Jesus’ Meals with Sinners
Enactment of Reversal on the Background of Early Jewish Eschatological Expectations
By (author) Serhii Smahlo
Paperback (Published)
(March 2026)
ISBN: 9783161634604
6.1 x 9.13 inches
Price: $134.00
In stock
Serhii Smahlo investigates Jesus’ table fellowship with outcasts in light of Jewish eschatological expectations. He explores how Jesus’ inclusion of “unexpected participants” embodied the concept of reversal – “the last will be first and the first will be last” – and how this enactment sparked conflict and ultimately led to Jesus’ rejection.
To investigate Jesus’ associations with ‘tax collectors and sinners’ within the Jewish apocalyptic framework, Serhii Smahlo identifies the essential features of the gospel accounts and examines their alignment with an eschatological vision found in Jewish tradition. The overall survey reveals a consistent motif: it is the presence of ‘unexpected participants,’ explained by Jesus in terms of reversal, that causes indignation among his opponents. Viewing this motif against the background of early Jewish eschatological expectations, Serhii Smahlo argues that Jesus’ meals with ‘unexpected participants’ were a specific enactment of eschatological reversal, reflecting both a close connection to common apocalyptic expectations and a certain discrepancy from them, which might explain the conflict and rejection surrounding these events.
1 Introduction
1.1 The Subject of the Study
1.2 The History of the Issue
1.3 Problem Statement
1.4 Research Hypothesis
1.5 Methodology
2 Jesus’s Meals with Tax Collectors and Sinners: Finding and Interpreting Key Features
2.1 A Survey of the Main Accounts
2.2 Interpreting the Key Motif
2.3 The Reversal with Unexpected Participants in the Context of a Meal
2.4 Other Accounts with Unexpected Participants
2.5 Eschatological Reversal as a Background
3 Meals and Reversal in the Jewish Tradition
3.1 YHWH’s Feast in Isaiah 25:6–8
3.2 Banquet with the Son of Man in 1 Enoch 62:14–16
3.3 Table Fellowship in the Yaḥad (1QS and 1QSa)
4 Jesus’s Meals with Sinners as a Performance of a Reversal
4.1 Outlining the Matching Features
4.2 Outlining the Mismatched Features
4.3 Jesus’s Reversal Within the Cultural Pattern
4.4 Jesus’s Reversal Within the Broader Context of Jesus’s Life
4.5 Jesus’s Reversal as an Apocalyptic Sign
4.6 Conclusion
4.7 Sketching the Theological Perspective
Born 1988; 2003-07 studied at M.D. Leontovych Vinnytsia College of Culture and Arts (Ukraine); 2015 MA in Biblical Studies and Theology (Moscow Theological Academy); 2023 Dr. theol. (University of Jena); Research Fellow on the project “Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti digital” at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
- By (author) Serhii Smahlo
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