. . . birds came along and devoured it . . . it withered away . . . it yielded no grain . . .”
-Mark 4:4, 6, 7.

Parables are usually connected to a scripture text or several of them. They often explain something puzzling about God and his relation to his people, or something unstated or mysterious in a text.

Yeshua understood a startling truth found in Isaiah 6, one that naturally leads any thoughtful reader to ask questions. Modern readers of the Sower parable (Mk 4; Mt 13; Lk 8) tend not to realize that the parable is commenting on a text. The text is Isaiah 6. It is not a randomly chosen or obscure passage. It is the chapter in which Isaiah saw God’s Throne above with his kingly robes coming down and filling the Temple (Isa 6:1). It is the “holy, holy, holy” passage with the Seraphim (the burning ones). It is the commission of the prophet Isaiah.

Yeshua, prophet and Messiah, has a mission which can be compared to Isaiah’s. Yet the puzzling thing about Isaiah’s commission is that he was sent to tell the people about God’s desire for them in that moment in history and yet his words would paradoxically cause greater judgment. God said to Isaiah:

Go, say to that people: ‘Hear, indeed, but do not understand; see, indeed, but do not grasp.’ Dull that people’s mind, stop its ears, and seal its eyes — lest, seeing with its eyes and hearing with its ears, it also grasp with its mind, and repent and save itself.
-Isaiah 6:9-10, JPS.

These words are so surprising, so ironic, many readers need to give them multiple readings to understand what they are saying.

Isaiah was a kingdom prophet. Yeshua was a kingdom prophet. The kingdom is God’s rule over his people and all the cosmos. Isn’t telling people about the kingdom good news? On the contrary, in many cases it is bad news. The simple in understanding think that true instruction will be easily recognized and that great promises will be believed and acted upon.

The easiest criticism of Yeshua is that his message was so little heeded. If he was Messiah, or even a true prophet, why didn’t he bring about the renewal of Israel? Why wasn’t the earth redeemed? Why didn’t the world to come start in his day? Where is the messianic redemption with all the promises of every person under their vine and fig tree?

Parables, according to the early rabbis in the land of Israel, were especially founded in Israel as a way of teaching by Solomon (see Song of Songs Rabbah, first chapter). They interpreted Mishlei (Proverbs) and Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) as illustrations of Torah truths. They saw Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs/Solomon) as figures of God’s dealings with Israel at the Exodus and Sinai. The figure or simile or parable (mashal) explains something about a scripture text.

The Sower parable is about good news that is bad news. It explains first and foremost how a true prophet (Isaiah, Yeshua) can speak what is good and yet he will not be heard. It explains how a generation can be so close to devastation (Isaiah’s in the Assyrian and Babylonian crises and Yeshua’s in the coming war with Rome) even though the kingdom is proclaimed. It explains how disciple circles can form and preserve the teaching for the future.

Isaiah’s words did not prevent Israel and Judah from collapsing, nor did Yeshua’s. But Isaiah’s words and Yeshua’s words did lead to the formation of disciple circles. They were passed down generation to generation.

The Sower parable is rich. To begin to understand it, realize it is a commentary on Isaiah 6. Realize first that it is about our human tendency not to receive the message. It is not our responsibility to bring the messianic era. The king will bring the kingdom. But he who has ears to hear will understand why it is delayed. We bear fruit while we wait.

If you would like to follow this series, here is Part 1.

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.

Cliches like splitting hairs, chopping logic, quibbling over details, or making fine distinctions come to mind as the probable result of insisting on a good interpretation of a few words from an ancient saying. After all, do the differences really amount to much?

Well, I think they do. Take the phrase “poor in spirit” for example.

I was explaining the Beatitudes at a “Yeshua in Context” seminar this past weekend. It was the third lecture in a few hours and the whole experience for me was like an intensive meditation on the meaning of being a disciple, of being a follower, of thinking about what it meant to be near to Messiah and learn from him. I was learning at least as much as those I was speaking to. Sometimes inspired texts do that.

