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Jesus Traditions |
The
reader’s patience is requested in the fact that these Jesus
pages are in effect a kind of sub-Web, “piggy-backing” on the
principal Web, http://www.paulonpaul.org,
and thus that the As Paul Tells It . .
. designation at the top of each page is not quite accurate.
The Jesus
Traditions Home Page is readily accessible by clicking on Contents,
to be found at the top and bottom of each page.
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Contents
of Jesus Traditions |
Addenda (8)
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Addendum U
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Samplings of Case Law in the
Pentateuch
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A sampling of case
law from Exodus gives these results:
• On freeing Hebrew slaves ... Selling
daughter as a slave ... Capital crimes: murder, 1st, 2nd
degree
... Kidnapping ... Cursing parent .... Injury to slave ... to pregnant
woman .... Injury to slave ... Liability, if ox gores ... in case of open pit
(chapter 21)
• Restitution, various ... Seducing a virgin ... Death for
sorcery ... Bestiality ... Sacrificing to a god ... Rights of strangers ...
Lending (chapter 22)
• Incorruptibility of due process ... Stray beasts ... The cause
of the poor ... Rights of strangers ... Lands, fallow, 7th yr
... A kid not to be boiled in mother’s milk
(chapter 23)
• A kid not to be boiled in mother’s milk ... etc. (chapter 34)
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A sampling of case
law from Leviticus follows:
• Dietary
regulations (chapter 11)
• Women, when unclean ...
Circumcision, 8th day (chapter 12)
• Eating of blood forbidden (chapter 17)
• Nakedness ... Child sacrifice ... Homosexuality ... Bestiality
(chapter 18)
• Gleaning ... Do not oppress or rob your neighbor ... Stealing
... Cursing the deaf or putting stumbling block for blind ... Judicial
probity ... Not hating brother in your heart ... No vengeance against
own people ... LOVING NEIGHBOR AS SELF ... Case of intercourse with
slave who is betrothed ... Not eating flesh with blood in it ... Augury
and witchcraft ... Tattoos ... Not making daughter a harlot ... Sabbath
... Mediums, wizards ... Respect for the old ... Consideration for the
alien ... LOVING ALIEN AS SELF ... Just weights (chapter 19)
• Child sacrifice ... Mediums, wizards ... Death for cursing a
parent ... Death for adulterous couple ... Death for incest, homosexuality,
bestiality (chapter 20)
• Basphemy ... Murder ... Damages for killing a beast ... Eye
for eye (lex talionis) ... Capital punishment for murder ... One
law for sojourner and native (chapter 24)
• No lending at interest (chapter 25)
• Vows (chapter 27)
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Several samples of
case law are to be found in Numbers:
• A man gathering sticks on
sabbath, stoned to death (15:32-37)
• death,
uncleanness (chapter 19)
• vows (chapter 30)
• cities of
refuge .. violent crimes (chapter 35)
• marriage of
heiresses (chapter 36)
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A sampling of case
law from Deuteronomy yields these rules:
• Dietary regulations ... Against boiling a kid in its
mother’s milk ... Tithing (chapter 14)
• The year of release, jubilee (chapter 15)
• Due process ... Witnesses ... Life for life, eye for eye,
tooth for tooth [lex talionis] (chapter 19)
• In war, against some cities, males to be slaughtered, women
and children taken as booty; other cities, genocide of all (chapter 20)
• Inheritance rights of children in case of a man with two wives ... A
stubborn son to be stoned (chapter 21)
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escaped slave, not to be returned to master ... No lending upon
interest, except to a foreigner (chapter 23)
• Divorce procedures ... Gleaning (chapter 24)
• Forty stripes, as punishment ... Levirate marriage ... Just
weights (chapter 25)
• Against misleading a blind man on the road ... Against incest
... Against slaying a neighbor in secret (chapter 27)
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Addendum V
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A Listing of Moral Themes in
The Letter of James
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[Bold = virtues; Red
= vices; Green = Reward]
Chapter 1
Steadfastness / hupomenê ... Wisdom ... Faith
... Double-minded, unstable
... The rich, a problem ... Life,
transitory ... Enduring temptation/testing, and receiving
the crown of life ... Believers, brought forth by the word of truth, to be a
kind of first fruits of his creatures ... Quick to hear, slow to
speak, slow to anger ... Meekness ... The implanted word,
able to save your souls ... Be doers, not hearers only ... Bridling
the tongue ... Pure religion is to visit orphans and widows, and
keep oneself unstained from the world
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Chapter 2
Warning against the rich ... The royal law,
love your neighbor as yourself ... The sin of partiality
... Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point is guilty of all
of it ... Judgment under the law of liberty [!] ... Mercy ...
Mercy triumphs over judgment ... Faith without works is dead ... No
safety in right belief ... Abraham, justified by works, in offering
Isaac ... A man is justified by works, and not by faith alone
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Chapter 3
The danger of an unbridled tongue ... The wise
and understanding: by a good life show one's works, in the meekness
of wisdom ... Avoiding jealousy, ambition
in your hearts; avoiding boasting, falsehood;
true wisdom [from above] is pure, peaceable, gentle,
open to reason, merciful, full of good fruits ...
Avoiding uncertainty or insincerity
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Chapter 4
Wars, fighting in the congregation: you desire,
kill, covet
... Friendship with the world is enmity with God ... Submit to God,
resist the devil ... Cleanse hands, purify hearts ... Double
mind ... Humble yourselves ... Do not speak
evil against others, or judge them
... Life, transitory ... Boasting ... It is
evil to know the right and not do it
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Chapter 5
Against the rich ... Patience / makrothumein,
until the parousia, which is at hand ... Judgment, near (presumably the
ultimate sanction) ... Prophets, examples of suffering and patience
... Steadfastness of Job ... Do not swear or
take an oath ... Pray, confess sins ... Bringing back one who wanders
from the truth
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Addendum W
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Lists of Virtues and Vices
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Virtues in the Letters of Paul
Galatians 5:22-23 22By
contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
generosity, faithfulness, 23gentleness,
and self-control. There is no law against such things.
Philippians 4:8 Finally, beloved, whatever is true,
whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there
is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
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Vices in the Letters of Paul
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 9Do
you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not
be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes,
sodomites, 10thieves,
the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the
kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:19-21 19Now
the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness,
20idolatry, sorcery,
enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21envy,
drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I
warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom
of God.
Romans 1:26-32 26For
this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged
natural intercourse for unnatural, 27and
in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women,
were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts
with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their
error. 28And since they
did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and
to things that should not be done. 29They
were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice.
Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30slanderers,
God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious
toward parents, 31foolish,
faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32They
know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to
die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.
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Addendum X
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The Status of the Bible for Jesus
and for Paul
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The Bible of Jesus was
of course the Jewish Bible, otherwise referred to as the Old Testament. Determining his attitude
toward its authority is somewhat complicated.
• While the Jewish Bible was profoundly instructive
and formative for Jesus, he was
selective in his use of it.
• He is represented in the tradition as advancing beyond and even
annulling provisions of the Jewish Law (click on contrasts).
We observe a curious ambivalence
of Matthew toward Torah, and perhaps an ambivalence
of Jesus, too. Yet Jesus appears to exercise a kind of moral autonomy with respect to
Torah, affirming or updating or nullifying as needed.
• Jesus is also represented as criticizing his
scribal opponents for their morally irresponsible use of Torah (Mark
7:9-13). And he is represented as using scriptural citations against them. (In the
temptation narrative, scripture is being thrown back and forth by
Jesus—and by the tempter.)
• While certain things in his Bible are
relativized, it is also true that his framing of the great (love)
commandment seems to qualify as an absolute demand, and is brought front and center with quotations from Deuteronomy
6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18.
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For Paul and the early Christians their only Bible
was the Jewish Bible. Paul never did succeed in developing a coherent view
of scriptural authority. On the one hand he had found that the
Jewish Law (Torah) was
inadequate as a way of getting right with God, and indeed posed obstacles.
On the other hand, the Jewish Bible was the only Bible he had, and he was
obliged to tease Christian meanings out of Abraham stories, and in effect
to use Moses to show that Moses got it at least partly wrong.
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Addendum Y
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Apocalyptic emerged in
second century B.C.E. Judaism, though writings which may be called proto-apocalyptic
appeared two to four centuries earlier (Ezekiel, Zechariah 1–8, and
Joel).
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As a literary form and
a religious outlook, apocalyptic has some or all of the following features
(as in Daniel, of the Jewish Bible; and Revelation, of the
New Testament):
• It flourishes during a time of persecution, and depicts in a
somewhat stereotyped fashion the period of tribulation followed by the end
of history.
• It is generally pseudonymous, claiming to be written by some
authoritative figure of old. Such pseudonymity not only gives weight to
the pronouncements, but also provides a measure of protection to the
author.
• It employs pre-dating (in the case of Daniel, it
describes the kinds of persecution which the Jews were experiencing in the
second century B.C.E. under King Antiochus IV as if they were happening
some four hundred years earlier in Babylon). The effect of this device is
to give the impression that contemporary events were disclosed long ago,
and that everything is happening according to God’s plan. An added
benefit of pre-dating is to make it possible for the work to circulate
without being suppressed.
• Apocalyptic is dualistic, in that there is a contrast between
the extremes of the Present Age, under the power of evil forces, and the
Age to Come, when God and the forces of good will prevail. This dualism is
reflected in a well developed angelology and demonology.
• In the apocalyptic view, God will intervene within a
predictably short interval to end the
present evil age and to vindicate the faithful; thus it is pessimistic
about the possibilities of what God can achieve within history, and is preoccupied with the end of history as God’s solution.
• At the end, God will judge the world, with rewards for the
righteous and punishment for the wicked. This system of retribution in the
age to come naturally gives rise (as in Daniel 12:2) to the belief in a
resurrection of the dead.
• The characteristic literary devices include visions, symbols
(especially animal symbolism), and an interest in numerology.
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| Revised
December 4, 2003
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Contents
of Jesus Traditions
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