Journal of Early Christian Studies

Introduction

According to the canonical gospels, Jesus lived the life of a Jew. He was circumcised on the eighth day (Luke 2.21), attended synagogues (e.g., Mark 1.21; Matt 13.54), and celebrated festivals in Jerusalem (e.g., John 5.1, 7.10). His teaching, too, at times emphasized the validity of the Law, a sentiment expressed memorably in his proclamation in the Sermon on the Mount: "Before heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle shall pass away from the Law" (Matt 5.18).

For most Christians from the late first century onward, however, not just jots and tittles but the bulk of the Law, at least in its literal sense, had in fact passed away, as abandonment of Jewish rules, rites, and institutions became an important marker of distinction between Christians and Jews. This development created a predicament for some Christians when they reflected on the manifestly Jewish deeds and teachings ascribed to their [End Page 591] savior: if Christ's incarnation, death, and resurrection rendered the Law obsolete, why had Christ himself obeyed and endorsed it so explicitly? Further complicating the matter was the assessment of the Law advanced by influential Christian thinkers such as Justin and Tertullian, who maintained that even since its inception God had not intended the Law to be observed literally, that Jews historically had misunderstood its basically spiritual character.¹ Such a view of the Law rendered all the more curious Jesus' submission to its literal decrees. Some strains of Christianity, among them the Marcionites and Gnostics, resolved the dilemma with a certain measure of denial. By expurgating texts, dissociating themselves with the God of Israel, or deemphasizing the affairs of Christ in the flesh, they were able to eliminate, or at least curtail considerably, what Andrew Jacobs has aptly called "the haunting Jewish origins of Christianity."² For Christians in so-called "orthodox" or "proto-orthodox" camps, on the other hand, who embraced the Jewish Scriptures as well as problematic Christian texts, and sought continuity between "a useful and significant Jewish past and a distinctive Christian present," the conformity of Jesus to the Law required more direct negotiation.³

This essay explores the strategies for doing so employed by John Chrysostom, presbyter in Antioch from 386 to 398 C.E. and archbishop of Constantinople for six years thereafter.⁴ Chrysostom is an interesting study [End Page 592] in this regard, for his engagement with the problem of Jesus' Jewishness features a dimension somewhat unique among his contemporaries. For most Christian thinkers in the second, third, and fourth centuries, Jesus' Jewishness was primarily an intellectual, theological, and/or exegetical issue, a fact to be reckoned with in the articulation of Christian theology and identity; for Chrysostom, however, it was also a pressing pastoral concern. The fluid communal and religious boundaries of late fourthcentury Antioch are well known, and among the many border-crossing Antiochenes were Christians attracted to the rites and rituals of the synagogue. ⁵ Evidence suggests that for some of them, at least, such behavior was motivated by the desire to imitate the example of Christ, who likewise attended synagogues and participated in Jewish festivals. Chrysostom, then, was faced not only with the intellectual challenge presented by Jesus' reported Jewish observance in the gospels, but also the more practical task of dissuading imitators.

I examine Chrysostom's engagement with the Jewishness of Jesus in the two primary homiletical contexts in which he himself treats of it. The first is in the series of eight homilies known traditionally as the Homiliae Adversus Iudaeos, delivered periodically in Antioch during 386–387 C.E. with the express intention of discouraging Christians from celebrating fasts or festivals with the Jews. The point of departure for Chrysostom's discussion of Jesus is the claim made by some in his flock, and echoed unmistakably in the middle of the third homily, that participation in Jewish ceremonies is justified by the fact that the savior had done just the same. Chrysostom concedes the historical point, but then launches a series of salvoes aimed at demonstrating why Christ's behaviors, otherwise exemplary, should not be imitated in this regard. Chrysostom's treatment of Jesus' Jewishness is brief here, however, and focused squarely on the homiletical objective at hand. He explains why contemporary Christians should not imitate Jesus' Sabbath or festival worship, but provides little by way of an explanation [End Page 593] for why Jesus, who knew such forms of worship were to be terminated, would have engaged in those activities in the first place.

A more elaborate treatment of this issue surfaces just a few years later, however, in Chrysostom's nearly 180 exegetical homilies on Matthew and John, delivered in Antioch between 390–391 C.E. Here, naturally, the points of departure for his discussion of Jesus' Jewishness are the recurring scenes in both gospels that report Jesus attending synagogues or festivals, encouraging observance of the Law, or even endorsing the Law's ongoing validity and importance. No doubt one of Chrysostom's objectives in these discussions is similar to his aim in the Homiliae Adversus Iudaeos. There is evidence to suggest that Christian participation in the Jewish ceremonies of Antioch continued well into the 390s, and Chrysostom was surely keen to prevent his interpretations of Jesus in the gospels from condoning or facilitating such activities. But Chrysostom's focus in the exegetical homilies is also much broader. His reading of the gospels constitutes a scriptural vindication of emerging Nicene orthodoxy, which requires him frequently to engage and deflect alternative interpretations from his chief rivals, Arians (in their various guises) and Manichaeans. In accounting for why Jesus had acted and taught the way he did, Chrysostom had to paint a picture that avoided hostility toward the Law or too sharp a break between the old dispensation and the new, which might too closely resemble the Manichaean position; on the other hand, a failure to disassociate Jesus sufficiently from Judaism might draw accusations of "Judaization," the very charge levied against the Arians with such gusto by late fourth-century champions of orthodoxy.

What emerges from this balancing act is a sophisticated exegetical and theological strategy to account for Jesus' engagement with Judaism. In short, I suggest, Chrysostom views Jesus' performance of the Law as paradoxical: Jesus both observed the Law completely, though at times for ulterior purposes, and abrogated it, though at times almost imperceptibly, a complex and double-sided behavior whose aim was to effect a deliberately gradual transition from one phase of salvation history, marked by the Law of Moses, to another governed solely by the higher commandments of Christ.

