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Jesus and the Pharisees
The New Gospel
"'The time is coming,' declares the LORD, 'when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,' declares the LORD.
'This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,' declares the LORD. 'I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, "Know the LORD," because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,' declares the LORD. 'For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.'"
- Jeremiah 31:31-34
(1) A Vision of the Good Life
"Jesus' ministry was centered on the proclamation of God's good news to all Jews, and it was based on the presupposition that all need God's forgiveness and acceptance. The Essenes [Yahad] also affirmed humanity's sinfulness and the need for God's forgiveness and acceptance."
- James H. Charlesworth, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historical Jesus" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992), p. 15
"Instead of posing as God's prophetic champion he [Jesus] insisted that peasants and commoners had direct access to God and could do things on their own. His message was almost anarchic compared with John the Baptist's championship of the Mosaic law and order."
- Mahlon Smith (private correspondence)
"The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it."
- Luke 16:16-16 // Matthew 11:12-13
"According to Jesus, to live under the reign of God is to live in a community whose members put their whole trust in God's goodness and power and who devote themselves wholeheartedly to doing God's will by imitating God's unconditional and indiscriminate generosity.
- Roy W. Hoover, "The Jesus of History and Contemporary Faith" presented at The Jesus Seminar on the Road, Vancouver, BC, Nov. 14, 1998
In many ways Jesus' vision is prefigured by the covenant described in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
"So shall all together comprise a Yahad [union] whose essence is truth, genuine humility, love of charity, and righteous intent, caring for one another after this fashion within the holy society, comrades in an eternal fellowship."
- Community Rule 1QS 2.24
"The heart of Jesus' vision of the good life is well expressed in Matthew 5:39-42 ['turn the other cheek' above] , 44-48; and 6:24-30:"
"Give to the one who begs from you; and don't turn away the one who tries to borrow from you."
"Love your enemies and pray for your persecuters. You'l then become chidren of your Father in the heavens. (God) causes the sun to rise on both the bad and the good, and sends rain on both the just and the unjust. Tell me, if you love those who love you, why should you be commended for that? Even the toll collectors do as much, don't they? So be 'perfect,' just as your heavenly Father is 'perfect.'"
- Matthew 5:42, 44b-46, 48
"A vision of life as it ought to be calls the legitimacy of the way things are into question. That is always a perilous thing to do and requires courage."
- Roy W. Hoover, "The Jesus of History and Contemporary Faith" presented at The Jesus Seminar on the Road, Vancouver, BC, Nov. 14, 1998
(2) Love Your Enemies
Precidents in the Old Testament
The admonition to love one's enemies "was deliberately designed to counter Leviticus 19:18, where the teaching of the Torah was actually to love your neighbor as your kin, but which had been interpreted as justification for not loving, or even hating, your enemies. The concept of 'neighbor' did not stretch in Jesus' day much beyond the boundaries of the clan. Jesus was calling that Leviticus interpretation to a new and higher standard. Luke's climax was 'Be ye merciful as your Father is merciful.'....It set Luke against the tradition of Leviticus, where the ultimate injunction of the Torah was 'Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy' (Lev. 19:2)."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 146
"When your enemy falls, rejoice not."
"If your enemy be hungry give him bread to eat."
- Proverbs 24:17, 35:21
"In consonance with the spirit expressed in the Book of Proverbs...the New Testament repeatedly urges its readers not only to love and care for one another, but to love and do good to their enemies as well (see especially Matt. 5.43-47). This same conception is taken up repeatedly in the rabbinic literature as well."
- Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?, (1995) p. 378
"The very works of My own hands [i.e., the Egyptians] are drowning in the Sea, and you {Israelites] would [dare] sing songs?"
- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 39b
A New and Demanding Admonition
"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' [1.38 Exodus 21:24; Lev. 24:20; Deut. 19:21] But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles."
- Matthew 5:38-41 // Luke 6:29
"...Because the commands are extreme, even ridiculous, when taken literally, they produce what may be termed 'insight': they prompt the listeners (or readers) to react differently to acts of aggression. In fact, the proposed response reverses the natural human inclination: when struck, we tend to strike back; when sued, we want to sue in return; when conscripted, our inclination is to resist. The demand level of these admonitions is accordingly very high.
