Committed Critic

My previous post compared Jesus’ trial before Pilate in Mark and Luke, and I tried to explain how Luke, who was probably basing his story on Mark’s version, changes the scene to make a different point than Mark made with it.

Here I’ll add Matthew to the mix (Mt 27:11-26):

Now Jesus was standing before the governor. And the governor asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus said, “You say so.” And when he was being accused by the chief priests and the elders, he didn’t answer anything. Then Pilate said to him, “Don’t you hear all the things they’re testifying against you?” But he didn’t answer him with even a word, to Pilate’s great amazement.

At feast-time, it was the governor’s practice to set free for the crowd one prisoner whom they wanted released. At that time they were holding a notorious prisoner named Jesus Barabbas. Pilate gathered them together and said to them, “Which one do you want me to set free for you, Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called messiah?”

While he was seated on the platform, his wife sent him a message saying, “Have nothing to do with that innocent man; I had a very painful dream about him today.”

But the chief priests and the elders convinced the crowd to ask for Barabbas, and to execute Jesus. So when the governor asked them, “Which of the two do you want me to set free for you?”, they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called messiah?” They all said, “Let him be crucified.” [Pilate] said, “But what wrong did he commit?” But they shouted louder, “Let him be crucified!”

Now when Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but that it was becoming a riot, he took water and washed off his hands in the presence of the crowd and said, “I am innocent of this man’s blood––see for yourself.”

And the whole people answered, “Let his blood be upon us and upon our children.”

(For all three accounts in parallel columns, see this page.)

Matthew keeps the story a lot closer to Mark’s account than Luke does, though he does add the part about Pilate’s wife, which is absent from the other Gospels. Because of her dream, we have a stronger sense that Pilate actually wants to save Jesus’ life, though Matthew doesn’t make this nearly as clear as Luke, who has Pilate practically beg the crowd to acquit Jesus.

The other major change in Matthew comes at the end of this passage, and I think it shows us what Matthew finds most important about this part of the story. Unlike any of the other Gospels, Pilate washes his hands in front of the crowd, saying that he is innocent of Jesus’ blood; then the crowd of people cry out, “Let his blood be upon us and upon our children.”

MATTHEW AND THE JEWS

This is a climactic scene, and scholars rightly suspect that Matthew’s angle on the story tells us something he holds very dear. The theme of blood shows us the point: Matthew wants to be very specific about where blame is assigned for Jesus’ death.

I wrote recently about how this passage has often been used by Christians to blame “the Jews” for Jesus’ crucifixion, and at times Christians have turned against Jews in violence for this reason. But the anti-Jewish reading falls apart, especially since practically everyone in the story (including Jesus, of course) is Jewish, and the only Gentiles we see are the Romans who carry out the crucifixion.

Probably, Matthew considered himself a Jew, and he believed Jesus really was the Messiah for the Jews. The Old Testament has a long tradition of prophets proclaiming violent punishment against Israel and Jerusalem for their faithlessness, and it is likely that that’s what Matthew has in mind here. The people who accept Jesus’ blood-guilt before Pilate are not “the Jews” as a race or religion, but rather the people of Jerusalem at that time, and Matthew (writing perhaps in the 80’s A.D.) thinks that the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D. is Jerusalem’s punishment for rejecting its messiah. That doesn’t mean they stop being God’s people, just that they’re punished for disobedience.

There may even be some irony intended in the story: if Matthew is thinking of the Christian belief whereby Jesus’ blood cleanses us from our sins, then the story could both demonstrate Jerusalem’s guilt and foreshadow their forgiveness as seen, e.g., in Acts 2.

However, there’s another side to the matter: Matthew also believes that Jesus and his apostles are the leaders that Israel must now answer to, so Jesus’ teachings do effectively turn most of Israel into apostates (i.e., outsiders), since they reject Jesus’ teachings and lordship. This is a problem that Paul wrestles with in Romans 9–11, and it’s still a theological problem today. (Paul thinks all Israel will eventually believe in Christ [see Rom 11:11, 23, 25-26], but that doesn’t seem to have happened.)

In any event, from a Christian theological perspective, Matthew’s general view makes good sense: Jesus was the Jewish messiah who called all Israel to repentance and obedience, after which he invited Gentiles throughout the world to join the people of God as well.

WHAT CAN COMPARISONS GET US?

