1986 - Joseph Keller - Jesus and the Critics. A Logico-Critical Analysis of the Marcan Confrontation

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DOI: 10.1177/0020964386040001041986 40: 29Interpretation

Joseph KellerJesus and the Critics : A Logico-Critical Analysis of the Marcan Confrontation

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Jesus and the CriticsA Logieo-Critieal Analysis of the Marean Confrontation

JOSEPH KELLERProfessor of EnglishIndiana University

A narrative pattern in which confrontationalpassages are followed by parables metaphoricallyclarifying the power of faith, and by miracleswhich show faith's power in act, enables Markto show Jesus meeting opponents' objectionsby requiring a yet greater degree both of loveand of faith than they.

T HE DEVELOPING BRANCH of linguistics called text linguistics,text grammar, or discourse analysis assumes a foundational logicalstructure for any cohesive text like the brief narrative in Mark 2:6-12. Inthis passage, a group of lawyers suspects that Jesus may be guilty ofblasphemy. The ensuing confrontation is the first of eleven places in Markwhere Jesus responds to reductionist attacks on him or on the behavior ofhis followers. Analysis discovers thatJesus' logic is consistent, as is that ofthe critics. The critics' logic essentially amounts to what logicians call aparticular, while that ofJesus is a universal argument. The limited perception of the critics results in a particularizing which Jesus shows is no t onlypartial bu t false: partial, because the critics insiston analyzingJesus as ifhewere restricted to one among alternative lifestyles or viewpoints; falsebecause Jesus is a whole person about whom a particular quantificationerroneously supposed to be the whole truth must be false. We can learnfrom these confrontations between Jesus and his critics for , as Tom F.

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Driver has observed, ". . . [W]e have to keep ever in mind that all languageaboutJesus, including the pages of th e New Testament, refers to an actualperson who is only partly comprehended in what is said about him."}Since analysis reveals that all eleven confrontation narratives in Markare logically equivalent (some less obviously so than o thers) , they may bethought to constitute a coherent whole within the coherence of the wholeGospel. This has some bearing on historical criticism, fo r as GuentherBornkamm has pointed out, "The passages in the Gospels which deal withJesus' perception and penetrating insight ought to be assembled . . . . Inreali ty we are here concerned with a most characteristic trait in thehistorical Jesus, one which quite accurately is confirmed by the nature ofhis preaching."2 I hope to show that a logical analysis also has some bearingon biblical literary criticism (as differentiated from redaction or formcriticism), an evaluative technique still in its infancy.3 This kind of criticismcan show that deep values or convictions order biblical narrative, poetry,or prophecy in ways which cause reader or hearer to frame ethical orreligious truths and to experience aesthetic pleasure. I begin with a reviewof the logical structures ofMark 2:6-12 and the other texts in whichJesusis depicted as confounding his opponents."Who but God alone," the scribes think to themselves, "can forgivesins?" (Mark 2:7, NEB translation). Since Jesus hadjust told a paralyzed

man that his sins were forgiven, the lawyers' shocked and puzzled reactionis perhaps not surprising. What is to the point is that obviously they haveassumed two alternatives, one of which must be false. Either God canforgive sins ("true") or Jesus can ("false"). Jesus does no t immediatelyresolve their difficulty. Instead, he proposes a disjunction of his own. Is iteasier, he asks, to say to the paralyzed man tha t his sins are forgiven or tosay, "Stand up, take your bed and walk?" Then, proving tha t he can doboth, Jesus raises the paralytic; and all the bystanders, presumably including the lawyers, praise God. Jesus by demonstration has negated the

