Things Jesus may have said

Or perhaps he didn’t say it after all. In Luke 14:1–6 there is a certain disagreement in the manuscript tradition between manuscripts. The question is what is the earliest recoverable reading for Luke 14:5?

And he said to them, “Which of you shall have…or an ox fall into a well, will not immediately draw him/it out on the Sabbath Day?”

Here is the problem: The oldest reading for the missing word in the passage above is uios (son). It pairs up with ox (bous) to make a rather incongruous pair: if your son or your ox falls into a well will you not immediately draw him out? Of course, you would; you would break sabbath laws and rescue your son! Children are a heritage from God, the psalmist believed (Ps 127:3). You have absolutely no choice assuming you are humane, religiously inclined, and concerned about pleasing God. And the saying seems to assume that to be the case on the part of those hearing the saying.

            Later copyists, however, in some manuscripts changed son (uios) to ass (onos) as making a better pairing (compare Luke 13:15) with ox (bous), or changed the word son to sheep (probaton). A few manuscripts even use all three words: son, donkey, sheep.* Since one of the canons of textual criticism is “the more difficult reading is to be preferred,” the preferred reading, text critics aver, appears to be son.**

The similar saying in Luke 13:15 reads:

You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manager, and lead it away to water it?

There is a third saying appearing in Matt 12:11, which reads:

What man of you, if he has one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it out?

None of these three sayings, as related as they are in concept and style, have parallels in the other two synoptics.

The Jesus Seminar in its deliberations did not regard Luke 13:15 as originating with Jesus. On the other hand, Luke 14:5 and Matthew 12:11 were given gray ratings.***

The rationale of the Fellows of the Seminar with regard to Luke 14:5 was that the historical Jesus did not debate the finer point of Torah nor did he debate about sabbath observance (like the rabbis). “The Fellows of the Seminar strongly agreed that Jesus did engage in activities that suggested that he had little concern for sabbath observance.”**** His actions, however, could have provoked those who did care about sabbath observance, which could have led to arguments about proper sabbath observance.

            The two earliest texts (P⁴⁵ P⁷⁵) that read “son” are from the third century. This time frame allows for over 100 years from original composition of Luke to the copyists in the third century, during which time texts were copied and altered. In other words, earliest recoverable forms are not the original and are still suspect.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

*Metzger, Textual Commentary, 138–39.

**The King James Version, however, reads ass/donkey, as does the New King James Version.

***See Funk, et al., The Five Gospels, 36. A gray rating indicates: “Jesus did not say this, but the ideas contained in it are close to his own.”

****Funk, et al., Five Gospels, 350.

Aphorisms of Jesus

Here are three examples of an aphorism:

But many that are first will be last and the last first (Mark 10:31).

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Mark 10:25).

Let the dead bury their own dead (Matt 8:22).¹

An aphorism is spoken by Jesus before a group in the Roman Province of Judea and later is recalled (or not) by unnumbered minds. The saying is repeated (or not) by still fewer mouths and pens with both performance and interpretive variations. In an oral world generally “one speaks or writes an aphoristic saying, but one remembers an aphoristic core”² on the basis of its sense and structure. One does not necessarily remember exact words. The core of the saying is subject to compression or expansion and changes when repeated. For example, compare the aphorism on First and Last: Mark 10:31, Matt 20:16, Luke 13:30, Gos. Thom. 4b.

            Aphorisms in the Jesus tradition at their literary stage appear in writing alone, as single sayings, and are gathered in pairs that lead to interpretative interaction and verbal and thematic seepage between them. They are also gathered into clusters (more than two) with similar results. They can also be appended as conclusions to other linguistic forms, such as miracles, prayers, parables, dialogues, and stories. The individual aphoristic saying is later gathered into aphoristic dialogues (for example, Matt 16:1-3; Luke 12:54-56; Gos. Thom. Saying 91) and aphoristic stories (for example, Mark 6:1-6a; Luke 4:16-30).

            There is a curious exclusion from the list of numbered aphorisms that Crossan finds in Q and Mark, and their parallels in Matthew and Luke. The aphoristic saying, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60/Matt 8:22) is lacking an aphorism number, like other aphorisms discussed in the book. Its absence jumps-out at readers between numbered aphorisms 53 and 54 on pages 343 and 370 (In Fragments), and in his discussion of the aphoristic dialogues in Matt 8:19-22 and Luke 57-62.³ In these dialogues Matthew has two aphorisms (Foxes Have Holes and Let the Dead) and Luke has three (Foxes Have Holes, Let the Dead, and Looking Back). Crossan never notes why the saying Let the Dead (Luke 9:60/Matt 8:22) does not receive a number as an aphorism in the book. He regards Luke 9:59-60 as dialectical dialogue rather than aphoristic dialogue, and agrees with Rudolf Bultmann, whom it struck as “improbable” (nicht wahrscheinlich) that the saying ever circulated as a solitary saying.⁴ Nevertheless, both in form and content the individual saying in Luke 9:60/Matt 8:22 clearly fits the aphoristic criteria Crossan himself developed (see note 1). Granted, it is a Q tradition and only singularly attested, but that does not affect the aphoristic character of the saying Let the Dead, even if it is integrated into a dialectical dialogue.⁵

Crossan’s book, In Fragments. The Aphorisms of Jesus, is a landmark study of the transmission of the aphorisms of Jesus that establishes the aphorism, alongside the parable, as a classic oral form used by Jesus and later preserved at the earliest literary stage of the tradition.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Aphorisms are “concise, pointed, pithy sayings of never more than a few sentences.” “Thus, the aphoristic form conveys universal truths in a distinctive compressed format.” Both quotations are from the front cover. They are generally unclear on their surface, prompting an auditor to ponder because aphorisms frequently trade in overstatement and exaggeration, hyperbole, and paradox, and even understatement. J. D. Crossan, In Fragments. The Aphorisms of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983), 27.

²Crossan, In Fragments, 67.

