Jesus (67 page)

3
. Jn 1:40, 44.

4
. Thanks to Thomas D. Stegman, SJ, for this insight.

5
. Meier,
Marginal Jew
, 3:159.

6
. In
A Marginal Jew
, Meier points to Jer 16:16, where God sends “many fishers” to catch the enemies of Israel (3:160).

7
. Meier,
Marginal Jew
, 3:160.

8
. Lohfink,
Jesus of Nazareth
, 73–76.

9
. Meier,
Marginal Jew
, 3:160–61.

10
. Mt 8:14–15; Mk 1:29–31; Lk 4:38–39.

11
. “The Gospel of Luke,” in Brown, Fitzmyer, and Murphy, eds.,
The New Jerome Biblical Commentary
, 691. The
NJBC
estimates a population of fifteen thousand. Crossan and Reed, in
Excavating Jesus
(119), estimate a far more modest number of inhabitants based on more recent archaeological data, around a thousand.

12
. Some scholars surmise that Peter may have been a widower. In the Gospel passages cited in footnote 10, after Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law, she “got up and began to serve him” (Lk 4:30). This may be a way of highlighting her complete healing. But some say this task would have more likely fallen to Peter's wife, who is apparently not on the scene. (Notice that the evangelists do not write, “Peter's wife asked Jesus to heal her mother.”) Either way—married man or widower—Peter was probably responsible for caring for his mother-in-law.

13
. Horns and Martens,
Let the Little Children Come to Me
, 174–75.

14
. Daniel-Rops,
Daily Life in Palestine
, 237. And of course beyond the memory of women too.

15
. Pixner,
With Jesus Through Galilee
, 29.

16
. Mt 13:47–50.

17
. Sanders
, Historical Figure of Jesus
, 102–3. Sanders includes an excellent brief description of Galilean fishing practices in his chapter “The Setting and Method of Jesus's Ministry.”

18
. Reed,
HarperCollins Visual Guide to the New Testament
, 69.

19
. Crossan and Reed,
Excavating Jesus
, 123.

20
. Lk 5:10.

21
. Donahue told me, “Jesus proclaims and enacts his kingdom proclamation not as a charismatic individual alone, but with a group whom he calls and forms, so his activity is radically social, and is the genesis of the church (
ekklēsia:
literally, ‘called out').”

22
. Is 9:1.

23
. Jn 1:40–42.

24
. Pixner suggests this scenario in
With Jesus in Galilee
, 30–32.

25
. “When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was
at home
” (Mk 2:1, my italics).

26
. In
Breathing Under Water
, the Franciscan Richard Rohr points out that Jesus often says, “Follow me,” but never, “Worship me” (77). It's a needed reminder to those who would focus only on his divinity.

Chapter Eight:
Immediately

1
. The number of variations in the spelling of the town's name is maddening. Most English translations use Capernaum. (That's what road signs in Galilee use today—along with Hebrew and Arabic.) Other translations use Capernahum or Kapernaum. The Hebrew name is Kfar Nahum (“the village of Nahum”) and the Greek name used in the New Testament is Kαϕαƿvαo
v
µ:
Kapharnaoum
. So perhaps the best translation would be Kapharnaum. Still, Capernaum is the most common usage today, though the English pronunciation is quite unlike the original.

2
. “An oppressive heat hovers over Capernaum during the long summers,” write Crossan and Reed in
Excavating Jesus
(119). I concur.

3
. Murphy-O'Connor,
Holy Land
, 251. He is referring to Lk 7:1–6: “He loves our people,” say the Jewish elders of Capernaum, “and it is he who built our synagogue for us.” On the other hand, Amy-Jill Levine suggested to me that the town may have had more than one synagogue; the structure built by the centurion may have been one of several places of worship.

4
. Mt 9:1.

5
. This translation is not reflected in the New Revised Standard Version, but Mark writes,
Kai euthus tois sabbasin
, literally, “And immediately on the Sabbath.”

6
. Brown, Fitzmyer, and Murphy, eds.,
New Jerome Biblical Commentary
, 600.

