02x26 - Holy Threads

[bunniefuu]

What does it all mean?

This is where the archeology has been found.

Oh, hi how are you?

Look at that.

I need a planter.

A shrine to a bellybutton.

Is this a rock of salt?

Look at that!

No one gets into this place?

Whoa, don't take me too far!

Now that's naked archeology.

[theme music]

[SIMCHA] In the beginning

God created Heaven and the Earth,

and the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve,

the first humans, which He placed in the Garden.

And what did Adam and Eve wear?

Well, nothing!

In fact, only after they sinned

and ate from the forbidden fruit of Good and Evil

were they aware of their nakedness

and covered themselves with leaves.

The first fashion statement!

Think about the first story in the Bible,

the story of the Garden of Eden.

The humans were innocent in the garden,

but the moment they lost their innocence,

they put clothes on.

I'm so proud of being the Naked Archaeologist.

Right, and you are a very innocent person.

[SIMCHA] Adam and Eve, Exodus, David and Goliath-

the great stories of the bible,

everybody remembers them.

But we usually don't pay attention

to what the characters from the Bible wear.

Did Moses, David, and, later, Jesus

follow biblical fashion trends?

Well, Jesus was more famous for his food,

not his clothes.

The Last Supper is the most famous episode

of the Christian Bible.

It's the last meal Jesus shared

with his twelve disciples before his crucifixion.

They ate bread and drank wine,

but what did they wear?

Did you ever think about textiles and religion?

No.

I think they were very God-fearing then.

So they wore kosher clothes?

Yes.

[SIMCHA] So, to figure out

what biblical characters wore,

let's go back to the Hebrew Bible.

As it turns out, there is an actual fashion commandment

in the Bible: all men must wear tzitzit-

fringes that hang from the four corners of a garment-

and at least one thread in those fringes

should be the colour Tekhelet,

a particular kind of blue.

To understand why biblical characters would wear tzitzit,

I am going to see Avrahaum Segol.

He's a modern tailor with a bit of an obsession

about tzitzit and their meaning.

So the God of Israel says,

"You will put on your corners these fringes,

these tzitziot, so that you remember to do

all the commandments I have given you."

You're saying God said,

"You know what? From now on,

so you remember all the commandments,-

Tie it to your garment.

"-tie it to your garment."

And that means these are holy fringes.

Tzitziot.

Commanded in the Bible.

Yes.

[SIMCHA] So was God making a fashion statement?

Or did everyone in ancient days wear holy fringes?

Well, let's start by looking at the biblical Philistines.

Delilah was a Philistine. Did she wear fringes?

Women in the Bible didn't wear fringes,

but, anyhow, Delilah probably didn't wear much,

so she doesn't count.

What about the other famous Philistine, Goliath?

In movies, he's shown wearing armor.

In real life, he probably wore armor and fringes.

What did the Philistines look like?

What did Delilah's people look like?

What did Goliath's people look like?

The fact is we don't know what Delilah looked like,

because we have no depictions of Philistine women.

But we do have depictions of Philistine men,

and these are blown-up depictions

made out of the only images of Philistine warriors

that we have.

And they come from Egypt,

from the time of Ramses II, some , years ago.

And you can see they're wearing feathered headgear

of some sort with ranks, right over here.

They have long swords,

and they also have short daggers.

They're wearing kilts, and they have fringes

at the corner of their kilts,

which probably signified some kind of religious tassel,

some kind of holy knots, if you will.

[SIMCHA] Unfortunately, we don't know what colour

these Philistine fringes were, and in the Bronze Age,

colour could tell you a lot.

In our own day you can identify athletes

by the colour of their uniforms;

similarly, in ancient times

you could learn a lot about a person

by the colour of their fringes.

For example, we know that in ancient Egypt

people wore fringes with threads and knots in red.

Actually, the Hebrew word tzitzit

may have originated from the repetition

of an ancient Egyptian word, tyet,

a red symbol and amulet in the shape of a knot,

also called "blood of !sis".

Scholars have suggested that this symbol

may represent the female reproductive system

or a menstrual bandage that was used

for casting love and sexual fidelity spells.

It was also a symbol of high status.

In another part of the Mediterranean,

on the Greek island of Santorini,

a famous tourist hot spot in the Aegean Sea,

in archaeologists discovered

a Bronze Age Minoan city named Akrotiri.

In this ancient city, beautiful and well-preserved frescoes

were excavated.

There you can still see ,-year-old wall paintings

depicting women wearing tassels with knots

very similar to the knots of tassels

that religious Jews wear today.

