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FINDINGS II
Proper 22 - A - October 2, 2011
Thomas 65 (Matthew 21: 33-46)
 | | Harry T. Cook |
Thomas 65: [Jesus] said, "There was a good man who owned a vineyard. He leased it to tenant farmers so that they might work it and he might collect the produce from them. He sent his servant so that the tenants might give them the produce of the vineyard. They seized his servant and beat him, all but killing him. The servant went back and and told his master. The master said, 'Perhaps (they) did not recognize (him).' He sent another servant. The tenants beat this one. Then the owner sent his son and said, 'Perhaps they will show respect to my son.' Because the tenants knew that it was he who was the heir to the vineyard, they seized him and killed him. Let him who has ears hear." (Translated by Ron Cameron/1.) /1 The Other Gospels, Philadelphia. 1982. The Westminster Press. P. 33 RUBRIC Because the Matthean parable of the vineyard with parallels at Mark (12:1ff) and Luke (20:9ff) was preceded by what some scholars (including this journeyman one) have hypothesized was a version of what may be its original found in the Gospel of Thomas/2, it seemed good to this exegete to work from the Thomas version for this analysis. This Thomas version ends with the murder of the parabolic son and an admonition attributed to Jesus followed by a telling reference to Psalm 118: 22-23 (The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.) Mark, Matthew and Luke follow suit in quoting the psalm. Christian theologians appropriated the quotation to apply it to what they determined was first century C.E. Palestinian Jewry's and Rome's rejection (for two quite different reasons) of Jesus, thereby asserting that the builder (in the theologians' minds "God") has chosen Jesus as the cornerstone, as it were, of the divine kingdom on Earth. Thomas avoided the allegorical coda included in all three synoptic gospels, i.e. the dire prediction of the vineyard servants' vengeance killing and the search for more obedient successors. That coda became part of the supposed biblical justification for the Crusades, among other atrocities. /2 Thomas was part of the trove of ancient documents discovered at Nag Hammdi, Egypt in 1945. Thomas is one of 52 so-called "tractates" of what remains of a library that was apparently buried some time in the fourth century C.E. The found text of Thomas is in Coptic, translated, it is thought, from fragments in Greek dating to around 200 C.E. A growing number of scholars are coming to a provisional conclusion that Thomas in its original form was probably in Greek and was in circulation as early as 50 C.E. Elaine Pagels in her Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York. Random House. 2003, pp. 32-73) makes a brilliant case that part of what the Gospel of John was up to was a discrediting of Thomas and his take on Jesus. HOMILETIC WORKSHOP The Mediterranean vineyard turns out to be an apt figure for these later Matthean parables. The one at hand, though, is ever so much more pointed and direct than the two of the fig tree and of the two sons, which precede it. If the Jerusalem authorities and Pharisees or late first century synagogue Jews had been puzzled by the first two, this latter one must have removed most causes of confusion -- especially for Jews the allusion to Psalm 118. In light of what late first century C.E. gospels writers were including in their narratives about Jesus' alleged betrayal, arrest, trial and execution, the "tenants" of the parable are all too clear as "the ones who killed Jesus." On this subject nothing clears the air like a serious reading of Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus by J. Dominic Crossan/3. The uncritical acceptance of such texts as this parable as historically representative of fact is what led the Christian Church into centuries upon centuries of anti-Semitism which, in turn, was largely responsible not only for the Holocaust but for much of the world's indifference to the plight of European Jews in the 1920s and 1930s before the "final solution." The task of the interpreter of the vineyard parable is to inquire as to what was likely to have been the situation and conditions on the ground in the late first century as the synoptic gospels were taking shape. It is widely hypothesized that the Matthean communities were primarily Gentile in nature -- nevertheless with a strong connection to the Judean traditions. But Gentiles were both the core and the future of such communities. Textual evidence exists to suggest this admixture of Gentile and Jew resulted in the mistranslation of the Hebrew root חםלע from Isaiah 7:14 as "fecund maiden" into παρθένος "(maiden who has not had intercourse") in the Greek of the Septuagint at Matthew 1:23. It was an error that might well have persisted in communities not led by the Hebrew-literate. The natural competition for a Gentile community of Jesus Jews such as the one we hypothesize the Matthean one to have been was no doubt synagogue Judaism, i.e. those Jews of the Diaspora who would have continued to operate as if there had been no challenge to their mission by the Jesus movement. It is difficult to believe that the events surrounding 70 C.E. would not have altered the program of synagogue Judaism more than is suggested in the pages of Matthew, but Matthew's commentary upon that very issue is what we have before us in the earlier version of the vineyard parable. Whereas the Thomas version ends with actual murder, the coda predicts more killing and destruction. I think Matthew makes it plain that the parable is meant to apply to the chief priests and Pharisees (see 21:45) for which we must read "leaders of first century synagogue Judaism." What is at stake is the very nature of heaven's domain, i.e. the rule or governance of human life to make it harmonize with the purpose of its giver. The implication is that Yahweh had called Israel and by extension its religious leaders over the generations to be a light to the nations (Isaiah 49) to teach and model the ethic contained in Torah. The whole enterprise could be compared to a vineyard that needed tending and cultivation in ways that would have encouraged it to yield what it was meant to yield. Clearly in Matthew's judgment neither the Temple could any longer (if it ever had) nor the synagogue in the present tense do any of that so very well. The rejection of Jesus, i.e. his ethical wisdom, meant both were through and could no longer claim stewardship of heaven's domain or governance. /3 San Francisco. 1995. HarperSanFranciso * * * * * | 
