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Joan Le Morvan, who now lives in Iona in Scotland, has led pilgrimages to the Holy Land for 25 years. Below she shares the insights she has gleaned over the years from some of the archeologists and scripture scholars working in Israel and how this has helped her understand the Scriptures better.
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The
Jewishness of Jesus|
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As Fr Peter Hocken has shown us in his wonderful book, "Blazing the Trail", one of the significant moves of the Holy Spirit in our day is leading us to get in touch with the Jewish roots of Christianity so we can rediscover the fullness of our spiritual heritage. The Catholic Catechism teaches us that when the Church delves into her own mystery, the People of God in the new covenant, she discovers her link with the Jewish people, "the first to hear the Word of God" (CCC839). Many of us have been victims of false teaching that God has rejected his Jewish people and revoked his covenant with them. Fortunately Pope John Paul II has corrected this "replacement theology" several times in the strongest of terms and has sought forgiveness of "our elder brothers" for the sins of Catholics against the people of the Covenant. "The Fifth Gospel" One of the ways to enter more deeply into the Jewishness of Jesus is to know something of the geography of the land. Fr Bargil Pixner, the famous Benedictine archeologist and Scripture scholar, now deceased, used to call the land of Israel the "Fifth Gospel" and wrote a book entitled this. In this book he reminds us that God has revealed himself to mankind not only at specific times in history but also in particular places. Place names are thus very significant in the gospels. It can be very enriching to explore these and see what they mean. When excavations were done in Galilee, in recent years,Old Testament cities, were discovered, often one upon another. Then evidence was found that there was a period of abandonment until 130 years before Christ, when the cities were rebuilt and Jewish settlements re-established on top of six hundred year old ruins in Gentile territory. These were towns like Cana, Nazareth, Nain, Capernaum, Bethsaida, Chorazin and Magdala. These small Jewish towns where Jesus ministered, would have felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the Gentile presence in Galilee. A walk of only two hours from Nazareth for example would have brought you to the town of Sepphoris (now called Zippori), where the Romans had their capital. In Jesus' day it was the most hated town in Galilee. The Romans had populated it with Gentiles. After the death of Herod, in 4 BC, the Jews had tried to revolt against Rome, and after a terrible battle had been defeated and sent as slaves to work on the Corinthian canal in Greece. This puts Jesus' sermon about God loving and healing gentiles in Luke 4 at the synagogue in Nazareth in its proper context. We are told that the people listening were "amazed at his gracious words" but Dr Jim Flemming explains in the light of the historical situation this is not a good translation. A better one would be "shocked, dumbfounded, or offended" which explains why afterwards they tried to kill him by hurling him off the cliff. It also highlights how radical and courageous Jesus was to say such a thing to such an audience at this time and underlines the fanaticism of the zealots around him, who would be prepared to kill someone for saying such things. "Extended not nuclear families" When we think of the Holy Family, we tend to be influenced by pious Christian art and project our western notions of the nuclear family - mother, father and child - on Jesus' upbringing. This would be far from his experience. The norm in middle eastern culture then would be very different. Everyone lived in extended families in a communal insula. Here there would be a communal courtyard where all the cooking, grinding of corn, preparation of food, weaving and spinning would be done. Several rooms leading off would be for sleeping and animals. Upper rooms would catch the breeze from the heat of the day and the roof would be made of branches covered with clay. The well would be about a mile away and Mary, like all the other women, would have to make three journeys a day to the well to supply the needs for the household. This would never be done in the heat of the day, which is why it would have been immediately obvious to Hebrew listeners that the Samaritan woman whom Jesus meets at the well, must have been a woman of ill repute. That Jesus spoke to her at all was incredible. Firstly she was a woman outside his clan, then was the question of her dubious reputation and finally she was a Samaritan. The Jews detested the Samaritans so much that on their ritual trips to the temple in Jerusalem, they would rather travel the long way round, on the other side of the Jordan river, than put a foot in Samaria. And if they had any financial dealings with Samaritans, the money would have to be dropped into a pail of water, before they could touch it. "Nazareth Jewish boys were well educated, even the most humble. The most important gathering place in the village would be the synagogue where the children would begin to learn their scriptures by heart, from the age of three, in the side room of the synagogue. Thus Jesus' contemporaries would have been well aware of the