Jesus and His Bible, Part 21

Agony and Trust

The gospel of Mark propels Jesus through his trial before the religious leaders to his appearance before Pilate, the release of Barabbas, the sentence of crucifixion, and his torture by the Roman soldiers. Then Jesus carried his cross as far as he could until the soldiers pressed Simon of Cyrene into service to carry it the rest of the way. 

As Jesus hung above them on the cross, with the inscription THE KING OF THE JEWS over his head, the soldiers below divided up his garments. Then Mark quotes the Jewish Testament for only the second time as narrator: “they ‘divided up his garments among themselves, casting lots for them’” (Psalm 22:19), and then “those passing by were…’wagging their heads’ (Psalm 22:8). These quotations are irresistible to the narrator as deriving from from Psalm 22 which Jesus quoted from the cross.

Years ago, I heard Brendan Manning preach on this moment in Jesus’s dying, and I think what he said set me off on this whole study of the scriptures Jesus quoted and how knowing their context lights up aspects of Jesus’s interactions that would otherwise remain obscure.  

What I took from what Brendan said is this: Many people think when they read what Jesus said at the moment of his dying, that God abandoned him. This is understandable, given that Jesus “cried out with a loud voice, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’” (Mark 15:34). From this understanding has arisen the notion that when Jesus took on himself the sins of the world, God could no longer look on him or be in his presence. In this understanding, God turned his back on Jesus because of our sin which he took on as his own. 

What Brendan said that changed everything for me was that when Jesus quoted Psalm 22, he brought into the event the entire psalm. Jesus made the psalm about him, and the significance is enormous. Specifically, said Brendan, the shift of the latter half of the psalm into an assertion of trust and confidence in God was implicit from the quotation, making it clear that while Jesus truly suffered as any human being would, in the midst of agony he could still affirm his confidence in God.  It came clear to me that there was no more separation between Jesus and his Father than there is between any suffering human and God. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me”—another statement of faith in another Davidic psalm.

The editors of The Jewish Study Bible  discuss the Davidic authorship of the Psalms ascribed to him, noting: “An ancient and pervasive tradition, going back to the Bible itself, attributes the authorship of Psalms to David” (1281), and that this tradition has continued into modern times for both Jews and Christians. Certainly this would have been the tradition received by Jesus, and his quoting a David psalm is deliberate as well as appropriate to his suffering. (Modern scholars are skeptical that David wrote all the psalms attributed to him; this does not seem very relevant to the context in which Jesus grew up and learned the scriptures.)

In his anguish, Jesus cried out with this Davidic psalm to express his brokenness and isolation. However, by quoting this psalm, he also identified himself with David, an anointed one who was targeted for assassination by King Saul. a king who also faced abandonment by his people on occasion, It is possible that in this quotation, Jesus asserted again his vocation as the anointed one of God and the son of David, in fact the true King of the Jews.

The psalm begins with the psalmist’s lament that he feels God to be far away from him in his time of dire need.  “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from my deliverance and from the words of my groaning” (Psalm 22:1). And he continues in that sorrow and despair for nearly half the psalm until a shift occurs in verse 22.  Robert Alter translates that verse this way, “Rescue me from the lion’s mouth. And from the horns of the ram You answered me” (The Hebrew Bible: The Writings, 68).  Alter’s use of past tense goes against the majority of translators, who make it parallel to the first half of the verse: Rescue me…Answer me.  However, Alter justifies his use of the past tense as a literal translation of the received text, and writes “perhaps the verb in the past tense is intended as a compact turning point: God has indeed answered the speaker’s prayer” (69, n.).  

Following that shift, the psalm becomes one of praise, the speaker calling all people to praise the Lord.  God “has not spurned nor has despised the affliction of the lowly, and has not hidden His face from him; when he cried out to Him, He heard” (Psalm 22:25, tr. Alter, Writings 69).  To see this affirmation implicit in the first cry of agony means that God did not abandon Jesus at his lowest point. When Jesus cried out, God heard him. And we, in our small flawed selves, can with confidence know that God does not and will not abandon us either, no matter how alone or agonized  we feel.

