Clergy and Educators

ICJS Scripture Forum, 2004-2005
Session #2

Scripture Forum
Session #2
Goucher College
November 5, 2004

Review of first session/introduction to second ses-sion by Chris Leighton:
   In the first session, the group examined issues sur-rounding religion, politics, and leadership by looking at two Jewish prayers and a newly-written Christian docu-ment, "Confessing Christ in a World of Violence."
   There was also some discussion (and later follow-up) regarding the Evangelical Christian community. On the one hand, some group members expressed incredulity that this community is so susceptible to the overtures made by the Bush administration. On the other hand, there was a realization, startling to some, that Evan-gelical Christians constitute a more nuanced and eclectic constituency than is recognized by most people looking in from the outside. The question was asked: How does that read of the Evangelical community connect with the election?
   The intention in the current session is to examine Jewish and Christian texts that look at the interplay of religion and politics and the appropriate use of power. This discussion is aimed at a larger project that will cul-minate in a study day on February 8 with Rabbi Irving Greenberg. Questions in the air are: Do we, or should we, construe citizenship in covenantal terms? How do religious covenantal claims connect with the claims of country and citizenship?

A brief discussion followed:

• As the discussion was getting under way, Charles Arian mentioned that both Irving Greenberg and David Hartman talk about the Jewish return to history. Greenberg, he said, is a reverse Rosen-zweig: Rosenzweig saw Christianity as being in history and Judaism as being outside of history. In history, Jews now must face questions concerning the ethical use of power -- Jews as rulers; Jews with guns.
• Our participant from the Evangelical community cautioned us not to believe the hype about Evangelical Christians and the election. The community supported Bush, but so did people
  from other Christian denominations and people from other religions. This time there was far less satisfaction with Bush than there was in 2000. It is likely that people were looking at the situation with Chief Justice Rehnquist's illness, and they were casting their votes on the basis of what
  was at stake in terms of the Supreme Court.
• Question: Is the Democratic Party capable of articulating its own agenda in religious terms?
• Response: Yes, but will it? Kerry did well, but Gore's equating fundamentalist Christians with
  the Taliban didn't help.
• Another response: The Republican issues -- abortion, gays and lesbians, the Iraq war, Sad-dam Hussein's regime as "evil" -- were far more clearly defined for the Evangelical community
  than were the issues espoused by the Democratic candidate(s).
• Bush was seen as not so paralyzed by nuance and complexity.
• Remark by a Jewish participant: Conservative Judaism is the "Democratic Party" of Judaism: Its positions are complex (although they seem clear from the inside) and hard to articulate.

Text study #1 (a pericope that appears in all three Synoptic Gospels, RSV translation):
   Matthew 22:15-22:
Then the Pharisees went and took counsel how to entangle him in his talk. And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Hero-dians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are true, and teach the way of God truthfully, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the money for the tax." And they brought him a coin. And Jesus said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They said, "Caesar's." Then he said to them, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard it, they marveled; and they left him and went away.

   Mark 12:13-17:
And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to entrap him in his talk. And they came and said to him, "Teacher, we know that you are true, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?" But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, "Why put me to the test? Bring me a coin, and let me look at it." And they brought one. And he said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They said to him, "Caesar's." Jesus said to them, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." And they were amazed at him.

   Luke 20:20-26:
So they watched him, and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might take hold of what he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. They asked him, "Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?" But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, "Show me a coin. Whose likeness and inscription has it?" They said, "Caesar's." He said to them, "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." And they were not able in the presence of the people to catch him by what he said; but marveling at his answer they were silent.

Discussion (which wasn't exactly tidy):

