Language Studies

Difficult Sayings

John the Baptist and Jesus
Matthew 11:2-5, Luke 7:21-22

"² And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples ³ and said to Him, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?" ⁴ Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: ⁵ The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. " (Matthew 11:2-5 I am literally "under the weather" and had to abandon my car in an East Anglian city and walk home. On the long cold walk I was reminded of an excellent church service last week which covered some of our current questions and raised additional ones.

Last Sunday, our minister led a quite rabbinic discussion rather than deliver a homiletic sermon. The gospel reading was from Luke 4:14-21 and I was doing the reading. The passage tells of Jesus' reading from the scroll of Isaiah at the Nazareth synagogue and then declaring its fulfilment in their hearing in much the same terms as his response to John the Baptist's messengers.

The discussion revolved around many issues but also raised another which reflected upon our John the Baptist and Jesus columns. When Jesus listed a number of signs and healings done by himself (Matthew 11:5) rather than simply say he was the Messiah, why did he miss out one listed in Isaiah 61:1, that of liberty to the captives. The congregation thought that this along with perhaps the others signs too was because he meant spiritual liberty from the things that bind us rather than physical liberty from the actual prison that John was in. This raises the issue as to whether Jesus' signs/miracles were literal or spiritual healings, and/or whether even if physical then they only point to spiritual signs now.

Returning to the Luke 4 reading, I had decided to read the Isaiah quotation in Hebrew to give people the impact of the words and the minister handed me a scroll with the Hebrew text of Isaiah 61:1-2a at the appropriate point. I then subsequently read the English text of Luke 4:18-19. In so doing I remembered a peculiarity of the quotation, Luke's version has more words than the Hebrew original, a common feature of Hebrew into English translation. But this was more than just a few words. There appeared to be a phrase added, another deleted and another modified. How can this be? Furthermore why did Jesus stop half way through verse 2 of Isaiah 61?

Well, those are the questions I want to put to you. Compare the passages side by side, spot the differences, account for them, contact me and/or wait for the end of our John the Baptist series when we will tackle the Luke 4/Isaiah 61 difficult question next.

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KJ Went has taught biblical Hebrew, hermeneutics and Jewish background to early Christianity. The "Biblical Hebrew made easy" course can be found at www.biblicalhebrew.com.

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