Remarkably, on one gorgeous fresco

illustrating a bare-breasted priestess,

the colour of fringes is blue.

It's the colour of tzitzit-as in Bible!

Okay. Now that I've seen them,

I want to touch them-

not the priestesses, the tziziot.

Are there any actual ancient tassels that have survived?

[SIMCHA] I'm on my way to a huge Antiquities warehouse

in Jerusalem where thousands of pieces

of ancient textiles are stored and restored.

They've arrived here from archaeological sites

all over Israel.

Let's see if they have authentic biblical tassles.

[SIMCHA] Moses, David, and Jesus-

the stories tell us what they did

but do we know what they wore?

In my quest to find out what the characters

of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles wore,

I discovered that they probably put fringes

on the corners of their garments,

as do all religious Jewish to this day.

So far, we've seen ancient murals that depict them,

but we haven't seen any actual tassels

that survived from biblical times.

I'm in Jerusalem in a huge warehouse of biblical textiles.

Orit Shamir runs the organic material department

at the Israel Antiquities Authority,

and she's got some tassels.

These were found by the late Professor Yigal Yorin

in a Judean desert cave.

He thought these tassels were made

in order to use in mantles as tzitzit,

but it was found not connected to a mantle.

The Jewish community, when they buried,

they took tassels out from the garment.

Because of this, we don't find any intact garment

with these tassels.

Oh. So let me get this straight.

When somebody d*ed and they buried them

in the burial shroud, they would take the tassels away

because they're holy-

they would want to reuse them.

So that's why you don't find tassels connected to shrouds.

Yes.

I never knew that.

But, you know, it is the only site in the land of Israel

in which we found something like this.

Is that the way biblical tassels are supposed to be made?

Maybe.

We don't know. -We don't know.

[SIMCHA] It doesn't seem like these tassels

are actual tzitzit,

because the knots are not correct,

only one string should be coloured,

and it shouldn't be purple-

it should be blue, a sacred blue, called Tekhelet.

The blue string was to remind the Israelites of the sea,

the sea of the sky, and the sky of God's holy throne.

What makes the Tekhelet special

and different from the regular blue

is the fact that it is made not from a plant dye

but from a special snail called a hilazon.

Nobody has ever found a blue dye

that can be traced back to this snail.

I'm on my way to see Zvi Koren,

a chemist and ancient textile and colour specialist.

We met Zvi before when he figured out

where Tekhelet came from.

But now he may have finally have found what it looks like.

He has an amazing collection of ancient fabric samples,

and from them he can analyze dyes and trace their origins.

That's very fine work.

Why couldn't this be some kind of ancient tzitzit?

To me this looks very fringey,

and I don't know what their fringes looked like.

The colour is not of a dark enough nature,

and there are too many fringes there.

Religious Jews wear four cornered garments with fringes,

and certainly in those days

they would have had a blue stripe in the fringes, right?

A blue, twisted yarn in the fringes.

Jesus would have worn something like that.

Very likely. He was a good Jew.

[SIMCHA] Not only Jesus wore tzizit,

but after him some of the early Christians did too.'

The Ravenna mosaics from the th century

provide evidence of that.

The Bible says Tekhelet, this mysterious colour.

What's it talking about?

It's talking about the blue or purple.

A biblical blue was obtained from a Murex trunculus snail,

but so far there's not been a biblical blue

that's ever been found.

Let me show you some ancient textiles.

This is one of the more beautiful dark blue colours.

Yeah, it hasn't faded.

And maybe this is the colour of Tekhelet.

his may not be authentic Tekhelet from snails,

but perhaps Tekhelet has this kind of dark blue colour.

Have you tested it?

Not yet, but-

Well, I don't understand how you sleep at night.

Here you have biblical Tekhelet.

In the Bible, it says wear this biblical blue,

and you find this amazing dark blue,

and you don't run to the lab to check it right away,

to see if it comes from a snail or a plant?

Why don't you just test it?

Because maybe-

This will be tested.

So you're seriously going to do it soon?

I will do it. Chances are it will not be real Tekhelet.

Just do it. It would be headlines:

"Biblical blue found." Can you do it tomorrow? Seriously.

If you come here one of the free days,

then I can do it for you.

That's naked archaeology- on-camera investigation.

I love the way you said that.

I love it.

It gets better, folks.

[SIMCHA] Moses, David, and Jesus

have been represented in thousands of paintings

and movies.

But are their clothes depicted accurately?

