The Widow's Mite 3: Return to the Questions

Having begun an initial exegesis and then reviewed the setting of the pericope, Mark 12:41-44, against the narrative structure of its Gospel, I am at a severe and dangerous place. Often, having done a little spade work, I feel I know where I am going. But that is danger made deadly by effort. The level of Bible understanding is so slipshod and lazy in our day that a little work feels more than it is. There remain many questions--a sign the work is unfinished. Ignore them and risk finding what you came for; the first sin was substituting human words for God's. Ergo, it is best to let application come slowly. And, besides, eisegesis is boring. The quest is in the questions.

Therefore, let us return to the original observations and add additional ones based on our investigation. As we discovered, the episode with the widow is the denoument of a two-part interaction between Jesus and the scribes in the Jerusalem temple. Our text is larger. The original pericope of 41-44 now begins at verse 28 (Mark 12:28-44). New material means new observations; the exegetical process begins again.

Observations about Mark 12:28-44

Pericope 1: The Greatest Commandment (28-34)

• Where does this exchange take place? In the temple (Mk. 11.27)
• Why is the location important? God has come back to the temple after leaving it in Ezekiel 10. It is the center pole of Israel's identity as a polis in an era when religion and politics were not separated and as a people in covenant with Yahweh. Interrogating Israel's righteosness anywhere else would be meaningless. For Jesus to do it makes it nothing less than a sign that the last days have come and the day of the Lord has dawned.
• Why does the scribe ask Jesus a question? the scribe wants to know where Jesus stands in relationship to that which is most central to their religious identity—keeping the Law. He has overheard Jesus throw off the materialism of the Sadduccees and re-affirm the importance of Moses's prophetic office in the Torah, not to mention its supernatural character. Jesus begins with the transcendent, ruling reality of Yahweh interpreting their question about the dead around that. So, then, the scribe's follow-up question is not sarcastic or rhetorical. It is genuine. The scribe is asking if this infamous teacher is one one of his kind of people. He is establishing his bona fides. In that sense, he is acting properly as a keeper of the Law for the people both living in Jerusalem and for the readers of this Gospel.
• Who were the scribes? The beauracratic, professional class of lawyers and religious leaders that interpreted the cultic and legal life of the people. Because of their education and training in the law, scribes were often appointed as trustees for widows and orphans. Sociologically, the rabbis were the successor to the prophets, who mediated the divine will. So one can expect a possible conflict between who is the real prophet; who really speaks on behalf of Yahweh for the people? There is a subtext of Jesus's teaching vis-a-vis the Pharisees. Jesus did not teach like them, quoting and citing authorities. Jesus spoke on his own authority. He spoke like a prophet directly commissioned by God.
• Why did he ask this question? Was this a common question? Was this a “sure to trick them” question? Was this an “establish your orthodoxy” question? What kind of question is this? Allow me to quote from the Pulpit Commentary about this: "The question was one much mooted amongst the Jews in the time of our Lord. "For many," says Beds, "thought that the first commandment in the Law related to offerings and sacrifices, with regard to which so much is said in Leviticus, and that the right worship of God consisted in the due offering of these." I quote this because Corban--which comes up in Mark 7--is the underlying question of this entire exchange with the scribes. Here is more about corban: "The Greek word korban [קָרְבָּן qorbān] is related to the term korbanas, signifying the “temple treasury.” In Jewish practice, therefore, the word “corban” had been coined as a sort of “vow” term. According to the prevailing tradition, one could designate his financial resources as “corban,” which, practically speaking, was a way of “tagging” them, suggesting, “this belongs to God,” and thus was not to be used for personal interests. There is a passage in the writings of the Jewish historian, Josephus, that illustrates the fact that funds from the temple treasury were “corban,” hence could not be used for secular purposes, e.g., city improvements, as in the building of an aqueduct for water supply (Wars 2.9.4). Thus, in the manner just described, the covetous, ungrateful Jews callously neglected parental responsibility by an appeal to this perverted human tradition. In so doing, they flouted the law of God." Also, this bit from Wikipedia of all places: "The Septuagint generally translates the term in Koine Greek as δῶρον "gift", θυσία "sacrifice", or προσφορά "offering up". By the Second Temple period, Hellenistic Jewish texts use korban specifically to mean a vow. The New Testament preserves korban once as a transliterated loan-word for a vow, once also a related noun, κορβανάς "temple treasury", otherwise using δῶρον, θυσία or προσφορά and other terms drawn from the Septuagint."
• What was the relationship between the scribes and commandments? The core duty of the scribal class was to maintain and copy religious records and scriptures. The scribes were experts in the Torah. It was their job to interpret it for the people and safeguard its orthodoxy against especially Hellenistic influences.
• What commandment does Jesus quote? He quotes the Shema: Deut. 6:4-5. The Shema was a portion of Scripture quoted both morning and evening by devout Jews and worn in phylacteries on the arm and forehead by the Pharisees. He doesn't just quote it, though. He reinterprets it so that there is a blurring and uniting of the oneness of Yahweh and his Messiah.
• What language does he quote it in? Jesus likely knew some Greek, and he knew Hebrew well enough to read and speak it when necessary. But Aramaic was the lingua franca of first century Jewish life.
• Why does he say these are a “commandment” and not “commandments”?
• Is it significant that (a) the sacrificial system is mentioned, and (b) a scribe says that system is not primary but secondary to ethics?
• How would the scribe have understood the Kingdom of God? Though the phrase "kingdom of God" is not found in OT or other Jewish literature, its content is clearly there. He would have understood it to be the realized moment of the rule of God, and Christians see that in the very presence of the King himself. Given that Jesus is evaluating Israel for her covenant faithfulness, his commendation is no empty gesture.
• Why does he go on to quote the second command? Because love of God and neighbor is the substratum on which any specific commandments required by the Jewish law would rest. If he'd only quoted the first, he'd only have referenced the first table of the law. By quoting the second, he includes the second table--the entire law. He also further explains the principle of his own judgment which he is doing now as God come back to his temple and as king come to his people. // Bill Mounce, commenting on this verse, says that the Greek conjunction kai ties the second together to the first. "God is 'one' and we are to love him." he says. "The single greatest commandment is both the theology of monotheism as well as the recognition that the one God is worthy of our love. Intellectual assent of monotheism is insufficient in and of itself. The commandment is both theology and praxis; all good theology leads to praxis."
• Why is it that this pericope concludes this way? Why was this question and answer so final that there was no need to repeat it? Because everyone agreed that Jesus's answer is true. Nothing more needs to be said. Jesus has established his right to act as a member of the scribal cast, and he has correctly interpreted the discipline. This is the principle by which Israel's righteousness is to be judged. And those in Israel who are trained in the Law agree.
• Jesus is first interrogated and, in the process, interrogates.

