by iamwhoiam 52 Replies latest watchtower bible
Jesus is making it up, or to be generous someone put those words in the text.
Or possibly there was a stricter branch of the Pharisees (Bet Shammai) that did not survive the fall of Jerusalem. At any rate, the controversy accounts in the synoptics are quite puzzling from a Jewish perspective.
Thanks for the good wishes, PP. :) Now if only we can get Narkissos back it'd be the old gang here.
Okay, I looked up the parallels between Papias and Luke 1:1:
Luke 1:1: "Seeing that many have undertaken to set in order (anataxasthai) a narration of the matters that have been fully assured among us..."
Papias (HE 3.39): "I shall not hesitate to arrange alongside (sunkatataxei) my interpretations as many things as I ever learned well and remembered well from the elders....Mark, who had become the interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately, yet not in order (ou mentoi taxei), as many things as he remembered of the things either said or done by the Lord. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but later, as I said, Peter, who would make the teachings to the needs, but not making them as an ordering together (suntaxin) of the Lord's oracles".
Both are talking about the arrangement of gospel traditions in a narrative. It might be worth asking in what way Mark was preceived as deficient by the ancients (the lack of nativity and epiphany narratives may be one factor, at least concerning Mark in its present form).
Now which other gospels is the author of Luke talking about in Luke 1:1? I don't see that question often pondered. I think Mark and Matthew are prime contenders (I am not a firm believer in "Q" and consider Lukan dependency on Matthew a strong possibility), and it is interesting that no other canonical gospel mentions its posteriority to other gospels, which may be a sign of Luke's later date.
TD- yes the Shammai schools did 'hate' Roman occupation and no doubt Romans themselves. What is stricking by silence is the broad brush given to the schools of Hillel (the pacifists) and Shammai who at their core were very decicated to traditional Judaism and keeping strict Torah observances. 'Paul' makes this blunder of distortion and in cowardly fashion runs from serious debate with these learned teachers and preaches to Gentiles who would not know the intricacies of Judaism.
The Sage Yochanan ben Zakkai, from the Hillel school, proclaimed peace and nonviolence even as the war raged in 67CE citing Zech. 4:6, where is that in the NT. Kind of spoils the skewed propaganda of 'Paul' "Peter' and 'John'.
IN Matthew the whole verse goes, "you have heard it said" NOT it is written, so obviously Jesus was making a comment on soemthing that was being express in his time, not to soemthin written in the Bible.
That's exactly what I was thinking. People have sayings all the time in accordance to what is happening with them... but not necessarily even all of them, and then these sayings can be forgotten from one generation to the next.
I also understand the Luke passage now, and its importance. Understand as in 'know' or have experienced. I think the people here can grasp the truth of it.
Follow Christ before anyone, even your own family. This doesn't mean to deny or shun your family; it just means that when they act without love or mercy, you won't follow them in doing the same. You will follow Him... and by doing so, give witness to what love and mercy and following Christ is supposed to be.
Tammy
Tammy- you are a good progressive believer, these types of progressions are vital if Christianity is to have any significance as a social force for the good in this world.
What is required of the modern reader is to 'interpret' these old passages in new ways, taken by themselves they can be very destructive as is testified by how the Christians behaved throughout the past 2000 years. 'Cut off your hand, poke out your eye' were literally carried out by Christians and they carried out atrocities on others because of verses like these attributed to 'Jesus'.
As former Witnesses we saw this similar effect when we had our GB cause the physical and mental harm to thousands of us by telling us in essence to cut off our hands for them. Everyone one of us here stood up against that type of tyranny and said loudly No more. And that is what persons wanting to have some form of Christian belief need to do with these passages that are so manipulative and just plain wrong in light of what Judaism was really about.
But we never got Truth in the Kingdom Hall or the Churches.
PS- point being no one in the Jewish community was even saying those things, Jesus is making it up, or to be generous someone put those words in the text.
Are you suggesting that NO ONE in the Jewish communities that had been in slaved for centuries and from which the Zealots came forth ever said to "hate your enemies"?
Because I find that very hard to believe.
Let's not forget that the Gospels do record MANY objections that the Jews and the Jewish heirarchy had against Jesus and IF this was one of them, why not record it?
IN Matthew the whole verse goes, "you have heard it said" NOT it is written, so obviously Jesus was making a comment on soemthing that was being express in his time, not to soemthin written in the Bible.
This is standard rabbinical practice in debate over halakhic matters, "you have heard it said ... but I say ... etc." Critical commentaries of Matthew I think will give you references to this in rabbinical literature. The binding-loosing metaphor that Jesus uses twice in Matthew (and only in Matthew) is also found in rabbinical literature WRT to halakha; he also recognizes the permanence of the Torah and the interpretive authority of the Pharisees (it is hypocrisy in deeds not falsity of teaching that Jesus criticizes in the first gospel).
Leo,
Indeed:
Jesus Demands Love Even for Enemies (5:43-44)
When Jesus explains his final quotation from the Bible, Love your neighbor, he adds to the quote an implication some of his contemporaries found there: hate your enemy. He is probably speaking of all kinds of enemies. Personal enemies were common enough in the setting of Galilean villages (Horsley 1986; Freyne 1988:154), but Jesus' contemporaries may have also thought of corporate threats to Israel or the moral fabric of the community (see Borg 1987:139). Whereas the biblical command to love neighbors (Lev 19:18) extends to foreigners in the land (Lev 19:33-34; compare Lk 10:27-37), other texts hold up a passionate devotion to God's cause that bred hatred of those who opposed it (Ps 139:21-22; see also 137:7-9). Popular piety, exemplified in the Qumran community's oath to "hate the children of darkness," may have extended such biblical ideology in Jesus' day (see Sutcliffe 1960). Jesus may well mean both personal and corporate enemies (Moulder 1978).
It is also possible that Jesus was noting what was written ( love your neighbour) and what was being said at the time of the onging occupation ( hate your enemies).
I don't recall any passages in the Torah that advocates loving the enemy and praying for them that persecute you...
PS- there is just no record of it. We can surmise that Jews would have hated the Roman occupation and as mentioned the Shammai school was a militant wing whereas the Hillel school like the Essenes were pacifists, but none of that is given depth in the NT. 'Paul' is particularly guilty of this omission and he makes the major arguments that Judaism and the observance of the Torah must end. Even in the Gospels 'Jesus' begins to change from a Torah observant jew to promoting the idea that this Faith must end and his new religion take over, that probably didn't sit to well with a people in the midst of losing their culture and religion under the hand of Rome. Matthew 28:18-20 is a dozy of chutzpah.
Oh I don't know, the Zealots seem like likely candidates to hate:
The Zealots objected to Roman rule and violently sought to eradicate it by generally targeting Romans and Greeks. Zealots engaged in violence against other Jews were called the Sicarii [ 9 ] . They raided Jewish habitations and killed Jews they considered apostate and collaborators, while also urging Jews to fight Romans and other Jews for the cause. Josephus paints a very bleak picture of their activities as they instituted what he characterized as a murderous "reign of terror" prior to the Jewish Temple's destruction.