1. Tom F. Driver, Christ in a Changing World; Toward an Ethical Christology (New York:The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1981), p. 27.2. Guenther Bornkamm, "Jesus of Nazareth" in Jesus of Nazareth, trans. I rene andFraser McLuskey with James R. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960); cited in InSearch of the HistoricalJesus, ed. Harvey K. McArthur (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,1969), p. 171.3. Robert Alter, The Ar t of Biblil:al Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), p. 12.Critical acumen may follow linguistic insight, hence the remarkable critical achievementsof structural biblical criticism. See Jean Calloud, Structural Analysis of Narrative, trans.Daniel Patte (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976) and Daniel Patte, Aline Patte, Structural Exegesis:From Theory to Practice (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978),Chap. 3, "Structural Exegesis ofMark15 and 16."30



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] esus and the CriticsInterpretation

alternative he had proposed by combining physical healing with spiritual.The resulting conjunction (because negated disjunctions convert to con-junctions) thus strongly implies the reality: thatJesus can both forgive sinsand heal the body. The inclusivewhole which can be constructed from theunion of the two propositions, "I forgive sins"; "I heal the body," revealsthe partiality and therefore falsity of the scribal alternation. The logicalstrategy attributed to Jesus in this passage is more subtly developed andmore dramatically displayed than the one he will use in most of thesubsequent confrontations, but essentially it amounts to negating a dis-junction, thereby affirming a conjunction. Jesus' opponents always try tolimit him to a choice between or among alternatives. Jesus rejects thealternation, proposing instead a conjunction or what conjunction ultimately amounts to, a universal . To the circumscription of a particularquantification, which says that of a single dimension of something we cansay this or that but no t both, Jesus opposes an implied or an explicitlyformulated universal quantification which says that of all of something wemust say both this and that. Jesus "speaks with a complete freedom whichis no t bound by the law of logical alternatives," Dietrich Bonhoefferwroteof these passages.4 Bonhoefferwas only partly right. Jesus may speak withcomplete freedom, bu t it is a freedom which carefully dismantles arguments based on incorrect alternatives. Moreover, in the Gospel of Mark,Jesus twice proposes an alternative of his own (2:6-12; 3:4) and uncovers ascribal contradiction by revealing the impossible alternative which th econtradiction assumes (that Messiah is both David's son and Lord:12:35-37).NeitherJesus nor his opponents could have been aware of particular or

universal quantification, of disjunction and conjunction as we conceive ofthese kinds of statements and operations. The shape such concepts havetoday is fami liar to us because Aristotelian and contemporary logic arepart of our intellectual heritage. Unfortunately, the system of Israelitelogic, if there was one, is no t known. No Palestinean Aristotle ofwhom weare aware sorted out principles of reasoning like identity, noncontradiction, or excluded middle, developed an assertoric syllogistic, and laid thefoundations of a propositional and a modal logic. 5 Of course, this is not tosay that ancient Israelites were incapable of thinking as well and ascogently as any Greek, despi te the semantically oriented skepticism of

4. Dietr ich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, trans. and ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York: Macmillan,1965), p. 29.5. I. M. Bochenski, A History ofFormal Logic, trans. and ed. Ivo Thomas (Notre Dame:University of Notre Dame, 1961), p. 10.31



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Thorleif Boman. 6 Moreover, it has been shown that hermeneutical rulesby which the Torah was interpreted were influenced by the logic ofHellenic rhetoric: a logic herbraized ". . . to fit into the hermeneuticprocess of classical Judaism," as Daniel Patte puts it. 7Anyone who reads the Mishnah is bound to be impressed by the innatelogicizing of its hermeneutic principles, regardless of any discernible

Hellenic influence. In this "final expression of the Jewish nation's unimpaired religious life . . . ," whose first compilation may have begun by about70 A.D., universal premises or general rules are either tacitly assumed (asone might expectin a body of oral law) or are specifically formulated, evenin the Midrashim preceding the organization of th e Mishnah by the schoolof Rabbi Akiba benJoseph (ca. 50-135A.D.).8 Typically, relevant situationsare examined which illustrate the application of rule in a variety of cases.Such a procedure broadly translates into one of the most ordinary sche-mata of contemporary predicate and propositional logic: first, a universalquantification and then a series of conjunctions. (Accordingly, it seems tome appropriate to comment on the logic of Jesus and his critics in thesemodern terms.) If a rule is no t explicitly formulated, it can sometimes beconstructed out of the series of inferences of the particular tractate.Wherea rule is explicitly set forth, it is ultimately derived from a specific scrip-tural text or texts, and it is sometimes extended by inference if it isperceived to be an application of a related but different scriptural principle.

