It is true that we do not know exactly when the Eighteen Benedictions were formulated, but we have solid ground under our feet in the Psalms of Solomon, mentioned above. They were created in the first century BCE.13 The seventeenth psalm in the collection speaks of the coming Messiah, who will purify Jerusalem of Gentile peoples and destroy all the lawless nations. He will gather for God a holy people and will not permit Israel ever again to give a place to injustice. Foreigners and strangers will no longer be allowed to dwell in the Land. Then the Gentile nations will all be subjected to Israel and be required to serve the people of God under the yoke of the Messiah.
Here, clearly, the author is drawing a picture of an eschatological state belonging to God. It has a center in Jerusalem. It has an authority who acts in the name of God: the Messiah. It has fixed boundaries: those separating Israel from the Gentile nations. It is a “pure community” and in this sense a homogeneous and uniform society: there are no sinners in it, and it no longer contains anything unclean. All that can appeal to individual passages in the Old Testament, perhaps even whole strata of Old Testament texts: compare, for example, Psalm 2; Isaiah 52:1; Joel 4:9-17.
The Hasmoneans attempted to reestablish a Jewish state in the wake of the catastrophe of the royal period. John Hyrcanus I (reigned 134–104 BCE) reconquered parts of Samaria and the land east of the Jordan. He forced the Idumeans in the south to accept male circumcision and incorporated them into the worshiping community of Jerusalem. Aristobulus I (104–103 BCE) reconquered Galilee and joined it once again with Judea. He forced the Itureans in the north to accept male circumcision and assumed the title of king. Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 BCE) brought all of Palestine under his rule, as well as further parts of the land east of the Jordan and the coastal plain. But then came the Romans under Pompey (106–48 BCE) and destroyed all these efforts to recreate a Jewish territorial state. In 63 BCE Pompey entered Jerusalem, seized the temple precincts, and carried out a horrifying bloodbath there. From that time on, Israel was divided and lay under the rule of Rome.
Jesus himself was directly confronted with the attempt to construct a new Jewish state in the Zealots’ dreams of revolt. This time it was supposed to be a real state subject to God. The Zealots longed to revolt against Rome not only because of the profound misery in Jewish society but even more because they were convinced that if God alone were to be the Lord of Israel, then the Romans could not rule in the Land.
Jesus opposed this. He intended something fundamentally different by his gathering of Israel. His idea was the establishment not of a God-state but of a new society under the rule of God. Those are not the same thing. His new society began in his community of disciples, which rested on pure acceptance. Its center was the community of his disciples. So the people of God is not meant to have a state or pseudo-state structure.
Certainly Jesus did not reject the state as an institution, but he did not believe that one could serve the Gospel through the state and with the state’s aid, or by imitating political forms of rule. When he was asked the tricky and at the time highly dangerous question whether a Jew was permitted to pay taxes to the emperor, he answered, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17). The emperor’s right as a guarantor of order is acknowledged, but in this antithetical parallelism he by no means has rights equal to God’s. What most translations give as “and” is in Greek an adversative kai; the correct translation would be: “Give [indeed] to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, but give to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17).
Jesus knows that the state, with its own structures of rule, is necessary. But the people of God is not a state. Therefore Jesus had no regard for the Zealots, who counted on violence and terror to make of Israel a state in the sense of the Psalms of Solomon. Of course, he probably did not think much of the Roman emperor and his ilk either. He was rather skeptical in their regard. According to Mark 10:42-45, Jesus said:
You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.
These words show that Jesus regarded contemporary “world politics” realistically and soberly. He saw through the arrogance of the powerful and the manipulative mechanisms of their political propaganda (cf. Luke 22:25). They derived their self-satisfaction from the exploitation of those under them. “You know that this is so,” he says. But at the same time, Mark 10:42-45 shows how Jesus imagined the transformation: it has to come as a silent revolution from below, from a completely different perspective, from an attitude that does not seek its own benefit but that of others. This is the attitude Christian tradition calls “humility.”
What is unique in the small discourse composition in Mark 10:42-45 is that in it the disciples are set in direct contrast to the nations and their rulers. But let me say again that the purpose of this is not to condemn all human forms of government. Power is not denounced here as something evil in itself. Jesus by no means questions the necessity of the state, but his interest is not in improving confidence in the government. It is only in God’s new society, which is beginning something unheard of, something altogether new, in the midst of the old world.
