Читать книгу The Story of Jesus - Roy A. Harrisville - Страница 19

The Synoptists record Jesus’ stilling of the storm (Mark 4:35–41; Matt. 8:23–27, and Luke 8:22–25), and all four evangelists record the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:30–44; Matt. 14:13–21; Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–15). Mark, Matthew and John record the narrative of Jesus’ walking on the water (Mark 6:45–53; Matthew 11:22–34; John 6:15–21). Mark and Matthew record the feeding of the four thousand (Mark 8:1–10; Matt. 15:32–50, and Jesus’ cursing the fig tree (Mark 11:12–14; Matt. 21:18–22). Matthew alone records the miracle of the fish and the temple tax (Matt. 17:24–27), and John alone records the miracle at Cana (John 2:1–12). These seven nature miracles are outnumbered by the exorcisms and miracles of healing, to the effect that the Gospel writers appear hesitant to lard their records with reports of events contradicting the course of nature, Matthew and Luke having already done so to a maximum with their accounts of Jesus’ conception and birth. Hence the question as to whether these miracles can be legitimated as serving the same “paradigm” of the kingdom as do the exorcisms and healing narratives, or are to be jettisoned as reflecting the influence of pagan, Hellenistic legend on the Jesus-tradition and its transmission. Perhaps Jesus’ cursing the fig tree requires symbolic interpretation, urging the question whether the Messiah will find fruit among a people given a half millennium since the Exile to get ready for him, and perhaps his guiding a single fish out of multiple schools to Peter’s hook with the precise amount in its mouth of the tax from which he was exempt can be construed as metaphor.

The narrative of Jesus’ stilling the storm (Mark 4: 35–41; Matthew 8:24–27; Luke 8:22–25) may appear to some as absurd as a purple cow.42 Others may believe the story is true simply because it appears in the Bible. Still others may view it as needing demythologizing, rescue from the context of a three-storied-universe with heaven above, hell below, earth between, and humans the object of sorties from each, for the sake of an interpretation of existence:

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee. From your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. (Psalm 139:7–8)

There are Greco-Roman and Jewish parallels a-plenty. Here are four which have often been cited. Let Homer’s hymn to Castor and Pollux be first in line:

glorious children of neat-ankled Leda. . .deliverers of men on earth and of swift-going ships when stormy gales rage over the ruthless sea. Then the shipmen call upon the sons of great Zeus. . .until suddenly these two are seen darting through the air on tawny wings. Forthwith they allay the blasts of the cruel winds and still the waves upon the surface of the white sea.43

The legend is repeated in Thomas Babington Macaulay’s (1800–1859) ode to The Battle of Lake Regillus in his Lays of Ancient Rome:

Back comes the chief in triumph Who in the hour of Fight Hath seen the great Twin Brethren In harness On his right. Safe comes the ship to haven Through Billows and through gales, If once the great Twin Brethren Sit shining on the sails.44

Next, in his history of Rome, Dio Cassius (AD ca. 165–235) records an episode involving Julius Caesar during a storm at Lacus Curtius:

Wishing, therefore, to sail to Italy in person and unattended, he embarked on a small boat in disguise, saying that he had been sent by Caesar; and forced the captain to set sail, although there was a wind. When, however, they had got away from land, and the gale swept violently down upon them and the waves buffeted them terribly, so that the captain did not longer dare even under compulsion to sail farther, but undertook to return even without his passenger’s consent, then Caesar revealed himself, as if by this act he could stop the storm, and said, “Be of good cheer: you carry Caesar.”45

Third, the Babylonian Talmud contains a story of Rabban Gamaliel aboard ship during a storm that almost drowned him. The Rabban pleads with God that it was not for his honor he had exiled Eleazar ben Hyrcanus who brought ruin wherever he directed his eyes, but solely for the honor of God, “in order that disagreements do not multiply in Israel.” The plea was accepted, “the sea immediately rested from its anger.”46

Fourth and finally, the Jerusalem Talmud contains the story of a Jewish lad on a heathen ship during a great storm. After praying in vain to their gods, the heathen order the boy to pray to his, adding that Israel’s God hears his own and is mighty. The lad prays with all his might and the sea becomes silent. The story ends with quoting Deuteronomy 4:7: “For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?”47

