Bib 314 Visalia Nov 13: Week 3 : Review/Signs/Jesus as Teacher TPH, Kingdom, Parables, Acted Parables

Great job interpreting the "text" of Dave Matthews' song "Bartender"!
Ist version:

2nd version:
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More on the song, along with different versions, here and here.

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we noted yet another literary structural outline:

"TPH"

Twice, Matthew makes almost identical statements, which might lead us to draw aninclusio around them:

And he went throughout all Galilee,
teaching      in their synagogues and
preaching   the gospel of the kingdom and
healing             every disease and every affliction among the people.
(Matt. 4:23)

AND

And Jesus went through all the towns and villages,
teaching            in their synagogues,
preaching          the good news of the kingdom and
healing              every disease and sickness.
(Matt 9:35)
Maybe Jesus only did three things in this section.
Q>Who is Jesus in Matthew?
              A>The one who teaches, preaches and heals.

Notice 11:1 says he went around "teaching and preaching," but :healing is not included. It seems we are to place special emphasis on healing in the division from 4:23-9:35.
Question:
-why healings highlighted in this section? (stay tuned..think about possible answers
-Is this a hemistiche?
-Since this threefold ministry is so intentionally signaled, might it not mean that in other places in Matthew
that when one or two of the three is mentioned, the third is implied, hidden somewhere, or conspicuous by its absence?

How about 11:1?:

-
How about 15: 29-30:
Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee. Then he
went up on a mountainside and sat down (implies teaching ).
Great crowds came to him (so now you expect to see him teaching, but he is healing instead...or is healing a firm of teaching here?)
bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them.
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For some helpful commentary on the "literary world" implications of Jesus' three activities...

teaching
preaching
healing

.....click to read these sections of David Bauer's commentary.
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One writer comments:

These three activities were his chief occupations in public ministry. Think of what Jesus did:
He was teaching in their synagogues. What was a synagogue service like? We have some insight in two New Testament passages: Luke 4:16-21, where Jesus began to teach about his own ministry. We also have Acts 13:15ff, where Paul used the invitation to speak as an opportunity to preach the gospel based upon the history of Israel. In the service, a reading from the Law and the Prophets, which followed prayers, would be followed by a distinguished Rabbi, either resident or visiting, being invited to teach concerning a point of the Law or the Prophets. He would read a text and explain and apply it. This is what Jesus evidently did. And the traditions of the synagogue required that the teacher be attractive in his appearance and presentation, as well as intelligent and godly. Interestingly enough, such a teacher did not have to be ordained. And his message was to be tactful and not too personal. That Jesus taught often in the synagogues of the land, tells us that he was a welcome teacher and respected. No wonder he was referred to as "Rabbi."
The text tells us that he also was actively preaching the Gospel/good news of the Kingdom. You are of course aware that the word, gospel, means good news. And the substance of the gospel is given in verse 22, to wit that the Kingdom of Heaven was near. It is referred to elsewhere as the gospel of peace (Rom 10:15), the gospel of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 9:13), and its message was simply that the Kingdom of Heaven had come. To the Jews this would be good news, as it would mean that the Lord was announcing the reign of Messiah (Isa 9:6,7) and peace between Himself and Israel (Isa 52:7). God had come to rule and thus to show his love and concern for his people. And that is the essence of the gospel.
We want to be careful not to distinguish too closely between teaching and preaching, though, because he did both at the same time, cf. the next three chapters. Teaching would emphasize a systematic presentation of the truth. Preaching or proclamation would emphasize declaration of the truth, as opposed to giving a systematic presentation of it. In his teaching he gave the details of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.
Finally, and this is what usually catches our attention most in this passage, hehealed the sick. The text says, he healed (literally) all chronic diseases and all occasional sicknesses among the people. The word, all, would place him in different category from other healers that were also going about the land. Perhaps the word would best be translated as the NIV does, every, because not all in the nation were healed. These other healers did not heal every case. They had their successes and their failures, but Jesus healed every diseasehe came into contact with, with no failures. The question needs to be asked, though, why? ..
Notice how these three ministries are tied together. What ties them together is the Kingdom of Heaven. The public teaching of Jesus focused upon the grace of God in coming to rule over his people and show his love and concern for them as their King. The healings were a tangible, easy to understand demonstration of the truth and power of the Kingdom. Jesus did not simply heal for the sake of making people feel better or improve their quality of life. Rather, those who were healed had an obligation to worship and serve the Lord, even to repent-cf. John 5:1-14. That is why, when Jesus preached he proclaimed the message that he did, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near. This is an important point, one that is missed by some in the healing movement in Pentecostal Church circles. We are mistaken if we separate healing from the gospel's message and focus on it or any other miraculous part of the gospel instead of on the Kingdom of God. -Link

We watched "The Rabbi: Gamla" video. Watch for these concepts,
-Who is Jesus in matthew? A rabbi.
-What does it mean to be a rabbi?
-What movement was born in Gamla?
-Who were the Pharisees?
-Sadducees?
-Zealots?

