Without Typology - No Gospels

di Jean-Noël Aletti

A Suffering Messiah: A Challenge for Matthew, Mark and Luke

"Analecta Biblica Studia" 17

2022, pp. 192

To show that Jesus’ sufferings and death on the cross in no way called into question hisstatus as Messiah, the Envoy of God, such was the challenge faced by the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and to do this, even before seeing Old Testamentrealities as prophecies of those of the New. If, by his resurrection, Jesus had indeed become for the disciples the royal, glorious, messianic figure, expected by Jewish traditions, the rejection of which he was the object as well as his ignominious death seemed contrary to those expectations: the Scriptures did not announce a suffering Messiah.  If then the resurrection and glorification confirmed the being-Messiah of Jesus, his death could not be that of a rebel, an impostor, or a blasphemer: it could not be foreign or contrary to the ways of God. That is why Mark, Matthew and Luke revisited the Scriptures to search for and find in them figures of divine envoys who were persecuted and rejected and thus to show that Jesus, because truly a prophet, had had a tragic fate similar to theirs.