This is a study designed to methodically refine the voluminous extant data about Jesus Christ's teachings found in The Gospels of Christ to a simple and historically reliable moral code. Here, we believe that to receive the benefit of Jesus' ministry in its truest sense, we must thoroughly understand the truest sense of his ministry. This means studying, within literary context, all available accounts of Jesus' life, as well as working constantly to better understand the historical, political, religious, and social context of his life.
If you want to start over from the beginning so that you are all caught up, the Introduction can be found here.
Very soon, as I've already mentioned in giddy anticipation, we will be reading the words Jesus was recorded to have said during his "Sermon on the Mount." The upcoming monologues, if we can find them historically plausible, will allow us to start building a picture of what Jesus really thought and said about the moral fabric of human life. We will find out what he was really concerned about, insofar as it can be known.
I've encountered some folks who say that, to their Christian faith, the words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel are not of prime importance. A friend of mine argued the other day that, since they were divinely inspired, the words of Paul are as important as the words of Jesus. He argued that, since they were divinely inspired, the words of the Book of Revelation are as important as those of Jesus.
This raised all kinds of old and loud questions in my mind. I don't like picking at people, so I don't ask questions like these in person often, and never without great tact. I can share those questions freely with you, though.
Some questions that I have for anyone who believes that the whole Christian Bible Canon is "divinely inspired" and "the word of God" are:
- Who set the canon, and why was the canon not set until, at the very earliest, two hundred years after the death of Christ?
- There were numerous other Christian texts in wide circulation at the time, many bearing striking resemblances to the the New Testament we know today. Did the person who set the canon have some method of categorization that allowed him to determine with certainty which of the early Christian texts were authentically "the word of God" and which were not? If so, what were the criteria he used?
- Why do God's words in The New Testament contradict one another?Other such questions abound.
I'm going to let these questions marinate for a session. Next week, we will begin to attack them head-on in some fashion.
Today, let's focus on our reading. Cheers.
------------------------------
Matthew 4:21 through Matthew 4:22
21 He walked along from there and saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them,
22 and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.
------------------------------
Today, as we promised last week, Jesus continues recruiting the first disciples. Recall that last week he recruited Peter and his brother from their fishing boats as he walked by the Sea of Galilee. As he continues walking along the sea here in verse 21, he sees the "sons of Zebedee" mending their nets while sitting in a boat. They are with their father, all three of them fishermen. One can imagine the boat is very close to the shore here, perhaps not even floating in water. The family would probably have been chattering away amongst themselves in Aramaic as Jesus, Peter and Andrew approached.
The nets they worked at mending might likely have been made of flaxseed cord or rope. If the family was very well off, their boat might have been made of sturdy Cedar of Lebanon, the very same kind that held aloft great blocks of Aswan granite in the pyramids of Egypt. If they were not well off, which is far more likely for a multi-generational group of fishermen, the boat could have been constructed with salvage wood from other boats, low quality local woods, or low quality woods available by trade. These could have included pine, willow or jujube. The boat would likely have had a bitumen pitch coating on the bottom to make it watertight.
The men were probably fishing for "musht," a species of tilapia found in the Sea of Galilee. Alternatively, they could have fished for sardines or carp. The men might have sold their catches at a local market where the fish would be bought to eat fresh or salted and treated for export.
This would have been their daily grind: pushing out into the lake to drag their nets about, hauling in what they could catch, mending their nets, fixing tiny leaks in their boat, and selling their product in town.
The event in today's reading is also attested in Mark 1:19. Rather than being independent from Mark's account, Matthew likely got his accounting of the call of the disciples directly from Mark.
Both accounts have Jesus walking along and (presumably) seeing all three men. In both accounts, however, he only calls to two of them.
The brothers Zebedee leave their father to work for Jesus. This is perhaps the first in a series of familial abandonments or rejections on the behalf of Jesus mentioned in the Gospel. As we will see, Jesus himself is said to have rejected his family (Mark 3:33), and to have been rejected by his family (Mark 3:21).
Why did Jesus only call the brothers and not the father? We cannot know for sure. I find it likely, if the incident happened at all, that Jesus called to all three of them, and that the elder of the three had insurmountable reservations about following a radical like Jesus, especially when he knew he had to wake up early the next day to fish again. Early Christians conveying this story by mouth may not have liked the idea that Jesus offered discipleship to someone and was turned down, so they may have reworked the story so that the father Zebedee was never offered discipleship in the first place.
Either way, like Peter and Andrew before them, John and James "immediately" follow Jesus, which seems admirably obedient.
What must Jesus have said to these working men of the sea to inspire them to leave behind career and family without question?
I postulate that Jesus likely had a whole bunch to say to these men. I postulate that he went to them proclaiming a message almost identical to that of John the Baptist's. He went to them preaching repentance and a new radical moral philosophy or code. He may also have carried a message of apocalypse to them, in that he might have approached them speaking about a near-to-come "end of the age."
The Gospel says that Jesus simply called to them, and they followed. This doesn't seem very human to me. I think that Jesus had some kind of detailed sales-pitch that isn't recorded here, and I think it must have been an extremely convincing one.
Either way, John and James find Christ's words, be they many or few, amicable, and decide to follow.
Next time, we'll be in Miracle Town, as the narrative of Matthew will show Jesus curing illnesses and diseases of all kinds. For historical context, we might then look at what the ancient texts have to say about medicine in first-century Palestine. It might behoove us to see how else people could be eased of their maladies in those days, if Jesus wasn't nearby. It will behoove us to see that Jesus wasn't the only miracle worker on the block back then.
Tune in next time. Thanks for reading. Please share this writing.
Love.
-------------------------
To read what's next, click here.
To read what's next, click here.
To read what came prior to this, click here.
For the index of Christ's words, click here.
