Mark and Matthew I: Comparative Readings: Understanding the Earliest Gospels in their First Century Settings (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament) 9783161508370, 9783161515606, 3161508378

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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber/Editor Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber/Associate Editors Friedrich Avemarie (Marburg) Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala) Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL)

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Mark and Matthew I Comparative Readings: Understanding the Earliest Gospels in their First-Century Settings Edited by

Eve-Marie Becker and

Anders Runesson

Mohr Siebeck

E-M B, born 1972, Studies of Theology in Marburg and Erlangen; 2001 Dr. theol.; 2004 Habilitation; since 2006 Professor of New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. A R, born 1968; Ph. D. (2001); Docent (2002), Lund University; since 2003 Professor of Early Christianity and Early Judaism, McMaster University, Canada.

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-151560-6

ISBN 978-3-16-150837-0 ISSN 0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) Die Deutsche Nationalibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://www.dnb.d-nb.de. © 2011 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproduction, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by epline in Kirchheim/Teck using Minion typeface, printed by GuldeDruck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Großbuchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

Preface This book represents the first results of international collaborative efforts, anchored at Aarhus University in Denmark and McMaster University in Canada, to initiate a new approach to the study of the earliest Gospels, Mark and Matthew. The project began in 2008 with a conference in Denmark that focused on comparative readings of these Gospels in their first-century settings, and continued in Canada in 2009, this time consisting of discussions on hermeneutics, reception history, and theology. The Aarhus conference, the results of which are presented here, was made possible by a generous grant from Aarhus University (AUFF) as well as by support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and Mohr Siebeck. For invaluable assistance in organizing the conference we would like to thank research secretary Marlene Jessen, Dr. René Falkenberg, and stud. theol. Helle Bundgaard Laursen, who also helped editing the indices. Many thanks also to doctoral student Nick Meyer and Dr. Jeremy Penner for help with copyediting. A special thanks to Jeremy, who worked around the clock on the penultimate version of the manuscript. Last but not least, we would like to extend our gratitude to Professor Dr. Jörg Frey, the editor of WUNT, for accepting the volume in this series, and to Dr. Henning Ziebritzki and Anna Krüger at Mohr Siebeck for their professionalism and patience during the complex editorial process of preparing the manuscript for publication. December 2010

Eve-Marie Becker, Aarhus, and Anders Runesson, Hamilton

Table of Contents Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V Eve-Marie Becker and Anders Runesson Introduction: Studying Mark and Matthew in Comparative Perspective . . . . 1

1. History of Research Cilliers Breytenbach Current Research on the Gospel according to Mark: A Report on Monographs Published from 2000–2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 David C. Sim Matthew: The Current State of Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

2. Reconstructing the Artifacts: Text-Critical and Linguistic Aspects of the Study of Mark and Matthew Barbara Aland Was heißt Abschreiben? Neue Entwicklungen in der Textkritik und ihre Konsequenzen für die Überlieferungsgeschichte der frühesten christlichen Verkündigung. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Tommy Wasserman The Implications of Textual Criticism for Understanding the ‘Original Text’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Stanley E. Porter Matthew and Mark: The Contribution of Recent Linguistic Thought . . . . . 97

3. Date and Genre Eve-Marie Becker Dating Mark and Matthew as Ancient Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

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David E. Aune Genre Theory and the Genre-Function of Mark and Matthew. . . . . . . . . 145

4. Socio-Religious Location Sean Freyne Matthew and Mark: The Jewish Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Morten Hørning Jensen Conflicting Calls? Family and Discipleship in Mark & Matthew in the Light of First-Century Galilean Village Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Linden Youngquist Matthew, Mark, and Q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Wayne Baxter Matthew, Mark, and the Shepherd Metaphor: Similarities, Differences, and Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

5. Conflict and Violence Warren Carter Matthew: Empire, Synagogues, and Horizontal Violence. . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Lorenzo Scornaienchi The Controversy Dialogues and the Polemic in Mark and Matthew . . . . . 309 John S. Kloppenborg The Representation of Violence in Synoptic Parables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

6. Building Community Using Text Oda Wischmeyer Forming Identity Through Literature: The Impact of Mark for the Building of Christ-Believing Communities in the Second Half of the First Century C. E. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Anders Runesson Building Matthean Communities: The Politics of Textualization . . . . . . . 379

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7. Notes from the Conference: Further Discussion Adela Yarbro Collins Reflections on the Conference at the University of Aarhus, July 25–27, 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 Index of References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

Introduction Studying Mark and Matthew in Comparative Perspective Eve-Marie Becker and Anders Runesson 1. To Compare Is to See Anew The study of Mark and Matthew in comparative perspective has a long history, but mainly insofar as we attempt to solve the Synoptic Problem, and, to a certain degree, to untangle the relationship of these Gospels through redaction-historical analyses. However, ever since the theory of Markan priority became firmly established in the first half of the 19th century, such redaction-historical work has focused on understanding Matthew rather than Mark when they are compared. To be sure, many studies, especially commentaries of either Mark or Matthew, make observations related to the other Gospel as they interpret specific passages or reconstruct certain events; nevertheless, most often the result of studying Mark and Matthew is that one Gospel stands in the shadow of the other. There is, thus, a certain methodological ambiguity in contemporary Markan and Matthean studies that needs careful attention. On the one hand, studies addressing the Synoptic Problem and related issues represent in-depth, detailed comparative analyses. In such studies, however, the comparative approach is limited to source-critical and tradition-historical methodologies. On the other hand, studies dealing with synchronic or diachronic aspects of Mark and Matthew are oriented towards one of the Gospels only, and usually ignore comparative approaches. The result is that the conclusions of such studies usually do not contribute to analyses of the Synoptic Problem and related issues; neither do they shed light on the other Gospel’s literary profile. A sustained comparative approach, however, contributes both to the Synoptic Problem discourse and sheds light on the individual Gospels through an analogy-contrast scheme. Such a scheme, it should be noted, does not presuppose a certain solution to the Synoptic Problem, but leaves that question open. In other words, regardless of whether the two-document hypothesis viz. two-source theory, for example, or the Mark-without-Q hypothesis is preferred, a comparative approach patterned on the analogy-contrast scheme will highlight aspects of the Gospels that are critical for our understanding of the rise and development of gospel literature in the first century C. E. A close comparative reading of both Gospels will, therefore, not only enhance our understanding of Mark and Matthew as they relate to each other, but also

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shed light on each Gospel in its own right, allowing us to see them ‘anew.’ A project focusing on the two earliest Gospels would thus fill a gap in scholarship, especially if it offered a sustained comparative approach from multiple perspectives. Seeing here both a need and a way forward for Gospel studies, we decided to gather an international group of scholars for two conferences that focused on comparative issues, covering traditional approaches as well as more recent methodological developments. The first conference, the results of which are presented here, took place at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, July 25–26, 2008. The second conference was held about a year and a half later at McMaster University in Canada, November 17–18, 2009. The basic impetus behind this project is the assertion that Mark and Matthew have been produced in a context of strong conceptual proximity; thus, they hold the potential to illuminate each other in significant ways and should be understood in relation to one another. A better understanding of Mark and Matthew through the comparative approach is not only achieved on the basis of contrastive reading, but also from the perspective of conjoint reading. Mark and Matthew have consistently and continuously provoked a contrastive reading that challenges their interpreters with respect to their literary and theological propria. Conjoint reading is merited too, however, because the two Gospels share more broadly a first-century C. E. context in which they both contributed to the development of early Christian identity formation. In such processes of identity formation, Mark and Matthew played different but overlapping roles. Sometimes they supported each other, and sometimes they competed; they often marked boundaries, but they also appealed to the Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures that shaped them and their audiences, urging contextualized understandings of their message. In other words, one may say that the heuristics of a sustained comparative approach lies interwoven within the interconnectedness of a competitive companionship. It was with this goal in mind we asked the contributors of the present volume to reflect on Mark and Matthew from different perspectives. The result, we believe, is enlightening and adds significantly to the study of the earliest Gospels in context.

2. Outline and Contributions In this volume, the purpose of comparing Mark and Matthew is to shed light on the earliest history of gospel literature, i. e., the earliest history of Jesus-traditions that were transformed into a more or less coherent Jesus-story that was not only repeated and imitated, but also modified and redefined. Within this comparative approach, the most challenging and deceivingly simple question arises: What is it that makes Mark’s Gospel a Markan Gospel, and Matthew’s Gospel a Matthean Gospel?

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For the Aarhus conference, and thus for this volume, we decided to focus on investigating the first Gospels in their first-century C. E. settings. We have divided the resulting studies under six headings, the first of which, entitled “History of Research,” introduces the project as a whole by placing both volumes in scholarly context. Here, C B presents the current state of research on Mark, focusing on recent monographs that have been published between 2000 and 2009. Breytenbach states that studies “on Mark and Matthew are scarce.”1 At the same time, his survey demonstrates how a comparative approach to both Gospels serves the interpretation of each Gospel respectively: “It seems to me to be of fundamental importance that the question of Mark’s genre should be placed within the general discussion on genres, a discussion that is basic to all literary studies.”2 Thus, the genre debate illustrates most impressively the need for a comparative approach when analyzing the genre of Mark (or Matthew); none of the Gospels can simply be looked at individually. D C. S’ analysis of the state of research on Matthew continues where Graham Stanton’s classic study ended in 1985. Sim notes that, much recent Matthean research has been focused directly on the place of the Matthean community within its various social, political, historical, and religious contexts. Where did it stand in relation to the broader Jewish community? Where did it stand in relation to the variety of viewpoints in the emergent Christian movement? How did it relate to the Gentile world and the issue of Gentile converts? What was its attitude towards Rome, and how were these views expressed in the Gospel narrative?3

These questions, together with such key problems as authorship, date, location, and interpretive methods, are the guiding principles around which Sim structures his observations.4 From a methodological point of view, the fundamental importance of text criticism and linguistics hardly needs an apology in New Testament scholarship, especially within comparative research on the Gospels. In Section 2, “Reconstructing the Artifacts: Text-Critical and Linguistic Aspects of the Study of Mark and Matthew,” B A discusses recent developments in text criticism that have been applied to Mark and Matthew. She starts by claiming that: “This contribution aims to present a simple result, namely to show what it really meant when texts have been copied in the context of early Christian textual transmission.”5 After discussing the ‘kohärenzbasierte genealogische Methode (CBGM: coherency-based genealogical method)’ and its quest for the ‘Ausgangstext (A: “initial text”),’ Aland reaches the conclusion that, “variants in New Testament ¹ C. Breytenbach, “Current Research on the Gospel according to Mark: A Report on Monographs Published from 2000–2009,” 13–32. ² Breytenbach, “Current Research on the Gospel according to Mark,” 31. ³ D. C. Sim, “Matthew: The Current State of Research,” 36. ⁴ Sim, “Matthew,” 33–51. ⁵ B. Aland, “Was heißt Abschreiben? Neue Entwicklungen in der Textkritik und ihre Konsequenzen für die Überlieferungsgeschichte der frühesten christlichen Verkündigung,” 55.

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manuscripts do not indicate an intentionally-styled tradition, but reflect the intense work of fallible people who did their job and who – despite a huge amount of minor variants – were remarkably reliable.”6 T W addresses the more specific problem of the elusive ‘original text.’ Noting that even though “the Gospel text has been affected by textual transmission from the very beginning of its literary history,”7 there is evidence that the situation was not as chaotic in the second century C. E. as has been argued recently by some scholars. He concludes that “the text-critical task will never be finished, but the rich and growing body of textual evidence, the tenacity of the textual tradition, and the refined methods of textual criticism may ensure us that the goal is within reach. The reconstruction of the original text remains an ‘impossible possibility.’”8 Moving on to linguistics, S E. P draws our attention to the fact that, despite its key role for interpreting the Gospels, linguistics has largely been marginalized in mainstream research, even in commentaries focused on the Greek text. In order to address this situation, Porter surveys important recent studies relevant to Mark and Matthew. Then, as he clarifies key terms and categories in linguistic research, he offers new insights into Mark and Matthew from the perspective of lexical semantics, grammatical semantics, syntactical semantics, pragmatics, and discourse. He concludes, “a linguistic framework, rather than something to be feared, presents new and possibly unique opportunities for exegetical work.”9 The articles presented in Section 3 are part of the current discussion on the date and genre of Mark and Matthew. E-M B points to the fact that dating Mark and Matthew is still a pivotal task for Synoptic Gospels research, as it “has important implications for interpreting and understanding the Gospel literature.”10 Becker applies the methods used for dating ancient literature in Classics for the dating of Mark and Matthew, and suggests that a distinction should be made between a ‘relative’ and an ‘absolute’ dating of gospel literature. In this respect, she also demonstrates how a comparative approach to both Mark and Matthew challenges the conventional attempts at dating them individually. In terms of a ‘relative chronology’ Matthew seems to follow Mark rather than vice versa. But because “we could not find an earlier or later date than 70 C. E. in the history of the first century C. E. that could function as a terminus post quem for dating Mark and Matthew, we need to conclude that both Gospels were written either before or after 70 C. E.”11 ⁶ Aland, “Was heißt Abschreiben?” 76. ⁷ T. Wasserman, “The Implications of Textual Criticism for Understanding the ‘Original

Text’,” 77. ⁸ Wasserman, “The Implications of Textual Criticism,” 96. ⁹ S. E. Porter, “Matthew and Mark: The Contribution of Recent Linguistic Thought,” 119. ¹⁰ E.-M. Becker, “Dating Mark and Matthew as Ancient Literature,” 124. ¹¹ Becker, “Dating Mark and Matthew,” 143.

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Since the 1970s, the genre of the Gospels, especially of Mark as the earliest Gospel, but less so of Matthew, has drawn the attention of New Testament scholarship. The question of genre is crucial for all Gospel research, since analyses of genre carries within it interpretive clues that shed light on the meaning of these texts. The genre(s) of the Gospels are notoriously difficult to establish and opinion varies. Many scholars, but not all, would say that all four Gospels share the same literary genre; some would regard this genre as sui generis, others would say it is unclassifiable, or generically ambivalent. The majority would insist, however, that the Gospels share a generic profile with Jewish and/or Greco-Roman literary genres, such as, e. g., biography or historiography. Noting this current state of genre analysis, D A argues that “the Gospel of Mark (followed by the Gospel of Matthew), represents both an imitative and transformative reaction to existing literary genres, i. e., Mark in particular is a type of GrecoRoman biography in the special sense that it is a parody of that genre.”12 Another critical area of investigation enabling scholars to interpret the Gospels from within a contextual frame concerns the socio-religious location in which the texts were transmitted and authored. The social, political, ethnic, religious, geographical, and cultural aspects of these texts need to be taken into account in such analyses. Approaches to the problems associated with these aspects have been many, especially over the last 40 years. In Section 4, we have aimed at renewing these discussions by combining diverse approaches with a comparative perspective. S F examines the Jewish context of the borderland of southern Syria/Phoenicia in the period just before and after the First Revolt (66–70 C. E.). In this context, he explores “how the particular exercises of myth-making that the authors of these two works engage in may become more intelligible by suggesting that they are addressing specific problems facing early Jewish Jesus-followers in different contexts within the general region, and at slightly different historical moments.”13 Contrary to some recent studies, Freyne finds that there is a considerable amount of continuity, despite conflicts between groups, within the highly complex matrix of post-war Judaism. M Hø J argues that neither Mark nor Matthew has a Galilean provenance, only a Galilean cradle. Because this Galilean cradle left significant marks on both Gospels, however, Jensen considers the different ways this fact may further the study of these texts. In order to limit the material, he chooses one test case: Jesus’ seemingly contradictory statements on family life and discipleship, as they are preserved in the earliest strata of the Jesus traditions. Referring to recent archaeological investigations, and drawing on sociological studies, Jensen creates a Galilean reading scenario and sets the scene for his investigation as follows:

¹² D. Aune, “Genre Theory and the Genre-Function of Mark and Matthew,” 147. ¹³ S. Freyne, “Matthew and Mark: The Jewish Contexts,” 179 f.

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[I]t is reasonable to assume that if rural Galilee was as strong as ever, the amount of animosity encountered in Mark and Matthew might stem from a Galilean experience of rejection caused by just the slightest suggestion of change and indirect critique. On the other hand, if the foundation under family life was already considerably eroded, the animosity preserved in Mark and Matthew needs, plausibly speaking, a more profound basis of direct critique from the Jesus movement to make sense.14

Focusing on the former scenario, Jensen concludes that Mark and Matthew display what he terms “a Galilean experience of rejection. … [T]he ‘conflict in calling’ described in the Gospel material was ‘a Galilean fact’ rather than an intended program per se.”15 Paying close attention to Q, L Y focuses on the literary sources and their internal relationship in order to draw conclusions about the socio-religious outlook of the communities behind the texts, with a special emphasis on Matthew as a user of both Mark and Q. Despite the fact that Matthew and Q have much in common regarding several fundamental socio-religious issues, and Mark differs from them both, it is commonly assumed that Matthew has used Mark, rather than Q, as the main text around which he created his own narrative. According to Youngquist, however, a close analysis of Matthew’s use of sources reveals that Q is at the centre of Matthew’s story, and Markan material is used only to illustrate Q. Such a conclusion has implications for how the relationship between these communities is reconstructed. W B argues for approaching the problem of socio-religious orientation spectrically. He focuses on a key metaphor in Mark and Matthew, the shepherd, and compares its appropriation in these two Gospels. He argues that this metaphor is used in a variety of contexts – both Jewish and Greco-Roman – but in very different ways, and by comparing its usage the central convictions inherent in these texts are revealed. By placing Mark and Matthew in this wider context, Baxter concludes that, unlike the case with many other texts written by Christ-believers, in both Mark and Matthew this metaphor was associated with Jewish national restoration, a distinctly Jewish concern. However, “on a continuum mapping belief in Jewish national restoration, while both Mark and Matthew would be positioned closer to the end advocating Jewish nationalism, Matthew would be much closer to the nationalistic end pole than Mark.”16 W C’ study, entitled, “Matthew: Empire, Synagogues, and Horizontal Violence,” forms a bridge between Section 4 on socio-religious location and the more thematically constricted Section 5, which deals specifically with aspects of conflict and violence. Limiting his analysis to the Gospel of Matthew, Carter notes that many studies in the past have attempted to interpret the ‘reli¹⁴ M. H. Jensen, “Conflicting Calls? Family and Discipleship in Mark & Matthew in the Light of First-Century Galilean Village Life,” 208 f. ¹⁵ Jensen, “Conflicting Calls?” 231. ¹⁶ W. Baxter, “Matthew, Mark, and the Shepherd Metaphor: Similarities, Differences, and Implications,” 281 f.

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gious’ conflicts in the synagogue to determine Matthew’s social location. This, however, creates a distorted picture, and Carter aims at describing the situation beyond such a restrictive perspective. He argues that, since synagogues were not isolated religious institutions but were places of imperial negotiation, and given that the Roman empire was the societal foreground in which late firstcentury C. E. Judaism and Matthew were embedded, the vertical, elite-generated pressure of negotiating the empire provides the primary context in which we might most appropriately understand the horizontal verbal violence between Matthew’s group and the synagogue(s).17

Noting that the early Jesus movement is often thought of as “a force for peacemaking and non-violence in the violent world of Mediterranean society,”18 J S. K highlights the fact that this movement was prepared to use violent metaphors and to imagine acts of violence carried out on its behalf. Some of these violent metaphors were taken from apocalyptic imagery associated with the final judgment; others, however, mirror the realities of daily life in ancient Mediterranean society. Regarding Mark and Q, Kloppenborg concludes that almost all representations of violence remain within the realm of realistic representation. Matthew, however, displays “the widest development of scenarios of lethal violence. Matthew expands the scope and intensity of divine violence so that it is applied both to opponents and to underperforming insiders.”19 L S’ study, entitled, “The Controversy Dialogues and the Polemic in Mark and Matthew,” focuses on the controversy dialogues specifically, since most of them are considered to be the “key to understanding Jewish-Christian polemical relations in the first century.”20 Against this background the comparative approach to Mark and Matthew can illuminate more extensively how and against whom Mark and Matthew are conceptualizing the controversies when they are reporting on conflicts between Jesus and the Jewish authorities. Scornaienchi states that even if both Gospels “want to show the aggression of the Jewish religious leader against Jesus as the reason for his death on the cross,” they also vary in how they “delineate a speech ethic as a normative principle through which Jesus appears as vir bonus in the debate.” While Mark “intends to write an apology of Jesus in a pagan context,” Matthew presents “Jesus’ teachings in the internal search for a new Jewish identity.”21 The articles in the final section of the volume, Section 6, focus on the problems associated with using text to build communities. We have chosen here to have two distinct contributions on Mark and Matthew respectively; these studies should, therefore, be read together, so that they may illuminate each other. While the topic itself, the use of text as a community building tool, allows for reception ¹⁷ ¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹

W. Carter, “Matthew: Empire, Synagogues, and Horizontal Violence,” 286. J. S. Kloppenborg, “The Representation of Violence in Synoptic Parables,” 323. Kloppenborg, “The Representation of Violence,” 351. L. Scornaienchi, “The Controversy Dialogues and the Polemic in Mark and Matthew,” 310. Scornaienchi, “The Controversy Dialogues,” 320.

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of historical approaches, the focus here is limited to first-century C. E. scenarios. O W raises the question of identity formation through the use of literature in her article, “Forming Identity Through Literature: The Impact of Mark for the Building of Christ-Believing Communities in the Second Half of the First Century C. E.” She begins her study by stressing that the Gospel of Mark works as the first Christian book in a twofold sense: 1) The religious impact of the Gospel of Mark was made through its presentation of the life, teaching, and passion of Jesus. 2) The literary impact of Mark’s Gospel as the first Jesus-book is often undervalued. By giving the Christ-believing communities a book of their own, the author of the Gospel of Mark provided the communities with a new, independent, and distinct cultural standing.22

Wischmeyer thus assumes that Mark’s refusal to disclose author and audience is, in the end, part of his literary strategy that “requires a broader audience of Christ-believing communities and individual persons.”23 In his article, “Building Matthean Communities: The Politics of Textualization,” A R examines the socio-political implications of textualizing oral tradition. Based on the most recent advances in synagogue research, he argues that the group that wrote down these traditions was in the process of leaving behind the larger Pharisaic collective to which they had previously belonged. The Matthean text, together with the Didache, provided these radical messianic Pharisees with the material they needed for building their own association. Runesson then examines the processes of building community through instruction and example, looking specifically at how ritual practice, national identity, and counter-colonization helps in these community building processes. He maintains that, while the Gospel of Matthew displays clear traces of the local context in which the Gospel was formed, it was intended for a global audience that would, it was hoped, adopt its version of messianic Judaism. As such, building Matthean communities using this text (as well as the Didache) meant no less than taking on the Roman Empire and subduing it to the God of Israel. A conference is held to bring people together in order to further the state of research by the mutual sharing of insights. This is done both by developing shared convictions in new directions and by disagreement; debates are central to any progress in our field. The outcome of our discussions and deliberations is mirrored to a certain degree in the published contributions. This does not mean, of course, that the studies presented to the reader are the final word. In order to capture some of what our interaction brought up as well as to invite further discussion as the reader is about to exit the book, we asked A Y C to write down her observations from the conference. In her contribution, “Reflections on the Conference at the University of Aarhus,” she chose to ²² O. Wischmeyer, “Forming Identity Through Literature. The Impact of Mark for the Building of Christ-Believing Communities in the Second Half of the First Century C. E.,” 355. ²³ Wischmeyer, “Forming Identity Through Literature,” 376.

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focus on one issue in the study of Matthew, namely Matthew’s Jewishness, as well as on the problem of genre in the Gospel of Mark. Her comments are not to be seen as a ‘conclusion’ to the volume, but rather as an indicator of the encouraging fact that discussion continues beyond both the conference setting and the pages of this book.

3. Résumé and Prospect This volume presents to the reader articles that investigate the first-century C. E. contexts of Mark and Matthew, with the aim of better understanding them through comparative analysis. Of course, more can be said, and other aspects of Gospel study could and should be addressed in future studies in order to develop further the potential of the comparative approach. The articles of the second volume of the Mark and Matthew project, which is currently in preparation, will continue to explore the Gospels within new settings, focusing on hermeneutics, reception history, and theology.24 The present volume illustrates the heuristic gains of a comparative, multi-perspectival approach to Mark and Matthew. All of the complex problems involved in the study of Mark and Matthew cannot be solved in this volume, but they can be addressed in fresh ways so that the interconnected competitiveness of these writings becomes more evident. The earliest Gospels cannot be regarded as isolated phenomena. Rather, the close relationship between them points to their intended interaction between Christ-believers as they shaped their narratives. One could perhaps even say that this literary and theological interaction created the phenomenon of what may be called ‘Christian literary culture.’ This would be true regardless of how we perceive of the Gospels within the frame of GrecoRoman and Jewish literature, and the question of the innovative aspect as it relates to the Gospel genre in that setting. The innovative traits in the Gospel narratives are undeniable, and they indicate a literary vigor that goes beyond simple narrative framing and redactional interpretation of diverse Jesus-traditions. Once we appreciate how Mark and Matthew together conceptualize the ‘gospel’ story, we will be able to see, from the perspective of their close literary companionship, how they each contribute to the shape of the narrative gospelconcept in more detail. It is our hope that the publication of this and the following volume will not be the end of a fascinating undertaking but rather a beginning of new readings of the earliest Gospels. This notion of beginning again ‘anew,’ or reading and rereading, is already inherent within the intentions of both Mark and Matthew, and thus a lifelong task for all Markan and Matthean scholars. In the opening of ²⁴ E.-M. Becker and A. Runesson, eds., Mark and Matthew. Comparative Readings II: Hermeneutics, Reception History, Theology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; in preparation).

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the Gospels, both authors write of a ‘beginning’ (archē, Mark 1:1; genesis, Matt 1:1), which is then replaced, or followed up, by a new beginning in the closing verses of each Gospel (Mark 16:8; Matt 28:16–20), forcing the reader to start all over again. From the very beginning, the exercise of reading Mark and Matthew comparatively has been an intriguing project, one that will continually call for the earliest Gospels to be read ‘anew,’ discovering again and again that, “… jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne ….”

1. History of Research

Current Research on the Gospel according to Mark A Report on Monographs Published from 2000–2009 Cilliers Breytenbach Six years ago, in 2004, Andreas Lindemann published his report on Markan research from 1992 till 2000.1 His essay is valuable for many reasons, not least because it helps us to follow certain tendencies in Markan research.2 Rather than structuring the current report according to categories such as volumes of essays, monographs, specific topics, expositions of particular passages, and commentaries, as Lindemann did, I shall focus this review on the literature that has been published in monograph form since 2000. When necessary, the preceding discussion will be briefly summarized. Sometimes the question is not only what was published, but rather what questions have not been addressed. It is not possible to give due credit to new commentaries,3 nor is it commendable to pay attention to the volumes of collected essays on Mark or monographs confined to specific episodes or single passages of the Gospel.4

1. Methodological Issues Lindemann was able to cover an array of monographs on methodological questions. Apart from his reviews of traditional redaction-critical work5 and more ¹ A. Lindemann, “Literatur zu den Synoptischen Evangelien 1992–2000 (III): Das Markusevangelium,” TRu 69 (2004): 369–423. ² D. Dormeyer, Das Markusevangelium (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005), ends his monograph on various topics in Markan research with a chapter on the contemporary discussion. ³ Cf. C. Evans, Mark: 8:27–16:20 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001); J. R. Donahue and D. J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2002); C. Focant, L’évangile selon Marc (Paris: CERF, 2004); M. E. Boring, Mark: A Commentary (Louisville: WJK Press, 2006); A. Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007). I have to leave aside the numerous short commentaries and introductions on Mark that have been written for teaching purposes. ⁴ Cf. J. Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard: Ideology, Economics, and Agrarian Conflict in Jewish Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006); A. P. Wilson, Transfigured: A Derridean Re-reading of the Markan Transfiguration (London: T & T Clark, 2007); A. de M. Kaminouchi, But It Is Not So among You: Echoes of Power in Mark 10:32.45 (London: T & T Clark, 2003); G. Keerankeri, The Love Commandment in Mark: An Exegetico-Theological Study of Mark 12:28–34 (Rome: PIB, 2003). ⁵ Cf. G. van Oyen, De studie van de Marcusredactie in de twintigste eeuw (Leuven: Peeters, 1993).

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modern narrative analysis,6 or readers’ response criticism,7 it became clear that the methodological perspective on Mark was widened in the nineties to include perspectives from the textual sciences within a broader semiotic framework, a promising new development.8 Since 2000, “aural criticism”9 and “performance criticism,” which had been developed from sociolinguistics and became fairly popular amongst researchers on Native American and African folklore,10 struck the exegetical guild.11 As had been the case regarding narrative and readers’ response criticism, Markan studies again became the testing ground for this new approach. Whitney Shiner assumes that the first “readers” of Mark’s Gospel would, in fact, have been “listeners,” since they would not have appropriated its meaning through silent reading. Instead, they would have had the text read out aloud to them, and hence “performed,” within a community setting.12 The book aims “to recover the experience of a Gospel performance in its first century setting” (1) by investigating the historical evidence available to us for reconstructing the nature of oral literature and oral performance in the ancient world, and by examining the Gospel of Mark itself for clues that it supplies with regard to its “performance style.” Shiner poses the following questions: Why would Mark’s Gospel have been presented in oral performance? What form might this oral performance have taken? What emphasis might such an oral performance have had, and what would have been the manner of delivery? Would Mark have been read from a scroll or a codex, or would the Gospel have been memorized (and if so, does its structure facilitate this)? How did ancient audiences typically react to oral performances, what motivated their responses, and how did such performances secure their involvement? Literacy levels were low (it is estimated that less than ⁶ Cf. T. E. Boomershine, Story Journey: An Invitation to the Gospel and Storytelling (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988); P. Müller, “Wer ist dieser?” Jesus im Markusevangelium: Markus als Erzähler, Verkündiger und Lehrer (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1995). ⁷ Cf. R. Fowler, “Let the Reader Understand:” Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991); B. M. F. van Iersel, Mark: A Reader-Response Commentary (trans. W. H. Bisscheroux; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). ⁸ Cf. O. Davidson, The Narrative Jesus: A Semiotic Reading of Mark’s Gospel (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1993); S. Pellegrini, Elija – Wegbereiter des Gottessohnes: Eine textsemiotische Untersuchung im Markusevangelium (Freiburg: Herder, 2000). ⁹ Cf. J. Dewey, “The Survival of Mark’s Gospel: A Good Story?” JBL 123 (2004): 495–507; idem, “From Storytelling to Written Text: The Loss of Early Christian Women’s Voices,” BTB 26 (1996): 71–8; idem, “The Gospel of Mark as an Oral-Aural Event: Implications for Interpretation,” in The New Literary Criticism and the New Testament (ed. E. Struthers Malbon and E. McKnight; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 145–60; idem, “Oral Methods of Structuring Narrative in Mark,” Int 43 (1989): 32–44. ¹⁰ Cf. A. Joubert, The Power of Performance: Linking Past and Present in Hananwa and Lobedu Oral Literature (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004). ¹¹ Cf. http://www.biblicalperformancecriticism.org/. ¹² Cf. W. Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel: First-Century Performance of Mark (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003). Further references to this work shall be made parenthetically in the main body of the text. The same procedure will apply to the following works under discussion.

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10 per cent of the population of the Roman Empire could read), books had limited circulation (they were difficult to read as well as expensive), and “for most types of communication, people preferred to hear a written message rather than read it silently” (11). Oral performance was thus important in the ancient world, and Shiner reviews the many different types of oral performance in the Roman world that might have served as a model for the recitation of the Gospel (private readings, public readings, storytelling, etc.), the forms adopted (novel, drama, pantomime, poetry, epic), and the nature of reading in worship contexts, both Jewish and Christian. Shiner thus uses performance criticism as a theoretical framework to conceptualize what happened to the Gospel of Mark after it had been written. It was written to be performed. One could, however, flip the question around and ask what had been performed and in what way before Mark was written. Performance criticism could help us to conceptualize the phase of oral transmission in a more responsible way. Unfortunately, this possibility has not been realized in the following publications. An upsurge of publications on orality is closely related to performance criticism. Theoretical insights into orality and audition encouraged some researchers to reopen old questions. In his dissertation presented in Durham, Terrence C. Mournet gives a brief overview of oral tradition in early form critical studies that focuses on the development of general oral studies since 1960 and its influence on New Testament studies.13 After discussing the interface between oral communication and written texts and highlighting the characteristics of oral communication, he applies these insights to the synoptic question. His conclusion reaffirms an insight, which had been underlined by early form critics, that there was a living oral tradition that influenced the literary phases of development of the synoptic Gospels: Given the extent to which oral communication dominated ancient society, we must look beyond the rigid, highly – and often exclusively literary models of Synoptic Gospel interrelationships that dominate the current academic landscape. Despite the understandable desire to reconstruct an elegant model of Gospel interrelationships, which a strictly literary paradigm enables one to do, we must begin a shift away from an exclusively literary model of Synoptic interrelationships towards an understanding of the Jesus tradition that is able to take account of the highly oral milieu that existed during the time of Gospel composition. (293)

Armin D. Baum also addresses the synoptic question. He, however, includes insights from experimental psychology into the abilities of human memory, such as research on Serbo-Croatian oral poetry, native North American and West African folklore, and rabbinic tradition.14 He concludes: ¹³ Cf. T. C. Mournet, Oral Tradition and Literary Dependency: Variability and Stability in the Synoptic Tradition and Q (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). ¹⁴ Cf. A. D. Baum, Der mündliche Faktor und seine Bedeutung für die synoptische Frage: Analogien aus der antiken Literatur, der Experimentalpsychologie, der Oral Poetry-Forschung und dem rabbinischen Traditionswesen (Tübingen: Francke, 2008).

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While not impossible it is improbable that the relationship of the first three Gospels to each other can be described in terms of simple literary dependence. As the different analogies have made clear, several characteristics of the New Testament synoptic evidence find no satisfactory explanation without the influence of oral tradition and human memory. (403)

“Therefore strong literary dependence including the Two-Source Hypothesis does not offer a satisfactory answer to the Synoptic Question. Yet the assumption of Markan priority has been confirmed” (411). Whilst Mournet asks for a revision of the traditional historical-critical approach which attempts to solve the Synoptic Problem on the basis of literary documents, Baum presents his view boldly: “Every single aspect of the Synoptic Problem may be accounted for if Matthew and Luke drew their common Markan material from the same oral source as Mark had done before them” (413). Any methodological approach to establish pre-Markan tradition hinges on the view one takes on the Synoptic Problem. It makes a fundamental difference if one allows for the influence of living oral tradition on the passages from Mark retold by Matthew or Luke. Only after one has carefully studied what happened to Mark’s material in Luke and Matthew, and not how Matthew and Luke integrated the Markan tradition in their narratives, will we be able to rule out the possibility that what is normally taken as Matthean or Lukan redaction contains pre-Markan tradition. One cannot escape the impression that orality and audition have been put to the service of conservative scholarship. Those who initiated this turn to performance studies have carefully avoided this caveat and underlined the fact that comparative studies in oral literature and performance studies should have a sobering effect on those who have too much optimism when setting out their search for pre-Markan tradition.15 A more positive approach is that of Bridget Gilfillan Upton. By comparing Mark with the novels by Chariton and Xenophon of Ephesus, she reviews the evidence which suggests that Mark and these novels were written for listening. She then applies aural and speech act theory to the various endings of Mark to illustrate how – in comparison with Xenophon’s Ephesian Tale – these texts (Mark 16:1–8; 16:9–20 and the shorter ending of 16:9 in k) were heard by ancient audiences.16

¹⁵ J. Dewey and E. Struthers-Malbon, eds., Orality and Textuality in Early Christian Literature (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995); B. W. Henaut, Oral Tradition and the Gospels: The Problem of Mark 4 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993); C. Bryan, A Preface to Mark: Notes on the Gospel in its Literary and Cultural Settings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) and the essays on Mark in R. A. Horsley, J. A. Draper, and J. M. Foley, eds., Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory and Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006). ¹⁶ Cf. B. G. Upton, Hearing Mark’s Endings: Listening to Ancient Popular Texts through Speech Act Theory (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

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2. Traditions in Mark’s Gospel Alongside aural studies, traditional source criticism still has its proponents. For the time being the traditional form of the two-source hypothesis seems to be unchallenged by the newer commentaries on Mark. But neither have the theories of a proto-Mark,17 the Secret Gospel of Mark,18 nor the priority of Matthew been put to rest. David Neville urges the proponents of Markan priority and posteriority to rethink their presuppositions on the division, arrangement, and order of parallel pericopes when conceptualizing Gospel formation, since evidence based on compositional order is ambiguous and inconclusive.19 In the light of the oral – aural debate, the relationship between Mark and Q has to move beyond traditional source criticism. The overlaps between Mark and Q are explained best when one allows that both Mark and Q independently drew on oral tradition.20 In the last two decades the question of the dependence of John on the synoptic Gospels has been answered in a markedly positive way by recent Johannine scholarship.21 If John’s Gospel is taken to be part of the aural reception history of Mark, it is no longer possible to claim that the Markan/Johannine parallel tradition has roots in common pre-Markan, pre-Johannine tradition. This, however, was the position taken by various commentators on John. Focusing on the making of the canonical Mark, Hugh M. Humphrey moves beyond narrative criticism toward the compositional stages behind the earliest narrative Gospel.22 “If ‘theology’ first of all is the process of bringing faith to expression, the composition history of Mark’s Gospel illustrates that process” (7). Mark came into being in three stages as the work of one person (an educated and affluent Alexandrian, who was at one time Peter’s interpreter in Rome, then the founder of the Alexandrian church), starting with a narrative version of Q (Mark 1–13), to which the passion-resurrection story was added (Mark 14–16) at a second stage. Finally, some complementary editing was done to produce the current Gospel. “In my view, the Gospel of Mark results not from the editing of unattested documents by an unknown redactor for unspecified purpose(s), but ¹⁷ Cf. D. Burkett, Rethinking the Gospel Sources: From Proto-Mark to Mark (New York: T & T Clark, 2004). ¹⁸ Cf. J. Dart, Decoding Mark (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003). ¹⁹ D. Neville, Mark’s Gospel – Prior or Posterior: A Reappraisal of the Phenomenon of Order (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002). Since one is well served by David Neville’s earlier report on the question of Markan priority and the two-source hypothesis, the reader is referred to this work: idem, Synoptic Source Criticism (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1994). ²⁰ Cf. F. Rothschild, Baptist Traditions and Q (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). ²¹ Cf. M. Labahn and M. Lang, “Johannes und die Synoptiker. Positionen und Impulse seit 1990,” in Kontexte des Johannesevangeliums: Das vierte Evangelium in religions- und traditionsgeschichtlicher Perspektive (ed. J. Frey and U. Schnelle; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 443– 515. ²² Cf. H. M. Humphrey, From Q to “Secret” Mark: A Composition History of the Earliest Narrative Theology (London: T & T Clark, 2006).

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from the ever-maturing theological reflection of the Christian tradition’s first evangelist, Mark” (7). At least one traditional source Mark used can be established with reasonable certainty: the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Since Joel Marcus had been restudying the use of quotations from the Old Testament from the perspective of Mark’s Christology,23 several studies on the use of specific Old Testament traditions have followed. Thomas Hatina24 discussed the function of Scripture in Mark’s Gospel, providing “an evaluation of the various contexts that have been proposed by historical critics for reading Mark’s quotations and allusions.” Former approaches are considered to be inadequate for “the lack of consideration given to the narrative of Mark’s Gospel as the primary context within which the quotations and allusions are embedded.” He proposes “a model for reading scriptural quotations and allusions that is sensitive to both the narrative of Mark’s Gospel and the historical setting within which it is written” (3). Hatina thus focuses on the context of the story world as the arena of literary criticism and narrative criticism (1). Various short studies appeared on the use of specific books from the Old Testament in Mark,25 flanked by Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll’s study on the literary interaction between the Gospel of Mark’s passion narrative and four Psalms of individual lament alluded to in it.26 In the four psalms David is depicted as one who in his suffering challenges God’s role, searches for understanding of his suffering in the light of his past relationship with God, and attempts to move God ²³ J. Marcus, The Way of the Lord: Christological Exegesis of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark (2nd ed.; London: T & T Clark, 2004). ²⁴ T. R. Hatina, In Search of a Context: The Function of Scripture in Mark’s Narrative (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002). ²⁵ Cf. the report on previous research on the Old Testament in Mark in R. E. Watts, Isaiah’s New Exodus and Mark (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 9–28. Unlike him, M. D. Hooker, “Isaiah in Mark’s Gospel,” in Isaiah in the New Testament (ed. S. Moyise and M. J. J. Menken; London: T & T Clark, 2005), 35–49, restricted her essay to those passages where clear citations or allusions to the book of Isaiah occur; cf. Hooker, “Isaiah.” Other essays on the OT in Mark: T. R. Hatina, ed., The Gospel of Mark (vol. 1 of Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels; London: T & T Clark, 2006); S. Moyise, “Deuteronomy in Mark’s Gospel,” in Deuteronomy in the New Testament (ed. M. J. J. Menken and S. Moyise; London: T & T Clark, 2007), 27–41; C. Breytenbach, “The Minor Prophets in Mark’s Gospel,” in The Minor Prophets in the New Testament (ed. M. J. J. Menken and S. Moyise; London: T & T Clark, 2009), 27–37; D. E. Hartley, The Wisdom Background and Parabolic Implications of Isaiah 6:9–10 in the Synoptics (New York: Lang, 2006); N. R. Parker, The Marcan Portrayal of the ‘Jewish Unbeliever:’ A Function of the Marcan References to Jewish Scripture: The Theological Basis of a Literary Construct (New York: Lang, 2008). ²⁶ Cf. S. Ahearne-Kroll, The Psalms of Lament in Mark’s Passion: Jesus’ Davidic Suffering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Cf. also R. Watts, “The Psalms in Mark’s Gospel,” in The Psalms in the New Testament (ed. S. Moyise and M. Menken; London: T & T Clark, 2004), 25–45; J. McWhirter, “Messianic Exegesis in Mark’s Passion Narrative,” in The Trial and Death of Jesus: Essays on the Passion Narrative in Mark (ed. G. van Oyen and T. Shepherd; Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 69–97: He seeks to identify a process of “messianic exegesis” that lies behind the Old Testament citations in Mark’s passion narrative.

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to act on his behalf because of his suffering. Because Mark alludes to these psalms in reference to Jesus, David’s concerns become woven into the depiction of Jesus in Mark. On this background the necessity of understanding Jesus’ death as inevitable within an apocalyptic framework is questioned. The suffering king David offers a more appropriate model for Jesus’ suffering in Mark than, as Watts has argued,27 that of the servant from Deutero-Isaiah.28 This clash of opinions shows that the inter-textual study of Mark and the Septuagint is a rich and promising field for research, revealing much about Mark’s compositional techniques and theological aims.29

3. On the Text of Mark Henrich Greeven’s comprehensive text-critical analysis of Mark, in which he suggests various deviations from the standard text, has been published posthumously.30 The question as to the ending of Mark’s Gospel has not been put to rest. After meticulously reviewing a seemingly closed debate, N. Clayton Croy reopens the question by arguing that the beginning and end of the codex have been mutilated accidentally.31 Attention has been given to rhetorical devices like irony32 and paradox,33 but specific studies on the style of Mark’s text are still rare.34 After reviewing pre²⁷ Cf. note 25. Watts argued that the new Exodus theme of Isaiah (particularly DeuteroIsaiah) is the hermeneutical key not only to the structure of the second Gospel but to Markan Christology and soteriology as well. ²⁸ In a later essay, “Challenging the Divine: LXX Psalm 21 in the Passion Narrative of the Gospel of Mark,” in Trial and Death, 119–48, Ahearne-Kroll re-examines Mark’s passion narrative through the lens of Ps 21. ²⁹ One example of compositional technique should suffice. The pattern of using basic citations from Deuteronomy and combining them with a second citation from another book of Moses seems to be a compositional technique often used by Mark. He follows this procedure in 7:10 (Deut 5:16 + Exod 21:17) and 12:19 (Deut 25:5–6 + Gen 38:8). The allusion to Deut 24:1 in 10:4 is followed by a combination of two citations from Genesis (Gen 1:27 + 2:24). These cases prove that in citing the books of Moses, Mark’s use of the commandments from Deuteronomy becomes fundamental. Other texts are attached to the Deuteronomistic base text. Cf. C. Breytenbach, “Die Vorschriften des Mose im Markusevangelium,” ZNW 97 (2006): 23–43. ³⁰ Cf. H. Greeven and E. Güting, eds., Textkritik des Markusevangeliums (Berlin: LIT, 2005). The Markan text of Codex Vaticanus is meticulously studied by J. Voelz, “The Greek of Codex Vaticanus in the Second Gospel and Marcan Greek,” NovT 47 (2005): 209–49. ³¹ N. C. Croy, The Mutilation of Mark’s Gospel (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003). ³² In his essay, “The Irony of Power in the Trial of Jesus and the Denial by Peter – Mark 14:53–72,” in Trial and Death, 229–45, T. Shepherd seeks to understand both the blasphemy charge and Peter’s denial of Jesus from the perspective of power, paying special attention to “power transactions” located within both of them. He argues that these two stories are a Markan intercalation – a storytelling technique that Shepherd links with “dramatized irony” in previous research. ³³ Cf. H. F. Santos, Slave of All: The Paradox of Authority and Servanthood in the Gospel of Mark (London: T & T Clark, 2003). ³⁴ One still has to rely on the dated contributions of M. Zerwick, Untersuchungen zum

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vious research on verbal aspect, Rodney J. Decker35 carefully distinguishes between “Aktionsart,” being the progress or modification of an action (17), that is, the state of completion of an act, and aspect, being the temporal relationship between the event time and the reference time, according to the speaker’s interests (17). Following John Lyons’ definition of deixis, Decker reviews Stanley Porter’s theories on verbal aspect in Hellenistic Greek by investigating the text of the Gospel of Mark: “Porter’s theory does, indeed, work consistently and adequately in handling the data of the text” (148). Paul Danove attempts to apply constructional grammar (a further development of case theory, first theorized by the renowned American linguist Charles Fillmore in the 1960s) to the analysis of the Markan text.36 “Constructional Grammar describes the grammar of a language in terms of grammatical constructions that identify a particular set of sentence elements and detail the syntactic and semantic constraints on these elements” (16). The analysis moves through three levels: from syntactic analysis (describing the number of mandatory and optional constituents required by a predicator), semantic analysis (describing the roles “arguments play in representing the state of affairs designated by a predicator” [21]), and lexical analysis (describing how each constituent is realized lexically and is labeled according to traditional categories). Danove then demonstrates the application of such analysis to the Gospel of Mark.

4. Mark as Narrative Studying Mark as a narrative text has become the state of the art.37 The development of the plot, characterization, and focalization (point of view) has gotten ample attention.38 In his monograph on narrative Christology, Jacob C. Naluparayil argues on the basis of a narratological analysis of the plot and the point of view of all main character groups that, although Jesus the protagonist is the Lord (1:2–3) and the beloved Son of God (1:11), he is primarily the divine Son of Man Markus-Stil: Ein Beitrag zur stilistischen Durcharbeitung des Neuen Testaments (Rom: PBI, 1937) and the notes of Turner and Kilpatrick which were republished together with some of his own contributions by J. K. Elliott, The Language and Style of the Gospel of Mark: An Edition of C. H. Turner’s “Notes on Marcan Usage” Together with Other Comparable Studies (Leiden: Brill, 1993). ³⁵ Cf. J. R. Decker, Temporal Deixis of the Greek Verb in the Gospel of Mark in Light of Verbal Aspect (New York: Lang, 2001). ³⁶ Cf. P. L. Danove, Linguistics and Exegesis in the Gospel of Mark: Application of a Case Frame Analysis and Lexicon (Sheffield: Academic Press, 2001). ³⁷ Cf. the introduction by D. Rhoads, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel (2nd ed; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999) and his collection of essays, Reading Mark, Engaging the Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004). ³⁸ Cf. O. I. Oko, “Who Then Is This?” A Narrative Study of the Role of the Question of the Identity of Jesus in the Plot of Mark’s Gospel (Berlin: Philo, 2004); Y. Bourquin, Marc, une théologie de la fragilité: Obscure clarté d’une narration (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2005).

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on earth (2:10, 28) who accomplishes his role as the Christ, the Son of God, through his suffering, death, and resurrection.39 In a volume including five previously published articles, Paul Danove’s detailed linguistic method is developed further to analyze the rhetoric of repetition and the characterization of God, Jesus, Jesus’ disciples, and the women at the tomb in the Gospel of Mark.40 The beliefs developed about God, Jesus, and his disciples are analyzed by means of their semantic and narrative rhetoric and the relations among and organization of such beliefs. Danove distinguishes beliefs that are assumed for the audience (e. g., beliefs about God, Jesus, and Jesus’ disciples) from beliefs that the narrative cultivates for the audience. Many interpreters will take 1:1–15 as a kind of prologue41 and 16:1–8 as an epilogue to the Gospel. On the structuring of 1:16–8:21 though, there is a variety of opinions. This might be due to the fact that since Ernst Lohmeyer’s and Robert H. Lightfoot’s composition-critical, Willi Marxsen’s and Werner Kelber’s redaction-critical, and Elizabeth Struthers Malbon’s structuralist study of space in Mark, there is a recognizable lack in narratological studies on the “settings” of Mark’s story. By asking spatial rather than temporal questions, Eric C. Stewart’s innovative study tackles the problematic geography of Mark’s Gospel.42 Using both modern critical social theory of spatiality and an exhaustive review of ancient evidence, he demonstrates how Mark’s spatial perceptions reflect Greek, Roman, and Jewish understandings of human geography. He argues that in Mark Jesus offers an unique spatial practice by challenging the spatial practice of the synagogue and temple, and the power of those in charge of those spaces, and by constructing a new space around himself (223–4).

5. Mark as Genre and Genres in Mark Since 2000, there has been some calm on the field of the genre of Mark, but Michael E. Vines has written a monograph comparing the Gospel of Mark with the Jewish novel:43 “the chronotype of the Gospel of Mark most closely resembles that of the Jewish novels. … Like the Jewish novels, an expectation of divine deliverance permeates Markan time and space. In both, Mark and the Jewish novel, faithful human agency is the means by which divine deliverance from ³⁹ Cf. J. C. Naluparayil, The Identity of Jesus in Mark: An Essay on Narrative Christology (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 2000). ⁴⁰ Cf. P. L. Danove, The Rhetoric of Characterization of God, Jesus, and Jesus’ Disciples in the Gospel of Mark (New York: T & T Clark, 2005). ⁴¹ Cf. H.-J. Klauck, Vorspiel im Himmel? Erzähltechnik und Theologie im Markusprolog (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1997). ⁴² Cf. E. C. Stewart, Gathered Around Jesus: An Alternative Spatial Practice in the Gospel of Mark (Eugene: Cascade, 2009). ⁴³ Cf. M. E. Vines, The Problem of the Markan Genre: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish Novel (Leiden: Brill, 2002).

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forces opposed to God’s rule is achieved” (153). Mark was written in unstable times in which people longed for Israel’s past and yearned for the future, expecting God to act on behalf of the Jews. “The chronotype of the Gospel of Mark lies between Israel’s epic past and its eschatological future” (154 f.). As in Esther, Job, and Judith, God is one of the main actors in the story, and he omnisciently implements his divine plan on earth (Mark 8:31, 33; 9:31). “In all three, divine intervention is at the centre of the action” (155). “Considered chronotypologically, the Gospel of Mark is a story of divine deliverance accomplished through human agency, set in an eschatological charged time” (160).44 Paul M. Fullmer places Mark into a literary-historical perspective.45 After introducing the narrative style, motifs, themes, rhetoric, and structure of “popular novelistic literature,” he maintains, on the basis of its composition, that the Gospel of Mark is a fast-paced episodic narrative that does not belong to the genre of the Bios; rather, popular novelistic literature provides the author with “a style, a set of motifs and themes and a basic narrative structure which he could follow without necessarily envisioning his work to be a biography, history, apocalypse, midrash, or memorabilia” (57). Fullmer proves this point by analyzing the topos of resurrection. This topos in Mark is based upon a popular motif sequence (confusion, death, the presence of a crowd and resurrection and enlightenment [134]) already present in Hellenistic epic novels (e. g., Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoë, dated before 50 C. E., and the Homeric epic) but it is also discernible in the prophetic prose of the Hebrew Bible since Hosea (cf. Ezekiel and the Elijah and Elisha miracle stories). It re-emerges in a hybrid form in early Jewish literature (Tobit, 2 Maccabees 7, additions to Daniel, and Josephus, Asen.), thus forming part of Mark’s literary-historical context. Fullmer illustrates that the evangelist was familiar with both the epic and prophetic mode of the resurrection narrative by analyzing the literary-historical context of such episodes as the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, the healing of the boy with the unclean spirit, and the resurrection of Jesus (197). In her study on the anecdote genre, Marion C. Moeser examines Lucian’s Demonax, the stories about Rabbi Gamaliel II in the Mishnah (m. Mo‘ed Qat.) and Mark, and reviews previous research on the subject of chreia.46 Although ⁴⁴ In a later essay, “The ‘Trial Scene’ Chronotype in Mark and the Jewish Novel,” in Trial and Death, 189–203, Vines compares Mark’s trial narrative with Jewish martyrdom stories. Using five features common to Jewish martyrdom stories, he seeks to highlight such features in Mark’s Gospel and concludes that Mark’s Gospel is, if not identical, at least comparable to such martyrdom stories. Along the same line K. O’Brien, “Innocence and Guilt: Apologetic, Martyr Stories, and Allusion in the Markan Trial Narratives,” in Trial and Death, 205–28, argues that the Markan trial narrative lacks elements that are crucial to the genre of apologetic, such as a defense and an appeal to an independent third party. Mark’s trial narrative is closer to Jewish martyr stories. ⁴⁵ Cf. P. M. Fullmer, Resurrection in Mark’s Literary-Historical Perspective (London: T & T Clark, 2007). ⁴⁶ Cf. M. C. Moeser, The Anecdote in Mark, the Classical World and the Rabbis (Sheffield: Academic Press, 2002).

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anecdotes are small units, fitting into larger genres that serve a variety of purposes, their transformative rules about content, form, and function do not change across cultures. The fifteen anecdotes in Mark 8:27–10:45 are analyzed and classified mainly in terms of Aelius Theon’s Progymnasmata. They are either free standing snapshots or elaborative chreia compiled for argumentative purposes. In this valuable work Moeser opens up possibilities to answer more questions on the literary conventions which determined the context of Mark’s Gospel composition and paves the way for an argumentative analysis of large sections of Mark’s discourse. In a comparative study in literary history, Florian Hermann has gone a long way in placing Mark’s passion narrative in the context of fifty ancient death reports (Todesberichte).47 Hermann investigates strategies of the presentation of death in Old Testament, early Christian and early Jewish, and rabbinic texts (37– 108). He proceeds to analyze the depiction of death after a judicial verdict, through enmity and force by others, and depictions of dying honorably or in shame (109–288). After this broad treatment of texts – from Isaiah 53 to Suetonius – Hermann concludes with “Strategien der Todesdarstellung,” a narratological summary of the recurring elements in the depiction of death (289–325). The Markan passion narrative is briefly analyzed (329–82) and is found to fit well into the context of ancient death reports. Although Mark puts the common strategies for the depiction of death in ancient literatures to the service of his Christology, he does not portray the crucifixion of Jesus as a noble death. Because of its diverting Christological profile, Hermann regards Mark’s passion narrative as a genre sui generis. The fruitful contributions of Vines, Fullmer, and Hermann demonstrate that a sound narratological analysis applied to the Gospel of Mark (or discernible narrative parts thereof) in comparison to other texts from a similar literary historical context can produce promising results.

6. The Date and Origin of Mark’s Gospel In his study on the date of Mark’s Gospel, James G. Crossley argues that the external evidence that links the Gospel of Mark to Peter, and the internal evidence that is used to establish a date around the time of the Jewish War, are inconclusive.48 He argues that other earlier situations could also fit the historical evidence of Mark 13, in particular the crisis during the reign of Caligula, and concludes that the situation reflected in Mark 13 allows for dating Mark sometime between the mid to late 30s C. E. and 70 C. E. (43). Therefore Mark 13 is ⁴⁷ Cf. F. Herrmann, Strategien der Todesdarstellung in der Markuspassion: Ein literaturgeschichtlicher Vergleich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010). ⁴⁸ Cf. J. G. Crossley, The Date of Mark’s Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity (London: T & T Clark, 2004).

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of little value for dating the Gospel. The Jesus of Mark breaks no biblical law and Mark really does not show any signs of the Torah being challenged. Crossley thus suggests a date for Mark sometime before the 50 C. E. (125), before the Pauline challenge to the Torah (cf. 125 and 208). In order to substantiate his case, he argues that Jesus was Sabbath observant (2:23–28), did not contradict the biblical law of divorce (10:1–12), and launched no attack on biblical food laws (7:1– 23).49 Three recent books seek, independently of each other, to reopen questions that are of perennial interest to many, yet unsolvable: the provenance and purpose of the Gospel of Mark. These studies reveal that provenance is, in fact, the crux interpretum for the explanation of authorial intent; while the authors agree on the dating of Mark, their vastly different explanations concerning Mark’s purpose cannot be made, and rightly so, from the provenance they establish. Two of them place Mark and his community in Rome, the other in the Galilee. Brian Incigneri argues that Mark and his community were located in Rome.50 They knew about the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, they remembered the triumphal procession of Vespasian and Titus up to the Temple of Jupiter, and they recalled the persecution by Nero. They had to be extremely careful not to provoke Roman hostility and suspicion. Mark is a coded text designed to console and assure his audience, who could not dare to criticize the Roman political situation openly. His portrayal of the disciples aims to show his readers that, if Jesus could forgive those who denied and abandoned him, those in the Markan community should forgive the ones who may have denied and abandoned the community under tribulation. The code Mark uses to criticize the Roman political elite would be obvious to his Christian readers. Under threat Mark used “cryptic allusion[s] … understandable only to insiders” (226), for “it would have been unwise to circulate a document, even privately, that might further incriminate Christians, one that might appear critical of the emperor, of Titus, or of Roman society” (227). The story of the healing of blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52) echoes and challenges the story of Vespasian healing a blind man (Tacitus, Hist. 4.81). James and John arguing about which of them is greater criticizes the political ambitions of Titus and Domitian. Hendrika Roskam argues that the Markan redaction reveals the suffering of his readers, which took place in the Galilee after the Jewish War.51 The Galilee is the location of the community, as one can infer from Mark’s depiction of the last instructions to the disciples to meet Jesus in the Galilee. Against many, she ⁴⁹ It is a pity that Crossley overlooked J. Svartvik’s erudite interdisciplinary study on Mark 7:1–23 which concluded that the story is not about purity but about the perils of evil speech: Mark and Mission: Mark 7:1–23 in its Narrative and Historical Contexts (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2000). ⁵⁰ Cf. B. J. Incigneri, The Gospel to the Romans: The Setting and Rhetoric of Mark’s Gospel (Leiden: Brill, 2003). ⁵¹ Cf. H. N. Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in Its Historical and Social Context (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

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rightly maintains that Mark is familiar with Galilean geography. He also refers to Galileans like James the Younger and Joses as if they were known to the readers. Mark 13:9 plays a key role. In order to prevent Roman intervention after the Jewish War, the Jewish leadership kept peace by handing over troublemakers. Mark thus wanted to appease the Jews and Romans alike: Jesus, the legitimate Son of God, could be worshiped by Jews; since he had no political aspirations, he was no threat to Rome, and neither were his followers.52 After a survey of the research on the purpose of Mark’s Gospel, Adam Winn53 asks “what realities moved [Mark] to provide a written account of Jesus’ life” (1). According to him, Mark was writing after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple for a fearful Christian community in Rome who, because of Nero’s purge, were very concerned that Vespasian might regard Christians as seditious and resume persecution (171–2). After witnessing the triumphal procession of Vespasian and Titus through the streets of Rome in 71 C. E., the fragile community wavered in their faith (170–6). Mark did not intend to write a theology of the cross but to show that Jesus’ power far exceeded that claimed for the new emperor, an alleged miracle worker and savior of the world. The question of the origin and provenance of the Gospel is far from settled. First, one has to develop a hypothesis on the intention of the Markan story without moving out of the text, plotting one’s own selection of the narrated episodes onto an assumed historical situation. Without this restraint, the argument becomes circular and the effort it takes to reconstruct communities behind the Gospels, to quote Dwight N. Peterson, is “not worth the trouble.”54

7. Markan Topics 7.1. Discipleship Discipleship has always been a popular topic of Markan research, although its investigation has resulted without significant progress in scholarship. Exploring the interrelated topics of Christology and discipleship within the apocalyptic context of Mark’s Gospel, Susan Watts Henderson55 focuses on six passages: Mark 1:16–20; 3:13–15; 4:1–34; 6:7–13; 6:32–44; 6:45–52. Together, these passages indicate that the disciples failed to understand not only Jesus’ messianic ⁵² J. Kloppenborg, “Evocatio Deorum and the Date of Mark,” JBL 124 (2005): 419–50, adheres to the view that the Gospel of Mark provides a retrospective view on the Jewish-Roman war of 66–70 C. E. ⁵³ Cf. A. Winn, The Purpose of Mark’s Gospel: An Early Christian Response to Roman Imperial Propaganda (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). ⁵⁴ D. N. Peterson, The Origins of Mark: The Markan Community in Current Debate (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 202. ⁵⁵ Cf. S. W. Henderson, Christology and Discipleship in the Gospel of Mark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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identity per se, but also the apocalyptic nature of his messiahship, as well as its implications for their own participation in God’s coming reign. The implications of this for Mark’s Gospel as a whole are to situate Mark’s Christological claims within the broader context of the apocalyptic “Gospel of God.” This lends coherence to Mark’s bifocal interest in miracle and passion. It also illuminates the relationship between Mark’s Jesus and his followers as those who carry forward his own mission. The continuation of this mission demonstrates the coming kingdom of God, which is fully assured although not yet fully in view. Is this new?56 Albeit that the merger between a traditional form-critical and a narratological approach is promising, Cédric Fisher’s57 view that the disciples in Mark’s narrative serve not only as a negative but also as a positive role model also has many forerunners. New is the thesis by Thorsten Reiprich that Mark recaps the question of the family of Jesus from 3:20–21 and 30–35 in 15:40.58 In Reiprich’s reading, Mary, the mother of James the Younger in 15:40, is identified with the mother of Jesus (cf. 6:3). She is called Mary and not the mother of Jesus, since after initially regarding Jesus as being beside himself (3:21), she too has left her biological family to become part of the family of God. In this sense she serves as example for all those who leave their natural families in order to belong to Jesus and to do the will of his father (3:30–35). 7.2. Soteriology A topic which has become quite en vogue in the last couple of years is the significance of Jesus’ death in the Gospel of Mark. I will confine myself to the monographs on this topic.59 Disregarding the narrative approach to understanding the death of Jesus, Alexander Weihs concentrates his voluminous treatment of the interpretation of Jesus’ death60 on a meticulous exegesis of the three Passion predictions in 8:31, 9:31, and 10:32–4 and on Mark 10:45 and 14:24. He discusses whether the divine necessity of the death of Jesus does not pose a theological problem concerning the nature of the atonement (in German, stellvertretende Sühne). After rehearsing research on δεῖ and παραδίδοναι ὑπέρ τινοϚ, he considers the motives of the persecuted prophet and the suffering servant as possible background. Although not developed in the Gospel of Mark, the motives of ⁵⁶ Cf. I. B. Driggers, Following God through Mark: Theological Tension in the Second Gospel (Louisville: WJK, 2007). ⁵⁷ Cf. C. Fischer, Les disciples dans l’évangile de Marc: Une grammaire théologique (Paris: Gabalda, 2007). ⁵⁸ Cf. T. Reiprich, Das Mariageheimnis: Maria von Nazareth und die Bedeutung familiärer Beziehungen im Markusevangelium (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008). ⁵⁹ One can be surprised by the number of articles – since 2000 I have counted seven essays and one collection of essays on this topic. Cf. G. van Oyen and T. Shepherd, eds., Trial and Death. ⁶⁰ Cf. A. Weihs, Die Deutung des Todes Jesu im Markusevangelium: Eine exegetische Studie zu den Leidens- und Auferstehungsansagen (Würzburg: Echter, 2003).

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“Sühne” and “Stellvertretung” (atonement and vicarious suffering) are taken to be of fundamental importance to the Gospel. The study of Peter G. Bolt claims to interpret the cross in the context of Mark’s Gospel and the latter in the light of the ancient Israelite and the GrecoRoman milieu.61 Bolt argues that when Jesus speaks of the cup (10:38), he is referring to the wrath of God. The ransom in 10:45 is taken to be a ransom from the consequences of sin, from the authority of the devil, from death, and from the wrath of God, revealing “how revolutionary Christian mercy was” (79) in the Greco-Roman world. Here, too, one has the strong impression that layers of dogmatic tradition blur the view. These two studies illustrate the problem of any study on Markan soteriology. Unless key passages like Mark 10:45 and 14:24 are interpreted within the narrative framework of the Gospel, they cannot be protected from dogmatic misreadings. 7.3. Theology and Eschatology Gudrun Guttenberger presents the reader with an overall interpretation of the Gospel of Mark by focusing on the concept of God which is presupposed and developed within the Gospel.62 She approaches her study against the backdrop of recent discussions on monotheism and Christology. In a rather old-fashioned way she adheres to redaction criticism, enriching it with synchronic methods of analysis, especially narrative criticism. This is, however, bent in such a way that she asks for the real author’s intention and seeks to reconstruct the way in which the historically intended readers understood the text. She bases her interpretation on the prologue of the Gospel and the synoptic apocalypse. In Mark, God, on the one hand, is transcendent, keeping distance from the events on earth, as can be inferred from his role at the baptism and transfiguration. On the other hand, he is present, being responsible for Jesus’ passion and for the rejection of his message, as is illustrated in 4:11ff. Through his will as lawgiver and creator he puts a demand on all humankind. Guttenberger touches upon various aspects of the theo-logy of Mark in her study. God allows history to develop, determining its path without interfering with the actual invents, without saving the suffering from current persecution. At the eschaton, which he himself determines, he will save the faithful. From the perspective of God as “Lenker der Geschicke,” Guttenberger asks how Mark relates evil to his concept of God: Mark avoids any form of dualism and integrates human evil and error in God’s divine purpose. It is impossible to give due time to this valuable work, which – although traditional in its approach – contributes to a topic which has been neglected in Markan research. ⁶¹ Cf. P. G. Bolt, The Cross from a Distance: Atonement in Mark’s Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004). ⁶² Cf. G. Guttenberger, Die Gottesvorstellung im Markusevangelium (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004).

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Focusing on Mark 1:1–15, Christian Rose examines the image of God.63 Previously the relationship between Christology and theology has often been determined by theology. Rose claims that the narrarator in Mark develops an image of God through his presentation of Jesus Christ. Thus, the oldest Gospel depicts a certain form of “theology as a narrative.” Rose thus uses narrative criticism and reader response criticism. He focuses on Mark 1:1–15 as the beginning of the narrative and the basis for the entire text, but extends his analysis to Mark 1:21–28, 2:1–12, 9:2–13, and 15:33–41. By keeping an eye on the whole narrative, he demonstrates that the deliberately polyvalent wording in Mark 1:1 shows not only that Mark but Jesus Christ himself has to be regarded as a narrarator of God’s Gospel. David du Toit addresses the theme of the absent master of the house in the Gospel of Mark, using a text like 2:18–20 as a point of departure.64 He argues that we should not read Mark through Matthean eyes, especially Mark’s Christology, and illustrates that the narrative depicts the time Jesus was present as a time of joy and the advent of salvation. This can be seen in the mighty deeds the Markan Jesus performs. For a short time the eschaton is present. Jesus’ presence suspends normal action as the story of the grain plucked at the Sabbath illustrates. As long as Jesus is present, there is no room for fear, as the narrative of Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee shows. But when Jesus leaves, the time of tribulation and fear has come. This is the reason why the women at the grave react with fear to the message that “he is not here.” According to du Toit, the story of Mark is structured by the demarcation of the time of the presence of Jesus and his absence after Easter. The time of absence is a short interim period separating his presence as messenger of the Kingdom from that of his return as Son of Man. Since the master of the house is not there, it is a time of abandonment without the saving presence of the Lord during which the faithful amongst the followers of Jesus are extremely endangered and have to adhere to his instructions amidst persecution, taking care not to be led astray. Du Toit manages to raise many new issues in the interpretation of Mark and has reopened the debate on Markan eschatology with a contribution which utilizes all the resources available from literary criticism and philology. 7.4. Mark and History Eve-Marie Becker has taken a new approach in solving the problem of the origin of Mark.65 From the point of view of the theory of history, she situates the Gos⁶³ Cf. C. Rose, Theologie als Erzählung im Markusevangelium: Eine narratologisch-rezeptionsästhetische Studie zu Mark1,1–15 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). ⁶⁴ Cf. D. S. du Toit, Der abwesende Herr: Strategien im Markusevangelium zur Bewältigung der Abwesenheit des Auferstandenen (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2006). ⁶⁵ Cf. E.-M. Becker, Das Markus-Evangelium im Rahmen antiker Historiographie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006).

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pel within the context of ancient history writing. In her monograph she analyzes the relationship between myth and historiography, historiography and biography, between historiography and its sources, event and narration, and historiography and theology. As an interpreter of the events accompanying the Jewish War, Mark stands at the cradle of Christian history writing. In order to place Mark within the context of ancient history writing, she compares the Gospel with contemporary historians like Artapanus, Nikolaus of Damascus, Flavius Josephus, and Tacitus. Then she concludes that Mark, in the light of its sources and in its purpose, should be regarded as ancient historiography. This sets an innovative agenda for Markan research and has to be discussed thoroughly. 7.5. Studies on Individual Sections and Specific Topics According to Anne Dawson, the concept of freedom in the Gospel of Mark reflects the social and political environment of the first-century Mediterranean world. She discusses the radically different concept of liberating power as freedom in the Gospel against the background of the Roman notion of peace that was prevalent in the political ideology expressed in the res gestae divi Augusti.66 Johannes Majoros-Danowski shows how Mark formed the story of Jesus the Messiah by utilizing the biblical traditions of Elijah as they were passed on within Second Temple period Judaism. This serves to highlight in detail the context of the Gospel of Mark in contemporary Judaism.67 Engaging with previous research on Mark’s portrayal of women (by, inter alia, Elisabeth Fiorenza, Elisabeth Malbon, Monika Fander, Mary Rose D’Angelo, Mary Ann Tolbert, Joanna Dewey, and Hisako Kinukawa), Susan Miller68 examines the Markan narratives where female characters play a significant role in order to determine the distinctive role played by women in Mark’s apocalyptic world view, and in the eminent egalitarian Kingdom of God. Timothy C. Gray69 analyzes one of the most striking elements of Mark’s story: the vital role the Jerusalem temple plays in Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem until the moment of his death. Mark’s readers knew that the temple had been destroyed and his narrative world “was generated by the events surrounding the demise of the Temple” (4). Gray’s narrative analysis of Mark’s use of the temple in chapters 11–15 sheds light on the theological portrait Mark paints of Jesus’ mission, teaching, and identity. This focus upon the temple serves to show how Jesus and his community will replace the temple. Mark also employs the temple as the backdrop for much of the passion narrative in order to portray the death of Jesus ⁶⁶ Cf. A. Dawson, Freedom as Liberating Power: A Socio-Political Reading of the Exousia Texts in the Gospel of Mark (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000). ⁶⁷ Cf. J. Majoros-Danowski, Elia im Markusevangelium: Ein Buch im Kontext des Judentums (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008). ⁶⁸ Cf. S. Miller, Women in Mark’s Gospel (London: T & T Clark, 2004). ⁶⁹ Cf. T. C. Gray, The Temple in the Gospel of Mark (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).

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in an eschatological vision that is deeply linked to the temple. Gray analyzes Mark’s use of intertexts from the Old Testament in chs. 11–15 with great care and highlights a pattern of Old Testament prophetic oracles that relate to the destruction of the First Temple, as well as other prophetic texts that point to the restoration of Israel that would follow such a tribulation.

8. Mark in his Contemporary Context In the aftermath of liberation theology and in the wake of post-colonial readings of the Bible, seasoned scholars have presented comprehensive interpretations of the first Gospel which try to address the socio-political situation of their modern readers.70 In the light of the current worldwide phenomenon of homeless people seeking refuge, Michael Trainor reads the Gospel through the lens of “the quest for home” and illustrates the way in which this topic gives coherence to Mark’s narrative, whilst bringing biblical scholarship into dialogue with the contemporary world.71 He sets out by examining the role of the “house” in both Greek and Roman societies, taking into account archaeological research; he traces the place of the household within society through the writings of philosophers (i. e. Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero); and he explores the relationship between household, society, and relationships within the household itself. The household of Jesus is in conflict with the religious, economic, and domestic worlds of his time, culminating in the crucifixion as the ultimate symbol of homelessness. Drawing on the theory of communicative action by Jürgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt, Carsten Jochum-Bortfeld contrasts Mark’s view of the human being with concepts of the ideal human (the aristocratic male) in Plato, Aristotle, the Cynics, Cicero, Seneca, the Stoics, up to Tacitus. By developing a human utopia, the evangelist renounces the prevalent social construction of humanity. In Mark’s narrative, Jesus enables the menstruating woman, the Syrophoenician woman, Bartimaeus the blind beggar, the poor widow, and the woman who anointed him.72 “In the Gospel of Mark the social construction of the role and status of people is negated and turned upside down” (197). The actions of those people, whose status did not allow them to be socially accepted, are acknowledged by Jesus, who acts in a non-hegemonic way. By calling and empowering those who were worthless in the eyes of the ruling class to follow him, he upgrades them immensely, binding them to himself (237). Mark places this reconstruction of humanity within the context of his Christology and theology of creation. ⁷⁰ Cf. E. C. Maloney, Jesus’ Urgent Message for Today: The Kingdom of God in Mark’s Gospel (New York: Continuum, 2004); R. Horsley, Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel (Louisville: WJK, 2001). ⁷¹ Cf. M. F. Trainor, The Quest for Home: The Household in Mark’s Community (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2001). ⁷² Cf. C. Jochum-Bortfeld, Die Verachteten stehen auf: Widersprüche und Gegenentwürfe des Markusevangeliums in den Menschenbildern seiner Zeit (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008).

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9. Matthew and Mark Studies on Mark and Matthew are scarce.73 Anne M. O’Leary’s “inter-critical” study of Mark and Matthew demonstrates that creative imagination was the principal means by which classical authors such as Virgil, Seneca, Plutarch, and Livy composed their works.74 An examination of the imaginative use of sources in both Jewish (Tobit) and Christian (1 Corinthians) documents in this light sets the context for an examination of Matthew’s use of Mark in the light of the same Greco-Roman literary conventions. “Penned in Greek, probably to Diaspora audiences, the canonical Gospels reflect Graeco-Roman rather than strictly Palestinian Jewish literary conventions.” Matthew uses the techniques of omission and variation to portray Jesus and the disciples more positively, and those of addition and conflation to “amplify his Christology” (117). Using Mark as a source, Matthew creates a “well balanced poly structure” based on key Jewish numerals (two, three, five, and sevenfold structures) and judaizes the material by embedding into it texts from the Torah, particularly into the mission and community discourses. By analyzing the way in which Matthew incorporates his Markan source into his text, and the function and effect of this source in its new Matthean context, O’Leary provides compelling evidence that Matthew used Mark toward the Judaization of his Gospel and the Christianization of Judaism.

10. Summary Firstly, the view that Mark is a narrative, an “episodical narrative” – if I may use my own phrase – has found broad acceptance. This does not mean, however, that the discourse is always analyzed and interpreted with the necessary rigor that is based on sound narrative criticism. But there seems to be a growing consensus that one first has to understand the story before one can start using it to answer historical questions concerning its origin, date of provenance, etc. It seems to me to be of fundamental importance that the question of Mark’s genre should be placed within the general discussion on genres, a discussion that is basic to all literary studies. From this perspective, it is imperative to ask two different types of questions: 1) to which genre does Mark belong, and 2) what type of text is the Gospel. The first question of genre is historical. Drawing on comparative literary history one should venture to place Mark’s Gospel somewhere within the Hellenistic Jewish literature of its time. As to precisely where, no clear consensus has yet been reached. Regarding the second question, i. e. the type of ⁷³ Cf. S. Barton, “The Transfiguration of Christ according to Mark and Matthew: Christology and Anthropology,” in Auferstehung – Resurrection (ed. F. Avemarie and H. Lichtenberger; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 231–46. ⁷⁴ Cf. A. M. O’Leary, Matthew’s Judaization of Mark: Examined in the Context of the Use of Sources in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (London: T & T Clark, 2006).

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the text of Mark’s Gospel, more of a consensus has been reached. It is a narrative, an episodical narrative. But within this narrative, there are many episodes that are arguments or narrarated speeches of Jesus that consist of proverbs, parables, aphorisms, or arguments on the basis of Scripture. One will make little progress on the question of genre unless a text typology of the individual episodes and their relationships are analyzed from a firm text-theoretical perspective. The results should then form the basis from which to select the appropriate material for a comparative study. Secondly, the fact that Mark created a narrative about the past in which he presents the past of the Galilean Jesus for his hearers opens up the possibility of rephrasing Ernst Käsemann’s question about the Christological and historical relevance of the narrative form. This question should be pursued further, recognizing the recent developments in the discussion of theorical approaches to history. Thirdly, historical narratives are told for various reasons, a primary one of which is to provide an orientation of time for their intended audience. The constructions of the reality that Mark presupposes and promotes have been dealt with by Guttenberger and du Toit. These questions should be pursued further. For example, if time and events are determined by the one creator, when the sun becomes dark, when the moon loses its shine, and the stars fall from heaven, and with the return of the presently absent master of the house, what then is the relevance of the commandments given by Moses? Thus, the construction of reality, the ethos shaping the identity of those who stay faithful to the words of the absent Jesus must be uncovered through the interpretation of the narrative, and then it could be utilized to determine the place of this important text within the development of early Christian religion. Fourthly, one should not give up on the question of what was before Mark. Insight into the process of the composition of Mark is invaluable for Markan studies. Precisely because this is the case, our research should rigorously distinguish between what we can know, what we can infer from the text, and what we are merely supposing. The evidence we have does not allow for much in the category of what we can know. Finally: We have nothing but the text. All sound research on Mark has to be checked against this text. This is why it is so disturbing that there is so little research on the style, syntax, and semantics of the text. There is also a need for studies on the rhetorical aspects of the text – studies that ask how the narrarator lets his main character argue with his opponents and how he goes about instructing his followers. The formal and functional aspects of Mark’s text still allow for another decade of research.

Matthew The Current State of Research David C. Sim 1. Introduction It is instructive to begin this investigation into Matthean studies in the early twenty-first century by referring to a previous survey. Anyone working on the Gospel of Matthew knows and admires the detailed survey of Matthean scholarship from 1945 to 1980 by Graham N. Stanton.1 In this magisterial and influential work, Stanton not only identified the major issues and trends in the field over those decades but he also made his own important contributions in the course of his discussion. Stanton’s mastery of Matthew’s Gospel and its scholarship was further evidenced in the following decade or so when he published a number of significant studies that established him as a leading authority in the area. In his survey Stanton divided the subject matter into seven distinct categories, the last of which was a long Bibliography that need not concern us further, and it is interesting to examine briefly the other categories and sub-categories that occupied his attention. After a brief examination of recent and influential Matthean works in the first section,2 Stanton moved on to particular subjects. His second category concerned Matthew as evangelist and focused on the structure and sources of the Gospel, as well as redaction criticism which had asserted itself as the method par excellence in the period under review.3 In the third section, Stanton examined Matthew as a possible polemicist or apologist.4 This invited, on the one hand, an investigation into whether the evangelist was directly opposing and criticizing an alternative Christian view that was manifestly antinomian. Stanton concluded that the arguments for this thesis were not strong, and that there was precious little evidence for an intra-Christian polemic in the Gospel. On the other hand, this topic necessitated an evaluation of Matthew’s relationship with contemporary Judaism. Scholars had long observed that in Matthew’s story Jesus and the disciples are engaged in a serious and prolonged dispute with the scribes and Pharisees, and ¹ G. N. Stanton, “The Origin and Purpose of Matthew’s Gospel: Matthean Scholarship from 1945–1980,” ANRW 2.25.3 (1985): 1890–1951. ² Stanton, “Origin and Purpose,” 1890–95. ³ Stanton, “Origin and Purpose,” 1895–1906. ⁴ Stanton, “Origin and Purpose,” 1906–21.

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that the Matthean Jesus was highly critical of these adversaries. While some of this material was found in Matthew’s sources, much of it was introduced by the evangelist himself. In explaining why Matthew had emphasized this particular theme, scholars postulated a conflict between the evangelist’s Christian group and the wider Jewish community, and the question then arose as to the implications of this dispute. Was Matthew’s community still a part of the Jewish religious world, or had this conflict resulted in it renouncing its Jewish heritage? With characteristic clarity Stanton identified two major approaches to this question. The first is the so-called intra muros view, which holds that the evangelist and his community, despite their conflict with other Jewish groups in the postwar period, still identified themselves within Judaism. The alternative theory, the extra muros position, posits that the Matthean community’s conflict with competing Jewish groups had led to its separation from its Jewish roots, and that this Christian group was now in the process of defining itself against Judaism. Stanton himself favored the second of these alternatives. The fourth section of Stanton’s survey concerned Matthew as a theologian, and discussed the standard theological issues – the Gospel’s Christology, ecclesiology, its use of the Old Testament, its attitude towards the Torah, and its overall purpose.5 In the section that followed, Stanton examined the origin of this Gospel.6 Here he analyzed the various hypotheses proffered for Matthew’s location, many of which appeared in the 1970s, as well as the consensus position that it was written in the latter part of the first century. In the sixth and final section of his survey, poetically entitled “Whither Matthean Scholarship,” Stanton rather adventurously speculated as to where Matthean studies might be headed in the late 1980s and beyond,7 and it is instructive to note his predictions. First of all, Stanton suggested that systematic accounts of Matthew’s theology would doubtless appear. Secondly, and more in hope than with certainty, he stated that there was an urgent need for several full-scale commentaries on Matthew. Thirdly, Stanton believed that the work being done on first-century Judaism by Jacob Neusner and others would be highly beneficial to future studies of the evangelist’s relationship with Judaism. Finally, he expressed the view that the methods of the social sciences could be further exploited in Matthean studies. Let us consider briefly these predictions of Stanton. His first prophecy remains largely unfulfilled. While Richard T. France published an impressive and detailed account of Matthew’s theology in the late 1980s,8 nothing comparable has been published since. Shorter and more basic introductions to Matthean theology were written by Ulrich Luz,9 Donald P. ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹

Stanton, “Origin and Purpose,” 1921–41. Stanton, “Origin and Purpose,” 1941–3. Stanton, “Origin and Purpose,” 1943–5. R. T. France, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1989). U. Luz, Theology of the Gospel of Matthew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

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Senior,10 and John K. Riches,11 but there is still a desperate need for a detailed and advanced treatment akin to the many studies of Pauline theology that are currently available. In direct contrast, Stanton’s second prophecy or wish, that the study of Matthew’s Gospel would be well served by major and full-scale commentaries, has been more than fulfilled in the past two decades. Not long after Stanton wrote, Joachim Gnilka published a detailed two-volume commentary in German,12 and this was followed less than a decade later by another dual-volume commentary, this time in English, by Donald A. Hagner.13 But even these excellent commentaries were soon surpassed. The three-volume commentary of W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison published between 1988 and 1997 is detailed, learned and authoritative, and is without doubt the finest commentary of the Gospel in English.14 In German-language scholarship, the commentary of Ulrich Luz is equally impressive and has the added advantage of presenting the history of interpretation (Wirkungsgeschichte) of each Matthean pericope. Luz’s magisterial work, comprising four volumes in the original German, has undergone a number of revisions and is now fully available in a three-volume English translation.15 In addition to these indispensable works, a number of very fine singlevolume commentaries have been published since the turn of the century.16 Stanton’s third and fourth predictions were also right on the mark. The influential work of Jacob Neusner on the (Pharisaic) reconstruction of Judaism in the period following the first Jewish revolt, in other words the emergence of Formative Judaism, has been profitably utilized in Matthean studies. Moreover, this topic has been greatly enhanced by the application of social-scientific methods which have proven to be influential tools in this and other areas of Matthean scholarship. As we turn to the current research on the Gospel of Matthew, noting its developments, trends and debates, it can be stated at the outset that the defining issue for the past two decades has been the social setting of the Gospel and its ¹⁰ D. P. Senior, What Are They Saying About Matthew? (rev. and enl. ed.; New York: Paulist Press, 1996). ¹¹ J. K. Riches, Matthew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). ¹² J. Gnilka, Das Matthäusevangelium (2 vols.; Freiburg: Herder, 1986–1988). ¹³ D. A. Hagner, Matthew (2 vols.; Dallas: Word Books, 1993–1995). ¹⁴ W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (3 vols.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988–1997). ¹⁵ U. Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989); idem, Matthew 8–20: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2001); idem, Matthew 21–28: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005). The first volume was revised and updated in 2007 and, like the second and third volumes, now sits within the Hermeneia series. Later references in this study to this volume will be to this revised work. ¹⁶ In English, see J. Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); B. Witherington, Matthew (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2006); R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007); and D. L. Turner, Matthew (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008). In German, see P. Fiedler, Das Matthäusevangelium (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006).

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underlying community.17 The debate identified by Stanton concerning whether this Christian community was still within Judaism or had separated from it, both physically and ideologically, has intensified considerably and is now without question the dominant theme in Matthean studies. It was perhaps inevitable that this discussion would lead to the exploration of other dimensions of this community’s historical and social setting. Initially the focus was directed to the relations between this group and the Gentile world, especially its involvement in the Gentile mission and the status of Gentile converts in Matthew’s community. A little later, questions were posed about the relationship between the evangelist’s community and other Christian circles, notably those groups associated with Paul. Into this mix came the important issue of Matthew’s setting within and relationship with the omnipresent and oppressive Roman Empire. On the basis of these related trends, it is fair to say that much recent Matthean research has been focused directly on the place of the Matthean community within its various social, political, historical, and religious contexts. Where did it stand in relation to the broader Jewish community? Where did it stand in relation to the variety of viewpoints in the emergent Christian movement? How did it relate to the Gentile world and the issue of Gentile converts? What was its attitude towards Rome, and how were these views expressed in the Gospel narrative? The following survey will examine these developments in recent and current Matthean research. In addition to these important subjects, it will also attend briefly to a few other topics of interest – the questions of authorship, date and location, and the application of new interpretive methods.

2. Matthew’s Relationship to Judaism As Stanton noted in his survey, the question of the relationship between the Christian Matthean community and the broader Jewish world had long occupied the attention of Matthean scholars. This seminal debate received renewed impetus in a monograph by J. Andrew Overman.18 In an uncanny fulfillment of Stanton’s hopes, Overman’s contribution to this topic was informed by both Neusner’s definitive work on Formative Judaism and the insights of social-scientific criticism. Overman provided a detailed description of Formative Judaism, the reconstruction of the Jewish tradition carried out by the scribes and Pharisees (and others) in the aftermath of the disastrous war against Rome, and then inter¹⁷ For a recent survey, see D. Sim, “Reconstructing the Social and Religious Milieu of Matthew: Methods, Sources, and Possible Results,” in Matthew, James, and the Didache: Three Related Documents in Their Jewish and Christian Settings (ed. H. van de Sandt and J. K. Zangenberg; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 13–32. ¹⁸ J. A. Overman, Matthew’s Gospel and Formative Judaism: The Social World of the Matthean Community (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990).

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preted Matthew’s community in relation to this particular type of Judaism. He argued strongly that this community betrayed all the hallmarks of contemporary Jewish sectarianism. It must therefore be viewed as a sectarian group within the fluid Judaism of the post-war period, but in opposition to the larger and more powerful parent body that was led in the setting of Matthew by the scribes and Pharisees. Overman defended his thesis by marshalling a whole range of sociological terms, models, and methods, especially the sociology of knowledge. He made much of the fact that Matthew’s Christian group continued to obey the Torah, though now interpreted through the prism of the messiah’s teaching, and it was observance of the Law according to Jesus’ interpretation that both identified this group as Jewish and explained its conflict with Formative Judaism.19 The important work of Overman was confirmed and extended soon after by Anthony J. Saldarini.20 Despite some differences in detail with Overman, Saldarini also maintained that the Matthean community was a sectarian or deviant group both within and in opposition to the broader Jewish society, and his work too contained a wealth of insights from the social sciences. Like Overman, Saldarini also emphasized the importance of Law-observance as a marker of the Matthean community’s Jewishness and as one of the sources of its conflict with other Jewish groups.21 In between the monographs of Overman and Saldarini, Stanton published an equally influential book.22 Stanton was also convinced of the huge potential of the social sciences for Matthean scholarship, in particular social conflict theory, but he parted company with the others in terms of the practical relationship between Matthew’s community and the wider Jewish world. Although contending that the evangelist’s group should be considered sectarian, Stanton drew the conclusion that the post-war conflict in which it found itself had led to the recent separation of Matthew’s community from the larger Jewish society. This separation was both physical and ideological, and meant that the Christian readers addressed by Matthew were now defining themselves in opposition to Judaism.23 Perhaps surprisingly Stanton did not focus on the issue of the Torah in the Gospel or in the Matthean community. Rather, he based his case upon other Gospel evidence – the use of “their synagogues” (4:23; 9:35; 10:17; 12:9; 13:54; cf. 23:34) in opposition to “the church” (16:18; 18:17), the seeming replacement of Judaism by Christianity in 21:43, the use of “the Jews” in 28:15, and the Gospel’s Christological claims about Jesus. Thus, by the middle of the 1990s the battle lines had been drawn and the major players had presented their cases. Over the next dec¹⁹ Overman, Matthew’s Gospel, 73–90. ²⁰ A. J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1994). ²¹ Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community, 124–64. ²² G. N. Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992), 113–45. ²³ Stanton, Gospel for a New People, 124–31, 139–42, 151–2, 156–8.

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ade and a half, the debate would intensify considerably and largely dominate the Matthean scholarly landscape. The intra muros position of Overman and Saldarini soon found a formidable ally in the important commentary of Davies and Allison. Davies had previously stated his case in his monumental analysis of the Sermon on the Mount published some decades before,24 and this was now defended and updated in their joint commentary.25 Further major studies supporting the general view that the Matthean community was engaged in an internal Jewish conflict were published by David C. Sim,26 Boris Repschinski,27 Martin Vahrenhorst,28 Frederick J. Murphy,29 Aaron M. Gale,30 Matthias Konradt,31 Peter Fiedler,32 Warren Carter,33 Daniel M. Gurtner34 and, most recently, Anders Runesson.35 In addition to these scholars, many others have signaled their support for this view without arguing for it in detail.36 ²⁴ W. D. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 256–315. ²⁵ Davies and Allison, Matthew, 3:692–704. ²⁶ D. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998), 109–63. ²⁷ B. Repschinski, The Controversy Stories in the Gospel of Matthew: Their Redaction, Form and Relevance for the Relationship between the Matthean Community and Formative Judaism (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 343–9. ²⁸ M. Vahrenhorst, “Ihr sollt überhaupt nicht schwören:” Matthäus im halachischen Diskurs (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2002), 3–24. ²⁹ F. J. Murphy, “The Jewishness of Matthew: Another Look,” in When Judaism and Christianity Began: Essays in Memory of Anthony J. Saldarini. Volume 2 (ed. A. J. Avery-Peck, D. J. Harrington, and J. Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 377–403. ³⁰ A. M. Gale, Redefining Ancient Borders: The Jewish Scribal Framework of Matthew’s Gospel (London: T & T Clark International, 2005), 15–40. ³¹ M. Konradt, Israel, Kirche und die Völker im Matthäusevangelium (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 12–13, 379–91; idem, “Die vollkommene Erfüllung der Tora und der Konflikt mit den Pharisäern im Matthäusevangelium,” in Das Gesetz im frühen Judentum und im Neuen Testament: Festschrift für Christoph Burchard zum 75. Geburtstag (ed. D. Sänger and M. Konradt; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 150–2. ³² Fiedler, Das Matthäusevangelium, 22–4; idem, “Israel bleibt Israel: Überlegungen zum Kirchenverständnis des Matthäus,” in Das Matthäusevangelium. Interpretation – Rezeption – Rezeptionsgeschichte: Festschrift für H. Frankemölle (ed. R. Kampling; Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004), 69–73. ³³ W. Carter, “Matthew’s Gospel: Jewish Christianity, Christian Judaism, or Neither?” in Jewish Christianity Reconsidered: Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts (ed. M. JacksonMcCabe; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 155–79. ³⁴ D. M. Gurtner, “Matthew’s Theology of the Temple and the ‘Parting of the Ways’: Christian Origins and the First Gospel,” in Built Upon the Rock: Studies in the Gospel of Matthew (ed. D. M. Gurtner and J. Nolland; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 128–53. ³⁵ A. Runesson, “Rethinking Early Jewish-Christian Relations: Matthean Community History as Pharisaic Intragroup Conflict,” JBL 127 (2008): 95–132. Runesson’s important contribution argues that Matthew evidences not simply an internal Jewish conflict, but an inter-Pharisaic debate. ³⁶ See Nolland, Matthew, 17–8; A. von Dobbeler, “Die Restitution Israels und die Bekehrung der Heiden: Das Verhältnis von Mt 10,5b.6 und Mt 28,18–20 unter dem Aspekt der Komplementarität. Erwägungen zum Standort des Matthäusevangeliums,” ZNW 91 (2000): 41–4; idem,

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On the other hand, the position of Stanton that Matthew represented a Christian tradition that was engaged with Judaism but no longer a part of it has also found many defenders. A prominent early supporter was Donald A. Hagner who has continued in later publications to restate and refine his position.37 Later scholars to support in detail the extra muros view include John K. Riches,38 Douglas R. A. Hare,39 Paul Foster,40 Roland Deines,41 Robert H. Gundry,42 and Ulrich Luz.43 While other scholars hold this position as well,44 it is fair to say that this particular understanding of the Matthean community’s relationship with Judaism is beginning to lag behind the alternative view depicted above. The major issues in this continuing debate have not changed considerably since the time of Overman, Saldarini, and Stanton, though perhaps they have “Auf der Grenze: Ethos und Identität der matthäischen Gemeinde nach Mt 15, 1–20,” BZ 45 (2001): 77–9; D. J. Harrington, “Matthew’s Gospel: Pastoral Problems and Possibilities,” in The Gospel of Matthew in Current Study: Studies in Memory of William G. Thompson, S. J. (ed. D. E. Aune; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 66–9; G. S. Jackson, Have Mercy on Me: The Story of the Canaanite Woman in Matthew 15:21–28 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 16–8; M. Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social- Scientific Approach to the Separation Between Judaism and Christianity (London: Routledge, 2003), 211–6; C. Evans, “Targumizing Tendencies in Matthean Redaction,” in When Judaism and Christianity Began: Essays in Memory of Anthony J. Saldarini. Volume 2 (ed. A. J. Avery-Peck, D. J. Harrington, and J. Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 93–5; J. Willitts, Matthew’s Messianic Shepherd: In Search of ‘The Lost Sheep of the House of Israel’ (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 33–4; B. T. Viviano, “Introduction: Matthew Studies Today,” in Matthew and His World. The Gospel of the Open Jewish Christians: Studies in Biblical Theology (ed. B. T. Viviano; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 6–7; D. L. Turner, Matthew (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 3. ³⁷ D. A. Hagner, “The Sitz im Leben of the Gospel of Matthew,” in Treasures New and Old: Recent Contributions to Matthean Studies (ed. D. R. Bauer and M. A. Powell; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 27–68. For his later statements, see idem, “Matthew: Apostate, Reformer, Revolutionary?” NTS 49 (2003): 193–209; idem, “Matthew: Christian Judaism or Jewish Christianity?” in The Face of New Testament Studies: A Survey of Recent Research (ed. S. McKnight and G. R. Osborne; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 263–82. ³⁸ J. K. Riches, Conflicting Mythologies: Identity Formation in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 202–25. ³⁹ D. R. A. Hare, “How Jewish is the Gospel of Matthew?” CBQ 62 (2000): 264–77. ⁴⁰ P. Foster, Community, Law and Mission in Matthew’s Gospel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). ⁴¹ R. Deines, Die Gerechtigkeit der Tora im Reich des Messias: Mt 5,13–20 als Schlüsseltext der matthäischen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). See too his convenient English summary of this work; idem, “Not the Law but the Messiah: Law and Righteousness in the Gospel of Matthew,” in Built upon the Rock, 53–84. ⁴² R. Gundry, “Matthew: Jewish-Christian or Christian-Jewish? At an Intersection of Sociology and Theology,” in The Old is Better: New Testament Essays in Support of Traditional Interpretations (ed. R. Gundry; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 111–9. ⁴³ Luz, Matthew 1–7, 52–6. ⁴⁴ See W. Weren, “The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community,” in Matthew and the Didache: Two Documents from the Same Jewish-Christian Milieu? (ed. H. van de Sandt; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2005), 53, 58; A. O. Ewherido, Matthew’s Gospel and Judaism in the Late First Century C. E.: The Evidence from Matthew’s Chapter on Parables (Matthew 13:1–52) (New York: Lang, 2006), 20–6. More tentative is P. Luomanen, Entering the Kingdom of Heaven: A Study of the Structure of Matthew’s View of Salvation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 275–6.

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undergone some refinement. Recent contributions still debate, amongst other matters, the definitions of Judaism and Christianity in the late first century, Jewish and Christian identity, the meaning of “the church” and “their synagogues” in the Gospel, the importance of Matthew’s high Christology and, needless to say, the Gospel’s depiction of Torah and the role of the Mosaic Law in Matthew’s Christian community. Fully aware that one of the major pillars of the intra muros position is the Gospel’s affirmation that all of the Torah remains valid (cf. Matt 5:17–19), some of the opponents of this view have sought to downplay the role of the Mosaic Law in the Gospel and its underlying community. Roland Deines has argued that, although the Matthean Jesus does not set his teachings against the Mosaic Law, he nonetheless renders it superfluous; what is important now are the commandments of Jesus messiah that transcend the Torah.45 It is interesting to note that in explaining how this applies to the Gospel, Deines resorts to Pauline language and categories rather than to those found in Matthew itself. The Law functions as a guide to know what sin is (cf. Rom 3:19), and righteousness no longer comes through the Torah but through the Law of Christ (cf. Gal 6:2).46 Given that most Matthean scholars view Matthew as largely independent from the Pauline tradition, it is not likely that Deines’ “Pauline” interpretation of the Torah in Matthew will exert much influence. A different attempt to play down the importance of the Law in the Gospel and the Matthean community appears in the work of Paul Foster. Most scholars use Matt 5:17–20 to establish the evangelist’s attitude towards the Torah, and then interpret the antitheses in 5:21–48 and other later texts in the light of these programmatic affirmations of the Law. By contrast with this, Foster begins with the antitheses and notes that the Matthean Jesus overturns the Torah at certain points. This understanding of the antitheses is then used to elucidate the meaning of 5:17–20.47 Once more it is doubtful that such a “backward” reading of the text will overturn the more conventional view that the evangelist promoted complete observance of the Torah, including its ritual aspects, according to the particular interpretation of Jesus. This position, so fundamental to the intra muros thesis, continues to attract strong support.48 ⁴⁵ R. Deines, “Not the Law But the Messiah,” esp., 64–82. For much more detailed discussion, see his monograph, Die Gerechtigkeit der Tora, passim. ⁴⁶ Deines, “Not the Law but the Messiah,” 82. ⁴⁷ P. Foster, Community, Law and Mission in Matthew’s Gospel, 94–217. For a similar view, see Witherington, Matthew, 125–40. ⁴⁸ So Konradt, “Die Vollkommene Erfüllung der Tora”; cf. too H. van de Sandt, “Law and Ethics in Matthew’s Antitheses: A Reorientation of Halakah in Line with the Jewish Two Ways 3:1–6,” in Matthew, James, and the Didache, 323–9; idem, “Matthew and the Didache,” in Matthew and His Christian Contemporaries (ed. D. Sim and B. Repschinski; London: T & T Clark International, 2008), 134–6; D. J. Harrington, “Matthew and Paul,” in Contemporaries, 16–8; J. Svartvik, “Matthew and Mark,” in Contemporaries, 36–43; J. Painter, “Matthew and John,” in Contemporaries, 72–7; D. Sim, “Matthew and Ignatius of Antioch,” in Contemporaries, 143– 150; and É. Cuvillier, “Torah Observance and Radicalization in the First Gospel. Matthew and First-Century Judaism: A Contribution to the Debate,” NTS 55 (2009): 144–59.

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3. Matthew and the Gentile World The past fifteen years or so has witnessed the emergence of a related debate with respect to the social setting of Matthew’s Gospel, this time involving the relationship between the evangelist’s community and the Gentile world. A number of key questions were central. How does Matthew depict Gentiles in his Gospel? What was his attitude towards the Gentile world? Did his community engage in a Gentile mission and, if so, what were its terms? The earlier consensus position was that Matthew, despite its inherent Jewishness, was fundamentally pro-Gentile. It was argued that Matthew depicted Gentiles favorably in his narrative and that his community was heavily engaged (or was planning to be heavily engaged) in a Gentile mission in accordance with the command of the risen Lord at the conclusion of the Gospel. This Gentile mission was generally considered to be Law-free since the resurrected Jesus demanded baptism rather than circumcision as the rite of initiation, and many scholars maintained that large numbers of Gentiles were entering Matthew’s community at the time the Gospel was composed. Certain aspects of this view have been challenged in recent times. Matthew is not as consistently pro-Gentile as commonly assumed, and there are in fact a number of anti-Gentile statements in the Gospel that have been conveniently ignored (cf. 5:46–7; 6:7–8, 31–32; 7:6; 18:17).49 This challenge to the dominant view has resulted in a lively discussion.50 Two related aspects of this debate are worthy of further comment, and both involve the significance of the Great Commission to evangelize all nations in 28:16–20. The first of these concerns the relationship between the initial mission charge to the disciples in 10:5–6, which prohibits any contact with the Gentiles and restricts the mission to the people of Israel, and the demand of the risen Christ to make disciples of all the nations (πάντα τὰ ἔθνη). Some scholars have affirmed that the commission at the end of the Gospel applies only to the Gentiles, so that the Gentile mission now replaces the original Jewish mission. This view necessitates taking πάντα τὰ ἔθνη as “all the Gentiles,” thereby excluding the Jewish people.51 The majority of exegetes were not convinced by this reading of the text,52 and they continued to support the alternative view that the earlier ⁴⁹ See Sim, Matthew and Christian Judaism, 215–56. See also D. Sim, “The Gospel of Matthew and the Gentiles,” JSNT 57 (1995): 19–48 and idem, “The Magi: Gentiles or Jews?” HvtSt 55 (1999): 980–1000. Cf. too Runesson, “Rethinking Early Jewish-Christian Relations,” 104–106 and B. Repschinski, “Matthew and Luke,” in Contemporaries, 51–7. ⁵⁰ D. Senior, “Between Two Worlds: Gentile and Jewish Christians in Matthew’s Gospel,” CBQ 61 (1999): 1–23; B. Byrne, “The Messiah in Whose Name ‘The Gentiles Will Hope’ (Matthew 13:21): Gentile Inclusion as an Essential Element of Matthew’s Christology,” ABR 50 (2002): 55–73; and W. Carter, “Matthew and the Gentiles: Individual Conversion and/or Systemic Transformation?” JSNT 26 (2004): 259–82. ⁵¹ D. R. A. Hare and D. J. Harrington, “Make Disciples of all the Gentiles (Mt 28:19),” CBQ 37 (1975): 359–69. See too Harrington, Matthew, 414–5. ⁵² See J. P. Meier, “Nations or Gentiles in Matthew 28:19?” CBQ 39 (1977): 94–102.

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restricted mission is now expanded to include the Gentiles as well as the Jews. In a recent article Axel von Dobbeler argued that neither of these views is correct. He contends that in the Great Commission the evangelist was not replacing or expanding the first mission; rather, the two missions should be seen as complementary. The disciples are charged with a Jewish mission, which proclaimed the Kingdom of Heaven and the restoration of the people of Israel and their land, and a Gentile mission that expands the Kingdom throughout the world and involves the conversion of the Gentiles to the God of Israel.53 In separating these two different but complementary missions, von Dobbeler accepts that πάντα τὰ ἔθνη must be rendered as “all the Gentiles.”54 While von Dobbeler has introduced a welcome new understanding of this Matthean theme, it is not certain that his exclusivist reading of πάντα τὰ ἔθνη will win over the majority of scholars.55 The second major point of contention with the Great Commission concerns the nature and the terms of the Gentile mission to which it refers. Were such Gentile converts expected to observe the Mosaic Law in full as an integral part of their Christian commitment or were they exempt from its requirements? There are two major scholarly responses to this question which, not surprisingly, place the emphasis on different Matthean texts. One of these focuses almost exclusively on 28:16–20 and makes much of the fact that in this pericope the entry rite into the Christian community is baptism rather than circumcision. It is argued from this that baptism replaces circumcision, in which case it follows that Gentile converts were excused from observance of the ritual requirements of the Torah.56 The alternative view takes its point of departure from the Gospel’s stance on the continuing validity of the Torah (cf. 5:17–19), and argues that this material enjoins full obedience to the Law for all followers of Jesus without distinction. This requirement is also witnessed in the Great Commission when the risen Jesus instructs the disciples to teach all new converts what he himself had commanded, which must include his teaching on obedience to the Torah earlier in the Gospel. Circumcision for Gentile converts is therefore presumed in 28:16–20. The risen Christ specifically refers to baptism for both Jews and Gentiles not because this ritual replaces circumcision, but because it is an entirely new rite not previously mentioned in the narrative.57 This important ⁵³ Von Dobbeler, “Die Restitution Israels und die Bekehrung der Heiden,” 18–44. ⁵⁴ Von Dobbeler, “Die Restitution Israels und die Bekehrung der Heiden,” 31–2. ⁵⁵ For critical evaluations of von Dobbeler’s hypothesis, see Konradt, Israel, Kirche und die

Völker, 337–40 and Willitts, Matthew’s Messianic Shepherd-King, 22–5. ⁵⁶ So, for example, Davies and Allison, Matthew, 3:685; Riches, Conflicting Mythologies, 216–22, and Konradt, Israel, Kirche und die Völker, 343–4. ⁵⁷ For this general position, see Sim, Matthew and Christian Judaism, 247–54; Murphy, “The Jewishness of Matthew,” 381–3; Repschinski, “Matthew and Luke,” in Contemporaries, 56–7; Painter, “Matthew and John,” in Contemporaries, 78–9; and M. Slee, The Church in Antioch in the First Century C. E.: Communion and Conflict (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 140–2. This view is implied, though not explicitly stated, by Senior, “Between Two Worlds,” 23; Nolland, Matthew, 1270; and von Dobbeler, “Die Restitution Israels und die Bekehrung der Hei-

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debate within the broader context of Matthew and the Gentile world will doubtless continue to occupy the attention of Matthean scholars.

4. The Gospel of Matthew in Its Christian Context A very recent and important trend in Matthean studies is the examination of the place of Matthew’s Gospel and its community within the diverse traditions that comprised the Christian movement in the late first century. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison briefly examined this issue at the end of their commentary. They concluded that Matthew, despite its inherent attachment to traditional Jewish values, stood firmly within “normative Christianity” of the first century, since it shared fundamental convictions about theology, Law, ethics, Christology, and ecclesiology with the other New Testament texts.58 This view was modified in turn by Donald P. Senior, who suggested that Matthew’s Jewish community was probably marginalized in a Christian church that was rapidly becoming Gentile in character and perspective.59 Senior’s observation highlights the inherent Jewishness of the Matthean Gospel, a point acknowledged by most scholars, and one that has prompted attempts to define more concretely the Jewish Christian context of Matthew by comparing it with or relating it to similar Jewish Christian texts. Our colleagues in the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands have been pioneers in this respect. In 2003 they organized a conference on Matthew and the Didache with the stated intention of determining whether these two documents, whose precise relationship with one another continues to baffle scholars,60 belonged to the same Jewish Christian milieu. The proceedings of the conference were duly published.61 In 2007 a second conference was organized, this time on Matthew, the Didache, and the canonical epistle of James, and the intention on this occasion was to explore the Jewish and Christian settings of these three

den,” 42. According to Fiedler, Das Matthäusevangelium, 431–2, Matthew inclined to the view that Gentile converts should be circumcised and observe the Torah, but he did not demand their conformity. ⁵⁸ Davies and Allison, Matthew, 3:721–2. ⁵⁹ D. Senior, “Directions in Matthean Studies,” in Current Study, 19–20. Senior refers to a number of studies that emphasize the marginality of Matthew’s Gospel and thus his community. In my own study of Matthew’s apocalyptic eschatology, I argued that Matthew’s peculiar interest in this worldview presupposed his community’s alienation from the surrounding world. See D. Sim, Apocalyptic Eschatology in the Gospel of Matthew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 179–243. ⁶⁰ The great majority of scholars maintain that the Didache was dependent on the Gospel. For a recent statement of the alternative view, that the Didache is early and was used by Matthew, see A. J. P. Garrow, The Gospel of Matthew’s Dependence on the Didache (London: T & T Clark International, 2004). ⁶¹ Van de Sandt, ed., Matthew and the Didache.

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related documents. Again the papers on a variety of themes and issues were later published.62 These conferences and the volumes they produced are of immense importance for locating with some precision the specific Christian context of Matthew, and for identifying other early Jewish Christian texts that may have belonged to the same ideological and theological setting. But determining a Jewish Christian (or Christian Jewish) context for Matthew raises a further important issue. What can be said of Matthew’s relationship with those Christian texts or traditions with which he shares no or little theological affinity? How different was Matthew’s Christian Jewish perspective from other Christian circles, and in which ways was it different? It is a striking feature of Matthean scholarship that very little has been done in this important area of research. With the obvious exceptions of the Didache and the letter of James, one almost looks in vain for comparative analyses of Matthew with other contemporary Christian documents. Even though it is usually acknowledged that Matthew used both Mark and Q, and much redactional work has been devoted to Matthew’s editing of these sources, there has been little interest in specific and detailed comparisons of Matthew’s theology with its Marcan and Q counterparts.63 Other scholars have suggested that Matthew was used as a source by other canonical authors, notably the authors of Luke’s Gospel,64 John’s Gospel,65 and 1 Peter.66 Yet, while these studies offer important comparative observations between Matthew and the other documents, they belong more to Matthew’s reception history than to the study of this Gospel proper. A recent attempt to address this lacuna in the field appears in another collection of studies, which was devoted to comparing Matthew with other contemporary Christian texts and/or authors.67 In addition to comparisons between the evangelist and the Didache and James, it also offers comparative analyses of Matthew and the other Gospel writers, as well as Paul, Hebrews, and Ignatius of Antioch. This volume makes no pretensions to being the last word on this complex and intriguing subject; rather its intention is to introduce and stimulate a dialogue between Matthew and his contemporary fellow Christians that hope⁶² Van de Sandt and Zangenberg, Matthew, James, and the Didache. See too an earlier discussion of these three texts with regard to early Christian identity in G. Garleff, Urchristliche Identität in Matthäusevangelium, Didache und Jakobusbrief (Münster: LIT, 2004). ⁶³ For a brief treatment of this theme, see Luz, Matthew 1–7, 41–4. ⁶⁴ This hypothesis has a long history. For the view that Luke wrote his own Gospel to critique Matthew’s rewriting of Mark, see E. Franklin, Luke: Interpreter of Paul, Critic of Matthew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994). ⁶⁵ See most recently, B. T. Viviano, “John’s Use of Matthew: Beyond Tweaking,” in Matthew and His World, 245–269. According to Viviano, the author of John reacted in various ways to the Matthean text, sometimes affirming it and sometimes flatly contradicting it. ⁶⁶ So R. Metzner, Die Rezeption des Matthäusevangeliums im 1. Petrusbrief: Studien zum traditionsgeschichtlichen und theologischen Einfluss des ersten Evangeliums auf den 1. Petrusbrief (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995). ⁶⁷ Sim and Repschinski, Contemporaries.

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fully will be further explored in future scholarship. For the most part the essays in this collection focused on the similarities and differences between the evangelist and the other authors at the theoretical level, but it is pertinent to investigate how his particular views might have been expressed in the real world. In other words, what would Matthew have thought of alternative Christian traditions, and how would he have reacted to them had he had the opportunity? This need not be a matter of guesswork. A number of Christian traditions existed well before the evangelist wrote his Gospel, and it is important to consider whether and in what ways he may have responded to them. The most obvious candidates here are Mark and Q, but a further possibility for exploration is the Pauline tradition. Paul was a well-known, influential, and controversial member of the Christian movement in its formative period, and his mission and epistles predate Matthew’s Gospel by some decades. It might be thought that Matthew’s possible attitude towards Paul would have sparked the interest of Matthean scholars, but nothing could be further from the truth.68 The scholarly consensus has argued that Matthew and Paul stood in very different and independent early Christian traditions, and the most that can be said is that Matthew was simply un-Pauline or non-Pauline.69 I have myself challenged this rather neutral view of the matter, and argued to the contrary that Matthew’s Christian Jewish theology was in large measure opposed to some fundamental aspects of the Pauline gospel. Matthew knew much about Paul, his mission, and his theology, and was also probably familiar with some of his epistles.70 In his narrative about Jesus, Matthew took the opportunity to challenge Paul’s liberal attitude towards the Torah (cf. 5:17–19; 7:13–27) and his claims that he had been appointed by the risen Christ to be the apostle to the Gentiles (cf. 16:17– 19; 28:16–20).71 Responses to this challenge to the consensus were slow to appear, but have been growing in recent years. A number of these have been supportive of the case I put forward for Matthew’s anti-Paulinism,72 while others ⁶⁸ For discussion of the comparative lack of interest in this question, see D. Sim, “Matthew’s Anti-Paulinism: A Neglected Feature of Matthean Studies,” HvtSt 58 (2002): 767–83. ⁶⁹ See, for example, Stanton, Gospel for a New People, 314. ⁷⁰ D. Sim, “Matthew and the Pauline Corpus: A Preliminary Intertextual Study,” JSNT 31 (2009): 401–22. ⁷¹ In addition to Sim, “Matthew’s Anti-Paulinism,” “Matthew and the Pauline Corpus,” and idem, Matthew and Christian Judaism, 188–211, see idem, “Matthew 7.21–23: Further Evidence of Its Anti-Pauline Perspective,” NTS 53 (2007): 325–43; idem, “Matthew, Paul and the Origin and Nature of the Gentile Mission: The Great Commission in Matthew 28:16–20 as an AntiPauline Tradition,” HvtSt 64 (2008): 377–92, and idem, “Paul and Matthew on the Torah: Theory and Practice,” in Paul, Grace and Freedom: Essays in Honour of John K. Riches (ed. P. Middleton, A. Paddison, and K. Wenell; London: T & T Clark International, 2009), 50–64. ⁷² For qualified support, see D. Catchpole, Resurrection People: Studies in the Resurrection Narratives of the Gospels (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000), 43–62. A more forceful statement of support is found in G. Theißen, “Kritik an Paulus im Matthäusevangelium? Von der Kunst verdeckter Polemik im Urchristentum,” in Polemik im Neuen Testament. Texte, Themen, Gattungen und Kontexte (ed. O. Wischmeyer and L. Scornaienchi; Berlin: de Gruyter,

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have not been convinced at all.73 Although it is still early days in this debate, it shows every indication of increasing in momentum as scholars begin to consider seriously the place of Matthew within its contemporary Christian setting and its relationship with alternative understandings of the messiah’s appearance.

5. Matthew and the Roman World Another aspect of Matthew’s social setting that has received recent attention is the relationship of the Gospel to the Roman Empire. It is rather surprising that this theme came so late to Matthean scholarship. After all, the evangelist lived in a world dominated by Roman power, and Roman imperialism and brutality casts a long shadow over his Gospel narrative. Jesus lived under Roman occupation, and was executed by Roman soldiers at the express command of the local Roman governor. We should expect that an exploration of Matthew’s attitude towards Rome and his depiction of the Empire in his narrative would have been eagerly undertaken by scholars, but such was not the case. Matthean scholarship neglected this rather obvious context for the Gospel until it was brought to prominence by Warren Carter. In a number of significant publications, Carter argued that Matthew disputed Rome’s imperial claims, and presented Jesus as totally opposed to Roman arrogance, power, and exploitation, and its idolatrous imperial theology as well. Matthew’s imperial context in fact supplied the key to interpreting many of the Gospel’s passages.74 Carter can perhaps be criticized for overplaying Matthew’s Roman context. Not all would agree with him that Matthew’s anti-imperialism can be found in almost every part of the Gospel, nor would they follow him in his claim that this particular theme provides a major hermeneutical key for interpreting this text, but even so there is no denying that Carter has identified an important aspect of the Gospel’s context that cannot be ignored. The influence of Carter’s work is evident in a recent collection of essays that was devoted to identifying and understanding the significance of Matthew’s Roman imperial setting.75 This volume comprised two distinct parts, one dealing 2011). In this contribution, Theißen extends the debate in new directions. See too, idem, “Kirche oder Sekte? Über Einheit und Konflikt in frühen Urchristentum,” Theologie und Gegenwart 48 (2005): 170–2. Painter, “Matthew and John,” in Contemporaries, 74–5, also detects anti-Pauline polemic in Matthew. ⁷³ See Harrington, “Matthew and Paul,” in Contemporaries, 24–5; Zangenberg, “Matthew and James,” in Contemporaries, 120, and J. Willitts, “The Friendship of Matthew and Paul: A Response to a Recent Trend in the Interpretation of Matthew’s Gospel,” HvtSt 65 (2009): 1–8. ⁷⁴ See especially W. Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2000), and idem, Matthew and Empire: Initial Explorations (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2001). ⁷⁵ J. Riches and D. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew in Its Roman Imperial Context (London: T & T Clark, 2005).

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with theories of empire, and Jewish and Christian attitudes to Roman imperialism, and the other concerned with Matthew’s treatment of Rome from a number of different perspectives. Despite the significance of this trend in Matthean scholarship and the possibilities for fruitful future research, Matthew’s imperial context seems not to have captured the interest of most scholars working on this Gospel. The momentum generated by Carter’s initial work appears to have stalled, due in large measure no doubt to the departure of Carter from the field. Having brought this neglected subject into the open, Carter moved on to the study of the imperial contexts of other early Christian documents. It remains to be seen whether this subject will again come to the forefront of discussion or whether it will lie dormant.

6. Authorship, Date, and Location The preliminary issues regarding the Gospel, those of authorship, date, and location, have all manifested themselves in recent scholarship. With respect to the author of the Gospel, very few critical scholars today hold the traditional view that the disciple of Jesus produced this text. Of those who do affirm this position, the most strident is Robert H. Gundry who has recently restated his earlier position that the evidence of Papias accurately identifies the Gospel’s writer as Matthew the disciple.76 A further supporter of this thesis, though perhaps less dogmatic than Gundry, is Richard T. France, who has reconfirmed in his recent commentary his previous conclusions regarding the question of authorship.77 The views of these scholars have also been championed by Alistair I. Wilson.78 There are, however, so many areas of uncertainty over the reliability and the true significance of the Papian tradition that most scholars tend to dismiss its relevance.79 The related issue of the Gospel’s date has also received some attention in current research. While the majority of scholars continue to date the Gospel towards the latter part of the first century, there is a small minority that opts for a date prior to the first Jewish war.80 ⁷⁶ R. Gundry, “The Apostolically Johannine Pre-Papian Tradition Concerning the Gospels of Mark and Matthew,” in The Old is Better: New Testament Essays in Support of Traditional Interpretations (ed. R. Gundry; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 49–73. For an earlier statement of his argument, see idem, Matthew, 609–22. ⁷⁷ France, Gospel of Matthew, 15. For his earlier arguments concerning the disciple Matthew as the Gospel’s author, see idem, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher, 50–80. ⁷⁸ A. I. Wilson, When Will These Things Happen? A Study of Jesus in Matthew 21–25 (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2004), 63–4. ⁷⁹ See D. Sim, “The Gospel of Matthew, John the Elder and the Papias Tradition: A Response to R. H. Gundry,” HvtSt 63 (2007): 283–99. ⁸⁰ This view often runs in association with the hypothesis that the author of the Gospel was Matthew the disciple; so Gundry, Matthew, 599–609, and France, Gospel of Matthew, 18–9. Some scholars, however, incline to an earlier date without a prior acceptance of the traditional identification of the Gospel’s author; see, for example, Nolland, Matthew, 14–7.

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It is the final issue, the location of Matthew’s Gospel, that has mostly been at the forefront of scholarly discussion. The hypothesis that the Gospel was composed in Antioch on the Orontes, which was first proposed almost a century ago by Burnett H. Streeter, still remains the dominant hypothesis today, although a serious challenger has emerged in the last two decades. In his important analysis of the Matthean community and Formative Judaism, J. Andrew Overman posited that the underlying conflict assumed a locale closer to the heart of the Pharisaic reconstruction of Judaism, and he produced a case for Galilee in general and for Sepphoris in particular.81 Overman’s alternative provenance for the Gospel has attracted a growing number of scholars who opt for Galilee as the general place of origin and for Sepphoris, Tiberias, or even Capernaum as the most likely specific locality.82 It is somewhat surprising, in the light of the longevity and increasing popularity of this hypothesis, that it has not yet been subjected to a detailed and critical appraisal.83 Until this is done, it is fair to predict that this hypothesis will continue to grow in popularity and influence.

7. Methods The survey by Stanton focused on the method of redaction criticism that so dominated the study of Matthew in that period. Stanton predicted that socialscientific criticism would come into its own in the next phase of scholarship, and that prophecy was soon fulfilled as we have seen. But he did not foresee the advent of a number of other methods that have been introduced to Matthean scholarship in the past two decades. An underrated and underrepresented method is that of feminist criticism. Perhaps the most important and influential fullscale studies from this perspective are the monographs of Elaine Wainwright84 ⁸¹ Overman, Matthew’s Gospel, 158–9. Overman repeated and expanded his arguments in his later commentary; see J. A. Overman, Church and Community in Crisis: The Gospel according to Matthew (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1996), 16–9. ⁸² See A. J. Saldarini, “The Gospel of Matthew and Jewish-Christian Conflict in the Galilee,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity (ed. L. I. Levine; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 26–7; P. Hertig, “Geographical Marginality in the Matthean Journeys of Jesus,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1999 Seminar Papers (ed. K. H. Richards; Atlanta: SBL, 1999), 479; E. W. Stegemann and W. Stegemann, The Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 223–5; Gale, Redefining Ancient Borders, 40–63; Runesson, “Rethinking Early Jewish-Christian Relations,” 106–7 and Witherington, Matthew, 21–8. Other scholars are sympathetic to this view without holding to it absolutely. See Harrington, Matthew, 10 and A. F. Segal, “Matthew’s Jewish Voice,” in Social History of the Matthean Community: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches (ed. D. L. Balch; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 26–7. ⁸³ For a brief critical review, see Sim, “Reconstructing the Social and Religious Milieu of Matthew,” in Matthew, James, and the Didache, 21–5. ⁸⁴ E. M. Wainwright, Towards a Feminist Critical Rereading of the Gospel according to Matthew (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991); and idem, Shall We Look for Another? A Feminist Rereading of the Matthean Jesus (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1998).

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and the collection of essays edited by Amy-Jill Levine in the series Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings.85 The study of the Canaanite woman in Matt 15:21–28 by Glenna Jackson is a fine marriage of traditional historical-critical methods and feminist insights.86 Another approach not foreseen by Stanton was literary criticism (or narrative criticism) which burst into Matthean studies in the mid–1980s with the publication of a number of articles and then finally an influential monograph by Jack D. Kingsbury.87 Once Kingsbury had established the literary-critical method as a useful and informative interpretive tool, this approach in its various guises simply took off, especially in the United States. A good measure of the popularity of any method is to survey published doctoral theses, since these works normally include a statement of and a defense of the method(s) employed in the study. The 1990s witnessed a host of literary-critical analyses of various aspects of Matthew’s Gospel that used this method in isolation.88 Using the same measure, we find that the interest in this approach has cooled somewhat in recent years, and those studies that use it prefer to combine it with redaction criticism and/or other historical-critical approaches.89 A method that appears to be gaining momentum is that of intertextuality, which is concerned in general with the relationship between precursor and successor texts. The use of an antecedent text may include explicit citation where the reference is made clearly and unambiguously, or it may apply to more indirect references, echoes, and allusions, where the connections between the two texts are more subtle and indirect. While Matthew’s direct and explicit citations of the Jewish scriptures have always been the focus of intensive study,90 scholars have only recently directed their attention to a systematic analysis of his more indirect allusions to these writings. The analysis of Jeremiah in Matthew’s Gospel ⁸⁵ A.-J. Levine, ed., A Feminist Companion to Matthew (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001). ⁸⁶ Jackson, Have Mercy on Me. ⁸⁷ J. D. Kingsbury, Matthew as Story (2nd ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988). Also of importance in establishing this method in Matthean studies was R. A. Edwards, Matthew’s Story of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985). ⁸⁸ See, for example, D. J. Weaver, Matthew’s Missionary Discourse: A Literary Critical Analysis (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990); D. B. Howell, Matthew’s Inclusive Story: A Study in the Narrative Rhetoric of the First Gospel (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990); J. C. Anderson, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over, and Over, and Over Again (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994); G. Yamasaki, John the Baptist in Life and Death: Audience-Oriented Criticism of Matthew’s Narrative (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). ⁸⁹ Good recent examples include J. R. Cousland, The Crowds in the Gospel of Matthew (Leiden: Brill, 2002); W. G. Olmstead, Matthew’s Trilogy of Parables: The Nation, the Nations and the Reader in Matthew 21.28–22.14 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); J. Y.-H. Yieh, One Teacher: Jesus’ Teaching Role in Matthew’s Gospel Report (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004); Wilson, When Will These Things Happen? ⁹⁰ See the recent treatment of this theme by M. J. Menken, Matthew’s Bible: The Old Testament Text of the Evangelist (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004). Cf. too the important collection of essays in T. R. Hatina, ed., Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels. Volume 2: The Gospel of Matthew (London: T & T Clark International, 2008).

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by Michael Knowles marks an important early attempt to apply intertextual principles,91 and later studies have added to the growing chorus of intertextual voices by evaluating Matthew’s allusions to other Old Testament texts.92 More general programmatic statements have been published by Ulrich Luz,93 Stefan Alkier,94 and Andries van Aarde.95 The evangelist’s intertextual boundaries, however, should not be restricted to the traditional Jewish canon. Matthew also had access to a number of Christian documents, Mark and Q at the very minimum, and intertextual methods can be profitably applied to Matthew’s use of both sources.96 Some scholars are also exploring the possibility that an intertextual relationship exists between Matthew and the Pauline corpus.97 Because intertextuality is in its infancy in Matthean studies, there is considerable scope for much important work to be done in the future.

8. The Future of Matthean Studies It is not easy to speculate on the future direction(s) of a discipline, but I take some heart from the earlier attempt of Graham Stanton, who was in most cases proved correct. An easy prediction to make is that Matthean scholars will continue to debate, at least in the short term, the Matthean community’s social and religious settings. If past trends are anything to go by, this topic will be dominated by that Christian group’s status vis-à-vis Judaism and its relationship with contemporary Jewish groups. Despite decades of deliberation, many issues here remain unresolved. How important was Torah-observance in this Christian community, and how does this impact on its Jewish and/or Christian identity? ⁹¹ M. Knowles, Jeremiah in Matthew’s Gospel: The Rejected-Prophet Motif in Matthaean Redaction (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 162–222. ⁹² The evangelist’s use of Zechariah, both in terms of direct citation and allusion, has been analyzed by C. A. Ham, The Coming King and the Rejected Shepherd: Matthew’s Reading of Zechariah’s Messianic Hope (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2005). For intertextual links between Lamentations and the Matthean passion narrative, see D. M. Moffitt, “Righteous Bloodshed, Matthew’s Passion Narrative, and the Temple’s Destruction: Lamentations as a Matthean Intertext,” JBL 125 (2006): 299–320. ⁹³ U. Luz, “Intertexts in the Gospel of Matthew,” HTR 97 (2004): 119–37. ⁹⁴ S. Alkier, “Intertextualität: Annäherungen an ein texttheoretisches Paradigma,” in Heiligkeit und Herrschaft: Intertextuelle Studien zu Heiligkeitsvorstellungen und zu Psalm 110 (ed. D. Sänger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2003), 1–26; idem, “From Text to Intertext: Intertextuality as a Paradigm for Reading Matthew,” HvtSt 61 (2005): 1–18. ⁹⁵ A. van Aarde, “Matthew’s Intertexts and the Presentation of Jesus as Healer-Messiah,” in Hatina, Biblical Interpretation, 163–82. ⁹⁶ For Matthew and Mark, see A. O’Leary, Matthew’s Judaization of Mark Examined in the Context of the Use of Sources in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (London: T & T Clark International, 2006). For Matthew and Q, see Luz, “Intertexts in the Gospel of Matthew,” 125–8. ⁹⁷ See T. L. Brodie, The Birthing of the New Testament: The Intertextual Development of the New Testament Writings (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2004), 206–35. For a very different reading of the evidence, see Sim, “Matthew and the Pauline Corpus.”

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What was the affect of Matthew’s Christology on this issue? At what point would his claims about Jesus have breached the limits of Jewish tolerance, and would the evangelist have knowingly done so? The matter of the Gospel’s location may play a part in future discussion. What difference would it make to our understanding of Matthew’s relationship with the Jewish world if we locate the evangelist and his community in the heart of Galilee rather than the Diaspora? The issues dealing with the Gentiles and the Matthean community are also still very much open. What was required of Gentile converts to the Matthean community? Were they expected to observe the Torah in full, or were their conditions of entering and remaining within the group not in full compliance with the demands of the Mosaic Law? Which Gospel texts and narratives best represent the evangelist’s views and the practices of his church? The interest in these topics shows no sign of waning in the near future. In addition to these more established areas of debate, I believe that the question of Matthew’s position within the very broad first century Christian movement will significantly increase in importance. The recent collection of essays comparing the evangelist with some of his Christian contemporaries has raised the issue of the place of Matthew within its wider Christian context. Is the Gospel of Matthew a distinctive early Christian document? If so, in which ways is it distinctive and what might be the implication of this for identifying the place of Matthew within the Christian movement in the late first-century? There is some evidence that the more specific issue, the relationship between the Matthean and Pauline traditions, will gain momentum in coming years. How do Matthew and Paul stand in relation to one another? Theologically speaking, what do they share in common and what are their differences? Given that Matthew wrote some decades after the time of Paul, can we detect subtle references to the apostle or his liberal gospel in Matthew’s narrative about Jesus? Is Matthew really antiPauline, as a number of scholars have recently argued, or is he merely un-Pauline? This potentially explosive area of research awaits detonation! No doubt other subjects will come to the fore, and eventually scholars may lose interest in the various settings of the Gospel and its underlying community. I close this final predictive section by returning to the earlier survey of Stanton. Stanton’s first prediction of Matthean scholarship in the late twentieth century was that full-scale analyses of Matthew’s theology would appear. This prediction was made with some confidence, which subsequent events show was misplaced. It may be the case that scholars are waiting for some resolution to the issues mentioned above. Can we really determine a clear and authoritative theology of Matthew when its relationship with Judaism is still in flux and when its place in the Christian community still remains unclear? Once Matthean specialists reach some level of agreement over these and other aspects of the Gospel, the production of such studies may ensue. That is my hope if not my firm prediction.

2. Reconstructing the Artifacts: Text-Critical and Linguistic Aspects of the Study of Mark and Matthew

Was heißt Abschreiben? Neue Entwicklungen in der Textkritik und ihre Konsequenzen für die Überlieferungsgeschichte der frühesten christlichen Verkündigung Barbara Aland Mit diesem Beitrag ist ein schlichtes Ergebnis intendiert: aufzuzeigen, was es bedeutet, wenn im Bereich der frühen Überlieferungen des Christentums Texte abgeschrieben werden. Ich setze das Ergebnis thesenartig voran: Texte abschreiben dient in einem wörtlichen und elementaren Sinn der Erhaltung der Texte. Das Medium des Schreibens und die „Institution“ der Schreiber gibt der Umgestaltung des Abzuschreibenden nur einen geringfügigen, tendentiell sogar zu vernachlässigenden Raum. Abschreiben steht damit im Gegensatz zu „freiem und lebendigen Überliefern“. Was als Banalität gelten könnte, ist es wohl doch nicht. Vielmehr wird – nüchtern – ein Beitrag zu den Realien von Überlieferung geboten, die Konsequenzen für unsere Rekonstruktionen der Frühgeschichte christlicher Verkündigung Jesu haben. Ich gehe so vor, dass ich im Hauptteil von einer neuen Entwicklung der neutestamentlichen Textkritik berichte, wie es mein Auftrag im Rahmen der in diesem Band dokumentierten Tagung war (1). Es ergibt sich daraus auch ein Beitrag zur Bedeutung des Abschreibens von Texten im Laufe von Überlieferungsprozessen. Dem folgt eine Diskussion anderer Neuansätze der Textkritik (2).

1. Eine neue Entwicklung der neutestamentlichen Textkritik: Die Kohärenzbasierte genealogische Methode (CBGM) 1.1. Vorbemerkung Aufgabe der Textkritik ist es, dem Text der Autoren neutestamentlichen Schriften so nahe zu kommen wie möglich. Der im Vollzug dieser Arbeit konstituierte Text hat – bestenfalls – die Autorität dieser Autoren, sonst nichts. Welche Autorität und Bedeutung ihm darüber hinaus noch zukommen könnte, entscheidet nicht der Philologe, sondern der Exeget, der Historiker und der Theologe. Dass das Material der Textkritik, der Wortlaut der neutestamentlichen Handschriften und ihre Varianten, so klug und so weitgehend wie irgend möglich für eine Rekonstruktion der frühen Geschichte der christlichen Verkündigung genutzt werden kann, ist eine Selbstverständlichkeit und geschieht seit je. Es

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führt in die Irre, wenn von einem hervorragenden Exegeten und Historiker der Frühzeit, Jens Schröter, die These aufgestellt wird, „die Suche nach einer Textform, die möglichst nahe an den Ursprung der Schriften selbst heranreicht“, könne sich „als unangemessen und deshalb revisionsbedürftig herausstellen“.1 Diese These ist freilich ausgelöst durch bestimmte textkritische Arbeiten, die m. E. den Charakter der handschriftlichen Überlieferung des Neuen Testaments einseitig und damit unzureichend erfassen.2 Ich komme auf diese Arbeiten zurück. Jens Schröter hat in seinen Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Jesusüberlieferung überzeugend dargelegt, dass man die „Geschichte der Verkündigung Jesu als Geschichte ihrer Rezeptionen“ nachzeichnen müsse und dabei von der „literarischen Gestalt der tatsächlich vorhandenen bzw. zu verifizierenden frühen Quellen“ – also Mk und Q – und ihrem gemeinsamen Bestand auszugehen habe.3 Es wäre unverständlich, wenn man dann nicht am Text dieser Quellen selbst und ebenso dem ihrer Rezeptionen in Mt und Lk zuhöchst interessiert sein sollte. Natürlich ist das auch nicht gemeint, denn jeder benutzt ja notwendigerweise den Text der gängigen Ausgaben, ohne ihn fortwährend in Frage zu stellen. Hier liegt vielmehr ein Missverständnis zwischen den Disziplinen der Textkritik und der exegetischen Historie vor, das ausgeräumt werden sollte. Textkritik hat – wie Exegese und Historie auch – von allen relevanten Quellen, im Falle der Textkritik Handschriften, Versionen und Zitaten, auszugehen und deren Varianten und ihre Zahl, aber auch deren Wortlautübereinstimmungen vernünftig zu bedenken, in eine Beziehung zueinander zu setzen und sich so in Anwendung vielerlei Methoden und auch in Berücksichtigung des historischen Kontextes dem Text der Autoren der frühesten schriftlichen Quellen des Christentums anzunähern. Der Textkritiker redet heute in besonnener Einschätzung seiner Möglichkeiten nicht von der Rekonstruktion des „Urtextes“, vielmehr ist Ziel seiner Arbeit der „Ausgangstext“ der handschriftlichen Überlieferung (A). Dieser Aufgabe ist die von Gerd Mink entwickelte und von ihm und seinen Kollegen, insbesondere Klaus Wachtel, im Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster angewendete „Kohärenzbasierte genealogische Methode“ (CBGM) gewidmet. Ich stelle sie hier als neue Entwicklung der Textkritik vor, ¹ J. Schröter, Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament. Studien zur urchristlichen Theologiegeschichte und zur Entstehung des neutestamentlichen Kanons (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 277 ff. ² Vgl. B. D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Ders., „The Text as Window: New Testament Manuscripts and the Social History of Early Christianity,“ in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. Essays on the Status Quaestionis (ed. B. D. Ehrman and M. W. Holmes; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1995), 361–79; D. C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Ders., Manuscripts, Texts, Theology. Collected Papers 1977–2007 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008). ³ J. Schröter, Erinnerung an Jesu Worte. Studien zur Rezeption der Logienüberlieferung in Markus, Q und Thomas (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1997).

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weil sie auch beweiskräftige und nachprüfbare Aussagen über die Regeln und Gesetze handschriftlicher Überlieferung neutestamentlicher Texte erlaubt, und zwar aufgrund des erhaltenen Gesamtmaterials, d. h. Angaben, die für die Rekonstruktionen aller frühchristlichen Überlieferungsvorgänge und ganz gewiss für das Thema „Markus und Matthäus“ von Bedeutung sind. Das zu tun scheint mir sinnvoll, obwohl die neue Methode bisher nur an den Katholischen Briefen durchgeführt wurde. Dabei hat sich aber so deutlich erwiesen, was es heißt, dass ein Text abgeschrieben wird, welchen Veränderungen er unterliegen kann und welchen eben auch nicht, dass geschlossen werden darf, dass Abschreibevorgänge prinzipiell für alle neutestamentlichen Texte gleich sind. Ich stelle die Methode Gerd Minks unter diesem Schwerpunkt vor und verweise dabei nachdrücklich auf seine eigenen grundsätzlichen Einführungen und andere Arbeiten, die vornehmlich den genuin textkritischen Ertrag der CBGM behandeln.4 Ich muss dennoch um Nachsicht für eine gewisse Ausführlichkeit bitten, die in der Komplexität der Materie und entsprechend der Methode begründet sind. 1.2. Die Grundprinzipien der Kohärenzbasierten genealogischen Methode (CBGM) Die CBGM nutzt die Tatsache, dass das Neue Testament – trotz gewaltiger Verluste – doch in einer so großen Zahl von Handschriften erhalten ist, dass das Prinzip der Abhängigkeit der einzelnen Zeugen untereinander erkennbar ist. Es besteht darin, dass die Zeugen in der Absicht möglichster Zuverlässigkeit und Präzision von ihrer jeweiligen Vorlage abgeschrieben wurden; zwischen ihnen besteht daher ein genealogischer Zusammenhang, Kohärenz. Diese Kohärenz zwischen den Zeugen ist die arbeitshypothetische Voraussetzung der Methode und wird zugleich durch das Ergebnis der Methode eklatant bewiesen. Das ist nur bedingt eine zirkuläre Argumentation, da sich das Faktum der vorausgesetzten Kohärenz aus der traditionellen textkritischen Arbeit fast aller Richtungen (nur der totale Eklektizismus ist auszuschließen) ergibt. Die CBGM ist daher eine Fortführung dieser Arbeit. Ein Stemma der erhaltenen Handschriften des NT im herkömmlichen Sinn kann nicht aufgestellt werden – dazu ist viel zu viel verloren – wohl aber kann – ⁴ G. Mink, „Problems of a Highly Contaminated Tradition: The New Testament – Stemmata of Variants as a Source of Genealogy for Witnesses,“ in Studies in Stemmatology II (ed. P. Van Reenen, A. Den Hollander, and M. Van Mulken; Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 2004), 13–85; ders., „Was verändert sich in der Textkritik durch die Beachtung genealogischer Kohärenz?“ in Recent Developments in Textual Criticism. New Testament, Other Early Christian and Jewish Literature (ed. W. Weren and D.-A. Koch; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003), 39–68. (siehe auch: http://www.uni-muenster.de/INTF/Genealogical_method.html); K. Wachtel, „Towards a Redefinition of External Criteria: The Role of Coherence in assessing the Origin of Variants,“ in Textual Variation: Theological and Social Tendencies? (ed. D. C. Parker and H. A. G. Houghton; Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2008), 109–27. Ich verdanke meinen ehemaligen Kollegen viel, von denen ich gelernt habe – und gegenwärtig noch lerne. Etwaige Irrtümer gehen gänzlich zu meinen Lasten.

