Dat geeft niet, er gaat nog een semi-professionele redactie overheen, maak je er maar niet druk om.
quote:
Factor #16 -- Miscellaneous Contrarium
In this section we will be placing miscellaneous notes about teachings and attitudes of Jesus and early Christianity which were contrary to what was accepted as normal in the first century. Some of these will to some extent overlap with factors above (especially newness, #4). Because this section was added later than 1-15, there is no parallel to it in the three "other religion" essays below.
From Malina and Rohrbaugh's Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels and the one on John as well:
* Jesus taught people to break even with family, if needed, for the sake of the Kingdom; he also indicated a highly inclusive assembly (Matt. 8:11-12) in a highly inclusive society. Christianity itself, as we see above, had beliefs which would have alienated others. Was it worth the price? "Given the sharp social stratification prevalent in antiquity, persons engaging in inappropriate social relations [JPH note: mixing slave and free, rich and poor, etc.!] risked being cut off from networks on which their positions depended. In traditional societies this was taken with deadly seriousness. Alienation from family or clan could literally be a matter of life and death, especially for the elite [JPH note: Christianity had more than the usual number from this area!], who would risk everything by the wrong kind of association with the wrong kind of people. Since the inclusive Christian communities demanded just this kind of association across kinship status lines, the situation depicted here [Matt. 10:34-36] is realistic indeed. The alienation would even spread beyond the family of origin to the larger kinship network formed by marriage..." [92] "Association" included being seen eating with persons of lower social rank [135]. "Such a departure from the family was something morally impossible in a society where the kinship unit was the focal social institution." [244]
* Relatedly, leaving the family usually meant forsaking material goods, in line with Jesus' demand to the rich young ruler (Luke 5:11). This is also a problem: "Geographical mobility and the consequent break with one's social network (biological family, patrons, friends, neighbors) were considered seriously deviant behavior and would have been much more traumatic in antiquity than simply leaving behind material wealth." [313] Now relate this to Peter and Co. leaving all behind!
* In his teachings Jesus often made reversals of common expectations that would have grossly offended the majority. The "Good Samaritan" parable is an example -- we all know that Samaritans were despised people; that would have been offensive enough! But few realize that the victim was also drawn up as someone broadly hated: The victim (and the Samaritan as well) were traders, who often grew rich at the expense of others, and were despised by the masses who saw them as thieves and would actually have sympathized with the bandits who robbed them! Jesus completely reversed the stereotypes (see item 2 above) in a way that would have shocked most of his listeners. [347] (To say nothing of extending the category of "neighbor" to such people!)
* A similar reversal: the invitation to, and acceptance of, Zaccheus (Luke 19). By dining with Zach, Jesus indicated fellowship with one whose values he shared. The crowd was dismayed, because tax collectors were stereotyped as "rapacious extortioners." Zach's pronouncement, often understood to mean he is now paying back what he has stolen, actually means he has been paying back already anyone he discovers he has cheated (even before he met Jesus!) and Jesus' fellowship is therefore understood as saying, "I believe him" -- whereas the crowd does not. [387] (Of course this has applications for Matthew as well.)
* We may not think much of Mary sitting at Jesus' feet while Martha does the housework; we may even sympathize, but the ancients would not have. Because a woman's reputation depended on her ability to run a household, Martha's complaint would be seen as legitimate -- and Mary herself, because she sat and listened rather than help, was "acting like a male"! [348] This example would have been shocking to the ancients. So likewise Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman [John, 98-9] -- speaking to her in public (especially as a social deviant), and using the same drinking utensil, would have offended common views of purity and ingroup-outgroup relations.
* The theme of being "born again" was a real shocker! [John, 82] When one was born, one's honor status was considered fixed at birth. Only extraordinary circumstances allowed for a change in honor status. Being born again would mean changing one's honor status in a very fundamental way, "a life-changing event of staggering proportions." Preaching a "new birth" would have been inconceivable!
From N. T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God [369-442]:
Touching cherished symbols can be a risk and a half! Think of how people react when someone burns Old Glory -- and now apply that to some things that Jesus did which "implcitly and explicitly attacked what had become the standard symbols of the second-Temple Jewish worldview" and thereby subverted the unique Jewish ethos that was perceived to have given Israel its unique identity:
* The general attitude towards pagan powers like Rome was revolution. Jesus advised instead "turning the other cheek" and carrying the soldier's pack an extra mile. The difference is one of Malcolm X versus Martin Luther King, in a time when X's methods were highly favored.
