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Subject: The Origins of the Bible, Part XX: I and II Zechariah, Primary Shapers of the Christian Story

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Thursday February 05, 2009 

The Origins of the Bible, Part XX
I and II Zechariah, Primary Shapers of the Christian Story

If you were to search the Scriptures for a book called II Zechariah, you would not find it. There is only a single fourteen-chapter book called Zechariah, buried in the Bible between Haggai and Malachi. It is, however, not a single book by a single author, although that is the way it appears. Chapters 1–8 of Zechariah reflect a period of Jewish history about 100 years earlier than chapters 9-14. The name Zechariah is associated with the author of chapters 1-8 and it ought to be called I Zechariah. Chapters 9-14 were added to the scroll of this small work by an unknown writer and should be designated II Zechariah. Scripture scholars when dealing with the better known book of Isaiah have followed that practice widely. Isaiah 1-39 is regularly called I Isaiah and is dated in the 8th century BCE. Chapters 40-55 of this book, which constitute the best known part of the Book of Isaiah because George Frederick Handel set it to music in his popular oratorio "The Messiah," are generally called II Isaiah and are dated in the 6th century BCE. Chapters 56-66, representi
ng a much later period in Jewish history, probably in the 5th or even the 4th century BCE, are called III Isaiah. 
Zechariah, on the other hand, has been generally ignored by ordinary Christians and scholars alike. Its importance, therefore, has been minimized. Even those people who claim that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, if asked a question about the message of the book of Zechariah, respond with glassy-eyed stares. If they know anything about this book it tends to be a verse from Zechariah 9:9 that reads: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your King comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass." This verse might be recalled because it is read as the Old Testament Lesson on Palm Sunday in almost every church that follows a liturgical lectionary and was clearly the passage on which the Palm Sunday story was modeled. Beyond this, however, most people, biblical fundamentalists and traditional Christians alike, would tend to have no knowledge whatsoever about this book. 

Yet the fact is that the Book of Zechariah is quoted overtly by New Testament writers at least eight times and is alluded to even more frequently than that in the shaping of the gospel tradition. With the exception of a few references in the Book of Revelation, almost every verse in Zechariah to which the New Testament points is from II Zechariah, that is, from chapters 9-14. This segment of Zechariah was a remark
ably influential book in the formation of the thinking of the early Christians; indeed it was probably second only to the book of Isaiah. 

To understand the impact of this statement, it is quite important that we get out of a literal biblical mindset. Jesus does not fulfill the prophets in the sense that he somehow said and did things that the prophets had predicted the messiah would do. That is patent nonsense, the product of overt biblical ignorance. Biblical prophets were not the predictors of the future. The gospels are rather interpretative works written two to three generations after the life of Jesus and written in the service of their claim that he was messiah. To underscore this claim, these early Christians searched the scriptures for the content of Israel's messianic hope and expectancy, and then they wrote the story of Jesus to be in accord with these expectations. In the various resurrection narratives, the command to do this kind of interpreting was written into the words and actions attributed to Jesus himself. Listen to Luke where he has Jesus say, "O foolish men and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken…and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself (24:25-27)." Later Luke has Jesus repeat this theme just for emphasis, "Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures (24:44, 45)." 
Luke was suggesting that it was the resurrected Christ who had directed the early disciples to find references to the scriptures of the Hebrew people by which they could properly interpret the experience they had with the life of Jesus of Nazareth. By the time the gospels were written this practice had become their primary interpretive tool. The Book of Zechariah, and specifically II Zechariah, was in that process one of the most influential books in the Hebrew Bible and they drew on it heavily to interpret the life of Jesus.

II Zechariah begins by introducing his readers to a figure who is, in all probability, intended to be a mythical figure not unlike the suffering servant of II Isaiah. II Zechariah's mythical character is called the shepherd king of Israel. It is this king, he says, who will come to Jerusalem not in pomp and splendor, but in humility and lowliness riding upon a donkey to lay claim to his kingdom. Mark is the first gospel author to write the Palm Sunday story and he did so by incorporating Jesus into that text, quoting it almost verbatim. Matthew and Luke copied Mark with little editorial change. John treats it very differently, as he does so many things. Jesus was not making a triumphant entry into Jerusalem, he was already there, and John makes the Palm Sunday story be an aftermath of the raising of Lazarus, a story none of the other gospels relate. John also adds enigmatically that the disciples did not know what Jesus was doing, but that after Jesus was glorified, the
y "remembered" that these things had been written about him in the prophets (see John, Chapter 12).

