A Gentile Mission
A Gentile Mission
Although there are at least hints of a Gentile mission in Jesus’ Galilean teaching, two Gospels provide much more explicit teaching on this subject after the resurrection. Some of his earlier Galilean teachings apparently had even limited his mission and that of his followers to Israel, at least in the short run, even in one of the two narratives that note him reluctantly granting the request of a Gentile supplicant (Mk 7:27-29).1 Even the prohibitive saying in Matt 10:5-6 is undoubtedly authentic: even those early Jewish Christians least inclined to cross ethnic barriers would probably not have invented such a mission saying for Jesus themselves, since Judaism did not oppose making proselytes2 and sometimes envisioned an end-time ingathering of Gentiles (cf. e.g., Is 19:19-25; 56:3-8).3 Further, the prohibition does fit a short-term mission during Jesus’ ministry and its expectation of some sort of imminent kingdom.
Where then did the early Christian Gentile mission (more proactive than most early Jewish interest in securing proselytes) come from?4 Early Judaism provides a plausible context for this mission without fully explaining its genesis. A range of Jewish views about Gentiles in the end time existed.5 Among these views, Jesus’ approach was probably among the more positive ones,6 as we shall note below. But Judaism did not have a concerted mission to the Gentiles such as we find in Matthew’s or Luke’s commissions (or Paul’s actual mission).7 (Some scholars envision a concerted Jewish mission to the Gentiles;8 they rightly recognize some Jews’ interest in making proselytes, but the evidence does not support the sort of centralized effort that other scholars mean by a “missions” movement.)
Most other Jews were either (especially in the Diaspora) not as eschatologically oriented as Jesus’ movement or (e.g., at Qumran) not as favorable toward Gentiles. But even if some had shared these characteristics, these beliefs by themselves need not have led directly to a “Gentile mission.” The context may make the early Christian Gentile movement plausible, but no single factor in the context readily explains its genesis.