Jesus and Scripture

Steve Moyise

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780281062171
• eBook ISBN: 9780281064854
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Steve Moyise offers an illuminating yet accessible guide to the various ways that Jesus employed Scripture, both in his teaching and in his understanding of his ministry. After analysing the scriptural quotations and allusions in the four canonical Gospels, Moyise examines the views of a range of key scholars (Borg, Crossan, Dunn, France, Kimball, Vermes and Wright), and shows how their differing reconstructions of Jesus' use of Scripture inform their understanding of his historical impact and significance.

1

Jesus and Scripture according to Mark’s Gospel

Introduction

Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels (16 chapters), and moves rapidly from a ministry of teaching, healing and exorcism in Galilee (Mark 1—10) to the final week (the Passion) in Jerusalem (Mark 11—16). According to the best manuscripts, the Gospel ends with the story of the empty tomb (Mark 16.1–8) and does not record any resurrection stories. It used to be thought that Mark’s original ending had been lost and that later scribes did their best to fill the gap (see the shorter and longer endings printed separately in the NRSV). But most scholars today believe that Mark deliberately ended his Gospel in an abrupt manner in order to stress the importance of the crucifixion. It corresponds with the abrupt beginning, where the story begins with Jesus’ baptism and temptation and records the threat to his life as early as Mark 3.6.

There are about 25 quotations from the Old Testament in Mark’s Gospel, of which some 22 are on the lips of Jesus. They are drawn from the law (10), the prophets (7) and the psalms (5). Since Mark is writing in Greek to a Greek-speaking audience, it is to be expected that the quotations would follow the LXX, which is generally the case. It is possible that Mark is responsible for this, but most scholars think that the translation of Jesus’ sayings from Aramaic to Greek had happened long before Mark wrote his Gospel. The Gospel is usually dated between 65 and 69 CE, largely because Mark 13.14–23 seems to envisage a period just before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies (c. 70 CE). We will begin with Mark’s view of Jesus’ attitude to the law.

Jesus and the law

In the debate about hand washing in Mark 7 (‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ – v. 5), Jesus criticizes their adherence to tradition because it involves ‘abandoning’ (v. 8) or ‘rejecting’ (v. 9) the commandment of God. He then cites the example of ‘Corban’, a law whereby a portion of one’s goods can be dedicated to God and is therefore no longer available for mundane use, even if that means hardship for one’s parents. This time Jesus accuses them of ‘making void the word of God through your tradition’ (v. 13), specifically citing the commandment to ‘Honour your father and your mother’ (v. 10). Thus Jesus is clearly portrayed as one who upholds the law and is hostile to ‘traditions’ (halaka) that undermine it.

This episode is followed by a discussion of what defiles a person, where Jesus says that ‘there is nothing outside of a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile’ (v. 18). It is elaborated in verse 20 that the things in question are ‘evil intentions’ and that they come from the heart. There then follows a list of sins – drawn from the commandments (theft, murder, adultery) and other traditions (fornication, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly) – that come from the heart and defile. Thus in this episode Jesus upholds the law in the face of the human inclination to transgress it.

However, it is Mark’s comment in the middle of this episode that has attracted attention. In verse 18, Jesus offers a rationale for why one is not defiled by what is outside: ‘it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer’. This is then followed by a comment from Mark that literally translated means ‘cleansing all foods’ (NRSV: ‘Thus he declared all foods clean’). It is not presented as words of Jesus, rather Mark’s deduction from the aphorism. Thus we have a major difficulty with Mark’s understanding of Jesus and the law. On the one hand, the episodes of Mark 7 strongly assert that Jesus upholds the law against Pharisaic tradition and the inclinations of the human heart. On the other hand, Mark thinks that Jesus’ aphorism that ‘there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile’ implies that all foods are clean, effectively abrogating a major section of the law and the principle – the distinction between clean and unclean – on which it is based.

