“Which is the first of all the
commandments?”
Mk 12:28b-34
Taken from Nineham
v. 28. One of the scribes, when he came
forward and heard them disputing and saw how well he had answered them, asked
him, “Which is the first of all the commandments?”
We know of a number of attempts by rabbis
before and after the time of Our Lord, to sum up in the shortest possible form
the fundamental principle, or principles, of the Law, the most famous being
that of Hillel (c. 25 B.C.): 'What you yourself hate (to be done to you), do
not do to your fellow; this is the whole law; the rest is commentary; go and
learn it.' Cf. also Gal. 5:14 and Rom. 13:9.
But as Abrahams points out the aim of all
such rabbinic attempts was to formulate the basic principle from which the rest
of the Law could be deduced as a corollary (cf Matt. 22:40), not to isolate certain
commandments as being vital, in contrast to others which were less important or
could be ignored.
According to the rabbis, all the
commandments must be kept (cf. James 2:10), and because the rabbinic formulations
just described tended, despite their authors' intentions, to conflict with this
principle, they became suspect and unpopular in many quarters. And Abrahams
thinks that what the inquirer in our passage really wanted was 'an opinion as
to whether Jesus did or did not share this fear of reducing the Law to
fundamental rules'.
The answer he received was clearly entirely
satisfactory to him as an orthodox Jew and for that reason we should not
perhaps too easily assume that by formulating the ‘first of all commandments’
(v. 28) Jesus implied any more than contemporary rabbis implied by their
formulations.
No doubt the importance of the episode from
the standpoint of the Evangelist lay precisely in the fact that the Christian
Church had drawn the inference which Judaism refused to draw, namely that provided
the spirit of the Law, as thus summed up, were kept, all else might be ignored.
But how far such an attitude went back in its entirety to Jesus is a further
question, and one too far-reaching to be decided here (such. passages as Matt.
5:17-20, Luke 16:17, Matt. 23:23, and James 2:10 would have to be taken into
account, as well as on the other side, Mark 7:19).
v. 29-30. Jesus replied, “The first is this:
‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all
your strength.’
The first part of the so-called Shemah
(Deut. 6:4-9, 11:13-21 and Num 15:37-41) which every pious Jew recites daily
and which played a great in late-Jewish piety and rabbinic discussion.
St Mark is the only Synoptist to include v.
29b, so it must remain doubtful whether the early Church saw in it the profound
significance. Perhaps in a Gentile milieu, such as St Mark's, an emphasis on
the strict monotheism of Christianity was particularly necessary; cf. 1 Cor. 8:5-6.
And with all your mind:
This does not occur in the Old Testament
text, though “dianoia” (mind) is often used in LXX as an alternative
translation for the Hebrew word here translated heart. The addition no doubt
emphasizes the all-embracing character of the required response.
v. 31. The second is this: ‘You shall love
your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Strictly speaking the inquiry concerned
only one commandment (v. 28); perhaps the two Old Testament passages are
thought of as constituting a single supreme command.
Neighbor:
Love for one's neighbor is a complex concept.
In Lev. 19:18, where the concept stands in contrast to 'taking vengeance or
bearing any grudge' against one' neighbor, the idea is clearly of a tender
regard for others and a promoting of their good, as active as our promotion of
our own. Probably Jesus interpreted the command in the same sort of way, except
that, whereas in Leviticus neighbor meant simply a fellow countryman, Jesus
gave it the wider connotation it was generally taken to have in his time.
Whatever the meaning of the word in the
original Leviticus passage, it seems clear that by Our Lord's time it was taken
to include at any rate the resident aliens in Israel as well as the Israelites
themselves; whether it was interpreted more widely still is disputed.
Christian commentators almost always
assume, on the basis of Luke 10:29-37 that Our Lord here understood it in a
completely unrestricted sense, but perhaps caution about this deserves to be
considered.
A further point which is often stressed is
the essential interrelatedness of the two commandments; true love of the
neighbor springs from the love of God, and on the other hand there can be no
true love of God which does not express itself in love of the neighbor. Wellhausen
goes even further and sees the grounding of the whole matter in the monotheism
proclaimed in v. 29b: 'Monotheism is no theory; it is a practical conviction;
it is the spring of inward character and of our conduct to our neighbor. It is
in other words, the motive of morality'.
vv. 32-34a. The scribe said to him, “Well
said, teacher. You are right in saying, ‘He is One and there is no other than
he.’ And ‘to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with
all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself’ is worth more than
all burnt offerings and sacrifices.And when Jesus saw that [he] answered with
understanding, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
These verses are found only in Mark and
their presence produces the unusual result that the decisive saying of Jesus
does not form the conclusion of the pericope. Those who think that in the
original version of the story the decisive words were spoken by the scribe see
in these verses a reminiscence of it, and they point out that Jesus' strong commendation
in v. 34 would be most natural if the scribe had said something strikingly
novel and bold. If we accept St Mark's version as the original one, perhaps the
best explanation is that these verses were retained as driving home the complete
identity of view between Jesus and this representative of orthodox Judaism.
Wellhausen comments: '(morality,) according
to ... the scribe, belongs to the service of God and is the true way of
worshipping him; it is of more value than all sacred actions which are
specially rendered to God and are of no use to anyone else.'
Such ideas are by no means novel - cf. e.g.
1 Sam. 15:22 and Hos. 6:6; and there are rabbinic parallels. The words do not
exclude ceremonies and sacrifice, and just how much they meant would have
depended on the tone of voice in which they were uttered. Jesus clearly found
them acceptable, though the precise terms of his answer raise a problem.
Taken at their face value they seem to
represent the Kingdom as something already present. J. Weiss points out that
there are other New Testament passages where we find the image of the kingdom
as a goal towards which men must make their pilgrimage—some being neater to it
than others. But he adds that does not alter the fact that in its basic idea,
the kingdom of God is something which comes down to men from on high.
The present passage should not be pressed
against the general impression of Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom which St Mark
gives. We cannot be sure that we are dealing with Jesus' precise words, and
even if we are, they may easily mean: 'You come near to possessing the
qualifications requisite for entry into the kingdom when it comes' .
Despite their negative form, the sense of
Jesus' words is no doubt to stress the scribe's nearness to the kingdom and we
probably should not ask what he still lacked which kept him from a still closer
approach. If, however, St Mark did have
any such question in mind, no doubt his answer was that 'what is lacking is the
acknowledgement of Jesus, imitation of him, arid admission to the company of
his disciples (cf. Mark 10:21 and Matt. 11:11 // Luke 7:28).
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