Introduction to the New Testament
Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels
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Jesus
 
What do historians engaged in the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" say about Jesus?
The Jesus Seminar
A response to the Jesus Seminar
 
The "almost indisputable facts" according to E.P. Sanders (Jesus and Judaism, 1985, p. 11):
Any discussion of Jesus, his self identity and his teachings, that takes place in the academy is necessarily drawn into the discussions of the quest for the historical Jesus, but students should not feel bound to the criteria of the Jesus Seminar to determine what can be said about Jesus with certainty. The following constitutes the basic features of Jesus' life that a student should know at the completion of an introductory course in the Bible.
 
What did Jesus Teach?
 
Our Sunday School education tends to give us the answer, Jesus taught us to love one another, but this answer can lead us to the fallacious conclusion that Jesus' opponents did not approve of such an ethic. If one begins with the Synoptic Gospels, one's answer is modified. Jesus taught that "the Kingdom of Heaven , the Reign of God (malkuta' de'laha), has come upon you!" (Matt 12:28 par.). One of Israel's long unfulfilled hopes shall be fulfilled or, better yet, is being fulfilled. The problem for some lay in how Jesus characterized that reign and its fulfillment.
 
If we look at the Lord's Prayer, we may find Jesus' teaching in a nutshell:
 
Our Father in Heaven
May your name be hallowed
May your kingdom come
May your will be done, as in heaven, so upon the earth
Give use today the bread of tomorrow
Forgive us our debts
Herewith we forgive our debtors
Do not let us fall victim to the test
Deliver us from evil. (Matt 6:9-13)
 
Later manuscripts add: For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, Amen.
 
Compare this to the Qaddish (Holy Prayer) from the ancient synagogue service:
 
Let his great name be glorified and hallowed in the world
he created in accord with his good pleasure
And may he let his reign reign in your lifetime and in your days and in the life time of the whole house of Israel,
speedily and soon.
And thereto say: Amen!
 
Donald B. Kraybill wrote a book to describe Jesus' teachings about the kingdom of Heaven and he titled it, The Upside Down Kingdom. This title has caught on as a quick way of making sense of Jesus' teachings. In its narrow sense, the "Upside Down Kingdom" refers to the idea that God directs his blessings to those at the bottom of the social order and that those at the top are meant to serve those at the bottom. In its broadest sense, this phrase refers to how Jesus turned people's expectations about the kingdom on their head.
 
Righteousness
 
One aspect of the Kingdom of Heaven, consonant with Jewish expectations, is that it would bring justice, the good would recieve their reward and the wicked would be punished, and its members would be characterized by righteousness. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaims, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt 5:20). What then is excessive righteousness? When we speak of righteousness, we typically speak of receiving what is due to us, fairness, or suffering the consequences of our actions. When a convicted murder sits on death row, some people feel that justice has not been done until that murder is executed. If our property is damaged in an accident, some claim that they need repayment for lost property or an injustice has been done them. But Jesus teaches another vision of righteousness than that described above.
 
In the six antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:21-48), Jesus gives examples of what he means by excessive righteousness. In all six, he contrasts how the law has been interpreted -- "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times" -- with his own interpretation -- "But I say unto you." [Cf. David Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism, 1956, p. 57]
 
The Antithesis Regarding Murder (5:21-26) From Effect to Cause
 
In this antithesis, Jesus describes the law prohibiting murder and extends it to anger. His jurisprudence calls for the righteous to look to the cause of murder, anger, and then to treat all acts that express that anger as acts of violence tantamount to murder. Verbal abuse is then as much a violation of God's law as physical abuse. The saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me" is exposed as false. One is called to be more circumspect about all of one's actions and responsible for the harm done to others.
In the second part of the antithesis, Jesus calls you to be accountable to another's anger against you. "When you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to you brother and sister, and then come and offer you gift." The implication is that you cannot be reconciled to God if you have not first atoned for your sins or offenses against others. In order to be righteous by Jesus' standards, one must try to be aware of any offense one might give. Our tendency to say "If my actions bother someone else, that is his or her problem" is at odds with Jesus' notion of righteousness.
 