9Since a one-by-one examination of many special cases with general

principles either assumed or clearly drawn apparently was a typical6. Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, trans. Jules L. Moreau (Phil-

adelphia: Westminster, 1960), "Greek thinking is clear logical knowing; Israelite thinkingis deep psychological understanding," p. 204. "Israelite thinking is prelogical . . . ," p. 195.For a criticism of Boman's semantically oriented analysis see James Barr, The Semantics ofBiblical Language (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp . 42-43, 295.

7. Daniel Patte, EarlyJewish Hermeneutic in Palestine (Missoula, Montana: The Society ofBiblical Literature, 1975), p. 114 an d references pp. 112-13, notes 103, 104.8. The Mishnah, trans. Herbert Danby (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. xvi.For th e formulation of general rules in the earliest Midrash, see, e.g ., Maaser Sheni5: 10-14: a ser ies of inferences from biblical tex ts resul ts in a general rule; or see Sotah8: 1-7, in which the seventh section states a general rule for the preceding teaching. Forimplied rules, see p. xxiv an d the introductions to Demai an d Hullin. For specificallyformulated general rules in the Mishnah, see, e.g., pp. 7,11,46,47,48,60,66,67,106,513,649, an d 771, n. 3.9. A particularly clear example of inference is found in Shebiith, 7: 12, Danby, TheMishnah, pp . 46-47. All produce gathered, whether converted to money or not, is subjecttotithing an d to charity by Deut. 26: 13. Hence all produce gathered from seventh-year fallowland is subject to tithing an d to charity. Conversely, all non-produce gathered is no t subjectto tithing and to charity. Both these rules ar e followed by specific lists of plants, and areillustrated by representative cases.32



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Jesus and the CriticsInterpretation

method by which th e law was discussed in the Pharisaic schools (e.g., ofHillel or ofAkiba), the strategy adopted by the opponents ofJesus, that ofexplicitly or implicitly proposing alternatives, seems a significant procedural departure. If th e Mishnah does indeed represent th e methodologyoforal tradition, as everyone agrees, then Jesus' opponents are depicted asdistorting that methodology, forced to do so by what they perceived asbehavior scandalously opposed to the tradition of the Fathers. At any rate,the effect of these passages is to demonstrate Jesus' constructive penetration to significant general rules underlying specific situations. 10After the first encounter with scribes, Jesus responds to the criticism of

scribes and Pharisees that he associates with tax collectors and sinners(presumably instead of with respectable people) with the assertion thatsinners need to join the righteous through his healing ministry. Thepremise is that even public sinners are not irretrievably lost (2:16-17).Thus he denies the disjunction in the implied proposition thatJesus couldassociate either with public sinners like tax gatherers and prostitutes orwith the righteous, but no t with both.

Next, on being asked why his followers, unlike th e disciplines of John,do not fast, the implication being that of the alternative behaviors one wascertainly preferable, Jesus in a reverse analogy to I I Samuel 12:21-23 11replies that both fasting and not fasting can be appropriate responses,justas new and old cloth make suitable patches, depending on the condition ofthe garment, and as new and old wineskins make suitable containers fo rnew and old wine (2: 18-22). For old cases an old decision, and fo r newcases a new, says R. Joshua as reported in the Mishnah. 12 The essentialconsideration according to Jesus, as Martin Dibelius noted, was of beingprepared for the coming Kingdom of God, whether or not one fasted. 13Again, the alternation (fasting vs. nonfasting) is denied, and both fastingand nonfasting are affirmed.When some Pharisees wondered why the followers of Jesus plucked

heads of wheat on the Sabbath, technically a breach of the law, Jesusreplied that inasmuch as necessity sometimes permits the Sabba th to beoverridden, people are not ineluctably condemned by their departure