The Jewishness of Jesus in the Homiliae Adversus Iudaeos

In the autumn of 386 C.E., Chrysostom interrupted a series of orations against the Anomoeans in order to take up a new topic: the participation of Christians in the rites of the local synagogues, which reached a crescendo [End Page 594] during the Jewish festival seasons. What followed were eight sermons, delivered over two years, in which Chrysostom exhorted, encouraged, admonished, hounded, and defied his congregation, urging them to steer clear of the synagogue and to support one another in achieving this end.⁶ As Chrysostom would have it, the involvement of renegade Christians in the life of the synagogue was a recent innovation, a flagrant transgression of established social and religious boundaries within Antioch. His task, therefore, was to reel in those who had broken ranks, to restore the status quo. Recent scholarship has recognized that John's rhetoric of innovation and boundary-transgression may not depict accurately the backdrop against which these sermons were delivered. Many urban centers in late antiquity, and Antioch in particular, were marked by varying degrees of religious intermingling, not just between Jews and Christians, but with so-called "pagans" as well, and John's Homiliae Adversus Iudaeos may have been less an effort to restore a staunch boundary between Christians and the synagogue than to erect one.⁷

Whether it was a new or a long-standing tradition, Christians were drawn to the synagogue by its antiquity and perceived authenticity, its sacred books, and the efficacy of its healings and other rites.⁸ In addition, [End Page 595] Chrysostom concedes, some were inspired by the example of Jesus himself. This becomes clear in the third sermon, when during a rant about the disobedience of the Jews and the lapsed significance of their festivals, Chrysostom blurts an unexpected observation: "Christ did keep the Pasch with them. . . . He also submitted to circumcision, kept the Sabbath, observed the festival days, and ate the unleavened bread."⁹ The reason for this curious admission comes just a few moments later, when Chrysostom demands that his audience "not keep pleading this excuse, but show me that Christ did command us to observe the old Pasch."¹⁰ The dynamic behind this exchange is surely the contention, advanced by at least some in Chrysostom's flock, that Jesus' own Jewish observance, and in particular his celebration of the festivals, implied that Christians, too, were obliged or at least permitted to observe the same rites.¹¹

The claim is understandable, too. Imitatio Christi had been a prevalent theme in Christian ethics and preaching for centuries. Jesus himself was reported to have said that genuine discipleship required one to bear his own cross (Mark 8.34 and parallels). Paul called upon his charges to be imitators of him, just "as I am of Christ" (1 Cor 11.1), and portrayed the sacrament of baptism explicitly as a reenactment of Christ's passion. Ignatius famously couched his desire for martyrdom in terms of imitating Christ (Rom. 6:3). Through the second, third, and fourth centuries, Christian thinkers and preachers continued to draw at the well of imitatio Christi, invoking it in support of martyrdom, asceticism, and other desirable behaviors.¹² Chrysostom himself made ample use of it.

Indeed, he even employs it in the Homiliae Adversus Iudaeos more than once. In the eighth homily, for example, when Chrysostom reprimands [End Page 596] congregants who have shown little urgency in tracking down backsliders, Chrysostom insists that such complacency flouts the example of Christ:

I also blame you for your unwillingness to set the sick ones straight. It is not in question that, when you come here to church, you listen to what is said, you leave yourself open to condemnation when you fail to follow through with action the words you hear. Why are you a Christian? Is it not that you may imitate Christ and obey his Laws? What did Christ do? He did not sit in Jerusalem and call the sick to come to him. He went around to cities and towns and cured sickness of both body and soul. He could have stayed sitting in the same place and still have drawn all men to himself. But he did not do this. Why? So that he might give us the example of going around in search of those who are perishing.¹³

This exaltation of Christ as a figure worthy of emulation comes toward the end of a homily in which imitation of past heroes features prominently. Chrysostom has held up as exemplary the actions of Paul, the Good Samaritan, David, Job, the infirm man at Bethesda, and Lazarus, and no doubt he saves Christ for last in the procession of past prototypes because he is the most exemplary of all.

John not only highlights the example of Christ in the Homiliae, but also the incomparable trustworthiness of his testimony. When he wishes to refute the notion that Jews adore God as Christians do, for example, he adduces Christ's own words:

No Jew adores God! Who says so? The Son of God says so. For he said: "If you were to know my Father, you would also know me. But you neither know me nor do you know my Father." Could I produce a witness more trustworthy than the Son of God? If, then, the Jews fail to know the Father, if they crucified the Son, if they thrust off the help of the Spirit, who should not make bold to declare plainly that the synagogue is a dwelling of demons? God is not worshipped there. Heaven forbid! From now on it remains a place of idolatry. But still some people pay it honor as a holy place.¹⁴

The quotation from the Son of God is a bungled version of John 8.19, on which Chrysostom predicates the claim that synagogues play host to idolatrous and demonic worship. Since Jews do not know God the Father, Son, or Spirit, then their worship must be directed at something else, namely demons. Accordingly, no Christian devoted genuinely to God should aspire to participate in the rites of the synagogue. The certainty [End Page 597] of this conclusion, Chrysostom alleges, stems from the unimpeachable nature of the evidence from which it proceeds, which he makes clear in the rhetorical question following the scriptural citation. Surely one could not produce a witness more trustworthy than the Son of God, whose testimony is unassailable.

