NEW STUDIES IN BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 19
Series editor: D. A. Carson
Contagious holiness
JESUS’ MEALS WITH SINNERS
Craig L. Blomberg
Apollos
InterVarsity Press
downers grove, illinois 60515
38 De Montfort Street, Leicester LE1 7GP, England
Website: www.ivpbooks.com
Email: ivp@uccf.org.uk
INTERVARSITY PRESS
PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, Illinois 60515, USA
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© Craig L. Blomberg 2005
Craig L. Blomberg has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or the Copyright Licensing Agency.
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations in this publication are from the Holy Bible, New International Version (Old Testament) and Today’s New International Version (New Testament). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2001 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton, a division of Hodder Headline Ltd. All rights reserved. ‘niv’ and ‘tniv’ are registered trademarks of International Bible Society. UK trademark numbers.
First published 2005
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
UK ISBN–13: 978-1-84474-083-3
UK ISBN–10: 1-84474-083-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
These data have been requested
US ISBN 0-8308-2620-3
Inter-Varsity Press is the publishing division of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (formerly the Inter-Varsity Fellowship), a student movement linking Christian Unions in universities and colleges throughout Great Britain, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For more information about local and national activities write to UCCF, 38 De Montfort Street, Leicester LE1 7GP, email us at email@uccf.org.uk or visit the UCCF website at www.uccf.org.uk.
who have hosted special meals
with Christian grace and unaffected hospitality
for more different people and more different kinds of people
in more different situations
while intentionally ministering to the outcast
than anyone else I personally know.
‘Sinners who need no repentance’ and Did Jesus really eat with the wicked?
2 Forming friendships but evading enemies
Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls
4 Jesus the consummate party animal?
Jesus’ eating with sinners in the Gospels I: Material not distinctive to Luke
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About Contagious Holiness: Jesus’ Meals with SinnersOne of humanity’s most basic and common practices—eating meals—was transformed by Jesus into an occasion of divine encounter. In sharing food and drink with His companions, He invited them to share in the grace of God. He revealed His redemptive mission while eating with sinners, repentant and unrepentant alike. Jesus’ “table fellowship” with sinners in the Gospels has been widely agreed to be historically reliable. This consensus, however, has recently been challenged, for example, by the claim that the meals in which Jesus participated took the form of Greco-Roman symposia—or that the “sinners” involved were the most flagrantly wicked within Israel’s society, not merely the ritually impure or those who did not satisfy strict Pharisaic standards of holiness. Craig L. Blomberg engages with the debate and opens up the significance of the topic. He surveys meals in the Old Testament and the intertestamental period. He then examines all the Gospel texts relevant to Jesus’ eating with sinners. He concludes with contemporary applications. |
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