(34 votes, average: 4.94 out of 5)
Loading...Julius-Kei Kato is a member of the blog, a PhD from Graduate Theological Union, an expert on the new Testament, and an Associate Professor in Religious Studies at King’s University College at Western University. You can learn about him here: https://jkato.kingsfaculty.ca/about-jk-kato/?mobileFormat=false
Prof. Kato has written a very interesting article for the blog as a guest post, on one of the most familiar and least understood passages in the New Testament, the Beatitudes. I can’t say that I always agree with those who provide us with guest posts, but oh boy do I agree with this one. And for my money it gets especially interesting at the end, where he shows how Christians today should understand this most critical teaching of Jesus precisely in light of the fact that the apocalyptic end of the age that he predicted never happened. Even those of us who are not Christian should see the real merit and strength of this position — it ends up endorsing precisely the vision that many of us have.
Here is the post, in full. Please feel free to make comments and ask questions.
–
Julius-Kei Kato is the author of Religious Language and Asian American Hybridity and How Immigrant Christians Living in Mixed Cultures Interpret Their Religion.
How Do We Interpret the Beatitudes When Their Original Apocalyptic Context Has not been Realized?
Julius-Kei Kato
Introduction
The Beatitudes, particularly in their Matthean form in Matt. 5:3-11, are some of the most recognizable and even popular teachings of Christianity and are all usually ascribed to Jesus himself in popular Christian preaching. Who has not heard of them romantically proclaimed as “the moral blueprint” of Christianity or the” epitome of Jesus’s teachings,” or the like? However, upon close exegetical and theological examination, I would say that the Beatitudes present one of the hardest parts of the gospels to interpret in a theological way.
At the university where I teach, it is not difficult to analyze these beatitudes in a literary and historical-critical way. The consensus of many critical biblical scholars about them can be summarized thus: They are found in Matthew 5 as part of the “Sermon on the Mount” and in Luke 6 as part of the “Sermon on the Plain”; they were probably found in the common Q source used by both Matthew and Luke which these evangelists then redacted to conform to each one’s particular emphasis, and so on.
But when the burning theological question is posed, namely, How does one make sense theologically and in the present time of these famous declarations of Jesus about who are “blessed” or “happy” in the reign of God I just find that many standard theological and homiletical explanations of the Beatitudes are just not robust enough because they fail to take serious consideration of what is most probably the original context of these declarations of Jesus—the Late Second Temple Jewish Apocalyptic Worldview which was espoused by a majority of Jews at the time. Needless to say, even the historical Jesus and his disciples lived and breathed in this apocalyptic environment and accepted its main presuppositions. One main foundation of that worldview was the belief that in their immediate future God was going to intervene directly in the chosen people’s history in order to defeat Israel’s enemies and set everything right once again. Fast forward to today. It is plain to see that we who try to interpret the Beatitudes at this point in history would fail to understand their original meaning if we neglect this crucial contextual element.
The Original Beatitudes
A number of important commentators point out that if there is a historical core to the so-called Beatitudes as they are found in Matthew and Luke, the first three beatitudes in Luke 6 would most likely make the cut.[1]
Lk 6:20-22 reads thus in the NRSV:
20 Then [Jesus] (he) looked up at his disciples and said:
[1st] ‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 [2nd] ‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
[3rd] ‘Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
So why would the first 3 Lukan Beatitudes be more historical? The reasons could be summarized thus: Jesus, the rabbi from Nazareth had, as primary audience and first concern, the really (and not only spiritually) downtrodden and marginalized classes of his own society who were under various forms of oppression. This audience is more faithfully reflected in Luke 6:20-21. Who were they? They were the truly and materially poor (v. 20), the truly physically hungry (v. 21) and those who were truly and constantly in tears because of their intense suffering and oppression (v. 21). The Beatitudes in Matt 5:3-11 (with the exception perhaps of v. 4 “Blessed are those who mourn…”) also seem to reflect a later process of “spiritualizing” the original message of the historical Jesus as best illustrated in Matthew’s editing the “Blessed are you poor” of Luke into a more spiritual “Blessed are the poor in spirit” in Matt 5:3.
I will concentrate then on the first three Beatitudes in Luke as probably coming from the historical Jesus himself and reflect on a possible theological interpretation of these not-yet-spiritualized teachings of Jesus.
The Great Dilemma
Hence, let us take the plainest meaning of the first three Beatitudes in Luke: The teaching proclaims that the poor, the hungry and the weeping are (in Greek) “makarioi”; “blessed” (traditional English translation), “happy” (more contemporary, plain English translation). The Scholars Bible of the Jesus Seminar renders makarioi into English as “Congratulations,”[2] that is, “worthy to be congratulated.”
