Jesus

As I mentioned earlier, the current issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (60.2) contains Henry Kelly’s essay on “Love of Neighbor as Great Commandment in the Time of Jesus: Grasping at Straws in the Hebrew Scriptures” (265–81). According to the abstract,

One’s “neighbor,” generously interpreted to include everyone else in the world, even personal and impersonal enemies, looms large in the NT, especially in the form of the second great commandment, and in various expressions of the Golden Rule. The NT also contains expansive claims that neighbors have a similar importance in the OT. The main basis that commentators cite for these claims is a half-verse in the middle of Leviticus (“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” 19:18b), as fully justifying these claims, supported by other isolated verses, notably, Exod 23:45, on rescuing the ass of one’s enemy. Relying on these verses has the appearance of grasping at straws in order to justify the words of Jesus, but it seems clear that in the time of Jesus they had indeed been searched out and elevated to new significance. John Meier has recently argued that it was Jesus himself who gave the Levitical neighbor his high standing, but because the Gospels present the notion as already known, this article suggests that it had achieved a consensus status by this time.

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The most recent issue of the Journal of Biblical Literature carries Matthew Goldstone’s essay “Rebuke, Lending, and Love: An Early Exegetical Tradition on Leviticus 19:17–18” (307–21). According to the abstract,

In this article I posit the presence of an early Jewish exegesis of Lev 19:17–18 preserved in the Tannaitic midrash known as Sifra, which is inverted and amplified in Did. 1:3–5, Q 6:27–35, Luke 6:27–35, and Matt 5:38–44. Identifying shared terminology and a sequence of themes in these passages, I argue that these commonalities testify to the existence of a shared exegetical tradition. By analyzing the later rabbinic material I delineate the contours of this Second Temple period interpretation and augment our understanding of the construction of these early Christian pericopae. In commenting on Lev 19:17, Sifra articulates three permissible modes of rebuke: cursing, hitting, and slapping. In its gloss on the subsequent verse, Sifra exemplifies the biblical injunction against vengeance and bearing a grudge through the case of lending and borrowing from one’s neighbor. The Didache, Matthew, and Luke invert the first interpretation by presenting Jesus as recommending a passive response to being cursed or slapped, and they amplify the second interpretation by commanding one to give and lend freely to all who ask. The similar juxtaposition of these two ideas and the shared terminology between Sifra and these New Testament period texts suggest a common source. By reading these early Christian sources in light of this later rabbinic work I advance our understanding of the formation of these well-known passages and illustrate the advantages of cautiously employing rabbinic material for reading earlier Christian works.

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Some time ago, Larry Hurtado posted some thoughts about how Jesus is characterized as ἐκ δεξιῶν or ἐν δεξιᾷ. Recently, he’s followed up with “another possible factor” for how the language coalesces and a “bonus” post on the importance of being data-driven in developing hypotheses about such phenomena.

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This month, Logos Bible Software’s free book is N. T. Wright’s Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Christian Discipleship (SPCK, 1994). The book falls into two parts:

Part one outlines the essential messages of six major New Testament books—Hebrews, Colossians, Matthew, John, Mark, and Revelation. Part two examines six key New Testament themes—resurrection, rebirth, temptation, hell, heaven, and new life—and considers their significance for the lives of present-day disciples.

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The latest reviews in the Review of Biblical Literature include:

Jewish Scriptures and Cognate Studies

• Jenny R. Labendz, Socratic Torah: Non-Jews in Rabbinic Intellectual Culture, reviewed by Joshua Schwartz
• Thomas L. Thompson, Biblical Narrative and Palestine’s History: Changing Perspectives 2, reviewed by Ralph K. Hawkins

New Testament and Cognate Studies

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Through June 11, the Westminster Bookstore is offering a free PDF download of Iain Duguid’s Is Jesus in the Old Testament? (P&R, 2013). Duguid has been at Grove City College but has recently joined the Westminster Seminary faculty. According to its introduction, Duguid’s essay (the text is a brief 33 pages of prose) has the following major components to its argument:

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Through June 16, Ben Witherington’s What’s in the Word: Rethinking the Socio-Rhetorical Character of the New Testament (Baylor, 2009) is available for free from Logos Bible Software.

In sum, “Expanding on the work in which he has been fruitfully engaged for over a quarter century, Witherington challenges the previously assured results of historical criticism and demonstrates chapter by chapter how the socio-rhetorical study shifts the paradigm.” The volume discusses concerns related to orality and canon, and includes several chapters treating particular texts or phrases within the New Testament.

