The metaphor of a “patient society” now allows us to ask a more precise question. If first-century Jewish society was experiencing political pressure, social division, economic vulnerability, religious disagreement, and anxiety concerning Israel's future, how was the cause of this condition understood?
There was no single answer.
Different groups and teachers looked at the same society and offered different diagnoses. They did not necessarily disagree about the existence of suffering. The disagreement concerned its cause and, consequently, its cure.
This distinction is fundamental to the present study.
A physician's treatment follows from his diagnosis. If the diagnosis is wrong, even a well-intentioned treatment may fail to address the underlying problem. Conversely, two physicians may observe the same symptoms but prescribe very different remedies because they understand the cause differently.
The same principle may be applied, cautiously, to religious and social movements.
First-century Judaism contained multiple interpretations of Israel's condition. The ancient historian Josephus himself describes several Jewish “philosophies” or schools, including the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, while also referring to another movement associated with Judas the Galilean. These categories should not be treated as exhaustive descriptions of every Jewish person or movement. They do, however, demonstrate the diversity of Jewish thought during the period.
The question confronting the society was, in various forms:
What has gone wrong, and what must be done for Israel to be restored?
3.1 The Pharisaic Response: Faithfulness to the Covenant
Any discussion of the Pharisees requires particular caution.
Christian history has often created a negative caricature of the Pharisees, portraying them simply as legalistic hypocrites concerned only with rules. Such a description is historically inadequate.
The Pharisees were a significant Jewish movement concerned with the proper interpretation and observance of God's will. According to Josephus, they exercised considerable influence among the people and were associated with a serious commitment to religious practice and ethical conduct.
The fundamental concern behind their approach can be understood as a question of faithfulness.
Israel belonged to God through a covenantal relationship. God's commandments provided guidance for how that relationship was to be lived. In a society facing foreign domination, religious uncertainty, and competing cultural influences, faithfulness to God's law could be understood not as meaningless legalism but as a means of preserving Israel's identity and loyalty to God.
The underlying diagnosis may therefore be expressed cautiously as follows:
Israel's disorder was connected with unfaithfulness to the will of God.
The remedy was correspondingly:
Israel must become more faithful to God's covenantal instruction.
Sabbath, purity, prayer, tithing, and other forms of obedience could therefore be understood as expressions of loyalty to God.
From this perspective, religious discipline was not necessarily the disease. It was intended as part of the cure.
This is important for understanding the later conflicts attributed to Jesus.
Jesus and the Pharisees did not simply disagree because one side cared about God and the other did not. Their disagreements often concerned a deeper question:
What does genuine faithfulness to God require?
When Jesus healed on the Sabbath or associated with people regarded as sinners or impure, the question was not merely whether rules should exist.
The question was whether a particular interpretation of obedience had failed to serve the deeper purpose of God's will.
Thus, within our physician metaphor, the Pharisaic approach may be described as a discipline-and-faithfulness model of healing.
The society needs restoration because it must return to faithful obedience.
Jesus would later challenge certain expressions of this model—not necessarily by rejecting obedience itself, but by asking whether mercy, love, and the good of human beings should stand at the centre of what obedience means.
3.2 John the Baptist: Repentance Before the Coming Judgment
John the Baptist represents another important response to Israel's condition.
Historically, John cannot be understood merely as a minor figure whose only purpose was to introduce Jesus. He appears to have been a powerful and influential teacher in his own right.
Josephus describes John as a good man who called people to practice righteousness toward one another and piety toward God. He also describes John's influence among the people as sufficiently great to arouse Herod Antipas' concern. The Gospel traditions likewise portray large numbers of people coming to John.
John's message, as preserved in the Gospel traditions, was marked by urgency.
The time for restoration was approaching.
God's judgment was near.
People must therefore prepare.
The diagnosis may be expressed in this way:
The society is not ready for the coming action of God because human beings have become morally and spiritually corrupted.
The remedy was:
Repent. Change the direction of life. Produce the fruits of repentance.
John's message was therefore more than a call for ritual performance.
In the Gospel of Luke, people ask John what they should do. His responses concern concrete human behaviour: sharing with those in need, rejecting economic exploitation, and refusing abuse of power.
This is a significant development in our study.
The question is no longer simply whether people are performing the correct religious rituals.
The question becomes:
What kind of human beings are they becoming?
John's baptism symbolized a decisive turning.
The patient must first acknowledge that something is wrong.
He must recognize his condition.
He must desire change.
Only then can healing begin.
This aspect of John's ministry fits remarkably well within the metaphor of the patient and the physician.
One of the greatest obstacles to healing is the refusal to recognize illness.
A person may say:
“Nothing is wrong with me.”
A society may do the same.
It may normalize greed, violence, injustice, exploitation, or exclusion and refuse to see them as symptoms of a deeper disorder.
John's first demand was therefore recognition.
Repent.
Acknowledge that the present way of life cannot continue unchanged.
Turn around.
Prepare for what is coming.
3.3 John's Moral Diagnosis
John's diagnosis differed in important ways from an approach based primarily on ancestry or ritual status.
The Gospel traditions attribute to him the warning that descent from Abraham should not be treated as a guarantee of safety.
