The Catalog of Good Deeds

And he coming forth saw a great multitude, and had compassion on them, and healed their sick. (Mt 14: 14)

A glance at almost any daily media broadcast will readily show anyone who doubts that many in the world have forgotten the virtue of compassion that this is certainly true. Occasional secular commentators have suggested a variety of sociological causes for this lack. Our holy Spiritual Church Father Nikitas Stithatos notes accurately that lack of compassion is directly connected with our separation from God. He tells us that:

A soul receives either blessings or penalties and punishment according to its inner activities. If it concerns itself with things divine and tills the ground of humility, tears fall like rain from heaven, and it cultivates love of God, faith and compassion for others . . . attracting [others’] attention with the rays of its virtue . . . . But if the soul devotes itself to the mundane and merely human matters, stirring and agitating the fetid waters of sin, it nourishes hatred and repels what is good and beautiful. (Philokalia IV, p. 87-88).

The exact connotation of the word mundane is: a lack of direct connection with God. In today’s information technology (IT) world much can be found that not only disconnects us from God, but also actively fosters the disconnection. When this happens, as St. Nikitas so aptly puts it, the “good and beautiful” are repelled and loss of compassion for others is a major consequence.

The Etymology of compassion

The English word ‘compassion’ has its roots in both Greek and Latin. In the Greek, we trace the usage back to the related word for ‘suffering: pathos. In Latin, we can see the root word cum, meaning ‘with’ and passio, or suffering, and patior, I suffer. In English, the dictionary meaning of the word encompasses: “A deep awareness of and sympathy for another's suffering,” as well as “understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it”. Individuals who have an illness and disease are called patients due to their suffering. In a sense, those with compassion co-suffer with them. The dictionary understanding of compassion correctly identifies three essential psycho-behavioral aspects: an emotional component: co-suffering, .i.e. feeling with the patient; a cognitive component: understanding; and a behavioral component: actions to alleviate the suffering.

Compassion: The Psychological Component

Compassion differs from empathy. The critical element in compassion that differentiates it from empathy is its behavioral component. Empathy is thinking and feeling what others are thinking and feeling. Compassion combines the deep awareness of the sufferings of others with a desire that leads, eventually, to an action to relieve the suffering

The Developmental Sequence

In terms of human development, natural empathy is the foundation of pro-social behaviors such as altruism. (Lewis and Haviland, 1993) Compassion is a component of love (the practice of agape, as it is known in patristic literaturei). Love is what we do, not just what we feel, for the good and welfare of others. Psychologists would ask: how can we love, how can we work for the good and welfare of others, if we are not aware of their suffering nor have a desire to relieve it? We love others only if we can first sense their needs. Empathy, then, may initiate the compassion process.

A Spiritual Caveat

However, as I discuss later in this article, we have to be spiritually predisposed to be empathic in order to practice altruistic-compassionate behavior with a specifically Godly ethos. This means that the compassion sequence should be of Divinely inspired agape indwelling in the heart. Such heart-centered agape would propel the mind to engage in both empathy and the compassion action steps. This would be the fullness of compassion because it would be enlivened by Godly love.

Understanding compassion by considering indifferent and/or malevolent behavior

One approach to understanding compassion is to consider its polar opposite: aggression, an anti-social component. One promising research endeavor on this aspect is the Dynamic Systems Model discussed by Granic and Patterson, 2006. This model uses coercion theory that was mainly developed in the research laboratories of the Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC) by collecting and analyzing parent-child interaction data over various naturalistic settings. (Patterson, 1982; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992; Reid, Patterson, & Snyder, 2002).

Coercion theory uses the processes of cognitive-behavioral psychology to study how family members mutually interact in such a way as to shape aggressive behavior in children and to simultaneously decrease parental influence over the child’s inappropriate belligerent behavior. As described by the researchers, it initially starts with parental demands that their children perform appropriate pro-social behavior. As I point out in an earlier article (Morelli, 2007):

In popular terminology such coercive controlling behavior is called Nagging. In discordant relationships, Patterson (1976, 1982) discovered that coercive controlling behaviors by one individual produce reactive similar coercive counter-behaviors in others, thus creating a pattern of escalation. This controlling aggression, or nagging, becomes stronger because of the expectation that persistence results in a pay-off (Bandura, 1986).

