David Lyle Jeffrey

The “Good” and “The Good Life”: Confucius and Christ

The Golden Rule is the ethical point most frequently compared in Jesus and Confucius; 1 in each case, what is recommended is preconsideration of one’s own actions toward other people in the light of an imaginative projection of how it would be if the roles were reversed. The formulations in both look substantively identical. 2 Yet the positive formulation of Jesus and the negative formulation of Confucius actually shape the substance and import of the precept in distinctive ways. Moreover, there may be a deeper level at which, while they are certainly not contradictory, these two formulations are expressions of an important register of ontological difference. Engaged thoughtfully, they nonetheless afford to ethical modeling an opportunity for “harmony in diversity,” complementarity rather than mere equivalence. I argue here that the two traditions can be mutually enhancing, each through knowledge of and sympathy for the other.

Meditation and Atonement in the Art of Marc Chagall

Abstract Chagall’s crucifixion paintings, long a delicate subject among art historians, are best contextualized in the light of his life-long repatriation of Christian iconography to its Jewish foundation. Chagall reverses typological sequences familiar to Christians, so that instead of the Old Testament being seen as prefiguring the events of the Gospels, in his work the New Testament refers back to the Hebrew Scriptures in such a way as to illuminate the universal in Jewish experience. In Solitude (1933) and The Yellow Crucifixion (1943) we see how Chagall achieves a remarkable fusion of Jewish and Christian understandings of meditation and visual commentary on the Scriptures, prophetically calling both traditions to repentance and reconciliation.

The Hebrew Prophets in Literature

Daniel 7:7–22 describes an apocalyptic night-vision of Daniel in which ‘the books’ are opened before the Ancient of Days, ‘whose garment was as white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire’ (v. 9). This scene of judgment climaxes with an approach to the throne by ‘one like the Son of man’ (v. 13), unto whom is then given ‘dominion, and glory, and a kingdom… which shall not pass away’ (v. 14). The tide ‘Ancient of Days’ alternates in the passage with ‘Most High’ (w. 18–27) and seems to indicate God enthroned in judgment over world empires. In Aramaic attiq yomin means ‘advanced in days’ and corresponds to a similar description of Zeus in hellenic art and literature. The term is cited throughout talmudic literature and becomes ‘the head of days’ in 1 Enoch 46. Rashi identifies the figure with God, other sources with an angel. St Augustine typifies patristic exegesis in seeing the Ancient of Days as God the Father, and adds that Daniel’s vision provides a concrete example of the Father’s appearing to the prophets in bodily form, so that ‘it is not, therefore, unsuitably believed that God the Father was also wont to appear in that manner to mortals’ (De Trinitate, 18.33).

The Gospel of St John in Literature

‘Idou ho anthropos’ (Latin Ecce homo, ‘Behold the man’) are the words used by Pilate in presenting Jesus to the Jews, bound, scourged, crowned with thorns, and wearing a purple robe (John 19:15). Most interpreters of Pilate’s laconic statement have taken Ecce homo to mean, ‘Here is the poor fellow!’, the speaker’s rhetoric having the purpose of eliciting pity from the spectators, or contemptuously ridiculing the Jews for taking such a lowly and risible figure’s claim to kingship over them so seriously, or provoking them into demanding Christ’s release. Among those exegetes interested in drawing out the theological implications of Pilate’s pronouncement, some suggest that John here emphasizes the incarnation (‘the man’ reflects the messianic title ‘Son of man’), while others equate the ‘man of sorrows’ (Isaiah 53:3) with Jesus in his humanity (The Gospel According to John, xiii–xxi, Anchor Bible, 1970, 876).

Job in Literature

This classic counsel of despair is uttered by Job’s wife in the wake of all the evils which befall him (Job 2:9). It is preceded by the question, ‘Dost thou still retain thine integrity?’ Her words may have been motivated by bitterness over what she and Job had endured (the Septuagint and the apocryphal Testament of Job both give her a lengthy speech in which she catalogues their degradation). Possibly she felt that blasphemy would have sudden death as a consequence, and that this would put Job out of his misery. In any case, the import of her words is to question the value of ‘righteousness’ (cf. Tobit 2:11–14).