³Crossan, In Fragments, 237-244.

⁴Crossan, In Fragments, 243; Rudolf Bultmann, Die Geschichte der Synoptischen Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1957), 29. Nevertheless, Crossan includes Matt 8:21-22/Luke 9:59-60 with the dialogues (#330) in his Sayings Parallels. A Workbook for the Jesus Tradition (Foundations and Facets; Philadelphia: Fortress, Press, 1986).

⁵The Jesus Seminar voted the aphorism in Matt 8:22 pink (a saying to be included in the data base for Jesus’ sayings) at Toronto in 1989, but voted Luke 9:60 gray (I would not include the saying in the database but might make some use of its contents) at Sonoma in 1988. Nevertheless, both sayings were printed pink in Robert W. Funk and Roy W. Hoover, The Five Gospels. The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 160, 316. Foundation and Facets Forum 6.3/4 (September/December 1990), 260, 276.

Jesus Remembered: A Gadfly on Israelite Religion

There is a rhetorical question, often asked: Why would anyone want to kill someone who wandered around the community telling charming stories, reminding neighbors to love one another, healing the sick, exorcizing evil spirits, and even supporting the Roman tax paid to Caesar (Mark 12:17)? The answer may lie simply in the fact that Jesus was remembered by the tradition, in part, as a critic of the religion in which he was reared, before he became, in the faith of the later Jesus gatherings, the savior of the world and much later, the second person in a divine trinity.

In the pronouncement stories Jesus is often quoted being critical of aspects of his own religious tradition.¹ A pronouncement story in the gospels is a brief narrative told for the purpose of housing a saying attributed to Jesus. For example, in Mark 2:23-27, Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees because his disciples “harvested” grain and ate it on the sabbath day, violating sabbath restrictions (Exod 20:8-11). Jesus replies that even David broke a taboo by eating consecrated bread (1 Sam 21:1-6), lawful only for priests to eat. The Sabbath was meant to serve humankind rather than being an ornery chore.

In another pronouncement story (Mark 3:1-6) Jesus attends a synagogue and met there a man with a withered hand. People watched him to see what he would do. He asked them, is one allowed to do good on the Sabbath? And he healed the man. His critics then conspired to destroy him. Both of these stories put Jesus in the position of challenging a basic aspect of the institutional religious tradition of his day, sabbath observance.

            Mark 11:15-19² is a story of Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple creating a disturbance by chasing-out the vendors and shoppers and saying that the religious philosophy allowing such practices has turned God’s house from a house of prayer into a hangout for crooks (Isa 56:6-8). It resulted in the chief priests and scribes planning on getting rid of him for challenging the institutional religion.

            I am inclined to call the settings of such narratives about institutional religion housing an antithetical saying attributed to Jesus, stories about the criticism of institutional religion that portray Jesus attacking, gadfly-like, Israelite religion.³ Such stories are traditional. That designation means they were products of oral recall, at some point between the public career of Jesus (around 30 C.E.) and the composition of the Gospel of Mark (around 70 C.E.). Mark found the stories in the stream of oral tradition, having been remembered, and passed around orally for about 40-50 years, and eventually repeated to him. Mark edited them to his tastes, and perhaps invented others. The historical character of the settings of the three stories discussed above is mixed. The Jesus Seminar/Westar book on the Acts of Jesus judges the setting of Mark 2:23-28 as likely to be historical (printed in the book in pink); Mark 3:1-6 was printed gray (likely not historical). The incident in the Temple (Mark 11:15-19) is multi-colored, although all seem to agree that an incident in the Temple took place at which time when Jesus rousted vendors and shoppers from the temple; the incident is likely historical (pink) other aspects of the story are gray and black, historically questionable.⁴

I am arguing that the settings of these traditional stories about institutional religion have historical value in themselves for informing the reader about how the life situation of Jesus was remembered. The memory that produced the setting is historical whether or not the settings reproduce a particular occasion in the life of Jesus or the sayings they house are considered to have originated with Jesus. The settings are not husks to be discarded; they describe social contexts in which Jesus was remembered. Bultmann describes the value of the traditional settings for the stories in this way:

The individual controversy dialogues may not be historical reports of particular incidents in the life of Jesus, but the general character of his life is rightly portrayed in them, on the basis of historical recollection.⁵

In other words, in such stories Jesus harped about the religion of the Israelites.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Vincent Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition (London: Macmillan, 1960), 63-87.

²Taylor refers to this narrative as a “story about Jesus,” 151, 179.

³R. Bultmann described the three stories I discussed above as controversy/scholastic dialogues. The History of the Synoptic Tradition (trans. John Marsh; Oxford, Blackwell, 1963), 11-69.

⁴The Jesus Seminar of the Westar Institute made a study of the stories about Jesus, evaluating whether the settings might be claimed to contain authentic memory of the time of Jesus: R. Funk, The Acts of Jesus. The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1998).

⁵Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, 50.

Are the Parables of Jesus deliberate Enigmas?

I ask the question because they have been exhaustively studied by parable ponderers since the first century and explanations even today are still getting more diverse and contradictory. Scholars today cannot even agree on what a parable is, and how it is supposed to function, much less what a given parable means. Historical Jesus Scholar, John Dominic Crossan, in a dictionary article suggests that this is the very result intended by the historical Jesus himself. He says that parables in the Jesus tradition are problematic.

This is probably because the parables were often told concerning the Kingdom of God and that explained a symbol by a metaphor…The presumption is that Jesus intended this effect, namely, that the parables would be both provocative and unforgettable so that the recipient would be forced inevitably to interpret.¹

He concludes the essay this way:

All these differing interpretations…should not be considered the interpreter’s failure but rather the parable’s success. It is a parable’s destiny to be interpreted and those interpretations will necessarily be diverse. When the diversity ceases, the parable is dead, and the parabler is silent.²

An enigma is defined in Webster’s New World College Dictionary as “a perplexing, usually ambiguous statement, a riddle.”³ So far as I am aware no one has argued that parables are deliberate enigmas, but Crossan’s statement seems to lead us in that direction.

