Clergy and Educators

ICJS Scripture Forum, 2005-2006
Session #6

Scripture Forum
Session #6
Chizuk Amuno Congregation
March 10, 2006

Texts:
     Genesis 23:1-20
     Luke 20:20-40

Introduction to the texts (Dr. Randi Rashkover):

• I thought we might take a different approach
  this time in terms of the nature of the text we're studying. We've been looking at legislative and liturgical texts, and I thought it was time to return to a narrative focus. So I chose Genesis 23, which is part of the Chaye Sarah parshah ("the life of Sarah") -- the Torah portion that runs from Gen-esis 23 to Genesis 25:9.
• We are dealing only with the negotiations between Abraham and the Hittites over the burial location for Sarah. This passage, of course, is preceded by the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. Sarah's death is described immediately after that event. The rest of the parshah deals with finding a wife for Isaac, the death of Abraham, and Abraham's burial at Machpelah.
• In past sessions we have looked at the jubilee and the sabbatical, an interior analysis of economics from a liturgical point of view, and the sacrificial economy of the Temple. This time we will consider the economy of raw commercial transactions, in particular, commercial transactions that take place between people who are members of different groups.
• I want to raise a few questions that might occupy our attention. The obvious question that governs Genesis 23 is: Why does a commercial transaction dominate the narrative of this event, especially since we might not expect something like this in the context of Sarah's death? What is the precise nature of this economic transaction? What are the rules, the implicit behavioral norms, of this trans-action? What is Abraham's emotional posture as he experiences this transaction? How does he go into the transaction, and how does he emerge from it, either emotionally or existentially?
• Additional questions: How does this commercial transaction function within the larger narrative
  of the people Israel? How does it function in the narrative context overall? How does this trans-action compare to other transactions, particularly those that have occurred in the Genesis narrative thus far between a Jew and a non-Jew? I'm in-terested in a possible comparison between this event and the contract or treaty made between Abraham and Abimelech. That is, I'm interested
  in Abraham's relationship with Abimelech and his relationship with the Hittites upon the death of Sarah.
• Those are the questions I want us to ask with respect to the Genesis text, but I think most of the same questions can also arise in the context of the Lukan text (Luke 20:20-40). The obvious overlap between these two texts concerns the nature of commercial transaction in the context
  of engagement between the religious environment and the secular environment.
• With regard to the Lukan text, I thought we
  might also pursue the questions that arose last time when we discussed the possibility that the Christianity of the Gospels is profiling an eschato-logical economics. If so, what is an eschatological economics, an economics of the kingdom of God? Do we see an economics of the kingdom of God in Luke 20:20-40? What is the relationship between eschatological economics and regular commercial transactions?
• Finally, there is a broad thematic that I want to introduce. One of the dominant conversations occupying the attention of Christian theologians these days is the extent to which Christian the-ology and Christian sources can locate a basis for democracy. Democracy is in crisis, so there is a renewed interest in theoretical justifications for it. There is a similar move within the Jewish tradition. David Novak is doing wonderful work trying to provide an argument to help Jews answer the question: If our political structure is primarily oriented toward a theocracy, why and how should we be committed to a democratic environment? In other words, there is a careful discussion going on concerning linking our sources to our analysis of democracy and how that link enables us to under-stand our commitment to democracy.
• The elephant in the room with respect to these conversations is the question of capitalism. The question of how we are to negotiate our sources with our posture in a capitalist environment is one that has not yet received much attention. Looking at texts like these may be one way of beginning to adjudicate a response to that question.

The first text: Genesis 23:1-20 (NRSV translation)

Sarah lived one hundred twenty-seven years; this was the length of Sarah's life. And Sarah died at Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan; and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Abraham rose up from beside his dead, and said to the Hittites, "I am a stranger and an alien residing among you; give me property among you for a burying place, so that I may bury my dead out of my sight." The Hittites answered Abraham, "Hear us, my lord; you are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our burial places; none of us will withhold from you any burial ground for burying your dead." Abraham rose and bowed to the Hittites, the people of the land. He said to them, "If you are willing that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hear me, and entreat for me Ephron son of Zohar, so that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he owns; it is at the end of his field. For the full price let him give it to me in your presence as a possession for a burying place." Now Ephron was sitting among the Hittites; and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the Hittites, of all who went in at the gate of his city, "No, my lord, hear me; I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it; in the presence of my people I give it to you; bury your dead." Then Abraham bowed down before the people of the land. He said to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, "If you only will listen to me! I will give the price of the field; accept it from me, so that I may bury my dead there." Ephron answered Abraham, "My lord, listen to me; a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver -- what is that between you and me? Bury your dead." Abra-ham agreed with Ephron; and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver that he had named in the hearing of the Hittites, four hun-dred shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants.

So the field of Ephron in Machpelah, which was to the east of Mamre, the field with the cave that was in it and all the trees that were in the field, throughout its whole area, passed to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites, in the presence of all who went in at the gate of his city. After this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah facing Mamre (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan. The field and the cave that is in it passed from the Hittites into Abraham's possession as a burying place.

