The Depiction of Jesus as Messiah in Luke-Acts - Research Paper Example

Abstract The Gospel of Luke, like those of Matthew and Mark, is a kind of Greco-Roman biography of Jesus. In Luke, this Gospel describes the life of Jesus from his birth to his resurrection and Acts depicts the spread of Christianity. It appears that the author of the Luke-Acts was a Greek speaking Christian outside of Palestine and in the second century, the book became attributed to Luke who was a travelling companion to the apostle Paul. The most probable reason for writing the Luke-Acts was to maintain a salvation history that would assist Christians. This brief essay presents a critical discussion about the depiction of Jesus as Messiah in the Luke-Acts. Contents Introduction 1 Jesus in the Luke-Acts and a Comparison of the Luke-Act Depiction with other Synoptic Gospels and Interpretations 3 Conclusion 13 Bibliography/ References 15 (This page intentionally left blank) Introduction Messiah refers to the Hebrew word, which translates to "one who has been anointed" and within the times of early Christianity, it referred to a future king or an expected royal leader from the line of David who will restore the kingdom to Israel (Baixeras, paragraphs 2 – 5). However, this term has complex meanings and the New Testament expectations from the Messiah are somewhat different from those of the Old Testament (Porter, pp. 1 – 10). Contours of specifically messianic expectations in the late Old Testament period and the post Old Testament times suggest that the Messiah refers to someone special. Thus, it is clear that Messiah refers to someone who enjoys a special relationship with God and who is a promised deliverer. However, because Luke was the only gentile author among the Gospel writers, his account represents the voice of the Gentile converts to Christianity who could no longer accept the superior attitudes of the Jews and considered themselves to be the true heirs to Israel (Pagels, pp. 90 – 93). Luke presents the notion that God had always wanted to offer salvation to everyone and Jesus Christ was the chosen Messiah for His intent. Luke draws on the Old Testament, especially Isaiah, to present the idea that Jesus was the Anointed Prophet who came in fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecy about the coming of the Anointed One (Porter, pp. 145). The Gospel of Luke depicts how God acts in mysterious ways to fulfil his plan to renew His people (Theology Library, “Gospel of St. Luke). Verses Luke 4:23 – 27 and Luke 13:29 clearly present God’s will to have His message about His Kingdom heard by all people who will come from all directions to claim their salvation. However, Jesus is more concerned about those that have special needs and little children, the blind beggar and a tax collector mentioned in Luke 18:15 – 17; Luke 18:35-43 and Luke 19:1-10 support this observation. The Luke-Acts deal with the birth and parentage of Jesus, his family and wonderings and his death followed by resurrection as well as his urging to his disciples to preach and teach God’s message of love and forgiveness to all nations. In addition, Luke 4:1-13 presents an account of the experiences of Jesus when presented with three temptations from the Devil (Ehrman, Chapter 8). In Luke 4: 16-30, Jesus is the rejected prophet when invited to read from the book of Isaiah and he later presents himself as the promised one. Clearly, Luke-Acts present Jesus as the Messiah who proclaimed the message of God to humanity and who is the saviour. Other synoptic gospels support the depiction of Jesus in Luke-Acts, but it is only Luke who inserts the words “the king” when describing the acclamation from his disciples on the arrival of Jesus to Jerusalem in Luke 19:38 (Pagels, pp. 93). Thus, it is clear that the depiction of Jesus as Messiah in Luke-Acts may be somewhat different from other synoptic gospels and interpretations and a critical evaluation of the depiction of Jesus as Messiah is a worthy effort. This essay presents a critical discussion about the depiction of Jesus as Messiah in the Luke-Acts and tries to compare the depiction in Luke with the depiction of Jesus by others. After all, it is only possible to evaluate by comparison because no living person today was alive to witness what transpired many years past and this means that it is necessary to make comparisons. Jesus in the Luke-Acts and a Comparison of the Luke-Act Depiction with other Synoptic Gospels and Interpretations Luke-Acts depict Jesus as a suffering Messiah in Luke 24:26 – 46 and this is an important element in the self-understanding of the Christian faith in its earliest form (Dunn, pp. 41 – 45). Jesus put to death as a messianic pretender posed a nationalistic threat to the authorities. In Luke 23:28, the king of Jews is the messianic pretender for the benefit of the Roman governor. However, Jesus himself does not embrace the concept of being a Messiah and never