The Gospel of Matthew in Its Historical and Theological Context: Papers from the International Conference in Moscow, September 24 to 28, 2018 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament) 9783161601040, 9783161601057, 3161601041

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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Herausgeber / Editor Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) · James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala) Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg) · Janet Spittler (Charlottesville, VA) J. Ross Wagner (Durham, NC)

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The Gospel of Matthew in its Historical and Theological Context Papers from the International Conference in Moscow, September 24 to 28, 2018

Edited by

Mikhail Seleznev, William R. G. Loader, and Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr

Mohr Siebeck

Mikhail Seleznev, born 1960; PhD in Linguistics; currently academic supervisor of the Bachelor’s Programme ‘Biblical Studies and History of Ancient Israelʼ at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and Associate Professor at Ss Cyril and Methodius School of Post-Graduate and Doctoral Studies (Moscow). William R. G. Loader, born 1944; 1972 Dr. theol.; 1978–2005 New Testament Lecturer at the Perth Theological Hall; 1994–2010 Professor of New Testament at Murdoch University; since 2010 Professor Emeritus. Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, born 1956; 1986 Dr. theol.; 1991 Dr. theol. habil.; 1994–1996 Professor of Biblical Theology at the Technische Universität Dresden; since 1997 Professor of New Testament at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena.

ISBN 978-3-16-160104-0 / eISBN 978-3-16-160105-7 DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-160105-7 ISSN 0512-1604 / eISSN 2568-7476 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com 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 reproductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was printed by Gulde Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buch­ binderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

Preface On 24–28 September 2018, New Testament scholars gathered in Moscow for an international conference on the Gospel according to Matthew. The event was generously hosted by the Aspirantura/Doktorantura of the Russian Orthodox Church and the program prepared in association with the Eastern European Liaison Committee (EELC) of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (SNTS). The conference was opened by His Eminence, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Volokolamsk, also a member of SNTS, and brought together scholars from across the Russian Federation as well as fifteen invited scholars from Western Europe, Australia, and the USA. The conference was a sequel to the Seventh International Symposium of New Testament Scholars which took place in Moscow, 26 September to 1 October, 2016, on the topic “History and Theology in the Gospel Narratives” and a forerunner of the conference on Mark held in Moscow in 2019 and planned future conferences on Luke and John. The conference witnessed once again to the openness of the Orthodox World in its yearning for a sincere dialogue with Western biblical scholarship. Already in 2013, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, opening the International Conference on Modern Bible Studies and the Tradition of the Church, stated: “I regard it very useful, that our Church educational centres establish and develop ties with foreign research and educational centres, with institutions and departments studying the Bible. In this way we re-establish the tradition of international scholarly ties of our Church, that was forcibly interrupted 100 years ago.” The need for a dialogue with modern Biblical scholarship felt by the Orthodox scholars was mirrored with an openness of the Western participants. It was felt that a dialogue of this kind is essential for a deeper understanding of the Scripture and its role in our lives in the modern world where what some see as the superiority of the rationalistic mindset characteristic of the Western word should no more be taken for granted. This volume brings together the papers which were presented, as well as including some further contributions from specialists in Matthew not present in Moscow. For those who participated directly in the conference it was a rich experience, a meeting of diverse traditions of faith and of culture. The generosity of the hosts helped build friendships and connections, so important both for international scholarship and for developing understanding across the nations.

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His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion had from the beginning given strong impetus to the mounting of these conferences and generously supported them. The present age is well served by international and ecumenical dialogue, which this conference represents, in the interests of furthering academic research as well as international, intercultural, and interfaith communication. October 2020

Mikhail Seleznev William Loader Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr

Table of Contents Table of Contents

Preface ......................................................................................................... V

Part One: Matthew in Reception and Research Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk The Gospel of Matthew in Church Tradition and Modern Scholarship .......... 3 Tobias Nicklas From Gospel Book to Virtual Reality: A Neglected Aspect of the Gospel of Matthew’s Ancient Reception History ............................... 17 Ian Boxall Joseph Son of David in the Reception History of Matthew’s Gospel ........... 29 Richard A. Burridge Matthew and Gospel Genre: A Critical Review of the Last Twenty-Five Years, 1993–2018 ................................................................... 47 Thomas R. Hatina Scripture, Memory, and Time: Matthew’s Fulfilment Quotations as Historiographical Devices ....................................................................... 75

Part Two: Matthew in Context Carl R. Holladay The Gospel of Matthew Within the Context of Second Temple Judaism ... 101 Michael Tilly Matthew and Jewish Apocalypticism ......................................................... 127 R. Alan Culpepper The Place of Matthew in Early Christianity ............................................... 149

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William R. G. Loader Matthew and John: Two Different Responses to a Similar Situation.......... 185

Part Three: Themes and Motifs in Matthew Jan Joosten The Text of Old Testament Quotations in Matthew ................................... 201 Joel Marcus John the Baptist in the Gospel of Matthew: Comparison and Distinction ...................................................................... 217 Craig S. Keener An Epitome of Matthean Themes: Matthew 28:18–20 ............................... 233 Paul Foster The Depiction of God in the Gospel of Matthew ....................................... 251 Matthias Konradt Following Jesus and Fulfilling the Law: Considerations on the Ethical Conception of the Gospel of Matthew ....................................................... 275 Roland Deines Jesus and the Torah according to the Gospel of Matthew .......................... 295 Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr Matthew’s Idea of Being Human: God’s Righteousness and Human Responsibility according to the Gospel of Matthew ................................... 329 Christian Blumenthal Basileia is Gaining Space: God’s Will, Mimesis of Christ, and the Spatial Shaping of the Basileia in Matthew’s Gospel ................................ 345 Alexey Somov Resurrection of the Righteous Sufferers in the New Testament: The Case of Matthew 27:52–53 ................................................................. 365

Table of Contents

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List of Contributors ................................................................................... 381 Bibliography.............................................................................................. 383 Index of Sources ........................................................................................ 427 Index of Modern Authors .......................................................................... 458 Index of Subjects ....................................................................................... 465

Part One: Matthew in Reception and Research

The Gospel of Matthew in Church Tradition and Modern Scholarship Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk

Dear participants of the conference! Dear fathers, brothers, and sisters! Our meeting is devoted to the first book of the New Testament canon – the Gospel of Matthew. It is often called the “Gospel of the Church,” primarily because in the early Church it enjoyed much greater popularity than the Gospels of Mark and Luke. From the earliest periods of Christian history, it attracted the greatest attention of exegetes. As early as the beginning of the second century it was referred to by Ignatius Theophorus, and in the first half of the third century Origen wrote a full commentary on it. In the fourth century a full commentary on it was compiled by John Chrysostom. It is no surprise that during the Modern Era, in the period of emerging academic studies on the New Testament, this Gospel became a subject of discussions. In my essay I would like to identify and discuss the contradictions that exist between Church Tradition and modern biblical Scholarship regarding questions of origin, dating, and content of this Gospel. I would like to offer my reflections on Church Tradition that have preserved the information about the origin of the Gospel of Matthew and call for more confidence in these testimonies. In addition, I would like to evaluate the significance of the contradictions between Church Tradition and academic biblical studies for contemporary Orthodox theology. In the first part of my essay I will describe the image of the author of the Gospel of Matthew, which can be reconstructed on the basis of the Gospel text itself. In this part I will draw on the account given in the first volume of my study about Jesus Christ.1 In the second part I will examine the evidence of the emergence of the Gospel of Matthew, which can be gleaned from Church Tradition, and will analyze it using the criterion of theological conditioning. In conclusion I will outline my thoughts on the theological “background” of the

1

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, The History and Canonical Structure of the Orthodox Church, vol. 1 of Orthodox Christianity, trans. Basil Bush (Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011).

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Gospel narrative, starting from the discussion about the concept of church in the Matthew’s Gospel.

A. The Gospel of Matthew: What Does the Text Tell about Its Author? Let us start with a presentation of positions that are evident from the Gospel text itself and that can be considered as a consensus both for the ecclesiastical tradition and for the community of scholars. What can we tell from the text of Matthew’s Gospel about its author? It is obvious that he is a Jew who is well acquainted with the Jewish environment and the interpretation of the Old Testament, which is traditional for this environment. Multiple references to the Old Testament are also characteristic of the other evangelists, but Matthew stands out among them in that he most consistently pursues the idea of fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies in the life of Jesus as the promised Messiah. In its composition, the Gospel of Matthew differs from the other two Synoptic Gospels. A significant place is given to the speeches of Jesus. As is well known, there are five such speeches in Matthew: The Sermon on the Mount (5:3–7:27), instruction to disciples (10:5–42), teaching in parables (13:3–52), one more lesson to disciples (18:3–35), and prophecies and parables of the last times (24:3–25:46). Each of these speeches is stitched together with the subsequent narrative by means of the concluding formula “When Jesus finished these sayings” (7:28; 19:1) or other similar phrases (cf. 11:1; 13:53; 19:1). The fifth discourse is followed by the words of the evangelist, “When Jesus had finished all these sayings …” (26:1). Thus, Matthew places special emphasis on the teaching ministry of Jesus, incorporating several lengthy speeches into the narrative fabric. Matthew to a greater extent than other evangelists stresses the royal dignity of Jesus. It is no coincidence that in the very first verse he calls him “the Son of David,” emphasizing His descent from the royal family: Matthew shows the Messiah as King – crowned, rejected and coming again. In this Gospel, as in no other, Jesus is depicted in royal colors. His origin is determined by the royal line of Israel, His life is threatened by the envious king, the magi from the East bring a king’s gifts to the baby Jesus, and John the Baptist proclaims Him King and announces that His Kingdom is coming soon. Even temptations in the desert reach their apogee when Satan offers Christ possession of all the kingdoms of the world. The Sermon on the Mount is the manifesto of a King, miracles confirm His royal regalia, and many of the parables reveal the secrets of His Kingdom. In one of the parables Jesus compares Himself with the son of the king, and later regally enters Jerusalem. In the face of death on the cross He predicts His future rule and

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declares power over the angels of heaven. In His last words it is stated that all power is given to Him in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18).2

The text of the Gospel of Matthew testifies that its main audience were readers from among the Jews. It is confirmed by numerous examples. In particular, Matthew calls Jerusalem “the holy city” (4:5). Mark and Luke would probably have explained what city they actually meant; for Matthew and his readers it is clear that the holy city is Jerusalem, because for Jews there was no other “holy city” in the universe, just as there was no other temple except the Temple of Jerusalem. In the Gospel of Matthew there are many Aramaic words left without translation, for example, “Whoever says to his brother ‘raka’ – shall be liable to the fire of hell” (5:22) or “You cannot serve God and mammon” (6:24). Borrowings from the Hebrew or Aramaic languages are also found in Mark, but Mark usually translates them (e.g., Mark 5:41), while Matthew in a number of cases considers this unnecessary, since obviously the meaning of these words was known to its readers, unlike the readers of Mark. Many events from the life of Jesus are represented in Matthew as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. Allusions to the Old Testament and quotations from it are also found in other Gospels, but their share in Matthew is much larger: in his Gospel we find about 60 such quotations and allusions, while, for example, Mark has only about a third as many – roughly 20. In the Gospel of Matthew there are parallelisms typical of Semitic literature; for example, “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (10:39). As is well known, parallelism is especially characteristic of Hebrew poetry; thus, in many psalms, verses are clearly divided into two parts, parallel to one another (e.g., Ps 50). Apparently, these parallelisms reflect one of the distinctive features of Jesus’s oral speech preserved by Matthew. Also typical for Hebrew poetry is the use of a particular phrase as a refrain. When Matthew reproduces the speech of Jesus, such formulas are repeated many times; for example, “You will know them by their fruits” (7:16, 20); “There men will weep and gnash their teeth” (8:12; 13:42; 22:13); “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites” (23:13–15, 23, 25, 27); “You blind fools!” (Matthew 23:17, 19). These refrains also reflect one of the characteristics of Jesus’s speech. Another example showing that the Gospel of Matthew was addressed primarily to a Jewish audience are the following words of Jesus: “Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath” (24:20). The mention of

2

Мак-Артур Дж. Ф. Толкование Книг Нового Завета. Матфея 1–7, trans. of Matthew 1–7: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Moody, 1985 (Славянское Евангельское Общество: Slavic Gospel Association, 2006), 10.

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the Sabbath mattered only to Jews, for whom the flight on Saturday meant a violation of the Sabbath rest rule. The Gospel of Matthew begins where the Old Testament ends. The last book of the section “Nevi’im” (Prophets) – the Book of Malachi – ends with a prophecy, which in the Christian tradition is interpreted as referring to John the Baptist. Matthew begins his story with the birth of Jesus and the preaching of John the Baptist. Perhaps this was the reason why this Gospel was placed first in the canon of the New Testament, as if connecting the Old Testament with the New. Another reason was the general orientation of the Gospel of Matthew, whose audience primarily consisted of Christians from the Jewish community. The relationship between the two Testaments is one of the central concerns of Matthew. In Matthew, Jesus builds his main teaching – the Sermon on the Mount – by relating his moral demands to the commandments of the law of Moses: “You have heard that it was said to the men of old … But I say to you” (5:21, 27, 33, 38, 43). However, only in Matthew does Jesus say, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them … till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (5:17–18). Matthew emphasizes the abiding authority of the Old Testament law in a way that the other two Synoptic Evangelists do not. Moreover, in Matthew, although Jesus criticizes the Pharisees, he still says that they must be obeyed: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’s seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do” (23:2–3). In no other Gospel do we find such advice. The controversies of Jesus with the Pharisees recorded in the Gospel of Matthew often relate to subjects concerning the interpretation of the Old Testament law. In Jesus’s time, representatives of various schools of rabbinical thought engaged in similar disputes. Reflections of these disputes can be seen in Jesus’s words about swearing an oath by the Temple or by the gold of the Temple, or by the altar or a gift that is on it, tithing from mint, anise, and cummin, and cleansing the exterior and interior of the cup or dish (23:16–26). For the readers of Mark and Luke, these problems were irrelevant, whereas Matthew’s readers would have known the context in which Jesus was giving these teachings.

B. The Tradition of the Church about Writing the Gospel of Matthew and the Criterion of Theological Conditioning This section will discuss the indirect evidence about the author of the Gospel of Matthew, which the Gospel text itself gives us. We can draw conclusions about the author’s origin and worldview, but the biblical text does not give us obvious answers on other issues. Further discussion is required to discern the

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author’s identity, time, geographical location, and his reasons for writing the text. The answers to these questions were kept and handed down by the Church from the earliest times, and if we follow the thread of Church Tradition, we can get close to the period of the New Testament. In fact, the earliest ecclesiastical testimony of the authorship of the first book of the New Testament is almost as old as the earliest manuscript evidence of the New Testament itself. It comes from the second half of the second century and belongs to the hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons. This text is well known, but we find it appropriate to quote here: Matthew published a Gospel while Peter and Paul were preaching and founding the Church at Rome; and after their departure (or deaths), Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also gave forth to us in writing the things which were preached by Peter. Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in a book the Gospel preached by his teacher. Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on his breast, himself produced his Gospel while he was living at Ephesus in Asia.3

This text belongs to a man who set himself the task of expounding Church Tradition in opposition to the numerous heresies that appeared at that time. The text shows that already in the second century there was a stable tradition concerning how the four Gospels were created and the identity of their authors. If we add to this that Irenaeus of Lyons was a disciple of Polycarp of Smyrna, a disciple of the Apostle John, then we receive evidence that practically connects us with apostolic times. In the testimony of St. Irenaeus, we see four points that complement the evangelical testimony but that are not derived from it: 1) The author of the Gospel was one of the twelve apostles – Matthew; 2) The Gospel of Matthew was written first among all the canonical Gospels; 3) It was written by the time that Peter and Paul founded the Church in Rome, hence during the period between 45 and 65 CE; 4) It was written in the language of the Jews, that is, in Hebrew or Palestinian Aramaic.

As is well known, all these points are questioned in academic biblical studies of the modern period. Most contemporary scholars are inclined to believe that the Gospel of Matthew appeared after the Gospel of Mark and after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. Extremely influential was B. H. Streeter’s hypothesis that the Gospel of Matthew was written ca. 85 CE in Antioch.4 The main argument in favor of such dating is that Jesus’s words given by Matthew contain a clear indication of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (24:1–2). This argument suggests a priori that Jesus Christ did not have a prophetic gift. 3

Ириней Лионский. Против ересей 3.1.1 (SC 211, 22–24). (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.1.1) 4 Cf. B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (London: Macmillan, 1951).

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In other words, it proceeds from a predetermined ideological premise, which actually replaces historical evidence. But is it possible to deny the Church Tradition of historicity only on the grounds that it is a matter of faith? We are well aware that in the absence of evidence for the earliest history of the creation of the biblical text, scholars inevitably turn to tradition. For example, we do not have early evidence of writing prophetic texts of the Old Testament or the Torah that would have appeared outside the Jewish tradition itself. Even such grand discoveries as the unearthing of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts cannot shed light on such issues as the appearance of the books of Ezekiel or Micah. A similar situation occurs with many New Testament texts. Under these conditions, scholars had to formulate criteria for the reliability of the evidence by which one or another testimony of the biblical text or tradition could be evaluated. These criteria can be reduced to one main point: Can we expect that behind any given testimony there is some theological concept? Is it possible to assert that this or that testimony promotes someone’s interests? For example, even critics of Christianity recognize that the story of Peter’s denial could not meet the interests of the early Christian communities, since it presented a negative portrait of the greatest preacher of Christianity, who was also considered the founder of the Roman Church. On the contrary, the thesis that Jesus Christ had twelve initial disciples has been questioned by many researchers, because the influence of a certain theological position is seen here: twelve apostles symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel. It is for this reason that Joseph Klausner, the first Jewish historian who turned to New Testament studies, considered the evidence of the Talmud more reliable. It is said in the Talmud that Jesus had five disciples. According to Klausner, this number does not have a theological basis nor does it derive from someone’s personal interest and therefore should be considered more reliable.5 Leaving aside the question of validity of such a judgment about the apostles. (Why could Jesus not select twelve disciples, consciously relating their number to the twelve tribes of Israel? Furthermore, from the Gospels we know that he himself made such a connection.) We will concentrate on this criterion – I will call it “the criterion of theological conditioning” – and try to apply it to the testimonies of the early Church regarding the origin of the Gospel of Matthew. We have identified four points in which the testimony transmitted through Irenaeus of Lyons complements the Scripture. Can someone’s interest stand behind at least one of them?

5 Cf. Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times and Teaching, trans. Herbert Danby (New York: Macmillan, 1921).

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Let us turn to the first point – the authorship of Matthew. Recognition of the authorship of the apostle, an eyewitness of Jesus Christ, certainly gave the text a clear advantage as testimony written by an eyewitness of the gospel events. The Gospel of Mark did not have such an advantage, and one could assume that, for this reason, it has faded into insignificance. However, we see that the Gospel of Luke from this point of view is even more inferior to the Gospel of Mark; according to Church Tradition, Luke was strongly influenced by the Apostle Paul, who himself was not a disciple of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, Luke’s Gospel has always been very influential in the Church. Furthermore, it is not clear why it was precisely Matthew who was given such great importance, if we consider his authorship to be only a legend. It is unclear what significance the personality of the former tax collector should have had for the Jewish community to which the Gospel of Matthew was addressed. Nothing is known about Matthew’s life from ancient Christian sources except his former profession. We understand quite clearly how pseudepigraphs appear: as a rule, this or that work is attributed to the name of a famous author or legendary character, so that the work would have an authoritative status. In the case of the Gospel, signed by the name of Matthew, we see no reason to choose such an author. If the Gospel of Matthew was considered a text created for the Palestinian Jewish community, it would be much more natural to assign it the name of Jacob, the brother of the Lord (we know that this was exactly the case with the apocryphal text about Mary’s childhood, known as “The Gospel of James”). It should be recognized that if we start from the criterion of theological conditioning, we do not find good reasons to question the authorship of Matthew. My next point is the primacy of the Gospel of Matthew among other Gospels. In this case, it is also unclear what theological reasons could have induced the ancient Church to declare that the Gospel of Matthew was written first. The only possible basis is the legend that Matthew wrote for the Jewish community; since the Jerusalem Church was the center from which the worldwide preaching of the gospel began, the appearance of the first written Gospel had to be connected with this Church. The third point focuses on the time when the Gospel of Matthew was created. According to the legend recorded by Irenaeus of Lyons, Matthew wrote his Gospel at a time when the apostles Peter and Paul preached in Rome. It seems that such a dating has a clear theological justification: as evidences of eyewitnesses, the Gospels had to be recorded early enough. However, a more detailed examination shows that the Church Tradition, expounded by Irenaeus, has deeper roots. An example of a purely theological approach to the dating of the Gospels is the preface of Theophylact of Ohrid in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. According to Theophylact, all Synoptic Gospels were written in a very short time and during the life of most of the apostles: Matthew

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wrote his Gospel in the eighth year after Christ’s ascension, Mark in the tenth, and Luke in the fifteenth.6 On the contrary, the testimony of Irenaeus of Lyons establishes an earlier date before which the Gospels could not have been written, namely, the preaching of the apostles Peter and Paul in Rome. In other words, during the first three missionary journeys of the apostle Paul, no Gospel was yet compiled. Indeed, the authors of the Epistles almost never quote the Gospel as a literary source, whereas the Old Testament is quoted in the epistles rather extensively. This could be due to the fact that the Gospels did not yet exist in a clearly recorded written form when the New Testament epistles first appeared, including the epistles of Paul, or that the Gospels did not receive universal circulation within the Church. We see that the tradition set forth by Irenaeus of Lyons is consistent with the text of the New Testament itself and cannot be explained by the criterion of theological conditioning. However, if we turn to the words of Irenaeus of Lyons about the Gospel of Mark, we will see that it dates rather late – the time “after the departure” of Peter and Paul, that is, after 65 CE, very close to the time of the Jewish War and the destruction of Jerusalem. We see that St. Irenaeus (unlike many modern biblical scholars, both secular and ecclesiastical) did not see the theological problem in the later dating of the Gospel of Mark. From the point of view of theological conditioning, St. Irenaeus should have dated both Gospels much earlier. And there were plenty of reasons for such conditioning in Irenaeus of Lyons, because he had the task of proving to the Gnostics the truth of the canonical Gospels, and St. Irenaeus is famous for his purely theological reasoning that there can be only four Gospels, and that their number has prototypes already in the Old Testament. Finally, the last point in our list is the original language of the Gospel of Matthew. By asserting that the first Gospel was written in the language of the Jews, Irenaeus of Lyons put himself in a rather dangerous position. While proving to the Gnostics that only the canonical Gospels are authentic, Irenaeus also maintained that the members of the Church deal not with the original of the Gospel of Matthew, but with a translation. At the time of Irenaeus, there were still Gnostic Judeo-Christian communities that used the Hebrew text, which they believed to be the original version of the first Gospel. Meanwhile, the testimony of Irenaeus of Lyons about the original language of the Gospel of Matthew is not the only thing that confirms its rootedness in the earliest tradition of the ancient Church. Eusebius of Caesarea cites the testimony of Papias of Hierapolis, which he also traces through the chain of successions to the times of the first apostles:

6 Феофилакт Болгарский. Толкование на Евангелие от Матфея. Предисловие. (Theophylact of Ohrid, Explanation of the Gospel of Matthew, Preface).

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And so Matthew composed the sayings (λόγια) in the Hebrew tongue, and each one translated them to the best of his ability.7

According to Eusebius, Papias of Hierapolis transmitted the teaching of a certain “presbyter John,” who may be either the apostle John or a man “standing next to the apostles.” This is the second tradition of the origin of the New Testament texts dating back to New Testament times. And it finds confirmation also from Irenaeus of Lyons, who directly calls Papias of Hierapolis an eyewitness of the apostles and says that Papias communicated with his teacher, Polycarp of Smyrna: He is a man who lived long ago (ἀρχαίος ἀνήρ), who heard the sermon of the apostle John and was friends with Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna.8

It should be noted that the words of Papias of Hierapolis about the “sayings in the Hebrew tongue” written by Matthew, which “were translated by each to the best of his ability,” sound even more remarkable than the testimony of Irenaeus. This implies that there were several versions of the Greek translation of Matthew, and that Papias could not vouch for their quality. The mention of “sayings” could also cause only questions from subsequent generations of Christians; in fact, it cast doubt on the integrity of the first Gospel. What exactly these “sayings” were remains a mystery. There are some apocryphal Gospels (such as the Gospel of Thomas) written in the form of the sayings of Jesus. However, the content of these sayings differs significantly from those sayings in the canonical Gospels. Summarizing the fourth point, we should note that it does not find a satisfactory explanation under the criterion of theological conditioning. Thus, we have examined four propositions about the origin of the text of the Gospel of Matthew, testimony that Irenaeus from Lyons quotes on the basis of Church Tradition dating back to apostolic times. Of these, we were able to offer a possible theological justification only for the second point that would allow us to question the historical interpretation. The question of whether the Gospel of Matthew appeared before or after the Gospel of Mark seems to be of secondary importance to us. There is a logic in the assumption that the Gospel of Mark was supplemented by Matthew and adapted for the Jewish reader. Nevertheless, we want to show that Church Tradition about the origin of New Testament texts cannot be ignored in any discussion of their beginning. Such tradition should not be summarily rejected on presumably “reasonable” grounds.

7

Евсевий Кесарийский. Церковная история 3.39.16 (Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, 3.39.16). 8 Ириней Лионский. Против ересей 5.33:3–4 (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5.33.3–4).

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C. History and Theology: A View from within the Gospel By analyzing the text of Irenaeus of Lyons using the criterion of theological conditioning, we accepted the “rules of the game” of modern biblical studies and juxtaposed “theology” and “history.” But we would like to emphasize that this opposition itself is farfetched in many cases. For example, let us turn to one particular issue of the isagogics of the Gospel of Matthew – its use of theological terminology. The Gospel of Matthew is the Gospel in which the Church is mentioned twice (16:18; 18:17). This is the only Gospel in which the baptismal formula “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” is used (28:19). Some scholars regard these references as clear evidence for dating the Gospel of Matthew to the end of the first century. In their opinion, it was not until this time that the church had created a sufficiently developed liturgical tradition, including baptismal and eucharistic formulas. Matthew, according to this view, adapted the Gospel of Mark in the light of the later liturgical tradition of the Church. In our opinion, such a view perfectly illustrates the highly artificial opposition between “theology” and “history.” Scholars typically understand this opposition in the sense that what is “theological” must necessarily be secondary. They refuse to concede that certain theological views could be inherent within the Christian community from the very beginning and that such views could have derived directly from its Founder. In fact, the term “church” is found repeatedly in the epistles of the Apostle Paul, written in the 50s and the first half of the 60s. For this reason, the use of the term “church” in the Gospel of Matthew does not make that Gospel “late,” nor does it mean that Matthew must have been written later than the other Gospels. As for Matthew’s use of the baptismal formula, these words could have been uttered by Jesus himself, which explains why they were used in the Church from the very beginning. From the Acts of the Apostles we know that baptism and the Eucharist were the original formative elements on which the life of the Church was built in the first months and years after the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 1:41–42). It was only appropriate that, when someone was baptized, the formula that went back to Jesus Himself should be used; similarly, at the celebration of the Eucharist, the words that He uttered at the Last Supper were recited. Not surprisingly, Jesus’s Eucharistic words are preserved with striking similarity by the all three Synoptic Gospels (Matt 26:26–28; Mark 14:22–24; Luke 22:17–20). We have every reason to believe that both baptism and the Eucharist were early, well-established practices that lie behind the fixed written text of all four Gospels. For this reason, the presence of the baptismal formula in the Gospel of Matthew need not imply its late origin, especially in comparison with the Gospel of Mark.

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One of the significant arguments advanced by those who argue for the late origin of both the Gospel of Matthew and the other Gospels is based on obvious references to Church Tradition, especially to the well-established liturgical practice of the Church. It is no exaggeration to say that the recognition of this fact was the cause of the great disappointment that ended the so-called “first quest for the historical Jesus.” The hopes of researchers who considered the Gospel of Mark to be the best source of information about the “historical Jesus” were ruined when a number of studies (in particular, William Wrede’s works9) showed that the narrative in the Gospel of Mark is based on a certain theological concept, and it is impossible to separate history from theology in this Gospel. This crisis of confidence in the Gospel texts as sources of information about Jesus, strangely enough, has a theological basis. In our opinion, this theological bias can be traced to the strict opposition between Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition, which arose during the Counter-Reformation in attempts to counter Luther’s thesis “by Scripture alone!” by a developing a coherent refutation. Catholic apologists wanted to show that not only Scripture but also Tradition are necessary for salvation, and in their arguments they drew a sharp distinction between Scripture and Tradition. Meanwhile, Luther's sola Scriptura thesis continued to be developed in subsequent Protestant theology. As a result, with the strengthening of the rationalistic approach to the study of Holy Scripture, everything related to the realm of Tradition was automatically recognized as unnecessary, and as hampering a reliable understanding of the biblical text. And yet, we find in the works of the fathers of the Eastern Church an entirely different approach. We do not find in them a strict opposition between Scripture and Tradition. Like modern biblical scholars, the Church Fathers faced situations in which the text of Scripture was not sufficient to answer a particular question. Just as in the analysis of the text of the Gospel of Matthew (based only on the text itself), we are left with a whole series of unresolved questions. The contemporaries of St. Basil the Great could not find in Scripture sufficient grounds for constructing a convincing doctrine of the divinity of the Holy Spirit. And in this situation, St. Basil pointed to a liturgical Church Tradition, as old as the New Testament texts, which preserved, in rituals and formulas, the original Church doctrine of the Spirit. In this argument, Basil the Great did not emphasize the difference between Scripture and Tradition. Instead, these were part of a single whole for him, and he saw no reason to prefer one to the other. In general, in the Eastern patristic tradition, Scripture is regarded as part of Tradition.

9 Cf. esp. William Wrede, Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien: Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Verständnis des Markusevangeliums (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901).

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What does this mean in relation to our problem? First of all, it means that the situation that brought rationalistic biblical studies to an impasse – the situation when the Gospel narrative from the very beginning has a theological basis – was absolutely natural from the very beginning for the fathers of the Eastern Church. The situation that put rationalistic theology in jeopardy (and, in particular, led to the construction of Bultmann’s kerygmatic theology as a possible way out) may become the basis for Orthodox theologians to build historical and critical biblical studies, not only without breaking with the Tradition, but also on the basis of Tradition. The first steps in this direction have already been made by a well-known Orthodox theologian of the 20th century protopresbyter, John Meyendorff. He was one of those thinkers who returned Orthodox academic theology to its patristic foundations. Thanks to him, in many ways the Orthodox theology of the 20th century returned to the original notion, characteristic of the Eastern Church, that Scripture and Tradition cannot be opposed. Scripture as a part of Tradition – this understanding has become self-evident for our theology. And it is Father John who became the author of probably the most unusual appropriation of the kerygmatic theology of Bultmann. Father John saw in it yet another proof of the obvious: Tradition and the theology of the Church are not opposed to the historical events that lie at its base. The Church, with its Tradition and theology, is the only possible form of existence of historical Christianity. Contradictions between tradition and scholarly consensus is not just a gulf separating the two spheres of human intellectual culture, the world of faith and the world of rational knowledge. They are also points of contact, giving each of these spheres an incentive to develop. Doubts of scholars concerning the authorship of both the Gospel of Matthew and other New Testament (and Old Testament) books pushed theologians to answer this challenge and, as a result, to comprehend the very phenomenon of authorship in relation to Holy Scripture, to raise the question of meaning and boundaries of inspiration. In this regard, I would like to quote the words of William Loader, which I heard here in Moscow, at the Seventh Eastern European New Testament Symposium: Biblical studies of the New Testament try to understand the complexities of history and serve the Church. And here we need each other. After all, our faith is based on events that occurred in history. And we cannot be satisfied with the departure from history, which sometimes happens with the supporters of a strictly synchronistic approach, or with those who run from difficult historical questions to such safe, though important, areas as linguistics and archeology.

And careful study of the Tradition of the Church is not a rejection of the historical and critical study of the Bible, but an attempt to resist withdrawal from

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history, an attempt to place from the very beginning the study of the New Testament text in the historical context of early Christianity. By speaking about the study of Church Tradition, we mean not only cooperation of “secular” and “confessional” biblical scholars, but also cooperation of biblical scholars, on the one hand, and patrologists specializing in early Christian writing, liturgists, and specialists in ancient hagiography, on the other. Today we now understand that the future of New Testament research belongs to interdisciplinary biblical studies. And I would like to express the hope that this practice of dialogue between scholarship and Tradition, which has occurred during the last two decades, will receive fruitful continuation and will prove useful to all scholars working in this field, both to those associated with the Church and to secular scholars as well. I also hope that the conferences on the New Testament, taking place in Moscow, will make an important contribution to this dialogue.

From Gospel Book to Virtual Reality A Neglected Aspect of the Gospel of Matthew’s Ancient Reception History Tobias Nicklas Tobias Nicklas

Probably no other early Christian writing was more influential than the Gospel of Matthew. That is why the international project Novum Testamentum Patristicum (NTP),1 which tries to offer a complete documentation of New Testament receptions in ancient Christianity, has assigned eight volumes (plus an extra volume for introduction) to the Gospel of Matthew. Only one of these books has been published so far.2 It is thus impossible to give an overview of the reception of such a writing in a single paper. The interpretation of some of its verses, like Matt 16:17–19, divided churches3 while others shaped societies and cultures.4 I could of course concentrate, for example, on second-century receptions of Matthew, as has been done in detail by authors like Édouard Massaux and Wolf-Dietrich Köhler.5 I am sure that the results of my work would differ only in small details from Massaux’s and Köhler’s. Another opportunity

1 Regarding the project, see Andreas Merkt with Tobias Nicklas and Joseph Verheyden, “Das Novum Testamentum Patristicum (NTP): Ein Projekt zur Erforschung von Rezeption und Auslegung des Neuen Testamentes in frühchristlicher und spätantiker Zeit,” Early Christianity 6 (2015): 573–95. 2 Justina C. Metzdorf, Das Matthäusevangelium. Teilband 6: Kapitel 19–21, NTP 1/6 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). A second volume by Thomas Karmann on the Matthean Infancy Gospel will appear in 2020. But now see also the important volume by Ian Boxall, Matthew Through the Centuries, Wiley Blackwell Bible Commentaries (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2019). 3 For a short overview of main lines of reception see Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: 2. Teilband Mt 8–17, 4th ed., EKK I/2 (Zurich: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2007), 472–80. 4 One could, however, also discuss the impact of parts of Matt 23 and Matt 27:25 in the history of anti-Judaism. For just one aspect of this reception see, e.g., Zsolt Keller, Der Blutruf (Mt 27,25): Eine Schweizerische Wirkungsgeschichte (1900–1950) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006). 5 Édouard Massaux, Influence de l’Évangile de Saint Matthieu sur la littérature chrétienne avant Saint Irenée, BETL 75 (Leuven: Peeters, 1950) and Wolf-Dietrich Köhler, Die Rezeption des Matthäusevangeliums in der Zeit vor Irenäus, WUNT 2/24 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1987).

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would be to focus on just a small passage.6 As this is more or less the task of the forthcoming NTP commentaries (and has partly been done in Ulrich Luz’s monumental commentary on Matthew),7 I will follow a different path: Our work on the receptions of the writings which made it into the New Testament usually focusses on the question of how these texts were read and interpreted by authors of different centuries. In other words, we tend to concentrate on processes of literary reception (and interpretation) by educated persons, that is, just a very small elite of literate people. This is certainly fully legitimate as long as we are interested in the major debates accompanying the development of doctrine or the highest levels of intellectual exchange. All this leads us to a better understanding of a certain section of church and society. But at the same time, we are in danger of overlooking how biblical texts were received by others.8 If we are interested in a text’s impact for a broader, less educated public, we have to look for different evidence and ask about how far and via which media a certain text made it into the “cultural memories of the church.”9 Of course, this is a difficult and somewhat problematic task, as we have to rely partly on written material here as well. At least in some cases, however, this gives evidence to receptions related to rituals, newly defined space and even “things,” that is, non-literary media beginning to represent important biblical figures, motifs, doctrines as well as stories for people who did not or could not read or study texts as we are used to. While the usual approach thus wants to understand how far and in which way a certain reception concretely relates to a special biblical passage in its written form, I will deal with examples that show how and why passages from the Gospel of Matthew were transformed in ways that helped to represent them as many people’s “virtual” Jesus stories.10 I will focus on ancient examples and concentrate on only two different aspects: first, receptions of Matthean figures and second, Matthean motifs and stories. 6 I have done this in my article Tobias Nicklas, “‘Let the Dead Bury their Own Dead’ (Matt 8:22 par. Luke 9:60): A Commandment without Impact for Christian Ethos?,” in Biblical Ethos and Application: Purview, Validity, and Relevance of Biblical Texts in Ethical Discourse. Kontexte und Normen neutestamentlicher Ethik IX, ed. Ruben Zimmerman and Stephan Joubert, WUNT 384 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 75–90. 7 Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, 4 vols., EKK I/1–4 (Zurich: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1990–2007). 8 In a fascinating volume, Ramsay MacMullen called this group “the second church” (The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200–400, WGRWSup 1 [Atlanta: SBL, 2009]). Perhaps we should even go so far as to speak about the real “majority church.” 9 Regarding this term see Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, 3rd ed. (Munich: Beck, 2000). 10 Regarding the New Testament as a “virtual entity” see Merkt, Novum Testamentum Patristicum, 579: “Das Neue Testament stellt im Modus seiner patristischen Rezeption … weitgehend eine mentale oder virtuelle Größe dar, eine Entität, die nicht in der physischen Form existiert, in der sie zu existieren scheint, gleichwohl aber Funktionen erfüllt und Wirkungen entfaltet, als gäbe es sie als konkrete, einheitliche und kohärente Größe.”

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At the same time, my lack of expertise does not allow me to follow a related and perhaps even more important path, namely, the use of Matthean texts in the emerging liturgies of the church, which certainly played decisive roles for the group of people we are interested in.11

A. “Three Holy Kings” as Matthean Characters The Gospel of Matthew is full of fascinating figures, many of which, I am sure, are not only known by close readers of the Gospel, but which made it into the cultural memories of the church (or better: of different churches in their different historical contexts).12 One could talk about Pontius Pilate and his handwashing (Matt 27:24), about Peter, the Rock (see esp. Matt 16:17–19), or the proverbially hypocritical Pharisees (see Matt 23:1–39). I would, however, like to focus on minor characters – the “magi from the East” mentioned in Matt 2:1–12. Even today, after many years of teaching New Testament, it is difficult for me not to think of them as three holy kings, although the text neither calls them “kings” nor says that there are (only) three of them.13 In fact, Matthew does not tell very much about them. They come from the East and go to Jerusalem where they want to venerate the newborn “King of the Jews” because they had seen his star rising (Matt 2:1–2). After an encounter with King Herod they go to Bethlehem where they find the child, venerate him, and offer him their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh (Matt 2:10–11). Led by a dream, they do not return to Herod, but take another way back into their home country (Matt 2:12). Because this little story raises so many questions, it has fascinated readers from earliest times. Why are (obviously non-Jewish)14 magi from the East interested in the birth of a Judean king? What is the relation of the star and the birth of this king?15 How is it possible to follow a star and arrive at a 11 See, e.g., the contributions in the forthcoming volume by Harald Buchinger and Clemens Leonhard, eds., Liturgische Bibelrezeptionen: Dimensionen und Perspektiven interdisziplinärer Forschung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming). 12 Regarding the impact of these minor characters for the Gospel of Matthew, see, e.g., Uta Poplutz, “Kleine Leute? Von der narrative Bedeutung so genannter ‘Randfiguren’ im Matthäusevangelium,” in Erzählte Welt. Narratologische Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Uta Poplutz, Biblisch-theologische Studien 100 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2008), 57–100. 13 Their number is probably developed from the number of their gifts mentioned in Matt 2:11. 14 Otherwise, they would certainly not talk about the “newborn king of the Jews”; see Matt 2:2. 15 I think that the answer to this question must be related to the Balaam oracle of Num 24:17. See also Tobias Nicklas, “Balaam and the Star of the Magi,” in The Prestige of the Pagan Prophet Balaam in Judaism, Early Christianity and Islam, ed. George H. van Kooten

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specific house? Why do these magi, although led by a star, first have an encounter with Herod and find Jesus only after that? Why do they disappear after their veneration of Jesus – and what can be said about their future lives? Questions like these have stimulated the energies and phantasies of interpreters and storytellers until today. First receptions of this text were discovered in the writings of 2nd and 3rd century authors like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyon, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Origen,16 who seems to be the first who counted their number as three (Comm. in Gen. 14.3). The best-known ancient extra-canonical infancy Gospels17 retell the story with only minor changes:18 According to the Protevangelium of James 21:119 the wise men (whose country of origin is not explicitly mentioned) do not go to Jerusalem at all, but appear in Bethlehem and cause a great tumult. Even then they have an encounter with Herod wherein they report that they “saw an indescribably greater star which shone among these stars and dimmed them, so that the stars no longer shone; and so we knew that a king was born for Israel” (PJ 21:2). After this, the star leads them to a cave wherein Jesus is born.20 The text speaks about the wise men’s gifts, but not explicitly about their worship of Jesus (PJ 21:3; but see 21:2). While Matthew mentions a dream warning them not to return to Herod, PJ speaks about an angel telling them “that they should not go into Judea.”

and Jacques van Ruiten, Themes in Biblical Narrative 11 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), 233– 46, esp. 235–41. 16 For a broader discussion of these authors and their reception of Matt 2:1–12 see Thomas Holtmann, Die Magier vom Osten und der Stern. Mt 2,1–12 im Kontext frühchristlicher Traditionen, Marburger theologische Studien 87 (Marburg: G. Elwert, 2005), 1855, who even discusses passages in Ignatius of Antioch, Eph. 19, but does not regard it as a clear reception of Matt 2 (see pp. 18–20). 17 The number of extra-canonical texts mentioning the magi, however, is much bigger. One could, for example, mention the Armenian Infancy Gospel, the Legend of Aphroditianus, the Cave of Treasures, the story is preserved in the Irish Leabhar Breach or the fascinating Revelation of the Magi. For the medieval Latin Church, the Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine (1228–1298) and the Historia beatissimorum trium regium by Johannes of Hildesheim (1310/20–1375) became most relevant. 18 English translations of the infancy Gospels quoted below are from J. K. Elliott, A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives, NTTS 43 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2006). 19 This text probably goes back to the end of the second century CE. Its place of origin is a matter of debate. Jan N. Bremmer has recently argued for Alexandria with good linguistic arguments. See Jan N. Bremmer, “Author, Date, and Provenance of the Protevangelium of James,” in The Protevangelium of James, ed. Jan N. Bremmer, Tobias Nicklas, and Thomas Karmann, Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha (Leuven et al.: Peeters, 2021), 49–70, here 63–69. 20 According to the PJ, Jesus is not born in a house or a stable, but in a cave.

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The early medieval Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew21 is even closer to the canonical text but gives a date – the magi from the east arrive in Jerusalem “when the second year was past” (Ps-Matt 16:1)22 – and describes the magi’s presents in more detail: “And to the child himself they each offered a piece of gold. And in addition one gave gold, another frankincense, and the third myrrh” (Ps-Matt 16:2). Before they leave, “they adored the infant a second time” (Ps-Matt 16:2). While these writings only re-enact Matthew’s story in more or less minor details, others offer major rewritings:23 The Arabic Infancy Gospel (probably 6th century),24 for example, completely leaves out the magi’s encounter with Herod but connects their coming to Jerusalem to a prophecy by Zeraduscht, that is, Zoroaster (Arab. 7). As the magi give gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the child, they receive one of Jesus’s swaddling bands as a gift in return. When they are back in their country, this swaddling band shows its power against the probably Zoroastrian adorers of fire: And their kings and chief men came together to them, asking what they had seen or done, how they had gone and come back, what they had brought with them. And they showed them that swaddling-band which the Lady Mary had given them. Wherefore they celebrated with a feast, and, according to their custom, lit a fire and worshipped it, and threw that swaddling band into it; and the fire laid hold of it, and enveloped it. And after the fire had gone out, they took out the swaddling-band exactly as it had been before, just as if the fire had not touched it. Wherefore they began to kiss it, and to put it on their heads and their eyes, saying: “This is verily the truth without doubt. Assuredly it is a great thing that the fire was not able to burn or destroy it.” Then they took it, and with the greatest honour laid it up among their treasury (Arab. 8).

21 Regarding introductory questions see Oliver Ehlen, “Das Pseudo-Matthäusevangelium,” in Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung 1: Evangelien und Verwandtes, ed. Christoph Markschies and Jens Schröter (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 983– 1002, esp. 983–86, who thinks it was composed around the seventh century CE. 22 This date probably is related to the later scene according to which Herod kills children up to the age of two (Matt 2:16). 23 Regarding my use of the term “re-enactment” (Neuinszenierung) see Tobias Nicklas, “Zwischen Redaktion und ‘Neuinszenierung’: Vom Umgang erzählender Evangelien des zweiten Jahrhunderts mit ihren Vorlagen,” in Gospels and Gospel Traditions in the Second Century, ed. Tobias Nicklas, Jens Schröter, and Joseph Verheyden, BZNW 235 (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2019), 311–30, esp. 312–13. 24 Regarding introductory issues see Maria Josua and Friedmann Eißler, “Das arabische Kindheitsevangelium,” in Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung 1: Evangelien und Verwandtes, ed. Christoph Markschies and Jens Schröter (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 963–82, esp. 963–65. The text is transmitted in two very different recensions. I refer to the short one (in Oxford ms. Or 350). A longer, quite different text – actually, more or less a full “Life of Jesus” – is transmitted in Florence Codex Laurentianus 32 (see the French translation by C. Genequand, Vie de Jésus en arabe, in: F. Bovon – P. Geoltrain, Écrits apocryphes chrétiens I [Bibliothèque de la Pléiade; Paris: Gallimard, 1997], 207–38).

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The interesting point of this version of the story is not just how far it departs from Matthew’s original account and how it implies that Christianity overcame fire veneration.25 Moreover, and perhaps even more important, it introduces a new medium: one of Jesus’s swaddling bands, which, according to the story, made its way from the Holy Family to the magi’s home country, obviously Persia. All this does not make sense if there was not a real swaddling band, which was venerated as a relic at some place where the Arabian Infancy Gospel was read. Is this just another sign of “people’s religiosity” (so-called Volksfrömmigkeit) without theological significance? I think this is not the case. Instead, such a swaddling band could serve as a visible proof of Jesus’s real humanity: the baby Jesus ate, drank, and needed swaddling bands! No chance for any kind of docetic Christology! As there is currently no study on the development of the veneration of Jesus’s swaddling bands as relics, I have to stop here.26 But my main point can already be made: Together with the story in the Arabian Infancy Gospel this “thing” thus served as a representation of “the magi” story for people who could not read it in a Gospel book. Perhaps it did not matter for these people whether the story came from the extra-canonical Arabian Infancy Gospel or the canonical Gospel of Matthew. Instead, it represented “the story” of the magi who went to Bethlehem and brought this visible (and perhaps even touchable) piece to their place. At the same time, this relic did not make sense on its own. Without the magi story it was just a piece of cloth. Connected to it, however, it could be understood as a relic – preserving the memories of Jesus’s miraculous birth and an originally Matthean story around it. This is not the only instance where the magi scene was presented in the form of media other than books. While I have to skip the role of the story in ancient liturgical developments,27 at least a short look into a group of iconographic representations of the story may be added. As far as I know, the oldest surviving image of the magi scene, probably one of the most ancient Christian pictures that has been found, is located in Rome’s Priscilla catacomb and goes

25 Regarding the role of Christianity in the late antique Persian Empire see Richard E. Payne, A State of Mixture: Christians, Zoroastrians, and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2015). 26 While Origen, Cels. 1.51 only mentions that the manger where Jesus was born was already shown in the cave of Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem, he does not speak about Jesus’s swaddling bands to be shown. There are traditions about Jesus’s swaddling bands shown as a relic in 5th century Constantinople and (somewhat later) in Rome. The traditions about Jesus’s swaddling bands in Aachen go back to medieval times. For these pieces of information, I am grateful to my colleague Andreas Merkt who is currently preparing a monograph on the relation of relics and written texts. 27 But see the evidence in Hans Förster, Die Anfänge von Weihnachten und Epiphanias. Eine Anfrage an die Entstehungshypothesen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).

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back to the time between 230 and 250 CE.28 But this is not an isolated case. In her monograph Bild, Grab und Wort, Jutta Dresken-Weiland discusses a whole series of depictions of the scene both in catacombs and on sarcophagi.29 Interestingly, the adoration of the magi is one of only a few biblical scenes that are regularly found close to ancient Christian burial places. Others are the story of Jonah, images connected to different stories about Peter, miracles like the multiplication of the loaves, the Cana pericope (John 2:1–11) or the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11) plus a few others.30 According to Dresken-Weiland, several Roman catacombs (Catacomb at Via Ardeatina, Calixtus catacomb, Domitilla catacomb, Marcus and Marcellus catacomb, Coemeterium Maius) place the magi scene at their intrados. All this only makes sense if people thought that the deceased, who were thought of as being present in the graves, could see these images. Were these images understood as protecting the graves, as Dresken-Weiland speculates?31 Or should the adoration of the magi function as a kind of typos, which showed the deceased (and, of course, even more the living ones) what their own adoration of Christ after resurrection would look like?32 We cannot be sure. One interesting point, however, is that most ancient depictions of the magi scene are so sparse that their observer needs the story to understand what they want to depict.33 As far as I understand, they are not simply visual signs interpreting the magi story, they also presuppose viewers being able to decode them. They do not tell a story on their own (as a modern comic does), but offer a system of signs which makes sense only to viewers who already have the story in mind. 28

Regarding this image see Jutta Dresken-Weiland, Bild, Grab und Wort. Untersuchungen zu Jenseitsvorstellungen von Christen des 3. und 4. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2010), 268–69. 29 Ibid., 269–76. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 269–70: “In den Katakomben wird die Huldigung der Magier am häufigsten in der Laibung angebracht. Dieses lange und schmale Band kann eine Reihe von Szenen aufnehmen, doch kommt diesem Anbringungsort in unmittelbarer Nähe zur Bestattung eine besondere Bedeutung zu: Man stellte sich wohl vor, dass diese Bilder von dem Verstorbenen gesehen werden konnten, den man sich als im Grab anwesend dachte; sie sollten vielleicht auch das Grab schützen.” 32 Ibid., 276, instead, sees no relation between the magi scene, otherworld and resurrection. 33 This is even the case for the well-known mosaic in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna where we find at least an inscription mentioning their names. Regarding this church and its iconography see Carola Jäggi, Ravenna: Kunst und Kultur einer spätantiken Residenzstadt (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2013), 168–90. Regarding the names (Gaspar/Caspar = Gundafor; see Acts of Thomas 17–29; Melchior = Hebr. “King of Light”/”My King is Light”; Balthasar = Beltschazzar; see Dan 1:7; 2:26 et al.) see Tobias Nicklas, “Die Karriere der Weisen. Von den Magiern aus dem Osten zu den Heiligen drei Königen,” Welt und Umwelt der Bibel 46 (2007): 24–26, esp. 25.

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B. Jerusalem Tells a Gospel Story Perhaps the best example where and how a Matthean story was transformed into a “landscape of memories” that has remained intact until today is the development of an Egyptian itinerary representing the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt (Matt 2:13–15). As I have shown elsewhere, this very brief passage led to the development of an immense number of texts, some of which are closely related to scriptural interpretation (such as, e.g., the interpretation of Isa 19:1 as a prophecy about Jesus’s sojourn to Egypt). Others are preserved as apocryphal writings (like the Arabian Infancy Gospel or the 8th century Vision of Theophilos) or as parts of homilies (like a Homily on the Church of the Rock attributed to Timothy II Ailuros, who was patriarch of Alexandria between 457–460, and again between 475–477).34 But even more, these texts can be related to concrete places, such as, for example, the ruins of Temples in Hermopolis Magna (which allegedly were destroyed when the Holy Family entered the city), things (like a Sycamore tree in Matariya close to Cairo under which the Holy Family took rest) and rituals related to them.35 As I do not want to repeat myself, I would like to discuss a different example. In the years 333–334 CE an anonymous traveler from Burdigala/Bordeaux wrote an Itinerarium about a journey which led him (or perhaps her)36 from his/her French home to Jerusalem and other places in the East. A slightly shortened version of his/her passage about Jerusalem is as follows: There are in Jerusalem two large pools at the side of the temple, that is, one upon the right hand, and one upon the left, which Solomon made; and further in the city are twin pools which have five porticoes, which are called Bethsaida. There the ones who were sick for many years were healed; these pools have water, which is red, when stirred up. Here is also a crypt, wherein Solomon tortured demons. Here is the corner of an exceedingly high tower, 34 See e.g., the detailed description about Timothy II Ailuros as patriarch with relevant literature in Hanns Christof Brennecke, Ecclesia es in re publica. Studien zur Kirchen- und Theologiegeschichte im Kontext des Imperiums Romanum, ed. Uta Heil, Annette von Stockhausen, and Jörg Ulrich (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2007), 264–68. 35 All this (and many more examples) are given in detail in Tobias Nicklas, “New Testament Canon and Ancient ‘Landscapes of Memory,’” Early Christianity 7 (2016): 5–23, esp. 9–18. See also the material discussed by Gawdat Gabra, “Über die Flucht der Heiligen Familie nach koptischen Traditionen,” BSAC 38 (1999): 29–50; Stephen J. Davis, Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 125–48, and Francois Bovon, “L’enfant Jésus Durant la fuite en Égypte. Les récits apocryphes de l’enfance comme legends profitables à l’âme,” in The Apocryphal Gospels within the Context of Early Christian Theology, ed. J. Schröter, BETL 260 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 249–70. 36 There has been a recent discussion about whether the Itinerarium was written by a woman. See Laurie Douglass, “A New Look into the Itinerarium Burdigalense,” JECS 4 (1996): 313–33; but also Susan Weingarten, “Was the Pilgrim of Bourdeaux a Woman?” JECS 7 (1999): 291–97.

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where the Lord ascended and the one who tempted him, spoke to him and the Lord said to him: “You will not tempt the Lord your God, but only serve him.” There is a big cornerstone, of which it is said, “The stone which the builders refused was made the head of the corner.” … And in the building itself, where the Temple was, which Solomon built, they say that the blood of Zacharias which was shed upon the stone floor before the altar is there until today. … On this side, one ascends Sion and sees where the priest Caiphas’ house was. And there is still a column where they flagellated Christ with rods. … From there, when you go out of the wall of Sion and walk to the Neapolis gate, at the right hand, below in the valley are walls where Pontius Pilate’s house or praetorium was. Here the Lord was questioned before the passion. On the left, however, is the small Golgotha hill where the Lord was crucified. About a stone’s throw from there is a crypt where his body was laid and rose on the third day (Itin. Burd. II 8).37

Even this short passage makes clear that our anonymous author does not just describe a city and its topography (even if he/she is very interested in topographic details like distances and directions), but a series of places related to stories. Not all, but many of his/her stories are biblical, some of them are related to extra-canonical Jewish and Christian traditions;38 in some cases – none of them in the above passage – he/she can also refer to places of general cultural or historical interest.39 In some cases, the stories referred to can be clearly identified and related to well-known texts. At the same time, the manner the anonymous author gives his/her overview shows that he/she has not necessarily read all these texts in written form. While the passage about the pools of Bethsaida clearly relates to John 5,40 the reference to Solomon torturing demons may refer to traditions also contained in the Testament of Solomon;41 it is, however, not necessary that the anonymous author knew of this book, which was perhaps

37 Regarding the Latin original see Kai Brodersen, ed., Aetheria/Egeria. Reise ins Heilige Land, Sammlung Tusculum (Leiden/Boston: de Gruyter, 2016) 54 and 56. The translation is my own. 38 For a discussion of the use of extra-canonical traditions in ancient Jerusalem pilgrimage writings see Tobias Nicklas, “Beyond ‘Canon’: Christian Apocrypha and Pilgrimage,” in The Other Side: Apocryphal Perspectives on Ancient Christian “Orthodoxies”, ed. Tobias Nicklas Candida R. Moss, Christopher M. Tuckett, and Joseph Verheyden, NTOA 117 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 23–38. 39 Brodersen, Aetheria, 9–10, writes: “Unterwegs werden immer wieder nachgerade touristische Hinweise gegeben, etwa zu einem Ort, von dem aus man einen Berg besteigen kann (I 2), oder zu dem Betrieb des berühmten Pferdezüchters Pammatus (II 3). Die Reise führt insbesondere auch zu Stätten, die für die antike Geschichte und Kultur von Bedeutung waren, etwa zum Geburtsort Alexanders d. Gr. (256–323 v.Chr.; III 1) oder zu den Orten, an denen der klassische Tragödiendichter Euripides (480–406 v.Chr.; III 1) oder der karthagische Feldherr Hannibal (247–183/81 v.Chr.; II 1) bestattet waren.” 40 Actually, the critical text of John 5:2 offers the reading Βηθζαθά, while many translations (including the German Einheitsübersetzung) have “Betesda.” Many ancient witnesses, however, also read “Bethsaida” or a related form. 41 See Nicklas, “Beyond Canon,” 30–31.

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used as a “marketing document of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.”42 The following passages relate more concretely to our topic. The text probably identifies a special tower with the “highest point of the Temple” mentioned in Matt 4:5 (see also Luke 4:9), where the Devil tempted Jesus to throw himself down. But interestingly, the author seems to conflate two temptations with each other. His quote of Jesus’s answer is a mixture of Matt 4:7 and 4:10 (or Luke 4:12 and 8), that is, Jesus’s responses to both the temptations at the highest point of the Temple (Matt 4:5/Luke 4:9) and on the mountain (Matt 4:8/Luke 4:5 [not explicitly mentioning the mountain]43). In other words, as in many other ancient receptions it is not clear whether the author of the Itinerarium refers to Matthew or Luke here, but even more, he seems not to have a concrete written version of the story in mind. Instead, the tower which is shown to him represents “the” story of Jesus’s temptation to him. Even more fascinating is the next part of the passage reflecting on the “big cornerstone.” Again, it is not clear whether the quote refers to Matt 21:42 or the parallel Luke 20:17 (both of which quote Psalm 118:23). Interestingly, however, the author seems not to be aware of the fact that both Matt and Luke refer to a saying of Jesus here. Is it possible that Jesus really pointed to a specific stone when he uttered this saying? Of course, one can read Matt 21:43 and Luke 20:18 (both speaking about “this stone”) in such a way – I regard it, however, as much more probable that our author did not have the concrete literary context of both passages in mind. The person who showed him/her the stone obviously related it to the well-known saying. In this way, the stone became a medium representing a Matthean/Lukan Jesus saying. Other passages show even more clearly that for our pilgrim Jerusalem represented a virtual story of Jesus’s passion, which in some cases related closely, in others less closely to concrete Gospel passages. While his reference to Caiaphas’s house could perhaps refer concretely to Matt 26:57,44 Pontius Pilate’s house/praetorium, Golgotha, and Jesus’s grave are mentioned in more than one canonical Gospel. At the same time, no canonical Gospel text mentions a specific column to which Jesus was bound during his flagellation.

42

Peter Busch, “Solomon as a True Exorcist: The Testament of Solomon in its Cultural Setting,” in The Figure of Solomon in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Traditions. King, Sage and Architext, ed. Joseph Verheyden, Themes in Biblical Narrative 16 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013), 183–95, esp. 194. 43 More precisely, the critical text of NA28 does not mention the mountain, while many witnesses mention it in one or the other form. 44 Only Matthew writes that after his arrestation Jesus was brought to Caiaphas. Mark 14:53 and Luke 22:54 only speak about the “high priest” (without mentioning his name). According to John 18:13, finally, Jesus is brought to Annas, Caiaphas’s father in law. As, however, only Luke explicitly mentions the “house,” one could even here speak about a conflation of Matthean and Lukan evidence.

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Perhaps we should take the time to have a somewhat closer look at one final motif. Before he comes to the places related to Jesus’s passion, the author talks about a place in the Temple where, according to his sources, “the blood of Zacharias which was shed upon the stone floor before the altar is there until today.” The two biblical reference points of this passage are Matt 23:35 and Luke 11:51. As only Matthew mentions the “altar,” which seems important for the concrete location of the traveler’s story, the reference seems to point to Matthew. But this is only part of the solution: The idea that the blood of Zacharias can be seen “until today” cannot be explained by Matthew alone. Instead, we have to look into an extra-canonical story coming from the Protevangelium of James. This text, which is very much concerned with the question of the real Temple and its purity,45 closes with a story about the murder of Zacharias – neither the priest mentioned in 2 Chron 24:20–22 nor the Old Testament prophet Zechariah,46 but John the Baptist’s father – in front of the altar of the Temple. The decisive passage is as follows:47 But at the hour of the salutation the priests were departing, and the customary blessing of Zacharias did not take place. And the priests stood waiting for Zacharias, to greet him with prayer and to glorify the Most High. But when he failed to come they were all afraid. But one of them took courage and went in and he saw beside the altar congealed blood; and a voice said, “Zacharias has been slain, and his blood shall not be wiped away until the avenger comes.” And when he heard these words, he was afraid and went out and told the priests what he had seen. And they took courage and entered and saw what had happened … And they did not find his body, but they found his blood turned into stone (PJ 24:1–3).

