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| AMatthias Stom's depiction of Jesus before Caiaphas, c. 1630. |
If a biblical lesson starts off with a false assumption about
the text the whole text is inadequately explained. The second lesson of the Presbyterian
Women’s Bible study, Who is Jesus? What a
Difference a Lens Makes, begins with a half-truth. The lesson, “According
to Matthew,” written by Judy Yates Siker, is written around the assumption that
the Jewish community and the Christian community were in conflict with each
other because of the fall of Jerusalem.
In the midst of the
crisis Siker believes each community was attempting to find their identity
minus the sacrificial system. The Jewish
community found their identity in the Law while the Christian community found
their identity in Jesus and his interpretation of the law
Siker’s point is that Matthew and the community he was writing
for were involved in a debate and the Christian side of the debate involved “derogatory
remarks and venomous hate speech” which the author of the text placed in Jesus’
mouth. The words of the Jews at the trial of Jesus, that his blood should be on them and their children, is also blamed on the crisis of the community
rather than the truth of history. Siker puts it this way:
“As we noted at the
beginning of this lesson, the Gospel of Matthew was written at a time when there
was great turmoil among the Jews; the temple at Jerusalem had recently been
destroyed for a second (and final) time, and the Jews were struggling to determine
for themselves what it meant to be a good Jew in the wake of this disaster. There
were those who believed that even without the temple (and thus the sacrificial system)
it was possible to remain strong in their faith because they had the Torah and
could not only survive, but thrive, by living in accordance with God’s revealed
law. They did not believe that the messiah had come. We call them non-messianic
Jews.[1]
There were however, others who believed that the messiah had come—Jesus of Nazareth—and
that he had fulfilled the Jewish law, he had offered the definitive
understanding of the law; thus, through belief in him and his teachings, Jewish
faith could flourish. We call these Messianic Jews.”
Siker goes on to explain that the non-messianic Jews evolved
into rabbinic Judaism while the Messianic Jews became Christians. She writes
that we are looking at an “in-house debate” and “sibling rivalry.” Siker’s
explanation, “the mistake that many Christians have made over the centuries is
to take the in-house Jewish debate from the first century, adopt its animosity
and use it to denigrate the Jews across time. The misuse of our Scripture has
resulted in centuries of anti-Semitism, culminating with the horrors of the
Holocaust.”
While Siker’s concerns about hatred of the Jews are valid and compassionate,
her understanding of the text and history is very confusing and wrong. It is a
tangle that needs undoing.
First, while Rabbinic Judaism did evolve from the crisis of
the loss of the temple, the conflict between Jew and Christian was really a
conflict about who Jesus is, not about Jewish identity.
Second, Jesus’ words to the religious rulers of his day was in
the long line of the Jewish prophets. Malachi, who was of the priestly line
himself, shames the priests of his day insisting they despise the name of the
Lord. He even tells them that God will spread refuse (manure) on their faces
because they offer blemished sacrifices and do not honor God. Ezekiel, after
God shows him the evil committed by the religious rulers in Jerusalem,
including the priests, has him listen to the proclamations of their death by
the hand of an angel. Isaiah and Jeremiah include the religious leaders in
their prophetic judgments.
In the end Jesus wept over Jerusalem because of their
rejection of his offer of salvation. The text is not hate speech but rather in
the line of the prophetic word of the Jewish Bible.
Third, although too many people have misused the words of scripture
against the Jewish people it was, in reality, those in the liberal tradition in
Germany who combined their disbelief with a radical nationalism and helped to persecute
the Jews to their death. They also, like many progressives today, did not
uphold the authority of scripture. They also had texts that they tried to
explain away.
All of this takes the focus away from who Jesus is. Siker
rightly sees him, in Matthew, as a teacher like Moses. The book is written to
the Jews. But there is so much more.
R.T. France in his Tyndale commentary on Matthew[2]
writes of Matthews theological emphases:
“The essential key to all of Matthew’s theology is that in
Jesus all God’s purposes have come to fulfillment. That is, of course, true of
all New Testament theology, but it is emphasized in a remarkable way in
Matthew. Everything is related to Jesus. The Old Testament points forward to
him; its law is ‘fulfilled’ in his teaching; he is the true Israel through whom
God plans for his people to go forward; the future no less than the present is
to be understood as the working out of the ministry of Jesus. History revolves
around him, in that his coming is the turning point at which the age of preparation
gives way to the age of fulfillment. Matthew leaves no room for any idea of the
fulfillment of God’s purposes, whether for Israel or in any other respect,
which is not focused in this theme of fulfillment
in Jesus. In his coming a new age has dawned; nothing will ever be quite
the same again.”
And France sees in Matthew several answers to who Jesus is.
Matthew uses Messiah, Son of David, Son of Man, King and Son of God. But he
uses them carefully that they might be filled with the additional understanding
of one who is crucified for the sins of his people. And so that they might be
seen as titles connected to the one who fulfills God’s purposes which means
that several of them such as Son of Man has been enlarged.
