July 2008 – Page 2

Mysticism as a strategy

What I hope I have shown by this brief survey of what has come to be known as the Christian mystical tradition, starting from the Fathers, and looking at it from the perspective they suggest, is that mysticism is not some settled concept, with a clear definition; rather it is the name for a religious strategy: in origin the name of a particular religious strategy that belongs to early modern Europe (though already under way in late medieval Europe—we cannot now go into the argument as to where the caesura between ‘medieval’ and ‘modern’ occurs, though this case is part of the argument for seeing the twelfth century as more decisive than the fifteenth or sixteenth). It is a strategy to which there may well be analogies in the histories of other religions: but we shall not discover that by confining our attention to ‘mystical writings’, we shall need to cast our nets much more widely. Briefly, I would say that something like what is called comparative mysticism may well have a role in comparative religion, but that both of these need to see themselves as part of a much wider attempt to compare different historical cultures: religions cannot be abstracted from the cultures in which they answer people’s social and spiritual needs (that does not mean that religions cannot pass from one culture to another: they evidently can, but we must not suppose that there is some ‘essence’ of religion that can be isolated, which is that which has passed from one culture to another—the situation is much more complex than that, and the question of religious identity not so easily solved), nor can ‘mysticism’ be abstracted from the religions that foster deep, prayerful commitment. ‘Comparitive mysticism’ is too easy, and unhistorical: it simply lulls us into thinking that we can regard as fundamentally significant (‘mystical’ has never lost the connotation of what really matters, what is ultimately powerful) what appeals to the individualized consciousness of the West—religious literature that aspires to the form of poetry, devoid of dogmatic content or ritual expression.

Fr Andrew Louth. The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition—New Edition (Oxford, 2007). From the Afterword of 2006, p. 213.

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St Isaac the Syrian on the Three Degrees of Knowledge

On the First Degree of Knowledge

When knowledge cleaves to the love of the body, it gathers up the following provisions: wealth, vainglory, honour, adornment, rest of the body, special means to guard the body’s nature from adversities, assiduity in rational wisdom, such as is suitable for the governance of the world and which gushes forth the novelties of inventions, the arts, sciences, doctrines, and all other things which crown the body in this visible world. Among the properties of this knowledge belong those that are opposed to faith, which we have stated and enumerated above. This is called shallow knowledge, for it is naked of all concern for God. And because it is dominated by the body, it introduces into the mind an irrational impotence, and its concern is totally for this world. This measure of knowledge does not reckon that there is any noetic power and hidden steersman over a man, nor any Divine care that shelters and takes concern for him. It takes no account of God’s providential governance; but on the contrary, it attributes to a man’s diligence and his methods every good thing in him, his rescue from what harms him, and his natural ability to avert the plights and many adversities that secretly and manifestly accompany our nature. This degree of knowledge presumes that all things are by its own providence, like those men who assert that there is no Divine governance of visible things. Nevertheless, it cannot be without continual cares and fear for the body. Therefore it is a prey to faintheartedness, sorrow, despair, fear of the demons, trepidation before men, the rumour of thieves and the report of murders, anxiety over illnesses, concern over want and the lack of necessities, fear of death, fear of sufferings, of wild beasts, and of other similar things that make this knowledge like a sea made turbulent by great waves at every hour of the night and day. For knowledge does not know how to cast its care upon God through the confident trust of faith in Him; wherefore in all things that concern it, it is constantly engaged in devising devices and clever contrivances. But when in some instance the modes of its contrivances prove fruitless, it strives with men as though they hindered and opposed it, since it does not see in this the mystical hand of providence.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tree that uproots love, is implanted in this very knowledge. It investigates the small faults of other men and the causes thereof, and their weaknesses; and it arms a man for stubbornly upholding his opinion, for disputation, and aids him in cunningly employing devices and crafty contrivances and other means which dishonour a man. In this knowledge are produced and are found presumption and pride, for it attributes every good thing to itself, and does not refer it to God.

Faith, however, attributes its works to grace. For this reason it cannot be lifted up with pride, as it is written: “I can do all things through Christ Which strengtheneth me”; and again, “Not I, but the grace of God which is in me”; and also “Knowledge puffeth up”; which the blessed Apostle said of this same knowledge, since it is not mingled with faith and hope in God, but he said it not concerning true knowledge, far be it!