Additionally, if we read to the end of Psalm 22, we see again the vision of a humanity reconciled to God. “And all the families of the nations will worship before thee; for the Kingdom is the Lord’s, and he rules over the nations.” Even the dead will bow before him, which, writes Alter, “is unusual because a reiterated theme in Psalms is that the dead, mute forever, cannot praise God” (n., 69)  But for a Christian reading this through the lens that Jesus spoke truth about the resurrection of the dead, it is the most natural and hopeful vision possible.

As a literary scholar, I have frequently looked at the context of allusions and quotations writers incorporate for enlightenment and expansion of the text before me. This is why Brendan Manning’s exposition stopped me in my complacent assumption that Jesus’s quotations of his Bible say only what they appear to say. It seems completely reasonable to me now to assume instead that they said far more to his scripturally alert audience than they appear to say, and these reverberations account in part for the hostility with which religious leaders met Jesus. 

In this specific instance, the gulf between thinking that God abandoned Jesus because of sin and thinking that Jesus invoked the trusting and even confident ending of Psalm 22 is enormous. God can look on sinful persons, God loves sinful persons, God hears sinful persons when they cry out their distress, and God will save them. We have only to look at the flawed humans in Jesus’s Bible to see this is true.

Jesus and His Bible, Part 20

Jesus Asserts His Messiahship

To remind ourselves, after referring to himself as the shepherd, Jesus and his followers (except Judas) went to the Mount of Olives, where Jesus prayed and his disciples slept. Judas arrived with an armed crowd and identified Jesus by a kiss. One of the followers drew a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s slave, but Jesus healed it. Jesus pointed out that they had many times before when they could have arrested him. His followers fled, and some followed at a distance.

Jesus was put on trial before the Sanhedrin, with several testifying against him, but their stories were inconsistent.  Eventually, the high priest asked him directly, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus responded, “I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62). With this statement Jesus invoked not only scriptures from his Bible, but also reminded the leaders of what he has said publicly in the past that they have not appreciated or believed.

It is possible, as we saw in Part 12, that by using “I am,” Jesus reminded his hearers of the words of God to Moses, “I AM has sent you.” This time Jesus applied the “I am” to himself, and those who recalled his earlier discourse would have been infuriated.

The second part of Jesus’s reply again alludes to David’s Psalm 110, with the invitation from God to the anointed one to sit at God’s right hand, the place of favor and authority (Psalm 110:1). Jesus repeated the offense he originally gave to the religious leaders by reminding them of the question they could not answer. This added fuel to the fire for those questioning him.  (See also the discussion of this Psalm in Part 14, for further reading.)

Jesus then quoted Daniel 7:13 once again to assert his being given authority and dominion by God, making public the words he shared with his followers about the destruction of the temple.  (See also Part 16 for extended discussion).

Jesus’s quotations from his scriptures function to remind his enemies of what he had said earlier. The leaders conducting this trial had already determined that Jesus was not the Messiah, so his claim to be Messiah could be labeled blasphemy. Of course, since he is who he says he is, it is not blasphemy at all but merely truth-telling.

Jesus and His Bible, Part 19

 The Suffering Shepherd

The story in Mark moves from the argument about the perfume to the oncoming disaster. Judas met with the religious leaders and offered to betray Jesus. Then as Passover began, Jesus and his disciples observed the first night of Passover with a supper. Jesus told them that one of them would betray him, to that man’s harm. He blessed the bread and broke it, and said, “Take it, this is my body." Then he gave thanks for the wine, and said, “This is My blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many.” Then they sang a hymn.

On their way to the Mount of Olives, Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, because it is written, I will strike down the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered” (Mark 14:27). He added, “After I have been raised, I will meet you in Galilee.” But Peter and the others insisted they would stay with him.

The scripture Jesus quoted is Zechariah 13:7: “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man my associate, declares the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd that the sheep may be scattered; and I will turn my hand against the little ones.”

The historical context of Zechariah is after the return of the exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem under Cyrus the Persian and the rebuilding of the temple in the 6th century BCE (Robert Alter, “Prophets,” The Hebrew Bible, A Translation with Commentary, 1193). This quotation comes midway in a prophecy that begins with Zech. 12:1. In that prophecy, Zechariah reverses the oracles against Israel to describe Israel as a bowl of poison, a burdensome stone, and a flaming torch to annihilate any invaders. God will destroy the nations coming against Jerusalem, and after that will pour out “grace and graciousness” upon David’s house and those who live in Jerusalem (Alter, “Prophets,” 1380.)  Chapter 13 goes on to promise cleansing for Israel’s offenses and impurities, the demise of false idols, and the punishing of false prophets. 

