Blessed are the poor
in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
(Matthew 5:3)
Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
(Luke 6:20)
Was Yeshua referring to the same or different people
by the terms “poor in spirit” and “poor”? For many years, the opinion among many
scholars has been that Matthew stressed the “spiritual” aspect of his message,
while Luke stressed the “social” aspect.[1]
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, indicates that once again
long-held opinions of certain scholars reveal more about their theological
positions that about what The Real Yeshua
actually had in mind.
As pointed out in a number of my previous articles
and blogs, Yeshua and his audience were very familiar the words of the Torah
and the Prophets because they heard them read and discussed every Shabbat in
their synagogues. There is no doubt that many of them, when they visited the
Temple, heard the read and discussed there too.
It
is important to be aware of the fact that Yeshua wasn't the only messianic
figure roaming around Judaea at that time. There were a number of others, as well
as other groups proclaiming their messianic messages. It is probably accurate
to say, that the everyday Jews living during that period had more “messianic encounters”
than they wanted – “So, you are another
messiah; what’s new!” I have no doubt that many of the people
who came to see and hear Yeshua were looking for clues as to whether he was that
figure. After listening to him some probably made the rounds and checked out
the “messiahs” too.
Luke records Yeshua’s answer to “the” question – the elephant that was probably always in the
room. It was on a Shabbat at his home synagogue that Yeshua chose to make
the announcement after he finished reading the portion from the Prophets assigned
to him that day:
“The Spirit of Yahweh ELOHIYM is upon Me, because Yahweh has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the
acceptable year of Yahweh, and the day of vengeance of our ELOHIYM; to comfort
all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for
ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that He
may be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:1-2)
After reading the section, he announced that he was
the one “Yahweh anointed” to do the things he had just read – he was that messiah. Notice that
included in the list is the term “the
poor.” Yeshua and his audience would have known that Isaiah made another
reference to “the poor” a little later:
Thus says Yahweh, “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And
where is the place of My rest? For all those things My hand has made, and all those things exist,” says Yahweh. “But on this one will I look -- on him who is poor
and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word.”
(Isaiah 66:1-2)
Another
group was also familiar with Isaiah’s words and used his terms in their
writings. It was the sect that produced The
Thanksgiving Scroll (XVIII, 14-15), one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this
scroll are the terms “good tidings”
and contrite spirit.”[2] Professor
David Flusser addressed this subject and provides important insights to what the
terms “poor” and “poor in spirit” meant to Yeshua:
This creative midrashic treatment of
Isaiah results in the addition of the `poor’
to the `meek,’ so that a
threefold promise – to the `poor in
spirit,’ `the contrite,’
and `the meek’ – is obtained
both is DST and Matthew. The fact that we were able to deal with DST XVIII,
14-15 and Matthew 5:3-5 simultaneously means that there is some literary
connection between the two passages. Therefore the question arises – Is the
supposed source of Jesus’ words and of DST a common, though very specific
Jewish `midrash,’ or is it probable that the source of the three first
Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount originated in the Dead Sea Sect or in
some milieu close to it? The second possibility seems to me to be the greater.[3]
The
terms the Dead Sea sect used for self-identification provide important clues
about their meanings of the terms. They called thesmelves:
(1) the
contrite in spirit
(2) the
poor of spirit
(3) paupers
of grace
(4) paupers
of Your redemption
(5) the
ones desperate of justification
(6) the
Sons of Light [4]
Yeshua
also used many of these terms in his teachings. Let’s turn to Flusser again for
his insights:
Thus it seems that the `poor of spirit’
in Matthew and DST are to be understood in the same way – they are the meek ones, the poor endowed with the supreme gift of divine
bliss, with the Holy Spirit. [5]
Another
source of information are the parallelisms of Psalm 34:15-18:
The eyes of Yahweh are on the
righteous, and His ears are open to their cry. The face of Yahweh is against those who do evil to cut off the remembrance of them from
the earth. The righteous cry out, and Yahweh hears, and delivers
them out of all their troubles. Yahweh is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a
contrite spirit.
The
parallelism links “contrite spirit” to the most important term in the message
of Yeshua – the righteous. The righteous are those with a contrite spirit – the ones who do TOV (good)
instead of RA (evil). What are
the acts of TOV that the righteous with a contrite spirit do – they are acts that protect life, preserve
life, make life more function, and increase the quality of life. Some of
the examples of TOV Yeshua used in his teachings are -- feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked,
visiting the sick, etc. And just like in the Psalm above, Yeshua linked
deliverance (salvation) to acts of TOV:
And the wicked shall go away into everlasting
punishment,
but the righteous into life eternal. [6]
This
is the salvation message of The Real
Yeshua – do you know of any Church that
teaches Yeshua’s salvation message? Dr. James H. Charlesworth, addressed
the connection between Yeshua and the Dead Sea sect (Essenes):
The attempts to compare Jesus with the
Dead Sea Scrolls have foundered on numerous fallacies, misconceptions, improper
methodologies, secondhand, even insufficient understandings of Jesus and the
Essenes, and misguided apologetics. To be specific, the most prominent,
pervasive, and significant faults are the following: the desire to prove Jesus
is totally unique and the incarnate Son of God; the tendency to read red-letter
New Testaments as if one has been given Jesus’ unedited authentic words; the
opinion that the Qumran Essenes over three centuries espoused the same theology
and that those who went to Qumran in the middle of the second century BCE were
the ones living there in the first century CE; the confusion of a search for a
relationship with evidence of borrowing; and the tendency to miscast the role
of historian, who works only at best with probabilities, so that only what is a
certainty is to be judged reliable.[7]
Charlesworth
also provides us with the answer to the question we began with -- Did Yeshua want his followers to be poor?
It is inconceivable that Jesus wished to
praise those who poor spirits; it is also improbable that Jesus meant this
blessing to be interpreted literally. He did not tell his disciples to become
financially poor, or to make people poor. The intent was to help the penniless
rise out of poverty.[8]
The
Real Yeshua’s mission was to create a kingdom of people – the righteous -- who were committed to doing acts that would make
people’s lives more like the Creator intended life to be for all mankind. The
Creator introduced TOV (good) into the world through His actions. Adam
introduced RA (evil) into the world through his acts. Yeshua’s goal was to
restore the world by doing acts of TOV like He did. Yeshua called for people to
follow him by doing what he did, not worship him while doing acts of RA.
Shalom,
Jim
Myers
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