"Luke preserves only two of the three sayings he found in Q: he omits the admonition about going an extra mile, probably because he thought it might offend the Romans whose conscriptive power it probably reflects. (Luke-Acts is, after all, a double-volume defense of the Christian movement for Roman consumption.)"
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"John the Baptist asked for the man with two tunics to give away the one he did not need; Jesus asked him, if called upon, to give away both. The book of Leviticus ruled: 'You must love your neighbour as yourself' (Leviticus 19:18)."
- Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence
"Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you."
- Matthew 5:44b // Luke 6:27b
"Such precepts, so far as can be ascertained, were utterly new, and exclusive to the gospel Jesus. They have no obvious counterparts in the teachings of either the Pharisees or the Essenes. Humane and inspired as the old Mosaic code is, they go far beyond it."
- Ian Wilson, Jesus, The Evidence
Both the admonition about turning the cheek and the one about loving one's enemies are part of the Sermon on the Mount and may have been created by the author of Matthew. There is almost unanimous concensus amongst scholars, however, that these sayings capture the essence of Jesus' message.
"For this too is a very pleasant strand woven into the Cynic's pattern of life; he must needs be flogged like an ass, and while he is being flogged he must love the men who flog him, as though he were the father or brother of them all. But that is not your way. If someone flogs you, go stand in the midst and shout, ' O Caesar, what do I have to suffer under your peaceful rule? let us go before the Proconsul.' But what to a Cynic is Caesar, or a Proconsul, an anyone other than He who has sent him into the world, and whom he serves, that is, Zeus?...
Now the spirit of patient endurance the Cynic must have to such a degree that common people will think him insensate and a stone: nobody reviles him, nobody beats him, nobody insults him: but his body he has himself given for anyone to use as he sees fit."
- Epictetus, "On the Calling of a Cynic", Discourses 3:22
"The admonition 'love your enemies' is somewhere close to the heart of the teachings of Jesus to the extent that we can recover them from the tradition. The Jesus Seminar ranked the admonition to love enemies the third highest among sayings that almost certainly originated with Jesus (the other two included the complex about turning the other cheek, Matt 5:39-42, and the cluster of beatitudes, Luke 6:20-22). The injunction to love enemies is a memorable aphorism because it cuts against the social grain and constitutes a paradox: those who love their enemies have no enemies."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
(3) Leave Judgement to God
"God sends the sun and rain for the good people and the bad people."
- Matthew 5:45b"The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and wentaway. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?'
'An enemy did this,' he replied.
The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'
'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let [ afete] both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'."
- Matthew 13:24-30 (Thomas 57:1-4)
"The parable reflects the concern of a young Christian community attempting to define itself over against an evil world, a concern not characteristic of Jesus. Letting the wheat and weeds grow up together suggests the final judgment rather than agricultural practice."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels , p. 194
Pastor Bob Peragallo, whose ministry is in Vancouver, BC, finds a deeper meaning in the parable.
"...The parable says that doing nothing is, for the time being, the preferred response to evil. It insists that the mysterious, paradoxical tactic of noninterference is the only one that can be effective in the time frame within which the servants are working. To be sure, he goes on to assure them that at some later, riper time, he will indeed interfere with the enemy's plans. But the principle thrust of this parable is that until the harvest, the 'evil' is to suffered, not resisted. The parable's main point, in short is not eschatological correction of wrongs but present forbearance of them."
"The verb
afiemi, has two major meanings in the New Testament. The first is the one represented by its use in this parable: send away, let go, leave, permit. But the second meaning of the word is the fascinating one here:
afiemi, when applied to debts, trespasses, sins, and so on, comes out in English as 'forgive.'"
"...The malice, the evil, the badness that is manifest in the real world and in the lives of real people is not to be dealt with by attacking or abolishing the things or persons in whom it dwells; rather it is to be dealt with only by an
afesiV, by a letting be that was a forgiveness, that was a suffering - that was even a permission - all rolled into one."
- Bob Peragallo, The Weeds
(4) Forgive Others
"For if you forgive others their failures and offenses, our heavenly Father will also forgive yours. And if you don't forgive the failures and mistakes of others your Father won't forgive yours."
