Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered. Matthew 21:18-22 NIV
This is pretty clearly an illustration. “Like this tree, you’d better actually give results, not just give the appearance of being moral”. (In fact, I believe Jesus uses this exact illustration in a sermon later.)
Why does this need to be an illustration?
Assuming that such a person as Jesus existed, and assuming that said person had the ability to cause a fig tree to wither as described, is it so unbelievable that such a thing could be done? The incident may, indeed, have inspired the later use in a sermon.
Morally, this is no worse than chopping the tree down in a fit of anger; since it was a tree “by the road”, and thus presumably had no owner but rather grew wild, I don’t think it would have been wrong to cut it down, or otherwise prevent it bearing fruit.
So… I’m not quite sure why you think it’s clearly an illustration. I mean, it can be used as an illustration… but so can virtually any incident, ever. Could you elaborate a bit more on that?
I’m not MugaSofer, nor am I a Christian (though I was for a long time), but:
Supposing for the moment that the incident, or something like it, really occurred, it seems like there are three obvious explanations.
Jesus zapped the tree because it was a sensible response to the fact that the tree didn’t have any figs on it.
Jesus zapped the tree because of some kind of flash of anger; he wasn’t really in control of his actions.
Jesus zapped the tree in order to make a point to other people who were there (e.g., as MugaSofer describes).
The first of these seems obviously not the case. (You want figs, the tree has no figs, fair enough; killing it doesn’t make anything better for anyone.)
The second is hard to reconcile with the character of Jesus as generally understood by Christians. (He was supposed to be superhumanly wise and morally perfect, and not getting carried away by anger is hard to reconcile with that.)
That leaves the third in a fairly strong position.
On top of this, there is a bit of a tradition in (what Christians call) the Old Testament, of prophets “acting out” the (allegedly divine) messages they are trying to convey. What MugaSofer proposes fits neatly into that tradition.
None of that proves anything, even if we take the rightness of Christianity as axiomatic. But it does give Christians a pretty good reason for thinking that Jesus’s action was meant (by him, or by the author of Matthew if it didn’t actually happen) primarily as making a point for the benefit of other people, rather than because Jesus really wanted the fig tree to be dead.
Supposing for the moment that the incident, or something like it, really occurred, it seems like there are three obvious explanations.
Your three options seem sensible.
The first of these seems obviously not the case. (You want figs, the tree has no figs, fair enough; killing it doesn’t make anything better for anyone.)
Agreed.
The second is hard to reconcile with the character of Jesus as generally understood by Christians. (He was supposed to be superhumanly wise and morally perfect, and not getting carried away by anger is hard to reconcile with that.)
Disagreed.
We’re talking here about a man who made a whip out of cords and drove some merchants away from where they were selling stuff, overturning their tables and scattering coins everywhere and chasing away the livestock and generally causing a riot. One might quibble about whether this was “out of control” or not, but Jesus clearly had a temper and occasionally lost it.
(In an interesting coincidence, just yesterday the priest gave a sermon involving that marketplace incident; as he put it, Jesus wasn’t always a nice person. Nice people don’t get nailed onto a wooden cross and left to die. That only happens to people who manage to seriously annoy certain other people.)
I’m not saying that the third possibility is impossible; but I think the second is also in a fairly strong position.
On top of this, there is a bit of a tradition in (what Christians call) the Old Testament, of prophets “acting out” the (allegedly divine) messages they are trying to convey. What MugaSofer proposes fits neatly into that tradition.
Hmmm. That is a good point, which I had not previously considered.
I don’t think it’s clear that the Incident In The Temple With The Whip was (or: was meant to be understood as) a matter of temper-losing. It could, again, be read as a deliberate statement, an invocation of (e.g.) the old prophecy about “purifying the sons of Levi”, done deliberately to make a point.
(Incidentally, an earlier edit of my paragraph about “the character of Jesus as generally understood by Christians” said explicitly something like “Of course being good isn’t quite the same as being nice, and I’m not claiming otherwise”. Though, as it happens, my own conception of goodness does involve being nicer than Jesus is shown as being in many stories in the gospels, and also nicer than I find it plausible to believe any super-powerful being actually is, given the state of the world. I mention this not in order to start an argument about the credibility of Christianity, but to calibrate the extent to which I agree with you that Christians needn’t regard Jesus as “nice”.)
I don’t think it’s clear that the Incident In The Temple With The Whip was (or: was meant to be understood as) a matter of temper-losing. It could, again, be read as a deliberate statement, an invocation of (e.g.) the old prophecy about “purifying the sons of Levi”, done deliberately to make a point.
I’m beginning to wonder if we don’t perhaps ascribe subtly different definitions to the phrase “losing one’s temper”.
I wonder that because I don’t think that the two options that you present here—that of temper-losing, and that of deliberate action—are necessarily contradictory.
Thinking about it, I am defining having lost one’s temper as a state wherein one sounds audibly angry, has a tendency to select sweeping, destructive actions when attempting to reach one’s goals, has very little patience with others and is likely to shout at people, but retains full control over one’s actions and can do things quite deliberately.
It may be that you are thinking of a yet angrier state, where one loses control and just lashes out at random. While that would also be losing one’s temper, that wasn’t what I’d meant by the phrase earlier...
In other words, yes, I agree that the Incident In The Temple With The Whip was most likely a deliberate statement. I just don’t think that that invalidates anything I said in my previous comment.