Pericope 2: Whose Son is He? (35-37)

• Why does this pericope exist? Having established his right to speak as a scribe and having established the principle of judgment to everyone's agreement, Jesus now does to the scribal class what he did to the other classes: he judges them on their own turf. Here, he takes them to task for not recognizing him. The Shema is the ultimate principle of judgment, but for those who should know better. Recognizing the Messiah, which Jesus said the Jewish leadership should have done (also John's prologue), is the penultimate principle.
• Could anyone teach anything in the temple? There is at least an informal policing going on. Anyone putting out their shingle would be publicly cross-examined by established teachers. Failure would have at least meant ridicule. And anyone not getting the hint may have faced a sliding scale of expulsion from the temple or worse. People did not separate religious teaching from political speech; look at what ISIS did to imams it did not agree with.
• What were people’s thoughts on the Messiah at the time?
• Was Jesus bringing up a common problem?
• Is Jesus's teaching style reflective of a kind of teaching? Jesus is employing a rabbinic method of teaching called haggadah, which is primarily wisdom instruction for living a God-fearing life. (now quoting some online research): Of the haggadic methods of interpretation, the most frequently used by Jesus is remez. Remez, or hinting, is a very rabbinic way of making a statement or declaration about something or someone by alluding to an Old Testament verse or passage of Scripture. Jesus hints at a biblical verse or passage just by mentioning one key word or phrase in the passage. His listeners, knowing the Bible by heart, much in the same way hear a key phrase and can recall the whole passage. Often, the point being taught is found in the biblical passage immediately before or just after the “hint” from that passage. However, it was unnecessary, in fact a waste of time, to quote a long passage from the Bible which the listeners all knew from memory. The moment the “hint” was given, the whole passage hinted at immediately burst into the mind of each listener.
• What do we learn about Jesus’s awareness of himself from his use of this psalm.
• Is this Psalm, Psalm 110, addressed elsewhere in Mark’s Gospel?
• Was Jesus siding with a certain line of argumentation?
• Why this psalm? What was this particular point important to bring up in this place? Four Davidic Psalms (2, 118, 110, and 22), each cited or alluded to at least twice, in this order, and at critical junctures in Mark's narrative, play a key role in his Gospel. In contemporary understanding Psalm 2 was associated with the future messianic purging of Jerusalem and especially the temple (e.g.4QFlor, Pss Sol 17). Psalm 118, concluding the Egyptian Hallel, spoke of Israel's future deliverance under a Davidic king with the restored temple as the goal of Israel's return from exile. Psalm 110's surprisingly elevated royal designation, uniquely expressed in Melchizedekian priestking terms, contributed to several portraits of exalted heavenly deliverers, some messianic, who would preside over Israel's restoration (e.g.11QMelch, 1 Enoch) while Psalm 22's Davidic suffering and vindication described the deliverance of righteous Zion (e.g.4QPs). Drawing from the dual perspective of their original contexts and contemporary interpretations, this paper proposes that Mark's careful arrangement of his psalm citations presents Jesus as both Israel's Davidic Messiah (Pss. 2, 118) and the temple's Lord (Ps. 110) who, coming to purge Jerusalem but rejected by the temple authorities, announces the present structure's destruction and, through his death and vindication (Ps. 22), its replacement with a new people-temple centered on himself. https://brill.com/view/journals/bi/15/3/article-p307_6.xml
• Should this pericope be part of the previous one?

