REL 1310 - Mowry - Unit 3

Biblical Books for Unit 3: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The History Between the Testaments

332 BC - 135 AD

Alexander The Great

Alexander The Great began invading the Persian Empire. By 332 BC, he had taken control of the regions of Judea and Samaria (Judah and Israel) from the Persians. Alexander, who has no male heir to take over, dies in 323 BC. Four of his generals end` up splitting his empire into four parts

  • General Ptolemy took Egypt, Libya, and Palestine (Judah/Israel)

  • General Seleucus took most of the Eastern part of the empire, including Syria

  • We don’t care about the other two

Unlike the Persians, the Greeks wanted to spread their culture/religion in a process called Hellenization. In order to get better economic opportunities, Israelites willingly gave up important part of their identity and religion and adopted hellenization. (Ex: not teaching Hebrew, stopping circumcision, melding Greek mythology with Judaism)

Epiphanes takes over and outlaws the practice of Judaism in 167 BC. He defiles the temple, creating a status of zeus in it and sacrificing a pig (unclean) on the altar. He believed himself to be a god and forced the Jews to offer a pagan sacrifice under threat of death. One guy volunteers to sacrifice, but a priest, Mattathias, kills the volunteer and the greek officer before fleeing into the wilderness. One of Mattathias’ sons, Judas (Maccabeus) takes over after his fathers death and engages in guerilla warfare on the Greek and manages to take control on the temple. They then purify and rededicate the temple in 164 BC, but they need to keep the lamps going but don’t have enough oil, but they miraculously keep burning. This becomes Hanukkah.

The three sons of Mattathias lead until 142 BC, when the Jews in Judah are no longer forced to pay tribute to the Seleucid (Greek) empire in Syria. Then, there can be Jewish autonomous rule over Judea. The two leaders fight for power and ask Roman General Pompey for help destroying the other leader. Pompey then takes over Judea and annexes it into the Roman Empire in 63 BC. Jewish autonomy is now gone.

Herod the Great was a great builder and helped remodel the temple to be bigger and better. He’s also paranoid and murderous, and he killed all his sons so they wouldn’t take his power. He orders all the Jewish sons murdered to avoid “The King” (Jesus).

In 66 AD/CE Rome responds to Jewish unrest (they resented the Romans) by raiding the temple. This leads to an uprising. Years of siege warfare and continuing Jewish infighting inside Jerusalem led to the downfall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The second temple was destroyed and all religious leadership was eliminated.

Emperor Hadrian build a temple for jupiter on the site of the old temple led to another Jewish uprising led by Simon Bae Kokhba in 132 CE.

  • After, this, Judaism is outlawed in Judea.

  • Judea was effectively depopulated

  • The Jewish people would not possess an autonomous Jewish state until 1948

Developments in Judaism

The Sanhedrin was a Jewish group that worked somewhat like a court following the rules of the Torah. They became the seat of religious and political authority.

The Synagogue(s) emerged, which were basically a church. They were houses of worship and study (but no sacrifices, thats temple only), often led by non-priests (rabbis)

Sects of Judaism

  • Pharisees

    • Believed freedom from roman rule would come from piety; from following religious rules

    • Came from all parts of society

    • Emphasized study of the Torah and the Oral Torah

    • Embraced many of the religious developments of the second temple period

  • Sadducees

    • Came from the aristocratic elite

    • Responsible for the administration of the temple

    • They rejected the authority of the Oral Torah and most of the religious developments during the Hellenistic Period

  • Essenes

    • Lived in isolated communities, under monastery-like ascetic guidelines

    • The most well-known group lived near Qumran and produced the Dead Sea Scrolls (hid them from Romans)

  • Revolutionary Groups

    • Sicarii

    • Zealots

  • Samaritans

    • They believed themselves to be Jewish, but Judahites disagreed because they came from intermarriage

    • Differences

      • Place of Worship (no temple)

      • Different Biblical traditions, reflecting their preference for Mt. Gerizim

  • Diasporic Groups

    • Without the sacrificial system and the temple, Judaism in diaspora emphasizes other religious practices

      • Sabbath

      • Kashrut

      • Torah Study

    • The synagogue became the center of religious and intellectual life

Life Post-70CE

  • Torah Observance and the synagogue effectively replaced the sacrificial system and the Temple.

  • Pharisaic Judaism was the only form to survive (except for Christianity)

The Synoptic Gospels

Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John

Of the four canonical gospels, 3 share a significant amount of material (Matthew, Mark, Luke)

  • The “synoptic” (seen together) gospels

  • Shared material is often identical in wording

  • John contains some elements from the synoptics, but considerably less

    • No exorcisms or parables

    • John’s gospel also has a different structure

    • In John, Jesus travels back and forth between Jerusalem and Galilee multiple times

The Synoptic Problem

  • Shared material indicates some shared source was used

  • Ancient authors tend to expand on sources, rather than cut material from it.