Of course, following the example of Yeshua, I started the talk with something unexpected. Predictability is often not the best tactic in teaching. So we started by thinking about the Beatitudes in Luke 6 instead of the more familiar ones in Matthew 5.

Matthew’s version is easier to take, especially Matthew’s version of the very first Beatitude about the “poor in spirit.” As you probably know, in Luke’s version, Yeshua makes a very similar point, but not about the “poor in spirit,” but rather “the poor.” Blessed are the poor.

Why is “poor in spirit” easier to take?

It’s because there is no alternate way to understand “blessed are the poor.” “Blessed are the poor” is an antithesis, pure and simple. It’s truth standing on its head, logic upside down. It’s crazy to say “blessed are the poor.”

But “poor in spirit” is capable of a few comfortable interpretations. The common one goes like this: “Blessed are people who exhibit humility, who think more of others than themselves. They are poor in spirit but rich in rewards from God.”

It’s a nice interpretation and the main point of it is certainly true. So if we just read Matthew’s version of the saying that way, we can’t go wrong. Right?

Why not just read all of Matthew’s Beatitudes in a parallel manner? Meek people are humble. Those who hunger and thirst in Matthew do so for righteousness (of course, in Luke, they just hunger and thirst). Being merciful is good. Peacemakers and people will to be persecuted are good.

Maybe all the Beatitudes are about something we do to earn a blessing. God gives the kingdom to humble people, the poor in spirit, and the meek and merciful. Maybe that’s what Yeshua meant.

But I don’t think so.

I think there is plenty of evidence that the “poor in spirit” are the broken and devastated. And the meek are not the “saints of humility” but rather the stepped on and oppressed, the ones always overlooked and never assumed to be important.

I think there is a long tradition of this in the Psalms and Prophets (and also the Wisdom) before Yeshua ever comes to teach God’s way to a band of disciples.

Job exhibits repeatedly a Wisdom tradition concerning care for the poor as a sign of righteousness, such as in 30:25, “Did not I weep for him whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for the poor?”

In Psalms the poor or needy one is the special subject of God’s care, as in 34:7(6), “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.”

The Prophets rail against the injustice done to the poor, as in Isaiah 3:14, “What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?”

So, a good interpretation of the Beatitudes does matter and it gives a different message. It is not, “Blessed are the righteous for they will earn a reward.” It is, rather:

Blessed are the crushed people, devastated, for theirs is the kingdom.
Blessed are those suffering grief, for they will be comforted by God.
Blessed are the overlooked and oppressed, for these will own the world to come.
Blessed are those who cannot find justice and true goodness in this broken world, for they will see goodness in the kingdom.
Blessed are those who have mercy now, for all will see how mercy is needed then.
Blessed are those who work for the One Thing, for they will see the One.
Blessed are those who heal fights and bitterness, for this is what God does.
Blessed are those who suffer for the mission of healing and serving, for their reward will redeem the persecution.

And the underlying message is also clear: My disciples will work to make this world as much like the world to come as they can.

While I was watching, thrones were set up,
and the Ancient of Days took his seat.
His attire was white like snow; the hair of his head was like lamb’s wool.
His throne was ablaze with fire and its wheels were all aflame (Daniel 7:9).

And with the clouds of the sky
one like a son of man was approaching.
He went up to the Ancient of Days
and was escorted before him.
To him was given ruling authority, honor, and sovereignty.
All peoples, nations, and language groups were serving him.
His authority is eternal and will not pass away.
His kingdom will not be destroyed (Daniel 7:13-14).

EXCERPT: Yeshua in Context, chapter 6, “The Messianic Secret.”

He proceeded to mix up categories in their minds, to challenge their certainty and expand their thinking. The Son of Man, Yeshua said, referring to the figure of heavenly authority to whom the kingdom is given in Daniel 7, will suffer many things.

Peter was overcome. Who knows what he was thinking as he took on his master and teacher? Mark says Peter rebuked him. The student was ready to tell the teacher how it is. The Son of Man does not suffer. He rules. It was time to put this talk of suffering away and get on with the mission they were most eager to see.

You can see more about Yeshua in Context and order at MountOlivePress.com.