As parental coercive attempts increase they are often also accompanied by escalation of a harsh strident tone of voice [speech pragmatics). (Morelli, 2007]. A child (or any person for that matter) being coerced may feel controlled and resist the nagger. One reason may be that the person being nagged (child or adult) needs to maintain a sense of healthy self-worth (Morelli, 2006a). The child may view the coercive tasks as symbols of a power struggle between a greater power and himself with a resultant loss of freedom and sense of being boxed in. A coerced child may want to avoid compliance as much as possible. Also, such a child may follow this avoidance with oppositional behavior to reassert his power and sense of control, to maintain some sense of control, and thus asserts himself by acting contrary to what he perceives he is being coerced into doing. As Granic and Patterson (2006) point out, this “finally [leads to] the parent's capitulation.” The researchers conclude: “. . .coercive interactions are the fundamental behavioral mechanisms by which aggression emerges and stabilizes over development.” This pattern is likely to be repeated in different settings over a lifespan. It should also be noted that the parents are simultaneously modeling coercive behavior, which means they are teaching their children to be coercive.

Malevolence generalizes

For example, the first encounter many children have with a social institution outside of his/her family home is nursery school. The coercive interactions first learned at home are likely to be repeated and reinforced by the reciprocal behaviors of the child with the other students. Patterson, Littman, & Bricker, 1967 point out that “When victims of aggressive behavior cry, give up their toy, or leave the disputed territory, the aggressive child “wins,” and he or she is, therefore, more likely to use the same aversive strategies in the service of future goals.” This then continues throughout a lifetime. Both early and later patterns of anti-social behaviors (including failure to empathize and act compassionately) are conceptualized by researchers as also being influenced by child-parent similarities or differences including: cognitive appraisals; emotions; global personality structures, and neural underpinnings of these emotion–appraisal feedback cycles and processes (Lewis, 2005).

The role of appraisal processes

Appraisals of cognition and emotion play a key role in developing anti-social patterns. As Lewis (2005) posits, a complex interaction exists between cognition and emotion. Reinforcement of patterns [between cognition and emotions] forms the structure of self-organizing interpretations of events in real time and accounts for personality patterns over development. Over time, and with repeated experiences, cognitive appraisals emerge in relation to their accompanying emotions, which then serve to amplify or constrain behaviors. Such cognitive appraisals serve the purpose of guiding an individual’s attention to elements in any situation that are relevant to their goal. Granic and Patterson (2006) conceive of these as cognitive-emotive-behavioral biases. These appraisal processes are similar to the pre-potency of automatic thoughts that elicit cognitive and behavioral dysfunction as described in the work of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) researchers and clinicians. (Beck, A.T. 1991, Beck, J.S. 2011, Burns, 1980 and Morelli, 2010).

A concrete example of coercion enhancing malevolence

One researcher (Forgatch, 1989) found that anger and contempt are the major emotional effects for parents and children in coercive situations. This could be conceived of as an escalating synergistic process in which the total effect is greater than the sum of the effects of the two (or more) interacting individuals. An example illustrating this process is provided by Granic and Patterson (2005) and is worth quoting in full:

A mother asks her son to comply to a vague request, for instance, “Help clean the house.” Just before her request, she is feeling anxious, thinking about the many things she needs to get done by the end of the night. The child, playing a video game, hears his mother’s request and begins to feel irritated, thinking that his mother always picks on him rather than his brother. As these low-grade [dysfunctional] emotions and appraisals coalesce, he rudely refuses his mother’s request (e.g., “Go clean it yourself!”). Her attention is now fully tuned to her son’s defiance and, through [favorable] feedback, her anxiety increases with the expectation that her son will force them into a confrontation. She also begins to feel irritated with his defiance. In an attempt to regulate her anxiety and her irritation, the mother suggests that they could go out to a restaurant afterward if he would just help her. Perceiving his mother as a nag and an obstacle to his goal (i.e., to continue to play video games), the child’s irritability grows into anger, expressed through loud complaining. In turn, through continued [favorable] feedback processes, his mother’s irritable feelings become amplified into anger, overriding her anxiety, and coupling with appraisals of her child as “selfish and nasty” and an obstacle to her goal of eventual rest. Her hostile emotion–appraisal amalgam motivates her to begin threatening her son with extreme consequences or to denigrate him in retaliation. Perceiving her rage, the child likewise escalates, becoming angrier while his appraisals change from mother as nuisance to mother as monster. Soon, these reciprocal interactions among appraisal components, emotions, and harsh words stabilize through [unfavorable] feedback processes. The child goes on playing his video games, ignoring his mother pointedly and angrily, while his blameful perception of her stabilizes. His mother, feeling beaten and unable to continue the fight, shifts from anger to contempt, which stabilizes along with an appraisal of her child as “useless” and “always bad.” Both dyad members remain in this seething state for the rest of the evening. (p. 108)

One way of interpreting this scenario is that the response of each person is guided by self-focus and thus blocks taking the perspective of the other. The child’s mother feels she has the right to force her son to comply with her will. The boy perceives his mother’s nagging behavior as “an obstacle to his goal.”

Anonymity of Social Media fueling indifference and malevolence

Numerous studies show that another psychological variable that influences the lack of compassion and the corresponding open display of anti-social aggression is anonymity. Anonymity is growing due to the proliferation of social media (Suler, 2004). One group of researchers (Postimes, Spears & Lea, 1998) suggests that individuals who share a common social identity (so readily prevalent in contemporary social media), may be more susceptible to group influence, social attraction, stereotyping, sex-gender typing, and discrimination in anonymous Computer Mediated Communication (CMC).

Compassion as an Emotion

Some of the early studies on compassion were focused on understanding compassion as related to empathic concern (Davis, 1983), sympathy (Eisenberg, et. al. 2007) and pity (Fiske, et al., 2002), which involves appraisals of concern for less fortunate individuals. In one study, Campos et al. (2009) found that compassion and sympathy were grouped together with similar words for pro-social emotions such as “kindness, tenderness, warmth, and caring.” Some studies have investigated compassion as a state (brief reaction-response to a specific situation or context) versus an ongoing trait or disposition over time (Shiota, Keltner, & John, 2006).

Critical Variables in Compassion Research

There are various theories concerning the critical variables that make up compassion. Researchers Goetz, Keltner, & Simon-Thomas ( 2010) suggest that “. . .within the concepts of appraisal research, this analysis suggests that compassion will be shaped by: 1) the relevance of the sufferer to the self; 2) the sufferer's blameworthiness for the [unfavorable] outcome; and 3) the individual's ability to cope with the situation at hand.” These appraisal processes are summarized in Figure 1.[ii] It could be hypothesized that the anti-social malevolent effects of the Dynamic Systems Model and the ascending anonymity factor now being actualized in social media, as discussed above, would influence any appraisal processes. Initial research investigating such variables as culture,(for example, differences in how compassion is facially and bodily displayed and communicated), gender differences, psycho-neurological variables such as age, evolutionary change and sex differences remains to be further explored.

Compassion-Love?

