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.

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.

Here is how the RSV (Revised Standard Version) translates this saying of Yeshua:

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

For reasons I will argue below, this translation is definitely substandard.

In my opinion, the worst translation of the verse is the NET version (New English), though I do like a lot of things about the NET. But their books are all translated by different scholars with little consistency in translation philosophy. I think they did harm on this verse:

The eye is the lamp of the body. If then your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

The CJB (Complete Jewish Bible and also the Jewish New Testament) does much better, but loses any illusion of close translation by paraphrasing:

‘The eye is the lamp of the body.’ So if you have a ‘good eye’ [that is, if you are generous] your whole body will be full of light; but if you have an ‘evil eye’ [if you are stingy] your whole body will be full of darkness. If, then, the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

The nice thing about the CJB here is that the reader gets help understanding the idiom (the good eye = generosity) and this interpretation is, in my opinion as argued below, correct.

The strangest is the King James, but then perhaps in Elizabethan English “single” had some denotation I am not familiar with:

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

Here are some comments I have written about Matthew 6:22-23 and then I will talk about Delitzsch’s choice of Hebrew words in his translation and how the DHE helps readers see a meaning within the orbit of Jewish discussion and terminology (as it should be):

The saying about the eye as the lamp of the body is hard for moderns to grasp. It is evident that Yeshua, and the ancients, are thinking of the eye as giving light and not just receiving it. Yeshua combines the idea of bright eyes (a sign of goodness) with the opposing idea of an evil eye, one that curses and does not bless others (the evil eye is an idiom for a curse). Yeshua teaches his disciples that their eyes should be filled with generosity and devotion to good deeds. A person with shining eyes has an interior light, their whole being is good. So with the eyes we see the needs of others and bless, but with bad eyes, darkness issues from the body and continues the world’s curse.

Now, on the Delitzsch’s translation via the English rendering in the DHE:

The lamp of the body is the eye, and if your eye is whole, your entire body will be illuminated. But if your eye is evil, your entire body will be darkened — and if the light within you is darkened, how great is the darkness!

The DHE’s whole translates תמים or “without blemish.” In the preface to the DHE, the editors thought perhaps Delitzsch should have chosen a term more familiar from rabbinic writings (“beautiful eye” instead of “whole eye”). On the other hand, Delitzsch’s choice of “whole eye” relates the saying of Yeshua to the sacrificial terminology, the offerings of animals that are “whole” or “without blemish.”

As for “evil eye,” you are probably familiar with the idea of a person with an evil eye, one who has the ability to curse and looks at people in order to curse them. It does not matter whether the curse has any valid power behind it. The motive of an evil eye is enough to suggest a great darkness within us when we choose to wish others ill.

So, following the DHE, I think we see a great contrast, a moving lesson.

The generous person is “whole,” even “without blemish” before God. The one who denounces, speaks rudely, and wishes ill of others is filled with darkness.

Generosity erases many sins. Having an evil eye toward others erases many good deeds.

And the DHE helps us, in the limited way a translation can, as opposed to a commentary. Matthew 6:22-23 is another reason I use the DHE and value it.

Unlike the many statements leading up to the crucifixion, the story of how it happened itself is concerned less with theology than with presenting in stark reality the betrayal of a good man, the senseless mockery, the brutal misunderstanding of what his kingdom is all about. Meaning is between the lines, a midrashic retelling of the innocent sufferer theme in the Hebrew Bible.

In the case of the story of Yeshua’s death, many different texts about the innocent sufferer are used. So even details like soldiers gambling for Yeshua’s clothes are connected to ancient words about an innocent sufferer’s indignation. Yeshua suffers like the just men who were persecuted in the pages of the Hebrew Bible.

Pilate calls up a whole cohort, more than 500 soldiers. This is part of the irony. To crucify Yeshua the might of Rome has to be called out. The historical reason for this is simple: Pilate needs to be ready in case a rebellion breaks out over this crucifixion. Rome must be ready to meet and repel any resistance. There will, of course, be none.

The parading of Yeshua in a mock robe with a fake scepter is a Roman tradition in triumphal parades of prisoners. The mocked person would be hailed as Caesar. History records many similar examples (Evans and Wright, Jesus, the Final Days, 27).

The irony of Mark’s messianic secret theme (see Yeshua in Context, chapter 6) is now fully realized. When misunderstood and crassly presented, Yeshua’s kingship is a matter for the Roman provincial government to mock. What can a man and a few disciples do to Rome?

In Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham discusses evidence that Simon of Cyrene and his sons Alexander and Rufus were the source for this part of the story. Peter has dropped out of the story and the women don’t enter in until 15:40. Simon and his sons must have been known to Mark’s community. Few characters in the gospels are named and Bauckham argues effectively that the evangelists only listed names of eyewitnesses whose stories they knew of first or second-hand.

Is the wine with myrrh to ease the pain of the victim or to prolong his agony? It seems that in mentioning the wine and the gambling over clothes, Mark is drawing on two texts about innocent sufferers without specifically citing the connections. They give me gall for food, vinegar to quench my thirst (Psa 69:22(21). They divide my clothes among themselves, casting lots for my garments (Psa 22:19(18). Mark’s account is short, brutal, and effective. The great man, Yeshua, is abused as an innocent sufferer. In the next scene the ironic meaning of it all will come to the fore.

