Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§14.2 The Character of Discipleship
similar-sounding degree of intimacy. 32 And the suggestion that God was thought
of as remote in the Judaism of Jesus' time speaks more of an earlier generation's
tendency to denigrate 'late Judaism' as well as being contradicted by such evidence.
33 Nevertheless the fact that Jesus did encourage his disciples to trust in
God as Father, while hardly unique within the Judaism of his day, may be said to
be distinctive in its consistency and in the degree of childlike persistence which
he encouraged his disciples to express in their prayers.
a. Child-Like Trust
The data are straightforward. Jesus is remembered as speaking of God quite regularly
as 'your Father', the 'you' being his immediate disciples. 34 There can be
little doubt that in the course of transmission the motif of God as Father has been
extended within the Jesus tradition. 35 But the evidence is sufficient to suggest
clearly that the extended motif was an elaboration of a well-remembered feature
of Jesus' own teaching. In the Lord's Prayer the disciples are encouraged on their
own part to address God as 'Father' (Luke 11.2/Matt. 6.9), which subsequent
32. Sir. 23.1, 4; 51.10 (Hebrew); Wis. 14.3; 3 Mace. 6.3, 8 (G. Schrenk, pater, TDNT
5.981). Much has been made, by Vermes in particular, of the tradition of Honi the circle-drawer
(first century BCE), who according to tradition prayed to God 'like a son of the house' (m. Ta 'an
3.8) (Jesus ch. 3). Vermes, however, also notes the absence of such intimacy in the DSS prayers
(Religion 180).
33. A basic misconception was that divine 'intermediaries' (Spirit, Wisdom, Word,
Name, Glory, as well as angels) indicated thought of God's remoteness (Bousset-Gressmann
319, an often quoted passage; echoed by Bultmann in his Jesus and the Word 137-41; also
Primitive Christianity 61), whereas they are better understood as ways of asserting God's immanence
without compromising his transcendence (see my Christology 130, 150-51, 176, 219-
20, 229, 252-53).
34. 'Your (singular) Father', Matt. 6.4, 6, 18. 'Your (plural) Father', Mark 11.25/Matt.
6.14-15; Matt. 5.48/Luke 6.36; Matt. 6.32/Luke 12.30; Matt. 7.11/(Luke 11.13); Matt. 5.16,45;
6.1, 8, 26; 10.20, 29; 18.14; 23.9; Luke 12.32; John 20.17.1 will discuss references to 'the Father'
(Mark 13.32; Matt. 11.27/Luke 10.22) below (§16.2c).
35. Jeremias provided the following statistics for the use of the title 'Father' for God in
the words of Jesus: three in Mark, four common to Matthew and Luke, four additional instances
peculiar to Luke, thirty-one additional instances peculiar to Matthew, and one hundred in John
(Prayers 30-32), to which may be added twenty in GTh (see below). Matthew's tendency to add
references to God as Father is illustrated by Matt. 5.45/Luke 6.35; Matt. 6.26/Luke 12.24; and
Matt. 10.29/Luke 12.6. Jeremias also notes a 'tendency of the later tradition to suppress "your
Father" almost to vanishing point', a tendency attested not least by Thomas, which has only two
instances of 'your Father' (GTh 15, 50.3, neither with parallels in the canonical tradition), as
against twelve instances of 'the Father' (GTh 27, 40.1, 44.1, 57.1, 69.1, 76.1, 79.2, 83.1, 96.1,
97.1, 98.1, and 113.1, with italics in the list here indicating parallels where 'the Father' has
been added).
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