In the course of the investigation, Pliny discovered something about the practices of Christian society. Our journey upriver has taken us to a very important period in the history of the world. It began with the heroic resistance of the Maccabees and flourished for a time under their successors, the.
In the capital, the presence of the temple gave the hierarchy dominant power and prestige.
The Founder of Christianity by C. H
Dodd
The Documents
But the interest of the work is much more centered on the account of Jesus' words. So far our attention has been concentrated on the Gospel record of Jesus' teachings. By "ministers of the gospel" he means Christian missionaries who spread the faith in the earliest days.
It is a story about things that actually happened, but in the light of the sequel, they take on an additional dimension.
Personal Traits
Dodd is recognized as one of the greatest New Testament scholars of the twentieth century. Sometimes it takes the form of the obvious reduction of big issues to the level of banalities. The images used were part of the mental furniture of the period; there is no.
The story is told by Matthew and Luke, with variations in detail, but with close agreement in the essential points of the dialogue.
The Teacher
Indeed, the parable of the lost sheep was (so Luke tells us) his response to such criticisms. It is equally an expression of Jesus' attitude and an image of the Godhead. But there is a further point: the maxim "Like father, like child" applies here, and it is in the application of this principle that we can recognize an emphasis which is characteristic of Jesus' teaching.
Jesus' answer is a reductio ad absurdum of any quantitative treatment of the question. Moreover, in the experiment we can hope to arrive at a fairer evaluation of the characteristic tendencies and emphases of the teaching of Jesus himself. Observance of the Sabbath may seem to us a relatively unimportant issue, but it was a sensitive issue.
He is reported to have made the point by explaining two of the Ten Commandments. There is nothing here that would alarm anyone familiar with the Old Testament or the Jewish teachings of the time. It was to the credit of the Pharisees that they stretched it -- for example, to save a life -- but within strict limits.).
It arose from the belief that with the creation of the kingdom of God. This is probably the meaning of the expression which is literally translated, "I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus."
The People of God
They were living a spiritual crisis, and the future of God's people in the world depended on the end of this crisis. His purpose was to create a community worthy of the name of God's people, a divine community, through. Each such instance was a miniature image of the way in which the young.
But he recognized the need for some carrier of the new life that was emerging. 34; they sit on twelve thrones as judges of the twelve tribes of Israel." 18 They are addressed in terms peculiar to God's people as an entity. Evidently this was fundamental in Jesus' mind to the whole idea of the divine Commonwealth.
Any other form of ambition to be first was in direct contradiction to the idea of the people of God, as understood by Jesus. This would be the end of the journey for him; he invited them to share it. We have seen how central to the ideal of the emergence of the people of God is the thought expressed in the parables of seed and harvest.
It was the postulate of the Jewish religion that Israel's status as God's people was based on a "covenant" that bound them to his service. 29 At the time of Jesus, the sects in Qumran considered themselves the people of the new covenant.
The Messiah
The charge most favored by the priests at that time was that they claimed to be the "King of the Jews." The accusation was, of course, set up for Roman ears. If we want to decode the symbolism, we can start with the words spoken by the "voice from heaven" tile. They come from the Old Testament. But if we conclude that Jesus saw his mission summed up in the ideal character of the Lord's servant, we encounter a certain problem.
We may rightly have such an analogy in mind when the Gospels present Jesus in terms appropriate to the servant of the Lord. It is in this sense that we can read the remarkable passage which in the three earlier Gospels immediately follows the scene. In a number of the significant words we have considered, we meet with the peculiar expression "Son of Man." 25 It is now time to ask what meaning we should attach to it.
Some of the predictions I mentioned point to a destiny that lies beyond suffering and death. They were anxiously debated, as we know from New Testament writings outside the Gospels. I suggest that it is in this light that we best understand the mysterious words about the coming of the Son of Man.
It is a vision of the final victory of the cause of God over all powers in the universe; it is also a vision of (expected) historic victory for Israel over its. This is not a bad summary, in the fewest words, of what Isaiah said about the servant of the Lord.
The Story: (I) Galilee
Jesus was not only (as we have seen) an observer of the everyday situation; he had done it himself. If we review Jesus' career as it appears in the Gospels, we can see that these were the keynotes of the whole thing. In pursuing his mission, he found himself obliged not only to neglect some of the finer points of current religious practice (such as fasting on proper days), but also to break some of the rules deemed necessary to promote the religion of to protect the people. Law (such as that of keeping the Sabbath).
According to Jewish tradition (as we have seen) this was one of the charges for which he was put to death. But now he could not submit to the claim of the family, although this claim was obligatory in Jewish society. He wants us to see in the meal of the five thousand a prototype of the sacramental meal in which Jesus gave.
But this does not necessarily beg the question of what was the place of this episode in the development of the mission in which Jesus was engaged. What remained was the memory of a perverse sense of mystery at the heart of the whole transaction. Informed guesswork, a legitimate tool of the historian, is often an indispensable tool for the historian of antiquity.
3 I tried to put together such a "portrait" from the parables in The Authority of the Bible, pp. The other gospels do not make this point, but it was most likely part of the Baptist's message.
The Story: (II) Jerusalem
However, he does not actually say that, and the extent of the defections need not be exaggerated. So this was the way in which the mission of the master's servant was to be fulfilled. In addition, the festival marked the liberation of Israel from Egypt - the birth of a nation.
They remember all too clearly some of the poetry of militant nationalism that was current. It was not to be expected that this open challenge to the priestly guardians of the temple should pass unnoticed by them. He appeared publicly in the temple and, in the presence of a large audience, delivered sharp criticisms of the official representatives of the Jewish religion.
It is clear that it can be nothing less than a termination of the lease and the re-letting of the property. One of the twelve disciples who were closest to Jesus was found to be willing to help them. We must bear in mind the ambiguous position of the Jewish council, the Sanhedrin.
But such an accusation would in no way discredit him in the eyes of the Jewish public; quite the opposite. The day went on; Jewish law required that the bodies be crucified.
The Story: (III) The Sequel
In any case, it is remarkable that this is the only place in the gospels where the belief that Christ has risen is a direct deduction from observing the state of the tomb. In the Bible, where angels are introduced, it is very often an indication that a truth is being conveyed that lies beyond the reach of the senses, a. In John, Mary, who laid the tomb open by removing the covering stone, concludes without investigation.
In any case, it is a shift in emphasis from the evidence of the empty tomb to a personal encounter with Jesus. Elsewhere in the New Testament, the proof of the empty tomb is never given, although most of its writers have much to say about Christ's resurrection. The passages, as I have cited, date back to a time well before the Gospels.
We can start with the earliest known recitation of the facts.5 This takes us far back to the gospels. It is with this background in mind that we must read the accounts of the appearances of the risen Christ in the closing pages of the gospels. Or rather, as they would have said, it was the rebirth of God's people, the resurrection of Israel from the dead, and they were in it.
It is because they speak from the center of this "new creation" that their testimony carries weight. In the community, the presence of the Lord no longer meant a sudden flash of recognition, completely convincing but soon over.