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und das ist der Ausgangspunkt des klugen Ansatzes dieser Methode – die genealogische, stemmaartige Abhängigkeit der „Textzustände“, das ist der vorfindliche Text aller erhaltenen Handschriften, festgestellt werden. D. h. der Text etwa des Zeugen 1739 kann unabhängig von seiner paläographischen und historischen Verortung ins 10. Jahrhundert mit den Textzuständen verglichen werden, von denen er abhängig ist, d. h. im Falle des Jakobusbriefes von A, des Ausgangstextes der Überlieferung, dessen unmittelbarer Deszendent er ist. Das bedeutet, dass kein anderer Zeuge notwendig ist, um seine sämtlichen Varianten zu erklären, die entweder mit den Lesarten von A übereinstimmen oder direkt daraus zu erklären sind. Wenn im folgenden von „Zeugen“ die Rede ist, sind also stets nur die Textzustände der jeweiligen Handschriften gemeint, nicht ihre historischen und physikalischen Gegebenheiten, was die Methode scheinbar enthistorisiert, aber manifeste historische Konsequenzen hat. Die Methode arbeitet mit den bekannten Kriterien der inneren Kritik (Beurteilung von Varianten nach philologischen und paläographischen Kriterien) und der äußeren Kritik (Kenntnis der Zeugen und ihrer Texte), wobei dieser letzte Punkt neu definiert und entscheidend verbessert, weil für jede variierte Stelle überprüfbar gemacht wird. Die Methode geht von der Beurteilung sämtlicher variierter Stellen einer neutestamentlichen Schrift aus, die jeweils in lokalen Zeugenstemmata festgehalten wird. In der überwiegenden Mehrheit aller dieser Stellen sind Entscheidungen eindeutig zu fällen; von allen Stellen auszugehen, auch den sicher zu beurteilenden, ist notwendig, weil in der Gesamtheit aller Lokalstemmata eine erste Aussage über die Wertigkeit, besser: den genealogischen Zusammenhang aller Zeugen untereinander, enthalten ist. Wenn beispielsweise 03 (B) bei allen unabhängig voneinander nach herkömmlichen Kriterien entschiedenen Stellen überaus häufig mit der jeweils als Ursprungslesart aller vorhandenen Varianten angesehenen Lesart übereinstimmt, erhält man ein bestimmtes erstes Urteil über den Wert bzw. das Verhältnis dieses Zeugen im Vergleich mit allen andern – so wie über alle andern Zeugen in Bezug zu einander auch. Objektiv kann die Beziehung jedes Zeugen zu jedem andern angegeben werden durch die Zahl ihrer Übereinstimmungen und Abweichungen von einander an allen gemeinsam bezeugten Stellen. Nur bei hoher Übereinstimmung kann von naher Verwandtschaft gesprochen werden (prägenealogische Kohärenz). Die genealogische Kohärenz von Zeugen ergibt sich aufgrund der Abweichungen von zwei bzw. in der Folge allen Zeugen von einander. Jedes Lokalstemma enthält ja Aussagen über prioritäre (Herkunftslesarten) und posteriotäre (davon abhängige, sekundäre) Lesarten. Die Priorität eines Zeugen gegenüber einem andern wird daher dadurch bestimmt, dass er mehr prioritäre Lesarten als ein anderer, mit ihm verglichener Zeuge aufweist. Die Zahl der Übereinstimmungen zweier Zeugen an allen gemeinsam bezeugten Stellen einerseits und die Zahl ihrer prioritären bzw. posteriotären Lesarten andrerseits gibt also präzise das genealogische Verhältnis der beiden verglichenen Zeugen an – vorausgesetzt,

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dass die einzelnen Entscheidungen, die den Lokalstemmata zugrunde liegen, richtig getroffen sind. Das wird höchstwahrscheinlich im ersten Arbeitsgang zwar bei vielen Stellen, aber doch nicht bei allen der Fall sein; zuweilen ist zunächst gar keine Lösung möglich. Da aber durch die Gesamtheit aller erarbeiteten Lokalstemmata präzise messbare Anhaltspunkte für das Verhältnis aller Zeugen zueinander gewonnen sind, können aufgrund eben dieser Daten in einem zweiten und weiteren Arbeitsgängen die Erstentscheidungen für die Lokalstemmata, soweit sie unsicher waren, korrigiert oder überhaupt erst einer Lösung zugeführt werden. Dadurch werden die Ausgangsdaten der genealogischen Kohärenz mit der sichereren Einschätzung der prioritären und posteriotären Lesarten verbessert, so dass in einem nächst folgenden Korrekturgang fragliche Lokalstemmata und damit wieder die Ausgangsdaten verbessert werden können. Solche iterativ revidierenden Arbeitsgänge werden so lange durchgeführt, bis sich keine Änderungen hinsichtlich der genealogischen Abhängigkeit aller Zeugen untereinander ergeben. Damit ist das Grundprinzip der Kohärenzbasierten genealogischen Methode beschrieben. Daraus folgt für die textkonstituierende Arbeit: Textentscheidungen können niemals im Gegensatz zu der genealogischen Stellung der sie lesenden Zeugen getroffen werden. – Dieser grundsätzlich formulierte Satz gilt, bringt aber bei der editorischen Entscheidung im Einzelfall auch große Schwierigkeiten mit sich, weil sich die Verluste an Handschriften als Prozess von Kontamination auswirken, die Urteile erschwert.5 Gerd Mink und Klaus Wachtel haben an Hand von Einzelfällen Lösungen begründet. 1.3. Die textkritischen Verbesserungen der Kohärenzbasierten genealogischen Methode 1.3.1 Die Neubestimmung des „äußeren Kriteriums“6 Bisher wurde die Bedeutung eines Zeugen weitgehend durch seine Zugehörigkeit zu einem der sog. Texttypen bestimmt, denen ihrerseits ein bestimmter Charakter und eine bestimmte Wertigkeit hinsichtlich des ursprünglichen Textes zugeschrieben wurde. Die Ergebnisse dieses Vorgehens sind keineswegs schlecht, ganz im Gegenteil hat das Verfahren von Westcott und Hort an hervorragende Ahnen. Wir verdanken ihm auch – zumindest im Ansatz – die Güte unserer heute als maßgeblich geltenden Ausgaben. Die Begrenztheit dieses Verfahrens kann aber niemand leugnen, weil Texttypen durch gemeinsame Leitlesarten definiert sind, die faktisch jedoch nie von allen Gruppengliedern gelesen werden, weshalb die Zugehörigkeit zu diesen Texttypen und ihr innerer Zusammenhalt äußerst vage ist. Auch die Wertigkeit dieser Gruppen in Hinsicht auf den ursprünglichen Text ist nur ansatzweise zu beschreiben, so dass bei jeder anste⁵ S. dazu unten bei 1.3.2.3. ⁶ Vgl. dazu Wachtel, „Towards a Redefinition of External Criteria.“

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henden Einzelentscheidung zusätzliche Argumentationen (und Hilfskonstruktionen) beigebracht werden müssen, denen entsprechend einer Lesart besonderes Gewicht beigemessen werden könne. Dazu gehört die vermeintlich weite Verbreitung einer Lesart und die Reihe bekannter textkritischer Grundregeln, die ein vorsichtig ausgewogenes Urteil über die zu einer Stelle vorhandenen Varianten ermöglichen soll. Jetzt werden bei der Anwendung der CBGM diese zuletzt genannten Grundregeln zwar auch mit Sorgfalt befolgt, aber daraus wird auf der Basis aller Varianten einer Schrift die Stellung eines Zeugen im Gesamtgefüge aller, d. h. die umfassende Genealogie der Zeugen, festgestellt und ihre jeweiligen präzisen Relationsangaben (d. h. ihre prägenealogische und genealogische Kohärenz) aus jedermann zugänglichen Datenbanken ablesbar. Diese Relationen gelten für alle Stellen. Textentscheidungen erhalten einen nachprüfbaren Rahmen, innerhalb dessen sie sich bewegen müssen, ein Rahmen, der sich aus der Gesamtheit der immer wieder revidierten Lokalstemmata ergibt. Das äußere Kriterium, d. h. die Kenntnis der Zeugen und ihrer Texte, wird also nicht mehr durch die Zugehörigkeit zu einem in sich nur vage definierten Texttyp und dessen nicht scharf umrissener Mitgliedergruppe bestimmt. 1.3.2 Kohärenzprüfung am Beispiel Textentscheidungen aufgrund von traditionellen Kriterien bedürfen der Überprüfung der genealogischen Kohärenz ihrer Bezeugung und werden dadurch gestärkt und bestätigt. Sie müssen zwei Bedingungen erfüllen. Lesarten, die als ursprünglich angesehen werden, müssen von A, dem Ausgangstext der Überlieferung,7 durch sie lesende Zeugen, deren naher Vorfahre A ist (möglichst ohne alle Zwischenglieder), abhängig gemacht werden können, und ihre Bezeugung muss ein konsistentes Geflecht von genealogisch nahe verwandten Zeugen bilden, in andern Worten, sie sollte vollständige Kohärenz aufweisen. Gerade auch schwierige Stellen, die bisher kaum zu lösen waren, können auf diese Weise geklärt werden. Gerd Mink und Klaus Wachtel haben das an einer Reihe von Textstellen aus den Katholischen Briefen argumentierend und unterstützt durch Diagramme der jeweiligen Bezeugung gezeigt.8 Ich verweise darauf und greife nur ein eindrückliches Beispiel von Mink auf,9 das für meine Frage nach den Charakteristika von Abschrift und Abschreiben von besonderer Bedeutung ist. In 1Petr 4,16/24–28 („Wenn er aber als ein Christ – leidet – , soll er sich nicht schämen, sondern soll Gott verherrlichen in diesem Namen“, ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ, bzw. die Variante: „in diesem Teil“ (oder „in diesem Geschick“, „in ⁷ Vgl. Mink, „Was verändert sich in der Textkritik durch die Beachtung genealogischer Kohärenz?“ 60. ⁸ Vgl. dazu die oben in Anm. 4 genannten Arbeiten. ⁹ Vgl. Mink, „Problems of a Highly Contaminated Tradition,“ 43–6, und ders., „Was verändert sich in der Textkritik?“ 60–2.

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diesem Rang“) ἐν τῷ μέρει τούτῳ. Die Bezeugung für ὀνόματι (ich nenne sie entsprechend der Editio Maior Variante b) ist nach herkömmlichen äußeren Kriterien betrachtet überwältigend, weil von allen als gewichtig angesehenen Handschriften gelesen (P72. 01. 02. 03. 1739 etc.). Alle Ausgaben vor der Editio Maior sahen daher auch diese Lesart als Urprungslesart an, zumal die Gegenlesart μέρει (Variante a) im wesentlichen von byzantinischen Zeugen gelesen wird. Nach inneren Kriterien beurteilt wird man aber zugeben müssen, dass μέρει (a) die schwierigere Lesart ist, von der man nur schwer annehmen kann, dass sie aus dem gut verständlichen ὀνόματι (b) entstanden ist, das zudem eine terminologische Parallele in 1Petr 4,14/6–10 hat, woher es in 4,16 übernommen sein könnte. So weit nach herkömmlichen Kriterien. Klarheit wird man damit nicht erreichen können, zumal nicht, wenn, wie sich mehr und mehr herausstellt, der byzantinische Text abgesehen von seinen eklatanten sekundären Lesarten eine sehr gute Textgrundlage bietet. Die Kohärenzprüfung hilft weiter. Die Durchsicht der Variante a lesenden Zeugen ergibt, dass fünf von ihnen (025=P. 307. 1448. 1735. 2298) direkt bzw. in zweiter Linie in ihrem gesamten Lesartenbestand aus A erklärt werden können (in der Terminologie der CBGM: A ist ihr unmittelbarer oder nächstunmittelbarer potentieller Vorfahre). Folglich ist die erste der oben genannten Bedingungen erfüllt, die Variante a (μέρει) kann von A abhängig gemacht werden. Von diesen Zeugen, genauer von 307 und 1448, sind nun zweitens sämtliche anderen die Variante a lesenden Zeugen genealogisch über ihre potentiellen nahen Vorfahren bzw. als ihre Deszendenten abhängig, so dass die gesamte Bezeugung der Variante a vollständige Kohärenz aufweist und damit auch die zweite Bedingung erfüllt ist10. Die Interpretation dieser Daten ergibt, dass Variante a offensichtlich nur einmal entstanden ist und dann in allen Zeugen von der jeweiligen Vorlage abgeschrieben ist. Das kann man erschließen, obwohl selbstverständlich viele μέρει lesenden Zwischenglieder verloren sind. Die Handschriftenziffern stehen ja hier, woran zu erinnern ist, lediglich für den Text dieser Zeugen. Diese Argumentation wird unterstützt durch die Bezeugung der Variante b (ὀνόματι).11 Sie kann zwar über 03 direkt zu A in Beziehung gesetzt werden, weist aber eine eklatant unvollständige Kohärenz auf. Die Zeugen dieser Lesart haben ihre nächsten potentiellen Vorfahren in höchst unterschiedlichen, auch byzantinischen Zeugen. Sie können nur teilweise von 03 her erklärt werden. Diese in Minks Diagramm dargestellten Daten lassen nur die Deutung zu, dass Variante b mehrfach entstanden ist, und zwar mehrfach in der Textgeschichte ¹⁰ Vgl. das Diagramm für diese Stelle bei Mink, „Problems of a Highly Contaminated Tradition,“ 44, fig. 14 und Mink, „Was verändert sich in der Textkritik?“ 60 (oben Anm. 4). Die potentiellen Vorfahren für jede der betroffenen Handschriften kann man aus der Datenbank entnehmen. ¹¹ S. dazu wieder Mink, „Problems of a Highly Contaminated Tradition,“ 44, fig. 14, und ders., „Was verändert sich in der Textkritik?“ 62 (Anm. 4).

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und in unterschiedlichen Traditionssträngen: schon früh, worauf 03 schließen lässt, aber auch möglicherweise (nicht notwendig) später, was die mehrfachen Rückbildungen aus dem byzantinischen Text anzeigen. Herkömmlich textkritisch geurteilt ist diese Mehrfachentstehung der Variante b wegen der oben erwähnten Parallele zu 1Petr 4,14/6–10 nur zu verständlich, so dass m. E. kein Zweifel daran besteht, dass μέρει die ursprüngliche Lesart ist. Entsprechend haben wir sie in die Leitzeile der Editio Maior aufgenommen, allerdings mit einem Punkt markiert, der hier anzeigt, dass eine andere Interpretation der Daten nicht ausgeschlossen ist. Anhand dieses Beispiels lassen sich weitere Konsequenzen, die sich aus der CBGM ergeben, kurz zusammenfassen, insbesondere insofern sie Aufschluss über die Überlieferungsweise antiker christlicher Texte geben. 1.3.2.1 Dass Kohärenz die handschriftliche Überlieferung bestimmt, zeigt das angeführte Beispiel aus 1Petr 4,16/24–28 deutlich.12 Diese Kohärenz kommt aber nur zustande, weil Handschriften allgemein in der Absicht größtmöglicher Präzision abgeschrieben wurden. Nicht Eklektizismus und freier Gestaltungswille kann also den durchschnittlichen Schreiber und damit die Überlieferungsweise bestimmt haben: Die schwierigere Lesart ἐν τῷ μέρει τούτῳ wurde zäh durch Generationen von Handschriften tradiert; sie wurde klug in das nahe liegende ἐν τῷ το ὀνόματι τούτῳ verändert und auch als solche durch viele Handschriften weiter getragen. Keineswegs wurden darüber hinaus noch andere „Verbesserungsvorschläge“ unternommen – die übrigen zur Stelle vorhandenen Varianten sind nur Folgeerscheinungen der beiden Hauptlesarten. Die offensichtlich unabhängig voneinander unternommenen Änderungen von μέρει in ὀνόματι geschahen entweder mehrfach wegen der Parallele in 1.Pt 4,14 oder weil Schreibern, die in ihrer Vorlage μέρει fanden, die inzwischen verbreitete Lesart ὀνόματι bekannt war. Spuren von spontanem Gestaltungswillen sind in diesem Überlieferungsvorgang nicht zu entdecken, eher Anzeichen von Willen zu Bewahrung des richtigen Textes. 1.3.2.2 Die Kontamination, gegen die „kein Kraut gewachsen“ schien, wird durch die CBGM in ihren Auswirkungen eingeschränkt. Zwar gibt es sie als Vorgang im Kopierprozess und noch weit mehr als faktisches Ergebnis der vielen Handschriftenverluste, aber ihre Konsequenzen, d. h. die Unmöglichkeit, Abhängigkeiten von Handschriften zu bestimmen, können eingegrenzt werden. Das ist deshalb so, weil bei der CBGM nur Texte, Textzustände, unabhängig von Ort und Zeit ihrer Erstentstehung verglichen und in Korrelation zueinander ¹² Dass Kohärenz zwischen allen erhaltenen Zeugen einer neutestamentlichen Schrift besteht, ergibt sich auch aus der Tatsache, dass sich ein Text konstituieren lässt, der an nahezu allen variierten Stellen (mehr als 95 %) einer identischen und konsistenten Genealogie aller erhaltenen Textzustände entspricht. Die arbeitshypothetische Voraussetzung der Methode wird durch das Ergebnis der konstituierten Leitzeile bestätigt.

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gesetzt werden und auch, weil für das Neue Testament eine hinreichend repräsentative Anzahl von Handschriften vom 2. Jahrhundert an erhalten ist, an denen wir historisch nachprüfen können, dass die erhaltenen Textzustände den Verlauf der Textgeschichte zuverlässig repräsentieren. 1.3.2.3 Gewisse Grenzen der Kohärenzprüfung zeigen sich für den Editor des Neuen Testaments an einer nicht ganz kleinen Zahl von Stellen, an denen die Bezeugungen zweier oder mehrerer konkurrierender Lesarten keine befriedigende Kohärenz ergeben. Es handelt sich bei diesen Lesarten – fast ausschließlich – nicht um Varianten, die aus grammatischen, stilistischen, inhaltlichen, schon gar nicht dogmatischen Gründen konkurrieren, sondern die aus Kopierversehen, aus gleichbedeutendem oder gleichwertigem Sprachgebrauch oder naiver Trivialisierung entstehen. Der Editor muss trotzdem Stellung beziehen. Seine Entscheidung ist in diesen Fällen zuweilen nicht zwingend begründbar. Beispiele: In Jak 1,20/12–14 liefern die Bezeugungen der Lesarten οὐκ ἐργάζεται (Variante a) und οὐ κατεργάζεται (Variante b) keine ausreichende Kohärenz, auf die eine Entscheidung gegründet werden könnte. Nach herkömmlichen inneren Kriterien spricht manches dafür, dass a durch Kopierfehler aus b entstanden sein könnte, ein Fehler, bei dem Mehrfachentstehung möglich ist; wegen der scheinbar schwerwiegenden äußeren Bezeugung wurde bisher immer zugunsten von a entschieden. Unwiderlegliche Gründe gibt es für keine der Alternativen. Wichtig in unserm Zusammenhang ist: eine sachliche oder stilistische Differenz zwischen beiden Lesarten und von daher eine Präponderanz für eine der Lesarten gibt es nicht. Das gilt auch für Jak 3,2/26–38 und darin die Lesarten δυνατός (in Variante a, c, d und e) und δυνάμενος (in Variante b) Auch hier ist ein sachlicher oder stilistisch-grammatischer Unterschied zwischen beiden nicht auszumachen; die Lesarten sind gleichbedeutend. Variante b könnte entsprechend bei Mt anzutreffendem Sprachgebrauch (δυνάμενος mit Infinitiv) einmal oder mehrfach in Teilen des byzantinischen und des Hk-Textes verändert worden sein; sicher ist das aber keineswegs. 1.3.2.4 Daraus folgt: Bei den mit der kohärenzbasierten Methode nicht oder nicht befriedigend zu klärenden Varianten handelt es sich um Fehler, die unbewusst oder halbbewusst einmal oder mehrfach jederzeit geschehen und auch zurückgebildet werden können. Bei ihnen könnte in der editorischen Arbeit die grundsätzliche Kohärenzbeachtung und Kohärenzforderung möglicherweise gelockert werden, weil die Bindekraft (connectivity) dieser Varianten gering ist. Für überlieferungsbezogene Überlegungen gilt dagegen: Es sind gerade nicht die genuinen Varianten, nicht diejenigen, von denen man anzunehmen geneigt sein könnte, dass sie aus theologisch-dogmatischen Erwägungen in freier Gestaltung des Textes in diesen eingedrungen wären, die sich der Lösung durch die CBGM widersetzen. Denn diese genuinen Sondervarianten, die es gibt, werden, wenn sie

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überhaupt entstehen, nur selten abgeschrieben, meistens aber gar nicht oder nur in einer nur geringen Zahl von Zeugen tradiert. Varianten dieser Art kommen vor und müssen erklärt und gewürdigt werden, aber sie betreffen in gar keiner Weise das Gros der Varianten. Von ihnen ausgehend kann man nicht Eigenart und Gesetze der Überlieferung beschreiben. 1.4. Übergreifende Ergebnisse und Konsequenzen für die historische Arbeit Was heißt: Ein Text wird abgeschrieben? Die in der handschriftlichen Überlieferung vorfindliche Kohärenz beweist, dass Handschriften mit der Absicht größtmöglicher Genauigkeit abgeschrieben wurden. Wäre die Kopiertradition frei und eklektizistisch, könnte man angesichts des Schwundes vieler Handschriften in den erhaltenen Manuskripten keine Kohärenzen und Kohärenzketten von Zeugen an variierten Stellen aufzeigen. Die überwiegende Mehrheit aller Varianten der handschriftlichen Tradition besteht einerseits in Versehen und Irrtümern aller Art, andrerseits in vermeintlichen Berichtigungen der Vorlage im Sinne des im Text Gemeinten. Varianten dieser Art sind typisch für die normalen Schreiber neutestamentlicher Handschriften. Bei ihnen handelt es sich in der Frühzeit um Berufsschreiber13, nicht solche, deren Ausbildung sie zur Abschrift von Literaturwerken in angesehenen Bibliotheken befähigte, aber doch solche, deren ausgeprägter Schreibstil verrät – er ist, wie bekannt, von Roberts „reformed documentary“ genannt worden –, dass sie gelernt haben, mit dem Abschreiben von Dokumenten aller Art ihren Unterhalt zu verdienen, das schnell und korrekt tun, und die auch befähigt sind, literarische Texte nach Art der frühchristlichen Schriften zu kopieren.14 Unsere neutestamentlichen Papyri sind ausnahmslos in diesem Stil geschrieben. Schreiber dieses Stils sind keine Theologen. Ein dogmatisches Interesse, das über einen naiven Berichtigungseifer hinausginge, liegt ihnen fern. Die Varianten, die solche Schreiber produzieren, entsprechen ihrer sozialen Mentalität. Varianten, die ernsthafte theologische Eingriffe in den Text darstellen, gibt es nur selten, und wenn es sie gibt, sind sie allermeist durch einen Minimaleingriff in den Wortlaut vorgenommen, was wiederum die prinzipielle Absicht der genauen Wiedergabe des Textes unterstreicht. Varianten dieser theologischen Art entstammen nicht der Institution der Schreiber, die die handschriftliche neutestamentliche Überlieferung trägt, sondern von Theologen oder theologisch interessierten Laien, um das weite Feld der dafür in Frage kommenden Personen mit diesem anachronistischen Ausdruck zu umreißen. Es gibt Beispiele dafür: In den Katholischen Briefen weist P 72 zwar eine beträchtliche Menge von vor¹³ Vgl. dazu H. Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Ancient Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 78–81. Vgl. dazu auch Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 277 und unten S. 17 mit Anm. 33. ¹⁴ Zu Sprache, Stil und Genus frühchristlicher Schriften vgl. gut Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, 32–41 mit Hinweis auf L. Rydbeck und L. Alexander.

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nehmlich semantisch-stilistischen, aber auch theologischen Individualvarianten auf, aber P 72 ist, wie bekannt, eine private Sammelhandschrift, bei der das theologische Interesse des Sammlers und Schreibers(?) teilweise aus den in der Handschrift eigenartig zusammengestellten Texten zu ersehen ist. Wichtig ist: Es handelt sich um einen Sonderfall von Handschrift, dessen zahlreiche Singulärlesarten nicht abgeschrieben wurden. Die „Institution“ der Schreiber bzw. ihre Auftraggeber suchten sich andere Vorlagen. Ähnlich bei den Evangelien: Der sog. westliche Text, insbesondere D, liefert Sonderlesarten, über deren Rang und Bedeutung man geteilter Meinung sein kann, die aber gewiss besondere Lesarten sind. Auch sie wurden in der gesamten handschriftlichen Evangelienüberlieferung nur sehr selten tradiert, weil man sich zuverlässige Exemplare zur Abschrift suchte. Die theologisch oder eher erzähllogisch ausgerichteten Varianten von D und auch seine aus außerkanonischem Überlieferungsgut schöpfenden Interpolationen15 gehen auf die oben bezeichneten „Theologen“ zurück, nicht auf die Normalschreiber. Varianten dieser Art bilden die absolute Ausnahme, aus der man keine Regel für eine im Grundsatz „freie und lebendige“ Überlieferung christlicher Verkündigung in der Frühzeit ableiten kann.16 Die Gesamtheit der handschriftlichen Überlieferung des Neuen Testaments zeigt also, was Abschreiben heißt, nämlich, eine schriftliche Vorlage intentional und prinzipiell genau zu kopieren,17 so genau, dass sie rekonstruierbar ist – vorausgesetzt, es sind Manuskripte in ausreichender Zahl vorhanden, wie es beim Neuen Testament der Fall ist. In der Frühzeit der ersten Jahrhunderte war die Kopiertradition aus mancherlei Gründen unordentlicher, u. a. weil es zu wenige und zu unpräzise Korrektoren gab. Aber ausgezeichnete Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Überlieferung auf Papyrus zeigen,18 dass es im Prinzip die gleiche Art von Fehlern und Varianten ist, die in diesen frühen Manuskripten vorkommt. Ihnen liegt ein einheitlicher Normaltext zugrunde.

¹⁵ S. bei Schröter, Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament, 283 f. den Hinweis auf die Einfügung eines sonst nicht tradierten Jesuslogions in D nach Lk 6,1–4. ¹⁶ Wenn theologisch motivierte Varianten in die breite Überlieferung eingehen, also abgeschrieben wurden – auch das geschieht – dann handelt es sich z. B. um byzantinische Sonderlesarten (etwa 1 Pt 3,15/8a Χριστόν/gegen 8b θεόν). Hier ist die Variante b schon früh in den Traditionsstrom der byzantinischen Vorlagen eingedrungen und dann im klassischen Sinne präzise abgeschrieben worden. Man kann sogar erwägen, ob b nicht der ursprüngliche Text ist. Dann gälte Entsprechendes für die Variante a. ¹⁷ Zur Genauigkeit der frühen neutestamentlichen Überlieferung auf Papyrus und zum literarischen Ethos des frühesten Christentums vgl. gut auch L. W. Hurtado, „The New Testament in the Second Century: Text, Collections and Canon,“ in Transmission and Reception: New Testament Text-Critical and Exegetical Studies (ed. J. W. Childers and D. C. Parker; Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2006), 3–27 und den Beitrag von T. Wasserman in diesem Band. ¹⁸ J. R. Royse, Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri (Leiden: Brill, 2008) und K. S. Min, Die früheste Überlieferung des Matthäusevangeliums (bis zum 3./4. Jh.) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005).

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Was heißt: Ein Text wird abgeschrieben? Der Text wird erhalten, wenn er abgeschrieben wird. Je mehr er abgeschrieben wird, desto mehr wird er – in dieser Form – erhalten und verbreitet. Oder anders: Schriftliches ist in der Abschrift nicht beliebig veränderbar und erweiterbar. Das ist keine Banalität, sondern diese faktische Bedeutung des Geschriebenen muss bei unserer Auffassung von der Kanongeschichte und auch der Rekonstruktion der frühesten Geschichte des Christentums und seiner Überlieferungen berücksichtigt werden. Das geschieht in den einschlägigen Arbeiten zu wenig, so etwa in den im Übrigen so eindrücklichen Untersuchungen von Jens Schröter zum Überlieferungsweg „Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament“. Er geht, was die Geschichte der Kanonisierung betrifft, von der „Flexibilität der Überlieferung“ aus, „die den Prozess, der für die mündliche Überlieferungsphase vorauszusetzen ist, nicht etwa zum Erliegen bringt, sondern fortsetzt …“, eine Flexibilität, von der er annimmt, dass sie „auch den Wortlaut des bereits vorhandenen Textes“ betrifft.19 Gewährsmann für diese textkritische Einsicht ist Bart Ehrman, dem entsprechend er formuliert: „In der Textüberlieferung der Evangelien zeigt sich ein geradezu erstaunlich freier Umgang mit diesen Texten, der sich in der Variabilität des Wortlauts niedergeschlagen hat“.20 Das trifft, zumindest nach meinen textkritischen Erfahrungen, nicht zu, und entsprechend kann man in der Fortführung auch schwerlich so argumentieren: „Die meiste Zeit ihres Bestehens hat die Kirche jedoch ohne eine fixierte Gestalt des neutestamentlichen Textes – und natürlich auch ohne einen ‚historischen Jesus‘ – 21 existiert. Das Bemühen, den einen Text oder den einen Jesus hinter der Vielfalt der Überlieferungen zu finden, stellt sich deshalb immer deutlicher als ein dem Überlieferungsbefund nicht angemessener Versuch heraus, einen einheitlichen Ausgangspunkt der Überlieferung zu eruieren, den es nie gegeben hat. Das frühe Christentum war nicht an der Bewahrung des einen Ursprungs orientiert, sondern wahrte die Beziehung zu den eigenen Anfängen in Form einer freien, lebendigen Überlieferung.“22

Wenn auch bei den frühesten Handschriften des Neuen Testaments vom 2. Jahrhundert an von einer „freien, lebendigen Überlieferung“ im hier gemeinten Sinne nicht die Rede sein kann, dann muss, wenn man Überlieferungsgeschichte beschreibt, der Verschriftlichung von Quellen wohl eine andere Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet werden. Verschriftliche Quellen, die eine bestimmte Form der Überlieferung schriftlich bewahren und verbreiten wollen, sind nicht beliebig veränderbar. Das widerspräche ihrer Intention, und es widerspricht auch dem Faktum der über 2000 erhaltenen Evangelienhandschriften. Sie überliefern insgesamt einen Text – die bekannten sehr frühen Ergänzungen dieses Textes muss man Schröter, Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament, 291. Schröter, Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament, 291. Die Parallelisierung ist unangemessen. Schröter, Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament, 292 ff. Außer auf B. Ehrman beruft sich Schröter auch auf Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (s. oben Anm 2). ¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹ ²²

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hinzuzählen – einen Text, der von der Frühzeit an – sollen wir sagen: von der Entstehung der Texte an? – abgeschrieben und damit bewahrt und verbreitet wurde. Die zahllosen Versehen, Fehler und naiven scheinbaren Berichtigungen widersprechen, wie gezeigt, nicht der Tatsache des prinzipiell einen überlieferten Textes. Wir dürfen nicht von den Ausnahmen der wenigen gewichtigen Eingriffe in den Text und seiner Varianten ausgehen, wenn wir die frühen Überlieferungsprozesse betrachten, was aber geschieht, wenn man „die erhaltenen Manuskripte aus den ersten Jahrhunderten des Christentums“ als Bestätigung für den Prozess einer freien und lebendigen Überlieferung versteht.23 Richtig ist wohl, dass das „Nebeneinander von mündlichen und schriftlichen Überlieferungsprozessen“, das Schröter für die früheste Zeit eindrücklich nachgewiesen hat,24 mit den ersten Verschriftlichungen nicht an sein Ende kam.25 Aber der Sog zur Erhaltung und Bewahrung, den die Schriftlichkeit von Texten – und zwar verbreiteten Texten – ausübt, darf nicht unterschätzt werden. Zwar gibt es freie Rezeptionen der Jesusüberlieferung bis etwa in die zweite Hälfte des zweiten Jahrhunderts, wie Schröter es am Beispiel des Papyrus Egerton 2, des Petrusevangeliums, des Thomasevangeliums und des Evangeliums der Maria aufgezeigt hat,26 aber das sind Arbeiten gestaltender theologischer Autoren, die Überlieferungen, die ihnen zugänglich waren, nutzten und in ihrem Sinne formten. Aus ihrem Kreis mögen auch die wenigen großen Interpolationen in neutestamentlichen Texten wie auch die gewichtigen Varianten kommen, nicht aus dem der Schreiber, und damit derer, die den vorgegebenen Text, so gut sie konnten, bewahrten. Der Text, den sie abschrieben, muss schon sehr bald eine hohe Autorität besessen haben. Anders sind die vielen Bezugnahmen auf diesen Text nicht zu verstehen, so schon innerhalb der Evangelien- und der Briefliteratur des NT, aber auch der Apokryphen, die doch wohl weitgehend als Ergänzungen der neutestamentlichen Literatur, nicht als deren intendierter Ersatz, zu verstehen sind, und damit den anerkannten Rang der neutestamentlichen Evangelien und der Paulinen nur unterstreichen.27 Auch die gnostischen Bezugnahmen auf neutestamentlichen Text weisen in diese Richtung, die bekanntermaßen im Allgemeinen sehr wörtlich sind, um gerade an dieser Autorität des Textes durch ihre Auslegung ihre eigene theologische Einsicht zu rechtfertigen. Und schließlich immer So Schröter, Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament, 293 ff. Schröter, Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament, 85; vgl. 81–104. So Schröter, Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament, 85 und 294. Schröter, Von Jesus zum Neuen Testament, 285–7. Ich zweifele daher auch daran, dass es sachlich angemessen ist, mit Lührmann von „apokryph gewordenen“ und dann entsprechend auch von „kanonisch gewordenen“ Schriften zu sprechen. Das ist nur in einem vordergründigen Sinne richtig, denn selbstverständlich hat im 2. Jahrhundert niemand von apokryphen oder kanonischen Schriften gesprochen. Der Sache nach und ihrer anerkannten Bedeutung schon im gesamten 2. Jahrhundert nach waren die kanonischen Evangelien aber sehr wohl autoritativ, so, wie es die Apokryphen eben nicht waren, wie es schon die bekannte Anfrage nach dem Petrusevangelium in Rhossos verrät. ²³ ²⁴ ²⁵ ²⁶ ²⁷

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wieder Marcion als einen Wendepunkt der Überlieferung: Er gehört einerseits noch zu den gestaltenden Theologen, die noch in den überlieferten Text eingreifen können, ist aber andrerseits schon der Theologe, der neuartig auf die Bedeutung des autoritativen überlieferten Textes der Paulinen und „seines“ Evangeliums hinweist, indem er ihn „reinigt“ (mehr durch Streichung bestimmter Themen als durch redaktionelle Bearbeitung), und ihn so in vorher nicht gekannter Stringenz zur Grundlage seiner Theologie macht, der er nur noch die exegisierend zusammenfassenden Antithesen, kein anderes dogmatisches Werk, an die Seite stellen muss. Die Faktizität der Schriftlichkeit, die Texte hinterlässt, die in Raum und Zeit vorhanden und eben nicht beliebig veränderbar und erweiterbar sind, sie war es, auf die ich von der textkritischen Arbeit aus hinweisen wollte. Dass sie außer für die Kanongeschichte auch für die Erforschung der vorsynoptischen Jesusüberlieferung im Blick gehalten werden sollte, scheint mir nahe zu liegen. Die hier nicht mehr zu stellende Frage, die sich dann ergäbe, müsste etwa lauten: Was bedeutet es für eine Überlieferung, die ja in den Anfängen durchaus „frei und lebendig“ war, wie Schröter gezeigt hat, wenn sie erstmals teilweise verschriftlicht wird, in Texte, die zur Verbreitung bestimmt sind?

2. Andere textkritische Neuansätze: Bart D. Ehrman und David C. Parker Beide hier anzuzeigenden Ansätze sind von besonderem Interesse, weil sie, wie es unbedingt förderlich ist, Textkritik disziplinenübergreifend mit Historie und Exegese verknüpfen. Beide tun das kenntnisreich, sensibel und unbedingt anregend, aber: sie gehen von den Ausnahmen der neutestamentlichen Varianten aus und vernachlässigen damit die Realität der normalen neutestamentlichen Überlieferung. Dazu einige kurze Anmerkungen. 2.1. Bart D. Ehrman Ehrmans28 Anliegen ist es zu zeigen, dass es in den Handschriften des Neuen Testaments bewusst intentionale Textänderungen von Schreibern gibt, die aus deren historischem Kontext zu erklären sind. Da dieser Kontext in den verschiedensten Perspektiven wirksam werden kann – neben judenfeindlichen und Frauen-diskriminierenden Tendenzen wirkt sich auch der soziologische Hintergrund der Schreiber aus etc. –, konzentriert sich Ehrman auf einen seines Erachtens ertragreichen und vielfältigen Aspekt, den der christologischen Debatten des 2./3. Jahrhunderts und fragt nach deren Einfluss auf die zeitgenössische Variantenbildung, wobei mit Recht das Moment der Tenazität vorausgesetzt wird, dem²⁸ Vgl die Titel seiner Arbeiten oben Anm. 2.

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entsprechend in späten Handschriften begegnende Varianten früh entstanden sein können. Eine weitere (wohl zutreffende) Voraussetzung der Arbeit besteht in der Annahme, dass die erhaltenen Handschriften im großkirchlichen Auftrag kopiert, d. h. von, wie Ehrman formuliert, sog. proto-orthodoxen Schreibern geschrieben worden seien, da sich „häretische“ Kopien des NT nicht erhalten hätten. So kann er also untersuchen, ob und inwiefern Variierungen des neutestamentlichen Textes zur Abwehr häretisch-christologischer Tendenzen vorgenommen wurden, Tendenzen, die Ehrman den (später) so genannten Parteiungen der Adoptianer, „Separatianer“ (= gnostische Trennungschristologien), Doketisten, Patripassianer bzw. eben Proto-Orthodoxen zuweist. Eine solche Untersuchung, im Prinzip nicht neu, aber immer nur ad hoc unternommen, ist willkommen und notwendig. Ehrman ist zudem klug, kenntnisreich und vorsichtig und bemüht sich, sein Ergebnis, das sich in der These von der „orthodox corruption of scripture“ niederschlägt, nicht zu überziehen. Er weiß von der Zufälligkeit29 (at random) und inconsistency30 theologisch zu interpretierender Varianten, die niemals systematisch durchgeführt werden (es gibt noch keine „Bibel in gerechter Sprache“). Er erkennt an, dass die Änderungen, die er auf theologische Absicht zurückführt, relativ sehr selten sind31, und er unterstellt den Schreibern keine unlautere Bosheit, sondern lediglich das Bemühen, den Inhalt des Textes, den sie kannten und selbstverständlich als „orthodox“ anerkannten, noch eindeutiger auszudrücken32 und damit vor jeder häretischen Missdeutung schützen zu wollen33. Dementsprechend versteht er solche Textänderungen durch die Schreiber, die er annimmt, auch nicht als einem Feld für direkte Polemik zugehörig, sondern sieht sie nur als „a secondary form of polemic“ an. Was seine Methode anlangt, so gibt Ehrman an, „standard kinds of textcritical arguments“ benutzen zu wollen, d. h. vor allem die Anwendung sog. innerer und äußerer Kriterien. Dabei sieht er sich dem traditionellen Ziel verpflichtet, bei jeder besprochenen Variante „die früheste Form des Textes“ zu erheben. Wir fragen, wie sich Ehrmans Ergebnisse auf dem Hintergrund der mit der Kohärenzbasierten genealogischen Methode gewonnenen Erkenntnisse bewähren. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 277. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 56 et passim. S. die Aufstellung in Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 164 f. Das entspricht durchaus antikem Verständnis der Aufgaben eines Editors (entsprechend auch eines Schreibers?), s. z. B. die erstaunlichen Prinzipien des Porphyrios bei seiner Orakelsammlung, Euseb, praep. ev. 4, 7. ³³ Vgl. Dazu Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 279 f.: „In no instance of scribal corruption that we have examined, even the most blatant among them, have we uncovered evidence to suggest that proto-orthodox scribes acted out of sheer malice or utter disregard for the constraints of the text – that is, that they strove to make the text say precisely, what they knew it did not. Quite the contrary, it appears that these scribes knew exactly what the text said, or at least they thought they knew (which for our purposes comes to the same thing), and that the changes they made functioned to make their certain meanings all the more certain.“ ²⁹ ³⁰ ³¹ ³²

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Ehrmans Beobachtungen zur Zufälligkeit und Inkonsequenz bei der Durchführung von Variierungen, zum geringen Umfang der Varianten und der daraus folgenden Mehrdeutigkeit, überhaupt der häufig fehlenden Eindeutigkeit in der Bestimmung der Ursachen von Varianten kann jeder bestätigen, der sich einmal mit allen Varianten eines größeren zusammenhängenden Textstücks beschäftigt hat, und selbstverständlich passen sie auch in das Muster, das die nach Minks Methode untersuchte Überlieferung der Kath. Briefe aufweist. Das mahnt aber zur Vorsicht gegenüber der vorschnellen und zu einseitigen Begründung von Varianten in eine bestimmte, zumal ideologische Richtung. Anders ist das natürlich etwa bei scribal slips wie Homoioteleuta und Homoioarkta, deren Ursachen eindeutig sind. Auch die von Ehrman behandelten Varianten sind Varianten von den Schreibern, deren Berufsauffassung und Mentalität oben beschrieben wurde34: Sie wollen kopieren, möglichst schnell, zuverlässig und präzise und im Rahmen der Genauigkeit, die die eigene Fehlbarkeit und ein mehr oder weniger strenger Diorthot zulassen. Schreiber sind eben nicht nur „human beings“, die durch ihre „anxieties, fears, concerns, desires, hatreds und ideas“ bestimmt sind,35 sondern zu ihrem Kontext gehören vornehmlich auch ihre Berufsvorgaben, die nur minimale individuelle Einflussmöglichkeiten boten und solche anzustreben auch nicht ermutigten. Dazu kommt, dass sich die meisten Varianten, wie wir sahen36, als offensichtliche Fehler, unbewusste oder halbbewusste37, erweisen. Wenn das so ist, ist die Chance, bewusste theologische Eingriffe zu finden, nicht sehr groß, und in der Tat, ist die Zahl der von Ehrman so charakterisierten Varianten ja auch nur klein. Nichtsdestoweniger gibt es theologisch motivierte Varianten, sie müssen aber in Relation zu der im Ganzen anders gearteten Überlieferung gesehen werden, die nicht theologisch bestimmt, nicht literarisch ambitioniert, nur minimal stilistisch engagiert, allenfalls gelegentlich erzähltechnisch-logisch bemüht ist. Daraus folgt, dass scheinbar gezielte theologische Eingriffe, die dogmatischer Absicht zu entspringen scheinen, auch auf andere, einfachere Entstehungsmöglichkeiten hin zu prüfen sind, die – gibt es sie – viel Wahrscheinlichkeit für sich haben.38 Wir erläutern das an einigen Textbeispielen aus einigen von Ehrmans prominenten Beispielen. Lk 2, 41–51, s. auch Lk 2,3339: Die Bezeichnung Josefs als Jesu „Vater“ bzw. Marias und Josefs als seine „Eltern“ in der Geschichte vom zwölfjährigen Jesus im Tempel ist verschiedentlich diskutiert worden. Ehrman nutzt sie als Beispiel für seine von ihm so genannten „anti-adoptionistic corruptions of scripture“.40 ³⁴ ³⁵ ³⁶ ³⁷ ³⁸ ³⁹ ⁴⁰

S. oben S. 64 unter 1.4. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 277. S. oben S. 11. Zur Definition s. oben S. 64. Ehrman weiß das auch, zieht aber keine Konsequenzen daraus. Vgl auch Mt 1,16 im Sinaisyrer. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 54–6.

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Aber birgt sie wirklich die Gefahr des adoptianischen Missverständnisses, so dass sie in „Josef und Maria“, in „Josef und seine Mutter“ o. ä. als dogmatisch korrekt geändert werden musste? Mir scheint diese Erklärung ein wenig überzogen angesichts der Tatsache, dass die Kopisten des Lukasevangeliums gerade die Geschichten von der Ankündigung und der wunderbaren Geburt Jesu wie dem Zeugnis des Simeon und der Hanna geschrieben hatten und nun bei der Rede von Josef als Vater Jesu stutzig werden konnten (keineswegs mussten, wie viele Handschriften zeigen) und entsprechend mit kleinem Eingriff änderten. Dafür spricht jedenfalls, dass in keiner Handschrift alle zu inkriminierenden Stellen „verbessert“ wurden, sondern „Korrekturen“ nur unsystematisch an einzelnen Stellen vorgenommen wurden41, was auch Ehrman weiß. Worauf es hier ankommt, ist schlicht, dass für diese Varianten eine einfachere Erklärung möglich ist als die des dogmatischen Anstoßes und der beabsichtigten Verhinderung des adoptianischen Missverständnisses, nämlich die des verdutzt-naiven logischen Anstoßes und demgemäß seiner beiläufigen Ver(schlimm)besserung. Das hier Ausgeführte gilt für mehrere von Ehrmans Beispielen. Sie erlauben schlichtere Erklärungen, als er sie bietet, und d. h.: wahrscheinlichere Lösungen für Schreiber, die im schnellen Fluss ihrer Kopistentätigkeit zwar beiläufig das „korrigierten“, was ihnen an Ungereimtheiten auffallen mochte und durch geringfügigen Eingriff zu korrigieren war, niemals aber den abzuschreibenden Text auch nur annähernd durchgängig korrigierten – auch Korrektoren taten das nicht. Zu dieser Mentalität passt besser die Annahme von gelegentlichen Berichtigungen jedweden Anstoßes als die theologisch-antihäretische Absicht, – obwohl, wieder sei es gesagt, auch das hier und da möglich ist.42 Ähnliches gilt von andern Beispielen. In Mt 24,36 lautet der zweifellos älteste und urprüngliche Text, dass weder die Engel im Himmel noch der Sohn Tag und Stunde kennen. Die Wendung „οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός“ lassen eine große Menge von Zeugen aus, der Mehrheitstext ist aber gespalten.43 Soll man diese Variante wirklich „one of the clearest examples of an orthodox change effected to prevent its heretical ‚misuse‘“ nennen?44 – einen „Missbrauch“, der im adoptianischen Sinne Jesus, „as a mere man“, die Kenntnis von Tag und Stunde absprechen könnte? Das überzieht doch wohl das, was wir über Sinn, Ausmaß und Verbreitung des ⁴¹ Dass der byzantinische Text in Lk 2,33 und 48 „korrigiert,“ spricht nicht dagegen, denn in dieser Textform werden Fehler konsistent weiter getragen. Vgl. dazu vor allem K. Wachtel, Der Byzantinische Text der Katholischen Briefe. Eine Untersuchung zur Entstehung der Koine des Neuen Testaments (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995). ⁴² Ein Kandidat für bewusste theologische Änderungen ist etwa P 72, eine Handschrift, die aber aus mancherlei Gründen nicht mit den üblichen Texthandschriften zu vergleichen ist. Vgl. dazu oben S. 64 f. ⁴³ Eine vollständige Auflistung der Bezeugung s. in K. Aland, B. Aland, and K. Wachtel, Text und Textwert der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1998), 129–30. Dass der byzantinische Text trotz seiner konservativen Textüberlieferung hier gespalten ist, zeigt, dass die Omission selbst in dieser Tradition umstritten war. ⁴⁴ Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 91.

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sog. Adoptianismus wissen, erheblich.45 Dagegen ist eine schlichte, „naive“ Erklärung der Variante, die des kirchenhistorisch dogmatischen Hintergrundes nicht bedarf, nahe liegend: Nur allzu verständlich stutzte man – nicht nur ein Schreiber – angesichts der Anmutung des Textes, dass auch der Sohn den Zeitpunkt des Endes nicht kennen sollte (und korrigierte durch eine scheinbar richtig stellende Omission). Ebenso ist die Zufügung von με post σκορπίζει im Entscheidungsruf Jesu in Mt 12,30/Lk 11,23 in einigen Handschriften kaum eine Zurückweisung einer gnostischen Trennungschristologie (Ehrman zählt sie zu den „anti-separationist corruptions“,46) – die zudem sprachlich ungeschickt wäre – ,sondern der ebenfalls ungeschickte Versuch, die hinter dem vierten Verbum des Satzes fehlende präpositionelle Wendung zu ersetzen. Das Bemühen um stilistische Änderung ist, auch wenn sie unzureichend ausfällt, sehr häufig und daher die einfachere Erklärung für die Variante. Noch schwieriger wird Ehrmans Deutung von Mk 15,34 „Mein Gott, mein Gott, warum hast du mich verlassen“ mit der Variante ὠνειδίσας με (statt ἐγκατέλιπές με) in D und wenigen lateinischen Zeugen. Porphyrios/Makarios Magnes war diese Lesung immerhin schon bekannt.47 Wieder handelt es sich um eine Stelle, die naiv frommen Lesern Anstoß bereiten konnte – Jesus am Kreuz von Gott verlassen? – Daher konnte man geneigt sein, die Stelle im Rahmen des einem Schreiber Möglichen abzumildern. Und da in der unmittelbar vorhergehenden Szene vom Schmähen Jesu (durch die Umstehenden) die Rede war (ἐβλασφήμουν in 15,29; ἐμπαίζοντες 15,31; ὠνείδιζον 15,32) mag in 15,34 eine Harmonisierung mit dem engeren Kontext im Sinne des „Warum hast du mich solchen Schmähungen ausgesetzt“ nahe gelegen haben. Muss man für die Variante in D die Erklärung bemühen, hier habe der gnostisch-häretisch mögliche Missbrauch eines Verständnisses der ursprünglichen Lesart im Sinne eines „der göttliche himmlische Christus verließ am Kreuz den irdischen Jesus“ verhindert werden sollen?48 Um nicht missverstanden zu werden: Beweisen kann ich die genannte einfachere Erklärung der Variante nicht. Abzweckungen, wie Ehrman sie angibt, mögen auch vorgekommen sein. Aber darum geht es hier nicht, sondern um die Frage, wie wahrscheinlich und regelmäßig sie sind, wenn man denn wie Ehrman eine Tendenz, wenn nicht mehr, zur „orthodox corruption of scripture“ belegen will. Regelmäßigkeiten, die eine solche Tendenz begründen könnten, sind aber in der neutestestamentkichen Überlieferung nicht festzustellen. Schließlich noch ein Wort zur Validität der kirchenhistorischen Voraussetzungen von Ehrmans textkritischen Überlegungen. Was wissen wir wirklich über den kirchenhistorischen Kontext neutestamentlicher Schreiber im 2./3. Jahrhun⁴⁵ ⁴⁶ ⁴⁷ ⁴⁸

S. dazu unten S. 72–3. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 135 f. Apocrit. II 12. So Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 144–5.

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dert, hier speziell über Zeitpunkt, Bedeutung, Trennschärfe und Ausmaß christologischer Debatten? Von den von Ehrman angeführten „Häresien“ (sog. Adoptianer, Separationisten, Doketisten und Patripassianern) sind nur die Doketisten schon früh nachzuweisen (1. Johannesbrief, dann Marcion, Gnosis u. a.), könnten also schon im 2. Jahrhundert eine Reaktion in neutestamentlichen Handschriften hervorgerufen haben. Was den antiken Doketismus betrifft, hat schon Harnack davor gewarnt, ihn nach modernen logischen Konsequenzen zu beurteilen49: Marcion lehrte aus Leib- und Materiefeindlichen Gründen doketisch, sein Christus litt und starb aber im Vollsinne des Wortes. Alle anderen oben genannten „Häresien“ sind, zumindest in ihrer expliziten Form, erst von den letzten Jahren des 2. Jahrhunderts an nachzuweisen, die Quellenlage ist sehr bruchstückhaft. Wichtiger noch ist, dass ihre Abgrenzung gegeneinander und vor allem die theologische Absicht, um deretwegen die einzelnen äußerlich anstößigen christologischen Definitionen gewählt wurden, im einzelnen unklar und jeweils auch verschieden ist. Alle von Ehrman aufgeführten Richtungen haben einen monarchianisch-monotheistischen Grundzug, der dem unreflektierten Gemeindeglauben entsprach. Ihn werden die Schreiber, soweit sie Christen waren, wahrscheinlich geteilt haben. Dem entsprechen die oben in den Beispielen angeführten „naiven“ Textänderungen. Dass die Schreiber aber die spekulativen, gegen die Logostheologie gerichteten Theorien eines Theodot und Artemon oder eines Noet, Praxeas und Sabellius so gekannt hätten, dass sie davon beeinflusst worden wären, ist wohl kaum anzunehmen, wäre zumindest reine Spekulation, und Ehrman setzt das auch nicht voraus. Wir befinden uns im 2. Jahrhundert in der Zeit des von Markschies so genannten experimentierenden theologischen Laboratoriums. Dass Schreiber neutestamentlicher Handschriften von einzelnen Versuchen desselben in irgendeiner Form gehört haben, insbesondere insoweit die drängende neue Fragerichtung nach dem Wesen, nicht so sehr nach dem Wirken Jesu, betroffen war, ist nicht auszuschließen, dass sie aber fähig und willens gewesen wären, ihre Ergebnisse in die ganz anders gearteten neutestamentlichen Schriften einzutragen und zwar so, dass man von einer Tendenz (oder mehr?) der „orthodox corruption of scripture“ sprechen könnte, ist schlicht unwahrscheinlich und entspricht auch nicht dem Charakter der „inconsistency“ und Inkonsequenz der betroffenen Varianten. Wenn es bei Ehrman um die kirchenhistorische und soziokulturelle Verortung neutestamentlicher Varianten geht, so bei dem im folgenden zu besprechenden Ansatz um den Sinn textkritischer Arbeit überhaupt.

⁴⁹ A. von Harnack, Marcion. Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott. Nachdruck der 2., verbesserten und vermehrten Auflage von 1924 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1960), 125.

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2.2. David C. Parker Parker50 ist ein außerordentlich erfahrener Kenner der materiellen und paläographischen Gegebenheiten neutestamentlicher Handschriften und ein leidenschaftlicher textkritischer Theologe. In seinem Buch mit dem sprechenden Titel „The Living Text of the Gospels“ wie auch in begleitenden Aufsätzen51 entwikkelt er eine Theorie, bei der sich in eigentümlicher Weise theologische und textkritische Interessen mischen. Sie kann zusammengefasst werden in dem Motto „Scripture is Tradition“.52 Ich bedauere es, hier nur auf diese Theorie, nicht auf die Diskussion von Einzelstellen eingehen zu können. Parker geht – Handschriftenspezialist, der er ist – von der Tatsache aus, dass das Neue Testament nur in der physischen Form von untereinander differierenden Manuskripten überliefert ist und weist dementsprechend auf die gewichtigen Abweichungen in den Handschriften der Evangelien hin, einschließlich der Abschnitte, die allgemein und auch von Parker selbst als sekundäre frühe Interpolationen angesehen werden (Markus-Schlüsse, Perikope von der Ehebrecherin, 21. Kapitel des JohEv u. a.) Es sind nicht allzu viele Variationskomplexe, die er bespricht, etwa 20 an der Zahl. Dennoch entwickelt Parker daran eine Allgemeingültigkeit beanspruchende Theorie, der entsprechend sich die Überlieferung von den Worten und Taten Jesu in einem über Jahrhunderte andauernden Prozess vollzog, der sich über die mündliche Weitergabe, die teilweise rekonstruierbaren frühen schriftlichen Quellen, über unsere heute als kanonisch bezeichneten Evangelien und die handschriftlichen Zeugen dieser Evangelien hin erstreckte und sich weiter bis heute in der persönlichen Aneignung und Interpretation der Texte vollziehe. Parker sieht demzufolge keinen prinzipiellen Unterschied zwischen den frühen, nur zu konjizierenden Vorstadien und Quellen der Evangelien und den erhaltenden neutestamentlichen Handschriften selbst. Methodisch lehnt er daher auch die Unterscheidung von „textual criticism“ und „source theory“, von „conjectural emendation“ und „literal reconstruction“ ab,53 da im Verlaufe des Kopierens der Handschriften sich die gleichen Vorgänge des Kompilierens, Interpretierens und Veränderns abspielten wie bei der frühesten mündlichen und schriftlichen Weitergabe. Er kommt daher zu dem Schluss, dass „the written texts are only a part of the process by which the traditions about Jesus were passed on“54 oder noch knapper formuliert, „that the Gospel texts exist only as a manuscript tradition, and that from the beginning the text grew freely.“ Infolge dessen hält Parker die Suche nach einem ⁵⁰ Die Titel seiner einschlägigen Arbeiten s. oben Anm. 2 ⁵¹ S. besonders „Scripture is Tradition;“ „Jesus in Textual Criticism,“ und „Textual Criticism

and Theology,“ alle in: Parker, Manuscripts, Texts, Theology, 265–333. ⁵² So der Titel des programmatischen Aufsatzes des in Anm. 51 genannten Sammelbandes. ⁵³ Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels, 118 und 179. „The traditions were told and retold, written and rewritten, in oral tradition and in successive versions of texts“ (179). ⁵⁴ Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels, 179.

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Urtext oder, wie er häufig merkwürdig formuliert, einem „single authoritative text“ für fragwürdig55 bzw. „in itself a distortion of the tradition“ und sucht in der skizzierten Theorie einen alternativen Annäherungsversuch an das Faktum der vorhandenen neutestamentlichen Varianten. Dementsprechend redet er vom „living text of the gospels“.56 Die theologisch engagierte Haltung, die dieser Theorie zugrunde liegt, drückt sich besonders klar auf den letzten Seiten von Parkers Buch aus: „[…] We argue this: the church came into being through the Spirit, as the community of the Spirit. The oral and written tradition together were and remain a principal element in the church’s finding its calling. But the tradition is manifold. There are four quite different Gospels, none with a claim to authority over the other three; there is no authoritative text beyond the manuscripts which we may follow without further thought. There is a manifold tradition to be studied and from which we may learn. But once that is done, the people of God have to make up their own minds. There is no authoritative text to provide a short-cut. Difficult though it is in practice to accept such a situation, it at least allows us to find an alternative approach to the multiplicity of variant readings which represent the divergent interpretations of early Christianity. Rather than looking for right and wrong readings, and with them for right or wrong beliefs and practices, the way is open for the possibility that the church is the community of the Spirit even in its multiplicities of texts, one might say in its corruptions and in its restorations. Indeed, we may suggest that it is not in spite of the variety but because of them that the church is that community.“57 Zu den theologischen Implikationen dieser Ausführungen nehme ich nicht Stellung. Von den Möglichkeiten der Textkritik einerseits und der historischen Exegese andererseits erlaube ich mir anzumerken: Es sind zweierlei Dinge, und sie arbeiten mit verschiedenen Materialien: die exegetisch-historische Arbeit an der frühen „Geschichte der Jesusüberlieferung als Rezeptionsgeschichte der Jesusverkündigung“58 und die textkritische Arbeit am Wortlaut der Evangelien. Die Rezeptionsgeschichte hat es mit dem Wirken von gestaltenden Theologen zu tun, die Textkritik mit dem von Schreibern, die zu kopieren den Auftrag haben und kopieren wollen. Das Ergebnis beider Arten von Arbeit ist verschieden von einander. Qualität, Charakter und Umfang der handschriftlichen Varianten können nicht mit den verschiedenen schriftlichen und literarischen Formen der Evangelien und anderer neutestamentlicher und apokrypher Texte und auch nicht mit den – möglichen – Redaktionsstufen von Q verglichen werden. Der Codex D, den Parker sehr gut kennt, und den er aus ⁵⁵ Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels, 211. ⁵⁶ Auch Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels, 206. ⁵⁷ Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels, 212. Vgl. eine ähnliche Aussage auch in ders.,

Manuscripts, Texts, Theology, 331–3. ⁵⁸ So Schröter, Erinnerung an Jesu Worte, 482–6.

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nahe liegenden Gründen oft zitiert, ist keine Logienquelle und kein Thomasevangelium. Zwar liegt auch ihm eine Art von gestaltendem Willen zugrunde, der aber inhaltlich und formal so eng begrenzt ist, dass er den Erzeugnissen der literarischen Jesusrezeption in keiner Weise gegenübergestellt werden kann. Wer zur Zeit der handschriftlichen Überlieferung theologisch gestalten und umgestalten wollte, schrieb ein Apokryphon. Der Schreiber schreibt ab – was nicht heißt, dass er nicht auch zum Theologen werden könnte. Aber es geschieht äußerst selten. Varianten der neutestamentlichen Handschriften markieren keine geistgeleitete Tradition, obwohl Varianten dieser Art so wie keinem Menschen so auch keinem Schreiber grundsätzlich abzusprechen sind. Vielmehr bezeugen die Varianten der neutestamentlichen Handschriften die mühsame Arbeit fehlbarer Menschen, die ihrem Beruf nachgingen – und das, trotz der Fülle der Kleinvarianten ist es zu sagen, erstaunlich zuverlässig und genau taten. Und nur weil sie das so taten, können wir den Ausgangstext der Überlieferung rekonstruieren und können die Eingriffe in den Text, die aus verschiedenen, auch sehr menschlichen Gründen vorgenommen wurden, im allgemeinen als solche sekundär vorgenommenen erkennen.59 Die Materialien der neutestamentlichen Textkritik, die Handschriften, Versionen und Zitate, und ihre Varianten sind so geartet, dass sie eine weitgehende Rekonstruktion des Ausgangstextes der Überlieferung gestatten, und wo sie es nicht tun, handelt es sich allermeist nicht um schwerwiegende sachliche Differenzen. Das ist eine überaus nüchterne, auf die Materialien und die zur Verfügung stehenden Methoden für ihre Bearbeitung bezogene Feststellung und die Ergebnisse dieser nüchternen Textkritik sollten als solche – kritisch – genutzt werden. Mit der Erstellung eines Textes, der „‚authoritative‘“ zu sein beanspruchte, eines „fixed point in the tradition that has any unique ‚authority‘“,60 hat textkritische Arbeit nichts zu tun. Ich vermute sogar angesichts dieser Formulierungen, dass hier Missverständnisse unter Textkritikern vorliegen, die aber in Anbetracht der erfreulichen Tatsache von jüngsten Auswirkungen der Textkritik auf die exegetischen Wissenschaften vermieden werden sollten.

⁵⁹ Ich widerspreche mit Nachdruck der Meinung Parkers: „At present, the best editors [scil. des NT bzw. der Evangelien] can hope to do is, where the manuscripts are available, to recreate forms of text that were current in the period 200–300 CE.“ (vgl. ders., Manuscripts, Texts, Theology, 328). Es ist auch nicht so, dass die Editoren des sog. Nestle-Aland 27, wenn sie den erhobenen Text als einen „working text“ (ders., Manuscripts, Texts, Theology, 328) bezeichneten, meinten, dieser Text sei eine Möglichkeit unter mehreren, die hätten abgedruckt werden können. Sie wollten damit lediglich die Fehlbarkeit ihrer Arbeitshypothese annoncieren. Es geht viel zu weit zu behaupten, dieser Arbeitstext sei „in no way as something believed by its editors to represent the autograph text.“ ⁶⁰ Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels, 91.

The Implications of Textual Criticism for Understanding the ‘Original Text’ Tommy Wasserman The four evangelists all wrote down their Gospels on manuscripts, and for most of their existence they have been preserved to us as manuscripts. Consequently, any serious study of these texts has to begin with the manuscripts and take the factor of textual transmission into account. In fact, the Gospel text has been affected by textual transmission from the very beginning of its literary history. The interrelationship between textual criticism and the Synoptic Problem has been presupposed in most Synoptic studies.1 The establishment of an “original text” of each Gospel is a starting point for the study of Synoptic relationships in the first place, and, conversely, how scholars regard the Synoptic Problem will affect their textual choices. The very notion of an “original text,” however, has now come under fire, due to the nature of the extant evidence, so that in relation to the Synoptic Problem, for example, some scholars do not think the extant evidence permits us to even attempt a documentary solution.2 In this essay I will discuss the term “original text” and the question of how far we can reach in our quest for this hypothetical entity. Due to the nature of the evidence, I cannot restrict my discussion to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark alone, but I will attempt to focus on them in some of my examples.

1. The State of the “Original Text” in the Current Debate Traditionally, text-critics have pointed to the wealth of evidence for the text of the New Testament, not least to the fact that so many early manuscripts close to the time the writings originated are preserved. This rich textual evidence has been utilized optimistically in the reconstruction of the original text of the New Testament.3 Thus, two of the pioneers of modern textual criticism, i. e., in the post-Textus Receptus era, B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort boldly titled their edi¹ See P. M. Head, “Textual Criticism and the Synoptic Problem,” in New Studies in the Synoptic Problem (ed. P. Foster et al.; Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 115–56. ² D. C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 121. ³ For a detailed historical survey of this classical pursuit of textual criticism, see E. J. Epp, “The Multivalence of the Term ‘Original Text’ in New Testament Textual Criticism,” HTR 92 (1999): 245–81.

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tion The New Testament in the Original Greek.4 More recently, Kurt and Barbara Aland stated in their classic handbook, The Text of the New Testament, “It is precisely the overwhelming mass of the New Testament textual tradition … which provides an assurance of certainty in establishing the original text.”5 Consequently, Kurt Aland concluded, when the 26th edition of the Nestle-Aland text appeared in 1979, that “a hundred years after Westcott-Hort, the goal of an edition of the New Testament ‘in the original Greek’ appears to have been reached.”6 When the 27th edition was released in 1993, however, the editors expressed themselves with more caution in the introduction to the volume: It should naturally be understood that this text is a working text (in the sense of the century-long Nestle tradition): it is not to be considered as definitive, but as a stimulus to further efforts toward defining and verifying the text of the New Testament.7

The optimism in the text-critical task is not only due to the wealth of evidence including the early papyri, but also to what the Alands have termed the “tenacity” (Tenazität) of the New Testament textual tradition, which means that practically every reading that has ever occurred in the textual tradition is stubbornly preserved, even if the result is nonsense.8 If this is true, one can assume that the original reading of the New Testament at any point has been preserved among the wealth of extant manuscripts, and that it is now possible, at least in theory, to restore the original text with the methods of textual criticism. During the last decades, however, a number of scholars, e. g., Helmut Koester, William Petersen, Eldon J. Epp, and David Parker have questioned the value of the extant textual evidence for the reconstruction of the so-called original text, including the earliest evidence, mainly because it is still too far removed from the authors.9 Furthermore, they have emphasized the great freedom and fluidity ⁴ B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek (2 vols.; Cambridge: Macmillan, 1881–1882). ⁵ K. Aland and B. Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism (trans. E. F. Rhodes; 2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 291–2. ⁶ K. Aland, “Der neue ‘Standard-Text’ in seinem Verhältnis zu den frühen Papyri und Majuskeln,” in New Testament Textual Criticism: Its Significance for Exegesis: Essays in Honour of Bruce M. Metzger (ed. E. J. Epp and G. D. Fee; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 274–5. ⁷ K. Aland and B. Aland, eds., Novum Testamentum Graece (27th ed.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993), 45*. ⁸ Aland and Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 296. Cf. the fuller expression of the principle: “When an alteration was made in the text of the New Testament – however strategically important the text, however extensively it was adopted for theological or pastoral reasons, and even if it became the accepted text of the Church – there always continued to be a stream of the tradition … which remained unaffected, and this for purely technical reasons” (295). ⁹ H. Koester, “The Text of the Synoptic Gospels in the Second Century,” in Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission (ed. W. L. Petersen; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 19–37; W. L. Petersen, “What Text Can New Testament Textual Criticism Ultimately Reach,” in New Testament Textual Criticism, Exegesis and Church History: A Discussion of Methods (ed. B. Aland and J. Delobel; Kampen: Kok-

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of the text in the earliest period of transmission, which resulted from the free attitude taken toward the text. Such an attitude is reflected in the so-called “Western” text, and in the loose and fluid patristic citations of the New Testament in early second-century authors. From these scholars’ perspective, the classical task of textual criticism – the reconstruction of the “original text” – is an impossible and unfruitful undertaking, which has to be abandoned altogether.10 In the task of verifying the text of the New Testament, Barbara Aland has often pointed to the special significance of the early papyri.11 Codex Vaticanus (B 03) of the fourth century was long thought to represent the result of a recension in Egypt in the third or fourth century. However, the discovery of P75, dated around 200, made it certain that this text existed already in the second century.12 It is now evident that P75 and Vaticanus (B) are by far the most closely related of any ancient MSS of the New Testament, not counting smaller fragments.13 Their text agrees over 90 % of the time, and the common view is that they derive from a common ancestor from at least the second century, the text of which has been preserved faithfully in these two manuscripts. Significantly, James Royse lists 166 singular readings in P75 and in only one of these readings (Luke 16:19) is it clear that the Vorlage of P75 did not have the reading we now find in Vaticanus.14 The Alands, among others, regard P75 as a major representative of a “strict” text that carefully preserves a text very close to the original, or initial text, just as Hort, even before P75 was known, concluded that Vaticanus represented a “neutral” text that had been transmitted in “comparative purity.”15 In contrast to the Pharos, 1994), 136–52; Epp, “The Multivalence,” 245–81; D. Parker, “Textual Criticism and Theology,” ExpTim 118 (2007): 583–9. ¹⁰ Cf. the remark by W. L. Petersen, “The Genesis of the Gospels,” in New Testament Textual Criticism and Exegesis (ed. A. Denaux; Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 62: “To be brutally frank, we know next to nothing about the shape of the ‘autograph’ gospels; indeed, it is questionable if one can even speak of such a thing.” ¹¹ See B. Aland, “Die Rezeption des neutestamentlichen Textes in den ersten Jahrhunderten,” in The New Testament in Early Christianity (ed. J.-M. Sevrin; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1989), 24; cf. idem, “Die Münsteraner Arbeit am Text des Neuen Testaments und ihr Beitrag für die frühe Überlieferung des 2. Jahrhunderts: Eine methodologische Betrachtung,” in Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission (ed. W. L. Petersen; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 55–70; idem, “Das Zeugnis der frühen Papyri für den Text der Evangelien: Diskutiert am Matthäusevangelium,” in The Four Gospels 1992: Festschrift Frans Neirynck. Volume 1 (ed. F. Van Segbroeck et al.; 3 vols.; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), 325–35. ¹² There is relatively little disagreement over the date of P75. See J. R. Royse, Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 615 n. 1. ¹³ See C. L. Porter, “Papyrus Bodmer XV (P75) and the Text of Codex Vaticanus,” JBL 81 (1962): 374. ¹⁴ Royse, Scribal Habits, 616–7. ¹⁵ Hort states, “It will be evident … that B must be regarded as having preserved not only a very ancient text, but a very pure line of very ancient text, and that with comparatively small depravation either by scattered ancient corruptions otherwise attested or by individualism of the scribe himself” (Westcott and Hort, The New Testament, 2:250–1); cf. Aland and Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 92–3, 335.

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Alands, however, Koester, Petersen, and Parker see this text or text-type, commonly known as “Alexandrian,” as the result of a deliberate attempt to establish a controlled text at the end of the second century.16 Hence, Petersen concludes that none of the early papyrus manuscripts can take us any closer to the original even when they confirm manuscript evidence from the fourth century, since none of them predates the critical date of 180 C. E. when the text, according to Petersen, assumed a more fixed form.17 Parker points to Codex Bezae (D 05) as a prime example of the kind of free text that must have been typical during the second century before standardization and recension occurred.18 He regards the wealth of textual variation that developed mainly during the first two centuries in the manuscript tradition of the Gospels as proof that early Christian users of these writings treated them as living texts which could be re-worded, expanded, and reduced in various places. In his study, aptly titled The Living Text of the Gospels, he gives examples from a number of key passages in order to demonstrate the apparent diversity in the early textual tradition. For him, the textual freedom implies that the early church was not concerned to transmit a controlled, authoritative, and reliable text. At the same time, any single manuscript, whether owned by a community or an individual, was regarded as its scripture regardless of its degree of textual corruption, as measured against our modern standard. In a similar vein, Bart Ehrman has suggested that the text of the New Testament was subject to deliberate alterations by “proto-orthodox” scribes on a large scale, especially in passages involving theological issues such as the divinity of Christ and the Trinity, etc.19 He detects corruption in a large number of passages, both by way of known textual variation and by mere conjecture.20 Today, most text-critics hesitate to use the traditional term “original text” since it has become increasingly problematic. Instead, they prefer to talk about ¹⁶ Koester, “The Text,” 37; Petersen, “The Genesis,” 33–4 (esp. n. 4); idem, “What Text,” 150; Parker, Living Text, 63, 200. ¹⁷ Peterson, The Genesis, 33–4; cf. idem, “What Text,” 139–40. ¹⁸ Parker, Living Text, 201–2; cf. B. D. Ehrman, “The Text of the Gospels at the End of the 2nd Century,” in Codex Bezae: Studies from the Lunel Colloquium June 1994 (ed. D. C. Parker and C.-B. Amphoux; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 100–2. ¹⁹ B. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); idem, Misquoting Jesus: The Story of Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco: Harper, 2005). ²⁰ For a critical evaluation of Ehrman’s treatment, see T. Wasserman, “Misquoting Manuscripts? – The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture Revisited,” in The Making of Christianity: Conflicts, Contacts, and Constructions (ed. M. Zetterholm and S. Byrskog; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, forthcoming); idem, The Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2006), 264; U. Schmid, “Scribes and Variants – Sociology and Typology,” in Textual Variation: Theological and Social Tendencies? Papers from the Fifth Birmingham Coloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (ed. H. A. G. Houghton and D. C. Parker; Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2008), 3–9.

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the earliest recoverable text or the “initial text” (Ausgangstext).21 The real difference of opinion, however, concerns the nature of the earliest recoverable text and its relationship to the hypothetical autographs – a term which in turn needs further definition.22 Some scholars think that a gulf separates the initial text from the autographs because of massive textual corruption that took place during the first hundred years of the transmission history before the time of our oldest witnesses. Others, including myself, think it is indeed possible to reconstruct a text that is not far removed from what the authors wrote in the first century. It is apparent that the central question whether the Alexandrian text or texttype is the result of a recension or of a strict transmission has not yet been resolved but simply pushed back into the second century.23 In my judgment, this remains one of the most controversial issues in textual criticism, the assessment of which will have significant implication for the overall view of the origin and history of the New Testament text. I will now briefly address these issues, and, as is common in textual criticism, I will first discuss the external evidence, and then move on to consider internal evidence before arriving at a conclusion.

2. The Contribution of the Early Papyri of the Gospels to Textual Criticism There are mainly two types of material that have formed our views of the early New Testament text, namely, the earliest manuscripts, mainly written on papyrus, and the patristic citations of the New Testament writings. Today, there are some one hundred and twenty registered papyri, about sixty of which contain Gospel material.24 Table 1 gives an overview of the earliest manuscripts ²¹ For definitions of the “initial text” as opposed to “autograph” and “archetype,” see G. Mink, “Problems of a Highly Contaminated Tradition: The New Testament. Stemmata of Variants As a Source of a Genealogy for Witnesses,” in Studies in Stemmatology II (ed. P. van Reenen, A. D. Den Hollander, and M. van Mulken; Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004), 25–7. ²² The term “autograph” needs further definition, depending on which book is under consideration, since there might be cases of multiple autographs or various stages of production. For example, G. Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles: A Disquisition upon the Corpus Paulinum (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 274–83, has argued that the goal of textual criticism is to restore, not the text of Paul’s letters as he sent them to various destinations, but the text of the collected edition, from ca. 100 C. E. For my purposes here, I am, nevertheless, content with a general definition of an autograph as the state of a book when it began its literary history through transcription for distribution (cf. Aland and Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 297). ²³ Cf. E. J. Epp, “The Twentieth-Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism,” in Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism (ed. E. J. Epp and G. D. Fee; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 104–6. ²⁴ There are in fact 127 items registered in the Kurzgefaßte Liste (digital version), but some MSS are divided between more than one number. See K. Aland et al., eds., Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments (2nd rev. and enl. ed.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994).

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from the first three centuries of each Gospel.25 Two uncials from this period are included. Table 1: Greek New Testament Papyri of the Gospels (up to 3rd–4th centuries) Gospel

Greg.Aland no.

Date (acc. to editor)

Gospel

Greg.Aland no.

Date

Matthew

P1 P35 P37 P45 P53 P64+67 P70 P77 P101 P102 P103 P104

III III/IV III/IV III III ca. 200 III II/III III III/IV II/III II III

Mark

P45

III

Gospel

Greg.Aland no.

Date

John

P5 P22 P28 P39 P45 P52 P66 P75 P80 P90 P95 P106 P107 P108 P109 P119 P121

III III III III III II ca. 200 III III II III III III III III III III III/IV

0171 Gospel

Greg.Aland no

Date

Luke

P4 P7 P45 P69 P75 P111

ca. 200 III/IV III III III III III

0171

0162

This list of extant manuscript evidence confirms what we know from patristic sources, that Matthew and John were the most popular Gospels. Mark, on the other hand, was the least popular, and therefore most affected by harmonization, especially to Matthew, the most influential of the Synoptics. I will return to this question, when I discuss internal evidence, but first I will consider the contribution of the early papyri to New Testament textual criticism. Eldon J. Epp has pointed out that “if we had several pieces of evidence like the P75 –B relationship, it would be plausible to argue that the situation [concerning the state of the text] was not chaotic, but quite orderly.”26 I would argue that the ²⁵ Recently Roger Bagnall has questioned the dating of the New Testament papyri to the second century. See R. S. Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 1–24. ²⁶ E. J. Epp, “The Significance of the Papyri for Determining the Nature of the New Testament Text in the Second Century: A Dynamic View of Textual Transmission,” in Theory and Method, 93.

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body of evidence pointing in this direction – namely, where the text of the early papyri to a great extent confirm the text of the major uncials of the fourth century and onwards – is growing steadily with the publication of new papyri, mainly from the Oxyrhynchus site. Since the time Epp made this statement two decades ago, thirty-one new papyri have been added to the list of extant papyri, from ninety-seven to one hundred and twenty-seven extant papyri. Recently, Kyong Shik Min has examined all the early textual witnesses of Matthew, classifying them according to their character of transmission (Überlieferungsweise), i. e., how well each scribe followed the exemplar during the copying, and according to their general textual quality (Textqualität), i. e., the degree of correspondence with the reconstructed initial text, which in this case is equal to the Nestle-Aland 27th edition.27 According to Min, almost all of the MSS attest to the initial text at a remarkably high degree.28 At the same time, however, it is evident that many of the individual scribes made a lot of mistakes and took some liberties in their copying. The reason that the “strict” text has survived in spite of a free attitude to copying may be the existence of good standard copies of the Christian scriptures that were widely available to them.29 This may also explain other standardized phenomena, such as the codex format, the titles of the Gospels, the use of nomina sacra, and various aids to reading. It should be noted that Min’s method, developed by Barbara Aland, involves an unavoidable element of subjectivity, since the judgment of the textual character of the papyri is measured against the hypothetically reconstructed initial text (read the Nestle-Aland text), which is close to the text of the fourth-century uncial codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.30 Once again, the pertinent question is whether the Alands’ “strict” text, attested to in most of these papyri, is simply the result of a second-century recension, or if it really reaches back into the first century to the initial stage of the literary history of the Gospels. In any case, as Epp anticipated, we are now getting more pieces of evidence in these early papyri, and if there was extensive redaction of the Gospel texts during the first century of their transmission, as some scholars have suggested, one ²⁷ K. S. Min, Die früheste Überlieferung des Matthäusevangeliums (bis zum 3./.4. Jh.) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005). ²⁸ “Insgesamt können wir hinsichtlich der Qualität des Textes, der sich in der Frühzeit weit verbreitete, mit einiger Sicherheit annehmen, dass er weitgehend dem Ausgangstext nahe stand. Wir müssen sogar davon ausgehen, dass in dieser Zeit der ursprüngliche Text [my italics] allein verbreitet war … Das bedeutet, dass der neutestamentliche Text auf Papyrus vor dem 3./4. Jahrhundert trotz ‘freier’ Überlieferungsweise grundsätzlich nicht sehr variiert oder verfälscht war, zumal keine systematische Redaktion des neutestamentlichen Textes durchgeführt war” (Min, Die früheste Überlieferung, 277). ²⁹ Min, Die früheste Überlieferung, 279; cf. C. H. Roberts, “Books in the Graeco-Roman World and in the New Testament,” in From the Beginnings to Jerome (ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 48–66. ³⁰ Cf. B. Ehrman, “A Problem of Textual Circularity: The Alands on the Classification of New Testament Manuscripts,” Bib 70 (1989): 377–88.

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would expect clear textual evidence from the manuscripts of the New Testament themselves. That is not the case. On the contrary, Epp himself has recently confirmed that the earliest extant fragments from the second century, P52.90.98.104, attest to a “close continuity” between “the earliest, most obscure phase, and the later more ample phases of the textual transmission,” such as is unusual to find in ancient text transmission.31 The recently published papyrus witnesses from Oxyrhynchus, however, attest to all the Gospels except Mark. The only extant papyrus that contains Markan text is the Chester Beatty papyrus P45 from the third century, which, like most other papyri, originates from Egypt. The Alands describe it as a “free text.”32 It does not align clearly with any of the major text-types of later centuries, although it is evidently related to Codex Washingtonianus (W) in Mark.33 The fact that we have only a single early papyrus witness to the text of Mark, which exhibits such freedom in handling the text, serves as an important reminder not to generalize the state of the evidence for all the Gospel texts, especially since Mark was more subject to harmonization by the scribes. On the other hand, if the text of Codex Vaticanus really preserves a comparatively pure line of transmission from the earliest time, such as has been inferred due to its close relationship to P75 in Luke and John, then we can expect that it preserves a text of high quality in Matthew and Mark too.34 In conclusion, the early papyrus witnesses to the Gospel texts represent various points along the spectrum from the “strict” text and transmission reflecting a concern for accurate copying through to the “normal” and the “free” text and transmission reflecting a looser attitude to the text and a more careless copying.35 ³¹ E. J. Epp, “Are Early New Testament Manuscripts Truly Abundant?” in Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity. Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan F. Segal (ed. D. B. Capes et al.; Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008), 105. Epp concludes by stating, “What these remnants [the few early NT MSS] lack in amplitude is made up by their provision of connection and continuity, and in that sense the New Testament manuscripts still may be understood as genuinely abundant” (ibid., 107). Cf. L. W. Hurtado, “The New Testament in the Second Century: Text, Collection and Canon,” in Transmission and Reception: New Testament Text-Critical and Exegetical Studies (ed. J. W. Childers and D. C. Parker; Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2006), 7: “The Oxyrhynchus fragments further justify the view that the more substantial early third-century papyri are reliable witnesses of the text of the writings that they contain, as these writings had been transmitted across the second century.” ³² Aland and Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 98–9 (and also 93–5). Min’s characterization of both text and transmission of P45 as “normal” (“Normaltext”; “normalen Überlieferungsweise”) seems to be an overstatement (Die Früheste Überlieferung, 150); cf. Royse, Scribal Habits, 196–7. ³³ Hurtado, “P45 and the Textual History,” 145. ³⁴ For this conclusion in Matthew, see M. W. Holmes, “Codex Bezae as a Recension of the Gospels,” in Codex Bezae: Studies from the Lunel Colloquium June 1994 (ed. D. C. Parker and C.-B. Amphoux; Leiden: Brill, 1996), 126, esp. n. 11. ³⁵ Hurtado, “New Testament,” 7; cf. P. Head, “Some Recently Published New Testament Papyri from Oxyrhynchus: An Overview and Preliminary Assessment,” TynBul 51 (2000): 10.

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3. The Tenacity of the Textual Tradition In general, there are relatively few traces of major redactional additions in the textual tradition. The two most significant cases are the Pericope of the Adulteress (John 7:53–8:11) and the so-called Long Ending of Mark (Mark 16:9–20). The fact that the Pericope of the Adulteress could establish itself in spite of a wide awareness of the shorter text implies that the Church had little opportunity to exercise control on the transmission of the text. Further, it illustrates the tenacity of the shorter text which is well attested in the late Byzantine period.36 The same is true in relation to the various endings of Mark. The Short Ending at 16:8 is preserved only in Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, minuscule 304, and some versional witnesses (there are no extant papyri in this portion of Mark), but many MSS with the Long Ending have critical notation or marginal comments questioning its originality. Hence, the Short Ending could not be eradicated through ecclesiastical control, although it must have been thought inadequate for the needs of the Church very early on. B. H. Streeter actually appealed to the ending of Mark as evidence of the reliability of the Alexandrian witnesses: Since B a were written in the fourth century, both the Longer and the Shorter Conclusions were already of great antiquity, and can hardly have been unknown to the scribes who wrote these MSS, and, for that matter, to a fairly long succession of MSS. from which they were copied. Incidentally I may be permitted to remark that an asceticism which could decline to accept either of these endings argues a fidelity to a text believed to be more ancient and more authentic, which materially increases our general confidence in the textual tradition which these MSS. represent.37

As mentioned, David Parker in his Living Text cites a number of examples of major and minor interpolations in the Gospels in order to demonstrate the development of the Gospel texts, most of which occurred in the first 150 years of their transmission.38 My point here is that it is precisely because not all scribes acted in such a free manner with the text that we are able to study those who did. Indeed, when Parker has discussed the several different forms of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew and Luke, he says in one of his concluding points, “Our evidence demonstrates the tenacity with which early independent Lucan forms of the Lord’s Prayer survived.”39 Frederik Wisse refers to the remarkable tenacity of the shorter text in these examples, in spite of the attractiveness of various interpolated readings. He concludes: ³⁶ See M. A. Robinson, “Preliminary Observations Regarding the Pericope Adulterae Based upon Fresh Collations of Nearly All Continuous-Text Manuscripts and Over One Hundred Lectionaries,” Filologia Neotestamentaria 13 (2000): 33–59. ³⁷ B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins, Treating of the Manuscript Tradition, Sources, Authorship, and Dates (London: Macmillan, 1924), 337. ³⁸ Parker, Living Text, 70. ³⁹ Parker, Living Text, 70.

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If indeed the text of the Gospels had been subjected to extensive redactional change and adaption during the second century, the unanimous attestation of a relatively stable and uniform text during the following centuries in both Greek and the versions would have to be considered nothing short of a miracle.40

In spite of this tenacity of the tradition, however, I do not deny that there are some passages in the New Testament where the original wording may be forever lost.41 One may think of those passages in Bruce Metzger’s Textual Commentary ranked with the D-letter rating, of which the committee says, “In fact, among the {D} decisions sometimes none of the variant readings commended itself as original, and therefore the only recourse was to print the least unsatisfactory reading.”42 Additionally, we have the Minor Agreements, to which Koester has appealed in order to prove that canonical Mark is a revised text, while the original UrMark, attested only by Matthew and Luke, has not survived. These places where Matthew and Luke agree against Mark in our standard editions pose a problem for those who defend the dominant solution to the Synoptic Problem, the Two Source Hypothesis, i. e., that Matthew and Luke each and independently used Mark and a lost document scholars refer to as Q. However, several possible explanations have been offered. For example, Streeter, who identified twentytwo Minor Agreements, labeled the majority of them as either “irrelevant” or “deceptive” agreements, i. e., changes which could have been made independently by Matthew and Luke for stylistic reasons.43 The remaining group of Minor Agreements Streeter ascribed to textual corruption, such as accidental omission or harmonization.44 Of course, there are other possible explanations. As for the text-critical implications, I agree with Wisse that the Minor Agreements are not necessarily indicative of the state of the text of Mark at the time of composition of Matthew and Luke, concluding that “[i]n most of these cases the text of Mark is clearly the lectio difficilior.”45 ⁴⁰ F. Wisse, “The Nature and Purpose of Redactional Changes in Early Christian Texts,” in Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins, Recensions, Text, and Transmission (ed. W. L. Petersen; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 52–3. ⁴¹ Cf. Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles, 226; M. W. Holmes, “Text and Transmission in the Second Century,” in The Textual Reliability of the New Testament: Bart D. Ehrman and Daniel B. Wallace in Dialogue (ed. R. B. Stewart; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 67–8. ⁴² B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 14*. ⁴³ Streeter, The Four Gospels, 295–305. C. Tuckett, “The Minor Agreements and Textual Criticism,” in Minor Agreements. Symposium Göttingen 1991 (ed. G. Strecker; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 120, suggests that independent redaction of Mark by Matthew and Luke would probably be more widely preferred in contemporary debate than some text-critical explanations that include various conjectures. ⁴⁴ Streeter, The Four Gospels, 306–8. For the view that textual corruption explains some of the Minor Agreements, see E. W. Burrows, “The Use of Textual Theories to Explain Agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark,” in Studies in New Testament Language and Text: Essays in Honor of George D. Kilpatrick on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday (ed. J. K. Elliott; Leiden: Brill, 1976), 87–99. ⁴⁵ Wisse, “Redactional Changes,” 52 n. 51.

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4. Patristic Citations In the discussion of the earliest New Testament text, several scholars have pointed to the loose and fluid citations of the second century Christian writers, and they have attempted to draw conclusions about the character of the manuscripts these fathers must have had at their disposal, and how they transmitted the text.46 In fact, William Petersen gives priority to patristic evidence in the recovery of the early text. The well intended student wishing to study the gospel tradition would be better advised to commence his or her studies with an examination of the gospel echoes and ‘parallels’ in the earliest Fathers and Christian apocrypha, rather than to read about the ‘theology’ of the evangelists as described by modern scholars on the basis of our modern critical editions.47

The first major problem with this procedure is the sparsity of evidence. The Apostolic Fathers cite the New Testament to a very limited extent. The mixture of Synoptic parallels in the citations of Justin Martyr yields little more, and may derive from other sources than the written Gospels (e. g., a Gospel harmony, an apocryphal Gospel, oral tradition, or midrash-like elaboration). Koester has claimed that the sayings of Jesus were already harmonized in Justin’s Vorlage produced by himself or his “school” in order to create the one Gospel.48 Graham Stanton, however, thinks it is more likely that “sayings of Jesus from the synoptic Gospels were harmonized for inclusion in the topically organized sets of sayings.”49 In any case, Justin apparently had a high regard for the Gospels “written by the apostles and their followers” (Dialogue 103.8). Moreover, he reports that “the reminiscences of the apostles,” i. e., the Gospels, were read aloud in worship (Apology 67.3). Thus, the character of Justin’s “citations” cannot automatically be used as evidence that the text of the Synoptic Gospels was completely unstable and could be changed during the first and second centuries. When Petersen uses the story of the Rich Young Man in Matt 19:17, he proceeds from the deviant form in Justin, “One is good, my Father in the heavens.”50 This variant, he suggests, has exceptionally wide dissemination at a very early date, since it is reflected in seven other early witnesses (Tatian’s Diatessaron, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, Old Latin MSS d and e). But is it permissible to conclude, as does Petersen, that this is “the oldest-known version of this Matthean pericope,” unknown in the Greek MSS?51 How can we know that this is the earliest form of Matthew? SigSee Koester, “The Text;” Petersen, “What Text;” idem, “The Genesis.” Petersen, “The Genesis,” 63; cf. idem, “What Text,” 151. Koester, “The Text of the Synoptic Gospels,” 29–32. G. N. Stanton, “Jesus Traditions and Gospels in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus,” in The Biblical Canons (ed. J.-M. Auwer and H. J. de Jonge; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 364. ⁵⁰ Petersen, “What Text,” 142. ⁵¹ Petersen, “What Text,” 143. ⁴⁶ ⁴⁷ ⁴⁸ ⁴⁹

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nificantly, the two preceding phrases in Justin, “Good teacher” and “Why do you call me good?” which Petersen does not cite, rather reflect Mark and Luke.52 This applies to several of Petersen’s examples, where he assumes that early patristic citations are from a specific Gospel, without paying attention to the context which suggests otherwise.53 This leads us to the second problem, which has to do with the value of patristic citations as evidence for the New Testament text. R. M. Grant has stated, “patristic citations are not citations unless they have been adequately analyzed.”54 Likewise, Gordon Fee has called for caution in several of his works on the evaluation and use of patristic citations in New Testament Textual Criticism.55 In one discussion he specifically singles out the following four problem areas: (1) The question of copying or citing from memory; (2) The question of citation habits, which range from precise to moderately careful to slovenly; (3) The character and type of work involved – citations are generally more precise in commentaries and controversial treatises and less so in letters and sermons; (4) The number of Bibles used by the father (some fathers relocated, and evidently changed their Bible text).56 With the example of Justin in mind, we could add two further problem areas: the nature of the source of the citation (e. g., a continuous-text MS, a Gospel harmony, a testimonia collection, or oral tradition); and the textcritical establishment of the father’s text itself, including citations.57 I would now like to draw particular attention to the problem of citation habits. Consider, for example, the church father Epiphanius (ca. 315–403). He lived in an era when the New Testament text had become more fixed. And, yet, he has been noted as “notoriously slovenly” in his citation habits.58 If fathers like ⁵² Cf. L. L. Kline, “Harmonized Sayings of Jesus in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Justin Martyr,” ZNW 66 (1975): 237: “Together the [Pseudo-Clementine Homilies] and [Justin Martyr’s Dialogue] attest (1) the combination of Luke 18:19 (= Mark 10:18, τί με λέγειϚ ἀγαθόν;) and Matt 19:17 (εἷϚ ἐστιν ὁ ἀγαθόϚ) and (2) the substitution of ὁ πατὴῥ μοὐ ὁ ἐν τοῖϚ οὐρανοῖϚ for ὁ θεόϚ. This is strong evidence for a common harmonistic source.” Irenaeus refers to this saying in Haer. 1.20.2: “there is one who is good, the Father in the heavens.” Significantly, however, the context suggests that Irenaeus is citing the Gnostic wording of the story, and Irenaeus concludes, “they [the Marcosians] assert that in this passage the Aeons receive the name of heavens.” ⁵³ See further Holmes, “Text and Transmission,” 70–2. ⁵⁴ R. M. Grant, “The Citation of Patristic Evidence in an Apparatus Criticus,” in New Testament Manuscript Studies: The Materials and the Making of a Critical Apparaus (ed. M. M. Parvis and A. P. Wikgren; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), 124. ⁵⁵ See e. g., G. D. Fee, “The Text of John in Origen and Cyril of Alexandria: A Contribution to Methodology in the Recovery and Analysis of Patristic Citations,” Bib 52 (1971): 357–94; idem “The Use of Greek Patristic Citations in New Testament Textual Criticism: The State of the Question,” in Theory and Method, 334–59; idem, “The Use of the Greek Fathers for New Testament Textual Criticism,” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research (ed. B. Ehrman and M. Holmes; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 191–207. ⁵⁶ Fee, “The Use of Greek Patristic Citations,” 344–5. ⁵⁷ Cf. Fee, “The Use of the Greek Fathers,” 195–6. ⁵⁸ Fee, “The Use of the Greek Fathers,” 192–3; cf. C. D. Osburn, The Text of the Apostolos in Epiphanius of Salamis (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004), 16.

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Epiphanius in the fourth century on the whole can reflect such loose citation habits in spite of the existence of good manuscripts, how can we assume that the citations of second-century writers adequately reflect the manuscripts at their disposal? In fact, Barbara Aland has shown that in the second century there was a much greater “freedom” to restyle and paraphrase the text because of the absence of a “text-consciousness” (Textbewusstsein).59 She suggests that the more recognizable citations towards the end of the second century point to an increasing awareness of the text, which may have developed due to second century controversies over Christian faith and as a result of the reading of some texts in the church service from very early on (cf. 1 Thess 5:27). Further, she emphasizes that it is necessary to differentiate between the usage of the text by fathers and the copying process by scribes; these parallel practices did not affect each other in the earliest era. If the first was characterized by freedom, the latter was characterized by accuracy.60 Apart from careful copying, Larry Hurtado points out that the early Christian manuscripts from the second century reflect emergent scribal conventions that quickly obtained impressive influence, such as the use of nomina sacra, the preference of the codex, and the use of reading aids.61 Some copies of Matthew and John dated to the second century were apparently made with great skill and at some expense. These copies were probably used for liturgical reading in public rather than for private purposes. There are even reader aids in the earliest extant papyrus fragment P52.62 Hurtado suggests that the cumulative evidence witnesses to an emergent Christian “material culture” and a distinctive Christian literary ethos. In this regard, he thinks we may even speak of a “text consciousness,” influential in the early Christian era, in spite of the fact that Christian writers felt free to appropriate the contents of texts.63 He points to several examples from the New Testament itself (Rom 15:17–21; 2 Cor 10:9–11; 2 Tim 4:13; Rev 21:18–19) and concludes: We have, perhaps, somewhat romantically regarded the earliest Christian circles as so given to oral tradition that their writings took a distant second place in their values. From the earliest observable years Christianity was a profoundly textual movement.64

⁵⁹ Aland, “Die Rezeption,” 5–21. ⁶⁰ Aland, “Die Rezeption,” 30. ⁶¹ Hurtado, “The New Testament,” 9–13. Cf. T. Wasserman, “A Comparative Textual Analysis of P4 and P64 + 67,” TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 15 (2010): 1–26. ⁶² The elegant literary bookhand is another indication that the MS was prepared for public

rather than personal use. ⁶³ Hurtado, “The New Testament,” 25–7, characterizes the development post–150 C. E. as indicative not of a emergent “text-consciousness,” but rather an emergent “author-consciousness,” reflecting a greater tendency to regard texts as the work of authors and cite them as such. ⁶⁴ Hurtado, “The New Testament,” 25–6.

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5. Harmonization Most text-critical scholars agree that harmonization (or “assimilation”) is the most frequent cause of corruption in the Gospels. For Parker, the phenomenon of harmonization is “incontrovertible evidence” that “the traditions remained fluid for centuries, and that the work of the evangelists did not end when they laid down their pens.”65 Harmonization can be of several kinds. Because of limited space, I will focus here on harmonization between parallel passages in the Gospels. First, it is important to keep in mind, that this kind of interpolation was not theologically motivated – scribes had already an “excuse” to supplement the text of one Gospel on the basis of a parallel in another.66 We have observed that Matthew was the most popular Gospel in the early Church, with the result that the textual tradition of the other two Synoptic Gospels contains far more variants that can be attributed to harmonization, Mark more so than Luke. I think we can see in these harmonizations one typical effect of the four-fold Gospel collection. To some extent, regular liturgical reading can also explain the phenomenon. On the other hand, the reading of fixed lessons from separate Gospels would surely have set limits to the extent of harmonization, and enhanced the tenacity of the tradition.67 Since scribes tended to harmonize one passage to another between the Gospels, one of the basic principles of textual criticism is to prefer the disharmonious reading.68 When Hort assessed manuscripts by way of this and other principles of internal evidence, he found that the “Neutral” text (of which Vaticanus was the chief representative) was superior to other text-types.69 Subsequent studies have confirmed that P75 and Vaticanus are comparatively “pure” from harmonization, as we may observe the phenomenon in places of textual variation, whereas it is a “hallmark” of the Western and Byzantine traditions.70

⁶⁵ Parker, Living Text, 205. ⁶⁶ Wisse, “Redactional Changes,” 49. ⁶⁷ Cf. Hurtado, “The New Testament,” 13: “Repeated public reading of New Testament writ-

ings would also have set real limits on how much a writing could be changed, at least in a given circle, without people noticing (and probably objecting), as anyone familiar with what happens when liturgical changes are introduced can attest.” ⁶⁸ Cf. Metzger, Textual Commentary, 13*: “Since scribes would frequently bring divergent passages into harmony with one another … that reading which involves verbal dissidence is usually to be preferred to one which is verbally concordant”; cf. H. von Soden, Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments in ihrer ältesten erreichbaren Textgestalt hergestellt auf Grund ihrer Textgeschichte (2 parts in 4 vols.; 2nd unchanged ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1911– 1913), 1:1427. For the same principle in relation to the LXX and the MT, see Petersen, “What Text,” 146 and n. 41. ⁶⁹ Westcott and Hort, The New Testament, 2:250–1. ⁷⁰ Cf. Parker, Living Text, 42; G. D. Fee, “Modern Text Criticism and the Synoptic Problem,” in J. J. Griesbach: Synoptic and Text-Critical Studies 1776–1976 (ed. B. Orchard and T. R. W.

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For example, Parker examined three uncial MSS representing these different textual traditions, Vaticanus (“Alexandrian”), Bezae (“Western”), and Dionysiou (Byzantine) in the parallel passages in Matt 12:1–13 and Mark 2:23–3:5.71 His analysis revealed fifteen readings in Bezae and five readings in Dionysiou as evident cases of harmonization, whereas there were no clear cases at all in Vaticanus (although one possible candidate).72 This is of course a very limited sample, but the results are nevertheless illustrative. Parker ended his investigation by drawing a conclusion about the trustworthiness of these MSS: Once we have seen how often Codex Bezae borrows from Matthew and Mark, we shall be less inclined to trust it. But Codex Vaticanus hardly ever does, on the present evidence, and we must scrutinise much more carefully the apparent harmonisations, and ask whether it is not the other witnesses that are at fault in reading a text different from that of the other Gospels.73

Parker here suggests that Vaticanus is generally so trustworthy that, in those rare instances where we find a potential case of harmonization, we must be more careful not to presuppose automatically what the author wrote and what the scribe copied so that our decision goes against the known tendency of this MS to avoid harmonization.74 We cannot interpret Parker to mean that Vaticanus is to be trusted because it preserves most faithfully what the author wrote, since he claims elsewhere that the “original text” is out of reach. On the other hand, he clearly expresses his interest in the recovery of as early a text form as possible, and suggests that the ultimate goal of textual criticism is “the reconstruction of the development of the text.”75 Therefore, I think what he is trying to say is that Vaticanus generally preserves the earliest text that we can reach. The key-phrase then is “on the present evidence,” but the earliest recoverable text may still be very different from the so-called “original.” Although Parker seems to agree that the distinct Bezan text, with very few exceptions (such as the “Western noninterpolations”), has little claim to be original, his main point is that this Longstaff; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 157–60; idem, “Rigorous or Reasoned Eclecticism – Which?,” in Studies in New Testament Language and Text: Essays in Honour of George D. Kilpatrick on the Occasion of His Sixtyfifth Birthday (ed. J. K. Elliott; Leiden: Brill, 1976), 180–1; idem, “P75, P66, and idem, Origen: The Myth of Early Textual Recension in Alexandria,” in Theory and Method, 270–1; Royse, Scribal Habits, 692. ⁷¹ Parker, Living Text, 40–1. ⁷² Elsewhere Parker says that harmonization accounts for a high proportion of the distinctive readings of Codex Bezae, and that there are over 1200 examples of the phenomenon (Living Text, 201). Note, however, that the degree of harmonization is unevenly distributed among the Gospels. See Holmes, “Codex Bezae,” 124. ⁷³ Parker, Living Text, 42–3. ⁷⁴ This accords with Hort’s well-known dictum that “knowledge of documents should precede final judgement upon readings” (The New Testament, 2:31). The factor clearly influenced the editors of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament in a number of places, e. g., in Luke 12:27 (originally a D-rated passage), where the majority of the Committee after “much hesitation” rejected the disharmonized reading of D it(a).d syrc.s al. See Metzger, Textual Commentary, 161. ⁷⁵ Parker, “Textual Criticism,” 586; cf. idem, Living Text, 211.

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“remarkably free text” preserves the “earliest Christian attitude to the tradition.”76

6. Harmonization and Recension This brings us back to the decisive question of a second century recension. Since Parker and others think that P75 and Vaticanus represent an attempt to establish a controlled text at the end of the second century when the text had developed freely, my question in relation to the phenomenon of harmonization would be: How did these Alexandrian revisers successfully disharmonize a huge amount of passages in the supposed chaotic state of the text in this dynamic period? This cannot be explained by Hans Lietzmann’s contention that the Alexandrian text was the result of expert collation and editing of manuscripts of the older “wild” type.77 As Günter Zuntz has pointed out, this would result only in the “emergence of an average text of that very type.”78 Zuntz maintained that “the Alexandrian collators must have been enabled to use manuscripts superior to those current in the second century.”79 Similarly, Frederic Kenyon, who used the evidence of the “wild” P45 as evidence of a fourth century revision, stated, “It points, perhaps decisively, to the conclusion … that the Vatican text represents the result, not of continuous unaltered tradition, but of skilled scholarship working on the best available authorities.”80 This was of course written before the discovery of P75. If applied to a second century revision, what were the “best available authorities” then, and where in the early church did such scholarship with the required skills exist?81 ⁷⁶ Parker, Living Text, 202. At times, however, I find Parker’s view of Codex Bezae somewhat unclear. For example, he says, “A minority of scholars have maintained that Codex Bezae is not a free text, but the oldest and most authentic form. Others have argued that it sometimes presents the best text. Whichever of these positions is correct, the present argument is unaffected” (Living Text, 201–2); cf. Ehrman, “The Text of the Gospels,” 102; and Petersen, “What Text,” 139 n. 12, who complains that the “Western” text is “not the foundation for modern editions.” ⁷⁷ H. Lietzmann, “Zur Würdigung des Chester Beatty-Papyrus der Paulusbriefe,” SPAW 24– 5 (1934): 781: “Verwildert waren sie alle, aber keine glich der anderen … Diese kollationierte man zusammen, strich ihre Sondervarianten weg und rekonstruierte aus dem, was sie gemeinsam hatten, mit philologisch-kritischem Urteil einen Durchschnitsstext. Das wurde der amtliche Bibeltext des alexandrinischen Sprengels.” ⁷⁸ Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles, 274. ⁷⁹ Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles, 252; cf. 274. ⁸⁰ F. G. Kenyon, Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri 1: General Introduction (London: Emery Walker, 1933), 16. ⁸¹ J. N. Birdsall, “Rational Eclecticism and the Oldest Manuscripts: A Comparative Study of the Bodmer and Chester Beatty Papyri of the Gospel of Luke,” in Studies in New Testament Language and Text: Essays in Honor of George D. Kilpatrick on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday (ed. J. K. Elliott; Leiden: Brill, 1976), 51, poses a similar set of questions: “The latter [P75] is a relatively careful exemplar of a sound and faithful philological tradition. This does not take us any further forward however in the solution of some historical problems about the transmission of the New Testament text. What was this sound and faithful philological tradition? Where did its practitioners work? From whence did they obtain their text and their methods?”

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Already in the first half of the second century we can observe the editorial activity of Marcion. In spite of his major revision of the Epistles, however, it is clear from Zuntz’ examination that Marcion was not the kind of critic who could detect in the manuscripts he used for his revision “the scribal blunders of an average scribe and the faults of an uncontrolled tradition.”82 It has often been suggested that Origen, because of his evident philological skills, was the mind behind the production of an Alexandrian recension. However, Fee has pointed to several factors demonstrating that Origen could not have created the text.83 Firstly, both P66 and P75 antedate Origen. Secondly, although he cited his current New Testament text with precision, he changed texts for some books, so he did not care whether the text was “pure” or not. Finally, it is evident from a study of Origen’s specific comments on variant readings, or places where Origen offers multiple variants, that, although he was aware of textual variation, he was quite indifferent and uncritical in his treatment of the text from the standpoint of modern textual criticism.84 Origen is apparently not a candidate for Petersen either. In several of his works, he points to a critical date of 180 or so, and he thinks it is “noteworthy” that it “coincides with the generation of Origen’s father, the Alexandrian martyr Leonidas,” who, according to Petersen’s assumption, probably belonged to the generation that began the first attempts to standardize the New Testament text.85 Michael Holmes, on the other hand, presents evidence from several areas to prove that ancient textual critics had little effect upon the wording of the text they studied, commented upon, and transmitted.86 First, Holmes appeals to the area of Latin textual criticism in antiquity, which was modeled upon the Greek, especially the Alexandrian, equivalent. In general, scholars and textual critics discussed variants in their adnotationes, but did not change the text. They could mark lines they thought did not belong to the original, but they would not eliminate them, and, above all, they paid little attention to manuscript attestation.87 Secondly, Holmes refers to the Christian transmission of the LXX, particularly Origen’s Hexapla in order to show that Origen did not affect the text itself, albeit ⁸² Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles, 241, 275–6. ⁸³ Fee, “The Myth,” 256–257. See also B. M. Metzger, “Explicit References in the Works of

Origen to Variant Readings in New Testament Manuscripts,” in Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish and Christian (ed. B. M. Metzger; Leiden: Brill, 1968), 88–103. ⁸⁴ Thus, Parker’s suggestion that “the Alexandrian text may have followed Origen’s interest in the distinctive character of each Gospel” is misleading (Living Text, 119–20); cf. F. Pack, The Methodology of Origen as a Textual Critic in Arriving at the Text of the New Testament (Ph. D. diss., University of Southern California, 1948), 346–7. For a recent study of Origen’s references to textual variants, see A. Donaldson, Explicit References to New Testament Variant Readings among Greek and Latin Church Fathers (Ph. D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2009), 96–110. ⁸⁵ Petersen, “The Genesis,” 34 n. 4. Cf. idem, “What Text,” 150 where Peterson sounds even more confident: “for that is the date [180] when the ‘Alexandrian’ or ‘neutral’ recension was created, … probably by the generation of Leonidas, the father of Origen.” ⁸⁶ Holmes, “Codex Bezae,” 145–7. ⁸⁷ Cf. Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles, 278.

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its form and organization.88 Finally, he points to Origen’s “tantalizing nonchalance” (in Metzger’s words) in his treatment of variant readings, which we have already noted. In this regard, Holmes concludes, Origen was simply a man of his own age. The main topic of Holmes’ essay is the question whether the distinct text of Codex Bezae is the result of an early recension of the Gospels, going back to a single scholarly editor. He arrives at a negative answer. Instead, it contains several layers reflecting the cumulous effect of several anonymous readers upon the text.89 This is also in accord with the Alands’ rejection of the idea that the “Western” text-type existed at an early date, because in their opinion, “nowhere can we find a theological mind capable of developing and editing such a text.”90 I think this is true also of the Alexandrian text and its representatives. Interestingly, Codex Vaticanus has a somewhat shifting quality in different sections of the New Testament. For example, the text in the Pauline letters is inferior to the text in the Gospels – a fact that in itself shows that Vaticanus is not the product of a thoroughgoing revision by philological methods.91 This is all the more interesting in light of the recent discovery of double-dots throughout the margins of the codex, which are probably text-critical sigla indicating textual variations known to the person who wrote them (perhaps the original scribe).92 In spite of an apparent awareness of textual variation throughout the New Testament, Vaticanus still reflects the careful copying of different underlying manuscripts from the time when the distinct collections (Gospels, Apostolos, Pauline letters, and Revelation) circulated separately.

⁸⁸ Cf. S. Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). Recently, T. M. Law, “Origen’s Parallel Bible: Textual Criticism, Apologetics, or Exegesis?” JTS 59 (2008): 1–21, has emphasized that Origen did not produce the Hexapla primarily for text-critical use (the establishment of a correct text), as shown by Origen’s evident veneration for the LXX of the Church, the presence in the Hexapla of obelized portions that he did not dare to omit, and the different revisions arranged in parallel columns. Unfortunately, Law does not consider the character of Origen’s New Testament scholarship, which could have strengthened his argument. ⁸⁹ Holmes, “Codex Bezae,” 150–2. ⁹⁰ Aland and Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 55. Note, however, that B. Aland, “Enstehung, Charakter und Herkunft des sog. westlichen Textes untersucht an der Apostelgeschichte,” ETL 62 (1986): 5–65, has suggested that the “Western” text of Acts culminated in a major recension early in the third or late in the second century in Syria. ⁹¹ Cf. Aland and Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 50. ⁹² P. B. Payne “Fuldensis, Sigla for Variants in Vaticanus and 1 Cor 14.34–5,” NTS 41 (1995): 240–62. In a recent paper presented at the SBL Annual meeting, Boston, November 22, 2008, Payne concludes, “The 51 umlauts [distigmai] that match the original ink of Codex Vaticanus provide compelling statistical evidence that the scribe who wrote them was aware of textual variants and believed them to be sufficiently important to note in this codex.” Until recently, Payne used the term “umlaut” for the sign. In consultation with the present author and other scholars, he decided to change the term to “distigme” (pl. “distigmai”).

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7. Authorial Style and Theology One of the criteria of internal evidence used in textual criticism concerns intrinsic probability. This means that the critic, in a place of variation, considers what the author was more likely to have written, in light of his style, vocabulary, and theology throughout a book.93 It may seem contradictory that several scholars who believe that we cannot reach the original text are still occupied with the reconstruction of what the author wrote in a given passage. Naturally, skepticism towards the extant manuscript evidence will increase the weight of internal criteria. When Ehrman detects corruption in numerous scriptural passages, he often appeals to internal criteria.94 Likewise, in Parker’s discussion of the complex passages known as the “Western non-interpolations,” mostly found in the three last chapters of Luke, he goes far to establish and appeal to Lukan style and theology.95 Does this not presume a ‘Luke’ whom we regard as at least approximating the original Luke? It was on the basis of internal evidence applied in a large number of passages that Westcott and Hort concluded that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus are manuscripts of superior quality. The results of their seminal work have been confirmed over and over again. In relation to author’s style, for example, James W. Voelz, has recently compared the Greek style of Codex Vaticanus in Mark to the characteristics of the Greek of that Gospel on the basis of a greater range of manuscript evidence, i. e., “Marcan Greek.”96 Voelz discusses features of orthography, vocabulary, morphology, and syntax and concludes that “the characteristics of ms. B’s Greek are generally quite congruent with the characteristics of the [sic] Mark’s Greek.” This congruence, Voelz suggests, “gives general warrant for evaluating ms. B as among the reliable witnesses to the text of the Second Gospel.”97

8. Conclusions Any serious study of the Gospels has to begin with the manuscripts and take into account the factor of textual transmission. Recently, a number of scholars in the field of textual criticism have challenged every assurance of certainty in establishing an original text of the New Testament by questioning the value of the ⁹³ ⁹⁴ ⁹⁵ ⁹⁶

See Metzger, Textual Commentary, 13–4*. Cf. Ehrman’s general description of his method (Orthodox Corruption, 31–2). Parker, Living Text, 148–74. See especially his treatment of Luke 22:19–20 and 22:43–4. J. W. Voelz, “The Greek of Codex Vaticanus in the Second Gospel and Marcan Greek,” NovT 47 (2005): 209–49. Voelz admits that his procedure contains an unavoidable element of circularity: “A given author’s Greek usage is determined on the basis of the readings of given mss., yet the selection of those mss. is determined to a significant extent on the basis of the author’s perceived usage” (ibid., 232). However, this procedure is controlled to a great extent on the basis of characteristics present at places where there is little or no textual variation. ⁹⁷ Voelz, “The Greek of Codex Vaticanus,” 243–4.

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extant textual evidence. The archetype of the textual tradition in their view is still at least 100 years removed from the authors, and during the earliest period there was such a great fluidity and freedom in handling the text that the extant manuscripts are unreliable for the purpose of establishing an original text. On the other hand, the same scholars are in effect occupied with the reconstruction of a text beyond the hypothetical archetype of the tradition, not least by appealing to internal evidence such as what the original author would likely have written. One of the basic assumptions of this minimalistic view is the notion that witnesses like P75 and Vaticanus, traditionally labeled “Alexandrian,” reflect an attempt to establish a controlled text at the end of the second century when the text had developed freely. I have attempted to show that the available material, including newly published papyri, show that the situation in the second century was not so chaotic. A significant majority of the earliest papyri witness to the Alexandrian text. If there was a major recension of the Gospel texts at the end of the second century, one would have expected clear evidence from the manuscripts themselves. Further, I have pointed to several problems of using early patristic sources in isolation from the manuscripts in order to draw firm conclusions about the state of the early text and its transmission. As for a second-century recension, the candidates capable of such an undertaking are indeed hard to find, more so if the recension was based upon a collation of largely corrupted MSS. Rather than being the result of text-critical scholarship and ecclesiastical control, I think our best extant MSS reflect a concern for careful copying present in some circles from the earliest time. Nevertheless, they are not faultless in spite of their general superior quality. Finally, we should not commit the mistake of thinking that the text chosen by the editors of our current standard editions is virtually certain at every point, and that we can ignore the foot of the page showing significant variants. In fact, the text-critical task will never be finished, but the rich and growing body of textual evidence, the tenacity of the textual tradition, and the refined methods of textual criticism may ensure us that the goal is within reach. The reconstruction of the original text remains an “impossible possibility.”98

⁹⁸ Reinhold Niebuhr’s phrase first applied to textual studies by R. M. Brown, The Spirit of Protestantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 149–50.

Matthew and Mark The Contribution of Recent Linguistic Thought Stanley E. Porter 1. Introduction This conference volume is to be commended for including the topic of linguistics and semantics in Matthew and Mark, because I believe that the linguistics of ancient languages, and in particular the language used to write the New Testament, is a very important – and widely neglected – subject. Several of the contributors to this volume, however, clearly know the value of modern linguistic study of ancient texts, as they have made their own contributions to such study, one of them in particular to the study of Mark. Professor Wischmeyer has given attention to matters linguistic in her treatment of hermeneutics,1 while Professor Becker wrote a significant and major work on textlinguistics in Paul,2 published originally in German and then in English translation. Professor Breytenbach wrote a very important – though now nearly impossible to find – textlinguistic analysis of Mark’s Gospel.3 Perhaps others have made contributions that I do not know about – I hope so.4 This is not the general pattern of research, however, and the linguistic research that has been done has clearly not made it into the mainstream of biblical research. One of my repeated frustrations is to turn to recent research, whether in journals, significant chapters, or even commentaries – which often make a pretense of treating the Greek text – only to find little to no reference to dedicated grammatical or related work – to say nothing of work from a modern linguistic standpoint. In a discipline such as biblical studies, which has taken the art of writing long and encompassing footnotes to a new pinnacle of comprehensiveness, whereby every known or related work is cited in support or refutation of a point, it is surprising how many comments can be made about language, without a single ¹ O. Wischmeyer, Hermeneutik des Neuen Testaments: Ein Lehrbuch (Tübingen: Francke, 2004), esp. chs. 8 and 9. ² E.-M. Becker, Schreiben und Verstehen: Paulinische Briefhermeneutik im Zweiten Korintherbrief (Tübingen: Francke, 2002; ET: Letter Hermeneutics in 2 Corinthians: Studies in Literarkritik and Communication Theory; trans. H. S. Heron; London: Clark, 2004). ³ C. Breytenbach, Nachfolge und Zukunftserwartung nach Markus: Eine methodenkritische Studie (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1984). ⁴ In this and the survey that follows, I do not attempt to be comprehensive, but to survey the work with which I am familiar.

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source – old or new – being cited. As examples, I have examined in some detail the two recent English language commentaries on Mark and Matthew, by Richard France and John Nolland.5 These commentaries appear in the New International Greek Testament Commentary, which purports, according to the Foreword, “to cater particularly to the needs of the student of the Greek text.” Not only that, but “At a time when the study of Greek is being curtailed in many schools of theology, we hope that the NIGTC will demonstrate the continuing value of studying the Greek New Testament and will be an impetus in the revival of such study.” This means that “the commentaries are intended to interact with modern scholarship and to make their own scholarly contribution to the study of the New Testament … and the series is meant to harvest the results of this research in easily accessible form. The commentaries include, therefore, extensive bibliographies and attempt to treat all important problems of history, exegesis, and interpretation that arise from the New Testament text.” Not only that, but the understanding of the biblical book is to be “based on historical-critical-linguistic exegesis.”6 That is a very encouraging statement regarding things linguistic. When one turns to the commentaries, one finds a different reality than the foreword leads one to believe. In France’s commentary on Mark, published in 2002, in the list of abbreviations for standard reference works, there are those for LSJ, MM, BAGD, and, of course, TDNT – but not for the Louw–Nida lexicon. The only grammatical work is BDF. Within the extensive bibliography of books and articles, there is a single work by Paul Danove, his earliest,7 and Moule’s Idiom-Book. Missing is any reference to Moulton, Robertson, Doudna,8 Goodwin, Smyth, Thrall or any other traditional grammarian, or reference to Schmidt, Palmer, Porter, Fanning, Decker, Louw, or any other modern linguistic approach, including the significant monograph by Breytenbach. In Nolland’s commentary on Matthew, published in 2005, the list of abbreviations includes the same works mentioned above as does France, but without MM. Traditional works included in his bibliography include Maloney (not cited by France),9 Moulton, Robertson, and Moule, though none of them is listed as being cited in the list of modern authors. The list of modern works refreshingly does include work by Stephanie Black,10 Güttgemanns,11 Louw (but not the Louw–Nida lexi⁵ R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); J. Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). ⁶ “Foreword,” x (France), xvi (Nolland). ⁷ P. L. Danove, The End of Mark’s Story: A Methodological Study (Leiden: Brill, 1993). ⁸ J. C. Doudna, The Greek of the Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: Society of Biblical Literature, 1961). ⁹ E. C. Maloney, Semitic Interference in Marcan Syntax (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981). ¹⁰ S. L. Black, “The Historic Present in Matthew: Beyond Speech Margins,” in Discourse Analysis and the New Testament: Approaches and Results (ed. S. E. Porter and J. T. Reed; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 120–39 and idem, Sentence Conjunctions in the Gospel of Matthew: καί, δέ, τότε, γάρ, οὖν and Asyndeton in Narrative Discourse (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002). ¹¹ E. Güttgemanns, “Narrative Analyse synoptischer Texte,” in Die Neutestamentliche

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con),12 and Porter (though not his Verbal Aspect or Idioms),13 but is missing a host of others, such as Schmidt,14 Palmer,15 Fanning,16 Decker17 and others, and only Black and Porter are cited in the index of modern authors. To say the least, in these two commentaries that purport to be about studying the language of the New Testament, including from a linguistic standpoint, the results are meager at best. One cannot say with any certainty that these recent commentaries reflect either detailed study of the Greek text on the basis of traditional language theory or appreciation on anything but an ad hoc way of any advances in modern linguistics.18 As A. T. Robertson himself pointed out years ago, however, “It is the task and the duty of the N. T. student to apply the results of linguistic research to the Greek of the N. T. But, strange to say, this has not been adequately done.”19 What was true then is no less true today.

2. Previous Research on the Linguistic Character of Matthew and Mark Having said this about these two commentaries in particular, I would not want to pretend that there is a lot of specific work of which they could have availed themselves. There are of course a number of general works that are disappointingly missing, some of which I have mentioned above. Not only the traditional Gleichnisforschung im Horizont von Hermeneutik und Literaturwissenschaft (ed. W. Harnisch; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982), 179–223 and idem, “Die Funktion der Erzählung im Judentum als Frage an das christliche Verständnis der Evangelien,” LB 46 (1979): 5–61. ¹² J. P. Louw, Semantics of New Testament Greek (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982). ¹³ Besides S. E. Porter’s Studies in the Greek New Testament: Theory and Practice (New York: Lang, 1996) and idem, The Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research: Previous Discussion and New Proposals (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), he refers to idem, “Why Hasn’t Reader-Response Criticism Caught on in New Testament Studies?” Literature and Theology 4 (1990): 278–92. ¹⁴ D. D. Schmidt, Hellenistic Geek Grammar and Noam Chomsky: Nominalizing Transformations (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981). ¹⁵ M. W. Palmer, “How Do we Know a Phrase is a Phrase? A Plea for Procedural Clarity in the Application of Linguistics to Biblical Greek,” in Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research (ed. S. E. Porter and D. A. Carson; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 152–86 and idem, Levels of Constituent Structure in New Testament Greek (New York: Lang, 1995). ¹⁶ B. M. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990). ¹⁷ R. J. Decker, Temporal Deixis of the Greek Verb in the Gospel of Mark with Reference to Verbal Aspect (New York: Lang, 2001). ¹⁸ This is not to say, however, that all commentaries show this neglect. The commentary by R. Gundry (Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993]) definitely tries to appropriate recent work on verbal aspect theory. ¹⁹ J. A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (4th ed.; Nashville: Broadman, 1934), 3; cited in Black, Sentence Conjunctions, 15 and idem, “How Matthew Tells the Story: A Linguistic Approach to Matthew’s Syntax,” in Built upon the Rock: Studies in the Gospel of Matthew (ed. D. M. Gurtner and J. Nolland; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 24.

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grammars, but recent work on verbal aspect and related topics is woefully missing. I would not pretend to have surveyed all of the important work that has been done recently from a linguistic standpoint on Matthew and Mark. However, there have been a couple of confluences of research that are worth noting. I will first survey the most important work that has been done fairly recently. Then, in the next section, I will break down the topic into a number of important components, and provide some applications to Matthew and Mark. Concerning Mark’s Gospel specifically, the largest body of work has probably been done by Paul Danove. Beginning with his work on The End of Mark’s Story, he introduced the notion of construction grammar to New Testament studies. Construction grammar is “a descriptive, non-transformational grammar which renders the locutions of a language into grammatical constructions ‘consisting of particular syntactic patterns associated with specific semantic structures.’”20 He briefly defines these syntactical patterns – including their valency descriptions – and their associated semantic structures in this work, and then attempts to build a theory of narrative around such a syntactically based structure. His valence descriptions include syntactic function, semantic function, and lexical realization. The theory of narrative has proved less productive than the syntactical and semantic analysis, no doubt because the structures above the clausal syntax are not of the same kind as those contained within the clause. In his second major work, supported by a number of articles on the topic, Danove offers a comprehensive analysis of case frames for the Gospel of Mark, and application of these case frames to textual studies, issues in translation, and narrative analysis.21 The third major work Danove has produced includes the application of his case frames to rhetorical analysis of characterization of God, Jesus, and the Disciples in Mark’s Gospel.22 Here he has left behind the valency descriptions but drawn upon what he sees as their insights to speak of how characters are depicted in Mark’s Gospel. There are a number of other works specifically on Mark’s Gospel that I also wish to mention. The first is Cilliers Breytenbach’s 1983 treatment of Mark’s Gospel, which is heavily dependent upon textlinguistics, especially the form found in the work of Teun van Dijk.23 After analyzing various methods in Mar²⁰ Danove, End, 30, citing the linguist Fillmore, “On Grammatical Constructions” (Unpublished Manuscript), 3. ²¹ P. L. Danove, Linguistics and Exegesis in the Gospel of Mark: Applications of a Case Frame Analysis and Lexicon (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), idem, “The Theory of Construction Grammar and its Application to New Testament Greek,” in Biblical Greek, 119–51, and idem, “Verbs of Experience: Toward a Lexicon Detailing the Argument Structures Assigned by Verbs,” in Linguistics and the New Testament: Critical Junctures (ed. S. E. Porter and D. A. Carson; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 144–205. Since then, see also idem, “Verbs of Transference and their Derivatives of Motion and State in the New Testament: A Study of Focus and Perspective,” Filologia Neotestamentaria 19 (2006): 53–71. ²² P. L. Danove, The Rhetoric of Characterization of God, Jesus, and Jesus’ Disciples in the Gospel of Mark (New York: Clark, 2005). ²³ Breytenbach, Nachfolge, 86–110, citing especially T. van Dijk, Textwissenschaft: Eine interdisziplinäre Einführung (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1980) and idem, Macrostructures: An Interdisci-

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kan research, and noting how they come to unsatisfactory conclusions regarding the nature of the text, Breytenbach proposes that Mark is an episodic narrative, and he attempts to examine this hypothesis using textlinguistics – though within the framework of compositional and redactional analysis. Recognizing the interdisciplinary nature of textlinguistics, he defines its various components, and then uses such tools as semantic connexions and cohesion, pragmatics and semantic and functional coherence, as well as local and global textual relations. This was clearly a work ahead of its time, but has not been pursued further by the author so far as I know, although the method used has been drawn upon and developed further by other continental and especially Scandinavian discourse analysts. The second work is the linguistic analysis of Mark by John Cook published in 1995.24 Cook uses a method that draws on a distinction between semantics and pragmatics, but places his work within speech-act theory, frame analysis, and ultimately analytic philosophy. The result is what amounts to a propositional analysis of the entirety of Mark’s Gospel, something akin to the colon analysis of the South African school of discourse analysis. No one has developed this method further, to my knowledge. In a volume that I edited along with Jeffrey Reed and that appeared in 1999, entitled Discourse Analysis and the New Testament, there were three linguistically informed treatments of Mark included. The first two were by Robert Longacre, a significant figure in linguistic circles who has promoted the work in tagmemics of Kenneth Pike and developed his own model of discourse analysis.25 In his first analysis of Mark, Longacre offers what he calls a “top-down, templatedriven narrative analysis.”26 Adopting a narrative model,27 Longacre exemplifies the structure of Mark’s Gospel in term of its (1) stage, (2) inciting incident, (3) mounting tension, (4) climax, (5) denouement, and then (6) closure. Within these major units, he breaks the book down into episodes, and discusses briefly their structure and relationship to the larger framework of the Gospel. In his second essay in the same volume, Longacre examines the two pericopes that make plinary Study of Global Structures in Discourse, Interaction, and Cognition (Hillsdale, N. J.: Erlbaum, 1980). ²⁴ J. G. Cook, The Structure and Persuasive Power of Mark: A Linguistic Approach (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995). ²⁵ See K. L. Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior (2nd ed.; The Hague: Mouton, 1967) and R. E. Longacre, The Grammar of Discourse (2nd ed.; New York: Plenum, 1996). ²⁶ R. E. Longacre, “A Top-Down, Template-Driven Narrative Analysis, Illustrated by Application to Mark’s Gospel,” in Discourse Analysis, 140–68. ²⁷ Longacre (“Top-Down, Template-Driven Narrative Analysis,” 140 n. 2) attributes this to W. Thrall, A. Hibbard, and H. Holman, in Handbook to Literature (New York: The Odyssey Press, 1961), but does not give a page number. I believe that he is referring to the five part tragic structure of Gustav Freytag. Freytag developed this model on the basis of studying tragedy, especially Shakespeare, and published it in his Technik des Dramas (3rd ed.; Leipzig: Hirzel, 1876 [1863]). Longacre also refers to this model in his Grammar, 34–5, but says it goes back to classical times.

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up Mark 5:1–43, vv. 1–20 and vv. 21–43.28 His analysis of these two pericopes goes into more detail in terms of the structure of the individual episodes that make up the larger Gospel. In other words, these analyses are detailed examples that are designed to support his larger top-down analysis. The third essay in the volume is by Wolfgang Schenk.29 This essay constitutes a further instance of his use of a model of German textlinguistics that he has used for some time. This model is based on the triad of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.30 Within the larger four-dimensional structure of the Gospel of Mark, Schenk analyzes in particular Mark 12:41–13:37 in terms of its levels of communicaton and its rhetorical structure. The result is a display of logical and rhetorical relations. In 2000, I published two articles on the linguistic concept of register, especially as initiated by Michael Halliday,31 and its possible use in New Testament study.32 Register analysis is, as opposed to study of idiolect (personal) and dialect (geographical-social change), concerned with transient forms of language. In register analysis, there are three metafunctions of language – the ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions – instantiated in terms of linguistic expression at the levels of field, tenor, and mode. The field of discourse is concerned with the subject matter and how it is expressed in terms of who is doing what to whom and how (the so-called transitivity network), the tenor of discourse is concerned with the linguistically expressed social-cultural relations of the participants, and the mode of discourse is concerned with the medium of expression and the features that go to making a text a text, such as cohesive devices. I then applied this framework to an analysis of Mark’s Gospel, in order to attempt to determine the context of situation. The context of situation in register analysis is not an attempt at a specific originating context, but the kind of sociolinguistic context that could have elicited such a text. The final work that I wish to mention is the treatment of verbal aspect in Mark by Rodney Decker, published in 2001. Decker draws extensively upon previous significant work in verbal aspect theory, especially by Porter, and accepts and applies this framework to Mark’s Gospel, especially in terms of temporal deixis. He concludes that the non-time ²⁸ Longacre, “Mark 5.1–43: Generating the Complexity of a Narrative from its Most Basic Elements,” in Discourse Analysis, 169–96. ²⁹ W. Schenk, “The Testamental Disciple-Instruction of the Markan Jesus (Mark 13): Its Levels of Communication and its Rhetorical Structures,” in Discourse Analysis, 197–222. ³⁰ Schenk (“Testamental Disciple-Instruction,” 197) identifies this triad with Charles Peirce and Charles Morris. ³¹ See, e. g., M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan, Language, Context and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective (Geelong, Australia: Deakin University Press, 1985). As a thorough example of register analysis, see J. T. Reed, A Discourse Analysis of Philippians (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997). ³² S. E. Porter, “Dialect and Register in the Greek of the New Testament: Theory,” in Rethinking Contexts, Rereading Texts: Contributions from the Social Sciences to Biblical Interpretation (ed. M. D. Carroll R.; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 190–208 and idem, “Register in the Greek of the New Testament: Application with Reference to Mark’s Gospel,” in Rethinking Contexts, 209–28.

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indexed semantics of the indicative tense-forms can be accounted for by study of the various ways that temporal deixis is used in Mark’s Gospel. I turn now to the equivalent works in Matthean studies. The first that I have come across is by David Hellholm,33 published in 1995 in a volume in tribute to Lars Hartmann, who himself has used linguistics in his work.34 Hellholm’s treatment of unit delimitation in the composition of Matthew’s Gospel draws upon semiotic theory, especially as it relates to lexical study, and some principles of textual differentiation from continental textlinguistics. The result is that he identifies the semantic patterns of Matthew’s Gospel, and then is able to discuss the semantic substitution that has occurred. In 2002, Stephanie Black published her detailed and impressive study of sentence conjunctions in the Gospel of Matthew. Drawing upon a variety of approaches, including Hallidayan linguistics and especially cognitive linguistics including relevance theory,35 Black was able to make a significant contribution to the study of conjunctions, especially as they are used in Matthew. Several of her major contributions included recognizing the low to mid-level discontinuity of the use of δέ, and the relation of γάρ and οὖν in terms of off-line material. Her findings also took into account the relation of Matthew’s Gospel to Mark’s. Black also has done research on Matthew’s use of the historical present from a linguistic standpoint, treating examples in contexts apart from speech margins and taking conjunctions into account.36 Her most recent essay takes a linguistic approach to Matthew’s narrative syntax.37 In this essay, she outlines several key linguistic principles, such as redundancy, mental representation and markedness, and then analyzes two key pericopes in terms of these features and the use of conjunctions. Her conclusions challenge a number of previous exegetical findings regarding Matt 8–9. In a recent monograph, Jeffery Capshaw draws directly upon the top-down model of Longacre and applies it to analysis of Matthew.38 As a result, he creates what he calls a linguistic plot structure for Matthew, including the stages noted above. Along the way, Capshaw also includes work on paragraph structure using Longacre’s model. He does all of this in order to focus upon Matt 1–4, where he analyzes in more detail the use of the Old Testament within these four chapters. William Varner provides a discourse analysis of Matthew’s nativity narrative.39 ³³ D. Hellholm, “Substitutionelle Gliderungsmerkmale und die Komposition des Matthäusevangeliums,” in Texts and Contexts: Biblical Texts in Their Textual and Situational Contexts (ed. T. Fornberg and D. Hellholm; Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995), 11–76. ³⁴ L. Hartman, Text-Centered New Testament Studies: Text-Theoretical Essays on Early Jewish and Early Christian Literature (ed. D. Hellholm; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997). ³⁵ D. Sperber and D. Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition (2nd ed.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). ³⁶ Black, “Historic Present.” ³⁷ Black, “Matthew.” ³⁸ J. L. Capshaw, A Textlinguistic Analysis of Selected Old Testament Texts in Matthew 1–4 (New York: Lang, 2004). ³⁹ W. Varner, “A Discourse Analysis of Matthew’s Nativity Narrative,” TynBul 58 (2007): 209–28.

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Defining discourse analysis as dealing with “grammatical and semantic functions as they affect meaning above the level of the sentence,”40 Varner then selects a number of features for further discussion: the discourse function of the genitive absolute, the historic present, the conjunction τότε, and the formula quotations. Varner concludes that Matthew crafted his work with well-intentioned literary designs. Finally, Matthias Grilli has used principles of textlinguistics, in particular pragmatics (as distinct from semantics), in his analysis of the discourse in Matt 18 as an example of a communicative act.41 The principles he draws upon are those related to the unity of the text, the difference between spoken and written texts in the communication process, and differentiating the author, reader, and textual strategies. While no doubt incomplete, this survey illustrates the state of play in linguistically based analysis of Mark and Matthew. While the amount remains relatively small when compared to traditional exegesis, including traditional grammar, there has been some significant work in a number of areas. Several scholars have clearly brought linguistic analysis to bear on the study of Mark and Matthew’s Gospels, which has pushed the linguistic boundaries beyond traditional understanding.

3. Linguistic Insights into Mark and Matthew The topic of this essay was to address semantics and linguistics in Matthew and Mark. To be honest, I am not sure what these terms are meant to distinguish. Semantics could be the more narrowly prescribed notion as opposed to syntax and pragmatics. In that case, I am not sure how it relates to linguistics. I will return to this distinction below. Instead, however, I take it that semantics is concerned with meaning in language, and probably more particularly with the meanings of words, such as lexical semantics, while linguistics is concerned with grammar, or more particularly the forms or structures of language. I will treat the two notions below, though in an expanded fashion. Let me make a clarificatory point first off, however. The notion of semantics or the meaning of language is very broad, and extends beyond simply the meanings of words. In fact, what I state below is going to indicate that I think that words actually have very little specific lexical meaning of their own. Meaning, however, is everywhere, and includes much more than words. For example, meaning is found in grammar, in the meanings of such things as verbal tenseforms (aspects), cases, etc. Meaning is found in the syntax of the language, that is, all of the elements and their relations and ordering that make up syntactical ⁴⁰ Varner, “Discourse Analysis,” 211 (italics in original). ⁴¹ M. Grilli, “Erster Teil: Lectüre von Mt 18 als Kommunkationsprozess,” in Gottes Wort in

menschlicher Sprache: Die Lectüre von Mt 18 und Apg 1–3 als Kommuikationsprozess (ed. D. Dormeyer and M. Grilli; Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2004), esp. 21–38.

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units, whether these be word groups, clauses or beyond. Meaning is found in the functional uses of language by speakers/writers in particular contexts, what is often called pragmatics. Meaning is also found in the entire discourse, so-called discourse semantics.42 In fact, as I will argue further below, lexical semantics, that is, the meaning of words, is minimalistic and abstract, and specific and concrete meanings are only found in specific instances of actual usage, that is, ultimately at the discourse level localized at particular structures. 3.1. Lexical Semantics I will deal with lexical semantics first, as this is an area in which most biblical scholars work. As I noted above in my survey of two recent commentaries, the standard lexical work is BADG (and now BDAG).43 This lexicon is not extraordinary in the history of lexicon making, as John Lee has so ably demonstrated.44 It is an alphabetical listing of the words that occur in the New Testament, with senses differentiated, a rough description of the meaning given, and glosses provided. From a linguistic standpoint, however, it is clearly deficient, because it neglects the notion of semantic fields or semantic domains.45 The notion of semantic domains or semantic fields revolves around the concept that the lexical items of a language are related, not to the words that appear before or after in an alphabetical listing, but to areas or fields of meaning. When considering individual lexical items, they should be considered in terms of how they are related to other words within a given field or fields. The Louw–Nida semantic domains lexicon46 is a significant step forward in this regard. It organizes the vocabulary of the Greek of the New Testament into ninety-three domains. These range across the physical and mental categories into which the vocabulary may be organized, and include categories for function words (such as prepositions and conjunctions), discourse markers and referentials, and the names of persons and places (i. e., words with unique referents). The domains are organized according to three major types of semantic features: shared features, which determine that individual words are included in the same semantic domain; distinctive features, which determine that words within a domain are differentiated from each other; and supplementary features, which are contextually based.47 As a result, according to the editors, there are 5000 lexical items included in the dictionary, with what they identify as 25,000 mean⁴² See Porter, Studies, 66–7, with bibliography substantiating this. ⁴³ W. Bauer, A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Litera-

ture (3rd ed.; revised and edited by F. W. Danker; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). ⁴⁴ See J. A. L. Lee, A History of New Testament Lexicography (New York: Lang, 2003). I have elsewhere criticized the lexicon in terms of specific errors, but do not do this here. ⁴⁵ See Porter, Studies, 69–70. ⁴⁶ J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1988). ⁴⁷ Louw–Nida, Greek-English Lexicon, 1: vi.

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ings.48 The Louw–Nida semantic domain lexicon is, to my knowledge, the first such dictionary ever completed in which an entire variety of language was captured by means of a semantic field lexicon.49 This does not mean that there are not problems with the lexicon. I have analyzed it in some detail elsewhere, and have identified a number of shortcomings.50 These include restriction of examples, the lack of syntactical information, problems related to the establishment of the domains and quantifying the semantic relations of the individual elements. However, none of this should detract from what a significant accomplishment such a lexicon is. This makes it all the more surprising that it is not apparently referenced in the two recent commentaries – or many other similar works that I have had occasion to use. One of the major problems with not using a source such as this is that it compels attention to be fixed upon the word. One thing must be said about most recent commentary literature, and that is that it has tended to take a very much word-centered approach to commentating, to the point of becoming commentaries more on individual words than on the text itself. Words are apparently easy to grab hold of, but are more problematic than at first appears. A couple of examples treated in both BDAG and the Louw–Nida lexicon will suffice, one a function word and the other a content word. First is the use of the preposition ἐν. BDAG offers twelve different senses of the preposition, while the Louw–Nida lexicon offers twenty-one identified meanings, with twenty-two supplementary syntactical identifications. This is quite a mass of meanings for what is in linguistic circles identified as a function word, that is, a word with procedural, functional, and grammatical meaning, but not content or conceptual meaning.51 Observing such lexical polysemy is not untypical, however, in both biblical studies and mainstream semantic studies. A brief analysis of Louw–Nida’s treatment helps us to understand something about the use of this preposition. Virtually all of the supplementary syntactical identifications are found in semantic domains other than the ones in which the prepositions are usually classified (i. e., 89 and 90). This indicates that, at the least, it is the words in the other domains in syntactical configuration with the preposition that result in its supplementary meanings. The same applies to several of the identified meanings. The rest are in domains for spacial relations (83), spacial extensions (84), relations (89), and case (90) – all of which indicate some type of spacial or relational sense in a specified situation. BDAG offers some insight into this situation before it lists its twelve senses: ⁴⁸ Louw–Nida, Greek-English Lexicon, 1: vi. ⁴⁹ On the Greek of the New Testament as a “variety” of language, and a corpus in its own

right, see S. E. Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood (New York: Lang, 1989), 1, 143–56. ⁵⁰ Porter, Studies, 70–1. ⁵¹ See Black, Sentence Conjunctions, 43–54. She notes that Aristotle thought of them as words of “meaningless sound” (p. 44).

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The uses of this prep. are so many and various, and oft. so easily confused, that a strictly systematic treatment is impossible. It must suffice to list the main categories, which will help establish the usage in individual cases. The earliest auditors/readers, not being inconvenienced by grammatical and lexical debates, would readily absorb the context and experience little difficulty.52

What BDAG states explicity, and Louw–Nida exemplify throughout, is that the differentiation of the senses of the preposition is not in fact senses differentiated on the basis of semantic distinctions. In all of the cases, the differentiation is in terms of pragmatic and contextual usage. The supplementary examples of Louw–Nida clearly indicate this, as do, however, the distinctions made within the categories of spacial and other relational and case related categories. BDAG explicitly states that it is the “uses” of the preposition that are many, not necessarily its senses, despite their twelve categories. The original readers, the lexicon states, would have been able to differentiate how the preposition is being used with “little difficulty” on the basis of “context.” One example – though admittedly an important one – may not seem sufficient basis for an entire lexical theory, but I believe it points us in the right direction toward a more productive lexical theory for biblical studies – lexical monosemy.53 Lexical monosemy works from a semantic minimalist position, what Charles Ruhl calls the “monosemic bias.”54 The monosemic bias works from the presupposition that words are monosemous, and that their “meanings” are derived from pragmatic usage in context, as their singular sense is modulated within a weak systematicity by such things as the semantic structure in which they are used and the wider and larger conceptual or pragmatic structure. What has often been identified as different meanings of the same word (i. e., polysemy) is usually, if not invariably, conceptual shifting or differentiation on the basis of pragmatic usage in context. In fact, form and function is closely associated in monosemy, and words that appear to have many instances of different meanings are better thought of as not polysemous but in fact to have, to use the words of Uriel Weinreich, “semantic near-emptiness”55 – as might well be argued for such a word as the preposition ἐν.56 ⁵² Danker, Greek–English Lexicon, 326. ⁵³ I base the following on C. Ruhl, On Monosemy: A Study in Linguistic Semantics (Buffalo:

SUNY Press, 1986). ⁵⁴ Ruhl, Monosemy, 3. ⁵⁵ U. Weinreich, “On the Semantic Structure of Language,” in Universals of Language (ed. J. Greenberg; 2nd ed.; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963), 180; cited in Ruhl, Monosemy, 3. ⁵⁶ A. Tyler and V. Evans, The Semantics of English Prepositions: Spatial Scenes, Embodied Meaning, and Cognition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 6–7, criticize Ruhl along the following lines: “some meanings are demonstrably context independent” (p. 6), and “the primary meaning would need to be so abstract to be able to derive a set of such distinct meanings that it is difficult to see how the meanings associated with other spatial particles … could be mutually distinguished” (p. 7). However, their example to refute the first claim is without context, and the second seems to function on the basis that there is no single meaning, only contextual meanings, both of which Ruhl treats and deals with.