The differences between at least these four parallels and the narrative in Mark, Matthew, and John need little space. Macaulay’s words, “The gods who live forever Have fought for Rome to-day! These be the Great Twin Brethren To whom the Dorians pray,” hardly apply to the One who abhorred violence. As for Dio Cassius’ story, despite Caesar’s bidding, the storm did not cease, and the ship had to ply toward land. Again, none of the exorcisms, miracles of healing, or nature miracles reflect the quid pro quo behind Rabban Gamaiel’s plea, and as for the Jewish lad, he had to pray to achieve his end, whereas the wind and sea are suddenly quiet at Jesus’ summons. In the New Testament, the raising of Lazarus is the only event at which the miracle follows a prayer, but the prayer is not for the miracle:

Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that You always hear me, but I have said this for the sake Of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe That you sent me (John 11:41b-42).

Here, at least, no continuum of cause and effect.

While all four evangelists record the feeding of the five thousand Mark and Matthew record a second feeding of four thousand, Mark setting the scene in a foreign country, “the region of the Decapolis” (7:31), and Matthew setting it in Galilee (Matthew 15:29), just as his co-authors the first feeding. The two feeding narratives are so strikingly similar that they appear to be two records of the same event. For example in Mark’s narratives the site is a desert place (cf. Mark 6:31 and 8:4); in both there is reference to the crowd’s confusion and hunger (cf. Mark 6:34 and 8:2–3); in both the disciples are in a quandry (cf. Mark 6:35 and 8:4), and in both Jesus asks the disciples what is at hand to feed the crowd (Mark 6:38 and 8:5). In John, the question is addressed to Philip (John 6:5), but then, as if to forestall any suggestion of limited knowledge on the part of Jesus, John immediately adds: “He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do” (John 6:6), a reprise of the refrain in chapter two (“he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone, John 2:25), and echoed by Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb (“I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here,” John 11:42).

In the accounts of the feedings, each segment appears to reflect earliest Christianity’s celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In Mark 6:39 and 8:6 Jesus functions as presiding officer. The disciples’ distribution of the loaves and fish in Mark 6:41 and 8:6 as well as their gathering up of the frarments (Mark 6:43 and 8:8) corresponds to the duties assigned the “deacons” in primitive celebration. The blessing or thanksgiving (Mark 6:41; 8:6) and the breaking of the bread (Mark 6:41 and 8:6), in which verbs are used from which the ancient church derived its technical terms for the thanksgiving and breaking of bread (eulogeo and klao), reflect practices that have continued till the present. Even the references to the hour of the day and the arrangement of the crowds into companies of fifty and one hundred (Mark 6:35, 39–40) reflect ancient Christian practice. Mark’s reference to the “green grass” on which Jesus commands the crowds to sit (Mark 6:39) could allude to Western, Roman practice of celebrating the Supper at Passover, a springtime, April festival. Could the ancient church’s celebration have fathered the feeding narrative? Or, is the assumption of a community creation trajected back into the life and career of Jesus too heavy a burden for that community to bear? There is more: Mark 8:17–21 and Matthew 16:7–10 record the disciples’ neglecting bread for their trip to the other side of Gailee, and Jesus’ remonstrance at their having tripped over a dietary minim when infinitely more was at stake. Jesus says, “when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect. . .and the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” (Mark 8:19–20), and to their answers replies, “do you not yet understand?” (Mark 8:21). Is this scene intended to furnish an allegorical interpretation of the feedings? To these questions John would respond with a robust denial. For this evangelist the feeding is a “sign,” the third after Cana (John 2:1–11), and the healing of the official’s son (John 4:46–54). That is, it is a tangible, palpable event calculated to point beyond itself to Jesus’ significance and power. Without that tangibility, there would be no sign, and nothing beyond it to which to point. Of course, whatever it was to which that tangible event was intended to point could be skewed, misinterpreted. And the crowd missed the point. It hailed Jesus as “the prophet who is to come into the world” and rushed to make him king (John 6:14–15). But the sign, the tangible event needed to be there for the point to be missed.

