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CHAPTER ONE

Jesus the Jew

In Jesus’ time Galilee was a place in transition. Three languages – Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek – were used. Dualistic doctrines from the east on the devil, angels, and demons threatened belief in strict Jewish monotheism. Hellenistic civilization was invading the last strongholds of Judaism. Raised in this complex environment,¹ Jesus could have laid the foundations of his movement by simply borrowing from all the surrounding sources. But he didn’t.

We need merely to read the synoptic Gospels² to discover that Jesus was, at the very least, a Jewish prophet, the last in a line that had begun with Amos and ended with John the Baptist. Matthew in particular had one obvious intention: to demonstrate that Jesus was truly the Messiah whom the prophets had announced. Hence his generous use of Old Testament quotations.

The Gospels in general had no trouble showing the Jewish character of Jesus’ thought. And this is for good reason. Jesus, as a Jew, had only one library at his disposal, namely the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. These scriptures inspired his teachings and parables. Jesus’ contemporaries made no mistake on this score. Even the ones who refused to recognize him as the Messiah saw him as an authentic prophet.³ The theology and moral teaching of Jesus was nothing less than Jewish theology and Jewish moral teaching without the ritual elements. “You diligently study the Scriptures…These are the Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39). “I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them,” he affirmed. “What did Moses command you?” he asked his questioners. When he gave the Golden Rule, “Do to others what you would have them do to you,” still considered the supreme lay expression of morality, he justified it with a peculiarly Jewish expression, “for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 7:12).

The Law of Moses, enlarged and commented upon by the prophets, was the law of the Jewish people. It mixed together religious, moral, social, and political prescriptions. When the prophets sounded their calls they addressed themselves to Israel – the people of God. They thought of Judah and Jerusalem as corporate personalities. They thus called the entire people of God to repentance. Justice had to be restored, religion purified, customs transformed, and the Torah put into practice at all levels. Similarly, Jesus addressed his reproaches and his appeals to the entire Jewish people. When he proclaimed metanoia, that is, a radical change of heart and mind, he was not addressing himself to pagan “nations,” per se, but to the Israelite community. Jesus traveled up and down Galilee preaching the good news of the kingdom, the reign of God: “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15). When he commissioned the twelve apostles, he instructed them: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel” (Matt. 10:5–6).⁴

Keeping in mind that the Jewish faith was a national religion, it is worth noting that Jesus accepted and taught without hesitation several typically Jewish notions. For instance, Jesus’ universalism did not spring from Greek rationalism, or from Roman law, or from some Enlightenment conception of individual rights. It was also certainly not the offspring of a happy marriage between Judaism and Neoplatonism. It grew out of a Judaism that “exploded” under the pressure and dynamism of the messianism borne within it. Greek and Roman ideals were simply too well balanced, too symmetrical to inspire action. Jesus’ universalism, rooted as it was in Judaism’s understanding of redemptive history was, on the contrary, asymmetrical. It contained a creative impulse that continuously renewed itself. How so? Consider the following.

The Chosen People

The Old Testament recounts how God chose Abraham of Ur. “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you…I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen. 12:1–3). This sense of election, which pious Jews still believe in today, continues to cause suffering for the Jews and to be a scandal for non-Jews. Yet precisely because of its scandalous character and the disequilibrium it inspires, the notion of election generates movement and energy. This helps explain why the Jewish people has survived centuries of persecution intact, while other civilizations have come and gone.

Following in Israel’s footsteps, the church also understands itself as divinely chosen. It affirms that there is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ, and it undertakes in his name the conquest of the world through its reforming and charitable missions. This conviction of having been chosen by God has sadly and unnecessarily created tragic tensions between the Christian faith and other religions. Yet every time the church doubts its election, every time it plays down the “scandal of particularity,” its capacity to witness to the gospel also diminishes.

