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Marriage & Empire


jkgayle

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Matthew 22 starts with the Marriage of the Empire, continues with the questions of complicity in the Empire of the goyim, and moves on into the issue of Marriage in the Afterlife.

As readers we go from overhearing Jesus saying 

 

Ὡμοιώθη ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν... ἐποίησεν γάμους

to him saying

 

Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῷ θεῷ

 

to his saying

 

ἐν γὰρ τῇ ἀναστάσει οὔτε γαμοῦσιν οὔτε γαμίζονται, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἄγγελοι θεοῦ ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ εἰσιν

 

All the while he's engaging with the political-rhetorical-scriptural experts whom he calls, again, good actors for the stage.

 

His own parable here is like a dramatic play. It's like this in the Empire of this Atmosphere We Breathe in, it's like the Caesar preparing his Prince's Wedding Party.

 

His own reason for conceding tax payments to the Roman Oppressor is that God is also due payment.

His own rebuttal of the story of one Wedding after the next, this time for a chronic Widow, is to say that the Post-Death Life is not like a Wedding after all.

So in addition to the content of the story, of the reasoning, of the rebutting, we get the rhetorical method of Jesus in the rhetorical Greek of Matthew. To try to lock in on a point of doctrine to build a theology around seems to miss completely how Jesus says what Jesus says and to whom.

Is anybody else reading who wants to talk about this in this forum here?

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