The Protevangelium thus turned Matthew’s brief passage into a story about the desecration of the Temple by the blood of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. This story was not only remembered in Jerusalem but presented to pilgrims by pointing to stones which obviously showed traces of red color. Interestingly, this representation of a Matthean motif transformed into the Protevangelium’s story could move from its original place at the Temple Mount into the Church of the Anastasis. The Breviarius de Hierosolyma, a short description of Jerusalem, is a kind of late antique guidebook for Jerusalem pilgrims, which probably goes back to the middle of the 6th century CE.48 45

Regarding the impact of purity language for the Protevangelium see Lily C. Vuong, Gender and Purity in the Protevangelium of James, WUNT 2/358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). 46 For a discussion of the Matthean text see Matthias Konradt, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, NTD 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 365. 47 Translation by J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament. A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation Based on M.R. James (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993; repr. 2009), 66. 48 Regarding introductory issues, see Herbert Donner, Pilgerfahrt ins Heilige Land: Die ältesten Berichte christlicher Palästinapilger (4.–7. Jh.) (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2002), 214–18, who calls it a “Merkzettel für Pilger” (p. 215).

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Chapter 3 of version A of the text offers a short description of the holy grave: “In front of the grave is the altar where the holy Zacharias was killed and where his blood dried up.” While this is the only clear sign that the Zacharias tradition (like many others) was moved from the Temple Mount to the Holy Sepulcher, a somewhat later text, Adomnan of Iona’s record of Arculf’s description of holy places in Jerusalem (Adamnani de locis sanctis libri tres; probably ca. 680 CE)49 describes the rocks of the grave simply as bicolored (“mainly red and white”), but not as discolored by the blood of Zacharias. Again, we see how much a relation of story and place and/or object was necessary. Arculf probably saw the same place the author of the Breviarium describes. As he does not or cannot relate it to a story anymore, he sees something completely different. Without the story only stones in different colors are visible.

C. Conclusion: The Gospel Transformed The Gospel of Matthew is first and foremost a book that, starting with Jesus’s origins,50 proclaimed him and his gospel of the kingdom of heavens. As far as we can know today, it was copied and read more often than any other Gospel book in antiquity.51 But at the same time, many of its stories, motifs, and figures did not simply remain letters, but were re-told and re-enacted with different purposes, for different people and in different contexts. They thus remained a living Gospel, a Gospel transformed via different media that enabled (re)presentation in many different ways: in places and stories connected to them, through their redefinition of “space” and by creating “landscapes of memory” through images, rituals, and even objects (like Jesus’s swaddling bands or the stones covered with Zacharias’s blood), which – as we saw in Arculf’s case – would not make sense if they lost connection to the stories of this living “Gospel.” For many people even in the 20th and 21st centuries, these media were and still are a main access to “the” Gospel. We should thus not overlook this kind of evidence, but take it much more seriously than we have for a long time.

49

Regarding introductory issues see ibid., 296–311. Interestingly, Thomas Hieke, “Biblos Geneseos – Mt 1,1 vom Buch Genesis her gelesen,” in The Biblical Canons, ed. Jean-Marie Auwers and H. J. De Jonge, BETL 163 (Leuven: Peeters, 2003), 635–50, goes so far as to understand Matt 1:1 as referring to the whole Gospel of Matthew. 51 Regarding the text’s early transmission see Tommy Wasserman, “The Early Text of Matthew,” in The Early Text of the New Testament, ed. Charles E. Hill and Michael J. Kruger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 83–107. 50

Joseph Son of David in the Reception History of Matthew’s Gospel Ian Boxall Ian Boxall

“Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, from whom was born Jesus who is called Christ” (Matt 1:16). So enters a promising character onto the stage of Matthew’s narrative, in a striking phrase which breaks the rhythmic pattern of the Matthean genealogy (“X was the father of Y”).1 Joseph will play a prominent role – as actor if not as speaker – in Matthew’s opening chapters. Elsewhere in the New Testament, by contrast, his presence is negligible. Luke’s infancy narrative concurs that Joseph was a descendant of David and Mary’s betrothed (Luke 1:27), describes his role in ensuring that the birth take place in Bethlehem (Luke 2:4, 16), and notes that Jesus was “thought” to be Joseph’s son (ὡς ἐνομίζετο, Luke 3:23; cf. Luke 4:22). Yet even in Luke 1–2, Joseph remains almost entirely in the background as a character, yielding center stage to Mary. In John, Jesus is simply referenced twice as “son of Joseph” (John 1:45, by Philip; John 6:42, by “the Jews”). In contrast, Joseph functions as protagonist in Matthew’s infancy narrative.2 Not only does Joseph take Mary as his wife and give her son his name, thus ensuring the child’s incorporation into the Davidic line (1:18–25; cf. Luke 1:27, 32; 2:4). He also acts as protector of Mary and the child, the divinely-chosen instrument to facilitate a safe rescue to Egypt, and return to the land of Israel (2:13–15, 19–23).3 At various points, his positive character traits are emphasized. He is “just” or “righteous” (δίκαιος, 1:19). His obedience to the divine will is illustrated by his actions in response to his dreams, which follow the angelic commands to the letter (2:14, 21). His flight to Egypt “by night” may underscore this obedience, suggesting an immediate response as he wakes from 1 On the variant readings, see Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, 2nd ed., ABRL (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 62–64. 2 Dan O. Via, “Narrative World and Ethical Response: The Marvelous and Righteousness in Matthew 1–2,” Semeia 12 (1978): 123–50. Antonio Sicari distinguishes between Jesus as the “theological protagonist,” and Joseph as the protagonista mediatore. Antonio A. Sicari, “‘Ioseph Iustus’ (Matteo 1,19): la storia dell’interpretazione e le nuove prospettive,” Cahiers de Joséphologie 19 (1971): 62. 3 For Egypt as a place of refuge, see e.g., Gen 12:10–20; 46:1–7; 1 Kgs 11:17, 40; Jer 43:6–7.

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his dream.4 That he receives revelation by dream emphasizes his role as a sympathetic Jewish character, matched by positive Gentile characters, the Magi and Pilate’s wife (2:1–12; 27:19). Despite such promising beginnings, however, Joseph disappears from the story following the holy family’s arrival in Nazareth (2:22–23), never to reappear. Apart from a brief reference to Jesus as “son of the carpenter” (ὁ τοῦ τέκτονος υἱός, 13:55), the subsequent narrative remains silent about this character. Yet textual marginality is rarely a firm guide to subsequent influence, as is well-illustrated by the rich afterlives of Joseph’s fellow-dreamers.5 Joseph too has been the subject of significant imaginative gap-filling in Christian history, with a particular explosion of interest in this shadowy member of the holy family, at least in the West, from the twelfth century onwards. Matthew’s Gospel has often played a foundational role in this history of reception, as exegetical questions provoked by the biblical text have been debated, its characterization of Joseph has been expanded, and its narrative threads have formed new patterns in response to changing cultural and ecclesial circumstances.6

4 Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., “Beginning the Gospel of Matthew: Reading Matthew 1:1– 2:23,” Salesianum 54 (1992): 341–59, here 356. This phrase may also heighten Matthew’s Mosaic typology, given Jewish tradition which located the Exodus at night: George M. Soares-Prabhu, “Jesus in Egypt: A Reflection on Mt 2:13–15,19–21 in the Light of the Old Testament,” EstBib 50 (1992): 236–40. 5 On the Magi, see e.g., Richard C. Trexler, The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1– 7: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 106– 11. On Pilate’s wife, see e.g., Ian Boxall, “From the Magi to Pilate’s Wife: David Brown, Tradition, and the Reception of Matthew’s Text,” in The Moving Text: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on David Brown and the Bible, ed. Christopher R. Brewer, Garrick V. Allen, and Dennis Kinlaw (London: SCM, 2018), 17–36. 6 On the reception history of Joseph, see e.g., Joseph Seitz, Die Verehrung des hl. Joseph in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung bis zum Konzil von Trient dargestellt (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1908); Francis Lad Filas, The Man Nearest to Christ: Nature and Historic Development of the Devotion to St. Joseph (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1944); idem, Joseph, the Man Closest to Jesus: The Complete Life, Theology, and Devotional History of St. Joseph (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1962); Joseph T. Lienhard, Saint Joseph in Early Christianity: Devotion and Theology. A Study and an Anthology of Patristic Texts (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 1999); Joseph F. Chorpenning, ed., Joseph of Nazareth Through the Centuries (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2011); Philip W. Jacobs, “The Reception History and Interpretation of the New Testament Portrayals of Joseph the Carpenter in Nativity and Infancy Portrayals in Early Christian and Early Medieval Narratives and Art from the Second Century to the Ninth Century CE” (PhD thesis, Bangor University, 2013); idem, Joseph the Carpenter: His Reception in Literature and Art from the Second to the Ninth Century, History of Biblical Interpretation Series 5 (Blandford Forum: Deo Publishing, 2016); Ian Boxall, Matthew Through the Centuries, Wiley Blackwell Bible Commentaries (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2019), 46–50.

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The aim of this paper is to offer a broad sketch of the afterlives of Joseph the husband of Mary, with particular focus on the reception of Matthew’s characterization of Joseph. As with any brief reception-historical study, this can only aim at a representative sampling of the diverse effects of Matthew’s text. Moreover, it will largely side-step those exegetical discussions broadly shared by patristic and medieval authors and modern critical commentators on Matthew. Three of these are particularly prominent in the literature. First, the discrepancies in the genealogies of Joseph in Matthew and Luke are widely commented on by modern and pre-modern exegetes. The respective interests may differ: patristic and medieval commentators generally seek to resolve the discrepancies.7 Contemporary scholars are more open to non-historical, christological explanations. Nonetheless, even the latter frequently discuss patristic solutions, notably the levirate marriage theory proposed by Julius Africanus (Eusebius, H.E. 1.7).8 A second, related question concerns Jesus’s Davidic descent, given that Joseph is not his biological father. Several patristic writers insist that Mary and Joseph came from the same tribe, and that they shared a common Davidic ancestry (a point made by both Hilary and Jerome in their commentaries on Matthew).9 The preference of modern scholarship is to resolve the dilemma on the grounds of adoption, or more precisely by Joseph becoming “legal father,” often on the basis of a Mishnaic passage: “If a man says, ‘This is my son,’ he may be believed” (m. B. Bat. 8:6; cf. Isa 43:1).10 W. D. Davies and Dale Allison are typical: “But Matthew has in mind legal, not necessarily physical, descent, that is, the transmission of legal heirship.”11 Similarly, Raymond Brown writes: “Joseph, by exercising the father’s right to name the child (cf. Luke 1:60–63), acknowledges Jesus and thus becomes the legal father of the child.”12 This legal view is very pervasive in the commentaries, and its impact can be felt more

7

For the various solutions, see Boxall, Matthew Through the Centuries, 42–43. E.g., Joachim Gnilka, Das Matthäusevangelium: 1. Teil, Kommentar zu Kap. 1,1–13,58, HTKNT 1 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1986), 6, 12–14; Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 503–04. 9 On early Christian traditions which view Mary as also of the Davidic line, see Markus Bockmuehl, “The Son of David and His Mother,” JTS 62 (2011): 476–93. 10 For a critique of a widespread Jewish concept of adoption, see e.g., Yigal Levin, “Jesus, ‘Son of God’ and ‘Son of David’: The ‘Adoption’ of Jesus into the Davidic Line,” JSNT 28 (2006): 415–42. For Levin, the Mishnaic passage deals with inheritance, “under the assumption that a man would know his real son” (424), not adoption. 11 W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 1, Introduction and Commentary on Matthew I– VII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 185. 12 Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 139. Similarly, Antonio Sicari refers to Joseph as padre legale: Sicari, “Ioseph Iustus,” 62. 8

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widely, as in Pope John Paul II’s 1989 Apostolic Exhortation on Joseph, Redemptoris Custos: In conferring the name, Joseph declares his own legal fatherhood over Jesus, and in speaking the name he proclaims the child’s mission of Savior.13

A third area of common interest concerns Joseph’s dilemma, and the implications for Matthew’s description of Joseph as δίκαιος (Vulgate iustus). The three broad solutions found in patristic authors often provide the framework for modern scholarly discussion.14 Did Joseph suspect Mary of infidelity (e.g., Justin; Ambrose; John Chrysostom), or did he suspend judgment over the cause of Mary’s pregnancy (e.g., Jerome; Hugh of St Cher)? The late-second-century Protevangelium is an early example of the second explanation: If I hide her sin, I will be found to be fighting the Law of the Lord; if I reveal her condition to the sons of Israel, I am afraid that the child in her is angelic, and I may be handing innocent blood over to a death sentence (Prot. Jas. 14.1).15

The last solution proposes that Joseph was already aware of the miraculous circumstances of the conception: εὑρέθη ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου (Matt 1:18) is thus taken to mean that “she was found” so by Joseph, which is why he is “afraid” to receive her (e.g., Eusebius; Ephrem; Basil; Theophylact). Though the least convincing to modern scholars, since it requires the miraculous conception “to serve as both the cause of Joseph’s problem and its solution,”16 this has been a popular interpretation in western Christianity, due to its espousal in a homily attributed to Origen, which was read liturgically on the Vigil of Christmas.17 But these are not the only issues of interest to the pre-modern reception of Matthew’s text. Gaps in the Matthean narrative provoke imaginative responses to questions about Joseph’s wider biography. Closer attention to Joseph as Matthean character invites interest in his role of protector of Mary and Jesus, the significance of his occupation, and his place within salvation history. Though 13 John Paul II, “Redemptoris Custos,” in Saint Joseph, “Guardian of the Redeemer.” Apostolic Exhortation of John Paul II. Text and Reflections, ed. Tarcisio Stramare, trans. Paul J. Pavese (Santa Cruz: Guardian of the Redeemer, 1997), 12. 14 E.g., R. Bulbeck, “The Doubt of St. Joseph,” CBQ 10 (1948): 296–309; Xavier Léon– Dufour, “L’annnonce à Joseph,” in Études d’Évangile (Paris, 1965), 65–81; Sicari, “Ioseph Iustus,” 64–65; Angelo Tosato, “Joseph, Being a Just Man (Matt 1:19),” CBQ 41 (1979): 547–51; Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 126–28; Luz, Matthew, 1:94–95. 15 Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 55, 57. 16 Bernard P. Robinson, “Matthew’s Nativity Stories: Historical and Theological Questions for Today’s Readers,” in New Perspectives on the Nativity, ed. Jeremy Corley (London: T&T Clark International, 2009), 110–31, here 118. 17 The homily appears in the eighth-century Homilarium of Paul the Deacon: Bulbeck, “The Doubt of St. Joseph,” 297.

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harmonization with Luke is frequently found, and popular oral traditions are added to the mix, Matthean textual motifs remain visible. The following discussion will include responses to Matthew’s portrayal of Joseph marginal to modern critical scholarship, as well as examples of the influence of older receptions on contemporary commentaries, influence which can sometimes go unacknowledged.

A. Joseph’s Earlier Story (Matt 1:16, 18) Matthew introduces the character of Joseph abruptly, at the climax to his genealogy, with little context except for the name of his father, Jacob (1:15), and his Davidic descent (1:6). The names of father and son are significant, and, as we shall see, occasionally provoke connections between Matthew’s Joseph and his patriarchal ancestors. In addition, the subsequent narrative (1:18–2:23) implies a connection with Bethlehem, David’s hometown, and probable location of Joseph’s family house (2:11). These hint at a Judean-centered backstory, in some tension with Luke’s Nazareth-focused narrative (Luke 1:26–27; 2:4, 39).18 Additional hints at a broader Matthean picture include the mention of Jesus’s brothers and sisters (12:46–50; 13:55–56), the reference to Joseph’s profession (13:55), and the latter’s absence from the story after 2:23. Subsequent reception of the figure of Joseph builds on these hints, and those provided by Luke, engaging in substantial gap-filling to create what Leonardo Boff has called the “Saint Joseph of the Imaginary.”19 For the most part, the earliest sources for an expansive biography of Joseph are not patristic treatises and commentaries, which tend to focus on christological issues, but non-canonical Infancy Gospels: the Protevangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and reworked versions such as the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary. Nor do these offer a monochrome picture: the characterization of Joseph, and his relationship to both Jesus and Mary, varies considerably across the texts.20 Nonetheless, one feature of the apocryphal Joseph(s) is consistent: the depiction of an aged man, a characterization already present in the late-second-century Protevangelium of James. Joseph is an elderly widower with sons from a

18

Possibly due to the influence of Matthew, the Protevangelium of James implies that Joseph lived in close proximity to the Temple, perhaps in Jerusalem (Prot. Jas. 8.3; 9; 15). The History of Joseph the Carpenter explicitly identifies Joseph as from the city of Bethlehem (Hist. Jos. Carp. 2.1). 19 Leonardo Boff, Saint Joseph: The Father of Jesus in a Fatherless Society, trans. Alexandre Guilherme (Eugene: Cascade, 2009), 71. 20 For discussions of Joseph as character in these texts, see e.g., Jacobs, “Reception History,” 31–176.

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previous marriage, reluctantly chosen as protector of Mary when a dove emerges from his rod (Prot. Jas. 9.1–2).21 Later texts are more specific. According to the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Joseph is a grandfather, with a granddaughter the same age as Mary (fourteen), and grandsons who are even older (Ps.-Mt. 8.4). In the Coptic History of Joseph the Carpenter, Joseph was widowed at 89, and is betrothed to Mary at the age of 91. Such a view may seem far removed from the presumption of Matt 1:18–25: that Joseph could pass as legitimate father of Jesus. This would appear to presuppose a man of marriageable age, though not necessarily as young as Mary.22 Nonetheless, the characterization of an elderly Joseph manages to exploit the silence in the Gospel text regarding Joseph’s actual age as well as his absence during the public ministry. The primary purpose here is to support the emerging belief in Mary’s perpetual virginity (an early Christian concern noted by Origen, Comm. Matt. 10.17). Not only does Joseph’s advanced age mean that he poses no threat to Mary’s vowed virginity. The “brothers and sisters” of the Lord (Matt 13:55–56) are clearly not Mary’s children but offspring from Joseph’s earlier marriage. Interestingly, belief in Joseph’s advanced years is shared by eastern and western traditions, even though these come to diverge over the question of a previous marriage. The view of the Protevangelium is dominant in the East, and also found occasionally in the West (e.g., Hilary of Poitiers, Comm. Matt. 1.4; Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Commentary on the Gospels). According to Epiphanius of Salamis, Joseph had six children from his previous marriage, four sons and two daughters, whom he names as Mary and Salome (Anchoratus 60.1; Pan. 51.10.7–8; 78.8). In the History of Joseph the Carpenter, they are called Lysia and Lydia (Hist. Jos. Carp. 2.3). The Coptic Synaxarion specifies three daughters. A rival tradition, which would become established in the West under the influence of Jerome (Helv. 19) and Augustine (Op. mon. 13.14; Serm. 51.30), views Joseph as the precursor of monastic asceticism. Joseph, like Mary, was also a virgin, and “the brothers and sisters” of Jesus were his cousins.23 This ultimately develops into the western medieval tradition of the Trinubium Annae or Holy Kinship, whereby the Lord’s brothers are sons of Mary’s half-sister 21 This is expanded in later versions: in Pseudo-Matthew, the dove flies up to heaven, foreshadowing Jesus’s baptism (Ps.-Mt. 8.3); in the Nativity of Mary, Joseph’s rod blossoms (Nat. Mary 8.4; cf. Num 17:23). 22 For rabbinic evidence that Jewish males often married around the age of eighteen or twenty, see Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), 82. 23 Seitz, Die Verehrung, 52–58. Among medieval exegetes who taught the virginity of Joseph were Alcuin, Rabanus Maurus, Rupert of Deutz, Hugh of St. Victor, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. For a fuller list, see Urbanus Holzmeister, De sancto Ioseph quaestiones biblicae (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1945), 65.

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Mary Cleopas (John 19:25), so named after her father Cleopas, the second husband of St. Anne and the brother of Joseph.24 There are rare exceptions to the characterization of an aged Joseph. In the triumphal arch mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome (432–40), he is depicted as a similar age to Mary.25 Nonetheless, the dominant western view preserves his extreme age. In the words of the fifteenth-century English Cherry Tree Carol: “Joseph was an old man, and an old man was he. He married sweet Mary, the Queen of Galilee.” Joseph’s fortunes would undergo a dramatic reversal in the fifteenth century, due especially to advocates such as Jean Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris (1363–1429), and the Franciscan Bernardino da Feltre (1439–1494), building on the earlier promotion of Joseph’s sanctity by Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). Gerson claims to have seen German paintings of Joseph as a young man, and his Joseph is relatively young, about thirty-six at the time of his betrothal (Aristotle’s prime of life).26 Similarly, in his sermon De Sancto Joseph, Bernardino da Feltre critiques the received model for Joseph in Italian art, arguing instead for a figure of youthful dignity: There is no saint in heaven so lofty, there is no king in the world who is worthy to follow at the heels of this saint. But he is not recognized because he is painted as a little old man [un vechiarello] and therefore seems like such a little fellow. But I say that he is tall, with a dignity more worthily adorned, a sanctity more sublimely crowned, a piety more nobly enthroned (Sermo 30).27

As a consequence, a young, handsome Joseph, affectionate towards his adopted son, would become the norm in Roman Catholic Christianity. It was merged

24 On the Holy Kinship, see Boxall, Matthew Through the Centuries, 223–24. For an English translation of the Trinubium Annae, see Brandon W. Hawk, The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary, Westar Tools and Translations: Early Christian Apocrypha (Eugene: Cascade, 2019), 109. According to Eusebius, the fraternal link between Joseph and Cleopas/Clopas had been made by Hegesippus: H.E. 3.11. 25 Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art: Volume I, trans. Janet Seligman (Greenwich: New York Graphic Society, 1971), Fig. 52; Jacobs, “Reception History,” 206. In a sermon for Pentecost attributed to the fifth-century Maximus of Turin, Joseph is said to be a young man (iuvenis, PL 57: 639C); however, this is misattributed. 26 Brian P. McGuire, “Becoming a Father and a Husband: St. Joseph in Bernard of Clairvaux and Jean Gerson,” in Joseph of Nazareth Through the Centuries, ed. Joseph F. Chorpenning (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2011), 52–60; Joseph F. Chorpenning, “St. Joseph as Guardian Angel, Artisan, and Contemplative: Christophorus Blancus’s Engravings for the Summaries of the Excellencies of St. Joseph (1597),” in Joseph of Nazareth Through the Centuries, ed. Joseph F. Chorpenning (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2011), 103–36, here 104. 27 Sheila Schwartz, “The Iconography of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt” (PhD diss., New York University, 1975), 73.

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with the Hieronyman tradition of Joseph’s virginity to create a model for celibate clergy, a particular concern for Gerson. Striking examples from the visual tradition include El Greco’s St. Joseph and the Christ Child (1597–99; Capilla de San José, Toledo), and Bartholomé Esteban Murillo’s Holy Family with the Little Bird (before 1650; Museo del Prado, Madrid).

B. Joseph the Dreamer (Matt 1:20–21; 2:13–15, 19–21, 22) Matthew’s narrative of Joseph incorporates four dream scenes (1:20–21; 2:13– 15, 19–21, 22). The dream motif connects the righteous Davidide with Gentile exemplary characters, the Magi and the wife of Pontius Pilate (2:12; 27:19), though in three cases Joseph’s dreams are distinguished from theirs in mediating an angelic visitation (1:20; 2:13, 19).28 Although frequently commented on by modern scholars, the dream motif is surprisingly marginal to the early reception history.29 The early commentaries of Hilary and Jerome are typical in their minimal interest. Nor are Joseph’s dreams central to the non-canonical Gospels. The angelic annunciation (Matt 1:18–25) is briefly described with little embellishment (Prot. Jas. 14.2; Ps.-Mt. 11; Nat. Mary 10.4–5), and the dream warnings to flee to Egypt and then return are either missing entirely (Prot. Jas. 22) or referenced in a perfunctory manner (Ps.-Mt. 17:2; 25:1 [Pars altera]). Modern commentators often find here a Joseph-Joseph typology, and for good reason.30 The New Testament Joseph fits well the pattern of his Old Testament predecessor. Both are sons of Jacob (Gen 35:24; Matt 1:16); both observe sexual restraint (Gen 39:7–20; Matt 1:25); both are recipients of dreams (Gen 37:5–11; Matt 1:20; 2:13, 19, 22); both go down to Egypt (Gen 37:28; Matt 2:14); both are instrumental in preserving their families (Gen 45–46; Matt 2:13–23). The connections are further strengthened when Matt 1–2 is compared 28 The presence of an angel of the Lord may underscore Joseph’s Jewishness. On the significance of dreams in the ancient world, see e.g., John S. Hanson, “Dreams and Visions in the Graeco-Roman World and Early Christianity,” ANRW 23.2 (1980): 1395–427; Robert Gnuse, “Dream Genre in the Matthean Infancy Narratives,” NovT 32 (1990): 97–120; Gerhard Mussies, “Joseph’s Dream (Matt 1:18–23) and Comparable Stories,” in Studies on the Hellenistic Background of the New Testament, ed. Pieter Willem van der Horst and Gerard Mussies (Utrecht: Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid, Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht, 1990), 86–95; Derek S. Dodson, “Dreams, the Ancient Novels, and the Gospel of Matthew: An Intertextual Study,” PRSt 29 (2002): 39–52. 29 See the minimal treatment of dreams in Luz’s summaries of the history of influence of Matt 1:18–25; 2:13–23. Luz, Matthew, 1:97–100, 124. 30 For the theory that the New Testament Joseph is a legendary figure, based on the Old Testament patriarch, replacing Jesus’s absent father, see Andries van Aarde, “The Carpenter’s Son (Mt 13:55): Joseph and Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew and Other Texts,” Neot 34 (2000): 173–90.

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with the portrayal of the Old Testament patriarch in the Testament of Joseph.31 This interpretation has its scholarly detractors, however. Several propose that the auditory dreams of Matthew’s Joseph better fit the pattern set by Jacob’s dream in Gen 46:1–4, which leads to his departure for Egypt, as well as those received by Abimelech and Laban (Gen 20:3–7; 31:24).32 Strong connections can also be made with Moses’s father Amram, who receives revelation by dream (Josephus, Ant. 2.216; cf. the dream of Miriam in L.A.B. 9). Moreover, some propose a better fit between the patriarch Joseph and Jesus, especially in Matthew’s passion narrative (e.g., Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver at the suggestion of Judah, Gen 37:26–28; Jesus was betrayed for thirty pieces of silver by Judah/Judas, Matt 26:14–16).33 What is not always acknowledged is that this alternative scholarly view of a Joseph-Jesus typology is already well-established in patristic and medieval exegesis. According to Tertullian: Joseph, again, himself was made a figure of Christ in this point alone (to name no more, not to delay my own course), that he suffered persecution at the hands of his brethren, and was sold into Egypt, on account of the favour of God; just as Christ was sold by Israel – (and therefore,) according to the flesh, by His brethren – when He is betrayed by Judas (Adv. Jud. 10 = ANF 3: 165).

Other authors find additional parallels between the patriarch Joseph and Christ (see also, e.g., Justin, Dial. 91; Tertullian, Marc. 3.18; Origen, Hom. Gen. 15.5; Ambrose, Jos. 14; Rabanas Maurus; Paschasius Radbertus; Rupert of Deutz).34 The connections with the passion are especially strong, offering support for this christological use being part of the evangelist’s authorial strategy. Moreover, the connection with the New Testament Joseph is occasionally retained. For Peter Chrysologus, the name of Jesus’s adoptive father serves as the link connecting the Old Testament patriarch and the suffering of Christ: “he [Joseph] became Mary’s protector in order to alert us to the fact that Christ’s passion was foreshadowed in the actions of the patriarch Joseph” (Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 146).35 A more robust foundation for the scholarly proposal of a Joseph-Joseph typology was laid by Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the prominent promoters of

31 Herman C. Waetjen, “The Genealogy as the Key to the Gospel according to Matthew,” JBL 95 (1976): 205–30, here 225–27; Gnilka, Das Matthäusevangelium, 1:19–20; Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:182; Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 111–12. 32 Gnuse, “Dream Genre”; Soares-Prabhu, “Jesus in Egypt,” 234–36; Luz, Matthew, 1:119. 33 E.g., Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:207; Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 112 n. 32. 34 See also A. W. Argyle, “Joseph the Patriarch in Patristic Teaching,” ExpTim 67 (1956): 199–201; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 21–28: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 384. 35 D. H. Williams, trans. and ed., Matthew, The Church’s Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 71.

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Joseph’s cause in medieval Europe.36 Bernard sets out an extended Joseph-Joseph typology in one of his Homilies in Praise of the Virgin: The first Joseph, sold by jealous brothers and led off to Egypt, prefigured the selling of Christ. The second Joseph, feeling jealous Herod, carried Christ away into Egypt. The first, keeping faith with the master, refused to couple with the mistress. The second, recognizing that his lady, the mother of the Lord, was a virgin, watched over her in faithful continence (In laudibus Virginis Matris 2.16).37

A similar Joseph-Joseph typology is found in an Ethiopian hymn preserved in an eighteenth-century manuscript: “Hail to thy eyelids, that like a wall surround thy eyes. Joseph dispenser of the food of justice, like Joseph (the patriarch) with the basket (of corn). Feed me with thy blessing, for I am a pilgrim; so that vengeance may not be taken on me.”38 In a Gospel rich in scriptural allusion as well as explicit formula citations, such parallels between biblical patriarchs and Matthean characters are to be expected. But that Matthew deems Joseph worthy of revelatory dreams is also indicative of Joseph’s character. This secondary accent in Matthew’s text also leaves occasional traces in the history of reception. In visual art, Joseph is regularly shown as sleeping even outside the biblical dream scenes, notably in depictions of the Nativity, as a continuation of his revelatory dreaming (e.g., Giotto’s c. 1305 Nativity fresco in the Arena Chapel, Padua). The motif can also have an exemplary function. According to the 1597 Summary of the Excellencies of St. Joseph, Husband of the Virgin Mary by Teresa of Ávila’s Carmelite associate Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios, Joseph’s dreaming is the habitual state of contemplation, the “contemplation in action” advocated by Teresa herself.39

C. Joseph the Protector (Matt 2:13–15, 19–23) Early reception, beginning with the Protevangelium, highlights Joseph’s role as protector of Mary’s virginity, emphasizing his widower status, or his great age. As the Joseph of Pseudo-Matthew declares: “I will be her guardian” (custos eius: Ps.-Mt. 8.4). By contrast, Matthew’s narrative is more focused on Joseph’s role as protector of God’s Son, presenting him as the primary human actor in this phase of the story. Joseph’s obedience in taking the child and his mother down to Egypt, returning after Herod’s death and then settling in “Galilee of 36

Connections between the two Josephs were earlier made by the ninth-century exegete Haimo of Auxerre (Hom. 12 = PL 118: 76). 37 Bernard of Clairvaux, Homilies in Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, trans. MarieBernard Saïd (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1993), 28–29. 38 W. H. Kent, “Eastern Devotion to St. Joseph,” The Dublin Review 116 (1895): 253. 39 Chorpenning, “St. Joseph as Guardian Angel,” 120–21.

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the Gentiles”, ensures the perpetuation of the divine plan, albeit through also foreshadowing Christ’s future suffering (2:16–18). Matthew may well be recalling the patriarch Joseph’s role in Jewish tradition as guardian.40 The reception history of this Matthean motif is complex, though it provides a concrete example of how imaginative embellishment has the capacity to preserve textual truth despite often fanciful gap-filling.41 This complexity is particularly pronounced in the Infancy Gospels. On the one hand, significant expansion of the Matthean Magi and flight narratives gives greater prominence to this stage in the story (e.g., Prot. Jas. 21.1–22.1; Ps.-Mt. 17–25). There is also some interesting harmonization with Luke (the martyrdom of Zechariah, and John the Baptist’s preservation from Herod, combines Matthew’s massacre of the innocents with Luke’s interest in the Baptist’s backstory, Prot. Jas. 22–23). Parallel traditions are preserved in the oral tradition of the Coptic Church, and in written texts such as the History of the Monks in Egypt (c. 400), and the Vision of Theophilus, which claims to be based on a vision received by Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria (385–412).42 Paradoxically, however, expansion of narratives in which Matthew’s Joseph is actor coincides with a diminution of Joseph’s prominence, as Mariological and christological concerns take precedence.43 In the Protevangelium, Jesus’s preservation from Herod is achieved, not by Joseph’s actions, but by Mary wrapping him in swaddling clothes and hiding him in a manger (Prot. Jas. 22.2). In the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, a cluster of miracles performed on the journey to Egypt serve to bolster the wonderworking power of the infant Jesus (Ps.Mt. 18–22). The miracle of the palm tree establishes a sharp contrast between Joseph’s inability to provide for the holy family during their arduous journey to Egypt, and the Christ child’s provision of both food and water. It is Christ who commands the palm to bend down to provide Mary with dates, and who causes 40 See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “St. Joseph in Matthew’s Gospel,” in Joseph of Nazareth Through the Centuries, ed. Joseph F. Chorpenning (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2011), 3–13. 41 On this, see e.g., David Brown, Discipleship and Imagination: Christian Tradition and Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 353–67. 42 See e.g., William Farid Bassili, The Flight into Egypt, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Dar Memphis Press, 1968); Gawdat Gabra, ed., Be Thou There: The Holy Family’s Journey in Egypt (Cairo/New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2001); Deirdre J. Good, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph in Egypt,” in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building on the Work of Elaine Pagels, ed. Eduard Iricinschi, Lance Jenott, Nicola Denzey Lewis, and Philippa Townsend, Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity 82 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 335–44. For the flight in Coptic art, see e.g., François Bœspflug and Emanuela Fogliadini, La Fuga in Egitto nell’arte d’Oriente e d’Occidente, Guardando ad Oriente (Milano: Jaca Book, 2017). 43 In Latin medieval tradition, one reason given for Mary’s marriage to Joseph is that he might care for her during the flight: e.g., Pseudo-Jerome, Hom. in Matt. 2; Bede, In Luc. 1.1.27–28; Remigius of Auxerre, Hom. in Matth. 4.

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a spring of water to flow from its roots (Ps.-Mt. 20). This date palm episode would prove a popular narrative in western medieval tradition. From the fourteenth century onwards, it would also feature regularly in western art, as backdrop to the Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Joseph’s limitations are explored in other ways too. In the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Joseph’s incompetence in the workshop is resolved by the child Jesus, who stretches a plank of wood that Joseph had cut too short (Inf. Gos. Thom. 13).44 In the medieval dramatic and artistic tradition of western Europe, Joseph’s inadequacies would be combined with his advanced age to produce a figure of some ridicule, virtually a cuckold, though this was combined with profound popular veneration for this only-too-human figure.45 Matthew’s emphasis on Joseph as protector was not entirely lost, however. A contrary development, highlighting Joseph’s active role in providing for his family, would leave its mark even on visual depictions of the palm tree miracle. Aelred of Rievaulx’s treatise “Jesus at the Age of Twelve” presents Joseph as the nutritius of Jesus, to parallel Mary’s role as mater. The term could refer to his educational role, that of “tutor,” and is sometimes translated as “foster-father” (see Luke 2:51–52). But although Joseph has a relatively minor role in Aelred’s treatise, the root meaning of nutritius as “nourisher”, one who provides food or meets other physical needs, offers a more positive connection to Matthew’s emphasis on Joseph’s protective role, extending it beyond the flight to and return from Egypt. In the sermon by Aelred’s fellow Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux cited above, Joseph’s role as nutritius is a dynamic one: To him it was given not only to see and hear what many kings and prophets had longed to see and did not see, to hear and did not hear, but even to carry Him, to take Him by the hand, to hug and kiss Him, to feed Him (nutrire) and to keep Him safe (In laudibus Virginis Matris 2.16).46

Bernard’s words here attributed to Joseph were originally spoken by Jesus to his disciples (Matt 13:17), except that Matthew’s original “prophets and righteous men” has become “kings and prophets.” The implication is that Joseph stands on an equal level to kings (he is, after all, of royal, Davidic blood).

44 Reverence for Joseph explains the version of this story in the Pars altera of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, where it is the servant, rather than Joseph, who is incompetent (Ps.-Mt. 27). 45 C. Philip Deasy, St. Joseph in the English Mystery Plays (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1937). Against the view that such traditions in art served to ridicule Joseph, see e.g., Carolyn C. Wilson, St. Joseph in Italian Renaissance Society and Art (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2001); Anne L. Williams, “Satirizing the Sacred: Humor in Saint Joseph’s Veneration and Early Modern Art,” Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 10:1 (Winter 2018) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2018.10.1.3. 46 Bernard of Clairvaux, Homilies, 29.

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This motif would feed into the Roman feast of Joseph on 19th March, introduced in Rome by the Franciscan Sixtus IV, promoting his order’s devotion to the saint. Liturgical calendars from the late fourteenth century often list this feast as Sancti Ioseph nutritoris domini.47 Joseph as the Lord’s nutritor is also evidenced in visual reworkings of the date palm miracle. In Quentin Massys’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt (c. 1509–1513; Worcester Art Museum, Worcester MA), Joseph offers a nut, more appropriate to a Netherlandish setting than a date, to the hungry Jesus. Similarly, in the panel depicting the palm tree miracle in Master Bertram’s Grabower Altarpiece (1379–1383; Hamburger Kunsthalle), it is Joseph who offers a canteen of water to Mary. This renewed prominence for Joseph is echoed in Grabower’s panel depicting the Nativity, where Joseph appears to be handing Mary the baby Jesus.48 Of particular relevance is the tendency among late-medieval German and French artists to portray Joseph as cooking, a motif also found in the late medieval mystery plays. A striking example is the Nativity panel in Conrad von Soest’s Wildunger Altar (1403; Evangelische Stadtkirche, Bad Wildungen, Germany), where Joseph crouches by a cooking pot at the foot of Mary’s bed. Though art historians sometimes dismiss the image of a culinary Joseph as “drudgery” or “demeaning”, it almost certain reflects his positive role as protector and nutritor domini, despite his advanced age.49 Nor is the fifteenth-century transformation of the aged, rather bumbling Joseph into a strong and active younger man unrelated to this Matthean motif of Joseph as protector.

D. Joseph the Carpenter (Matt 13:55) If Joseph the cook is an indirect offshoot of Matthew’s depiction of Joseph as protector of the child Jesus, another occupational detail is more straightforwardly grounded in the Matthean text. Matthew’s sole reference to Joseph after the infancy narrative occurs in the context of Jesus’s return to his hometown. Alone among the canonical Gospels, Matthew has Jesus’s Nazarene townsfolk identify him as “the son of the carpenter” (ὁ τοῦ τέκτονος υἱός, 13:55; in Mark, he is “the carpenter, the son of Mary,” Mark 6:3; in Luke, “the son of Joseph,” Luke 4:22; cf. John 6:42). It is possible that Matthew’s reading represents his redactional change to Mark’s οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ τέκτων (Mark 6:3), betraying a reluctance to ascribe 47

Schwartz, “Iconography of the Rest,” 63. The title of Joseph as nutritor Domini is attested as early as the ninth century. R. Gauthier, Le Culte Liturgique de Saint Joseph en Occident d’après les manuscripts des quinze premiers siècles (Montréal: Fides, 2002), 13–90. 48 Schwartz suggests that this may reflect another Matthean theme: Joseph bestowing on Jesus his Davidic lineage. Schwartz, “Iconography of the Rest,” 47. 49 Ibid., 58–63.

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to Christ such a humble occupation.50 This will certainly become a concern for Christians by the mid-third century, when Origen responds to Celsus’s objections to Jesus’s modest origins with the claim that “in none of the Gospels current in the Churches is Jesus Himself ever described as being a carpenter” (Contra Cels. 6.36 = ANF 4: 589). The word τέκτων does not necessarily have such modest connotations, however. It could describe a range of artisans, including a stone-mason or builder. Though Joseph in the Protevangelium possesses a “carpenter’s axe” (σκέπαρνον), he is also engaged in the construction of buildings (οἰκοδομῆσαι τὰς οἰκοδομάς: Prot. Jas. 9.3). The success of this Matthean tradition of Joseph as τέκτων is evident in the rich reception history this phrase has provoked. Justin Martyr knows a tradition that Jesus worked in the family business, specifically making ploughs and yokes (Dial. 88). The same artifacts are mentioned in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Inf. Gos. Thom. 13).51 In the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Joseph was away working in Capernaum as a “carpenter” (faber ligni: Ps.-Mt. 10.1) when Mary became pregnant. The title of the History of Joseph the Carpenter also underscores this tradition: Joseph is introduced by Jesus as “the blessed old carpenter” (Hist. Jos. Carp. 1.8). Here Joseph’s trade apparently offers a definition of how Joseph was “righteous” (Matt 1:19): “And my father Joseph, the blessed old man, worked at the craft of carpentry and we lived from the work of his hands. He never ate bread he did not earn, acting in accordance with the Law of Moses” (Hist. Jos. Carp. 9.2).52 Although less prominent in visual art than other Josephite images, famous examples from the modern period include Georges de La Tour’s Saint Joseph Charpentier (c. 1642; Louvre, Paris) and Christ in the House of his Parents by the English Pre-Raphaelite John Everrett Millais (1849–1850; Tate Britain, London). The focus of Millais’s painting is Christ rather than Joseph (the cut on his hand produced by a nail prefigures his passion). However, de La Tour’s Joseph points to his exemplary role as model for Christian workers, as does Pius XII’s establishment in 1955 of the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker (on 1st May). More striking is the way in which Latin Fathers exploit the christological potential of the phrase “son of the carpenter”, given the ambiguity of faber, which could mean “smith” and “craftsman” as well as “carpenter” (e.g., Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 3.2; Peter Chrysologus, Serm. 48; Augustine, Serm. 5 in

50

Though see Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 302. The variant at Mark 6:3 is almost certainly due to harmonization to Matthew. 51 Hippolytus (Haer. 5.26.29) knows an alternative tradition, preserved by the Gnostic Justin, which has the twelve-year old Jesus tending sheep at Nazareth. 52 Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 169.

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Epiphaniam).53 Joseph thus becomes a mirror of God the Father. Commenting on Matt 13:55, Hilary of Poitiers writes: Plainly he was the son of a carpenter (fabri filius) who hammers on iron with fire, he who smelts all the power of this world by his judgment, and who gives form to matter all for the benefit of humanity. In other words, he is the one who molds the formless matter of our bodies so that our members may perform different functions and do every work that leads toward eternal life (Comm. Matt. 14.2).54

E. Joseph’s Departure (Matt 13:55) If imaginative gap-filling marked the earlier phase of Joseph’s biography, the same extends to its end. The absence of Joseph from the ministry of Jesus in all four canonical Gospels, including the family wedding tradition potentially underlying John’s Cana episode (John 2:1–12), has led commentators to the probable conclusion that he was already dead. In the words of Raymond Brown: “Joseph makes no appearance during Jesus’ ministry in any Gospel, and it is highly likely that he had died before Jesus’ baptism.”55 This would explain the matronymic “son of Mary” at Mark 6:3, as well as Joseph’s absence from Matt 13:55.56 Speculation about Joseph’s death would eventually lead, following the Council of Trent, to a Roman Catholic promotion of St. Joseph as patron of a happy death. One of the most extensive traditions concerning Joseph’s death is found in the History of Joseph the Carpenter, dated by Ehrman and Pleše to the late-sixth or early-seventh century.57 This text may well have been instrumental in promoting a liturgical feast in honor of Joseph in the Coptic Church in the seventh century CE, the earliest such feast in the Christian world.58 Presented as a revelation by Christ to his disciples on the Mount of Olives, the text offers an overview of Joseph’s biography (Hist. Jos. Carp. 1–14) before an extended narrative 53 Hildebrand Höpfl, “Nonne hic est fabri filius?” Bib 4 (1923): 41–55. Aquinas will later reject the idea that Joseph was a blacksmith: non erat faber ferrarius, sed lignarius (Comm. in Matt. on 13:55). 54 Hilary of Poitiers, Commentary on Matthew, trans. D. H. Williams, FC 125 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 158. 55 Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 519. 56 Though Jesus is called “son of Joseph” in Luke 4:22 and John 1:45; 6:42. 57 Some date the text as early as the fourth century, though close parallels with sixth- and seventh-century Marian texts favor the later dating. For discussion, see Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 158; Jacobs, “Reception History,” 131–51. 58 Seitz, Die Verehrung, 68–70; Joseph T. Lienhard, “St. Joseph in Early Christianity: Devotion and Theology,” in Joseph of Nazareth Through the Centuries, ed. Joseph F. Chorpenning (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2011), 15. See also G. Giamberardini, “Saint Joseph dans la tradition copte,” Cahiers de Joséphologie 17 (1969): 141–77.

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of his “departure from the body” at the age of 111, in the presence of Mary and an eighteen or nineteen-year old Jesus (Hist. Jos. Carp. 15–29). Christ is presented as promoting Joseph’s cult: Those who will provide an offering and deposit it in your shrine on your memorial day, which is the twenty-sixth of the month of Epiphi, I will also bless in the celestial offering, which is in the heavens” (Hist. Jos. Carp. 26.2).59

Though emphasis on an elderly Joseph was originally an offshoot of the early defense of Mary’s perpetual virginity, the precise age given in the History of Joseph the Carpenter may reflect a concern to exalt Joseph’s status alongside that of Mary. According to Geoffrey Parrinder, “the ideal age for the close of life in Egypt” was 110.60 It would then be a sign of Joseph’s greatness that he surpassed that milestone. Other factors may also be at play in developing medieval traditions about the age at which Joseph died, not least a conviction that Joseph is the last of the patriarchs. Matthew leaves uncertain whether Joseph belongs to what Christians would later call the old covenant or the new. Though the Messiah is born during his life (1:16; 2:1), he is absent from the ministry in which the kingdom is proclaimed.61 The fact that Joseph confesses Jesus as his Lord, true King, and Saviour in the History of Joseph the Carpenter (Hist. Jos. Carp. 17) may mark him out as a Christian saint. But alternative traditions in the West may support the patriarchal interpretation of Joseph. In one, Joseph is 120 when he died, the same age as Moses (Deut 34:7). Other texts place him as old as 200, a full 25 years older than Abraham (Gen 25:7).62 In the Byzantine liturgical tradition, he is generally celebrated on the Sunday after Christmas along with his ancestor King David.63 A postscript to speculation about Joseph’s early death, which clearly places him among the saints of the old covenant, occurs in Jean Gerson’s sermon on Joseph, delivered before the Council of Constance on 8th September 1416. Gerson speculated that Joseph was among the saints whose bodies were raised from their tombs according to Matthew’s account of the death of Jesus (Matt 27:52).

59

Ehrman and Pleše, The Apocryphal Gospels, 185. Geoffrey Parrinder, Son of Joseph (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), 114. 61 On Matthew’s conception of stages in salvation history, see e.g., John P. Meier, The Vision of Matthew (New York: Paulist, 1978), 26–41. 62 Filas, The Man Nearest to Christ, 22. Nor is Joseph the only New Testament figure about whom such a claim was made: in the late-fifth or early-sixth century Story of John the Son of Zebedee, John is also 120 at his death. 63 Seitz, Die Verehrung, 88–90; Filas, The Man Nearest to Christ, 31–32, 96–100. 60

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F. Concluding Reflections Matthew’s characterization of Joseph the son of David presents an active yet silent character, whose protective role is necessary for the execution of the divine plan, yet whose penchant for hearing voices comes at the expense of using his own voice. The Wirkungsgeschichte of Matt 1–2 has enabled a recovery of that voice, though paradoxically, in the case of the early reception in the noncanonical Infancy Gospels, this was combined with a diminution of Joseph’s prominence. The recovery of that prominence in the western tradition of a younger Joseph is a striking example of what David Brown has called “truths of the imagination,” the preservation of important textual truths – in this case, Joseph’s role as protector of Jesus and Mary, which re-emerges in the medieval title nutritor Domini – through imaginative retelling and gap-filling.64 Such a history of effects may be quantitatively different, though not necessarily qualitatively so, from historical-critical and narrative-critical reconstructions of the Matthean Joseph, which must also respond imaginatively to textual gaps through the combination of specific textual threads. Speculation about his hometown (whether Bethlehem or Nazareth), his age at the betrothal to Mary, the details of his occupation as τέκτων, or the timing of his death, are cases in point. Attention to the reception history of Matthew’s Joseph is beneficial for other reasons also. In several instances (e.g., the meaning of Joseph’s dilemma, the sense in which he was δίκαιος, and a possible typology connecting the patriarch Joseph with Joseph or Jesus), the earlier reception has been shown to have laid the groundwork for later scholarly discussions. This has happened both in theological treatise and commentary, and through the kind of “rewritten scripture” attested in the New Testament apocrypha. The proposal in the History of Joseph the Carpenter that Joseph’s hard work in providing for his family demonstrated his fidelity to the Law of Moses (Hist. Jos. Carp. 9.2), accords with contemporary proposals that Joseph’s righteousness consisted of Torah obedience. Second, the changing face of Joseph’s story across the centuries, and in different reading communities, is an important reminder of how a reader’s context impacts interpretation. The question and significance of Joseph’s age, for example, reveals much about the expectations of audiences, and changing cultural assumptions. Even similar conclusions can be reached for quite different reasons. The tradition of an elderly Joseph may well have its roots in Mariological concerns. However, it can assume a quite different significance when interpretive questions shift to Joseph’s relationship to the new Christian dispensation. Potential links with Old Testament patriarchs then become more prominent.

64 David Brown, Tradition and Imagination: Revelation and Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 60–65.

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Finally, various strands in the reception history emphasize Joseph’s exemplary role, which has meant different things for monastics, young celibate clergy, or Christian fathers. This too is an important aspect of Joseph’s character in Matthew’s narrative, increasingly acknowledged by narrative critics though not always prominent in the commentaries. Matthew’s characterization of “righteous” Joseph is what Dan Via has called “a semantically packed miniature.”65 He not only anticipates the characterization of Jesus as “righteous” (Matt 3:15; 27:19, 24), but also serves as model for Jesus’s disciples, whose higher righteousness is to be shaped by Jesus’s merciful interpretation of Torah already exemplified in Joseph’s actions towards the pregnant Mary (1:19; cf. 5:17–20; 9:13; 12:7).66 Closer attention to reception history can remind the contemporary interpreter of other textual threads which also exploit this exemplary function. It is commonplace for scholars to recognize how Joseph’s co-dreamers the Magi and Pilate’s wife prefigure the post-Easter mission to “all the nations” (28:19). Might Joseph the dreamer also contribute to this missionary impetus? At least one patristic commentator on Matthew, Hilary of Poitiers, believed so, on the grounds that, in bringing the child Jesus to Nazareth as a consequence of a dream, Joseph enables the light of Christ to come into “Galilee of the Gentiles” (2:23; 4:15): “Joseph provides an image (species) of the apostles to whom Christ was entrusted for dissemination far and wide” (Comm. Matt. 2.1).67 The end of the Matthean Joseph story thus fittingly anticipates the end of the Gospel story, both endings also heralding new beginnings.

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Via, “Narrative World,” 124. He is also “Son of David” (1:20), a title which will have rich christological resonances through Matthew’s Gospel (1:1; 9:27; 12:23; 15:22; 20:30–31; 21:9, 15). 67 Hilary of Poitiers, Commentary on Matthew, 48. 66

Matthew and Gospel Genre A Critical Review of the Last Twenty-Five Years, 1993–20181 Richard A. Burridge Richard A. Burridge Burridge’s work was rapidly seen as highly significant, not to say game-changing, in understanding the genre of the Gospels, and his conclusions were widely accepted. This sea change in scholarship is Burridge’s major contribution to the scholarly world.2 Richard Burridge has set an agenda that will provide decades of work for biblical scholars, historians, and theologians.3

It seems incredible that it is twenty-five years since my revised doctoral thesis was first published in the SNTS Monograph Series4 and some thirty-five years since I began research into the genre of the Gospels. I am pleased and privileged to be invited to give the opening paper for this Moscow conference, “The Gospel of Matthew in its Historical and Theological Context,” in an attempt to summarize my Critical Review of Matthean scholarship since 2000, with particular attention to those scholars and books which have paid me the honor of interacting with my work, and those who more recently have started to develop new avenues of interesting research arising out of the Gospels’ biographical genre. By the time the second edition of my book appeared in 2004, a “seachange”5 about the genre of the Gospels had clearly happened over the decade

1 This paper is based upon my “Gospels and Biography, 2000–2018: A Critical Review and Implications for Future Research”, pages I.1–I.112 in Richard A. Burridge, What are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, 25th Anniversary Edition (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2018); material used by kind permission of Baylor University Press. 2 Steve Walton, “What are the Gospels? Richard Burridge’s Impact on Scholarly Understanding of the Genre of the Gospels,” CBR 14 (2015): 81–93, here 86–87; later reprinted with the same title in Biographies and Jesus: What does it mean for the Gospels to be Biographies?, ed. Craig S. Keener and Edward T. Wright (Lexington: Emeth Press, 2016), 47– 57, here 52. 3 Ian Markham, “Richard Burridge’s Achievement,” First Things (2014): 22–24, here 24. 4 Richard A. Burridge, What are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, SNTSMS 70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992; paperback, 1995). 5 “This book may produce a sea-change in the problem of the genre of the Gospels. Whether it produces a sea-change in contemporary interpretations of the Gospels remains to

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since it was first published, and the biographical hypothesis had now become accepted as the new scholarly consensus, as the above quotation from S. Walton’s review article makes clear. However, in literary and theological studies, no less than in the wider humanities, or indeed in the sciences, the proof of a hypothesis is not only when other scholars repeat or agree with the original research, but more importantly, when it begins to be assumed and taken for granted to be used as a basis for further profitable lines of new research, as suggested by Markham’s quotation above. This addresses C. Tuckett’s second point, about whether this work would produce “a sea-change in contemporary interpretations of the Gospels.”6 This paper builds upon the second edition’s review of the 1990s7 by looking particularly at new research and publications which have appeared since 2000, both significant commentaries on Matthew’s Gospel which have been published in the last two decades, but also several areas where the biographical hypothesis has had a significant impact, namely, the social setting and audience of the Gospels for specific communities or “all Christians,” the interest in the biographical genre among Roman Catholic biblical scholars, the relationship of ancient biography with historiography, and finally, some new avenues of research about the interpretation of the Gospels, both theological and historical.

A. The Literary Theory of Genre First however, we must note that our account of the literary theory of genres continues to have significant implications for Gospel studies, which some scholars have appreciated and utilized well, while others still fail to take this into account – particularly with regard to the distinction between genres (as represented by nouns, biography, history, tragedy, etc.) and the level of modes (as adjectives, such as tragic, biographical and so forth), as well as our discussion of A. Fowler’s model of genres’ origins, life, development, and death or transmogrification into other, newer genres.8 Equally, it is important to stress that our research into the “family resemblance” between the Gospels and ancient bioi was based on a whole range of some nineteen different generic features that indicate a work’s genre, including both “external” features of form and structure as well as “internal” features of content.9 Given the more unusual be seen”; Christopher Tuckett, review of Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels?, Theology XCVI 769 (1993): 74–75. 6 Tuckett, Review of Burridge, What are the Gospels?, 74–75. 7 Ch. 11, pp. 252–307 in Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). 8 See particularly sections 3.C and 3.D, pp. 37–47, and pp. 239–43 in ibid. 9 See particularly ch. 5, pp. 105–23 in ibid.

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nature of one of our features, namely counting all the verbs to determine the subject, it is perhaps not surprising that this one attracted a lot of attention – but it remains crucial to remember that it is only one of nineteen features, and cannot determine genre on its own. I propose to illustrate the contemporary approach to literary theory of genres with reference to a recent important handbook and consider how this impacts popular literature and culture. I. Genre Theory – John Frow’s Handbook, 2005 / 2015 John Frow’s handbook, Genre, in the key “New Critical Idiom Series” was first published in 2005 and has recently been revised for its second edition (2015). It draws upon ancient authors like Plato and Aristotle, and goes through Goethe to modern theorists like Frye, Derrida, Genette, Todorov and Bakhtin; therefore, it may safely be taken as a reliable guide to current literary theory as both taught in the classroom and used by practitioners. Since genre affects everything, Frow seeks to explain “how genres organize verbal and non-verbal discourse … and how they contribute to the social structuring of meaning”; he is “not concerned with the question of how to classify or to recognize genres, and the book is neither a description nor an endorsement of existing classifications,” but “about how genres actively generate and shape knowledge of the world.”10 His treatment of “literary genre theory” in ch. 3 begins with taxonomies, but moves to more biological metaphors, such as family or species, in a historical survey from Plato and Aristotle through to today’s understandings of “poetics”; significantly Frow makes it clear that he distinguishes genres from modes, in “the ‘adjectival’ sense suggested by Fowler,” such as in “gothic thriller, pastoral elegy, satirical sitcom”; thus a “dramatic lyric” is very different from “lyrical drama.”11 Ch. 4, “Implication and Relevance,” maps out the various dimensions and explores how genres project “worlds,” before turning in ch. 5 to “Genre and Interpretation” through contrasting a Nigerian scam email with a proper business letter, followed by a professional gambler suddenly breaking into song accompanied by an unseen orchestra on an antiquated river steamer in the 1951 musical film, Showboat. Frow discusses how genres provide “cues” or “figures” for the interpretation of meaning as a “set of expectations that guide our engagement with texts”; crucially, he also notes that “any text addressed to an unknown audience may need to strengthen the cues”12 – and this is how we have used the “cues” of the various generic features shared between the Gospels and ancient lives to determine their genre as biography. Finally, 10 John Frow, Genre, The New Critical Idiom Series (New York/Abingdon: Routledge, 2005; 2nd ed. 2015); see p. ix for the series editor’s preface, and pp. 1–4 for the quotations from Frow. 11 Ibid., ch. 3, pp. 55–78, here 71. 12 Ibid., ch. 5, pp. 109–33, here 132.

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Frow looks at how “genres exist only in relation to other genres,” and yet are constantly changing, concluding with the emergence of new genres like the blog, email, and micro-blog.13 It is both reassuring and comforting that Frow’s much more recent handbook follows a very similar path to that which we originally mapped out in the first edition of our book – tracing genre theory from Plato to Russian formalists and French structuralists, noting that its functions shift from classification and taxonomy to a “set of expectations” to guide our reading, identifying terminology and levels like mode, genre and sub-genre, signaling a “family resemblance” through a range of generic features, outlining shifts and developments as genres change and grow, before finally coming to the use of genre in the interpretation and evaluation of texts.14 It is particularly important that Frow reaffirms Fowler’s two main contributions of the levels of mode, genre and subgenre and also his account of the “life and death of literary forms”15 – since both of these two aspects will be crucial in our analysis of Gospel commentaries and scholarship that will follow shortly. II. Genre in Popular Culture – Neil Gaiman, 2013 Secondly, we turn from the literary theorist to a practitioner with an enormous, popular appeal, namely, Neil Gaiman, famous for his many works of fiction in comic books (including writing for DC and Marvel Comics), plays, films, and especially novels written in the genres of science fiction and fantasy literature (such as American Gods [2001], and Stardust [1999], later made into a film [2007]), as well as producing the novel Good Omens with Sir Terry Pratchett (1990), not to mention writing episodes for BBC’s Doctor Who (2011 and 2013) and appearing as a cartoon version of himself in “The Book Job” episode of The Simpsons (2011). His collection, The View from the Cheap Seats, includes a lecture given at the thirty-fifth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in 2013, entitled “The Pornography of Genre, or the Genre of Pornography.”16 Given that Gaiman’s entire professional career has been writing in certain specific genres, his reflections are both fascinating and instructive as he admits that the “big thing that niggled at me was genre. I’m a genre writer, in the same way that this is a genre conference, and that only gets sticky

13

Ibid., ch. 6, pp. 134–67. See ch. 2, pp. 26–51 in Burridge, What are the Gospels. 15 Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 56–57 and 164–67; idem, “The Life and Death of Literary Forms,” in New Directions in Literary History, ed. Ralph Cohen (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), 83–88. 16 Neil Gaiman, “The Pornography of Genre, or the Genre of Pornography,” in his The View from the Cheap Seats (New York: HarperCollins, 2013), 39–48. 14

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or problematic in either case when one asks what the genre is, which leads us to a whole boatload of other questions.”17 He further observes that Life does not obey genre rules. It lurches easily or uneasily from soap opera to farce, office romance to medical drama to police procedural or pornography, sometimes within minutes … but then you have to ask yourself, what’s genre? It’s not subject matter. It’s not tone. Genre, it had always seemed to me, was a set of assumptions, a loose contract between the creator and the audience.18

This is congruent with all that we have noted about genre – that it is determined by a whole range of features which include both form and content, and cannot be decided by any one aspect like “content” or “tone” – while Gaiman’s phrase “a set of assumptions, a loose contract between the creator and the audience” echoes our original definition of a “shared set of expectations or contract, common to both author and reader.”19 He illustrates this by quoting Linda Williams’s comparison of porn films with musicals, where the plot exists to get you from song to song, and similarly with the different sexual scenarios in a porn movie: if you take them out – the songs from a musical, the sex acts from a porn film, the gunfights from a Western – then they no longer have the thing that the person came to see. The people who have come to that genre, looking for that thing, will feel cheated, feel they have not received their money’s worth.20

Gaiman confesses “and when I understood that, I understood so much more – it was as if a light had been turned on in my head.”21 The rest of the lecture notes that “subject matter does not make genre,” and goes on to examine how genre “privileges story,” before finally admitting, “but I suspect I’m at my most successful and ambitious and foolish and wise as a writer when I have no idea what sort of thing it is that I’m writing.”22 What Frow’s recent handbook – or for that matter, Fowler and all the literary theorists whom we first analyzed three decades ago – spelled out in theory, Gaiman is doing in practice, providing what his various readers and audiences have come to expect and want to receive from his different books, comics or films. Genre may only be a “tool” hanging in the literary or biblical critic’s garden shed – but it is very difficult to dig down deeply or to enable things to grow, develop, and blossom without such a tool. Thus, we can now proceed

17

Ibid., 43. Ibid. 19 Burridge, What Are the Gospels (2nd ed., 2004), 39. 20 Gaiman, “The Pornography of Genre,” 43–44, referring to Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the “Frenzy of the Visible” (Berkeley: University of California, 1989; expanded ed. 1999). 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 45–47. 18

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with our analysis of Gospel scholarship over the last couple of decades confident that both the original version of this book and all that has flowed from it over the years is resting on a secure literary and theoretical base about genre, which can also be found right across popular culture today.