Whereas the Western church has lost much of its conquering dynamism, many in the proletariat, or working class, now consider themselves heirs of Christianity’s chosenness. Perhaps because they are “free from the sin of exploitation,” the poor have increasingly felt called to guide humanity in the “movement of history.” The oppressed thus compel the Christian West to arouse itself from the rationalistic torpor that it so much enjoys.⁵

But let us return to Israel’s election. It is the result of a divine choice as inexplicable as love, because Israel is “the least of the nations.” Strangely enough, even though God’s choice is arbitrary, it binds the responsibility of the elect. For if God makes a covenant with Israel to which he will be faithful, Israel is in return required to uphold its part of the agreement. Israel must be “holy,” or “set apart,” because it is to be a witness among the nations, with God as its light. As a result of this witness, all nations will eventually recognize that Israel’s God is the only one worthy of worship. But if Israel breaks the stipulations of the covenant and becomes unfaithful to Yahweh, terrible punishments will come. God’s people will be devastated, carried off in bondage, and destroyed. Only a small remnant will escape. And with this remnant God will again rebuild a faithful people.⁶

Jesus obviously shared this belief in Israel’s election. Precisely because of his Jewishness he addresses his prophetic call to the people of Israel. And having drawn the consequences of the Jews’ disobedience, he dared to announce the rejection of this stiff-necked people, while also envisioning the birth of a “remnant,” of a “small flock,” to which the Father would give the kingdom and to which the nations would be drawn.⁷

The Moral Bias

Perhaps even more important than the belief in election is Israel’s moral sense, or what we shall call the “moral bias of the Old Testament.” Like the Greek philosophies, Oriental cosmogonies try to explain the creation of the world and the origin of evil and death. Yet humanity always comes out as the victim of fate. Some refer to the Fall as a cosmic catastrophe; others explain evil as the necessary shadow cast by the good. For some, creation is subjected to the perpetual cycle of death and new beginnings. For others, the problem of evil is resolved by successive reincarnations of the human soul until its final absorption into God. The majority find consolation for the world’s injustices in the hope for a celestial paradise where sin and death will be abolished.⁸

The Old Testament, on the other hand, dares to attribute evil and death to a strictly moral cause. Death enters history because of humanity’s fault. And it is man who drags the other creatures with him into death.⁹ At first glance, such notions seem revolting. How can Genesis be reconciled with modern paleontology and evolutionary views that tell us that disease and death affected plants and animals long before man ever appeared on earth? Moreover, if the Old Testament is right, the righteous should be rewarded for their virtues. But how many depraved families enjoy impudent happiness, and how many virtuous ones are struck by inexplicable catastrophes! How many inoffensive nations are annihilated while the brute force of unscrupulous conquerors prevails! No. Humanity’s sin cannot be the only cause of suffering and death. Job and the Old Testament psalmists already protested against such an unjust doctrine.

However, there is another way, asymmetric to be sure, of looking at the biblical notion of the Fall and its consequences. It demands that we abandon the search for an explanation of evil and death. When we look deeper into the Bible we discover something very different, something that incites action. Here I am, thrown into the world, a person alone before the God of Israel. I cannot declare, “I was born by chance,” or “I am conditioned by my environment, the toy of heredity and of events that drag me along.” No, I must allow myself to be “offended.”¹⁰ What? God says I am the only one to blame for my sins? Yes. The only master of my temperament? Yes! Of my environment? Certainly. Of my nation and the way it behaves? Indeed. Of my death and the fall of a world headed straight for suicide? Exactly. The Bible describes how we are all responsible for our death and the death of those around us. And because the Bible is not a philosophical dissertation, it adds one paradox to another by stating that we are guilty because we reject forgiveness. We would not be guilty if our heredity had no cure, but we are guilty insofar as we neglect the cure that God freely gives us.

Jesus gave no other explanation to those who questioned him about the death of eighteen people crushed by a falling tower. “Do you think that they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:4). In other words, repentance comes first. Fall on your knees before God and confess your sin. Then get up and change the course of history!

In the Hebrew world, there is no explanation of evil. Redemptive history shows us a different way to get out of it: repentance and faith. By requiring us to repent, God acts in history not so much as Creator, but as Redeemer. Through the repentance of a few, God says to the whole of a sick history, “Rise and walk!” Such an injunction awakens in every person who hears it the response of faith. Such faith gives humanity its true measure and moves history forward. This is the gospel of the kingdom of God.

Inexorable Justice

The asymmetrical nature of Hebrew thought, and thus of Jesus’ approach, can also be found in its requirement of justice. Take, for example, the law of retaliation expressed for the first time in the Book of Genesis after Cain had killed his brother. Abel’s blood demanded revenge. Justice had to be established. Cain was to die because he had killed. But God decreed that whoever would kill Cain must also pay the price of blood: “If anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man” (Gen. 4:15; 9:6).

This principle of justice, known as the lex talionis, was codified by Moses in the following terms: “You are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise” (Exod. 21:24). From then on, strict accounting regulated human relationships and one’s relationship to God.

