Why (how) does Jesus' coat have no seam?

Question

When Jesus is arrested and His captors take His clothes, they split them in four parts. However, His coat they did not split, as John records, "the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout." See John 19:23,24.

Is this seamless robe only significant because it led to the fulfillment of the scripture in Psalm 22? Is there a theological or doctrinal symbolic significance of having no seam?

I don't even know the process of weaving - how would you make a coat without seams? (I assume it has sleeves)

Answer 1

There is definitely theological significance to the seamless tunic of Jesus, "woven from the top throughout." Here is a linguistic argument for that significance.

The Greek for John 19:23 (Nestlé-Aland) says εκ την ανωθεν υψαντος δι ολου. ek ten anothen hupsatos di holou "From the top woven by entirety", literally.

That same word ανωθεν (anothen, from the top) happens to show up in John 3:7, which says in the KJV, "Marvel not that I said unto thee, "Ye must be born again." The Greek phrase is δει υμας γεννηθηναι ανωθεν. It-is-necessary you will-be-born again? top?.

Jesus's garment is woven from the top in just one piece. Yet we must be born (again?) (from above?) Is it possible that the seamless wholeness of the garment is a symbol of the wholeness conferred by baptism?

Answer 2

These answers have really been helpful, and they helped me in my reading when I came to Exodus 28:32. God is telling Moses the design of the priest's garments:

And there shall be an hole in the top of it, in the midst thereof: it shall have a binding of woven work round about the hole of it, as it were the hole of an habergeon, that it be not rent.

So, part of the significance of his robe is that it is like that of a priest - and Jesus is our High Priest!

Answer 3

The inner garment appears to refer to a shirtlike tunic made out of linen or wool and reaching to the knees or ankles. These garments were usually made by sewing together two superimposed squares or rectangles of fabric, stitching along three of their sides. Holes were left for the head and arms. A more expensive type of tunic was made in a similar way but using “only one long piece of cloth, folded in two, with a hole cut in the middle for the head” and hemmed, says the book Jesus and His World. This kind of tunic needed to be stitched at the sides. Completely seamless garments, like the one Jesus wore, were unique to Palestine. They were woven on upright looms that used two sets of vertical warp threads, one at the front and one at the back of a crossbar. The weaver would alternate his shuttle, which carried the horizontal weft thread, from the front part of the web to the back, “thus creating a cylindric piece of fabric,” says one reference work. A seamless tunic would likely have been a rare possession, and the soldiers considered it a desirable one.

^{Watchtower 2009 7/1 p. 22 Did You Know?}