scylla and charybdis.

I'm always a little puzzled by Matthew 6. It's always an effort to see beyond the "teacher of timeless wisdom" aspect, which just isn't very credible given the setting the book is written from. It's hard to take off my 21st century American glasses and put on 1st century Palestinian ones, but here goes.

The message is subversive, that much is certain. He's telling his Jewish peasant audience not to be like the zealots who are leading them into a sure and disastrous confrontation with Rome, but he's doing this by addressing the way they lead their daily lives verses the way they see the zealots lead theirs. The zealots (the Pharisees, broadly conceived) are the hypocrites who stand in the synagogue (vss. 2, 5, and by extension, 16). They wear their religion as an exclusionary badge that reads "we hate the Romans", and do everything out in the open to drive the dagger deeper. It is intentional provocation that will bear bloody fruit just 40 years or so later. Neither are they to be like the pagans (Gentiles), adopting their practices like they did before the exile, as though God had given Israel no other way.

Instead, they are to leave off with those polar agendas and take Jesus for his. they are to be Israel, but a NEW Israel, the Israel that God had intended all along. They were modfy their behavior to reflect a new heart (Jer 31.31-34). They were to trust YHWH to provide for them as he promised to in the covenant (vss. 25-34) rather than trusting in revolution on one hand or on capitulation to paganism on the other. However, they were also not to participate in a wholesale abandonment of the covenant in favor of paganism. That was just another variety of "wrong".

So, we have a biblical scylla and charybdis: the religious elite who have misunderstood and misapplied the covenant, and who are following the powerful Jewish narrative of zealotry (the Macabees and the Hasmoneans of 100 years prior) as the solution to the "problem" of Rome (which was in turn connected with the exile...the Messiah would overturn the Gentile oppressors as one of the signs of the end of the exile), OR the way of paganism. Paganism amounted to a throughgoing abandonment of covenant, and by extension, of YHWH himself. This, of course, is what Israel believes landed her in exile to begin with, so she was understandably loathe to take up that agenda again. Both options came with lengthy and powerful supporting narratives and both involved some of the most dominant symbols in 1st century Judaism (Torah, Temple, covenant and exile). There would have been strong incentives and aversions. The effusive reaction of the Jews on both sides becomes understandable in that context.

In the end, the message from Jesus is as it always: "Repent and believe in me". When Josephus uses that same phrase in Greek, right at the same time that the first gospel was being circulated (AD65 or so), it meant "Abandon your agenda and take me for mine." That is the core of the gospel message, around which the rest is organized.