Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§14.8 The Character of Discipleship
agery of the banquet or wedding feast as an image for life in the coming kingdom.
261 Once again, even if the motif has been elaborated in the (re)telling, there
should be little doubt that Jesus' own teaching had provided his disciples with the
motif in the first place. And equally there need be little doubt that Jesus' own
practice had been of a piece with that teaching. 262
In a day when much of Western society seems to have lost the sense of the
importance of family and communal meals, it is important to remind ourselves of
the importance of the principle and practice of hospitality in the ancient world,
and particularly of the religious and social significance of the meal table in the
Ancient Near East. The ideal had long since been characterized in the Greek legend
of Philemon and Baucis. 263 In Jewish thought Abraham and Job were extolled
as the models of hospitality, where again it was precisely the sharing of
food which was the expression of that hospitality. 264 And the same social etiquette
is assumed in Jesus' mission instructions (particularly Luke 10.7/GTh
14.2). 265 Jeremias has expressed this significance of the meal table well: 266
... to invite a man to a meal was an honour. It was an offer of peace, trust,
brotherhood and forgiveness; in short, sharing a table meant sharing life. . . .
In Judaism in particular, table-fellowship means fellowship before God, for
the eating of a piece of broken bread by everyone who shares in the meal
brings out the fact that they all share in the blessing which the master of the
house has spoken over the unbroken bread. 267
261. See above, §12.4f.; also M. Trautmann, Zeichenhafte Handlungen Jesu (FB 37;
Würzburg: Echter, 1980) 161-62 (with bibliography).
262. Becker insists that Jesus' table-fellowship should not be regarded as merely anticipatory
of what has not yet happened; it was 'the realization of the coming Kingdom of God'
(Jesus 160-61).
263. Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.613-70.
264. Abraham in Genesis 18; Philo, Abr. 107-14; Josephus, Ant. 1.196; 1 Clem. 10.7;
probably Heb. 13.2. Job in T. Job 10.1-3; 25.5; 53.3. See further those cited in my Romans 744.
265. It is primarily on the basis of these texts (plus Mark 6.10) that Crossan bases his
very strong judgment that 'the heart of the original Jesus movement (was) a shared egalitarianism
of spiritual and material resources', 'open commensality' (Historical Jesus 341-44, 261-
64).
266. Jeremias, Proclamation 115. He cites appositely 2 Kgs. 25.27-30 (par. Jer. 52.31-
34) and Josephus, Ant. 19.321.
267. Barrett, Jesus 50, appositely cites W. R. Smith, The Religion of the Semites (1901):
'Every stranger whom one meets in the desert is a natural enemy, and has no protection against
violence except his own strong hand or the fear that his tribe will avenge him if his blood be
spilt. But if I have eaten the smallest morsel of food with a man, I have nothing further to fear
from him; "there is salt between us", and he is bound not only to do me no harm, but to help and
defend me as if I were his brother . . .' (269-70). See also Bailey, Through Peasant Eyes 14-15;
601