The word in the Greek text is hierous (’[symbol]ierous[/symbol]) which is the same word used to indicate the role of Zechariah (the father of John the Baptist) at the beginning of Luke, offering sacrifices in the Temple.
One consideration that has been offered regarding the story has been that the victim of the robbery appeared dead and that the priest and Levite were obeying the Law to avoid ritual contamination by not touching the body. In other words, Jesus was not making a point that the “holy” people were evil, but that in following the letter of the Law too strictly, they were missing the greater Law to show God’s mercy to another person. (And I would agree that his message would be quite consistent with the teachings of Hillel and many contributors to the Talmud.)
Interesting. So it was more the way in which people were interpreting the law that Jesus was drawing attention to, rather than the actual content of the law?
A superficial adherence to, and interpretation of, the rules that still held on to social and class stucture traditions that violated the deeper spirit of the law.
It doesn’t sound too different than today.
Which seems perfectly in line with other biblical stories about Jesus and his encounters with the scribes and pharisies. The story of unclean hands and “it’s what comes out of a man that is evil not what goes in” comes to mind.
So the concept is that Jesus was not really teaching anything radical in actual content but rather trying to teach others to focus on the deeper spiritual aspects of what was already there. This brings up another point to me. Jesus had a deeper spiritual insight than most of the other religious leaders of his day but it was exsposure to, and the availability of those teachings already present that helped this side of him to develop. Maybe? Probably?
Although there are some questions about how his time was spent between 13 and 30. I think he may have bumped into a Buddhist.
In rereading my post I thought that might be it. I should have said “only” about etc. I didn’t mean it to be not about that at all. It is about that but IMO deeper than just that.
I’m assuming that this was intended with a bit of humor. There is nothing in the Jewish tradition that elevates form over substance in terms of compassion, mercy, or justice.
Isaiah, Amos, and other prophets from the period before the Babylonian captivity have numerous passages in which they excoriate the people for attending to sacrifice and celebration while not being compassionate to the poor or exercising justice. Hillel has already been mentioned. I think Buddha was a pretty neat guy, but the odd notion that anything in the West that smacks of the profound must have been smuggled in from the East always strikes me as a sort of reverse prejudice: Our ancestors could not have been as bright as those other peoples..
It was humor…or an attempt at least. I do find it interesting that many of the teachings of Christ are also found in the teachings of Buddha. I have a book called Christ and Buddha as brothers which shows their teachings side by side and there are a lot in common. My take on it is that truth love and compassion will take us all to the same conclusions if that is what we seek.
How often do we find similar teachings in other religions as well.
Speaking of the lost years, aren’t their rumors about the Essenses?
One problem with the Essene hypothesis (although it is only suggestive and does not rule out anything) is that the Essenes were basically locked in a philosophical battle with the priesthood, objecting to the political appointees to those offices who came in under Herod and his predecessors. Rather than continue the fight publicly, they withdrew from public life, completely, (after which they picked up their aura of holiness). Given the vehement tirades found in their literature that speicifically attacked the priesthood, in contrast to the record of Jesus who was most frequently in conflict with the Pharisees–another group who was out of political power–it seems unlikely that Jesus actually spent much time embracing their philosophy. It would be somewhat similar to a person growing up among committed Socialists in our era, only to spend most of their time in conflict with Greens. Not impossible, but not likely.