I would like to point this out here as the theological interpretive crux of the problem. Why did Jesus proclaim the poor, the hungry, and the crushed-to-the-point-of-weeping people as worthy of congratulations? At first blush, Jesus’s proclamation just does not make sense. When and where in normal human circumstances have the poor, the hungry, and those broken by sorrow ever been deemed as blessed? The answer is: Never! Nowhere! So why did Jesus have the gall to make this declaration? Taken in its plainest sense, Jesus’s declaration seems like the proverbial “pie in the sky,” (that is, something that never happens in real life). If you dangle such a ‘pie in the sky’ to the starving without offering any real food, your declaration becomes a cruel, insensitive, even offensive statement to people who do not need to have their difficulties further exacerbated. So, was Jesus such a cruelly insensitive rabbi?
One of the most common ways that interpreters deal with this interpretive dilemma is to say that the Beatitudes describe an “eschatological” and not really “normal historical” order. And herein lies the key to theologically interpreting the Beatitudes.
The Original Context of the Beatitudes
As mentioned briefly earlier, the notion of the beatitudes-as-eschatological is connected to its historical context. That context would be the apocalyptic hope of late Second Temple Judaism. It is seldom explicitly stated that the Beatitudes make historical sense only when they are set against the backdrop of an apocalyptic-eschatological “reversal of fortunes.”[3] In effect, that means that the historical Jesus as well as the original audience to whom the Beatitudes were directed, were hoping for an imminent world-changing intervention of God (also known as “the coming of God’s reign”) into their historical world. That would then create a new world order where, the (really) poor, the (literally) hungry, the weeping ones would be the beneficiaries of this reversal of fortunes brought about by divine action and will be truly (and not only spiritually) “blessed,” thus, truly worthy of being “congratulated.”
When the Original Context is Gone
Now when this suggested original context of first century apocalyptic hope is neglected, the Beatitudes can pose a daunting challenge for theological interpretation. Bereft of its original apocalyptic context, the declaration of “blessedness” can become just a cruel and unrealistic paean to an impossible utopic dream.
Of course, the apocalyptic eschaton, in the form in which many first century Jews believed it would come, never actually came. Where does that leave us in terms of theologically interpreting the Beatitudes? Are we condemned to make the Beatitudes part of the “opium” of the people by explaining that the promised rewards would be in a deferred state called “heaven” (as has happened in effect for most of Christian history)? Do we just ignore the elephant in the room that is actually screaming that the promised blessed state according to the Beatitudes is an impossible dream this side of the grave? Do we just turn the Beatitudes into profoundly spiritual-sounding platitudes that, again, are just not founded on the ordinary experiences of those they profess to congratulate?
How to Interpret the Beatitudes Theologically when Apocalypse Has not Come?
When the Christian communities realized that the expected imminent intervention of God was not so imminent after all, they started to re-consider some teachings of Jesus that directly hinged on an imminent coming of God’s reign. These efforts to interpret the beatitudes in a post-imminent-apocalyptic world are already found for example in Matthew’s redactional efforts to spiritualize the Beatitudes.
I’d like to propose that the fact that the Beatitudes’ original context of apocalyptic-eschatological hope has not been realized should be made clearly and explicitly the starting point of any theological way of interpreting the Beatitudes so that the resulting interpretation would avoid—what I mentioned as—unhelpful and irrelevant treatments of the topic. And in that vein, I’d like to take some important hints from liberationist, postcolonial and minoritized (such as Asian/Asian-North American) biblical hermeneutical principles and practices. To put it simply: In the wake of the original apocalyptic context of the Beatitudes being unrealized, they should now be theologically interpreted through the lens of a realized, collaborative, incarnational eschatology by which the promised rewards of the Beatitudes no longer depend on an apocalyptic intervention of God but on the followers of Jesus (or practically anyone else [even agnostics/atheists] who think that Jesus was a great teacher) taking on a liberative praxis to create in some way and realize a new social order where the really poor, the truly hungry, the weeping and marginalized ones really come to experience now (not later in some heaven) some measure of the blessedness that God’s reign should bring with it.
In other words, I think that the way forward in interpreting the Beatitudes theologically today would be to understand them as a concrete call to action to realize a better local and/or global order in which the poor, the hungry, as well as the weeping, the excluded, the marginalized and disadvantaged ones are made the preferential recipients of distributive justice so that they would truly be “blessed” and worthy of “congratulations.” This is “theological” in a very broad sense where we can even take “theology” to refer humanistically to the finest aspirations and hopes translated into concrete efforts of humans to be compassionate and (distributively) just.
Needless to say, it is something that Dr. Ehrman in his noble efforts to provide for the needy (through this blog!) is definitely doing and, thus, he and all the blog members are in a deep way practitioners and realizers of the beatitudes!
