Jesus among Friends and Enemies

A Historical and Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels

Keith, Chris, Hurtado, Larry W., Chris Keith, Larry W. Hurtado

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780801038952
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441234513
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

This engaging text offers a fresh alternative to standard introductions to Jesus. Combining literary and sociohistorical approaches and offering a tightly integrated treatment, a team of highly respected scholars examines how Jesus's friends and enemies respond to him in the Gospel narratives. It is the first book to introduce readers to the rich portraits of Jesus in the Gospels by surveying the characters who surround him in those texts--from John the Baptist, the disciples, and the family of Jesus to Satan, Pontius Pilate, and Judas Iscariot (among others). Contributors include Richard J. Bauckham, Warren Carter, and Edith M. Humphrey.

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God and Angels

Edith M. Humphrey

Anyone who has taught Sunday school knows about the little girl who has a stock one-word answer for every question: “God!” With this response, seven-year-old Emily figures that she has a good chance of answering correctly—though not with any depth.

This chapter faces the same dilemma. How can we talk with any substance about God in the Gospels, since God is the main actor and the initiator of every action, not only in the Gospels but also in the entire scriptural library? The other heavenly characters, the angels, are not so prominent, but they appear at key points in the biblical narrative; moreover, the corpus of literature that provides the background for their appearances in the Gospels is varied and vast. To class the almighty God alongside other characters in stories about Jesus may appear impudent; to trace the mysterious force of the angels risks speculation. Yet we will see that the connection of God and the angels with Jesus coheres well with the main theme of this volume—surely Jesus is in the company of his friends.

We begin by looking at key concepts of God and of the angels that informed the Evangelists and that occasionally provide a foil against which they react. In writings that circulated prior to the Gospels, we find customary titles, various descriptions of God and the angels, and stories in which they precipitate or perform characteristic action. (At times we also will consider writings concurrent with or postdating the New Testament, because these may preserve for us ways of speaking about God and the angels that come from an earlier time but that are available to us only through such later documents.) With this context in place, we will read Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John with an eye to where God and the angels make their impact, both separately and together, but always in connection with Jesus himself.

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Protology and Eschatology

Eschatology is a word heard frequently today, due to end-of-the-world theories taught in several American denominations and sensationalized in novels and film. The word eschaton refers to the end; so eschatology (sometimes confused with apocalyptic) is the study of those things connected with “the end.” However, eschatology is a slippery term in the hands of theologians, as G. B. Caird demonstrates in his cogent book The Language and Imagery of the Bible,[1] where he adduces at least seven different meanings of the term. After all, to which “end” are we referring—the end of an era or the absolute end of the space-time universe? The term protology is the mirror opposite of eschatology, referring to the dawn of creation, even to the “time” before that. In this category belongs the fall of rebel angels (cf. 1 Enoch 6–9; 2 Apoc. Bar. 56:12–14; 2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6), who make their influence felt in the human realm (e.g., Dan. 10:13, 20; Wis. 2:24; Tob. 3:8; Eph. 6:12, Gal. 4:3–9). Alternately, there are clues concerning “good angels,” as in Job 38:7, where they are called the “morning stars.” (Astral imagery is often used for minor deities and angels.) These sang for joy at the creation, but Job knows nothing of this mystery, since protology is beyond the ken of humanity. Secrets about time, protological and eschatological, as well as mysteries about unseen worlds are seldom disclosed in the Bible, but are partially unveiled in those strange books called “apocalypses” (e.g., Daniel, Revelation, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, Apocalypse of Abraham), whose generic title means “an unveiling” or “revelation.”

[1]. G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (London: Duckworth, 1980), 243–71.

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It is clear from the outset of each Gospel that the main denotation given to God is that of the supreme Deity associated with the drama of humankind and especially of Israel, beginning with the creation stories in Genesis. References to God’s angels push further back to what we may call “protological time,” adding a mysterious “apocalyptic” dimension to this story. That is, the narrative of God’s dealings with humankind and with Israel sometimes is prefaced and bordered by an earlier and parallel narrative involving angels. This dimension is memorialized in Western culture by the epic poem of John Milton, whose Paradise Lost commences not with the human plight but with the rebellion of Satan.

Historical Considerations: God and the Angels in the Biblical and Later Traditions

First we will consider the portrayal of God and angels in the biblical and later traditions that informed the authors of the canonical Gospels.

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Ēl and ʾĔlōhîm

The simplest Hebrew form of the word for God is ēl, incorporated in the names “Israel,” “Michael,” “Raphael.” ʾĔlōhîm is the plural and can accurately be translated “gods” (Ps. 82:1b). Commonly, it is used in the Bible to refer to the singular God of the Hebrew people, with the plural ending perhaps suggesting God’s majesty (thus sometimes called the “majestic plural”), similar to the English royal use of “we.”