However, it pivots to this poem, which is what Jesus quotes: “Sword, rouse against My shepherd, against My companion man—said the Lord of Armies. Strike the shepherd and let the sheep be scattered, and I will bring My hand back against the shepherd lads” (Alter, “Prophets,” 1382-83).  The chapter ends with the apocalyptic vision that two-thirds of the population will die and the remaining third will be purified as if by fire, until they call out for God and say that the Lord is their God.  

This particular quotation continues Jesus’s theme of apocalypse, perhaps intensified by his foresight that he will soon suffer and die. Indeed, Christians from early times have seen in Zechariah 12:10 and 13:1 predictions about the Jews in relation to Jesus. “They will look on the one whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for him, as one mourns for an only son…in that day a fountain will be opened for sin and for impurity.” Understandably, the Jewish commentators see Zech. 12:10 as directly following from the battles and sieges foreseen early in the chapter; thus this mourning is for all their countryfolk who have died in the battle. Intriguingly, the Hebrew can be translated as singular or plural: “they shall lament to Me about those who are slain, wailing over them as over a favorite son and showing bitter grief as over a first-born” (Berlin and Brettler, eds., The Jewish Study Bible, 1264). 

The way Jesus uses Zech. 13:7 not only references apocalyptic cleansing, but also invokes the promise of reconciliation that comes before and after this passage, so that even though a disaster is coming upon his followers, the result will be their longer-term spiritual good.

Jesus and His Bible, Part 18

 Generosity and the Poor

Following his apocalyptic sermon, Jesus told his followers that they would need to stay alert because no one except God knows when the end of all things will occur.  Despite this clear statement, Christians through the ages have speculated and predicted the end of the age to the day and hour. What Jesus did know was that his own days were numbered because the religious leaders were looking for ways to seize him in order to kill him.  

Jesus was in Bethany at dinner when a woman with an alabaster vial of costly perfume came in, broke it and poured it over his head.  By itself, this was a remarkable act of generosity, but to some it was wasteful.  “She should have sold it and given the money to the poor,” they said to each other.  

However, Jesus commended the woman who poured perfume over him and defended her action to those critical of it.  “She has anointed my body for burial,” he said, “and her gift will be spoken of in the whole world.” Despite Jesus’s advice to stay alert and his clearly stated expectation that he would die soon, their concern was to disparage the woman’s gift because of “the poor.” It appears that only the woman took Jesus seriously and “she has done what she could.”

But Jesus did address their concern for the poor: “For the poor you always have with you, and whenever you wish, you can do them good; but you do not always have me” (Mark 14:7). This comment immediately turned the spotlight onto the critics: what had they done for the poor lately? 

Jesus’s comment alludes to a passage in the Torah: “For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land’” (Deut. 15:11). 

The text commends generosity toward the poor, but not just handing out money to them. The context of this verse in Deuteronomy is the requirement to remit all debts every seven years. This requirement, if observed, would go a long way to lessening poverty, particularly generational poverty.  Every seven years, a family would have a chance to live and work without indebtedness, a chance to start over. Specifically, the Deuteronomy text goes on to insist that every Hebrew who must sell himself or herself into slavery must be freed in the seventh year, and must be sent away with supplies, always remembering the years of slavery in Egypt, and how the Lord set Israel free and furnished them with the goods of Egypt in their escape.

Once again Jesus rebuked the religious elite of the day for observing jots and tittles of the law but ignoring the law of love for neighbor. By including this quotation, Jesus reminded all his hearers of the requirements of Mosaic law that go to mitigating poverty, a law that each of them is responsible to fulfill. These requirements are with them and us daily. I’m reminded of the times I have heard “the poor are always with you” as an excuse for apathy, but instead Jesus and the Law make this persistence of poverty the reason for practical compassion.  Remit their debts. Give them access to your extra. Help them make a new start.