The Antithesis on Adultery (5:27-20)
 
Jesus radicalizes the law against adultery by calling for the righteous to avoid lust. He applies a similar standard of jurisprudence to the one above. Rather than looking at the act of adultery, one looks to the root of that act. When we allow our feelings of attraction to become conscious thoughts of desire, we cross a line. While adultery is clearly a betrayal of marriage, treating another person as a sexual object, or dwelling upon sexual thoughts about another person other than our spouse is deemed unacceptable for one who wishes to dwell in God's Kingdom. The radical quality of this demand is even more apparent when one sets it in its first century context. Adultery is the sin of a wife not a husband. Jesus breaks with the conventional discourse on sexuality by referring to a man's behavior. He does not accuse women of causing men to have sexual impulses but rather insists that men can control their own sexual urges. This idea is not at odds with the Old Testament narratives, but it does not reflect the habitual thought of Jesus' society and, in many respects, our own society.
 
The Antithesis on Divorce (5: 31-32) From the cause to the effect
 
In this antithesis, Jesus limits the grounds of divorce to adultery. The Old Testament law sets very few restrictions upon divorce (Exod 20:14; Deut 5:18). In this case, Jesus calls his audience to think of the consequences of one's actions and states that we are accountable for them. Divorce may not be a violation of the law, but it may cause others do commit acts that are violations.
Any reconstruction of Jesus' thought is speculation, but it seems to be that the following may be part of what Jesus has in mind. He is speaking about a man divorcing a woman: the law does not provide for a woman to divorce a man. Given that marriage is the only means for a woman within a patriarchal culture to have status, a divorced woman is in an awkward and vulnerable situation. The divorce may force her into another marriage. The woman who has violated her marriage through adultery chooses to commit this act of sin; the woman who seeks another relationship because of divorce is forced into the act. Jesus, therefore, places the responsibility for this act upon the husband who has given the woman a divorce.
If the above reconstruction is accurate, we can draw the following analogy from our contemporary setting. The law allows me to sell guns, but if I sell a gun to a person bent on revenge and that person shoots another person, I am culpable for that offense.
 
The Antithesis on Swearing (5: 33-37)
 
Jesus prohibits swearing in this antithesis even though the law enjoins one to swear oaths in God's name in court and with regard to property disputes. Jesus is not speaking about the use of expletives. Mennonites have taken Jesus' prohibition against swearing seriously and do not take oaths. On the most basic level, we can conclude that Jesus believes that honesty is essential to righteousness: one should always mean what one says. I suspect that Jesus is addressing a much more complicated issue about language and meaning. He claims that distinctions between valid oath formulae do not hold. Jesus lists some terms that many Jews do not think are binding, that is they cannot be used in official oaths. Heaven, earth, and Jerusalem are excluded because they are not names for God. Jesus seems to be arguing that their capacity to refer to God does not depend upon our conventions. Consequently, he states all oath terms may be binding oath terms; therefore, one should use none of them. When he states "do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black" (5:36), he seems to be pointing out the limits of human speech to define reality. We may think we know the truth and swear to our convictions, but all of us make errors. We may swear that we will do something in the future, but we sometimes cannot control the circumstances that allow us to fulfill our promises. Consequently, Jesus suggests that we never give our words such binding force. For a longer treatment of this antithesis visit my paper on the Goshen College Web Page: Jesus' Prohibition Against Swearing and His Philosophy of Language
 
The Antithesis Regarding Recompense (5: 38-42)
 