10. Jesus may have been like the grea t Rabbi Akiba in this r e s p e ~ t . A lively discussionamong the Rabbis Eliezer, Joshua, and Akiba regarding th e validity of a particularinference and the relevance of proofs was brought to a satisfactory conclusion when R.Akiba formulated a general rule governing the case. Pesahim, 6: 1-2, Danby, The Mishnah,pp . 143-44.11. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative, refers to analogy with a reversal, p. 180.12. Danby, The Mishnah, p. 783 (Yadaim, 4:3) .13. Martin Dibelius, Jesus, trans. Charles B. Hedrick and Frederick C. Grant (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1949) , p . 108.

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from specific Shabbat legal decisions. He thus denies the specific alternatives presupposed by the hyper-legal Pharisees who confronted him.Commandments like that which prohibits labor on the Sabbath are madefor our benefit. Hence, the sovereignty of men and women includes thelaw and its occasional bu t sometimes necessary or inconsequential suspension (2 :24-28). Those Pharisees who, as J. Z. Lauterbach put it, wereno t slaves to the law but were its masters would have emphaticallyagreed. 14Similarly with the remaining seven cases: in each one, to a limitationwhich would exclude, Jesus either proposes a universal or sets up a

disjunction which cancels the disjunction of the critics, thus, logicallyspeaking, converting it to a conjunction. In 3:2-5,Jesus insists that the actof healing defines the healer, not whether or not the act be performed onSabbath. To the Pharisees' implied alternative, to heal ("bad") or not toheal ("good") on the Sabbath, Jesus proposes a disjunction of his ownwhich cancels the Pharisaic alternative. Healing and preserving life is goodand the opposite is bad, even on the Sabbath. Healing is an act whichoverrides the Sabbath. In 3:22-29, to the accusation, "He drives out devilsby the prince of devils," Jesus first points out the absurdity of the dis-junction (Satan vs. Satan) and then affirms the hea ling power of theuniversal Spirit. In 7: 1-13, to the alternation which perceives his followersas no t adhering to tradition instead of following it, Jesus simply says thatpeople should not neglect God's law while observing human law. In effect,he implies that both God's commandments and human traditions shouldbe observed, although the one should be subordinate to the o ther . Here,Jesus' principle if not his practice is impeccably Pharisaic. In 10:2-9, theindissoluble unity of marriage is asserted, as opposed to divorce; noalternative is possible to the God-given unity of male and female established a t the creation ofman and woman. In 11 :28-33, to the assumptionthat Jesus must derive his powers from one or more than one particularauthority, Jesus implies that the universal divine authority guides hisactions. To the cunning disjunction of 12: 14, "Are we or are we notpermitted to pay taxes to the Roman Emperor?" Jesus suggests that asmoney bears the image of its creator, the Emperor; it should be paid tohim, while we, of course, are "owed" to him whose image we bear: thetemporal to the Emperor of the world and the spiritual to God. There is no14. J. Z. Lauterbach,Rabbinic Essays (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1951), p.131. Cited in Patte, Early Jewish Hermeneutic, p. 96. Cf. the Mekilta de Rabbi Ishmael, 3 vols.(Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1933-1935), III, 196: "The

Sabbath is given to you and you are not given to the Sabbath." Cited in Patte, EarlyJewishHermeneutic.34



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disjunction. Finally, in 12:18-27, to the hypothetical case proposed by agroup ofSadducees, that of the woman serially married to several brotherson the dea th of her first and subsequent husbands, all brothers,Jesus firstcorrects the Sadducees' ignorance of Scripture and then opposes to theirdisjunction the universal truth that all men and women, living or dead, arespiritually alive in God: "God is not God of the dead but of th e living"(12:27).