- Matthew 6:14-15
"...This form is a finely balance legal precept and is more characteristic of Matthew that it is of Jesus. The Markan form [Mark 11:25] has been edited and expanded to suit the context of prayer in which Mark places it. Luke's terse admonition is undoubtedly closer to Jesus' style."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"Forgive and you'll be forgiven."
- Luke 6:37c
(5) Put Your Trust in God
"No one can be a slave to two masters. No doubt that slave will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and disdain the other. You can't be enslaved to both God and a bank account!
"That's why I tell you: Don't fret about your life--what you're going to eat and drink--or about your body--what you're going to wear. There is more to living than food and clothing, isn't there? Take a look at the birds of the sky: they don't plant or harvest, or gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. You're worth more than they, aren't you? Can any of you add one hour to life by fretting about it?
Why worry about clothes? Notice how the wild lilies grow: they don't slave and they never spin. Yet let me tell you, even Solomon at the height of his glory was never decked out like one of them. If God dresses up the grass in the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into an oven, won't [God care for] you even more, you who don't take anything for granted?"
- Matthew 6:24-30
(6) Defilement Comes from Within
Levitical Purity Laws and Pentateuchal Dietary Laws
"The purity society in which Jesus lived was the product of a scribal elaboration that saw and interpreted the Jewish tradition through the lense of purity. Purity was part of a religious ideology legitimating the social position of the temple elites."
- Robert W. Funk and The Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: What Did Jesus Really Do? (1998) p. 211
During the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur "the Torah from Leviticus (12-13) about clean and unclean things was being read according to the Jewish custom. In that passage attached to Yom Kippur, God was teaching Moses and Aaron to distinguish between the common and the holy. Laws about clean and unclean foods followed. There we read about a woman's uncleanness in conception, about human uncleanness though leprosy, and about uncleanness through sexual discharge. Aaron, the priest, was to make atonement for the uncleanness of the people of Israel."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 65, 84
"Following the destruction of the Temple in 586 BC the place of the Lord had been defiled, and pious Jews tried to keep their own homes as undefiled as the altar in the Temple and themselves as undefiled as its priests. This meant keeping Levitical purity laws and Pentateuchal dietary laws very carefully indeed. A member of the Qumran Community [actually the Yahad, a group described in the Dead Sea Scrolls who did not necessarily live at Qumran] would never enter in the house of someone outside (a 'dead' person), because they would be exposed to all types of uncleanness."
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
"Typically Qumranic is the praise of God for purifying the faithful from impurities ([Purification Ritual] 4Q512. Note the following Qumran Pseudepigraphic Psalm: '[And y]ou will test all. And chosen ones, like offerings, you will declare pure (tthr) before you. But hated one[s) like impurity (kndh) you will reject' ([Pseudepigraphic Psalm] 4Q381 46 5-6). As we know from an unpublished letter ('Some of the Precepts of the Torah'), which the Righteous Teacher may have sent to a priest in Jerusalem, the Qumran group held to rules for purification that differed from other Jews (4QMMT [Some of the Precepts of the Torah]). The Qumranic penal code, which included the death penalty, was closely aligned with the rules for purity."
- James H. Charlesworth, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historical Jesus" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992), p. 25
"Jesus offended 'worthy' Jews by entering into the homes of such people as tax collectors, and as a result was being accused of mingling with 'sinners' and 'harlots', 'drunks' and 'prostitutes'...The term 'harlot', for instance, simply meant that they mingled with Gentiles in their working or social lives, rather than any observation of their sexual promiscuity."
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
"R. Hanina ben Dosa, who dates to the first half of the first century C.E., was once seen carrying the unclean carcass of a snake upon his shoulder, his behavior implying that impurity does not exist. It is interesting to note that R. Hanina's thought is inferred only from his action. Some of Jesus' actions may also be analyzed in the same way."
- Paolo Sacchi, "Recovering Jesus' Formative Background" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 129
Essene Purity Practices
"When rituals express anxiety about the body's orifices, the sociological counterpart of this anxiety is a care to protect the political and cultural unity of a minority group. The Israelites were always in their history a hard-pressed minority...The threatened boundaries of their body politic would be well mirrored in their care for the integrity, unity, and purity of the physical body."
- May Douglas, Purity and Danger
"Although emptying the bowels is quite natural, they [the Essenes] are taught to wash after it, as if it polluted them."