The discussion begins:

• Reaction: There are some things I don't under-stand. It's a remarkable dance that's being enacted here -- the way in which they defer to one another, almost as a way of, at least initially, sidestepping the transaction. There's a certain etiquette enacted before they agree on the price. I'd like to understand that a bit better. It would seem to me that buying a piece of land and burying your beloved there gives you a claim on that piece of real estate that would be different from buying land where you would sow crops, build a house, or pitch your tent. The acquisition of land to bury the dead implies a relationship fixed for all time, so the enormity of this transaction seems to put it on a different level than your typical com-mercial exchange.
• Remark: Everything else Abraham did in the land he did acting as if he possessed the land. This is the only time he felt that he needed to purchase the land in order to do something. This transaction is atypical, different from all the others. Why does he do this now?
• Remark: The thing that strikes me about this is not that he entered into a commercial transaction, but that he refused the gift of land where he could bury Sarah among the Hittites. He maintains his independence.
• Response: Technically speaking, the so-called offer to give him the land was not really an offer. It's a customary way of speaking, of being polite in that society; but there was no intent to do any-thing but sell him the land. That's what I read.
• Remark: This is no time to be doing business. I viewed this as a critical moment in which Abraham is threatened with absorption or assimilation, and he chooses to remain independent.
• Question: Are there any other contemporary par-allels that have this kind of exchange? I read the same thing -- that this was the way people would finally arrive at a price.
• Response: It's often taught that way, as if this were a kind of standard dance between two par-ties in which the parties reach a price without actually setting one. But I think it's clear from
  the text that it is very important that the land is bought. There are several references to the fact that this transaction takes place before all of the Hittites. That way, down the road nobody can deny that it happened. There is an emphasis that this is a transaction, that the land was bought and paid for.
• Question: Do we know that land transactions would have been recorded in writing in some form at this time? (Response: Absolutely, they would have. We have thousands of them.)
• Remark: I was struck initially by Abraham's defer-ence and the fact that he didn't just take what he needed. His wife is dead, and he needs to bury her. But this is the first time that he demonstrates a kind of care or concern or deference. It seems to be out of his usual pattern. I don't understand the significance of that, either in terms of the transaction that's going on or the implications of it. If Abraham buries his dead in a land that is not his own, by having done that, does he have a claim to it? And if he does, then why is he going through all of this posturing? If he really wants to establish himself in the land, this seems to be the perfect way to do it -- burying his dead there.
• Question: Is part of the complexity the fact that the land was promised by God, so the Hittites' claim would be dismissed as not having any real gravity?
• Response: No, it's precisely the reverse. Abraham is operating out of the notion that this is his land. He doesn't ask permission to do any of the other things he does there. But when it comes time to bury his wife, suddenly he acts as if it's not his land, or he needs permission. I don't know what
  to make of that.
• Reaction: Maybe one of the ways that we can begin to explore that is to suggest that there's a certain extent to which the customary exchanges appear to be a sort of buffer, or even a kind of mollification of something. There's a narrative movement in the whole section that goes from Abraham mourning and weeping for Sarah all the way to the opposite extreme in vv. 19-20 ["After this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah facing Mamre (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan. The field and the cave that is in it passed from the Hittites into Abraham's possession as a burying place."] The narrative moves from as much of a description of someone's real feeling as we ever get in a text to an objective description of what has transpired. I think it's interesting to consider the nature of the anxiety he's experiencing. Is he concerned about absorption into the Hittite environment, and by performing a commercial transaction he demon-strates a recognition of the differences between the two parties? Is the deference he's expressing born of some fundamental anxiety he's experienc-ing? Perhaps we need to consider not only the notion that Abraham may have the certainty that he's been promised this land by God, but also the events that transpired just before this text, when Abraham was mired in the circumstance of dual potential loss -- first the loss of his son, and then the loss of his wife. That alone could create a sense of anxiety. Is this a test? If so, what is it
  a test of?
• Remark: There is a tension in the understanding
  of v. 4, which begins in the Hebrew with "ger vtoshav." Ger is a stranger, but toshav is about settling in. This is what Shimshon Raphael Hirsch says in his commentary; it addresses a question that was asked earlier: "The underlying idea of ‘grabbing’ is ‘being settled,’ the act of permanent settling. Abraham does not ask for permission just to bury his wife. He wants his wife to rest in her permanent, everlasting possession of a resting-place. That's why he asks for the right to acquire a piece of land as freehold property for the purpose of a sepulcher. He had tarried for many years as an alien in the country, had never tried to acquire a single foot of land in it. Why? For wandering was his calling. The necessity for bury-ing his wife was the first cause that brought him the need to acquire the possession of land in the country."
• Reaction from a Jewish participant: Far be it from me to disagree with Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, but I am just appalled at that. I do not think it was Abraham's calling to be a wanderer. It was Abraham's calling to be a settler, to settle in the land. Did he have trouble settling in the land? Yes, he did. But his calling was to establish that place, Israel, as the homeland for the people for all eternity. His calling was not to wander aimlessly, to fail at settling. I think the story is telling us that Abraham begins as a stranger, but by buying that piece of land, he's not just buying a resting place for Sarah; he's scrawling his name forever in the physical place of Israel. Mortality is not on the horizon anymore; it's right beyond the door; it's coming in the room. Not just Sarah's mortality but Abraham's as well. And he almost killed Isaac. His destiny is to claim this land. He can't buy it all, but he buys a piece of it and that piece will spread out like a crystal.
