Embodiment and Ritual Clothing: Dressing the Israelite High Priest

Exodus 28 and 39 contain a detailed description of the clothing God instructed to be made and worn by Israelite priests. In this essay, sacred clothing will be understood through the lens of ritual studies, characterizing clothing with a sense of liminality that defines and endows the human wearer with identity and power. The social meanings and implications of the high priest’s dress will be reconstructed by engaging in sensory criticism, drawing upon insights from the greater eastern Mediterranean world. Given the ancient world’s unique conception of a permeable body, ritual clothing had the ability to imbue the wearer with personhood, effectively transfiguring the priest into a mediator between God and the community. This examination of bodily adornment will show how ritual investiture was not merely symbolic but had substantial transformative value.