MATTHEW: The Mumzer

As we look at the gospels, there will be a set of questions that we will always ask when considering the context of that narrative. Who is the author? who does the author work with? who is the audience? and other questions will help us begin to approach each particular narrative with the appropriate posture of interpretation.

In short, Matthew is a Jewish author who happens to be writing for a Jewish audience. Much of my opinion about the gospel of Matthew will go against popular scholastic opinion, was inherited from my learning under Ray Vander Laan, and was shaped by listening to others teach on Matthew’s gospel. While I don’t believe this is nearly as important as we seem to make it, regarding the question of when each gospel was written (in terms of order), it is my personal opinion that Matthew was in fact written first. I also happen to believe that Matthew was originally penned in Hebrew. These are not the typical opinions. There is no external evidence to support the idea of a Hebrew version of Matthew, but there are many clues within the Text itself. I do not discredit all of the discussion about the source material “Q,” or even doubt its existence (in fact, I see that discussion as very fruitful), but I do see Matthew being the first record and Mark being penned later. This is neither here nor there for the purposes of this blog, so we’ll continue moving forward.

In order to understand the agenda that Matthew has behind writing his gospel, we need to look no further than the first chapter of his gospel. Bible students will immediately raise their eyebrows at that suggestion, as they remember that the first chapter of Matthew starts with a thorough genealogy. I believe this is one of the most intentional decisions made by Matthew in his gospel.

If a Jew were to read Matthew’s genealogy, they would quickly notice how odd the genealogy is. From a Jewish perspective, the genealogy is one of the worst ever recorded in biblical history. The passage is riddled with problems:

The passage contains multiple references to women. Women are not typically included in Jewish genealogies. The maternal lineage does not become important until later in history; the mention of fathers takes all priority. Women are not mentioned in a genealogy unless absolutely necessary.

The women Matthew mentions in Jesus’s genealogy are not women you would ever want to go out of your way to point out. Under normal circumstances, the author would work incredibly hard to bend the lineage around these stories and avoid bringing them up all together. Each of these women comes from a frustrating past, therefore marring the genealogy. Tamar slept with her father-in-law. Rahab was a prostitute. Ruth was a pagan, a Moabitess forbidden to enter the assembly of God. Bathsheba is part of the worst moment of King David’s life. The purpose of a genealogy is to prove the purity of a person’s pedigree. Why does Matthew deliberately go out of his way to mention these women?

If we consider for a moment who Matthew was and his background, it may shed some light on the agenda that lies behind his gospel.

Matthew was a tax collector. He was a traitor. He had turned his back on the people of God and agreed to work for Rome. If Matthew had any family to speak of in Galilee, he had turned his back on them and his faith community. Matthew was an outsider — a mumzer. (I use this term very loosely and poetically; the word in the Torah literally refers to a child of illegitimate birth — a “bastard,” without the derogatory stigma.) The day that Matthew was sitting at his collection booth and Jesus walked by, calling him to be a follower of a strictly-observant rabbi, must have been a stunning experience.

Somebody was giving the mumzer a second chance. Somebody had truly seen him and invited him into something amazing. The first act of Matthew is to throw a party and invite all of his “sinner” friends. This is a guy who is going to follow Jesus with a heart for the outsider.

So, when Matthew writes a gospel — the “good news” about a new King who is reigning — what is the thing that has always stuck out to him about Jesus? What is the thing that he wants all his Jewish readers to understand? What is his agenda?

I was always taught in Bible college that Matthew was written in order to prove that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. I believe this is incorrect. If this is Matthew’s goal, then he fails miserably. Matthew is written to say this Jewish Messiah is one who sees the outsider. Jesus is one who welcomes the mumzer. And Matthew is going out of his way, not to prove the purity of the Messiah’s bloodline, but the messiness of it, because this is a Messiah who understands the messiness of life. When you read Matthew’s gospel, you begin to see “the one who doesn’t belong” on every page. It’s the leper. It’s the Roman. It’s the gentile woman. It’s the demoniacs in the Decapolis. It’s the blind men and the bleeding woman. It’s the unclean, the pagan outcast, the rejected, and the despised around every corner of Jesus’s ministry.

