The Jewish Annotated New Testament (153 page)

These observations help us to understand several New Testament passages. It is possible to see Jesus’ command to “Love your enemies” as belonging to the same tradition as Rabbi Judah’s ruling. Therefore, when Jesus states, according to Matthew 5.43, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’” he is not referring to a Pharisaic or proto-rabbinic view. More likely, he is referring to the composers of certain Dead Sea Scrolls, such as the Community Rule, who divide the world into those who follow “the path for the wise” and therefore merit love and those other “men of the pit” who deserve “eternal hatred” (1QS 9.21).

Further evidence points to this common ground between Jesus and the Pharisaic and later rabbinic tradition. While it is often thought that Jesus and his followers rejected the “restrictive” Jewish notion of the neighbor, it is more accurate to say that in place of restricting the term “neighbor” to fellow Israelites, the followers of Jesus redefined the term in their own “restrictive” sense. As in the Jewish sources, Matthew’s Gospel glosses the broader context of Leviticus 19.18 to instruct
its particular community
, the church. Immediately before “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Leviticus exhorts: “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people” (19.17–18a). Matthew 18.15–17 states:

If another member of the church [lit., “your brother”] sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member [lit., “he”] listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member [lit., “he”] refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender [lit., “he”] refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Matthew’s gloss on Leviticus 19.15–18 concerns reproach. But the neighbor is a “brother” who belongs to Matthew’s community. The Johannine community likewise understood Jesus’ commandment to love as applying to fellow community members (Jn 13.34–35; 1 Jn 3.11–17). While the commandment to love is at the center of Johannine theology, the evangelist never uses the term “neighbor” but consistently concentrates on love between those in the new community created by Jesus.

Jewish perspectives on Leviticus 19.18 can also help to elucidate Luke’s parable of the good Samaritan. Jesus’ interlocutor, the Jewish lawyer, holds a restrictive definition of “neighbor”: his question, “Who is my neighbor?” presupposes that some people are not neighbors. Contrary to many interpretations, however, the parable neither redefines the term “neighbor” nor abolishes the distinction between Jew and Gentile. Jews did not regard Samaritans as Gentiles. There was certainly long-standing enmity between Samaritans and Jews: the two nations claimed different locations for the Temple, different versions of the Torah, and alternative lines of priests (2 Kings 17.24–41;
Ant
. 9.277–91). Despite this mutual enmity, which Josephus and the Gospels both attest (Lk 9.52f; Jn 4.9;
Ant
. 18.2.6–7, 20.6.1–3;
J.W
. 2.232–37), Jews in Galilee and Judea lived next door to Samaritans. Early tannaitic rabbis consider Samaritans to be Israelites (
b. Qidd
. 75b;
y. Ketub
. 3,1, 27a; minor tractate
Kutim
1.1), and it is only later amoraic rabbis who regard them as Gentiles. The parable of the good Samaritan should therefore not be understood as redefining the category of “neighbor” so as to include Gentiles, for the parable makes no reference to Gentiles. The Samaritans were Israelites with entrenched opposition to the Jewish ways of understanding their shared tradition. A subtle but decisive shift at the end of story confirms that Jesus’ point was not to redefine the category of “neighbor” to include Gentiles but to emphasize that neighbors are those who show love:

“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” [The lawyer] said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (Lk 10.36–37)

In the end, the parable does not answer the lawyer’s question “Who is my neighbor?” but illustrates
how to love
. It shows the Jewish questioner what a neighbor
does
but does not redefine who a neighbor
is
.

The matter of how to
act
as neighbor relates to what is often called the “golden rule.” The golden rule was a common teaching expressed in a wide range of pre-Christian Greek (Herodotus, Isocrates and many others) and Jewish (e.g., Tobit and
Aristeas
) texts, but Jesus may have been the first to connect the golden rule to the love commandment. Matthew, who records Jesus as saying that “the law and the prophets” “hang” or “depend” on Leviticus 19.18 (Mt 22.40), elsewhere quotes Jesus as making an analogous remark about the golden rule: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (7.12). Luke cites the golden rule and then explains it with what seems to be an allusion to the love command (Lk 6.31ff.). The
Didache
, another early Christian text, opens with a gloss on the two Great Commandments (Deut 6.5 and Lev 19.18) explained in terms of the golden rule (
Did
. 1.2). Paul may be combining the love commandment and the golden rule in Romans 13.10, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law” (cf. Gal 5.14). James likewise seems to allude to the golden rule, which he calls “the royal law,” when he cites the love command (Jas 2.8). So far, none of this conflicts with Jewish teaching.

However, as the followers of Jesus continued their expansion into the Gentile world, the connotations they gave to the love command began to change. Leviticus 19.18 (along with Deut 6.5) became a substitute for—rather than the guiding principle for understanding—the laws of the Torah. In turn, they redefined the term “neighbor” to include those outside the community of Israel. Perhaps this transformation of the notion of “neighbor” was facilitated by the connection of the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself with the golden rule. When preaching to Gentiles, the followers of Jesus needed to express biblical injunctions in familiar language: Gentiles would have been familiar with the golden rule, but not necessarily with Leviticus 19. Paul’s view became decisive: “the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal 5.14). Here Leviticus 19.18 replaces the rest of the law and the term “neighbor” has been redefined to include Gentiles, though Paul also acknowledges that working “for the good of all” is not incompatible with giving priority to “those of the family of faith” (Gal 6.10).