Jesus did not, therefore, veil his Messiahship by using the expression Son of Man, much less did he transform it, but He used the expression to refer, in the only possible way, to His Messianic office as destined to be realized at His “coming,” and did so in such a manner that only the initiated understood that He was speaking of His own coming, while others understood Him as referring to the coming of a Son of Man who was other than Himself.
-The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer, 1906.

Anne Moore, “The Search for a Common Understanding of God’s Kingship,” in Wayne O. McCready and Adele Reinhartz, ed., Common Judaism: Explorations in Second Temple Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008).

Marc Zvi Brettler, God is King: Understanding an Israelite Metaphor (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989).

What are the underlying beliefs of people in Israel in Yeshua’s time about God’s kingship that resonate when he speaks of the “kingdom of God”? What does Yeshua’s generation think of when God’s rule is raised as an issue?

Anne Moore’s thesis: “I propose that there was a common understanding of the kingship/kingdom of God arising from the common Scripture of Second Temple Judaism — the Hebrew Bible.”

Marc Zvi Brettler writes about the metaphor of God as a king, like the human rulers people were familiar with. The Hebrew Bible uses this metaphor in three ways:

1. God as absolute king of the people of Israel.
2. God as eternal-emperor of all the people of the nations of the world.
3. God as monarch-shepherd caring for the disadvantaged and marginalized.

Examples in the Hebrew Bible

1. God as absolute king of the people of Israel. Exodus 15:1-18, God as a warrior who fights on Israel’s behalf, the liberator-God whose rule is established on the mountain in the midst of the people of Israel. Numerous other examples, including: Exod 19:3-6; Deut 33:2-5; 1 Sam 8-12; Jer 10:1-16; Isa 41-44. God claims Israel’s allegiance as his special people, chosen for a close covenant relationship. The Exodus event is critical. Torah is the requirement of allegiance. Israel is viewed as unique, separate from the nations.

2. God as eternal-emperor of all the people of the nations of the world. Psalm 9:8-9 (7-8 in Christian Bibles), God’s throne is forever and from it he judges the peoples of the world with fairness. Other examples come from the poetic and prophetic literature: Jer 10:7; Dan 4:31; Psa 22:26; 47; 96:10; 103:19. God is comparable in these texts to emperors who rule not only their own nation, but others. The nations are subject to God’s judgments. People in the nations are called to praise and worship God. In some texts (Moore does not mention this), the relationship between God and non-Israelite peoples is described with intimacy similar to God’s relationship with Israelites.

3. God as monarch-shepherd caring for the disadvantaged and marginalized. Psalm 145, God is “my king,” a compassionate monarch who is personally involved in the worshipper’s life, who upholds the fallen and marginalized who call on him. Other examples include the shepherd verses of the Hebrew Bible (shepherd was a royal metaphor for one of the roles of a monarch), the image of God as “shield,” and royal verses expressing the personal relations between people and God: Psa 5; 9; 10; 22; 102; 103; 146; Isa 40:10-11. God is a king and protector (shield) of all the people, including the prisoner and the oppressed.

Examples in Second Temple Jewish Literature

1. God as absolute king of the people of Israel.

…Tobit 13:1, 3-5, 11, 17, Blessed be the God who lives for ever, because his kingdom lasts throughout all ages . . . acknowledge him before the nations, O children of Israel . . . his is our Father . . . he will afflict you for your iniquities but he will again show mercy on all of you. He will gather you from all the nations among whom you have been scattered . . . A bright light will shine to all the ends of the earth. Many nations will come to you from far away . . . bearing gifts in their hand for the king of heaven . . . The gates of Jerusalem will sing hymns of joy.

…Judith 9:12, 14, God of the heritage of Israel . . . there is no other who protects the people of Israel but you alone!

…Philo, Special Laws 4.164, Other kings bear scepters in their hands, and sit upon thrones in royal state, but my scepter will be my copy of the book of the Law; that shall be my boast and my incontestible glory . . . created after the image and model of the archetypal royal power of God.

…Jubilees 50:9, You shall not do any work on the day of the Sabbath . . . a day of the holy kingdom for all Israel is this day among their days always.

2. God as eternal-emperor of all the people of the nations of the world.

…Testament of Moses 10:1, 5, 7, This his kingship will appear throughout the whole creation. Then the devil will have his end. Yea, sorrow will be led away with him . . . the sun will not give light and in darkness the horns of the moon will flee . . . for God Most High will surge forth, the Eternal One alone. In full view will he come to work vengeance on the nations. Yea, all their idols he will destroy.

…Psalms of Solomon 17:34, He [Messiah] will be compassionate to all the nations who reverently stand before him.

…Sybilline Oracles 3:46-47, But when Rome will also rule over Egypt guiding it toward a single goal, then indeed the most great kingdom of the immortal king will become manifest over men.

…Targum on Zechariah 14:9a, And the kingdom of the Lord will be revealed among the dwellers of the earth.

