The Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”
-Mark 2:24

You may have heard, wrongly, that the Pharisees were the rabbis and that they basically ran the show in Yeshua’s time.

You may have heard that the Pharisees . . .

• were all hypocrites
• made up 613 rules which were oppressive
• led the synagogues and governed the way Jews lived for God.

Great resources for those who want to read up on the Pharisees: E.P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief and Shaye Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. I provide no documentation for the assertions I will make in this summary on the Pharisees. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

There are several reasons why the Pharisees are misunderstood:

• Josephus, who was a Pharisee, exaggerated their power and influence
• The later rabbis (third through sixth centuries), whose origins were in the Pharisee movement, exaggerated their power and influence when writing about the first century
• The other parties (Sadducees, Essenes, Herodians) all ceased to exist after 70 CE
• Yeshua clashed with the Pharisees on some matters of Torah
• Un-careful reading of the Gospels leads people not to notice the Sadducees and chief priests were the primary instruments of his execution, while some Pharisees instigated against him.

Here are some important truths about the Pharisees:

• They tended to be middle class, some working as scribes and other in various occupations.
• They tended to be urban, not rural.
• Their numbers were never large.
• Their origin was as a political party in the days of the Maccabees.
• They had some popularity because they stood against Rome in some early clashes.
• They were a sort of fraternity with a common interest in reforming Israel by increasing zeal for the Torah.
• Their beliefs were the closest of all the parties to the views of Yeshua and the apostles.
• In the early days especially, and the later rabbis corrected this tendency, they emphasized ritual over love and justice and mercy.
• You should no more judge Judaism by the things Yeshua criticized about the Pharisees than you should judge any Christian group by the ideas or behavior of some.
• If Yeshua was commenting today, he’d have many sharp criticisms for various Christian sub-groups that might make the Pharisees look good by comparison.
• The synagogues were run by common Jews, elders in the various towns.
• The rabbis of later centuries, whose origins were from the Pharisees, did not become the recognized leaders of Judaism until the sixth century.
• Synagogues in Israel in Yeshua’s time were not places of power, but learning and piety, and they were not led by Pharisees.
• Most Jews did not follow the growing list of traditions the Pharisees were coming up with out of a desire to see Israel come closer to God.
• The 613 are biblical commandments, not man-made rules of the Pharisees.
• Yeshua had positive things to say about some Pharisees. Nicodemus seems to have become a disciple. Of one Pharisee Yeshua said, “You are not far from the kingdom.”
• Many Pharisees believed in Yeshua after the resurrection, and one of them was Paul.
• Paul continued to say, “I am a Pharisee,” the rest of his life and never repudiated this identity.
• The Pharisees who thought more like Shammai were probably more violent in their manner of dealing with threats to Israel’s renewal.
• The Pharisees who thought like the gentler, more tolerant Hillel outnumbered the Shammaite Pharisees.
• Paul the persecutor was probably in the more militant Shammaite wing.
• The Pharisees were a minority on the Sanhedrin and the Sadducees called the shots.
• The Temple did not run according to the wishes of the Pharisees; if it had, this would have been a vast improvement and would have made the Temple much more in keeping with what Yeshua believed.
• The Pharisees in Yeshua’s time lived in Judea and had not spread much into Galilee.
• Yeshua believed the Pharisees did not keep the Torah enough and said his disciples had to surpass them.
• A large part of Yeshua’s critique was that the Pharisees should have seen loving God and people as the highest priorities of Torah.
• Yeshua expected his disciples to outdo the Pharisees literally in loving God and people.

So why would Pharisees come up to Galilee to check Yeshua out? Why would they sometimes follow him around and find reasons to criticize his disciples?

They cared deeply about Israel getting right with God. They wanted to see Messiah come and had a notion of Messiah and victory over Rome that Yeshua came to teach against.

They saw Yeshua at first as a disciple of John the Baptizer. They came to evaluate him as they had first evaluated John. They were critical of his ideas which did not match their own about what Torah renewal would look like.

They were well-meaning people who were wrong about a few things. But they were more like Yeshua in beliefs than most other Jewish sub-groups. And some of the things they were wrong about no one else understood either. Even the disciples did not think Messiah would die, make atonement for Israel and the world, and rise again.

Questions? Doubt something I said has substantiation? Feel free to ask me in the comments. Or if you would like to share how misinformation about the Pharisees and about Judaism has bothered you, I’d love to hear from you.

Lamb of God #2

So, it might surprise you to know that Boyarin thinks Judaism and Christianity are compatible. His goal, stated on pages 6-7 is to help Christians and Jews to stop vilifying each other. He doesn’t follow Jesus and isn’t asking fellow Jews to do so. But he demolishes all ideas that Christian devotion to Jesus is contrary to Judaism or that Christianity is anything other than a Judaism to which mostly non-Jews have been drawn. Jews in the time of Jesus were looking, he says, for a divine messiah. And Jesus’ earliest followers were kosher Jews. The sad separation and enmity of Judaism and Christianity is something to get beyond, not something to perpetuate.

Among the themes of the book are some startling claims which deep six the status quo that Judaism and Christianity are separate and incompatible ideas about God and faith:

• Jews in the time of Jesus were expecting a divine-man Messiah figure.
• Many Jews already believed in something very much like what Christians call the Son and Father.
• Some accepted Jesus as divine-man and some did not; both groups were Jews; one of these groups we now call Christianity and the other Judaism.
• Christianity is a Judaism.
• It is not just that Jesus is a Jew, but Christ, the exalted and divine figure, is also a Jew.
• The doctrinal police represented by some rabbis and church fathers are the ones who sought to make Judaism and Christianity incompatible (he gives the specific example of Jerome who rejected people with orthodox faith who wished to remain Jews, saying they had to renounce Jewishness to be true Christians).
• Early Messianic Jews (Christian Jews) called Nazarenes must have been a sizable group even in the fourth century.
• The false boundary between Judaism and Christianity needs to be blurred.
• “Son of God” originally meant the human Davidic ruler; “Son of Man” originally was a divine figure equal with God though submitted to him.
• The roots of the All-Transcendent God [Father] and the Immanent Agent God [Son] go back even to pre-Israelite days as Canaanites sought to understand deity as both.
• The Similitudes of Enoch (part of the book called 1 Enoch) give the lie to the notion that Judaism rejected a divine redeemer who is a God-man.
• The Similitudes, written about the same time as Mark, parallel the ideas of a divine man almost identically to Mark, but neither text was aware of the other.
• Yeshua (Jesus) and his early followers were kosher (he documents how Mark 7 and the “all foods clean” passage have been misunderstood).
• There was a history of faith in a suffering Messiah (Isaiah 53 style) before Jesus and the usual debate about whether Isaiah 53 concerns Israel or Messiah is a moot argument.
• The liberal Christian notion that the church developed the suffering Messiah idea by misinterpreting the Hebrew Bible is false.
• The Gospels are a conservative return to an earlier idea of a Second Divine Figure, who represents the Immanent Aspect of God.
• Jesus, or Mark, knew his way around a halakhic argument.

Boyarin also gives many intriguing solutions to long-held puzzles about Christology, the theology of the divinity of Jesus and his humanity, and how the Gospel texts are using the Hebrew scriptures and dealing with the seeming paradoxes of Yeshua (Jesus):

• The debate about “Son of Man” as “human one” or “divine redeemer” can be resolved if we understand “Son of Man” as a simile: one who is divine but it is like he is human.
• Contrary to much Christian scholarship, Yeshua (Jesus) saw himself as Son of Man from the beginning, not just at the Second Coming.
• Daniel 7 has two ideas in tension: Son of Man is divine redeemer but also Son of Man is Israel.
• The root of Jesus’ saying “the Son of Man” must suffer is Dan 7:25-27 where Son of Man is Israel and must suffer a time, times, and half a time. Jesus midrashically reads this as the Son of Man (himself) suffering for Israel as Ideal Israel.
• Christianity long ago deemed adoptionism a heresy (Jesus became divine at his baptism when filled with Spirit). This idea is called apotheosis (a man becomes divine by indwelling divine spirit). Yet the gospels contain this theme, especially Mark, argues Boyarin (though he becomes God at his ascension, not his baptism). However, see the next bullet point.
• The opposite of adoptionism (apotheosis) is theophany (incarnation, God becomes man) and the divine man is shown to have pre-existed and been divine before birth as a human. This theme is also in the Gospels and is emphasized over the apotheosis theme.
• Boyarin sees both theophany (God became man) and apotheosis (a man became God, Jesus became God as his ascension) in the Gospels. Are these two incompatible streams? See my thought below.

What about Boyarin’s notion that the Gospels have both apotheosis (Jesus becomes God at the ascension) and theophany (Jesus was already God who became man at his birth)? As he shows extensively, the same thing happens in the Similitudes of Enoch, which Enoch chapters 70-71 seemingly contradicting what had been said earlier about Enoch. While earlier it seems Enoch became the Son of Man when, as it says in Genesis, he “walked with God and was not,” in truth, he was already Son of Man before he was born, according to chapters 70-71. Are these ideas really a contradiction? Perhaps they are relative to whether Enoch is viewed from the earthy viewpoint or the divine. This is a way to take Boyarin’s notion that in the Gospels Yeshua (Jesus) both becomes God and already was God. In reality, he already was God, but in appearance his divinity was revealed at his ascension. This way of reading it is compatible with the creeds of Christianity and the strong divinity statements in Paul, Hebrews, and Johannine writings.

The Jewish Gospels is a short, approachable book. Even people who don’t read academic literature can enjoy it and understand most of it. Boyarin gos out of his way to define terms in simple language. The body of the book is only 160 pages.

I can’t honestly think of a sound reason to criticize the book, although it seems my review may be weak for lack of finding fault. I found the entire book engaging and finished it in about three hours. In my opinion, this is a great step forward in Jewish-Christian relations and is a mind-opener worthy of being read by many thoughtful Jewish and Christian thinkers.

Divinity1

One of the two weirdest (there is one that is even weirder) is Matthew 2:15. Is Matthew able to read and understand the Hebrew Bible? Is he guilty of a strange and arbitrary reading simply to justify his belief in Yeshua of Nazareth? Of course the author of Matthew knows what he is doing. It is the modern reader who must make the adjustment into the world of midrashic use of scripture. Midrash is a kind of teaching using the scriptures in a homiletic manner (a sermon, a talk on a religious or moral subject). Midrash is interested in going beyond the plain meaning — but it is not intended to replace the plain meaning. Midrash is looking for something hinted at. And Midrash always has a justification. It is never arbitrary. It is always based on some technical detail about the words, grammar, or interconnections between the verse in question and other verses on the same theme.

One aspect of the art of midrash is to say something that seems a tad outrageous. But on closer investigation the outrageous statement can be justified and also can be shown relevant. The sages and rabbis of old loved to discuss halakhah (detailed investigations of categories and practices for keeping the commandments of Torah). But the public preferred to hear from them midrashes — sermons and parables with moral, theological, and narrative interest.

So, let’s look at the great midrash of Matthew on Hosea 11:1 and learn as students.

Matthew’s citation of Hosea 11:1 is much closer to the Hebrew than the Greek translation (LXX, Septuagint). The Hebrew text of Hosea 11:1 rendered in as literal a form as possible looks something like this:
When a youth [was] Israel, I loved him; and out of Egypt I called my son.
The LXX has: out of Egypt have I called his children.
Matthew has: out of Egypt I called my son.

Although Matthew wrote in Greek, his midrash on Hosea depended on the Hebrew text (or if not, a Greek text that was based on the proto-Masoretic text).

