Living with Other Creatures: Green Exegesis and Theology

3. Reading the Synoptic Gospels Ecologically

3. Reading the Synoptic Gospels Ecologically Few of those who have written about the ecological dimension of the Bible have found much to say about the Synoptic Gospels.1 It may be that, as Robert Murray comments, Jesus’ relationship to the nonhuman creation is not ‘a salient theme in the gospels’,2 but, alternatively , it may be that, especially when the Gospels are read with their relation to the Old Testament in view, there are significant references to the non-human creation that have not been given the attention they deserve. It may be that, in the case of the Gospels, the eyes of modern urban readers still need to be opened to that dimension of human life, our relationship to the non-human environment and its creatures, that to the biblical writers was self-evidently of huge importance. In this chapter I shall explore two approaches to identifying the ecological dimensions of the story of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. (I shall not be concerned to distinguish ‘the historical Jesus’ from the Jesus of the Gospels, but with the way in which the Gospels depict Jesus and his story.) The first approach attempts to make explicit the Palestinian ecological context that the Gospels largely take for granted , in the hope of discovering something of Jesus’ relationship with it. The second approach works with the theme of the kingdom of God, 1 Notable exceptions include Robert Faricy, Wind and Sea Obey Him (London: SCM Press, 1982), pp. 40–8; Northcott, Environment, pp. 224–5; Adrian M. Leske, ‘Matthew 6.25–34: Human Anxiety and the Natural World’, in The Earth Story in the New Testament (ed. Norman C. Habel and Vicky Balabanski; Earth Bible 5; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), pp. 15–27; William Loader, ‘Good News – For the Earth? Reflections on Mark 1.1–15’, in Habel and Balabanski, Earth Story in the New Testament, pp. 28–43; and some other essays in the same volume. 2 Murray, Cosmic Covenant (Heythrop Monographs 7; London: Sheed & Ward, 1997), p. 126. unquestionably the central theme of Jesus’ teaching and ministry in the Synoptic Gospels, in order to show that the kingdom includes the whole of creation and that some of the acts in which Jesus anticipated the coming kingdom point to the redemption of the human relationship with the rest of creation. Jesus in His Ecological Context In a chapter called ‘Jesus and the Ecology of Galilee’,3 Sean Freyne has recently characterized the ‘micro-ecologies’ that distinguished the three regions of Galilee – Lower (including Nazareth), the Valley (including Capernaum and the lakeside) and Upper (including Caesarea Philippi) – along with the ‘different modes of human interaction with, and different opinions about the natural world’4 that the three different environments produced. Freyne sees Jesus’ ministry as taking place successively in these three regions, and suggests ways in which the ecological character of each may have influenced Jesus’ thought and teaching. It has to be said that many of these suggestions are very speculative, while some are illuminating and others at least plausible. It is probable, for example, that the term ‘the sea’, used by Mark and Matthew to refer to the lake of Galilee, reflects the usage of those who lived beside it and were unconcerned with the Mediterranean, while the story of the stilling of the storm reflects the threat of the mythological abyss on the part of people whose lives were dominated by water, its possibilities and dangers. It is also plausible that Jesus’ faith in the Creator God of the Hebrew Scriptures, who cares for his creation and overcomes the everthreatening chaos, engaged at this point with the consciousness, at once realistic and mythic, of the local fishermen who were his disciples .5 (The stilling of the storm will be discussed further in the last main section of this chapter.) On the other hand, I am not tempted by this suggestion: ‘One is tempted to ask whether Jesus’ healing ministry, attested in all the gospels, might have given him a special appreciation of the climatic Living with Other Creatures 64 3 Sean Freyne, Jesus, a Jewish Galilean: A New Reading of the Jesus-Story (London: T&T Clark [Continuum], 2004), ch. 2. 4 Freyne, Jesus, p. 40. 5 Freyne, Jesus, p. 53. conditions of the Lake area, and the quality of its water, prompting a visit to its source [Mount Hermon].’6 Nothing in the stories of Jesus’ healings...