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I wish now to take a closer look at a second example that has direct bearing on Matthew (if not Mark). This is the use of the word δικαιοσύνη. This word appears seven times in Matthew and well over fifty in Paul’s letters. BDAG differentiates three senses of the word: (1) “the quality, state, or practice of judicial responsibility w. focus on fairness”; (2) “quality or state of juridical correctness with focus on redemptive action”; and (3) “the quality or characteristic of upright behavior.”57 BDAG does not place any example from Matthew in the first two categories, although it mentions that Matt 5:6 perhaps offers a “related eschatological sense” to the sense of salvation in Rom 5:17 and 1 Cor 1:30, where salvation is seen as a “righteousness bestowed by God.”58 Louw–Nida offer something similar. They differentiate four senses of the word: 88.13: “the act of doing what God requires – ‘righteousness, doing what God requires, doing what is right’”; 34.46: “to cause someone to be in a proper or right relation with someone else – ‘to put right with, to cause to be in a right relationship with’”; 53.4: “observances or practices required by one’s religion – ‘religious observances, religious requirements’”; and 57.111: charity. Examples from Matthew appear in the first, third and fourth, but not the second, reserved entirely for examples from Paul. If we were to take a monosemic bias towards the meaning of δικαιοσύνη, we would, I think, be able to reduce this complexity significantly. Notable is the fact that, in both lexicons, the distinctions are made on the basis of pragmatic usage in context. BDAG identifies its second category in terms of a “focus on redemptive action,”59 that is, contexts in which such action can be identified. Louw– Nida’s fourth definition – charity – is clearly based upon a specific context as found in Matt 6:1 (although they admit that this could be an instance of the third category, 53.4), in which they see a metaphorical modulation (metonymy). The specific contexts are the ones that give these specific meanings to what otherwise is the same sense of the word. When the specifically contextual factors are removed, the monosemous sense of right behavior, doing what is right, etc., is what is left, a sense that can be modulated in the several different pragmatic contexts. For Matthew, such a context might include right behavior in terms of the expectations of formalized religion, while in a Pauline context such behavior might involve some type of redemptive or salvific action. The word itself is the same, but the pragmatic context in which it is used modulates the specific meaning from the more abstract to the specific sense. The benefits of this approach to semantics are several for study of the New Testament. (1) Lexicography can be simplified, so that what is studied at the lexical level is not unnecessarily intertwined and encumbered with what is better studied at the contextual level. The abstract meanings of lexical items apart from context can be recognized as contributing their minimal semantics to the larger ⁵⁷ Danker, Greek–English Lexicon, 247–8. ⁵⁸ Danker, Greek–English Lexicon, 247. ⁵⁹ Danker, Greek–English Lexicon, 247.

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contextual meaning. (2) Commentaries can break free of their word-focused approach and better focus on the larger contextual and pragmatic factors that are, in fact and have always been, the determining features in determining meaning. (3) We can perhaps finally rid ourselves of the dreaded specter of theological lexicography that so heavily hangs over New Testament study, when we realize that theology is located not at the word level but at the contextual or discourse level, and study the components of it appropriately.60 (4) In terms of Matthew and Mark, we can see that the common vocabulary of the koine is at play, while appreciating the importance of context and pragmatics for determining the specific meanings in a given context. 3.2. Grammatical (Morphological) Semantics There are various grammatical or morphologically based phenomena that have meaning that merit some consideration. Several of the most important include the meanings that are grammaticalized in the verbal tense-form, and those that are grammaticalized in the case forms. 3.2.1. Verbal Semantics There are a number of semantic features that are grammaticalized in the verbal tense-forms. There are, I believe, three major tense-forms in Greek, with the future form one that occupies semantic space between the indicative and the subjunctive. Besides aspect, which is grammaticalized in the tense-forms,61 there is attitude in the mood forms (indicative, subjunctive, optative, imperative, along with the participle and infinitive). The result is grammaticalization of perfective, imperfective, and stative aspect, in the assertive, projective, contingent, and directive attitudes, along with the factive presuppositional and non-factive presuppositional attitudes.62 Voice grammaticalizes the semantic feature of causality, and includes active agency, passive agency or ergative agency (for the middle form). The finite forms (all those excluding the participle and infinitive) also grammaticalize person, which selects third person for those not included with the speaker, second person for those other than the speaker, and first person for those included with the speaker.63 Finally, the semantics of number are related to singularity and non-singularity, not specifically numerically but conceptually.64 ⁶⁰ As was recognized long ago by J. Barr in The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). ⁶¹ See S. E. Porter and A. W. Pitts, “New Testament Greek Language and Linguistics in Recent Research,” Currents in Biblical Research 6 (2008): esp. 215–25. ⁶² These are all discussed at more length in Porter, Verbal Aspect, esp. chs. 2, 4–9. ⁶³ See A. Siewierska, Person (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). See below on indexicals for further discussion, especially of the nature of second person. ⁶⁴ I use the term non-singularity for the plural form, as it is often used of honorifics and includes such things as plural of modesty and respect. See G. G. Corbett, Number (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 221.

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This is quite a bit of meaning to grammaticalize in the morphology of a verbform, but it is what Greek does. In previous research, it has been shown that the verbal systems, for the most part, are independent of each other, so that selection of one semantic feature does not have a causal systemic influence upon choices in other systems of the Greek verbal network.65 Thus, choice of tense-form does not influence choice of voice form, etc. I could just as easily discuss the use of tense-forms in the section on discourse below, but will treat it here instead. The use of the tense-forms as discourse markers is increasingly being recognized. The reason is both that the tense-forms grammaticalize aspect, and hence have a significant function to play individually as they convey semantic information concerning the action, and that their alteration comprises a means of organizing or staging the events of the discourse for the reader. An example is Mark 1:9–16. One could argue that this is three separate episodes, or that it is one episode in three parts. In either case, the selection of tense-forms by the author indicates the progression of the action. The action opens with Jesus’ baptism (Mark 1:9–11). This event is relatively less important in Mark’s Gospel, as indicated by detail of treatment and grammatical formulation. All of the aspectual verbs are perfective in aspect, and used to convey the basic narrative: ἐγένετο, ἦλθεν, ἐβαπτίσθη, εἶδεν, ἐγένετο, εὐδόκησα. Though I am not here using contrasting verbal semantics as a source-critical tool, I cannot help but note that the parts of Matthew’s Gospel account of Jesus’ baptism that are more developed than (or expand upon) Mark’s baptismal account open and close with the more marked imperfective aspect: διεκώλυεν (Matt 3:14) and ἀφίησιν (Matt 3:15). The temptation of Jesus (Mark 1:12–13) is more important in the Markan narrative than the baptism, because it is something that Jesus is involved in, rather than having the action done to himself. This episode is introduced with the imperfective narrative present, ἐκβάλλει (Mark 1:12), and closed with the imperfective aspect (imperfect form), διηκόνουν (Mark 1:13). The Matthean account, similarly as above, is greatly expanded. Though the Matthean material is introduced using perfective verbs, there are three uses of the stative aspect to introduce the three Old Testament quotations that are used in Matthew’s (and Luke’s) accounts (Matt 4:4, 6, 7). The third, and most important, episode within this Markan unit concerns the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (Mark 1:14–15). Whereas Mark has to this point only used perfective and imperfective aspect in his narrative primary and secondary unembedded clauses, when he announces Jesus’ ministry the aspectual character of the episode changes. The unit is introduced with a perfective verb, ἦλθεν (Mark 1:14), but the content of Jesus’ message (introduced with two imperfective verbs in secondary embedded clauses, κηρύσσων and λέγων) is formulated using the stative aspect: πεπλήρω⁶⁵ See S. E. Porter and M. B. O’Donnell, “The Vocative Case in Greek: Addressing the Case at Hand,” in Grammatica intellectio Scripturae: Saggi filologici di Greco biblico in onore di Lino Cignelli OFM (ed. R. Pierri; Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 2006), 35–48.

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ται … καὶ ἤγγικεν (Mark 1:15). The commands in response to this declaration are in the imperfective: μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε (Mark 1:15). Matthew tones down this episode entirely, using only a single imperfective followed by a stative aspect, putting the command before the statement of content concerning the kingdom (Matt 4:17). 3.2.2. Case Semantics As noted in the work of Danove, there is a significant amount of work that has been done recently in terms of case semantics. One of the major points of discussion is the relationship between semantic and morphological cases, as well as conceptual cases. Conceptual cases are something like discussion of phonetics (as opposed to phonology) – they include all of the various case roles that might be posited. There are those who discuss such things, but they have not proved as productive as discussion of semantic cases and their possible relations to morphological cases. Semantic cases have been widely discussed by a number of scholars, including those in biblical studies more recently.66 These all find their source in the work of Charles Fillmore on semantic cases, “The Case for Case,”67 in which he defined “a universal set of atomic semantic roles.”68 These were not related to the forms that cases might (or might not) take in a given language, but were located in the so-called deep structure as underlying semantic roles and relationships. In most forms of case semantics, there are a number of defined semantic cases, including: patient (or sometimes goal), for the item that is the recipient of the action; agent, for the person or thing that performs an action; instrument, for the element that brings about change; experiencer (or perceiver), for the being who experiences or perceives; and a number of others. Because of problems with determining the function of roles, and especially with providing a definitive list, semantic cases have not been widely pursued of late.69 Morphological case continues to be discussed, especially as it marks an intersection between traditional grammar and modern linguistics. Greek has four morphologically instantiated case forms: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative; along with a fifth partial case, the vocative case, found only in limited forms in the singular.70 There have been various attempts to define the cases. Standard grammars are accustomed to defining a variety of uses of the cases, so that a grammar might have anywhere around a dozen or more uses of the geni⁶⁶ Besides Danove, see S. Wong, A Classification of Semantic Case-Relations in the Pauline Epistles (New York: Lang, 1997). A response is found in Porter and Pitts, “Greek Language,” 222–30 and S. E. Porter, “The Case for Case Revisited,” Jian Dao 6 (1996): 13–28. ⁶⁷ C. J. Fillmore, “The Case for Case,” in Universals in Linguistic Theory (ed. E. Bach and R. T. Harms; London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), 1–88. ⁶⁸ B. Blake, Case (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 67. ⁶⁹ Blake, Case, 67–75, who reaches this conclusion on p. 75. ⁷⁰ Porter and O’Donnell, “The Vocative Case in Greek,” 35–48.

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tive. More convincing to my mind are attempts to define the sense of the individual cases that allows them to pragmatically function with a range of related though distinct uses in various contexts. Louw was one of the first to attempt such a set of distinctions.71 I went further in my Idioms of the Greek New Testament and attempted to define the case semantics of each one, including the nominative as the nominal idea, the accusative as equivalent to the nominative but within a syntactically restricted context, the genitive as the case of definitional restriction on another entity, and the dative as the case of relation. In a method similar to that of Ruhl with lexical semantics, I defined a three-tiered interpretive matrix for grammatical case, in which the case semantics are modulated by syntax and context.72 3.3. Syntactical Semantics Syntax has meaning as well. By this, I do not necessarily mean that the individual words that are chosen change the meaning of a word group or a clause, because that is a matter of paradigmatic lexical choice, and no doubt the changing of a word can make a difference in meaning. What I am including here under syntactical semantics is the difference that the syntax itself, the syntagm under discussion, whether it is a word group, clause, clause complex, or even a larger unit, makes to the meaning of the text. For the sake of discussion here, I will divide the discussion into two categories, that of word group and of clauses and clause complexes. 3.3.1. Word Group In annotating the Greek New Testament for OpenText.org, a richly annotated web-based text for scholarly study, we have found that the smallest meaningful disambiguating syntactical unit is the word group. The word group consists of a head-term and all of the terms that are constituently related to it. The five types of constituency relation are: specifier (e. g., article, preposition), definer (e. g., adjective, appositional element), qualifier (e. g., genitive, dative, negative elements), relater (e. g., element related by a preposition to the head term), and connection (e. g., καί). This model identifies and disambiguates the elements of a word group. Word groups are then the components of clause components. A simple, straightforward example of the word group is the opening word group of Matthew’s Gospel: βίβλοϚ γενέσεωϚ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ υἱοῦ Δαυὶδ ὑιοῦ Ἀβραάμ. This is the opening primary clause of the Gospel, and it consists of a single word group. At first appearance, it would seem to be easy enough to analyze. The head term is βίβλοϚ, and it is modified by a single qualifier γενέσεωϚ, modified by a single qualifier Ἰησοῦ, modified by a single definer Χριστοῦ – but ⁷¹ J. P. Louw, “Linguistic Theory and the Greek Case System,” Acta Classica 9 (1966): 73–88. ⁷² S. E. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic

Press, 1994), 81–100.

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then analysis get more difficult. Either we have a composite definer, with two uses of υἱοῦ, each modified by a qualifier, Δαυὶδ and Ἀβραάμ, or we have a single definer and qualifier, with a subsequent definer and qualifier. In other words, Jesus Christ is said to be both son of David and son of Abraham, or son of David who is son of Abraham. One could argue that the subsequent genealogy is structured in such a way as to indicate the latter analysis, as the first section is concerned with descent from Abraham, and the second with descent from David, who is a descendant of Abraham. However, there is not a third definer and modifier unit for the third part of the genealogy, and hence the opening word group may have a composite definer to indicate the two most significant ancestors of Jesus Christ. This may not seem like a significant distinction to have to make, but it does illustrate that the analysis forces a decision on each of the linguistic elements, and hence analysis of the structure, rather than simply saying that we have a string of genitives and moving on to the next verse. 3.3.2. Clauses and Clause Complexes A clause is the minimal unit of independent syntax, and usually though not invariably consists of a Predicator, although there are clauses that consist merely of a Subject. The clause components consist of the Predicator, which is the basic structural unit of the clause in Greek; the Subject; the Complement, including any mandated recipients of the action of the Predicator; and the Adjunct, which is an optional structural element that may have numerous instantiations in a given clause (this is the terminology used in the OpenText.org project).73 A number of clauses form a clause complex (note that I am not using the concept of the sentence, because there is too much ambiguity how it relates to the clause and clause complex). The clauses within a complex are primary and secondary unembedded clauses (secondary embedded clauses are, as the rubric implies, embedded within either primary or secondary unembedded clauses, and have a participle or infinitive as their Predicator). Clauses are connected by conjunctions to form clause complexes, and these complexes are then formed into larger units, sometimes called paragraphs on a structural level or episodes on a semantic level. In terms of clause ordering, which is useful in determining thematization within a discourse, the frequency-based ordering of the New Testament is Predicator (P)–Adjunct (A)–Subject (S)–Complement (C) for all primary and secondary unembedded clauses. This, one could say, is the default thematization order of the Greek of the New Testament. By contrast, the ordering of elements within a structured corpus of representative Egyptian documentary papyri that has been assembled for the OpenText.org project indicates that the order is Predicator–Complement–Adjunct–Subject.74 The Babatha archive, a group of east⁷³ See Porter and Pitts, “Greek Language,” 230–5, esp. 234–5. ⁷⁴ S. E. Porter and M. B. O’Donnell, “Building and Examining Linguistic Phenomena in a

Corpus of Representative Papyri,” in The Language of the Papyri (ed. T. V. Evans and D. D. Obbink; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 287–311.

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ern Meditarranean texts from Babatha, who was fleeing the Romans during the Bar Kokhba rebellion, has ordering of Predicator–Adjunct–Complement–Subject.75 These observations can be further refined. If we delete the Adjunct, which is optional in clausal construction, the New Testament has PSC order (some would say that this is VSO, but I refrain from this for a variety of reasons, not least that the Subject is optional), while the structured corpus of papyri and the Babatha archive have PCS. This is not to say that every book in the New Testament follows this ordering pattern, but Mark’s Gospel certainly does. The Predicator is clearly the item that is fronted most often (824 ×), followed at some distance by the Adjunct (548 ×), then the Subject (409 ×) and then the Complement (186 ×). This is P(A)SC ordering. On the basis of this study, several observations regarding the New Testament merit attention. There has been much discussion of Mark 13 as a small apocalypse, or at least some kind of a possibly self-contained unit within the Gospel. I have argued elsewhere that there are a number of unifying features to this discourse – including cohesive use of καί, the use of imperative forms and certain vocabulary – that indicate that it has a cohesiveness to it, and that it is distinct from the general style of the rest of the Gospel.76 If we examine the thematization of this portion, especially in the words of Jesus (Mark 13:5–37), we find that it is different from the rest of the Gospel. The ordering of the words of Jesus in this part of the Gospel are Adjunct–Predicator–Subject–Complement (37 ×, 30 ×, 20 ×, 4 ×). If the Adjunct is removed, however, the ordering is the same as the rest of the Gospel: PSC. By contrast if we examine the long ending of Mark’s Gospel, we can make some further observations on the basis of thematization. The ordering of Mark 16:9–20, the so-called long ending, is: Adjunct–Subject– and then Predicator or Complement the same number of times (12 ×, 9 ×, 3 × each). Without the Adjunct, the ordering is SP/C (S–P or C). This is a distinctly different thematization pattern than is found in the rest of the Gospel and would seem to be in clear support of the longer ending of Mark being inconsistent in at least this linguistic feature with the rest of the Gospel. 3.4. Pragmatics In some treatments of semantics, those things that are normally considered as pragmatics are also included, so that making a distinction between semantics and pragmatics is a difficult one.77 I have tried to go beyond the simple semantics vs. pragmatics distinction, so that many of the things that would be consid⁷⁵ S. E. Porter, “Buried Treasure in the Babatha Archive,” in Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth International Congress of Papyrology (ed. T. Gagos; Ann Arbor, MI: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library, 2010), 623–32. ⁷⁶ Porter, Criteria, 210–37. ⁷⁷ See, for example, J. Lyons, Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); S. C. Levinson, Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); and K. Allan, Linguistic Meaning (2 vols.; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).

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ered in pragmatics, including grammatical and syntactical semantics, are included in separate categories. In another discussion, they could have been included here. In any event, it is still the case that, in many instances, pragmatics is dominated by discussion of Gricean implicature, or its descendant, relevance theory of Sperber and Wilson, and speech-act theory. I think that there is merit in pursuing Gricean implicature in all of its fullness and boldness, as has Stephen Levinson recently.78 I am less convinced by relevance theory, and am pretty much convinced that speech-act theory has little to offer to a study of ancient documents such as the New Testament that cannot be gained through a systemic-functional approach. However, having said that, there are still plenty of pragmatic findings that can occupy our interest. As noted in the survey above of treatments of Mark and Matthew, many of the discourse studies are related to pragmatic features. Some of the most important are such elements as indexicals and deictic indicators, both of which are concerned with relating the linguistic entity to the nonlinguistic world; anaphora and cataphora, both of which are concerned with linking a given linguistic entity with other linguistic entities;79 the role of presuppositions;80 and, an area that is only now being considered in New Testament study, conversational structure, including such things as politeness, taking turns, and sequence and preference.81 Indexicals, to select one example, include the use of pronouns. These are notoriously difficult in some places in the New Testament, especially the letters of Paul where we are often left to wonder whether “our” means Paul or Paul and others. However, rather than attempting to decipher this issue, I note that indexicals pose an interesting set of questions regarding interpretation. The first person pronouns, especially the singular, usually index the speaker, even if others are included. The second person pronoun indexes a different situation, as it is addressed to someone other than the speaker. Whereas we may know something about the speaker, it is often more difficult to determine the addressee. As Green indicates, there are no necessary linguistic or other external indicators regarding the one being addressed, as that person is “whoever the speaker intends to be addressing.”82 In fact, that person need not be physically proximate at the time or place of utterance (as examples, one notes telephone calls or, when we used to do this, letters, and now e-mail and textmessaging). An example might well be found in Matthew’s so-called Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:13 begins: ⁷⁸ See S. C. Levinson, Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), supporting the work of P. Grice, collected in Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989). ⁷⁹ G. M. Green, Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding (Hillsdale, N. J.: Erlbaum, 1989), 17–35. ⁸⁰ See S. C. Levinson, Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 167–225. ⁸¹ See Levinson, Pragmatics, 284–370; J. L. Mey, Pragmatics: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 192–268. ⁸² Green, Pragmatics, 19.

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“You [thematized personal pronoun] are the salt of the earth.” I realize that the second person plural is used before this in the sermon (5:11–12), but these simply pose the same problem. The question is who are the “you.” Are they the disciples (5:1) or are they the great crowd gathered around (4:23–25), or are they others, not necessarily present or listening at the time? As Green states, “it is knowledge of (or beliefs about) the speaker, including beliefs about his beliefs and intentions, at all levels, that enables an interpreter (addressee or otherwise) to divine the intended referents of indexical pronouns. Their reference is some function of the spatio-temporal coordinates of the utterance, but is by no means uniquely entailed by them.”83 3.5. Discourse84 In several ways, the term “textlinguistics” is a more fitting term to use for the study of written discourse, as it implies that there is a definable linguistic structure to a text, in the same way that there is structure to a clause or a word group. However, that is where one of the major disagreements among discourse analysts takes place. There are some, especially those who work from a top-down model, from the discourse down to the smaller components, such as paragraphs, clauses, etc., who believe that the levels above the clause can be defined in terms of supersentential units. Thus, whereas there is a definable clausal syntax, there is also a definable discourse structure and even paragraph structure. Robert Longacre has worked within this framework, with his definition of paragraph types and fivestage discourse model, used in several of the treatments noted above.85 Most have not found this model satisfactory. There are numerous reasons for this, not least that the discourse model that Longacre uses seems derived from analysis of Renaissance drama and is being imposed on works of a different type altogether. Further, there is a tension between the larger units and the linguistic structures that make them up, and no necessary or clear correlation between them in terms of semantics or syntax. Many, including myself, prefer a bottom-up model of discourse analysis, especially one that works with levels of textual components, beginning with morphology, and then the word, word group, clause, clause complex, sub-paragraph, paragraph and then discourse (or some combination of similar levels).86 With this model, one does not have to have a super-sentential ⁸³ Green, Pragmatics, 20. ⁸⁴ For a survey of theories with regard to New Testament studies, see Porter and Pitts,

“Greek Language,” 235–41. ⁸⁵ Longacre, Grammar, 276. On the paragraph, see R. E. Longacre, “An Apparatus for the Identification of Paragraph Types,” Notes on Linguistics 15 (1982): 15–22 and S. J. J. Hwang, “Recursion in the Paragraph as Unit of Discourse Development,” Discourse Processes 12 (1989): 461–77; cf. S. E. Porter, “Pericope Markers and the Paragraph: Textual and Linguistic Considerations,” in The Impact of Unit Delimitation on Exegesis (ed. R. de Hoop, M. C. A. Korpel, and S. E. Porter; Leiden: Brill, 2008), 157–95. ⁸⁶ See Porter, Idioms, 298–307, for a brief introduction.

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model for levels above the clause, as these can be structurally defined on their own, and their structures filled with units from the lower level. Using the Hallidayan register model,87 the OpenText.org project has developed what are called functional displays. These are a select group of linguistic features that fall within the field, tenor, and mode of discourse, as they contribute to the ideational, interpersonal and textual semantic metafunctions. Field includes verbal aspect and causality; tenor includes polarity (positive and negative), attitude, and participants; and mode includes theme (the element of the clause that is placed first) and semantic domains. There are many observations that can be made in terms of features of language that have an influence on discourse. Many of these could be discussed elsewhere, but merit discussion here. The use of the narrative present has been recently studied in terms of its discourse function. There are many functions that the narrative present performs within Greek. These include a means, within narrative, of focusing attention upon particular features of discourse, such as the change of setting, introduction of new or focal characters, and significant dialogue. One of the major functions of the use of the narrative present is as a discourse unit marker. The narrative present can be used to mark the opening or closing of a new sub-paragraph within discourse. Mark uses the narrative present particularly well. Despite what is typically said about Mark’s use of the narrative (or historic) present, that it is a sign of Semitic influence, I think that it is a linguistically sounder judgment to say, whether one considers Mark’s Greek substandard or not (this is not a value judgment, but a reflection of its relation to the standard variety),88 that the use of the narrative present is a feature of his idiolect – much as it was of other ancient authors who used it in similar ways as he did.89 I won’t attempt to justify all of the paragraph divisions in a text such as the UBSGNT, but I do find it noteworthy that a number of the significant paragraph breaks are marked with the use of the narrative present to delimit the unit (e. g., 3:13, 20, 31). Conjunctions are significant function words. Recent research has shown that there is a continuum of conjunctive usage along two horizontal clines: continuity–discontinuity and logico-semantic, and that they are used at various discourse levels.90 In other words, some conjunctions have various degrees of continuity and discontinuity (e. g., καί is a conjunction of continuity and ἀλλά is one ⁸⁷ See Porter, “Dialect” and “Register,” for an introduction to Halliday’s thought regarding register. ⁸⁸ On these issues, see M. Leiwo, “Substandard Greek: Remarks from Mons Claudianus,” in Ancient Greece at the Turn of the Millennium: Recent Work and Future Perspectives (ed. N. M. Kennell and J. E. Tomlinson; Athens: Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens, 2005), esp. 240–4. ⁸⁹ See Porter, Verbal Aspect, 134–5. ⁹⁰ See S. E. Porter and M. B. O’Donnell, “Conjunctions, Clines and Levels of Discourse,” Filologia Neotestamentaria 20 (2007): 3–14.

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of discontinuity) while others grammaticalize such relations as cause and inference. Some of these conjunctions are used locally to connect words or word groups, while some reach all the way to the higher levels of discourse, such as connecting paragraphs. The conjunction καί is intriguing in this regard. It has the most generalized function of any of the conjunctions in the New Testament, and can be used to connect individual words all the way up to paragraphs. Recent research in the papyri of Egypt and the Babatha archive of the eastern Mediterranean, as well as previous work on other literary Greek, I believe, has laid to rest the notion that this is indicative of some Semitic influence, or is some form of inferior Greek.91 In fact, such usage is not necessarily even substandard usage, but a widespread feature of the koine variety of nonliterary Greek. As I noted above, Stephanie Black has done significant work exploring the functions of clausal conjunctions in Matthew’s Gospel. The use of conjunctions as discourse indicators, however, goes back to ancient times – for example, the Sinaiticus version of Mark’s Gospel.92 There are 310 paragraph units indicated in the manuscript. The major distinguishing feature to indicate a paragraph break is the use of an initial conjunction, in particular the use of the conjunction καί. My count indicated that 172 instances of the conjunction καί were used to indicate the beginning of a paragraph. There were 54 instances of the conjunction δέ, and a smattering of other conjunctive words, such as four instances each of ἀλλά and γάρ, and one each of ἰδού and ὅταν at the beginning of a paragraph unit. The use of καί indicates continuity, and the use of δέ indicates low level discontinuity, but is not a strong discontinuous conjunction. ἀλλά is much more strongly discontinuous (adversative). What is more significant from a grammatical standpoint is the use of γάρ and ὅταν, two conjunctions that are not used in this way by the standard variety. Nevertheless, the ancients clearly knew that conjunctions are boundary markers in discourse, even if they had not bothered to learn our prescribed rules of their use.

4. Conclusion This paper has had a number of intentions. One is to survey recent work in linguistics addressed to Matthew and Mark’s Gospels. As we have seen, there are a number of works that are strongly and seriously linguistic in nature and that are focused upon Mark and Matthew in a specific way. Most of this work has yet to become known and integrated into mainstream New Testament research. No doubt one of the reasons for this is the recentness of some of this work. However, ⁹¹ See Porter and O’Donnell, “Building,” and Porter, “Buried Treasure”; and now S. E. Porter, “The Babatha Archive, the Egyptian Papyri and Their Implications for New Testament Study,” in New Testament Manuscripts: Examples of Applied Method and Approach (ed. T. J. Kraus and T. Nicklas; Leiden: Brill 2010), 213–37. ⁹² See Porter, “Pericope Markers.”

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there is a body of work that should already be known by now, and that has not yet been included. The reasons for this are no doubt complex and many. I hope that my opening up some of this work will result in more widespread and serious attention to this work. A second intention has been to clarify some of the fundamental definitions in linguistic research, and to outline meaningful categories that have been discussed and would benefit from more widespread consideration in New Testament research. I have tried to avoid overly technical vocabulary, so as to eliminate one of the all-too-easily invoked reasons for avoiding a technical discipline with its own specialist vocabulary. I again hope that my defining and illustrating such terminology and categories will show that a linguistic framework, rather than something to be feared, presents new and possibly unique opportunities for exegetical work. A third intention is to offer some new and perhaps incisive and challenging insights into Matthew and Mark’s Gospels from the several standpoints of lexical semantics, grammatical semantics, syntactical semantics, pragmatics, and discourse, as a contribution to the study of these two books. Let me repeat that I believe that it is important that a volume on Matthew and Mark include a chapter such as this, not just as an act of tokenism in light of some recent research, but as an important indicator of the legitimate desire to open our horizons of understanding in all possible and legitimate directions.

3. Date and Genre

Dating Mark and Matthew as Ancient Literature Eve-Marie Becker 1. Dating Ancient Literature – Methodology and Heuristics “We need to remind ourselves how very difficult the dating of the Gospels is and how necessarily speculative our conclusions are.”1 By this statement Donald A. Hagner refers to various methodological and hermeneutical problems of dating the Gospel literature, i. e., he points to the fact that Mark and Matthew refuse a precise dating. At the same time, dating Mark and Matthew has important implications for interpreting and understanding the Gospel literature. We should, however, also remind ourselves that the issue of dating is a general problem of dealing with ancient texts: Ancient literary texts do not mention the date of their composition2 even if they go back to orthonymous authors whose living dates are known to us. The absence of references to the date of composition can be observed in nearly all ancient genres (e. g., epic literature; tragedies; philosophical dialogues; poetry; prose-texts: e. g., historiography, biography, and letters). And it applies to nearly all ancient authors: To a certain extent Cicero might be an exception.3 But how are studies in philology and classical literature as well as in history dealing with the fact that ancient literary texts mostly refuse a precise dating? Do they give up trying to find a dating? What could we learn from their approaches to dating ancient texts? The particular importance and significance of dating ancient literature depend on various heuristic aims which lead the investigation. By reflecting on ¹ D. A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13 (Dallas: Nelson, 1993), lxxv. ² The reference to the date of origin in the beginnings of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War

(1:1) to 431 B. C. E., e. g., seems to be fictitious. ³ In some of his letters we can at least find instances and references, e. g., to a certain day when the letter is written, in the letter-ending (e. g., Quint. fratr. 2.2). In other letters Cicero refers, e. g., to an earlier writing in connection to a specific date (e. g., Att. 14.18). The possibility of relating the Cicero-letters not only to history but also to a concise chronology has above all something to do with the fact that Cicero’s secretary, Tiro, had collected and edited parts of the letter-corpus soon after Cicero’s death. Parts of Cicero’s speeches have been commented on early by Asconius Pedianus (ca. 3–88 C. E.) who also had access to specific Ciceronic sources; cf. P. K. Marshall, “Asconius Pedianus, Quintus,” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary (ed. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth; 3rd rev. ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 188–9. Cf., concerning Cicero’s letters in general, M. von Albrecht, Geschichte der römischen Literatur von Andronicus bis Boëthius: mit Berücksichtigung ihrer Bedeutung für die Neuzeit (2 vols.; 2nd ed.; München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1997), 1:416 ff.

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those aims we can better understand what our expectations should be regarding the dating of Gospel-literature. Historical studies consider literary texts primarily as historical sources.4 The interpretation of historical sources by the historian is mainly a reconstructive task. It serves for insight into history (‘Geschichtskenntnis’).5 Thus, dating literature first of all means to reconstruct a ‘history of events.’ Studies in classical philology or literature, however, consider literary texts to be human artworks first of all. The value and meaning of such artworks do not primarily become evident by reconstructing their dating. But nevertheless, comparative studies in familiar types of texts tell something about possible ‘Vorlagen’, the literary style of the text, the cultural coinage of the author, and – finally – also about the text in its historical context. Even if the meaning and function of literary texts as historical sources is limited in philology or literary criticism6 because of their particular focus on individual texts and their literary style, questions of dating and historical contextualization cannot be avoided. We need to take this into account when we look at a general tendency in Gospel exegesis according to which the genre as a literary category is considered to be “the key to interpretation.” Richard A. Burridge recently claims that “the biographical genre of the gospels has implications for their social function, setting, and delivery.”7 I will not take up the discussion here, whether the Gospel writings are biographical or – as it seems to me – much more historiographical in nature.8 I will simply state a more recent tendency of ignoring or downplaying questions of ⁴ Cf. G. Theuerkauf, Einführung in die Interpretation historischer Quellen: Schwerpunkt Mittelalter (2nd ed.; Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997), 62 ff.; A. von Brandt, Werkzeug des Historikers: Eine Einführung in die Historischen Hilfswissenschaften (Stuttgart: W. Kolhammer, 1989), 48 ff.; K. Arnold, “Der wissenschaftliche Umgang mit den Quellen,” in Geschichte: Ein Grundkurs (ed. H.-J. Goertz; 2nd ed.; Hamburg: Cornelson Verlag, 2001), 42–58. Cf., in general, E.-M. Becker, “Die synoptischen Evangelien und ihre Quellen. Überlegungen zur Terminologie und Methodologie der Evangelien-Exegese,” in “Quelle:” Zwischen Ursprung und Konstrukt: Ein Leitbegriff in der Diskussion (ed. T. Rathmann and N. Wegmann; Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2004), 129–49. ⁵ Cf. Theuerkauf, Interpretation, 31 ff. ⁶ “Das literarische Werk ist … nicht einfach nur Zeugnis für eine längst entschwundene Vorzeit, sondern auch für viele sehr viel jüngere Vergangenheiten … Der Zeugniswert eines Werkes ist … ein höchst komplexes Phänomen. Ein Werk besitzt nicht nur in seiner ‘ursprünglichen’ Gestalt Zeugniswert, sondern in jedem Modus, in dem es in weiterem Verlauf der Geschichte zum Tragen kommt, zunächst auf Grund der späteren Texteingriffe, durch Ergänzungen, Streichungen, oder auch durch Umstellungen, dann aber auch durch jede neue Rezeption, jeden Eintritt in einen neuen Kommunikationszusammenhang, sei es nun in Form von Interpretation, Kommentaren, Zitaten oder durch Erzählungen, die sich dem ‘alten’ Werk anlagern,” W. C. Schneider, “Literarische Werke als historische Quellen,” in Aufriß der Historischen Wissenschaften: Bd. 4 Quellen (ed. M. Maurer; Stuttgart: Reclam, 2002), 102–25, 107. ⁷ R. A. Burridge, “Gospels,” in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies (ed. J. W. Rogerson and J. M. Lieu; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 432–44, 440. ⁸ Cf. E.-M. Becker, Das Markus-Evangelium im Rahmen antiker Historiographie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006); eadem, “The Gospel of Mark in the Context of Ancient Historiography,” in The Function of Ancient Historiography in Biblical and Cognate Studies (ed. P. Kirkpatrick and T. Goltz; New York: T & T Clark, 2008), 124–34.

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dating the Gospel literature for the benefit of literary studies.9 Instead of this it seems to be clear that neither from a historical nor from a literary point of view can the question of dating Mark and Matthew be neglected.10 Literary studies and historical studies rather more interact with each other. More particularly, the reason for continuing the debate about dating and locating Mark and Matthew is threefold: First, New Testament studies seek to write a history of early Christianity – in that sense, the Gospel literature acts as an important historical source11 as well as a narrative reflex of the history of events during the last third of the first century C. E. Secondly, addressing the Synoptic Problem and, as we do now, relating Mark and Matthew to each other, specifically, raises questions of literary dependencies, composition history, and a relative chronology in which Mark and Matthew are to be pre- or post-dated in relation to each other. Thus, the pure statement that Die “Entstehung des Markusevangeliums” is terminus post quem for dating Matthew12 seems to be insufficient. We would rather more like to know how to contextualize the shape of either Mark or Matthew precisely. Thirdly, there is a hermeneutical need for continuing questions of dating the Gospel writings as well as ancient texts.13 Thus, the question of dating Mark and Matthew, i. e., the reconstruction of an ‘absolute’ date (= terminus post quem and terminus ad quem) as well as a ‘relative’ chronology, remains an important task of Gospel exegesis. This is, of course, especially the case if we look at Gospel literature as historiographical literature: Then we are even more forced to relate the ‘narrated time’ in the Gospel writing to its ‘date of narration,’ i. e., the date of its origin.

⁹ There are, of course, also other examples; cf., e. g.: A. Mittelstaedt, Lukas als Historiker: Zur Datierung des lukanischen Doppelwerks (Tübingen: Francke, 2006). ¹⁰ Concerning a critical review of the implications of the historical-critical paradigm cf. J. Barton, “Historical-critical Approaches,” in The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (ed. J. Barton; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 9–20; cf. also J. A. Fitzmyer, The Interpretation of Scripture: In Defense of the Historical-Critical Method (New York: Paulist Press, 2008). Janice Capel Anderson and Stephen D. Moore, eds., Mark & Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies (2nd ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), however, put together various approaches to Markan exegesis that basically leave the paradigms of historical criticism. ¹¹ Concerning the reconstruction of Israelite history, cf. K. W. Whitelam, “Introduction: General Problems of Studying the Text of the Bible in Order to Reconstruct History and Social Background,” in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies, 255–67. ¹² U. Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: 1. Teilband Mt 1–7 (Düsseldorf: Benziger, 2002), 103. ¹³ “Das historische hermeneutische Dreieck von: Verfasser – Situation – Adressat erschließt den Zugang zu den Texten der Vergangenheit. Damit wird deutlich, daß Texte, die in der Vergangenheit verfaßt wurden, unter den Bedingungen dieser Vergangenheit entstanden und zunächst auch unter diesen Bedingungen gelesen werden wollen”, O. Wischmeyer, Hermeneutik des Neuen Testaments: Ein Lehrbuch (Tübingen: Francke, 2004), 53.

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2. Dating Ancient Literary Texts – Criteriological Remarks How can we proceed from here and discuss questions of dating Mark and Matthew in the framework of dating ancient literature?14 The aim of this contribution is to offer a comprehensive survey of criteria and methods of dating the Gospel literature as ancient texts. First of all we need to distinguish between an ‘absolute’ and a ‘relative’ dating. 2.1. Finding an ‘absolute’ dating (= terminus post quem and terminus ad quem) The ‘absolute’ dating of an ancient narrative prose-text applies to the text itself and its relation to historical events and data.15 In order to define such an absolute dating, methodological distinctions of the various narrative levels and the elements of composition in the text are to be formulated.16 We need to raise the following questions: a. What kind of historical events are mentioned in the text and what is the latest historical event, the text narrates (= level of narration)? To what kinds of historical data as a historical context does the text refer (= synchronistic elements)? What kind of historical material (e. g., documents, literary sources) is mentioned explicitly or at least presupposed narratively (= level of composition)? An example for this: In the beginning of his Histories (I:1 ff.) Polybius defines his rationale for writing a history of the rise of the Romans in the course of 53 years (220–168 B. C. E.). This might refer to his writing plans around ca. 160 B. C. E. In books XXX–XL, however, Polybius adds the history of 168 until 145 B. C. E., by telling us about the consolidation of the Romans. So this must be a part of a later passage. Most convincingly the Histories have been composed in a multi-stage-process.17 b. To what kind of historical events that are not part of the narration itself does the author refer (= level of reference)? What kind of references to the author’s life-time are implied in the text (= the narrator’s perspective)? An example for this: In his biographical writing, Agricola, Tacitus gives two indications for a post quem-dating which go beyond the narration of Agrico¹⁴ Concerning general methodological questions of dating Gospel literature, cf. also Die Datierung der Evangelien (ed. R. Wegner; 2nd ed; Paderborn: Deutsches Institut für Bildung und Wissen, 1983). ¹⁵ Concerning the term ‘event’ (= Ereignis), cf. M. Saur et al., “Ereignis,” in Lexikon der Bibelhermeneutik: Begriffe – Methoden – Theorien – Konzepte (ed. O. Wischmeyer; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 141–6. ¹⁶ Cf. also, e. g., Becker, Markus-Evangelium, 89. ¹⁷ Cf. K. Meister, Die griechische Geschichtsschreibung: Von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des Hellenismus (Stuttgart: W. Kolhammer, 1990), 155–7.

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la’s life. Tacitus refers to the death of the protagonist Agricola (1:4) and to the beginning of the emperorship of Trajan (44:5).18 These references, however, differ in respect to their literary function: In 1:4 Tacitus mentions a historical date that is not part of the narration itself. By doing so, he legitimates his interest in writing about Agricola. The note in 44:5 tells something about the narrator’s perspective on his writing. Here Tacitus refers to the current livingconditions in Trajanic time.19 These distinctions of various narrative levels and elements of composition aim in fact at a post quem-dating. Complications in finding a secure post quem-date occur in the case of prophetic or apocalyptic literature (e. g., Mark 13parr.; Revelation): Here the distinction between past tense-experiences that must lie behind the text (vaticinium ex eventu) and future scenarios is hard to make: There is a certain discrepancy between the ‘level of narration’ and the ‘level of reference’20 which can, e. g., be observed in Virgil’s Aeneis.21 Indications for the ad quem-dating can basically be deduced from the text only e silentio:22 The terminus ad quem might be the earliest historical date the text does not tell us about. Such an e silentio-conclusion, however, must remain tentative: In the case of Sallust’s work, Bellum Iugurthinum, the author does not talk about Iugurtha’s death even if it is evident that he knows about it: Not to mention this event is obviously a significant part of Sallust’s intentio auctoris.23 Thus, the lack of a reference to a historical date cannot simply be used for dating the text. Indications for the terminus ad quem are mostly to be deduced from the text history24 or from extra-textual testimonies and writings – that is, from the early reception-history. ¹⁸ Cf. also J.-W. Beck, ‘Germania’ – ‘Agricola’: Zwei kleine Kapitel zu Tacitus’ zwei kleinen Schriften: Untersuchungen zu ihrer Intention und Datierung sowie zur Entwicklung ihres Verfassers (Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag, 1998). ¹⁹ “in hanc beatissimi saeculi lucem ac principem Traianum videre.” ²⁰ Concerning the interpretation of Mark 13par., see below. ²¹ So Werner Suerbaum has tried to make a distinction in the Aeneis as an epic-text between Virgil’s narration as a propheta retroversus and ‘real prophecy’ (9.446–449): Cf. W. Suerbaum, Vergils ‘Aeneis’: Epos zwischen Geschichte und Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1999), esp. 317 f. Cf. also M. von Albrecht, Virgil, Bucolica, Georgica, Aeneis: Eine Einführung (Heidelberg: Winter, 2006), esp. 171–3. ²² Concerning Mark 9:1, see below. ²³ Cf. G. M. Paul, Historical Commentary on Sallust’s Bellum Jugurthinum (Liverpool: F. Cairns, 1984), 258 f. Cf. also, E.-M. Becker, Markus-Evangelium, 221. ²⁴ In the case of dating the Gospel of Mark the text history does not really help because the oldest manuscript which contains parts of Mark is P45 (third century C. E.), but cf. Irenaeus, Haer 3.10.6, who quotes, e. g., parts of Mark 1 as well as Mark 16:9. In the case of dating the Gospel of Matthew, however, C. P. Thiede, “Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory-Aland P46): A Reappraisal,” ZPE 105 (1995): 13–20, esp. 17, has tried to date P64 already in the first century C. E. and – by doing so – to point to an earlier dating of Matthew. Nestle-Aland27, 687, however, date the Papyrus to the second century C. E. See a response to Thiede in K. Wachtel, “P64/ 67 : Fragmente des Matthäusevangeliums aus dem 1. Jahrhundert?” ZPE 107 (1995): 73–80: “Thiedes Argumentation für eine Datierung des P64/67 ins 1. Jahrhundert ist … als methodisch

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Therefore we finally need to ask: c. What manuscripts do we have (= text history)? Which authors or writings give the earliest indication of knowledge (= testimonies) or usage (= delivery, reception) of the text (= reception history)? 2.2. Finding a ‘relative’ chronology The ‘relative’ dating is basically an issue of chronological dating. Hereby, the ‘temporal structure’ of the past tense is of particular interest rather than the reconstruction of precise historical data.25 Depending on whether we are dating the writings of one author or writings of different authors chronologically, the cognitive interests vary: d. In the case of dating writings of the same author, the assumed chronology paints a certain picture of the author’s literary development.26 Vice versa a certain assumption of the author’s literary development leads to a specific chronology of his writings. e. In case of dating writings of various – known, but mainly unknown – authors, the assumed chronology says something about possible literary influences, or even more about literary dependencies (sources, ‘Vorlagen’). Vice versa certain observations on literary influences or dependencies lead to a specific chronologization of these writings. A prominent example for this in the field of New Testament studies is the relative dating of the so-called Johannine writings (letters 1–3 John and the Gospel of John) which leads to a variety of chronological models.27 unzulänglich und sachlich falsch zurückzuweisen. Die herkömmliche Datierung in die Zeit um 200 hingegen hat sich als gut begründet erwiesen” (80); P. M. Head, “The Date of the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew (P. Magd. Gr. 17 = P64): A Response to C. P. Thiede,” TynBul 46 (1995): 251–85. Cf. also Irenaeus, Haer. 3.9.1 ff. on the Gospel of Matthew. ²⁵ Cf. A. Brendecke, “Chronologie,” in Lexikon Geschichtswissenschaft: Hundert Grundbegriffe (ed. S. Jordan; Stuttgart: Reclam, 2002), 52–4. Cf. a similar basic idea that goes back to Eusebius’ church history (book II–VII) and chronicles, in A. von Harnack, Die Chronologie der Litteratur bis Irenaeus: Nebst einleitenden Untersuchungen, Erster Band (Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1897), esp. 233 ff. on the New Testament time; idem, Die Chronologie der Litteratur von Irenaeus bis Eusebius, Zweiter Band (Die Chronologie, 1904). ²⁶ Cf., e. g., the debate on the chronology of Philo’s writings: Only in the cases of the Legat. and Flacc. can scholars work with a post quem-dating; cf., e. g., P. W. van der Horst, Philo’s Flaccus: The First Pogrom: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 1–6. Generally, the literary categorization of Philo’s writings seems to be more important; cf., e. g., S. Sandmel, “Philo Judaeus: An Introduction to the Man, His Writings, and His Significance,” in ANRW 2.21.1 (1984): 3–46, 6–13. ²⁷ Cf., concerning the chronology of the Johannine letters and their relation to the Gospel of John, e. g., J. C. Thomas, “The Order of the Composition of the Johannine Epistles,” NovT 37 (1995): 68–75; F. Vouga, “Johannesbriefe,” in RGG (ed. H. D. Betz et al.; 8 vols.; 4th ed.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998–2007), 4:549–52.

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2.3. Results: Finding an absolute dating and a ‘relative’ chronology The above mentioned observations lead to the following distinctions for dating ancient texts:28 Dating type Text-level indication (content/composition) Absolute dating

Relative chronology

a.) Post quem:29 – level of narration and synchronistic elements – level of composition d.) Writings of one author: (> literary development)

Text-level indication Extra-textual evidence (reference) b.) Post quem:30 – level of reference – the narrator’s perspective

c.) Ad quem: Reception history – text history (see note 24) – testimonies – literary reception

e.) Writings of diverse authors: (> literary influences, dependencies; sources; ‘Vorlagen’)

3. Dating Mark and Matthew comparatively Coming to the dating of the Markan and Matthean Gospel narratives, I will concentrate on two aspects: First, and in more detail, I will discuss the post quem dating of Mark and Matthew, because this is the main focus of scholarly discussion today.31 Secondly, and more briefly, I will take the question of a relative chronology as a methodological quest for the so-called Synoptic Problem. 3.1. Finding an absolute dating – The question of the terminus post quem Martin Hengel and Camille Focant have – like other scholars – argued for taking Mark 13par. as the main textual basis for dating the Synoptic Gospels.32 This is because Mark 13par. Matt 24 can be best used for an absolute dating: Here we can possibly find references to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem near Marks in the tablet refer to what will be looked at in part 3. Terminus ad quem only e silentio. Terminus ad quem only e silentio. Concerning the observations and arguments for the ad quem-dating, cf. U. Luz, Evangelium nach Matthäus, 103 ff. who – on basis of the two-source-theory and in regard to Rezeptions- und Wirkungsgeschichte – pays more attention to the ad quem-dating of Matthew. ³² Cf. M. Hengel, “Entstehungszeit und Situation des Markusevangeliums,” in Markus-Philologie: Historische, literargeschichtliche und stilistische Untersuchungen zum zweiten Evangelium (ed. H. Cancik; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1984), 1–45, 20; C. Focant, “La chute de Jérusalem et la datation des Évangiles,” in Marc, Un Évangile Étonnant (ed. C. Focant; Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 1–20; E.-M. Becker, Markus-Evangelium, 80 ff. Cf. lately also A. Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 11; J. Marcus, Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 37–9. ²⁸ ²⁹ ³⁰ ³¹

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the conclusion of the first Jewish-Roman war (66–70 C. E.).33 I agree with this. But while Hengel and Focant suggest an ante eventum 70–dating of Mark and Joel Marcus leaves the issue of ante or post 70 C. E.-dating open,34 I will ask a slightly different question: Do Mark and Matthew really give any varying hints about the year 70 that would legitimate an ante eventum 70 date for Mark and a post eventum 70 date for Matthew? By dealing with this question I will rather argue that both Gospels agree in their view on the year 70 C. E. In other words: If we date Matthew post eventum 70, we need to do the same with Mark. In what follows, I will also discuss to what extent the year 70 C. E. serves as a sufficient reference point for dating Mark and Matthew and to what extent we can find further historical data. 3.1.1. ‘Level of narration’ and ‘level of composition’ ‘Level of narration’ in and beyond Mark 13par. Matt 24 The apocalyptic speech (or ‘discourse’35) in Mark 13par. Matt 24 is embedded in a narrative that starts with John the Baptist’s mission (Mark 1:4) or with the pregnancy of Mary (Matt 1:18). The overall narration finishes with the empty tomb scene on Easter Sunday (Mark 16:1–8) or Jesus’ commissioning in Galilee (Matt 28:16–20), which should take place some days after the Easter Sunday.36 So Mark and Matthew only differ slightly concerning a post quem-dating on the ‘level of narration’: In any case, the Easter-events mark the latest point in the narration of the Gospel’s ‘Ereignisgeschichte’.37 Already in Mark as well as in Matthew various examples of synchronistic elements are found, by which the author relates his narration to certain historical data (e. g., Matt 2:1; 3:1; Mark 1:4), even if this – as a literary strategy – is employed more frequently in the Lukan Gospel narrative (e. g., Luke 2:1; 3:2). On the ‘level of narration’ the apocalyptic speech takes place shortly before the passion events (Mark 14:1; Matt 26:1). Thus, two observations can be formulated: (1) On the narrative level Mark 13par. Matt 24 do not give any other or further indications for a post quem-dating of Mark and Matthew in addition to ³³ Cf., in general, E.-M. Becker, “Der jüdisch-römische Krieg (66–70 n.Chr.) und das Markus-Evangelium: Zu den ‘Anfängen’ frühchristlicher Historiographie,” in Die antike Historiographie und die Anfänge der christlichen Geschichtsschreibung (ed. E.-M. Becker; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 213–36. ³⁴ Cf. Hengel, “Entstehungszeit,” 34; Focant, “La chute,” esp. 20; Becker, Markus-Evangelium, esp. 99–100; Marcus, Mark 1–8, 39. ³⁵ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 594. ³⁶ The disciples need to travel to Galilee first: cf. Matt 28:16. ³⁷ It is, however, interesting to see that Matthew slightly extends the eschatological period. While the last event in connection with the parousia according to Mark 13:27 is that the Son of Man will send messengers to assemble the elect ones, Matt 25:31 ff. – which contains parallel material to Mark 13, Jesus’ final pre-passion words – mentions what will happen after the parousia: The Son of Man will hold his judgment of the nations. Here we find that Matthew, more than Mark, has worked out the history of future events. This, however, does not tell us anything about a post quem-dating.

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what is supplied through the overall Markan and Matthean narrative (Mark 1– 16; Matt 1–28): Mark 13par. Matt 24 is a prophetic or apocalyptic speech soon before the passion events start. The question whether and to what extent the Jesus-figure here acts as a propheta retroversus or a propheta verus cannot be discussed on that narrative level. (2) Mark 13 and Matt 24 generally agree in how this narrative level is arranged, although one can observe semantic and structural variations (see below). Thus, in terms of evidence for dating, Matthew does not really go beyond Mark on the narrative level of the text. ‘Level of composition’ Neither the Markan nor the Matthean Gospel contain historical material (like the titulus crucis: Mark 15:26; Matt 27:37)38 that could post-date the terminus post quem of Mark and Matthew narratively beyond what is defined by chapters 16 and 28. So the question whether the ‘level of composition’ gives further indications for the post quem-dating needs to be discussed on the basis of source criticism.39 Two remarks are to be formulated here: (1) It is disputed whether Mark 13, e. g., goes back to a literary source, possibly a Jewish apocalyptic flyer (‘Flugblatt’), as Gerd Theißen has argued,40 and might respond to the so-called Caligula-crisis (40 C. E.).41 Therefore the meaning of the assumed source-material behind Mark 13 for the post quem-dating of Mark remains vague. One cannot work with two hypotheses at the same time here, namely, (a) the reconstruction of such a hypothetic source, and (b) the dating of the source as well as the implications for the dating of the final text. (2) The inclusion of the genealogy and the birth-story in Matt 1–2 as legendary material (cf. par. Luke 1–2)42 certainly points to a more developed concept of Gospel-literature than can be observed in Mark. These narrative elements even put the Gospel-literature closer to biography than those of the Markan Gospel. But neither the birth-story itself, which is possibly derived from M, nor its inclusion in the final Matthean Gospel narrative can give us either a clear hint for dating Mark and Matthew comparatively or in regard to the precise year 70 C. E.

³⁸ Cf. Becker, Markus-Evangelium, 154 ff. ³⁹ See below 3.3. Cf. an overview on the current discussion in Yarbro Collins, Mark, 594 ff. ⁴⁰ Cf. G. Theißen, Lokalkolorit und Zeitgeschichte in den Evangelien: Ein Beitrag zur

Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, (2nd ed.; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1992), 137; G. Theißen, Das Neue Testament (München: C. H. Beck, 2002), 30. Cf. also: Yarbro Collins, Mark, 596; E.-M. Becker, “Markus 13 Re-visited,” in Apokalyptik als Herausforderung neutestamentlicher Theologie (ed. M. Becker and M. Öhler; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 95–124. ⁴¹ Cf. Theißen, Lokalkolorit, 171 f. ⁴² Cf. M. Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums (6th ed.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971), 125–8; R. Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1931), 320 ff.; E.-M. Becker, “Legende: I. Neutestamentlich,” in Lexikon der Bibelhermeneutik, 351.

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3.1.2. ‘Level of reference’ and ‘the narrator’s perspective’ ‘Level of reference’ The ‘level of reference’ leads us to those elements of the Gospel narratives that might refer to historical events that are not part of the narration itself. We should expect such elements primarily in those texts that use prophetic, apocalyptic, or allegoric language. What examples can be found within and beyond Mark 13par. Matt 24? We mainly have to think of Mark 10:39par.; 12:9par.; 13:2par.; 13:14par.; Matt 22:7; 23:37–39.43 Before we look at the Markan and the Matthean version of these texts comparatively (see below), I will summarize the state of scholarly discussion so far: – Mark 10:39par. Matt 20:23 could – as a vaticinium ex eventu – be a reference to the martyrdom of James the son of Zebedee (Acts 12:2; ca. 41–44 C. E.). This is mainly undisputed,44 even if the question remains why we do not have any hint of his brother’s, namely, John’s, martyrdom.45 Nevertheless, we might conclude that at least 44 C. E. serves as a terminus post quem for dating Mark and Matthew. – The parable of the vineyard and the tenants could contain a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in Mark 12:9par. Matt 21:41. This is – in regard to the Markan text – insinuated by, e. g., Dieter Lührmann,46 but questioned by, e. g., Adela Yarbro Collins.47 I will come back to this. ⁴³ Cf., in general, already A. Jülicher and E. Fascher, Einleitung in das Neue Testament (7th ed.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1931), 303–5. Cf. also H. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (London: SCM Press, 1990), 289 ff., who interprets Mark 14:22 ff. in relation to 70 C. E.; concerning Mark 15:38, cf.: P. Vielhauer, Geschichte der urchristlichen Literatur: Einleitung in das Neue Testament, die Apokryphen und die Apostolischen Väter (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975), 347; H. N. Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in its Historical and Social Context (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 81 ff.; eadem, “The Gospel of Mark as Polemic: The Persecution of the Markan Christian Community and the Purpose of Mark’s Gospel,” in Religious Polemics in Context: Papers Presented to the Second International Conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR) Held at Leiden 27–28 April 2000 (ed. T. L. Hettema and A. van der Kooij; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2004), 294–302. Matt 27:25 is not discussed here, since we are obviously dealing with a Jewish curse-formula (cf. Matt 23:35; Acts 5:28; 18:6; 2 Sam 1:16; Jer 51:35). ⁴⁴ Cf. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 497 f. This is questioned by G. Zuntz, “Wann wurde das Evangelium Marci geschrieben?” in Markus-Philologie: Historische, literargeschichtliche und stilistische Untersuchungen zum zweiten Evangelium (ed. H. Cancik; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1984), 47–71, 50 ff. ⁴⁵ According to Irenaeus (Adv. haer. 2.25.3; 3.3.4) John even reached an old age; cf. also J. Marcus, Mark 8–16. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven: Yale University Press 2009), 754. ⁴⁶ Cf. D. Lührmann, Das Markusevangelium (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987), 199: “Hier endet die Geschichte in der Gegenwart der Leser und reicht damit weit über die erzählte Zeit hinaus: die Römer haben das Land übernommen.” ⁴⁷ Cf. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 547: “Here the focus is not on the destruction of Jerusalem, let alone the rejection of Israel as a whole. Rather it is on the removal from power of the leaders who oppose Jesus …. Giving the vineyard to others implies that a new leadership will emerge among those who accept Jesus as the messiah.”

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– Because of its multiple attestation the so-called temple-logion in Mark 13:2par. Matt 24:2 (cf. also Mark 14:58; 15:29; John 2:19; Acts 6:14) could go back to the teaching of the historical Jesus.48 Thus, it cannot give an indication for the post quem 70 C. E.-dating of Mark and Matthew. Could the adverb ὧδε in Mark 13:2 (par. Matt 24:2) even be read as an ex eventu 70 C. E. specification, in that it reflects the fact that the temple’s base walls have not been destroyed?49 Beside this, it could be stated, however, that the frequency of references to the temple and its destruction or substitution in Mark 13–15 is not accidental at all (14:48; 15:29, 38): Mark obviously relates Jesus’ fate very much to the fortune of the temple,50 and Matthew follows Mark in this. The apocalyptic speech in Mark 13:3 ff.par. Matt 24:3 ff., especially Mark 13:14 ff.par. Matt 24:15 ff., could refer to the siege of Jerusalem and the desecration of the temple. The interpretation of the ‘level of reference’ mainly depends on the phrase in Mark 13:14 τὸ βδέλυγμα τῆϚ ἐρημώσεωϚ ἑστηκότα ὅπου οὐ δεῖ: What is meant by the Danielic syntagm βδέλυγμα τῆϚ ἐρημώσεωϚ51 and how could the participle perfect masculine (ἑστηκότα) be understood as a personal expression?52 There are mainly four suggestions for interpretation: (a) The syntagm refers to the erection of an emperor-statue in the Caligulacrisis (e. g., G. Theißen; G. Zuntz);53 (b) it refers to the expectation of the antichrist (e. g., M. Hengel);54 (c) it refers to a Roman emperor and his victory celebration on the temple-areal (cf. Josephus, B. J. 6:316; e. g., D. Lührmann; E.-M. Becker);55 (d) it has to be understood as a common apocalyptic topos that provokes the reader to de-code it (e. g., A. Yarbro Collins).56 In accordance with the variety of interpretations, so the conclusions vary with regard to the post quem-dating of Mark. – Unlike Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem in Matt 23:37–39, which goes back to Q,57 Matt 22:7 could as a redactional element refer to the final catastrophe of ⁴⁸ Cf., e. g., Yarbro Collins, Mark, 601. ⁴⁹ Cf. Theißen, Lokalkolorit, 271; cf. differently Yarbro Collins, Mark, 11: “It seems rather

that the ‘here’ is added for dramatic effect.” Nestle-Aland25 omitted the adverb according to A K Γ and 1241, 2542 etc. ⁵⁰ Cf. Becker, Markus-Evangelium, e. g., 92. ⁵¹ Cf. Dan 9:27; 12:11LXX/Θ; 11:31LXX. Cf. also 1 Macc 1:54. ⁵² Cf. F. Blass, A. Debrunner, and F. Rehkopf, Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch (18th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), § 134. ⁵³ Cf. Theißen, Lokalkolorit, 133 ff.; Zuntz, “Evangelium,” 47 ff. ⁵⁴ Cf. Hengel, “Entstehungszeit,” 43. ⁵⁵ Cf. Lührmann, Markusevangelium, 222; Becker, Markus-Evangelium, 88. ⁵⁶ Cf. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 596: The “aside is a literary device to indicate that the preceding allusion to the ‘desolating sacrilege’ or ‘abomination of desolation’ is a cryptic saying that requires interpretation;” cf. also Rev 13:18. ⁵⁷ Matt 23:37–39par. Luke 13:34 ff. = Q (13:34 ff.). If these verses – at least in part – go back to the historical Jesus, they cannot be related to the destruction of Jerusalem directly, as Luz, Evangelium nach Matthäus, 91, indicates. We would rather have the same quality of reference as in Mark 13:1 f.par. (see above).

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Jerusalem, i. e., the burning of the temple and the city (cf., e. g., Josephus, B. J. 6:249 ff.). This is stated by, e. g., Ulrich Luz and Camille Focant,58 but questioned by, e. g., Donald A. Hagner.59 I will come back to this. So we can resume: Beside Mark 10:39par. Matt 20:23 there hardly seems to be scholarly agreement about the evidence of these texts for an absolute dating of Mark and Matthew. So far, there is no agreement on whether Mark and Matthew should be dated as contemporaries or in the relationship of ‘predecessor and follower.’60 Such a question very much interferes with the debate about the origin and the purpose of the Markan Gospel. By looking at the various texts mentioned above, I will therefore rather concentrate on a comparative perspective and ask if and how Mark and Matthew vary in presenting their ‘level of reference.’61 Mark

Matt

10:39: τὸ ποτήριον ὃ ἐγὼ πίνω πίεσθε καὶ τὸ βάπτισμα ὃ ἐγὼ βαπτίζομαι βαπτισθήσεσθε 12:9: (V. 1) ἐλεύσεται καὶ ἀπολέσει τοὺϚ γεωργοὺϚ καὶ δώσει τὸν ἀμπελῶνα ἄλλοιϚ Cf. Luke 20:16

20:23: τὸ μὲν ποτήριόν μου πίεσθε

13:2: οὐ μὴ ἀφεθῇ ὧδε λίθοϚ ἐπὶ λίθον ὃϚ οὐ μὴ καταλυθῇ Cf. Luke 21:6; 19:44 13:14–23

21:41: λέγουσιν αὐτῷ· κακοὺϚ κακῶϚ ἀπολέσει αὐτοὺϚ καὶ τὸν ἀμπελῶνα ἐκδώσεται ἄλλοιϚ γεωργοῖϚ, οἵτινεϚ ἀποδώσουσιν αὐτῷ τοὺϚ καρποὺϚ ἐν τοῖϚ καιροῖϚ αὐτῶν 24:2: ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν οὐ μὴ ἀφεθῇ ὧδε λίθοϚ ἐπὶ λίθον ὃϚ οὐ καταλυθήσεται 24:15–28 22:7: ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺϚ ὠργίσθη καὶ πέμψαϚ τὰ στρατεύματα αὐτοῦ ἀπώλεσεν τοὺϚ φονεῖϚ ἐκείνουϚ καὶ τὴν πόλιν αὐτῶν ἐνέπρησεν. Cf. Luke 14:16–24/Q 14:16 ff.; GosThom 64

Ad Mark 10:39par. Matt 20:23: Matthew only differs by not presenting the second part of the parallel structure (καὶ τὸ βάπτισμα ὃ ἐγὼ βαπτίζομαι βαπτισθήσεσθε), which in the Markan text is best understood metaphorically.62 ⁵⁸ Cf. Luz, Evangelium nach Matthäus, 103: “Terminus post quem ist … die Zerstörung Jerusalems.” U. Luz, Matthew 21–28: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 54: “In my judgment the strange v.7 makes sense only if it was prompted by the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C. E.;” Focant, “La chute,” 20. ⁵⁹ Cf. Hagner, Matthew, lxxiv: “far too much weight has been put on this text in the confident post to-dating of Matthew.” Hagner even thinks that Matt 5:23–4; 17:24–7 and 23:16–22 are to be understood as “pre–70 temple allusions” (lxxiv). ⁶⁰ Cf. also 3.3. ⁶¹ Cf., similarly, Jülicher and Fascher, Einleitung, 304 ff., who state in respect to their post eventum 70 C. E.-dating: “die Grenze [einer Datierung des Markus-Evangeliums, E–MB] nach uns zu kann erst durch Vergleichung mit Mt und Lk gefunden werden: die Lebenszeit des Mk würde auch für spätere Datierung ausreichen.” ⁶² Cf. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 497.

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Thus, both Gospels basically agree in how they are referring to James’ martyrdom as a vaticinium ex eventu.63 Ad Mark 12:9par. Matt 21:41: Here the Matthean version differs from the Markan and the Lukan (20:16) version in two aspects: (a) The king’s reaction is formulated by the audience (cf. Matt 21:23: οἱ ἀρχιερεῖϚ καὶ ὁ πρεσβύτεροι τοῦ λαοῦ), not by Jesus himself. (b) The king’s reaction is more direct (κακοὺϚ κακῶϚ ἀπολέσει αὐτοὺϚ) than is the case in Mark and Luke (ἀπολέσει τοὺϚ γεωργοὺϚ). According to the Matthean version Jesus is less aggressive towards the Jewish authorities here than he is in Mark 12:9. This observation, however, hardly marks a difference in terms of a post quem-dating of Mark and Matthew respectively. Ad Mark 13:2par. Matt 24:2: There are no significant differences in how Mark and Matthew embed the Jesuanic temple-logion in their Gospel narratives: Both authors place it right before the apocalyptic speech. And both authors agree in repeating the temple-logion twice (Mark 14:58par. Matt 26:61; Mark 15:29par. Matt 27:40) and mentioning the prodigy of the split curtain in the context of the crucifixion-scene (Mark 15:38par. Matt 27:51). Because Mark and Matthew do not differ in how they frame and interpret the temple-logion, the templelogion itself does not give evidence for a differing post quem 70 C. E.-dating of Mark and Matthew either. Ad Mark 13:14–23par. Matt 24:15–28: Mark 13:14 (compare to Matt 24:15) marks a break within the apocalyptic speech. This becomes evident on the basis of semantic and grammatical observations: (a) In Mark 13:14 ἴδητε occurs the first time as a description of the audience’s cognition.64 This is similar to Matt 24:15.65 (b) The ‘reading instruction’ also lays certain weight on Mark 13:14par. (c) Mark 13:3 is characterized by an ὅταν66-sentence that might be a redactional element of structuring the order of apocalyptic events (13:4, 7, 11, 14): It is not until Mark 13:14 that τότε67 occurs complementary to ὅταν.68 In Matt 24:4 ff. we find a τότε-structure from v. 9 on, but – comparable to Mark 13:14 – only a ὅταν- τότε-structure in 24:15. Thus, in Mark 13:14par. the time of the author’s ⁶³ It is interesting to see that the pronouncement of the martyrdom of the Zebedees does not occur in Luke. Is this because Luke refers to James’ death in Acts 12:2? ⁶⁴ Cf. also Yarbro Collins, Mark, 607. ⁶⁵ The meaning of ὁρᾶτε in Matt 24:6 is unspecific. ⁶⁶ ὅταν occurs in Mark 2:20; 3:11; 4:15, 16, 29, 31, 32; 8:38; 9:9; 11:19, 25; 12:23, 25; 13:4, 7, 11, 14, 28, 29; 14:7, 25. It might be a redactional element. ⁶⁷ τότε occurs in Mark 2:20; 3:27; 13:14, 21, 26, 27. ⁶⁸ Cf. the only other reference in Mark, 2:20. Cf. also Becker, Markus-Evangelium, 87 ff.: “Hier begegnet erstmals und komplementär zu ὅταν das Zeitadverb τότε, das im nicht-klassischen Griechisch der Verknüpfung zeitlich nachfolgender Ereignisse dient.”

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recent experiences seems to be reached. In what follows until Mark 13:23par. Matt 24:25, Mark and Matthew sum up these experiences. By comparing the Markan and the Matthean version we can in fact observe some differences: (a) The micro-context of Mark 13:14–23par. Matt 24:15–28 varies: Matthew leaves out Mark 13:9–12, viz., he places it differently (cf. Matt 10:17–22), and he adds 24:10–12. (b) Beside this, there are some semantic and grammatical variations, e. g., the inclusion of ἡ φυγὴ ὑμῶν in Matt 24:20 or the change from singular to plural in 24:22 (αἱ ἡμέραι). Do these differences hence imply that the Matthean version points on the ‘level of reference’ to a different date in time than the Markan text? I cannot see any textual evidence for this assumption. Ad Matt 22:7: Matthew obviously takes the parable of the great supper or feast from Q, but differs very much in presenting the king’s reaction to what Luke and – possibly Q – present: After hearing that the invited guests refuse to come, in Luke and Q the οἰκοδεσπότηϚ invites all kinds of people from the streets (Luke 14:23; Q 14:23). In the Matthean version, however, the protagonist (βασιλεύϚ) gets angry and gives order to kill the murderers of his servants and to burn down the city. The interpretation of Matt 22:7 in particular deals with two questions: (a) Does the phrase καὶ τὴν πόλιν αὐτῶν ἐνέπρησεν support a secure post eventum 70 C. E.-dating? Luz thinks so.69 But already Karl Heinrich Rengstorf has suggested that rather than constituting a definite reference to the fall of Jerusalem, the conceptuality behind ἐμπίμπρημι70 is much more topical or general (cf., e. g., Josh 6:24; 1 Macc 5:28; Josephus A. J. 12:336; B. J. 6:353).71 (b) Why is the Matthean version so different from Luke and Q? Ivor H. Jones has correctly observed that the parable in Matt 22:7 should be read in conjunction with the vineyard-parable in 21:41: “In The Tenants the vineyard is kept intact (contrast Isa 5:5–6); in The Feast the city is burnt.”72 It could be that Matthew leaves out the judgement-motif in 21:41, which he knows from Mark,73 and transfers it to the parable on the feast in 22:7. Thus, Matt 22:7 would be an example for the inclusion and redactional modification of Q-material on the basis of a Markan text. Although a heightening of violence can be detected from Q 14:23 to Matt ⁶⁹ See above. ⁷⁰ Cf. the general usage in the LXX, e. g.: Neh 1:3; 1 Kgs 18:10; 2 Macc 8:6. ⁷¹ Cf. K. H. Rengstorf, “Die Stadt der Mörder (Mt 22:7),” in Judentum, Urchristentum,

Kirche: Festschrift für Joachim Jeremias (ed. W. Eltester; Berlin: A. Töpelmann, 1960), 106–29, esp. 113 ff.: “Die aus den Schriften des Josephus gesammelten Belege beweisen nicht allein, daß der Matt 22 6 f. verwendete Topos sehr alter vorderorientalischer Herkunft sich bis in die neutestamentliche Zeit auf jüdischem Boden erhalten hat, sondern daß er bei Josephus auch den ausgesprochenen Charakter einer Zusammenfassung … trägt” (116). ⁷² I. H. Jones, The Matthean Parables: A Literary and Historical Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 403. ⁷³ ἀπολλύειν in Mark 12:9 and Matt 21:41 varies in its meaning: ‘killing’ in Mark 12:9 and ‘destroy’ in Matt 21:41. The verb occurs in Matt 2:13; 10:28, 39, 42; 12:14; 21:41; 22:7; 27:20, and is only used in Matt 2:13; 12:14; 22:7; 27:20 explicitly in the sense of ‘killing.’

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22:7,74 such a redactional modification offers no more secure indication for dating Matthew post eventum 70 C. E. than what is already supplied in Mark’s Gospel in 12:9. In other words, an increase of violence can be detected from Q to Matthew, but not from Mark to Matthew. So far we have found that Mark and Matthew hardly vary in giving indications for the ‘level of reference’ when they present material that can be found in both Gospel narratives. And even in the case of using Q-material (Matt 22:7) Matthew adapts his text to how the ‘level of reference’ already occurs in Mark (cf. Matt 22:7 and 21:41par. Mark 12:9). Finally we should ask: Does Matthew include other traditional material (M) or redactional elements that might be relevant for analyzing the ‘level of reference’ in the Matthean Gospel? We have to think here primarily of those texts in Matthew that reflect the community’s relation to the Jews.75 On the basis of these texts scholars have discussed whether Matthew already looks back to a process of separation from the Jews and the synagogues76 or if this process is expected in the near future.77 We could add the question of how Mark and Matthew are to be compared in dealing with the issue of ‘Jews’ and ‘synagogues’ in their Gospel-stories.78 There are, however, two basic problems in taking those indications as the ‘level of reference’ for dating Mark and Matthew: (a) The various texts would ⁷⁴ Cf. also J. S. Kloppenborg’s contribution in this volume. ⁷⁵ Cf., e. g., the references mentioned in U. Schnelle, Einleitung in das Neue Testament (4th

ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002), 266 ff.: Matt 4:23; 9:35; 5:20; 6:2, 5; 10:17 f.; 12:9; 13:54; 23:1–36; esp. 23:6, 24, 34. ⁷⁶ Cf., e. g., Luz, Evangelium nach Matthäus, 96: Matthew “blickt … auf den vor kurzem geschehenen Bruch zwischen seiner Gemeinde und den örtlichen Synagogen zurück;” G. N. Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992), esp. 157 ff.: “The evangelist is not addressing scribes and Pharisees in direct confrontation or debate, but his denunciations are nonetheless polemical. They represent in part anger and frustration at the continued rejection of Christian claims and at the continued hostility of Jews towards the new community” (157). ⁷⁷ Cf., e. g., A. J. Saldarini, “The Gospel of Matthew and Jewish-Christian Conflict,” in Social History of the Matthean Community: Cross-disciplinary Approaches (ed. D. L. Balch; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 38–61: 49 ff. and 60 ff.: “Matthew insists on his allegiance to Jesus by carving out a deviant Jewish identity for his sectarian Jewish community” (60); cf. also A. J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994); Saldarini defines the Matthean community as “Matthew’s Groups of Jewish Believers-inJesus,” 84 ff.; ibid. 198 ff.: “the Gospel of Matthew addresses a deviant group within the Jewish community in greater Syria, a reformist Jewish sect seeking influence and power … within the Jewish community as a whole” (198); cf. also J. A. Overman, Matthew’s Gospel and Formative Judaism: A Study of the Social World of the Matthean Community (Ph. D. diss., Boston University, 1989), esp. 327 ff.: “The Gospel provides many indications that Matthew’s community constituted the minority in a struggle with a parent group, which was in this case formative Judaism” (327); J. A. Overman, Church and Community in Crisis: The Gospel according to Matthew (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1996), 413 ff. ⁷⁸ Concerning the Markan Gospel, cf. J. C. Crossley, The Date of Mark’s Gospel: Insight from the Law in Earliest Christianity (London: T & T Clark, 2004), esp. 208, where Crossley suggests a dating of Mark in the 30s or 40s and a dating of Matthew after that. Cf. also J. Painter, review of Crossley, Date of Mark, RBL [http://www.bookreviews.org] (2006).

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need to be analyzed in terms of ‘Literarkritik’ and source criticism to find out which texts really give insights into the redactor’s perspective and the date of writing.79 (b) The process of separation (‘Partings of the Ways’) in general does not simply come to an end within the first century C. E.80 Moreover, it was dependent on specific local situations around and beyond the Mediterranean: What Matthew has in mind by writing his Gospel narrative therefore depends very much on the place of writing. Thus, the Gospel writers’ relation to the synagogues and to the Jews is rather more a matter of locating than of dating Mark and Matthew.81 It rather seems to be more promising to take a text like Matt 28:16–20 and its semantics (triadic formula in v. 19; concept of baptism)82 as a possible indication for the historical stage of the Matthean community and, thus, for Matthew’s date of composition. ‘The narrator’s perspective’ The Gospel of Mark and Matthew differ in how the Gospel writer (‘narrator’) becomes visible: In the Markan Gospel we get in touch with the narrator three times: in 1:1, 7:19c, and 13:14.83 The parallels in Matthew indicate that this author avoids presenting himself.84 Mark

Matthew

1:1: ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ’Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ [υἱοῦ θεοῦ] 7:19c: καθαρίζων πάντα τὰ βρώματα 13:14: ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω

[1:1]: βίβλοϚ γενέσεωϚ ’Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ υἱοῦ Δαυὶδ υἱοῦ ’Αβραάμ / [24:15]: τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ Δανιὴλ τοῦ προφήτου … ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω

⁷⁹ Some of the above mentioned texts go back to Q (e. g., Matt 10:17 ff.; 23:1–36*; 23:6*, 34*), to Mark (e. g., 4:23) or M (6:2, 5), but mainly to Matthean redaction (e. g., 5:20; 9:35; 12:9; 13:54; 23:24). ⁸⁰ Cf. D. Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 21: “Judaism and Christianity were not separate entities until very late in late antiquity.” Therefore Boyarin considers texts from the second and third century C. E. (Justin; Apostolic Succession in the Mishnah) rather to be engaged in “a process of creating a difference between Judaism and Christianity” (27); cf. also 37 ff. Cf. the overall discussion as well, e. g.: Christianity in the Beginning (vol. 1 of When Judaism and Christianity Began: Essays in Memory of Anthony J. Saldarini [ed. A. J. Avery-Peck, D. J. Harrington, and J. Neusner; Leiden: Brill, 2004]); J. M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). ⁸¹ Luz, Evangelium nach Matthäus, 98 ff., finally refers to Johanan ben Zakai as a contemporary of Matthew. ⁸² Cf. D. Hellhom et al. eds., Ablution, Baptism, and Initiation in the Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Early Christian World (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011). ⁸³ We could also mention Mark 7:3–4 here: The parenthesis also functions as a ‘narrative comment.’ Cf. the diverse types of ‘Erzählerkommentare’: E.-M. Becker, “Text und Hermeneutik am Beispiel einer textinternen Hermeneutik,” in Die Bibel als Text (ed. O. Wischmeyer and S. Scholz; Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 2008), 193–215, 206–7: Mark 7:3–4 is a ‘sachliche Deutung’ while 7:19 acts as a ‘sachliche conclusio.’ ⁸⁴ Luz, Evangelium nach Matthäus, 44 says: “Erzählerkommentare oder direkte Anreden an

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Ad Mark 1:1par. Matt 1:1: While Matthew in 1:1 formulates in any case a ‘formal title’ – whether for his Gospel-book (βίβλοϚ) as a whole or at least for the first chapters or parts in it85 – Mark creates a polyvalent introduction that leaves it unclear if Mark 1:1 should be understood chronologically (‘Beginn der Ereignisgeschichte’), thematically (‘Themenangabe’), kerygmatically (cf. 1:2 f.; 1:14 f.) or formally (‘Bucheröffnung’).86 I guess that the ambiguity of Mark 1:1 – as a redactional element – is part of the intentio auctoris. In this way Mark reveals himself not only as a literary or historiographical author, but also as a theologian and – possibly – even as a messenger of the εὐαγγέλιον. Matthew, however, does not develop this concept further: He rather interprets the Markan incipit and applies it to his narrative. Ad Mark 7:19c: In Mark 7:19c Mark formulates as a result of Jesus’ dispute with the Pharisees and scribes (Mark 7:1) an ‘explanatory comment,’87 viz., a conclusio out of Jesus’ arguments on cleanliness and uncleanliness: According to Mark Jesus has in fact defined all food as clean. This statement might stand in close relation to what Paul argues for in 1 Cor 8:8,88 which, of course, would help more for reconstructing the profile of the audience89 than finding further evidence for a post quem-dating of Mark. In the Matthean text, however, instead of this narrative conclusio, it is Jesus himself who gives an ethical interpretation of being clean or unclean (Matt 15:18–20). Thus, Matthew hides himself behind the Jesus-figure (cf. also Matt 26:56) and the sources (Mark; Q; M), which deliver Jesus-traditions to him: He avoids any narrative comment and does not formulate a general interpretation of Jesus’ teaching about food laws. Ad Mark 13:14par. Matt 24:15: As it stands now, the so-called ‘reading instruction’ in Mark 13:14 (‘Leseappell’) is hard to understand: Does it go back to the apocalyptic source already, possibly to the Jewish ‘flyer’?90 Or does it go back to the redactor, Mark himself?91 It seems to me that the reading instruction can be die Leser/innen gibt es selten (vgl. 24,15),” but mentions as such possible ‘Erzählerkommentare’ 26:56; 1:23c; 22:23b; 27:33b, 46c, s. n. 93. While Matt 1:23c is a prophetic fulfillment and Matt 26:56 is put in Jesus’ mouth, 22:23b; 27:33b, 46c already go back to the Markan parallels (Mark 12:18; 15:22, 34). ⁸⁵ Cf. discussion in U. Luz, Evangelium nach Matthäus, 117–9. ⁸⁶ Cf. Becker, Markus-Evangelium, 102–11; eadem, “Mark 1:1 and the Debate on a ‘Markan Prologue,’” Filologia Neotestamentaria 22 (2009), 91–106. ⁸⁷ Cf. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 356. ⁸⁸ Cf. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 356. ⁸⁹ Cf. the contribution of O. Wischmeyer in this volume. ⁹⁰ Cf. Theißen, Lokalkolorit, 137. ⁹¹ Cf. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 608: “The clause is better taken as an aside from the evangelist to the individual who read the Gospel aloud to a group of assembled followers of Jesus (directly) and to his audience (indirectly), a hypothesis supported by the concluding statement in v. 37, which makes clear that the speech is directed to a broader audience than the four disciples named in v. 3.”

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best understood as an ‘Aufmerksamkeits-/Weckruf ’ which occurs as a specific literary element inside (cf., e. g., Rev 2:7, 11; 13:9) and outside (e. g., Mark 4:9par.; 4:23) apocalyptic literature.92 In Mark 13:14 this ‘Aufmerksamkeits-/Weckruf ’ is related to the apocalyptic speech (Mark 13:3 ff.) itself. In Matt 24:15 its pragmatic function is similar, namely, to draw attention to the apocalyptic speech (νοείτω). There is, however, a visible difference in how Mark and Matthew make use of the reading instruction within the apocalyptic speech: While in Mark 13:14 the attention is obviously to be directed to the reading of Mark 13 (or the Markan Gospel as a whole), in Matt 24:14 it is clearly to be directed to the reading of the book of Daniel.93 If this ‘Weckruf ’ in Mark 13:14, as a reading instruction, can be taken as a Markan element, it leads us at least to a later stage of delivering Jesus-traditions, namely, to a stage of ‘Christian literacy:’ Mark already presupposes readers and the existence of ‘Christ-believing’-literature. Matthew 24:15, however, says probably more about the social (reading culture) and religious (LXX-culture) profile of the Matthean audience in distinction to the Markan community, and less about questions of date. Matthew 24:15 could also be understood as an interpretative improvement of Mark 13:14 as ‘literarische Vorlage’ in that Matthew makes explicit from where the motif of the βδέλυγμα is taken (Dan LXX). But why is it that Mark – in distinction from Matthew – makes himself visible as the author of the Gospel narrative, viz., why is it that Matthew avoids presenting himself? We can only speculate here, especially in regard to matters of dating: (a) There might simply be various technical reasons for Matthew differing from Mark 1:1 (different material and literary style), Mark 7:19c (e. g., different traditions), and Mark 13:14 (interest of interpretation and improvement). (b) It could also be that Mark as a Gospel-writer has a different kind of authority and/or self-understanding, possibly a more genuine understanding of being an ‘evangelist,’ and Matthew does not feel himself legitimated to adopt Mark’s ‘author-concept.’94 (c) Finally, it could be that Matthew is much more conservative in using his traditions and sources than Mark is. In any case, on the basis of these observations we learn more about the authors’ profile and strategy than about dating Mark and Matthew. 3.2. Mark 9:1par. and Mark 13:30par. as evidence for an ad quem-dating? Finally we have to look at two texts that might also point to the ‘level of reference’ of the Gospel narratives, namely, Mark 9:1 and 13:30par. Because both ⁹² Cf. Becker, “Markus 13,” 119–21. Cf. also, K. Berger, Formgeschichte des Neuen Testaments (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1984), esp. 118. ⁹³ Cf. Theißen, Lokalkolorit, 136 ff. ⁹⁴ This becomes evident by noticing that most of the Matthean narrative comments can already be found in the Markan text (Matt 22.23b; 27.33b, 46cpar.); see below n. 84.

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texts expect Jesus-followers to live until the beginnings of the eschatological events, these followers cannot have died yet. So we need to ask here: Can both texts be an indication for an ad quem-dating of Mark and/or Matthew?95 In order to discuss this question we have to look at the texts individually and then again comparatively. Mark

Matthew

9:1: ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι εἰσίν τινεϚ ὧδε τῶν ἑστηκότων οἵτινεϚ οὐ μὴ γεύσωνται θανάτου ἕωϚ ἂν ἴδωσιν τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐληλυθυῖαν ἐν δυνάμει. Cf. Luke 9:27 13:30: ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι οὐ μὴ παρέλθῃ ἡ γενεὰ αὕτη μέχριϚ οὗ ταῦτα πάντα γένηται.

16:28: ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι εἰσίν τινεϚ τῶν ὧδε ἑστώτων οἵτινεϚ οὐ μὴ γεύσωνται θανάτου ἕωϚ ἂν ἴδωσιν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐρχόμενον ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτοῦ. 24:34: ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι οὐ μὴ παρέλθῃ ἡ γενεὰ αὕτη ἕωϚ ἂν πάντα ταῦτα γένηται.

(a) The assignment of the origins of Mark 9:1 and 13:30: While Rudolf Bultmann thought that Mark 9:1 was an ‘apocalyptic prediction,’ which was formulated in the communities,96 some scholars consider Mark 9:1 or Mark 13:30 to go back to the historical Jesus, so that either Mark 9:197 or Mark 13:3098 served as a model for the formulation of the other saying later on. As long as one of both logia is considered to be pre-Markan – either Jesuanic or community inspired (cf. 1 Thess 4:13 ff.; 1 Cor 15:51 f.) – none of these logia might be relevant for the dating of the final Markan text. Only if both logia were redactional99 could something be said about the terminus ad quem of dating Mark: Then the date of the death of the witness-generation (max. 70–80 C. E.) might not have been reached yet. (b) The Matthean parallels: The Matthean versions of Mark 9:1 and 13:30 (cf. Matt 16:8; 24:34) do not differ from the Markan text significantly. Therefore they supply no evidence for assigning Matthew an absolute date that is different than Mark’s.100 ⁹⁵ This is insinuated by, e. g., Lührmann, Markusevangelium, 6. ⁹⁶ Cf. R. Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition: Mit einem Nachwort von G.

Theißen (10th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 128: “Ein isolierter Spruch … und zwar eine Gemeindebildung als Trostwort wegen des Ausbleibens der Parusie.” Similar to this: J. Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus (Markus 8,27–16,29) (5th ed.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1999), 26 ff.: “Das Logion ist auf dem Hintergrund des Problems der Parusieverzögerung zu sehen, das Teile der frühen Christenheit bewegte” (26). ⁹⁷ Cf. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 412. ⁹⁸ Cf. N. Perrin, What Is Redaction Criticism? (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 49–50. ⁹⁹ Cf. Lührmann, Markusevangelium, 153: “Das Logion reflektiert das Problem der Parusieverzögerung, ein aktuelles Problem in der Situation des Mk; hat er es nicht selbst gebildet, geht es auf eine vergleichbare Frage zurück (vgl. bei Paulus: 1 Thess 4,13–18 1Kor 15,51f).” ¹⁰⁰ The expression: ἕωϚ ἂν ἴδωσιν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐρχόμενον ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτοῦ in Matt 16:28 can be understood in analogy to the Markan expression: ἕωϚ ἂν ἴδωσιν τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐληλυθυῖαν ἐν δυνάμει because the coming of the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ is equivalent to the coming of the Son of Man in Mark (cf. 8:38; 13:26; 14:62); cf. Lührmann, Markusevangelium, 153; Yarbro Collins, Mark, 413.

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3.3. Finding a relative chronology – Questions of ‘Literarkritik’ and source criticism How can we date Mark and Matthew in relation to each other, i. e., in terms of a relative chronology (see point e. in the table above)? We need to start here on the basis of source critical theories and afterwards proceed with observations on the Gospels’ composition. All in all there exist three kinds of source theories that are relevant for a relative chronology of Mark and Matthew: (a) According to, e. g., Johann Jakob Griesbach101 (but cf. already Irenaeus, Haer. 3.1.1) and modern followers of his theory,102 Matthew is the oldest Gospel narrative and has been used by Mark. (b) The two-source-theory (H. J. Holtzmann; P. Wernle) has been developed as a consequence of assuming a Markan priority (esp. K. Lachmann). (c) If Mark and Matthew should have used Synoptic material independently – as, e. g., Delbert Burkett has recently suggested103 – both Gospels would have been written approximately at the same time (ca. 80–100 C. E.).104 A majority of scholars, however, still favour the two-source-theory.105 Why is this and how can we apply this theory to the issue of dating Mark and Matthew? Three observations support the idea of Markan priority and Matthew’s usage of Mark: (a) There are several indications showing that Matthew uses Mark as a literary ‘Vorlage’: He takes over most of the Markan pericopes precisely (e. g., Mark 13 in Matt 24)106 or even accepts narrative doublets that Luke rejects (Mark 6:17 ff. in Matt 14:13 ff.; Mark 8:1 ff. in Matt 15:32 ff.).107 (b) By taking Mark as a literary ‘Vorlage’ Matthew corrects,108 improves and interprets,109 or enhances110 the Markan text several times. (c) By including another source (Q) and further material (M) Matthew presents more traditions, e. g., creates further doublets,111 shapes a much longer and extended Gospel-version (e. g., Matt 1–2; speech-concept; 28:9 ff.), and finally embeds Mark 13 even in a longer context of ¹⁰¹ Cf. S. E. Johnson, The Griesbach Hypothesis and Redaction Criticism (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991). ¹⁰² Among modern followers of Griesbach, cf., e. g., W. R. Farmer, The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Analysis (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964), 5 ff. and 199 ff. Cf. also C. M. Tuckett, The Revival of the Griesbach Hypothesis: An Analysis and Appraisal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). ¹⁰³ Cf. D. Burkett, Rethinking the Gospel Sources: From Proto-Mark to Mark (New York: T & T Clark, 2004). Burkett creates here a “new multi-source theory” (6), in which he assumes the “priority of a pre-Markan gospel” (5). ¹⁰⁴ Cf. Burkett, Rethinking, 163 ff. ¹⁰⁵ Cf. also U. Schnelle, “Synoptische Frage,” in RGG, 7:1978–84, 1980 ff. ¹⁰⁶ In general, I would share this view. ¹⁰⁷ Part of his ‘great omission’ (Mark 6:45–8:26), Luke leaves out Mark 8:1 ff. ¹⁰⁸ Cf. Matt 8:28 and Mark 5:1; Matt 15:39 and Mark 8:10. ¹⁰⁹ Cf. Matt 24:15 and Mark 13:14; see above. Cf. also Matt 28:8, 9 ff. in comparison to Mark 16:8. ¹¹⁰ Cf. Matt 8:28 ff. and Mark 5:1 ff.; Matt 20:29 ff. and Mark 10:46 ff. ¹¹¹ Cf. Matt 9:27 ff. (cf. Mark 10:46 ff.par. Matt 20:29 ff.).

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eschatological discourses (Matt 23–25). Although extending Mark, Matthew seems to follow first of all the Markan Vorlage: The Gospel of Mark functions as his basic book while the other material is included and added in a supplementary way. 3.4. Conclusions Even if it seems to be the case that, in terms of a relative chronology, Matthew follows Mark rather than vice versa, in terms of an absolute dating, Matthew provides no unique or even more precise indications for a terminus post quem in comparison to Mark. This observation can be interpreted twofold: First, in regard to the post quem-dating, Mark and Matthew need to be treated equally. And because we could not find a further112 or later date than 70 C. E. in the history of the first century C. E. that could function as a terminus post quem for dating Mark and Matthew, we need to conclude that both Gospels were written either before or after 70 C. E. Secondly, what can be said for the literary intention of the Markan Gospel is also relevant for Matthew: Both Gospels obviously refuse a precise dating.113 This does not mean, however, that we are discharged from dating Mark and Matthew. To the contrary, a precise dating of Mark and Matthew could shed light on central issues of Markan and Matthean exegesis: for instance, we could precisely formulate the extent of the authors’ agreement in creating the ‘level of narration,’ how much they reveal of the ‘level of reference,’ and the extent to which each narrator affects the Gospel narrative and makes himself visible. In terms of a relative chronology, Matthew might be the later Gospel. The manner in which Matthew succeeds Mark also indicates how Matthew values his writing in relation to the Markan ‘Vorlage,’ namely, as a competitive completion of Mark rather than as a totally new-conceptualization.

¹¹² The only exception might be 44 C. E. (cf. Mark 10:35 ff.par. Matt 20:20 ff.). ¹¹³ “Markus schreibt – im Unterschied zu den taciteischen Historien und zu Josephus’ Bel-

lum – nicht über die jüdische oder römische Geschichte bis zu einem bestimmten ‘historischen’ Zeitpunkt, sondern über eine Ereignisgeschichte, die mit dem Wirken des Täufers beginnt und mit der Darstellung des apokalyptischen Erlebnisses der Frauen am Ostermorgen endet. Die Erzählung der ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ist daher eine für die Zukunft hin offene Geschichtsdarstellung. Sie erfolgt aus einer Erzählperspektive, die historisch nicht näher definiert werden will,” Becker, Markus-Evangelium, 338 (some italics added).

Genre Theory and the Genre-Function of Mark and Matthew David E. Aune 1. Introduction During the last thirty years, the problem of the genre of the Gospels has become a critically important issue for some NT scholars, yet for others it has been an issue of marginal or negligible significance.1 Before the 1970s, commentators on the Gospels rarely mentioned the issue of genre. That situation has changed somewhat, though interest in the genre question varies widely. Particularly since the 1980s, many commentaries on Mark have included a discussion of genre,2 while curiously, commentaries on Matthew published during the same period rarely treat the issue.3 Those who think that the genre issue is worth pursuing are often primarily concerned with the hermeneutical implications of an appropriate generic identification of the Gospels. Yet if a knowledge of the genre of the Gospels is necessary for proper interpretation, how can New Testament scholars produce extensive commentaries without paying careful attention to the hermeneutical implications of the genre of the text? And even if one decides that Mark shares the generic profile of “biography” or “history” or “mythic narrative” or “Jewish novel,” what are the hermeneutical entailments of that decision?4 Or, is this ¹ In Brian J. Incigneri’s lengthy study of Mark, The Gospel to the Romans: The Setting and Rhetoric of Mark’s Gospel (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 19, the author does not mention the issue of genre and maintains that Mark should not be considered a literary work of art (in this he has a point). Rather, he follows Robert Alter in arguing that we cannot apply literary critical categories to the Bible, since biblical literature is different, for the texts are “theologically motivated [and] historically oriented” and “have their own dynamics, their own distinctive conventions and characteristic techniques” (quoting R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative [New York: Basic Books, 1981], 15, 23). For Incigneri, narrative criticism “has dehumanized the text” and therefore must be rejected (20–2). Thus Incigneri is at odds with both literary and rhetorical genre theorists. ² The most extensive discussion of the genre of Mark in a commentary is that found in A. Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 15–43. This discussion is longer than her earlier monograph on the subject, Is Mark’s Gospel a Life of Jesus? The Question of Genre (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1990). ³ Examples of commentaries on Matthew lacking a discussion of genre: R. Schnackenburg, The Gospel of Matthew (Echter Verlag: Würzburg, 1987; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); P. Fiedler, Das Matthäusevangelium (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006). ⁴ H. N. Roskam, The Purpose of Mark in Its Historical and Social Context (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 236, thinks that while Mark is correctly categorized as “ancient biography,” this generic identification reveals nothing about the purpose of Mark. She therefore prefers the designation

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another example of a hermeneutical circle, i. e., scholars prefer to categorize Mark in that genre that fits their understanding of the text and then use the hermeneutical implications of the genre to interpret the text? There are, of course, a number of genre theorists who maintain that it is precisely the critic who determines or creates the genre of the text. For New Testament scholars, the central issue has been to identify the ancient genre to which Mark and the other canonical Gospels belong (whether to the same or different genres), working under the general assumption that all literary texts, and perhaps even all nonliterary texts, from all times and places have a generic identity. New Testament scholars puzzling over the genre of Mark are no different from literary scholars baffled over the genre of Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Hamlet – Prince of Denmark,” or the problem of classifying the supposedly “unclassifiable” works of the modern German-cum-English writer W. G. Sebald.5 One of the widespread (but not universal) presuppositions of the academy is that the four canonical Gospels share a single “literary” genre,6 which for some is sui generis (a default view of much of German scholarship), but for others is “unclassifiable” or “generically ambivalent,”7 and for yet others is a “new genre” or even a “revolutionary new genre,” while perhaps a majority are convinced that the Gospels must share a generic profile with one or more ancient Jewish and/or Greco-Roman literary genres (biography, history, novel, and myth are the usual suspects). The view that Mark must be based on a single generic model reflects the Aristotelian view of taxonomy, which envisages an exhaustive classification system in which every member of a particular population can be placed in one, and only one, class.8 Neoclassical literary criticism (eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries), under the ubiquitous influence of Aristotle, imagined a total literary system of all literary works that consisted of normative rules with univer“an apologetic writing in biographical form,” essentially inventing a new biographical subgenre to fit her interpretation. ⁵ S. Cooke, “‘Always Somewhere Else’: Generic ‘Unclassifiability’ in the Work of W. G. Sebald,” in Gattungstheorie und Gattungsgeschichte (ed. M. Gymnich, B. Neumann, and A. Nünning; Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2007), 235–52. ⁶ There are exceptions, such as M. Vines, The Problem of Markan Genre: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish Novel (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 24–5. Vines argues that just because the Synoptic Gospels exhibit mutual independence does not mean that they arranged their material under the influence of the same genre and that redactional differences suggest that each was dissatisfied with the presentation of the other. Since Matthew and Luke include birth narratives and resurrection appearances, they conform more closely than Mark to ancient biography, suggesting that Mark was either not a biography or it was a deficient one. Vines is using a discrimen here, of the type he elsewhere pejoratively labels “formalistic and reductive comparisons” (122). He also exhibits a rigid view of genre out of keeping with the general orientation of modern genre theory. ⁷ I insert the options “unclassifiable” and “generically ambivalent,” not because they are actually used by NT scholars, but because they imply research in progress rather than a final decision. ⁸ G. C. Bowker and S. Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 62.

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sal validity that rigidly separated literary kinds. Following Todorov,9 and in keeping with the more recent emphasis on the dynamic rather than static nature and function of genres, I will argue that the Gospel of Mark (followed by the Gospel of Matthew), represents both an imitative and transformative reaction to existing literary genres, i. e., Mark in particular is a type of Greco-Roman biography in the special sense that it is a parody of that genre.10

2. The Beginnings of Genre Criticism in Biblical Studies Beginning with the late nineteenth century, the biblical scholars who founded and developed the form critical method tried to isolate, identify, and describe constituent literary forms in biblical narrative texts that were presumed to have originated in oral discourse (in part influenced by the Danish folklorist Axel Olrik).11 Two of the founders of New Testament form criticism, Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Dibelius, independently developed taxonomies of oral forms preserved in the Gospels based on analogous forms attested in both Jewish and Greco-Roman literature. On the literary form of the Gospels, Bultmann argued that “while we need analogies for understanding the individual components of the Synoptic Tradition we do not need them for the Gospel as a whole.”12 He continues:13 The [literary] analogies that are to hand serve only to throw the uniqueness of the Gospel into still stronger relief. It has grown out of the imminent urge to development which lay ⁹ T. Todorov, “The Origin of Genres,” in Modern Genre Theory (ed. D. Duff; Harlow: Peterson Education Limited, 2000), 193–209. ¹⁰ The view that Mark is a parody of Greco-Roman biography will be discussed briefly below, but in this context it is not possible to develop this proposal adequately. ¹¹ Rudolf Bultmann, for example, was familiar with some of the ideas of the Danish folklore scholar Axel Olrik, who in 1909 published an article in German, “Epische Gesetze der Volksdichtung,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 52 (1909): 1–12, translated into English in 1965 as “Epic Laws of Folk Narrative,” in The Study of Folklore (ed. A. Dundes; Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965). Olrik (1864–1917) was a philologist and medievalist who worked primarily in the field of Scandinavian folklore and who proposed a set of diagnostic principles or “laws” to distinguish segments of originally oral performances preserved in written texts, precisely the task of form criticism as envisioned by Dibelius and Bultmann. Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932), the founder of Old Testament form criticism, read a copy of the lecture that Olrik had given on the epic laws in Berlin in 1908. Gunkel corresponded with Olrik on the subject and refers to Olrik’s epic laws in The Legends of Genesis: The Biblical Saga and History (trans. W. H. Carruth; New York: Schocken, 1964); a translation of “Die Sagen der Genesis,” the introduction to his commentary Genesis:Übersetzt und Erklärt (7th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), first published in 1901. A posthumous work of Olrik, Nogen Grundsætninger for Sagnforskning (ed. H. Ellekilde; Copenhagen: Det Schønberske Forlag, 1921), was translated into English as Principles for Oral Narrative Research (trans. K. Wolf and J. Jensen; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). ¹² R. Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (trans. J. Marsh; New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 373. ¹³ Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, 373–4.

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in the tradition fashioned for various motives, and out of the Christ-myth and the Christcult of Hellenistic Christianity. It is thus an original creation of Christianity.

When form criticism began to come under increasing criticism during the 1950s and 1960s, some members of the academy, particularly in the United States, began to shift their focus to the holistic literary analysis of biblical books. This holistic approach began in earnest in the 1970s and took two forms, literary criticism, soon rebaptized as narrative criticism, and genre criticism. One of the earliest applications of narrative criticism to the Gospels was the slim but influential book on Mark by David Rhoads and Donald Michie,14 influenced by two types of formalistic analysis, the New Criticism (which flourished from the 1920s through the early 1960s, primarily in the United States) and narratology (which began with the Russian formalists in the 1920s and was developed by more recent scholars such as Gérard Genette). Throughout most of the twentieth century, but with new vigor in the 1970s, genre criticism began to flourish in literary scholarship as a critical tool for interpreting literary texts, and began to exert an influence on biblical studies during the early 1970s. In 1972, William G. Doty was one of the first New Testament scholars to argue for the importance of genre criticism, based on his exposure to genre theory promulgated by literary scholars,15 and the view that Mark belonged to the genre of Hellenistic biography was revived after years of dormancy by several scholars including Siegfried Schultz (1964), Philip L. Shuler in a 1975 Oxford dissertation written under E. P. Sanders, published in1982, and by Charles H. Talbert in the United States (1977), all largely innocent of developments in modern genre theory.16 While the development of narrative criticism appropriate for understanding the literary qualities of the Gospels was essentially a new undertaking for biblical scholars, the genre criticism of the Gospels had antecedents in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that had been largely muffled by the claim of form critics that the Gospels were a unique non-literary product of early Christianity and that the Evangelists were not “authors” in the proper sense of the term so much as editors. The initial interest in the genre of the Gospels by New Testament scholars tended to mirror earlier attempts to classify the literary form of the Gospels by comparing their form, content, style, and structure with other forms of ancient literature, particularly biographies and apocalypses.

¹⁴ D. Rhoads and D. Michie, Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982). ¹⁵ W. G. Doty, “The Concept of Genre in Literary Analysis,” in The Society of Biblical Literature One-Hundred-Eighth Annual Meeting Book of Seminar Papers: Friday-Tuesday, 1–5 September 1972 (ed. L. C. McGaughy; 2 vols.; Society of Biblical Literature, 1972), 2: 413–48. ¹⁶ S. Schulz, “Die Bedeutung des Mk für die Theologiegeschichte des Urchristentums,” TU 87 (1964): 135–45; P. L. Shuler, A Genre for the Gospels: The Biographical Character of Matthew (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982); C. H. Talbert, What Is a Gospel? The Genre of the Canonical Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977).

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3. Relevant Aspects of Modern Genre Theory for the Toolkits of New Testament Scholars Literary scholars and genre theorists are not one big happy family, nor should we expect that they would be. Some literary critics argue that genre is a useless abstraction.17 For others, genres have been regarded as an arbitrary and artificial system of classification. For the New Criticism (ca. 1920s to the early 1960s), the concept of genre was a threat to the central notion of an autonomous text. For Jacques Derrida, individual texts resist classification because they are interpretively indeterminate and no generic trait confines a text to a genre because such a belonging would falsify the constituents of a text.18 Essentially, Derrida’s approach leads to a study of individual texts apart from the historical consideration of genre.19 Before the 1980s, genre criticism was largely the province of literary studies and the view of genre that dominated was that of a genre as container or package for discourse. Since then, the notion of genre has been reconceptualized by scholars working outside the field of literary studies, such as applied linguistics, sociology, communication studies, education, and rhetoric. Genre criticism has been transformed from a descriptive to an explanatory activity with a shift in focus from an exclusive emphasis on types of texts, systems of classification, and an a posteriori interpretive tool to an emphasis on the socio-rhetorical function of genres.20 “Rhetorical genre studies” is a designation for the study of nonliterary genres which arose in the 1980s. Proponents of “rhetorical genre studies” often consider themselves as opposed to literary genre studies. Bakhtin, however, argues persuasively that all genres mediate communicative activity, from novels to military commands, and that all discourse is generic in form.21 Both literary genres and nonliterary genres (Gattungen and Textsorten),22 reminiscent of the dichotomy between Hochliteratur and Kleinliteratur made by early twentieth century New Testament scholars,23 function to regulate the social positions, relations, and identities of authors. ¹⁷ B. Croce, “Criticism of the Theory of Artistic and Literary Kinds,” in Modern Genre Theory (ed. D. Duff; Harlow: Longman, 2000), 25–8. ¹⁸ J. Derrida, “The Law of Genre,” in Duff, Modern Genre, 219–31. ¹⁹ R. Cohen, “History and Genre,” New Literary History 17 (1986): 203–18 (here: pp. 205–6). ²⁰ A. Bawarshi, Genre and the Invention of the Writer: Reconsidering the Place of Invention in Composition (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2003), 7–9. ²¹ M. M. Bakhtin, “The Problem of Speech Genres,” in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (ed. C. Emerson and M. Holquist; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 60–102. ²² This distinction is found in Birgit Neumann and Ansgar Nünning, “Einleitung: Probleme, Aufgaben und Perspektiven der Gattungstheorie und Gattungsgeschichte,” in Gattungstheorie und Gattungsgeschichte (ed. M. Gymnich, B. Neumann, and A. Nünning; Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2007), 3. ²³ The founders of form criticism, Karl Ludwig Schmidt, Martin Dibelius, and Rudolf Bultmann, categorized the oral traditions that were incorporated into the written Gospels as well as

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In the following short paragraphs, I will summarize several features of genre theory that tend to cut across various modern approaches to genre that can serve as critical tools in dealing with the problem of the genre of Mark and Matthew. “Genre” means type or category and refers to groups of literary works which, according to Neumann and Nünning, share significant material or content, formal and functional features that both serve as criteria for relating individual texts to groups of texts and provide an orientation for both authors and readers.24 Frow also defines genres as complex structures that must always be defined in terms of three main structural dimensions: (1) the formal, (2) the rhetorical (= Neumann and Nünning’s “functional”), and (3) the thematic (= Neumann and Nünning’s “material or content”).25 These are precisely the same generic features that David Hellholm used in the 1980s to analyze the form of apocalypses.26 These categories overlap, however, and must be given different weight and proportions depending on which genre is analyzed. Generic differences are also based on the “use-value” of discourse rather than just its content and formal features.27 Literary genres are structured categories with a “hard core” of prototypical members exhibiting a high degree of “family resemblance” to one another (an assumption of cognitive psychology); they also consist of other, less typical marginal members.28 This means that genres are fuzzy categories, evident in the fact that no single genre has been completely defined,29 since (as Alastair Fowler has observed), “genres at all levels are positively resistant to definition.”30 Many, perthe Gospels themselves, as folk literature, or to use the dichotomy made famous by Karl Ludwig Schmidt, Kleinliteratur rather than Hochliteratur. Since the Gospels, as well as the oral traditions of which they were constituted, were considered “unliterary,” the written Gospels could not be expected to conform to ancient literary genres such as biography or history. According to Schmidt, “Das Evangelium ist von Haus aus nicht Hochliteratur, sondern Kleinliteratur, nicht individuelle Schriftstellerleistung, sondern Volksbuch, nicht Biographie, sondern Kultlegende” (K. L. Schmidt, Die Stellung der Evangelien in der allgemeinen Literaturgeschichte [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1923]; repr. in Neues Testament, Judentum, Kirche: Kleine Schriften [ed. G. Sauter; München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1981], 66–7 [emphasis in the original]). During the last quarter of the twentieth century, it became clear to many scholars that the form critical assumption of a dichotomy between Kleinliteratur and Hochliteratur was an artificial distinction that owed more to romantic notions of primitivity than to insights into comparative literature. ²⁴ Birgit Neumann and Ansgar Nünning, “Einleitung,” 3. ²⁵ J. Frow, Genre (London: Routledge, 2006), 74–6. ²⁶ Two of Hellholm’s seminal works in this area are Das Visionenbuch des Hermas als Apocalypse: Formgeschichtliche und texttheoretische Studien zu einer literarischen Gattung (vol. 1 of Methodologische Vorüberlegungen und makrostructurelle Textanalyse; Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1980), and idem, “The Problem of Apocalyptic Genre and the Apocalypse of John,” in Early Christian Apocalypticism: Genre and Social Setting (ed. A. Yarbro Collins; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 65–96. ²⁷ T. O. Beebee, The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study of Generic Instability (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 7. ²⁸ D. Fishelov, “Genre Theory and Family Resemblance – Revisited,” Poetics 20 (1991): 123–

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haps most, genres share at least one fundamental trait, which may provide essential information about their scope and possibilities (for biography, for example, this would be a focus on the life of a single significant individual).31 In order to evaluate a writer’s work, critics should take account of the generic tradition within which the author is working (i. e., the “family tree” of the genre). The high mortality rate of ancient literature, however, has meant that modern scholars have had access to only a fraction of the “ancestors” on the generic “family tree,” making the task of genre criticism very difficult. Genres are dynamic rather than static entities that have no essence and which evolve or are transformed over time (see no. 5 below), so that the increasing number of texts associated with a particular genre incrementally transform the entire genre.32 Ralph Cohen articulates this view, which is widely held among modern genre theorists:33 I wish to argue that genre concepts in theory and practice arise, change, and decline for historical reasons. And since each genre is composed of texts that accrue, the grouping is a process, not a determinate category. Genres are open categories. Each member alters the genre by adding, contradicting, or changing constituents, especially those of members most closely related to it.

Unrealistically rigid and restrictive conceptions of genre may face problems in trying to accommodate new works (a common problem for many who seek to generically classify the Gospels).34 The transformation of genres occurs in many ways. Todorov suggests just three (namely, inversion, displacement and combination):35 From where do genres come? Why, quite simply, from other genres. A new genre is always the transformation of an earlier one, or of several by inversion, by displacement, by combination.

Gérard Genette, a prominent French literary theorist, has distinguished between a hypertext and its hypotext, i. e., any text derived from a previous text, by way of simple transformation or indirect transformation or imitation, each of which can 38. This emphasis on one fundamental shared trait is a rejection of the particular application of Wittgenstein’s family resemblance theory that emphasizes the negative: “Representatives of a genre may then be regarded as making up a family whose septs and individual members are related in various ways, without necessarily having any single feature shared in common by all” (A. Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982], 41). ²⁹ A. Dundes, “Texture, Text, and Context,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 28 (1964): 264. ³⁰ Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 40. ³¹ Fishelov, “Genre Theory and Family Resemblance,” 135. ³² Y. Tynyanov, “The Literary Fact,” in Duff, Modern Genre, 32. ³³ Cohen, “History and Genre,” 204. ³⁴ Fishelov, “Genre Theory and Family Resemblance,” 128. ³⁵ Todorov, “The Origin of Genres,” 197.

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take a great variety of forms.36 Alastair Fowler has provided detailed discussions of ten types of generic transformation: (1) topical invention (topics added to the repertoire of a genre), (2) combination, (3) aggregation (short works are groups in an ordered collection), (4) change of scale (expansion or contraction), 5) change of function, (6) counterstatement (i. e., counter-genres or “anti-genres,” as antitheses to existing genres), (7) inclusion (embedding one genre in another), (8) generic mixture, (9) hybrids (two or more repertoires present in such proportion that none dominates),37 and (10) satire.38 Mark transformed the existing sources incorporated into his text, just as Matthew transformed Mark using a number of strategies including the deconstruction of Q, the Sayings Source. All human discourse is genre-bound, i. e., genre is a universal dimension of textuality,39 and genres are by definition social conventions, the social context of which can be called a “discourse community” or an “activity system.”40 A modern university constitutes such a discourse community and the system of genres characteristic of such a community includes grant applications, study guides, term papers, dissertation proposals, lectures, and so forth. The early Christian church similarly functioned as a discourse community, using a system of many oral and written genres (the latter including letters, gospels, histories, apocalypses, and novels). Within discourse communities, the forms of oral and written discourse largely reflect typified, recurrent situations that are understood and used intuitively by speakers and hearers, writers, and readers. Each person in the discourse community acquires knowledge about genres through the process of literary socialization, a process in which the canonical generic prototypes play a significant role. Individual texts signal their generic affiliation by means of textual clues that reflexively move the reader to apply a certain schema to their interpretation (e. g., paratextual generic labels, like “The Gospel according to Mark”).41 ³⁶ G. Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (trans. C. Newman and C. Doubinsky; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 5–10. ³⁷ K. Seibel, “Mixing Genres: Levels of Contamination and the Formation of Generic Hybrids,” in Gattungstheorie und Gattungsgeschichte (ed. M. Gymnich, B. Neumann, and A. Nünning; Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2007), 137–50. ³⁸ Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 170–83. In the field of biblical studies, see D. Damrosch, The Narrative Covenant: Transformations of Genre in the Growth of Biblical Literature (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987). When he wrote this book, Damrosch was a member of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He uses the phrase “narrative covenant” to refer to the pact between author and reader that provides the framework of norms and expectations that shape both the composition and the reception of a text. ³⁹ Frow, Genre, 2. ⁴⁰ C. Bazerman, “Discursively Structured Activities,” Mind, Culture and Activity 4 (1997): 296–308. ⁴¹ G. Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (trans. J. E. Lewin; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

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4. Paratextual Features of the Gospels 4.1. Introduction Since genres exist within literary systems and literary systems are part of historical and social contexts, if the system changes or literary texts are transposed into another literary system or are read in a different historical and social situation, both the understanding of the genre and the meaning of the text change, i. e., static definitions of genre, covering all its manifestations, are impossible.42 After Mark and Matthew were written, the texts themselves, as well as their physical characteristics and their literary, social, and ideological contexts were subject to a variety of changes inevitably entailing altered perceptions of their generic significance. The most obvious example is the fact that longer and shorter endings were appended to Mark, transforming Mark by supplying a continuation modeled on the endings of Matthew, Luke, and John as well as by providing a narrative closure in line with the broad conventions of appropriate narrative conventions. James Kelhoffer has argued convincingly that Mark 16:9–20 was added to the text of Mark ca. 120–150 C. E. and that this expansion was based on texts of the four Gospels, constituting relatively early evidence for the existence as well as the respect accorded the fourfold Gospel collection by the mid-second century.43 4.2. Subscriptiones and Superscriptiones Between the composition of the canonical Gospels (ca. 70–100 C. E.) and the middle of the second century, two paratextual features were added to the Gospels: (1) they were subject to gradual aggregation, culminating in the traditional εὐαγγέλιον τετράμορφον known to Irenaeus ca. 180 C. E. (Adv. haer. 3.11.8),44 and (2) they were given identical subscriptiones or superscriptiones.45 Though there is no explicit mention of a εὐαγγέλιον τετράμορφον before 180 C. E., Justin implies such a collection in Dialogue 103.8 (ca. 160 C. E.), where he refers to “the memoires composed by his [Jesus’] apostles and those who followed them” (i. e., at least two “memoires” in each of two categories).46 “This ⁴² Tynyanov, “The Literary Fact,” 32. ⁴³ J. A. Kelhoffer, Mission and Message: The Authentication of Missionaries and Their Mes-

sage in the Longer Ending of Mark (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). ⁴⁴ This passage in Irenaeus was probably based on a source (see T. C. Skeat, “Irenaeus and the Four-Gospel Canon,” NovT 37 [1992]: 194–9), which can be dated some years earlier than ca. 180 C. E., when Irenaeus wrote Adv. haer., perhaps ca. 170 C. E. ⁴⁵ A. Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius, Teil II: Die Chronologie (Band 1: Die Chronologie der Literatur bis Irenäus nebst einleitenden Untersuchungen; 2. erweiterte Auflage; Leipzig: H. C. Hinrichs Verlag, 1958), 682. G. N. Stanton, “The Fourfold Gospel,” in Jesus and Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2004), 67. Here Stanton maintains that Irenaeus does not refer to the fourfold Gospel as a recent innovation. ⁴⁶ Stanton, “The Fourfold Gospel,” 76.

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way of categorizing the Gospels in terms of their authorship by two apostles and two followers of apostles is reflected in the Western order of the Gospels found in P45 (ca. 200 C. E.), several old Latin manuscripts (e a b ff2 g), the Apostolic Constitutions and codices D (5th –6th cents.), W (4th –5th cents.), and X (9th –10th cents.).”47 The most likely scenario is that with the gradual aggregation of from two to four Gospels48 it became necessary to add subscriptiones or superscriptions to each Gospel in order both to distinguish one from another and to assert their basic similarity.49 These two paratextual developments are generically salient in that they reveal how some Christians in the late first and early second centuries C. E. understood the texts of the Gospels. Discounting later expansions (subscriptiones and superscriptiones were often expanded by scribes), the forms of the subscriptiones and superscriptiones at issue exhibit two basic patterns: a short form (often presumed to be earlier),50 e. g., κατὰ Μαθθαῖον, κατὰ Μᾶρκον, κατὰ Λοῦκαν, and κατὰ ’Ιωάν[ν]ην, and the longer and more familiar form (which a number of scholars in recent years have argued is more original),51 e. g., εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μαθθαῖον, εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μᾶρκον, εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Λοῦκαν, and εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ ’Ιωάν[ν]ην. The stereotypical shorter and longer forms of both the subscriptiones and superscriptiones are unusual in that they use the preposition κατά as a periphrasis for a genitivus auctoris.52 The stereotypical form of the subscriptiones and superscrip⁴⁷ M. Hengel, Die vier Evangelien und das eine Evangelium von Jesus Christus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 75–6. ⁴⁸ Petersen, “Die Evangelienüberschriften,” 268. ⁴⁹ T. K. Heckel, Vom Evangelium des Markus zum viergestaltigen Evangelium (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 207–16. ⁵⁰ Nestle-Aland27 and the UBSGNT3 put the short form of each of the Gospel superscriptions in the text. While the short form was included in earlier editions of Nestle-Aland, a brief list of variants was included in Nestle-Aland26; the laconic UBSGNT mentions no variants for the superscriptions. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek with Notes on Selected Readings (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882), 321: “In length and elaboration they [i. e., titles] vary much in different documents, we have adopted the concise and extremely ancient form preserved in a B and some other documents, which is apparently the foundation of the fuller titles.” ⁵¹ Hengel, Die vier Evangelien, 87–95. See also his earlier work on this subject: Die Evangelienüberschriften (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1984), translated into English as “The Titles of the Gospels and the Gospel of Mark,” in Studies in the Gospel of Mark (trans. J. Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 64–84, with notes on pp. 162–183. The originality of the long form is also maintained by S. Petersen, “Die Evangelienüberschriften und die Entstehung des neutestamentlichen Kanons,” ZNW 97 (2006): 254. ⁵² An example of this idiom is found in 2 Macc 2:13: ἐν τοῖϚ ὑπομνηματισμοῖϚ τοῖϚ κατὰ τὸν Νεεμιαν, “in the memoirs of Nehemiah.” A different meaning of κατά is found in the subscriptio of Genesis in Codex Vaticanus: ΓΕΝΕΣΙΣ ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΥΣ ΕΒΔΟΜΗΚΟΝΤΑ, “Genesis according to the Septuagint.” For discussions of the use of κατά as a periphrasis for the possessive genitive, see W. Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature (3rd ed.; revised and edited by F. W. Danker; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 513; W. Köhler, “κατά,” EDNT 2:254; for papyrological examples for the use of κατά as a periphrasis for a possessive pronoun, see J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the

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tiones suggests that they were added at one point in time to all four Gospels to distinguish them from one another when they first began to circulate as a collection.53 This aggregation of Gospels could have begun with a collection of two or more papyrus rolls (much as Herodotus must have circulated as a collection of nine papyrus rolls)54 or as a group of codices (P52, a fragment of John dating to the first half of the second century, is the earliest physical evidence for a codex that presumably contained a single Gospel). Eventually the εὐαγγέλιον τετράμορφον was found within a single codex, of which there are as many as three early examples, two from the end of the second century (P4 –P64 –P67 and P75) and one from the mid-third century (P45).55 The textual evidence for both forms at the beginning and end of each of the canonical Gospels is tabulated in Tables A and B below. The subscriptiones are arguably earlier than the superscriptiones due to the different conventions associated with writing literary works on papyrus rolls compared with writing them in codices. When a literary work was copied on a papyrus roll, the title (i. e., typically a one-word title together with the author’s name in the genitive) was placed at the end of the work (as a subscriptio), but when copied in a codex, it was placed at the beginning of a work (as a superscriptio).56 Both subscriptiones and superscriptiones were typically added later to literary works when they were copied for distribution; the incipit or first sentence of the work itself normally functioned as the author’s title (e. g., Mark 1:1). When a work written in a papyrus roll was transferred to a codex, the subscriptio could be omitted (which for conservative reasons rarely happened) or replicated in the superscriptio, resulting in a work with the same (or a similar) title at the beginning and end.57 Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980; originally published in 1930), 322. ⁵³ Heckel, Vom Evangelium des Markus zum viergestaltigen Evangelium, 208–9. ⁵⁴ D. E. Aune, The New Testament in Its Literary Environment (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987), 117–8. ⁵⁵ Stanton, Jesus and Gospel, 71–5. ⁵⁶ R. P. Oliver, “The First Medicean MS of Tacitus and the Titulature of Ancient Books,” TAPA 82 (1951): 243, 245, 248; E. M. Thompson, A Handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeography (Chicago: Ares, 1966), 58; C. Wendel, Die griechisch-römische Buchbeschreibung verglichen mit der des Vorderen Orients (Halle-Saale: Niemeyer, 1949), 24–9. ⁵⁷ The manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas provide a partial example. Of the three extant Greek fragments of Thomas, POxy 1 is a single leaf from a papyrus codex (shortly after 200 C. E.), while POxy 654 and POxy 655 are papyrus fragments of two different papyrus rolls (both early third century C. E.). The complete Coptic manuscript of Thomas (middle of the fourth century C. E.) discovered at Nag Hammadi has a subscriptio that reads Π ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ Π ΚΑΤΑ ΘΩΜΑΣ, “the Gospel according to Thomas,” with no superscriptio, but rather the author-editor’s incipit, i. e., opening words functioning as a title: “These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymus Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, ‘Whoever finds the meaning of these words will not taste death’.” The reference to Thomas in the incipit was replicated in the author’s name in the subscriptio, while the term “gospel” was probably derived from the superscriptiones (and/or subscriptiones) of the four canonical Gospels,

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The 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament regards the short forms of the Gospel superscriptions, κατὰ Μαθθαῖον, κατὰ Μᾶρκον, κατὰ Λοῦκαν, and κατὰ ’Ιωάν[ν]ην as more original, presumably on the basis of the textcritical principle lectio brevior potior est (i. e., the shorter reading is preferable), despite the paucity of the evidence (they cite only the two fourth century codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus). Additional evidence for the short forms is also available in the superscriptions of the ninth century codices F (010) and H (013), as well as the running titles that occur before 500 C. E. only in three codices: a B D.58 Table A: Gospel Subscriptions Subscription

Textual Evidence

κατὰ Μαθθαῖον κατὰ Μᾶρκον κατὰ Λοῦκαν κατὰ Ιωάν[ν]ην εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μαθθαῖον εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μᾶρκον εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Λοῦκαν εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ ’Ιωάν[ν]ην

B B B B A D U 2 33 565 700 788 a A C E L U Γ Δ Ψ 2 33 700 P75 a A (02) C L U W Δ Π Ψ 2 33 1582

a A E Δ Ψ 2 33 565 1582

Recently, a number of scholars have rightly argued for the priority of the longer forms.59 There are two major arguments for this: (1) The shorter forms, such as ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΘΘΑΙΑΝ, make sense only if they are considered abbreviations implying the antecedent ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ in a codex containing all four Gospels.60 In fact, the short forms occur only in codices which contain all four Gospels: a B F H (a and B date to the fourth century, while F [010] and H [013] date to the ninth century). There is a close analogy in Westcott and Hort’s critical edition which must already have existed as a fourfold collection. Even though the Gospel of Thomas was part of a papyrus codex (preceded by the Apocryphon of John and followed by the Gospel of Philip), the practice of putting a subscriptio at the end and not replicating it with a superscriptio at the beginning is based on the conventions associated with the papyrus roll. ⁵⁸ D. C. Parker, Codex Bezae: An Early Christian Manuscript and Its Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 10–22, contains a discussion of the superscriptions, subscriptions and running titles of all Greek and Latin New Testament manuscripts dating before 500 C. E.; see particularly Table 2: “Running Titles in Greek New Testament Manuscripts Written before 500” (17–9). ⁵⁹ One fragment of P4 –P64 –P67 (parts of a single codex originally containing at least Luke and Matthew) reads ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ MAΘΘAIAN, which T. C. Skeat thinks is part of a flyleaf that comes from the beginning of the manuscript: “The Oldest Manuscript of the Four Gospels?” NTS 43 (1997): 18. Skeat maintains that this fragment was written in a different hand than the rest of the codex and the inclusion of the hooked mark between the two thetas does not become common until ca. 200 C. E., while he dates the codex itself to late second century (26–31). ⁶⁰ P. W. Comfort and D. P. Barrett, The Complete Text of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1999), 44; Petersen, “Evangelienüberschriften,” 254.

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Table B: Gospel Superscriptions61 Superscription

Textual Evidence

κατὰ Μαθθαῖον κατὰ Μᾶρκον κατὰ Λοῦκαν κατὰ ’Ιωάν[ν]ην εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μαθθαῖον

aB

εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μᾶρκον εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Λοῦκαν εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ ’Ιωάν[ν]ην

aBF aB aBFH P4 –P64 –P67 C E K M S U Δ Π Ω 2 33 565 700 788 1346 1424 A E H K L M S U W Γ Δ Θ Π Ω 1 2 13 28 33 124 565 700 1364 1424 A C E K L M S P U W Δ Θ Π Ψ Ω f 13 1 2 28 33 565 700 1346 1424 P66 P75 A C E G K L M S U W Δ Θ Ψ Ω f 13 2 28 33 124 565 1424

of the New Testament,62 in which they printed ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ on a flyleaf, followed by each of the Gospels, headed by what they considered the most original form of the superscriptions: ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΘΘΑΙΑΝ, ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ, ΚΑΤΑ ΛΟΥΚΑΝ and ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΗΝ, also used as running titles accompanying the texts of the four Gospels, with this comment: “In prefixing the name ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ in the singular to the quaternion of ‘Gospels,’ we have wished to supply the antecedent which alone gives an adequate sense to the preposition ΚΑΤΑ in the several titles.”63 Westcott and Hort were presumably following the precedent of Codex Vaticanus by using such short forms as ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΘΘΑΙΑΝ as running titles (in the case of Vaticanus, with ΚΑΤΑ on the verso and ΜΑΘΘΑΙΑΝ on the recto). In the case of those few manuscripts which have the short form for some or all of the supercriptiones (a B F H; B alone has the short form in subscriptiones), all have a collection of all four Gospels, suggesting that the longer forms preceded the shorter forms and that the shorter forms are intentional abbreviations of the longer forms.64 (2) Prior to the aggregation of the four Gospels, the oldest form of the titles of the Gospels was very probably the longer forms written as subscriptiones, but such subscriptions would only have been necessary when two or more Gospels written on papyrus rolls were in proximity. Only when the text of the Gospels began to be written on codices (the first extant example of which is the early second century C. E. codex fragment of the Gospel

⁶¹ Hengel, Die vier Evangelien, 87, n. 258. ⁶² B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek (2 vols.; Lon-

don: Macmillan, 1881). ⁶³ Westcott and Hort, Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek, 321. ⁶⁴ Petersen, “Die Evangelienüberschriften,” 254.

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of John, P52)65 would the subscriptiones have been replicated at the beginning in the form of superscriptiones. The priority of the long forms and their connection to the εὐαγγέλιον τετράμορφον constitute two linked paratextual features that have important implications for the generic understanding of the Gospels in the ancient church. Several problems present themselves: (1) What does εὐαγγέλιον in the longer subscriptiones and superscriptiones mean and where did it come from? (2) When were they first affixed to the εὐαγγέλιον τετράμορφον? There is widespread agreement that the term εὐαγγέλιον in the first sentence of Mark (1:1) is the source for its use in the longer form of the subscriptiones and superscriptiones: ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγέλιου ’Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Just how εὐαγγέλιον came to be used in this way is not easy to trace, since both Matthew and Luke chose not to use εὐαγγέλιον as a description of their narratives (Matthew substituted the term βίβλοϚ in Matt 1:1, while Luke described his work as a διήγησιϚ in Luke 1:1). Further, since Matthew and Luke were more comprehensive narratives that contained most of Mark together with many other Jesus traditions, both Gospels soon eclipsed Mark in popularity. The term εὐαγγέλιον first appears in a Christian context in the writings of Paul, where it is a theological abbreviation for “the proclamation of the saving significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus.” When Mark used εὐαγγέλιον in the incipit to his narrative about Jesus, he used it in the sense of “the complex of traditions about the words and deeds of Jesus.” This expanded meaning is evident in Mark 14:9 at the end of the story of Jesus’ anointing in Bethany by an unknown woman: “Amen, I say to you, wherever the gospel [τὸ εὐαγγέλιον] is proclaimed to the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”66 Here τὸ εὐαγγέλιον is clearly about Jesus and in this context means the oral or written proclamation of the entire story of Jesus including his teachings and stories about him including the passion narrative.67 Mark is certainly referring to his own narrative as τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, though not in the sense of a specific literary genre.68 The term τὸ εὐαγγέλιον (always with the definite article, because early Christians are referring to a known entity),69 occurs several times in the Didache and the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, all written within the first quarter of the second century, at about the time that the four Gospels were all in circulation and on the point of becoming a collection of closely similar texts. Scholars have tried to determine whether or not the relatively few occurrences of εὐαγγέλιον in these early Christian writings refer to an oral message or a written text. Yet we must ⁶⁵ B. Nongbri, “The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel,” HTR 98 (2000): 23–48. ⁶⁶ Whether Mark 14:8–9 were part of the original text or a later insertion is disputed. ⁶⁷ E. Lohmeyer, Das Evangelium des Markus (15th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959), 295. ⁶⁸ Collins, Mark, 643–4. ⁶⁹ εὐαγγέλιον occurs 76 times in the New Testament, but just twice in an anarthrous form.

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ask whether this either/or approach to the meaning of εὐαγγέλιον is not an anachronistic approach to understanding this important early Christian lexeme. Here is a list of the relevant texts with brief translations: Didache 8:2: “But as the Lord commanded in his gospel [ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ], pray in this way: ‘Our Father in heaven.’” Didache 11:3: “With respect to apostles and prophets, treat them in accordance with the command of the gospel [δόγμα τοῦ εὐαγγελίου].” Didache 15:3: “Do not reprove in anger, but in peace as you find in the gospel [ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ].” Didache 15:4: “But say your prayers, give alms and engage in all your activities as you have found in the gospel of our Lord [ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν].” Ignatius, Phld. 5:1: “When I flee to the gospel [τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ] as to the flesh of Jesus and to the apostles as to the presbytery of the church.” Ignatius, Phld. 5:2: “And we should also love the prophets, because their proclamation anticipated the gospel [τὸ εὐαγγέλιον] and they hoped in him and awaited him.” Ignatius, Phld. 8:2: “For I heard some saying: ‘If I do not find it in the ancient records, I do not believe in the gospel [ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ].’ And when I said to them, ‘It is written,’ they replied to me, ‘That is just the question.’ But for me, Jesus Christ is the ancient records; the sacred ancient records are his cross and death, and his resurrection, and the faith that comes through him – by which things I long to be made righteous by your prayer.” Ignatius, Phld. 9:2: “But there is something distinct about the gospel [τὸ εὐαγγέλιον] – that is, the coming of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, his suffering, and resurrection. For the beloved prophets made their proclamation looking ahead to him; but the gospel [τὸ εὐαγγέλιον] is the finished work that brings immortality.” Ignatius, Smyrn. 5:1: “They have been convinced neither by the words of the prophets nor the Law of Moses, nor, until now, by the gospel [τὸ εὐαγγέλιον] nor by the suffering each of us has experienced.” Ignatius, Smyrn. 7:2: “But instead pay attention to the prophets, and especially to the gospel [τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ], in which the passion is clearly shown to us and the resurrection is perfected.” Martyrdom of Polycarp 4:1 [3]: “Because of this, brothers, we do not praise those who hand themselves over, since this is not what the gospel [τὸ εὐαγγέλιον] teaches.” 2 Clement 8:5: “For the Lord says in the gospel [ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ], ‘If you do not keep what is small, who will give you what is great? For I say to you that the one who is faithful in very little is faithful also in much.”

For Bauer-Aland, all these passages are categorized as in transition to the later Christian understanding of εὐαγγέλιον as a book whose content deals with the life and teaching of Jesus.70 For Bauer-Danker (based in part on Bauer-Aland, but with considerable liberties taken), the occurrences of εὐαγγέλιον in the Didache, Ignatius, Phld. 8:2, Smyrn. 7:2, Mart. Pol. 4:1 [3] and 2 Clem. 8:5 all mean “the good news of Jesus,” that is, “details relating to the life and ministry of Jesus” with the suggestion that εὐαγγέλιον perhaps has this meaning in Mark ⁷⁰ W. Bauer, Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur (ed. K. Aland and B. Aland; 6th ed.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), col. 644.

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1:1.71 The entry concludes with the phrase “this usage marks a transition to” with the next subentry beginning, “a book dealing with the life and teaching of Jesus.” Kurt Niederwimmer hesitates between whether the Didachist means the viva vox evangelii or a written gospel for Did. 8:2; 11:3,72 while he thinks that Did. 15:3 and 15:4 may refer to a written gospel book, though it is not clear which one.73 For William Schoedel, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον in Ignatius regularly refers to the good news about Jesus rather than a written document.74 Particularly with regard to Ign. Smyrn. 5:1 and 7:2, Schoedel indicates that there is no reason to think that Ignatius is referring to a written gospel; for Ignatius τὸ εὐαγγέλιον probably consisted of a collection of traditions such as those found in Ign. Smyrn. 1:1–2 and 3:2–3 that represent the fulfillment of prophecy as well as confirm the reality of the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ.75 According to Buschmann, in Mart. Pol. 4:3, εὐαγγέλιον refers to the report about the suffering of Jesus in so far as it provides teaching and instruction for the imitation of the Lord.76 Both Lindemann and Pratscher argue that in 2 Clem. 8:5 (which has verbal similarities with Luke 16:10), the phrase ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελιῳ probably refers to an apocryphal gospel,77 while Donfried argues that εὐαγγέλιον here means “the oral message of salvation, rather than as a designation for a written book.”78 While here I am primarily concerned with the meaning of τὸ εὐαγγέλιον in the Apostolic Fathers, the opinions of various scholars just surveyed generally agrees with the detailed examination of possible traces of synoptic tradition in the Apostolic Fathers in the well-known study of Helmut Koester in which he concludes with the view that in most cases allusions to words of Jesus in the Apostolic Fathers are not based on written gospels.79 The use of the term τὸ εὐαγγέλιον in the selection of texts from the Apostolic Fathers briefly surveyed above, all dating to the first half of the second century, suggests that it is a false alternative to presuppose that τὸ εὐαγγέλιον must refer either to oral traditions about Jesus or a written text about Jesus. Τὸ εὐαγγέλιον in these texts refers to an authoritative complex of traditional teachings and activities of Jesus with an implicit indifference toward the issue of whether this complex was transmitted in oral or written form. The texts cited from the Didache, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, and 2 Clement all refer to the teachings of Jesus found ⁷¹ ⁷² ⁷³ ⁷⁴ ⁷⁵ ⁷⁶

BDAG 403. K. Niederwimmer, The Didache (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 135, 173. Niederwimmer, The Didache, 203–5. W. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 201. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 234, 242. G. Buschmann, Das Martyrium des Polykarp (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 127. ⁷⁷ A. Lindemann, Die Clemensbriefe (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 224; W. Pratscher, Der zweite Clemensbrief (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 131–2. ⁷⁸ K. P. Donfried, The Setting of Second Clement in Early Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 72. ⁷⁹ H. Koester, Synoptische Überlieferung bei den Apostolischen Vätern (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1957).

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in τὸ εὐαγγέλιον; most of the texts from Ignatius consider τὸ εὐαγγέλιον as a comprehensive entity that embodies the Christian message; Ignatius, Phld. 9:2 and Smyrn. 7:2 emphasize the coming, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus narrated in τὸ εὐαγγέλιον. Bauer-Aland are not very helpful when they define τὸ εὐαγγέλιον in the texts reviewed above as “Auf dem Übergang zu dem späteren christlichen Sprachgebrauch, für den εὐαγγέλιον Beziehung eines Buches ist, dessen Inhalt Leben und Lehre Jesu bilden.”80 While this is apparently intended to reflect the ambiguity of whether εὐαγγέλιον refers to an oral message or a written text, semantically it is not useful and for that reason I have tried to define the connotations of τὸ εὐαγγέλιον in a more appropriate manner. Bauer-Danker tries to solve this problem by defining εὐαγγέλιον as “details relating to the life and ministry of Jesus, good news of Jesus,” and only at the end of this category, as a concession to BauerAland is the phrase “This marks a transition to” inserted.81 The problem is the use of the term “Leben” or “life,” which can be understood either as (1) a chronological narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus or simply as (2) a collection of traditions containing the words and deeds of Jesus. The first understanding of “life” is moving in the direction of a genre of the sort exemplified by the Synoptic Gospels, while the second is the Christian designation for an authoritative reservoir of Jesus traditions that can take any one of a number of forms. The twelve texts from the Apostolic Fathers quoted and briefly discussed above all come from the first half of the second century, the period when it is likely that the longer form of the subscriptiones and superscriptiones of the Gospels were affixed to them when they began to be aggregated. The meaning of εὐαγγέλιον in the subscriptiones and superscriptiones is exactly the same as the meaning of εὐαγγέλιον in the twelve texts discussed above, namely “an authoritative complex of traditional teachings and activities of Jesus [with an implicit indifference toward the issue of whether this complex was transmitted in oral or written form].” This means that the use of εὐαγγέλιον in the subscriptiones and superscriptiones does not have a generic meaning. It also means that the subscriptio “The Gospel according to Thomas” is an appropriate designation for a collection of sayings of Jesus even though it has no narrative framework. 4.3. The Title of Mark The text of Mark is introduced by a metatextual statement, the predicate of an implied “this is,” providing important clues to the question of genre: “[This is] the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ [the Son of God].”82 There are at least five problems in this statement requiring discussion: (1) What does the ⁸⁰ Bauer-Aland, Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, col. 644. ⁸¹ BDAG 403. ⁸² The possible options in text, syntax, and punctuation are discussed in detail by M. E. Bor-

ing, “Mark 1:1–15 and the Beginning of the Gospel,” Semeia 52 (1990): 47–50.

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term ἀρχή mean in relation to τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ’Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ? (2) Does the entire phrase ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ’Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ apply to the entire text of Mark or is it limited to a relatively short introductory section, such as the socalled “prologue” in 1:1–15?83 (3) Why does the term “good news” (τοῦ εὐαγγελίου) have a definite article, even though nouns in ancient Greek book titles are typically anarthrous? (4) Is the phrase “of Jesus Christ,” which is part of the longer genitival phrase “the good news of Jesus Christ” (τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ’Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ) an objective or subjective genitive? As an objective genitive it could be translated: “the good news about Jesus Christ”; while a translation of the subjective genitive could be: “the good news proclaimed by Jesus Christ.” (5) Does the phrase “Son of God” belong to the original text? Though there is an enormous literature on these problems that cannot be put into play here, the following solutions seem to me to be the best options: (1) Grammatically, ἀρχή is a nominative absolute used in introductory material such as titles.84 Semantically, ἀρχή has eight distinct meanings in the NT,85 of which the most appropriate meaning for its occurrence in Mark 1:1 is “beginning,” defined as “a point of time at the beginning or a duration.”86 Some recent suggestions for translating ἀρχή, as “foundation,”87 or “norm” or “canon,”88 have no semantic basis, but are rather speculative pragmatic meanings with a negligible contextual basis. (2) The phrase ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ’Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ functions as the title of the entire text.89 (3) The phrase τοῦ εὐαγγελίου is articular because the author is aware of the fact that the audience is familiar with the “good news” to which he refers. (4) The genitive phrase “of Jesus Christ,” as unclear in Greek as it is in English, is a plenary genitive,90 intentionally ambiguous, so that the reader can construe it as referring either to Jesus Christ as the proclaimer or Jesus Christ as the proclaimed.91 (5) The phrase “Son of God” is probably not original, despite its relatively strong attestation, because it is far more likely that it was added by a pious scribe than that it was accidentally omitted by copyists.92 ⁸³ Boring, “Mark 1:1–15,” 53–9. ⁸⁴ D. B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testa-

ment (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 49–51. ⁸⁵ J. P. Louw and E. A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains (2 vols.; New York: United Bible Societies, 1988), 2:35. See the still valuable discussion in A. Wikgren, “ΑΡΧΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΥ,” JBL 61 (1942): 11–20. ⁸⁶ BDAG 137–8. ⁸⁷ L. Keck, “Introduction to Mark’s Gospel,” NTS 12 (1965–66): 352–70. ⁸⁸ Boring, “Mark 1:1–15,” 53. For Boring, ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ’Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ means “The rule, normative statement, for preaching the good news of Jesus Christ is the following narrative of the beginning and foundation for the church’s contemporary preaching of this message.” ⁸⁹ Those holding this opinion before 1942 are mentioned by Wikgren, “ΑΡΧΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΥ,” 11–12, a view which he claims has general agreement (15); Boring, “Mark 1:1–15,” 50–1. ⁹⁰ Wallace, Greek Grammar, 119–21. ⁹¹ R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 53. ⁹² The pros and cons are discussed briefly in B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (New York: United Bible Societies, 1971), 73.