By humility true knowledge makes perfect the soul of those who have acquired it, like Moses, David, Esaias, Peter, Paul, and the rest of the saints who have been accounted worthy of this perfect knowledge to the degree possible for human nature. And by diverse theorias and divine revelations, by the lofty vision of spiritual things and by ineffable mysteries and the like, their knowledge is swallowed up at all times, and in their own eyes they reckon their soul to be dust and ashes. But that other knowledge is puffed up, even as is meet, since it walks in darkness and values that which belongs to it by comparison with things of earth, and it does not know that there is something better than itself. And so all who cling to such knowledge are seized by the uplifting of pride, because they measure their discipline according to the standard of the earth and the flesh, they rely upon their works, and their intellects do not enter into incomprehensible matters. But as many as reflect upon the waves of the glorious splendour of the Godhead, and whose labour is on high, their minds do not turn aside with inventions and vain thoughts. For those who walk in the light cannot go astray, and for this reason all those who have strayed from the light of the knowledge of the Son of God, and have turned away from the truth, journey in these pathways just mentioned. This is the first degree of knowledge; in it a man follows the desire of the flesh. We find this knowledge blameworthy and declare it to be opposed not only to faith, but to every working of virtue.

On the Second Degree of Knowledge

But when a man renounces the first degree and turns toward deep reflections and the love of the soul, then he practises the aforementioned good deeds with the help of his soul’s understanding, in co-operation with the senses of his body, and in the light of his soul’s nature. These deeds are: fasting, prayer, mercy, reading of the divine Scripture, the modes of virtue, battle with the passions, and the rest. For all these good things, all the various excellences seen in the soul and the wondrous means that are employed for serving in Christ’s court in this second degree of knowledge, are made perfect by the Holy Spirit through the action of its power. This knowledge makes straight the pathways in the heart which lead to faith, wherewith we gather supplies for our journey to the true age. But even so, this knowledge is still corporeal and composite; and although it is the road that leads us and speeds us on our way toward faith, yet there remains a degree of knowledge still higher than it. If it goes forward, it will find itself raised up by faith with the help of Christ, that is, when it has laid the foundation of its action on seclusion from men, reading the Scriptures, prayer, and the other good works by which the second degree of knowledge is made perfect. It is by this knowledge that all that is excellent is performed; indeed, it is called the knowledge of actions, because by concrete actions, through the senses of the body, it accomplishes its work on the external level.

On the Third Degree of Knowledge,
which is the Degree of Perfection

Hear now how knowledge becomes more refined, acquires that which is of the Spirit, and comes to resemble the life of the unseen hosts which perform their liturgy not by the palpable activity of works, but through the activity accomplished in the intellect’s meditation. When knowledge is raised above earthly things and the cares of earthly activities, and its thoughts begin to gain experience in inward matters which are hidden from the eyes; and when in part it scorns the recollections of things (whence the perverseness of the passions arises), and when it stretches itself upward and follows faith in its solicitude for the future age, in its desire for what has been promised us, and in searching deeply into hidden mysteries: then faith itself swallows up knowledge, converts it, and begets it anew, so that it becomes wholly and completely spirit.

Then it can soar on wings in the realms of the bodiless and touch the depths of the unfathomable sea, musing upon the wondrous and divine workings of God’s governance of noetic and corporeal creatures. It searches out spiritual mysteries that are perceived by the simple and subtle intellect. Then the inner senses awaken for spiritual doing, according to the order that will be in the immortal and incorruptible life. For even from now it has received, as it were in a mystery, the noetic resurrection as a true witness of the universal renewal of all things.

These are the three degrees of knowledge wherein is brought together a man’s whole course in the body, in the soul, and in the spirit. From the time when a man begins to distinguish between good and evil until he takes leave of this world, his soul’s knowledge journeys in these stages. The fullness of all wrong and impiety, and the fullness of righteousness, and the probing of the depths of all the mysteries of the Spirit are wrought by one knowledge in the aforementioned three stages; and in it is contained the intellect’s every movement, whether the intellect ascends or descends in good or in evil or in things midway between the two. The Fathers call these stages: natural, supranatural, and contranatural. These are the three directions in which the memory of a rational soul travels up or down, as has been said: when the soul works righteousness in the confines of nature, or when through her recollection she is caught away to a state higher than nature in the divine vision of God, or when she recedes from her nature to heard swine, as did that young man who squandered the wealth of his discretion and laboured for a troop of demons.