[1] John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Volume IV Law and Love (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2009), 613-15. Also: Robert Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels: What did Jesus Really Say? (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1993); Gerd Lüdemann, Jesus after 2000 Years (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2001).
[2] Richard L. Pervo, The Gospel of Luke (The Scholars Bible) (Salem, OR: Polebridge, 2014), 69.
[3] R. Alan Culpepper, “Luke,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX, ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), 143 (142-145). Also Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), 152-53.
Great post! Personally, I have long had difficulty thinking of Jesus as a great teacher since I believe he got the most important part of his message wrong – that the world would end within a generation.
Luke also famously contains the “woes” (malattitudes?)
Luke 6;24-26
“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”
Do you think these are also historical?
Good question! I didn’t have enough space to deal with the woes. One can make a case for them being historical because they are part of the “reversal of fortunes” theme that is connected with the coming of God’s reign.
Even when I was a Christian, I was never a fan of liberation theology. It amounts to redistribution to those running the government, while the oppressed remain so.
I don’t see how the Beatitudes are anything but a cruel joke. God isn’t going to rescue anyone, it’s up to us to help each other.
Great post Dr Kato! As a preacher/pastor, I couldn’t agree with you more. I like how it is put in the Letter of James: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2:15-17)
I actually had that in mind when writing the essay! Thanks!
Dr, Ehrman, I want to donate some money to the blog. I am unsure how to donate exactly. How do I donate? I do not have alot of money, but I want to be a member of this great movement.
Thanks! On the landing page you’ll find a link that says “Donate to the Blog.” Click that!
Thank you! I will.
Bart, did you write this? I do not believe you wrote this. Did Julius write this with a PhD?
If you dangle such a ‘pie in the sky’ to the starving without offering any real food, your declaration becomes a cruel, insensitive, even offensive statement to people who do not need to have their difficulties further exacerbated. So, was Jesus such a cruelly insensitive rabbi?
It is called hope. Cruel? How? At least someone believed that anything could happen. Believe without seeing while god sits naturally in our mind. Hope is what keeps people going. I personally believe without seeing. Even giving a homeless man or woman money. I make sure to say, ” we haven’t forgotten about you”. Cruel? I do not understand that point of view.
Yes, Julius wrote this.
Thanks, SonofZeus1, for your comment. I wrote that part echoing the famous words in the letter of James, chapter 2 where the author says:
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? 15If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, 16and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? 17So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
In short, if Jesus had told hungry people (Luke 6:21) “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled,” although there was no real hope of “being filled,” then that is, in a sense, cruel. What I’m saying though is, in the case of the historical Jesus, that WAS NOT SO – HE WAS NOT CRUEL. Why? Because, as an apocalyptic preacher, he was hoping for an imminent coming of God’s kingdom into history and when that happens, the hungry will truly be filled. If we put in Jesus’ apocalyptic expectation into the equation, these declarations of his are, I’m saying, powerful messages of realistic hope.
You have a better case than my ’argumentum ad absurdum’. I see now that his audience was not interested in a series of one-liners. CS Lewis wrote that it was the difference between a Christian going to judgment in a criminal court with a pardon in hand and the a Jew going to judgment in a civil court expecting a large settlement.
The poor, the meek in the New Testament are a social category, a caste system where rarely people could run from. There’s something intrinsic in being poor, something that is attached to people by birth. Being poor is a disgrace, a disease.
Hence, to the limits brought by society, the only answer is “salvation” and freedom through belief.
But, if you observe today in Nigeria people addicted to cough syrup, in the banlieues enslaved to religious abstraction, in the Asian region to questionable rhythmic Bollywood movies and their plots, the problem is the opposite. It’s the excessive freedom.
As Umberto Eco in his famous novel stated: “It is not about the truth that makes us free, but about the excessive freedom that wants to become true.”
The message of Beatitudes today speaks differently and is heard differently. Quality of living organism, so something beautiful.
But also, I am afraid, a bad category in the wide ocean of monotheistic religions: relativism.
I’m not trying to be nasty in saying this, but this is precisely why I don’t take theology at all seriously. If I tell you, “Let’s meet up next week, and we’ll go kayaking,” and then we don’t wind up meeting up, there’s no need to invent some new interpretation about my kayaking remarks. Jesus said there was going to be an imminent apocalypse, it didn’t happen, therefore the good things he was predicting would happen for the poor, oppressed, etc. aren’t going to happen. End of story. Why does one need to invent a “theological” interpretation for this passage that somehow makes it come out correct? You can certainly claim that we need to help the poor and downtrodden in this life, but I have no need to consult the New Testament to find reasons for doing that. The entire enterprise–and again, I do not say this to be nasty–sounds completely pointless to me.
