Luke and the Jewish Religion

Introduction

The assignment for this essay—Luke and the Jewish Religion—requires opening definitions, for both “Luke” and “Jewish Religion” have multiple connotations. “Luke” could refer to the Gospel proper in terms of narrative presentation, the Gospel plus Acts, or the Gospel narrator understood in terms of identity (Gentile, proselyte, God-fearer, Jewish) and intended audience (Jewish, corpus mixtum, primarily Gentile; late first century and facing challenges of Jewish–Christian relations; early second century and facing concerns with incipient Marcionism, etc.). Debates continue unabated on the relationship between the Gospel and Acts: Was the second volume written to correct the first? Did the singular author intend the two volumes to stand independently? Do the volumes address different audiences in different social contexts? ¹ I shall therefore address only the Gospel text. Rather than engage in the (often unacknowledged) circular argument, wherein we read a text, identify author and audience on the basis of our reading, and then interpret the text on the basis of this reconstruction, my focus will be primarily on the narrative itself.

“Religion” is also difficult to define, despite the proliferation of critical-theoretical discussions in the circles of the American Academy of Religion. The reified popular definition—e.g., “a set of variously organized beliefs about the relationship between natural and supernatural aspects of reality, and the role of humans in this relationship” ² —foregrounds belief and thus follows the Christian default wherein “belief” is primary. For other “religions” (again, an artificial category), orthodoxy takes second place to ritual or orthopraxy. Alternatively, “religion” can be explored via attention to what constitutes sin and righteousness. ³

The problems in defining “Jewish religion” provide a good test case for what constitutes “religion.” ⁴ Jews never settled down to a self-definition based on belief; Jews have always been more than an “ism.” In antiquity, Jews saw themselves, generally, as united by a common homeland, ancestry, and history, and by a set of distinctive practices (e.g., circumcision, centralized worship in Jerusalem, Sabbath and festival observances, dietary requirements). However, two factors complicate this focus. First, a proselyte (cf. Acts 2:11; 6:5) becomes a “Jew,” at least in terms of community recognition. Second, Jews who ignored or eschewed these indicators were still Jews.

The term today translated “Judaism,” Ioudaismos, first appears in 2 Macc 14:37, where it describes Razis, the “father of the Jews/Judeans” (patēr tōn Ioudaiōn) who “had been convicted of Judaism [Ioudaismos], and he had, with all earnestness, cast aside body and life [sōma kai psychē] on behalf of Judaism [Ioudaismos].” The term functions as the counter to what the Hellenists were promoting, Hellenism (Hellēnismos), as 2 Macc 4:13 suggests. “Hellenism” carries the primary connotation of a “culture” rather than a “religion”; again, the definitional problem arises. Both “religion” and “culture” include behaviors, worldviews, sacred time and space, a sense of internal identity and distinction from the “other” (a relatively new favorite religious studies term). Yet the connotations are still different. I suspect one is more apt to die for one’s religion than for one’s culture (cultural martyrs don’t get grant funding; religious martyrs don’t get to live). Culture may or may not include issues of worship; religion usually does.

Such ethnicity-oriented cultural interests in part prompt the fondness in some circles for translating the New Testament’s references to the Ioudaioi not as “Jews” but as “Judeans.” ⁵ This may be an appropriate move for three instances where Luke uses the term: all three are from Roman speakers (Pilate [23:3], his soldiers [23:37], and the titulus on the cross [23:38]). With this translation, it is “Judean” elders (presbyterous tōn Ioudaiōn) who seek a healing for the centurion’s slave (7:3), despite the setting in Capernaum, which is in Galilee. Joseph of Arimathea is from a “Judean” city (poleōs tōn Ioudaiōn, 23:51); Luke’s notice is the only information we have for the location. “Judean” can refer to all people who recognize Judea as their homeland, or it can have the narrower connotation of an area distinct from Galilee and Samaria.

The translation “Judean,” though plausible, minimizes what today we think of as “religion,” that is, the practices and beliefs for which Razis and his fellow “Jews” died. For today’s readers, the term “Judean” breaks any link between Jews at the time of Jesus and Jews subsequently. I would not want to erase the connections between people called “Christians” in Acts 11:26 (cf. 26:28; 2 Pet 4:16) and folks in churches today, despite the differences that have obtained between the first century and the twenty-first. I would want Jewish history to be treated with the same respect. Further, I doubt we would be as interested in Luke’s view of the “Jewish religion” (a topic much more popular than the New Testament’s views of pagan religion or Samaritan religion) were we not heirs of the past two-thousand years of what is called “Jewish–Christian relations.”

For this essay, “Jewish religion” will mean those beliefs and practices that marked Jews as Jews, and that distinguished them from either Samaritans or various forms of Gentile worship. It takes as its categories those the academic study of religion foregrounds: sacred space (Jerusalem, temple, pilgrimage, synagogues) and sacred time (Sabbath, holy days, cosmogony/eschatology) and Scripture, myth (covenant, ideal kingship) and ritual (temple, priesthood, prayer, circumcision, purity, diet), theology, and ethics.

Further, the focus will be less on what we know of Jewish practice and belief—either in relation to Jesus (the late twenties and early thirties c.e. in Judea and Galilee) or in relation to the authorship of the Gospel (the end of the first or beginning of the second century, someplace likely outside the land of Israel)—than on how the narrative constructs these beliefs and practices. Thus, this article complements the others in this collection that address how Luke’s narrative creates a world, whether spatially, intellectually, or imperially.

Finally, determining Luke’s view of the “Jewish religion” means not equating “Judaism” with the religion of “Israel” as determined by the Tanakh or the Septuagint.

One can claim to love “Judaism” because one loves what the church came to call the “Old Testament,” but that would be tantamount to claiming one loves “Roman Catholicism” or the “Baptist Church” because one loves “1 Corinthians.” Judaism is not Leviticus or the Psalms or any of the other books that comprised what most Jews regarded as “Scripture” at the end of the first century c.e.; rather, “Judaism” is the interpretation of those Scriptures as understood by those who considered themselves “Jews” (Ioudaioi), or, if one must, “Judeans.”

Luke’s View of Jewish Religion

Lloyd C. Gaston proclaims Luke–Acts to be “one of the most pro-Jewish and one of the most anti-Jewish writings in the New Testament.” ⁶ The debate is not going to be settled. ⁷ Nor can the debate be separated from apologetic agendas. François Bovon suggested that attention to the role of Torah in the Third Gospel is an outgrowth of “the more general debate around the relationship of Judaism and Christianity after the Holocaust.” ⁸ Some scholars propose to exculpate the Gospel from its anti-Jewish interpretation; others seek to condemn it. My own less-than-optimistic view of Luke’s assessment of the Jewish religion may be a consequence of my being Jewish. Then again, one can be subjective and right.

Joel Green suggests that “[t]he religion of Israel—its institutions, practices, and so on—is to be embraced fully when understood vis-à-vis the redemptive purpose of God,” and that “Israel’s religion must cohere with the purpose of God as articulated by God’s own authorized interpretive and redemptive agent, God’s son, Jesus of Nazareth.” ⁹ For Luke, the Jewish religion, which is distinct from the “religion of Israel,” does not follow this “authorized interpretive and redemptive agent” and so is illegitimate.

Michael Cook argues that Luke casts “Christianity as the direct perpetuation of authentic Judaism” and thus “Luke has driven a wedge between ‘Judaism’ and the ‘Jews.’” ¹⁰ His point should be nuanced. Luke separates “Judaism” or “the Jewish religion” from Israel’s Scriptures, history, and ritual. Thus, Luke less separates Jews from Judaism than brackets Jews and Judaism on one side of (salvation) history and Jesus and his proto-Christian followers on the other. Luke’s opening chapters display appreciation for the “Jewish religion,” but as the story progresses, the appreciation becomes tempered, selective, and ultimately co-opting. Not only the Jewish people who refuse to follow Jesus, but also those religious markers that define Judaism as distinct from post-Nicene Christianity or even late-first-century followers of Jesus, are for Luke best left in the past.

Jerusalem and the Temple (Sacred Space)

Luke–Acts begins by depicting the land of Israel, Jerusalem, and the temple as replete with righteous Jews, whose piety stands over and against Rome, the site of profane power. A priest and his wife, “righteous before God,” live “blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord” (1:6). These evocations of the Septuagint in style and characterization represent for Luke what was ideal Israel, but what is no longer.

In these earlier chapters Jerusalem is the “city of David” (2:11); Luke emphasizes Joseph’s membership in “the house of David” and so indicates that Jesus is David’s heir (1:27; cf. 1:32, 69; 2:4; 3:31). “Living in Jerusalem” and frequenting the temple is Simeon, “righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him” (2:25).

It’s all good. ¹¹ It is also a lovely memory of a time that is no more. Following the nativity material in the first two chapters, the sacred quality of Israel, Jerusalem, and the temple is gradually eroded. Once readers encounter this erosion, they will find, when they return to the infancy material, subtle critiques throughout.

The temple is the site of initial revelation, but it is also the place where the priest is struck mute (1:8–20). The temple and its priesthood, in effect, have nothing more to say. Zechariah’s ritual duties will transfer to his son, John the Baptist. The crowds will no longer come to the temple; it is instead at the shore that “all the people and the tax collectors justified God, having been baptized with the baptism of John” (7:29). The Pharisees and the lawyers, those concerned with how Jewish “religion” is to be practiced (according to Luke), “rejected the purpose of God for themselves” because they had refused to be baptized by John (7:30). ¹²

Simeon, the righteous one in the temple, is now ready to die. His generation will not be repeated. Accompanying him is the prophet Anna, who “never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day” (2:37). She forms one part of a narrative frame together with the one fully righteous person the adult Jesus encounters in the temple: the widow who puts her “whole life” (panta ton bion) into the temple treasury (21:4). The two women, both apparently childless, symbolize the fate of the institution: there will be no next generation to continue temple piety. This generation of those who practice Judaism are the very ones who will suffer from “the blood of all the prophets” (11:50–51; see also 12:56; 17:20–37; 19:41–48).

Anna’s prayer signals yet another shift away from Jewish religious practice. Geir Otto Holmås correctly observes, “Apart from Lk. 1–2, none of the many prayer scenes in Luke-Acts shows Jews outside the Jesus movement in prayer.” ¹³ Christian-identified worship once again coopts, fulfills, or replaces Jewish religious practice.

The doom of both Jerusalem and the temple is anticipated not only in the infancy materials but also by the Temptation. The devil offers Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world” were Jesus to worship him (4:5–6). There is no reason to presume the offer is not bona fide. Thus, when in the third temptation the devil takes Jesus to Jerusalem and tempts him on the pinnacle of the temple (4:9–11), readers should conclude that the devil controls both city and temple as well. ¹⁴

Jerusalem may be the “holy city” for Matthew, who uses the phrase in the Temptation scene (4:5; cf. 27:53), but it is not for Luke. It is rather just the place where prophets are killed (Luke 13:34), from the ancestors to Jesus (and in Acts extending to the time of James [12:2]). The old days of pilgrimage and promise are ended. Jesus returns to the temple not to worship there, but to clean it out (Luke 19:45–46), condemn it, and for a week occupy it. Luke complements the negative view of the temple by noting that Judas’ confidants (22:4) include “the chief priests and officers of the temple” (stratēgous tou hierou; 22:52; also Acts 4:1; 5:24, 26).

Luke retains the detail of the torn temple curtain (Luke 23:45) but changes the timing. In the Gospel of Mark, the tearing of the curtain follows Jesus’ death (Mark 15:38). In Luke, it immediately precedes Jesus’ handing over his spirit (23:46). Dennis Sylva, appealing to parallels between the death of Jesus and that of Stephen, sensibly reads the repositioning as an indication that “Jesus’ commitment of his spirit is an address to the God revealed to him by the tearing of the temple curtain, as Stephen’s commitment of his spirit is an address to the Lord revealed by the opening of the heavens.” ¹⁵ For this reading to hold, the divine presence must remain in the temple. However, it does not stay there. Luke predicts its departure: “Behold, your house is forsaken” (13:35). The city is doomed. As Jesus states in response to the comment about the beauty of the temple and the “gifts dedicated to God” (21:5): “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down” (21:6; cf. 21:20–24).

One can regard the various predictions of Jerusalem’s destruction (13:33–35; 21:20–24; 23:27–31) as “pathetic, not vindictive,” ¹⁶ and Jesus does weep over Jerusalem (19:41–44), but the result is the same. The last lines of the Gospel state that Jesus’ followers “returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God” (24:52–53), but this setting is at best a stopgap measure. Their new location is not Jerusalem but the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8; cf. Luke 24:47). The Gospel hints at what Acts displays: the Jerusalem community eventually disappears, so that no one is left to support Paul; churches are formed outside the land of Israel and thus fully detached from the sacred space of the “Jewish religion.” Further, it is only Jesus’ followers who are found blessing God in the temple. “When Luke in the Gospel’s concluding scene again depicts the temple as a place of prayer, he focuses narrowly on those for whom Jesus’ true identity has been made known and by whom he has been recognized.” ¹⁷

The site of sanctity has increasingly moved away from the temple, as a second reading of Luke made with attention to geography demonstrates. The pious Jews Zechariah and Elizabeth are from the hill country of Judea, not the city. Jesus’ natal family is from Nazareth, and he is born in Bethlehem. Michael Fuller points out that in Mary’s Magnificat, the “promise to Abraham … is carefully described in terms of descendants, and nothing is said regarding inheritance of the land, the primary emphasis in the OT version of the Abrahamic covenant (e.g., Gen 17:8).” ¹⁸ The righteous Anna is not from Jerusalem but is of the tribe of Asher (Luke 2:36), whose land allotment is in the north. The person who buries Jesus is not from Jerusalem but from Arimathea (23:51); Jesus’ ascension takes place not in Jerusalem, but in Bethany (24:50).

That the ascension scene echoes Sir 50:2–21 ¹⁹ confirms the conclusion that by the end of the Gospel narrative the temple and Jerusalem are defunct. Jesus, the new religious leader, the new high priest, has replaced the temple institution with his new rituals of baptism and Eucharist. His followers will replace Jerusalem with the cities of their mission.

The one outlying story of the temple as a viable religious institution appears in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (18:9–14). Perhaps, in an earlier version of the parable, both Pharisee and tax collector are justified, with the tax collector tapping into the merits of the Pharisee. ²⁰ For Luke, however, that the temple is the site of the tax collector’s reconciliation is incidental. The tax collector is the one justified; the Pharisee is not. Luke secures the Pharisee’s negative portrayal by appending to the parable the floating line “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted” (18:14b; cf. 14:11).

From Circumcision to Baptism

As they affirm the sacred space of Jewish tradition, the infancy materials also affirm Jewish orthopraxy. Luke 2:21 notes that “[a]fter eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child….” Mary and Joseph then “present” Jesus for “their purification according to the law of Moses…. (as it is written in the law of the Lord, ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’)” (2:22–23; cf. Exod 13:13–14; 34:19). ²¹ Mary and Joseph “offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, ‘a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons’” (Luke 2:24; cf. Lev 12:8). This dedication to temple observance and adherence to Torah continues, for “every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover” (Luke 2:41).

These lovely rituals will not be repeated. The last person circumcised in the Gospel is Jesus himself. ²² Luke shifts emphasis away from circumcision, purity, and Sabbath observance in favor of a concern for broad-based moral behavior and a particular concern for voluntary poverty. ²³ The important marker for Luke becomes baptism, because it separates those who “acknowledge the justice of God” from those who do not (7:29); that marker is from heaven, although the “chief priests and the scribes” refuse to acknowledge its origins (20:4–7).

The shift in initiation ritual from circumcision to baptism comports well with Luke’s interest in shifting focus from Jews, whether defined by geography (Judean origins with a connection to the land of Israel) or by descent from Abraham, to a non-Jewish (Samaritan, Gentile) and ultimately Christian covenantal people. Jesus’ genealogy contains Abraham (3:34), but it extends to Adam (3:38) and so erases the focus on the Jewish people “according to the flesh.” This relativizing of the Jewish people also entails the relativizing of the Jewish religion. Luke then confirms an erasure of the Jewish people with the Baptist’s pronouncement: “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (3:8). The children of Abraham in the Gospel of course turn out to be (only) those who are rescued by Jesus (13:16; 19:9).

Scriptural Interpretation, Sacerdotal Roles, Halakhah, and Heilsgeschichte

The Torah is holy, and Jesus does not violate it, but what remains of it for Luke is moral discourse, not practice that would distinguish the Jewish “religion” from that of, say, Presbyterians or Baptists. According to Luke, Jesus is the only Jew who fully understands Torah. The scene of the twelve-year-old in the temple foreshadows this mastery. Mary and Joseph find Jesus sitting in the temple “among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (2:46). Jesus will again be found sitting in the temple, but then he is not among the teachers; instead, he is the teacher, as the title didaskale, accorded him in the temple, indicates (21:7), and as Luke describes: “Every day he was teaching in the temple.… And all the people would get up early in the morning to listen to him in the temple” (21:37–38).

The earlier “teachers” morph into priests and elders, and it is they who ask Jesus questions. Their intent is not to learn; rather, while Jesus is teaching in the temple, “[t]he chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him” (19:47). According to Luke 2:47, “all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers,” and this remains the case for Jesus’ audience during his last week (19:48). But the former teachers are now silent, unable to respond to his questions (20:7, 26, 40).

In like manner, the first righteous priest, Zechariah, whose fidelity is already compromised by his doubts (1:20), finds his counterpart in the priest (and fellow Levite) who fails to aid the wounded traveler on the Jericho road in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (10:31). Contrary to many studies, the rationale is not observance of purity laws: Luke provides the priest and Levite no excuse. When Luke has concern for halakhic observance, the foils are invariably not priests but scribes, lawyers, and Pharisees. The point in the parable is more generally the failure of the priest and the Levite to display fidelity to Lev 19:18 (“You shall love your neighbor as yourself”). ²⁴ The remainder of the Gospel limits the priesthood to Caiaphas and his cronies. In the passion narrative, no priest performs ritual duties, and “almost no attention is given to the religious function of the temple beyond the stated ideal that it is to be a house of prayer.” ²⁵

Regarding scriptural authority, Luke’s Jesus insists, “it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one stroke of a letter in the law to be dropped” (16:17). However, the context of the statement mitigates the value of Torah. Immediately prior to this assertion, Jesus contrasts the “law and the prophets [that] were in effect until John [the Baptist] came” with “the good news of the kingdom” (v. 16). Immediately following, Jesus annuls the possibility of divorce; thus Jesus not only interprets the text, he revokes one of its halakhic possibilities: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (16:18; contrast Deut 24:1–3).

Further removing Jewish Torah from practical import is the next pericope, the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31). Abraham advises the rich man that his brothers “have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them” (16:29). But the rich man, who had apparently not spent much time attending to Scripture’s repeated mandates to care for the poor, dismisses the text in favor of an appearance from the dead. Abraham responds, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (16:31).

The rich man’s brothers are not alone among Jews, and others, who have the text but either do not follow it or do not understand its meaning. The first scriptural debate in the Gospel is between Jesus and the devil (4:1–13). The devil knows the texts, but only Jesus both understands them and practices them as they should be practiced. With this scene, Luke establishes a trope: whoever challenges Jesus on scriptural interpretation is on the side of the devil. The key term is “tempt” or “test” (peirazomenos, 4:2; ouk ekpeiraseis kyrion ton theon sou, 4:11; panta peirasmon, 4:13).

The trope plays out in the run-up to the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The lawyer seeks to “test” (ekpeirazōn) Jesus, and thus steps into the devil’s role. Of course the lawyer will cite Scripture, and of course he will misuse it. Luke 10:27 places on the lips of a lawyer what in Matthew (22:37–39) and Mark (12:30–31) form Jesus’ “greatest commandment”: Deut 6:5 on loving God and Lev 19:18 on loving neighbor. The lawyer, who asks Jesus “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), obviously misses the import of the commandments. Ironically, his question, in the context of Second Temple Judaism, makes sense. Leviticus 19:34 goes on to mandate “you shall love the stranger” (see also Deut 10:19) and thus draws a distinction between neighbor and resident alien. However, for Luke’s narrative, the neighbor/alien distinction is obviated and the lawyer’s question illegitimate. ²⁶

Jesus debates Sabbath practice (e.g., Luke 14:3–6), but as for his engaging in Sabbath “rest,” Luke makes no mention. Rather than rest, Jesus spends his Sabbaths in the business of healing (e.g., 4:39; 6:6–11; 13:10–17). Ironically, the local Jewish communities do engage this Sabbath rest: “As the sun was setting” (that is, when the Sabbath had ended), “all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them” (4:40). One might conclude that they should have come earlier, and that their fidelity to the Sabbath delayed the manifestation of Jesus’ restorative powers.

Jesus’ adherence to Torah continues into the passion narrative, where he “does not confess his Messiahship, there is no charge of blasphemy, and there is no decision of condemnation…. Luke is anxious to show Jesus’ innocence to the extent that he cannot even be charged with any violation of the Torah let alone be guilty of the charge.” ²⁷ On the other hand (literally), Jesus does not observe those rituals that, for Luke, mark at least some Jewish religious practice: he does not have his disciples fast (5:33); to the amazement of the Pharisees, he does not wash his hands before he eats (11:38); he approves of his disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath (6:1–5), despite the Pharisees’ assertion that what they are doing “is not lawful” (v. 2). For Luke, their version of the “religion of Judaism” is not to be followed.

By the end of the Gospel, it is only Jesus and his followers who attend to the Scriptures, and only they have the key to understanding them. Jesus, raised in a house filled with Torah-piety (2:22–24, 27, 39), shows his mastery of Torah in his vanquishing of Satan. He understands, while the lawyer does not, the meaning of Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18. He quotes Torah to a ruler, “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother’” (Luke 18:20).

Like their Lord, the women followers are the only Jews who correctly follow the Torah. They rest on the Sabbath “according to the commandment” (23:56) before they come to the tomb. And like their Lord, the two on the road to Emmaus will have the correct understanding of the full meaning of Scripture (24:25–27, 32). That resurrection scene and the ensuing one demonstrate that Torah’s ultimate function is not to teach halakhah. Rather, it is to testify to Jesus’ life and death and the mission in his name: “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem’” (24:45–47).

Whatever practice, theology, ritual, salvation history, or hermeneutic is available must, for Luke, culminate in Jesus. If it does not, it is incomplete or illegitimate.

From Synagogue to Anywhere Else

The opening synagogue scene finds Jesus, in accord with his regular practice (kata to eiōthos autō, 4:16; cf. v. 15), participating in Jewish religious practice. Luke introduces the synagogue as the site primarily for Torah reading. For Luke, Jewish religious life is both synagogue- and temple-based. Yet for Luke, neither base will, or should, endure. The synagogue becomes identified not as the locus of Torah and sanctity, but as the site of violence and rejection. Thus the synagōgos (“place of gathering together”) comes to signal the place where “Jews” “gather together” principally to reject Jesus.

The people in the Nazareth synagogue reject Jesus because he rejects them. First, he insists that they want a show of mighty works like the ones he did in Capernaum (4:23). Then he adduces Elijah and Elisha, not simply to show the extension of healing to Gentiles, but more, to show that no one in Israel received those benefits: “[T]here were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah” who were not fed; “[t]here were also many people with leprosy in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed” (4:25–27 NRSV, adapted).

Despite these details, readers consistently insist that the Jews rejected Jesus because he spoke of extending messianic blessings to the Gentiles. Common is the understanding that Luke 4 is a “prophetic challenge to first-century Jewish assumptions regarding election,” namely, that the “religiously upright assumed that not only would the Gentiles be cast out, but their apparently less devoted fellow Jews would be excluded as well.” ²⁸ With such generalizations, readers get the impression that the vast majority of Jews were ancient versions of hard-core Christian fundamentalists. This is at best an ungenerous picture of Jewish tradition.

Aside from the stories of righteous Gentiles, from the widow and Naaman back to Rahab and Ruth and forward to Achior and Helena of Adiabene, which were well known to Jews historically, Luke’s own story-world belies this view of Jewish xenophobia. The Gentile centurion of 7:1–10 is hardly condemned by the “religiously upright” elders who plead on his behalf. The election of Israel does not mean the damnation of the Gentiles. However, in Luke 4 Jesus’ sermon intimates that it will be the “many [Jewish] widows” and “many [Jewish] people with leprosy” in Nazareth (4:25, 27) who will see no eschatological blessings.

Luke reports that “all in the synagogue were filled with rage” (eplēsthēsan pantes thymou en tē synagōgē). “They got up, drove [Jesus] out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff” (4:28–29). Jeffrey Siker observes, “God’s ‘country’ (patris) to whom the ‘acceptable year of the Lord’ applies is not, for Luke, exclusively the Jews but includes the Gentiles.” ²⁹ I’d go farther: the locus of sanctity for Luke is not the synagogue of Nazareth, and not even the land of Israel; it will be in Gentile lands, anticipated by Zarephath and Syria (4:25–27; cf. 1 Kgs 17 and 2 Kgs 5). The divine patris, the new “fatherland,” anticipates the elimination of Jews as a distinct people among the followers of Jesus, and so the elimination of the “Jewish religion” as viable or approved.

From this initial equation of the synagogue as a place of rejection and violence, the rest of the synagogue scenes in Luke add up to the same sum. Luke 6:6 notes that Jesus taught in the synagogue where he healed a man with a withered hand. The result: “they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus” (6:11). The healing of the bent-over woman in 13:10–17 has a better result, with the “entire crowd” (pas ho ochlos) “rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing” (v. 17). Yet even here, the term “synagogue” is associated not with the people, but with the “synagogue ruler” (archisynagōgos) who rejects Jesus’ healing. After this scene, every reference to synagogues in Luke’s Gospel is negative. Without Jesus, the synagogue has nothing to offer. Jesus condemns the Pharisees for loving the seats of honor in synagogues (11:43). He cautions against the scribes who seek the same seating assignments (20:46). He warns his followers that they will be brought “before the synagogues” (12:11) and “handed over to synagogues and prisons” (21:12).

Conclusion

For Luke’s Gospel, the “Jewish religion” consists of a bankrupt and soon to be defunct temple, synagogues of violence, leaders who pervert the tradition, and halakhic practices that lack scriptural warrant or that prove either misguided or irrelevant. The Jewish religion, and the Jews who subscribe to this tradition through ethnic identification, practice, or belief, are both rejected. Scripture remains of value, but only as Jesus interprets it; Torah remains practiced, but only Jesus’ followers do so correctly.

That Luke sees nothing left of, or for, the Jewish religion should not preclude Luke’s readers from finding ongoing value in Judaism. In Luke’s time, the religion of the Jews was a potential rival, either for converts or, more likely, as a challenge to the truth claims of the church. Today this need not be the case. In like manner, Jews today may not only find much in Christianity to appreciate, but also much that is familiar. Because religion need not be a zero-sum game, both Jews and Christians can each find meaning, or inspiration, or profundity in the practices and beliefs of the other.

Were we to read with sensitivity to the other, we might be more cautious in our interpretations of Luke’s Gospel. Many Christian readers today conclude, on the basis of Luke 4, that Jews and Judaism are both xenophobic and that Jesus invented universalism. This view ignores the numerous positive comments about Gentiles in the Scriptures of Israel, which are also the Scriptures of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries. It ignores the Noahide commandments, the God-fearers in the synagogues, the Gentiles in the temple, and the proselytes to Judaism. It also ignores Luke 7:1–10.

Many Christian readers associate Judaism with the Pharisees and regard Pharisees as retainers whose service of the elites contributed to the economic exploitation of most of the population. Thus they conclude that Jews and Judaism are synonymous with economic exploitation. ³⁰ That Luke accuses the Pharisees of being “lovers of money” (16:14) reinforces such a conclusion.

As Neale correctly points out, “The Gospel representation of the Pharisees as the rigid purveyors of halakhic Judaism, unable to appreciate the haggadic wisdom of Jesus, obscures the complexity of ancient Judaism as a living, functioning way of life.” ³¹ Not only the history of ancient Judaism, but the New Testament itself belies these stereotypes. The view of Pharisees as retainers does not clearly surface in Luke, or in other texts for that matter: the Pharisees do not work for Caiaphas or Pilate. They are more voluntary society than middle-men; they are artisans (e.g., Paul, who worked leather), not tenured academics. Josephus, no fan of the Pharisees, speaks of their aversion to luxury (Antiquities 18.12). To restrict Jews or the Jewish religion to a stereotyped “Pharisaism” is to bear false witness against both people and tradition. As for the stereotype of Jews as serving mammon: consider Deuteronomy and Amos, or the Rabbinic equating of righteousness and the care for the poor (Hebrew: tzedakah), or Jews’ over-representation in the United States in terms of philanthropic giving. All speak to the contrary. (The sad thing is that corrections of stereotypes still need to be made.)

With opening scenes of sentimental piety, Luke lulls readers into a sense of respect for what might be called “the Jewish religion.” But the reader reads on in the Gospel, where the good news of Jesus becomes bad news for any Jewish religion. Perhaps readers of Luke might at some point be able to see both Pharisee and tax collector—both those who follow Jesus and those Jews who, true to their own understanding of Jewish religion, follow the lead of other teachers—as justified. Surely divine mercy is broader than at least this reading of the Third Gospel suggests.