The Unforgiving King of Matthew 18:21-35?

I am currently reading John Coutts’ A Shared Mercy: Karl Barth on Forgiveness and the Church, and I will probably write my review of it tomorrow.  Today, I want to share something in the book about Jesus’ parable on forgiveness in Matthew 18:21-35.

Some background information is in order.  First of all, on pages 89-91, Coutts is discussing the work of Ched Myers and Elaine Enns as it concerns the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:21-35.  The bibliographical information is Ched Meyers and Elaine Enns, Ambassadors of Reconciliation, vol. 1, New Testament Reflections on Restorative Justice and Peacemaking (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009) 56, 65-66.  I recognized Ched Myer’s name because, in 2014, I read and reviewed his book Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus.

Second, I should summarize the parable of Matthew 18:21-35.  In this parable, a king forgives the debt of a servant who owed him ten thousand talents.  That very same servant then turned around and refused to forgive a fellow servant who owed him a much smaller amount.  When the king heard this from other servants, he was outraged at the unmerciful servant and handed him over to torment in jail.  Jesus concludes by saying, “So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses” (KJV).  Jesus tells this parable after Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive his brother who sins against him, and Jesus says Peter should forgive, not just seven times (as Peter proposed), but seventy times seven (Matthew 18:21-22).

Third, the story of Lamech in the Book of Genesis is relevant to this discussion, so I should summarize that.  Lamech appears in Genesis 4:18-24.  Lamech was a descendant of Cain, the son of Adam and Eve who killed his brother Abel.  Lamech tells his two wives, Adah and Zillah, that he killed a man who merely wounded him.  Lamech then says, “If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy and seven fold” (KJV).  Lamech is alluding there to God’s interaction with Cain in Genesis 4:15: God expelled Cain, Cain expressed fear that someone would kill him, and God then tells Cain that “whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on his sevenfold” (KJV).  Lamech is taking this a step further: Lamech will take seventy and seven fold vengeance on anyone who hurts him!  Lamech is starting or perpetuating a cycle of vengeful retribution.

Back to the parable in Matthew 18:21-35.  Many people interpret the king in that parable to represent God, and they maintain that the lesson of the parable is that God will treat unforgiving people as the king in the parable treated the unforgiving servant: God will punish them.  Myers and Enns have a different interpretation, however, as they see the king, too, as a flawed character, chained to Lamech’s way of vengeance.  Coutts summarizes their view on pages 91-92:

“Referring to Amos Wilder’s depiction of Jesus’ parables as a ‘war of myths,’ they interpret it rather provocatively as a satirical judgment on the ‘retributive justice liturgy’ that prevails upon each of the parable’s characters.  Because the king shows himself ‘unwilling…to forgive more than once,’ Myers and Enns maintain that he is not intended by Jesus as an allegorical stand-in for God, but as an indication of the extent to which the king is himself deeply mired in Lamech’s ‘logic of retribution.’  Caught up in that logic, the parable’s king utilizes the common practice of ‘predatory lending’ in order to keep slaves in his debt.  The other servants operate under the same competitive logic when they turn the unmerciful servant in, such that all the characters are depicted as condemning themselves—-along with Lamech and everyone after him—-to the ‘collective death sentence of our own design.’  Particularly given Peter’s question and Jesus’ answer about how often to forgive, Myers and Enns conclude that the parable’s audience is meant to hear in the final verse of the chapter not an approval of any of the story’s characters but a warning that ‘God will not save us from the consequences’ of leaving Lamech’s ‘spiral of vengeance’ uninterrupted.”

For Myers and Enns, it is not only the unmerciful servant who is unmerciful in this story.  The king is unmerciful because he does not forgive after that one time (not to mention that the king is a predatory lender, who keeps servants in his debt by lending them lots of money).  The servants who turn the unmerciful servant in to the king are, likewise, unmerciful.  None of these characters demonstrates the lavish forgiveness that Jesus exhorted Peter to show—-the seventy times seven forgiveness!  As a result, all of the characters are trapped in Lamech’s cycle of vengeance.  And that will happen to us, if we do not forgive others from our hearts.

I like this interpretation because it presents forgiveness of others as something that is practical, rather than something that we do to appease a wrathful God.  In reading this interpretation, I thought of a comment that someone made on a theology board one time.  This person thought that the parable would have been a lot better had it presented the king doing more than forgiving the first servant’s debt.  Suppose that the king also paid the small debt of the servant who owed the unforgiving servant money?  What a way to model forgiveness to the unforgiving servant!  In reading that comment, I wished that the parable had said that, too, but I resigned myself to the fact that we have the Bible that we have, not the Bible that we wish!  It was refreshing, therefore, to read an alternative interpretation of the parable, that of Myers and Enns.

Am I convinced by their interpretation, though?  Not entirely.  For one, I can’t get past Jesus’ statement in Matthew 18:35 that “So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses” (KJV).  That seems to be saying that God will treat unforgiving people the way that the king in the parable treated the unforgiving servant.  I wonder if, or how, Myers and Enns address that point.

Second, the idea that God will not forgive us if we don’t forgive others occurs elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew.  See Matthew 6:15.  The concept also appears in Mark 11:26.  It would not surprise me, therefore, if the parable in Matthew 18:21-35 reflects that teaching.  And yet, Myers and Enns still make a good point: does not that hyper-conditional conception of forgiveness contradict the lavish forgiveness that Jesus exhorts Peter to exercise right before Jesus tells the parable?  Does the parable as it is commonly interpreted mesh neatly with Jesus’ exhortation of lavish forgiveness earlier in Matthew 18?

On page 120 of A Shared Mercy, Coutts refers to a similar point made by Anthony Bash, in Forgiveness and Christian Ethics.  Coutts relays Bash’s view as follows: “Anthony Bash rightly asks how the ‘divine forgiveness is an unimaginably lavish gift to the undeserving’ if it is ‘made contingent on the degree to which one person forgives another,’ and thus proposes that the hints of contingency in Jesus’ statement apply not to the gift of divine forgiveness but to our experience of it.”

I’ll probably be repeating some of this, albeit in a more succinct form, in my review of Coutts’ book tomorrow or the next day.  Let me say that I do appreciate this book because it interacts with Christian thinkers who struggle to define forgiveness, and it itself wrestles with the issue.  I have encountered that often in Christian print, but, when it comes to Christians in a face-to-face context, they often tend to act as if their pat answers are obvious.  I myself question how well they walk the walk that they talk!  This is not to suggest that I walk it that well, either!

The Martyrdom of Zechariah in Rabbinic Literature and Matthew 23:35

In Matthew 23:35, Jesus is lambasting the Pharisees, and he says:

"That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar” (KJV).

A number of biblical scholars say this is an error.  They think that Jesus really means Zechariah the son of Jehoiada, who was murdered in the Temple court in II Chronicles 24.

In II Chronicles 24, the story about the murder of Zechariah the son of Jehoiada is set in Judah's pre-exilic period, during the reign of King Joash of Judah.  After the death of Jehoiada, who was a priest, a mentor to King Joash, and the father of Zechariah, King Joash and the princes of Judah become idolatrous.  This offends God, so God sends them prophets to exhort them to turn from their wickedness.  But the people continue in their idolatrous ways.  Zechariah the son of Jehoiada, under the influence of God's spirit, criticizes their transgression of God's commandments and says that God is forsaking them because they are forsaking God.  The king and princes plot to stone Zechariah in the Temple court, and the dying Zechariah says, "The LORD look upon it, and require it" (v 22 KJV).

But Jesus in Matthew 23:35 does not say Zechariah the son of Jehoida, but rather Zechariah the son of Barachias.  Zechariah the son of Berechiah was a post-exilic prophet.  He encouraged the Jews returning to Judah after the exile in their work of rebuilding the Temple (Ezra 5:1; 6:14).  The biblical Book of Zechariah is attributed to him, and Zechariah 1-8 explicitly concerns figures and events during Israel's post-exilic period: Joshua the high priest, Zerubabbel the governor, etc.  Zechariah's father was named Berechiah, but his grandfather was Iddo (Zechariah 1:1), so Zechariah is called the son of Iddo (Ezra 5:1; 6:14).  Iddo and Zechariah were both priests (Nehemiah 12:4, 16).

Was Jesus, Matthew, or whoever spoke or wrote Matthew 23 mistaken in saying that Zechariah the son of Berechiah, rather than Zechariah the son of Jehoida, was killed between the Temple and the altar?  Many biblical inerrantists think not.  They maintain that Jesus was correct and that Zechariah the son of Berechiah was killed between the Temple and the altar during Israel's post-exilic period.

I am currently reading C. Marvin Pate's 40 Questions About the Historical Jesus.  (Kregel Academic sent me a complimentary review copy of this book.)  Pate argues that Jesus in Matthew 23:35 was not mistaken.  An argument that Pate makes is that there are other ancient sources that say that the prophet Zechariah the son of Berechiah was killed.  Pate states, on page 33:

...rabbinic traditions (e.g., the Targum on Lam. 2:20 and the Midrash Rabbah on Eccl. 3:16) also refer to Zechariah the prophet being killed in the temple.  On this understanding, Jesus and extra-biblical tradition converge in reporting an actual incident not mentioned in the Old Testament.

I had never heard this before, and I was curious to check out these sources.