This new thing extends to the utmost depths out of which society constantly recreates itself. Mark 10:42-45 summarizes it in the simple call no longer to seek to rule but instead to serve. “Serve” here should not be read in a bland and colorless sense. In its original meaning the word signified nothing other than waiting on tables. It was based on daily table service, which in the ancient world was the burden of slaves, servants, or free women. It was above all at table that the contrast between those more highly placed, who reclined comfortably, and the slaves or women who had to serve was most keenly felt. In Greek and Roman culture serving in the house was regarded as menial. It was by no means seldom at ancient banquets that the guests would wipe their greasy fingers on the hair of the slaves serving them.14 “How could a human being be happy while having to serve anyone at all?” asked the Sophist Callicles in the Platonic dialogue Gorgias (491c). So it is no accident that Jesus shapes the new society he is beginning with his disciples at table. This is the starting point for the true revolution; here begins the genuinely classless society.
So Jesus does not fight for the correct politics or the right form of the state but instead for fraternity and sorority in the people of God. He struggles not for power and for freedom from Rome but for the overturning and remaking of what power is. And that is certainly a political agenda. He knows that peace and justice, feeding on true fear of God, must grow from below.
Jesus certainly desires the revolution—he wants “new wine in new wineskins” (Mark 2:22)—but a completely different kind of revolution. The usual sort of revolution requires masses of people and must happen quickly. Jesus counts on the leaven that, almost unnoticeably, raises the whole mass of dough (Matt 13:33), and he compares the coming of the reign of God to a mustard seed, which is very tiny and yet grows into a great shrub (Mark 4:30-32), in the version in the Sayings Source even into a World Tree (Matt 13:31-32 // Luke 13:18-19).
And for this particular point of view, which no longer counts on the state or expects salvation from kings, Jesus had a monumental share of the Old Testament behind him: namely, the Torah, the first five books of Moses. The Torah had grown out of the history of the failure of the kingship in Israel and the experience of the catastrophe of exile. In order to give a true evaluation of the significance of the Torah in the context we are talking about here I must broaden the perspective somewhat.
To begin with, the structure of the Hebrew Bible does not follow the model of a continuing “biblical history.” Older readers, remembering the so-called Schoo
l Bibles or Bible History books of an earlier time, may still be familiar with the image of an ongoing biblical narrative. It began with the creation of the world, continued with Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and their children, through Abraham, Moses, the judges, David, Solomon, until finally it reached the Maccabees. This all took place in as homogeneous a narrative as possible incorporating everything to be found in the Old Testament. Prophets such as Amos, Isaiah, or Jeremiah were introduced at appropriate places. Where the Old Testament itself revealed some holes in the story they were filled in, at least as far as possible.
But that picture in no way does justice to the structure of the Hebrew Bible. The real Old Testament does not offer a continuous history of events. Taken as a whole, it is not history at all. Its first and most important part is the “Torah,” followed by the “Nebiim,” the prophets. The books of Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings were also counted among the prophets—because of the fact that the prophets Nathan, Ahijah, Micah ben Imlah, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, and Huldah play an important part in them.15 Finally, the third block is made up of the “Kethubim,” the “writings.” The reason for mentioning all this is that the Torah, in Jewish understanding—an understanding that was being shaped already in Old Testament times—is the foundation, the basis of all Sacred Scripture. The “prophets” and the “writings” are by no means sections with equal weight; they exist with reference to the Torah and are understood to be a kind of commentary on the Torah. The fact that this is really so is indicated by the synagogal liturgy, in which the Torah is always recited first and as the reading that determines all the rest.
The Torah in its present form originated, at the earliest, toward the end of the Babylonian exile, but more probably soon after the end of the exile. It was intended to secure Israel’s identity and rescue it from a total rupture of continuity. This is true, of course, only of the Torah “in its present form,” for many texts of the Torah are older than that. It contains songs, narratives, and collections of laws that belong to older strands of tradition. But in the context of our question we are not concerned about those ancient traditions that were worked into the Torah; we are considering the overall composition, that is, the final form we know today. The Sitz im Leben of the Torah as a whole composition is the crisis, indeed catastrophe, of the exile. And the Torah is not simply a collection of laws; rather, its law collections are framed by and interwoven with stories.
An important question for us is: when does the story end, the one that constitutes the frame for Israel’s history and repeatedly interrupts it? The answer is amazing.16 The frame of the story is not extended to the entry into the Promised Land under Joshua, much less to David’s kingship, and certainly not as far as the Maccabees. Rather, the Torah ends with the death of Moses (Deut 34). He sees the land of promise from a distance, but he is not allowed to enter it. And with him Israel also stands on the borders of the land, but it may not enter. When the annual recitation of the Torah reaches this point it stops and begins again from the beginning.