In the marketplace of the critical study of religion today there are at least six contemporary strategies for reading New Testament “parables.”⁴ One of these strategies treats parables as allegories. An allegory is a coded story that describes something totally different from what it says on its surface. On its surface the story of the Sower (Mark 4:3-8) describes the successes and failures of farming in first-century Palestine (Mark 4:13-20), but as its Markan interpretation (Mark 4:13-20) shows, it is really about success and failure of early Christian preaching. Most ecclesiastical interpretation of parables today are still treating them as allegories, particularly in church circles.

In the late 19^th century against the excesses of allegory, Adolf Jϋlicher, a German scholar, argued that parables were comparisons comprised of two parts, a picture part (the parabolic story) and a “matter” or substance part. The “matter” part was the unspoken “issue” of the comparison; the “matter” was the real subject of the picture part. Something learned in the picture part evoked the substance part in terms of a single point expressed in a universal moral of the widest and broadest generality. For example, Jϋlicher’s moral for the parable of the Two Farmer’s and a Fig Tree (Luke 13:6-9) was “all who do not repent will perish.”

In 1935 C. H. Dodd, a British scholar, argued that parables are metaphors. A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes one known thing in language appropriate to another known thing. Dodd argued that parables, introduced by the frame “the Kingdom of God is like…” were intended to cast light on God’s reign. In other words, God’s reign is described in language appropriate to Palestinian village life. As things go in the story, so go things under the reign of God. The specifics of the comparison, however, are never quantified, but left for auditors/readers to fill in. For Dodd, the Parable of the Sower illustrates the arrival of God’s reign in Jesus’ ministry by means of a harvest image.

In 1967, Dan Via, an American scholar, argued that narrative parables are neither allegory nor metaphor (a strategy that treats them as figures). Parables are narrative, freely invented fictions that work like any narrative does. They are a form of literary art that can be appreciated for themselves. They are literary objects that do not reference but instead call attention to themselves. What Jesus intended with the parables is lost to us in the twentieth century. All we have are the parables and they should be studied for what they are. These brief stories dramatize how Jesus understood human existence. In the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matt 20:1-15). The complaining workers understood life in terms of merit and were unwilling to accept the risk of relying on God’s grace.

In 1994, W. R. Herzog, Jr., an American scholar, argued that the parables were stories typifying the oppressed situation of Palestinian peasants at the hands of a wealthy elite. In his stories Jesus mirrored the oppressed conditions under which the peasants lived; they were intended to teach the peasants about their oppressed situation. This explains why Jesus was crucified. He was a threat to the state precisely because he sought to inform the peasants about their oppression. The Laborers in the Vineyard (Matt 20:1-15) reflects Herzog’s understanding of the clash between wealthy elite and disfranchised peasants. The amount paid the workers was not a living wage because day laborers do not work every day. The banishment of the worker who confronts the owner is intended to intimidate the other workers.

In 1994, C. W. Hedrick, an American scholar, argued that the parables are open-ended narrative fictions that Jesus invented by observing the world around him. They realistically portray aspects of Palestinian village life and aspects of the world around him. Complications raised in the narratives are left unresolved leaving resolutions for auditors/readers to solve. Because their polysemy (meaning they are capable of multiple meanings) and what different readers bring to them, they are capable of a wide range of plausible readings, as the history of parables interpretation demonstrates. Narrative fictions work by pulling the auditor/reader into their fictional worlds where discoveries about self and one’s own world may be made. Discoveries are evoked for auditors/readers in the nexus between the narrative and what they bring to it. In the story a Pharisee and Toll Collector (Luke18:10-13) the auditor/reader is presented with two flawed characters praying in the temple. The complication facing the auditor/reader is this: which flawed character will be acceptable to God?

Jesus did not explain his stories to his auditors. Hence, no one has access to that information. We do, however, know how some were explained (or not) in manuscripts through the third/fourth century: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Gospel of Thomas, the Apocryphon of James, Pistis Sophia, and The Apocalypse of Peter. Interpretations in the modern period add more diverse explanations. Explanations do not generally agree, but each interpreter claims to know how Jesus understood them. My own theory is that we do not interpret parables, but they interpret us (their readers), by evoking from us personal responses. How do you see it?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹“Parable,” vol. 5.146-52 in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Doubleday, 1992), 150.

²Ibid., 5.152.

³4^th edition, 2002.

⁴For the description of these six strategies, I have abbreviated and edited my dictionary entry on “Parable” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Abingdon, 2000), 374-76.

Jesus on the Management of Slaves

Traditionally, scholars of the parabolic language attributed to Jesus will distinguish between types of parabolic sayings: simile (a saying that uses “like” or “as” for a comparison, Matt 13:33), similitude (an analogy, similar to a simile, but elaborated with more detail, Matt 13:31). A parable, on the other hand, is a fully formed narrative, a story with beginning, middle, and end (Matt 13:3b-8). There are relatively few similes in the gospels, and many think of similitudes as narrative parables with less detail.¹ A case on point is Luke 17:7-9, a story with less detail.

Who among you having a slave ploughing or tending sheep, when he comes in from the field will say to him: “Come here at once and take your place at the table?” On the contrary, will he not rather say to him: “Prepare my meal, and after girding yourself, serve me while I eat and drink, and after these things, you can eat and drink?” He would not thank the slave because he did what was ordered, would he?²

The saying reflects the schema of a story: the beginning of the story: a man’s slave was working in the field. The middle of the story: the slave comes in from the field. The end of the story: his work day is not yet done. It is as much a story as is the “parable of the leaven,” Matt 13:33b.

Luke 17:7-9 is cast in the form of a conundrum, a series of three questions about how to treat slaves, and appeals to common social practice for the definitive answer: “Who among you having a slave…will say…?/On the contrary, will he not say…?/Does he thank the slave…?” (Luke 17:7, 8, 9). The conundrum provides one example of the treatment of slaves and allows it to stand for the customary practice as a whole: slaves do not eat before their owners; slaves exist only to make the owner’s life more comfortable.

