Love your enemies!

Knowing what context someone is speaking or writing in helps understand the full power of their message. For example, take Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech out of the context of racial oppression and it loses its punch. The same is true with events from the Bible.

I was reading Luke 6.27-30 this morning. The words are probably familiar to anyone who has any acquaintance with Christianity:

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, tdo good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.

The sting of this passage was really brought home to me when I read it with some passages from the ancient Jewish historian Josephus in mind. Writing at the end of the first century AD, Josephus reports events in Israel roughly contemporary with the time of Jesus. Israel was under Roman rule at the time so it was not too difficult for the Jews to realize exactly which enemies Jesus might have had at the front of his mind. Read the following excerpts about how the Romans dealt with the Jews and then read Luke 6.27-30 again. Sorry about the language in the following passages, I only have an old-school translation of Josephus.

But Varus [a Roman general] sent a part of his army into the country, against those that had been the authors of this commotion, and as they caught great numbers of them, those that appeared to have been the least concerned in these tumults he put into custody, but such as were the most guilty he crucified; these were in number about two thousand. (Josephus War 2.75)

After this he raised another disturbance, by expending that sacred treasure which is called Corban upon aqueducts, whereby he brought water from the distance of four hundred furlongs. At this the multitude had indignation; and when Pilate was come to Jerusalem, they came about his tribunal, and made a clamor at it. Now when he was apprized aforehand of this disturbance, he mixed his own soldiers in their armor with the multitude, and ordered them to conceal themselves under the habits of private men, and not indeed to use their swords, but with their staves to beat those that made the clamor. He then gave the signal from his tribunal [to do as he had bidden them]. Now the Jews were so sadly beaten, that many of them perished by the stripes they received, and many of them perished as trodden to death by themselves; (Josephus War 2.175-177)

The main reason why [Titus] did not forbid that cruelty was this, that he hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterwards be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies. (Josephus War 5.450-1)

"But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies"!