Thanks for your honest thoughts about “theology”. Believe me, on some days, I really feel just like you do about it. “Theology” though has other dimensions and it is still quite important to people who believe that they have to grapple with what their ancestors believed about life and especially about God in the past (just like me) — because that has influenced so many people throughout history and continues to exert an influence on many people up to today. Hence, people will still try to “make sense” of what the historical Jesus taught and how his followers throughout the ages interpreted and re-interpreted those teachings to make them relevant to their particular contexts … It’s like a history of religious teaching and thought, if you will.
I’m with you Peter.
If Jesus was saying the apocalypse will see the poor and oppressed rewarded, and it didnt happen, then whatever preferrable reinterpretation we put on it is irrelevant. The image of a gracious Jesus on the mountain telling the poor they will be blessed in the afterlife is not an event that happened. It’s quite possible it was indignant Jesus telling them the poor their time had come.
The famous musician, Neil Young, once said (highly paraphrased here) of certain cultural aspirations common to himself and his contemporaries, “We were’t mistaken that art can change people’s minds. We were wrong to think people want to change.”
The same seems true of those living in ancient times. The historical Jesus may have purposed himself to redress the order of his world via the reversal of social hierarchies, as many claiming to adhere to his teachings have done since the first century. But, like a piece of art, even the ‘word of God’ can’t overcome the slightest avarice of most human beings when it comes to true socioeconomic revolution.
I resound in your praises of Dr Ehrman’s efforts and intent. We should count ourselves fortunate that he wended his way out of Christian faith, as it has helped establish a foundation for real ‘Jesus’ work in the actual world.
Your comments are particularly poignant in the midst of the present social unrest!
Hello Prof Kato,
I was told that a lot of seminaries are into social justice. The pastor who told me that seemed a bit uncomfortable about it. At the time, I didn’t really understand why that would be, but your post has clarified that for me.
Would you say that the version of the Beatitudes in Luke being attributed to the historical Jesus is what is taught in most seminaries or is this your personal opinion or that of a few others? Also, do most seminaries teach that Jesus failed to predict the second coming and therefore the reason for The Beatitudes in Matthew being written the way they are, or do they include it with other ideas such as Jesus really referring to the Transfiguration, a future generation, etc? Thank you.
Thanks for this. I was once an active Roman Catholic priest (no longer now) so I could only speak about my limited experience concerning seminaries. Many “ordinary” seminaries, I have the impression, tend to be on the conservative side, so topics like these which make church officials uncomfortable are not too emphasized. I think that the “standard” seminary style (apart from avant-garde seminaries) would be to attribute everything to Jesus. What is more, even if many ministers or priests studied avant-garde things in the seminary, when they find themselves in a parish or church, they become afraid the “rock the boat” and disturb the “ordinary believer.” Thankfully, I have also seen a good trend in seminaries I know toward an emphasis on social justice!
This is a very interesting, thoughtful observation that I had to read very slowly. My observation for Professor Julius-Kei Kato is to work on your writing style. I had to chuckle over your 120-word sentence that begins, “To put it simply…” Professor, that is not a simple sentence. As a former college professor from a niche academic discipline, I worked hard to make my writing accessible to those not part of my inner circle. And this was in the pre-blog era. You obviously have terrific insights that are of interest to people outside your academic orbit (like me). Writing in a more accessible style will help more people benefit from your scholarship. I’ve never seen an instance where someone was criticized for writing that was too prosaic.
too true… too true … Let me blame an education that included classical Latin from 13 years old onwards (lol!), then also Greek later on. Maybe I should ask your help now because I’m writing a book that, I hope, would be more accessible to non-academics! Thanks for this.
Great post. Thank you. I’m always curious that while the majority view is that Jesus had an apocalyptic worldview, there are many respected scholars (Jesus Seminar, etc.) who believe otherwise. If it’s so clear that Jesus had an apocalyptic worldview, how come a strong minority of scholars believe differently? I assume this question can’t be answered with a brief reply, but it has always bothered me.
Thanks! One major reason that the Jesus Seminar thought the historical Jesus was non-apocalyptic was their analysis of words/teachings of Jesus which they judged to be coming from Jesus himself or very close to words Jesus expressed. A surprising number of these (especially parables) dealt with very this-worldly things. For example, Parable of the Mustard Seed, Parable of the lost sheep… That analysis led a number of scholars to say that the historical Jesus was more like a wisdom teacher rather than an apocalyptic prophet.
Thank you so much. It answers a question I’ve been wondering about.