7
. Donahue and Harrington,
Gospel of Mark
, 79.

8
. Donahue and Harrington,
Gospel of Mark
, 80.

9
. Donahue and Harrington,
Gospel of Mark
, 80.

10
. It is “What have we to do with thee?” in Marshall,
Interlinear Greek New Testament
, 139.

11
. Brown,
Introduction to the New Testament
, 129.

12
. Meier,
Marginal Jew
, 2:630. And: “The historical fact that Jesus performed extraordinary deeds deemed by himself and others to be miracles is supported most impressively by the criterion of multiple attestation of sources and forms and the criterion of coherence. The miracle traditions about Jesus's public ministry are so widely attested in various sources and literary forms by the end of the first Christian generation that total fabrication by the early church is, practically speaking, impossible.” Barclay writes in
The Mind of Jesus:
“If we remove the stories of the miracles, the whole framework of the Gospel story falls to pieces, and often even the teaching of Jesus is left without an occasion and a context” (66).

13
. In Matthew (17:14–21) he is described as
selēniazetai
, or “moonstruck,” from the Greek word for “moon.” The boy's condition was thought to be related to the phases of the moon. (The word “lunatic” preserves the Latin word for moon,
luna
.) From the description of the boy's falls and what was believed in ancient medicine, the condition is considered by most contemporary scholars to be epilepsy (Harrington,
Gospel of Matthew
, 257). In Mark (9:14–29) and Luke (9:37–43) the boy is afflicted by “a spirit.”

14
. Mt 17:15–18.

15
. We should also remember, as Meier points out in
A Marginal Jew
, the “description of the illness or other difficulty presented to Jesus is often vague. . . . What the precise pathology of each condition was, what its cause was, how serious or irreversible it was, and whether the cure Jesus worked was permanent are not stated” (2:647). The writers of the Gospels were not modern-day physicians or diagnosticians.

16
. Bloom, ed.,
C. S. Lewis
, 41.

17
. Harrington,
Who Is Jesus?
, 25.

18
. Mt 11:29.

19
. Rom 7:19.

Chapter Nine:
Gennesaret

1
. Mk 1:16–20; Mt 4:18–22.

2
. Johnson,
Gospel of Luke
, 88.

3
. Prv 9:10.

4
. Jer 29:11.

5
. Coles,
Dorothy Day
, 51.

6
. Sheed,
To Know Christ Jesus
, 148.

Chapter Ten:
Happy

1
. Harrington,
Gospel of Matthew
, 78.

2
. Murphy-O'Connor,
Holy Land
, 316.

3
. A Jesuit told me that he was once invited by his spiritual director to meditate on the Sermon on the Plain during a retreat. Unfamiliar with that nomenclature, he imagined Jesus on an
airplane
. “I thought it was some creative Jesuit meditation technique,” he said.

4
. The expression “Blessed are” was a standard Jewish formula, appearing many times in the Old Testament, particularly in the Psalms, as well as in the Jewish liturgy (Levine and Brettler, eds.,
Jewish Annotated New Testament
, 10).

5
. Barclay,
Gospel of Matthew
, 97.

6
. Harrington,
Gospel of Matthew
, 78.

7
. Lohfink,
Jesus of Nazareth
, 29. In his book
The Historical Figure of Jesus
, E. P. Sanders offers an excellent response to the question of “When?” Sanders also asks, “Where?” That is, in heaven or on earth? Sanders concludes that, while it is impossible to say precisely what Jesus intended and no one statement encompasses his teaching, “There is no difficulty in thinking that Jesus thought that the kingdom was in heaven, that people would enter it in the future, and that it was also present in some sense in his own work” (178). In other words, everywhere and at every time. But Lohfink's emphasis on immediacy is important, particularly when considered in light of some of Jesus's parables.

8
. Noted in Levine and Brettler, eds.,
Jewish Annotated New Testament
(113). See also Dt 15:11 (“I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land'”); Is 49:10; Jer 31:25; Ez 34:29.

9
. Harrington,
Jesus
, 33.

