mentioned, color names don't translate well from culture to culture.
We also don't know the condition of the "robe" or the quantity. It could have been purchased 10 times over after having been weeded from the closet of a noble house and in ever worse condition each time it changed hands. Fabric is incredibly labor- intensive to produce by hand. It was used until there was nothing left to use.
I rather suspect that the robe we're discussing was closer to red, as we'd call it, but the purple thing isn't completely out of possibility, as Herod the king apparently supplied "splendid clothing" for his own version of mocking, which may have taken place first before the Roman one:
And is colourfast. You'd not want any shade of purple going through your washing.
That is you'd expect it to be a reasonable charactiture (or for it's lack of purple to be a feature "hah, hah Galilean thinks turds are purple", if youve got spears you dont need a good punchline).
It does occur to me that a cheap red stain is easy to obtain, and blood red may fit in the purple spectrum.
Herod investing in a bad joke, works.
I suppose you might have other cloths purpled on the wash.
It would be a revisionist version of Jesus, but he could have 'legitimatly' owned purple (or been gifted by those trying to set him up)
There's an odd association in some cultures between blue and white. The Greek uses "glaukos", the source of English "glaucous". My husband keeps referring to my "light" eyes in a similar way (that is, blue; brown is apparently dark). Color history is weird.