• Question: When did Hirsch write that?
• Response: In the nineteenth century.
• Reaction: I think if you want to have Abraham as your father and you don't have a land, then the way in which you connect to him is one that mir-rors to some degree your own situation.
• Remark: I think that Hirsch's reading is rather fair if you look at Lech-lecha [Torah portion, Gen. 12:1-17:27], where it says, "Go to the land that I will show you." I think it's interesting to look at this, after the test of the binding of Isaac, as another test. Is this a test of Abraham's faith that God will provide the land and he doesn't need to buy it? Is he somehow failing in his faith in his anxiety over purchasing this land? Precisely because mortality
  is right around the corner, does Abraham feel he needs something material? That is interesting because God has promised him material goods: He will give him land and children, He will give him a historical future for his people. I think one of the questions here is: Is Abraham behaving covenan-tally, or is he transgressing the covenantal context here?
• Reaction: I love that question. I have it, too. And I can see both sides of it. I believe that Abraham is committed here to the notion that God works through people; God does not work miracles. I admit that you can play this both ways, but after this Abraham sends a servant to get Rebekah for Isaac. If Abraham believed that God was in charge of everything, Rebekah would have just appeared, like Eve. I believe that Abraham is a grounded man who believes in God but understands that God works through human agencies and worldly ways, not in miraculous ways.
• Reaction: It's very interesting to say that right on the heels of the Akedah because, had Abraham been left to his own devices, who knows what would have happened to Isaac.
• Response: God does intercede on occasion, there's no doubt about it. But that's on a personal, spirit-ual, revelatory level; although you could say there's something very physical about whether or not Abraham killed his son. The fact is that both
  of these stories are not private transactions in a lawyer's office. These are public displays. This is for public consumption. I think to move the opinion of a people and to make a political statement, you have to do it in this way.
• Remark: It's interesting to me that the nature of the transaction continues to posit the rights and legitimate claims of the Hittites. There's a real acknowledgment that this land, after the trans-action, is going to have to be shared. (Question: What do you mean "shared"?) They're going to have to live side by side. (Reaction: There are boundaries.) I'm not sure that the boundaries are so clearly marked. Abraham buys a piece of land, but what that means in terms of …
• Response: He's going to have neighbors. And it's a small piece of land; it's a cave.
• Remark: I'm wondering whether you can ever real-ly talk about economic transaction, at least in the tradition, without also talking about an economy of faith. If in some way the Akedah is a test -- the text says it's a test -- then I'm wondering if this isn't also a test. And I'm wondering if part of the tension that comes through here for me is the tension between my affirming that God will provide and my needing to be an agent in my own destiny. It's not as simple as: God will provide and I do nothing. Obviously, I have to do something. But how does one live in the tension between, on the one hand, believing that God will provide, and on the other, saying that in the meantime we have
  to find a cave? I'm wondering if this transaction, which is an economic transaction, is set in this context because it's trying to remind us of what we might want to forget at the end of chapter 22, which is that in some way we're going to live in the tension in our faith life and in our economic life. We're going to live with a tension between doing for ourselves what needs to be done and believing that God will provide what we most essentially need. And I don't know that that's
  ever resolved.
• Reaction: I'm not sure I follow. You introduce this as a test. What is the nature of the test?
• Response: That's what I'm asking. There was a test in chapter 22, and the thing I learned at the end of it is that God did provide. (Question: God did provide?) The point is that God didn't kill Abraham's son. It says: "God will provide." And, lo and behold, there's a ram in the bush. So it works.
• Question: Isn't this tension, though, the paradox of faith? In a sense God promised the land, but Abraham must implement and execute that promise in human legal terms.
• Response: And this is taking possession, taking ownership of the land.
• Objection: We're making an assumption here. There's a difference between possession and ownership. I think the question is: What makes these people think they can actually own land? People in our Native American cultures believe
  that you can't own property. You can't own land any more than you can own the sky or the birds or the trees. (Reaction: I think that impulse is in the Bible as well.) There's a real assumption here that Hittites own the land, and that through a commer-cial transaction Abraham can own land. Yet that's never really discussed.
• Question: Is Abraham trying to own the land in that sense, or is he trying to get the Hittites out of it?
• Another question: Or is he negotiating possession?
• Response: He wants possession of an area of the land and he manipulates the transaction beautiful-ly. He's at his most vulnerable, the Hittites are exploiting him, but he insists on having a separate burial place, which my commentary points out be-comes not only Sarah's burial place but Abraham's, Isaac's, Rebekah's, Jacob's, and Leah's. The test is whether Abraham is going to become one of the people of the land, or whether he will maintain himself as faithful to God and God only. So it is something like the preceding chapter in the reli-ance on God and God alone.
• Reaction: I think you're getting at an issue that
  is currently a source of really heated debate with profound political ramifications. I've read a number of Christian commentators who are insistent that it is God who owns the land, and any bid on the part of a people to claim any land as their possession is to drift in the direction of idolatry. To claim any land as your possession is to misunderstand the fact that God is the Creator and that all of God's gifts are in some sense provisional. Moreover, if one does not behave responsibly vis-à-vis those gifts, then one can no longer continue to lay claim to them. So there's a fair amount of Christian scholarship on this whole question that would want to have us read the narrative of this trans-action as provisional, as part of a failed test.
