A Gateway to the Research of the Jesus Seminar

Mahlon H Smith
Rutgers University

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Far from being a marginal Jew, Jesus stood at the center of a heated Jewish controversy. So to hear what Jesus has to say for himself one has to filter out the viewpoints of others that reduce him to stereotypes. (1) Voice. Gospel sayings that neither promote Jesus as restorer of Israel nor counter claims that he was a perverter are apt to reveal his own voice rather than those of his fans. Q's prime example is the pair of paradoxes that contrast Jesus with John. The first (Luke 7:28//Matt 11:11) claims the greatest person who was ever born was not Jesus, but John: Among women's offspring no one is greater than John; but in God's government the smallest is greater than he. The second (Luke 7:31-35//Matt 11:16-19) goes further by belittling Jesus' reputation: So, to what will I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children in a forum, sitting and yelling at each other. They say: "We pipe for you and you don't dance!" "We sing a dirge and you don't cry!" For John the Baptist has come not eating bread or drinking wine, and you say: "He's a fanatic!" The son of Adam has come, eating and drinking, and you say: "See, the guy's a glutton and a drunk, a pal of tax agents and delinquents!" [8] Now, Wisdom is justified by all her children. Though the concluding proverb neutralizes the criticism of Jesus, it does not glorify him. Rather, it makes a very egalitarian suggestion: that Jesus is just one child of wisdom among many, like any other sage. [9] (2) Wit. As a sage, Jesus posed as an objective commentator on a situation that damaged his own reputation. He exposed the inconsistency of critics without engaging in partisan name-calling. Even foes granted his wit. In an age when wit was a sage's prime credential, Jesus was treated as a master by urban aristocrats, who usually scorned rural orators (Mark 10:17, 12:14; John 3:1-2). Years later, Josephus---a descendent of the family that ruled Jerusalem a century before---could still describe Jesus as a "clever man" (sophos aner is not Christian editing, unlike most of Antiquities 18.3.3). (3) Worship. Jesus was not your average Jewish sage, but Jews who heeded him behaved as normal Jewish students. They repeated and interpreted things he said, championing his wisdom when challenged by other teachers' students and arguing its implications among themselves. Even worship of Jesus is easily traced to the normal ancient student-teacher relationship. Jewish students regularly called their teacher "the master" (rab) or "lord" (mar) and often treated his words as revelation direct from God. Many a student regarded his own teacher as the greatest authority. In fact, there are still Jews who identify their own rabbi with the messiah. Jesus did not have to say or do anything extravagant to inspire such expressions of devotion, since idolization of a mentor was common in the culture in which he lived. (4) Proportion. Jesus' supporters were not apt to subordinate him to John, much less advertise him as a drinking buddy to social deviants. But Jesus could exaggerate John's status. For no Jew would claim to be greater than his predecessor any more than usurp the status of his own father. So, other Jews would think Jesus' glorification of John qualified him to be a worthy successor of the Baptist. Some were bound to disagree. But by quoting his critics Jesus could demonstrate both good humor and a sense of historical proportion. Like a comic telling jokes about himself, Jesus mocked his own reputation. After presenting John as the greatest star in the world, known for self-discipline, he casts himself as a social clown--a first century Falstaff--noted for excessive indulgence with disreputable people. But his paradox is designed to make people rethink their presuppositions. Jesus juxtaposed caricatures of John and himself that seemed plausible, in order to discredit both. The final proverb about Wisdom's children suggests that differences between Jesus and John were not as great as people thought. (5) Inversion. The prior paradox was designed to encourage Jews who saw John as a prophet (Luke 7:26//Matt 11:9). Supposing he was the greatest who ever lived, Jesus reminds them, John was only human. He was born like other humans so, implicitly, like any other human he was bound to die. And die he did. For, to Herod Antipas, the Romans' nominally Jewish governor of Galilee and the Jordan, John's influence on the Jewish peasantry made him a dangerous demagogue who could trigger a popular revolt at any time. Rather than risk that, Antipas had John imprisoned and executed in his prime.