Matthew sees himself in the ministry of Jesus. Matthew’s story is his agenda.

Our God is the God who sees the one who doesn’t belong. Our God is the God who would be born of a questionable pedigree, just to prove that He’s not here for everyone who has it all together.

God is looking for mumzers.

Gospel Narrative

In the next few posts, I’d like to unpack a general overview of the gospel writers and what they are trying to accomplish with their four accounts. In order to do this, I will need to lay some ground work and address some assumptions made by many students of the Bible.

I will not be making an attempt to “harmonize” the gospels. These attempts end up being the right answer to the wrong question — which is really just a wrong answer. One of the first things we have to come to grips with is that the Bible is not a piece of western historical literature. The goal of biblical history is NOT to give an accurate, detailed description of events. Historical narrative — especially gospel narrative — is written to tell a compelling story with an agenda. Attempts to harmonize the gospels stem from this apologetic impulse to make sure all the details line up and the “accuracy” of the accounts is verified. Simply put, the gospel writers were not concerned with telling you how something happened, as much as telling you something about who Jesus is.

Each gospel writer has an agenda behind their gospel. Oftentimes, this agenda is driven by that writer’s audience. The writer is trying to convey convictions about the person of Jesus to a particular group of people as they tell the audience about the life of Christ. In the day of the gospels, it was perfectly acceptable to bend details in such a way as to make a deeper point about the story. Accuracy was not their main goal; the sooner we come to grips with that, the sooner we will appreciate the gospels for the inspired, authoritative works that they are.

“Gospel” is an ancient term that was used by the Greco-Roman world to announce that a new kingdom had arrived on the scene. The gospel (or euangelion in the Greek) was “good news” that a new ruler was here. Alexander the Great brought a gospel, the good news that the kingdom of Greece (and all it had to offer its citizens) was here. The kingdom of Rome burst onto the scene with a gospel of peace in Caesar Augustus. In fact, here is the translation of a plaque we found in Priene (an ancient city in modern-day Turkey) announcing the gospel of Augustus:

“Citizens of Priene: Since Divine Providence has brought to life the most perfect good in Augustus, whom she filled with virtues for the benefit of all mankind, bestowing on us Augustus Caesar as Savior of the World, for he has put an end to war and brought perfect peace. By the epiphany of his birth, he brought the gospel of peace to all mankind. For that reason, the Greeks of Asia have on this day declared that the New Year should begin from now on, on the 23rd of September, the day of the birth of this god. Never will another gospel surpass the gospel that was announced at his birth. He is not only Lord of the Empire, but Lord of the Earth and of the calendar and of time itself.”

The reader must understand when they read the “gospel of Mark” that they are reading a subversive piece of literature where Mark is claiming that he has good news that a new Kingdom is here. A new Prince of Peace is reigning and that all are being invited to recognize a better kingdom. These authors aren’t trying to just give an accurate record of history! They are trying to announce the coming of a better King in an artistic way.

After we address the four authors and what their agendas are, my plan is to walk through the life and ministry of Jesus. While most people would choose the gospel of Luke to do this, I will be using the gospel of Matthew as my original template. This does not mean I will always use the Matthew Text, as sometimes I will choose the way the passage is worded in another gospel. There will also be moments where I try to “harmonize” individual stories in order to address certain questions, but these moments will be few and far between. After Matthew, I will address a few of the stories within the gospel of John, all the while trying not to disturb the way in which I will attempt to address the book of Revelation later in our study.

To summarize, I believe it is incredibly important to learn how to hear each gospel within the context of the agenda of the author. The voice of Matthew needs to be heard as the voice of Matthew, and his gospel needs to be read and seen as a whole narrative, from beginning to end — with a purpose and a narrative arc and a point to be made. The same is true with Mark, Luke, and John. I will try to preserve those distinct voices in their diversity, not harmonize them together and ruin the voice in which the inspired Word is meant to be heard.

So, with nothing further to cover, let’s start with the gospel narrative of Matthew…

THE SILENT YEARS: Perfect Timing

We’ve looked at the five different responses within the first-century Jewish world to the problem of Hellenism and the Greco-Roman empire and influence. While we’ve touched on a few of the aspects of these different groups, I wanted to dedicate a post to reviewing and summarizing the different responses and how they will play into the cultural landscape of the gospel narratives and the stories of Jesus.