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5. The Genre-Function of Mark 5.1. Genre-Salient Features When Mark was first written, the author provided it with a paratextual “frame” within which its generic potentialities could be realized by its readers,93 most prominently the “title” (or opening sentence) with which the text is introduced. Mark was written and read within a discourse community constituted by a cluster of what would later be called “Christian” churches, a minority group within a dominant Greco-Roman culture. Unlike Matthew, Mark was not modeled after a single identifiable generic prototype94 (theories of an Urmarkus or proto-Mark have not been widely accepted).95 Mark did use a variety of sources to construct his text and they have been the subject of vigorous research. While the longest single source was probably the Passion Narrative (parallels with the Johannine Passion Narrative indicate that this source was pre-Markan rather than a Markan creation, though this remains a moot issue), he also incorporated collections of miracle stories, conflict stories, and parables, a relatively long eschatological discourse (Mark 13),96 as well as individual miracle stories, conflict stories, parables, and the like. Mark transformed the sources he used (both oral and written) by enlarging the scale of even the largest of the constituent sources (Mark contains ca. 11,229 words, written on a papyrus scroll perhaps ca. 20 feet long) and ⁹³ G. MacLachlan and I. Reid, Framing and Interpretation (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1994). ⁹⁴ Though I am not using the term in that sense, the notion of a prototypical generic text or a schema that functions to define the features of a particular genre is a supposition of genre theorists influenced by cognitive psychology; see W. Hallet, “Gattungen als cognitive Schemata: Die multigenerische Interpretation literarischer Texte,” in Gattungstheorie und Gattungsgeschichte (ed. M. Gymnich, B. Neumann, and A. Nünning; Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2007), 53– 71 (specifically, p. 57). See also A. Garnham, Mental Models as Representations of Discourse and Text (Chichester: Ellis Horwood, 1987) and E. Rosch and C. B. Mervis, “Family Resemblance: Studies in the Internal Structure of Categories,” Cognitive Psychology 7 (1975): 573–605. ⁹⁵ As a way of solving the Synoptic Problem, several scholars have proposed the existence of a primitive form of Mark or Urmarkus, a hypothesis that has not proved generally convincing to the academy. One of the more recent forms of this hypothesis is that proposed by D. Burkett, Rethinking the Gospel Sources: From Proto-Mark to Mark (New York: T & T Clark, 2004). Burkett argues that Proto-Mark was subject to two revisions, Proto-Mark A (ca. 70 C. E.) and Proto-Mark B (ca. 75–85 C. E.); Proto-Mark A incorporated Q, M and other material and served as a source for Matthew, while Proto-Mark B, incorporating Q and L, served as a source for Luke. Canonical Mark was based on both Proto-Mark A and Proto-Mark B. Final forms of Matthew, Mark, and Luke appeared from ca. 80–100 C. E. ⁹⁶ The literature is extensive, so I can only refer to a few representative works such as P. Achtemeier, “Toward the Isolation of Pre-Markan Miracle Catenae,” JBL 89 (1970): 265–91; idem, “The Origin and Function of the Pre-Markan Miracle Catenae,” JBL 91 (1972): 198–221; H.-W. Kuhn, Ältere Sammlungen im Markusevangelium (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), and the survey article by W. R. Telford, “The Pre-Markan Tradition in Recent Research (1980– 1990),” in The Four Gospels 1992: Festschrift Frans Neirynck (ed. F. Van Segbroeck et al.; 3 vols.; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), 2:693–723.

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by providing both a comprehensive spatial and temporal framework for his story of Jesus and by linking units of tradition using a variety of sequencing techniques. Mark’s narrative is written in a strikingly paratactic style. Of a total of 589 sentences in Mark (though the punctuation in Nestle-Aland is not unproblematic), 369 sentences (62.64 %) begin with καί. John A. L. Lee (in a neglected article) has argued that the speeches of Jesus in Mark are sites where certain lexemes are located that in other contexts in first century C. E. Greek texts function as prestige features indicating formality and correctness in usage.97 According to Lee, Jesus in Mark speaks better, more formal Greek than is spoken by those around him and used by Mark in the narrative.98 None of the examples cited by Lee can plausibly be traced back to Aramaic or Hebrew and Lee suggests that these linguistic features were probably not added by Mark, since they do not occur in narrative sections of the text.99 The narrative is highly episodic and the constituent episodes exhibit a variety of literary forms characteristic of a secondary literary genre.100 Form critics understood many of the literary forms found in Mark as written forms of an originally oral tradition. While that may be true, the presence of such stereotypical forms in Mark should be construed from a literary perspective as type-scenes. The many type-scenes that Mark includes in his text constitute the evidence for his presentation of Jesus. The primary problem he has to deal with is that of linking the singular historical episodes (his primary sources) together to form a coherent argument. Mark was produced by a member of a particular discourse community and was intended for intramural consumption, though the community segment to which Mark addressed his text must be distinguished from that addressed by ⁹⁷ J. A. L. Lee, “Some Features of the Speech of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel,” NovT 27 (1985): 1– 26 (here p. 26). Examples of an elevated linguistic register found only in the speeches of Jesus in Mark: (1) μέν (… δέ): five occurrences (4:4; 9:12; 12:5; 14:21, 38); in three of these occurrences μέν is correlated with δέ in the best manner (12:5; 14:21, 38); (2) εὖ (obsolete by the first century C. E.; superseded by καλῶϚ): one occurrence (14:7); (3) ὦ (used in literary authors as a conscious prestige feature): one occurrence (9:19); (4) ἄν + indicative in the apodosis of an “unreal condition”: once in 13:20; with the indicative alone: once (Mark 9:42); (5) ἔξωθεν (in the original sense of “from outside” with the force of ἔξωθεν felt): twice (7:15, 18); (6) ἔσωθεν (in the original sense of “from inside” with the force of -θεν felt): twice (7:21, 23); (7) ὁράω (the present and imperfect are obsolete in the NT; typically replaced by βλέπω and θεωρέω): twice (1:44; 8:15); (8) θύραι (used of one door; equivalents using the singular are frequent, suggesting that the phrase ἐπὶ θύρα in 13:29 was obsolete and formal-sounding); (9) the optative was slightly archaic in the first century C. E. and elevated in tone; Jesus uses φάγοι in 11:14; οὐ μή (though common in the LXX [it occurs 800 times] was rare in other contexts and would have had a formal and dignified tone): nine times (9:1, 41; 10:15; 13:2, 19, 30, 31; 14:25, 31). There are several other lexemes more briefly discussed by Lee. ⁹⁸ Lee, “Some Features of the Speech of Jesus,” 6. ⁹⁹ Lee, “Some Features of the Speech of Jesus,” 26. ¹⁰⁰ C. Breytenbach, “Das Markusevangelium als episodische Erzählung. Mit Überlegungen zum ‘Aufbau’ des zweiten Evangeliums,” in Der Erzähler des Evangeliums: Methodische Neuansätze in der Markusforschung (ed. F. Hahn; Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1985), 137–69.

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Matthew (as we have argued above). The social context of Mark, that of the Christian church, provided the original readers and auditors with a framework within which Mark was interpreted. Despite numerous attempts to profile the community addressed by Mark the great diversity among scholars on this issue invalidates the entire enterprise. While Mark, Matthew, and the other two canonical Gospels were eventually read as part of early Christian services of worship (the earliest reference to the liturgical reading of the Gospels is Justin 1 Apology 67, written ca. 165 C. E.), there is no clear evidence for determining more specifically when, how, and by whom it was read. It is probably appropriate, however, to refer to the reading of Mark within the community as a performance. The author refers to the reader in just one enigmatic parenthetical remark in Mark 13:14, “Let the reader understand,” referring to the cryptic phrase “the abomination of desolation” (repeated verbatim in Matt 24:16), that was doubtless a crux interpretum for the original recipients. Mark is a secondary or complex genre (i. e., it functions as a host genre recursively constructed from a number of primary or simple genres)101 written in the narrative mode enabling readers and hearers to enter a textual world intended to be experienced as real.102 Further, Mark has an ideological or didactic function, a feature it shares with most ancient historical and biographical genres, though this function is not ethical so much as religious or philosophical. Mark writes in the third-person, conveying the comprehensive perspective of a detached observer. Within the framework of this third-person narrative, the author includes many primary nonliterary forms in which Jesus speaks in the first person. While most “identifications” of the genre of Mark are based on the assumption that specific genre-traits link Mark to a particular genre such as biography, history, myth, and the novel (to name four common proposals), we must be prepared to forego simplistic answers and entertain the possibility that Mark has been recycled from elements of several genres. Mark’s narrative is mimetic and the sequences of events and the interactions among the characters are largely plausible or realistic, though the narrative is punctuated with miraculous and supernatural features that give meaning to the whole story and in particular serve to validate the ultimate religious significance of its central character, Jesus Christ (this compound form of the name, common in the Pauline letters, occurs only in Mark 1:1). Mark’s narrative is designed to convey truth and meaning as well as authority, plausibility, and realism. While there is a fuzzy distinction between fiction and nonfiction in the literature of the ancient world, the distinction is still valid.103 Fiction is characterized both by its lack of relatedness to the real world ¹⁰¹ The distinction between primary and secondary genres was made by Bakhtin, “The Problem of Speech Genres,” in Duff, Modern Genre, 84–5. ¹⁰² On narrative as a mode, see J. Genette, The Architext: An Introduction (trans. J. E. Lewin; Berkely: University of California Press, 1992), 71. ¹⁰³ G. W. Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). See also M. Hayward, “Genre Recognition of History and Fiction,” Poetics 22

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and by the fact that its speech acts are non-illocutionary.104 Mark’s story narrates events that are presumed to have happened in the real world. 5.2. The Macro-Genre of Mark The real problem is that of understanding the macro-genre that Mark used in shaping his story of Jesus from the many sources available to him. Richard Burridge has presented one of the more carefully argued cases for identifying the macro-genre of Mark with Greco-Roman biography. Burridge maintains that Greco-Roman biography was a flexible genre and that the Gospels would have been broadly identified with that genre. Though differences exist between Greco-Roman biography and the Gospels, the similarities outweigh the differences. Both genres sustain a focus on the protagonist by naming him at the outset and by the frequency with which the protagonist is the subject of verbs. GrecoRoman biography concentrates on one individual, and shares a similar appearance, length, structure, mode of representation and units of composition.105 With regard to length, mode and scale of presentation, the Gospels and GrecoRoman biography are similar and are generically connected. Burridge’s arguments have not satisfied everyone. Michael Vines, for example, has two major objections to Burridge’s identification of Mark with biography: (1) Jesus’ activity is significant primarily as an earthly manifestation of divine presence and action (e. g., he received a divine commission from God to act as his agent [1:11; 9:7]; demons recognize in Jesus the power and authority of God [1:24; 3:11; 5:7]; the centurion at the foot of the cross recognizes Jesus’ special relationship to God).106 (2) Identifying Mark as Greco-Roman biography, according to Vines, is unable to account for the predictions concerning the eschatological Son of Man made by Jesus (8:38; 13:26; 14:62).107 Vines concludes: “Therefore, the content of Mark, with its themes of Jesus’ divine commission and his role as the eschatological Son of Man, exceeds the generic limitations of Greco-Roman biography.”108 He concedes, however, that Burridge might be right in saying that Matthew and Luke are linked to the genre of Greco-Roman biography.109 The problem with Vines’ critique of Burridge, however, depends on whether these distinctive features of Mark must be considered generically salient. (1994): 409–21. Hayward reports an experiment using 5–15 randomly selected sequential words from a history or fiction text (with no para-textual indicators) with 79.2 % accuracy at five words (this means that generically identifiable signals extend down to the micro-level of texts). ¹⁰⁴ Beebee, Ideology of Genre, 263, an idea based on R. Ohmann, “Speech-Acts and the Definition of Literature,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 4 (1971): 1–19. ¹⁰⁵ R. A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 189. ¹⁰⁶ Vines, The Problem of Markan Genre, 12. ¹⁰⁷ Vines, The Problem of Markan Genre, 12. ¹⁰⁸ Vines, The Problem of Markan Genre, 13. ¹⁰⁹ Vines, The Problem of Markan Genre, 10–11.

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As we have noted above, one feature of generic transformation includes “topical invention,” i. e., the addition of topics to the repertoires of a genre.110 Vines, however, assumes that Greco-Roman biography is a rigidly defined genre with no room for transformation. Vines is just one of a number of competent scholars who are not satisfied with understanding the genre of Mark as a type of Greco-Roman biography (e. g., Robert Guelich, Albrecht Dihle, M. Eugene Boring, and others). In his recent commentary on Mark, Boring lists five elements that set Mark apart from Hellenistic biographies:111 (1) The narrative juxtaposes pictures of Jesus as truly human and truly divine through the rhetorical device of the messianic secret. (2) The story of Jesus is the definitive segment of universal history, extending from creation to the eschaton; Jesus, the Christ and the Son of Man, has appeared in history and will appear again at the end of history as its goal and judge. (3) The main character is both a figure of the past as well as the present Lord of the community who still speaks; thus the drama has two levels. (4) The narrative is episodic not anecdotal, composed of units of tradition that had been used in the preaching and teaching of the gospel, placing Mark apart from other Hellenistic authors and making his narrative distinctive. (5) As Jesus had communicated the inexpressible reality of the kingdom of God in parables calling for decision by the hearer, so Mark wrote his Gospel pointing beyond itself and calling for participation and decision by the reader; Mark speaks of Jesus in the new narrative form of the extended parable. Boring’s articulation of the distinctive features of Mark are highly theological and are not all beyond criticism (his view of Mark as an “extended parable” violates an appropriate sense of scale; no parables are 11,229 words long). Like Vines, Boring’s criticism of the GrecoRoman biography proposal is based on an overly rigid conception of genre. 5.3. Mark as a Parody of Biography In response to the criticisms of categorizing Mark as biography by Vines and Boring, let me first make the point that Greco-Roman biography was written largely by and for members of the educated upper classes of Greek and Roman society, reflecting the humanistic values of those social strata. The central figures of such biographies were typically prominent representatives of ancient society, such as politicians, generals, philosophers, and poets, who were ideal embodiments of Greco-Roman social ethics and virtues. Mark, on the other hand, was obviously written in a much lower register of Koine Greek than most extant Greco-Roman biographies (compared, for example, with any of the biographies of Plutarch) and it also reflects the counter-cultural social and religious values of first-century Christians, often marked by a subversive rejection of the values of the dominant ¹¹⁰ Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 170–83. ¹¹¹ M. E. Boring, Mark: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 7–8.

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culture. In fact, the Gospel of Mark appears to have been written in reaction to Greco-Roman biography rather than as a simple emulation of it. That is, Mark can be understood as an intentional parody of the hierarchy of values that typically characterized Greco-Roman biography. The “use-value” of the Gospel of Mark (i. e., the ideological features that appealed to those for whom it was written), then, is such that it would have served as a foundation text for the discourse community within which it was written, validating and justifying the kind of Christian values that early believers readily understood as exemplified primarily in Jesus himself. Understanding the Gospel of Mark as a parody of Greco-Roman biography provides a reading strategy that makes sense of the major ways in which the author presents the story of Jesus. The features that Vines and Boring find in Mark but claim are absent from Greco-Roman biography, with the intention of disputing the view that Mark is a type of ancient biography, have an appropriate place in Mark if Mark is construed as parody of Greco-Roman biography. One rhetorical feature of the Gospel of Mark that has been increasingly studied in recent years is the author’s use of irony,112 and it is specifically irony that is one of the privileged rhetorical strategies of parody.113 Parody imitates earlier authors, specific texts, or types of text for the purpose of marking a difference or contrast at the macrocosmic textual level and is dependent for its effect on the reader’s ability to recognize the parodied original. Irony operates on a microcosmic semantic level by marking a difference or contrast between what is said and what is meant. Parody therefore imitates the generic features of the original text or type of text upon which the parody is based, and is best considered a mode rather than a genre.114 Although this proposal needs to be supported with the kind of detailed argumentation that is not possible in the present context, let me suggest a few features of Mark that support this view. If we regard Mark as a parody of GrecoRoman biography, the absence of a genealogy of Jesus and the fact that the story begins just as Jesus is entering into the short-lived public phase of his life make good sense. In Greco-Roman biography, a genealogy functioned to highlight the worthy pedigree of the subject of the biography. Jesus is presented without such a pedigree (at least by Mark), but is identified as extraordinary by John the Baptist (1:2–8) and by God through the divine voice, the words of the bat qol at the baptism of Jesus declaring that Jesus is his beloved Son (1:9–11). Vines emphasizes a contrast between Mark and Greco-Roman biography when he claims that ¹¹² J. Camery-Hoggatt, Irony in Mark’s Gospel: Text and Subtext (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); R. M. Fowler, Let the Reader Understand: Reader-Response Criticism and the Gospel of Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991). ¹¹³ L. Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (New York: Methuen, 1985), 52. ¹¹⁴ S. Dentith, Parody (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 37; R. L. Mack, The Genius of Parody: Imitation and Originality in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century English Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 8.

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“Whereas Graeco-Roman biography focuses on a social space that emphasizes connections with family, clan and polis, these elements are missing in Mark.”115 This critique misses the point: Jesus is repeatedly identified as “Jesus of Nazareth” (Mark 1:9, 24; 10:27; 16:6) and is called “the Nazarene” (Mark 14:67). When the mother and siblings of Jesus are mentioned (Mark 3:31–35), these common familial relationships were transformed by Jesus into metaphors for those who do the will of God, but in ways violating both Jewish and Greco-Roman conceptions of the moral responsibilities of grown males for their parents (traditional Jewish familial mores are reflected in Mark 7:10–13; 10:18–19). The followers of Jesus become a surrogate family and God is understood as the true father of Jesus (Mark 1:11; 9:7; 11:25; 14:36, 61), while Jesus’ disciples abandoned their own families to follow him (Mark 10:28–31). The central parody of all is of course the fact that the hero of the story is a crucified criminal, carried through in part with the parodic mention of the crown of thorns and the purple garment with which his captors clothe Jesus. The focus on the death of Jesus has its counterpart in the demand that disciples take up their cross and follow Jesus. One immediate objection to regarding Mark as a parody (a form of satire) is that it seems at variance with modern definitions of parody like that proposed by Wayne Booth: “the mocking imitation by one author of another author’s style.”116 The tone of the Gospel of Mark is serious, while parody can be irreverent, mocking, inconsequential and even silly. The term “parody” is a transliteration of the Greek literary term παρῳδία (first appearing in Aristotle’s Poetica), which referred to a narrative poem of moderate length, using the meter and vocabulary of epic, but with a light, satirical or mock-heroic subject.117 In modern times “parody” is typically used of an artistic composition in which the characteristic themes and style of a particular work or author are exaggerated or used of an inappropriate subject, especially for the purpose of ridicule.118 A basic and broad definition of parody has been proposed by Simon Dentith that allows for the possibility that a parody might be serious: “Parody includes any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice.”119

Vines, The Problem of Markan Genre, 123. W. Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 71–2. Dentith, Parody, 10. L. Brown, ed., The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 2:2105, s. v. “parody.” ¹¹⁹ Dentith, Parody, 9. ¹¹⁵ ¹¹⁶ ¹¹⁷ ¹¹⁸

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6. The Genre Function of Matthew 6.1. Matthew’s Transformation of Mark Many who discuss the genre of Matthew ignore the literary and social significance of the shared generic features of the two texts.120 Since genres are dynamic rather than static, the genre of Mark was transformed by the composition of Matthew (just as the genre of Mark and Matthew were changed by the composition of Luke and John). One striking feature of Matthew’s performance of his precursor text is that it did not result in the disappearance of Mark. The survival of Mark has one obvious implication: the segment of the Christian discourse community within which Mark arose was different than the specific discourse community for whom Matthew wrote. The survival of Mark, which is largely reproduced in Matthew in condensed form, is itself an argument for Streeter’s theory of local gospels, as well as an argument against Richard Bauckham’s view that each Gospel was written for the entire church,121 though attempts to construct profiles of the communities within which the Gospels arose have proven problematic.122 The literary dependence of Matthew on Mark is a datum of central significance for understanding the genre of Matthew. However it is that Matthew came to have access to a copy of Mark, it seems clear that the social context within which he reworked Mark was markedly different from the social context within which Mark itself was written. It is likely that the biographical parody constructed by Mark in dialog with and in reaction to existing biographical forms was not understood by Matthew, who apparently understood Mark as a biography of Jesus that transcended both Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds. The reason is simply that by creating a parody of Greco-Roman biography, Mark had expanded the repertoire of what was thought appropriate for biography. The models for his transformation of Mark consisted not only of the Gospel of Mark itself (which he apparently considered a βίοϚ), but also the general patterns of Greco-Roman biography, which included such conventional features as genealogies and birth narratives. Further, Matthew was obviously concerned with the ¹²⁰ G. N. Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992), 66, is one of the few to comment on this issue. ¹²¹ B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins, Treating of The Manuscript Tradition, Sources, Authorship, and Dates (London: Macmillan, 1924); R. Bauckham, “For Whom Were the Gospels Written?” in The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (ed. R. Bauckham; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 9–48. For a rebuttal of Bauckham’s theory, see Roskam, The Purpose of Mark, 17–22. Martin Hengel also argues that none of the canonical Gospels were written for a single community in The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Collection and Origin of the Canonical Gospels (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000), 106. ¹²² D. N. Peterson, The Origins of Mark: The Markan Community in Current Debate (Leiden: Brill, 2000).

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conclusion of Mark, which seems almost modern in its striking avoidance of a conventional closure. Matthew therefore concluded his transformation of Mark by including two appearances of the risen Jesus, one to the women who visited the tomb and one two the eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee. Even though Matthew is so closely modeled on Mark, one does not have to know Mark to understand Matthew, as its long neglect in the lectionary of the Western church attests. The relationship of Matthew to Mark can be discussed under the rubric of intertextuality, particularly since Matthew also incorporated other texts, specifically the saying source Q into his own textual project. Matthew’s text can also be regarded as a textual performance of Mark. One characteristic of new performances of existing genres is that each individual text to some extent modifies and changes the entire group of generically affiliated texts.123 Mark, Matthew’s intertext or precursor text, belongs to one or more genres so that its meanings do not belong to it alone. Matthew’s transformation of Mark does not closely conform to the typical strategies of generic transformation sometimes discussed by genre theorists (see above). Matthew makes little use of Mark in Matt 1–11 (only in 3:1–4:22 does he follow the order of Mark). Matthew 8–9 is particularly complicated, where Matthew combines Mark 1:40–2:22 and 4:35–5:43 with material from Q to create a new unit that is temporally and spatially united.124 It is not until Matt 12:1 that the First Evangelist takes over the sequence of material in Mark, beginning with Mark 2:23, without changing the narrative order and omitting very little, so that Matt 12:1–28:8 (with a long insertion of Matt 24:37–25:46 that included Q material in 24:37–41) consists of a rewriting of most of Mark supplemented with material from Q and Special M. 6.2. The Title of Matthew Like Mark, Matthew opens with a superscription lacking a verb and predicate: βίβλοϚ γενέσεωϚ ’Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ υἱοῦ Δαυὶδ υἱοῦ ’Αβραάμ, “Book of the origin of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” Though Matthew is dependent on Mark, he has introduced significant modifications. Matthew 1:1, like Mark 1:1, can be construed as the title of the entire text or for an initial segment (i. e., either 1:2–17 or 1:2–25).125 The two nouns ἀρχή (in Mark 1:1) and γένεσιϚ (in ¹²³ D. Fishelov, Metaphors of Genre: The Role of Analogies in Genre Theory (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 21. ¹²⁴ U. Luz, “The Miracle Stories of Matthew 8–9,” in Studies in Matthew (trans. R. Selle; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 221–40. ¹²⁵ Those who argue that Matt 1:1 functions as a title for the entire text include the following: W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Matthew (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 1:149–55; J. D. Kingsbury, Matthew: Structure, Christology, Kingdom (Philidelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 10, n. 54; M. Mayordomo-Marin, Den Anfang Hören (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 208–13; U. Luz, “Das Matthäusevangelium – eine neue oder eine neu redigierte Jesusge-

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Matt 1:1) share a semantic overlap; in appropriate contexts both can mean “beginning, origin.”126 Just as ἀρχή in Mark 1:1 is a double entendre that refers to an introductory section of the text or the entire text, so γένεσιϚ in Matt 1:1 is also a double entendre that refers both to an introductory section and to the entire text. The phrase βίβλοϚ γενέσεωϚ is found in Gen 2:4 and 5:1; in the first passage it means “history of the origin,” while in the second it means “genealogy.”127 Perhaps the most striking feature of Matthew’s title is the fact that he ignored Mark’s use of εὐαγγέλιον and omitted it entirely from the incipit to his narrative. This suggests that, when Matthew recycled Mark, εὐαγγέλιον had not yet become a designation for the reservoir of authoritative Jesus traditions that it shortly became in the Apostolic Fathers during the first half of the second century. Matthew uses the term εὐαγγέλιον just four times, three times in the stereotypical expression τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆϚ βασιλείαϚ (Matt 4:23; 9:35; 24:14), by which he specifies that the content refers not to the message about Jesus, but the message of Jesus (Matt 4:23; 9:35),128 which he regards as the message that should be proclaimed by the church (Matt 24:14). Apparently τὸ εὐαγγέλιον was a relatively unimportant term for the third evangelist also, since it is entirely absent from the Gospel of Luke and occurs just twice in Acts (15:7; 20:14). 6.3. Matthew’s Deconstruction of Q129 Matthew, like Luke, chose to incorporate many segments of the Q source into his rewritten version of Mark’s story of Jesus. While Matthew could have incorporated the Sayings Source into his narrative in a variety of ways, he chose to subordinate Q to the Markan narrative. Further, even though the Q documents used by Matthew and Luke were probably not identical, it is generally accepted that Luke preserves the original order of pericopes in Q. There are eight blocks of Q material in Matthew that are out of sequence with the sequence of Q material in Luke.130 Matthew has two techniques for incorporating Q into the framework of his rewritten narrative of Mark:131 (1) using a “block” technique, Matthew takes schichte?” in Biblischer Text und theologische Theoriebildung (ed. S. Chapman, C. Helmer, and C. Landmesser; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2001), 54. ¹²⁶ BDAG 111–2, 154. ¹²⁷ BDAG 154. ¹²⁸ U. Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary (trans. W. Linss; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989), 207. ¹²⁹ The term “deconstruction” was coined by Jacques Derrida in the 1960s as a technical philosophical term, but is here used in its more popular sense in English as “the selective dismantlement of building components,” rather than “to tear down, destroy.” ¹³⁰ (1) Matt 9:37–10:15 (= Q 10:1–12:1), (2) Matt 6:9–13 (= Q 11:1–4), (3) Matt 7:7–11 (= Q 11:9–13), (4) Matt 5:15; 6:22–23 (= Q 11:33–35), (5) Matt 10:26–33 (= Q 12:2–10), (6) Matt 6:25–33, 6:19–21 (= Q 12:22–34), (7) 24:23–51 (= Q 12:39–46), (8) Matt 13:31–33 (= Q 13:18–19). ¹³¹ See U. Luz, “Matthew and Q,” in Studies in Matthew, 45–50.

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over blocks of Q material, often changing the order that they had in Q; (2) using an “excerpt” technique, he uses individual sayings of Jesus found in blocks of Q material, which he locates in various places in his Gospel, treating Q as a quarry for sayings of Jesus. While Matthew treated Mark with integrity, he used the Q document as a collection of material for expanding and embellishing his reading of Mark.

7. Concluding Summary Since the 1970s genre criticism has become an increasingly attractive approach to the holistic understanding of the literature of the New Testament, particularly the Gospels. Form criticism, which opened new perspectives for understanding the pre-literary history of the transmission and development of gospel traditions, focused on describing and identifying the constituent units of Jesus tradition, but regarded the Gospels themselves as unique and unparalleled literary forms created by the early church. Redaction criticism, which became influential in the 1950s, tended to focus on the theology of the evangelists and began to regard them more as authors than editors by distinguishing tradition from redaction. When some of the weaknesses of form criticism and redaction criticism became increasingly evident beginning with the 1970s, New Testament scholars in the United States began to focus on holistic approaches to the Gospels, developing both narrative criticism and genre criticism based on theoretical directions and developments in contemporary secular literary criticism. Genre criticism and genre theory, which had begun to develop in significant ways during most of the twentieth century as a concern of literary criticism and literary theory, was expanded into “rhetorical genre studies” beginning with the 1980s as theorists began to regard all human communication as genre-bound, breaking down the artificial distinction between literary and nonliterary genres. Unlike proponents of narrative criticism, New Testament scholars with an interest in genre criticism have often tended to ignore developments in secular genre theory by relying on common-sense understandings of genre, which frequently tend to be Aristotelian in origin with the assumption of a relatively inflexible understanding of individual genres. Though genre theorists exhibit wide variety, developing genre theory has tended to accept a number of fundamental assumptions about the nature of genre criticism: (1) Genres are complex structures that must be defined in terms of three structural dimensions which often overlap and are given different emphases: the formal, the rhetorical (or functional), and the thematic (material or content). (2) Genres are structured categories with a hard core of prototypical members (but see point 3), but, when all examples of the genre are considered, have fuzzy

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boundaries making them resistant to definition. (3) Genres are dynamic rather than static entities that have no essence and which evolve or are transformed over time. The increasing number of texts that are associated with a particular genre incrementally serve to transform the entire genre. (4) Genres that continue in use are always in process of transformation, a process that has many different dimensions including combination, change of scale, change of function, parody, hybridization, combination and so on. (5) Writing and speaking are socially determined modes of communication that occur in a social context that can be designated a “discourse community.” (6) Individual texts signal their generic affinities by paratextual features such as titles, how they are presented in written form, the way in which they are written or printed, the material used in transmission, other written or oral texts with which they are closely associated, and so on. Paratextual features of written communications, such as are found the canonical Gospels, provide important clues for how the author and the earlier generations of readers understood the text. These paratextual features can include the ways in which the author labels a text, including the incipit that is used to introduce a text to its readership, the changing social contexts within which a text is read, and ways in which the text is interpolated, titled, expanded, or contracted. One of the more important textual features which were added to the Gospels are the subscriptiones or superscriptions that were added to the end and the beginning of the texts of the Gospels sometime during the early second century C. E. in order to distinguish them from one another during the process of aggregation, i. e., when the Gospels were collected and eventually formed a fourfold Gospel. Texts written on papyrus rolls often received a secondary title at the end of the text (the subscriptione) in addition to the incipit or opening sentence. When the codex was increasingly used as the format for early Christian literature during the second century, subscriptions were typically moved or repeated at the beginning of texts in accordance with the conventions associated with the codex. The longer forms of the subscriptiones or superscriptions have a strong claim to being older than the short forms, i. e., εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Μᾶρκον (“the Gospel according to Mark”) is more original than κατὰ Μᾶρκον (“According to Mark”). This textual decision makes it important to understand what εὐαγγέλιον meant to those who first affixed the longer form to the Gospels as well as to the next generation or two of Christian readers. The term τὸ εὐαγγέλιον occurs about a dozen times in the Apostolic Fathers and generally means “the authoritative complex of traditional teachings and activities of Jesus” (with an implicit indifference toward the issue of whether this complex was transmitted in oral or written form). Thus τὸ εὐαγγέλιον is not a generic term, either when it occurs in the Apostolic Fathers (during the first half of the second century C. E., contemporaneous with the affixing of the subscriptiones and superscriptions to the fourfold collection of Gospel texts) or in the incipit of Mark.

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Unlike Matthew, Mark was not modeled after a single identifiable textual prototype. Mark is an episodic text based on linking earlier oral and written gospel tradition into a relatively large-scale narrative that functions as a complex genre with an ideological function. While the genre of Mark is often identified by specific genre-traits that are linked to a particular genre (e. g., biography, history, myth, and the novel), it is possible that it has been recycled from features of several genres. Nevertheless the most convincing generic identification of Mark has been its association with Greco-Roman biography, a view carefully argued by Richard Burridge. The problems with identifying Mark as a development of Greco-Roman biography raised by several critics suggests that Mark is in fact a parody of ancient biography in which some of the stereotypical features of that genre are intentionally transgressed primarily by subverting the social values enshrined in typical performances of Greco-Roman biography. In so doing, Mark expanded the repertoire of what was thought appropriate for ancient biography. Parody is a macrotextual complement to the microtextual use of irony, which typically functions as a major rhetorical strategy of irony, and irony pervades the text of Mark as J. Camery-Hogatt, building on the work of earlier Markan scholars, has amply demonstrated. The genre of Mark was transformed by Matthew (unaware of its parodic character) by the addition of features more typical of Greco-Roman biography that had been avoided by Mark. The discourse community within which Matthew transformed Mark differed markedly from the discourse community of the latter. Like the incipit found in Mark 1:1, the incipit of Matthew functions as the title of the entire work, though Matthew (like Luke) self-consciously rejects the label εὐαγγέλιον used by Mark to characterize his work. One of the most striking features of Matthew’s transformation of Mark is his deconstruction of Q. For Matthew, the Q source became primarily a collection of material he would use to expand and embellish the Markan narrative.

4. Socio-Religious Location

Matthew and Mark: The Jewish Contexts Sean Freyne In this presentation I want to focus on a borderland that was both literal and metaphorical, namely, southern Syria/Phoenicia, a region where early Jesus-followers are deemed to have been active. This region is often identified in recent scholarship as the place of composition of both Mark and Matthew, but often, one suspects, faute de mieux, and with less than full conviction. Indeed, a survey of recent scholarship would suggest that with regard to Mark, at least, a concern for the date rather than the location is judged to be the more important issue facing the interpreter.1 Hence there is little need to explore further the issue of the geography of the first addressees of the work. The reasons for this hesitation are manifold, but especially the awareness of the problem of moving from the narrated world of the text to the actual world behind the text, in view of the ‘literary turn’ in gospel studies in the past few decades.2 The idea espoused by some scholars that behind every text there is a discrete community, hermetically sealed from all others and thus free to engage in its own myth-making in glorious isolation, is patently false. Such assumptions ignore, among other things, the degree of human interaction that occurred both intra- and inter-regionally, and the ways in which ethnic and religious connectivities were able to transcend political and social barriers. Before the enterprise of seeking a contextually plausible setting for our gospels is abandoned as useless and unnecessary, Synoptic scholars should at least consider the possibilities that recent archaeological and regional studies have to offer in providing interesting and challenging reading sites for the works that they engage with so diligently. My procedure will be, firstly, to take a closer look at the general region that is often described loosely as southern Syria, with particular attention to the problems that the Jewish inhabitants of the region encountered in the period immediately prior to and after the first revolt. Against this background I will then address the ways in which the two writings may have sought to negotiate the particular problems of that place and time, or perhaps better, explore how the particular exercises of myth-making that the authors of these two works engage in may become more intelligible by suggesting that they are addressing specific ¹ E.-M. Becker, Das Markus-Evangelium im Rahmen antiker Historiographie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 77–101; J. Riches, Conflicting Mythologies: Identity Formation in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 104 n. 84. ² J. R. Donahue, “Windows and Mirrors: The Setting of Mark’s Gospel,” CBQ 57 (1995): 1– 26.

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problems facing early Jewish Jesus-followers in different contexts within the general region, and at slightly different historical moments.

1. Southern Syria before and after the First Revolt Without attempting to detail the earlier history of the region, it is worthwhile remembering that Southern Syria/the Levant was always a contested area from the Amarna to the Roman period, and still is today. There were several natural reasons for this: it was a valuable corridor between the Mediterranean and the East, and fertile valleys with snow-capped mountains and rivers provided a plentiful supply of water. From earliest times we hear of different ethnic groups competing for these resources and control of the region, known from the Hellenistic times as Coele (i. e., ‘hollow’) Syria: Canaanites, Israelites, Arameans, and later, Phoenicians, Itureans, Greco-Egyptians, Syrians, Judeans, and Romans.3 On an East/West axis, the region stretched from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, at least ideally, but certainly to Damascus and its oasis, and on a North/South trajectory, it covered the region from the Pass of Hamath, where the Litani river rises to Kedesh of the Galilee, where the borders of political Galilee of Roman times began. In Israelite belief, as we shall discuss later, this whole region belonged to the allotted land, as various boundary descriptions in the Hebrew Bible clearly indicate (Ezek 47:15; Josh 13:2–6; Num 34:7–9). On the eve of the first revolt, the southern part of this area was ruled by Agrippa II, the last of the Herodian client kings, who had inherited the territories that Augustus had bequeathed to his grandfather, Herod the Great: Gaulanitis, Batanea, Trachonitis, and Auranitis east of the Jordan – the southern part of the Iturean kingdom – and Ulatha and Paneas, on the west of the Jordan. The Phoenician city-states of Akko/Ptolemais, Tyre, and Sidon formed the western borders of Agrippa’s territory. These latter two had a history of encroachment from the coastal plain into the interior to varying degrees at different periods. Farther north in the Lebanon the former Iturean principality had been carved up into several lesser territories associated with various cities (Akra, Chalcis, and Abila) after the death of Agrippa II, probably in 92 C. E.4 This pattern of multiple forms of governance is typical of the Roman principle of ‘Divide and Rule,’ which applied also in Galilee. There Nero had partitioned the province in 54 C. E., the western part being included in an enlarged procuratorship of Judea and the eastern section (Tiberias, Tarichaeae, and their territories) added to Agrippa II’s kingdom. Farther north, of course, was the Roman province of Syria and Cilicia, ³ Strabo, Geogr. 15.1, 2.34. ⁴ A. M. H. Jones, “The Urbanisation of the Iturean Principality,” Journal of Roman Studies

21 (1931): 267; W. Schottroff, “Die Ituräer.” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 98 (1992): 137–45.

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which seems to have been a single province until Vespasian divided them in 72 C. E. as part of his eastern settlement (cf. Gal 1:21; Acts 15:23; 27).5 After the first revolt, the Flavians embarked on an aggressive policy of urbanization, especially after the death of Agrippa II. This policy was continued subsequently by the Antonine and the Severan emperors, in the anticipation that cities could be trusted to be loyal to Rome, since they had more to lose, whereas opposition and revolt was traditionally associated with the countryside. This was the case in Judea with Sepphoris, and to a lesser extent Tiberias, during the first revolt. However, this urbanization policy was subject to local conditions. Thus, apart from Caesarea Philippi, the territory of Agrippa was largely rural, and hence a policy of administration through local villages within a larger eparchic system was undertaken. Thus the epithet μητροκωμία appears on inscriptions for four different villages in Batanea, probably signifying their role as administrative centers within a particular district. West of the Jordan also the term Τετρακομία was later applied to Upper Galilee.6 Both regions had been allowed to preserve their village culture, presumably because of the strong Jewish preference for a village ethos, originating with the Maccabean conquest in the north, and continued subsequently by Herod the Great when he introduced both Idumean and Babylonian Jews in the territories which he had received from Augustus (Jos A.J. 16.285; 17.23–31).7 In Auranitis two places, Qanatha and Soada/Dionyias, had the title πόλιϚ from early in the second century, the former appearing in some lists of Decapolis cities. However, this designation can only have been honorific since a number of these places bearing this designation are only five miles apart, according to Jones.8 They were unlikely therefore to have been allotted large territories with dependent villages after the manner of the typical Hellenistic idea of the city-state. Jones has been able to present a useful picture of the administrative structure in the villages of Auranitis, based on the rich epigraphic evidence from the region. In many respects their structure resembled that of an urban context, with several technical terms such as κοινόν and δῆμοϚ being used, and there is often reference to public buildings typical of the city: theatres, baths, reservoirs, fountains, temples, and most interesting of all, inns, which suggest a lively movement of traders and other travellers in the area. Clearly we are not talking here of hamlets, yet the use of the two terms κώμη and πόλιϚ must point to some difference. On the assumption that the Itureans were originally a nomadic people who roamed the steppe lands of southern Syria,9 Jones has suggested that, while they ⁵ M. Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark (London: SCM Press, 1985), 42, 158 and 245 n. 991. ⁶ M. Avi Yonah, The Holy Land from the Persian to the Arab Conquest (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1966), 115 and 133. ⁷ Avi Yonah, The Holy Land, 112. ⁸ Jones, “Urbanisation,” 274. ⁹ This assumption is not universally accepted today, since Josephus and other ancient writers use the name ‘Arab’ in a non-ethnic sense. Thus, Itureans as the inhabitants of Coele-Syria

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settled down to the urban way of life, in some instances traces of a tribal past can be detected from the inscriptions.10 This would suggest a greater degree of homogeneity in terms of cultural and religious affiliations, presumably. Josephus and archaeology are helpful with regard to Jewish villages in the region. Thus, we hear of the Babylonian Jews whom Herod had planted in this region living in well-stocked villages at the time of the revolt, but choosing to retreat to Gamla because of its defences against the advancing Romans (Vita 58). Elsewhere, Sepphoris is chided for not supporting the Jewish cause during the revolt, situated as it was in the center of Galilee and surrounded with strong villages (Vita 346). Excavations at Gamla and Yodefat show how self-sufficient such larger villages were in terms of local production of basic household wares, oil and olive presses, and defence systems, and by occasional signs of decorative elements in a few elite houses as well as public places of worship – synagogues in the case of Jewish villages, and small temples in pagan ones. Presumably these conditions are typical of the larger μητροκομία we hear about in Batanea and Auranitis also.11 The urban context was more mixed than that which was obtained in the villages, both in terms of social stratification and ethno-cultural allegiances. Perhaps a model dealing with the cultural role of cities, which I employed in a previous study, could be applied to our present discussion of villages and cities in this region.12 According to the model, heterogenetic cities introduced aspects alien to the hinterland in terms of personnel, culture, and ways of relating to the countryside, whereas orthogenetic ones were much more sensitive to local and indigenous concerns, thus explaining why villages, especially Jewish ones, may be distinguished on the basis of distinctive ethnic identity markers. Village life continued to be characteristic of the Jewish ideal, as can be seen by the number of thriving villages in both Galilee and the Golan in the Talmudic period.13 Despite the tradition of cities being viewed as the sources of evil and conflict, as exemplified by Cain’s sin (Gen 4:17; Josephus, AJ. 1.60–66), since the beginning of he Hellenistic age Jews had flocked to the major cities such as Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome. However, by living in separate areas they replicated the village pattern, thereby maintaining some sense of their roots but also becoming the object of ridicule and suspicion by the other more cosmopolitan inhabitants. in Roman times may well have Syrian, rather than Arabian background. Cf. E. Myers, The Itureans: Challenging Misconceptions and Evaluating the Primary Sources (Ph. D. diss., The University of Toronto, 2007), 236–59. ¹⁰ Jones, “Urbanisation,” 269 ff.; W. H. Wadddington, Inscriptions Greques et Latines de la Syrie: Recueillies et Expliquées (Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot Freres, 1870), nos. 2393 and 2396. ¹¹ Jones, “Urbanisation,” 270. ¹² S. Freyne, “Urban-Rural Relations in First-Century Galilee: Some Suggestions from the Literary Sources,” in Galilee and Gospel: Collected Essays (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 45– 58. ¹³ D. Urman, The Golan: Profile of a Region During the Roman and Byzantine Periods (Oxford: BAR, 1985).

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This situation was naturally exacerbated when Jews, living “in cities not their own” – as the decree of the Emperor Claudius to the Alexandrians put it – had upset the delicate balance of power by introducing kinsmen from the countryside into the city. Thus, during the procuratorship of Felix, in the heightened atmosphere leading up to the revolt, there were continued disturbances between Jewish and Syrian inhabitants of Caesarea Maritima with regard to who controlled the city. Josephus identifies the Syrians as Greeks and alleges that they could rely on support from the army, since the bulk of the Roman troops in the city were levied in Syria (B. J. 2.266–70). Somewhat later, Josephus gives a rather coloured account of a series of Jewish attacks on the inhabitants of all the Greek cities in the periphery of the Jewish lands, beginning in Perea and the Decapolis, moving north to encircle Galilee, before coming south through the coastal towns as far as Gaza. Both the highly emotive language of the account, the scale of the operation, as well as the order of the cities suggest that this is a literary creation to enhance the heroic qualities of the Jewish people by the general turned historian (B. J. 2.457–60). Nevertheless, there is nothing improbable about the atmosphere of hostility that did exist, and Josephus does also include an account of Greek counter-reprisals against the Jews in the various cities in the region, mainly in the north, but significantly noting that Antioch, Sidon, and Apamea did not engage in such tactics (A. J. 2.477–80).14 What is noteworthy in these accounts is Josephus’ repeated mention of Syria and Syrians in connection with the various recriminations that occurred in this period (B. J. 2.266, 461). Most remarkable is the account of the treatment of Jews in Syria itself, where he claims that a reign of terror was conducted by the inhabitants of all the Syrian cities, with a view to getting rid of the Jews, only to find that there were numerous Judaizers in their midst, whose loyalty was deeply suspect (B. J. 2.461–7). A little later a similar situation is reported for Damascus, where many of the women were Jewish sympathisers, and the men folk were afraid to inform their wives that they had in fact conducted a pogrom against the Jews in that city (B. J. 2.560f; Vita 27).15 Yet Josephus suggests that Jews and Syrians could live side by side in Philip’s territory without any overt animosity (B. J. 3.58), and he also reports that somewhat earlier there was rejoicing in Syria when the young Herod got rid of the brigand chief, Hezechias, who had terrorized the borderland between upper Galilee and Syria (B. J. 1.205). Furthermore, on the death of Herod the Great, a Jewish delegation informed Augustus that they would prefer to have their country united to Syria rather than be ruled over by one of Herod’s sons (A. J. 17.314; ¹⁴ S. Freyne, “The Revolt from a Regional Perspective,” in The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History, and Ideology (ed. A. M. Berlin and J. A. Overman; London: Routledge, 2002), 47–9. ¹⁵ G. Theissen, The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic Tradition (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2004), 268–70; M. Hengel and A. M. Schwemer, Paulus zwischen Damaskus und Antiochen: Die unbekannten Jahre des Apostels (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 80–100.

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18.2). In fact ten years later with the deposition of Archelaus in Judea, their wish was partially realized when Judea was made a Roman procuratorship under the governor of Syria.16 Despite all the hostility of the pre-revolt period both in Palestine and its surroundings as well as in Syria proper, Josephus ends his account of the Jewish War by saying that Jews were particularly numerous in Syria, where by virtue of proximity the two peoples were intermingling (B. J. 7.43). We seem to be faced with an ambiguity, therefore, with regard to Jewish-Syrian relations. On the one hand deep-seated animosities of a religo-cultural kind prevailed, and yet there are long-lasting historical and geographical links that brought the two territories and their populations very close together. This closeness was not merely a case of geographical proximity but consisted of actual intermingling, an intermingling which from the Jewish side at least had deep roots. Thus, in the Contra Apionem Josephus has no difficulty in interpreting Herodotus’ claim that “the Syrians of Palestine practice circumcision” as a reference to the Jews (C. Ap. 1.169, 171). Philo also is aware of the close associations, claiming that Agrippa I was a Syrian and ruled over a large part of Syria (Flacc. 39). What is the basis for these Jewish claims that link Jews and Syrians so closely, while at the same time recognising the deep-seated Syrian animosity and suspicion of the Jews? One element of a plausible answer was the fact that Jewish claims were based on much older Israelite ideas about the extent of the allotted land, which in later times began to play an important role in Jewish expressions of restoration. Thus according to 2 Sam 8:1–14, David conquered or received submission from all the various kings between Edom and Damascus and as far north as Hamath on the Orontes. As mentioned previously, these limits of the greater Israel (or some variants of them) recur in various sections of the Hebrew Bible: the poetic and prophetic literature, such as Ps 72:8; Amos 6:14; Ezek 47:15; Zech 9:10; Mic 7:12; the narrative material: Josh 1:4; 13:2–7; Num 34:7–9; 2 Kgs 14:25, 28; Sir 44:21 f.17 On the other hand the animosities of the Greek cities towards the Jews, which Josephus describes, has its most likely background in the Maccabean wars of conquest, which were inspired by the ideology of the greater land and the removal or conversion of all non-Jewish peoples from the conquered territories (1 Macc 11:63–74; 15:33; A. J. 13.257–58, 318 f., 397). The focus on southern Syria as the possible reading site for one or both of the texts under consideration has raised a number of important issues that need to be taken into account in any consideration of the first two gospels in their Jewish contexts. Foremost of these is the claim that ‘Israel’ reached into this territory, and therefore all movements of restoration were likely to see this as missionary terrain, in terms not just of Gentiles (Syrians), but also of Jews. In short, there ¹⁶ For a full discussion of these titles and the situation in Judea until the time of Agrippa I (41 C. E.), cf. W. Eck, Rom und Judaea (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 23–45. ¹⁷ M. Hengel, “Ἰουδαία in der Geographischen Liste Apg 2, 9–11 und Syrien als ‘Grossjudäa’,” Revue Histoire Philosophie Religieuses 80 (2000): 51–68.

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was a geographical as well as a temporal dimension to early Christian aspirations, on the basis of their Jewish heritage. Another issue that emerges for consideration is the urban/rural divide and how this might have affected the Jesus movement also. A third factor is the endemic animosity of the Syrians towards the Jews, and how this might play itself out with regard to the Jesus followers. In the reading exercise that I propose to do in the second part of this paper these issues will be the main focus of attention, but given the rapidly changing environment both of the Jewish population and the Roman imperial presence, attention to the date of each document will also be crucial to the exercise.

2. Reading Mark and Matthew in Syrian Contexts 2.1. Mark Before engaging directly with the gospel text I should indicate my working hypotheses with regard to Mark. Firstly, I prefer the option of an Eastern Mediterranean location, rather than Rome for its composition.18 Furthermore, based on the work of several scholars, I would want to date the gospel to the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the temple, and claim that the problems this generated for Palestinian Jesus-followers as well as for other Judeans loomed large on Mark’s horizon.19 I use the phrase ‘Palestinian Jesus-followers’ advisedly, because I want to avoid the debates about Galilean versus Jerusalem Christianity, by suggesting that there were indeed groups of Jesus followers in both Galilee and Jerusalem prior to the revolt.20 In supporting this claim I basically agree with, but would want to considerably modify, the claims of some recent discussions in Q scholarship regarding the Q community in Galilee.21 On the other hand Jerusalem Jesus-followers must also have had a ‘Galilean’ influence (whatever that might mean) in the persons of their leaders Peter and James, the brother of Jesus. While I do not agree with Burton Mack’s overall profile of Galilee, I am impressed by his discussion of Mark’s knowledge and use of Q, and the implication of this for both documents, as I will later suggest.22 My second working assumption has to do with the legitimacy of moving from the Markan text to the world behind the text. I do not want to leave myself open ¹⁸ Theissen, Gospels in Context, 236–58. ¹⁹ Becker, Das Markus Evangelium, 80–100; J. Marcus, “The Jewish War and the Sitz im

Leben of Mark,” JBL 111 (1992): 441–62. ²⁰ S. Freyne, “The Geography of Restoration: Galilee-Jerusalem, Relations in Early Jewish and Early Christian Experience,” NTS 47 (2000): 289–311, contra A. Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 101 and 658–67. ²¹ Contra J. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-Examination of the Evidence (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000), 170–97 and J. Kloppenborg, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 171–5. ²² B. Mack, “Mark and Q,” Semeia 55 (1991): 15–39.

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to the criticism that seeking to isolate a community from the textual indicators involves engaging in allegorical readings. And yet I do believe that the Markan text is a window, not a mirror. The difficulty is to achieve a critical correlation between the world of the text and the world behind it, and for this reason I have devoted a considerable part of this paper to a discussion of the political, social, and cultural realities in what I have been loosely describing as ‘Southern Syria,’ since this, I believe, is the world in which Mark wants to situate his story. In an important article Cilliers Breytenbach poses a relevant question as follows: How can our understanding of the spatial aspect of the world that can be constructed from the text of Mark benefit from taking cognisance of the relevant images of the Galilean localities that historians construct from the remains of Galilee that have survived the last two millennia?23 2.1.1. Markan geography When Mark writes at 1:28 that ἀκοὴ about Jesus’ deeds went everywhere throughout “the surrounding region” of Galilee, was he just making a generalized remark, or is there something more to his statement? As is well known, the name ‘Galilee’ means ‘circle,’ so in specifying the sphere of hearsay about Jesus further by adding περίχωρον τῆϚ ΓαλιλαίαϚ the author seems to be pointing the reader to an outer rim or circuit of Galilee. The subsequent narrative will fill out this impression further. It is generally accepted that Mark 3:7–12 is a Markan composition. Vincent Taylor rightly notes that vv. 9–12 prepare for later uses in the narrative of the boat, and the exorcisms of Jesus, but what about the geographical list of vv. 7–8?24 Despite some textual difficulties, it is in fact quite significant in relation to Jews and Gentiles within the narrative: Galilee itself, Judea (with Jerusalem, as center, given special mention), Idumea (which had been Judaised in the Maccabean times), and Perea are all mentioned. It thus corresponds with the territories that were designated as Jewish by Pompey a century earlier when carving up the Hasmonean state. At the end of this list of Jewish places Tyre and Sidon are added, thereby broadening the horizon of the reader. These of course were Phoenician cities that played an important role in the administrative control of the region at the time that Mark was writing, and they will emerge later in the narrative, specifically in the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman and in the summary of Jesus’ journey throughout this whole περίχωρον (Mark 7:24–31). Significantly, the summary of Mark 3:7f. is followed immediately by the call of the Twelve at Mark 3:13–19. This narrows once more the focus of Jesus’ ministry to Israel’s restoration and the implications of that eventuality for bordering places also. These were often ignored completely in such maps of Jewish restora²³ C. Breytenbach, “Mark and Galilee: Text World and Historical World,” in Galilee through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures (ed. E. Meyers; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 75–86. ²⁴ V. Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark (London: Macmillan, 1963), 225–8.

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tion geography as in Ezek 47:15–17. There the northern boundary is said to run from the Great Sea to the Euphrates, omitting the Phoenician presence, even though Ezekiel is well aware of Tyre’s relationship with its Israelite hinterland (Ezekiel 27). This tension between the reality of surrounding peoples and Israel’s restoration hopes surfaces directly in the story of the woman, Syro-Phoenician by birth, whom Mark pointedly describes as Greek, recalling Josephus’ identification of Syrians as Greeks in Caesarea and bitter opponents of the Judeans. Yet she is able to convince the Jewish healer, Jesus, that she, as a non-Jew, should also share in the gifts of God’s βασιλεῖα, which he was now enacting. This successful challenge from an outsider, and a woman to boot, begins a new phase in the travels of Jesus as he moves on what some have wrongly seen as an improbable journey that takes him via Sidon to the midst of the Decapolis – through non-Jewish territories, but with many Jewish inhabitants in the villages, nonetheless.25 Mark does not specify whether or not this journey was the opening of the mission to Gentiles or directed at Jewish villages in that region. On a previous visit to the χώρα of the Decapolis at Mark 5:1–19, the raving demoniac who is restored to his right mind is told to go and tell his own people what the ΚύριοϚ (i. e., ‘the God of Israel’?) had done for him, when he asks to join Jesus’ retinue (v. 19f). Mark, it would seem, is quite aware of the Jew/Gentile divide as this expressed itself geographically, but his narrative seems to operate with a more tolerant notion of how these differences might be bridged, but without entirely dissolving them either. Thus in his reply to the Syro-Phoenician woman, Jesus is made to echo the salvation-historical perspective of Jew first, as the πρώτον of 7:27 suggests, a point of view that Matt 15:23 will sharpen considerably. Returning to Breytenbach’s formulation of the question as to how knowledge of the actual historical realities might assist in understanding the narrative, it seems clear that the reality of Jews and non-Jews as this was known from our historical survey was a present reality for Mark as he writes his narrative. While Tyre and Sidon loom largest on the horizon, thus at least raising the question as to where the author himself might have been located, the Decapolis also comes in for favorable treatment from the main character. Thus for Mark, it would seem, there was hope that relationships might play themselves out in a different manner than the ways in which Josephus describes the situation in Syria, the memory of which must have been very much alive at the time when this narrative was being written.

²⁵ F. Lang, “‘Über Sidon mitten ins Gebiet der Decapolis:’ Geographie und Theologie in Markus 7,31,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 94 (1978): 145–59; T. Schmeller, “Jesus im Umland Galiläas: Zu den markinischen Berichten vom Aufenthalt Jesu in den Gebieten von Tyros, Caesarea und der Decapolis,” BZ (1994): 44–66.

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2.1.2 Mark and the village culture of the north Howard Clark Kee attempted to locate Mark’s gospel in northern Palestine on the basis of a sociological reading of the text. While Kee correctly points to the rural emphasis of Mark, his analysis of this dimension of the narrative-world, based on linguistic and social aspects, does not take sufficient account of how the urban/rural divide played itself out in this particular setting.26 Let us first see how Mark represents this aspect before returning to our earlier discussion of the actual issues involved. Mark had his favorite locations for presenting Jesus at work – house, desert, lake and lakeshore, “way” – but none of these is ever located in a city. Even his encounter with the blind Bar Timaeus at Jericho takes place after Jesus had passed through the place without any event being narrated as happening in Jericho itself (Mark 10:46). The summary of Mark 6:56 might appear to break this pattern: “Wherever he entered villages, (κώμαι), cities (πόλειϚ) or fields (ἄγροι) they placed their sick in the market places (ἀγόραι), and begged that they might touch the hem of his garment; and as may as touched it were healed.” However, the mention of πόλειϚ here is quite untypical of Mark’s characteristic description. Elsewhere κώμαι (Mark 6:6, 56; 8:23, 26, 27) or κώμαι και ἄγροι (6:36) are the terms that he uses, with the once off mention of the rare κωμοπόλειϚ (1:39). In this regard Mark’s treatment of Jesus’ journey to the north is highly significant: He visits the villages (κώμαι) of Caesarea Philippi but not the city itself. Indeed, so well is the reader prepared for this pattern that it almost goes unnoticed that, when Jesus reaches Jerusalem, he visits the temple briefly but then withdraws to the village of Bethany (Mark 11:2, 11). What is the significance of this pattern as far as the narrative is concerned? In general, it fits the image of the Markan Jesus shunning the enthusiastic attention of the crowds and his desire to avoid the mindless adulation that goes with such gatherings. Noteworthy in that regard is the way in which the stories of his healings of deafness and blindness depict him as taking the person aside and performing the miracle away from the crowd (Mark 7:33; 8:23). On the other hand the over-enthusiastic sons of Zebedee are reminded that the journey to Jerusalem was not a triumphant procession of the glorious king about to take over his city, but a pilgrimage that would lead to rejection, suffering, and death by crucifixion outside the walls (Mark 10:35–45). While the idea is never explicitly stated, it would not be misconstruing Mark’s intention to suggest that for Jesus’ true messianic status to be understood all pretensions of power and prestige needed to be abandoned; this messiah enters Jerusalem, not as somebody looking for earthly power, but riding on a peasant’s beast of burden, a donkey. As already mentioned, the countryside, not the cities, were the main source of resistance to Rome during the revolt, and such strong villages as Gamla and Jota²⁶ H. C. Kee, Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark’s Gospel (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1977), 100–5.

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pata in the north were made to bear the brunt of the Roman onslaught. The homogeneity of village life appealed to Jewish nationalist ideology, and yet in Mark’s account Jesus is never made to endorse village life as such. Rather his movement is between villages, refusing to be “captured” by any one place, e. g., Capernaum (Mark 1:35–39), and rejected in his home village of Nazareth (6:1– 6). Significantly, neither Sepphoris nor Tiberias are even mentioned in the narrative, nor for that matter the strongly nationalist centers of Jotapata or Gamla. Against this background, Mark’s portrayal of the Jesus movement as a village rather than an urban based phenomenon had a provocative, even revolutionary dimension to it. Yet in terms of Jewish restoration values of justice and sharing, a village culture was more likely to provide the example of these values in action than the more cosmopolitan urban ethos. As previously mentioned, in the Jewish tradition cities were seen as centres of vice and brigandage, originating with Cain’s desire for power and domination over his kin (A. J. 1.60–6). Thus, Mark’s narrative, however ‘removed’ from the actual realities on the ground the picture may appear to be, does yield up interesting aspects of Jewish hopes and fears, when read in that setting. These were very real in the wake of the destruction of the holy city and the loss of this center of divine presence, which had served Israel so well for so long.27 According to Josephus, John of Gischala in upper Galilee led a Galilean battalion to Jerusalem for the last stand against the Romans, something that is indicative of the attachment to the symbolic center that many Galilean Jews had, despite Josephus’ attempts to pillory John and his followers (B. J. 4, 121–7). From this perspective Mark’s historicomythic narrative addresses a genuine sense of trauma and loss for those Galilean Jews – Jesus followers and non-Jesus-followers alike – who had survived the Roman purge. At the same time his narrative opened up the possibility of access to the divine presence for those Jewish sympathisers who lived in the region and whose interest in the God of the Jews had made them, too, the target of GrecoSyrian animosity. 2.1.3. Mark and Persecution Proponents of a Roman origin for the gospel of Mark have little difficulty in identifying the setting of the Gospel in the Neronic persecution of the Roman Christians, as described by Tacitus. Martin Hengel is quite definite that since Mark 13, 6–13 in particular would seem to reflect the situation of Christians in Rome under Nero, the Gospel should be read in the light of the persecutions of the Christians by that emperor, the civil war following his death, and the strange belief of a Nero-redivivus, as the Antichrist returning from the East. The description of the stages of the persecution in v. 9 corresponds more or less with the opposition to Christians described in Acts – condemnation by Jewish authorities, followed by the traditional Jewish punishment by flogging, and finally being ²⁷ Riches, Conflicting Mythologies, 145–79.

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brought before various Roman officials, such as procurators, governors, or the Emperor himself.28 More recently, the case for a Roman setting has been argued in terms of the threat of crucifixion for Jesus-followers (Mark 8:38), resulting from a formal trial, but as Yarbro-Collins points out this type of execution was not confined to Rome, as the case of Jesus makes clear.29 Likewise, Theissen argues that the fears generated by the idea of Nero’s return from the East were as likely to apply in Syria as in Rome.30 Thus it is important not to isolate a single passage or verse and seek to build a particular case on that without seeing the way in which hostility and persecution are represented in the whole work. In this respect it is noteworthy that apart from the mention of the alliance between Pharisees and Herodians at Mark 3:6 and the ominous fate of John the Baptist (6:7–30), the reader is not made aware of violent reactions to either Jesus or his followers. The one exception in the first part of the gospel is Mark 4:17, where the parable of the sower is interpreted in the light of early Christian missionary practice and experience. Some will endure tribulation (διώγμοϚ) and persecution (θλίψιϚ) because of the word (διὰ τὸν λόγον). The description echoes Pauline references to persecutions endured by Jesus-followers elsewhere (2 Cor 4:8; Rom 8:35; 2 Thess 1:4; 2 Tim 3:11). Hence some interpreters attribute the passage to a pre-Markan source.31 However, elsewhere in the gospel, Mark uses the same language in regard to the likely experiences of Jesus’ followers: Mark 10:29f., where the absolute use of λόγοϚ is replaced by the preferred Markan term εὐαγγέλιον, now linked with διώγμοϚ (cf. Mark 1:1, 14; 8:35; 13:10). Likewise at 13:19 θλίψιϚ has an eschatological nuance in that the proclamation of the gospel through bearing witness to the Gentiles is a necessary part of the end-time scenario, even when this μαρτύριον takes place in a setting of official persecution of Jesus-followers both in Jewish and Pagan settings (Mark 13:9f.). Thus, it would seem that Hengel’s identification of Mark 13:9–13 with the Roman Christians is too narrow an understanding of the role that the persecution of Jesus’ followers is meant to play in Mark’s overall presentation. It is noteworthy that in the second half of the Gospel, as the movement towards Jerusalem is underway, the Markan Jesus begins to instruct the disciples as to what lies ahead (Mark 8:27–38; 9:30–37; 10:32–45; cf.10:52). As Norman Perrin pointed out, this threefold pattern of instruction on the nature of true discipleship takes place as he predicts his own imminent death, thus preparing them for similar experiences.32 The instruction is closely associated with “the way” (ὁδόϚ) – a reference both to the actual pilgrim way to Jerusalem, but also to the early Jesus movement, for which this became a suitable designation and metaphor. ²⁸ ²⁹ ³⁰ ³¹ ³²

Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark, 21–8. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 98 ff. Theissen, Gospels in Context, 258–81. R. Pesch, Das Markus-Evangelium (2 vols.; Freiburg: Herder, 1980), 1:243–5. N. Perrin, What is Redaction Criticism? (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969).

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At the end of the gospel, Mark points the way back to Galilee for Peter and the disciples (Mark 16:7). There has been much discussion as to whether this is either a reference to a post-resurrection appearance or to the Parousia in Galilee.33 However, neither event occurred within the Markan narrative, at least, so it becomes necessary to examine more closely the intra-textual dynamics of the reference at 16:7. There the young man points to Jesus’ foretelling of a reunion of a kind in Galilee, which is promised at 14:27 f. On closer examination all that is promised at that point, however, is that Jesus would go ahead of them to Galilee, in the context of a flock that would be scattered once the shepherd had been taken, as indeed had occurred shortly afterwards (14:50). The verb that is used at 14:27 – προάγω – is also used with regard to the journey to Jerusalem at 10:32, where Jesus is leading a reluctant band of followers, including the Twelve, to the Holy City, having foretold his suffering and eventual death to them. Thus, it would seem that 16:7 is a directive to the disciples to re-engage with the Galilean mission of Jesus and to be prepared for the struggles that lay ahead, now that they had experienced the outcome for him in Jerusalem. The directive, therefore, functions not as an actual encounter, but as a promise of on-going presence, in terms of the community’s call to follow Jesus courageously in Galilee and beyond. Despite the destruction of the temple as the symbol of divine protection and presence, the risen Jesus is now being proposed as its replacement in a way that was very different to that which the spatial symbol of the Jerusalem temple had functioned, especially with regard to inclusivity (Mark 13:1–2; 14:58; 15:38). Appropriately from a Markan point of view, it was a Roman soldier (likely a Syrian) who recognized the significance of that event for Jew and Gentile alike. In my reading, therefore, Mark’s gospel presupposes a community of Jesus’ followers in or near Galilee, continuing his mission, which, as we have seen, within the Markan narrative framework also includes southern Syria, without thereby transgressing the Jew/Gentile order, yet seeking to include both in the restored community. In other words, Mark’s narrative does point to a mission in the north, one that operates in the borderland of fraught relations between Jews and Syrians, but which hopes to win adherents from both, as the last embers of the temple were smouldering in Jerusalem, and with them the hopes associated with that great center fading also. The suffering and rejection of the Jesus-followers that the Markan narrative foresees/reflects occur therefore in the context of the disturbances in Syria which Josephus, however exaggeratedly, has described. In the past at least, many have taken Mark’s gospel to be directed solely towards Gentiles, following the alleged Pauline trajectory of a focus on a mission to the Gentiles only. In particular Mark 7:1–23 has been taken to suggest that the Markan Jesus’ pronouncement at v. 15 and the Evangelist’s interpretation of it at ³³ E. Lohmeyer, Galiläa und Jerusalem (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1936).

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v. 19b had broken definitively with the Jewish purity regulations, and that the author has to explain to Gentile readers the Jewish purity practices, with the details of which he is not very familiar (vv. 3f.).34 However, some recent studies have challenged this assumption, especially the claim that Jesus’ response at 7:15 signals a total break with Jewish tradition, in view of the fact that it is not prominent in later discussions about purity issues.35 It can at least be argued that the Markan Jesus is distinguishing between purity regulations as practiced by the Pharisees, who sought to extend these to the whole people, and the more universal commands of the Torah, but without severing his connections with the Mosaic tradition.36 The role of the chapter within the Markan framework suggests that it forms a bridge between the two feeding miracles, the one with a strong Israelite colouring and the other taking place in Gentile territory. The stance of the Markan Jesus and his followers is to reject specific halackic observances of the Judeans that separated them from non-Judeans, thereby opening up a door for non-Jews also to feel at home in this new family. Jerusalem scribes would shortly make Galilee their home, there to refashion their Jewish belief system independently of the temple. Mark’s gospel may in fact be reflecting the beginnings of that process as native Pharisees and scribes from the center made alliances to ensure a strong separatist identity for Galilean Jews who had survived the crisis. Yet, as we have seen, the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman’s encounter with Jesus suggests that crossing the Jew/Gentile border was neither as easy nor as obvious as might have been expected, even for those who had the memory of Jesus to guide them. In the light of our three considerations, both at textual and actual levels, an understanding of Mark’s gospel that reflects a situation of missionary activity among Jews and Syrians is not at all implausible. Both Mark 3:7f. and 13:10 seem to reflect a mixed situation of both Jews and Gentiles, the former mapping out the mission field and the latter indicating where opposition was likely to surface. The emphasis on the sufferings in store for those who witness to the gospel of and about Jesus corresponds to what we know of the situation in post–70 Syria. Yet for those Jews who had come to believe in Jesus’ messiahship there was sufficient motivation to embark on a mission, specifically in the very region of upper Galilee/Phoenicia/southern Syria, viewed as part of the allotted land that would form the nucleus of the restored Israel. The village culture of the region meant that there were deep-seated loyalties to the traditional beliefs on both sides, yet this did not deter the Markan Jesus-followers from proclaiming their good news for both that the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth represented. Matthew’s gos³⁴ E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah (London: SCM Press, 1990), 39 and

261 ff. ³⁵ J. Svartvik, Mark and Mission: Mark 7, 1–23 in its Narrative and Historical Contexts (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 2000), 109–204. ³⁶ T. Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakah: Was Jesus Indifferent to Impurity? (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 2002), 60–88.

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pel is our best indicator of how Mark was received and what adaptations had to be made if the mission to Jews and Gentiles was to bear fruit. 2.2. Matthew This understanding of Mark has the value of seeing the Gospel within the multivariate matrix of Jewish identities in the period, a matrix that also included various different groups of Jesus followers. Thus the label ‘judaization’ to explain Matthew’s reception of Mark is potentially misleading. Rather the proposal has the benefit of explaining why Matthew found Mark’s gospel congenial in the first instance, even when from his perspective there was need to emphasise and develop further certain aspects of the profile, as we shall presently examine. Thus the two works may not have been as far apart, theologically, socially and even geographically, as some construals of their relationship would have it.37 There seems to be general agreement among Matthean scholars on the dating of the gospel between 80 and 90 C. E. The reference to the “king destroying their city” in the Matthean redaction of the parable of the Great banquet (22:7) is generally taken to refer to the destruction of Jerusalem. While this only requires a post–70 date, Theissen speaks of a definite sense of distance from the event in contrast to Mark’s more frenzied response, a distance which allows for the insertion of material to do with the on-going mission into the period between the abomination of desolation and the final judgement, and emphasising the need for ethical vigilance while the return of the master is delayed (Matt 24–25).38 With regard to location, many, though not all, opt for the traditional location of Antioch, a context that has much to offer in view of our knowledge of the Christian community there both prior to (Galatians, Acts) and after the Matthean moment (Ignatius). True, there have been some interesting attempts to see Galilee, even Sepphoris, as the location of the Gospel, but this seems to me to be less probable, at least for the completed Gospel, even if some of the special Matthean traditions of a strongly Jewish Christian bent may indeed have had a Galilean, if not a Sepphorean, provenance.39 In different ways all of these studies focus on the intra-Jewish polemical dimension of the gospel, and therefore feel the need to posit a Galilean setting, in view of the role that Galilee was to play ³⁷ A. O’Leary, Matthew’s Judaization of Mark Examined in the Context of the Use of Sources in Greco-Roman Antiquity (London: T & T Clark International, 2006), 118 n.1 explains her use of the term ‘judaization’ with reference to a literary process in which the re-writing model that she proposes “increases the density” of explicit and implicit uses of Jewish and Hebrew Bible references. ³⁸ Theissen, Gospels in Context, 271–4. ³⁹ A. J. Overman, Matthews’s Gospel and Formative Judaism: The Social World of the Matthean Community (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990); A. J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994); A. Gale, Redefining Ancient Borders: The Jewish Scribal Framework of Matthew’s Gospel (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005).

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in the remaking of post–70 Jewish identity, but it may well be that such conflicts could be equally well explained in a geographic setting on the fringes of Galilee rather than a Galilean setting itself.40 Theissen places the Gospel east of the Jordan on the basis of his ‘local colouring’ approach, and thinks that Antioch does not quite fit the picture in view of what he considers to be its closeness to the Didache, which belongs in a less cosmopolitan setting. He thus proposes a city/ town “in the interior of Syria” for Matthew.41 Suddenly, Southern Syria/Upper Galilee appears to be getting quite crowded with evangelists and their writings! This shows the difficulty in settling on a single place of composition, even when the alternative, namely, the gospels being addressed to a world-wide church ab initio, is to my mind even less convincing, at least for the first century. Perhaps it would be better to focus on the earliest traceable place of reception of a gospel, rather than its place of actual composition – which could be anywhere – as a better option in negotiating the problem. Early Christian missionaries were on the move, and as they travelled they brought with them various collections of traditions from and about Jesus, both oral and written. It seems possible, therefore, to envisage the Matthean missionaries penetrating the Syrian hinterland more deeply than did their Markan forerunners, especially in view of the displacement of peoples more generally in the wake of the first Jewish revolt. Rather than attempting to distinguish between an urban Antioch and a rural Syria, therefore, I am suggesting that it may be possible to detect various stages of the Matthean redaction, and to attribute these to different locales and moments, each leaving traces in the text.42 As is well known, John Kloppenborg has made a strong case for “reading Q in Galilee” also. I am not entirely convinced, however, with locating the alleged Q community in Capernaum, which seems to be based on a combination of archaeological evidence and literary indicators – namely, the woes uttered against the Galilean towns of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum (Q 10:13– 15) – as suggested by Jonathan Reed.43 These woes belong to the second layer of the alleged Q redaction as argued by Kloppenborg, where apocalyptic and prophetic pronouncements give the original wisdom document a strong Deuteronomic colouring. At least the woes would seem to indicate a sense of rejection by those who formulated or handed them on. In passing it may be noted that Tyre and Sidon are favourably contrasted with Chorazin and Bethsaida, whereas ⁴⁰ L. M. White, From Jesus to Christianity: How Four Generations of Visionaries & Storytellers Created the New Testament and Christian Faith (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 240: “Somewhere in or near the village culture of Upper Galilee.” ⁴¹ Theissen, Gospels in Context, 251. For a detailed discussion of the various options, while eventually deciding for Antioch, cf. D. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998), 40–62. ⁴² This approach has been suggestively developed by W. Weren, “The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community,” in Matthew and the Didache: Two Documents from the Same Jewish-Christian Milieu? (ed. H. van de Sandt; Assen: Van Gorcum, 200), 51–62. ⁴³ Kloppenborg, Excavating Q, 214–70; Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, 170–97.

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Capernaum’s fate is likened to that of the biblical Sodom, presumably because, from the point of view of the formulators of the sayings, it was the leader of the opposition to the group. It seems safe to assume, therefore, that the deep sense of alienation reflected in these sayings points to a stage of the Q community’s history where it had moved from this area of Galilee, and thus the comparison with Tyre and Sidon may be no mere coincidence.44 Significantly, even at this second stage, Q does not seem to reflect the crisis generated by the Jewish War, as can be seen not only in the different choice of genre, but also in the different conceptions of the role of the returning Son of Man (as judge in Q), in contrast to that of gatherer of the elect in Mark.45 In a scenario in which Matthew is seen to draw on both Mark and Q, while introducing other material as well (M), whether traditional, redactional or both, we are faced with an intriguing set of questions: What prompted this re-working or re-writing? What is changed, discarded, or expanded in the process and to what purpose? In a word, what were the internal and external stimuli in that precise context that provoked this hermeneutical enterprise? Ulrich Luz has posed the question sharply: “Is Matthew telling a new Jesus story, or merely editing Mark’s story?” His answer is that while Matthew shows great respect for the tradition which he receives both from Mark and Q, he nevertheless does write a new story because he has to consider the present rather than the past in addressing his new audience. As Luz succinctly puts it, Matthew “tells the story of Jesus’ fate in Israel and the story of the separation in Israel because of Jesus.”46 By way of suggesting lines of enquiry rather than giving definitive answers to these questions it seems best to pose the same three questions to Matthew as we did to Mark, with an eye both to clarifying his rewriting strategy and identifying the possible contextual impulses for the changes and adaptations. 2.2.1. Geography and Restoration A good point to begin is to note how often Matthew uses the designation Israel rather than any of the regional names (though he is well aware of these, cf., e. g., 10:6) for the ethno-geographical entity to which he belongs and which he hopes to reassemble. The fact that the Greek woman, Syrophoenician by birth, of Mark is presented as a Canaanite woman suggests that Matthew is harking back to ancient historical memories of conquest and settlement in making his claim for Israel. The stories of the slaughter of the children by Herod and the flight into Egypt, both with their strong exodus resonances, reinforce this dimension of the story for the reader from the outset. Both the Twelve and Jesus are sent to Israel, ⁴⁴ H. Koester, “The Synoptic Sayings Gospel Q in the Early Community of Jesus’ Followers,” in Early Christian Voices in Texts, Traditions and Symbols: Essays in Honor of Francois Bovon. (ed. D. H. Warren, A. Graham Brock, and D. W. Pao; Leiden: Brill, 2003), 50. ⁴⁵ Mack, “Q and the Gospel of Mark,” 15–40; L. Vaage, “The Son of Man Sayings in Q: Stratigraphical Location and Significance,” Semeia 55 (1991): 103–30. ⁴⁶ U. Luz, Studies in Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 27.

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it is emphatically and explicitly stated (10:5b–6; 15:23), and the Twelve will fulfil their symbolic role in the regeneration/παλιγγενσία by judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt 19:28), thus underlining their eschatological role in the future also. Matthew’s rendering of the parable of the wicked tenants, especially 21:43, which speaks about the handing over of the vineyard (a symbol of Israel) to a nation (ἔθνοϚ) producing the fruit, unlike the present selfish tenants, has often been understood in the light of second century replacement Heilsgeschichte of the Epistle of Barnabas and Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho. However, as Saldarini has persuasively argued, this ἔθνοϚ should not be construed as referring to the Gentiles, conceived as a new, replacement nation. Rather, the Matthean group sees itself as replacing the religious leaders, i. e., chief priests and Pharisees, since the crowds recognise Jesus as a prophet in the immediate context (Matt 21:46). Even the notorious self-curse – “his blood be on us and our children” (Matt 27:25) – uttered by “all the people” before Pilate, can, according to Saldarini, be read as part of this pattern running through the whole work of a struggle for leadership of Israel – “people” in this instance meaning the people of Jerusalem “who allowed themselves to be manipulated by their leaders,” thereby uttering a prophecy ex eventu for the fate of the citizens in the Roman’s siege of 70 C. E.47 In the light of this overall emphasis it is interesting to see how Matthew deals with the Markan geography, especially Mark 3:7f., which played such an important role in Mark’s narrative, as we have argued. At 4:23–25, Matthew reworks these Markan verses while also drawing on Mark 1:28 and Mark 1:39. Thus, Jesus’ reputation (ἀκοή) went throughout the whole of Syria (v. 24) and great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and “Beyond the Jordan” (Perea, v. 25). Essentially, this reworking involves replacing Tyre and Sidon with Syria (though both Phoenician cities are mentioned later at 16:21), but explicitly referring to the Decapolis, while also including the acknowledged Jewish regions, following Mark. Significantly, Syria stands apart from the list, being described as “all Syria” and suggesting that it was quite important for the author, most probably because it was now the location of the Matthean communities. At any event, the same pattern of Israelite and nonIsraelite sharing in the healing (messianic) work of Jesus is confirmed later by the citation and application of Isa 42:1–4 at Matt 12:18–21 – the first of the servant songs which envisages a salvation shared by Jews and Gentiles. Because of this typically Matthean strategy of constant appeal to the fulfilment of Scripture for aspects of Jesus’ ministry, it is important to highlight the way in which the Gentiles do feature in the first gospel. Indeed the whole narrative is framed by their presence: the magi come to adore the child that has been ⁴⁷ Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community, 203; cf. Riches, Conflicting Mythologies, 221 ff. n.84.

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born, the son of David, in the infancy narrative, and the Gospel closes with the commission to “disciple” πάντα τα ἔθνη (28:19). While reference to the ethical standards of the Gentiles at 5:46f.; 6:7, 32; 18:17 might seem to be less than favorable, they are being used as a goad to Jesus’ new family to go beyond the accepted standards, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. The absence of any mention of circumcision for Gentiles has been variously interpreted. Sim and Runesson, e. g., use the argument from silence to claim that circumcision was practised in the Matthean community, whereas Saldarini recognises that the silence could be argued either way.48 Part of the difficulty may be that we tend to view the situation as an either/or one, thereby not allowing for compromise on the part of the Matthean and other Christian communities. At least the so-called Antioch incident between Peter and Paul (Gal 2:11–14) demonstrates that theory and practice did not always correspond with regard to Jew/Gentile contacts, and the formal solution to the problem of mixed communities reported in Acts 15:28f. shows that it continued to be an on-going issue for Jewish Christian communities. Certainly, unlike some other Jewish views on the possibility or otherwise of Gentiles attaining righteousness, Matthew’s Jesus has no doubts, as his commendation of the centurion makes clear: “Amen, I say to you I have not found such faith in Israel” (Matt 8:10; cf. Matt 24:9; 26:13). Of course, one has to balance this positive view of the matter with the strong emphasis on the mission to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” with the disciples being instructed not to go anywhere among the Gentiles, not even to the Samaritans (Matt 10:5; cf. 15:24). This contrast between a mission to Israel and one to the Gentiles has often been understood in either/or terms, and as an indication of Matthew’s seeming inconsistency. Interpreters have had to resort to a salvation historical understanding which sees the mission to the Gentiles as the consequence of Israel’s rejection. Thus, the mission to Israel (Matt 10) is presumed to have failed, and the work ends with the replacement mission, following the Lukan pattern at Acts 13:44–51. But this solution ignores the earlier geographic summary, which, though adapted slightly from Mark, nevertheless reflects the idea that from a Jewish restoration perspective, which seems to have been shared by both evangelists, there was no contradiction between a continued emphasis on Israel’s restoration and the inclusion of the Gentiles. Indeed they are intimately interwoven in the Isaian notion of restoration, as can be seen from Is 49:6, e. g.,49 Matthew has merely emphasized this aspect more fully and clearly than Mark, presumably because of changed times and circumstances, which we will address presently. ⁴⁸ Sim, The Gospel of Matthew, 247–55; A. Runesson, “Rethinking Early Jewish-Christian Relations: Matthean Community History as Pharisaic Intragroup Conflict,” JBL (2008): 104 n. 30; Saldarini, Matthew’s Jewish-Christian Community, 156–60. ⁴⁹ Freyne, “Geography of Restoration.”

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2.2.2. Location of the Matthean group As mentioned already, Gerd Theissen regards Antioch as too cosmopolitan for the Matthean community/group, suggesting instead a lesser Syrian town. He notes that there is a decided difference between the Matthean point of view and that of Ignatius, but also that the links with the Didache would support a less urban setting.50 However, neither argument is altogether compelling. To begin with, the very cosmopolitan nature of Antioch would suggest that one cannot assume a single type of Christianity in the city any more than one can presume the same with regard to Judaism there.51 Ignatius of Antioch represents a type of Hellenized Christianity, which shows unmistakable signs of Greek-style rhetoric and thinking, very different indeed from the type of proto-Rabbinic influence in Matthew.52 But it is his attitude to Judaism that is most revealing. “It is monstrous to talk of Jesus Christ and practice Judaism (ἰουδαίζειν),” Ignatius declares to the Magnesians (10:3), and in a similar vein he indicates to the Philippians that he is opposed to those who “interpret Judaism to you,” even if they are uncircumcised. This suggests that in Ignatius’ Antiochian experience, Gentiles, probably God-fearers, were interested in discussing Judaism with Christian believers. For him, such an interest in Judaism was of no value to the Christian believer. Yet, he is prepared to tolerate circumcised Jews, provided they talk about (ἑρμηνεύειν) Christ, and not about Judaism (Phil. 6:1). Could this be a veiled allusion to Matthean Christians? There is some evidence that Ignatius knew and used the gospel, even if he would not have endorsed the evangelist’s more conservative Jewish leanings.53 Allowing for some 20–30 years between Matthew and Ignatius, it would seem likely that there was more than one type of Christian group in Antioch at an earlier period, as indeed is evident already in Paul’s report in Galatians 2. Both Matthew and Ignatius were interested in bringing together various, apparently divergent, traditions for the sake of unity and group solidarity, even if they were operating with different constituencies.54 What of the internal evidence of the gospel itself? In his recent attempt to suggest a Galilean, even Sepphorean setting for Matthew, Aaron Gale highlights ⁵⁰ Theissen, Gospels in Context, 251. ⁵¹ M. Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to

the Separation Between Judaism and Christianity (London: Routledge, 2003), 53–111. ⁵² W. R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 15–17. ⁵³ J. P. Meier, “Antioch,” in Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity (ed. J. P. Meier and R. E. Brown; London: Chapman, 1983), 45–72 and 74–81; Zetterholm, Formation, 203–22. ⁵⁴ Theissen’s other claim, namely, the rural setting of the Didache, need not change the view of Matthew as an Antiochene document in its final phase of development. While there are undoubted connections between the two works, this could well have occurred at some earlier phase of both documents’ evolution, in view of the disputed tradition history of the Didache. Furthermore, the Matthean community of Antioch may well have continued to maintain contacts with the other groups of Jesus’ followers in the surrounding region, including the Aramaic speaking hinterland, as can be seen in its later relations with Boroea and possibly also Edessa.

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the urban language of Matthew in comparison to Mark, drawing largely on the study of J. D. Kingsbury.55 It certainly is noteworthy that Matthew uses the term πόλιϚ 26 times in contrast to Mark’s 8 usages. Equally there is a contrast in their usage of κώμη, Matthew employing the term only 4 times in contrast to Mark’s 7 usages in a much shorter document. Most significant are the places where Matthew changes Mark’s villages to cities, as, e. g., in his description of the disciples’ mission (Matt 10:8 and 23) or their flight (Matt 23:34). Jesus’ own movements are also described as moving from city to city (Matt 11:1; cf. 9:35). However, positing a move to Antioch need not exclude the Syrian countryside either; after all Matt 4:24 speaks of Jesus’ reputation going through “all Syria.” Because of Matthew’s stress on a mission to Israel, Gale assumes that this urban emphasis must therefore refer to a Galilean city, and Sepphoris is for him the most likely candidate. However, this does not necessarily follow, since, as we have seen, Matthew is thinking of both Jews and Gentiles as part of Jesus’ audience from the outset (Matt 4:24f.). Plot constraints determined the author’s depiction of Jesus’ movements, but this cannot be used to designate the location of the implied addressees of the completed Gospel. That said, I also agree with Luz’s assertion that we must think of Matthew’s gospel in terms of an historical evolution that corresponds to the progression of the community as it moved from Palestine to Syria in the post–70 period.56 There is no doubt that some of the more conservative statements from a Jewish point of view – the so-called M material – may well have originated among observant Jesus followers in Galilee, even possibly in Sepphoris, in view of later rabbinic evidence of followers of Yeshua ha-Nozri there.57 But equally the Q sayings of the radical itinerants whom Matthew greatly respects must have had a Palestinian origin also in the pre–70 period. However, as previously mentioned this group/tradents of the Jesus movement were eventually unsuccessful and must have moved on, possibly to Upper Galilee, and eventually, after the destruction of the temple, to Syria, possibly even Damascus. The final redaction of the Q document with its conservative statements about the Torah and its observance (Q Lk 4:1–13; 11:42c; 16:17) have been interpreted by Kloppenborg as an indication of the group’s changed views about the Pharisaic movement, which it had previously lampooned as part of its polemical strategy.58 This shift of perspective might well have also led to a closer rapprochment with the observant Jewish Christians, some of whom formed the Matthean nucleus in Antioch, while others eventually re-emerged in our sources in the larger Syrian region as Nazarenes and Ebionites (Epiphanius, Panarion 29–30). ⁵⁵ Gale, Redefining Ancient Borders, 46–63; J. D. Kingsbury, Matthew as Story (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 125. ⁵⁶ Luz, Studies, 7–14. ⁵⁷ S. Miller, “The Minim of Sepphoris Reconsidered,” HTR 86 (1993): 377–402. ⁵⁸ J. Kloppenborg, “Literary Convention, Self-Evidence and the Social History of the Q People,” Semeia 55 (1991): 99 ff.

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The final piece of the Matthean jigsaw is of course Mark, who had also encountered the Q group on its way northward, as we have suggested. What is interesting about this scenario is that while Mark’s gospel continued to circulate independently and did not disappear following its adoption by Matthew, Q’s fate was sealed, even if it survived long enough for Luke to administer the coup de gras, so to speak. This development cannot be attributed solely to the vulnerability of a Sayings Collection, as is evident from the survival of the Gospel of Thomas, e. g., in the same general Syrian region. The reason for Q’s demise as a separate document may have to do with the ultimate domestication of the group’s survivors within the ambience of the Matthew/Didache house churches in Antioch and elsewhere in the countryside. Matthew’s repeated concern for the μίκροι–νήπιοι suggests that these radical prophetic figures (Matt 10:26–42) were deemed to have been of special significance within the settled community (Matt 18:1–5, 10), and should, therefore, be cared for as representatives of Jesus’ own radical presence in their midst (18:20; 25:31–45). One of Matthew’s achievement as an evangelist/author was to blend these disparate elements of the original Jesus movement into a single narrative, “bringing forth from his treasure house the new and the old.” In so doing he ‘domesticated’ the movement both literally and metaphorically. Equally, Mark’s mysterious command to the disciples and Peter to return to Galilee is developed by Matthew in a very self-assured way by locating the command to make disciples of all the nations “on a high mountain in Galilee” (Matt 28:18). This move has been interpreted by Riches and others as reflecting the break with Judaism that, it is claimed, Matthew has effected in his narrative. However, that need not be the case. By the time of writing, Jerusalem was in no position to function as the beacon for the nations that Isaiah had envisaged (Isa 2:2–4). In suggesting a mountain in Galilee as the alternative Zion, Matthew may well have been inspired by an alternative Jewish restorationist, namely, the author of 1 Enoch, who locates the vision dealing with the judgement on the Jerusalem priests and the new temple in the Hermon region (1 En. 13:7). Furthermore, all branches of the Jesus movement, including the group led by James, had to abandon Jerusalem. This transference, due to the corrupt stewardship of the Jerusalem leaders (Matt 21:33, 45), did not mean that the Matthean Christians had lost their respect for Jerusalem as the “holy city” (Matt 4:5; 5:35; 27:53), nor are they ashamed to admit Jesus’ readiness to conform to the institution of the temple tax (17:24–27). 2.2.3. Conflict and Rejection In discussing the theme of persecution in Mark we have seen that both Jewish and Gentile arenas are envisaged. Matthew retains this pattern also, thereby confirming his shared horizon with Mark regarding the simultaneous mission to Jews and Gentiles (Mark 13:9f.; Matt 10:17f.). While undoubtedly the threat of

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Roman power was ever-present for the Matthean community, as indicated in the infancy story already, the main focus is on the struggle with the synagogue and its leaders. It is not possible to rehearse the issue as to whether this dispute with “their synagogues” should be viewed as an internal affair or as one in which the Matthean community has already broken from its Jewish moorings and was looking back in anger and frustration.59 Previously, I have attempted to explain the polemical tone of much of the Matthean language as stemming from the community’s desire to forge a new identity for itself, but within a Jewish matrix. In achieving this goal the evangelist engages in a rhetorical attack on his rivals, usually designated as “the scribes and Pharisees.”60 I continue to have a lot of sympathy for this position, especially as articulated subsequently by Saldarini, who uses social deviancy theory to explain the Matthean group’s negotiation of its fraught relationship with mainline Judaism, while retaining its ‘membership’ within that larger whole.61 While this approach certainly leads to new and challenging readings of some of the more strident passages in the gospel, as was noted already in regard to 21:43 and 27:25, it nevertheless does less than full justice to other facets of the text, especially the total denigration of the opponents (ch. 23) and the claim to have superior insight on the basis of Jesus’ status as wisdom incarnate whose teaching has an eschatologically definitive status for both Jews and Gentiles (Matt 28:16–20). How can we envisage such claims taking shape within the proposed Antiochene setting and what new social configurations did they give rise to? To begin with it is important to recall Luz’s emphasis on Matthew’s respect for tradition and hence the presence in the finished work of material which not merely comes from an earlier source, but which also reflects that source’s point of view, for which he presumably had some sympathy. However, it is part of the newness of Matthew’s re-writing that he was able to blend these into his overall narrative and current perspective, while allowing them to be heard on their terms also. With this caveat in place, it is possible to see a stage in the community’s Jewish Christian past which was indeed loyal to Jerusalem’s teaching authority, and this stage is reflected in the M material already alluded to (e. g. Matt 5:17–21; 17:24– 27; 23:1–9). A second stage is the post–70 situation, which reflects a mounting tension between the Matthean community and the emerging ‘formative’ Judaism, with the scribes and the Pharisees as the chief architects of this new Jewish identity after the loss of temple and priesthood.62 ⁵⁹ For a full and detailed discussion, cf. G. Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992), 113–45; Luz, Studies, 243–64. ⁶⁰ S. Freyne, “Vilifying the Other and Defining the Self: Matthew’s and John’s Anti-Jewish Polemic in Focus,” in“To See Ourselves as Others See Us”: Christians, Jews and “Others” in Late Antiquity (ed. J. Neusner and E. Frerichs; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985), 117–44. ⁶¹ Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian Jewish Community, 84–123; cf. Riches, Conflicting Mythologies, 222–5, on Matthew’s handling of the issue of ethnicity and kinship. ⁶² I am indebted here to the fine essay of Weren, “History and Social Setting,” 51–62.

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This hostility is much more pronounced than in Mark’s gospel, and Matthew’ response is more pointed in its attempt ‘to vilify’ the Jewish leaders. On the other side of the coin there would appear to have been actual hostilities against the Matthean Christians, or at least their missionaries, on the basis of such passages as Matt 5:11; 10:16–21; 23:34. Despite these mutual animosities and hostilities it would in my opinion be inaccurate to declare that the dispute was no longer ‘intra muros.’ The Matthean Jewish followers of Jesus had inherited the idea of a more open and receptive attitude towards non-Jews from Mark, and they now developed this into a full scale sense of mission to all, especially in view of the hostilities they were experiencing at the hands of their co-religionists. Christian Jews began to develop their own rituals and meeting places and may not have continued to frequent the synagogue, as Matthew’s repeated use of the expression “their (your) synagogues” suggests (Matt 4:23; 9:35; 10:17; 12:9; 13:54; 23:34).63 It is unlikely that the leaders of emerging formative Judaism would have dared to continue their persecution of the Jewish followers of Jesus as far as Antioch, even if such Mishnaic passages as m. Hal. 4:7–8 and m. Šeb. 6:2 suggest that the fiction of Syria being equivalent to the land of Israel for halachic purposes was continued. Antioch, together with Apamea and Sidon, had not engaged in anti-Jewish attacks in the pre-war period, unlike some other cities closer to Galilee. This may well explain why Jesus-followers felt safer and had subsequently migrated there. Furthermore, Jews in Antioch had to be extremely cautious. The Gentile population was quite suspicious and had asked to have the Jews expelled, but Titus refused to do so or to remove their privileges (B. J. 7.100–111). A later account by the third-century historian Malalas declares that the emperor had set up several bronze figures, presumably taken as spoils from Jerusalem, outside the city gate close to the Jewish quarter in order to remind them of what rebellion against Rome entailed.64 For that reason also, one can imagine that the Jewish believers in Jesus within the city would have sought to separate themselves from their co-religionists, at least to the extent that they were prepared to fraternize with Gentiles who joined their movement.

3. Conclusion ‘Borderlands’ are difficult territories to negotiate precisely because of their complexity. They do not fit neatly into our categories of ‘them’ and ‘us’, ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’ since attitudes and boundaries are constantly moving. Nevertheless, the suggestion of adopting Syria as a reading site, as well as an actual geographical ⁶³ Runesson, “Re-thinking Early Jewish-Christian Relations,” 117–20. ⁶⁴ W. Meeks and R. Wilken, Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries (Mis-

soula: Scholars Press, 1978), 2–13.

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location for both the Markan and Matthean communities has proved interesting and insightful in dealing with some of the conundrums of the texts. The starting point of this reading experiment, and that is all it is, has been to take seriously the geographic indicators of both gospels – administrative, ethnic and symbolic – and work from these signals towards an understanding of the overall thrust of each work, taking account of the importance of the symbolic geography that was one strand of the inherited Jewish restorationist aspirations. Undoubtedly, there is a changed perspective in Matthew from the earlier Mark, a perspective that seeks to be respectful and inclusive of various different strands of the fractured early Christian family, reflected however generically in the traditions we label Q and M, but which relies on the Markan genre and outline. In preparing this paper I found myself in dialogue with John Riches’ stimulating study, Conflicting Mythologies: Identity Formation in Matthew and Mark, and agreeing with many of his insightful comments on both works. However, in the end, I was not able to go along with his conclusion that both evangelists, while using and understanding the Jewish heritage in different ways, have left Judaism behind in their efforts to form an identity for a new people. They are therefore forced to metaphorize aspects of the Jewish heritage that they wish to appropriate, while at the same time ceasing to be Jewish in any recognizable way. For Riches the conflict of myths that both evangelists are caught up in is that between the cosmic myth of overcoming universal evil on the one hand, and on the other, the specifically Jewish myth of restoration. The one is revolutionary, the other is revisionist, and while both evangelists are more deeply engaged with the cosmic world view, they never quite let go of the restoration model. This allows both groups to identify themselves over against the world of Roman imperialism and Jewish religion, alike. There is much that is challenging about his claim, but in my view Riches does not adequately take into account the actual historical realities that were operative in post–70 Judaism and the manner in which these played themselves out in Syria-Palestine in the period between the two Jewish revolts. Had he done so he might have seen more continuity, despite the conflict, within the pulsating, ambivalent, and highly complex Jewish matrix than his account of the conflicting and contrasting myths allows.

Conflicting Calls? Family and Discipleship in Mark & Matthew in the Light of First-Century Galilean Village Life Morten Hørning Jensen 1. Introduction 1.1. What Can Galilee Do for Mark and Matthew? Recent decades have seen an explosion of interest in Roman Galilee, and much scholarly effort has been invested in the search for its historical, political, religious, sociological, economic, and cultural secrets. Sean Freyne’s magisterial study from 1980, Galilee from Hadrian the Great to Bar Kochbha,1 cleared the first grounds for the highway of studies to follow – fuelled by the renewed interest in the historical Jesus and aided by the growing number of archaeological digs and surveys in the region.2 This esteemed conference might therefore be an appropriate occasion to ask: What can Galilee do for Mark and Matthew? The question is far from trivial. Neither Mark nor Matthew has a Galilean provenance; alas only a Galilean cradle. To what extent the final texts of the two Gospels render Galilean traditions and how they interplay with Roman, Antiochene, or other traditions from their place of provenance is far too complex a matter to be settled in this or any one article.3 ¹ S. Freyne, Galilee From Alexander the Great to Hadrian 323 B. C. E. To 135 C. E.: A Study of Second Temple Judaism (Wilmington, NC: Glazier, 1980). ² For an introduction to Galilean research, see M. H. Jensen, Herod Antipas in Galilee: The Literary and Archaeological Sources on the Reign of Herod Antipas and Its Socio-Economic Impact on Galilee (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 2–34. ³ An introduction to the discussion of Matthew’s place of origin can be found in W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (3 vols.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 1:138–47. For Mark, see A. Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 7–10. In the case of Matthew, Syria/Antioch seems to be the preferred provenance among commentators though a number of other places have been proposed as well, among which also Galilee is to be found. Thus J. A. Overman, Church and Community in Crisis: The Gospel according to Matthew (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), argues for a Galilean provenance, which is taken even further by B. Witherington III, Matthew (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2006), locating the exact place of origin in Capernaum. In the case of Mark, Rome is the preferred provenance, though Galilee has been proposed as well in a recent contribution by H. Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in Its Historical and Social Context (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 94–114.

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Nevertheless, this article will assume that the Galilean cradle of the Jesus tradition has left profound enough reminiscences within the two Gospels to warrant a careful application of ‘fresh Galilean insights.’ What is needed, though, is a carefully chosen test case in which ‘the Galilean cradle’ has the potential to further Markan and Matthean studies. Such a test case can be identified in the issue of Jesus’ view on family life and its relationship to discipleship. The motivation for choosing this test case is fourfold. First, the Jesus traditions, including Mark and Matthew, contain what has been termed an “apparent contradiction”4 when it comes to the issue of family life. On the one hand, Jesus confirms the commandment to honor one’s parents and marriage is protected against divorce, just as family imagery is used to describe the realities in his basileia. On the other hand, Jesus leaves his own family and later seems to renounce it, persecutions are to be expected from family members, and a disciple who does not love Jesus more than he loves his own family is not worthy of him. The question therefore is: Do Mark and Matthew present us with a coherent and persuasive picture regarding family life and discipleship? Do the Gospels envision a replacement of obligations toward one’s family for the sake of a new ‘spiritual’ family? Or are the obligations rather minimized and submitted to a new world order?5 Second, in research generally, not connected specifically to Mark and Matthew, the issue of Jesus’ relationship to family has gained some ground. This research, however, seems caught at an impasse of different solutions and methods, which basically can be grouped into two camps. One camp argues that the Jesus tradition did not entail hostility towards the family institution per se. Rather, the authority of Jesus represented a ‘new law’ and a new order for the end times, under which the family institution now had to be submitted. The Jesus tradition was supra-family rather than anti-family.6 The other camp, however, argues precisely the opposite. The basic thrust of the Jesus tradition entails ⁴ S. Guijarro, “Kingdom and Family in Conflict: A Contribution to the Study of the Historical Jesus,” in Social Scientific Models for Interpreting the Bible: Essays by the Context Group in Honor of Bruce J. Malina (ed. J. J. Pilch; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 237. ⁵ In both cases, early Christianity seems to have entailed a form of community which rightfully may be termed ‘fictive kinship.’ The question here is to what extent this new brotherhood or family co-existed with the ‘earthly’ family. On ‘fictive kinship,’ see the discussion in J. H. Hellerman, The Ancient Church as Family (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 1–91; D. Duling, “The Matthean Brotherhood and Marginal Scribal Leadership,” in Modelling Early Christianity (ed. P. F. Esler; London: Routledge, 1995), 159–81, and C. S. Keener, “Family and Household,” in DNTB (ed. S. E. Porter and C. A. Evans; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 356–7. For a general discussion of various traditions in both Greco-Roman and Jewish material regarding subordination of family ties, see S. C. Barton, Discipleship and Family Ties in Mark and Matthew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 23–56 and also S. P. Ahearne-Kroll, “‘Who Are My Mother and My Brothers?’ Family Relations and Family Language in the Gospel of Mark,” JR 81 (2001): 1–25. ⁶ See, e. g., Barton, Discipleship; J. W. Pryor, “Jesus and Family – A Test Case,” ABR 45 (1997): 56–69.

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an anti-family stand. Jesus went against all suppressing hierarchies, including the patriarchal family.7 We are thus confronted with a simple yet complex question: Did the Jesus movement entail hostility towards the family institution ‘per se’? Since this question in its entirety is not related to Mark and Matthew studies more than it is related to historical Jesus studies based most often on Q, what follows will only provide a suggestion from a certain angle.8 The third motivation for the present topic is based on the fact that Galilee already has been utilized as ‘a reading scenario’ in a number of studies trying to bolster or weaken certain perceptions.9 The main issue here concerns what kind of Galilean setting we encounter in the first century. In connection with family life, this large issue narrows into a focus on the state of the extended family and the overall traditional, rural way of life. The question thus is: Did the Galilee of especially Herod Antipas provide a stable socio-economic environment in which the family as an institution could prosper, or did his reign force rapid changes that harmed the traditional way of life, thereby eroding the patriarch’s possibilities to support his family? The final motivation is based on the observation that, while there have been discussions on discipleship ‘pro et contra’ family life in connection to Mark and Matthew in a small number of specialized studies,10 the issue seems to be low on the agenda in the leading commentaries on the two Gospels, as are insights from Galilean studies in general, it seems.11 ⁷ See, e. g., H. Moxnes, Putting Jesus in His Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003); A. D. Jacobson, “Divided Families and Christian Origins,” in The Gospel Behind the Gospels: Current Studies on Q (ed. R. A. Piper; Leiden: Brill, 1995), 361–80. ⁸ J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 229–302 and Moxnes, Putting Jesus. This approach is, however, also far from unproblematic. Thus, Moxnes’ study seems to entail profound circular reasoning when Moxnes first presents a stratification of Q based on the hostility towards the family of institution and afterwards concludes that the historical Jesus was against the patriarchal family. For a study arguing the opposite while still based on Q, see Pryor, “Family.” Likewise, S. Guijarro argues in a number of articles based on Q that Jesus was not against the family per se. Rather, his program aimed at transforming society from within, starting with the family as an institution, and it was only when the patriarchal family proved to be unreceptive to this message that conflict erupted. See Guijarro, “Conflict” and idem, “Domestic Space, Family Relationships and the Social Location of the Q People,” JSNT 27 (2004): 69–81. ⁹ Cf., especially, S. Guijarro, “The Family in First-Century Galilee,” in Constructing Early Christian Families (ed. H. Moxnes; London: Routledge, 1997), 42–65; Guijarro, “Conflict;” Guijarro, “Domestic Space;” Moxnes, Putting Jesus. ¹⁰ Barton, Discipleship; W. Carter, Household and Discipleship: A Study of Matthew 19–20 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994); M. H. Crosby, House of Disciples: Church, Economics, and Justice in Matthew (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988); P. Kristen, Familie, Kreuz und Leben: Nachfolge Jesu nach Q und dem Markusevangelium (Marburg: N. G. Elwert Verlag, 1995) among others. ¹¹ In the case of Mark, the socio-economic conditions of Galilee are rarely brought into play. See though J. Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus (2 vols.; Zürich: Benziger Verlag, 1978), 1:69 and Yarbro Collins, Mark, 159. The issue of family life and discipleship is generally treated only

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1.2. Working Hypothesis The objectives of the present paper are therefore twofold. First, I wish to examine Mark’s and Matthew’s position on family life pro et contra discipleship and, given that the initial impression of an ‘apparent contradiction’ stands up to scrutiny, I secondly wish to establish ‘a Galilean Reading Scenario’ that may shed light on the state of the traditional, extended agrarian based family institution. The motivation for doing so is taken from a number of studies by M. Moreland who, building on the work of sociologist James C. Scott,12 has outlined what very likely constituted the core values of a rural based peasant society. The foremost marker of such a ‘peasant ideology’ was one of no-risk-taking with a strong desire for safety and risk-sharing, preferring above anything else “a stable economic and social environment.”13 It follows that a peasant society in a healthy condition would react strongly against any challenge to its patriarchal and traditional foundations and not be open towards even the slightest change, which necessarily would involve risktaking and instability. On the other hand, if the economic foundation in Galilee had eroded rapidly and the extended families in a rapid speed became fragmented into smaller nuclear units, then – sociologically speaking – its members would be more open to change than if the old patriarchal family institution was still in place. Thus, building on Moreland’s and Scott’s analyses, it is reasonable to assume that if rural Galilee was as strong as ever, the amount of animosity against the Jesus movement encountered in Mark and Matthew might stem from a Galilean experience of rejection caused by just the slightest suggestion of change and indirect critique. On the other hand, if the foundation under family life was briefly, especially in connection to 3:20–35. See, e. g., R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2002), 178–9; R. A. Guelich, Mark 1–8:26 (Dallas: Nelson, 1989), 182, 184–6; C. Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20 (Dallas: Nelson, 2001), 312; A. Pilgaard, Markusevangeliet (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2008), 79, 134, 273. More space is devoted, though, in Yarbro Collins, Mark, 235, 291, 481. In the case of Matthew, Galilee is also virtually absent whereas the family issue appears here and there; cf. U. Luz, Matthew 8–20 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 19, 112 ff.; Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:393f; Davis and Allison, Matthew, 2:57–8, 217; W. Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A SocioPolitical and Religious Reading (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 122–3, 208–9, 242– 3; M. Müller, Kommentar til Matthæusevangeliet (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2000), 148, 236, 272–3, 311–2, 323–32. ¹² J. C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976). ¹³ M. Moreland, “The Galilean Response to Earliest Christianity: A Cross-Cultural Study of the Subsistence Ethic,” in Religion and Society in Roman Palestine: Old Questions, New Approaches (ed. D. R. Edwards; London: Routledge, 2004), 39. Cf. also idem, “Q and the Economics of Early Roman Galilee,” in The Sayings Source Q and the Historical Jesus (ed. A. Lindemann; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001), 561–75; idem, “The Jesus Movement in the Villages of Roman Galilee: Archaeology, Q, and Modern Anthropological Theory,” in Oral Performance, Popular Tradition, and Hidden Transcript in Q (ed. R. L. Horsley; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 159–80.

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already considerably eroded, the animosity preserved in Mark and Matthew needs, plausibly speaking, a more profound basis of direct critique from the Jesus movement to make sense.

2. Family Life in Mark and Matthew 2.1. Introduction The first step, before investigating the socio-economic environment of first-century Galilee, is therefore to take a closer look at Mark and Matthew to see how these Gospels envision the conflict between the callings of discipleship and family life. We will do so by grouping the relevant texts into the following four groups: (1) Jesus’ call of the first disciples: Mark 1:16–20; (2:14); Matt 4:18–22; 9:9–13. (2) Jesus, his own family, and Nazareth: Mark 3:21, 31–35; 6:1–6a; Matt 12:46– 50; 13:53–58. (3) The disciples and their families, conflict: a. “We have left everything”: Mark 10:28–31; Matt 19:27–30. b. “Handed over”; “hated by all”: Mark 13:12–13; Matt 10:21–22; 24:9. c. Texts particular to Matt: 8:18–22 (“let the dead bury their dead”); 10:34– 39 (sword and not peace); 19:10–12 (εὐνοῦχοι). (4) Filial piety, divorce, houses, and ‘family imagery’: a. Filial piety: Mark 7:10–13; Matt 15:4–5 (Corban). Mark 10:19; Matt 19:19 (the commandment to honor parents). b. Prohibition against divorce: Mark 10:2–12; Matt 5:31–32; 19:3–9. c. Setting in houses: Jesus in houses (Matt 13:36; 17:25; Mark 1:29; 2:15; 7:24; 9:33 etc.); sending to houses (Matt 10:12–14; Mark 6:10). d. Family as image: God as father (Matt 7:7–11; 21:28–32; Mark 8:38; 11:25; 13:32; 14:36 etc.); house as image (Matt 5:15; 7:24–27; 12:25; Mark 13:34– 37 etc.). Space will not allow more than a sketch of these texts, but I hope it will be enough to demonstrate the tensions and potential conflict in callings. Short notice will also be given to some of the more prominent contributions within research. 2.2. Jesus’ Call of the First Disciples Beginning with the first callings of disciples, it is important to notice how differently Mark and Matthew equip their readers with background information on Jesus. While Matthew places Jesus within a traceable family record, Mark limits himself to mentioning that Jesus came from Nazareth (1:9), and it is not until chapter three that he introduces Jesus’ relatives (3:21, 31–35) and in chapter six

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provides us with details on Jesus’ upbringing, profession, and hometown (6:1– 6a). Instead, Mark provides his readers with a sense of urgency, immediately stressing how the coming of the basileia sets a new order in life as demonstrated prominently through the callings of the first four disciples (1:16–20) followed in chapter two by the calling of Levi (2:14). In all cases we encounter the same pattern of Jesus seeing (εἶδεν, 1:16, 19; 2:14), Jesus calling (1:17, 20; 2:14), and an immediate response (1:18, 20; 2:14). The main issue for our purposes concerns to what extent Jesus’ call is in conflict with the traditional family life of the disciples. From a sociological perspective, a break with normal family life seems entailed. This is most obvious in the second calling of James and John, who left their father with his hired servants in order to follow the call of Jesus (ἀφέντεϚ τὸν πατέρα αὐτῶν Ζεβεδαῖον ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ μετὰ τῶν μισθωτῶν), thus compromising their filial obligations.14 However, in the world of Mark, the radical break with family life which results in neglecting one’s work duties is softened right away when Jesus follows the four disciples into Capernaum and takes up lodgings, it seems, in Peter and Andrew’s house (1:29). The same pattern seems obvious in the call of Levi in 2:14, where Jesus in the following verse is dining ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ αὐτοῦ, which – judging from the context – must refer to Levi’s house (2:15). It rather seems that Mark placed the point of intersection not between Jesus and family life per se but between Jesus and all other priorities. As pointed out by S. Barton, from a rhetorical point of view, the use of εὐθὺϚ as well as the many verbs of motion (παράγων, ἀφέντεϚ, ἠκολούθησαν, προβάϚ, ἀφέντεϚ, and ἀπῆλθον) forces on the reader an impression of urgency under which family obligations are submitted.15 The authority for this reversal of priorities seems established already by the way Mark begins his Gospel with a mixed OT citation providing a sense of eschatological expectation over what follows.16 It is reinforced further by the bold statement in 1:15 of how “time is fulfilled and the Kingdom is at hand.”17 In the light of this, the first callings (following immediately after) are easily identified by the reader as prophetic in-breaks in line with Elijah’s calling of Elisha in 1 Kgs 19:19–21, in which sacred family duties were also set aside. By picking exactly the theme of familial obligations, Mark succeeds in underscoring how profoundly the coming of the basileia changes, if not jeopardizes, even the most ¹⁴ As already mentioned in note 8, H. Moxnes divides the texts according to the level of their anti-family ethos and places Mark 1:16–20 at the first level most in opposition to the old hierarchical family institution from which Jesus calls forth his disciples without letting them know whereto: “The strange thing about these sayings is that they leave the person who is called in limbo, called to leave and to follow Jesus, but without a new place to go, either socially or in terms of location” (Putting Jesus, 57). ¹⁵ Cf. Barton, Discipleship, 65. ¹⁶ Mark 1:2–3 cites Exod 23:20, Mal 3:1, and Isa 40:3. ¹⁷ For an introduction to the discussion of this statement, see Pilgaard, Markusevangeliet, 73.

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fundamental facts of life when establishing a new world order in which all human institutions are reorganized around Jesus as the new prophetic authority.18 Commenting briefly on Matthew’s version, we see here a number of variations, most of which are trivial changes.19 However, with Luz, it is possible to see a heightening of the tension in the way the disciples’ responses are put into the same formula,20 just as Matt 4:21–22 twice points out how the two brothers, John and James, were in the boat with their father leaving him behind without any reference to hired servants (μισθωτοί) as in Mark. “Zebedee is left decisively behind.”21 2.3. Jesus and Nazareth The second group of texts concerns Jesus’ relationship to his earthly family (Mark 3:21, 30–35; 6:1–6a and Matt 12:46–50; 13:53–58), and, as often noticed in the research, Mark delivers the most profound critique of Jesus’ earthly family compared to Matthew and not least Luke.22 Mark is the only gospel that has the saying of 3:21 that Jesus’ relatives (οἱ παρ’ αὐτοῦ) came to grab him (κρατῆσαι αὐτόν) because they said he was out of his mind (ἔλεγον γὰρ ὅτι ἐξέστη) – a statement that most likely has the family as its subject.23 ¹⁸ Cf. also Barton: “So the social (and economic) detachment which the story models and legitimates is not detachment at any cost and for any reason. Sociologically speaking, the story represents the interests and self-understanding, not of an anti-social movement, but of an innovatory, prophetic one. The leaving of familial and occupational ties for the sake of Jesus and the Gospel (8.35b) dramatizes powerfully the movement’s sense of new priorities, while intimating, at the same time, what those new priorities might cost in personal and social terms” (Discipleship, 67). ¹⁹ Such as how the slightly awkward construction καὶ ποιήσω ὑμᾶϚ γενέσθαι ἁλιεῖϚ ἀνθρώπων (Mark 1:17) is changed to καὶ ποιήσω ὑμᾶϚ ἁλιεῖϚ ἀνθρώπων (Matt 4:19). ²⁰ ἀφέντεϚ ἀπῆλθον ὀπίσω αὐτοῦ of Mark 1:20 is changed into ἀφέντεϚ ἠκολούθησαν αὐτῷ in Matt 4:22 to match the same construction in Mark 1:18 and Matt 4:20. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 162–3, sees in this a heightening of the tension. The expected reaction of a disciple is of one kind only, immediate response in obedience. ²¹ Barton, Discipleship, 130. Finally, it can also be noticed how the brother-term is used emphatically twice in 4:18 and 21. This corresponds well with the overall manifold use of the term in Matthew underlining how the community around Jesus in some ways is depicted as a new brotherhood (cf. Barton, Discipleship, 129). For more on this issue, see Duling, “Brotherhood.” ²² Barton lists the differences in six points (cf. Barton, Discipleship, 78–9). The clear edge against Jesus’ earthly family in Mark has led some scholars to see an intra-muros conflict in the early church between the Markan community and the congregation in Jerusalem, led by James, the brother of Jesus. For a discussion thereof, and rebuttal of the idea, see Barton, Discipleship, 82–5. ²³ It has been discussed whether the subject of the last part of the verse is really the family of Jesus, or whether it should be taken impersonally as a rumour. The difference is minimal, however, since the family of Jesus accepts the verdict on Jesus by seeking to grab him. R. Brown, et al., have argued persuasively for Jesus’ family as the subject by pointing to a sandwich struc-

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This accusation is pursued further in 3:31–35 with Matt 12:46–50 as a close parallel.24 The main point is how both Mark and Matthew depict a clear distance between Jesus’ earthly family and his new family consisting of the crowd and/or the disciples. Jesus’ mother and brother stand ἔξω and are unable to contact Jesus directly. When Jesus is made aware of their request to speak to him (so Matthew) or their calling him out (so Mark), he responds by looking at (so Mark) or pointing at (so Matthew) those around him (so Mark) or his disciples (so Matthew) saying: “look, my mother and my brothers” (ἰδοὺ ἡ μήτηρ μου καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοί μου, Matt 12:49, diff. Mark only with ἴδε).25 From a sociological angle, this story sends a drastic signal. Is Jesus’ earthly family “eradicated in this new concept of the true family” as formulated by H. K. Kee,26 or are filial obligations subjected to the new eschatological family? David May’s analysis of Mark 3:31–35 in the light of honor/shame is helpful here. In a traditional society, Jesus puts his family to shame by leaving his hometown. For this reason they have to summon him to regain their honor. According to May, Jesus accepts their claim by entering into the discussion, but points to a new and higher order or reality by claiming that it is in the doing of the will of God that one becomes his family. In this way, “the family of Jesus and Jesus himself are saved from dishonor and shame by the higher legitimating norm of ‘doing God’s will’.”27 His earthly family is thus not excluded more than it is subjected to this new order. In the light of this, it seems that in the worlds of Mark and Matthew, H. Kee, E. Schüssler-Fiorenza, H. Moxnes, and others are pushing it too far when claiming that all earthly institutions and gender divisions are eradicated in Jesus.28 Still, even if a consequence rather than a direct program, the conflict between Jesus and his family is important enough to re-enter once more in both Gospels, namely in the story of Jesus visiting Nazareth (Mark 6:1–6a; Matt 13:53–58). The same pattern of overall similarity with a few dissimilarities can be ture of 3:20–35. First Jesus’ family accuses (3:20–21), then the Scribes of Jerusalem accuse (3:22); Jesus then answers the accusation of the Scribes (3:23–30) and finally the accusation of the family (3:31–5). Cf. R. Brown et al., Mary in the New Testament (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1978), 51–9, cf. also, e. g., D. C. Sim, “What about the Wives and the Children of the Disciples? The Cost of Discipleship From Another Perspective,” HeyJ 35 (1994): 374–5; Barton, Discipleship, 68–73. ²⁴ The variations stressed by Barton, Discipleship, 179–82, are all subtle. ²⁵ A more clear-cut variation is found in Matt 12:50, exchanging Mark 3:35’s τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ with τὸ θέλημα τοῦ πατρόϚ μου. This change is typical for Matthew emphasizing the new brotherly kinship with the one heavenly father (cf. the discussion of Barton, Discipleship, 180– 1). ²⁶ H. C. Kee, Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark’s Gospel (London: SCM Press, 1977), 109. ²⁷ D. M. May, “Mark 3:20–35 from the Perspective of Shame/Honor,” BTB 17 (1987): 86. ²⁸ Cf. E. S. Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1984), 147–8; Moxnes, Putting Jesus, 123–4; Kee, Community, 109.

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observed.29 The key point in this connection is how Jesus is declared ἄτιμοϚ by his kin, house, and hometown. As underlined by Neyrey, Guijarro, and Moxnes, Jesus is in these texts publicly dishonored by and ostracized from his hometown, which to a large degree probably consisted of his extended family. In an honor/ shame society, such an act was of profound importance, stigmatizing and banning the person from the social interaction and economic benefits of the community. His local community tries to “shame him back into his proper place”30 by placing him within their well-known and well-ordered hierarchy as son of the carpenter and Mary. Again, Jesus answers back by appealing to a higher calling, namely that of a prophet, which entails a conflict with his hometown. 2.4. The Disciples and Their Families: Conflicts We now turn to sayings of Jesus concerned with the kind of problems and conflicts the disciples should expect from their families when following Jesus. Mark and Matthew share two groups of sayings,31 on top of which Matthew adds five other texts that all clearly heighten the conflict between family obligations and discipleship.32 To begin with the texts shared by Mark and Matthew, then, both render a saying where Jesus, in response to Peter’s claim to have left πάντα to follow him, states that no one shall leave “house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields”33 without being fully repaid. There are a number of differences between the two logia, the most important of which seems to be ²⁹ To begin with the last point, in Mark, Jesus adds καὶ ἐν τοῖϚ συγγενεῦσιν αὐτοῦ to the list of places where a prophet is disregarded, whereas Matthew only takes over ἐν τῇ πατρίδι and καὶ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ αὐτοῦ (13:57). Also, the level of resistance seems heightened in Mark by the notion in 6:5 about how Jesus could not do any powerful deeds in Nazareth (οὐκ ἐδύνατο ἐκεῖ ποιῆσαι οὐδεμίαν δύναμιν), whereas in Matt 13:58 he just seems to have avoided it by his own choice due to their lack of faith (οὐκ ἐποίησεν ἐκεῖ δυνάμειϚ πολλάϚ). ³⁰ Moxnes, Putting Jesus, 52. Cf. also J. Neyrey, “Loss of Wealth, Loss of Family and Loss of Honour: The Cultural Context of the Original Macarisms in Q,” in Modelling Early Christianity (ed. P. F. Esler; London: Routledge, 1995), 139–58, and Guijarro, “Conflict.” ³¹ Viz. (a) the saying on what has been left will be returned now or in the parousia (Mark 10:28–31; Matt 19:27–30, cf. also Luke 18:28–30), (b) how family members shall turn over each other to courts and death penalty (Mark 13:12; Matt 10:21, cf. also Luke 21:16), which in all cases are followed by the saying on how the disciples shall be hated by everyone (Mark 13:13; Matt 10:22, cf. also Luke 21:17 and Matt 24:9). ³² Viz. (a) how it is not allowed to bury even one’s father before following Jesus (8:21–22, cf. Luke 9:59–60); (b) the group of sayings in 10:34–37 stating how Jesus has come to bring sword and not peace (10:34, cf. Luke 12:51), how family members will rise against each other (10:35– 36, a loose citation of Micah 7:6, cf. Luke 12:52–3), and how the one loving his family more than Jesus is not worthy (10:37, cf. Luke 14:26, though hate instead of love); (c) finally, only Matthew has the saying of how some have become enouchoi for the sake of the kingdom (19:12). ³³ οἰκίαν ἢ ἀδελφοὺϚ ἢ ἀδελφὰϚ ἢ μητέρα ἢ πατέρα ἢ τέκνα ἢ αγρούϚ, Mark 10:29, cf. Matt 19:29. Matthew’s version, as reconstructed in NA28, is identical except for a slightly different word order. There are, however, a number of text critical variants in both Mark and Matthew most of which concern an emendation of Luke 18:29’s γυναῖκα.

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Mark’s insistence on the prospect of persecution (μετὰ διωγμῶν, 10:30) as well as present reversal of fortunes (cf. νῦν ἐν τῷ καιρῷ τούτῳ, 10:30).34 Persecution from family members as a consequence of discipleship becomes even more evident in the second shared saying, in which Jesus predicts how “brother shall hand over brother to death and father child, and children shall rise against parents and kill them.”35 Immediately after follows the third shared saying stating that the disciples will be hated ὑπὸ πάντων (Mark 13:13, cf. Matt 10:22 and also 24:9). From a sociological perspective, these sayings depict a clear antagonism between discipleship and rural peasant life, pillared on stability, accountability, and the subjection of personal preferences to the well-being of the family and its inheritances (i. e., ‘house’ and ‘fields’).36 The Jesus of Mark and Matthew jeopardizes all this by subjecting the disciple’s family obligations to his basileia. This conflict is taken further in the texts particular to Matthew. First, we find the two logia of 8:18–22.37 In the first of these, Jesus states that following him will result in homelessness. In the second one, Jesus denies a disciple’s request to bury his father before following him. As often pointed out in research, the most sacred duty of a son was the obligation to bury his father, thereby paying him the last and final honor.38 Not doing so was sacrilege beyond imagination. Though various explanations have been sought to soften this saying, for example by pointing to the tradition of a secondary burial, the edge of it remains in all cases.39 The potential conflict between family life and discipleship cannot be expressed more clearly than this. The second text particular to Matthew consists of the three sayings in 10:34– 37 stating how μάχαιρα and not εἰρήνη is to be expected in the slipstream of ³⁴ Persecution is a theme of special importance to Mark and this saying adds family to the list of subjects behind the persecutions the disciples should expect to encounter (cf. Barton, Discipleship, 99). ³⁵ παραδώσει ἀδελφὸϚ ἀδελφὸν εἰϚ θάνατον καὶ πατὴρ τέκνον, και ἐπαναστήσονται τέκνα ἐπὶ γονεῖϚ καὶ θανατώσουσιν αὐτούϚ (Mark 13:12; cf. the same saying in Matt 10:21, though it is in a different context). ³⁶ For introduction to the all-pervasive role of family in traditional rural Mediterranean life, see, e. g., C. J. H. Wright, “Family,” in ABD (ed. D. Noel Freedman; 6 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1992), 2:761–9; N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 B. C. E. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1979; repr. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999); P. J. King and L. E. Stager, Life in Biblical Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001); C. Meyers, “The Family in Early Israel,” in Families in Ancient Israel (ed. L. G. Perdue et al.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997). ³⁷ The parallel passage in Luke 9:57–62 includes a third logion of a disciple not being allowed to say good-bye to his parents. ³⁸ Cf. Guijarro, “Conflict,” 222–9; F. Barth, Role Dilemmas and Father-Son Dominance in Middle Eastern Kinship Systems (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1971); Keener, “Family;” Wright, “Family.” ³⁹ B. McCane, “‘Let the Dead Bury Their Own Dead’: Secondary Burial and Matt 8:21–22,” HTR 83 (1990): 31–43; idem, Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003).

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Jesus (10:34) and, with allusion to Micah 7:6, Jesus states that he has come to disrupt the internal peace and order of the family so that sons will rise against fathers, daughters against mothers, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law, so that a man will finally have the members of his household as enemies (10:35– 36).40 The final logion in the group even seems to top the previous statements by stating that “whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me” (10:37).41 Thus, in 10:34–37, Matthew almost seems to adopt a stance of holywar. The subordination of the family is extremely radical, if not bluntly antifamilial.42 Finally, Matthew – uniquely among the gospels – includes a saying stating that some have made themselves εὐνοῦχοι for the sake of the Kingdom (19:12), thus adding to the picture a new way of life on edge with the old patriarchal style of family life. 2.5. Filial Piety, Divorce, Houses, and ‘Family Imagery’ Finally, in the fourth group, we find the texts which seem to run in the opposite direction, confirming and protecting family life. First, Mark and Matthew do – as the only gospels – render the ‘corban-saying’ (Mark 7:10–13; Matt 15:4–6, with slight differences in wording). In both Gospels, it is embedded within a longer dispute with some Pharisees and Scribes over the tradition of the elders. Jesus directly quotes with affirmation the command of Moses to honor one’s mother and father (Exod 20:12 and Deut 5:16) and links it to a citation from Lev 20:9 that anyone who curses43 his father and mother must be put to death. Jesus then continues by claiming that such behavior is found when the Pharisees and Scribes allow a son to declare his possessions for ‘corban’ (κορβᾶν), which is explained in Mark as a ‘votive gift’ (δῶρον), thereby avoiding the task of supporting his parents, presumably because his possessions now formally belonged to the temple.44 This logion seems a plain case ⁴⁰ The tradition of internal family strife as a sign of the messianic era is found in a number of non-biblical texts as well, such as 1 En. 100:1–2; Jub. 23:19; 4 Ezra 6:24; 3 Bar. 4:17; A. J. 6:109; m. Sot.ah 9:15. Cf. the discussion in Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20, 311–2. ⁴¹ ὁ φιλῶν πατέρα ἢ μητέρα ὑπὲρ ἐμὲ οὐκ ἔστιν μου ἄξιοϚ, καὶ ὁ φιλῶν υἱὸν ἢ θυγατέρα ὑπέρ ἐμὲ οὐκ ἔστιν μου ἄξιοϚ. Matthew’s version may be seen as more soft than Luke’s: ἔι τιϚ ἔρχεται πρόϚ με καὶ οὐ μισεῖ τὸν πατέρα ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τὴν μητέρα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα καὶ τὰ τέκνα καὶ τοὺϚ ἀδελφοὺϚ καὶ τὰϚ ἀδελφὰϚ ἔτι τε καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἑαυτοῦ, οὐ δύναται ε῏ιναί μου μαθητήϚ. ⁴² Cf. Barton, Discipleship, 177. It comes as no surprise, then, that Matthew places one of his ‘take up your cross’ sayings in exactly this context (10:38; cf. 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23 and 14:27). ⁴³ ὁ κακολογῶν in Mark 7:10, Matt 15:4, whereas κακῶϚ εἴπῃ in LXX and lNw˘j in MT. ⁴⁴ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 352, explains the vow in the following way: “The only practical effect of the vow is that the parents would be liable to trespass against temple property if they made use of any of their son’s belongings. In other words, the son is making cynical use of the biblical vow, a cultic form, in order to evade his obligations related to the commandment to honor one’s father and mother.”

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for filial piety and coheres with Jesus’ answer to the rich young man, in which the commandment to honor one’s parents is also made effective (Mark 10:19; Matt 19:19). Likewise, it seems most plausible that Jesus’ prohibition against divorce aims at protecting the family unity and not least its vulnerable female part (cf. Mark 10:2–12; Matt 5:31–32; 19:3–9). At least it is usually understood this way even though A. Jacobson has proposed that it likewise contributed to the anti-family stand of certain traditions within the early Jesus movements. Jacobson arrives at this conclusion through the presupposition that many would have left their spouses to join this radical movement and then became banned from entering into new marriage.45 This interpretation does not hold up well against the text, and, at least in the Markan tradition, the more appropriate issue is if divorce under any circumstance can be allowed (ὃ οὖν ὁ θεὸϚ συνέζευξεν ἄνθρωποϚ μὴ χωριζέτω, 10:9). Thirdly, metaphors from family life are used throughout the sayings and parables of Jesus – often depicting a regular family setting, like God being described as a father, most profoundly in Matthew (7:9–11; 21:28–32; 5:16, 45, 48; 6:4–15; 10:20, 29; 11:27; 12:50; 13:43; 23:9 et al.), though also occasionally in Mark (8:38; 11:10, 25; 13:32; 14:36). Finally, this corresponds well with the role that οἰκία plays in the two Gospels. It is often embedded and invisible at first sight but it is there, nevertheless, as emphasized by M. Crosby in his House of the Disciples.46 Jesus and the disciples are often in a house (Matt 13:36; 17:25; Mark 1:29; 2:15; 7:24; 9:33 etc.), disciples are sent to houses (Matt 10:12–14; Mark 6:10), just as house is used in a positive manner as an image of the basileia (Matt 5:15; 7:24:27; 12:25; Mark 13:34–37 etc.). Thus, the term οἰκία ends up having a very positive connotation in both Mark and Matthew.47 2.6. Partial Conclusion To sum up this first part, the relationship between discipleship and family life in Mark and Matthew is complex indeed. On the one hand, rejection and persecution dominate the picture. On the other hand, Jesus reaffirms the commandment to honor one’s parents, divorce is prohibited, and family metaphors are used throughout with positive connotations, just as Jesus and the disciples are constantly found in and hosted by οἰκία.

⁴⁵ A. D. Jacobson, “Jesus against the Family: The Dissolution of Family Ties in the Gospel Tradition,” in From Quest to Q (ed. J. Ma Asgeirsson, K. de Troyer, and M. W. Meyer; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2000), 189–218. ⁴⁶ Crosby, House. Cf. especially the appendix, pp. 325–8, though he at times seems to overstress his point, including too much material. ⁴⁷ This a point also stressed by Guijarro, “Family,” 114 ff. and Moxnes, Putting Jesus, 56–7.

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It is therefore not without reason that the Jesus tradition’s – in this case Mark’s and Matthew’s – stand on family life has been depicted as one of ‘apparent contradiction.’ A conflict in callings is clearly present and the gap between a supra-family submission and an anti-family dissolution seems narrow at times.

3. Rural Galilee as a ‘Reading Scenario’ 3.1. The Socio-Economic State of Rural Galilee We now turn to this investigation’s second main part, aiming at establishing a plausible socio-economic scenario based on recent archaeological investigations, which then have the potential to increase our knowledge of the state of family life in the Markan and Matthean Galilean cradle. The rationale behind this step is, to repeat, as follows: If the economic foundation under family in Galilee had eroded rapidly and the extended families fragmented into smaller nuclear units, then – sociologically speaking – its members would be more open to change than if the old patriarchal, patrilocal, and patrilineal family institution was still in place. In the former case, the degree of conflict observable in Mark and Matthew most logically relates to a severe antifamily stand of the Galilean Jesus movement. On the other hand, sociological investigations underline that a strong peasant society would react harshly towards any kind of change and would not be open towards the slightest shift in balance. It follows that if Galilee was strong, even an indirect critique of the family institution would call forth a harsh reaction. In this case, then, the conflict we have observed could have been produced by less than a direct critique. The question is, then, how we best obtain a feeling of the socio-economic conditions of rural first-century Galilee. I suggest that the best way of approaching this vast field is by establishing certain ‘indicators or gauges’ through which we can get a feeling of the overall development from a bird’s eye view. The aim is in this way to establish a perception of what could be termed the relative or comparative developments of the region over time – as opposed to an absolute description aiming at clarifying how things really were. Instead, the following investigation takes a more modest approach, aiming solely at detecting changes over time which together will indicate whether the socio-economic foundation under rural peasant life was worsening, improving, or perhaps maintaining the status quo. There are a number of points that can be used to gauge the pulse of Galilee, for example, political development, land ownership and settlement patterns, the state of rural villages and towns, types of dwelling houses, monetization, specialization and commerce, tax pressure, and climatic conditions. These areas are much more than we will be able to cover in detail in what follows. I will therefore concentrate on the points where new archaeological materi-

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al has been made available and let the other areas slip by with only cautionary remarks. In reality, this means that most of my time will be spent on dealing with the array of recent surface surveys in Galilee and the surrounding regions as well as looking at a number of excavations of villages or towns. 3.2. The Political Development Beginning, though, with the political development in Galilee, the question is to what extent the region was experiencing dramatic and rapid change. While only a sketch can be drawn here,48 it appears, generally speaking, that while some changes and turmoil took place in the first century B. C. E., the Herodian era introduced a period of calm. According to Josephus, Pompey’s conquest and reorganization in 63 B. C. E. stripped the Hasmonean state of many of its conquered city-states allowing only Galilee proper to remain in Jewish hands (A. J. 17.74–76 and B. J. 1.155–158). The long-term consequences thereof have been discussed. S. Applebaum argues for a direct connection between Pompey’s reorganization and the rebellion of 66 C. E.49 This seems, though, to be an exaggeration since – again according to Josephus – a number of edicts afterwards issued by Julius Caesar were designed to lift the restrains placed by Pompey in return for the assistance provided by Antipater to Caesar during his fight with Pompey (A. J. 14.127–133, 190–216, esp., 205, 207). The Herodian period was marked by some unrest, at least in the transitional phases – that is, before Herod’s final capture of the throne in 37 B. C. E.50 and after his death in 4 B. C. E.51 Robbers (as Josephus describes) or members of the ousted Hasmonean clan (as Freyne describes them) succeeded in a number of attacks also in Galilee. Interestingly, no internal upheavals are reported by Josephus or any other written source to have taken place in Galilee during the reign of Antipas and actually right up to the war of 66 C.E. Though Josephus is keenly interested in presenting Antipas in a bad light, as another example of bad Herodian rulership,52 he does not provide us with embarrassing stories of rebellion and unrest within his jurisdiction, except for a story about John the Baptist (A. J. 18.116– 119) and the embarrassing destruction of his army in a battle with the Nabatean king (A. J. 18.113–115). ⁴⁸ For a more thorough investigation, see M. H. Jensen, “Droughts and Famines? The Climatic Conditions of First-Century Galilee” (forthcoming; unpublished paper). ⁴⁹ Cf. S. Applebaum, “Economic Life in Palestine,” in The Jewish People in the First Century (ed. S. Safrai and M. Stern; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1976), 656; idem, “Judaea as a Roman Province: The Countryside as a Political and Economic Factor,” ANRW 2.8 (1977): 361. ⁵⁰ Cf. A. J. 14.102, 120, 158–9, 297–9, 413–33 and B. J. 1.177, 180, 203, 238–9, 303–16. ⁵¹ Cf. A. J. 17.271–272 and B. J. 2.56, 68 describing unrest in Galilee. For a detailed discussion, see Jensen, Herod Antipas, 150–1. ⁵² Cf. my discussion in Jensen, Herod Antipas, 99–100.

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When looking specifically at Antipas’ reign and its impact on the socio-economic development in Galilee, I was compelled by a closer study of all the sources available to conclude that Antipas is best described with adjectives such as: minor, moderate, and unremarkable. He did not make fundamental changes in Galilee; rather he engaged in a modest development of the region.53 To sum up, Galilee took its part in the turmoil entailed in the Roman conquest of the East. It is, however, noticeable that the reported unrest is confined to the transitional periods and turmoil does not seem to have been continuous. 3.3. Settlement Patterns An area of inquiry that has been considerably advanced through recent decades of archaeological activity is that of settlement patterns. An increasing number of surveys performed by Israeli archaeologists, in particular, now provide us with a sketch of how settlement activity developed over time. It should be noted immediately that there are several methodological complications connected to the use of surface surveys in establishing settlement and population density, such as rather broad periodizations (e. g., the entire Roman period), different counting strategies, problems detecting pottery in certain periods, and others, which may lead to over- or under-representation of certain periods.54 Nevertheless, surveys are valuable as a macro tool that can provide a preliminary view of a given area’s development over time; data from actual excavations can later be added to provide a more detailed knowledge of that area. In this connection, I will only be able to show a chart of the various surveys performed in and around Galilee (totaling 17 altogether) and to offer a comment related to the last one. The first chart, mainly summarizing the surveys performed by the Archaeological Survey of Israel project (ASI),55 clearly demonstrates a growing number of settlements from the Hellenistic period and onwards with a peak either in the Middle Roman, Late Roman, or most often the Byzantine period. It is further observable how the most dramatic increases in most cases occurred between the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Thus, without exception, the number of settle⁵³ For a short discussion of Herod Antipas’ impact on Galilee, see M. H. Jensen, “Herod Antipas in Galilee: Friend or Foe of the Historical Jesus?” JSHJ 5 (2007): 7–32. ⁵⁴ For a discussion, see U. Leibner, Settlement and History in Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Galilee: An Archaeological Survey of the Eastern Galilee (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 59–86. ⁵⁵ In total, the numbers from the 16 surveys listed in chart 1 are taken from: R. Frankel et al., Settlement Dynamics and Regional Diversity in Ancient Upper Galilee (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2001); D. Urman, The Golan: A Profile of a Region During the Roman and Byzantine Periods (London: BAR, 1985); I. Finkelstein and Y. Magen, eds., Archaeological Survey of the Hill Country of Benjamin (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1993); I. Finkelstein et al., Highlands of Many Cultures: The Southern Samaria Survey: The Sites (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1997); D. Bar, “Frontier and Periphery in Late Antique Palestine,” GRBS 44 (2004): 69– 92. In this last article, Bar conveniently summarizes a number of the ASI-surveys.

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ments rose from the Hellenistic period into the Roman, beginning to decline only in the later Roman periods or in the Byzantine period.56 Chart 1

Hel (332–63)

Upper Galilee, Frankel et al., Settlement Dynamics Golan, D. Urman, Golan Golan Heights, ASI Hanita, Galilee, ASI Mt. Tabor Galilee, ASI Nahalal, Galilee, ASI Mishmar Ha’Emek, Galilee, ASI Hadera, coast, ASI Shechem, Samaria, ASI Lod, Judea, ASI Lachish, Judea, ASI Menasshe, Judea, ASI Herdium, Judea, ASI Urim, Judea, ASI Southern Samaria, ASI Do., Finkelstein et al., Highlands (est. no. of residents) Chart 2

Leibner, sites Estimated settled area (dunams)

ER (63b–70c)

106 75

182 51

28 10 19 37 5

41 30

38 62

19 25 27 1

45

170 15,680

235 22,000

22 316– 569

40 559– 985

69 50 112 75 75 103

64 15 59

40 579– 1015

Byz (324–641) 194

170

Hel 100–50 50–1 1–50 BC. E. BC. E. C. E. 26 225– 492

MR/LR (70–324)

210 40 45 49 45 106 64 133 106 158 137 46 120 306 32,520

50– 100 C. E.

