Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies ISSN 2633-0695 Vol 2.1 (Autumn 2020) 224 Hidden in Plain Sight: Seeing the Stripping of Jesus as Sexual Violence David Tombs david.tombs@otago.ac.nz ABSTRACT Recent work in biblical studies has given increased attention to a reading of Jesus as a victim of sexual abuse. This article explores how the stripping of Jesus might be understood as an example of abuse ‘hidden in plain sight’. Most students are initially surprised or doubtful when it is suggested that Jesus is a victim of sexual violence. However, this scepticism can become a powerful learning resource if they are helped to ‘discover’ it for themselves through an experiential learning process. This might involve a critical examination of crucifixion and stripping images, and/or a contextual bible study on Matthew 27:26–31. Discovering the sanitising and erasure of sexual violence in the dominant (mis)understanding of crucifixion can offer students insight into other ways that past and present sexual violence is often marginalised, normalised, or hidden. Often these classroom exercises prompt a discussion of what makes abuse ‘sexual abuse’. KEYWORDS Jesus; Sexual Abuse; Crucifixion; Francisco Goya; Susan Sontag 1. Background I developed a keen interest in liberation theologies during my undergraduate studies at Oxford and my Master’s at Union Theological Seminary, New York in the 1980s. In 1993, I began a part-time PhD at Heythrop College, University of London, to investigate Christology within Latin American liberation theology. I initially planned to investigate the development of liberationist Christology from the 1970s to the 1990s with particular reference to Jon Sobrino’s work in El Salvador. I found Jon Sobrino’s reading of Christ in light of ‘the crucified people’ of El Salvador (the Saviour) especially inspiring. 1 Sobrino’s life and work took seriously the inequality, social injustice and oppression which was the daily experience of the Salvadoran poor. He described how crucifixion of the Salvadoran poor was an ongoing reality. The poor were ‘crucified’ by relentless unjust economic structures. This was a slow and grinding crucifixion. If they sought to challenge or change these structures they were met with harsh repression and political violence by the social elites and the military. This was a 1 See especially, Jon Sobrino, Jesus the Liberator (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books; Tunbridge Wells, Burns & Oates, 1993); Sobrino, The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified People from the Cross (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994). For a wider discussion of Latin American liberation hermeneutics, see David Tombs, “The Hermeneutics of Liberation,” in Approaches to New Testament Study (ed. Stanley E. Porter and David Tombs; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 310-55; David Tombs, Latin American Liberation Theology (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2002).