Some Canadian viewpoints, how sweet *EH*. Julius I lived in London for 20 years and Western is regarded as one of the best. I thought Bart’s wife studied there, but he boisterous exclaimed the UK! The teaching you present very well,is a message of unity, how to behave/act today in helping those in need. I think most people do something/anything to help those in need. This ties in well with effective altruism. I have always been surprised by people in poverty in a great country like Canada. How could this be? We have everything here one needs to make it ago,yet some struggle. If I witness this here, I cannot imagine what its like in parts of the world where poverty is fervent with no opportunity! Still, in all our efforts, this is a plague, imo, that is difficult to overcome despite our best intentions. The reason foremost; it must be a collective undertaking, including government and noble leaders, who truly believe and want to eradicate poverty and consider humanity equal. Approximately, 50 million people die every year and 140 million are born, thus our world will potentially reach over 10 billion by 2050 and poverty? Sustainability?
Thanks for your thoughts … yes, poverty is one of those great, systemic problems that are really difficult to solve. It so much easier “to discuss” poverty than to solve it. I grew up in a developing country (the Philippines) and I’ve seen real material poverty – up, close and personal. I have your same concerns. Thanks for saying “Western” is one of the best … hmmm… last time I checked it was more or less rated #10 in Canada …
Amen!
Absolutely brilliant!
I think Luke is more likely to have changed the original to “Blessed are the poor”. He has made all his blessings to contrast with his woes. But his woes are out of place in the sermon on the mount/plain which is all about encouragement to the righteous followers to continue on the right path despite the difficulties. Not promises of punishment to the those who are unrighteous.
Thanks for this. Yes, this is also a possible analysis. This is how the craft of history works – putting forward different possibilities. That’s why we biblical scholars still have jobs! 🙂
With the presumption that Mathew was written before Luke, is there push back with the argument that Luke is more historical? Had Mathew wrote Luke’s verbiage and Luke wrote Mathews verbiage, would the argument be “stronger”….? Finally, loved your post. Thank you….!!!!
Thanks! The question of whether Matthew was written before Luke has never been conclusively settled although I have the impression that many scholars think so. I’m not so sure myself. The historicity of either Matthew’s or Luke’s versions of Jesus’ teaching has to be decided on a case-to-case basis. In this case, I think Luke’s version reflects more faithfully the historical Jesus’ words.
The question posed by Nichrob is what I was thinking as I twice listened to this reading of post. I get that the order of the gospels is not dispositive. But while Mt seems to have embraced an immediate end of times theology, the author of Lk/Acts seems to be writing with a rethinking and reworking of this imminent end theology: namely, one to account for a delayed end of times. This reality creates a tension with the idea that Lk preceded Mt. Further, the reworked end of times theology in Lk would create tension with the idea that Lk’s eschatological theology surrounding the Beatitudes was the more a primitive theology. Of course, I suppose that Lk could have simply chosen to include the more primitive theology of the Beatitudes with the more mature theology for end of times—for some other reason. It is just an interesting mix to me. If you have a comment, thanks. Otherwise, I loved your thoughts.
I like your post and definitely agree with your conclusion. My question is, what do you make of Jesus’ words in Matthew 26:11 “The poor you will always have with you, a but you will not always have me” and John 12:8 “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” ?
Thanks for this fantastic question! My first reaction and response would be: I personally think that the historical Jesus thought he was the messiah. In short, I think the historical Jesus had a messianic self-consciousness (that’s not saying of course that he thought he was divine). If we consider Mt 26:11 or John 12:8 as historical (that warrants another discussion), then we could say – perhaps the historical Jesus thought that fulfilling his messianic mission took precedence over any ministry to the poor (which was also important for Jesus but less important than fulfilling the messianic mission). However, the two said verses could be later additions of the early Christians to what they imagined were “the words of Jesus” and they function as highlighting their faith that Jesus was the messiah and, therefore, more important than any other concern, even the ministry to the poor. My two-cents worth!
This is the most credible and inspiring explanation of the beatitudes that I have seen. Together with Matthew 25:31-46 we have the mandate to bring about the kin-dom. The historical Jesus emphasized deeds not creeds. This message is especially timely now. We must work to end systemic poverty and structural racism. Those of us who have silently benefited from white privilege, have to stand with the oppressed and work for a kin-dom where all belong. I applaud Dr. Ehrman’s work to end hunger and homelessness. I support the blog with an additional recurring donation and urge all who are able to do the same
Thanks for your comment! This theme takes on a greater urgency with all that is happening there in the US now about racism and how that is a systemic issue that also spawns poverty!
This is a big eye-opener for believers, and a little disturbing. Throughout our lives we have been taugt that Jesus was describing the reversal of fortunes to be found either in heaven or on earth if you followed his teachings. In either case it was good news for the believer because their lot in life would improve as a result of beliefs (once you’re in heaven) or actions (here and now).