In my quest for an authentic costume

for the biblical characters,

I found that they probably wore "holy threads,"

fringes called tzitzit. These fringes were to remind Jews

of all the commandments and at least one thread

was supposed to be a special colour of blue.

So far we've found depictions of fringes

on ancient murals, but no actual fringes

that have survived ancient times.

But we have found a sample of blue

that might be the biblical blue we are looking for.

But while we wait for our chemist to test it,

I'm going to drop by my friend Laura Sheim,

a costume designer, who specializes in biblical fashion,

to ask her what she thinks about my clothes.

You can see that I'm just-

Up to date.

You shouldn't laugh at me.

No, you look fine.

I look fashionable in my own way?

Yeah.

I've got my own look, right?

Yeah, no.

I'm a free man; I'm not a sl*ve to fashion.

No, you are not.

You've done biblical clothes?

Yes.

When you approach this, you approach it

as a scholar, as a historian, or an archaeologist?

Of course I want to be authentic,

but what is important for me is the the feel of the period.

The clothes have to be dynamic.

It's not a piece in a museum.

For you it has to be alive.

I make to every garment a script:

they wear it when they sleep or when they travel.

So you imagine them, they're cleaning it,

they're wearing it, they're patching it.

The colours that you chose,

the fabrics that you choose,

even the little bit of stitching,

it feels real and it feels biblical.

I'm telling you, if I throw some of your materials

into an archaeological setting, it might fool them.

For sure.

Yeah? -Yeah.

But, you know, it wouldn't fool the chemist.

They'd look and they'd see.

Yeah.

My friend Zvi would figure you out.

[SIMCHA] And by now, I think, he should be ready for us.

So I'm going back to Zvi Koren's lab

to test the piece of textile from Jesus's time,

which could turn out to be dyed with the true biblical blue.

I'm feeling good that this is biblical blue.

Are you sure? You have good vibes?

Yeah, I do.

This little piece, we're going to cut out a little fiber

found at the scene of the archaeological site.

We place it right into this vial.

We're going to take an organic solvent,

and it's used for stripping off any kind of blue colourant,

whether it's from a plant or from snails.

We're going to put this and heat it up

for about five to seven minutes in boiling water

at degrees Celsius,

and then watch how the colour is extracted.

Five minutes and counting.

Give me a blue. Give me a B.

Give me an L, U, E. Listen to that.

That says the dye should have extracted. And has it?

No.

Something is wrong. It's not extracting.

To me it looks a little purplish.

We're going to analyze the solution.

I'm going to take it all in. You see the mark?

And that's enough. We inject it into here.

I'm catching the excess amount of liquid back into the filter.

Okay. You ready?

Go. Good.

Now I'm a chromatographer.

Absolutely.

A naked chromatographer.

There's going to be a sharp spike coming up.

That means there's some indigo in here.

Yeah. There's a little bit of indigo.

There it is. With the cursor on the top,

you see the little spike over there?

Yeah.

That's a tiny bit of indigo.

If it was biblical blue, what would we see?

We'll see indigo also, but considerably more.

Now, I'm sorry, guys, I hate to disappoint you,

but it's just not going to happen with this sample.

Maybe one day, one day we'll have the privilege

of finding the true biblical blue,

which no one, no one has ever found.

I wanted it to be biblical blue, as blue as your shirt, Zvi.

Tomorrow is another day.

Another day.

[SIMCHA] In my journey to find out

what the famous characters of the Hebrew

and Christian bibles wore,

I discovered that Moses, David, and Jesus

probably put on fringes called tzitzit

at the corners of their garments.

One string in those fringes was dyed

a sacred blue called Tekhelet.

But does the Hebrew Torah have

another clue for biblical clothing?

In Deuteronomy, we discover another law for clothing:

In the Bible, Shaatnez, mixed wool and linen is prohibited.

One of the important principles of the Hebrew Bible

s separation.

Darkness from light, water from dry land,

meat from milk as well as linen from wool.

If they're mixed they're not kosher.

Can archaeology show that people

actually followed this law?

I'm back at the Israel Antiquities Authority

in Jerusalem

to check in again with Orit Shamir.

People don't realize.

They know about kosher food,

but there's a biblical injunction

that has kosher clothes-

you can't mix linen and wool.

The Jewish community didn't mix wool and linen.

In contrast, textiles from Egypt and from Syria,

they were mixed textiles.

So when you examine this, you can actually tell:

are they following the biblical law or not?

We found thousands of thousands of textiles

in all these Jewish sites, and none of them

is not made of shaatnez,

mixed wool and linen together.

