Reflection to the Word on the Sunday of March 16, 2025
May The Lord Make Us Understand Luke 13:31At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you."
It was clear that Herod Antipas wanted to have Jesus killed, but it is also worth looking at the warning givers, because they were Pharisees, who warned him to flee in order to save his life. The depiction of the profoundly unfriendly Pharisees might have been a bit of an exaggeration in the Gospel, worded at least half a century after the events.
It looks like the Pharisees and the Jesus-led movement had a common enemy, or actually immediately three, and these three were practically one, the contemporary establishment. Although the Pharisees as a class were quite wealthy, but their wealth was incomparable to the strata of real wealth.
These aforementioned three common opponents of Jesus and the Pharisees were the Romans, the higher level priesthood, especially in Jerusalem, as they controlled the golden purses of the Temple, and the Herodian clans, the sons and grandsons of Herod the King, and the overarching cousinship and their feudal vassals and clientry.
Both parties, Jesus and the Pharisees, agreed that the Romans are ungodly occupiers, as the Jews must not have been anybody’s servants, but God’s. That is why the agents provoked Jesus with the public question, that tell us, is it lawful, they meant the Law of Moses, to pay taxes to the Roman Emperor, or it is not lawful?
They agreed, that the high priest, appointed by the Romans, are illegitimate, as they lacked the proper lineage for the high priesthood, and that is why even the sacrifices made in the very Jerusalem Temple, might have been questionable. They agreed, that the Roman puppet Herodian Kings and rulers are usurpers of the power in the Land of Israel, in Judea, Samaria, Galilee and elsewhere, because the throne of David belongs to the descendants of David, that is why the Messiah was titled the Son of David.
It looks like that Jesus and the Pharisees had more common points, than we would have think of reading the Gospels, and one of the major points was to keep the Law of Moses.
The Pharisees and the scribes, led by Torah scholars, guarded the tradition of Moses, though in the Gospel Jesus seems to rebuke the Pharisees and the scribes, by saying: “I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Indeed, the Nazarene Baptizing Movement, an offshoot of the Qumran Essenes, had some different views than the Pharisees, sometimes even stricter than the moral rulings of the Pharisees.
And one more stricter point was the views regarding marriage and divorce.
It was in important one, as John the Baptist got beheaded by Herod Antipas, because John said that Herod Antipas remarriage was unlawful and immoral. Practically, Jesus inherited this case, and even Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee, wondered, whether Jesus was the resurrected John.
John was beheaded because he opposed Herod’s remarriage of his brother’s divorcee wife, which is forbidden by Jewish Law, but Jesus even opposed Herod’s divorce, as Herod divorced his former wife in order to marry a new one. If Herod Antipas hated John the Baptist, he would have hated Jesus on the square.
The Law of Moses and the Pharisees allowed Jews to divorce their wives for whatever reason, Jesus and the Essenes forbade divorce for all reasons, except adultery. Jesus and the Essenes were stricter than the Pharisees, though the Gospel tries to paint a picture of the opposite.
It really happened, that some news agencies, around a year ago, accused the Chinese government with rewriting the Bible in university text books, in order to adjust the text more compliant to the ideology of the ruling party in China.
It is a major accusation, as there are almost universally accepted Gospel versions, and no authoritarian regimes, including the Chinese, should be allowed to rewrite them, led by political agenda and manipulative reasons. HOWEVER, do the Chinese have some logical aspects to guide them? The text in question is about the attempted stoning of the adulterous woman, where the Chinese say that Jesus sided with the accusers.
The Gospel of John is an already multi-redacted compilation. It is generally held that the story with the case of the adulterous woman was placed into the Gospel later, as most of the early manuscripts do not contain it. It is eventually not certain whether the story is completely made up or has some factual core, if any.
Actually, the Chinese version has some logical points, like the point that the Law of Moses is unalterable. Even Jesus did not have the authority to change it, though the Chinese conclusion is wrong, because it should be obvious to all that Jesus did not stoned that woman to the death, especially not single-handedly.
The Jewish Law was clear concerning the sin of adultery as it is written that “the man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, even he who commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” (Leviticus:20:10)
However the implementing rules and regulations found in the Rabbinic teachings made the execution of the sentence very rare if not almost impossible.
In the gospel story at the end Jesus was left alone with the woman. It is stated that the woman committed the sin, she was guilty as charged, however the prosecution could not continue, when they were left alone. In order to continue the process, two valid witnesses would have been needed, and three judges to judge, and at least ten men to to execute the sentence. And there was also something established as a warning system. All the conditions must have been fulfilled on order to sentence a person to death, and it is almost never happened or very, very rarely.
When the two were left alone, Jesus and the woman, nothing could have continued prosecution or execution wise, because Jesus alone was not two witnesses, neither three judges, neither a stoning party. The woman was guilty, he knew it, she knew it, but Jesus was right that Jewish-legally he, alone, was not able to condemn or prosecute the woman, because he had no legal authority to do that. Nonetheless, he had the prophetic or at least the teaching authority to tell her to repent and sin no more.
The Chinese interpretation is quite right in that sense that if the crowd would have stayed, then Jesus not only would not have had the chance to overthrow the death sentence, but even he must have followed the decree of the written law showing no clemency, because the Torah (the Law of Moses) is unalterable, its decrees and ordinances are for ever.
There was no other way in the possibly made up story to overthrow the death sentence for the sake of mercy than getting rid of the crowd by a psychological and very much Jedi-ish mind-trick by appealing to their existing guilt in their own hearts.
Thus, the later interpolated Gospel story were written as polemy, aiming to blame the Pharisees and the scribes, as a polemy, or even a political gig than real theology or a real account of an episode of the life of Jesus.
Actually, the flexible Jesus in the Gospel story acted exactly real- life -Pharisee-wise, or even in a rabbinic-talmudic style. When the law seemed to harsh, they and he too, circumvented its effects for the sake of mercy, and by doing that they also saved the applicability of the unchangeable Law.
The historical Jesus had more common points with the Pharisees, than the Gospels admit, and this was one of the reasons Herod Antipas wanted to have him killed, that Jesus had broad support from all walks of the society, among them Nikodem the Pharisee, and Herod was afraid to lose his throne. And he did.
May the Lord make our understanding broader by the scrutinizing of the details in the background of the texts, in order to understand that justice and mercy must walk hand in hand. AMEN.