From Homily Fifty-two, The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, translated by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery.

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La Berceuse des Saints

Thou, flood of light, poured into a manger!
Thou, hope and promise!
Tottering from the shadows to the sky.
Thou, eternal dream of the universe!
Thou, song of heaven’s blessing!
Sleep, sleep, O springtime of salvation!
Thy star lightens the horizon,
And burns away the darkness of ignorance.
By Thy coming redemption is enkindled
With love and light,
And the world recovers its existence.

Sœur Marie Keyrouz OSB, from her Cantiques de l’Orient, 1996.
English translation of Arabic lyrics.
Note to Reader: You really need to listen to this, if you find any delight in classical Arabic music and singing. Her voice is sublime.

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A mysterious conversation

It was nearly a quarter of a century ago. The teenaged boy and his mother went to the newly restored Mission La Purisima near Lompoc, California, the full name of which is Mision La Purisima Concepcion de Maria Santisima. It was a beautiful Easter Sunday morning, warm and clear, and the nave was so full that it was standing room only by the time they arrived. Not long into the service, however, the young man, overdressed for the heat and suffering from the closeness of the centuries old, unventilated church, began to feel unwell. Though he was distressed at leaving in the midst of Holy Mass, he was afraid that he might become sick in the church itself, which was not an option. So he excused himself from his mother and stepped outside. Finding a bench in the shade near a small fountain in the gardens, he sat down to catch his breath and allow his stomach to settle. Not long afterward, a woman in a sky-blue nun’s habit joined him on the bench opposite. The young man thanked her, of course, for her concern for his well-being, and the two continued to talk for some time, with the young man feeling better as time passed. At one point, he saw his mother briefly leave the church and approach, checking on him. She returned to the Mass and her son continued to talk with the kind nun. Eventually taking his leave of the sister, he rejoined his mother for the rest of the Mass. On the way home, the young man mentioned the conversation with the nun, and how much he enjoyed it. His mother, surprised, noted that she didn’t see anyone talking with him on the other bench by the fountain, which fact surprised him indeed. For the woman was there, as plain as day, and they had a good conversation.

Yet to this day I can’t remember what we talked about for all that time….

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Cohen, Maccabees to Mishnah

Several months ago, a friend at church asked me for a good book about the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament. He’s a numismatist and familiar with Greek and Roman history, but not so much on the Jewish history of the so-called Intertestamental Period. “How do we get from there to here?” I recall him asking. I hadn’t a recommendation for him at the time. After asking around, I picked up a few different books to read through, intending to hand over to him whichever I might find to be the best of the bunch. So, consider that the context of this short review.

I’ve just finished reading Shaye J. D. Cohen’s From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, second edition (Westminster John Knox Press, 2006). The first edition was volume seven of the Library of Early Christianity series edited by Wayne Meeks; apparently this second edition is not to be considered part of that series, oddly enough. The cover is unlike the standardized cover of the series, as one may see here. At xiv + 250, it is neither too short nor particularly detailed, and footnotes are kept to a minimum, and extremely economical even at that. There is a glossary and general index, and the whole is certainly geared to “students and other nonspecialists” as Cohen notes in the Preface to the First Edition (p. xi).

The book is an introduction to Jewish history between roughly 200 BCE and 200 CE, thus the “Maccabees to the Mishnah” of the title. Note my careful choice of phrasing: it is an introduction to Jewish history of that period, and not a history of the period in itself. This I find to be the case in that the chapters are thematically rather than chronologically arranged. After the Foreword to the First Edition by Wayne Meeks, and the Prefaces to the First and Second Edition of this book by Cohen, chapter one, “Ancient Judaism: Chronology and Definitions” (which is really the Introduction to the work, discussing concerns of phraseology for the period and other issues) is followed by a Timeline. One might at this point, particularly in light of the title, expect the work to be arranged chronologically, but this is not the case. As I mentioned, the book is arranged thematically, in the following chapters:
2. Jews and Gentiles
3. The Jewish “Religion”: Practices and Beliefs
4. The Community and Its Institutions
5. Sectarian and Normative
6. Canonization and Its Implications
7. The Emergence of Rabbinic Judaism
There then follows a helpful thirteen pages of annotated “Suggestions for Further Reading,” arranged by chapter, and then the glossary and general index.