• In New Testament studies, there has been a lot of work done by scholars to expose anti-Judaism, but there hasn't been much done to show how the Church positioned itself in relation to the hegem-ony of Rome. Given the historical circumstances when the Gospels were being written, the notion that God was the only King had to be suppressed. Nevertheless, there is present a polemic that undercuts the authority of Rome.
• Comment from a Jewish participant: After reading the Mark passage, I'm not sure I understand the question, or what the question actually is. There was no question about the necessity of paying taxes. In rabbinic literature, certain laws were restricted (like the law of the sabbatical year) to enable the paying of taxes. The point is to trap Jesus into encouraging civil disobedience.
• Response from a Christian participant: Often these debates involve the Pharisees asking Jesus impos-sible questions, questions that have no answers. I would like to know the context of this pericope.
• (This comment was followed by a brief survey of what preceded this pericope in the Gospels.)
• If Jesus' central proclamation is that the kingdom of God is near, this question follows out of that.
• The king occupies a subordinate position as representative of God and God's authority. There is only one King, so what are the ramifications of the allegiance one owes to Caesar? Jesus ups the ante by asking for a coin that has the image of Caesar: The image and divine authority go hand
  in hand.
• Question: How do we connect this encounter with the entrance into Jerusalem? And thinking of Cae-sar's image on the coin, that money needs to be changed to be used in the Temple.
• This discussion occurs in the Temple, so it has to do with more than just Caesar.
• Rome controls the Temple.
• The Essenes had the same idea: The Temple authorities had sold out to Rome.
• Question: What kind of Pharisee is within the Tem-ple precincts with a Roman coin in his pocket?
• Comment: Among the nuances of meaning for the verb "give" in Luke 20:25 are "to give back" or "to return," i.e., return what belongs to Caesar. [Scribal note: The same verb is used in all three versions.]
• A Jewish participant cited a story told by the rab-bis. In this story, when the king stamps coins they are all the same. When God stamps His image, the images are all different, but they are all the image of God. Caesar isn't God.
• Comment from a Christian participant: This peri-cope is read in my church in such a way as to support the separation of Church and State. One has to choose whose lordship will govern one's life, and Luke makes the choice clear: "You cannot serve God and mammon" (RSV, Lk. 16:13; Matt. 6:24). [NRSV: "You cannot serve God and wealth."]
• Money is life in the empire. Jesus does not want people to divorce themselves from the political.
• Question: What is the nature of one's obligation to the state?
• Response: This text is more about the Pharisees and their role in the Temple than it is about people's relation to the state. This is not a text about how Christians are to respond to civil authority.
• Response to the response: But Jesus has to take a stand regarding Caesar.
• You're asking the wrong question. The people had to pay the taxes anyway.
• At this point there was some discussion about the language in the pericope, specifically in regard to the verb thaumazo (translated as "marvel" or "amaze"; see Matt. 22:22, Mk. 12:17, and Lk. 20:26), which was described as having a spir-
  itual content as it is used in Luke's Gospel. It
  was pointed out that the verb also has cultural connotations, expressing an attribution of honor
  in an honor-shame society.
• The Pharisees are hoping that there is no honor-able response to the question they're asking, which will cause Jesus to be dishonored (= lose face).
• But if his answer leaks out to the Romans, he's dead.
• Jesus honors Caesar because he understands that Caesar has power, but Caesar's power isn't the same as God's power.
• Another way to read it: Caesar has nothing that doesn't belong to God, so Caesar's power and authority have no legitimate claim. Caesar has
  no real power over anyone.
• Comment from a Christian participant: If I were to preach this text, I would preach about all of God's things that we give to Caesar.
• Objection: Yet at his trial, Jesus was accused of telling people not to pay taxes.
• Immediate response from a number of people: That was a scurrilous claim.
• Maybe the people who testified to this charge understood what Jesus was actually saying.
• Question: Where does Jesus say anything openly defiant against the political authority? He doesn't, because the "political authority" has no authority.
• Comment from a Jewish participant: There is a principle stated in a later rabbinic story -- "The law of the land is the law of the land" -- but there is also a higher law.
• Response from another Jewish participant: The rabbinic tradition is essentially accommodationist, but Jesus doesn't care about making the Romans angry.
• People kept trying to put Rome on Jesus' radar screen.
• Rome is on his radar screen: Jesus is disarming Rome of its power. Caesar's presence was so pervasive that we would have to spiritualize
  Jesus' message to an extraordinary degree to
  keep it from connecting to the harsh political
  and economic realities that the people were up against. Not to take Caesar seriously would force Jesus to advocate a pie-in-the-sky theology.

