An insight into the Temple / Whip / Moneychangers incident

[_Symmachus]

That better righteousness would be connected to that expected Kingdom of God. You seem to believe that would not be connected to the poor or treatment of the poor. It is clear that Jesus presents no Marxist style of social analysis. A relationship between capitol and poverty is not brought to view. Jesus does not announce that poverty is painful in a way asking for alleviation. Everybody with familiarity with poverty knows about that. I do not think there is any approach to the instruction love your neighbor without important implications for treatment of the poor (unless you can exclude the poor as neighbor which does not fit Jesus's comments). There are multiple passages stating the kingdom of God is good news to the poor and not the rich. Luke 4;16 "preach good news to the poor, liberty to them who are oppressed," Luke 6;20 blessed are you poor Luke 16:20 well known story of rich Dives who had a poor Lazarus at his gate.

I see it as analogous to the relationship between a cart and a horse: one precedes the other, and to get the other wrong is to miss the point of the relationship in the first place. What I reject (because I find no evidence to accept it) is the idea that addressing or alleviating poverty was any serious motivation behind Jesus and his movement, such as it was. He was not an anti-poverty campaigner who used the rhetoric of apocalyptic; he was an apocalyptic who thought he foresaw the eminent and violent extinction of the social, political, economic, and religious order that he was in. His rhetoric was the rhetoric of inversion: the last would be first and the first last, the proud struck down and the humble exalted, the poor made rich, prostitutes made holy, priests made profane, and so on. It is imminent inversion of the world that is the point, not the particular instances of that inversion. The thrust of the prodigal son parable, for instance, is not that younger profligate sons get a bad rap and that they need more sympathy but that the people exalted by the present order—first-born sons of high moral character—won't be in the coming kingdom of heaven if they don't get on board with Jesus's program. Jesus's dining with publicans wasn't the result of compassionate understanding of tax farmers but a rebuke to the present social values. I see sayings and stories about the poor in the same light. (I note quickly that you cite examples that, if I recall correctly, are specific to Luke, and that evangelist was probably post 70, when apocalypticism was on the way out and Jesus was being reinterpreted by second and third generations of his movement who did not see the end of times arrive, but perhaps we should save that discussion).

With some exceptions, most of Jesus's sayings and actions on other social topics (family life, for example) are not seen as prescriptive, or at least their ambiguity is acknowledged. Most Christian males haven't rendered themselves eunuchs, for example. When it comes to poverty, by contrast, there is a broad cultural agreement today that Jesus was an advocate for the poor, and I think that is wrong. But I understand why: the idea that you should emasculate oneself to express devotion or abandon your family to do so is not universal, but practically every culture holds it as a norm that the poor shouldn't be exploited, usually honored in the breach rather than the observance. Every monarch that has ever warmed a throne has talked about itself as a protector of the poor against the exploiters, and no one goes around saying that they want to screw the poor—but of course the people you don't like sure do! People use this kind of rhetoric about the poor all the time in every culture.

What Jesus says about the poor is much more understandable to people because its familiarity, but Jesus's rhetoric about the poor isn't all that different in substance from that of the Hebrew prophetic tradition (e.g. Amos, Isaiah, and so on), but people are better able to see their rhetoric about the poor in context for the obvious reason that there is no Amosism and no Isaian Church. Jesus was more extreme because his expectation of transformation was more cosmic and permanent than theirs. They were motivated by a vision of Israel's destruction and eventual deliverance as a political entity; Jesus was possessed by an ominous sense of the immediate demise of the world itself, with deliverance in the coming kingdom of god only for those who embraced his form of Judaism. All I'm saying is that one must understand his rhetoric about the poor as serving that goal. It is not the other way around (at least in terms of understanding the text and trying to understand Jesus historically; as a theological issue, clearly different factors enter in).

You are not the only person viewing Jesus urging personal acceptance of poverty as reflecting an expectation that the world would end. On the other hand it has been long been interpreted to teach that turning from personal wealth helps turn a person from greed and allows an opening to awareness of God and the needs of others. It is true that people developed that sort of interpretation in the centuries after Jesus with no end of the world and it is clear apocalyptic expectation was there in Jesus's teaching.

I think you are right in everything here, although it is not just that the apocalyptic expectation was there but that it was central to his teaching, in my view.

I do not quite see why there would be urgency to spreading a message of righteousness if it was all about to end. What would be the point? A better or improved righteousness as valuable implies an ongoing living situation where overcoming selfishness with love for neighbor could actually be expressed.