Goetz et al (2010) make a distinction between compassion and love: “Compassion responds to suffering and negative [unfavorable] events, whereas love antecedents are primarily positive [favorable]” (p.363). However, this distinction is not made by Christ, and this distinction is not understood as such by His Church. In psychological terms, love, as taught to us by Christ, is congruent with what George Kelly (1955, V. 2, p. 57) would call a superordinate construct – it encompasses all. It derives from the “organizational corollary which states “each person characteristically evolves, for his convenience in anticipating events, a construction system embracing ordinal relationships between constructs." Then Kelly goes on to say that “one construct may subsume another as one of its elements” (p.57). This could be understood as an hierarchical organization in which higher-order or abstract superordinate constructs influence individuals’ perceptions of the world around them. Kelly also considered superordinate constructs as "core-constructs" that significantly contribute to our identity and to how we perceive ourselves interacting in the world.

However, Goetz et al. (2010) do cite one study that they call an “intriguing possibility:” that love is, in fact, a core factor underlying compassion. They point out that the work of Greitemeyer, Rudolph, & Weiner (2003) suggests that compassion can be “moderated by love and valuing of the other person, probably through appraisals of self-relevance.” This research also extends to appraisals of blameworthiness and the extremity of the need of the recipient for compassion.

“Love” the ultimate superordinate construct

Christ Himself has given us the ultimate “superordinate construct.” He said: “And that he should be loved with the whole heart, and with the whole understanding, and with the whole soul, and with the whole strength; and to love one' s neighbor as one's self, is a greater thing than all holocausts and sacrifices.” (Mk 12:33). This is certainly the understanding of the Apostle Paul who writes to the Galatians (4: 14): “For all the law is fulfilled in one word: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Thus compassion without love is meaningless in a Christ-like sense. As St. Paul tells the Corinthians: “And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity [love], it profiteth me nothing.” (1 Cor 13:3). Certainly, for Christ-like compassion, any differentiation of individuals based on such appraisals must be rejected and/or modified. Did not Christ tell us:

And whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him other two, Give to him that asketh of thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away. You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this? Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt. 5: 41-48)

The need to discern real need

As Morelli (2009) points out, appraisal of the criterion for helping (in this case having compassion) is “that it be for the good and welfare of the individual.” Such an appraisal must be guided by discernment, or what our Church Fathers call diakrisis, the virtue of being able to discriminate between Godly and un-Godly thoughts. For example, dependent individuals not being provided with the opportunity to learn functional behaviors they need and that they are capable of learning, would not be for their good and welfare. Thus the need for a Godly appraisal of their real need.

Since the Vietnam War I have visited Spinal Cord Injury units of Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals. Hospital staff and even visitors were instructed never to do any action for a paralyzed veteran that they could do themselves unless they specifically asked and you determined they could not perform the task. This was personally difficult for me. I was brought up, for example, to open doors for people, pick up something they may have dropped and give it back to them etc. Now I had to watch a paraplegic or quadriplegic veteran struggle to perform such simple tasks. Truly, however, this was for their good and welfare. They had to learn to do as much as they could do for themselves in order to maximize being self-sufficient. Even now as an on-call Orthodox Chaplain for the local VA Health-care Center, I have to and do abide by these instructions.

Consider what St. John of the Ladder (Moore,1979) says of pride in his spiritual classic the Ladder of Divine Ascent:

Pride is denial of God, an invention of the devil, the despising of men, the mother of condemnation, the offspring of praise, a sign of sterility, flight from Divine assistance, the precursor of madness, the cause of falls, the foothold for satanic possession, a source of anger, a door of hypocrisy, the support of demons, the guardian of sins, the patron of pitilessness, the rejection of compassion, a bitter inquisitor, an inhuman judge, an opponent of God, a root of blasphemy. (p. 138)

In today’s terminology we would rightly say that pride is the mother of all other passions. It is the perfect storm in which all the other passions can develop; self-love, presumption, arrogance, and vainglory all can be seen to stem from this root. St. John even specifically relates pride to “rejection of compassion.”