I took a look at the Midrash Rabbah on my Judaic Classics Library (which is the Soncino one).  The passage is Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:19.  The passage there did not say that the Zechariah in question was Zechariah the son of Berechiah or the son of Iddo.  It simply referred to a Zechariah who was killed.  The footnote that the commentators added believe that the Zechariah here is Zechariah the son of Jehoida, the one in II Chronicles 24.  And there is good reason that they arrive at that conclusion.  According to Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:19, Zechariah was killed before the Babylonians invaded Judah.  Zechariah has been dead and buried by the time that Nebuzaradan the captain of the Babylonian guard invades Judah, and his blood is still visible at the Temple.  The passage seems to suggest that the Babylonian invasion of Judah was God's punishment for what Judah did to Zechariah, even though a merciful impulse towards Judah comes over Nebuzaradan at Zechariah's grave.

Zechariah the son of Jehoida, in II Chronicles 24, was killed prior to the Babylonian invasion of Judah.  Zechariah the son of Berechiah lived after the time of the Babylonian invasion, when the Israelites returned from exile.  Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:19 is talking about a pre-exilic Zechariah, so it probably concerns Zechariah the son of Jehoida in II Chronicles 24, not the prophet Zechariah the son of Berechiah.

The Targum on Lamentations 2:20 is a different story.  C.M.M. Brady's translation of this Targum states the following:

See, O Lord, and observe from heaven against whom you have turned. Thus is it right for the daughters of Israel to eat the fruit of their wombs due to starvation, the lovely boys wrapped in fine linen? The Attribute of Justice replied, and said, “Is it right to kill priest and prophet in the Temple of the LORD, as when you killed Zechariah son of Iddo, the High Priest and faithful prophet in the Temple of the Lord on the Day of Atonement because he admonished you not to do evil before the Lord?”

There, the Zechariah who is killed in the Temple is Zechariah the son of Iddo, the post-exilic prophet Zechariah.  Pate is correct about this passage.

I still have questions, though.  For one, was Zechariah the son of Berechiah/Iddo a high priest, as the Targum suggests?  He was a priest, but was he the high priest?  In the Book of Zechariah, the high priest is Joshua, not Zechariah (Zechariah 3; 6:11).  Does the Targum really have the prophet Zechariah the son of Berechiah/Iddo in mind?  Yet, perhaps one can say that Zechariah the son of Berechiah/Iddo became high priest after the time of Joshua.  Second, the Targum says that Zechariah the son of Iddo was killed on the Day of Atonement.  The reason that this detail stands out to me is that Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:19 (the source we looked at above) seems to suggest that Zechariah the son of Jehoida was killed on the Day of Atonement: "R. Judan said: Seven transgressions were committed by Israel at that time: they killed a priest, a prophet, and a judge, they shed innocent blood, they defiled the Temple Court, and this was done on the Sabbath which was also the Day of Atonement" (Soncino translation).  This is said immediately after the story of Nebuzaradan visiting the grave of Zechariah.

Were both Zechariahs killed on the Day of Atonement?  Or could it be that the Targum is mixing up and confusing Zechariahs, saying Zechariah the son of Iddo when it really means Zechariah the son of Jehoida (the one killed on the Day of Atonement in Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:19)?  Could the Targum here be making the same mistake that many scholars think Matthew 23:35 makes?  If so, then the Targum is not actually reflecting a Jewish tradition about the death of Zechariah the son of Berechiah.

I still tend to believe what I said in my post about II Chronicles 24:

Finally, not only is there no evidence that Zechariah the son of Berachiah was martyred, but I also find it unlikely.  Zechariah the son of Jehoiada spoke truth to power and had a message that could get him killed.  Zechariah the son of Berachiah, by contrast, supported the establishment, specifically the attempts by Governor Zerubabbel and Joshua the priest to rebuild Israel.  Why would Zechariah the son of Berechiah be martyred?  Was it because he was challenging post-exilic Jews for not completely giving paganism up?  Still, he was part of the establishment.

Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh

In Matthew 2, magi from the east present the child Jesus with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Why did they give Jesus those particular gifts?

Here are three items.  The first two items draw from Tim Widowfield’s post on Vridar, “Why Did Matthew’s Nativity Story Have References to Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh?” The third item is from my reading of the fifth-ninth century C.E. Christian work, “The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan.”

A.  Matthew 2 could be alluding to Isaiah 60:6, which states: “The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the LORD” (KJV).

Isaiah 60:6 is about what will occur after God glorifies Israel: Gentiles will bring Israel gold and incense.  According to biblical scholar John Nolland, Matthew’s allusion to Isaiah 60:6 depicts “Israel being glorified in the person of the messiah by the wealth of the nations” (page 117 of Nolland’s 2005 book, The Gospel of Matthew).

There are various things to consider:

First, Isaiah 60:6 is part of Third Isaiah, which may not even have Messianism.  At least I agree with biblical scholar Paul Hanson that it does not, for the idea of a Davidic king is absent from Third Isaiah.  At the same time, Matthew most likely was unaware of the different ideologies within the Book of Isaiah.  Matthew could have interpreted Isaiah 60:6 messianically, even if that was contrary to Third Isaiah’s ideology.

Second, were Midian, Ephah, and Sheba located east of Israel, which is where the magi were from?  Sheba was probably located to the south of Israel.  Midianites could have been located southeast of Israel, however, in southern Transjordan (Numbers 22; 25; 31; I Kings 11:18).

Third, were there magi in Midian?  Well, the sorcerer Balaam in the Book of Numbers served the Midianites, who were mixed with the Moabites.  Could Matthew 2 be positing a reversal of the Balaam story: magicians from the east are not trying to subvert Israel, as Balaam did, but are honoring her Messiah with gifts?  Perhaps.  Yet, the first century Jewish philosopher Philo praises magi who were in Persia (Special Laws 3.100-101; Every Good Man Is Free 74).  Not surprisingly, many have maintained that the magi who visited Jesus (in real life, in the story, or in both) were from Persia.

B.  Tim Widowfield’s post on Vridar draws from controversial scholar Margaret Barker’s book, Christmas, the Original Story.  Barker maintains that the magi’s gifts relate to the anointing of the Messiah and the eschatological Temple.  Myrrh was used for anointing.  Frankincense was used in the worship at the Tabernacle (Exodus 30:34).  Josephus in Antiquities 8:4 states that a lot of incense was burned when Solomon was consecrating his Temple.  There were Jewish traditions about the Messiah building a new Temple, different from the inadequate and (according to some) corrupt Second Temple.  Could the magi’s gifts relate to that?

C.  Gold, frankincense, and myrrh feature prominently in “The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan.”  They are present in Book I, Chapters 30-31, and Book II, Chapter 8, verses 17-19.
Adam and Eve are trying to adjust to their rough life after they have been exiled from the Garden of Eden.  God gives them incense and myrrh from the Garden of Eden, and golden rods from the Indian sea, to comfort them.

Adam at first does not find these gifts too comforting.  He thinks that they serve to remind him of the glory that he lost in Eden: that the gold symbolizes the Kingdom of God in the Garden, the incense recalls the bright light that was once a part of Adam’s nature, and the myrrh concerns Adam’s present sorrow.
God, however, tells Adam that these gifts are intended to comfort him, both symbolically and functionally.  God says that kings will bring God these gifts when God comes in the flesh.  The gold represents God’s kingdom.  The incense represents Christ’s divinity.  The myrrh is a token of Christ’s suffering and death, which will save humanity, including Adam.

The gifts also have a practical function.  The gold is a sort of nightlight for Adam and Eve when they sleep in the cave at night.  Adam and Eve are having difficulty becoming accustomed to the darkness of night, especially after leaving Eden, a place where there is no night.  The incense provides a sweet smell, and the myrrh can comfort Adam and Eve in their sorrow.  Adam and Eve place these gifts around their cave, which is their home, a place of prayer, and, eventually, a place of burial for the righteous.

Later, Adam on his deathbed is exhorting his righteous son, Seth.  Adam instructs Seth to preserve the gold, incense, and myrrh, for they are a sign from God.  They symbolize the same things that God told Adam earlier, but Adam also presents an alternative symbolism: the gold symbolizes Christ’s defeat of Satan; the incense symbolizes Christ’s resurrection and exaltation above all things; and the myrrh symbolizes the bitter gall that Christ will drink as well as the torment that Christ will suffer in hell from Satan.

Adam says that the gifts are to be taken aboard the Ark during the Flood, along with Adam’s corpse, and they are to be buried with Adam.  A long time afterwards, Israel will be conquered and spoiled, and these gifts will be taken to another land.  These gifts will last for centuries, until kings will bring them to the Christ child.  The idea seems to be that this gold, incense, and myrrh end up in Persia after Israel is exiled, and the Persian magi later bring them to the child Jesus.

How do these items symbolize what they symbolize?  Gold probably had royal associations, so that could be why it symbolized God’s kingdom.  Incense may have symbolized Christ’s divinity in the sense that incense is sweet, and Christ’s divinity sweetened his humanity.  It may have symbolized Christ’s resurrection because the sweet smell of incense rises, as Christ rose to heaven.  Christ, according to many Christians, was a sweet offering to God: Christ righteously obeyed God and pleased God in so doing, and Christ’s sacrifice was an atonement for sinners that God accepted.  The myrrh may have symbolized Christ’s passion because of its bitter taste; at the same time, Christ on the cross refused to drink wine mingled with myrrh, which could have alleviated his pain (Mark 15:23).  Perhaps the myrrh in “The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan” recalled that scene at the passion.

Merry Christmas, for those who celebrate it.  For those who do not, have a good day.

