{"id":320,"date":"2011-08-20T08:46:51","date_gmt":"2011-08-20T08:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ivchristiancenter.com\/nobody-expects-the-kingdom-of-god\/"},"modified":"2011-08-20T08:46:51","modified_gmt":"2011-08-20T08:46:51","slug":"nobody-expects-the-kingdom-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ivchristiancenter.com\/es\/nobody-expects-the-kingdom-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobody Expects\u2026 The Kingdom of God"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 15<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

<\/strong>This is part seven of the Lost Gospel of Jesus series. I'm trying to show you the Gospel, the message, that Jesus preached. It is a message that is supposed to change everything. In part one<\/a> we saw that Jesus preached the Gospel. In part two<\/a> we saw that when Paul and the disciples and Jesus preached the Gospel miracles, healings, supernatural manifestations happened. In part three<\/a> we looked at what it was that Paul preached. In part four<\/a> we saw what Jesus preached and what he taught his disciples to preach. In part five<\/a> we looked at the actual words that Jesus and his disciples used when they preached the Gospel. In part six<\/a> I showed you a longer version of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God as Jesus preached it. Now I want to show what happened when Jesus preached the Gospel of the Kingdom of God in Nazareth<\/em>.
 
        I like to imagine Jesus on the road to Nazareth thinking about what was getting ready to happen in his hometown. It hadn\u2019t been that long since he left, months maybe or even weeks. I imagine him remembering all the people in Nazareth who needed God\u2019s help, who needed God\u2019s power to show up in their lives. Old Mrs. Matityahu whose son had been blind from birth\u2026 Mr. Gedalya who\u2019d been laid up in bed since he fell and injured himself while doing construction work up in Sephoris\u2026 The Shimon family, they\u2019d never had anything, they were so poor they thought poor was normal \u2026 today was going to be their day\u2026today God\u2019s power was going to deliver them \u2026 today was the day God\u2019s promises were going to be fulfilled \u2026 good news, good news, GOOD NEWS!<\/p>\n

        Unfortunately the people in Nazareth weren\u2019t as thrilled at Jesus' good news as you might have expected, though pretty much every translation gives the impression that Jesus was well received:<\/p>\n

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Luke 4:20 And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. 22 And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. <\/strong>And they said, Is not this Joseph\u2019s son?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The translation seems a little odd given the context. In the very next verse Jesus responds as though the people of Nazareth are doubting his ability to do what he said, and in the verse after that he suggests that the saying, \u201cno prophet is accepted in his own country,<\/em>\u201d is true of them, and at the end of the passage the people of Nazareth attempt to throw Jesus off a cliff.<\/p>\n

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Luke 4:28 And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, 29 And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That hardly sounds like the people loved his sermon.<\/p>\n

        From the context, it seems clear that that verse 22 is being mistranslated. The problem is the word \u201cgracious.<\/em>\u201d As Joachim Jeremias<\/a>  pointed out<\/a>, the words translated \u201cwitness\u201d and \u201cwondered\u201d are ambiguous:<\/p>\n

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\u201cBoth verbs are ambiguous: martyrein with the dative can mean either \u2018give witness for\u2019 or \u2018give witness against,\u2019 and thaumazein can mean either \u2018be enthusiastic about,\u2019 or \u2018be shocked at.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So the verse could mean that the people of Nazareth were for or against Jesus and were enthusiastic or shocked:<\/p>\n

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Luke 4:22 And all bare him witness\/all bore witness against him<\/em><\/strong>, and wondered\/were shocked<\/strong><\/em> at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph\u2019s son?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But that would still leave us with the phrase \u201cgracious words,\u201d an indication that the words were pleasing to the crowd.<\/p>\n

        Lindsey, without any apparent reference to the work of Jeremias, solved this problem by translating the Greek back into Hebrew and in the process clearly illustrated how failing to take the Hebrew language into account when translating the Greek copies of the New Testament can lead to shockingly erroneous results, results that sometimes even contradict the original meaning. Here\u2019s Lindsey\u2019s story:<\/p>\n

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Let me remind you that we were studying this story in Flusser\u2019s seminar and that meant we were looking into every possible problem connected with the text. There was always the possibility that the Greek translator had misunderstood some Hebrew word or phrase and mistranslated it\u2026<\/p>\n

As the seminar proceeded week after week, one young woman who was studying early rabbinic literature at the university grew more interested with each hour of seminar. For one thing, she pondered the fact that this episode ends with the people trying to throw Jesus down from the cliff Nazareth was built on. This reminded her of some of the suggestions of the Mishnah: when punishment was to be that of stoning (for whatever reason) it was thought kinder to push the condemned off of some high place \u2014 often a house \u2014 with the hope that he would die from the fall and the stoning be without agony when it followed. Perhaps, she reasoned, the people of Nazareth planned to throw Jesus down from the cliff as a preliminary act before actually stoning him. <\/p>\n

She then looked at the expression \u201cthey were astonished at the gracious words which issued from his mouth.\u201d Translating back to Hebrew she noted that the Greek \u201cwords of grace\u201d are literally in Hebrew \u201cdivrei chesed.\u201d This expression could easily be understood by a Greek writer translating to Greek as \u201cwords of grace.\u201d But the word \u201cchesed\u201d in Hebrew can also mean \u201ca wicked thing\u201d or a \u201cdisgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n