47. From the Jerusalem Talmud, Ber. 9a. Also reported in the Babylonian Talmud, Ber. 33a, and the Tosefta, Ber. 2.20.
48. Acts 28:1-6.
49. For an excellent discussion of the relationship between faith and historical judgment, see Van Harvey, The Historian and the Believer (New York: Macmillan, 1966).
50. Fuller, Interpreting the Miracles, 38.
51. Mark 6:7-13, Matthew 10:5-8, Luke 10:8-9.
1. The sources for my understanding of culture and social world are numerous. Three, however, have been most important: Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1967); Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973); and Hans Mol, Identity and the Sacred (New York: Free Press, 1976). Within New Testament studies, see especially Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), who similarly speaks of “social world” as having a double meaning, referring both to the total social environment as well as “the world as they perceived it and to which they gave form and significance through their special language” (8, italics added). See also John Gager, Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1975), 9-11, who applies the notion to the construction of a new social world by the early Christians in the midst of an established social world.
2. For introductions to the Jewish social world at the time of Jesus, see especially Gerd Theissen, Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978; published in German in 1977); B. Reicke, The New Testament Era (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980); B. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981); and J. E. Stambaugh and D. L. Balch, The New Testament in Its Social Environment (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986). For more detailed treatments, see E. Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus, 2 volumes, rev. ed., G. Vermes and F. Millar (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1973-79); Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, sect. 1: The Jewish People in the First Century, 2 volumes, edited by S. Safrai and M. Stern (Philadelphia: Fortress Press; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974-76). For Roman rule in Palestine, see especially E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews Under Roman Rule from Pompey to Diocletian (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976). For the impact of Hellenism upon Judaism, see especially M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 2 volumes, translated by J. Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974).
3. See Geertz’s use of the terms “ethos” and “worldview” as the two central elements of culture. He defines the “ethos” of a people as “the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood”; and “worldview” as “the picture they have of the way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas of order” (Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 89 and 126-141).
4. To illustrate this with the contemporary culture of the United States: though our culture is pluralistic, some widely shared assumptions constitute our “conventional wisdom”—an essentially material understanding of reality, and an ethos that stresses achievement and satisfaction within this world. See, for example, Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), which describes the “conventional wisdom” of the American middle class.
5. The decisive role played by sages in traditional cultures is difficult to imagine in the modern world. In premodern cultures, written material was not generally accessible to ordinary people, so “independent study” of sacred tradition was simply impossible. Access was possible only through worship, folk wisdom, and the sages themselves.
6. Throughout much of her history, ancient Israel apparently did not affirm an afterlife, and thus the rewards and punishments in much of the Old Testament are understood in this-worldly terms. These traditions remained current in the time of Jesus. The belief in an afterlife emerged clearly only in the late postexilic period (ca. 200 B.C.), in part because of the suffering of the righteous in this life, sometimes precisely because they were faithful (the belief in an afterlife appears around the time when the righteous within Judaism were being persecuted and even martyred). By the first century, perhaps most of the Jewish people had embraced the notion of an afterlife, though the Sadducees (an aristocratic group which included the high-priestly circles) still did not (see Mark 12:18-27, Acts 23:6-8).
7. The notion of reward for following the “authorized path” and of punishment for deviating seems almost to be a “cultural universal.” It is found in Eastern notions of karma, in traditional Western notions of a last judgment, and in modern secular forms as well. Obviously, it is the basis of all systems of law. But it is also, for example, the basis of popular culture in the United States: if one follows the central values of the American way of life, one will reap the fruits of the American dream. To say that the notion of rewards and punishments is universal does not mean that every individual subscribes to it, but that it is part of virtually every established “social world.”
8. Some of these may seem to be biological “identities,” such as man, woman, oldest son. But the value and role ascribed to these biological facts is the product of conventional wisdom.
9. Such is also the case in secular cultures. In our culture our sense of identity (“self-esteem”) typically depends upon how well we measure up to our culture’s standards of achievement, affluence, appearance, and so on. See Robin Scroggs, Paul for a New Day (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), especially 5-14, who speaks of this way of being as living according to “the performance principle” and as what St. Paul meant by “life under the law.” Scroggs sees this way of being as cross-cultural and not peculiar to Judaism; indeed, it is found not only in contemporary American culture but also in much of “conventional” Christianity.
10. The tithes included the “wave” or “first fruits” offering, ranging from 1 to 3 percent of produce; the annual tithe of 10 percent for the support of the priests and Levites; and a second tithe of 10 percent each year which was used for different purposes in different years (every third year, for example, it was the “poor man’s tithe”). See F. C. Grant, The Economic Background of the Gospels (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), 92-106, and his list of twelve taxes on 94-96; Safrai and Stern, The Jewish People in the First Century, volume 2, 818-825; and the useful notes on the tractates Maaseroth and Maaser Sheni in Danby’s edition of The Mishnah (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 67, 73. For Roman taxes, see F. M. Heichelbaum in T. Frank, ed., An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome (Patterson: Pageant Books, 1938), 231-245; Schürer-Vermes, The History of the Jewish People, volume 1, 372-376, 401-407; M. Stern, The Jewish People in the First Century, volume 1, 330-333; Grant, The Economic Background of the Gospels, 88-91.
