Micah in Ancient Christianity

Reception and Interpretation

Riemer Roukema

• Editorial: De Gruyter
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783110663914
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Theology & Religion
• Categoría: History of Christianity

What happened when the writing of the Old Testament prophet Micah from the 8th century BCE was read and interpreted by Christians in the 1st to 5th century BCE? This research meticulously describes data from patristic commentaries and other ancient Christian works in Greek and Latin, as well as the remains of Gnostic receptions of Micah, and it analyses the interpretative strategies that were adopted. Attention is paid to the partial retrieval of Origen's Commentary on Micah, which is lost nowadays, but was used by later Christian authors, especially Jerome. This work includes the ancient delimitation of the Septuagint version and patristic observations on the meaning of particular terms. Other aspects are the liturgical readings from Micah's book up to the Middle Ages, its use in Christ's complaints about Israel on Good Friday (the Improperia), and a rabbinic tradition about Jesus quoting Micah. It is noted whenever patristic authors implicitly use or explicitly quote Jewish interpretations, many of which are supplied with parallels in contemporaneous or medieval Jewish works. This first comprehensive survey of the ancient Christian reception and interpretation of Micah is a valuable tool for Biblical scholars and historians.

VII Jesus’ quotation of Mic 1:7 in b‘Abodah Zarah

In § II.2 we saw that the only text from Micah that Jesus quoted according to the New Testament Gospels was the saying about the divided families from Mic 7:6. Yet there is one more attestation of Jesus quoting Micah, namely in the Babylonian Talmud and a related text. Although it cannot be established for sure whether this tradition originated from the historical Jesus, it is worthwhile to discuss it, because several scholars do take it seriously as a source that may go back to Jesus. If it was possibly transmitted by Jewish Christians, it deserves to be investigated in this study of the ancient Christian reception and interpretation of Micah.

VII.1 An encounter between Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and a Jewish Christian

In the Mishna, ‘Abodah Zarah is a treatise on idolatry. In its discussion in the Babylonian Talmud (b‘Abodah Zarah) Jesus is introduced as quoting, ‘For from the fee of a prostitute she gathered [them] and to the fee of a prostitute they will return’ (Mic 1:7de MT).¹ In Micah’s context this means that Samaria gathered her idol images (Mic 1:6a, 7a–c) from the wages she had earned by prostitution. In the words, ‘to the fee of a prostitute they will return’, the idol images seem to be the subject. The reference to prostitution is used in its figurative sense of idolatry, which may have included cultic prostitution, and the term has also been interpreted as an allusion to Samaria’s reliance on Assyria.²

In order to assess the meaning of this quotation in b‘Abodah Zarah it is necessary to discuss its context, which is a story (a baraita) about Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, a tannaitic rabbi who lived roughly from the 30s in the first century to ca 115.³ He dwelled in Lod (Lydda), but also travelled through Palestine.⁴ The story has been investigated by numerous scholars, whose interpretations are quite divergent.⁵ Benefiting from their various insights I will paraphrase the narrative and comment on it as far as is necessary for the understanding of the quotation from Mic 1:7 and its provenance, which implies that I will generally refrain from taking a position on the various other difficulties raised by this tradition. My interest is to find out whether we plausibly find here an element of the early Jewish-Christian reception of Micah.

The story tells that rabbi Eliezer was arrested because of heresy (‏מינות‏‎‎), and therefore he was led before the Roman governor to be judged. Further on it appears that the heresy he was accused of was his association with a Jewish Christian, so that he was under suspicion of being a Christian himself. Therefore the story seems to be situated during a persecution of Christians, probably in the beginning of the second century.⁶ The governor called him an old man and asked why he had occupied himself with such idle things. Eliezer professed his trust in the judge, by whom – according to a parenthesis – he meant his heavenly Father, but since the governor understood that he was referring to him, he acquitted the rabbi. When Eliezer came home his disciples wanted to comfort him, but he would not accept their consolation. Then rabbi Aqiba asked Eliezer whether perhaps he had ever heard a heretical teaching that had pleased him and might therefore be the reason for the denunciation and his arrest. Eliezer acknowledged that he suddenly remembered an encounter with one of the disciples of Yeshu ha-notsri (Jesus the Nazarene), called Jacob of Kefar Sekhaniah, in the upper market of Sepphoris. This Jacob had quoted the interdiction, ‘You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute…’ This has to be completed by the following words, ‘… and the hire of a dog⁷ into the house of the Lord your God to pay any vow’ (Deut 23:19 [23:18]). Jacob asked whether – in spite of this prohibition – it was permitted to use the fee of a prostitute for building a latrine for the high priest, apparently on the temple site.⁸ Eliezer did not reply to this, and Jacob continued that Jesus the Nazarene had taught him, ‘For from the fee of a prostitute she gathered [them] and to the fee of a prostitute they will return’ (Mic 1:7de), which meant, ‘they came from a place of filth, let them go to a place of filth’. The story does not explicate what this saying refers to, but apparently it means that – according to this story – Jesus had agreed with the spending of the fee of a prostitute on building a latrine for the high priest. It is told that at that time this view had pleased Eliezer, and that now – apparently years later – he grew aware that this must have been the reason for his arrest because of heresy, since he had transgressed the words, ‘Keep your way from her’, namely heresy, ‘and do not go near to the door of her house’ (Prov 5:8). The story identifies the adulterous woman of this text as heresy, so Eliezer’s quotation implies that he should not have conversed with a disciple of Jesus, who was a heretic, even though Eliezer could agree with Jacob’s view on spending the fee of a prostitute for a latrine for the high priest. If this report describes a real, historical conversation, it might have taken place in the 60s of the 1^st century, before the destruction of the temple in 70 CE.⁹

With some variations the story is also found in Qohelet Rabbah I, 24 on Eccl 1:8.¹⁰ According to this version, Jacob ascribed the quotation of Deut 23:19 (23:18) to ‘So-and-so’ (‏פלוני‏‎‎, a rabbinic designation of Jesus¹¹) and asked what was to be done with these things, i. e. the fees of a prostitute. Eliezer replied that they are forbidden, which means that it is forbidden to offer them to the temple to pay a vow. Jacob said that they are forbidden as an offering (‏קרבן‏‎‎)¹², but allowed for destruction (‏אבדן‏‎‎)¹³. Eliezer asked what this meant, to which Jacob replied, ‘Let bath-houses and latrines be made with them.’ Eliezer agreed with this and admitted that this halakha had escaped his memory. When Jacob saw that Eliezer agreed, he quoted the argument of ‘So-and-so’ (‏פלוני‏‎‎), ‘From excrements they (i. e. the fees of a prostitute) came, and to excrements they will go out’, as it is said, ‘For from the fee of a prostitute she gathered [them] and to the fee of a prostitute they will return’ (Mic 1:7de). The conclusion reads that they should be used for latrines for the people (‏לרבים‏‎‎, ‘for the many’). Eliezer liked this view, and much later he acknowledged that for this reason he was arrested because of heresy.

It is difficult to date such stories. It is assumed that the Babylonian Talmud was composed in the fifth century and Qohelet Rabbah in the seventh or eighth century,¹⁴ but the individual traditions may be much older. However, before we continue to assess the possibly historical context of Eliezer’s encounter with Jacob, a third version of this story must be mentioned, which is found in the Tosefta treatise Ḥullin II, 24.¹⁵ The Tosefta (which means ‘addition’, namely to the Mishna) is dated ca 300, so that it is older than b‘Abodah Zarah and Qohelet Rabbah.¹⁶ In Ḥullin the story about Eliezer’s arrest because of his presumed heresy due to his encounter with Jacob in Sepphoris is similar to the other versions, including a short reference to Yeshua (Jesus) ben Panthira, but the contents of the latter’s words is absent there. This might suggest that the references to Deut 23:19 (23:18) and Mic 1:7 were not found in the original version of this story and were added to the version found in b‘Abodah Zarah and the still later rendering in Qohelet Rabbah. If this were the case, it would be most unlikely that the quotation from Mic 1:7 might go back to an early Jewish-Christian tradition or even to Jesus himself. However this may be, the patristic authors do not show any awareness of this tradition.¹⁷

VII.2 Assessment of historical reliability

Yet – as I noted above – several scholars take this story seriously as an early and reliable tradition. Dan Jaffé considers it likely that Jacob’s view on the use of a prostitute’s fee and his reference to Jesus might be older than the synoptic Gospels. He argues that Jesus’ saying about the food that passes out into the latrine (Mark 7:19) and his attention paid to prostitutes (e. g. Matt 21:31; Luke 7:37 – 50) confirm that Jesus did not mince his words about such realities. Jaffé holds that the question of a latrine for the high priest could be urgent on Yom Kippur, when he had to stay in the temple day and night in order not to make himself unclean.¹⁸ Therefore it was not strange in itself that Eliezer and Jacob discussed this topic in a debate on halakha, for which the latter referred to Jesus. The quotation of a prophetic text, i. e. Mic 1:7de, as a clarification of a prohibition from the Torah is quite common in the Talmud. For such reasons – in Jaffé’s opinion – the view ascribed to Jesus does not necessarily originate with Jews who wanted to discredit him, as Joachim Jeremias thought.¹⁹ Thierry Murcia notes that, prior to Jaffé, Joseph Derenbourg, Heinrich Laible, Joseph Klausner, Robert Eisler, Saul Lieberman, Morris Goldstein, Marcel Simon, Moshe David Herr, Salomon Malka, and René-Samuel Sirat considered the episode of Eliezer’s arrest, including his debate with Jacob, authentic or probably authentic,²⁰ and that according to Morton Smith the teaching attributed to Jesus may be early and resembles the sayings in Q.²¹ We may add the name of Hans Bietenhard, who wrote that the story might be authentic.²² With regard to the halakha attributed to Jesus, however, Murcia refers to other scholars who contest or doubt its authenticity, such as – to mention only a few – Robert Travers Herford, Lawrence H. Schiffman, Daniel Boyarin, John P. Meier, and Simon Claude Mimouni.²³ Furthermore, Jacob Neusner concludes from his extensive research on Eliezer that very little is known for sure about the historical Eliezer, which also applies, therefore, to his encounter with Jacob and the latter’s reference to Jesus.²⁴ Likewise, Johann Maier denies the historical reliability of the whole story,²⁵ and Peter Schäfer considers the historical encounter between Eliezer and Jacob highly improbable, ‘let alone that the halakhic decision with regard to the hire of the harlot refers to an authentic saying of Jesus’.²⁶ Joshua Schwartz and Peter J. Tomson do not defend the historicity of the story and situate the halakha attributed to Jesus in a Babylonian context, which does not support a first-century Palestinian provenance.²⁷

If we should try to find an historical context for Jesus’ view of the use of the fee of the prostitute as an offering for the temple, we might think of a prostitute who complained that her gift was rejected on the basis of Deut 23:19 (23:18). When Jesus heard this, he was upset and quoted the words from Mic 1:7, meaning that the priest who had rejected the offering should have been more inventive and compassionate with the prostitute by accepting her offering for an appropriate purpose, such as a latrin...