Monday, March 01, 2004

Suffering of Jesus in the NT

On Paula Fredriksen's criticism of Gibson's emphasis on suffering as
anachronistic, Jeff Peterson writes the following:
It seems to me this is qualified by the use of πασχεῖν in the NT (Mark 8:31, 9:12, et parr.; Acts 3:18 and 17:3; Heb 13:12 et al.; and several times in 1 Peter). Some of these might be taken as synonymous with ἀποθανεῖν, but not all: especially in 1 Pet 2:23, Jesus suffers and refrains from reviling but entrusts his case to God; it's not coincidental that the clearest NT allusion to Gibson's epigraph (Isa 53:5) comes in 1 Pet 2:24. There's doubtless a complex evolution from Mark and 1 Peter et al. to Catholic devotion to Gibson's interpretation, and I'm not denying some troubling elements in that development, but it's against the evidence to say that no early Christians found salvific value in Jesus' suffering; presumably this was strongest among those groups with some experience or prospect of martyrdom, as I would argue is already true of Mark's audience in the few years following Nero's action, when for the first time organized general hostility seemed like a possible future for adherents to Jesus (cf. Mark 4:17; 13:13).

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