The superior rank of Christ's testimony surfaces again in the fifth homily. Chrysostom expands upon the charge he had developed in the previous discourse when he claimed that contemporary observance of Jewish festivals is illegitimate because God never sanctioned such observance beyond the bounds of Jerusalem. The Jews of Antioch, three centuries after the destruction of the Temple, had neither the right nor the obligation to keep the festivals and Christians, naturally, had no reason to partake in the charade. To those claiming that the Jews might soon rebuild their Temple and reconstitute its ceremonies, perhaps inspired by the enthusiasm that had blazed a generation earlier during the reign of Julian, Chrysostom insists upon the permanence of the Jewish plight:

Come now, and let me give you abundant proof that the temple will not be rebuilt and that the Jews will not return to their former way of life. In this way you will come to a clearer understanding of what the Apostles taught, and the Jews will be all the more convicted of acting in a godless way. As witness I shall produce not an angel, not an archangel, but the very Master of the whole world, our Lord Jesus Christ. When he came into Jerusalem and saw the temple, he said: "Jerusalem will be trodden down by many nations, until the times of many nations will be fulfilled." By this he meant the years to come until the consummation of the world. And again, speaking to his disciples about the temple, he made the threat that a stone would not remain upon a stone in that place until the time when it is destroyed. His threat was a prediction that the temple would come to a final devastation and completely disappear.¹⁵

As Chrysostom understands the sayings in Luke 21.24 and Matt 24.2, Christ predicted not merely the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., but also its continuation in ruins until the end of times. As before, the validity of this conclusion is confirmed in Chrysostom's view by the dependability of the witness, which he emphasizes in his introduction to the quotations: an angel would constitute a stellar witness, an archangel all the more so; the testimony of Christ surpasses even these.

Thus, inasmuch as Chrysostom himself so unabashedly invokes the example and testimony of Christ, one sees why some in his congregation applied the same logic to their participation in the life of the synagogue. If [End Page 598] Christ's example was to be imitated, why not celebrate Passover with the Jews as Christ did? If Christ's testimony was to be heeded, and Christ in the gospels here and there endorsed the worthiness of the Law, why not observe its various ceremonies?

Chrysostom's response to this proposition is brief. In just a few lines, he spells out three reasons why Christ's observance of the Law, and in particular his celebration of the Passover, should not be imitated. First, in keeping with an argument revisited throughout the sermons, he notes that Christ observed the Passover in Jerusalem, the only location where it could be celebrated legitimately. This was a new spin on a longstanding polemical tradition. Most Christian authors in the second and third centuries interpreted the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem as an indication that God had forsaken the Jews and the worship they conducted there, making way for Christian worship in its stead. As Christine Shepardson has shown, fourth-century Christians such as Aphrahat, Ephrem, and Chrysostom, all confronted with Christian observance of Jewish festivals, took that interpretation one step further by citing the Temple's destruction as proof that contemporary observance of Jewish festivals by anyone, whether Christian or Jew, was invalid.¹⁶

Second, Chrysostom maintains, "the old Pasch was a type of the Pasch to come, and the reality had to supplant the type. So Christ first showed the foreshadowing and then brought the reality to the banquet table."¹⁷ In other words, Chrysostom reasons, Christ terminated the Passover in the very act of observing it, for in so doing he brought to light the reality it foreshadowed—namely, the Eucharist. Observance of the Passover thus represents, in some sense, a rejection of the full meaning of the Eucharist. This, too, was hardly an innovative interpretation. Christian thinkers since as early as Barnabas and Justin had understood Jewish rituals and ceremonies as types fulfilled in Christ, thereafter to be observed in their more spiritualized Christian form.

Finally, according to Chrysostom, Christ may have kept the Passover and other festival days, but he never specifically commanded his followers to observe them, and indeed he "even freed us from the obligation to do so."¹⁸ This last argument is especially intriguing, seeing as one would be [End Page 599] hard-pressed to identify instances in the gospels in which Jesus frees his followers from the obligation of observing the festivals. Evidently Chrysostom was similarly at a loss to pinpoint such an injunction, for rather than supporting his allegation with a quotation from the gospels, he calls upon Paul to speak for Christ, which enables him to mobilize Paul's condemnations of the festivals in Gal 4.10–11, 1 Cor 5.8, and 1 Cor 11.26:

Hear what Paul had to say. And when I speak of Paul, I mean Christ; for it is Christ who moved Paul's soul to speak. What, then, did Paul say? "You are observing days, and months, and seasons, and years. I fear for you, lest perhaps I have labored in vain among you." And again: "as often as you shall eat this bread and drink this cup, you shall proclaim the death of the Lord." When he said: "As often as," Paul gave the right and power to decide this to those who approach the mysteries, and freed them from any obligation to observe the festival days.¹⁹

This is not the only passage in the Homiliae where Chrysostom utilizes Paul in such a way. When he contends in the second sermon that Judaizers who participate in the festivals are accursed, he brings forth Paul's charge to the Corinthians: "If any man does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let a curse be upon him."²⁰ For John, attendance at festivals is tantamount to not loving the Lord. As he goes on to say, however, it is not he or even Paul who has levied the curse against such renegades, but Christ himself "who spoke through [Paul]."²¹ As Margaret M. Mitchell has observed, Paul here functions for John as a "kind of 'second Jesus,'" able to deliver injunctions as though they came from the mouth of Christ himself.²² Indeed, she observes, this is part and parcel of John's broader understanding of Paul as a mouthpiece for Christ, an idea expressed most strikingly in his homilies on Romans when he describes Paul's tongue as having Christ seated upon it.²³

Recourse to Paul is not John's only tactic for getting Christ to say what he is not reported to have said in the gospels. In the sixth homily he employs the rhetorical device called prosopopoeia (speech-in-character) by imagining what the Son of God will say to his rogue parishioners on Judgment Day. Drawing upon Luke 13.27, he provides his flock with a harrowing glimpse of the future: [End Page 600]

On the day of judgment you must be afraid of hearing him who will judge you say: "Depart. I know you not." "You made common cause with those who crucified me. You were obstinate toward me and started up again the festivals to which I had put an end. You ran to the synagogues of the Jews who sinned against me."²⁴

Again, one wonders where in the gospels Jesus could be construed as putting an end to the festivals, either in his sayings or in his conduct. Chrysostom avoids this problem by placing the desired annulment in the mouth of a conjured Christ who, just like Paul, promulgates the dicta of Christ that went unsaid in the gospels. In this way Chrysostom reclaims Christ from those who would invoke his sayings or deeds as a justification for participation in the rites of the synagogue. In fact, Chrysostom alleges, Christ has instructed them specifically to refrain from observing the festivals, even if that prohibition is not expressed explicitly in the gospels.²⁵