Reflecting on St. Maximos the Confessor’s counsel (Philokalia II, p. 274) may also help provide a connection between lack of compassion and the anti-social aggressive behaviors described above. St. Maximos, although specifically talking about the passion of gluttony, includes a caution against “self-love [as] it severs the natural bonds of compassion.” This understanding is further developed by our holy Church spiritual father Nikitas Stithatos who first points out that “nothing so prevents someone newly engaged in spiritual warfare from practicing the commandments as this pernicious vice of self-love, (Philokalia IV, p. 86) and then suggests a spiritual basis for a solution: “If it [the individual] fills itself with things Divine and the ground of humility [overcoming narcissistic self-love] . . . it cultivates love of God, faith and compassion for others.”

A modern example of the vacuousness of compassion without love is given to us by a saintly contemporary spiritual father of the Church, Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain (2008). First he tells us:

This is the most important thing of all: to have true love among yourselves . . . not false love. Always, when there is true concern for each other, compassion and love, one can act correctly. Kindness and love are empowering. (p. 234)

Then the saintly Elder goes on to make the connection between Godly-love and compassion even more explicit with a concrete example:

Love is a divine attribute and informs the other person. Even in hospitals, when the doctors and nurses feel genuine compassion for their patients, this is the most effective medicine of all the medications given to them. The patients feel they are being cared for with love [emphasis mine] and have a sense of certainty, security and consolation. (p. 347)

By Fr. George Morelli

Source: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/compassion-the-forgotten-virtue1

Preaching in Jewish cities and villages and addressing crowds, the Lord speaks in the language intelligible for these crowds, that is, in the language of people around him. At the same time, we see in the Gospel, especially in the Gospel of St. John, the following affirmations: These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me (Jn. 14:24); I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me (Jn. 8:28); My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me (Jn. 7:16), or The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life (Jn. 6:63). The Lord proclaims absolutely new and strange things which exceed by far not only human customs and habits but also human reason. His words often provoke anger as they are hard to grasp. He addresses Jews, saying, you have no room for my word, and they are divided again (Jn. 10:19) and many of them would say: He was raving mad. Not only the Pharisees but also many of his disciples, on hearing it (the sermon at Capernaum) said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" (Jn. 6:60). And as John reports, from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him (Jn. 6:66). His words amazed the crowd as he taught not as their teachers of the law (Mt. 7:29). No one ever spoke the way this man does (Jn. 7:46). And even the closest twelve disciples are bewildered. Let us remember the parable about a camel for whom it is easier to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, "Who then can be saved?" (Mt. 19:25).

So, the Lord preaches in the language of people around him but often remains unintelligible. Explaining the reason for it, he says to the Jews: You are from below; I am from above (Jn. 8:23).

The gospel’s word inspired from above is a call to utter perfection which exceeds any measure and rule, going beyond the law. If forgiveness is to be given, it should be given not three times as the Pharisees taught (Yoma 86 Bar) nor seven times as St. Peter believes (whose measure apparently exceeds that of the Pharisees) but seventy-seven times, that is, endless times (Mt. 18:21-22). One should donate not one fifth of the value of a ram (cf. Lev. 5:15-16) nor half of one’s possessions, as Zacchaeus, who found Christ, offers (Lk. 19:8) but sell everything and distribute the money to the poor. One should love not only one’s close relatives and friends but extend one’s love to all people including one’s enemies. (But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Mt. 5:44-45)). Love in the Saviour’s preaching becomes an authoritarian directive: your neighbour is any one whom you approach with love and care (see the Parable of the Good Samaritan). In the Gospel we hear a call to utter perfection: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt. 5:48) but this perfection is unattainable for the man in his fallen state since it demands a spiritual renewal through communion with God and strengthening through the power of the Holy Spirit, for with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible (Mt. 19:26). This is the answer that the Lord gives to his bewildered disciples.