many symbolic acts Jesus did which were allusions to Old Testament prophecies, such as riding on an ass into Jerusalem, of which we would be ignorant today. It is also thought by some, that Jesus was probably not a carpenter as there wasn't much wood around in the area, and he would have been more likely to have been a stone mason/builder (tektron), who would have hired himself out on a daily basis as the workers mentioned in some of his parables. Nazareth was a small town in the territory of the tribe of Zebulum. It was too small to even be mentioned in the list of towns of each tribe in the book of Joshua. Excavations indicate that there were about two hundred and fifty people living there at the time of Jesus. Josephus, in chronicling the Jewish Wars mentions forty six towns in Galilee, but does not mention Nazareth." Hence "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" was a reasonable question. During excavations in Caesarea in 1962 a fragment of a marble plaque was discovered with Hebrew inscriptions which contained a list of priestly families who had settled in Galilee during the Roman era, among them is a family in Nazareth. At that time the Jews consciously "planted" orthodox Jewish settlers in this pagan territory to reclaim it for the Jewish faith.This was also why as Jesus grew in understanding, and started expressing his religious views, it became necessary for him to move from the small hamlet of his ultra orthodox clan to the larger town of Capernaum on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Knowing a little more about the customs and attitudes of the family helps us to understand the consternation and dismay his mother and siblings must have felt at his unorthodox behaviour and why they thought he was mad. "Capernaum Here at Capernaum Jesus probably lived with Peter's extended household on the sea shore, the ruins of which you can still visit today, over which a huge modern church has been built. Usually a wife went to live with her husband's family but in this situation, with the gospel reference to Peter's mother-in-law's house, it would seem that, Peter came to live with, and head up, his wife's family clan.Another reason why Capernaum was a good place to make his base, was that Jesus had three very strong protectors here, for whom he had performed significant healings. They were Jairus, the head of the synagogue, whose daughter he had healed, the royal official, whose servant/son he had healed, and the centurion, whose servant he had healed. These three men would have turned a blind eye to the crowds Jesus was attracting, at a time when it was forbidden for more than twelve Jewish males to meet in one place, and they would have made sure that Jesus' activities were not reported to the authorities in Jerusalem. Capernaum was also ideal because it was part of a trade route so the many visitors, passing through, would have had the opportunity to hear Jesus' message and take it to others. This also meant, however, that ultimately news of Jesus' miraculous healings would leak out to those Jesus didn't want to know about it, like the suspicious and paranoid Herod. This perhaps accounts for the fact that Jesus, while proclaiming the kingdom, often told the people he healed, not to tell anyone. Knowing his time was limited, he didn't want to be arrested prematurely before he had time to share his full message. This was also why from the moment that we hear in the Gospel that "Herod wanted to see Jesus", Jesus stops the miracles and gathering crowds, and moves away from the area round Capernaum, Bethsaida and Chorazim (known as the evangelical triangle because of the ministry Jesus did there), to the pagan territory of the Gerasenes on the other side of the lake. Henceforth he concentrates on training and forming his small group of disciples, rather than preaching to the crowds, to prepare them for his death, resurrection and ultimate mission.
RESOURCES If you get an opportunity to visit the Holy Land, do take it. There are some things that can only be understood in the land itself. But useful resources that I have found invaluable over the years are: "The Fifth Gospel" and "With Jesus through Galilee" by Bargil Pixner OSB The lectures of Dr Jim Flemming at the Biblical Resource Centre at En Karem Writings of Josephus Flavius My next trip to the Holy Land will be March 2006. Those interested, write to me Joan Le Morvan, c/o Goodnews Office, Allen Hall, 28 Beaufort St, SW3 5AA
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As a result of our history, we in the West have been very much influenced by Greek thought and without us being aware of it, this affects the way we look at things and is very different from the Jewish mindset. This can become a handicap when we try to read the bible, which is an oriental book and we can miss so much. We can attempt, for example, to translate Hebrew idioms literally and fall into misunderstandings. This can happen in all languages. I remember my Norwegian-in-laws, thinking, for example, that I was cruel to animals, because I told them that my flat was too small "to swing a cat". It is thus very important for the reader to have some knowledge of the cultural milieu of first century Palestine, and the Jewish context of Jesus' upbringing and that of his family and disciples, to properly appreciate the full meaning of the sacred scripture we are reading.
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