A world where people love their neighbors would be a world where the poor are not abused and taken advantage of. It would be a world where people seek to give opportunity to the poor. These fit the hope Jesus announces. I see no other meaning to the phrase kingdom of God which would matter to people and would be good news to the poor. What could make Jesus so dull witted as not to be thinking about that? I realize there are Christians who see the point of it all to be being beamed up to the heavenly spaceship enterprise where they get mansions and great singing voices. These are not always the ones concerned with loving their neighbors.Is Jesus proposed righteousness be political alliance to his party and superficial conformity to a couple of extra rules like poverty? That view would be of the sort held by folks Jesus described as dead man bones.

Well, I think it is pretty clear that Jesus wasn't setting up a social movement that he expected to last for very long. The earliest Christians certainly didn't see it that way, including Paul. Consider the opening of the Gospel of Mark and of the other two synoptics after the birth narratives (Matt 3 and Luke 3): the end of the world is coming any day now! Mark, the earliest gospel, only makes any sense if you have this opening in mind, and that is why I interpret what Jesus says about the poor through that lens as well. Same with Matthew (Luke, being a bit later, is somewhat different). These people thought that the eschaton was imminent, as did many other Jews in the region (followers of John the Baptists, the Qumran community, and others). That kind of mindset might be foreign and illogical to people with different assumptions, but people in this forum don't have to go very far to find examples close to home.

And I would suggest that your puzzlement is the result of seeing things backwards: "I see no other meaning to the phrase kingdom of God which would matter to people and would be good news to the poor." That's because it wasn't about the poor qua poor. The appeal of Jesus's message wasn't hope for a better life now but a promise of a place in god's kingdom that was shortly and violently to arrive. What little is said by Jesus about the poor was hardly original, so I don't know why it would have had any special appeal, but I can understand why his message could appeal to people in a culture that had been steeped in apocalyptic fervor for two centuries: "you might be a poor wretch now, spat upon by the corrupt priests, but follow me and you sit by the right hand of God with a view of their destruction!" Even the Beatitudes make more sense from this perspective than they do as ethical precepts, much less a social program which, again, is a popular reading today but one that has its roots only in the 19th century.

[_Dr Moore]

Thank you Dr. Symmachus for taking the time to so articulate your perspective.

If I may attempt to summarize your position: while Jesus surely didn’t not care about the poor, his messages and actions do not appear, on closer analysis, focused primarily on uplifting the poor from poverty. That his ministerial motivation lay in larger matters applicable to all equally. Is that close?

If your careful research on the matter is to be believed, then have you not discovered a case of anachronistic inconsistency with the Lord of the New Testament and the Smith-projected and acutely poverty conscious Lord of the Book of Mormon?

[_Gadianton]

If anything, Jesus is saying that we should all be poor if we want membership in that kingdom because it means we reject this world, just as he says we should be ready to abandon our families, go to war against our parents and siblings, and that males should be ready to cut their balls off, all for the same reason. If you want in to Jesus’s kingdom, you have to let go of what you’d rather hold on to

A compelling summary of the case you're making.

What about the story in Mark, where Jesus justifies using expensive perfume upon him, as critics opined the perfume could have been sold and the proceeds used to help the poor? No doubt, Rusty the Tin Man and his goon squad thank the Lord for these verses.

I always had trouble with the story of the widow's mite because Jesus allowed the woman to follow through. Shouldn't he have stopped her, as the Lord stopped Abraham, and told her she'd passed the test? No need to have her suffer unnecessarily? Yet, apparently, he had no problem taking her last mite, despite the suffering it would bring upon her, and for reasons very consistent with your argument.

first-born sons of high moral character—won't be in the coming kingdom of heaven if they don't get on board with Jesus's program

And what was that program? Is there any evidence Jesus reflected on the possibility that his own order was just a predictable inversion of the present order, with himself as the new aristocracy? I mean, the verses you mention about the low being exalted and the mighty falling are trivially no more than that without context, but the context I've always assumed is that the humble who become the rulers will carry forth a better order, because they understand suffering and have compassion on the weak. The whole thing makes sense only if the end of the program is goodness for everyone, most importantly, for those who receive it the least now. I suppose I'm asking, in some way, is loyalty still the means to the ends of goodness and equity for all? Or is loyalty closer to an end in itself?

[_Symmachus]

If I may attempt to summarize your position: while Jesus surely didn’t not care about the poor, his messages and actions do not appear, on closer analysis, focused primarily on uplifting the poor from poverty. That his ministerial motivation lay in larger matters applicable to all equally. Is that close?