11. It is significantly higher than present income tax rates in the United States. Very few (if any) pay 35% of their total income, before exemptions and deductions.
12. It is therefore not surprising that “tax farmers” and their employees the “tax collectors” were the most despised of the “outcast” class. They were chronically suspected of gouging the people; and they were also “collaborationists,” working hand in glove with the occupying Gentile power. This was true even in Galilee, where the taxes went into the coffers of Herod Antipas, a client-king of Rome.
13. See Hans Mol’s comments about the role of commitment in sustaining a culture’s worldview, social order, and identity in Identity and the Sacred, 11-13, 216-232.
14. For this section, see Marcus Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teaching of Jesus (New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1984), 27-72.
15. Leviticus 19:2. The whole of the “holiness code” is found in Leviticus, 17-26, and as a collection is commonly viewed by scholars as an exilic or postexilic work.
16. The connection between holiness and separateness is made explicitly in the rabbinic tradition, where “separate” is actually substituted for “holy.” See Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Pol
itics, 52-53.
17. On the meaning of the term “renewal movement,” see chapter 7, p. 126.
18. For an introduction to the movements as a whole, see especially Theissen, Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity.
19. For an introduction, see G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (Cleveland: Collins World, 1977); for the scrolls themselves, see G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Baltimore: Penguin, 1968).
20. See W. D. Davies, Introduction to Pharisaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), and J. Neusner, From Politics to Piety (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), and Judaism in the Beginning of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984). On a more technical level, see J. Neusner, The Traditions about the Pharisees before 70, 3 volumes (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971); J. Bowker, Jesus and the Pharisees (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); and E. E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, 2 volume, translated by I. Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975). For a view of the Pharisees with a different emphasis, see Ellis Rivkin, The Hidden Revolution (Nashville: Abingdon, 1978).
21. To a large extent, the stereotype flows out of the portrait of the Pharisees found in Matthew’s gospel (see, for example, Matthew 23). Matthew was written sometime after A.D. 70, when there was considerable hostility between the early church in Palestine and the Pharisees; the conflict between the two groups is reflected in the gospel account.
22. L. Finkelstein, Akiba: Scholar, Saint and Martyr (New York: Atheneum, 1975; first published in 1936), 276-277.
23. See especially David Rhoads, Israel in Rebellion: 6-74 C.E. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976); W. R. Farmer, Maccabees, Zealots, and Josephus (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956); and Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Politics, 34-68. R. A. Horsley and J. S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs: Popular Movements at the Time of Jesus (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985), argue persuasively that there was not a unified resistance movement, but a variety of peasant movements ranging from prepolitical “social bandits” to prophetic movements to armed revolutionary movements.
24. See Theissen, who handles this point masterfully, in Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity, 84-85.
25. There were seven occupations included in the list of “most-despised”: gamblers with dice, usurers, organizers of games of chance, dealers in the produce of the sabbatical year, shepherds, tax collectors, and revenue farmers (that is, “supervisory” tax collectors who purchased the right to collect the taxes for a given area). Deprived de jure of all Jewish civil and religious rights, they were viewed as “Jews who had made themselves as Gentiles.” Especially noteworthy from the standpoint of the gospels is the inclusion of shepherds and tax collectors in this list. There is another list of occupations only slightly less despised: workers in the transport trades, herdsmen of all kinds, shopkeepers, physicians, butchers, goldsmiths, flaxcombers, handmill cleaners, pedlars, weavers, barbers, launderers, blood-letters, bath attendants, and tanners. These groups were deprived de facto of Jewish rights. For lists and commentary, see J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 303-312.
1. It is striking that the earliest name for his movement was “the Way.” See Acts 9:2.
2. There are over one hundred proverbs in the sayings of Jesus. See especially Leo Perdue, “The Wisdom Sayings of Jesus,” Foundation and Facets Forum 2.3 (1986): 3-35; Charles E. Carlston, “Proverbs, Maxims, and the Historical Jesus,” Journal of Biblical Literature 99 (1980): 87-105; and J. D. Crossan, In Fragments: The Aphorisms of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983).
3. Scholarly literature on the parables of Jesus is voluminous. The classic studies in twentieth century scholarship are by Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (New York: Scribner’s, 1972), C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (New York: Scribner’s, 1961); and John Dominic Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). For an excellent survey of Jesus’ parables, including bibliography, see Bernard Brandon Scott, “Essaying the Rock: The Authenticity of the Jesus Parable Tradition,” Foundation and Facets Forum 2.1 (1986): 3-53. For a survey of parable research up to 1979, see W. S. Kissinger, The Parables of Jesus: A History of Interpretation and Bibliography (Methuen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1979).