It is quickly obvious if you look up Hosea 11:1 that the verse is not about Messiah, but about Israel. Vs.2 says, “As they [prophets] called to them they went away from them; to the Baals they would sacrifice and to images they would burn offerings.” (Note: Most modern translations deviate from the Masoretic text, but I am not persuaded of their reasons regarding this verse and so offer my own translation based on the Delitzsch commentary).

What facts of the situation did Matthew have in front of him that led to this connection between Yeshua the son and Israel the son?

First, Matthew had the gospel accounts from eyewitnesses that the heavenly voice twice called Yeshua “son,” once at the baptism and once at the transfiguration. Second, he had the unusual manner of Yeshua’s speaking, which was frequent, about his Father. The sonship of Yeshua was a major theme of Yeshua’s teaching and God was “Abba” to him. Third, he knew the deep theme of Israel’s sonship in the Hebrew Bible. In Deuteronomy 32 (a key chapter), Israel is the son who disappointed God who gave him birth. In the Exodus tradition, God said to Pharaoh, “Let my son go” (Exod 4:23). God promised to be a father the Davidic king (Messiah) who would be a son to him. In the Psalms about the Davidic king (Messiah) the king is called son and it is even said, “you are my son; today I have begotten you” (Psa 2:7).

Matthew is saying that Yeshua is the son like Israel is the son and like the Davidic-messianic king is the son. He is defining the meaning of Yeshua’s sonship. The specific event that brought this comparison to mind is Yeshua’s family coming back into Galilee out of Egypt, where they had been hiding from Herod.

Comparisons between contemporary events and ancient biblical events were a poetic Hebrew way of thinking. A similar famous text is also used in this section about Rachel weeping for her children. The event that inspired Jeremiah the prophet to speak of Rachel weeping was when exiles to Babylon, terribly treated Judeans being taken away from everything they held dear, passing nearby the place where Genesis had indicated Rachel was buried. It was not unusual for Jeremiah to relate geography — the place Rachel was buried — to events in his time — exiles being tragically marched away.

The problem a modern reader has is simple: we look for the plain meaning, the literal. We tend to be bothered by poetic, symbolic, homiletical connections. If Matthew doesn’t have a prophecy-fulfillment connection to Hosea 11:1, how dare he cite the verse!

But Matthew has done something much deeper. He has related Yeshua (not only here, but in dozens of places) firmly to the sonship of Israel and the sonship of the Davidic-messianic kings.

In Matthew’s day, the movement of Yeshua-followers was expanding. Certain elements already wanted to remove Yeshua in some ways from his Jewish context. Matthew famously represents the interest of keeping the image of Yeshua within a Jewish framework. Yeshua is Ideal Israel and Yeshua is the New Moses. The midrash on Hosea 11:1 is a masterful example of the art of teaching Yeshua’s life from within Jewish thought.

Q is an imagined document which scholars think they see in the background of Yeshua-sayings that are shared only by Matthew and Luke (they don’t occur in Mark).

The Q theory is that Matthew and Luke each independently used Mark and this lost source of sayings which scholars call Q. Let me break that down. The theory is that Matthew did not know Luke and Luke did not know Matthew. The sources they had included Mark and Q (and both had special sources either written or oral besides Mark and Q as well).

To better understand this, think of a harmony of the gospels, which puts the gospels in columns. Triple Tradition materials is stories and sayings that occur in all 3 (Mt-Mk-Lk). Double Tradition material usually occurs in Mt-Lk (though sometimes Mk-Lk and Mt-Mk).

Most of this Double Tradition material (the Mt-Lk stuff) consists of sayings. Why are these sayings in both Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark? The answer in Q theory is that they had a source of sayings called Q. The Q theory is a good theory. It has some support. It seems logical.

Note: I am avoiding a long post on details, including the 7 arguments used to support Q (four negative and three positive). For a thorough discussion, read Goodacre.

Now, here is Goodacre’s basic case:

#1, Another theory of gospel origins works better than the Q theory.

#2, The Farrer theory (supported by Goulder and Goodacre): Luke used Matthew and Mark plus other sources.

#3, In the Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre theory, the Double Tradition material is Luke using Matthew.

#4, Many have doubted this because Luke takes things Matthew gathers into long discourses (Sermon on the Mount) and spreads them out all over his gospel (many of the Sermon on the Mount sayings are in Luke, but spread all over). — Goodacre says this is Luke’s literary artistry at work. He simply has a different idea about how to use the sayings than Matthew and is creatively spreading them into more specific contexts instead of long sermons.

#5, Why doesn’t Luke use some things in Matthew (most famous: the Magi)? The answer, which can be backed up by the larger context: Luke doesn’t like certain things. Magi are one of them (see Acts 8:9 and following). Luke chooses the “Luke-pleasing elements” only.

#6, Sometimes Luke’s version of a saying appears more “primitive” (closer to what scholars imagine might be the original form of Yeshua’s words) than Matthew’s. Goodacre says this is because Luke (as did all the others) had a large body of oral tradition to work with and may have preferred a different version than Matthew.

#7, Some have argued for Q by noting that Luke sometimes lacks additions or “corrections” in language Matthew has made. Goodacre: sometimes Luke preferred Mark over Matthew.

NO WORRIES: If this sounds like Greek to you or boring, don’t sweat it. This is just extra fodder for the imagination and for understanding gospel origins.

BENEFIT: If the Q theory is wrong, and if we can say that Luke used Matthew and Mark as well as other sources, it changes the way we look at several things. We can read Matthew as an attempted improvement on Mark and Luke as an attempted improvement on both (see Luke 1:1-3). Also, the value of oral tradition (eyewitness testimony) is higher if we dispense with Q (which was supposedly a written source which constrained Mt and Lk). The creativity of Matthew and even more so Luke is better appreciated when Q is regarded as a myth.

Contributing to the faulty view of rabbinic dominance in early Jewish history is the Mishnah and Talmud and Midrashic literature. This, taken together, is called rabbinic literature. And in the rabbinic literature, the dominance of the rabbinic movement is greatly exaggerated.

