jewish-christian gospels and syriac gospel traditions fulfilled the law and the prophets that include the love commandment,
seems to mean “preoccupation with the Jewish law.”^45 This may be the
case—as a matter of fact, I argue below that the passage presumes a Jewish
understanding of the law—but how can one come to a conclusion like
this? Origen was haunted by the same problem, and for him, the problem
was created by one first century Christian gospel editor, namely Matthew,
who had added the love commandment to the story about a rich man (see
above).^46 What makes the discussion in Origen’s Latin passage Jewish? In
the following, I will approach these questions by drawing attention to the
Jewish-Christian profile of the passage.^47
...The Jewish-Christian Profile of Origen’s StoryThe Role of Jewish Law
It was noted above that it is difficult to label the discussion about the
love commandment as either Christian or Jewish. The commandment
is found in Leviticus :: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a
grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as
yourself: I am the Lord.”^48 There is no doubt about the Jewish origin of the
commandment. Nevertheless, by the time of the writing of the passage, it
obviously also was an integral part of Christian interpretation of the law,
too.
A notable feature in Origen’s passage, if compared with its synoptic
counterparts, is that it does not list the individual commandments and
concentrates only on the love commandment. Is this an indication of
the Jewish context of the writer? Does the passage take the obedience
to ten commandments and Jewish law in general for granted, and, in
practice, “doing the law and the prophets” means following traditional
(^45) Klijn , .
(^46) Whether or not Matthew and his community were still Jewish is a question that has
often occupied Matthean scholars. I have suggested that Matthew’s community is best
understood as a (Christian) cult movement that is moving away from Judaism. For this,
see Luomanen b.
(^47) For the analysis of indicators of Jewish Christianity and Jewish-Christian profiles,
see Chapter ..
(^48) When we are discussing the social background of the passage, we should also
keep in mind that the Jewishness of the rich man does not necessarily prove that the
authors or editors of the passage were also Jews, as Klijn (, ) seems to imply.
Nevertheless, there are other features in the passage, e.g., the particularistic use of the
love commandment as well as the phrase “Simon Son of Jonah” that reveal the Jewish
viewpoint of the editor.