The family in the Jesus movement

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Fall, 2004 by Santiago Guijarro

In Mark's version the messengers are exhorted to remain in the households that take them in and to shake off the dust of the place that does not receive them (Mark 6:10-11). In the Q version, however, the instruction is much more detailed, and the mission to households (Q 10:5-7) is clearly distinguished from the mission to the city (Q 10:8-12). In the mission to households only the possibility of being taken in is considered, while in the city mission we also find instructions about how to behave in case of refusal. In Mark as well as in Q the instructions about the mission to households are found first, and their tone is clearly more positive than those related to the city.

The fact that these mission instructions have been transmitted independently by Mark and Q indicates that this is a very ancient tradition, but it also reveals that this tradition continued to be significant for the disciples of the first generation. To grasp their original tone, we must keep in mind that they were pronounced in the context of the Jesus movement before his death, that is to say in the context of the peasant mass movement led by Jesus and his closest disciples. When placed in this framework, the instructions about the mission to households pose three interesting questions for the topic of our research.

The first one, concerning their purpose, may be formulated like this: What was Jesus' objective in sending his closest disciples to households? In Mark's version there are two purposes: to cast out demons (Mark 6:7) and to preach conversion (Mark 6:12:), but the second is clearly redactional. That means that in the tradition before Mark there was only the purpose of casting out unclean spirits (Twelftree: 122-27). According to the Q version, however, Jesus sent his disciples to announce peace and to practice open table fellowship (Q 10:5-7).

These two actions, exorcism and open table-fellowship, that appear in Jesus' sayings as the purpose of the mission charge, reveal the situation of the peasant families to which the disciples were sent. These families were suffering the pressure caused by the marketization of the economy and the urbanization process. They were running the risk of forgetting the traditional values of hospitality and solidarity. In this situation, Jesus' messengers announced with their behavior that God was at the point of intervening as king and patron of his people. In this way, not only was disintegration avoided, but also small groups were created in which the reign of God was received and enacted (Horsley: 231-45).

The second question concerns the strategy. If Jesus' proclamation belongs to the realm of political religion, it might be asked why Jesus sent his disciples to households. But this contradiction that we perceive between the political horizon of Jesus' message and his domestic strategy is only apparent. In the Hellenistic-Roman world the house and the city were not two separable entities. Aristotle's thesis, according to which every city is made up of households and "every household is a part of the city" (POLITICS 1252a-1253b) was then an axiom (Cicero, DE OFFICIIS I, 17; Philo, DE IOSEPHO 38-39). It is therefore reasonable that Jesus' strategy combined activities in plazas or open areas with those in houses. If the household was the basic cell of society, Jesus could not omit it from his plan to make the good news reach everyone. Recreating the household was the best way to recreate society from its roots.