Thursday, July 26, 2012

You May Now Resume Loving

You'll be delighted to know that after 572 pages of the fourth volume (!) of his Anchor-sponsored masterwork, A Marginal Jew, historical critic John Meier concludes (against his initial suspicions) that the command to love God and neighbor may very well have been uttered by the historical Jesus himself.  Who says we don't still need the historical critical method?

But it gets even better on page 573:
The one thing that cannot be found anywhere int the ancient Mediterranean world prior to Jesus is the terribly terse, totally unexplained, in-your-face demand 'love your enemies.' Consequently, while the argument from discontinuity is more tenuous in this case, I am inclined to allow that the Q command to love enemies, as well as the Marcan tradition of the double command, goes back to the historical Jesus.
Your heard the man - he allows it!