Also contributing to this distorted view of early Jewish history is a sad reality: most of the Jews in the early centuries are invisible to us today. Literature from the Jewish communities of the Roman empire outside of rabbinic literature is scarce. The rabbis seem to have been the leaders of the Jewish world because their literature, almost exclusively, survives. But historians have enough evidence to know that the widespread Jewish communities of the early centuries were not so rabbinic in practice and that the rabbinic movement was a small one, growing slowly in importance and influence.

What sort of people set the standards for the synagogues of early Judaism? For the most part, they are invisible Jews. We only wish we could know more about synagogue life in those times.

What was the star of Bethlehem? What is the Jewish background of the star and the magi?

Who were the shepherds of Bethlehem? Why do they figure so prominently in Luke’s birth narrative? What do we learn about Yeshua and his context?

The following information is derived from a paper by Eric Ottenheijm of the University of Utrecht presented at the 2010 Society of Biblical Literature in the Matthew section.

In Matthew 5:1, Yeshua went up on “the mountain.” No one knows which mountain, although there is a lovely hill which is the traditional spot. More important than a physical location, though, is understanding the allusion of “the mountain.” There are a number of mountains of great significance in the Hebrew Bible. The echoes of Exodus and Isaiah in particular add depth and meaning to the Sermon on the Mount.

For a long time, it has been recognized that Yeshua’s ascending the mountain to deliver the Sermon on the Mount has echoes of Moses ascending Sinai to receive and then deliver the Torah. There is a long tradition of viewing the Beatitudes, for example, as a sort of new Ten Commandments.

Dale Allison, in The New Moses: A Matthean Typology, gives a few reinforcements to the Sinai imagery: (1) “went up the mountain” in the LXX (Greek or Septuagint version of the Bible) is used 18 times of Moses, (2) Yeshua sat on the mountain and Moses “dwelt” or “sat” forty days according to Deuteronomy 9:9, (3) other Jewish literature such as 4 Ezra 14 uses the “sat” motif to make a character echo Moses, and (4) Matthew 8:1 continues to echo language about Moses.

Eric Ottenheijm shows, however, that more than Moses is going in in the mount of the Sermon.

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns,’” says Isaiah in 52:7.

“Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings,” is Isaiah’s word in 40:9.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted,” Isaiah says in 61:1.

The mountain of Isaiah is the mountain of good news. The one whose feet are on it delivers good news to the poor. “Blessed are the poor,” says Yeshua in the Sermon.

Ottenheijm points out a few things about Isaiah and Matthew:
(1) Matthew quotes and alludes to Isaiah more than any other book.
(2) Matthew 4:12 – 5:11 (the larger section surrounding 5:1) begins and ends with Isaiah references (see below).
(3) Matthew is not the only Jewish literature combining Isaiah 52:7 with 40:9 and 61:1 (see below).

Is this a denial of the Moses/Sinai theme in Matthew? Not at all. Ottenheijm says that first, Isaiah took the mountain theme from the story of Israel and gave it a new twist and then Matthew took up Isaiah’s mountain theme, which already had Moses overtones, and gave it still a new twist:

Moses/Sinai/Torah –> messenger/mountain/good news in Isaiah –> Yeshua brings good news on the mountain.

In the time of Yeshua and Matthew, people read the Torah looking for connection to God and an end to the exile. They also read Isaiah this way, finding Isaiah to be a sort of messianic handbook of the last days. It is not hard to imagine those who first heard Matthew’s version of the Sermon read aloud connecting Yeshua with the messenger of good news in Isaiah. God sends his Torah and his good news from “the mountain.”

APPENDIX A: Isaiah in Matthew 4:12 – 5:11 (derived from Ottenheijm’s paper):

Matt 4:12-17 Galilee of the gentiles, Isaiah 8:23 – 9:1.

Matt 4:23 Good news, allusion to Isaiah 52:7 and 40:9.

Matt 5:1 Yeshua ascends the mountain and sits down.

Matt 5:3-5 First two Beatitudes compare to Isaiah 61:1-3.

Matt 5:11 Echoes Isaiah 51:7.

APPENDIX B: Early Jewish Texts Combining Isaiah 52:7; 61:1-3; and 40:9 (abridged from Ottenheijm):

–11 QMelchizedek.

–Psalms of Solomon 11.

–Tanhuma Toledot 14 combines the idea of Messiah and Isaiah 52:7.

The main point of McKnight’s book is that the word “gospel” to the apostles meant the story of Yeshua giving meaning to life and eternity. Gospel was not simply a message of personal salvation. Personal salvation is one of the things that happens when people listen to the gospel.

In this podcast I’m simply exploring one aspect of McKnight’s four-part outline of what the gospel is. He says it is:
(1) The Story of Israel
(2) The Story of Jesus
(3) The Plan of Salvation
(4) The Method of Persuasion

In considering the first part of McKnight’s outline, the gospel as the story of Israel, I am turning to Luke’s infancy narrative. Luke, whose gospel bears clear signs of relationship to Paul, presents Yeshua’s birth, the community into which he was born, and his early childhood as a culmination of the hopes of faithful Israelites.

In particular, I want to look at Mary’s Psalm in Luke 1:46-55. It has traditionally been called the Magnificat, from the Latin translation of the Bible. I will read Mary’s Psalm in the newly released Delitzsch Hebrew English version (DHE), where its relationship to the language of the Psalms and prophets is clarified by Delitzsch’s careful retranslation of the Greek text of Luke into Hebrew.

The overall concept of Mary’s Psalm is that of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, who spoke a psalm on the birth of her son. Hannah’s Psalm and Mary’s Psalm have the following ideas in common, though Luke does not exactly quote from 1 Samuel 2:

• Rejoice in God’s salvation.
• The strong are humbled.
• The lowly are raised up and empowered.
• Rich and poor are reversed.

