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29 If a consensus of scholarship on the interpretation of this pericope were to be sought, it would support the view that the saying is, in large part, from the historical Jesus.1 Few Matthew scholars today would agree with what Lamar Cope could claim about Matt. 25:31-46 a mere forty years ago. While some might agree that the core of the sheep and the goats passage goes back to Jesus himself, moderately few scholars hold such a position today.2 Most Jesus scholars view Matt. 25:31-46 to be an ecclesial creation. As Cope went on to argue in the piece cited above, the authenticity of this passage is suspect due to a number of factors, not least for its identification of Jesus with the Son of Man but also for its suggestion that final judgment will be determined based on one’s treatment of the disciples.3 In this chapter I will not focus on this question directly but instead investigate related matters: the Jewishness of this passage, how it has functioned within Christian theology, and how it might contribute to JewishChristian dialogue and relations today. In a nutshell, I hope to show that this passage, even if it cannot be plausibly explained as an early memory of Jesus’ own teaching, is one deeply grounded in a first-century Jewish worldview. Moreover, I will suggest that this passage contributes significantly to our understanding of Matthew’s Gospel as a whole, a gospel that in many ways reads like a treatise on the author’s perceived divine rejection of the scribes CHAPTER TwO A Jewish Teaching: Jesus, Gentiles, and the sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31-46) Joel N. Lohr sOuNDINGs IN THE RELIGION OF JEsus 30 and Pharisees, perhaps the Jewish people as a whole. However, in coming to understand the Jewishness of this passage, it seems more likely that apart from those who opposed Jesus directly (the Jewish leaders), Matthew probably understood all Israel (all Jews, whether or not they were associated with Jesus) as part of the elect who belong to God,and the Sheep and Goats story involves the judgment of gentiles apart from that people in a way very similar to Noahide law. I will conclude by suggesting that this passage has much to contribute to contemporary Jewish-Christian relations and dialogue; for Christians who seek to make bridges to and engage with contemporary Judaism, the story of the Sheep and the Goats is an often overlooked, but important passage.4 In what follows, I first briefly trace a picture of Jewish judgment ideas in antiquity. I then move to examine who and what Matt. 25:31-46 might be about before I explore how this passage has been an embarrassment to the church. I then provide a short survey of Matthew’s Gospel in order to place our pericope within it contextually. I conclude with some reflections on our passage as it relates to Jewish-gentile relations, the historical Jesus, as well as Jewish-Christian dialogue. Jewish Judgment in Antiquity My goal in what follows is not to present an exhaustive survey of Jewish judgment texts or to uncover new material that shows Matt. 25:31-46 to be Jewish in orientation. Few scholars today would disagree that the passage reflects at least a basic Jewish ethos.However,it may be instructive to recount briefly some features of Jewish judgment in antiquity in order to set the stage for how Matthew 25 might have been understood in the first century. The first thing to note, and it is a key point, is that there was a wide variety of Jewish judgment ideas in antiquity. Marius Reiser, in his monograph Jesus and Judgment, surveys judgment in Jewish eschatological thought of the Second Temple period, and his conclusions are many.5 Despite the variety of judgment motifs in this period, it seems clear that a few principles guide this literature. First, judgment is a central idea of Judaism, and in fact it might be said that a final judgment is a defining characteristic of Jewish thought.Such judgment usually takes one of two forms: Israel’s enemies are judged at some point in history, as a turning point in Israel’s existence (as in a “day of the Lord” or a “day of visitation”), or a judgment involving all people takes place in the hereafter, usually after death. Sometimes, however, these two are combined . Second, there is usually a division of...

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