Today, our customs are less rigid. Of the law of retaliation, our legislators have retained only provisions concerning liability.¹¹ Israel, however, could not rid itself of its peculiar election. It existed for a moral purpose. God had said, “You shall be to me a holy nation.” Much more was required, therefore, of the Jews than of the other nations. They had to give an account for every sin before it could be erased.¹²

Israel was also marked by God’s law in its relations with other nations. No compromises were allowed. Yahweh ordered the destruction of non-Jews living in the land. “Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshipping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God” (Deut. 20:16–18). The Pharisees of Jesus’ time continued to observe this law to some extent when they ordered the Jews to avoid all contact with pagans or Samaritans (John 4:9). They acted this way to save their people from idolatrous contamination. Even in Jesus’ day the people of Israel were ready to use holy violence as soon as the purity of worship was desecrated. We even know of one inscription that threatened death for any pagan who dared venture into the court of the temple.

The Christian faith, rooted in the Jewish mindset, does not deny the necessity of sacred violence – far from it. But this violence has assumed a different form, thanks to the person of the goel.

Who is the goel? He is the “avenger of blood.” According to the Law of Moses, if someone had been murdered, the goel had the responsibility of carrying out the vendetta against the guilty person. “The avenger of blood shall put the murderer to death; when he meets him, he shall put him to death” (Num. 35:19). The goel was the victim’s next of kin. He was also the appointed protector of his relatives. If an indebted kinsman were forced to sell his land, the Book of Leviticus decreed, “his nearest relative (goel) is to come and redeem what his countryman has sold” (Lev. 25:25). The goel is thus closely intertwined with the ideas of vengeance and redemption.

The goel was also expected to marry the wife of his deceased kinsman as well as redeem a kinsman who had become enslaved. “If one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells himself…one of his relatives may redeem him, an uncle or a cousin or any blood relative” (Lev. 25:47ff.).

In Isaiah and the Psalms the goel often refers to God himself, with the double meaning of avenger and redeemer of the people of whom he is the kinsman. “Leave Babylon, flee from the Babylonians! Announce this with shouts of joy and proclaim it…The Lord has redeemed (ga’al) his servant Jacob” (Isa. 48:20). “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you… For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead. Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, and people in exchange for your life” (Isa. 43:1ff.). The payment of a ransom is never omitted from the duties of the goel.

In Isaiah, chapters 52 and 53, another idea of goel appears: he is the one who redeems Israel by taking upon himself the chastisement of God. For the Christian, the figure of the “Servant of Yahweh,” who gives his life in ransom for the guilty ones fallen into slavery, now thrusts itself upon Jesus (Mark 10:45). In this way the law of retaliation was transmuted. Its demand for justice, for holiness, could never be abolished. But God’s vengeance would now be borne by God himself, by the God who is the goel of his people in the person of his Son.

Jesus believed he was the goel, that is, the instrument chosen by God to carry out redemption. When Jesus healed a woman with a deformed back in the synagogue, the ruler of the synagogue became indignant because Jesus had healed someone on the Sabbath, and he told the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” But Jesus answered back, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (Luke 13:14–16).

In all these ways – Israel’s sense of election, humanity’s moral foundation, and the divine requirements of justice and redemption – it is clear that Jesus’ identity and mission were rooted in Hebrew thought. Jesus’ theology was Jewish and he expressed it in the fundamental paradox that generates action. If God is all-powerful, nothing that happens is outside his ultimate will. But if God is good, he cannot be the author of evil and death; on the contrary, he is fighting them until the final victory.

Jesus’ moral monotheism thus leads to a pragmatic dualism. We use the term “pragmatic” because Jesus, who struggled with evil, did not revere evil. However, the reality of evil, the frightening influence it has over the world, and the power it possesses over the children of God posed the problem of violence for Jesus. As he saw it, evil truly was an enemy of God, and a dangerous one, to be fought at any cost. As we shall see, only the bloody struggle of the cross and redemption was to overcome this enemy and submit it to God’s order.

The basis of Jesus’ behavior and thinking is quite different from ours, which is inspired mostly by scientific rationalism. And this should concern us all the more. Is modern Christianity still close enough to Judaism, still asymmetrical enough to get our rationalism-infested Western civilization out of trouble? Are we able to recognize the radical nature of Jesus’ prophetic call? That is the question.