A similar ambiguity occurs with the way Mark presents Jesus’ view of the Sabbath. On the one hand, it is evidently Jesus’ custom to be in the synagogue on the Sabbath (Mark 3.1; 6.2), and he undoubtedly upholds the Ten Commandments (Mark 10.19), even though the Sabbath is not explicitly mentioned in his summary. But Mark 2.1—3.6 collect together a series of controversy stories, two of which focus on what can or cannot be done on the Sabbath. In Mark 2.23–28 the Pharisees object that Jesus’ disciples are plucking grain as they make their way through the grain fields. Jesus replies by citing a story from 1 Samuel 21.1–6, where David entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, along with his companions. Jesus acknowledges that what David did was ‘unlawful’ but ends with the saying: ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath’ (Mark 2.28). This is open to at least three interpretations:

1 Jesus has the authority to break the Sabbath, as his royal predecessor did.

2 Jesus has the authority to temporarily suspend the Sabbath because of the disciples’ hunger, as with David and his companions.

3 Jesus has the authority to declare that the disciples’ actions do not constitute a break with the Sabbath, contrary to Pharisaic tradition that regarded ‘plucking grain’ as a form of work (see Appendix 2).

Before trying to answer this we will consider the second controversy story (Mark 3.1–6) – the healing of the man with the withered hand. It is a Sabbath, and Jesus is in the synagogue along with the sick man. In this instance there is no verbal accusation by the Pharisees, but Mark tells us that Jesus knew they were watching him, ‘to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him’ (v. 2). Jesus takes the argument to them by asking: ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ (v. 4). Since he then proceeds to heal the man, it is clear that Jesus does not regard his healing activity as breaking the Sabbath, contrary to the view of the Pharisees. Indeed, Mark tells us that the Pharisees immediately went out to conspire with the Herodians to have Jesus put to death (v. 6). Mark clearly intends this to be ironic: the Pharisees complain that Jesus is breaking the commandments while they themselves are engaged in a plot to have someone murdered.

Thus it would appear that Mark does not regard Jesus as breaking the Sabbath, although his interpretation of it is clearly at loggerheads with Pharisaic tradition. Whether Mark is correct in this will be discussed in Chapters 5–7, but two points are worth mentioning here. First, if this healing corresponds to what actually happened, the Pharisees would surely have pointed out that the man’s life was not at risk. If Jesus truly respected the Sabbath, why did he not wait until the following day to heal him? Second, if Jesus defended the disciples’ plucking of grain on the Sabbath by reference to David eating the consecrated bread, they would surely have pointed out that in that story there is no mention of it being on a Sabbath (1 Sam. 21.1–6). What is clear is that Mark thinks that Jesus upheld the spirit of the Sabbath against Pharisaic traditions.

We thus return to the question of the food laws. Is it likely that Mark thinks that Jesus castigated the Pharisees for ‘abandoning’, ‘rejecting’ or ‘making void’ God’s commandments for the sake of their traditions, only to abrogate the food laws on the basis of an aphorism about what defiles a person? If we remember that the discussion began over the issue of Pharisaic hand-washing rituals (Mark 7.1–5), it could be argued that Mark’s conclusion – ‘cleansing all foods’ – has nothing to do with the law’s distinction between clean and unclean food. It is simply asserting that food does not become defiled by breaking the detailed hand-washing rituals of the Pharisees. The status of food that the law regards as unclean is simply not in view. Indeed, although Jesus is accused of eating with tax collectors and sinners (Mark 2.16), he is never accused of eating anything unclean, which concurs with Peter’s protestation in Acts 10.14 that never in his life – thus including his time with Jesus – has he ever eaten anything unclean. Therefore while the question of Mark’s attitude to the law continues to be a matter of debate,¹ most scholars think that Jesus kept the Jewish food laws and at no time spoke against them.

This appears to be confirmed by a number of other texts where Jesus is seen to uphold the authority of the law. For example, having healed the man suffering from leprosy in Mark 1.42, he tells him to ‘go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them’ (Mark 1.44). When the young ruler asks what he has to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus directs him to the commandments (Mark 10.19). The fact that Jesus adds the requirement to sell his possessions and give to the poor is hardly a criticism of the commandments. When the Sadducees seek to trap him with a concocted story about a woman forced to marry seven brothers after each dies (based on the levirate law of Deuteronomy 25.5), he replies: ‘Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?’ (Mark 12.24). He then argues from the book of Exodus that because God said ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ (Exod. 3.15), the dead must be raised. One might have expected a quotation from one of the texts in the Old Testament that speak of resurrection, such as Daniel 12.1–2, but this is probably to be explained by the fact that the Sadducees regarded the prophets as secondary to the law. According to John Meier, the logic of Jesus’ reply is this:

1 Throughout Scripture, God refers to himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

2 Scripture also says that God is a God of the living, not the defiling, unclean dead.

3 Therefore Abraham, Isaac and Jacob must be ‘alive’ with God (now or in the future).²

However, there are two further stories that might challenge this view. The first is the discussion about divorce in Mark 10.2–9. The Pharisees ask Jesus whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife. Jewish sources suggest that this was a hotly debated subject, some arguing that divorce was possible for almost any reason (the school of Hillel), others taking a more rigorous line and insisting that the reason had to be something serious, such as adultery (the school of Shammai). Jesus responds by asking them what Moses commanded, and they reply by quoting words from Deuteronomy 24.1–4 (‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her’), the only passage in the law to mention divorce. However, this is evidently not Jesus’ position, for he says that this was written ‘because of your hardness of heart’, and goes on to quote Genesis 1.27 and 2.24, that marriage is about two people becoming one flesh. Although these texts do not mention divorce, Jesus deduces that ‘one flesh’ implies ‘no divorce’, and so goes beyond even the rigorous position of Shammai: ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery’ (Mark 10.11–12).

Although one could argue that Jesus is not contradicting the law (Deuteronomy 24 permits divorce but does not command it), he is clearly giving the Genesis texts priority over the Deuteronomy text. Indeed, John Meier says that Jesus’ position on divorce is nothing short of astounding: ‘Jesus presumes to teach that what the Law permits and regulates is actually the sin of adultery.’³ In other words, the Jewish man who conscientiously follows the Torah’s rules for divorce and remarriage is in fact guilty of breaking one of the Ten Commandments. According to Meier, this is much more than entering the debate about permissible grounds for divorce. On the other hand, Jesus is not the first to give priority to the Genesis text. We find the same argument in a text from the Dead Sea Scrolls, though it is unclear whether it is condemning polygamy or divorce:⁴

The ‘builders of the wall’ [possibly Pharisees] . . . who have followed after ‘Precept ’– ‘Precept’ . . . shall be caught in fornication twice by taking a second wife while the first is alive, whereas the principle of creation is, Male and female created He them . . .

(CD 4.20–21)

Our second example is where Jesus is asked, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ (Mark 12.28). He replies by affirming the traditional confession (known as the Shema): ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’ (Mark 12.29–30). However, he then goes beyond the scribe’s question by asserting: ‘The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”’ (Mark 12.31), adding that there is ‘no other commandment [singular] greater than these’.

Combining the commandments to love God and neighbour was not unique to Jesus. In a work entitled The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, we read in the Testament of Issachar, ‘love the Lord and your neighbour’ (T. Iss. 5.2), and in the Testament of Dan, ‘love the Lord and one another with a true heart’ (T. Dan 5.3). However, there do not appear to be any parallels to citing them as the first and second commandments, although Philo and Josephus both think of the Ten Commandments as pertaining to God (first five) and neighbour (second five). It would appear to cohere with Mark’s view that Jesus upheld the law but was antagonistic towards Pharisaic traditions that (in his view) diverted it from its humanitarian intentions. Thus Jesus is against using the ‘permission’ to divorce in Deuteronomy 24 as a path to adultery, or the dedication of goods to God (Corban) to avoid obligation to one’s parents. In Jesus’ view (as portrayed by Mark), such traditions do not ‘uphold’ the law, as the Pharisees claim, but undermine its true intent.

However, there are two further features of this story that require comment. The first is technical, and it is that Jesus cites four faculties (heart, soul, mind, strength), whereas Deuteronomy 6.5 only has three (heart, soul, might). It is inconceivable that Mark was not aware of this and indeed he has the scribe repeat Jesus’ answer with just three (‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author information
• Title page
• Imprint
• Table of contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Jesus and scripture according to Mark's Gospel
• 2. Jesus and Scripture according to Matthew's Gospel
• 3. Jesus and Scripture according to Luke's Gospel
• 4. Jesus and Scripture according to John's Gospel
• 5. Jesus and Scripture - minimalist views
• 6. Jesus and Scripture - moderate views
• 7. Jesus and Scripture - maximalist views
• Conclusion
• Appendix1: Search items for Jesus's quotations in the Gospel
• Appendix2: Jewish legal texts
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Search items for biblical references
• Search items for authors and subjects