Jesus the Prophet

Jesus the Prophet November 11, 2015

David Turner offers a detailed study of Jesus’ “woes” to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23 (Israel’s Last Prophet). He sets the polemic in the context of a Deuteronomistic theological perspective as employed by the prophets of Israel. Together, these add up to a “motif of prophetic rejection” with a recognizable logic consisting of three themes:

“The first (1) is the ‘Deuteronomistic’ formulation of Israel’s relationship to God. In this formulation Israel’s national prosperity depends on its obedience to the law of Moses. Moses the archetypal prophet and lawgiver is succeeded by other prophets who continue to call on Israel to obey the law. Deuteronomism sets out the covenantal foundation and context for the role of Israel’s prophets and Israel’s accountability to prophetic warnings. The second aspect of the motif (2) is simple unbelief leading to passive resistance to the covenantal urgings of the prophets. Such passive resistance is found in the worsening of idolatrous worship and disobedience to the law as the divided monarchy declines. The third aspect of the motif (3) is prophetic rejection proper, animosity leading to the active persecution of the prophets, taking the forms of threats, imprisonment, physical harm, and even murder.”

He examines woe oracles from the Old Testament, noting that they “blend anger, grief, and alarm about the excruciating consequences that will come upon Israel.” Woes are followed by descriptions “of the persons on whom the woe will come. This description amounts to the reason why the woe is merited. Thus a woe oracle states the conclusion and then the premises on which it is based.” That is the form that Jesus uses.

In Turner’s view, Jesus doesn’t diverge from this Hebraic and Jewish model, but sees himself as “the ultimate rejected prophet” and the “disciples as a remnant community of persecuted prophets.” Thus, he can see the severe polemic against Jewish leaders not as a supersessionist rejection of Judaism but as an “intramural” conflict “where different voices contend for the mantle of authentic biblical religion during turbulent times.” 

Matthew’s gospel is replete with rejected prophets: “The genealogy of Jesus stresses the exile to Babylon, which was due to rejection of the prophets (1:11–12, 17). The ministry of John the Baptist is presented in terms of prophetic rebuke (3:7–12), and Israel’s rejection of John is the rejection of an Elijah-like figure who is much more than a mere prophet (11:7–18; 17:12; 21:32). Jesus’ disciples, when persecuted, are to be encouraged because the prophets were similarly persecuted (5:12). Response to Jesus’ disciples is described as response to a prophet (10:41–42; 25:35–45). Jesus repeatedly cites the prophets, at times with an introduction stressing his incredulity at the religious leaders’ ignorance (9:13; 12:7; 13:14–15; 15:7–9; 21:13, 16, 33, 42). All these factors and more combine to build the case that Israel has rejected its prophets.” Thus, “Matthew 23 as a prophetic critique of Israel’s leaders coheres with the contextual flow of Matthew’s narrative.”

Matthean typology of rejected prophets is the basis for “both polemic and pedagogy”: “It is the basis of Jesus’ critique of the religious leaders and of Jesus’ preparation of his disciples for their postresurrection mission. They can now grasp their own prophetic identity in distinction from that of Israel’s current leaders.” And chapter 23’s polemic leads into the following chapter that predicts the fall of the temple: “the judgment of Jerusalem is justified in Matthew 23 before it is predicted in Matthew 24–25.” Yet, though Jesus’ main purpose in Matthew 23 is to justify the punishment of the Jewish temple elites, He is also warning His own disciples to avoid the abuses that led to the woes. Jewish leaders were neither the first nor the last to use their piety to glorify themselves.

Turner concludes, “Matthew presents Jesus’ dispute with the religious leaders as a thoroughly Jewish prophetic critique calling for a return to biblical values. This is not an attack on all Jews as a people at that time, let alone for all time. Jesus’ stringent critique is directed against the scribes and Pharisees who were prominent at that time in the Jerusalem religious establishment.” It’s not an anti-Judaic discourse, but a thoroughly Jewish internal critique of (some of the) Jewish leadership. As Turner puts it, “Matthew should not be viewed as a (gentile?) Christian critic of the Jewish people but as a Jew who is engaged in a vigorous intramural dispute with other Jews over the identity and religious significance of the Jewish teacher Jesus.”

Turner’s is an impressively detailed, careful monograph. It is good to have a study that focuses on Matthew 23, as a supplement to the many studies of the Olivet Discourse. And if his thesis is construed in narrow terms, Turner convinces: Jesus isn’t anti-Jewish; He does indeed make use of prophetic rhetoric and themes; He does align Himself with the rejected prophets of Israel. 

Yet, it is hard to see how this escapes some element of supersession. Let’s agree with Turner that this is an “intramural” argument. But one must presumably decide which side of this intramural dispute is in the right, and it is difficult to see how both could be: How could those who reject the prophet and those who stand with the rejected prophet both claim to be Israel? For Matthew and the other New testament writers, Jesus and and His followers claim to be the continuation of Israel. Those Jews who don’t follow this prophet (in the words of Revelation) claim to be Jews but are not. And the New Testament teaches that Jesus and His followers were right in this claim.

I have no wish to demean Jews, but theological honesty demands that we admit the import of the New Testament’s message that Israel is the Israel that stands with rather than against the but rejected prophet.


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