B. Gospel Scholarship and Commentaries 2000–2018 Walton suggests that “given the wide acceptance of Burridge’s conclusions, it is worth considering commentaries on the Gospels since 1999, on the basis that a seven-year interval should give sufficient time for Burridge’s conclusions to permeate scholarship sufficiently to affect them.”23 So we shall consider major books and commentaries which have appeared on each Gospel in turn since around 2000, with particular regard to Matthew’s Gospel. I. Matthew’s Gospel 1. The Previous Consensus – W. D. Davies and Dale Allison The most important critical commentary on Matthew, the first part of Davies and Allison’s comprehensive three-volume ICC, was published in 1988 and quickly comes to a comment about the “exponents of ‘the New Criticism,’ socalled,” who think “genre becomes important.”24 Davies and Allison argue that Matthew is “an omnibus of genres … the multiplicity of genres in Matthew calls for flexibility in method and aim” and “if it be legitimate to use the literary term, ‘genre,’ for our canonical gospels – an uncertain issue – … from a classical point of view ‘gospel’ is not a literary genre.”25 This is typical of most major critical commentaries and scholarly approaches throughout much of the twentieth century from the days of Bultmann and the form critics onwards. 2. The Beginnings of Change – David Garland, Graham Stanton, and Warren Carter In our survey in 2004, we noted that things had begun to change with Garland’s Reading Matthew adapting my list of the purposes of ancient lives for Matthew,26 and Stanton’s acceptance that “the gospels are a type of Graeco-Roman 23

Walton, “What are the Gospels,” 86–87 and 88; later reprinted in Biographies and Jesus, 52 and 54. 24 W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 1, Introduction and Commentary on Matthew I– VII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 2. 25 Ibid., 3, 4. 26 Cf. David E. Garland, Reading Matthew: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the First Gospel (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2001).

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biography.”27 Stanton’s untimely death in 2009 sadly prevented any further research from him in this, or any other, area. However, Warren Carter’s provocative Matthew and the Margins does note that I had “persuasively” argued that the Gospels are bioi, which he then develops for his stress on both the person of Jesus and the “community of disciples” around him.28 3. Change of Consensus – Craig S. Keener, 1997, 1999, 2009 Keener’s first commentary (1997) on Matthew was (one of, if not the) the first to include a section on “Matthew as Biography” early in his introduction, noting that this was how it was understood through most of history up to 1915, and then citing C. Talbert, D. Aune, G. Stanton and myself as the “current trend … again to recognize the Gospels as ancient biography.”29 A couple of years later, Keener’s larger commentary quickly comes to a whole section on “Matthew as Biography” in which he states that “the most complete statement of the question to date comes from … Richard A. Burridge.”30 Keener continues to refer to my work throughout both the rest of the introduction and at various places in the commentary itself, not only to the 1992 original edition of my book, but also citing Four Gospels, One Jesus? (1994) and my contribution on Gospel audiences in Gospels for All Christians (1998).31 Keener’s Commentary was then republished as a new edition in 2009 with the addition of an extended discussion of “Matthew and Graeco-Roman Rhetoric.”32 The first page of his new preface states that the importance of the genres of ancient biography and histories are “widely argued today, but see most influentially Richard A. Burridge”33 – thereby demonstrating the shift in scholarly consensus which had taken place over that first decade of the twenty-first century.

27 Graham N. Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), 64. 28 Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2000), 8. 29 Craig S. Keener, Matthew (Downers Grove/Leicester: InterVarsity, 1997), 24–26. 30 Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), 1 and 16–24; quotation from 17. 31 Cf. Richard A. Burridge, Four Gospels, One Jesus?: A Symbolic Reading (London: SPCK, 1994); idem, “About People, for People, by People: Gospel Genre and Gospel Audience,” in Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences, ed. Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 113–46. 32 Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), xxv–l. 33 Ibid., viii and n. 1.

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4. Change of Consensus Accepted – Ben Witherington III Witherington’s Smyth & Helwys commentary may have been the first actually to devote a section to “Genre” in his introduction, openings with “readers, throughout much of church history, have understood Matthew’s Gospel to be some sort of biography,” to which he adds a footnote referencing the original 1992 version of my book.34 He describes how ancient biography differs from modern concepts, and how Matthew is distinguished from rabbinic and Qumran literature by his interest not only in God, but in the human story of Jesus. He also quotes Plutarch’s distinction between ἱστορία and βίος in his prologue to the Alexander (I.1–3),35 and then applies this to Matthew’s portrait of Jesus. Finally, he agrees with Keener, who “rightly in my judgement, concludes that Matthew’s Gospel should be considered an ancient biography.”36 Later in the commentary, Witherington states that “this entire Gospel is following the genre of biography, which more often than not included stories about the hero’s origins and birth.”37 5. Change of Consensus Resisted – Ulrich Luz Luz’ large and comprehensive commentary went through almost as many versions as some scholarly reconstructions of the Gospel of Matthew itself: the first volumes in German appeared in the late 1980s, followed by some English translations, while the definitive fifth edition in German (reworked in 1998– 2000) appeared in 2002, to be later translated into English for the Hermeneia series in 2007.38 In the first edition, a short section on “genre” begins by asking, “what is the genre of the Gospel of Matthew? Certainly, it had to remind the Jewish-Christian readers first of all of a Hellenistic βίος,” with a footnote stating that “the relationship of the Gospels to ‘biography’ is today very controversial.”39 Seventeen years later in the fifth edition, Luz has a longer section on “genre and intention of the gospel,” which begins by stating that “the discussion about the genre of the Gospel of Matthew has not yet led to a consensus,” but after a brief consideration of proposals about the Gospel being sui 34 Ben Witherington III, Matthew, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2006), 11–13. 35 See my original discussion on Plutarch in What are the Gospels, 60–62. 36 Witherington, Matthew, 13. 37 Ibid., 53. 38 Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: 1. Teilband, Mt 1–7, 5th ed., EKK I/1 (Düsseldorf: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2002); ET Matthew 1–7: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007). 39 Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary, trans. Wilhelm C. Linss (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1989; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 44 and n. 43, his italics, also in German: “die Verhältnis der Evangelien zur ‘Biographie’ ist heute sehr umstritten,” Luz, Matthew, 1:27 n. 43.

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generis, logia, and lectionary, he does admit that “the most widespread view today is that the Gospel of Matthew is a biography,” referencing the 1992 original edition of my book.40 This is further evidence of the shift in the scholarly consensus about the Gospels as biography, which has come about in response to my work and that of others. Luz repeats his view in an essay originally published as a birthday greeting for Frans Neirynck in 1993 on fictionality in Matthew, where he argues that “Matthew has no developed awareness of genre distinctions” and “gives no evidence of knowing Hellenistic historiography, tragedies, biographies or novels”; he concludes, “in answer to the ‘genre’ question we can say that his concern is to write a new Gospel of Mark for his community, supplemented by Jesus’ teaching” with a footnote stating “from the Matthean perspective, the early church was fully justified in entitling the Matthean story ‘εὐαγγέλιον’ and not ‘βίος.’”41 Equally, in a later essay, he is still arguing that “in terms of genre, I find Matthew’s Gospel closely related to Jewish books. … We have to place Matthew’s Gospel in this tradition, rather than in the Hellenistic tradition of biography or history.”42 6. Further Traditional Assumptions – R. T. France, David Turner, and Craig Evans Something similar can be seen in France’s NICNT Commentary, which, although published in 2007, refers to his earlier thinking and scholarship in his 1989 treatment of Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher: “I do not intend to argue again here the traditional issues of authorship, provenance, date, and sources which would normally be found in a commentary introduction,” preferring to refer readers to his earlier work.43 Therefore, there is no reference to any of the more recent debate about Gospel genre or biography. On the other hand, Turner’s BECNT Commentary, published the following year (2008) devotes a little over a page of his introduction to “Gospel Genre: The Question of History and Theology,” noting that “some scholars argue that the Gospels are examples of the ancient genre of laudatory biography or encomium,” referencing Shuler 40 Luz, Matthew, 1:13–18, here 13–14; German original, “Heute am verbreitetsten ist die Bestimmung des Mt-Evangeliums als Biographie” (Luz, Matthäus, 1:40). 41 Ulrich Luz, “Fictionality and Loyalty to Tradition in Matthew’s Gospel in the Light of Greek Literature,” in his collection Studies in Matthew, trans. Rosemary Selle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 54–79, here 77 and 79. 42 Ulrich Luz, “The Gospel of Matthew: A New Story of Jesus, or a Rewritten One?” in Studies in Matthew, trans. Rosemary Selle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 18–36, here 30–31. 43 R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 1–22, here 14; see also idem, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher (Exeter: Paternoster, 1989).

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and Talbert.44 Nevertheless, footnoting myself, Frickenschmidt, Guelich, Nolland, Shuler, and Stanton, Turner concludes, be that as it may, most if not all would agree that the Gospels are not comprehensive biographies or exhaustive histories of Jesus. … The Gospels continue to teach the church by narrating the reliable words and deeds of Jesus. The Gospel authors faithfully present story and history and creatively interpret history as story.45

Perhaps more surprising is the complete lack of any reference to genre or biography in Craig Evans’s 2012 Cambridge commentary.46 7. Change of Consensus Assumed – Scot McKnight After these instances of the new consensus not being taken into account, we turn finally to a collection of essays in honor of Graham Stanton that do reflect the change of consensus. In my biographical analysis of Stanton’s own career as a five-fold chiasm reflecting Matthew’s five discourses, I noted that all Stanton’s major book titles contained one or other of the words “Jesus” and “Gospel,” and in at least two cases, both!47 Scot McKnight entitles his own contribution, “Matthew as ‘Gospel’”;48 in this essay he pondered upon Stanton’s interest in both the way Paul understood the “gospel” as well as the documents which bear that name, but added: “I also want to tap into another issue that has shaped deep concerns in Graham’s career: the gospel genre question.”49 McKnight argues that Stanton’s own doctoral work in his 1974 SNTS monograph “paved the way for the later turn to βίοι, biographies, to comprehend accurately the genre question, and one thus thinks of the now established conclusions of Richard Burridge.”50 After a study of Paul and gospel, McKnight turns to Matthew and begins, “I agree with Richard Burridge and many others: the gospels are βίοι” and then concludes, “I am not arguing that Matthew’s Gospel is actually ‘gospel genre’ as if the βίος theory at work today is mistaken. I am happy to call Matthew a βίος instead of an εὐαγγέλιον. … [B]ecause it

44

David L. Turner, Matthew, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), ix. Ibid., 4–5 and n3. 46 Craig A. Evans, Matthew (Cambridge University Press, 2012). 47 Richard A. Burridge, “The Gospel of Jesus,” in Jesus, Matthew’s Gospel and Early Christianity: Studies in Memory of Graham N. Stanton, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner, Joel Willitts, and Richard A. Burridge, LNTS 435 (London: T&T Clark, 2011 ), 5–22; see especially p. 21. 48 Scot McKnight, “Matthew as ‘Gospel,’” in Jesus, Matthew’s Gospel and Early Christianity: Studies in Memory of Graham N. Stanton, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner, Joel Willitts, and Richard A. Burridge, LNTS 435 (London: T&T Clark, 2011 ), 59–75, here 60–61. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., 61. 45

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tells a saving story about Jesus as Messiah, gospels whether it is a gospel genre or not.”51 Thus, this survey of Matthean scholarship has shown how commentaries have moved from not considering genre at all in their introductions in the midlate twentieth century, before my original edition was published, to debating and discussing it around the time of the second edition, and now the biographical hypothesis has not only become accepted but increasingly assumed and used for further research. II. Mark’s Gospel A comparable survey of Markan scholarship and commentaries over the last couple of decades demonstrates a similar pattern to that found with Matthew, namely, that it begins with older more established scholars like Joel Marcus52 and Adela Yarbro Collins53 either reaffirming the old consensus about uniqueness or arguing for historiography, while others like Ben Witherington III,54 William Telford,55 Adam Winn, 56 Clifton Black,57 Xabier Pikaza,58 Camille Focant,59 and Darrell Bock60 quickly began to accept the biographical hypothesis through the first decade of this century, so that younger scholars are now taking it for granted in new avenues for research, despite the attempt by Becker’s massive project over fifteen years to argue for “a person-centered” historiography. 61 51

Ibid., 67 and 74, his italics. Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 27 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 64–69. 53 Adela Yarbro Collins, Is Mark’s Gospel a Life of Jesus? The Question of Genre, Père Marquette Lecture (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1990); compare ch. 1 with the same title in idem, The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 1–38; idem, “Genre and the Gospels,” JR 75 (1995): 239–46; idem, Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 15–43; compare section about my work (What Are the Gospels [2nd ed. 2004], 27–30) with Collins’s article in JR. 54 Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 3. 55 William R. Telford, Writing on the Gospel of Mark (Blandford Forum: Deo, 2009), 9 56 Adam Winn, Mark and the Elijah-Elisha Narrative: Considering the Practice of Greco-Roman Imitation in the Search for Markan Source Material (Eugene: Pickwick, 2010), 61–65, here 62 and 63. 57 C. Clifton Black, Mark (Nashville: Abingdon, 2011), 33–34. 58 Xabier Pikaza, Evangelio de Marcos: La Buena Noticia de Jésus (Navarra: Editorial Verbo Divino, 2012), 117–19, here 118. 59 Camille Focant, The Gospel According to Mark: A Commentary (Eugene: Pickwick, 2013), 1–2 – though it is worth noting that it was originally published in French in 2004. 60 Darrell Bock, Mark, NCBN (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 37. 61 Eve-Marie Becker, Das Markus-Evangelium im Rahmen antiker Historiographie, WUNT 194 (Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 22–23 and 43; similarly, see also idem, “The 52

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III. Luke’s Gospel As with Matthew and Mark, commentaries on Luke from the first years of the new millennium, particularly from older, more traditional scholars like F. Bovon’s Hermeneia (2002),62 continued with the former “unique” genre of “Gospel.” However, while this view was debated over the next few years by younger and newer Matthean and Markan scholars, it seems to have taken Lukan commentators longer to come to terms with the shifting consensus across Gospel scholarship as a whole.63 One possible reason for this may be the debate around whether Luke’s genre can be determined separately from that of Acts, which we shall come to below. On the whole, however, Walton’s summary is surely correct: “there is still room for good commentating (perhaps particularly on Luke) which takes the biographical nature of the Gospels seriously, and which works out the agenda set by Burridge’s research at every level of the exegesis of the text.”64 IV. John’s Gospel Unlike the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and especially Luke, the biographical genre of John’s Gospel quickly became the new scholarly consensus at the start of the new millennium, led especially by the work of A. Lincoln,65 C. Keener,66 R. Bauckham,67 and W. Carter.68 This was then taken up by younger scholars

Gospel of Mark in the Context of Ancient Historiography,” in The Function of Ancient Historiography in Biblical and Cognate Studies, ed. Patricia Kirkpatrick and Timothy D. Goltz. (New York/London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2008), 124–34; idem, The Birth of Christian History: Memory and Time from Mark to Luke-Acts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018). 62 Francois Bovon, Luke, 3 vols., Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002–2012), 1:5–6. 63 Cf. e.g., Mikeal Parsons, Luke, Paideia (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015), 13–19. 64 Walton, “What are the Gospels,” 90. 65 Andrew T. Lincoln, Truth on Trial: The Lawsuit Motif in the Fourth Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 169–71, here 170 and n46. 66 Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, 2 vols. (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2003); see ch. 1, pp. 3–52; see also pp. 108, 140, 153, 216, 275, 280, 338, 429, 634, 649, 712, 833, 859, 1069. 67 Richard Bauckham, The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), “Introduction: Genre,” 16–21; ch. 4, pp. 93–112, is a revised version of his article in NTS 53 (2007): 17– 36; the chapter is an updated version of his contribution to Jesus in Johannine Tradition, ed. R. T. Fortna and T. Thatcher (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 101–11. 68 Warren Carter, John: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist (Peabody: Baker Academic, 2006), 3–20; idem, John and Empire: Initial Explorations (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 123– 43, here 140, and see references to Burridge’s “fine discussion” in notes 4, 5, 10, 26, 29, 30, 33, 34, 36, 39, 41, 42, 46, and 47 on pp. 141–43.

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who assumed John’s biographical genre as a starting point for their further research; see, for example, Edward Klink,69 and Kasper Bro Larsen’s conference on “The Gospel of John as Genre Mosaic” at Aarhus University in Denmark, June 23–26, 2014.70 The main attempt to restate the former form-critical consensus has been led by Ashton, 71 but better attention to genre theory shows that his designation of “apocalyptic” would be modal at best, while John’s actual genre remains that of ancient biography. V. Conclusion Summing up this survey of the last two decades of Gospel scholarship with regard to all four Gospels, a tendency consisting of three phases can be noted: first, the restatement of traditional views in the early years of the millennium by some scholars (e.g., Luz, Collins, Bovon, Ashton); second, increasing acceptance by other major scholars further into the first decade of the new century (e.g., Stanton, Witherington, Keener, Carter, Bauckham, Parsons, Lincoln, etc.); thirdly, this was followed by the younger generation of recent PhD and junior scholars who had always assumed the biographical consensus, and therefore use it as a base line to develop new lines of research. This pattern can be seen especially in Matthew and Mark, but perhaps less so in Luke where more traditional views have held sway longer, while the huge outpourings about the genre of John demonstrates how the early acceptance of the biographical hypothesis has led to profitable further research.

C. Other Areas of Gospel Scholarship This paper has concentrated on the large numbers of commentaries on Matthew since the millennium which have discussed the biographical genre of the Gospels, mostly with very positive results. We now turn, rather more briefly, to other areas of Gospel scholarship where the biographical hypothesis is not only increasingly assumed, but also producing new avenues of research, particularly with regard to Matthew’s Gospel.

69

Edward W. Klink III, The Sheep of the Fold: The Audience and Origin of the Gospel of John, SNTSMS 141 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 107–51, here 111. 70 Kasper Bro Larsen, The Gospel of John as Genre Mosaic (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015). 71 See John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), esp. 307–20; idem, “Intimations of Apocalyptic: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” in John’s Gospel and Intimations of Apocalyptic, ed. Catrin H. Williams and Christopher Rowland (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 3–35.

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I. Gospel Genre and Audience 1. Richard Bauckham and “The Gospels for All Christians,” 1998–2005 The biographical hypothesis also sparked the debate about the Gospels’ social setting and their audience, initially through Richard Bauckham’s provocative lecture at the 1995 British New Testament Conference in Bangor, arguing that the theories about Gospel being written for specific communities, for example, the so-called “Matthean Community,” which were hermetically – or even hermeneutically – sealed from one another rested upon a genre mistake of treating the Gospels as though they were letters to specific churches.72 The ensuing book of essays from various scholars used the biographical hypothesis to examine the Gospel audiences rather than specific “communities” also raised issues about the Gospels’ social context and function, as well as the setting of their production, delivery, and publication. It also stimulated sharp responses from Philip Esler and David Sim73 and led to a fascinating session at the SBL in Atlanta November 2003, 74 at which Margaret Mitchell used patristic evidence to argue that the Gospels were associated with different audiences, if not communities.75 2. Edward Klink, Cedric Vine, and the Audience of the Gospels, 2005–2014 This debate has continued to produce more new work, especially Klink’s collection of essays on The Audience of the Gospels, including most notably Bauckham’s response to Mitchell’s paper about the patristic evidence.76 In this essay, Bauckham clarifies that his critique is directed at the claim that the Gospels were written within and for specific communities and are to be interpreted through the reconstruction of those Johannine or Matthean “communities.” He does not deny that the Gospels were written within early Christian churches, as the early Fathers recognize, but that this “original, specific, localized audience

72 Richard Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 27–30; see esp. p. 28 n. 31. 73 See Philip Esler, “Community and Gospel in Early Christianity: A Response to Richard Bauckham’s Gospels for All Christians,” SJT 51 (1998): 235–48, and Richard Bauckham’s “Response to Philip Esler,” SJT 51 (1998): 249–53; David C. Sim, “The Gospels for All Christians? A Response to Richard Bauckham,” JSNT 84 (2001): 3–27. 74 Society of Biblical Literature, Session S22–118 on “Gospels for All Christians?” (Atlanta: SBL, November 22, 2003). 75 Subsequently published by Margaret Mitchell, “Patristic Counter-Evidence to the Claim that ‘The Gospels Were Written for all Christians,’” NTS 51 (2005): 36–79. 76 Edward W. Klink III, ed., The Audience of the Gospels: The Origin and Function of the Gospels in Early Christianity, LNTS 353 (London: T&T Clark, 2010), containing inter alia, Richard Bauckham, “Is there Patristic Counter-Evidence? A Response to Margaret Mitchell,” 68–110.

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would not be hermeneutically relevant.”77 He then gives an extensive analysis of Mitchell’s “counter-evidence,” looking at Clement and Mark, Papias, and Matthew, and other patristic exegesis of the Gospels to restate his basic argument that the Gospels “are not the sort of literature that deals with the specific issues of a localized audience in the way that, for example, 1 Corinthians does.”78 Klink completed his doctoral research under Bauckham at St Andrew’s on the audience of the Fourth Gospel in 2005,79 but his introductory essay here traces the wider debate about the genre of the Gospels and their original audiences from the initial reactions by scholars like Esler and Sim to its application to Pauline Letters by David Horrell.80 A conclusion summarizes all the essays and indicating possible lines for further research. Vine’s monograph about the audience of Matthew summarizes Bauckham’s argument and the other contributions to The Gospels for All Christians, noting that “the Gospels’ genre is deemed to be that of Graeco-Roman bios and as such they would have been intended for a wider audience,” but “defining genre does not equate to establishing authorial intention.”81 However, Vine puts all discussion of genre aside, and prefers instead to discuss characterization and plot, the role of Peter, orality and performance, and assumptions about the heterogeneity of Gospel audiences; he ends with several “fruitful avenues for further investigation,” such as audience dynamics and how they function, the open nature of the Matthean Jesus’s teachings, the nature of discipleship, and investigation into “reconstructing plausible reception scenarios” of the Gospels,82 all of which require attention to genre. 3. Justin Marc Smith and “Why Βίος?,” 2015 Justin Marc Smith’s contribution to Klink’s collection about the implications of the biographical hypothesis for the Gospels’ audiences is further developed in his revised version of his PhD, originally begun under Bauckham at St Andrew’s.83 His discussion of genres and sub-genres with regard to the typologies 77

Bauckham, “Is there Patristic Counter-Evidence?” 69, his emphasis. Ibid., 109. 79 Klink III, The Sheep of the Fold. 80 Originally given as “The Letters to all Christians? Were there Pauline Churches?,” keynote at the British New Testament Conference, Liverpool, September 2005; subsequently revised as “Pauline Churches or Early Christian Churches? Unity, Disagreement, and the Eucharist,” in Einheit der Kirche im Neuen Testament, ed. Anatoly A. Alexeev, Christos Karakolis, Ulrich Luz, and Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, WUNT 218 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2008), 185–203. 81 Cedric E. W. Vine, The Audience of Matthew: An Appraisal of the Local Audience Thesis, LNTS 496 (London: T&T Clark, 2014), quotations from pp. 5 and 8. 82 Ibid., 204–07. 83 Justin Marc Smith, Why Βίος? On the Relationship Between Gospel Genre and Implied Audiences, LNTS 518 (London: T&T Clark, 2015). 78

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of ancient biography leads him to put forward a new four-fold typology based on the author’s relationship to their subject (contemporary or non-contemporary?) and to their audience (open or focused), suggesting that the Gospels are examples of contemporary-focused biographies. This is followed by an analysis of the patristic evidence about Gospel audiences, and a comparison with the non-canonical Gospels, before Smith concludes that “the genre of ancient biography was the genre best suited to imparting the words and deeds of Jesus to the widest possible audience.”84 Thus in 2004, I suggested that the biographical hypothesis was leading to interesting debates about the supposed communities for which the Gospels were written, and the beginning of a greater emphasis on their audiences; the decade and a half since has borne this out with continuing discussion and lots of possibilities for further research and scholarship, which shows no sign of abating any time soon. II. Roman Catholic Reactions Given the primacy accorded to Matthew’s Gospel in the Roman Catholic tradition, it is interesting that one of the first reviews of my work appeared in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly (1993), where Jerome Neyrey described it as “an immensely learned volume … a superb survey of the topic, but also breaks new ground in its nuanced reading of ancient texts and its literary model.”85 This appreciation became a harbinger for what was to follow. 1. Italian Translation and Barcelona Conference, 2012 An Italian translation of the second edition appeared within a few years,86 but its significance only became apparent when a Symposium on “Jesus Tradition and the Gospels” was held to mark and celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first publication at the Theological Faculty of Catalonia in Barcelona in 2012. Organized and hosted by the Revd Professor Armand Puig i Tàrrech, it featured a range of scholars from across Europe, including an opening keynote on “Biography as the Gospels’ Literary Genre” from myself,87 while other contributors included Samuel Byrskog (from Lund), Santiago Guijarro Oporto (Salamanca), Christian Grappe (Strasbourg), Thomas Söding (Bochum), and

84

Ibid., 212. Jerome H. Neyrey, review of Richard A. Burridge, What are the Gospels?, CBQ 55 (1993): 361–63. 86 Richard A. Burridge, Che cosa sono i vangeli? Studio comparativo con la biografia greco-romana, Introduzione allo studio della Bibbia, Supplementi 37, trans. Francesco de Nicola (Brescia: Paideia Editrice, 2008). 87 Richard A. Burridge, “‘Biography as the Gospels’ Literary Genre,” Revista Catalana de Teologia 38 (2013): 9–30. 85

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our hosts in Barcelona, including Agustí Borrell, Begonya Palau, and of course Armand Puig i Tàrrech himself on the parables.88 The ensuing discussions proved most interesting and stimulated our desire to continue this work on the biographical genre of the Gospels. 2. The Ratzinger Prize and Conference, 2013 However, I was completely unprepared when I was asked if I would accept the Joseph Ratzinger Prize in 2013 from Pope Francis at the Vatican later that autumn. It was preceded by a three-day conference organized by the Joseph Ratzinger Foundation, which took place in the Pontifical Lateran University and in the Vatican itself on the overall topic of “The Gospels: Historical and Christological Research.”89 In the keynote address on “Graeco-Roman Biographies and the Gospel Literary Genre,” I outlined the debate about Gospel genre, the arguments for the biographical hypothesis, and suggested some implications for further research. 90 However, I was particularly keen to set all of this material in the context of the work of the young Joseph Ratzinger as a peritus, a theological expert consultant, to Cardinal Frings of Cologne throughout the whole of Vatican II, and his later interest as Pope in and writing about Jesus and the Gospels, culminating in his three-volume biography of Jesus of Nazareth. At Vatican II, Ratzinger had worked primarily on Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on November 18th 1965.91 It is significant that most of the later 1969 commentary on Dei Verbum was written by Ratzinger himself,92 including a fascinating introduction about the various drafts (more than any reconstruction of the Synoptic

88

The rest of Revista Catalana de Teologia 38 contains the other papers from the confer-

ence. 89 All the conference papers are published in The Gospels: History and Christology: The Search of Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI, ed. Bernardo Estrada, Ermenegildo Manicardi, Armand Puig i Tàrrech, 2 vols. (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013); vol. 2 contains thirteen short papers produced alongside the main conference but not actually delivered in Rome. 90 Richard A. Burridge, “Graeco-Roman Biography and the Gospels’ Literary Genre,” in The Gospels: History and Christology: The Search of Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI, ed. Bernardo Estrada, Ermenegildo Manicardi, Armand Puig i Tàrrech (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013), 1:151–98. 91 See the official English translation on the Vatican website, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en. html. 92 Cf. Joseph Ratzinger, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (London: Burns & Oates/New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 3:155–272.

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Problem!) through which it went before reaching its final state, as Ratzinger’s commentary makes clear.93 After Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he convened the Synod of Bishops in October 2008, resulting in Verbum Domini (“the Word of the Lord”), the post-Synodal Exhortation on the Word of God (2010), the title paying homage to Vatican II’s Dei Verbum (“the Word of God”).94 Even before he became Pope, Ratzinger was writing his own account of Jesus of Nazareth during the summers of 2003 and 2004; following his election as Pope in 2005, he gave “every free moment” to working on it, publishing the first volume in September 2006 with the subtitle, “From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration.”95 In his foreword, Pope Benedict describes his purpose and his method, noting how difficult it was “when I was growing up” within the mainstream of German New Testament Scholarship with its stress on Form Criticism leading to the gap between the so-called “historical Jesus” on the one hand, and the “Christ of faith” on the other, and all the debates surrounding the relationship between the two. The result was that “the real object of faith – the figure of Jesus – became increasingly obscured and blurred” and “receded even further into the distance”; he lamented that “intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air.”96 Therefore, while the historical-critical method “is and remains an indispensable dimension of exegetical work,” we need to go beyond its limits to “a Christological hermeneutic which sees Jesus Christ as the key to the whole.”97 This echoes my conclusions to the first 1992 edition of my book that this biographical genre “has distinct hermeneutical implications for gospel studies, reaffirming the centrality of the person of Jesus of Nazareth.”98 The similarity of these two conclusions, each written without knowledge of the other, is striking. At the prize ceremony H. E. Cardinal Camillo Ruini stated in his citation that the award was because my “great contribution” had restored “the indissoluble connection, both historical and theological, between the gospels and Jesus of Nazareth” (“un grande contributo al riconoscimento, storico e teologico, del legame inscindibile dei Vangeli a Gesù di Nazaret”).99 In light of all formcritical influences over most of the twentieth century, it is understandable why 93

Ibid., 155–65. Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Word of God (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2010). 95 Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Image/Random House; London: Bloomsbury, 2007), xxiv. 96 Ibid., xi–xii. 97 Ibid., xv–xix. 98 The original conclusion to Burridge, What Are the Gospels (1992 ed.). 99 The speeches and citation were reproduced in L’Osservatore Romano, October 27, 2013, p. 5. 94

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it was seen as innovative, especially in the light of Ratzinger/Benedict’s lament about losing Jesus in “thin air.” A shorter, revised version of my keynote paper is included in the collection to mark Pope Benedict’s 90th birthday in 2017.100 Meanwhile, continuing work by Catholic scholars has built upon the biographical genre of the Gospels, especially a recent monograph from Jean-Noël Aletti, from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. At its heart is a substantial essay of just over 100 pages, “beginning with the necessity of showing that the genre of the Gospels is biographical, it will be possible to clarify and to resolve some enigmas and, let us hope, to make clear the literary and theological genius of these anonymous narrators who for a longtime [sic] have been thought to be storytellers without talent.”101 He discusses ancient biographies at the time of the Gospels, including reproducing my “genre map” of bios and its neighboring genres, and following our comparison with Philo, Plutarch, and Suetonius, before turning to examine Mark, Matthew, and Luke in turn. He notes that “the findings of Burridge’s monograph, mentioned several times in the preceding chapter, have possibly had the most influence on the research and have furthered a new paradigm.”102 Aletti’s particular contribution is to examine the “decisive role” played by the anagnorisis, or “recognition” of Jesus, particularly as Matthew and Luke take Mark’s narrative and make it more biographical through the infancy and passion/resurrection narratives, drawing on Old Testament biblical models. Thus, over the last twenty-five years from Neyrey’s early review through the Ratzinger Prize to the most recent offering from Aletti, it is clear that Roman Catholic biblical scholarship has been grappling with the implications of the biographical hypothesis, particularly with regard to Matthew and also their specific christological concerns, both in reaction to the earlier impact of formcritical views, and also pursuing the development of top level academic and critical research in response to the work of Vatican II.

D. Further Implications for New Research At the end of this survey of scholarship about the genre of the Gospels, we look ahead briefly at what several scholars have described as “new avenues” for research arising from the implications of the biographical hypothesis.

100 Richard A. Burridge, “Biographies of Jesus: Joseph Ratzinger and the Gospels,” in Cooperatores Veritatis: Tributes to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI on his 90th Birthday, eds Pierluca Azzaro and Federico Lombardi (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2017), 47–88. 101 Aletti, The Birth of the Gospels as Biographies. 102 Ibid., 25; genre map reproduced on p. 12.

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I. Gospel Genre and Theology, 2012–2016 1. Ian Markham, “First Things,” and Future Research The prestigious north American Catholic journal First Things asked not a biblical scholar, but a theologian and ethicist, Ian Markham, an Episcopal priest and dean and president of Virginia Theological Seminary, to explain “Richard Burridge’s Achievement” in being awarded the Ratzinger Prize for their readership.103 Markham began by outlining the previous form-critical “unique” consensus, and its impact on Pope Benedict as noted in the introduction to his biography of Jesus, before summarizing my “groundbreaking book,” which set out the biographical argument “with precision and overwhelming evidence.” He then went on to “unpacking the implications of reading the gospels as Greco-Roman biographies” as demonstrated in Four Gospels, One Jesus?, followed by the “even more remarkable and interesting” Imitating Jesus. Markham argues that “New Testament scholars and theologians alike are working hard now to absorb Burridge’s insights,” particularly those in dogmatic theology. Markham made this same point in academic detail in the SBL 2009 panel on Imitating Jesus: “Burridge is right, genre is the key, but what he overlooks is that it is not simply a literary key, but a theological key.”104 Finally, he returned to this theme with his conclusion in First Things, noting that “Richard Burridge has set an agenda that will provide decades of work for biblical scholars, historians, and practical theologians.”105 Can this conclusion be borne out by the recent work of other scholars? 2. “Reading Wisely” with Jonathan Pennington (2012) Another of Bauckham’s PhD students, Jonathan Pennington, attempts to elucidate the theological implications of the biographical genre of the Gospels in his book, Reading the Gospels Wisely. The first part, “Clearing Ground, Digging Deep, and Laying a Good Foundation” discusses the literary nature and genre of the Gospels, beginning with a brief summary of literary genre theory, reflecting our approach through a range of generic features and conventions to provide a “family resemblance,” but in a way which is flexible and overlaps with other neighboring genres, before going on to outline the debate about the

103

Ian Markham, “Richard Burridge’s Achievement,” 22–24. Ian Markham, Panel on “Imitating Jesus” (delivered at the annual meeting of the SBL in New Orleans, LA, Nov 21–24, 2009). 105 Markham, “Richard Burridge’s Achievement,” First Things, 24. 104

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Gospels as bioi, or Greek biographies, in which he says, “for the following discussion I rely on the analysis of Burridge’s What are the Gospels?”106 However, he wants to go further, what he terms “Bioi plus – towards a more comprehensive understanding of the Gospels,” especially their “virtue-forming purpose” and other implications.107 Therefore, he analyses why we need four different Gospels, where he again draws upon my work, especially the use of the four traditional symbols of the evangelists, the lion, ox, eagle, and human face.108 The second part of the book develops a narrative approach to the Gospels as stories, and its hermeneutical challenges, before coming in part 3 to the theological implications for reading the four Gospels wisely in “applying and teaching the gospels,” thus guiding our worship and preaching, where he concludes finally that the Gospels are the “archway of the canon,” using the image of the keystone. I welcome both his acceptance of the biographical genre of the Gospels and his attempt to develop further the theological implications, particularly pastorally for our worship, teaching and preaching, and understanding of discipleship. 3. Andrew Lincoln and the Virgin Birth (2013) Another example of the impact of the biographical hypothesis upon theological reflection with particular regard to Matthew’s Gospel is seen in Andrew Lincoln’s work on the virgin birth and the infancy narratives, Born of a Virgin? In ch. 3 (“What are the infancy narratives?”) he argues for the parallels between these stories in Matthew and Luke and similar stories in ancient biographies. Lincoln begins his discussion by making it clear that, while the Gospels have a distinctive “good news” influenced by the Jewish Scriptures, “the consensus view about the canonical Gospels as a whole is that … they find their closest literary analogy in the genre of ancient biography.”109 After a discussion of their various generic similarities, Lincoln concentrates on “what readers would have expected ancient biographies to relate about their subjects’ beginnings,” comparing it to what we say about the “topics of ancestry, birth, boyhood and education in the Synoptics.”110 After stories about Romulus and Remus, Augustus, Plato, Apollonius, Theseus, Cicero, and Alexander, Lincoln concludes that “major elements in the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke bear a remarkable resemblance to what 106

Jonathan T. Pennington, Reading the Gospels Wisely: A Narrative and Theological Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), esp. ch. 2, “What Are the Gospels? Understanding the ‘Gospel’ genre,” 18–35; quotation from p. 22 n. 7. 107 Ibid., 25. 108 Ibid., 70–71 and notes 40 and 43. 109 Andrew T. Lincoln, Born of a Virgin?: Reconceiving Jesus in the Bible, Tradition, and Theology (London: SPCK; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 57–58; see also n. 7. 110 Ibid., 60 n. 10.

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is to be found in Graeco-Roman biographies,” and he stresses that this is not about a “history of religions” approach, but rather “it is primarily a literary point about genre and its implications.”111 This is therefore a good example where our work on the biographical genre of the Gospels has not just impacted another biblical scholar’s approach to the Gospels, but also the stress on genre has led him into other areas of dogmatics and systematic theology, which we never envisaged. II. Gospel Genre and Historical Research, 2016 – And beyond! 1. Michael Licona and Plutarch’s Lives (2017) After these theological implications, Michael Licona also sets out to discover “what we can learn from ancient biography” – but in particular how it might apply to the differences between the various accounts in the Gospels of the same or similar events and sayings. Licona quickly turns to “the Gospels as biography,” where he describes the original research behind my work, which he describes as “the definitive treatment on the subject,” and continues by noting that “today a growing majority of scholars regard the Gospels as GrecoRoman biography.”112 He then outlines the main features which the Gospels have in common with Graeco-Roman biography, compared with the absence of Jewish biographies of sages. Thus, the biographical hypothesis in general, and my work in particular, provide the foundation for all Licona’s work which follows; afterwards, his conclusion begins by again noting that “by the beginning of the twenty-first century, a paradigm shift had occurred” as “the majority of New Testament scholars had embraced the view of Richard Burridge … that the Gospels belong to the genre of Greco-Roman biography.”113 As well as our work forming the platform undergirding Licona’s book, his main research grows out of an observation noted in the original version of my book, drawing upon the work of the classicist, Christopher Pelling, who first stimulated my interest in ancient biography as my undergraduate tutor at Oxford, and who then helped enormously with my subsequent doctoral research. In our initial survey of Graeco-Roman biography, we saw that, Pelling concluded that six of them [Plutarch’s Lives] were written together at the same time, drawing on the same sources and information: the Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, Cato Minor,

111

Ibid., 66. Michael R. Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?: What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography (Oxford University Press, 2017), 3. 113 Ibid., 197. 112

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Brutus and Antony. Any differences between them must be due to Plutarch’s literary methods, therefore, and so we can study how he went about his writing and how much licence he allowed himself.114

He undertakes a synoptic comparison of some thirty “pericopes,” from which he derives a list of Plutarch’s compositional techniques, such as concentrating with more detail on whoever is the subject of that particular Life, shining a “literary spotlight” on a character, conflating or compressing accounts, transferring actions or sayings from one character to another in a different Life, displacing events or sayings into a different time or place, redacting them with different syntax, wordings, numbers, or terms, paraphrasing the same or similar sayings in different ways, and so forth: “these were standard conventions for writing history and biography of that day and were practiced by virtually all.”115 He then analyses nineteen parallel pericopes from the Gospels (all of which include Matthew’s version) and he concludes that Matthew is using these techniques “more than the other evangelists”.116 Thus, this is a good example of a younger, new scholar not only agreeing with and assuming the biographical hypothesis, but also using it as the basis for further research into other questions, such as the historicity of the Gospel accounts, with both a pastoral concern for conservative readers anxious about the differences as well as an apologetic purpose aimed at dismissive critics.117 2. Craig Keener and Edward Wright’s “Biographies and Jesus” (2016) Similar assumptions and concerns lie behind a recent collection of essays on “Biographies and Jesus,” edited by Craig Keener and his assistant, Edward Wright, a collection of sixteen contributions of “groundbreaking research from a team of motivated, (mostly) young, and internationally diverse scholars drawn from the continents of Africa, Asia, Europe and North America,”118 many of whom are working on various implications of the biographical hypothesis with Keener and Wright at Asbury Theological Seminary. 114 See Burridge, What are the Gospels, 65–66, referring to two of Pelling’s key articles: C. B. R. Pelling, “Plutarch’s Method of Work in the Roman Lives,” JHS 99 (1979): 74–96; idem, “Plutarch’s Adaptation of His Source Material,” JHS 100 (1980): 127–40. 115 Licona, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels, ch. 3, “Parallel Pericopes in Plutarch’s Lives,” 22–111; quotations taken from his conclusions on pp. 109–10. 116 Ibid., 196. 117 Such apologetic purposes seem to occupy much of Licona’s time and ministerial activity; see, for example, the interview and debate which he conducted with me on the apologetic radio show, Unbelievable?, for Premier Christian Radio, London, broadcast on June 17th, 2017: https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes/Unbelievable-Why-are-there-differences-in-the-Gospels-Mike-Licona-RichardBuridge. 118 Craig S. Keener and Edward T. Wright, eds., Biographies and Jesus: What Does it Mean for the Gospels to be Biographies? (Lexington: Emeth Press, 2016), 1.

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It begins with a detailed Introduction from Keener himself and reprints Steve Walton’s paper about the impact of my work,119 followed by no less than fourteen other pieces, some from other published scholars, and some by Keener’s postgraduate students, all exploring the implications of the biographical theory for further research. The book concludes with an appendix from Keener himself on “memory and oral tradition.” In each case, all the Gospels are included, but Edward T Wright’s chapter on the “historical reliability” of the Gospels concludes with an interesting suggested list of possible sources which “would be a starting point for the comparative work” on the sources available for Matthew’s account of Jesus’s death.120 Both Licona and Keener have noted that comparing the Gospels with ancient biographies has implications for fundamentalists and sceptics alike. It is thus very interesting – and gratifying – to see younger scholars like these taking my arguments about the biographical hypothesis and developing them further with so much detailed study of other ancient biographies and the Gospels. 3. Craig Keener’s “Christobiography” (2019) Given all the references to, and use of my work already noted in various books and commentaries from Keener, it is no surprise that he has been working on a major new text specifically about what he terms “Christobiography.”121 Here Keener seeks to build upon his brief comments in his introduction and “Closing Words,” as well as his recent research in Biographies and Jesus. The same two extreme approaches are once again in his sights: “Traditional skeptical and fundamentalist approaches to the Gospels have generally committed the same error: judging the Gospels by standards foreign to their original genre. In this book I have sought to support a more historically sensitive approach.”122 Keener begins with an introduction where he examines “default expectations” about the Gospels, ancient biography, and history, where he notes that “Richard Burridge’s widely acclaimed 1992 Cambridge monograph … swiftly and successfully shifted the consensus of scholarship about the Gospels.”123 The first main part considers “Biographies about Jesus” in which he outlines

119 Steve Walton, “What are the Gospels,” 47–57; originally with the same title in CBR 14 (2015): 81–93. 120 Edward T. Wright, “An Initial Exploration of the Historical Reliability of Ancient Biographies,” in Biographies and Jesus: What Does it Mean for the Gospels to be Biographies?, ed. Craig S. Keener and Edward T. Wright (Lexington: Emeth Press, 2016), 236– 60. 121 Craig S. Keener, Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019). 122 Ibid., 497. 123 Ibid., 13.

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the debates that led to the current biographical consensus; the second part explores the vexed relationship between ancient biography and historiography. Part III tests the “range of deviation,” drawing on his detailed work on Tacitus’s, Suetonius’s and Plutarch’s accounts of Otho and Galba, and the analyzing the “flexible” use of literary techniques in ancient biographies, before Part IV considers the particular issues of miracles and a detailed study of the similarities and distinctiveness of John compared with the Synoptic Gospels. Finally, Part V discusses “memory studies,” before concluding with some reflections about how best to “reform” Form Criticism for today in light of recent studies of “traditional Middle Eastern memory,” particularly over a time period of around eighty years of “living memory.” Here also, Keener is dealing with all four Gospels, but it is worth noting that practically every chapter in Matthew appears at some point in his over 500 pages of detailed argument, which concludes with some “implications of this study.” Keener repeats his final conclusion from Biographies and Jesus to make it abundantly clear how important the presumption of the biographical hypothesis is for his work: I believe that my two most essential primary points are difficult to dispute: in the early empire, normal biographers writing about recent figures attempted to recount historical information (normally for edifying purposes); and biographers could exercise a degree of flexibility in how they recounted that information.124

He is, therefore, right to expect that the biographical genre of the Gospels will continue to provide rich resources for these debates in the years to come. 4. Helen Bond on Mark as Biographer (2020) Helen Bond has also produced a new book, also published by Eerdmans; originally intended to be about Mark’s Passion, it has subsequently expanded into a treatment of the whole of Mark as “the first biographer of Jesus.”125 As with Keener, she begins by taking the biographical hypothesis as her starting point but goes on to observe that “the practical results of the identification of the gospels as bioi – the payoff – seems disappointingly meagre. Certainly, it does not seem to have revolutionised gospel interpretation in the manner promised by those caught up in the heady debates of the 1980s.”126 Bond makes it abundantly clear that “my own view, in contrast, is that reading the gospels as ancient biographies makes a profound difference to the way that we interpret 124

Ibid., 499. Helen Bond, Mark: The First Biographer of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020); I am extremely grateful to Professor Bond for allowing me to see a draft of the unfinished manuscript of her new book; I am delighted to welcome its recent publication as a handsome volume indeed. 126 Ibid., 1–2. 125

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them.” This, then, is her main reason for writing her book, to explore the implications for reading Mark in the light of its biographical genre. While this book is not about Matthew’s Gospel, her conclusions follow the direction set by Lincoln, Pennington, Licona, and Keener in exploring some of the hermeneutical implications of the Gospels’ biographical genre. This final survey of the last five years or so began with Markham’s statement that “Richard Burridge has set an agenda that will provide decades of work for biblical scholars, historians, and practical theologians.”127 Despite what might have seemed a preposterous claim at first sight, this study has demonstrated some evidence that Markham could eventually be proved correct, as we have noted a variety of approaches which different scholars have adopted as a consequence of the biographical hypothesis, from Pennington’s “reading wisely” and Lincoln’s application of it to the debates about the virgin birth, through Keener and Licona’s concern for historical accuracy, to Bond’s attempt to read Mark as Jesus’s first biographer. On the other hand, we must also note that their biographical genre does not automatically answer all our questions about the Gospels, as emerges from the contrast between Licona and Keener on historicity compared with Bond’s similarly careful analysis. Clearly, we are only just getting started and there is still much to do – but Markham did suggest it would take decades!

E. Conclusion This paper at the start of our Conference on “The Gospel of Matthew in its Historical and Theological Context” has tried to summarize the main developments over the last two decades, which have turned out to be much larger than anticipated. We began with a relatively brief consideration of the theory of genre both from a literary critic’s handbook and from the perspective of a highly successful practitioner of “genre fiction,” which allowed us to assume that our theoretical undergirding and methodology still remains a firm foundation for all that has been built thereupon subsequently. We then embarked upon an analysis of Gospel commentaries published since 2000, with particular regard to commentaries and significant books on Matthew. While the former consensus about the Gospels as “unique” was particularly defended by some established scholars, others came quickly to accept the biographical hypothesis, which the next generation of younger scholars then proceeded to use as a base for further research into various implications. In addition, we have noted how the biographical hypothesis has been applied by Richard Bauckham to the question of the Gospel “communities,” leading to

127

Markham, “Richard Burridge’s Achievement,” 24.

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continuing debate, particularly between Bauckham himself and Margaret Mitchell, while new work by Klink and Smith has explored the ramifications of the biographical hypothesis for the Gospel audiences. We also sketched out some reactions and responses arising from within the Roman Catholic tradition, marked by the 2008 translation of the second edition of my book into Italian, and the conference to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the original publication in Barcelona in 2012, followed by the Ratzinger Prize in 2013 for establishing the “indissoluble connection between Jesus and the gospels,” and the accompanying conference, as well as continuing new research from Catholic scholars like Aletti. Finally, we attempted to summarize the most recent work being done especially on both the theological and historical implications of the biographical hypothesis, with theological work from Pennington and Lincoln leading into some debates about historical accuracy from the work of Licona and Keener, and concluding with new books from Keener and Bond. Thus, we may conclude as we mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first edition of my book (not to mention the thirty-fifth anniversary of my embarking on the actual research in 1982–83!) that the discussions about the biographical hypothesis are certainly alive and thriving. We also argued at the start that the real mark of the success of any hypothesis is to be found not just, or even mainly, in its scholarly acceptance, but in the fruitfulness of the new avenues for research which it inspires, and which are constructed upon its foundation. These are exciting times to be undertaking new research based on the biographical genre of Matthew and all the Gospels – and I, for one, cannot wait to see what emerges next!

Scripture, Memory, and Time Matthew’s Fulfilment Quotations as Historiographical Devices Thomas R. Hatina Thomas R. Hatina

The frequent use of fulfilment quotations (FQs), which include both the formula and the accompanying quotation, has been widely recognized as a distinct literary device in Matthew’s Gospel. When one traces the scholarly discussion, four interrelated set of historical-critical questions have dominated the field. One set of questions is source-critical, addressing both (and sometimes independently) the scriptural sources (Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek) and the quotation formula sources that accompany them. A second set of questions is comparative, focusing on the evangelist’s interpretive method, particularly his midrashic technique. A third set of questions has been concerned with the uneven distribution of the quotations. And the final set of questions, which I principally want to address in this study since they continue to be the most contentious, has focused on the relationship between the FQs and the narrative in which they are embedded, particularly focusing on their compositional sequence.1 Put simply, one side of the debate has argued that the quotations gave rise to the narrative;2 whereas the other side has tended, in varying degrees, to argue

1 Some of the most influential studies that continue to be touchstones include Robert H. Gundry, The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew’s Gospel: With Special Reference to the Messianic Hope, NovTSup 18 (Leiden: Brill, 1975); Krister Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew and its Use of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968); Wilhelm Rothfuchs, Die Erfüllungszitate des Matthäus-Evangeliums. Eine biblisch-theologische Untersuchung, BWANT 88 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,1969); R. T. France, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher (Exeter: Paternoster, 1989); George M. Soares-Prabhu, The Formula Quotations in the Infancy Narrative of Matthew: An Enquiry into the Tradition History of Matthew 1–2, AnBib 63 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1976); Maarten J. J. Menken, Matthew’s Bible: The Old Testament Text of the Evangelist, BETL 173 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004). 2 Aside from the variances among the FQs, see, for example, George Dunbar Kilpatrick, The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew (Oxford: Clarendon, 1946); Krister Stendahl, “Quis et Unde? An Analysis of Mt 1–2,” in Judentum, Urchristentum, Kirche: Festschrift für Joachim Jeremias, ed. Walter Eltester, BZNW 26 (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1964), 94–105; Rothfuchs, Die Erfüllungszitate des Matthäus-Evangeliums; Richard S. McConnell, Law and Prophecy in Matthew’s Gospel: The Authority and Use of the Old Testament in the Gospel of St. Matthew (Basel: Friedrich Reinhardt, 1969).

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that the quotations were appended to an already existing narrative.3 Redaction critics have demonstrated well over the years that Matthew uses Scripture to append Mark and Q, but it has also been convincingly argued that sections of Matthew have been composed from Scripture even when Mark is used as a source.4 Forcing the discussion into an either/or structure, however, is not the best way forward in understanding the function of the FQs at the synchronic level, since both strategies appear to be utilized by the evangelist at different points in the Gospel. What is more, the issue has at times impinged on a priori notions of historical reliability. We can acknowledge that editing took place, but we are completely in the dark when it comes to its process prior to the insertion of the quotations and their fulfillment formulas.5 In this paper, I want to bring this longstanding debate away from the contentious issue of sources and compositional development and toward the literary complexities of early Jewish historiography that comfortably blended Scripture, tradition, and invention.6 After locating the FQs within the historiographical conventions practiced among the evangelist’s literary contemporaries, I re-examine the evangelist’s hermeneutic (and ours) through the insights of social memory theory as a model that can explain the processes that led to the uniqueness of evangelist’s text production. From this perspective, the FQs function as hermeneutical devices that give us a glimpse into how Jesus was remembered and historicized at one moment in time and space.7 Whatever the

3 Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, 2nd ed., ABRL (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 99– 100. R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007); Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 156–63; Soares-Prabhu, The Formula Quotations, 162–91. 4 See, for example, the discussion of Judas’s denial in Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 84–95 and Petri Merenlahti, Poetics for the Gospels? Rethinking Narrative Criticism (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2002), 86–89. 5 See also Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 36–37, 102–04. 6 Like Luke, Matthew is at home within the general parameter of Jewish Hellenistic history instead of only biography. As a convincing comparison with Luke’s “unfolding plan of God,” see David Paul Moessner, Luke the Historian of Israel’s Legacy, Theologian of Israel’s ‘Christ’: A New Reading of the ‘Gospel Acts” of Luke, BZNW 182 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016). 7 The widespread view that Matthew’s use of Scripture is apologetic can be traced to the classic work of Eugene Massebieau, Examen des citations de l’Ancien Testament dans l’Évangile selon saint Matthieu (Paris: Fischbacher, 1885). Most subsequent studies have concentrated on how the FQs have served Matthew’s christological and ecclesiastical interests instead of his historiography. An example of an apologetic use of FQs that is historiographical (viewed from the positivist tradition) is Georg Strecker, Der Weg der Gerechtigkeit: Untersuchungen zur Theologie des Matthäus, 3rd ed., FRLANT 82 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971).

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underlying sources were, when texts are viewed as products of memory instead of as archives, our questions are redirected to processes that can better explain how Scripture was fused with Jesus temporally, and why the memories of Jesus in Matthew are distinct from his counterparts.

A. The Formula Quotations in Overview Like the other scriptural quotations in Matthew, the FQs are apologetically driven and rhetorically tactical, implying that the evangelist’s opponents were convinced that claims about Jesus’s messianic identity were incongruous with Scripture.8 One of the challenges in attempting to categorize the FQs is that they do not convey any one particular form (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic), function, and content that sets them apart from quotations with other formulas (e.g., 2:5–6) or quotations without them (e.g., 18:16).9 This remains a hard nut to crack. Why do only some quotations have this formula? What we can say, with no illusions of answering the question, is that the explicit use of “fulfillment” connects the story of Jesus with that of Israel more deliberately. While the verb πληρόω in the standard lists of the ten FQs (1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 27:9) can convey the outcome of a prediction, this is not always the case. One of the oddities encountered by modern readers who have the luxury of flipping back to the Old Testament is that some of Matthew’s citations are not predictive, but are taken from simple prose about Israel. In and of themselves, these citations (such as Hos 11:1 in Matt 2:15 and Jer 31:15 in Matt 2:18), like the predictive ones, have no direct connection whatsoever with the incidents in Matthew, apart from common themes and terms that justify analogous links. The term πληρόω has numerous nuances beyond the fulfillment of prediction. In relation to Scripture texts that are not predictive, it could accommodate a sense of completion, similar to its temporal use (e.g., Mark 1:15; Plato, Tim. 39d.; P.Oxy. 491.6). As in the temporal use, which implies that all events in history have led to a specific intended moment, the non-predictive Scripture texts identify events and figures in Israel’s history as culminating in Jesus, be it as analogy, destiny, perfection, recapitulation, or extension of a fuller meaning. Specificity is difficult to determine. The point is that the FQs can encompass both fullness and accomplishment within a realized divine program (e.g., 8

For a thorough summary of the issues, see Donald Senior, “The Lure of the Formula Quotations: Re-Assessing Matthew’s Use of the Old Testament with the Passion Narrative as a Test Case,” in The Scriptures in the Gospels, ed. Christopher M. Tuckett, BETL 131 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1997), 89–115. 9 On the accessibility of the Scriptures in Matthew’s community, see Luz, Matthew, 1:125–30.

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Eph 1:23), without being tethered to promise-fulfillment or foreshadowing.10 In this sense the Gospel story is the completion of Scripture (e.g., Matt 5:17– 18). This understanding can be compared to the completion of a document (e.g., Lydus, de Magistratibus populi Romani, 3.11, 68). Since Matthew’s historiography is driven by a need to unify Jesus with the Scriptures, there is no reason why the FQs containing predictive Scripture texts cannot also convey both fullness and accomplishment. Mogen Müller similarly argues that that evangelist is conveying not so much a proof from prophecy, but may be conveying a “filling up” (13:48; 23:32) and a “realizing” (3:15; 5:17) in the sense “that only when these things happened was the true content of the text revealed.”11 Additionally, while many scholars use terms like “proof” when explaining the function of the FQs in Matthew,12 there is no such terminology offered by the evangelist. In Christian literature, we do not begin to see “proof” terms (namely, ἀπόδειξις or ἐπίδειξις) in connection with Scripture until Justin Martyr, who uses them to argue for Jesus’s divine sonship on the basis of prophecy (Apol. 52:1; 33:2; 44:11; Dial. 36:2; 110; 117). Since scriptural prophecy for Justin has a determinant function of what will happen in the future, his sense of history is very similar to that of Matthew, though not without a few distinctions. Two of the major ones are that Matthew neither reflects on the temporal distance between prophecy and fulfillment nor uses Scripture to function as evidence.13 For Matthew, the hermeneutical process of uniting Jesus with Scripture does not appear to be forced, but rather organic, cohesive, and reflective, despite its legitimizing use. The overt aim for all of the FQs is to rhetorically legitimize the historicity of Matthew’s story, but not for its own sake.14 Matthew’s historiography aims to convey believability that Jesus as Israel’s Messiah was not recognized and accepted by his own people. For example, the quotation from Jer 31:15 in Matt 2:18 presents the murder of Jewish children under Herod through the frame of 10 Cf. respectively Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016), 106–08; John J. O’Rourke, “The Fulfillment texts in Matthew,” CBQ 24 (1962): 394–403. 11 Mogens Müller, “The Reception of the Old Testament in Matthew and Luke-Acts: From Interpretation to Proof from Scripture,” NovT 43 (2001): 315–30, here 319; Senior, “The Lure of the Formula Quotations,” 104. 12 E.g., Richard B. Hays, “The Gospel of Matthew: Reconfigured Torah,” HTS 61 (2005): 165–90. 13 Similar observations have been made of Luke in Martin Rese, Alttestamentliche Motive in der Christologie des Lukas (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1969), 38–42 and 208– 09. 14 Note the rhetorical function of Scripture as narrative commentary in David B. Howell, Matthew’s Inclusive Story: A Study of the Narrative Rhetoric of the First Gospel, JSNTSup 42 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), esp. 179–88.

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Rachel weeping for her children in Ramah. Rachel’s sorrow, which represents divine sorrow, functions as a subversion of Herod as Israel’s king who is threatened by Jesus, Israel’s true king whose reign is the goal of history for Matthew.15 In the broader narrative, the murder of the children is only important because it contributes to Jesus’s identity construction through the pervasive tensions with the Jewish establishment. The distribution of the FQs also remains baffling.16 They are found in material that Matthew inherits from Mark (8:17; 12:17–21; 13:35; and 21:4–5) and in the special material. Five of the FQs are concentrated within the infancy narrative (1:18–2:23), which along with the genealogy (1:1–17) comprises a programmatic introduction to Jesus as Israel’s awaited Messiah. Unlike in Mark, the reader is presented with vital information that intertwines Scripture, supernatural events, and midrash as an identity construct before the baptism, which programmatically initiates Jesus’s ministry. What is of particular importance is the way that the narrative artistry in this section, which – consisting of symbolic, metaphorical, and typological language along with common mythical events such as dreams, cosmic portents, and a miraculous escape – integrates the remembrance of Jesus’s birth and journey from Egypt with the remembrances of Israel’s history, principally in relation to Moses and David. Elsewhere, I have argued that Matthew’s appeal to fulfilled Scripture in the travel portion of the narrative is an exercise in historicizing myth for the purpose of legitimizing Jesus’s identity from the outset of the story.17

B. The Problem of Sequence in the Compositional Process R. T. France, who has contributed significantly to the study of the FQs (not to mention the entire Gospel), argues for a compositional process that begins with the evangelist having received traditions about Jesus. Subsequently, these initiated the introduction of the Scripture texts that are cited as fulfilled, resulting in a cause and effect process that connects Scripture and Jesus in narrative 15 In her study of the “ideal king” in Classical and Hellenistic literature, Deirdre J. Good (Jesus the Meek King [Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999], 39–60) observes that Herod, as he is portrayed in Matthew 2 falls short in every category (e.g., Letter of Aristeas 290–94). Instead, it is Jesus in the balance of the Gospel narrative who fulfills the chief Hellenistic virtues of grace, justice, and compassion even toward his enemies in times of crisis. 16 Though, compellingly Luz (Matthew, 1:127) suggests that the fulfillment formulas were used wherever it was possible. 17 Thomas R. Hatina, “From History to Myth and Back Again: The Historicizing of Scripture in Matthew 2,” in Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels: The Gospel of Matthew, ed. Thomas R. Hatina, LNTS 310 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 98–118. See also Luz, Matthew, 1:130.

