gryan wrote: ↑Mon Oct 10, 2022 7:07 am
I don't at this moment find myself in disagreement with anything you have written in the post copied above, and this is a shift for me in relation to some things I've written in the past week. Thanks for your work on this topic!
Hi Greg, I am very pleased. Thanks for your comment. I hope it stays that way
After my last post I noticed that Neil wrote a post on the same topic that turns 15 years old on friday.
All the best for this anniversary!
Neil's solution deserves a full mention here.
Neil wrote
So when we come to Mark’s famous list of the names of the Twelve disciples (3:13-19) where we see Simon, Andrew, James and John the first listed, we hold breath waiting to see Levi’s name also flash up in lights. But it never comes. The closest teasing reminder of his name is a nondescript “James the son of Alphaeus”. Levi was also said to have been a son of Alphaeus. What has happened here? Was Levi a victim of cut-throat sibling rivalry for the inner job?
So where does all this leave Levi?
His calling is clearly meant to be interpreted as a calling to be one of Jesus’ “inner disciples”. The narrative has too many resonances with the calling of the leaders of the Twelve to be taken as anything else.
This is where the differences need some thought. Levi is a tax-collector. His job is to take money from his fellow Jews and give it to gentiles. He has many tax-collector friends. He also has many “sinner” friends. And they all come together to have a feast with him and Jesus.
But Jesus also came to Levi with a large crowd which included his disciples. So there were two large groups in Levi’s house: the tax-collectors and sinners and the disciples of Jesus and the multitude with them.
The scribes and Pharisees who looked in had no problem with the crowds on the side of the disciples, but they did raise censorious eyebrows over the “tax-collectors and sinners” from Levi’s side. So they asked the disciples why Jesus mixed with them. Interestingly the disciples do not reply. Presumably we are meant to imagine that they don’t understand either. Maybe they passed on the question to Jesus himself. Because it was Jesus who answered them:
When Jesus heard it, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.’ (2:17)
The alert reader will notice that the scribes, Pharisees, and Jesus all addressed Levi’s followers as “the sinners”. The assumption behind the question of the scribes and Pharisees and the response from Jesus is that the disciples are not sinners, but the righteous. The same letter in which Paul accused Peter of acting the same way as “false brethren” also addresses gentiles as “sinners” in the sense of being outside the Jewish covenant (Galatians 2:15)
Those with Levi are the “unwashed”, those who are as far removed from normal Jewish religious observances as are the gentiles. The tax-collectors among them even work for the gentiles. Jesus compares his disciples, on the other hand, only a few versus later, to the followers of David. Later we learn that those same disciples, with the minds of the “righteous” Pharisees, attempted to turn away children from coming close to Jesus; and to stop a man performing exorcisms in Jesus’ name independently of their group. Levi’s house filled with tax-collectors and sinners does not sound like that sort of exclusivist place. The disciples are only there mixing with them at all because of Jesus.
Compare the first called of the Twelve, Simon Peter. The first act after his call and that of his colleagues was to enter a synagogue on the Sabbath and to effectively “cleanse” that synagogue by exorcising a demon from among the worshipers there. After that, they visited Simon’s house. Not the vast numbers of tax-collectors and sinners there, but a sick relative. Jesus healed her and she served Jesus and his close disciples.
- As soon as they left the synagogue they entered the house of Simon
- Simon’s wife’s mother lay sick
- He came and healed her
- She served them (presumably with food)
The scene subsequent to the call of Levi could not be more different.
- He entered Levi’s house
- He was dining there with his followers
- Jesus refers to the crowd as the sick
- And to himself as their physician
No synagogue, no Sabbath. Just straight to Levi’s house. Not to heal a solitary woman, but to feast with multitudes of tax-collectors and sinners. Why? Their invitation was an act of healing. Jesus, the physician, called the sick this time. That is, Levi and his many friends.
Simon Peter and the Twelve were not sick, although they did know a few who were sick, such as an in-law (not blood) relative of Simon’s. With Jesus they only reached Simon’s house after first negotiating, as “righteous” Jews, the synagogue on the Sabbath. Levi and his friends went straight from Call to House where they celebrated their newfound association with Jesus and his disciples.
I cannot prove but cannot avoid suspecting that the author of this gospel is setting up Levi as a personification of the call of the gentiles. He is the representative apostle to the gentiles. This accounts for his apposition to the call of the Jerusalem/Jewish apostles, and his absence from the list of the Twelve. It also accounts for the differences in narrative sequence (synagogue/no synagogue intervention), terminology (tax-collectors and sinners for the sick), and micro-themes (immediate large scale celebration) between his call and the call and subsequent movements of the leaders of the Twelve.
Son of Alphaeus?
There remains the curious link Mark establishes between Levi and the Twelve. Both Levi and a certain James in the list of Twelve are sons of Alphaeus. Again one cannot help but wonder (which is why this is in a blog and nowhere else) if the author is pointing to a link nonetheless. Jew and Gentile were, ideally, one in Christ. Reality may have meant something closer to a situation involving family hostilities and disputes, but the unified family idea was nonetheless the ideal and perhaps even the historical beginnings.
I find it particularly remarkable that Neil has offered an interpretation for both circumstances that require explanation.
- Why Levi is not among the Twelve.
- Why his brother James is one of them.
I agree that a good interpretation must be able to explain both points.