As I teach this material to my students, I often find there are universal experiences that demand very important observations. First, you will find yourself resonating with one of these groups. We have the same groups and responses at work today within the religious community; for certain, you can find Pharisees, Herodians, and even Essenes. That is actually very helpful to wrestle with. To understand oneself, to be able to objectively critique and evaluate your own experience, and to identify weaknesses and dangers in your daily walk is incredibly beneficial. So don’t resist or miss the opportunity to relate with the story. This, however, leads to another significant observation. This is NOT about figuring out which group was the most “correct” or the “right” group to belong to. To be sure:

Each group had its struggles. None of these groups had the methodology perfect; they all had an approach skewed by biases and misinterpretations. In short, on some level, each of these groups was wrong.

Each of these groups also brought something quite valuable to the table. This will be hard for most of us to accept. Each of us will have a group that we will demonize and vilify and act as if there was no redeeming value to them; we will all talk as if the world would be better off without “that group.” (By the way, I have found this is often indicative of your own personal struggles; almost without fail, the group you hate the most is the one you struggle with becoming.) It is important to realize that each group offered something while struggling with something else.

With that being said, let’s take a moment to review the five groups and I’ll suggest what I believe to be the strengths and the weaknesses of each group. My language will certainly betray my own biases (as you can probably already tell from my writing, I identify most with the Essenes). But nevertheless, here goes nothing:

ZEALOTS — This group brought an incredible amount of passion and zeal to the table. This was their incredible strength, as it takes some chutzpah to actually get out and change the world — to go and DO something. The Zealots were nothing if not action-oriented. They put their money where their mouth was and aligned their behavior with their beliefs. Their obvious weakness would be their steadfast resolve to use redemptive violence, something that definitively goes against the teachings of Jesus. A Zealot would have been offended at the suggestion of Jesus to love his enemies; he had likely taken a vow to kill them. But Jesus saw their strengths and called a few Zealots to be his disciples; he saw the passion and zeal and knew that if he could just change the weapon in their hand and rewire their passionate hatred into zealous love and compassion, he’d be on to something.

PHARISEES — This group definitely gets the worst treatment in the gospels. Their negative side is in the open for all to see. Their self-righteous devotion to what they perceive as the correct path is what will keep the Kingdom from coming. Jesus was ruthless against their weaknesses, frequently telling them that the sinners (the people the Pharisees blamed for the world’s ills) were entering the Kingdom ahead of them, while their own piety was blinding them to seeing things through God’s eyes. However, they were incredibly devoted to the path of God and living a life that was set apart. Jesus exhorted His followers to do what the Pharisees say, just not what they do. They had the truth correct, but they had forgotten about loving others and chasing after the marginalized. If the Pharisees would keep their rugged devotion to obedience and not let it get in the way of truly seeing and loving people, they would be a formidable force for the Kingdom. But self-righteousness is so hard to overcome; it makes the victim blind to God’s peace

SADDUCEES — To be sure, the Sadducees had been called to their role by God Himself. This is their strength. They have a role that is appointed, commissioned, and ordained by God to help the people in their relationship with God (you may recognize the roles of the priest here). However, having spiritual power is incredibly dangerous and difficult to carry well. Many of us in today’s church culture can relate with abused religious leadership. And far too many of us have given up on religious leadership and have judged anyone who carries a title guilty until proven innocent. This is a tragedy for both parties. We need people to be called to the God-ordained offices of church leadership and they need to carry that responsibility with integrity. But we also need to respect our leaders, allowing them to be human, encouraging them to fulfill their duties as God intended.

HERODIANS — This may not be something that we want to hear, but most of us are Herodians. We wouldn’t last a day in the life of the Hasidim in the Galilee. Take away our running water, air conditioning, and smartphones, and we’d be crying uncle by lunchtime. We have convinced ourselves that we can live in the Hellenistic world that is American consumerism and serve God at the same time. We do not see our consumption as idolatry. And we may be right, but that is the danger and the weakness of the Herodian. They had exchanged the “set apart” life of the Pharisees for the comforts of the world. However, the positive of the Herodians is that they are perfectly placed for God’s mission. If they will snap out of their idolatrous slumber, they find that they are sitting right at the crossroads of the earth, perfectly placed to impact a world that’s buying into the wrong message and the wrong kingdom.