Jesus and His Bible, Part 17

 Reconciliation and God’s Kingdom

Like the Prophets of his Testament, Jesus first called out the disobedience of Israel and their breaking of covenant with God. But also like the Prophets, Jesus then envisioned a future of reconciliation. Israel will serve him, and all exiles will come home, and their hearts will be devoted to loving God, as is evident in the allusion here in Mark 13:27 to Deuteronomy 30:4. In the context of that verse, God warns Israel that if they disobey and break covenant, he will scatter them among the nations. But if they return to the Lord and obey him with their whole heart and soul, then the Lord will restore them from captivity.

“If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back.” They will return to the land God has given them, and God will “circumcise your hearts to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live” (Deut. 30:4).

Like other prophets, Jesus also invoked a vision of a humanity reconciled in its entirety to God. He alludes also to the prophet Zachariah, who, during the reign of Darius the Mede, sees an angel going to measure Jerusalem, and the angel says that God will be the glory in the midst of Jerusalem, that it will not need walls to protect it, because God will be a wall of fire around her. God says to Israel to return home.

 “Flee from the land of the north, for I have dispersed you as the four winds of the heavens.” Zechariah goes on to say that God is coming to dwell in the midst of Zion and “many nations will join themselves to the Lord in that day and will become my people” (Zach. 2:6). This carries forward the vision of a humanity reconciled to God.

Jesus placed his vision in the tradition of the Prophets by invoking Isaiah and Zechariah. He brings in the books of Moses by quoting Deuteronomy (the last to be written down, often dated to the Babylonian exile). He also quoted from the book of Daniel, a book of conundrums, with its pinpoint accuracy about the history of the Middle East up to the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and its far flung predictions in the ending chapters that no one has yet seen fulfilled.  

Jesus referenced by these quotations the covenant of obedience between Israel and God, the breaking of which led to Israel’s exile and after their return to Jerusalem, the collusion of some of Israel with the Greek invaders to the profanation of their Temple. He also spoke of God’s judgment on the occupying powers. He stated that the Israel of his own time was again breaking the covenant, some colluding with the invaders, that they would therefore be dispersed and exiled, and that their own Temple would be profaned and destroyed. He warned his followers that because of their suffering, they would be vulnerable to claims by false messiahs, but reminded them that the work before them will still be to spread the good news of God’s kingdom and God’s Messiah Jesus while enduring unto death.

He asserted as well that the coming of the Son of Humanity will put an end to nations and armies (which was opposite to what Israel hoped for) and that His kingdom will include all humanity. We hope to see this literally true, but we remember as well that Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is among/within you.” This helps define our relationship to nations and armies in our present day. Our first loyalty is always to the Kingdom of God and the King God has chosen, namely Jesus.

Jesus and His Bible, Part 16

 Apocalypse and the Kingdom

Facing into his own oncoming murder by the Jewish and Roman authorities, Jesus continued his apocalyptic mood and prophecy. He predicted false Christs who would lead even the chosen ones astray, if that were possible. Then, as it seems to me, he spoke about the end of the world, as, perhaps, does Daniel. He reminded his hearers to remember the fig tree, and to learn to watch the signs as they watch for leaves and buds, so they can know that the end is near. He said that “this race” will not pass away before the end occurs, and that his words are eternal. He also said that no one knows the exact time, except his Father, so stay alert.  

“The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling, and the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken, and then they shall see the son of man coming in clouds, and he will gather together his chosen from the four winds, from the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of heaven” (Mark 13: 24-27).

Here Jesus alluded to the prophetic words of Isaiah: 

“Behold the day of the Lord is coming, cruel, with fury and burning anger, to make the land a desolation; and he will exterminate its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light; the sun will be dark when it rises, and the moon will not shed its light. Thus will I punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud, and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless” (Isaiah 13:10).

This passage in Isaiah is first to be understood as an oracle concerning Babylon, in which God calls his warriors to do battle against Babylon. Isaiah foresees that God will raise up the Medes against Babylon, destroying them completely. The fact that Jesus quoted a passage reminding his hearers of deliverance from captivity spoke to the crowd’s hope of deliverance from Rome, and must have made the leaders of the nation more uneasy, as they already feared retribution from Rome if anything like a political uprising occurred.  But Jesus also included the leaders of his own people among the wicked, arrogant, haughty, and ruthless. They might have called his diatribes against them to mind as he quoted Isaiah.

