Jesus the Bridegroom: The Origin of the Eschatological Feast as a Wedding Banquet in the Synoptic Gospels by Long Phillip J

Author:Long, Phillip J. [Long, Phillip J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickwick Publications - An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2013-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

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The Wedding Banquet in the Synoptic Gospels

Introduction

Summary of the Study

I BEGAN THIS STUDY with the observation that New Testament scholars often state that writers of the Second Temple period conceive of the end of the age as a messianic banquet, but never as a wedding banquet. The Synoptic Gospels, on the other hand, describe Jesus as claiming that the kingdom of Heaven “like a wedding banquet” and he refers to himself as a bridegroom. This is therefore a problem for some scholars because it is assumed that Jesus would have used metaphors which were current in the first century in order to communicate his message clearly. If no one was describing the messianic age as a wedding banquet, it is highly unlikely that Jesus would choose to use that particular metaphor for his messianic ministry. 835 How did the eschatological banquet at the end of the age come to be a description of Jesus’ ministry? How did a banquet motif transform into a wedding banquet in the Synoptic Gospels?

In order to explore this problem, I proposed to use an intertextual methodology in order to explore how the Gospel writers applied the metaphor of a messianic banquet. In my second chapter, I adapted Hays’s method for detecting allusions to include both texts and traditions found in earlier documents. In an oral culture it was not always possible for an audience to “read” a text. Rather, they heard a story which employed common tradition known to all. The first step of my method is to “hear an echo” in the Gospel text. For example, in Matt 8 :11–12 Jesus describes the kingdom in terms of a messianic banquet (“many from the east and west reclining at the table with Abraham”). In Mark 2 :19–20 Jesus describes himself as a bridegroom and his ministry as an on- going wedding banquet characterized by feasting. In these examples a listener might “hear an echo” of traditions from the Hebrew Bible.

The second stage of my method was to gather texts which might have been used by the Gospel writers. I therefore reviewed data from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple period that describes the beginning eschatological age as a banquet (chapter 3 ) or the return from exile as a new Exodus and an ongoing banquet with the Lord in the Wilderness (chapter 4 ). Since there are a number of texts which describe the end of the age as a restoration of the marriage between Israel and her God, I examined the marriage metaphor in Hosea, Jeremiah and Isaiah (chapter 5 ). Frequently the Wilderness period was used to describe the initial marriage of Israel and their God. These three related sets of imagery overlap and blend together, creating various combinations of joyous celebration of a renewed marriage at the end of the exile. One of the ways a future age could be described was as an invitation to join in the joyous celebration which accompanies the marriage of Israel.

These three traditions appear in various combinations in the literature of the Second Temple period.

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