When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,
they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law tested him by asking,
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him,
“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

Any commentary on this passage seems superfluous, but then again superfluity is seen in many circles today to be the métier of biblical scholars. It is certainly not something Jesus engages in, not in his treatment of the Pharisees – biblical scholars first and foremost – and not in his answer. Jesus takes their question seriously and gives a somewhat direct answer. It is a serious question, though not altogether clear as to why they ask it: they might be trying to trick Jesus, or trap him in what they suspect might be the shallowness of his learning, but it is a question which he ought to be able to answer as a pious Jew. The answer he gives, that of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5), recited daily by Jews then and now, is not a groundbreaking or shocking answer; it simply places Jesus in the mainstream of Jewish thought.

The second part of Jesus’ response, which is why earlier I called this a “somewhat direct answer,” is that one should love one’s neighbor as oneself. This answer, too, is common in Judaism, given that it is taken from Leviticus 19:18. What is indirect about Jesus’ answer is precisely that he gives two answers.

Now, it seems to me that everyone knows this feeling, no matter what we are being asked: what are your two favorite cities? Your five favorite movies? Ten favorite books? Just two, five and ten? Can we relax the rules a bit? If I mention Vancouver and Rome, how can I leave out Istanbul and Chicago? Is Jesus pushing the limits, just because he cannot decide? He was only asked to name one commandment, yet he must name two.

He does not even plead with the Pharisees, “Just one? No way, I have to mention two. I, and my father for that matter, have two favorites.” The first and greatest is to love God, but “the second is like it.” In what way is the “second like it”? Is it like it in being great? Or is it alike in reality: to love God is to love neighbor? Jesus makes no excuses for offering two commandments instead of one, and makes no apologies: however it is the case, it is. At the heart of Jesus’ understanding of life is to love God and neighbor. Like I said, commentary is superfluous. It is in the doing of it that the two commandments become one.   

John W. Martens

Follow me on Twitter @johnwmartens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.