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Thanks to Anthony Le Donne for noting the availability of LibriVox recordings for D. F. Strauss’s Life of Jesus and Albert Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historical Jesus. LibriVox also has apps available for Android, iOS, and Kindle users, and the iOS version (at least) allows downloading and storage for offline listening.

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Now garnering interest in Logos Bible Software’s prepublication program are 6 volumes of select works from Simon Kistemaker. The collection mostly contains items related to the Gospels but also includes an edited volume of hermeneutics essays and a survey of Calvinist history and thought.

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[caption id=“attachment_2129” align=“alignright” width=“87”] Richard Bauckham[/caption]

In his 2006 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Richard Bauckham suggests:

that we need to recover the sense in which the Gospels are testimony. This does not mean that they are testimony rather than history. It means that the kind of historiography they are is testimony. An irreducible feature of testimony as a form of human utterance is that it asks to be trusted. This does not mean that it asks to be trusted uncritically, but it does mean that testimony should not be treated as credible only to the extent that it can be independently verified. There can be good reasons for trusting or distrusting a witness, but these are precisely reasons for trusting or distrusting. Trusting testimony is not an irrational act of faith that leaves critical rationality aside; it is, on the contrary, the rationally appropriate way of responding to authentic testimony. . . . It is true that a powerful trend in the modern development of critical historical philosophy and method finds trusting testimony a stumbling-block in the way of the historian’s autonomous access to truth that she or he can verify independently. But it is also a rather neglected fact that all history, like all knowledge, relies on testimony. ( 5; italics original)

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Jesus is both the properly trusting recipient of his Father’s care and the hen that would gather her chicks to protect them.

Today, the Pope’s new book on the Gospels’ infancy narratives goes on sale. The volume is the third of a three-part series. The two earlier volumes have respectively discussed the narratives from Jesus’ baptism to his transfiguration (2007) and the final entrance into Jerusalem to the resurrection (2011). The present volume:

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The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:

New Testament and Cognate Studies

• Jo-Ann A. Brant, John, reviewed by Matthew Gordley
• Bart B. Bruehler, A Public and Political Christ: The Social-Spatial Characteristics of Luke 18:35–19:43 and the Gospel as a Whole in Its Ancient Context, reviewed by John Cowan
• Jaime Clark-Soles, Engaging the Word: The New Testament and the Christian Believer, reviewed by Ronald Witherup
• Gerald J. Donker, The Text of the Apostolos in Athanasius of Alexandria, reviewed by Justin A. Mihoc
• Craig A. Evans, Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence, reviewed by Panayotis Coutsoumpos
• Charles W. Hedrick, Unlocking the Secrets of the Gospel according to Thomas: A Radical Faith for a New Age, reviewed by William Arnal
• Josep Rius-Camps and Jenny Read-Heimerdinger, The Message of Acts in Codex Bezae: A Comparison with the Alexandrian Tradition, Volume 4: Acts 18.24–28.31: Rome, reviewed by Vaughn CroweTipton
• Christopher D. Stanley, ed., The Colonized Apostle: Paul in Postcolonial Eyes, reviewed by Steed Davidson

Second Temple Judaism

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To demonstrate the superiority of Jesus’ sacrifice to those previously offered under the Torah, the writer to the Hebrews quotes a version of Ps 40:6–8 (Eng; 40:7–9 HB; 39:7–9 OG; Heb 10:5–9). 1 In so doing, Hebrews fairly clearly situates its rendition of this psalm’s words as Jesus’ own (cf. Heb 10:10). 2 If one were to read the entire psalm in this direction however, 3 problems would seemingly arise (e.g., vv. 12–17 Eng). 4

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In Acts 13:16–41, Paul addresses the Pisidian synagogue. In this discourse’s context, Paul asserts “we preach to you the good news concerning the promise that had come to the fathers—that this promise God has fulfilled for us their children by raising Jesus” ( Acts 13:32–33; ἡμεῖς ὑμᾶς εὐαγγελιζόμεθα τὴν πρὸς τοὺς πατέρας ἐπαγγελίαν γενομένην, ὅτι ταύτην ὁ θεὸς ἐκπεπλήρωκεν τοῖς τέκνοις [αὐτῶν] ἡμῖν ἀναστήσας Ἰησοῦν). From here, the following quotation of Ps 2:7 confirms Jesus’ resurrection by Yahweh’s hand (cf. Acts 13:37). 1 This resurrection in incorruption situates Jesus as the means by which the ancestral promise becomes actualized ( Acts 13:34–37) because it situates him as the recipient and mediator of the things vouchsafed to David ( Acts 13:34)—namely, an everlasting covenant in which the wandering return and receive forgiveness from Yahweh ( Isa 55; cf. Deut 30). 2