John's mobilization of alternative sources—whether Paul or the anticipated sayings of Christ—provides an effective strategy for combating the desire to imitate Christ by participating in the life of the synagogue. If Christ truly did speak through Paul, then celebration of Jewish "days, months, and seasons," for example, would by all means constitute a flagrant violation of Christ's own intentions for Christian living. But John's strategy also leaves a critical question unanswered, as it fails to explain why Christ, who presumably knew that he would condemn the festivals (and literal observance of the Law more generally) through Paul's voice, engaged originally in the behaviors he eventually would condemn. In other words, why did Jesus himself celebrate "days, months, and seasons," only to turn right around and condemn them? The same could be said of John's other two methods for disarming the urge to imitate Christ: if Christ knew and indeed predicted that the Temple in Jerusalem would be laid waste forever, and its ceremonies replaced by the higher celebrations for which the originals were merely types, why did he participate in the lower, unfulfilled versions?

In this sense, Chrysostom's engagement with Jesus' Jewishness in the Homiliae Adversus Iudaeos is shaped quite narrowly around the homiletical [End Page 601] context at hand. Since his primary, if not solitary, objective in these sermons is to forestall Christian observance of Jewish rites, and his begrudging admission of Jesus' Jewish deeds comes in response to Christians who justify their observance on the grounds of imitatio Christi, his subsequent discussion of Jesus' Jewishness aims squarely at dissuading imitators. His goal is to show why even though "Christ did keep the Pasch with them . . . [and] also submitted to circumcision, kept the Sabbath, observed the festival days, and ate the unleavened bread,"²⁶ such observance should not translate into Jewish observance by Christians in John's own day. Missing from the discussion is a sustained or sophisticated negotiation of the problem raised by Christ's observance of the Law in the first place.

Such a discussion was soon to follow, however. Just three years after delivering the last of the Homiliae Adversus Iudaeos, Chrysostom began to focus his homiletical efforts on the New Testament. First up in these exegetical homilies was a series of ninety sermons on the Gospel of Matthew delivered in 390 C.E., and eighty-eight on the Gospel of John delivered in the following year.²⁷ Over the course of these sermons, Chrysostom would have to grapple regularly with "Jewish" details in Jesus' ministry: for example, his affirmation of the Law and of the authority of the Pharisees in Matthew or the festival pilgrimages to Jerusalem in John. But the homiletical context of these sermons is different from the Homiliae Adversus Iudaeos. Although Christian participation in the synagogues of Antioch undoubtedly continued into the 390s, and to some extent the ongoing presence of Judaizers in his audience must have occupied his thoughts as he sought to make sense of Jesus' relationship to Judaism, John's concerns in the gospel homilies are nevertheless much broader.²⁸ In [End Page 602] addition to addressing pastoral exigencies and instilling sound Christian values, of course, Chrysostom is also engaged in an ongoing dialogue in these homilies with the two main rivals to the Nicene orthodoxy he is at pains to uphold: Arians and Manichaeans. As I will suggest momentarily, these adversaries, as well as the Judaizers, most likely shaped the sophisticated strategy Chrysostom develops in the gospel homilies for negotiating Jesus' Jewishness.

The Jewishness of Jesus in the Gospel Homilies

Recent scholarship has highlighted the extent to which accusations of "Judaizing" featured prominently in the anti-Arian and anti-Eunomian rhetoric of Athanasius, Ephrem, the Cappadocians, and others.²⁹ For one reason or another, these Christians argued, subordinationist Christologies possessed an inescapably Jewish quality, thus rendering them inferior to Trinitarian orthodoxy which, in contrast to the heresies, was the genuine Christianity free from Jewish taint. Even prior to Nicaea, of course, it was common for proto-orthodox heresiologists to affix the label "Jew" to their opponents, but as Daniel Boyarin has observed, the mid- to late fourth century marked a time when orthodox heresiological discourse became increasingly interested in locating Christian rivals within the murky ground separating Christian from Jew.³⁰ Arians and Anomoeans were not necessarily Jews as much as Judaizers, like Christians and like Jews but at the same time neither one. Chrysostom himself appears to have expressed this view at the outset of his Homiliae Adversus Iudaeos, when he notes the similarity between the Anomoeans whose censure is being interrupted and the Judaizers against whom he is about to inveigh.

The "Judaizing" accusation, however, was not the privileged property of the orthodox. Amidst their effort to carve out an imperial religion in the fourth century there emerged what Paula Fredriksen and Oded Irshai have aptly called "a late avatar of the sorts of Christianities established [End Page 603] by Marcion and Valentinus"—namely, Manichaeism.³¹ The Manichaeans viewed their own version of Christianity as the genuine article, and in the orthodox acceptance of the Old Testament, the Jewish God, and the corrupted gospels, they saw an unmistakable Jewish taint, so much so that the Manichaean Faustus could refer to the apostolic conveyors of the gospel tradition as semi-Iudaeis.³² Nicene advocates, then, found themselves on both ends of the "Judaizing" charge.

In this vein, the well-known dispute between Jerome and Augustine over Paul's rebuke of Peter at Antioch is important because it reveals both sides of the slippery slope down which orthodox thinkers might slide when considering the Jewishness of Jesus and, in this case, his earliest disciples.³³ From Jerome's point of view, to concede that Peter continued to practice the Law erroneously legitimates the notion that one can be both a Christian and a Jew, a Judaizer. Christ abrogated the Law, he contends, Peter knew this full well, and thus the basis for the scene in Gal 2.11–14 is a case of "play-acting." Augustine, alternatively, worried that attributing false motives to Paul and Peter undermined the authority of Scripture, a grave concern in the face of the Manichaeans. Moreover, had the apostles failed to uphold the Law, even when they knew its purpose had been fulfilled in Christ, they might have given the wrong impression to other Christians by suggesting that the literal precepts of the Law were inherently bad or not divinely bestowed—the Manichaean view.³⁴ According to Augustine, Jesus observed meticulously rather than abrogated the Law, as did his Jewish followers after him, and it was only with the destruction of the Temple that the Law was completely and necessarily abandoned by all Christians. The debate between Jerome and Augustine thus reveals the tension among orthodox thinkers to find, on the one hand, continuity with Judaism and the Law, and on the other, a radical break from them.