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God in the Biblical and Later Traditions

Let us follow the contours of the Bible, starting with God’s active engagement with the seen world: “In the beginning God created” (Gen. 1:1 RSV). We may trace this drama, along with N. T. Wright[71] and others, as an open-ended five-act play: creation, the fall, the call and history of Israel, the climax of the story in Jesus, and the continuing drama of God’s people in a world that God promises to judge and renew. The first three acts of this story were not clearly discerned as such by the Hebrew, Israelite, or Jewish people who related and transmitted these narratives. This is the shape, however, implied by the Evangelists, who craft their narratives with the previous “acts” in view, and with a defined hope for the future. They consider themselves inheritors of a tradition in which God’s character has been revealed: God is Creator of the world and Sovereign over history; God is also the “Lord of hosts” (1 Sam. 1:3; 2 Kings 19:31; Ps. 24:10; cf. 2 Kings 6:17), commanding unseen forces whose actions have a bearing on the space-time world. He is Lord of all.

So impressive is this God that, in the Hebrew Bible, his generic title, ʾĕlōhîm, takes a plural form. ʾĔlōhîm is a classifying noun (“God”) rather than a name: so beyond human understanding is God that his full nature cannot be named by human beings (not even by his specially chosen people), nor fully conceived. Moses does not name God, for to name is to dominate. Rather, God reveals his mysterious “name” as YHWH (Exod. 3:14).

In the Hebrew/Israelite/Jewish tradition, YHWH is held in such great respect that the name is not uttered. When reciting Scripture in Hebrew, the reader encounters YHWH adorned with the vowel-pointings for the word ʾădōnāy (“Lord”), and by this convention is cued to substitute ʾădōnāy orally in its place. In the mature Jewish tradition (from the first century CE and afterward), the sense of holiness is amplified: not only YHWH, but even ʾădōnāy is avoided (except for prayer), and terms such as hāššēm (“the Name”), “Heaven,” “Glory,” “Power,” and “Abode” come into currency. (See Matt. 5:34, which already may reflect this practice in the phrase swearing “by Heaven.”) Other alternative titles for God use periphrasis: “Father of the sons of truth” (the Qumran community), “Prince of gods,” “King of majesties,” “Ruler of all creatures,” “God of gods,” “King of kings,” “Ruler over all earthly kings,” and “God of knowledge.” These substitutes for YHWH (and ʾădōnāy) and descriptive expansions of the generic ʾelōhîm are not all found in the Gospels but are consonant with the character of God expressed there.

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YHWH

The four Hebrew consonants transliterated YHWH form what is known as the “tetragrammaton” (“four-lettered word”). This holy “name” (commonly pronounced “Yahweh” in academic circles) may be discerned in English translations of the Old Testament when the word “Lord” is printed in small capitals, and the name is associated with the verb “to be” (Exod. 3:14). Its precise sense remains unknown: “I am,” “I will be,” or even perhaps “I cause to be.” In the Hebrew Bible, YHWH is found often in combination with ʾĕlōhîm (“the Lord God”). The varied combinations of ʾĕlōhîm and YHWH form a key plank in some scholarly theories concerning the compilation of the Torah (the Pentateuch, the first five Old Testament writings). The short form for YHWH is yāh, which appears in a number of biblical names (e.g., “Elijah”) and in the cry “Hallelu-jah!” (= “Praise Y/Jah!”).

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Besides the trio of YHWH, ʾĕlōhîm, and ʾădōnāy, there are common biblical titles that evoke images or contexts: “God Most High” (ʾēl ʿelyôn) places God over other super-human beings, probably over rival tribal deities; “Lord of hosts” (YHWH ṣĕbāʾôt) pictures a warrior leading the heavenly armies; “Holy One of Israel” associates him with Israel; “God of the fathers/patriarchs” or “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” recalls Hebrew history. The Lord God, though exalted, reaches into human affairs—breathing life into Adam, calling Israel into being, writing the Ten Commandments on stone tablets by means of “his finger” (Exod. 31:18), and inspiring Israel’s leaders by his presence, or “Spirit” (e.g., Num. 11:25; 2 Sam. 23:10).

