And he learned that Israel began to grumble, even as it was being rescued from Egypt, and that the grumbling kept breaking out again and again. That Israel took a dim view of the land God wanted to give them and even slandered it. That it was frightened by the nearness of God, that it broke its covenant with God, that it wanted to be like the other nations. That God nevertheless sustained his people, with great endurance and unwearying patience, that he forgave them again and again, that he created the temple for them in Jerusalem as a place of atonement so that the horrible consequences of sin were broken asunder and the people could always begin anew.
He learned that God had given Israel festivals that divided the year, so that one could live from feast to feast. That at these festivals Israel gathered to remember its history and join in a holy community to praise God. That God raised up prophets for his people to snatch them out of their hard-heartedness and blindness. That Israel did not listen to its prophets, did not live according to its social order, sought out the gods of the nations, and so became like the Gentiles. That God therefore had to scatter it among the nations in order to bring it to repentance and reflection.
And he learned that, even in this most profound crisis of Israel’s history, God never forgot his people. That he promised to gather them again, renew the fertility of the land of Israel for them, and one day to raise up a king for them who, after all the many kings who had so miserably failed them, would be the true Anointed, the true Ruler, the true God-fearer.
And finally, he learned that God had begun a history with his people that was crucial for the whole world because it brought it to the moment of decision. That this God who had resisted every name and certainly every image was the absolute Lord of history. That he would bring all history to its goal without damaging human freedom: as its Creator, its Judge, but also its Lover. Then God would be all in all and the world would breathe a sigh in God, and God himself would take away the shroud of sorrow that still covers the nations.
All that and much more the young Jesus heard, recited it daily like every faithful Jew, and took it into his heart.4 It is impossible to measure the depth to which it penetrated, because that was a secret between him and his heavenly Father. The reader of the gospels can only dimly perceive it, for example, when the evangelist Luke tells his interpretive story of how the twelve-year-old Jesus, during his first pilgrimage to Jerusalem, remained in the temple and explained to his parents, who had sought him with great anxiety, that he had to be in what belonged to his Father (Luke 2:41-52).
Jesus, a Scribe?
All that had to be said at the outset if we are going to talk about Jesus and the Old Testament. But we have not yet come to the real topic of this chapter. We are interested not in how Jesus, as a pious Jew, lived his life on the basis of Scripture but in what role Scripture played in his preaching and his public activity. How did he deal with it as a teacher, a preacher, a prophet, and someone who was more than any prophet?
There is some indication in the very existence of his disciples (cf. chap. 5 above) that Jesus did not work with Scripture as a scribe would: the disciples did not come to Jesus to “learn Torah” but to “follow” him. Moreover, at the time of Jesus the scribes had already located themselves deliberately within the existing tradition of interpretation and relied on authorities for doing so. To ground an opinion on the Law, they appealed either to one or more passages in Scripture or to a respected teacher. Sequences of tradition handed down under the names of great scribes were of the greatest significance for rabbinic theology, for they build bridges to the oral Torah, which—according to the rabbinic view—had been given at Sinai in addition to the written Torah.5
But this very scribal technique apparently played no part in Jesus’ thinking. The gospels do not contain a single text in which he mentions acknowledged scribal experts by name and quotes them. He does use scriptural references, but they differ from those of the later rabbis.
So what was his way of drawing on Sacred Scripture? That subject would really require a whole book. In this chapter I will merely offer three samples; we might compare them to test shafts. They are meant to show how Jesus worked with his Bible. The samples touch on three themes: first, and once again, the subject of Jesus and the reign of God (cf. chap. 2 above), then that of Jesus and the state, and finally Jesus and nonviolence.
Jesus and the Reign of God
Biblical scholars have long since agreed that the concept of the reign of God was central to Jesus’ preaching. Paul scarcely used it at all, and in John’s gospel, in contrast to the Synoptics, it disappears altogether. Things continued that way in the early church: the concept of the “reign of God” or “kingdom of heaven” acquired a new content or else played only a secondary role in theology.
That is in itself astonishing, for in ancient Judaism God’s kingship played a very significant role indeed. But a finer distinction needs to be made. It was taken as a matter of course that God is already king and, as such, is ruler of the whole world and is Lord of Israel in a special sense, as the YHWH-is-king hymns themselves (Pss 93; 96–99) make abundantly clear. In the worship at the temple but also in synagogue worship God was addressed as king,6 enthroned in the midst of his people Israel. God effects justice and righteousness, protects the lives of those devoted to him, is master of all the powerful and mighty, and everything must bow to his rule. Still more, future salvation is already a reality in heaven, where the eschatological temple, the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city are already prepared. There the angels are already celebrating the reign of God around the divine throne. Biblical scholarship has called this notion of God’s kingship “theocratic.”
This is to be distinguished from another point of view that developed more and more clearly after the collapse of the Davidic kingdom and is rightly called “eschatological.” It expects the kingship of God as a manifestation, an event that breaks into history, a powerful eschatological and thus final revelation of God’s eternal kingship.