100– 150 C. E.

150– 200 C. E.

200– 250 C. E.

250– 300 C. E.

37 544– 962

39 652– 982

39 38 656– 649– 1119 1099

32 508– 882

The second chart summarizes the most important survey for our purposes. Over a five year period, Uzi Leibner directed a team that systematically surveyed an area of 285 square kilometers west of the north-eastern part of the lake of Galilee with the objective of describing the developments in settlement density in the Hellenistic through Byzantine periods (300 B. C. E. – 650 C. E.).57 The importance of the survey stems from two facts: First, it is located in the heart of Lower Galilee, and, second, it offers a more refined picture by establishing what Leibner terms a “high resolution analysis” with relatively short sub-per⁵⁶ According to Bar, “Frontier,” 76–8, Palestine experienced a peak of settlement activity in the second to fourth centuries during which period the frontier of settlement was widened to its maximum with agricultural activity even in the most peripheral areas. ⁵⁷ Cf. Leibner, Settlement. Chart 2 summarizes the numbers given at p. 310 and 314.

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iods. Leibner thus distinguishes between an early Roman period lasting until 135 C. E., a mid-Roman period lasting until 250 C. E. and, finally, a late Roman period (the Byzantine period is similarly divided into three). The basis of this “high resolution analysis” is twofold. On the one hand, Leibner uses David Adan-Bayewitz’s detailed classification of Galilean pottery types,58 and, on the other hand, the survey managed to collect a large sample of ceramics from each site, in total an average of 200, counting only identifiable shards. Leibner arrived at the following results: In the Hellenistic period, settlements were “sparse” and, furthermore, proved to be “fortified sites located on hill-tops near valleys suitable for large scale cultivation.”59 In the early Roman period, however, a dramatic change took place with a “massive wave of settlement construction,” now markedly unfortified, placed at “locations with no strategic value.”60 The rise in density is close to a hundred percent. In this respect, Leibner’s survey mirrors Frankel’s study of Upper Galilee and some of the ASI-surveys, in which the most significant growth was during the Roman period. In the mid-Roman period, however, Leibner encountered a slight fall in the number of settlement sites, followed by a more drastic decline from the late Roman period and onwards. In this respect, Leibner’s study differs from some of the others. This new study is extremely important for our understanding of first-century Galilee. It is actually the first of its kind to offer such a thorough and detailed analysis, using Adan-Bayewitz’s fine-masked pottery classification. The basic thrust regarding the early Roman period is clear: an intensive effort was made to bring the rural area under the plow. The growth in this period therefore took place not only in the urban centers of Sepphoris and Tiberias, known from other excavations, but also in the rural parts of the region, as political circumstances allowed unfortified settlements on less-desirable tracts of land. To conclude this ‘survey of surveys,’ the following may be noted: In all the surveys presented here, there is an unambiguous trend of growth in the settlement density in Galilee and other Jewish regions from the Hellenistic period and onwards until at least the late Roman period. There is no sign of decline in the first century. It is important, however, to realize that the results of surveys should be treated with caution due to their broad time spans. They need to be complemented by proper stratified excavations, to which we will turn shortly.

⁵⁸ Cf. D. Adan-Bayewitz, Common Pottery in Roman Galilee: A Study of Local Trade (Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1993). ⁵⁹ Leibner, “Settlement and Demography,” 114. Cf. Leibner, Settlement, 316, 319. ⁶⁰ U. Leibner, “Settlement and Demography in Late Roman and Byzantine Eastern Galilee,” in Settlements and Demography in the Near East in Late Antiquity (ed. A. S. Lewin and P. Pellegrini; Rome: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali, 2006), 115. Cf. Leibner, Settlement, 333

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3.4. Land Ownership Connected to the issue of settlement patterns, we find the issue of land ownership, which is highly contested in research. Some claim that from the time of Alexander the Great onwards, more and more land was aggregated under the crown. Large estates, latifundiae, were on the rise, farmed by a mix of day laborers, small-plot owners, and even slaves, but owned by the tiny segment of rich elite living remotely in an urban setting as ‘absentee landlords.’61 Recently, John Kloppenborg has forcefully argued for this picture in his study, The Tenants in the Vineyard.62 Others emphasize that the tension between the rich urban elite and the rural peasantry was a fact of life long before Alexander, as indicated by several preHellenistic traditions,63 and that the sources do not paint a dramatically different picture of this balance during the Herodian period. In particular, it has been a trend in recent research on Herod the Great to depict his rule in a more positive light, stepping back from grand psychological descriptions based on Josephus’ at times colorful narratives. I will here briefly summarize what I have presented elsewhere in more detail, namely that the truth of the matter is that we have relatively few sources available that provide information on how this balance developed.64 If a sketch should be drawn, it seems to be the case that large estates in Palestine always occupied the better land of the plains while, at the same time, independent or semi-independent small-plot farming took place in the more remote and less attractive plots of land. Evidence of this duality stems from the Zenon papyri (especially PSI VI 554), the Hefzibah inscription, several excavations of large estates, as well as from Josephus and the New Testament.65 One particularly important argument against my reading of the sources is found in J. Kloppenborg’s newly published study of the terms used for a tenant (γεωργόϚ, ’aris, colonus, Greek, Hebrew and Latin, respectively) and a day-worker (ἐργάτηϚ, po’al, mercennarus). Kloppenborg seeks to demonstrate how these ⁶¹ Cf., eg., Applebaum, “Economic Life;” Applebaum, “Roman Province;” D. E. Oakman, Jesus and the Economic Questions of His Day (Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1986); idem, Jesus and the Peasants (Eugene Books: Cascade Books, 2008); D. A. Fiensy, The Social History of Palestine in the Herodian Period: The Land Is Mine (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991). ⁶² J. S. Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard: Ideology, Economics, and Agrarian Conflict in Jewish Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). ⁶³ Cf., eg., J. Pastor, Land and Economy in Ancient Palestine (London: Routledge, 1997); M. Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, A. D. 132–212 (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983); Z. Safrai, The Economy of Roman Palestine (London: Routledge, 1994); H. Lapin, Economy, Geography, and Provincial History in Later Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001); Freyne, Galilee. ⁶⁴ Cf. M. H. Jensen, “Galilæa, jord og den historiske Jesus,” DTT 71 (2008): 149–70. ⁶⁵ Cf. the detailed discussion in Jensen, “Galilæa, jord,” 154–61.

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terms suddenly began to be used in the Hellenistic (LXX and the Zenon archive), early Roman (the Gospels and the letters found in Nahal Hever and Wadi Muraba’at), and middle Roman (the Mishnah) sources, which he takes to indicate a sudden increase in huge farms, landless day-laborers, and tenants. The growth in estates produced a “debt spiral” that demoted the formerly free farmers to “a class of underemployed non-slave laborers (ergatai).”66 In this, Kloppenborg utilizes the thesis of R. de Vaux, stating that while Mesopotamian culture had always included large estates, the ideal in Israel was the many small self-sufficient farms.67 It must be conceded, on the one hand, that Kloppenborg’s thorough study of the sources reveals how the central government was growing in the Hellenistic and Roman periods at the expense of the rural peasantry. On the other hand, I find the proposed implications of his semantic observations to be weakened by the fact that they can be applied to texts that Kloppenborg himself dates from the eighth century B. C. E. down to around the exile, namely texts that explicitly mention hired labor, sakir (LXX: μισθωτόϚ – Ex 12:45; Lev 19:13; 22:10; 25:6, 40, 50, 53; Deut 15:18; 24:14; Job 7:1–2; 14:6; Isa 16:14; 21:16; Mal 3:5) and texts that even in graphic detail describe the elite’s economic oppression of the poor (1 Sam 8:14; 1 Kgs 21; Isa 5:8; Prov 28:8; Ezek 18:8; 22:12; Micah 2:2; Neh 5:1–5). 3.5. Rural Villages and Towns As mentioned above, surveys need to be complemented by a perspective from actual excavations, and it is to this body of evidence that we now turn. Four excavations of villages or towns from Galilee and the Golan with first-century layers will be considered. The settlements that I will briefly introduce here are Cana, Capernaum, and Yodefat in Galilee and Gamla in the Golan. Of these, Yodefat and Cana are of special interest since their destruction during the Jewish War effectively sealed their first-century stratum.68 In order to gauge the socio-economic pulse of these villages/towns, we must look for evidence of the following four points of focus: (a) enlargement or decline in the settlement perimeters, (b) signs of local industrial activity, (c) signs of public buildings, and (d) signs of stratified housing. Together, these four points of focus will provide another ‘gauge’ on the socioeconomic pulse of Galilee.

⁶⁶ J. S. Kloppenborg, “The Growth and Impact of Agricultural Tenancy in Jewish Palestine (III BC. E.-I C. E.),” JESHO 51 (2008): 60. ⁶⁷ R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961). ⁶⁸ A longer treatment than is possible here can be found in Jensen, Herod Antipas, 162–78.

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A detailed survey of these four settlements paints a picture of rural areas without signs of decline in the early first century. On the contrary, there was an expansion supported by small-scale local industries. (a) In Yodefat, evidence of olive oil, pottery, and textile production has been attested in the excavations. Further, the city expanded on the southern slope throughout the first century up until the war in 66. Most interesting is the discovery in the 1997 season of an upper-class area with an elite house where some of the beautiful frescoes in the geometric First Pompeian style are preserved.69 (b) The excavations at Cana likewise produced material evidence of a small village community in a steady process of expansion. Two public buildings were found, as well as evidence of small-scale industrial activity, including oil production, textile production, and glass-blowing.70 (c) The excavations at Capernaum have painted a picture of a medium- to large-sized village consisting primarily of large living units. A public building was possibly found in the earliest stratum of the synagogue.71 (d) Likewise, at Gamla, evidence was found of differentiated living units with several public buildings. The synagogue might be the best known public building, but it was not the only one. A commercial neighborhood was also discovered, including a large olive oil extraction plant, a flour mill and a street of shops. Though Gamla was outside the perimeter of Antipas’ reign, the coins of Antipas outnumbered those of Philip, and there is good reason to believe that activity involving both areas took place there.72 ⁶⁹ For Yodefat, see esp.: M. Aviam, Yodefat: A Case Study in the Development of the Jewish Settlement in the Galilee During the Second Temple Period (Ph. D. diss., Bar-Ilan University, 2005); idem, “Yodefat/Jotapata: The Archaeology of the First Battle,” in The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History, and Ideology (ed. Andrea M. Berlin and J. Andrew Overman; London: Routledge, 2002), 121–33; idem, “First Century Jewish Galilee: An Archaeological Perspective,” in Religion and Society in Roman Palestine, 7–27; D. Adan-Bayewitz and M. Aviam, “Iotapata, Josephus, and the Siege of 67: Preliminary Report of the 1992–94 Seasons,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 10 (1997): 131–65; Aviam, “Yodefat;” idem, “Socio-Economical Hierarchy and Its Economical Foundations in First Century Galilee: The Evidence From Yodefat and Gamla,” in Flavius Josephus: Interpretation and History (ed. J. Pastor, M. Mor, and P. Stern; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). ⁷⁰ Cf., eg., D. R. Edwards, “Khirbet Qana: From Jewish Village to Christian Pilgrim Site,” in The Roman and Byzantine Near East (ed. J. H. Humphrey; Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2002), 101–32; P. Richardson, “What Has Cana to Do with Capernaum?” NTS 48 (2002): 314–31; idem, Building Jewish in the Roman Near East (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2004). ⁷¹ Cf., eg., V. C. Corbo, “Capernaum,” in ABD, 1:866–9; S. Loffreda, “Capernaum,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East (ed. E. M. Meyers; 5 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 1:416–9; J. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-Examination of the Evidence (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), 139–69; A. Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue: A Socio-Historical Study (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001), 182 ff. ⁷² Cf., eg., S. Gutman, “Gamla,” in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (ed. E. Stern; 4 vols.; Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society & Carta, 1993), 2:459–63; D. Syon and Z. Yavor, “Gamla 1997–2000,” Hadashot Arkheologiyot – Excavations and Surveys in Israel 114 (2002): 2–4; idem, “Gamla 1997–2000,” ‘Atiqot 50 (2005): 1–35.

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To sum up, this short ‘survey of excavations’ – which of course needs to be enlarged with all material available, including the exciting new excavations currently taking place in rural Galilee – provides us with another glimpse of the socio-economic pulse of rural Galilee. It is striking that the local villages and towns seemed to have been expanding and thriving in the same period that the two urban centers, namely Sepphoris and Tiberias, were also expanding. No general economic decline is attested. 3.6. Specialization and Commerce The issue of small-scale industrial activity is particularly worthy of further consideration, as a number of archaeologists have argued for a certain pattern and level of commerce on this basis. We will briefly discuss the findings of three of these archaeologists. Firstly, we have the seasoned Galilean archaeologist and excavator of Yodefat, Modechai Aviam, who argues in a forthcoming study that the inhabitants of this city “lived their lives between prosperity and simplicity, but not poverty.”73 He supports this claim by pointing to the finds of a “wealthy quarter,” a flour mill, an olive press, some luxurious artifacts, a very high number of clay loom weights indicating textile production and four pottery kilns. Secondly, the excavator of Cana, Douglas Edwards, likewise argues for a profitable interplay between city and village in his most recent study tackling the ‘political-economy-model’ of M. Finley, which he finds all too one-sided in stressing that resources only went from village to city (the consumer city). Edwards instead argues for a more nuanced and reciprocal relationship, in which local entrepreneurs in the small villages also benefited from the “vibrant economic environment under Herod Antipas.”74 Thirdly, the foremost Galilean pottery expert, David Adan-Bayewitz, claims to have found material evidence supporting regional and inter-regional trade of pottery produced at local rural pottery centers in Galilee such as Kefar Hananya.75 Adan-Bayewitz deduces two things from this data: First, the economic interaction between city and village may have been reciprocal rather than ‘parasitic.’76 Second, the small-scale industrial activity was used to aid and support the ⁷³ Aviam, “Socio-economical.” ⁷⁴ D. R. Edwards, “Identity and Social Location in Roman Galilean Villages,” in Religion,

Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Galilee (ed. J. Zangenberg, H. W. Attridge, and D. B. Martin; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 373. ⁷⁵ Through the use of neutron activation analysis, Adan-Bayewitz claims to have established a “site-specific manufacturing provenience to the majority of the common pottery” (D. AdanBayewitz and M. Wieder, “Ceramics from Roman Galilee: A Comparison of Several Techniques for Fabric Characterization,” Journal of Field Archaeology 19 [1992]: 189). See further D. AdanBayewitz, Common Pottery in Roman Galilee: A Study of Local Trade (Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1993). ⁷⁶ Cf. D. Adan-Bayewitz and I. Perlman, “The Local Trade of Sepphoris in the Roman Period,” IEJ 40 (1990): 171.

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self-sufficiency prevalent in rural areas. All in all, it is his judgment that Galilee was a place where “important local industries flourished.”77 It should be noted, though, that while Adan-Bayewitz’s results are accepted by some, they are challenged by others.78 3.7. Differentiated Houses and Living Units One further way of measuring the socio-economic climate of rural Galilee is by considering the scale of domestic units encountered in rural settings. Do we encounter a poor unified body of houses or a diversified picture pointing to social stratification even within the villages themselves? This would to some degree reveal whether funds were stored in the villages, or whether these areas were drained by absent plant owners leaving nothing behind but a uniformly poor body of workers and peasants. This is actually what was claimed in an article on family life in Galilee by S. Guijarro.79 According to Guijarro, 70–75 % of the population were peasants or craftsmen living in single-room mud brick houses, and he uses this as an argu⁷⁷ Adan-Bayewitz and Perlman, “Trade,” 172. See further his new study into the origin of production of fragments of the Herodian oil lamp found at various sites in the North, which suggests that most of the lamps at Jewish sites in Galilee were imported from Jerusalem; D. Adan-Bayewitz et al., “Preferential Distribution of Lamps From the Jerusalem Area in the Late Second Temple Period (Late First Century B. C. E.–70 C. E.),” BASOR 350 (2008): 37–85. ⁷⁸ Cf. S. Freyne: “These findings suggest a pattern of co-operation between the city and the villages in the hinterland that would appear to rule out any idea of tension between them” (“Jesus and the Urban Culture of Galilee,” in Texts and Contexts: Biblical Texts in Their Textual and Situational Contexts [ed. D. Hellholm and T. Fornberg; Oslo, Copenhagen: Scandinavian University Press, 1995], 602). Cf. also E. M. Meyers, “Jesus and His Galilean Context,” in Archaeology and the Galilee: Texts and Contexts in the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Periods (ed. D. R. Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 58; J. F. Strange, “First Century Galilee From Archaeology and From the Texts,” in Archaeology and the Galilee, 41; idem, “First-Century Galilee From Archaeology and From the Texts,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1994 Seminar Papers (ed. H. Eugene Lovering, Jr.; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 83; idem, “The Sayings of Jesus and Archaeology,” in Hillel and Jesus: Comparative Studies of Two Major Religious Leaders (ed. J. H. Charlesworth and L. L. Johns; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 301; Edwards, “Urban/Rural,” 17–8; idem, “The Socio-Economic and Cultural Ethos of the Lower Galilee in the First Century: Implications for the Nascent Jesus Movement,” in The Galilee in Late Antiquity (ed. L. I. Levine; New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 56–7. R. L. Horsley, Archaeology, History, and Society in Galilee: The Social Context of Jesus and the Rabbis (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), 72, for one, refuses to accept that the wide distribution of pottery from Kefar Hananya, a fact that he does not dispute, is not a good indicator of trade. Pottery is not a good marker of trade as the specialized demands of clay, kilns and expertise would seem to make pottery the exception from self-sufficiency. He further argues that the numbers indicate that the big city markets were the place of trade rather than a direct distribution from Kefar Hananya since “the appearance of the pottery varies inversely with distance from Kefar Hananya itself, not Sepphoris or Tiberias” (“Archaeology of Galilee and the Historical Context of Jesus,” Neot 29 [1995]: 224). Cf. also J. D. Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1999), 224–5. ⁷⁹ Guijarro, “Galilee.”

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ment for his view of a period of economic stress in Galilee. Guijarro derives these numbers from the models of the sociologists Sjoberg and Lenski, and the idea of mud brick-houses from an article by T. Canaan, which, in fact, describes Arab housing in the twentieth century.80 Guijarro’s picture is far too simplistic. At this time, we do not have sufficient material evidence to propose such solid numbers. In contrast, to my knowledge, every excavation in Galilee presents a diversified picture with respect to living quarters, as demonstrated by, for example, Y. Hirschfeld, P. Richardson, and E. Meyers.81 I take this as another indication of socio-economic stability, whereas a poor, simple, unified mass of housing would point in the direction of decline and debt. 3.8. Monetization The issue of monetization has also been raised in the debate surrounding the socio-economic conditions, and some have claimed that Antipas initiated a heavy policy of minting in order to monetize the economy more profoundly so that taxes could be collected in coin rather than in kind.82 However, important new data has recently been collected by the Israeli archaeologist Danny Syon, who in his dissertation from 2004 has traced coin circulation in Galilee and the Golan throughout the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods. In total, 186 coin collections were catalogued, resulting in a database of nearly 10,000 identifiable coins. In essence, Syon’s investigation confirms in great detail what is also known from local excavation counts, namely, that while “a dramatic change”83 took place during the Hasmonean period, when Tyrian and Ptolemaic coins were substituted by Hasmonean coinage, only minor changes took place during the Herodian period. Neither Herod the Great nor Herod Antipas’ coinage made any real impact on the circulation. To illustrate, it can be noted that while Syon counted 5,632 Hasmonean coins, only 723 coins from Herodian and Romans rulers were found. Thus it is a serious exaggeration to claim that the Herodian ⁸⁰ T. Canaan, “The Palestinian Arab House: Its Architecture and Folklore,” JPOS 13 (1933):

1–83.

⁸¹ Cf. Y. Hirschfeld, The Palestinian Dwelling in the Roman-Byzantine Period (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press – Israel Exploration Society, 1995); Richardson, “Towards a Typology of Levantine/Palestinian Houses,” JSNT 27 (2004): 47–68; E. M. Meyers, “Roman-Period Houses From the Galilee: Domestic Architecture and Gendered Spaces,” in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past (ed. W. G. Dever and S. Gitin; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 487–99. ⁸² Cf., eg., W. E. Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflicts and the Setting of Q (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 138. ⁸³ D. Syon, Tyre and Gamla: A Study in the Monetary Influence of Southern Phoenicia on Galilee and the Golan in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Ph. D. diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2004), 224.

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rulers profoundly monetized the economy. Rather, they carried forward what already existed.84 3.9. Taxes Another factor that has often been presented as a background for the breakdown of socio-economic stability during the Herodian regimes is the tax burden. Quite a number of scholars have argued for the existence of a system of triple taxation in the first century: imperial, Herodian, and temple tax.85 In a recent dissertation, F. Udoh has surveyed this issue afresh and arrives through detailed analysis of the textual sources at a different picture. First, he rejects that an imperial tax was ever paid on a regular basis.86 He then argues for a much more lenient picture of Herod the Great than the one presented in what he describes as the old view of Herod. Instead of presuming that Herod’s enterprises point to “crushing tax burdens,”87 Udoh claims from a chronological perspective that Herod financed his most expensive and lavish building projects only after new territories had been granted to him, providing him with much more personal wealth and income. Therefore, “The immensity of Herod’s enterprises points not to crushing tax burdens, but rather to the prosperity of his realm and to his personal wealth.”88 In conclusion, Udoh states: The general view that excessive taxation of the Jewish state in the early Roman period was the cause of observable depravity in the first century C. E. is not supported by the evidence …. The arguments used to build an impression of continuous tax oppression and economic depravity in Palestine do no stand up to scrutiny. Palestine was not continually “oppressed” by three levels of ruinous taxes from 63 B. C. E. until the Revolt of 66 C. E.89

⁸⁴ A thorough discussion of the coinage of this period can be found in M. H. Jensen, “Message and Minting: The Coins of Herod Antipas in Their Second Temple Context As a Source for Understanding the Religio-Political and Socio-Economic Dynamics of Early First Century Galilee,” in Religion, Ethnicity, 277–314. ⁸⁵ Cf. Applebaum, “Roman Province,” 373; Pastor, Land and Economy, 139; R. L. Horsley, Galilee: History, Politics, People (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995), 140, 215 ff.; idem, Archaeology, 77. ⁸⁶ “The discussion of Jewish tax obligations to Rome under the Herods is hampered by the lack of evidence. There is nothing in Josephus’s account of Herod’s reign to suggest that his subjects paid tribute to Rome” (F. E. Udoh, To Caesar What Is Caesar’s: Tribute, Taxes, and Imperial Administration in Early Roman Palestine [63 B. C.E–70 C. E.] [Providence, R. I.: Brown University, 2005], 118). ⁸⁷ Udoh, To Caesar, 190. ⁸⁸ Udoh, To Caesar, 190. According to Udoh, these new territories provided Herod with new ways of gaining revenue: “With these new territories, Herod had available to him the revenues derived not only from a tax base that extended beyond Judea, but especially from the estates and from tolls and duties collected in the cities and trade routes that he now controlled” (To Caesar, 197). ⁸⁹ Udoh, To Caesar, 285.

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3.10. Climate Finally, all too briefly, the issue of climatic fluctuations, which has been the topic of some discussions in research. Yet again, we encounter highly conflicting scenarios between those who find evidence of frequent droughts and climatic instability leading to famine,90 and those who find that Galilee of all places provided the most stabile climate in Palestine supporting a large population on its fertile soil.91 In a fuller investigation, I concluded that that Galilee indeed prospered from a more stable climate than any other region in Palestine with an average annual precipitation of approximately 600 mm, well above the 250 mm point marking the ‘aridity line,’ though famines and crop failures were part of life as witnessed in the Old Testament, Josephus, and in the New Testament.92 However, no indication of famine during the reign of Herod Antipas is found, and while this by no means excludes the possibility of such famines, there is no solid basis in the actual reports or in the general knowledge of the Galilean climate to support a bleak picture of agricultural environments and possibilities in Galilee. 3.11. Partial Conclusion To sum up this investigation of the socio-economic pulse of rural first-century Galilee, the combined picture that can be derived from each of these gauges is one of status quo if not growth and expansion. This means that a depiction of the Galilean situation in what has been termed “a uniform peasant model”93 – with roughly 75 % of the population experiencing a rapid economic decline and high costs for the extended family, now being fragmented into smaller and more easily exploitable nuclear units – seems more grounded on the models involved than on the data available. Instead, a more nuanced evaluation is called for along the lines that are already found in the research, for example in M. Moreland’s studies, which likewise concludes that since early first-century Galilee was not the scene of “extreme wealth”94 in the new urban centers Sepphoris and Tiberias, and since the fundamental village structure “was maintained and even expanded” in this period, the villages maintained their ability to function as “insurance against extreme conditions.”95 ⁹⁰ Cf., eg., Applebaum, “Economic Life,” 691. ⁹¹ Cf., eg., Goodman, State, 22, 83; Freyne, Galilee, 16; M. Avi-Yonah, The Holy Land: From

the Persian to the Arab Conquests (536 B. C. to A. D. 640). A Historical Geography (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1966), 203. ⁹² Cf. Jensen, “Droughts and Famines.” ⁹³ Cf. Richardson, “Khirbet Qana,” 143. ⁹⁴ Moreland, “Galilean Response,” 43. ⁹⁵ Moreland, “Galilean Response,” 42. Moreland concludes: “Thus, one must avoid overstat-

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4. Conclusions By way of final conclusion, we must now evaluate to what extent our investigation has produced useful answers for studies in Mark and Matthew. It was motivated by several factors including the seemingly modest role Galilean studies play in recent research on Mark and Matthew as a background for understanding the ‘apparent contradiction’ in these two Gospels as to their stand on the conflict in calling between family life and discipleship. If the ‘reading scenario’ established above is correct, how can it then help to clarify this question? Before outlining this, an important reservation must be restated: The issue of the relationship between the provenance of the two Gospels and their Galilean cradle is complex indeed. A relationship has been assumed in this study, but the absence of ‘Galilee’ within recent gospel research might very well be due to this difficulty, and my suggestion is weakened by the fact that this relationship is assumed rather than demonstrated. With this reservation in mind, my main conclusion is that the type of rural peasant setting that Jesus encountered had all its basic power structures intact and was therefore on its guard against even the slightest suggestion of change. In this, my survey concurs to a high degree with Moreland’s observations of the state of rural Galilee. Likewise, there is thus good reason to accept Scott’s claim that a rural peasant society in such conditions would do all in its power to stick to tradition, defending the tradition family institution based on patriarchal, patrilocal, and patrilineal values. As phrased by Moreland (with respect to Q), a bold line runs through the sayings of Jesus asking his hearers “to take risks or give up possessions that are rightfully theirs, and abandon their traditional kinship-based obligations and lifestyles. These demands were unacceptable to peasants who valued the safety measures available in the traditional village setting.”96 A basic thrust in the Jesus-sayings is the challenge of the peasant subsistence ethic of stability and no-risk-taking. This produced rigid resistance within the rural Galilean cradle of the Jesus movement, as is evidently seen from an array of texts, such as the blessing of the persecuted (Luke 6:22–23), the outcry on the generation of Jesus (Matt 11:16– 19), and the condemnation of villagers within Galilee (Matt 11:20–24) to mention a few.97

ing the types and extent of exploitation of new administrative structures in ER Galilee. No doubt peasants were oppressed, but to claim that they were pressed to the limits of survival is not supportable” (Moreland, “Galilean Response,” 43). ⁹⁶ M. Moreland, “The Jesus Movement in the Villages of Roman Galilee: Archaeology, Q, and Modern Anthropological Theory,” in Oral Performance, Popular Tradition, and Hidden Transcript in Q (ed. R. L. Horsley; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 174. ⁹⁷ Cf. Moreland, “Jesus Movement,” 177.

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Mark and Matthew in this way contain what could be termed ‘a Galilean experience of rejection,’ and I suggest that it is exactly within this wider picture that we should place the conflict texts. Rather than seeing a program against family per se (which is only possible by an axiomatic discarding of material, even within Q, pointing in the other direction),98 the explanation that better accounts for most evidence is to see the duality on the family issue as a consequence of a strong kinship-based family culture that was not at all receptive to a message demanding subjection of all existing power structures to the coming of the new kingdom of heaven. Thus, I suggest that the ‘conflict in calling’ described in the Gospel material was ‘a Galilean fact’ rather than an intended program per se.

⁹⁸ Which alone is demonstrated by the different evaluations of the Q-material’s stand on family life in Moxnes, Putting Jesus and in Guijarro, “Conflict;” Guijarro, “Domestic Space;” Pryor, “Family.”

Matthew, Mark and Q A Literary Exploration Linden Youngquist 1. Introduction: Matthew and Mark in Contrast In 2001, Donald Senior, following a review of Allison and Davies’ summary of trends in Matthean scholarship, points out that while there are numerous differences among scholars about the precise social and religious setting of the Matthean community, there is in fact general agreement on the origin and early history of the community. Matthew’s church was originally a group that considered itself part of the Jewish religion and community. It had recently encountered opposition from other Jewish groups, including Pharisees, and had broken with those groups. The debate is whether Matthew’s community had come to identify itself as a Gentile movement, or whether it still thought of itself as Jewish.1 One of the anomalies of this discussion is that, while the general outline of the social history is clear, the evidence of Matthew’s literary activity seems to lead in another direction. Most scholars agree that Matthew used two main sources, Mark and Q, and that of the two, the starting point for Matthew’s story was Mark. The anomaly is that on the surface, Mark’s view of Jesus’ religion seems to contradict much of Matthew’s perspective. Three issues in particular are treated differently by the two evangelists: Jesus’ disciples, Jewish purity laws, and the Jerusalem temple. With respect to the disciples in Mark, we may characterize them as seed sown on rocky soil: it springs up quickly, but when the sun shines hotly, the plants quickly die. In the same way the disciples are presented as those who respond immediately to Jesus’ call, but eventually abandon him in the time of persecution.2 Matthew, on the other ¹ D. P. Senior, “Directions in Matthean Studies,” in The Gospel of Matthew in Current Study: Studies in Memory of W. G. Thomspon, S. J. (ed. D. E. Aune and W. G. Thompson; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 17–20. Evidence for this view is abundant: for example see the chart in W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (3 vols.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988–97), 1:10–11, that lists the various commentators who have identified the author of the Gospel as a Jewish Christian, as opposed to those who identify the author either as the apostle Matthew or a Gentile Christian. For a more recent discussion of the issue, and a list of relevant scholars, see A. Runesson, “Rethinking Early Jewish-Christian Relations: Matthean Community History as Pharisaic Intragroup Conflict,” JBL 127 (2008): 96–8, nn. 3–4. ² M. A. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s World in Literary-Historical Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 153–72.

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hand, presents the disciples, and especially Peter, in a generally positive light. While most of Mark’s stories about the twelve are repeated by Matthew, they are usually turned on their head, with the disciples ultimately meeting Jesus after the Resurrection and being given the command to preach to all nations. Regarding purity laws, Mark portrays Jesus as abrogating them, or at least subjugating them, to issues of ethics and spirituality. Matthew agrees with the ethical and spiritual, but emphasizes the ritual aspects as well. The following chart illustrates the problem: Disciples Mark

Matthew

1:16–20 Four are called and two “immedi- 4:18–22 Same, with added mention that all ately” follow Jesus. four “immediately” followed Jesus. 2:13–14 Levi is called and follows. 9:9–10 Same, although Levi has become Matthew. 3:13–19 When seven more are added to 10:2–4 Same, with the mission speech folthese five, they become Jesus’ constant lowing the naming of the twelve. companions and share in his power to heal and exorcise demons. 3:20–21; 31–35 When Jesus’ family 12:46–50 There is no mention of Jesus’ accuses him of being demon possessed, family accusing him of demon possession; Jesus includes these disciples (actually, when his family tries to speak to him, he those sitting around him listening to his points to his disciples and indicates they are teaching), but not his family, in what he his true family. identifies as his true family: “those who do the will of God.” 4:10–13 The disciples fail to understand 13:10–17 The disciples do not misunderthe parables. stand the parables, they simply ask why Jesus uses them; Jesus concludes: “blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear.” 4:35–41 The disciples wonder if Jesus 8:23–27 Same, except the disciples pray cares that their boat is sinking; Jesus “save, Lord” instead of criticize Jesus for his rebukes them for their lack of faith. lack of concern for their safety. 6:7–13 Their relationship with Jesus seems 10:1–16 Their relationship remains good to improve when they are sent out to during the mission. preach and have great success in healing and casting out demons. 6:45–52 After the disciples fear when see- 14:22–33 After their fear when seeing Jesus ing Jesus walk on the water we are told, walk on the water, Peter asks to join him on “they did not understand about the loaves the sea and their confession is, “truly this is because their hearts were hardened.” the son of God.” 8:14–21 When Jesus warns the disciples to 16:5–12 When Jesus’ warns them to beware beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, they of the leaven of the Pharisees, the disciples misunderstand and Jesus asks if they have understand what Jesus is talking about. “hard hearts”

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Mark

Matthew

8:31–33 After confession that Jesus is the Christ, Peter rebukes Jesus for predicting that he will go to Jerusalem and die; Jesus calls him “Satan.” 9:2–10 Peter does not understand the significance of the transfiguration because they are all afraid.

16:21–23 Same, although initially Peter was praised as the rock of the church with the authority of heaven after his confession that Jesus was the Christ. 17:1–9 “Peter did not know what to say” is omitted; but Peter, James, and John prostrate themselves, are filled with awe, and are touched and told by Jesus not to fear. 17:14–21 Same, but Jesus also tells them to have faith as a mustard seed and all is possible for them.

9:14–29 The other disciples are unable to exorcize a demon in the mean time; Jesus calls his disciples (?) a “faithless generation.” 9:30–37 The disciples argue which of them is greatest; Jesus teaches them about serving. 9:38–41 John rejects an exorcist who casts out demons in Jesus’ name; Jesus tells him to accept such people, for “whoever is not against us is for us.” Those who serve disciples will be rewarded; those who do not will be rejected. 10:13–16 The disciples rebuke parents for bringing their children to Jesus to be blessed; Jesus teaches them about children. 10:35–45 James and John seek positions of honor in Jesus’ kingdom. 12:41–13:2 The disciples fail to understand Jesus’ criticism of the temple when a poor widow is bankrupted by giving her last money to the temple treasury; they point instead to the magnificence of the structure. 14:3–9 The disciples are indignant when a woman anoints Jesus’ feet at Simon the leper’s house; they reproach her. 14:10–11 Judas betrays Jesus to the chief priests. 14:32–42 Peter, James and John fall asleep during Jesus’ moments of agony in Gethsemane. 14:43–50 When the soldiers come to arrest Jesus, all flee. 14:66–72 Peter denies Jesus three times during his trial.

18:1–5 The disciples ask Jesus who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven; Jesus teaches them about true greatness and serving. 10:42; 12:30 The story of unknown exorcist omitted; the saying is now “whoever is not with me is against me;” those who serve the “little ones” will not lose their reward.

19:13–15 Same.

10:20–28 Matthew has their mother ask the question. Impoverished widow’s story omitted.

26:6–13 The disciples are indignant, but do not reproach the woman. 26:14–16 Same. 26:36–46 Same.

26:47–56 Same. 26:69–75 Same.

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Mark

Matthew

16:1–8 The women who go to the tomb fail to report to the disciples that Jesus is alive and in Galilee.

28:1–8 The women tell the disciples to meet with Jesus in Galilee; there they are given the Great Commission.

Jerusalem Mark

Matthew

3:22–30 Scribes from Jerusalem accuse Jesus of being possessed by Beelzebul: Jesus says this is a sin that cannot be forgiven. 4:10–From then on Jesus uses parables with outsiders so that they may indeed look and not perceive, and may indeed listen but not understand, so that (Gk. ἵνα) “they may not turn again and be forgiven.” 7:1, 9–13 Jesus criticizes scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem for neglecting to care for their parents by dedicating their estates to the temple

12:22–32 Matthew agrees, adds there are Jews who also cast out demons but are not possessed by Satan. 13:10–17 No mention of parables used to obfuscate, but to exclude (“but to them it has not been given”), Jesus uses parables, not so that, but because (gr. ὅτι) they do not see 15:1–14 Same; no explanation of why Pharisees wash their hands; downplays specific reference to the temple (no mention of Corban); disciples object to Jesus’ criticism and he responds with ‘blind guide’ saying. 15:15–20 Matt omits that all foods are clean.

7:14–23 After criticizing Pharisaic focus on dietary issues, Jesus says that what people eat cannot defile them and Mark adds that he thus “declared all foods clean.” Omitted 17:24–27 Jesus directs Peter to pay the temple tax for both of them, in order not to give offense. 11:15–19 Upon entering Jerusalem, Jesus 21:12–13 Matt omits note that Jesus will not temporarily shuts down the collection of allow anyone to carry vessels through the the temple tax and the selling of sacrificial temple. animals, which appears to be a prophetic act pointing to the eventual cessation of all temple activities. 12:38–40 Jesus warns disciples to beware 23:1–39 Matt expands on criticism of the of the scribes. scribes, adding a series of denunciations of both them and the Pharisees, and of Jerusalem itself. 12:41–44 After witnessing a widow give Matt omits widow story. her last pennies to the temple treasury, Jesus predicts the temple’s and the city’s destruction 13:1–23 Finally, Jesus predicts that the 24–25 The eschatological discourse is greatly temple, and indeed the city of Jerusalem expanded emphasizing the delay of the cowill be destroyed. ming of Jesus.

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Mark

Matthew

15:6–15 The people of Jerusalem, stirred up by the priests, demand Barabbas be released and Jesus crucified.

27:15–26 Matt adds that the people of Jerusalem curse themselves; Caiaphas is complicit; elders of the people help to betray him.

The Law Mark

Matthew

7:1–22 After criticizing Pharisaic focus on dietary issues, Jesus says that what people eat cannot defile them, and Mark adds that he thus “declared all foods clean.” 12:28–34 Jesus affirms a scribe’s assertion that to love God and neighbor is more important than burnt sacrifices and offerings.

5:17–20 The law in its entirety must be fulfilled. 15:1–20 Matthew omits the declaration.

22:34–40 Matt omits the statement that loving God and neighbor are more important than burnt offerings and sacrifice, but includes a saying that emphasizes moral purity (love neighbor and god) while also demanding adherence to ritual (tithing of the herbs from one’s garden).

While the weight of these differences is an ongoing topic of debate,3 it is clear that, on the surface at least, Matthew disagreed with Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’ relationship with his disciples as well as Jesus’ attitude toward purity laws and the role of the law in general. These differences are even more compelling when we make a similar comparison of Matthew and Q on these issues. Disciples Q Q is neutral with respect to the twelve; one oblique reference (Q 22:28–30) may or may not mention that there were12 “chosen” disciples; none of the 12 are named in Q.

Matthew Matt 10, 16, 18: Matthew is generally positive, especially toward Peter: Matthew reports most of Mark’s stories about the twelve, but usually turns them on their head; Mark reports failures soon following success (with the exception of mission in ch. 6); Matthew often rescues the portrayal of the twelve.

Jerusalem Q

Matthew

Mark 3:22–30 Scribes from Jerusalem accuse Jesus of being possessed by Beelzebul: Jesus says this is a sin that cannot be forgiven.

12: Matthew agrees, adds there are Jews who also cast out demons but are not possessed by Satan.

³ See, for instance, A. Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 96–102, for a discussion of various viewpoints.

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Matthew

The Pharisees and Scribes are barely men- Same. tioned in Q, but are excoriated in Q 11: 39, 42, 46–48, 52 for their extreme concern about appearances and not enough about personal attitudes and morality No other groups appear to be mentioned in Q. God will abandon the temple (Q 13:34– Same. 35). No mention of end of sacrifice. Same. The Law Q

Matthew

Q 16:16–17 The law in its entirety must be Same. fulfilled. Even the ritual laws are to be obeyed, Same. though emphasis should be on justice and love of God (Q 11: 42). Q 13:34–35: the temple will be abandoned Same. by God.

One way of understanding the significance of the differences in the portrayals of the disciples, the temple, and the law by Matthew and Mark is to consider a relatively recent analysis of the factions among first-century C. E. Christian movements. John Painter, in his book, Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition has offered a nuanced analysis of the usual division of early Christians into “Jewish” and “Gentile,” or “Petrine” and “Pauline,” by suggesting six early factions among Christians. The main issue that divided early Christian groups concerned the inclusion of Gentiles in the church. The various groups he identifies are as follows: The Circumcision Mission consisted of three factions, the first of which was made up of Pharisaic believers who thought that all Christians should be circumcised and should follow the Mosaic law. The second faction was the group that recognized the need for a separate mission to Gentiles that did not require adherence to Moses, but it also did not participate in that mission. James, Jesus’ brother, was the representative of this group. The third circumcision group was associated with Peter, and also recognized the validity of a mission to Gentiles, but it included outreach to all Jews, even those in the diaspora, and at times spilled over to include Gentiles. There was also a mission to the uncircumcised that was made up of three factions. The first largely overlapped with the third faction of the circumcision groups and recognized the validity of both missions, but focused mainly on Gentiles and did not require them to observe Jewish law. Barnabas is most closely associated

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with this group. The second uncircumcision group also recognized the mission to Jews, but limited it to Jewish territories, and especially the area around Jerusalem. For them, requiring circumcision was only an expediency. Paul is identified with this group. Finally, there was a group that rejected the Jewish law entirely and did not, therefore, accept a separate mission to the Jews.4 While this analysis of early Christianity is itself too simplistic, it does help in understanding the different presentations of Mark and Matthew. While Mark looks like it would work well as the Gospel of the final faction, with its negative portrayal of Jews, disciples and Judaism itself, Matthew seems to be somewhere between the second and third circumcision factions, emphasizing on the one hand the validity of the Jewish law, but also elevating Peter to the role of the rock upon which the church is founded. The result is the apparent disparity between the the social history of Matthew, which emphasizes the community’s Jewish roots, and the literary history that suggests that the community’s sacred text, Mark, was essentially against the Jewish mission. This discrepancy notwithstanding, the consensus is that Matthew is a sort of second edition of Mark, and that Q was used to supplement, and perhaps correct Mark’s narrative. This view is largely based on the fact that Matthew reproduces approximately ninety-five percent of Mark’s story, and that he generally follows Mark’s order of events. This paper will raise the question of Matthew’s literary method with respect to his sources and argue that Matthew’s “bible” was Q. As the conflict between Matthew’s community and other Jewish groups escalated, Matthew created a new story of Jesus by supplementing Q with Mark. The result was not a violation of Q’s commitment to Judaism, but a mandate for a new mission, one that actively pursued Gentiles and incorporated them into the church, provided that they also agreed to take on the yoke of the law. Three points will be covered: Matthew’s community appears to have its roots in the Q community. The structure of Matthew’s Gospel is better explained as an update of Q than of Mark, and Matthew’s use of Markan material in specific passages is intended to illustrate and strengthen claims found in Q.

2. Matthew and the Q Community A brief history of research on Matthew and Q will provide a summary of the arguments that the Matthean community was related to the Q community. The idea that there is a special relationship between the text we call the Gospel of Matthew and collection of sayings we call Q goes back all the way to Schleiermacher, who used Papias’ comments about Matthew and the Logia to claim that “Matthew’s” Gospel must have been written by the apostle himself in Hebrew. ⁴ J. Painter, Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 73–8.

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Subsequently, others followed and “interpreted” or “explained” these sayings in Greek, but the author of our canonical Gospel was the only one of the synoptic writers to use this source, hence Matthew’s name became associated with this gospel as well.5 Subsequent scholars like Heinrich J. Holtzmann6 and B. H. Streeter,7 while disagreeing with Schleiermacher in varying degrees, still used the broad outline of his views to make similar arguments for a close connection between Matthew and Q. 2.1. The Recent Debate: Heinz Eduard Tödt The development of redaction criticism and the possibility of recovering specific data about early Christian communities based on the composition of the gospels has generated a new group of proposals regarding the relationship between Matthew and Q. This new era in Q studies owes much of its impetus to the work of Heinz Eduard Tödt.8 While not specifically addressing the issue of Matthew and Q, Tödt was one of the first to notice a distinctive Christology in Q which set it apart from other early Christian communities. The basis of this insight, that Q saw Jesus not as the suffering savior but as the authoritative Son of Man who will judge the world and therefore whose words are the rule of the community in the present, has been challenged.9 Nevertheless, once the idea of Q as a distinctive kind of early Jesus movement was posited, scholars were quick to embrace it. The result for our question has been various attempts to explore the Matthew/Q connection in terms of the communities that produced the two documents. Working from internal data, scholars have theorized on the basis of sociological, theological, and literary connections that the two communities were related. 2.2. Two Recent Approaches to Continuity between Q and Matthew Ulrich Luz offers one of the first detailed arguments for the relationship between Matthew’s community and Q’s community, incorporating the above perspectives ⁵ F. Schleiermacher, “Über die Zeugnisse des Papias von unsern beiden ersten Evangelien,” TSK 5 (1832): 735–68. ⁶ H. J. Holtzmann, Die Synoptischen Evangelien: Ihr Ursprung und geschichtlicher Charakter (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1863), 251–2. ⁷ B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins, Treating of the Manuscript Tradition, Sources, Authorship, and Dates (London: Macmillan, 1924), 19–21, 218–33, 500–4. ⁸ H. E. Tödt, The Son of Man in the Synoptic Tradition (London: SCM Press, 1965). ⁹ For the insight that the Son of Man was introduced to Q at the preredactional level, hence it may not be as important to the final stage of development see D. Lührmann, Die Redaktion der Logienquelle (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1969). On the other hand, P. Hoffmann, “The Redaction of Q and the Son of Man. A Preliminary Sketch,” in The Gospel Behind the Gospels: Current Studies on Q (ed. R. A. Piper; Leiden: Brill, 1995), 159–98, argues that Tödt is correct to see the central importance of the Son of Man for Q. Hoffmann disagrees on the question of whether the Son of Man sayings are authentic, as Tödt claims, or later creations of the community.

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in addition to considering more carefully the composition of Q and Matthew. Luz argues, on the one hand, that Matthew’s theology reflects Q. Matthew gives a central place to the theme of judgment. This is similar to Q, where most of the blocks of sayings, and indeed the whole document, end with the threat of judgment, so all but the mission discourse in Matthew end with such threats. The Son of Man is also important to both: as in Q, where sayings concerning the Son of Man appear at the beginning and ending of key blocks of material and at the beginning and end of the whole document, so in Matthew the Son of Man, as the future judge of the world, has a key role. Finally, both Matthew and Q are characterized by a polemic against “this generation,” the nation Israel.10 On the other hand, Luz argues that the Matthean and Q communities shared a common social organization. The leadership of both groups consisted of prophets and scribes. In Q the disciples journey from place to place preaching their message, and it is clear that Matthew’s community is familiar with such individuals, though for Matthew, there were also community prophets. Similarly, Q speaks of sages who were envoys of wisdom, while Matthew speaks of their settled counterparts, the scribes. Luz believes, therefore, that Matthew presupposes the existence of the wandering preachers of Q but has shifted emphasis to their counterparts in the resident community.11 James M. Robinson has developed his ideas about the Q–Matthew relationship in a series of articles spanning three decades. In his earlier writings he only touched on the issue in the context of other topics, and focused mainly on Christology. In “Logoi Sophon: On the Gattung of Q,” Robinson affirmed that “Matthew … of all the canonical evangelists retains closest affinities with the Gattung of sayings collections, in spite of his having imbedded Q in the gospel Gattung of Mark.”12 Thus he initially thought that there was a christological continuity between Matthew and Q, while denying that Matthew was shaped by Q on a literary level: Matthew has “imbedded Q in the Gospel Gattung of Mark.” In more recent work, encouraged partly by Luz’s commentary on Matthew, Robinson has affirmed the development from Q to Matthew with increasing detail and in particular has acknowledged that to some degree, at least, Matthew must be considered an adaptation of Q’s message. In “The Q Trajectory: Between John and Matthew via Jesus,” Robinson argued from the apparent discrepancies between John the Baptist’s and Jesus’ lifestyle that the two may have differed in terms of ideology as well: John was apocalyptic, Jesus sapiential.13 Nevertheless, Q portrays Jesus as an apocalypticist and as a partner of the Baptist. John Kloppen¹⁰ U. Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989), 74–5. ¹¹ Luz, Matthew 1–7, 82–3. ¹² J. M. Robinson, “Logoi Sophon: On the Gattung of Q,” in Trajectories Through Early

Christianity (ed. J. M. Robinson and H. Koester; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 71–113. ¹³ J. M. Robinson, “The Q Trajectory: Between John and Matthew via Jesus,” in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester (ed. B. A. Pearson; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 173–94.

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borg’s analysis of Q into sapiential, apocalyptic, and nomistic layers may account for this data.14 The earliest layer of Q, which emphasized sapiential themes, may reflect the historical Jesus. A second, apocalyptic, layer was added by the community as a reflection of its experience of rejection by Israel. Kloppenborg’s third layer (4:1–13; 11:42c; 16:17) reflects an attempt to gain acceptance in Jewish circles and may be a short step from Matthew’s 10:5–6, 23 (which cannot be Matthew’s, cf. 28:16–20); hence, as Robinson observes, these verses represented … either some otherwise unknown strand of tradition, further attestation for the final redaction of Q which Luke might readily have omitted, or an addition to Q by the Matthean community after the Lukan copy of Q had been made. If thus a clear distinction between a third edition of Q, a QMt and even a kind of Ur-Matthew cannot be drawn, since all these entities are themselves obscure, it would seem clear that the Q movement – at least a significant part of it – merged into the Matthean community .…15

In 1992, in “The Sayings Gospel Q,” an article about literary design in Q, Robinson offered several examples of how the Matthean composition was influenced by the style and ideas of Q.16 For instance, Matthew’s beatitudes may be seen as an expansion of Q’s already Christianized adaptation of Jesus’ pronouncements of blessings on the needy and Q’s interest in Isaiah 61: This stamp of approval pronounced on the miserable of the village was progressively appropriated by the Jesus movement for the disciples themselves. The fourth Beatitude (Q 6, 22–23) was secondarily appended (as is evident also from its divergent formulation) to refer specifically to those whose hardship is not due to fate, but due to support of Jesus…. This Christianizing trend was carried forward in the additional Matthean beatitudes, which have become a Tugendkatalog of Christian virtues, again in partial dependence on the immediate context of Isa 61:1….17

Robinson’s most recent reflection on the Matthew/Q relationship is “From Safe House to House Church: From Q to Matthew.”18 In this article Robinson sees Matthean redaction of the mission discourse as evidence for the sociological continuity between Matthew and Q. Robinson envisions the earliest Q missionary practice as limited to Jews and carried out as follows. A “worker” … at first approached blindly some completely unknown house with the familiar greeting “Shalom!”, “Peace!” …. If he was received hospitably, the householder was designated “son of peace,” in that God’s “peace” came upon him, or if the householder’s reaction was negative, the “peace” returned to the “worker” …. Where received ¹⁴ J. Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987). ¹⁵ Robinson, “Q Trajectory,” 193. ¹⁶ J. M. Robinson, “The Sayings Gospel Q,” in The Four Gospels 1992: Festschrift Frans Neirynck (ed. F. Van Segbroeck et al.; 3 vols.; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), 1:361–88. ¹⁷ Robinson, “Sayings Gospel,” 369. ¹⁸ J. M. Robinson, “From Safe House to House Church. From Q to Matthew,” in Das Ende der Tage und die Gegenwart des Heils. Begegnungen mit dem Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt: Festschrift für Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. M. Becker and W. Fenske; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 183–99.

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the “worker” ate what was set before him and remained in that house … or town … . He cured the sick. He explained that what was taking place, no doubt both the receiving of food and the healing of sickness, as God reigning …. If a “worker” was rejected by a town and had to leave, he shook the dust off his feet …, to brand the town as so unholy that even its dust polluted.19

The picture of the mission practice as portrayed in Mark, Luke-Acts, and Paul’s writings shows that the Q procedure was quickly abandoned by the Gentile church.20 Matthew’s community, on the other hand, appears to have continued to follow Q’s rules, albeit with adjustments and modifications as the situation demanded. The Matthean redactional changes to the mission discourse give some insight into how the mission was carried out by Matthew’s church. For instance, Q had ordered workers not to take provisions with them, but to rely on God and their positive reception in the villages for their food and bed. Matthew updates these injunctions by also warning workers not to receive money for their labor, since money could easily be hoarded. This represents a practical consideration arising out of the attempt to follow literally Q’s command. Only those who ventured out relying on God’s provision would be tempted to take cash payments rather than food and a bed for the night. A positive development of the Q practice is related to this financial concern. While originally Q envisioned its adherents as leaving home and evangelizing the countryside, it later became obvious that not everyone could or would follow this order.21 Matthew thus appears to make provision for sympathizers to the Q cause by granting those households who routinely accepted workers the designation “worthy house,” or in Robinson’s translation, “safe house.” These homes were thus given the same status that had earlier been reserved only for the workers who risked their lives to proclaim the kingdom. Such homes are also apparently designated by Matthew as “the church,” signaling that it was here (not in the synagogue or temple) where Q people gathered.22 Robinson concludes: Since the “worker” in the house of the “son of peace” received bed and breakfast …, it was here that God answered his prayer for a day’s ration of bread, fulfilling already in part the petition for the coming of God’s kingdom …. It is also where the healing of the sick and the preaching of the kingdom by the “worker” took place …. Thus the house became the place where God already reigns. It may well be that it is also where Q 10, 2, the praying for the Lord of the harvest to “dispatch workers into his harvest,” is to be located (though no ¹⁹ Robinson, “Safe House,” 188. ²⁰ Note, for instance, the Markan prescription to carry a stick (for protection) and to wear

sandals (Mark 6:8–9), which is a direct contradiction of the Q practice. ²¹ This transition apparently already had begun in Q. Kloppenborg in Formation, 193, argues that the command to pray that the lord of the Harvest send out workers in Q 10:2 is secondary to the rest of the discourse because it implies different addressees (those who gather to pray for workers) than the ones who actually go out (cf. Acts 13:1–3), it has no parallel in the Markan version of the mission speech, it is attested as an independent saying in Gos. Thom. 73, and the motif of the harvest does not crop up elsewhere in the Q mission speech. ²² Robinson, “Safe House,” 197.

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location is named), since what seems to be in view is a group meeting. That is to say, the house acquired from very early on what might be called ecclesiastical traits. Such a house would become not only what we might call a “safe house,” but, in Pauline language, a “house church,” or, in the Matthean redactional vocabulary of the Gentile church, ἐκκλησία.23

Therefore, Robinson can trace the development of Q’s mission practice from its early days when itinerancy was the rule, to the period of Matthew’s church, when safe houses (house churches) had been established as stopping points for the preachers and as a means of incorporating more settled sympathizers into the movement. Robinson’s work on this topic reveals a long evolution that begins with an awareness of the Christological similarities between Matthew and Q, then moves to the literary relationship between the two. Earlier he characterized Matthew as Q imbedded in Mark; later, at least to some extent, as Mark imbedded in Q. Finally, he has considered the sociological connection between Matthew and Q with respect to missionary practice. While Gentile churches in general rejected Q’s (and presumably Jesus’) methods, Matthew appears to have continually updated the rules in order to keep them alive.

3. Matthew as a Literary Expansion of Q The problem, as noted above, with these theological and sociological arguments for continuity between Matthew and Q, is that the literary history seems to contradict the thesis. And the more anti-Jerusalem/pro-Gentile Mark is thought to be, the more acute the problem becomes. Ulrich Luz addresses the issue: Therefore we argue that the Gospel of Matthew comes from a community which was founded by the wandering messengers and prophets of the Son of Man of the Sayings Source and remains in close contact with them. The traditions of Q thus reflect, for the community, experience from its own history. They are “its own” traditions.24

At the same time, Luz denies that Matthew is a literary expansion of Q. In his words: “Matthew, who has taken over the narrative structure of the Gospel of ²³ Robinson, “Safe House,” 199. ²⁴ Luz (Matthew 1–7, 83) cites D. Hare, The Theme of Jewish Persecution of Christians in the

Gospel According to St. Matthew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 85–6, as an authority for this connection between Matthew and Q. It is not clear, however, that Hare made this precise claim. Hare suggests that anti-Pharisaism may have had its roots in Jesus’ ministry and that memory of these disputes was “cherished and transmitted by the Palestinian church, which, during the pre-war period, discovered that Pharisaism was the most vigorous opponent of its messianic mission.” He also points out that the references to controversy with the Pharisees in Luke do not constitute evidence that Luke’s church was engaged in such controversy. Rather Luke’s use of such motives was simply a literary convention. In contrast it appears that Matthew has intensified the Q polemic against the Pharisees, suggesting that for his community the conflict was still alive (cf. p. 95). It is not clear, however, that Hare is explicitly claiming here

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Mark, is literarily a new conception of the Gospel of Mark and not a new conception of Q.”25 Luz elaborates on this point in a subsequent essay, “Matthäus und Q.”26 Based on his theory of QMT/QLK, he finds that QMT is much closer in genre to Q than Luke’s version of Q: Im Unterschied zum Lukasevangelium, wo das redaktionsgeschichtlich nicht mehr aufzuhellende kompositionelle Durcheinander zwischen Q und Sonderguttraditionen besonders im großen Reisebericht darauf hinweisen könnte, daß Q dem dritten Evangelisten in einer wesentlich erweiterten – vor allem auch durch ganz andere Gattungen erweiterten – Gestalt vorlag, scheint der erste Evangelist der ursprünglichen literarischen Gestalt von Q und vermutlich auch seinem ursprünglichen Trägerkreis relativ nahe zu stehen.27

Having thus reasserted his earlier contention that Matthew stands in close relation to Q, he explains how it is that, from a literary standpoint, Matthew is to be considered a new edition of Mark. A major point in his argument is the fact that from Matt 12:1ff., at least, Matthew has taken over Mark’s stories without any changes in order. In contrast, Matthew has “destroyed” the structure of Q.28 By way of illustration Luz makes a series of observations about Matthew’s use of Q and Mark. Most importantly, Matthew pays little attention to the order of Q. When he is reproducing entire Q sections he places them in Q’s order only when there are corresponding sections of Mark in the same order. On the other hand, when he is excerpting individual sayings he tends to present them in their Q sequence. Another important feature of Matthew’s composition is his tendency to attach Q compositions to Markan passages, or to begin longer collections of Q material with Markan material.29 The two major exceptions to this practice are Matt 11 and the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5–7). Matt 11 does not begin with Markan material, but the composition is easily understood as Matthew’s heightening of the tension between Jesus’ kingdom and this generation which denies him, a key point in Matthew’s story of Jesus. The Sermon, while its position is dictated by Mark 1:21, nevertheless departs from the usual Matthean compositional technique in that it contains no Markan material at the beginning. But again this is relatively insignificant: though generally based on the outline of Q’s sermon (6:20–49), in fact Matthew appears to use other written sources to determine the structure of the Sermon and relegates Q material to the role of additions and insertions. This is true for that Q and Matthew are related, although this is clearly the inference, which Luz rightly identifies. ²⁵ Luz, Matthew 1–7, 75. ²⁶ U. Luz, “Matthäus und Q,” in Von Jesus zum Christus: Christologische Studien. Festgabe für Paul Hoffmann zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. R. Hoppe, P. Hoffmann, and U. Busse; Berlin: de Gruyter), 201–15. ²⁷ Luz, “Matthäus und Q,” 207. ²⁸ Luz, “Matthäus und Q,” 207. ²⁹ The latter tendency is seen in Matt 10, 13, 18 and 24; the former in Matt 12 and 23 where the placing of the Q material was suggested by the presence of similar Markan passages (Luz, “Matthäus und Q,” 208–10).

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the Antitheses (Matt 5:21–48), the Cult Didache (6:1–6, 16–18), and even for the second half of the sermon where larger Q passages have been inserted (6:19– 7:28); Matthew still uses other parts of Q merely to supplement the existing text.30 Matthew’s rearrangement of Q is triggered by a couple of factors. On the one hand, Luz concludes that Q for Matthew is in a kind of notebook format, which allows him to rearrange the contents freely. On the other hand, the creative reworking of Q points to the fact that Matthew obviously revered the Q text. For him it represented the preaching of Jesus that served as a model for his own community’s proclamation, which Matthew conveniently organized by rearranging into five major discourses. Mark, for Matthew, provided the narrative setting for sermons, and a means of interpreting them. Mark was useful for this purpose because in its presentation of Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees, it provided a precedent for the community’s own conflicts with Israel. To reinforce this point, Matthew has three other chapters made up mostly of Q material (11, 12 and 23) which serve to heighten the Markan story of Jesus’ rejection by Israel by sharpening Jesus’ attack on “this generation.” Matthew’s continuity with Q can also be observed here. Q apparently stands at the end of the Mission to Israel, Matthew at the beginning of the community’s outreach to Gentiles.31 Consequently, though Matthew follows Mark’s order in the presentation of Jesus’ story, he does so because of the need both to ground Q in history and to make it a model for his community’s ongoing mission. In contrast, it is Luke’s apparent pedantic use of Q that signals his relative disinterest.32 Luz offers a number of helpful insights in his analysis of Matthew’s use of Q and Mark. Notably, it is probably correct that the reworking of Q by Matthew is to be taken as a sign of respect, not of lack of interest in Q’s message. Similarly, Matthew’s motive in using Mark was to provide a narrative context by which Q could be interpreted. What he fails to explain, however, is why Matthew has apparently so drastically changed his use of Mark between Matt 3–11 and 12– 28. In fact, it appears that Matthew has used Mark in 3–11 to supplement Q’s narrative, not the other way around. But in chs. 12–28, Matthew apparently proceeds as Luz has described. Why the change? M. Eugene Boring addressed this issue in his 1994 SBL paper, “The Convergence of Source Analysis, Social History and Literary Structure in the Gospel of Matthew.”33 Boring begins by naming his assumptions about Matthew, Q, and ³⁰ The Antitheses are expanded by the “love of enemy” and “turn the other cheek” passages from the Q sermon, the Cult Didache (Matt 6:1–18) by means of the teaching on the Lord’s prayer, and the second half of the sermon is supplemented by the insertion of verses from Q 13 (Luz, “Matthäus und Q,” 211). ³¹ Luz, “Matthäus und Q,” 211–4. ³² A. D. Jacobson, The First Gospel: An Introduction to Q (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1992), 94, makes a similar but briefer observation. ³³ M. E. Boring, “The Convergence of Source Analysis, Social History and Literary Structure in the Gospel of Matthew,” in Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers (ed. E. H. Lovering; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 587–611.

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Mark. He agrees with the position taken by Luz that Matthew’s community was originally based on Q. According to Boring, whether or not the Matthean community was founded by messengers from the Q community (as Luz argues), it is clear that Q was central for Matthew. As he says: … the acceptance of this collection of Jesus’ sayings played a major role early in the life of the community. During this initial phase, among the dominant themes of Q that had a formative influence on Matthew’s church were the image of Jesus as authoritative teacher, the importance of the sayings of Jesus, the future coming of the Son of Man as the divinely appointed eschatological Judge, the continuing importance of the Law, and the mission to Israel that had already been rejected.

Things changed for Matthew’s community, perhaps as a result of the disruptions of 66–70 C. E., when a new group of disciples joined and introduced the Gospel of Mark. This new Gospel was also embraced, though loyalty to Q remained: Without surrendering its earlier convictions based on its use of Q for many years in its worship and instruction, some strikingly new elements entered the life of the community. The Gospel of Mark offered a connected narrative of Jesus’ ministry, death and resurrection as a way of affirming the community’s faith. It was a major move in the thought of the Matthean community to adopt this genre of Christian confession. Though Q was chronologically prior, Matthew made the Markan narrative basic to its own composition. The Gospel of Matthew is a narrative with inserted speeches, which themselves become a part of the narrative, not a collection of speeches with a narrative framework. The stress on the crucified Jesus shifted the emphasis from Q’s picture of Jesus and filled in Q’s declarations about the suffering and crucifixion. Likewise, narratives about the disciples and their relation to Jesus gave a new mode of talking about the Christian life.

Having thus shown how Matthew began with Q and ended with Mark, Boring moves to the issue of the composition of Matthew to show that the incorporation of Q into Mark notwithstanding, Matthew’s compositional activity also betrays on ongoing loyalty to Q. To make this point, Boring focuses on the various proposals for an outline for Matthew, and after dismissing most of them, argues that key to the structure of Matthew is the issue of the order of his Markan materials. The first half of Matthew rearranges Markan material rather freely, while from Matt 12:22, Matthew follows the Markan order without variation. Boring then provides a source and structural analysis of Matt 1–12:22, showing that it is carefully composed of Markan, Q, and M materials and organized into a chiasm that emphasizes the centrality of Jesus as Messiah at the beginning, middle, and end (1:2–25, 4:23–9:35, 12:15–21), which enclose portrayals of Jesus’ relationship to his disciples (4:18–22, 9:36–11:1), John the Baptist (3:1–4:37, 11:2–19) and his opponents (2:1–23, 11:20–12:14). The purpose of this section is to demonstrate that the Messiah was part of a cosmic and earthly struggle with Satan that continued into the original readers’ own experience. Following the source and structural analyses of the two halves of Mark, Boring concludes

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“[The] extended and carefully composed Part One, derived mostly from non-Markan traditions for which Q formed the central focus and organizing principal, in effect makes Q the hermeneutical key with which to read the Markan narrative.” That narrative is reproduced in its essentials in Matt 12:22–28:30, for in this section Matthew “simply adopts Mark’s outline, in which Mark 8:31 = Matt 16:21 was a decisive turning point ….”34

James Robinson also is aware of the problem of the divergent social and literary analyses of Matthew. In “The Sayings Gospel Q,” Robinson also proposed that Matthew’s Gospel itself was shaped by its concern to reproduce Q’s message. For example, the summaries at Matt 4:23 and 9:35, which mark off the section of Matthew that depicts Jesus preaching and healing, appear to be conscious expansions of Q 7:22, which characterize Jesus’ ministry as one of preaching and healing. Moreover, much of the material in this section appears to be an attempt to document the claims of Q 7:22: the poor are evangelized (Matt 5:3); the lame walk (Matt 8:5–13; 9:1–8); the blind see (Matt 9:27–31); the lepers are cleansed (Matt 8:1–4 ); the deaf hear (9:32–34); and the dead are raised (9:18–26 ).35 In a later article, “The Matthean Trajectory from Q to Mark,” Robinson also takes up Luz’s thesis explicitly.36 Most importantly, Robinson notices the main weakness of Luz’s argument. While, as noted above, Luz argues that the community that produced Matthew is to be thought of as a development of the Q community, he also argues that the Gospel of Matthew is more indebted to Mark than to Q: “Matthew, who has taken over the narrative structure of the Gospel of Mark, is literarily a new conception of the Gospel of Mark and not a new conception of Q.”37 Robinson rightly questions this claim: “How is it that the Q community, now become the Matthean community, could give up its own Q priorities so readily, to become just a new concept of Mark? Was there no Q loyalty left? Is there not at least a last gasp of Q in Matthew’s sense of values?”38 Aside from this purely theoretical concern, Robinson goes on to note (in agreement with Luz and Boring) the anomaly in Matthew’s treatment of Mark in the first and second halves of the his Gospel. In addition to this observation, Robinson adds another: the rearrangement of Mark in Matt 3–11 is minimal39 and in fact Matthew pulls stories out of Mark in roughly their Markan sequence beginning from Mark 1 and reaching all the way to Mark 13:13. So, in effect, we may describe Matthew as scanning through Mark twice, once to locate materials to include in Matt 3–11, and once to write Matt 12–28. For Robinson the solution ³⁴ Boring, “Convergence,” 610. ³⁵ Robinson, “Sayings Gospel,” 370–1. ³⁶ J. M. Robinson, “The Matthean Trajectory from Q to Mark,” in Ancient and Modern Per-

spectives on the Bible and Culture: Essays in Honor of Hans Dieter Betz (ed. A. Yarbro Collins; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 122–54. ³⁷ Luz, Matthew 1–7, 75. ³⁸ Robinson, “Matthean Trajectory,” 124. ³⁹ Particularly in Matt 8–9, Matthew follows Mark’s relative order except for reversing Mark 2:1–22 and 4:35–5:17.

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to this anomaly is obvious; Matt 3–11 is to be thought of not as Matthew editing Mark, but as Matthew editing Q (or at least Q 3–7): For in these chapters Q, and following him Matthew, is energetically perfecting the main (pre-) christological argument of Q, to the effect that Jesus is the Coming One predicted by John, a message intended only for Israel. For Matthew this is a monument to and justification for the Q community, for having held out in Jesus’ own lifestyle for so long, before in fact yielding to the unremitting pressure of the Gentile Christian community and its Gospel Mark. Mark is hence only a subordinate factor in Matthew 3–11, just as Q is only a subordinate factor in Matthew 12–28.40

Matthew’s aim in his first section, then, is to improve the argument that Jesus is the coming one. Accordingly, he upgrades Q’s sermon to emphasize Jesus’ preaching by adding more early Q material and he upgrades Q’s miracle tradition by adding more miracles, although since there are only two miracles in Q, he had to add most of this material from Mark. To this complex Matthew added the mission instructions supplemented by Mark’s mission, part of Mark’s apocalypse and Q’s instructions on discipleship. The point is that Matthew has followed Q’s outline and inserted Mark to support the storyline of Q.41 The bulk of the article is concerned with explaining why and how Matthew has treated his source materials in this way. Key to Robinson’s analysis is the possibility that Matthew is “archiving” the Q traditions in order to justify his community’s practices in the past. This is in contrast to the long-held tenet of form and redaction criticism that Gospel texts reveal more about the communities/individuals producing them than they do about Jesus or his first followers. Robinson looks to Luke for support of this analysis. For example, in Luke 10, Jesus explicitly forbids the disciples to carry weapons, while shortly after, in Luke 22:30, which, not coincidentally, is the last Q verse recorded by Luke, Jesus explicitly reverses this command. For Robinson, Luke’s aim is to justify the Gentile Church’s departure from the ways of Jesus. Thus, just as Luke can in Acts portray a sort of primitive “Communism” at the beginning of the Jerusalem church without feeling obligated to portray the subsequent Gentile Diaspora church in such terms, even more can he portray the Mission of the Twelve and even the Mission of the Seventy-Two in his Gospel in a way quite different from his presentation of the Pauline Mission in Acts.42

Applying this model to Matthew, Robinson suggests that Matthew’s aim is to justify his community’s recent adoption of the Gentile mission, not by condemning the past practice of going exclusively to Jews, or by rewriting the history to show that the community had always been oriented to Gentiles. Instead, he narrates the past practice as correct, but past nevertheless, and then chronicles the shift to the Gentile mission. He accomplishes this by organizing the first half of ⁴⁰ Robinson, “Matthean Trajectory,” 125–6. ⁴¹ Robinson, “Matthean Trajectory,” 132–3. ⁴² Robinson, “Matthean Trajectory,” 126–7.

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the Gospel around Q themes, using particularly the older layer of Q materials. Here Matthew portrays the exclusivistic mission of his community as the exclusivistic mission of Jesus and his disciples. But then he is free to use the rest of his story of Jesus to show how Jesus himself abandons the Jews and turns to the Gentiles.43 In Matthew 3–11, Matthew is presenting an idealized version of the traditional Q kind of Christianity, so as to have it on the record, an archaic archive vindicating the first major period of the Matthean community’s own way of being Christian. Matthew’s point is: though we will have to do it Mark’s way, one can never say we were unfaithful in having done it so long in Q’s – and Jesus’ – way.44

Having laid this groundwork, Robinson proceeds to show how in fact Matthew has preserved Q’s history in Matt 3–11. This section is essentially an expansion of Q 3–7, the only tightly structured section of Q. Q 3–7 is organized narratively to portray Jesus as the coming one predicted by John. John may have thought this figure was God, but Q redefines John’s idea by pulling out OT prophecies that were fulfilled in Jesus, especially from Isaiah.45 Q 3 portrays John announcing a successor who will judge Israel, and then baptizing Jesus to fulfill that role. Q 7 portrays John asking Jesus if he is in fact the coming one and Jesus answering by describing his ministry in terms reminiscent of several Isaianic prophecies: the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor are evangelized. This answer makes sense in Q because, between John’s announcement and his question to Jesus, Q has presented Jesus’ inaugural sermon, in which the poor are declared blessed, and the healing of the centurion’s boy. Thus there is a clear logic to the narrative.46 Robinson, then, supports Boring’s claim that the first part of Matthew (3–11 at least) are Matthew’s attempt to reproduce the message of Q. For Boring, this is ⁴³ Robinson, “Matthean Trajectory,” 128. ⁴⁴ Robinson, “Matthean Trajectory,” 128. ⁴⁵ Cf. Q 7:22 and its relation to Isaiah, esp. 61:1 = Good news preached to the poor, heal …

the blind. ⁴⁶ Robinson, “Matthean Trajectory,” 129–30. An objection to Robinson’s analysis of Matthew may be raised here. Not all the material in Matt 3–11 appears to fit his characterization of this section as an expansion of Q’s attempt to identify Jesus as the coming one, or as an archaizing tendency in the Gospel. Much of the material in the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, appears to be aimed at the contemporary practice of Matthew’s church (as seen in the Antitheses [Matt 5:21–48] and the Cult Didache [Matt 6:1–6, 16–18]). Similarly, pulling the mission instructions forward in the narrative appears to have little to do with Q’s argument that Jesus was John’s successor, rather it also explains the current missionary rules for the Matthean community, particularly since it incorporates part of the Markan apocalypse, which suggests that the rules given there are to be followed until the parousia. To address these types of questions, Robinson raises the possibility that Matt 3–11 was written in several stages. An early stage included the incorporation of the Lord’s prayer into the sermon, and possibly the repositioning of the Mission instructions with the prohibition of the Gentile mission inserted. Perhaps this layer was aimed at converting Baptists. Later layers changed the focus of the material to the current practices of the community. Perhaps some of these changes occurred at the time the rest of the Gospel of Mark was incorporated into Matthew’s outlook.

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clear from the centrality of Q material in this section, and from the representation of Q’s themes. The point is to provide the interpretive lens with which to view the Markan narrative. For Robinson, Matthew’s commitment to Q in this section is seen in the way he reproduces (more or less) Q’s opening structure and then uses Markan and other materials to reinforce/illustrate Q’s “story”. But in Robinson’s case the purpose is not to call the community to continuing loyalty to Q, to enshrine (archive) its history before offering it vision mission. For both Robinson and Boring, the second half of Matthew reflects a clear shift to Markan priorities. In the final section of this paper, I will offer a more detailed analysis of Matthew’s use of Mark in Matt 3–11 as illustrated by the composition of Matt 8–9, which will be the basis for the question of whether in fact Matthew’s initial loyalty to Q changes in the second half of the his Gospel as dramatically as suggested by others.

4. Matt 8–9 and Q The composition of Matt 8–9 has generated a good deal of interest among scholars. At least part of the reason is the rather thorough rearrangement of Markan material, a fact that suggests the author took particular interest in this section of the Gospel. The more well known of the scholarly analyses have come to the conclusion that Matthew’s interest here is primarily Christological and that the material has been organized according to theme in order to demonstrate various aspects of Christ’s mission. While such analyses are to some extent helpful, they falter in the apparent arbitrary way in which they divide the material, and in their inability to explain all of the material and its current arrangement in Matthew.47 A different approach has been taken by Luz.48 Luz accepts that thematic concerns are possible, such as the fact that at least some of the stories are intended to ⁴⁷ For a helpful summary of the viewpoints see J. D. Kingsbury, “Observations on the ‘Miracle Chapters’ of Matthew 8–9,” CBQ (1978): 559–73. One analysis that has gained limited acceptance is that of Christoph Berger (“Jesu Taten nach Matthäus 8 und 9,” ZKT 70 [1973]: 272–87). Berger divides the material into four major sections that emphasize four themes: Outcasts (8:1-17), Discipleship (8:18–34), Jesus and Israel (9:1-17) and Faith (9:18-34). W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew [3 vols.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988–97], 2:3) criticize this analysis, pointing out, among other things, that the markers Berger identifies as indicators of the themes of the sections are not limited to those sections whose themes they supposedly indicate. For example πίστις, while occurring in 9:22, 29, is also found in 8:10 and 9:2. ⁴⁸ Luz has written two articles on Matt 8–9, in addition to his treatment of these chapters in his commentary: U. Luz, Matthew 8–20 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 1–58; idem, “Die Wundergeschichten von Mt 8–9,” in Tradition and Interpretation in the New Testament: Essays in Honor of E. Earle Ellis (ed. G. Hawthorne and O. Betz; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 149– 65; idem, “Fiktivität und Traditionstreue im Matthäusevangelium im Lichte griechischer Literatur,” ZNW 84 (1993): 153–77.

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provide corroboration to Jesus’ answer to John in Q 7 (= Matt 11) about whether Jesus is the One to Come. In Q 7:22 (= Matt 11:5), Jesus claims to perform certain miracles, and an example of at least one of each is found in Matt 8–9.49 But reference to Q 7:22 alone does not account for all the material in Matt 8–9, and Luz notes that thematic approaches in general often fail to take Matthew seriously as a story, hence they do not account for the placement of this material precisely here in Matthew’s gospel, nor do they adequately explain the supposed themes of the section.50 Luz proposes, in contrast, that the material is first of all a narrative, i. e., it tells a story about a particular development in Jesus’ life. As such, it must be analyzed narratively, both in terms of the section itself, and in terms of the story of Matthew as a whole. Using this approach, Luz observes that Matt 8–9 begins with Jesus reaching out to Israel, and ends with his rejection by the religious leaders. In terms of Matthew’s plot, this reversal in attitude is important because it sets up Jesus’ speech in Matt 10, in which Jesus establishes his new community.51 Luz also notices that if indeed Matthew has woven these Markan (and Q) episodes together to tell this story, then Matthew must have done so with the consciousness that his narrative deviated both from his tradition and from the life of Jesus himself. The rearrangement of Mark suggests the former point, and the fabrication of a second version of Jesus healing two blind men at Matt 9:27–31, based on an episode in Mark 10:45–52 (= Matt 20:29–34, where the same story appears in its Markan position) illustrates the latter. To account for this creativity of Matthew, Luz proposes that the story, although it is a description of a course of events in Jesus’ life, probably reflects the experience of Matthew’s community.52 Finally, as noted above, Luz argues that somewhere in the background of Matthew is the community that produced Q. These three assertions about Matt 8–9, that this section is to be understood as telling a story, that that story is, among other things, the story of Matthew’s community, and that Matthew’s community is in some sense the community behind Q, form the basis of my analysis. I will show that Matt 8–9 can be understood as a Matthean narrative created to illustrate statements made by Jesus in Q. We will look at Matt 8–9 from several perspectives. First, the selection and arrangement of sources will be considered. Second, the main themes and narrative elements will be identified. Finally, the motive for, and structure of, the final composition will be discussed.

⁴⁹ Luz, “Wundergeschichten,” 150–1; cf. Matt 11:5: “… the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up ….” Matt 8–9 includes the story of a leper cleansed (8:1–4), two paralytics restored (8:5–13; 9:1–8), a dead girl raised (9:18–26), two blind men healed (9:27–31), and the exorcism of a mute (and deaf) demoniac (9:32–34). ⁵⁰ Luz, “Wundergeschichten,” 150–1. ⁵¹ Luz, “Wundergeschichten,” 152–5. ⁵² Luz, “Wundergeschichten,” 156–7; see also Luz, “Fiktivität,” 155–62.

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5. Matthew’s Use of Sources in Matt 8–9 Mark The following is a list of the Markan pericopes used in Matt 8–9, presented in Matthean order; the source of each is identified: Matthew

Mark

8:1–4

Leper cleansed

1:40–45

8:14–15 8:16–17 8:23–27 8:28–34

Peter’s Mother-in-law Evening healings Storm stilled Demoniac(s) cured

*1:29–31 1:32–34 4:35–41 5:1–20

9:1–8 9:9–13 9:14–17 9:18–26 9:27–31

Paralytic healed Call of Levi (Matthew) Question about fasting Girl raised (Woman healed) Blind healed

*2:1–12 2:13–17 2:18–22 5:21–43 10:46–52

In order to understand Matthew’s purpose in his use of this material, it is first necessary to describe adequately how Matthew has arranged his sources. For instance, we may assert simply that Matthew has rearranged some Markan pericopes. The major problem with this description is that it forces us to look solely to Matthew’s imagination for clues to the motive of the rearrangement (hence the attempts to identify various themes that Matthew may be illustrating). Another way to describe this material is that Matt 8 and 9 are composed mainly out of two Markan sections (Mark 1:29–2:22 and 4:35–5:41) that have been interpolated into each other (and somewhat rearranged). Another Markan pericope (Mark 10:56–52) was also used.53 While this is more precise than the first description, it is open to the same objection. A more adequate description is helpful: Matt 8–9 is composed out of two sequences of Markan material, the second of which is interpolated into the first. That at least two Markan sequences are present is obvious: the pericopes in the above table marked with asterisks and brackets show where a new sequence begins and ends. One sequence stretches from Mark 1:29 to Mark 5:20 (corresponding to Matt 8:14–34); the other begins at Mark 2:1 and extends through Mark 10:52 (corresponding to Matt 9:1–34). That leaves only the first Markan pericope, Mark 1:40–45, out of sequence. But if we notice that in Mark that pericope immediately precedes Mark 2:1–20 (i. e., the pericope that begins the second Markan sequence in Matt 8–9), then it appears that Matthew has created a first sequence of Markan material stretching from Mark 1:40 to 10:52 and ⁵³ H. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (London: SCM Press, 1990), 321.

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interpolated into it a second that extends from 1:29 to 5:20. The following, therefore, depicts Matthew’s collection of Markan stories in Matt 8–9. Markan Sequence A

Markan Sequence B

1:40–45 1:29–31 1:32–34 4:35–41 5:1–20 2:1–12 2:13–17 2:18–22 5:21–43 10:46–52

Of course, other descriptions are possible as well. This description, however, will be useful in determining the motive for assembling this collection of stories. Before turning to that issue, we will look at the other material in Matt 8–9, which comes from Q. 5.1. Q Three (and a half) Q pericopes have been added to the Markan material: Matthew 8:5–10 (8:11–13) 8:18–22 9:32–34

Q Centurion’s boy (Patriarch’s dinner) Following Jesus Mute demoniac

Q 7:1–10 (Q 13:28–29) Q 9:57–60 Q 11:14–15

The first, one of two Q miracle stories, stands between the beginning of sequence A and the beginning of sequence B. The second pericope is in the middle of Markan sequence B; it is a pair of sayings on discipleship that is used by Matthew to introduce the story of the stilling of the storm. The third is at the end of Markan sequence A, and is Q’s other miracle story. Matthew has significantly reworked both of the Q miracle stories. He names the malady of the Centurion’s boy as paralysis, and concludes the story with a saying from Q 13 about the Gentiles eating with the Patriarchs. With the story of the mute demoniac, as with the story of the two blind men, Matthew has created a doublet of a traditional (in this case, Q) story that he repeats later closer to its traditional position (i. e. at Matt 12:22–24 = Q 11:14–15). It is not immediately obvious why these pericopes were incorporated into the Markan materials. This point will be taken up in the next section. Why, then, has Matthew assembled this material at this point in his story of Jesus?

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6. Matthew’s Intention 6.1. Sequence A As mentioned above, it has been observed that one purpose of Matthew 8–9 is to provide narrative corroboration to Jesus’ claim in Q 7:22 that in his ministry, “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf (κωφόϚ) hear, and the dead are raised ….” But this cannot be the sole or even main function of Matt 8–9, for not all the materials (including the miracle stories) in these chapters serve this purpose. The stories of the stilling of the storm, the Gadarene exorcism, the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, and the sayings on discipleship and ministry do not directly corroborate Q 7:22. When we isolate sequence A, however, it is remarkable that all of the Markan miracles, with a minor exception, appear to illustrate Q 7:22: a leper is cleansed, a paralytic (= lame man) is restored, a dead girl is raised, and two blind men receive their sight. The two Q miracles have both been reworked by Matthew apparently to serve the same purpose. The Centurion’s boy becomes a paralytic in Matthew (παραλυτικόϚ a synonym for χωλόϚ, perhaps under the influence of Mark) and the story of the demoniac who is κωφόϚ has been duplicated by Matthew and moved to this position before Q 7 (= Matt 11; in Q the story stands after Q 10).54 Similarly striking is that none of the miracles in Markan sequence B serve this function: neither the stories of a feverish woman cured, of the stilling of a storm, nor those of the healings of many who are sick and demon possessed (including the Gadarene), directly allude to Q 7:22. These data suggest that sequence A was compiled by Matthew with Q 7 in mind. Of course, there are two pericopes in sequence A that do not relate directly to Q 7:22: the calling of, and eating with, the tax collector, and the question by John’s disciples. A review of Q 7 as a whole, however, suggests the reason for their presence. In Q 7:33–34 (= Matt 11:18–19), Jesus speaks of “this generation’s” criticisms of him and John, “For John came neither eating and drinking, and they said, ‘He has a demon.’ The son of man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, a drunkard and glutton, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’” Neither of these statements is corroborated in Q, hence it is significant that in the story of the tax collector’s call (Matt 9:9–13 = Mark 2:13–17), the Pharisees complain to Jesus’ disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And in the pericope about John’s disciples (Matt 9:14–17 = Mark 2:18–22) they ask Jesus, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast.” In other words, these two stories also illustrate statements made by Jesus in Q 7 about himself and John. We may display the correspondences between Sequence A and Q 7 (Matt 11) as follows. ⁵⁴ One problem with Matthew’s use of the Q miracle in this connection is that it describes the healing of a κωφόϚ who is mute, who thus speaks when healed. Q 7:22 refers to κωφοί who hear. The difference is minor, for deafness and speech impediments are often associated (cf. Mark 7:32).

256 Matt 8:1–13; 9:1–33 Sequence A

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Matt 8:14–34 Sequence B

8:1–4 – λεπρὸϚ … ἐκαθαρίσθη (= Mark) 8:5–13 – παραλυτικόϚ … ἰάθη (diff Q)

Q 7 (Matt 11) 7:22 (11:5) – λεπροὶ καθαρίζονται 7:22 (11:5) – χωλοὶ περιπατοῦσιν

8:14–15 – mother in law raised 8:16–17 – healings 8:18–22 – potential disciples 8:23–27 – storm stilled 8:28–34 – demoniacs cured 9:1–8 – παραλυτικόϚ περιπάτει (= Mark) 9:9–13 – Jesus eats μετὰ τῶν τελωνῶν καὶ ἁμαρτωλῶν (= Mark) 9:14–17 – John’s disciples fast and Jesus’ do not

9:18–26 – θυγάτηρ … ἐτελεύτησεν (diff Mark: ἐσχάτωϚ ἔχει; ἠγέρθη τὸ κοράσιον (diff Mark: ἀνέστη) [9:20–22 – the woman with the hemorrhage] 9:27–31 – ἠνεῴχθησαν αὐτῶν οἱ ὀφθαλμοί, diff Mark: ἀνέβλεψεν) 9:32–34 – κωφόϚ is cured; [Jesus cures people ἐν τῷ ἄρχοντι τῶν δαιμονίων (= Q)]

7:22 (11:5) – χωλοὶ περιπατοῦσιν 7:34 (11:19) – τελωνῶν φίλοϚ και ἁμαρτωλῶν 7:33–34 (11:18, 19) – John came neither eating nor drinking; the son of man came eating and drinking 7:22 (11:5) – νεκροὶ ἐγείρονται

7:22 (11:5) – τυφλοὶ ἀναβλέπουσιν 7:22 (11:5) – κωφοὶ ἀκούουσιν [7:33 (11:18) – they say John δαιμόνιον ἔχει

We may conclude, therefore, that sequence A was assembled by Matthew with Q 7 in view. The fact that the material is presented in Mark’s order suggests that Matthew scanned Mark, and each time he found a story suitable for illustrating a statement by Jesus in Q 7, he added it to the narrative in the Markan sequence. The one exception, of course, is the story of the woman with the hemorrhage (Matt 9:20–22 = Mark 5:24–34), but it is likely that this story was included in Matt 8–9 because it was integrally linked in Mark to the story of the raising of the dead girl (Matt 9:18–19, 23–26 = Mark 5:22–24, 35–43). It may have served a structural function as well (see below).

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6.2. Sequence B Why, then, was a second sequence of Markan materials also assembled? It is instructive that the Q pericope (Q = Matt 8:18–22) in this section actually introduces Jesus’ Mission Speech in Q (Q 10). This suggests that this material may have been collected with Q 10 in view. A closer analysis reveals that this is likely the case. We may summarize the narrative in Matt 8:14–34 as follows. Jesus, having entered the village of Capernaum, goes to the house of a sympathizer (i. e. Peter) and immediately heals the sick woman residing there; in return, Jesus is given a meal (8:14–15). Later that evening, Jesus offers aid to the entire village, using Peter’s house as his base (8:16–17). When Jesus decides to leave the village, he finds people interested in going with him, but warns them that he has no firm plans for lodging, and that the trip is urgent and cannot be delayed (8:18–22). Jesus and his followers soon find themselves in peril when a sudden storm nearly swamps their boat, but through God’s power they are protected (8:23– 27). When Jesus reaches the opposite shore, he heals two demoniacs, but the violence and economic loss caused by the healing lead the townspeople to reject him. He immediately leaves the area at their request, and returns to Capernaum (8:28–34). When described in this way, it appears that, in general terms, sequence B illustrates from Jesus’ own practice the instructions for mission he gives the disciples in Q10 (= Matt 10). Jesus commands them not to carry provisions, but to rely on the hospitality of sympathizers who are only identified when they respond positively to the disciples’ preaching (Q 10:4–6). They are to stay in one house in a village, and from there to reach out to the rest of the village (Q 10:7–9). They may be rejected, and because of the urgency of the situation, are to leave the villages that reject them and seek places that will respond positively (Q 10:10–11). The story of the stilling of the storm (Matt 8:23–27) does not fit into this scheme in an obvious way, for Jesus in Q never promises the missionaries that wind and weather will attack them, but Matthew has edited both that story and the mission speech itself to establish a connection. To the instructions in Q 10 Matthew has added warnings of persecution from Q 12: preaching may lead to life threatening situations (Q 12:1–8). To the stilling of the storm story Matthew has added two Q sayings about discipleship (Q 9:57–60 = Matt 8:18–22) and edited the story so that the disciples’ experiences in the boat become a paradigm for the dangers of discipleship in general.55 Hence, it is likely that the story of the ⁵⁵ G. Bornkamm, “The Stilling of the Storm in Matthew,” in Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew (ed. G. Bornkamm, G. Barth, and H. J. Held; London: SCM Press, 1963), 52–7, argued long ago that Matthew’s version of the stilling of the storm has been transformed by the evangelist from a simple miracle story into a “… kerygmatic paradigm of the danger and glory of discipleship.” This conclusion is drawn from Matthew’s insertion of the Q pericope about wouldbe followers (Q 9:57–60 = Matt 8:19–22) into the introduction to the story of the stilling of the storm (Mark 4:35–41 = Matt 8:18, 23–27) and the creation of catchword connections between the two stories, particularly the use of the word ἀκολουθεῖν at 8:19, 22, and 23. In the first two

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storm is at least a metaphor for God’s protection of his workers (cf. Q 12:6–7, 11–12) who encounter danger (persecution) on the way. The results of the analysis of sequence B may be displayed. Matt 8–9 Sequence B

Q 10 and 12 (Matt 10)

8:14–15 Jesus is received into a private home where he heals a sick person and is served a meal. 8:16–17 Jesus then offers assistance to others in the same village; demons are exorcised and the sick are healed. 8:18–22 Jesus encounters two possible disciples: he warns them that following is both urgent and hard (no place to stay).

Q 10:5–9 (10:8–10)

The disciples are to heal people and be repaid with a meal.

Q 10:7–9 The disciples are to stay in a (10:1, 11–13) single private home while they help villages; they have authority to heal. Q 10:4–6 The disciples are to take no (10:9–11, 23) provisions, nor do they have places reserved to stay.56 The mission is urgent and does not allow for delay 8:23–27 Jesus and the disciples encoun- Q12:1–12 The disciples will experience ter danger on their journey, but (10:26–33) danger as a result of the jourare saved. ney. 8:28–34 Jesus heals a demoniac, but Q 10:10–11 If a house or town rejects the when he is rejected by the (10:14–15) message, the disciples are to man’s acquaintances, he leaves leave. the area.

To sum up: Matthew has composed Matt 8–9 out of two sequences of Markan and Q materials, the first serving to illustrate statements made by Jesus in Q 7 (Matt 11), the second serving to illustrate Jesus’ mission commands in Q 10

occurrences Matthew copies Q, but in the third, Matthew differs from Mark, who portrays the trip as the disciples’ idea. Matthew makes it Jesus’ idea, and then has the disciples “follow” Jesus into the boat. Bornkamm rightly comments: “Of course there is no question of disputing that ἀκολουθεῖν in 8:23 bears in the first place the simple meaning of follow after, but at the same time it is given by the preceding sayings (8:19 ff. and 21 ff.) a deeper and figurative meaning” (55). I arrive at the same conclusion, adding to Bornkamm’s argument that this story was apparently included here as an illustration of the dangers that Jesus promises to his disciples when they obey his command to go and preach in Matt 10. Of course, in Matt 10, Jesus does not specifically promise that nature itself will be an adversary, but predicts that the disciples will be betrayed by family and put on trial for their lives and that God will take care of them (from Q 12:1–8 and 51–53, passages that Matthew has incorporated into his mission speech). Nevertheless, if my thesis is correct, namely that Matthew has assembled Matt 8–9 in order to illustrate statements from Q, then it is interesting that the story of the stilling of the storm is only one of two stories in Matthew’s known tradition (i. e. Mark and Q) that depict the disciples in danger and Jesus rescuing them (the other is also a “storm and boat story,” at Mark 6:45–52 = Matt 14:22–32); there are no stories of the disciples standing trial for their lives. To illustrate God’s protection of missionaries, Matthew’s only option was to transform the story of the rescue at sea into a metaphor for salvation in the midst of persecution. ⁵⁶ Matt 10:11 instructs the disciples to enter a village and then determine who is hospitable.

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(Matt 10). It remains to ask why Matthew combined the two sequences by interpolating one into the other.

7. Matthew’s Composition That the two sequences should be combined was suggested by the materials themselves. In terms of form and content, the material in each sequence is similar, since both portray Jesus pursuing his mission. The decision to interpolate sequence B into the middle of sequence A, while putting the two Q miracles near the beginning and the end appears first to have also been suggested by the sources themselves. For the stories suggest that Jesus entered Capernaum twice (Q 7:1–10; Mark 2:1–12), and left it once, to journey across the lake (Mark 4:35–41). A reasonable arrangement, with the least amount of rearranging of Mark, would be to place the sequence of Markan material that has Jesus ministering in the town, and then leaving it (sequence B) between the two stories of Jesus entering the town. Hence, while Luz is correct to observe that Matthew has consciously changed Jesus’ story vis a vis Mark, it is also true that Matthew has remained conservative in his presentation by telling the story implied by his source materials once they had been excerpted from Mark and Q. There is probably an aesthetic dimension to the composition as well. The present arrangement presents two complete cycles of Jesus’ ministry in and around Capernaum. Each is of similar length (approx 4350 letters) and each contains the same number of miracles (5). Each begins (more or less)57 with Jesus entering Capernaum and healing a paralytic, ends with Jesus casting out a demon and being rejected by the crowd, and contains stories of Jesus healing ritually unclean people (whom he meets on the road) and women on their sickbeds.58 Each has pronouncements by Jesus about discipleship and ministry. Matt 8

Matt 9

1–4 Ritually unclean man cleansed

1–8 Entry into Capernaum, healing of a lame man 9–17 Sayings about Jesus’ ministry

8–13 Entry into Capernaum, healing of a lame man 14–17 Woman on deathbed raised 18–22 Sayings about Jesus’ ministry 23–27 Storm stilled 28–34 Demoniac cured; Jesus rejected

18–19, 23–26 Dead girl raised 20–22 Ritually unclean woman cleansed 27–31 Blind men healed 32–34 Demoniac cured; Jesus rejected

⁵⁷ The exception, of course, is that the first cycle has Jesus heal the leper and then enter the village. This shift probably reflects Mark’s report that Jesus encountered the leper outside the village while on the road (cf. Mark 1:39, 40, 2:1). Levitical law requires that lepers live outside of inhabited areas (Lev 13:45–6). ⁵⁸ The goal of reinforcing the parallels between the two ministry cycles may have led Matthew to retain the story of the bleeding woman in sequence A.

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These parallels do not need to be pressed too strongly, since according to the analysis of Matthew’s composition presented here, their presence in these chapters is something of a coincidence. Nevertheless, they may help further explain why Matthew assembled the material by inserting Sequence B into Sequence A, and placed the Q stories, about Jesus entering Capernaum, on the one hand, and being rejected after an exorcism, on the other, at the beginning and end of the composition. The present position of the Q miracles allows Matthew to begin (more or less) each cycle of ministry by having Jesus enter Capernaum, and to end it with a story about Jesus being rejected after an exorcism. Matt 8–9 appears to be a case of Matthew expanding and corroborating sayings in Q using Markan and Q materials. Q has Jesus claim to perform certain miracles, and to follow certain mission practices, but Q narrates only one of the miracles Jesus claimed to perform, and never portrays Jesus at work. Matthew has supplied this lack by assembling two sequences of Markan material and arranging them around relevant Q stories to create a narrative sequence that both gives examples of Jesus’ mission practices and supports his claims to be the One who is to Come. Luz’s observation is apropos: Matthew’s story reflects the experience of his community. In terms of this paper, we may restate that assertion: Matthew is not retelling Mark’s story, but narrating the one implied in Q. This is but one example of how Q stood behind our Gospel of Matthew, not only theologically and sociologically, but as its literary inspiration as well.

8. Conclusion The analysis of Matt 8–9 suggests that, at this point in Matthew’s Gospel at least, the author’s focus is on Q, with Markan materials used twice in their Markan order to illustrate or reinforce the teaching of Jesus in Matt 10 and 11. This data confirms the observations of Boring and Robinson that the first half of Matthew is still loyal to Q. The larger question is whether the second half of Matthew can be analyzed in similar terms or whether the conclusion that Matt 12–28 is the wholesale adoption of Mark and hence of an essentially different viewpoint is accurate. Several observations are important. First, even in Matt 3–11, Matthew uses his Markan materials selectively and conservatively (i. e. in Markan order), and in 8–9 specifically to illustrate Jesus’ teaching in Q. Second, Matt 3–11 is essentially an expansion of Q 3–7, the only section in Q that has a clear narrative structure. Third, Matt 12–28 use of Mark in Markan order is not inconsistent with Matthew’s procedure in Matt 3–11. Finally, the Q material used in Matt 12–28 does not have a clear narrative structure but is better characterized as a collection of speeches by Jesus with perhaps some thematic development to them. Is it possible that Matthew has composed his Gospel as an expansion of Q, and where possible has taken up Q’s story of Jesus as the framework, and used Markan material to illustrate Q? In the same way, when Q does not have a nar-

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rative structure, has Matthew adopted Mark’s, but again, not to embrace Mark’s religion, but to illustrate Q? The significant differences in Matthew’s portrayal of fundamental issues like leadership of the church, the temple, and Jewish law visà-vis Mark are provocative.

Matthew, Mark, and the Shepherd Metaphor Similarities, Differences, and Implications Wayne Baxter 1. Introduction While scholars have long recognized Matthew’s use of Mark as a literary source, cross examinations of these texts often climax with the task of understanding the Evangelists’ theological emphases. Doubtless these types of inquiries have proven beneficial for the advancement of Gospel studies, but can a comparison of Matthew and Mark be taken further, specifically, towards determining the Gospel writers’ respective social locations? The present study attempts to move in this direction by comparing the Evangelists’ appropriations of the shepherd metaphor in order to discern one particular aspect of their social locations: socio-religious orientation.1 The study will begin by explaining the need to view socio-religious orientation spectrally. Next it will discuss the role and relevance of the shepherd metaphor for accessing socio-religious orientation, followed by an examination of the metaphor’s usage in the Hebrew Bible, and in the writings of Second Temple Jews, non-Christ-believing Romans, and first-century Christbelievers in order to provide points on a socio-religious spectrum on which Mark and Matthew can be located by comparing their respective appropriations of the metaphor with these groups and with each other.

2. Socio-Religious Location: Thinking Spectrally Discussions concerning socio-religious orientation have for too long suffered significantly from the inadequate and historically inaccurate categorization of false opposites. Scholars who believe, for example, that Matthew and his community decisively broke away from Judaism and no longer participated in the public synagogue environment refer to the Mattheans as “extra muros.” Those who assert that they still existed within Judaism and the public synagogue refer to them as being “intra muros.” While “extra muros”/“intra muros” have long been ¹ Socio-religious orientation or location describes the manner in which an author or group relates to Judaism, on the one hand, and Christ-belief on the other, in terms of ritual, belief, and practice.

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the standard terminology for the debate, these terms greatly oversimplify what would have been a highly complex situation.2 This type of either/or configuration fails to describe adequately the historical picture of the social interactions between Jews and Christ-believers. Even scholars who embrace the terms “intra muros” and “extra muros” recognize the complexity of the social interactions between the groups.3 The either/or configuration, then, fails to do justice to the immense socio-religious diversity of the time. In contrast to this approach, Daniel Boyarin provides a more sophisticated way of conceptualizing socio-religious interactions,4 insisting that scholars should not think of Judaism and Christ-belief as circles – separate, intersecting, concentric, or otherwise – but rather that interactions between the two groups are better configured as points on a continuum, with one end perhaps representing a Jewish nationalistic, stringently Torah-observant, form of Judaism that is hostile towards Christ-belief,5 and the other end indicative of an equally polar form of non-Jewish national, Torah-free, anti-Judaistic Christ-belief.6 Consequently, there would have been many permutations between these two end points and the boundaries between the sub-groups would have been quite blurred, with the exchange of beliefs and customs moving in both directions. Thus, Boyarin’s “wave theory” provides a much more sophisticated and historically plausible depiction of the social-historical realities of the time. ² A. Chester remarks that “the theological, historical, social, economic and political issues involved [in comparing the eschatology of Jews and Christ-believers] are much more complex … hence I am dubious about setting up so simple a contrast and critical of attempts to do so” (“The Parting of the Ways: Eschatology and Messianic Hope,” in Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways AD 70 to 135 [ed. J. Dunn; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992], 303). ³ For example, while P. Foster freely adopts the “intra muros”/“extra muros” language, he notes, speaking of D. Sim’s categories of antinomistic Gentile Christ-believers and rigorist Jewish non-Christ-believers, “there is a range of possibilities between these extremes” (Community, Law and Mission in Matthew’s Gospel [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004], 257). With reference to the middle ground between early Judaism and Christ-belief, S. Wilson recognizes that some groups of Christ-believers “found themselves straddling, and thus inevitably blurring, the dividing lines between the Jewish and Christian communities” (Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70–170 CE [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995], 143); cf. comments of a similar nature by R. Brown, “Not Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity by Types of Jewish/Gentile Christianity,” CBQ 45 (1983): 74; and J. R. C. Cousland, The Crowds in the Gospel of Matthew (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 304. ⁴ D. Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 1–21 (especially). ⁵ E. g., Saul of Tarsus (cf. Acts 8:1–3; Gal 1:13–14; Phil 3:4–6) and Ignatius of Antioch, who spoke disparagingly of Jews in his letters, and considered Judaism and Christ-belief as wholly antithetical (e. g., Magn. 10:3). ⁶ Boyarin writes, “On one end [of the continuum] were the Marcionites, the followers of the second-century Marcion, who believed that the Hebrew Bible had been written by an inferior God and had no standing for Christians and who completely denied the ‘Jewishness’ of Christianity. On the other were the many Jews for whom Jesus meant nothing. In the middle, however, were many gradations that provided social and cultural mobility from one end of this spectrum to the other” (Dying for God, 8).

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Yet even this paradigm could use further nuancing. Because of the common custom among biblical scholars of describing non-Christ-believing Jews and Christ-believers in terms of false opposites, a Judaism–Christ-belief spectrum like Boyarin’s could be perceived as simply perpetuating the practice of using false opposites. Numerous issues are involved in locating a group on a socio-religious continuum, e. g., the degree to which Torah is observed,7 the level of participation in the Temple cult,8 and the attitude towards the reception of Gentiles. Each of these socio-religious practices or beliefs could generate its own spectrum. But what is it about the shepherd metaphor that lends itself to accessing certain aspects of socio-religious realities?

3. Thinking Behind the Shepherd Metaphor: Patterns of Usage A growing number of scholars have come to recognize that metaphors, despite being linguistic or literary constructions, can be used to glean social history.9 While a metaphor has intrinsic meaning its semantic significance is closely tied to the social-historical context of the one who appropriates it, whereby the metaphor’s meaning is developed further.10 Consequently, the appropriations of ⁷ While commentators tend to homogenize the different Christ-believing groups in the New Testament, a close look reveals a spectrum of views for Torah observance: Hellenists like Stephen for whom the Temple cult held little practical relevance (Acts 7; cf. Hebrews, whose author either mirrors Stephen’s view or represents an even more extreme position); Jews like Paul who, according to his letters, advocated a Law-free mission to the Gentiles, but who still participated in the Temple cult, according to Acts 21:18–26; and James, who led a compromise between the Law-free position of Paul and the Christ-believing Pharisees (Acts 15:5) – a group that would represent yet another position on the spectrum. As for non-Christ-believing Jews, these groups followed festival laws like Passover and Sabbath, and ceremonial laws like circumcision, as well as the dietary and purity regulations in varying measure: see, for example, the halakhic disputes between the forbearers of the Qumran community and the Jerusalem establishment in 4QMMT. Still, Jewish groups would tend to observe these laws much more stringently than most Christbelievers. ⁸ Prior to the temple’s destruction, most Jews advocated expiatory sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple (even groups that withdrew from the Jerusalem cult [e. g., the Qumran community] did so in hope that God would one day cleanse it from its defilement and thereby re-establish its sacrificial efficacy). Some Christ-believers like the author of Hebrews, however, taught that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross nullified the sacrificial system and consequently rejected the entire Temple cult; others allowed for non-expiatory sacrifice (e. g., Acts 21:18–26). ⁹ See, for example, the comments of G. Anderson, “From Israel’s Burden to Israel’s Debt: Towards a Theology of Sin in Biblical and Early Second Temple Sources,” in Reworking the Bible: Apocryphal and Related Texts at Qumran (ed. E. Chazon, D. Dimant, and R. Clements; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 1–30, especially 2–3. In a discussion of the semantic importance of metaphors, P. Porter notes that “a correct understanding of a metaphor can be reconstructed only from its social or extralinguistic context … [including] the historical background” (Metaphors and Monsters: A Literary-Critical Study of Daniel 7 and 8 [Lund: CWK Gleerup, 1983], 5). ¹⁰ J. Huntzinger underscores these two observations: “[Later authors] did not merely ‘borrow’ the metaphor – careful not to ply or mould it in any way – but they made it theirs by taking it and asking what the metaphor was saying to them. The reality depicted by the metaphor

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metaphors can reflect the patterns of thought of the borrower. Patterns of thought represent part of what E. P. Sanders calls, “patterns of religion,” which he defines as “the description of how a religion is perceived by its adherents to function.”11 As Sanders notes, a pattern of religion is comprised of patterns of ritual (behavior) and patterns of thought (theology), the latter of which, according to Sanders, consists of separate motifs.12 The shepherd motif or metaphor reveals certain patterns of thought connected with socio-religious orientation, as will be observed in section four below. In the case of Matthew, the Christological strand of “Shepherd” offers significant potential for exploring his socio-religious location for several reasons. First, because the metaphor is a core leadership symbol for early Jews and Christbelievers, it represents a central thought pattern for these authors,13 relating to the hierarchical realities of a community. Second, and consequently, it appears fairly frequently in the writings of early Jews and Christ-believers, thus offering a broad base for comparisons. And third, these groups of authors tend to employ the metaphor in distinct ways (see section four below). The particular aspect of socio-religious orientation that the shepherd metaphor speaks to is Jewish national restoration. In a spectrum mapping belief in Jewish national restoration, one end of the continuum would represent a zealous nationalistic concern for the moral wellbeing and political-national restoration of the nation of Israel, while groups at the other end would have no desire whatsoever for Israel’s restoration.14 This type of spectrum would be most appropriate for an analysis of the shepherd metaphor for two reasons. On the one hand, overtones of Jewish national restoration are regularly associated with the shepherd metaphor, and Israel’s restoration represents a central theme in the writings of Second Temple Jews.15 On the other hand, Jewish national restoration is broadly applicable: while not as major a theme for Christ-believers, the future of Israel does nevertheless factor into their theology in different ways.16 Thus, an examination of the had significance for them which is why they used it. By taking ownership of the metaphor they were able to shape it for themselves and make it useful just as it had been useful to the previous community from whom they had inherited it” (End of Exile: A Short Commentary on the Shepherd/Sheep Metaphor in Exilic and Post-Exilic Prophetic and Synoptic Gospel Literature [Ph. D. diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 1999], 54). ¹¹ E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 17 (his emphasis). ¹² Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 18. ¹³ Non-Christ-believing Jews, for example, employ “shepherd” as a metaphor for Israel’s rulers, while Christ-believers appropriate it for their assembly leaders. ¹⁴ Besides numerous non-Jews and Christ-believers, some highly acculturated non-Christbelieving Jews would probably also be found at this end, e. g., Tiberius Julius Alexander (the nephew of Philo of Alexandria), who rejected his Jewish upbringing in order to fully assimilate to Roman culture and religion. ¹⁵ Not only do the exilic and post-exilic prophets speak frequently of Israel’s restoration, but so do many Second Temple Jewish authors, e. g., 1 Enoch; Jubilees; 4 Ezra; 2 Baruch; Psalms of Solomon 17; and some of the texts from Qumran. ¹⁶ See, for example, Romans 9–11; Ephesians 2; Heb 8:7–13; and Acts 1:6.

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appropriation of the shepherd metaphor can be used to generate a socio-religious spectrum mapping belief in Jewish national restoration. It is to this task that the study now turns.

4. The Shepherd Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible, and in the Writings of Early Jews, Non-Christ-Believing Romans, and Christ-Believers In the HB the shepherd metaphor is stereotypically invoked by the term, erx (“shepherd”).17 While the imagery associated with the shepherd metaphor in the HB can be quite broad,18 when the metaphor is invoked without erx, it does not appreciably add to the observable pattern of the shepherd-erx metaphor observed below.19 ¹⁷ Of the two words used for “shepherd,” erx and xwb, the latter term is almost never deployed metaphorically: of its 183 uses in the HB, the noun form never appears metaphorically, while the verb appears twice in the extended metaphor of Ezekiel 34; by contrast, of the 167 occurrences of erx, almost half (82) are metaphorical. As Huntzinger states: “The frequent use of erx … reveals it to be a standard term for describing the activity of shepherding” (“End of Exile,” 155). Additionally, erx corresponds most closely to ποιμαίνω, the standard term used in Greek sources for “shepherd”: the LXX employs ποιμήν/ποιμαίνω for erx 92 times, compared to using βόσκω for erx (17 times) and νέμω (seven times). Of the latter two terms, νέμω never appears in the NT. While βόσκω appears nine times in the NT, it is never used for Jesus and only twice (John 21:15, 17) does it refer to leaders in Christ-believing communities. ¹⁸ Shepherding imagery can be evoked by or is implicit in the mention of “sheep” (e. g., 2 Sam 24:17; Ps 95:7; Mic 2:12), a shepherd’s duties of leading, feeding, guiding, and gathering the flock (e. g., Ps 68:7; Isa 49:10), as well as by his accoutrements (e. g., Isa 10:5, 24; Ezek 37:19). For a survey of shepherding imagery in the HB beyond the use of “shepherd,” see R. Hunziker-Rodewald, Hirt und Herde: Ein Beitrag zum alttestamentlichen Gottesverständnis (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001), 39–204; B. Fikes, A Theological Analysis of the Shepherd-King Motif in Ezekiel 34 (Ph. D. diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1995); and Huntzinger, “End of Exile.” Wild beast imagery can also presuppose the protection of a shepherd (e. g., 1 Sam 17:34–35; Mic 5:7 [MT]). For an investigation of shepherding imagery that includes this type of broader wild beast imagery, see Porter, Metaphors, 61–120. While pau (“sheep”) can conjure up the image of a shepherd, the focus of pau-metaphors tends to be the sheep not the shepherd. Hence, when pau is used metaphorically by itself (i. e., without erx) – 22 times of its 248 occurrences – it refers to: the special relationship between the nation Israel and YHWH (Pss 74:1; 79:13; 95:7; 100:3); the recipients (typically Israel) of YHWH’s intervention (Pss 77:21; 78:52; Mic 2:12; Zech 9:16); the victims of another nation’s military advance (Ps 44:23; Mic 5:7); the subjects of a king/ruler (2 Sam 24:17; Jer 13:20); the objects of reproach (Ps 44:12; Jer 12:3); and Israel’s straying from YHWH (Isa 53:6). Hence, when an author uses “sheep” metaphorically, he is more interested in saying something about the sheep/people, but when he uses “shepherd” metaphorically his interest lies in the shepherd/leader. ¹⁹ In parallel fashion to shepherd-erx metaphor, biblical writers use “rod” (iby ) metaphorically to signify rulers: Jewish monarchs or members of the ruling class (Gen 49:10; Num 21:17; Pss 2:9; 125:3; Isa 11:4; Ezek 19:11, 14), Gentile kings or leaders (2 Sam 7:14; Isa 10:5–8; 14:5, 29; 19:13; Amos 1:5; Zech 10:11), or YHWH (Job 9:34; 21:9; Ps 23:4; 45:7; Isa 30:31; Lam 3:1; Ezek 20:37; Mic 7:14). Similarly, “staff” (zorym/porym) is employed metaphorically for Jewish monarchs or members of the ruling class (Isa 3:1–4), Gentile rulers (Num 21:18; 2 Kgs 18:21/Isa 36:6; Ezek 29:6), or for YHWH (Ps 23:4). Porter notes that herd leader language, i. e., “he-goat” (dozr), “ram” (lja), and “bull” (xs, nax), can evoke the shepherd metaphor. Thus,

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The biblical writers often use “shepherd” to symbolize political and civic rulers: pre-monarchical rulers,20 Israel’s kings,21 the nation’s ruling class,22 as well as Gentile monarchs23 and military leaders.24 In addition to earthly rulers, YHWH is commonly depicted as Israel’s ultimate shepherd in very pastoral terms, i. e., using imagery especially appropriate for describing the duties of literal shepherds: hence, YHWH gathers his lost flock, leads them to abundant pastures, and carefully watches over them to protect them from danger.25 The metaphor is chiefly associated with YHWH’s saving power exercised on behalf of his people.26 A Jewish national restoration perspective is intrinsic to the metaphor’s use in the HB, whereby concern for Israel’s moral and/or geo-political wellbeing is explicitly expressed or presupposed. Similar to the HB, non-Christ-believing Jews commonly appropriate the metaphor, on the one hand, for earthly rulers or for the activity of ruling.27 A few innovations within this category do appear, however. In Pseudo-Philo shepherd-rulers can refer to intercessors who act on behalf of Israel for the nation’s iniquity (LAB 19:3); according to the Dream Visions section of 1 Enoch they can represent the (destructive) governing of Israel by angelic beings (1 Enoch 89–90); in the Damascus Document, the metaphor is associated with the community’s religious leader who exercises ruling authority over his flock in the different areas of communal life (CD XIII 7–12); Philo frequently employs the metaphor to symbolize the virtuous mind that successfully rules over or controls bodily passions.28 On the other hand, non-Christ-believing Jews regularly use the shepherd metaphor for YHWH, especially to underline his mercy and compassion.29 Comthese animals symbolize (Gentile) monarchs (Isa 14:9; Dan 8:4–8) and military leaders (Isa 34:2–7; Ps 22:12, 20; Zech 10:3–5). Verbs with pastoral connotations are often employed for YHWH: e. g., eho (“lead,” “guide” [Exod 13:17–21; 15:13; Deut 32:12; Neh 9:12, 19; Job 12:23; Pss 5:9; 23:3; 27:11; 43:3]), leo (“lead,” “guide” [Exod 15:13; 2 Chr 32:22; Pss 23:2; 31:4; Isa 40:11; 49:10]), tqa (“gather” [Isa 49:5; Mic 2:12; 4:6]), auj (“go out” [Isa 37:32; 40:26; 49:9; Ezek 20:38; 34:13; Mic 2:13; 7:15]) and afb (“bring out” [Num 27:17; Ps 78:54; Jer 30:3; 31:8–9; Ezek 34:13; Zech 10:10]). ²⁰ Num 27:17; 2 Sam 7:7; 1 Chr 17:6; Isa 63:11. ²¹ 2 Sam 5:2; 1 Kgs 22:17/2 Chr 18:16; Ps 78:71–72; Jer 2:8; 3:15; 10:21; 23:1–4; 50:6; Ezek 34; Mic 5:3; Zech 13:7. ²² Jer 17:16; Isa 56:10–11; Zech 10:2–3; 11:5. ²³ Isa 44:28; Jer 22:22; 25:34–36; 43:12; 49:19; 50:44; Zech 11:15–17. ²⁴ Jer 6:2–3; 12:10; Mic 5:4–5; Nah 3:18. ²⁵ Psalm 23:1; Jer 31:10; Ezekiel 34; Hos 4:16; Mic 7:14; Zech 11:13. ²⁶ Genesis 48:15; 49:24; Ps 28:9; Isa 40:11. ²⁷ 1 Enoch 85–90; 4Q504 1–2 iv 7; 1Q34 ii 8; CD xiii 7–12; Philo, Mos. 41, 60–2; Ios. 2; Prob. 31; Agric. 50; Virt. 58; Josephus, A. J. 8:404; 17:278; 4 Ezra 5:16–8. Parallel to the HB, when Second Temple Jewish texts invoke the shepherd imagery without the use of “shepherd” it adds little to the discussion of the metaphor; cf. W. Baxter, Matthew’s Shepherd Motif and its Socio-Religious Implications (Ph. D. diss., McMaster University, 2007), 51. ²⁸ Philo, Agric. 44–48, passim; Abr. 221; Det. 3, 9, 25; Ios. 2; Migr. 213; Mut. 110; Post. 67, 98; Prob. 31; Sacr. 45, 48–49, 51; Sobr. 14; Somn. 2.151–4. ²⁹ 4Q509 IV, 10 ii–11 3; Sir 18:13–14; Apoc. Ezek.; L. A. B. 28:5; 1 Enoch 89–90, passim; Jdt 11:19; Philo, Agric. 51. Other innovative categories of usage also appear. In CD XIX 7–11 the

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pared to the HB, Second Temple Jewish authors appropriate the shepherd metaphor for non-political figures30 and for non-political functions31 with greater frequency. Thus, there seems to be three basic patterns of usage concerning the metaphor’s employment by non-Christ-believing Jews. The first pattern of thought concerns the metaphor’s referent. As in the HB, non-Christ-believing Jewish authors invoke the metaphor for kings or king-like figures, and hence, for the activity of ruling or governing. Consequently, for non-Christ-believing Jewish authors, the metaphor can bear political overtones. The second pattern of thought is the Jewish nationalist perspective frequently associated with the metaphor. When linked with the shepherd metaphor, this perspective expresses hopes for Israel’s present or future wellbeing – moral and/or geo-political.32 The third concerns pastoral imagery. Second Temple writers (similar to the HB) commonly speak of shepherd-rulers in earthy terms, i. e., using imagery particularly appropriate for literal shepherds: they pasture or graze the sheep; they guard, protect and lead them; they watch over the afflicted, and pay special regard for the oppressed and crushed members of the flock.33 Of non-Jewish, non-Christ-believing writings, Roman texts possess the most significance for any study of early Christian texts because of the strong social and political influence the Roman Empire would have had upon its Jewish and Christ-believing constituents.34 Roman authors writing in or near the first century C. E.35 typically do not employ “shepherd” as a metaphor.36 A number of striking-down-of-the-shepherd represents the execution of God’s wrath upon those Jews who turn away from the Covenant. In Psalms of Solomon 17 the metaphor applies to the messiah, the warrior-like Son of David who will sternly judge the Gentiles and apostate Jews, but gather together the people of God and shepherd them in righteousness (17:21–46). 2 Baruch 77 uses the metaphor for teachers of the Law. ³⁰ E. g., religious leaders, teachers, and the human mind. ³¹ E. g., interceding, controlling bodily passions, and teaching. ³² Usually it is YHWH who is expected to accomplish this renewal, but in a few instances this hope for national restoration is associated with Israel’s leaders: at times royal, at other times messianic, or religious. ³³ Similarly, when YHWH is depicted as a shepherd, he is described as gathering his sheep together and pasturing them, as binding up, healing, and feeding his flock, and as protecting them from physical dangers. ³⁴ Cf., e. g., W. Carter, Matthew and Empire: Initial Explorations (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2001), and J. Riches and D. Sim, eds., The Gospel of Matthew in its Roman Imperial Context (New York: T & T Clark, 2005). ³⁵ Among Roman sources, those authors whose dates would have at least partially overlapped with Mark and Matthew’s would be most pertinent. People belonging to the earliest Markan and Matthean communities would likely have been born in the early part of the first century C. E. and probably would have died either at the end of the first century or early in the second century; hence, the authors of Roman texts surveyed in this section of the study chronologically overlap with the first century. ³⁶ In one instance, Inst. 8.6.18.1, Quintilian (c. 40–118 C. E.) does explicitly quote Homer’s metaphor, “shepherd of the people,” referring to Agamemnon (Il. 2:253). But Quintilian cites Homer’s phrase only to demonstrate the need to use metaphors appropriately and not simply for the sake of using a well-known figurative expression.

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them frequently use “shepherd” (Latin, pastor) only when referring to the shepherding vocation,37 or as a proper name.38 That Roman authors most frequently employ “shepherd” incidentally suggests that they viewed shepherds as unimportant at best. Numerous uses, however, push this attitude even further. In a number of instances the manner in which they discuss shepherds as a vocation or as a social class reveals a very negative attitude that non-Christ-believing Romans had towards shepherds. They are often portrayed as semi-violent, unprincipled rabble-rousers, whose lives possessed little value compared to the rest of Roman society.39 Consequently, R. MacMullen comments, “No one’s social relations were so limited and tenuous, so close to no relations at all, as the shepherd’s in the hills. His work kept him away from people. In those he did meet he had reason to fear an enemy.”40 It is likely because of this critical attitude towards shepherds that Roman authors refrained from using “shepherd” as a metaphor for Roman emperors: it would be offensive. Unlike Ancient Near Eastern, Classical Greek, and Hellenistic sources which commonly employ “shepherd” as a metaphor for monarchs,41 this does not happen in Roman texts. Of the honorific titles ascribed to Roman emperors, the most common of these given to, for example, Julius and Octavius Caesar, are “Saviour” (Σωτήρ), “Benefactor” (ΕὐεργέτηϚ), “God” (ΘεόϚ), and “Founder” (ΚτίστηϚ).42 In addition to these titles, F. Sauter43 notes that Martial and Statius ascribe to Domitian the names “Peacemaker,” “Favourite of God,” ³⁷ For “shepherd” as a vocation, see Ovid (c. 43 B. C. E.–17 C. E.), Fast. 1.379; 2.369; 3.879; 4.487, 735, 776, 795, 810; Trist. 4.1.12; Metam. 1.573, 676, 681; 3.408; 4.276; passim; Seneca the Younger (c. 4 B. C. E.–65 C. E.), Ep. 34.1; 122.12.2; Herc. fur. 139, 232, 451; Med. 101; Phaed. 422; Oed. 146, 808, 816; Herc. Ot. 128; Oct. 774; Nat. 2.22.1.8; Pliny the Elder (23–79 C. E.), Nat. 8.54.3, 100.5, 106.2, 114.3; 10.40.6, 115.3; 12.22.5; 16.75.5, 179.4, 208.1; 18.330.3; 19.27.3; 22.56.2; 25.14.8; Martial (c. 40–104 C. E.), Epi. 5.65.11; 8.53.3; 11.41.1; 13.38.1; 14.156.1; Petronius (first century C. E.), Fr. 27.10; Statius (c. 45–96 C. E.), Achill. 1.20; 2.51; Theb. 1.367; 2.378; 4.301, 368, 715; 6.188; 7.393, 437; 8.692; 9.191; 10.574; 11.310; 12.268; Sil. 1.2.43, 214; 1.4.105. ³⁸ Pliny the Younger (c. 61–113 C. E.) uses it as a proper name (“Junius Pastor” [Ep. 1.18.3]), as does Seneca the Younger, who uses it as the name of a Roman knight (Ira 2.33.3–4). ³⁹ This portrayal of shepherds clearly comes through, for example, in Livy (c. 59 B. C. E.–17 C. E.), Ab Urbe. 1.40.5–7, 39.29.9; cf. 1.4.9, 5.7; 2.1.4; 5.53.8–9; Seneca the Younger (c. 4 B. C. E.–65 C. E.), Ep. 47.10.7; Ag. 731; Pliny the Elder (23–79 C. E.), Nat. His. 35.25.1–5; and Velleius Paterculus (c. 19 B. C. E.–30 C. E.), Hist. I, 2.1–2. For a detailed examination of these and other texts, see Baxter, “Shepherd Motif,” 133–42; cf. the observations of K. Chew, “Inscius pastor: Ignorance and Aeneas’ Identity in the Aeneid,” Latomus 61 (2002): 616–27. ⁴⁰ R. MacMullen, Roman Social Relations: 50 BC to AD 284 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 1. ⁴¹ Cf. J. Vancil, The Symbolism of the Shepherd in Biblical, Intertestamental, and New Testament Material (Ph. D. diss., Dropsie University, 1975), 14–127. ⁴² Other honorific names include: parens patriae, pontifex maximus, and Divus Iulius for Julius Caesar, and divi filius and Augustus for Octavius Caesar; cf. a list of inscriptions that accord divine honours to Caesar, Antony, Augustus and his house in L. Taylor, The Divinity of the Roman Emperor (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1975), 267–83. ⁴³ F. Sauter, Der Römische Kaiserkult bei Martial und Statius (Stuttgart-Berlin: W. Kohlhammer, 1934).

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and “Lord/Master of the World,”44 as well as the names of popular Roman gods like “Jupiter” and “Hercules.”45 Thus, despite the variety of titles of honor bestowed upon living and dead emperors of the Roman Empire, the ascription of “shepherd” never appears among them.46 In the writings of first-century Christ-believers, the shepherd metaphor is employed either for Jesus as the messianic Shepherd or for assembly leaders.47 While a “shepherd” is viewed quintessentially as a leader/ruler of the flock, how Christ-believers portray shepherd-rulers differs considerably from their portrayal in the HB and in other Jewish texts. Although Christ-believers commonly depict Jesus as a shepherd who, like YHWH, offers his flock abundant care, their description of the messianic Shepherd (apart from two possible exceptions)48 lacks the pastoral imagery found in the portraits of YHWH as a shepherd in the HB and in Second Temple Jewish texts, as well as in the description of the Davidic messiah in Psalms of Solomon 17. Additionally, Christ-believers link the metaphor to Jesus’ death on the cross: the shepherd dies to secure his sheep’s salvation – quite unlike the salvation YHWH as Israel’s shepherd works on behalf of his flock according to the HB and Second Temple Jewish texts: his deliverance involves a display of power.49 This more non-pastoral use of the shepherd metaphor (for Jesus) finds corroboration in the other major category of usage for Christ-believers, assembly leaders. While assembly leaders would exercise ruling authority over their congregations, Christ-believing authors (either explicitly or implicitly) associate teaching with shepherding. This connection between teaching and shepherding exemplifies how Christ-believers usually employ the metaphor for assembly leaders, i. e., without the earthy, pastoral imagery that so often marks its usage by non-Christ-believing Jews. Besides a less pastoral deployment of the shepherd metaphor, there are two even more significant tendencies in the metaphor’s deployment by Christ-believers. On the one hand, Christ-believers’ appropriations of the metaphor usually ⁴⁴ Suetonius (69–121 C. E.) also asserts that Domitian sought to be called “our Lord and God” (dominus et deus noster). ⁴⁵ Other titles for Domitian include “Lord of the Earth” (Statius, Sil. 3.4.20), “Ruler of the Nations” (Sil. 4.2.14–15), “Master of the Sea and Land” (Philostratus, Vit. Apoll. 7.3), and “Ruler of Lands and Seas and Nations” (Juvenal, Sat. 4.83–4). ⁴⁶ The absence of this particular usage of “shepherd” in the writings of first-century Roman authors is intriguing in light of the fact that most of the Roman titles mentioned above are applied to Jesus by his early followers: Jesus is called “Saviour” (σωτήρ) in Luke 2:11; John 4:42 and Phil 3:20; he is called “God” (θεόϚ) in John 20:28 and Rom 9:5; he is the “Source of Creation” (ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆϚ κτίσεωϚ) in Rev 3:14 (cf. John 1:3; Col 1:16); John’s expression for Jesus, ὁ μονογενήϚ (John 3:16; cf. μου ὁ ἀγαπητόϚ in Mark 1:11), would approximate “Favourite of God”; Jesus is referred to as “Ruler” in 1 Tim 6:15 and Rev 1:5; and, of course, he is frequently called “Lord” (or “Master”) throughout the NT. ⁴⁷ See Mark 6:34; 14:27; John 10:11, 16; Heb 13:20; 1 Pet 2:25; 5:4; Rev 7:17; 12:5; 19:15, and John 21:15–17; Acts 20:28; Eph 4:11; 1 Pet 5:1–2, and Jude 12, respectively. ⁴⁸ Mark 6:34 and Rev 7:17. ⁴⁹ For a discussion of Zech 13:7–9 in this regard, see Baxter, “Shepherd Motif,” 185.

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lack the Jewish national restoration perspective that frequently characterizes the metaphor’s use by non-Christ-believing Jews. The nation of Israel’s moral or geo-political wellbeing is not typically the focus; the concern, rather, is much more universal: “the church of God” (Acts 20:28), “the body of Christ” (Eph 4:11–12), or the overcoming church (Revelation). On the other hand, Christbelievers neither liken earthly monarchs nor other such leaders to shepherds, and conversely, assembly leaders are never portrayed as political leaders, nor do Christ-believers usually liken the activity of ruling/governing to shepherding. Hence, for Christ-believers the shepherd metaphor possesses no political overtones. Thus, the differences in the patterns of thought between non-Christ-believing Jews, non-Christ-believing Romans, and Christ-believers concerning the shepherd metaphor seem plain. Most texts within the first group employ the metaphor for political monarchs and associate the activity of ruling with shepherding; a Jewish national restoration perspective is often reflected, and they tend to present “shepherds” and “shepherding” using pastoral language, i. e., in imagery appropriate for the shepherding vocation. The second group is critical towards shepherds and does not use “shepherd” metaphorically. Christ-believers, for their part, never use the metaphor for political monarchs; their usage does not convey Jewish national overtones; and Christ-believing authors usually do not employ the metaphor with much pastoral imagery. The question now becomes, how do the Evangelists’ appropriations of the shepherd metaphor compare with these patterns of usage?

5. The Shepherd Metaphor in Mark and Matthew 5.1. Mark’s Use of the Shepherd Metaphor The author of Mark’s Gospel uses the shepherd metaphor twice in his narrative. Its first usage occurs after Jesus gathers the disciples together upon returning from their mission. When Jesus sees the crowds who have followed him, his compassion is aroused because “they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34a). Consequently, Jesus begins “to teach them many things” (v. 34b). His lengthy lesson makes it difficult for the crowd to tend to their need for physical nourishment (vv. 35–36). Jesus, however, looks after this need by multiplying the disciples’ paltry food supply of five loaves and two fish to feed and satisfy the 5000–plus member crowd (vv. 36–44). The reference to Jesus as a shepherd here would be indirect: the masses are helpless – like a flock without its shepherd – so Jesus steps in and does for them what their (absentee) shepherds should be doing,50 viz., he tends to their needs. ⁵⁰ The shepherds that the people lack would likely refer to the various religious leaders mentioned previously in Mark’s narrative: the scribes (1:22), the priests (1:44), the Pharisees (2:16,

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While there are a number of HB texts to which “like sheep without a shepherd” may possibly allude,51 the most probable contender would be Num 27:17.52 Given the connection between v. 34a and 34b, viz., that Jesus begins to teach the crowd after he observes their shepherd-less state, as well as the allusion to Num 27:17, Jesus’ primary – but not exclusive – role as Israel’s shepherd would be that of teacher: the shepherd teaches his flock.53 Thus for Mark, Jesus serves as the messianic, Moses-like shepherd who teaches the people of Israel, and who compassionately satisfies the nation’s needs while they are in the wilderness.54 The second occurrence of the metaphor occurs at the conclusion of the Last Supper. Here Jesus and his disciples go out to the Mount of Olives, where he predicts their impending failure and denial, declaring, “You will all fall away, because it has been written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered’” (14:27b). Mark appropriates Zech 13:7 (“I will strike down the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered”) to demonstrate God’s sovereignty over the events of the passion.55 Mark also extends the shepherd imagery of Zech 13:7 in the next verse: “But after I have been raised, I will go ahead (προάγω) of you to Galilee” (14:28). While προάγώἄγω does not necessarily bear shepherding imagery, it can;56 and in view of its close connection with the shepherd citation in the previous verse, προάγω would doubtless bear that imagery here. Mark, 18, passim), and the Herodians (3:6). The negative responses of these leaders to Jesus at this point in the narrative would seem to exemplify why the Evangelist can characterize the Jewish people as being without a shepherd. The leaders care more about strict legal observance than about the sick and the outcast members of the flock: the scribes accuse Jesus of blasphemy when he absolves the paralytic of his sins (2:7); the scribes of the Pharisees accuse Jesus of improper table fellowship because he eats with notorious sinners (2:16); the Pharisees and Herodians plot Jesus’ murder after he heals on the Sabbath (3:6). ⁵¹ E. g., Num 27:17; 1 Kgs 22:17//2 Chr 18:16; Ezek 34:5; Zech 10:2. ⁵² There are several reasons for this. First, scholars recognize that the wilderness is an important motif in Mark’s Gospel (e. g., U. Mauser, Christ in the Wilderness: The Wilderness Theme in the Second Gospel and its Basis in the Biblical Tradition [London: SCM Press, 1963], W. Lane, Gospel of Mark [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974], and R. E. Bracewell, Shepherd Imagery in the Synoptic Gospels [Ph. D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1983). In fact, within this section of the narrative, its importance is suggested by the triple usage of ἔρημοϚ (“wilderness”) in 6:31, 32 and 35, a term which occurs in almost stereotypical fashion in the book of Numbers in the LXX. Additionally, Jesus’ immediate response to seeing the crowd “like sheep without a shepherd” is to teach them (v. 34c), and Moses is recognized not simply as the Lawgiver but as Israel’s teacher (e. g., Deut 4:14; 5:31; 6:1; 31:19; Matt 23:2; John 9:28). Lastly, the feeding miracle that immediately follows in Mark’s narrative – necessitated by the length of Jesus’ teaching session – would almost certainly evoke thoughts of Moses and the miracle of manna in the wilderness (e. g., John 6:14, 41–58). ⁵³ Within the broader context of the feeding miracle (vv. 35–44), his second role as Israel’s Shepherd would be provider/feeder. ⁵⁴ Cf. E. Broadhead’s assessment of this verse: “Over against this critique stands the positive characterization of Jesus. In view of the failure of the leaders of Israel, Jesus shepherds the scattered flock of God. He does so first of all through instruction, then through the gift of food” (Naming Jesus: Titular Christology in the Gospel of Mark [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999], 94). Bracewell, for his part, suggests that even the feeding miracle was intended to teach

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then, extends the shepherd metaphor beyond the striking down of the crucifixion to the resurrection of Jesus and the reconstitution of his dispersed disciples in Galilee. The Evangelist thus adds to his earlier depiction of Jesus as Israel’s messianic shepherd-teacher and provider in the wilderness by portraying Jesus as Israel’s prophesied shepherd, who was struck down and whose followers were dispersed – according to the sovereign plan of God – only to be raised again to gather together his dispersed flock of disciples in Galilee. Mark’s appropriation of “shepherd” therefore reveals certain patterns of thought concerning the metaphor. First, the activity that the Evangelist associates with the metaphor is teaching: Jesus is the messianic shepherd-teacher of the flock. This association of teaching with shepherding puts Mark more in alignment with other Christ-believers,57 who, as observed in section four above, commonly assume this same shepherd–teacher connection. Second, Jewish national overtones are present in Mark’s use of the shepherd metaphor, particularly in 6:34. Not only does the allusion to Num 27:17 and the feeding miracle elicit comparisons to Moses – Jesus is the Moses-like Shepherd of the flock – but the pericope depicts the crowds at this point in the narrative as idealized Israel.58 Jesus the messianic Shepherd attends to Israel’s religious or (“Shepherd Imagery,” 132–35). Certainly, according to Mark 8:14–21, there was a didactic point to the miracle, which Jesus expected his disciples to understand. ⁵⁵ The ὅτι here would be causative: i. e., “because it is written.” ⁵⁶ E. g., in the LXX: Gen 46:32; Exod 3:1; Ps 77:52; Isa 63:12–14; and Jdt 11:19; cf. also 2 Sam 5:2; Isa 40:11; and Ezek 34:13 for cognates bearing this same type of association. ⁵⁷ The teaching-shepherding association would distinguish Mark from non-Christ-believing Jews and non-Christ-believing Romans. ⁵⁸ This depiction seems particularly evident when comparing this feeding miracle with the second in Mark 8:1–9: the setting of the wilderness is emphasized in Jesus’ first feeding miracle, thus paralleling Moses’ feeding of Israel in the wilderness; the setting of the second feeding, however, is linked more to Jesus’ journey into Tyre, where he heals the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter (Mark 7:24–30). Further, that the crowd gathers to him near Sidon in the region of the Decapolis implies the presence of Gentiles in the second feeding, also suggested by the omission of κόφινοι (“baskets”), a term that the satirist Juvenal considered especially characteristic of Jews. This term, however, is used twice for the first feeding (6:43; 8:19) suggesting the first crowds were Jewish. The Evangelist might also be symbolizing the idealization of Israel by the number of leftover baskets: in the first feed there are twelve, perhaps signifying the Twelve Tribes of Israel, whereas in the second meal only seven remain. Finally, Israel’s idealization is suggested by Jesus’ command to the crowd to recline in groups, which they do in groups of hundreds and fifties (6:39–40). This detail is lacking in the second meal (cf. 8:6), and the significance of this omission should not go unnoticed. It is likely that Mark uses this first feeding to foreshadow the eschatological messianic banquet, an event that factors strongly, for example, in the thought of the Qumran community (e. g., 1QSa II 11–22). Hence, without explicitly identifying the crowd as Israel, Mark nevertheless dresses the crowd in Israel’s garb. Jewish national connotations are not nearly as prominent in 14:27, but are perhaps still slightly present: Jesus predicts that after he, the shepherd, is crucified, he will go ahead of his disciples to Galilee after he has been raised from the dead (14:28). In light of Mark’s resurrection narrative, where the angel informs the women that Jesus has gone ahead of them to Galilee (16:7), Jesus’ words in 14:27–28 may be construed as a prediction of the reconstitution of a renewed Israel centering around his disciples after his resurrection.

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moral renewal through his extensive teaching, and to the nation’s physical wellbeing through his supernatural provision of food. In this way Mark’s (first) appropriation of the shepherd metaphor possesses fairly pronounced overtones of Jewish national restoration. The Jewish national overtones in Mark’s employment of the shepherd metaphor would more closely resemble the Jewish national sentiments of most non-Christ-believing Jews than the non-Jewish national stance of many Christ-believers and non-Christ-believing Romans. The third pattern of usage to Mark’s employment of the shepherd metaphor concerns its pastoral imagery. While this imagery is only slight in 14:27,59 it is much more prominent in 6:34, where Jesus the shepherd provides for the physical needs of his flock, in a manner reminiscent of shepherding texts in the HB. Although not as centrally a characteristic usage of the metaphor as its association with Jewish nationalism or with teaching, the pastoral imagery in Mark’s appropriation of the shepherd metaphor would nevertheless resemble its appropriation by many non-Christ-believing Jews more than its use by numerous Christbelievers and non-Christ-believing Romans. Overall, discerning Mark’s socio-religious orientation with a high degree of precision based on his appropriation of the shepherd metaphor is difficult. While his usage is quite dissimilar to that of non-Christ-believing Romans, thereby suggesting that the author of Mark was not a Roman Gentile, the Jewish national overtones and pastoral use of the shepherd metaphor aligns more with nonChrist-believing Jews; but his association of the metaphor with teaching would put him more in the camp of Christ-believers. Mark’s socio-religious location, however, can receive more illumination when his employment of the metaphor is compared with Matthew’s. 5.2. Matthew’s Use of the Shepherd Metaphor The shepherd metaphor represents a significant motif for Matthew that contributes considerably to the theological framework of the Gospel.60 Matthew launches his shepherd motif in the birth and infancy narratives. The central theme of the story in the first two chapters is kingship, specifically, who Israel’s true king really is. Matthew unfolds this kingship theme largely through two implicit, interrelated contrasts between the Jewish leaders and the eastern Magi, and between Jesus and Herod. The more important contrast in the infancy narrative is between Herod (who for Matthew typifies the Jerusalem leadership) and Jesus. Whereas Matthew’s genealogy presents Jesus as the Son of David, the rightful heir to the throne of “David the king,” and whereas the Magi come to ⁵⁹ As previously mentioned above, προάγω (“I will go ahead”), to which Mark directly links the striking down of the shepherd, is often used in the LXX as a means of depicting pastoral imagery. ⁶⁰ For a sustained, detailed examination of Matthew’s deployment of the shepherd metaphor, see Baxter, “Shepherd Motif,” 189–256.