Walter Wink provides the following interpretation of this pericope:
"Indebtedness was the most serious social problem in first century Palestine. Jesus' parables are full of debtors struggling to salvage their lives. The situation was not, however, a natural calamity that had overtaken the incompetent. It was the direct consequence of Roman imperial policy. Emperors had taxed the wealthy so vigorously to fund their wars that the rich began seeking non-liquid investments to secure their wealth. ... It is in this context that Jesus speaks. His hearers are the poor ("if any one would sue you"). They share a rankling hatred for a system that subjects them to humiliation by stripping them of their lands, their goods, finally even their outer garments.
Why then does Jesus counsel them to give over their inner garment as well. This would mean stripping off all their clothing and marching out of court stark naked! Put yourself in the debtor's place, and imagine the chuckles this saying must have evoked. There stands the creditor, beet-red with embarrassment, your outer garment in he one hand, your underwear in the other. You have suddenly turned the tables on him. You had no hope of winning the trial; the law was entirely in his favor. But you have refused to be humiliated, and at the same time you have registered a stunning protest against a system that spawns such debt. You have said in effect, "You want my robe? Here, take everything! Now you've got all I have except my body. Is that what you'll take next?"
Nakedness was taboo in Judaism, and shame fell not on the naked part, but on the person viewing or causing one's nakedness (Gen 9:20-27). By stripping you have brought the creditor under the same prohibition that led to the curse of Canaan. As you parade into the street, your friends and neighbors, startled, aghast, inquire what happened. You explain. They join your growing procession, which now resembles a victory parade. The entire system by which debtors are oppressed has been publicly unmasked. The creditor is revealed to be not a "respectable" moneylender but a party in the reduction of an entire social class to landlessness and destitution. This unmasking is not simply punitive, however; it offers the creditor a chance to see, perhaps for the first time in his life, what his practices cause, and to repent.
... Jesus' third example, the one about going the second mile, is drawn from the very enlightened practice of limiting the amount of forced labor that Roman soldiers could levy on subject peoples. Jews would have seldom encountered legionnaires except in time of war or insurrection. It would have been auxiliaries who were headquartered in Judea, paid at half the rate of legionnaires and rather a scruffy punch. In Galilee, Herod Antipas maintained an army patterned after Rome's; presumably they also had the right to impose labor. Mile markers were placed regularly beside the highways. A soldier could impress a civilian to carry his pack one mile only; to force the civilian to go farther carried with it severe penalties under military law. In this way Rome attempted to limit the anger of the occupied people and still keep its armies on the move. Nevertheless, this levy was a bitter reminder to the Jews that they were a subject people even in the Promised Land. ...
From a situation of servile impressment, you have once more seized the initiative. You have taken back the power of choice. The soldier is thrown off-balance by being deprived of the predictability of your response. He has never dealt with such a problem before. Now you have forced him into making a decision for which nothing in his previous experience has prepared him. If he has enjoyed feeling superior to the vanquished, he will not enjoy it today." Walter Wink, Jesus' Third Way (Philadelphia: New Society,1987), pp. 17-22
 
In the fifth antithesis -- one cited by Walter Wink with whom I stand in disagreement -- Jesus addresses the law of "lex talionis," an "eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth" (Exod 21:24; Lev 24:20; Deut 19:21). In the Second Temple interpretation of this law, it is not about retribution but about the limits of recompense, that is, how much one owes or should receive in compensation for harm done. If someone knocks out my tooth, I do not knock out his or her tooth. I ask for compensation for the loss of the tooth, and my compensation should be no greater than the value of the tooth. Jesus asks for the righteous to give up the demand for recompense. If someone harms me, I should not make them suffer in turn: "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." If the situation is reversed and I have done someone harm and they seek recompense by taking me to court, I should not limit the compensation to the letter of the law but seek to give them more than the minimum: "If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well." In other word, if you pay what the law demands, that is not righteousness, that is doing what the law requires. Righteousness is doing more than the law requires. For example, the law requires that you pay your taxes. Many expect that the government should then take care of the poor and those in need with those taxes. Jesus advocates paying one's taxes, but he would not equate being law abiding with righteousness. Jesus' notion of righteousness calls for a generosity that is excessive: "Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you."
 
Walter Wink situates this passage in the context of oppression, but one is hard pressed to find in the Gospel accounts of Jesus much material that is concerned with the Roman occupation of Judea and the Galilee. Jesus' words are directed to relationships within one's community and with one's God. Moreover, Wink's analysis presupposes that Jesus encourages us to shame others to conform to our principles of justice and allows us to maintain our sense of dignity. While the methods that Wink outlines in his book, The Third Way, may be effective and necessary for people who are suffering oppression, I do not think that they are methods that Jesus recommends in the Sermon on the Mount. If we look at Jesus' treatment of honor and shame -- a new question for biblical scholars -- it seems that Jesus differentiates between public honor and humiliation and the honor that we receive from God. Jesus suggests that the latter is real and the former inconsequential." Whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites (over actors) do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret with reward you" (Matt 6:2-4).
 
The Antithesis Regarding Love of Enemies (5:43-47)
 
This antithesis begins with an interpretation of the law that finds no citation in the Torah. In order to find scriptural basis for hating one's enemies one must look to the psalms that call for vengeance (eg. Ps 139:19-22). In this antithesis, Jesus calls for the extension of acts of kindness and charity to those beyond your own community, beyond those from whom one can expect treatment in kind. Again, the accent falls upon giving to others without the expectation that you will receive the same treatment. We teach our children that in order to have friends, one must be a friend. Jesus drops the first part of this adage and calls us to be friends. Kindness is its own reward.
 
