Jesus heard Hebrew in the synagogue when the Sacred Scriptures were read. Probably he knew long passages from the Hebrew Bible by heart. And fragmentary knowledge of Greek was probably indispensable for him as a worker in the building trades. It is possible that Jesus worked for years in Sepphoris, which was only about four miles from Nazareth. That city had been completely destroyed after an insurrection; this was done by the Roman legate Publius Quintilius Varus, the later loser of the so-called Varus battle in Germania. In the time of Jesus, Sepphoris was rebuilt on Herod Antipas’s orders.
Creative Language
But none of that is what we mean by Jesus’ “language.” We are referring to his speaking style, his way of putting the reality of the reign of God into words. It would be revealing if Jesus had used an imprecise, vague, or bombastic style. In that case we would simply say, “Your speech betrays you.” But the case is exactly the opposite. Jesus’ language was accurate. It was specific and precise. It was concise and pointed. There was not an ounce of extra fat in it. For example, one day while he was speaking, a woman in the crowd interrupted and shouted at him: “Blessed the womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you” (Luke 11:27). In many translations and commentaries this shout is entitled “benediction of Jesus’ mother.” But that simply misses the point of what the woman was saying, because it is Jesus himself who is being called blessed here; this is done by exalting his mother. That is good oriental style (and not unknown in Greek culture, either). In the East one praises someone by praising his or her mother and abuses someone by slandering her or his mother.1 But how does Jesus respond to this shout of “blessed the womb that bore you”? He answers: “Rather: blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:28).
What is that all about? An official correction of what the woman had said? Certainly not! The woman had paid Jesus a compliment. As a polite oriental gentleman, Jesus offers a compliment in return. The woman, after all, had been listening to him. Therefore, she herself is being called blessed.
But at the same time Jesus’ answer contains a very tactful clarification. He does not praise this woman alone as blessed but includes all the listeners in his reciprocal compliment. Certainly he could not say, “Rather: blessed are you who hear the word of God and keep it,” because Jesus cannot tell whether everyone in the crowd is keeping God’s word. Therefore the indirect “blessed are those” is altogether appropriate here. And yet that by no means exhausts what Jesus’ clarification contains, for he not only opens the reciprocal compliment to a larger group of people, ultimately the “new family” now coming to be in Israel (cf. Mark 3:35). No, he also indicates that “hearing” alone is insufficient. “Doing” has to follow. Ultimately he even says: it is not a matter of admiring me as a person but of doing the word of God.
How many words have I just used, and had to use, to explicate Luke 11:27-28! Jesus was better. He said it all in a single brief statement that could scarcely have been formulated more succinctly. A polite return compliment—and yet at the same time a whole block of theology, for this little statement made it clear to everyone that the listeners, when they heard Jesus, were hearing the word of God itself.
Obviously such brevity and exactness are also connected to the catechetical aims of the later gospel tradition: Jesus’ words and parables were used for preaching and baptismal instruction after Easter. For that purpose they had to be compressed and divided and shaped in such a way that they could be easily remembered. The strict form of many of these texts thus rests on the necessities of the later tradition.
But that by no means explains everything. Jesus himself must have had an extraordinary command of language; it comes through everywhere. It was so powerful that it also shaped the language of his disciples and those who handed on his tradition. Masters of language like G. K. Chesterton and Dorothy L. Sayers point explicitly to this unique quality of Jesus.
A Precise Observer
The degree to which the language of the historical Jesus continues to permeate the tradition is shown by a phenomenon that runs throughout the whole gospel tradition: Jesus’ words and parables betray a deep love for reality. They reveal a careful observation of things and people. And beyond all that they are richly imaginative and inventive. How unforgettable are the words, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the reign of God” (Matt 19:24). Anyone who has heard this saying about the proverbially largest animal and the proverbially smallest hole will never forget it—not only because it is so terribly vivid, but also because of its illusionless severity. Obviously it does not mean to say that in principle there is no salvation for rich people—one hundred percent of them. This kind of language is not interested in statistical accuracy. Its intention is to disturb, to shake us awake, to make us uneasy, to break through the icy armor of human indifference. We can see how uncomfortable it is from the fact that medieval theologians asserted that there was a narrow gate in Jerusalem that was called “the needle’s eye.” That drew all the sting from Jesus’ words. But that gate was an invention. It never existed. It was the offspring of the imagination of an Irish monk in the eighth century.2 Jesus wants to disturb his listeners. Therefore he loves paradox and has no hesitation in saying, “how can you say to your [sister or brother in faith], ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (Matt 7:4-5).
Another example of the vividness, brevity, and keenness of Jesus’ language: in 1945 the complete “Gospel of Thomas” was discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt. Its existence was already known from individual quotations in the church fathers. It was probably written around the middle of the second century. Because of its gnosticizing tendencies, it was rightly excluded by the church from the canon of Sacred Scripture from the start. It contains a saying about the Pharisees: “They are like a dog sleeping in the cattle manger: the dog neither eats nor [lets] the cattle eat” (GThom 102). A Greek proverb is at the root of this. It speaks of unbearable people who can neither enjoy anything themselves nor let anyone else have enjoyment. Jesus, who apparently was much more educated than many exegetes allow, adopted the proverb and put it in a new context, for there is parallel content in Matthew 23:13 // Luke 11:52. Jesus was using similar familiar words when he said, “let the dead bury their own dead” (Matt 8:22) or “doctor, cure yourself!” (Luke 4:23).
So Jesus quotes. But how pointedly and disturbingly he quotes! If the subject were not so serious one could almost hear in the image of the dog in the manger a trace of Jesus’ humor: we only have to imagine how the cattle try to feed and cannot because the dog will not leave his comfortable spot in the manger. That, says Jesus, is just how the people’s theological teachers lie on the sources of knowledge. But they themselves do not live out of those sources and they prevent others from reaching that knowledge. Jesus apparently was a close observer.