- Flavius Josephus, Jewish War, 2:8:120
Although Jesus and his teachings had much in common with the Essenes and the Yahad, he relaxed their strict purity practices. One such ritual was the washing of hands to allow the demons to drip off the fingertips.
"...But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man."
- Matthew 15:20"It's not what goes into a person from the outside that can defile; rather it's what comes out of the person that defiles."
- Mark 7:15; Thomas 14:5
"The earthy humour of the saying is apparent if we paraphrase it this way: 'What stinks is what comes out, not what goes in.' It should doubtless be understood as a contrast like: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice' (Hos 6:6). In other words, purity of ethical attitude and behaviour matters more than cultic purity. But, like the tithing of tiny herbs, it was not rubbishing either aspect of purity. Only later did Mark and his tradition turn the words into an absolute contrast and have Jesus effectively deny the validity of biblical purity laws. Both Matthew and Luke backed off from such a radical stance, Luke by omitting the episode, Matthew by making it square with biblical Law again, with the result that Jesus is rejecting only an extremist interpretation."
- William Loader, "Jesus the Jew"
"Some scholars who are not noted for conservative views on the historicity of the gospel traditions use this saying as part of their argument that Jesus repudiated the plain teaching of the Mosaic law. But Jesus is unlikely to have challenged directly and entrenched food taboo. This is the only passage in the gospels which suggests that he did so. And if he did so, then it is difficult to explain why in his crucial controversy with Paul, Peter retreated and sided with James and the 'false brethren' by refusing to eat with non-Jews (Gal. 2:1-14)."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 243
"What comes out of a man is what makes him 'unclean'. For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean'."
- Mark 7:20b-23 (Matthew 15:17-19)
"In the teaching of Jesus, holiness, not uncleanness was understood to be contagious."
- M. Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teaching of Jesus, p. 135
For Paul, impurity was a state of mind.
"[As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that] no food is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean."
- Romans 14:14
Simon the Leper
(a) Associating with the Unclean
"No madman, or lunatic, or simpleton, or fool, no blind man, or maimed, or lame, or deaf man, and no minor shall enter into the community, for the angels of holiness are with them."
- Damascus Document CD 16
"Now what do we find in Mark that would be read by the Christians [during the annual reading of the Torah] against the background of the Day of Atonement? In the balance of Mark 1 and deep into Mark 2, we find stories where Jesus was the source of forgiveness, where forgiveness was understood as healing in the episode of Peter's mother-in-law (Mark1:29-31); in the story of those possessed of demons (Mark 1:32-35); in the account of the unclean leper (Mark 1:40-45); and in the restoring of the paralytic. In each of these narratives, the miracle was accomplished quite specifically by Jesus pronouncing forgiveness on the sick, the distorted, and the unclean. Next, we read of Jesus calling into discipleship a man name Levi, the tax collector, who was associated with and who worked for the hated and unclean gentiles (Mark 2:14). Finally, we read the account of Jesus sitting at table with the unclean tax collectors (Mark 2:15-17)."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 65, 84
"Jesus associated with commoners, and even with lepers, the outcasts, and women; these actions would have been anathema to the Essenes [Yahad]. In contrast to the Essenes, Jesus visited in the house of a leper (Mk 14:3 and parallels). The Essenes were afraid of lepers, developed strict rules for dealing with such dangers ([Community Rule] 1QS, [War Scroll] 1QM, [Temple Scroll] 11QTemple), and placed lepers as outcasts in a section to the east of Jerusalem (11QTemple 46) [below], precisely where Jesus is said to have entered a leper's home. Jesus' attitude to lepers and outcasts was unusual."
- James H. Charlesworth, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historical Jesus" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992), p. 25
"While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, "'Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year's wages [Greek: 'more than three hundred denarii'] and the money given to the poor.' And they rebuked her harshly.
'Leave her alone,' said Jesus. 'Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her'."
- Mark 14:3-9 (Matthew 26:6-13; Luke 7:36-50; John 12:1-8)
"Jesus deliberately disobeyed the Jewish laws regarding purity..." Jesus' exhortation was "be willing to be defiled in the attempt to help or save other, even Jews of questionable beliefs and ancestry. On this principle Jesus and the Essenes stand at opposite ends of the spectrum."