ESSENES — The positive of the Essenes is their passionate commitment to know the path of God and walk it. They had all the zeal of the Zealot, the devotion of a Pharisee, the calling of a Sadducee, and they hadn’t forgotten generosity, hospitality, and love to the outsider. But it didn’t matter. They ran off into the desert and separated themselves so much from the culture that they weren’t ministering to the people God so desperately wanted to rescue. This may sound very familiar to our discussion about shephelah. Please notice that over 2,000 years later, the wrestling matches haven’t changed one bit.

It’s very important to point out that Jesus calls all of these guys into His havurah (group of disciples). He calls at least two Zealots (Simon and Judas), five boys from Pharisee-ville (Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Philip), two Herodians (Matthew and Thaddeus, whose Greek name gives him away, specifically), and He is influenced and trained by an Essene (more on this later). There also appears to be connections to priestly families spread throughout, as well (you may remember Jesus’s uncle is a righteous priest named Zechariah). Jesus calls these guys together and tells them to get along! Can you now appreciate why they are always arguing about who’s the greatest? They aren’t taking about personal greatness; they’re arguing about worldviews. Every conversation that comes up is going to be divided amongst themselves; Simon is never going to read the Scripture in the same way as Thaddeus — they can hardly stand being in the same room!

One final point: Galatians 4:4 tells us God sent Jesus at just the right time. When all the pieces were in place, Jesus showed up. That means that there could not have been a more perfect time for Jesus to come than when He did. So why did God wrap Himself in flesh and enter the story when He did? There must have been something about this newfound love for the Text and how it was interacting with culture. The different responses amongst God’s people must have set a stage that God wanted to crash and fill with His truth.

What will we find as God comes and walks among us?

THE SILENT YEARS: Essenes

But the Hasidim weren’t the only ones to react negatively to the corruption of the priesthood and the Temple system. There was also another group that responded with as much zeal and passion as the Hasidim, but with a different methodology. This group was called the Essenes.

*It should be noted that there continues to be much debate about this group called the Essenes and what we truly know about them. Every time the scholastic community seems to make some headway in deciding who this group was and what they did, a whole different discussion arises that questions even the most basic assumptions that scholars have made.

One of the places that has been uncovered and has led us to learn so much about the Essenes is the work at Qumran and the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. Most are familiar with the fact that we found an unbelievable amount of biblical text in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but we also found much along the lines of extra-biblical text as well. One of the documents that was uncovered is called The Community Rule and explains much about the lifestyle and expectations for those living in the Essene community.

From what we can tell, the Essenes were made up of disillusioned priests who recognized the corruption of the Temple system and rejected the priesthood that had become so tattered. Some of them continued to perform their priestly duties twice a year, while others abandoned their posts altogether. While we used to think that only male priests were allowed into the group, we have recently found the bodies of several females in the cemetery at Qumran, causing many to suggest that the priests’ families were allowed to live there, or maybe that others were allowed into the sect, as well.

At any rate, we know this group of priests came out to the desert in order to preserve God’s way. They were determined to know the path and walk it well. They were stationed out in the desert in order to be the fulfillment of Isaiah 40:

Comfort, comfort my people,
    says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been completed,
    that her sin has been paid for,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand
    double for all her sins.

A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
    the way for the LORD;
make straight in the desert
    a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up,
    every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level,
    the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
    and all people will see it together.
        For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

They would be the voice crying out in the desert. They would be the group that would know the ancient paths when the words of Jeremiah would come to life:

This is what the Lord says:

“Stand at the crossroads and look;
    ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
    and you will find rest for your souls.

When the people began coming back to God’s way, the Essenes would be ready. When people found themselves standing at a crossroads and asking for the ancient paths, the Essenes would know those paths. They were committed to knowing the path of God and walking in it.

To know the path. And to walk it.