Jesus' notion of righteousness is then radical and extravagant, As Ben F. Meyer writes, "The bursting of limits in the antitheses correlates with the message of the herald of salvation ... his proclamation of divine benevolence, boundless and on the brink has a transforming impact on the person who accepts it."..."The reign of God' signifies a revelation of extravagant goodness, generosity appealing for generosity, depth calling depth into being" (The Aims of Jesus, 1979, p. 144). The problem with these commands is clearly the question of how to fulfill them. Jesus does not provide a method, he simply presents the demand, but an important corollary to the demand for perfection stands God's own abundant forgiveness.
 
Abundance
 
Another understandable expectation is that those who dwell within God's Kingdom will share in his abundance. Isaiah 24:6-8 proclaims:
 
On this mountain the Lord of
hosts will make for all
peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of
well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow,
of well-aged wines strained
clear
And he will dstory on this
mountain
the shroud that is cast over all
peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all
nations;
he will swallow death forever,
Then the Lord God will wipe
away the tears from all
faces,
and the disgrace of his people
he will take away from all
the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
 
If we look at one of the speeches in which Jesus describes the happiness or blessings of the kingdom, we may detect an interesting habit of speech. Jesus likes reversals. His blessings -- the Beatitudes -- set up a paradox: happy are the poor, the mourners. Compare this to an Homeric blessing:
 
Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiated has no part in them; never has a part of good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom.

 

Or look at an intertestamental blessing from Ben Sirach:
 
Happy is the man who lives with an intelligent wife, and the one who does not plow with ox and ass together. Happy is the one who does not sin with the tongue and the one who has not served an inferior. Happy is the one who finds a friend and the one who speaks to attentive listeners.
 
When we look at Jesus' list of the blessed, we need to ask how so? Why are blessings coming to these? Because they are good? No, because God is good. The coming of the eschaton does not validate the status quo rather it reverses it. The sinners are no longer excluded but included.
 
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl (Matt 13:45-46); its coming transvaluates values; material fortunes are worth nothing. There will be startling reversals: "The last will be first and the first, last" (Matt 20:16).
 
In his teaching and his actions, Jesus characterizes the abundance of God's kingdom as God's extravagent love.
 
Jesus frequently used parables in order to explain the nature of God's extravagent love. Parables are not allegories. We cannot take each element and translate it into something in this world. If we look at the allegorical method used by the Church Fathers, we can see the obvious problems with this approach to interpreting the parables.
 
Augustine's interpretation of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37):
{Adapted from Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for all its Worth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982) 124.}
 
Robert W. Funk writes, "Jesus infringed the symbol system of his religious tradition so that he modified the fundamental structure of the correlative semantic code. .. As a modification of the semantic code, the parable and the aphorism became an event of language: a new tradition, a new code, with new polarities -- and thus a fresh sense of the real, emerged" (Parables and Presence, 1982, p.ix). Let me translate. In using parables and sayings like the beatitudes, Jesus was doing something new and startling with language that invited people to think about new possibilities. This can be illustrated by looking at elaborate parables, like the good Samaritan that calls us to rethink what we mean by neighbor, or at short parables, such as the parable of the mustard seed (Luke 13:18-19; cf also 13:20-21) that suggests that what we deem insignificant might have great significance.
 
 'A parable, [Paul] Ricoeur tells us, is a metaphorical process in narrative form. A parabolic metaphor, in the strangeness of its plot, institutes a shock which redescribes reality, and opens for us a new way of seeing and being. The Kingdom of God is like "what happens" in the story. What happens, despite its everyday setting and circumstances, is "odd." More, it is "extravagant." This form of metaphorical process opens an otherwise matter-of-fact situation to an open range of interpretations and to the possibility of new commitments.' Lewis S. Mudge, "Paul Ricoeur on Biblical Interpretation,' in Paul Ricoeur, Essays on Biblical Interpretation, p. 26 .
 