One example of Delitzsch’s work to conform the New Testament language at times to the style of the Hebrew Bible is seen in Luke 1:47. Compare the ESV (English Standard Version) with the DHE:

“My spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:47, ESV).

“My spirit rejoices in the God of my salvation” (Luke 1:47, DHE).

Why the difference? Luke has used a phrase in his Greek gospel which will speak to his Greco-Roman audience. Roman emperors are hailed as saviors. The early believers used language regularly to refer to Yeshua as Lord and Savior, as opposed to the common idea of Caesar as Lord and Savior.

But Luke’s phrase is a departure from the idiom of the Hebrew Bible. While the noun Savior is used of God, the phrase “God my Savior” does not exist. Rather, we find six times in the Hebrew Bible the phrase “God of my salvation.” Delitzsch has taken Luke’s Greco-Roman shaped expression and cast it back into the customary language of the Bible.

The prophet Micah, for example, looks at the deplorable condition of his generation in Judah. He sees that the people are far from God and selfishness and cruelty reigns in the land. He knows his nation will be judged by God for the evil in his time. “Don’t rejoice over me,” he says, “when I fall . . . I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him.” And in this era of wickedness in Judah, Micah says, “I will look to the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation.”

So Mary in her psalm recognizes that the community of the faithful in Judea is small. People like her cousin Elisheva (Elizabeth) and Zechariah and Simeon and Anna, the godly characters depicted in Luke chapters 1 and 2, are the remnant of righteous Israel in an unrighteous time. Judgment is coming for Judah and by the time Luke writes his gospel, Jerusalem has already been laid waste.

But while Romans look to Caesar as Savior and while the clueless in Israel think the Savior has not come, Mary sees in the birth of her son the great act of the God of my salvation.

In verse 54, Mary calls Israel the Servant. Delitzsch’s translation opts to go strongly with the idea of Servant, whereas the Greek could also possibly be read as “child.” In the Servant songs of Isaiah, the Servant is first and foremost Israel. Yet as Israel is a blind and unfaithful servant of God, it becomes clear in Isaiah that the remnant of faithful in Israel are the ones who will fulfill that role. Mary and the community of righteous Israelites in Luke chapters 1 and 2 are that remnant. But ultimately Isaiah narrows it down even more to one Israelite who is the Servant, an Israelite who will suffer for the transgressions of his people.

And Luke’s audience knows well that Yeshua is ultimately the Servant.

More than that, he is the Servant whose coming was promised to the fathers. Mary recognizes in verses 54-55 that her child has arrived due to God remembering his compassions on Israel. Though there is much wickedness and though the people are not right, God has shown compassion and brought the Promised One.

It is because prior to everything God made an unbreakable promise to Abraham. The birth of Yeshua in Judea is the culmination of an age-old story. These events are not new. They are from days of old. A humble woman of Israel has become the mother of the Messiah, the bearer of the promise made to Abraham.

Luke’s gospel is written primarily to gentiles. Why, then, did he bother to give all this Jewish background and understanding? Didn’t Luke realize gentiles don’t need the story of Israel? Of course Luke did not realize something so false.

The gospel, as Scot McKnight says, is the story of Israel. It goes back even before that, before the promise to Abraham. It goes back to Adam. What has been lost will be recovered. The Abrahamic promise, with which Mary completes her psalm, is God’s promise to bring back what was lost in Adam’s day, and even more, to exceed the blessing of Eden.

The meaning of Yeshua cannot be separated from Israel’s story. Far from being irrelevant, people today need to read the larger story, to see Jesus as God’s compassion on Israel after many generations, the fulfiller of the promise to the fathers.

Luke understands that Israel’s role in all this is not finished. He more than hints in Mary’s Psalm that Yeshua’s identity as the Promised One of Israel is God’s compassion on Israel, meaning good news for Jewish people. It would have been easy for Luke to omit this in the gentile churches of his time. He did not omit it.

The apostolic understanding of Jesus and the gospel is not replacement. It is not a new religion. It is the expansion of the faith of Abraham, the story of Israel expanding in Yeshua, the Seed of Abraham. And in God’s compassions, no one is left behind. The nations should not boast nor should Israel. God is the salvation of Jew and gentile in one Savior for a consummation that we have yet to see but in which we greatly hope.

And another of my pointers, which forms the basis for this post: “Understand the genre of parables in rabbinic literature.” And the golden text for learning about this subject: David Stern, Parables in Midrash (note: this is not the David Stern who is famous in the Messianic Jewish community, but the Professor of Classical Hebrew Literature at the University of Pennsylvania).

WHAT IS THE RELATION BETWEEN RABBINIC PARABLES AND YESHUA’S?
This is a tricky question that needs to be addressed. Rabbinic parables started being written down in the fourth century in the land of Israel. That’s quite a long time after Yeshua. Some books and studies have unwisely blurred the lines between the first and fourth century.

Stern sums it up simply: “They were both part of a single genre” (188). This conclusion is based on the work of David Flusser (a scholar whose work, in my opinion, has flaws, but on this specific issue he must have made his point well) who demonstrated that literary characteristics of rabbinic parables have much in common with parables in the gospels.

People were telling parables already before Yeshua’s time and the genre continued with much similarity for hundreds of years.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF PARABLES IN RABBINIC WRITINGS?
Rabbinical parables in most cases originated “in public contexts (sermons or preaching), and as an instrument for praise or blame, often directed at persons in the audience” (200). They “tend to be phrased in terms of praise or blame, or as a variation upon these opposites: approbation or disapproval, appreciation or disappointment, pleasure or pain” (52).

Among the purposes mentioned by Stern for parables are apologetics (defending the idea of faith against ideas that undermine it) and polemics (urging a point of view in opposition to others).

WHAT PARABLES ARE NOT
They are not primarily about doctrine. They may reflect on doctrinal themes. But they are primarily about praise or blame.