These Essenes went to work, not only memorizing the Text, but preserving it. One of the main accomplishments of this sect is the unbelievably accurate transmission of the biblical text through copying the words and preserving the scrolls. Without the Essenes, there would be no Dead Sea Scrolls. Without the Essenes, we would still be wondering about the accuracy of our scriptures. To know the path.
But they were also committed to walking it. According to The Community Rule, in order to join this sect, you had to sell all of your worldly possessions and everything you had became common property in the community. They lived in strict, disciplined community with others, including a rigid commitment to ritual and obedience, meal times, and communal responsibility. The extent of their commitment to following God’s commands is astounding. To document the work of the Essenes adequately would be far beyond the scope of this blog post (even ignoring how much it is debated within scholarship). To walk the path.

When I travel to Israel with groups, one of the most significant stops we make is at Qumran, as we observe the dedication and passion with which these men (and apparently women) devoted themselves to learning, knowing, and walking the Text. I have stood on the mountain overlooking Qumran many times and shouted, “I want to be an Essene!”

To be the voice of one crying in the desert. To be the answer to the one standing at the crossroads and asking for the ancient paths and the good way. To know the path. To walk it.

I want to be an Essene.

THE SILENT YEARS: Sadducees/Herodians

So the Hasidim moved up north to walk the path of God as faithfully as possible. But what happened to everyone they left behind in the south?

In short, they continued to walk the path as they saw fit upon their return from captivity. This group of people who had worked at trying to figure out how you live within empire and then influence it for the Kingdom of God, who developed the approach Brueggemann calls “accommodation/resistance,” established a lifestyle they believed was a response to God’s calling to live in shephelah and be at the crossroads of the earth.

However, not all of them were well intentioned. Josephus tells us that not long after the Maccabean revolt, the current leadership under the Hasmoneans became as Hellenistic as the Greeks. When this self-serving worldview came in contact with power, the situation was ripe for corruption. The Hasmoneans ruled for just over a century when they looked up to see the Roman empire dominating the horizon. They knew that there would be no standing against this new world rule and began to position themselves politically for survival. The system of tithes and offerings had served this ruling elite quite well. Now that there were millions of Jews living in the land, and thousands of priests, the system that was built for a much smaller Israel wandering through the desert was now producing quite a bit of wealth for those in charge. The arrival of Rome threatened their very lifestyle.

And so the Hasmonean family took their daughter and married her to a neighboring ruler, the man we know as Herod the Great. Herod was the man who inherited from his father the Nabatean/Idumean kingdom that we spoke about in the book of Obadiah. This group of traders had become incredibly wealthy and powerful; to this day, scholars are baffled by the social and economic accomplishments of this nomadic group of people who began to build cities in the eastern desert.

According to some estimates, Herod was the richest man ever to live (including through today). According to history, his income sat at well over a hundred times his country’s GDP. If this is even remotely true, Herod could have bought the Roman empire a few times over. This gave Herod incredible clout in a political conversation. Rome, however, had all of the power and might, so Herod feared for his safety. As long as the two agreed to play nice, the relationship would be incredibly beneficial for both parties. Herod would enjoy great regional power and immeasurable wealth; Rome would have a leader with enough influence to rule a very difficult and tumultuous region.

And so the Hasmoneans arranged for this brilliant political situation and positioned themselves to enjoy a dynasty under Roman rule. One of Herod’s first acts would be to find a new high priest for the Jewish Temple system. He held the office up for bid to the Hasmoneans. The Hasmonean leadership was made up of seven families who were directly descended from Zadok, the high priest from the days of Solomon. These descendants were called Zadoki or Zadokim, which we translate as “Sadducee.” While the term Sadducee originally referred to the direct descendants of Zadok, it eventually became used of the priesthood to describe any descendant of Aaron. The term became used more to speak of a “party,” rather than a descent.

However, these seven families will be spoken of in Scripture as the “chief priests.” These seven families, or chief priests, were offered the high priesthood by Herod to the highest bidder. (Please understand, this was a total corruption of the system.) Amongst these seven families, the house of Ananus (we often translate as Annas) bought the high priesthood and his house would hold it until the destruction of Jerusalem. The corruption was well known and grew to such an extent that the best way to understand the chief priests would be to see them as a mafia.

Here are some details we know from history (mostly from Josephus):

 – The chief priests only paid the other priests for the two weeks they worked each year, keeping the remaining tithes for themselves.