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form.18 While France does not view the fulfillment citations as pre-existent proof texts, his explanation of the process implies that they appear to function as post-existent proof texts, where the story comes first and the Scripture follows. He writes, “The formula-quotations are thus not themselves part of Matthew’s tradition, but his own editorial gloss on the story of Jesus; their subtle and elusive quality is testimony to the ingenuity of his pervasive midrashic agenda.”19 Others certainly hold very different positions, but I want to single out the view that France proposes because it is broadly representative among Matthean scholars and addresses important issues of historiography that have been discussed in SNTS East-West Symposia among academics and clergy. Recently Craig Keener, who even entertains the idea that Matthew’s use of Scripture is built on principles drawn from Jesus’s teaching, argues that the evangelist most likely already found the analogies between Jesus and the Scriptures in his received tradition. To claim otherwise, he suggests, we should expect to find considerably more FQs in Matthew’s special material. In addition, Keener writes, “We would also expect his narratives to conform more closely to the citations and expect Matthew to have chosen more obvious citations.”20 I am in agreement that the FQs are part of the evangelist’s midrashic technique. I am also in agreement that Matthew believed he was writing a historical account. The evangelist gives no indication that some parts are less historical than other parts. So, from the evangelist’s perspective there is no difference historically between events such as Jesus teaching in parables and the risen dead walking around Jerusalem. However, I do not find the separation of Matthew’s supposed received tradition (material apart from Mark and Q) and the FQs compelling. It is not clear why the FQs are editorial glosses and why the received tradition is sometimes sheltered from invention. If Matthew has a midrashic agenda (that surpasses commentary), then it is likely that he engages in the expansions of Scripture, like so many of his Jewish contemporaries. The assumption that Matthew’s unique material should be regarded as received tradition that predates the evangelist is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to establish. Keener’s claim that Matthew received the analogies does not help in this regard, but simply pushes the problem into a pre-Matthean period to which we also have no access. What we do know, however, is that the relationship between Scripture and narrative was highly integrated in Jewish historiography, broadly speaking. There was no imposed separation between

18 France, The Gospel of Matthew, 14; R. T. France, “The Formula-Quotations of Matthew 2 and the Problem of Communication,” NTS 27 (1981): 233–51. 19 France, The Gospel of Matthew, 14; Graham N. Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 360. 20 For example, the burden of proof is placed on those who are skeptical of Matthew’s historical reliability by Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 14.

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what France calls pre-existent and post-existent proof texts. One of France’s key points is that since the evangelist believed the tradition he received to be factual, he would have used Scripture only for explanatory and structural purposes. Believability in ancient historiography, however, cannot be approximated to modern conception, which are informed by critical hermeneutics that delineate “the real” from “the true” and “the past” from “history.” In addition, Keener’s point that Matthew would have written differently had he constructed the episodes on the basis of Scripture ignores the breadth of Jewish and GrecoRoman historiographical practices.21 Broaching this topic is impossible here, but suffice it to say that in ancient historiography narratives, speeches, and events are often constructed as representations of what was imagined or believed to be true. I am not arguing that invention predominated, since retellings of the past incorporated prior retellings or traditions. My point is that the processes of historiography were far more complex in the integration between received traditions, cultural memories (like the Scriptures for Jews and myths for Pagans), and pressures of the present that included invention, expansion, selection, neglect, and forgetting. While France, Keener, and others grant freedom to the evangelist in the modification of Scripture and the traditions connected with them, they appear to be tethered to a positivist conception of historiography based on a hermeneutic that allows access to the actual past, which subsequently leads to claims about historical reliability.22 This is understandable given that most Gospel scholars today have been trained in and continue to propagate an archival conception of the text. Within this conception, the Gospels are assumed to contain an archival character or quality, which allows them to be dissected and anatomized into layers of tradition that can yield distinctions between the past and present, fact and fiction, continuity and discontinuity, memory and redaction, and even (for some) objectivity and subjectivity. Texts are viewed as products of prior influences whose layers can be excavated. This is different from a hermeneutic that views texts as media that capture or freeze existential realities in the author’s present that may or may not preserve features from the past. Since conceptions of texts – what they are and what we can do with them – impinge on methods, diachronic conceptions have seamlessly led to historical-critical exegesis. The way forward requires an untethering from modernist concerns about the reliability or unreliability of the Gospel accounts and by extension, Matthew’s

21 See M. David Litwa, How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). By contrast, the conceptions of ancient historiography are striking in Craig S. Keener, Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019). 22 In a still important article, France (“The Formula-Quotations of Matthew 2,” 236) writes with reference to Matt 2:23, “It was the fact of Jesus’ residence at Nazareth that made it necessary to concoct the quotation ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’, and not vice versa.”

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FQs. After about two centuries of attempts, we have achieved considerable disagreement about the traditions underlying the fundamental content and its interpretation in the Markan account, which served as a literary foundation for the other Synoptics and probably John. While questions of provenance are still important, it is not constructive to place the burden of proof on opposing positions.23 Rather, as Morna Hooker often advocated, the burden of proof lies on the one making the claim. I am of the view, however, that such questions face epistemological and hermeneutical obstacles that have been widely traversed by perspectival historians and social memory theorists, which I will discuss below. The balance of this study will attempt to show that significant cultural memories, such as the events and figures in Scripture, played a pivotal role in making sense of the present, but not simply as reflective addenda or post-existent proof texts supplementing prior traditions about Jesus. This may have been one part of the larger process of integrating what I would call culturally “canonical” stories into conceptions of reality, but the fabric of historiography was far more intertwined. It often blended cultural memories with present concerns in ways that obfuscated the sequence of the narrative construction, since perceptions of the past were always guided by the present, which in terms of the process problematizes reconstructions of traditions. Before broaching the mnemonic framework that offers an explanation of the process, I first want to place Matthew’s FQs in the literary contexts of Jewish historiography so as to show that the hermeneutic in antiquity was wide-ranging and not tied to any particular sequence. Culturally significant “canonical” stories were necessarily subject to retellings, re-writes, additions, expansions, and omissions for purposes of relevance. New stories incorporated them and shaped them in both form and meaning, while symbiotically being influenced by them. I begin with the evangelist.

C. The FQs and Matthew’s Historiography From a broader story-wide vantage point, Matthew’s heavy reliance on Scripture betrays the broader socio-religious and theological challenges that Jewish Jesus-followers were experiencing both within Judaism and outside of it. On the one hand, they identified themselves as a new people of God who were discontinuous from their ethnic roots by virtue of their conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah and son of God who has fulfilled Israel’s destiny. Yet on the other hand, they were convinced that the “law and the prophets” conveyed a continuity between themselves as Jesus-followers and their Jewish

23

Keener, The Gospel of Matthew, 14–15.

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ethnic heritage – so much so, in fact, that their appropriation of Scripture served as a key legitimizing strategy in polemical exchanges (e.g., Matt 21:23). Scripture not only revealed the divine will for the present, but connected it with world history.24 At the root of Matthew’s frequent appeal to Scripture is the force of identity formation of both Jesus and his followers, who appear to be seriously threatened by opposing Jews given the evangelist’s combative tone.25 The frequent use of the quotation formula “have you not/never read?” ἀναγινώσκω (12:3, 5; 19:4; 21:16, 42; 22:31) in controversy settings, which implies public readings, appears to target sarcastically and undermine the opposition. If this reflects the social tension, the FQs appear to intensify the identity formation by making the connection between the Scripture texts and the story not only explicit, but unified. The temporal distance between the past and present (and anticipated future) collapses – as will be discussed below. For the evangelist, the story of Jesus is the story of the Scriptures, and vice versa. The unification is multifaceted, incorporating continuation, expansion, and representation, resembling Jewish literature that is often classified as “historical” and “rewritten bible/Scripture,” but only in the sense that the received story of Jesus is integrated with Scripture. Contrary to some, Matthew is not a haggadic midrash, but it does use its techniques. This is evident in Matthew’s use of Mark, but more specifically in the many passages that further explain Mark’s scriptural allusions (e.g., compare Mark 11:1–10 with Matt 21:1–9; and Mark 13:14 with Matt 24:15). While I can partly agree with Richard Hays that cumulatively the FQs “frame Israel’s Scripture as a predictive text pointing to events in the life of Jesus,”26 from a literary vantage point, I see their primary function as temporal unification of past, present, and future, again stressing identity construction through a historically believable portrait. The temporal meeting point is the character of Jesus who – as the agent, prophet, and embodiment of God – is the literary construct resulting from a tension between the real person and cultural images. All of the other characters, the events, and even the Scriptures (which could be classified as a divine character) determine Jesus’s identity by their interactions with him.

24 Michael Knowles, Jeremiah in Matthew’s Gospel: Rejected-Prophet Motif in Matthean Redaction, JSNTSup 68 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 20. 25 Some kind of clash with a local synagogue is often proposed. E.g., Stanton, A Gospel for a New People, 146–68; Luz, Matthew, 1:79–93; J. Andrew Overman, Matthew’s Gospel and Formative Judaism: The Social World of the Matthean Community (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990); Anthony J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); David C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community, SNTW (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998). 26 Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 107.

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Aside from the historical person behind the characterization, the evangelist needed to portray Jesus’s unification with Scripture to meet the needs of his present circumstance, whatever that may have been. Perspectival historians view identity reconfigurations, ancient and modern, as products of representation, rhetoric, and perceived reality, often resulting from a group’s need to distance itself from cultural and political hegemony.27 However, there are also many instances where Scripture inclusion and representation in its various forms functioned to legitimize sub-groups both to their fellow ethnic counterparts and the broader Greco-Roman audience for purposes of social acceptance and validation. One of the ways that this was achieved was through a rhetoric that conveyed the longevity of the new movement. While the Romans were inclusive, they were highly suspicious of religions that were not rooted in the past. Simply put, a “new” religion’s legitimacy would have been verified by great figures of the past.28 The same principle appears to be operative in Jewish circles, though in a more exclusive way, whereby great figures like Moses and the Prophets would have been used to show legitimacy. Undoubtedly, the evangelists would have applied the same principles since they wrote within the same literary contexts. Gregory Sterling’s convincing proposal that Luke-Acts was composed to ease Roman suspicions about the novelty of the Jesus movement widens the context of social pressures for Jesus-followers that were in play across the Mediterranean. Sterling argues that in an effort to root the Jesus movement in the distant past, Luke retells the story of Israel twice in Acts: in the speech of Stephen (7:2–60) and in the speech of Paul (13:16–41) with an aim to show that the promises given to Israel are fulfilled in Jesus.29 If credibility pressures were as widespread as Sterling claims, and if Matthew’s community can be classified sociologically as a “deviant” group that seeks validity in relation to the prevailing Jewish majority, then the use of the FQs can easily be viewed as a device that lends to believability through the invocation of antiquity.30 There were certainly numerous devices available for amplifying the credibility of a

27

Elizabeth A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 185. 28 The relationship between Christian identity and the Roman body politic becomes increasingly important from the second century onward. See Raoul Mortley, “The Past in Clement of Alexandria: A Study of an Attempt to Define Christianity in Socio-Cultural Terms,” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition. Volume 1: The Shaping of Christianity in the Second and Third Centuries, ed. E. P. Sanders (London: SCM, 1980), 186–200. 29 Gregory E. Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition: Josephos, Luke-Acts, and Apologetic Historiography (Leiden: Brill, 1992). 30 Saldarini, Matthew’s Jewish-Christian Community. On the FQs as credibility devices, see Overman, Matthew’s Gospel and Formative Judaism, 73–90.

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narrative about the past, and appealing to “canonical” tradition was certainly one of them.31 In addition to the underlying socio-religious conditions that help us make sense of the function of the FQs as historiographical devices, we get a rare glimpse into the evangelist’s hermeneutic in Matt 26:54–56, which has not been given enough attention in relation to the FQs.32 Matt 26:54–56 presents us with the strong possibility that Scripture not only shaped existing parts of the narrative, but also influenced the creation of new narrative, since the events connected with Jesus’s ministry were viewed as divinely predetermined, which strongly guided the historiographical process. In the arrest scene, Jesus says, “But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way (οὕτως δεῖ γενέσθαι)?” (26:54) and then again “But all this has taken place, so that the scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled” (26:56). These two summary statements are not connected with specific Scripture texts, but they twice link πληρόω with the Scriptures in an unusual way by placing them on the lips of Jesus.33 The evangelist believed that his exegesis was that of Jesus whose self-admitted mission is set on the “lost sheep” or remnant of Israel (10:6; 15:24; 18:14) – a method that was common in Judaism.34 Donald Senior’s suggestion that 26:54 and 56 is one of three instances (alongside 3:15 and 5:17) of programmatic statements that connect scriptural fulfillment to Jesus’s mission is worth taking seriously.35 These two summary statements are a rare glimpses into an important aspect of the evangelist’s underlying hermeneutic that Jesus is the realization of Scripture and that the Matthean community is what Ulrich Luz calls “the true core of the nation of Israel, summoned by Jesus to God.”36 While the immediate concern of both Matt 26:54 and 56 is the arrest and betrayal scenes, they more 31 Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 246–47. 32 This may be an example of a redaction and expansion of Mark’s use of Scripture (here Mark 14:49). 33 An exception might be 13:14, though here ἀναπληρόω is used. 34 Matthew P. Knowles, “Scripture, History, Messiah: Scriptural Fulfillment and the Fullness of Time in Matthew’s Gospel,” in Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament, ed. Stanley E. Porter, McMaster New Testament Studies (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 59–82. 35 Senior, “The Lure of the Formula Quotations,” 105–106, 108–109. 36 Ulrich Luz, The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew, trans. J. Bradford Robinson, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 40. Emphasis on Matt 26:54–56 as a hermeneutical key coheres with Müller’s (“The Reception of the Old Testament in Matthew and Luke-Acts,” 319–21, 27–28) main point that for Matthew Jesus is the unfolding of the testimony of Scripture. In Matthew, the Jewish opponents simply do not understand the full meaning of Scripture, which can be contrasted with Luke-Acts where proof from Scripture begins to dominate since the Jews’ rejection of Jesus is due to the hardening of their understanding of Scripture.

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broadly encompass all of the Scripture quotations (e.g., 3:3; 9:13; 11:10; 12:7), and even the entire Gospel story.37 Apart from how one understands the causal relationship between tradition and Scripture, the evangelist believes that Scripture played a formative role in his historiography because it did so in the mission of Jesus. It was, of course, not the only determining factor that influenced his story (e.g., Mark and Q), but it was a significant factor influencing not only the tradition he received and shaped, but also his own narrative constructs. One of the most telling examples of this is Matthew’s version of Judas’s betrayal, which expands Mark’s account through scriptural frameworks. Mark turns the plot-agent in the betrayer tradition (1 Cor 11:23) into a character by pointing to Judas, which allows the story to unfold (Mark 14:43–47). Matthew freely develops the character and the plot explicitly on the basis of Scripture texts that otherwise have no connection with the Gospel’s context. Whereas Mark reports Judas’s visit with the chief priests, Matthew (27:1–10) constructs a dialogue between them about the thirty pieces of silver and the purchase of a potter’s field on the basis of several possible texts, though he specifies Jeremiah (Zech 11:12–13; Jer 18:2; 19:2, 11).38 Frank Kermode, who provides an insightful comparison of the Gospels, well summarizes the narrative realization of the betrayal by pointing to a process that is widespread in narrative constructions. In relation to the Gospels, he writes, “the Old Testament and the Apocrypha are treated as a sort of seminary of narrative germs, which are transplanted and grow into the history-like story of the Passion.”39 That Scripture was ultimately about the revelation of God in Jesus was a widespread scriptural hermeneutic among early Christians even though explicit hermeneutical references like the one in Matt 26:54–56 are rare. We find them scattered throughout the New Testament (1 Cor 15:3–4; Mark 1:1–3; 14:49; Luke 24:27; Heb 1:1–2), but John is particularly interesting as a comparison with Matthew since it presents the reader with three explicit scriptural keys for unlocking the process of Jesus’s identity construction. As interpretive keys, they incorporate all of the individual embedded scriptural references in the narrative. From one angle the Scriptures interpret the literary figure of Jesus, yet from another they are interpreted by him. Both function symbiotically and are

37 Stanton, A Gospel for a New People, 348; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 3, Commentary on Matthew XIX–XXVIII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 506. 38 Less obvious are the suggestions that Matthew’s account is built on Achitophel’s betrayal of David (2 Sam 17:23) and that the returning of the guilt money is built on the sale of Joseph for twenty shekels of silver by his brothers (Gen 37:28). 39 Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy, 84–99, here 88. On the influential role of Scripture in Matthew’s special material in the Passion account, see especially, Senior, “The Lure of the Formula Quotations,” 108–114.

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next to impossible to bifurcate since the narrative blurs the distinction between past and present.40 Three of the most explicit interpretive keys are 1:45 (“Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth’”), 5:39 (“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf”), and 5:46 (“If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me”).41 When these interpretive keys are read alongside programmatic statements identifying the purpose of Jesus’s mission (10:10; 19:35) and the purpose for writing about it (20:30–31) as the generating of eternal life through belief that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, then we are confronted with a text (like that of Matthew) whose process of identity construction is heavily reliant on Scripture. The writer of John similarly believes that his account of Jesus is historically and theologically credible, but he is even more explicit about it by claiming that his testimony of the “things” that were recorded are true (21:24).

D. Extending the Historiographical Context Expanding the literary context further to include early Jewish historical literature sheds further light on the function of the FQs as historiographical devices. In contrast to Matthew, however, explicit references to the fulfillment of Scripture using πληρόω are scarce in these writings. On occasion, in the historical writings of the LXX, there are references to the unfolding of events as fulfillments of the “word of the Lord,” but πληρόω is not used as a gloss for ‫סִ בָּ ה‬ (e.g., 1 Kgs 12:15; 2 Chron 12:15) or ‫( מָ לֵא‬e.g., 2 Chron 36:21), which are often translated in English Bibles as “fulfill,” but more so convey confirmation.42 The citing of Scripture in the historical writings is usually accompanied by the formula “it is written.”43 Apart from the LXX, early Jewish accounts of the past took on numerous forms. The closest form to what we today might identify as history is represented in Hellenistic Jewish histories. While most, if not all Jews were Hellenized, some like the Sicilian Jewish rhetorician Caecilius of Calacte of the first century, a certain Demetrius the Chronographer of the third century BCE and a certain historian Eupolemus of the second century BCE wrote about Jewish 40

E.g., Catrin H. Williams, “Patriarchs and Prophets Remembered: Framing Israel’s Past in the Gospel of John,” in Abiding Words: The Use of Scripture in the Gospel of John, RBS 81, ed. Alicia D. Myers and Bruce G. Schuchard (Atlanta: SBL, 2012), 187–212. 41 Other similar keys include 2:22; 8:56; 10:34–36; 12:41; and 20:9. 42 E.g., 1 Kgs 12:15; 2 Chron 12:15. 43 Josh 8:31; 2 Sam 1:18; 1 Kgs 2:3; 2 Chron 23:18; 31:3.

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history in a manner that was taken to be non-Jewish by their pagan critics and even by Josephus. Although some wanted to be identified as pagan, others like Artapanus, who retold the story of the Jews in Egypt through the careers of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses, and Cleodemus Malchus, who linked Hercules with Abraham’s three sons, engaged in syncretism, often for unknown reasons.44 Despite the style and patterns of Greek historiography, the tendency was to remain attached to Scripture with little concession given to pagan religion or history. Even in 1 Maccabees, which is written in the style of Hellenistic historiography, the events are governed by the Jews’ obedience to Torah. The same touchstone of Scripture is seen in the somewhat unique style of Philo, whose syncretism in his presentation of Jewish history aims at making the biblical accounts palatable to his pagan readers. Finally, Josephus, who finds himself between the interests of his Roman benefactors and his ethnic heritage, is not immune to the powerful influence of Scripture as the historical source for Jewish identity, which he creatively adapts for apologetic reasons. In the Antiquities, he uses Hellenistic historiographical form as a model to retell Jewish (scriptural) history.45 These writings, however, represent only a small portion of Jewish writings that can be deemed as historical. While the blending of myth and history was common practice in historiography across the Mediterranean, Jewish writers were distinct in that remembrances of the past were a religious obligation that weighed how reliability coincided with transmission of traditions as revealed truths of God. For Jewish historiographers, just like for the evangelists, history and religion were unified and perceived to be accurate beyond frameworks of their pagan counterparts who were more deliberate about the distinction between the sacred past and the profane past, and allowed for more blind fate, though they still incorporated myth in believable ways.46 Historicized cultural memories, as believable narrative constructs, were everywhere intermixed with newer memories and new 44 These legitimizations for Jewish communities in the diaspora may have been known to early Christian historiographers like Luke; see Gregory E. Sterling, “‘Opening the Scriptures’: The Legitimation of the Jewish Diaspora and Early Christian Mission,” in Jesus and the Heritage of Israel, ed. David P. Moessner (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999), 199–225. 45 Harold W. Attridge, The Interpretation of Biblical History in the Antiquitates Judaicae of Flavius Josephus, HDR 7 (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976). 46 The relationship between myth and history in antiquity is an important broader context for the Gospels that can only be given a cursory mention here. See Carlo Brillante, “History and the Historical Interpretation of Myth,” in Approaches to Greek Myth, ed. Lowell Edmunds (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,1990), 93–138; Albert Henrichs, “Demythologizing the Past, Mythicizing the Present: Myth, Historiography, and the Supernatural at the Dawn of the Hellenistic Period,” in From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, ed. Richard Buxton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 223–

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appropriations of Scripture.47 Post-biblical Jews, like their early Christian counterparts, viewed their Scriptures (especially the Torah and the Prophets) as a whole, without subjecting them to historical scrutiny, perceiving them as containing all the history that was sufficient for interpreting new events. As such, historical writing overlapped with biblical commentary, halakhah, and rewrites, since a common aim for many of them was to retell biblical history for present purposes, despite their modern genre categorizations.48 While the historical writings in the Hellenistic style tended to provide a continuation of biblical history in a more chronological and systematic way, the others were often interpretations of biblical history that incorporated continuity in more subtle ways. Having said that, there was considerable overlap. Socially conditioned interests in the past were indistinguishable from the preservation of tradition for posterity.49 This conflation of religion and history played an indispensable role in the shaping of early Jewish and Christian identity. Josephus, for example, boasts that the Jews present a better organized public record than the Greeks (Apion, 1.1ff).50 In reality, Jewish and early Christian historiographers rarely, if ever, evaluated competing versions of the past in biblical and 48; John Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 117–27; Kenton L. Sparks, “The Problem of Myth in Ancient Historiography,” in Rethinking the Foundations: Historiography in the Ancient World and in the Bible; Essays in Honour of John Van Seters, ed. Steven L. McKenzie and Thomas Römer (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000), 269–80. 47 Sparks, “The Problem of Myth in Ancient Historiography,” 269–280. 48 On the common aim of retelling biblical history, see George W. E. Nickelsburg, “The Bible Rewritten and Expanded,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran Sectarian Writings, Philo, Josephus, ed. Michael E. Stone, CRINT 2 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 89–156. 49 Note, for example, the vast differences between Philo and Josephus in their recounting of the same events. See E. Mary Smallwood, “Philo and Josephus as Historians of the Same Events,” in Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, ed. Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 114–29. 50 Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 20, writes, “What Josephus seems to have missed is that the Greeks had criteria by which to judge the relative merits of various versions which the Jewish historian had not.” There is an irony here in that while the pagans liked history and had more sophisticated criteria for practicing it, they did not tie their varied identities to it. Jews and early Christians did, but did not engage in evaluating competing conceptions of the past. What is more, one could argue along with Momigliano that a loss of interest in history as a record of the past among many Jews began to emerge in the second century BCE with the release of writings like Daniel, Esther, Judith, and Tobit. Writings like 1 Maccabees were an exception. It is within this move toward a more novelistic approach to history that creates part of the literary milieu for the Gospels. In the early rabbinic period, the disinterest in history led to a growing interest in the Torah, which was believed to have preceded history and is constantly contemplated by God beyond the realm of history. Thus, it pales in value for human identity and purpose (Pes. 6b.; Ab. Zarah 3b).

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nonbiblical accounts according to literary criteria.51 What constitutes “historical” is necessarily broad given the lack of restrictions and the fluidity and blending of the sub-genres. There are ample examples on how Scripture interrelated with, contributed to, and prompted Jewish historiography, which incorporated the bending and blending of numerous genres. Instead of explicit quotation formulas, Scripture is often conveyed as fulfilled through different terminology and devices.52 William Kurz’s study of the promise-and-fulfillment motif in Jewish historiography, especially in 1 and 2 Maccabees and Josephus (in relation to Luke-Acts), provides an important foundation for Matthew. In addition to his convincing proposal, I add Jewish literature that is often called “rewritten Bible/Scripture” as an analogue, since the past is likewise retold by blending of Scripture, tradition, and invention in a believable way for socio-rhetorical purposes, preserving a continuity between the distant (scriptural) past and the present. Additionally, they resemble Matthew’s rewriting of Mark, at least in principle. I am not arguing that Matthew’s evangelist was directly beholden to, or influenced by, any one text, method, or genre, but I am arguing that his cultural conditioning in relation to contemporary literary practices can help us gain perspective on the function of the FQs as historiographical devices. Three of the many examples suffice to make the point. The first example is the book of Jubilees (2nd century BCE), which is considered to be canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and some Ethiopian Jews. Fittingly, this work is sometimes nicknamed “little Genesis” because it is an inventive rewriting of Genesis from the perspective of angelic revelations given to Moses while he was on Mount Sinai. In addition to verbatim accounts taken from Genesis, the author of Jubilees makes all sorts of creative emendations and additions. To mention a few, Abraham’s embarrassing presentation of his wife to foreign rulers (as his sister!) is removed, while Reuben’s apparent incest is explained away. Isaac’s covenant with Abimelech is radically recast, while new tales of Abraham’s youth are introduced. The plagues visited on Pharaoh are condensed, and the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh are omitted. The second example is 2 Baruch, dated sometime after 70 CE and before 135 CE. While the author, who is supposedly the Baruch of Jeremiah’s day, claims to be writing about the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, he in fact is writing about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The author ingeniously uses the first destruction of Jerusalem (2 Kgs 25; Jer 39) to craft a narrative

51 If John used the Synoptics, for instance, then the “truthfulness” of the new account is simply asserted and rhetorically reinforced. 52 William S. Kurz, “Promise and Fulfillment in Hellenistic Jewish Narratives and in Luke and Acts,” in Jesus and the Heritage of Israel, ed. David P. Moessner (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999), 147–70.

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that aims to reassure the disillusioned Jews of his day whose faith in a protective God is being shattered. The problem of why bad things can happen to God’s good people looms large. Second Baruch draws together many prayers, visions, and letters to comfort his audience and explain why God allows evil and suffering in his creation. The author is so deeply steeped in the language of Scripture that he moves effortlessly from allusive biblical expressions to explicit quotations in order to convey present and novel meaning in an uncertain time. The final example is 1 Enoch, which is one of the most well-known noncanonical writings in early Judaism. Attributed to the great-grandfather of Noah (cf. Gen 5:18–24), 1 Enoch is an apocalyptic composite of writings dating from the third century BCE to the first century CE. After his quasi-rapture by God (Gen 5:24), Enoch is taken on a mystical tour of the earth, Sheol, and the heavens. He has visions about past and future history, the coming judgment, and a mysterious judge identified as a Messianic Son of Man. Reminiscent of Ezekiel’s apocalyptic vision, Enoch’s experience is complex and inventive, filling in the holes that Moses supposedly left in the writing of the Torah. Common to the Pseudepigraphal literature is its interaction with scriptural texts and traditions in the retelling of the past. Whether rewriting, borrowing, reframing, or filling in, these texts betray a profound interest in a steadily growing body of literature that provided and preserved strong storied memories that functioned to reaffirm and/or construct varied Jewish identities.

E. Making Sense of Matthew’s Hermeneutic and Ours If Matthew’s FQs are apologetically and rhetorically prompted literary devices that make sense within ancient Jewish historiography, how might we make sense of them at the hermeneutical level? This question leads to multiple answers that try to explain underlying assumptions (such as notions of time and Scripture) and processes (such as memory) that led to the evangelist’s innovation and the renewal of tradition, which were believed to convey truth and reality as much as Scripture. A re-examination of Matthew’s hermeneutic has the potential of untethering us from the conventional, often positivist, concerns for historical reliability and the role of the FQs in the compositional sequencing, which has reached an impasse. To raise the hermeneutical query is to raise the “inconvenient truth” about what truths in themselves – and in our case historical truths – really are and why they differ.53 In light of Matthew’s historio-

53 John D. Caputo, Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information (London: Pelican, 2018), 12.

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graphical context, which combined Scripture, tradition, and invention, the processes that led to text production were never freed from the intertexts of identity formation/preservation and culture. As much can be said about our own receptions. I understand intertexts differently than many of my colleagues who use the term “intertextuality,” instead of the more proper term “influence,” to identify intentional direct borrowing of texts (oral or written) from their “original” context and their placement into another context. They often cite language theorists, perspectival historians, and literary theorists in support, but frequently do not fully appreciate their hermeneutical underpinnings or the conceptual origins of intertextuality, which is rooted in political idealism that attempted to subvert the establishment and empower the reader/critic.54 The earliest users of the term and its concept, namely Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes, envisioned a new hermeneutic that challenged traditional hermeneutics that was text- and author-oriented in search of the “actual” meaning in favor of a conception of meaning that does not exist apart from meaning producers. The two hermeneutics cannot co-exist, yet attempts among biblical scholars persist. For example, the distinction that Wim Weren makes between production-oriented intertextuality (which concerns the intentions of authors) and reception-oriented intertextuality (which concerns the role of readers) is important if the historical-critical inquiry is part of the investigation.55 What needs to be kept in mind, however, is that the former is always intertwined with the latter at every level. The evangelist as author is also a reader of both Scripture and the Jesus tradition. His construction of Matthew, similarly to our historical reconstructions, results in a narrative that is representational of a past that never happened in exactly that way, since the actual past is not accessible. A certain circularity to which Mikhail Bakhtin eminently pointed that affects the evangelist as much as us is inescapable. A construct of the socio-cultural context stems from texts, which are themselves products of that context. This makes reconstructions of sources, pre-texts, and contexts more complicated than many historical-critics have envisioned, rendering traditional approaches to the compositional sequencing of the FQs problematic. Narrative retellings of the past in antiquity were the best, and perhaps the only, solution to a problem that continues to face the broader human concern of translating knowing/experiencing into telling within a structure that conveys meaning. While each culture has its series of codes and genres, narrative is the

54 See Thomas R. Hatina, “Intertextuality and Historical Criticism in New Testament Studies: Is There a Relationship?” BibInt 7 (1999): 28–43. 55 Wim J. C. Weren, Studies in Matthew’s Gospel: Literary Design, Intertextuality, and Social Setting, Biblical Interpretation Series 130 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 96–98.

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transcultural meta-code to any understandable retelling of the past.56 Hayden White makes an important distinction between historical representation and historical discourse in modern historiography that is useful for comparing and placing Matthew’s FQs within the broader Mediterranean historiographical milieu. White argues that modern constructs of the historical representation claim to extract the “real” from the “imaginary” and assume that “real” events speak for themselves. In antiquity, the fusion of the supernatural, perceptions of the divine, and cultural memories would have seamlessly and even unconsciously permeated retellings about the past that had relevance in the present. Again, Matthew, for instance, gives us no indication that the Infancy Account or the connections between the FQs and adjacent narrative material are no less real than Jesus’s teaching in parables. On the contrary, historical discourse, which narrativizes imaginary events, is assumed not to represent the real. Modern constructs of historical representation are problematic when they are narrativized because “real events do not offer themselves as stories.” White’s main critique that “the very distinction between real and imaginary events, basic to modern discussions of both history and fiction, presupposes a notion of reality in which ‘the true’ is identified with ‘the real’ only insofar as it can be shown to possess the character of narrativity.”57 Modern distinctions say as much about the “real” within the perspective of the historian as do ancient conflations of what we might today call myth and history. White argues that we should be more concerned with the conceptions of reality that influence historiography rather than attempting to reconstruct the underlying realities that were the preconditions of narrative.58 In relation to Matthew’s FQs, we can ask along with White, “what kind of notion of reality authorizes construction of a narrative account of reality in which continuity rather than discontinuity governs the articulation of the discourse.”59 In conjunction, we can ask about the evangelist’s conception of time that allowed a free integration between Scripture (Israel’s past) and a representation of Jesus (evangelist’s present). Undoubtedly Matthew’s notion of coherency and continuity between the Scriptures and his community aimed to capture the “real,” but as a historical representation it is an image of what can only be a perceived reality. There simply would have been no other way to communicate the story to address the needs of his present circumstance. The relationship between the evangelist’s present (his representation of Jesus through the medium of narrative) and the past (his appeals to Scriptures as a representation of Israel’s story) begs for an explanatory process that can in 56 Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” Critical Inquiry 7 (1980): 5–27, here 5–6. 57 Ibid., 10. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., 14.

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part be satisfied by the insights of social memory theory, which allows us to see his historiography as self-serving art of memory. While this topic is vast, I limit my discussion to its implications for a concept of time that might make sense of how the FQs relate to the evangelist’s story of Jesus. The main tenet of the theory since it was first developed by Maurice Halbwachs was that recollections of the past are assimilated within the frameworks of the present. Individual or psychological memory was not rejected by Halbwachs, but was viewed as an expression of the social patterning of an individual’s group, since no memories are independent from social frameworks that have shaped identity.60 One of Halbwachs’ key observations on the function of memory within religious contexts is that recollections of the past are assimilated within the frameworks of the present. Barry Schwartz, who has been instrumental in recent applications of social memory to historical Jesus research in North America, claims that the indispensable function of social frameworks, or cultural memory frames that shape identity, is frequently observed among the evangelists’ use of Scripture, writing, “the Gospels key the activities and fate of Jesus to statements in the Hebrew Scriptures an estimated three hundred times, which affirms both the Gospel writers’ mastery of Scripture and their listeners’ identification with the history the sacred texts describe.”61 The use of the Scriptures as memory frames that invoke the past – as literary symbols or historiographical devices – essentially destroys time as a linear system since the evangelist’s framework is prophetic wherein events of the past function as symbols within a closed cyclical or static system. The “pastness” of Scripture is always re-presented as performance. Prophetic miscalculations pose no problem since they do not require containment. They can always be renewed within a framework that is fixated on the telos and is not subject to

60 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 43, 50–51. Individual memories and collective ones are collapsed, Halbwachs writes, “One may say that the individual remembers by placing himself in the perspective of the group, but one may also affirm that the memory of the group realizes and manifests itself in individual memories” (p. 40). For this particular application to nascent Christianity, see Werner H. Kelber, “The Works of Memory: Christian Origins as Mnemohistory – A Response,” in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, ed. Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher, SemeiaSt 52 (Atlanta: SBL, 2005), 221–48, here 246. 61 Barry Schwartz, “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire: Memory and History,” in Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity: A Conversation with Barry Schwartz, ed. Tom Thatcher (Atlanta: SBL, 2014), 7–37, here 15–16.

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time.62 Attention is directed at the existential or emotional dimension, recognizing the integration of facts and feelings, which abolishes distance in the fusing of past and present.63 The conventional view of time situates the present on a linear continuum between the past and the future, but it gives equal weight to each instant. This represents the common hermeneutical structure in most studies of Matthew’s FQs that invoke “promise-fulfillment” or “proof-text” explanations. It allows for the potential retrieval of the past in some form, even though the past does not really exist. In this sense, the sequence of events in time is perceived in spatial terms, which means that events in time can be divided into an infinite number of segments or epochs, each distinct from the other like objects in space. The present can be influenced by the past, but it too is distinct and cannot occupy the same space. Too often in appropriations of social memory theory in Jesus studies conceptions of the past and the present as an ontological relationship have not been adequately explained.64 I suggest that when social memory theory, as Maurice Halbwachs conceived of it, prioritizes the present within an ontology of difference – which views reality as only being difference, as opposed to an ontology of identity or identification which always begins with a transcendent reality that leads to difference – it sheds more light on the process integrating the past and present. Gilles Deleuze summarizes it this way: The past would never be constituted if it did not coexist with the present whose past it is. The past and the present do not denote two successive moments, but two elements which coexist: One is the present, which does not cease to pass, and the other is the past, which does not cease to be but through which all presents pass. … The past does not follow the present, but on the contrary, is presupposed by it as the pure condition without which it would not pass.65

This understanding of the relationship between the past and present moves beyond a linear (and causal) conception of time to one that allows for the existence of the past to which the present passes. Thus, the present does not simply 62

Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 14–16; David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country – Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 353, 359. 63 Lowenthal, Past is a Foreign Country, 381. 64 E.g., Chris Keith, “Memory and Authenticity: Jesus Tradition and What Really Happened,” ZNW 102 (2011): 155–77; Anthony Le Donne, The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2009); Jens Schröter, “Memory and Memories in Early Christianity: The Remembered Jesus as a Test Case,” in Memory and Memories in Early Christianity: Proceedings of the International Conference held at the Universities of Geneva and Lousanne (Jun 2–3, 2016), ed. Simon Butticaz and Enrico Norellil; WUNT 398 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 79–96. 65 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Zone, 1988, orig. 1966), 59.

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cease to be when it passes. It passes to a past. But the past does not exist in the same way as the present. The French philosopher Henri Bergson, who had a significant influence on both Halbwachs and Deleuze, argued that the past exists virtually in contrast to the present which always exists actually. The past is structured differently. The virtual is not the possible, the transcendent, or a copy, or even a type. It is real. But it is not what has happened. Otherwise, we would be back to a linear conception. Instead the past is understood as that which is always different and cannot be subsumed under identity because it is always an effect of an ongoing differing present.66 The past is coiled into every present resulting in only potentiality and differences, each of which is identity. For Bergson, memory is not simply psychological, but is a wider single ontological condition wherein its innumerable expressions function.67 The present and the past exist “at the same time.” Todd May summarizes Bergson’s main point this way: “There is no present that does not actualize the past. It is all of the past that is actualized at every moment. The past that is actualized exists.”68 I think Halbwachs carries this idea into his understanding of social memory, arguing that the received past is influential for meaning-making in the present, especially if the tradition is older, is adopted by a large number of adherents and is widespread. Since the past serves the present, the present determines how the past is remembered.69 The past for Halbwachs is only the past as it was variously remembered and does not exist in any other way. When texts are viewed as memory texts (including receptions of Scripture and the Jesus tradition), they are media of suspended expressions, capturing a snapshot of the unfolding possible connections that can arrange themselves in seemingly infinite combinations. As a distinct model of text production, social memory theory collapses tradition and reception into an integrated process whereby constructs of the present and the anticipated future are shaped by culturally significant remembrances of the past. When tradition and memory are conflated, we can assume a past, but it is always a past that has always been received. It is important to clarify that the object for social memory theorists is not the storage or recitation (Erinnerung) of select data from the past, but rather involuntary acts of internalization and identity construction (Gedächtnis) where remembering and forgetting are inextricably bound in the service of relevance.70 Social memory theory challenges linear models of transmission and proposes that traditions, as products of memory, are more pliable, situational,

66 Todd May, Gilles Deleuze: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 53. 67 Deleuze, Bergsonism, 56. 68 May, Gilles Deleuze, 52–55. 69 Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 183. 70 Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 19–20.

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temporally conditioned and disconnected from some underlying transcendent reality that serves as a standard. Its capital lies in its explanatory value for making sense of how and why authors of texts perceived the past in competing ways. I close by bringing attention to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s use of the metaphor of the rhizome within their political theory as a helpful way of conceiving the interconnecting process that makes sense of emerging identities as we find them in Matthew’s FQs in comparison to his peers. In contrast to a tree, which is a system of derivation in a specific location that embeds itself with one root that leads to a trunk and the branches, a rhizome (like the Kudzu plant) can sprout roots and stems from any point. It has no beginning, middle, or end. It has no shape and is not limited to any one space since it can connect itself to a tree, the ground, or a fence.71 I would argue that the production of texts and their reception are like rhizomes. The text (e.g., Matthew’s Gospel) mediates a single snapshot of one point in the unfolding rhizome of a society. The past (be it the actual or received past of Israel or Jesus) could not have determined the text preserved in the snapshot and cannot determine how it will look because interconnections are limitless within an ontology of difference. Conceiving of texts as products of rhizomes instead of trees does not necessarily undermine more traditional diachronic conceptions and their related methods, but it certainly no longer tethers us to a single conception of a mediated past, but provides for variegated perspectives and much greater breadth that can lead to fuller understanding. As a suspended expression of commemoration, Matthew captures only a snapshot of the developed rhizome in the first generation after Jesus’s death – a rhizome that potentially would have conveyed a host of perspectives that we can never access. Approaching social memory theory using the rhizome metaphor challenges linear models of transmission and proposes that traditions and Scripture texts, as products of memory, are more pliable, situational, discontinuous, temporally conditioned, and disconnected from some underlying transcendent reality that serves as a standard. Its capital lies in its explanatory value for making sense of how and why authors of texts perceived the past in competing ways without being hermeneutically pressured to preserve a transcendent continuity.

71 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).

Part Two: Matthew in Context

The Gospel of Matthew Within the Context of Second Temple Judaism Carl R. Holladay Carl. R. Holladay

A. Introduction When read alongside the Jewish writings that were produced both in the land of Israel and in the diaspora between 200 BCE and 200 CE, how does Matthew look? With which Jewish writings does it bear close affinity either in terms of literary genre or overall outlook? If we were asked to include Matthew, and even the other three canonical Gospels for that matter, within one of the standard collections of Jewish writings from this period, where would we place it?1 Would it easily fit into one of the usual literary categories such as apocalypse, testament, or wisdom literature? Or would we have to create a new section in the Table of Contents to include Matthew? Matthew has generated a prodigious amount of scholarly research and publications over the past several decades. Although numerous, often conflicting, lines of interpretation have been pursued, there is broad agreement on some basic issues.2 Most agree that Matthew reflects awareness of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE, and that it was probably composed in the last quarter of the first century CE.3 Where Matthew was written is still disputed. Some argue for a Palestinian provenance such as Jerusalem, Caesarea Maritima, or somewhere in Galilee, while others think Syrian Antioch the most

1 Among the most notable are: R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English. With Introductions and Critical and Explanatory Notes to Several Books, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1913; repr. 1965); James H. Charlesworth, ed. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1983–1985); Werner Georg Kümmel, Christian Habicht, Otto Kaiser, Otto Plöger, and Josef Schreiner, eds., Jüdische Schriften aus hellenistisch-römischer Zeit, 6 vols. (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1973–); Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman, eds., Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2013). 2 Summaries of recent scholarship on Matthew are readily available in W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, 3 vols., ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988–1997); and Ulrich Luz, Matthew: A Commentary, 3 vols., trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001– 2007). 3 Matt 22:7; 24:15. See the discussion of dating in Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:127– 38, who date it between 80 and 95 CE; Luz, Matthew, 1:58–59, dates it around 80.

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probable context of origin.4 Everyone would agree that its narrative focus is “the land of Israel” (2:20, 21), although its geographical horizon sometimes extends beyond Palestine to “the East” (2:1) and to Egypt (2:13–23). Matthew nowhere mentions Rome or any other major Mediterranean city such as Alexandria or Antioch on the Orontes. Two regions of the Palestinian mainland are the main focus of attention: Galilee5 and Judea,6 with no mention of Samaria as a geographical region.7 Matthew’s geographical horizon is aptly captured in the narrative summary of 4:25: “And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.” Within Galilee the main geographical locations around which the narrative is constructed are Nazareth,8 “the Sea of Galilee,”9 and Capernaum,10 with occasional references to paired cities such as Chorazin and Bethsaida,11 Tyre and Sidon,12 and more remote places such as Caesarea Philippi.13 The main location in Judea is Jerusalem,14 although initially the Judean focus is on Bethlehem.15 Judea is also linked with the vaguely described region “beyond the Jordan.”16 Naturally this assumes that the Jordan River, with which the ministry of John the Baptist was associated, is a major geographical marker on Matthew’s map of “the land of Israel.”17 Although Papias’s early testimony that Matthew was based on an Aramaic (or Hebrew) original has generated numerous theories about the original language of composition, no such text has survived.18 The textual tradition of Matthew is traceable only to a Greek original, which began to be translated into other versions at an early date. Although written in Greek, Matthew is clearly Jewish in ethos, outlook, and texture. Its Jewishness is one of the earliest features of the patristic tradition relating to Matthew: It was written by a Jew for

4 Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:138–47, favor Antioch of Syria; similarly, Luz, Matthew, 1:56–58. 5 Matt 2:22; 3:13; 4:12, 15, 18, 23, 25; 15:29; 17:22; 19:1; 21:11; 26:32; 27:55; 28:7, 10, 16. 6 Matt 2:1, 5, 22; 3:1, 5; 4:25; 19:1; 24:16. 7 Matthew refers once to “the Samaritans” (10:5). 8 Matt 2:23; 4:13; 21:11; 26:71. 9 Matt 4:18; 15:29. 10 Matt 4:13; 8:5; 11:23; 17:24. 11 Matt 11:21. 12 Matt 11:21–22; 15:21. 13 Matt 16:13. 14 Matt 2:1, 3; 3:5; 4:25; 5:35; 15:1; 16:21; 20:17–18, 21:1, 10; 23:37. 15 Matt 2:1, 5–6, 8, 16. 16 Matt 4:25; 19:1; cf. 3:5; 4:15. 17 Matt 3:5–6, 13; 2:20–21. 18 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.16.

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a Jewish audience. Accordingly, we can think of Matthew as a Hellenistic Jewish writing – a text written in Koine Greek by a Jew. As for the overall literary quality of Matthew’s Greek, any assessment must take into account the presence of numerous Semitisms throughout the narrative, and the degree to which these are derived from earlier sources or are the author’s own creation. But as C. F. D. Moule observes, “there are passages [in Matthew] where we find quite accomplished Greek, free from Semitisms,” and one might say that the editor was an educated person commanding sound Greek with a considerable vocabulary; but he derived many Semitisms, and perhaps some Latin, from his sources; and he also had some feeling for Semitic “atmosphere,” occasionally introducing a Semitism on his own account, though less histrionically than Luke.19

Whether Matthew’s main biblical text was Hebrew or Greek, or a combination of the two, is an equally complicated question, but his biblical quotations often display Septuagintal features.20

B. Some Distinguishing Features of Second Temple Judaism How to characterize a religious tradition or movement as complex and controversial as Judaism during the Second Temple period is a perennial challenge. Recent scholarship is rightly critical of earlier interpretive categories such as Spätjudentum, “normative Judaism,” “post-biblical” or even “intertestamental” Judaism, and also of characterizations that highlight the purported hyper-legalism or moribundity of Judaism during the pre-Christian period.21 Simplistic, monochrome descriptions have given way to more nuanced efforts to capture the diversity and complexity of Jewish beliefs, practices, and traditions in the 19 C. F. D. Moule, The Birth of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1981), 278, 280. 20 See Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:32–33, acknowledging that some (Bacon, Clark, and Strecker) have argued for Matthew’s exclusive use of the LXX, but arguing instead that Matthew knew the Old Testament in both Hebrew and Greek. Determining Matthew’s source text for a particular Old Testament quotation or allusion is complicated by the fact that a particular quotation or allusion may have derived from one of the other synoptic Gospels rather than from his independent use of the Old Testament. The charts (pp. 34–57) display the variety of ways in which Matthew’s quotations tend to follow the LXX or the MT. One must, for example, distinguish between the 10–12 formula quotations in Matthew and the non-formula quotations, the latter of which “are generally LXX in form or exhibit only minor variations from the LXX” (p. 52). See Krister Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew and Its Use of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Lund: Gleerup, 1967), esp. his analysis of the formula quotations (pp. 97–127). 21 See George W. E. Nickelsburg, with Robert A. Kraft, “Introduction: The Modern Study of Early Judaism,” in Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. Robert A. Kraft and George W. E. Nickelsburg (Atlanta, Scholars Press, 1986), 1–30, esp. 1–2.

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Hellenistic and early Roman periods. While some now prefer to speak of “Judaisms” – identifiably discrete systems of Jewish belief and practice – rather than “Jewish diversity” or “varieties of Judaism,” others still insist that it is possible to speak of a “common Judaism” – a set of core beliefs, texts, and traditions based on Torah but also informed by prophetic and wisdom texts.22 Shayeh J. D. Cohen has argued convincingly that Judaism between 200 BCE and 200 CE, far from being anemic and legalistic, displays remarkable levels of literary activity that are creative and innovative in responding to the new social-political realities, first, of Hellenism as exemplified in the Ptolemies, Seleucids, and Antigonids, and, later, of Rome during the late Republic and the early Empire.23 Drawing on earlier prophetic and even wisdom traditions, Jewish apocalyptic movements emerged in different settings, displaying admirable resilience in responding to oppressive political realities by constructing a viable counter-culture, at least in the imagination if not in actual communities and social structures. Among other things, this sustained stream of intellectual vitality and literary productivity reflected a commendable form of democratization in which the interpretation of Scripture and tradition moved outside official circles that were directly connected to well established institutions such as the Temple, and were embraced by those empowered by their own intellect and independent spirit. Over time, these democratic impulses saw the origin and development of identifiable groups such as Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, to name Josephus’s top three, with the possible addition of the Zealots later on.24 Inevitably, these discrete groups and their traditions competed with each other, even as they were embraced by different sectors of Jewish society. The sheer volume of writings produced during this period, whether categorized as “apocryphal” or “pseudepigraphical,” that is, as they are understood in relation to the Jewish Scriptures, or as they occur in such prolific authors as Philo of Alexandria in the early first century CE and Josephus later in that same century, attests to this intellectual ferment. A central ingredient of this same intellectual movement is the emergence of the Greek Scriptures, gradual to be sure, but eventually complete. While the origins of this major literary accomplishment remain obscure, the general outlines are fairly clear, aided and abetted, of course, by the production of the Letter of Aristeas, itself an effective piece of literary propaganda that appeared sometime between the end of the third century BCE and the first century CE.

22 See Jacob Neusner, William S. Green, and Ernest S. Frerichs, eds., Judaisms and Their Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66CE (London: SCM, 1994), esp. Part II “Common Judaism” (45–314). 23 See Shayeh J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 3rd ed. (Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014). 24 Josephus, B.J. 2.119–166; A.J. 18.11–25.

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The emergence of Matthew, along with the other Gospels, as well as the other writings of the New Testament, should be seen within this broader context of literary productivity that characterized Second Temple Judaism. When the earliest followers of Jesus began collecting and preserving oral and written traditions about their central cultic figure, and eventually began writing their own accounts of his life and teaching, they were responding to religious, intellectual, and literary impulses that had already been in place within Judaism for two centuries or more. Their willingness to appropriate old, well-established literary genres such as the letter and biography reflected patterns of literary innovation that had already begun in Alexandria in the second century BCE and that had developed in other places as well.25 Yet another feature of Second Temple Judaism that bears directly on Matthew is messianic expectation.26 How one construes various Jewish texts from this period, especially those that appropriate such Old Testament texts as Num 24, Isa 11, or the “servant songs” of Isa 42–53, constitutes a major challenge for interpreters of Matthew. Efforts to reconstruct Jewish messianic thinking by assembling motifs from relatively late texts such as 4 Ezra (late first century) and 2 Baruch (early second century), and then producing clear messianic profiles that are thought to have been present a century or two earlier, have now given way to more nuanced analysis in which the various texts that speak of messianic figures or hopes are interpreted in their respective historical contexts. As John J. Collins observes, Messianic references in the Pseudepigrapha are sparse. There is no evidence of messianism at the time of the Maccabean revolt, and indeed messianic expectations seem to have been

25 The case for seeing Graeco-Roman βίοι as a well-defined literary genre that was appropriated by Jewish authors such as Philo of Alexandria and by the early Christian writers who composed the canonical Gospels has been argued convincingly by Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004); see also the third edition, published by Baylor University Press in 2018; also see Maren R. Niehoff, “Philo and Plutarch as Biographers: Parallel Responses to Roman Stoicism,” GRBS 52 (2012): 361–92. 26 From the vast bibliography on Jewish notions of messiahship during the Second Temple period, I am indebted to John J. Collins’s numerous publications in which he explores this theme. Especially informative is his “Jesus and the Messiahs of Israel” in his book Encounters with Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005); also, idem, The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010); Adela Y. Collins and John J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2008); and Gerbern S. Oegema, The Anointed and His People: Messianic Expectations from the Maccabees to Bar Kochba, JSPSup 27 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998).

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dormant throughout much of the Second Temple period. When we find a resurgence of messianism in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we find not just one messiah, but, in the classic phrase of 1QS 9:11, the expectation of “a prophet, and the messiahs of Aaron and Israel.”27

Rather than seeing unsystematic messianic conceptions scattered throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls, Collins finds a fairly well-defined understanding of a priestly messiah that reflected the priestly orientation of the Qumran sect. He also finds a generally coherent notion of a royal, Davidic messiah that was especially influenced by Isa 11 and Num 24, and whose militant role as “the Prince of the Congregation” necessarily included inflicting violence, especially against Gentiles.28 On the controversial question of whether the notion of a suffering or dying Messiah is attested in Jewish thought prior to Jesus, Collins finds no evidence for such thinking in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Of particular interest to Collins is the way in which different messianic conceptions, as expressed in certain titles such as Messiah, Son of Man, and Son of God, begin to be used interchangeably or even become blended within a single figure. Reflecting late nineteenth and early twentieth-century scholarship, Albert Schweitzer distinguishes two distinct traditions of messianic thought: one expressed with Son of Man imagery mediated through Dan 7 in which a heavenly figure exercises universal dominion, which culminates in eschatological judgment at the end of history, the other using royal, Davidic imagery to envision a figure anointed by God to re-establish the house of David and inaugurate a new political order on earth.29 Critical to our understanding of messianic thinking during the period prior to Jesus and contemporary with the origin and development of early Christianity is how certain terms are used and understood within such texts as 1 Enoch, which reflects a Judean provenance and was a valued text within the Qumran community prior to the Christian period.30 Notable is the usage in The Book of the Similitudes (1 En. 37–71) of the expressions “Righteous One,”31 “Messiah,”32 “Chosen One,”33 and “Son of Man.”34 While a variety of biblical texts 27

Cf. J. Collins, “Jesus and the Messiahs of Israel,” 169. 1QSb; CD 7:19–21; 1QM 11:6–7; similarly, Pss. Sol. 17:21–25; see J. Collins, “Jesus and the Messiahs of Israel,” 170–71. 29 Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, First Complete Edition, ed. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), esp. 235–59. Schweitzer characterizes these two eschatological conceptions as “prophetic and Danielic eschatology” (p. 239). 30 See James C. VanderKam “Righteous One, Messiah, Chosen One, and Son of Man in 1 Enoch 37–71,” in The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity, The First Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 169–91. 31 1 En. 38:2; 53:6. 32 1 En. 48:10; 52:4. 33 1 En. 39:6; 40:5; 45:3–4; 48:6; 49:2, 4; 51:3–4; 52:6, 9; 53:6; 55:4; 61:5, 8, 10; 62:1. 34 1 En. 46:2–4; 48:2; 62:5, 7, 9, 14; 63:11; 69:27, 29; 70:1; 71:14, 17. 28

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inform these usages, especially influential as source texts are Dan 7 and certain Servant Songs in Second Isaiah.35 In 1 En. 48 the Son of Man, who is regarded as an agent of the Lord of the Spirits and whose revelatory role was conceived even prior to creation, is also designated as “the Chosen One” (v. 6) and as “his (i.e., the Lord’s) Messiah” (v. 10). But, as Collins notes, “the assimilation of the Son of Man to the Davidic messiah in the Similitudes is quite limited. The Son of Man does not appear on earth, and he is not portrayed as the fulfillment of other messianic prophecies.”36 Whether another variation of messianic function can be designated “prophetic,” that is, in sharp contrast to the royal, Davidic function, and that of the eschatological Son of Man, depends on how such texts as Isa 61 were understood in Jewish thought of this period.37 Luke’s featuring of this text in the Nazareth Inaugural (Luke 4:16–30) clearly signals his understanding of a “prophetic anointing,” but this may have more to do with Luke’s distinctive conception of Jesus’s prophetic role than with anything else. Here again, a Qumran text, 4Q521, the so-called Messianic Apocalypse, which draws heavily on Ps 146, may be pertinent, especially if Collins is correct in his interpretation of this text as providing “a rare account of the role of the messianic prophet.”38 The prospect that a messianic figure would raise the dead, a role normally reserved for YHWH, figures in Jesus’s response to John the Baptist’s question (Matt 11:2–5; Luke 7:22), thereby suggesting parallels between Elijah, who raised the dead, and Jesus. Along with these messianic ideas embedded within various literary sources from the Second Temple Period, some of which are difficult to link with actual historical figures, are the reports of would-be kings, prophets, and messiahs who were part of the Palestinian landscape from the time of Pompey’s arrival in 63 BCE until the Second Jewish Revolt under the leadership of Bar Kokhba in 132–135 CE.39 That Simon Bar Kosiba, who sought to free Jews from Roman rule, operated with clear messianic pretensions based on Num 24:17, is

35

VanderKam, “Righteous One,” 188–90. Cf. J. Collins, “Jesus and the Messiahs of Israel,” 172. Collins sees a more thorough confluence of messianic traditions in 4 Ezra 13, in which a figure rises from the sea (cf. Dan 7), takes his place atop Mount Zion, from which he establishes justice, mainly by slaying the Gentiles. This figure “functions as the Davidic messiah typically functions in Jewish literature of this era” (p. 173). And yet, explicit Son of Man imagery is not found in this messianic scenario in 4 Ezra 13, and thus we do not find the same confluence of images here that occurs in 1 Enoch 3–71. 37 Ibid., 175–77. 38 Ibid., 176. 39 Ibid., 177, noting Josephus, B.J. 2.258–262; A.J. 20.169–172. 36

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widely acknowledged.40 How far back into the first century such claims can be traced remains disputed, although Jewish resistance to Roman rule surfaces near the turn of the era, when Judas, son of Sepphoraeus, and Matthias, son of Margalus, two highly esteemed teachers (σοφισταί) of the Jewish ancestral laws, encouraged their students to remove the golden eagle that Herod had erected over the Temple gate. Although Herod was near the end of his life, he executed both teachers along with their students who were the ring leaders.41 In neither of his accounts of this episode does Josephus attribute messianic motives to the teachers or students; instead, he reports it as a case in which the Jewish protesters, both teachers and students, were motivated by “zeal for the law.” Josephus reports further that the power vacuum created by Herod’s death in 4 BCE “induced numbers of persons to aspire to sovereignty,” including some of Herod’s veterans in Idumea.42 He mentions several individuals with royal ambitions, including Judas, son of Ezechias, who raised an army of followers in Sepphoris in Galilee;43 Simon of Peraea, who “was proclaimed king by [the people] in their madness,” and ravaged the royal palace at Jericho;44 and Athronges, an obscure shepherd who appointed himself king and who, along with his four brothers, conducted guerilla warfare throughout Judea.45 While none of these royal pretenders is said to have been messianic in any explicit sense, Josephus interprets their various exploits as dramatic, albeit failed, power plays to lay claim to the title “king” once held by Herod the Great. Another outburst of anti-Roman sentiment occurred during the reign of Claudius (41–54), who organized Judea as a Roman province and placed it under direct Roman rule administered by procurators. According to Josephus, the newly appointed procurator Cuspius Fadus (44–46) aborted an uprising against Rome led by a “certain impostor (γόης) named Theudas” who claimed to be a prophet (προφήτης), who had assembled a group of followers in the Jordan Valley.46 Although the details of the ideological vision that motivated Theudas 40 See E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews Under Roman Rule: From Pompey to Diocletian: A Study in Political Relations, SJLA 20 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 428–66, esp. 439–40; J. Collins, Scepter, 225–28. 41 Josephus, B.J. 1.648–655; similarly, A.J. 17.149–167. Even after Archelaus succeeds his father Herod as king of Judea, he has to deal with continuing resistance by those who still resent Herod’s actions (B.J. 2.5–13; A.J. 17.206–218). Josephus characterizes the Jewish resisters as “rebellious followers of the interpreters (of the law)” (A.J. 17.216) and their actions as sedition (στάσις, B.J. 2.11). 42 B.J. 2.55; A.J. 17.269–270. 43 B.J. 2.56; A.J. 17.271–272. 44 B.J. 2.57; A.J. 17.273–277; Tacitus, Hist. 5.9. 45 B.J. 2.60–65; A.J. 17.278–284. 46 A.J. 20.97–99; similarly Acts 5:36, which gives the number of Theudas’s followers as 400. On the conflict between the implied chronology of Josephus and that of Luke, see Carl

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are vague, Peter Schäfer is willing to identify this as the “first instance of an uprising with messianic- apocalyptic overtones.”47 The probable basis for this claim is Josephus’s phraseology suggesting that Theudas saw himself as a new Moses or Joshua: he promised that “at his command the [Jordan] river would be parted and would provide them an easy passage,” thereby enabling them to proceed toward Jerusalem. Josephus reports another episode a few years later, while M. Antonius Felix was procurator (ca. 52–60), in which an unnamed Jewish prophet, identified simply as an “Egyptian,” gathered thousands of followers and led them from the desert to the Mount of Olives, with the intention of entering Jerusalem, overpowering the Roman garrison, and proclaiming himself “as tyrant of the people” (τοῦ δήμου τυραννεῖν).48 Felix, however, anticipated the attack, and managed to suppress the uprising by deploying the heavy Roman infantry, while also engaging popular support. Although the Egyptian prophet and some of his followers escaped, most of his forces were killed or taken prisoner. Even so, Josephus reports the continuation of similar anti-Roman uprisings fueled by calls for independence, with the result that “every day saw this war being fanned into fiercer flame.”49 Josephus’s account of a similar incident a couple of years later, during the procuratorship of Porcius Festus (60–62 CE), is less detailed than that of the Egyptian prophet:50 “[Festus’s forces attacked] the dupes of a certain impostor (γόητος) who had promised them salvation (σωτηρίαν) and rest from troubles if they chose to follow him into the wilderness.” In this instance, however, unlike the previous episode involving the Egyptian prophet, Festus managed to kill both the leader and his followers. In one sense, these episodes are sporadic rather than continuous. For the most part, our main source of information is Josephus, whose pro-Roman bias is evident in both the Wars and Jewish Antiquities. Regardless of the circumstances prompting these uprisings, Josephus tends to characterize these incidents as revolutionary and seditious, as episodes in which gullible, socially

R. Holladay, Acts: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 146–47. On the relationship between γόης and προφήτης, see Philo, Spec. 1.315, as noted by Louis Feldman in LCL 9:440–41 n. b. 47 Peter Schäfer, The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World (London: Routledge, 2003), 114. 48 B.J. 2.261–263, which identifies the leader as “the Egyptian false prophet” (ὁ Αἰγύπτιος ψευδοπροφήτης) and as a charlatan (γοής), and gives the number of his followers as 30,000; A.J. 20.167–172; also, Acts 21:37–39, which reports 4,000 followers. 49 B.J. 2.264–265. 50 A.J. 20.188.