Christians for the most part do not perceive this break in the text because they have a wrong idea about the Hebrew Bible. They still have something like the “Bible history” of the old school Bibles in their heads, and those simply continued the story without interruption after the death of Moses.
Of course, we have to ask why the basic text for Israel’s identity ends with the death of Moses. Why doesn’t it end after the people have entered the Promised Land? Or with the building of Solomon’s temple? Or with the reforms under King Josiah? Why is Israel’s history interrupted? Why does Israel’s fundamental text accept an open ending? A border situation? An unfinished narrative?
The answer can only be: because the ongoing history of Israel, especially that of its period as a nation-state, was not regarded as a time that lent Israel its identity. The final redactors of the Torah were of the opinion that what Israel was in its innermost self, what constituted it, what it was for, was revealed not under David and Solomon but under Moses, and, more precisely, it revealed itself in Israel’s liberation from Egypt and the covenant with its God at Sinai.17
It only becomes clear what that ultimately means when we keep in mind that, at the time when the Torah was created as a unit, the royal period was already in the past. People could look back at that period in its entirety, and in the eyes of the final redactors of the Torah, who were seeking God’s true will in and for history, the royal period was not only an unlucky era but a theological catastrophe. That period could in no way be one that created identity. It could only be a time of warning against going that way again. Therefore it was not included in Israel’s basic text. Instead, the identity of the people of God was sought in Israel’s early period, in the time of the “patriarchs,” the time when a covenant was made with God, the time when Israel was still on its way, the time of its testing in the wilderness.
Consequently, the Torah shows little interest in an earthly king. The covenant God forges with Israel makes every worldly king a spectator, and so the legal materials in the Torah for the most part say nothing about a king or a state. If we sift through the concrete law in the Torah we see immediately that the king plays an insignificant role; in most of the law collections he does not appear at all. There are cultic laws, social laws, family law, but scarcely any law applying to political institutions. The only partial exception is Deuteronomy 17:14-20, a law concerning the king:18
When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” you may indeed set over you a king whom the LORD your God will choose. One of your own community you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who is not of your own community.
Even so, he must not acquire many horses for himself, or return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, since the LORD has said to you, “You must never return that way again.”
And he must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself. When he has taken the throne of his kingdom, he shall have a copy of this law written for him in the presence of the levitical priests. It shall remain with him and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes, neither exalting himself above other members of the community nor turning aside from the commandment, either to the right or to the left, so that he and his descendants may reign long over his kingdom in Israel.
This text shows that Israel need not have a king at all. That in itself is something revolutionary against the horizon of ancient Near Eastern societies. But if Israel really wants a king it should install him itself—and in terms of constitutional law that means there is to be no absolutism but only a constitutional monarchy. The constitutional nature of the idea is also apparent in the fact that the Torah is above the king. He is to read it daily and keep it with him at all times.
Besides, the king’s power is limited: he is not to lead the army in war (cf. Deut 20:9, where the king does not appear). He has nothing to do with the observance of the laws (cf. Deut 17:8-13, where the king is also absent). And he is not the final instance for appeal (Deut 19:17). If we look at the matter closely we find that there is to be a division of authority in Israel: independent judges, independent priests, a prophet from time to time, always one chosen by God (Deut 18:18). The king is also to be distinguished from the other Oriental potentates in that he keeps his chariots, his harem, and his treasury within limits. Thus in the projected constitution in Deuteronomy 17 he plays only a marginal role. He is not central. Compared with the usual custom in the ancient Near East, his status was entirely relative. To put it in a nutshell: his main task was to study the Torah every day.
But the most crucial statement is in Deuteronomy 17:20: the king is not
to “exalt himself above other members of the community [lit.: his brothers].” That is, the king is an Israelite like all the rest, a brother within a whole people of brothers and sisters. This is particularly emphasized in Deuteronomy, the last book of the Torah. At least during the festivals at the central sanctuary all class differences are eliminated. The ideals of the original people of the twelve tribes then reappear:
Rejoice before the LORD your God—you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, the Levites resident in your towns, as well as the strangers, the orphans, and the widows who are among you—at the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and diligently observe these statutes. (Deut 16:11-12)
However, the deuteronomic project corresponds to the Torah as a whole: the primary figure is not the king as such, nor is it David, who does not directly appear in the Torah. The major figure in the Torah is clearly Moses. But Moses is anything but a king. He is presented as Israel’s great prophet, and that in turn corresponds to the fact that the focus of the whole Torah is the rescue of the people from Egypt, that is, their rescue from a theocracy.
Jesus of Nazareth Page 24