The Church Fathers Wrestle with Jesus' Declaration of Ignorance (Matthew 24:36)

In Matthew 24:35-37, we read:

“Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.  But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.  But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (KJV).

This passage appears to suggest that Jesus does not know the exact time when he will return.  How can this be, if Jesus is God and, thus, is omniscient?

I subscribe to Derek Leman’s Daily Portion.  Derek was a Messianic Jewish rabbi.  His Daily Portion presents a passage from the Torah and a passage from the Gospels, along with brief quotations of scholarly commentaries.  I have enjoyed reading the Daily Portion because Derek usually notices the sorts of things that I would notice—-the sorts of things that I would find interesting if I were reading those commentaries.

On Matthew 24:36-51, Leman quotes from Dale Allison and W.D. Davies, Matthew: A Shorter Commentary (New York: T&T Clark, 2004).  Allison and Davies discuss how ancient church fathers wrestled with the idea of Jesus not knowing the time of his own return:

“Older Christian theology often struggled with Jesus’ declaration of ignorance. Luke omitted the saying, as did certain copyists of Matthew and Mark. Origen wondered whether Jesus was referring to the church of which he is the head. Ambrose attributed ‘nor the Son’ to an Arian interpolation [i.e., he did not think it was genuine but that copyists who doubted Jesus’ divinity added it]. Athanasius suggested Jesus only feigned ignorance. The Cappadocians thought the Son did not know the date on his own, but only through the Father; or as Gregory Nazianzen put it: ‘He knows as God and knows not as man.’ Chrysostom, in a prize example of bad exegesis, simply denied that Jesus was ignorant of anything: ‘neither is the Son ignorant of the day, but is even in full certainty thereof.’ So too Cassiodorus, citing Jn 21:17 and contending that ‘nor the Son’ means that the Son did not make others know. But modern Christian theology, emphasizing with the creeds that Jesus was ‘true man,’ has come to terms with our saying as an expression of kenosis [the truth from Philippians 2 that the Son emptied himself of certain divine privileges to descend into humanity].”

Book Write-Up: The Gospels for All Christians

Richard Bauckham, ed.  The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences.  Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1998.

For whom were the Gospels written?  The idea that I have frequently encountered in academia, starting with my undergraduate Intro to New Testament class over a decade ago, was that the Gospels were written for specific communities, in specific locations.  Mark’s Gospel was supposedly written in Rome for Christians in that area, whereas Matthew’s Gospel was written in Antioch, Syria for the Jewish Christian community in that region.  Even my church’s Bible study curriculum apparently presumes that the Gospels were written within and for specific communities.  My church recently went through a curriculum about John’s Gospel, and the host on the DVD said that John wrote his Gospel in Ephesus, and that he was addressing the concerns of Christians in Ephesus.  For example, the cult of Dionysus was big in Ephesus, so John’s Gospel depicts Jesus turning water into wine, the sort of thing that Dionysus did.

I had assumed that the Gospels were written within and for specific communities, until I read about The Gospels for All Christians on Nick Norelli’s blog.  I figured that I should acquaint myself with recent developments in New Testament scholarship, and I was fortunate to find the book at a good price.  The Gospels for All Christians essentially challenges the idea that the Gospels were written to and for specific Christian communities, arguing instead that they were originally intended for a more general, widespread audience of believers, and perhaps even non-believers.  The book contains contributions from Richard Bauckham, Michael B. Thompson, Loveday Alexander, Richard A. Burridge, , Stephen C. Barton, and Francis Watson.

The book contends that there is no evidence that the Gospels were written for specific communities, and that the likelihood is that they were not.  Bauckham argues that it was unlikely in the ancient world that a person would write a Gospel for a community that was located in the very place where he was writing the Gospel.  Paul wrote letters to Christian communities, but he did so from outside of those communities’ locations.  For Bauckham and other contributors to the book, the fact that the Gospels were written down indicates that they were intended to have a broader circulation beyond any specific local communities.  A person would probably not have written a Gospel for a Christian community in his own area, the logic runs, for, in that case, he would have continued to rely on oral tradition and performance, making writing the Gospels unnecessary.

I am not entirely convinced that Bauckham and company disprove that the Gospels could have been written within and for specific communities: after all, did not the Qumran community produce written literature for its own community?  Moreover, there could have been reasons that the Gospels were written down that had nothing to do with giving them broader circulation, such as a desire to preserve Jesus’ life and teachings for posterity because the disciples were dying off, and Christ was not returning anytime soon.  (I draw here from what the book Reinventing Jesus says is the view of many scholars as to why the Gospels were written down.)

I also wish that The Gospels for All Christians had offered more alternative explanations for features of the Gospels that many scholars attribute to their composition for specific communities.  On some level, the book did so by arguing that some of the problems that the Gospels address were not restricted to local communities but had a more widespread existence: John and Matthew are about Christians’ problems with mainstream Jewish communities, and this issue was not limited to one or two communities but was present throughout the Diaspora.  But I was hoping that the book would get more specific.  For example, there are scholars who argue that Matthew was writing for a wealthier community than Mark was, and thus Matthew’s Jesus assumes that his disciples have more money than Mark’s Jesus assumes for his disciples.  How would Bauckham and company address such phenomena?  They say things that indicate that they are aware of such issues, but how would they account for them, within their model of the Gospels being written for a general audience?

Although I am not yet sold on the book’s thesis, I think that it does well to question scholarly consensus, and to ask if that consensus truly has a firm foundation.  The book is also a repository of information about ancient routes, why and for whom books were written and produced in ancient times, genres, and trends within New Testament scholarship that focus on communities.  Bauckham’s chapter that argues that the Gospel of John was written on the assumption that its readers were familiar with Mark’s Gospel is also worth the read.  Whether or not the Gospels were originally written for a broader audience, they did come to have a broader audience, and so (in my opinion) it is reasonable to maintain that John’s Gospel was written to people who had access to Mark’s Gospel.

I also commend the book’s clear prose.

Good book.

The Whole World Was At Peace?

I went to midnight mass last night.  The priest was saying that the people in the world put aside their resentments and divisions when Jesus was born.  I had no idea where he was getting that.  Herod certainly didn’t put aside his ambitions in the Gospel of Matthew, for Herod saw the recently born Jesus as a rival to his throne and tried to kill him.

I thought of a Bible study group that I attended years ago.  We were going through the Gospel of Luke.  The group leader was saying that, the way that he long saw the Christmas story, people at Jesus’ birth are all happy and are singing songs together.  In reading Luke, however, he was seeing a different picture: people’s reactions were, “This is strange stuff.”

Book Write-Up: Matthew and Empire, by Warren Carter

Warren Carter.  Matthew and Empire: Initial Explorations.  Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 2001.

Warren Carter argues that Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew was against the Roman empire and its oppression of Israel.  That’s not the message one often hears when watching Jesus movies, I’ll tell you that!  I was recently watching the 1961 movie King of Kings, starring Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus.  The movie did a good job showing why there were many Jews who wanted a Messiah to deliver them from Roman oppression, and yet it depicted Jesus as one who was not overly concerned about Rome.  Rather, Jesus in the movie focused on preaching peace and love.  Some Romans were wondering if this could have anti-Roman political implications: for example, Pilate wondered if Rome would get its taxes if Jews decided to heed Jesus’ exhortation to sell all they have and give to the poor.  But the Roman soldier defending Jesus sought to reassure Pilate that Jesus was not seeking to overthrow Rome, for Jesus was promoting a spiritual kingdom rather than a new political kingdom.

But Carter wants to argue that Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel was opposing Rome, and that his ministry in that Gospel had political implications.  Carter doesn’t go as far as S.G.F. Brandon in Jesus and the Zealots (read my review of that book here), for Carter does not argue that Jesus was a revolutionary who was open to using violence, nor does Carter believe that the Gospel of Matthew was trying to downplay or obscure any political significance in Jesus’ mission.  Rather, Carter maintains that Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel was countering Rome by promoting and practicing love, service, and recognition of the value of all, rather than the Roman empire’s way of seeking to lord it over others.  Moreover, according to Carter, Jesus believed that the coming Kingdom of God would overthrow Rome and inaugurate a reality in which the poor are fed rather than exploited.  For Carter, Jesus in his ministry of healing and exorcism was foreshadowing that sort of reality.

On what basis does Carter argue that Jesus was opposing the Roman empire?  Carter places a lot of emphasis on Matthew 20:25-27, in which Jesus contrasts the Gentile princes’ exercise of power with the service that Jesus exhorted his disciples to practice.  Carter also argues that Jesus in his ministry was acting as an alternative to Rome: whereas the Roman empire maintained that the emperor was a son of a god and brought divinity and peace to the world, Jesus was claiming to be the Son of God and was healing the brokenness that was in Palestine under Roman rule.  Moreover, amidst Rome’s insistence that the empire was a place of prosperity and peace, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount was highlighting just how bad the Roman empire was: it was a place where people mourned.  But Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel was promising a new reality in which the mourners would be comforted and the meek would inherit the earth.

Carter tries to refute interpretations of Matthew’s Gospel that disregard or contradict Jesus’ opposition to Rome.  Against the view that Jesus in Matthew was to be one who would liberate people from sin rather than political oppression, Carter maintains that, within ancient Jewish thought, the political and the spiritual were interconnected, for Israel’s political destiny was contingent on its relationship with God; Carter also interprets forgiveness in parts of Matthew in reference to the cancellation of debts and the Jubilee, which had socio-political implications.  Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-29: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls” (KJV).  Carter interprets that politically, in reference to Rome, noting places in ancient Jewish literature where toil, rest, and yokes had political significance.  Against the argument that Matthew’s Gospel is downplaying Pilate’s guilt in the crucifixion of Jesus, Carter holds that Pilate in Matthew’s Gospel is far from innocent: that Pilate exemplified why Roman power was so horrible.

