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      Introduction: Acknowledging Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse

      JAYME R. REAVES AND DAVID TOMBS

At the heart of this book is a surprising, even scandalous, claim: that Jesus was a victim of sexual abuse. It may seem a strange and implausible idea at first. This initial puzzlement is to be expected; the starting point and central focus of the book is both unusual and confronting. As the following chapters will highlight, there is significant evidence that, at the very least, the forced stripping and naked exposure of Jesus on the cross should be acknowledged as sexual abuse.1 The acknowledgement of this truth has the potential for positive consequences, but we also acknowledge it is a difficult and disturbing subject to address. Sexual abuse points to what is speakable – and what is unspeakable – in the suffering Jesus experienced.

      To say that Jesus suffered, even suffered greatly, is uncontentious. Jesus’ suffering is firmly attested in Christian faith as we know it. The Apostles’ Creed explicitly acknowledges Jesus’ suffering with the phrase ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate’ (passus sub Pontio Pilato). The word excruciating (derived from the Latin crux) connects the cross (crux) with acute suffering in the passion narratives. The early Church at the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) firmly condemned the Docetic heresy, which denied the reality of Jesus’ suffering. The ruling established that Christian orthodoxy included an acknowledgement of the reality of suffering on the cross.

A number of works have also spoken of Jesus’ suffering as torture.2 Naming Jesus’ ordeal as torture underlines the intentional cruelty and violence in his mistreatment. The term ‘torture’ is not used in the Gospel texts to describe Jesus’ experience. However, a close reading of the passion narratives provides a strong argument for seeing Jesus’ experience in this way. Although some might prefer not to use the word ‘torture’ for Jesus’ experience, there are few Christians likely to see the use of the term as morally shocking or theologically objectionable. To acknowledge Jesus’ suffering as torture does not create new theological difficulties.

      To acknowledge Jesus as a victim of sexual abuse, however, typically prompts a very different reaction: blank surprise, stony silence, scepticism, correction, or even offence. Some ask questions like, ‘Do you really mean that?’ Others say there is no evidence in the Bible to support such a claim. Some flatly declare, ‘You can’t say this.’ Jesus is readily spoken of as a victim of suffering, and there is little problem in describing his suffering as torture. But to speak of him as a victim of sexual abuse is shocking and meets resistance. Why? We have come to see the resistance to the idea of Jesus as a victim of sexual abuse as part of the key to understanding what sexual abuse means and why it could be so important to our understanding of both Jesus’ experience and our contemporary context.

      If our experiences over years of work with church and academic groups are an indication, there are often several stages that people go through as they consider this proposal. At first, it is likely to be viewed as speculative conjecture, without biblical or historical evidence to support it. Or it might be seen as a subjective reading imposed on the text and drawing on an agenda from a very different time and place, rather than being supported by the text itself. Why, people may ask, if Jesus suffered sexual abuse, has this not been recognized in 2,000 years of Christian history? If it were in the Bible, they may continue, surely it would have been more openly acknowledged before now? This stage is marked by a sense of the novelty of the claim, and the lack of familiarity with the biblical evidence that supports it.

Deeper dynamics are also often at work. The resistance to this suggestion also takes the form that it is absurd, insulting, offensive, and even blasphemous. Those who oppose it claim that it conflicts with both the historical record and the theological understanding of who Jesus was. The chapters in Part 1 of this volume will show that evidence of the sexual abuse of Jesus is clear in the biblical text but is rarely noticed or discussed. The failure to notice this abuse in the Gospel texts is linked to how the texts are usually read.3 Some chapters in this volume mention the limited scholarship in this area, and it is important to register both this silence and the reasons for it at the outset. The paucity of work on Jesus and any sexual topics makes an open discussion on Jesus and sexual abuse very difficult.

It is hardly surprising, then, that the suggestion that Jesus should be acknowledged as a victim of sexual abuse at first seems to be absurd. When most people think of the crucifixion, they think of visual representations in Christian art, often explicitly regulated by the Church. For example, the final session of the Council of Trent (1545–1563) set down requirements on holiness and devotion in religious art. The Council’s 25th Decree stipulated that ‘all lasciviousness be avoided’ and nothing be seen that is disorderly or unbecoming.4 Although the convention of a loincloth was already established in practice, this ruling explicitly increased the pressure to conform to such conventions, with those who flouted it at risk of being declared anathema. As a result, there are few visual images which illustrate the reality of Jesus’ naked exposure. The number started to increase in the twentieth century, but these are still a small minority. In the common visual imagination of crucifixion, both in churches and in wider society, a modest loincloth obscures the clear historical record of the nature of crucifixion.

      Despite the fact that a fully naked Jesus is only rarely depicted, the historical reality is nonetheless quite widely known. Historians and biblical scholars believe that Jesus was fully naked on the cross even though it is rarely discussed in detail. Similarly, many churchgoers are familiar with this reality and so describing Jesus as naked on the cross is not new.

Over the years, our experience has been that it is the naming of the stripping and nakedness as sexual abuse that is new to people, rather than the nakedness itself. And it is here that we come to a strange mismatch between what we know and what we acknowledge. It seems it is possible to know about the nakedness of Jesus on the cross, and even see this depicted in some artistic works, and yet still not describe or name his stripping and forced naked exposure as sexual abuse. This reticence becomes more obvious if we contrast it with contemporary examples of prisoners who have been stripped naked in detention, such as, for example, the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq in the early 2000s.5 There was no reticence in the wide coverage of this scandal or in describing the stripped and humiliated detainees at Abu Ghraib prison as victims of sexual abuse. Indeed, it was so obvious that a reluctance to describe it in such a way would be seen as dishonest.

      Some have suggested that Jesus suffered abuse, but that stripping and exposure are not really sexual. This raises questions about when abuse should be recognized or qualified as sexual abuse. To believe that the more generic term of ‘abuse’ (instead of ‘sexual abuse’) would be preferable is problematic. What sort of abuse is stripping and forced exposure if it is not sexual abuse? Public stripping, enforced nakedness and sexual humiliation constitute sexual abuse because they are attacks on sexual identity and sexual vulnerability. They have a specifically sexual meaning. They derive their power and impact because they were understood – and still are understood – to have a sexual dimension. To name them only as abuse is to mischaracterize what has happened, which serves to distort the reality of Jesus’ experience.

      When

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