Pericope 3: Jesus's Condemnation of the Scribes (38-40)

• What is the difference between the material above and these open judgments?
• Is this a rhetorical form--first trounce their teaching and then trounce them?
• The fourfold things they like: long robes, marketplace respect, best seats at synagogue, best seat at banquets. Why are these so wrong?
• Why are widow's houses and long prayers even mentioned? The former makes some sense, but the latter?
• Where did condemnation come up? The "greater" condemnation? What is the lesser one? Are we assuming he was talking about condemnation?

Pericope 4: The Lord's Doom Upon Jerusalem / The Widow's Mite (41-44)

• Why does this story exist here? Because, quoting again from the Pulpit Commentary: "The Greek word korban is related to the term korbanas, signifying the “temple treasury.” The charge is that the scribes, and indeed all of Israel's rulers, have made a corban (a vow -- kind of like a making a covenant) with the world system instead of living by their covenant vow to Yahweh. Therefore, the judgment will be made in the korbanas of the temple where the world system and Jewish devotion meet each other. It is a deeply ironic location.
• The people in the story are the crowds, rich people, Jesus, his disciples, temple benefactors, and the widow.
• The place is the temple treasury (Where is that?)
• Why does the temple have a treasury?
• What narrative requirement does each person in the story fulfil? What purpose do they serve?
• Money is important to the story and how much or little of it there is.
• Economic class is part of this: some live in abundance, but the widow lives in poverty.
• The story has Jesus going through a series of postures: he sits, he watches, he calls, he speaks.
• Jesus praises the largest gift, but based on a value completely other than its commercial value.
• No one is concerned about what happens to this widow after Jesus's pronouncement. Odd if her character is the point.
• The author makes a point to tell the reader how much the widow's coins were worth.
• Even if the commercial value of the coins is not important or, indeed, if money is not the object, is there still an implicit teaching about money?
• There is a lot of the verb "put" in this story.
• The dramatic engine of the story is fueled by compare and contrast: wealth and poverty, large and small, the crowd and the individual, Jesus and the disciples, a wide view versus a narrow view, the value of the crowd and Jesus's value, watching silently and speaking aloud.
• The story doubles up on its description of the amount the widow put into the treasury: everything she had, all she had to live on.
• Are these two adjectival phrases about the widow's gift meant to give us more information about the widow, or is this just repetition for emphasis?
• Jesus begins his teaching with "Truly, I tell you." Is this important?
• The disciples are not present in the story until Jesus calls them.
• The reaction of the disciples nor of anyone else is recorded. Audience reaction is assumed.
• Why are all the verbs in the simple past tense save the ones in Jesus's pronouncement. Those are all in the perfect tense?
• Is there a reason Jesus contrasts the verbs "have contributed" and "has put in" in the final comparison?
• Does giving tithe to the temple equate one-to-one to contemporary church tithing or to charitable giving today?
• What did this story mean to Jews or God-fearing gentiles who circulated it a decade or two before the temple's destruction?
• What status or position in society did widows have in first-century Palestine?
• Who is Jesus at this point in the Gospel narrative?
• What more does this story tell us about Mark's Jesus? How does this story advance the story about Jesus that Mark's gospel is telling?
• There is a kind of implicit narrative blocking that shapes the story.