This was a profound challenge.
Identity alone was not the cure.
Membership alone was not the cure.
Ancestry alone was not the cure.
The patient could not claim to be healthy simply because he belonged to a respected family.
The evidence of healing had to appear in the way people lived.
The demand for “fruit worthy of repentance” therefore brought moral behaviour to the centre.
Share.
Do not exploit.
Do not abuse power.
Treat others rightly.
In this sense, John may be understood as diagnosing the crisis of society primarily in terms of moral failure requiring repentance before divine judgment.
The cure was moral transformation.
Yet John's proclamation, at least as preserved in the Gospel traditions, remained strongly oriented toward an approaching divine event.
Someone stronger was coming.
Judgment was near.
God was about to act decisively.
The patient must therefore be healed before the final moment arrives.
3.4 Similar Symptoms, Different Diagnoses
We can now see the emerging pattern.
Different responses could observe many of the same symptoms:
- suffering,
- injustice,
- social disorder,
- moral failure,
- foreign domination,
- religious anxiety,
- and Israel's longing for restoration.
But they interpreted the cause differently.
The following summary is necessarily simplified, but it helps clarify the analytical problem:
| Response | Primary Concern | Diagnosis | Proposed Remedy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pharisaic approaches | Faithfulness to God and Israel's covenantal identity | Israel's disorder is connected with unfaithfulness and improper observance | Renewed faithfulness and obedience |
| John the Baptist | Moral readiness for God's approaching action | People are morally unprepared for divine judgment | Repentance and concrete moral transformation |
| Revolutionary responses | Political freedom and divine sovereignty | Foreign domination and compromised rule are central problems | Liberation or resistance, in different forms |
| Sectarian or separatist responses | Purity and true communal faithfulness | The wider society has become corrupt | Withdrawal, purification, and formation of a faithful community |
This table is not intended to suggest that every person belonged neatly to one of these categories.
Historical reality was more complex.
Its purpose is to establish one central point:
Jesus entered a society in which several diagnoses of the human and social problem were already competing with one another.
3.5 Jesus Enters the Conversation
Jesus did not begin by inventing entirely new vocabulary.
He spoke about God.
He spoke about repentance.
He spoke about the Kingdom.
He spoke about judgment.
He spoke about the poor, the righteous, the sinful, and the coming restoration.
These were familiar categories within his Jewish world.
The originality of a physician does not necessarily consist in inventing entirely new words.
It may lie in seeing the illness differently.
Two physicians can look at the same patient and use some of the same language while arriving at very different conclusions.
This is the question we must now ask about Jesus.
The Gospels summarize both John's and Jesus' ministries with language concerning repentance and the nearness of God's Kingdom.
At first sight, their message appears almost identical.
Yet the later Gospel traditions also preserve indications of significant differences between their ministries and expectations.
Jesus praised John as an extraordinary figure. At the same time, traditions such as the saying concerning “the least in the kingdom” being greater than John raise important interpretive questions.
What difference did Jesus perceive between the Kingdom he announced and the expectation represented by John?
Was the Kingdom primarily a future event for which people must prepare?
Or did Jesus understand God's reign as already becoming present?
Was the central human problem simply insufficient moral preparation?
Or did Jesus identify a deeper form of alienation and disorder?
And if the Kingdom was in some sense already present, how were people to enter it?
These questions take us to the central problem of this study.
3.6 From Diagnosis to Jesus' Distinctive Prescription
The purpose of this section has not been to declare the Pharisees wrong and John the Baptist right, or John wrong and Jesus right.
Such a conclusion would merely repeat the theological assumptions with which the investigation began.
Instead, we have attempted to reconstruct the situation as one involving competing diagnoses.
Each response recognized some form of disorder.
Each proposed a remedy.
Each offered people a path toward restoration.
The next question is therefore not:
“Was Jesus another teacher who wanted people to become morally better?”
The historical question is deeper:
What did Jesus believe was the fundamental disorder from which human beings needed to be healed?
And the related question is:
What did he believe would actually bring about that healing?
Our earlier investigation suggests a possible hypothesis.
Jesus may have shifted the focus from waiting for God to transform the world at some future moment toward entering and embodying God's reign in the present.
If this interpretation is correct, the implications are profound.
The patient is not simply told:
“Wait until the physician arrives.”
Neither is he told merely:
“Perform enough religious acts to persuade the physician to heal you.”
He is called to recognize that the path of healing has already been opened and that he must now change the direction of his own life.
Whether this hypothesis can be sustained by the Gospel traditions must be examined carefully.
We must therefore now turn directly to Jesus.
The next section will ask:
4. Jesus' Diagnosis: What Did He Believe Was Wrong?
This section will examine whether the traditions concerning Jesus reveal a coherent understanding of the fundamental human disorder.
We will investigate particularly the themes of:
- alienation from God,
- distorted images of God,
- self-righteousness,
- hypocrisy,
- judgment of others,
- exclusion,
- domination and the desire for power,
- wealth and attachment to possessions,
- retaliation and hostility,
- and the failure to love one's neighbour.
Only after identifying the diagnosis can we properly examine Jesus' central prescription:
“Repent, for the Kingdom of God has drawn near.”
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