The thematic arrangement I found to be a distraction, in all honesty. The book is well-written and clearly up-to-date, being an especially clear presentation for those who might be new to the subject. Cohen shows himself an adept at summarizing without oversimplifying. But I found myself often relying on my own fund of knowledge in order to fill in the gaps, as I ran into explanations that were at times too drastically curtailed, no doubt due to limited space. Yet I especially thought that more of a chronological arrangement would have made the book that much more valuable and useful. As it is, I would need to recommend this book in conjunction with another, something like Julius Scott’s Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament (Baker Academic, 1995) or Anthony Tomasino’s Judaism before Jesus: The Events & Ideas That Shaped the New Testament World (Intervarsity Press, 2003). [As an aside, how many books on this period are going to be titled alliteratively? “From the Greeks to the Godfearers” “Persians to Pharisees” “Apocalyptic and Afikomen”] Scott’s book is particularly successful at combining chronological and thematic chapters, and that, I think, would be much more useful to the kind of audience that Cohen’s book is aimed at: the “students and other nonspecialists.” One might hope for a vastly reworked third edition in not so limited a format (223 pages of text really is too short; Scott is just over 350 pages of text, and Tomasino just over 300) in which Cohen could “go to town” on the subject, rather than being so limited and therefore occasionally too terse.

We might not expect a third edition to come from the same publisher, however. As Cohen notes in an addition to his preface for this addition, dated December 2005:

The first edition of this book was published by Westminster Press in 1987 in the Library of Early Christianity series edited by Wayne Meeks. I was delighted then to be associated with a Presbyterian publishing house. It is one of the blessings of America that a Presbyterian publisher would commission a Jew to write a book on early Judaism for a series oriented to students of the New Testament. This never happened in the old country. Eighteen years later I am grateful to Westminster John Knox Press for publishing this second edition and remain grateful to the press for its courtesies to me over the years. I am no longer happy, however, to be associated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the parent body of WJK, because I am deeply pained by the recent anti-Israel turn in its policies. The fact that WJK is editorially and fiscally independent of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) affords small consolation; by publishing this book with WJK I am associating myself perforce with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), an organization whose anti-Israel policies I condemn and distrust.

Bravo, Professor Cohen.

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The Gospels on the Pharisees VI

Parts I, II, III, IV, and V in this series covered the gospel evidence regarding the Pharisess in nineteen parallel pericopes between the three synoptic gospels primarily, with one pericope included from the Gospel of John. Now I’d like to look at how the gospel evidence regarding the Pharisees has been, intentionally or unintentionally, misunderstood throughout the ages.

First, it is important to understand that the Gospel of Matthew was and is by far the most popular gospel of the four. It received pride of place in Patristic citation from the second century onward. In later established lectionary pericopes as well, much more of Matthew was read during more of the year than was the case with the other gospels. Therefore, even aside from concerns of compositional theory, the Gospel of Matthew appears to have been effectively The Gospel, with the others contributing secondarily. So, even though our focus in the previous contributions to this series was on Matthew as the earliest gospel according to the Griesbach Hypothesis of the compositional history of the synoptic gospels, that perspective of “Matthew first” is upheld in the de facto status of Matthew as the preferred gospel throughout Church history.