There is another very important aspect of the gospel’s word: the gospel’s teaching is not an abstract sum of knowledge but the way of finding a new life in the Kingdom of Heaven. This Kingdom is already revealed in power through the knowledge of God in communion with the Son. (If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well (Jn. 14:7); anyone who has seen me has seen the Father (Jn. 14:9)). Any parable or instruction of the Saviour has an element of not only theological revelation but also guidance for action. In other words, they are inseparable from moral, ascetic and volitional decisions and pose a person before the problem of choice. Very often the Lord concludes his instructions with words: He who has ears let him hear. His call points out that he does not set forth his teaching in a ready and completed form but rather urges his listeners to think, to seek and to come to self-determination. But the way to the comprehension of the divine word which comes from the above, from the Father, lies through the understanding of the commonly accepted human words, images and idioms in which it is embodied, that is, through the understanding of the language of the gospel’s preaching.

What is this language then? The gospel’s preaching is not set forth in a language of fixed terms. It does not have a strict system and precise definitions which are found in later theology. The language of the gospel’s theology is different in that it is figurative and its instructions are given in the form of vivid comparisons, metaphors and parables often striking in their paradoxality, for instance, Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it (Lk. 17:33). Many images are borrowed directly from the everyday life of Palestinian peasants, fishermen and craftsmen, which makes the Saviour’s preaching more open and intelligible for listeners. The language of the gospel’s theology is based on the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament. The good knowledge of these texts characteristic of the people whom the Saviour addresses enables him not only to cite them but also to borrow from them certain images and expressions and to build more complex allusions and connotations, developing these images even further. (see for instance the parable about ‘evil workers in a vineyard’ in Mt. 21:22-24 and Is. 5). Therefore, an adequate understanding of the gospel’s theology is impossible without a good knowledge of the Old Testament.

Besides, a study of inter-testament literature, which was very popular in its time, as the existence of a great number of its translations into other languages show, as well as the Middle East folklore, non-biblical idiomatics, sayings by various authoritative teachers, aphorisms, etc. has shown that the Lord, in creating the image-bearing harmony of this instructions and parables, often addressed this living manifold linguistic material as well.

I would like to speak in detail about it. There are examples pointing to a striking coincidence between the Gospel’s words and expressions we find in rabbinical sources.

Mt. 6:34

Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Bracho 9б

There is enough trouble of its own for every hour

Мt. 7:5

You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Baba Bathra 15б

He says to him: take out a chip stuck in our teath. And he answers to this: first take out the log that sticks out of your eye.

Mk. 2:27

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Yoma 856

The Sabbath is given to you, not you to the Sabbath

Mt. 9:17

Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins

Abot 4, 20

It happens that a new vessel can be full of an old wine, but it also happens that even young cannot be found in an old.

For the proponents of the historical development of Christianity, such examples serve as a pretext for denying uniqueness to the gospel’s teaching. Identifying the figurative and ideological aspects of an expression, they overlook that the Lord, using popular comparisons, idioms, clichés, etc., often puts into them a new meaning consonant with the spirit of his preaching.

In the Bikkurim tractate, there is a story about a dispute between Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah and Athenian sages. It is of a pronounced folkloric nature. The Athenian sages, for instance, break a jug before Joshua and ask him to sew it together. To this Joshua responds by spilling a handful of sand and asking them to spin it into yarn. The Athenian sages then ask him to build a castle in the air, and he tells them to bring bricks. Among other things, the Athenian sages asked Joshua: What is to be used to salt the salt that has lost its saltiness? The answer offered by Joshua is this: the afterbirth (placenta) of a she-mule. The meaning is that a she-mule as a cross between a mare and an ass is barren. The sages ask: Can’t a she-mule have afterbirth? The rabbi answers: Can’t salt lose its saltness? This story makes us recall the words of the Saviour:

Mt. 5:13

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

Bikkurim 8

How can the salt that has lost its saltiness be made salty again? We say to them: by the afterbirth of a she-mule. Hasn’t a she-mule an afterbirth? And is not salt salty?

Clearly, one and the same phrase: If salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty? serves completely different purposes and, coming from the Saviour, turns from a witty folk puzzle into an assertion of the lofty mission and responsibility with which the Lord entrusts his disciples.

