"You Have Heard That It Was Said ...."

The eighteenth chapter of Luke considers three, different juridical, figures setting out a meditation on moral goodness and its practical application, justice.

We begin in verses 1-8 with the corrupt judge and the persistent widow who must press her suit again and again in order to receive justice. Jesus says that the judge "does not fear God nor regards man" (Lu 18:1). He views the grave responsibilities before him as a game. In fact, he sees the widow in terms of a boxer who might give him a black eye ( ̀υποπάζε / ùpopiáze) ) if he is not careful. Jesus concludes this excursis on the "unjust judge" by placing him suddenly in the frame of absolute justice:

This is no game, Jesus declares. An unseen justice grinds its wheels slowly, but be sure of this: God's justice grinds finely. No one escapes notice. And this is the verdict for which there is no appeal.

The second juridical figure Jesus considers is a proud Pharisee, whose vocation is to expound opinions concerning the Law. This man practices what we would term "relativism." He discerns the state of his soul comparing to other men and decides that he has come out on top. But moral justice is a matter for serious self-examination. The standard is absolute, and the scales are calibrated in Heaven.

Meantime, a contrite publican stands humbly in the shadows. He knows the proud Pharisee's game very well being far more worldly than the Pharisee and, by that measure, far more successful. He is a Roman official, after all, a member of the Equestrian class (just below the Senatorial class), and has been accorded honor and respect in society. He "wins," we might say. But he does not examine his state through the lens of relativism. He brushes all that aside and bares his soul before God in the uncompromising light of absolute good and evil. He is disconsolate and begs God for mercy. "I tell you," Jesus says, "this man went down to his house justified rather than the other" (Lu 18:14).

The third juridical figure Jesus considers is obviously the main subject. He is third in a sequence of three. The first two figures have appeared in parables. He is a real person. And he is an άρχων / árchon, a ruler. As the word means first, he is probably a priest. (The Cambridge Greek Lexicon suggests that árchon would be used to specify the High Priest.) Probably, he descends from Zadok, High Priest under Solomon, and was, therefore, a Sadducee, an aristocrat and a member of the Sanhedrin ("a Supreme Court justice," in our terms).

He would have offered sacrifice at the Temple. And he would have held sway over the synagogue, a relatively new institution established by the Hasmoneans in second century B.C. The synagogue was designed to promulgate the school of Moses as part of a general program to advance the Persian hybrid religion. Before the synagogue appeared, there is no evidence that the cult described in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, collectively called Torah, was a principal part of Hebrew society or that anyone attempted to conform his life to it. (Jonathan Adler, The Origins of Judaism Yale Univ. Press, 2022.) Yet, by the first century A.D., it had become the standard for Jewish (but not Hebrew) conduct of life.

What were Jesus' views concerning this cult? Certainly, He does not see it as instituted by God. He plucks grain from the fields and eats the kernels on the sabbath (Lu 6:2). He and his disciples fail to perform the correct ablutions before eating (Mt 15:1-2). He accepts the touch of a hemorrhaging woman (Mt 9;20-22; Mk 5:25-34; Lu 8:42-48). Again and again, He heals on the sabbath. As for blood sacrifice, He is infuriated that this cultic ritual has been moved to the heart of Temple. He mocks the Levite and the Priest in His Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lu 10:25-37) because they neglect a man in mortal need lest they become ritually unclean (that is, banned from Temple rituals). And He forcibly ejects from the Temple those who think one can gain God's favor in a trade of blood-for-salvation (Mt 21:12-17; Mk 11:15-19; Lu 19:45-48; Jn 213-16).

In sweeping statements Jesus says that the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath (Mk 2:27) and that the son of man is the lord of the sabbath (Mt 12:8, Lu 6:5), dismissing all sabbath proscriptions.

