THE BIBLE AS MIDRASHIC LITERATURE

In Mark 12:38-40 we read: As he taught, Jesus said, "Watch out for the scribes. They like to walk around in flowing robes, and be greeted in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues, and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widow's houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished severely."

In his gospel, Mark makes 21 references in all to the scribes and 19 of these, like this one, were hostile. We really do not know who wrote this or any of the other three gospels since the names were only given to them as much as 100 years after they were written. It is pretty obvious that the early Christian community for whom Mark wrote held the scribe in very low esteem. Was this opinion shared by the other evangelists? When Matthew wrote his gospel some 10 years later, he had a copy of Mark open on the desk in front of him as he wrote. We know this because of the 664 verses in Mark, Matthew included 606 of them, in one way or another, into his gospel. Of the 19 negative references to scribes in Mark, Matthew dropped 7 completely, kept 6 intact and altered 6 so as to remove the negativity. Matthew's community obviously regarded the scribe in higher esteem. I wonder why?

First, what was a scribe? In the Jewish communities of the first century, the scribe filled two important offices. In synagogue services, he acted as the "sophar" or worship leader. He also was the school teacher to the Jewish children in the community. There is a very strong possibility that Matthew himself was such a scribe. It has been suggested that Matthew left us with an autobiographical clue in Matthew 13:52 which says, ""¦Therefore every scribe who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old." This rather puzzling statement gives the gentile reader (that's us!) a clue as to how the Jewish scriptures were written.

The Jewish scriptures, our Old Testament, were written in a literary style known as midrashic literature. In this style of writing every effort was made to incorporate and interpret new events in terms of events that were already in scripture. In doing so historical accuracy was not nearly as important as meaning. This was what Matthew was speaking of when he wrote that the scribe ""¦brings out "¦new treasures as well as old" (Matt 13:52). An example will illustrate this. In Exodus 14 we read that Moses parted the waters of the Reed Sea to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt. In Joshua 3, we read that Joshua parted the waters of the Jordan River to lead the Hebrew people into the promised land. Did this event actually happen exactly as described? I suspect not. Certainly the river was crossed but the "parting of the waters" has it's most important meaning as a literary device linking Joshua to Moses. God's plan was being carried forward. This midrash of the parting of waters was used again in the Old Testament in 2 Kings 2 when the waters of the Jordan were parted by both the prophet Elijah and the prophet Elisha. This midrash is carried into the New Testament in Mark 1 when at the baptism of Jesus the heavens were parted to permit the descent of the Holy Spirit and God's words of benediction. The meaning is obvious"¦Jesus becomes the new Moses leading his people from an old life to a new. But Jesus is also portrayed as greater than Moses. For Moses, God only parted waters, but for Jesus, the very heavens were parted. When read for meaning, the historical accuracy of the event assumes little importance. It is when we of the twenty-first century read these stories without knowing their literary background that the mistake is made of assuming that the stories are historically true exactly as written.

At this point we know, or at least suspect, that Matthew was a scribe and that the Jewish scriptures, and possibly the Christian as well, were written in a style known as midrashic literature . We're leading up to something here but we don't yet have the whole picture. The next step is to look at how Jewish worship services were conducted in the synagogues of the first century. Most of us are aware that many Christian churches today follow the lectionary. That is, the scripture readings, Sunday by Sunday, are determined in advance for the entire year. This was also the case in first century Judaism. The entire Torah had to be read in the course of one year. The great holy days of the Jewish year fell on those days on which the corresponding passages of the Torah were read. This two thousand year old lectionary has now been reconstructed with a high degree of certainty. A typical synagogue service at the time would have consisted of the required Torah reading plus optional readings from the Prophets. The sophar would also preach a sermon usually based on the Torah reading. Part of that sermon would frequently have consisted of pointing out and explaining the midrashic connections found in the readings. The service would also have been interspersed with various prayers and hymns. Remember that the psalms were simply hymns in the Hebrew language. Such a service would probably feel very familiar to us. We are following the same basic pattern right now.

For almost 60 years after the death of Jesus, Christians and Jews worshipped together. In most synagogues Christians were in a minority position and the tradition developed that the Christians would worship with their fellow Jews on Shabat and on the following day they would meet together for their own service. This is the origin of the Christian practice of services on the first day of the week rather than the last. In at least some synagogues, Christians constituted the majority of the congregation and would quite naturally have wished to have Christian scripture readings to complement the Torah readings from the Jewish lectionary.

It is only recently becoming apparent that this is exactly the need that the gospel writers were attempting to meet. One of the earliest manuscripts of the Bible is known as the Codex Alexandrinus. Unlike our modern Bible translations, which are organized by chapter and verse, this manuscript has the gospels organized into lections. Mark, in particular, is organized into 49 lections. Incidentally the chapter-verse organization did not come into use until the mid 16th century. These 49 lections of Mark correspond exactly, Shabat by Shabat, to the Jewish lectionary. It would seem that we have found the organizing principle behind Mark's gospel.

What does this mean to our modern day interpretation to the life of Jesus? It would appear that Mark selected stories from the life of Jesus and wrote them into his gospel in those places where they would best suit the existing Jewish lectionary. This means that we cannot read Mark with the preconceived notion that we are reading about the life of Jesus in any kind of a sequential order. However, we are still able to infer some information as to order. We can be reasonably sure that the baptism of Jesus by John was an early event and that the cleansing of the Temple was a late event.