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disenfranchised people are duped by ambitious leaders variously described as charlatans, false prophets, and tyrants.51 While our understanding of the political situation in Palestine during the first century is incomplete in many respects, the overall picture is clear enough for us to get some sense of the historical and social setting in which Matthew can be placed. To be sure, we must distinguish between the period Matthew reports – the first three decades of the first century – and the period in which he writes – the last three decades of the first century. And we must allow for the possibility that what he reports reflects his own situation, perhaps even more so than the earlier situation he describes. But even with these methodological qualifications, we can render some plausible judgments. On any showing, Matthew’s portrait of John the Baptist has a strong prophetic element – he is introduced as the fulfillment of Isa 40:3, clothed like Elijah (2 Kgs 1:8). His call for repentance and moral reform echoes the preaching of Israel’s prophets. Responding to Jesus, the crowds acknowledge that “all regard John as a prophet” (21:26). Although Josephus does not call John the Baptist a prophet, he reports Herod Antipas’s fear that his eloquent preaching might have revolutionary effect and “lead to some form of sedition.”52 The Matthean portrait of Jesus has similarly explicit prophetic dimensions. The crowds respond to Jesus’s “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem by saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee” (21:11; also, 21:46). Although the episodes involving prophets reported by Josephus occur several decades after the time of John the Baptist and Jesus, they illustrate some of the popular expectations that circulated in Palestine during the early Empire. As Acts 21:38 shows, such knowledge of local prophetic movements provided interpretive categories for understanding Paul in the early 60s. Even more explicit than prophetic terminology is the strong Matthean portrait of Jesus as belonging to the royal, Davidic line, and the symbolic significance attached to the title “king.” The central importance of this dimension of Matthew’s Christology is signaled in the opening verse, “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (1:1), a theme repeatedly mentioned and further developed throughout the narrative. The sheer frequency of Matthew’s use of “Son of David” as a christological title, especially in comparison with Mark and Luke, is ample proof of Matthew’s construal of Jesus as a royal Messiah.53 Moreover, the prominence of

51 See Richard A. Horsley and John S. Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements in the Time of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988; orig. pub., 1985). 52 A.J. 18.116–119. 53 Matt 9:27; 12:23; 15:22; 20:30–31; 21:9, 15; 22:42–45.

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the ironic title “King of the Jews” in the Matthean Passion Narrative underscores the broader political context in which the narrator expected readers to situate events relating to the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus.54 When attempting to relate Matthew to its social and political context, we cannot simply assume that the efforts of various royal pretenders whom Josephus reports as “aspiring to sovereignty” after the death of Herod the Great shaped Jewish and Roman perceptions of Jesus during his lifetime, since several decades separated those events from the time of Jesus’s ministry. But if we work with a broader historical framework, extending from the Hasmonean period until the early Empire, we can see some of the ways in which various leadership, perhaps even messianic, roles functioned within the Palestinian context. This is especially true with royal and prophetic roles, along with sacerdotal roles mainly associated with the high priest. Already during the Hasmonean period, the title “king” (βασιλεύς) had acquired special significance. According to Josephus, Simon (ca. 142–135 BCE), after distinguishing himself as a military leader, was appointed high priest,55 although 1 Macc 14:41–43 is more explicit in assigning him royal and priestly functions. Josephus reports that John Hyrcanus I (ca. 135–104) was unique in the way he exercised “supreme command of the nation, the high priesthood, and the gift of prophecy.”56 According to Josephus, Aristobulus I (ca. 104–103) was the first Hasmonean leader to claim the title “king,”57 although Strabo reports that this innovative claim was first made by Alexander Jannaeus (ca. 103– 76), the successor of Aristobulus I.58 Later, Aristobulus II (ca. 67–63) functioned as both high priest and king.59 John Hyrcanus II, the elder son of Alexander Jannaeus and Salome Alexander, was reinstated as high priest in 63, but owing to the administrative reforms of Gabinius, he was deprived of political power.60 When Julius Caesar came to Syria in 47 BCE, he issued a series of decrees in which Hyrcanus II was confirmed as high priest and ruler (ἐθναρχής) of the people, and there is some evidence that he was seen as king;61 Caesar also declared that Hyrcanus II and his sons would be allies and friends of the 54

Matt 27:11, 29, 37, 42 (“King of Israel”); cf. 2:2. B.J. 1.50–53. 56 B.J. 1.68–69; cf. A.J. 13.230–299. 57 B.J. 1.70; A.J. 13.301. 58 Strabo 16.2.40. R. Marcus, LCL 7:379 n. c, observes: “The title ‘king’ (melek) does not appear on the Hebrew coins of Aristobulus.” 59 B.J. 1.120–122; A.J. 14.4–7. See Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135), rev. ed., ed. Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, Pamela Vermes, and Matthew Black, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1973–1987), 1:234 n. 2. 60 B.J. 1.153, 169–170. 61 A.J. 14.143–148, 190–212. R. Marcus, LCL 7:523 n. f, notes that Caesar appointed Hyrcanus both high priest and ethnarch, according to the decrees cited in A.J. 14.190–212, further asserting, “by the Jews he seems to have been called king,” citing A.J. 14.157, 172. 55

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Roman people.62 In 42–41 Mark Antony named Phasael and Herod as joint tetrarchs under the ethnarch Hyrcanus II.63 In 40, Herod in Rome received the support of Octavian and Antony, and was appointed king of Judea by the Senate.64 As this period of Jewish history shows, leadership roles such as high priest and king (and even prophet) could be clearly distinguished, and when a leader claimed to be both high priest and king, such claims did not go unnoticed; moreover, when the Roman Senate finally confirmed Herod the Great as king of Judea, it was no small matter. Roman sensitivities over the use of the title “king” (βασιλεύς), especially as it related to imperial appointees in Judea, are also evident during the early Empire, for example, in Augustus’s decision to name Archelaus ethnarch of Judea rather than king, as Herod had specified in his will, and to assign Philip and Antipas the title “tetrarch.”65 Several years elapsed before Gaius, at the beginning of his reign (37–41), appointed Agrippa I king (βασιλεύς), assigning him control of the tetrarchies of Philip and Lysanias.66 As a result of this imperial decision, Agrippa became the first Herodian after Herod the Great to bear the title “king.”67 Moreover, Herod Antipas’s ambition to be promoted from tetrarch to king, apparently egged on by his wife Herodias, proved to be his downfall.68 As punishment for this insolent gesture, Gaius exiled them both.69 Taking into account this historical framework, mostly reported by Josephus, enriches the social-political context in which Matthew sets the story of Jesus. For one thing, this broader understanding of the way in which kingship was understood during the Hasmonean period, and subsequently in the early Empire, sets Matthew’s portrait of Jesus as a royal figure, as the legitimate heir of the House of David, into bold relief. Given the way in which Rome is reported to have responded to episodic uprisings led by would-be kings, prophets, and the like, it is understandable why a figure whom Matthew explicitly designates “Messiah,” “Son of David,” “prophet,” and “Son of Man,” could be mocked and eventually executed under the ironic title “King of the Jews.” As this brief survey shows, claiming the title “king” or even aspiring to it, much less being 62

A.J. 14.194–195. B.J. 1.243–244; A.J. 14.324–326. R. Marcus, LCL 7:621 n. i, says “This (with the parallel B.J. 1.244) is the first occurrence in Josephus of this title [τετραάρχης].” 64 B.J. 1.282–285; A.J. 14.379–389; similarly, Strabo, Geogr. 16.46; Appian, Bell. civ. 5.75; Tacitus, Hist. 5.9 (references, Marcus, LCL 7:651 n. h). 65 B.J. 2.93–94; A.J. 17.317–320. 66 B.J. 2.181; A.J. 18.237; Philo, Flacc. 25; Legat. 324–326. 67 On Agrippa I’s appointment as king in 37, see Daniel R. Schwartz, Agrippa I: The Last King of Judea, TSAJ 23 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1990), 60. 68 B.J. 2.182–183; A.J. 18.240–255. 69 According to B.J. 2.183, they were exiled to Spain, although A.J. 18.252 reports Lyons in Gaul as their place of exile. See Schwartz, Agrippa I, 5. 63

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assigned that title officially, were politically and socially consequential actions, not only for the individual but also for his followers.

C. Philo’s De vita Mosis Now that we have surveyed some aspects of Second Temple Judaism that need to be taken into account when interpreting the Gospel of Matthew, we can return to our original question: To what section of the Table of Contents of Jewish writings from the Second Temple Period would the Gospel of Matthew belong? The answer is fairly clear: those writings that focus on the life, teachings, and accomplishments of a single individual. And in this respect, Philo’s short treatises on the patriarchs Abraham and Joseph and his longer two-volume work De vita Mosis, would be the closest literary analogues.70 While it would be profitable to compare Matthew with each of these three writings, I will concentrate on De vita Mosis.71 Although the position of De vita Mosis within the larger Philonic corpus is disputed, it is best understood as a work written mainly for outsiders, which introduces Philo’s Exposition of the Law; and which is followed by De Opificio Mundi, a treatise arguing that the cosmos and the Law of Moses are harmonious. Then follow biographical treatments of the patriarchs Abraham (and some non-extant essays on other patriarchs) and Joseph, showing how the patriarchs embodied the Mosaic law before it was given. Next comes systematic exposition of the Law, beginning with the treatise De Decalogo, followed by four books of exposition De specialibus legibus, concluding with two treatises De

70

In Feldman et al., Outside the Bible, the section titled “Interpretive Texts Centering on Biblical Figures” includes the following texts: Life of Adam and Eve, 1 Enoch, Apocalypse of Abraham, Melchizedek, Aramaic Levi Document, Visions of Amram, Song of Miriam, Apocryphon of Joshua, The Vision of Samuel, Pseudo-Ezekiel, The Apocryphon of Ezekiel, The Letter of Jeremiah, 1 Baruch, 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch, Prayer of Nabonidus, and 4 Ezra. One might also think of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Lives of the Prophets in a similar category. While each of these writings relates to particular individuals, they do so in different ways. They may report various traditions that have gathered around the name of an individual such as Enoch, Abraham, or Ezra; or wisdom traditions associated with scribal figures such as Baruch. But these writings do not conform to the genre βίος, even if it is loosely defined, in which an author purports to rehearse the details of someone’s life, beginning with his birth and concluding with his death. 71 See Louis H. Feldman, Philo’s Portrayal of Moses in the Context of Ancient Judaism, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity Series 15 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2007); Maren R. Niehoff, “On the Life of Moses,” in Feldman et al., Outside the Bible, 1:959–88; also Ellen Birnbaum, “On the Life of Abraham,” in ibid., 1:916–50. Burridge, What are the Gospels, 124–28, includes Philo’s De vita Mosis among the five examples of early Graeco-Roman βίοι.

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virtutibus and De praemiis et poenis. The other major sections of Philo’s works include The Allegorical Commentary, with a three-volume introductory work Legum allegoriae, which covers Gen 2:1–3:19, followed by seventeen separate treatises, each devoted to a specific section of Genesis, which cover Gen 3:24– 31:21; and Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin 1–4 and Quaestiones et solutiones Exodum 1–2, which cover Gen 2:4–28:9 and Exod 6:2–30:10 respectively.72 Philo’s literary aim is made explicit from the outset: He intends to write “the life of Moses” (Μωυσέως … τὸν βίον ἀναγράψαι, Mos. 1.1), a claim that makes the title of the work entirely appropriate: ΠΕΡΙ ΤΟΥ ΒΙΟΥ ΜΩΥΣΕΩΣ.73 Acknowledging that Moses’s legislation is widely known, Philo concedes that “the man himself as he really was is known to few” (αὐτὸν δὲ ὅστις ἦν ἐπ᾽ ἀληθείας ἴσασιν οὐ πολλοί, 1.2). This revealing phrase renders Philo’s literary aim even more explicitly. Rather than sketching certain external features of Moses’s life that would surface, say, in a chronological rehearsal of events, Philo wants to probe more deeply in order to portray Moses as he truly was. As the unfolding narrative makes clear, Philo thinks this deeper understanding of Moses can be achieved only if one grasps his multi-faceted significance. While Moses’s fame as a lawgiver may be widely known, this singular achievement, Philo argues, does not do justice to the other dimensions of his life, most notably his role as sovereign leader of the Jewish people (to which Book 1 is devoted), but also his priestly and prophetic leadership. Book 1 of De vita Mosis can be read as a form of “rewritten Bible,” based mainly on Exodus and Numbers, with occasional excursuses prompted by the biblical narrative and yet diverging freely from it.74 For the most part, the episodes Philo chooses to report are directly related to Moses, and just as in the 72

In my construal of The Exposition of the Law I follow Samuel Sandmel, Philo of Alexandria: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 47–76; similarly, David T. Runia, Philo of Alexandria: On the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses, Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 1–4; for a slightly different view, see James R. Royse, “The Works of Philo,” in The Cambridge Companion to Philo, ed. Adam Kamesar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 32–64. 73 At the end of the preface, Philo again refers to τὰ περὶ τὸν βίον [of Moses]. In Mos. 2.66, Philo reiterates his claim to have written “the life of Moses” (τοῦ βίου Μωυσέως). Later, in his discussion of humanity (φιλανθρωπία) as a virtue, Philo recalls the “two treatises in which I wrote about the life of Moses” (ἐν δυσὶ συντάξεσιν, ἃς ἀνέγραψα περὶ τοῦ βίου Μωυσέως, Virt. 52). 74 See Jonathan Potter, “Rewriting Moses and Mark: The Composition of Luke’s Gospel in Light of Rewritten Scriptural Narratives,” Ph.D. dissertation, Emory University, 2019, with extensive bibliography. As Potter reports, the expression “rewritten Bible” was coined by Geza Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies, SPB 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1961). Among numerous publications, see Sidnie White Crawford, Rewriting Scripture in Second Temple Times, SDSSRL (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008); József Zsengellér, ed., Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years: Texts, Terms, or Techniques? A Last Dialogue with Geza

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biblical account, they highlight Moses’s leadership role as it is reflected in those stories. One obvious exception is the fairly lengthy account of Balak and Balaam (1.263–299), in which Moses plays no role. But there are some glaring omissions such as the giving of the law at Sinai (Exod 19–24), and these are hard to explain. Even when Philo discusses Moses as legislator in Book 2, he alludes only briefly to the Sinai epiphany (2.69–70). There are some other organizational oddities. While De vita Mosis is notable for the way in which it is organized around the four roles of king, legislator, priest, and prophet, this fourfold schematization is not clear from the outset. Nowhere in the opening preface (1.1–4) does Philo preview the work using these four categories. In fact, he does not mention them explicitly until the beginning of Book 2, when he lays out the details of this framework in the preface (2.1–7). This comes as a surprise, since the concluding paragraph of Book 1 reports that, Philo, having “told the story of Moses’s actions in his capacity as king,” will next deal with the powers Moses displayed “as high priest and legislator” (1.334). Somewhere between writing the conclusion to Book 1 and the opening preface of Book 2, Philo apparently decided to include prophecy as a fourth interpretive category. Perhaps this occurred because he had already singled out several instances of Moses’s prophetic powers in Book 1.75 While the retrospective conclusion to Book 1 claims that it told “the story of Moses’s actions in his capacity of king,” the motif of Moses as king is introduced only gradually as the narrative unfolds. In reporting Moses’s early life, Philo says that he was brought up as a prince (βασιλικῆς) in Egypt (1.8), and that he received the nurture and service fit for a prince (βασιλικῆς, 1.20). It was widely expected that he would be the successor of his grandfather’s sovereignty (ἀρχῆς) … [and that he was] regularly called the young king (ὁ νέος βασιλεύς, 1.32). After Moses killed the Egyptian, his detractors accuse him of wanting to take the throne (τῆς ἀρχῆς) from his grandfather. They complain that “he is eager to get the kingship (βασιλείας) before the time comes” (1.46). The kingship motif especially surfaces in the report of Moses’s becoming a shepherd in Arabia, when Philo asserts that shepherding is the best training for kingship: “[he] received his first lesson in the command of others; for the shepherd’s business is a training-ground and a preliminary exercise in kingship for

Vermes, SJSup 166 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). In Feldman et al., Outside the Bible, the section including notable examples of “rewritten Bible” such as The Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees is titled “Sustained Biblical Commentaries: Retellings and Pesharim.” 75 See Mos. 1.57, in which Moses, while chastening the Arabian shepherds who were harassing the seven young maidens, “grew inspired and was transfigured into a prophet.” Similarly, 1.175, during the exodus, Moses predicts the defeat of Egyptians; 1.201, during the manna episode, Moses “possessed divine inspiration, spoke these oracular words”; 1.210, under inspiration, Moses struck the rock.

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one who is destined to command the herd of mankind, the most civilized of herds …” (προδιδασκόμενος εἰς ἡγεμονίαν· ποιμενικὴ γὰρ μελέτη καὶ προγυμνασία βασιλείας τῷ μέλλοντι τῆς ἡμερωτάτης τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐπιστατεῖν ἀγέλης, 1.60). Philo cites the adage that kings are “shepherds of their people” (1.61), and while he does not cite a source, he may be echoing Ezekiel’s description of the leaders of Israel as shepherds (Ezek 34), a metaphor that reflects the widespread association of shepherds with kings in the ancient Near East. The kingship motif achieves special prominence about midway through Book 1, when Philo diverges from the biblical account to provide an excursus on Moses’s moral development (1.148–162). His explicit use of kingship language is noteworthy: “Moses, invested with this office and kingship” (Μωυσῆς τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ βασιλείαν λαβών, 1.148); Moses “gave up the lordship of Egypt” (τὴν Αἰγύπτου κατέλιπεν ἡγεμονίαν, 1.149); God granted him “the kingship of a nation more populous and mightier” (βασιλείᾳ πολυανθρωποτέρου καὶ κρείττονος ἔθνους, 1.149); upon receiving this office (τὴν ἀρχήν, 1.150), Moses avoided nepotism; cared only for his subjects; eschewed riches, preferring instead the wealth of nature; refused excess, displaying moderation instead; sought only to pursue the virtues, those treasures a ruler (τὸν ἄρχοντα) should have in abundance (1.153–154). Accordingly, God granted Moses dominion over nature, thereby making him a world citizen (1.157). As God’s true partner and collaborator, Moses was given the same title, being made “god and king of the whole nation” (ὠνομάσθη γὰρ ὅλου τοῦ ἔθνους θεὸς καὶ βασιλεύς, 1.158). This royal status enabled Moses to enter God’s exclusive space – “the unseen, invisible, incorporeal and archetypal essence of existing things” (εἴς τε τὸν γνόφον, ἔνθα ἦν ὁ θεός, εἰσελθεῖν λέγεται, τουτέστιν εἰς τὴν ἀειδῆ καὶ ἀόρατον καὶ ἀσώματον τῶν ὄντων παραδειγματικὴν οὐσίαν, 1.158). Having penetrated to this interior space of God, Moses exemplifies the true philosopher and in turn becomes a model for others, especially other rulers: “in himself and his life displayed for all to see, he has set before us, like some well-wrought picture, a piece of work beautiful and godlike, a model for those who are willing to copy it (καθάπερ τε γραφὴν εὖ δεδημιουργημένην ἑαυτὸν καὶ τὸν ἑαυτοῦ βίον εἰς μέσον προαγαγὼν άγκαλον καὶ θεοειδὲς ἔργον ἔστησε παράδειγμα τοῖς ἐθέλουσι μιμεῖσθαι, 1.158).76 Those who strive to imprint this image of Moses on their souls are truly blessed. When a ruler (ἡγεμών) is profligate, so will his subjects be (1.160). At the end of this passage, Philo introduces the image of

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On Mos. 1.158, see Carl R. Holladay, THEIOS ANER in Hellenistic-Judaism: A Critique of the Use of This Category in New Testament Christology, SBLDS 40 (Missoula: SBL, 1977), 108–29; for further treatment of this passage, see M. David Litwa, “The Deification of Moses in Philo of Alexandria,” The Studia Philonica Annual: Studies in Hellenistic Judaism 26 (2014): 1–27.

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Moses as legislator (νομοθέτης), and although this was his future destiny, already at this early stage of his career he was “the reasonable and living impersonation of law” (αὐτὸς ἐγίνετο νόμος ἔμψυχός τε καὶ λογικός, 1.162). In Book 2, the preface (2.1–7) briefly summarizes the first book, which dealt with “the birth and nurture of Moses” and “with his education and career as a ruler” (ἀρχῆς). After giving a compact review of the events covered in Book 1, Philo explains why the four discrete roles are necessary requirements for leadership. Of the four, kingship remains the foundational category for Philo, with the other three roles seen as requisite ancillary functions. A king, especially the philosopher king, must be a worthy legislator, an exemplary religious leader, that is, priest, and someone gifted with divine inspiration, that is, a prophet. One of the striking features of Book 2 is the disproportionately brief treatment of Moses as legislator (2.8–65) – roughly half the length (14 pages) of each section devoted to his priestly and prophetic roles (28 pages each).77 After brief mention of the virtues required of an exemplary legislator, Philo argues for the enduring validity and permanence of Moses’s laws, which have been widely acknowledged. As proof of this universal acclaim, he adduces Ptolemy II Philadelphus’s initiative in requesting a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (2.26–44). Rather than giving a detailed rehearsal of Moses’s legislative genius, Philo insists that it is reflected in the two-fold organizational structure of the Pentateuch: the historical part reporting the creation of the world and early Israelite history, while the commands and prohibitions specify which behaviors are acceptable. His internal logic is clear: ethics is grounded in cosmology. The story of Noah is cited as an example. All three sections of Book 2 consistently display two features also found in Book 1: a strong moralistic cast and Philo’s penchant for symbolic or allegorical exegesis. Philo begins the legislative section by noting the virtues required of a successful legislator (2.8–25). The priestly section (2.66–186) begins by underscoring the paramount importance of piety (εὐσέβεια), and reporting Moses’s moderation and moral purity in his preparation for receiving the divine oracles (2.66–70). Similarly, the third section begins with Philo’s assertion that Moses was “a prophet of the highest quality” (2.187), and that God’s prophetic oracles are “signs of the divine excellencies (ἀρετῶν θείων), graciousness and beneficence (τῆς τε ἵλεω καὶ εὐεργέτιδος)” with which he “incites all men to noble conduct” (καλοκἀγαθίαν, 2.189).

77 Some think Philo’s treatment of Moses as legislator was originally longer and that a section has dropped out; others think Philo abbreviated it because he gives fuller treatment to the Mosaic legislation elsewhere. See Colson’s note on §65 in the LCL Appendices, pp. 606–07.

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Just as his allegorical exegesis surfaces in his treatment of Moses as king in Book 1,78 it is especially frequent in the section on Moses as high priest in Book 2 (2.66–186). Explaining the five pillars in the propylaeum of the tabernacle prompts Philo to expatiate on the five human senses and how the configuration of the tabernacle with its inner and outer courts symbolizes the human being who consists of both “mind” and “sense” (2.81–82). His description of the material and length of the tabernacle curtains triggers numerological reflections on the numbers four, ten, twenty-eight, and forty, the number of weeks a baby resides in the womb (2.84). The four colors of thread used to weave the curtains symbolize the four elements earth, water, air, and fire, a reminder of God’s creative role (2.88). The ark of the covenant symbolizes God’s gracious power, which enables humans to be grateful rather than prideful (2.96). The cherubim, representing recognition and full knowledge, symbolize the two hemispheres above and below the earth, along with the creative and kingly potencies (2.98– 99). The altar of incense is a symbol of gratitude (2.101), while the candlestick with its various branches symbolizes the luminaries and planets (2.103). The position of the table of shewbread, as well as the bread and salt on it, also illustrate how food comes from heaven and earth (2.104). The crown displayed on the high priest’s ephod signifies the four letters of the tetragrammaton (2.115). The high priest’s vestments, with all of their intricate decorations, have manifold symbolic significance, including heaven, the zodiac, and human reason. The cumulative effect of all these clothing details is to signal that, when the high priest enters the innermost sanctuary, he takes the whole universe with him – the high priest is a “little world,” a microcosm (2.117–135). The laver is a symbol of purity (2.138–139), and the twelfth rod with Aaron’s name on it, which becomes a budding plant, shows that the nut is a symbol of perfect virtue, and illustrates that the four virtues justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom are available to those who devote themselves to austerity and hardship, that is, to continence and self-restraint (2.181–186). What becomes especially clear in this elaborate rehearsal of the tabernacle, its furnishings, dimensions, and fixtures, along with the detailed treatment of the decorative elements of the high priest’s vestments is that allegorical interpretation, rather than being seen as separate from Philo’s moralistic emphasis, is in fact one of the main hermeneutical strategies through which his moralizing occurs. For Philo, allegory serves his moral interests. This applies not only to Moses himself but also to his legislation, which, throughout, serves as the means by which the reader of the Bible or the practicing Israelite can access the moral truths embedded within the Mosaic legislation. Working with the Stoic assumption that the individual’s ultimate goal is to conform to one’s

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E.g., the burning bush episode (1.67–70) and the Elim episode (1.188–190); Philo’s allegorizing is especially strong in De Abrahamo and to a lesser extent in De Iosepho.

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moral will to the cosmic will of the universe, Philo shows how the Mosaic law is critical to achieving this end. While Philo’s rehearsal of Moses’s priestly role tends to follow the order of events in the biblical narrative, his treatment of Moses as prophet displays a different organizational structure (2.187–291). His overall aim in this section is to show that Moses “was a prophet of the highest quality” (2.187). In his preliminary discussion, Philo conceives of three types of divine utterances: (1) those in which the main emphasis is on God’s own initiative – utterances spoken directly by God to an interpreter; (2) utterances that occur when God answers a question the prophet has asked, thus in which God and the prophet collaborate; and (3) those utterances in which the experience of the prophet under divine inspiration is the most prominent element. The first type of divine utterance Philo does not discuss. In a class to itself, it is beyond praise, “too great to be lauded by human lips” (2.191). Philo explains the other two types by adducing four specific examples. Moses receives a prophetic oracle, or a “divine ruling” from God, in four exemplary cases: (a) capital punishment for someone who blasphemes God (2.192–208; cf. Lev 24:10–16); (b) capital punishment for violating the Sabbath (2.209–220; cf. Exod 31:14; 35:2; Num 15:32–36); (c) resolving the conflict that arises when the demands of mourning and funeral rites conflict with the rules for Passover observance (2.221–232; cf. Num 9:1–14); and (d) clarifying the laws of inheritance in special situations, e.g., when a man dies without any male heirs (2.233–245; cf. Num 27:1–11). As for oracles received by Moses under divine inspiration, Philo adduces four examples: (a) predicting the parting of the Red Sea and the defeat of the Egyptians (2.246–257; cf. 1.175; Exod 14); (b) praying for manna, especially in obtaining directions for receiving it on the Sabbath (2.258–269; cf. 1.201; Exod 16:4–36); (c) invoking the slaughter of the Golden Calf idolaters (2.270– 274; Exod 32); and (d) destruction of the priestly rebels and their companions (the Korah rebellion; 2.275–287; Num 16). Having cited specific cases of Moses’s prophetic activity in each of the aforementioned categories, Philo shifts to the account of Moses’s death, which he presents as the culminating prophecy of his career. Philo is aware of the main interpretive problem: The account of Moses’s death in Deut 33–34 would appear to imply that it was written post-mortem. Instead, Philo presents it as a case of Moses’s prophesying his own mysterious departure. As with Philo’s treatment of Moses’s other three roles, here also his moralistic interests are clearly on display. Moses is the “holiest of men ever yet born” (2.192). Blaspheming is seen as a “monstrous violation of the moral law” (2.198). Deciding on the appropriate punishment for a blasphemer is a matter of justice (δίκη, 2.200). Reaching this decision, Moses is praised as “the wisest of men,” who has drunk from the undiluted “wine of wisdom” (2.204). The Sabbath should be reserved for the exclusive pursuit of wisdom (2.211, 215);

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accordingly, the “places of prayer throughout the cities [are] schools of prudence and courage and temperance and justice and also of piety, holiness and every virtue by which duties to God and men are discerned and rightly performed” (2.216). In seeking meaningful ways to resolve conflicts involving observance of the Law, Moses honors God’s truth and justice (2.237). Those who punished the Golden Calf idolaters were accounted as “the noblest of heroes” (2.274). In dealing with the internal rebellion among the priests, Moses, “though the mildest and meekest of men, was so spurred by righteous anger by his passionate hatred of evil that he besought God to turn His face from their sacrifice” (2.279). Moses insists that he does not lie (2.280).

D. The Gospel of Matthew and Philo’s De vita Mosis: A Comparison The Gospel of Matthew is roughly two-thirds the length of Philo’s De vita Mosis.79 One of the most obvious differences in the two works is that, while De vita Mosis is composed in the first-person,80 the implied author of Matthew operates as an omniscient narrator. While De vita Mosis is explicitly identified as a βίος, Matthew gives no indication of its literary genre within the narrative. Only in the title, which was probably ascribed to the work in the second century, is Matthew identified as a gospel (εὐαγγέλιον). Even so, both works have only one main character: Jesus Christ in Matthew and Moses in De vita Mosis. The main difference between the two works is that one treats a figure from the distant past, the other a relatively recent figure. Nevertheless, this focused attention on one main character means that both works should be read as βίοι. While the Old Testament figures prominently in the composition of each work, it does so in different ways. Much of De vita Mosis consists of “rewritten Bible” in which Old Testament stories are retold through summary or paraphrase, often with considerable literary license comparable to later forms of rabbinic Haggadah. Although Philo’s hermeneutical method in De vita Mosis is not full-scale allegory comparable to what is found in Legum Allegoriae, it does exhibit a consistent tendency to identify the symbolic significance of various features of the biblical text. By contrast, Matthew does not display interest in allegory or explicit symbolism comparable to what is found in De vita Mosis. Probably the closest Matthew comes to employing allegory is Jesus’s interpretation of the Parable of the Sower (Matt 13:18–23). Implicit allegory or symbolism may be reflected in Matthew’s Birth and Infancy Narrative, which

79 According to TLG, Matthew contains 18,338 words, while De vita Mosis contains 31,400 words. 80 See Mos. 1.1, 4–5; 2.3, 8.

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would prompt an informed Old Testament reader to see a resemblance between Herod’s threats against the infant Jesus and Pharaoh’s slaughter of the Hebrew children; or the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Matt 21:33–46), when the wicked tenants slay the landowner’s son (21:39), but Matthew’s version is more muted than the mention of the “beloved son” in Mark 12:6 and Luke 20:13. For all its dependence on the Old Testament as the main source text, De vita Mosis nowhere exhibits interest in Matthew’s use of promise-fulfillment as a hermeneutical scheme. Nothing close to Matthew’s numerous “fulfillment quotations” is found in De vita Mosis. In terms of the overall story, both Matthew and De vita Mosis begin their stories by devoting attention to the birth and infancy of their respective heroes; moreover, they conclude their narratives by reporting how each figure died. But the proportions are quite different, with Matthew’s Passion Narrative occupying several chapters (chs. 26–27, ca. 12% of the narrative), while the death of Moses is treated with relative brevity in De vita Mosis (ca. two pages in LCL; 2.288–291). Their respective arrangement of material reflects the two main options used by ancient biographers: Matthew follows a roughly chronological arrangement, while De vita Mosis opts for a topical arrangement.81 In some respects, Matthew’s arrangement is topical, just as parts of De vita Mosis more or less follow the biblical timeline. Even so, the means by which each work portrays its main character differs rather substantially. In Matthew, the character of Jesus is portrayed episodically. The narrative consists mainly of stories or episodes in which John the Baptist and his successor Jesus figure as the main character with which other characters interact, either positively or negatively. This is especially true in the narrative portions of Matthew, including the Passion Narrative, and the events pertaining to Easter. Sayings material is interwoven into these episodes, but is most conspicuously collected in Matthew’s five main discourses (chs. 5–7; 10; 13; 18; 23–25). This same episodic arrangement is true to some extent in De vita Mosis, but not in the same way. For one thing, episodes featuring Moses figure differently in each of the four portrayals. They are especially prominent in Philo’s portrayal of Moses as king in Book 1, to some extent in the priestly section (2.66–186), but scarcely at all in the legislative section (2.8–65), and in a highly schematized way in the prophetic section (2.187–291). Another way in which the two works can be compared profitably is their respective use of explicit encomium. In De vita Mosis Philo repeatedly praises Moses with superlatives: he is the “greatest and most perfect of men” (1.1); “the holiest of men ever yet born” (2.192); “great in everything” (2.211); “the mildest and meekest of men” (2.279). The closest Matthew’s narrator comes to using such bold encomiastic language is the opening verse: “An account of the 81

On the use of chronological and topical arrangement, see Burridge, What are the Gospels, 115, 200–02.

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genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of God” (1:1). Here, the narrator’s own sentiments are clearly expressed, but this verse is remarkable for being exceptional. To be sure, bold claims are made about Jesus in Matthew, but these tend to occur on the lips of characters within the story, for example, the christological titles in the Birth and Infancy Narrative (1:20–21, 23); the heavenly voice at Jesus’s baptism (3:17) and the Transfiguration (17:5); the demoniacs (8:29); the two blind men (9:27; 20:31); John the Baptist’s question (11:2–3); Peter’s confession (16:16); Jesus’s prediction of his death (17:22; 20:18), and, of course, the collection of Son of Man sayings throughout the Gospel; the question about the Son of David (22:41–45); Pilate’s question (26:63–64); and the centurion (27:54). The two narratives also differ in the ways in which the moral character of the central figure is portrayed. In De vita Mosis, Philo’s moralistic emphasis is consistent and explicit. In numerous ways, he depicts Moses as the embodiment of philosophical virtue, both in the ways he behaves and in the legislation he formulates. Philo employs conventional moral language, such as the four cardinal virtues or comparable qualities, in describing Moses and his legislation, even insisting that Jewish synagogues are schools in which the virtues are taught. Throughout De vita Mosis Philo portrays Moses as the supreme teacher of virtue who himself epitomizes the virtues. As such, he is a moral paradigm for everyone, especially other kings and leaders. In Matthew there is also a pervasive didactic dimension. Jesus’s teaching is showcased in the five, highly formalized discourses, as well as in numerous episodes in which pronouncements and other chreia figure prominently. But the moralistic dimension of the portrait of Jesus in Matthew is indirect rather than direct. One can deduce Jesus’s passion for such virtues as justice, forgiveness, and wisdom from the Sermon on the Mount, but these claims are implicit rather than explicit; at least, they are not as explicit as Philo’s claims about Moses in De vita Mosis.

E. Conclusion Although the Gospel of Matthew is sometimes read as an early Christian writing, whose distinctiveness reflects the perceived uniqueness of its central figure Jesus Christ, it can be read profitably as a Jewish writing that emerged within the context of Second Temple Judaism.82 The literary achievement represented

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See Edwin K. Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, WUNT 378 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017); J. Andrew Overman, Matthew’s Gospel and Formative Judaism: The Social World of the Matthean Community (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990); Anders Runesson, Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew: The Narrative World of the First Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016); and David C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew

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by this Gospel, rather than being exceptional, should be seen as part of a broader literary movement in which Jewish writers had participated for at least a century, if not longer. That Matthew can be confidently dated to the last quarter of the first century CE means that it can be related effectively to the socialpolitical context of Palestinian Judaism during the Early Empire. The numerous Jewish writings that are preserved from this period provide valuable literary parallels as well as perspectives on major trends of thought and movements such as those related to various would-be leaders and messianic pretenders. Such prolific writers as Philo and Josephus also provide abundant testimony about historical figures and events, and this valuable evidence must also be taken into account in our interpretations of Matthew. Close comparisons between Matthew and specific Jewish writings such as Philo’s De vita Mosis can be profitable in detecting similarities of literary genre and purpose but also in identifying distinctive features of each writing. Further literary comparisons beyond the one attempted in this paper would be profitable, as would more focused efforts to relate various dimensions of Matthew, such as its eschatology or apocalyptic outlook, to the multifaceted literature of this period.

Appendix: Outline of Philo, De vita Mosis Book 1 1.1–4

Preface

1.5–334

Moses as king (84 pp)

5–17 18–33 34–43 44–46 47–50 51–59 60–62 63–84 85–95 96–146

Birth and infancy (Exod 2:1–10) Moses’s Egyptian upbringing, his precocity, and moral development Israelites under Egyptian bondage (Exod 2:14–25) Slaying the Egyptian (Exod 2:11–15a) Flight to Arabia, Moses’s continuing moral development (cf. Exod 2:15b) Moses’s intervention in the dispute between seven young maidens and shepherds, Moses’s marriage (Exod 2:16–22) Moses becomes shepherd, training for kingship Burning bush, Moses’s call, three signs (Exod 3:1–4:17) Moses’s return to Egypt, signs contest (Exod 4:18–27; 5:22; 7:8–13) Ten plagues, some in different order (Exod 7–12:32)

and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community, SNTW (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998). I am grateful to R. Alan Culpepper for these references.

124 147 148–162 163–180 181–187 188–190 191–208 209 210–211 212–213 214–219 220–236 237–238 239–249 250–254 255–257 258–262 263–299 300–304 305–318 319–333 334

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Summary description (Exod 12:33–42) Excursus: Moses as king and moral paradigm Departure from Egypt, pillar of cloud, Egyptian pursuit, parting the sea, choral celebration (Exod 13:17–15:21) Bitter water made sweet (Exod 15:22–26) Elim, slightly allegorized (Exod 15:27) Bread from heaven (Exod 16) Quails (Exod 16; Num 11:31–33) Water from rock (Exod 17:1–7; Num 20:1–13) Excursus on marvels of God and the universe Defeat of Phoenicians (Amalek) (Exod 17:8–16; cf. Deut 25:17–19) Sending spies (Num 13–14) [NB: Philo omits Exod 18 (Jethro); Sinai, giving of law, Exod 19–24] Summary – wanderings for 38 years Confrontation with kinsmen/Edom (Num 20:14–21) Defeat of Canaanite king Arad (Num 21:1–3) Discovery of spring (Num 21:16–18) Defeat of Sihon, king of Amorites (Num 21:21–32) Balak, Balaam (Num 22–24; cf. Num 31:16) Worship of Baal at Peor and incident of Midianite women (Num 25) Moses chooses Phinehas, who leads the conquest of Canaan (Num 31) Summary of wars fought east of Jordan (Num 32) Conclusion – “We have told the story of Moses’s actions in his capacity of king”

Book 2 2.1–7

Preface – Moses as the embodiment of four discrete roles: king, lawgiver, high priest, prophet

2.8–65

Moses as legislator, with sub-sections: this section is disproportionately short (14 pp) – see LCL 6:606–607

(a) 8–25

(b) 26–44 (c) 45–65

Virtues required of a legislator; enduring validity and permanence of Moses’s laws, which have been widely acknowledged Universal acclaim of Mosaic legislation seen in LXX translation by Ptolemy II Philadelphus; Moses’s legislative wisdom reflected in two-fold organizational structure of Pentateuch: The historical part reports the creation of the world and early Israelite history, while the

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commands and prohibitions specify which behaviors are acceptable. The internal logic: ethics grounded in cosmology. Noah an example of virtue. 2.66–186

Moses as (high) priest (28 pp)

(a) 66–67 (b) 68–70

(c) 71–76 (d) 77–83 (e) 84–88 (f) 89–93 (g) 94–108

(h) 109–135 (i) 136–140 (j) 141–145 (k) 146–160

(l) 161–173 (m) 174–179

(n) 180–186

Moses’s priestly qualities – piety (εὐσέβεια) as the chief requirement; his reception of oracles; his moderation; Moral purity as preparation for receiving oracles, forty days on the mountain, glistening countenance (cf. Exod 24:15–18; 34:29–35); On the mount, receives instructions for building and furnishing the tabernacle, using Platonic categories; Construction of tabernacle (cf. Exod 26:15–30); Woven materials, curtains, and veil (cf. Exod 26:1–14, 31– 37); Tabernacle floorplan simulates temple; dimensions explained (cf. Exod 27:9–19); Sacred vessels, furnishings, fixtures – ark, candlestick, table, altars, etc. – and their symbolic significance (cf. Exod 25:10– 40; 27:1–8); High priest’s vestments and their significance (cf. Exod 28); Brazen laver constructed from voluntary offerings of precious metals, and its symbolic significance (Exod 38:8); Selection of his brother (Aaron) as high priest, and his sons as priests (cf. Exod 29; Lev 8); Eight-day dedicatory celebration – Moses’s anointing of fixtures, high priest; dedicatory offerings and sacrifices; prayers as heavenly flame (Lev 8–9); Golden calf incident (Exod 32); Priestly orders, tensions between “temple attendants” and priests, and resolution of tensions by Moses with twelve rods (Num 16:1–3; 17); Rod with Aaron’s name on it becomes budding plant; fruits, nuts, their significance

2.187–291

Moses as prophet, culminating with his prophecy of his own departure from the earth. (27 pp)

2.187–191

Different types of prophetic experience, two of which apply to Moses: (a) his receiving an oracle given in answer to question, and (b) his own prophetic inspiration. Four examples of each type.

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Prophetic oracle answering a question, in which God and Moses cooperate

(a) 192–208 Punishment for blaspheming God (cf. Lev 24:10–16); (b) 209–220 Punishment for violating the Sabbath (Exod 31:14; 35:2; Num 15:32–36); (c) 221–232 Demands, e.g., mourning rites, that conflict with Passover observance (Num 9:1–14); (d) 233–245 Instructions about the laws of inheritance (Num 27:1–11) 2.246–287

Moses’s own prophetic experience

(a) 246–257

Predicting the parting of the Red Sea and destroying the Egyptians (Exod 14) (b) 258–269 Prayer for manna, especially on the Sabbath (Exod 16:4–36) (c) 270–274 Invoking the slaughter of golden calf idolaters (Exod 32) (d) 275–287 Destruction of priestly rebels (Korah) and his companions (Num 16)

2.288–291

Moses’s prophecy of his own mysterious departure (Deut 33–34)

2.292

Conclusion

Matthew and Jewish Apocalypticism Michael Tilly Michael Tilly

The conviction that there will ever be unity and agreement among the exegetical interpreters of the New Testament is probably one of the high hopes of an ideal world and seems to be quite unattainable in this era. Thus, on the one hand, the Australian biblical scholar David Sim writes in his monograph on the eschatology of the Gospel of Matthew, “The gospel actually stands as one of the most comprehensive and clear examples of apocalyptic eschatology in the contemporary literature.”1 The American theologian Donald Hagner, who thoroughly analyses the apocalyptic motifs in the Gospel of Matthew, also comes to the pointed conclusion, “The Gospel makes such frequent use of apocalyptic motifs and the apocalyptic viewpoint that it deserves to be called the apocalyptic Gospel.”2 The late Ulrich Luz, on the other hand, notes in his excursion about the Matthean understanding of justice and judgment in the third volume of his voluminous EKK-commentary, “Much more important is that Matthew develops apocalyptic ideas extremely sparingly.”3 In my contribution to the conference “The Gospel of Matthew in its Historical and Theological Context,” which took place in 2018, I will certainly not resolve this exegetical dissent. But in what follows I want to show that – and how – Matthew, whose Judaeo-Christian setting makes probable at least a certain affinity to Jewish apocalypticism,4 on the one hand, takes up numerous forms and contents of Jewish apocalyptic literature and, on the other hand, re1 David C. Sim, Apocalyptic Eschatology in the Gospel of Matthew, SNTSMS 28 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 177. 2 Donald A. Hagner, “Apocalyptic Motifs in the Gospel of Matthew: Continuity and Discontinuity,” HBT 7 (1985): 53–82, here 60. Cf. Daniel M. Gurtner, “Interpreting Apocalyptic Symbolism in the Gospel of Matthew,” BBR 22 (2012): 525–45, here 525–28; Charles E. Carlston and Craig A. Evans, From Synagogue to Ecclesia: Matthew’s Community at the Crossroads, WUNT 334 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 428–39. 3 Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, 3. Teilband: Mt 18–25, EKK I/3 (Düsseldorf: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1997), 547: “Viel wichtiger ist, daß Matthäus apokalyptische Vorstellungen ausgesprochen sparsam entfaltet.” 4 Cf. Jens Herzer, “Auferstehung und Weltende als Rätsel? Zur Funktion und Bedeutung von Mt 27,51b–53 im Kontext der matthäischen Jesus-Erzählung,” Evangelium ecclesiasticum. Matthäus und die Gestalt der Kirche. Festschrift für Christoph Kähler zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Christfried Böttrich, Hans-Peter Hübner, Kerstin Voigt, and Dietmar Wiegand (Frankfurt am Main: edition chrismon, 2009), 115–44, here 125.

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contextualizes and fundamentally modifies these forms and contents in order to depict his specific interpretation of the meaning of the Christian faith both in the present and in the future. This essay is subdivided into three parts, of which the first is divided into two, the second into four, and the third into three successive subsections. In the first section (i.e., A.I) I will briefly sketch the essential historical and theological specifics of ancient Jewish apocalypticism and in the next section (i.e., A.II) I will outline its reception in early Christianity. In the next part (B.) I will offer an overview of different crucial “apocalyptic” motifs in the Gospel of Matthew itself. The main intention of the subsections of this part is to show what similarities and differences exist with regards to contemporary Jewish apocalypticism. Finally, in part C., I want to show which specific functions and intentions of the use of apocalyptic-like language and content in the first Gospel and how these are connected with these similarities and differences.

A. Early Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism I. Jewish Apocalypticism The emergence and development of Jewish apocalypticism is inextricably linked to Greek colonization and the advance of Hellenistic culture in the eastern Mediterranean since the end of the 4th century BCE. “Hellenism” as a general pattern of civilization meant both the successive infiltration of the Near Eastern world into Greek culture and way of life and their reception in all areas of Jewish life.5 At the same time, numerous historical and mythical traditions originating from diverse cultural influences of neighbouring empires and nations left their mark on the Jewish cultural sphere. This inexorable clash between the traditional religious and cultural orientation of biblical Judaism and the dominant “foreign” cultures of its Hellenistic environment was perceived by Jewish people as either a threat, a challenge, or an enrichment of their own cultural and religious identity, depending on their individual place in society, their distinct point of view, and their personal living conditions.6 5 Cf. Martin Hengel, The “Hellenization” of Judaea in the First Century after Christ, trans. John Bowden (London/Philadelphia: SCM, 1989); idem, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols., trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974); Louis H. Feldman, “How Much Hellenism in Jewish Palestine?” HUCA 57 (1986): 83–111. 6 Cf. Benedikt Otzen, Judaism in Antiquity. Political Development and Religious Currents from Alexander to Hadrian, trans. Frederick H. Cryer, Biblical Seminar 7 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 18–27; Wolfgang Oswald and Michael Tilly, Geschichte Israels: Von den Anfängen bis zum 3. Jahrhundert n. Chr., Geschichte Kompakt (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2016), 102.

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Due to such experiences of deficiency and powerlessness and above all due to actual political situations of distress and threat, such as the national and religious crisis under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the traditional Jewish image of God, the Zion tradition, and the conviction of the salvific function of the Jerusalem Temple cult had become fragile. The contradiction between these traditional hopes of salvation and realities currently experienced was too obvious. At the same time, the increasing influence of Hellenistic culture and the associated broadening of cultural horizons also meant a development in terms of both the Jewish perception of history and worldview. The answer to the twofold question of the enduring justice of Almighty God and the relevance of the enduring election of Israel could now be based and expressed both on a linear concept of time and an individualization of religious consciousness. Jewish apocalypticism therefore represents a special way of formulating and conveying a kind of orientation in the face of a situation experienced as completely chaotic and inextricable.7 The main themes of the different apocalyptic currents and movements during the Hellenistic-Roman period are not only speculations about the future course of history and the coming end of the world, but also the comprehensive explanation of the past and present itself. Their central concerns are 1) to convey a meaningful interpretation of the contemporary world that can create identity through revelation of transcendent knowledge, and 2) to control the reception of this knowledge in accordance with segments of the Jewish religious tradition that are considered decisive in each case.8 Jewish apocalypticism tries to reconcile the seemingly oppressive and chaotic present situation, the certainty of God’s omnipotence and righteousness, and the expectation of a coming salvation and reward. History thereby undergoes a certain periodization; the apocalypticist’s point of view is shortly before or in history’s final phase. At the same time, the expected redemption is not regarded as a causal consequence of historical progress, of inner-worldly developments, or of human action, but merely as its radical end. Thereby, the conventional Deuteronomistic notion that world history – despite all mis-developments and obstacles – will lead to a future salutary goal is rejected. Apocalypticism thus mediates between the pious person’s own consciousness of election by God and their actual experience of suffering, need and perceived

7 Cf. Norman Cohn, Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith, 2nd ed. (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2001), 163–75; Michael Tilly, Apokalyptik, UTB 3651 (Tübingen/Basel: Francke, 2012), 16–17. 8 Cf. John J. Collins, “From Prophecy to Apocalypticism: The Expectation of the End,” in The Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity, vol. 1 of The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, ed. John J. Collins (New York/London: Continuum, 2000), 129–61, here 157–58; Tilly, Apokalyptik, 18–19.

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inferiority; at the same time it seeks to legitimize the unconditional authority of the just and almighty God of Israel.9 Apocalypticism ties in with biblical prophecy by adopting some of its most important forms and contents. However, it puts them into a new context and thereby gives them quite a new function. The essential difference between apocalypticism and prophecy is that prophecy is convinced of the idea of history as a place of God’s salutary intervention in world affairs, while apocalypticism assumes that salvation can come to history only from the outside by bringing it to a radical end. Apocalypticism also receives ideas of biblical wisdom and deals with a specific wisdom related problem, viz. the question of theodicy. However, Jewish wisdom is primarily interested in the present structure of the world, whereas apocalypticism is primarily interested in the prospective direction of the world. Jewish apocalyptic writings written throughout the Hellenistic-Roman epoch mostly contain exclusive revelatory messages of a transcendent divine plan of final salvation or interpretations of the way of the world and revelations of its expected end, jointly communicated through various modes of revelation. The most important of these modes are oracles, epiphanies, dreams, and ecstatic visions while awake. The testimonies of literary apocalypticism reveal desperation, revenge fantasies, longings, and hopes of both its authors and its addressees. As “crisis literature,” the apocalyptic texts that will be discussed in more detail below, often reflect the ongoing conflict between foreign powers and one’s own powerlessness.10 II. Apocalypticism in Early Christianity Apocalypticism is an important bridge between the traditional histories of ancient Judaism and early Christianity. It is also a formative factor in most New Testament writings. Without reference to Jewish apocalypticism, neither the Jesus movement nor early Christianity can be fully understood. However, Christianity can by no means be absorbed into the term “apocalypticism.” Certainly, essential elements of the apocalyptic symbolic system were taken up

9 Cf. Richard A. Horsley, “The Kingdom of God and the Renewal of Israel: Synoptic Gospels, Jesus Movements, and Apocalypticism,” in The Origins of Apocalypticism in Judaism and Christianity, vol. 1 of The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, ed. John J. Collins (New York/London: Continuum, 2000), 303–44, here 304–09; Tilly, Apokalyptik, 24–26. 10 Cf. Otzen, Judaism, 218–21; Richard A. Horsley, Revolt of the Scribes. Resistance and Apocalyptic Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress 2010); Anathea E. Portier-Young, Jewish Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2011), 379–81; idem, “Jewish Apocalyptic Literature as Resistance Literature,” in The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. John J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 145–62; Tilly, Apokalyptik, 47.

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and transformed in Christianity and they became the very basis of an independent and quite efficient religious system. Christian apocalypticism can be characterized by the hope for a better future as well. However, the decisive difference between early Christian and Jewish apocalypticism is that in post-Easter Christianity the crucial turn to salvation was not regarded as a future or extrahistorical source of hope, but as an event of the past, an event that had already happened in history.11 The further formation of Christian belief up to the present day is based on this fundamental transformation. Early Christianity adopted essential traditions, forms, and materials from the manifold forms and sub-groups of ancient Judaism. The formation of Christian confession apparently drew upon forms and contents of Jewish apocalyptic literature. Moreover, Christian literature clearly continued its complex eschatological symbolic system. The salvific significance of God’s creative revealing action in Christ was essentially developed and made comprehensible by three means of Jewish traditional eschatology: biblical prophecy, wisdom, and apocalypticism. Especially, the hopes for the future that are formulated in the New Testament, also in the Gospel of Matthew, were fed by the prophetic traditions of the Hebrew Holy Scriptures (e.g., Isa 7; Dan 12) and their idiosyncratic continuation and interpretation in post-biblical Jewish apocalyptic writings, which were regarded as important sources of Christian revelation and proclamation. In all of them one encounters traditional Jewish statements about the future and the present, especially about the coming kingdom of God. Apocalyptic texts and traditions are therefore an important background for a comprehensive understanding of the early Christian religion. Both the expectation of an imminent end of this world – one of the essentials of early Christian faith – and the promise of a general resurrection of the dead, a perquisite for a comprehensively retributive final judgment, and based also on the belief in Jesus’s resurrection, as an impulse event (Impulsereignis),12 take up central apocalyptic motifs. Even the early Christian Easter faith is based on experiences in the mode of received visions. The presence of this Jesus, who was believed to be dead, in the visionary apparitions of his followers, as listed in 1 Cor 15:3–8 and as reflected in the accounts of the Gospels (Matt 28; Luke 24; John 20–21; cf. Mark 16:9–20), triggered faith in the resurrection of Jesus as God’s eschatological act of power.13 These Easter apparitions of the Risen One were interpreted by the first Christians especially by means of traditional apocalyptic ideas and images as the decisive and definitive sign of the dawning of the end of the present aeon and were viewed within the 11

Cf. Tilly, Apokalyptik, 88. Cf. ibid., 88–91. 13 Cf. Nicola Wendebourg, Der Tag des Herrn. Zur Gerichtserwartung im Neuen Testament auf ihrem alttestamentlichen und frühjüdischen Hintergrund, WMANT 96 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2003), 369–71. 12

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eschatological horizon of an expected general raising of the dead (1 Cor 15:20– 21).14 The first Christians, all members of the pre-Easter Jesus movement, confessed Jesus of Nazareth, who had been crucified by the Romans and raised from the dead by God himself, as Christ or Messiah of Israel, who was believed to have been elevated to a heavenly position of power at the right hand of God (cf. Ps 110:1) and was expected to return for the final judgment (cf. Acts 2:36). Both the Parousia, the return of Christ in the last days as a messianic ruler, and God’s own intervention through the establishment of his kingdom were initially expected by the first Christians in the immediate future or during their own lifetime (cf. 1 Thess 1:9–10; 4:15).15 In view of the delay of these promised final events, in the course of the following decades the initially tense and imminent eschatological expectation gave way to a kind of constant expectation (Stetserwartung; cf. Matt 24:37– 25:30; Luke 21:36).16 At the same time, the politically and nationally determined image of the warlike Messiah of Israel, which was prominent in Jewish apocalyptic literature, had to be reconciled with Jesus’s humble suffering and dying.17 This remarkable transformation of traditional apocalyptic expectations in view of the crisis within the Jesus movement, which was triggered by the crucifixion of Jesus, led to the widespread conviction of the salvific importance of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ both as an atoning sin-offering and as a sign of God’s grace and justice.18 The first Christians hoped for their eschatological redemption as the community exclusively chosen by God. They were deeply convinced that God himself was giving new life to the righteous only, that is, to themselves. So, they 14

Cf. George E. Ladd, “Apocalyptic and New Testament Theology,” in Reconciliation and Hope: New Testament Essays on Atonement and Eschatology, presented to L. L. Morris on his 60th birthday, ed. Robert Banks (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 285–95, here 292– 93; Joost Holleman, “Jesus’ Resurrection as the Beginning of the Eschatological Resurrection (1 Cor. 15,20),” in The Corinthian Correspondence, ed. Reimund Bieringer, BETL 125 (Leuven: Peeters, 1996), 653–60; Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2000), 1222–24; Dieter Zeller, Der erste Brief an die Korinther, KEK 5 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 485–86. 15 Cf. Tilly, Apokalyptik, 89. 16 Cf. Erich Gräßer, Das Problem der Parusieverzögerung in den synoptischen Evangelien und in der Apostelgeschichte, 3rd ed., BZNW 22 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1977). 17 Cf. Gerbern S. Oegema, Der Gesalbte und sein Volk. Untersuchungen zum Konzeptualisierungsprozess der messianischen Erwartungen von den Makkabäern bis Bar Koziba, Schriften des Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994); Stefan Schreiber, Gesalbter und König, BZNW 105 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2000). 18 Cf. Gurtner, “Symbolism,” 543; Jörg Frey and Jens Schröter, eds., Deutungen des Todes Jesu im Neuen Testament, 2nd ed., UTB 2953 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012); Carlston and Evans, Synagogue, 458–75.

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lived by the enthusiastic self-conception of exclusively representing the true Israel of the last days waiting for the last judgment, which alone is taken out of the threatening general wrath of God and spared for great heavenly reward. Charismatic gifts such as the power to heal the sick or the power over all evil demons – perceived by traditional Jewish apocalypticism as signs of the dawning end of the world19 – were believed to have already been realized in these communities and were later also retrospectively anchored in the Jesus tradition by Christian authors. The expectation of the imminent coming of the reign of God also led to a certain relativisation or even abolition of conventional hierarchical structures within this solidarity-based Christian community of the last days.20 Thereby the boundaries between internal and external groups (common both in Judaism and in the Hellenistic-Roman world) were increasingly crossed. Fundamental ideas and stylistic elements of apocalyptic eschatology have no intrinsic importance in the New Testament, but they are mostly instrumentalized in order to express Christian theology, eschatology, and soteriology. The Christian kerygma now offered a savior-figure that was distinguished from, but legitimized by God himself at a time just before his expected judgment. The themes and situations in which apocalyptic traditions and motifs are frequently encountered include the expectation of the imminent parousia (1 Thess 4; 1 Cor 15), the experience of current harassment and persecution (Mark 13; Rev; 2 Thess 1) and the threat of a part of the Christian congregation falling away from those beliefs and practices that were considered as generally binding at least by the early Christian authors (John 5; 2 Thess 2; Eph 3; 1 John 4; Heb 12). Roles and sovereign titles borrowed from Jewish apocalypticism such as “Messiah” were also transferred to the remembered person, Jesus of Nazareth, and he himself now became the object of Christian proclamation.21 To sum up, the confession of Christ became the actual standard for the reception of Jewish apocalyptic literature in early Christianity. The way the New Testament authors found “messianic” passages in the Hebrew Bible, selected them, and the contexts in which they used them presupposed an independent and christologically based framework of interpretation. Notwithstanding this incorporation of apocalyptic ideas, which is more or less pronounced in all authors we encounter in the New Testament, not many

19

Cf. Tilly, Apokalyptik, 90; Annette Merz, “Der historische Jesus als Wundertäter im Spektrum der antiken Wundertäter,” in Die Wunder Jesu, vol. 1 of Kompendium der frühchristlichen Wundererzählungen, ed. Ruben Zimmermann (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2013), 108–39, here 117–19; Annette Weissenrieder, “Heilungen Jesu,” in JesusHandbuch, ed. Jens Schröter and Christine Jacoby (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 298– 310, here 307–08. 20 Cf. Tilly, Apokalyptik, 90. 21 Cf. Carlston and Evans, Synagogue, 475–77.

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early Christian texts can be clearly assigned to a defined text type “apocalypse” with regard to their form or function. In fact, a minimalist point of view in contemporary apocalyptic research assigns only two short sections in Pauline literature to this literary genre (1 Cor 15:5–6.; Rom 11:25–26a) in addition to the Revelation of John in which the apocalyptic world of imagination is consistently and intensively absorbed. In my opinion, however, the authors of the four New Testament Gospels, above all Matthew, also adopted some apocalyptic traditions, subjected them to an essential change through their respective Christology and incorporated them into their ongoing stories of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.