The evangelist strains to find an appropriate religious moral for the story (Luke 17:10). Comparing disciples to the slave in the story (“So also you...”), the evangelist tells the disciples to admit that they are worthless slaves because they only did what was commanded (by God)—that is, they should have done more. Luke 17:10 is not part of the story; it is the evangelist’s interpretation of the story.³

The complication, which is left unresolved in the story, is: how should owners treat their slaves? The story leaves that question unresolved. It only describes what people usually do. Hence some readers are left pondering if there might be a better way of treating slaves, and that eventually raises the issue of the institution of human slavery itself for a thoughtful reader.

Slavery was ubiquitous in both ancient Greece and the Roman Republic and Empire. The general view of slaves is that they were chattel (a self-moving item of personal property). Aristotle argued that slaves should be thought of as a “live tool”; that is, as a living item of property (Pol. 1.2.3-6). Slaves had no legal rights and the slave owner had the power of life or death over them. The institution of slavery was based on violence, and the slave’s life was harsh. Hence, the best admonition for slaves was “Slaves obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling with single-hearted devotion” (Eph 6:5; Did. 4:11). The slave in the story of Jesus was a farm slave, where life was even more difficult than the lives of town slaves.⁴

We may be surprised that Jesus does not outright condemn such an inhumane social institution, but his stories are not frontal assaults on human degeneracy. His stories realistically mirror situations designed to provoke auditors into pondering their own situations in life through the story. Here is Adolf Jϋlicher’s description of the situation in Luke 17:7-9:

The Jesus who speaks in 17:7-9 is not the ethicist but the knower of men, who describes things, as they were at the time, without sentimentality also without exaggeration of the wretched conditions of slaves.⁵

His invention of a heartless slave owner and his treatment of a (single?) slave as characters for this story may be taken as a subtle criticism because it raises the question: might there be a better way of treating this particular slave? Paul, likewise, offered a subtle criticism of slavery, when he violates his own directive of “remain as you are” in view of the imminent end of the world (1 Cor 7:17-20). As I read the text, Paul allows an exception for slaves. If they can gain their freedom, they should do so (1 Cor 7:21).⁶ The short letter to Philemon (particularly verses 10-17) also support the idea that freedom is better than servitude, even though Paul does not specifically ask Philemon to free Onesimus.

The story in Luke 17:7-9 constitutes a subtle criticism of slavery. A better example, however, is the behavior of the appreciative slave owner in Luke 12:35-39. The slave owner dons an apron and serves his slaves a meal (Luke 12:37). There are other sayings attributed to Jesus that also suggest better ways in human relationships in general (for example, Matt 5:6; Luke 6:29a; Luke 6:32), and, hence, they obliquely apply to the treatment of slaves. A similar subtle criticism of slavery is reflected by Paul in his suggestion of a “better way” for the Jesus gathering at Corinth (1 Cor 12:31b-14:1a). The later writings of the New Testament, however, seem oblivious to the evils of slavery. Their authors advise slaves to obey their masters (even the hard or merciless ones) so as to reflect well on their religious faith (Eph 6:3; Col 3:22-23; 1 Tim 6:1; Tit 2:9-10; 1 Pet 2:18). On the whole, the Bible’s record on the institution of slavery is rather poor.

The Jesus Seminar voted that Luke 17:7-9 was not a genuine saying of Jesus.⁷ As I look today at the rationale for that decision, the reasons do not seem cogent. Our rationale at that time was that Luke invented the saying out of Israelite wisdom and Greco-Roman symposium traditions, but the meal in the story is not a symposium and no parallels are offered from Israelite wisdom traditions in support of the Seminar’s rationale. On the positive side, Luke 17:7-9 has the same oblique quality as Mark 12:17b (“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”), which was voted Red (assuredly genuine)⁸ at the University of Redlands in 1986. Luke 17:7-9 is, therefore, also likely a genuine saying of Jesus, the historical man.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Charles W. Hedrick, Many Things in Parables. Jesus and his Modern Critics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 6-7.

²My translation.

³Hedrick, Many Things in Parables, xvi, 12-14.

⁴On slavery, see K. R. Bradley, “Slavery,” 1415-17 in The Oxford Classical Dictionary (eds. S. Hornblower and Antony Spawforth; 3^rd ed.; Oxford, 1999); H. W. Johnston, The Private Life of the Romans (New York: Scott, Foresman,1903), 87-111.

⁵Die Gleichnisreden Jesu (2^nd ed.; 2 vols.; Freiburg: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1899), 1.16. My translation.

⁶How the translation of 1 Cor 7:21 (μαλλον χρησαι) should be rendered in translation is disputed. For example, E. J. Goodspeed: “If you were a slave when you were called, never mind. Even if you can gain your freedom, make the most of your present condition instead.” RSV: “Were you a slave when called? Never mind. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.” Goodspeed’s translation slights the adversative (αλλα) that suggests a strong contrast between the two states of servitude and the slave’s opportunity to gain freedom.

⁷R. W. Funk and R. W. Hoover, The Five Gospels and the Jesus Seminar (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 363. The Jesus Seminar, “Voting Records,” Forum 6.3-4, 265. At Cincinnati in 1990, the vote on Luke 17:7-10 was Red=0, Pink=13, Grey=30, Black=57. Hence, the saying was considered nongenuine.

⁸Jesus Seminar, “Voting Records,” Forum, 6.3-4, 302.

Is "Love Your Neighbor as Yourself" Something Jesus taught?