Of course, these two points of view, the theocratic and the eschatological, do not exist in complete isolation from one another. Combinations and overlappings appear again and again.7 In Jesus’ time both the theocratic and the eschatological notions of God’s kingship were in circulation. The Kaddish, a very ancient Jewish prayer, may stand as an example of the eschatological type. Its core was probably prayed as early as the first century CE.8 Originally it concluded the synagogal reading of Scripture. Today it begins:
May His great name be exalted and sanctified in the world which He created according to His will! May He establish His kingdom and may His salvation blossom and His anointed be near during your lifetime and during your days and during the lifetimes of all the House of Israel, speedily and very soon!
So the text does not speak simply of God’s eternal kingship, which is assumed. Its petition is that this kingship become a reality in Israel, that it be “established.” God is asked to establish it in Israel in this very generation, to reveal his lordship in the world as quickly as possible.
We do not really know with certainty whether the Kaddish was being prayed in Jesus’ time, but we cannot exclude the possibility because the Our Father has a certain kinship to the Kaddish. Both prayers ask first that the divine Name be sanctified and then in the second place that the reign of God may come. Given this striking agreement, it could well be that the Kaddish already existed in Jesus’ time and that, together with other prayers, it contributed to Jesus’ ability to assume that his listeners took the reign of God as a given. We may take it for granted that the concept of God’s malkutha, the royal rule of God, was commonly known and that Jesus himself was familiar with it from his youth.
And yet there must have been something more in Jesus’ view, because the way he then went on to speak about the reign of God had a unique contour. The very fact that for him the reign of God was absolutely central and imbued everything he said and did is unique to him. This phenomenon can only be explained by a very personal reference
to Scripture, more precisely to the book of Isaiah. That is the only way to grasp the specific way he talked about the reign of God. Isaiah contains a text that was apparently of the highest significance for Jesus’ thinking and doing, namely, Isaiah 52:7-9:
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy; for in plain sight they see the return of the LORD to Zion.
Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem; for the LORD has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.
These verses are part of the larger text complex of Isaiah 40-55, which biblical scholars call “Deutero-Isaiah,” that is, “Second Isaiah.” This is because these chapters presuppose a situation that does not fit the time of the historical Isaiah, namely, the crisis of the Babylonian exile and the misery of those who remained behind in Jerusalem and Judea. In this situation a prophet arose who deliberately linked to the tradition of the historical Isaiah and even assumed his character and his voice. We do not know the name of the prophet because this person simply continued the prophetic words of Isaiah, writing against the danger that Israel would assimilate to Babylon and be sucked into the worship of the gods of Babylon. But the prophet also writes against the danger of resignation, radicalizing faith in the one, unique God (the “worship of YHWH alone” thus became “monotheism”) and announcing a new exodus. The deported will return to Zion in a solemn festival procession, and in that way the God of Israel will show himself to be the lord of all the nations.
Isaiah 40–55 is constructed as a great dramatic poem. Voices are interwoven: here the voice of God, there the voice of the prophet. Israel, the suffering servant of God in Babylon, is addressed; in other scenes the addressees are those who have remained behind in Jerusalem and Judea. The text we have quoted, Isaiah 52:7-9, has those still in Jerusalem in view. For them the future is brought into the present: the new Exodus from the land between the rivers into the motherland is already happening. Those remaining in Jerusalem already see how the procession of those formerly deported is approaching the city. They see the messengers of joy who run ahead of the caravans. They hear the jubilation of the watchers on the city walls. A shout of joy breaks forth over the ruins of Jerusalem.
What is so special about this text? What does it have to do with the origins of Jesus’ specific message? We may offer five observations:
1. A messenger of good news appears, in Hebrew a mebassr, in Greek an euaggelizomenos. There is much to favor the idea that here in this passage, and in Isaiah 61:1-2, we find the theological source of the word evangelium, “Gospel.” It is true that there were in the Hellenistic world of the time a good many euaggelia, messages of good news, as, for example, in the announcement of a new ruler’s ascent to the throne. But the one Gospel of God that speaks of God’s action in history has its origin here, in this text.
Evidently Jesus recognized himself in the messenger of good news in Isaiah 52. He was convinced that now, with his appearance, Isaiah’s message of salvation was being fulfilled. Now the promises of Isaiah, that “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them,” are coming to pass.9 So what Jesus brings is the good news, and he himself is its messenger.
2. In accordance with our text, the content of the good news is called out, proclaimed by the messenger. Jesus did exactly that. He not only taught like the scribes but announced his message of the reign of God in all of Israel, or caused it to be announced by the disciples he sent out. That is something different from mere teaching.
3. What, according to Isaiah, is the content of this message? In itself it is the return of the exiles to Jerusalem and thus the rescue and restoration of Israel. But that is not how it is formulated. Instead, Isaiah speaks of God’s return to Zion. So behind the return of the deportees stands God himself; it is God who has brought about this return, God who leads it, God who is coming back. God identifies once again with his people.