Secondly, it is likewise important to understand the disruption of Judean society caused by the Great Revolt of 66-74 and the subsequent severance of proper comprehension of the picture of the Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew. After the Great Revolt, the old societal structures and institutions were all overturned: the chief-priestly families and other aristocracy were obliterated by the rebels, and those surviving the subsequent Roman onslaught were faced with a society which had no need of them after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. The surviving Pharisees and others worked at constructing a new societal structure, under more direct oversight from both the Romans and the rabbis. The societal context depicted in the gospels was no longer existent, and relatively quickly faded from memory, with readers culturally further distant losing the original understanding of the context even more quickly, as they had perhaps never had a good grasp on it at all in the first place. The depiction in Matthew of a dialogue between Jesus and the Pharisees, one rooted in different bases for halakhic argumentation but still a generally workable relationship, and the function of the rhetoric in the gospel as part of that argumentation, was all lost. Indeed, as we have seen from the earlier parts of this series, the argumentation was already unimporant to both Luke and Mark in their presentations to gentile audiences. This lack of both interest and comprehension led to statements in Matthew being taken not as part of a rhetorical strategy in argument, but as bald fact, particularly Jesus’ diatribe against the Pharisees and scribes in Matthew 23. But Matthew 23 simply cannot be taken in isolation as a freestanding critique of all scribes and Pharisees in every particular (that is, of the Pharisaic program of halakhic rulings and the personal failings noted of individual unnamed scribes and Pharisees) as it has been and, in some quarters, still is. It is only correctly understood when viewed in the context of the interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees depicted throughout the earlier chapters of Matthew, and particularly only in the view of Jesus’ different focus in admitting the Word of the Lord found amidst the prophetic texts in determining his halakhic rulings. It is only from within Jesus’ own halakhic program that the critique of the Pharisaic halakhic program is properly comprehended. Thus the foundation for the charges of hypocrisy lie within those debates, the subtext of which is determining the will of God in ordinary life. Jesus’ emphasis is on fostering a moral interiority rooted in God’s mercy toward and love for man in addition to maintaining ritual purity; this is the source of the charge for hypocrisy among the Pharisees: their halakhic program is found by Jesus to be only inconsistently guided by the example of the same Divine mercy and love for man, and thus the Pharisees only hypocritically claim to consistently reveal the will of God to man. With the loss of understanding this context, Christian commentators very early on thereby considered the Pharisees to have been one and all personally hypocritical and gulty of the personal failings described in Matthew 23. Thence, whether knowing or not that the Pharisees were the source of Rabbinic Judaism, this charge of empty hypocrisy was transferred to all Judaism. And that mistaken perspective was (surprisingly, to a thoughtful and sympathetic reader) maintained throughout the ages until only the last generation.

Continue reading “The Gospels on the Pharisees VI”

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The Call

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
And such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joys in love.

George Herbert. 1633.

Now this is interesting. While Herbert tends in his poems (as does Christina Rossetti) towards a kind of genteel dualism (a phrase I coined in order to describe this non-revolutionary, non-confrontational, but quite unconventional Christianmystical dualism which is also very English and very middle class), here we see a very interesting arrangement in these three stanzas. Note the pattern, which seems at a glance to be rigidly followed throughout, but other than the use of three capitalized nouns per stanza and ABAB rhyming at line-ends, this is not the casse. Appearances deceive (let that be a genteel mystic’s lesson for you). In stanza 1 (Way-Truth-Life), the pairs are all nouns, subject-object: Way-breath, Truth-strife, Life-death. In stanza 2 (Light, Feast, Strength), all nouns: Light-feast, Feast-length, Strength-guest. Stanza 3 (Joy, Love, Heart) mixes it up by pairing the three main (capitalized!) nouns with two verbs (move, part) and one noun (love): Joy-move, Love-part, Heart-love. Also notice that in the second and third stanzas we find some repeats of the main words. In stanza 2 (Light, Feast, Strength), we have Light-feast. In stanza 3 (Joy-Love-Heart), however, the last line of the stanza (and of the poem as a whole) reuses all three of the main nouns, with the homograph ‘joy’ as a verb: ‘Such a Heart, as joys in love.’ So, the pattern is there, but is not so rigid as we are led to believe at a glance. Another striking, and intentional, usage in this poem relates to the capitalization. Note that the main three nouns of each are all capitalized, while other nouns are not, which is striking in the case of the nouns, as they were generally still typically capitalized into the later 17th and early 18th century. So this uppercase-lowercase usage is intentional, and, in fact, is rather an ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ thing: the capitalized nouns all refer to the the heavenly ‘He,’ while the lowercase words are terrestrially situated with the ‘I’ and ‘We’ characters. Also, don’t miss the trinitarianism: three capitalized nouns per stanza, and three stanzas. Also, the four of lines per stanza generally (in these sorts of Christian poems) reflect the four Gospels, while the total of twelve lines is probably rather the Twelve Apostles rather than the Twelve Tribes of Israel. So, those are some interesting bits about its organization and pattern, but the capitalizations are also interesting in that they draw on biblical texts.

The stanza 1 The trio Way-Truth-Life appears in John 14.6: ‘Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.’ (We’ll just pass over the absence of the second half of the verse in this poem, problematic as it is.) The rest of the capitalized nouns in the poem similarly represent Christ. In stanza 2, Light and Strength are paired in Psalm 27.1: ‘The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?’ Feast is probably a reference to the communion meal. In stanza 3, Love and Heart are found in Matthew 23.37 parr alluding to Deuteronomy 6.5: ‘Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.’ The connection with Joy is uncertain. One suggestion is Matthew 25.21, 23, end: ‘…enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” Lastly, the “Come, my…” in the first line of each stanza perhaps reflects the final words of Rev 22.20, lending a bit of apocalypticism to the poem: ‘Even so, come, Lord Jesus.’