There was one place where I did not exactly buy into the entirety of Carter’s interpretation, but I found it to be quite interesting.  Remember the story in Matthew 17:24-27 in which Peter draws a coin out of a fish to pay tribute?  Carter argues that the story is about tribute to Rome, and that Jesus was demonstrating God’s sovereignty over the Roman empire.  I tend to disagree with Carter’s argument that Jesus in vv 25-26 is criticizing a situation in the Roman empire in which kings’ children are exempt from paying tribute, for it seems to me that Jesus’ point is that the disciples do not have to pay tribute because they are the king’s children, and yet Peter should pay it so as not to cause trouble or unnecessary offense.  But Carter does make the interesting argument that the scene with the fish demonstrates God’s sovereignty.  Carter notes examples in Roman literature of birds, animals, and fish acknowledging the sovereignty of the emperor, and Carter contends that Jesus is demonstrating his own sovereignty over nature, amidst a situation in which Peter had to yield to Rome. 

Carter’s discussion of Pilate reminded me somewhat of Diane Sawyer’s interview with Mel Gibson back when the Passion of the Christ was coming out.  Scholars and critics were saying that Gibson’s film blamed the Jews for Jesus’ death while downplaying Pilate’s culpability, but Gibson appeared to be puzzled by that accusation, for he felt that he was portraying Pilate negatively: as cowardly.  That tells me that there should probably be more nuance in discussions about the Gospels’ depictions of the role of Rome in Jesus’ death: I do think that the Gospels largely blame Jewish authorities for Jesus’ death, and yet I don’t find their depiction of Pilate to be all that flattering.  The widespread idea that the Gospels were trying to downplay Roman involvement in Jesus’ death out of an attempt to appease Rome strikes me as rather simplistic, and it should be nuanced more.  Carter, in my opinion, does well to criticize scholarly arguments about the portrayal of Pilate in Matthew’s Gospel, not because there is nothing to such arguments, but rather because the issue is more complex.

At the same time, I do wish that Carter had dealt more with the implications of the criticism of Rome in the Gospel of Matthew.  According to Carter, the Roman empire had influence in Syria, which is where Carter (and many scholars) believe that Matthew’s Gospel was written.  If so, why wasn’t Matthew afraid to write a Gospel that criticized the Roman empire?  Wouldn’t he have feared Roman retaliation, on himself and his Christian community?  I think that fear of Rome, or at least political wisdom, explains why opposition to Rome is not that explicit in Matthew’s Gospel.  I agree with Carter that Matthew’s Gospel is pertinent in some manner to the Roman empire, but I do not see Rome being criticized in an explicit and head-on way in Matthew’s Gospel.  Similarly, within ancient Jewish literature, we often find implicit or coded criticisms of Israel’s imperialistic oppressors, but rarely are the criticisms explicit.

There were other interesting discussions in Carter’s book: Carter’s statement that Jesus was telling the rich young ruler to sell his goods and give to the poor because the rich young ruler had gotten his wealth at the expense of others, and Carter’s argument that Matthew in quoting the Hebrew Bible was echoing the contexts of the passages he was quoting.  Matthew quoted passages that originally related to Assyrian imperialism, and the promise of redemption in the midst of that.  According to Carter, Matthew was doing so to reassure Israel that God would redeem her from Roman imperialist hegemony.  This sounds like typology.  In one place, Carter says that Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel anticipated possible death, for servants of God before him, including the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, died in their mission.  That is actually a notable thought: that Jesus in Matthew did not see himself as the Suffering Servant, but rather regarded the Suffering Servant as a figure before him, one who perhaps foreshadowed him.  I am reluctant to wholly accept that, for it seems to me that Matthew believed that Isaiah was predicting Jesus and identified Jesus as the Suffering Servant.  But I am interested in learning more about how the Hebrew Bible can predict or foreshadow the New Testament, while still having meaning for its own identified historical contexts.

Carter briefly tries to tackle a theological issue: How can Matthew criticize Roman imperialism, exclusion, and violence, while embracing a model in which God will come and violently overthrow Rome?  At first, Carter seems to be saying that God can’t be Mr. Nice Guy in overthrowing oppression: that God may have to use force to bring about a just society.  But Carter holds out hope that perhaps it won’t come to that: that, if we take political steps towards justice and peace, maybe God won’t need to use force to overthrow oppression.  This may be overly idealistic, but it is better than saying that we should not pursue political and economic justice because such efforts would be futile, since we are corrupt sinners, and Christ will come back anyway to fix things.  Moreover, so many of God’s acts in the Bible are presented as contingent on human behavior, so who is to say that God couldn’t change God’s plans if we were to behave a bit better?

While Carter was addressing theological problems, he should have addressed how we can hope in Jesus’ promise of a new world, when his promise of Rome’s overthrow did not come to pass.  Carter should have said something about the failure of Jesus’ imminent eschatology to materialize, and whether that effects the Bible’s status as divine revelation that can provide people with hope.

Overall, this was a good book.

Forgiving Each Day in Prayer

When I was doing my daily quiet time recently in the Book of Numbers, studying Numbers 28, I checked my notes on that chapter that I took a few years ago.  Numbers 28-29 is about the sacrifices that are offered on each day, each Sabbath, each new moon, and each festival.  In my notes on Numbers 28, one thing that I wrote was the following:

"Mark 11:25----forgive others when praying.  Matthew 6:11----prayer is daily.  Maybe God wants us to forgive others each day in prayer.  It is an occurrence----aorist----yet occurs each day."

I don't remember if I came up with that thought myself or learned it from somebody else (such as a renowned Christian commentator of the past, or a modern evangelical preacher, or both).  The connection between this point and Numbers 28 is that both are about honoring God each day.  Numbers 28 commands Israel (probably, more specifically, the priests) to offer sacrifices each day.  And Jesus presents prayer as a daily occurrence, since Matthew 6:11 asks God to give us this day our daily bread.

Forgiveness has long been a thorny subject with me, the reason being that I have a hard time doing it.  One time, in an evangelical small group, some students and I were talking about Matthew 6:14-15, which affirms that God will forgive us if we forgive others, and will not forgive us if we don't forgive others.  One lady said that she understood forgiveness to be a process rather than an act, and she said that how to understand "forgive" in Matthew 6:14-15 may depend on what the Greek word's form is: is it an imperfect, which describes a continuous action up to this point, or is it an aorist, which concerns a completed action?  Do we have to officially have forgiven someone----the action is complete----for God to forgive us?  I sincerely hoped not, for I could not really complete an act of forgiveness----I could forgive, and then I'd remember the reason I was mad at the person in the first place, and the unforgiveness would continue.

Incidentally, we did not have Greek New Testaments with us at that evangelical small group that day----although a couple of people in the group could read New Testament Greek.  When I checked the Greek word for "forgive" in Mark 11:25, Matthew 6:12, and Matthew 6:14-15, I saw some variety, as I beheld the word in the present, in the aorist subjunctive, and in the future.

But perhaps forgiveness could be a process, even when it is in the aorist subjunctive in Matthew 6:14.  There is an aorist of occurrence----which somehow I knew about when I wrote that note in my notebook.  An aorist can describe something simply happening, and we don't have to get bent out of shape about the aorist having to concern a completed act rather than a process.  When we come before God in prayer, we forgive others.  This forgiveness can be described as an occurrence.  And yet, we may very well have to repeat that act of forgiveness on multiple occasions.  I like what C.S. Lewis once said: it's not necessarily the case that we have to forgive a different sin against us seventy times seven; in many cases, we may have to forgive the same sin against us that many times!

But, in any case, prayer can be a forum for forgiveness, as we remind ourselves that we are sinners and need forgiveness from God and others, and therefore we should forgive others' sins against us.  And, if we find that we forgive the person and resentment creeps up again, we repeat the act of forgiveness in prayer.  Sometimes, our forgiveness of others will be more complete than at other times.  I think that God honors our efforts, not necessarily us being perfect in terms of forgiving others.

UPDATE: The meaning of the Greek word translated as "this day" in Matthew 6:11 is debated, for it is rare.  The following meanings are proposed by Gingrich on my BibleWorks: "daily, necessary for existence, for the following day, for the future."

John and Realized Eschatology

For my write-up today on Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, I'll use as my starting-point something that I wrote in a post a while back, when I was blogging through volume 4 of John Meier's A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus.  I was talking about the issue of realized eschatology, and what I said referred to an example of what that means.  I said:

"I enjoyed Meier’s discussion of the Gospel of John.  The way Meier tells it, the Gospel of John differed from the synoptics on the issue of the coming of the Son of Man...The synoptics thought that the Son of Man would come in the future as a judge, after the resurrection of Jesus Christ...In the Gospel of John, however, the belief is that the coming of the Son of Man occurred at Jesus’ first coming, which is why John has a realized eschatology in which Jesus is acting as judge while he is on earth, and people are judged already according to how they view Jesus...Meier may be on to something, but I don’t treat his description as absolute...[T]he Gospel of John contains a concept of futurist eschatology, not just present judgment (John 5:28-29; 6:40)."

