ANALECTA BIBLICA [STUDIA] - 17

ALETTI Jean-Noël

Without Typology - No Gospels.
A Suffering Messiah: A Challenge for Matthew, Mark and Luke
2022, pp. 192.

To show that Jesus’ sufferings and death on the cross in no way called into question his status 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 Testament realities 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.

Jean-Noël AlettiJesuit, professor emeritus of the Biblical Institute in Rome, is know for his work on the letters of Paul as well as on the synoptic Gospels, especially the two narratives attributed to Luke, the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. This present work can be considered the second part of a previous essay, The birth of the Gospels as Biographies, GBPress, Rome, 2017.