Abstract
An attentive reading of the stripping and forced nudity of Steve Biko during his detention in Port Elizabeth (19 August to 11 September 1977), and his forced nudity in a police Land Rover on the drive to Pretoria (11–12 September), offers significant insights for a contextual reading of the stripping and torture of Jesus. The first section describes Biko’s experience through: (1) Biko’s question to a visiting magistrate at Walmer police station (2 September 1977); (2) police statements at Biko’s inquest (November 1977); (3) Donald Woods’s later interview (November 1986) with Peter Jones who was arrested alongside Biko; and (4) evidence submitted by the police, and by Jones, to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty hearings (September and December 1997). The second section turns to the strippings of Jesus described in Matt 27:26–31, during the mockery in the praetorium, and the additional stripping and forced nudity at crucifixion. It offers a reading of Jesus’s experience of punitive stripping and forced nudity in the context of Biko’s experience of punitive stripping and forced nudity, with attention to what is clear and what else might be possible in the torture of Jesus.