4. Classic Old Testament examples of the latter kind are found in the prophets Nathan and Isaiah. In Nathan’s story about the man who had only one ewe lamb (2 Samuel 12:1-6) and Isaiah’s story about the vineyard which yielded only wild grapes (Isaiah 5:1-7), both prophets elicited a verdict from their hearers about the story before the hearers perceived that the story applied to them.
5. Texts referred to are Matthew 6:28 = Luke 12:27; Matthew 7:16 = Luke 6:44; Luke 6:43 = Matthew 7:17 (compare Matthew 12:33).
6. For this exposition, see H. Richard Niebuhr’s insightful The Responsible Self (New York: Harper & Row, 1963). Niebuhr argues that our view of the “ultimate context” or “total environment” in which we live (that is, our view of “ultimate reality” or God) decisively affects our response to life. He explicitly lists and analyzes the four possibilities of seeing reality as indifferent, as hostile, as requiring appeasement, and as “friend.” For the notion of “imaging” reality, see also Alan Jones, Exploring Spiritual Direction (New York: Seabury, 1982), 83-98.
7. A phrase used by Carl Sagan in his television series and book Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980).
8. The yawning sense of meaninglessness and cosmic loneliness generated by the modern worldview has been one of the central themes of twentieth-century art and literature (fiction and poetry, as well as philosophical and theological writing). Perhaps it nowhere comes to expression more clearly or humorously than in a scene from Woody Allen’s movie Annie Hall. The main character (Allen himself) is trying to pick up a young woman who is looking at a modern painting in an art gallery. About the painting, she says: “It restates the negativeness of the universe; the hideous, lonely emptiness of existence, the nothingness; the predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation forming a useless bleak strait jacket in a black absurd cosmos.” Granted, this is a wonderfully exaggerated caricature, but it is not going too far to say that there is a measure of this in most of us.
9. The quoted words are from Matthew 6:26, 28-29. The whole passage is found in Matthew 6:25-33 = Luke 12:22-31.
10. Matthew 5:45; compare Luke 6:35. Other relevant texts include Matthew 10:29-31 = Luke 12:6-7.
11. The quoted phrase is from Isaiah 6:3; the word “glory” is closely associated with “presence” and “radiance.” Thus to say “the earth is full of the glory of God” is to say the earth is filled with the divine presence or radiance. See also many of the psalms and Job 38-41, where the magnificent display of the created world is seen as a beautiful and awesome disclosure of the divine mystery. Christians have sometimes been uneasy with the notion of God “permeating” creation, thinking it sounds like a more Eastern way of thinking. Yet it is intrinsic to the Jewish-Christian tradition to see God as both immanent (everywhere present) and transcendent (see chapter 2). The widespread notion of God as only transcendent seems to be associated with the popular image of God as a being “out there” or “beyond” the universe, and not “here.”
12. Luke 15:11-32. The depth of his desperation and degradation is indicated by a detail of the parable: he became a swineherd, lower than an outcast, if such be possible. Herders of sheep were in the lowest class (see chapter 5, pages 91-92, and note 25); a swineherd was even worse, in a sense unheard of, for pigs were unclean animals. Other details in the parable also make it clear that the son had become “worse” than an outcast.
13. Matthew 20:1-15.
14. See chapter 5, pages 91-92. Norman Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 107, refers to Jesus’ meals with outcasts as perhaps “the central feature” of Jesus’ ministry (italics adde
d).
15. See chapter 3, pages 46-47.
16. Both Perrin and Jeremias refer to it as a “parabolic action” which expressed forgiveness or the grace of God; Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 227, and Perrin, Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus, 107. For the social meaning of the action, see chapter 7.
17. For example, in the parable of the prodigal, the father’s response is summed up with the words, “He had compassion.” In an especially important passage which summarizes a block of Jesus’ teaching, Jesus is reported to have said, “Therefore be merciful [compassionate], even as your Father is merciful [compassionate]” (Luke 6:36; for further treatment of this passage, see chapter 7).
18. See Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 31-59, especially 33, 38-53.
19. For a striking account of the prophetic notion of the feelings or pathos of God, including compassion and tenderness, see Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, volume 1 (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).
20. The phrase comes from Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, 44, who uses it to sum up the central claim of the prophets of Israel.
21. See W. T. Stace, Religion and the Modern Mind (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1952), 252: according to the religious traditions, “there are two ways of life, that which most of us follow, and which consists in ‘making the best of a bad job,’ and the ‘way of the saints….’ ” The two ways correspond to the perception of human existence common to the religions of the world. There is the claim that there is something wrong with human life as it is most commonly lived, that it is filled with suffering, anxiety, grasping, and bondage, that it is “fallen” or “sinful,” not what it is meant to be. The sense of something being wrong may be felt internally or seen externally in injustice and wars and all the other suffering that we inflict upon each other. Yet the religions also teach that there is a way of overcoming the dis-ease and disorder that mark existence most of the time. The centrality of these two elements is nicely summarized by William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Macmillan, 1961), 393: the “common nucleus” to which the religions of the world “bear their testimony unanimously” consists of two elements: “An uneasiness” and “Its solution” (that is, the problem and its cure).
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