Redaction criticism is the academic term for studying how authors like Matthew and Luke copied certain parts of their Gospels from earlier works (especially Mark) but changed parts of the source text to suit their own message.

The reason redaction criticism is so important is that it helps highlight the arguments that the different Gospels are making about Jesus, since we can see where they went out of their way to change the text they used as their source for the story. It helps us draw conclusions about the authors and the churches they were writing for, which can also help us find where the author wants us to be surprised, angry, or amused by the story he tells.

For some contexts, I suppose it is fine to conflate the different stories; however, my conviction here is that these three Gospels want to tell us different things about what Jesus’ trial means, and that we are meant to understand all three of them as different insights into our faith.

In these two posts, I have suggested three very different points that the Gospels make using Jesus’ confrontation with Pilate. Each serves as a trial scene, but not exactly the kind we would expect:

• Mark emphasizes the injustice of the envious high priests manipulating the scornful and cynical Roman governor so that Jesus gets crucified by getting caught in the middle of an unjust system. In effect, it is the world that is found guilty, for no one in Mark’s Gospel (including the disiples) passes the test of believing in Jesus properly.
• Luke puts Jesus on trial before the readers of Luke’s Gospel, so that Pilate, Herod, the criminal on the cross, and the centurion by the cross all become witnesses who testify that Jesus is innocent. The jury is Luke’s Gentiles readers, who find Jesus a worthy lord despite his shameful execution.
• Matthew puts the people of Jerusalem on trial, which is ironic since they’re condemning themselves when they think they’re condemning Jesus; Jesus’ unjust punishment is crucifixion, while their just punishment is the destruction of Jerusalem 40 years later. Yet there is the possibility of forgiveness for those who later repent, even though Jerusalem will be destroyed nonetheless.

On the whole, we should compare each Gospel to a stage play rather than a history book. While a history book needs to cover all the facts and acknowledge all the subtleties of history, a play can simplify story-lines and stylize confrontations between characters in order to make us feel things and realize things that we might miss if we were only given facts. This, I’m convinced, is what Mark, Luke, and Matthew have done for us here.

Bible scholars have recently challenged the “supercessionist” idea that Jesus intended to replace Judaism with Christianity, or that the New Testament replaces Jews with (Christian) Gentiles as the people of God. A key battleground text for this question is the Gospel of Matthew, and a key assumption in the way I will interpret it is that different parts of the Bible don’t always agree with one another.

I’ll pursue the idea that Matthew’s church believed that the Jews were still the people of God, and that Gentiles, though welcome to join in following Christ, had in no sense inherited the faith from the Jews as a whole.

Here are four key texts for the issue. The first is from the Sermon on the Mount, where this particular passage represents Jesus’ fundamental teaching about the law (Matt 5:17-19):

Don’t suppose that I came to overthrow the law or the prophets; I didn’t come to overthrow but to fulfill. Truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota or one stroke of a letter will pass away from the law until all things have happened. Therefore, whoever rejects one of the least of these commandments, and teaches the same to other people, will be called least in the heavens’ kingdom. But whoever does and teaches them will be called great in the heavens’ kingdom.

In a second text, Jesus remarks on the faith of a Roman Centurion (Matt 8:10-12):

Truly I say to you, I haven’t found such faith from anyone in Israel. I tell you, many from the east and west will come and recline at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the heavens’ kingdom, but the sons of the kingdom will be cast into the darkness outside, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

In a third passage Jesus responds to Pharisees and scribes who ask why his disciples don’t follow the tradition of ritually washing their hands before eating. A key point of his response is Matt 15:11, 17-20:

What enters the mouth does not make a person unclean; but what comes out of the mouth, that is what makes a person unclean…Don’t you know that everything that enters the mouth moves to the stomach and then is expelled into the toilet? But the things that come out of the mouth come out of the heart, and these make someone unclean; for out of the heart come disagreements, wicked deeds, murders, adulteries, thefts, false testimonies, and blasphemy. These are the things that make a person unclean, but eating with unwashed hands doesn’t make a person unclean.

Finally, at the crucifixion of Jesus, there is an important exchange between Pilate and the people of Jerusalem (Matt 27:24-25):

Now when Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing, but that it was becoming a riot, he took water and washed off his hands in the presence of the crowd and said, “I am innocent of this man’s blood––see for yourself.”

And the whole people answered, “Let his blood be upon us and upon our children.”