But if Jesus was simply saying – ‘The end days are arriving and God is going to intervene and turn everything upside down’ – and it didnt happen, and based on Jesus apocalyptic theory, it aint going to happen. God didnt arrive and therefore nothing is going to change for the poor or oppressed.
The theologians had to twist it and reinterpret it to mean something Jesus never meant in the first place.
And I’m afraid it all makes sense and Mr Kato is probably correct. 🙁
Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, it is quite disturbing for a believer, isn’t it? Believe it or not … I still consider myself a “believer” (some others don’t [consider me one] though …). I qualify that saying that my faith is very, very modest. It is definitely NOT anymore faith in a God who can intervene in history. It is more like a humble, trusting decision that reality is still fundamentally good and by “reality” I include,. I don’t know if that makes sense. Perhaps I’m just a hopeless romantic and optimist … If you are interested to read more about what I think God is, please go to my blog about that here . It’s boring though and too cerebral. You’ve been forewarned.
And it changes everything Christians have been taught. We are now left with a Jewish apocalyptic with some excellent ethical teachings, not the inerrant Son of God.
In turn this means that Jesus teachings are on par with other wise teachers. The onus is YOU and ME to take them, think about them and determine the best way to apply them (if at all).
Take the Good Samaritan as an example. If Crossan is to be believed it was never a story aboyut ‘who is my neighbour’. But – if we do apply it as a story about who is my neighbour then we end up with some really powerful ethical teaching about how to treat those different from ourselves. The onus is back on us to consider and interpret.And maybe our interpretation produces a better teaching than the teacher intended !!!
I agree!
For Christianity, the elephant in the room seems to be– there IS no elephant in the room. It never showed up. Great post! It’s up to us.
“There is NO ELEPHANT in the room” – Insightful! However, the elephant I mean here is. The better image perhaps should be – that could perhaps convey the unrealized eschaton better. (Sorry I just watch too much Sci-Fi….) Thanks for this.
Well done, Dr. Kato, and very interesting! This melds very well with my universalist/unitarian perspective, too. I hope you will consider other guest appearances in this blog.
Thanks so much for your kind words. Dr. Ehrman is the boss here of course and his wish is my command (tongue-in-cheek)
Dr. Kato-
If the first three verses are the historical elements, what do you think of the Book of Mormon putting almost the full sermon verbatim from Matthew on the lips of Jesus in Mesoamerica in around 34 CE?
Sorry but I don’t know enough about the Book of Mormon to comment responsibly about this. I’m not sure if the following comparison is helpful but the author of John (in the 90s) put words into the mouth of Jesus–words that the historical Jesus (in the late 20s) did not probably utter. I would guess (largely uneducatedly though) that Joseph Smith did a similar thing, i.e., reproduced it there from Matthew 5. I imagine that, like John, he did it because he wanted to convey a teaching that he thought would be helpful for his followers.
Professor Ehrman, Sorry this is off topic but thoughts and questions don’t always come at opportune times.
Matt. 16:18 states “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (NIV)
Do you think these words are original to the historical Jesus or were they put on his lips?
I did a search of the blog but was not successful.
Certainly Matthew 25:35-40 is a clear unambiguous call for action that really challenges the proposition that faith alone is required for salvation. But it’s also an indirect acknowledgement that God does not plan to universally eradicate suffering, pain, and injustice from the planet….or else what’s the point of Matthew 25. Still, there is then the mixed message of Matthew 7:7, essentially, ask and I will answer…..which would seem to imply, pray hard enough and genuine enough and your suffering will be eliminated. So which is it? I suppose it can be both a challenge for us non-sufferers to act while being an expression of hope for the sufferers…..if not in this life, then the next (the answer may not always be “yes”). That’s why I’ve always thought Bart’s trouble with broad suffering to be a bit curious. Yes, it seems like God’s direct action to alleviate suffering is small or even masked by simple probability….but why be surprised that there are starving or homeless….when there has always been starving and homeless…especially in Jesus’ day. Jesus never technically promised that God would eradicate it….why assume He would?
Thanks for these remarks! Linking this post with Mt 25 (sheep and goats) is a helpful comparison. As to “Jesus never technically promising that God would eradicate (suffering)” … if I follow the logic I develop in the essay, I would say that (I think) Jesus believed, better perhaps, hoped that when “the kingdom comes” suffering would be eradicated in the new world order that God would establish.
Professor Kato,
I was a student of yours about 10 years ago at Kings. What a pleasure it is to see you have a post in here, I have just recently became a member and through this blog and Prof Ehrman’s videos on youtube, my interest in Christianity has been revived. It was in your classes that you opened up a critical study of the New Testament that I had never come across before, most importantly the 3 world views.
I do not remember if the topic of post covered in one of your classes, but I think i have a much better appreciation of it now! Wishing you all the Best!