Just a decade earlier, I suggest, Chrysostom tried to balance these competing forces when examining the Jewishness of Jesus in his homilies on Matthew and John. As a staunch proponent of Nicene orthodoxy, he had to uphold the double-canon, the sanctity of the Law, and a sense of [End Page 604] its continuity with the Christian age, in order to stem the advance of the Manichaeans whom he frequently engaged in these homilies; at the same time, however, he had to be careful not to draw too close a connection between Jesus and the Jewish observances, thus risking exposure to the accusation of promoting Judaizing, which might play into the hands of the Judaizers in his midst or, in the least, render him guilty of the same charge routinely levied by the orthodox against their Arian and anomoean opponents. Chrysostom's solution was to read this tension—both continuity and a break with Judaism—directly onto the person of Jesus himself.

Thus, on the one hand, like Augustine was soon to do, Chrysostom insists in his homilies on Matthew and John that Jesus adhered meticulously and unfailingly to the Jewish Law.³⁵ In the Fourth Gospel, for example, Chrysostom finds Jesus demonstrating steadfast adherence to the Law in his initial ascent to Jerusalem for the Passover, the time he caused a stir in the Temple. Pressed to clarify why the otherwise serene Jesus toppled tables and cracked a whip, Chrysostom sees in the tirade a symbolic gesture. Knowing he would soon violate the Sabbath, an act the Jews would erroneously interpret as a breach of the Law, Jesus wished to impress upon the Jews his resolute devotion to God, the Temple, and the Law:

Since he was about to heal on the Sabbath, and to do many similar things, which they would consider to be a violation of the Law, he therefore disabused them of such suspicion, lest he appear to do these things as an adversary of God or as one who had come to oppose the Father. For someone demonstrating so much zeal for a house [i.e. the Temple] was not about to oppose the master of that house, the one who is served in it.³⁶

Chrysostom goes on to note that Jesus had been an inveterate observer of the Law, but his humble beginnings had prevented such religiosity from garnering widespread admiration. The zealous demonstration in the Temple, on the other hand, was a spectacle for all to see. Through it he broadcast to the crowds the scrupulous Jewish observance those close to him had come to expect.

Over and over again in the Fourth Gospel Chrysostom draws attention to this devotion. When Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well that "salvation comes from the Jews" (John 4.22), he means that the Jewish covenant is the foundation of the blessings and salvation to come. In [End Page 605] so saying, Chrysostom maintains, he reveals that "at all times he is not opposed to the Law."³⁷ Similarly, by sending the congenitally blind man to the pool of Siloam, Jesus demonstrates "that he is not disposed unfavorably to the Law and the Old [Covenant]."³⁸ Even when it appears as though Jesus violates the Law, Chrysostom insists otherwise. He is unswerving in his insistence that Jesus' alleged violation of the Sabbath in John 5–7 did not constitute a violation of the Law. Following Jesus' own line of reasoning, Chrysostom says Jesus' violation of the Sabbath in order to heal upheld the Law in the same way a circumcision performed on the Sabbath does so—all the more so, for if bodies can be altered on the Sabbath with no consequences for health, surely they can be altered for the purpose of curing.

Chrysostom finds Jesus to be similarly committed to the Law from beginning to end in the First Gospel. In his first significant public appearance Jesus proclaims that he came "not to abolish the Law and the Prophets . . . but to fulfill them" (Matt 5.17), which Chrysostom understands to be a confirmation of Jesus' steadfastness to the Law. As he observes, "[Jesus] fulfilled the Law . . . by transgressing none its prescriptions," a claim he then bolsters with a bevy of citations.³⁹ Jesus likewise demonstrates his commitment to the Law at the close of his campaign, when he eats the Passover with his disciples on the eve of the cross. "For what reason did he observe the Passover?" Chrysostom asks, "To demonstrate that at all times up until the last day he is not opposed to the Law."⁴⁰ Jesus not only upheld the Law himself, according to Chrysostom, but he also commanded others to follow it. Thus, when Jesus censures the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy, he nevertheless bids his audience to abide by the decrees of those stationed in Moses's seat. In doing so, Chrysostom says, Jesus "commands so much respect be given to [the Law], that he demands it be kept even when those who teach it have been corrupted."⁴¹ The First Gospel, like the Fourth, reveals a Jesus firmly devoted to the Law.

Despite Chrysostom's insistence on Jesus' unremitting adherence to the Law, at times he is less enthusiastic about the Jewish habits of the Son of God, as more than once he suggests that Jesus' performance of the Law was not for its own sake, but for some or another ulterior purpose. We witnessed this phenomenon already in his description of Jesus' motivation [End Page 606] for attending the Temple on the Passover. Jesus did not go to the Temple because it was Passover, but in order to set the stage for ensuing events in his ministry, namely his violation of the Sabbath. This search for ulterior motives becomes a trend in Chrysostom's homilies. So, when Jesus returns to Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks in John 5, Chrysostom comments as follows on Jesus' motivation:

"After this there was a festival of the Jews." Which festival was it? I think it was that of Pentecost. "And Jesus went up to Jerusalem." Continually () he makes the customary visit to the city during the festivals. He does so, on the one hand, in order that he might appear to celebrate the festival with them, and on the other hand, that he might persuade the guileless multitudes. For especially during these festivals the simpler folk ran together.⁴²

