the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Nationality
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or NATIONALITY.—This term includes the characteristics created by national ideals and facts. The national environment of Jesus and His disciples has been set forth in the preceding article under the two ideals of independence and unity. Of these ideals the former rested on the Messianic Hope, the latter on the Mosaic Law, which were the key-notes of the most ancient Scriptures of the Jews—the Prophets and the Pentateuch respectively. They provide the clue to all that was distinctive in the nationality which appeared in, around, and against Jesus.
1. The Messianic Hope, with its meaning for independence.—The expectations aroused at the birth of Jesus were by no means of a cosmopolitan character (Matthew 1:21; Matthew 2:6, Luke 2:10—‘all the people,’ not ‘all people’), even as they appear in the perspective of St. John’s transcendental point of view (John 1:29; but cf. John 1:31). It was with the hope of keen patriots that the disciples remained with Him to the end (Acts 1:6, Mark 10:28). St. Matthew especially represents Him throughout with a glow of nationalist pride, as son of Abraham and of David (Matthew 1:1; Matthew 9:27; Matthew 21:15), and the heir of the prophets (Matthew 2:15; Matthew 2:23; Matthew 4:14; Matthew 8:17).
As to Jesus Himself, it cannot be denied that He so far shared the patriotic hopes of His fellow-countrymen as to believe they were to be fulfilled in His own person (Luke 4:21; Luke 7:23; Luke 20:13). We may even venture to say that He counted it a temptation to make His ministry succeed on popular lines (Matthew 4:5 f.). At any rate He withdrew from advertisement (Mark 1:36 f.), and from the popular desire to make Him king (John 6:15), refused to give a ‘sign’ (Mark 8:12), and seemed to repudiate any claim that rested on succession from David (Matthew 22:43-45). But He took as the very keynote of His acceptable and authoritative preaching the phrase which the nationalists used in the name of independence, ‘the kingdom of God’ or of ‘Heaven.’ He spoke of His disciples sitting on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes (Matthew 19:28). And though He baffled their material hopes over and over again, and left them dumb, He quickened enthusiasm to the highest pitch by His entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:5 ff.) on lines sketched out by prophecy. And these advances were no accommodation to the popular feeling; they were the expression of His own patriotic consciousness. He declared to the Samaritan woman that salvation is of the Jews (John 4:22). He forbade the disciples to address themselves to others than the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 10:5 f.). He was loth to discount the value of nationality by admitting a Syrophœnician woman, an alien both in race and in religion, to an equal claim on His brief ministry with the elect people (Matthew 15:24; Matthew 15:26). Although He allowed the rights of Caesar (Matthew 22:21), and authorized His disciples to pay the tribute-money that was due, He reserved the right to consider it an unrighteous infliction (Matthew 17:26). With the love of a patriot He wept over Jerusalem because it knew not the day of its visitation, and was near its final ruin (Luke 19:41-44). Though rejected by those who had formulated their own material notions of the Messianic Hope (Matthew 16:20 f., John 7:45-52; John 9:22), it was after all on the ground of His patriotism that Jesus was betrayed into the hands of the Gentiles. When Caiaphas urged this policy, he was moved more by fear for ‘our place’ than ‘our nation.’ It was on the charge of having spoken against Caesar (Luke 23:2) that Pilate was induced to condemn Jesus (John 19:12; John 19:16). It was in the name of the Messianic Hope that He was mocked by the soldiers, and over His cross were written as accusation the words, ‘The King of the Jews’ (Mark 15:26).
2. The Mosaic Law in its bearing upon unity.—National pride also centred in the unity which was epitomized in the Mosaic Law. Before the death of Herod the Great, two Pharisees were burnt alive for leading an assault upon the golden eagle he had fixed over the gate of the Temple court. And the passion for the Law was no less exaggerated throughout the period of direct Roman rule, as when there was a riot on the occasion of Pilate’s bringing the Roman ensigns within the city walls. Jesus Himself was very conscious of the national unity through the Law. He kept the feasts, being found in Jerusalem at the Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles, and of Dedication (cf. Matthew 26:55). He was a regular attendant at the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16); and His interest in these nurseries of nationality was so far recognized that the liberality of Jairus in providing one was assumed to be a claim on His favour (Luke 7:4-5). His works of healing were kept so far as possible on the lines of the Law (Mark 1:44; Mark 5:12-13). He thought of Israel as the Chosen People, and spoke of them as the children’ (Matthew 8:12; Matthew 15:26). Indeed His reverence for the Scriptures (Luke 4:4; Luke 4:8; Luke 4:12; Luke 16:31; Luke 24:25-27), for the Law (Matthew 5:19; Luke 10:26-28, John 5:45), and for the Temple (Matthew 23:17; Matthew 23:21, John 2:16-17), went far deeper than was appreciated by worldly-minded ecclesiastics (John 2:18; John 7:46-49).
