Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§14.5 The Character of Discipleship
Lord. 183 The Jesus tradition itself comes to us in different performance variations:
Matthew and Mark sum up the significance of the teaching in regard to the
law in different but complementary words (Matt. 22.40; Mark 12.31b); somewhat
surprisingly it is Mark (rather than Matthew) who takes the opportunity to
include the beginning of the Shema (Mark 12.29); 184 and Luke has given the
teaching an intriguing twist by having the key commands uttered by a lawyer
(nomikos), with Jesus approving (Luke 10.27-28). It is also to Luke that we owe
one of Jesus' most vivid and enduring parables, spoken to illustrate the love command,
the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.29-37), with its final punchline,
'Go and do likewise' (10.37). 185 But once again we find that the key teaching
remains stable throughout, however presented.
We can therefore be confident that it was indeed Jesus' teaching which resulted
in the importance accorded to 'loving the neighbour' in the Jesus tradition
and in earliest Christianity. 186 Two features are particularly worth noting. First,
that the command to love one's neighbour is put second to the primary command,
to love God with all one's being (Mark 12.30 pars.; §14.1 above). 187 The
implication is that the two go together, 188 perhaps also that the second is possible
in long-term reality only as the corollary to the first. 189 Perhaps too that each is
both a deeply rooted emotion and an act of resolute will ('with all your heart...
with all your might'). Second, worth noting also is the realism in the way the
command is formulated. It does not call for the disciple to love everyone, as
183. 'The centre of his ethos and the culmination of his moral instructions'
(Schnackenburg, Sittliche Botschaft 89). Becker has no doubt that 'this theme' (the love command)
was part of Jesus' message, but is surprisingly dogmatic in his insistence that 'Of course,
Jesus does not directly quote the Torah' (Jesus 249, 254).
184. But the citation of Deut. 6.5 in all three versions (Mark 12.30 pars.) shows that
Mark's elaboration simply makes explicit what was already implicit.
185. See above, chapter 13 n. 244.
186. The Jesus Seminar shows a strange unwillingness to allow that Jesus could himself
have been creative in his use of Lev. 19.18; the most some were willing to allow is that 'Jesus
might have affirmed the interpretation of the law given by Hillel', referring to Hillel's teaching
the negative form of the Golden Rule (b. Sabb. 31a) (Funk, Five Gospels 104-105). Lüdemann
judges 'the historical yield of the tradition' at this point as 'nil, since it is firmly rooted in the
community and is to be derived from its needs' (Jesus 86), thus evoking some unknown creative
genius in disregard of the tradition itself and confusing use made of and importance attributed
to a tradition with origin of the tradition.
187. 'A wholly original conjunction of Deut. 6.4-5 and Lev. 19.18' (Stuhlmacher,
Biblische Theologie 1.100-101). Note also that Luke's version of the saying on tithing (Matt.
23.23/Luke 11.42) includes 'love of God' as part of the higher obligation.
188. See particularly V. P. Furnish, The Love Command in the New Testament (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1972) 27-28, 33, 37.
189. See further Schräge, Ethics 81-85. Cf. Moo: 'For Jesus, it is not a question of the
"priority of love over law" but of the priority of love within the law' ('Jesus' 11).
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