TWO INTERPRETATIONS:

One traditional Christian understanding of Matthew runs something like this:

• Jesus “fulfills” the law by spiritualizing it, so that Christians simply love God and one another in place of the Jewish law. Jesus’ encounter with the Roman centurion provides the occasion for him to prophecy that the Jews, who lacked faith in Jesus, would be replaced by Gentile Christians as the people of God. Jesus’ teaching about what enters and exits the mouth is his proclamation that Jewish purity laws no longer pertain to Christians. And the crowd’s statement, “Let his blood be upon us and upon our children,” represents the Jews (as a whole) rejecting Jesus and accepting guilt for his death.

In contrast to this is an alternate reading, proposed in recent years by scholars who feel that Matthew’s gospel is too Jewish to intend such an anti-Jewish message. This interpretation runs as follows:

• Jesus “fulfills” the law by showing Jewish Christians how to observe Torah by intensifying it in a particular heart-felt way rather than with the (also heart-felt) Pharisaic practice using strict oral traditions to be sure of observing Torah. Jesus’ encounter with the Roman centurion leads him to issue a standard prophetic warning, much like those in the OT prophets, that God would punish Israel if they did not repent of their sins. Jesus’ teaching about what enters and exits the mouth only rejects the Pharisaic practice of hand-washing, not the entire system of Jewish purity laws. And the crowd at the crucifixion represents not the Jews as a race or religion, but the people of Jerusalem as a generation that rejected Jesus; Matthew sees the punishment for Jesus’ blood as coming back against the people of Jerusalem and their children (i.e., the next generation) when Jerusalem is destroyed by Rome 40 years later.

SOME OBSERVATIONS

I lean toward the latter reading. Here are a few points supporting it:

• In Matthew 5 Jesus never gets rid of any laws––whether for Jews or Gentiles––and indeed he explicitly criticizes those who would.
• Jesus never breaks the Jewish law in Matthew. When accused of breaking the Sabbath (Matt 12:2), he only claims that his work is a justified exception in the same way as an emergency rescue or priestly work in the Temple.
• In Mark’s story about hand-washing, Mark does claim that Jesus was declaring all food clean (Mk 7:19). However, Matthew eliminates that line from the story, and then he adds Jesus’ statement only against handwashing (a tradition of the Pharisees, not a biblical law). It seems here that Matthew disagrees with Mark about what Jesus means: he was only saying that handwashing was unnecessary for purity, not that all food were clean.
• The Hebrew prophets say many awful things about the Israelites/Jews, but the assumption is always that the Jews remain the people of God. To use Jesus’ harsh words against Jews as evidence that God was rejecting the Jews as God’s people is to misunderstand Jesus’ role as a prophet.

IMPLICATIONS

It is no surprise that Matthew is often read as supercessionistic by Christians: Matthew claimed that Jesus had the only true interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures, open also to Gentiles. As time passed, and more Gentiles than Jews became Christians, Matthew’s words seemed to have a different meaning. However, at the first, all of Jesus’ followers were Jews, and the earliest Palestinian churches were Jewish. If we hypothesize that Matthew wrote for one of these Jewish communities, the Gospel of Matthew would fit that context very well.

If there were NT Jewish Christians who could follow Jesus and still observe Torah, it should discourage us from too easily championing “Christian faith” against “Jewish legalism.” In Matthew’s opinion, Jesus did not reject Judaism, but rather called Jews (and ultimately Gentiles) to a particular form of Judaism.

Perhaps most important, the fault for Jesus’ crucifixion does not fall on “the Jews” in any broad sense. All of the heroes at the crucifixion were Jews, and the villains were a mixture of Jews and Gentiles. Matthew seems to think that one generation of Jerusalem residents, led by a wicked High Priest, rejected Jesus and were almost immediately punished for it. To suggest that blood remains on the heads of Jews today would not only be dangerous and possibly hateful, but it would miss the point made my Matthew.

My reading distinguishes between what we believe and the implications of what we believe. For Christians, it is still difficult to escape the conclusion (based on Matthew, at least) that non-Christian Jews are outside of the people of God. Though the idea is obviously offensive to Jews and many Christians as well, the Christian confession “Jesus is Lord” leaves little room for equivocation, at least on the question of where one’s loyalty must lie. But scholarly readings of Matthew that challenge us to shift our perspective can help us see that whatever our present faith, our Scriptures probably looked very different to those who wrote them.

