Other Texts To Consider

1. Other Texts To Consider • "Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it." (Matthew 10:34-39 NASB) • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/But_to_bring_a_sword

2. The context • Parallels in Mark 12:38-40 and Luke 11:37-52 • .Sources: Mark, Q • ( The most important of the non-biblical sources is the "Sayings Gospel Q," which has to be reconstructed from its use by Matthew and Luke. Q was probably lost because it had been incorporated into Matthew and Luke. Q is important as an early collection of the sayings of Jesus without a narrative framework.) • Matthew’s own special material. • 3. Conflict existed between the “Matthean community” and a rival academy in Jaminia over who was the proper authority on religious matters. • 4. The temple had been destroyed (71 CE ) by the time this Gospel was written down, as consequence there is fierce competition between Jesus’s followers and the surviving Jewish groups over who was best suited to carry on the tradition.

3. The Healing Circle: Excerpt History as Interpretation, as telling stories Exert from: Constantine's sword : the church and the Jews : a history / James Carroll.

4. What was the “destruction of the temple”? See handout/web page. • http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/luminaries/monograph/mythhistory.shtml • On the ninth and tenth days of the month of Av, 70 CE, after a four-month siege, Roman forces took Jerusalem by storm. They crushed a Jewish revolt that had erupted in the spring of 66 after a period of rioting and strife instigated by the incompetence and greed of Roman administrators and the zeal of Jewish extremists. • The immediate consequences were severe. According to Josephus (38 - c100 CE), the historian who briefly participated in the revolt before defecting to the Romans, 1.1 million Jews died in the siege and its aftermath; 97,000 were enslaved. The Temple, one of the largest structures in the Roman Empire, a building that had made Jerusalem and the Jews famous, was destroyed. Roman troops razed what was left of the city. Palestine was formally annexed to the Roman Empire. Its inhabitants were subjected to Roman law and deprived of the autonomy they had enjoyed with few interruptions since 539 BCE. • Jews now faced the task of making sense of the calamity.

5. What the Temple’s Destruction Proved… • See page 131 of handout: How did Christianized Jews and Pharisaic-rabbinic Judaism differ in their interpretation of the Temple’s destruction ? • How would you account for these differences?

6. The consequences of the Temple’s Destruction • For surviving Jews • For Jewish Christians • What is the evidence of this ? • Key word: • Main Entry: ke.ryg.maPronunciation: k&-'rig-m&Function:nounEtymology: Greek kErygma, from kEryssein to proclaim, from kEryx herald -- more at CADUCEUSDate: 1889: the apostolic proclamation of salvation through Jesus Christ- ker.yg.mat.ic /"ker-ig-'ma-tik/ adjective

7. Story and Conflict • Conflict as theme because… • Characters in the drama? • Centurion to the rabbi?

8. Jesus’s Rebuke • “To fulfill the law”? • From family squabble to tribal warfare? • Conflicts of the second generation?

9. Supersession… • Implications ? • Old Isreal / New Isreal

10. Biblical interpretation and Implications

11. Inbuilt limitations of human thinking about the past… • History as contingent and accidental • Thus the war and the Gentiles changed everything…. • From fulfillment to demonization?