On the Mount of Beatitudes, Jesus revises the Exodus story and gives the Law that truly proceeds from Heaven. In this, He fulfills the precepts of the Lord's Prayer:

And what of the Torah? He says that these laws are commendable, but in a worldly way, for even the scribes and Pharisees have mastered them (Mt 5:20). They are not, however, up to Heaven's standard:

How could Jesus say these thing if the laws of Moses were given by God Himself. Shall we say that God got it wrong? Surely, the pronouncements of unchanging God are not open to variation.

Notice that Jesus follows a telling formula: "You have heard that it was said to those of old." He does not say, "It was said to those of old." The implication is clear: these teachings are not ancient, are not of Moses, are not a true story of Exodus. And certainly they were not given by God. But what more authoritative spokeman could the Babylonians have nominated to give their law than the God of Israel?

The contention that these laws, as the first century received them, were given by Nebuchadnezzar is plausible. After all, Nebuchadnezzar was famously the law-giver king, "a king devoted to justice" writing "a just code of laws for his land and regulations for his city and his own royal office," as is recorded in ancient Cuneiform tablets. (W.G. Lambert et al., eds, Cuneiform Texts for Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum, Part 46, London, 1965.) Certainly, the laws taught in the synagogues are statutes regulating civil society. If we say they constitute religion, we must say they constitute "civil religion." They would have been favored by Babylonian, Persian, and Roman imperial authorities for their role in governing a well-regulated society. But they will not elevate anyone spiritually as Jesus vividly declares. He sees them as a minimum for living well-regulated life. He says that unless one keep these laws, he shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But He does not say all those who keep these laws will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And we must remember that the Ezra tradition makes it clear that the Hebrew Scriptures were revised as the deportees were returned from Babylon.

The Sadducees were keen to enforce these laws. They were to say nothing of angel life. They must not include talk of the afterlife or a Kingdom of God — subjects which went to the heart of Jesus' Kingdom-of-Heaven religion. Above all, these laws specified elaborate rites for blood sacrifice — the primary ritual of the Babylonian and Persian religions, which were of a piece with the Zion Temple, which the Persians financed and designed.

All of this is background for Jesus' encounter with the wealthy, young árchon, a priest of the Temple.

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But Jesus will have nothing to do with front-parlor niceties, replying sharply,

And He gets right down to business.

Jesus knows the young man, like the proud Pharisee, has founded his self-confidence upon following the Torah. Yet Jesus sees that he is open to the possibility of eternal life. That is, this man may be a Sadducee, but he is clearly coloring outside the lines. He is seeking, which explains why he has come to Jesus, praising Him.

The young man is sincere, but Jesus, in His teacherly way, leads him down a path that He knows will fall short. As Jesus did on the Mount of Beatitudes, He shines Heaven's light on the statutes of Torah revealing their inadequacy:

As the Temple priest walks away, Jesus goes to the heart of the matter quoting the Babylonian Talmud, which is written in the native Babylonian language, Aramaic:

The message is clear. The laws of Babylon, given to the exiled Judeans, are admirable in their way. Certainly, they specify rules for a well-ordered society, but to imagine that they could regulate life by Heaven's standard is the stuff of fantasy.

In effect, Jesus repeats the precept, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." But it will not do to commit one's whole life to the world's standard and vainly believe that it is adequate to the Kingdom of God. You would be in that case, Jesus says, in danger of hell fire.

We have met with three figures: a corrupt judge, a proud Pharisee, and a priest of the Temple. In each case, the world they imagine to be true is seen in the perspective of God's Kingdom and the uncompromising light of God's truth. The "unjust judge" and the proud Pharisee have yet to have their eyes opened. Their moment of truth still lies before them. But the priest's eye-opening experience is now. He has stood before God now.

Before God we shall discover that most things we believed have been fantasy. You see, the problem has been our pride, our ego, and our failure to be good, and, by that measure, just. St. Paul says to meet with God is to have the scales fall from your eyes (Acts 9:18).

What will the young, wealthy priest do? In the meantime, he walks away. But can he walk far? He lives on the anxious edge of being faithful yet estranged from God. We would say he follows the rules religiously, yet he has missed the Heavenly purpose of those rules. In that sense, he is like many Christians today.

We call this checklist religion: