Jesus’ Meals with Pharisees and Their Liturgical Roots by Thomas Esposito

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jesus’ Meals with Pharisees and Their Liturgical Roots by Thomas Esposito Ma. Marilou S. Ibita thomas esposito, Jesus’ Meals with Pharisees and Their Liturgical Roots (AnBib 209; Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2015). Pp. 400. Paper €35. This book is the publication of Esposito’s 2014 dissertation from the Biblicum. Following the introduction and five chapters of discussion and conclusion are a fourteen-page bibliography (English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish publications) and an index of biblical citations. Esposito highlights three points in studying Luke—7:36–50; 11:37–54; and 14:1–24— offering a critical, negative response to the use of the literary symposium genre in interpreting [End Page 139] these texts, advancing their proposed liturgical roots (following the lead of his abbot, Denis Farkasfalvy, “The Eucharistic Provenance of the Christian Bible,” in his Inspiration and Interpretation: A Theological Introduction to Sacred Scripture [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010] 63–87), and using Brian E. Beck’s catchphrase “Pharisaic mind” as a lens to characterize them (Christian Character in the Gospel of Luke [London: Epworth, 1989] 127–44). In chap. 1, E. situates the Lucan meal scenes in the context of the Synoptic Gospels and Luke-Acts. In chap. 2, he gives an overview of the complex portrayal of the Pharisees in Josephus and rabbinic literature, as well as in Matthew, Mark, and Luke-Acts. He describes the positive/apologetic and the negative/polemical description of the Pharisees in the Lucan corpus. E. includes Beck’s idea of the “Pharisaic mind,” which represents the Pharisees as the opponents of Jesus and the church who “embody ‘those faults to which [Luke] believes his readers are prone’” (p. 134). The three succeeding chapters deal with Luke 7:36–50; 11:37–54; and 14:1–24, respectively. They follow the same format: a narrative background, an exegetical analysis (description; delimitation; and source-critical, form-critical, and redactional observations) and discussion through the lens of the symposium literary genre. E. presents both pros and cons regarding the genre, with a strong judgment that the classification of these Lucan chapters in the symposium genre is inadequate. E. ends each chapter with suggested meanings of the meal setting in connection with the Lucan community’s Sitz im Leben while advancing his hypothesis about the symposium genre. In chap. 3, on 7:36–50, E. argues that the symposium genre overlooks the mutual recognition between Jesus and the woman as well as the “liturgical significance of her actions and the sequence itself . . . all of which suggest a liturgical context for the woman’s actions and the meal itself” (p. 200). In chap. 4, on 11:37–54, E. argues that scholars who use the symposium genre “deduce their interpretation by demanding that every aspect of the pericope fit the symposium category” (p. 266). He holds that the woes are situated in the eschatological setting of the meal to address the problems of the Jewish and gentile Lucan community members, particularly the “vestigial Pharisaic attitudes which corrupt the ministry and unity of the disciples” (p. 271). In chap. 5, on 14:1–24, E. interprets the third supper as “the surest sign of unity to the community reading his gospel, a reading likely listened to at table (15:1–2!) during their Eucharistic assembly on Sundays” (p. 339). For him, Luke communicates that the inclusivity of the meal is limited only by auto-exclusion, and that individual Pharisees can eventually join the Lord’s table. Esposito concludes with a concise picture of Jesus and his meals: as a prophet at table who upends the social mores of his times particularly against the “Pharisaic mind,” as shown by his table talk at these meals. Instead of the inadequate literary symposium genre, E. proposes that the meal scenes be considered as “Gospel pericopal structure” or “genre of encounter” (p. 359). This connects with Farkasfalvy’s proposal that these pericopes were retold and transmitted during the community’s “cultic meal” (p. 360). For E., “it is certainly not the primary intention of Luke to cast a setting-less sequence as a symposium for its own sake, or to wrap Jesus’ words in a...