-Who is Jesus (the rabbi) to the Zealots? (compare/contrast?)
-What is a synagogue?
-What are components of synagogue meetings?
-What is significant about the bleeding woman reaching for Jesus' prayer shawl?

-What are zitzit?
-Why are they knotted five times?

Here is a slideshow of the video. Just click part 1, and click the rest from there:

Part 1: Gamla
Part 2: The Zealots
Part 3: The Rabbi
Part 4: The Rabbi in the Synagogue
Part 5: The Tassels
Part 6: The Rabbi?s Way
Part 7: Following Our Rabbi

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how meaningful the historical world context can be,

This is especially true in parables..

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PARABLES

Watch this clip ("Ignatius,World's Greatest Youth Pastor,") and discuss how it is a parable:

Unless we use words like subversive, etc,

we may have missed the point of the point.

We have already hit some parables in Matthew (ch 7), and soon will find many more (ch 13);

1) literal meaning of Greek word "parable": Taking two things that have nothing in common and asking "What do they have in common?" A creative comparison told in story form. Thus the point is often "hidden" or "unobvious" at first..

A parable is a succinct story, or word-picture/picture in words.. in prose orverse, that illustrates a lesson. It is a type of analogy.^[1].

..The word "parable" comes from the Greek παραβολή (parabolē), meaning "comparison, illustration, analogy",^[3] ...often comparaing two items that seem incongrous, disparate, and have nothing to do with each other... Christian parables have recently been studied as extended metaphors,^[5] ..
Unlike the situation with a simile, a parable's parallel meaning is unspoken and implicit, though not ordinarily secret...The New Testament parables are thought by scholars such as John P. Meier to have been inspired bymashalim, a form of Hebrew comparison. The Tanakh contains only five parables;

the New Testament dozens.
-Link

More:

“The greatest thing by far is to be master of analogy....it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of thesimilarity in dissimilars.”
(Poetics, 1459 a 5-8, "The Basic Works of Aristotle")

If Jesus "never opened his mouth once (at least to 'outsiders') without speaking an analogy-metaphor-parable," (Matt 13:34-35).. what a genius!

And then surely the essence of genius is to do the same: our primary job as interpreters/communicators is to find, exploit, and communicate connections between two apparently unrelated things; modeling the great connectedness of all things in theFreakonomic Kingdom.

   2) the  one primary point
                                     of a parable
is that
                              a parable has
      one primary point"
(Note that is a chiasm!).

Parables may have allegorical components, but are not usually allegories. Press and push for the ONE PRIMARY POINT>

3)Sub point of the main point:
this quote from Eugene Peterson helps us get how offensive Jesus' parables were to religious folk:

"gnostics delight in secrecy. They are prototypical insiders. They think that access to the eternal is by password and that they know the password. They love insider talk and esoteric lore. They elaborate complex myths that account for the descent of our spiritual selves into this messy world of materiality, and then map the complicated return route. They are fond of diagrams and the enlightened teachers who explain them. Their sensitive spirits are grieved by having to live surrounded by common people with their sexual leers and stupid banana-peel jokes and vulgar groveling in the pigsty of animal appetite. Gnostics who go to church involuntarily pinch their noses on entering the pew, nervously apprehensive that an insensitive usher will seat a greasy sinner next to them. They are however enabled to endure by the considerable compensation of being ‘in the know’ (gnostic means ‘the one who knows’). It is a good feeling to know that you are a cut above the common herd, superior to almost everyone you meet on the street or sit beside in church.
It is inevitable that gnostics will boycott the creation theater and avoid its language as much as possible, for metaphor is an affront to their gossamer immaterialities and inner-ring whispers, a loud fart in the salon of spirituality.” (Answering God, 75-76)

Kraybill, from your Upside Down Kingdom textbook:

"the parables sizzle into the minds of the religious heavyweights:
your attitude is the opposite of God's" p. 158
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4)

Remember the "Teenage Affluenza" video that we watched, for which students used
terms like:

subversive
satirical
inductive
abductive
interactive
juxtaposing
convicting
evolving
comedic
abductive
pointed
ironic
interactive
offensive (to some)

in describing? These are all great sub-definitions of a parable.

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HERE"S WHAT WE DID L DO IN CLASS for Parable Presentations assignments )

>)Sit at the table marked by your party name.