once in the early synoptic tradition does he use the title himself nor does he welcome its application to him. For Jesus, the popular expectations of him being the Messiah implied a misunderstanding of his mission and this was the motivation for the discouragement of this notion. However, neither did Jesus reject a messianic role altogether and this is the conclusion that can be reached from his attack and abuse of the temple. According to the Jewish beliefs, the Messiah must be a descendant of David and although Matthew 1:2 – 16 and Luke 3:23-28 both provide a genealogy of Jesus which leads back to David, the two genealogies agree only from Abraham down to David (Skolnik, pp. 247). Thus, the Jews claim that both of the previously mentioned genealogies were “constructed” to demonstrate the Davidic descent of Jesus because the early Christian community believed that he was the messiah. In addition, Luke sets the birthplace of Jesus to be in Bethlehem, which is also the city of David’s birth but the Judaic tradition asserts that John was unsure that either Jesus was born in Bethlehem or that Jesus was the descendant of David. Thus, the Judaic tradition establishes that the home of Jesus was Nazareth in Galilee and that he was most probably born there. Jewish tradition further asserts that apart from Matthew and Luke, other parts of the New Testament do not presuppose the virgin birth of Jesus. The first three gospels, which includes the gospel of Luke, the period between the baptism of Jesus and his crucifixion runs into a mere single year, but according to John, this runs into two or even three years. Furthermore, the Jewish tradition asserts that although the New Testament tradition considers Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, what Jesus considered himself is unclear and that he saw himself as being more of a prophet. Jesus never mentioned the word Messiah and preferred to call himself “The Son of Man” in the Luke-Acts. The Jewish scholarly tradition mentions Jesus to be a sorcerer and an enticer who misled people (Skolnik, pp. 249). The ancient Jewish law, halakhah Sanh 6:4 required death sentence for Jesus by stoning and hanging because of his preaching. However, the crucifixion of Jesus was the result of a foreign government consisting of the Romans executing the sentence of death requested for by the Jewish authority. Thus, it will appear from the Jewish perspective that the Christians utterly failed in presenting anything to humanity apart from the ravings of “Jesus is king” passed on from father to son because of brainwashing. The Jewish accounts of Mary are even more derogatory (Skolnik, pp. 250). However, it is possible that the success of the Christians was the result of a desire on the part of humanity at the time to remove the chains of slavery to Jews and their oppressive laws bordering on barbarism. Jews thought themselves superior to all mortals and openly ridiculed the non-Jews. After all, it is possible that despite the fact that Jesus, regarded as a Messiah by the Christians who was so easily executed only had his name used to seek political freedom from the Jews. Nevertheless, it is a miracle that love and not force and apparent defeat and not victory could be used as the basis of creating a theology which completely overturned the barbarism of the Jews which had kept humanity in a legal yoke provided by God which now extends to the four corners of the globe. Was God the blameless responsible for all this? After all, God had to gain by keeping humanity in conflict and divided, with the Tower of Babel in the Old Testament illustrating his desire to maintain divisions. Scholars insist that the trial of Jesus depicted in Luke-Acts was fair, with the widest possible official representation from Israel being present (Neagoe, Chapter 3). However, this representation did not answer to the explanation provided by Jesus about his divine anointing in Luke 20: 1-8. Luke 22: 66 – 71 further describes the trial of Jesus in which the Sanhedrin of Israel asks Jesus if he is Christ. Jesus replies that if he were to answer they will not believe but that from then on the Son of man will sit on the right hand of the power of God. The Sanhedrin then proceeded to ask Jesus if he was the Son of God, to which Jesus replied that they said that he was. Clearly, Jesus himself did not say in Luke–Acts that he was the Son of God, but the Sanhedrin will say this. The case of Jesus passed on to Pilate for execution depicted in Luke 23:1 – 38 suggests that Pilate in accordance with the Roman tradition of not interfering in the affairs of God did not find anything wrong with Jesus (Neagoe, Chapter 3). However, the Jewish Sanhedrin convinced Pilate that Jesus was seditious and that he was misleading people. Before his crucifixion, Jesus and his God given the opportunities to save Jesus failed to do this and the crucifixion of Jesus with a superscription over him resulted. “This