Why was Simon Peter naked while he was fishing?
In the last chapter of John, I noticed a line describing Jesus coming to talk to Simon Peter while he was fishing. “When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put o his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea.” (John 21:7) Why in the world would Peter be fishing without any clothes on? Obviously Peter did not care if the others that he was fishing with saw him naked, but he could not stand in front of Jesus without putting on his robe first. If Peter knew that Jesus would not be happy seeing him fishing naked, then why would he fish this way when Jesus was not around. I wanted to research this question because I think the fact that Peter was doing something that he knew Jesus would be opposed of, could have something to do with how he later denies Jesus later in the New Testament. Peter is already knowingly going behind Jesus’ back being around people in a way that Jesus would not like.
An article I found of Rev. Daniel Graves blogspot written about this encounter of Jesus and the apostles mentions a simple answer as to why Peter was naked. Most likely, Peter was not the only one that was naked while fishing that day. Stripping down to work was probably customary at that time and Peter simply done so just because this was the way he was comfortable working. Peter left his work fishing, “changing roles” as Rev. Graves said, to talk to Jesus and put on his clothes to become appropriate for socializing.
The second answer I found in my research in an article on godrules.net, pointed out a much simpler answer to this question. When this passage is looked at through different translations, it seems that Peter was not completely naked. When originally written, the word that was used meant that Peter did not have on any upper garments. This did not translate well into English, so when the word naked was used it had a great impact on the meaning of this verse of the Bible. I found a similar answer on my third piece of research on page 1401 of the book Study John’s Gospels volume 2. The meaning of how Peter was dressed might have been mistranslated into English and the verse originally meant to read that Peter had taken of more clothes than a person normally would when in public. Peter might have literally “stripped for work” and could have been the only one because he was the only one that was mentioned doing so.
http://danielgraves.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-was-peter-fishing-naked.html
http://www.godrules.net/para/joh/paralleljoh21-7.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=0l0zYe0FWIcC&pg=PA1401&lpg=PA1401&dq=was+peter+really+fishing+naked+in+john&source=bl&ots=5EQ7TuyrTu&sig=04N5SFLoG-fw5rVCdxHjnMHuhEM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UWIPUcGEIoKEygHow4DIAQ&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=was%20peter%20really%20fishing%20naked%20in%20john&f=false
An article I found of Rev. Daniel Graves blogspot written about this encounter of Jesus and the apostles mentions a simple answer as to why Peter was naked. Most likely, Peter was not the only one that was naked while fishing that day. Stripping down to work was probably customary at that time and Peter simply done so just because this was the way he was comfortable working. Peter left his work fishing, “changing roles” as Rev. Graves said, to talk to Jesus and put on his clothes to become appropriate for socializing.
The second answer I found in my research in an article on godrules.net, pointed out a much simpler answer to this question. When this passage is looked at through different translations, it seems that Peter was not completely naked. When originally written, the word that was used meant that Peter did not have on any upper garments. This did not translate well into English, so when the word naked was used it had a great impact on the meaning of this verse of the Bible. I found a similar answer on my third piece of research on page 1401 of the book Study John’s Gospels volume 2. The meaning of how Peter was dressed might have been mistranslated into English and the verse originally meant to read that Peter had taken of more clothes than a person normally would when in public. Peter might have literally “stripped for work” and could have been the only one because he was the only one that was mentioned doing so.
http://danielgraves.blogspot.com/2010/04/why-was-peter-fishing-naked.html
http://www.godrules.net/para/joh/paralleljoh21-7.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=0l0zYe0FWIcC&pg=PA1401&lpg=PA1401&dq=was+peter+really+fishing+naked+in+john&source=bl&ots=5EQ7TuyrTu&sig=04N5SFLoG-fw5rVCdxHjnMHuhEM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UWIPUcGEIoKEygHow4DIAQ&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=was%20peter%20really%20fishing%20naked%20in%20john&f=false