- James H. Charlesworth, Jesus Within Judaism
"The author of the Temple Scroll emphasizes the holiness of Jerusalem. Since this is where God is present in the Temple among humanity, the Temple was to be kept sacred and ritually clean (11QTemple 27.4). The purity required for the priests serving before God (Lev 22:4), for the holy warriors of Israel in their camp (Deut 23:10-11), and the congregation of Israel standing at Mount Sinai and waiting for the coming of God (Ex 19:1-15) served as a kind of obligatory ideal to be observed by the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The holiness of God should not be offended by impurity. Thus 'no leper and no man stricken' (by a skin disease) shall enter the Temple unless they have been cleansed. After the cleansing he shall 'bring near' (his offering', 11QTemple 45.18; cf. Mk 1:44, where the leper, cleansed by Jesus, is told to show himself to the priest and to offer for his cleansing what Moses has commanded)."
- Otto Betz, "Jesus and the Temple Scroll" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 78
(b) East of Jerusalem
"And you shall make three places at the east of the city, separated one from another, into which shall come the lepers and the people who have a discharge and the men who had a (nocturnal) emission."
- Temple Scroll 46.16-18
"These regulations explain why Simon the leper lived in Bethany, east of Jerusalem....It [the Temple Scroll] was the regulations for a life of purity in the Holy City that were followed by the Essenes, of whom a group must have occupied a certain quarter within the walls, most probably in the southwest corner, close to the Essene Gate. Through that gate the Essenes left Jerusalem in order to reach their 'place of the hand' (meqo'm yad=latrine), which was established outside of the city walls in order to keep the holy place clean (46.13-16). In a similar way, quarantine places were established by those Essenes. Therefore, Simon who had a house in Bethany may have been a member of the Essene community who had been obliged to dwell east of Jerusalem because of the disease that rendered him unclean."
- Otto Betz, "Jesus and the Temple Scroll" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 79
"In 1950 a Jewish Christian sanctuary was apparently found in the immediate vicinity of the New Testament Bethany. A shrine to honor Lazarus was attached to it, at the latest, during the early Byzantine period. Originally the sanctuary was a large Jewish ritual bath, which resembles a recently found miqweh on the northern side of the Mount of Olives and which also may be compared with baths on Mount Zion."
- Rainer Riesner, "Jesus, the Primitive Community, and the Essene Quarter of Jerusalem" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 216
(c) Evolution of the Story
"According to the Gospel of Mark, while Jesus sat at table in the house of 'Simon the Leper' in Bethany, a woman came and anointed him with a precious ointment (14:3-9). In Matthew's report, the house of Simon the leper is also mentioned, while according to John, Jesus was in Bethany in the company of Lazarus and Martha, and Mary anointed him (12:1-8)."
- Otto Betz, "Jesus and the Temple Scroll" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (James H. Charlesworth, Ed. - 1992), p. 78
Luke tailored his account of the story to correspond with the Day of Atonement
"In the original story the woman's act was probably interpreted by Jesus as a 'courtesy', which Jesus would have expressed with the Greek term kalon, which can be understood as either a good or beautiful act. The double meaning of the term would have been understood as a clever reply to the criticism leveled at Jesus by his disciples."
- Robert Funk (Editor), Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus, p. 136
"First Simon the Leper in Mark and Matthew became Simon the Pharisee in Luke. For his atonement story, Luke wanted to contrast forgiveness with righteousness. Second, the woman became a prostitute. Luke called her euphemistically, 'a woman of the city who was a sinner' (Luke 7:37)....Third, Luke heightened the sensual quality of the act. Only in Luke's version of this story did the woman 'wet his feet with her tears and [wipe] them with the hair of her hear.' She then kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment (Luke 7:38). It was a powerfully sensual scene in which Jesus was himself assumed to have been sexually defiled by his having allowed this woman to touch him in this way. The host immediately made this judgment. 'If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner' (Luke 7:39). To this Jesus responded with a parable that related forgiveness to love, not to righteousness (Luke 7:40-47). Then Jesus pronounced the woman forgiven and was thus portrayed as claiming the God power of being the source of forgiveness and absolution."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 151
(7) The Sabbath Was Made for Man
Violating Strict Observance
"In the Damascus Document, a large portion of two columns (10.14-11.18) concerns ordinances for the proper observance of the Sabbath. The ordinances are occasionally shockingly strict; it is forbidden on the Sabbath to lend anything to a friend or to lift a pebble or brush away dust in your home."