Next, Jesus referenced a prophecy where Isaiah names Edom (Isaiah 33) as a target for wrath, and prays for and celebrates Zion’s survival. Then Isaiah shifts to God’s indignation against all the nations, all their armies.

Isaiah 34:4 “And all the host of heaven will wear away, and the sky will be rolled up like a scroll; and their hosts will also wither away as a leaf withers from the vine, or as one withers from the fig tree.” 

When Jesus quoted from this passage, he put both Herod (who was Idumean, or of the Edomite people) and then all nations on notice that the time will come when all their military and political might will wither away.  Additionally, the fig tree and the vine specifically reminded his hearers of the frequent use of these plants to symbolize Israel itself.  There was nothing reassuring in any of this for his immediate hearers.

Still in an apocalyptic vein, Jesus invoked Daniel’s vision of “the Ancient of Days.” This vision is set within the reign of Belshazzar of Babylon. Daniel sees “The Ancient of Days” on a throne, surrounded by thousands and thousands, and the books were opened. The boasting beast is slain and thrown on the fire.

Daniel 7:13 “I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a Son of Man was coming. And He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages might serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and his kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.” Daniel asks for an explanation, which is more of a reiteration of what he has seen than an explanation.

When Jesus quoted from this passage, it is easy to hear him repeating his self-identifying as the Son of Humanity to whom God will give everlasting dominion, whom all peoples, nations, and languages will serve. I think Jesus’s use of this passage underlies the Christian understanding that aspects of Daniel’s apocalypse point toward Jesus. 

The vision cited here in Daniel 7 foresees that all peoples will serve the Son of Humanity, and emphasizes the grace and inclusive nature of God's Kingdom even as the political powers and rulers of nations are defeated. This speaks against nationalism and political partisinship: our primary loyalty is to the kingdom where Jesus rules.

Jesus and His Bible, Part 15

 Jesus and the Temple, Actual and Symbolic

This post will repeat some of the content of earlier posts, but I’ve put that content in to address a central preoccupation of Mark 11-13, namely the Temple as the central symbol of the nation of Israel. 

Starting in Mark 11, Jesus arrived at the Temple, which formed the focus of his attention for the next three complete chapters of Mark, ending with his trial before the Sanhedrin.  The Temple was the holiest of sites for the Jewish nation, containing in its deepest recesses the Holy of Holies where the High Priest visited God once a year. Jesus had visited the Temple many times over his lifetime as a devout Jew, and this visit was his last.  

Embedded in the narrative are symbols relating to the nation of Israel. Jesus cursed the fig tree for being fruitless, reminding his followers of the traditional symbolism in which the fig tree represents Israel. This fig tree which has put all its energy into leaves rather than into buds that will fruit is a living parable. Its owners have not pruned it into fruitfulness (as per Sarah Ruden, The Gospels, 43, n.).  The next day, the dried up tree was a pointed warning to his followers about what was coming for Israel and the temple.

The allusion provided by the fig tree signifies in two directions. First, the ideal of human life is often referred to in the first Testament as sitting under one’s own vine and fig tree. National peace allows unmolested cultivation of crops, including those with some degree of luxury and pleasure.  This picture of peace is found throughout the Jewish scriptures.  Second, the prophets often target this picture and show its destruction as a sign of God’s displeasure and judgment. The prophet Joel depicts the judgment of the Lord as coming in a horde of locusts destroying the vines and fig trees, and the regeneration of Israel as productive vine and fig tree (1:7, 11; 2:22). The prophet Hosea, speaking for God: “I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness, … as the first ripe in the fig tree…” but they followed after idols (9:10).  The prophet Amos identifies the diseased and worm-eaten vines and fig trees as the judgment of God, who says, “yet you have not returned to me” (4:9). It would be hard for people familiar with the prophets to miss this allusion.

In case this was too subtle an allusion, Jesus then told a pointed and provocative parable about a vineyard.  What immediately precedes this parable in Mark is the confrontation between the priests, etc., and Jesus over where his authority is from.  

“A man planted a vineyard, and put a wall around it, and dug a vat under the winepress, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey” (Mark 12:1). 