[10] Ironically, John's prominence precipitated his demise. Even his arrest was bound to disorient and demoralize Jews who looked to him for leadership. So, Jesus assures this audience that God's dominion does not depend on even the greatest mortal. Israel's God often turned unlikely candidates, like Moses or David, into leaders. By offsetting a grandiose image of John with a picture of God's inverted social values, Jesus refocused his fellow Jews' concern with John's arrest. If they heeded Jesus, they would not lament a great mortal's absence but celebrate a greater immortal God's presence. (6) Puzzles. These paradoxes show that, as more a poet than a teacher, Jesus composed striking images but left logical problems unexplained. So, listeners had to make their own sense of what he said. Treating these word puzzles as fact could generate opposing views of Jesus. (a) Speculation. Anyone who idolized Jesus was bound to be puzzled by the first paradox's claim that John was the greatest person who had a mother. To counter opponents who belittled Jesus, some supporters added a time limit ("from Adam to John the Baptist") that let them claim Jesus was greater than John.[11] Other literalists could conclude this paradox showed that the one greater than John (Jesus) came direct from God and was not born like other humans. Such interpretations, however, were pure speculation. For this paradox does not focus on Jesus at all, much less divide him from John and the rest of humanity. (b) Illustration. The second paradox does contrast Jesus with John, but portrays Jesus eating and drinking with secular people. Mark illustrates how it could be used to counter speculation that separated Jesus from the everyday world. His "good news of Jesus" begins by identifying John as God's final messenger in terms similar to Q (Mark 1:1-4; compare Matt 11:7-11//Luke 7:24-28). Mark shows Jesus recognized John's status by submitting to baptism (Mark 1:9-11), but focuses this scene on the revelation that Jesus was really God's son. Thus, as in Q's first paradox, the one whom humans see as inferior is closer to God than his greatest messenger. After this, like Jesus' second paradox, Mark sharply contrasts Jesus' behavior with John's. John preached purification, the unclean obey Jesus (Mark 1:27). John and his disciples fast, but Jesus parties with tax agents and others who deviated from religious norms (Mark 2:13-19). Mark drew the differences between Jesus and John so sharply that no one could confuse them. Yet, he claimed, after John died many Jews like John's executioner, Herod Antipas, did confuse both men (Mark 6:14). (c) Dilemma. Mark's sequence is odd. If immediately after John's arrest Jesus' behavior became diametrically opposed to John's, no Jew would think that Jesus was John's greater successor. For, in antiquity, followers were expected to adopt the lifestyle of their mentor. If Jesus deviated so much from John while John was still alive, when John died no Jew would confuse the two. Non-Jews lacked the background to confuse Jesus with John or any prophet. But, Jews knew the background well enough to distinguish a "pal of tax agents and delinquents" from a champion of Israel's covenant with God. Mark created this dilemma by presenting contrasting images of Jesus and John as facts everyone could see. Jesus' paradoxes in Q treated these images as an inconsistent set of opponents' opinions: i.e., old impressions. Jesus' unsavory reputation was based on past performances, before he began to fill the void left by John's arrest, not after. Mark's dilemma disappears when his historical chronology is discounted. (7) Spirit. John's arrest (or execution) led Jesus to emerge as a leader of Jews. His paradoxes admit he was not yet regarded as a religious giant and differed from John in temperament (optimism vs. pessimism) and social style (congeniality vs. discipline). But his concluding proverb about Wisdom's children minimizes the differences. Mark stressed the gap. From his viewpoint, long after Jesus died, it was clear that Jesus was John's successor only as agent for the spirit of God (Mark 1:8-12, 3:28-30). But the specter of death looming behind Jesus' paradoxes in Q belongs to John. Jesus' spirit of ironic optimism, at a time when other Jews were starting to mourn the loss of a dynamic spiritual leader, is the one ingredient that could have thrust him, a little-known Jew whom others mocked, to center stage and generated the range of paradoxes in the ensuing debate. From the mouths of newborns and infants you have founded a strong point for response to your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. --- Ps 8:3 So, the last will be first and the first last. ---Matt 20:16 (1) Reversal. Jesus' paradoxes invert expectations: a typically Hebrew outlook that Jesus honed to razor sharpness. Israel's theology traced the operation of a single dominant universal Force that is basically positive and inherently consistent. God created the world. God sustained the world. But God also corrected the world. Israel's history convinced Hebrew sages and prophets that the Power governing the universe tended to balance things by repeated reversals of human power. Commemoration of the