Part 7—The Evangelists
Before considering the works of the four evangelists, it needs to be noted that the gospels (and Acts) are not histories, but catechetical-theological tracts meant for teaching and preaching. Some opine they were written to supplement the synagogue lectionary, allowing a distinctly Christian aspect to the gatherings for prayer and fellowship the early Christians would enjoy after the synagogue service. Second, while in some way under the pen of Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, the gospels we have today each developed over a period of twenty to thirty years. Thus, Mark reaches its final edition in the mid-60s, Matthew and Luke in the 70s, and John in the 90s. The various editings reveal the changing relationship betwixt the specific audience of the gospel and the Jewish community and synagogue. While there was certainly factional discord and disagreement between the early followers of Jesus as Messiah and others in the synagogue, and the tensions between them fluctuated from time to time, place to place, after 70AD and the destruction of the Temple there arises a steady push to oust the Christians. 70AD fosters an understandably conservative tincture in Judaism. By the 80s there is introduced into the daily synagogue prayers a curse on heretics aimed directly at the Christians. The Christian had either to curse himself before God, or remain silent and reveal himself at odds with his extended faith community. By the 90s formal condemnations and excommunications are introduced. We have a half century of internecine tensions, denunciations, persecutions, and finally expulsions. They that held themselves to be among the Chosen were understandably hurt, offended, bewildered. Their writings betray the evolving antagonisms and anger.
Mark, the evangel of God-fearers–Mark’s is the earliest gospel. It was written for an audience of non-Palestinian gentiles (most likely, God-fearers). Its tack is the slow disclosure of Jesus’ identity throughout his ministry. The handful of references to the “Jews” merely and non-pejoratively indicates the people. It is the chief priests and scribes who conspire against Jesus, who stir up the crowds against him, and who mock him on the cross. Nevertheless, they are not portrayed as hypocrites; they do not knowingly act against God’s Christ. Pilate knows Jesus is innocent but yields to the demands of his subjects. Ignorance and apathy trump faith and courage. The world cannot deal justly with Jesus; it knows justice only retributively. It is Jesus who reveals to the world the re-creative, the divine meaning of justice. This gospel for the gentiles reaches its crest with a gentile centurion standing before the cross of Christ and proclaiming “This man was truly a son of God”.
Matthew, the evangel of Jews–Matthew, whose completed work comes nearly a decade later, reveals a deteriorated relationship with the synagogue. Matthew seems to be written by a Rabbi or one familiar and comfortable with rabbinical argumentation. He is obviously addressing a Jewish audience. He makes frequent references to Jewish scripture, especially the messianic prophecies, to exemplify Jesus as their culmination. Jesus is presented as a new Moses, not enunciating or initiating a new Law, but being in himself the fulfilment of the Law. The Pharisees are denounced because they have burked the Law in favour of an overlay of traditions; they have eclipsed the relationship betwixt God and man with a burdensome body of rules. In Matthew’s telling, it is the Sanhedrin which seeks Jesus’ end by soliciting false testimony against him. They encourage Judas, but when he repents the betrayal of the innocent, they piously snub him. Pilate’s wife has a dream and sends word to her husband that Jesus is innocent. Pilate can find no case against him and declares him innocent, washes his hands of his blood, and yet hands him over. Passers-by, priests and scribes mock him as he dies. His co-crucified mock him as well. As in Mark, he dies crying out to the God who has abandoned him. The Jewish leaders are still fearful and ask the tomb be guarded. When the handsel morn arrives and the tomb is empty, they pay the guards to depone the disciples stole the body. The blame is here heavily on priests, scribes and Pharisees. Again, it is the gentile guard standing before the cross who recognizes the incarnate divinity.
Luke, the evangel of Gentiles–Luke, whose work is contemporaneous with Matthew, views the story differently. Luke is writing to a gentile audience. He is a socio-political observer. He rarely refers to scriptures. In his telling Jesus is a prophet concerned for the well-being of the poor, the outcast, and even the gentiles (although he never preaches to them, or sends missionaries to them until after the resurrection, as depicted in Luke’s second work, the Acts of the Apostles). This is a gospel of the radical summons to abandon all in order to follow Christ, the Lord of pardon and mercy. In the passion narrative, the trial features no false witnesses or testimony. There is no actual condemnation. The elders, priests and scribes bring Jesus to Pilate accusing him of inciting the people to civil disobedience. Pilate finds him innocent. He sends him to Herod. Herod finds him innocent. But the leaders and the people cry “away with him”. Pilate allows them their wish. Still a crowd, lamenting and mourning, follows after him. One of his co-crucified defends and praises him. When he dies the centurion lauds him, the people beat their breasts. The animosity of Jew against Jew is not found in this gentile gospel. Luke transfers much of that acerbity to the sequel work, Acts. The internecine antagonisms are referenced there in the executions of Stephen and James, and in the persecutions of Peter, John, and Paul. Yet, the major thrust of Acts, as in the gospel, is the summons to follow in the ways of the merciful Christ.
John, the evangel of a new faith–John was born a Jew. His writings exhibit one who was not only familiar with the land but profoundly devoted to and enamoured of the cult. He writes to a Christian audience at the end of the century. Judaism and Christianity are now two separate entities. The Temple and its cult are gone. The priests, Sadducees, Sanhedrin, et al. are now items of history. The conservative Pharisees are the sole power remaining, and they are striving with every fibre of their being to preserve the faith of the fathers. The followers of Jesus have been excommunicated and expelled. Unlike the other gospels wherein Jesus is handed over by some power group within Judaism, according to John, Jesus is handed over simply by “the Jews”. It is John’s way of literally relating to his audience, an audience well aware of the political and religious situation of the day, a situation wherein the new church was struggling, an outcast from the synagogue, an excommunicate of Judaism, without legitimate imperial status as a religion, a church persecuted and pursued. Thus, while his fellow evangelists use the term “the Jews” a handful of times each as a neutral designation for the people, John uses the term approximately seventy times, occasionally as a neutral, but more often with some pejorative intensity. He notes that the Jewish parents of a Jewish man cured by Jewish Jesus are afraid of “the Jews”; the Jewish crowds who follow Jesus are circumspect about discussing him for fear of “the Jews”. Only in this perturbed partisan gospel written two generations after Jesus could Jesus be given to distinguish himself from his fellow countrymen and co-religionists by referring to them as “Jews”. The gospel conjures up such disprizing battlements story after story. For John, the world is black and white, truth and lies, Jews and Christians, and he has no inclination to speak kindly to his opponents. If Matthew had depicted Jesus as the fulfilment of the Law, John now hails Jesus as the replacement of the Law. John weaves his story around the great Jewish feasts and Jesus systematically proclaims himself their supplanting. John opens his gospel echoing the opening verses of the Law, and counters it in proclaiming that Jesus comes into his own and his own neither recognize him nor accept him. Yet, Jesus is everything prophesized, promised and prefigured–he is one with God and God’s spirit, the suffering servant, the Passover lamb, the king whose dominion transcends the world’s understanding of kingdom. Only in John’s narrative do the priests object to the writ of execution “King of the Jews”, for they have no king but Caesar. Jesus testifies before Pilate that they who have handed him over have the greatest guilt. In John’s heart, Judaism has not only rejected Jesus, but in so doing, it has rejected itself!
In his gospel, the three epistles, and Revelation, John spends a good deal of time talking about love and enlightenment, but an equal amount displaying his anger and bitterness. No other body of works in Christian scripture has such rich irony, such satirical and biting criticisms and retorts between Jesus and his adversaries. The epistles exhibit a writer who is insipid because members of the churches he founded have now taken control and are blocking his directions, and even his entry. In Revelation, the empire that had imprisoned him is castigated in the imagery of hellish and hell-bent powers whose cacoethes is the destruction of Christ and his church. The synagogue is called the Synagogue of Satan. John is not one with whom one would wish to argue. It is his way or no way. Tellingly, his gospel has Jesus proclaim “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. This preacher of love has either a very thin skin or has been near fatally wounded by the rejection of his native religion. His vision of Christ is glorious, literally and figuratively, but his own humanity is very much in evidence. He preaches Jesus Christ, he summons to Christ-like living, and he also bears witness to the epigonic nature of discipleship. Sainthood is never bereft of individuality, idiosyncrasy, and historical context. John, in and through all the dimensions of his frail and gifted humanity, is testimony to that. The inclusion of his very human and faith filled works in the foundational documents of the church’s vision discloses a great wisdom in the ancient church. It is unfortunate that within a century after John’s writing, some begin to misinterpret the historical context of the polemics in his and his fellow evangelists’ works, and so launch the long and torturous road of condemning them for whom Jesus pours out his life, them, who were before them and remain still, the Chosen of God, his Israel.
Part 8—Ite, missa est (Go, our commission is given us).
Despite the anger, the pain, and the polemics of this separation, in essence, Judaism and Christianity veer apart on only one point. Judaism is prohibited from making any image of God. Christianity avers that God makes—for us—his own image in Jesus, his delegate for the world, his Messiah, his Christ. In embracing Christ’s work to bring healing and health to all the world, in being a Christian, one carries the image of God–not in stone or glass or metal or paint–but incarnate, in one’s self, body and soul. And, as in Jesus, it resides there not for the sake of self but another, one’s neighbour, the neighbour we are commanded to love.
We are commanded to love, yet we stand divided. And so we look upon a great divorce, replete, on both sides, with all the hostility, animosity, bitter coldness, and scorn that anyone privy to the emotive workings of such a perceived personal betrayal of hope and trust, to such an animate tearing asunder of two living beings will know too sorrowfully well. We, the Christians and the Jews of today, are the children of that divorce. We have grown up in separate houses. We have been feed the lies of mistrust. We have been goaded with the relics of discomfiture and anger. We, who are family, can maturely put all that aside and live in mutual respect and charity with one another, but only heaven can put back together that which heaven once made one.