JESUS' TEACHIN REGARDING LOVE FOR ONE'S NEIGHBOUR

In our relationships with others we generally observe what might be designated the 'law of mutual interaction': Do as much for your neighbour as he makes the effort to do on your behalf; love him as much as he loves you. In the Jewish understanding of the law no more is expected of us than that. This is alluded to by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount:

    "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles . . . You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven . . . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Luke in his record of the sermon twice notes the emphasis on love for one's enemies:
    "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who illtreat you . . . Do to others as you would have them do to you . . . Love your enemies, do good to them . . . and you will be sons of the Most High" (Luke 6:27-35).
Many critics have claimed that Jesus could not have mentioned the words referring to the hatred of enemies, as no such injunction is found in the Old Testament or in the Jewish literature. The Manual of Discipline from the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, advises the Qumran community members to "love all that God has chosen and hate all that He has rejected", and also to "hate all the children of darkness".19 It is thought nowadays that Jesus was referring to the Essenes, who were his contemporaries.

Love for one's enemies is, however, contained in the OT ordinances. In Exodus 23:4-5 we read:

    "If you come across your enemy's ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help him with it."
And Prov. 25:21-2 teaches:
    "If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head . . .
The reference to "burning coals" would seem to indicate the beautiful eastern custom of giving a vessel containing coal to one's guest, which he would then carry home on his head to fire up his own stove with the warmth given him by his friend.

The attitude of love for one's enemies which Jesus displayed was further testimony to his being a genuine "Son of David". We read in 2 Sam. 19:6 how the commander of David's army, Joab, rebuked his master with the words, "You love those who hate you!" Love for one's enemies in the Old Testament, it must be conceded, makes only sporadic appearances.

The idea of loving one's neighbour in the Bible is founded upon the twice repeated injunction in Leviticus 19: "Love your neighbour as yourself" (vv 18 and 34). Jesus interpreted this as an active challenge: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Luke 6:31 and Matt. 7:12). In some modern translations attempts have been made to substitute "as much as you . . ." for "as you . . .", but the Bible is not speaking about measuring the amount of love, rather about its correct motivation.

There are two stories in the Talmud which touch upon the interpretation of this ordinance. A certain man of Gentile birth went first to R. Shammai, an exponent of the more rigorous line, and asked:

    "How many Torahs do you have?" "Two", Shammai replied, "the written and the oral Torah". "I believe," the Gentile remarked, "in the written Torah, but not in the oral. Make me a proselyte but teach me only the written Torah." Shammai rebuked him and sent him off. The same man went to R. Hillel, who took him as a proselyte and began to teach him the Torah. Another stranger came to Shammai and said to him, "Make me a proselyte and teach me the whole Torah as I stand here on one leg." Shammai drove him off with a builder's rod, for he was a builder by trade . . . The same foreigner came to Hillel, who accepted him as a proselyte and said to him, "Whatever you yourself hate, that do not do to your neighbour: in this is the whole Torah. The rest is but comment upon it. Go and take it as your guide!"20
Hillel, who lived a little before Jesus' time, recieved the appellation "the Meek" on account of his friendly approachability.

The Jerusalem Targum also says, "Do not do to your neighbour what you yourself hate," and in the Didache, the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles", we read:"What you do not wish done to yourself, you should on no account do to others" (I,2). This little guide to the teaching on baptism, written, it would appear, at the beginning of the second century and known to the church historian Eusebius, contains an issue which is of importance for our day: "Do not destroy the foetus, neither kill it after it has been born" (II 2).

The Rabbis' exegesis of the law generally aims at establishing the minimum expected from us by God, which is why love for our neighbour is seen from the negative point of view of "Thou shalt not!" Jesus taught an active, unreserved attitude: Do, Love, Give, Lend, Pray, Have mercy! Could it be that Jesus was familiar with the words of R. Hillel above, since the final cadence to his instructions is, "In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Mt 7:12)?

As the Messiah Jesus also gave the teamei Torah, a new impulse to its teaching. Twice in John's gospel we find a phrase which raises neighbourly love to the new level of the ideal. We read in 13:34: "A new commandment I give you: Love one another. AS I have loved you, so you must love one another," and in 15:12: "My command is this: Love each other AS I have loved you". This commandment to love one another is not actually new, but it is given a fresh impetus in following the example of Jesus: "as Jesus did"! Love is not self-seeking but makes the affairs of others its own. Love does not search for those who are on a par with it, but raises its object to equal status with itself. Jesus alone has realised the royal commandment of love in giving his life as a ransom for it.

