19 April 2024
We turn now to the inauguration of Jesus' public ministry in Luke 4:16-31. This is a long one.
At his bar-mitzvah in Jerusalem, Jesus demonstrated how seriously He took the Covenant of Moses. Bailey neglects to mention that common Jewish folks were aware that Daniel's prophecy said the Messiah was about due to show. There was a Messianic fervor all over the kingdom. The Romans were on edge about it, as were the Sanhedrin and other Jewish leadership. It was in the air. However, Bailey does mention a common movement that arose (because of this Messianic fervor) of ordinary Jewish folks getting together in the evenings to discuss the Covenant Scriptures. Their meetings would sometimes feature serious scholarship. After eighteen years of this, Jesus was one of a whole herd of new rabbis who sprouted from this movement across the whole nation.
Our passage begins with Jesus after His baptism and temptation experiences. He returned to Galilee to begin public ministry. Depending on how you harmonize the Gospels, John records a substantial amount of work Jesus did, including the wedding at Cana, His first clearing of the Temple, the interview of Nicodemas, and then came the jailing of his cousin, John the Baptist, and finally the mission time with the Samaritans. Thus, Jesus already has a public profile. This is why He was invited to speak in His hometown synagogue.
Bailey offers an elaborate diagram of the synagogue event. He shows how the central event of reading the passage from Isaiah 61 is a climax, bookended between a series of physical movements that were reversed after the reading. Further, the passage in Isaiah is ABCBA (preach, sent, sight, send, proclaim). He refers to this as a specific form called "encased parables". The climax can be a miracle, a quotation, or something critical that becomes the center of attention.
Scholars have noted that Jesus edits the passage on the fly, inserting a line from Isaiah 58 in the middle. It also happens to be bits and pieces of the message of the Qumran Community, in the sense that they were a Messianic community and all of this was meant to test the audience's reaction there in Nazareth when Jesus all but announces that He is the Messiah. These happen to be the true Messianic promises, nothing at all like the False Messianic Expectations of the Pharisees.
Bailey confirms something I had suspected long ago, but lacked the expertise to nail it down. The narrative of how the audience reacted is told in ambiguous Greek language. To suggest the crowd liked His message at first, then became hostile later, is not consistent with the context. A better translation would read that they were offended from the start. More to the point, they were offended that He was suggesting the inclusion of the Gentiles (gracious words), and left out the parts of Isaiah that Jews normally interpreted to indicate destruction of Gentile nations.
All the more so if you review the history of Nazareth. It didn't exist until the Maccabeans reconquered the area and sent Judeans to colonize this spot in the hills above the Plain of Esdraelon. As a colonial town planted in recent history, it would have been quite consciously nationalist and conservative. Indeed, priests fleeing the sack of Jerusalem some decades later chose to take refuge in Nazareth; it was their kind of town. For Jesus to come there, as a homeboy, and suggest that the Gentiles would be welcomed into the Covenant was just too much for them to stomach. It would be like preaching immigration to Texas cowboys who had been raided by illegal immigrants passing through.
At any rate, Bailey performs a detailed rhetorical analysis of Isaiah 61:1-7, which we will look at tomorrow.
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