Friday, March 5, 2010

Do Justice To The Event: Led Astray

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

That’s a mild way of saying that Jesus’s fellow Jews wanted him dead, deceased, demised. They were pining for Israel’s restoration via strict Torah observance and so given Jesus’s rambunctious ways they wanted him passed on, expired and gone to meet his maker; they wanted an ex-Jesus. (Not to be confused with ‘exegesis’).

The Babylonian Talmud says that Jesus was killed because “he led Israel astray”. According to Jewish Law -- e.g. Deut. 13 -- such national deception was punishable by death. Therefore given Jesus’s seemingly lax if not antagonistic attitude to what Wright calls “some of the most central and cherished symbols of the Judaism of his day”, and, moreover, “his replacing of them with loyalty to himself”, Jews thought they had no choice but to brand him as YHWH’s mortal enemy.

After all, look at his attitude and actions toward the Temple in his last days. He talked about its destruction, and even symbolically acted it out by turning over the tables within and pronouncing it corrupt. The modern day equivalent might be walking into the New York Stock Exchange and writing “Socialism is here to stay” in big red letters, or perhaps walking into St Peter’s Basilica and shouting “Luther was right!” repeatedly. Of course I’m not suggesting Jesus was a socialist, or Reformed for that matter. His criticism came from within Judaism. It came from one of their own, a fellow Jew, which is why it was so scandalous.

Of course the Jewish authorities presented Jesus to Pilate as a threat to Caesar, a disturber of pax romana, but they were not in the least bit concerned about his being such. In fact, if he was a genuine threat to the Roman Empire they might well have embraced him. Their Messiah was to be their great liberator from pagan oppressors. Jesus, though claiming Messiahship, did not fit the bill and so became a hindrance rather than a help.

I asked previously what Jesus’s crucifixion would have looked like to watching Jews. It would have looked like a false prophet getting his comeuppance. It would have looked like a man enduring the curse, the wrath, of YHWH, and justifiably so.

And yet, Jesus had said that he intended not to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it. He had said that doing YHWH’s will was his life’s work. What, then, are we to say about his death’s work? Was it somehow or another part of the Law’s fulfilment? Was it the will of Israel’s God? Why, according to Jesus, did he himself die?

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