Continued from Chapter 22h
Christian theological needs
The argument that Jesus died without any significant following is an argument necessitated by the theological need to have Jesus’ life conform to the Christian concept of the suffering servant.
But the Gospels argue that Jesus had a significant following among the wellborn as well as among the common people even at the time of his crucifixion. This faithful following, we are told, was not composed of ignorant masses following a mere miracle-working prophet. The Gospels allege that the masses adhered to a messianic belief that Jesus, who was believed to be the son of David (Matthew 9:27), was not only the prophet promised in Deuteronomy 18:15 (John 7:40), but was in fact, the very Messiah himself (John 7:41). Even though there was a division among the crowd over who Jesus was (John 7:43), and many of his disciples left him (John 6:66), the assumption to be drawn from the Gospels’ silence is that thousands of people throughout the country still believed in him as the Messiah at the time of the crucifixion.
It should be noted that according to the Gospel narratives, the general Jewish populace did not have occasion to directly reject Jesus’ messianic assertions since he had not openly claimed to be the Messiah (Matthew 16:20, Mark 8:29-30, Luke 9:20-21). To whatever reason one may attribute the description of Jesus’ large following, the fact still remains that the Gospels insist the members of the various classes of society did not generally reject him. On all accounts, there is little resemblance between the life of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels and the life of the servant as depicted by Isaiah 53. There is only one logical conclusion to be drawn and that is that Jesus is not the servant portrayed by Isaiah.
5:4: “Surely our diseases he did bear, and our pains he carried; but we considered him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.”
The servant as a vehicle for bearing “our” diseases and pains.
Did Jesus heal the sick and infirm? Matthew makes use of Isaiah 53:4. He writes: “This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, ‘He took our sicknesses and carried our diseases’” (Matthew 8:17). The context shows that Matthew understands this verse literally to mean “he took away sickness,” and thus he sees Jesus’ supposed miracles as fulfilling prophecy concerning healing the infirm rather than as a reference to his allegedly removing sin by dying on the cross. However, whether literally or figuratively Jesus never bore the “diseases” or “pains,” that is, the humiliation and adversity of Israel or, for that matter, of any other people. Faith healing and miraculous cures are not impossible. However, they are attributed to Jesus not because they happened but rather because pre-Gospel Christian tradition expected them to happen.
Certain illnesses may be relieved or even disappear because of the deep trust the infirm place on the “faith healer,” but that does not necessarily mean the “healer” is working under a divine mandate. In the case of Jesus, it may be that he brought about some faith-healing “cures” but these were magnified and replicated more in story than in reality.
Nagua‘
The servant is considered as one “stricken,” (nagua‘). Nagua‘ is used in the Jewish Scriptures in connection with being stricken with what is called “leprosy” (nega‘ tzara‘at, “the plague of leprosy” Leviticus 13:9). Jesus was not stricken physically with leprosy or anything resembling it, so Christians cannot claim that he literally fulfilled this verse. Even metaphorically, nagua‘ cannot be applied to Jesus who was not shunned as a loathsome pariah. The application to Jesus of nagua‘, that is, stricken metaphorically in the manner of one who has leprosy and treated as a leper by fellow human beings, is unwarranted. The respectively supportive, indifferent, or hostile audiences Jesus confronts in the Gospels show a variety of responses to his message, but none can be compared to nagua‘; not even in the description of his last few hours of life.
Continued