Thanks!
Your name does indeed ring a bell! Awesome! It’s always great to reconnect with former students! If you took New Testament with me, chances are I touched upon this topic. Great to hear from you. Be safe and well. I still have the same email from that time so, I’m only a short email away!
Prof. Kato,
Thank you very much!
What do you think of groups like the Jesus Seminar who seem to absolutely bristle at the idea Jesus was apocalyptic? In the their keystone work, the 5 Gospels, they make this very clear.
Could it be that the realization that Jesus was apocalyptic also has some negative connotations and consequences? For example Jesus repeatedly stressed that ties to ones family come second to the movement even using the word Hate (miseo) in Luke 14:26 which is used later in Luke as well to mean literal hate not love less. He even forbade followers from taking some time off to go bury parents. He says entire villages will be destroyed for rejecting his disciples in Matt 10.14-15. There are other places as well where this apocalyptic mindset leads to a rather abusive and seldom talked about side of New Testament Jesus. For all the beautiful things Jesus says and does apocalyptic thought does indeed have a dark side. Could that be why groups like the Jesus Seminar resist it so strongly ?
Thanks for your time !
Thanks Steve for this. I mentioned also in another response that the main reason why the Jesus Seminar concluded earlier that the historical Jesus seemed to have been mainly non-apocalyptic was because of the results of their analysis of the words that, they concluded, went back to Jesus himself – a surprising number of these dealt with this-worldly matters and not “apocalyptic” matters (e.g. Jesus’ parables). About the passages you mention, I think they stem from Jesus’ messianic consciousness by which he concluded that following him and his kingdom movement took precedence over everything, even sacred duties. But, yes, I think apocalyptic thought has a dark side indeed. You might want to check out the following work which lays out the different issues re. an apocalyptic or non-apocalyptic Jesus: ‘The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate’ edited by Robert Miller.
Prof. Kato,
Thanks for your reply! One thing I wonder about with the Jesus Seminar is which came first – did they arrive at the conclusion Jesus was non apocalyptic after a careful objective analysis of his words…or did their pre-existing preferences and bias lead them to dismiss out of hand verses that clearly seem apocalyptic in nature – ignoring the greater context of John the Baptist being apocalyptic and early Christians and Paul as well.
To think the beginning and the end were apocalyptic – but not the middle.
Seems like special pleading to me.
Thanks !
Wow! Very thought provoking. Thanks
Professor Kato, a wonderful, challenging piece on the Beatitudes. But I’m even more impressed by your great generosity of spirit in responding to reader questions and comments, very much in keeping with the spirit Professor Ehrman cultivates in this blog. If more of us would follow the example of your gentle patience and wonderful openness to other views, how transformed this sadly divided world would be!
Professor Kato, your conclusion is right on!! What i don’t understand is why it is not already forever a central tenant and action of anyone considering themselves “Christian?” This call to action is made crystal clear by the Lord’s Prayer; “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.
For the “MikeinNeb Christianity Sect” (Kinda/Sorta Thomas Jefferson, Kinda/Sorta Deist but not quite….) the first line of the Lord’s Prayer is its Central Tenant!! 🙂
There is a simpler understanding of the Beatitudes that does not require “thoroughgoing eschatology” and is consistent with the foundation of philosophical thought.
Growing up in and extensively traveling throughout Hellenized Galilee, Jesus certainly spoke Greek and was exposed to Greek culture (perhaps his favorite word – hypocrite – being a Greek word from the theater that had no equivalent in Aramaic). And certainly the “liberal” Jesus from Galilee was at odds with the “conservative” Jewish establishment in Judea – eventually costing Jesus his life.
The Beatitudes are simple statements of principles of duality. The principles of duality (mutual dependence, non-absoluteness, change/reversal, and relativity) were first espoused by Heraclitus and are the foundation of Socrates’s argument for the permanence of the soul. (They are also of course yin and yang, the foundation of all Eastern philosophical thought too.)
Perhaps, instead of being a “the end is near” nutcase, the liberal Jesus from Galilee was teaching people the same thing many great philosophers have espoused throughout human history – that all things are relative, that all things change and ultimately reverse, that complimentary opposites are mutually dependent, and, therefore, that material wealth and power does not lead to lasting happiness (the kingdom of God). Don’t worry about the morrow (material comfort).
My view is that there is very little evidence to suggest Jesus could speak Greek and tons of reasons for thinking he could not. Rural Galileans from small hamlets did not have schools or means or reasons to learn foreign languages, in the midst of their virtually destitute hand-to-mouth daily existence.
That is precisely why he would have spoken Greek :-). If Jesus and his father were indeed carpenters from Nazareth trying to get by, they would have without question spent most of their working time a couple miles away in the major Greek city of Sepphoris, where all the construction jobs were. School is not required to learn to talk. (Same is true for fisherman wanting to sell their fish at the markets in the Greek cities along the Sea of Galilee. . .)