For hundreds of years, it seems, the Hebrews (and then Israelites) as a group did not deny outright the existence of other deities. Rather, they positioned their Lord above all others, practicing an exalted “henotheism” (the choice of one supreme God among others, e.g., Ps. 82:1) instead of the absolute monotheism now expressed in Judaism and Christianity. Even while the Shema (Deut. 6:4) and other passages imply a practical monotheism, we see a continuing Israelite admission that other deities exist in the proscriptions of biblical prophets against the worship of Baal and Molech. However, the association of the term YHWH with the verb “to be” came to involve an implicit denial of the “being” of other deities. The trajectory moves toward an acknowledgment of YHWH alone, emerging full-blown in the pointed sarcasm of (deutero-)Isaiah: “Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? . . . He plants a cedar. . . . Part of it he takes and warms himself. . . . The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it. . . . [A] deluded mind has led him astray, and he cannot save himself or say, ‘Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?’” (Isa. 44:10–20).

Probably by the Persian period (fifth century BCE), and certainly by the Common Era, Jews and then Christians were known for what others regarded as their eccentric notion that there is only one God worthy of worship—indeed, Christians came to be charged as “atheists,” as we see in the second-century Martyrdom of Polycarp.[72] At that time, Christian apologists also faced off with the gnostic movement, some of whose writers radically reinterpreted the Hebrew Scriptures, as we can verify from the cache of texts found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi. Gnostics reanimated the biblical stories with various deities, including a creator (the “Demiurge”) who is not the supreme God. When the biblical deity’s words “I alone am God” are placed in the mouth of the Demiurge, they are heard by readers no longer as a call to monotheistic faithfulness, but “as the height of . . . hubris and stupidity.”[73] Even in the wider religious setting of the second century, Jewish and Christian monotheism continued to be a curiosity.

We must also consider the Greek expression of biblical names for God. Both Hellenistic Jews and Christians throughout the empire mainly read their Scriptures in Greek translation called the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX), and so the Greek titles and phrases used for God were appropriated in the New Testament and Christian tradition. ʾĔlōhîm becomes theos, YHWH (with ʾădōnāy) is generally rendered kyrios (“Lord”), “the Most High” is rendered hypsistos, and “Lord of Hosts” is rendered kyrios pantokratōr (literally, “Lord–Ruler over all”). Interestingly, the “to be” connotation of YHWH comes to the fore in the participial Greek title ho ōn (“the One who is,” “the Existing One”), used in Christian worship and on icons of Jesus.

Especially notable is the tradition whereby two of God’s primary attributes came to be pictured as agents of God, beginning with Proverbs and Psalms and then developed in the rabbinic tradition, as well as in the Deuterocanonical writings. God’s “Word” (Hebrew, dābār; Greek, logos; and the associated Aramaic memra in the targumim) and God’s “Wisdom” (Hebrew, ḥokmâ; Greek, sophia) began as poetic personifications (e.g., Word in Ps. 33:6; Wisdom in Proverbs 8), which were then vividly amplified so that in the texts they seem to assume will and personality as quasi-independent beings alongside God.

In Wisdom of Solomon, we read: “For while gentle silence enveloped all things . . . your all-powerful Word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne, into the midst of the land that was doomed, a stern warrior carrying the sharp sword of your authentic command, and stood and filled all things with death, and touched heaven while standing on earth” (Wis. 18:14–16). Here the “Word” depicts both the Exodus “angel of death” and the Lord, who is sovereign over world history. Like the angel in Exodus, the Word enacts God’s commands; like the Lord, the Word is both transcendent and immanent. A similar phenomenon occurs in the figure of Wisdom (Wis. 7:22–8:8), who “is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty” (7:25), but who (like the Lord) is “one” (7:27). Thus, Wisdom demonstrates some of the characteristics of God but also provides a link between God and humanity, making them “friends of God.” Again, in Sirach 24, Wisdom dwells with Israel, especially in Jerusalem, while in Baruch 4:1, Wisdom is equated with the Torah, given to Israel from God by the hand of the angels. Wisdom and Word are strongly linked together, a bond implied in the poetic doublet of Wisdom of Solomon 9:1–2: “O God . . . who have made all things by your Word, and by your wisdom have formed humankind.” First Enoch, however, relates a more pessimistic story in which Wisdom cannot find a dwelling place on earth (not even in Israel) and so returns to heaven, allowing “Folly” full reign on the earth (1 En. 42).

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Deuterocanonical/Anagignoskomena/Apocryphal, Pseudepigraphal Writings and Parabiblical Writings

The term parabiblical refers to a myriad of writings that are connected by theme or narrative with the books that were eventually recognized as sacred by the Jewish rabbis, or as canonical by Christians. (The term canonical, or “according to the ‘rule’ of faith,” is a specifically Christian term, whereas rabbis,when they debated the limits of the Hebrew Bible, spoke of those books that required a ceremonial washing of hands.) Parabiblical books were written at various times and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1: The Friends of Jesus
• Part 2: The Enemies of Jesus
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Ancient Sources Index
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• Notes