Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE CLIMAX OF JESUS' MISSION §17.5
more than likely reflects a developed celebration where the two elements (bread
and wine) were taken in close succession, and thus also the likelihood that the
Paul/Luke version (body and cup) is closer to the original formulation. 248 All
told, then, the case for seeing an allusion to the Servant of Isaiah in what Jesus
originally said is not very strong.
The alternative (if that is the best way to put it), strongly suggested in both
versions, is that Jesus spoke of his anticipated death in terms of a covenant sacrifice
rather than a sin offering. 249 The precedent here would be Exod. 24.8: 'Moses
took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, "See the blood of the
covenant that the Lord has made with you . . ."' . 25 ° This meshes well with the
earlier possibility indicated above in §13.3e, that Jesus (somewhat like the
Qumran covenanters) saw the group around him as somehow constituting the renewal
of God's covenant with Israel, 251 or spoke with a view to the establishment
of the new covenant promised in Jer. 31.31-34. 252 Jesus may well have gone the
more willingly to his death because he saw it as the sacrifice which would bring
into effect that long-promised covenant. 253
If this suggestion is on the right lines, then we have another powerful motif
on which Jesus is remembered as drawing to make sense of what was about to
happen to him: the suffering righteous/(martyr), the son of man frail to death,
destined to drain the cup and be baptized with the fiery baptism predicted by the
Baptist, and now also covenant sacrifice. What we cannot say with any of the
confidence expressed in regard to the other images is that the suffering Servant of
Isaiah 53 was one of the powerful images that Jesus was recalled as drawing
on. 254 Moreover, the concern on the part of commentators to draw on its moving
248. See above, §8.5c. The same logic applies to Luke's 'poured out for you', which
parallels the body 'given for you' (Luke 22.19).
249. But Stuhlmacher would question strongly whether there is any justification for posing
these as alternatives (Biblische Theologie 1.136-42); see also below n. 253.
250. 'The blood of the covenant' (Exod. 24.8; cf. Zech. 9.11) is echoed in 'my blood of the
covenant' (Matt. 26.28/Mark 14.24), but the Paul/Luke version 'is scarcely any less of an allusion
to the covenantal sacrifice of Exod 24:3-8 than the Marcan formula' (Fitzmyer, Luke 1391).
251. The 'for you' of Luke 22.20 would presumably have in view particularly the twelve
as representatives of (eschatological) Israel (Vögtle, 'Todesankündigungen' 94-96).
252. The point does not hang on the presence of the word 'new' ('new covenant', only in
the Paul/Luke version), though if early tradents did introduce it they would no doubt have
claimed that they were simply making explicit what was implicit. See also Tan, Zion Traditions
204-16.
253. We should not play off covenant sacrifice and atoning sacrifice against each other,
since there was a tendency to run the two together, evident in the Targums (Pesch,
Markusevangelium 2.359), as also in description of the Passover lamb as a sacrifice (1 Cor. 5.7).
254. Contrast Wright, who suggests that 'Isaiah 40-55 as a whole was thematic for Jesus'
kingdom-announcement' (Jesus 603).
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