CHAPTER 13 - Jesus the Teacher
CHAPTER 13
Jesus the Teacher
“A disciple does not outrank his teacher, nor a slave his or her slaveholder; it suffices for a disciple to become like his teacher, and a slave like a master . . .”
MATTHEW 10:24-25
When people in antiquity spoke or wrote about teachers, one of the main subjects of discussion was naturally the teachers’ sayings. Ancient historians rarely could provide more than plausible reconstructions of speeches, offering the semblance of what was known or supposed to have been said on a particular occasion. By contrast, notable sayings of famous sages often circulated and were memorized and passed on. Interested followers or admirers sometimes gathered these sayings into collections or included them in related narratives. When the sages were recent, one could expect the sayings to reflect genuine tradition about the speaker (though not usually in order).
In this chapter I will introduce Jesus the sage, a role that the majority of scholars today accept regardless of their views on other issues (such as Jesus’ eschatology). I will focus especially on Jesus’ use of parables, a form distinctive to Jesus in our first-century Christian sources, and show how these parables fit a first-century Palestinian Jewish context. Indeed, examining other Jewish parables demonstrates that even the parable interpretations in the Gospels can be understood within a first-century Jewish context much more readily than many earlier scholars supposed.
We know much about Jesus’ teachings. Scholars differ over the details, but without reconstructing Jesus’ precise words, scholars can gather enough evidence from our sources to speak of Jesus’ purpose and mission.1