3. God as monarch-shepherd caring for the disadvantaged and marginalized.

…Psalms of Solomon 5:1-2, 5, 8, 16, 19 Lord God, I will joyfully praise your name among those who know your righteous judgments. For you are good and merciful, the shelter of the poor. When I cry out to you, do not ignore me . . . when we are persecuted, we call on you for help, for you will not turn away from our prayer . . . for if I am hungry, I will cry out to you, O God . . . Happy is the person whom God remembers with a moderate sufficiency, for if one is excessively rich he sins . . . May the glory of the Lord be praised, for he is our king.

…Judith 9:11-12, For you are the God of the lowly, helper of the oppressed, upholder of the weak, protector of the forsaken, savior of those without hope . . . King of all creation, hear my prayer!

Examples in Yeshua’s Teaching

God, absolute king of the people of Israel

…Mark 1:15, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.

…Luke 11:20, If I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has already overtaken you.

God, the eternal-emperor of the people of all the nations

…Matthew 8:11-12, I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.

…Matthew 13:37-39, He who sows the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world, and the good seed means the sons of the kingdom; the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels.

God, shepherd-monarch of the fallen

…Luke 10:9, Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’

…Matthew 5:3, Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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.

This helpful way of looking at named characters in the gospels as all thanks to Richard Bauckham and his book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

Simon of Cyrene is interesting for several reasons. One of them is that Mark also names his sons, Alexander and Rufus (15:21), while Matthew (27:32) and Luke 23:26) do not. What could be the reason?

Another interesting feature of Mark’s naming of Simon (and Mark is the earliest gospel we have) is that Peter drops out as a character after 14:72 and the women at the cross aren’t in the story until 15:40. Simon of Cyrene is in 15:21 — right in between. It appears Simon of Cyrene, or perhaps his sons Alexander and Rufus, is the source for the story of Yeshua’s carrying the cross through the streets.

Notice that Luke 23:27-32, a story about some of Yeshua’s sayings along the road to Golgotha, is unique. Simon of Cyrene was a living witness. Where might Luke have gained this extra information? One possible source is Q (if you read literature about the gospels, you know about the hypothetical source of Yeshua-sayings known as Q). Another would be an interview with Simon. Luke says he interviewed the witnesses. Maybe he got more out of Simon that Mark did before him.

Why would Mark name Simon and his sons, Alexander and Rufus, whereas the other evangelists did not name the sons? Part of Bauckham’s theory is that evangelists only named people they knew or whose testimony they had heard. If the theory that Mark was in Rome has any merit, could it be that Alexander and Rufus were known in Rome? Just a guess. Maybe Mark did not interview Simon, but only his sons.

The case continues to add veracity to the historical realism of the gospels. Named characters, especially considering that they are rare, suggest known eyewitnesses in the Yeshua community. The evangelists do not appear to be inventing stories after all.

Why is only one of them named? And what else do we know about Cleopas? Here is where we get into some fascinating material from Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Cleopas is perhaps the most interesting case. And this evidence is the kind of simple, memorable material to silence skeptics who doubt completely that the story of Yeshua has a solid historical basis.

First, a few things we know about Cleopas:

(1) Cleopas is one of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:18).

(2) His wife is named Mary and she was at the cross (John 19:25, Clopas is a form of Cleopas and the name is rare).

(3) Cleopas was Yeshua’s uncle (Joseph’s brother) spoken of in Eusebius (citing Hegesippus) in Hist. Ecclus. 3.11; 4.22.

(4) Cleopas’ son, Simon, the cousin of Jacob (James) and Yeshua, was the leader who replaced Jacob (James) over the Jerusalem congregation.

But here is the most important thing: Cleopas is a perfect example of a trend in the gospels. The people who are named are treated so for a very important reason. The only consistent answer that explains why some are named and some are not (Baukham mounts his case with overwhelming evidence of detail) is that the named characters were known to the evangelists as eyewitnesses.

They lived and told their story of encountering Yeshua again and again. Cleopas is one example, a person of great importance in the Yeshua movement after the events the gospels narrate. He is a rare case of someone we know from later historical records as well.

And the fact that he is named and not the other disciple illustrates the truth. The only plausible reason the other disciple is not named is that Luke did not have a record of his story or that he was not generally known afterward as one of the eyewitnesses in the movement. But Cleopas, apparently, was.

Look for more on this theme under the categories “Disciples & Named Characters” and “Eyewitnesses.” See Richard Bauckham’s book for a full analysis, including charts of gospel names and variants.

An interesting but isolated parallel to the a activity of Jesus may be found in 2 Chr 17:7-9 LXX:
And in the third year of his [Jehoshaphat's] reign he sent his leading men and the sons of prominent people . . . to teach in the cities of Judah; and with them the Levites . . . and with them (was) the book of the Law of the Lord, and they passed through the cities of Judah and taught the people.

Here, according to the Chronicler, the old ideal, according to which the people are to be instructed in the Law by the priests and Levites, is fulfilled at the initiative of the king. Jesus’ activity reflects a new ideal: the instruction of all the people about the good news of God, the eschatological plan about to be fulfilled.

Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Gospel of Luke. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1991. p. 201.