[SIMCHA] Incredibly, you can tell

whether ancients were following the Bible

by analyzing their clothes!

Maybe textiles can decode archaeological mysteries.

For example, who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Can biblical fashion help solve

this archaeological mystery?

Well, one of the places where a lot of ancient textiles

were found is Qumran,

where it is said the scrolls were written

by religious group called the Essenes.

The Essenes were a Christian-like movement

which followed a man

they called the Teacher of Righteousness.

Some scholars believe this teacher was the prototype

of the Christ figure.

Other scholars think that the Essenes were actually

a Christian group and the Teacher of Righteousness

was James, the brother of Jesus.

So maybe the textiles of the Essenes

found here can tell me not only

who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls

but what Jesus and his followers wore.

In a shepherd boy threw stones into a cave.

And when the stones hit a ceramic jar,

the boy went in to investigate.

Inside the jars were ancient scrolls,

some containing the oldest known copies

of passages of the Bible.

Over the years, there have been various theories

about what Qumran was used for.

Though some feel strongly that the Essenes

lived here and wrote the scrolls here,

others think it was just a pottery factory or a farm.

But some of the linen textiles found here

at Qumran might help solve the mystery.

A very interesting story about the linen textiles in Qumran,

where the Essenes, the sectarians-

The Essenes.

-they preferred to use linen textiles

because it was against the Roman world,

which was very colourful.

So in contrast to the Roman world,

they used linen, white garments, undyed.

I will show you some examples.

You know, this is amazing,

because what you're telling me now

is you can actually see religion and ideology,

because the movement that actually-

Christianity emerged out of the same kind

of messianic movement- Ebionites,

poor ones, no ostentatious.

They rejected the Roman world,

everything about the Roman world,

the food and even the clothes.

They're saying,

"We're not going to be fashion victims."

Yeah. And also they want to be modest.

They didn't want to use bright colours like red.

They didn't want to show off.

They used undyed, simple textiles.

You know what?

Everybody's arguing:

did the Essenes write the Dead Sea Scrolls?

You've got the proof right here.

It is written in the scrolls that they used

to wear linen garments. So we can see it here.

This is amazing. The proof is in the linen.

This linen is bleached. It is very white

compared to this linen.

So they made special process

in order to give it the white colour.

But of course they didn't dye it.

The person who wore this

might have written the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Yes.

[SIMCHA] So if Jesus belonged to

an Essene-like movement as many scholars speculate,

he might have worn garments made of this kind of material.

I can imagine Jesus wearing clothes

made of bleached linen like this.

Another find from the site was a piece of fabric

that Orit believes was used to cover one of the scrolls.

This, which came as a bunched up,

ancient poop, was restored by you.

And you could see indigo.

You could see that it's one of the pieces of linen cloth

that wrapped the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Yes. It is very important and very rare,

because they decorated this piece with linen stripes

made of indigo, and the design corresponds

with the plan of the Temple.

Oh, you're kidding.

This is the intact design of-

The design of the lines.

You know, you're decoding.

These little lines that to someone else

would be just design, the people who wrote

the Dead Sea Scrolls were designing the future temple

or the existing temple.

The existing temple, which is also mentioned

in the Temple Scroll.

But I just want to get it straight.

What we have here is a piece of linen

that was worn, probably,

by one of the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It's not a statement of fashion;

it's a statement of religion, of ideology,

of philosophy, because what they're doing

is rejecting the Roman world by not wearing wool

like the Romans but linen,

and not being ostentatious but, rather,

bleaching it white for purity.

And they're wrapping their sacred scrolls in linen also,

but with a slight blue design corresponding

to the architecture of the Temple.

Somebody else looks at this,

and what they see is a piece of ancient material.

You've actually decoded it.

It's the Dead Sea Scrolls on textile.

Yes.

You know, I didn't think I would be looking

at a ,-year-old piece of material

and getting an insight into the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It's exciting. But this is cutting edge.

[SIMCHA] I am really amazed,

because not only did ancient textiles teach me

something new about the Dead Sea Scrolls,

but the Dead Sea scrolls helped me to decode

what the Essenes, and Jesus himself, may have worn.

All observant Jews, from Moses through Jesus to today,

do not wear clothes made of mixed fibers

of wool and linen,

but they did and do wear tassels

in the corners of their garments.

So if you're making a biblical epic,

dress your characters in wool or linen;

don't use fabrics which mix those two materials.

But most importantly, don't forget about those fringes

called tzitzit at the corners of their garments

with blue thread in them, to remind us'

where the sea meets the sky

and where God's Holy Throne is.