ancestors' liberation from Egypt reminded Israelites that the poles of oppression were subject to reversal. The Force that ruled nature favored the slave over the master, the landless over the landowner (Ps 105). The bond between little Israel and the great God was declared to be eternal. Yet, whenever Israel's leaders assumed this Power was on their side, their own prophets warned them that the balance was bound to shift again, unless they became agents of the God whose goal was always social justice (e.g., Isa 1:12-17, Amos 5:8-15). (2) Crisis. John the Baptist's call for the family of Abraham to purge itself of a lax lifestyle through renewed devotion to God and social justice inevitably catapulted him to public prominence as current champion of Moses' traditional values.[12] So, his death created theological and social chaos. Most Jews were unprepared for the twist of fate that turned John's prophetic prominence into his death warrant. Jewish wisdom tradition, however, taught Jesus how to deal with this crisis. (a) Irony. [13] Jesus interpreted John's mortality as proof of God's irony. Like Qoheleth, the most radical Jewish sage before him, he saw that even the greatest sage was bound to suffer the same fate as the fool (Eccl 1:16).[14] God governed the world with a time for everything: to be born, to die; to mourn, to dance (Eccl 3:1-8). One event anticipated its reverse. So, when one thing happened, it was time to turn to the opposite. And turn, turn, turn Jesus did. His whole theological outlook pivoted on the principle of ironic twists. For this Jew saw that the God who governed the world always turned things around. (b) Metaphor. The Jewish spotlight shifted from John to Jesus because he found new metaphors to end the theological confusion created by the demise of a great prophet. Hebrew prophets used stock verbal images with familiar connotations to describe the workings of God. These metaphors became a theological shorthand that was easily grasped by those who lived in an old world order. But when the world presumed by a metaphor is upset, a gap in experience occurs. Continued use of theological images tied to a vanished order creates the impression that God is absent. So, when old metaphors failed to explain John's fate, Jesus challenged fellow Jews to revisualize God's power, turning their depressed view of the world downside up. (3) Stature. Though Jews accepted inversions of human status as normal, they thought their God was always great. This was expressed in metaphors of grandeur: the high heavens, a great king, towering cedars of Lebanon were stock images of God's dominance. These did not reveal the irony in Israel's vision of God's style of governing the world. But Jewish scripture offered another image that did: the cosmic Creator who empowered earthlings. (a) Seed. Jesus used common items in Jewish households to assure peasants preoccupied with the death of a great champion, that the Force that fed and protected the small and weak was still in control. Birds eat seed. But just toss a single mustard seed (which Jews regarded as next to nothing) and as any peasant knew, you get a shrub that overshadows the biggest bird.[15] (b) Leaven. To make bread, Jewish peasants used leaven: not a fresh yeast culture but leftover sour dough from yesterday's loaf. Just a bit was enough to raise even a lot of flour (Matt 13:33//Luke 13:20-21). Like any fermenting concoction old leaven went bad and had to be thrown out. To be safe, at a time of ritual purification like Passover (the celebration of God's freeing Israel from a foreign culture) Jews got rid of it. But Jesus reminded Jews how this impure ingredient produced their basic food. (c) Worth. Jesus used common Jewish metaphors for worthlessness to remind his fellow Jews that the God they worshipped as Creator could invert first appearances and work though creatures that they held in low regard. His paradoxes about John set the stage for this inversion, by focusing on the issue of relative worth. There John's stature as a man of God was not in question but, rather, what came after him. Mustard seed and leaven---one a lightweight, the other impure---resolve each paradox in turn. (4) Youth. People tend to imagine the past as an age of giants. So, newcomers stand in the shadow of their predecessors and often suffer adverse comparison. Jesus was no exception. His paradoxes prove contemporaries first thought he was no match for John, much less a greater successor. Yet, as a Jew, Jesus was heir to a folklore which celebrated triumphs of relative youths like Isaac, Jacob and David. For the God of Israel gave youngsters nerve to stand up to greater forces. (a) Child. No Jewish theological poet before Jesus expressed this better than David. Experience made this peasant's youngest child marvel that the Force that created the universe gave an insignificant earthling power over all other creatures (Ps 8). David's song gave Jesus a metaphor he refined to describe God's ironic pattern of behavior: the cosmic Parent puts the last child first. Jesus' claim that little children inherited God's rule (Mark 10:14) was not a new teaching nor a sentimental interlude but, rather, a reminder to Jews in word and gesture. By standing a peasant child in front of him, Jesus challenged fellow Jews to realize that God's power belonged, not to fallen giants like John or to bullies like Herod Antipas, but to a new generation of peasants' children like them and himself. (b) Parent. If the youngest child comes first, then the person in position to know God best is not the greatest prophet or sage, but any newborn. David said that God used infants' mouths to silence foes (Ps 8:3); and Jesus took him literally. The best theology is baby talk. The most common first word of any child is "mama" or "papa". Such simple sounds become the primary name for the parent who supports a child's existence. Jesus lived in a culture where a father was supposed to support his child and its mother. So, he called God "Abba" (Aramaic for "papa"). (c) Point. For Jews, accustomed to roundabout references to the supreme Being, calling God "Papa" was startling. It made such an impression that a quarter of a century later Greek-speaking Christians like Paul still used the Aramaic "Abba" to initiate non-Jews into the circle of Jesus' followers (Rom 8:15, Gal 4:6). Yet, Jesus called God "Abba" precisely because it was not a ritual formula. He did so to show Jewish peasants, not that he was favored by God, but rather that they were. Life usually made peasants view themselves as a voiceless mass at the bottom of the social pyramid. Jesus stood that pyramid on its head. If peasants called God "Papa", they would realize they had direct access to the Power that ruled the universe. Far from posing as sole spokesman for God, Jesus tried to convince Jews who felt inferior that they did not need a great prophetic mediator after John. As David had said, any new voice was in a position "to silence the enemy." (5) Power. After John was silenced by Herod Antipas, Jesus emerged as a leader of Jews simply because he dared to speak up when other Jews did not. Antipas expected Jewish peasants to revert to a disorganized subservient mass after he eliminated the spokesman whose voice they heeded: John. His policy was to decapitate, at least figuratively, a revival of Jewish culture resistant to Roman domination. He did not count on the sudden emergence of Jesus, a new voice with a message of the paradoxical power of common people. (a) Chain-of-command. Ancients generally thought power flows from top to bottom. Some cosmic Force made a strongman overthrow those currently in power. Then, as headman, he controlled others through loyal underlings. The Roman empire worked this way. After defeating all rivals, Julius Caesar's heir, Octavian, took the titles Augustus (greatest), Imperator (commander) and Princeps (chief). In Greek, the common language of most of his empire, he and his successors were known as Basileus: "captain", "chief" or "king." As head of a military organization, the Roman emperor delegated authority to those who could maintain the current power structure. Antipas' father, Herod "the Great", demonstrated his loyalty to Caesar's successors and ability to suppress Jewish dissidents. So, Rome gave him the rank and title of "king (or captain) of the Jews" (Antiquities 14.284). Antipas was Herod's original heir but lost his father's office when the dead tyrant's will was probated in Rome (Antiquities 17.188, 224). Given the military rank of quartermaster (tetrarch) of the Galilean-Jordan region, Antipas tried to show Romans he deserved his father's rank of "king", by pacifying a region that bred many insubordinate Jews. His execution of John was just another maneuver in his forty year career of trying to eliminate Jewish social structures independent of the Roman chain-of-command. (b) Independence. Judaic tradition, however, was founded on a vision of freedom from domination by any power-structure. The image of YHWH as king was really ironic; for YHWH was celebrated as the Power who strengthened common people to counter the forces supporting any tyrant (Ps 44, 47). The primary principle of Israel's covenant was not to serve any Power except the One that liberated the ancestors from slavery (Exod 20, Deut 6). To insure everyone freedom from domination by social superiors, Moses deliberately did not establish a centralized government. The later emergence of an Israelite monarchy was viewed by all prophets of the Mosaic order as a concession at best and a disastrous social experiment at worst. Its collapse led Jews to celebrate YHWH all the more as the only governor in the world who was really eternal. So, Jewish history was filled with champions of independence, including Jesus. (c) Presence. Though Jewish poets described God as seated above the heavens, they insisted that he was close to anyone in real need (Ps 145:18). Jesus