According to Chrysostom, Jesus ascended to Jerusalem for two reasons, neither of which suggests he did so for the purpose of celebrating the festival. In one sense he went simply to find an amenable crowd. Jesus, Chrysostom supposes, preferred the laidback, simple, country folk to the clever, urbane, and corrupt types normally populating a city like Jerusalem. Pentecost offered Jesus the opportunity to address a large number of such guileless pilgrims from the countryside.⁴³ Alternatively, Chrysostom proposes, Jesus went to Jerusalem dicis causa. He did not go to feast with his fellow Jews, but in order "that he might appear to feast with them" (). Here the future bishop of Constantinople appears to be hawking his own docetic version of the messiah—not that Jesus seemed to be flesh, but that Jesus' observance of the festivals was superficial.⁴⁴

Such reluctance to admit of Jesus' bona fide participation in the festivals occurs again when he returns to Jerusalem for the Feast of Dedication in John 10. As before, Chrysostom feels compelled to explain why Jesus was in Jerusalem for the occasion, and it is not because he wished to take part in the celebration:

"It was," it says, "the festival of the re-consecration of the Temple in Jerusalem, and it was winter." This was a magnificent public festival, for [End Page 607] they commemorated with much eagerness the day on which the Temple was rebuilt following their return from the long captivity in Persia. Christ was also present at this festival, for he resided continually in Judea from this point on, since the Passion was at the doors [i.e. soon].⁴⁵

To those figuring Jesus had gone to Jerusalem for the same reason as any other Jew, to participate in the festival worship, Chrysostom indicates that Jesus was not in Jerusalem because of the feast; he was there because his impending doom required it. Since he was in the neighborhood, so to speak, it made sense for him to visit the Temple and take part in its activities. The implication is that if this feast had occurred earlier in the course of his ministry he would not of his own accord have opted to visit Jerusalem on account of it.

Ulterior motives for Christ's Jewishness surface in the homilies on Matthew as well. Jesus' command to the leper in Matt 8.4 provides a signal representative. When Jesus instructs the cleansed leper to show himself to a priest and to make the requisite offering, he does so in order to fulfill the Law; but such adherence to the Law, Chrysostom insists, was for the purpose of "restraining for a time the impudent speech of the Jews, and condescending to their weakness."⁴⁶ Jesus did not endorse the Law because it was necessary, but in order to prevent Jews from seizing on a violation of the Law as a pretext for impeaching Jesus or his ministry.⁴⁷

Chrysostom similarly draws upon the contentiousness of the Jews to account for Jesus' reported presence in the synagogue(s) of the Galilee (Matt 13.54), a custom that for Chrysostom requires explanation. Just as Jesus prescribed adherence to the Law in order to avoid conflict with the Jews, so he visited the sites where the Law was read for the same purpose. As Chrysostom puts it, "he visits the synagogues continually, lest they accuse him all the more for dwelling constantly in the wilderness, which might suggest that he has detached himself from society and is contending against it."⁴⁸ Jesus did not frequent synagogues because it was a natural, appropriate, or worthwhile thing to do. He went to forestall Jewish efforts to brand him a renegade too early in his ministry.

Jewish hostility is, however, not always Jesus' pretext for Law observance. Sometimes Chrysostom describes Jesus' ulterior motives in different terms. In Matt 23.23, when Jesus follows up his censure of the scribes [End Page 608] and Pharisees for their overindulgence in the minutiae of the Law with the concession that it was right for them to have been so scrupulous, Chrysostom vehemently rejects the notion that Jesus did so out of appreciation for the Law. "Forget it!" (), he tells anyone who supposes that Jesus encouraged tithing because it was prescribed in the Law.⁴⁹ Jesus approved of tithing the mint, dill, and cumin, Chrysostom says, because almsgiving is a noble and worthwhile endeavor. After all, he asks, "what harm is there in giving charity?"⁵⁰ Jesus was not approving of Law observance in Matt 23.23, but encouraging generosity.

Attributing Jesus' Law observance to ulterior motives was not a new phenomenon in Christian thought. As Andrew Jacobs has observed, both Justin and Origin employed this strategy when grappling with Jesus' circumcision. Justin, for example, viewed Christ's submission to circumcision not as obedience to the Law, but as part and parcel of his redemptive physical suffering, "just one more indignity that Christ suffered in order to redeem humanity."⁵¹ Origen, too, viewed the circumcision as redemptive rather than obedient, construing it as an act that freed humanity from the threat of the hostile angel in Exod 4 against whom circumcision was instituted as a protective measure. To some extent, then, Chrysostom follows the lead of second and third century Christian thinkers when he interprets Jesus' performance of the Law as something other than obedience to it.

At times, however, Chrysostom goes beyond merely mitigating Christ's Law observance by attributing it to ulterior motives, contending that Christ deliberately violated the Law. In the Fourth Gospel this occurs in John 6.3–4. When Jesus takes his disciples to a mountain in the Galilee instead of journeying to Jerusalem for a festival, Chrysostom seizes the opportunity to make a penetrating observation about the relationship between Jesus and the Law:

"And the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was soon to come." How is it then, one might ask, that he does not go up to the festival, but goes instead to the Galilee while everyone else is hurrying to Jerusalem—and he does not go alone, but he takes also his disciples, and from there goes on to Capernaum? From this point on he was gently loosening the grip of the Law (), using the wickedness of the Jews as a pretext.⁵² [End Page 609]

Whereas Chrysostom provides ulterior motives for Jesus' participation at other feasts, he sees in Jesus' abstention from this Passover a transparent message about the demise of the Law. Jesus removed to the Galilee in order to demonstrate the emerging obsolescence of the Law. The "wickedness of the Jews" is not a mitigating factor that explains why Jesus steered clear of Jerusalem, where he otherwise would have wished to be. On the contrary, the threat from the Jews furnishes Jesus the chance to pursue his genuine motivation, which is to avoid the festival and thereby to annul the Law. Thus, where Jesus' observance of the festivals is often a secondary consequence of other more important aspects of his ministry, his failure to observe this one reflects a purposeful and meaningful gesture toward their termination.

