Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§13.3 For Whom Did Jesus Intend His Message?
11.25). The implication, once again, is that as the Qumran community saw itself
as participants in the 'new covenant', 115 so Jesus saw the group around him as
anticipatory fulfilment of the new covenant (Jer. 31.31-34) which Yahweh was to
make with his people. 116 As the twelve somehow represented restored Israel, so
they represented Israel under the new covenant. No more need be said at this
point, but we will return to the passage later (§17.5d[3]).
f. The Assembly of Yahweh
In two famous passages in Matthew, Jesus is reported as speaking of his ekklesia.
Matt. 16.18: 'You are Peter (Petros) and on this rock (petra) I will build my
ekklesia, and the gates of hell will not prevail over it'; Matt. 18.17: '. . . if he
(your brother) refuses to listen to them (those who seek to reason with him), tell
it to the ekklesia; and if he refuses to listen even to the ekklesia, let him be to you
as a Gentile and a toll-collector'. Both passages are probably redactional and indicative
of later developments. The former elaborates or cuts across Jesus' terser
response to Peter in Mark 8.30, and the latter is part of what appears to be a developed
rule of community discipline, reflecting the subsequent context where
individual communities were called ekklesia ('church'). 117
The only cause for pause is the fact that ekklesia is regularly used in the
LXX (about 100 times) to translate the Hebrew qahal, 'assembly'. Most notable
are the phrases qahal Yahweh and qahal Israel. 118 In view of the evidence reviewed
in this section (§13.3), the likelihood cannot be excluded that Jesus did
speak on occasion of the assembly of Yahweh, and that he thereby intimated his
hope to gather around himself the core of a reconstituted Israel. Perhaps even the
thought would have been implicit that as those who gathered to hear Moses
speak to them from God were his qahal/ekklesia, so too those gathered to hear
Jesus speak from God were a renewed qahal/ekklesia. Any memory of Jesus on
115. CD 6.19; 8.21; 19.33-34; 20.12; lQpHab 2.3-6; cf. lQSb (lQ28b) 3.26; 5.21-23.
116. See further above, chapter 12 n. 65. Becker argues that since the (new) covenant
idea is characteristic of the post-Easter church and not at home elsewhere in the preaching of
Jesus, the conclusion is unavoidable that the covenant motif does not come from Jesus (Jesus
128-29). But the motif is wholly consistent with Jesus' more widely attested hopes for some
sort of restoration of Israel.
117. See further below, vol. 3.
118. Qahal Yahweh, Num. 16.3; 20.4; Deut. 23.1-3, 8; 1 Chron. 28.8; Neh. 13.1; Mic.
2.5. Qahal Israel — Exod. 12.6; Lev. 16.17; Num. 14.5; Deut. 31.30; Josh. 8.35; 1 Kgs. 8.14,
22, 55; 12.3; 1 Chron. 13.2; 2 Chron. 6.3, 12-13. See further Davies and Allison, Matthew
2.613, 629. Jeremias notes 4QpPs 37(4Q171) 3.16: '(God) established him (the Teacher of
Righteousness) ... to build for himself a congregation (Ibnot lo 'dt). . .' (Proclamation 168).
Still deserving of consideration is Cullmann, Peter 193-99.
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