• Response: I think the way the Torah would like to read this is one way intra- and one way extra-. The Torah would say intra-, within the tribes, that's true: The land belongs to God. God gave
  it to this tribe and that tribe, which is why in the proper years it goes back to the original tribe. But extra-, it belongs just to those tribes. (Question: On what basis does it read that way?) Response: The Torah understands that God's decision was to give that land to the Israelites.
• Question: Is it significant that in chapter 12 God doesn't give the land to Abraham? God says: "I will give the land to your descendants." In chapter 15 God says: "I give the land to your descendants." God never told Abraham that he himself was going to possess the land, did He? In fact, in chapter 15 the implication is that the gift of the land is going to be implemented or realized after the Exodus.
• Remark: One thing I think Abraham has learned is that God is a terrible procrastinator. That resolves the tension between faith and action. It's not that God won't do it, but God takes a long time, so you better do it.
• Question: Is it significant that God is not men-tioned at all in this passage? The Hittites refer to Abraham as "the prince of elohim," but elohim in the Hittite language doesn't have to mean "God"; this can mean "the prince of the gods."
• Response: There are a number of possible rea-sons for that. The obvious reason links up with
  the notion of this transaction as a failed test. The absence of God here is indicative of the absence of God in Abraham's behavior, because Abraham is acting on his own. But another way to read this text is to see that Abraham is behaving covenan-tally in the sense that his actions are a repetition of the promise, or a way of testifying to the prom-ise. Is it possible that the form and content of our covenantal testimony can be religious and secular at the same time? Abraham is behaving according to the commercial terms of the Hittites, so the form his covenantal testimony is taking here is an engagement with the secular order (in the sense that God is not mentioned here).
• Reaction: If people want to see it that way, the argument they make is that what is done is done in the name of God.
• Question: Then are there rules that our sources provide for us for precisely how that's supposed
  to transpire?
• Remark: There is in the Torah a tension with re-gard to the covenant, I think. One the one hand, the predominant sense is that the covenant is eternal. But there is a minority voice that wants to say that the covenant is provisional: "I AM if you." The tension between the dominant reading and the subtext is not resolved. It seems to me that in our conversations we read one of those poles of the tension, but we don't play the other off of it. The tension resides precisely in the fact that both are there. If that's a sort of pattern built into the covenant relationship -- I AM forever; and I AM if -- what does that mean in terms of everything that ensues from the covenant?
• Question: What does it mean in terms of how one lives with one's neighbors, particular one's non-Jewish neighbors?
• Reaction: I was reminded when we were talking about that strain in contemporary Christian the-ology that the strain comes out of one of the poles of the tension, but it doesn't take the other into account. The idea that the people will belong in the land if they live responsibly is countered by the notion that they haven't lived responsibly and therefore shouldn't have the land. But that notion is in tension with the other pole that says the land belongs to the people forever. So it seems to me that in any real discussion -- whether of contem-porary political issues in Israel, or the question of democracy and the religious order -- if the covenantal tension is not maintained, then the discussion collapses into a kind of fanaticism in one direction or the other. The genius of the tradition is that it keeps you off balance pre-
  cisely so that you can't tumble into some kind
  of fanaticism on either end.
• Response: I don't think those things are mutually exclusive.
• Response: I think this text actually mediates both of those two scenarios. It's the same tension we saw before. How does Abraham want to pursue his material needs, all the while that he has been promised that his needs will be met and there is
  no immediate evidence that they have been met? Abraham needs to bury his wife, let's say, for his own emotional need. He needs to be able to rest because she rests. He is acting in advance of the covenantal fulfillment in order to meet that need. If the text thought that was a problem, the text would not have made this negotiation possible. The text provides a very realistic resolution to the problem. Perhaps there are other texts where the burial of Machpelah is problematic; interestingly enough, it's problematic now. Does the situation remain resolved through this commercial trans-action? Maybe it does. I don't know.
• Remark: It occurred to me when the point was raised that the promise was to be fulfilled after the exodus that maybe the events that begin with the Akedah and continue with Abraham's buying the land and finding a wife for Isaac are questions about Abraham's commitment to that future fulfillment. In other words, Abraham wasn't doing anything before the Akedah to ensure the future, any future. His son was probably thirty-some years old, and nothing was happening. So God says to him, "Go ahead and sacrifice that future." The Akedah was Abraham's failure. We know that God never speaks to Abraham after this, but maybe this is Abraham's teshuvah [repentance]. He finally realizes that he wasn't doing anything
  to ensure the future. He realizes that it was no longer just about his lifetime but also about his son's, and there were no children, there was no future, and he's got to do something to change that.
• Reaction: That takes the earlier comment about God's being a procrastinator and turns it on its head. God wasn't the procrastinator. God was waiting for Abraham to step up and do something about fulfilling the promise. It was Abraham in a sense who was the procrastinator. He didn't get
  it until the Akedah. Then the light went on and
  he realized that it was up to him.
• Reaction: So there is something about human agency, that the promise is not just going to happen.
• Remark: That's exactly how Soloveitchik reads this: Sarah dies, Abraham faces his own mortality, and he realizes that he's got to get the plan going. So he buys land and then gets someone for Isaac to marry.
• Remark: One of the questions is whether to bury Sarah here or send her home. When Abraham makes arrangements to get a wife for Isaac, he insists that Isaac not go anywhere, because this place has been established as their own.



