Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS
§14.5
and for all social relationships. The teaching which Matthew has put immediately
prior to this under the preceding antithesis illustrates the outworking of
such an attitude and priority (Matt. 5.38-42/Luke 6.29-30). 199 For it urges not
simply non-retaliation, but a positive outgoing generosity ('let him have your
cloak also; go with him a second [mile])'. 200 This is how love responds to provocation.
201
c. Matt. 7.12/Luke 6.31
Matt. 7.12
Everything, therefore, whatever vou wish that
people should do for vou, so also do for them; for
this is the law and the prophets.
Luke 6.31
And as vou wish that
people should do for vou, do for them likewise.
The aptly named 'Golden Rule' was well known in its essential principle in many
forms, both within Second Temple Judaism and beyond. 202 This is regularly
contrast with love of neighbour (255-57). Merklein emphasizes the eschatological context —
love of enemy as the actualization of God's kingship (Jesu Botschaft 116-28).
199. Cited above, §8.5d. '"Love your enemy" would have meant "Love the Romans'"
(Borg, Conflict, 130); not the Romans, but the local adversary (Horsley, Jesus 150, 261-73);
Matt. 5.39-41 'a strategy of coping with soldiers who took what they needed, by violence if
necessary' (Chilton, Rabbi Jesus 46). Perrin points out that the 'coat/cloak' saying is, literally
taken, ridiculous ('A man acting in that manner would soon be back before the court on a
charge of indecent exposure!') and concludes that it was never meant to be taken literally:
'What we have here are illustrations of a principle. The illustrations are extreme . . . but that is
deliberate. They are intended to be vivid examples of a radical demand, and it is as such that we
must regard them' (Rediscovering 147-48). 'So drastic and wellnigh intolerable a demand must
almost certainly derive from the historical Jesus' (Catchpole, Quest 111). Cynic parallels in
Downing, Christ and the Cynics 25-26.
200. Cf. G. Theissen, 'Nonviolence and Love of Our Enemies (Matthew 5:38-44; Luke
6:27-38)', Social Reality 115-56, who argues that 'experiences of the Jewish War and the postwar
era are reflected in the way traditions about loving our enemies are formulated in Matthew'
(132-37 [here 136]) and, once again, that those in view are 'wandering charismatics' (144-46);
but Theissen also draws attention to the two classic examples of effective nonviolent resistance
by Jews in Palestine during the 20s and 30s (Josephus, War 2.174; Ant. 18.271-72) to demonstrate
that such teaching by Jesus would have offered a real and realistic political option (149-
54). Cf. and contrast Becker, Jesus 252-53.
201. 'The credibility of these radical demands is to be found in Jesus alone. He himself
fully lived in accordance with these instructions. . . . These words are conceivable only as his
own' (Gnilka, Jesus 230). See also Schräge, Ethics 76-79.
202. Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.686-88 again provide a convenient summary of the
data, usually in the negative form ('Don't do to others what you would not want others to do to
you'), including Tob. 4.15; Ep. Arist. 207; Philo, Hypothetica in Eusebius, Praep. evang. 8.7.6;
588