 – The chief priests owned the system of money-changers and merchants who sold on the Temple Mount; they were called “the booths of Ananus” and they were built off of a complete ownership of the economic system AND the regulations that oversaw the system.

 – The chief priests had their own Temple Guard, who were notorious for carrying out behind-the-scenes executions of their enemies.

 – The chief priests had their own “Sanhedrin,” who met in the private home of the High Priest and functioned outside the formal Sanhedrin, who were made up of both Pharisees and Sadducees.


And we need to clear up some terms, so that we understand the writings of the gospels:

 – The “chief priests” are the leading families of the priesthood, descended from Zadok, who function as a mafia.

 – The High Priest is their leader and continues to function as the leader described in the Books of Moses, although much of the public understands the system to be completely corrupt and no longer bearing any resemblance to the Levitical priesthood. The Mishnah is brutal in its description of the priesthood under Herod and the corruption of God’s Levitical standard.

 – “Sadducee” is a term that refers to a party (think Republican/Democrat) and is any member of the serving priesthood who sees themselves as a part of the priestly system. While they may or may not share directly in the corruption of the chief priests, they are giving their passive nod to the system they oversee.

All of those mentioned above would be priestly descendants of Aaron.

However, there would also be a portion of the general public that would approve of the Hellenistic lifestyle. They would rejoice in the world that the rule of Herod has ushered in. While they certainly would not rejoice in the corruption of the Temple, they turn a blind eye to it and continue to carry on with business as usual. This group of non-priests who share the same worldview are called Herodians.

To be certain, the entire spectrum of responses to Hellenism and obedience to God’s way would be represented in the Herodian worldview. There certainly would have been Herodians seeking to love God with all their heart, soul, and might. Although we have cast this discussion in a fairly negative light, it is very important to realize that not all Herodians were self-seeking people turning a blind eye to corruption. A Herodian simply believed that they could follow God and be a part of the Hellenistic world that Rome offered them. They did not see those two things as mutually exclusive. This separated them from their brothers in the north, the Hasidim.

THE SILENT YEARS: Hasidim

So the Greeks move into town and the people of God respond in different ways. Some of them certainly thought that this lifestyle was not inherently evil and preferred everything that Greece had to offer. And also, for sure, you would have seen all kinds of people responding with different commitment levels to walking the path of God, from true compromisers to those who just wanted to hold both worlds in tension.

And there’s an argument to be made there, but we will deal with this later.

Other Jews, however, responded with fierce resistance. They refused to engage the new Greek world as passive consumers of this new message and philosophy. They resisted in the choices they made, they resisted in the way they worshipped, and they resisted in where they chose to live. And all of that worked out alright until the Greek world went into turmoil. Alexander the Great died and the Greek empire was passed on to four different generals. We will talk about the first two later, but the far eastern part of the empire (think Babylon/Chaldea) was given to a Greek ruler named Seleucus, and the southern portion (think Egypt) was given to a general named Ptolemy.

Originally, the land of Israel lay in the southern kingdom of Ptolemy. Ptolemy’s style of rule was one of passive invitation and suggestion; similar to Alexander, Ptolemy believed that if you built it, they would come. However, Seleucus was bent on the domination of the Greek empire and wanted to be Greece’s new emperor of fame. As Seleucus pushed west, he went to war against Ptolemy and the southern kingdom fell to Seleucus. This changed the world of the Jews dramatically.

Seleucus’s style of leadership was starkly different from Ptolemy. Seleucus said, “Become Greek or die.” Massive persecutions were launched at those who would refuse to take on the Hellenistic world and its value systems (namely Jews). Seleucus was famous for the torture that was pursued in the city squares under his rule. People were boiled in oil, pulled apart limb from limb by horses, and skinned alive as they peeled one-inch strips of hide from their bodies.

This bloody mess only fueled the fire of resistance. One day, Seleucus stormed into the Temple of God, desecrated the holy place, and offered pigs on the altar. This was the last straw for many of the resistive Jews and they mounted a revolt, led by Judah “the Hammer.” We know him as Judah Maccabee and the Maccabean revolt. This revolt is also the story of Chanukah. The eight-day uprising led to the miraculous overthrow of what some might argue was the most powerful army in the world at the time. A little band of Jewish rebels took back the Temple and supposedly walked in to find the menorah out of oil, but still burning. This is the celebration of the festival of lights.