Realized eschatology has been a prominent theme in my reading thus far of Lee's book, and I'm sure that it will be prominent in the rest of the book, as well.  Lee, like many scholars, maintains that the Gospel of John has a realized eschatology.  Eternal life is something that people can enjoy now, for "It is to be lifted up above this base existence into the joy and peace that belong to God" (page 77), an idea that overlaps with things that the first century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria affirmed.  Today, Ezekiel's promises that people would be washed in the Spirit and that Israel would be resurrected are being fulfilled, as people are "created anew" and are "embracing the meaning of life intended by God" (page 70).  The promise that God will dwell in people's midst has been fulfilled in the incarnation of the Word in Jesus Christ.  People were judged already while Jesus was on earth, based on their view of Jesus.  And the new Temple and new Jerusalem are present now, as the Spirit dwells within a church that consists of Jews and Gentiles, who fellowship with God and with each other.

But what about the passage that I cited in my post----John 5:28-29, which affirms that there will come a resurrection, as those who did good deeds are resurrected unto life, whereas those who did evil deeds are resurrected unto judgment?  Lee states on page 113:

"Does Jesus teach realized eschatology, future eschatology, or some combination of the two?  Verses 28 and 29 appear to undermine the rest of the Gospel's teachings, particularly its this-worldly life just promised in [John 5:26-27], so much so that some scholars conclude verses 28-29 must be a later addition...But is it possible that no contradiction exists at all...?  Put another way, how quickly does Jesus' proclamation of the future ('an hour is coming') become John's past ('and now is')?  At the hour of Jesus' death?  At his Resurrection?"  Lee appears to be arguing that John could have envisioned John 5:28-29 being realized at Jesus' death or resurrection.  Jesus' death is important in John's Gospel, according to Lee.  On pages 56-57, Lee says that, when Jesus tells his mother in John 2:4 that his hour is not yet come, he means Jesus' "appointed death", which is when Jesus is glorified and victorious over the world and is a prerequisite for the rebuilding of the Temple.

According to Lee, even Paul, Matthew, and other Christians who had a futurist eschatology maintained that, in a sense, eschatological promises were being realized in their own time.  Paul, according to Lee, believed that Jesus' resurrection indicated that "the general resurrection has begun, and the new age is upon us" (page 78).  Lee says regarding I Corinthians 15, particularly the verse that says, "if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised": "Try to rid your mind of the misconception that Paul argues for a future resurrection.  He does not say 'if you do not believe the dead will someday rise' but rather 'if you do not believe the dead are raised.'" But did Paul lack a futurist eschatology?  I do not entirely know how Lee addresses this question, but one can point to such things as Paul's references to the Second Coming of Christ (I Thessalonians 4) and the renewal of the cosmos (Romans 8) to argue that Paul indeed had a futurist eschatology.  But he may have believed that the end was near because, already in his time, an eschatological fulfillment of promises was occurring, and in some cases had occurred. 

Regarding Matthew, Matthew in Lee's book for some time agreed with John the Revelator's view that Christ would soon return and overthrow evil, and yet, as John reminds Matthew, even Matthew presented graves being opened and people rising from the dead soon after Jesus' death and resurrection (Matthew 27:51-53), and Matthew in Lee's book regarded that as a fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy about the opening of graves (Ezekiel 37).  Perhaps Matthew had both a realized and also a futurist eschatology: he believed that eschatological promises were being fulfilled, and yet he anticipated a fuller fulfillment.

My impression is that Lee and many biblical scholars believe that John took realized eschatology further, to the point that it eclipsed or even supplanted any futurist eschatology.  On pages 94-95, the character Ruth says something that's quite intriguing: "When John dies, everything will change.  He is the final apostle, the last living person to have walked with Jesus.  And Jesus hinted that John would live to see him return.  Once John dies, we can get on with being Christians, no longer peering up at the clouds, waiting for the Messiah to light up the skies.  Our appointed deacons can finally exercise their authority without John's overbearing presence.  Those who have lost heart can finally let go."  In a sense, the picture I get is that a realized eschatology----one that focuses on the here-and-now rather than eagerly expecting for a cataclysmic end to come from right around the corner----is necessary for people to heal from their disappointed hopes, and for the church to be the church.

The question that I have is this: What hope does a realized eschatology actually provide?  If this is all there is, then that's pretty sad!  Moreover, if Jesus through the incarnation fulfilled the promise that God would dwell among us, where does that leave us now, when God is no longer incarnate among us?  Perhaps that's why Jesus' promise in John's Gospel about sending the Spirit is so important.

I one time took a Greek New Testament class on the Gospel of John, and the professor said that John believed in an afterlife, only he envisioned Christians going to heaven right after their physical death.  I have questions about that.  First of all, would that count as a resurrection, since the soul leaving the body has been argued to be different from a resurrection (at least according to N.T. Wright)?  Second, what exactly did Jesus bring that was new?  Wasn't there already a belief that souls would go to heaven----by Philo and others within Second Temple Judaism?  Perhaps Jesus moved the afterlife for the righteous into heaven, whereas before that all souls went to Hades, according to a certain strand of thought.

Jesus' First Coming, and We're Here Because of Love

At church this morning, the pastor's sermon was about the recent tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut.  The pastor said that Christmas from now on may be an especially hard time for the families of the children and faculty members who were shot at the elementary school, for this tragedy occurred shortly before Christmas.  The pastor referred to the story in Matthew 2, which states in v 16 (in the KJV) that Herod "slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men."  Tragedy occurred in association with the birth of Christ, my pastor said.  The pastor then told us that Jesus' coming did not eliminate evil or human sinfulness.

Then what did Jesus come to do?  What I got out of my pastor's sermon is that Jesus came to defeat death, to atone for our sins, and to model God's desire for the cosmos through his healing of the sick.  That makes a degree of sense to me.  Why we should have to wait a long time for Christ to return and clean up the world of sin, however, I do not know.  I thought that Christ was beginning the process of binding Satan at his first coming (Mark 3:27).  Has that process been interrupted, only to resume after Christ comes back?
That said, I'm praying for the families of the victims of this massacre.  I know that I'd feel horrible if someone in my own family were killed. 

Something else that stood out to me in this morning's service was what someone said during the prayer part.  The pastor was asking for prayer requests, and a young man who has recently started coming to our church talked about hard times, then he remarked that he is here because of love.  I don't know what exactly he meant by that, or what personal experiences lie behind his statement.  But it is a profound statement: We're here because of love.  Many of us can testify that we are here on account of the people who loved us.  The children who survived the shooting survived because teachers heroically protected them from the shooter.  Was the shooter himself loved?  I can't entirely say because I don't know.  From what I have read, his Mom went to bat for him when he was a student in elementary school because she wanted for the school to meet his special needs, which indicates love on her part.  But he was a loner, who felt uncomfortable socially.  From what people have said, his family had the resources for him to receive mental health treatment, but I doubt that he found a safe place where he felt comfortable sharing.  I wish that he had.

Turning Stones into Bread: Why Was It Wrong?

At church this morning, the pastor in his sermon said that Jesus not once thought about himself.  Rather, my pastor said, Jesus served others.  The pastor referred to Jesus healing the sick, and also Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding to spare the wedding couple any embarrassment.  The pastor also mentioned Jesus' refusal at his temptation to turn stones into bread as an example of Jesus choosing not to think about himself.

I have to admit that I've not extensively studied Jesus' refusal in Matthew 4 and Luke 4 to turn the stones into bread.  To be honest, I don't know what the big deal would have been had he turned the stones into bread!  I've read explanations: Jesus would have been wrong to have turned stones into bread in violation of his Father's will, Jesus was supposed to depend on God, etc.  But why would it have been against the Father's will for Jesus to turn stones into bread?  The Father had no problem with Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes! 

Was it a matter of selfishness, as my pastor suggested this morning?  I have a problem with that.  Is self-interest always wrong?  If Jesus could acceptably multiply loaves and fishes to feed others when they were hungry, why was it wrong for him to turn stones into bread to feed himself when he was hungry?  Isn't it appropriate for people to meet the needs of the hungry, whomever they may be, even if the hungry are they themselves?  Perhaps one could say that Jesus simply shouldn't have obeyed Satan because, well, it was Satan who was commanding him to do something, and we should never do what Satan says!  I'd like a better answer than that, for I prefer to believe that right is right and wrong is wrong, regardless of who says it.  What I mean is that something is wrong not because Satan commands it, but Satan commands it because it is wrong.  Granted, Satan probably was telling Jesus to do something wrong when he suggested that Jesus turn the stones into bread, but my question is why Jesus turning stones into bread would have been wrong in the first place.  Perhaps some of the considerations that I just mentioned are incomplete parts of the answer, if there's an answer out there that is more satisfying.

See my post from a while back about Jesus' temptation: here.

Arbitrary Apologetics?

Nate of the blog "Finding Truth" had a post a while back, Missing the Point.  In the course of the discussion in the comments-section, the topic of the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke came up.  Many contend that the genealogy in Matthew contradicts the one in Luke, whereas those who are committed to biblical inerrancy tend to maintain that the two genealogies are both factually true.  One conservative Christian solution that has been proposed for the contradictions between the genealogies is that the one in Matthew is Jesus' genealogy through Joseph, whereas the one in Luke is his genealogy through Mary.  The problem with this argument is that Luke's genealogy does not mention Mary, but only Joseph.  Those who believe that Luke's genealogy concerns Jesus' line through Mary, however, respond that Mary is not mentioned because women were usually omitted from Jewish genealogies.  See here for more about this argument.