In every case, Jesus integrates into a broader whole the particularalternatives assumed by the critics to be hard and fast choices, only one ofwhich is permissible. The system of beliefs and practices to which thecritics subscribe allows them to perceive only stereotypes whereJesus seespersons, forces them to fit even Jesus into alternative stereotypical slots.For the critics, a "good" man never eats with public sinners, even if he is aprophet calling for repentance. Of course, there may bejustification fo r anarrow viewpoint. The extreme of cultic purity on which th e critics insistserves to harden the division between sacral and profane, while a s trictinterpretation of the Sabbath commandment ensures a division betweenIsraelite and Gentile. But there is loss in narrowness, too. The critics arelike people forced to see the world as one-dimensional: everything is flat;there is no perspective. In sum, to return to thejargon of logic, their sets oflimited alternatives, "good" and "bad," can only be seen in perspective bybeing denied as alternatives and thus transformed into sets of con-junctions. How? Merely by accepting Jesus' loving and generous complexity.

The thesis of the critics-that there is one, and only one, right way topreserve the holy way of life and belief-naturally excludes the antithesisthat there is more than one way . Yet, as Jacques Derrida has noticed,though a thesis may exclude its antithesis, an antithesis is neverthelessimplied; and a thesis cannot be understood without iLlS Jesus' criticsformulate both a thesis and an antithesis and, pointing to the actuality ofthe one, fail to see that what they have constructed actually is a composite.They would have been closer to their target had they realized this, fo rthere is a kind of truth to the composite. Jesus does associate with bothsinners and saved, and he does uphold the law as well as fail to check hisfollowers when, on occasion, they ignore its technicalities. Therefore theone "Jesus" can be imagined or abstracted if and because the second"Jesus" can. Any generalization which defines t he one mus t then assumethe other and opposite abstraction.

15. Jacques Derrida, "Signature Event Context ," in Margins of Philosophy, trans. AlanBass (Brighton, U.K.: Harvester Press, 1983) is an example of the Derridean insight whichappears in one guise or other everywhere in his "inscription."

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Even then the critics would be far f rom the truth, for what may be trueof the parts of a composite may not be true of the whole. What may be trueof aspects of a person is not true of all of the person. Failure to see thisintensifies the stereotyping to which the critics of Jesus are prone. In alogical sense, at least, prejudice is self-defeating. The critics cannot see thisbecause they do not have the fai th which will enable them creatively toembrace the Jesus who associates with sinners as well as with the saved;who both upholds the law and modifies it. Certainly, the critics often lackcharity, fo r their questions can be malicious. Love does no t stereotype, andfaith cannot. To se t up alternative images and insist that real people besqueezed out of the one and into the preferred frame is a sin againstcharity as well as a weakness of faith. If the leaven of th e Pharisees to whichJesus objected teaches us anything, it teaches us to avoid the stereotypingwhich insists that Christ be "imprisoned and encysted"16 in a particularisticthinking which lacks the faith to accept (if no t wholly understand) hiswholeness.My interpretation may be supported by the placement of most of theMarean confrontational passages. Frequently, the logic-based passages arefollowed by parables, narratives which as Sallie TeSelle has stressed areanalogical, nonsystematic evocations of truth situations-that is, life eventswhose metaphoric resonance evokes a sense of ultimate authenticity ascontrasted to the analytic language of debate. 17 Parables express theuniversal in the event. Parables in turn are followed by miracles, revelations of the power of God which resolves contradictions. The logic-basedconfrontations reveal the narrowness of a Pharisaic constriction of faith.The parables exemplify the fulness of th e reality which faith accepts: faithno t as a thematic explication of a cognitive claim bu t as a primal stance, amode of being in the world-"the new logic of grace," as TeSelle puts it. 18And the message of the miracles is the unutterable unity within which suchapparent contradictions as life and death are contained.