It seems likely to me that Jesus knew the Scripture “love your neighbor as yourself.” It was part of the legal code of ancient Israelite religion (Lev 19:18), and other Judeans familiar with the Scriptures surely would have known it. In ancient Israel, however, the neighbor was a fellow-Israelite (Deut 15:1-3; Lev 19:17-18). This definition of neighbor was expanded in Leviticus to include foreigners who came to dwell with the Israelites (Lev 19:33-34). It seems likely that Jesus was aware that the obligation of “loving the neighbor” also included foreigners in their midst. The issue, however, should not be decided on whether he knew the Scripture, but on how well it fitted his ideas and attitudes. Is it something he might have taught?

The Jesus Seminar voted several times on the saying and gave it a weighted average of gray,¹ which meant “Jesus did not say this, but the ideas contained in it are close to his own.”² Unfortunately the Seminar did not vote on the saying Lev 19:18 by itself, but rather they considered it as a package with Deut 6:4-5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut 6:5) as one of the two chief commandments of the law. There was a mail-in vote in 1989 on two of the three occurrences of the “chief commandments” appearing in the gospels: for Matt 22:37-40 and Luke 10:27 (Red, 0; Pink, 33; Gray, 60; Black, 7). At the University of Redlands in 1986 there was a vote on Mark 12:28-34 (Red, 11; Pink, 28; Gray, 22; Black, 39). At the University of Notre Dame also in 1986 there was again a vote on Mark 12:28-34 (Red, 4; Pink, 32; Gray, 28; Black, 36).

Paul (Gal 5:14; Rom 13:9, 10) and James (2:8) knew the saying, “love your neighbor as yourself,” but they do not cite Jesus as their source. It seems more likely that they were familiar with the saying through the Israelite Scriptures. Luke, however, seems to think that the saying fitted the attitudes of Jesus by associating it (Luke 10:25-29, 36-37) with the story Jesus told about a robbery and assault on the Jericho road (Luke 10:30-35). From my perspective Luke’s reading of the story is simply misguided. The story is an exaggeration of what it meant to be a righteous man in late Judaism: “a righteous man risks his life and living for the nobodies of the world.”³ The story has little to do with loving neighbors. But from Luke’s perspective the story reflected an attitude toward others similar with that found in the saying about loving the neighbor.

Surely it is not a wrong thing to love one’s neighbor, even defined as one’s “own people.” Paul even thought that loving the neighbor fulfilled the whole law (Rom 13:8-10)! But loving the neighbor, however defined, does not go far enough. Thus Paul (Rom 13:8a: “owe no one anything except to love one another”) and James (Jas 2:1-9: “show no partiality”) expanded the horizon of the saying “love one’s neighbor” to include one’s fellow human being (an attitude also shared by Jesus in Luke 6:32, which implies that love must be extended beyond one’s own kind); and Jesus expanded the horizon of the saying even further to include love for enemies (Luke 6:27b and Matt 5:43-44).⁴ Thus, these three ideas, loving one’s neighbor (narrowly defined), loving one’s fellow human being (broadly defined), and loving one’s enemy come together under the obligation to love others. It seems inevitable that Jesus would have taught all three concepts.

While the saying “love your neighbor as yourself” fails to meet the criteria of dissimilarity and multiple attestation, it may be considered a saying of Jesus under the criterion of coherence.⁵ “Love your neighbor as yourself” is an idea that is consistent with Jesus’ attitudes on love of others, and as such deserves a pink rating; that is to say: “Jesus probably taught something like this.”

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹The weighted averages ranged from a high of 0.42 to a low of 0.35: The Jesus Seminar, “Voting Records. Sorted by Group Parallels by Weighted Averages,” Forum 6.3-4 (September/December,1990), 299-352 (319).

²Robert Funk, Roy Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 36; Jesus Seminar, “Voting Records. Sorted by Gospels, by Weighted Averages,” Forum 6.3-4, 319.

³Hedrick, Parables as Poetic Fictions. The Creative Voice of Jesus (Peabody. MA: Hendrickson, 1994; reprint, Wipf and Stock, 2005), 116 (93-116).

⁴Hedrick, The Wisdom of Jesus. Between the Sages of Israel and the Apostles of the Church (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), 87-88.

⁵The Criterion of Coherence states: “material from the earliest stratum of the Jesus tradition may be original, provided it coheres with material established as original by means of the criterion of dissimilarity.” For a short discussion of the criteria for determining authenticity see Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide. Studying Jesus (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999; reprint, Wipf and Stock, 2013), 135-52 (143-44).

Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31)

There is only one version of this parable: it comes from Luke's special parables tradition. Joachim Jeremias, the distinguished German New Testament scholar, pointed out that of the ninety examples of the Greek historic present¹ appearing in Mark's gospel, Luke has only used one from their shared material (Luke 8:49).² In Luke's special parables tradition, however, he has used the historic present five times in narrating parables (13:8; 16:7; 19:22), two of which appear in Rich Man and Lazarus (16:23, 29). Jeremias argued from these observations that the contrast in the use of the historic present between Luke's broader gospel narrative and his parables constitutes "clear evidence of an underlying pre-Lucan tradition."

 

            He further pointed out that the first part of this parable (Luke 16:19-26) reflects well-known folk material deriving from Egyptian traditions (The Journey of Si-Osiris to the Underworld), which was transported to Palestine as the story of the poor scholar and rich Publican, Bar Ma'jan.³ His view is that Jesus made use of the underlying folk narratives to compose his own story. The second part of the parable (Luke 16:27-31) is a new epilogue that Jesus added to the traditional folk material in the first part; hence the emphasis of Jesus' parable lies in the second part. Further, the parable's title should be the "Parable of the Six Brothers."

