The Benedictus of Zechariah
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Re: The Benedictus of Zechariah
That the Benedictus will not totally bear the interpretation Andrew gives it can be seen in one of the key verses in the song of Zechariah: “To give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins” - v.77
According to the ‘political’ interpretation, salvation should refer to rescue from a political event through a dramatic intervention. But here, salvation is through forgiveness of sins - a different matter altogether.
This raises another question concerning interpretation of the Benedictus. Although Zechariah is the author of the song in the narrative, Luke is the author of the whole narrative, and therefore we should be asking how the entire context of the narrative might inform our understanding of the song, and the place of the song within the narrative. Further, the entire narrative of Luke is Luke/Acts.
When we pursue the theme of ‘forgiveness of sins’ within the rest of the narrative, a number of things are brought into view. First, the historical context: Israel at this time was living in the historical reality of an incomplete return from exile: the people had returned to the land (in part - there were as many Jews living across the Roman empire as were living in Israel), but the full conditions to be expected of spiritual return from exile had not occurred - namely freedom from pagan oppression and YHWH’s return to His temple. To these conditions could be added the apocalyptic prophecies of outpouring of the Spirit and resurrection from the dead. Israel was, in other words, still waiting for forgiveness of sins, which would be demonstrated by these occurrences and conditions.
Second, Jesus’s three-years ministry exemplified ‘forgiveness of sins’ to those he gathered around him and ministered to. This was not only through direct verbal command, but the bringing into being of a state of mini restoration from exile according to its portrayal by Isaiah - eg Luke 7:18-23/Isaiah 35:5-6, and the fleshing out of 61:1-2 in the kind of ministry Jesus exercised.
Third, forgiveness of sins, as a broad thematic heading of much that Jesus said and did, led him inexorably to the cross, which in itself provided a focus for what ‘forgiveness of sins’ would truly mean.
Fourth, Luke part 1 described “all that Jesus began to do and teach” - Acts 1:1. Acts itself continues the story - reflecting the same phenomena: powerful presentations of Jesus’s death and resurrection; the Spirit outpoured; people renewed and gathered together into new communities.
Such ‘spiritual’ developments had a political edge. A new authority was being brought into the lives of its subjects - beyond the supreme authority of the day, Rome and its emperor.
Rescue from enemies and serving God without fear, as part of Zechariah’s prophetic song, must therefore be understood in a modified sense. An expectation of Israel, of a kingdom which would overcome pagan oppression nationally and politically, was not to be. A decisive supernatural intervention by YHWH on Israel’s behalf there was - but what did it look like? Very different from an expectation of some kind of apocalyptic revival of a warrior king with a warrior kingdom like David. Instead, at the very centre, a man dying on a cross, subsequently raised from the dead.
Luke’s gospel does include prophecy of another political event, which worked against national Israel, so could hardly be said to have been a fulfilment that Zechariah visualised - the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 as the conclusion to the Jewish wars. The rescue of the Jewish Christian community from this disaster is a subject of history, which might fit Zechariah’s song, but he would at that stage have had no knowledge of such a community within a community. However, Luke 21 does not allow for such a limited interpretation - for “that day - - - will come upon all who dwell upon the face of the whole earth.” v.34-35.
As far as Rome was concerned, there was to be no rescue from periods of political oppression, through which members of the Christian community were sent to their deaths in thousands. The same could be said of the post-Constantine empire. But during that early period of intermittent periods of persecution, the church continued to expand and grow. From the church’s point of view, it was the presence of the risen Jesus in her midst by the Holy Spirit, which ensured not rescue out of persecution but, growth and strength through it - a rescue of a very modified kind. Zechariah’s terminology brings the thinking of an earlier stage of the covenant to a later stage, where a new horizon of understanding is emerging, overshadowing the old horizon, and requiring its reinterpretation.
Re: The Benedictus of Zechariah
“Second, Jesus’s three-years ministry exemplified ‘forgiveness of sins’ to those he gathered around him and ministered to. This was not only through direct verbal command, but the bringing into being of a state of mini restoration from exile according to its portrayal by Isaiah - eg Luke 7:18-23/Isaiah 35:5-6, and the fleshing out of 61:1-2 in the kind of ministry Jesus exercised.”
I am surprised at the use of Isaiah 35 here as a prophecy of the work Jesus would accomplish during his lifetime. The whole chapter appears to me to be a single picture of the political redemption and national regathering that almost all of the OT prophets speak about in length. I agree that Jesus partially fulfilled some of these verses during his life, but what about the other verses? Yes, the Kingdom of God was at hand in a thrilling and new, but yet still limited way. But what about it’s complete arrival?
3 Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 4 Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.”