No one familiar with the Hebrew prophets would have missed this quotation from the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 5, the prophet writes: “Let me sing now for my well-beloved a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard.  My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. And he dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. And he built a tower in the middle of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; then he expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones. And now…I will lay it waste…For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his delightful plant. Thus he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress…Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil…Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and clever in their own sight.” The prophecy goes on to predict the defeat and downfall of the nation of Israel.

Jesus essentially said that the same conditions that provoked judgment before have occurred again, and even worse, and how can they hope to escape?  This had to be infuriating: Jesus tapped into the Jewish national fear that they would lose their holiest of places, the Temple,  which God inhabited, and that they would again be dispersed as exiles. And it confirmed their suspicion that Jesus’s message and person have political implications.  This suspicion became more intense as he continued.

The disciples pointed out the grandeur of the Temple, and Jesus said it would be torn down. They asked when, and he said, “Many will come in My name saying, ‘I am He!’ There will be wars, earthquakes, famines, the beginning as of birth pangs. You will be persecuted for My sake, and the Holy Spirit will give you the words to speak. Family members will deliver you to death, and all will hate you because of me. The one who endures will be saved. Then the Abomination of Desolation appears. Run for the hills, don’t stop to take your valuables. This will be the worst trouble since the beginning of creation, and no one will survive if the Lord does not shorten those days.  And do not believe any who say, ‘Here is the Christ.’” 

These are terrifying words, but for the Jewish hearers, the worst is yet to come.

“But when you see ‘the abomination of desolation’ standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (Mark 13:14).

This famous phrase, “the abomination of desolation,” comes out of the book of Daniel. (I think the advice to the reader was interpolated by the gospel writer, knowing that his Gentile readers needed to do some research, rather than a direct quotation from Jesus.) 

The fact that Jesus quoted from the apocalyptic book of Daniel requires attention. I was brought up to read the whole Bible with an ingenuous understanding that the stories were written just after the events they narrate, sort of like a diary, that prophecies were about future events, and that events took place as literally as their representation in the text. I also shared with others like me an anxiety over any question that opened up the possibility that scripture included fiction or legend or even oral tradition that was written down much later than the events, or that prophecy could legitimately be insights about events current to the prophet. 

As I myself learned a dead language, Anglo-Saxon (Old English), and grappled with the trouble of translating it, and then investigated the questions arising from the relationship of the text to historical events (see Beowulf for an example), I became less anxious about the Bible as well. As a Christian, the Bible remains a measuring stick for my behavior and a source of my understanding of who God is and what Jesus came to do for us, my sacred text.  I have become more at ease with thinking of it also as a complex text with many kinds of literature in it. It could have as a motto “Let the reader understand” meaning “This is going to take some study and imagination on your part, reader.”

Also, as I grew in my experience of God’s love and my understanding of God’s character, the literal interpretation of events in the Bible became less crucial to my faith. I had existential experiences of God in my life that pointed me toward seeing the whole of the Bible as the record of others’ experiences of God. The religious communities who discerned what should be in the Bible seemed to me to have chosen a collection that requires reverent imagination to reconcile together. I also became convinced that we cannot read innocently, or in other words, without the pressures of our upbringing and our experience and our allegiances, and thus that before accepting any one reading, it must be tested against the whole Bible, and particularly against the character and teaching of Jesus.

For me, the book of Daniel presents all of the textual problems that previously I could barely acknowledge.  According to The Jewish Study Bible, it has two parts: legends of Daniel and other Jewish heroes in the royal courts and four apocalyptic visions. Complicating the matter is the fact that both Hebrew and Aramaic are used, but do not define the boundary between the two parts. The first part probably circulated orally in the 4^th to 2^nd centuries BCE, and the second part likely dates to the last year of the Maccabean revolt (164 BCE) (JSB, 1640). As with other apocalyptic literature, the scholarly understanding is that they are written after the facts they describe, a symbolic recounting of the history that gives credence to the prophecies about the future (JSB, 1642).  Robert Alter points out the similarities between Daniel and the Apocrypha apocalyptic texts, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls, all written in the 2^nd century BCE (Writings, 747). 