Let’s get back to the story. The Maccabeans took control of the Temple and the land of Israel and, for a brief time in history, the Jews had their land back. The Maccabeans turned control of the Temple over to the priesthood — the rightful rulers of God’s Temple system. The priestly family was known as the Hasmoneans and they were direct descendants of the family lines of Zadok, the high priest who was put in place at the opening of the Temple of Solomon (more on them later).

However, this priestly Hasmonean family, within a matter of years, became as Hellenistic as the Greeks. Josephus tells us that there were so many priests at the Greco-Roman mud-wrestling on the Sabbath that there were not enough left in the Temple to hold Sabbath services.

Let that sink in.

Yes, many of the Jewish people felt betrayed. After all of that work to push out the Seleucids and God’s miraculous provision to defeat their enemies, how could they simply compromise the way of God and become as Greek as their imperial counterparts?

And so, in disgust and dismay, those groups of fiery rebels headed north to the Galilee, which we have already discussed. They became people of fierce devotion and commitment to walking the path of God. They were people of the insula, the rabbi, and the synagogue. Set apart. Holy. Devoted unto the LORD.

They called themselves Hasidim, or “the Pious Ones,” and they were made up of two groups:


ZEALOTS

This group held on to the passion that led the Jews to revolt. They believed that the Kingdom of God would come through total devotion to God’s path, complete resistance and rejection of the Hellenistic world, and a commitment to redemptive violence. They believed that if they would rise up in faithful obedience — with the sword — that God would defeat their enemies. He did it at Chanukah. He did it with Joshua and the conquest. He would do it again.

One of the zealot sects that we know of was the Sicarii, known for their short daggers called sicae. They were known for hiding a dagger up their sleeve and taking a vow to kill any Roman they found who was alone. They saw any cooperation with Rome or acceptance of Hellenism as a rejection of God and complete idolatry. Their poster boys were guys like Phinehas, who speared the Israelite man and the Moabite woman who were having relations in front of God’s house.

Realize the teachings of Jesus that were committed to principles of forgiveness and loving your enemies would run counter to this worldview. Realize that every time Jesus interacts favorably with a Roman, it would be incredibly offensive to this group. Realize that Jesus called some of these guys to be His disciples. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.


PHARISEES

This group believed that the Kingdom of God would come through complete devotion to God’s path and completely resisting and rejecting the Hellenistic world. They did not believe that God would want them to take up the sword against their enemies, but that if they would simply worry about obedience, God would bring rescue to their situation.

You see, the Pharisees get a really bad rap in our teachings. Admittedly, this is for good reason: Jesus is ruthless against many Pharisees. But what we often fail to see is that, of all the groups that will be at Jesus’s disposal, He is going to insist, by His own choice, on working with this religiously pious group of leaders. Certainly, their piety bred a self-righteousness that prevented them from seeing those on the outside, those on the margins, and the very people who were forgotten in the stories of the Old Testament.

But this was a group of people who were fiercely devoted to God’s commands and walking the path well. Their commitment to God would put our personal walks with the LORD to shame ten times over.


The Hasidim were the pious ones. They headed north to start a new home for a new kind of Judaism. And it worked. When God showed up to do His work amongst us, He decided to set up shop right under the noses of the Hasidim. He didn’t build an apartment on the wing of the Temple in Jerusalem; He went right up to the Galilee and lived in Nazareth. He planted His ministry in Capernaum for three years — the Pharisee capital of the Jewish world. He called zealots and fishermen who were the sons of Hasidim to be His first disciples.

There is something here to learn from the fierce and zealous devotion of the Hasidim.

THE SILENT YEARS: Culture

So the Jews come back with a renewed vigor for the Text. But there’s one more major historical shift that sets the stage for the arrival of Jesus.

There was a cultural change that affected the course of human history more (in my opinion) than any other shift in history. We saw this shift just begin to peek it’s head through the curtains during the reign of the Persians, but it never really made an entrance. We spoke of the kingdom of Persia and the differences inherent in their methods of ruling the world. They sought to rule through your surrender and acceptance of their rule, rather than destruction and domination of everybody and everything. This is because the Persians were at least somewhat influenced by the Greeks to the West.

