Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [280]
The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. (Acts 5:30-31)
Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,
“The Lord said to my Lord,
‘Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.’
“Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” (Acts 2:33-36)
Evidently this ascension did not involve a process of symmorphosis as in Paul, or at least that is never made clear. Yet, like Paul, these short statements of kerygma (Christian missionary proclamation, the central doctrines of the church) were based on inspired reinterpretation of Scripture and were used as evangelical sermons. Like Paul, they talk of Jesus’ passion and exaltation as part of the same process of salvation; passion and exaltation are two aspects of the death and resurrection of the Savior.
In any event, the identification of resurrection with enthronement is evident, and Psalm 110 is used as the proof-text. Enthronement is connected to Jesus’ Messianic status as well in Acts 2:33-36, where Psalm 110 is used to demonstrate that Jesus is both Messianic and divine. The second “Lord” in Psalm 110 designates the Messiah, implicates him in divinity, but cannot be identified with David himself.
Very likely though, it was originally the inscription on the cross which made this Messianic connection obvious to the later interpreters of the events of Jesus’ death.13 The themes of Messianic candidacy and enthronement of the righteous martyr come together at the crucifixion. As Timo Eskola has said: “First Christians located the enthronement of the Messiah in the eschatological event of the resurrection of the dead.”14 And it is clear that these connections are made by preachers who are involved in the earliest Christian mission. Jesus was proclaimed as the enthroned Messiah whose resurrection and exaltation were proof of the coming eschaton. According to Luke, this is what the good news of the early Christian missionaries was. Indeed, it is very close to the message that Paul preached as well. In both cases, the message depended on the presence of the Christ in the community in baptism, in the Lord’s Supper and in the gifts of the spirit which Luke links to the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.
Both of these passages might have appeared in Paul but for two further elaborations that are characteristic of Luke and completely uncharacteristic of Paul. Although Paul is distrustful of his Jewish brethren, Paul did not usually pile on anti-Jewish phrases like Luke: “whom you had killed” and “this Jesus whom you crucified.” These are characterics of a later time, when Jews and Christians are more at loggerheads. Whatever Jews were interested in Christianity had converted; the rest were skeptical, and many were hostile.
Between Paul and Luke’s account of the resurrection, the theme of Jewish opposition to the Gospel has again and again entered Christian tradition. It is coterminous with the missionary impulse of Christianity. The opposition to the Christian mission was usually symbolized by the Jews who were therefore reviled. To explain away opposition, demonization of the Jews was undertaken.15 Probably the Jews were used for this purpose because they were skeptical of the empty tomb tradition, to say nothing of the resurrection of Jesus, and many other claims of the church. The remarks of R. Abbahu in the Palestinian Talmud are later still but they are cogent and relevant:
R. Abbahu said: “If a man says to you, ‘I am God,’ he is a liar.