If your careful research on the matter is to be believed, then have you not discovered a case of anachronistic inconsistency with the Lord of the New Testament and the Smith-projected and acutely poverty conscious Lord of the Book of Mormon?

I agree with your summary, venerable Doctor, and as to your second question, I can only apologize for not yet having really thought about the matter. 3 Nephi certainly does present a Jesus with a social program, and 4 Nephi imagines how it was carried out, with Mormon and Moroni as chronicles of its downfall. Like the purer forms of socialism, Jesus's teaching is perfect and fails in the implementation only because human beings aren't good enough to realize it.

From the historical perspective, I wonder further whether this significant difference between the Jesus of the gospels and the Jesus of 3 Nephi is a detail worth weighing for those who measure questions of Book of Mormon historicity. It's not decisive but it surely doesn't help, if another grain of sand on that heap is needed anyway.

A compelling summary of the case you're making.

In the interests of broadcasting my humility, my case is unique to me only in certain ways of framing the issue, and while I have an ill-tempered though largely non-violent reaction to the portrayal of Jesus as a champion of the poor—which obviously says something about my character—a lot of the ideas expressed here stem from my reading of the scholarship of the past thirty or forty years, at least as regards Jesus's Jewishness and his apocalyptic fervor.

What about the story in Mark, where Jesus justifies using expensive perfume upon him, as critics opined the perfume could have been sold and the proceeds used to help the poor? No doubt, Rusty the Tin Man and his goon squad thank the Lord for these verses.

I always had trouble with the story of the widow's mite because Jesus allowed the woman to follow through. Shouldn't he have stopped her, as the Lord stopped Abraham, and told her she'd passed the test? No need to have her suffer unnecessarily? Yet, apparently, he had no problem taking her last mite, despite the suffering it would bring upon her, and for reasons very consistent with your argument.

Never mind the Prophet's big birthday bash. If people want to celebrate how wonderfully Christlike he is by throwing a big party in the conference center, what's it to you?

And what was that program? Is there any evidence Jesus reflected on the possibility that his own order was just a predictable inversion of the present order, with himself as the new aristocracy? I mean, the verses you mention about the low being exalted and the mighty falling are trivially no more than that without context, but the context I've always assumed is that the humble who become the rulers will carry forth a better order, because they understand suffering and have compassion on the weak. The whole thing makes sense only if the end of the program is goodness for everyone, most importantly, for those who receive it the least now. I suppose I'm asking, in some way, is loyalty still the means to the ends of goodness and equity for all? Or is loyalty closer to an end in itself?

I think it's much more about loyalty to Jesus's form of Judaism, and thereby staving off a miserable death as the son of man comes riding on a cloud of consummate glory, with a hope of reward that isn't really spelled out but must be better than the now. What kind of program does one need for that, or at least how much of it needs to be spelled out? Think of the early Mormons: the earliest years of the Church were years of boiling millennial expectation, but how much of a program had Joseph Smith really put out by 1831, when Mormons started gathering in Kirtland after selling their farms? A lot of the program of Mormonism in that period was a response to the social and economic crises brought on by the sudden influx of an eager population with nowhere to reside while waiting Christ's immanent return.

Now, suppose that all the events in the synoptics only happened over a matter of months, even weeks: would you expect a fully coherent program to have developed in that time frame? There really isn't much indication that Jesus's preaching lasted all that long. Only John gives us this idea that the movement (such as it was!) was protracted over at least three years (three Passovers are mentioned, with another implied), but it's clearly later than the other three. My view is that, unlike Joseph Smith, Jesus wasn't around long enough in his preaching role to develop a substantial following that would have necessitated responses to problems and answers to questions.

It is possible that Jesus had much greater detail to his thought than the text shows us. But I don't really see much of a concrete program or even an end in mind other than the coming end; the most you can see is "repent," a theme that screams at you in Mark and Matthew, toned down in Luke, but withers to a whisper by John where Jesus has become a totally different kind of figure from that of Mark.

What we have to compare Jesus to is the prophetic tradition, material from Qumran, and sayings and stories about Tannaim like Hillel and Shammai found in the earlier layers of the Mishnah (perhaps we could include Paul and his circle, and any other New Testament writers): compared to these, Jesus was an original, but not all of these had a coherent program that we can tell either. A lot of it is just captivating sayings and stories, like Jesus's case. But certainly for Jesus, I do not see anything sketched out with even the detail you provide ("I've always assumed is that the humble who become the rulers will carry forth a better order, because they understand suffering and have compassion on the weak. The whole thing makes sense only if the end of the program is goodness for everyone, most importantly, for those who receive it the least now"). Forms of Jesus's social program as I most often see it expressed are just read back into the gospels with a circularity that is so ingrained even in post-Christian societies that it appears as a linear development: from Jesus's saying to a Christian sociology. Time and tradition are what warp that line and feed the illusion.