Jewish commentary notes the occurrence for the first and only time in the Jewish Scriptures of the idea of personal resurrection in Daniel 12:2-3. There is also an emphasis on the faithful few, and a judgment separating those who deserve reward from those who deserve disgrace.  This resurrection was a tenet of faith for the Pharisees of Jesus’s time and persists in some Jewish sects to the present.

Jewish and Christian commentators see different things in this book. Christians have seen prefigurations of Christ; Jewish rabbis have seen the book as a symbolic description of the exilic past and present threats (1642). Thus, the Jewish Scriptures categorize Daniel with “The Writings,” while the Christian Scriptures place it among the prophetic books. This reflects how I understand what goes into the act of reading and understanding: we are unavoidably biased in how we interpret what we read, even when we try very hard to be neutral. So it interests me even more to see what Jesus emphasizes out of Daniel and how he appears to understand it.

So back to Jesus referencing “the Abomination of Desolation.” The first reference is in Daniel 9:27. During the first year of Darius, the Mede, Daniel prays for compassion on his people, repents on their behalf, reminds God of the despair of the chosen people.  While he is praying, Gabriel comes and gives him insight into the destiny of his people. They will have “70 weeks” to restrain transgression, seal up sins, make atonement, bring in everlasting righteousness and anoint the holy place. After 69 weeks, the Messiah will be cut off, and a foreign prince will come to destroy the city and the sanctuary. He will in the 70^th week stop the offerings, “and on the wing of abomination will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”

Commentary in The Jewish Study Bible identifies the word Messiah, which means “anointed one,” with the high priest Onias III, killed in 171 BCE. The foreign prince is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who placed new altar stones on the Temple altar and offered pagan sacrifices (JSB, 1660, n.). Scholars believe that a portion of the Jewish nation at the time collaborated with Antiochus. 

By referencing this history, Jesus invoked the understanding from the prophets that the Jewish people suffered invasion and exile because of their idolatry, but he also challenged the politics of his present day. The Sadducees, the priests, were willing to collaborate with Herod and Pilate, representatives of the Roman occupiers, in order to rid themselves of Jesus, fearing that Jesus himself would provoke an invasion by his talk of a kingdom. The Pharisees were willing to cooperate with the Sadducees, their religious opponents, in order to rid themselves of Jesus, who consistently provoked them by pointing out how their outward pious observances covered inward corruption and compromise. Jesus foresaw that their efforts to preserve the political and religious status quo would in the near future be desolated by invasion and ruin. Jesus also contributed  to the interpretation that the Messiah referenced in Daniel applied to him also as God’s anointed one. Death is the fate of God’s anointed ones who stand in the way of political and religious self-perpetuation and self-aggrandizement.

During the reign of Cyrus the Persian, Daniel previews (or reviews) the shifting empires of the area. A particularly evil king, a usurper of power, will lose a battle, and take his disappointment out on the people of the holy covenant. “And forces from him will arise, desecrate the sanctuary fortress, and do away with the regular sacrifice. And they will set up the abomination of desolation” (Daniel 11:31). And he will entice those irreligious away from the covenant but the people who know their God will display strength and take action.

This again details the rise and course of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (JSB, 1664), including the Jewish sympathizers who enable him to take over the Temple worship and the Maccabees who “take action” to avenge the desecration.

This next passage comes toward the end of Daniel, where the writing has moved from the symbolic review of history into apocalyptic prophecy. The shift occurs at Daniel 11:40, with the phrase, “At the time of the end.” The events described from here to the end of Daniel have no historical reference, making this a foretelling of the future, in which a major battle will occur in the area near Jerusalem. A time of great suffering will occur, the worst since there was a nation. Wickedness and goodness will be separated and appear in clarity. When the power of the holy people is shattered, the events are completed. Daniel does not understand, and asks what will be the final end. “Many will be purged, purified and refined; but the wicked will act wickedly, and none of the wicked will understand, but those who have insight will understand. And from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1290 days” (Daniel 12:11).