10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
As argued in the A Light To The Gentiles thread, a possible solution is that Jesus was born to be the King of the Jews who would bring about their national regathering and political salvation, but He would not do this for over another 2000 years. He had other business to take care of during His earthly life. Regarding Israel, perhaps we are overlooking the possibility that what He began to fulfil in part, He will return to complete in full?
Re: The Benedictus of Zechariah
Andrew - Zechariah’s prophecy is almost entirely couched in the language and thought-forms of the OT, the prophets especially, in which forgiveness of sins would have been seen almost entirely in terms of national rescue from political oppression, and from which point of view your presentation needs to be taken seriously. I also accept the validity of your point that the ‘remnant’ concept was in the OT, and could have been carried over into the rescue of a community within a community, which is what actually came about in AD 70. The shock of national disaster in AD 70 probably worked to the benefit of the early church in giving relief from Jewish persecution and the Judaisers; I don’t see any equivalent symmetry with regard to Rome.
The main thrust of your argument, in this and the other advent meditations, is for a limited interpretation of the various songs and prophecies - avoiding the universalising tendencies which we tend automatically to bring to an understanding of these texts. I accept that we need to check this kind of reflex interpretive response, and listen more carefully to what the text might saying.
The main question I have about a ‘limited’ understanding which might arise out of this approach is that it seems to me out of kilter with most of what Luke/Acts goes on to describe. ‘Knowledge of salvation’ and ‘forgiveness of sins’ goes on to mean much more than vindication of (remnant) Israel and rescue from her oppressors.
The interpretive key which you are proposing is of a rather limited and local wrapping-up of Israel’s history, in which judgement of Israel’s oppressors assumes a much more prominent place. I think the prominence given to the death of Jesus does not sit well with such a localised view, and presents a huge step-change from localised interests of Jewish national history. The foregrounding of the death of Jesus in the gospels and the NT generally, the incongruity of this death being simply an adjunct to salvation as deliverance from political oppression, makes better sense of subsequent developments in Acts, and is very much the burden of Paul’s interpretation of the outcome of Israel’s history.
Returning to Zechariah’s prophecy, you astutely point out that Zechariah did not describe exactly how salvation was to be known, or how forgiveness of sins was to come about, and what it might mean. This is surely the hub of the issue. The developing history of Israel from the OT and in the intertestamental period suggests that there was to be no recapitulation of previous events and expectations - there was to be no national restoration of Israel, even around a faithful remnant. But there was to be a taking of the ‘evangelion’ to Israel/Zion, (and subsequently the world) - as per Isaiah 52:7-10, and frequent references to ‘nations’ and ‘ends of the earth’ in Isaiah.
What was the content of that ‘evangelion’? You seem to limit it to an Israel/remnant rescue from oppression and judgement, which the rest of the world is free to join if it wants to. Luke/Acts suggests that this was not the burden of Jesus’s message and ministry, or definitely not the apostolic proclamation - either to the Jews or the Gentiles. We therefore have to ask whether Zechariah’s song can be understood entirely in the limited way in which you present it.
The history of God’s dealings with Israel is a complex intertwining of the particular with the universal. The particular was the stepping stone to the universal. It’s not always as clear and obvious as some might like to suggest. Zechariah’s song might be an example of the ‘not obvious’, in the light of the rest of Luke/Acts, but then neither do I think it can be taken as an example of the ‘obviously limited’ interpretation which you are proposing.
Re: The Benedictus of Zechariah
Andrew - you missed my point. I was questioning whether there was a symmetry between judgement on Jerusalem and judgement on Rome - not the possibility of a symmetry between God’s dealings with Israel in OT and NT.
I was also suggesting that the foregrounding of the death of Jesus in the NT makes it of much greater significance than a means to a limited end for a limited group of people, ie salvation from oppressive political powers as suggested in Luke 1:74 - although in a limited historical and fulfilled future sense, it certainly also was and is.
Your summary has neatly sidestepped the emphasis of the NT that in Jesus, “ho protos kai ho eschatos”, history has reached its eschatological climax for both Jew and Gentile. Jesus’s coming is therefore of universal significance, and not just of significance for Israel.
Re: The Benedictus of Zechariah
The limited interpretation runs into difficulties when it tries to accommodate the death of Jesus - mainly because the line of interpretation inevitably entails a penal substitution which depicts a savage, retributory YHWH, dispensing horrific punishment on an innocent proxy. The limited interpretation allows for none of the (huge) qualifications which accompany the death of Jesus as the suffering of God himself. In this way, the whole obedience/disobedience reward/punishment strategy, on which Israel assumed her survival depended, was subverted. The necessary framework for this subversion is a much more sophisticated and profound appreciation of sin (if something as vicious and ugly in its nature can be so described) than is involved in a simple reward/punishment system. Such a framework also suggests that what Israel experienced was not, in the end, for her own self-centred benefit (ie survival), but for the benefit of the whole world - Jew and Gentile, and the entire cosmos.