With those in mind, we have a better idea of what is going on in each line of the poem.

Stanza 1, line 2: a Way would normally tire people out, taking their breath away, not giving it. So here already we’re already seeing the strange, counterintuitive result of the mixing of the uppercase Divine and the lowercase human(s). Line 3 may be an oblique allusion to Hebrews 6.16: ‘For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife.’ Line 3 goes further, ending all strife. And the last verse of the stanza is both the most counterintuitive and most dualistic in the poem: dualistic because of the subject-object pairing of Life and death, counterintuitive because of the sentence: ‘And such a Life, as killeth death.’ This, of course, is a twofold reference to Christ, who can be said to have defeated (though not killed) death through his resurrection, and is to actually kill death in the future, as depicted in Revelation 20.14: ‘And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.’ In paraphrase: ‘Come, Christ, you who overturn reality, stronger than all, stronger even than death.’

Stanza 2 is a little trickier. The Light showing a feast is also a communion reference. ‘Such a Feast as mends in length’ means ‘Such a feast that gets better as it goes’. So the first two verses really work together: the Light illumines the way to the communion/feast, which keeps getting better and better. The last line of the stanza relates to the Feast, as well: ‘Such a Strength as makes his guest.’ That is, the Strength invites to the Feast. So, in paraphrase: ‘Come, Christ, who lights the way to the ever-better communion feast, inviting whom you will.’ And this Feast, I think, with consideration of the Revelation allusions, is probably meant to represent an eternal Feast.

Stanza 3 is the culmination of the increasing closeness depicted in the poem stanza by stanza. Stanza 3 is a full-blown love poem: Christ the Joy that cannot be removed, the Love that no one can separate away, and Heart that rejoices in love (whose is unsaid; does it matter?). In the end, the world-overturner is your Lover forever.

It’s rather astonishing that all of this is packed into a mere twelve lines!

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Scripture, Prayer, and Life

The reading of Scripture manifestly is the fountainhead that gives birth to prayer—and by these two things we are transported in the direction of the love of God whose sweetness is poured out continually in our hearts like honey or a honeycomb, and our souls exult at the taste which the hidden ministry of prayer and the reading of Scripture pour into our hearts.

Isaac the Syrian. The Second Part, XXIX.5. Translation by Sebastian Brock (CSCO 555).

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The Gospels on the Pharisees V

(continued from here)

15.) Mt 22.15-22 / Lk 20.20-26 / Mk 12.13-17
Taxes to Caesar. Mt presents, at this point, the Pharisees now planning to “entangle [Jesus] in his talk” (22.15), sending some of their own disciples and some Herodians to do so. Lk has the instigators as scribes and chief priests, following from the previous pericope in Lk. Mk retains the Pharisees and Herodians of Mt. It’s interesting that the Herodians appear in Mt only here, involved in a question with overtly political ramifications, while they are utterly absent throughout the rest of Mt. In Mk they appear here, and also in 3.6, curiously, at the end of the incident of Jesus’ healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath (see my note 6, above). However, in this case, the outcome in all three parallels is relatively positive: wonder/amazement on the part of hearers at Jesus’ skillful answer, even despite his explicitly calling them hypocrites in Mt, and with this evaluation of them imputed to him by the narrator in Lk and Mk.

16.) Mt 22.34-40 / Lk 10.25-28 / Mk 12.28-34
The Great Commandment. The shortest account is that of Mt, a simple question and answer without commentary on the part of Jesus or his interlocutor. Lk’s account poses a different question (“Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 10.25), and the entire pericope is displaced relative to its position in Mt and Mk. Indeed, the pericope in Lk appears to be a different incident, as the initial question differs, and it is then followed by another question from Jesus, and the scribe then answers with the OT quotations, to which answer Jesus gives an approving response. Mk appears to conflate Mt and Lk, particularly so as to keep the approval of Jesus at the end, though in a different formulation (cf Lk 10.28 and Mk 12.34). Mt and Mk both begin with the scribe’s question (a lawyer from among the Pharisees in Mt, one of the scribes in Mk) which is then answered by Jesus. Mt ends the pericope there, while Mk includes a recapitulating affirmation from the scribe, whose positive response is then in turn affirmed by Jesus. An interesting change in perspective is discernible between Mt and Mk. In Mt, Jesus proclaims “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (22.40). However, this becomes in Mk part of the scribe’s affirmation “[This pair of laws] is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” (12.33). There is a whiff of supersession of the sacrificial system in Mk that is entirely absent from Mt, likely to be attributed to the later, more Gentile context of the audience of Mk.

