Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§13.3 For Whom Did Jesus Intend His Message?
earliest Christianity, 127 not to mention a sense somewhat similar to that at
Qumran of being a priestly community. 128 (3) Jesus' talk of a new/rebuilt temple
(Mark 14.58) is interpreted by the Fourth Evangelist as a reference to his own
(resurrected) body (John 2.21), which conceivably may help explain Paul's ready
assumption that the community of believers are in some sense 'the body of
Christ' (Rom. 12.4-5; 1 Cor. 12.12-27). The data are rather sketchy and the connections
convoluted, but they do at least suggest the intriguing hypothesis that
Jesus saw the community of his disciples as in some sense the core of a renewed
worshipping people of God.
h. The Diaspora?
With the hope of a restored Israel so prominently expressed in Jesus' mission, one
might have expected some explicit reference to the return of the scattered exiles of
Israel. Such an expectation could/would of course be included within the talk of
repentance/return and the symbolism of the (restored) twelve (tribes). But it is
surprising in that case that Jesus gave no clearer indications on the subject: the call
to return is one which was repeated through Israel's history, not limited to a particular
situation in that history; no attempt was made to include a diaspora Jew
among the twelve. What about 'the lost sheep of the house of Israel' ? But the
commission of Matt. 10.6 hardly has the diaspora in view, since in the preceding
sentence the disciples are forbidden to go 'on the way of/towards the Gentiles'
(10.5). 129 And we have already noted the possibility that the similar allusion in the
story of the Syrophoenician woman (Matt. 15.24) may at best suggest that Jesus
extended his mission to greater Israel (§§9.9f). So too the imagery of the 'sheep
without a shepherd' (Mark 6.34/Matt. 9.36) seems to be directed more against the
failures of Jewish leadership 130 than to gathering in the scattered outcasts. It is
true that Luke has set the parable of the lost sheep in parallel to the parable of the
prodigal son (Luke 15.4-7, 11-32), with the latter's reference to the younger son's
time in a 'far country' (15.13), but any equivalent inference has to be read into the
former. All in all, once again, we have to conclude that little or no attempt has
been made in the Jesus tradition to include the thought that Jesus' mission aimed
to restore Israel by bringing exiled Israel to repentance as in Deut. 30.2. 131
In sum, although the evidence becomes increasingly tenuous, the initial
127. 1 Cor. 3.9, 16; 6.19; 2 Cor. 6.16; Eph. 2.21; 1 Pet. 2.5.
128. Rom. 5.2; 12.1-2; 15.16; Phil. 2.25; 1 Pet. 2.5; Rev. 1.6; 5.10; 20.6.
129. See Jeremias, Promise 19-21; discussion in Davies and Allison, Matthew 2.168-69.
130. See above, n. 113.
131. See further above, §12.6c(2).
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