B. Apocalyptic Motifs in the Gospel of Matthew Given such a context, it comes as little surprise that Matthew depicts, for example, the death and resurrection of Jesus with traditional motifs found in Jewish apocalyptic literature. Thus, Donald Hagner states, “The apocalyptic viewpoint permeates the Gospel of Matthew.”22 Accordingly, apocalyptically connoted elements of the complex motif of theophany (e.g., earthquakes, storm and angelic phenomena, fear and terror, opening of the graves, collection of the just)23 factor both in Matt 27:51–54 and in 28:2–4. Likewise, in his extensive literary adaptation and massive supplementation of the Markan speech of the last days (Mark 13:1–37) in Matt 24–25, the evangelist follows Jewish apocalyptic tradition by presenting the imminent cosmic catastrophe and the following events of the last days as a universal revelation of Christ: “The evangelist has conformed the Christian notion of the return of Jesus to an apocalyptic-eschatological perspective.”24

22 Hagner, “Motifs,” 68. Cf. Frank J. Matera, Passion Narratives and Gospel Theologies: Interpreting the Synoptics Through Their Passion Stories, Theological Inquiries (New York/Mahwah: Paulist, 1986), 116–17; Horsley, “Kingdom,” 332–39; Romeo Popa, Allgegenwärtiger Konflikt im Matthäusevangelium. Exegetische und sozialpsychologische Analyse der Konfliktgeschichte, NTOA/SUNT 111 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 162. 23 Cf. Gurtner, “Symbolism,” 535–43; Jörg Jeremias, Theophanie. Die Geschichte einer Gattung, 2nd ed., WMANT 10 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1977); Albrecht Scriba, Die Geschichte des Motivkomplexes Theophanie, FRLANT 167 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995); Kenneth L. Waters, “Matthew 27:52–53 as Apocalyptic Apostrophe: Temporal-Spatial Collapse in the Gospel of Matthew,” JBL 122 (2003): 489–515, here 505–07; Horsley, “Kingdom,” 338–39. 24 Sim, Eschatology, 109. Cf. Georg Strecker, Der Weg der Gerechtigkeit. Untersuchungen zur Theologie des Matthäus, 3rd ed., FRLANT 82 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), 236–42; Horsley, “Kingdom,” 334–38; Carlston and Evans, Synagogue,

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The analogies between the Gospel of Matthew and Jewish apocalyptic literature, however, are also of a fundamental nature and thereby concern 1) universalistic, 2) dualistic, 3) and historically periodizing statements and hermeneutic patterns of interpretation, as well as 4) the idea of the last judgment. These statements, patterns, and ideas are dealt with in the next four subsections. I. Universalism and Judgment Jewish apocalypticism’s view of God’s action at the very end of this aeon can be described as universally oriented, since it referred not to Israel alone, depicting a particularistic salvation scenario for the good of its own community, but also included the entire ethnic world either as an object of divine judgment or as its instrument. This obvious tendency towards universalization and eschatologization of God’s judgment, previously presented in concrete historical terms, is already evident in the additions of Zeph 1:2–3 and 3:9–20.25 Moreover, in Isaiah 66,26 one of the latest parts of the biblical book of Isaiah, Israel and the foreign nations are no longer seen differently from a judicial perspective. Here, the peoples of the world no longer appear alone as “chaotic” opponents of Israel. Israel, accordingly, no longer has an unconditional guarantee of salvation. Rather, only the faithful righteous from both groups of humanity can come to salvation and reward. Deviant ritual and ethical behavior, especially of members of one’s own community, however, entails exclusion from the redeemed ones and inexorable punishment by God’s wrath in the final judgment. A universal perspective of the coming salvation27 is expressed in Matt 24:14: καὶ κηρυχθήσεται τοῦτο τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς βασιλείας ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ οἰκουμένῃ εἰς μαρτύριον πᾶσιν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, καὶ τότε ἥξει τὸ τέλος. Already in Matt 8:11 it is said that the righteous ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν καὶ καὶ δυσμῶν (“from the East and the West”), that is, from the entire Oikomene, will also receive their place in 439–58; Edwin K. Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, WUNT 378 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 116–17. 25 Cf. Michael De Roche, “Zephaniah I 2–3: The ‘Sweeping’ of Creation,” VT 30 (1980): 104–09; Michael Ufok Udoekpo, Re-thinking the Day of YHWH and Restoration of Fortunes in the Prophet Zephaniah: An Exegetical and Theological Study of 1:14–18 and 3:14–20, Das Alte Testament im Dialog 2 (Bern et al.:Peter Lang, 2010), 151–95. 26 Cf. Bernard Wodecki, “Der Heilsuniversalismus bei Trito-Jesaja,” VT 32 (1982): 248– 52; Michael Tilly, “Das Heil der Anderen im hellenistischen Diasporajudentum. Betrachtungen zur griechischen Übersetzung von Jesaja 66,14b–24,” in Das Heil der Anderen: Problemfeld “Judenmission”, ed. Hubert Frankemölle and Josef Wohlmuth, QD 238 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder 2010), 209–21. 27 Cf. Heinrich Baarlink, Die Eschatologie der synoptischen Evangelien, BWANT 120 (Stuttgart et al.: Kohlhammer, 1984), 77–80; Hagner, “Motifs,” 59; Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 279–86; Christfried Böttrich, “Gerichtsszenarien im Neuen Testament,” VF 57 (2012): 127–42, here 130–33.

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the heavenly kingdom. In this context we encounter the apocalyptic double motif of the exclusive eschatological banquet of the righteous in the kingdom of God and the – self-chosen – exclusion of the ungodly from this salvific celebration followed by their ultimate condemnation to a post-mortal punishment.28 In Matt 24:41 it is announced that God’s angels will gather his chosen “from the four winds,” which also stands for “the whole world.” The symbolic imaginary of Matt 25:32 also states that in the last days πάντα τὰ ἔθνη will appear before the throne of the Son of Man.29 Finally, the universalist idea of a judgment on all nations is explicitly expressed in the Christian missionary mandate to make disciples of all peoples (Matt 28:18–20), which leads to the present situation of the Matthean community.30 It is worth mentioning that in this context the traditional apocalyptic image of the judgment upon all nations as a harvest is also used (Matt 12:30; 13:30, 39–43; cf. Isa 24:13; Joel 4:13; Rev 14:15–16). II. Dualism and “Heilsgeschichte” Another important motif rooted in Jewish apocalypticism is uncompromising cosmic dualism, that is, the contrasting juxtaposition of antagonistic powers, principles, and world ages: The evil world on this side and the world of salvation on the other side, impurity and purity, light and darkness, unjust and just, unholy powers and God facing each other (cf. 1 En. 1–36; 4Q201–206).31 The pictorial word in the final section of the Beelzebul controversy in Matt 12:33– 37 contains comparable antagonisms.32 The court scene in the Matthean

28 Cf. Marius Reiser, Die Gerichtspredigt Jesu: Eine Untersuchung zur eschatologischen Verkündigung Jesu und ihrem frühjüdischen Hintergrund, NTA 23 (Münster: Ashendorff, 1990), 216–26. 29 Cf. Günther Bornkamm, “Enderwartung und Kirche im Matthäusevangelium,” in Überlieferung und Auslegung im Matthäusevangelum, ed. Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held, WMANT 1 (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1960), 13– 47, here 21; Jörg Frey, “Die Apokalyptik als Herausforderung der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft. Zum Problem: Jesus und die Apokalyptik,” in Apokalyptik als Herausforderung neutestamentlicher Theologie, ed. Michael Becker and Markus Öhler, WUNT 2/214 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 23–94, here 73–74. 30 Cf. Matthias Konradt, Israel, Kirche und die Völker im Matthäusevangelium, WUNT 215 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 286–302; Romeo Popa, “Der Weg der Völker. Die eschatologische Begründung der Völkermission im Matthäusevangelium,” NTS 65 (2019): 166–89; Loren Stuckenbruck, “The ‘Children of the Earth’ and ‘Peoples’ in Jewish Apocalyptic Expectation: A Conversation with the Gospel of Matthew,” in “Make Disciples of All Nations”, ed. Loren Stuckenbruck, Beth Langstaff, and Michael Tilly, WUNT 2/482 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 13–35. 31 Cf. Tilly, Apokalyptik, 51–52. 32 Cf. Joachim Gnilka, Das Matthäusevangelium: 1. Teil, Kommentar zu Kap. 1,1–13,58, HTKNT 1 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1986), 460–61; Ulrich Luck, Das Evangelium

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Sondergut 25:31–46 also shows distinct dualistic features, illustrating the last judgment by means of the four juxtapositions “sheep and goats,” “left and right,” “blessing and curse,” and “wages and punishment.”33 Again and again throughout the Gospel of Matthew, sharp juxtapositions of the Matthean community and its Jewish and non-Jewish opponents are encountered. Thus, Matt 13:11 contrasts these two antagonistic groups by means of the pronouns ὑμῖν and ἐκείνοις and underpins this identity-forming contrast34 in the following verses 14–17 with a marked scriptural quotation from Isa 6:9–10. Since Hellenistic times, cosmic dualism in ancient Judaism was increasingly conceived in the sense of a temporal sequence and thus represented as a radical discontinuity of several (mostly two) ages (cf. Daniel 7–12). In this “periodized” understanding of history, one of these two world ages is understood to be approaching its catastrophic end and a final struggle between good and evil. The other presents a latter-day and eternal world age which offers a comprehensive perspective of salvation for the righteous.35 Frequently the inventory of motifs of end-time scenarios contains the idea of an eschatological decisive battle portrayed in cosmic dimensions between the two antipodes (cf. 1QM 1:9b–11a).36 In Matt 24:30–31 the coming of the Son of Man is equally described as an eschatological battle between the righteous and demonic powers.37 Also the saying about building the church on a

nach Matthäus, ZBK 1 (Zurich: TVZ Theologischer Verlag, 1993), 151–52; Wolfgang Wiefel, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, THKNT 1 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1998), 238–39; Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: 2. Teilband Mt 8–17, 6th ed., EKK I/2 (Zurich: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2016), 268–71; Peter Fiedler, Das Matthäusevangelium, Theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2006), 256; Walter Klaiber, Das Matthäusevangelium: Teilband 1: Mt, 1,1–16,20, Die Botschaft des Neuen Testaments (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2015), 254–55; Matthias Konradt, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, NTD 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 202–03. 33 Cf. Ferdinand Hahn, Frühjüdische und urchristliche Apokalyptik, Biblisch-theologische Schwerpunkte 36 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1998), 121. 34 Cf. Hagner, “Motifs,” 58; Jürgen Roloff, Jesu Gleichnisse im Matthäusevangelium, Biblisch-theologische Schwerpunkte 73 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2005), 21–22. 35 Cf. Tilly, Apokalyptik, 52. 36 Cf. ibid., 51–52.; Alex P. Jassen, “Violent Imaginaries and Practical Violence in the War Scroll,” in The War Scroll, Violence, War and Peace in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature: Essays in Honour of Martin G. Abegg on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Kipp Davis, Kyung S. Baek, Peter W. Flint, and Dorothy Peters, STDJ 115 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2016), 175–203, here 190–91. 37 Cf. Sim, Eschatology, 101; Warren 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, here 485–86.

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rock (Matt 16:18) speaks of the quasi military final showdown between the ἐκκλησία and the πύλαι ᾅδου.38 Already the Matthean version of Jesus’s line of ancestors in Matt 1:1–17 bears some characteristics of a periodizing historical review, starting from Abraham (Matt 1:2) leading through the rulers of the Davidic kingdom (1:6– 7) and the eventual loss of royalty (1:11–12) into the final kingdom of the Messiah of Israel (1:16).39 An explicit differentiation between “this aeon” and the “coming aeon” is also offered by the threatening word in Matt 12:32. The end of the present aeon also is the subject of Matt 13:39–40; 24:3; and 28:20. The eschatological rebirth (παλιγγενεσία) of this world is announced by the Matthean Jesus in Matt 19:28.40 The Jewish apocalyptic mindset can be described as fundamentally pessimistic about the future course of history. It views the present as a period of complete disorder and increased hardship. Current events are likewise considered to be part of the last and worst period before the total and unconditional catastrophic end of the degenerative course of history. Apocalyptic writing thus perceives its own position in history as shortly before (or enduring) its final and decisive phase before this eschatological turning point. At the same time, the predestined and near change of the aeons, the end of the existing world, appears just within reach.41 In Matthew’s Gospel, the present is also the time of decision. The call to decision in Matt 12:30, formulated in the present tense, leaves no room for distance or neutrality towards the message of Christ.42 The description of the 38

Cf. Joachim Gnilka, Das Matthäusevangelium: 2. Teil, Kommentar zu Kap. 14,1– 28,20, HTKNT 1 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1988), 61–65; Luck, Matthäus, 187–89; Wiefel, Matthäus, 299–300; Luz, Matthäus, 2:461–63; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 288– 89; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 1:323-25; Konradt, Matthäus, 261–63. 39 Cf. Adela Y. Collins and John J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God: Divine, Human, and Angelic Messianic Figures in Biblical and Related Literature (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2008), 134–42; Moisés Mayordomo-Marín, Den Anfang hören. Leserorientierte Evangelienexegese am Beispiel von Matthäus 1–2, FRLANT 180 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 217–43; Matthias Berghorn, “Die Genesis Jesu Christi aber war so…” Die Herkunft Jesu Christi nach dem matthäischen Prolog (Mt 1,1 – 4,16), BBB 187 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019), 126–27; Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, 1:4–14; Luck, Matthäus, 19–21; Wiefel, Matthäus, 25–30; Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: 1. Teilband, Mt 1–7, 5th ed., EKK I/1 (Düsseldorf: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2002), 89–97; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 38– 46; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 1:20–26; Konradt, Matthäus, 39–44. 40 Cf. David C. Sim, “The Meaning of παλιγγενεσία in Matthew 19.28,” JSNT 50 (1993): 3–12. 41 Cf. Carlston and Evans, Synagogue, 442. 42 Cf. Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, 1:459; Luck, Matthäus, 151; Wiefel, Matthäus, 237; Luz, Matthäus, 2:262; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 255; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 1:252–53; Konradt, Matthäus, 201.

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events of the last days in Matt 24:4–22 also reflects the expectation of the turn of the aeons while the community is still alive and at the same time assigns it a place within the narrated event “at some distance from the resurrection but short of the Parousia.”43 In sum, “Matthew actively promotes an imminent eschatological expectation.”44 According to the first evangelist’s perspective, the current situation of his addressees is marked by distress and persecution. In a comforting manner he gives these apparently current experiences of suffering a meaningful interpretation: “Matthew’s apocalyptic-eschatological scheme enables his readers to accept more readily the present dire circumstances which threaten them.”45 The beatitudes in Matt 5:10–12 link this perception to the Jewish tradition of the suffering fate of the prophets (cf. Matt 23:34–35).46 The section on the persecution of the disciples (Matt 10:16–23) aims at illustrating the close connection between present discipleship and proclamation and future suffering.47 In the speech concerning the last days, however, Matt 24:9 seems to delimit the Matthean community’s former experiences of persecution. III. Periodization of History The perception of history as a linear and determined sequence of events (cf. 4 Ezra 6:35–9:25) marks the starting point of the Jewish apocalyptic system, which interprets the past and ongoing historical situations and processes.48 In particular, the logion of Matt 22:14 (πολλοὶ γάρ εἰσιν κλητοί, ὀλίγοι δὲ ἐκλεκτοί) seems to correspond to this determinism: “The apocalyptic perspective of the future is secure in Mt.”49 However, passages such as the community rule in Matt 18:15–17 show that Matthew, notwithstanding his deterministic 43 Augustine Stock, The Method and Message of Matthew (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1994), 365. 44 Sim, Eschatology, 174. Cf. Hagner, “Motifs,” 73. 45 Sim, Eschatology, 224–25f. 46 Cf. Georg Strecker, Die Bergpredigt. Ein exegetischer Kommentar (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984), 44–50; Michael Tilly, Johannes der Täufer und die Biographie der Propheten: Die synoptische Täuferüberlieferung und das jüdische Prophetenbild zur Zeit des Täufers, BWANT 137 (Stuttgart et al.: Kohlhammer, 1994), 101; Martin Vahrenhorst, “Ihr sollt überhaupt nicht schwören”: Matthäus im halachischen Diskurs, WMANT 95 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2002), 348–49; Carlston and Evans, Synagogue, 481–483; Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, 2:300–02; Luck, Matthäus, 59; Wiefel, Matthäus, 90–91; Luz, Matthäus, 1:214–15; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 115–17; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 1:90–92; Konradt, Matthäus, 364–65. 47 Cf. Horsley, “Kingdom,” 333; Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, 1:372–79; Luck, Matthäus, 127–29; Wiefel, Matthäus, 195–98; Luz, Matthäus, 2:104–17; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 230–32; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 1:204–08; Konradt, Matthäus, 166–68. 48 Cf. Tilly, Apokalyptik, 93–94. 49 Hagner, “Motifs,” 69.

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understanding of salvation-history, maintains the basic idea of free will and human responsibility for sin.50 In apocalyptic literature the God-given rule of the Messiah of Israel was either transcendentalized (e.g., Sib. Or. 3:741–761; 2 Bar. 29) or represented as both earthly and temporally limited (4 Ezra 7). The Messianic period was not considered an integral part of the coming eternal period of salvation, but was expected to emerge immediately before it. It marks the outermost edge of this world’s history and yet still belongs to the present aeon. The main reason for this cardinal limitation of the existence and function of the Messiah might be that the figure of such an anointed eschatological savior was not compatible with the strict theocentricity of the apocalyptic imagination.51 In particular, “apocalyptically” oriented currents within ancient Judaism interpreted the biblical prophets as predictive preachers of the processes and events in their own present times, which were all regarded as God’s will and thus salvific-historically relevant. Prior prophetic messages are now interpreted as predicting both present realities and the future. From the perspective of authors and addressees, such updates to the interpretations of traditional prophetic revelation literature were mostly related to the idea of a present or imminent fulfilment of the contents of such biblical prophecies.52 In particular, among the Dead Sea Scrolls a series of peculiar scriptural commentaries (Pesharim) on authoritative holy texts can be found. These commentaries accordingly interpret the present situation of their authors, tradents, and readers by means of the biblical books of prophets (e.g., Isaiah, Habakkuk, and Nahum) and the Psalms, which were regarded as Davidic prophecy. The text of the Hebrew Bible thereby is interpreted sentence by sentence and in its individual semantic units.53 50 Cf. Sim, Eschatology, 91; Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, 2:135–40; Luck, Matthäus, 205–06; Wiefel, Matthäus, 322–25; Luz, Matthäus, 3:42–44; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 305; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 2:44–46; Konradt, Matthäus, 290–91. 51 Cf. Tilly, Apokalyptik, 83. 52 Cf. Hans-Friedrich Weiß, “Propheten – Weise – Schriftgelehrte zur Kategorie des ‘Prophetischen’ im nachexilischen Judentum,” in Interesse am Judentum. Die Franz-DelitzschVorlesungen 1989–2008, ed. J. Cornelis de Vos and Folker Siegert, Münsteraner judaistische Studien 23 (Berlin/Münster: LIT, 2008), 23–54, here 34–36. 53 Cf. Maurya P. Horgan, Pesharim: Qumran Interpretations of Biblical Books, CBQMS 8 (Washington D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association, 1979); George Brooke, “Qumran Pesher: Toward the Redefiniton of a Genre,” RevQ 10 (1979–1981): 483–503; Shani L. Berrin, “Pesharim,” in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Lawrence H. Shiffman and James C. VanderKam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 644–47; James H. Charlesworth, The Pesharim and Qumran History. Chaos or Consensus? (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002); Timothy H. Lim, Pesharim (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2002); Shani Berrin, “Qumran Pesharim,” in Biblical Interpretation at Qumran, ed. Matthias Henze (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2005), 110–33; Michael Tilly, “Paulus und die antike jüdische Schriftauslegung,” KD 73 (2017): 157–81, here 162–63.

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The so-called Reflexionszitate (formula quotations) in Matthew’s Gospel (Matt 1:22–23; 2:6, 15, 17–18, 23; 4:14–16; 8:17; 12:17–21; 13:35; 21:4–5; 27:9–10), all of which are attributed to the Matthean Sondergut, also serve to justify faith in Christ through Scripture, according to a model of interpretation called “promise and fulfilment.”54 Also evident is an underlying determinism of salvific history: “Matthew’s major purpose in highlighting the fulfilment of prophecy on these occasions was to validate the status of Jesus as Messiah and son of God, but underlying this validation is the prior conviction that history as a totality is foreordained and unchangeable.”55 When comparing the Pesharim and the Matthean formula quotations, one essential point becomes apparent. While the Pesher either offers a continuous interpretation of a coherent prophetic text or grows out of different fixed text sections,56 the formula quotations of the first evangelist are consistently decontextualized in order to justify certain aspects of the Christ event in the sense of a messianic “interpretatio punctualis.”57 Matthew’s reasoning of past, present, and future aspects of the Christian faith, however, refers not merely to the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies, but also to the words and deeds of Jesus himself.58 Jesus thus predicts the betrayal of Judas (Matt 26:21–25), the denial of Peter (Matt 26:34), his own death and resurrection (Matt 16:21; 17:22–23; 20:18–19), and also the future destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (Matt 22:7; 24:2). Here, too, a clearly deterministic view of history is encountered: “The fulfilment of these prophecies … presumes the mechanistic nature of the historical process.”59 IV. The Last Judgment In reaction to the period of deep national and religious crisis during the second half of the 2nd century BCE, in ancient Palestinian Judaism the idea of an otherworldly retribution of all good and evil deeds in God’s universal judicial action arises.60 This act of heavenly judgment means either reward (i.e., salvation,

54

Cf. Wilhelm Rothfuchs, Die Erfüllungszitate des Matthäus-Evangeliums. Eine biblisch-theologische Untersuchung, BWANT 88 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,1969); Strecker, Weg, 49–85; Baarlink, Eschatologie, 81–85; Graham N. Stanton, “Matthew’s Use of the Old Testament,” in A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 346–63, here 358–63. 55 Sim, Eschatology, 89. 56 Cf. Bertil Gärtner, “Der Habakuk-Kommentar (1QpHab) und das Matthäus-Evangelium,” in Das Matthäus-Evangelium, ed. Joachim Lang, Wege der Forschung 525 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980), 174–204, here 187; Sim, Eschatology, 89. 57 Ibid., 182. 58 Cf. Sim, Eschatology, 226. 59 Ibid., 90. 60 Cf. Tilly, Apokalyptik, 60–61.

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redemption, and eternal life), or punishment (i.e., doom, destruction, and eternal damnation). The acceptance of the elimination of the anomaly of death (cf. Gen 3:19) by God himself and the bodily resurrection of all those who have already died is the decisive prerequisite for carrying out such a balancing judicial action. The perspective of the righteous beyond death, that is, their hope for a post-mortem reward for their piety and steadfastness, becomes in this context also an expression of their adherence to comprehensive divine justice, which prima facie seems to be suspended by their current experiences of suffering and martyrdom (cf. Dan 12:2). Such notions of a balancing post-mortem judgment in ancient Judaism clearly represented a decisive innovation in comparison with the traditional conviction that death makes all people equal (cf. Eccl 9:3–6).61 The Gospel of Matthew consistently accentuates the eschatological idea of the last judgment as a transcendent reality.62 This is already expressed by the fact that the evangelist deliberately incorporates the tradition of John the Baptist’s judgment sermon (Matt 3:7–12).63 Furthermore, a rich ornamentation of different aspects of the panorama of the last judgment in the Sermon on the Mount is to be noted.64 Matthew here draws on an early Christian collection of sayings of Jesus, which share a special interest both in eschatological aspects of the Savior’s life and in emphasizing the idea of imminent judgment. In this collection of Jesus’s sayings as authoritative interpretations of the Law of Moses, the relationship between the kingdom of God and the Christian norm in the world is presented.65 The fifth and sixth antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount offer striking examples of what Matthew calls “greater justice,” a special Christian way of life which corresponds solely to God’s will and which alone opens the door to his kingdom. The Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:9–13; cf. Luke 11:2–4) can

61 Cf. Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Kohelet, 2nd ed., HTKAT (Freiburg im Breisgau et al.: Herder, 2011), 447–48. 62 Cf. Daniel M. Gurtner, The Torn Veil: Matthew’s Exposition of the Death of Jesus, SNTSMS 139 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 168. On the history of research cf. Olaf Rölver, Christliche Existenz zwischen den Gerichten Gottes: Untersuchungen zur Eschatologie des Matthäusevangeliums, BBB 163 (Bonn: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Unipress, 2010), 41–45. 63 Cf. Tilly, Johannes, 70–83; Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, 1:68–72; Luck, Matthäus, 31–34; Wiefel, Matthäus, 54–56; Luz, Matthäus, 1:147–49; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 74–82; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 1:52–55; Konradt, Matthäus, 49–51. 64 E.g. Matt 5:19, 21–26, 29–30; 6:4, 6, 18–27. 65 Cf. Roland Deines, Die Gerechtigkeit der Tora im Reich des Messias: Mt 5,13–20 als Schlüsseltext der matthäischen Theologie, WUNT 177 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004); Élian Cuvillier, “Torah Observance and Radicalization in the First Gospel. Matthew and First-Century Judaism: A Contribution to the Debate,” NTS 55 (2009): 144–59; Christiane M. Koch, “Wer diese Worte hört …’: Die Bergpredigt im Spiegel der Tora,” TGl 101 (2011): 165–82.

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be regarded as a concise example of this, combining prayer requests of a cosmic-apocalyptic character with the everyday ethical requests for the preservation of life and community.66 Important aspects of the evangelist’s expectation for eschatological salvation are already reflected in the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:3–10), which, as a “table of inlet conditions”67 into the kingdom of God, establish a direct link between Easter and Parousia and future judgment.68 According to Matt 5:20, faith, repentance, and above all the comprehensive fulfilment of the commandments, the social dynamics of “greater justice,” form the exclusive conditions for entering the heavenly kingdom of God. Throughout the Gospel references to the last judgment are repeatedly encountered (e.g., Matt 10:15, 26–33; 12:27, 36–37; 18:8–9, 23). For Matthew, the coming of the Day of Judgment apparently has the meaning of an individual division between the righteous and the ungodly; its present dawning therefore already means a final retribution itself (Matt 7:24–27; 24:40–41).69 The most important function of the well-considered speech on the last days (Matt 24–25) is the challenge to the addressees to be patient, to be vigilant, and to shape their Christian existence decisively and actively in face of the – in principle always possible – sudden and incalculable dawn of the judgment day, on which the sentence in relation to all people will be proclaimed according to their individual works: “[T]he wicked will burn forever and the righteous will be transformed into angels with the eternal life this brings.”70 In all these individual aspects of the reception of apocalyptic forms and concepts in the Gospel of Matthew, it is striking that they are also used as structural elements of the narrative account. Let us look at the five great speeches which are composed from different predetermined traditions (Mark; Q; SMatt), namely, the Sermon on the Mount (ch. 5–7), the commissioning speech (ch. 10), the parable speech (ch.13), the community instruction (ch. 18), and the speech about the Pharisees and the final days (ch. 23–25), which is introduced as an instruction of the disciples. It becomes perfectly clear that these speeches not only close stereotypically with the formula καὶ ἐγένετο ὅτε ἐτέλεσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς τοὺς λόγους τούτους (Matt 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1), but that these 66

Cf. Strecker, Bergpredigt, 130–32; Jeffrey B. Gibson, “Matthew 6:9–13//Luke 11:2– 4: An Eschatological Prayer?” BTB 31 (2001): 96–105; Jörg Frey, “Das Vaterunser im Horizont antik-jüdischen Betens unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Textfunde vom Toten Meer,” in Das Vaterunser in seinen antiken Kontexten, ed. Florian Wilk, FRLANT 266 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 1–24, here 16–22. 67 Bornkamm, “Enderwartung,” 14. Cf. Strecker, Bergpredigt, 98–99. 68 Cf. Luz, Matthäus, 3:549. 69 Cf. Meghan Henning, Educating Early Christians through the Rhetoric of Hell: “Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth” as Paideia in Matthew and the Early Church, WUNT 2/382 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 138–73. 70 Sim, Eschatology, 146.

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Formulae are preceded by an “explicitly apocalyptic note.”71 Thus, in the double parable of housebuilding in Matt 7:24–27, traditional theophany phenomena such as downpour, flooding, and storms are explicitly encountered.72 Matt 10:39–42 deals with this-worldly behavior towards Jesus and its consequences in the judgment to come.73 Matt 13:49–52 speaks of the glory of the heavenly kingdom and of the final judgment.74 Matt 24:37–42 deals with current behavior leading to future wages.75 Finally, the conclusion of the great pictorial speech of the last judgment in Matt 25:46 contrasts the eternal punishment of sinners and the eternal life of the righteous.76

C. Apocalypticism and the Testimony of Christ in Matthew In summary, it should first be noted that particularly in Matthew the early Christian kerygma was interpreted and formulated through the apocalyptic imaginary: “In Matthew … the apocalyptic perspective holds a much more prominent place than in any of the other Gospels.”77 Many older literary apocalyptic traditions thereby experienced an innovative contextualization and interpretation, rooted in and shaped by this Christian kerygma. However, precisely because of their demonstrated divergence, the end-time expectations of apocalyptic literature cannot be considered as the actual key of interpretation for the eschatology and soteriology of the first Gospel. This specifically Christian – or specifically Matthean – perspective on the apocalyptic tradition concerns mainly three aspects, namely, the idea of judgment, Christian ethics, and the understanding of history. These aspects will be discussed in the following three subsections.

71

Hagner, “Motifs,” 64. Cf. Scriba, Theophanie, 118; Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, 1:281–83; Luck, Matthäus, 103–04.; Wiefel, Matthäus, 154–56; Luz, Matthäus, 1:411–15; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 194–95; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 1:151–52; Konradt, Matthäus, 128–30. 73 Cf. Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, 1:397–403; Luck, Matthäus, 132–34; Wiefel, Matthäus, 205–07; Luz, Matthäus, 2:145–53; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 235–36; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 1:216–19; Konradt, Matthäus, 173–74. 74 Cf. Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, 2:510–11; Luck, Matthäus, 169–70; Wiefel, Matthäus, 250–64; Luz, Matthäus, 2:360–66; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 269; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 1:284–86; Konradt, Matthäus, 225–26. 75 Cf. Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, 2:337–38; Luck, Matthäus, 264–65; Wiefel, Matthäus, 420–22; Luz, Matthäus, 3:449–56; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 369; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 2:182–84; Konradt, Matthäus, 370–80. 76 Cf. Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium, 2:377; Luck, Matthäus, 274–75; Wiefel, Matthäus, 437; Luz, Matthäus, 3:541; Fiedler, Matthäusevangelium, 380; Klaiber, Matthäusevangelium, 2:209. 77 Hagner, “Motifs,” 53. 72

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I. The Day of Judgment First of all, it can be said that the judicial motif is strongly emphasized throughout the Gospel of Matthew. This concerns both the explicit and the structural references to an imminent judgment in the last days.78 In his shaping of a futurist eschatology, however, the evangelist consistently pays attention to the primacy of his readers’ current situation through the accentuation of hope and deeds motivated by a constancy of expectations.79 At the same time, the judgment is not only directed outwards, but also inwards.80 The Matthean community is addressed by the evangelist as a “corpus mixtum,”81 which must remain until the definitive separation of good and evil in the final judgment. The strong emphasis on the idea of judgment in Matthew thus seems to have both a comforting and a paraenetic purpose. On the one hand, the reward of the righteous and the punishment of sinners promises true justice: “Matthew emphasizes this particular element and uses it to satisfy his apocalyptic community’s psychological need for vengeance on those who are responsible for their suffering.”82 On the other hand, the evangelist here undertakes an (apparently necessary) determination of his reader’s relationship with the surrounding Jewish or Jewish-Christian majority. He thereby wants to consolidate and stabilize his own community and its exclusive quest for “greater justice” by consciously differentiating itself from this majority of “others”: “An important function of the evangelist’s apocalyptic eschatology is that it both identifies and legitimates the sectarian nature of the Matthean community.”83 II. Ethics and Eschatology Since inner-worldly and inner-historical demand for a change of behavior seems to have little relevance given the expected end of this aeon, ethical themes and parenetic admonitions do not take up too much space in Jewish apocalyptic literature. Matthew’s ethics, however, are conceived within his concept of eschatology. He uses the apocalyptic motif of the world’s coming judgment with a double outcome “as a motivation to righteousness.”84 In particular, the unity of hearing and acting (Matt 7:24–27) as well as the loyalty and testing of believers (cf. Matt 25:34–46) are emphasized.85 In the Sermon 78

Cf. Hahn, Apokalyptik, 120. Cf. Luz, Matthäus, 3:549. 80 Cf. Ferdinand Hahn, “Die eschatologische Rede Matthäus 24 und 25,” in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Ludger Schenke, SBS (Stuttgart: Katholische Bibelwerk, 1988), 107–26. 81 Bornkamm, “Enderwartung,” 17. Baarlink, Eschatologie, 99–107. 82 Sim, Eschatology, 234. 83 Ibid., 223. Cf. M. Vahrenhorst“Ihr sollt …,” 415–16. 84 Hagner, “Motifs,” 75. On the history of research cf. Rölver, Existenz, 33–41. 85 Cf. Hahn, Apokalyptik, 120. 79

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on the Mount the Mosaic law appears both sub specie principii, in the light of God’s will manifested in creation, and sub specie iudicii, in the sense of the universal judgment of the world.86 Georg Strecker rightly notes here: “The Christian Church is the representation of ethical demands in time. By proclaiming this demand, it guarantees continuity between the time of Jesus and the present until the end of history.”87 III. History and Salvation The most important difference between Matthew’s message and contemporary Jewish apocalypticism seems to be the Christian concept of God’s intervention both in the world and in history. Although the event of resurrection was also interpreted by him in accordance with traditional apocalyptic ideas as an event affecting the entire cosmos88 and determined by salvation history, the evangelist regarded salvation in Christ as a past event in this world, which in turn shapes the present situation of his Christian congregation and also defines its future destiny: “The evangelist uses apocalyptic-like language with a whole range of apocalyptic motifs, to refer quite readily to events already in the past.”89 It should be noted here that a future general resurrection is not explicitly mentioned at any point by the Matthean Jesus. Thus, Elaine Raju writes in her Heidelberg dissertation: “The expectation of a general resurrection in the last days recedes in favour of the assumption that the deceased righteous already live with God.”90 This current hope for the future, founded on the past event of salvation in Christ, neither presupposed the total collapse of the existing world nor does it distinguish in a dualistic manner between the hopeless past and present and the exclusive realization of salvation in the transcendental or extra-historical kingdom of God. Rather, it postulates the fundamental significance of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth as the salvific Christian impulse event

86

Cf. Bornkamm, “Enderwartung,” 29. Georg Strecker, “Das Geschichtsverständnis des Matthäus,” in Das Matthäus-Evangelium, ed. Joachim Lang, Wege der Forschung 525 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980), 326–49, here 341: “Die christliche Kirche ist die Repräsentanz der ethischen Forderung in der Zeit. Durch die Verkündigung dieser Forderung gewährleistet sie die Kontinuität zwischen dem Damals der Zeit Jesu und der Gegenwart bis zum Endziel der Geschichte.” 88 Cf. Baarlink, Eschatologie, 109–10. 89 Hagner, “Motifs,” 69. Cf. Rolf Walker, Die Heilsgeschichte im ersten Evangelium, FRLANT 91 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), 114–18. 90 Elaine Raju, “Tod, Auferstehung und ewiges Leben im Matthäusevangelium” (Th.D. diss., Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, 2017), 197: “Die Erwartung einer allgemeinen endzeitlichen Auferstehung tritt zurück zugunsten der Annahme, dass verstorbene Gerechte schon bei Gott leben.” 87

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in space and time. “The evangelist wants to instruct his readers about the glorious character of two realities: one having occurred, the other yet to occur.”91 The promise of salvation at the end of Matthew’s Gospel in Matt 28:20b reads: ἰδού, ἐγὼ μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν εἰμι πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας ἕως τῆς συντελείας τοῦ αἰῶνος. From the perspective of the first evangelist and his addressees, therefore, the new aeon seems to have already begun under the reign of the crucified and risen Christ right in the midst of suffering and persecution.92 By presenting its entire narrative account of the Christ event according to the pattern of “promise and fulfilment,” the Gospel of Matthew qualifies not only the present, but also the future of its readers as the end time fulfilment of biblical prophecies. “If God had acted in a definitive way in Christ, then the long-awaited metamorphosis of the present age could not be far behind.”93 In particular, it takes up the apocalyptic-eschatological notion of judgment and the idea of the imminent kingdom of God. However, the intention of these statements is not to inform readers about the time of the expected end of the world,94 but to make them aware of the significance of the time that remains. Matthew is not concerned with quantity, but with the quality of this remaining time. On behalf of his addressees he is concerned with their radically new attitude towards the precious remaining time as the last opportunity for awareness, the last opportunity for changing one’s behaviour, and the last opportunity for ethical action in accordance with a “greater justice.”95 While Jewish apocalypticism aims at making its readers secure about their future destiny, Matthew’s Gospel provokes its addressees’ anxiety in order to affect their present conduct.96

91

Hagner, “Motifs,” 74. Cf. Walter Schmithals, Die Apokalyptik. Einführung und Deutung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), 124. 93 Hagner, “Motifs,” 58. Cf. Sim, Eschatology, 90. 94 Cf. Luz, Matthäus, 3:547: “Matthäus hat keine Scheu vor apokalyptischen Vorstellungen, aber ein Bedürfnis nach Ausmalung oder nach weltanschaulicher Präzisierung existiert bei ihm nicht.” 95 Cf. Egon Brandenburger, Das Recht des Weltenrichters. Untersuchungen zu Matthäus 25,31–46, SBS 99 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1980), 131–38. 96 Cf. Baarlink, Eschatologie, 120–21; Matthias Konradt, “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. Dieter Sänger and Matthias Konradt, NTOA 57 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2006), 129–52, here 150–51. 92

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D. Conclusion “Mt’s apocalyptic is an altered apocalyptic”97 or even “a kind of turning of apocalyptic on its head.”98 By interpreting the Christ event in such a way as God’s eschatological intervention, the Matthean community also became a place of Christ’s saving presence in the world. As “reminiscent hope” or “hopeful remembrance” the community’s faith henceforth awaited a future completion of this salvation, which in turn is already completely and once and for all based on past redemption already having taken place in the cross and the resurrection. So, the unapocalyptic “already now” of God’s saving action is decisive and characteristic of Matthew’s eschatology. Despite all hostility towards and persecution of the community, the present world “already now” is regarded as a place of salvific experience. For Matthew and his readers, both history and the present age are no longer places of fundamental godlessness, hopelessness, and despair. Their common faith is therefore founded not only in the hope of the coming kingdom of God, but also in the memory of the inner-historical reality of salvation.

97 98

Hagner, “Motifs,” 69. Ibid., 72.

The Place of Matthew in Early Christianity R. Alan Culpepper R. Alan Culpepper

Reflecting on his Fulbright year in Göttingen in 1957 and its influence on his subsequent work, the late J. Louis Martyn recalled the influence of F. C. Baur and the debates Martyn had with Ernst Käsemann about the Gospel of John. Martyn said, “We found ourselves in considerable disagreement, but the disagreement was focused on a question we agreed to be crucial: Where does the document we are reading belong in the strains and stresses characteristic of early Christian history?”1 The place of Matthew in early Christianity has received a great deal of attention in recent publications, so I will survey both the issues related to this topic and some of the literature it has generated. As an approach to the topic we may take a path charted by a bit of oral tradition Martyn attributed to Walter Bauer: “On the way toward ascertaining the intention of an early Christian author, the interpreter is first to ask how the original readers of the author’s document understood what he had said in it.”2 Martyn warned us that listening to an early Christian writing with the ears of the original hearers requires a great deal of imagination. One hears not only the voice of the author but also the voices of other Christian theologians who prove, more often than not, to be saying rather different things, and in some instances to be saying those different things quite effectively. If one does not hear the chorus of these other voices, one does not really hear the voice of the author as his first hearers heard him.3

Taking as our starting points the dialectical, religionsgeschichtliche work of F. C. Baur and the dialogical task Martyn attributes to Walter Bauer is particularly appropriate for the study of Matthew because Matthew takes us back to an early Jewish-Christian community, which Baur identified as the first stage in Christian history, but one which, as we will see, involved vigorous dialogue – “strains and stresses” – with other voices and traditions.

1 J. Louis Martyn, “Listening to John and Paul on the Subject of Gospel and Scripture,” WW 12 (1992): 68–81, here 70. 2 Ibid., 69. 3 Ibid., 70.

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A. Sharpening the Question As we listen for and to the other voices in Matthew’s setting, we quickly become aware that our traditional categories are too wooden. For example, even the topic, “the place of Matthew in early Christianity,” assumes an early separation of Christianity from Judaism that seems not to have been the case in Matthew’s setting. And again, “Judaism” as a designation for the voices in the Matthean context too easily imports the later emergence of classical, rabbinic Judaism into the late first century. E. P. Sanders’s delineation of “common Judaism” reminds us of the beliefs and practices shared by Jews both in Palestine and in the diaspora prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and of the distortions that often accompany the traditional labels for Jewish groups. Sanders envisages “a situation in which there were many shades of opinion about ‘religion’ and ‘politics’, and in which the two were intertwined.”4 While there were identifiable groups, especially during the time of military conflict, “they were not otherwise, however, members of ‘parties’.”5 The belief that God had chosen Israel and given Israel the law undergirded the desire to bring all of life under the law, which was common to all forms of Judaism, not just to the Pharisees.6 Other categories are evolving also. We now know there were first-century synagogues, but were they places of worship rather than or in addition to community gatherings?7 Matthew is the only Gospel to use the term ekklesia, but do these references designate the local community of Jesus followers (Matt 18:17) or all believers (Matt 16:18)? Can we speak of the Matthean community as the community in which and perhaps for which the Gospel was written, or

4

E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016), 29. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 319. 7 James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, vol. 1 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 307; Carsten Claussen, “Jesus und die Versammlungen Galiläas,” in Jesus und die Archäologie Galiläas, ed. Carsten Claussen and Jörg Frey, Biblisch-Theologische Studien 87 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2008), 227–44, here 237: “Nüchtern betrachtet lässt sich kaum mehr aussagen, als dass es sich um einen Versammlungsplatz gehandelt haben mag, der sowohl für religiöse Versammlungen in engeren Sinne als auch für das Zusammenkommen der Dorfgemeinschaft zu anderen sozialen Zwecken gedient habe. Beides wäre im dörflichen Leben Galiläas zur Zeit Jesu kaum zu trennen.” Cf. Mordechai Aviam, “The Decorated Stone from the Synagogue at Migdal,” NovT 55 (2013): 205–20; Steven Fine, “From Synagogue Furnishing to Media Event: The Magdala Ashlar,” Ars Judaica XXX (2017): 27–38; Jordan J. Ryan, The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017).

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are all constructions of gospel communities modern fictions?8 Can we speak of a (not to say “the”) “parting of the ways” at this time, and if so is the Matthean community still within Judaism or separate from it?9 Our answers to these questions determine in large measure whether we should speak of “varieties of Jewish experience,” “Jewish-Christians,” or “Judaism and Christianity” late in the first century. The complexity and fluidity of the Matthean setting challenges the adequacy and accuracy of any terms we use to describe it, but the pursuit of our topic can still be illuminating as long as we bear in mind these issues and the challenges they place before us. The approach taken here will lead us to consider in turn Matthew’s use of its sources, its place among the New Testament voices, and its reception in the second century.

B. Matthew’s Use of Its Sources If we understand a “facet” as “any of the definable aspects that make up a subject,”10 and if we accept Edwin Broadhead’s insight that sources are traditions, and traditions “are carried by tradents who are deeply invested in their construction,”11 we can examine Matthew’s engagement with each of its sources as a facet or “definable aspect” of its place in the early Christianity. We will 8 Richard Bauckham, ed., The Gospel for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). See also Martin Hengel, “The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ,” in The Earliest Gospels: The Origins and Transmission of the Earliest Christian Gospels – The Contribution of the Chester Beatty Gospel Codex P45, ed. Charles Horton, JSNTSup 258 (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 13–26, here 25, “Contrary to a widespread view, none of the four Gospels was written by and for one particular community”; Cedric E. W. Vine, The Audience of Matthew: An Appraisal of the Local Audience Thesis, LNTS 496 (London: T&T Clark, 2014). Richard Last, “Communities that Write: Christ-Groups, Associations, and Gospel Communities,” NTS 58 (2012):173–98, on the other hand, draws on research on Graeco-Roman associations that show that these ancient communities produced writings communally and wrote to advance their own self-interests. 9 Cf. e.g., Tobias Nicklas, Jews and Christians: Second-Century “Christian” Perspectives on the “Parting of the Ways,” Annual Deichmann Lectures 2013 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014); Matthias Konradt, Israel, Church, and the Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew, trans. Kathleen Ess, Baylor-Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014), 355; Ulrich Luz, The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew, trans. J. Bradford Robinson, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 14, 15; Dale C. Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1993), 290. 10 Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield: Merriam-Webster, 1989), s.v. “facet.” 11 Edwin K. Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, WUNT 378 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 105–06.

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consider briefly the major lines of tradition with which Matthew interacts, assuming the two-document hypothesis: the Gospel of Mark, the sayings tradition (Q), quotations of Scripture, and Matthew’s special traditions (M), noting especially the Petrine tradition in Matthew. Three caveats are necessary. First, while the Q hypothesis continues to be a matter of debate among New Testament scholars,12 our concern here is with Matthew’s sources. On the basis of the priority of Mark, Matthew must have had a source for the sayings tradition, even if Luke subsequently depended on Matthew for both the Markan material and the sayings found only in Matthew and Luke. Second, James D. G. Dunn is surely right in calling attention to the oral sources Matthew must have had in addition to these written sources, oral tradition which Mark also knew and Q tradition in oral form,13 but for the sake of simplicity and brevity I will not make those distinctions here. Third, while I agree with Broadhead on the importance of situating the Gospel of Matthew as a living tradition among proponents of various traditions in Judaism and the emerging church, I disagree with his insistence on setting aside the notion of a single evangelist who was the author of a foundational text. Broadhead views the Gospel of Matthew as the work of a number of scribal figures contributing to this living tradition over time. On the other hand, Matthew is best understood, I suggest, as the evangelist’s responses to the competing and conflicting voices in the Matthean context through its inclusion and reshaping of its sources, although seams, strains, and conflicts remain visible in the resulting Gospel. I. The Gospel of Mark Matthew’s most important source is the Gospel of Mark; Matthew adopts its genre and its basic order, especially in the second half of Matthew. By incorporating about 90 percent of Mark, Matthew demonstrates both Mark’s formative influence and, in important respects, the need for a Gospel that incorporates other traditions, adjudicates debates that are either handled differently in Mark or are not present in it, and serves needs of the Jewish-Christian community that were not met by the earlier Gospel. We can identify Matthew’s alteration of several of Mark’s major themes. Distinctive of Mark are its emphasis on the messianic secret; the failure of the disciples; Galilee as the place of the advent of the kingdom of God; Jesus’s controversies with the religious authorities over his breaches of the Sabbath, 12

Cf. Mark Goodacre, The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2002). 13 James D. G. Dunn, “How Did Matthew Go about Composing His Gospel?” in Jesus, Matthew’s Gospel and Early Christianity: Studies in Memory of Graham N. Stanton, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner, Joel Willitts, and Richard A. Burridge, LNTS 435 (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 39–49.

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purity, and food laws; and Mark’s embrace of the gentile mission. While recognizing the need for detailed analysis, we will briefly note Matthew’s response to each of these issues. The messianic secret. Matthew minimizes Mark’s secrecy motif by omitting the commands to secrecy in Mark 1:25, 34; 5:43; and 7:36 (cf. 7:24), but retains others in 1:44; 8:30; and 9:9. Matthew omits the report of the adverse effect of the spread of Jesus’s fame in Mark 1:45, softens the harshness of the statement of the purpose of the parables in Mark 4:10–12, and omits or minimizes the pattern of private instruction of the disciples in Mark 4:34 and 7:17. Matthew also “cleans up” the Gospel by omitting references to Jesus’s emotion, and references to Jesus’s not knowing something or being unable to do something, and softens other difficult passages.14 Lidija Novakovic has persuasively argued that “for Matthew, the ‘unmessianic’ character of Jesus’s earthly ministry was probably one of the most troubling features in his Markan source.”15 In contrast to Mark, Matthew “constructs a narrative which from the very beginning establishes Jesus’s messianic credentials and in which multiple characters, even gentiles, recognize him as the Davidic Messiah.”16 In Matthew, Jesus’s messianic identity is confirmed by his healing miracles, Scripture quotations, the title “Son of David,” and his characterization as Israel’s Davidic shepherd.17 The failure of the disciples. Matthew regularly portrays the disciples more positively than Mark. Gerhard Barth observed that “Matthew has omitted or interpreted differently all of the passages in Mark’s Gospel which speak of the lack of understanding on the part of the disciples.”18 Matthew omits Jesus’s sharp questions, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables? (Mark 4:13; Matt 13:18), and “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” (Mark 4:40; Matt 8:26). Following the walking on the water, where Mark says, “and they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened” (6:51–52), Matthew says, “and those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly, you are the Son of God’” (14:33). When Jesus asks the disciples 14

Ibid., 118. Lidija Novakovic, “Matthew’s ‘Messianization’ of Mark,” in A Temple Not Made with Hands”: Essays in Honor of Naymond H. Keathley, ed. Mikeal C. Parsons and Richard Walsh (Eugene: Pickwick, 2018), 13–27, here 18. 16 Ibid., 19. Cf. Anne M. O’Leary, Matthew’s Judaization of Mark: Examined in the Context of the Use of Sources in Graeco-Roman Antiquity, LNTS 323 (London: T&T Clark, 2006). 17 Wayne Baxter, Israel’s Only Shepherd: Matthew’s Shepherd Motif and His Social Setting, LNTS 457 (London: T&T Clark, 2012). 18 Gerhard Barth, “Matthew’s Understanding of the Law,” in Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew, ed. Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held, trans. Percy Scott (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), 58–164, here 106. 15

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about the multiplication of the loaves, in Mark Jesus says, “do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? … Do you not yet understand?” (8:17–21), but Matthew reports, “And becoming aware of it, Jesus said, ‘You of little faith … do you still not perceive? Do you not remember … Then they understood …” (16:8–12). In Matthew, Jesus uses the expression ὀλιγόπιστοι (“you of little faith”) five times (Matt 6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8; 17:20), instructing the disciples, and through them the church regarding the need for faith. Matthew also omits Mark’s report, after the second passion prediction, that the disciples “did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him” (9:32), and reports that it was the mother of James and John, rather than the disciples themselves, who asked for the seats of honor for them in the kingdom (Mark 10:35–36; Matt 20:20–21). These two changes disrupt the pattern in Mark of a passion prediction, misunderstanding on the part of the disciples, and further instruction that is repeated in Mark 8, 9, and 10. The effect of these changes is to take the edge off Mark’s portrayal of the disciples as hard of heart, unable to understand, and failing in their call to follow Jesus. Jesper Svartvik argues that “the Gospel of Mark could and should be understood as a Pauline Gospel.”19 In effect, “Mark’s narrative Gospel unfolds the beginning of Paul’s kerygmatic gospel.”20 David Sim observes a trend in Markan studies toward the view that “Mark wrote his Gospel from a clear Pauline perspective,” based on Mark’s focus on the death of Jesus, the gentile mission, and a liberal attitude toward the law. At issue, primarily, is the question of fidelity to the law in gentile settings (matters of purity and food, e.g., 1 Cor 8:4–13; 9:19–21; Gal 2:11–14; cf. Mark 7:19) and whether gentile converts were required to be law observant, especially regarding circumcision (1 Cor 7:17–20; Gal 5:2–7; Acts 21:21). Matthew does not address the issue of circumcision. On the other hand, Matthew’s Jesus insists on the observance of the law in all matters, moral and cultic, light as well as weighty, even tithing mint, dill, and cumin (Matt 5:18–19; 23:23).21 Matthew edits or omits Mark’s Pauline

19 Jesper Svartvik, “Matthew and Mark,” in Matthew and His Christian Contemporaries, ed. David C. Sim and Boris Repschinski, LNTS 333 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 27–49, here 33. 20 Ibid., 34. 21 David C. Sim, “Matthew’s Use of Mark: Did Matthew Intend to Supplement or to Replace His Primary Source?” NTS 57 (2011): 176–92, here 186. John P. Meier, “Antioch,” in Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity, ed. Raymond E. Brown and John P. Meier (New York: Paulist, 1983), 51–52; p. 78, for example, characterizes Matthew’s achievement in a less polemical way: “For all their differences, Ignatius was moved by a theological crisis to take a direction similar to that of Matthew: to draw together venerable Christian traditions from different, even divergent streams, all in the service of the unity of the church as it entered a new period and faced a new crisis.”

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features, leading Sim to observe that “Matthean scholarship is now taking seriously an anti-Pauline perspective in Matthew.”22 Galilee. Matthew maintains Mark’s characterization of Galilee as the locus of the kingdom (12x in Mark/16x in Matt). Mark only – 1:28; 6:21 (cf. Matt 14:6) Matthew only – 2:22; 4:15; 19:1 (cf. Mark 10:1); 21:11; 28:10, 16 Both (Mark/Matt) – 1:9/3:13; 1:14/4:12; 1:16/4:18; 1:39/4:23; 3:7/4:25; 7:31/15:29; 9:30/17:22; 14:28/26:32; 15:41/27:55; 16:7/28:7

Matthew does not contain the reference in Mark 1:28 because it omits the exorcism in the synagogue (Mark 1:23–28). The only other place Matthew omits a reference to Galilee in Mark is in Mark 6:21/Matt 14:6, and Matthew adds references of Galilee in the birth narrative (2:22), the quotation from Isa 8:23– 9:1 (4:15), the geographical note in 19:1, the response of the crowds to Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem (21:11), and the appearances to the women (28:10) and the eleven (28:16). The differences between the two Gospels are not significant,23 but for Matthew Galilee is the locus of Jesus’s battle for the crowds against opposition from the Pharisees. Fasting, Sabbath, purity, and food laws. Related to Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus as the messianic interpreter of the law, the first Gospel sharpens Jesus’s controversies with the religious authorities over matters that were particularly sensitive in Matthew’s setting, and may have been regarded as tests of one’s obedience to the law: fasting, Sabbath observance, purity, and food laws. The pronouncement story in Matt 9:14–17 regarding fasting probably speaks to a debate in the Matthean community over whether they ought to fast and when. In Matt 6:16–18, fasting is assumed, as is its connection with mourning. In Matt 9, Jesus answers with two sayings that contrast the old and the new:

22

Sim, “Matthew’s Use of Mark,” 187. For a contrary view, see Barth, “Matthew’s Understanding of the Law,” 162; Terence V. Smith, Petrine Controversies in Early Christianity, WUNT 2/15 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1985), 158–60; Joel Willitts, “Paul and Matthew: A Descriptive Approach from a Post-New Perspective Interpretive Framework,” in Paul and the Gospels: Christologies, Conflicts and Convergences, ed. Michael F. Bird and Joel Willitts, LNTS 411 (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 62–85; and Kelly R. Iverson, “An Enemy of the Gospel? Anti-Paulinisms and Intertextuality in the Gospel of Matthew,” in Unity and Diversity in the Gospels and Paul: Essays in Honor of Frank J. Matera, ed. Christopher W. Skinner and Kelly R. Iverson, SBLECL 7 (Atlanta: SBL, 2012), 7–32. Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, “Matthew and Paul,” in Matthew and His Christian Contemporaries, ed. David C. Sim and Boris Repschinski, LNTS 333 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 11–26, here 25, offers a restrained endorsement of Sim’s view: “While the evidence for Sim’s hypothesis may not seem totally convincing to all, at the very least he has provided a stimulus for us to rethink our largely canon-influenced tendency to harmonize Paul and Matthew.” 23 See David C. Sim, “The Gospel of Matthew and Galilee: An Evaluation of an Emerging Hypothesis,” ZNW 107 (2016): 141–69, esp. 153–54.

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the old garment and new patch, and the old wineskins and new wine. The question these two sayings pose is, what is old, and what is new, and what do the sayings imply about their relationship? Do they imply that Israel (or Judaism) is old and the kingdom (or the church) is new, as Ulrich Luz contends when he writes, “In my judgment the double saying thus most likely emphasizes the fundamental incompatibility of the old Israel, represented by the enemies of Jesus – the scribes, Pharisees, and disciples of John – with Jesus and the community of disciples.”24 More likely, I think, Jesus and his disciples did not fast as did the Pharisees because the coming of the kingdom, which Jesus proclaimed, could not be a time of fasting. Matthew’s community probably did practice fasting (see 6:16–18) but with marked distinctions from the Pharisees (Matt 23; Did 8:1). More difficult is the question of what Matthew intended by adding “and both will be preserved” (9:17) – which does not occur in either Mark or Luke. Rather than the “fundamental incompatibility” that Luz finds, Matthew seems to affirm both the need for new forms, new practices, and piety based on Jesus’s interpretation of Torah, and the value of the old also – the garment and the wineskins.25 The new wine of the Gospel brings a new authority (9:6, 8), a new interpretation of the Scriptures, new ethical priorities (e.g., forgiveness, mercy, and the “golden rule” – 6:14–15; 7:12; 9:13), and therefore a new approach to traditional piety (eating with tax collectors and sinners rather than fasting). The sayings, therefore, do not affirm supersessionism – the church replacing Israel – but the imperative of accepting the new realities of the kingdom within the context of the long-held traditions of Israel. Similarly, in response to the question of Sabbath violation (Matt 12:1–8), Matthew omits Jesus’s pronouncement that “the Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27) and in its place Jesus offers a typically rabbinic argument from the lesser to the greater: Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice,” you would not have condemned the guiltless. (Matt 12:5–7)

Jesus is greater than the Temple; he does not say “greater than the law.” The contrast is between what is allowed in the Temple and what is allowed by Jesus. Because Jesus is greater than the Temple, he can allow the disciples to pluck grain on the Sabbath because they are hungry. Jesus cites Hos 6:6, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice,” as a hermeneutical principle, which he also cites in 24 Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 37. 25 Cf. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 2, Commentary on Matthew VIII–XVIII, ICC (London: T&T Clark, 1991), 115.

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Matt 9:13, but which is particularly apt here because the setting contrasts Jesus’s merciful ruling with sacrifice, the central activity of the Temple. Jesus does not violate the law but fulfills it in his own person and teaching. Although Matthew greatly abbreviates Mark’s account of the healing of the hemorrhaging woman, he adds the detail that Jesus wore a garment with tassels (9:20),26 a practice that reminded Jews to live in obedience to the law (Num 15:38–41; Deut 22:12). In Mark 7:1–23/Matt 15:1–20 Jesus is questioned by Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem because his disciples were eating without first washing their hands. Mark explains, (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) (Mark 7:3–4)

Matthew’s audience apparently did not need this explanation because Matthew omits it. The omission also focuses the issue between Jesus and the Pharisees and scribes, leaving out the reference to “all the Jews.” In his response, Jesus then distinguishes the authority of the law from the tradition of the elders (Matt 15:3, 6). With a slight change Matthew clarifies Mark’s ambiguous reference to “the things that come out are what defile” (Mark 7:15), which might refer to excrement, so that Jesus’s pronouncement reads “it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles” (Matt 15:11). This change aligns Jesus’s teaching with the quotation from Isaiah that refers to deceitful speech, and in so doing shifts the issue away from what is eaten. Matthew adds the disciples’ cautionary words, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” (15:12), and Jesus’s response that condemns the Pharisees as plants that will be rooted up and blind guides of the blind (15:13–14). Then, Matthew omits Mark’s parenthetical comment, “thus he declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19) and adds the concluding statement, “but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile” (Matt 15:20).27 In all these matters, Matthew distinguishes between the response of the Pharisees and scribes and that of the crowd, justifies Jesus and his disciples in matters relating to the Sabbath, fasting, and purity, and refrains from having Jesus pronounce all foods clean. Matthew thereby presents Jesus as faithfully observing and teaching the law as he interpreted it.

26 Cf. François P. Viljoen, “The Law and Purity in Matthew: Jesus Touching a Bleeding Woman and Dead Girl (Matt. 9:18–26),” NGTT 55 (2014): 443–69, here 458; http://ngtt.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/535/555. 27 Cf. Svartvik, “Matthew and Mark,” 40.

