Attention to possible sub-text

  • David Tombs, Sithembiso Zwane and Charlene van der Walt, ‘Male Violence Against Men: A Contextual Bible Study on the Crucifixion of Jesus’, in Jione Havea (ed) Haunting Questions of Liberation Theology (2025), Otago archive.

    Rocío Figueroa and David Tombs, ‘Vendo Sua Inocência, Eu Vejo Minha Inocência’, Estudos Teológicos (2024). Open access (Brazilian Portuguese); Open access (English). Otago archive (English original 2021).

    David Tombs, ‘Things Too Indecent to be Recorded: The Soldiers Mocking the Death of Herod Agrippa’, in Juliana Claassens. Rhiannon Graybill and Christl Maier (eds), Narrating Rape: Shifting Perspectives in Biblical Literature and Popular Culture (2024). Otago archive.

    David Tombs, 'Art depicts Jesus in a loincloth on the cross – the brutal truth is he would have been naked’, The Conversation (28 March 2024). Open access.

    David Tombs, ‘Alone and Naked: Reading the Torture of Jesus alongside the Torture of Miriam Leitão’, International Journal of Public Theology (2023). Open access.

    David Tombs, The Crucifixion of Jesus: Torture, Sexual Abuse, and the Scandal of the Cross (Routledge, 2023). Open access.

    David Tombs, 'The Pink Crosses of Ciudad Juárez' in Rebekah Pryor and Stephen Bevans (eds) Feminist Theologies: Interstices and Fractures (2023). Otago archive.

    David Tombs, ‘Reading Crucifixion Narratives as Texts of Terror’ in Monica Melanchthon and Robyn Whitaker (eds.) Terror in the Bible: Rhetoric, Gender, and Violence (SBL 2021), Open access.

    Jayme R. Reaves, David Tombs and Rocío Figueroa (eds), When Did We See You Naked?’: Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse (2021). Open access.

    Rocío Figueroa and David Tombs, ‘Seeing His Innocence, I See My Innocence’, (2021). Open access.

    Rocío Figueroa and David Tombs, ‘Viendo su Inocencia veo mi Inocencia’, (2021). Otago archive.

    David Tombs, ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: Seeing the Stripping of Jesus as Sexual Violence’, Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies (2020). Open access.

    David Tombs, ‘Unspeakable Things: Drawing upon the Nanjing Massacre to Read Crucifixion as an Assault on Human Dignity’ in Zhibin Xie et al. (2020). More info.

    ‘Recognising Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse. Responses from Sodalicio Survivors in Peru’, (2020). Open access.

    Jayme Reaves and David Tombs, '#Me Too: Naming Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse', Review and Expositor (2020). Open access.

    Jayme R. Reaves and David Tombs, ‘#MeToo Jesus: Naming Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse’, International Journal of Public Theology (2019). Open access.

    David Tombs, Crucifixion and Sexual Abuse (2019). Otago archive English, Spanish, French, German.

    David Tombs, 'Crucificação e abuso sexual' (2019). Open access(Brazilian Portuguese).

    Edwards and Tombs, ‘#HimToo – why Jesus should be recognised as a victim of sexual violence’, The Conversation (2018). Open access.

    David Tombs, ‘Prisoner Abuse: From Abu Ghraib to The Passion of The Christ’ (2009). Otago archive.

    David Tombs, ‘Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse’, (Union Seminary Quarterly Review (1999). Open access. 

In response to the stripping and forced nudity attested in the text, and the context of torture these take place within, it is reasonable to ask whether there is evidence that Jesus experienced additional sexualised violence beyond stripping and forced nudity. Might the sub-text of Gospel crucifixion accounts offer additional hints of additional sexualised violence?

This strand in the research is particularly challenging. The evidence is harder to access and also harder to assess. Questions about the sub-text are more concerned with possibility or probability not certainty or proof. Any findings need to be qualified, careful, and open to further evidence.

Despite these challenges, it is valuable to investigate the possible sub-text as well as the text and context. I suggest that the possibility of additional sexualised violence is a reasonable question to ask. There are are some hints that might point in this direction in the sub-text. Scholars who investigate these hints may draw different conclusions on them. However, one point of likely agreement is that any additional sexualised violence is not directly evidenced with the same level of certainty as the textual evidence for stripping and forced nudity.

To sum up, text, context, and possible sub-text are each valuable areas of investigation. Investigating all three areas alongside each other allows all three to be more critically interrogated. An informed approach will recognise both the things that are typically recorded and explicit, and also acknowledge what is often left unsaid, or only implied indirectly, on which much more tentative assessments need to be made.

Read more

Go back to ‘Crucifixion’