* Keeping the Sabbath strictly was a Jewish distinctive; Jesus' actions of healing and plucking corn on the Sabbath violated not the actual law, but the rigourous interpretation favored of it by those wishing to preserve and emphasize this distinction. (See related item here.)
* Jesus' dispensing with ritual handwashing (like the "stickler" Sabbath observance, not a rule of the law, but a rigorous interpretation of it) violated perceptions of purity.
* Jesus' command to follow him, rather than bury the dead, violated one of the most ingrained sensibilities of the day to care for the family and attend to their burial needs (important both in Jewish and non-Jewish contexts).
* Jesus' demonstration in the Temple was a symbolic "acting out" of the destruction of what, to many Jews, was Judaism's central symbol: the place where sacrifice and forgiveness of sins was effected; a place of great pretisge and honor before non-Jews; the central political symbol of Israel. Not all Jews agreed with this assessment (the Essenes for example considered the Temple apparatus corrupt and probably would have sympathized with Jesus here), but for Jesus to say it would be destroyed, and by pagans at that, would have been profoundly offensive to many Jews, especially those who considered it security against pagan invasion.
From Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God we have these observations, offered by a reader with his own observations:
"Precisely on the basis of the key texts from the Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel and elsewhere, the early Christians declared that Jesus was lord in such a way as to imply, over and over again, that Caesar was not....The theme is strong, though until recently largely unnoticed, in Paul. Romans 1.3-5 declares the 'gospel' that Jesus is the royal and powerful 'son of god' to whom the world owes loyal allegiance; Romans 1.16-17 declares that in this 'gospel' are to be found soteria and dikaiosune. Every element in this double formulation echoes, and parodies, things that were said in the imperial ideology, and the emerging imperial cult, at the time. At the other end of the letter's theological exposition (15.12), Paul quotes Isaiah 11.10: the Davidic Messiah is the world's true lord, and in him the nations will hope." (page 568-569)
Wright goes on to list other Pauline passages such as Philippians 2.6-11, I Corinthians 15.20-28, and Thessalonians 4.15-17 which speaks of Jesus in manners that parallels that of Caesar. He also notes:
"Nor is this confined to Paul. Matthew's risen Jesus declares that all authority in heaven and on earth is now given to him."
Also,
"The gospel of Jesus as king of the Jews is then placed, by implication, in tension with the rule of Herod as king of the Jews, until the latter's sudden death in chapter 12 [of Acts]; whereupon the gospel of Jesus as lord of the world is placed in tension with the rule of Caesar as lord of the world, a tension which comes to the surface in 17.7 and smoulders on through to the pregnant but powerful statement of the closing passage, with Paul in Rome speaking of the kingdom of the true god and the Lordship of Jesus himself....This entire strand of thought, of the kingdom of Israel's god inaugurated through the Lordship of Jesus and now confronting the kingdoms of the world with a rival call for loyalty, finds classic expression, a century after Paul, in the famous and deliberately subversive statement of Polycarp: 'How can I blaspheme my king who saved me?' Caesar was the king, the saviour, and demanded an oath by his 'genius'; Polycarp declared that to call Caesar these things would be to commit blasphemy against the true, divine king and saviour." (page 569-570)
Wright does note, per passages like Romans 13:1-7, that Christians were commanded to respect governing authorities. However, he goes on to say,
"Our particular modern and western way of formulating these matters, implying that one must either be a revolutionary or a compromised conservative, has made it harder, not easier, for us to arrive at a historical grasp of how the early Christians saw the matter. The command to respect authorities does not cut the nerve of the gospel's political challenge. It does not mean that the 'Lordship' of Jesus is reduced to a purely 'spiritual' matter. Had that been so, the great persecutions of the first three centuries could largely have been avoided. That, as we saw in the previous chapter, was the road taken by gnosticism." (page 570)
So the question to be asked is, "Why did the early Christians make such a bold political stand part of their established belief system?" They must have truly believed that Jesus was the Lord of this world, and that His resurrection from the dead proved it. Wright concludes:
"This subversive belief in Jesus' Lordship, over against that of Caesar, was held in the teeth of the fact that Caesar had demonstrated his superior power in the obvious way, by having Jesus crucified. But the truly extraordinary thing is that this belief was held by a tiny group who, for the first two or three generations at least, could hardly have mounted a riot in a village, let alone a revolution in an empire. And yet they persisted against all the odds, attracting the unwelcome notice of the authorities because of the power of the message and the worldview and lifestyle it generated and sustained. And whenever we go back to the key texts for evidence of why they persisted in such an improbably and dangerous belief they answer: it is because Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead. And this provokes us to ask once more: why did they make this claim?" (page 570)
An interesting parallel in modern times may be found here.