Most of my ideas here are based on reading Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community, by Anthony J. Saldarini. For a shorter and less technical study of Matthew that somewhat disagrees but deals with similar issues, see the The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew (from Cambridge University Press’s New Testament Theology series), by Ulrich Luz.

After Rome destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70, the city lay in ruins. In the 130’s, the Roman emperor Hadrian decided to rebuild Jerusalem, complete with a Roman temple to Jupiter. The Jews revolted. Historical details are murky, but we know that a warrior-prince named Simon bar Kosiba (bar means son of) led a band of rebels who recaptured much of Judea from Rome for about three years. Coins minted by Simon during the revolt proclaim “The Redemption of Israel.”

Popularly, Simon was known as “Bar Kokhba” (“Son of the Star”), an allusion to a messianic prophecy in Num 24:17. Many Judeans seem to have thought he was the Messiah under whom Israel would rule the world in eternal peace. In the meantime, there was little peace to be had, and the historian Dio Cassius, writing in the third century, claimed that 580,000 Jews were killed during the war. In the end, Rome leveled the city and banished all Jews from the region.

In studying early Christianity, understanding the revolt helps to put Jesus’ messiahship into perspective. The term “Messiah” (anointed one) can refer to any king or priest who is chosen by God for a task (see, e.g., Isa 45:1). Many Jews in Jesus’ day expected God’s deliverance, but this expectation didn’t always include a Messiah — many Jews expected an army of angels or God himself to show up and vindicate the righteous. Among the various Jewish uprisings in the first century, none of the leaders seems to have thought of himself as a unique end-time Messiah, as the Christians believed Jesus was. But by the second century, the tradition had developed into the expectation of a unique Messiah who would deliver Israel permanently, and Bar Kokhba seemed to fill this role.

Since A.D. 134, Jews have viewed Bar Kokhba usually either as a tragic hero or as a reckless revolutionary who brought ruin upon Israel. Either way, he remains the only Jew to have ruled the state of Israel as a Messiah in this strong sense.

Reading suggestions: The best place to get a more detailed overview of the Bar Kokba revolt is either the Anchor Bible Dictionary’s article on it (vol. 1, pages 598-601) or Peter Schäfer’s book History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World, published in 2003. If you’re interested in Archaeology, Yigael Yadin published a book in 1971 called Bar Kokhba: The rediscovery of the legendary hero of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome; it’s written in engaging prose for a popular audience, and it has lots of great color photos.

NOTE: From time to time, I hope to do one-page introductions to topics related to the Bible and Christianity that people may not know about. (Since I’m long-winded, for each one I’m limiting myself to one double-spaced page in Word.) You can see my previous one-page take on biblical theology here.

Beginning in 1947, fragments of hundreds of scrolls were found in 11 caves near the Dead Sea in Israel, apparently hidden there by a group that lived nearby at Qumran. Some of the scrolls are Old Testament manuscripts, but others are sectarian texts revealing a group of “Covenanters,” a pre-Christian Jewish reform movement who obeyed Torah as interpreted by their “Teacher of Righteousness,” and who believed (much like early Christians) that their community fulfilled OT prophecy.

Above all, the Qumran Covenanters were Jews, and their concerns were those of second temple Judaism. The Temple was all-important, but God’s presence there (Deut 12:5-7) depended on the Temple’s holiness –– requiring ritual purity, a correct sacrificial calendar, and a proper priesthood. The Covenanters saw the Jerusalem priesthood as (ritually) corrupt, so they moved to the Dead Sea, where their Community functioned as if it were the Temple. Righteousness (i.e., strict obedience to Torah) replaced animal sacrifices to make atonement for the land. Much like Paul, the Covenanters believed that humans were incapable of righteousness on their own, but that God, in his righteousness, forgave them and led them to righteous conduct.

The covenanters were harshly apocalyptic. God had predestined humanity into two groups: Sons of Light (themselves) and Sons of Darkness (everyone else). At the end of days (which they expected imminently), the Sons of Light would march forth and conquer the world, destroying everyone from the “dominion of Belial.”

The scrolls have a twofold significance for Christians: (1) the OT manuscripts are a thousand years older than what we had before; and (2) many of the ideas are startlingly similar to later Christian teachings. Against the common tendency to contrast Christianity with Judaism, the scrolls show just how Jewish the New Testament really is.

Feel free to ask me any questions, factual or otherwise.