I do not think that it's an absolute rule that Jewish genealogies omitted women.  Matthew's Gospel is probably a Jewish-Christian Gospel, or at least it's plausible that it emerged in a community that had a strong Jewish-Christian influence, and it refers to women, such as Tamar and Rahab (vv 3, 5).  I Chronicles 2:16 mentions the woman Zeruiah (the mother of Joab), and I Chronicles 4:18 refers to Bithiah, the daughter of Pharaoh.

But I admit that genealogies in the Hebrew Bible tend to focus on men.  Does that explain why Luke does not mention Mary in his genealogy?  Under Nate's post, a commenter, William, offered the following insight:
"I also wonder that if Luke really meant 'Mary' instead of 'Joseph,' as it says, then why didn’t he just write 'Mary?' It would have been that easy to negate this entire problem. Had Luke done that, no one would ever be talking about the discrepancy between Ma[t]thew and Luke, and this issue at least would never enter into the conversation. I have heard the argument that the Jews would not accept a genealogy from a woman, and maybe that is correct, but many of the very same people who use this argument will point to using women like Mary Magdalene as witnesses as some sort of evidence that the bible is from [G]od, because man, at that time, would not have used women as credible witnesses. Maybe that’s true too, but I can’t help but wonder why it’s one way on one instance and another way in separate instance…"

William is arguing that certain Christian apologists are arbitrary when they say that Luke has Mary's genealogy but does not mention Mary because Jews would not accept a genealogy that traced a person's line through a woman, and yet they turn right around and contend that the Gospels' stories of Jesus' resurrection appearances are historical because they present the first witnesses as women, in a Jewish culture that did not accept women's testimony (which, I will note, is only partially true, since there were cases in which women could be witnesses, according to rabbinic writings).  So was Luke trying to support his case by appeasing ancient Jewish misogyny, or by disregarding (if not countering) it?  It appears that Christian apologetics just grab hold of whatever argument might work, even if they employ arguments that end up contradicting one another.

I think of a post that I wrote a while back, Does Boring Mean Historically-Accurate?  In that post, I critique a point that someone made that Numbers 7 is historically accurate because it repeats seemingly boring details over and over, and the person was contending that this makes sense if the biblical author was aiming to convey history.  I argued, however, that there could be a literary reason for such repetition.  And there are conservative Christian apologists who have used the same sort of argument to explain the redundancies in the Pentateuch----in countering the idea that the Pentateuch contains different sources: that redundancy or repetition was a feature of rhetoric in the ancient world.  So does redundancy mean something is historically accurate, or can it be rhetorical, for such a purpose as emphasis?

On some level, what I'm saying is unfair.  I cannot say for certain that everyone who appeals to the women eyewitnesses to Jesus' resurrection argues that Mary was omitted from Jesus' genealogy to appease Jewish standards.  And I cannot say that those who appeal to rhetoric to dispute source criticism of the Bible deny that there is a rhetorical purpose behind the repetition in Numbers 7.  But it does interest me that there are so many arguments out there that aim to uphold the historicity and inerrancy of the Bible, and these arguments contradict each other.  

Blinded by Might 7

In my latest reading of Blinded by Might: Why the Religious Right Can't Save America, by Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson, I started the section of the book entitled "The Interviews", in which Cal Thomas interviews prominent people on the Right and the Left about the role of religion in politics.  In my opinion, this will probably be the best part of the book----I certainly thought that my latest reading of it was excellent!  One reason that I like this section so far is that it goes beyond the usual platitudes that are thrown around in debates regarding this issue, as both sides talk through rather than to one another.  "You can't legislate morality."  "Yes you can, for the law bans murder, which is immoral!"  "The church should stay out of politics, and religion should not influence the government!"  "But Martin Luther King, Jr. was politically active as a minister, and that was a good thing!"  "There's a moral majority in this country that is upset by America's moral and spiritual downturn."

It's not that all of these platitudes lack merit.  I just wish that there were a way to arrive at some ground that took into consideration the merits of the various sides.  Yes, legislating morality can be futile, and it's especially troubling when a group seeks to legally force its moral vision on people who don't see things in the same way.  There are areas in which there are different ideas as to what is moral, and so why should one group be able to force its morality onto others?  On the other hand, "You can't legislate morality" is a problematic statement because the law itself is a codification of beliefs about what is moral and immoral----murder is immoral, theft is immoral, racial discrimination is immoral, etc.

Yes, there is a problem when religion influences government.  Religion, like certain areas of morality, is a matter of personal preference, and so it's problematic when it is legally forced on people who do not subscribe to it, especially when there is no solid proof that it is true (at least that's my opinion).  Moreover, as Thomas and Dobson argue, there are downsides to the church becoming obsessed with politics: demonization of the other, alienation of those the church is trying (or should be trying) to serve and to reach, etc.  And yet, there have been times when religion has influenced politics in positive ways, such as the civil rights movement.

I can't say that all of these issues were resolved in my latest reading.  Perhaps they won't be resolved in the rest of the book, either!  But it was refreshing to see a left-leaning former Senator and critic of the religious right, Mark Hatfield, affirm that legislation often reflects moral principles, or right-wing former Senator Bill Armstrong admit that Christian conservatives are not exactly the majority, or George McGovern say that the religious right, like the religious left, has the right to bring its religious beliefs into the public square.  And, when Cal Thomas asked George McGovern if there were any weaknesses to the religious left's approach, McGovern did not get defensive or act as if his own side was flawless while the other side was demonic.  Rather, McGovern attempted to provide a thoughtful reflection in response to Thomas' question.

Onto another subject, I really appreciated George McGovern's spiritual reflections in his interview.  McGovern relates that his father was a fundamentalist who believed that people had to be saved and sanctified, but McGovern himself believes that it's important simply to love other people, and he appeals to Matthew 25:31-46 to argue that Jesus will accept those who help the least of these, even if they did not entirely know what God was like or how to communicate with God.  Thomas then responds----in conservative evangelical fashion----that this is salvation by works, and that we need to believe in Jesus to get into heaven because our works are not good enough.  Thomas then appeals to McGovern's father and asks if McGovern confesses the Lord Jesus and believes that God raised him from the dead, which leads to salvation, according to Romans 10:9.  McGovern replies that he does.

Whether McGovern is interpreting Matthew 25:31-46 correctly, I do not know.  We're not told how much the sheep who helped the least of these knew about Jesus----only that they did not know that they were helping Jesus when they helped the least of these.  And yet, the criterion here is service, and faith is not mentioned.  But, on the other hand, what is commended is service to Jesus' brethren, who, in the New Testament, are often believers in Christ, and so even here there may be a Christian focus.  The point of Matthew 25:31-36 may be what Matthew 10:42 says: "And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward" (KJV).

I'd like to believe that God honors the good deeds of everyone, even non-Christians.  And yet, I recognize that I am flawed and far from perfect, and thus I feel that I need forgiveness.  Must a person have an instantaneous moment of salvation in order to be forgiven, however, or can one be forgiven as one continually treads the path of trying to live a good life, recognizing that he or she falls short?

The Wedding Garment

In Matthew 22, there is a parable about a king who hosts a wedding feast for his son, and, when the invitees choose not to come, the king orders his servants to bring into the feast people (both good and bad) from the highways.  When the king notices that one of the guests does not have a wedding garment, the king orders that guest to be cast into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

What is the wedding garment?  I've heard two proposals.  The first proposal is that the wedding garment is the imputed righteousness of Christ that covers the believer as a robe----that the believer is sinful, but he is covered by Christ's righteousness, such that God sees Christ's righteousness and not his sins.  I heard this view in a Seventh-Day Adventist Sabbath school class.

The second proposal is that the wedding garment refers to good works.  And, believe it or not, I've heard this interpretation more often than the first one.  I heard it at an Assemblies of God church, where the Sunday school teacher was saying that the wedding garment could symbolize works of compassion.  When an old lady joyfully said that she had a ticket to heaven, the Sunday school teacher replied that a ticket is not enough, for you also need a wedding garment.  The old lady was somewhat baffled!  I also heard this interpretation in a Bible class at DePauw University.  Moreover, on a Christian radio program, there was a discussion about the parable of the ten virgins and the oil in Matthew 25, and the preachers were interpreting the oil as good works rather than as the Holy Spirit because that coincided more with Matthew's themes.  I think that the same considerations can be applied to the wedding garment in Matthew 22.

In Jesus and the Jewish Parables, Brad Young talks about the Parable of the Wedding Feast.  He quotes Irenaeus, who in Against Heresies 36:6 says that the guest without the wedding garment represents one who did not receive the Holy Spirit due to his wickedness.  Young states on page 173 that Irenaeus is connecting "the wedding garment with works of righteousness and the receiving of the Holy Spirit."  And Young refers to a parable in Semachot Derabbi Chiya in which Rabbi Nathan (second century C.E.) tells about a king who provides his servants with gold and silver, warns them not to rob each other, and leaves.  When the king returns, he sees that the servants have stolen from one another and are naked.  According to Young, the point of the parable is that "likewise the wicked steal from each other in this world and will appear naked----without good works----before God" (page 178).  Nakedness is associated with the absence of good works.