Jesus' teaching on fasting and prayer

The whole of our religious life, according to the Sermon on the Mount, was to take effect naturally and without external display. Fasting, alms-giving and prayer can easily degenerate into mere outward observances in which nothing more than the person's own merit is displayed. Jesus said, "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen of them". "How can you believe if you accept praise from one another...?"

The Rabbis too spoke often against hypocrisy. R. Jeremiah Bar Abba (ca. AD 250-290) made it clear that, "There are four groups of men who cannot receive the Presence of God [the Shekhinah]: blasphemers, hypocrites, liars and slanderers."21 Rabbi Eleazar said, "He who practises righteousness in secret is greater than Moses."22 On the other hand reminders were given that "He who gives alms to the poor in public does so to his own disgrace".23 Every Christian too faces the danger of falling into duplicity and "eye-service". Once in a men's meeting in my younger days, when we had exchanged views for over an hour on "just where these Pharisees might actually be found", a distinguished member of our company stood up and said, "Phariseeism is never far from us. It resides in our own hearts!" These words left an indelible impression on my young mind.

Fasting in the Bible is represented as intrinsically good. King David fasted when pleading with God in his grief "for the child" who had fallen ill (2 Sam. 12:16). The friends and family of the sick sometimes fasted in this way (Ps. 35:13). The condition of the church can lead to it (Ps. 69:9-10, Dan. 9:3). The threat of war, drought and famine were all factors which made people fast. The Jews held compulsory fast days on the Great Day of Atonement and on the day of remembrance for the destruction of the Temple. The Pharisees fasted voluntarily twice in the week. Since Moses, according to tradition, had gone up into Mount Sinai on the fifth day of the week, Thursday, and come down on the second day, Monday, these days were chosen as optional fast days. The early Church, so we read in the Didache, fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays.

In Hebrew the words used for 'fasting' are either tsom, which means abstaining from food, or ta'anith, 'self-affliction'. Usually water is drunk when fasting. The Jews never fasted on the Sabbath as it signified for them a day of celebration given by God. Fasting makes us more sensitive to both good and evil. We can see this in, for example, the account of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. It nevertheless has its own blessings when it is combined with the word of God and with prayer. Jesus could even say of the healing of a difficult illness that, "this kind can come out only by prayer and fasting" (Mark 9:29).

Jesus also taught the principles of prayer in the Sermon on the Mount. Prayer was to be secret communion with God:

    "When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him . . . Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened" (Matt. 6:6-8 and 7:7-8).
Jesus'own prayer life was profound. He rose always "early in the morning", apparently at four or five o'clock, and went into the mountains to pray. Then, at the end of the day, he withdrew once more into solitude. He both began and ended his public ministry with a prayer struggle. In his Messianic office he continues at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us (Rom. 8:34 and Heb. 7:25).

The Jews traditionally stress that prayer should happen bekavanah, 'concentratedly'. The root behind this speaks of 'direction', kivun. When praying one directs his whole mind to encounter God. When alone, the orthodox Jew prays the "silent prayer". Public prayer, said aloud, is in principle only possible when there are at least 10 men present, the minyan. This number is based on Abraham's prayer for Sodom, which God had promised not to destroy "if there were ten righteous people there" (Gen. 18:22-32). Jesus established a new minyan, which is not limited to male participants, when he said, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I with them" (Matt. 18:20).

The Jewish background of the Lord's Prayer.

The beginning of the eleventh chapter of Luke tells us that the Lord's Prayer was a response to a request of the disciples. They said to Jesus, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." And thus the "Pater noster" was born, a prayer which might be considered Jesus' most precious bequeathal to his flock. The Jewish prayer literature does, it must be conceded, contain disjointed parallels to this prayer, but it nevertheless forms a whole which is without peer.

Former Chief Rabbi of Stockholm Gottlieb Klein wrote about the Jewish background to the prayer in two separate studies.24 In Klein's words, it has a Messianic feel to it . . . All the hopes and expectations of Jesus' ardent heart are cast in a unified substantial form in this prayer." It fulfils certain requirements characteristic of Jesus' own time for a prayer. Every prayer in that day had to comprise seven requests. On the other hand it had to be of a tripartite structure. Prayer always began with praise to God, the Shevah. To this were appended the individual's own pleas, the tephillah, and the prayer concluded with the giving of thanks, the hôdayah. Klein analyses the prayer as follows:

Shevah.