Perhaps Jesus was foretelling the Roman invasion in 70 CE as a fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy. At the same time, Jesus’s quotation alludes to the historical abomination of desolation, the idolatrous profanation of the holy place by a political leader, supported in his despicable action by some of the chosen people. It is possible that Jesus used the historical (and possible future) profanation as a metaphor for the way he saw the religious establishment of his day profaning the Temple by making it a “den of thieves.” Perhaps also Jesus was thinking about how his own person would be violated and destroyed at the behest of Jewish leaders using the tools of the Romans. This possibility resonates with Jesus’s words as reported in other gospels, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” referring, as other gospel writers say, to his own body.

Jesus and His Bible, Part 14

The Messiah and Politics

In Mark 11, Jesus entered Jerusalem to wild acclaim, disrupted the Temple businesses by throwing the vendors out and overturning their tables, and signaled his sense that the temple system was fruitless and would die by cursing the fig tree. Subsequently, through Mark 12, people ask him a long series of questions.  The first, asking where he got his authority from, he answered with a question. The second, asking if it was according to Jewish law to pay taxes to Caesar, Jesus answered with the famous “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” The third, asking about whose wife the much married woman would be in the resurrection, and the fourth, asking which was the greatest commandment in the Jewish Law, we have already discussed.

Now Jesus poses a question of his own. “How is it that the scribes say that the Christ, the Messiah, is the son of David? David himself said in the Holy Spirit, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put thine enemies beneath thy feet.’ So if David calls him Lord, in what sense is he David’s son?” (Mark 12:35-37). 

The religious authorities do not answer this question. And it is a puzzler.  

Here is the context in Jesus’s scripture:

Psalm 110:1 “The Lord says to my Lord: sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies a footstool for thy feet.” This Psalm is full of political promises. God tells the king to rule over his enemies. Later in the psalm, God promises that he will be at the king’s right hand, shattering kings, judging nations, filling them with corpses. The scribes and religious leaders cannot safely talk about this psalm without sounding like rebels against Rome.  

Further, this Psalm is a promise made by God to the king, promising him a priesthood like Melchizedek’s, an ancient priest/king at the time of Abram.  Both Saul and David occasionally took priestly roles. Additionally, Melchizedek is also possibly a pun meaning rightful king (Jewish Study Bible, 1408, n.). I suspect its interpretation was controversial at the time of Jesus, and Jesus knew it.  

The way Jesus quotes it is to take David as the speaker and the “my lord” as a son of David.  This is not a self-evident interpretation. Some present-day Jewish commentary suggests instead that David is the psalmist writing about himself as king in the third person and reinforcing the idea that God is on his side. 

Though Christian commentators adopt the whole of this psalm as a prophecy for which Jesus is the Messianic fulfillment, it is in fact full of puzzles. For example, the victories described are military and partisan, in that God works judgment upon “the nations, crushing heads far and wide.” This does not accurately describe the work Jesus said he came to do. Further, expecting that Jesus in a Second Coming will be qualitatively different, even militant and violent, does its own violence to the character of Jesus demonstrated at his first coming. Jesus was militant against hypocrisy, greed, power-hunger, and pride when he came the first time, and these will be the great enemies he defeats when he returns.

Jesus quoted this verse to silence those baiting him. He asked the people how it is that the scribes say the Messiah is the son of David, particularly since David in his Messianic psalm calls his “son” my Lord.  The crowd enjoyed hearing him riddle the religious experts. (This reminds me of the religious debates so popular with the ordinary folks in the 17^th century in England, a time when people went to war over versions of the Christian religion.) 

But it is hard to imagine Jesus simply engaging in riddling one-ups-manship. Why this riddle at this time?  The immediate context in Mark is one in which Jesus was frequently quoting the Hebrew scriptures at his enemies, making clear that he knew they were opposing him, making clear that he would be the murdered son of the vineyard owner, who is God, and making clear that God is the God of the living, not corpses, and that death will not be the end. He also made clear that the mission of Israel was not self-involved purity but loving each other as neighbors and loving the stranger as oneself also.  They were meant to bring God to the world, not keep God to themselves.

He followed this quotation with specific criticism of the hypocrisy of the religious experts, who showed off their prayers while impoverishing the helpless.  This reinforces his teachings elsewhere about taking care of human need as being more important than religious observances.

This particular quotation spoke to the Jewish hope for military victory over national enemies, and Jesus invoked this in a way that both put his questioners on the spot and undercut this political understanding of the Messianic aspect of the psalm.