But with all this tenderness for the obligations of Jewish religion as ties, He resented them as bonds. His perfect allegiance to the truth and grace of God (John 1:17) made every lesser loyalty stand in subordination. He withdrew Himself more and more from the passion of nationality as embodied in the religious pedantry and exclusiveness of the Pharisees, until at last it was almost wholly arrayed against Him and He against it (Matthew 23:15 etc.). The disparagement of Gentiles with which He began (Matthew 6:32; cf. Matthew 20:25, turned to denunciation of the false children and unfaithful servants (Matthew 21:28-44, cf. Matthew 8:12; Matthew 11:21). And Luke especially records His kindly attitude towards Samaritans (Luke 9:52; Luke 10:33; Luke 17:16). In regard to the terms of the Mosaic Law, He did not hesitate to act as Lord of the Sabbath in the interests of humanity (Mark 3:4). And, further, He taught that a man could not be defiled by the eating of meats (Mark 7:15), or cleansed by the washing of pans (Mark 7:8). He distressed His disciples by sending away sorrowful a young devotee of the Law (Mark 10:17-22), and offended religious sentiment when He kept company with publicans and sinners (Matthew 9:11, Luke 15:2; Luke 19:7).
Thus at length the devoted Student of the Scriptures and whole-hearted Champion of the Law was ejected from the national party as a deceiver (John 7:12; John 9:22-28, Matthew 27:63), and delivered up to the priests and the Romans. While He was finally accused to the Romans as a pretender in the cause of independence, He was attacked from the beginning by the legalists as an enemy to the cause of unity. Though He embodied the Hope of Israel and fulfilled the Law of Moses, it was in the name both of the Hope which the priests mistook and of the Law which the scribes misinterpreted, that Jesus was brought to the cross.
But the essential attitude of Jesus in respect to nationality can be better read in the varied witness of His disciples even than in His own. Within the limits of His short career He conformed to the Law, for He was born under it (Galatians 4:4); and He spoke out of a Messianic consciousness (Luke 4:21), because He came unto His own (John 1:11). But when He was departed, His disciples ‘saw greater things than these.’ They perceived that the use of current speech and even contemporary ideals was compatible with a more perfect independence of their limitations than the most antagonistic and revolutionary attitude could express. The ideals of Christ moved with such ease in a plane of thought which is as universal as it is inward, that they could be embodied in the contemporary forms as well as in any other. Whereas the most ardent of reformers, ready to deny standing room to everything established, may be quite exclusively the product of his age, and governed by the most pedantic ideas. Thus the gospel of Jesus was released at once and instinctively from its nationalist setting, with this unique result that it lost nothing but gained everything by its liberation. It is true the company of original Apostles remained Christian Jews; but the leaders came to recognize that they enjoyed no distinctive privilege of the Kingdom which was withheld from the Gentiles. And St. Paul, son of Benjamin and pupil of Gamaliel as he was, drew out to the full logical issue the universal implication of the gospel.
The influence of Jesus upon nationality has been of a composite nature. On the one hand, He has loosened its bonds by enlarging the conception of God and emphasizing the fact of human brotherhood. Nationality was at first constituted under the aegis of the national deity, and provided the practice-ground and range for social ethics. Thus nationality and religion were virtually the same thing, where either meant anything, and where Rome had not obliterated them both by the triumph of material force and the deification by the reigning Emperor. It was to the sacred union of these two ideas of nationality and religion that Jesus was sacrificed. But the sacrifice enabled religion to pass into the higher stage of association with humanity (cf. John 12:24; John 12:32), for which, through the providential advance of Rome, the world was craving, and towards which in the region of philosophy the Stoics had already felt their way (Acts 17:26). What nationality had hitherto done for religion, in providing the scope for its practice of social ethics, humanity was to do henceforth. The harriers had been broken down between Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, bond and free; they being brought by the blood of the Cross near to God, and so to one another, in order that henceforth the bonds of brotherhood might be of a purely human character, and that the parables of the Good Samaritan and of the Shepherd-judgment might be the pattern and sanction for next-door philanthropies and world-wide missions.
Literature.—Matheson, Growth of the Spirit of Christianity, as well as more formal works; Wilson Harper, The Christian View of Human Life (1901), chs. vii.–x.; Forrest, The Authority of Christ. (1906), ch. v.; J. Martinean, National Duties (1903), 1; B. F. Westcott, Social Aspects of Christianity (1887), 35; F. W. Robertson, Sermons (1874), iv. 287; D. J. Vaughan, Questions of the Day (1894), 12.
A. Norman Rowland.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Nationality'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/n/nationality.html. 1906-1918.