In Matthew, Chrysostom points to Jesus' discourse on dietary regulations as an example of his unambiguous abrogation of the Law. The eradication of laws pertaining to meats, Chrysostom adds, was of no small significance, "for all of Judaism is held together in this, and if you abolish this, then you even abolish it all."⁵³ In other words, Jesus did not merely upend one component of the Law when he declared all foods clean, he toppled the whole thing! This is a far cry from the Jesus who eight chapters later, in his disputation with the scribes and Pharisees, "commands so much respect be given to [the Law], that he demands it be kept even when those who teach it have been corrupted."⁵⁴

In sum, then, Chrysostom's presentation of Christ in the gospel homilies shows him to be fervently and unflinchingly loyal to the Law, ambivalent about the Law, and openly hostile to it. As Chrysostom at one point describes this variable depiction, "[Jesus] did not put an end to [the Law] in every case, nor in every case did he observe it; rather, sometimes he did the one, sometimes the other."⁵⁵

Chrysostom can sit comfortably with this tension, however, because it conforms to the broad conceptualization of Christ's relationship to the Law which he outlines most revealingly in his sixteenth homily on Matthew, when he examines Jesus' apparent endorsement of the Law in stating that he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Matt 5.17–19). According to Chrysostom, Christ fulfilled the Law in three respects. First, as we saw above, he did so "by transgressing none of its prescriptions," a claim Chrysostom repeats in his homilies on Matthew and John.⁵⁶ Second, Jesus fulfilled the Law inasmuch as his own obedience to it released those [End Page 610] Whereas Chrysostom provides ulterior motives for Jesus' participation at other feasts, he sees in Jesus' abstention from this Passover a transparent message about the demise of the Law. Jesus removed to the Galilee in order to demonstrate the emerging obsolescence of the Law. The "wickedness of the Jews" is not a mitigating factor that explains why Jesus steered clear of Jerusalem, where he otherwise would have wished to be. On the contrary, the threat from the Jews furnishes Jesus the chance to pursue his genuine motivation, which is to avoid the festival and thereby to annul the Law. Thus, where Jesus' observance of the festivals is often a secondary consequence of other more important aspects of his ministry, his failure to observe this one reflects a purposeful and meaningful gesture toward their termination. In Matthew, Chrysostom points to Jesus' discourse on dietary regulations as an example of his unambiguous abrogation of the Law. The eradication of laws pertaining to meats, Chrysostom adds, was of no small significance, "for all of Judaism is held together in this, and if you abolish this, then you even abolish it all."53 In other words, Jesus did not merely upend one component of the Law when he declared all foods clean, he toppled the whole thing! This is a far cry from the Jesus who eight chapters later, in his disputation with the scribes and Pharisees, "commands so much respect be given to [the Law], that he demands it be kept even when those who teach it have been corrupted."54 In sum, then, Chrysostom's presentation of Christ in the gospel homilies shows him to be fervently and unflinchingly loyal to the Law, ambivalent about the Law, and openly hostile to it. As Chrysostom at one point describes this variable depiction, "[Jesus] did not put an end to [the Law] in every case, nor in every case did he observe it; rather, sometimes he did the one, sometimes the other."55 Chrysostom can sit comfortably with this tension, however, because it conforms to the broad conceptualization of Christ's relationship to the Law which he outlines most revealingly in his sixteenth homily on Matthew, when he examines Jesus' apparent endorsement of the Law in stating that he came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Matt 5.17–19). According to Chrysostom, Christ fulfilled the Law in three respects. First, as we saw above, he did so "by transgressing none of its prescriptions," a claim Chrysostom repeats in his homilies on Matthew and John.56 Second, Jesus fulfilled the Law inasmuch as his own obedience to it released those baptized into him from its obligations. Drawing on various statements from Romans, Chrysostom shows how Christ, in fulfilling the precepts of the Law, enabled Christians to fulfill the Law by means of faith in him. Finally, Chrysostom explains, Christ fulfilled the Law to the extent that the new code of laws he inaugurated was a natural extension of the old Law. In the Sermon on the Mount and in the course of the ministry that would follow, Jesus initiated new legislation, variously called by Chrysostom "another way of life" (), "a higher manner of living" (), "greater commandments" (), and drawing upon Rom 8.2, "the law of the spirit of life."⁵⁷ This newer and more perfect standard of conduct did away with the older, partial, and incomplete Law. Chrysostom takes pains to insist, however, that even as the new laws replace the old ones, they do not do so because the original laws suffered from an inherent badness. It is not a case of the good replacing the bad, but the good being surpassed, or fulfilled, by that which is better and more complete. Nevertheless, Chrysostom concludes, despite the goodness of the original legislation, the advent of the higher code requires that the lower one be repealed.

In this sense, then, the relationship between Jesus and the Law is inherently contradictory. As the single point of transition between the age of the Law and the "time of the greater commandments," as Chrysostom calls it, Jesus must uphold and repeal the Law simultaneously.⁵⁸ Like the fulcrum in a simple lever, Jesus' ministry marks the decisive moment in history in which the Law descends in significance as it is replaced by the emerging rules and principles of Christianity. Thus, it should come of no surprise that in the gospels Jesus appears to be undertaking the seemingly impossible task of maintaining and abolishing the Law at the same time because, according to Chrysostom, he is in fact performing the seemingly impossible task of maintaining and abolishing the Law at the same time!

One might wonder, of course, why Jesus did not choose one particular moment during his ministry to effect the transition from the one paradigm to the other. At the Sermon on the Mount, perhaps, or at the Transfiguration or the Last Supper, he could have indicated to his followers that from that moment forward the Law would no longer be in effect, having been replaced by the new code he was instituting. According to Chrysostom, Jesus deliberately chose not to initiate so abrupt a transition, preferring instead the gradual, albeit contradictory, process in which the old was phased out, and the new phased in, slowly and simultaneously. [End Page 611]

This was above all a pastoral decision, as Chrysostom suggests on numerous occasions. Jesus chose to abrogate the old Law carefully, cautiously, and incrementally, and to introduce the new one with as much care, so as not to startle his listeners or to appear too opprobrious before hostile crowds. Jesus' elimination of the dietary laws in Matt 15.1–20 provides a case in point. Chrysostom devotes an entire homily to explaining just how coyly and diplomatically Jesus repealed the restrictions on meats and replaced them with ethical injunctions. Jesus did not even mention meats explicitly in his conversation with the scribes and Pharisees, referring to them only obliquely through his discourse on hand washing and the traditions of the elders. So subtle was his message, Chrysostom goes on to explain, that his own disciples failed to grasp it fully.