Another example in which the Saviour in his edification refers to an already known sayings is found in the Gospel of Matthews 7:12. This passage makes us recall a story about one of the most prominent religious teachers of the turn of the era, Rabbi Hillel. There are several surviving stories about a heathen who wished to convert to Judaism. He came first to Rabbi Shammai but, dissatisfied with his visit, decided to approach Rabbi Hillel as a more flexible and less rigoristic man. One of these stories is as follows:

Shabbat 30а

Another man came to Shammai and said, I will become a Jew if you can teach me the entire Torah in the time that you can stand on one foot. Again, Shammai, drove him off in anger. Going to Hillel, he made the same offer. What is hateful to you, do not do to others, said Hillel. That is the whole Torah.

It is not difficult to see that the Gospel’s words: So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets, on one hand, presuppose a knowledge of Hillel’s saying and appear to be a direct reference to it but they develop it and give them a different, gospel’s, measure, on the other. While Hillel’s instruction is called only to keep one from evil and to prevent one from showing disrespect for others, the Saviour’s words express something much greater – a call to love and care of one’s neighbours.

The most interesting examples however are those in which the Lord, alluding to expressions well known to his listeners, does not merely reconstruct them or give them a new meaning but inverts them in a very unexpected and paradoxical way, thus revealing new relations going beyond habitual human wisdom.

I will try to illustrate this idea using the following three examples.

Among the Qumran discoveries are fragments of the original Hebrew (Testament of Naphtali) and Aramaic (Testament of Levi) text of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs dating back to the 2nd century B.C. The full text of this apocryphal writing has survived in Greek but it is also known in its Syrian, Latin, Ethiopian and Slavonic version. This excellent literary work was certainly known to the Saviour’s contemporaries, which accounts for a whole number of its lexical coincidences with the New Testament literature.

Here is a vivid example:

Testament of Joseph 11, 1, 5-6

I was tormented by hunger but the Lord himself fed me up. I was lonely, and God comforted me, I was sick, and the Lord visited me, I was in prison, and God had mercy on me.

Mt. 25:35-37

I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me

This example has been repeatedly cited as a testimony to the literary dependence and ‘close relations which existed between Jewish pre-Christian apocryphal and the New Testament literature’ (И.Д. Амусин Кумранская община. М., 1983). But we will go beyond a mere statement of apparent verbal coincidences. Joseph’s words in the apocrypha, so moving and full of gratitude to his Lord, belong to a quite understandable and ‘natural’ plane: a righteous man is suffering and the Lord does not abandon him but supports and helps him. On the other hand, people’s reaction to the Gospel’s words is amazement. For all the outward similarity of the expressions, there is a glaring contrast as in the Gospel’s parable it is not God but a man who visits his Lord and gives him food, water and clothes. But can a man really take care of God: Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? – This is a puzzle not only for gospel’s sinners but also righteous men: whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.

This is how a simple ‘old’ theme gives rise to an unexpected and paradoxical ‘new’ gospel’s instruction – an instruction so important that the response to it determines ultimately one’s way either to eternal punishment or to eternal life (Mt. 25:46), as will see below.

Let us take another example from the tractate Pirkei Avot’s (The Saying of the Fathers). This tractate is of special interest for us since it contains brief sayings which characterize the worldview of the oldest Rabbinic authorities beginning from Simeon the Righteous (3d century B.C) to the beginning of compiling Mishnah (c. 200 A.D.). The first four chapters contain the authors’ instructions given by 60 teachers. Before they were committed to paper, they were discussed and handed down by word of mouth, and in this sense they represent a very rich material picturing the ideological atmosphere at the turn of the era. Most of the sayings in the next, fifth, chapter are anonymous. Some of them can be viewed as a sort of school folklore or a set of popular aphorisms born in the walls of a beth misrash. But these are also worldly truths and axioms expressing the original insights of rabbinic ethical and didactical wisdom.