>>>

For the first fifteen minutes read, as a group, the parable assigned to you. Discuss it, use some "three worlds theory" to decide what you think the main point is. Consider the literary context: what comes before/after the parable, etc. Take into consideration any info from the "historical world" you may be aware of; you might want to peek at what the Bible Background Commentary has to say about yout parable (linked below, and one is in class to be shared).

The Good Samaritan Luke 10:25-37, see whole chapter for context here
(see pages 217-218 in the BBC here)

Zealots Party

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Rememner Stein offers these three possible reasons Jesus teaches in parables:

1. To conceal his teaching from those “outside”

2. To illustrate and reveal his message to his followers

3. To disarm his listeners—they force a response somehow, leave you wrestling, are provocative

Suggested Chiasms related to Matthew 13/Parables:

in a small subset of Matthew 13 (which may well be the very center of the whole book, thematically and chiastically (Below from Thomas Clarke)

"I first noted chiasm by looking at the footnotes regarding Isaiah 6:10 in NIV Study Bible. In the parallel verses from Matthew 13:15, see if you can identify the levels:

For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts …

Let us identify the nouns. They are as follows:
•
People
•
Heart
•
Ears
•
Eyes
•
Eyes
•
Ears
•
Hearts

Did you see the three levels of the chiasm? With the exception of the word “people,” they all have pairs. Did you see the center point? I sense that this verse is speaking about spiritual blindness. What about you?

Here then is the presentation of this first example of chiasm,

on chart on p. 28 here"

(Thomas Clarke)

GOOD SAMARITAN:

-See p, 161-167 of Upside Down book to get the "historical world" of Samaritans

-Who is the surprising Jesus figure in this story? Of course, the Samaritan is one, but the surprising one is that guy left for dead (as Jesus was).

We so often miss ( see "Parables and Misundertaking")

the point and punch of parables..

Good article in the new Biblical Archaeology by Amy-Jill Levine (emphasis mine):

In the parable, the priest and Levite signal not a concern for ritual purity; rather, in good storytelling fashion, these first two figures anticipate the third: the hero. Jews in the first century (and today) typically are either priests or Levites or Israelites. Thus the expected third figure, the hero, would be an Israelite. The parable shocks us when the third figure is not an Israelite, but a Samaritan.

But numerous interpreters, missing the full import of the shock, describe the Samaritan as the outcast. This approach, while prompting compelling sermons, is the fourth anachronism. Samaritans were not outcasts at the time of Jesus; they were enemies.

In the chapter before the parable (Luke 9:51–56) Luke depicts Samaritans as refusing Jesus hospitality; the apostles James and John suggest retaliation: “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9:54). John 4:9 states, “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.” The Jewish historian Josephus reports that during the governorship of Cumanus, Samaritans killed “a great many” Galilean pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem (Antiquities 20.118–136). The first-century Jewish person hearing this parable might well think: There is no such thing as a “good Samaritan.” But unless that acknowledgment is made, and help from the Samaritan is accepted, the person in the ditch will die.

The parable offers another vision, a vision of life rather than death. It evokes 2 Chronicles 28, which recounts how the prophet Oded convinced the Samaritans to aid their Judean captives. It insists that enemies can prove to be neighbors, that compassion has no boundaries, and that judging people on the basis of their religion or ethnicity will leave us dying in a ditch. link

Levine: Good Samaritan parable teaches compassion for the enemy

And this video version:

Amy-Jill Levine: Dangers on the Road to Jericho from Chautauqua Institution on FORA.tv

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See a great, hilarious section by Capon:\

The defining character – the one to whom the other three respond by being non-neighbour or neighbour – is the man who fell among thieves. The actual Christ-figure in the story, therefore, is yet another loser, yet another down-and-outer who, by just lying there in his lostness and proximity to death, is in fact the closest thing to Jesus in the parable.

That runs counter, of course, to the better part of two thousand years’ worth of interpretation, but I shall insist on it. This parable, like so many of Jesus’ most telling ones, has been egregiously misnamed. It is not primarily about the Samaritan but about the man on the ground. This means, incidentally, that Good Samaritan Hospitals have been likewise misnamed. It is the suffering, dying patients in such institutions who look most like Jesus in his redeeming work, not the doctors with their authoritarian stethoscopes around their necks. Accordingly, it would have been much less misleading to have named them Man-Who-Fell-Among-Thieves Hospitals...{as if the doctors would stand for that} (p. 210ff, Kingdom, grace, judgment: paradox, outrage, and vindication in the parables of Jesus)

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What an amazing job my students from last month did surprising us with an unannounced "temple tantrum," and acted parable.

We'll talk about that next time