is the Son of God” was the text of the superscription and it will appear that either the Jews or the Romans placed the superscription. However, it is probably appropriate to think that this was the work of the Sanhedrin, the officials of Israel, because Jesus had clearly indicated that they and not Jesus would say that Jesus is the Son of God. Nevertheless, it is clear that the superscription was an open insult to God and clearly not supportive of Jesus being the Messiah in the eyes of the mortals. Quran, the holy book of Islam presented as a series of divine revelations by Muhammad who claims to be the prophet of God in the line of Moses and Jesus mentions Jesus as being a prophet and the Son of Mary, rather than the Son of God (McAuliffe, Vol. 3, 7 – 20). Thus, the Quran depicts Jesus as a Messiah in the sense that like Moses, he preached the true word of God, but he is not elevated to the status of anything more than a mortal son of man and Mary is always highly regarded as being his mother. However, neither the Jews nor the Christians have any decent feelings for Muhammad (Skolnik, pp. 601 - 605), (Shamoun, “Is Allah the God of the Bible”), (Van Nattan, “Allah, who is He?”), (Grauman, “Islam's Mohammed: The False Prophet that Deceived the World”) and (The Coop Report, “Islam and Christianity: Things You Should Know”). It is obvious that despite the undignified crucifixion of Christ, the Christians too are any more charitable in their attacks on other controversial figures of history. Nevertheless, it will appear that Mohammad’s depiction of Jesus is closer to the depiction of Jesus in Luke-Acts. However, whether Mohammad was an Arab opportunist used by the Devil who wanted to exploit the division in Christianity and Judaism for his or the Devil’s glorification is something that God should have dealt with. Certainly, Mohammad’s followers only entice revulsion because of their obsession with their desire to maintain their women in veil and their instinct to commit every evil on earth after praying to their God. Clearly, when three synoptic gospels are differing in their accounts, as asserted by the Jews, then Christianity can also be regarded as being mere falsehood perpetuated for the liberation of people from the chains of the all knowing and blameless God who has seen fit to torment humanity. It is possible that the crucifixion of Christ used to spin tales from broken hearts for capturing the spirit of men to conquer the evil of Judaism could conquer the everlasting hatred for the uncircumcised felt by the Jew. However, the mere fact that every religion known to man pales in comparison to monotheism and that this is obvious to anyone with a scholarly yearning for the truth who observes the world renders anyone to lean towards a belief in God. However, if a true and sincere caring God existed it was his duty to have prevented such divisions. The irresponsible giver of life cannot absolve blame for not caring for either the humans or animals amongst the created. From the perspective of a historian, the Luke-Acts, which present a chronicle of the early Christian history, are not things that happened, but rather they are a particular person’s chronicling of things that happened (Witherington, pp. 15). It is entirely true that no one who begins a bibliography of Jesus with a sentence that is similar to "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" or concludes an account with "these things have been written so that you might believe" is being either neutral or logical. No accounts of the events that transpired during the times of Jesus are available from observers considered as being neutral. Although the historical and archaeological evidence that exists helps to set the scene, it does not present the happenings and acting (Ermatinger, pp. 64 – 75). The synoptic gospels, called passion narratives, depict the end of a virtuous life at the hands of officials bound to uphold the law of God given to Moses. However, this law of God causes men to revolt at its harshness and in John 8:1-11 even Jesus asks who will be the first person to cast the stone at a woman prostitute to be stoned to death according to the Law of Moses. Clearly, the act of Jesus was noble and expected from a Messiah, yet Mohammad wanted to revert humanity to the Law of Moses, a yoke removed by the sacrifice of Jesus (Van Nattan, “Part Four: Muhammad, Prophet or Pretender?”). Perhaps the hatred between the followers of the three monotheist faiths will never end, but neither the Muslim nor the Jew has any charity for anyone who is not of their own kind and only the Christian charity fulfils the vision of Jesus, the Messiah. Yet the followers of Judaism and Islam shamelessly live off the Christian giving to insult the Messiah Jesus. Is there a sign in all this about the Messiah? It is possible to examine Jesus in terms of the words of Deut 18:18 of the Old Testament, which refer to the promise made by God to