When Jesus was arrested, the earliest gospel writer notes that "all of the disciples forsook him and fled (Mark 14:52)." By the time the gospels came to be written (roughly 70 to 100), the twelve had, however, become heroes among the followers of Jesus, so that this apostolic abandonment, which was clearly an indelible memory, had to be transformed. That was done by Mark saying that the prophets had predicted this abandonment so the disciples were merely fulfilling the scriptures and thus were guiltless, and consequently not blameworthy. The text they quoted for this apostolic whitewashing was from II Zechariah, "Strike the Shepherd that the sheep may be scattered (13:7)." Matthew repeats and expands this connection. Luke assumes it. 

The shepherd king of II Zechariah was said to be doomed by those who "trafficked in sheep," which brings to mind the gospel story of the people who bought and sold animals, primarily sheep, for sacrifice in the temple. This connection with the story of Jesus cleansing the temple is made overt and clear in the last verse of Zechariah, where the prophet writes that when the day of the Lord comes, "There shall no longer be a trader in the House of the Lord (14-21)." Was the story of Jesus cleansing the Temple not history, but an attempt to interpret Jesus as messiah inspired by II Zechariah? I think it is fair to suggest that it was. 

The work of the shepherd king=2
0was then annulled, says II Zechariah, by these "traffickers in sheep," who paid him off to rid themselves of him. The price of his riddance was "thirty pieces of silver." The shepherd king then hurled this money back into the temple (Zech 11:8, 12-14). Matthew is the gospel writer who introduces the thirty pieces of silver in the story of Judas Iscariot and Matthew has Judas hurl the money into the Temple. Clearly, Zechariah was his source for this part of his story line (Matt. 26:14-16, 27:3-7). 

Later II Zechariah states that God will pour out compassion on the people of Jerusalem "so that when they look upon him whom they have pierced, they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly for him as one weeps over a first born (Zech. 12:10, 11)." John used this passage and gave credit to Zechariah when he developed the story of the soldier who pierced Jesus' side with his spear (see John 7:31-37). 

Finally, Zechariah portrays the day of the Lord that will come at the end of time. All of the nations of the world will be gathered in Jerusalem in warfare and the Lord will defeat them. The Lord will stand on the Mount of Olives and split the mountain in two. There will be no darkness and finally on that day, living water will flow out of Jerusalem, embracing all of the nations to the East and those to the West and the Lord will become King over all the earth. On that day all will worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and "there will be no trade
rs in the House of the Lord." It was an incredible mythical portrait of the dawning of the Kingdom of God for which the Jews had been taught to yearn. 

Living water for the Jews is always a symbol of the Holy Spirit. This is thus a Pentecost portrait on which Luke clearly drew when he wrote the Pentecost story in the book of Acts. The Spirit was poured out on the gathered world, said Luke, and oneness was created in that they could all speak the language of their hearers (see Acts 2). 

Once we put all of these pieces together, II Zechariah describes in precise order the pattern that was written into the final week of Jesus' life: the Palm Sunday procession on the donkey, the betrayal, the apostolic abandonment, the crucifixion and the day of Pentecost. It is clear that the little book of II Zechariah exercised vast influence on the way the Jesus story was developed, remembered and told.

One conclusion is obvious. The gospels are neither history nor biography. They are interpretive portraits written by Jews, probably in the synagogues, to portray the Jesus who empowered them and who raised them to a new level of consciousness about God's living presence in Jesus and now in them. Messiah had opened them to enter the presence of God. That is how Jesus was identified with the messianic hopes of Israel and that is the basis upon which they made the Christ claim for him as well as the God claim that would develop over the centuries in the creeds. With newly informed eyes the Bibl
e is fun to read and even more fun to understand. 

–John Shelby Spong

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

John J. Scherer, of Seattle, Washington, writes: 
Did you know that your book Honest Prayer is currently being listed on some sites as costing as much as $85 for a used copy?

Dear John,

They must think the original hardback that came out in 1972 is a collector's item! For anyone who wants the book, and not a collector's item, Honest Prayerhas been republished in paperback by St. Johann Press in Haworth, New Jersey, and these paperbacks are also available from Amazon at a very paperback price. They even offer used ones. 

You need to know that an author (unless self-published) has nothing to do with the marketing or the pricing of his or her own book. That is the publisher's responsibility. 

Honest Prayer was an exciting venture for me. It was my first book and grew out of a deeply meaningful pastoral relationship with a woman in her early forties, married with three children, who had an incurable cancer. It was the first time I was not able to put together the assurances of my faith, which at that time I had never questioned, with the realities of life, so I wrestled publicly in a series of sermons on the subject of prayer. This little book was the result. I have moved beyond the place where I was when that book was written more than a quarter of a century ago, but not in a different direction. I only sk
immed the surface in that book, but it started me on a lifelong journey. I will return to that theme when my last book comes out in 2009 on life after death.

Thanks for writing.

– John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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