It's been a while since I laid my eyes on a Bible, so there's a high chance I've forgotten the nuances, but Jesus has always struck me as an apocalyptic figure. He not only speaks of the kingdom to come, he's repeatedly reminding his followers that earthly business soon doesn't matter (except in some rare cases, like when upholding Roman law).
You are quite right, Jesus certainly seems to have been eschatological in his outlook - which isn't surprising, given that he was at first a disciple of the explicitly apocalyptic figure of John the Baptist, who railed against alleged abuses of power by the Herodian Tetrarchs in Galilee and the Jerusalem priestly establishment, and would appear to have instituted his rite of water baptism (which Jesus affirmed and continued) as a rival to the rituals of the Temple cult.
Jesus, while calling for or prophesying the Second Temple's destruction, appears - if we can judge by the practices of his first followers - to have been somewhat more even-handed and even a bit more positive in his appraisal of the Temple cult than John, although this is obviously contested amongst scholars.
But he was definitely, at the same time,
a much more scandalous person than John and in this manner, I'd like to modify, somewhat, your opinion that Jesus's "
intent to me seems to have been to separate the believers from the rest of society," analogous to the later desert monastic movement of the third century and the idea that, "
many of the earliest saints were hermits". I don't agree on this point and neither do the vast majority of historical Jesus scholars.
Unlike his mentor John - who espoused an austere, hermit-style desert lifestyle defined by asceticism in places siphoned off from mainstream society, not unlike the Essenes - Jesus was adamantly
not asceticly-minded. Quite the contrary, he was viewed as a shameless hedonist in his dietary and table-fellowship habits, with his only '
ascetic' quality being a celibate mode of life that he didn't impose on his followers (most of whom, including the Twelve Apostles, were married and thus sexually active men who took their wives with them while spreading the gospel).
As Jesus himself stated in response to his Pharisaic and priestly critics:
John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon'; the
Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Behold, a glutton and
a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' (Matt. 11.1, 8f. / Luke
7.33)
What's fascinating, is that the accusation that Jesus was a "glutton and drunkard" who had loose company, is the
very same accusation levelled against the disorderly son who rejects his parents' authority and disgraces them in the Torah, the punishment for which is stoning (the fate Jesus's brother James was subjected to, on the basis of alleged Torah-infringement!):
"If a man has a wayward and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his community. They shall say to the elders of his town, 'This son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.' Thereupon the men of his town shall stone him to death. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst: all Israel will hear and be afraid" (Deuteronomy. 21:18-21).
If I may reference the eminent scholar Professor E.P. Sanders at this junction (because he ties all of this up with both Jesus's eschatology
and his rejection of paternal authority/disrespect for dead parents) in chapters 13 - 14 of his magnum opus,
The Historical Figure of Jesus:
The beatitudes (Matt. 5 . 3- 1 2; slightly different in Luke 6.2tr-26) bless the downtrodden, the poor and the meek, as well as those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart and the peacemakers. These sayings imply demands, but the clearest note is sympathy and promise for those who needed them most.
The tone of Jesus' ministry was compassionate and not judgemental. People should be perfect, but God was lenient - and so was Jesus, acting on his behalf...
Jesus himself did not live a stern and strict life...
Jesus was conscious of his differences from John, and he commented on them more than once. The prostitutes repented when John preached - not when Jesus preached. John was ascetic; Jesus ate and drank. And Jesus was a friend of tax collectors and sinners - not of former tax collectors and sinners, which is what Zacchaeus was after he met Jesus, but of tax collectors and sinners. Jesus, I think, was a good deal more radical than John.
Jesus thought that John's call to repent should have been effective, but in fact it was only partially successful. His own style was in any case different; he did not repeat the Baptist's tactics.
On the contrary, he ate and drank with the wicked and told them that God especially loved them, and that the kingdom was at hand. Did he hope that they would change their ways? Probably he did. But 'change now or be destroyed' was not his message, it was John's. Jesus' was, 'God loves you . '
Moreover, some people criticized Jesus because his disciples did not fast when followers of John the Baptist and Pharisees were fasting, and he responded by asking a rhetorical question: 'Can the wedding guests fast as long as the bridegroom is with them?' (Mark 2. 1 8-22 & parr.) . Jesus was no Puritan...
Finally, we must note one of the most interesting aspects of Jesus' ministry: he called 'sinners', and apparently he associated with them and befriended them while they were still sinners. In Matthew 11.1 8f. , quoted just above, Jesus' critics accused him of this behaviour.
Jesus' perfectionism did not make him shun the company of even the worst elements of society. On the contrary, he courted it. Jesus was not given to censure but to encouragement; he was not judgemental but compassionate and lenient; he was not puritanical but joyous and celebratory...
Jesus' particular kind of perfectionism goes very well with his view that in the kingdom many human values would be reversed. The kind of perfection he had in mind was suitable for the poor and the poor in spirit: the perfection of mercy and humility. Jesus also, of course, wanted his hearers to be moral in the normal sense of the word (honest and upright) , but the main aspect of God-like perfection was mercy. He displayed this by being gentle and loving towards others, including sinners...
Jesus died on a Roman cross, executed as would-be 'king of the Jews' . When we consider his message - God's all-embracing love, the need for commitment to him, love shown to everyone, even enemies - it is hard to understand how he came to this end...
The order to 'let the dead bury the dead' was not only contrary to normal human sensitivity, it was also against any reasonable interpretation of the Jewish law, which commands honour of father and mother. The offensiveness of the saying makes it unlikely that 'bury the dead' is a metaphor. The would-be follower probably had a dead father, and Jesus said to him, 'Let the (spiritually) dead bury the (physically) dead. ' If so, Jesus thought that following him should override everything else...
If Pharisees or others dedicated to the law had heard it, they would have been scandalized. We learn from the passage not that Jesus opposed honouring father and mother, but that he had an attitude towards his own mission that would lead to ignoring the law if that were necessary. His call was more important than burying the dead. Something of this attitude may have been communicated to the public, and many would have been deeply offended. If this particular incident led nowhere, Jesus' attitude did, as we shall now see.
Jesus' view that his mission took precedence over everything is more fully expressed in the passages about the 'sinners' . Jesus called as one of his followers a tax collector (Levi in Mark and Luke, Matthew in Matthew) , and the man accepted the call. Jesus was subsequently accused of eating with tax collectors and sinners (Mark 2 . 14- 1 7 & parr.) . This seems to have been a genuine offence: something he actually did that really offended people....
The significance of the fact that Jesus was a friend of the wicked was this: he counted within his fellowship people who were generally regarded as living outside the law in a blatant manner.
(continued....)