The narrative of Jesus’ walking on the water (Mark 6:45–52; Matt. 14:22–33; John 6:16–21) has led to innumerable contortions on the part of interpreters. One reckons on a wooden plank on which Jesus was balancing; another on an optical illusion of the disciples who imagined Jesus walking on the water when he was actually walking along the shore; still another opines that in ancient times Palestine experienced periods of cold which would have frozen the water close to the shore of Gennesaret, so that Jesus was walking on ice floes. Or again, another attempts to explain the event against the background of altered states of consciousness on the part of the eyewitnesses. For those who spurn such notions as hostile to the intention of the texts, there is always the expedient of appealing to Graeco-Roman parallels, according to which divine men walk by foot on the sea, a scene allegedly replicated by the evangelists intent on accenting the epiphany.48 The scene is especially vulnerable with those who oppose the transcendent or the religious, among whom naturalists and biologists may be the most ardent. Since the Enlightenment scientists have been wary of assigning to the divine what cannot be grasped by reason, since the reasonable or rational as essence of the human is taken to be the essence of the divine as well. Whether or not in appeal to Augustine’s insistence on curbing biblical answers to cosmological questions, or to Galileo’s notion of God’s “two books,” one of faith, and the other of nature, a host of interpreters, many with scientific backgrounds, have opted for a separation of the structures of the observable world and the interpretation of those structures from the perspective of faith. In other words, while the meteorologist could assign Jesus’ quieting of the storm to the prevailing winds round and about Galilee, the believer could acknowledge the event as a divine interference, with neither invading the other’s territory. The truce achieved by this separation is uneasy. “Enthralled” by the “luminous figure of the Nazarene,” a figure “too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers,”49 Albert Einstein stated that conflict between science and religion occurred when religion insisted on the absolute truthfulness of everything recorded in the Bible, or when science attempted to arrive at fundamental judgments with respect to values and ends. And since he believed the principal source of the conflict lay in the concept of a personal God, obviously that concept had to be abandoned for the conflict to be resolved. And there’s the rub. For, this person, this Nazarene is confessed as God, the one by whom the worlds all came to be, with power to turn the structures of the observable world on their head, to perform what to reason is a violation of the natural and rational, to do the impossible, the unbelievable. And as for reason, hailed as essence of the divine as well as of the human, as for that insistence on the superiority of scientific rationality with its claim to objective reality, it is as pious and “religious” a view as insistence on the existence of a personal God. All of which means that there is as much warrant for faith as for that of scientific rationality. William Blake’s argument respecting art may be stretched to apply also to science or faith:

If perceptive Organs vary; Objects of Perception seem to vary; If the Perceptive Organs close: their Objects seem to close also.50

In the face of inevitable resistance, the expectations and preconceptions on which all seeing depends and which I bring to this narrative have to do with Christ’s lordship over creation, readily admitting the story’s judgment on that much vaunted “objectivity,” its challenge to any current or prevailing world-view, and its announcement of the new over against what has given thousands comfort and ease: the impenetrable and unassailable continuum of cause and effect.

In Matthew 17:24–27, after the disciples have reached Capernaum, Peter is met by temple tax collectors who ask whether or not his teacher pays the tax (Greek: didrachma). Peter acknowledges that he does. At home, Jesus asks him from whom the kings of the earth receive tribute, from their children or from others. Peter answers, “from others.” “Then,” Jesus responds, “the children are free,” but adds that to avoid offence Peter should go to the sea, and in the mouth of the first fish he catches find a stater, enough to satisfy the payment for the two of them. The text raises questions. First, the English versions wrongly translate Peter’s interrogators as “collectors of the temple tax.” The original simply refers to tax collectors, either to those who collect the poll tax required of everyone, Jew or Gentile, or to collectors of the temple tax. But if the latter, the analogy to the “others” from whom the “kings of the earth take toll or tribute” breaks down, since the temple tax was required only of Jews. Second, the didrachma was a foreign, Greek silver coin. The stater, equal to two didrachmas, and which Peter was to retrieve from the fish’s mouth, had to be exchanged for the equivalent silver half shekel since foreign coin was tabu in the temple. Taken alone, the narrative seems haphazard, that is, until linked to the passion prediction which immediately precedes. There, Jesus predicts that the Son of Man will be betrayed, killed, and rise again on the third day. Thus, interpreted in the light of what precedes, our narrative reads that Jesus, Son of Man (the self-reference is obvious), is free of legal obligation but nevertheless takes it on to prevent giving offense.51