They are not riddles intended to confuse outsiders. Stern argues this in spite of Yeshua’s sayings about “to you has been given the secret of the kingdom” and “in order that they might not see” in Mark 4:11-12 (and parallels in Matthew 13:11-13 and Luke 8:10).

Stern thinks Yeshua (or Mark) has been misunderstood. The point is not that the parables were too hard to understand rationally. The point is that outsiders, those who do not remain near to Yeshua and ask questions and learn from him, will not be able to apply them. They will not penetrate the deeper message of the parables, which are mysteries, truths of a complex nature, involving more than interpretation: “To understand correctly, one must be a member of the community” (204).

TIPS FOR READING PARABLES
Who is Yeshua praising and why?

Who is he blaming and why?

How does the praise and blame from the parable receive added information from Yeshua’s teaching and actions with the disciples?

In other words, the parables are persuasive pieces of rhetoric designed to encourage action or belief in a certain direction. They are not primarily about information or revealing doctrine. The rabbinic parables may be later, but they provide a wealth of additional contexts in which we can see the same patterns as in Yeshua’s parables. They confirm for us the way parables were used in public speaking to persuade hearers to a new course of action or to stand firm in a good course of action or belief. We should look for Yeshua’s parables to function the same way.

This will largely keep us from reading too much later Christian theology into the parables, to imagine that they are about a timeline for the last days or a foretelling of Christendom or anything of the kind. They are persuasive sermons delivered to Jews in Galilee and Judea about Jewish life and faith.

A few centuries before Yeshua, some unknown circles of apocalyptic scribes wrote some texts that are now known as part of 1 Enoch (which is really five books written at different times). The early part of 1 Enoch is the Book of the Watchers. Who are the watchers? The answer is found in Daniel 4:10 (4:13 in Christian Bibles; see also 4:14, 20 (4:17, 23)) :

In the vision of my mind in bed, I looked and saw a holy Watcher coming down from heaven.

Watchers are angelic beings who watch the earth, doing God’s bidding. In 1 Enoch 6-10 an elaborate story is told, drawing heavily on Genesis 6:1-4, the account of the “sons of God” who took “daughters of men” as wives. These Watchers saw the beauty of human women and two hundred of them took human wives. They taught their wives sorcery and the children born to them were giants and Nephilim. Eventually God dispatched powerful angelic beings to imprison some of the Watchers.

This interpretation of Genesis 6, and the notion of unclean spirits in Jewish thought, seems to have been common. The New Testament writers speak of the story of the Watchers in 1 Enoch with acceptance:

And the angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day.
-Jude 6

. . . in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison.
-1 Peter 3:19

For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until the judgment . . .
-2 Peter 3:4

Unclean spirits are fallen angels, perhaps not the ones who married human women, but others who similarly existed in rebellion against heaven. In Mark 1:23, a demonic spirit is called “unclean.” We are more used to thinking of spirits as evil than unclean, which is a technical category from Leviticus and Numbers. Of all the causes of impurity in the Torah, what association with uncleanness would fall on demonic spirits? Almost certainly they were associated with death, which rendered unclean (Numbers 19).

In Yeshua in Context, chapter 4, I relate a story from Josephus in which Solomon (allegedly) discovered roots and herbs which could draw demons out through a person’s nose. A few stray tales of exorcism in the time of Yeshua involve performers with an audience doing what looks like a “magic show.” Similarly, in the apocryphal book of Tobit, demons are expelled by a sort of magical incantation involving burning fish parts.

There is no precedent for what Yeshua did: expelling demons by verbal command. No biblical figure before Yeshua did this. No demon spoke in the manner of the demons in the gospels. The clash between Son of God and fallen “sons of God” in the gospels is unique.

The theology behind the gospels and their view of demons is that of a hidden conspiracy of evil. Much of the evil that is in the world has been helped along through the influence of these fallen angels or demons. Just enough is said in the Bible about the Serpent in the Garden, about false deities and lying spirits, to make the idea credible.

New Testament writers agree. As John says, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). And as Paul said, “We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

And Yeshua said, “Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course” (Luke 13:32). The resurrection, the defeat of death, is the ultimate victory over unclean spirits and all they represent. Satan is fallen. God’s kingdom is overtaking.

In Michael Bird’s Are You the One Who Is to Come?: The Historical Jesus and the Messianic Question, there is a helpful chart of some major messianic scriptures and references to the thought of the time about these texts. What kinds of things were people saying about Isaiah 11 in Second Temple Judaism? That will be our theme in this first installment.

To help those who might not have the patience to read through the examples below, what you will see is:

• The “Shoot from the Stump of Jesse” is definitely interpreted as a messiah-figure (king, warrior).
• There is an expectation of war against oppressing nations (Rome = Kittim, nations = gentiles).
• There are unclear hints in the Dead Sea fragments of the Shoot being one of several messianic figures working together (one of them is a priest of renown).
• The Shoot will lead the nation in a time of unparalleled righteousness and is even said in one place to be without sin.
• The excerpt from Testament of Levi sounds like Yeshua’s baptism (but these texts were almost certainly edited after the time of Yeshua with Christian involvement – so no big revelation here).
• One excerpt in the Dead Sea Scrolls sounds as if, possibly, the Shoot will be killed. But words are missing and I have not read commentary on this text, so I may be completely mistaken.

THE SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 11:1-6, RSV
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the girdle of his waist,
and faithfulness the girdle of his loins.
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.

PSEUDEPIGRAPHA (Various Jewish Writings, from Charlesworth’s two-volume set).
1 Enoch 62:2

The Lord of the Spirits has sat down on the throne of his glory, and the spirit of righteousness has been poured out upon him. The word of his mouth will do the sinners in: and all the oppressors shall be eliminated from before his face.