[_kairos]

Solomon was right- the best case for a human on this earth is to be both wise and rich- then you can dictate much of what kind of life you will live. For the underclasses life frankly is a bitch- all one can do is try to be happy- work if you can, drink a little vino to cheer you up and enjoy your spouse's company if that is your lot. Back to Solomon- even the rich person says he has no idea what his/her inheritor will do with the wealth left her/him. And that Solomon says is very depressing.

Jesus was a low-middle class Jew though some might say he was carpenter and that was a trade that would keep food on the table and clothes on his back and allow him to get to the major Jewish festivals in Jerusalem. He cared for all people then and now in they that His Gospel offers an amazingly happy ending. Even though the way ahead in this life may be very dark for you and me, for the refugees and migrants wandering or in camps, for the orphans, for the those who will die today of starvation or from the ravages of war and revolution, for the babies alive in the womb but aborted (a very,very short earth life), for all there is, I believe, a brilliant, everlasting Light at the end of this life's journey. That ending is assured for all who believe the Gospel Jesus came to teach and live. In that belief of more after this life, there is hope even joy, though life today and tomorrow is a bitter, ugly grind.

Jesus died that all might live but that life is not here and now but everlasting, eternal life.

As Solomon might say" if this now life, is all there is , vanity of vanities, we are all just chasing the wind". Jesus promised much more and I believe Him.

not a sermon, just a thought,

k

[_Gadianton]

I think it's much more about loyalty to Jesus's form of Judaism

I do agree that we wouldn't necessarily expect a lot of details on the afterlife, and that also, economic conditions and darn, just a leader's personality and presence, while teaching something barely different could be enough to explain how a movement sprang up. But ultimately, should the movement be successful, and should we wish to justify the movement, we can't do so by pointing to material causes like, "folks were desperate and easy to dupe back then, and that guy had a real tongue of silver!" Even if we are agnostic and doubting liberals who are looking no farther than for a good metaphor, we need something more.

I suppose I'm thinking about now, on reflection, what was it that was offered? Your very first sentence says a lot, and I was missing that piece, and so I can update my question to, what was Jesus's form of Judaism vs. the standard fare?

I think I'm supposed to know the answer to that one. Jesus was more about the spirit than the letter of the law, correct? Or was that Paul's thing?

Without knowing many details about what was going on in the background, the consistent thing from the gospels is that he's subversive. He's like their version of Socrates, showing that what they think they know, they don't know. But to the extent that's true, how it factors into Judaism of that time, and then what the greater lesson is, I'm coming up short on that one.

[_huckelberry]

I do not think there is any approach to the instruction love your neighbor without important implications for treatment of the poor

I see it as analogous to the relationship between a cart and a horse: one precedes the other, and to get the other wrong is to miss the point of the relationship in the first place. What I reject (because I find no evidence to accept it) is the idea that addressing or alleviating poverty was any serious motivation behind Jesus and his movement, such as it was. He was not an anti-poverty campaigner who used the rhetoric of apocalyptic; he was an apocalyptic who thought he foresaw the eminent and violent extinction of the social, political, economic, and religious order that he was in. His rhetoric was the rhetoric of inversion: the last would be first and the first last, the proud struck down and the humble exalted, the poor made rich, prostitutes made holy, priests made profane, and so on. It is imminent inversion of the world that is the point, not the particular instances of that inversion.The thrust of the prodigal son parable, for instance, is not that younger profligate sons get a bad rap and that they need more sympathy but that the people exalted by the present order—first-born sons of high moral character—won't be in the coming kingdom of heaven if they don't get on board with Jesus's program.
.........
what Jesus says about the poor is much more understandable to people because its familiarity, but Jesus's rhetoric about the poor isn't all that different in substance from that of the Hebrew prophetic tradition (e.g. Amos, Isaiah, and so on), but people are better able to see their rhetoric about the poor in context for the obvious reason that there is no Amosism and no Isaian Church. Jesus was more extreme because his expectation of transformation was more cosmic and permanent than theirs. They were motivated by a vision of Israel's destruction and eventual deliverance as a political entity; Jesus was possessed by an ominous sense of the immediate demise of the world itself, with deliverance in the coming kingdom of god only for those who embraced his form of Judaism. All I'm saying is that one must understand his rhetoric about the poor as serving that goal. It is not the other way around (at least in terms of understanding the text and trying to understand Jesus historically; as a theological issue, clearly different factors enter in).
.........

