Jesus replied, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God.

Matthew 22:29 NLT

כְּתָב – a writing, document, edict

Scriptures, the written word of God

First, let’s understand scripture. It’s written down, recorded, a message of importance with authority; but scripture is much more than that.

• a written edict
  • of royal enactment
  • of divine authority

We forget the igniting spark of the Reformation just five centuries ago. The printing press fanned the flame of scripture now available to ordinary saints of the church.

In the early church, the time of Jesus and before Christ, Scriptures were hand-written on individual sheets or rolls of parchment. Faithful Scribes meticulously recorded every jot and tittle on individual scrolls. Worshipers relied on leaders of the faith for the truth of the Bible recorded through the generations and millenia.

I remind us: no cell phones, no internet, no television, no radio, no media producers and analysts of pronouncements by authorities. Just authoritarian leadership with men who wrote down important words to be shared with the people. Scriptures for worship and written announcements for a king or emperor’s  emissaries to send out to all the land.

Jesus spoke with such authority and sent out the Twelve as emissaries to proclaim the Gospel to Israel. Israel was a captive land ruled by a king dependant on Rome. Jesus’s authority, proclaimed throughout these Roman provinces, not only resonated with the common people, but challenged the very limited authority of Jewish officials in Jerusalem.

Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection

²³ The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question…

Let’s examine the role of the Sadducees who have been part of the crowds in various places and among those with no ears to hear. Look for these religious unbelievers in the multitudes. 

Matthew 5-7

The Sermon on the Mount

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him…

Crowds of men, women and children came to hear Jesus from distant and nearby towns. Most could not read, although a few local religious authorities always seemed to show up in the crowds. Jesus’ listeners had heard very little of the scriptures in their weekly gatherings and seasonal festivals of the church. 

Is it so different today among the ‘literate’ of the church illiterate in the Scriptures?

Many of us know and some can quote the beatitudes (or blessings) Jesus spoke. Jesus’ encouraging proverbs lift our hearts. But let’s listen further.

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them… 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven…

(We will see how Jesus addresses the mistakes of the Pharisees later.)

Israel just before Jesus

So you think we have controversy today?

The undercurrent of politics between conservative and liberal, republican and democrat, communist and  theist in the 21st century pales by comparison to Roman rule of 1st century Israel.

Every religious encounter with Jesus comes from a different perspective.

Before the empire, Rome once had a king and then a republic in 509 BC until about 29 BC. 

A glance at a map from 90 BC,  just a little more than a century before Christ, shows a Hellenistic (Greek) Hasmonean State.  It would be like us thinking back to about 1890.

The Romans had invaded Greece, Macedonia and many other countries. It would be only a few more years until the fall of Jerusalem and massive political and religious changes.

The Sadducees were a political party consisting mainly of high priests and aristocrats of Jerusalem, who had only been around since about 150 B.C. Their claim to priestly authority came through Zadok and Aaron, but their line was by no means continuous back to those generations.

They were aristocrats and fancily-dressed priests. Even though they claimed only literal scripture and no validity to any oral Torah, their party had wholeheartedly embraced hellenism as comprise of retaining influence with their greek captors. Jesus may have easily pointed to Sadducees in the crowd by telling any parable against the rich. 

Once again, it may be helpful to think back on the history of each of these perspectives of the time of Jesus in parallel to looking back the same number of years in the 21st century. In Jesus’ time, Sadducees would only have a history comparable of us looking back to around the 1830’s.

Just before Christ

Suppose you sit among the multitudes listening to Jesus on a hillside or by the seashore. The year, about AD 30. A few of the old men will remember well the stories of their fathers about 63 B.C.

In our current context we would look back only to 1925 A.D. My father had been born. One of my grandfathers was twenty-five years old and I remember his stories about World War I.

This is how recent the memory of the crowds listening to Jesus would have remembered the fall of Jerusalem in 63 B.C.

The Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Pompey the Great, conquered Jerusalem, entered and defiled the Holy of Holies. 

Just four years later Pompey would enter into an alliance with Julius Caesar. who would be assassinated on the Ides of March (March 15), 44 BC. by Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus, and Marcus Junius Brutus, ironically next to the Theatre of Pompey.

In contemporary terms we only need to think back as far as March 15, 1944, near the end of WWII.

Controversies of the Jews

Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees –Matthew 16:12

Hellenistic Period (332-141 BCE)

• The most important event of the Hellenistic period, though, is the translation of the Torah into Greek in Ptolemaic Egypt. – Source: Jewishvirtuallibrary.org

Sadducees embraced Hellenism (Greek culture) but argued for the strict religious obligations of Levitical priesthood. Priests have authority over the people according to Hebrew scripture, not the Septigent. 

The Torah gave this aristocratic class the authority of Law. Sadducees also argued that the resurrection did not exist.

They opposed any Authority of Jesus as King or Son of God and argued against the Pharisees; for after all they were just common people. Unlike the Sadducees, the multitudes with ears to hear Jesus were, for the most part, just like you and me.

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To be continued…

Your Mistake – You don’t know the Scriptures – 2