sought to convince Jewish peasants that this was still true despite John's death. Many Jews, including Pharisees, mourned John's loss by fasting. Rather than join their laments, Jesus assured the mourners that they were near bliss; so, they should not grieve but laugh (Matt 5:4//Luke 6:21b). David had said "Weeping lasts a night, but joy comes with dawn" (Ps 30:5a). YHWH always "turned mourning into dancing" (Ps 30:11). So, after John's funeral Jesus decided to dance, at least figuratively. Scripture portrayed God's reign as a wedding celebration (Jer 33:10-11). Jesus just insisted that the "bridegroom" (God) was still present (Mark 2:18-19) and urged fellow Jews to let corpses be buried by "the dead" (Matt 8:22//Luke 9:60). To him the vacuum left by John's absence was evidence that the unseen God was at hand. Thus, he called on his fellow Jews to change their depressed worldview.[16] Yet, many refused to view the world after John as Jesus did. The paradoxes cited above prove his cheerful behavior offended conservatives' sense of propriety. But his behavior was only designed to demonstrate that, while John was gone, his God was not. And he told other Jews to spread word that the Power that governed the world was really close (Luke 10:7//Matt 10:9b). (6) Economics. Yet, where was that Power? Like most people, Jewish peasants equated power with wealth. The rich amass resources that they can disperse, not only to have a more comfortable life than the average person, but to control the lives of others. In order to have any power, poor people think they have to submit to conditions dictated by those who control the wealth. Jesus concentrated on challenging this way of thinking. (a) Property. Herod the Great had used a policy of confiscating opponents' property and granting supporters tax-exemptions to become one of the richest and most influential men in the Roman empire. His death in 4 bce brought peasant revolts that lasted ten years, with several commoners (an outlaw, a slave, and a shepherd) seizing portions of his property and vying to set themselves up as "king" (Antiquities 17.269-285). A man named Judah (or Judas), the son of one of Herod's first Galilean victims, led a band of Jews to loot the imperial palace at Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, and then plundered the countryside. Another man by the same name, a Galilean sage, sparked a tax-revolt among Pharisees and others, urging Jews to refuse to recognize any man as master (Antiquities 18.3-9, 23). The Romans crushed these attempts by Jews to reclaim control of their own land. Sepphoris, the center of tax-revolt in Galilee, was burned and its citizens enslaved (Antiquities 17.288). Antipas was left to prevent further uprisings; and for a long time he succeeded. But his execution of John gave Jesus a Galilean audience eager to hear his message that they were God's real heirs. (b) Poverty. The most provocative of Jesus' paradoxes was his announcement that God's "kingdom" really belonged to the poor (Luke 6:20//Thom 54).[17] "Kingdom" (basileia) refers primarily, not to territory, but to the role of chief: a position with power to govern by staying on top of things. So, Jesus claimed power belonged to the lower classes. Impoverished peasants should not to be pitied but congratulated, because God had turned his office over to them. The rich were not to be viewed as rulers. With ironic humor, Jesus compared a rich man claiming kingship to a camel trying to squeeze through the eye of a needle (Mark 10:25). To his original audience this was transparent mockery of the pretensions of Herod Antipas. Anyone who concentrated on amassing resources, like camels or the Herodians, was not qualified to be king. Israel's unseen God made the standard for kingship, not bulk or prominence, but being practically invisible, like the eye of a needle or a mustard seed. Thus, peasants could laugh at John's executioner instead of fearing him. Indeed, Jesus challenged those who were deeply in debt to reassess their obligations, by announcing that they had a choice: either to remain slaves of wealth (Aramaic: mammon) or to serve a God who, they knew, had freed slaves and made them his heirs (Matt 6:24//Luke 16:13). (c) Robbery. Jesus' message was a declaration of economic independence for Galilean peasants. To have security, he insisted, they did not need any property. On the contrary, as their generation well knew, royal storehouses only invited looting by thieves (Matt 6:19-20//Luke 12:33). As Qoheleth ironically observed: riches attract looters, so laborers sleep better than landowners (Eccl 5:11-12). The more one's property, the more the risk. For the owner never knew when or where robbers would strike (Matt 24:43//Luke 12:39).[18] Moreover, wealth put a person in danger. For, as any bandit knew, to plunder a strongman's estate, the owner must first be overpowered (Mark 3:27//Matt 12:29//Luke 11:21-22).[19] Rumors of this type of talk would lead Antipas to view Jesus as more a social threat than John. But Jesus did not urge assault on Herodian strongholds. Rather, by exposing the vulnerability of wealth, he urged Galilean peasants to see that those who seemed better off were not really their masters. (d) Taxes. When Jesus mentioned looting landlords (mostly Herodians), any Galilean---friend or foe--would have pressed him to take a stand on the issue of paying taxes imposed by a foreign regime (Mark 12:13-17).[20] His reply--"Return to Caesar what's Caesar's and to God what's God's"--could have led radical Pharisees, heirs of the tax-revolt just twenty-five years before, to dub Jesus "a pal of tax agents." But, though Paul later told Christians to pay Roman taxes (Rom 13:6-7), Jesus did not. Rather, he set a standard that made others determine what the emperor deserved by weighing his claims against God's. Each tax-payer would have to decide how much the government was ultimately worth. Jews who denied Roman right to the bounty of God's land could use Jesus' principle to conclude that the emperor really deserved nothing. So, this principle was not just a shrewd evasion of an opponent's trap; it demonstrated that any government is decided by the governed. (7) Anthropology. The idea that human beings have God-given authority to govern the world is as old as Israel's story of the creation. Jewish scripture began with an ironic vision: the Power that generated and animated the cosmos made its last creature, "the Earthling" (Hebrew: ha Adam), a copy of itself (Gen 1:26-28).[21] Jewish sages sometimes stressed that humans were basically no better than the lowest beast on earth (Job 25, Eccl 3:18). But this led Jewish poets to marvel all the more that God made governing the earth the generic birthright of any "son of Adam" (Ps 8). Even during dark times, a Jewish visionary assured compatriots that ultimately God would replace inhumane rulers with a representative of universal humanity (Dan 7). (a) Solidarity. This legacy of Jewish humanism was the mirror in which Jesus saw himself and everybody else. Many sayings show he called himself "the son of man".[22] Contrary to much modern scholarship, this was neither a Jewish (or Christian) messianic title nor the name of a figure in ancient myths. Rather, it was a just a Jewish poetic way of saying "this guy". Jesus used it to stress solidarity with other members of the human species. He did not pretend to be better than any man or woman but, rather, posed as a representative of common humanity, without any claim to special distinction. Qoheleth had concluded that there was nothing better for humans than to eat, drink and enjoy life (Eccl 2:24, 3:12-13). So, Jesus characterized himself as just another guy who ate and drank (Matt 11:19//Luke 7:34, see 2.1 above). He even identified with the poorest human by leaving job and family to live as a homeless tramp with "nowhere to lay his head" (Matt 8:20//Luke 9:58). (b) Authority. Jesus chose the hardest human lot to show the poor they could do anything he did. What really distinguished him from other men was his refusal to regard poor people as helpless. He assured Galilean peasants that to remove any obstacle they need only speak out with confidence no greater than a mustard seed (Matt 17:20//Luke 17:6). He saw that bullies (like Herod Antipas) take advantage of the masses only because the average person has little confidence in his-or-her own authority. So, like a cheerleader, he encouraged disheartened Jews to exercise the decision-making authority that their scripture said God granted the human species. As a result, he found himself at odds with those Jews who claimed authority to tell others what to do, especially scholars and priests. When they claimed he consorted with deviants from God's laws, he countered that on earth God gave each earthling authority to decide what to tolerate (Mark 2:10).[23] When they faulted him for tolerating infractions of sabbath observance, he noted that the LORD had made the human being as such "lord" over even such matters (Mark 2:27-28). Far from dictating rules for other people, Jesus made each person's behavior his-or-her own business. He insisted there was only one thing God would not tolerate: opposing the spirit by which the Holy One moved a human to speak out before oppressive authorities, alien or Jewish, secular or religious (Luke 12:10-12).[24] (b) Principle. Yet, Jesus also stressed that the right to self-rule did not include authorization to condemn opponents. If the Creator tolerated enemies and treated all sides the same, right or wrong, then only creatures who did likewise could claim to be God's heirs (Matt 5:45-48//Luke 6:32-36). Jesus pondered the irony of humans, who tend to be blind their own flaws, trying to correct others' errors: those who cannot see their own missteps can only lead everybody to disaster (Luke 6:39, 41-42//Matt 7:3-5, 15:14). Teachers might be offended by such irreverent wit. But Jesus just provided others a mirror to judge their own actions. In principle he did not censor anyone---tax agent or Pharisee, prostitute or priest---though fans who did not understand his logic later thought he did. An old Jewish proverb noted that criticism creates hostility as surely as the north wind brings rain (Prov 25:23). Jesus concluded the only effective way to counter opponents was to stop condemning them (Matt 7:1//Luke 6:37). (c) Tactics. Torah warned against oppressing others or taking vengeance (Lev 19:17-19, 33-34). So, Jesus cautioned Jews against retaliation and urged kindness to opponents (Matt 5:44//Luke 6:27).[25] Since aggressors expect hostility, an early Jewish sage noted: the way to embarrass enemies is not to attack but aid them (Prov 25:21). Jesus developed this strategy into shrewd but simple moves to counter those taking advantage of Jewish peasants. If a creditor claimed someone's clothes, the debtor was to strip and offer him his robe as well (Matt 5:40). Pagans left slaves naked (Deut 28:48). The Torah required Jews to leave the poor a robe for protection (Deut 24:10-14). So, this tactic would publicly shame the creditor as an oppressor who violated God's law.[26] Also, when a Roman or rich Jew forced a peasant to bear burdens like a slave, Jesus advised volunteering to go further than required (Matt 5:41) to demonstrate freedom from following orders. Likewise, his tactic of turning the other cheek (Matt 5:39//Luke 6:29) was designed as a sign of defiance, not submission. By standing up to the slap of a social superior, rather than cringing, a pauper would demand to be treated as a human equal rather than as an animal. (d) Time. Jesus' dramatic message of the dignity and power of the lowest earthling was contrary to common opinion in his day. To many peasants he must have appeared as more than an ordinary mortal. Who? they debated among themselves. But Jesus himself did not ignore the limits of human existence. While other Jews ranked him among the immortals (Moses, Elijah, the messiah) Jesus faced up to the fact that, like any human, his time was short. A child of Adam, he noted, is like a bolt of lightning: momentarily brilliant enough to enlighten the horizons (Luke 17:24). But scripture reckoned human life in days rather eternity. Jesus knew that soon others would look for him but would not see him (Luke 17:22). But when, he did not know (Mark 13:32). Jewish followers who could not accept their brilliant mentor's mortality, however, took such sayings as allusions to, not Jesus' death as an ordinary earthling, but his revelation to the world as Heaven's ideal "son of man." (e) Mortality. Ordinary Jewish idolization of mentors blinded disciples of both John and Jesus to a fact that Jesus, as a Jewish sage, accepted: every human, no matter how great or brilliant, is bound to die. The question he faced was the same as any human: how was he going to live till then, lamenting or rejoicing, with fear or courage? Other Jews were intimidated by Antipas' execution of John; Jesus was not. He knew that human life is short and unpredictable. So he stressed: nobody knows where or when anyone's life will end, at work or play (Matt 24:40-41//Luke 17:34-35). Yet, while life lasts, any human has as much power as leaven or lightning to alter the world. But to do anything, one must spend what one has. In a sober parable Jesus likened life to a temporary trust (Matt 25:14-30//Luke 19:12-26). One who risks nothing gains nothing, nor keeps anything. Everyone's life must be given up eventually. Ironically, the only way to get any return is to risk losing all (Luke 17:33).[27] Jesus did not plan to die. But he saw that as an earthling, his life was only a seed. If he tried to preserve it, he would wither alone. But if he risked dying, like John, his life might bear fruit (John 12:24). He did not know who would hear, much less understand, his vision of a creative Power that moved masses organically, through creatures who were themselves ironically no greater than a speck of dirt. But if he broadcast it, the wind would find fertile ground for that single seed to yield a huge crop (Mark 4:3-9). It did, even more than he expected.

Copyright © 1998-2023 by Mahlon H. Smith All rights reserved. This essay was written in 1992 for a proposed volume of portraits from various scholars working on the question of the historical Jesus, including Fellows & critics of the the Jesus Seminar. Polebridge Press abandoned that project for lack of enough contributions. This draft has been revised as a result of feedback from my students over several years. The electronic edition was posted July 11, 1998. It was last updated February 11, 2019. Hypertext links to this web page and brief quotations in scholarly reviews and publications are invited. But the text as a whole may not be posted or reproduced elsewhere without express written permission of the author.

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