Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§13.8 For Whom Did Jesus Intend His Message?
by presenting a Samaritan as hero, when Samaritans were usually regarded as
half-breeds and apostates (Luke 10.30-37). 244 At the very least, the parable suggests
that Jesus' concern to break down boundaries within Israel (§13.5) may
have extended beyond the bounds of Israel, 245 though we should beware of romanticizing
Jesus' conscious intentions at this point. 246 Caution is even more
necessary with the parable of the sheep and the goats, since it may be a further
example of Matthew's own broader vision (see n. 235), but the possibility can
hardly be excluded that Jesus did share an expectation of final judgment in which
ethnic and religious identity was not a key factor but the universal responsibility
to love the neighbour was. 247
The picture which emerges is one in which Jesus did not envisage a mission
to the Gentiles, 248 but took for granted the likelihood that Gentiles would be
included in God's kingdom. He did not seek out Gentiles but responded positively
to faith and commended unreservedly neighbour love wherever and by
whomsoever it was expressed.
13.8. Circles of Discipleship
The ambiguity which we noted at the beginning of this chapter has reappeared
again and again in the intervening discussions. Jesus seems to have preached
with a view to reaching as many in Israel as would hear him, though probably he
was well enough aware, or soon became so, that the commission of Isaiah was
likely to be played out in his mission too. How he saw his call to particular individuals
to follow him as fitting into the larger vision of an Israel returned to its
Lord and trusting him afresh, and of both as fitting into his expectation of the
244. See above, §9.3c. The echoes of such hostility are plain in Luke 9.52-54; John 4.9;
8.48. See also M. Gourges, 'The Priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan Revisited: A Critical
Note on Luke 10:31-35', JBL 117 (1998) 79-103. The Good Samaritan is one of relatively few
passages attributed to Jesus which are given an unreserved vote of confidence by the Jesus
Seminar (Funk, Five Gospels 323-24; similarly Lüdemann, Jesus 332; other bibliography in
Hultgren, Parables 100 n. 40; Meier, Marginal Jew 3.602 n. 172, with critique of the Jesus
Seminar's rationale in n. 173).
245. We may perhaps envisage a specific protest against limiting Lev. 19.18 in the way
that Leviticus 19 implied (including 19.33-34).
246. Wright's claim that 'the story dramatically redefines the covenant boundary of Israel'
(Jesus 307) overstates the implication.
247. Davies and Allison argue that Matthew was drawing the parable from tradition
{Matthew 3.417-18); see further above, chapter 12 n. 219.
248.1 have already discussed Mark 13.10/Matt. 24.14 in §12.4h above. The alternative
case is made by E. J. Schnabel, 'Jesus and the Beginnings of the Mission to the Gentiles', in
Green and Turner, eds., Jesus of Nazareth 37-58.
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