• Remark: I find it fascinating that the Torah assumes that there are always other peoples there. Even at this early juncture there is no assumption that Abraham would just come in
  and bring in all the people who decided to follow him and believe in his God. The text makes it clear that there are going to be others and that this is not just going to turn into one big monotheistic, everybody-recognizes-God kind of place. It's going to be a place with some who do recognize God and many who don't, who are going to be displaced by that idea. I don't know what to make of that.
• Remark: They're already there when Abraham
  gets there, and they're not going to change. He will have to negotiate constantly with people who are not part of what he is part of. God could have made another garden with no other people in it, but God doesn't give Abraham a garden. This is not a new creation, but it could have been.
• Remark: It isn't only that there are other people there. It's also that the covenant doesn't trans-form them.
• Remark: The role of who is a guest in the land
  and who is a host is going to switch back and forth constantly. No one gets locked into being just one or the other, playing one or the other role.
• Question: What do you mean? I'm a Hittite. I'm
  the host; you're the guest.
• Response: In this story you are indeed. But
  there will be subsequent stories in which that
  is reversed.
• Question: So why did the Hittites communicate with Abraham? We don't know if the Hittites know that Abraham has been promised their land. They had a choice. They're the host. Even if Abraham offers them four hundred shekels for the land,
  they could have said that it wasn't for sale.
• Remark: The United Arab Emirates were trying to buy the company that operates the port, but we didn't have to sell it to them. We could tell them that we didn't care how much money they paid, it was not in our interest to sell. No deal.
• Remark: That raises the possibility that there is some implicit ethic that Abraham and the Hittites share. Is there some kind of universal human ethic that's being presupposed here, perhaps the human need to bury the dead?
• Additional remark: In your own land, in your own space.
• Objection: Wait. You mean in the space that will become yours after the transaction.
• Remark: I think the fact is that Abraham actually knows he cannot control the memory of him, the way he is perceived, his identity, after his death. The only thing he can control is whether or not this space legally belongs to him and to his de-scendants. Legally there will be a record that this is his after he dies. That's the best he can do. He could make the claim that the land is his because God gave it to him, but that claim won't be of any value if others have a different perception. He has to play their game.
• Remark: And for generations this is the focal point. This is the only piece of ground that the family really had. They bury their dead there, and they always go back there, even from Egypt.
• Remark: The land is later referred to as "the land which Abraham bought from the Hittites."
• Remark: I think this text may be telling us that, from the Hittite perspective, Abraham was a player: He got to sit down at the table with the head of the Hittites, and he was able to pull off this transaction. That meant that he had enough of a reputation that others understood he was a force to be reckoned with. I don't see this as be-ing just a universal human thing. I think it's a bit more political, that Abraham is a political player.
• Remark: The Hittites recognize that there is an immediate need; burial cannot be postponed forever. But it's as if they feel Abraham has been in their land for so long that he really has become like one of them, so they offer to let him bury his dead among them. If he had done that, he himself might not have been able to be buried with Sarah. The same negotiation would have to be carried out every time.
• Remark: Maybe the Hittites thought this was a chance to absorb Abraham and all of his ownings into themselves.
• Remark: Maybe by insisting on buying the land Abraham is saying that he is not one of the Hittites and does not wish to be one of them.
  So this is a dance about accommodation and resistance.
• Remark: If you read this from a New Testament perspective, it's ironic in a way. Abraham is be-having in a discerning fashion by engaging in a commercial transaction. The spiritual decision is to perform the commercial action because accepting the gift would link him in an ethical, spiritual way to the Hittites. And he had to discern what to do in the midst of his grief.
• Remark: Everybody's being very subtle about this.
• Remark: It's so political in that they both have agendas that cross over, and both think they win.

