Jesus – An Historical Approximation...

 

Jesus – An Historical Approximation

-          Jose Antonio Pagola, (Convivium Press) TPI, Bangalore, 2013

 

In the heart of a Jewish family:

In Nazareth, family was everything: one’s birthplace, life school and job security. Outside the family an individual was unprotected, unsafe. One’s true identity came from the family. Such a family was more than the small circle formed by parents and children. It included the whole family clan, presided over by a patriarchal authority and formed by all who were linked to it by blood or by marriage. Close social and religious ties were established in this ‘extended family’. They owned their tools and olive mills in common; they shared the various farm tasks, especially harvesting the grain and grapes; they came together to protect their land or defend the family honour; they arranged marriages for their sons and daughters, thus protecting the family’s goods and reputation. Groups united by family relationship often established a new village.

Jesus belonged to such family; he did not live, as we might imagine, in a small family circle with his parents. The gospels tell us he had four brothers named James, Joses, Judas and Simon, and some sisters whose names are unknown because women were not considered important. These brothers and sisters were probably married and had small families of their own. An ‘extended family’ like Jesus’ might represent a large part of population of a village like Nazareth. (The reference to Mk 6:3 was interpreted by Jerome as cousins or near relatives was discounted by Meier and other recent scholars… The Catholic Church has always assumed that the texts -Mk 3:31-32; 1 Cor 9:5; Gal 1:19- are not referring to other sons of the Virgin Mary). To leave one’s family was a serious matter. It meant losing the tie to one’s protective group and to one’s town. The individual must find another ‘family’ or group. Thus, leaving one’s family of origin was bizarre and risky decision. But at some point Jesus did just that. His family, even his extended family, must have seemed too small. He was looking for a ‘family’ big enough for everyone who was willing to do God’s will (Mk 3:34-35). The break with his family initiated his life as an itinerant prophet.

There were at least two aspects of the families that Jesus would come to criticize. One was patriarchal authority which dominated everything; the father had absolute authority; everyone owed him obedience and loyalty. The father arranged marriages and decided the fate of his daughters. He organized the work of the household and defined everyone’s rights and duties. Everyone was subject to him. Jesus would later talk about more fraternal relations, in which dominion over others would be replaced by mutual service. Matthew attributes these words to Jesus: “And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father – the one in heaven 23:9.

The other aspect Jesus challenged was the situation of women. Women were mostly appreciated for their fecundity and their work in the house. They bore the burden of raising and clothing children, preparing meals, and other domestic tasks. Apart from that they participated very little in village social life. Their place was in the home. They had no contact with men, except for their relative. They did not sit at the table with invited guests. Women had their own world of friendship and mutual support. Indeed, every woman belonged to someone. Ownership passed on from her father to her husband. Her father could sell her as a slave to pay a debt, but not his son who would become responsible for the continuity of the family. Her husband could repudiate her, abandoning her to her fate. Especially tragic was the situation of repudiated women and widows, who were left without honour, goods or protection, unless they could find another man to take care of them. Later Jesus would defend women against discrimination, count them among his disciples, and firmly oppose the right of repudiation exercised by men: “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. Mk 10:11.

Like all the children of Nazareth, Jesus lived his first seven or eight years in the care of his mother and the women of his extended family. In these Galilean villages, children were the weakest and most vulnerable members, the first to suffer the effects of hunger, malnutrition and disease. Infant mortality was very high. Moreover, very few reached adolescence without having lost a father or mother. Of course children, even orphans were appreciated and loved, but their life was especially harsh and difficult. At around eight, boys were introduced with very little preparation into the authoritarian world of men, where they were taught to affirm their masculinity by cultivating courage, sexual aggressivity and wisdom. Years later, Jesus would adopt an attitude toward children that was unusual in that kind of society. It was not normal for an honourable man to show children the attentiveness and affection that Christian sources attribute to Jesus, contrasting them with other, more typical reactions. His attitude is faithfully reflected in these words: “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these the kingdom of God belongs” Mk 10:14. [pp. 58-60]

Unmarried, without children:

Jesus lived a quiet life, with no big events worth noting. The silence of the sources can probably be explained very simply: nothing special happened in Nazareth. The one important exception was something strange and unusual in those Galilean towns, which probably was frowned on by his neighbours: Jesus did not get married. He did not seek seek out a wife to ensure his family's posterity. Jesus' behaviour must have been disconcerting to his family and neighbours. The Jewish people had a more positive and joyful view of sex and marriage than is seen in other cultures. In the synagogue Jesus had heard the words of Genesis more than once: "It is not good that the man should be alone." 2:18.