(Incidentally, an earlier edit of my paragraph about “the character of Jesus as generally understood by Christians” said explicitly something like “Of course being good isn’t quite the same as being nice, and I’m not claiming otherwise”. Though, as it happens, my own conception of goodness does involve being nicer than Jesus is shown as being in many stories in the gospels, and also nicer than I find it plausible to believe any super-powerful being actually is, given the state of the world. I mention this not in order to start an argument about the credibility of Christianity, but to calibrate the extent to which I agree with you that Christians needn’t regard Jesus as “nice”.)
Noted.
While we could try to narrow down exactly to what extent each of us considers “good” and “nice” to overlap, I think we’re more-or-less in agreement on the main point here; that Jesus, as presented in the Bible, could be good all the time without necessarily being nice all the time (and sometimes, indeed, could be good at the expense of being nice).
Why does this need to be an illustration?
Assuming that such a person as Jesus existed, and assuming that said person had the ability to cause a fig tree to wither as described, is it so unbelievable that such a thing could be done? The incident may, indeed, have inspired the later use in a sermon.
Morally, this is no worse than chopping the tree down in a fit of anger; since it was a tree “by the road”, and thus presumably had no owner but rather grew wild, I don’t think it would have been wrong to cut it down, or otherwise prevent it bearing fruit.
So… I’m not quite sure why you think it’s clearly an illustration. I mean, it can be used as an illustration… but so can virtually any incident, ever. Could you elaborate a bit more on that?
I’m not MugaSofer, nor am I a Christian (though I was for a long time), but:
Supposing for the moment that the incident, or something like it, really occurred, it seems like there are three obvious explanations.
Jesus zapped the tree because it was a sensible response to the fact that the tree didn’t have any figs on it.
Jesus zapped the tree because of some kind of flash of anger; he wasn’t really in control of his actions.
Jesus zapped the tree in order to make a point to other people who were there (e.g., as MugaSofer describes).
The first of these seems obviously not the case. (You want figs, the tree has no figs, fair enough; killing it doesn’t make anything better for anyone.)
The second is hard to reconcile with the character of Jesus as generally understood by Christians. (He was supposed to be superhumanly wise and morally perfect, and not getting carried away by anger is hard to reconcile with that.)
That leaves the third in a fairly strong position.
On top of this, there is a bit of a tradition in (what Christians call) the Old Testament, of prophets “acting out” the (allegedly divine) messages they are trying to convey. What MugaSofer proposes fits neatly into that tradition.
None of that proves anything, even if we take the rightness of Christianity as axiomatic. But it does give Christians a pretty good reason for thinking that Jesus’s action was meant (by him, or by the author of Matthew if it didn’t actually happen) primarily as making a point for the benefit of other people, rather than because Jesus really wanted the fig tree to be dead.
Your three options seem sensible.
Agreed.
Disagreed.
We’re talking here about a man who made a whip out of cords and drove some merchants away from where they were selling stuff, overturning their tables and scattering coins everywhere and chasing away the livestock and generally causing a riot. One might quibble about whether this was “out of control” or not, but Jesus clearly had a temper and occasionally lost it.
(In an interesting coincidence, just yesterday the priest gave a sermon involving that marketplace incident; as he put it, Jesus wasn’t always a nice person. Nice people don’t get nailed onto a wooden cross and left to die. That only happens to people who manage to seriously annoy certain other people.)
I’m not saying that the third possibility is impossible; but I think the second is also in a fairly strong position.
Hmmm. That is a good point, which I had not previously considered.
I don’t think it’s clear that the Incident In The Temple With The Whip was (or: was meant to be understood as) a matter of temper-losing. It could, again, be read as a deliberate statement, an invocation of (e.g.) the old prophecy about “purifying the sons of Levi”, done deliberately to make a point.
(Incidentally, an earlier edit of my paragraph about “the character of Jesus as generally understood by Christians” said explicitly something like “Of course being good isn’t quite the same as being nice, and I’m not claiming otherwise”. Though, as it happens, my own conception of goodness does involve being nicer than Jesus is shown as being in many stories in the gospels, and also nicer than I find it plausible to believe any super-powerful being actually is, given the state of the world. I mention this not in order to start an argument about the credibility of Christianity, but to calibrate the extent to which I agree with you that Christians needn’t regard Jesus as “nice”.)
I’m beginning to wonder if we don’t perhaps ascribe subtly different definitions to the phrase “losing one’s temper”.
I wonder that because I don’t think that the two options that you present here—that of temper-losing, and that of deliberate action—are necessarily contradictory.
Thinking about it, I am defining having lost one’s temper as a state wherein one sounds audibly angry, has a tendency to select sweeping, destructive actions when attempting to reach one’s goals, has very little patience with others and is likely to shout at people, but retains full control over one’s actions and can do things quite deliberately.
It may be that you are thinking of a yet angrier state, where one loses control and just lashes out at random. While that would also be losing one’s temper, that wasn’t what I’d meant by the phrase earlier...
In other words, yes, I agree that the Incident In The Temple With The Whip was most likely a deliberate statement. I just don’t think that that invalidates anything I said in my previous comment.
Noted.
While we could try to narrow down exactly to what extent each of us considers “good” and “nice” to overlap, I think we’re more-or-less in agreement on the main point here; that Jesus, as presented in the Bible, could be good all the time without necessarily being nice all the time (and sometimes, indeed, could be good at the expense of being nice).