Excerpts from Psalms of Solomon 17:22-37

Undergird him with strength to destroy the unrighteous rulers . . . to shatter all their substance with an iron rod; to destroy the unlawful nations with the word of his mouth . . . He will gather a holy people whom he will lead in righteousness . . . He will distribute them on their land according to their tribes . . . He will judge peoples and nations in the wisdom of his righteousness . . . And he will be a righteous king over them, taught by God. There will be no unrighteous among them in his days, for all shall be holy, and their king shall be the Lord Messiah . . . and he himself will be free from sin . . . and he will not weaken in his days (relying) upon his God, for God made him powerful in the holy spirit, and wise in counsel of understanding, with strength and righteousness.

Excerpts from Testament of Judah, chapter 24.

And after this there will arise for you a star from Jacob in peace . . . This is the Shoot of God Most High; this is the fountain for the life of all humanity . . . and from your root will arise the Shoot, and through it will arise the rod of righteousness for the nations, to judge and to save all that call on the Lord.

Excerpts from Testament of Levi, chapter 18.

And then the Lord will raise up a new priest to whom all the words of the Lord will be revealed . . . The heavens will greatly rejoice in his days and the earth shall be glad; the clouds will be filled with joy and the knowledge of the Lord will be poured out on the earth like the water of the seas . . . The heavens will be opened and from the Temple of Glory sanctification will come upon him, with a fatherly voice, as from Abraham to Isaac. And the glory of the Most High will burst forth upon him. And the spirit of understanding and sanctification shall rest upon him.

TARGUM (Aramaic Translation).
Excerpts from 11:1-6.

And a King shall come forth from the sons of Jesse, and from his children’s children the Messiah shall be anointed . . . And the righteous shall be round about him, and those that work in faith shall draw nigh unto him. In the days of the Messiah of Israel peace shall be multiplied on the earth.

DEAD SEA SCROLLS (simplified from the Florentino Garcia Martizez translation).
Excerpts from 4Q285 5:1-6, “4Q War Scroll.”

A shoot will emerge from the stump of Jesse [missing words] the bud of David will go into battle with [missing words] and the Prince of the Congregation will kill him, the bud of David [missing words] and with wounds. And a priest will command [missing words] the destruction of the Kittim.

Excerpts from 1QSb 5:22, 25, 26, “Rule of the Blessing.”

. . . to reproach the humble of the earth with uprightness,
to walk in perfection before him in all his paths . . .
May you strike the peoples with the power of your mouth . . .
May you kill the wicked.

Excerpts from 4Q161 3:18-25, “Isaiah Pesher.”

The interpretation of the word concerns the shoot of David which will sprout in the final days, since with the breath of his lips he will execute his enemies and God will support him with the spirit of courage . . .
He will not judge by appearances or give verdicts on hearsay. Its interpretation: [missing words] according to what they teach him, he will judge, and upon his mouth [missing words] with him will go out one of the priests of renown, holding clothes in his hand.

NEW TESTAMENT
Matthew 2:23
Acts 13:23
Hebrews 7:14
Revelation 5:5
Revelation 22:16

And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and sought a way to destroy him; for they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching.
–Mark 11:18

The gospel did not just happen. The events which marked the onset of a new stage in the world’s redemption happened in a time and place with three main cultural backdrops. Parts 1 and 2 introduced Greek and Roman influences on these events, both in Yeshua’s time and the later time the gospels were written. What about conditions and social structures in Israel itself? What are some basics readers need to know about conditions and groups in Israel? What about Jewish concerns in the times of the evangelists?

First, it cannot be over-emphasized, and it rather has been under-emphasized, that Yeshua was Galilean and his movement was primarily a Galilean one at the beginning. For more about this, see “Yeshua the Galilean” by clicking here. In Galilee itself, Yeshua was safe unless he ran afoul of Herod Antipas. It was primarily in Judea and Jerusalem that there was danger for Yeshua. Galilee was rural and had no aristocracy. Judea had powerful people with statuses to protect so that prophets and upstart messianic brigands were quickly eliminated.

Second, we must locate Yeshua among the common Jews and not see him as part of any of the parties. In an overreaction to centuries of neglecting the Jewish context of Jesus, some studies in recent decades have aligned Yeshua with the Pharisees. This is a misunderstanding of what the Pharisees represented. Yeshua did not belong to any of the parties. Of the parties, the Pharisees may have been closest to Yeshua’s way of thinking, but he himself was not a Pharisee.

As one of the people of the land, Yeshua’s common belief with his countrymen centered on monotheism, covenant, the election of Israel as God’s people, the Temple, and the way of life laid out in the Torah. Readings of Yeshua overturning laws of the Torah are without basis and should be rejected. A more sophisticated reading of Mark 7 and Matthew 15 is called for, a reading based more in Jewish discussions about how to keep the food and purity laws, not whether to keep them.

Second, we can and should accept the picture of the gospels that there was some degree of literacy in Galilee and synagogues with some education. It is not difficult to believe that Yeshua could read the Hebrew text. But we should not imagine him as a scribe with the kind of training found in Judea in the small movement of Pharisees and scribes. Yeshua would have been a literate, but by Judean standards, poorly educated layman.

Third, we should understand the times of Yeshua in Judaism as formative. The last decades before the First Jewish Revolt in 66-70 CE were a time when Israel was looking for an identity, for a way to be Israel. The powerful chief priests and Sadducees held nearly all the power in Jerusalem. Galileans paid tithes to the chief priests out of duty to Torah in spite of corruption and the fact that the Temple-state in Judea was abusive of wealth and power. The Pharisees were seeking to bring their own kind of renewal, but it too was a movement defined by power and status, not righteousness in the mode of the prophets of Israel.

Israel was seeking to be Israel, to recover some sense of what Torah had expressed as the ideal. The common people were powerless. From time to time, groups of the common people would follow an upstart messianic or prophetic leader. None of the small revolts inspired a wide following.

It is in this sense that we should understand Yeshua, who worked wonders in Galilee and attracted crowds. People were ready for change. They wanted to see something from God. Some of the people were ready for a revolution. Otherwise the various brigands who led small revolts would have found no followers. Yeshua seemed to be a person who could make things happen at long last.

