On turning the other cheek

According to Walter Wink, the interpretive key to Matthew 5:39 is that Jesus specifies being struck on the right cheek. Why the right cheek? In a right-handed world, the only way that one could strike a person on the right cheek is by delivering a back-handed slap, like a master would to his slave. Thus Jesus is counseling the relatively powerless among his hearers on how to assert their equality. Offering the other cheek isn't a way to avoid getting hit again, but his time, he'll have to punch you like you're an equal. It's an appealing interpretation because it provides exegetical validation to the techniques of a variety of non-violent social change movements.

But is Wink correct? Yesterday I was reading On First Principles by Origen, and he chalks up the right cheek detail to one of those absurdities that litter the scriptures which demand a deeper, spiritual, non-literal interpretation:

What could be more unreasonable than the command which simple minds think the Savior gave to his apostles: "Salute no one on the road" [Luke 10:4]? The saying about the right cheek being struck [Matt. 5:39; Luke 6:29] is also most unlikely, for anyone who strikes would strike the left cheek with the right hand unless he happened to suffer from an unnatural condition.

Now Origen, a third century Alexandrian, is as far away from Jesus of Nazareth as I am from the War of 1812. But he is a lot closer to the Sermon on the Mount in time and space than Walter Wink is. If Jesus is speaking directly to the plight of a slave humiliated by a back-handed slap, then it seems like Origen would have recognized the context of that detail immediately.

What gives?

Another question: has anyone written a book on the history of the interpretation of "turning the other cheek?" I'm not familiar with one, but I'd be shocked if there weren't one out there. Seems like that'd be some low-hanging fruit for any number of people eager to get published.

Comments

[Lee]

So don't keep us in suspense! What did Origen think it meant?

[Danny Kam]

I have heard a lot about Walter Wink, but I have never actually read him. I have heard of this interpretation and other interpretations that try to make the right-handed slap into something more based on some obscure interpretational key, but I usually don't give much weight to things like that.

[Marvin]

Lee, he never says. At least not in this section of his writings. He just cites it as an example. A talking snake and a God planting a garden like a farmer is also absurd on the face of it, he says. Higher criticism in the 3rd century! Who'd a thunk it? Well, not really, but it is interesting that you've patristic fathers out there saying stuff like, The Bible has more than a few absurdities and impossibilities.

[Thomas J. Bridges]

I noticed this passage as well. It could actually support Wink's reading: asking for something absurd (of course it depends on whether people are hitting backhanded or not).