Similar examples are peppered throughout the gospel homilies. When Jesus flouts the Law in the Fourth Gospel by skipping the Passover, as we saw above, he was "gently loosening the grip of the Law," doing it in a way that would largely escape notice.⁵⁹ Jesus shows similar subtlety in the apocalyptic discourse of Matthew 24, where "he led [his followers] away from the Jewish customs furtively () and unsuspectedly ()," by hinting at the forthcoming destruction of the Temple.⁶⁰ Likewise, when Jesus commends the authority of Moses, rather than the law of faith and grace, in Matt 23.1–3, he does so "because prior to the crucifixion it was not yet the time for these things to be said clearly ()."⁶¹ In the same discourse, when Jesus commends almsgiving according to the Law in Matt 23.23, Chrysostom reports that he does so not only because almsgiving is praiseworthy at any rate, but also "since it was not yet time explicitly () and clearly () to abolish the precepts of the Law."⁶² Perhaps one statement above all epitomizes Chrysostom's impression of the obscurity attending the epochal transformation wrought by Christ. When Jesus proclaims that he has come to fulfill the Law, not to abolish it, Chrysostom notes that "by this he tells us enigmatically () that the whole world is being transformed."⁶³ Jesus had hardly been clear about when precisely the new would replace the old.

Indeed, Jesus' repeal of the old and enactment of the new in some cases [End Page 612] was so enigmatic or understated that the apostles themselves continued to cling to parts of the old Law in the ensuing generation. Circumcision, for example, could hardly be understood to have been abrogated unambiguously by Christ, seeing as a good many in the church, including Paul in Acts 16.3, continued to observe it. According to Chrysostom, Christ did abolish the rite, but left it to his disciples to enact the newfound freedom openly. Chrysostom concludes as much in the passage mentioned above where Jesus' abolition of the dietary restrictions is taken to imply the abolition of the Law as a whole:

For all of Judaism is held together in this, and if you abolish this, then you even abolish it all. He therefore demonstrates that circumcision, too, must be ended. But he himself is not the first to introduce this (), since [circumcision] was older than the other commandments and held in higher esteem; rather, he ordains it through his disciples. It was so great [a commandment] that even the disciples, who wished to abolish it for a long time, at first practiced it, and in this way put an end to it.⁶⁴

In other words, the process whereby the old Law was phased out and the new one was introduced extended beyond the lifetime of Jesus himself. Circumcision remained in force for many Christians until the Jerusalem Council, and even in its wake more time was needed to extinguish it completely. The observance of meats, too, continued to hold sway in the apostolic period, so much so that Peter, who heard firsthand Jesus' discourse in Matt 15.10–20, according to Acts 10.9–16 had not yet eaten from an unclean animal prior to the visions he experienced in anticipation of his meal with Cornelius.⁶⁵

Again, such continuation of Law observance into the apostolic age, according to Chrysostom, is traceable directly to Jesus and his ambivalent relationship to the Law during his ministry. Jesus had chosen to phase out the Law gradually—repealing it partially, less plainly, secretly, [End Page 613] unsuspectedly, and quietly, so as not to startle his audience or elicit its hostility—a tactic that produced a vague period of time in which the Law seemed to be simultaneously in effect and not. Jesus in the gospels therefore both upholds and repeals the Law, a practice subsequently undertaken in some measure by his apostles.

Conclusion

Chrysostom does not suggest a particular date by which the old Law was phased out completely, having been eclipsed by the new Law it foreshadowed. Indeed, to identify any such moment might undermine the paradigm of gradual transition he proposes. Two events were no doubt critical in this regard, however. The first is the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, which, as we saw above, played a key role in the anti-Judaizing rhetoric of both John and his contemporaries. The end of the Temple meant the de facto obsolescence of much of the Law. The other is the ministry of Paul, which, as we saw particularly in the Homiliae Adversus Iudaeos, figured prominently in John's negotiation of Jesus' engagement with the Law. John viewed Paul as a "kind of 'second Jesus,'"⁶⁶ as Mitchell puts it, through whom Jesus spoke and legislated posthumously, thus making it possible to attribute to Jesus opinions not expressed by Jesus in the gospels and to some degree contraindicated by his actions.⁶⁷

In this sense, the gradual transition and historical periodization envisioned by Chrysostom in the gospel homilies reinforce and enhance his strategy for dissuading imitators of Christ in the Homiliae Adversus Iudaeos. Not only do they buttress the idea that imitation of Christ's Jewish behaviors centuries later is unseasonable, seeing as all of the Old had no doubt been eclipsed entirely by the late fourth century, they also help account for the apparent discrepancy between Christ's actions and his intentions for Christian life. Jesus' observance and even endorsement of the Law in his own lifetime is in accord with his subsequent condemnations [End Page 614] of it through Paul and others, since both are part and parcel of the subtle and enigmatic process through which he transformed the world.

At the same time, John's double-sided presentation of Jesus as neither hostile toward the Law nor entirely compliant with it steered a safe orthodox course through the potential pitfalls presented by late fourth-century heresiological discourse. By describing Jesus as simultaneously obedient to, ambivalent towards, and defiant of Jewish ceremonies, and thereby effecting a gradual transition from one period of salvation history to the new Christian age of higher precepts, John established a measure of continuity between Jesus and the prior dispensation, which avoided the fault of Manichaeism, while at the same time identifying a firm break between Jesus and the Law, which forestalled the accusation of promoting Judaizing.