Text #2:
Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, page 33b:
For Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yossi, and Rabbi Shimon were sitting, and Yehuda, a son of proselytes, was sitting near them. Rabbi Yehuda commenced [the discussion] by observing, "How fine are the works of this people (i.e., the Romans)! They have made streets, they have built bridges, they have erected baths." Rabbi Yossi was silent. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai answered and said, "All that they made they made for themselves; they built market-places, to set harlots in them; baths, to rejuvenate themselves; bridges, to levy tolls for them." Now, Yehuda the son of proselytes went and related their talk, which reached the government. They decreed: "Yehuda, who exalted [us], shall be exalted, Yossi, who was silent, shall be exiled to Sepphoris, Shimon, who censured, let him be executed."

Note on Shimon bar Yohai from The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and Geoffrey Wigoder, editors in chief, p. 636: Shimon bar Yohai [was] a pupil of R. Aqiva ben Yosef. He conducted his school at Tekoa in Upper Galilee, where his pupils included R. Yehudah ha-Nasi.... For speaking against the Romans he was condemned to death, and he and his son Elazar ben Shimon consequently had to go into hiding -- they are said to have spent twelve or thirteen years in a cave until the death sen-tence was annulled. After the Bar Kokhba Revolt and subsequent persecution, Shimon feared for the continuation of Torah studies and developed an ideology that gave ultimate priority to the learn-ing of the law above all other activities....

Text #3: Mishna, Tractate Avot
Chapter 1 [contemporaneous with Jesus]
10. Shemayah and Avtalion received the Torah from them. She-mayah said: Love work; hate domination; and seek not undue intimacy with the government.

Chapter 2 [post-200 C.E.]
3. Be careful in your relations with the government; for they draw no man close to themselves except for their own interests. They appear as friends when it is to their advantage, but they do not stand by a man in his time of stress.

Chapter 3 [c. 70 C.E.]
2. Rabbi Chanina, an assistant of the high priest said: Pray for the welfare of the government since but for fear of it men would swallow each other alive.

The message of the first two texts is: Don't get close to the government; it is not interested in your welfare.

Discussion:

• Introductory remark by Charles Arian: In balancing Torah study with ordinary life and working for a living, the weight of the Talmud comes down against spending one's whole life in Torah study.
• There seems to be a subtle sub-text here against converts.
• This text has a healthy ambivalence about power.
• The text exposes Yehuda as a quisling and lifts up Shimon as the real hero who exposes the glitter as rot.
• The tradition is ambivalent about Shimon. His values are good but he's a zealot.
• Comment from a Jewish participant: There was a question about how involved one should get in secular culture, which is still a question today.
• Question: Is this text more descriptive than prescriptive? (Answer: Yes.)
• This situation is like the situation of present-day Palestinians in Israel. Under the Israelis the Palestinians are better of materially, but they're not free.
• Question: Does this text inspire taking on the government, or does it advocate silence?
• Response: It's hard for us to answer that question because the whole problem is foreign to us.
• The attitude that comes from the text is healthy skepticism: These things are good but they are not of ultimate value, so do not be seduced by them.
• This is a put-down of Aeneas's understanding of Rome's destiny:




Others will cast more tenderly in bronze
Their breathing figures, I can well believe,
And bring more lifelike portraits out of marble;
Argue more eloquently, use the pointer
To trace the paths of heaven accurately
And accurately foretell the rising stars.
Roman, remember by your strength to rule
Earth's peoples -- for your arts are to be these:
To pacify, to impose the rule of law,
To spare the conquered, battle down the proud.

(Aeneid, Book VI, lines 847-853, translation by Robertus Fitzgerald)

• Question: What does the tradition make of the silence? Yossi can go either way.
• The rabbis were very aware of Roman culture.
  The key idea is the seduction of the secular culture. Judaism is intended to keep one sepa-
  rate from that pull.
• The challenge is much bigger now. Jewish ideas were clearly superior to Roman ideas. All but the ultra-Orthodox would not say this about modern culture: There is movement in various streams of Judaism toward gender equality and acceptance
  of gays and lesbians. The challenge now lies in choosing which ideas from the general culture to include in Judaism.
• The message of the text is: When you are in con-flict with the government, be quietly resisting.
• The question is: Whose Judaism will work the best -- the one that is symbiotic, the one in exile, or the one active in a combat relationship with identifiable enemies?
• It depends on the context: All three are needed from time to time.

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