17.) Mt 22.41-46 / Lk 20.41-44 / Mk 12.35-37
The Question about the Son of David. Here we find some interesting narrative tricks in process amongst the three parallel pericopes. First comes Mt, a pericope immediately following upon the “Great Commandment” pericope described above. The audience is still the Pharisees. In Lk, however, with the displacement of the “Great Commandment” pericope, at the end of the dispute with the Sadducees over the resurrection (not covered in these notes: see Mt 22.23-33; Lk 20.27-40; Mk 12.18-27), Lk inserts a response from the scribes (20.40), following with the “Son of David” pericope in verse 41: “But he said to them…,” thus addressing this pericope to the scribes. Mk, on the other hand, inserted a clean break between the “Great Commandment” pericope and the “Son of David” pericope with 12.34b: “And after that no one dared to ask him any question.” A similar statement occurs at Lk 20.40, and at Mt 22.46. It appears that Lk placed his statement at 20.40 because that is the end of the last pericope in his set in which Jesus is asked a question, as the case is in Mk. Both appear to have found the placement of Mt’s similar statement awkward, as it follows the end of a pericope in which Jesus asks the question. Interesting, too, are the different audiences. In Mt, it is still the Pharisees around whom he asks, and they then answer, followed by Jesus making an objection through a Scriptural citation, an interesting and classically rabbinic practice. This is altered, however, in Lk, who has Jesus ask the scribes, “How can they say…?” (20.41), and Mk follows this format in having Jesus question the crowd “How can the scribes say…?” (12.35). In both, he continues with the same Scriptural citation as an objection, but the argumentation is no longer preserved, the questions having become merely rhetorical. Again, Mt appears more authentic and earlier than Lk and Mk.

18.) Mt 23.1-39 / Lk 20.45-47, etc / Mk 12.37b-40
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” This entire chapter of Mt 23 is devoted to a fascinating list of apparent halakhic rulings of the Pharisees (and those scribes following their lead) with which Jesus vehemently disagrees. As Pickup notes (p. 102), in Mt Jesus addresses the “crowds and his disciples” in that order, which Lk turns into “in the hearing of all the people he said to his disciples” (20.45), following with a drastically shortened account of Mt’s pericope, which Lucan abbreviation is then followed by Mk. The halakhic disagreements are displaced by Lk into Lk 11.37-54, where they likewise are presented in a different order, in the narrative setting of dinner at a Pharisee’s house, with the remnants of some halakhic argumentation on handwashing (see my note 9, above). It appeas that Lk wanted to keep the particularly halakhic distraction to a minimum, so he relegated only the more interesting rhetoric in Jesus’ argumentation into the earlier context of Lk 11, keeping the nearly unrecognizable remnants of Mt’s detailed halakhic objections and argumentation in one place. The fragment of this discourse left in place in Lk 20.45-47 and Mk 12.37b-40 is likewise simply a warning about the scribes, not the scribes and Pharisees as in Mt, apparently wishing to focus on the scribes as the official teachers of the law, rather than those responsible for the content of that instruction, which would have been the Pharisees. In addition, Mt 23.37-39, the climactic conclusion of this chapter in Mt, is completely displaced to another context in Lk (13.34-35), again demonstrating a fondness for the arrangement of Jesus’ sayings into discrete gnomic utterances more in keeping with Gentile conceptions of proper rhetoric for a philosopher, rather than the halakhic argumentation of a Judean teacher of the law. But this passage in Mt is tied to its immediately preceding context by the words “prophet” and “blood”, in addition to being the climactic point of this chapter, a hair’s breadth away from explicitly prophesying Jesus’ soon forthcoming death. Such is completely out of place in Lk.