The second text: Luke 20:20-40 (NRSV trans.)

So they watched him and sent spies who pretended to be honest, in order to trap him by what he said, so as to hand him over to the jurisdiction and authority of the governor. So they asked him, "Teacher, we know that you are right in what you say and teach, and you show deference to no one, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to the em-peror, or not?" But he perceived their craftiness and said to them, "Show me a denarius. Whose head and whose title does it bear?" They said, "The emperor's." He said to them, "Then give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." And they were not able in the presence of the people to trap him by what he said; and being amazed by his answer, they became silent. Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her." Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive." Then some of the scribes answered, "Teacher, you have spoken well." For they no longer dared to ask him another question.

The discussion continues:

• Reaction from a Jewish participant: Well, that's pretty clear.
• Response: It's funny that you say that because oftentimes this "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" is said as a detached saying, as if its mean-ing were self-evident, as if this were a way to start a conversation. I want some guidance to help me discern what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, because then I could do it. It's not always clear.
• Response: I assume that's the point. In that climate, where the occupier had his boot on
  the people's neck, Jesus had to avoid being identified as a revolutionary and having his whole crew wiped out. So his answer is coded. It's what Norm Beck calls a "cryptogram." It will be read one way by the outside censors, who will see him acknowledging the emperor. But those who are his followers will understand that he has discredited the emperor because God's domain is all-inclusive.
• Question: Is he implicitly saying to pay the taxes, but that all things should be done in the context of faith in God?
• Question: Or is he implicitly being vague? (Or explicitly being vague?)
• Response: I think he is deliberately being vague. The point is that they're trying to trap him, and they don't. The content of the question is less important than the context because both of
  these stories end with "they were amazed," "they became silent," "they no longer dared to ask him questions." The dynamic of the story is much more about the interplay between the people, and the content is almost incidental to that dynamic.
• Remark: When I chose this story, I purposely added the second part of it, the part where we have the question of resurrection. I think it's
  quite interesting that the drama is the same in both parts of the narrative: They were amazed
  by his answer. But I'm not sure that it's without context, that all we have here is the dance of being amazed, because there is actually a con-versation here about the nature of resurrection. There is a temporal distinction being made be-tween the present age and the resurrected age, and that may be a key to helping us discern what it is to say "the things of Caesar, and the things of God."



• Request from a Jewish participant: Before we continue, could someone explain to me your understanding of the pshat, the plain meaning
  of vv. 34, 35, and 36. [Jesus said to them, "Those
  who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage;
  but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, be-cause they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection."]
• Response: I thought it meant that for people who are resurrected, marriage is not an issue. (Inter-jection: After you're resurrected, obviously.) When you're resurrected, you're not worried about who you're married to or who you're not married to. When you're resurrected, you are angels, you are children of God.
• Remark: The text says, "those who are worthy of a place."
• Reaction: I took that to mean that the experience of the resurrected is totally different from the experience of our current reality. To try to take the logic of the present experience and impose it on a conviction about how we will be when we are resurrected is inapposite. It just doesn't apply.
• Question: If you think the resurrection is not an eschatological reality but a present reality -- i.e., I as a baptized Christian am living a resurrected life -- how does the question become irrelevant to how I negotiate in this world? I don't care whether or not I'm going to be married in heaven. What I care about is living in this world as one who lives a resurrected life as a baptized Christian. Therefore, how do the rules apply, and are the rules irrele-vant? Is the notion of rendering to Caesar an irrelevant question? What does understanding the present order as already the beginning of what God desires mean for the temporal world in which
  I reside? And just let me try not paying taxes.
• Remark: Thomas More said, "I am the king's good servant, but God is first."
• Remark: The traditional peace churches within the Christian tradition looked at this text and said, "We live in the resurrected life. Therefore, we won't serve in the armed forces." It wasn't that they were really pacifists; it just wasn't their army.
  But the only way you can live that kind of life is
  to disengage yourself from interaction with most
  of the rest of the world.
• Remark: The emperor's realm is seen as culturally and spiritually corrupt and, therefore, the only way to avoid the contamination is to establish one's own separate movement.