 
Jesus' proclamation of God's love, which he often gave in story form, is interpreted in the Gospels through the telling of Jesus' own story. If we look at a story like "The Cleansing of the Ten Lepers," we may find in microcosm the way Jesus made manifest the Kingdom which he proclaimed. The key questions to ask in order to understand this story concerns why Jesus sent the lepers to see the priests and why the Samaritan did not go to the priests. Ironically, the lepers uncleanness allows them to live in community together. The number ten may be significant; this is the smallest number (quorum) for conducting the prayer service according to Judaism.
In order to be restored to ritual purity, the leper must appear before the priest who proclaims him clean. Again ironically, the healing of their leprosy and the restoration of ritual purity for the nine Jews brings an end to the community of the ten. The Samaritan separates from the group because he can no longer be a part of the group and so he praises God by himself. One should not leap to the conclusion that those who go to the priest do not praise God; they make offerings in the Temple (Lev. 14). When Jesus then says to the Samaritan, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well," we need to think about the implications of his word in the context of late Second Temple Judaism. A priest would object, for the priests proclamation and observation of the Temple cult is what he would take to be the essential cause of the healing. Moreover, he would not consider the Samaritan "healed," for the Samaritan would still be considered unclean. Jesus seems to be implying that the standards of the Temple code are no barrier to the worship of God. Jesus in his actions and in his words continually removes or overrides barriers that make distinctions between various groups of people and restrict those who can worship or be in fellowship with God's people.
 
Consider the story in Matthew 19:13-15 in which the disciples try to prevent children from approaching Jesus. We tend to think that Jesus words about children in the kingdom here and in 18:1-5 signify that we need to be innocent like children or accepting like children. We should ask ourselves whether or not we are imposing modern notions of childhood upon an ancient text. Perhaps, what is at issue here is status. According to the norms of the day, a child, a woman, and those who suffered mental or physical defect were not permitted to participate as fulling in worship as an adult male. We might also consider the issue of power related to status. A child cannot assert its privilege. If we are to become like children, perhaps we need to relinquish or status or authority over others.
 
Who did Jesus say he was?
 
Students tend to be very familiar with doctrinal statements about Jesus or statements about his identity drawn from the Gospel of John: Jesus is God's only begotten son; he is the second person of the Trinity. Some students are familiar enough with Jewish tradition to know that Christ is not Jesus' family name but the Greek for the Hebrew title Messiah meaning anointed one. The Gospels record that many people wondered whether Jesus was the Messiah. He is executed as a false Messiah, someone who proclaims himself King of the Jews in definance of Roman hegemony. His followers proclaim him Christ immediately after his resurrection. Students are often surprised to find that Jesus does not make direct use this title for himself. He seems to have prefered the phrase "son of man." Scholars still debate without consensus whether this term is a messianic title. There are indications in Jesus' actions that he claimed a messianic identity, but as in his preaching, his actions do not meet with people's expectations.
 
The following chart itemizes some of his actions that seem to be based upon prophetic texts but do not fulfill expectations:
 
 Expectation  Scripture  Jesus' Twist
   
 Restoration of Israel  Ezekiel 37:15-28  The Discipleship of the Twelve
 Paradisal Restoration  Is 29:17-24  
 Restoration of Davidic Rule  Zech 9:9; cf also Amos 9:11  Not as the Warrior King (cf. Is 61 versus Luke4:18-19)
 Ingathering of Nations to the Temple in Jerusalem  Isaiah 2:2-4; Zech 14:21 and Isaiah 56:6-8  Disruption of the Temple system
 
As noted in our discussions of the parable of the good Samaritan and Jesus' healing of the Samaritan leper, the stories Jesus told and the stories told about Jesus contain a critique of the temple cult. In Mark 2:7, some scribes accuse Jesus of blasphemy for saying that the sins of the paralytic are forgiven. In the mainstream of Second Temple Judaism, forgiveness for sins of this type was granted by God alone and facilitated by the temple cult. In Matt 24:2 (par.), Jesus predicts the destruction of the temple. While Jesus' twists on expectations about God's kingdom may have angered or disturbed some people, his action against the temple -- commonly called the "cleansing of the Temple"-- is the necessary cause of his execution and may, in fact, be the sufficient cause.
 
What did Jesus set out to accomplish: It seems to me that at the heart of the proclamation of God's reign and the significance of Jesus' actions point to the reconciliation of the world to God and the breaking down of boundaries in order to allow all of humanity to be reconciled with one another and with God.
 
Copyright © 1998 by Jo-Ann A. Brant