send a prophet amongst the Jews who will have the word of God in his mouth and who shall speak to them what God commanded (Porter, pp. 244). Scholars agree that the same person wrote Luke and Acts and that the verses of Deut 18:18 appear twice in Acts 3:22-23 and 7:37. Clearly, to date no other prophet after Moses from amongst the Jews apart from Jesus is available. In the Old Testament, LU 3:38, Adam is described as the Son of God presumably because Adam was the original creation of God and had no father or mother in the biological sense. Thus, clearly, God has the power to create without biological procreation and this means that it is possible to consider Jesus as being the Son of God. Perhaps this can remove at least one objection that confronts the Christian faith, apart from the concept of Trinity. However, the versus LU 3:38 of the Old Testament clearly support Jesus as being closer to God than any other prophet in human history, because no other is without a biological father. Luke and Acts go on to describe how the Apostils, who were the chosen disciples of Jesus, were to see him after the resurrection and how he instructed them through his appearances for many days to preach his message to the world (Willimon, pp. 13 – 27). The Apostils, who had the authority to preach, spread the message across the world. Different scholars have interpreted the Luke-Acts somewhat differently (Mount, pp. 60 – 65). Whereas Charles Talbort identifies Jesus in the Luke-Acts as the founder of Christianity who preaches a doctrine of truth to his local community, David Aune considers the Luke-Acts as an account of the emergence of Christianity as a “national consciousness” over Judaism. It is important to understand that the gospels grow out of the oral traditions of the time and they are not biographies. Thus, it is difficult to say what has been lost and what remains. However, the assertion of Jesus in Luke 22:18, which corresponds to Mark 14:25, that he will no longer drink wine until he drinks it anew in the Kingdom of God and the subsequent events presented suggest that Jesus knew. If Jesus knew, healed, saved, performed miracles, showed righteousness, did not yield to the Devil, asked God for forgiveness for the sin of others even when he was on the cross and he was not afraid to speak out against wrong openly in front of the highest powers in the land then he must have been someone special. Neither Mohammad nor Moses showed such virtues. The message in the tales has become clouded over the passage of the very many years, but if humanity wanted a Messiah, who was worthy of being called the Messiah? When deciding about the Messiah is, it is not only proper to examine history, the synoptic gospels of the Apostils, scholarly works and commentaries, but it is also proper to look at the life of the prophets, their works and the impact of their works on the world. Jesus was the only one who did not kill any man on earth. He saved even the sinners, asked God for their forgiveness and he promised salvation. The life of Jesus was a blameless life in which no sin or spilling of human blood is involved, even though later Christians have killed for their faith. Moses killed and did not escape from the clutches of the Pharaoh without spilling blood. Muhammad too killed to uphold what he said was the Law of God and in battle. However, Jesus was in every way a saviour who everyone looks at with hope, expectation and he rebuffed no one. Thus, Jesus is the Messiah, the Saviour and in a sense the Son of God because of his extraordinary creation. Today, his people are the most progressive, are found on all four corners of the world, and bring his joy and happiness to all. Although those who are not Jews or Muslims feel uncomfortable with their ways, everyone feels at home with the people of Jesus. Conclusion Only God knows truth and man in a brief life cannot expect to find the answer to everything. Every new life must learn again and with the passage of time, the birth of the prophets from the past becomes more distant. New thinking keeps evolving and the truth becomes dimmed in the constant battle between good and evil. Thus, the important thing is to try to do good works, have tolerance for others and to try to keep close to God in private by works and thinking. After all, the only power is God, but Jesus is more of a Messiah and a Saviour. He is the Son of God just like Adam and it is proper to expect that in due course God will resolve the mysteries, perhaps at the time of the second coming of Jesus. (This page intentionally left blank) Bibliography/ References 1. Atwill, Joseph. Caesar’s Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus. Joseph Atwill; Second edition (April 15, 2005). 2. Baixeras, Juan. Understanding Messiah. Baixeras, Juan, 2009. January 2006, 2009. http://www.geocities.com/athens/Olympus/5257/understa.htm 3. Bovon, Francois. 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