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This week in the biblioblogosphere:

• Mark Goodacre finds and makes available a PDF version of Wilhelm Wrede’s Paul.
• Daniel and Tonya draw attention to Alex Andrason’s recent article on the use of yiqtol in Biblical Hebrew (via Uri Hurwitz) and Randall Buth’s response to the article.
• Via Ekaterini Tsalampouni, Holger Szesnat mentions the availability of the new Journal of Ancient Judaism.
• Christian Askeland notes the availability of a stable, Unicode-compliant Coptic font.
• At BioLogos, Peter Enns interviews N. T. Wright about Jesus’ humanity.
• Kirk Lowery ponders current developments in the peer review process for scholarly publications.
• Scot McKnight prepares his readers for a change of blogging address.
• Larry Hurtado uploads an essay on Martin Hengel’s impact on English-speaking, New Testament scholarship.
• Charles Halton considers cartographic hermeneutics and some of their implications for readers of biblical texts.

John Collins rightly argues that the possibility of a positive answer to this question depends heavily on what one means by משיח (messiah).

The following poem, “Epi-strauss-ium,” by Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) playfully draws attention to D. F. Strauss’s then recently published Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet ( Life of Jesus Critically Examined; NAEL 2:1452 n. 1).

Matthew and Mark and Luke and holy John Evanished all and gone! Yea, he that erst, his dusky curtains quitting, Through Eastern pictured panes his level beams transmitting, With gorgeous portraits blent, On them his glories intercepted spent, Southwestering now, through windows plainly glassed, On the inside face his radiance keen hath cast, And in the luster lost, invisible, and gone, Are, say you, Matthew, Mark, and Luke and holy John? Lost, is it? lost, to be recovered never? However, The place of worship the meantime with light Is, if less richly, more sincerely bright, And in blue skies the Orb is manifest to sight.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upGCMl_b0n4&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

By S. M. Lockridge

Thanks to Michael Bird for the reminder about this clip.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6_Qa-HnaYg&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

Lyrics by Bernard of Clairvaux, music by Johann Sebastian Bach.

To complement the current series on faith and scholarship over at Café Apocalypsis, we might note some interesting comments from James Dunn’s Jesus Remembered. Dunn favorably mentions Gadamer’s alliance with “those who want to maintain that faith is not in principle at odds with the hermeneutical process in its application to the study of the NT” ( 123) because the whole Jesus tradition began from a “faith stimulus” ( 127). That is, “the original impulse behind these records was . . . sayings of Jesus as heard and received, and actions of Jesus as witnessed and retained in memory” ( 129; emphasis original). This tradition emerged and was preserved “as an expression of faith” ( 132). All this is to say, as Dunn helpfully summarizes, that:

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In his Jesus Remembered, James Dunn makes the following, insightful observations about the interplay between the study of Jesus and the study of history:

For those within the Christian tradition of faith, the issue [of Jesus’ relationship to history] is even more important. Christian belief in the incarnation, in the events of long ago in Palestine of the late 20s and early 30s AD as the decisive fulcrum point in human history, leaves them no choice but to be interested in the events and words of those days. For the incarnation, by definition, means the commitment of God to self-manifestation in Jesus at a particular time and place within human history, and thus places a tremendous weight of significance on certain events in Palestine in the years 28-30 (or thereabouts) of the common era. Christians cannot but want to know what Jesus was like, since he shows them what God is like. . . . [T]he new questers of the third quarter of the twentieth century showed that faith could and does have a theologically legitimate interest in the history of Jesus. Honest historical inquiry may be granted insights regarding Jesus which are crucially (in)formative of honest (self-critical) faith. . . . The point of [this historical] otherness of Jesus is, in part at least, . . . the otherness in particular of Jesus the Jew—again something we ‘moderns’ have forgotten at our cost. Without that sense of Jesus ‘born under the law’ ( Gal. 4.4), of Christ ‘become servant of the circumcision’ ( Rom. 15.8), with historical awareness of what that means in terms of the particularities of history, then the humanity of Christ is likely to be lost again to view within Christianity and swallowed up in an essentially docetic affirmation of his deity. Although the failures of earlier lives of Jesus at this point . . . are now widely acknowledged, the instinctive compulsion to extricate Jesus from his historical context and to assume his [a-historical,] timeless relevance still has to be resolutely resisted ( 101–102).

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Joachim Jeremias’s “Rediscovering the Parables” is a modern classic in parables research for reasons that can be clearly seen after even casual perusal.