In chapters two to five, we have six confrontations followed by fourparables which in turn are succeeded by five miracleswhose details we aregiven. (There are, in addition, many healings.) The implicit thesis of thelogic-based passages is the wholeness of the person,Jesus, which the critics

If>. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. G. W. Bromiley an d R. J. Ehrlich, 4 vols.(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936-1969), lVII, 68!.17. Sallie McFague TeSelle, Speaking in Parables, a Study in Metaphor and Theology(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), especially Chapter 4, "The Parable: The Primary Form."Cf. David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, the New Pluralism in Theology (New York: Seabury,1975), pp. 128-36.18. TeSelle, Speaking in Parables, p. 71.36



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have neither the love nor th e fai th to perceive. The explicit thesis of th eparables is the need fo r faith, and the miracles showwhat faith can achieve.In a sense, these chapters give us two stories , or two aspects of a single

narrative. One is the story of the confrontations, parables, and miracles.The other, which interrupts the confrontations, parables, and miracles, isa continuation of the "external" narrative ofchapter one: the comings andgoings ofJesus and his followers, the story ofJohn's execution and, almostas an aside, the plot by some of Jesus' "friends" to restrain him. The twonarrative structures are not symmetrical. There seems to be no structuralcohesion between them other t han the chronology of ] esus' li fe and hismISSIon.I am by no means suggesting tha t the "inner" narrative of logical andmetaphoric talk and analogical miracle is obviously a "motivated" artisticpattern whose design invariably elicits an aesthetic response. It mayindeed elicit such a response, of course, if we allow ourselves to be taughtby its uniqueness. ( In the absence of conventional models, both the Gospeltext and our response to it are different from texts like the Aeneid. TheLatin epic was written within a tradition, and our reading of it is conditioned by that tradition.) Instead, I suggest tha t the "inner" narrative ofthe Gospel is as it is because of the convictional core from which itproceded, the deep values that saw the restricted logic of the opponents ofJesus as a ba r to faith and th e parables and miracles of]esus as showings offa ith in story and in deed. That what we are dealing with is no t a conventional, "motivated" aesthetic design may be indirectly suggested by thefact that the other Gospels only occasionally employ the argumentparable-miracle sequence. Moreover, their confrontational scenes do no tconsistently yield the alternational-conjunctional schemata of Mark.In chapters seven and eight, a confrontation with Pharisees (7: 1-13) isfollowed by teaching parables (7: 15-23) and miracles (7:25-30, 32-35;

8:2-9). The Pharisees return to the attack, demanding a sign from heavenwhich is brusquely refused (8: 11-12); ] esus urges his puzzled disciples tounderstand the meaning of the miracle of the loaves and fishes (8: 17-21),and this "confrontation"with his own followers is followed by the curingofa blind man (8:22-26). Once again, the sequence moves from the logicaland metaphoric to the analogical: argument, teaching parables, miracle;confrontation, teaching (but no t parables), and miracle.Climactic scenes in Mark are the sections in which]esus is first defined asMessiah by Peter (8:27-33)-a partial identification, of course-then seenin his transfigurational wholeness (9:2-8). These passages are followed bya miracle (9: 16-27) and a discourse on, among other things, the child-likeness of faith (9:36-37, 42-50). Discourse is followed by manifestation,

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and manifestation by miracle. Yet another confrontation (10:2-9) is atlength succeeded by the miracle which cured Bartimaeus, whose faithmade him see (10:46-52). The episode in which lawyers ask by whoseauthority jesus does what he does (11 :27-33) is followed by th e parable ofthe vineyard (12: 1-9). Finally, th e Pharisees pose th e ingenius probe intojesus' stance toward the Roman occupation (12: 14-17), the Sadduceespresent the specious scenario of the much-married woman (12: 18-27),and a lawyer gives jesus an opportunity to stress the central significance ofthe two great commandments (12:28-31). "After that nobody ventured toput any more questions to him" (12:34), nor a re the re more parables ormiracles. Instead, jesus died and rose f rom the dead, the supreme manifestation of th e Ultimate in whom all particularities are seen, by faith, tobeabsorbed.

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1986 - Joseph Keller - Jesus and the Critics. A Logico-Critical Analysis of the Marcan Confrontation

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