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“Herod the king,”61 asking, “Where is the one born king of the Jews?” (v. 3a),62 Herod’s kingship was seen by some as illegitimate from the outset.63 Unlike Herod, Jesus belongs to the royal line of King David; and far from ascending to the throne through wealth or political guile, Jesus’ appointment as king of the Jews comes via divine sanction as predicted by the scriptures. Hence, the ultimate reason why Herod’s throne is illegitimate is because he is not the one God has appointed to rule his people Israel, rather, it is Jesus. In response to Herod’s query regarding the birthplace of the messiah, the religious leaders answer by citing some scriptures predicting where he would be born: “And you Bethlehem, land of Judah, by no means are you least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel” (Matt 2:6). Matthew uses this citation of Mic 5:1 and 2 Sam 5:2bβ to confirm once again Jesus’ legitimacy as the true heir to the throne of David (Mic 5:1), and to summarize and foreshadow in terse fashion Jesus’ mission to Israel (2 Sam 5:2). The latter scripture serves to introduce Matthew’s shepherd motif. According to Matthew Jesus represents the promised ruler who will shepherd God’s people Israel. Here “shepherd” clearly connotes “rule”: God has appointed Jesus to be the Shepherd-Ruler of the nation of Israel.64 ⁶¹ Although Matthew refers to Herod as “king” three times within the pericope, he never does so again after the first explicit appearance in the narrative of Jesus, the new-born king (cf. the use of only “Herod” in 2:12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 22). ⁶² The question is ironic for Herod is the king of the Jews: by the time of Jesus’ birth, Herod the Great (as he had become known) had been in power for over thirty years. Moreover, based on the inscription, “Regi Herodi Iudaic(o)” (“king of the Jews”) on some pottery found at Masada (see H. Cotton and J. Geiger, “Wine for Herod,” Cathedra 53 [1989]: 3–12 [in Hebrew]), D. Mendels asserts that Herod desired not merely to be “King of Judea” but “King of the Jews” (The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism [New York: Doubleday, 1992], 284, 322 n. 22). ⁶³ Although Herod ruled over the Jews, controversy existed over the legitimacy of his throne because of his Idumean ancestry (cf. H. Hoehner, “Herodian Dynasty,” in DJG [ed. J. B. Green and S. McKnight; Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1992], 319), his friendship with Rome and attraction to Roman culture (cf. P. Richardson, Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans [Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996], 15–18), and because of his excessive cruelty (cf. Hoehner, “Herodian Dynasty,” 320–21, and Richardson, Herod, 33–8). On this contrast between Herod’s illegitimacy and Jesus’ legitimacy, D. Verseput comments (“The Davidic Messiah and Matthew’s Jewish Christianity,” SBLSP [1995]: 102), “[Matthew] even juxtaposes the legitimate child-heir with the house of Herod, so that comparisons with an earlier protest against the Hasmonean dynasty in Ps. Sol. 17 are difficult to avoid.” ⁶⁴ While scholars like W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison (The Gospel According to Saint Matthew [3 vols.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988–97], 1:210; cf. B. Nolan, The Royal Son of God: The Christology of Matthew 1–2 in the Setting of the Gospel [Fribourg/Suisse: Éditions Universitaires, 1979], 133, D. A. Carson, Matthew [Grand Rapids: Zondervan], 88) take “my people Israel” to refer to the church of Jews and Gentiles, it seems better to understand “his people” in 2:6 as referring to Jews for several reasons. “My people” (τὸν λαόν μου) is clearly an echo of “his people” (τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ) in 1:21b. In 1:21 the angel tells Joseph that “he [= Jesus] will save his [= Jesus’] people (τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ) from their sins.” Since Jesus is Jewish “his people” would more naturally refer to the Jews. Similarly, given the verse’s close proximity and relation to the genealogy, which deals with Israel’s history from Abraham to the Babylonian exile, the Jewish nation would be in view in 1:21. Further, the literary context of Mic 5:1 refers to a coming Davidic ruler who will gather together and shepherd the exiles of Israel, and in the literary context of

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Matthew appropriates the shepherd metaphor near the close of the so-called Miracle Chapters (8–9)65 which, together with the Sermon on the Mount,66 offer a window into Jesus’ mission, viz., the things he said and did in the Land of Israel.67 After bracketing off the Miracle Chapters with a second summary statement of Jesus’ mission, Matthew writes that when Jesus saw the crowds, he “felt compassion for them because they were harassed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd” (9:36). Whereas Mark alludes to Num 27:17, Matthew likely alludes to Ezek 34:5.68 Besides implicitly affirming that Jesus’ therapeutic mission to Israel represents the fulfillment of Israel’s scriptures,69 Matthew’s allusion to Ezekiel 34 accentuates what he perceives to be Israel’s need for new leadership: not only does Jesus satisfy this himself (which Matthew idealizes through acts of healing), but he commissions the Twelve to continue to meet this crucial need of the nation – similar to YHWH appointing his Davidic shepherd in Ezekiel 34. Matthew appropriates the shepherd metaphor at the close of the Olivet Discourse in a pericope concerning final judgment in 25:31–46. While there are a 2 Sam 5:2, David is commencing to rule as king over “all the tribes of Israel.” In his appropriation of these texts, Matthew tweaks them to apply them specifically to Jesus; he does not, however, change their basic sense. Thus, while not denying the legitimacy of the inclusion of the Gentiles in the Jesus movement, the focus of Matthew’s Shepherd here is the nation of Israel. ⁶⁵ The Miracle Chapters demonstrate the authority of Jesus’ deeds: after the healing of the paralytic, for example, the Evangelist states, “the crowds were awestruck and glorified God who gave such authority to people” (9:8, cf. 9:33). ⁶⁶ The Sermon on the Mount showcases the authority of Jesus’ teaching: Matthew notes that at the conclusion of the Sermon “the crowds were amazed by [Jesus’] teaching for he was teaching them as one having authority and not as their scribes” (7:28b–29). ⁶⁷ Matthew brackets these chapters with summary statements of Jesus’ activity in 4:23 and 9:35. Matthew 4:23, which is actually part of a more detailed summary (extending to 4:25), reads: “And he went around all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every sickness among the people.” 9:35 states, “And Jesus went around all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every sickness.” S. McKnight speaks of this inclusio as uniting the Sermon on the Mount and the Miracle Chapters (New Shepherds for Israel: An Historical and Critical Study of Matthew 9:34–11:1 [Ph. D. diss., Nottingham University, 1986], 14–5). ⁶⁸ The context of the linguistically closer Num 27:17 contradicts Matthew’s meaning of the phrase (Joshua replaces Moses as Israel’s shepherd), whereas the context of Ezekiel 34 fully aligns with it (Israel’s shepherds have been unfaithful); there are three contextual parallels between Matthew and Ezekiel 34: the unfaithful shepherds of God’s people, the consequent plight of God’s people, and the unique relationship between YHWH and the Davidic shepherd (for a detailed discussion of the parallels between Matthew and Ezekiel 34, see W. Baxter, “Healing and the ‘Son of David’: Matthew’s Warrant,” NovT 48 [2006]: 36–50); further, there are other important parallels: a verbal one between Matthew’s references to Israel being ἀπολωλόϚ (“lost”) in the closely connected verse 10:6, and ἀπολωλόϚ in Ezek 34:4 and 16 [LXX], referring to Israel; and also the overt shepherding imagery associated with the Son of David motif in the Miracle Chapters as well as the entire Gospel parallels the shepherding imagery related to the divine and Davidic shepherds of Ezekiel 34. ⁶⁹ The Evangelist makes this point more explicitly in his citation of Isa 53:4 in the summary statement of Matt 8:17, and implicitly by his allusion to passages in the book of Isaiah in Matt 11:5.

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number of interrelated features worth discussing,70 of central importance for the present study is the character of the Son of Man and the manner by which he judges. The pericope begins: “But when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon the throne of his glory” (25:31). According to Matthew, Jesus the “Son of Man” will return and appear on a glorious throne with attending angels.71 What is implied by “sitting on a throne” becomes explicit in v. 34a: the Son of Man is called “the king.”72 The uniqueness of the relationship between this royal judge and God can be inferred by his reference to God as “my Father.” According to Matthew, “before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them from each other, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep on his right and the goats on the left” (vv. 32–33). There are several observations to make here. The activity that the shepherd engages in is judgment; the scope of the judgment is worldwide, i. e., πάντα τὰ ἔθνη (“all the nations”) will appear before Jesus.73 The passive form συναχθήσονται (“will be gathered”) suggests that “the nations” take their place before the Son of Man at his initiative.74 Matthew alludes in v. 32c (“just as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats”) to Ezek 34:17, where YHWH promises (as Israel’s true shepherd) to judge between the sheep as well as between the rams and goats.75 Thus, Matthew’s deployment of the shepherd metaphor in the Olivet Discourse reveals that Jesus is the eschatological judge and king, to whom all people must eventually answer. ⁷⁰ For a detailed examination of this pericope, see Baxter, “Shepherd Motif” 229–37. ⁷¹ While the precise nature of the allusion invoked by the Son of Man title is far from settled

(cf. Davies and Allison, St. Matthew, 2:43–52), the son of man’s coming with angelic beings and a throne of glory, as well as the title’s use in the passion narrative (26:64), would almost certainly suggest an allusion to Dan 7:13–14. For a brief but useful discussion of Matthew’s appropriation of Dan 7:13, see R. Gundry, The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew’s Gospel with Special Reference to the Messianic Hope (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 231–3. ⁷² The appellation “the king” in v. 34a harkens back, on the one hand, to its use in the infancy narrative for Herod (2:2), where it would possess irony since Matthew portrays Jesus as the true king of the Jews in that passage. It anticipates, on the other hand, its use in the passion narrative (27:11, 37, 42), where it also conveys irony: Jesus is mockingly called “the king of the Jews.” ⁷³ The precise identity of πάντα τὰ ἔθνη remains unsettled, but the least that can be said is that the judgment is not limited to one locale – i. e., it involves people from all over the world. For a survey of the major positions, see U. Luz, “The Final Judgment (Matt 25:31–46): An Exercise in ‘History of Influence’ Exegesis,” in Treasure New and Old: Recent Contributions to Matthean Studies (ed. D. Bauer and M. A. Powell; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 271–310; for a detailed history of interpretation of 25:31–46, see S. Gray, The Least of My Brothers: Matthew 25:31–46: A History of Interpretation (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989). ⁷⁴ Cf. Matt 13:41 and 24:31, where the Son of Man sends forth his angels in the Eschaton to gather the lawless and the elect (respectively). ⁷⁵ This act of judging, on the part of YHWH, is mentioned three times in Ezek 34:17–22. Y. Chae insists, “No other comparable text exists beside Ezek 34:17–22 that involves sheep and goats in the context of God’s judgment to establish the eschatological community. The allusion is nearly irrefutable” (Jesus as the Eschatological Davidic Shepherd: Studies in the Old Testament, Second Temple Judaism, and in the Gospel of Matthew [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006], 221).

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Matthew extracts his final explicit occurrence of the shepherd metaphor from the Markan passion narrative. On the Mount of Olives Jesus tells his disciples: “All of you will fall away on account of me in this night, for it has been written, ‘I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I am raised I will go ahead of you to Galilee” (Matt 26:31aβ–32). While the Miracle Chapters offer one side of Jesus’ shepherding activity, viz., he performed works of healing and exorcism in the Land of Israel to save his people from the physical ramifications of their sins, the striking down of the shepherd presents the other, more central aspect of his shepherding: ultimate salvation from sin comes by Jesus’ sacrificial, atoning death and his resurrection from the dead.76 The Evangelist states that the striking down of the shepherd and the scattering of the disciples happen “because it has been written” (v. 31aγ): it was part of God’s sovereign plan to bring about the redemption of Israel from their sins and to secure (by his death) the climactic coming of the kingdom of heaven. When compared with Mark’s citation of Zech 13:7 there are two differences. Matthew reverses Mark’s order of the subject and predicate. Moreover, he seems to append an allusion to Ezek 34:31.77 While the Markan parallel has only “τὰ πρόβατα will be scattered” (14:27bβ), Matthew’s citation reads, “τὰ πρόβατα τῆϚ ποίμνηϚ will be scattered” (26:31bβ). The phrase “sheep of the/my flock” appears but once in the Jewish scriptures: in Ezek 34:31.78 By inverting Mark’s word order and inserting τῆϚ ποίμνηϚ, Matthew would be emphasizing the dispersal of the flock, viz., his disciples.79 Furthermore, the insertion of τῆϚ ποίμνηϚ perhaps suggests how Matthew views the re-gathering of Jesus’ disciples: they constitute the “sheep of [God’s] flock,” i. e., a restored Israel – similar to Ezek 34:31. Matthew’s deployment of “shepherd” thus reveals certain patterns of thought concerning the metaphor. First, the activities that the Evangelist associates with the metaphor are ruling, healing, and judging. According to the birth and infancy narrative, God has appointed Jesus to rule as king over Israel; in fulfilment of the prophecy of the Davidic Shepherd in Ezekiel 34, Jesus tends to Israel’s shepherd-less plight by healing the crowds; and at his Parousia Jesus will sit on his throne as king to judge the nations. The association of the shepherd metaphor with ruling especially puts Matthew in close alignment with non⁷⁶ The striking down of Jesus the Shepherd, which comes soon after the anticipatory language of sacrifice in the Last Supper (cf. 26:28), doubtless refers to his crucifixion, as the ensuing events of the narrative make obvious. ⁷⁷ Cf. J. Willitts, Matthew’s Messianic Shepherd-Kind: In Search of ‘The Lost Sheep of the House of Israel’ (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 138–48, who also argues along these lines. ⁷⁸ In Ezekiel 34, the expression refers to Israel knowing that YHWH is their God and that they are his people – “the sheep of my flock” (jzjrxm pau [MT]/πρόβατα ποιμνίου μού [LXX]) – and that they will again enjoy the blessings of the covenant, after he gathers them from their dispersion and re-establishes them as his people in their own land. ⁷⁹ Matthew also underscores this emphasis by the additions of the emphatic pronoun ὑμεῖϚ (“you”) and the phrase ἐν ἐμοί (lit. “by me”). Carson captures the sense of these additions to Mark: “you, of all people, on account of me, your Messiah, by your own confession” (Matthew, 540, his emphasis); cf. Gundry, Use of the Old Testament, 27–8.

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Christ-believing Jews who commonly make the same connection. Second, Jewish national overtones are clearly present in Matthew’s deployment of the metaphor: Matthew asserts that God has appointed Jesus, the true heir to David’s throne, to rule over the nation of Israel; the Evangelist views Jesus’ therapeutic shepherding of the people of Israel as the fulfilment of YHWH’s promise in Ezekiel 34 to care for and thus begin to restore the Jewish nation; and he perceives the re-gathering of Jesus’ disciples as the reconstitution of a restored Israel. Such restoration overtones closely resemble the Jewish national perspective of most non-Christbelieving Jewish groups. The third pattern of usage to Matthew’s deployment of the metaphor concerns pastoral imagery, which appears prominently in the Miracle Chapters, where Matthew depicts Jesus as the therapeutic Son of David who tends shepherd-less Israel through his acts of healing and exorcism. This more physicallyoriented shepherding is similar to the metaphor’s use by non-Christ-believing Jews. The imagery is also quite definite in the parable of final judgment, where judgment is likened to a shepherd separating the members of his mixed flock, putting the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. On balance, then, Matthew’s deployment of the shepherd metaphor suggests that his thought more closely aligns with non-Christ-believing Jews than with most Christ-believers or non-Christ-believing Romans. Now how do Mark and Matthew compare?

6. Mark vs. Matthew While Mark’s appropriation of the shepherd metaphor does not demarcate his socio-religious orientation in a precise way, it can be more clearly illumined by comparing his use of the metaphor in the two passages that Matthew borrows. In taking up Mark’s statement of the crowd being “like sheep without a shepherd,” Matthew makes some significant alterations. He directly links the shepherd logion to the healings taking place in the Land of Israel – both Jesus’ healings summarized in 9:35 and those of his disciples, whom Jesus gives authority to heal in 10:1–8. Mark actually separates this logion from the disciples’ commission in Mark 6:7–13 with the account of John the Baptist’s death (6:14–29). Matthew also emphasizes the horrible condition of the people when he inserts that they were “harassed and downcast.” It is not simply that Israel was (de facto) leaderless – because of their unfaithful shepherds; Matthew underlines the awful plight that ensues, something Jesus seeks to rectify – the manner by which offers yet another difference between the Gospel writers. In Mark Jesus responds to seeing the “sheep without a shepherd” by teaching them many things; the Matthean Jesus responds by sending his disciples out on a therapeutic mission exclusively to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” All of these Matthean alterations of Mark serve to heighten the Jewish national sentiments connected with Mark’s use of the shepherd metaphor. That is, in Mark, the Jewish national overtones

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emerge from the shepherd logion’s connection with the succeeding feeding miracle, which offers an idealized, eschatological picture of Israel. Matthew, however, does not present an idealization of Israel; rather, he underscores the disastrous state of the nation, and offers the solution to its present predicament: new leadership in the form of Jesus’ disciples, who will tend to the plight of the lost sheep of Israel. In using Mark’s citation of Zech 13:7 about the smitten shepherd, Matthew makes a subtle but significant change by inserting τῆϚ ποίμνηϚ: “τὰ πρόβατα τῆϚ ποίμνηϚ will be scattered,” alluding to Ezek 34:31. Coming at the tail end of Ezekiel 34, “sheep of my (the) flock” refers to YHWH gathering together the nation of Israel after their Babylonian exile and re-establishing them as his people in their own land to enjoy once again the blessings of the covenant. Matthew’s insertion of τῆϚ ποίμνηϚ into Mark’s citation would thus heighten the Jewish national sentiments of this shepherd logion. The addition of this Ezekielian phrase suggests that Matthew sees the re-gathering of Jesus’ disciples as the reconstitution of renewed Israel, and not some separate entity. Matthew’s alterations of Mark’s appropriations of the shepherd metaphor, then, offer a bit more clarity to the latter’s socio-religious location, particularly in terms of belief in Jewish national restoration. Mark’s use of the metaphor suggests that he held to a form of Jewish nationalism that was more pronounced than many of his Christ-believing counterparts (a number of whom believed that Israel had no future).80 His view, however, would not be as strong as Matthew’s, for Matthew heightens the Jewish national overtones present in Mark’s employment of the metaphor, thus implying that Matthew held to an even stronger strand of Jewish national belief, one that would have been more indicative of many non-Christ-believing Jews.

7. Conclusion Far from being monolithic religious entities, first-century Judaism and Christbelief existed in a variety forms. These diverse expressions can best be understood as points on a spectrum mapping patterns of thought or patterns of behavior. The particular spectrum related to shepherd metaphor usage centers around belief in Jewish national restoration. Mark’s appropriation of the metaphor suggests that he held to a form of Jewish national belief – quite unlike many other Christ-believers. Not only does Matthew’s shepherd motif reveal obvious Jewish national convictions, his handling of Mark’s shepherd logia, suggests that his view of Jewish national belief was much stronger than Mark’s. Thus, on a continuum mapping belief in Jewish national restoration, while both Mark and Matthew would be positioned closer to the end advocating Jewish ⁸⁰ E. g., the author of Hebrews, and Ignatius of Antioch. Mark’s view of Israel’s restoration may perhaps be closer to the position outlined by Paul in Romans 9–11.

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nationalism, Matthew would be much closer to the nationalistic end pole than Mark. The Gospel writers’ views represent their own and not necessarily those of their respective audiences. An intriguing follow-up question to this study, then, would concern how the audience’s ethnic biases affect the way in which the Gospel writer presents his views, especially in the case of Mark. The consensus among biblical scholars is that the author of Mark was a Palestinian Jewish Christ-believer who addressed Gentile Christ-believers in Rome. The question would be, is the degree to which Mark conveys his Jewish nationalism – particularly when compared with Matthew – an accurate representation of Mark’s conviction, or has the Evangelist muted his view somewhat for the sake of his audience who, being Romans, would on the one hand, most likely have thought of shepherds unfavorably, and who, on the other, would not be as naturally predisposed to Jewish national belief, as would say, a Jewish audience (like Matthew’s)? In other words, does pastoral sensitivity trump personal conviction? The answer to this complex question merits future study.

5. Conflict and Violence

Matthew: Empire, Synagogues, and Horizontal Violence Warren Carter Matthew’s Gospel emerges, so the dominant paradigm declares, from late firstcentury religious conflicts between a synagogue or synagogues and the Matthean community.1 Both groups compete to claim Israel’s traditions and scriptures, to determine their authoritative interpretation, and to shape a faithful communal identity and set of practices. For the Matthean community, Jesus as God’s Messiah and Son provides the definitive interpretations and teaching (e. g., 5:17–48), and manifests God’s saving presence (1:21–23). The synagogue(s) attributes no such authority to Jesus and dissents from any claims that he is the definitive interpreter of Israel’s traditions and scriptures, or the agent of salvation. More recently, I and some other scholars have argued that the Gospel is an act of imperial negotiation.2 In narrating the actions and teaching of Jesus crucified by Rome and raised by God, the Gospel shapes the identity and guides the practices of post–70 Jesus-followers as they live their daily lives in the Roman empire. The Gospel comprises a hidden transcript, negotiating Rome’s world in a tensive interaction comprising both non-violent resistance yet imitative accommodation. How might these quite different readings of the Gospel be adjudicated? Are they incompatible, forcing us to chose one of the two scenarios? Some choose ¹ G. N. Stanton, “The Origin and Purpose of Matthew’s Gospel: Matthean Scholarship from 1945 to 1980,” ANRW 2.25.3 (1985): 1890–1951; D. Hagner, “The Gospel of Matthew,” in The New Testament Today (ed. M. Powell; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), 31–44. The debates have centered on how Matthew’s Gospel and community/church relate to the synagogue “down the street,” whether Matthew is “intra-muros” (still within Judaism though perhaps separated from a synagogue) or “extra-muros” (having turned its back on Judaism though defining itself over against it), whether the Gospel and community should be understood as “Christian Judaism” or “Jewish Christianity.” See W. Carter, “Matthew’s Gospel: Jewish Christianity or Christian Judaism, or Neither?” in Jewish Christianity Reconsidered (ed. M. McCabe-Jackson; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 155–79; A. J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); D. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998); G. N. Stanton, Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992); D. Hagner, “Matthew: Apostate, Reformer, Revolutionary,” NTS 49 (2003): 193–209; idem, “Matthew: Christian Judaism or Jewish Christianity?” in The Face of New Testament Studies: A Survey of Recent Research (ed. S. McKnight and G. Osborne; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 263–82. ² W. Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading (London: T & T Clark, 2000); idem, Matthew and Empire: Initial Explorations (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2001); J. Riches and D. Sim, eds., The Gospel of Matthew in its Roman Imperial Context (London: T & T Clark, 2005).

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the synagogue-separation scenario simply because it is familiar, freely admitting they know nothing about imperial matters. Yet there is no denying that crucifixion was a political and imperial act and that to follow a crucified one required careful negotiation of imperial power. In this paper I will suggest that not only is it possible to reconcile the two approaches, but that doing so is necessary for understanding Matthew’s provenance. Hence, I will argue that while the focus of the dominant synagogue paradigm on conflict is well placed, to construe that conflict primarily as religious conflict within a narrowly constructed synagogal context is severely flawed.3 This approach assumes the false and anachronistic separation of religion from the socio-political arena. It ignores recent work that has established synagogues not as religious institutions isolated from Roman power and Greek culture but as diaspora places of imperial and cultural negotiation (Sections 1 and 2). The dominant paradigm also simply ignores recent work that has understood Matthew’s Gospel as a work engaged in negotiating the Roman empire (Sections 3 and 4). In the light of these factors, the Gospel-synagogal conflicts require reconsideration. Accordingly, I will argue that since synagogues were not isolated religious institutions but were places of imperial negotiation (Sections 1 and 2), and given that the Roman empire was the societal foreground in which late first-century Judaism and Matthew were embedded (Sections 3 and 4), the vertical, elite-generated pressure of negotiating the empire provides the primary context in which we might most appropriately understand the horizontal verbal violence between Matthew’s group and the synagogue(s) (Section 5).4 That is, the existence of synagogal-Matthean conflict attests not primarily religious strife but elite, imperial pressure and contested ways of negotiating it. Imperial negotiation or elitenonelite status supplies the primary axis for understanding the Gospel’s context and content, subsuming the current conventional and inadequate categories that present the conflict primarily as religious (Jew-Christian), ethnic (Jew-Gentile) or institutional (synagogue-ekklesia). It should be clear that I am using the term ³ I recognize that the term “religion/religious” is problematic for both ancient and modern discourse. I also recognize both the necessity and irony of employing a category that I am simultaneously trying to deconstruct. My central point is that contemporary enlightenment-shaped notions pervade contemporary Matthean scholarship and distort discussion of the Gospel. For the integral role of religion in antiquity in relation to ethnos, national cult and identity, philosophy, domestic traditions and observances, voluntary associations, and astrology/magic, cf. S. Mason, “Jews, Judeans, Judaizing, Judaism; Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,” JSJ 38 (2007): 457–512, esp. 482–8; J. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007); P. Fredriksen, “Christians in the Roman Empire in the First Three Centuries C. E.,” in A Companion to the Roman Empire (ed. D. Potter; Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 587–606, esp. 589– 93. ⁴ I underline “verbal” violence. I do not see widespread Matthew-synagogue physical violence. It is possible that there is some/sporadic elite-initiated violence against Jesus-followers (notably 10:17); see W. Carter, “Construction of Violence and Identities,” in Violence in the New Testament (ed. S. Matthews and L. Gibson; New York: T & T Clark, 2005), 81–108.

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“negotiation” not to mean formal face-to-face discussions between Christian leaders and imperial leaders, but to refer to making one’s way or shaping an appropriate way of life and identity in the midst of the Roman empire.

1. Synagogues and Empire Matthean scholarship has placed considerable focus on conflict between a synagogue and the Matthean group. Shaped by contemporary understandings of religion as a separated and individualistic sphere, scholars have emphasized the religious questions involved in the conflict and/or separation – the locus of atonement, divine presence, and revelation.5 Yet in styling the conflict in religious terms, Matthean scholarship has operated with the mistaken assumption that synagogues were primarily religious, socially introverted communities concerned only with religious matters. This erroneous view can only be maintained, however, by ignoring the embedding of religion in larger political, economic, and cultural structures, and by ignoring larger synagogal-societal interactions. Recent work has argued that synagogues were considerably participationist in negotiating the imperial world. John Barclay, for example, helpfully identifies at least seven areas or spheres in which to explore different kinds and degrees of Jewish interaction with the diaspora/imperial world:6 the political (relations with political authorities), social (participation and maintenance of distinctives), linguistic (use of Greek language), educational (acquisition of Greek paideia or training), ideological (commitment to cultural norms and values), religious (relation to religious language and practices), and material (participation in material culture [food, dress, etc.] and the maintenance of distinctives). Within these spheres, Barclay assesses levels of “assimilation” which concern social integration and degrees of similarity to one’s neighbors, “acculturation” which concerns the linguistic, educational, and ideological spheres, and “accommodation,” the degree to which Jewish and Diaspora practices are merged or polarized. For each term, he sketches a spectrum or scale that spans high levels of integrative living through to high levels of oppositional living.7 Barclay’s exploration, along with ⁵ W. Carter, Matthew: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004), 74– 7. I recognize that the Gospel is interested in both internal and external dimensions of encounter with God (the attacks on hypocrisy; the command to love God with one’s whole being); my objection here is to the imposition of contemporary (post-enlightenment) privatized notions of religion onto a text deriving from a world in which religion is embedded in political, societal, and kinship structures. ⁶ J. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora from Alexander to Trajan (323 B. C. E.–117 C. E.) (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), 88–98; E. S. Gruen, Diaspora Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002). ⁷ Assimilation or Social Integration spans at its highest level abandonment of key Jewish social distinctives, through some integration (attendance at the gymnasium for education or at Greek athletic competitions or the theater; employment with non-Jews), to social life confined

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that of other scholars,8 indicates that Jewish diaspora communities experienced significant middle levels of assimilation, acculturation, and accommodation, while preserving Jewish distinctives. Barclay argues that first-century B. C. E. political, economic, and social pressures on Jewish diaspora communities seem to have eased somewhat in the first century C. E. “Jewish communities could practice their own customs unhindered” (thereby maintaining identity), while the easing of pressures also “enabled the Jews’ greater integration and acculturation in the cities they inhabited.”9 Thus the emperor Claudius issued edicts around 41–42 C. E. after violence against Jews in Alexandria and after Caligula’s death, reaffirming Jewish rights to observe their customs in Alexandria, Syria, and “the rest of the world” “without hindrance” (Josephus, A. J. 19.278–91). Barclay further suggests that the presence of Gentile God-worshippers in synagogue communities indicates Jewish openness as well as respectability in the eyes of some Gentiles.10 That is, synagogues as diaspora communities knew the duality of allegiance on the one hand to their own traditions and (selected) practices which distinguished them societally to varying degrees, and on the other hand to their cultural-urban contexts in whose societal life they were embedded and regularly participated. Their existence was marked by the hybridity that commonly pervades interactions between local peoples and imperial power.11 Three brief scenarios illustrate this diasporic Jewish hybridity within the Roman empire. One example concerns the elite Gentile woman Julia Severa only to the Jewish community. Acculturation (Language/Education) spans at its highest level scholarly expertise and familiarity with Greek literary, rhetorical, philosophical, and religious traditions, through some acquaintance with common moral values, to at its lowest level no familiarity with Greek. Accommodation spans at its highest level submersion of Jewish cultural uniqueness, through reinterpretation of Judaism that preserves some uniqueness, to antagonism to Greco-Roman culture. ⁸ For example, P. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Trebilco (173–85) draws on widely scattered evidence from the first few centuries C. E. to offer evidence for Jews at various times and places holding “significant offices in their cities,” for civic benefactions in which Jews made financial contributions for their cities’ well-being, for Jewish attendance at the theater, for active participation in the civic and cultural life, for recognition as good residents, for involvement in gymnasia (the center of social and educational life), for imitation of some civic cultural practices such as honoring prominent women who were benefactors and adopting Greek and Roman names, for having non-Jews as patrons or benefactors of synagogues, for the existence of Gentile God-fearers in synagogues who identified with the synagogue and adopted some but not all Jewish practices such as circumcision, for exposure to situations (theater, gymnasium) in which pagan religious activities took place. Trebilco (186) concludes that “many members of the communities interacted regularly with Gentiles and were involved to a significant degree in city life. Moreover, some Jewish communities were influential and respected in their cities …. They were a part of the social networks of the city and shared in many of the characteristics of daily life.” ⁹ Barclay, Jews, 281. ¹⁰ Acts 13:16; 14:1; 16:14; 17:4, 12. ¹¹ J. Barclay, ed., Negotiating Diaspora: Jewish Strategies in the Roman Empire (London: T & T Clark, 2004), esp. Barclay, “Introduction: Diaspora Negotiations.”

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who donated a synagogue building in Akmoneia (east of Ephesus).12 She belonged to a network of leading families that exhibited and secured great power, wealth, and status through prominent public positions and acts of beneficence. Julia Severa herself was three times the high priestess (ἀρχιέρεια) of the temple of the Sebastoi during Nero’s reign. That a Jewish group accepted her patronage suggests both its considerable openness to and participation in civic networks, and its worthiness, for whatever reasons, at least in the eyes of this Gentile woman. The second example concerns Tessa Rajak and David Noy’s examination of the scattered data on holders of the title ἀρχισυνάγωγοϚ.13 Rajak and Noy reject the argument that archisynagogoi provided liturgical and practical services in synagogues akin to contemporary (Christian) clergy. Rather, the term must be understood, they argue, in the context of replicating Greco-Roman status distinctions and understandings of office-holding evident, for instance, in city governments and organizations such as artisan associations. They locate the title ἀρχισυνάγωγοϚ14 in the empire-wide “honor-driven patterns of office distribution.” To be an archisynagogos required not “qualifications” such as expertise, Jewish ethnicity, masculine gender, or even adulthood, but elite social standing, family connections, and wealth to exercise beneficence and patronage. Those who held this honorary function were well embedded in a city’s hierarchical social structure and could represent and mediate for the synagogue community in the larger civic setting.15 Such imitation of conventional office-holding and patterns of benefaction by synagogues suggests significant acceptance of pervasive civic values and practices as well as active participation in the wider societal structures. Rajak and Noy’s argument indicates considerable accommodation to and imitation of imperial society among synagogue communities, particularly in relation to the patronal participation of elites.16 ¹² Barclay, Jews, 279; Trebilco, Jewish Communities, 145–66. ¹³ T. Rajak and D. Noy, “Archisynagogoi: Office, Title, and Social Status in the Greco-Jewish

Synagogue,” in The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 393–429. ¹⁴ Along with other synagogal titular, except perhaps that of γραμματεύϚ, which may stipulate particular tasks. ¹⁵ The term in Luke 13:14 and Acts 13:15 suggests some actual leadership function in the gathering. In Corinth synagogue leaders led by Sosthenes take Paul to the proconsul Gallio suggesting considerable involvement in the city and access to imperial power (Acts 18:12–17). Yet Gallio’s quick rejection of the matter and indifference to Sosthenes’ beating also suggests some distance. ¹⁶ P. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 177–237, esp. 201–210, 219–28, reaches similar conclusions of “positive interactions” between Jewish groups and their urban contexts, concluding that “there is clear evidence from Roman Asia … that being a member in a Jewish group did not mean the dissolution of all participation in conventions, institutions, and constituent groups of the polis.” He identifies Jewish participation in central sociocultural institutions of the polis such as the theater and gymnasium, in civic networks of benefaction, in various social, business, and cultural relationships and guilds or occupational associations (55–173), and in the non-cultic honoring of the emperor. It is not

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A third example of significant Jewish societal participation comes from an early third-century C. E. monument or stele found in Aphrodisias.17 This monument names three groups in the Jewish community who contributed to a building project which Reynolds and Tannenbaum identify as a soup-kitchen or food distribution center for the needy.18 The first list comprises about nineteen members (including three proselytes and two god-fearers) belonging to a sub-group of students of the law who had initiated and substantially funded the building. The second list names fifty-five Jews by birth who contributed to the building. The third lists fifty-two contributing “god-fearers” (θεοσεβήϚ, theosebēs), none of whom is a Jew. The inscription indicates significant levels of Jewish societal investment. First, it honors the involvement of over one hundred synagogue members in a charitable civic project. The nature of this project – relief for local suffering through food distribution – indicates interaction with their civic context, as do the existence of a socially-conventional monument and use of Greek language. Second, the high number of “god-worshippers” or “god-fearers” is significant.19 They are differentiated from proselytes or converts, suggesting that they had not adopted all the markers of Jewish identity such as circumcision. Their placement as the third group also suggests their lower status in the synagogue community. Nevertheless, their participation in this Jewish community indicates porous boundaries, involvement with the Gentile society of Aphrodisias, and some level of prominence in attracting Gentiles. Third, this last observation is strengthened by the fact that nine of the godfearers are city councilors. This office required considerable property ownership and involved, amongst other duties related to the city’s wellbeing, attendance at abundantly clear how Jews negotiated the latter activities especially in regard to deities and the imperial cult. Harland (213–28, 239–43) argues that Jews participated only in non-cultic, nonidolatrous honoring activity such as prayers on behalf of and dedication of inscriptions and monuments (Josephus, C. Ap. 2.68–78; B. J. 2.195–98, 409–16; Philo, Legat. 132–40; Flacc. 49– 52) though the paucity of evidence and the ready integration of cultic honorary practices into meals, gatherings, and civic occasions may belie more complex and diverse negotiations and forms of participation. In relation to the more restricted sphere of (non-mandatory) imperial cult observance, for example, Peder Borgen details a spectrum of responses that involves participation, degrees of interaction, and refusal to participate. Cf. P. Borgen, “‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘How Far?’: The Participation of Jews and Christians in Pagan Cults,” in Early Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), 15–43; and W. Carter, “Honoring the Emperor and Sacrificing Wives and Slaves: 1 Peter 2:13–3:6,” in A Feminist Companion to the General Epistles (ed. A.-J. Levine; London: T & T Clark, 2004), 13–43. ¹⁷ J. Reynolds and R. Tannenbaum, Jews and God-Fearers at Aphrodisias (Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 1987). ¹⁸ Reynolds and Tannenbaum, Jews, 26–7. ¹⁹ Though the term’s exact meaning is debated, it seems to cover various behaviors of Gentiles sympathetic to and involved in various ways in the synagogue community such as attending services, learning Torah, following some ethical teachings, and donating funds for this charitable memorial building. For discussion, cf. B. Wander, Gottesfürchtige und Sympathisanten: Studien zum heidnischen Umfeld von Diasporasynagogen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998); Reynolds and Tannenbaum, Jews, 48–66.

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public civic sacrifices. These nine wealthy men had significant status within Aphrodisias and participated in the synagogue. Just how they, and the rest of the synagogue community, negotiated their cultic and imperial responsibilities is not clear, though Reynolds and Tannenbaum suggest in relation to the centurion Cornelius (Acts 10:1–2) that tolerance for participation in such worship (required of Cornelius in the army) may have been acceptable for God-fearers.20 Fourth, the inscription identifies the diverse occupations of at least twentyseven of those named, ten Jews and seventeen god-fearers. Jews are identified as a rag-trader, grocer, poulterer, confectioner, shepherd, bronze-worker, tailor, and gold-smith. Among the god-fearers are an athlete, treasurer in a senator’s household, missile or weapons-maker, fullers (thrice), sculptor or painter of pictures and images, producer of mincemeat, boot-maker, stone cutter or carver, marble-worker, plasterer, linen-worker, ink-maker, maker of wooden tablets, purple-dyer, boxer, customs-collector, knob-turner, carpenter, money-changer, bronze-smith, and armlet-maker. Again considerable openness to and interaction with society are attested. These recent investigations of Jewish interaction with the larger structures of the Greco-Roman world challenge reconstructions of Matthean-synagogal conflict that assume diaspora synagogues were primarily religious entities, detached from larger societal, political, and economic structures, and isolated from GrecoRoman society as defenders of exclusive Jewish cultural identity.21 Synagogues also functioned as community centers hosting communal dining, serving as banks and repositories for archives, sacred items and votive offerings, providing education for children, asylum for criminals, manumission for slaves, and assembly sites for local “deliberative and judicial assemblies.”22 This scholarship has thus established the multiple functions, various civic activities, and cultural and political embeddedness of synagogues, engaged in negotiating Hellenistic culture and Roman imperial power. In Barclay’s work, boundaries between synagogues and their surrounding society appear as considerably but not completely porous, with degrees of bridge-building and interaction, along with maintenance of cultural distinctives and continuous discernment about appropriate levels of participation. Of course the above instances are records of public interactions. The more informal interactions, including those of disguised, ambivalent, and calculated dissent in which subjugated groups also engage, and to which James Scott attends, are off-record, but would seem to reinforce the picture of similar ambivalent societal engagement.23 These complex patterns of imperial negotia²⁰ Reynolds and Tannenbaum, Jews, 58–66. ²¹ V. Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication

Society of America, 1961), 296; E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews Under Roman Rule from Pompey to Diocletian (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 123. ²² D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999), 389–450. ²³ J. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

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tion show, with Erich Gruen, that it is inadequate to think of Jewish negotiation of the Roman empire with only the unnuanced alternatives of either withdrawal or accommodation, either resistance or assimilation that have marked some previous studies.24 Gruen appeals to Jeremiah’s letter to the Babylonian exiles urging societal involvement and commitment to “the welfare of the city” as “a blueprint for diasporic existence,” much more so than “distress or despair” (Jer 29:5–7).25

2. Jewish Diaspora Existence and Synagogue(s) in Antioch Similar hybridity, with its complex societal investments and differentiations, is evident in Antioch, a likely provenance for Matthew’s Gospel.26 Antioch was the capital of the Roman province of Syria, where the governor resided (Josephus, B. J. 7.58–59; cf. A. J. 18.1) ruling in alliance with the local boulē or council of elites (Josephus, B. J. 7.107). According to Josephus, Jews had settled in Antioch since its founding in 301 B. C. E. by Seleucus Nicator (C. Ap. 2.39; B. J. 7.43). Perhaps some had citizenship.27 They had negotiated Roman presence since Pompey’s intervention in Syria around 65 B. C. E. (Josephus, B. J. 1.127–33, 185). Cassius, for instance, had after 44 B. C. E. “collected arms and soldiers” from cities in Syria and “imposed heavy tribute upon them” (Josephus, A. J. 14.272), but there is no evidence for violent confrontations. While Josephus mentions a synagogue in a second-century B. C. E. context (B. J. 7.44), by the first century, there were probably multiple synagogues or collegia, “twenty to thirty” according to Zetterholm.28 Along with the functions noted above, synagogues also observed distinctive practices such as Sabbath, dietary laws, and temple tax collection. There were probably diverse practices and understandings among Antiochene Jews in their encounter with imperial power, yet non-violent interactions dominate. As the 66–70 war begins and hostility toward Jews erupts in various Syrian cities, Josephus specifically declares that there was no violence against Jews in Antioch, to whom he attributes, perhaps protectively, “no revolutionary intentions” (Josephus, B. J. 2.477–480). The comment may express, despite its apologetic tone, the considerable embeddedness in Antiochene society that Barclay and Gruen find widespread in diaspora communities. Josephus also notes “multitudes of Greeks” drawn to the Antiochene synagogues, an indication of some openness to and participation in the city’s life (B. J. 7.45). ²⁴ Gruen, Diaspora, 5–6. ²⁵ Gruen, Diaspora, 135. ²⁶ For recent statements, cf. M. Slee, The Church in Antioch in the First Century C. E. (Lon-

don: T & T Clark, 2003), 118–25; Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 15–17. ²⁷ M. Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch (London: Routledge, 2003), 20– 42 for discussion. ²⁸ Zetterholm, Formation, 37–8; Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 30–6.

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Roman power became increasingly prominent in Antioch during the 66–70 war. Three or four legions were stationed in the city (Josephus, B. J. 2.186). Governor Cestius used troops from Antioch against the initial outbreaks of violence in Galilee (Josephus, B. J. 2.499–500). Vespasian assembled troops there in 67 before moving south against Galilee and Judea (Josephus, B. J. 3.8, 29). He returned to Antioch briefly in 69 before returning to Rome to counter Vitellius (Josephus, B. J. 4.630–31). Wheat was levied from the surrounding area to support Titus’ army in its siege of Jerusalem (Josephus, B. J. 5.520). The presence of so many troops and the practice of angareia – requisitioning transportation, labor, and lodging (Matt 5:41) – took its toll on the property, energy, and dignity of local residents.29 In 71 Vespasian’s son and future emperor, Titus, displayed captured Jewish troops and booty in Antioch and he addressed a rally in the theater (B. J. 7.96, 100–111; Malalas 10.45–51). As Roman power was increasingly asserted during the 66–70 war, overt conflict among Jews and between Jews and Gentiles occurs. An elite and highly acculturated Jew, Antiochus, son of a Jewish leader, accuses other Jews of a plot to burn the city, uses troops under Roman command to compel Jews to join him in sacrificing (to city and/or imperial gods?), abolishes the Sabbath, puts to death some who refuse, and incites Gentile violence against Jews. The animosity increases when a fire does break out and Jews are blamed (Josephus, B. J. 7.47– 59). This incident involving violent conflict among Jews and between Gentiles and Jews is very unusual in the sources. Noteworthy is that the antagonism breaks out as imperial power becomes increasingly demanding during the 66–70 C. E. war. Antiochus and his supporters had allied themselves with the ruling Roman and Antiochene elite, having access to Roman military power (Josephus, B. J. 7.46–47), embracing Hellenistic observances, and distancing themselves from Jewish practices. In response, “a few” Jews (ὀλίγοι; Josephus, B. J. 7.51) consented to his demands, while others refused to abandon distinctives such as Sabbath observance. In choosing martyrdom rather than offer sacrifices, they affirmed their Jewish identity over elite Roman-Antiochene favor and societal accommodation (Josephus, B. J. 7.51). Others no doubt sought some via media, protecting themselves, maintaining distinctives, and securing some imperialcivic favor.30 Roman actions are also ambivalent. While the wartime assertion of Roman power increases the vertical pressure that harasses and divides Antiochenes and Jews, Rome also contains the conflict. The Roman deputy-governor, Gnaeus Collega, establishes that no Jews started the fire (Josephus, B. J. 7.60–62). And the victorious general Titus, returning to Rome after his victory over Jerusalem ²⁹ N. Lewis, “Domitian’s Order on Requisitioned Transport and Lodgings,” RIDA 15 (1968): 135–42. ³⁰ Zetterholm, Formation, 53–111, discusses various possibilities in terms of religious practices but not in terms of societal or imperial negotiation.

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and displaying Jewish captives and booty in Syrian cities on the way (Josephus, B. J. 7.96), visits Antioch, and resists demands to expel Jews from the city or rescind their rights (Josephus, B. J. 7.103, 106–111; A. J. 12.119–124). To conclude from this Antiochus incident, as Michelle Slee does, that post 70 “anti-Gentile feeling on the part of many Antiochene Jews would have been rife” seems overstated.31 Her claim ignores the previous long history of peaceable if ambivalent Jewish participation in the city, the key role of the Jew Antiochus in the conflict, general Gentile tolerance of Jewish distinctives, Jewish gratitude for and reliance on the vindication and protection provided by the Romans Gnaeus Collega and Titus in 71, and the necessity of re-establishing civic goodwill post– 70. Imagining a sustained period of anti-Gentile hostility ignores the pre–66–70 conditions, and posits a far too monolithic context. Likewise, Zetterholm’s hypothesis that the strictly enforced, post–70, collection of the tax for the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus separated Jewish Jesus-followers from Gentile Jesus-followers under persecutory pressure and demands for participation in cultic activity is not convincing.32 There is no evidence that collection of the tax for Jupiter’s temple functioned in Antioch in this way, nor any evidence for the frequently invoked notion of religio licita which protected synagogue members but exposed Jesus-believers.33 Participation in imperial and city cults was not mandatory and non-observance was not subject to persecution and punishment. More likely is a post–70 scenario of pragmatic survival as Roman presence and pressure on Jewish groups continued to be exerted in the city. Coins, including Judea Capta coins issued after the victory of 70 showing dominant Roman military power and a bound female figure representing defeated Jerusalem, proclaimed Roman sovereignty and divine agency, delineated Jews as a captured and humiliated people, and deterred thoughts of revolt. Likewise the cooption of the temple tax, now offensively collected for the temple of the victorious Jupiter Capitolinus in Rome, conveyed similar messages of Jews as a defeated and subjugated race.34 No doubt (non-mandatory) civic celebrations of the imperial cult honoring Rome, the empire, and the imperial household involved the city in sacrifices, prayers, offerings, processions, games, street-parties, and distributions, providing a constant reminder of divinely-blessed Roman power. Gates built by Tiberius and statues of various figures including Tiberius and Vespasian performed the same function. The hierarchical and exploitative imperial structure, marked by alliances between Roman officials and Antiochene elites as well as patron-client relationships within the city and surrounding territorium or chōra, ³¹ Slee, Church in Antioch, 132. ³² Zetterholm, Formation, 178–230. It is the virtue of Zetterholm’s study, though, to look to

social forces, rather than primarily to theological issues, to explain his “parting of the ways.” Cf. Carter, Matthew and Empire, 130–44. ³³ There is no first-century evidence for this term or practice of approving certain religions. The term originates with Tertullian, Apol. 21.1. ³⁴ Carter, Matthew and Empire, 130–44.

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continued at the expense of non-elites whose production, skills, and labor serviced the elite way of life. The sociologist Rodney Stark describes Antioch as a city in chaos and crisis, marked by squalor, over-crowding, ethnic tensions, violence, natural catastrophes, and “filled with misery, danger, fear, despair, and hatred” for many.35 Peter Garnsey highlights the precarious daily struggle for non-elites to supply food, where diseases of contagion and deficiency were rife, and the life-span was short.36 In this post–70 context of increased Roman presence and power that pressured Jewish groups to appear more compliant than contestive, many Antiochene Jews, including Jesus-followers, knew that the difficult tasks of imperial negotiation required variously submission to and dependence on Roman officials, recovery of civic goodwill, and defense of Jewish distinctives.37 In such a context and faced with this multi-dimensional task, contention among Jewish groups was also likely.

3. Matthew and Empire: Method Consideration of Matthew’s Gospel as a post–70 text of imperial negotiation is a relatively recent development in Matthean scholarship with Matthean scholars generally ignoring the pervasive Roman world. Thus, for example, the issue of “Matthew and the Gentiles” has been regularly engaged in terms of individual conversion and conditions of membership in the Jesus-synagogue (circumcision?) but infrequently in relation to the largest Gentile system in the Matthean world, the Roman empire.38 Several factors account for this distorting neglect of the empire. One factor concerns our pervasive contemporary understanding of religion as a socially isolated and internalized, spiritualized, and individualistic entity. In the first-century world, however, religion was very much a “public” or societal phenomenon, intertwined with political and societal institutions, with communal rituals and civic events, with economic and military, kinship and domestic structures.39 Virgil, for example, has the god Jupiter appoint Romulus to found Rome and its empire for which Jupiter declares, “I set neither bounds nor periods of ³⁵ R. Stark, “Urban Chaos and Crisis,” in The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 160–1. ³⁶ P. Garnsey, Food and Society in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). ³⁷ Carter, Matthew and Empire, 9–53. ³⁸ W. Carter, “Matthew and the Gentiles: Individual Conversion and/or Systemic Transformation,” JSNT 26 (2004): 259–82. ³⁹ K. C. Hanson and D. E. Oakman, Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and Social Conflicts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 131–59; M. Beard, J. North, and S. Price, Religions of Rome: Volume 1: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); also J. Rives, “Religion in the Roman Empire,” in Experiencing Rome: Culture, Identity and Power in the Roman Empire (ed. J. Huskinson; London: Routledge, 2000), 245–75.

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empire; dominion without end have I bestowed;” Romans will be “lords of the world” (Aen. 1.254–82). Seneca has the emperor Nero declare, “Have I of all mortals found favor with Heaven and been chosen to serve on earth as vicar of the gods? I am the arbiter of life and death for the nations” (Clem. 1.1.2). Josephus has Rome’s puppet Agrippa recognize that “without God’s aid so vast an empire could never have been built up” (B. J. 2.390–91).40 Politics and religion did mix. The constituting of religion as an integral part of the political and societal landscape suggests that any attempt to understand Matthew’s Gospel in terms of religion as a separated and individualistic sphere is inadequate. Furthermore, our training as biblical scholars has, especially following discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, directed our attention to first-century Judaism with all its diversities and debates. While we have examined New Testament texts, including Matthew, in this rich and multi-faceted context, we have often neglected some dimensions of it, including diverse Jewish negotiation of Roman power. First-century Judaisms did not exist in a political vacuum; they undertook diverse imperial negotiation, whether the Jerusalem leaderships’ beneficial alliance with yet submission to Roman power (Josephus, A. J. 20.251; cf. A. J. 18.33–35, 90), the restlessness of festivals (Josephus, B. J. 1.88), eschatological fantasies of violent revenge (e. g., 1 En. 46:4–8; 48:8–10), armed attacks by brigands and popular kings (Josephus, B. J. 2.433–34; 4.508–10; 7.29), paying the temple tax (Josephus, B. J. 7.218; cf. Matt 17:24–27), or the recognition of Rome as God’s agent (Josephus, B. J. 5.362–74) – to name but a few instances of imperial negotiation. Moreover, our methods have often precluded attention to the Roman empire. While historical critical approaches locate the Gospel in a particular time and culture, they do not necessarily attend to the societal structures and cultural systems that pervade these settings. One can locate Matthew’s Gospel and its audience, for instance, in Galilee or in Antioch, capital city of the Roman province of Syria, but the significance of the datum emerges only as dynamics of empires are elaborated, for instance, by classical and archaeological studies, social-scientific models of empire,41 anthropological studies of how the powerless negotiate the powerful,42 and postcolonial studies of imperial strategies, interactions, and ⁴⁰ Note also Tacitus, Ann. 13.51; Suetonius, Vesp. 5.7, for a dream in which Nero was “to take the sacred chariot of Jupiter Optimus Maximus from its shrine to the house of Vespasian”; Statius (Silvae 4.3.128–9) declares concerning Domitian (81–96 C. E.) that “At Jupiter’s command he (Domitian) rules for him the blessed world,” and Pliny with reference to Trajan identifies the gods as “the guardians and defenders of our empire” and prays to Jupiter for “the safety of our prince” (Pan. 94). ⁴¹ J. Kautsky, The Politics of Aristocratic Empires (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); G. Lenski, Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 189–296; D. Duling, “Empire: Theories, Methods, Models,” in Gospel of Matthew in its Roman Imperial Context (ed. J. Riches and D. Sim; London: T & T Clark, 2005), 49–79. ⁴² Scott, Domination.

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impact.43 Such approaches enable the pervasiveness of empire, the assumed cultural scripts, and dynamics of power and resistance to be elucidated scene by scene through the Gospel’s plot.44 While there were regional differences, Rome’s empire extended power through some common spheres and strategies. James Scott identifies three spheres in which imperial rule was exerted. Roman elites and their provincial allies exercised material domination, exacting agricultural production through taxation, services, and labor. Land ownership, the hard manual work of nonelites (including slave labor), and coerced extractions of production sustained the elite’s extravagant and elegant lifestyle marked by conspicuous consumption. Elite alliances also enacted status domination, comprising social and economic practices, social interactions, and punishments that damaged the personal wellbeing of the subjugated non-elites and deprived people of dignity through humiliation, insults, degradation, and forced deference, exacting a personal toll of anger, resentment, and learned inferiority.45 Ideological domination utilized a set of convictions and/or narrative that justified and expressed elite oppression, privilege, self-benefiting rule, and societal inequality. The elite’s political, economic, societal, and cultural hierarchical order and exploitative practices were sanctioned as the will of the gods. This stable, “natural,” and immutable societal and cosmic order awed, impressed, and cowered the subordinated, while bolstering the elite.46 These spheres of domination comprised the “Great Tradition,” the official version of reality. To effect these dominations, Rome used various strategies: establishing cities; constructing buildings that facilitated the empire’s administration; securing presence through coins and statues of significant imperial personnel such as emperors and governors; owning land; levying taxes, tributes, and rents; forming alliances with local provincial and urban elites; appointing governors; waging military campaigns; deterring revolt by stationing troops, parading captives and loot from military victories; celebrating the imperial cult that promoted both an imperial theology which declared Rome’s identity to be the chosen of the gods as well as cult practices that pervaded both the civic and domestic realms. Often these imperial realities of post–70 Antioch have been ignored as irrelevant to the Gospel, or dismissed by that very erroneous phrase “Roman backgrounds.” The “backgrounds” image suggests a false scenario with Christians center-stage and the empire supplying the backdrop. The exact opposite is nearer the mark. The empire was center-stage, the foreground, with the small ⁴³ E. g., G. Castle, ed., Postcolonial Discourses: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); F. Segovia and R. S. Sugirtharajah, eds., A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings (New York: T & T Clark, 2007). ⁴⁴ Carter, Matthew and the Margins. ⁴⁵ Scott, Domination, 111; see p. 198 for summary chart. ⁴⁶ Scott, Domination, 2.

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marginal Christian movement needing to find its place and negotiate its way within it. It is for similar reasons that the “Church-and-State-in-the-New-Testament” approach has failed to frame or discuss this issue adequately. Attending to the few texts where Rome or its representatives like kings or governors (Pilate) or taxes are explicitly mentioned ignores the imperial realities and structures assumed by these scenes, the fact that the empire was pervasive, and that every gospel scene – infancy stories, temptations, preaching, healings, feedings, conflicts, parables, crucifixion, resurrection, eschatological scenes – participates in the imperial world. The empire does not suddenly go away for several chapters and then mysteriously reappear. Likewise, resorting to unsubstantiated claims of violent persecution will not help us. Rome was generally quite tolerant and inclusive of local religious observances, seeking to insert itself into, rather than abolish, local observances. Hence with the main exception of Gaius Caligula, Rome was happy to accept sacrifices and prayers for, but not to, the emperor and empire’s well-being in the Jerusalem temple – until some priests ceased from this accommodation in 66 C. E. (Josephus, B. J. 2.409–416; cf. Gaius in Philo, Legat. 357). Nor can we protest that the absence of Jesus’ direct violent confrontation with Rome means he is not concerned with Rome or politics. James Scott’s work on how powerless groups negotiate enormous disparities of power indicates that the absence of violence does not mean the absence of resistance. Powerless groups rarely resort to direct violent confrontation because they know they will lose. Rather they employ self-protective, symbolic actions, seeming to cooperate but redefining the interactions, developing a hidden transcript of narrative and practices that fashion an alternative version of reality. I am suggesting that Matthew’s Gospel is one such little tradition.

4. Matthew and Empire: Strategies of Negotiation Matthew’s Gospel continually intersects with this imperial world, negotiating it with a mix of accommodation, participation, imitation, pragmatic survival, contestive practices, and denunciation.47 The plot’s main character, Jesus, is crucified by Rome. Crucifixion was not a religious act; it was a Roman form of execution for those understood to threaten Roman elite interests and order (Josephus, B. J. 5.449–451). The governor Pilate and his allies, the temple-based Jerusalem ruling elite, the “rulers of Judea” (Josephus, A. J. 20.251), cooperate in crucifying Jesus.48 This is not an alliance of the secular and the religious powers. This distinction is inappropriate and anachronistic. Nor is it a matter of Jews against Gentiles, with Pilate having a minimal role or being politically neutral – as one ⁴⁷ For elaboration of the following, cf. Carter, Matthew and the Margins; idem, Matthew and Empire. ⁴⁸ W. Carter, Pontius Pilate: Portraits of a Roman Governor (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2003).

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scholar has amazingly argued49 – or forced against his will to kill nice Jesus. Rather, the formation of alliances between Rome and provincial governing elites with a shared interest in protecting the status quo against any non-elite threat was a common imperial strategy. Matthew introduces the chief priests and scribes as allies of the Roman sanctioned king Herod in ch. 2. This alliance sustains, benefits from, and defends imperial societal structure. Matthew presents Jesus’ teaching and actions as offering pragmatic survival strategies and challenging this imperial order even as, at times, it imitates and re-inscribes aspects of the imperial order. Employing an imperial term, Jesus is “king of the Jews” though unsanctioned by and thereby a threat to Rome (2:2; 27:11, 29, 37, 42). He announces an empire or kingdom (βασιλέια) that is not Rome’s (4:17). This empire denotes his God-given mission to manifest God’s saving presence (1:21–23), to be light in the darkness of imperial power (4:15–16). This passage in 4:15–16 evokes and updates Isa 7–9 and the overthrow of Assyria’s empire.50 Jesus, as the agent of God’s purposes (Son, Christ), is presented as manifesting God’s saving presence (Emmanuel, 1:21,51 23), sovereignty (11:25– 30), and well-being (5:3–12),52 tasks that involve societal vision and transformation.53 Such claims drew extensively on Jewish traditions, participated in debates about Jewish self-definition and divine encounter in the post–70 world,54 and contested imperial claims. Jewish inhabitants of late first-century Antioch knew that claims to manifest divine presence, purposes, sovereignty, and well-being were central aspects of imperial propaganda and societal vision. These claims about Jesus parallel yet resist Roman imperial theology and its public self-presentation as an empire chosen by Jupiter and the gods to be their agent on earth.55 While the Gospel uncritically employs aspects of the imperial world to depict God’s empire – land-based economy (13:1–9, 18–32), trade (13:45–46), fishing (13:47–50), a king with skilled slaves collecting tribute (18:23–35), landowner and day laborers (20:1–16), an absentee landlord and tenants resisting rent payment (21:33–41), slaves as the source of labor (18:23–35; 22:3–4) – it also seeks the transformation of the imperial world. Jesus’ disciples are to pray for God’s empire to come (Matt 5:3; 6:10). Part of this transformation means restoring access for the persecuted powerless (“the meek”) to land, the empire’s most important resource and basis of elite wealth (5:5; cf. Ps 37).56 His miraculous ⁴⁹ H. Bond, Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 129, 133. ⁵⁰ Carter, Matthew and Empire, 93–107; idem, “Evoking Isaiah: Matthean Soteriology and an Intertextual Reading of Isaiah 7–9 in Matthew 1:23 and 4:15–16,” JBL 119 (2001): 503–20. ⁵¹ Carter, Matthew and Empire, 75–90. ⁵² Carter, Matthew and Empire, 20–34, 57–74. ⁵³ Carter, “Matthew and the Gentiles.” ⁵⁴ E. g. D. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1991), 1–3, 10– 19. ⁵⁵ Carter, Matthew and Empire, 20–74. ⁵⁶ Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 132–3.

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healings and exorcisms enact Isaiah’s vision of God’s reign/empire and reverse the physical and somatic damage caused by the deprivations of the imperial system and inadequate access to food resources (11:2–6, citing Isa 35:5–6; Matt 4:23–25; 8:1–17, 28–34; 9:2–8, 18–34 etc.). Likewise, Jesus’ actions of feeding large crowds enact and anticipate the full establishment of God’s empire in which all have access to abundant fertility, in contrast to the inequities and deprivations of Rome’s imperial system (14:13–21; 15:32–39; cf. Isa 25:6–10).57 Strategies are necessary to survive the present socio-economic exploitation and cultural/ideological pressures of Roman power. In the midst of the empire, Jesus gathers and teaches a community of followers (4:18–22; chs. 5–7, 10, 13, 18, 24–25). Jesus challenges a “rich man” to sell his possessions, divest his excessive wealth by redistributing it to the poor, and join Jesus’ community (19:16– 24). Disciples are to share resources (5:42; 6:2–4; 25:31–46), be an inclusive and missional community (5:43–48; 10:7–8; 25:31–46), secure reconciling relationships (ch. 18), use “power for” not “over” as do “the rulers of the Gentiles … and their great men” (20:24–28), and create more egalitarian households (chs. 19–20).58 Jesus reframes tax payment as expressions not of loyalty to Rome but of loyalty to God. To refuse to pay Vespasian’s post–70 punitive and subjugating temple tax was to invite retaliation for insubordination (17:24–27; 22:15–22).59 Yet in the scene involving the coin in the fish’s mouth (17:24–27), the Gospel resignifies payment to express God’s greater sovereignty and to remind Jesus-followers that Rome’s attempts to define reality and control the world’s destiny are futile. It is possible that the imperial cult is negotiated in similar ways in Antioch. Jesus forbids violent confrontation with Rome: “Do not violently resist (μὴ ἀνιστῆναι) the evil doer” (Matt 5:39).60 Instead of “fight” or “flight,” violence or passivity, they were to employ common “weapons of the weak”61 in using ambiguous, disguised, self-protective acts of dissent to refuse submission, assert dignity, and surprise the oppressor (5:39b–41).62 And always Jesus-followers are to manifest God’s transformative empire in actions that repair and roll back imperial damage and anticipate the life-changing presence of God’s purposes (6:2–4; 10:7–8; 25:31–46). Throughout, Jesus continually conflicts with Rome’s provincial allies, the societal leaders based in Jerusalem including chief priests, scribes, Pharisees, Sad⁵⁷ Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 305–8, 326–8. Garnsey, Food and Society. ⁵⁸ Carter, Matthew and Margins, 376–410. ⁵⁹ W. Carter, “Paying the Tax to Rome as Subversive Praxis: Matthew 17:24–27,” JSNT 76

(1999): 3–31; Carter, Matthew and Empire, 130–44. ⁶⁰ W. Wink, “Beyond Just War and Pacifism: Jesus’ Nonviolent Way,” Review and Expositor 89 (1992): 197–214; Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 150–4. ⁶¹ J. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Scott, Domination. ⁶² W. Carter, “Constructions of Violence and Identities in Matthew’s Gospel” in Violence in the New Testament (ed. S. Matthews and L. Gibson; New York: T & T Clark, 2005), 81–108; idem, Matthew and the Margins, 150–7; Wink, “Beyond Just War.”

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ducees, and elders.63 Jesus conflicts with them over his authority to manifest God’s presence and purposes (1:21–23; 12:22–45), and to interpret Sabbath observance (12:1–14), purity and dietary laws (15:1–20), material support for the elderly and for the temple (15:3–6), divorce (19:3–9), and tithing (23:23). Both Jesus and the leaders value the scriptural tradition but they conflict over its interpretation. Interpreting the biblical traditions was neither disinterested nor exclusively or particularly religious. Rather, it was a political act that enacted societal visions64 and shaped societal practices and structures. It thereby either reinforced or contested elite practices, thus causing divisions among Jewish groups. Jesus announces judgment on these leaders, resisting the hierarchical social order that they oversee as exploitative and destructive. He calls them “shepherds” who like Ezekiel’s unfaithful leaders order society for their own benefit while damaging the sheep/people (9:36; cf. Ezek 34). God will “uproot” them (15:13), an image of judgment and condemnation (Jer 1:10; 12:17). Jesus enacts judgment symbolically against Jerusalem’s temple, the center of their power, denouncing it as a “den for robbers/bandits” (21:12–17; cf. Jer 7:11).65 Matthew interprets the temple’s destruction in 70 C. E., ironically by their ally’s legions, as God’s condemnation for rejecting Jesus (Matt 22:7).66 Jesus elaborates their condemnation in parables (21:28–22:14), foretelling their destruction (21:41; 22:7; 26:61). The curses of ch. 23 condemn their practices of extortion, greed, and hypocrisy, and locate them in a tradition of those who murdered the prophets. They neglect “the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faithfulness” (23:23). In 23:38 he denounces the temple as “desolate,” abandoned by God. This condemnation is consistent with Matthew’s presentation that the empire is under the power of the devil who allocates human empires (4:8). Jesus’ exorcisms manifest God’s empire in freeing people from the devil’s power and asserting God’s sovereignty over human lives (4:24; 8:16, 28–34; 9:32–34; 12:22, 28 etc.). Demon possession is a commonly observed phenomenon in contexts of ⁶³ S. van Tilborg, The Jewish Leaders in Matthew (Leiden: Brill, 1972); A. J. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1988). Informing Saldarini’s analysis are models of empire formulated by Kautsky, Politics; Lenski, Power and Privilege. ⁶⁴ Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community, notes (134, 161, 164) Matthew’s “opponents’ reform program for Judaism stresses a number of purity and dietary customs which in Matthew’s view detract from the observance of the Ten Commandments (5:19) and justice, mercy, and faith (23:23) …. The changes in practice and understanding which Matthew proposes … aim to reorientate and reform the Jewish community deeply and comprehensively …. Matthew thus envisions his little group of believers-in-Jesus influencing Jewish society to become an ideal community by God, that is the ‘kingdom of heaven.’” ⁶⁵ K. C. Hanson and D. E. Oakman, Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and Social Conflicts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 131–59. ⁶⁶ Burning cities was a common imperial tactic (1 Macc 1:19, 29–32). Jerusalem and the temple were burned by Titus’ troops in 70 C. E. (Josephus, B. J. 2.395–7; 6.249–408). Matthew links fire and judgment in 13:30, 40.

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political oppression, colonial domination, and social conflict.67 Thus Jesus casts the demons out of two men into a herd of pigs who destroy themselves in the sea (8:28–34). The pig was the mascot of the Roman Tenth Fretensis legion stationed in Syria, a legion that played a role in destroying Jerusalem in 70 C. E.68 The scene reveals the demon-possessed nature of the empire and its military, as well as Jesus’ power to liberate from and overcome the power “behind the throne.” Moreover, the Gospel reveals that the devil has agents, notably the Jerusalem client leaders and allies of Rome. Its verbally violent rhetoric regrettably describes them as “evil” (9:4; 12:34) and “tempting” Jesus (16:1–4), applying to them features of the devil (4:1, 3; 13:38–39). The Gospel also reveals that the days of Rome’s empire are numbered. Chapters 24–25 offer a fantasy of revenge and destruction, ironically imitating imperial power and reinscribing it cosmically in attributing the violent ways of Caesar to God. God ends Rome’s world, restores Israel (19:28), and establishes God’s heaven and earth (19:28; 24:35). In 24:27–31, Matthew presents Jesus’ return as the end of all empires, especially Rome’s.69 Verse 28 (“where the corpse is, there the eagles are gathered”) describes the final battle in which Rome’s army is destroyed. The army is represented by the symbolic eagle or standard (aquila) that legions carried into battle. Josephus explains that the eagle “is the king and bravest of all the birds … a symbol of empire … an omen of victory” (B. J. 3.123). In Matt 24:28, the eagles (not vultures) lie in defeat among the corpses of Roman soldiers. Verse 29 denotes judgment on the cosmic deities that Rome claimed sanctioned its power. Evoking Daniel, Jesus the Son of Man returns to judge (13:47–50; 25:31–46) and establish God’s “everlasting dominion … and kingship that will never be destroyed” (Dan 7:13–14; cf. 26:64). Not surprisingly the elite alliance of Jerusalem leaders and Roman authority crucifies Jesus. This death sentence represents the empire’s ultimate power to remove one who threatens its interests. Their death-dealing act of crucifying Jesus reveals the extent to which the ruling elite, the alliance of Rome and Jerusalem-based leaders, will go to resist his manifestation of God’s saving presence and reign/empire. His resurrection manifests the limits of their power; they cannot keep him dead. It also reveals the supremacy of God’s sovereign power in which Jesus participates, being entrusted with “all authority in heaven and earth” (Matt 28:18). Through such actions and interactions, the Gospel presents Jesus as the agent of God’s sovereignty, presence, blessing, and vision of well-being. These realities pervade the Gospel’s theology, Christology, soteriology, ecclesiology, and escha⁶⁷ P. Hollenbach, “Jesus, Demoniacs, and Public Authorities,” JAAR 49 (1981): 567–88. ⁶⁸ Josephus, B. J. 5.69, 135; 6.237; E. Michon, “Mélanges III: Note sur une inscription de

Ba᾽albek et sur des tuilles de la legion Xa Fretensis,” RB 9 (1900): 95–105. ⁶⁹ W. Carter, “Are There Imperial Texts in the Class? Intertextual Eagles and Matthean Eschatology as ‘Lights Out’ Time for Imperial Rome (Matthew 24:27–31),” JBL 122 (2003): 467–87.

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tology. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, these themes are also central emphases proclaimed in Roman imperial theology.70 Rome is chosen by the gods to manifest their sovereignty, presence, will, blessing, and well-being among compliant subjects. The gods sanction the empire and its hierarchical, exploitative, and patriarchal societal order. Matthew’s Gospel contests such claims and societal order, even as it simultaneously imitates and reinscribes them while pragmatically ensuring survival within it.

5. Matthew, Synagogue, Empire, and Horizontal Violence The discussion has established that the conventional framing of Matthew’s provenance as a religious conflict between Jesus-followers and (the rest of) a synagogue (or synagogues) is untenable. Neither synagogue(s) (Sections 1 and 2) nor Matthew’s Gospel (Sections 3 and 4) can be understood solely as religious entities isolated from the larger imperial-societal contexts in which they are embedded. Both were involved post–70 in the task of negotiating freshly asserted Roman power and pressure in Antioch. My contention is that this assertion of imperial power and the task of negotiating it contextualize and contribute to the oft-discussed Matthean-synagogal conflict that Matthew’s well-known vicious rhetoric against other Jewish leaders, against competing interpretations of traditions and practices, and against synagogue communities seems to attest.71 John Barclay observes, “diaspora communities are typically sites of contested power, both internal contests over the power of the ‘tradition’, and contests with the ‘host’ community.”72 That is, horizontal conflicts are common where vertical pressure is exerted as various imperial situations, ancient and modern, attest. Josephus, for instance, indicates increasing Jewish divisions in Judea and Jerusalem during the 66–70 war as imperial pressure intensifies (e. g., B. J. 4.377–97; 503–84; 5.1–38; Eleazar, John, Simon).73 In discussing recent European empires, for instance, David Abernethy notes increasing horizontal violence between Hindus and Muslims in India and between competing groups in Kenya and Malaya under British imperialism, in Vietnam under French control, and among groups in the former Belgium Congo.74 We could add black-on-black violence in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s struggle with apartheid and white power.75 ⁷⁰ ⁷¹ ⁷² ⁷³ ⁷⁴

Carter, Matthew and Empire. Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 30–6. Barclay, Negotiating Diaspora, 3. E. g. στάσιϚ Josephus, B. J. 4.133. 388, 395, 545; 5.98, 105, 255, 257, 441; 6.40. D. Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415– 1980 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 147–61. ⁷⁵ B. Hamber, “Who Pays for Peace? Implications of the Negotiated Settlement in a PostApartheid Settlement in a Post-Apartheid South Africa,” in Ethnopolitical Warfare: Causes, Consequences, and Possible Solutions (ed. D. Chirot and M. Seligman; Washington: American Psychological Association, 2001), 235–58, esp. 238–41.

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Dynamics of vertical and horizontal struggle are evident in the Antiochus incident as imperial presence and pressure increased in Antioch during the 66– 70 C. E. war. Antiochus’ alliance with ruling elites, his use of the Roman military, the attempt to enforce participation in civic rituals, the involvement of Gentiles/ Antiochenes, the deputy governor, and Titus attest vertical imperial pressure. Compliance by some Jews, the choice of martyrdom by others, and conflicts among Jews over Sabbath and civic involvement attest internal or horizontal Jewish conflicts. Yet these conflicts over Sabbath observance and cultic participation cannot be understood primarily in terms of religious differences. Rather, in the context of the vertical pressure, they are acts of imperial negotiation involving issues of interaction with imperial society and maintenance of distinctive identity. Frantz Fanon, in his study of imperial power dynamics in the French colony of Algeria, examines the creation and role of horizontal violence as vertical imperial power is asserted. He writes: The native is a being hemmed in …. The first thing which the native learns is to stay in his place, and not to go beyond certain limits. This is why the dreams of the native are always of muscular prowess; his dreams are of action and aggression …. The colonized man will first manifest this aggression which has been deposited in his bones against his own people. This is the period when the natives beat each other up, and the police and magistrates do not know which way to turn when faced with the astonishing waves of crime …. The settler keeps alive in the native an anger which he deprives of an outlet; the native is trapped in the tight links of the chains of colonialism. But we have seen that inwardly the settler can only achieve a pseudo petrification. The native’s muscular tension finds outlet regularly in bloodthirsty explosions – in tribal warfare, in feuds between septs, and in quarrels between individuals.76

In Fanon’s analysis, horizontal struggles – whether tribal or individual, physical or verbal – are multi-faceted. They result in part from subjugated people being hemmed in and contained by imperial controls and restriction without outlet. They indicate considerable imperial (vertical) pressure. In addition to containment, horizontal struggles also develop because the oppressed mimic, as Fanon and Homi Bhabha note, the competitiveness and violent domination that mark the imperial situation. Violent domination “has been deposited in his own bones.” The subjugated yearn for power while simultaneously and angrily resisting it. Yet as Fanon also argues, horizontal violence is a means of avoiding direct confrontation with the oppressor since the oppressed know that they cannot win such struggles. Rather, they turn on each other with attacks that substitute for attacks on the oppressor. Assuming imitation of the oppressor, and noting that displacement of yet identification with the oppressor go hand in hand, Paulo Freire observes in relation to Latin American struggles, “Because the oppressor exists within their oppressed comrades, when they attack those comrades they ⁷⁶ F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 52–4.

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are indirectly attacking the oppressor as well.”77 That is, horizontal violence occurs as oppressed groups in negotiating imperial power substitute attacks on other oppressed groups for direct confrontation with the oppressor. Lashing out against similarly oppressed groups is a safer option. Horizontal violence thus attests the restricting pressure of overwhelming imperial power, its imitation, and its engagement by avoidance and attacks on substitute groups. The Matthew-synagogue conflict, located in a context of freshly asserted imperial power, provides, I am suggesting, another site of contested power, reflecting the same dynamics of vertical pressure and horizontal violence. In this perspective, the horizontal violence of verbally violent polemic against other Jewish groups evident in Matthew’s Gospel attests not simply religious conflict but the pressure of Roman power post–70 where Jewish groups in Antioch felt constrained and “put in their place.” This power is not asserted as formal persecution but as the conventional strategies of imperial power, namely, military intimidation, and material, status, and ideological domination. The verbal, horizontal violence evident in Matthew confirms the groups’ active negotiations of this asserted imperial power, expresses the anger nurtured by humiliating and confining power,78 and effects an indirect attack on Rome in attacking synagogues and leaders since synagogue leadership was conventionally the preserve of the Rome-allied wealthy and powerful, as Rajak and Noy argue,79 and since synagogues appeared to Matthew to seek too much accommodation. Yet the violent polemic also participates in imperial power, mimicking the violent domination that marks the imperial context. To discuss Matthean-synagogal conflict without consideration of the key role of Roman imperial power is thus to tell only half the story – and a distorted one at that. The Gospel’s horizontal, verbal violence attests the contentiousness and divisiveness of negotiating increased Roman pressure. For example, given the experiences of Roman power in 66–70 C. E. and its aftermath in Antioch, it would be understandable if a significant number of Antiochene Jews, including some followers of Jesus, thought it necessary to rebuild trust and solidarity with their fellow Antiochenes, to assure them of Jewish civic loyalty and cooperation, and thereby to protect Jewish distinctives. Likewise, in these circumstances of dominating Roman power, it would not be surprising if some followers of Jesus, crucified by the empire but resurrected and returning to judge and destroy it, might find efforts at rebuilding civic trust and solidarity too compromising and accommodationist. Likewise, some Jews seeking to rebuild trust and solidarity ⁷⁷ P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (new rev. 20th anniversary ed.; New York: Continuum, 1999), 44. ⁷⁸ Awareness of anger’s divisive and destructive impact accounts for the Gospel’s repeated teaching on containing anger through the processes of forgiveness and reconciliation (5:21–26; 6:14–15; ch. 18). If anger is not contained, the community will self-destruct, just as its interactions with the synagogue(s) have become divisive. ⁷⁹ Rajak and Noy, “Archisynagogoi.”

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might find it unsettling to have within their community a group who claimed to follow one who had been crucified by Rome. The Roman death penalty by crucifixion hardly suggested willing submission to the empire since it was regularly imposed on violent criminals and robbers (Martial, On the Spectacles 9), and on slaves (Cicero, Verr. 2.5.162), and of course on Judean “rebels” in the war of 66– 70 C. E. (Josephus, B. J. 5.449–51). The crucified status of this group’s leader indicated a serious challenge to Rome’s power from which distance might be a wise strategy. Horizontal violence among Jewish groups occurs in the context of Roman pressure. Similarly contentious was the disputed claim made by Jesus-followers that God had raised him from the dead (cf. 28:11–15). Talk of resurrection did not just mean a “religious” dispute over the locus of divine presence or certainty of eternal salvation (28:19–20). Rather, it was disturbing because it exposed the limits of Roman power, which could not keep Jesus dead. Claims of resurrection also evoked eschatological traditions derived from accounts of resistant Jews martyred by Antiochus Epiphanes that God would justly vindicate those martyred by imperial power and would powerfully intervene to end all empires and establish God’s empire in full (Dan 12:1–3; 2 Macc 7). That Jesus’ followers referred to him as “Son of Man” indicated, for those with ears to hear, an echo of Dan 7 that he was the one entrusted with God’s everlasting authority and would overcome all empires (Dan 7:13–14, evoked in Matt 26:64; Matt 28:18). Such claims, fed by biblical traditions, meant the end of the Roman world. They were dangerous and disruptive for attempts to rebuild civic trust. And those who made them, especially when the new age had not, to all appearances dawned, and when Roman power seemed to be even more secure, seemed very misguided. Hence the alternative claim is asserted alleging deception and denying resurrection (28:11–15). Matters of crucifixion, resurrection, and return are not isolated religious matters; they are acts of imperial negotiation asserted against Roman pressure, which was fracturing Jewish groups. What is needed, then, is to understand the Gospel’s narrative and violent polemic not in terms of narrow religious conflict, but as part of the horizontal violence expressive of contested and competitive imperial negotiation taking place among subjugated Jewish groups. At stake in this negotiation is the shaping of appropriate social identity, practices, and societal visions in the midst of Roman power, necessitating degrees of accommodation, mimicry, participation, survival, and protection of distinctive identity and practices. I will briefly mention four contested dimensions. One dimension, common in the imperial world, involves claiming and shaping the past and presenting a socially-determinative memory of it.80 Matthew’s opening genealogy re-members Israel’s history as shaped by the world-blessing ⁸⁰ S. Swain, Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World AD 50–250 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); E. S. Gruen, Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).

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promise to Abraham, the justice-representing role of Israel’s kings, and the coming of the Christ (1:1–17), all imperially-contestive claims.81 A second dimension involves forming a community that in the midst of Roman power faithfully embodies God’s sovereignty, blessings, and will (1:21; 4:17; 5:3–12); hence Matthew’s continuous competitive discrediting of synagogue communities and the extensive instruction for Jesus-followers in a distinctive identity and way of life. Third, distinctive practices are crucial for self-definition. Jesus’ disputes over various practices reflect the same horizontal and vertical struggles. With regard to Sabbath observance, the Gospel constructs a duality, upholding Sabbath observance while arguing with Pharisees over how to observe it faithfully. Jesus, citing precedents in David and priestly observance (12:3–5), offers mercy as the guiding principle for Sabbath faithfulness against the Pharisee’s insistence on rest (12:2). This dispute is much more than a religious matter of whether to privilege Gen 2:1–3 or Hos 6:6. Rather, each perspective participates in a larger societal vision, one enacting mercy and one maintaining the status quo. Each vision engages in imperial negotiation. The latter is more accommodationist in the imperial context, the former more contestive and transformative. Similar dynamics are at work in the scenes on taxes discussed above or in the dispute over divorce (19:3–12). The Pharisaic position that a man can divorce his wife “for any cause” upholds patriarchal privilege, a mainstay of imperial society under the emperor as “pater patriae.” Jesus’ interpretation of “one-flesh” relationships curtails that power and offers a different vision and practice of male-female interaction in which only God is father (23:9).82 A fourth contested area comprises legitimate leadership that can interpret the tradition and shape the community faithfully. Matthew’s Gospel establishes Jesus’ authority as God’s faithful agent (1:18–25; 3:13–17; 4:1–11), while discrediting various leaders and synagogues – always presented negatively (5:20; ch. 23). In turn, they do not find convincing Jesus’ authority or denunciations of the status quo as under God’s judgment, his interpretations of the tradition and the scriptures, his claims to save from and forgive sins and manifest divine presence, and his continual attacks on and conflicts with scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and chief priests. Accordingly, they deem these emphases to be the words and actions of a blasphemer (9:3; 26:65); a glutton, drunkard, and friend of taxcollectors and sinners (11:19); one who is of the devil (12:24), who is not legitimated by God (16:1), and lacks legitimate authority (21:23–27); one who caused the downfall of the temple (26:61), who subversively identifies himself as the heavenly, Danielic Son of Man (26:65), and treasonously as king of the Jews (27:11, 29, 42); and whose crucified body was stolen by his misguided disciples (28:11–15). Without claiming a complete transcript, we have here signs of ⁸¹ Carter, “Matthean Christology,” 143–65. ⁸² Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 262–8; 376–84.

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intense post–70 disputes between Jesus-followers and other Jewish groups over Jesus’ legitimacy to interpret the past and to shape a community, the present, and the future – in the midst of Roman power and other options drawing on Jewish traditions. The extensive and well-known Matthean redactions of his source material about synagogues, leaders, teachings, and practices – which I do not need to repeat – indicate extensive, intense, and competitive “internal contests over the power of the ‘tradition’” occurring within the pressured context of negotiating Roman power. Through these four tasks, and others, emerge central Matthean perspectives and practices, defined by Jesus, which the Jesus-community is to embody, and by which all other communities – synagogues and empires – are judged, now and in the (violent and imperially imitative) eschatological completion of God’s purposes: these are practices of justice (5:10, 20; 6:33), mercy (5:7; 6:2–4; 9:13; 12:7), non-violence (5:38–42), love (5:43–48; 22:34–40), faithfulness (23:23), and doing God’s will as interpreted by Jesus (5:17–48; 7:24–27; 12:46–50). These perspectives inform key actions: preaching the good news of God’s empire manifested by Jesus; repairing imperial damage by healing the sick, exorcizing demons, and raising the dead (10:7–8; 28:19–20); extending forgiveness to others (6:14–15) and practical care and justice for the poor and powerless (5:3– 12; 25:31–46). These actions are not narrowly religious “virtues,” nor inner dispositions, nor narrowly contested loci within competing parts of religious traditions. They are contestive and accomodationist ways of being, in the assertive imperial world – among other ways of being with which they conflict. They envision and contest particular societal interactions and structures. Taught by Jesus, they are acts of divisive imperial negotiation with which others in the synagogue(s), engaged in their own imperial negotiation and under similar imperial pressure, did not find convincing.

The Controversy Dialogues and the Polemic in Mark and Matthew Lorenzo Scornaienchi 1. The Interpretation of the Controversy Dialogues and their Polemical Content1 Through form-critical research, the controversy dialogues acquired an important role in Synoptic studies. German theology in the nineteenth century viewed them as part of the polemical preaching of Jesus against the Jewish authorities. In this article, I use the term “controversy dialogues” as an English translation of Bultmann’s term, “Streitgespräche.”2 These texts depict Jesus to be in continuous conflict with the religious authorities of his time throughout the duration of his ministry. Such debates take place even in remote areas, such as Jesus’ own, normally friendly, Galilee. At the end of the first collection of conflict dialogues in Mark, we find the decision of the Pharisees and Herodians to put Jesus to death (Mark 3:6), an important foreshadowing of the Passion. Exegesis of these passages typically concentrates on their polemical content. The polemic is the key to understanding their meaning and their function in the narration of the Gospel. It seems quite certain that a real conflict must lie behind them, and the task of interpretation is to throw light on the polemical background from which they have developed. Since the development of form-criticism, few authors have tried to demonstrate that these texts presuppose a real debate between the historical Jesus and ¹ This paper is based on my current research on the conflict dialogues in the Gospel of Mark, the subject of my Habilitationsschrift. Here I would like to make a comparison of the two Gospels on this common subject. According to the two-source theory, Matthew uses the material of Mark to construct his Gospel. The question that I would like to put forward regards the peculiarity of the Matthean redaction of the Markan passages. ² Cf. R. Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition (trans. J. Marsch; Oxford: Blackwell, 1963), 39–61. Defining these passages is already an interpretation of them. “Streit-und Schulgespräche” is translated as “controversy and scholastic dialogues.” The translator, however, uses another variant of the same words (Streit-und Schulgespräche) “conflict and didactic saying” (12). Incidentally, the two variants of the same word demonstrate the difference of Streitgespräch, a form of dialog, or an apophthegm, a saying. This question of definition can be seen in the variety of names that are used for these passages. A recent tendency is to stress the content or features of the narrative in these passages, and so they are called “controversy stories,” “conflict stories,” or “pronouncement stories.”

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the religious Jewish authorities.3 It is generally accepted that the conflict dialogues are to be considered a result of polemic between Jews and Christians concerning the interpretation and keeping of the Law, and have nothing to do with the historical Jesus. Such a hypothesis goes back to the Formgeschichte and represents a reaction against the assumption that the conflict dialogues were a report on the debates between the historical Jesus and his contemporaries. The main task is to determine the Sitz im Leben,4 that is, the real situation in the Christian Church, in which these texts originated. The link with the historical Jesus loses any relevance for the interpretation of these passages. Recent research on the historical Jesus also maintains the assumption that the conflict dialogues are late polemic of the Christian community. E. P. Sanders,5 for example, sees no plausibility that the historical Jesus had objections to the Law or even that the debates in Galilee actually took place. He speaks about a sort of “retrojection:” “I have suggested that they reveal the signs of retrojection: later disputes have been thrust back into the lifetime of Jesus. The later Christian church, or at least sections of it, did disagree with the Pharisees and their successors, the rabbis, about the law.”6

2. The Polemic in Matthew If the conflict dialogues are the key to understanding Jewish-Christian polemical relations in the first century, it is not surprising that they are also used to interpret the anti-Jewish polemic in the Gospel of Matthew. In recent years, two significant contributions by M. Gielen7 and B. Repschins8 ki on the conflict dialogues have tried to reconstruct the Matthean polemic against Jews on the basis of the redaction of the controversy dialogues. Although the strongest reproach can be found in the woes in Matthew 23, Repschinski takes the “controversy stories” (as he calls them) as documentation of the position of Matthew in the new definition of Judaism after the Jewish war. Such an

³ This position is expressed after the liberal exegesis only by M. Albertz, Die synoptischen Streitgespräche: Ein Beitrag zur Formgeschichte des Urchristentums (Berlin: Trowitzsch, 1921), 59–64. ⁴ Cf. the important article of S. Byrskog, “A Century with the Sitz im Leben: From FormCritical Setting to Gospel Community and Beyond,” ZNW 98 (2007): 1–27. ⁵ E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993), 205–36. ⁶ Sanders, Historical Figure, 217. In many episodes the Pharisees criticize the disciples and not Jesus himself. This is a hint that it is the community, and not Jesus, that is at the center of the conflict, although in antiquity the teacher was responsible for the behaviour of the pupils. ⁷ M. Gielen, Der Konflikt mit den religiösen und politischen Autoritäten seines Volkes im Spiegel der matthäischen Jesusgeschichte (Bodenheim: Philo, 1998). ⁸ B. Repschinski, The Controversy Stories in the Gospel of Matthew: Their Redaction, Form, Relevance for the Relationship between the Matthean Community and Formative Judaism (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000).

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interpretation is possible precisely because of the assumption that the nature of the conflict dialogues is polemical. The anti-Jewish polemic of Matthew is a very complex problem.9 It raises some questions that can only be mentioned here. The first question concerns the historical background, i. e., the relationship between Christians and Jews. Does the polemic emerge from a debate after a rupture between the two groups? Does the Christian community see itself as a new entity in juxtaposition with Judaism, or does it view those attending the Synagogue as a part of the same religious group? Since G. Bornkamm, this question has been defined by the Latin alternatives intra muros (internal contraposition) and extra muros (external contraposition). The second question comes from the history of the reception of this polemic: how is it possible for Christians today to read such disparaging critiques against Jews, especially in light of the Holocaust?10 After the Holocaust, Christian exegetes have felt a heightened sensitivity and a certain embarrassment to find such a fierce critique against Jews in the New Testament Canon. There is another question concerning the tenor of the polemic in Matthew’s Gospel that involves a clear internal inconsistency. The content and the tenor of the woes in Matthew 23 contradict clearly the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. In the first antithesis, Jesus condemns every offence of anger against a neighbor to be like murder. According to the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, it is not permitted to be angry at a brother (albeit, see the Greek Ϛαριαντ εἰκῇ “without reason,” which would reduce the radicalism of this position); it is not permitted to say to him “raca” or to call him a “fool” (5:22). Jesus himself then calls Scribes and Pharisees in Matt 23:3 μωροὶ καὶ τυφλοί. How is it possible to explain this inconsistency, i. e., that Jesus himself does what he categorically prohibits in the ethical part of the Gospel?

3. The Controversy Dialogues in Mark This inconsistency in speech ethics seems to me to be a very important starting point in order to explain the different functions of these passages in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, and also to reconstruct the tenor of the polemic in the two Gospels. ⁹ A discussion of this debate is offered by A. Runesson, “Rethinking Early Jewish-Christian Relations: Matthean Community History as Pharisaic Intragroup Conflict,” JBL 127 (2008): 95– 8 and also by Repschinski, Controversy Stories, 13–61. ¹⁰ See, for example, the questions of U. Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: 3. Teilband, Mt 18–25 (Zürich: Benziger, 1997), 294, on Matthew 23. The last two questions are particularly interesting: “5. Was läßt sich über die Wirkungsgeschichte des Textes sagen? Wieweit ist sie dem Text gerecht geworden, wieweit hat sie ihn wieder verzeichnet? 6. Und schließlich lautet die letzte Frage: Wie gehen wir heute mit diesem – immerhin kanonischen! – Text um?”

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I would like to focus my attention first on the argument of my research, examining the function of the conflict dialogues in Mark. In the conclusion, I will give some reflection on how to think of the polemic in Matthew, trying to apply my findings to Matthew’s redactional interests. In my opinion, the conflict dialogues in Mark are not principally conceived of as a historical account of the debates Jesus had with his contemporaries, nor are they polemical documentation of Christian and Jewish perspectives on the Law. Because of the brevity of these passages, it is evident that there is not adequate space to treat the position opposed by the polemic. An exception could be found in Mark 7 regarding the question about purity. In this case, purity does not seem to be a prevelant concern for the Markan readers, because author must explain the meaning of the adjective κοινόϚ, a term that would be comprehensible only in the context of Jewish ritual. It is necessary, then, to propose a different interpretation of the conflict stories that I would define as a literary-biographical interpretation. This definition does not imply that the debate has no historical meaning or that there were no controversies between Christians and Jews. It means that in this form conflict stories have a peculiar literary and biographical function that I would like to elucidate. Two observations on the thesis of E. P. Sanders support this view. Sanders maintains that in Mark 2:23–28 the inclusion of the David episode with the showbread is not a good argument for a historical debate of Jesus on the Sabbath. “Jesus’ biblical argument in favor of mitigating circumstances is not really up to the Pharisaic standard, since David did not break the Sabbath law. Legally, Jesus would have needed a better analogy.”11 My objection to Sander’s argument is very simple; a bad argument is a bad argument for the community as much as for the historical Jesus. But the point of the story is the final saying of Jesus about his lordship on the Sabbath, which resembles an apophthegm cited by Plutarch: “Pausanias, the son of Pleistoanax, in answer to the question why it is not permitted to change any of the ancient laws in their country, said, ‘Because the laws ought to have authority over the men, and not the men over the laws.’”12 Sanders argues that the community is at the center of the conflict because Jesus must respond to his disciples’ behavior and not his own. This can be easily explained by looking to the cultural milieu of the ancient world. In the exercise books Progymnasmata13 each pupil learned this chreia about Diogenes in different forms: “Diogenes on seeing an undisciplined youth, beat his pedagogue”; or we can read it in a mixed form, verbal and actional: “Diogenes, on seeing an undisciplined youth, beat his pedagogue and said: ‘why did you teach him such ¹¹ Sanders, Historical Figure, 214, 216: “the argument was not good enough to prove mitigating circumstances.” ¹² Plutrach, Mor. (Apophthegmata laconica) 230 ff. Very important is the parallel expression τοὺϚ ἄνδραϚ τῶν νόμων κυρίουϚ εἶναι. ¹³ For the English translation, see G. A. Kennedy, ed., Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003).

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a thing?’”14 Teachers had to be responsible for their pupils. This way of asking confirms the function of Jesus as a teacher. Jesus was of course a didaskalos and not a paidagogos. 3.1. The Question of the Literary Genre The controversy dialogues consist of a very brief narration with a dialogue in direct speech that culminates in a saying of Jesus. If we look for similar examples in Greek literature, we find two possible parallels: the apophthegm and the chreia. R. Bultmann,15 following P. Wendland, defines the dialogues as apophthegms and distinguishes three types: controversy dialogues, scholastic dialogues, and biographical apophthegms. He sees their origin not in the influence of Greek literary examples, but in pre-rabbinic writings.16 G. Porton excludes any rabbinic origin of the controversy dialogues, because in rabbinic writings we find a different way of disputation: “It is a discussion between rabbis of equal stature which focuses upon exegetical technique and a point of halakhah. It is not the presentation of the impressive wisdom of a unique individual.”17 The main argument by Bultmann is the use of the counter-question in the rabbinical dispute and also in Mark 11:27–33. It should be said, however, that the method of asking a counter-question in a debate is already discussed by Aristotle as a dialectical device, and it is not primarily a rabbinic argumentative strategy.18 P. Vielhauer19 and G. Theißen20 define these texts as apophthegms as well. K. Berger, on the contrary, defines them as chreiai.21 Dormeyer declares that it is impossible to make a clear distinction between chreiai and apoph¹⁴ Hermogenes, Progymn. 3. Translation in Kennedy, Progymnasmata, 76. ¹⁵ Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, 39–56. ¹⁶ Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, 41: “to carry on disputes in this way is typi-

cally Rabbinic.” Bultmann is aware of the chronological distance of the Rabbinical writings and adds (41–2): “In the Synoptic tradition the forms have been preserved much purer than in the Rabbinic, where the process was more self-conscious, the variations in motif artificial, and the items of the tradition were subjected to metamorphosis.” A particular motif of the Rabbinical controversies is the counter-question. We find it also in one debate on authority in Mark 11:27–33. ¹⁷ G. Porton, “The Pronouncement Story in Tannaitic Literature: A Review of Bultmann’s Theory,” Semeia 20 (1981): 97. ¹⁸ Aristotle, Soph. elench. 15, 174a: “Another devise is to put one’s questions alternatively, whether one has several arguments leading up to the same point or whether one has several arguments proving both that this is so and that is not so, for the result is that the answer is not on his guard at the same time against either several or the contrary attacks.” Translation from G. P. Goold, Aristotle: On Sophistical Refutations (London: Loeb, 1978), 81. ¹⁹ P. Vielhauer, Geschichte der urchristlichen Literatur (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975), 298–301. ²⁰ G. Theißen, Lokalkolorit und Zeitgeschichte in den Evangelien (München: C. H. Beck, 2002), 119–31. ²¹ K. Berger, Formen und Gattungen im Neuen Testament (Tübingen: Francke, 2005), 140– 52. This dilemma between apophthegms and chreiai divided the two great figures of the form

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thegms.22 Since V. Taylor, the translation “pronouncement stories” has been used in the English-speaking world.23 So also Tannehill uses the term “pronouncement stories,”24 but as we have already indicated, other variations like “conflict stories” or “controversy stories” are also used. These are intended to be translations of apophthegms (and sometimes chreia), but introduce an element of “story,” which is not proper for an apophthegm. Apophthegms are concise sayings that give an answer to a particular question or to a particular situation. They are already treated by Aristotle in his Rhetoric,25 in the section about the arguments of a speech, where he distinguishes between ‘serious sayings’ and ‘ridiculous sayings.’ The chreiai were later used by the Cynics as a form of propaganda for their philosophical views.26 The meaning of the word chreia, “useful,” can be explained in this idea of philosophical propaganda. It is a genre through which it is possible to criticize the philosophical issues of the time and to promote cynic moral philosophy. The Cynics made creative use of many literary genres like letters, sayings, and speeches. They created new literary forms through the combination of different genres, such as the diatribe, a speech where the opponent can be fictively cited and confuted. The chreia had the function of giving an account of the philosophy and behavior of Diogenes (as we saw above), attributing to him many sayings that he perhaps had never pronounced. This fictive function demonstrates why the chreiai became the name of the exercises in the school of rhetoric, as we can see in the Progymnasmata by Theon, Aphthonios, and Hermogenes. The chreiai maintained this character of a fictive composition, while the apophthegms were regarded as true pronouncements of an important person. They can refer to the wisdom of venerable characters in antiquity, philosophers, kings, and conquerors. They could be the basic elements for a biography, as we see in Plutarch and in his collection of apophthegms and in Lucian Demonax and so on. Through apophthegms, Jesus criticism, R. Bultmann and M. Dibelius. M. Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums (3rd ed.; Tübingen: Mohr, 1959), 149–64, defines these passages as chreiai. ²² D. Dormeyer, Das Neue Testament im Rahmen der antiken Literaturgeschichte: Eine Einführung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993), 160: “Man darf den Unterschied zwischen diesen Kleingattungen nicht unnötig formalisieren, … da die literaturtheoretischen Bestimmungen von Autor zu Autor schwanken und die schriftstellerische Praxis sich nicht an die schwach ausgeprägte Literaturtheorie zu halten pflegte.” ²³ V. Taylor, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition: Eight Lectures (2nd ed.; London: Macmillan, 1957), 63–87. ²⁴ For example, cf. R. C. Tannehill, “Varieties of Synoptic Pronouncement Stories,” Semeia 20 (1981): 101–19. The term occurs in the entire Semeia volume, entitled Pronouncement Stories, where the form is analyzed in New Testament and Greek Literature. ²⁵ Aristotle, Rhet. 1395b. ²⁶ D. R. Dudley, A History of Cynicism (2nd ed.; Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2003), 112: “Though the χρεία was not a Cynic invention, it was one of the favourite forms, being introduced into the diatribe and even verse with great frequency. Being short, easily remembered, instructive and yet popular, it was admirably adopted to their needs, and played a large part in education.”

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is presented as a Greek teacher or a philosopher, who can formulate his thought in pithy and concise sayings, in a very different way than a religious leader of Palestine. Another interesting observation on the question of the genre is proposed by Repschinski. He supposes the controversy dialogues are a form of ἀγὼν λόγων. This is a form of disputing, perhaps created as a medium of philosophical discussions by the Sophists, were used in comedies, tragedies, and fables.27 Repschinski finds parallels to the controversy dialogues in the Greek tragedies. He writes: “The opponents of a contest in dialogue engage in a contest over rhetorical art and persuasive argument, but also over the moral weight of their positions.”28 As an example he quotes the contest in dialogue in Euripides’ Electra between Electra and Clytemnestra. For Repschinski, Matthew modified the simple genre he found in Mark on the basis of this literary form of disputing. As a critique to this theory, however, it must be stated that the agon logon is a special form of verbal game, in which two positions and two characters compete for the victory. In these forms, we have a precise presentation of the two views and a clear sequence of the events. Normally, the first character is the one who loses the game. In these texts, a neutral observer is always mentioned who has the function of judging the game and declaring the winner. In the controversy dialogues we can surely find elements of inimical disputing and a fierce competition. However, the Jerusalem controversy stories are, as in Mark, more than simple apophthegms, since they are contain elements of dialectic. In Mark 11:27–33 the dialogue ends with an unsolved paradox and not with a saying of Jesus. In comparison to the form of agon logon, the controversy dialogues do not represent a match of equals. The description of the opponents of Jesus is not at all accurate. They more generally resemble the characteristics of the apophthegms, where just one character is at the center of the scene. The apophthegms are composed to portray Jesus as a very wise teacher, at the costs of his adversaries.

4. Mark’s Use of Conflict Dialogues With these observations, I come to another point of my research – the polemical meaning of the conflict dialogues. As I have already indicated, apophthegms are not especially argumentative compositions. Their function, because of their brevity, is to present the wonderful wisdom and value of a person. Wisdom is the quality of concise formulations that cannot be contradicted. A proper polemical debate would need an exposition of the opponent’s arguments and a detailed confutation of their content. In the conflict dialogues, as in the Greek ²⁷ A complete presentation of this form in the whole of Greek literature is offered by W. J. Froleyks, Der ΑΓΩΝ ΛΟΓΩΝ in der antiken Literatur (Ph. D. diss., University of Bonn, 1973). ²⁸ Repschinski, Controversy Stories, 285.

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apophthegms, the characterization of the opponents is vague. They are simply identified with a group of persons. There is no place for a detailed description of their positions. The opponents are clearly represented as adversaries of Jesus. Already in the first debate of the Galilean collection of conflict dialogues in Mark 2:7, Jesus is accused of blasphemy by the Pharisees and the Sadducees. This is the same accusation that is formulated by the Sanhedrin in Mark 14:64. In Mark 3:6 there is a clearer link between this conflict and the death of Jesus, because after the dialogue the Pharisees and the Herodians deliberate to kill him. Although there is generally no polemical argumentation, it is clear that these conflict dialogues have a connection with Jesus’ death. This means, of course, that the religious authorities are seen as responsible for his death. The true purpose is, nevertheless, not just to represent the inimical behavior of the Jews toward Jesus. The point is, on the contrary, the delineation of a very clear paradigm in the ancient world. Jesus as the teacher and philosopher encounters the resistance and the opposition of the establishment. The purpose of this polemical setting is not primarily to represent the aggression of the Jewish religion, but to contribute to a biographical perspective of the figure of Jesus. He is like many philosophers unjustly condemned and put to death despite any convicting evidence. It was known in antiquity that a philosopher, as Canfora says, had a very “dangerous profession.”29 These small narrative sketches seem to respond indeed to the accusation that Jesus, as a crucified man, was a criminal, and that he practiced many suspicious arts like sorcery. Jesus’ death on the cross was an object of prejudice and scandal in GrecoRoman society and it was inconceivable that the son of God had to die in this ignominious way. The polemic against the cross can be seen in the Pauline letters as background of his theology of the cross. In 1 Cor 1:18–25, the cross is said to be a scandal to the Jew and foolishness to the Greek. The Jewish accusation of a curse against the one who is hanged on a post in Deut 21:23, used probably against Christian claims for Jesus, is discussed by Paul in Gal 3:13b. And a clear defense from the accusation of sorcery can be seen in the Beelzebul debate, and I also would suggest in the Temptation. Jesus is not a servant of the devil, but his opponent. These two themes are discussed in detail by the Apologists. In my opinion, this apologetic effort begins in force after the Jewish war. The Christians no longer have to speak about their Lord through a contrastive theology of the cross. They must also try to differentiate themselves and their founder from the original violent Palestinian context. Jesus is presented as a philosopher. He is thus presented by the apophthegm, and the whole story of the Gospel reveals that his destiny similar to that of a philosopher, such as Socrates. Socrates was condemned unjustly and accused of teaching against the official religion and the gods. He was rejected by his city. ²⁹ L. Canfora, Un mestiere pericoloso. La vita quotidiana dei filosofi greci (Palermo: Sellerio, 2000).

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The sub-genre of the conflict dialogue is combined with plot of the larger gospel genre. Narrative unity is reached through the prediction of the passion of Jesus. This is not only a narrative anticipation of the passion, but it is also a sort of summary of the narration. It seems to be an allusion to the famous saying in Plato’s Republic on the destiny of the righteous one. Through this reference to Socrates the passion of the suffering servant from Isaiah 53 can be explained successfully to pagan readers: “The righteous one will be flagellated, tortured, bound, blinded in both eyes, and lastly after he endures every bitter suffering, he will be crucified (or, literally, hanged).”30 As a proper philosopher, Jesus addresses his opponents with controlled and non-aggressive language. In Mark 3:4, Jesus becomes angry because of the hardness of their hearts, but he does not resort to invective. Only in Mark 7 does Jesus call the Pharisees hypocrites. This non-aggressive disposition of Jesus corresponds to the speech ethics of the times. One’s attitude in speaking is an important issue in philosophy in the first and the second centuries. We find that particular attention is paid to speech in other passages of the New Testament, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount, in the Letter of James, in 1 Peter, and in the Letter of Jude. In the Christological Hymn in 1 Pet 2:23 the figure of Jesus as the suffering servant is described as non-aggressive with these words: “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” After the Jewish war, it was important for Christians to portray their founder as a non-violent philosopher, and not to describe him as an apocalyptic prophet. Josephus does the same with several religious groups in Palestine, and he depicts them as philosophical schools that seek an answer for the last destiny of man.31 So, it is possible to explain why the Roman centurion calls Jesus a son of God (Mark 15:39), a riddle that continues to puzzle exegetes. The scene with the centurion before Jesus on the cross is not an ironic scene as some exegetes try to demonstrate. Mark puts forward in his Gospel a figure of Jesus that also pagan readers can accept with respect. Jesus is not a criminal, but a teacher who reveals divine wisdom in his person. In the second group of controversy dialogues set in Jerusalem, the theme is much more concrete, was we see in the questions raised by Jesus’ opponents regarding his authority and its political implication. Mark wants to differentiate Jesus’ authority from the messianic prophets, who incited the people through signs and wonders not to pay the tributes and to make a revolt against Roman rule in Palestine. This is the reason why in the Gospel of Mark Jesus is not called a prophet,32 and this description is always corrected. Jesus speaks like a philoso³⁰ Plato, Rep. 361e. On this argument, cf. the essay by E. Benz, Der gekreuzigte Gerechte bei Plato, im Neuen Testament und in der alten Kirche (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1950). ³¹ Josephus, B.J. 2.119–166 and A. J. 18.11–25. ³² The only passage in which Jesus, indirectly, is called a prophet is Mark 6:4.

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pher. This is what the people see; nevertheless, Jesus’ authority is that of the Son of God.

5. Matthew’s Polemic and the Conflict Dialogues I come now to the question of the polemic in Matthew, which I raised at the beginning. Repschinski considers the Matthean redaction of the conflict stories a particularly anti-Jewish polemic. He tries to demonstrate that Matthew shapes the Markan texts into a form of verbal contest, the agon logon. Actually, Matthew seems to make only some stylistic corrections to the apophthegms. Some texts are shortened (like Matthew 15) and others are rewritten in a clearer dialogical form. These corrections are not sufficient to suppose the use of a new literary genre such as an agon logon, as Repschinski does, because the basic elements of this genre are missing. The only substantial correction is the disappearance of a friendly scribe (Mark 12:28–34)33 in Matt 22:34–40. It is not possible for Matthew that a lawyer (νομικόϚ) could give a friendly answer to Jesus; on the contrary he wants to tempt him. The controversy dialogues in Mark are polemical in their very nature. Jesus is unjustly accused and condemned to death by the religious authorities. It is also important to observe that Matthew maintains Jesus’ non-aggressive attitude in speaking, and stresses it with a quotation from Isaiah: “Behold, my servant, whom I have chosen … he shall not strive, nor cry, neither shall any hear his voice in the streets” (42:1–4). And some verses later: “But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (12:36–37). The importance of Matthew’s speech ethics is expressed in the Sermon on the Mount and gives a new definition of radical observance. In the first antithesis (5:21–23) Jesus equates anger and insult against a brother with murder. In the fourth antithesis on the oath (5:33–37), he prohibits swearing in any case, in order to ensure that each utterance be taken as either affirmative or negative, without recurrence to other forms of assurance. For prayer too, the difference with the pagans lies in the attitude to speech. In Matt 6:7 it is said: “And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.” This position on the ethics of speech is the rea³³ This passage cannot reduce the polemical content of the controversy stories in Mark. It is, moreover, an exception that proves the rule. The Markan redaction of 12:34 confirms that Jesus’ fairness in disputing was judged as a further problem. In my opinion two are the focus of this passage. First, Jesus has no heretical position on the central articles of faith. This contradicts the accusation in the debate about Beelzebul that Jesus makes miracles with the help of the devil. Socrates was accused as well of introducing new divinities in Athens. Second, Jesus adheres to a speech ethic and is fair in disputing. He can admit when his adversary is right.

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son why Matthew doesn’t reproduce in this context the recommendations to pray with insistence and incessantly that probably in Q were linked with prayer, as we can see in Luke 11:8–13. We find these verses in Matt 7:7–11 in a context of general exhortation before the Golden Rule. The importance of speech ethics for Matthew makes the question of the woes in Matthew 23 much more urgent. Is it possible that Matthew was unaware of a contradiction between the ethical rules and the aggressive condemnation of Scribes and Pharisees? An answer to this question cannot be the one proposed by L. T. Johnson,34 who considers the anti-Jewish polemic in Matthew quite mild in comparison with the excesses of invective in the philosophical and religious polemic of the time.35 Jesus is a figure who of course should be exemplary. The solution to this question can be found in some redactional elements in Matthew. There is but another difference to those already mentioned: in contradistinction to the Markan text, the episode about David and the showbread is correctly described, without the mistake about the chief priest. Matthew tries to justify the quotation of this passage that has nothing to do with the Sabbath, adding these words: “Or have you not read in the law, that on the Sabbath day the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are guiltless?” Then he follows a pronouncement of Jesus regarding the temple in 12:6, and we read: “But I say unto you that in this place is something greater36 than the temple.” After this saying, we read for the second time a quotation of Hos 6:6. The theme of the temple returns again in Matthew 23 in some of the woes. Jesus condemns swearing on the temple and on the gold of the temple and swearing on the offerings. The temple is greater than the gold and the altar greater than the offering, but “here is something greater than the temple.”37 The temple was destroyed in the time of Matthew. G. Theißen points out that the same quotation of Hos 6:6, which in Matthew is twice cited (9:13 and 12:7), was used by Johanan ben Zakkai in order to comfort the people after the catastrophe of the Jewish war.38 The absence of the temple is not very dramatic, ³⁴ L. T. Johnson, “The New Testament’s Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic,” JBL 108 (1989): 419–41. ³⁵ Johnson, “Anti-Jewish Slander,” 441: “by the measure of Hellenistic conventions, and certainly by the measure of contemporary Jewish polemic, the NT’s slander against fellow Jews is remarkably mild.” ³⁶ U. Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: 2. Teilband, Mt 8–17 (Zürich: Benziger, 1990), 231, is right to remark that this saying could not be christologically interpreted because of the neutral form μεῖζον. He writes: “Das, was größer ist als der Tempel, ist also die Barmherzigkeit, die in Jesu Auslegung des Willens Gottes das Größte geworden ist.” It must be said that the meaning of “mercy” (like that of “righteousness”) for Matthew is clearly legalistic and not equivalent to the Pauline sense of “grace.” The believer must be righteous and receive mercy through doing merciful works or deeds. ³⁷ Matt 12:6: λέγω δὲ ὑμῖν ὅτι τοῦ ἱεροῦ μεῖζόν ἐστιν ὧδε. ³⁸ G. Theißen, Das Neue Testament (München: C. H. Beck, 2002), 73, and Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus II, 44 n. 38.

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because according to the prophet Hosea, God wants mercy and not sacrifices; the people no longer need the temple. Matthew seems to put the same message into the mouth of Jesus. Jesus wants to comfort the people as well, and he wants to reproach the generation that was responsible for the temple’s destruction. Matthew takes the conflict dialogues to depict the opposition of that generation against Jesus. In Matt 21:46 we read: “But when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude.” Then Matthew has an important note that we do not find in Mark: “because they took him for a prophet.” Taking the rich material from Q, Matthew depicts a figure of Jesus more as a prophet than as a philosopher. It is the duty of a prophet to utter God’s judgment to his people. The aggressive woes in Matthew 23 are of a prophetic genre. Jesus is presented by Matthew as a prophet who condemns the generation responsible for the catastrophe of the war. In a Jewish context, this is not aggressive language that would contradict the rigid speech ethic in the Sermon on the Mount. It is expected that a prophet will speak dramatically and denunciate injustice. Matthew presents a reflection on the situation of Judaism in his time. The death of Jesus represents the beginning of the destruction. He intends to consider the destruction from the perspective of the teaching of Jesus and his death, and in so doing, he participates in the internal discussion, intra muros, of the new definition of the Jewish religion after the Jewish war. The prophetic words of Matthew 23 are a call to conversion; Christianity presents itself as the true form of Judaism in the debate after the crisis.

6. Conclusions From the point of view offered by the controversy dialogue a polemic between Jesus and Jewish authorities is depicted. Both Gospels, Mark and Matthew, want to show the aggression of the Jewish religious leaders against Jesus as the reason for his death on the cross. Both Gospels delineate a speech ethic as a normative principle through which Jesus appears as vir bonus in the debate. Matthew develops this ethics of speaking, radicalizing it as a proper normative teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount that must be observed by Christians. The difference is in the purpose and the setting of the two Gospels. Mark intends to write an apology of Jesus in a pagan context. Jesus is a non-aggressive teacher who will as δίκαιοϚ be unjustly condemned to death. In this apology, Mark wants to demonstrate that the Christians (and their leader) have nothing in common with the Jewish rebels. Matthew writes in a Jewish context. Jesus is a prophet who preached the very meaning of the Jewish law and called to repentance those responsible for the temple’s destruction. Matthew proposes Jesus’ teaching as the way forward in the Jewish internal search for a new identity. Jesus had prophesied the destruc-

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tion and paid with his death, but he had also offered the solution – to attend to a religion of mercy and not of sacrifices. In this religion, the past generation lived around the temple and from the temple and were severely rebuked by Jesus because their conduct was no longer viable.

The Representation of Violence in Synoptic Parables John S. Kloppenborg “Mythical violence in its archetypal form is a mere manifestation of the gods. Not a means to their ends, scarcely a manifestation of their will, but first of all a manifestation of their existence” – Walter Benjamin1

The early Jesus movement is often supposed to have been a force for peace-making and nonviolence in the violent world of Mediterranean antiquity. Yet an examination of the discourse of the Jesus movement shows that it was quite prepared to use violent metaphors and to imagine actions effected on its behalf – in some instances quite appalling violence.2 Some of the violent language of the Synoptics comes from the repertoire of apocalyptic images associated with the final judgment – burning and torture – but violent images can be found in other contexts as well. The term “violence” is of course problematic, since violence is always socially constructed. What in one society or in one social register is regarded as the justifiable application of force in the pursuit of some legitimate end might in another society or social register be viewed as unwarranted violence. The violence inflicted on a Roman slave, for example, was likely regarded by the owner as entirely appropriate use of property (res) or as simple discipline. The difference between δύναμιϚ or ἐξουσία and ὕβριϚ or βία is a matter of perspective, for both the ancient reporter and the modern interpreter. The term “force” is perhaps a more neutral designation for what one party might call authority and power, and another might regard as violence.

¹ “Critique of Violence,” in W. Benjamin, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913–1926 (ed. M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings; Cambridge: Belknap, 1996), 248. ² See K. Berger, “Der ‘brutale’ Jesus: Gewaltsames in Wirken und Verkündigung Jesu,” BK 51 (1996): 119–27. Violent language in the Apocalypse has often embarrassed interpreters. B. R. Rossing, “Apocalyptic Violence and Politics: End-Time Fiction for Jews and Christians,” in Contesting Texts: Jews and Christians in Conversation about the Bible (ed. M. D. Knowles et al.; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 67–77, insists that the violent images in the Apocalypse (esp. ch. 19) do not underwrite or authorize violence today. Instead, the author of the Apocalypse stands against violence and domination in his use of the image of a slain lamb. For a more historically-nuanced approach, see A. Yarbro Collins, “Persecution and Vengeance in the Book of Revelation,” in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East: Proceedings of the International Colloquium on Apocalypticism (ed. D. Hellholm; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983), 729–49.

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1. Force and Violence in the Ancient Mediterranean Displays of force were ubiquitous in ancient society, military force being only its most obvious manifestation. Ancient Mediterranean states were founded on military force and maintained through the readiness to use force where needed. Martin Zimmermann observes a propos of the Romans that the merciless, unrestrained application of violence, victoriousness, and the cruel consequences for the subjugated barbarians … were taken for granted by the Romans as a way of representing sovereignty and power and its positive corollary, security and order within the Empire. Economic prosperity was due to the pax romana, whose foundation was an uncompromising readiness to exercise physical violence.3

The application of force was hardly restricted to the institution of the military, however. It was witnessed in interpersonal relationships. The articulation of status hierarchies was effected through the exercise or threat of force. Honor was gained and friendships maintained not only by helping friends but by harming enemies.4 Even rhetorical speech was conceived as a form of violence.5 In his advice on the construction of compelling speech, the author of the Rhetorica ad Herrenium recommends not only using images of striking beauty or strong comic images, but deliberately to conjure fear and loathing with scenes of violence, appealing to “one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking” (3.22.37). Violence and representations of violence were simply part of the fabric of life. Force was involved even in the concept of ownership. While modern concepts of ownership focus on the owner’s rights to possess, use, and dispose of a thing, undergirded by such institutions as land registries and courts with bailiffs to enforce decisions concerning ownership, Greek and Roman conceptions of ownership involved having the force required to maintain possession and to repel hostile claims.6 Andrew Lintott describes this as an aristocratic conception of right: “rights are essentially rights of possession which were originally acquired by force and will therefore in the end have to be defended by force.”7 The long history of Roman interdicts de vi (concerning violence) shows how

³ M. Zimmermann, “Violence in Late Antiquity Reconsidered,” in Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices (ed. H. A. Drake; Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 347. ⁴ M. W. Blundell, Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). ⁵ D. E. O’Regan, Rhetoric, Comedy, and the Violence of Language in Aristophenes’ Clouds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). ⁶ Both Greek and Roman law observed a distinction between full ownership (κτῆσιϚ, dominium) and the right to exploit the land (χρῆσιϚ, possessio), the latter acquired by sale or by occupation and use (usucapio). This distinction created room for contests over possession, often involving the use of force. ⁷ A. W. Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), 30.

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deeply ingrained the expression of force was in matters having to do with property.8

2. Violent Gods and Heroes Given the ubiquitous nature of displays of force, it is inevitable that the literature of the Jesus movement would display a wide array of violent images. I leave aside the obvious and explicit narratives of violence visited upon various persons by the ruling elite – the beheading of John, the execution of Jesus and such reports of violence as the legend of Herod’s killing of the children (Matt 2:16–18) or the report of Pilate’s killing of pilgrims (Luke 13:1). Instead, I wish to focus on metaphors and representations of violence in parables of Jesus where God is represented as the agent of violence or where Jesus is depicted as one who acts with overpowering force. I focus on the parables for two reasons. First, the parables of Jesus, whatever else they might be, begin as generally realistic narratives. They offer a lexicon of ordinary ancient phenomena, including the dangers of travel, tensions between brothers over inheritance, the operation of vineyards, the management of households, housebreaking, and banditry. In his influential book, The Parables of the Kingdom, C. H. Dodd observed that Jesus’ parables provided a singularly complete and convincing picture … of life in a small provincial town – probably a more complete picture of petit-bourgeois and peasant life than we possess for any other province of the Roman empire except Egypt, where papyri come to our aid.9

As generally realistic discourse the parables also include a number of instances of the application of force. Such force is applied not only by negatively-marked characters – for example, the bandits of Luke 10:29–35 – but also by characters who are positively coded: the estate owner in Q 12:42–45 who kills a disloyal slave, the nobleman of Luke’s story of Entrusted Money, who slaughters his opponents, and the owner of the vineyard in Mark’s parable of the Tenants (Mark 12:1–9), who slaughters his tenants. The second reason for focusing on the parables has to do with their plastic quality. As the history of interpretation confirms, the parables were subject to a wide variety of applications and developments. Stories that began in a highly realistic vein – Q’s parable of the Banquet, for example – became in Matthew a transparent allegory of salvation history. The artificial and unnatural actions included in Matthew’s narrative make clear to the auditor that the writer is not describing a banquet at all and the representation of realistic banqueting practices is almost entirely lost. ⁸ B. W. Frier, “Urban Praetors and Rural Violence,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 113 (1983): 221–41; Lintott, Violence, 128–30. ⁹ C. H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom (rev. ed.; London: James Nisbet, 1961), 10.

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It is the combination of highly realistic and patently non-realistic elements in the parables to which I would like to draw attention. On the one hand, some of the metaphors applied to God or Jesus or to other agents of the kingdom presuppose and appeal to the quotidian force that was simply part of the fabric of Mediterranean life. On the other, at crucial points the parables resort to what I will call “imaginary violence” – actions which cannot realistically be believed of human agents and can only be ascribed to the gods. As we track the development of Synoptic discourse, these resorts become more plentiful and discourse that was once anchored to realistic scenarios of force is increasingly disconnected from those realistic bases. Drawing a line between real and imaginary violence is not a simple matter, since the modern interpreter is far removed from what was and was not possible in the ancient world. Sometimes interpreters substitute what they believe must have been the case for a careful analysis of actual patterns of social exchange, either imagining a legal free-for-all, with the élite regularly terrorizing nonelite persons, or positing a much more law-abiding society than was likely the case. In order to discipline our imaginations, we must attend to the examples of actual force that are documented in literary and especially documentary (non-literary) sources. This will provide a better index of when the threshold between real and imaginary violence has been crossed. Interpreters are sometimes troubled by the way in which lethal force is apportioned within the Synoptic parables. While the Synoptic Jesus enjoins a generally nonviolent ethic, his stories are peppered with examples of appalling cruelty. In a recent article Barbara Reid has confronted the seeming anomaly in Matthew produced by Matthew’s advocacy of nonviolence in the Sermon on the Mount and its juxtaposition with images of a violent deity in his parables.10 She begins by rejecting certain ways to resolve the anomaly: (a) that Matthew has combined conflicting strands of tradition which depict God in conflicting ways, either not noticing the conflicts or not bothering to resolve them; (b) that the images of a violent and a gracious deity were intended to illustrate, respectively, lower and higher forms of morality; and (c) that the images of violent males in the parables should not be associated with God at all. The latter two solutions, according to Reid, are hardly viable. Matthew provides the reader with no guide to sort the various depictions of God into higher and lower moral forms, and in fact the narrative train of Matthew places the most violent images towards the conclusion of his narrative. And given Matthew’s unpacking of the allegorical stories of the Planted Weeds (Matt 13:46–43) and the Unmerciful Servant (18:23–35) – one could add the obvious interpretations of the Tenants (Matt 21:33–46) and the Banquet (22:1–14) – it is impossible to deny that Matthew identifies God as an agent of astonishing violence.11 ¹⁰ B. E. Reid, “Violent Endings in Matthew’s Parables and Christian Nonviolence,” CBQ 66 (2004): 237–55. ¹¹ Reid, “Violent Endings,” 250–2.

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Reid’s resolution is to distinguish sharply between the nonviolence mandated for Jesus’ disciples in the here and now and the violent eschatological action of the deity in effecting judgment: The final separation of good and evil depicted in violent ways in the eight parables takes place in the end-time, and is to be done by God, not by human beings. The problem is that all too often Christians are tempted to apply this end-time separation of evildoers and righteous ones to the present.12

As the final sentence makes clear, Reid’s interest is at least in part in the contemporary application of biblical texts and it is for this reason, presumably, that she also rejects the first solution – Matthew’s incorporation of multiple conflicting strands of tradition – because Matthew provides no metric for how the modern theologically-engaged reader might distinguish one strand of tradition from another and choose to emulate only one strand.13 A partially parallel situation exists in the texts of Qumran, which were prepared to imagine horrific violence perpetrated by the angels upon the unjust: And the visitation of all those who walk in [the spirit of deceit] will be for an abundance of afflictions at the hands of all the angels of destruction, for eternal damnation by the scorching wrath of the God of revenges, for permanent terror and shame without end with the humiliation of destruction by the fire of the dark region. And all the ages of their generations (they shall spend) in bitter weeping and harsh evils in the abysses of darkness until their destruction, without there being a remnant or a survivor for them. (1QS IV 11–14)14

1QM imagines a great eschatological battle in which the congregation participates and which ends with the annihilation of the forces of “Sons of Darkness.”15 Yet this fantasy of violence appears restricted to the end times. Raija Sollamo has argued that the dualism adopted in 1QM was intolerant in nature, but still nonviolent in practice, except for the eschatological battle. For this dualism no compromise was allowed. With the representatives of darkness and evil, the sons of Belial, the Prince of Darkness, one must not negotiate; they must be destroyed …. It was impossible for a small group, like the Qumran community, to destroy its enemies, the Sons of Darkness, who comprised the majority of the human race, nor was revenge allowed to individuals (1QS 7.9). The solution was to turn the final decision into an eschatological battle where divine and angelic hosts, led by archangel Michael, would secure victory for the Sons of Light.16 ¹² Reid, “Violent Endings,” 253. ¹³ See the comments of J. J. Collins, “The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation

of Violence,” JBL 122 (2003): 19, who is critical of such selective readings of the Bible: “In short, violence is not the only model of behavior on offer in the Bible, but it is not an incidental or peripheral feature, and it cannot be glossed over.” ¹⁴ Translation: F. García Martínez and E. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1997–1998), 1:77. ¹⁵ See, e. g., 1QM I 5, 10, 15, 16; III 9; IV 12; IX 5–7; XI 7, 11; XII 5; XIII 11, 13; XIV 5; XV 2; XVIII 5. Similar statements may be found in other Qumran texts. ¹⁶ R. Sollamo, “War and Violence in the Ideology of the Qumran Community,” in Verbum et Calamus: Semitic and Related Studies in Honour of the Sixtieth Birthday of Professor Tapani

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In accord with the apocalyptic idiom of many Qumran texts, the faithful expected to endure hardships as the End approaches but not to seek revenge themselves. Sollamo continues: “Apocalyptic imagination concerning these hardships was full of violence and the use of force, but it is never permissible for the faithful ones to participate in violent activities or to resort to force (cf. 1QS VII 9). They have to suffer and wait until God intervenes.”17 The text to which Sollamo repeatedly points, 1QS VII 9, indeed prohibits retaliation. But this prohibition occurs in a section of Serek haYahad containing rules regulating the behavior of community members. It prohibits retaliation against fellow members, not against outsiders. Thus, we might have a rough analogy to Matthew, who enjoins the forgiveness and reconciliation of community members, and prohibits anger and vengeance, but is quite prepared to imagine the torture and killing of the unfaithful in eschatological contexts. Reid’s solution of distinguishing sharply between present behavior and the representation of the End, where scenes of violence are freely elaborated, is not entirely adequate to the Synoptics, however. It ignores, for example, the violence done on behalf of the Jesus people that is not restricted to the End: the destruction of demons, and especially parabolic discourse that reflects on divine violence in causing the destruction of Jerusalem. There is perhaps another way to consider the distinction that is witnessed in the Synoptics and at Qumran. In a recent article Tonio Hölscher examines the visual depictions of war in Greek and Roman sources. Important differences may be observed in the representation of archaic Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman battles which likely correspond to differences in the ideologies of conflict as well as differences in technologies, battle strategies, and in the organization of fighting units.18 But in depictions of battles in archaic Greece, Hölscher makes a noteworthy observation. When picturing hoplite battles the constant focus is on the virtues of the manliness and bravery of the soldier, who typically strides forward, spear raised. Harviainen (ed. H. Juusola, J. Laulainen, and H. Plava; Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 2004 [http://www.nnqs.org/sollamo.html]), 341–52. ¹⁷ Sollamo, “War and Violence.” ¹⁸ T. Hölscher, “Images of War in Greece and Rome: Between Military Practice, Public Memory, and Cultural Symbolism,” Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003): 4–12. Archaic Greek battles are represented as contests between two warriors; Hellenistic forms depict two armies, distinguishable on the basis of clothing and weaponry, facing each other; and Roman reliefs present armies in coherent group formations. Archaic Greek images idealize the warrior’s (frequently naked) body, often depicting it in accordance with heroic and athletic ideals; in Hellenistic representations the athletic ideal waned, and in Roman depictions heavily armored legionaries might be juxtaposed with naked barbarian soldiers. In archaic Greek forms the enemy is not dehumanized and in many cases the two combatants look alike; the image of the “ferocious uncivilized Gaul” makes its appearance during the Hellenistic period (p. 10); and in Roman reliefs the German enemy is depicted both as uncivilized and as bold (and therefore useful for certain roles). The oriental enemy, by contrast, is pictured as effeminate and weakened by luxury.

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Vanquished opponents on the other hand, are depicted in the most varied postures – fleeing, kneeling, couching, and lying stretched-out on the ground. The weapons of victorious warriors often do not even hurt their opponents: defeat is represented by posture.19

By contrast, representations of mythological battles are filled with scenes of great cruelty. The war against the Amazons shows Achilles and Herakles killing Amazons;20 a favorite image is Achilles’ notorious ambush and killing of the young Trojan prince Troilos and the desecration of his body.21 Other images include Achilles’ desecration of Hector’s corpse by dragging it behind his chariot in front of the Trojan lines, and Ajax’s rape of Cassandra in the sanctuary of Athena. These provide graphic pictures of terrible and unparalleled cruelty. Of course terrible violence and cruelty were part of actual hoplite warfare. But, Hölscher observes, in such images of fury, a wild and dangerous aspect of warfare, which was nevertheless considered an essential part of heroic conduct, was transferred to the realm of myth. From these mythological images, we can see more clearly that images of contemporary fighting were consciously focused on other values – that is, on the values and norms that resulted from the manifold political and social interconnections between the elites of the poleis of archaic Greece.22

The parsing of the representation of force and the displacement of savagery onto the gods and mythological heroes created in archaic Greek representations the space for other less lethal virtues such as manliness and courage in the depiction of contemporary soldiers. This differential apportioning of cruelty and bravery allowed “positive” virtues to be emphasized for the warriors, who in fact were drawn from the same social classes throughout Greece. The contemporary human opponent was neither dehumanized nor his corpse desecrated; he was merely bested. In the next battle, after all, the forces of victory could be reversed, and at other times, these erstwhile opponents would form alliances and treat each other as friends and peers. Cruelty and humiliation belonged to heroes and gods. This way of parsing the roles of gods and humans in displays of lethal force was certainly not the only one available. Roman depictions of battles – for example, the column of Marcus Aurelius – shows legionaries hacking the vanquished and beheading prisoners while the Emperor, mounted and majestic, grants clemency to suppliants.23 In the Gemma Augustea, the upper panel shows the gods – ¹⁹ Hölscher, “Images of War,” 11 (emphasis added). ²⁰ Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae (LIMC) (Publié par la Fondation pour le

lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae; Zürich: Artemis, 1981–1999), I/2 Amazones, nos. 2–3, 7 (Achilles), 8, 16ab, 18, 26 (Herakles). ²¹ LIMC I/1 Achle, no. 19–90. ²² Hölscher, “Images of War,” 9–10 (emphasis added). ²³ K. R. Bradley, “On Captives under the Principate,” Phoenix 58 (2004): 298–318, plates 4, 8. Trajan’s column shows the emperor being presented with the heads of the Dacians killed (Hölscher, “Images of War,” plate II, 1–2).

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Oikoumene, Oceanus or Neptune, Italia, Roma and the eagle of Jupiter – surrounding the seated and wreathed Augustus in a display of triumph, harmony, and majesty. The lower panel has soldiers with bound and humiliated prisoners, one being dragged by the hair.24 In other representations, actual violence was deliberately mythologized, as sometimes occurred in the amphitheatre when criminals and prisoners were brutally executed by having them reenact scenes such as the immolation of Herakles, the castration of Attis, or the punishment of Prometheus.25 But such instances of conflation could not occur without the existence of a conceptual distinction between the “ordinary” violence of humans and the extraordinary violence of gods and heroes. The point here is to observe that the Synoptic Gospels’ allocation of lethal displays to one party and other virtues to other parties is neither singular nor unique. Nor is it entirely correct to suggest, with Reid, that the fault line lies with eschatology, as we shall see. Matthew and probably Mark are both able to imagine terrible violence purveyed by the deity in historical time. The fault line, instead, falls between deities and their agents, who are able to act with extreme force and cruelty, and humans who are enjoined to express more humane virtues. The figure of Jesus is a transitional figure: Markan metaphors ascribe to him the power to torture and destroy demons, much as a Roman legate, but stop short of ascribing lethal force in relation to humans. The Sayings Gospel Q employs generally realistic metaphors when it ascribes force to Jesus, even lethal force. Yet at one key point Q casts Jesus in the role of one who tortures and kills a slave. In Matthew the volume of “imaginary violence” increases substantially and lethal force is imagined to apply not only against opponents of the Jesus movement but against its own underperforming partisans.

3. Violence, Realistic and Imaginary in Mark Mark includes a variety of instances of the threat or actual application of force. Most of these are invoked in relation to Jesus’ role as an exorcist, and the force that he is imagined to wield is in relation to the demonic world. In contrast to Q’s reference to ὁ ἐρχόμενοϚ, John’s coming figure in Mark is called ὁ ἰσχυρότερόϚ (1:7), emphasizing the overwhelming power of Jesus as the Son of God. Adela Collins is right to observe that Jesus’ designation as “the one stronger than I” evokes connotations of the divine warrior and his (royal) messiah or another agent in battle.26 This of course coheres with a tissue of Markan elements. At 1:24 Jesus is expected to “destroy” (ἀπολέσαι) an unclean spirit, which reacts to Jesus’ command by “mauling” or “convulsing” (σπαράσσειν) the ²⁴ Bradley, “Captives,” 298 and plate 2. ²⁵ See K. M. Coleman, “Fatal Charades: Roman Execution Staged as Mythological Enact-

ments,” Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990): 60–70. ²⁶ A. Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 146.

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victim violently, an image not unlike the destructive panic and agony of the defeated depicted in Hellenistic and Roman battle reliefs.27 Josephus paints just such a picture of the “bandit” defenders of Jerusalem. When they saw that Titus made a show that they were in his hands, “like dogs they mauled (ὥσπερ κύνεϚ ἐσπάραττον) the corpse of the people and filled the prisons with the enfeebled” (B.J. 5.526). The request of the Gerasene demon to be spared “torture” (5:7) and instead to be put into a herd of swine evokes battle imagery where the triumphant commander is able to inflict a painful death on the vanquished, or to offer them a swift death. The notion of superior strength, again in the context of besting the demonic world, is found in the parabolic aphorism of Mark 3:27: “No one is able to invade the house of the strong man (τοῦ ἰσχυροῦ) to steal his goods (τὰ σκεύη αὐτοῦ διαρπάσαι) unless first he binds the strong man.”28 Although this saying is used to illustrate Mark’s argument that it is illogical to suppose that Jesus exorcizes demons by the power of Beelzebul, the aphorism itself draws for its metaphors on realistic scenarios of housebreaking, home invasion, and conflicts over property. The tales of housebreaking related by Apuleius presuppose that if the owner is at home, a vastly superior force is required to assail the house. Entry into the house must be secured either by subterfuge or by breaking or dislodging a heavily bolted door,29 and then by overpowering the guards and other domestic servants. Apuleius tells of armed thieves able to hold back the household defenders with threats of force (Met. 3.28), or by killing the defenders outright (4.18), or of one thief getting his compatriots drunk or drugged so that he could bind them and take their spoils (7.12). Apuleius’s novel of course contains fantastic elements. The papyrus record, however, attests cases of conflict over property where force is involved. BGU VIII 1821 (Herakleopolites; after 1 Jan. 57 B. C. E.) is a complaint by Hadastes, a military settler and a minor official in the nome, who had been imprisoned – without cause, he claims – and then his seed grain confiscated by the tax collector (λογευτήϚ). προχειρισάμενοϚ ἩράκλειοϚ 15 ὁ λογευτὴϚ τῆϚ ΣώβθεωϚ ὑπηρέταϚ νομαρχικουϚ τραξεσ καὶ ἀγωγήν μου ποιησάμενοι τά τε σπέρματα διαρπάσαντεϚ κατακλείσαντέϚ με ἐμοῦ …. ²⁷ Hölscher, “Images of War,” plate IV, 2. ²⁸ Collins, Mark, 233 points to T. Levi 18:12 where the eschatological priest binds Beliar:

“and Beliar will be bound by him” (καὶ ὁ Βελίαρ δεθήσεται ὑπ αὐτοῦ). ²⁹ Apuleius (Met. 4.10) mentions “moving the door” (sublevare), lifting it from its hinges (dimovere), or breaking it (perfringere) and 4.16 has a scenario of gaining entry through forged letters of introduction.

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Herakleios the tax collector of Sobthis assigned some servants of the nomarch and arrested me and seized my seed, imprisoning me.

Herakleios’ ability to seize Hadastes’ grain depended upon his access to physical constraint, since Hadastes was also an official with some access to power – he claims to be the administrator the public accounts (ἐκλογιστεία) of the nome. This papyrus illustrates how the application of force was a common measure in contests over property. In Mark’s example it is important to keep in mind that it is not merely a matter of the theft of property of some householder, but of the local strongman (τοῦ ἰσχυροῦ) who, one must presume, had his own guards and henchmen. The ancient hearer would assume that “the strong man” is strong because he is able and willing to act violently and to employ others to do the same in pursuit of his interests. Thus, Mark 3:27 places Jesus in the role of one who wields even more force than the local don and is able to overpower and disarm him. The metaphor is full of the implications of overwhelming violence. 3.1 The Parable of the Tenants While Mark 1:7 and 1:24 draw realistically on battlefield conduct, and while Mark 3:27 invokes a realistic scenario of the use of physical constraint as a metaphor for Christ’s use of force against the demonic world, the same is not the case with Mark 12:1–9, the conclusion of the parable of the Tenants. There are indeed some realistic representations in the parable, as I have shown elsewhere.30 In particular, the assumption that conflict would arise in a vineyard more readily than in a wheat field or vegetable garden is perfectly realistic given the particularities of ancient viticulture: It was the most heavily capitalized sector of ancient agriculture, requiring a substantial investment in facilities and tools; during the four to five years of initial unproductivity, the vineyard nevertheless required costly maintenance;31 the minimum labor inputs required were significantly higher than for any other crop, and there was a high degree of volatility in the labor required throughout the agricultural cycle;32 a significant social gulf typically existed between the owners of vineyards and their tenant vinedressers, and owners were normally absentees;33 the value of the crop relative to other crops made it an especially appealing target for thieves, and the typical rental structures (requiring between one-half and two-thirds of the crop as rent)34 made it appealing for tenants to try to hide some of the produce, and for landlords to take extraordinary measures to prevent this. ³⁰ J. S. Kloppenborg, The Tenants in the Vineyard Ideology, Economics, and Agrarian Conflict in Jewish Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). ³¹ Kloppenborg, Tenants, 295–7. ³² Kloppenborg, “Agricultural Tenancy,” 33–66. ³³ Kloppenborg, Tenants, 298, 304–5. ³⁴ Kloppenborg, Tenants, 581.

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Hence, numerous instances of conflict are attested in vineyard: the confiscation of crops by the owner’s agents;35 tenants being expelled from their leases;36 late payment or nonpayment of wages and tenants’ threats to abandon the lease if payment is not forthcoming;37 requests from tenants that the owner send more guards lest the crop be stolen;38 violence at harvest time, perhaps from neighbors or the pickers;39 thefts of crops, iron tools, vineshoots, and vine supports, and in some cases, injuries done to a guard trying to prevent the theft;40 interference from tax collectors who could stop the harvest and pressing until the taxes were paid or sureties given;41 and overt acts of aggression – tenants being prevented from entering their vineyards by neighbors,42 deliberate damage to the vines and vineyard equipment by rivals of the owner or by neighbors,43 illegal occupation of vineyards by others and the expulsion of the tenants, normally about harvest time when there was a chance of appropriating the grape harvest and its revenue.44 Of course, tenants did not normally revolt in the course of things or kill their landlord’s agents. The parable here takes literary license. But what Mark 12:1–8 describes is not far from the realm of the realistic. Perhaps events such as that related in Mark 12:1–8 occurred from time to time. A papyrus from the late second or early third century C. E. contains a complaint of an owner of an olive orchard who found two persons harvesting his date palms. When he tried to apprehend them, the interlopers tried to kill him with a pruning knife in order to appropriate his land.45 Surely the ancient reader of Mark 12:1–8 would not register the same shock that some modern readers do when they hear of a story of homicide in a vineyard around harvest time. The ancient reader, understanding the tools of the vinedresser’s trade, would no doubt assume that the killing was done with iron tools – mattocks, hooks, and pruning knives. In sum, the scenario depicted in Mark 12:1–8 (and Gos. Thom. 65) is well within the realm of the imaginable. ³⁵ PSI VI 554 (Zenon archive; III B. C. E.). ³⁶ CPR XVIIA 6 (Hermopolis; III C. E.). ³⁷ P.Zen.Pestm 37; PSI IV 414; PSI IV 421; P.Lond. VII 2061; P.Cair.Zen. III 59317; P.Zen.

Pestm. 52. ³⁸ PSI IV 345; P.Cair.Zen. III 59329; P.Cair.Zen. IV 59610. ³⁹ PSI IV 345. ⁴⁰ P.Mich. I 63–64; P.Gur. 8; CPJ I 14; P.Oxy. XX 2274. ⁴¹ P.Mich. X 601. ⁴² P.Cair.Zen. III 59367. ⁴³ P.Enteux. 65; P.Mich. V 229; SB XVI 12524. ⁴⁴ P.Cair.Zen. IV 59624; P.Oxy. XLIX 3464; P.Cair.Zen. II 59179. ⁴⁵ P.Mich.Michael 11 (Karanis?; 180–210 C. E.): “When I visited] the olive-garden which belongs to me in the plain of Psenarpsenesis of the village of Karanis, I found Satabous, also called Kinkiol, along with his son, harvesting the fruit of the date-palms on the same land. And when I wanted to lay hold of him, desiring to kill(?) me with the pruning-knife(?) that he had and [to appropriate] my [land, he …] (ὡϚ δὴ ἐβουλήθην ἐπιλ[αβ]έσθαι αὐτοῦ, ᾧ εἶχεν δ[ρεπά]νῳ ἐ[μ]ὲ βουλόμε[νοϚ ἀποκτείν]ειν καί μου[—).”