• Remark: I think there is also an economic under-standing of marriage in the question put to Jesus. Marriage was an economic transaction, and the economic transaction is going to be different in heaven. The question is: Who is she going to belong to? Whose labor is she going to be? She was married to all these men, but who will have her to be his wife and servant?
• Reaction: You think this had to do with labor inside marriage? I think this is straight out of the Saddu-cees' book of apologetic on the resurrection. This question about levirate marriage is one of the questions that they would ask to point out the absurdity of the resurrection: What happens in
  the resurrection? Do they take turns? How can you possibly have a resurrection? This can't work.
• Objection: But the reason for the levirate marriage was property.
• Remark: The framework of the conversation demonstrates the real difference in the world view between Jesus and the Sadducees. Whether it's a question of property ownership or because of sex, clearly the woman is part of an economic order, and the response appears to be an out-and-out rejection of that economic order. Jesus is saying that he won't be caught on an absurdity because the rules don't apply here.
• Remark: The issue is really death. Where there is death, you need marriage because you have to have procreation. In the resurrection, there is no death, so there's no point in having marriage.
• Response: Right, and that's probably why I chose the text, too, because there's a discussion of death but no interest in burial at all.
• Remark: We could say the same thing vis-à-vis the way in which the kingdom is conceptualized around intimacy. Because intimacy is no longer exclusively defined, marriage is irrelevant. There
  is a very interesting question here about the monogamous imagination. There's such a rich correspondence between the singularity of one's commitment in marriage and the singularity of one's commitment to God, and they mutually reinforce each other. But is the kingdom envi-sioned as a time in which the dynamic of one's singular commitment is redefined?
• Response: Nowhere does Jesus do anything but uphold traditional marriage as it was understood in his time. He wouldn't have said to the Sadducees, "Because at the resurrection [those who are wor-thy] ‘neither marry nor are given in marriage,’ you shouldn't get married now."
• Remark: This is in part the tension between the already and the not yet as it's spelled out in other parts of the New Testament.
• Remark: I'm wondering if we can say that there is here a kind of repetition of the text we read earlier because, obviously, there is a tension between being able to take care of the needs that immedi-ately present themselves and faith in a future covenantal realization. It's so unusual in the Gos-pels to have something like: "Then some of the scribes answered, ‘Teacher, you have spoken well.’" One might say that part of the reason why they're able to honestly nod at this is not simply because they're scared, perhaps, but because there's some covenantal repetition here. There's some similarity in their understanding of antici-pation about the fulfillment of promise.
• Objection: The text doesn't identify who these scribes are, but if they're scribes of the Pharisees, they would have agreed with Jesus anyway, be-cause the Pharisees believed in the concept of resurrection.
• Question: Do we know which scribes these are?
• Response: No, we don't. But the fact that they said that would seem to imply that they agree with what Jesus says. I think they are the Pharisees' scribes.
• Remark: I think this is Jesus the Pharisee speaking to the Sadducees. But as Luke rewrites it, I think it's part of Luke's general scheme to transfer responsibility for opposition to Jesus onto the Jewish leadership, and to exonerate the emperor. First he needed to say good things about paying taxes to the emperor -- all you gentile readers reading my book, don't forget to pay your taxes. But I think originally it's the Pharisaic belief in the future life and a divine justice -- or whatever you want to call it -- beyond this world that is speak-ing here.
     Speaking about both the tax question and the marriage question, I was intrigued to read in the preface to another book a discussion about sac-raments in the Christian tradition, and the long debate about whether marriage was or wasn't a sacrament. Historical evidence seems to show
  that the early Christian community didn't perform marriage ceremonies; they just recognized what-ever the civil ceremony was in the prevailing culture. That had a certain relevance for me because marriage is a matter of considerable debate, if you all who are serving churches got the two letters from the House minority whip in Annapolis that I got this week. So in Jesus' discussion with the Sadducees, it wasn't that marriage was such a burning question. It was typical Sadducee rhetoric against the Pharisees' belief in a future life.
• Question: When a sage's authority is being established and there is a debate in which he
  is recognized as someone with gravitas, is the debate staged in a way that at the end of it there is a conclusion that says he bested them in a way that leads in a sense to some deference or admi-ration? My recollection of a number of debates is that at the end of the debate, you'd have two different positions, and the positions are seen as having to exist side by side, and that's that. So I'm wondering if there's a dynamic at work here that is a departure, or that is alien to Jewish sensibilities.
  [Scribal note: Statements like "they were amazed," "they became silent," and "they no longer dared to ask him another question" all reflect the same phenomenon, labeled "challenge-riposte" by scholars who study the Bible in its cultural context. Challenge-riposte is central to the very public honor-shame competition carried out in Mediterranean societies in both the ancient and modern worlds. The challenge -- expressed in word, gesture, or action -- is intended to under-mine a man's honor. The response must answer in equal measure or up the ante and itself poses a challenge in return. If positive (gifts, compliments) and negative (insults, dares) challenges go unan-swered, there is a loss of honor. In Luke 20:20-40, where he twice bests the Sadducees, Jesus dem-onstrates a high level of skill at riposte, thus showing himself to be an honorable and authoritative prophet.]