Yet nearly all of Yeshua’s teaching and his actions were calculated to overthrowing popular messianic notions. Yeshua found a people so out of touch with the vision of the prophets for the world to come, the kingdom of God, that he set about overturning sacred cows. He dined with sinners. He healed impure people. He praised the faith of non-Jews. He warned that being the Chosen People would not bring inheritance by itself in the kingdom. He denied the idea of power and status as a way for Messiah or Messiah’s followers. He spoke of a long delay in the coming of the kingdom. He established a renewal movement, a group within Israel to be True Israel. He claimed to be of very high and exalted status which people would only understand when he was glorified. He gave many hints and signs of his identity. He left a group of disciples to lead a movement after his death and glorification when these things would become clear. He spoke of coming in the future as the Son of Man.

Yeshua’s vision of Messiahship and kingdom is a Jewish vision, but different in many details from other Jewish ways of imagining the kingdom.

In the days of the evangelists, division with synagogues throughout the empire heightened the distance between the Yeshua-movement and Jewish communities. The evangelists emphasized the origins of their movement as Jewish but with a view to spread to the nations. Yeshua had other sheep. Yeshua called for his name to be proclaimed to the gentiles. The Abrahamic promise was at last being realized.

“Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?”

But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a coin, and let me look at it.” And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?”

They said to him, “Caesars.”

Yeshua said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were amazed at him.
–Mark 12:14-17

What has the gospel to do with Rome? As in the first installment about Greece and Hellenism, we’re considering Roman background in the life and message of Yeshua as well as in the time of the evangelists who wrote the gospels and their audience.

First, and very importantly, we should rid people of the notion that the Romans controlled daily life in Israel or even in Jerusalem. Many imagine Roman legions marching to and fro all the time as Israelites tried to live in peace. Rome ruled from afar and kept a small number of troops in Jerusalem and a few other places. Here is how E.P. Sanders summarizes it in The Historical Figure of Jesus:

The situation varied from time to time and from place to place . . . but Rome generally governed remotely, being content with the collection of tribute and the maintenance of stable borders; for the most part it left even these matters in the hands of loyal local rulers and leaders.

In Galilee, Rome ruled through Herod Antipas, who had his own guard. During the time of Yeshua, there was little civil unrest in Galilee. Antipas collected tribute for Rome and let the towns of Galilee exist as Jewish towns, with Jewish education and synagogues (house synagogues, perhaps).

There were three kinds of taxation: tribute to Rome, taxes to Herod Antipas, and tithes to Jerusalem. The tribute to Rome was one-fourth of the produce every second year (so 12.5%), according to Richard Horsley’s study in Archaeology, History, and Society in Galilee. Add taxes to Caesar and perhaps 20% or more in tithe (depending on how tithing was interpreted and there is uncertainty) and the farmers who struggled to produce enough to survive were strapped with taxes. (And since the Temple-state in Jerusalem kept the tithes and did not redistribute them as in Torah, this was a heavy burden making Judeans rich off of Galileans).

In Judea, Rome ruled through the High Priest and his entourage of chief priests and, to a lesser degree of power, the Sanhedrin. Most of the soldiers in Jerusalem were Temple guard, not Roman soldiers. Pilate maintained a small garrison and in event of a major incident, had to call troops down from Syria (with a considerable time delay in help arriving).

How much trouble was brewing against Roman rule in Yeshua’s time? Most historians agree that older ideas about a wildly revolutionary populace in Israel has been overblown. There were a number of small movements of revolt, but the people in the land were not anywhere near the point of revolution yet. There was resentment and certain messianic or prophetic hopes could arise in small resistance groups. But the so-called Zealot party was not about overthrowing Rome at the time (they are mentioned in the gospels and possibly their zeal was for Torah and not revolution).

In Mark 12, Yeshua’s opponents attempt to trap him into either being arrested for making public statements against Rome or losing followers by sounding too supportive of Rome and taxation. Yeshua turned this around and shamed his opponents. He asked them to produce a denarius. The Roman denarius had an image of Caesar, already thought by many to be an idolatrous image due to the Roman imperial cult, and said on it pontifex maximus (highest priest) and DIVI AUG[ustus] F[ili] AUGUSTUS (son of the deified Augustus, see Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, pg. 423). The coin, like the one used for the Temple tax, was idolatrous. Pharisees would normally not carry such a coin and Galileans definitely not.

What about the influence of Rome on the gospels at the time they were written, in the lives of the evangelists and their readers? The influence of Rome on the gospels is felt much more here.

First, the gospels and other literature of the early Yeshua-movement could circulate between cities precisely because of Rome. Roman roads and imperial order made for what some have called the Roman internet. That is, people would send messages from city to city with travelers on the roads. Copies of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John would have started circulating, so that many people could read them. Richard Bauckham edited a collection of essays all about the nature of circulating documents and how this should affect our view of the gospels in The Gospels for All Christians.

The major point for us in this is that we should not assume each gospel was written for a narrow audience. Some have greatly exaggerated the idea of a Matthean school of Jewish-Christians and a Johannine school with its own ideas about who Yeshua was. Some wish to depict the early Yeshua communities as greatly divided in matters of faith. Yet the circulation patterns of letters and documents on the Roman “internet” suggests a much closer communication between believers in different cities.

Finally, the Imperial Cult, the worship of the Roman emperors (or of their genius, as it was termed then) is a subject worth greater study. The term “Son of God” in the gospels cannot be read without keeping in mind it was a term used for Augustus and other Caesars, usually after they died. The images of Yeshua in the gospels as a highly exalted figure have to be read as especially important for the evangelists writing in the late first century, as the movement spread outside of Israel. The Roman cry “Caesar is Lord” was met with the cry “Yeshua is Lord.”

As Yeshua himself said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, but to God the things that are God’s.”

Read Part 3, “Greece, Rome, Israel #3.”