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If Mark 12:1–8 evokes a scenario that at least has the ring of verisimilitude, Mark 12:9 does not. In response to the killing of the only son, the parable puts the question, “What then will the owner of the vineyard do?” It answers immediately, “he will come and will destroy those tenants,” as if this were the obvious conclusion to the story. Indeed many critics, beginning with Dodd, supposed that this is the inevitable conclusion, even though Dodd himself did not think that v. 9b was original to the parable.46 Mark 12:9 in fact makes three assumptions which in no way can be judged realistic or inevitable. First, it takes as self-evident that the owner would move against the tenants in order to dislodge them. But as I have shown elsewhere, in other cases of known take-overs of vineyards, even powerful owners such as Apollonios the dioikētēs of Ptolemy II Philopater did not dare attempt to dislodge the aggressors. Less powerful individuals clearly avoided punitive expeditions for fear of suffering physical injury themselves. Hence, Mark’s assumption is clearly not self-evident to any first-century audience.47 Second, v. 9 assumes that the owner would undoubtedly succeed in recovering his property. Such confidence is plainly unrealistic given actual reports of the illegal occupation of farms and the difficulties that plaintiffs incurred in recovery. For even when one’s claim to ownership was unassailable, it could not be taken for granted that recaption would be smooth or that it would occur at all. The owner would have to be possessed of clearly superior force, since, as the parable makes plain, the tenants were already armed and were prepared to use force themselves in order to retain the vineyard. What is astonishing in v. 9 is its naïve assumption that the owner would succeed, something that no ancient reader of the story could assume.48 And finally, the conclusion to Mark’s story takes for granted that the owner’s resort to self-help was normal and indeed justified, when in fact an analysis of contemporary Roman, Greek, and Greco-Egyptian law shows that self-help of this sort had been criminalized.49 It is not that such resorts to self-help may not have occurred. The point is that Mark 12:9 does not betray the least embarrassment or interest in justifying what in a depiction of actual events was in fact clearly an illegal resort to ⁴⁶ Dodd, Parables, 98, 102. Similarly, B. B. Scott “Essaying the Rock: The Authenticity of the Jesus Parable Tradition,” Forum 2 (1986): 23: “It is also a normal response by a reader – a reader/performer expects a master to punish.” J. E. Newell and R. R. Newell, “The Parable of the Wicked Tenants,” NovT 14 (1972): 236, also argue that the parable ended with v. 9a, but conclude that the question “can have only one answer: It is that the owner will put the tenants to death for their crimes.” ⁴⁷ Kloppenborg, Tenants, 344–5. ⁴⁸ Compare the celebrated case prosecuted by Cicero of the seizure of the farm belonging to Aulus Caecina by Sextus Aebutius and detailed in Pro Caesina. It is far from clear that Cicero’s case won the day, or that Caecina was able to recover his land. On this see B. W. Frier, The Rise of the Roman Jurists: Studies in Cicero’s Pro Caecina (Princeton: Princeton University, 1985). ⁴⁹ Kloppenborg, Tenants, 338–46; A. Schalit, König Herodes: Der Mann und sein Werk (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969), 256.

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force.50 Lease agreements regularly contained a clause permitting the lessor, in the event of default, to expel (ἐκβάλλειν) the lessee from the object of the lease and to re-let it (μεταμισθοῦν) to others.51 They did not permit self-help. What makes v. 9 the “natural” conclusion to the story is its Isaian intertext, introduced in v. 1. Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard (Isa 5:1–7) tells the story of an oddly unsuccessful vineyard and ends with the owner demolishing the wall and allowing it to be trampled and destroyed. Mark’s generally realistic story of a man who encountered problems with his tenants assumes a different cast when it is conflated with or seen to reenact another story, taken from Israelite representations of the actions of the deity. Mark’s adaptation of the ending of Isaiah’s song takes into account the particularities of the parable: It was not a vineyard that had become unproductive but rather the tenants who had robbed the owner of his produce and killed his son.52 Hence, the remedy was not to destroy the vineyard but to destroy the tenants. This deus ex machina ending makes sense only if the reader understands from the allusions to Isa 5:1–2, 5 in vv. 1, 9 that the parable is no longer speaking about a vineyard or a real owner, but instead is speaking about God, and that certain details are deliberate mythological reenactments. God is unfettered by human prohibitions of self-help; one must assume that God’s actions are justified; and one must also assume that God’s efforts at recovering the “vineyard” would be successful. That is, all of the implausibilities and illegalities of v. 9, if read as a realistic story, vanish once one sees that it is discourse about God. Verse 9 is not only a deus ex machina ending in the theatrical sense of an ending that is not warranted by the plot up to that point, but also in the sense that the protagonist of v. 9 is quite literally God.

⁵⁰ K. R. Snodgrass, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 292, concedes now that the owner’s action in taking the law into his own hands was illegal, but asks “Is it unrealistic to hear a story of people who did?” This, however, misses the key point that the story makes no apology whatsoever either for the owner’s action, nor does it betray any uncertainty over whether the owner’s actions would be successful. It is the naive confidence reflected in v. 9 rather than the action itself which indicates that the story is no longer speaking of a vineyard owner, but is speaking of God. ⁵¹ See, e. g., clauses permitting expulsion (ἐκβάλλειν) and re-leasing (μεταμισθοῦν): P.Col. Zen. I 54.18–19 (256 B. C. E.); P.Hal. 1v.8.177 (III B. C. E.); BGU IV 1119.39–40(6/5 B. C. E.); BGU IV 1120.45 (5 B. C. E.); BGU IV 1121.25–36 (5 B. C. E.); BGU IV 1122.33–36 (13 B. C. E.); P.Köln III 147.14 (30 B. C. E.–14 C. E.); P.Ross.Georg. II 19.50 (141 C. E.). Other contracts stipulate that the lease being guaranteed, the tenant’s tenure is secure against expulsion (ἐκβάλλειν) and re-leasing (μεταμισθοῦν): P.Tebt. I 105.31–21 (103 B. C. E.). ⁵² I have shown elsewhere (“Egyptian Viticultural Practices and the Citation of Isa 5:1–7 in Mark 112:1–9,” NovT 44 [2002]: 134–59) that the LXX rendering of the MT of Isa 5:1–7 has already introduced implicitly the idea of tenancy though its substitution of ἄκανθα (thorns) for the MT’s be’ušîm (stinking grapes), since thorns are a sign of poor tending, against which tenancy contracts regularly have stipulations. Hence, the LXX’s owner cannot be the vinedresser, since in that case he is fully responsible for the unproductivity of the vineyard.

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The significance of this conclusion should not be missed. At a crucial point in his narrative, Mark moved beyond metaphors based on the “realistic” norms of force attested in the experiences of Mediterranean persons, and invokes a discourse of a divine being using lethal force in punishing enemies. Mark 12:9 does not involve the destruction of demons, but imagines the killing of humans, as 12:12 makes clear, Jesus’ opponents. Mark 12:1–9 shifts registers to the realm of the gods and their ability to use force out of proportion with what humans could muster. This is the only point in Mark’s narrative where the divine explicitly intervenes or is imagined to intervene with such deadly force to kill human opponents.

4. Force and Violence in Q Like Mark the metaphorical discourse in Sayings Gospel Q for the most part reflects the realities of life in an advanced agrarian society. Although Q 6:47–49, the parable of the Two Builders, warns of destruction, that destruction is due to stupidity rather than punishment inflicted by a divine agent. Like Mark, Q illustrated Jesus’ triumph over demons by citing a parable of a strong man (Q 11:21–22). Unfortunately, it is impossible to reconstruct this parable with any certainty.53 If Matt 12:29 reflects Q, Q’s parable was very close to that in Mark (3:27), and pictured the overpowering of a local strongman. If Luke 11:21–22 reflects Q, the image is of a soldier who overpowers another and distributes the spoils to his own partisans. In either case, however, Q’s parable represents Jesus in the role of a man of violence, but does not transgress the bounds of realistic discourse. 4.1. Q 12:33–34, 39–40 A more striking picture of violence is Q’s comparison of the Son of Man to a housebreaker in 12:39. The context in Q is supplied by the prior admonition concerning wealth: “μὴ θησαυρίζετε ὑμῖν θησαυροὺϚ ἐπὶ τῆϚ γῆϚ, ὅπου σὴϚ καὶ βρῶσιϚ ἀφανίζει καὶ ὅπου κλέπται διορύσσουσιν καὶ κλέπτουσιν·” θησαυρίζετε δὲ ὑμῖν θησαυρο … ἐν οὐραὗᾦ, ὅπου οὔτε σὴϚ οὔτε βρῶσιϚ ἀφανίζει καὶ ὅπου κλέπται οὐ διορύσσουσιν οὐδὲ κλέπτουσιν· 34 ὅπου γάρ ἐστιν ὁ θησαυρόϚ σου, ἐκεῖ ἔσται καὶ ἡ καρδία σου. (12:33–34) 33

This draws on the entirely realistic scenario of housebreaking in which the thief, rather than smashing the door, tunnels through the wall. Compare, for example, the complaint to a local official in P.Mich. V 421.5–9 (41–54 C. E.): ⁵³ The International Q Project printed Q 11:21–22 in open brackets, indicating that the text was in Q, but its wording could not be reconstructed (J. M. Robinson, P. Hoffmann, and J. S. Kloppenborg, eds., The Critical Edition of Q [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000], 234–5).

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.τινὲϚ λῃστρικῶι τρόπωι [δ]ιώρυξαν τὴν τῶν ἡμετέρων ὄνων αὐ[λ]ὴν καὶ ἔνδον γενόμενοι ἀπήλασάν μὅὖ ὄνουϚ λευκοὺϚ δύο τελείουϚ τιμηθένταϚ ‘δραχμῶν’ σϞ 5

… certain persons dug their way through the wall of the courtyard like thieves and getting inside drove off two full-grown white donkeys of mine valued at 290 drachmae ….54

The next Q saying, Q 12:39–40, recycles the image of housebreaking but now applies it to the Son of Man, comparing him to a housebreaker: 39 [[ἐκεῖν]]ο δὲ γινώσκετε ὅτι εἰ ᾔδει ὁ οἰκοδεσπότηϚ ποί φυλακῇ ὁ κλέπτηϚ ἔρχεται, οὐκ ἂν [[εἴασ]]εν διορυχθῆναι τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ. 40 καὶ ὑμεῖϚ γίνεσθε ἕτοιμοι, ὅτι ᾗ οὐ δοκεῖτε ὥρᾳ ὁ υἱὸϚ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἔρχεται.

As can be seen, Q 12:39–40 is attached to 12:33–34 by the catchwords διορύσσειν and κλέπτηϚ. The result of the juxtaposition of the two sayings is doubly jarring, since in 12:33–34 the point is to acquire goods that cannot in principle be stolen, while in 12:39 the point is to prevent a theft of goods that can be stolen. And while 12:39 and Gos. Thom. 21; 103 presume that a theft can be prevented by readiness – not merely being awake but being prepared with arms to repel the attack – Q 12:40 implies that one should be constantly armed because one cannot know when the (armed) thief is coming. In a context where housebreaking was common, the image of the housebreaker is a vivid reminder not only of unexpected loss but also of violent confrontation. The modern North Atlantic interpreter is likely to miss the assumptions about violence that are part of this saying – the violence of thieves undermining walls and the violence of a householder repelling such attacks with equal or greater force. Q’s alignment of the Son of Man with a bandit/housebreaker is no less striking than Mark’s comparison of Jesus with one who is strong enough to overwhelm a local strongman. Both comparisons presuppose the central importance of brute force in effecting one’s goals. Yet Q uses the image of the housebreaker only as an analogy to the bandit’s unexpected appearance, and stops short of identifying the Son of Man with the lethal force that bandits applied.

⁵⁴ The technique of digging through (dioru&sein) a wall or undermining (ὑπορύσσειν) a door is attested in several complaints about theft. P.Oxy. XLIX 3467 (98 C. E.): […].[ c ? ] την ·ρ··[ c ? ]νοϚ λῃσ[τρικᾦ τρόπῳ διορύ]ξαντέϚ τινε[Ϛ τὸ ἐν τῇ δημο]σίᾳ ῥύμῃ τεῖχοϚ τῆϚ αὐ[λῆϚ] καὶ εἰσελθόντεϚ ἀπήλασάν μου πρόβατα ὀκτώ, “… some thievishly dug through the wall in the public street of the courtyard and entering, set free eight of my sheep”; P.Tebt. III 804 (112 B. C. E.): report of night burglary, “having undermined the doorpost (ὑπορύξαν|τεϚ τὸ σταθμὸν), he entered the vestibule. I woke up and shouted for help”; P.Mich. inv. 3267 (SB XX 14679) (205–24 C. E.) also mentions the undermining of a house (ὑπορύξαντεϚ τὴν οἰκίαν ἐβάστασαν) and violent entry.

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4.2. Q 12:42–46: The Slave left in Charge Much more gruesome, but still within the realm of the realistic, is Q’s parable of the Slave left in Charge. The parable is told in a generally realistic vein. Q imagines a slave estate, with a vilicus responsible for the management of other slaves, a scenario well known from agronomic writers such as Cato and Columella. Owners were typically anxious that in their absence managers might abuse their trust and, presumably, managers did so only when they thought that they would not be discovered. Estate owners (or their agents) frequently made inspection tours of their holdings, sometimes discovering their orders being disobeyed.55 What is more striking in Q’s parable is the severity of the punishment that is imagined: the untrustworthy slave is not beaten or sold but bisected (διχοτομεῖν), and then his lot assigned to the disloyal (ἄπιστοι). This punishment has embarrassed some interpreters, who, citing 1QS II 16–17, tried to mitigate its force by arguing that the verb refers figuratively to being cut off from the community.56 Jeremias conjectured that διχοτομεῖν was the result of a mistranslation of the Aramaic Hl cNs˘jI (√ cls, “divide”), which could have been rendered “he will give him (blows)” or “he will assign him (his portion).”57 The Greek verb, however, is unambiguous, although it is normally reserved to medical, astronomical, mathematical, and architectural contexts.58 Josephus (A. J. 8.31) uses the verb in connection with Solomon’s famous offer to split a child under dispute and the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch has Michael command his angels to “cut [the wicked] apart with sword and death and their children with demons” (καὶ διχοτομήσατε αὐτοὺϚ ἐν μαχαίρᾳ καὶ ἐν θανάτῳ, καὶ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν ἐν δαιμονίοιϚ (16:3).59 A related verb, διατέμνειν/διατάμνειν is attested describing the dismemberment of humans. Odysseus threatens to have an opponent torn to pieces (διὰ μελεϊστὶ τάμῃσιν, Od. 18.339). Herodotus (2.139.1) ⁵⁵ See Cato, De agri cultura 5.3–4 and the wide-ranging advice of Columella, De re rustica 1.7–8. Examples of inspection visits or the right to conduct them are found in P.Lond. VII 1948 (257 B. C. E.); P.Cair.Zen. III 59300 (ca. 250 B. C. E.); III 59329 (249 B. C. E.); BGU IV 1122.36 (13 B. C. E.); IV 1151.46 (13 B. C. E.); P.Flor. II 118; 127; 148.11–14; 156; 201; 267. ⁵⁶ See O. Betz, “The Dichotomized Servant and the End of Judas Iscariot,” RevQ 5 [1964]: 43–58) who cites 1QS II 16–17 (“May God separate him for evil and may he be cut off (zxkof) from the midst of all the sons of light …. May he [God] assign his lot with the cursed ones forever”). This suggestion is accepted by E. Schweizer, The Good News According to Matthew (Atlanta: John Knox, 1975), 463; J. R. Donahue, The Gospel in Parable: Metaphor, Narrative, and Theology in the Synoptic Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 100. ⁵⁷ J. Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (rev. ed.; London: SCM Press, 1972), 57 n. 31. T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1949), 118, proposed that there was confusion between the Heb. hU˘o˛ (Pi. ‘cut up’) and the Aram. hz˘o¯ which can mean ‘to cut up’ or ‘to seize’ or ‘take by force.’ M. J. Lagrange, L’Évangile selon saint Luc (Paris: Gabalda, 1921), 370 admits the plain meaning of the verb, but argues “cependant il faut ici l’entendre au figuré, puisque le serviteur va se trouver rangé parmi les infidèles.” ⁵⁸ Snodgrass, Stories with Intent, 502, wrongly reports that it is “rare.” On the contrary, the verb is commonly attested (more than 300x) in Greek literature. ⁵⁹ This section of 3 Baruch shows the influence of Matthew.

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reports a vision in which Sabacos the king of Ethiopia is advised to cut Egyptian priests in half (πάνταϚ μέσουϚ διαταμεῖν). Herodotus also relates Xerxes’ punishment of a retainer, Pythius the Lydian, by having his eldest son cut in half and the two halves of the body placed on opposite sides of the road for the army to march through (μέσον διαταμεῖν, διαταμόνταϚ δὲ τὰ ἡμίτομα διαθεῖναι τὸ μὲν ἐπὶ δεξιὰ τῆϚ ὁδοῦ τὸ δ’ ἐπ’ ἀριστερά) (7.39.3). Caligula is said to have had victims sawn in half (multos honesti ordinis … medios serra dissecuit) (Suetonius, Caligula 27).60 Famously, Isaiah is rumored to have been “sawn in two,” a legend which is alluded to in Heb 11:37.61 There are no defensible grounds for avoiding the plain meaning of Q’s verb.62 Although the punishment is gruesome in the extreme, it is hardly unrealistic. An inscription from Puteoli dating from the Augustan period outlines the duties of a manceps (contractor), which include the disposal of corpses and the torturing and execution of slaves: Qui supplic(ium) de ser(vo) servave privatim sumer(e) volet, uti is sumi volet ita supplic (ium) sumet, si in cruc(em) patibul(atum) agere volet, redempt(or) asser(es) vincul(a) restes verberatorib(us) et verberator(es) praeber(e) d(ebeto), etquisq(uis) supplic(ium) sumet pro oper(is) sing(ulis) quae patibul(um) ferunt verberatorib(us)q(ue) item carnif (ici) HS IIII d(are) d(ebeto). If someone, privately, wants to inflict punishment on a male or female slave, then the punishment must be inflicted in the way that has been asked for, so that if he has asked for the yoke and the cross, the manceps must provide the beams, the fetters, the whips for the floggers, and the floggers, and each person asking for inflicting punishment must pay 4

⁶⁰ There is some evidence that later rabbis knew of execution by ‘bisection’: b. Sanh. 52b: “But whence do we know it [viz. execution by the sword] of a murderer? – It has been taught: [And if a man strikes his slave … and he die under his hand,’] he shall surely be avenged. Now I do not know what form this vengeance is to take; but when it is written, A I      ,         [Lev 26:25], I learn that vengeance is by the sword. But perhaps it means that he must be pierced through? – It is written,      . Then perhaps it means that he must be cut in two [lengthwise]?” ⁶¹ See the Lives of the Prophets (Isaiah) 1: Isaiah was “sawn in two” (πρισθεὶϚ εἰϚ δύο). This is repeated by the Assumption of Isaiah (5.1). For other instances of dismemberment, see 1 Sam 15:33; Sus 55 (ἤδη γὰρ ἄγγελοϚ τοῦ θεοῦ λαβὼν φάσιν παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ σχίσει σε μέσον.), 59 (μένει γὰρ ὁ ἄγγελοϚ τοῦ θεοῦ τὴν ῥομφαίαν ἔχων πρίσαι σε μέσον). ⁶² Most interpreters are now prepared to accept the literal meaning of the verb: A. Weiser, Die Knechtsgleichnisse der synoptischen Evangelien (München: Kösel, 1971), 198–201; I. H. Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 543; R. H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Literary and Theological Art (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 497; W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Matthew (3 vols.; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988–1997), 3:390; B. B. Scott, Hear Then the Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 210–11; M. A. Beavis, “Ancient Slavery as an Interpretive Context for the New Testament Servant Parables with Special Reference to the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1–8),” JBL 111 (1992): 42–3; A. J. Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 161; U. Luz, Matthew 21–28 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 225.

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sesterces for each worker carrying the yoke, and for each flogger, and likewise for the executioner. (cols. 8–10)63

It is not incidental that the object of the brutal treatment in Q 12:46 is a slave. Jennifer Glancy rightly stresses the fact that slaves were answerable in their bodies and argues that Matthew’s representation of slaves merely inscribes the prevailing ideology of slavery, which viewed slaves as bodies available to their owners’ use and punishable only in their bodies.64 In Plautus’ comedies slaves are routinely subject to a wide variety of tortures. Erich Segal observes: besides the countless references to the standard whipping instruments like virgae (rods) and stimuli (goads), [Plautus’] comedies display a vocabulary of tortures which, for color, variety, and inventiveness, is matched only (appropriately enough) by his Rabelaisian rosters of trickeries. Plautus mentions an astounding number of torture devices, including iron chains, hot tar, burning clothes, restraining collars, the rack, the pillory, and the mill. The fact that his bondsmen are so frequently referred to as verbero (“flog-worthy”), mastigia (“whip-worthy”), and furcifer (“gallowsbird”) is an additional reminder of what retribution usually awaits a misbehaving slave. (These allusions are far too numerous to cite, but it may be worth noting that there is a high incidence of these “torture titles” in, of all plays, the Captivi.).65

Hence, despite the seeming hyperbole of Q’s picture of a bisected slave and the ways it might offend modern sensibilities, such bodily punishment fell within the range of the imaginable. If we do not seek to avoid the obvious intent of Q’s διχοτομεῖν, two further features of the parable become important in the context of a discussion of violence. The first concerns the object of force. All of the sayings preceding the parable (Q 12:2–12, *13–15, 16–20*, 22–31, 33–34, 39–40) are aimed at insiders to the Jesus movement, or at least persons who are potential sympathizers and who might accept Q’s moral instruction. Since there is no indication of a change of audience, this means that, in sharp contrast to Mark’s metaphors of lethal force, the threat of lethal force in Q 12:46 is directed not at opponents but at insiders. These insiders (or potential sympathizers) are to conduct themselves appropriately as slaves or face brutal punishment. Contemporary apocalyptic literature is rife with imagined scenes of torture and brutal punishment – persons being cast into flaming pits, or being devoured by animals and vomited up only to be devoured again. The typical victims of such tortures are fallen stars, kings and landlords, sinners, and the wicked – that ⁶³ Text: J. Bodel, “Graveyards and Groves: A Study of the Lex Lucerina,” American Journal of Ancient History 11 (1986): 1–133, and F. Hinard and J. D. Dumount, eds., Libitina: Pompes funèbres et supplices en Campanie à l’époque d’Auguste. Édition, traduction et commentaire de la Lex libitinae Puteolana (Paris: De Boccard, 2003). ⁶⁴ J. A. Glancy, “Slaves and Slavery in the Matthean Parables,” JBL 119 (2000): 90. ⁶⁵ E. Segal, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 138. I owe this reference to Glancy (“Slaves and Slavery,” 81). See in general, K. R. Bradley, Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control (London: Oxford University Press, 1987), 118–37.

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is, persons whom one presumes do not belong to these authors’ identity groups.66 Hence, it is remarkable that Q turns the threat of such violence on its own partisans.67 One explanation of this development lies with Q’s choice to adopt the trope of the household in 12:39–40 and 12:42–46. Once the trope was adopted, the dynamics of slave owning became narrative options. When imagining a punishment for a disloyal slave, the parable remains strictly within the idiom of household management, even if it chose one of the most extreme punishments available. In this respect Q does not, like Mark 12:9, appeal to “imaginary” violence, but remains strictly within the bounds of a realistic story. If Q moves outside the bounds of realistic household management, it is only in the final phrase, Q 12:46b (καὶ τὸ μέροϚ αὐτοῦ μετὰ τῶν ἀπίστων θήσει). Commenting on the Lukan version, Nolland cites 1QS II 16–17, “[God] will give his allotted portion in the midst of the accursed forever” and remarks: “Here we are dealing with the assignment of an eschatological destiny. This final clause is likely to have been added at a time in the transmission history when Jesus’ role in assigning eschatological destinies was self-evidently the thrust of the story.”68 A second noteworthy feature of the parable concerns the subject of διχοτομήσει. Prescinding for a moment from the question of the referents in the original parable, for Q the κύριοϚ (and therefore the dispenser of the punishment) is clearly the Son of Man. The allegorical identification of the ὁ κύριοϚ of 12:46 with ὁ υἱὸϚ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου of 12:40 is inevitable given the close and deliberate structural similarities between the two parables.69 Hence, there is a progression in Q from the representation of the Son of Man as a housebreaker whose advent cannot be anticipated or stopped, to the Son of Man as a slave-owning disciplinarian, able to dispense graphic and horrific punishment. In the sequence from 12:39–40 to 12:42–46, Q shifts from the responsibilities of an οἰκοδεσπότηϚ to those of the chief δοῦλοϚ or οἰκονόμοϚ. The κύριοϚ of the ⁶⁶ See 1 En. 17; 21 (fallen stars); 63 (kings, rulers and landlords); 103 (sinners); T. Abr. 12 (those entering by the broad path); T. Isaac 5.10–32 (sinners); 2 Apoc. Bar. 30.5 (the wicked); Gk. Apoc. Esdras (4.13–24) (sinners); Vis. Esdras (sinners). ⁶⁷ A parallel is found at Qumran, where covenanters were subject both to the discipline of the sect for various infractions of the rule, but also to extreme punishment at the hands of God or “all those who accomplish retributions” (1QS II 6–7). See C. Newsom, The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran (STDJ 52; Leiden: Brill, 2004), 95– 101, 127–34. ⁶⁸ See J. Nolland, Luke (3 vols.; Dallas: Word Books, 1989–1993), 2:704. Of the various proposals to see redactional development in the parable, Nolland judges the descriptions of the first slave as “faithful” and “wise” and the final clause of v. 46 assigning the slave to a place with the unfaithful to be the most likely secondary accretions. “The first seems to short-circuit the logic of the parable; … the last moves right outside the story logic of the parable” (700). ⁶⁹ This is the consensus of virtually all scholars. See most recently, C.-P. März, “Zur Vorgeschichte von Lk 12,35–48: Beobachtungen zur Komposition der Logientradition in der Redequelle,” in Christus bezeugen: Festschrift für Wolfgang Trilling zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. K. Kertelge, T. Holtz, and C.-P. März; Leipzig: St. Benno, 1989), 175; H. T. Fleddermann, Q: A Reconstruction and Commentary (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 634–5; B. H. Gregg, Jesus and the Final Judgment Sayings in Q (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 216–7.

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second parable in fact functions in the role of an οἰκοδεσπότηϚ. This shift in social register is symptomatic of a later development when it was deemed more appropriate to identify Jesus followers with “slaves” rather than “householders,” a term which in other circumstances is a metaphor for Jesus or God.70 Finally, it should be noted that the function of this parable is not merely to enjoin faithful action. That point could easily have been made without stressing the delay and sudden return of the κύριοϚ. In fact much the same point is made by the story of Joseph in Genesis 39 which, as Dale Allison has pointed out, has many points of contact with Q 12:42–46.71 In later developments of the Joseph story in the Testament of Joseph, Joseph adds that as overseer he drank no wine, but supplied food to the poor (T. Jos. 3.5).72 Q’s parable, by contrast, stresses not only the master’s absence – which was not uncommon, since owners often did not wish to be involved in the daily operations of their estates – but his delay and sudden return. The latter detail is in fact borrowed from 12:40 (ᾗ οὐ δοκεῖτε ὥρᾳ ὁ υἱὸϚ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἔρχεται). Given the emphasis of Q’s parable, its main thrust appears to have been to encourage the same consciousness as that enjoined by Q 17:26–30. Since the Day of the Lord will come without any warning whatsoever, in the midst of perfectly ordinary events, it is imperative to be ready (cf. 12:40: ὑμεῖϚ γίνεσθε ἕτοιμοι) at all times. Q’s answer to the suspicion of a delay of the Parousia (12:45) is that there may well be no delay at all. It is dangerous folly to put one’s trust in guesses about the End, despite how educated they might seem. The conclusion to Q’s parable, with its depiction of the terrible fate of the slave, is paralleled in Q 17 by the specter of one member of a family or clan being swept away to destruction while her or his fellow is spared (Q 17:34–35). Thus, unlike Mark, Q maintains a generally realistic idiom when describing violent scenarios. There are other points in Q’s discourse where “imaginary” scenes are entertained – fiery destruction of the non-repentant (Q 3:9, 17), Capernaum’s descent to Hades (10:15), and the resurrection of the Queen of the South and the Ninevites (Q 11:31–32) – but in Q’s parables at least, a realistic tone is preserved and metaphors are invoked that are based on the ordinary practices and patterns of exchange in Mediterranean society – housebreaking and household management. In Q, however, the Son of Man becomes a man of violence not only against demons but against his own disobedient partisans.

⁷⁰ Cf. Matthew, who uses ‘householder’ (οἰκοδεσπότηϚ) in particular in parables and metaphorical expressions seven times: Matt 10:25R; 13:27S, 52S; 20:1S, 11S; 21:33R; 24:43 (=Q). ⁷¹ D. C. Allison, The Intertextual Jesus: Scripture in Q (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000), 87–92. ⁷² Allison, Intertextual Jesus, 90 adds a reference to his master’s absence (ἐὰν δὲ ἀπεδήμει, οἶνον οὐκ ἔπινον), which is the reading of some manuscripts, instead of ἐὰν δὲ ἐπεδίδῃ μοι οἶνον, οὐκ ἔπινον.

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5. Divine Force and Violence in Matthew Matthew’s editing of Mark’s stories and his creation of new episodes intensified the level of lethal force attributed to the divine or agents of the divine. Matthew’s penchant for a fuller allegorizing of parables also led to an increasing disconnection between the original realistic scenarios of the parables and the meta-message that Matthew wished to install in the parable. Matthew’s parables, unlike Mark’s or Q’s, are unrealistic from the very beginning. And while Matthew preserved Mark’s metaphors of force in regard to the besting of demons and the punishment of opponents, he extended his metaphors of force to insiders of the Jesus movement, the “underperformers” as far as his ethical demands were concerned. Increasingly Matthew’s language embraces fantastic or at least unusual scenarios.73 In Matthew’s adaptation of Mark and Q, two features of these documents were decisive. First, Matthew has expanded and elaborated Mark’s deus ex machina ending to Mark 12:1–9 and used the motif of divine destruction to transform Q’s parable of the Banquet into an allegorical story featuring God’s destruction of his enemies. Second, Matthew combined two features of Q to create a discourse increasingly aimed at insiders rather than at demons and opponents: Q’s attention to household management, seen in the parable of the Slave left in Charge, and a tag-phrase found in Q 13:28. 5.1. The Destruction of Opponents: Matt 21:33–22:10 In place of Mark’s single parable (Mark 12:1–9), Matthew created a triptych of the parable of the Two Sons (21:28–32), the Tenants (21:33–46), and the Banquet (22:1–10, 11–14), all aimed at the chief priests and elders and all having to do with God’s demand for righteousness. The three parables also illustrate escalating sequence from non-belief (21:32), to the killing of the son (21:39), to the abuse and killing of God’s slaves, presumably members of the Jesus movement (22:6). Matthew’s editing of Mark’s parable of the Tenants has greatly enhanced its allegorical dimensions. First, while the significance of the vineyard is not entirely clear in Mark, Matt 21:43 indicates that Matthew saw it as the Reign of God. Second, Matthew allegorized the “harvest” (καρποί)74 demanded by the owner as “righteousness” demanded by God.75 Third, his interpretation of the slaves as ⁷³ On the usual understanding of Synoptic relationships, Matthew edited Mark. Matthew did not preserve Mark’s account of the destruction of the unclean spirit in Mark 1:23–28, but he took over mostly unchanged Mark’s image of a burglary in 3:27 at Matt 12:29. And the demon at Matt 8:29, like its Markan counterpart, expects to be tortured (βασανίσαι). ⁷⁴ On the plural καρποί meaning ‘harvest,’ see P.Lond. II 163.6–7, “we wish to lease from you for a period of three years (and) three harvests” (εἰϚ ̣ [ἔ]τ̣η̣ ̣ τ̣ρ̣ ε̣̣ ί̣ α̣ καρ[ποὺϚ] | τρεῖϚ). ⁷⁵ (1) In Mark the owner expects “to receive from the harvest” (λάβῃ ἀπὸ τῶν καρπῶν τοῦ ἀμπελῶνοϚ), implying a standard crop-share arrangement. Matthew converted this into “to

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the prophets is even more patent than it is in Mark, especially because he has some of the slaves “stoned,” anticipating Matt 23:37–39 and recalling 2 Chr 24:21.76 These transformations have the effect of alerting the hearer that the story is not about viticulture at all, but is a coded story about God’s dealings with Israel. It should then come as no surprise when Matthew further elaborates the punishment sequence of Mark 12:9. Since the reader of Matt 21:33–46 recognizes via the allusions to Isa 5:1–777 that the parable is in fact about God’s relationship with Israel, the tensions that exist in Mark, between the generally realistic idiom in Mark 12:1–8 and the implausible conclusion (v. 9), are mitigated considerably, if not eliminated entirely. Matthew’s householder is not a real viticulturalist but a stand-in for God. Because of this the reader has no expectation that the actions of the householder will be governed by realistic norms. Matthew’s editing of Mark 12:9 has three aspects. First, he adds the phrase, ὅταν οὖν ἔλθῃ ὁ κύριοϚ τοῦ ἀμπελῶνοϚ, which at first sight might appear to be an allusion to the Parousia (cf. Matt 19:28; 25:31). Since, however, ὁ κύριοϚ is the vineyard owner, not the son, and since in Matt 21:46 the chief priests and elders recognize themselves in the destruction of the first tenants, it is more likely that Matthew has the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C. E. in view.78 The parable of the Banquet, which follows immediately, likewise offers an etiology of the destruction of the Temple. Second, Matthew describes the replacement tenants as οἵτινεϚ ἀποδώσουσιν αὐτᾦ τοὺϚ καρποὺϚ ἐν τοῖϚ καιροῖϚ αὐτῶν, underscoring receive his harvest,” as though the owner were entitled to the whole of the harvest. Gundry (Matthew, 426) aptly comments that “the theological symbolism of God’s demanding the totality of people’s lives has swallowed up the economic realism, which requires rental payment of only part of the crop.” (2) Matthew underscores the importance of the ‘harvest’ twice more in the parable, both times, redactionally. First he qualifies Mark’s ‘others’ (12:9) as “those who will return to him the harvest in its appropriate time” (21:41). Then he offers his own interpretation of the parable: the Reign of God will be taken from the priestly élite and given to an ethnos “which produces its harvest” (τοὺϚ καρποὺϚ αὐτῆϚ) (21:43). Since Matthew earlier uses καρποί as a metaphor for good works or righteousness (3:9; 7:16–20; 12:33), and given the obvious paraenetic import of the parable of the Wedding Garment which follows (22:11–14), it is a reasonable surmise that the produce looked for by the owner (i. e., God) is righteousness. ⁷⁶ Matthew compresses Mark’s sequence of three individual slaves into two groups of slaves and adds ὃν μὲν ἔδειραν, ὃν δὲ ἀπέκτειναν, ὃν δὲ ἐλιθοβόλησαν to Mark 12:3. The latter verb both anticipates Jesus’ lament in Matt 23:37–39 and recalls the murder of the priest-prophet Zechariah ben Yehoida in 2 Chr 24:21. His pluralization of the δοῦλοι suggests strongly that Matthew has in mind the Deuteronomistic motif of the sending of the prophets to Israel and their typical fates, at least according to Deuteronomistic theology. On the Deuteronomistic motif of the killing of the prophets, see O. H. Steck, Israel und das gewaltsame Geschick der Propheten: Untersuchungen zur Überlieferung des deuteronomistischen Geschichtsbildes im Alten Testament, Spätjudentum und Urchristentum (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1967). ⁷⁷ Matthew has enhanced the allusions to Isaiah. For details, see Kloppenborg, Tenants, 178–9. ⁷⁸ Thus W. Trilling, “Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte des Gleichnisses vom Hochzeitsmahl Mt 22,1–14,” BZ 4 (1960): 254–5; Dodd, Parables, 99; Jeremias, Parables, 77; Davies and Allison, Matthew, 3:184; Hultgren, Parables of Jesus, 372.

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his interest in καρποί, that is, righteousness as the “harvest” of the vineyard. This is also in keeping with the focus of the next parable, in particular the parable of the Wedding Garment. For our purposes, the most significant transformation is Matthew’s qualification of Mark’s simple ἀπολέσει (“he will destroy”). In Matthew this becomes κακοὺϚ κακῶϚ ἀπολέσει αὐτούϚ, “he shall put them to a miserable death.” ΚακοὺϚ κακῶϚ ἀπόλλυμι occurs frequently in Greek literature, including in contexts where the gods destroy the impious. For example, in Sophocles’ Ajax Teucer prays that Zeus, Fury, and Justice the Fulfiller might destroy those who would desecrate Ajax’s body: “Put these miserable men to a miserable end (κακοὺϚ κακῶϚ φθείρειαν), just as they sought to cast this man out with unmerited, outrageous mistreatment” (Ajax 1391). Menander’s Dyskolos four times has characters uttering κακὸν δὲ σὲ κακῶϚ ἅπαντεϚ ἀπολέσειαν οἱ θεοί, “may all the gods vilely destroy you” (138, 220, 442, 926). In Josephus’ account of the Egyptian plagues, he writes: Again therefore the Deity sent a fresh plague to punish [Pharaoh] for his deceit. A vast multitude of lice broke out on the persons of the Egyptians issuing from their bodies, whereby the miserable wretches miserably perished (ὑφ’ ὧν κακοὶ κακῶϚ ἀπώλλυντο), neither lotions nor unguents availing to destroy the vermin. (A. J. 2.300)

Of course the phrase κακοὺϚ κακῶϚ ἀπολέσαι is not restricted to actions of the gods; it is employed in a wide range of Greek literature to describe miserable deaths, however they are effected.79 But when the phrase is used in connection with actions of a deity, as it is by Matthew, it conjures up images of spectacular and extravagant violence and destruction. Matthew here has God act in a way ⁷⁹ For example, Aesopus, Fabulae 164 (κακοὶ κακῶϚ ἀπόλοισθε πάντεϚ οἱ λύκοι, ὅτι μηδὲν παθόντεϚ ὑφ ἡμῶν κακὸν πολεμεῖτε ἡμᾶϚ); Euripides, Cyclops 268 (ἢ κακῶϚ οὗτοι κακοὶ οἱ παῖδεϚ ἀπόλοινθ’, “If I am lying, may these sons of mine be taken miserably”); Euripides, Medea 805 (κακὴν κακῶϚ θανεῖν, “that wretch must die a wretched death”); 1386 (σὺ δ’, ὥσπερ εἰκόϚ, κατθανῆι κακὸϚ κακῶϚ, “you … shall die a miserable death”); Troiadas 446 (κακὸϚ κακῶϚ ταφήσηι νυκτόϚ); Sophocles, Ajax 1177: (κακὸϚ κακῶϚ ἄθαπτοϚ ἐκπέσοι χθονόϚ, “for his wickedness may he be wickedly cast out of his country”); Aristophanes, Plutus 65 (ἀπό σ’ ὀλῶ κακὸν κακῶϚ), 418 (ἐγὼ γὰρ ὑμᾶϚ ἐξολῶ κακοὺϚ κακῶϚ), 879 (τοὺϚ συκοφάνταϚ ἐξολεῖ κακοὺϚ κακῶϚ); Demosthenes, De Halonneso 45.6 (κακοὺϚ κακῶϚ ἀπολωλέναι); In Midiam 204.8 (εἶτα θαυμάζειϚ εἰ κακὸϚ κακῶϚ ἀπολεῖ; “Then can you wonder if your evil deeds bring you to a miserable end?”); Contra Zenothemin 6.5 (κακὸϚ κακῶϚ ἀπώλετο, “miserable, he was destroyed miserably”); Eubulus, Fragmenta 116–17 (κακὸϚ κακῶϚ ἀπόλοιθ ὅστιϚ γυναῖκα δεύτεροϚ ἔγημε); Polybius 7.3.2 (ἔφη συλλυπεῖσθαι τοῖϚ ’ΡωμαίοιϚ ὅτι κακοὶ κακῶϚ ἐν ταῖϚ κατὰ τὴν ’Ιταλίαν μάχαιϚ ἀπολώλασιν ὑπὸ Καρχηδονίων); Josephus, A.J. 7.291 (κακοὶ κακῶϚ ἀπολέσθαι); 12.256 (κακοὶ κακῶϚ ἀπώλλυντο); Aristippus (apud Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 2.69) (κακοὺϚ κακῶϚ ἀπολωλέναι); Cebes, Tabula 32.5 (ἀπόλλυται κακὸϚ κακῶϚ); Plutarch, Cicero 26.2 (κακὸϚ … ἀπόλοιτο κακῶϚ); Antonius 70.7 (τοὔνομα δ οὐ πεύσεσθε, κακοὶ δὲ κακῶϚ ἀπόλοισθε); Brutus 33.6 (οἱ μὲν δίκαϚ τιννύοντεϚ ἀπώλλυντο κακοὶ κακῶϚ); Lucian, Philops. 20 (κακὸϚ κακῶϚ ἀπέθανεν μαστιγούμενοϚ); Icaromenippus 33 (ἐϚ νέωτα οὖν ἀρχομένου ἦροϚ κακοὶ κακῶϚ ἀπολοῦνται τῷ σμερδαλέῳ κεραυνῷ, “next year at the opening of the spring the wretches shall die a wretched death by the horrid thunderbold” [Zeus speaking]); Artemidorus Daldianus, Onirocriticon 2.16 (κακοὺϚ κακῶϚ ἀπολέσθαι).

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that is hardly distinguishable from his Greek counterparts. The stock classical expression evokes both vengeance and unrestrained fury as part of these agents. Matthew’s version of the Banquet (22:1–10) similarly conveys a picture of unrestrained divine violence, when the king sets his troops loose on the city to destroy and burn. Matthew’s version of the parable follows immediately upon his version of the Tenants and it is likely that Matthew’s violent end to the Tenants has simply been carried forward into his rendition of the Banquet. The unrealistic and highly allegorical elements of Matthew’s parable are obvious and need not be rehearsed here. It is sufficient to remark that Matthew has taken a parable told in a generally realistic mode in Q (14:16–24) and the Gos. Thom. (64) and turned it into an allegory of salvation (and damnation) history, borrowing from the Tenants the verb ἀπώλεσεν (21:41; 22:7) and adding the burning of the city, a motif that is featured in other Matthean parables. Both parables have in view the destruction of Jerusalem and both are directed at the same audience – the chief priest, the elders of the people, and the Pharisees, who will be the main opponents during the Matthew’s passion narrative as well. As I have argued elsewhere, Matthew displays a strong apologetic interest in these two parables, providing an etiology of the destruction of the temple and the devastation of Jerusalem.80 For Matthew, the two parables offer an explanation of the temple’s demise: God’s demand for righteousness was ignored, God’s repeated invitations to the Kingdom were rejected, and God’s son and his prophets were killed. Under such circumstances, vengeance was inevitable. Mark’s editing of the parable of the Tenants thus played a crucial role in the development of this fantasy of divine violence. It is worth noting that of all the synoptic parables, only Mark’s Tenants, Matthew’s Tenants and Banquet, and Luke’s Entrusted Money conclude with the wholesale slaughter of opponents. Since both Matthew’s Banquet and Luke’s Entrusted Money are found in the immediate context of their retellings of the Tenants, we must conclude that it ⁸⁰ Kloppenborg, Tenants, 199: “Josephus, writing about the same time as 2 Baruch and Matthew, lays most of the blame for the destruction revolt upon the ‘tyrants’ or revolutionary factions that occupied and controlled the city during the siege; but he also cites enmity kindled between the high priesthood on the one hand, and the lesser priests and the leaders of Jerusalem on the other, which led to a general collapse of public order (A. J. 20.179–81, 205–7). For his part Matthew narrows the blame to the priestly élite and their associates, who at a climactic point in [his] passion narrative persuade (ἔπεισαν) the crowds to ask for the release of ‘Jesus Barabbas’ rather than ‘Jesus the Christ’ (27:17–20). A few moments later this crowd calls out, ‘his blood be on us and our children’ (27:25). This disastrous cry is for Matthew the product of the malice of Jesus’ élite opponents. Matthew of course knew that many of the élite were killed during the First Revolt and that those who survived never regained power. Both the destruction of the tenants in 21:41 and their loss of the Reign of God in 21:43 refer to events in Matthew’s world. His parable also imagines the ascendancy of the Jesus group in the place of the displaced élite, fulfilling God’s original mandate to produce a good harvest (21:43). Matthew’s account of the history of Israel both compasses an explanation of the disaster of 70 C. E. and holds out hope of restoration and recovery.”

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was Mark’s story of divine violence that provided the template for the development of later fantasies of divine vengeance. Mark’s account of divine violence is understated: It occurs in a single verb, ἀπολέσει. But this is all it took to encourage Matthew and Luke to produce much more detailed accounts of divine violence.81 It might also be noted in passing that this exercise of divine force is not restricted to the End times but is, instead, an expression of lethal force by the deity in history. 5.2. Force against Insiders in Matthew Mark 12:9, Matt 21:33–46, and Matt 22:1–10 all imagine the application of divine force against hostile outsiders – the chief priests, elders, and scribes – and imply that God is an agent in the destruction of the temple.82 Matthew’s depiction of divine force is not limited to these scenes, however. He also has several scenes of the punishment and exclusion of persons who are not opponents but underperformers – those who do not meet the moral standards of the Jesus movement. I will note these more briefly. Two elements, both present in Matthew’s sources, seem to have been influential in Matthew’s representation of divine force and punitive violence: the motif of casting into outer darkness, borrowed from Q and, more importantly, the trope of household management. Matthew reused two of Q’s phrases, “cast[ing] into outer darkness” and “weeping and grinding of teeth” in contexts concerning the use of lethal force. In addition to the text he drew from Q (Matt 8:12 = Q 13:28), Matthew used “outer darkness” at 22:13 and 25:30, and “weeping and grinding of teeth” at 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51 and 25:30, five times in all. In Q the scene is of Galilean villagers being denied entry into an eschatological banquet. In that context the phrases “outer darkness” and “weeping and grinding of teeth” (Q 13:28 = Matt 8:12), though hyperbolic, do not imply the torture or destruction of those excluded as much as the anguish and humiliation at being barred from a banquet with the patriarchs. In Matthew’s reuse of these phrases, however, more is implied. “Grinding of teeth” appears twice in the editing of Matthew’s parable chapter (ch. 13), where Matthew attaches it to the description of the punishment of the wicked, who are “thrown into the furnace of fire” (13:42, 50). Commentators have already noted that the agricultural procedure reflected in the Planted Weeds is at odds with ⁸¹ I have shown elsewhere that the Markan trajectory of aligning the divine with destructive powers is much longer, extending through Eusebius’ treatment of the dispossession of the Jews in Comm. in Esiam, Stuart England, and Victorian age accounts of the triumph of British Colonialism, all of which utilized the parable of the Tenants as a parable of the justified use of force. See Kloppenborg, Tenants, ch. 1. ⁸² On Mark and the destruction of the temple, see J. Kloppenborg, “Evocatio Deorum and the Date of Mark,” JBL 124 (2005): 419–50.

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contemporary agricultural practice.83 Matthew’s allegorical interests have evidently supervened and allowed him to embrace an unrealistic representation of harvest practices. Still influenced by the notion of exclusion from the kingdom in 8:12, Matthew has the weeds (= wicked) thrown out (βαλοῦσιν αὐτούϚ) of the field. And because he wishes to construct a figure of destructive punishment, burning is introduced in place of feeding the weeds to livestock. “Grinding of teeth” in the context of immolation obviously has a different sense than Q’s grinding of teeth. The parable of the Net (13:47–50) creates a yet more unrealistic scenario. This parable carries the same Matthean message of the eschatological separation of the unjust from the just. While the image of the burning of weeds in a furnace has at least some pertinence in the parable of the Weeds, at 13:50 the metaphor of the furnace has become completely detached from its natural use and it now applies to fish. The tropes of the incineration of the wicked and their lamentation evidently had sufficient appeal for Matthew that he turned them into taglines that could be applied indiscriminately to any eschatological judgment scene. The original connection with the realistic scenario of exclusion from Q’s nighttime banquet was progressively lost. Having used Q’s “grinding of teeth” twice in ch. 13, Matthew introduces it into another parable taken from Q (Q 12:42–46 = Matt 24:45–51) and adds Q’s “outer darkness” to orthodontic abuse in his editing of Q 19:12–26 (Matt 25:14– 30). Both phrases then appear at the conclusion of Matthew parable of the Wed-

⁸³ The burning of weeds in order to prepare land for planting is common enough, but the procedure envisaged by Matthew is not. Lagrange (Matthieu, 268) expressed doubt over the binding of the weeds prior to burning: “Il paraît superflu de faire des gerbes liées avec l’ivraie; peut-être est-ce à cause de son abundance exceptionnelle, ou parce que déjà le sens figuré pénètre dans la parabole: l’ivraie, soigneusement ligotée, ne pourra échapper au feu.” Gundry (Matthew, 265) and Luz (Matthew 8–20, 255) and J. Roloff (Jesu Gleichnisse im Matthäusevangelium: Ein Kommentar zu Mt 13,1–52 [Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2005], 56) argue that it would be more usual to leave the weeds in the field. – At harvest weeds are more likely left behind by the harvesters and later used for animal fodder; they are rarely collected first and then burned. According to G. H. Dalman, Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1928–1942), 2:248–50, darnel (lolium temulentum) is difficult to distinguish from wheat, but is edible by chickens and livestock. Ibid., 324–6: “Bei bēt nettīf | sagte man mir, daß der stehengebliebene Rest beim Ernten von den Schnittern fallen gelassen werde, damit er nicht in die Garben komme. Frauen sammelten ihn dann als Hühnerfutter… . Dabei will das Gleichnis [Matt 13:29–30] gewiß nicht den gewöhnlichen Hergang der Landwirtschaft schildern, sondern nur zum Zweck der beabsichtigten Belehrung einen dafür geeigneten Fall herausheben. Das zeigt sich besonders Matth. 13,30 in dem den Schnittern gegebenen Befehl, erst den Lolch | zu sammeln und für das Verbrennen in Bündel zu binden, sodann den Weizen in den Vorratsraum zu führen. Die praktische Ausführung wäre nur so denkbar, wie es oben von bēt nettīf berichtet wurde, da die Schnitter unmöglich erst den Lolch aus dem Felde herausholen und dann den Weizen ernten können. Die Möglichkeit seiner nützlichen Verwendung des Lolches, die auch für die Zeit des Gleichnisses anzunehmen ist, wird in den Hintergrund gerückt, um, dem Zweck des Gleichnisses entsprechend, den Gegensatz von Lolch und Weizen in möglichst großer Schärfe erscheinen zu lassen.”

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ding Garment (22:13). By this time in Matthew’s narrative the two phrases have assumed their full mythological connotation of eschatological torment. While Q’s adoption of the trope of the group of Jesus-followers as a household (Q 12:39–40, 42–46) accounts for its dramatization of internal discipline as dismemberment, Matthew’s development of the trope of the church as a household has resulted in the depiction of extravagant punishments not only for outsiders but for insiders, coded in his stories as “guests” or as domestic “slaves.” Matthew’s spatial imagination is strongly dominated by the metaphor of the household, into which newcomers might be admitted and from which they can forcibly be expelled.84 Household control through force is seen in Matthew’s parable of the Wedding Garment, artificially attached to the parable of the Banquet. In the parable of the Wedding Garment Matthew’s interest shifted from an etiology of the destruction of the temple (22:1–10) to the unresolved problem constituted by the Matthean community’s invitation to both πονηρούϚ τε καὶ ἀγαθούϚ (22:10). The parable resolves the problem of a corpus mixtum by insisting, much in the vein of a similar parable told by Yohanan ben Zakkai,85 that performance of the commandments – righteousness – is necessary if one is to survive the last judgment. The nonrealistic aspects of the parable of the Wedding Garment are obvious. Persons invited off the street can hardly be expected to have come prepared with freshly washed clothing. This narrative non sequitur is sufficient to alert the hearer to the fact that the story has long departed the world of realistic wedding etiquette and is about something else. Hence, Matthew can be equally unrealistic in representing the punishment of the unfortunate guest, who is “bound” – borrowed perhaps from Matt 13:30 – and thrown (ἐκβάλλειν) into “outer darkness” amid the grinding of teeth (22:13). The extravagance of the punishment is striking when one compares this parable with the equally fanciful parable of Yohanen ben Zakkai, where those unprepared are merely shamed.86 As noted above, when Matthew took over Q’s parable of the Slave left in Charge (Q 12:42–45 = Matt 24:25–51) he added, rather gratuitously, ἐκεῖ ἔσται ⁸⁴ M. Crosby, House of Disciples: Church, Economics, and Justice in Matthew (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988), stresses the centrality of the metaphor of the house in Matthew’s Gospel, but does not comment on the aspect of household control through force. Crosby’s study should be read alongside that of Glancy (“Slaves and Slavery”). ⁸⁵ B. Šabb. 153a = Qoheleth Rabbah 9.8. ⁸⁶ B. Šabb. 153a: Said Yohanen ben Zakkai: “It is like a king who invited his servants to the banquet and did not name the exact time. The wise among them came and sat at the door of the palace, saying ‘Does the king’s palace lack for anything?’ But the fools went about their own business saying, ‘Was there ever a banquet without a set hour?’ All of a sudden, the king summoned them to his presence. The wise ones appeared all dressed and cleaned up for the occasion, while the fools appeared in their dirt. The king rejoiced to see the wise ones and was angered at the appearance of the fools, and said, ‘Those who have dressed themselves for the banquet, let them sit and eat and drink, while the ones who are unprepared may stand by and look at them.’”

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ὁ κλαυθμὸϚ καὶ ὁ βρυγμὸϚ τῶν ὀδόντων to Q’s description of the dismemberment of the slave and his assignment of dishonorable place. Matthew also substituted ὑποκριταί for Q’s ἄπιστοι, assimilating disloyal Jesus-followers with those vilified in Matt 23. The conclusion to Q’s parable of the Slave left in Charge may also have influenced Matthew’s construction of his story of the Unmerciful Slave. This parable is, like other Matthean parables, told in a fantastic idiom: a slave who owes 10,000 talents to his master – that is, twenty-five times the yearly revenue from Judea allowed to Archelaus (Josephus, B. J. 2.97) – and a king who is willing to forgive such a debt. When the first slave is found acting in an unmerciful way to one of his fellows, he is handed over to the “torturers” (τοῖϚ βασανισταῖϚ). It is not so much that the torturing of slaves is unusual; on the contrary, it is well known that prevailing ideologies of slave-owning held that force and torture were the only ways to produce reliable testimony from slaves. What is striking is how Matthew has re-used the scenario from Q 12:42–45, which there, as here, is aimed at insiders to the Jesus movement, evidently those in leadership positions. Finally, the parable of the Entrusted Money – a text of terror as Richard Rohrbaugh has called it87 – likewise concludes with the third “worthless” slave being thrown into outer darkness amid grinding of teeth (25:30). As a realistic story the parable makes no sense. As Richard Rohrbaugh has shown, the returns on investment expected by the householder are completely unrealistic except in the extremely risky world of maritime shipping. Matthew can only be thinking of some non-monetary gain, probably righteousness, as the parable of the Last Judgment which follows immediately suggests. The very extravagance of the parable, with its demands for unheard-of gains, alerts the hearer to the fact that an allegorizing code is to be inferred from the very beginning. That is, unlike Mark 12:1–8, 9, where the parable is composed in a generally realistic mode through v. 8 and only in v. 9 jumps to the imaginary world of the gods and their actions, Matthew’s parable of the Entrusted Money begins as an allegory, and has lost most of its connections to the worlds of the management of slave estates, investment, and credible scenarios of gain. Hence, it is not too surprising when the third slave is published extravagantly.

6. Conclusion In the representation of modes of force purveyed on behalf of the Jesus movement, the Synoptic tradition begins with metaphors drawn from a range of violent scenarios well known from daily life in the Mediterranean, including housebreaking, the disciplining of slaves, and battlefield practices. In Q and Mark, with ⁸⁷ R. L. Rohrbaugh, “A Peasant Reading of the Parable of the Talents/Pounds: A Text of Terror,” BTB 23 (1993): 32–9.

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one exception, the use of these scenarios remains well within the bounds of realistic representation. Mark represents Jesus as a military commander, defeating and dispatching demons, and as a strongman, able to overpower other men of violence. At only one point does Mark invoke a scenario of “imaginary violence” where violence out of proportion to what is normally witnessed is unleashed, here on Jesus’ opponents. Q also preserves a generally realistic mode in its construction of metaphors of force but imagines deadly force used not only against demons but against partisans of the Jesus movement. In this sense Q, like Qumran,88 constructs the self with threats of violent destruction, but unlike Qumran, appeals to the “ordinary” violence of a slave-owning household rather than the imaginary violence of destroying angels and apocalyptic fire. It is in Matthew that we see the widest development of scenarios of lethal violence. Matthew expands the scope and intensity of divine violence so that it is applied both to opponents and to underperforming insiders. Matthew makes explicit what is only hinted at in Mark, that the deity unleashes his fury on the people of Jerusalem and, like Greek gods, “evilly puts them to a miserable death.” But Matthew surrounds the discipline of the self with threats of imaginary violence effected by God on those who fail to meet community standards.

⁸⁸ See above, n. 67.

6. Building Community Using Text

Forming Identity Through Literature The Impact of Mark for the Building of Christ-Believing Communities in the Second Half of the First Century C. E. Oda Wischmeyer The topic given to me touches on many crucial questions about the interpretation of the Gospel of Mark.1 My contribution will be confined strictly to the issue of community-building through literature. Details of the literary character, historical setting, and theology of Mark, as well as the debate concerning a possible community that produced the Gospel of Mark will only be discussed if necessary for my main topic. To a certain extent, I will deal with questions of method as it bears upon the concerns of Synoptic exegesis.2 I will not build my arguments from a particular literary, sociological, religious, or cultural theory, such as the use of a narrative for the constitution of communal memory, identity formation, foundation myth, consolation, or on using a narrative to appropriate power, because the basic conclusions are predictably deteremined by the prevailing theory. I will, however, touch briefly upon some recent theories used in Markan research in the third section, “The Gospel of Mark as a Community-building Tool: Evidence from Texts.” Furthermore, I shall deal with a comparison of Paul and Mark at some length and for different issues, because Paul is the one person that we know of from the first Christian generation who contributed to the building of communities through the use of literature. In this article, I will argue that the Gospel of Mark works as the first Christian book, and in two ways: 1) The religious impact of the Gospel of Mark was made through its presentation of the life, teaching, and passion of Jesus. 2) The literary impact of Mark’s Gospel as the first Jesus-book is often undervalued. By giving the Christ-believing communities a book of their own, the author of the Gospel of Mark provided the communities with a new, independent, and distinct cultural standing. This was the beginning of the rapid emergence of eminent Jesusbooks – the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John – in the last decades of the first ¹ Professor Alasdair Heron, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, has kindly revised the English version of this article. For the arguments of this paper I have benefited greatly from the following commentaries: J. Marcus, Mark 1–8 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); idem, Mark 8–16 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); A. Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007). ² Cf. J. Capel Anderson and S. D. Moore, eds., Mark and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies (2nd ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008).

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century C. E., and, moreover, it marks the start of a second type of Christian literature besides the Pauline letters.3

1. Methodological Considerations It is often assumed, indeed, even taken for granted, that there is a relationship between the rather small piece of literature we are accustomed to speak of as “The Gospel of Mark” and a particular Christian community or group or family of Christian communities. This relationship can occur in two different directions. The first direction is passive; the term ‘community’ may refer to a certain group that influenced and shaped the traditions and the ideas of the author and his book. The second direction is active; it is the process in which the author himself intends to impress or shape an institution or community by his book. Both directions are connected. Though my contribution will deal predominantly with the second, active, direction, I will take my starting point from both perspectives as part of the broader relationship between the Gospels and certain communities.4 It is obvious from a methodological perspective that we are operating with two closely related concepts that were developed in the nineteenth century for ³ See G. Theißen, Die Entstehung des Neuen Testaments als literaturgeschichtliches Problem (Heidelberg: Winter, 2007), and O. Wischmeyer, “Was meint ‘Literaturgeschichte des Neuen Testaments’?” in Neutestamentliche Grenzgänge. Symposium zur kritischen Rezeption der Arbeiten Gerd Theißen. Festschrift für Gerd Theißen zum 65. Geburtstag (ed. P. Lampe and H. Schwier; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 120–39. ⁴ For major contributions to our understanding of the Markan community, see: W. H. Kelber, The Kingdom in Mark: A New Place and a New Time (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974); H. C. Kee, The Community of the New Age: Studies in Mark’s Gospel (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977); M. A. Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s World in Literary-Historical Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989); J. R. Donahue, “The Quest for the Community of Mark’s Gospel,” in The Four Gospels 1992: Festschrift Frans Neirynck (ed. F. van Segbroeck et al.; 3 vols.; Leuven: University Press, 1992), 2: 817–38; M. D. Goulder, “A Pauline in a Jacobite Church,” in The Four Gospels, 2: 859–75. For a critical debate on the concept of “community” in general see, D. N. Peterson, The Origins of Mark: The Markan Community in Current Debate (Leiden: Brill, 2000). Peterson gives a critical methodological analysis of several major approaches to reconstructing the “Markan community” and argues in a rather general way that scholars by these approaches intend to control Markan exegesis. He aims to point out that the reconstruction of “the Markan community, however, never actually provides reliable interpretive control” and “that the idea that the Markan community can provide such interpretive control is a chimera” (194). Peterson does not deny that there has been a connection between the Gospel of Mark, its author, and a distinct community, but he doubts that scholarship can reconstruct this community. My contribution aims (1) to differentiate between the active and the passive relationship between the author and his community or communities and (2) to replace the rather simple model of reconstructing the author and his message by reconstructing his community. Peterson is right in his critique on the circular structure of this model, but he fails to analyse what we can know about the author and his community or communities by means of analyzing the literary and theological structure of Mark. H. N. Roskam’s monograph, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in its Historical and Social Context (Leiden: Brill, 2004) will be discussed under section 3 (see note 58).

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interpreting early Christian texts, and have turned out to be leading methodological tools commonly known as “Formgeschichte” and “Redaktionsgeschichte” for the analysis of ancients texts. These different methodological tools have one underlying presupposition in common: oral traditions, as well as different types of literature, depend – to greater or lesser degree – on communities, not just on individual persons or particular authors. Therefore, to a greater or lesser degree, ancient texts should be interpreted with regard to their concrete communal and social settings, and not simply put in a general historical framework, such as, e. g., “the Roman Empire.” Furthermore, the whole attempt to interpret gospel texts according to both methods of “Formgeschichte” and “Redaktionsgeschichte” is based on a historical perspective. This means that we have to take into consideration the developmental stages in this literature. First, we have to determine the work of those members of the early communities who collected, generated, and shaped the accumulating Jesus-tradition, and those who contributed to and shaped the so-called kerygma of the pre-Pauline communities. In addition we have to consider the Jerusalem group who shaped the passion narrative.5 Mark employed and shaped the material that was collected by these groups. Second, we have to differentiate between these community members of the first Christian generation and the communities of the second and third generation to which the author of “Mark” and the authors of the other Gospels and of the Deuteropauline and non-Pauline letters belonged, and for whom they wrote their letters or books. To sum up: “Formgeschichte” and “Redaktionsgeschichte” only work within the overall historical framework of the history of Early Christianity, and in particular according to the established paradigms of literary history (“Literaturgeschichte”) and social history (“Sozialgeschichte”). The starting point of “Formgeschichte”6 is the conviction that there is a connection between religious communities and their basic cultic, ethical, and literary requirements, and that these communties shape their oral and literary traditions. This approach was developed within the discipline of Cultural and Social History, beginning with Herder’s “Volkspoesie,” which focused on the study of people’s creative powers concerning culture in general and literature in particular.7 ⁵ See J. D. Crossan, The Cross that Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988); A. Yarbro Collins, “The Genre of the Passion Narrative,” Studia Theologica 47 (1993): 3–28; W. Reinbold, Der älteste Bericht über den Tod Jesu. Literarische Analyse und historische Kritik der Passionsdarstellungen in den Evangelien (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994); E. Bradshaw Aitken, Jesus’ Death in Early Christian Memory: The Poetics of the Passion (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004); F. Herrmann, Strategien der Todesdarstellung in der Markuspassion. Ein literaturgeschichtlicher Vergleich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 5– 23. ⁶ See G. Theißen in: R. Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition. Mit einem Nachwort von Gerd Theißen (10th ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 409–52. ⁷ For a survey of Herder’s contributions to Biblical Studies, see H. Graf Reventlow, Epochen der Bibelauslegung: Von der Aufklärung bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (München: Beck, 2001), 189– 202.

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From the point of view of “Formgeschichte,” the “Sitz im Leben” is to be considered as producing the needs of the communities, especially in preaching, worship, and basic instruction. These social needs provided the vehicle for the promulgation of the early Christian oral traditions and their later transformation into early Christian literature. “Formgeschichte” operates on the assumption that literature is shaped by dynamic and powerful currents within the “Sitz im Leben.” According to the assumptions of “Formgeschichte,” the Christ-believing communities and their institutional needs play a creative role in collecting, repeating, conserving, as well as shaping oral Jesus-traditions. “Formgeschichte” works by reconstructing these traditions and their underlying social “Sitz im Leben,” and it thereby opens windows that enable us to reconstruct the situation of the early Christ-believing communities, including their needs and their formative power. So far, the idea of “Formgeschichte” is reasonable, and the results for New Testament studies, especially for Gospel research, have been helpful and illuminating. The concept of classical “Formgeschichte” was developed, expanded, and modified by a second methodological approach, “Redaktionsgeschichte.” “Redaktionsgeschichte” assumes that the final text was formed according to the author’s intentions, and at the same time the text portrays the community to which the author belongs and to which his Gospel is addressed. “Redaktionsgeschichte” stresses the role of the person who collects and combines the oral or literary traditions and brings them into a coherent text, or even a book, but at the same time aims at reconstructing the community to which the author belongs. From the point of view of “Redaktionsgeschichte,” the Gospels have a twofold relationship to communities. The first relationship is a passive one and is known as mirror relation – a term that Richard Bauckham has brought into discussion and criticized.8 The essential idea of mirror-reading is the possibility of the historical contextualization of texts. Each text operates as a mirror of its time, reflecting its discrete historical setting. But at the same time, it also reflects the historical and social context of the author. It is obvious that the scholarly reconstruction of the past must use texts as sources in this way, as witnesses or mirrors of the social, political, intellectual, and religious realities of their time. So far, then, mirror reading is reasonable and plausible. In this methodological paradigm, however, literature – and the gospels belong to the category of religious literature – is used as a historical source that throws light on the circumstances in which the author lived. As Richard Bauckham has pointed out, however, reading the text in this way introduces a hermeneutical circle. Mirror-reading attempts to reconstruct the author’s world by the social and cultural setting of the author’s book. But we have to think through and ⁸ R. J. Bauckham, “For Whom Were the Gospels Written?” in The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (ed. R. Bauckham; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 9–48. See also the other contributions in the volume.

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discuss carefully if the world of the book could have been composed to portray a world that is different or even independent from the author’s, or how far the book’s world could even have been partly or wholly imagined or idealized. Therefore, when reading Mark in order to reconstruct “his community,” we must begin by first determining the kind of book that the Gospel is. We do not have any historical evidence regarding the Christ-believing community or group of communities to which the author of Mark belonged, or for whom he wrote, outside the author’s book itself. And this book, which was later called, “The Gospel according to Mark,” by no means pretends to report on the author’s community or to give the slightest insight into it; on the contrary, it is strictly limited to telling the story of the last year of Jesus of Nazareth’s life between Galilee and Jerusalem by bringing together isolated and independent parts and details of the Jesus-traditions into a narrative. Therefore, both our work of historical reconstruction of the community behind the Gospel of Mark, and our opinion on the Gospel of Mark as a community-building tool, remain dependent on our historical-critical skills, historical caution, and scrutiny. In particular, we should not identify or mingle arguments from “Formgeschichte” and “Redaktionsgeschichte,” thereby blurring the window function and the mirror function. We should also remain aware of the fact that at least mirror-reading may to some extent have a circular logic. To strengthen my argument it is helpful to discuss briefly the broader issue of the relationship between authors and communities. I will discuss Paul’s relationship with the churches he established as an example, as he is the one New Testament historical figure and author we know of in detail. Can we gain some insights from Paul on the issue of the relationship between Christ-believing communities and early Christian authors? I will begin by analysing the passive aspects of relationship that Paul had with these communities, and then move to discuss the ways in which the relationship was active. Regarding the former, it is obvious that Paul himself does not give his addressees the slightest idea that either his home town, Tarsus, or the city where he was educated, Jerusalem, had any great significance for his biography. He does not mention Tarsus at all, and his references to Jerusalem do not include any hint that he was educated there.9 Even his “mother-community,” the city of Antioch10 – a city to which scholars have assigned its own theological tradition – is mentioned only once in his letters (Gal 2:11). One could argue that Paul was not on good terms with Jerusalem and Antioch when he wrote his letters, but this is a weak argument; we should seek another approach to understanding the relationship between early Christian ⁹ For the reconstruction of the first period of Paul’s life, see M. Hengel, “Der vorchristliche Paulus,” in Paulus und das antike Judentum (ed. M. Hengel und U. Heckel; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991), 256–65 (Hengel argues that Paul was educated in a Greek synagogue in Jerusalem). Hengel also sees Rom 15:19 as evidence of Paul’s relationship with Jerusalem. ¹⁰ For Antioch, see M. Hengel and A. M. Schwemer, Paulus zwischen Damaskus und Antiochien. Die unbekannten Jahre des Apostels (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 274–461.

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authors and communities, or, in a broader sense, the attitudes of Christ-believers towards cultural and religious topography. In the autobiographical passages of his letters Paul does not show any interest either in his family background or the cultural and social situation of the places of his childhood and early youth. The only aspect that matters for him is his religious affiliation to the Jewish people, and in particular to the tribe of Benjamin as well as to the Pharisees. Paul seems to have no deep seated commitment either to cities in terms of their cultural and political importance or to prominent Jewish or leading Christian communities, which is very unlike his literary self-introduction in Act 21:39: “ἐγὼ ἄνθρωπος μέν εἰμι Ἰουδαῖος, Ταρσεὺς τῆς Κιλικίας, οὐκ ἀσήμου πόλεως πολίτης” (cf. 22:3; 23:34; 9:11). In such a sentence we hear Luke, not Paul. We have to realize that our historical research and our contextualizing historical hermeneutics fit to some degree with Luke’s idea of urban culture and the importance of a prominent place of birth and education, but that Paul’s self-concept is quite another one. Paul does not seem to have been aware of the influences we reconstruct from the Jewish diaspora in Tarsus or the early Christian theology in Antioch. I think that we may go even one step further in describing Paul’s self-understanding. He underlines that he began his service of εὐαγγελίζεσθαι without any connection to the Christian communities of Damascus or Jerusalem – a biographical statement that we may doubt. He understands there are only two aspects in his biography that give him authority as an apostle: his Jewishness (Gal 2:15) and the κύριος, who made him the last ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. He understands himself as a member of the international Jewish diaspora and its ethnic, religious, ethical, and literary culture. His cultural sphere is the Roman Empire, not a particular city or community, such as Jerusalem, Antioch, or Ephesus. Thus, I really do hesitate to agree with those colleagues who find the hermeneutical clue to the interpretation of Romans in the political role of the urbs, because I am not sure if Paul was really fighting against the myth, the glory, and the power of Roma aeterna,11 if he even noticed it or was interested in it.12 The only city that impresses him in terms of its religious status is Jerusalem. In short: Paul does not evoke the impression that his person and his mission, and in particular his writing, were influenced or shaped by the Jewish and Christ-believing communities to which he belonged. Moreover, the author of Luke-Acts is not able to write a history of Paul’s education, although he is concerned to contextualize Paul in Judaism, as well as connect him with the Christbelieving communities of Damascus, Antioch, and to some degree with Jerusa-

¹¹ K. Haacker, Der Brief des Paulus an die Römer (3rd ed.; Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagshaus, 2006); R. Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007). See also the recent monograph of N. Elliott, The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of the Empire. Paul in Critical Contexts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008). ¹² See the different attitude in the Apocalypse of John.

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lem. Paul writes on his own responsibility on the foundation of being κλητὸς ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Paul’s theological and innovative literary writing has to be regarded as paradigmatic. This discussion concerning his relationship with certain communities is relevant for Mark. We have to consider whether the author of the Gospel of Mark was so different from Paul’s innovativeness in his writing, and his independence from the communities to which he had belonged. An examimation of Paul’s self-understanding and literary and missionary self-presentation as ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ therefore minds for interpreting the author of the Gospel of Mark. What kind of authority does the author claim for his narrative? The second kind of relationship between the Gospels and communities is active; it is concerned with the author’s intention to shape the communities in which he is living and instructing by his book. As I already mentioned, this idea includes the presupposition that the early Christian authors wrote within and for particular communities, and that their books served practical purposes within and for their communities, such as memory building, consolation, instruction, and information. The comprehensive term used to describe these kinds of functions is community-building (sociological perspective) or identity-shaping (socio-psychological perspective). However, in my view we should be cautious in this respect also, and start anew by asking: must we really assume that the Gospel of Mark was written for the distinct communal purpose of communitybuilding? To establish my reluctance in ascribing such a purpose for Mark’s Gospel, I would like to discuss again the concept of community-building by using Paul’s letters as an example. We know two authors who explicitly wrote for Christbelieving communities: Paul of Tarsus and John, the author of the Revelation. Therefore, methodologically, it may be helpful to look at Paul for a second time. He was the leading figure in building Christian communities; he did not, however, write a Gospel, but instead composed letters for this purpose. John, too, did not wish to do without this communicative genre when writing his apocalypse and therefore shaped it as a letter furnished with an epistolary frame. Finally, the only Gospel author who presents himself and his literary intentions in a prooemium, Luke, does not address a community, but a patron. These puzzling observations make clear that we cannot simply take it for granted that early Christian authors wrote in close connection to discrete communities for the purpose of community-building; we have to go deeper into this issue by considering the literary genres and their impact on community-building. When we return to Paul and his letters, we get quite a different impression of him from what we found with the passive relationship between authors and communties (discussed earlier). It is exactly Paul’s own influence as a missionary on young Christian communities that is strong, and in particular on those communities he had founded himself. The literary and rhetorical strategy of his letters are indeed powerful tools of community-building (2 Cor 10:10 ff.). Paul is

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the best example of an early Christian author who uses his literary work as a tool for building and guiding communities, but at the same time he stresses his own independence of these communities. His attitude towards these communities is that of actively influencing and educating them, and his letters are his chief instrument to accomplish this. Paul’s relationship to his communities serves as a warning against too quickly constructing an analogous relationship between Mark and Christ-believing communities. Paul and Mark are the two Christ-believing authors, who, from the very beginning, introduced subsequent Christianity to literature,13 but further comparison of both authors serves to outline the differences between their writings and choice of literary genre. Paul is the most important example of an early Christian author who has a strong intention14 of shaping Christian identity by writing. Paul chooses the communicative genre of letters. He writes under his own name, addresses specific communities, establishes and defends his authority in many ways, and uses the rhetoric of persuasion. In comparison, the author of the Gospel of Mark acts as a hidden author without any claim to authority and does not attempt to address his work to a particular audience. He also does not write a narrative that works in a persuasive or instructive way as fabula or exemplum; instead, he simply tells the story of Jesus’ preaching of the Gospel, his passion, and his death. The prevailing pragmatics of the narrative of Mark’s Gospel lie in the narrative itself.15 Therefore no social or social-historical interpretation of the Gospel of Mark can pass over the hidden author and the genre of Mark’s Gospel. It is both the hidden author who refuses to make his intentions explicit, or to use auctoritas as do Paul and John, the author of Revelation, and Mark’s chosen genre, that makes it difficult to understand the Gospel as a communitybuilding tool in the proper sense of the phrase.

2. The Current Discussion on the Author and on the Genre of the Gospel of Mark For the first step of our inquiry we have to consider the hidden author “Mark” and discuss his hidden intentions. The question of the ‘author’ of an anonymous book is both precarious and intriguing. We are looking for a person who does not want to be known personally, or at least does not take care to make himself known as the author. The Gospel of Mark is a coherent narrative, and there is no reason to doubt that the text was composed by one single person who had the innovative, conceptual, creative power, responsibility, and auctoritas for the narrative. Therefore, using the term “author” seems to be quite reasonable, even if the author hides himself behind his narrative. A hidden author remains an ¹³ For the general perspective, see Theißen (note 3) and in particular Tolbert (note 4). ¹⁴ Here the precarious term of intentio auctoris is obviously fitting. ¹⁵ See Stephen Westerholm’s contribution in the second volume of “Mark and Matthew.”

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author in any case. As to the author of the Gospel of Mark, there has been no scholarly consensus about his person and his historical setting since Papias’ comments about Mark’s authorship have come under historical suspicion.16 The monumental commentary of Adela Yarbro Collins gives us a brilliant update for the related questions on authorship, place of writing, date, genre, composition, audience, and purpose, treating each topic independently from the other ones.17 This methodological differentiation is to be preferred to the mingling of issues of personal identity and name, geography, dating, social and cultural setting, and community-membership. In this broader field of so-called introductory questions I shall concentrate on discussing the two predominant proposals for reconstructing the author and putting him in a particular historical and geographic setting.18 The most prominent proposal is the Roman one, and Yarbro Collins writes accordingly: “The external evidence thus points to Rome, or at least Italy.”19 The other proposal points to Antioch, and Yarbro Collins comments on this location in a broader sense as follows: “Much of the internal evidence suggests the East.”20 There are four major arguments that support the thesis that an author – who’s name was perhaps Μαˆ ρκος – wrote the Gospel of Mark in Rome around 70 C. E.: 1) the testimony of Papias and subsequent Christian authors; 2) the tradition of Peter in the Gospel; 3) the language, namely the Latinisms; and 4) the presence of the lepta/quadrans term in Mark 12:42. I omit a discussion of Papias because the arguments are already well known and well-established.21 The evidence of a special relation between Peter and the Gospel of Mark is not very convincing, as was noted already by Jülicher: “Ohne die Anregung des Papias würden wir schwerlich den Petrus als Gewährsmann für die Güte der Markusberichte reklamiert haben.”22 Moreover, Yarbro Collins points out that the sphere of Peter’s influence was by no means limited to Rome. This observation leads us to another rather fundamental point: “the mobility and communication in the first-century Roman world.”23 The same argument goes for the Latin terms in the Gospel of Mark.24 Only in the case of the lepta/quadrans25 term, there seems ¹⁶ See Marcus, Mark 1–8, 21–4. For his picture of the Markan community, see pp. 25–8. ¹⁷ This procedure keeps the commentary of Yarbro Collins from the circular structure that is

blamed by Peterson (note 3). ¹⁸ For details see the commentaries of Yarbro Collins and Marcus. I shall restrict my comments on issues that are closely related to my theme. ¹⁹ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 8. ²⁰ Marcus, Mark 1–8, 33–7, prefers Antioch. His argument is based on his dating the Gospel, which he situates between 69 and 74/5 C. E. in the context of the Jewish War. ²¹ See the detailed analysis given by M. Hengel, Der unterschätzte Petrus: Zwei Studien (2nd ed.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 58–77, esp. 74 ff. Hengel discusses the scholarly literature that affirms the historical reliability of Papias. ²² A. Jülicher, Einleitung in das Neue Testament (7th ed.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1931), 299. ²³ Bauckham, “For Whom Were Gospels Written?” 32. ²⁴ See Yarbro Collins, Mark, 99. ²⁵ Mark 12:42.

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to be of a different quality, and I will discuss it briefly. The word τὸ λεπτόν or τὰ λεπτά refers to small coins or a very small coin in some Greek inscriptions. As a coin of low monetary value, we find the λεπτόν as a small copper coin in Syria: “Wohl aber könnten die kleinsten uns aus der Zeit Christi bekannten AE–M. der Gegend, die sog. Prokuratoren-M. mit Kaisernamen, aber ohne Kaiserbild, und die entspr. des Herodes Antipas, Archelaos, Agrippa das L. oder der κοδράντης sein; in Syrien ist das L. auch sonst nachgewiesen.”26 A comment on λεπτὰ δύο: “ὅ ἐστιν κοδράντης” is obviously written from a western, non-Syrian perspective in spite of the fact that the Greek loanword κοδράντης was used also in Syria. I agree with Yarbro Collins’s comment: “In Syria and Judea, Roman and local coin denominations coexisted, and local coins were understood in terms of Roman denominations.”27 I also agree with the next sentence on the same page: “For this reason, the use of the term quadrans … here may not be taken as evidence that Mark was written in Rome.” But I am not sure about her conclusion: “In fact, mention of the two lepta makes it more likely that Mark was written in one of the Eastern provinces.”28 This fits for the λεπτὰ δύο term, but it does not explain the addition of “ὅ ἐστιν κοδράντης” as an explanatory phrase. As I understand it, the term lepta belongs to the tradition, that means to the East, and the author is also familiar with it. But the author feels that he should give a translation for his broader audience and therefore adds quadrans. This addition would not be necessary for a Syrian audience. Here we may also comment on the interesting detail in manuscript D for Luke 21:2 that re-amends the “ὅ ἐστιν κοδράντης” phrase, a phrase which is eliminated in the other manuscripts. The perspective of D may have been the same as Mark’s author, i. e. not western in particular, but one that is more general. In this sense the phrase in Mark 12:42 is evidence that Mark should be read with a particular geography in mind; but rather, that Mark represents a meta-regional imperial culture.29 To this conclusion I would like to add the expertise of Maria Alföldy,30 who argues that, in general, geographical or topographical information about coins cannot be gained from literature. To sum up, I do not think that there are convincing arguments for connecting the author of Mark to a particular community, neither Rome nor Antioch. But, in my opinion, this does no harm. It is more important to draw a cultural, rather than a regional, portrait of the author, i. e. to understand Mark’s author as a cultural person. From this perspective, my ongoing comparison between Paul and Mark may be somewhat helpful. Mark, like Paul, seems to be as meta-regional citizen – not in the legal but in the cultural sense – of the Roman Empire of the ²⁶ F. Freiherr von Schrötter, Wörterbuch der Münzkunde (2nd ed.; Berlin: de Gruyter 1970), 350 ff. See Yarbro Collins, Mark, 589 for more literature. ²⁷ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 589. ²⁸ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 589. ²⁹ The Aramaisms and their translations point in the same direction. ³⁰ Oral information by Prof. Maria R.-Alföldy, University of Frankfurt/M., Institut für archäologische Wissenschaften.

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first century C. E.31 He seems to be well educated in Jewish literature and able to construct history on the foundations of the Jewish prophetic heritage and within an apocalyptic framework (ch. 13), while still maintaining a literary affinity with contemporary pagan historians, as Eve-Marie Becker has pointed out.32 His own cultural and religious background is perhaps close to that of Paul in terms of the same broad literary and religious culture of the Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora that always involves a real or ideal connection to Jerusalem.33 Mark’s overall conception of εὐαγγέλιον and his use of the Jewish Bible, of Isaiah in particular, his interest in the topic of purity (ch. 7), as well as the apocalyptic horizon of his interpretation of the figure of Jesus, traces back to Jewish origins as well as to Christian education in a community that was influenced by Pauline theology.34 However, Mark’s predominant interest in the Jesus tradition, and in a connection to groups of Jesus’ disciples, in particular to Peter, whom Paul, as far as we know, had not favoured, marks a clear difference from Paul. These considerations are meaningful only in terms of cultural horizons, not in terms of geography and regional location, i. e. Galilee or Jerusalem. I would raise another question: Would the location of the community really matter for understanding the author’s instruction and his plans for strengthening the Christ-believing profile of the community? Would his narrative for Rome be different than for Antioch? Would a different geographical audience alter the structure, the contents, and the intention of his narrative? And, would the religious profile of the community have mattered? I do not see differences in communicating the εὐαγγέλιον Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ as a narrative to a Jewish Christian community, or to a partly or predominantly non-Jewish-Christ-believing community in one of the cities between Rome and Antioch. This is especially true when we keep in mind the strong parallels between those texts of Paul where he is arguing about food purity to the Corinthian community, or to the very different Christ believing communities in Rome, or if we also consider his argument against Peter in Antioch on exactly the same issue.35 ³¹ This is the underlying idea of Bauckham, “For Whom Were the Gospels Written?” ³² Cf. E.-M. Becker, Das Markus-Evangelium im Rahmen antiker Historiographie (Tübingen:

Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 130–399. ³³ Compare Paul’s idea of a collection for the saints in Jerusalem and the importance of ch. 13 for Mark’s Gospel. ³⁴ See Marcus, Mark 1–8, 73–5; J. C. Fenton, “Paul and Mark,” in Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot (ed. D. H. Nineham; Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), 89–112. Marcus does not mention the important issue of the role that Isaiah plays in Paul’s letters and in the Gospel of Mark. But he points out that scholars such as M. Werner, Der Einfluß paulinischer Theologie im Markusevangelium (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1923), and Fenton, “Paul and Mark,” overlook the genre difference. Marcus writes: “It would be difficult, for example, to picture ‘being in Christ’ in a literal way within the Markan story” (75). ³⁵ Marcus argues that “the very plurality of the Synoptics … is in favor of the supposition that they were written, as Streeter puts it, in and for different churches” (Marcus, Mark 1–8, 26). This statement is one sided. One can argue equally well that the diversity of the authors’ interests was the reason for the plurality of gospels.

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The scholarly discussion of Mark’s genre has been documented by Adela Yarbro Collins and Eve-Marie Becker.36 In the context of my argument, I will limit my observations strictly to some points that will illuminate my question about the Gospel of Mark as a community-building tool.37 I take my point of departure by repeating the remark that a mere narrative in some respect works like a hidden author. The ‘Gospel of Mark’ is a narrative without a title38 and without an author who reveals himself, his origins and education, his authority, his addressees, and his intentions. This may be part of early Jewish and early Christian pseudepigraphical culture. Another characteristic of Mark’s Gospel deserves our attention: in addition to the fact that the author of Mark hides his person like the anonymous or pseudonymous authors of the Deuteropauline letters, he also completely hides the sources of his historical narrative. He does not point to sources, such as eyewitnesses,39 or the disciples of Jesus, or apostles like Peter.40 He does not provide any means for verifying his narrative; it is precisely this lack of verification that underlies the reason why Papias inquired and debated the apostolic authorship that dominated the process of canon-building. This issue of reliability is the point where the question for the author and the question for the genre meet. It is the issue of authority, and this issue was of high interest for the communities. What could they know about Jesus, and how trustworthy were the texts?41 It is obvious that the Gospel of Mark had authority. It was not only read, but also preserved and copied by communities, and it was read and rewritten by other Christ-believing authors like Luke, Matthew, and perhaps John. We do not know, however, the reason why this anonymous text made such an impact. Scholars have made several proposals, and two are reasonable.42 First, if the Gos³⁶ For the complicated general debate on the genre see Becker, Das Markus-Evangelium, 130–399 and Yarbro Collins, Mark, 15–43. Collins’ definition of Mark as an “Eschatological Historical Monograph” (42) aims to combine both the historiographic and the apocalyptic horizons of the Gospel, and to bring together the categories of literature and history of religion. M. E. Vines, The Problem of the Markan Genre: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish Novel (Leiden: Brill, 2002), provides a helpful overview of Hellenistic prose literature. He puts the Gospel of Mark in the context of Jewish novelistic literature but without giving evidence from Jewish texts. My argument consists of four basic elements: (1) the Gospel of Mark is a narrative, (2) the Gospel of Mark has a biographical perspective (E.-M. Becker: “personenzentriert”), (3) the Gospel of Mark is to be read within the framework of Hellenistic-Roman historiographical literature, as E.-M. Becker’s monograph makes evident, (4) the Gospel of Mark is still close to Jewish Literature (intertextuality), as A. Yarbro Collins underlines. ³⁷ The topic of the purpose of Mark recently has been worked out by Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark (note 4). ³⁸ See M. Hengel, Die Evangelienüberschriften (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1984). ³⁹ This lack of evidence challenges the whole discussion on eyewitnesses as R. J. Bauckham does in, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). ⁴⁰ See the different way of gaining authority in 2 Peter and in the Johannine literature. ⁴¹ The prooemium of the Gospel of Luke and the prologue of the Gospel of John confirm that this issue mattered for communities. ⁴² See Marcus, Mark 1–8, 25–39.

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pel was only written for one particular community by one of its members, this community must have had authority of a high rank and influence within the Christ-believing communities as a whole. There must also have been an archive and an active literary culture. In this case the community had the self-evident function of giving the narrative authority and communicating it in the group of the ἐκκλησίαι Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Second, one also can imagine that the Gospel of Mark was written by a Christ-believer who had particular theological and literary gifts and aimed to bring the traditions of Jesus’ mission and death into a narrative. Both options should not be understood as alternatives, but as complementing each other. Nevertheless, we have to emphasize that we do not know about the author or about the community to which he belonged. Here I would like to add a brief remark on the question of readership, which is the third part in the triangle of author, text (or genre), and audience (or readership). Adela Yarbro Collins provides a detailed discussion of the issue of the readership of the Gospel of Mark.43 Two issues in this discussion are important for her. First, she argues that the reader of 13:14 “is the one who actually reads the text to the audience, rather than the individual reader of the audience.”44 Two, she is convinced that “the Gospel was publicly read aloud and probably interpreted and applied as well. It is scribal in that sense that the Gospel was a written text that the public reader had probably read privately and studied, but his private reading and study was most likely rooted in an oral context of teaching and handing on the tradition.”45 Her comments are very cautious, and her inclination to construct an oral framework for early Christian culture is well founded. But if we imagine that the author was educated in a community that to some degree was close to Paul and to the Septuagint, the difference between oral and literary culture seems to me less important. Given that the majority of members of the Christ-believing communities were not able to read by themselves, there still remains a minority that might have been able to study the Septuagint and read the letters of Paul and the Gospel of Mark. Neither the Septuagint nor Paul’s letters were closely related to certain places, and they could be studied everywhere by single persons and by interested groups in communities as well as in services.46 To sum up: we are only sure about the result of the author’s work. He wrote the first book for the Christ-believing communities. In my opinion, this is a fact that deserves more attention, because, for the first time, a text of a Christ-believing author emerged that, to a certain degree, was independent of its author, its community, the circumstances of its origin, its reading conditions, and even of ⁴³ ⁴⁴ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶

Yarbro Collins, Mark, 597–8. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 598. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 598. The reading of sacred scripture in the service is limited to the Septuagint in the first generations of Christ-believing communities. See Melito of Sardes, who, in his Homily on the Passover, refers only to OT texts (oral remark by Prof. Reinhard Seeliger, Universität Tübingen).

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its religion. The book claims the authority of narrating the Jesus story without appealing to locale, or personal authorities like apostles,47 or communities,48 or the author’s own person,49 and without considering alternatives or commenting on the narrative. The brevitas of the narration as a whole, the single brief textual units, as well as the brief style of the λόγια (sententiae), are part of what authors like Ps.-Demetrius call a “royal style,” connecting it with the literary style of kings and rulers.50 From this perspective of style, the brief and uncommented evidence of the narrative has the power of authority and conviction.51 In Mark, the narrative itself is its own authority. The later Gospels that more or less include the first Gospel have lost this original brevitas because their authors have other literary aims. At the same time, they are losing the authority of a brief uncommented narrative that does not rely on any external anchorage like prooemia, prologues, and genealogies. Finally, we must look at the opening of Mark’s Gospel to discuss if the author’s intentions are hidden in the beginning of his book. Scholars agree about the importance of the opening sentence of the Gospel of Mark:52 “Each word here is momentous,” as Joel Marcus puts it.53 Adela Yarbro Collins argues against J. K. Elliott,54 who doubts that the text of vv. 1–3 is part of the original text. She states: “It is to be expected, however, that the author would depart from his normal narrative usage in fashioning a suitable opening for the work as a whole.”55 Mark 1:1 is constructed without verbs and works as a heading, a brief table of contents, and as a opening to the narrative. The opening gives a threefold hint to the author’s intention: (1) the following book is εὐαγγέλιον Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. (2) The message is about the person of Jesus, who is the Messiah56 and at the same time υἱὸς θεοῦ. (3) The book belongs to the historiographical genre in a broader sense, because of the opening word ἀρχή.57 The lack of any further references in 1:1 gives the first sentence an extraordinary power and authority. These insights lead me to conclude that it is the narrative that follows that has the power of community-building. This conclusion seems to be self-evident; how⁴⁷ ⁴⁸ ⁴⁹ ⁵⁰

This is the way the later tradition wants to put it (cf. Papias, see note 22). Perhaps 1 Clement. Such as Paul, John, the author of Revelation, and Josephus. I am grateful to Dr. Lorenzo Scornaienchi, University of Zürich, for directing my attention to Ps.-Demetrius, On Style, 8, and discussing with me the “royal style” of the Gospel of Mark. This topic is part of his monograph-project on “Die markinischen Streitgespräche”. ⁵¹ This no longer holds good in the next generation. ⁵² For detail see the discussion in Yarbro Collins, Mark, 130–2. ⁵³ Marcus, Mark 1–8, 143. ⁵⁴ J. K. Elliott, “Mark 1.1–3 – A Later Addition to the Gospel?” NTS 46 (2000): 584–8. ⁵⁵ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 132. ⁵⁶ We cannot know whether the whole audience was already so educated in the Christian faith as to know exactly that the title of Christ means the Messiah. However, this connection is plausible in Mark 12:35–37, because it is not the title “Messiah” that is discussed, but the title “Son of David.” ⁵⁷ See Becker, Das Markus-Evangelium, 102–16.

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ever, a brief look at the issue of the purpose of Mark’s Gospel will show that the scholarly discourse has taken rather different approaches.

3. The Gospel of Mark as a Community-building Tool: Evidence from Texts “The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in its Historical and Social Context,” to use the title of Hendrika Roskam’s dissertation,58 continues to be discussed, although there have been numerous scholarly theory-based attempts to solve the issue. Hendrika Roskam gives a comprehensive introduction to the topic and comes to the conclusion that the purpose of Mark’s Gospel basically depends on the definition of the genre, or, as she states, “on the Gospel’s literary character.”59 Roskam aims to re-establish the combination of the question of the origin, the genre, the audience, and the purpose of Mark. She refers to Mark 4:17, 8:34 ff., 10:29 ff., and 13:9–13, and argues convincingly “that Mark wrote his Gospel for Christian readers whom he considered to be suffering persecution because of their adherence to the Christian movement.”60 She presupposes “that the author and his intended readers were living at the same time and in the same geographical area,”61 and situates the author and his persecuted Christian community within the Galilee,62 to a time shortly after the Jewish War. In this situation the author aims to protect the communities by giving a narrative that changes the protrait of Jesus as “an anti-Roman rebel, and as a consequence, the Christians should not be considered insurrectionists.”63 She states further that the author is able to give an apologetic narrative and to defend his audience by using the genre of biography. She states: “Mark’s Gospel can best be characterized as an apologetic tract in biographical form.”64 There is textual evidence to support Roskam’s claims that the community was persecuted, and I shall come back to this topic later. But her proposal to read Mark as an apologetic tract is not as convincing. It is very unlikely that this narrative ever reached the Roman government or was intended to be read by Roman authorities, especially if we take into consideration the close relationship that Roskam herself stresses between the author, his narrative, and his Christbelieving audience.

⁵⁸ ⁵⁹ ⁶⁰ ⁶¹ ⁶²

See note 4. Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark, 11. Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark, 75. Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark, 75. Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark, 94–114. See especially p. 76 n. 3, where she discusses Kelber, The Kingdom in Mark (see note 4). The thesis that Galilee is the place of origin is implausible (see the considerations in the introductory questions). ⁶³ Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark, 211. ⁶⁴ Roskam The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark, 238.

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It seems to me that the application of historical constructions or sociologically based theories and models to the Gospel of Mark do not give as many insights as a close textual reading of the hidden author’s narrative and its impact on communities. Although we are dealing with a ‘hidden author’ and his narrative, we have at least three texts that may work as direct indications of the author and his intention or the purpose of his book: Mark 1:1–4/5, 7:1–23, and 13:14. In these texts we hear the author’s own voice and read his commentary on the record or narrative that he gives for his literary audience. I will begin with chapter 7:1–23. The lynchpin of the text is the observation, made by the Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem, that Jesus’ disciples did not observe ritual purity, and charge them with the following: “They are eating their bread with profane hands.”65 Yarbro Collins classifies chapter 7 into two parts: “Verses 1–13 constitute a scholastic or controversy dialogue in which the interlocutors are the Pharisees and the scribes. Verses 14–23 are structured as a typically Markan scene in which Jesus instructs the crowd and then gives private instruction to his disciples.”66 The first part of the text is dedicated to the topic of pharisaic customs and the παράδοσις τῶν πρεσβυτέρων, referring to food and meals, as well as to the κορβᾶν. The subject matter of the instruction that Jesus gives his disciples in vv. 17–23 is the strict ethical interpretation of the religious topic of purity (κοινός, κοινοῦν), referring in particular to food and meals. The explanations of vv. 3 and 4 demonstrate that the audience of Mark, at least in its majority, should be regarded as a non-Jewish one (generalizing “the Pharisees and all Jews”) and thus the text hardly could have been written for a community in Judea or Galilee. Particularly remarkable is the fact that Mark uses the quite unusual term κοινός for “profane” in 7:2, 5 (cf. v. 15). We do not find this word used by Greek authors except in 4 Macc 7:6 in the same context of impure food – perhaps pork.67 If we put 4 Maccabees at the end of the first century C. E.,68 Paul is the first author to use κοινός in terms of religious purity. So we may conclude that κοινός as a term for ritual impurity has a Jewish Christian origin and was a topic of theological importance for Paul. He deals with the issue of purity of food in two prominent texts: 1 Cor 8–10 and Romans 14. In Romans he uses the term κοινός. This fits very well with Mark 7:19. In this context I am especially interested in Mark 7:2, particularly the translation or interpretation of the phrase “unwashed hands.” The author seems to be familiar with the particular κοινός terminology as well as with the non-specific translation of “with unwashed hands.” Yarbro Collins comments on the phrase: “Mark added the latter phrase for these in his audience who may not have been familiar with the Jewish notion of ritual impurity.”69 One may go one step ⁶⁵ ⁶⁶ ⁶⁷ ⁶⁸ ⁶⁹

The English translations are taken from Yarbro Collins, Mark, 339. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 342. But see H.-J. Klauck, 4. Makkabäerbuch (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1989), 719 n. 6d. Klauck, 4. Makkabäerbuch, 669. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 344.

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further and add that his audience may not have been familiar with the particular Jewish-Christian debate on ritual impurity that is reflected in the term κοινός. While the author’s explanation in Mark 7:19, “καθαρίζω πάντα τὰ βρώματα,” is a very small secondary hermeneutical comment, and seems to have been written in passing and without considerable emphasis, it is nonetheless of great interest. The sentence is lacking in Matthew 15:17.70 Here we have the author’s own theological comment in his own language. He is as convinced as Paul that there is no problem of food purity or impurity. Yarbro Collins refers to 1 Cor 8:8 and comments on the sentence as follows: “The comment of the evangelist should probably not be read as an indication that the evangelist and his entire audience had abandoned such observance. It does make the point, however, that such observance is not necessary for followers of Jesus.”71 I agree with her, and would add the observation that the perspective of the author’s comments in general serves the purpose of interpreting Jewish religious customs for his non Jewisheducated audience, which was probably the majority. Additionally v. 2 could point to a Jewish Christian origin of the author who uses the same term as Paul and then translates it for an audience who is not of Jewish Christian origin, and with whom he is well-aquainted. In general, chapter 7 is an instruction on food and purity and the author’s very brief comments serve the purpose of directly instructing his contemporary Christ-believing communities about the issue of κοινός/κοινόω. The second text to be considered is Mark 13:14: “ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοεῖτω.”72 In the context of the whole Gospel of Mark this sentence can only be read as the author’s remark meant to elucidate the sense of v. 14a as an aside for the reader. But in terms of diachronic analysis it is also possible that the comment was already part of the tradition73 and served the purpose of instructing an earlier audience. Instead of deciding for one option I prefer to stress the character of this author’s comment either as part of an earlier flier or as an original comment of the author of Mark.74 In any case, the comment appeals to a reader and breaks through the dense logic of Jesus’ speech to his disciples whom he addresses in the second person pluralis (13:5–37). The comment also breaks through the dense narrative of Mark 11–13.75 Joel Marcus comments on the sentence: “Although the possibility of a scribal gloss cannot be excluded…it is more likely that this ⁷⁰ ⁷¹ ⁷² ⁷³

There is no parallel in Luke. Yarbro Collins, Mark, 356. Manuscripts D and a add: τι αναγινωσκει. See Yarbro Collins, Mark, 597–8. Theissen thinks of a “apokalyptisches Flugblatt:” cf. G. Theißen, Lokalkolorit und Zeitgeschichte in den Evangelien. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition (2nd ed.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 145–76. See the discussion in Yarbro Collins, Mark, 594–600, and Marcus, Mark 8–16, 864–8. ⁷⁴ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 596, doubts that the phrase can be used “as evidence for a written source,” because the text is shaped as a speech of Jesus to four of his disciples. But the sentence could be interpreted as a comment for the reader of the flier, written by the redactor. ⁷⁵ See the motive of the fig tree in 11:12 and 13:28.

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intrusive clause is an insertion by the evangelist to underline for his addressees the significance of the prophecy of end-time persecution he is transmitting.”76 A close reading of 13:14 leads to an even more detailed insight. This brief verse is conspicuous in some respects. (1) It is the only explicit address to readers of the Gospel of Mark,77 (2) it is a comment on v. 14a, and (3) it emphasizes a hidden sense of the phrase, “τὸ βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως ἑστηκότα ὅπου οὐ δεῖ.” In 13:14 the author of Mark not only proves to be familiar with Jewish apocalypticism in general, but he is also addressing readers to whom he reveals the hidden sense of an apocalyptic prophecy concerning the temple. Adela Yarbro Collins comments on the phrase: “It is much more likely that the aside is a literary device to indicate that the preceding allusion to the ‘desolating sacrifice’ is a cryptic saying that requires interpretation.”78 And (4), Mark 13:14 is an urgent apocalyptic time announcement like 1 Thessalonians 5. The third text of importance is Mark 1:1–3. I have already commented on the opening sentence in 1:1. Mark 1:2 indicates that the Gospel of Mark is in certain respects a Jewish book:79 “καθὼς γέγραπται ἐν τῷ Ἠσαίᾳ τῷ προφήτῃ.” By beginning his narrative with a catena of quotations from the prophets, the author puts his book about Jesus (v. 1) into the framework of the prophets of Israel, Isaiah in particular. Joel Marcus comments: “Mark’s ascription of the whole catena to Isaiah could simply be a mistake, but it is more likely that Mark is deliberately setting his story in an Isaian context.”80 But v. 2 is not the very beginning. As I already pointed out, in v. 1 the author himself announces his book as εὐαγγέλιον Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, so that members of Christ-believing communities can be sure, already from the very beginning, about the content. V. 1 includes another indication of the author’s audience. He is writing for a Christbelieving audience81 that comprises members of Jewish and non-Jewish origin.82 Finally we have to consider the texts about persecution, which Hendrika Roskam stresses as the purpose of the εὐαγγέλιον. She has demonstrated that a number of sentences in chapter 4, 8, 10, and 13 reflect the situation of the communities and of the author and thereby are part of the author’s own voice, so to say. To sum up, we can make some important observations regarding the issue of the Gospel of Mark as a community-building tool from a few sentences that show us the author’s own hand. We have evidence that the author is more deeply ⁷⁶ Marcus, Mark 8–16, 891. ⁷⁷ In the Gospel, Jesus often addresses his audience. The author never addresses an audience

himself. ⁷⁸ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 596. ⁷⁹ See J. Marcus, The Way of the Lord: Christological Exegesis of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1992), 18 n. 22 for parallels from the Qumran library, later New Testament writings, and rabbinic literature. ⁸⁰ Marcus, Mark 1–8, 147. Marcus refers to Mark 7:6. ⁸¹ This statement does not exclude pagan readers such as god-fearers. ⁸² The two titles of Messiah and Son of God may be read in this sense.

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rooted in the Septuagint and in Jewish religion and culture than his audience. At the same time, he not only belongs to a Christ-believing community, but he also gives them their own first book, thereby introducing them to literary culture. The book is a narrative of Jesus of Nazareth’s last year and finds its end in the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. The book works as a narrative about Jesus for any community and for any reader. It conceptualizes the true character of Jesus as God’s son from the very beginning in Mark 1:1. Furthermore, it contributes moral instruction on the differences between what the author constructs as common Judaism on the one hand and the ethical teaching of Jesus on the other hand, but also consolation and hope as narrative. In particular it works as a time announcement in an apocalyptic framework.

4. The Gospel of Mark as a Community-building Tool: Some General Remarks The introductory passage of Mark’s Gospel conceptualizes the theological and the literary program of the book. I have already dealt with the issue of the general conceptualization of the Gospel in 1:1–3. With respect to his theological program, the author maps out his understanding of Jesus Christ in light of his relationship to the one God, who is the God of Israel, by connecting Jesus with the prophecy of Isaiah and with the baptizing of John. In doing so, he puts Jesus into the framework of God’s salvation-history with Israel (“Heilsgeschichte”), and into the contemporary history of Jerusalem-Judea (“Zeitgeschichte”). This conceptualization means that there is only one God, the God of Israel, and that there is only one plan that God has for humanity, namely the final coming of God’s kingdom into the world. This plan was revealed through the prophets of Israel, passed on through the message of John the Baptist, and finally came to its climax with the mission of God’s son, Jesus, and the εὐαγγέλιον of Jesus. Isaiah’s prophecy is the guarantee of God’s constancy and continuity from the very beginning, John’s message is the initiation of the καιρός, and Jesus’ baptism is the beginning of the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ itself. The Gospel of Mark as εὐαγγέλιον in the form of a narrative extends the εὐαγγέλιον to the current situation of his literary audience, which is basically ecumenical (Mark 13:10). Regarding his literary program, the author is just as clear. His book comprehends the various aspects of the εὐαγγέλιον as narrative – ranging from the prophets via John to Jesus the Christ whose final return as Son of Man (Mark 13:26) is near (Mark 13:30) – and instruction on the καιρός (Mark 13:32–37). In this framework the author lays the whole emphasis on Jesus proclaiming the good news of God83 in Galilee and Jerusalem. This means that the narrative of the

⁸³ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 133.

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εὐαγγέλιον Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ is devoted to the center and final climax of the whole process of God’s revelation with men. The author understands God’s revelation as a process of internal dynamics that is situated within the author’s own time (13:30). By these means, the Gospel of Mark works as a qualified time announcement that is delivered in narrative form because it has a historical dimension that originated with the prophets and continued to the coming of Jesus of Nazareth towards the end of time. The near future will bring the coming of the Son of Man, as the young man announces to the disciples in Mark 16:7. The sentence, “He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he said to you,”84 is the climax of the Markan time announcements, which began with 1:1, the ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, and remains open to the near future. Regarding the temporal structure of the εὐαγγέλιον Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, as well as the Gospel of Mark as a book, we read a historical outline of the life and work and death of Jesus with an apocalyptic vision in chapter 13 that opens the narrative of Jesus’ death for God’s future. In this chapter, the Christ believing communities become part of the narrative. Chapter 13 announces that God’s final judgement, the coming of the Son of Man and the “end” (13:7), will happen during the lifetime of the audience (13:10). The Gospel of Mark is written during the second generation of Christ-believing communities and their leaders when the εὐαγγέλιον was being preached to a non-Jewish audience all over the Roman Empire. But how can we apply these theological and literary insights to a potential community that was connected in some way or another to the Markan Gospel? We can observe that only two early Christian authors put the term εὐαγγέλιον in the centre of their texts, Mark and Paul, and here we have a foundation for reconstructing the contribution of the Gospel of Mark to community-building in general. εὐαγγέλιον is an important term for the author, as he uses it in the introductory sentence as I already have pointed out. Adela Yarbro Collins also stresses the affinity of Mark and Paul: “The earliest evidence we have for the Christian use of the noun εὐαγγέλιον (‘good news’) is its appearance in the letters of Paul to designate the message of the early Christian missionaries and its oral proclamation.”85 Yarbro Collins describes the use of εὐαγγέλιον in Mark in a twofold way, as an “oral announcement” and as an “explanation of the salvific significance of the life and work of Jesus, especially his death and resurrection.”86 It is evident that only the last part of this description is also true for Paul, because the salvific significance of the life and work – and let me add the message and instruction – of Jesus does not count for Paul. But it does indeed count for Mark, and it indicates the specific understanding of εὐαγγέλιον in Mark. Both authors, Paul and Mark, share the apocalyptic opinion that the καιρός has come, and both authors base their opinion on Isaiah, Mark in his famous initial quotation ⁸⁴ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 780. ⁸⁵ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 130. ⁸⁶ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 130.

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of Isaiah, and Paul in 2 Cor 6:2: “λέγει γὰρ καιρῷ δεκτῷ ἐπήκουσά σου καὶ ἐν ἡμέρᾳ σωτηρίας ἐβοηθησά σοι. ἰδοὺ νῦν καιρὸς εὐπρόσδεκτος, ἰδοὺ νῦν ἡμέρα σωτηρίας” (Is 49:8 LXX). The difference between Mark and Paul lies in their particular understanding of the beginning of the εὐαγγέλιον, and its apocalyptic calendar, so to say. Paul understands the resurrection of Jesus as the starting point of the καινὴ κτίσις and the eschatological βασιλεία (1 Cor 15:20–28), whereas Mark attributes the starting point of the καιρός or the ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου to the work of preaching and baptizing of John and then continues to the work of Jesus. This means that Jesus’ instructions, the miracles, the meals, and the passion already belong to the εὐαγγέλιον. The difference between Paul and Mark in fixing the date of the beginning of the καιρός comes from their different understanding of the term εὐαγγέλιον. The consequences of Mark’s conceptualization of καιρός are obvious. He includes the narrative of Jesus’ work in preaching, healing, and instructing in the last year of his life into the εὐαγγέλιον. This leads me to the conclusion that the particular interpretation of the ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου by the author of the Gospel of Mark underlies the different literary genres of Paul and Mark, and that it generates different forms of early Christian literature: letter and gospel. Both genres are tools of community-building through communication in general, particularly as time announcements of the highest relevance, in terms of present time and in terms of human destiny in the future. In Mark, both periods are referred to as εὐαγγέλιον. If we concentrate on Mark, we find the elements of time announcement and the salvific power of εὐαγγέλιον, especially in chapter 13:10: “And first it is necessary that the good news be proclaimed to all the nations.”87 To sum up, we may characterize the contribution of the Gospel of Mark for community-building in general as follows: (1) The Gospel of Mark is a time announcement that interprets the present and future time, and the eternal destiny of the audience, in the light of the εὐαγγέλιον. (2) Because Jesus’ life and instruction belong to the εὐαγγέλιον as Mark interprets it, chapters 4, 7, and 13 are meant not only as Jesus tradition, but also as true community instruction. The main themes of this community instruction are the kingdom of God (ch. 4), the issue of ritual purity, particularly with respect to meals (ch. 7), and the end (ch. 13). (3) The main topics of these chapters of instruction (chs. 4, 7, and 13) are by no means accidental and adopted by the author only due to tradition or early sources, but they shape the central message of Mark’s Gospel to the communities: the βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ (ch.4), the concept of ethical instead of ritual purity (ch.7, see also ch.12), and the εὐαγγέλιον of the τέλος (ch.13).

⁸⁷ Yarbro Collins, Mark, 591.

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The community instruction works via Jesus teaching his disciples, even if his instruction is also directed to the people or the Pharisees (ch. 4 and 7). Chapter 13 is the only speech of Jesus that is directed only to four of the disciples and at the same time is evidently transparent for the community. Here we find sentences that are referring not only to the time of the narrative, but also to the author’s time.

5. The Gospel of Mark as a Community-building Tool: The Particular Perspective Finally, I will ask once more whether Mark wrote for a particular community. I have already noticed the lack of evidence. The author does not refer to one particular ἐκκλησία as Paul does, or to several communities like John, the author of the Revelation, who addressed his book to the seven churches of the Asia (Rev 1:4) and fashioned his book of the apocalypse (βιβλίον ch. 5 and often) as a letter. Mark could have done the same by addressing his Gospel to an ἐκκλησία, or putting the εὐαγγέλιον narrative in the frame of a letter. From the point of view of literary communication the Gospel of Mark is addressed to a general and nonspecific audience. The author chooses to forgo any form of direct communication, thereby leaving himself and the audience hidden. This literary strategy requires a broader audience of Christ-believing communities and individual persons, and this chronological insight points to a post-Pauline context with more developed communities, a situation that parallels the Deuteropauline letters. These overall conclusions will gain more support if we put together some major insights into the religious and cultural situation of the author and his work and apply them to a community that goes well with the assumed situation of Mark: (1) There is evidence that indicates that the Gospel of Mark was neither written in Israel (including Galilee) nor dedicated to a Judeo-Christian community in Israel or Galilee, despite the fact that the author is familiar with Jerusalem and in general with Israel’s religion, culture, and language.88 Moreover, we do not have real evidence for Rome as the place of origin of the Gospel or as the community for whom the Gospel was written. At any rate the author has closer acquaintance with Judaism than his audience. (2) The author himself, not only his traditions and sources, is familiar with the Septuagint, with Jewish customs, in particular with pharisaic customs, and with the geography of Syria in general, but not in detail. So we may put him everywhere outside Israel, perhaps in Syria, but also possibly in Asia, as he is near to Paul’s religious and cultural background in some respects. He plays a

⁸⁸ See the Aramaisms.

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part as mediator between Israel’s religion and culture and his readers who do not live in Israel, some – or many – of whom are Jews. (3) An important clue to the author’s intention is related to the fact that he wrote the first Christian book. This fact has not yet attracted the full attention that it deserves, as I have already pointed out. The author has written a small but considerable book of religious literature in popular koine. This is, in principle, a novum in the overall cultural and religious world of early Christianity, and I want to emphasize this fact in particular. Paul was the first Christian author, but he did not write books. In my argument it is not necessary to discuss the question of the material and shape of this book (e. g. scroll or codex?). There are arguments for both types of books in early Christian literature. In the case of the Gospel of Mark, we do not have evidence for a scroll as the original form from the papyri and manuscripts.89 This would mean that Mark’s Gospel could be understood as higher religious (Septuagint) literature or as a piece of literature more generally. In the case of a codex as the original form the innovative factor with regard to the social status of the addressees would be more obvious. There is no evidence whether the scroll or the codex were read in assemblies or ‘at home’ – whatever this means during the time of ‘house churches’ – and whether Mark was read by appointed lecturers (slaves or community leaders?) or by individuals. Mark 13:14 seems to tell us that the author thought of readers, but we do not know about their ways of reading.90 The reason for the book format is that it can accommodate any form or style of reading. (4) The author has in mind a Christ-believing audience that speaks Greek and that is accustomed to reading or hearing the Septuagint, and to making theological and other claims using the Septuagint. We do not have any evidence that the author was familiar with non-Jewish literature, or at least that non-Jewish literature was of interest for him. In spite of this, in some respects he was not so far from Hellenistic historical genres and was able to write a narrative in a framework of contemporary history. Despite the brevity of the Gospel of Mark and its ‘blurred genre,’ this mere literary ability puts him close to authors such as Josephus who aimed to write historical narratives like pagan historians and who ⁸⁹ For the question in general see, T. Dorandi, “Tradierung der Texte im Altertum; Buchwesen,” in Einleitung in die griechische Philologie (ed. H.-G. Nesselrath; Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1997), 9 ff. I am grateful to Barbara Aland who commented in a letter that we do not have any extant fragments of New Testament texts on new scrolls, only some on the reverse side of already used scrolls (opistographs); we do, however, possess texts of the church fathers since Irenaeus that are written on new scrolls. For possible reasons, see L. Alexander, “Ancient Book Production and the Circulation of the Gospels,” in The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (ed. R. Bauckham; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 71–112. Alexander argues that the Christ-believing communities “adopted the ‘utilitarian’ format of the codex” for practical reasons and “used books intensively and professionally from very early on in its existence” (p. 85; Alexander refers to H. Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Ancient Church: A History of Early Christian Texts [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995]). ⁹⁰ See above.

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understood the contemporary world at the same time in terms of history and apocalyptic meta-history. The audience that this author has in mind is interested in a Jesus-book, perhaps in order to read it or to hear it recited in an evening meeting. There must have been a need for such books, because otherwise Mark would not have undertaken the task of writing the first Jesus-narrative for a broader Christ-believing audience. We have no evidence that Paul’s communities were already interested in this particular interpretation of the εὐαγγέλιον as a narrative that included the work of John the Baptist and Jesus.91 This gives me the occasion to repeat the wellestablished argument that Mark wrote after the death of Paul as well as Jesus’ apostles, first of all Peter, and that his audience was accustomed to reading religious books or hearing them read instead of hearing visiting apostles or listening to their letters. This matters for the dating of Mark’s Gospel, because we have to assume an audience that in some respect is like Paul’s addressees, but perhaps more numerous and better educated. We should also consider whether the author did not intend simply to be read by a whole community, but also by special circles in the communities who, to some extent, were better educated and more interested in religion than the majority. The dedication of the Gospel of Luke (cf. 1:1–4) at least points to this alternative. (5) The purpose of the narrative, however, is not a literary prodesse aut delectari in terms of religion, but the communication of the εὐαγγέλιον as the author understands it. The Gospel is neither written in order to strengthen the Christian identity and to give the members of the communities a corporate myth (Gerd Theissen92) or a ‘great narrative,’ nor is it to support and comfort them in a situation of persecution (Hendrika Roskam). These functions are only secondary results of the narrative. First and foremost, the Gospel is what it says it is: εὐαγγέλιον for Christian communities in the twofold sense of a salvific message93 or time announcement, and a Jesus narrative.

⁹¹ Paul does not mention John. ⁹² Gerd Theissen uses the term “Mythos” for Mark’s Gospel in the framework of his theory

of religion: G. Theißen, Die Religion der ersten Christen. Eine Theorie des Urchristentums (Gütersloh: Verlagshaus, 2000). In my opinion it is the Gospel of John that combines the myth of Christ for the first time with the Jesus-narration. ⁹³ This is the term that A. Yarbro Collins prefers.

Building Matthean Communities The Politics of Textualization Anders Runesson 1. Introduction: The Question How does a (religious) community come into being? This sociological question has intrigued generations of scholars, and the literature relating the emergence of a new group to various definitions of the nature of new religious movements is vast.1 A variety of categorizations have been suggested, which attempt to indicate which needs and strategies are behind the formation of such groups. In an earlier study, I put forward a theory on how the origin and development of Matthean communities may be understood within a larger Pharisaic-Jewish context.2 In the present study, the aim is to isolate and analyze one factor in the building of these religious communities, namely the text itself: the Gospel of Matthew. For almost two millennia, the Gospel of Matthew has been and still is used in a multitude of contexts for a wide variety of purposes, some of which relate to community building.3 While it is important to understand such later uses in order both to realize the contextual nature of our own interpretations as well as those of the earliest Christ-believers, the reverse line of argument is also true: analyses of later interpretations and uses of Matthew need to be accompanied by careful attention to the earliest period in order not to loose sight of the larger spectrum of possible, even intended, readings.4 In addition, some of the interpre¹ For examples of sociological literature and discussions applied to the Gospel of Matthew, see A. Runesson, “Rethinking Early Jewish–Christian Relations: Matthean Community History as Pharisaic Intragroup Conflict,” JBL 127 (2008): 95–132, 109 n. 47. ² Runesson, “Early Jewish–Christian Relations.” ³ For treatment of specific passages and their history of interpretation, see the important three-volume commentary by U. Luz, Matthew: A Commentary (3 vols.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989–2005). See also H. Clarke, The Gospel of Matthew and Its Readers: A Historical Introduction to the First Gospel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). In a forthcoming study, I deal with the use of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark in official church documents: “Judging the Theological Tree by its Fruit: The Use of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew in Official Church Documents on Jewish–Christian Relations,” in Mark and Matthew. Comparative Readings II: Hermeneutics, Reception History, Theology (ed. E.-M. Becker and A. Runesson; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming). ⁴ I am not saying that the earliest reception should be given priority in terms of authoritative interpretations and uses. Each use of a text has its own hermeneutical place in time and space and should be treated independently of authority claims. Rather, I am insisting, in light of some

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tations and uses of Matthew that developed in Late Antiquity and became and remained influential in Christian and academic understandings of this Gospel throughout the centuries have been claimed to reflect the author’s original aims and purposes. On closer examination, however, such interpretations seem unrelated to and disconnected from the late first-century religio-cultural and political context in which the text was written.5 It is of key historical importance, then, that any analysis of the earliest uses of the Gospel of Matthew in community building efforts proceeds from a specific reconstruction of the socio-historical, institutional, and political setting in which the text emerged, since with changing geographical and cultural settings meaning will be perceived differently and uses will multiply. While we cannot use the text to reconstruct secondary contexts in which to understand later meanings, the text, like all texts, by necessity carries within it traces of the conditions under which it was produced.6 Such traces will be used here as building blocks in a theory regarding the use of text in Matthean community building. In order to enable discussion of this admittedly intricate task of isolating original and intended uses of text related to the building of a community, we shall proceed in two main steps. First, we shall consider the social implications of the textualization of oral traditions and draw conclusions from this process targeting the earliest formation of the Matthean community (section 2). Second, we shall consider the text as an ideological community-building tool through an analysis of the text’s construction of the ideal Matthean, set within the larger socio-political context of Roman colonialism in the late first century (section 3). recent scholarship which tends to downplay the importance of meanings produced in original settings in favor of later reception, that in principle all periods in the history of the text are examples of reception, even the production of the text itself (see further below). Therefore, methodologically, we cannot and should not ignore the earliest period in the life of the text. There is an ethical dimension to this too: through attempting to go beyond our own contemporary interpretations searching for the earliest understandings of a text, respect is shown for those who authored and received the Gospel before us. ⁵ I am thinking here primarily about the alleged anti-Jewish nature of the gospel, an assumption that rests on imprecise terminological choices and a theological setting foreign to the earliest phases of the Jesus movement. For discussion of this problem, see Runesson, “Early Jewish– Christian Relations.” See also the work of D. C. Sim, especially his tightly argued reconstruction of the Matthean community in The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998), and A. J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994). Most recently, Terry Donaldson has treated this topic as related to the New Testament as a whole: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the New Testament: Decision Points and Divergent Interpretations (London: SPCK, 2010). ⁶ Cf. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin (ed. M. Holquist; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 253: “The real world enters the work and its world as part of the process of its creation.” Cf. L. J. Lawrence, An Ethnography of the Gospel of Matthew: A Critical Assessment of the Use of the Honour and Shame Model in New Testament Studies (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 60–9. See also J. Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 18 n. 14, where he briefly but effectively discusses Richard Bauckham’s perspective.

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The results of such an investigation put in perspective and challenge understandings of Matthew as a ‘Christian text’ used by ‘Christians’ to build a ‘church.’ It will be argued that the earliest uses of the Gospel of Matthew, even the production of the artifact itself, should be seen as a Jewish counter-colonial move set in motion by intensified eschatological expectations after the failed revolt 66–70 C. E. and the general increase of non-Jews in the Jesus movement. The aim of this move was to provide and spread a theo-political road map for an active takeover of the Roman Empire, replacing it with the rule of the God of Israel as heaven and earth were expected to merge in the Kingdom of Heaven. The earliest communities built with the help of the Gospel of Matthew were separatist Jewish socio-religious associations with a far-reaching program threatening the political status quo in the Mediterranean world and beyond.

2. Socio-political Implications of Textualization 2.1. The Nature of First-Century Synagogues and the Matthean Community In order to be able to address the question why anyone would want to turn oral traditions about their group’s professed Messiah into text – indeed, a narrative – we need first to consider the social and institutional world in which these people lived their daily lives. Once we have made analytical decisions regarding the place and time where this process of textualization took place, we can reconstruct such a setting using sources external to the Gospel text itself.7 The suggested dates for the composition of Matthew ranges from 40 to 110 C. E.,8 and theories on provenance vary between specific suggestions, such as Jerusalem, Caesarea Maritima, Antioch, Capernaum or Sepphoris, and more general areas in the eastern Mediterranean (e. g., Palestine or Syria).9 While it must be admitted that further specificity, especially regarding location, brings with it a certain amount of speculation, it is nevertheless preferable to aim for the more likely rather than the less, and thus enable hypothetical reconstructions which make sense of the material to which we do have access. While a majority of scholars still favor the hypothesis that the Gospel was composed in Antioch, a ⁷ The problem of circularity thus pertains only to the difficult task of providing a date and provenance for the text, a task that depends almost exclusively on information drawn from the text itself. However, as mentioned earlier, every text, inadvertently and sometimes advertently, reveals traces of the context in which it was authored. It is my contention that such traces are visible to some extent in the Gospel of Matthew and thus allow for discussion of the where and when questions. ⁸ For thorough discussion, see W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (3 vols.; London: T & T Clark International, 1988–1997), 1:127–38. ⁹ See Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:138–47. For Sepphoris, see A. M. Gale, Redefining Ancient Borders: The Jewish Scribal Framework of Matthew’s Gospel (London: T & T Clark International, 2005), esp. 41–63.

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growing number of studies have drawn attention to the likelihood that the text was produced in an urban environment in Galilee.10 This location seems to me to be the best suggestion so far.11 As for the date of the composition of the text, despite recent attempts at arguing for a pre–70 date,12 the view of the scholarly majority placing Matthew sometime in the 80s or early 90s remains the most convincing.13 In sum, although certainty is not to be had, the general economic, political, religious, and socio-cultural setting in which the Gospel of Matthew was composed was most likely that of post-war Galilee. Since human group interaction is influenced not only by various social and political circumstances generally but also more specifically by the institutional patterns which impose certain limits on discourses and types of interaction, it is of key importance that we consider possible institutional scenarios in which context Matthew was composed.14 As I have argued elsewhere, we have two main

¹⁰ See A. Overman, Church and Community, 16–9, suggesting Sepphoris or Tiberias. E. Schweizer argues for “Syria, or perhaps the neighboring areas of Galilee” (“Matthew’s Church,” in Interpretation of Matthew, [ed. G. N. Stanton; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983], 149–77); Anthony Saldarini points to “[t]he Galilee, with its complex and cosmopolitan society and its tightly woven cultural network” (“Jewish-Christian Conflict,” 26–7). A Galilean setting is further supported by A. F. Segal, “Matthew’s Jewish Voice,” in Social History of the Matthean Community: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches (ed. D. Balch; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 3–37; 25–9; D. J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1991); E. W. Stegemann and W. Stegemann, The Jesus Movement: A Social History of Its First Century (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 223–9; Gale, Redefining Ancient Borders, 41–63. See also B. T. Viviano, Matthew and His World: The Gospel of the Open Jewish–Christians (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 4, who suggests a provenance in northern Palestine or southern Syria (as opposed to Antioch in northern Syria), mentioning Sepphoris in Galilee as one of the likely candidates. B. Witherington III, Matthew (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2006), argues for Capernaum. ¹¹ For a discussion of the arguments for and against Antioch as well as in favor of Galilee, see Gale, Ancient Borders, 41–63. In addition, based on recent work on the dual nature of institutions designated by synagogue terms in the first century, it should be noted that Matthew displays an institutional pattern matching what we know from other sources about Palestine as opposed to the Diaspora. It would thus require additional hypotheses to explain this discrepancy between the text and historically known realities if a Diaspora location were to be assumed, hypotheses that are not needed if we locate the text in the Jewish homeland where Jews were in charge of town and city administration. On the nature of synagogues, see A. Runesson, The Origins of the Synagogue: A Socio-Historical Study (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001); firstcentury synagogues are treated on pages 169–235. Also, in terms of the choice between Galilee and Judea for the provenance of Matthew, traces of conflict between these areas in the text speak in favor of Galilee. See further below. ¹² Nolland, Matthew, 16–7. ¹³ So also Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:138: “Matthew was almost certainly written between . . 70 and . . 100, in all probability between . . 80 and 95”. ¹⁴ Cf. R. A. Burridge, “Who Writes, Why, and for Whome?” in The Written Gospel (ed. M. Bockmuehl and D. A. Hagner; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 99–115, esp. 105–6, on the importance of identifying the type of community. Burridge is, however, hesitant regarding the possibilities of more detailed scenarios. Taking the point of departure in what we know today about ancient synagogues, we may feel more confident in persuing at least some level of detail in this regard.

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such settings which need our attention: the public synagogue,15 and the association synagogues.16 While public synagogues, a type of municipal institution in which local decisions of various kinds were taken and public Torah reading took place on a weekly basis,17 would be present in cities, towns, and villages, association synagogues were primarily an urban phenomenon, although, as indicated by the associations of the Qumranites and the Therapeutae, an urban environment was not essential to this institutional type.18 It is the association synagogue that gives us the best evidence regarding what type of community we are dealing with in the earliest phases of Matthean group formation. This type of institutional structure provided for the needs of first-century Jewish communities which shared a religio-political vision and program. It is highly likely that what became the Jesus movement partly formed, in its initial stages, as subgroups within already existing associations, such as the Pharisaic (cf. Acts 15:5), and later became independent associations within a network of likeminded Christ-believers.19 What is usually and problematically termed “the parting of the ways” between Jews and Christians should be reconsidered, therefore, as primarily intra-Jewish association conflicts. In the case of Mattheans, who were most likely Pharisees who found their belief in and hope for resurrec¹⁵ E. g., Mark 1:21–28; 13:9; Luke 4:16. For discussion of the synagogue as a public institution, see L. I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (2nd ed.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). ¹⁶ E. g., Acts 6:9 and the Theodotos inscription (ASSB No. 26 [CIJ 2.1404]). For the identification of the Qumran community as an association similar to the Greco-Roman associations, cf. M. Klinghardt, “The Manual of Discipline in Light of Statutes of Hellenic Associations” in Methods of Investigation in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities and Future Prospects (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1994), 251–67; M. Weinfeld, The Organizational Pattern and the Penal Code of the Qumran Sect: A Comparison with Guilds and Religious Associations of the Hellenistic-Roman Period (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1986). Another specific group, with branches all over the Diaspora according to Philo, was the Therapeutae, whose synagogue is described in some detail in De Vita Contemplativa. The historicity of this group is convincingly defended by J. E. Taylor, Jewish Women Philosophers of First Century Alexandria: Philo’s ‘Therapeutae’ Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); M. A. Beavis, “Philo’s Therapeutai: Philosopher’s Dream or Utopian Construction?” JSP 14 (2004): 30–42. For further discussion as applied to Matthew, see Runesson, “Early Jewish–Christian Relations.” ¹⁷ For a discussion of such readings in public synagogues, see Runesson, Origins, 213–23. ¹⁸ For Qumran and the Therapeutae as association type synagogue communities, see n. 16 above. Note that Philo describes the associations of the Therapeutae as present not only in Egypt but all over the Mediterranean world. The Essene communities too were not isolated to one place only but were spread over the country. The reading of Torah in association synagogues is discussed in Runesson, Origins, 223–31. ¹⁹ There would also, from the earliest period, have been groups of Christ-believers formed independently of other associations, since many of those who joined the movement probably did not belong to an association before they became followers of Jesus. Note the place and authority of the Jerusalem community in the network of Apostolic Jewish communities implied in Gal 1:18; 2:1–10. Cf. the spread of the Essene communities and the Therapeutae according to Josephus and Philo respectively. (For the term “Apostolic Judaism,” see Runesson, “Early Jewish–Christian Relations,” 100.)

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tion at the end of time eschatologically confirmed and fulfilled in Jesus’ resurrection, their break with the larger Pharisaic network came as a result of the events developing after the disaster in 70 C. E.20 Such an institutional setting and historical developments with regard to the Mattheans would have allowed for continued interaction between these messianic Jews and the larger Jewish communities in the setting of the public synagogue in various locations.21 It would require, however, that a new association22 intended for members of the Matthean group took form, within which those Mattheans who chose to leave the larger Pharisaic community would reinforce and maintain their own identity.23 The tensions that led to this split are best explained both by changes within the Pharisaic community as its membership shifted and the beginnings of what became rabbinic Judaism emerged, and by tensions following an increased eschatological awareness among Mattheans after the destruction of the temple, which Jesus most likely had predicted in the 30s as a coming end-time sign.

²⁰ The closeness between Pharisees and Christ-believers more generally is often ignored by scholars, despite the fact that the Pharisees are the only Jewish group explicitly mentioned as having within it and producing Christ-believers (cf. Acts 15:5, Paul, Nicodemus). Further, as Peter Tomson notes, (“Transformations of Post–70 Judaism: Scholarly Reconstructions and their Implications for our Perception of Matthew, Didache, and James,” in Matthew, James and Didache: Three Related Documents in their Jewish and Christian Settings [ed. H. van de Sandt and J. K. Zangenberg; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2008], 91–121, 117 n. 99), the Pharisees protested strongly when James was killed in 62 C. E. (Josephus, A. J. 20.200). It is also noteworthy that Luke repeatedly portrays the Pharisees as interested in Jesus and his teachings, inviting him to dine with them (e. g., Luke 7:39; 11:37). Indeed, according to Luke, Pharisees once acted with the aim of saving Jesus’ life, warning him of Herod Antipas who wanted to kill him (Luke 13:31). Pharisees are also said to have saved the lives of Peter and other apostles (Acts 5:34– 39), and they, as a group, defended Paul in a conflict in Jerusalem (Acts 23:9). Such passages produce an interesting portrait of Pharisaic – Messianic relations: no lesser lives than those of Jesus, Peter, and Paul are defended, and protests are voiced as James is killed on the orders of the high priest. It would be hard indeed to imagine the Sadducees, the priestly authorities in Jerusalem, or the Essenes, acting in similar ways. ²¹ For Matthean involvement in public synagogue settings as related to missionary efforts, cf. the table in Runesson, “Early Jewish–Christian Relations,” 118. ²² I avoid the term ‘Church’ since this word is misleading in a first-century context. For English speaking readers, “church” is an institution that is not a “synagogue” and by implication leads to the flawed impression that Matthew was not part of a larger synagogue context. The term ekklēsia, used twice by Matthew, was one of many synagogue terms in the first century and cannot be argued to indicate distance between Matthew’s community and “the synagogue.” For various synagogue terms and sources in which they occur, see A. Runesson, D. D. Binder, and B. Olsson, The Ancient Synagogue From its Origins to 200 C. E.: A Source Book (Leiden: Brill, 2008). ²³ For the Matthean organisation as an association, or collegium, see D. Duling, “The Matthean Brotherhood and Marginal Scribal Leadership,” in Modelling Early Christianity: Social Scientific Studies of the New Testament in Its Context (ed. P. Esler; London: Routledge, 1995), 159–82; R. Ascough, “Matthew and Community Formation,” in Gospel of Matthew in Current Study (ed. D. Aune; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 96–126. Cf. E. Wainwright, Shall We Look for Another? A Feminist Rereading of the Matthean Jesus (Mary Knoll: Orbis Books, 1998), 45.

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It is within such institutional settings the originally oral traditions about Jesus would have been transmitted by designated tradents.24 At the time of the textualization of these traditions within the Matthean association, the Jews had lost the war and the Galilee experienced, for the first time, an increasing permanent presence of Roman soldiers and the changes and oppression that followed with that presence. It is my contention, then, that the production of the text is intimately bound up with these complex tensions and developments. What does this mean as we consider the role of text in the building of the earliest Matthean community? 2.2. Tradition, Text, and Power Since we are aiming at understanding the earliest use of the Gospel of Matthew, we should begin by putting the spotlight on the very production of the text: what function did textualization itself fulfill? Why would someone now, at this particular time and place, need a text? What is implied socially as oral traditions are written down? The following basic “building-blocks” for a theory are, as I see it, on the table. First, when the group eventually producing the Gospel of Matthew was exposed to the message of the kingdom and Jesus’ resurrection,25 they were most likely Pharisees, members of a Pharisaic association synagogue. Second, the traditions at that time were transmitted in oral form. A smaller group among these Pharisaic Christ-believers, most likely scribes (cf. Matt 13:51–52; 23:34),26 were entrusted and authorized to keep and transmit them and they did so according to certain practices.27 These oral traditions were transmitted in the community ²⁴ These tradents were most likely a small group of people. ²⁵ I do not believe that members of this community were followers of Jesus during his brief

career. It seems more likely that what caught the attention of these Pharisees was the combination of the message of resurrection and the kingdom, which, by using available networks in public synagogues, was proclaimed by Jesus’ followers throughout the land during the years immediately following Jesus’ death. (This seem to have been the practice generally as indicated by John 18:20 and, for the Diaspora, Acts.) ²⁶ Cf. D. E. Orton, The Understanding Scribe: Matthew and the Apocalyptic Ideal (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989); Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community, 103; and D. C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism, 122. On the Jewish identity of the author of Matthew more generally, Davis and Allison, Matthew, 1:7–58 provides a detailed and solid case. ²⁷ Cf. R. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 264: “[T]here were specific practices employed to ensure that tradition was faithfully handed down from a qualified traditioner to others.” Bauckham notes that Paul as a Pharisaic teacher would have been familiar with technical terminology for tradition, implying that such formal transmission of tradition by authorized tradents was part of Pharisaic identity and procedure (265; cf. Josephus, A.J. 13.297). On the issue of transmission of traditions, see also S. Byrskog, Jesus the only Teacher: Didactic Authority and Transmission in Ancient Israel, Ancient Judaism and the Matthean Community (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1994). As Byrskog has suggested, the most likely scenario is one in which a small group of peo-

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before the author of the Gospel of Mark had written down his account of the Jesus story and were thus independent of that text.28 Third, at some point after the war some individuals among the Matthean Christ-believers decided to write down these oral traditions. While doing this, they had access to Mark’s Gospel. Regarding Q, in my opinion, these traditions were likely part of Matthean oral tradition; it is unlikely they originated as text outside the Matthean community.29 ple were educated in memorizing and transmitting the traditions; see his recent study “Memory and Identity in the Gospels: A New Perspective,” in Exploring Early Christian Identity (ed. B. Holmberg; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 33–57, 43: “What we have in the Gospels is the product of a few literary skilled individuals and the Jesus tradition is available mainly through the narrative work of these persons. We know very little about their broader communal settings and the connections to popular story tellers and cult.” See also the contributions in S. Byrskog and W. H. Kelber, eds., Jesus in Memory: Traditions in Oral and Scribal Perspectives (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009). ²⁸ Cf. J. D. G. Dunn, who has compellingly emphasised that some traditions recorded in Mark may have been known by Matthew previous to the production of Mark’s Gospel. Such a scenario may explain variants of the same traditions, without presupposing literary dependency from a traditional redaction-critical perspective. For a concise account of Dunn’s theory, see his A New Perspective on Jesus: What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005). ²⁹ Acknowledging the extreme difficulties involved in solving the Synoptic Problem and in full respect for scholars who have drawn other conclusions, I have, so far, failed to be convinced by the suggestion of a Q source used independently by Matthew and Luke. It seems to me that if there is literary dependency between the synoptic Gospels (for a recent rejection of such literary dependency, see A. D. Baum, Der mündliche Faktor: Analogien zur synoptischen Frage aus der antiken Literatur, der Experimentalpsychologie, der Oral Poetry-Forschung und dem rabbinischen Traditionswesen [Tübingen: Francke, 2008]; for application to Matthew, see idem, “Matthew’s Sources – Written or Oral? A Rabbinic Analogy and Empirical Insights,” in Built Upon the Rock: Studies in the Gospel of Matthew [eds. D. M. Gurtner and J. Nolland; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008], 1–23), the theory that best explains the material is Markan priority without Q (see M. Goodacre, The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem [Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002]), combined with due attention to oral culture and practices. Cf. J. D. G. Dunn, “Q1 as Oral Tradition,” in The Written Gospel (ed. M. Bockmuehl and D. A. Hagner; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 45–69. It seems to me better to speak of oral traditions that may have circulated also beyond Matthean communities in slightly different forms (some likely spread originally by Mattheans themselves as evidenced by Matthew’s strong emphasis on mission within the land, an activity pre-dating the written form of the Gospel of Matthew; see further below), but which later history was to some degree determined by these traditions being written down by Matthew. Matthew was then used by Luke, who may also have had access to some of these traditions previous to the inscripturation of Matthew’s Gospel (cf. the comment on traditions common to Mark and Matthew, above n. 28). In my opinion, at the present stage of research, not least on orality, the hypothesis of Q as a literary document has lost its fundamental explanatory force (the hypothesis itself predates, of course, all landmark studies on orality). In addition, although speaking of a collection of oral teaching and calling it Q may be slightly more on the mark, it still seems to be a hypothesis lacking in the precision it is intended to accomplish. To assume literary independency between Matthew and Luke, which is the foundation of any Q hypothesis, is problematic since variants of shared traditions may be better explained by the redactor’s ideological preferences and/or the continuous existence of oral tradition alongside the earliest written documents; such coterminous existence of text and oral tradition is a well established fact for the larger Christ-believing world, well

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As an accepted subgroup within a larger Pharisaic community, Mattheans had built and maintained their identity using received oral traditions. They had most likely also been involved in mission to other Jews in various parts of the country,30 probably mainly in Galilee and the surroundings (which at this time had no presence of the Roman army), in this way spreading the traditions they had been entrusted with (e. g., Matt 10:1, 5–6; cf. 2:6; 8:19; 15:24). As we know from Paul’s writings as well as Acts, such missionary activities in which oral traditions were spread were dependent on a group of tradents at one specific location who would be guarantors for the message, as well as function as a resource if new situations occurred requiring specific decisions and action.31 The social status and power within the group that comes with such positions at a centre was considerable, even in small marginal movements such as this, and rivalry almost certainly was part of the picture from earliest times. What happens socially, then, when the power and status related to oral transmission are compromised by the production of a text? And, reversely, could such social changes have been part of the reason behind producing the text in the first place, so that one of the earliest uses of the Gospel of Matthew was related to the building of a separate and independent community, distinguished from the original setting in which the Matthean traditions were transmitted orally? I believe that this is likely. The text itself is evidence of a change in practice with regard to community building, and such social changes come about as a result of changing attitudes and convictions.32 It should be noted that the production of the text beyond Synoptic Gospel studies. Cf. concerns expressed in later rabbinic circles regarding situations that may occur as a result of the coterminous existence of oral tradition and written text: “Matters received as oral traditions you are not permitted to recite from writing and that written things you are not permitted to recite from memory” (b. Tem. 14b). I am grateful to Akiva Cohen, who pointed me to this passage. ³⁰ It is unlikely that any active mission to non-Jews was carried out before the writing of the Gospel of Matthew. The focus throughout the text, until 28:19–12, is almost entirely on the Jewish people and the importance of a mission to them. In addition, the ethnic-related aspects of Matthean theology in the text are, contrary to the case with the Jewish people, underdeveloped as they apply to non-Jews and give the impression of lack of deeper reflection, as we see, e. g., in Paul’s letters and even in Luke-Acts. Such reflection would almost certainly have resulted from longer periods of interaction with non-Jews, especially in a missionary context. Matt 28:19–20, with its radically worded command to extend the mission beyond the Jewish people, is most likely redactional (so, e. g., J. D. Kingsbury, “The Composition and Christology of Matt 28:16– 20,” JBL 93 [1974]: 573–84), belonging to and reflecting the time of the writing of the Gospel. ³¹ Cf. Gal 2:2, 9 on the status of the Jerusalem community, which is not relativized by Paul’s remarks but rather the other way around: Paul’s rhetoric emphasizes the fact that this group was a key player in the larger movement and enjoyed high status. One of the key problems in the early Jesus movement was whether or not to include non-Jews as members, and if so, how. On formal transmission of tradition, cf. Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 264–71. ³² It may be of some interest to compare this phenomenon to similar situations over history, such as, e. g., the translation of the bible during the reformation period. While such translations are in themselves indicative of changing attitudes and convictions towards community building among those who made and supported them, the result was severe conflict between “the translation party” and the leadership of the larger community. Another example would be the recent

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was a result of certain intentions, which grew from specific social locations; such intentions can therefore not be generalized to apply to other gospels, although some common aspects may have existed. There are many possible scenarios as to the reason and motives behind the textualization process among Mattheans. Of these, a conflict perspective with inner-community motivations triggering the production of the artifact seems to fit the evidence best.33 In the social, political, and institutional context described above it is, a) likely that oral traditions would be favored over textual, and b) unlikely that those entrusted to keep and transmit these traditions would be interested in relativizing or giving up their status and position in their community. I would therefore suggest that the production of the text was one of several results of intra-Pharisaic conflict, in which radical individuals, some of which were scribes, driven by an increased eschatological awareness after the fall of the temple as well as by the increase of non-Jews in the Jesus movement generally (also an eschatological sign34), forced a situation in which a community split became the only solution. This conflict produced and explains the severe antiPharisaic rhetoric of the text, the intensity of which is not present to the same degree in any other New Testament text, as well as the authority ascribed to the Pharisees, which is acknowledged and legitimized in the same literary context as the most fierce anti-Pharisaic attacks (Matt 23:2–3).35 Producing the text meant taking control of traditions. The traditions that were textualized were preserved in a form responding to the vision and needs of the separatists, those whose convictions regarding community building could no longer be maintained within the larger Pharisaic (non-eschatologically oriented) community at this politically sensitive time. Consequently, it is their voice which is the dominant voice in the Gospel text as we have it today.36 This voice, as we

study on women’s medicine by Monica Green, showing how women’s authority in medicinal knowledge regarding their own bodies in the 12th century and beyond was challenged and marginalized as authority came to be defined through text: Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); with the emergence of universities followed the exclusion of women from professional authority in the field of medicine. Both examples indicate the radical social implications of textualization and the power issues surrounding such processes in different time periods and areas in society. We may, of course, also refer to various forms of the rabbinic prohibition against writing down oral tradition, which they finally did anyway, even recording this prohibition! (cf. b. Tem. 14b: “Those who write the traditional teachings are like those who burn the Torah, and he who learns from them receives no reward.”) Text is not an innocent medium, neither in antiquity nor in the Middle Ages, although we may easily be led astray to think so by our own thoroughly textualized and educationalized Western culture. ³³ Cf. n. 32 above. ³⁴ Cf. T. L. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 C. E.) (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), especially 499–505. ³⁵ See Runesson, “Early Jewish–Christian Relations,” 127–8. ³⁶ On dominant voice in Matthew’s Gospel, cf. E. Wainwright, Shall We Look for Another? A Feminist Rereading of the Matthean Jesus (Mary Knoll: Orbis Books, 1998), 35–49.

