| Judgment and Tom Wright's Jesus | | Date Created: Dec 18, 2006, 10:33 AM |
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I'm writing a set of short devotions for Scripture Union on a chunk of Luke's gospel. And the passage I was working on early this morning is one that Wright has to dance around for his reimagined ministry of Jesus. It's the sending out of the 70 (or 72, in some manuscripts). You remember: if the boys stop at a village that welcomes them, that's cool, but if they stop at a village that isn't hospitable, they're to do the dusty Hokey-Cokey at it. Then in verses 12-15, Jesus goes into a tirade about judgment falling upon villages that reject the disciples. "Woe to you, Korazin etc!"
For NT Wright's Jesus, who knows nothing about a Final Judgment at the end of space/time, these judgments are coming right away and will "take the form of Roman invasion and destruction." (Wright, Luke for Everyone, London: SPCK, 122.) In other words, for those villages, the cost of rejecting the disciples was the Jewish Wars. It'd be ingenious if only it fit the text a little better.
(1) The whole thrust of the passage is that some villages will accept and other villages will be punished for not accepting. But the Romans would not have and did not hit the named towns harder than any other.
(2) The judgment that Jesus envisions happens on "that day" (v 12) and at "the judgment" (v 14). Read the text, even in Wright's own translation: it's clear he envisions not only Galilean towns like Bethsaida and Korazin and Capernaum being judged on "that day," but also an ancient city, Sodom (v 12) and foreign cities like Tyre and Sidon (v 13). Jesus clearly has a universal day of judgment in mind, not a limited first-century Roman police action against Judaea and/or Galilee.
(3) It will be clear from the follow-on vv 18-24 that Jesus regarded the disciples' mission as joyously successful. Yet the people of Galilee still got biffed by the Romans. Never mind, guys, you still did really really well. |
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