I think that the first proposal (the wedding garment as imputed righteousness) is more comforting, but it does not really fit themes in Matthew, who (while he talks about God forgiving sins) does not refer to imputed righteousness.  But the second proposal fits with Matthew's emphasis on good works.
How good does one have to be to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, in Matthew's mind?  Doing good works entails doing the sorts of things listed in Matthew 25----feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, clothing the naked, etc.  But it also involves exceeding the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees (Matthew 5-7) by cultivating inward righteousness----avoiding hate and lust (which perhaps means coveting a neighbor's wife) and not just murder and adultery.  But, while the Sermon on the Mount exhorts people to be perfect, it recognizes that we continually fall short, which is why the Lord's Prayer asks for forgiveness.

I struggle with Matthew's soteriology, as I understand it.  Often, I try not to worry about it, for the last thing that I need to be is spiritually insecure.  At the same time, I can appreciate the concept that faith should be something that is put into practice, at some level.

Jesus' Halakah: Strict and Lenient

In my latest reading of volume 4 of John Meier's A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Meier talks about the co-existence of strictness and leniency in Jesus' approach to the Torah.

According to Meier, Jesus was stricter than the Judaisms of his day and thereafter on the issues of divorce and oaths. Jesus prohibited divorce and remarriage, which set him apart from Second Temple and (later) rabbinic Judaism. Whereas the Dead Sea Scrolls are concerned about people having more than one spouse, they do not contain a blanket prohibition of divorce. And, while scholars have compared Jesus' position on divorce in Matthew 19:9 (which has the exception clause for fornication) to the position of Shammai, Meier believes that Jesus and Shammai had different views on the subject. Shammai believed that a man could divorce a woman if she shamed him, whereas Jesus prohibited divorce, period.

For Meier, Jesus was also revolutionary on the issue of oaths because he prohibited them altogether. Even Jews who had issues with oaths, such as Philo, still believed that they were permissible on some level because they were commanded in the Torah. Consequently, there was discontinuity between Jesus and Judaism, and Meier views that as a reason that Jesus historically held these positions on divorce and oaths.

But Jesus was lenient on the issue of the Sabbath. Meier does not regard as historical the interactions in which Jesus gets in trouble for healing on the Sabbath, for rabbinic Judaism largely did not prohibit that. Moreover, Meier does not believe that Jesus getting in trouble in Mark 2 for his disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath is plausible. While Meier acknowledges that there were voices in Second Temple Judaism (i.e., Philo) that considered plucking grain to be work, he does not think that the Pharisees would have popped out of nowhere near the grain-fields, accosting Jesus and his disciples for plucking grain on the Sabbath. Moreover, according to Meier, had Jesus historically made the Scriptural bloopers he makes in Mark 2 (i.e., referring to Abiathar, when the priest in I Samuel 21 was Ahimelech), the Pharisees would have laughed at Jesus rather than taking him seriously and getting angry at him.

But Meier regards Jesus' statements that people on the Sabbath could pull an ox or a man out of a ditch to be historical, even though they were later attached to "Sabbath controversies" contrived by the early Christians. For Meier, Jesus had a common-sense halakah when it came to the Sabbath, one that sympathized with peasants who felt they needed to pull their ox or a person out of a ditch. Meier speculates that Jesus was responding to the Essenes or stricter voices within Pharisaism.

Why Jesus was strict in some areas and lenient in others, I do not entirely know. One point that Meier makes is that creation played a significant role in elements of Jesus' halakah. Jesus opposed divorce and believed that the Sabbath was less important than human well-being on the basis of the creation stories in Genesis, for example.

"What You Call God, I Call a Redactor!"

For my write-up today on volume 4 of John Meier's A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, I'll use as my starting-point Meier's discussion of Matthew 19:9, which (in the King James Version) states: "And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery."

Meier's position appears to be that the "except for fornication" clause was added due to "some particular problem within Matthew's church", either by Matthew himself or by the M tradition (pages 104-105). A reason for this conclusion is that Paul, Mark, and Luke do not mention this exception clause, and they seem to treat Jesus' command as an absolute ban on divorce and remarriage (Mark 10:11-12; Luke 16:18; I Corinthians 7:10-11). Paul, however, as Meier notes, "creates an exception for a special case on his own authority" (page 105): Paul allows a marriage to be dissolved if the non-believing spouse chooses to divorce.

Does this undercut the Bible's authority as the word of God? I can understand how people can think that. I remember hearing an evangelical biblical scholar say that he needs to hear the little old ladies at his church dogmatically appeal to Scripture as "the word of God". I didn't hear everything that he said, but I can think of a reason that he would feel that way: When he's reading books and articles that treat the Bible as a collection of human documents, then it's easy to get away from believing that the Bible is the word of God. After all, if Jesus said one thing, and some guy comes along and adds a clause that changes the meaning of what Jesus originally said, then how can we believe that all of the Bible reflects an unchanging will of God? It looks like a book that contains different human opinions. In a class, I was one time saying that the Bible was the word of God, and my professor responded, "What you call God, I call a redactor!"

There are a lot of people who feel liberated by the historical-critical method, precisely because it presents the Bible as the words of a variety of human beings, none of whom was infallible. Whereas my friend liked the little old ladies at his church dogmatically telling him that the Bible is God's word, since he felt that this kept him on the straight-and-narrow, others would like to get away from that dogmatism altogether. They've been abused by people who appeal to Scripture to justify their abuse, or they believe that some of the Bible's rules result in unhappiness. And then there are those who try to hold on to the Bible as Scripture, but they just can't. They believe that the Bible obviously reflects the opinions of fallible human beings, some of whom held ideas that are unjust (i.e., slavery, sexism, etc.), and they're tired of making excuses for the Bible, or doing mental gymnastics in an attempt to argue that the Bible indeed is perfect.

And then there are those who actually believe that the Bible can function as a valuable source for religious practitioners. They do not see the Bible in a fundamentalist sense, however, but they maintain that the flux and adaptation that are within the Bible are models for how the church should interact with the book. After all, if Matthew could add an exception clause to Jesus' teaching in an attempt to meet a pastoral need within his church, then why should we treat what is in the Bible as an absolute and rigid standard for how we should live our lives? Perhaps we can adapt the tradition, or change it in light of our current situation. What I'd ask, though, is if our changes can get to the point where we're not faithful to the tradition, period.

The (Gentile) Demoniac

For my write-up today on volume 2 of John Meier's A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, I will talk some about Meier's discussion of Jesus' exorcism of the Gedarene demoniac. This story appears in Mark 5, Luke 8, and Matthew 8 (only, there, the land is called the country of the Gergesenes, and there are two demoniacs).

Meier believes that the demoniac in the story was actually Gerasene, on the basis of many "early and excellent" ancient manuscripts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But, according to Meier, there was a change to "Gedarenes" and "Gergesenes" because those particular areas are closer to the Sea of Galilee than Gerasa, which is not close to the Sea (see the map here). For those who made the change, the city of the demoniac had to be close to the Sea of Galilee, for, in the story, the demons enter the pigs, who then jump off of a cliff into the Sea.

But, for a variety of reasons, Meier believes that the part of the story about the pigs was added later. (For example, Meier states that Jesus in the Gospels usually does not destroy other people's property.) Meier's conclusion is that the story was originally about a Gerasene demoniac and did not have the part about the pigs, but that people altered the location to Gedar or Gerges after the pigs part was added. That, for Meier, accounts for the present of Gerasa in ancient manuscripts. And Meier is open to the possibility that the historical Jesus performed an exorcism in Gerasa and that "the unusual venue of the exorcism helped anchor it in the oral tradition" (page 651). Why was the venue unusual? Because it was part of the Decapolis, "a group of Hellenistic cities with mostly pagan populations in the region of southern Syria and northeastern Palestine" (page 651). Ordinarily, Jesus ministered to fellow Jews.

This information actually answers a question I have had about the story: Why were there pigs in Israel, which regarded them as unclean? It turns out that the pigs were in predominantly pagan areas. And, when Jesus told the ex-demoniac to go home and testify to his family about what the Lord did for him, there's a likelihood that the ex-demoniac's family was pagan and did not worship the God of Israel, meaning that the ex-demoniac was witnessing to Gentiles. Of course, as I noted, Meier does not believe that the story originally had the pigs. But the information about the Decapolis helped me to understand the pigs' presence in the story (at some stage).

Something else that interested me was Meier's reference to Franz Annen's view that the story was written by early Christians to justify the mission to the Gentiles against conservative Jewish-Christian detractors. Jesus, after all, is visiting a Gentile area and is conducting an exorcism there. Meier maintains that the story was historical, however, because the very appeal to it demonstrates that Jewish-Christians accepted its historicity as well, for why refer to a story that the Jewish-Christians could simply say was made-up? This argument stood out to me because of the scholarly view that Jesus did not envision a mission to the Gentiles, for Paul would have spoken about that in his debates with Judaizers had Jesus given any indication of support for a Gentile mission. Perhaps. Or maybe Paul didn't know about that story, or it didn't come to his mind in his debates.

Matthew 10:23; Jesus and the Kingdom

I have two items for my write-up today on volume 2 of John Meier's A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus.

1. Matthew 10:23 states (in the KJV): "But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come." As I showed a few days ago, Meier believes that this statement in Matthew 10:23 was from early Christians, not Jesus himself. But isn't the statement embarrassing, since it was an unfulfilled prophecy? And isn't stuff that's embarrassing to the early Christians most likely from Jesus, since the early Christians would not invent an embarrassing tradition? Meier says that we see here "the limits of the criterion of embarrassment" (page 391). Sure, after the second or the third generation, Matthew 10:23 probably became embarrassing. But before then, early Christians could have believed that the Son of Man would come in their lifetimes.