 

            The result of the discussions of this parable by members of the Jesus Seminar concluded that this parable did not originate with Jesus for several reasons: because folk tales about a rich man and a poor man whose fates were reversed in the next world were well known in the ancient Near East; in no other genuine parable of Jesus were characters given names; and that an interest in the plight of the poor is a special interest of the author Luke. The result of the combined vote of the Fellows was that the first part of the parable is questionable as a parable originating with Jesus. The second part, which described the six brothers, concerns the characteristic early Christian theme of the Judean lack of belief in the resurrection. For these reasons ninety percent of the fellows voted against the parable as originating with Jesus.⁴

 

            Hence, on balance, there are enough questions about the pedigree of this parable to seriously question it as a parable composed by Jesus of Nazareth. Not all agree, however. For example, one critically trained scholar is aware of most of these challenges to the parable as a composition by Jesus, but nevertheless argues the following: "Although the parable in its present wording has clearly been transformed by Christian allegorization, it would seem that a nucleus of the parable can be attributed to Jesus."⁵ And he even uses a 12th century painting of Lazarus at the rich man's gate on the dust jacket of his hard-back book, in a sense symbolizing all the parables.

 

            Perhaps it is time that critical scholars formulated a history of religions rule for evaluating parables that states: "The more certain it is that a parable reflects themes, plots, values, and traditional religious views of antiquity, the less certain it is that the parable originated with Jesus of Nazareth." The rationale for the rule is the following: because the parable makes extensive use of well-known traditional material it is far less certain that it might have originated with Jesus. The problem is not that one has thereby disproven its origin in the mind of Jesus, but that one cannot disprove that it originated with the gospel writer or elsewhere in antiquity. In attributing the parable to Jesus one runs the risk of attributing ideas to Jesus that were not his own. And for those reasons it should not be included in a database for determining the characteristic ideas of Jesus.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

¹ The Greek "historic present" is the use of a present tense where one would have expected a past tense. For example, in telling a story a narrator says: "and he says…" instead of the expected "and he said…" The historic present is a characteristic literary feature of Mark's gospel, but not of the other two.

² Jeremias, Parables of Jesus (6th edition), 182-86. See Hawkins, Horae Synopticae,149.

³ Jeremias, Parables, 183, 178-189.

⁴ Funk and Hoover, Five Gospels, 360-62.

⁵ Hultgren, Parables of Jesus (Eerdmans, 2000), 115.

Jesus, a Galilean Story-Teller

Whatever else he may have been Jesus was clearly a teller of tales.  His stories remind me of the world's first photographic process, the daguerreotype.  His tales, like those old photos, were black and white, grainy, and often blurry, but nevertheless provided realistic images of life in first-century rural Galilee.  For the most part the stories replicated common life in small peasant villages.  Chances are that all his characters in peasant village life were accurate to type, but those few modeled on characters from the upper classes are, likely, lacking in verisimilitude because of the inaccessibility of the oral "folk poet" to their exclusive social circles.  Few of the stories reflect religious motifs, however general, and none of the stories are theological or eschatological in character.  Theology and eschatology are brought to them by pious believers, and early "Christians," who preserved them purely for theological and religious reasons.

               The stories treat human beings in Palestine momentarily caught in the act of being human—except two.  One of these (Luke 16:19-31) contrasts the states of the rich and the poor after death.  The other, a Q story (Matt 12:43-45a = Luke 11:24-26a), describes "unclean" Spirits who possess an individual.  This last narrative provides the only confirmation among the stories that their artistic creator shared in the mythology of evil spirits, and demons endemic to the ancient world.  According to the Jesus Seminar this story did not originate with Jesus, and it seems to be little discussed in academic literature.  Brandon Scott, Craig Blomberg, and Arland Hultgren do not include the story in their parables surveys; Graham Twelftree does not include it in his book on spirit possession and exorcism in Palestine.

               The story of the twice–possessed person, however, is narrative, as is the classic form of "parable." In form the story is not unlike other better known stories Jesus told.  The story of the twice-possessed person narrates a case of possession by an "unclean" Spirit, later described as "evil."  Contrary to the highly respected German scholar, Joachim Jeremias, the Spirit is not "cast out," but merely goes out of the person of its own volition.  It passes through the desert (i.e., "waterless places") seeking rest, but finding none (why the Spirit needed rest is not stated), the Spirit returns to its "house," in the person in whom it formerly resided.  It found the "house" cleaned up and put in order (Matthew adds that it was "empty"). Speaking in images like the story, apparently during its residency this possessing Spirit had only disarranged and cluttered the house, leaving a dirty floor. The Spirit went out again, and found seven other Spirits "more evil" than itself.  And all eight entered and dwelled there.  Q added an interpretive conclusion (Matt 12:45a = Luke 11:26a), "and the last state of that person becomes worse than the first."  Matthew adds a second interpretation (12:26c): "So shall it also be with this generation."

               The story describes the helpless and the hopeless condition of a person possessed by a Spirit: if for some reason the possessing Spirit decides to vacate its "house," nothing prevents it from returning and causing even more serious harm to its host, who had in the interim regained an ordered life.  Jeremias argued that the relapse is not "predetermined and inevitable," but merely possible, and makes the individual responsible for keeping free of future possession by not letting the "house" become empty, and hence subject to repossession.

               In short the story describes the absolute control that evil spirits exert in the ancient world.  Apparently anyone could be possessed or repossessed at the whim of any Spirit.  Matthew regards the story as a curse upon "this evil generation" (Matt 12:45c; 12:38-39).  In Luke it becomes a warning about the dangers of demon possession (Luke 11:14-26).  Jeremias turned it into Christian theology.  He thinks the life of the healed individual must be filled with a spiritual element—"the word of Jesus."

               The canonical gospels, with the exception of John, relate several stories about the exorcism of demons.  Oddly there is only one story about Spirit possession in the Old Testament (1 Sam 16:14-16; 18:10; 19:9), but the amelioration of Saul's depression by David's harp playing is scarcely an exorcism in the later Hellenistic style (cf. Tobit 3:7-8; 6:7-8, 16-17).  None of the other seven exorcism stories in the gospels concern repeat possessions by evil Spirits.

