The Suffering Christ

The theology of the suffering of the Messiah was an after-the-fact apologetic response to explain the suffering and ignominy Jesus suffered, since he was deemed by “Christians” to be the Messiah.

This commonplace view has to be rejected completely. The notion of the humiliated and suffering Messiah was not at all alien within Judaism before Jesus’ advent, and it remained current among Jews well into the future following that – indeed, well into the early modern period.

The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ, by Daniel Boyarin

This image of Jesus on the cross is the defining image for Christianity, and an image that many see as the dividing image between Christians and Jews – the image that the Messiah would suffer and die. Christians saw that this must be so; the Jews saw it as scandal. At least this is the commonly held notion.

In order to explain away this notion that the Messiah would suffer and die, it is claimed that Christian apologists reinterpreted Isaiah 53 – a passage not referring, as more recently claimed, to the persecuted people of Israel, but to the suffering Messiah.

…many Jewish authorities, maybe even most, until nearly the modern period have read Isaiah 53 as being about the Messiah; until the last few centuries, the allegorical reading was a minority position.

Other than one very important, but absolutely unique, notice in Origen’s Contra Celsum, there is no evidence at all that late ancient Jews read Isaiah 53 as referring to Israel. There are several attestations, however, of ancient rabbinic texts which refer to the suffering of the Messiah; Boyarin notes several of these.

If these verses do indeed refer to the Messiah, they clearly predict his suffering and death to atone for the sins of humans, but the Jews allegedly always interpreted these verses as referring to the suffering of Israel herself and not the Messiah, who would only triumph.

It is alleged that Christians would distort the meaning of this passage to explain away the crucifixion. Boyarin points out that the challenge to this generally accepted position is well-document by modern Messianic Jews, concerned to demonstrate that their belief in Jesus as Messiah does not make them un-Jewish.

Whether or not one accepts their theology, it remains the case that they have a very strong textual base for the view that the suffering Messiah is based in deeply rooted Jewish texts early and late.

This idea that a Messiah would vicariously suffer to redeem the world was not one difficult to accept for many Jews. It was a view that was current before Jesus came into the world, a view based on a close reading of many varied texts in order to derive new narratives, images, and theological ideas – via a reading and interpretive style known as midrash.

In fact, Boyarin sees this midrashic interpretive method at work in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s suffering. Further, it was an orthodox rabbinic idea that the Messiah would suffer and die, from the time of the Talmud and onward.

My reasoning is that if this were such a shocking thought, how is it that the rabbis of the Talmud and midrash, only a couple of centuries later, had no difficulty whatever with portraying the Messiah’s vicarious suffering or discovering him in Isaiah 53, just as the followers of Jesus had done?

Jesus would speak directly about His coming suffering:

The first time in Mark that Jesus reveals the inevitability of his suffering and death is in chapter 8.

The relevant passage begins with verse 27. Jesus asks His disciples: who do you say that I am? Peter answered: you are the Christ (the Messiah). Jesus then goes directly to a statement of the Son of Man, the divine figure – the Second Person of God, or the two-Gods – as seen in Daniel 7. The transition is subtle (and I never would have understood it absent Boyarin’s book), but Jesus is connecting the human Messiah to this divine second God, or, as Christians would come to understand it, the Second Person of the Trinity.

This Son of Man must suffer many things; He will be rejected by the elders, scribes and chief priests; He will be killed, and rise again in three days. Peter would then rebuke Jesus, and receive the reply: “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

The passage concludes where it began, with a reference to the Son of Man:

Mark 8: 38 “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

In this passage in Mark 8, Jesus makes clear that the Christ, the Messiah, will suffer, and that He is that Christ. It is clear that Jesus claims that the Messiah and the Son of Man are one and the same person in Him, Jesus Christ.

Jesus repeats this idea of the suffering of the Son of Man in Mark 9: 12. Then there is exchange in Mark 14:

Mark 14: 61(b) Again the high priest was questioning Him and said to Him, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” 62 And Jesus said, “I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”

63 And tearing his tunics, the high priest said, “What further need do we have of witnesses? 64 You have heard the blasphemy; how does it seem to you?” And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death.

Once again, Jesus connects the Messiah with the Son of Man – and claims that He is that person. Further, it is seen that claiming to be the Son of Man is blasphemy as far as the high priest is concerned. In other words, it is not merely a messianic claim, but a claim of divinity – and, as I have noted more than once, when Boyarin uses the word divine or divinity in reference to Jesus, he is meaning this Second Person of God. This is further evidenced by Jesus’s response: I am.

The high priest of the Jews could hardly be expected to miss this allusion. Jesus claims to be the Son of God, the Son of Man, and indeed God himself. A statement such as that is not merely true or false; it is truth or blasphemy.

A strict understanding of blasphemy is in mentioning the name of God. A further understanding consists of imputing divine status to oneself or to another human. Even if one ignores the “I am” statement, alluding to Himself as the Son of Man coming with the clouds and sitting at the right hand of power (both allusions to Daniel 7), is sufficient grounds for the charge of blasphemy – as it imputes divine status on the “human” Jesus.

Making this claim was not an isolated incident for Jesus:

John 8: 28 So Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing from Myself, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.

It doesn’t really get more direct than this. But there is more:

John 8: 57 So the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” 58 Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 59 Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.

Stoning was the biblically ordained punishment for blasphemy. Proper grammar, if Jesus was merely claiming some form of angelic long-life as a created being, would have Jesus say, “before Abraham was, I was.” But He didn’t say this, and the Jews who were ready to stone Him understood exactly what Jesus was claiming for himself.

I suspect all of these claims were well known to the high priest and to the elders, otherwise why would they have wanted to question Jesus directly themselves. And here he was, in their presence, standing by His claims.

Through all of these terms, Jesus is claiming some share of divinity, hence the charge of blasphemy.

Further, it was only when Stephen plainly attributed the title Son of Man to Jesus that his questioners cast Stephen out of the city and stoned him.

Boyarin’s point is simple: attributing this title to a human being is a claim of divinity, and divinity is reserved only for God. Anyone who claims otherwise – on behalf of himself or another – is committing blasphemy against God.

Conclusion

Gospel Judaism was straightforwardly and completely a Jewish-messianic movement, and the Gospel the story of the Jewish Christ.

I am reminded that the term “Judeo-Christian” meant, until the last century or so, Jews who converted to Christianity. In other words, one could consider the apostles the first Judeo-Christians.

In addition to the points raised by Boyarin regarding the suffering Christ, allow me to add this thought: any Messiah also claiming to be divine would, inevitably, be made to suffer by those who did not believe the claim. And why would vested interests want to believe the claim, or allow the claim to stand? The game of power is given up when the One truly in charge arrives, especially One who calls the vested interests hypocrites.

I am reminded of The Grand Inquisitor, where Jesus returns (not the return), and the Inquisitor dispatches Him, not wanting to give up the game even though he knows Jesus speaks the truth. I have written about this here.