Why did the final redactor of Matthew include Matthew 10:23, however, when he lived at a time when Matthew 10:23 was an embarrassment due to its non-fulfillment? Meier's answer is that the final redactor may have believed that Matthew 10:23 was fulfilled when the risen Jesus appeared to his disciples in the Gospel of Matthew's final scene, in "a sort of 'proleptic parousia'" (page 391).

What's interesting about Meier's note on page 391 is that he talks a little about the history of interpretation of Matthew 10:23. Meier states that v 23b "is not cited before Origen and not often after him". Meier believes this is due to embarrassment, but a scholar named Kunzi, on page 181 of Das Naherwartungslogion Matthaus 10, 23, denies that.

2. Meier talks about how the Kingdom of God was present in Jesus, in part because Jesus was liberating people from the bondage of Satan when he healed them and cast out their demons. For Meier, Jesus expected the fullness of the Kingdom to come in his life time, and Jesus was starting that. Perhaps Meier believes that Jesus was offering a preview of the Kingdom in its fullness, or that he was starting the assault against evil that God would continue by dramatically intervening in the course of human events. I'm still unclear about whether or not Jesus considered himself to be the Messiah, in Meier's eyes. Obviously, Meier believes that Jesus considered himself to be a significant figure in terms of the Kingdom of God, but was he significant as a prophet, or as something more, according to Meier?

Ben Witherington's Critical Methodology and Apologetics

I finished Ben Witherington III's Jesus the Sage. I have two items:

1. Are the Gospels fiction, or are they historical? Witherington says on page 154:

"I have argued elsewhere that the ancient popular biography provides us with our closest analogies for the genre of the Gospels...There are certainly many other options besides pure fiction and photographic recall. For instance, it is possible the Gospel writers have used material of some historical substance and a broad historical outline of the life of Jesus, coupled with their selection, editing, and arrangement of various pericopes according to their various theological purposes."

On the TV program, Faith Under Fire, Witherington said that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, and that the testimony is reliable (even though the Gospels were written about forty years after the events that they clam to narrate) because the Mishnah states that disciples were able to remember vast amounts of material that their teacher taught them. Witherington notes that Luke claims to draw from the testimony of eyewitnesses, and that both Matthew and Luke carefully use the sources that they have, such as Mark, showing that they were responsible historians. For Witherington, there is a good chance that Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark and that Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke, even though these Gospels are formally anonymous, for the second century church would not attribute Gospels to non-eyewitnesses or to non-apostles unless those figures actually wrote them (and Mark and Luke were not apostles). Regarding Matthew, Witherington does not claim that Matthew the apostle was responsible for the Gospel of Matthew's final form, but he does suggest that the Gospel contains traditions going back to Matthew the apostle. And, if my impression is correct, Witherington appears to believe that John wrote the Gospel of John, and he notes that the end of the Gospel says that it represents eyewitness testimony. You can watch or listen to Witherington making his points here and here.

Is this consistent with what Witherington argues in Jesus the Sage? I'd say yes and no. In both, Witherington maintains that the Gospel authors used sources, and he is confident that these sources, on some level, reflect the historical Jesus. At the same time, I think that Witherington in Jesus the Sage is more sensitive to the fact the the Gospel authors had ideological and theological agendas and were not simply recalling what actually happened. He criticizes scholars for unjustifiably (at times) preferring Luke's forms of sayings over how other Gospels' present them, and he attributes that to the scholars' attraction to Luke being less Jewish and apocalyptic in his presentation of the sayings (page 215). Witherington also proposes to uncover what is authentically Q by peeling back the layers that obviously reflect Matthew and Luke (and one can see the characteristics of Matthean and Lukan interaction with sources by looking at their use of Mark). Witherington affirms that Matthew softens Mark's portrayal of the disciples as dense in their failure to understand Jesus, and he also discusses differences between the synoptic Gospels and James. For example, Witherington notes that James does not really talk about the inbreaking Kingdom of God through Christ.

Regarding John, Witherington does not believe in Jesus the Sage that the Gospel of John goes back to John the Galilean son of Zebedee, for there is not much in that Gospel about Jesus' Galilean ministry or the sons of Zebedee. But Witherington does acknowledge that the Beloved Disciple could have been a Judean eyewitness to Jesus as well as the source of traditions that made their way into the Gospel of John (whose present form came from someone other than the Beloved Disciple, according to Witherington). This is similar to what Witherington said about Matthew on Faith Under Fire. Another point: In Jesus the Sage, Witherington says that Peter in the Gospel of Matthew is given a scribal authority to bind and to loose. Does this imply that there were written sources going back to the original disciples of Jesus, according to Witherington?

I think that the passage with which I opened this item, the one from page 154, is a reasonable way to see the Gospels: they are not a photographic recall of events, but rather they are the result of a process of using sources and composing a work that accords with the ideologies of the Gospels' writers. Some, or even many, of these sources may go back to eyewitness testimony. But a significant part of uncovering the historical Jesus is sifting what is ideological in the Gospels from what is historical----though it is possible that the ideological can overlap with the historical, as Witherington seems to believe when he regards the Gospels of Matthew and John to be accurately depicting Jesus as one who claimed to be wisdom itself.

2. On page 353, Witherington says: "Kings were often said to have miraculous births in antiquity, and Jesus is no different." In my opinion, this differs from Witherington's defense of the historicity of the virgin birth in his blog post, The Virginal Conception----Miracle on Nazareth Street, where he argues that the virgin birth is historical because (1.) Matthew and Luke had to get the idea from somewhere, and there were no true parallels in the ancient world, and (2.) the story was embarrassing within that honor and shame culture, so it was most likely not made-up. Based on what Witherington says on page 353 of Jesus the Sage, I can argue that early Christians could have attributed to Jesus a miraculous birth to show that he was like other kings (even if other kings were not said to be the products of a virginal conception).

Jesus' Death in Acts; Matthew----Jew or Gentile?

I finished Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, volume 1, and I have two:

1. S.G. Wilson states on pages 157-158: "...the soteriological significance of Jesus' death is never made explicit in the missionary speeches and is rarely apparent elsewhere in Luke-Acts. [T]he most that can be said is that 'Luke has taken over certain traditions regarding the meaning of the death of Jesus but he has not in any way developed them or drawn attention to them.' The longer reading in Luke 22:19-20 and the reference to the church as having 'been obtained by his own blood' in Acts 20:28 are not to be overlooked, and a practical theologia crucis, understood as a daily bearing of the cross modelled on the careers of Jesus and his apostles, is clearly a matter of some interest to Luke. Yet the failure of Luke to develop the positive notion of Jesus' death as an atonement, even though he is aware of it, means that there is little to counterbalance the negative emphasis on Jewish culpability. Of course, this is not necessarily a deliberate move on Luke's part, for it may well be that Paul's concentration on this theme makes him, rather than Luke, the exception in early Christianity, or that the atonement was an inner-church theme and not part of the missionary kerygma. The effect, however, whether intended or not, is that our attention is focused without distraction on the accusations against the Jews."

I found this interesting because some have argued that Luke does not believe in blood atonement and that the few passages that do refer to it are interpolations. Wilson sees those few passages as authentic, however, and he maintains that Luke knows of the notion that Jesus' death was for blood atonement but does not develop it. The result is that the Jews in Acts bear a significant amount of onus for Jesus' death, which is not even given much redeeming value in Acts. At the same time, Wilson does note that the Jews in Acts act according to the plan of God when they kill Jesus.

2. On pages 184-187, Benno Przybylski (which I will abbreviate as "BP") argues against G. Strecker's idea that a Gentile Christian was behind the final redaction of the Gospel of Matthew. Some of Strecker's arguments resemble those of John Meier and Michael Cook, who contend that Matthew was not a Jewish-Christian Gospel.

First, Strecker says that Matthew 5:43 reveals ignorance of the Jewish tradition, for it says that Jesus' audience has heard that you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Strecker states that such a concept is not in the older rabbinic tradition. BP responds, however, that it "could easily reflect teaching similar to that of the Qumran sectarians as expressed in 1QS 1.10 or 9.21."

Second, Strecker says that Matthew is unaware of Hebrew parallelism, for Matthew 21:1-9 presents Jesus riding two animals in fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9, when Zechariah 9:9 is not saying that the king will ride on both an ass and also a colt. Rather, Zechariah 9:9 is using Hebrew parallelism (repeating a thought), which means that the ass and the colt both refer to one and the same animal. The argument that Matthew does not understand Hebrew parallelism is used by John Meier and Michael Cook. But I agree with BP: the rabbis themselves took parallelism literally at times, just like Matthew. For example, BP cites Psalm 28:5, which says that "He will break them down and not build them up". This looks like parallelism because a thought is being repeated. But the rabbis believed that God did not repeat himself superfluously, and so the Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael Shirata 6 held that Psalm 28:5 refers to two separate things rather than being a repetition of one idea: "He will break them down" relates to this world, and "and not build them up" pertains to the World to Come. See my post here for more information on Matthew 21 and Zechariah 9:9.

Third, Strecker says that Matthew 12:11 contradicts Jewish law. Matthew 12:11 says that the Pharisees believed that one could pull his sheep out of a pit on the Sabbath. According to BP, "Strecker argues that according to rabbinic law the owner could feed the animal or even help it to help itself but he could not actually lift it out." But BP responds that Matthew may be going with a minority rabbinic opinion, or that popular practice was more liberal than the majority rabbinic view.