Chapter 160 of 404

Jesus and Sages’ Style

Jesus was distinctive in some respects.¹⁵ Each teacher had some unique or characteristic elements in his style,¹⁶ and many scholars have commented on specific characteristics of Jesus’ teaching style, some unique to him and others common to ancient Jewish teachers in general.¹⁷ (For instance, few if any other teachers sometimes prefaced their words with, “Amen [Truly], I tell you.”)¹⁸

By contrast, some other elements of Jesus’ style are characteristic of his contemporaries in general.¹⁹ Most rhetorical forms in biblical wisdom literature, such as proverbs and riddles, continued among sages of Jesus’ day.²⁰ Jewish teachers typically employed the rhetorical techniques of hyperbole and rhetorical overstatement.²¹

Unfortunately for some of his subsequent interpreters, Jesus employed this same evocative, engaging teaching style, regularly seeking to evoke specific responses rather than to provide direct proof-texts for subsequent theological systems.²² Modern interpreters often find his sayings hopelessly contradictory and incoherent when we fail to familiarize ourselves with catchy figures of Jewish speech, expecting instead developed doctrinal pronouncements.

We find even exact parallels to some of his language among Jewish teachers. ²³ For example, Jesus often introduces parables with precisely the same language documented in later rabbis. Jesus’ phrases like “To what shall I compare . . . ?” (Matt 11:16//Lk 7:31; also Lk 13:18, 20)²⁴ and “So-and-so is like” (e.g., Mk 4:26, 31; 13:34; Matt 11:16; 13:24; 25:1; Lk 6:48-49)²⁵ both appear regularly in later Jewish sources. These later sources undoubtedly did not borrow them from Jesus, so Jesus and the later rabbis undoubtedly reflect a common pattern already used by sages in Jesus’ era.

As we noted earlier, much of Jesus’ audience must have also consisted of rural, agrarian peasants. More than in the settings of many later rabbinic parables, ²⁶ the settings of the majority of Jesus’ extant parables reflect an agrarian environment.²⁷

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