• Remark: We have these two texts. I know it might be serendipitous or coincidental, but I want to think that they're sitting side by side, so I want them to talk to each other. I want Abraham in the land of the Hittites to comment on what it is Jesus is doing. Would Abraham consider Jesus a good Jew, or wonder what he's talking about? Would Abraham recognize the answer given in vv. 22, 23 as being an insight into the tension he's wrestling with in terms of accepting the land as a gift or buying the land?
• Remark: The way I've always read this passage
  -- in particular, "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" -- is that Jesus has left the world in many ways and is already in the world to come. Material items like coins don't matter in that world, so he doesn't really answer the Sadducees' ques-tion in a way that provides practical reasoning for this world. The reason I say that is it prefaces my answer to your question of how Abraham would look at this. In the Machpelah passage Abraham finally realizes that he has to be proactive and make things happen, but Jesus is looking toward the kingdom of God and his head isn't into making things happen in this world.
• Reaction: In other words, Jesus isn't coming from a position of need here in trying to negotiate this particular issue. He sees it as a staged event, which to him is a demonstration of craftiness.
  He knows they're trying to make trouble for him. Whereas Abraham is in a situation in which he is caught between his existential needs and his ability to receive the promise. (Major objections arise at this point.) Where don't you buy that?
• Response: First, I think that all the issues around craftiness have to do with Luke setting up some-thing that's going on in the year 85, so I don't want to be too invested in what's being said here as something that Jesus is talking about. If we have some teaching in this text, its origin is in the writer's memory of Jesus. So, if this somehow is about something Jesus is wrestling with, and that's an if, but if it is, then Abraham and Jesus are from the same tradition. It's an argument within the tradition. What I want to know is, from within the tradition, would Abraham recognize this logic, or is there such a departure here that Abraham would wonder where Jesus took such a turn?
• Another response: Where I find myself bristling at the notion that Jesus' eschatology has taken him over is that if that were true, then his teachings about how people are to live in this world and face these realities would be trumped by his fantasies about the future.
• Response from a Jewish participant: Except that it seems to me that Abraham is an agent for doing something. He participates in the Hittites' economy because he's doing something for the future of the promise. Jesus doesn't comment on how paying the taxes is being an agent for getting the worthi-ness to earn the resurrection. It's just not in this text.
• Response from several Christian participants: It's not in the text, but it's not excluded by it either.
• Response from another Jewish participant: I think it does look like it's excluded. One is over here, and one is over there.
• Response: But that's only if you want to dichot-omize it. You have to give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's, but there's no implication that there's a demarcation. What is Caesar's may also be God's. A way of reading the two texts together is to see that, in order to get what is God's, one must also engage what is Caesar's. So Abraham has to engage the Hittite economy in order to promote what is God's; and, as followers of Jesus, we engage what is Caesar's also remembering ultimately what is God's.
• Response: But how would the rabbis of the time read this? Jews have lived by the distinctions, the dichotomies. That's the way the rabbis thought. So if you set up this and that, milk and meat, Shabbos not Shabbos, kosher not kosher, you're going to read this not as one text embedded in
  the other, but as two separate narratives. So I
  do think the Jews of the time would see this as
  a break.
• Response: And that's the cleverness of Jesus as
  a teacher, that he can say something in one way and people interpret it somehow, but there's a deeper meaning to it and you don't get it, you don't get it.
• Reaction: But why would Jesus want to continue the alienation that he already knows is there? Why be such a clever teacher and push away the very people who are already at odds with you? Why wouldn't he want to bring them in with his teaching?
• Response: This is the beginning of the Passion. Everything is coming to a head in the whole story and, at this point, Jesus is spending half his time avoiding getting arrested and killed for the wrong reason. Here he basically just dismisses the Sad-ducees.
• Response: This is not our usual picture of Jesus, but he really didn't care about the Sadducees. They ran the Temple, but since they didn't be-lieve in a future life, there was no point in talking to them.



• Remark: We may have to say that there are things that belong to God and things that belong to Cae-sar. We may have to parcel life out that way, but the fact is -- whether Caesar knows it or not -- everything belongs to God. What? You don't like that?
• Response: I don't think that the rabbinic point of view is so mired in dichotomies in that particular way so as to exclude the possibility of there being some kind of admixture between the things that are Caesar's and the things that are God's.
• Reaction: That's not what I said earlier. If people are saying that, it's a false dichotomy. Look at Abraham …
• Response: Therefore, the teaching is precisely that point. This is a false dichotomy. And I'm not so sure Abraham wouldn't say, "Way to go!"
• Remark: I don't think it's transparent that it's a false dichotomy. That's what I'm saying. I think the rabbinic mind …
• Remark: It would be very interesting to study how this text has been interpreted in different settings over a period of time. My read of the Lukan com-munity at this time is that they are a beleaguered minority fighting for their very existence against the oppression of Rome. So the story is told in a way that accentuates Jewish culpability and downplays Roman involvement -- for their own survival. The story is also meant in an apocalyptic way to provide hope to a community that sees the oppression crashing down on them. It's saying: "There's the emperor, and then there's God.
  And you know what? God's got it all." So hope
  is premised not on the empire, not on Caesar;
  it's premised on God.
• Reaction: That's the way I think the rabbis would get it, because if they understood the context, then they would understand that it's not possible to be forthright in that context. If you're forthright in that context, you're dead. So they're going to speak in a way that will save the Jewish people at the same time as it instructs them. If you have ears to hear, you'll hear it. If you're like the em-peror's stupid people, you're not going to get it anyway. That's why I'm not so sure Abraham wouldn't recognize it, or the rabbis wouldn't recognize it; because to the extent that you're living as a minority, if not a beleaguered minority, you're always going to speak in ways that the insiders are going to get.
• Remark: I think that the rabbinic answer to the question of whether or not it is permissible for us to pay taxes is dina de-malkuta dina, "the law of the land is the law of the land."
• Reaction: That's true, but there would be at this time other folks who would say, "We should ac-knowledge no authority and power because we have to fight for our independence."
• Question: Don't the rabbis come after Jesus? I think it's a little bit important who comes first.
• Response: I think it's contemporaneous.
• Question: What is the rabbinic period?
• Response: It starts a couple hundred years before Jesus.
• Response: I think when it emerges, it's a sort of proto-rabbinic reality; but technically it emerges after the New Testament.
• Response: The rabbis' political authority is established, basically, at the destruction of
  the Temple.
• Final remark: The Sadducees had developed this, on one level very simple, but also very complex interplay with the occupying authority, which immersed them completely in the Roman system. But they had complete segregation of religious life from gentile ungodliness. So the Sadducees were the real masters at separating the obligations of Caesar and the obligations of God. That's why I think Jesus' answer to their question is so clever. It throws the question back at them: "You're the people who are the experts on this. Render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." Then he just walks away.

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