The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus

Jordan J. Ryan

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781506428116
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506438443
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

No one disputes today that Jesus must be understood as a participant in the currents of Second Temple Judaism. However, his relation to the institution of the synagogue has received much less attention despite the clear depiction in all four Gospels of the synagogue as the site of his activity and the considerable recent scholarship on the place of the synagogue in Jewish life. Reviewing what we now know about actual synagogues in the land of Israel and what we understand of their public role in Jewish life and culture, Jordan J. Ryan shows that Gospel narratives placed in synagogues accurately reflect the ancient synagogue setting, a fact that points toward the historical plausibility of the setting of these narratives and suggests that synagogue research must be a starting point for their interpretation. Further, he argues that the synagogue setting of Jesus‘s activities reveals that his efforts at the restoration of Israel were intentionally aimed at the synagogue as an institution of public and political life; that is, Jesus sought to bring the kingdom of God into being by persuading local public synagogue assemblies to participate in it. This book marks an important new direction for research.

II

The Historical Jesus and the Synagogue

5

Kingdom and Synagogue: The Synagogue and Jesus’s Program

The Synagogue Summary Statements

Each of the four evangelists describes Jesus’s activity within synagogues as a hallmark of his ministry. In other words, the Gospels do not portray the synagogue as incidental to Jesus’s program, but as intrinsic to it. It is this data that opened our investigation in chapter 1. Now that we are equipped with our reconstruction of “the synagogue” as Jesus knew it, we return to this data and the questions that it raised.

As mentioned in chapter 1, the synoptic Gospels all contain summary statements of Jesus’s Galilean program, which situate it in synagogues:

“Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. (Mark 1:38–39)

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. (Matt 4:23)^[1]

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. (Luke 4:15–16)

Two other related passages can be grouped with these summary statements, though neither situates the synagogue activity specifically in Galilee:

But he said to them, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose.” So he continued proclaiming the message (κηρύσσω) in the synagogues of Judea. (Luke 4:43–44)

Jesus answered, “I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret.” (John 18:20)

These last two require some further comments. Luke 4:43–44 presents both textual and historical problems. Unlike the other synoptic synagogue summary statements, v. 44 specifically indicates that Jesus was proclaiming the message in the synagogues of Judea (εἰς τὰς συναγωγὰς τῆς Ἰουδαίας) rather than Galilee. Some notable manuscripts (including A, D, Γ, Δ, Θ, Ψ) replace “Judea” with “Galilee.” Nevertheless, the NA28 has printed “Judea.” This is because the best manuscripts (P⁷⁵, א, and B) evince this reading, and moreover, it is the lectio difficilior.^[2] The “Galilee” reading can be explained as an attempt to assimilate to Mark 1:39 and Matthew 4:23 (see above),^[3] and to its context within the Lukan narrative,^[4] which places Jesus in Capernaum prior to this pericope and by the Sea of Galilee in the episode following it. The “Judea” reading is more difficult to explain. This leads to the conclusion that “Judea” is likely the correct reading.

The fact that this pericope comes between an episode taking place in Capernaum and another taking place by the Sea of Galilee may also be indicative of a historical problem. Interestingly, Luke is the only evangelist to specifically describe Jesus travelling to Judean synagogues, and his Gospel is the only one that depicts an episode taking place in a Judean synagogue (Luke 13:10–17). Given that Luke’s source, Mark, has Jesus travelling only to synagogues in Galilee, it seems as though there is some specific intent behind Luke’s testimony that Jesus was active in Judean synagogues. It is tempting to dismiss Luke’s testimony here, but it is nevertheless hard to explain his decision to locate Jesus’s synagogue activity within “Judea” rather than “Galilee,” especially given that he mentions Jesus’s Galilean synagogue program in 4:14–15. The best solution is to take Luke’s usage of “Judea” here to be inclusive, in the sense of “the entirety of the Jewish homeland,” since he uses it in this way elsewhere (1:5, 6:17, 7:17, 23:5; Acts 10:37).^[5] This would mean that, according to Luke, Jesus’s synagogue program took place in both Galilee and Judea.

From a historical perspective, Luke’s testimony here is important. It breaks up the neat, convenient synoptic narrative of a Galilean ministry that was followed by a final, fateful trip through Judea to Jerusalem at the very end of Jesus’s life by introducing forays into Judea early on in Jesus’s career. When cast alongside the narrative of the Fourth Gospel, which has Jesus making multiple trips back and forth from Galilee to Judea, Luke’s indication that Jesus was active in both Judean and Galilean synagogues makes a good deal of sense.^[6] These two facts of Johannine coherence and reading against the synoptic grain lead me to the conclusion that Luke’s testimony should be taken seriously. However, given that the three other Gospels do not contain any episodes set in Judean synagogues, and that Luke does not feature an episode taking place in a Judean synagogue until 13:10–17, it is clear that Jesus’s activity in Galilean synagogues was remembered much more strongly. I suggest that the best inference to make from the evidence is that Jesus’s synagogue program took place primarily in Galilee, since this is where he was based (cf. Mark 2:1; Matt 4:13). Nevertheless, Jesus probably did not limit his area of activity to Galilee alone, and likely made forays into Judea, where he entered synagogues to teach and proclaim his message.

The saying in John 18:20 is a reply given by Jesus to the high priest when he is questioned about his teaching. The reference to habitual teaching in the synagogue is curious within the context of John’s narrative, since only one block of teaching is located within a synagogue setting in the Fourth Gospel (see John 6:59). This saying thus likely reflects the strength of the memory of Jesus having regularly taught in synagogues.

This saying is set in Jerusalem. However, the statement is general, and Jesus is not depicted teaching in a Jerusalem synagogue in John, nor in any of the other Gospels. Jesus’s undisputed venue of choice while in Jerusalem was the temple.^[7] The inference that can be made from this is that the teaching in synagogues mentioned here most likely refers to Jesus’s teaching outside of Jerusalem, and thus, primarily to his activities in Galilee and perhaps also in Judea. This is all the more likely when considered alongside the fact that the only episode set within a synagogue in John takes place in Capernaum.^[8]

We thus have a collection of summary statements that locate Jesus’s program of teaching and proclamation in Galilee and beyond within synagogues. This evidence will anchor our investigation. It is a logical starting point, the first visible node from which the imaginative web of historical reconstruction will be spun. It is difficult to dispute the inference from this evidence that the historical Jesus taught and proclaimed his message in synagogues.^[9] It is a manifestly plausible scenario. As our ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Figures and Tables
• Abbreviations
• Introduction and Status Quaestionis
• Early Synagogues
• The Historical Jesus and the Synagogue
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Outlining the Practice of History: A Historiographical Approach to Jesus
• Appendix B: Approaching the Sources: Hermeneutics, Truth, and Knowledge in the Practice of History
• Appendix C: Additional Notes on Secondary Rooms in Synagogue Buildings
• Works Cited
• Index of Names
• Index of Texts