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The mission to the gentiles. Although Matthew’s view of the mission to Israel and the mission to the nations will be discussed further below, this is another point on which Matthew recasts Mark. Matthew omits Jesus’s conversation with the Gadarene demoniac in Mark 5:18–20, thereby sidestepping the man’s request to be one of his disciples and Jesus’s response, sending him to his home and his own (ὕπαγε εἰς τὸν οἶκόν σου πρὸς τοὺς σούς, Mark 5:19), and the man’s preaching in the diaspora.28 When Matthew reports Jesus’s response to the pleas of gentiles (the centurion and the Canaanite woman, 8:5–13; 15:21–28), he notes their extraordinary faith (8:10; 15:28) and grants their request because of their faith (8:13; 15:28). Matthew’s editing of Mark’s account of Jesus’s encounter with the gentile woman “in the district of Tyre and Sidon” is telling. First, Matthew identifies her as a Canaanite “from that region” (15:21). Then, she addresses him as the Jewish Messiah, “Have mercy on me Lord, Son of David,” and Jesus responds, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (15:24; cf. 9:36; 10:6).29 He grants her request, then, only after she persists. In the apocalyptic discourse in Matt 24/Mark 13, Matthew moves the statement, “the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations” (Mark 13:10) from its parallel position in Matt 24:9, which declares that the disciples will be “hated by all nations,” and places it at the end, where it has a more eschatological sense: “and this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come” (24:14). The mission to Israel will continue until the end (10:23), and the mission to all nations (24:14; 28:18–20) will fulfill Jewish expectations for the future. These examples of the way Matthew has appropriated and changed Mark are sufficient to suggest that Matthew intended to replace the earlier Gospel. While he adopted most of Mark and its chronology, he (1) supplemented it with additional teaching material, (2) constructed a clear presentation of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of David, (3) added the birth narrative and resurrection appearance in Galilee, (4) removed Mark’s Pauline emphases, (5) presented the disciples in a better light and gave Peter a place of preeminence for the church, (6) focused Jesus’s conflicts with the Pharisees, (7) clarified Jesus’s faithfulness to and fulfillment of the law, and (8) recast the mission of the church to Israel and the nations. David Sim asks, pointedly, “What role could Mark have 28

“Go home to your people” (CEB, NASB, NIV) is a better translation than “Go home to your friends” (KJV, RSV, NRSV). 29 Cf. Baxter, Israel’s Only Shepherd, who concludes that “according to his shepherd motif, Matthew clearly holds to a Jewish national restoration of Israel, putting him much closer to the Jewish-nationalistic end of a spectrum mapping belief in Jewish-national restoration. This belief in a Jewish nationalism is most characteristic of NCB [non-Christ believing] Jews” (195); Matthew “remained conceptually within the orbit of Second Temple Judaism and not separated from it” (202).

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possibly played in the Matthean community once Matthew had published his own corrected, revised, enlarged, improved, and updated edition of Mark?”30 II. The Sayings Tradition (Q) The sayings material common to Matthew and Luke, whether Luke derived it from Q or from Matthew, represents an important part of Matthew and its additions to Mark. James M. Robinson concluded, “it would seem clear that the Q movement – at least a significant part of it – merged into the Matthean community, bringing into Matthew … the traditions of Jesus that Q had transmitted.”31 Ulrich Luz hypothesizes that Q communities in Galilee were forerunners of the Matthean communities. When they fled to Syria during the Jewish War, they encountered the Gospel of Mark and were influenced by it.32 Noting the aetiological function of these hypotheses, Alan Kirk suggests that it is better “to look for an alternative to Q as a proxy for a Galilean Jesus movement, one that better accounts for the hard evidence of its utilization by Matthew and Luke.”33 The Q material was probably known to Matthew and Luke in different versions, and each Gospel seems to preserve the original form of this tradition more accurately at different points.34 Matthew structured this material in five discourses and marked the end of each with the formula, “Now when Jesus had finished saying these things” (7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; and 26:1), thereby marking off five units of narrative followed by teachings in the body of the Gospel.35 The first of these discourses, the Sermon on the Mount, is introduced by the statement that Jesus “went up on the mountain” (5:1), sat down, and taught the crowds and his disciples. The allusion to Moses is almost certainly deliberate in light of the parallels between the births of Jesus and Moses that Matthew draws in the birth narrative.36 Matthew 5:17–20 is the first and most important 30

Sim, “Matthew’s Use of Mark,” 182. James M. Robinson, “The Q Trajectory: Between John and Matthew,” in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester, ed. Birger A. Pearson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 173–94, here 193. 32 Ulrich Luz, “Looking at Q,” in New Studies in the Synoptic Problem: Oxford Conference, April 2008, ed. Paul Foster, Andrew Gregory, John S. Kloppenborg, and Joseph Verheyden, BETL 239 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 571–89, here 585; and idem, Matthew, 1:44, 49. Donald Senior affirms that he finds Luz’s description of the evolution of Matthew’s community to be convincing: “Matthew at the Crossroads of Early Christianity: An Introductory Assessment,” in Matthew’s Gospel: At the Crossroads of Early Christianity, BETL 243 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 3–23, here 14–15. 33 Alan Kirk, Q in Matthew: Ancient Media, Memory, and Early Scribal Transmission of the Jesus Tradition, LNTS 564 (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 306. 34 Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:116, 121. 35 Benjamin W. Bacon, Studies in Matthew (New York: Holt, 1930). 36 Cf. Allison, The New Moses. 31

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reference to the law in Matthew. The dialectical construction, “not to … but to …,” suggests a context in which the teachings of the Matthean community have left the community open to the Pharisaic charge of antinomianism; i.e., they set aside the law.37 Alternatively, Matthew may be challenging a Pauline group. Matthew’s Jesus, therefore, following the beatitudes, asserts that he has come not to abolish but to fulfill “the law and the prophets” (5:17). Various interpretations have been offered as to the meaning of “fulfill.”38 At a minimum, in this context, it probably means (1) that Jesus has come as the Messiah, fulfilling the promises and specifically the messianic expectations based on the Scriptures; (2) Jesus’s teachings provide an interpretation of the law – centered in the love command – that brings the law to full expression; and (3) by implication, those who follow Jesus’s teachings will also keep the law. Further, the law abides until the end of time – not just until the coming of Jesus. His followers, therefore, are expected to keep the law in every detail (5:19). They should be more righteous – by following Jesus’s teachings on righteousness – than even the scribes and the Pharisees.39 For our purposes, it is significant that this opening declaration regarding the continuing validity of the law is followed by repeated warnings that disciples will be judged by what they do or do not do, and that Matthew includes instructions on a variety of specific issues: Sabbath observance (12:1–8, 9–14), prayer (6:5–13; 7:7–11), fasting (6:16–18), almsgiving (6:2–4), oaths (5:33–37; 23:16–22), divorce (5:31–32; 19:1–9), tithing (23:23), and other issues addressed by the Torah. In a way not unlike the rabbis, Matthew offers guidance on the essence of the law: the “Golden Rule” in its positive form, which Matthew says is “the law and the prophets” (7:12), the greatest command – the love command (22:36–40), and the “light” things of the law – tithing mint, dill, and cumin, which also ought not to be neglected, and “heavy” things of the law – justice, mercy, and faith (23:23). There is no debate in Matthew regarding whether Jesus’s followers ought to keep the law, only how the law is to be

37

See Konradt, Israel, Church, and the Gentiles, 357. Cf. M. Jack Suggs, Wisdom, Christology, and Law in Matthew’s Gospel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 116–18; Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, WBC 33A (Dallas: Word, 1993), 105–06. 39 Wolfgang Reinbold concludes from a study of the law in Matthew (esp. 5:20 and 23:2– 3) that Matthew maintains that the authority of the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees from the seat of Moses should be recognized and that Jesus’s followers should be more righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees: “Die Jünger sollen die Tora in ihrer Auslegung durch die ‘Schriftgelehrten und Pharisäer’ halten, und zwar in höherem Maße als sie. Sie sollen, wenn man so will, die besseren Pharisäer sein” (“Das Matthäusevangelium, die Pharisäer und die Tora,” BZ 50 [2006]: 51–73, here 61–62). 38

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interpreted, and what its essence is.40 Jesus interprets – in some instances radicalizes – and prioritizes mitzvoth (see 12:5), but he does not abolish, relax, or supersede the law. Drawing heavily from Q material, Matthew gives instructions for itinerant missionaries in the towns and villages of Israel. Matthew 10 contains instructions for avoiding gentiles and Samaritans, instructions on what the itinerants should and should not take with them, finding worthy hosts, responding to rejection and persecution, the divisive response to their message, and promises of reward for those who receive them. This chapter gives us a window on the early mission to Israel carried out by the Q tradents. III. Quotations of Scripture Another Matthean distinctive is its allusions and quotations of Scripture. Scripture permeates the Gospel, providing divine purpose for the events surrounding Jesus and commentary in the Gospel narrative. W. D. Davies and D. Allison collected and categorized the quotations. The numbers are impressive. In addition to the 17 citations and 39 possible allusions shared with Mark, and four citations and 19 possible allusions in the double tradition, there are 21 citations and 50 allusions peculiar to Matthew.41 The mix of textual traditions in the citations is also significant and shows that “Matthew is the only NT writer frequently to agree with the MT against the LXX,” which suggests that “he could read the Scriptures in their original language.”42 The formula quotations, which probably come from the evangelist because their text is often tailored to Matthew’s context and interpretation, are particularly significant. The quotations not only show that certain events fulfill prophecy, at times they generate events in the Matthean narrative. As Broadhead observes, “the Gospel of Matthew claims that this is the reason certain events occurred. God’s history with Israel, then, determines the story of Jesus.”43 Although Krister Stendahl built his case for a Matthean school on the peculiarities of these quotations,44 Davies and Allison conclude that they are the evangelist’s own work because (1) Matthew’s expansions of Markan quotations also show the same mixed text form, (2) some of the quotations fit their Matthean setting so closely that it is hard to imagine them in a different setting, (3) Matthew has not assimilated these quotations to the LXX, and (4) some of the quotations

40

Cf. Suggs, Wisdom, Christology, and Law in Matthew’s Gospel, 117–19. Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:29–57; cf. Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 124. 42 Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:45. 43 Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 124. 44 Krister Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew and Its Use of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968). 41

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appear to contain redactional material.45 These arguments lead to the conclusion that “the formula quotations show every sign of being redactional; and they do not of themselves demand a setting in a school.”46 IV. Matthew’s Special Traditions (M) In addition to Mark and Q, Matthew contains material found nowhere else. Much of this material is redactional or partly redactional; the rest apparently came to Matthew from various oral and written sources. Davies and Allison have helpfully sorted the remaining, non-redactional material into five categories: (1) the infancy stories, (2) ten parables, (3) several isolated sayings, (4) three groups of sayings, and (5) traditions about the passion and resurrection.47 Here we are less concerned about the origin of these materials than how they are used in Matthew and what they tell us about Matthew’s setting. Because these verses reflect a diversity of perspective, they can be characterized as “a collection of conflicting voices” in the Matthean setting,48 and probably reflect different stages in the history of the community, some of it very early.49 The infancy stories. Matthew 1–2 show that Jesus is the Davidic Messiah who fulfills the Scriptures of Israel. The genealogy, with its three groups of fourteen generations (1:17) leading to and from David, demonstrates Jesus’s Davidic lineage (1:1, 20). The virgin birth fulfills Isa 7:14 and the promise of Emmanuel. The coming of the wise men from the East introduces the acclamation of gentiles, which will be bracketed by the mission to the nations at the end of the Gospel. Herod’s persecution evokes the infancy of Moses, and Israel’s exodus experience.50 Ten parables. The parables unique to Matthew reflect themes that are prominent elsewhere in the Gospel: the demands of the kingdom (the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price, 13:44–46; the marriage supper, 22:1–14), the believing community as a corpus mixtum (weeds and wheat, 13:24–30; and the net full of fish, 13:47–50),

45

Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:52. Ibid., 1:145 n. 119. 47 Ibid., 1:124; cf. Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 90– 46

96. 48

Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 130. Stephenson Brooks, Matthew’s Community: The Evidence of His Special Sayings Material (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1987). 50 On all these themes, see Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (New York: Doubleday, 1983). 49

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the importance of good works (the two sons, 21:28–32; the ten virgins, 25:1–13; the sheep and the goats, 25:31–46; cf. the talents, 25:14–30), and the imperative of mercy (the unforgiving servant, 18:23–35, the workers in the vineyard, 20:1–16).

Isolated sayings. For our purposes, the most interesting isolated sayings are: “Do not give what is holy to dogs” (7:6), “When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next . . . you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (10:23), “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me” (11:28–30).

In addition, there is the blessing of Peter at Caesarea Philippi (16:17–19) that will be treated below. These sayings reflect something of Matthew’s ecclesiology and the mission of the early church. Groups of sayings. Again, we may note the particular relevance of these groups of sayings for the Matthean community/ies. Matthew 5:21–24, 27–28, 33–37; and 6:1–18, all in the Sermon on the Mount, belong to what has traditionally been called the six antitheses. Glen H. Stassen, who stood in the tradition of Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer as a peacemaker concerned with applying the teachings of Jesus to the problems of society, identified a triadic structure in Matt 5:21–7:11, fourteen units that each contain (1) a statement of traditional righteousness (“you shall not kill”), (2) the vicious cycle plus judgment (nursing anger or saying, “you fool”), and (3) a transforming initiative (“go, be reconciled”). The antitheses, “You have heard it said, but I say to you,” are followed by a third element: a transforming initiative, and the emphasis falls on the transforming initiative. Here, according to Stassen, we find the heart of the Sermon on the Mount: be reconciled, remove the cause of temptation, turn the other cheek, love your enemies and pray for them.51 Three acts of piety are addressed in 6:1–18 – almsgiving (6:2–4), prayer (6:5–6), and fasting (6:16–18). The symmetry of these parallel units, which Hans Dieter Betz identified as a “cult-didache,”52 suggests that they were not composed by Matthew but must be pre-Matthean.53 In each section, Jesus warns against hypocritical displays of one’s devotion to God, says that those who seek the acclaim of others have received their reward, and then describes the private conduct of one’s piety that will be rewarded by God.

51 Glen H. Stassen, “The Fourteen Triads of the Sermon on the Mount,” JBL 122 (2003): 267–308. 52 Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3–7:27 and Luke 6:20–49), ed. Adela Yarbro Collins, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 330. Luz, Matthew, 1:298, demurs: “we are not really dealing with a ‘cult.’” 53 Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:573–74.

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The other group of sayings peculiar to Matthew is found in the caustic discourse in chapter 23 (23:1–3, 5, 7b–10, 15–22). I agree with those who find here an extension of Matthew’s polemic against the Pharisees elsewhere in the Gospel.54 Readers are expected to be very familiar with the workings of the synagogue (Moses’s seat, 23:2; instructors, 23:10; flogging, 23:34) and the practices of the Pharisees (phylacteries and fringes, 23:5; oaths, 23:18; tithing, 23:23; purity, 23:25; decorating graves, 23:29). Telling perhaps is what is not said. Matthew does not advocate dispensing with phylacteries and fringes, or tithing herbs, or washing, only that one’s word be such that oaths are unnecessary (5:37). The demand is that one not neglect the “weightier” things, justice, mercy, and faith (23:23), that one’s piety be genuine (23:26) and one’s practice consistent with one’s teaching (23:3), and that one be a servant to others (23:4, 11). Still, Jesus warns his followers that the synagogues will persecute them (Matt 10:17; 23:34).55 Among these are sayings that show Matthew’s concern to illustrate righteousness and faithfulness to the law, while at the same time rejecting the leadership of the Pharisees: “do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach” (23:3). Traditions about the passion and resurrection. The material peculiar to Matthew in the passion and resurrection traditions deals with the fate of Judas and its fulfillment of Jeremiah (27:3–10), Pilate’s wife’s dream (27:19), the people’s avowal of responsibility, “his blood be on us and on our children” (27:25), the foreshadowing of the resurrection at Jesus’s death (27:51b–53), the chief priests and the Pharisees posting guards at the tomb (27:62–66), the earthquake and descent of an angel at the resurrection (28:2–4), the appearance to the women at the tomb (28:9–10), and the rumor that spread among “the Jews” (28:11–15). Most of this material, therefore, is characteristically Matthean, heightening the miraculous, showing fulfillment of Scripture, and sharpening polemic against the religious leaders. The distancing reference to “the Jews” (28:15) occurs only here in Matthew. Matthew 28:18–20. The commissioning of the disciples at the end of the Gospel occurs only in Matthew and is variously judged to be either Matthew’s creation or part of the M tradition. The disjunction between the command to

54 Scholarship has been divided on the questions of the identity of those condemned in Matt 23 (fellow Christians or leaders of the synagogue) and whether this chapter represents the views of the evangelist or a pre-Matthean source. See esp. David E. Garland, The Intention of Matthew 23, NovTSup 52 (Leiden: Brill, 1979); and Kenneth G. C. Newport, The Sources and Sitz im Leben of Matthew 23, JSNTSup 313 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995). 55 This paragraph is adapted from Culpepper, “Matthew and John: Reflections of Early Christianity in Relationship to Judaism,” in John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, RBS 87 (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 214.

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“make disciples of all nations” (28:19) and Jesus’s earlier charge to the disciples to go only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (10:6) has been one of the cruxes of Matthean scholarship. No manuscript attests the closing scene of Matthew prior to the Council of Nicea, mid-fourth century.56 Does “all nations” (πάντα τὰ ἔθνη) include Israel or does it mean “all the gentiles”? Does Matthew understand that the mission to Israel ended with the rejection and crucifixion of Jesus, so the disciples are sent to carry the gospel to the gentiles, or will the mission to Israel continue until the Son of Man comes (10:23)? Or, are we to conclude that there is no Matthean design in the movement from the mission to Israel in Matthew 10 to the mission to all nations in Matthew 28 – they are simply different traditions both of which have been preserved in the Gospel?57 Is the ending intentionally polyphonic so that it can be read as the continuation of Jewish faith or as “the turn from Israel and the beginning of the Gentile church”?58 My inclination is to read the ending of Matthew in continuity with the rest of the Gospel. It embraces the gentile mission without abandoning the mission to Israel. On a mountain in Galilee the risen Lord calls for the fulfillment of the Scriptures, especially the prophetic vision of envoys sent to “declare my glory among the nations” (Isa 66:19) and the nations streaming to Zion (Isa 22:2–4; 66:18–20). For Matthew, therefore, the church’s mission is not a rejection of Israel but the fulfillment of Israel’s divinely ordered mission. In contrast to the Pauline mission, however, Matthew projects a Torah observant mission, calling gentiles to repent, observe Torah, and follow Jesus’s teachings. Whether this meant that gentiles would be expected to become Jews (including circumcision) is debatable.59 Matthew refers to the repentance of the Ninevites (12:41) without saying anything about circumcision, so there may have been a range of acceptable responses for gentiles. The gentile mission, however, stands under Jesus’s authority and contains new elements, which Broadhead enumerates as follows: First, there is a new status for Jesus; he has all authority in both heaven and earth. Secondly, the disciples have a new task to do what they were earlier forbidden to do: go beyond the house of Israel. Thirdly, they have a new rite in the form of baptism. Fourthly, they have a new credo: in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Fifthly, they have a new

56

Ibid., 221. See esp. Konradt, Israel, Church and the Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew; Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, esp. 117, 276, 279–86; David C. Sim, “Is Matthew 28:16–20 the Summary of the Gospel?” HTS 70 (2014), art #2756. 58 Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 296. 59 See David C. Sim, “Matthew, Paul and the Origin and Nature of the Gentile Mission: The Great Commission in Matthew 28:16–20 as an Anti-Pauline Tradition,” HvTSt 64 (2008): 377–92, 384–88. 57

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task: to teach and to make disciples. Finally, they have new promise: the risen Christ is with them in their activity, which will lead them (as in Mt 24) to the end of the age.60

V. Petrine Tradition Because of its significance in Matthew and in the mix of New Testament voices, Matthew’s development of the Petrine tradition merits special consideration. In Mark, Peter is one of the group of three closest to Jesus, he occasionally speaks for the other disciples, and he is singled out in the announcement of the resurrection that the women are to take to the disciples. The disciples, however, are generally failures in Mark. Both Matthew and Luke portray the disciples more positively. In Acts, Peter is the acknowledged leader of the church in its earliest days, but attention then turns to Paul and his mission work. Peter is associated with Jerusalem and the gospel to the circumcised, as he is in Galatians, where Paul writes: “… when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles)” (Gal 2:7–8). Paul then says that when Peter came to Antioch, he and “the other Jews” ate with gentiles, and then ceased to do so when “certain people came from James,” Paul confronted him directly, not for eating with gentiles but for the hypocrisy of drawing back and keeping himself “separate for fear of the circumcision faction” (Gal 2:12–13). According to 1 Corinthians, Peter was known to the church in Corinth, traveled with his wife (1 Cor 9:5), and some claimed, “I belong to Cephas” (1 Cor 1:12). Peter is given particular prominence in Matthew, where Peter is “first” (10:2). Peter walks on water with Jesus, until he doubts (14:28–29), and at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus declares the primacy of Peter in the leadership of the church: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matt 16:18). In short, Matthew supported those who were advocating Petrine authority and reworked Mark, giving Peter a new level of leadership and authority as Matthew addressed the problem the gentile mission poses for its Jewish Christian community. In contrast to Paul, Peter will lead Torah observant followers of Jesus in a mission to both Israel and the nations. As Broadhead says, “he will be the rock upon which the church is built among the Gentiles.”61 Our review of the sources, the tributaries of tradition flowing into Matthew, and Matthew’s incorporation, adjudication, and alteration of these sources places Matthew in a Jewish setting, maintaining fidelity to the law while presenting Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, the Son of David, whose teachings fulfill the law and the prophets, call his followers to a new standard of righteousness, 60 61

Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 117. Ibid., 127.

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one greater than that of the Pharisees, and open the way for a Jewish Christian mission to all nations.

C. The Place of Matthew among the New Testament Voices Having considered the traditions that flowed into Matthew and its engagement with the Pauline and Petrine traditions, we may extend our search for clues to its place in Jewish Christianity by reviewing its similarities and dissimilarities with three of its neighbors in the New Testament: Hebrews, James, and John. I. Hebrews Hebrews may be the most obscure book in the New Testament. Its author is unknown, and interpreters debate whether it is pre- or post- 70.62 Martin Hasitschka finds that only Matthew and Hebrews among the New Testament writings develop the connection between blood, the forgiveness of sins, and the theme of the covenant.63 Therefore, while we cannot say that one knew or used the other, “both texts are rooted theologically and literarily within the world and the texts of the Hebrew scriptures.”64 Their differences are equally apparent: “their common world of theological thought and christological ideas, however, bears very individual characteristics.”65 II. James Commentators differ regarding the epistle’s connection with the brother of Jesus, and therefore also differ regarding the date of the epistle.66 According to

62 Cf. e.g., Craig R. Koester, Hebrews, AB 36 (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 54, “Given the existing evidence, a date between A.D. 60 and 90 is plausible, but greater specificity is tenuous. Interpretation cannot assume or preclude the existence of the Temple, or rely on connections with persecutions known from other sources.” 63 Martin Hasitschka, “Matthew and Hebrews,” in Matthew and His Christian Contemporaries, ed. David C. Sim and Boris Repschinski, LNTS 333 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 87–103, here 90. 64 Ibid., 87. 65 Ibid., 90. 66 For example, Peter Davids, The Epistle of James, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 22, takes as a working hypothesis that the epistle can be traced to James the Just, who either received assistance in editing it or it was edited at a later date, perhaps when the church began to spread beyond Jerusalem. Similarly, Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James, AB 37A (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 121. Others take the letter as pseudonymous and assign it to the end of the first century. For a sample of recent scholarship on James, see Robert L. Webb and John S. Kloppenborg, eds., Reading James with New Eyes: Methodological Reassessments of the Letter of James, LNTS 342 (London: T&T Clark, 2007).

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some interpreters, it draws on Jewish paraenetic tradition, and may “represent one of the earliest layers of Christianity.”67 Jesper Svartvik pairs Matthew with James in the constellation of New Testament Gospels and epistles: In short, Matthew and James wrote texts so similar to each other in theological tenor that they could be described as a theological pair, on a par with (1) the four Johannine writings; (2) the Lukan Gospel and Acts; and (3) the texts of Mark and Paul. In other words, in terms of theology Matthew is as different from Mark as James is from Paul.68

Taking a different position, Jürgen Zangenberg finds that neither Matthew nor James is anti-Pauline; they are simply non-Pauline.69 But what is the relationship between Matthew and James? On any reading, there is a close relationship between the two, yet the themes and traditions common to the two “are always on the level of single sayings.”70 Twenty-one of the 26 parallels between James and the Synoptics appear in the Sermon on the Mount.71 These include keeping and doing the law, endurance of trials, prayer without doubt, rich and poor, respect of persons, evil-speaking, anger, and oaths.72 Debate now centers on whether James depended on Q or on Matthew.73 If James is early, it may have drawn on Q or traditions common to Q. If James is late, however, it may have drawn from Matthew.

67

Svartvik, “Matthew and Mark,” 36. Ibid. 69 Jürgen Zangenberg, “Matthew and James,” in Matthew and His Christian Contemporaries, ed. David C. Sim and Boris Repschinski, LNTS 333 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 104–22, here 119–20; cf. Willitts, “Paul and Matthew,” 85. 70 Zangenberg, “Matthew and James,” 114. 71 John S. Kloppenborg, “The Reception of the Jesus Tradition in James,” in The Catholic Epistles and the Tradition, ed. Jacques Schlosser, BETL 176 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004), 93–141; idem, “The Emulation of the Jesus Tradition in the Letter of James,” in Reading James with New Eyes, 121–42, esp. 121–22. Kloppenborg extends Patrick J. Hartin’s thesis that James depended on Q; cf. Hartin, James and the ’Q’ Sayings of Jesus, JSNTSup 47 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991). 72 Zangenberg, “Matthew and James,” 116. 73 That James depended on Q or was “an intermediary between Q and the Gospel of Matthew,” cf. Hartin, James and the ’Q’ Sayings of Jesus, 242–43; Kloppenborg, “The Emulation of the Jesus Tradition in the Letter of James”; and for a judicious assessment of the argument, see Paul Foster, “Q and James: A Source-Critical Conundrum,” in James, 1 & 2 Peter, and Early Jesus Traditions, ed. Alicia J. Batten and John S. Kloppenborg, LNTS 478 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 3–34. That James is pseudonymous and dates to the first third of the second century, and hence may have been familiar with Matthew, cf. Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of James, ICC (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 61; idem, “The Audience of James and the Sayings of Jesus,” in James, 1 & 2 Peter, and Early Jesus Traditions, ed. Alicia J. Batten and John S. Kloppenborg, LNTS 478 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 58–77. 68

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III. John Matthew and John present an interesting pairing of two of the four Gospels. On the one hand, while some contend that John knew Mark, and there are tantalizing evidences of a literary relationship between Luke and John, only recently has the relationship between Matthew and John begun to gain attention.74 On the other hand, these two are both more closely related to Judaism, and perhaps more specifically local synagogues than are Mark, which by tradition was written in Rome, or Luke, which may have been written by the only gentile writer in the New Testament. Both Matthew and John belong to that period following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple 70 CE, when what it meant to be Jewish was being redefined both among the post-war rabbis and Jewish Christians. Both Gospels retell the story of Jesus’s ministry in relation to the heritage of Judaism and the observances that defined the lives of first-century Jews. In this way, each defined for its Jewish-Christian adherents how the Christian community represented an authentic extension of their Jewish heritage. Both also reflect positive and negative assessments of the Jewish communities with which they interacted.75 Matthew and John demonstrate contemporary but different approaches to interpreting the Jesus tradition for early Christian communities still in close proximity to their Jewish origins. In a recent essay, I surveyed seven issues in each Gospel: (1) Jesus as a new Moses, (2) fulfillment of the Scriptures, (3) the law, (4) the Sabbath, (5) purity issues, (6) the Pharisees, and (7) the synagogue. John does not convey the impression, as does Matthew, that believers are still organically related to the synagogue. 74 H. F. D. Sparks, “St. John’s Knowledge of Matthew: The Evidence of John 13, 16 and 15,20,” JTS 3 (1952): 58–61; K. Peter G. Curtis, “Three Points of Contact between Matthew and John in the Burial and Resurrection Narratives,” JTS 23 (1972): 440–44; John Muddiman, “John’s Use of Matthew: A British Exponent of the Theory,” ETL 59 (1983): 333– 37; Benedict T. Viviano, “John’s Use of Matthew: Beyond Tweaking,” RB 111 (2004): 209– 37; rpt. in Matthew and His World: The Gospel of the Open Jewish Christians: Studies in Biblical Theology (Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 245–69; Gilbert Van Belle and David R. M. Godecharle, “C. H. Dodd on John 13:16 (and 15:20): St. John’s Knowledge of Matthew Revisited,” in Engaging with C. H. Dodd on the Gospel of John: Sixty Years of Tradition and Interpretation, ed. Tom Thatcher and Catrin H. Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 86–106; James W. Barker, John’s Use of Matthew (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015); and Dale C. Allison, Jr., “Reflections on Matthew, John, and Jesus,” in Jesus Research: The Gospel of John in Historical Inquiry, ed. James H. Charlesworth and Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski (London: T&T Clark, 2019), 47–68. 75 C. K. Barrett, The Gospel of John and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 172; Wayne A. Meeks, “‘Am I a Jew?’ Johannine Christianity and Judaism,” in Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults, ed. Jacob Neusner, SJLA 12 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 163–86, here 171; Luz, The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew, 12–13.

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Both the early Christian communities and their Jewish counterparts were diverse and evolving rapidly in the late first century, so we must allow for ambiguity on both sides, from the Gospels and from “the difficulty of mapping the complexity of Judaism and its relationship to the emergent Christian movement.”76 Current Matthean scholarship is divided over the question of whether “the community found itself in a current and pressing conflict with the Pharisaic opponent”77 or “no longer remained within the association of synagogues,” although “the breach between synagogue and community lay in the relatively recent past.”78 These alternatives are sometimes reduced to the metaphorical terms intra muros or extra muros,79 but this dichotomy may be too decisive and unambiguous to serve in untangling such a fluid historical process and such nuanced interpretations of the period. As Allison put it, “… Matthew was much concerned with the preservation of his Jewish religious heritage in a church inexorably becoming Gentile.”80 On the other hand, our findings lead us to agree with Hakola’s assessment that “the Johannine Christians assess various aspects of Jewishness exclusively in light of their faith in Jesus which had the effect of obliterating the relevance of these matters as fundamentals of Jewish identity.”81 Matthew is still engaged in a hermeneutic of interpreting Jesus as the Messiah of Israel in order to make it possible for Jewish believers to continue to live as practicing Jews while worshipping with believers in the ekklesia, whereas the separation of Johannine believers from the synagogue now lies in the past and the Fourth Evangelist and his community are engaged in a polemical hermeneutic that justifies this break and claims the spoils of Judaism for the Johannine community/ies.82

76

Senior, “Matthew at the Crossroads of Early Christianity,” 6. Konradt, Israel, Church, and the Gentiles, 355. 78 Luz, The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew, 14, 15. 79 Graham N. Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 113–45; Senior, “Matthew at the Crossroads of Early Christianity,” 11–15. 80 Allison, The New Moses, 290. 81 Raimo Hakola, Identity Matters: John, the Jews, and Jewishness, NovTSup 118 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 218. 82 See Culpepper, “Matthew and John,” 189–219, on which these paragraphs are based; John Painter, “Matthew and John,” in Matthew and His Christian Contemporaries, ed. David C. Sim and Boris Repschinski, LNTS 333 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 66–86; Adele Reinhartz, Cast Out of the Covenant: Jews and Anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John (London: Lexington /Fortress Academic, 2018). 77

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From here, it is only a short step to see the debate about Petrine authority engaging not only the Matthean community but the Johannine also.83 The characterization of Peter in John suggests that the Johannine community/ies are in dialogue with other Jewish Christians, and specifically with Matthew, about Petrine authority. Both attach ecclesial imagery to Peter. Both claim apostolic authority and adjudicate various lines of tradition in their social and ecclesial context. For Matthew, the church and its mission are based on the authority given to Peter. For John the Beloved Disciple remains primary, but John’s portrayal of Peter is not anti-Petrine.84 This survey situates Matthew among the Jewish-Christian voices in the New Testament: Hebrews, James, and John. Matthew shares an emphasis on the connection between the blood of Jesus, the forgiveness of sins, and the theme of covenant with Hebrews. Individual sayings in Matthew and James seem to draw on common early tradition, and both are at least non-Pauline if not antiPauline. With John, Matthew shares concerns with issues on which they differed from the Pharisees, but they differed on the importance they give to Peter, and John reflects a more definitive separation between the Gospel community and the synagogue.

D. The Dissemination of Matthew in the Second Century The dissemination and influence of Matthew can be seen in echoes and allusions to Matthew from the early decades of the second century in the Didache and Ignatius, in the fragments of Papias, and in the number of papyri containing portions of the First Gospel that have been dated to the late second or early third centuries.

83 See Paul N. Anderson, “‘You Have the Words of Eternal Life!’ Is Peter Presented as Returning the Keys of the Kingdom to Jesus in John 6:68?” Neot 41 (2007): 6–41. 84 Contra Savas Agourides, “The Purpose of John 21,” in Studies in the History and Text of the New Testament in Honor of Kenneth Willis Clark, ed. Boyd L. Daniels and M. Jack Suggs (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1967), 127–32; Graydon F. Snyder, “John 13:16 and the Anti-Petrinism of the Johannine Tradition,” BR 16 (1971): 5–15; Arthur H. Maynard, “Peter in the Fourth Gospel,” NTS 30 (1984): 531–48.

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In this context we can only survey allusions to Matthew in the Didache and the letters of Ignatius. Two major studies appeared in the 1950s, one by Édouard Massaux,85 who found familiarity with Matthew in Clement of Rome,86 Barnabas,87 and Ignatius, and the other by Helmut Koester,88 who found that these writers relied on oral tradition – their use of the Synoptic Gospels cannot be demonstrated. Arthur J. Bellinzoni surveyed 28 second-century writers or writings and found that in the first half of the second century there was little or no use of the Gospel of Matthew. Instead, the references seem to reflect use of pre-synoptic oral or written tradition. Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians (after 135) and 2 Clement (mid second century) reflect knowledge and use of the Gospel of Matthew, and other references to Matthew follow in the Gospel of the Nazoreans, the Gospel of the Ebionites, the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of Thomas, all of which were probably composed in Syria. 89 Subsequent studies have refined the criteria, supported one position or the other, or advanced alternative views. Richard Bauckham, for example, posited that a source slightly different from the M source was used by Ignatius and the authors of the Ascension of Isaiah, the Didache, and the Gospel of Peter: “The differences would be readily explicable if in both cases M were the oral tradition of the church of Antioch, on which Matthew drew some twenty or thirty years before Ignatius wrote.”90 I. The Didache The Didache appears to be a composite work containing several discrete sections: the “Two Paths” (1–5), within which the “Gospel Section” (1.3b–2.1) echoes teachings found in the Sermon on the Mount; a transitional chapter (6); the “Church Order” section (7–15), which addresses Christian practices and problems related to itinerant prophets and teachers; and the apocalyptic discourse in the final chapter (16), which also contains features found in Matthew and Luke. Because these sections may come from various places, it is hard to 85 First published in French in 1950; ET Édouard Massaux, The Influence of the Gospel of Saint Matthew on Christian Literature before Saint Irenaeus, 3 vols., trans. Norman J. Belval and Suzanne Hecht, ed. Arthur J. Bellinzoni, New Gospel Studies 5/1–3 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1990–93). 86 See 1 Clem. 13.2/Matt 5:7; 6:14–15; 7:1–2, 12 (par. Luke 6:31, 36–38); 15.2/Matt 15:8 par.; 46.8/Matt 26:24 par. 87 See Barn. 4.13/Matt 22:14; 5.12/Matt 26:61. 88 Helmut Koester, Synoptische Überlieferung bei den apostolischen Vätern, TU 65 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1957). 89 Arthur J. Bellinzoni, “The Gospel of Matthew in the Second Century,” Second Century 9 (1992): 197–258, here 254–55. 90 Richard Bauckham, “The Study of Gospel Traditions Outside the Canonical Gospels: Problems and Prospects,” in The Jesus Tradition Outside the Gospels, ed. David Wenham, Gospel Perspectives 5 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), 369–403, here 398.

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determine where the Didache was written, but Antioch or Syria are often suggested. Bart Ehrman dates it to “around the year 100, possibly a decade or so later.”91 Huub van de Sandt lists parallels that suggest the Didache’s use of Matthew: the exhortation to baptize in the name of the Trinity in Did. 7,92 the Lord’s Prayer in Did. 8, and the similarity of the instructions on handling grievances in Did. 15.3 and Matt 18:15–17.93 These parallels become even more impressive when viewed in the context of other allusions to Matthew or Matthean tradition in the Didache: Matthew 5:23 5:23–24 5:26 par. 5:39 5:44, 46–47 5:48 6:5 6:9–13 6:16 7:6 7:12 par. 10:10 12:31 18:15–17 24:10–12 24:10, 13 24:30 24:31 24:42 par. 28:19

Didache 3.7 14.2 2.5 2.4 1.3 2.4 8.2 8.2 8.1 9.5 1.2 13.2 11.7 15.3 16.4 16.5 16.6, 8 16.6 16.1 7.1

Most scholars conclude from these parallels that the Didache drew on either Matthew94 or Matthean tradition. With the current trend toward an early dating 91

Bart D. Ehrman, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers, 2 vols., LCL 24–25 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 1:411. 92 So also Odes of Solomon 23.31–32; cf. the discussion of the early baptismal formulas in Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 287–89. 93 Huub van de Sandt, “Matthew and the Didache,” in Matthew and His Christian Contemporaries, 123. See idem and David Flusser, The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and Its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2002). See also Michelle Slee, The Church in Antioch in the First Century CE: Communion and Conflict, JSNTSup 244 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), who argues that Matthew and the Didachist took different positions on the terms for admitting gentiles to participation in the Eucharist. 94 B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (London: Macmillan, 1951), 507– 11; Wolf-Dietrich Köhler, Die Rezeption des Matthäusevangeliums in der Zeit vor Irenäus, WUNT 2/24 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1987), 30–36, 55; Graham N. Stanton,

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of the Didache, however, it has been suggested that the relationship runs in the other direction: Matthew depended on the Didache.95 Alternatively, Jonathan A. Draper posits a dialectical relationship in which each was influenced by the other “in a common milieu of mission and ministry.”96 Following an examination of the parallels and especially the demand for perfection in keeping the law in both writings, van de Sandt concludes that the two writings came from socially and geographically proximate contexts. Both are distant in perspective from Pauline circles, but it is probable that Matthew and the Didache were related through proximity and dependence on common tradition.97 II. Ignatius Ignatius plays a role in the quest for Matthew’s place in early Christianity because there is widespread agreement that Ignatius provides the earliest attestation of the Gospel, and both can reasonably be traced to Antioch.98 The allusions or quotations are strong but not numerous,99 as one might expect given that Ignatius wrote these letters while traveling, so any allusions to Matthew represent his memory of it. Matthew 2:2, 9–10 3:15 10:16 12:33 15:13 23:27 23:29–34 26:7 par.

Ignatius Eph. 19.2 Smyr. 1.1 Polyc. 2.2 Eph. 14.2 Phld. 3.1 Phld. 6.1 Magn. 8.2 Eph. 17.1

The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 79; M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 8 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 106. 95 Alan J. P. Garrow, The Gospel of Matthew’s Dependence on the Didache, JSNTSup 254 (London: T&T Clark, 2004). 96 Jonathan A. Draper, “Apostles, Teachers, and Evangelists: Stability and Movement of Functionaries in Matthew, James, and the Didache,” in Matthew, James, and Didache: Three Related Documents in Their Jewish and Christian Settings, ed. Huub van de Sandt and Jürgen K. Zangenberg, SBLSS 45 (Atlanta: SBL, 2008), 139–76, here 176; cf. his earlier essay, “Torah and Troublesome Apostles in the Didache Community,” NovT 33 (1991): 347–72, esp. 355. 97 van de Sandt, “Matthew and the Didache,” 124, 137–38; cf. van de Sandt, ed., Matthew and the Didache: Two Documents from the Same Jewish-Christian Milieu? (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2005). 98 Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:144. 99 Streeter, The Four Gospels, 505, counted fifteen passages in Ignatius “which look like reminiscences of Matthew.”

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Streeter observed that Ignatius is the only one of the Apostolic Fathers who refers to the virgin birth, and that in Smyr. 1 “three points characteristic of Matthew come together”: Davidic descent, virgin birth, and baptism to “fulfill all righteousness.”100 Köhler identified two passages for which dependence on the Gospel of Matthew is probable (Symr. 1.1 and Phld. 3.1) and nine others where such dependence is “gut möglich.”101 Based on these allusions, Davies and Allison suggest that “when Ignatius writes of ‘the gospel’ (Phil. 5.1–2; 8.2), one may reasonably identify this with our Matthew.”102 David Sim has argued that Ignatius and Matthew represent antithetical Christian traditions in Antioch early in the second century. While Ignatius is a proponent of the Pauline, law-free gentile mission, Matthew represents antiPauline, Torah observant Christian Judaism: “Matthew and Ignatius stood at opposite ends of the Christian theological spectrum.”103 Sim argues two further implications. First, when Ignatius condemned his “Judaizing” opponents in his letters to the Philadelphians and the Magnesians, he was reflecting on Christian Jews, and in particular the Matthean community in Antioch also. And second, the echoes of Matthew’s polemic against the Pharisees in these letters represent Ignatius’s deliberate effort to condemn the Christian Jews “with words that derive from their very own Gospel.”104 We may therefore hear an echo of Ignatius’s response to Matthew in his words to the Philadelphians: But if anyone should interpret Judaism to you, do not hear him. For it is better to hear Christianity from a man who is circumcised than Judaism from one who is uncircumcised. But if neither one speaks about Jesus Christ, they both appear to me as monuments and tombs of the dead … (Ign. Phld. 6.1, Ehrman, LCL 1:289).

III. Other Jewish-Christian Writings Space does not allow exploration of other echoes, allusions, and citations of Matthew in the second century writings, although the Pseudo-Clementine “Recognitions” seem to reflect opposition to both non-Christian Judaism and the Pauline mission (Ps.-Clem. Recognitions 1.33–71).105 The following summary of the data by Ulrich Luz suggests the scope of the references that might

100

Ibid., 505–06. Köhler, Die Rezeption des Matthäusevangeliums in der Zeit vor Irenäus, 77–80, and 80–88. 102 Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:144; cf. Streeter, The Four Gospels, 506–07. 103 David C. Sim, “Matthew and Ignatius of Antioch,” in Matthew and His Christian Contemporaries, ed. David C. Sim and Boris Repschinski, LNTS 333 (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 139–54, here 151. 104 Ibid., 154. Cf. Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 255, 299–300. 105 Cf. J. Louis Martyn, The Gospel of John in Christian History: Essays for Interpreters (New York: Paulist, 1978), 122–47. 101

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be assembled and the extent of Matthew’s influence, especially on Jewish Christianity during this early period: Among them from the second century is the Gospel of the Nazarenes, which was in use in the fourth century among the Jewish Christians of Northern Syria and which one can almost call an expanded paraphrase of Matthew. Another is the Gospel of the Ebionites, which was regarded as a Gospel of Matthew and at the same time makes use of important Matthean theological statements. Other Jewish Christian writings that show Matthew’s influence are the Christian adaptation of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Pseudo-Clementines, in Gnostic circles the Nag Hammadi Apocalypse of Peter as well as the Syrian Didascalia, which belongs in a Jewish Christian setting. In the broadest sense of the word one could also designate as Jewish Christian 5 Ezra (which was strongly influenced by Matthew), the Christian interpolations in the Sibylline Oracles (1.323–401), and the Ascension of Isaiah.106

The echoes and allusions to Matthew in second century writings provide another vector for locating Matthew’s place in late first-century Judaism and emerging Christianity. These references appear most frequently in JewishChristian writings and writings that originated from or had contact with Antioch or Syria,107 especially the Didache and Ignatius. IV. Papias In the fourth century, Eusebius recorded quotations from Papias (early 2nd c.), that claimed that Mark was Peter’s interpreter and “wrote accurately all that he remembered” and then that “Matthew collected the oracles in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could” (Eusebius, E.H. 3.39.15– 16, Kirsopp Lake, LCL). Noting other possible interpretations, Davies and Allison translate this fragment from Papias as “now Matthew made an ordered arrangement of the oracles in the Hebrew (or: Aramaic) language (Hebraïdi dialektō), and each one translated (or: interpreted) it as he was able.”108 Later attributions of the Gospel to Matthew all seem to depend on Papias. Irenaeus recorded, “now Matthew published among the Hebrews a written gospel also in their own tongue” (Eusebius, E.H. 5.8.2, quoting Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 3.1.1; cf. similarly Eusebius, E.H. 6.25.4, citing Origen). Another scrap of tradition reported by Eusebius claims that Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached in India “and had left them the writing of Matthew in Hebrew letters,” which Pantaenus (d. ca. 190) found there when he preached among the Indians before becoming head of the school in Alexandria (Eusebius, E.H. 5.10.3). 106

Luz, Matthew, 1:47. See also the echoes of Matthew in Pol. Phil. 2.3. Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 222–24, cites references to Hebrew Matthew related to Syrian Beroea, the library at Caesarea, and the Transjordan. 108 Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:8. 107

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Papias’s statement is problematic for several reasons. Would Matthew, one of the Twelve, have depended so heavily on Mark and Q, even for the account of his own calling (Matt 9:9/Mark 2:14)? Moreover, neither the Gospel nor Q gives evidence of having been written in Hebrew or Aramaic and translated into Greek.109 Scholars have therefore taken one of four positions: (1) Matthew wrote a Gospel in Hebrew or Aramaic;110 (2) Matthew wrote a source containing Old Testament texts, sayings of Jesus, or other Gospel traditions that was used by the evangelist, and therefore tradition attributed the Gospel to Matthew;111 (3) Papias says that Matthew, who wrote the Gospel in Greek, organized Jesus’s teachings in a Jewish pattern or style;112 (4) Papias’s testimony must be dismissed as unreliable.113 The choices are difficult. Can one follow Kürzinger in interpreting Hebraïdi dialektō as referring to a literary or rhetorical style rather than to Hebrew or Aramaic? Papias claims to rely on early tradition. Can one simply set it aside? In context, he refers to a Gospel, like Mark or Luke, rather than a source Matthew used. In saying Matthew wrote in Hebraïdi dialektō, could he have confused Matthew with the Gospel of the Nazoreans? And how does one account for the number of references to the Hebrew Gospel in later Jewish sources? All of these proposals offer a resolution of the difficulties, but none of them is substantial enough to offer much confidence. Whatever resolution one chooses, it is clear that once again Matthew is related to a Jewish context.

109 John S. Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 64; cf. Matthew Black, “The Use of Rhetorical Terminology in Papias on Mark and Matthew,” JSNT 37 (1989): 31–41, here 40 n. 19. 110 George Kennedy, “Classical and Christian Source Criticism,” in The Relationships among the Gospels, ed. William O. Walker (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1978), 125–55; George Howard, Hebrew Gospel of Matthew (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1995); cf. esp. Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 222–24, 302–03, 313–14. 111 This view can be traced to Schleiermacher; so also T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus (London: SCM, 1957), 17–20; and Black, “The Use of Rhetorical Terminology in Papias on Mark and Matthew,” 31–41, 38. 112 Josef Kürzinger, “Das Papiaszeugnis und die Erstgestalt des Matthäusevangeliums,” BZ 4 (1960): 19–38; idem, “Irenäus und sein Zeugnis zur Sprache des Matthäusevangeliums,” NTS 10 (1963): 108–15; Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 609– 22; Luz, Matthew, 1:46–47. 113 E.g., Werner Georg Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, rev. ed., trans. Howard Clark Kee (Nashville: Abingdon, 1975), 120–21.

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V. Papyrus Texts of Matthew The popularity of the Gospel of Matthew in the second century is evident in the number of papyrus copies that have survived, even though most are incomplete, single leaves. The oldest fragment of Matthew is 64/67 from about 200 CE, which contains fragments of chapters 3, 5, and 26. Three other manuscripts of Matthew date to the second or early third century: P.Oxy. 4405 (a new portion of 77) contains Matt 23:30–34, 35–39; P.Oxy. 4403 ( 103) contains Matt 13:55–56; and P.Oxy. 4404 ( 104) contains Matt 21:34–37, 43, 45.114 The earliest papyri containing substantial portions of Matthew, and the other Gospels, is 45 (ca. 200). Ten copies of Matthew from the second and third centuries give us 142 of the 1070 verses of the Gospel.115 Tommy Wasserman’s analysis of these early witnesses to the Gospel of Matthew yields “a spectrum from the ‘strict’ textual quality ( 1, 35, 53, 64 + 67, 70, 77), copied from exemplars with a text close to the reconstructed initial text in NA27” to other witnesses farther removed from the initial text.116 Larry Hurtado notes the effect of repeated liturgical reading of the New Testament writings, a factor that is particularly relevant for the text of Matthew. In contrast to Mark, for which Nestle-Aland, 28th ed., lists only three papyri ( 45, 84 – 6th c.; and 88 – 4th c.), Matthew, “the most widely used Gospel, … has probably the most stable and fixed text.”117 Although the Gospels originally circulated individually, several recent studies suggest the origin of a fourfold Gospel collection in the early second century.118 The number of early copies of Matthew that have survived clearly attests to its popularity in the second and third centuries. Moreover, Graham Stanton pointed out that Matthew and John apparently circulated together: Very nearly all the earliest papyri of the Gospels are fragments or parts of Matthew and John. The papyri published very recently in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri series, volumes LXIV (1997) 114 Larry W. Hurtado, Texts and Artefacts: Selected Essays on Textual Criticism and Early Christian Manuscripts, LNTS 584 (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 6; Tommy Wasserman, “The Early Text of Matthew,” in The Early Text of the New Testament, ed. Charles E. Hill and Michael J. Kruger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 83–107. See NA28, 792–99. 115 Hurtado, Texts and Artefacts, 34. 116 Wasserman, “The Early Text of Matthew,” 103. 117 Hurtado, Texts and Artefacts, 13. 118 Ibid., 19, cites the following: Theo K. Heckel, Vom Evangelium des Markus zum viergestaltigen Evangelium WUNT 120 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999); James Kelhoffer, Miracle and Mission: The Authentication of Missionaries and Their Message in the Longer Ending of Mark, WUNT 2/112 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), esp. 154–56, 175; Charles E. Hill, “What Papias Said about John (and Luke): A ‘New’ Papian Fragment,” JTS (1998): 582–629, esp. 661–71; Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (London: SCM, 2000); Graham Stanton, “The Fourfold Gospel,” NTS 43 (1997): 347–66.

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and LXV (1998) include two very early papyri of Matthew (P103 and P104), and four early fragments of John (P106–P109). In the latter part of the second century these two Gospels were copied many times in or near Oxyrhynchus. We can be almost certain that in spite of their obvious differences, Christian communities in this area used both Gospels at the same time.119

E. Assembling the Facets, Constructing the Diamond What do Matthew’s sources, its relationship with other voices in the New Testament, and its earliest attestations in the second century tell us about its place in early Christianity? Each of these relationships defines an area or sector of early Christian traditions and theology and provides clues as to Matthew’s setting and geographical location. In view of Richard Bauckham’s challenge to the identification of specific Gospel communities, it needs to be said that the implication of specific shaping traditions and the evidence for a localized influence in the earliest citations of Matthew point on the contrary to the shaping influence of a specific context and Matthew’s concern to address its particular needs and challenges.120 From the data, we can infer that Matthew had access to the Gospel of Mark and was influenced by it but found it inadequate and theologically incompatible, particularly in its Christology and its departure from the law. Chronologically, the publication of Mark serves as the terminus a quo for the composition of Matthew. Matthew was also influenced by tradents of the Q tradition and advocates of Petrine leadership. The Q tradition was carried by itinerant prophets and teachers, who probably came from Galilee or Syria. Matthew’s community maintained both the mission to Israel and the mission to gentiles but expected all baptized believers to keep the law as it was interpreted by Jesus. It was probably also located in an area in which the growing role of the Pharisees was being felt, and a location in which there was a scribal community that fostered the study and interpretation of biblical texts (the law and the prophets). The references to “their synagogue/s” in Matthew are often cited as evidence that Matthew’s church had separated from the synagogue, but these references 119 Graham Stanton, review of Paul N. Anderson, The Christology of the Fourth Gospel: Its Unity and Disunity in the Light of John 6, RBL 1 (1999). http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&context=ccs. 120 Here I agree with Philip F. Esler, “Community and Gospel in Early Christianity: A Response to Richard Bauckham’s Gospels for All Christians,” SJT 51 (1998): 248–53; Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 27 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 25–28; and David C. Sim. “The Gospels for All Christians? A Response to Richard Bauckham,” JSNT 84 (2001): 3–27. See also François P. Viljoen, “The Matthean Community within a Jewish Religious Society,” HTS 72 (2016), a3418. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v72i4.3418.

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are not conclusive evidence for such an early separation. In Matt 4:23 and 9:35 “their synagogues” are the synagogues of Galilee. In 10:17 “their synagogues” refers to the (councils and) synagogues of “men” whom Jesus’ disciples should beware of. In 12:9 it is a general reference, and “your synagogues” in 23:34 is part of Matthew’s anti-Pharisaic polemic. “Their synagogues” may be those in which the Pharisees exercise authority. Matthew’s community were Christian Jews, Jews who believed in Jesus as the Messiah of Israel but continued to be law-observant Jews. Matthew’s alterations of Mark, elevation of Peter, and demand for observance of the law suggest contact with Pauline Christians and a concerted effort to construct an alternate path for Matthew’s community. In the New Testament, Matthew is most closely related to James and Hebrews, while occupying the other end of the spectrum regarding the law from Paul. John manifests a similar conflict with the Pharisees, but the Johannine community had been “put out of the synagogue” (John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2) and had developed a stronger “rhetoric of disaffiliation”121 than Matthew. John emphasizes Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets rather than the demand to continue to observe the law. John’s community also accepted Peter’s role as shepherd but insisted on the authority and witness of the Beloved Disciple. Matthew’s influence on second-century sources is first attested in the Didache and the letters of Ignatius, which provides a clue to Matthew’s location. Ignatius was bishop of Antioch, and the Didache was probably written in Syria, if not in Antioch. It may be that the Judaizers Ignatius opposed included Matthew, although Phld. 6.1 (quoted above) may indicate that they were uncircumcised gentiles.122 In an earlier decade, Peter and Paul had both been in Antioch and found adherents there, and there were close connections between the Christian communities in Jerusalem and Antioch, so the network of Matthean relationships points to Antioch more than to any other early Christian center. Luz comments, “In general we can say that the smaller and more remote a community of Matthew is, the more difficult it is to explain the rapid spread of the Gospel of Matthew.”123 Conversely, as a port city, communication to and from Antioch and the movement of persons in and out of the city would have facilitated the gathering of traditions and tradents, the flourishing of different Jewish and Christian communities, each with its own leadership, and the rapid spread of Matthew in the second century.124 It may also be significant that only Matthew refers to the report about Jesus spreading “throughout all Syria” (4:24). 121

This term is Adele Reinhartz’s. Cf. her Cast Out of the Covenant, xxii, xxxii. Meier, “Antioch,” 80 n. 178. 123 Luz, Matthew, 1:57. 124 For studies on Antioch and its role in early Christian history, see Wayne A. Meeks, and Robert L. Wilken, Jews and Christians in Antioch: In the First Four Centuries of the Common Era, SBLSBS 13 (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1978); Meier, “Antioch,” 12–86. 122

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Antioch was strongly advocated by B. H. Streeter and continues to be the most widely accepted location for the composition of Matthew.125 Other suggested locations include Syria,126 Palestine,127 Galilee,128 and Caesarea Maritima.129 Notably, those who advocate a site other than Antioch generally do so on the basis of seeking a more Jewish setting. Our method may tilt the scales in favor of Antioch because this center of early Christian activity more easily accounts for the diversity of traditions Matthew draws upon, its relationships with other early Christian writings, and the rapid reception of the Gospel early in the second century. On the other hand, those who start from the Gospel narrative, its focus on the Galilean region, its conflict with formative Judaism, and its characterization of the Pharisees, generally turn toward Galilee as Matthew’s provenance, suggesting either Tiberias or Sepphoris as the setting reflected in Matthew.130 The issue is paradoxical because while we know little if anything about the role of Pharisees in Antioch during the time of Matthew, we have no evidence 125 B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (London: Macmillan, 1951), 486–87, 500–23; cf. Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:143–47; Luz, Matthew, 1:56–58 (but tentatively); Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, ABRL (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 212–16; Konradt, Israel, Church, and the Gentiles, 364–65; David C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community, SNTW (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), esp. 300; idem, “Matthew and Ignatius of Antioch,” 139, 154. 126 Eduard Schweizer, The Good News According to Matthew, trans. David E. Green (Atlanta: John Knox, 1975), 16–17; Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), 42 (an urban center in Syro-Palestine). Wim J. C. Weren, Studies in Matthew’s Gospel: Literary Design, Intertextuality, and Social Setting, Biblical Interpretation Series 130 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 251–65, posits three phases, during which the Matthean communities moved from the area around Capernaum to the Golan and southern Syria. 127 Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols., trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 1:105; Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew, SP 1 (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1991), 10 (or Syria). 128 J. Andrew Overman, Church and Community in Crisis: The Gospel according to Matthew (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1996), 16–19; Ben Witherington, III, Matthew, Smyth & Helwys Commentary (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2006), 22–28 (Capernaum). For a summary and critique of the arguments for locating Matthew in Galilee, see Sim, “The Gospel of Matthew and Galilee,” 141–69. 129 Benedict T. Viviano, “Where Was the Gospel According to St. Matthew Written?” CBQ 41 (1979): 533–46. 130 J. Andrew Overman, Matthew’s Gospel and Formative Judaism: The Social World of the Matthean Community (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 158–59; idem, Church and Community in Crisis, 16–19; Anders Runesson, “Rethinking Early Jewish-Christian Relations: Matthean Community History as Pharisaic Intragroup Conflict,” JBL 127 (2008): 95–132, 107; cf. Sim, “The Gospel of Matthew and Galilee,” 144–55.

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of “Christian” communities in Galilee in the first century. The Jewishness of first-century Galilee is now firmly established, however. During the Hasmonean period (early first century BCE) Jewish settlers established new towns and villages that became the basic structures of the population of Galilee. The discovery of mikva’ot, Jewish iconography, Hasmonean coins with no human images, synagogues, stone vessels, Judean oil lamps, Jewish burial practices, and the absence of pig bones all point to a predominantly Jewish population in these towns and villages in the time of Jesus.131 Josephus claims the Pharisees “are considered the most accurate interpreters of the laws and hold the position of the leading sect” (αἵρεσιν; War 2.162, LCL 2:385; cf. Acts 26:5) and are “extremely influential among the townsfolk” (δήμοις; Ant. 18.15, LCL 9:13). If one were to argue that Matthew simply reproduces historical tradition of Jesus’s conflict with the Pharisees, Matthew’s characterization of the group would have no bearing on the issue of its setting. Similarly, if one were to argue that Matthew vilifies the Pharisees, making them Jesus’s opponents in the Gospel narrative in a way that does not reflect either the setting of Jesus’s ministry or the Matthean situation, the characterization of the Pharisees would have no bearing on the issue of provenance. But Matthew alters Mark at key points to sharpen the conflict and vilify the Pharisees, which suggests that Matthew reflects competition and conflict between the Mattheans and the Pharisees. Streeter’s arguments for Antioch still carry weight. Matthew was written in the contentious atmosphere of the period when Jesus followers were still part of the synagogue and Jewish communities but were separating from them, when they and other Jews were dealing with the aftermath of the Jewish war and the destruction of the Temple, when gentile churches were emerging, and when the apostles and eyewitnesses were passing from the scene but adherents of James, Peter, Paul, and John were still expounding the teachings of their apostolic authority. It may also be relevant to note that the Gospel of John also engages in a polemic against the Pharisees during this period.132 The compromise Matthew effected maintained observance of the law while embracing the mission to the nations as well as to Israel, expounded an interpretation of the law it traced to Jesus while opposing that of the Pharisees, maintained relations with the synagogue while endorsing the establishment of churches, and established the authority of Peter rather than James or Paul. Whether Matthew represents a single community or a group of Christian communities is difficult to determine, but the latter is probable, if only on the basis 131 This is the conclusion I drew from a survey of recent assessments of the archaeological data regarding first-century Galilee by Mark Chancey and Mordechai Aviam especially. Cf. Culpepper, “The Galilee Quest: The Historical Jesus and the Historical Galilee,” PRSt 45 (2018): 213–27, here 221. 132 Culpepper, “Matthew and John,” 207–13.

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of the number of streams of tradition the Gospel incorporates. While the first evangelist’s composition of a Gospel for the church(es) in his setting almost certainly did not resolve the conflicts and reconcile the contending voices in its setting, it did address the church’s needs for a collection and interpretation of the Jesus tradition so successfully that it quickly became the favorite Gospel of Christians and churches far beyond its original audience. Cogent as this construction of the place of Matthew in early Christianity may be, given our current evidence it is no more than a good working hypothesis. Since we began with J. Louis Martyn, it is fitting to conclude with another of his gems. Reminding readers that we can say very little about the Johannine [or Matthean] community with virtual certainty, Martyn said, “it would be a valuable practice for the historian to rise each morning saying to himself three times slowly and with emphasis, ‘I do not know.’”133

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Martyn, The Gospel of John in Christian History, 92.