Perhaps an even stronger argument: in several places in the Gospels the Aramaic word – “satan” or “mammon” for example – is retained in the original Greek versions. As Greek words for these terms did exist, if Jesus spoke in Aramaic all of the words would have been translated into Greek. The only logical reason for retaining a random Aramaic word in a Greek version of a Gospel was if Jesus spoke in Greek but retained select Aramaic words (as all second language speakers do) and was being quoted.
And what is more likely – that the apostles with Greek names learned Aramaic, or that Jesus spoke to them in Greek?
Appreciate your work . . .
I dno’t think that is “without question” at all. You are thinking of them as modern workers in a capitalist society trying to make ends meet. I question it entirely myself! As, btw, did the great E. P. Sanders. If they were carpenters, it didn’t mean they were doing fine carpentry work. They were making and fixing the gates and plows etc. the hamlet needed. The most likely had a plot of land they worked as well. Ancient jews in those kinds of small settings probably didn’t travel much.
I am amazed that/admire how you find the time to answer blog comments.
I do realize that it was not a capitalist society with a working middle class but rather an agrarian/peasant society – with majority poor rural peasants subservient to nearby urban landowning elite that extracted taxes and rent. “Without question” is indeed a reach, but:
Those labeled as carpenters/builders/laborers (and not farmers) by the people of Nazareth – how would they have paid their taxes/rent if not by laboring for the wealthy? Was not Sepphoris a mere 3.5 miles from Nazareth – barely a jaunt for a man that walked throughout Palestine?
It is unfathomable to me that any rural peasant labeled as a carpenter/builder/laborer would not have had (or even been forced) to work for the overlords in the nearby urban center in a peasant society. (The move to “priestly class” likely being a jump up in social status, something that other Nazarene peasants apparently found offensive.) Perhaps farmers could stay home and pay taxes with crops, but builders/laborers would have to go (and stay) where the building/laboring needed to be done. And there be constantly exposed to the language/culture of the people they were serving. And learn their favorite Greek word hypocrite.
I don’t think it’s at all unfathomable in an ancient context, especially small rural communities. What makes you think it is, based on ancient economies and life in small Jewish hamlets?
Well, reading the Beatitudes (and corresponding woes) tells me he knew philosophy – Heraclitus and Laoze alike would immediately recognize Luke’s verses mentioning rich/poor, hungry/full, weep/laugh, praise/condemn as “of course” characteristics of the interactions of duality that underlie all human experience. “Happiness” (makarios) being the purpose of philosophy and desire of every human, the verses are a simple and universal lesson on the reality of human experience/condition.
What were there, maybe 100-200 people living in the rural hamlet of Nazareth, within eyeshot of Sepphoris? Whether it be a tiny community today or a peasant village on the outskirts of an ancient city, the relative distribution of labor needs is the same – the work is in the city. And who needs building/labor work done anyway – elite educated “sophisticated” urban overlords or self-sufficient farmer peasants who know how to do for themselves?
His trade and living within eyeshot of the jewel of Galilee aside, we haven’t yet gotten to the fact that Greek was the language of all official Roman government proceedings and must have been spoken at Jesus’ trial. With no mention of a translator in any source, should not the assumption be that Jesus understood what was being said at his trial?
Within eyeshot??? But in any event, it’s fine if you want to think all this!
Well, yes – to quote one author: “Sepphoris is “perched like a bird” on a 400 foot hill that overlooks the Bet Netofa Valley and helps to explain its other Hebrew name, Zippori (bird). From this panoramic view of Lower Galilee one can survey Nazareth and Cana as Antipas did, and even imagine Jesus walking to work with His father every day. ”
And Eric Meyers of Duke: “It’s very likely that Jesus actually worked in Sepphoris in the time of Antipas’ activity there. Of that there’s probably no doubt.”
This being only one of many other clues that Jesus may have spoken at least broken Greek as a second language, including: 1) repeated use of the Greek word hypocrite in Jesus sayings, 2) Gospel writers retaining the use of single Aramaic words in Greek writings, 3) disciples with Greek names, 4) Jesus’s trial was almost certainly conducted in Greek, and 5) Palestine in general and Sepphoris in particular was a multi-lingual society, evidenced by the recent archeological find of market weights in Sepphoris registered on one side in Greek and the other Aramaic.
I can see I haven’t convinced you 🙂 Appreciate the opportunity to have conversed with you.
If it’s a matter of quoting one scholar’s opinion or another, this could be a very long chanin of comments. 🙂 Eric is a friend of mine and we’ve had this disagreement in roughly forever.