Regarding the very difficult Mt 23.2-3, Pickup says (p. 106):

Is is possible to understand Jesus to be saying that the people should follow the scribes and Pharisees’ teaching of the Scriptures, but just not their behavior or the halakha of their oral traditions? I believe that it is, since this is exactly what we have seen throughout our analysis of Matthew’s gospel. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ objection to the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees was not that their teaching of Scripture per se was wrong, but that their application of it failed to adequately fulfill the principles of the Law. Their level of righteousness (i.e., righteous behavior) was what was inadequate (5:20), not what the people heard from them regarding what Scripture said. Jesus objected to the actions of the scribes and Pharisees. Angry epithets, lustful looks at women, bills of divorcement, vows made in vain, acts of personal vengeance, and unloving behavior all failed to measure up to the moral principles of Scripture that the scribes and Pharisees themselves taught. Thus, Matthew’s Jesus says in the present discourse, “…Do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach” (v. 3).

That is really the only sensible reading in context. Likewise, such a proclamation and such a diatribe would have sealed anyone’s fate: telling the people at large, through popularity with whom the Pharisees gained all their influence in wider affairs, to ignore the Pharisees’ halakhic program would’ve been perceived as a direct attack on their foundational support among the people, mentioned by all sources. And while the Pharisees are not depicted as involved in the arrest, trial, sentencing and execution of Jesus, this may be taken as their response to such confrontational speeches on the part of Jesus: they neither came to his defense nor did they attempt to ameliorate the sentence.

It also seems to me that this chapter Mt 23 would have been most shocking in its indictment of Pharisaic rulings for another reason. The objections are coming not through argumentation, as in Mt 15, but by fiat, from a man who speaks and acts with authority—heavenly authority some believed, but not all. This, I think, would have frightened not a few hearers, and rightly so. It is exactly this confrontation between the prophetic and the professional that is depicted, in various clarities, throughout the gospels.

19.) Mt 26.6-13 / Lk 7.36-50 / Mk 14.3-9 / Jn 12.1-8
In a rather rare case, this particular pericope, The Anointing by the Woman, is present in all four gospels in parallel forms, though there are differences. Mt and Mk are nearly identical, with John close to them, while Lk’s version is so different and so displaced (the other three gospels all place this even late in Jesus’ life, explicitly six days before the crucifixion in Jn, while Lk places it years earlier) as to perhaps indicate a separate incident. In any case, it is only in Lk’s version that there is mention of a Pharisee, Jesus’ host, named Simon. Interestingly, both Mt and Mk also have the host as Simon, but call him a leper (Mt 6.6; Mk 14.3) and place the event in Bethany. Jn places it in Bethany as well, (2.1-2) but in the home of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, who is the woman who anoints Jesus. The Pharisees Simon in Lk appears to be concerned with the ritual purity status of the woman who is touching Jesus (7.39). Though it is not explicitly stated, and Lk is not as careful with such details as is Mt, the concern of Simon appears to be transmission of uncleanness from the sinful woman to Jesus (perhaps exacerbated through the presence of the liquid medium of her tears and the ointment?). As mention of Pharisees and this theme of uncleanness is lacking in the other parallels, which thereby do appear to reflect a different situation being depicted, there is no further elaboration on the presence of the Pharisees in the parallels.

This concludes the set of parallel pericopes in which Pharisees are mentioned in at least one of the gospels. This was an intersting little project. After a bit more research, I’ll be presenting some information related to the above on how different passages in the gospels have been misread regarding the Pharisees. One thing, I think, is clear from the above: the Gospel according to Matthew preserves a more accurate record of first century proto-halakhic dispute than do either Luke or Mark, both of which show a clear tendency towards altering passages for the benefit of their Gentile audiences. The way that pericopes found in Matthew were edited, being shortened or rearranged or scattered in Luke and Mark, leads to the inescapable conclusion that Matthew was the earliest Gospel and Luke and Mark used it as a source. For an author like Matthew (for lack of any better name) with such sensitivity to the traditions of first century Judean halakhic dispute, there is no way that he would treat Mark and Luke (for it would require knowledge of both) as a kind of halakhic treasury (which they certainly aren’t) to pull random bits of phrases and arguments together and construct whole perfect examples of halakhic argumentation out of them, placing them in the mouth of Jesus. Rather it is more sensible to see the original whole arguments abbreviated by Luke and Mark as later alterations for later, different audiences with later, different interests.

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