Indeed, Jewish sages cited the golden rule in similar circumstances. When Hillel the elder, Jesus’ contemporary, was confronted by a would-be convert who audaciously demanded to be taught the whole Torah while standing on one foot, the sage answered with the famous words: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary” (
b. Shabb
. 31a). Philo likewise calls on the golden rule in seeking to explain the rationality of biblical law to Gentiles (
Hypoth
. 7.6). But whereas for Paul, or at least certainly Paul’s later Christian interpreters, the golden rule and the love command came to replace the rest of Torah, in Judaism, the concern for love remained the guiding principle by which Torah was to be interpreted.

If we think of the historical Jesus as one who kept Torah requirements (Mt 5.17–19), and as primarily concerned with a mission to Israel (Mt 10.5–6; 15.24), then his use of Leviticus 19.18 looks quite similar to Akiva’s and quite dissimilar to the way it was understood by the later Christians. Like both his Pharisaic contemporaries and later rabbinic Jews, Jesus neither sought to redefine the category of the neighbor so that it includes Gentiles nor to replace all the laws of Judaism with one or two Great Commandments. Like Akiva and his students, he regarded Leviticus 19.18 as the greatest of the commandments in the sense that it should be used to interpret the rest of the law. Only later, during the Gentile mission, did his followers revise this position.

DIVINE BEINGS

Rebecca Lesses

Jews and Christians in the biblical period and Late Antiquity believed in a panoply of supernatural beings who partook in divine power and glory. While both groups claimed to be monotheistic, evidence from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), early postbiblical Jewish literature, and the New Testament demonstrates that divine qualities were found not only in the creator of the universe, but in a host of other beings known by various names: sons of God; the Angel of the Lord (a chief angel second only to God); Wisdom; named angels like Gabriel or Michael; the Son of Man; the divine Glory; and the
Logos
(Word; see “John’s Prologue as Midrash,” p.
546
). Christians came to believe that Jesus, identified in the New Testament as the Son of Man, the Son of God, and the
Logos
, had a status equal to God’s; for example Jn 1.1 says: “In the beginning was the Word [
Logos
], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

In the Tanakh, the God identified by the tetragrammaton YHWH is the creator and ruler of the universe who has made a covenant with the people of Israel, his special treasure (Ex 19.6). He appears to individuals (for example, Abraham in Gen 15) and to the people of Israel at Sinai. He bestows both reward and punishment on individuals and on nations. In the Tanakh, God is male; female imagery is rarely applied to him, and his grammatical gender is always male. However, both male and female are made in the divine image (Gen 1.26). The Tanakh occasionally refers to the gods of other nations, but always as objects of scorn, and many prophets strongly denounce Israelites who worship them. By the time of the Babylonian exile, an anonymous prophet teaches that there is only one God, and that the deities whom other nations worship do not exist (Isa 40–55).

The figure of Wisdom in the book of Proverbs (whose date is disputed) and in Second Temple Jewish literature is the only female figure that comes close to divine status. In Proverbs, Wisdom speaks about herself in the first person (8.22–23): “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.” What is more, she participated in creation (8.30): “then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.” The first-century BCE apocryphal work, the Wisdom of Solomon, exalts her status even more: she is the “fashioner of all things” (7.22), “a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty” (7.25). She sits by the throne of God’s glory (9.4,10), and is closely linked with the “all powerful word,” who leaps from the royal throne to destroy the firstborn of the Egyptians (18.15). In a review of biblical events (Wis 10), she is the protector and guide of human beings from the beginnings of human history, playing a role the Tanakh gives to God or angels.

While according to Jewish belief God does not have a son, Genesis 6 and Job 1–2 refer to the “sons of God” (
bnei Elohim
). The term “sons of God” refers to a council of divine beings who advise God and carry out his commands. The divine council also appears in Ps 82.1, where its members are called “gods” (
elohim
). The adversary (
ha-satan
in Hebrew) in the book of Job is a member of this council, whose task it is to observe human beings. In 1 Kings 19, the prophet Micaiah is privileged to observe the meeting of the divine council. In Daniel 7, the members of the divine council are called “the holy ones of the Most High.” The Septuagint and a Dead Sea Scroll also refer to sons of God at Deut 32.8. In Joshua 5.13–15, “the captain of the Lord’s host” appears as a “man” with an unsheathed sword.

One notable angel in Tanakh is the Angel of the Lord, who is often indistinguishable from God himself. Sometimes, the Tanakh calls angels “man” or “men.” For example, when three “men” (angels) visit Abraham (Gen 18), it is not obvious at first that one of them is God, but eventually, when he replies to Sarah’s laughter at the news she will bear a son in her old age, his identity becomes clear. Exodus 23.20–21 refers to another angel in exalted terms—

Behold, I send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Be attentive to him and listen to his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression; for my Name is in him.

This angel bears God’s essence, his name, and even though he is distinct from God he possesses divine authority. The later pseudepigraphic
Apocalypse of Abraham
(perhaps first-century ce) names this angel Yahoel; in early Jewish mystical literature he is called Metatron. The development in Jewish thought of this angel who bears the name of God into God’s principal angel is an important component in the fashioning of early Christian ideas about the divinity of Jesus.