4. And the direct content of the proclamation? It is: “Your God has become king.” That is, God becomes king precisely in gathering, leading back, and restoring Israel. So the proclamation does not speak primarily about God’s eternal kingship, something it simply presumes. Nor does the proclamation say that God’s royal reign will break forth soon after the return of the exiles. What it really says is that in the very moment in which the exiles return, God becomes king. That is, God’s eternal lordship is now revealed as an event within history. With the return of the exiles God’s royal rule is definitively realized in the world. God now reveals himself conclusively and ultimately as king; God manifests himself decisively as king. The watchers are already beginning their rejoicing.
This is the precise point to which Jesus linked. He applied Isaiah 52:7-9, and the theology of the book of Isaiah as a whole, to his own present in a wholly personal way unique to him: he himself is the messenger of the good news; he himself proclaims it. And this message says that God’s royal reign is happening now, is coming now. This eschatological event that God is setting in motion and that is manifest in Jesus’ actions will gather and restore Israel. That Jesus simply applied to himself a text that spoke of God’s messenger of good news and the royal reign of God now manifesting itself assumes a breathtaking boldness.
5. One final observation about Isaiah 52:7-9: it is not a marginal text in Scripture to which Jesus refers and on the basis of which he speaks and acts. This is a central text because the creed that “God rules as king” constitutes the center of the Torah. After all, what is this solemn formula “God rules as king” all about? It is a clear reference to the first commandment of the Decalogue. What does that commandment say? “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:3 // Deut 5:7). And the commentary on this commandment in Deuteronomy, the shema‘ Israel, says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut 6:4-5).
And now comes the crucial point: the announcement of the present coming of the reign of God is the eschatological historicization and making present of what the first commandment of the Decalogue and its commentary in Deuteronomy 6 say. To put it another way: the proclamation of the reign of God coming now is the definitive historical realization of what has always been before Israel’s eyes and what it sought to live in the Torah: for Israel there can be only this one God and he must become Lord of one’s whole life, of every hour of the day, of all spheres of life.
How closely the royal reign of God and the great commandment (with its motif of God’s unity) belong together in the Old Testament is evident from the parallelism in Zechariah 14:9: “And the LORD will become king over all the earth; on that day the LORD will be one and his name one.” So Jesus, with his proclamation of the reign of God, makes the center of the Torah the center of his preaching. What Jesus proclaims is thus nothing other than the center of the Torah—an insight that is of the utmost importance for Christian-Jewish dialogue. It is, of course, true that this center of Torah is found in Jesus in a new, eschatological sense that overthrows everything else.
In Mark’s gospel this association between the first commandment and God’s reign is unmistakably set before our eyes: after a scribe has called the first commandment (together with the love commandment from Lev 19:18) the greatest of all commandments, Jesus says to him, “You are not far from the reign of God” (Mark 12:34).
Jesus must have had a sense, for us almost shocking, of who God is and what is the center of God’s will. It is a historical will: it is manifested in God’s actions in his people in the midst of this history. And Israel is called now to surrender itself totally to this will manifested in Jesus.
So what has our first sample shown us? It suggests that Jesus had a unique and genuine ac
cess to the Sacred Scriptures. He applies Isaiah 52:7-9 to himself and develops his proclamation of the reign of God out of this text. This in no way excludes the possibility that he also linked to the existing abstract term malkutha. It does not even deny that people in Israel had otherwise made use of Isaiah 52:7-9.10 But beyond all these caveats, Jesus was apparently in a position to read Scripture with new eyes and on the basis of a breathtaking claim.
Jesus and the State
The second sampling relates to the Our Father.11 This prayer, which Jesus gave to his disciples as their very own, is one of the shortest and at the same time one of the most profound prayers in Christianity. It discloses, as does no other text, who Jesus was. Every petition in the Our Father is deeply grounded in the Old Testament. We have already seen that in the fourth chapter of this book, where we spoke of the first petition in the prayer, the so-called gathering petition. That plea draws on the theology of the book of Ezekiel.
But we should not merely ask what the Our Father says and what it asks; we should also ask what it does not say and what it does not ask for. Then we see that the Our Father speaks neither of Zion nor of Jerusalem nor of the land of Israel nor of Israel as a nation. It does speak of the gathering of the people of God, but not of Israel as a national entity. That is by no means a matter of course, for in the Amida, the Eighteen Benedictions, one of the most important prayers of Judaism and one whose early stages may go back to the time of Jesus,12 things are altogether different. The seventh petition reads, “Look upon our affliction and plead our cause, and redeem us speedily for Your name’s sake; for You are a mighty Redeemer. Blessed art thou, O L-rd, the Redeemer of Israel.” The fourteenth petition is still clearer: “And Jerusalem, Your city, return in mercy, and dwell therein as You have spoken; rebuild it soon in our days as an everlasting building, and speedily set up therein the throne of David. Blessed art thou, O L-rd, who rebuilds Jerusalem.” Neither the struggle Israel is here conducting with God’s help nor the eschatological rebuilding of Jerusalem nor the coming of the Messiah need be interpreted in the Eighteen Benedictions in a national sense. But one could read the quoted passages from the prayer in that way, and the Zealots did most certainly interpret the prayer just so. In the Our Father, Jesus consistently excludes all the corresponding terms. Apparently he did not want his gathering of the people of God to be misunderstood in the sense of reconstructing a nation-state.
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