  • Assumedly, Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source material

  • Why do we need multiple gospels?

    • Modern biographies seek to be comprehensive and conclusive

    • Ancient biographies used the subject in question to encourage a particular response to a particular context

Mark

The Structure of The Gospel of Mark

  • The book of Mark is split in half at Peter’s proclamation that Jesus is the messiah in 8:27

  • Jesus’ identity is secret in the first half, but it is public is the second half

Context of The Gospel of Mark

  • Mark includes (parenthetic) explanations of Jewish traditions and translations of Aramaic expressions

    • This indicates this is being written for non-Jewish followers

    • Oral traditions work great until they are threatened, so the gospels got written down once it needed to be due to Christian Persecution

Matthew

Unique features of Matthew

  • Organized into a 5-part cycle of teachings and narratives

  • An abundance of scriptural citations (this fulfilled this prophecy, etc)

  • Birth Narrative

    • Focuses on the Magi (three wise men) and Herod’s killing of all Jewish male babies under 2, not the actual birth

      • Similar to Moses

    • Emphasizes Jesus’s Davidic Heritage

Matthew’s Audience

  • Given the resemblance to the torah w/ 5 parts, scriptural citations, and references to Moses and David, Matthew’s audience was likely Jewish

  • Matthew, speaking to/as a Jew, refers to the Pharisees as Jews, so when the Pharisees take blamed for Jesus’s death, more modern interpretations blame Jews for Jesus death and use it for antisemitism

“Impossible” Ethical Interpretation of the Law

  • The pharisees only cared about following the law, they didn’t care why you followed it

  • Jesus cared about why you were doing it

    • Wishing someone dead is as bad as killing someone

Luke

Unique Features of Luke

  • Provides a more universal outlook

    • Genealogy extends all the way back to Adam

  • An emphasis on the socially marginalized

    • Ex: Birth Narrative

      • Jesus in the manger/in a barn

      • Angel speaks to Mary, not Joseph first

      • Shepherds at Jesus’s birth

      • Focus on the poor + women in the narrative

  • The Journey to Jerusalem forms the largest part of the book

The Acts of the Apostles

Acts likely has the same author as the Gospel of Luke. Acts contains a series of “we” sections where the author speaks in the second person, implying they were a apostle. 

Structure

  • Acts has a 3-part structure 

    1. Jerusalem (1:1-8:3)

      • Resolution of Luke (Resurrection)

      • Pentecostal Event

      • Ministry of the Apostles

      • Early Church

      • Stephen, the first Martyr

    2. Judea and Samaria (8:4-12:25)

      • Church spreads beyond Jerusalem

      • Conversion of Saul

      • Conversion of Cornelius

        • Ethnicity is no longer a factor; anyone can be a Christian

    3. … to the ends of the earth (13-28)

      • Paul exorcises, heals, and argues w/ religious leadership

      • Paul goes to the synagogue, then to the Gentiles

      • The Council of Jerusalem 

        • Decides not only do you not need to be ethnically Jewish, you don’t need to be religiously Jewish (follow the law, etc)

      • Christianity becomes a threat to Judaism, Roman Religions, and (maybe) the Roman Empire

The Gospel of John

John is stylistically different from the other synoptic gospels. 

Similarities between The Synoptic Gospels

  • Same basic plot/characteristics

  • Highest concentration of similarities in Jesus’ arrest, trial, death

Differences between The Synoptic Gospels

  • Chronology (Jesus celebrates the Passover three times in John)

  • Geography ( Jesus visits Jerusalem 3 times )

  • John lacks many central episodes common to all three gospels (baptism, temptation in the wilderness, transfiguration, praying in Gethsemane)

  • John includes characters not in the Synoptics

Structure

  • Prologue

    • Instead of a birth narrative like in Matthew and Luke, John offers a “cosmic” beginning (“in the beginning”) like Genesis 1:1

    • Logos = the underlying logic/rules of the universe = Jesus

  • Book of Signs

    • There are 7 instances in the Gospel of John where Jesus makes a declarative statement about his identity/“I am” statements

    • Echoes Exodus 3:14 (When God reveals his name) in Greek “I am that I am”

    • The Gospel of John has no parables

    • In John, miracles function more as prophetic sign acts

  • Book of Glory

  • Epilogue

Purpose of The Book

  • John uses the term “Jew” much more than the other gospels