The Greek philosophers had been contemplating some of the most complex questions that mankind had ever considered. It was a completely different way of thinking and asked radically different sets of questions. While most of the world had been focused on the concrete and practical things, this new Western world was asking big questions about the abstract and the unknown. This led to some new convictions.

At the heart of this new worldview lay a core premise and belief. One can find many different Greek philosophers who mention this idea, but Protagoras is often given credit for stating that “man is the measure of all things.” Now, that may not strike you as all that loaded of a statement, but this became the fundamental shift that brought about the worldview known as Hellenism. Hellenism (named after “Helles”) is usually used to speak of the spread of the Western worldview that had made a major shift. No longer were the gods or God at the center of man’s existence; now, MAN stood at the center of his own existence.

Hellenism certainly never did away with the gods — that would be foolish. Hellenism simply shifted their place from the center of the universe to one of many other categories of thought. Man was now at the center; man is the measure of all things. This idea quickly begins to bear fruit in the world. No longer is man made in God’s image, but the gods are made in man’s image (think of Greek mythology and how the gods are often pictured as foolish super beings who look and act a whole lot like men). At this point, our worldview begins to revolve around ourselves and a different set of priorities begin to emerge: power, pleasure, luxury, leisure, and comfort.

When Greece took over, their greatest weapon was not their military — it was their new worldview. Greece came bringing what they called euangelion. We translate this word “gospel” or “good news.” Greece had a gospel. They had good news to share. This good news was that the kingdom of Greece was here. We often talk about Alexander the Great as an amazing military commander (and he was), but Alexander was much more than a military officer; Alexander was an evangelist. And no, that’s not me waxing eloquent; I mean that Alexander was an evangelist. He was convinced that if he could take control of an area and simply build his Greek cities, the indigenous people would flock to this newfound worldview.

If you build it, Alexander said, they will come.

And it worked. Alexander changed the world forever.

And please don’t hear me as trying to be dramatic. I’m trying to make a point that sits right under our noses. If you are an American, you live in the most Hellenistic culture in human history. The Greco-Roman world is still the world that serves as our blueprint for society. In the universities I work with, we are unashamed to teach the Greco-Roman way. From our economics, to our politics, to our architecture, athletics, art, and social infrastructure — we are Greek.

Now, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, but it’s essential to understanding what is happening in history when God wraps Himself in flesh and joins the story. It’s critical to realize that we are no longer dealing with “some other ancient culture.” We have now entered OUR world.

“You deserve a break today.”
“Have it your way, right away.”
“Just do it.”
“You’re worth it.”
“You deserve the best.”

I hate to break it to you, but Alexander the Great won. There are Golden Arches in every country I’ve ever been in — even in countries where a cheeseburger isn’t kosher! The Greeks had traded the immortal God for the images of mortal man, and they loved it.

And the world loved it.

They couldn’t get enough of it. They welcomed the Greco-Roman world with open arms. This new day was bringing power, security, comfort, leisure, pleasure, and entertainment. It brought a new kind of infrastructure that provided healthcare and education. It entertained you with media, art, and competition. This same competition called out the best of humanity and drove us to continue to become better and better and better.

And it still is. We’re still breaking world records.

Isn’t mankind amazing?

And yet, somewhere, God got lost. And don’t worry, people have found Him again; every now and again we try to dust Him off and make sure we give Him the prominent place on our mantels where He belongs. We even use Him to try to get more stuff and bigger houses with better mantels to put Him on.

There’s a word for this: idolatry.

But there were a few groups of people who saw this all coming. They refused to buy the greatest lie of human history and fought to stand against the kingdom of self. Some of them missed the point, and all of them struggled. Every attempt to stand against it was flawed, but there were groups of faithful God-followers who sought to hang on to the way God was trying to redeem the world.

The world Jesus was born into was deeply entrenched in cultural struggle and in the midst of a battle of worldviews. Before we start to look at the New Testament, we need to understand how some different Jewish groups were responding to this new worldview shift. It will help us realize who Jesus is working with and talking to in the gospel accounts.

And it just might help us find our place in the story.