Let me illustrate this situation with just one of many possible examples. The feast of Hanukkah occurs between the third and fourth Shabats of the month of Kislev. It is also called the Feast of the Dedication and is sometimes also called the Festival of Light. It celebrates the 164 BC victory of the Maccabees over the Syrians and the rededication of the Temple. The return of the light of God to the Temple became the primary theme, but in typical midrashic style the Jews wove into the festival other similar themes from their scriptures where the light of God had manifested itself. In Mark's gospel, the Christian story chosen to correspond to this celebration is the Feast of the Transfiguration. In this story the themes are preserved. The Temple is on a mountaintop, so is the Transfiguration. Jesus appears with Moses who was also transfigured by the light of God on a mountaintop in Sinai. Jesus is the new Temple being dedicated by the light of God to replace the old Temple. Both Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus and, in Jewish tradition, neither of them experienced death. Jesus did experience death but defeated it. The midrashic idea of presenting the new in the light of the old is preserved by serving up the Feast of the Transfiguration in conjunction with Hanukkah.

I'll content myself with just one more remarkable example from the gospel of Matthew. Fifty days following Passover, the ancient Jewish lectionary called for the Feast of Pentecost. This feast remembered Moses at Mount Sinai and celebrated the wonder and virtues of the Torah. This celebration took the form of a vigil. The day was broken into eight segments of three hours each and, just like a vigil in a modern Christian church, the congregation would divide themselves up in such a way that there was always a group in the synagogue for each of the eight portions of the vigil. The principle reading was Psalm 119.

At 176 verses, this is by far the longest of the psalms. It is broken into 22 stanzas each marked by a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The first stanza, Aleph, was the meditation for the first segment of the vigil. The entire congregation was probably present at this point and a full worship service was likely held. The remaining 21 stanzas were broken into seven groups of three each, one group for each of the remaining seven portions of the vigil. The second portion of the vigil, for example, would meditate on stanzas Beth, Gimel and Daleth. The remarkable organization of the psalm strongly suggests that it was written specifically for use in the vigil. There are other clues to that as well, for example: verse 62: "At midnight I rise to praise thee." and verse 147: "I rise before dawn and cry for help." and a number of other similar verses as well.

Let us now investigate how the Christian scribe, Matthew, used the midrashic technique to introduce Jesus into this Jewish feast of Pentecost. As mentioned earlier, Pentecost honored Moses and the Law received on Mount Sinai. Matthew portrayed Jesus as the new Moses delivering a new law on a new mountain. I refer of course to the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:17-29). The sermon is organized to fit the vigil format that we've already examined. The Sermon begins with an octave of eight blessings or beatitudes, and in typical Jewish literary style, the eight blessings are bracketed by making the first and the last reward identical. Thus both "the poor in spirit" and those "persecuted for righteousness sake" are promised the Kingdom of God. The remainder of the Sermon is divided into eight sections, each of which is an exposition of one of the beatitudes. Again in typical Jewish literary style, the last beatitude is explained first and so on working backward through the list. It also goes, almost without saying, that these eight expositions on the new Law of Jesus fit perfectly into the eight portions of the vigil of Pentecost.

What does this tell us about the Sermon on the Mount? Was it an actual historical event in the life of Jesus? There is of course a remote possibility that it was. However, in light of the very artificial arrangement of the Sermon to fit neatly into the Feast of Pentecost, I would suggest that there was no one event in the ministry of Jesus that could be classified as the Sermon on the Mount. Should we therefore throw it out as unhistorical? NEVER! What is important here is not whether the Sermon on the Mount was an historical event but that the content of the Sermon reflects the authentic teaching of Jesus. The fact that this teaching was probably done over a period of time in many different teaching situations is not nearly as important as the basic truth of these teachings. To put it a different way, the authority of scripture does not rely upon the details of its historicity but rather upon its ability to instruct us spiritually and point us in the direction of God.

What I have introduced here is a new insight into the way in which the gospels came into being. They were arranged to fit into the pre-existing Jewish lectionary and they were written in the Jewish tradition known as midrashic literature. This is a new point of entry into biblical truth. To anyone who clings to the notion of literal truth, I can only say that it is the content of the teaching that is important and not the literal historicity of the biblical story. The Jewish people had a "God experience" in the life and teachings of Rabbi Yeshua Bar Miriam. To them this God experience was so real and so powerful that they were unable to speak of it easily in the ordinary, everyday language of human beings.

The Jews who wrote the gospels knew they were not history, the Jews who first read them knew they were not history, but they also knew in the depth of their being that the Jesus experience was true. It was not literally true --- it was profoundly true. It was of God. It is we gentiles, centuries later and in total ignorance of the Jewishness of our scriptures, that have said in essence , "We know best.", and have read them as if they were literal history.

I will close with a quote from a prominent Jewish biblical scholar. Joseph Klausner wrote of Jesus:
"In his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code; neither is there any parallel to the remarkable art of his parables. The shrewdness and sharpness of his proverbs and his forcible epigrams serve, in an exceptional degree, to make ethical ideas a popular possession. If ever the day should come and this ethical code be stripped of it's wrappings of miracle and mysticism, the Book of the Ethics of Jesus will be one of the choicest treasures in the literature of Israel for all time."

I commend these thoughts to you in the name of Jesus of Nazareth our brother and our teacher.