Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)
JESUS' POSTRESURRECTION APPEARANCE in Luke 24 has proved to be a hermeneutical conundrum for NT interpreters. Luke 24:44-46 illustrates the problem.1
Then he [Jesus] said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you - that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day."2
The problem is obvious - where do Israel's Scriptures speak of a suffering Messiah? Attempts to identify where "it is written" have been unconvincing. Likewise, scholarly efforts to find the concept of a suffering Messiah in the Second Temple Jewish literature have proved fruitless. As Lloyd Gaston has noted, "nowhere is it even intimated that the messiah should suffer, neither in the Bible as written nor in the Bible as read in first century Judaism."3 Joel B. Green represents many when he refers to the concept of a scriptural suffering Messiah as an "oxymoron" and a "hermeneutical innovation."4 Consequently, many scholars have labeled Luke's "scriptural suffering Messiah" a Lucan invention. In an attempt to explain the difficulty, Mark L. Strauss has argued that Luke's suffering Messiah must be a fusion of the concept of the Davidic king and the Isaianic Suffering Servant.5 Interpreters have usually been content to draw on the figure of Isaiah 53 or to note that pre-Christian Judaism had no concept of a suffering Christ figure; they therefore remark that Luke's scriptural suffering Messiah is an early Christian invention or oxymoron.6 In this article, however, I will argue that Luke's "suffering Messiah" is not an oxymoron and that his narrative gives readers all the clues necessary to identify the Scriptures to which Luke's Jesus is referring.
It is my contention that many scholars have not adequately accounted for the enormous role the Book of Psalms plays in Luke's narrative, specifically with respect to the suffering anointed one.7 Although many have rightly noted Luke's reliance on the psalms in his interpretation of Jesus' resurrection and exaltation (primarily Psalms 16; 110; and 132),...