Well, I think it is pretty clear that Jesus wasn't setting up a social movement that he expected to last for very long. The earliest Christians certainly didn't see it that way, including Paul. Consider the opening of the Gospel of Mark and of the other two synoptics after the birth narratives (Matt 3 and Luke 3): the end of the world is coming any day now!... would suggest that your puzzlement is the result of seeing things backwards: "I see no other meaning to the phrase kingdom of God which would matter to people and would be good news to the poor." That's because it wasn't about the poor qua poor. The appeal of Jesus's message wasn't hope for a better life now but a promise of a place in god's kingdom that was shortly and violently to arrive. .

little is said by Jesus about the poor was hardly original, so I don't know why it would have had any special appeal, ......

Symmachus,In Above quotesI have trimmed your words some to try and avoid being drowned in various subjects. I am still having trouble deciding where to start a reply.

Some of what you observe fits clear lines of thought I am at least familiar with. On the other hand I think your take on the beloved prodigal son story has a singular dark cast to it. I have never heard such an interpretation. After all the story ends with the father observing the elder son's secure place in the household.

Perhaps I understand your cart and horse concern. I can see (its a very traditional reading) That Jesus words focus on people following a true righteousness so that Gods will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.Such actually happening would be the kingdom of God on earth which Jesus was concerned to announce. Concern for the poor would at best be something on the cart being pulled by the primary concern.

The phrase, kingdom of God, certainly has an important place in Mark it carries most of the load of explaining Jesus purpose. In Mark and Matthew it is important but shares more with moral and personal spiritual instruction. In these gospels the phrase kingdom of God is not given a lot of specifics. It is true that it was a broad concern there at that time but that does not mean it meant the same thing to everybody. Is the kingdom of God a sudden complete transformation or a relationship to God which could come closer or become further away? Is it a single event? Is its arrival violent? Is it a cosmic break in time or not that at all? Are the role inversions (rich poor etc) you mention revenge wishes or illustrations for understanding our personal relationships with others as Jesus repeatedly insisted upon?

I think it is very difficult to be sure which kind of picture of kingdom of God Jesus had in his own mind when he said it. It is entirely possible that he was not entirely sure himself. His understanding could have developed over time. He would not know how history was to turn out. He started thinking his own suffering was a critical part. That is the meaning Mark focuses upon. There was an expectation among believers after his death of a sudden return completing the kingdom of God in some unspecified way. These believers transitioned away from that helped I would expect by the fluid variety of meanings the kingdom of God can take.

Returning to your observation that social gospel type concerns for the poor are late developments long after the life and times of Jesus, yes I can see that. People long after Jesus have continued to think about implications of the kingdom of god and how its presence on earth could develop.Such considerations have used the example of the prophets and understood Jesus as part of that tradition. I see no reason not to do that. I do see development of ideas and hopes as to how the kingdom of God relates to new times and places to be a normal growth process.

[_Symmachus]

I certainly don't wish to be boxed into the claim that Jesus (as distinct from his movement, a distinction that I must underline) was an apocalyptic preacher and nothing else. I am saying that he was primarily an apocalyptic preacher, and that any other interest I think must be seen in light of that fact. The responses I see invoke the movement, either suggesting some other appeal than apocalyptic fervor for contemporaries on the one hand, or emphasizing that later tradition's focus on what are supposed to be Jesus's teachings constitute at least equally strong evidence of what he taught. One can see the circularity of the latter (that is the nature of the problem!), yet both concerns are connected in that they are focusing not on Jesus but on the people who responded to him. I think that is fair, since all we have are records written by people who responded to him, but there is a still a Jesus there to get at, if only in very broad terms.

Rather than address every point that has been individually, I should like to explain what my position is. I apologize for being long about it, but I hope to show that my position is not a casual one but rather comes from trying to make sense of the evidence I see.

There is something to tradition, then, but the question is: which tradition? Consider the Christology of the gospels. The earliest (Mark) has Jesus as a messiah but still a human being, which Matthew follows but with a great deal more emphasis on his Jewishness. Luke makes him a son of God in a very literal sense, and with John, the latest gospel, he becomes God himself. One can see in this a kind of literary apotheosis, especially by comparing the confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi. In Mark (likely the earliest), this occurs just after just after Jesus heals a blind man by spitting in his eyes:

And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am?. And they answered, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets.And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ [=messiah]. And he charged them that they should tell no man of him.
And he began to teach them, that the Son of man [=a messianic title] must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men. And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.

