The Text Itself

Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies. Jesus read the scroll to the people proclaiming the good news. After reading what was written, he continued with “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” Looking at the words in the scroll of Isaiah, we can say that the presence of Jesus fulfills Isaiah’s prophecies centuries before. To clear this further, let us first understand a key term that the group finds relevant in relation to the first main idea. Scroll of the prophet Isaiah Isaiah was a leading prophet during the eighth century whose words transgress through time. Although his prophecies were mentioned back then, his words still continue to live past the centuries and are present even to us today. As stated in the book Who’s Who in the Bible, “His hopeful words offered comfort to a future generation…” (165) This is due to the fact that he is a messenger of God; he speaks of His words. The whole Book of Isaiah is divided into three parts namely: The First Isaiah, The Second Isaiah, and The Third Isaiah. The passage read from the scroll is taken from the third under the subcategory, Promises of salvation.            Moreover, the rolling of the scroll is significant because it shows how Jesus proclaimed and taught in the synagogues. According to the book Mysteries of the Bible, “Luke emphasizes a sense of expectation that filled the room as ‘the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him,’ awaiting his interpretation of the Scripture.” (291) Isaiah wrote the passage, Isaiah 61:1-2, centuries ahead, professing that God would send somebody to help the poor and the oppressed. Jesus, on the other hand, reading the scroll and being present in Luke 4:16-21 indicates that truly, Isaiah’s prophecy has been fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is for the poor and oppressed.             The passage that Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah focused mainly on the poor, “…to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free…” Furthermore, certain words from the passage can be considered synonymous. Firstly, the words “captives”, “oppressed” and “poor” all fall under a particular set of people who belong to the marginalized end of society.  Conversely, there the words “liberty” and “free” likewise mean the same thing. The group believes that the reason behind these synonymous words is that Luke was pointing out this idea—that Jesus has come to “free” or “bring liberty” to the “captives”, “oppressed”, and the “poor” Poor According to Jon Sobrino, S.J., there are two categories to which the poor is divided. The first one is the economic poor whom he describes as “those who hunger and thirst, who go naked, who are the strangers, the sick, those in prison, those who mourn, those weighed down by a real burden.” (6)* Alternatively, there is sociological poor who stand at the margins of society. Sobrino describes them as the people whose “basic social relationships is denied them, and with this, the minimum of dignity.” (6)* Jesus is sided with the poor since it is them who need him more. They are the ones who carry the heavier encumbrances and hope unceasingly for betterment. Furthermore, according to Paul Achtemeier, the situation of the poor “is understood not as a consequence of personal failings but as a result of social factors, particularly injustice.” (807) Aside from the problems that these people face economically and socially, they too are subject to slavery because of the existence of discrimination. In addition to that, Myers points out that we are given the responsibility to uplift the poor people’s lot. A year acceptable to the Lord Based on our research, we believe that this year pertained to is the Jubilee Year. In those times, it is tradition to certain slaves and prisoners free upon the time of the Jubilee year. We came up with this hint since the text indicates, “To let the oppressed go free” and the last line in Isaiah’s prophecy indicates “a year acceptable to the Lord”, we consider the possibility that it is the Jubilee year which this line pertains to.             The coming of the Jubilee year is relevant for it is a time of hope for the poor and oppressed. Leviticus 25: 8-10 explains this: “Seven weeks of years shall you count—seven times seven years—so that the seven cycles amount to forty-nine years. Then, on the tenth day of the seventh month let the trumpet resound; on this, the Day of Atonement, the trumpet blast shall re-echo throughout your land. This fiftieth year you shall make sacred by proclaiming liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when everyone of you shall return to his own property, everyone to his own family estate.” The Church is and should primarily proclaim or be the messenger of the Kingdom of God.             In the text, the word “synagogue” has been said twice and although this repetition is not that significant, the fact that Jesus implied and proclaimed the fulfillment of the passage in the scroll of Isaiah, the synagogue therefore has a significant role in the passage. Perhaps it is in the Church that the revelation of who Jesus is should start and that the Church is the one to proclaim this. Synagogue             The synagogue is a Greek word, which means “gathering of things” or an “assembly of people.” It is a place where the Jews mainly study their bible, Torah. The reading of the Torah is usually appointed by the synagogue director to any adult Jew present, just as with the case in the text where Jesus was handed the scroll of Isaiah for him to read to the people.            When and where the synagogue originated is still unknown but there are many who suggested that they arose in the Babylon exile as response to the loss of the Temple as the center of Jewish life although there are no evidence to support this. On the other hand, some scholars suggest that the synagogues were produced, as a mode of resistance to Hellenism but still, although this option is more likely to be true, there weren’t enough evidence to support such claim.            There were, however, some buildings found in the Nile that were identified as Jewish synagogues but there weren’t any signs that the structure was Jewish. Perhaps, the early synagogues were usually just a large part of a house set aside only for the purpose of gathering and reading the Torah. (Achtemeier, 1007)

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