               Does this story of Spirit possession have any relevance in the 21st century, other than as an astute observation on life in the 1st century?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

The Basic Problem of Historical Jesus Studies: “Criticism—to make judgments in the light of evidence”

This essay appeared in a revised form in The Fourth R 28.1 (January-February): 21

Everyone interested in Jesus of Nazareth should be interested in this short essay.  I am not certain who first stated the basic problem of historical Jesus studies in so many words, but any historian who works comparatively and critically with the gospels today immediately becomes aware of the problem.  Here is how the German scholar, Wilhelm Wrede, formulated the problem in 1901: "How do we separate what belongs properly to Jesus from what is the material of the primitive community" (Messianic Secret, 4).  Wrede may even have been the first to state the problem in this way.  Albert Schweitzer, who critiqued all the scholarly lives of Jesus in German and French written from 1778 through 1901, was in the best position to have recognized the problem, but in fact did not.  Schweitzer rejected Wrede's literary-critical analysis of Mark in 1906, and assumed that the earliest two gospels were historically reliable in what they reported.  He also was less than critical in what he generally regarded as authentic Jesus traditions (J. M. Robinson, "Introduction," to Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, xix).  After Schweitzer's book, no critical studies of Jesus were written until 1956, in part because of the difficulty of separating Jesus from the church's beliefs about him.  An axiom of critical Jesus studies is this: the gospels contain some reliable historical information about Jesus, but it must be separated from the basically faith descriptions of Jesus where they are concealed.

 

               Recently it appears the situation has changed to judge from the spate of critical Jesus books published at the end of the twentieth century.  In spite of scholarship's failure to solve the basic problem, scholars have again begun writing "biographies" of Jesus.  Some confidently combine an extensive "course of life" with psychological analyses of Jesus.  Nevertheless, these studies do not first lay out for readers exactly where they draw the line between the good-intentioned machinations of the early community and Jesus himself.

 

               Actually in the two-hundred and fifty year history of history-of-Jesus research only once has it happened that a large group of scholars (The Jesus Seminar) has convened to address formally the basic problem of Jesus research.  The Seminar did its study in the public eye (not behind the ivy-covered walls of academia), reached a consensus (that did not please everyone), and published a report to the public (The Five Gospels, 1993), which included their findings and the reasons for their findings.  One would have supposed that this report would have become the basic point of reference for all future Jesus studies.  Scholars could cite the report by adding or subtracting sayings and giving the reasons for their judgments.  But the report was generally treated at best with benign neglect by the guild of scholars, and Jesus studies continued apace without first carefully sorting out "what properly belongs to Jesus" from the "material of the early community."  In other words the basic problem of Jesus studies is routinely ignored.

 

               How should we regard books on Jesus of Nazareth that: (1) do not recognize this axiom of critical Jesus studies: that not everything attributed to Jesus in the gospels originated with Jesus; (2) do not include a specific list of the historical raw data on which the author bases his/her description of Jesus; (3) do not include a justification for regarding such raw data as historical; and (4) do not carefully distinguish between the data and their own interpretation of it.

 

               It is easier for me to respond by describing the extremes.  At their very worst such studies are romantic and devotional, and are intended, either consciously or subconsciously, to buttress the faith of the believing community.  Hence they are not critical studies, but fall into the category of propaganda or devotional literature.

 

               On the other hand, at their very best they are still flawed studies because they confuse the raw data with their analysis, and fail to justify what they do use.  Hence at best they are unreliable and misleading.

 

               What do you think?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

“New” Parables of Jesus Lost in the Gospels?

Well, maybe not "new" in the sense that no one has ever seen them before, but there are certainly parables in the gospels that are overlooked, neglected, or ignored for one reason or another—so the parables are "new" in the sense that they need to be "rediscovered" as parables. What is a parable? The classic form of parable is a brief narrative fiction about ordinary things.  Basically a narrative is a story having at least three elements: a beginning, middle, and end.  So a parable is a form of speech that is something more than a phrase, clause, or saying—it tells a story.  A parable may be as brief as a single sentence: "a woman took and concealed a fermenting agent in three bushels of flour until the whole was leavened" (Matt 13:33); or a parable may extend to as much as two paragraphs in length (viz., A Father and Two Sons, Luke 15:11-32).  In general, scholars tend to recognize a literary unit as a parable when they are introduced with the phrase:  "The kingdom of God is like . . .," but that is not always the case.  A Father and Two Sons (Luke 15:11-32), and An Injured Man on the Jericho Road (Luke 10:30-35) are not introduced by a parabolic comparative frame, and yet these two stories are universally recognized as parables.
 

            The Jesus Seminar made a survey of early Christian literature in the first two centuries of the Christian era searching for parables attributed to Jesus, and found thirty-three that they thought should be included in the corpus of stories attributed to Jesus (Funk, Scott, Butts, The Parables of Jesus. Red Letter Edition [Polebridge Press, 1988).  I have argued, however, that the corpus of Jesus' parables is comprised of at least forty-three parables, ten more than acknowledged by the Jesus Seminar.  One that you may have missed is Settling out of Court (Matt 5:25-25 = Luke 12:58-59).  I checked several commentaries on the parables at random and discovered that the following scholars apparently do not regard it as a parable (The Jesus Seminar, Kissinger, Scott, Bailey, Blomberg, Hultgren), but at least two do (Smith and Jeremias).  Another story, The Persistent Friend (Luke 11:5-7) is not regarded as a parable by the Jesus Seminar and Scott, but Kissinger and Jeremias do discuss it as a parable.
 

One story, Offering your Gift at the Altar (Matt 5:23-24), appears to have gone virtually unrecognized as a story of Jesus by the scholars whose works I checked for this blog:
 

If, therefore, you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and first go become reconciled to your brother, and then coming offer your gift.