Here is the beginning of our answer the significant question raised by our eloquent dean, Professor Gadianton: what attracted people? Those closest to Jesus report that he had the reputation of an apocalyptic figure like Elijah (whose return is still alluded to at every seder even today) or an apocalyptic preacher like John the Baptist, whose teaching as recorded by the gospels is that god's wrath is soon to visit the unrepentant in a blaze of death. That teaching finds a parallel at the end of the quotation, complete with a messianic title. Note too his thought pattern of inverted expectations and paradox: deny yourself, lose your life to find it, lose your soul if you gain possession of the world, and so on. This is the kind of rhetoric that I think Jesus's attitude towards the poor must be seen: the world will hate the messiah, so whom the world hates, the messiah loves. But that is not because the messiah has a special message of hope or love but because he has a special hatred for this present world. Here is the gospel writer's chance to record whatever he wanted readers to know about Jesus's contemporary reputation, yet I don't see any hint that Jesus is extolled as a great ethical teacher, a champion of the poor, a social reformer. He may have been those things, but if he was, they weren't what made him notable to people who had enough interest in it all to become Mark's readers (to say nothing of Mark himself). The main question seems to be: just what kind of messiah is this? The proleptic reference to the cross (Jesus hadn't carried a cross at this point in the narrative) gets at the core of Christianity, the thing that defines it for itself and divides from other religious groups (especially, in this period, Judaism): namely, the meaning of Jesus's death. It was already the main issue when Mark was being written. Clearly, they didn't expect his death and were already trying to construct some sense out of the heap of apocalyptic tropes and gestures made by Jesus while he was alive. As the last line of this quote shows, the sense Mark makes out of that for his community of readers is that he still expected Jesus to come as the messiah, and that soon.

Consider the parallel in a later gospel:

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

(I bold the significant differences)

Mark had mentioned the prophets—but which prophets did people have in mind? According to Matthew, the prophet who prophesied Jerusalem's destruction (which happened again in 70 with Roman rather than Babylonian arms, a fact which leads to a post-70 dating). We get the same stuff as in Mark, but the additions are significant about what people thought about Jesus. People were now saying that he founded a sect (translated as "church" here but ekklēsiā should more neutrally be "community") which had claimed the authority to offer opinions on matters of Judaic law ("bind" = forbid and "loose" = permit in Mishnaic terminology; it has nothing to do with the LDS conceptions of sealing).

Mark had alluded to Jesus's death on the cross, but now we get a resurrection preceding the coming of the messiah, and he is now explicitly called god's son (the meaning of that is complex and contentious). The people who read this were at least a part of the second and third generations of Christians. To the extent that Matthew's version reflects what people were saying about Jesus during his lifetime, the only significant difference from Mark is that people saw in him a resemblance to Jeremiah, who had prophesied destruction. To the extent that this passage reflects the later community for whom it was written, they are still concerned with the nature of Jesus as a messiah, but they had also the added concern about their group's relationship with the wider culture of Judaism. I don't see Jesus's appeal being primarily his social message except that, again, the wider society is sinful and terrible.

The only hint I see is the new detail that Jesus will judge people for their good works when he returns as the messiah. Presumably, that would include adherence to some of Jesus's ethical sayings, although he hardly offers any detailed instructions: don't EVER have a sexual thought about a woman not one's wife, don't call people names, love your enemies...but you also get this kind of teaching in other Jewish sects of the time, so it doesn't explain why anyone would join Jesus's sect and not those others. And even then, this is still all wrapped up in an expectation that the end will be here any day now; some of the people in Jesus's group would still be alive at his return according to Matthew, so if you were part of that second or third generation and you'd just witnessed the gruesome finale to the Jewish revolt against Rome, you'd not be without justification in expecting that return soon.

The next parallel, in Luke, has the core of Mark but has some differences from Matthew, mostly omissions of matters that had been (and probably still were when Luke was written) of particular concern for Jewish followers of Jesus but not the (likely) non-Jewish audience of Luke: gone are the interest in Jewish law, the reference to Jeremiah, and the claim that Jesus will judge good works (perhaps reflecting Paul's influence?):

And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am? They answering said, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others say, that one of the old prophets is risen again. He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God. And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that thing; Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day. And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away? For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy angels. But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.