Among them is this lecture (5:10): all people are divided into four types. The first type would say: mine is mine, yours is yours – these, according to the Pirkei Avot tractate are מידה בינונית, neutral people. The second type says: mine is yours and yours is yours. They are צדיק, pious people. The third ones say: mine is mine and yours is mine. These are רשע , wicked people. And finally, the fourth ones will say: mine is years and yours is mine. These are עם הארץ, people of the land.

The expression ‘people of the land’, am ha-aretz, was originally used by the Pharisees to denote those who did not belong to their party but later acquired a negative connotation meaning ‘unlearned and stupid people ignorant of Torah’.

In this connection we can recall the Gospel of John 17:10 in which the Lord, addressing his Father, says literally this: All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. It reflects utter mutual openness and endless commitment to each other – relations of perfect love between Father and Son, which do not fit the Pharisaic ethical and legal wisdom, as for the Pharisees ‘mine is yours and yours is mine’ is a commoner’s stupidity while for the Son of God it is an expression of the utmost wisdom and love.

Another example. We find the following affirmation in the Sotah tractate (8b):

Sotah 8b

In the measure with which a man measures it is meted out to him.

This affirmation needs the following explanatory comment: Samson followed his eyes’ inclination and had his eyes put out… Absalom took pride in this hair and was hanged by his hair; etc. In other words, the punishment and retribution are unavoidable according to the principle ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. But coming from the Saviour, the same expression acquires a directly opposite meaning, expressing a call to mercy and refusal to judge:

Mt. 7:2

For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Here is the final example in which only one word is changed. In the rabbinical literature, a crowd is always denoted by the world רבים translated as ‘many’. But it also means ‘great’. Probably, in combining these two meanings, ‘many’ as denoting a certain group of people and ‘great’ as denoting one’s special righteousness and learning, the Qumranites used the word רבים as one of the ways to name themselves. In this connection, it is very characteristic that in the Gospel the Lord, addressing the crown around him, used not the Greek πολλοι for the Hebrew רבים – ‘many’ and ‘big ones’ but its opposite μικροι meaning ‘little ones’, which is הקטנים האלה in Hebrew. As far as I know, this usage is not found in the Mishnah literature and may express an exclusive peculiarity of the Saviour’s language.

Mt. 18:6

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea

Tos. Sanhedrin 13, 5

Whoever committed a sin and tempted many into sin shall have the gates of Gehenna closed after him and shall be committed to it for ages of ages.

Pirkei Avot 5:18

Whoever tempted many into sin shall not be permitted to repent..

For all the common topic expressed in the affirmation that whoever causes others to sin deserves death, it is impossible to overlook that in one case it is an abstract affirmation about many and addressed to many but in the other it is personal concern for each of ‘the little ones who believe in me’, that is, who put their trust in the Lord.

If we have to deal with ‘the little ones’, it means that each of them needs special care, like a child. One of many is not worthy of abandoning the ninety-nine. But it is only one of the little ones, namely, the one whose angel in heaven always sees the face of my Father in heaven (Mt. 18:10), can be likened to a lost sheep for whose sake the shepherd leaves the whole flock, And if he finds it, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off (Mt. 18:13).

Among the Mishnah parables we will also find one in which a shepherd will take more care of a stray goatling which joins the flock than his lost sheep.

A goatling grew in the desert and he went astray and joined a flock. The shepherd began giving him food and drink and came to love him most of all his flock. He is asked: Do you really love this goatling more than your flock? He says to them: I worked so much to take my flock out in the morning and to take them in in the evening until they grew up, but this one who grew in deserts himself came to join my flock. How can I not love him?

I have simplified this parable, of course. Clearly, the point here is not a proselyte newcomer. Still it is impossible to overlook the contrast: the parable about a lost sheep is an image of selfless, searching and saving love, while in the parable about a goatling who just joined the flock without any efforts on the shepherd’s part, love does not go beyond ordinary relations motivated by profit.

By Archpriest Leonid Grilikhes

Source: http://www.bogoslov.ru/en/text/1246430.html

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