The Death and Resurrection of Jesus as the Fall and Resurrection of Israel

Abstract

Jerusalem’s destruction is often construed by Lukan scholars as divine retribution for the Jews rejecting and killing Jesus. Instead, I argue that attention to the verb κɛῖμαι in Simeon’s prophetic blessing (Luke 2:34) is essential for Luke’s narrative framing of the meaning and purpose of Jesus’s death. Luke plays on the double entendre available with κɛῖμαι to mean both “appointed” and “laid down.” More precisely, κɛῖμαι foreshadows Jesus’s coming death and burial (23:53). Thus, Luke reveals through his narrative that Jesus has been appointed to be laid down in death in solidarity with the coming “fall” (πτῶσις) of Israel in order that Israel’s “resurrection” (ἀνάστασις) (2:34) might be secured in his resurrection. Therefore, Luke tethers the death of Jesus to the coming fall of Jerusalem because it is Jesus’s proleptic experience of Jerusalem’s already looming judgment in nuce. Additionally, this thesis better accounts for why Jesus’s resurrection bears a significant amount of soteriological weight in Acts. It is only because Jesus’s death has the particular significance of sharing in Israel’s fall that Jesus’s resurrection means anything for Israel. Finally, this thesis challenges the supersessionist notion that Luke believes fallen Israel is either left behind and/or superseded by the church.