I note that your commentary on “ho protos kai ho eschatos” - four times repeated in Revelation in the context of Jewish (Smyrna) as well as Roman persecution - describes the phrase as “a victory for the church over the forces that threatened to destroy it (Rome / Satan / death)”. The last two components of your triad (Satan / death) suggest what is true of the wider biblical narrative, that the victory of Jesus is a reversal of the curse of the Fall, creating a provision to “reign in life” which Paul contrasts with “death reigned” – not just through the power of imperial Rome, but through the power of Adam – Romans 5:17. “Life” here relates to the indwelling presence of God provided by the Spirit, a reality for this life as well as a guarantee of the future, rather than life as a guarantee of survival.
Eschatology is the study of the last things, which turns out to be a person, Jesus “ho eschatos”, “the last Adam” – 1 Corinthians 15:45. But Jesus in relation to what? Clearly, in the New Testament, his earthly life, death, resurrection, and ascension/outpoured Spirit are prominent. To a somewhat lesser extent, the historical protection of some of his people through the AD 70 events (mentioned ambiguously in the Matthew/Mark/Luke apocalypses), and to a lesser extent as far as it can be seen in the NT, protection from Roman persecution and survival through it.
Re: The Benedictus of Zechariah
The sacrificial system was at least in part a movement away from the human sacrifices of surrounding Middle Eastern cultures. To assert that God demanded a proxy sacrifice of an innocent representative of Israel for the sins of Israel, apart from the impossibility of such a request (no such natural descendant of Abraham existed), is regressive in the extreme, and contrary to what we know of the character of YHWH in the OT.
Where does the bible talk about the suffering of God on the cross? Everywhere that it is assumed that Jesus was himself God (ie pretty much everywhere in the gospels and the NT, for which evidence has been cited at length on this site).
Why shouldn’t God suffer for the sake of the salvation of his chosen people? I everywhere assert that he does.
The reward/punishment obedience/disobedience system provided Israel with a limited perception of a much deeper problem - which was illuminated to its fullest extent in God taking the suffering of the cross on himself in Jesus. The deeper problem is extensively presented by Paul in Romans, but it is hinted at throughout the OT. The problem was not what Israel did (whether in obedience or disobedience) but who Israel was (it was a heart issue, which Paul traces to an Adamic inheritance she had in common with the Gentiles - see just about everywhere in Romans). The death of Jesus on the cross placed the issue of sin in a very different context from a reward/punishment obedience/disobedience framework.
Essentially, the self-centredness of Israel’s perception of her own salvation arises from your own line of interpretation, which in itself is somewhat contradictory. You say on the one hand that Israel was saved from her enemies so that God could remain true to his promise to Abraham (blessing to others etc), but on the other hand you say that there was no universal significance to the death of Jesus, which was purely to facilitate rescue from judgement on Jerusalem/Rome for those who trusted in him, and that anyone else in the world benefited from this localised interpretation only as an after-thought - by entering a narrative which was primarily for Israel, not them. (So Israel’s salvation was essentially a self-centred affair; God never intended it to be for anyone else except Israel according to your interpretation).
Re: The Benedictus of Zechariah
Like I said at the end of my commnets on the “Save them from their sins” thread, would it not make sense for the authors of these texts to be deliberately showing us that everyone was expecting the wrong thing to happen- that people expected a king and political victory, but got a servant and a spiritual victory. To do so, they would show us prophecies made just prior to Jesus’ birth that echo OT prophecies that could be interpreted in a political way, and then by way of the rest of the narrative, show us that the political interpretation must be changed. Isn’t that what a lot of the NT does? It reinterprets the OT prophecies so that they predict Jesus, rather than another David. So couldn’t the gospels show us this same progression as a narrative?
I do not personally believe in the “verbal plennary” of scripture, but I do believe that it is divinely inspired. Doesn’t it make sense that God would tell (or show in a vision, or otherwise influence) prophets about certain things that they would misinterpret by applying them to their own time and place? That the universal significance is lost on the very authors of the passages trapped as they are by circumstance. But God knows the universal significance of what He has imparted, and waits for the rest of us to catch up.
You can’t talk about the Bible without talking about prophetic visions, especially the NT. Prophetic vision and spritual ecstacy are what spreading the Holy Spirit was all about. That specifically was what Peter and Paul were good at. And I don’t see why you’d even talk about the Bible without assigning these visions some level of authority. So its really easy for me to imagine prophets of all times and places receiving authentic visions, but interpreting them too narrowly.
Just a thought.
