Jesus and the Rabbis

The fact that here and there a rabbi contemporary with Jesus may be found who holds particular moral views similar to Jesus’ (thus seeming to deprive Jesus of a unique religious status) does not seem to obscure the cosmic centrality of Jesus’ presence and mission.

A rabbi, for example, said that a truly moral act requires not only a good external deed but also an inward moral motivation. But this utterance scarcely resembles Jesus’ generation of a world-transformative movement and following.

An enormous difficulty, however, with this interpretation of the historical consequences of Jesus is that the social movement that flows from his words and deeds did not for the most part continue to embody the radical moral way of the Sermon on the Mount.

Nevertheless, though not universally normative (I am excluding groups like the Mennonites) his radical “pacifist” way was retained in the church’s tradition as the highest expression of the spiritual life – though emasculated by various interpretive strategies. An example of this is the circumscription of Jesus’ hard moral demands to those seeking perfection by withdrawing into the monastic life.