In “Q” material, Jesus declares that following him takes precedence over all social obligations, even those family obligations one’s society and religion declare to be ultimate (Matt 8:21-22//Lk 9:59-60). This saying is widely accepted as authentic, particularly due to the positive application of the criterion of dissimilarity; it does not fit the mainstream of early Judaism, Christianity, or Greco-Roman thought.109
In this passage, when a prospective disciple requests permission to simply attend to his father’s burial before following Jesus, the latter replies, “Let the dead bury their dead.” This striking response may represent a typically sage-like sort of catchy saying110 probably meaning, “Let the ‘spiritually dead’ see to such concerns.”111 Others suggest, “Let the other physically dead persons in the tombs see to your physically dead father,” a manifest impossibility characteristic of Jesus’ typically shocking and graphic style to emphasize that this is no business of the living disciple’s.112
Despite the graphic language, Jesus’ demand may prove less harsh in some respects than it sounds at first. The prospective disciple is probably not asking permission to attend his father’s funeral later that day; his father more likely either was not yet dead or had been buried once already. When a person died, mourners would gather, the body would be prepared, and a funeral procession would take the body to the tomb immediately (cf. Mk 5:35, 38; Lk 7:12), leaving little opportunity for family members to be away making promises to sages. For a week afterward, the family would remain mourning at home and not go out in public.113 But father and son might wish to be together before the father died,114 and Semitic idioms in other languages might suggest that “I must first bury my father” could function as a request to wait until one’s father dies — perhaps for years — so that one may fulfill the ultimate filial obligation before leaving home.115
A custom practiced only in the decades immediately surrounding the time of Jesus might illumine this passage more directly, however. In Jesus’ day the eldest son would return to the tomb a year after the father’s death to “rebury” his father by arranging his now bare bones in a container and sliding it into a slot on the wall. If the father has died, this young man cannot refer to his father’s initial burial (which would be underway at that moment), hence must be asking for as much as a year’s delay for a secondary burial.116
Then again, if Jesus’ demand sounds less urgent than we might suppose, in respect to priorities it proves more demanding than it at first sounds to modern western readers. The offense lies not in the immediacy of the demand but in the priority the demand takes over family obligations,117 the kind of demand God made of biblical prophets.118 Many Jewish people considered honoring parents the supreme commandment,119 and considered burial of one’s parents one of the most important implications of that commandment regardless of the circumstances.120
A few teachers did insist that disciples honor their teachers above their parents,121 but for a young man in his thirties (as Jesus apparently was)122 to seek such honor would be considered presumptuous and shameful.123 Moreover, such teachers never envisioned anything as dramatic as neglecting the parents’ burial. When sages figuratively placed demands for the honor of sages higher than those of one’s parents, it was to emphasize the importance of Torah study, but they would never have placed even the urgency of Torah study above the urgency of burying a parent who had died,124 and presumably would have avoided dishonoring or disobeying living parents by any means possible.125
In most current interpretations of biblical law, only one person’s honor took precedence over the honor shown to parents: God’s.126 Jesus does insist on honoring parents (Mk 7:6-13); yet he demands a greater affection toward himself. A disciple cannot simply “move on” from him after several years, as with some other teachers, and count it a profitable learning experience.127 In a saying generally deemed authentic, Jesus scandalously claims the supreme position of attention in his followers’ lives.