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shall argue below, rather than suppressing variation added new perspectives and allowed for (controlled) diversity. It is likely that the fall of the temple and increasing interest among non-Jews in the Jesus movement more generally also led to intensified eschatological expectations elsewhere. There are implications, thus, for the Gospel of Mark too in this regard, as Mark was most likely written, just as Matthew, after 70 C. E.37 Although it is clear that the socio-religious location of Mark’s Gospel was different than that of Matthew’s, and that conclusions regarding Matthean developments cannot be applied to the context in which Mark was authored, we may consider, reversely, ways in which Markan developments as expressed in that text may have influenced Matthean community developments. We shall return to this below. The conclusion drawn in this section is, thus, that the production of the text was a step towards building community in new ways. The text in and of itself is indicative of changed attitudes, which caused a break with the larger Pharisaic community as well as with those Christ-believers who chose to remain within that community.38 The questions that follow naturally from such a conclusion would be what kind of community the separatists built, and what use, more specifically, a text like the Gospel of Matthew could have had in such an institution. To these questions we now turn. 2.3. The Text and the Community Rule Several scholars have noted that the type of community structures that have left traces in the Gospel of Matthew are those of a collegium.39 Specifically, chapter 18 has been noted as especially illuminating in this regard, since it has been identified as containing the rules of an association; these rules have often been regarded as sufficient evidence for drawing conclusions about the type of community in which Matthew was written and used. If this is correct, we would be able to identify immediately a very central use of the Gospel of Matthew in its earliest setting, namely as a community rule of an association. While I agree, as mentioned above, with the identification of the people behind the production of the text as members of a Jewish collegium, it is unlikely that the narrative itself would have constituted the rule. To be sure, as in other ³⁷ Cf. E.-M. Becker, “Dating Mark and Matthew as Ancient Literature,” in this volume. While Becker refrains from dating either of the Gospels before or after 70 explicitly, her study shows clearly that both Gospels belong together on either side of that date. Since, in my opinion, Matthew should be dated post–70, it follows that Mark should also be dated after the fall of the temple. Markan priority builds on other evidence, which cannot be discussed here. ³⁸ On the split of movements as new groups are created, see Runesson, “Early Jewish–Christian Relations,” 126–7, and n. 108. ³⁹ See n. 23 above. See also Carter, “Matthew: Empire, Synagogues, and Horizontal Violence,” in this volume.

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associations,40 this collegium would have kept a separate document, a community rule, guiding the life of its members. The genre and narrative form of the Gospel41 exclude the possibility that this text would have been used as such a document, just as biblical texts would not have functioned, as documents, as community rules in other Jewish collegia, e. g., in the Qumran community. The institutional structures evidenced in other Greco-Roman and Jewish associations and clearly detectable in Matthew’s Gospel in and of themselves thus strongly suggest that the Matthean community had access to an additional document, which functioned as a community rule. Such a community rule may be safely assumed to have existed in the earliest Matthean community, even if the document has since been lost. However, as it happens, it seems this Matthean community rule has not been lost. Rather, it has just not been noted as such in this particular context, even if it has been associated very closely with our Gospel: the Didache.42 Due to limitations of space, I will leave the more detailed discussion to be presented in a forthcoming monograph.43 However, a few comments are in order. The redactor (the didachist) of this thoroughly Jewish document carefully worked with and harmonized older sources with more recent traditions and his own additions at the time of composition.44 It is the final product that interests us most here, since it may be dated around the same time as the Gospel of Matthew and the resulting text as a whole shows remarkable points of contact with ⁴⁰ Cf. Weinfeldt and Klinghardt (n. 16 above) for Jewish associations as well as discussion of the Iobaccoi. See also Philip Harland for a comprehensive discussion of the nature of GrecoRoman associations in relation to the communities of Jews and Christ-believers, the two latter of which he regards as part of the larger group of associations in Greco-Roman societies: Associations, Synagogues and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003). ⁴¹ See below for further discussion of the implications of the genre. ⁴² Recent years have seen an increase in comparative studies on Matthew and the Didache as documents belonging to the same cultural context, indeed being closely related to each other. See, e. g., H. van de Sandt and D. Flusser, The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2002); A. J. P. Garrow, The Gospel of Matthew’s Dependence on the Didache (London: T & T Clark, 2004). See also the contributions in H. van de Sandt and J. K. Zangenberg, eds., Matthew, James and Didache: Three Related Documents in their Jewish and Christian Settings (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), and note the conclusion of Zangenberg (“Reconstructing the Social and Religious Milieu of the Didache: Observations and Possible Results”), where he states that the Didache: “came from anywhere in the Greek-speaking (eastern) Mediterranean, that it was deeply rooted in Judaism, and shows striking similarities with Matthew and – to a lesser but still significant degree – with James, and all three might very well have come from a common ‘Milieu’” (69). While Zangeberg avoids speaking of “group” in order to avoid too specific conclusions regarding the relationship between these texts, consideration of the nature of ancient institutions may lead in the direction proposed here. ⁴³ A. Runesson, The Gospel of Matthew and the Myth of the So-Called Parting(s) of the Ways Between Judaism and Christianity (in preparation). ⁴⁴ For discussion of the source situation in the Didache, see K. Niederwimmer, The Didache (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 42–52.

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this Gospel.45 It is by no means clear that the didachist used Matthew’s text; it may well have been the other way around,46 or we have to reckon with a complex situation in which oral traditions existed coterminously with the creation of both texts such that the didachist may sometimes have used the same traditions as Matthew did, sometimes the Gospel text itself.47 The social scenario that makes most sense of the evidence at hand is, in my opinion, that of not only a shared religio-cultural context (as most scholars would agree), but also of a common institutional setting within which the authors of both texts belonged. This shared context would have had its beginnings before 70 .. and was, as I have previously argued regarding Matthew, most likely that of a subgroup within the larger setting of Pharisaic Judaism,48 and extends into the post–70 period when Mattheans separated themselves from other Pharisees. In the pre–70 setting, oral traditions were transmitted which were later written down in the form of the Gospel of Matthew; the author of the

⁴⁵ The dates suggested for the Didache vary but all converge around the first or early second century; for discussion, see the works listed above, n. 42. It should be noted that there is nothing in the text itself excluding a pre–70 date except Did. 13.3–4, 6, which seem to presume that the temple no longer exists and the community is adapting to a new situation in which the “High Priests” are no longer managers of the worship of the God of Israel. It is of interest, also, to note that the eschatological sections of the Didache belong to the latest layer of the text. This matches well the reconstruction of the layers of Matthew, in which the latest layers mirror heightened eschatological expectations in the aftermath of the fall of the Jerusalem temple, and strengthens the theory that these documents were produced within the same institutional setting. See further below. ⁴⁶ So Garrow, Matthew’s Dependence on the Didache. ⁴⁷ Cf. Niederwimmer, The Didache, who considers the Didache to be later than Matthew but states that, “[t]he elements of the Jesus tradition in the Didache (in the sectio and elsewhere) could stem from the oral tradition that still circulated alongside the written gospel that the communities now possessed” (51 n. 62). See also H. Köster, Synoptische Überlieferung bei den apostolischen Vätern (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1957), 240. In my opinion, the literary situation is well explained if we posit a shared institutional context for both texts, since oral traditions may have been used by both authors in separate settings. ⁴⁸ Some scholars have noted the relative lack of hostile rhetoric in the Didache, and have understood that as an indication of a stage in the community’s life when tensions had became less intense because of a greater distance between this group and Judaism (cf., e. g., J. Verheyden, “Jewish Christianity, A State of Affairs: Affinities and Differences with Respect to Matthew, James, and the Didache,” in Matthew, James and Didache: Three Related Documents in their Jewish and Christian Settings [ed. H. van de Sandt and J. K. Zangenberg; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2008], 123–35, 134). While this is possible, it is, in my opinion, unlikely. The document is thoroughly Jewish and one would have expected at least some signs in the text of a shift towards a non-Jewish cultural milieu. Since this is not the case, it is better to understand the lack of conflictual language as an indication of the document’s previous history within a larger Pharisaic community. In such a setting, the rule functioned as marking a specific variant of Jewish identity, namely that of law abiding messianic Christ-followers. Chapter 8 contains the only example of direct polemics, and this section was likely inserted by the didachist (so P. Tomson, “Transformations of Post–70 Judaism: Scholarly Reconstructions and their Implications for our Perception of Matthew, Didache, and James,” in Matthew, James and Didache, 91–121, 119) at about the same time as Matthew’s Gospel was written. See further below.

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Gospel used, in addition to the traditions transmitted in his own community, the Markan text49 as a tool as these traditions were assigned narrative form. The rules of the Didache, governing the behavior, ritual, and life of the association, mirror to a large extent community life among Mattheans before 70 C. E., but also after, since the careful redaction was meant to uphold the rules that were included in the composition. The rules, as they were compiled and redacted by the didachist, could not stand by themselves, however, as a new association was formed and new members (some of which would have been non-Jewish converts) were being expected. They needed to be connected to and legitimized by references to the authority of “the gospel,”50 by numerous inclusions of Gospel traditions (closely related to Matthew’s Gospel as opposed to other Gospels), and in two cases also by references to the Hebrew Bible.51 As the earliest Matthean community was built, the aspect of using text as a tool in this process was thus, on a basic level, two-fold. First, Mattheans built community by regulating the life of community members using a community rule, the Didache.52 This method was common among other associations as well, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Second, they produced a written narrative of the life and meaning of Jesus: the Gospel of Matthew. To answer, partly, the question, “what was a gospel used for?”53 the following may now be said. The function of the Gospel, in relation to the Didache, was to provide legitimacy and authority to the community rule. This is evidenced both in the Didache and in redactional passages in Matthew which present specific community rules (also present in the Didache) as having been given by Jesus himself. But this function of Matthew’s Gospel does not, of course, exhaust the ways in which this text was used for community building. The Gospel also functioned to shape the members’ vision of the history and current moment of the Jewish people as well as the (immediate) future, the latter of which involved the entire world.54 In brief, we may thus conclude that the Gospel of Matthew, despite allusions in chapter 18 and elsewhere, did not fill the function of a community rule. We therefore need to further explore in which ways the Gospel may have been used, as a narrative. Before looking at the larger issue of how the text presents ⁴⁹ The use of Mark by Matthew does not presume that Matthew had no previous knowledge of traditions present in Mark; in many cases he probably had. Such traditions would have been transmitted orally among the Mattheans. ⁵⁰ Did. 8.2; 11.3; 15.3; 15.4. ⁵¹ Did. 14.3 (Mal 11:1, 14) and 16.7 (Zech 14:5). ⁵² Cf. Niederwimmer, Didache, 63, who suggests that the Two Ways tractate was used by, and set within, “Jewish religious societies of the ‘awakened,’ for whom the tractate served as a community rule.” This description fits well the Matthean setting. ⁵³ Tomson, “Transformations,” 119. ⁵⁴ It is of some interest to note that both Matthew and the Didache became very popular and received widespread use in Christ-believing communities and churches for centuries. If the Mattheans were effective missionaries, which is likely, such popularity for the two documents is hardly surprising. Cf. Segal’s comment that “Christian Pharisees … must have been somewhat successful in an atmosphere of rising rabbinic influence” (“Matthew’s Jewish Voice,” 35).

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normatively the ideal community member, it is necessary to say a few words on the social implications of the narrativisation itself, and the (intentional) choice of genre. 2.4. New Wine into New Wineskins: The Implications of Genre The question of the genre of the Gospels is much debated today. Since the topic is treated thoroughly by David Aune in the present volume, we shall not go into detail here.55 The purpose of this section is to examine what the genre of the Gospel of Matthew may tell us about how the Mattheans thought their text would contribute to community building. The importance of genre can hardly be overestimated since, as Richard Burridge has noted, genre is a “set of conventions and expectations mediating between authors and audiences, guiding both the production and the interpretation of the text.”56 As such, the genre of the Gospels will have implications for how we understand the text’s social function.57 Since genre is a choice, and the process of narrativizing oral traditions meant introducing a new meaning-infused hermeneutical frame within which to understand Jesus-traditions through the lenses of that specific genre, we may speak here with some confidence of the intentions of the people producing the narrative. The problem is, of course, that such confidence will rest on our ability to accurately determine which genre Matthew represents. While some questions remain in this regard, in my opinion Burridge’s suggestion that Matthew represents a form of ancient biography comes closest to the mark.58 As Aune puts it, Mark, as a type of Greco-Roman biography, represents both an “imitative and transformative reaction to existing literary genres.”59 As for Matthew’s relation to Mark, it seems clear that Matthew developed Mark’s parody of this (dynamic) genre into a form more in line with conventional Greco-Roman biographies, perhaps critiquing and correcting – as Matthew saw it – the way Mark’s text functioned.60 ⁵⁵ D. E. Aune, “Genre Theory and the Genre-Function of Mark and Matthew.” ⁵⁶ Burridge, “Who Writes, Why, and for Whom?” 112. ⁵⁷ Cf. R. A. Burridge, “Gospels” in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies (eds. J. W.

Rogerson and J. M. Lieu; Oxford, 2006), 432–44. ⁵⁸ R. A. Burridge, What are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). See also, idem, “Who Writes?” 112. Warren Carter comes to the same conclusion: Matthew and the Margins: A Socio-Political and Religious Reading (London: T & T Clark, 2000), 8. For a different assessment of the evidence, see E.-M. Becker, Das Markus-Evangelium im Rahmen antiker Historiographie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), who, investigating Mark’s Gospel, argues that the genre is closer to ancient history. Byrskog, “Memory and Identity,” 56, suggests that the Gospels display a combination of biographical and historical tendencies. ⁵⁹ Aune, “Genre Theory and the Genre-Function,” p. 147 in this volume. ⁶⁰ Cf. Aune, “Genre Theory and the Genre-Function,” p. 170: “However it is that Matthew came to have access to a copy of Mark, it seems clear that the social context within which he reworked Mark was markedly different from the social context within which Mark itself was written.”

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If this identification of the genre of Matthew’s Gospel as a bios is correct, it follows that the same basic intentions and goals underlying ancient bioi generally should be applied to the aims of the author of Matthew, with important implications for our topic. As narrativization was formed in a biographical matrix, the essential hermeneutical consequences were Christological.61 Jesus is presented as both the expression of and norm for the Matthean community that produced the text and other communities adopting the text. As Carter summarizes it, the narrative is intended to be identity forming and life-style shaping; as bios, Matthew’s Gospel had a community building function in terms of fixating normatively the values to be embraced by the members.62 This means that the accusation that is often thrown at scholarly reconstructions of the community in which the Gospel was written, that such reconstructions are basically allegorical exercises without real value for our understanding of the community in question, has to be problematized. While a text’s reception may differ considerably depending on socio-cultural and political factors, as 2000 years of reception history has shown clearly, the fact remains that even if the original setting in which the Gospel was authored may not have consistently reflected all the norms laid down in the text (no one is perfect, despite Matt 5:48!), it is very likely that it did display, at least on the most basic and fundamental levels, the beliefs and lifestyles promoted by the narrative. In other words, regardless of the historicity of specific passages, the biographical form itself would have encouraged imitation of the behavior and norms conveyed through the narrative. Such norms may thus be understood as the guiding principles for the prototypical ideal behavior that the author intended the audience – any audience – to conform with.63 Individuals who did conform to those ideals would have been held in high regard and had significant status within the communities.64 Burridge insists that the genre-approach leads to a more open view of the diversity of perceived audiences than the so-called community approach would allow. (Matthew’s target audience is identified by Burridge in general terms as “Christians with a Jewish background.”) Carter, however, quoting Burridge and Sean Freyne65 for support, concludes that “[a]s bioi, the gospels have a ‘commu⁶¹ Burridge, “Who Writes, Why, and for Whom?” 113. ⁶² Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 8–14. We shall return below to the reconstruction of

the “ideal Matthean.” ⁶³ The readings of later audiences, which may have been quite far removed from first-century C. E. Jewish culture, would have to be evaluated from the perspective of a first-century reading in terms of hermeneutical strategies and norms. ⁶⁴ On prototypicallity, cf. R. Roitto, “Behaving Like a Christ-Believer: A Cognitive Perspective on Identity and Behaviour Norms in the early Christ-Movement” in Exploring Early Christian Identity (ed. B. Holmberg; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 93–114. ⁶⁵ S. Freyne, “Vilifying the Other and Defining the Self: Matthew’s and John’s Anti-Jewish Polemic in Focus” in “To See Ourselves as Others See Us:” Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity (ed. J. Neusner and E. S. Frerichs; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), 117–43.

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nity building’ function,” and then moves on to locate the community in Antioch.66 It seems to me that while a larger audience may ultimately have been the target for the group that decided to textualize these traditions (cf. Matt 28:19– 20), the text itself can tell us little about such larger audiences. Intentions and specific interpretive details extracted from the text may inform us primarily of conditions in which the text was written, since the author, regardless of intended target audiences, would a) be influenced consciously or unconsciously by his own socio-religious and political context, and b) may have had little or no knowledge about the specifics of other communities in the Mediterranean world that would eventually have become readers of Matthew and more or less conformed to the norms and values represented in that text depending on their socio-cultural location.67 If the text itself is to be the point of departure for an analysis of how the text was used to build community, it would seem methodologically necessary to deal with the group that made the choices regarding genre, editorial changes, and the production of convincing rhetoric while authoring the text.68 We have already noted that community was built before the production of the text, and thus that the text was not a sine qua non for community building in this socio-religious culture. In addition to what we have said about the social implications of textualizing oral traditions, can we now draw more specific conclusions based on the choice genre? The following may be said. Since we know that oral traditions about Jesus preceded the textual stage, and since we know that the textualization involved choice of genre, which determined the wider interpretive frame of the text, it is reasonable to conclude that a modification in the perceived meaning of the Jesus-event was coterminous with the textualization itself. Whatever meaning the biographical genre adds to the traditions about Jesus, such meaning was, by definition, not there before the text was authored. The choice of genre was thus an essential aspect of building community using text. Further, Burridge has noted differences between stories about individual rabbis in rabbinic literature on the one hand, and the narratives of the Gospels on the other in terms of perceived meanings provoked by the genre. The ‘rabbinic ⁶⁶ Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 8; 15–6 for Antioch as the location of the community. ⁶⁷ It is of some interest here to compare with any modern example of authors writing for

worldwide audiences. It is often easy to see, especially for people of cultural backgrounds other than that of the author, the social and cultural specifics of the text. This is true also in the scholarly world, as postcolonial critiques of Western exegetical practices have shown us. Feminism is another important movement enabling us to see cultural and gender-specific aspects of texts to which previous generations were blind. ⁶⁸ Of course, other groups of various types throughout history have used Matthew’s text to build and sustain their communities. Investigations of how this was done needs, however, to also take into account as primary material sources other than Matthew, since Matthew’s message was merged into various cultures and contexts different from the first matrix which formed the gospel.

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genre’ lacks a focus on the person, and emphasizes instead the interpretation of law. From this perspective, we may hypothesize that the earliest oral traditions transmitted among Mattheans had Jesus’ teaching as their focus rather than his person. This would fit well the Pharisaic context within which I have argued that the oral traditions predating Matthew’s Gospel were transmitted. It would also match the textualized document’s emphasized concern – unique among the Gospels – for Jesus’ teachings, the law and its interpretation. This hypothesis is further strengthened if we look specifically at the nature of the traditions that were included together with Mark’s Gospel in Matthew’s text. These traditions basically lack narrative and consist mostly of Jesus’ sayings and teachings.69 This is true of special Matthean material and double tradition, as well as the traditions referred to in the Didache. The oral tradition was not transmitted in the form of a biographical narrative. It is Mark’s Gospel that brings to the Mattheans the genre and form found in Matthew’s text, and with this follows a shift of emphasis in how Jesus was perceived and remembered in this community. While Markan narrative traditions were “Mattheanized” as they were incorporated in the text the Mattheans were creating, and controlled by the dominant voice of that Gospel, it is also true that the way in which Jesus was remembered among Mattheans as they developed their community was “Markanized.” The biographical genre brings with it implications for Christology. For Mattheans, such a shift in understanding was linked with increased eschatological expectations after the destruction of the temple and the growing number of non-Jews joining the larger movement, and it contributed to the break between the separatists and the larger Pharisaic community as argued above.70 Increased eschatological expectation lead to enhanced Christological focus. Choosing the ⁶⁹ While I believe that both the double tradition and special M-material were transmitted orally within Matthew’s community before the text was produced, and thus find Q an unnecessary hypothesis, this argument holds even if one would reckon with the existence Q as a separate source used by Matthew. The same is true for special M, although few would argue that this material was handed to our author(s) as a written source. For discussion of special M in this regard, see R. E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 143–8. ⁷⁰ On Pharisaic Christ-believers, cf., e. g., Acts 15:5, Nicodemus in John 3:1–2, 7:50–1, 19:38– 42, and, of course, Paul. Regarding the Pauline correspondence it should be noted that it has a strong Christological focus, and that this pre-dates the biographical narratives. This may be seen as part of a development later resulting in the production of Mark’s Gospel. However, it should also be noted that, as is clear from Acts 15, there was a conflict between Paul and other Pharisaic believers in Christ, and that those labelled Pharisees in 15:5 emphasized the law. While the bios as genre is always bound to Christology, Christological reflection is not bound to that genre. One would need additional evidence to claim that Jesus-traditions not set within the biographical genre would have a stronger focus on law and teaching. Such evidence is clearly present in Matthew but not in Paul’s letters. Cf. Aune, “Genre Theory and the Genre-Function” in this volume, who notes that Matthew’s use of the term euangelion refers to Jesus’ message, not the message about Jesus (Matt 4:23; 9:35; 24:14; 26:13). Matthew’s Jesus is also clear that this is the message that his followers must proclaim (24:14). With the aims and expectations connected with the biographical genre, this emphasis on spreading the teaching about the Kingdom is merged with a focus on Jesus himself; the narrative as such functions to explain the person of Jesus.

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biographical form also prepared these traditions to be received by Diaspora Jews and non-Jews (Matt 10:17–18; 28:19–20), who would have been familiar with the genre and would have understood the narrative in this hermeneutical space, which helped provoke and guide eschatological expectation. The function of the choice of this genre would, thus, also have implications for Christologically and eschatologically focused community building through mission in contexts other than the one in which the text was formed. In other words, the new genre was instrumental in building new communities, or, to use an expression from the Gospel itself: new wine was poured in new wineskins (Matt 9:17).

3. Building Community by Instruction and Example: The Ideal Matthean Summarizing the above conclusions, we have noted a variety of uses of the Gospel of Matthew related to the building of the earliest Matthean community. Such uses include, a) to take control of Matthean oral tradition as a separation with the Pharisees occurred, in which Mattheans created their own independent association synagogue,71 b) to legitimize a fixed form of community rules composed at about the same time as the Gospel itself (the Didache), and c) to express and spread with the help of the biographical genre the increased eschatological and Christological awareness that was called for according to the Mattheans after the fall of the temple and the continually growing non-Jewish interest in the Christ-movement more generally. Textualization functions as a kind of ‘canon’ not only for what are acceptable oral traditions,72 but also with regard to the control of the traditions included by the dominant voice of the text. The aim to control tradition should not be understood as an attempt at complete submission of traditions that were in tension with the dominant voice. There is, clearly in Matthew, respect for the integrity of individual traditions once they have found a place in the narrative. This combination of narrative control of traditions and coterminous (limited) tension between some traditions recorded within the same text opened up for diversity of interpretation when individual passages were read and heard, especially in places socio-culturally removed from the earliest setting in which the text was composed.73 This may explain the popularity of the Gospel of Matthew in the ⁷¹ A group breaking away from a larger Pharisaic association (cf. Matt 23:2–3) would need to emphasise that there is only one teacher on which the group members must rely. This is also what we see happening in Matt 23:8–10. ⁷² This does not mean, of course, that everyone agreed on that ‘canon.’ As Papias shows us, oral traditions were still transmitted alongside the texts and were preferred by some (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.4). ⁷³ Readers and hearers in the earliest discourse community would have had interpretive expectations and tools similar to those individuals who textualized the traditions in that same community; such common ground would have formed a basis for common understandings of

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emerging Christ-believing communities (e. g., among Jews and non-Jews of opposing views) as well as throughout church history: its neatly structured narrative comes with a certain interpretive elasticity, which makes it somewhat adaptable to different cultures.74 Nevertheless, there is enough evidence in the text for deducing a basic and rather firm portrait of how the authors, or redactors, imagined the ideal Jesusfollower, the ideal Matthean, to be. Based on the norms and values ascribed to Jesus as well as Jesus’ direct instructions to people around him in this biographical narrative, we may reconstruct the ideal behavior that these self-proclaimed heirs of the oral traditions transmitted among Pharisaic Christ-believers felt necessary for themselves and all other Christ-followers to adapt to and follow. In the following, we shall deal with such Matthean ideals under two headings relating to ritual practice and theologically infused counter-colonization respectively. As we do so, we shall also pay attention to the community rule, i. e., the Didache, which provides further evidence with implications for how we read the Gospel text. The guiding question for these sections is: What did the Mattheans believe they were doing when they built community using this text? 3.1. The Ideal Matthean: Ritual Practice and National Identity Since ritual worldview and practice were key components of ethnic and other aspects of identity that built cohesion and community in antiquity, it is instructive to isolate and analyze rituals in the Gospel of Matthew whose validity is either expressed explicitly or taken for granted implicitly when rhetorical points are made that depend on shared ritual patterns: First-century Jewish ritual life related primarily to the Jerusalem temple, public synagogues, association synagogues for those who belonged to such, and the home. In Matthew, most accepted rituals that are mentioned are shared more widely with other Jews and Jewish groups.75 Among these, we find prayer (6:5–13; cf. Did. 8.3), almsgiving (6:3–4; cf. Did. 1.5b–6), fasting (6:17–18; cf. Did. 8.1), the Jewish law in its entirety (5:17–19; 19:17) as well as specific laws such as dietary laws (15:1–20) and other purity laws (8:4, 5–13; 23:25–26), the Sabbath (12:1– 14; 24:20), festivals (Passover [26:2, 17–35]), tithing (23:23), the temple cult and practices connected with the temple, including the temple tax (5:23–24; 12:3–5; 17:24–27; 23:19–21). In addition, public ritual reading of Torah in synagogue settings is clearly implied as a matter of course in the summarizing statements passages standing in tension with each other. As the text travelled to other communities in the Mediterranean world expectations and tools would be different, resulting in a wider range of possible interpretations of the text. ⁷⁴ While this is true, compared to Mark’s Gospel, Matthew’s text seems to aim at a more narrow range of interpretive possibilities. See further below. ⁷⁵ For discussion of several of the following rituals and practices, cf. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community, 124–64.

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of Jesus’ activities (4:23; 9:35) as well as part of specifically mentioned events taking place in such synagogues (13:54).76 Note also that Matt 23:6, while not referring to public reading or teaching of Torah explicitly, implies a shared public worship space which includes the presence of both Pharisees, scribes, and Jesus followers.77 Finally, while circumcision is not mentioned in the text, it is likely understood to be part of the ritual requirements for those (male) non-Jews who wanted to join the Mattheans, as well as for male children born to Matthean parents.78 As the above list makes clear, most rituals mentioned were shared between Mattheans and other Jews.79 It is important to note that identity and community cohesion build not only on rituals that are unique to the group itself, but also on ritual behavior shared with a larger community.80 In this way, a specific group ⁷⁶ On the wording “their synagogues,” see the discussion in Runesson, Origins, 355–7; see also idem, “Early Jewish–Christian Relations,” 118, 121–25, and literature mentioned there. ⁷⁷ Matt 12:9 may refer to a Pharisaic association synagogue: see Runesson, Origins, 355–7. ⁷⁸ For this conclusion, cf. R. Mohrlang, Matthew and Paul: A Comparison of Ethical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 44–5. Other scholars who draw similar conclusions include, e. g., A.-J. Levine, L. Michael White, and D. Sim. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community, 156–60, notes that there were likely both circumcised and uncircumcised members among the Mattheans. The question needs to the considered from two perspectives. It seems unproblematic to assume that a Jewish community like the Mattheans, which emphasized the validity of the entire Jewish law and thus accepted the identity markers of the covenant with the God of Israel, consisted of Jews who were circumcised. The question is whether the new instruction in Matt 28:19–20, which brings in non-Jews as potential members of the community for the first time in the narrative, would imply that such converts, if male, would have to go through circumcision. For several reasons, it seems as if the evidence is in favor of assuming that circumcision was part of such conversions. If the teaching of the law, a central theme in Matthew’s narrative as a whole, was modified on this point, it would most likely have been mentioned, as was the case, e. g., with the issue of divorce (Matt 5:31–32; 19:3–9). In addition, it would be narratively, halakhically, and theologically strange if Matthew emphasizes the validity of the law (as Jesus interprets it) throughout his gospel, and then instructs his disciples to make disciples of non-Jews, i. e., make non-Jews be what they themselves were, teaching them everything that Jesus has endorsed in the narrative until that point, which includes full compliance with the law, and then, without comment, assume that the audience would understand by itself that circumcision was not to be part of this missionary program. It seems more likely that what we see in Matthew is a position very similar to that of other Pharisaic Christ-believers, who required circumcision (Acts 15:5). For discussion of the phenomenon of Pharisaic Christ-believers urging circumcision as a late novelty in the Jesus movement, see P. Fredriksen, “Judaism, the Circumcision of Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at Galatians 1 and 2,” JTS 42 (1991): 532–64, esp. 558–64. ⁷⁹ To this we may add that Mattheans also shared with other Jews interpretive techniques as they read and adapted their common sacred scriptures to their own understanding of the present moment. On this, see S. Ruzer, Mapping the New Testament: Early Christian Writings as a Witness for Jewish Biblical Exegesis (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Such use of interpretive techniques is also an expression of a shared identity, within which the specifics – the results of the interpretations, as opposed to the techniques themselves – served community-building functions for the Matthean association itself. ⁸⁰ While Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 9, correctly notes the specifics of community shaping rituals, several of the more generally accepted aspects of ritual behavior are unfortunately left out, which creates a portrait of the community in need of further comment.

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may find a ritual place within a larger ritual worldview without leaving behind basic Jewish identity markers. While some of the rituals were performed in the exact same manner as other Jews performed them, others were modified to mark the group’s uniqueness within the larger Jewish society.81 In addition, while communal meals were found among other Jews at this time, evidenced not least by the presence of triclinia in synagogues,82 as well as among non-Jewish associations whose buildings also included triclinia, Mattheans were instructed by their text to regularly take part in a specific form of a communal ritual meal, the Eucharist (Matt 26:26–29; cf. Did. 9.1–10.7). Baptism (Matt 28:19; cf. Did. 7.1–4) was the formal entrance requirement for new members, performed only once as such individuals were accepted into the community. In this way, Jewish ritual immersion practices were shaped in a specific way in the Matthean community, thus creating cohesion and identity among members.83 This specific form of Jewish ritual behavior, combining rituals shared with other Jews with unique forms of rituals, should be seen within a larger ritual worldview of which the land and the capital city, Jerusalem, is also part. In Jewish thought and practice, the land, the law, the temple and Jerusalem as the city of the temple combined into a ritual whole. Interestingly, this is also what we see in Matthew. The land, including both Judea and the Galilee (Matt 2:22) was designated “the land of Israel” (Matt 2:20, 21; gē Israel, or in Hebrew, Eretz ’Israel),84 and Jerusalem is noted several times, even after the crucifixion, as the holy city, or “the city of the great king” (Matt 4:5; 5:35; 27:53). The land and Jerusalem seems indeed to be integral parts of the ritual system in which the Jerusalem temple has a key position – for Matthew receiving its importance relative to Jesus himself (cf. Matt 12:685). This will be important to keep in mind as we deal with Matthean theology and resistance in the next section. ⁸¹ Prayer (Matt 6:5–13; Did. 8.3), e. g., was given a specific form, which, according to the author, would distance the group from non-Jews. At the same time, however, the prayer marks a specific identity within Judaism through its specific wording. ⁸² See the discussion in D. Binder, Into the Temple Courts: The Place of the Synagogues in the Second Temple Period (Atlanta: SBL Press, 1999) 415–26. For a detailed discussion of the triclinium in the Ostia synagogue, see A. Runesson, “The Synagogue at Ancient Ostia: The Building and its History from the First to the Fifth Century,” in The Synagogue of Ancient Ostia and the Jews of Rome: Interdisciplinary Studies (ed. B. Olsson et al.; Stockholm: Paul Åström, 2001), 29– 99. ⁸³ Similarly, the Qumran community modified more common immersion practices, giving them unique forms supporting the experience of a specific Jewish identity. ⁸⁴ This is the only occurrence of this term in the New Testament. ⁸⁵ While often misinterpreted as Jesus abolishing of the Sabbath, this passage represents a typical Jewish discussion of what is more, or less, ‘heavy’ in the law. Jesus refers to temple practices, which all agree are valid, to show his adversaries that the Sabbath commandment is (correctly) relativized by the priests due to the need to perform the sacrifices on the Sabbath (i. e., sacrifices are more important than the Sabbath). In the same way, mercy (cf. also Matt 23:23) is more important and overrides the Sabbath, since Jesus (the Messiah) is greater than even the temple, which itself is greater than the Sabbath.

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In sum, the Gospel of Matthew functioned in its earliest setting to build community identity by explicitly and implicitly legitimizing a Jewish ritual worldview and, within this worldview, adding specific forms of rituals that marked Matthean identity over against other Jewish (and non-Jewish) groups. The ideal Matthean was one who adhered to these ritual commandments and customs and while doing so emphasized justice, mercy and faith, or trust, more than anything else (Matt 23:23). The text not only endorses such ritual behavior, it instructs its audience to adhere to it within a Jewish worldview of which Jerusalem and the land are integral parts. The upholding of Jewish rituals combined with Messianic convictions necessarily had religio-political implications beyond the association to which the Mattheans belonged with regard to national independence and self-rule. This leads us to consider the Gospel of Matthew as a document of resistance over against the political rule of powers – with cosmic implications – which not only did not adhere to a Jewish ritual worldview, but in fact actively opposed it and had already destroy its centripetal centre, the Jerusalem temple. 3.2. The Ideal Matthean: Theology, Resistance, Counter-Colonization An understanding of Matthew’s Gospel as a text produced for community building purposes in a late first-century Galilean context needs to take into account Roman imperial strategies after – from a Roman perspective – Jupiter’s apparent victory over the God of Israel when the Jerusalem temple was destroyed. The increased presence of Roman troops in Judea and the beginnings of a changing situation in the Galilee as a consequence of these Judean events cannot have gone unnoticed by any Jews living in that area, especially in urban settings.86 Although it is true that not all colonized people, or people living under the pressure of foreign imperial rule, resist, there is indeed ample evidence in Matthew’s narrative that this particular group may not only have resisted, but were in fact in the process of shaping community membership in ways that led to a mission of counter-colonization.87 The question we are concerned with here is how the ⁸⁶ On Roman presence in Judea and the Galilee after the war see, e. g., E. P. Sanders, “Jesus’ Galilee,” in Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity: Essays in Honour of Heikki Räisänen (ed. I. Dunderberg et al.; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 3–41. See also the extensive work by Mark Chancey on Galilee, which also includes analyses of cultural and architectural changes in the region, especially his Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); chapter 4 deals specifically with changes and transformations taking place in the second and third centuries, i. e., indicating what was beginning to happen as the Gospel of Matthew was written down in the late first century. On Roman military presence in Judea and Galilee after 70 C. E., see 61–70. ⁸⁷ While such aspects of the Gospel of Matthew have largely gone unnoticed by scholars, this has all changed with the extensive work of Warren Carter over the last 10 years or so. See his recent contribution to the present volume, “Matthew: Empire, Synagogues, and Horizontal Violence.” See also The Gospel of Matthew in its Roman Imperial Context (ed. J. Riches and D. C. Sim; London: T & T Clark, 2005).

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text of Matthew constructs such a counter-colonial move and thus how the text may have been used to build specific types of communities in this regard. The document is clearly meant to instruct not only the community’s members living in the area, but all its missionaries, which are expected to travel and spread the convictions of the Mattheans both within the land and globally in the Roman empire; to Jews as well as to non-Jews (see especially Matt 10; 28:18–20). Mission in antiquity was in no way limited to what we today would call a religious venture affecting only people’s private lives; it was a socio-political activity often deemed subversive by ruling authorities.88 The ideal Matthean was expected to actively and messianically undermine the status quo, either at home or as a traveling missionary in the empire. From an imperial perspective, rejecting other people’s gods also meant changing their political loyalties, which in turn destabilized Roman rule. Based on Matthew 28:18–20, there can be little doubt, in my opinion, that the written document as we have it is a religio-political tractate meant to change the world, fulfilling prophecies regarding Israel’s God’s universal rule. In other words, the aim was to subdue the empire and all areas of the known world to the rule of one single God, the God of Israel, and his Messiah.89 Such intentions and aims are a mirror image of the aims of the Roman empire, which gods had so far been utterly successful in controlling most of the known world. The strategies and tools for completing such a reversed colonial enterprise were, however, very different from those of the empire. There is no hint in Matthew of an endorsement of military violence or political coercion to reach the goals presented in the text. One could perhaps express it such that, while the Roman empire expanded the realm of their gods through the use of military force, i. e., achieving from the ground up what the rulers of the cosmic realm were said to have wanted, the Mattheans were endorsing non-violent means of achieving the global goals of the God of Israel through eschatologically and Christologically oriented preaching and teaching of perfection.90 The aim and the methods converge with the underlying conviction that now is the time of the long spoken of redemption. Deliverance and liberation will come about as all nations universally pay proper attention to Israel’s God, who will, in the end and contrary to the apparent weakness indicated by the fall of the temple, be vic⁸⁸ For an analysis of mission in antiquity, see A. Runesson, “Was there a Christian Mission Before the Fourth Century? Problematizing Common Ideas about Early Christianity and the Beginnings of Modern Mission,” in The Making of Christianity: Conflicts, Contacts, and Constructions (ed. M. Zetterholm and S. Byrskog; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011 [forthcoming]). ⁸⁹ We see these convictions of global submission of the nations to the Messiah of Israel in several passages in Matthew prior to 28:18–20. The centripetal movement in the narrative around Jesus is especially obvious in Matt 2:1–12 (from the east), 8:5–13 (from the West), 15:21–8 (from the past and globally; indicated by the use of Chananaios as an ethnic designation for the woman, i. e., a reference to the enemies past and present of the Jewish people. Cf. Davies and Allison, Matthew, 2:547–8). ⁹⁰ Cf. Matt 5:48; 28:20.

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torious. In brief, what we see in Matthew’s Gospel is that the God of a specific ethnic group, based in its own (colonized) nation within the empire, strikes back. For the Mattheans, it was religio-political warfare undermining the political status quo (which was upheld with the help of the gods of the empire) and thus threatening the stability, power and influence of the empire.91 But what was, more specifically, the theo-political problem perceived by the group that decided to write down the text? In which way is the document ideologically building a community of members dedicated to such specific tasks? How does the text motivate and legitimize the religio-political and counter-colonial activities it endorses and expects community members to engage in? The following points may summarize, from context to text, some of the key elements which respond to such questions. There was in late first-century Judea and Galilee what we today would call a political and military problem, observable by all and manifesting itself in escalating colonization after the defeat of the Jewish people in 70 . As we have noted above, in the ancient mind such events had cosmic equivalents. It appeared, therefore, to the Romans and to others, that Roman success resulted from them enjoying the favor of the gods. The God of Israel had not been strong enough to defend his own land and people. The defeat is, in all likelihood, recorded in Matthew (22:7; 23:37–24:2). As Jews, however, Mattheans would not have been able to simply blame the Romans for their suffering, since that would have implied that Jupiter was indeed stronger than Israel’s God. Rather, as the prophets did centuries earlier when the first temple fell, and the rabbis also did later on, the causes behind the defeat were sought within the Jewish people. The theo-political situation was thus constructed as God’s punishment of his own people, thereby avoiding what seemed to others so obvious: the fall of Jerusalem was the result of the victory of another god. Seeing historical events through Matthean lenses, the Romans, far from successfully serving their own gods were in reality just a tool in the hand of Israel’s God. The empire in itself was, behind the scene, powerless (Matt 28:18).92 Since guilt has to be sought within the people, we are led to consider the relationship between sin and national as well as individual disaster. The political situation, intertwined with cosmic realities, is inextricably linked to the sins of ⁹¹ Even a passage such as Matt 22:15–22 dealing with Roman taxes is, contrary to some commentators, quite clear in its critique of the Roman Empire. Far from endorsing a position that distinguishes “the secular” from “the religious,” Jesus is here stating in a concealed way that Roman rule is to be subdued under the rule of the God of Israel. Everyone in the discussion knew that everything ultimately belonged to God, and the coin of the emperor had no place in the land (“the land of Israel”; Matt 2:20, 21). Matt 22:15–22 should thus be read together with the worldview coming to the fore in Matt 4:8 and 28:18. The expression to give to God the things that are God’s can hardly refer to anything else than the land, Jerusalem and the entire world, which implies rejection of the claims of the devil and Rome (4:8), none of whom, ultimately, have any power (28:18). ⁹² Cf. the comment made by Jesus to Pilate in John 19:11, which is based on the same basic premise. For the Hebrew Bible, see, e. g., Isa 10:5.

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the people; sin is, in such a worldview, defined in relation to the gods and thus also a political category. Liberation from bondage, therefore, cannot come unless the sins of the people have been removed. The importance of this for Matthew is indicated by the fact that this is stated in connection with the very name of Jesus in the beginning of the narrative, as the angel says to Joseph regarding Mary: “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21). This is also why repentance is key as the kingdom, which is liberation, is about to happen (Matt 4:17; cf., 4:23 etc. The kingdom is mentioned 55 times in the narrative.93): repentance opens up for forgiveness, which in turn erases accumulated guilt. As in the Hebrew bible,94 the leaders of the people have a special responsibility to shepherd the people, and on this responsibility divine judgment is based.95 From a Matthean perspective, the Jewish leaders had not been able to remove sin from the land (witness the political and military disaster that is taking place), but rather are increasing it by their defiance of God’s law (Matt 13:42). After the war, the Pharisees are understood by the Mattheans to increase sin, since they resisted Matthean advice at the end of time and thus hinder Mattheans from ushering in the messianic age (Matt 5:20; 9:12–13, 36; 23:14–15).96 The leaders as well as the other parties could not, thus, remove the non-Jewish empire from the holy land, and therefore could not uphold the sacred status of the land. (The status of the land is upheld by keeping the law on which the people depend: Matt 5:19; 7:21; 13:41–43; 23:23.) Guilt is thus accumulating and disaster follows (Matt 9:36; 18:12; 22:41–46; 23:32, 35–36, 37–24:2). On the other hand, removal of sin through repentance and forgiveness will open up for the kingdom of heaven, which is the merging of heaven and earth (cf. Matt 6:10, 12, 14–15; 18:35). Therefore repentance is a vital component of both John’s and Jesus’ message (Matt 3:2, 7–8; 4:17; cf. the editorial comment in 11:20). In the kingdom true obedience of the law will prevail; justice, mercy and faith will rule. Jesus, the agent of the kingdom, has already begun saving his people from their sins, and thereby set in motion the bringing about of the kingdom ⁹³ Of these references to the kingdom, the majority has the added definition “of heaven.” This expression, “the kingdom of heaven,” is found only in Matthew, but reoccurs in later rabbinic texts, indicating, again, a close relationship between Mattheans and the forerunners of the rabbis, the Pharisees. ⁹⁴ See, e. g., Ezek 33:1–9; 34. On divine judgment in biblical and other early Jewish texts, see A. Runesson, “Judgment,” in The New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible (ed. K. Doob Sakenfeld et al.; 5 vols.; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008), 3:457–66. ⁹⁵ For analysis of the shepherd motif in Matthew’s Gospel, with political implications, see Wayne Baxter’s contribution to the present volume, “Matthew, Mark, and the Shepherd Metaphor: Similarities, Differences, and Implications.” See also Joel Willitts, Matthew’s Messianic Shepherd: In Search of ‘The Lost Sheep of the House of Israel’ (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007). ⁹⁶ The problem Mattheans see with the Pharisees seems primarily to be that they do not approve of the Matthean strategies in relation to the grassroots movement, rather than some flaw in their interpretation of the law; such debates of law do exist in Matthew, but they are clearly of secondary importance and not the cause of the harsh Matthean rhetoric.

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(Matt 1:21; 4:17; 9:1–8, 12–13; 26:2897), which will eventually rid Israel from breakers of the law (Matt 13:42: τοὺϚ ποιοῦνταϚ τὴν ἀνομίαν). This means that the kingdom will result in the removal of the Romans and the cosmic powers that follow with them from “the land of Israel” (Matt 8:28– 3498).99 The Apostolic Jews who belonged within the Pharisaic association previous to their break with this community seem to have stopped there, with the restoring of the kingdom of Israel ruled by the Messiah as heaven and earth had merged at the end of time. The narrative before the unique Matthean material in Matthew 28 is concerned with the restoration of Israel and the Jewish people only, and non-Jews are described as recognizing, and submitting to, the rule of the Messiah without conversion. Gentiles are clearly not on the same level of concern as Jews are, neither is their status equal to that of Jews in Matthew’s Gospel. With the last verses of Matthew 28 this changes. Here, the Jewish Messiah displays his unlimited power, which was given to him by Israel’s God because he had earlier rejected the devil’s offer of exactly the same gift of global power and rule (Matt 4:8–11; 28:18–20).100 What we see here can hardly be defined as anything other than a direct exhortation to the community members to reject the evil cosmic powers following with Roman rule, as Jesus himself had done; they are instructed to conquer the world through Messianic interpretation of the Jewish law and through forgiveness of sins as accomplished by the sacrificial death of the Messiah (Matt 26:28). The meaning and content of the kingdom is modified as this exhortation is made explicit, and it opens up for the nations to become full partakers of the blessings together with the Jewish people who acknowledge the rule of the Messiah. This universal kingdom, with Jerusalem at its centre,101 would be ruled by the Messiah, and the heads of the twelve tribes would rule Israel (Matt 19:28). Building communities using this text, which was most likely read on a weekly basis, thus meant founding communities with explicit subversive aims and claims. This was, of course, exactly what the Romans feared would happen in collegia, whatever innocent purpose they were said to have.102 This reconstruc⁹⁷ Since the temple had been rendered into a “den of robbers” by the priests in charge (Matt 21:13) it is no longer functioning as it was meant to, and atonement is impeded. The blood of Jesus, the righteous one par excellence, given voluntarily (cf. imagery of Isa 53), now brings the forgiveness needed. ⁹⁸ Cf. Luz, Matthew 8–20, ad loc. on the issue of this area as historically belonging to Israel in Matthew’s perspective. ⁹⁹ For discussion of this passage, see Runesson, “Was there a Christian Mission Before the Fourth Century?” ¹⁰⁰ Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 110–1, correctly relates the gift of the devil with Roman rule. ¹⁰¹ It is quite likely that the Mattheans theologized these events with the help of their sacred scriptures, perhaps reflecting on texts like Isa 40; 42:1–13; 52:13–53:12; 54:4–5; 56:1–8; 65–6, esp. 66:17–21. ¹⁰² Cf. the concerns expressed in the letters exchanged between Pliny the Younger and emperor Trajan regarding the potential establishment of an association for firemen in Nicomedia (Ep. 10.33, 34).

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tion of events from a Matthean perspective also explains what seems to us today to be contradictory: if Roman imperial presence is the noticeable symptom of a religious and social disaster, why is not Rome attacked more explicitly in the text itself? From a first-century Jewish perspective, there was no alternative other than to seek the causes of the current disaster within the Jewish people itself, and the Jewish leadership more specifically. For Mattheans, the blame was associated primarily with the Pharisees, despite the fact that this group was not in charge of the temple, nor of the public synagogues.103 The good news, however, as understood by Mattheans, was that Rome’s time is up, liberation is at hand, the God of Israel and his Messiah are in charge: the kingdom of heaven will soon be established. In sum, then, the ideal Matthean, as formed by the exhortations of the text and by the example of Jesus as it is described by the text, would have acted along the following lines. He or she would have carefully followed the Jewish law as taught by Jesus, with an emphasis on justice, mercy and faith, in this way incarnating a Jewish (Messianic) identity recognized as such by Jews and non-Jews alike. Further, this individual would have been convinced that Jesus, the only teacher, provided a way to remove the sins of the people, and therefore that he would be able to bring about the kingdom. This was, in fact, already happening and therefore the ideal Matthean worked intensely to undermine Roman rule and religion in the land of Israel, restoring the (ritual) balance between land, law, ethnos and God in this area. Indeed, he or she would be involved in attempts at building communities of Matthean-type Jesus followers worldwide, all working for the same goal of marginalizing Roman ways of life, including their religious culture. Such aims and views were clearly not in line with, e. g., Pauline strategy, which emphasized that non-Jews should remain non-Jews; such theology results in an acceptance of certain aspects of a non-Jewish identity and culture within the people of God (“in Christ”), alongside a Jewish identity. Diversity within the Jesus movement, as evidenced in Paul and Matthew – and Mark – should not surprise us, however, since uniformity is not to be expected of, neither to be imposed on the ancient material.

4. Conclusion: Building Community Using Text in Late First-Century C. E. Galilee The Gospel of Matthew has been used throughout the centuries in a wide variety of ways to build and maintain community and identity among Christians. It is my contention that in order to understand such uses of Matthew we need to situ¹⁰³ Cf. the location of Matt 23:37–24:2 immediately after the severe criticism of the Pharisees in chapter 23, a chapter which does not mention the Jerusalem leadership at all.

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ate the various interpretations firmly in the socio-political, economic, religious and cultural contexts in which they were produced. The same basic principle for historical reconstruction of meaning is valid for the earliest period in a text’s history: body and soul are inseparable. Therefore, in order to address matters of intention behind the text, the present study began by considering the social implications of the production of the text itself in a situation of intra-Pharisaic conflict in post-war Galilee. Such a procedure enabled reflection on the consequences for community building of the transition from oral traditions and tradents to a written text, which presented, in an approach similar to a canonization process, specific traditions in specific ways in narrative biographical form. The textual medium itself required a conscious choice of genre, within which form lay inherent the intentions of the group that produced the text. From the perspective of community building, this revealed an increased focus on Christology in the period after the fall of the temple. The Matthean establishment of an independent association (collegium), evidenced in the text (especially chapter 18) and following patterns similar to other Jewish and Greco-Roman collegia, led to the conclusion that this community must have had, in addition to the Gospel of Matthew, a community rule. I have suggested here that based on the remarkable religio-cultural similarities between Matthew’s Gospel and the Didache, their intertextual relationship, the date and provenance of the texts (as far as these can be asserted), it is very likely that the latter was indeed the community rule of the association which produced Matthew’s Gospel. I believe that the case in favor of such a conclusion is stronger than arguments against, since it is based not only on the contents of the texts but also on institutional realities which can be reconstructed independently of either of the texts, but within which both texts fit perfectly. Reading the documents as interrelated within a specific institutional setting, a Jewish messianic collegium, has implications for how we study this early Apostolic-Jewish community, the only one for which we have two types of documents preserved. In the present study, I have only explored these as they relate to the use of the Gospel text in community building: the Gospel functioned as legitimizing rules laid down in the Didache by anchoring them in a narrative about Jesus and his teaching. In this way, the Didache refers to Gospel traditions present in Matthew (as well as oral traditions used by both Matthew and the Didache), and the Matthean narrative puts those and other passages of the Didache within the frame of the authority of Jesus himself. Finally, the instructions and example of the text itself for building a community of ideal Christ-believers were considered in terms of ritual worldview and its political implications as well as the theological motivations for a counter-colonial enterprise aimed at subduing the Roman empire to the God of Israel. While such aims mirror rather closely the aims of the Romans themselves, the strategies to achieve such rule for the God of Israel were non-violent. The ideal Mattheans focused in their mission on teaching Jewish law and forgiveness through the

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sacrificial death of the Messiah, an offer now extended beyond the Jewish people. Ultimately, then, the text of the Gospel of Matthew was used for community building on a global scale, although such aims and goals were resisted – even forbidden – as long as Jesus traditions were transmitted orally by chosen individuals in Pharisaic settings more interested in law and the restoration of Israel than in eschatological Christology with radical universal implications for the idea of the heavenly kingdom. It is of some interest to note that the colonial aspects of the Gospel of Matthew were noted by later non-Jewish Christians using this text. Indeed, the final words of Matthew, Matt 28:18–20, have been used by nations engaging in various forms of colonial activities around the world, claiming to do God’s work by spreading, not Judaism as Matthean communities did, but (non-Jewish) Christianity. As is well known, this Jewish text has even been used, frequently, to delegitimize Judaism as a religion with the aim of building non-Jewish Christian communities which have been claimed to supersede both Judaism as a religion and the Jews as the people of God. Such developments only show that the hermeneutics involved when text is used for community building purposes on local as well as national and global levels are heavily dependent on political and economic realities. The separatist group of former Pharisees that we call Mattheans would never have guessed, I firmly believe, how things would ultimately turn out.104

¹⁰⁴ I am grateful to Peter Tomson for many a discussion of Matthew, and to Akiva Cohen and Serge Ruzer for reading and commenting on the penultimate draft of this study.

7. Notes from the Conference: Further Discussion

Reflections on the Conference at the University of Aarhus, July 25–27, 2008 Adela Yarbro Collins The conference was stimulating and productive, both in articulating the state of research on Mark and Matthew and on their relation to each other and in pointing out fruitful areas for further research. In this response, I shall address two topics that were discussed during the conference and remain controversial: 1) the relation of the author of Matthew and “the Matthean community” to Jewish groups and practices and 2) the genre of Mark. In the section on “Matthew’s Relationship to Judaism” in his paper, David Sim states that the view that “Matthew represented a Christian tradition that was engaged with Judaism but no longer a part of it” is “beginning to lag behind” the view that the tension between Matthew’s community and the Pharisees is intra muros, that is, it is a conflict between “formative Judaism” and “Christian Judaism” during the turbulent decades after the (first) Jewish war with Rome. This interpretation implies that the evangelist and the communities for whom he wrote had a Jewish identity. It seems to me likely that this scholarly point of view has arisen as an indirect response to the Holocaust. After World War II, a number of Christian biblical scholars began to consider and to investigate the role that Christian biblical scholarship has played in the history of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. In my view, it is a very good thing to reflect on the passages in Matthew that have been used to define Jews as the “other” in definitions of Christian identity. It is necessary for those who teach Matthew and those who preach on Matthean texts to address explicitly anti-Jewish readings of Matthew and to counter such readings. It may be going too far, however, to say that Matthew is a product of Christian Judaism. A serious problem, in my view, for this kind of reading is Matt 21:43, a saying unique to Matthew. Here the Matthean Jesus implies that the kingdom of God will be taken away from the chief priests and the Pharisees (21:45) and that it will be given to a people (ἔθνοϚ) who will bear its fruit. Since the Judeans and their kin in the eastern and western diaspora constituted an ἔθνοϚ, the evangelist seems clearly to imply here that, at the time he was writing, the followers of Jesus constituted a new ethnic group. This idea seems to be a forerunner of the later notion that Christians constituted a third γένοϚ, that is, a third kind of human

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beings distinct from both “Jews” and “Gentiles.”1 Matt 27:25, another saying unique to Matthew, portrays “the whole people (πᾶϚ ὁ λάοϚ)” as saying “Let his blood be upon us and upon our children.” It seems unlikely that the author would have used the phrase “the whole people” if he considered himself and his audiences to be part of the Jewish people. Sim also notes, “one of the major pillars of the intra muros position is the Gospel’s affirmation that all of the Torah remains valid (cf. Matt 5:17–19).” Matt 5:17–20, a passage with a partial parallel in Luke 16:16–17, portrays Jesus as saying that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Furthermore, he says that heaven and earth will pass away before a single small letter (ἰῶτα) or even a single small part of a letter (κεραία) passes away from the law. Yet the antitheses that follow do not discuss circumcision, which is never mentioned in Matthew, or food laws, or laws concerning ritual purity. The Matthean Jesus, however, instructs the crowds and his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. Do and keep, therefore, whatever they say to you, but do not act in accordance with their deeds, for they talk but they do not act” (23:2–3). Later in the same speech, he says “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, for you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and give up the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. You should have done the latter without neglecting the former” (23:23). Finally, in 24:20, the Matthean Jesus seems to affirm the observance of the Sabbath: “Pray that your flight not take place in winter or on the Sabbath.” In my view these tensions within the text of Matthew can best be resolved by the hypothesis that the audience of the Gospel was not homogeneous. The author was writing to unify at least two factions in the ἐκκλησία – the communities that were Torah observant in a way similar to the observance of the Pharisees and those, like the communities founded by Paul, who did not observe the practices of circumcision, kashrut, and ritual purifications. The evangelist gave the observant faction its due by emphasizing the continuing authority and validity of the law. He gave the non-observant wing its due by interpreting the law in terms that did not involve practices they considered unnecessary for those who adhered to Jesus as the messiah. Similarly, the remark that the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat is a rhetorical concession. On the one hand, it gives the observant faction of the ἐκκλησία its due. On the other, it leads into the warning to do what they say, but not what they do. This warning evokes the widespread Greco-Roman distinction between teaching and doing, used to criticize those philosophers who teach but do not practice what they teach. It also sets up and prepares for the application of this topos to the scribes and Pharisees. Similarly, the last part of v. 23 is necessary to make a similar point: the rivals are fulfilling the “light” commandments, ¹ On the latter notion, see D. Kimber Buell, Why This New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).

Reflections on the Conference at the University of Aarhus, July 25–27, 2008

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but not the “heavy” or truly important ones. The concession of this clause, that both the “heavy” and the “light” commandments should be observed, is necessary to beat the scribes and the Pharisees at their own game. It does not necessarily imply that the audiences of Matthew ought to tithe mint, dill, and cumin. The other controversial topic involves the question of the genre of Mark. David Aune makes the helpful proposal that we move away from Aristotle’s normative rules about genre and the position that every member of a population can be placed in one and only one class. Instead, we should move toward Tzvetan Todorov’s proposal that genre be defined in dynamic rather than static categories.2 According to Aune, Todorov argued that genres are transformed by inversion, displacement, or combination. Apparently building on Todorov’s notion of the inversion of a genre and perhaps also on Alastair Fowler’s naming of parody as an “anti-genre,”3 Aune proposes that Mark was written in reaction to Greco-Roman biography, not in imitation of those βίοι; it is a parody of such works. The central parody of Mark is the presentation of a hero who is a crucified criminal, who demands that his disciples take up their crosses and follow him. This interpretation of the genre of Mark reduces its complexity. The text of Mark has some important similarities with ancient historiography, such as the attribution of the course of events to divine agency.4 The author of Luke-Acts refers to the plan of God (βουλὴ τοῦ θεοῦ) in several passages.5 Mark does not use such terminology, but implies that the divine plan is manifest in Scripture and in the predictions of the events of the passion, which “must” (δεῖ) take place (8:31). The good news proclaimed by Jesus and his followers is that the divine plan, foretold in Scripture, is about to be fulfilled. The citation of the book of Isaiah (and implicitly of Malachi and Exodus) in Mark 1:2–3 supports this interpretation. The fulfillment of Scripture alluded to here should not be taken as an isolated case in which a specific scriptural motif or even a few related passages are fulfilled in a single event, namely, the appearance and activity of John the Baptist. Rather, this is only the first in a sequence of events that constitute the fulfillment of the divine plan. The meaning of this fulfillment is summarized in ² T. Todorov, “The Origin of Genres,” in Modern Genre Theory (ed. D. Duff; Harlow: Peterson Education Limited, 2000), 193–209. See also idem, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (trans. R. Howard; Cleveland, OH: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1973); idem, Genres in Discourse (trans. C. Porter; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). ³ A. Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). ⁴ See the discussion of Herodotus, Polybius, and Mark in “Mark as History” in the section of the Introduction on “Genre” in A. Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007). See also E.-M. Becker, Das Markusevangelium im Rahmen antiker Historiographie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). ⁵ Acts 2:23; 4:28; 5:38–39; 20:27. My thinking about “the plan of God in Mark” was stimulated by Prof. Dr. Oda Wischmeyer’s paper and by conversation with her.

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1:14–15 and focuses on the kingdom of God. The narrative of Mark as a whole suggests that the kingship of God on earth is to be realized in his son Jesus (1:11) in an anticipatory way and later in a definitive way in his role as the heavenly Son of Man (8:38; 13:24–27; 14:62). Thus it would seem that Todorov’s notion that a new genre emerges by displacement or combination is as relevant as his talk about transformation by inversion. Mark combines historiographic perspectives and techniques with biographical micro-genres and narrative focus on one individual. He combines and also transforms both of these genres by setting them in an apocalyptic framework: the conviction that the kingdom of God has drawn near and predictions that the risen and exalted Jesus would be manifest as the glorious Son of Man of Daniel 7. Mark does not simply invert and parody the Greco-Roman genre “biography.” As Homi Bhabha and other post-colonial theorists have argued, in a situation of cultural hegemony, subaltern people mimic the values and practices of their rulers, but with a difference. The author of Mark imitates Greek and Roman historiography and biography by combining certain techniques and values associated with them in his narrative, but also displaces these from the frameworks of Greek culture and Roman imperium. Instead he re-places them in an implied, biblical, master-narrative, constructed from the Septuagint, which culminates in an apocalyptic scenario.6

⁶ Alluded to in Mark 8:38–9:1; 9:42–48; chapter 13; 14:62.

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List of Contributors Barbara Aland is Professor Emerita of New Testament and Church History, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany. David E. Aune is Walter Professor of New Testament at the University of Notre Dame, USA. Wayne Baxter is Lecturer at McMaster University and King’s University College, Canada. Eve-Marie Becker is Professor of New Testament at Aarhus University, Denmark. Cilliers Breytenbach is Professor of Literature, Religion and History of Early Christianity at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, and Professor extraordinaire of New Testament at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Warren Carter is Professor of New Testament at Brite Divinity School, USA. Adela Yarbro Collins is Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School, USA. Sean Freyne is Director of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies and Emeritus Professor of Theology at Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland. Morten Hørning Jensen is Associate Professor at the Lutheran School of Theology in Aarhus, Denmark. John S. Kloppenborg is Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, Canada. Stanley E. Porter is Professor of New Testament, President and Dean at McMaster Divinity College, Canada. Anders Runesson is Associate Professor of New Testament (Early Christianity) and Early Judaism, McMaster University, Canada. Lorenzo Scornaienchi is Oberassistent at the Lehrstuhl ad personam für Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Universität Zürich, Switzerland. David C. Sim is Associate Professor in Theology, School of Theology, Australian Catholic University, Australia. Tommy Wasserman is Docent in New Testament and Lecturer at Örebro School of Theology, Örebro, Sweden, and Høyskolen for Ledelse og Teologi, Stabekk, Norway. Oda Wischmeyer is Professor Emerita of New Testament, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. Linden Youngquist is William C. and Maxine M. Manning Professor of Christian Religion at Iowa Wesleyan College, USA.

Index of References1 Mark 1 1–13 1–13:13 1:1

1:1–3 1:1–4 1:1–5 1:1–15 1:2 1:2 f. 1:2–8 1:2–17 1:2–25 1:4 1:7 1:9 1:9–11 1:9–16 1:11 1:12 1:12 f. 1:13 1:14 1:14 f. 1:15 1:16 1:16–20 1:16–8:21 1:17 1:18 1:19 1:20 1:21 1:21–28 1:21–10:52

127n24 17 248 10, 28, 138*, 139*, 140, 155, 158, 160, 162, 166, 172*, 176, 190, 368*, 372*, 373, 374 368, 372, 373 370 370 21, 28*, 162 372* 20, 139, 210n16, 413 169 172 172 130* 332 169, 209 110, 169 110 20, 166, 169, 271n46, 414 110 110 110 110, 190 110, 139, 414 111*, 210 210 25, 209, 210, 234 21 210, 211n19 210, 211n20 210 210*, 211n20 245 28, 383n15 253

¹ Compiled by Dr. René Falkenberg (Aarhus)

1:22 1:23–28 1:24 1:28 1:29 1:29–31 1:29–2:22 1:29–5:20 1:32–34 1:35–39 1:39 1:40 1:40–45 1:40–2:22 1:40–10:52 1:44 2:1 2:1–12 2:1–20 2:1–22 2:7 2:10 2:13 f. 2:13–17 2:14 2:15 2:16 2:18 2:18–20 2:18–22 2:20 2:23 2:23–28 2:23–3:5 2:28 3–11 3:4 3:6

272n50 343n73 166, 169, 330, 332 186 209, 210, 216 253, 254 253 253, 254 253, 254 189 188, 259n57 259n57 253*, 254 171 253 164n97, 272n50 259n57 28, 254, 259 253 248n39, 253 273n50, 316 21 234 253, 254, 255 209, 210* 209, 210, 216 272n50* 273n5 28 253, 254, 255 135n66, 135n67, 135n68 171 24, 312 91 21 246 316 190, 273n50*, 309, 316

460 3:7 f. 3:7–12 3:11 3:13 3:13–15 3:13–19 3:20 3:20 f. 3:20–35 3:21 3:22 3:22–30 3:23–30 3:27 3:30–35 3:31 3:31–35 3:35 4 4:1–34 4:4 4:9 4:10 4:10–13 4:11 ff. 4:15 4:16 4:17 4:23 4:29 4:31 4:32 4:35–41 4:35–5:17 4:35–5:41 4:35–5:43 5:1 5:1 ff. 5:1–19 5:1–20 5:1–43 5:7 5:19 f. 5:21–43 5:22–24 5:24–34 5:35–43 6:1–6 6:3

Index of References

186, 192, 196 186 135n66, 166 117 25 186, 234 117 26, 212n23, 234 212n23 26, 209, 210, 211* 212n23 236, 237 212n23 135n67, 331, 332*, 336, 343n73 26*, 211 117 169, 209, 210, 212*, 212n23, 234 212n25 372, 375*, 376 25 164n97 140 236 234 27 135n66 135n66 190, 369 138n79, 140 135n66 135n66 135n66 234, 253, 254, 257n55, 259 248n39 253 171 142n108 142n110 187 102, 253, 254 102 166 187 102, 253, 254 256 256 256 189, 209, 210, 211, 212 26

6:4 6:6 6:7–13 6:7–30 6:8 f. 6:10 6:14–29 6:17 ff. 6:31 6:32 6:32–44 6:34 6:35 6:35 f. 6:35–44 6:36 6:36–44 6:39 f. 6:43 6:45–52 6:45–8:26 6:56 7 7:1 7:1–13 7:1–22 7:1–23 7:2 7:3 7:3 f. 7:4 7:5 7:6 7:9–13 7:10 7:10–13 7:14–23 7:15 7:17–23 7:18 7:19 7:21 7:23 7:24 7:24–30 7:24–31 7:27 7:32 7:33 8

317n32 188 25, 234, 280 190 243n20 209, 216 280 142 273n52 273n52 25 271n47, 271n48, 272–5 273n52 272 273n53 188 272 274n58 274n58 25, 234, 258n55 142n107 188* 312, 316, 365, 371, 375*, 376 139, 236 370 237 24, 24n49, 192, 370 370*, 371 370 138n83*, 370 370 370 372n81 236 19n29, 215n43 169, 209, 215 236, 370 164n97, 192, 370 370 164n97 138*, 138n83, 139*, 140, 370*, 371 164n97 164n97 209, 216 274n58 186 187 255n54 188 372

Index of References

8:1 ff. 8:1–9 8:6 8:10 8:14–21 8:15 8:19 8:23 8:26 8:27 8:27–38 8:27–10:45 8:31 8:31–33 8:33 8:34 8:34 ff. 8:35 8:38 8:38–9:1 9:1 9:2 9:2–10 9:2–13 9:7 9:9 9:14–29 9:19 9:30–37 9:31 9:33 9:38–41 9:41 9:42 9:42–48 10 10–15 10:1–12 10:2–12 10:4 10:9 10:13–16 10:15 10:18 10:18 f. 10:19 10:27 10:28–31 10:29 10:29 f. 10:29 ff.

142, 142n107 274n58 274n58 142n108 234, 274n54 164n97 274n58 188* 188 188 190 23 22, 26, 248, 413 235 22 215n42 369 190 135n66, 141n100, 167, 190, 209, 216, 414 414n6 127n22, 140–1, 164n97 164n97 235 28 166, 169 135n66 235 164n97 190, 235 22, 26 209, 216 235 164n97 164n97 414n6 372 29, 30 24 209, 216 19n29 216 235 164n97 88n51 169 209, 216 169 169, 209, 213n31 213n33 19 369

10:30 10:32 10:32–34 10:32–45 10:35 ff. 10:35–45 10:38 10:39 10:45 10:45–52 10:46 10:46 ff. 10:46–52 10:52 11–13 11:2 11:10 11:11 11:12 11:14 11:15–19 11:19 11:25 11:27–33 12 12:1 12:1–8 12:1–9 12:3 12:5 12:8 12:9

12:18 12:19 12:23 12:25 12:28–34 12:34 12:35–37 12:38–40 12:41–44 12:41–13:2 12:41–13:37 12:42 13 13–15 13:1 f.

461 214* 191 26 190 143n112 188, 235 27 132*, 134* 26, 27* 252 188 142n110, 142n111 24, 253*, 254 190 371 188 216 188 371n76 164n97 236 135n66 135n66, 169, 209, 216 313, 315 375 335* 333*, 334, 344, 350 325, 332, 336, 343* 344n76 164n97* 350 132*, 134, 135*, 136n73*, 137*, 334*, 334n46, 335*, 336, 341, 344*, 344n75, 347, 350* 139n84 19n29 135n66 135n66 237, 318 318n33 368n57 236 236 235 102 363, 364, 364n26 23*, 114, 127, 129–32, 140, 142*, 164, 365, 372, 374*, 375*, 376, 414n6 133 133n57, 191

462 13:1–23 13:2 13:3 13:3 ff. 13:4 13:5–37 13:6–13 13:7 13:9 13:9 f. 13:9–12 13:9–13 13:10 13:11 13:12 13:12 f. 13:13 13:14

13:14 ff. 13:14–23 13:19 13:20 13:21 13:23 13:24–27 13:26 13:27 13:28 13:29 13:30 13:31 13:32 13:32–37 13:34–37 13:57 14–16 14:1

Index of References

236 132, 133, 134, 135, 164n97 135 133, 140 135, 135n66 114, 371 189 135, 135n66, 374 25, 383n15 190, 200 136 190, 369 190, 192, 373, 374, 375 135, 135n66 213n31, 214n35 209 213n31, 214 132, 133, 135*, 135n66, 135n67, 138*, 139–40, 142n109, 165, 367, 371, 372*, 377 133 134, 135–6 164n97, 190 164n97 135n67 136 414 135n67, 141n100, 167, 373 130n37, 135n67 135n66, 371n76 135n66, 164n97 140–1, 164n97, 373, 374 164n97 209, 216 373 209, 216 213n29 17 13

14:3–9 14:7 14:9 14:10 f. 14:21 14:22 ff. 14:24 14:25 14:27 14:27 f. 14:28 14:32–42 14:36 14:31 14:38 14:43–50 14:48 14:50 14:58 14:61 14:62 14:64 14:66–72 14:67 15:6–15 15:22 15:23 15:26 15:29 15:31 15:32 15:33–41 15:34 15:38 15:40 16:1–8 16:6 16:7 16:8 16:9 16:9–20

235 135n66, 164n97 158 235 164n97* 132n43 26, 27 135n66, 164n97 191, 271n47, 273, 274n58, 275, 279 191, 274n58 273, 274n58 235 169, 209, 216 164n97 164n97* 235 133 191 132, 135, 191 169 141n100, 167, 414, 414n6 316 235 169 237 139n84 187 131 72, 132, 133, 135 72 72 28 72*, 139n84 132n43, 133, 135, 191 26* 16, 21, 130, 236 169 191, 274n58, 374 10, 85, 142n109 16, 127n24 16, 85, 114, 153

Matthew 1–2 1–4 1–11 1–12:22 1:1 1:2–25

131, 142 103 171 247 10, 138, 139, 158, 172* 247

1:16 1:18 1:18–25 1:21 1:21–23 1:23

70n39 130 307 276n64*, 299, 307, 405 285, 299, 301 139n84*, 299

Index of References

2 2:1 2:1–12 2:1–23 2:2 2:3 2:6 2:12 2:13 2:15 2:16 2:16–18 2:19 2:20 2:21 2:22 3–11 3:1 3:1–4:22 3:1–4:37 3:9 3:13–17 3:14 3:15 4:1 4:1–11 4:3 4:4 4:5 4:6 4:7 4:8 4:8–11 4:15 f. 4:17 4:18–22 4:19 4:20 4:21 f. 4:22 4:23 4:23–25 4:23–9:35 4:24 4:24 f. 4:25 5–7 5:1 5:3

299 130 402n89 247 278n72, 299 276 276, 276n64, 387 276n61 136n73*, 276n61 276n61 276n61 325 276n61 400, 403n91 400, 403n91 276n61, 400 246, 248*, 249*, 250*, 250n46*, 251, 260* 130 171 247 344n75 307 110 110 302 307 302 110 200, 400 110 110 301, 403n91* 405 299* 111, 299, 307, 405 209, 234, 300 211n19 211n20 211 211n20 37, 137n75, 172*, 202, 248, 277n67*, 396n70, 398 116, 196, 300 247 199, 301 199 277n67 245, 300 116 248, 299

5:3–12 5:5 5:6 5:7 5:10 5:11 5:11 f. 5:13 5:15 5:16 5:17–19 5:17–20 5:17–21 5:17–48 5:20 5:21–23 5:21–26 5:21–48 5:22 5:23 f. 5:31 f. 5:33–37 5:35 5:38–42 5:39 5:39–41 5:41 5:42 5:43–48 5:45 5:46 f. 5:48 6 6:1 6:1–6 6:1–18 6:2 6:2–4 6:3 f. 6:4–15 6:5 6:5–13 6:7 6:7 f. 6:9–13 6:10 6:14 f. 6:16–18 6:17 f. 6:19–21 6:19–7:28 6:22 f.

463 299, 307, 308 299 108 308 308 202 116 115 173n130, 209, 216 216 40, 42, 45, 398, 412 40*, 237, 412 201 285, 308 137n75, 138n79, 307, 308 318 305n78 40, 246, 250n46 311 134n59, 398 209, 216, 399n78 318 200, 400 308 300 300 293 300 300, 308 216 41, 197 216, 402n90 237 108 246, 250n46 246n30 137n75 300*, 308 398 216 137n75 398, 400n81 197, 318 41 173n130 299 305n78, 308 246, 250n46 398 173n130 246 173n130

464 6:25–33 6:31 f. 6:32 6:33 7:6 7:7–11 7:9–11 7:13–27 7:16–20 7:24 7:24–27 7:27 7:28 f. 8–9 8:1–4 8:1–13 8:1–17 8:4 8:5–10 8:5–13 8:8–13 8:10 8:11–13 8:12 8:14 f. 8:14–17 8:14–34 8:16 8:16 f. 8:17 8:18 8:18–22 8:18–34 8:19 8:19 ff. 8:19–22 8:21 f. 8:21 ff. 8:22 8:23 8:23–27 8:28 8:28 ff. 8:28–34 8:29

Index of References

173n130 41 197 308 41 173n130, 209, 319 216 45 344n75 209, 216 308 209, 216 277n66 103, 171, 248n39, 251*, 251n48, 252*, 252n49, 253–9, 260*, 277 248, 252n49, 253, 256, 259 256 251n47, 300 398 254 248, 252n49, 256, 398, 402n89 259 197, 251n47 254 347* 253, 256, 257, 258 259 253, 256, 257 301 253, 256, 257, 258 277n69 257n55 209, 254, 256, 257*, 258, 259 251n47 257n55, 387 258n55 257n55 213n32 258n55 257n55 258n55* 234, 253, 256, 257*, 257n55, 258, 259 142n108 142n110 253, 256, 257*, 258, 259, 300, 301, 302, 405 343n73

9:1–8 9:1–17 9:1–33 9:1–34 9:2 9:2–8 9:3 9:4 9:8 9:9 f. 9:9–13 9:9–17 9:12 f. 9:13 9:14–17 9:17 9:18 f. 9:18–26 9:18–34 9:20–22 9:22 9:23–26 9:27 ff. 9:27–31 9:29 9:32–34 9:33 9:34–11:1 9:35 9:36 9:36–11:1 9:37–10:15 10 10:1 10:1–8 10:1–16 10:2–4 10:5 10:5 f. 10:6 10:7 f. 10:8 10:8–10 10:9–11 10:11

248, 252n49, 253, 256, 259, 405 251n47 256 253 251n47 300 307 302 277n65 234 209, 253, 255, 256 259 405 308, 319 253, 255, 256 397 256, 259 248, 252n49, 253, 256 251n47, 300 256*, 259 251n47 256, 259 142n111 248, 252, 252n49, 253, 256 251n47 248, 252n49, 254, 256, 259, 301 277n65 277n67 37, 137n75, 138n79, 172*, 199, 202, 248, 277n67*, 280, 396n70, 398 277, 301 247 173n130 197, 237, 245n29, 252, 257, 258n55*, 260, 300, 402 258, 387 280 234 234 197 41, 196, 242, 387 195, 277n68 300*, 308 199 258 258 258n56

Index of References

10:11–13 10:12–14 10:14f 10:16–21 10:17 10:17 f. 10:17 ff. 10:17–22 10:20 10:20–28 10:21 10:21 f. 10:22 10:23 10:25 10:26–33 10:26–42 10:28 10:29 10:34 10:34–37 10:34–39 10:35 f. 10:37 10:38 10:39 10:42 11 11:1 11:2–6 11:2–19 11:5 11:16–19 11:18 11:18 f. 11:19 11:20–24 11:20–12:14 11:25–30 11:27 12 12–28 12:1 12:1 ff. 12:1–13 12:1–14 12:1–28:8 12:2 12:3–5 12:6 12:7

258 209, 216 258 202 37, 202 137n75, 200, 397 138n79 136 216 235 213n31, 214n35 209 213n31, 214 199, 242, 258 342n70 173n130, 258 200 136n73 216 213n32, 215 213n32, 214, 215 209 213n32, 215 213n32, 215 215n42 136n73 136n73, 235 245*, 246, 252, 255*, 260 199 300 247 252, 252n49, 256*, 277n69 230 256* 255 256, 307 230 247 299 216 237, 245n29, 246 246*, 248, 249, 260* 171 245 91 301, 398 171 307 307, 398 319, 319n37, 400 308, 319

12:9 12:14 12:15–21 12:18–21 12:22 12:22–24 12:22–32 12:22–45 12:22–28:20 12:24 12:25 12:28 12:29 12:30 12:33 12:34 12:36 f. 12:46–50 12:49 12:50 13 13:1–9 13:10–17 13:18–32 13:27 13:29 f. 13:30 13:31–33 13:36 13:36–43 13:38 f. 13:41 13:42 13:43 13:45 f. 13:47–50 13:50 13:51 f. 13:52 13:53–58 13:54 14:13 ff. 14:13–21 14:22–33 15 15:1–14 15:1–20 15:4 15:4 f. 15:4–6

465 37, 137n75, 138n79, 202, 399n77 136n73* 247 196 247, 301 254 236 301 248 307 209, 216 301 336, 343n73 72, 235 344n75 302 318 209, 211, 212, 234, 308 212 212n25, 216 245n29, 300, 347, 348 299 234, 236 299 342n70 348n83 348n83, 349 173n130 209, 216 326 302 278n74 347*, 405 216 299 299, 302, 348 347*, 348 385 342n70 209, 211, 212 37, 137n75, 138n79, 202, 398 142 300 234, 258n55 318 236 237, 301, 398 215n43 209 215

466 15:13 15:15–20 15:17 15:18–20 15:21–28 15:23 15:24 15:32 ff. 15:32–39 15:39 16 16:1 16:1–4 16:5–12 16:17–19 16:18 16:21 16:21–23 16:24 16:28 17:1–9 17:14–21 17:24–27 17:25 18 18:1–5 18:10 18:17 18:20 18:23–35 19–20 19:3–9 19:3–12 19:10–12 19:12 19:13–15 19:16–24 19:17 19:19 19:27–30 19:28 19:29 20:1 20:1–16 20:11 20:20 ff. 20:23 20:24–28 20:29 ff. 20:29–34

Index of References

301 236 371 139 49, 402n89 196 197, 387 142 300 142n108 237 307 302 234 45 37 196, 248 235 215n42 141*, 141n100 235 235 134n59, 200, 201, 236, 296, 300*, 398 209, 216 104, 237, 245n29, 300*, 305n78, 392, 407 200, 235 200 37, 41, 197 200 299*, 326 300 209, 216, 301, 399n78 307 209 213n32, 215 235 300 87, 88n51, 398 209, 216 209, 213n31 196, 302*, 344, 405 213n33 342n70 299 342n70 143n112 132, 134* 300 142n110, 142n111 252

21:12 f. 21:13 21:12–17 21:23 21:23–27 21:28–32 21:28–22:14 21:32 21:33 21:33–46 21:33–22:10 21:39 21:41 21:41–22:7 21:43 21:45 21:46 22:1–10 22:1–14 22:3 f. 22:6 22:7 22:10 22:11–14 22:13 22:15–22 22:23 22:34–40 23 23–25 23:1–9 23:1–36 23:1–39 23:2 23:2 f. 23:3 23:6 23:8–10 23:9 23:16–22 23:19–21 23:23 23:24 23:25 f.

236 405n97 301 135 307 209, 216, 343 301 343 200, 342n70 326, 343, 344n76, 347 343–7 343 132, 134, 135, 136*, 136n73*, 137, 301, 344n75, 346n80 346 37, 196, 201, 343, 344n75, 346n80*, 411 200, 411 196, 320, 344 343, 346, 347, 349 326 299 343 132, 133, 134, 136–7, 136n73*, 193, 301*, 403 349 343, 344n75 347*, 349* 300, 403n91* 139n84*, 140n94 237, 308, 318 201, 245n29, 246, 301, 307, 310, 311, 311n10, 319*, 320*, 350, 406n103 143 201 137n75, 138n79 236 273n52 388, 397n71, 412 311 137n75, 138n79, 398 397n71 216, 307 134n59 398 301*, 308, 398, 400n85, 401, 412* 137n75, 138n79 398

Index of References

23:34 23:37–39 23:37–24:2 23:38 24 24–25 24:2 24:3 ff. 24:4 ff. 24:6 24:9 24:10–12 24:14 24:15 24:15 ff. 24:15–28 24:16 24:20 24:22 24:23–51 24:25 24:25–51 24:27–31 24:28 24:29 24:31 24:34 24:35 24:36 24:37–41 24:37–25:46 24:43 24:45–51 24:51 25:14–30 25:30 25:31 25:31 ff. 25:31–45 25:31–46 25:30 25:31

37, 137n75, 138n79, 199, 202*, 384 132, 133, 133n57, 344, 344n76 403, 406n103 301 129–32, 142, 245n29 193, 236, 300, 302 132, 133, 134, 135 133 135 135n65 135, 197, 209, 213n31, 214 136 140, 172*, 396n70* 135*, 138, 139–40, 139n84, 142n109 133 134, 135–6 165 136, 398, 412 136 173n130 136 349 302 302* 302 278n74 141* 302 71 171 171 342n70 348 347 348 347* 278 130n37 200 277, 278n73, 300*, 302, 308 350 278, 344

25:34 26:1 26:2 26:6–13 26:13 26:14–16 26:17–35 26:26–29 26:28 26:31 26:31 f. 26:36–46 26:47–56 26:56 26:61 26:64 26:65 26:69–75 27:11 27:15–26 27:17–20 27:20 27:25 27:29 27:33 27:37 27:40 27:42 27:46 27:51 27:53 28 28:1–8 28:8 28:9 ff. 28:11–15 28:15 28:16 28:16–20 28:18 28:18–20 28:19 28:19 f. 28:20

467 25:32 f. 278 278, 278n72 130 398 235 197, 396n70 235 398 400 279n76, 405* 279* 279 235 235 139, 139n84* 135, 301, 307 302, 306 307* 235 278n72, 299, 307 237 346n80 136n73* 196, 201, 346n80, 412 299, 307 139n84*, 140n94 131, 278n72, 299 135 278n72, 299, 307 139n84*, 140n94 135 200, 400 405* 236 142n109 142, 142n109 306*, 307 37 130n36 10, 41, 42*, 45, 130, 138, 201, 242 200, 306, 403, 403n91* 402*, 402n89, 405, 408 197, 400 306, 308, 387n30, 395, 397, 399n78 402n90

468

Index of References

‘Old Testament Writings’/Septuagint Gen 1:27 2:1–3 2:4 2:24 4:17 5:1 38:8 39 46:32 (LXX) 48:15 49:10 49:24

19n29 307 172 19n29 182 172 19n29 342 274n56 268n26 267n19 268n26

Ex 3:1 (LXX) 12:45 13:17–21 15:13 20:12 21:17 23:20

274n56 223 268n19 268n19* 215 19n29 210n16

Lev 13:45 f. 19:13 20:9 22:10 25:6 25:40 25:50 25:53 26:25

259n57 223 215 223 223 233 233 233 339n60

Num 21:17 21:18 27:17 34:7–9 Deut 4:14 5:16 5:31 6:1 15:18 21:23

267n19 267n19 268n19, 268n20, 273*, 273n51, 274, 277, 277n68 180, 184 273n52 19n29, 215 273n52 273n52 233 316

24:1 24:14 25:5–6 31:19 32:12

19n29 233 19n29 273n52 268n19

Josh 1:4 6:24 13:2–6 13:2–7

184 136 180 184

1 Sam 8:14 15:33 17:34 f.

233 339n61 267n18

2 Sam 5:2 (LXX) 5:2 7:7 7:14 8:1–14 24:17

274n56 268n21, 276*, 277n64 268n20 267n19 184 267n18*

1 Kgs 18:10 19:19–21 22:17

136n70 210 268n21, 273n51

2 Kgs 14:25 14:28 18:21 21

184 184 267n19 233

1 Chr 17:6

268n20

2 Chr 18:16 24:21 32:22

268n21, 273n51 344, 344n76 268n19

Neh 1:3 5:1–5 9:12

136n70 233 268n19

469

Index of References

9:19

268n19

Jdt 11:19 (LXX) 11:19

274n56 268n29

125:3

267n19

Prov 28:8

233

Job 7:1 f. 9:34 12:23 14:6 21:9

233 267n19 268n19 233 267n19

Sir 18:13 f. 44:21 f.

268n29 184

1 Macc 1:19 1:29 1:32 1:54 5:28 11:63–74 15:33

301n66 301n66 301n66 133n51 136 184 184

2 Macc 2:13 7 8:6

155n52 22, 306 136n70

Ps. Sol. 17 17:21–46

266n15, 269n29, 276n63 269n29

4 Macc 7:6

370

Hos 4:16 6:6

268n25 307, 319*

Ps 2:9 5:9 21 22:12 22:20 23:1 23:2 23:3 23:4 27:11 28:9 31:4 37 43:3 44:12 44:23 45:7 68:7 72:8 74:1 77:21 77:52 (LXX) 78:52 78:54 78:71 f. 79:13 95:7 100:3

267n19 268n19 19n28 268n19 268n19 268n25 268n19 268n19 267n19* 268n19 268n26 268n19 299 268n19 267n18 267n18 267n19 267n18 184 267n18 267n18 274n56 267n18 268n19 268n21 267n18 267n18* 267n18

Amos 1:5 6:14

267n19 184

Mic 2:2 2:12 2:13 4:6 5:1 5:3 5:4 f. 5:7 7:6 7:12 7:14 7:15 10:11

233 267n18*, 268n19 268n19 268n19 276*, 276n64 268n21 268n24 267n18* 213n32, 215 184 267n19, 268n25 268n19 267n19

Nah 3:18

268n24

Zech 9:10 9:16 10:2 10:2–3 10:3–5

184 267n18 273n51 268n22 268n19

470

Index of References

10:10 11:5 11:13 11:15–17 13:7 13:7–9 14:5

268n19 268n22 268n25 268n23 268n21, 273*, 279, 281 271n47 392n51

Mal 3:1 3:5 11:1 11:14

210n16 233 392n51 392n51

Isa 2:2–4 3:1–4 5:1 f. 5:1–7 (LXX) 5:1–7 5:5 5:5 f. 5:8 7–9 10:5 10:5–8 10:24 11:4 14:5 14:9 14:29 16:14 19:13 21:16 25:6–10 30:31 34:2–7 35:5 f. 36:6 37:32 40 40:3 40:26 40:11 (LXX) 40:11 42:1–4 42:1–13 44:28 49:5 49:6 49:8 (LXX)

200 267n19 335 335n52 335, 344 335 136 233 299 267n18, 403n92 267n19 267n18 267n19 267n19 267n19 268n19 233 267n19 233 300 267n19 268n19 300 267n19 268n19 405n101 210n16 268n19 274n56 268n19, 268n26 196, 318 405n101 268n23 268n19 197 375

49:9 49:10 52:13–53:12 53 53:4 53:6 54:4 f. 56:1–8 56:10 f. 61:1 63:11 63:12–14 (LXX) 65–66 66:17–21

268n19 267n18, 268n19 405n101 23, 316, 405n97 277n69 267n18 405n101 405n101 268n22 242, 250n45 268n20 274n56 405n101 405n101

Jer 1:10 2:8 3:15 6:2 f. 7:11 10:21 12:3 12:10 12:17 13:20 17:16 22:22 23:1–4 25:34–36 29:5–7 30:3 31:8 f. 31:10 43:12 49:19 50:6 50:44

301 268n21 268n21 268n24 301 268n21 267n18 268n24 301 267n18 268n22 268n23 268n21 268n23 292 268n19 268n19 268n25 268n23 268n23 268n21 268n23

Lam 3:1

267n19

Ezek 18:8 19:11 19:14 20:37 20:38 22:12 27 29:6

223 267n19 267n19 267n19 268n19 233 187 267n19

471

Index of References

34 34:4 (LXX) 34:5 34:13 (LXX) 34:13 34:16 (LXX) 34:17 34:17–22 34:31 37:19

267n17, 268n21, 268n25, 277*, 277n68*, 279, 279n78, 280, 281, 301 277n68 273n51, 277 274n56 268n19* 277n68 278 278n75 279*, 281 267n18

47:15 47:15–17

180, 184 187

Dan 7 7:13 7:13 f. 8:4–8 9:27 11:31 (LXX) 12:1–3 12:11 (LXX)

306, 414 278n71 278n71, 302, 306 268n19 133n51 133n51 306 133n51

Eearly Jewish Texts/Non-canonical writings 2 Apoc. Bar. 30:5

341n66

Apoc. Esdras (Greek) 4:13–24 341n66 Assumption of Isaiah 5:1 339n61

63 85–90 89–90 100:1 f. 103

341n66 268n27 268, 268n29 215n40 341n66

4 Ezra 5:16–18 6:24

268n27 215n40

2 Bar. 77

269n29

Lives of the Prophets 1 339n61

3 Bar 4:17

215n40

T. Abraham 12

341n66

T. Isaac 5:10–32

341n66

T. Jos. 3:5

342

T. Levi 18:12

331n28

Jub 23:19 1 En. 13:7 17 21 46:4–8 48:8–10

215n40 200 341n66 341n66 296 296

Dead Sea Texts CD XIII 7–12 XIX 7–11

268, 268n27 268n29

1QM I5 I 10 I 15 I 16

327n15 327n15 327n15 327n15

III 9 IV 12 IX 5–7 XI 7 XI 11 XII 5 XIII 11 XIII 13 XIV 5

327n15 327n15 327n15 327n15 327n15 327n15 327n15 327n15 327n15

472

Index of References

XV 2 XVIII 5

327n15 327n15

1QS II 6–7 II 16–17 IV 11–14 VII 9

341n67 338, 338n56, 341 327 327, 328*

1QSa II 11–22

274n58

1Q34 II 8

268n27

4Q504 1–2 IV 7

268n27

4Q509 IV 10 iiff.

268n29

Early Jewish Authors Josephus A. J. 1.60–66 2.300 2.477–80 6.109 7.291 8.31 8.404 12:119–24 12.336 13.257 f. 13.297 13.318 f. 13.397 14.102 14.120 14.127–33 14.158 f. 14.190–216 14.205 14.207 14.272 14.297–99 14.413–33 16.285 17.23–31 17.74–76 17.271 f. 17.278 17.314 18.1 18.2 18.11–25 18.33–35 18.90 18.113–15

182, 189 345 183 215n40 345n79 338 268n27 294 136 184 385n27 184 184 218n50 218n50 218 218n50 218 218 218 292 218n50 218n50 181 181 218 218n51 268n27 183 292 184 317n31 296 296 218

18.116–19 19.278–91 20.179–81 20.205–07 20.251

218 288 346n80 346n80 296, 298

B. J. 1.88 1.127–33 1.155–58 1.177 1.180 1.203 1.205 1.238 f. 1.303–16 2.56 2.68 2.97 2.119–66 2.186 2.195–98 2.390 f. 2.395–97 2.409–16 2.433 f. 2.457–60 2.499–500 2.666 2.266–70 2.461 2.461–67 2.477–80 2.560 f. 3.8 3.29 3.58

296 292 218 218n50 218n50 218n50 183 218n50 218n50 218n51 218n51 350 317n31 293 290n16 296 301n66 290n16, 298 296 183 293 183 183 183 183 292 183 293 293 183

473

Index of References

3.123 4.121–27 4.133 4.377–97 4.388 4.395 4.503–80 4.508–10 4.545 4.630 f. 5.1–38 5.69 5.98 5.105 5.135 5.255 5.257 5.362–74 5.441 5.449–51 5.520 5.526 6.40 6.237 6.249 ff. 6.249–408 6.316 6.353 7.29 7.43 7.44 7.45 7.46 f. 7.47–59 7.51 7.58 f. 7.60–62 7.96 7.100–111 7.103 7.106–11 7.107 7.218

302 189 303n73 303n73 303n73 303n73 303n73 296 303n73 293 303n73 302n68 303n73 303n73 302n68 303n73 303n73 296 303n73 298, 306 293 331 303n73 302n68 133–4 301n66 133 136 296 184, 292 292 292 293 293 293* 292 293 293, 294 202, 293 294 294 292 296

C. Ap. 1.169 1.171 2.39 2.68–78

184 184 292 290n16

Vita 27

183

58 346

182 182

Philo Abr. 221

268n28

Agric. 44–48 50 51

268n28 268n27 268n29

Det. 3 9 25

268n28 268n28 268n28

Flacc. 39 49–52

184 290n16

Ios. 2

268n27, 268n28

Legat. 132–40 357

290n16 298

Migr. 213

268n28

Mos. 41 60–62

268n27 268n27

Mut. 110

268n28

Post. 67 98

268n28 268n28

Prob. 31

268n27, 268n28

Sacr. 45 48 f. 51

268n28 268n28 268n28

474 Sobr. 14 Somn. 2.151–54 Virt. 58

Index of References

Ps-Philo

268n28

LAB 19:3 28:5

268n28

268 268n29

268n27

New Testament Mark and Matthew (s. above) Q 1:7 3–7 3:9 3:17 4:1–13 6:20–49 6:22 f. 6:47–49 7 7:1–10 7:22 7:33 7:33 f. 7:34 9:57–60 10 10:1–12 10:2 10:4–6 10:5–9 10:7–9 10:10 f. 10:13–15 10:15 11:1–4 11:9–13 11:14 f. 11:21 f. 11:31 f. 11:33–35 11:39 11:42 11:46–48 11:52 12 12:1–8 12:1–12

330 249, 250*, 260 342 342 199, 242 245 242 336 250, 252, 255*, 256* 254, 259 248*, 250n45, 252*, 255*, 255n54, 256* 256 255, 256 256 254, 257, 257n55 255, 257*, 258* 173n130 243, 243n21 257, 258 258 257, 258 257, 258 194 342 173n130 173n130 254* 336, 336n53 342 173n130 238 199, 238*, 242 238 238 257, 258 257, 258n55 258

12:2–10 12:2–12 12:6 f. 12:11 f. 12:13–15 12:16–20 12:22–31 12:22–34 12:33 f. 12:39 12:39 f. 12:39–46 12:40 12:42–45 12:42–46 12:45 12:46 12:51–53 13 13:18 f. 13:28 13:28 f. 13:34 f. 13:34 ff. 14:16 ff. 14:16–24 14:23 16:16 f. 16:17 17 17:26–30 17:34 f. 19:12–26 22:28–30

173n130 340 258 258 340 340 340 173n130 336–7, 340 336 336–7, 340, 341, 342, 349 173n130 337, 341, 342* 325, 349, 350 338–42, 348, 349 342 340*, 341*, 341n68 258n55 246n30, 254 173n130 343, 347* 254 238* 133n57 134 346 136* 238 199, 242 342 342 342 348 237

Luke 1–2 1:1–4 2:1 2:11 2:33

131 378 130 271n46 70, 71n41

475

Index of References

2:48 2:41–51 3:2 4:16 6:1–4 6:22 f. 7:39 9:23 9:59 f. 10 10:29–35 11:8–13 11:21 f. 11:23 11:37 12:27 12:51 12:52 f. 13:1 13:14 13:31 13:34 ff. 14:16–24 14:23 14:26 14:27 16:10 16:16 f. 16:19 18:19 18:28–30 18:29 19:44 20:16 21:2 21:6 21:15–17 21:16 21:17 22:19 f. 22:30 22:43 f.

71n41 70 130 383n15 65n15 230 384n20 215n42 213n32 249 325 319 336 72 384n20 91n73 213n32 213n32 325 289n15 384n20 133n56 134 136 213n32 215n42 160 412 79 88n51 213n31 213n33 134 134, 135 364 134 271n47 213n31 213n31 95n94 249 95n94

John 1:3 2:19 3:1 f. 3:16 4:42 6:14 6:41–58 7:50 f.

271n46 132 396n70 271n46 271n46 273n52 273n52 396n70

7:53–8:11 9:28 10:11 10:16 18:20 19:11 19:38–42 20:28 21:15 21:17 Acts 1:6 2:23 4:28 5:34–39 5:38 f. 6:9 6:14 7 8:1–3 9:11 10:1 f. 12:2 13:1–3 13:5 13:16 13:44–51 14:1 15 15:5

85 273n52 271n47 271n47 385n25 403n92 396n70 271n46 267n17 267n17

15:7 15:23 15:27 15:28 f. 16:14 17:4 17:12 18:12–17 20:14 20:27 20:28 21:18–26 21:39 22:3 23:9 23:34

266n16 413n5 413n5 384n20 413n5 383n16 132 265n7 264n5 360 291 132, 135n63 243n21 289n15 288n10 197 288n10 396n70 265n7, 383, 384n20, 396n70*, 399n78 172 181 181 197 288n10 288n10 288n10 289n15 172 413n5 271n47, 272 265n7, 265n8 360 360 384n20 360

Rom 3:19 8:35

40 190

476

Index of References

9–11 9:5 14 15:17 15:17–21

266n16, 281n80 271n46 370 108 89

1 Cor 1:18–25 1:30 8–10 8:8 15:20–28 15:51 f.

316 108 370 139, 371 375 141, 141n99

2 Cor 4:8 6:2 10:9–11 10:10 ff. Gal 1:13 1:13 f. 1:18 1:21 2 2:1–10 2:2 2:9 2:11 2:11–14 2:15 6:2

190 375 89 362 316 264n5 383n19 181 198 383n19 387n31 387n31 359 197 360 40

Eph 2 4:11 4:11 f.

266n16 271n47 272

Phil 3:4–6 3:20

264n5 271n46

Col 1:16

271n46

1 Thess 4:13 ff. 4:13–18

141 141n99

5 5:27

372 89

2 Thess 1:4

190

1 Tim 4:13 6:15

89 271n46

2 Tim 3:11

190

Heb 8:7–13 11:37 13:20

266n16 339 271n47

Jac 1:20 3:2

63 63

1 Pet 2:13–3:6 2:23 2:25 3:15 4:14 4:16 5:1 f. 5:4

290n16 316 271n47 65n16 61, 62* 60, 61, 62 271n47 271n47

Jude 12

271n47

Rev 1:4 1:5 2:7 2:11 3:14 5 7:17 12:5 13:9 13:18 19 19:15 21:18 f.

376 271n46 140 140 271n46 376 271n47, 271n48 271n47 140 133n56 323n2 271n47 89

477

Index of References

Early Christian Texts / Extra-canonical Writings 2 Clem. 8:5

159, 160*

Didache 1:5 f. 7:1–4 8:1 8:2 8:3 9:1–10:7 11:3 13:3 f. 13:6 14:3

398 400 398 159, 160, 392n50 398, 400n81 400 159, 160, 392n50 391n45 391n45 392n51

15:3 15:4 16:7

159, 160, 392n50 159, 160, 392n50 392n51

Gos. Thom. 21 64 65 73 103

337 134, 346 333 243n21 337

Martyrdom of Polycarp 4:1 [3] 159, 160*

Early Christian Authors Eusebius

Irenaeus

Praep. Ev. 4.7

69n32

Hist. Eccl. 3.39.4

397n72

Ignatius Magn. 10:3

198, 264n5

Phld. 5:1 5:2 8:2 9:2

159 159 159, 160 159, 161

Phil. 6:1

198

Smyrn. 1:1–2 3:2–3 5:1 7:2

Adv. Haer. 1.20.2 2.25.3 3.1.1 3.3.4 3.10.6 3.11.8

88n51 132n45 142 132n45 127n24 153–4

Justin Martyr 1 Apol. 67 67.3

165 87

Dial. 103.8

87, 154

Tertullian

160 160 159, 160 159, 160*, 161

Apol. 21.1

294n33

Malalas Chron. 10.45–51

293

Rabbinica B. Sanh. 52b

339n60

B. Šabb. 153a

349n85, 349n86

478

Index of References

Qoheleth Rabbah 9.8 349n85 B. Tem. 14b

M. Sot.ah 9:15

215n40

387n29

Greco-Roman Authors Aesopus Fabulae 164

Cicero 345n79

Apuleius Met. 3.28 4.10 4.16 4.18 7.12

331 331n29 331n29 331 331

Att. 14.18

123n3

Quint. fratr. 2.2

123n3

Verr. 2.5.162

306

Columella

Aristippus

De re rustica 1.7 f.

(cf. Clem. Alex., Paed. 2.69) 345n79

Demosthenes

Aristophanes

Contra Zenothemin 6.5 345n79

Plutus 65 418 879

345n79 345n79 345n79

Aristotle Rhet. 1395b Soph. Elench. 15.174a

314n25 313n18

Artemidorus Daldianus Onirocriticon 2.16

345n79

Cato De agri cultura 5.3 f. 338n55

Cebes Tabula 32.5

338n55

De Halonneso 45.6

345n79

In Midiam 204.8

345n79

Eubulus Fragmenta 116–17

345n79

Euripides Cyclops 268

345n79

Medea 805 1386

345n79 345n79

Troiadas 446

345n79

Herodotus 345n79

Hist. 2.139.1

338

479

Index of References

7.39.3

339

Homer Il. 2.253

269n36

Od. 18.339

338

Juvenal Sat. 4.83–84

271n45

Livy Ab Urbe. 1.4.9 1.5.7 1.39.29.9 1.40.5–7 2.1.4 5.53.8 f.

270n39 270n39 270n39 270n39 270n39 270n39

Icaromenippus 33

345n79

Philops. 20

345n79

270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37

Metam. 1.573 1.676 1.681 3.408 4.276

270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37

Petronius Fr. 27.10

270n37

Vit. Apoll. 7.3

271n45

Plato

Martial

Rep. 361e

317n30

Plutarch 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37

On the Spectales 9 306

Menander Dyskolos 138 220 442 926

Fast. 1.379 2.369 3.879 4.487 4.735 4.776 4.795 4.810

Philostratus

Lucian

Epi. 5.65.11 8.53.3 11.41.1 13.38.1 14.156.1

Ovid

345 345 345 345

Antonius 70.7

345n79

Brutus 33.6

345n79

Cicero 26.2

345n79

Mor. 230 ff.

312n12

Pliny the Elder Nat. 8.54.3 10.40.6 12.22.5 16.75.5

270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37

480 18.330.3 19.27.3 22.56.2 25.14.8 35.25.1–5 100.5 106.2 114.3 115.3 179.4 208.1

Index of References

270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n39 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37

Pliny the Younger Ep. 1.18.3 10.33 10.34

270n38 405n102 405n102

Pan. 94

296n40

Polybius Hist. 1.1 ff. 3.4–5 7.3.2 30–40

126 126 345n79 126

Ps.-Demetrius On Style 8

269n36

Rhetorica ad Herennium 3.22.37

270n37

Herc. Fur. 139 232 451

270n37 270n37 270n37

Herc. Ot. 128

270n37

Ira 2.33.3 f.

270n38

Med. 101

270n37

Nat. 2.22.1.8

270n37

Oct. 774

270n37

Oed. 146 808 816

270n37 270n37 270n37

Phaed. 422

270n37

Sophocles 368n51

Quintilian Inst. 8.6.18.1

122.12.2

324

Seneca Ag. 731

270n39

Clem. 1.1.2

296

Ep. 34.1 47.10.7

270n37 270n39

Ajax 1177 1391

345n79 345

Statius Achill. 1.20 2.51

270n37 270n37

Sil. 1.2.43 1.2.214 1.4.105 3.4.20 4.2.14 f. 4.3.128 f.

270n37 270n37 270n37 271n45 271n45 296n40

Theb. 1.367 2.378

270n37 270n37

481

Index of References

4.301 4.368 4.715 6.188 7.393 7.437 8.692 9.191 10.574 11.310 12.268

270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37 270n37

Tacitus Agricola 1.4 44.5

127* 127*

Ann. 13.51

296n40

Hist. 4.81

24

Thucydides

Strabo Geogr. 15.1, 2.34

180n3

Peloponnesian War 1.1 123n2

Suetonius

Velleius Paterculus

Caligula 27

339

Hist. I.2.1 f.

Vesp. 5.7

296n40

270n39

Virgil Aeneis 1.254–82 9.446–449

296 127n21

Papyri (excl. New Testament Papyri – s. Index of subjects) BGU IV 1119 IV 1120 IV 1121 IV 1122 IV 1151 VIII 1821 CPR XVIIA 6 CPJ I 14

335n51 335n51 335n51 335n51, 338n55 338n55 331

III59300 III 59317 III 59329 III 59367 IV 59610 IV 59624

338n55 333n37 333n38, 338n55 333n42 333n38 333n44

P. Col. Zen. I 54.18–19

335n51

P. Enteux. 65

333n43

P. Flor. II 118 II 127 II 148 II 156 II 201 II 267

338n55 338n55 338n55 338n55 338n55 338n55

333n36 333n40

PSI IV 345 IV 414 IV 421 VI 554

333n38, 333n39 333n37 333n37 222, 333n35

P. Cair. Zen. II 59179

333n44

482

Index of References

P. Gur. 8

333n40

P. Hal. 1v.8.177

335n51

P. Köln III 147.14

335n51

P. Lond. II 163 VII 1948 VII 2061

343n74 338n55 333n37

P. Mich. inv. 3267 I 63–64 V 229 V 421.5–9 X 601

337n54 333n40 333n43 336 333n41

P. Mich. Michael 11 333n45 P. Oxy. XX 2274 XLIX 3464 XLIX 3467

333n40 333n44 337n54

P. Ross. Georg. II 19.50

335n51

P. Tebt. I 105 III 804

335n51 337n54

P. Zen. Pestm. 37 52

333n37 333n37

SB XVI 12524 XX 14679

333n43 337n54

Index of Subjects1 Abschrift (von Texten) 55–7, 60–7 Ἀγὼν λόγων 315, 318 Adoptianism 69, 71–3 Agency (active, passive, ergative) 109 Agrippa II 180–1, 296 Antioch/Antiochene 48, 182–3, 193–205, 292–305, 359–65, 381–2, 395 Antiochus Epiphanes 293–4, 304–6 Aphrodisias 290–1 Apocalypse/apocalyptic/apocalypticism 19, 22, 25–9, 43, 114, 131–41, 148–50, 194, 241–2, 249–50, 317, 323, 328, 361, 365, 372–8, 414 – apocalyptic literature 127, 140, 34 – apocalyptic scenario 414 – apocalyptic speech 130–40 Apocryphical texts 67, 75–6 – “apokryph gewordenen” und “kanonisch gewordenen” Schriften 67 – the Gospel of Thomas/Thomasevangelium 67, 75, 156, 161, 200 Apophthegm 309–18 Apostolic Fathers 87, 160–1, 172–5 Apostolic Jews/Apostolic-Jewish/Apostolic Judaism 383, 405–7 Artworks 124 Ἀρχή 162, 172 Aspectual verbs 110 Assimilation 90, 287–92 Association(s) 184, 289, 381–407 Atonement 26–7, 287, 405 Attestation 86, 93, 163, 242 – multiple attestation 132 Audience 14–6, 21–4, 31–2, 135–40, 162, 195, 199, 282, 296, 334, 346, 362–78, 393–401, 412–3 ‘Aufmerksamkeits-/Weckruf’ 140 Aural criticism 14 Aural study 16–7 Äusseres Kriterium 59–60

Author(s) 22, 31, 44–7, 55, 79–81, 89–91, 95–6, 104, 123–9, 139–43, 148–56, 162, 167–9, 173–4, 187, 199–200, 266–72, 356–80, 393–8 – Intentio auctoris/the author’s intention 24–7, 104, 116, 127, 143, 168, 188, 255, 358–70, 377, 393–5, 407 Authority/Autorität/auctoritas 33, 51, 55, 95, 140, 161, 166, 172–5, 201, 210, 235, 258, 268–71, 285, 312–3, 323, 360–2, 366–8, 385–392, 412 – die Autorität eines Texts 67–8, 75–6, 80, 92 – Jesus’ authority 206, 211, 240, 247, 277–85, 301–7, 317–8, 407 – orthonymous authors 123 Autograph 76, 79–81 Barnabas 196, 238 Biblical studies 106–7, 111, 147–52 Bios/bioi/biography/biographical 22, 26, 29, 123–4, 131, 145–51, 165–71, 175, 312–6, 359–60, 369, 393–8, 407, 413–4 – Greco-Roman biography 147, 166–71, 175, 393, 413 – Hellenistic biography 148 – parody of biography 168–71, 175 Book(s) 15, 139, 143, 160–2, 171, 246, 355–62, 367–78 Brevitas 368 Caesarea Maritima 183, 187, 381 Caligula-crisis 23, 131–3 Cana 223–5 Canon/Kanon/canonical 31, 44, 50, 66–8, 86, 153, 162, 366, 397, 407 Capernaum 48, 189, 194–5, 205, 210, 223–4, 257–60, 342 Characterization 20–1, 100, 316 Chreia 23, 312–4

¹ Compiled by stud. theol. Helle Bundgaard Laursen (Aarhus)

484

Index of Subjects

Christianity/Christian(s)/Christianization 18, 24–5, 31–7, 40–6, 50–1, 75, 89, 125, 138, 148, 154–9, 168, 185–90, 198–206, 238–42, 250, 264–7, 310–2, 320, 357– 62, 377–83, 408 – Christian identity 40, 50, 362, 378, 406, 411 – Christian Judaism 285, 411 – Jewish Christian 193, 199, 201, 233, 264, 285–6, 310, 371, 379, 394 Christology/Christological 18–43, 51 240–51, 266, 302, 394–7, 402–8 – narrative Christology 20 Chronology 123, 128 – ‘relative’ chronology 125, 128–9, 142– 3 Chronotype/chronotypical 21–2 Church 17, 37–43, 51, 75–85, 90–2, 152, 158–65, 170–3, 200, 238–50, 272, 298, 310, 349, 359, 377–84 Circumcision 41–2, 184, 197, 238–9, 265, 288–90, 299, 412 City/cities 180–9, 194–202, 218, 224–5, 288–97, 383 Clause/clausal 100, 105, 110–7, 335, 341, 372, 413 – clausal conjunction 113, 118 – clausal syntax 100, 116 – clause complex(es) 112–6 Clement of Alexandria 87 Climate 229 Codex 14, 19, 83, 89, 94, 155–7, 175, 377 Codices – Codex Bezae 75, 80, 91–4 – Codex Sinaiticus 83, 85 – Codex Vaticanus 19, 79, 83–5, 91–5, 157 Cohesion, cohesiveness, cohesive 102, 114 Coherence, s. Kohärenz Collegium/Collegia 292, 384, 389–90, 405–7 Colonialism/colonization/counter-colonization 304, 380–1, 398, 401–3, 407–8 Commentary/commentaries 13, 17, 34–8, 43, 47, 86–8, 93, 97–9, 105–6, 109, 145, 167, 203, 207 Commerce 217, 225 Communal meals 400 Communal memory 355 Community/communities 14, 24–5, 29– 37, 40–2, 50–1, 75, 141, 170, 179, 191– 3, 197, 200–13, 224, 240, 249, 267–8,

278, 288–90, 300–12, 327–8, 355–406, 411–412 – community-building 355–81, 387– 402 – the Markan community 140, 211 – the Matthean community 34–43, 48– 51, 137–8, 196–203, 233, 239–69, 285– 7, 349–51, 379–412 Community rule 389–92, 397–8, 407 Composition 15–23, 86, 103, 123–31, 138–42, 152–53, 166–70, 179, 185–6, 194, 240–52, 259–60, 314–5, 363, 381– 2, 390–2 – composition history 17, 125 Conjunction(s) 103–5, 113, 117–8, 136 – clausal conjunctions 113, 118 Controversy dialogues/“Streitgespräche” 309–20, 370 Corban 209, 215 Crucifixion 23, 30, 135, 169, 188–90, 237, 247, 274, 279, 285–6, 298, 302, 305–7, 316–17, 373, 400, 413 Dating 23–4, 123–37, 140–3, 155–6, 161, 193, 339, 363, 378, 396 – ‘absolute’ dating 126, 129, 143 – ad quem-dating 127, 129, 141 – post quem-dating 125–8, 130–9, 143 Decapolis 181–7, 196, 274 Destruction 218, 223, 302, 320, 327–8, 336, 342–7, 351 – the destruction of Jerusalem 132–4, 189, 193, 236, 328, 344–6 – the destruction of the temple 24–5, 30, 129, 133, 185, 191, 199, 265, 301, 302, 344–9, 384, 396 Devil 27, 301–2, 307, 316, 318, 403–5 Diaspora communities 31, 238, 249, 287– 8, 292, 303 – diaspora synagogues 288, 291 – the Jewish diaspora 288, 292, 360, 365, 397 – synagogues as diaspora communities 288 Didache 43–4, 159–61, 194, 198–200, 246, 390–2, 396–8, 407 Disciple(s)/discipleship 21, 24–6, 31–3, 41–2, 47, 100, 116, 139, 169–71, 190–1, 197–200, 205–16, 230, 233–42, 247–50, 254–9, 272–4, 279–81, 299–300, 307, 312, 327, 365–6, 370–6, 399, 412–13

Index of Subjects

Discourse 23, 31, 102–5, 109–10, 113–9, 130, 147–52, 164, 241–6, 277–8, 323–8, 335–6, 342–3, 382 – discourse analysis 101–4, 116 – discourse community 152–3, 163–70, 174–6, 397 – discourse structure 116 – discourse studies 115 – eschatological discourse(s) 143, 236 – the field, tenor, and mode of discourse 102, 117 Diseases of contagion and deficiency 295 Divine plan 22, 413 Divorce 24, 206, 209, 215–6, 301, 307, 399 Docetism/Docetists 69, 73 Doublets 142, 254 Eagle(s) 302, 330 Ebionites 199 Editio Maior 61–2 Empire/Roman Empire 15, 39, 46–7, 269–71, 285–99, 302–8, 324–5, 357, 360, 365, 374, 381, 402–4, 407 Ending(s) of Mark 16, 19, 85, 153 – the Long Ending of Mark 85, 114, 153 – the Short Ending of Mark 16, 85, 153 Epiphanius 88–9, 199 Episodical narrative 31–2 Eschatology/Eschatological 22, 27–30, 43, 108, 130, 141, 167, 190, 196, 201, 210– 2, 247, 264, 274, 278, 281, 296–8, 306– 8, 327–31, 341, 347–9, 375, 381, 384, 388–91, 396–7, 402, 408 – eschatological discourses 143, 163, 236 Ethics/ethical 43, 139, 165, 168, 193, 197, 230, 234, 290, 311, 319, 326, 343, 357, 360, 370–5, 380 – speech ethics 311, 317–20 Ethnos/ethnicity/ethnic 179–82, 195, 203, 282, 286, 289, 295, 344, 360, 387, 398 – ethnic group 403, 406, 411 Εὐαγγέλιον 158–62, 172, 175, 374–75, 378 – εὐαγγέλιον τετράμοφον 153–55, 158 ‘Explanatory comment’ 139 External evidence 23, 81, 363 “Extra muros”/“intra muros” 34, 38–40, 202, 211, 263–4, 285, 311, 411–2

485

Family/family life 26, 169, 192, 197, 203– 17, 226, 229–31, 234, 258, 289, 342, 356, 360 – patriarchal family 207–8, 215 Filial piety 209, 215–6 ‘Flugblatt’ 131, 371 Folklore 14–5, 147 Forgiveness 305, 308, 328, 404–7 Form criticism/Formgeschichte 15, 26, 147–50, 164, 173, 309–10, 357–9 Formative Judaism 35–7, 48, 137, 201–2, 411 Freedom 29, 78–80, 84, 89, 96 Functional displays 117 Galilee/Galilean 24–5, 28–32, 48–51, 130, 171, 180–6, 189–202, 205–9, 217–31, 236, 273–4, 293, 296, 309–10, 316, 347, 359, 369–70, 373–6, 382–7, 400–7 – Galilean Jews 189, 192 Gamla 182, 188–9, 223–4 Gattung 149, 163, 241, 245 Gemeindeglaube 73 Genealogy 57, 113, 131, 169, 172, 275–6, 306 Generic transformation 152, 167, 171 Genitivus auctoris 155 Genre 22–3, 31–2, 123–4, 145–53, 161, 174, 195, 313–20, 361–3, 369, 375–7, 390, 393–7, 407, 413–4 – the genre of Mark 21–2, 31, 146–50, 158, 162–70, 175, 203, 362, 366–8, 411–3 – the genre of Matthew 150, 170–3, 245–7, 393–7 – macro-genre 166 Genre criticism 147–51, 173–4 Gentiles 36, 41–5, 51, 184–202, 233, 238– 54, 265, 268, 274–82, 286–98, 300–4, 318, 405, 412 Gnosis 73 God-fearer(s) 198, 288–91 Golan 182, 220, 223, 227 Grammar(s)/grammatical 63, 97–100, 104–7, 109–12, 115, 118–9, 135–6 – construction grammar 20, 100 – grammatical semantics 109, 119 Grammaticalization 109–10, 118 Handschriften 71–6 Harmonization 82–6, 90–2 – assimilation 90

486

Index of Subjects

Hefzibah inscription 222 Hermeneutics/hermeneutical 46, 97, 123– 5, 145–6, 195, 248, 358–60, 371, 379, 393–7, 408 Herod Antipas 207, 225–9, 364, 384 Herod the Great 180–3, 195, 218, 222, 227–8, 276, 325, 366–8, 413–4 Heuristics 123 Historiography/historiographical 29, 123–5, 139 History/historical 14–8, 22–32, 35–6, 44, 55–8, 63–8, 72–5, 103–5, 124–53, 165– 75, 180–205, 233–51, 263–4, 294, 306– 12, 324–30, 341–84, 392–411 – Ereignisgeschichte 130, 139, 143 – historical context 124–6, 265, 358 – historical events 126, 132, 403 – meta-history 378 – reception history/Rezeptionsgeschichte 17, 44, 75, 127–9, 394 – salvation-history 187, 197, 325, 346, 373 – social history/Sozialgeschichte 233, 239, 246, 264–5, 357, 362 – theoretical approaches to history 32 Hochliteratur/Kleinliteratur 149 Horizontal – horizontal conflict(s) 303–4 – horizontal struggle 304, 307 – horizontal violence 285–6, 303–6 House(s) 28–32, 182, 188, 209–17, 224– 7, 242–4, 257, 291–4, 300, 325, 331–2, 336–51 Hybridity 288, 292 – Jewish hybridity 288 Hypertext/Hypotext 152 Identity 26, 29, 146, 182, 192–4, 201–3, 285–97, 304–7, 320, 341, 363, 384, 387, 398–401, 406, 411 – Christian identity 32, 40, 50, 362, 378, 411 – identity formation 355, 361, 378, 394 Ignatius of Antioch 44, 159–61, 193, 198 Image of God 28 Imperfective aspect 109–11 Imperial rule 297, 401 Internal evidence 23, 81–2, 90, 95–6, 198, 363 – intrinsic probability 95 Invective(s) 317, 319 Irenaeus 87, 153

Irony 19, 168, 175, 301–2, 317 Isaiah 200, 250, 300, 339, 365, 372–5 Israel 22, 30, 41–2, 180, 184–202, 223, 241–52, 266–81, 285, 302, 306–7, 344, 372–7, 402–8 – Land of Israel 202, 277–80, 400, 405– 6 Itureans 180–1 Jerusalem 29, 133, 136, 185–96, 200–2, 235–9, 244, 249, 275, 293–303, 315–7, 331, 351, 357–61, 365, 370–6, 381, 400–5 – the destruction of Jerusalem 132–4, 189, 193, 236, 328, 344–6 Jesus – the historical Jesus 66, 133, 141, 205– 7, 242, 309–12 – Jesus’ authority 307, 317–8 – Jesus Christ 28, 113, 159, 162–6, 171, 198, 373 – Jesus’ teaching and actions 29, 40–2, 133, 139, 158–61, 166, 175, 201, 260, 274–7, 285, 299–300, 311, 320, 355, 373, 376, 396, 407 – the significance of Jesus’ death 26 Jesus-tradition(s) 15, 139–40, 158, 161, 172–3, 206, 217, 357–9, 365, 375, 393, 408 Jew(s)/Jewish – Babylonian Jews 181–2 – the first Jewish-Roman war 23–5, 29, 36, 47, 130, 184, 195, 218, 223–4, 292– 3, 303–6, 310, 316–7, 319–20, 369, 385–6, 404, 411 – Galilean Jews 189, 192 – internal Jewish conflict 38, 304 – Jewish Christian 193, 199, 201, 233, 264, 285–6, 310, 371, 379, 394 – Jewish diaspora 288, 292, 360, 365, 397 – Jewish national restoration 266–81 – Jewish novel 21, 145 – Jewish societal participation 290 John, First Letter of 73, 128 John the Baptist 130, 169, 190, 218, 241, 247, 280, 325, 373–5, 378, 404, 413 Jordan 180–1, 194 – “Beyond the Jordan” 196 Josephus 29, 181–91, 218, 222, 229, 292, 296, 302–3, 317, 331, 338, 345, 377 Jotapata/Yodefat 182, 189, 223–5

Index of Subjects

Judaism – Christian Judaism 285, 411 – formative Judaism 35–7, 48, 137, 201–2, 411 – Matthew’s relationship to Judaism 36–40 Julia Severa 288–9 Jupiter 271, 294–9, 330, 401, 403 Justin Martyr 87–8, 154, 165, 196 Kanongeschichte 66, 68 Kashrut 412 Kingdom/Kingdom of Heaven/Kingdom of God 26–9, 42, 111, 167, 180, 210, 215, 231, 235, 243–5, 279, 299–302, 306–8, 326, 346–8, 373–5, 381, 385, 404–8, 411, 414 Kohärenz/coherence 26, 30, 57, 60–4, 101 – genealogische Kohärenz 58–60 – Kohärenzbasierte genealogische Methode (CBGM) 55–60, 63, 69 – Kohärenzketten 64 – Kohärenzprüfung 60–1, 63 – prägenealogische Kohärenz 58–60 Kontamination 59, 62 Kopiertradition 62–70, 74–5 Land ownership 217, 222–3, 297 Language(s) 40, 97–106, 117, 132, 199– 201, 272, 323, 363, 391 – ancient language 97 – non-aggressive language 317–20 Latinism(s) 363 Leader(s), Jerusalem 25, 196, 200–2, 252, 275–6, 296, 300–8, 320, 346 Lectio difficilior 86 Leonidas 93 Lepta/quadrans 363–4 Letter(s), the Pauline 94, 108, 115, 166, 316, 356, 359–62, 367, 374 Lexical 20, 100–8, 112 – lexical semantics 104–5, 112, 119 Lexicography 108 – theological lexicography 109 Lexicon 105–8, 325 Liberation theology 30 Linguistics/linguistic 21, 97–106, 111, 113–9, 149, 164, 188, 265, 287 – the linguistics of ancient languages 97 – sociolinguistic 14, 102 – textlinguistics 97, 100–4, 116

487

Literacy, s. Schriftlichkeit ‘Literarkritik’ 138, 142 Literary culture 360, 367, 373 Literary history/Literaturgeschichte 22–3, 31, 77, 83, 173, 239, 244, 357 – Literary-historical perspective(s) 22–3 Literary studies 31, 125, 149 Literary ‘Vorlage’/‘Literarische Vorlage’ 57, 61–5, 87, 124, 128, 140–3 Literature 14–6, 22–3, 31, 123–7, 131, 140, 147–51, 166, 173, 184, 313, 325, 340, 345, 355–8, 362, 365–6, 377–9, 395 – Christian literature 175, 356–8, 375–7 Location 24, 34, 47–51, 179, 185, 188, 193, 196–9, 203, 221, 263, 266, 275, 281, 363, 365, 381–9, 395 – social location 263, 388 Lord’s Prayer 85 Luke, Gospel of 71, 245 Marcion 68, 73, 93 Mark and Matthew 31, 98, 104, 115, 118, 123–6, 129–43, 150, 153, 170, 179, 205–17, 230–1, 239, 263, 281, 311, 320 Martyrdom 22, 132, 135, 159–61, 293, 304 Matthew and the Gentile world 36, 41–3, 295 Matthew and the Roman world 46–7 Memory building 361 Messianic prophets 317 Metafunctions, ideational, interpersonal, and textual semantic 102, 117 Minor Agreements 86 Mirror-reading 358–9 Mission 26, 29, 36, 41–2, 45, 130, 187, 190–202, 234, 237–51, 257–60, 265, 272, 276–7, 280, 299–300 Monetization 217, 227 – Judea Capta coins 294 – lepta/quadrans 364 Monosemy/monosemic/monosemous 107–8 Monotheism 27 Morphology/morphological 95, 109–11, 116 Movements, Christian 36, 43, 45, 51, 238, 298, 369, 397 Multiple attestation 132 Myth 29, 145–8, 165, 175, 179, 203, 329– 30, 335, 349, 355, 360, 378

488

Index of Subjects

Narration 29, 126–33, 309 Narrative(s) 14–26, 32–6, 46, 51, 100–3, 110, 126–47, 153, 158, 161, 164–76, 186–91, 196–201, 222, 239, 244–60, 275, 297–8, 359–81, 390–407 Narrative analysis 14, 29, 100–1 Narrative criticism 17–8, 27–8, 31, 49, 148, 173 ‘Narrator’ 126–43 Nazareth/Nazarene 169, 189, 199, 209, 211–3 Negotiation/negotiating 194, 201, 287, 291, 298, 303 – imperial negotiation 285–6, 295–6, 304–8 – Jewish negotiation 292, 296 Nero 24–5, 180, 189–90, 289, 296 New Criticism 148–9 Nomina sacra 83, 89 Novel 16, 22, 146, 149, 165, 331 Oral-aural debate 17 Oral performance 14–5 Oral tradition(s) 15–7, 87–9, 161, 165, 357–8, 380–1, 385–98, 407 Origen 93–4 Orthodoxy – “orthodox corruption of scripture” 69, 71–3 – Proto-Orthodoxy 69, 80 Papyri (New Testament) – P4 155 – P45 84, 92, 155 – P52 89, 155, 158 – P64 155 – P66 93 – P67 155 – P72 65 – P75 79, 82, 84, 92–3, 155 Parable(s) 32, 132, 136, 163–4, 167, 190– 6, 216, 234–6, 280, 298, 301, 323–7, 332–50 Paragraph 103, 113, 116–8 Paratactic style 164 Paratextual features 153, 158, 174 Parody 147, 168–71, 174–5, 393, 413 – parody of biography 168–71, 175, 414 – παρῳδία 169 Passion Narrative 18, 23, 29, 158, 163, 279, 346, 357 Patripassianer 69, 73

Patristic citations 79, 81, 87–9 Paul/Pauline 24, 35–6, 40, 44–5, 50–1, 67–8, 94, 97, 108, 115, 139, 158, 166, 190–1, 197–8, 238–44, 249, 316, 355– 78, 387, 406, 412 Peasant society 208, 217–26, 229–30, 325 Perfective aspect 109–11 Performance criticism 14–6 Persecution(s) 24–8, 189–90, 200–6, 214–6, 233, 294, 298, 305, 369, 372, 378 Pharisees/Pharisaic 33–7, 48, 139, 190, 196, 199–201, 215, 233–8, 246, 255, 300, 307–19, 346, 360, 370, 376, 379, 383–91, 396–9, 404–8, 411–3 Philip 183 Philology 28, 58, 93–4, 123–4 Phonetics 111 Politics 296–8, 379 Polysemy/polysemic/polysemous 106–7 Pompey 186, 218, 292 Pragmatics/pragmatic 101–19, 140, 162, 294, 298–9, 303, 362 Prediction 26, 34–5, 50–1, 141, 166, 317, 413–4 Priesthood 201 – chief priests 196, 235, 299–300, 307, 319, 343–7, 411 Proclamation s. Verkündigung Prodigy 135 Pronouns 115–6 Prophet(s)/prophetic – messianic prophet(s) 317 – prophetic literature 127, 184 – prophetic speech 131 Provincial elite(s)/allies 299–300 Psalms of lament 18 Pseudo-Clementine 87 Purity 79, 312, 365, 370–5, 412 – purity laws 192, 233–7, 265, 301, 398 – ritual purification 412 Q (the Sayings Source) 17, 44, 75, 86, 133, 136–7, 152, 136–7, 171–6, 185, 194–5, 199–203, 207, 233–61, 319–20, 325, 330, 336–43, 346–51, 386 – Mark and Q 17, 44–5, 50, 195, 233, 259, 343 – the Q community 185, 194–5, 239– 41, 244, 247–52 Qumran/Qumranites 265, 327–8, 341, 351, 383, 390, 400

Index of Subjects

Reader Response criticism 14, 28 Readership 174, 367 Reading instruction/‘Leseappell’ 135, 139– 40 Recension 79–83, 92–6 Redaction criticism/Redaktionsgeschichte 27, 33, 48–9, 173, 240, 249, 357–9 Redactor 17, 138–9, 371, 386, 390, 398 Reference 19–20, 49–51, 97, 116, 123, 126–43, 156, 190–7, 211, 272, 278, 317, 368, 392 Register 102, 117, 323, 336, 342 Relevance theory 103, 115 Religion 108, 202, 266, 286–7, 295–6, 378, 406 – “public” religion 295, 316 Repentance 320, 404 Resurrection 17, 21–2, 158–61, 234, 247, 274, 279, 298, 302, 306, 374–5, 384–5 Rhetoric/rhetorical 19–22, 32, 100, 102, 149–50, 168, 174–5, 198, 314–5, 324, 362 – rhetoric of repetition 21 – rhetorical devices 19, 167 – ‘rhetorical genre studies’ 149, 173 Righteousness/righteous 40, 108, 159, 197, 317, 327, 343–50 Ritual 40–2, 202, 237–8, 259, 266, 295, 304, 370–5, 392, 398–412 Roman Empire 15, 39, 46–7, 269–71, 285–99, 302–8, 324–5, 357, 360, 365, 374, 381, 402–4, 407 – Roman imperial theology 299, 303 – Roman power 46, 201, 286, 293–308 – Rome’s imperial system 300 Rome 181–90, 202, 293–306, 406 Sabbath 24, 28, 292–3, 301, 304, 307, 312, 319, 398, 412 Scribes/Schreiber 33, 36–7, 55–76, 80, 83–94, 154, 163, 192, 201, 215, 236–41, 299–300, 347, 370, 385, 388, 399, 412–3 Schriftlichkeit, literacy 67–8 Scroll(s) 14, 164, 377 Self-help 334–5 Semantics/semantic 20–1, 32, 97, 100–19, 131, 135–8, 161–2, 168, 172, 265 – case semantics 111–2 – grammatical semantics 109, 119 – semantic studies 106 – syntactical semantics 112, 115, 119 – verbal semantics 109–10

489

Semiotic framework 14 Separatist/Separatianer/Separationist 69, 72–3, 381, 388–9, 396, 408 Sepphoris/Sepphorean 48, 181–2, 189, 193, 198–9, 221, 225, 229, 381 Septuagint, the (LXX) 19, 93, 140, 223, 367, 373, 376–7, 414 Settlement patterns 217, 219, 222 Shepherd metaphor/“Shepherd” 263–82, 301 – the Davidic Sheperd 277–9 – patterns of usage 265–81 Sidon 180, 183, 186–7, 195–6, 202, 274 Sin 27, 40, 182, 236–7, 279, 307, 403–6 Sitz im Leben 310, 358 Social setting(s) 35–6, 41, 46, 357 Socio-economic 207–9, 217–29, 300 Socio-religious 263–7, 275, 281, 381, 389, 395 – socio-religious orientation 263, 266, 275, 280 – socio-religious spectrum 263, 267 Source criticism 17, 131, 138, 142 Source(s) 16–8, 29–34, 44, 50, 82, 87, 96– 7, 124–31, 139–42, 152, 158, 163–6, 182, 190, 199–201, 219, 222–3, 228, 233, 239–40, 245–53, 259, 263, 270, 293, 308, 326–8, 347, 358, 366, 375–6, 381, 390 Space/spatial/spatiality 21, 164, 169, 171, 186, 191, 349 – space of Mark 21 Speech-act theory 16, 101, 115 Stative aspect 109–11 Stemma 57–60 Subscriptiones 153–61, 174–5 Superscriptiones 153–61 Synagogue(s) 21, 37, 40, 137–8, 182, 201– 2, 224, 243, 263, 277, 285–95, 303–8, 311, 381–5 – archisynagogoi 289 – diaspora synagogues 288, 291 – Matthean-synagogal conflict 303, 305, 391 – synagogues as diaspora communities 288 Synchronistic elements 126, 129–30 Synoptic Problem 16, 77, 86, 125, 129, 163, 386 Syntax/syntactical 20, 32, 95, 100–19 – clausal syntax 100, 116 – syntactical patterns 100

490

Index of Subjects

– syntactical semantics 112, 115, 119 Syria/Syrian/Syria 137, 179–203, 288, 292–6, 302, 364, 376, 381 – post–70 192, 199 Syro-Phoenician woman 186–7, 192, 195 Systemic-functional approach 115 Tarichaeae 180 Tatian 87 Tax(es) 200, 217, 227–8, 236, 292–300, 307, 333, 398, 403 Temple, Jerusalem 21, 29–30, 133, 188– 92, 200–1, 215, 233–8, 261, 265, 298– 301, 319–21, 372, 398–400, 406 – the destruction of the temple 24–5, 30, 129, 133, 185, 191, 199, 265, 301, 302, 344–9, 384, 396 – temple-logion 132, 135 Tenacity/Tenazität 78 – the tenacity of the textual tradition 85–6, 90, 96 Tense-forms 103, 109–10 Testimony 127–9, 350, 363 Text consciousness/Textbewusstsein 89 Textform 56, 71 Textual criticism/Textkritik 19, 55–6, 68, 75–6, 78, 81–2, 86, 88, 90–1, 94, 96 – die neue Entwicklung der Textkritik 56 Textual studies 100 Text-type/Texttyp 32, 59–60, 80–1, 84, 90 – Alexandrian text 80–1, 91–6 – Byzantine text 90–1 – “Free text” 80, 84, 92 – “Initial text”/Ausgangstext 56, 60, 76, 79–83 – Living texts 74–5, 80 – “Neutral” text 79, 90 – “Normal” text 84 – “Original Text” 77–80, 91, 95–6, 168 – “Strict” text 79, 83–4 – Western text 79, 90–5, 154 Textual corruption 80–1, 86 Textual quality/Textqualität 83 Textualization 379–81, 385, 388, 395–7 Textzustände 58, 62–3 Theology 17, 34–5, 43–5, 51, 87, 95, 98, 109, 173, 241, 266, 302, 316, 360, 365, 400–1 – Roman imperial theology 46, 297–9, 303 – the theology of Mark 25–30, 355 Therapeutae 383

Tiberias 48, 180–1, 189, 221, 225, 229 Title 83, 139, 155–8, 162–3, 174–6, 270– 1, 289, 366 – the title of Matthew 171–2 Torah/Law 24, 27, 31, 34, 37, 40–5, 50–1, 139, 192, 199, 233–9, 264–5, 383, 398– 9, 412 Tradition(s) – Jesus-tradition(s) 15, 139–40, 158, 161, 172–3, 206, 217, 357–9, 365, 375, 393, 408 – Oral tradition(s) 15–7, 87–9, 161, 165, 357–8, 380–1, 385–98, 407 Translation 18, 100, 162, 314, 338, 364, 370 Transcript, hidden 285, 298 Transmission/Überlieferung 15, 55–79, 81–5, 93–6, 173–4, 341, 387 – Ausgangstext (“Initial text”) der handschriftlichen Überlieferung 56, 60, 76, 79–83 – character of transmission (Überlieferungsweise) 56, 62, 83 – “freie und lebendige” Überlieferung 55, 65–7 – textual transmission 77, 84, 95 – Jesusüberlieferung 56, 67–8, 75 – Überlieferungsprozesse 55, 67 Two Source Hypothesis/Theory 16–7, 86, 142 Tyre 180, 186–7, 195–6, 274 Urbanization 181 Ur-Markus 86, 163 Variants/Varianten 55–76, 86–90, 93–6 – Mehrfachentstehung der Variante 62– 3 – Sondervarianten 63, 92 Vaticinium ex eventu 127, 132–3, 135, 196 Verbal aspect 20, 99–104, 110, 117 Verbal systems 110 Verbal form 110 Verkündigung Jesu 55–6, 65, 75 Verschriftlichung 66–7 Vertical pressure 293, 303–5 View of the human being, Mark’s 30 Village(s) 181–2, 187–9, 199, 205, 218, 223–30, 242–3, 383 – rural villages 217, 223–5 – village culture 181, 188–92

Index of Subjects

Violence 136–7, 257, 285–8, 292–5, 298, 300, 303–8, 323–33, 336–7, 340–3, 346–7, 351, 402 – horizontal violence 285–6, 303–6 Vocabulary 95, 105, 109, 114, 119, 169, 244, 304

3, 303–6, 310, 316–7, 319–20, 369, 385–6, 404, 411 – depictions of war 328–30 Western non-interpolations 91, 95 Women, Mark’s Portrayal of 29 Word group 105, 112–3, 116, 118

War 184, 215, 411 – the first Jewish-Roman war 23–5, 29, 36, 47, 130, 184, 195, 218, 223–4, 292–

Zenon papyri 222–3

491