What remains, though, is the apocalyptic core: the world will end soon when Jesus, god's messiah who has been killed and was resurrected, will return to the accompaniment of god's glory and angels. For Luke's initial audience, it was probably still believable that some old-timer had been a child within earshot of Jesus (a not uncommon way of thinking in early Christian literature because it helped to establish or invent apostolic continuity; cf. Ignatius and John). But again, here is a chance for a late gospel writer to embellish or at least expand the picture; he has inherited a narrative device (Jesus asks the question, "who do people say that I am?" and gets an answer) but instead of doing that, instead he largely follows the script that goes back to Mark. That tells me that people had a certain expectation about how Peter answered that question in the first instance, and his answer was not that people said Jesus offered hope of better way to live with each other but that Jesus was an apocalyptic messiah who was any day now going to return with great spectacle and celestial fanfare. That is clearly what Luke's community of Christian readers/listeners expected.

It is worth asking why Luke didn't add anything Jesus's social message or ethical teaching, because it's not as if he couldn't. He was bound by audience expectations to a degree, but John, the latest gospel to be written, does show a significant departure, perhaps reflecting a totally new or at least different set of expectations among certain Christians:

From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve. After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.

What I bold here is the only point of similarity that John has with the others. It is completely shorn of its apocalypticism except for the title (Christos = messiah), but it's not clear that John even knew what it meant. Jesus here is a sage ("thou hast words of eternal life") but he is not a sage of social justice, at least not for the community of Christians who were John's readers.

If Jesus's social message were so characteristic (rather than incidental), why isn't anyone reported as interested in it? Gospel writers record people's reactions to Jesus, and that reaction was chiefly centered on his miracle-working and his apocalypticism in the synoptics and on his Christological message in John, where the concept of messiah has taken on a completely new meaning.

We could also ask about 1 Thessalonians, which vies with Galatians for being the earliest Christian writing of any kind. Given that letters are always responses to a particular circumstance or set of them, perhaps it wouldn't be fair to expect them to reveal anything general about how people in the late 40s or early 50s were talking about Jesus as either an apocalyptic messiah figure or a social reformer or something else. Still...

There was clearly some apocalyptic anticipation in Thessalonica, as evidence by 1 Thessalonians 1.8-10, 2.19-20, and 3.11-13:

For from you sounded out the word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that we need not to speak any thing. For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come....For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and joy...Now God himself and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you. And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.

That bit about "loving one another" may perhaps be a reference to Jesus's saying recorded in John 13 ("love one another as I have loved you"). True, that gospel probably hadn't been written yet, but the occurrence here might show that it was an earlier saying among Christians. Even so, Paul doesn't attribute it to Jesus, and all it would show is that Jesus did offer some apparently moving but substantively vague advice about interacting with other people. It was also not original to Jesus and goes back Leviticus (19.18: "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD").

Now, the community at Thessalonica consisted of mostly non-Jews, but it seems that, despite this unfortunate theological handicap, they were quite taken with apocalypticism, as well. In fact, they were so taken with it, that they started to worry when people in their community were dying from natural causes and were thus not able to witness the return of Christ. And of course, being Greeks, they may not have believed in an afterlife, so this presented a bit of problem for Paul's teaching, which is one of the reasons he writes the letter—"weren't we all supposed to see this resurrected messiah coming soon?" Paul answers at 4.13-5.11:

But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.

Even outside the gospels and even among non-Jews, you can see what message appealed to people: followers of Jesus the messiah (however they interpreted that) will be spared the destruction of the unbelievers at his return. You can't get more apocalyptic than that, and that is what seemed to attract people, not the social message. Paul does have a lot to say about how Christians in the communities he wrote to should behave, but he doesn't ground it in any putative ethical or social teachings of Jesus, which is an interesting fact in its own right. Consider a passage from Galatians, also very early, where Paul tells the Galatians about his meeting, or confrontation rather, with the leaders of the Christians in Jerusalem. The main issue there, of course, was the increasing tension between the old Jewish followers of Jesus and the influx of non-Jews into the movement. Circumcision and dietary laws were the main issues, but there is an interesting detail here (2.9-11):

And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision. Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do. But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.

I would translate that bolded part a bit differently: "Only they would that we should remember the poor, which very thing (auto touto) I had already been eager to do." The verb tense used in the relative clause (espoudasa) and the tense of the infinitive dependent on it (poiēsaiare both aorist, so this was not an intention for the future (otherwise we would have had an imperfect verb with a present infinitive) but something already done, or something that was generally true about Paul at any point in time (although in that case I would expect a present infinitive with the aorist verb, but oh well). In other words, what Paul is saying is that he didn't need that sort of advice from Peter: he knew already to take care of the poor. After all, as he had already bragged about earlier in the same letter, he was more Jewish than any of them, and care for the poor was part of Jewish ethics in general. It's not as if Jesus were the first person in the Jewish tradition (or any other) to exhort people to care for the poor (if he indeed did so, which seems not an unsafe assumption, although in most instances they serve as a foil against someone Jesus doesn't like or to serve a point he wants to make; he doesn't make general statements about kindness toward the poor because just about everybody already thought way—what Jesus did was show them their hypocrisy). In any case, Paul's aside implies that he didn't need to hear this from Peter and company, and since he couldn't have heard it from Jesus himself (at least, he left no record of any conversation with Jesus to that effect), then it is safe to assume that he did not see in this an idea particularly associated with Jesus.