What pleased God is a man with a fertile wife at his side, surrounded by children. It is not surprising that we read sayings like this in the later rabbinical literature: “Seven things are condemned by heaven, and the first of these is a man without a woman”. What could have moved Jesus to adopt a behaviour so absolutely strange to the Galilean towns, known only in a few marginal groups like the Essenes of Qumran or the Therapeutae of Egypt?

Jesus’ renunciation of sexual love does not seem to have been motivated by an ascetic ideal like that of the “monks” of Qumran, who sought extreme ritual purity, or the Alexandrian Therapeutae, who practiced “dominion over the passions”. His life style was not that of a desert ascetic. Jesus ate and drank with sinners, talked with prostitutes, and did not live in fear of ritual impurity. Nor can we see in him a rejection of women. His renunciation of marriage is not like that of the Essenes of Qumran, who did not take wives because they might cause discord in the community. Jesus accepted women in his group without hesitation, did not shy away from their friendship, and responded tenderly to the special affection of Mary Magdalene.

We also have no reason to suspect that Jesus heard a call from God to live without a wife like Jeremiah, who according to the tradition had been asked by God to live alone, not enjoying the company of a wife or feasting with his friends, but staying away from his wayward people who went on with their merrymaking, heedless of the punishment that awaited them. Jesus’ life, attending weddings, sitting at table with sinners, and celebrating meals as a foretaste of the final banquet with God, was nothing like the wild-eyed holiness that the prophet adopted as a critique of his impenitent people. 

The celibate life of Jesus was also unlike that of John the Baptist, who abandoned his father Zechariah despite his obligation to provide him with descendants to continue the priestly line. John’s decision to live without a wife made some sense. It would have been hard to take a wife with him to the desert, to live on locusts and wild honey while he proclaimed the imminent judgment of God but the nearness of a forgiving Father. In contrast with the austerity of John, who came “eating no bread and drinking no wine”, Jesus shocked people with his festive life style: he ate and drank without regard to what people thought Lk 7:33-34; Mt 11:11-19. There were men among the disciples who travelled with him, but also women he loved dearly. Why wasn’t a wife beside him?

The Pharisees didn’t practice celibacy. There was one rabbi after Jesus, named Simon ben Azzai, who recommended marriage and procreation to the others but had no wife of his own. When he was accused of not practicing what he preached, he used to reply: “My soul is in love with the Torah. Others can keep the world going”. Totally devoted to studying and observing the law, he did not feel called to spend time with a wife and children. That wasn’t Jesus’ reason either, for his life was not devoted to studying the Torah.

But he was totally dedicated to something that was increasingly seizing control of his heart. He called it the “reign of God”. It was his life's passion, the cause to which he gave himself, body and soul. The labourer from Nazareth ended up living only to help his people take hold of the "reign of God". He abandoned his family, left his work, walked into the desert and joined the movement of John; later he left that, sought out collaborators, and began to go around the towns of Galilee. His one obsession was to proclaim the “Good News of God” (This expression originated in the first generation of Christians, but it reflects the content of Jesus’ activity very well Mk 1:14). Caught up in the reign of God, he lived out his life without ever having time to create his own family. His behaviour was strange and disconcerting. According to the sources he was called a “glutton”, “tippler”, “friend of sinners”, “Samaritan”, “crazy man”. Probably they also mocked him as “eunuch”. That was a devastating insult which not only challenged his manhood, but linked him with a marginal group of men who were seen as impure because they were not physically whole. Jesus reacted by explaining his behaviour: there are eunuchs who were born without testicles, others were castrated in order to serve the families of the high administration of the Empire. But “there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven”. This graphic language could only have come from someone as unique and scandalous as Jesus Mt 19:12. 

If Jesus did not live with a woman, it was not because he disapproved of sex or belittled the family. It was because he could not marry anything or anyone that might distract him from his mission of service to the reign of God. He did not embrace a wife, but let himself be embraced by prostitutes who were entering into the dynamic of that reign, after recovering their dignity in his presence. He had no children to kiss, but he hugged and blessed the children who came to him, seeing them as a “living parable” of how to embrace God. He did not create his own family, but he worked to raise up a more universal family, made up of men and women doing God’s will. Of all Jesus’ features this is the one that most forcefully reveals his passion for the reign of God and his total dedication to the struggle of the powerless and humiliated. Jesus knew tenderness, experienced affection and friendship, loved children and defended women. He only turned away from what could interfere with his love, his universality, and his unconditional commitment to those who were deprived of love and dignity. Jesus would not have understood any other celibacy besides the one that flowed out of his passion for God, and for the poorest of God’s sons and daughters. [pp.70-73]