Andy Angel,The Jesus You Really Didn’t Know: Rediscovering the Teaching Ministry of Jesus

Once again, Andy Angel has produced a thoughtful, challenging and accessible book designed mostly for a lay audience. It is grounded in thorough scholarship and tackles the highly unfashionable topic of judgement in the teaching of Jesus. Angel points to popular authors such as Rob Bell who recognize the idea of reward and punishment in the Gospels, but move swiftly to minimize this by emphasizing a theology of love over condemnation. Angel has little difficulty in demonstrating that this is a serious distortion of the evidence: Matthew’s Jesus, at least, expected sinners to change – to repent and live in simple obedience to his teaching.

This leads Angel into a discussion about the role of the Torah in Jesus’ teaching. Angel argues persuasively that Matthew’s Jesus never breaks the Law, nor does he teach others to do so. The evidence in this Gospel is clear: the disputes with the Pharisees are about issues of interpretation not substance – the commandments stand, and Jesus expects his followers to keep them.

Angel allows only one qualification. Placing considerable weight on Matthew 5.17–20, he argues that Jesus placed a time limit on laws relating to temple worship. These laws will fall away when ‘heaven and earth pass away’, which, for Angel, is a metaphorical reference to the destruction of the Temple in 70 ce. At that point, the temple rules effectively became redundant, while the rest of the Law remained intact. This ‘yoke’ is not ‘easy’, as many interpreters suggest, but ‘comfortable’ in the sense that Jesus promises to be ‘God with us’, encouraging and supporting followers to obey the Torah. Gently but firmly, Angel spells out his conclusion: Christians are ultimately accountable to a God who expects humble submission to all of Jesus’ teaching, however counter-cultural this may seem in a sceptical age that values personal autonomy and reassuring therapy over disturbing condemnation.

There is no doubt that Angel is absolutely right about much of this. But nonetheless there are clear weaknesses in the argument he constructs. First, Angel almost casually dismisses historical Jesus questions: how much of this emphasis on judgement is Matthew rather than Jesus? Angel is entirely upfront about his preference for assuming that Matthew gives an accurate, undistorted account of Jesus’ teaching, but others might want to consider this more carefully. At no point does Angel even discuss the possibility that Matthew is re-Judaizing Christianity precisely because he thinks Jewish elements in Christianity have been neglected. Yet, as Ed Sanders pointed out years ago, if Jesus were simply a teacher of repentance and submission to the Law, he would have been applauded, not condemned.

Second, although the issue of the relationship between Matthew and Paul is treated more seriously in a final appendix, many will consider this is too little too late. To be fair, Angel acknowledges that his thinking is still ‘work in progress’ as he tries to reconcile conflicting views. This, however, may be the problem: Angel simply assumes that Paul and Matthew must agree about the Law, even though it is sometimes difficult to see how. Perhaps the answer is that they do not agree, as Paul presents a more radical alternative and Matthew bravely tries to pull Christianity back into line with mainstream first-century Judaism(s).

There is no doubt that this is a significant book that needs to be taken seriously: however unfashionable, judgement, reward and punishment are inescapably woven into the gospel. But that may not be the end of the argument, and perhaps a more rigorous challenge of some of the underlying assumptions in this book would help balance the discussion a little more fully.