- James H. Charlesworth, Jesus Within Judaism
The Essenes observed the Sabbath "more rigorously than any other Jews."
- Flavius Josephus, Jewish War, 2:8:147"If you do not observe the Sabbath as a Sabbath you will not see the Father."
- Thomas 27
Although Jesus, as a devout Jew, supported the observance of the Sabbath, he did not support overly strict prohibitions regarding the Sabbath.
"One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, 'Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?'
He answered, 'Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.'
Then he said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'"
- Mark 2:23-27 (Matthew 12:1-8; Luke 6:1-5)
The passage "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" directly echoes a pronouncement of Hillel.
"The written Torah permitted poor people to pluck grain in others' fields (Deut 24:19ff) but was silent about such activity on the sabbath. Rabbis were still debating under what conditions this practice could be permitted on the sabbath for more than a century after Jesus. So there was no definitive Pharisaic halakha in Jesus' day. But Essenes had a long-standing prohibition of even going into grain fields on the sabbath. Therefore the mere presence of Jesus and his disciples out in the fields on a sabbath would (for religious Jews) raise the question of whether they were observing the sabbath or not."
- Mahlon H. Smith (CrossTalk)
"Since it was permissible to pluck corn form the edge of a farmer's field, but not on the sabbath, Jesus is claiming that the circumstances were exceptional. But is mere hunger an 'exceptional circumstance'? In his defense Jesus claims support for his conduct from David's action when he and those with him were hungry. The argument is so sophisticated that it is unlikely to have been invented in the early church as a defense of Christian rejection of sabbath observance."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 243
The author of Matthew omitted Mark 2:28 from his text, one of a number of omissions of references in Mark that may have offended Jewish sensibilities. Matthew, however, does contain sayings attributed to Jesus which violate sectarian Sabbath observance.
"Let no man help a beast to give birth on the sabbath day; and if it fall into a cistern or into a pit, let it not be lifted out on the Sabbath."
- Damascus Document CD 11.13"He said to them, 'If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?'"
- Matthew 12:11
"We have found one instance in which Jesus, in effect, demanded transgression of the law: the demand to the man whose father had died."
- E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism
"Another disciple said to him, 'Lord, first let me go and bury my father.' But Jesus told him, 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.'"
- Matthew 8:21-22 // Luke 9:59, 60; Thomas 86:1-2
"In both the gentile and Judean worlds, one had a basic filial duty to bury one's father. It would have been an acute form of dishonor to leave one's father unburied or to permit someone else to bury him: it would have brought shame, not only on the father's memory, but also on the son."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"The reference is not to primary but to secondary burial. Imagine a room-like tomb with burial niches carved into its sides. [Click here for photo.] The body rested in one of those until, after a year, the flesh had decomposed. Then the bones were gathered and buried either in an ossuary or in the floor of the tomb. This allowed a family tomb to be used again and again for generations, the dead of the family to remain together, and one to be (literally) gathered to one's ancestors. Such a reburial was especially the obligation of the eldest son, but the reply does not presume that the father has just died (primary burial) or even that reburial is just about to take place (secondary burial). The objection may well mean: I must stay at home until a year has elapsed and I have fulfilled the obligations of secondary (re)burial."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images (1998), p. 164
"Otherwise the material in the Gospels reveals no transgression by Jesus. And, with the one exception, following him did not entail transgression on the part of his followers. On the other hand, there is clear evidence that he did not consider the Mosaic dispensation to be final or absolutely binding. He spoke of and demonstrated the destruction of the old temple and the coming of the new, he admitted sinners to the kingdom without requiring the lawful signs of repentance, and he issued at least one law for a new order: the prohibition of divorce."
- E.P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism
Expurgating the Torah
"We know the Qumran scribes used midrash pesher techniques in interpreting the prophets. So Jeremiah would have given them plenty of reason for censoring the regulations that validated the sacrificial cult at Jerusalem:"
- Mahlon Smith (CrossTalk)
"How can you say, 'We are wise, and the Torah of YHWH is with us'? But see, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie!'"