Initiators and followers of the School of the History of Religions have rushed to accent the similarity between pagan myuthology and the Cana miracle in John 2:1–11; seen it as a “parade example of the penetration of hellenistic miracle tradition into the Jesus tradition.”52 One recalls the temple of Dionysus the wine-god, located not too far distant from Cana, at which the priests on the eve of the god’s yearly festival, roughly corresponding to Christian celebration of Epiphany, locked three empty crocks in a sealed building and presented them on the next day full of wine. Another comments that in Judaism wine serves as metaphor for the joys of the time of salvation. Still another suggests that Jesus’ participation in a wedding at Cana developed into the narrative of a miracle, in this case, outdoing the feat of Dionysus, or Bacchus, his Roman counterpart, with twice as many crocks, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. But all this may be missing the subtelties for tripping on the obvious. Why, for example, does the evangelist first note Jesus’ mother’s invitation to the wedding, and that of Jesus and the disciples as if an afterthought: “Jesus and his disciples had also been invited” (John 2:2)? What to make of Jesus’ seemingly coarse rebuff to his mother’s announcement that the supply of wine is exhausted: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” (John 2:4) , together with the remark that his “hour” has not yet come? Incidentally or no, this is the first of seven instances in which I reference is made to Jesus’ “hour.” In 7:30 the Evangelist writes of Jesus’ enemies inability to lay hands on him because “his hour had not yet come.” In 8:20, following Jesus’ teaching in the temple, the Evangelist writes again that no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.” In 12:23, Greeks who have come to Jerusalem for the festival, approach Philip and ask to see Jesus, who after being informed of it, says “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” In 12:27 Jesus is recorded as saving, “Now is my soul troubled. And what should I say—Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” In 13:1 the evangelist records that at the festival of Passover Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Finally, in 17:1, following his high priestly prayer, Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that yo ur Son may glorify you.” This “hour,” described as an hour of glorification, and identified with an event Jesus might pray to avoid (“What should I say—Father, save me from this hour?”) , or, as per the evangelist, with “going to the Father,” can only mean his death. It is an “hour,” the coming of which Jesus is aware, as for example at the arrival of the Greeks, and for which he prays (“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son”) but which he does not own or bring about. Reference to it as “his” simply describes him as its subject. More, since this “hour,” this “glorification” will be the glorification of the Father, the death of Jesus is an event initiated by the Father. It will be”an”hour,” a death he takes on himself.

To return to the Cana miracle, what to make of his mother’s reposte that the servants do whatever he commands? Doesen’t she hear, or understand what he said, or does she pay no mind to it? And what of Jesus’ reversal of his earlier demurrer in favor of his mother’s plea with the order to fill with water six stone jars designated for purification, jars, as it turned out, about to be defiled? Had his “hour” come in that moment, and if so, why is that term later reserved for his crucifixion? (cf. John 8:20; 12:23, 27; 13:1; 17:1). And, prior to the servants’ drawing it out and bringing it to the steward, why not a simple statement to the effect that the water had been changed to wine, the servants cognizant of the entire affair but the steward totally unaware? Finally, what to make of the evangelist’s conclusion that at Cana Jesus “revealed his glory” (shades of the Prologue, 1:17), ”and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11)? If we agree that the evangelist is pursuing a specific goal with his work, what provokes our questions may not be due to lapses, or a haphazard “go” at the event. Then, beneath the servant’s knowledge of the source of the miracle, or the disciples’ belief in the revelation of his “glory,” and beneath the order of Jesus’ mother in face of her son’s rebuff, or the steward’s surprise at the water’s being changed to wine, may lie the intent to distinguish a faith dependent on the “sign” as sheer fact, and a faith that grasps what it is to which that “sign” is meant to point. In either case what is “signed” is the same: Jesus’ power over nature, a power to leave an Olympian god leagues behind, though the one faith is given superiority over the other, as at the end of the Gospel in Jesus’ word to Thomas: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:28). Then, by way of parallel, there may be two “hours,” and two revelations of his “glory,” one at Cana matched by a seeing, and the other, an “hour” of glorification-crucifixion matched by a believing absent the seeing, the latter the greater of the two, and at Cana, at the least signaled in Mary’s antecedent appearance at the event, and her summons, if not in the steward’s surprise.