Mark 12:28-34 closes out a passage describing a series of debates between Jesus and the important political factions in Jerusalem with one of the scribes asking him, “What is the greatest commandment?” Scribes were not just people who made copies of the Scripture but were considered to be experts on it. Ezra was “a scribe skilled in the law.” During the Maccabean period scribes rose to prominence in society as experts on the Law. They were instrumental in the development of the Talmud. By the 2nd century AD they were typically referred to not as “scribes” but as “sages” and eventually as Rabbis. So the man asking this question was a learned scholar of the Scriptures.
Accordingly, Jesus answers him by quoting Scripture. He uses the first two lines of one of the most famous passages of the Torah. Today, observant Jews recite these words twice a day. It’s called the Shema Yisrael because it begins with those two Hebrew words which can be translated: “Hear, O Israel!”
The text in Deutoronmy 6:4,5 reads: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
Since we are reading from a Greek translation of a Hebrew text it may be straining gnats to go into the details of the language used by Mark but I’m going to do it anyway because it fascinates me.
What gets translated “with all” here is literally “from the whole” (ἐξ ὅλος). In another post I mentioned that there are other Greek words that can mean “from.” Here is one of them: εξ (eks). It can also mean “out of.” Unlike ἀπο, which is generally used to describe separation, εξ more often refers to lack of separation. The other word ὅλος (hol-os) is often used in modern English terms such as “holistic.”
The commandment as Mark records it is then: “Love the Lord your God from your the whole heart and from your the whole soul and from your the whole mind and from your the whole strength”
The four sources of love for God are:
καρδία (car-dia) which is familiar English word for heart used in all manner of medical terminology. We think of the heart in more emotional terms today but in Biblical times it was considered not only the source of feeling but of thought. Decisions were made by the heart. No one has yet discovered an ancient Hebrew word for “brain.
ψυχή (psu-chay or in later Byzantine Greek psy-chay) is used here for “soul.” Familiar to us from “psychologist” (one who studies the ψυχή), this word gets translated about half the time as “life” instead of “soul” and occasionally gets translated as “mind.” To me this means there is no fundamental difference between life and soul. They are inseparable. This fits well with the Biblical notion that the dead soul is merely “sleeping” until the resurrection.
διάνοια (dia-noi-a) is used for “mind,” It is one of many Greek words which get translated into English as “mind.” This one seems to be more often associated with the rational thinking process or intellect than some of the others. In the Shema text recorded in the Septuagint (the Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures which was the Bible of the New Testament writers) there is no mention of “mind.”
ἰσχύς (is-chus) is “strength” in Mark’s Greek. It can refer to physcial strength or the military power of a king or city-state. The Septuagint uses δύναμις (du-na-mis) instead. This is the word from which we get “dynamic” i.e. powerful. Is this a distinction that makes no difference? I don’t know but I find it interesting to think about.
When the scribe repeats the saying back to Jesus, he leaves out one source and changes the wording for another. Maybe he left out “soul” deliberately because the Sadducees didn’t believe in souls, angels, or the resurrection. Perhaps he was one of them or just didn’t want to offend them. He uses the word σύνεσις (su-nes-is) instead of διάνοια for “mind.” This is literally “a joining” but is often used to express understanding or comprehension. This choice of wording my have something to do with intellectual disputes that arose during the Second Temple period over the idea of dualism. Perhaps because of this subtle restatement and omission Jesus told him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” That response implies that the scribe still had a distance to go before reaching full understanding; that his faith or committment was lacking.
To summarize the lesson here using a much abused gambling metaphor: You have to be “All In” with heart, life, thoughts, and power to really love God the way He should be loved.
This is a very, very hard thing to do.
And don’t even get me started about how hard it is to love the neighbors.