- Jeremiah 8:8
"If Jeremiah directed this charge at the authorities who controlled the Jerusalem temple even after Josiah's reform, it is not hard to imagine the followers of the Teacher of Righteousness regarding this as prophetic justification for expurgating the Torah advocated by Jerusalem priests who rejected their leader's interpretation of Torah and instead insisting that only his teaching (rather than the laws that Temple-based scribes ascribed to Moses) was the true word of God.
"The Essenes certainly didn't accept Tanakh that did not support the Teacher of Righteousness. If Judean arch-conservative priests who governed Qumran could play loose with written scripture, what historical basis is there for supposing that a movement among the working and peasant classes of Galilee would have regarded the text of the Torah sacrosanct?"
- Mahlon Smith (CrossTalk)
(8) Reject Religious Hypocrisy
"...Within the period preceding the teaching of Jesus, the adherents of 'Prophetism' [an irresistible call from heaven to utter preaching] were in religious and political opposition against the pro-Roman Jewish governments, while 'Legalism' had gained the upper hand, and had become simply a set of external forms and an arid commentary on the Mosaic Law (we are told of 600 or more commandments or prohibitions collected by the Rabbis in their commentaries, so meticulous that any movement made by a devotee was in danger of being wrong)."
- Luigi Pareti, The Ancient World
Jesus, as a reformer in the tradition of Prophetism, sharply criticized Pharisees obsessed with Legalism as "blind guides".
"They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues, and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men."
- Mark 12:38-39, (Matthew 23:5-7; Luke 20:45-46, 11:43)
"'They broaden the scripture-containing cases that they wear as safeguards.' These relatively small cases, worn on the forehead or on the arm, contain four portions of the Law: Exodus 13:1-10, 11-16; and Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 11:13-21. But the Pharisees increase the size of these cases to give the impression that they are zealous about the Law. Jesus continues that they 'enlarge the fringes of their garment.' At Numbers 15:38-40 the Israelites are commanded to make fringes on their garments, but the Pharisees make theirs larger than anyone else does. Everything is done for show! 'They like the most prominent place', Jesus declares."
- The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves."
- Matthew 23:15
"...Both the detailed knowledge of Pharisaic argument and the level of invective in many of the sayings recorded in Matthew 23:1-36 reflect the later historical context, not the public life of Jesus."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"Jesus said, 'Damn the Pharisees! They are like a dog sleeping in the cattle manger: the dog neither eats nor [lets] the cattle eat.'"
- Thomas 102; Matthew 23:13, Luke 11:52
"The saying was attributed to Aesop and other sages and was widely known in the ancient Near East. It belongs to the category of common wisdom that was frequently attributed to Jesus by his followers."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"...There appears most vividly in Jesus' words an echo of the revolt of a pure and noble spirit against all the formalism and hypocrisy which governs social intercourse."
- Luigi Pareti, The Ancient World
"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him.
The next day he took out two silver coins [Greek 'two denarii [denarii]'] and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'"
- Luke 10: 30-35
The Priest and the Levite pass by because if they touched the victim and he were dead they would have had to undergo ritual purification for a week.
"The imagery of the parable itself draws on the longstanding animosity between Judeans and Samaritans. The parable subverts the negative, stereotyped identity of the Samaritan and throws the conventional distinction between 'us' and 'them' into question. A Samaritan who goes to he aid of a person, probably a Judean, who has been assaulted and left for dead, after two representatives of the established religion have ignored him, has stepped across a social and religious boundary. Jesus' audience, which was made up of Judeans, would have viewed the story through the eyes of the victim in the ditch: the parable prompts them to think of the identification of their neighbor as a different ethnic group. The possibility of another kind of social world has come into view."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
According to Episcopal Bishop, John Shelby Spong, the parable about the Good Samaritan did not originate with Jesus. Luke created the story in order to make his Christian lection for the day parallel the Torah as it was read during Jewish liturgical year.
"In Deuteronomy Moses told the people that they were to destroy the foreigners with no mercy (Deut. 7:1:2). If you do this, Moses promised, God will keep you from evil and will even lay this evil on those who hate you (Deut. 7:15). In Luke, in the corresponding segment, Jesus was portrayed as giving the parable of the good Samaritan in which the foreigner, whose worship was judged to be corrupt, was portrayed as showing mercy on the Jew who had fallen upon evil fortune..."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 159