Jesus Master of Wisdom
In the books of the New
Testament there are some passages about the wisdom of God or that, report to
Jesus, sentences that the Ancient Testament uses about Wisdom.
So many sentences of Jesus are similar to those of the wise men.
The inhabitants of Nazaret realized considering Jesus prreaching superior to the
scribes teaching. In fact, in fact, so we read in the Gospel according to Mattew:
"And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes"(Mattew 7,28-29)
The same teaching of Jesus,
expressed in parables, has a sapiential
style, so much it is true that also the Maisters in
Israel, called wise man, they use the parable to explain the sense of the
Scripture to the disciples.
Then the preaching of the Master is characterized for many
discourses by sapiential style, like the famous Sermon on the Mount(Mt 5,7), or
the discourse in the synagogue of Cafarnao and related to the Bread of life (Gv
6).
Besides these discourses, Jesus has used some sapiential sentences,
like this one:
"Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Mt 26,52),
"For whosoever will save his life shall
lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it"(Mt
16,25), or "Render
therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things
that are God's".
Then in his preaching, Jesus is teaching like the
wise men of Israel. But some texts of the New Testament, starting from the
synoptic Gospels, they refer to Jesus what the Ancient Testament refers to the
personified Wisdom, as we can read in this passage of the Gospel of Matthew:
"Come to me, all
you who are wary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you
and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest
for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light"(Mt 11,28-30).
Jesus speaks like the wise
man of the book of the Sirach: "Approached to me or ignorant, stop you in my
house to instruct you...., you subdue the neck to his yoke [of the Wisdom]
"(51,23-26); but in the same text, to the chapter 6, the same image of the yoke
is applied more expressly to the teaching of the same Wisdom: "introduce your
feet in his fetterses and the neck in his drawstrings. It lowers your shoulders
to load you her, not to bother you for his bonds. Finally you will get
your rest, you'll be happy"(Sir 6,24-25).
In the Gospel according to Matthew Gesù says:
"The
Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it;
for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now
one greater than Solomon is here"(Mt 12,42; also Luke 11,31).
Salomon expressed a Wisdom
received by God; we can think therefore that in Jesus is expressed a greater
Wisdom, the same Wisdom of God.
In another footstep of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says:
"Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town"(Mt 23,34).
The parallel passage of Luca is introduced, instead, in different way:
"Because of this,
God in his wisdom said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom
they will kill and others they will persecute"(Lk 11,49).
Then, Luke specifies the
Wisdom of God is Jesus himself that repeats words of the same Wisdom of God: "Yes,
I tell you, ... "(Lk 11,51).
In the Gospel of Matthew we read:
"The Son of Man came eating and drinking,
and they say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and
"sinners." But wisdom is proved right by her actions"(Mt 11,19).
you clearly understands that these works that make justice to the Wisdom are the
"works of Christ".
These texts depend on the same common source of Matthew
and Luke, probably. They don't affirm in explicit way that Jesus is the Wisdom,
they only suggest it .
But now we aks wether the Jesus, Master of wisdom, is the same Jesus
identified with the same Wisdom of God, as done describe in filigree in the
Gospel, is an attribute of the historical Jesus, that really existed two
thousand years ago? I think the answer be affirmative, and we now see
because.
To the origins of the Christian preaching, we find the missionary activity of
the preaching itinerantis of the Galilee, a movement born by the same preaching
of Jesus. Peter and the first disciples have followed the Teacher in Galilee and
they have accompanied him to Jerusalem (Mk 14,32-42.66-72); then, after the
capture of the their Teacher, they have returned to Galilee, where Jesus has
appeared them (Mc 14,28; 16,7), keeping on holding relationships with the other
groups of disciples remained in Jerusalem (Gal 1,19; Act 12,17) .
These Jew-Christian preachers has not lasted a lot, but they have produced a message assimilated by other tides of the primitive Christianity.
From this movement was born the source Q (German: Quelle). It picks up the Mottos of Jesus and the Gospel of Thomas, that it is apocryphal.
The source Q has a sapiential character and it was born, as written source, before the Gospels, and precisely in the environment of the direct listeners of Jesus. Listening to the preaching of Jesus, the authors of Q have understood and developed this Source Q, according to the schemes of the popular wisdom.
All the sapiential teachings of Jesus, his Mottos, parables, picked in the source Q, they have been elaborated therefore, at first orally, then in different editings, from the Itinerant preachings of Galilee and subsequently from other, not itinerant, Gelileans.
According to the majority of the researchers, in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke there is the source Q. It contains important teachings of Jesus like the Beatitudes and the prayer of "Our Father". Then, this sapiential characterization of Jesus, as it appears in the Gospel, it is typical of the source Q that, as I have said before, it could be antecedent to the Gospels, and therefore very near to the time of historical Jesus.
To go up again to the origin of the source Q to reconstruct its prehistory, allows us to arrive to an interesting discovery: the idea of Jesus Master of wisdom is broadly faithful to the historical Jesus.
J.S. Kloppenborg
individualizes a layer more native than it entirely picked up material
ethical-sapiential, left again in six unities (I: Lk 6,20b-49; II: 9,57-62;
10,2-11.16; III: 11,2-4.9-13; IV: 12,2-7.11-12; V: 12, 22b-31.33-34; VI: 13,24;
14,26-27; 17,33; 14,34-35), picked together according to the traditional model
of the "the wise man instructions".
According to the researchers the native order is reconstructed
better by Luke in comparison to Matthew.
The New Testament doesn't expressly identify never Jesus with the Wisdom, also attributing him very much of what the texts of the ancient Testament attributed to the wisdom. This happens because Jesus overcomes infinitely the Wisdom which you/they could know her/it the essays of the ancient Will; the Revelation of the New Will is at the same time in continuity and in breakup with that of the ancient Testament.
Only Jesus will subsequently be defined expressly Wisdom of God. This title has been long the whole course of Christian history.
TO THE DISCOVERY OF JESUS OF NAZARETH
