Jesus and Sinners.

Jesus and Sinners

One of the points that seem to be firmly established in research on the historical Jesus is his welcoming attitude toward a group of men and women to whom the gospel includes under the broad heading of "sinners"; amongst them being prostitutes and tax collectors. This topic is present in the Q source, which confirms that Jesus is reproached for being a friend of tax collectors and sinners (Q 7:34). It is also present in the triple tradition: the banquet scene in Mark (Mk 2:16) which Craig Blomberg, professor of the New Testament at Denver Seminary in Colorado, says, “If ever there were a context in the Gospels in which we might expect Hellenistic influence in general or the appearance of a symposium in particular, it would be with a meal involving well-to-do turncoats working for Rome” , the passage of the sinful woman in Luke (Luke 7:37), and the moral of the parable of the two sons (Matthew 21.31-32) The triple tradition confirms that even Mark was a tax collector before he got the call.

It can be discuss how each one of these texts could have been altered or edited along its transmission process, but the criterion of dissimilarity reinforces the historical validity of the subject in general. Some of these testimonials are editorial creation by Evangelist (Luke 15:1-2). Even one suspects that some of the episodes, like the Feast of Levi, may have been built as a narrative frame for an authentic saying of Jesus. However, as E. P Sanders, a now retired professor of Religion at Duke University says, “it is unlikely that the Church has created the characterization of the proclamation of Jesus as a message to the sinners " The first community soon abandoned this attitude of acceptance and went to take a more demanding practice. Recall the penitential discipline of Matthew's community which considers someone a sinner if they do not repent as a Gentile or a tax collector (Mt 18,17 ) or the discipline of Paul’s community (1 Cor 5, 11). It is unlikely that the community falsely attributed to Jesus an attitude contrary to the practice which soon became predominant..

The welcome of sinners by Jesus is not presented as a marginal or negligible attitude, but rather as the sign of the coming of the Kingdom, and as a defining characteristic of the new type of Kingdom. More significant is that, according to the gospel, this attitude of Jesus was a scandal to the Pharisees and to the representatives of the Orthodox religion. All texts highlight the gossip and criticism that aroused due to Jesus’ conduct. This indicates that this conduct involved not only a break with later Christian practices, but also with normal practices in Judaism of his time period.

Do you have to identify with sinners?

In the Psalms, it is continuously repeated the claim that the righteous do not sit at the table to eat with sinners. "I hate the assembly of evildoers, and really do not feel the wicked" (Psalm 26:5). “Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil, to take part in wicked deeds with men who are evildoers; let me not eat of their delicacies" (Psalm 141:4). Some have thought that the sinners eating with Jesus were not sinners in the biblical sense of the word, but were Jews who did not live by the purity requirements demanded by the Pharisees.

To understand this, it is necessary to explain the concept of “amme ha-'arets” or the unlearned, which are “the ordinary people…in Rabbinic literature.”

Were these people living in a state of sin, or rather people living in a state of legal impurity? Following Sanders, we believe that the “amme ha-'arets” were not considered sinful by the Judaism of Jesus' time. "The common people were not irreligious. Probably almost always served the Law, celebrated the holidays and obeyed some of the highest standards of purity. Only bore no special laws of purity” When it is said that Jesus welcomed sinners, we are not talking simply unlearned people, but of people deemed unholy or habitual violators of the precepts of the Torah.

J.P. Meier, professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, is another who agrees with Sanders about not identifying sinners with the ignorant. While Meier has so far not addressed this point in detail, his opinion is quite clear.

"In the gospel, 'sinners' are a separate group, often attached to the tax collectors, but never identified with the crowd in general. In my opinion the 'sinners ' most likely refers to the Jews who reject the commandments of the God of Israel or in practice have adopted the way of life of the nations, which cannot be said for the mass majority of people in general"

Impurity

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