READING LUKE-ACTS, PART IX

Above:  View of Nazareth (1842), by David Roberts

Image in the Public Domain

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Luke 4:14-30

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Each of the Synoptic Gospels includes an account of the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth.  The three accounts are not identical, especially regarding when the audiences rejected Jesus.  In this post, I focus on the Lucan account.

The version in the Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as possessing not only the Holy Spirit (a Lucan motif) but scribal literacy, as well.   The Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as being able to read and to navigate a scroll that lacked chapter and verse numbers, and to find the passages he had in mind.  (That is impressive!)  The Jesus of Luke 4:18-19 read Isaiah 61:1-2 then Isaiah 58:6.  (That is even more impressive!)  Scribal literacy required much advanced education.  Many scholars of the New Testament have debated how realistic this depiction of Jesus is.

That is a valid question, but not one I feel qualified to address conclusively.  I would not be surprised to learn that St. Luke possessed scribal literacy, though.

The point of rejection in Luke 4:28 was Jesus citing divine blessings on Gentiles from the Hebrew Bible.  What about this enraged the audience?

Interpretations vary:

1. The rejection resulted from the villagers’ xenophobia and ethnocentrism.
2. The rejection resulted from villagers resenting Jesus likening them to persecutors of old.
3. The rejection resulted from Jesus’s refusal to provide his hometown with messianic blessings.

Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, in The Jewish Annotated New Testament (2011), reject (1) and propose (3).  They point out that Jews generally had positive relations with Gentiles and expected the redemption of righteous Gentiles (Zechariah 8:23).  That may be so.  However, I suppose that some Jews were ethnocentric and xenophobic.  I am a citizen of the United States of America, a nation with a strong tradition of welcoming immigrants and another strong tradition of practicing xenophobia and Nativism.  Jewish acceptance of righteous Gentiles (as elsewhere in the Gospel of Luke) need not rule out the ethnocentrism and xenophobia of certain Jews.  Likewise, neither Judaism nor Christianity are legalistic religions when people practice them properly.  Yet legalistic adherents, congregations, movements, and denominations of both religions exist.

The second interpretation on the list comes courtesy of Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke I-IX (1981), 538.  That villagers resented Jesus likening them to persecutors of old may be accurate.  Hearing negative comparisons rooted in the uncomfortable past angers people in the present day.  In the United States of America, many White people continue to chafe against criticism of pro-slavery secessionists of 1861 while professing to reject race-based slavery, what Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens boasted in March 1861 was the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy.

The past is never dead.  It’s not even past.

–William Faulkner

I also suggest that more than one motivation may have played out in the Lucan account.

Accepting the traditional Christian interpretation–xenophobia and ethnocentrism–need not lead one down the path of anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism.  Bigotry is a defense mechanism against dealing with one’s faults and failings anyway.  Be honest with yourself, O reader.  Do you not categorize some groups of people as being undesirable?  If they were to receive extravagant grace, would you become enraged?  Grace is scandalous; it does not discriminate.

Alternatively, how much of your identity is bound up with your ancestors?  If you learn that they were total bastards, does that anger you and threaten your ego?  If so, why?  You are not your ancestors.  Recall the previous post in this series.  God should be the source of your identity.  You are one of the apples of God’s eyes.

KENNETH RANDOLPH TAYLOR

DECEMBER 25, 2021 COMMON ERA

CHRISTMAS DAY

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++