The Jesus Seminar colored the saying gray, as it did a similar saying parallel (Mark 11:25), but the story is not unlike its "twin" immediately following in Matthew (On Going to Court, Matt 5:25-26) in its use of the imperative; this "twin" parable is colored pink in The Five Gospels.  Bultmann regarded the "saying" Offering Your Gift at the Altar as the more original form of another similar saying (Mark 11:25), since Matthew's parable "presupposes the existence of the sacrificial system in Jerusalem" (Bultmann, p. 132).  Bultmann regards the legal style of Offering Your Gift at the Altar in Matthew as the work of the early church.  The saying itself, however, is older, since the content had nothing to do with the church "brotherhood" (Bultmann, 146, 147).  The use of the term "brother" when used in the gospels is generally read as a Christian motif, which may account for the general neglect of the parable, but that aspect of the saying is likely part of the Christian reworking of a much older saying.  How might the narrative have appeared in its earlier pre-Christian form?
 

A man was offering his gift at the altar and there remembered his [friend] had something against him; he left his gift there before the altar and first went, became reconciled with his [friend], and then coming he offered his gift.

The term "friend" makes an appearance in other parables of Jesus in Luke (11:5-6; 14:10; 15:6, 9; 15:29).
 

What do you think?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

Color gray: the saying is questionable as a saying of Jesus
 

Color pink: the saying is likely a saying of Jesus

 

Bibliography:
 

Funk, Hoover and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels

B. T. D. Smith, The Parables of the Synoptic Gospels

Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition

Bailey, Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes

Kissinger, The Parables of Jesus

Scott, Hear Then the Parable

Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus

Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables

Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus

Jesus Scrubbed

The military service uses the expression “scrubbing a list” when it is being checked for accuracy. To clean a list of errors, typos, inaccuracies, etc. one “scrubs” the list. I am using the term to describe a Jesus-Seminar-like exercise, which aims to determine in so far as is possible what in the gospels is left of the essentially historical Jewish man Jesus of Nazareth. Everyone “scrubs” Jesus: the gospel writers, Paul, translators, ministers, true believers and liberals, even historians! When a critical historian “scrubs” Jesus, however, his Jesus comes out as a radical figure having little in common with either the modern or ancient Christian church. In the first place, Jesus was not Christian but Jewish. The rituals with which he would have been familiar would have been those in Jewish tradition rather than in the Christian calendar. Jesus knew nothing of Christian baptism, Eucharist (Lord’s Supper), Christmas, Easter, confirmation, invitation hymns, ordained clergy, bishops, ordination, praying in Jesus name, etc.
     Jesus is represented as undergoing the Jewish rite of circumcision, of celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Dedication, Passover, observing the Sabbath, going to the synagogue and the temple, arguing with Pharisees about Torah (he knew nothing of the books of the New Testament). So how did we get Christian rites, theology, and celebrations out of this Jewish man? In part, it was due to the fact that Jesus was “scrubbed” by the evangelists in their narratives, and then by the later church. Their literary contexts and “Christian” spins of the oral Jesus traditions, which they received, made Jesus more amenable to the Christian Greek mentality.
     Most scholars accept that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptizer, but John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4-5). The Christian view (Paul) sees baptism as immersion in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ (Romans 6:3-4). Matthew, on the other hand, was bothered by the suggestion that Jesus might also be thought to have “confessed his sins” like everyone else when he was baptized by John, and completely eliminates this as a possibility by having Jesus explain to John why it was necessary that John baptize him (Matt 3:13-15). In Luke, apparently John does not baptize Jesus, for Luke writes that John was put in prison (Luke 3:19-20) immediately before the baptism of Jesus (Luke 3:21); this appears to be how Luke handled Jesus being baptized for the remission of his sin; he wasn’t baptized by John, but rather at a later time, and who baptized him is left unclear. In the Gospel of John, John’s baptism is not a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; rather John was baptizing so that Jesus might be revealed to Israel (John 1:31). The baptism of Jesus in John was a baptism of the spirit rather than a water baptism, which John only witnesses (John 1:30-34). On the other hand, in a strange passage John represents Jesus as baptizing others (John 4:1), but then in the very next verse (John 4:2) John actually denies that Jesus is doing the baptizing himself—a statement that contradicts John 4:1!
       The sayings of Jesus that pass historical/critical muster (if I can put it that way) do not offer guidance for living, talk about God or salvation, predict the future, warn about the end of the world, anticipate the foundation of an ecclesiastical institution that would last for 2000 years, establish a cult of a dying and rising God, or authorize the change of theology from a radical form of Judaism to an entirely new Greek/Roman religion. Here are three radical sayings that probably originated with Jesus of Nazareth; shorn of their literary contexts they appear to prescribe actions that are completely impractical and unworkable in practice in either the ancient or modern worlds:

Luke 6:27: “Love your enemies.” The seriously radical character of this saying is camouflaged by its literary context—by including it among other plausible but challenging acts one can render an “enemy”: do good, bless, pray. In this way the reader is led to believe that “loving your enemy” means something less than how one “loves” family, wife, parents, friends.

Luke 6:29: When struck on the cheek, offer the other; when someone takes your outer garment, offer your undergarment (which is worn next to the skin); put into practice this act would leave one nude without a stitch of clothing.
Luke 6:30: “Give to everyone who begs from you.” Follow this principle literally and how long do you suppose it would be before you find your savings exhausted, the bills piling up, and the mortgage long overdue.

      Another saying camouflaged by its literary context in all three synoptic gospels and the Gospel of Thomas is, “Pay both Caesar and God what is due them” (Mark 12:17). The oblique character of the saying is mitigated by the controversy story. In the context it comes across as an evasive answer by which Jesus avoids the trap laid for him by his interlocutors; in its literary context the saying is a shrewd quip allowing Jesus to best his interlocutors in the exchange. In itself as an oral survival from Jesus’ public career, however, it is simply ambiguous offering no clear guidance, since it does not specify the content of what is due the Caesar and what is due to God. One has to work that out for oneself with no help from Jesus. These types of sayings are characteristic of what most probably originated with Jesus. The literary contexts of the pronouncements in the gospels are not the actual social contexts of Jesus’ public career, but due to the evangelists. As a result, when the literary context is “scrubbed” we are left in general with sayings characterized by perplexing ambiguity or unrealistic idealism.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University