Nudity In Ancient Jewish Culture

The Jewish culture of the Old Testament period was not marked by many of the arbitrary conventions that conservative theologians claim it was.  While conservatives often imagine the ancient Jews to have lived with the same legalistic prudery that is so often espoused by modern Christians, public nudity was not regarded as something to be kept out of Jewish life.  In fact, it was common in ways that would likely shock many readers of the Bible.

The first major reference to public nudity in ancient Jewish culture is found in the Pentateuch.  Exodus 22:26-27 details a process where a person was temporarily left without any clothing after he or she gave their cloak--their "only covering"--to a loaner as a guarantee, or a "pledge."  The person who received the cloak was to return it by sunset, lest the one giving the pledge spend the night suffering from a heightened vulnerability to the elements.  Simply by imparting this law, God authorized nudity to be a part of fundamental Jewish life as far as pledges went.

Furthermore, God himself not only permitted nudity when he did not legislate against it in Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 4:2) and condoned it in Exodus 22:26-27, but he even directly commanded it on at least one occasion (Isaiah 20:1-6) as a demonstration for Isaiah's audience.  God is described as predicting the fate of Egypt after providing instructions for Isaiah to be naked for three years.  The prophecy states that the captive men and women of Egypt would be forced to walk naked, with their "buttocks bared," after being conquered by a foreign power (Assyria).  Since Isaiah's own condition is supposed to reflect their future state, he, too, walks naked.

1 Samuel 19:23-24 even confirms that nudity was so commonly associated with Yahweh's prophets that onlookers wondered if King Saul was a prophet simply because he denuded himself and prophesied while under the influence of the "Spirit of God."  Once again, the Bible does nothing to hide the fact that nudity was not something that the Jews universally loathed or discouraged.  Without even reading the Biblical creation narrative or Mosaic Law, one can see from historical portions of the Bible that the Jewish culture described in the Old Testament clearly involved public nudity.

As the aforementioned passages affirm, contrary to popular evangelical ideas, extramarital nudity is not an affront to God and was even integrated into Jewish society enough to be directly associated with Yahweh (in some circumstances).  Though it has been demonized for centuries of church history, nudity was never the immoral abomination that many have mistaken it for.  Ultimately, no one even needs to read all the way to Isaiah or even Exodus to realize that the Bible does not condemn mere nudity.  Key details the Bible provides about Jewish history only confirm what the first two chapters of Genesis plainly teach: the human body is metaphysically good and is not shameful or sinful.