    1. Our Father, which art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name
    2. Thy kingdom come
    3. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Tephillah
    4. Give us this day our daily bread
    5. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors
    6. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
Hodayah
    7. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever. Amen.
Klein points out that in Jesus' time prayers always had to be offered in the plural. This also applied to the individual praying alone, and is presumably why Jesus taught us to say, "give us!" The petitioner identified himself with the needs of the congregation and the nation. Prayer was not to be the mere interpreter of the self. And how important this is! The Rabbinic literature differentiates between the phrases "our Father" and "my Father". Rabbi Abbaye, who lived in the 4th century, says that the individual should always identify himself with the congregation and recite, "May it be thy will, O God, our Lord, that you will lead us into peace . . ." RaSHI too insists, still in the Middle Ages, that the plural form should be used particularly in short prayers. The form of address, "Our Father, which art in heaven . . ." appears once in the Midrash25 and also once in the form "Thy Father, which is in heaven . . ."26 The Sidur prayer-book uses the form "Our Father" or "Our Father, our King". The blessing of God is nevertheless always personal. It is no mere coincidence that the Aaronic blessing was given to Israel in the singular: "The Lord bless thee and keep thee . . ." (Numbers 6:24-26).

In Klein's opinion the prayer taught by Jesus makes veiled reference to the belief in the resurrection:

    "There is an old teaching which says that, "The Holy One, may his name be exalted, will let the dead rise into this world, so that his great name will be sanctified. Therefore all should pray, 'Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come', because the resurrection will follow as the fulfilment of these prayers . . ." Here we have a Messianic prayer, which only Jesus in his time could have prayed. It is the most personal thing we own from Jesus. His longings and aspirations are immortalised in it, and the spirit which will realise that prayer has performed miracles in the hearts of men."

The Sidur prayer-book's Aramaic qaddish sections, which appear at many points throughout the book, resemble the shevah part of the Lord's prayer:

    "Magnified and sanctified be his great name in the world which he hath created according to his will. May he establish his kingdom in your life-time, and in your days, and in the life-time of all the house of Israel, speedily and at a near time; and say ye, Amen."
The congregation respond to the Rabbi's recitation with, "Let his great name be blessed for ever and ever, amen."

While discussing Klein's reference to the resurrection, it is worth noting the interpretation of the "Seal of the Midrash", Rabbi Tanhuma, of Genesis 12:1, "Leave your country . . . and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you":

    "'And I will bless you' means that 'I will bless you in my glory and will make your name great, so that your name will be great and blessed on the earth'. What does this mean? It means that first will be the blessing you receive and then mine: firstly we pronounce 'the shield of Abraham' and then 'the resurrection from the dead'."27
This refers to the Rabbinic exegetical principle that one should always begin with God's promise to Abraham and conclude with the resurrection. The phrase has an immediate point of contact with the weekday shaharith prayer, in which is said
    "Blessed art thou, O God, the shield of Abraham: thou, O Lord, art eternally strong, thou raisest the dead and art strong to save. Thou shakest the living with thy grace, raisest the dead in thy great mercy, givest strength to those who stumble, healest the sick, freest the prisoners and perfectest the trust of those who lie in the earth . . . thou art the king who bringeth down to the grave, maketh alive and maketh thy salvation to flourish."
I may mention further that the Yalqut Shimoni says of Abraham's blessing that it is the "language of redemption" and implies the future redemption of Israel.28 It is no wonder that Professor Klein saw in the Lord's prayer the Messianic theme and certain emphases relating to the resurrection belief.

The Lord's Prayer contains a detail of which the significance and origin have been questioned. We ask that God will not "lead us into temptation", but will "deliver us from evil". These words are from an ancient prayer form which is still in use in the Sidur prayer-book. Early in the morning, the orthodox Jew prays:

    "Lead us not into sin, nor into transgression or evil; lead us not into temptation or into shame. Let not any inclination to evil have dominion over us . . . but join us to good inclinations."
In the Lord's prayer Jesus' concern was that his disciples should make forgiveness their daily portion and would be shielded from evil. This is also evident in his high-priestly prayer in John 17: "My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one."

The Lord's prayer reflects the same childlike carefree quality which Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount. It was he who said, "Do not worry about tomorrow". . ."do not worry about your life". . ."Why do you worry about clothes?" (Matt. 6:25, 28, 34). Now his disciples were learning to ask, "Give us this day our daily bread". The guilt of yesterday and the cares of tomorrow can step aside, for he who is God's lives on the reality of this day. Perhaps it was this "one day gospel" which became clear to a certain businessman, making him have the words of Psalm 118:24 put on the wall of his office: "This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."
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19.    The Manual of Discipline, I 4 and 10.
20.    Shabbath 31a.
21.    Sutta 42a.
22.    Baba Bathra 9b.
23.    Hagiga 5a.
24.    Gottlieb Klein, Är Jesus en historisk personlighet, pp38-39, and Fader vår, ett bidrag till kännedom om urkristendomen.
25.    Yoma 8:9
26.    Sutta 9:15
27.    Tanhuma, par, "lech lechah" 4.
28.    Yalqut Shimoni, "lech lechah" 64.


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