I have no wish to make the erroneous claim that Jesus was uninterested in the poor or that he didn't put great value on poverty, especially as an antidote to the corrupting influence of wealth. His sayings are too well known for such a claim to be entertained. But they are so well known now that they have obscured what people thought Jesus's primary message was, both contemporaries who saw him and later communities of Christians. The handful of verses trotted out every election year (for example) have to be seen in some kind of context, as does the incident discussed in the OP. A handful of verses about poverty have become the stand-in for the gospels as a whole largely because the central issue addressed by the gospels and indeed the New Testament as whole is the nature of Jesus, which nobody thinks or cares about anymore—even Christians hardly talk about it—but Jesus’s few references to the poor are easily digestible and not controversial because they align with sentiments about the poor that are quite general and thus not characteristic of Jesus. Such theological indifference was not always the case. On this, tradition is on my side, because how one thought about that question is primarily what defined you as a Christian, at least on an intellectual level; it really was only in the 19th century that that began to change. But the nature of Jesus was already the issue in late 40s, as Paul's struggles with the Palestine Christians over non-Jewish converts attests. It is a mark of how secular even Christianity has become that most people assume Christianity has to do with questions of social policy rather than fear of "losing one's soul" for not accepting Jesus as the messiah when gentle Jesus, meek and mild, returns amid the roar of angels and the fire of destruction.

[_kairos]

I certainly don't wish to be boxed into the claim that Jesus (as distinct from his movement, a distinction that I must underline) was an apocalyptic preacher and nothing else. I am saying that he was primarily an apocalyptic preacher, and that any other interest I think must be seen in light of that fact. The responses I see invoke the movement, either suggesting some other appeal than apocalyptic fervor for contemporaries on the one hand, or emphasizing that later tradition's focus on what are supposed to be Jesus's teachings constitute at least equally strong evidence of what he taught. One can see the circularity of the latter (that is the nature of the problem!), yet both concerns are connected in that they are focusing not on Jesus but on the people who responded to him. I think that is fair, since all we have are records written by people who responded to him, but there is a still a Jesus there to get at, if only in very broad terms.Rather than address every point that has been individually, I should like to explain what my position is.

Symmachus- what great insights you have laid out- a keeper for me!

One question: Jesus clearly was a "healer" and poor and rich are attracted to such persons, then and now. Even if the people, leaders and disciples could not quite grasp the kind of Messiah He was, the miracles attracted, can i say it, thousands? So what role do you see His miracles having had on His "attitude' toward the poor and His messiahship- "if you do not understand my words/teaching, believe in Me because of the miracles I perform" (my bad on the translation)

thanx again for your insights,

k

[_Symmachus]

Symmachus- what great insights you have laid out- a keeper for me!

That's very kind of you to say. I do want to emphasize though, that I am in the main following the work of scholars whose work I have studied and applying their insights in this particular case.

One question: Jesus clearly was a "healer" and poor and rich are attracted to such persons, then and now. Even if the people, leaders and disciples could not quite grasp the kind of Messiah He was, the miracles attracted, can i say it, thousands? So what role do you see His miracles having had on His "attitude' toward the poor and His messiahship- "if you do not understand my words/teaching, believe in Me because of the miracles I perform" (my bad on the translation)

The miracles are an interesting and difficult problem that I am least qualified to tackle because my temperament is such that I just can't believe such things happen, and I have certainly witnessed the birth of miracle narratives in Mormonism: mundane things get reinterpreted as some kind of divine intervention later on. Consequently, I see them as invented at some point, but I have no way of proving when or how. I don't know either whether there really were thousands of people or large crowds by our standards (though they may have appeared large to an ancient observer). Clearly, these traditions developed early, perhaps in Jesus's lifetime, though it is complicated by the fact that Paul doesn't mention any of Jesus's miracles (unless you count the resurrection) nor does Paul mention any of those that the Book of Acts records him as performing. That is my recollection anyway.