10
. As for the crowd's reactions, it's hard not to recall the film
Monty Python's Life of Brian
, which follows the travails of a fictional counterpart to Jesus named Brian. In the film, the real Jesus is proclaiming the Beatitudes from a mountain (or at least a hill), and the camera pans back to a group of people who can barely hear him. One man, straining to hear, reports to the crowd, “I think it was ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers.'” A woman laughs and asks: “What's so special about the cheesemakers?” Then comes my favorite line, by someone who is obviously a theologian, “Well, obviously, this is not meant to be taken
literally
. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.”

11
. Barclay,
Gospel of Matthew
, 122.

12
. Ps 24:3–4.

13
. Harrington,
Gospel of Matthew
, 79.

14
. Jesus also described
himself
using this word, as in Mt 11:29, when he says, “I am meek (
praus
) and humble in heart.”

15
. Barclay,
Gospel of Matthew
, 119.

16
. Mt 20:16.

17
. Mt 25:31–46.

18
. And, particularly in Matthew, a portrait of who Jesus is.

19
. Mt 19:24; Mk 10:25.

20
. Mt 23:11.

21
. Barclay in
Gospel of Matthew
writes, “
Makarios
, then, describes that joy which has its secret within itself, that joy which is serene and untouchable, and self-contained, that joy which is completely independent of all the chances and the changes of life” (1:103).

Chapter Eleven:
Capernaum

1
. Mt 8:20; Lk 9:58.

2
. The New Revised Standard Version uses “at home.” So do Marshall,
The Interlinear Greek-English New Testament
, 142; and Zerwick,
Grammatical Analysis of the New Testament
, 104.

3
. As Donahue and Harrington write in
The Gospel of Mark:
“Perhaps we are to imagine that the house belongs to Peter (see 1:29–31), though some scholars suppose that it belonged to Jesus (see 2:1, 15)” (284).

4
. Murphy-O'Connor,
Holy Land
, 252.

5
. Crossan and Reed,
Excavating Jesus
, 130.

6
. Murphy-O'Connor,
Holy Land
, 254. Mt 8:14 says that Jesus “came to” or “entered” Peter's house, when he cured Peter's mother-in-law, implying that Jesus did not live there or lived elsewhere.

7
. Again, Jesus says, in Mt 8:20 and Lk 9:58, “[T]he Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” which argues against the idea of Jesus having a permanent dwelling. On the other hand, it may simply indicate that he stayed in Capernaum for a limited time.

8
. The presence of a centurion (Mt 8:5–13; Lk 7: 1–10; Jn 4:46–54) argues for a “small Herodian garrison with an official” (Reed,
HarperCollins Visual Guide to the New Testament
, 74).

9
. Reed,
HarperCollins Visual Guide to the New Testament
, 75.

10
. Crossan and Reed,
Excavating Jesus
, 120.

11
. Crossan and Reed,
Excavating Jesus
, 119.

12
. An overview of the typical house in Capernaum can be found in Crossan and Reed,
Excavating Jesus;
Korb,
Life in Year One;
and Barclay,
Gospel of Mark
.

13
. Luke, writing for a more citified audience, roughly twenty years later, uses the word
klinidion
, a small bed.

14
. Donahue and Harrington,
Gospel of Mark
, 94.

15
. Zimmerman,
Woman Un-Bent
, 35.

16
. Matthew's version (9:1–8) of the greeting is even more tender: “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”

17
. Levine and Brettler, eds.,
Jewish Annotated New Testament
, 62–63.

18
. Sanders,
Historical Figure of Jesus
, 37.

19
. Jn 9:2–3.

20
. Barclay,
Gospel of Mark
, 55.

Chapter Twelve:
Parables

1
. Lk 5:1–3.

2
. Mk 4:1–9; Mt 13:1–9.

3
. Mt 13:1–9; Mk 4:1–9; Lk 8:4–8.

4
. Mt 13:18–23; Mk 4:13–20; Lk 8:11–15.

5
. Dodd,
Parables of the Kingdom
, 16.

6
. Harrington,
Jesus
, 30.

7
. Wright,
Jesus and the Victory of God
, 176.