The Wandering Soul

In the reconstruction of history, we must always consider context and content. The better we can correlate the two, the more we shall understand. The reason politicians and others complain about being quoted out of context is that context matters as much as the words that are quoted. Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies’ (Matt. 5.44 // Luke 6.27). Who were his hearers' enemies? Often people say that they were the Roman soldiers. Jesus meant, love Roman soldiers, and if they hit you turn the other cheek. But there were not any Roman soldiers in Galilee (unless they were on vacation there). Perhaps the enemy was the village magistrate or the biggest property owner. If this book were a sermon, it would not matter much. ‘Love your enemies’ can be applied sermonically to a lot of cases, and the original context need not determine the present-day significance of the saying. But if we want to know what Jesus was up to, what he had in mind, what sort of relations he worried about, at what level he addressed other people – national, local or familial – we need to know the context as well as the words. Our task in general is to search for good fits between the units of which the synoptic gospels are composed and a context in Jesus' day and time. If we can do that, we shall know a lot about Jesus.