Matthew and John Two Different Responses to a Similar Situation William R. G. Loader William R. G. Loader

A. Introduction We live in an age where people are increasingly realizing that it is not good to live in isolation. In the field of New Testament studies we have been on a journey from reading it in isolation, almost as a timeless text, to reading it within its historical context, and in many settings we still find ourselves on that journey, certainly in settings with which I am familiar. Over the past two hundred years when that journey got underway in earnest we can identify trends. Sometimes the focus was on Greco-Roman background, sometimes on Jewish, which usually meant, rabbinic background. Sometimes we had the polarity of a nonHellenistic Palestine pitted against a Hellenistic wider world. The connection with Judaism received a boost with the discovery of the library hidden in caves at Qumran, which in turn led to a revival of interest in the so-called apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, the diverse writings of Second Temple Judaism. At the same time scholars such as Martin Hengel helped us to see that the dichotomy between a Palestinian Judaism and a Hellenistic Judaism of the diaspora did not really work.1 Today there is a growing realization of the importance of Judaism as the context in which to read New Testament literature, which shows itself in new approaches to Paul, movements such as the Enoch Seminar, emphasizing diversity within Judaism, and an awareness that alongside such diversity was also a commonality not least in relation to the authority of Torah, emphasized by scholars like E. P. Sanders.2 This awareness is not to be played off against the impact of popular and popularized Hellenistic philosophies, some of which had a profound effect on understanding the human condition, its desire for wellbeing or pleasure, its issues of stability, not least in relation to the passions,

1 Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus: Studien zu ihrer Begegnung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Palästinas bis zur Mitte des 2. Jahrhunderts vor Christus, WUNT 10 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1969). 2 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).

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and what it meant to live in harmony with one’s natural surrounds and one’s fellow human beings. Reading in isolation not only distorts one’s understanding of the wider world. It also distorts one’s self-perception. This insight is one of the grounds for revisiting our Gospels in light of their Jewish context. Across Judaism’s diversity is a common commitment to Torah, even in such writers as Philo, who spiritualizes much of its cultic and ceremonial tradition to create symbols of faith, while at the same time insisting that none of Torah’s practices be set aside and severely criticizes some who do so (Migr. 89–92). For some, indeed, the focus seems to have been primarily on the ethical teachings of Torah, such as we find in 2 Enoch. Some claim prior authoritative interpretation of Torah’s authority, as in earlier Enochic tradition, while for others to love the Lord God with one’s whole heart had to mean observance of every provision and neglect of none. Arguably common to all was the notion not of Torah as a set of commands to be borne as a burden, but Torah as a gift of God’s goodness enabling one to live in relationship with God, which provided not only commandments for life but also rituals for sustaining community and worship and stories to inspire. The emergence of a more nuanced understanding of Judaism in its diversity and unity is not only the product of more careful historical research, but also of the gradual abandonment of antisemitic stereotypes about Jews and Judaism. At worst they generated the spirit which found its fulfilment in the holocaust and also perpetuated a theology of demarcation where Christian faith assured itself by seeking to disqualify the faith that gave it its birth as a religion of selfjustification. This paper will focus on two of our Gospels, Matthew and John, Matthew, the first in sequence and probably in influence over the centuries, and John coming a close second because of its different and highly symbolic character, leaving Luke, though significant, and Mark, much shorter and similar, in their wake. For both Matthew and John Torah is of major significance but in different ways. In both, it will be argued, we are dealing with a writing which grapples with the situation of defining its community’s faith in relation to its Jewish heritage and its dissenting and, one might say, from competing contemporary representatives, two different responses to a similar situation.

B. Matthew The sage, Ben Sira, concludes his work with the words: 23

Draw near to me, you who are uneducated, and lodge in the house of instruction. Why do you say you are lacking in these things, and why do you endure such great thirst? 25 I opened my mouth and said, “Acquire wisdom for yourselves without money. 24

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26

Put your neck under her yoke, and let your souls receive instruction; it is to be found close by (51:23–26).

It had earlier given voice to Wisdom similarly: 19

Come to me, you who desire me, and eat your fill of my fruits. 20 For the memory of me is sweeter than honey, and the possession of me sweeter than the honeycomb (24:19–20).

And Ben Sira goes on to explain: All this is the book of the covenant of the Most High God, the law that Moses commanded us as an inheritance for the congregations of Jacob (24:23).

thus, identifying Wisdom with Torah. Matthew has Jesus speak similarly as God’s Wisdom: 28

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (11:28–30).

Matthew presents Jesus as exponent of Wisdom, the true teacher of the Law, and so has carefully composed his Gospel so as to have this statement immediately precede two anecdotes he took over from Mark, but separating them from the cluster of five in which they appear in Mark 2–3: the controversy over the disciples’ plucking and eating grain on the Sabbath (12:1–8; cf. Mark 2:23– 28) and Jesus’s healing the man with a withered hand on the Sabbath (12:9– 14; cf. Mark 3:1–8). Not only has he taken over these stories in which Jesus’s critics accuse Jesus of sanctioning disobedience towards Torah, but he has supplemented them to present Jesus as offering a halakic response demonstrating that, far from setting the Law aside, he upholds it. Thus, he adds argument from priests working on the Sabbath and from rescuing animals caught in a ditch. As the sequel to these anecdotes, Matthew then brings a citation from Isaiah 42 that echoes the word spoken of Jesus by God at his baptism (12:18–21). In part they serve here to illustrate his insistence that people not make him known, but they also function as a reminder of what was said then at his baptism, which confirmed his identity as the one whom John announced as the judge to come. Thus, here we read: 18

Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim judgement (κρίσιν) to the Gentiles. 19 He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. 20 He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smouldering wick until he brings judgement (κρίσιν) to victory. 21 And in his name the Gentiles will hope (12:18–21).

At his baptism we heard the heavenly voice declare: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (3:17). That declaration served to identify Jesus as the one who would exercise God’s judgment, “the wrath to come.” For John the Baptist warned:

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10

The axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire (3:10–12).

Matthew has his readers clearly understand that Jesus’s role is to be the judge to come, his primary role definition in the opening chapters, and that at his baptism God confirmed Jesus as God’s agent, indeed, his Son, to exercise that role. Hence the echo of these words in 12:18–21, which emphasize Jesus’s role as judge.3 Here too we have heard his unique sonship declared in 11:27 in words that come closest to Johannine Christology of the Son’s unique knowledge of the Father, and so as the one who can summon his hearers to come and take on that yoke, embracing his exposition of God’s Law. Jesus is the judge to come who now expounds Torah. Accordingly, Matthew’s account of Jesus’s public ministry concludes with an image of Jesus the Son of Man conducting judgment (25:31–46). While John the Baptist’s prediction in chapter 3 could give the impression that Jesus must be about to take up the role of judge immediately, the reality portrayed by Matthew is that the judgment day was still to come and that in the interim the judge had come to expound the basis of that judgment. Matthew even uses the Q tradition, which has John send his disciples to deal with this disparity, asking whether he really was the one whom he announced as the Christ to execute judgment since that was not what he was doing, to which Jesus responds not by denying that as his role, but by pointing to signs of fulfilment of prophetic hope, his healings, and announcement of good news for the poor (11:2–6). Far from ameliorating the stark image of Jesus as judge to come, Matthew expands it to portray a ministry of grace that not only brought help and healing, but also brought exposition of the Law by which people would be judged. Already the fact that the judge to come had come in advance of the judgment to make clear the basis for judgment is an act of grace. Thus, as Jesus’s first act after emerging victorious from his testing in the wilderness, a model of faithfulness in contrast to Israel’s unfaithfulness, the evangelist profiles Jesus as a new Moses, but greater than Moses, who like Moses, goes up a mountain, an echo of Sinai and the giving of the Law, in order to expound the Law. In 5:17–20 Jesus makes important declarations about the Law, but before that, and in keeping with the expansion of his role beyond John’s image, he utters promises of hope for the needy and the faithful, because to live by God’s law is not oppression but freedom and promise (5:3–12). His message of the coming kingdom or reign of God, which Matthew has him share 3 Mothy Varkey, Salvation in Continuity: Reconsidering Matthew’s Soteriology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 81–87.

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with John (4:17; 3:2), is not only a vision for the future, but a promise for the present. The major statement about the Law in 5:17–20 begins by warding off accusations that he is initiating a departure from Torah. Such critique in Matthew’s day will have come from fellow Jews in conflict with the way the followers of Jesus handled Torah. There were sections of the diverse Jesus movement which had in fact set parts of Torah aside, including circumcision and food laws, and some in their charismatic enthusiasm, much more, as 7:21–23 indicate. Some take the words, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets,” as addressed to such groups.4 It seems much more likely that Matthew is reinforcing his community’s stance as it responds to critics among fellow Jews who were partly informed in their critique by such abuses.5 As 7:21–23 show, Matthew will have been aware of such abuses. There is a complex exegetical history over what Jesus means by fulfilling the law and the prophets, but most no longer see it as fulfilling and so replacing and setting aside the law and the prophets, but rather as upholding, in particular, upholding the law, which makes more sense in light of 5:21–48, which need to be read as intensifying, not setting aside, and, in particular in light of what immediately follows 5:17, where Jesus declares: “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (5:18). This cannot be set aside by reading “accomplished” as primarily relating to prophetic fulfilment6 and not including the meaning, “done,” especially in light of what immediately follows, where Matthew’s Jesus goes on to say:

4 David C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community, SNTW (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 207–08; earlier Günther Bornkamm, “Enderwartung und Kirche im Matthäusevangelium,” in Überlieferung und Auslegung im Matthäusevangelium, ed. Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held, WMANT 1 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1960), 13–47, here 21–22; Gerhard Barth, “Das Gesetzesverständnis des Evangelisten Matthäus,” in Überlieferung und Auslegung im Matthäusevangelium, ed. Günther Bornkamm, Gerhard Barth, and Heinz Joachim Held, WMANT 1 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1960), 54–154, here 149–50. 5 Donald A. Hagner, Matthew, 2 vols., WBC 33A–B (Dallas: Word, 1993–1995), 1:104– 05; R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 181– 82. Matthias Konradt, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, NTD 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), sees Matthew addressing both fronts (p. 75), as earlier Reinhard Hummel, Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Kirche und Judentum im Matthäusevangelium, BET 33 (Munich: Kaiser. 1966), 66–71. 6 Hans Hübner, Das Gesetz in der synoptischen Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), 196–97, 202, 237–38; France, Matthew, 179, 186.

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Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven (5:19).

That is clearly about the Law. Time and space prevent a more detailed discussion of the way these principles are expounded in the Sermon on the Mount, but the message is clear. Jesus taught with authority and not as their scribes (7:29; cf. Mark 1:22). Matthew depicts him as the scribe par excellence, also to be followed by teachers in his community (13:52). Far from setting Torah aside, Jesus is its advocate.7 It is true that the primary focus is on ethical aspects of Torah, not least in the exposition in 5:21–48 on anger, adultery, divorce, oath taking, retaliation, and loving one’s enemies,8 and especially in the depiction of the judgment in Matthew 25, but Matthew clearly also means not setting the lesser commandments aside (5:19), best illustrated in his words about tithing: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others (23:23).9

You should focus on the weightier matters, but you keep it all, even provisions which appear very minor indeed. Jesus, then, for Matthew, is Israel’s Messiah, but as Israel’s Messiah, he is above all the one to exercise judgment, like the Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch, which Matthew echoes in the phrase “throne of his glory” (25:31; cf. 1 En. 45:3; 47:3; 55:4; 60:2; 61:8; 62:2–3, 5). This is not about discontinuity but continuity.10 Torah remains as God’s gift showing the way to remain in a relationship of life and hope with God, and Jesus is its supreme and sole interpreter. This was an exclusive claim which, combined with elevated statements about Jesus’s origin and being, elevating him far above Torah, would have been a

7 John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Bletchley: Paternoster, 2005) observes, “‘Fulfil’ must be taken in a manner that allows it to be an appropriate counterpoint to ‘annul’” (p. 218). 8 On the so-called antitheses as not being antithetical to Torah, but antithetical to the way it had been heard and interpreted, see Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3–7:27 and Luke 6:20–49), ed. Adela Yarbro Collins, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 208, 216–17. On similar reactions to oaths and retaliation in Judaism see Ingo Broer, “Anmerkungen zum Gesetzesverständnis des Matthäus,” in Das Gesetz im Neuen Testament, ed. Karl Kertelge, QD 108 (Freiburg: Herder, 1986), 128–45, here 131; idem, “Das Ius Talionis im Neuen Testament,” NTS 40 (1994): 1–21, here 11–21; Betz, Sermon, 277–89; cf. Barth, “Gesetzesverständnis,” 86–88. 9 Nolland, Matthew, 221. 10 On this see Varkey, Salvation in Continuity, 95–107.

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cause of offence to his fellow Jews and have resulted in the followers of Matthew’s Jesus no longer being welcome in “their synagogues” (4:23; 9:35; 10:17; 12:9; 13:54; cf. “your synagogues” 23:34). Matthew’s claim was that they, Jesus’s followers, should now be the teachers and leaders to tend the vineyard that is Israel. They are, in that sense, a new ethnos to help it bear its fruit (δοθήσεται ἔθνει ποιοῦντι τοὺς καρποὺς αὐτῆς, 21:42), ethnos here best understood as reference not to Gentiles, but to the new community of the faithful.11 They were apparently living in a majority Jewish society with local rule determined by synagogue authorities sitting on Moses’s seat (23:2), probably somewhere in the territory and time of Agrippa II, whose territory extended far to the north and who reigned until the 90s CE. This makes best sense of their apparent alienation from the synagogue while at the same time having to live under the local administration it exercised. The offence was exacerbated because of the increasing presence of non-Jews among them and the bad reputation other followers of Jesus elsewhere had in relation to Torah faithfulness.

C. John As the call of Wisdom, offering instruction symbolized by nourishment, was an appropriate place to begin our comments on Matthew, even more so is the image of Wisdom the place to start for identifying the approach to Torah in the Gospel according to John. From the beginning we hear of the Word, which is light and life, and offers water and bread. These are the rich images used in Judaism of Torah as Wisdom. In John these are now images of Jesus, who declares of himself: I am the light, the life, the bread, the truth, the way. The difference from Matthew is that John is not declaring that Torah is the light, life, bread, and truth as expounded by Jesus the judge and its interpreter, but rather setting Jesus in contrast to Torah. Jesus, not Torah, is the Word, a variation of the claim to be Wisdom, who was with God from the beginning. The relationship between Jesus, who in John assumes all the attributes once attributed to Torah, and Torah itself is complex. Torah clearly matters for the author; it is indeed an authority in the sense that he sees Torah as bearing witness to Jesus as the one who was to come and who has come, in much the same way as John the Baptist is reprofiled as primarily a witness to Jesus.12 Torah, John declares, was a gift of God given through Moses (1:17). It was a gift of grace, a view John shares with other Jews of his time, but it was not permanent nor adequate. The gift of who Jesus is came in its stead: χάριν ἀντὶ 11

Konradt, Matthäus, 335–36. On the status of Torah in John, see William R. G. Loader, Jesus in John’s Gospel: Structure and Issues (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017), 443–52. 12

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χάριτος (1:16). Furthermore, John depicts the Torah, including its institutions, as symbolizing at an earthly level what was to come in Jesus. He brings a new Temple to replace the old, relevant also in the wake of the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE. The symbolism is extensive and includes the way the author uses Old Testament stories. That water of purification in six stone jars, representing what had become a key focus in many parts of Judaism, and through numerology implied as less than perfect, is now transformed into something else: the wine. The manna, an image of Torah, has been replaced by Jesus as the bread of life. “‘Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven” (6:32). “39 You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; but it is they that testify on my behalf. 40Yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (5:39–40). Similarly, the well of water, a rich symbol of Torah, is now symbolic of the water of life that Jesus himself gives (4:10–14). A theology of supersessionism often accompanied antisemitism in its worst manifestations, with the result that many try hard to avoid any use of such language in relation to the Fourth Gospel. We should not, however, allow our views about what we now see as appropriate to blind us from what we have in this text, let alone read our views into it. The Fourth Gospel clearly does convey the notion of replacement at one level, clearly in relation to the Temple and by implications the provisions relating to it, a substantial component of Torah. It does not, however, understand itself as departing from Torah, let along parting from Judaism, much as its opponents might have seen it as such. Rather, its Jewish way of coming to terms with its Jewish environment and heritage is to make the claim that the God of Israel has brought a greater gift which comes in place of the former gift (χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος, 1:16), and this is indeed to honor what Torah intended and foreshadowed, so that Torah and its provisions can now be called upon as an authority to support such claims. The Gospel reflects a complex relationship with other Jews. Clearly it mattered significantly to the author to demonstrate that the followers of Jesus, far from abandoning the faith of their Jewish fathers, something which could be frowned on in the Greco-Roman world which valued the old, stood in true continuity with it. Otherwise the appeal to biblical authority as a witness for the new would make no sense. Nor would the many attempts to depict Jesus as the one foreshadowed by the old. This only makes sense if the author and a major proportion of his readership shared such concerns and presuppositions. The specific reference to being put out of the synagogues (16:2; cf. 9:22) reflected conflict with those other Jews, probably the majority, to whom the author and his readers once belonged, sometimes now referred to as unbelievers and designated simply as “the Jews.” The controversies with these, now retrojected in the text to the time of the ministry of Jesus, are hardly imagined out of thin air. They reflect real conflicts between the author and his readers, on the one hand, and the synagogue adherents on the other, “the Jews.” They

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are offended by the high christological claims made for Jesus. There is little evidence of continuing controversy over interpretation of the Law. At one point Jesus may appear to be arguing halakhically to defend his healing on the Sabbath (7:19–24), but this is not the case. Unlike in Matthew, Jesus is not being presented as the interpreter of the Law, but as the one whom the Law predicted, it alleges, and who would replace the Law. The sensitivity to issues of belonging explains why there is so much recourse to justifying the new with arguments from the old. Salvation is from the Jews (4:22), the true faithful Jews of old, and needs to be explicated and argued as such. By implication the old, the Law, is still being valued, and it has been reconfigured still as God’s gift, but given at the level of the flesh, what is below. What is below is not something at all evil, but something belonging to a lower level of reality, compared with the level of the Spirit, what is and comes from above, as John’s Jesus explains to Nicodemus (3:1–10). The structure of thought is similar to what we find in Hebrews, where popular platonic categories serve the contrast. This is why the author of the Fourth Gospel can still sustain an argument from continuity. Both the old and the new are God’s gifts, the one replacing the other. It is also why the author does not disparage the old, though comes closest to it in his declaration in 6:63, “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life,” but that, again, is not a contrast between good and bad but between levels of creation. John’s Jesus disparages only those who continue to live by Torah instead of living by being in a relationship with Jesus as God’s Son sent from the Father, as God’s Word and Wisdom. In John, Torah is not equated with Wisdom as in the traditions of Judaism that informed Matthew and may have at some stage informed the Logos tradition that is reflected in the Prologue. Only Jesus is Wisdom and Word. The “I am” statements imply: “I alone” and not Torah. The true bread coming down from heaven was not the manna and the Torah it symbolizes, but the Son (6:32–33). He, not the Scriptures, is the source of eternal life (5:39–40). Thus, John’s Gospel appears, like Matthew, to be written in a setting where followers of Jesus are coming to terms with the rejection they have experienced from fellow Jews, but doing so very differently, Matthew making the claim that Jesus is the true interpreter of the eternal Law, John making the claim that Torah has been superseded by Jesus as the Word of God, as, John alleges, Torah had predicted and foreshadowed would happen. Both are making a claim to represent what Israel’s faith should be and to be authoritative interpreters of it.

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D. Matthew and John on Spirituality Let me conclude with some comments about what I consider a striking degree of commonality between Matthew and John, frequently overlooked. They have a similar structure in what I would describe as their spirituality. In both we find the forgiveness that belongs to the core of beginning and sustaining a relationship with God.13 In Matthew forgiveness, a restored relationship with God, is already offered to all in John’s baptism, as in Mark. While one of the initial findings of redactional analysis was to note that Matthew’s omission of “for the forgiveness of sins” in taking over Mark’s account and his using it instead as an addition to Jesus’s words over the cup in the last meal and so to conclude that Matthew deliberately denies that John’s baptism offered forgiveness,14 is, on reflection, an overinterpretation. While it is true that Matthew omits the expression and that it appears in the last meal, he has in fact omitted much more from Mark and replaced it by a summary of John’s preaching that is made to match the summary of Jesus’s message in 4:17 based on Mark 1:15, and indeed also matches the summary of what the disciples are to preach (10:7). Thus, where Mark reads, “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν, 1:4), Matthews reads instead, “1 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2 ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’” (3:1–2). Rather than demote John by removing forgiveness from what his baptism offered, Matthew promotes John, while not to the same level as Jesus, nevertheless to a level of continuity and consistency with Jesus. Such elevation is unlikely to have implied a diminishing of his baptism’s impact. The context also suggests that John’s baptism in Matthew’s view retained this significance. Thus, when he writes that people came to be baptized, confessing their sins (3:6) and adds the words “for repentance” in 3:11 (cf. Mark 1:8), it is scarcely credible that he implied that the baptism offered nothing in response or somehow foreshadowed a forgiveness that would become available only much later

13 See also the discussion comparing soteriology in John and Matthew in William R. G. Loader, “Tensions in Matthean and Johannine Soteriology Viewed in Their Jewish Context,” in Jesus and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context, ed. R. Alan Culpepper and Paul N. Anderson, SBLRBS 87 (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 175–88. 14 Bornkamm, “Enderwartung,” 13; Eduard Schweizer, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, NTD 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), 23; Hummel, Auseinandersetzung, 101; John P. Meier, Matthew (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1983), 319; Konradt, Matthäus, 406; cf. Barth, “Gesetzesverständnis,” 109–10; and see the discussion in Loader, “Tensions,” 175–76, 178–79.

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after Jesus’s death.15 Forgiveness was part of the good news he proclaimed, which then Jesus and the disciples would also proclaim. Similarly, Matthew has Jesus declare that one inherits eternal life already in the present by keeping the commandments, the Torah, every stroke, as interpreted by Jesus (5:20; 19:16–22).16 Thus, Jesus, too, in Matthew as in Mark, offers forgiveness of sins during his ministry to the paralytic (Matt 9:2–6; Mark 2:5–10)17 and in sayings (Matt 6:14–15; Mark 11:25), and does so not least in the so-called Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:9–13) and also in the parable of the unforgiving servant (18:35). Such sayings make it clear that forgiveness is made possible primarily because of who God is and God’s mercy and compassion. At the same time Matthew also knows the tradition of Jesus’s death as vicarious, which he found in Mark 10:45 (Matt 20:28) and in Mark’s account of Jesus’s last meal where he declares: τοῦτό ἐστιν τὸ σῶμά μου (“This is my body,” 14:22) and more significantly over the cup says: τοῦτό ἐστιν τὸ αἷμά μου τῆς διαθήκης τὸ ἐκχυννόμενον ὑπὲρ πολλῶν (“This is my blood of the covenant poured out for many,” 14:24), to which as reinforcement Matthew adds the words, εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν (“for the forgiveness of sins,” 26:28). That does not change the fundamental understanding that forgiveness is rooted in the being of God, any more than for Jews the belief that the suffering righteous, whether in Isaiah 53 or in the Maccabean martyrs (2 Maccabees 7), had a vicarious effect implied that thereby all other means of forgiveness were to be excluded. The same inclusive understanding explains how Matthew can affirm both that forgiveness of sins was offered through Jesus and John and that it was a fruit of Jesus’s death. There is no need to try to deny one aspect or the other, for instance, by denying that John’s baptism and Jesus’s offer of forgiveness during his ministry were real or by claiming they were proleptic pointing to his death, nor to explain away the admittedly few references to his death as atoning, such as we find in his account of the final meal and in the ransom saying he takes over from Mark. This inclusive understanding of the soteriology of the cross stands in contrast to an exclusive soteriology of the cross, which would declare that forgiveness is possible only on the basis of Christ’s vicarious death.

15

So rightly on 3:6, Hagner, Matthew, 1:47. So Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew, SP 1 (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1991), 281; idem, “The Rich Young Man in Mt 19, 16–22: Another Way to God for Jews?” in Four Gospels: Festschrift Frans Neirynck, ed. Frans van Segbroeck, Christopher M. Tuckett, Gilbert Van Belle, and Joseph Verheyden (Leuven: Peeters, 1992),1425–32, here 1431–32. 17 This can hardly be dismissed as christological rather than soteriological. Cf. Meier, Matthew, 91; similarly Hagner, Matthew, 1:234; Robert Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 154–80. 16

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Similarly, and even more so, John’s Gospel portrays Jesus as offering forgiveness, or in more encompassing terms, eternal life already during his ministry, based primarily on his own person, acting for and in that sense embodying God and God’s compassion. As in Matthew, this is an offer of life in relationship with God, including forgiveness, though sustained in John not by adherence to Torah as God’s gift for living in oneness with God, but by Jesus’s teaching, later, post-Easter, mediated by the Spirit and its version of Jesus’s story claimed to be depicted in the Gospel. John also knows the tradition of Jesus’s death as vicarious,18 and it comes alongside a range of sayings that interpret his death as a climactic event, in which sin and its ruler are exposed, the full extent of Jesus’s love for his own revealed, and the shamefulness of the cross transformed for the eyes of faith into a moment of exaltation and glorification which would carry Jesus back, ascending to his Father, to receive and send the Spirit. Here, too, however, an inclusive soteriology of the cross is assumed. There is no need as some have done, to explain away the allusions to Jesus’s vicarious death, and reduce his death to his exit or ascent.19 Nor is there need to explain away references to his offering the gift of eternal life during his ministry because of who he was, with theories that such references are all proleptic conditional on Jesus’s death.20 18 On this see Loader, Jesus in John’s Gospel, 147–202; Jörg Frey, “Das vierte Evangelium auf dem Hintergrund der älteren Evangelientradition. Zum Problem Johannes und die Synoptiker,” in Die Herrlichkeit des Gekreuzigten. Studien zu den Johanneischen Schriften I, ed. Juliane Schlegel, WUNT 307 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 239–94, here 286; Jörg Frey, “Die ‘theologia crucifixi’ des Johannevangeliums,” in Die Herrlichkeit des Gekreuzigten. Studien zu den Johanneischen Schriften I, ed. Juliane Schlegel, WUNT 307 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 485–554, here 530–31. 19 Ernst Käsemann, Jesu letzter Wille nach Johannes 17, 3rd ed. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1971), 124, 135; Rudolf Bultmann, Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1953), 406; Michael Theobald, Das Evangelium nach Johannes Kapitel 1–12 (Regensburg: Pustet, 2009), 65. 20 Cf. Wilhelm Thüsing, Die Erhöhung und Verherrlichung Jesu im Johannesevangelium, 3rd ed., NTAbh 21 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1979), 14, 164, 171; Marianne Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 178; John Painter, John: Witness and Theologian, 3rd ed. (Melbourne: Beacon Hill, 1986), 89–90; Jörg Frey, Die johanneische Eschatologie I–III., WUNT 96, 110, 117 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997–2000), 2:241–46, 3:281; but who argues, for instance, in relation to the words “and now is” that for the author Christ’s presence alone makes true worship possible (2:282); Jörg Frey, Theology and History in the Fourth Gospel: Tradition and Narration (Waco: Baylor, 2018), who in my view presses the post-Easter perspective too far when for instance he writes: “The Jesus who utters his divine ‘I am’ is already the risen and glorified one, who is ‘the resurrection and the life’ (11:25) and the ‘light of the world’ (8:12)” (p. 169). See also the assessment in Loader, Jesus in John’s Gospel, 194–202 and Cornelis Bennema, The Power of Saving Wisdom: An Investigation of Spirit and Wisdom in Relation to the Soteriology of the Fourth Gospel, WUNT 2/148 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 37, who rightly argues that “Jesus, as Wisdom incarnate, is the source of salvation” (p. 38, similarly 94–96, 122, 186–87).

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Thus, in John, too, we see a similar pattern of spirituality, basically ground in a relationship with God governed by oneness in prayer and obedience to God’s will. The difference is, of course, that for Matthew God’s will is Torah interpreted by Jesus, whereas in John it is doing as Jesus taught and commanded. In areas of ethics it amounts to the same, since the ethics of John’s community will have been shaped by values found in Torah, though also widely upheld by the moral teachers of the time. So differences remain, with Matthew not setting a single stroke aside and John linking ethics no longer to Torah but to loving one another as Jesus loved them in a community of love, which embraced mutual love of Father, Son and believers together. Even then they are not so far apart because at least in terms of where Matthew puts the emphasis, namely, the weightier matters, there is significant common ground.

Part Three: Themes and Motifs in Matthew

The Text of Old Testament Quotations in Matthew Jan Joosten Jan Joosten

A. Introduction Like many other books of the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew quotes the Old Testament – or Scripture, for it was not yet “Old” when the New Testament was being written – profusely. This intense preoccupation with Scripture is often, and with good reason, located in a Matthean school.1 But it was not limited to the Matthean school. The Gospel came into being in a milieu where Jewish Scripture dominated religious discourse. In Judaism of the Second Temple period, the only way to speak of God, divine service, or human morality was in the language of the Bible.2 This was true of Hebrew- and Aramaic-speaking Jews in the land of Israel. The non-biblical texts from Qumran show us prayers, sermons, regulations, and stories studded with phrases from books that ended up forming the Hebrew Bible. But it was also true of Jewish circles in the diaspora who expressed themselves in Greek. Books like the Wisdom of Solomon or Judith, and sections of books such as the Prayer of Azaria in Daniel 3 or the prayer of Esther in Esther 4:17, are written in an anthological style in which many words and phrases can only be understood in relation to Scripture – in this case the Septuagint.3 Much religious writing was conceived as a kind of mosaic in which existing pieces of text were lifted from earlier works and imbricated into a new constellation. The phenomenon is stylistic in nature, but not only stylistic. To begin with, intertextuality in the Second Temple period has an exegetical component. The reuse of scriptural fragments draws on existing interpretations – a principle

1 See the seminal study of Krister Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew and Its Use of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968). 2 Like “Old testament,” “Bible” is an anachronistic term because at the time the Gospels came into being, the Bible as we know it did not yet exist. I will nevertheless use it here as shorthand for the collection of writings that ended up in the Hebrew Bible. 3 The fact that these writings systematically refer to earlier Scriptures in their Greek version is one of the reasons to believe that they were composed in Greek. See e.g., Jan Joosten, “The Original Language and Historical Milieu of the Book of Judith,” in Collected Studies on the Septuagint: From Language to Interpretation and Beyond, ed. Bernd Janowski, Mark S. Smith, and Hermann Spieckermann, FAT 83 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 195–210; idem, “The Prayer of Azariah (DanLXX 3): Sources and Origin,” in Septuagint and Reception, ed. Johann Cook, VTSup 127 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 5–16.

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that must be admitted even if the reuse, as often happens, is the earliest, sometimes the only, witness. Modern interpretation of Qumran texts is to a large extent taken up with the question about which biblical passage, or passages, they refer to. In addition, the reuse itself may give the scriptural extract a new life and meaning. Furthermore, beyond exegesis, there is an existential dimension. After the Babylonian exile, Scripture became a defining marker of identity for Jews of all stripes. Through liturgy, education, and day-to-day behavior, Jewish existence was increasingly located in the textual world of Scripture. This textual world encompassed both oral and written expression, and a variety of textual forms. Explicit verbatim quotations are only the most visible expression of a much larger phenomenon, the tip of the iceberg. Allusions, overt or covert, reuse of scriptural expressions and idioms, partial quotations, modified or composite quotations, and pseudo-quotations suggesting a scriptural source but unattested in the extant writings all participate in a discourse that inhabits Scripture, and completes it. “Turn it, turn it, for everything is in it” ( ‫ֲה ֹפ‹ בָּ הּ וְ הַ ֶפּ ‹ בָּ הּ‬ ‫)דְּ כוֹלָה בָּ הּ‬, said Ben Bagbag according to Mishnah Avot 5:25, speaking of the Torah.4 Quotations in the New Testament and in Jewish literature of the same general period often look somewhat imprecise to us. When we compare the quoted text to our editions of the Hebrew Bible or the Septuagint, divergences stand out. Many of these divergences are significant, and some of them we will pursue in what follows. But in a broad cultural and religious-historical view the divergences are less important than the massive presence of Scripture as such. Verbatim quotation is something of a chimera in Second Temple Judaism, an ideal type that cannot be instantiated. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that there was not one fixed and stable source text in this period, but a plurality of textual forms: proto-Masoretic, proto-Samaritan, aligned with the Septuagint, “nonaligned.” The main factor causing this plurality was not unfaithfulness or negligence, but investment – existential commitment. The text of Scripture was put to use, injected into real life, embraced, and exploited at every turn. This is what generated multiple text forms, first in Hebrew but also in the ancient versions. All these textual forms were variations of a core that all agreed was of vital importance to Jewish life. All this does not mean it is not worthwhile to evaluate the textual form of quotations in the New Testament. In Matthew many quotations do not conform precisely to any extant version of the source text. Nonetheless, it is often possible to trace the origin of their text. Some of them are clearly based on the 4 A similar sentiment is already found in the Hebrew Bible itself: “These words I am commanding you today must be kept in mind … speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, as you lie down, and as you get up” (Deut 6:6–7). See also Psalm 119.

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Septuagint, while others diverge widely from any known Greek version. Study of this variation will illuminate some unexpected aspects of the hermeneutics at play. It may also teach us something about the historical background of the Gospel of Matthew.

B. Methodological Considerations The books that would later make up the Hebrew Bible were circulating in various forms during the late Second Temple period. While much is uncertain, a few general remarks will be useful in setting out what is known or can reasonably be supposed. I. The Text of Scripture in the First Century CE The Hebrew text of biblical books is attested in different textual forms in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but a form very close to the Masoretic Text as it has come down to us nevertheless dominates. Of biblical scrolls retrieved fragmentarily from the Qumran caves, around 60 percent belong to the proto-Masoretic group.5 Also significant is that fragments of biblical scrolls from other sites in the Judaean Desert, which on the whole date to a later period than the Qumran biblical scrolls, all reflect the proto-Masoretic or Masoretic text-type.6 Although we should be wary of postulating a linear development, the available evidence does indicate that the Masoretic text-type was in the ascendant during the early Roman period. Regarding the New Testament, this may reasonably be taken to mean that any reference to the Hebrew text of the Bible would likely be to something rather close to the text as we know it.7 The Greek text is also attested in various forms during this period. The main factor of variation is the extent to which the original version, the “Old Greek,” is revised on the basis of the proto-Masoretic Hebrew. This process of revision may have set in during the second century BCE. By the first century BCE it

5 Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1992), 115 (3rd ed.: Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012). Percentages like this are bound to be approximate. Around 200 biblical texts were found in the Qumran caves, but not all of them are extensive enough to classify them according to text type. In the third edition of his Textual Criticism (see the next note), Tov abandoned percentages. 6 Ibid., (2012), 29. 7 As is well known, even the Masoretic text as it has come down to us in medieval codices is not entirely unified. Similar variation has to be reckoned with in the time of the New Testament.

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becomes systematic in the form known as the kaige revision, of which the earliest datable witness is the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever.8 The kaige group is rather diverse and may reflect a school rather than a welldefined individual or group. The revision that bears its name may have stretched out in time from the first century BCE to the second century CE, by which time it more or less coincides with Theodotion. The majority of biblical quotations in the New Testament reflect the Old Greek, but as might be expected the kaige revision too has left clear traces in New Testament writings.9 II. The Textual Dynamics of Quotations in the Greek New Testament Quotations are different from a running text in that the author quoting an early writing may alter its text for reasons that do not usually affect scribal transmission. The quoting author may abbreviate the text he is referring to so as to bring out the precise point he wishes to illustrate, or he may alter the text in other ways. He may also alter the quoted text because he is citing from memory and does not recall the exact wording.10 A more practical question that needs to be raised before inquiring into how an author, consciously or unconsciously, manipulates a quotation, is the question about which version he or she refers to. The answer is bound to be complex. The New Testament is a collection of writings of different origins and modes of composition. Some of the authors may have been bi- or trilingual, while others most likely knew only Greek. Some of the writings may partly be based on Semitic – Hebrew or Aramaic – sources, while others may partly be based on Greek sources. So, let us imagine a number of possible scenarios: a) When a monolingual Greek author, such as the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, quotes Scripture, he will refer to an existing translation, most likely the Septuagint. At times, such quotations diverge markedly from the received Hebrew version of the passage in question. Thus, in Heb 1:6, a line is quoted from the finale of Deut 32 that is missing in the MT:

8

See Dominique Barthélemy, Les devanciers d’Aquila: première publication intégrale du texte des fragments du dodécaprophéton trouvés dans le désert de Juda, précédée d’une étude sur les traductions et recensions grecques de la Bible réalisées au premiére siècle de notre ère sous l'influence du rabbinat palestinien, VTSup 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1963). For the impact of Barthélemy’s book and for the later history of research see Robert Kraft, “Reassessing the Impact of Barthélemy’s Devanciers Forty Years Later,” BIOSCS 37 (2004): 1– 28; Peter J. Gentry, “New Ultra-Literal Translation Techniques in Kaige-Theodotion and Aquila,” in Die Sprache der Septuaginta/The Language of the Septuagint, ed. Eberhard Bons and Jan Joosten, LXX Handbook 3 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2016), 202–20. 9 See e.g., Mark 14:62 quoting Dan 7:13, and 1 Cor 15:54 quoting Isa 25:8. 10 For more discussion on the methodology of dealing with Old Testament quotations in the New Testament, see R. Timothy McLay, The Use of the Septuagint in New Testament Research (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

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καὶ προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες ἄγγελοι θεοῦ. Let all the angels of God worship him.

In a case like this there is little reason to inquire why the quotations diverges from the received text. In all likelihood, the author is not conscious of the divergence; it is simply due to the biblical text with which he is familiar.11 Instead of the Septuagint, a monolingual author may refer to a revised version, either because it represents Scripture as he knows it, or because he knows two or more Greek versions and chooses the one that fits his purposes best. b) A bilingual author writing in Greek may quote from an existing Greek version (usually the Septuagint, but occasionally a revised version) for a variety of reasons which will usually prove hard to determine, but which may be distinguished in theory. He may quote an existent Greek version because he judges it to be an accurate rendering, or because it is the version his addressees know, or simply because it is the easiest solution. He may, however, equally offer an ad hoc translation of the Hebrew, or adjust an existing Greek version to his understanding of the Hebrew. The reason for this course of action is usually that the point he wishes to draw from the quotation is not, or imperfectly, expressed in the Septuagint.12 c) A bilingual author writing in Greek but using Semitic Source material that contains quotations in Hebrew may attempt to render the quotations into Greek himself.13 But he may just as well use an existing Greek translation.14 Substituting an existing translation in quotations is not only standard practice in academic writing today, it was also widely practiced in antiquity.15 By itself, the fact that a writing quotes the Hebrew scriptures after the Septuagint does not prove that the writing was created in Greek. The choice between translating afresh or quoting from an existing version is governed, among other factors, by the contextual function of the quotation. 11

Cf also the quotation of Ps 16/15:10 in Acts 2:27; of Amos 9:11–12 in Acts 15:16–17. For an extensive discussion of the latter example, see McLay, Use of the Septuagint, 17–36. 12 An example of this procedure in Matthew would be Isa 53:4 quoted in Matt 8:17, which will be mentioned below (and see also Hos 11:1 quoted in Matt 2:15). For an example in Paul, Exod 9:16 quoted in Rom 9:17, see Jan Joosten and Menahem Kister, “The New Testament and Rabbinic Hebrew,” in The New Testament and Rabbinic Literature, ed. Reimund Bieringer, Florentino García Martínez, Didier Pollefeyt, and Peter Tomson, JSJS 136 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 335–50, in particular 346–49. 13 A possible example is Tob 2:6 as quoted in the BA text of Amos 8:10, which the Greek translator did not take from the LXX of Amos but apparently translated himself from the Aramaic version of Tobit (note, however, that in the S text the quotation is adapted to the Septuagint in one detail). 14 See e.g., the allusion to Psalm 79:2b–3 in 1 Macc 7:17, for which the translator appears to have used the LXX of Psalms. 15 Thus, the Old Testament quotations in the Syriac translations of the Gospels have in many places been taken straight from the Old Testament Peshitta.

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Where the point at issue can be drawn from an existing translation, the easiest option is to use it. But where the existing translations do not bring out this point, a new translation may be called for. As we will see, however, this principle is not always observed.16 These reflections are tentative and their practical value is uncertain. We know rather little about the authors of New Testament writings, and notably lack precise information about their knowledge of languages other than Greek. How good was “Mark’s” Aramaic? How proficient was Paul in Hebrew? How many members of the Matthean school could read the Bible in source text? All these questions have been discussed, but no clear-cut answers have been given. Nevertheless, the enumerations of possible scenarios provide us with a framework to think about scriptural quotations in the writings of the New Testament.

C. The Use of Scripture in Matthew Matthew cannot be qualified as a Jewish writing without further ado. The Gospel reflects several literary strata, and it is likely that some of the latest stages in its redaction history reflect an anti-Jewish bias, and perhaps a pagan-Christian milieu.17 In the present paper, however, I would like to bracket out this question. Whatever the tenor of its latest edition, its many quotations and the scriptural language in which the Gospel of Matthew is steeped from end to end assimilate it to Jewish religious writings of roughly the same period. I. Semitic and Greek I would like to focus, therefore, on a different distinction. While the layers in which Matthew is composed are hard to disentangle, logic dictates we accept at least the following stages in its redaction history. At the beginning stand early traditions of words and deeds of Jesus. These early traditions were incorporated into the Gospel of Mark and other written sources that have not been preserved (notably “Q”). − The Matthean redaction reworked a version of the Gospel of Mark and other written sources. It may also have drawn directly on oral tradition circulating in its time. The redaction is likely to have proceeded in phases. − −

Through this messy and sparsely documented redactional history runs a basic divide: the earliest phases happened in a Semitic milieu, the later phases in Greek. Jesus and his disciples did not usually converse in Greek, and most of 16

See below on the quotations of Hos 6:6 in Matthew. See notably David Flusser, “Anti-Jewish Sentiment in the Gospel of Matthew,” in The Jewish Sages and Their Literature, vol. 2 of Judaism of the Second Temple Period, ed David Flusser (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 351–53. 17

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Jesus’s teaching and debate was done in Aramaic or Hebrew. The earliest oral traditions too, and perhaps some written works that have been lost, were likely formulated in those languages. In contrast, the Gospel of Matthew as we have it is written in Greek. Moreover, if we accept the two-source hypothesis, as I think we must, the immediate sources of Matthew – Mark and Q – were also written in Greek. There was a Semitic phase in the genesis of Matthew, and a Greek phase. This postulate has important repercussions for the use of Scripture in Matthew. In the Semitic phase, the main reference would be the Hebrew Bible. Recent research has demonstrated that Hebrew was still widely spoken in the first century CE, and many of Jesus’s conversations would have taken place in Hebrew.18 Notably, discussions on the Jewish law would normally be formulated in Hebrew, and parables too. References to Scripture could easily have been made to a Hebrew text. Jesus was almost certainly bilingual and likely used Aramaic when teaching the crowds in Galilee, and also in exorcisms and healings. But even in an Aramaic context, the Hebrew Bible would likely be quoted in its original language, the way it almost always is in later rabbinic writing. The quotation of Psalm 22:2 in Aramaic from the mouth of Jesus dying on the cross suggests that, alongside the Hebrew text, Aramaic translations also played a part.19 Such an Aramaic version of Scripture would in all likelihood be known to Jesus and his group in oral form only. It is true that fragments of Aramaic translations of Leviticus and Job have come to light in Qumran. But they are the exception to the rule, which was oral translation. Oral translation can be quite stable, and the later Targums, such as Onkelos and Jonathan, written down perhaps in the early second century CE, can legitimately be used to reconstruct Aramaic paraphrases that may have been around in Jesus’s time.20 In the Greek phase, the main reference is the Septuagint. The Septuagint originated in the diaspora in Egypt, but by the first century CE it had made important inroads into the Jewish heartland. Most of the 27 Greek manuscripts of which fragments have been found in the Qumran caves represent the Septuagint. As we saw above, much evidence suggests that the Septuagint was being revised in Palestine from the second half of the first century BCE onward (kaige-Theodotion). 18 See Jan Joosten, “Aramaic or Hebrew behind the Gospels?” Analecta Bruxellensia 9 (2004): 88–101. 19 Note that Codex Bezae (D) reads in both Matt 27:46 and Mark 15:34, instead of σαβαχθανι (= Aramaic ‫“ שבקתני‬you have abandoned me”), ζαφθανι (cf. B in Mark, ζαβαφθανι), which reflects the Hebrew text of Psalm 22:2 (‫)עזבתני‬. This hardly represents the original text of the Gospel, however. 20 See Jan Joosten, “How Old is the Targumic Tradition? Traces of the Jewish Targum in the Second Temple Period, and Vice Versa,” in The Text of the Hebrew Bible and Its Editions. Studies in Celebration of the Fifth Centennial of the Complutensian Polyglot, ed. Andrés Piquer Otero and Pablo Torijano Morales (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 143–59.

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Between the Semitic origins of the Gospel and its Greek redaction, we must of course postulate a bilingual phase. Those who translated the early tradition from Hebrew or Aramaic into Greek knew both languages. Nevertheless, the basic divide is incontrovertible: Jesus and his disciples in all likelihood never used the Septuagint, but in the received version of Matthew the Septuagint looms large. This constellation raises questions about the Old Testament quotations in the Gospel Matthew. II. The Search for the Ideal Prooftext In Matthew, many quotations follow the Septuagint rather closely while others diverge from the Septuagint, some of them radically. Some of the variation may be due to the diverse origins of traditions incorporated into the Gospel. But in a few cases, it seems rather that the choice of textual form reflects a conscious decision. There is a measure of “textual opportunism” which deserves to be explored and held to the light. On a textual level, the Septuagint very often diverges from its Hebrew source text. The reasons for this divergence are not always easy to determine. In some cases, the Greek translators may have used a Hebrew source at variance with the received MT.21 In other instances, the divergence seems to be due to the Greek translator. Whatever their origin, such divergences create a problem when passages are quoted in later writings. A famous example in Matthew is the following: Matt 1:23 ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται υἱόν, καὶ καλέσουσιν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἐμμανουήλ. Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel. LXX ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται υἱόν, καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Εμμανουηλ. Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall name him Emmanuel.

The verse is said to be fulfilled in the miraculous pregnancy of Mary by the Holy Spirit. The key word is “virgin” (παρθένος). On precisely this point, however, the Septuagint diverges from the Hebrew, which more simply announces that the “young woman” (‫ ) ַﬠ לְ מָ ה‬will conceive and bear a son. When a divergent Septuagint rendering is quoted in writings whose authors in all likelihood knew no Hebrew, one may legitimately infer that they were unaware of the difference. Hebrews and Acts draw points from the Septuagint

21 The discovery of variant text types in Qumran has confirmed the possibility that Hebrew texts diverging from the (proto-)Masoretic text were used by the translators.

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that find no support in the Hebrew source text.22 This phenomenon is found also in Jewish writings in Greek from the same general period.23 But in Matthew things are more complicated. The infancy Gospel reflects a relatively late stage in the redaction history. It does, however, give evidence of at least some knowledge of Hebrew: Jesus’s name is “correctly” connected to the notion of salvation.24 More importantly, several other fulfilment prophecies introduced in the same way as Isa 7:14 pointedly do not follow the Septuagint, but a Greek version much more faithful to the Hebrew. The best example is Isa 53:4 quoted in Matt 8:17: Matt 8:17 αὐτὸς τὰς ἀσθενείας ἡμῶν ἔλαβεν καὶ τὰς νόσους ἐβάστασεν. He took our infirmities and bore our diseases. Isa 53:4 ‫אָ ֵכ ן ֳח ָליֵנוּ הוּא נָשָׂ א וּמַ כְ אֹ בֵ ינוּ סְ ָב לָם‬ Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases. LXX: οὗτος τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν φέρει καὶ περὶ ἡμῶν ὀδυνᾶται. This one bears our sins and suffers pain for us.

The Septuagint offers a nice free translation of the verse. But the version did not fit the purpose of Matthew, which was to show that the Messiah was expected to heal the sick. Consequently, the version quoted in Matthew is not the Septuagint but a somewhat literal rendering of the Hebrew. Some have thought that the mixture of Septuagint and non-Septuagint readings in the quotations peculiar to Matthew reflects a specific version of the Greek Bible.25 This is possible, but not very likely: the only non-Septuagint Greek versions we know of are revisions of the Septuagint, but the Greek version quoted in Matt 8:17 does not look like a revised Septuagint.26 A better explanation is to say the quotation was produced ad hoc by someone who knew the Hebrew text of the verse and was able to provide a Greek translation of it. “Matthew” – whether this was an individual, a group, or a school is indifferent in this respect – knew both Hebrew and Greek and used this knowledge while selecting his prooftexts. Thus, the flipping from one text type to another in the same literary layer in Matthew appears to indicate conscious exploitation of textual plurality. Knowing both the Hebrew and the Greek, the author or redactor(s) chose the version 22

See above at note 11. See the literature quoted above in note 3. 24 A modern Semitist will not connect the etymology of the name to the notion of salvation: the name ‫ יהושוע‬is composed of the divine name and a noun meaning “noble, rich”; but certainly in folk etymology the connection must often have been made. 25 See e.g., Maarten J. J. Menken, Matthew’s Bible: The Old Testament Text of the Evangelist, BETL 173 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004). 26 The Greek is not a literal rendering of the Hebrew source text such as one would expect in a kaige-Theodotion type of revision. 23

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that best fitted his (their) purpose. This may seem opportunistic, or even potentially dishonest, to us. But in the time of the New Testament it appears to have been acceptable. A very similar approach is found in contemporary writings. Jonathan Norton has shown that Paul, Josephus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls similarly hop from one text type to another as the argument requires.27 Another interesting parallel may be drawn from the Psalms of Solomon. These Psalms were written in Jerusalem shortly after its occupation by Pompey in 63 BCE. The author must have known Hebrew. But some of its proof texts are drawn from unique readings in the Septuagint. Note, for example: Ps. Sol. 9:2 ἐν παντὶ ἔθνει ἡ διασπορὰ τοῦ Ισραηλ κατὰ τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦ θεοῦ. Among every nation is Israel’s dispersion, according to the word of God.

The word of God predicting Israel’s dispersion is almost certainly Deut 28:25:28 Deut 28:25 καὶ ἔσῃ ἐν διασπορᾷ ἐν πάσαις ταῖς βασιλείαις τῆς γῆς. And you shall be in dispersion in all the kingdoms of the earth.

However, the key term, διασπορά, “dispersions,” present in the Septuagint does not occur in the Hebrew text of Deut 28:25. Instead the Hebrew reads, “You will become an object of terror (‫ )וְ הָ ִייתָ לְ ַז ֲﬠוָה‬to all the kingdoms of the earth.” The author almost certainly knew of this Hebrew text, but nevertheless felt justified to draw a point from the Septuagint variant. The ancients did not have the same view of variants as we do and may have considered different versions of the same text as legitimate instances of the divine word. In a much later period, Jerome in his commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets remarks systematically on both his rendering of the Hebrew and the widely diverging Septuagint, explaining that the former leads one to the plain sense of the text while the latter leads on to a more spiritual interpretation.29 III. The Septuagint as a Stand-in for the Hebrew Text Although it is difficult to attain perfect certainty, the evidence evaluated in the preceding passage strongly suggests that the author of the Gospel of Matthew 27

Jonathan D. H. Norton, Contours in the Text: Textual Variation in the Writings of Paul, Josephus and the Yahad, LNTS 430 (London: T&T Clark, 2011). 28 See also Jer 34:17, the Greek version (Jer 41:17 LXX), which is very similar, is probably itself an allusion to Deut 28:25. 29 See also the very eloquent statement of Augustin: “For the same Spirit who was in the prophets when they spoke these things was also in the seventy men when they translated them, so that assuredly they could also say something else, just as if the prophet himself had said both, because it would be the same Spirit who said both” (City of God 18.43).

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has an eye, so to speak, on both the Hebrew and the Greek versions of Scripture and draws on both according to the demands of his argument. In a few cases, however, it appears that the reverse happens: a well-chosen prooftext is presented in a version that does not bring out the point at issue. More precisely, a prooftext that works well in Hebrew is presented in the Septuagint version, which skews or obscures the meaning of the source text. In such a case, the use of the Septuagint may obscure the whole point of the quotation. There are several cases in Matthew were the Septuagint version may mask a different version that makes better sense in the context. An instructive example is the quotation of Hos 6:6a in Matt 9:13 and 12:7. The former is in the pericope on the calling of Matthew. The Pharisees ask the disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus’s answer includes a reference to Hos 6:6a: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” The second pericope is that of the disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath. The Pharisees tell Jesus, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the sabbath.” Jesus gives quite a complicated answer, referring to David in the sanctuary of Nob and to the Temple cult that does not halt because of the Sabbath. And then again, a reference is made to Hos 6:6a: “If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.” Both pericopes are paralleled in Mark and Luke, but the quotation of Hos 6:6a is a Matthean addition in each. Nevertheless, the quotation can hardly be attributed to Matthean redaction. Several data indicate that the quotation was taken from a source. The way it is introduced in Matt 9:13, “Go and learn,” has no parallels in the Matthew, but closely agrees with a formula used in Rabbinic literature.30 Also, if the verse were a redactional addition, one would expect it to make sense in the Gospel context. Putting it simply, the quotation does not seem to fit either context. “Mercy” may include a large range of charitable activities: almsgiving, visiting the sick, redeeming slaves, burying the dead. But welcoming well-to-do sinners to one’s table is not usually considered an act of mercy, nor the plucking of grain to feed oneself. Several exegetes have thought the quotation is out of place, in either or both the contexts where it occurs.31 I will not try to enumerate possible interpretations. Instead I will point out some discrepancies between the Hebrew source text and the Greek text quoted in Matthew. The text quoted in Matthew is ἔλεος θέλω καὶ οὐ θυσίαν. This corresponds to what both Rahlfs and the Göttingen edition print as the text of the Septuagint, although Codex Vaticanus 30 See Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: Erläutert aus Talmud und Midrasch, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (Munich: Beck, 1922), 499. 31 See e.g., David Hill, “On the Use and Meaning of Hosea vi. 6 in Matthew’s Gospel,” JTS 24 (1977): 107–19.

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and a long list of witnesses read in Hos 6:6a, ἔλεος θέλω ἢ θυσίαν “I desire mercy more than sacrifice.” This is indeed what is meant in Hosea, as the second part of the verse shows: “… and knowledge of God more than whole offerings.” The negation in the first part of the verse is a Semitic figure of speech that is not to be taken literally.32 The Vaticanus version may well represent the Old Greek of Hos 6:6. However, in light of the wide distribution of the text adopted by Rahlfs and Ziegler there is no reason to think Matthew is quoting anything else than the Septuagint text that was known in the milieu that produced the Gospel. In any case, the salient point in this version is not the function of the negation, but the use of the word ἔλεος, “mercy.” The Hebrew version of Hos 6:6b is, ‫כִּ י חֶ סֶ ד חָ ַפצְ ִתּי וְ ל ֹא־זָבַ ח‬. Here ‫ חסד‬by no means implies “mercy” but rather something like “sincere love” or “faithfulness,” as the expression “knowledge of God” in the parallel shows.33 The meaning of the Hebrew is radically changed in the Septuagint. From demanding love of God, the Septuagint transforms the phrase into a requirement to exert charity toward one’s fellow humans. Contrary to what one might think, this change is probably not due to an exegetical or theological decision on the part of the Septuagint translator. In the Twelve Minor Prophets, ‫ חסד‬is always translated as ἔλεος and nothing indicates that in the present case the translator was conscious of changing the meaning of the verse. The transformation was accidental, but it was fruitful too: the Septuagint translator in effect created something like a double command of love – “be charitable to your neighbor, and know, that is, love God” – long before it was formulated in its classical form in the Gospels. In the Markan version of the double-command-of-love pericope, Hos 6:6 is expressly alluded to. After Jesus quotes Deut 6:5 back to back with Lev 19:18, the scribe who asked the question about the first among the commandments responds, “To love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself – this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Mark 12:33). The “whole burnt offering and sacrifices” here point to Hos 6:6 – the scribe is suggesting to Jesus that there is no need to quote two verses from Scripture; one verse suffices to justify the double command of love. The Septuagint interpretation of Hos 6:6a finds a nice parallel in Rabbinic literature. In Avoth de-Rabbi Nathan we read the following anecdote: 32

See Heinz Kruse, “Die ‘dialektische Negation’ als semitisches Idiom,” VT 4 (1954): 385–400. 33 Jan Joosten, “Hesed “bienveillance” et éleos “pitié”. Réflexions sur une équivalence lexicale dans la Septante,” in “Car c’est l’amour qui me plaît, non le sacrifice…”. Recherches sur Osée 6:6 et son interprétation juive et chrétienne, ed. Eberhard Bons, JSJS 88 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 25–42.

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One day Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai left Jerusalem, and Rabbi Yehoshua was following him. He saw the Temple in ruins. Rabbi Yehoshua said: “Woe be to us, for the place where atonement was made for our sins is in ruins.” Rabbi Yohanan replied: ‘My son, don’t be sad, we have atonement equivalent to that one, namely, acts of charity (‫ )גמילות חסדים‬as it is said: “I desire kindness (‫ )חסד‬and not sacrifice” (Hos 6:6a). ARN, Version A, Chap. 4 (Schechter, p. 21)

The conversation between the two Rabbis reflects a Semitic milieu. The reference to Hos 6:6a owes nothing to the Septuagint. In fact, the reverse is the case: the passage (in spite of being written down perhaps 400 or 500 years after the Septuagint of Hosea) throws light on the equivalence between the Hebrew ‫חסד‬ and the Greek ἔλεος. As it turns out, at some point in the Hellenistic period, the biblical term ‫ חסד‬came to be interpreted – against its original meaning – as a reference to alms and other works of charity, ‫גמילות חסדים‬. The Septuagint translators probably knew this interpretation and based their standard rendering of the Hebrew term on it. But let us return to Matthew. The reference to Avoth de-Rabbi Nathan is quoted in many commentaries on Matthew, but it does nothing to clear up the meaning of Hos 6:6 in the two verses we are dealing with. In the Rabbinic text, the interpretation of the verse fits the context perfectly: when the Temple cult comes to an end, the prophecy announces that God can be served in other, and better, ways. None of this applies to the passages in Matthew, which are not concerned with the Temple cult but with commensality and a fine point of Sabbath law. The agreement between ARN and Matthew is superficial and does not extend beyond the mere quotation of Hos 6:6a. At this point, I would argue that it is fruitful to envisage the scenario I described above. Perhaps in the two passages in Matthew, the Septuagint version quoted does not accurately reflect what was originally meant. The two pericopes where Hos 6:6a is quoted came to Matthew from Mark. But the reference to Hos 6:6a in these two contexts may well have been transmitted to Matthew via a different channel. If this channel originated in a Semitic milieu, as the expression “go and learn” suggests, Hos 6:6a would have been quoted in Hebrew. The original meaning of the Hebrew differs completely from that of the Septuagint. The prophets of the eighth century all underscore the primacy of ethics over the cult: Amos 5:23–24 Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Isa 1:15 When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you;

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even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Mic 6:7 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?34

Hosea’s language is different, but the message is the same: God does not want to be served in a formal way, following the rules of the cult. God is not against the Temple cult as such, but what he seeks first of all is genuine love and affection. Everything else – social justice, political independence, and material prosperity – will flow from there. This is the tenor of Hos 6:6 in its original context. In all his discussions on the Law, Matthew’s Jesus supports this prophetic motif. Jesus is not against the Law: he practices it himself and is ready to uphold it; but he is against formal observance of the law if it is not accompanied by genuine piety. Any show of legalism that hides disregard for the fundamental values of the law – justice, solidarity, piety (κρίσις, ἔλεος, πίστις, Matt 23:23) – provokes his ire. This is also the theme of the two passages quoting Hos 6:6a: to welcome sinners at one’s table (Matt 9:10–13) might be regarded as a breach of certain purity regulations that had come to be embraced in Second Temple Judaism, but this was not an original command of the Torah and it made no sense to Jesus. The healthy have no need of a physician, but the sick do. As to plucking grain on the Sabbath (Matt 12:1–8), the Torah forbade work on Sabbath, but severe hunger justified transgressing the command on the principle of piqquah nephesh. The life of the disciples was more important than strict observance of the law. Such is the principle underscored by the quotation of Hos 6:6a. The argument is not about mercy, but about the distinction between true piety and formal conformity to divine exigencies. If this explanation is at all close to the mark, the reference to Hos 6:6a cannot be understood on the basis of the Septuagint text quoted. Perhaps when the underlying tradition was translated into Greek, the Septuagint version was used mechanically by someone who did not fully understand the tenor of the quotations. Alternatively, and no doubt preferably, the Septuagint was used here as a mere stand-in for the Hebrew text. In the bilingual milieu in which the Gospel of Matthew gestated, the words ἔλεος θέλω καὶ οὐ θυσίαν indicated that Jesus quoted Hos 6:6a – in Hebrew. In either case, our passages can only be understood when we move beyond the letter of

34 See Alexander Rofé, Introduction to the Literature of the Hebrew Bible (Jerusalem: Simor, 2009), 398–401.

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Matthew’s text and return to what, according to the two accounts, Jesus said – in Hebrew.

D. Conclusions How do we read Matthew? We can read the Gospel from the point of view of its most recent redactional strands, that is, from a community of Christians that is no-longer Jewish, perhaps in Asia Minor, at the end of the first century CE. To my mind this is a poor way to honor Matthew’s conservatism. Throughout its redactional history, old and still older traditions were preserved, some of them standing in tension with the views of the latest redactional strands. The point of view of the latest layers is important, but so is that of the earlier layers. The way to appreciate both is to read the Gospel with an eye for history: the movement of followers of Jesus evolved over the latter two thirds of the first century, and the telling of the Gospel evolved with it. Within the historical-critical approach delineated, the linguistic aspect is an underestimated element. This is true in general: a large part of the contents of Matthew must have been formulated in Aramaic or Hebrew before they were translated into Greek. It is true in particular of Matthew’s use of Scripture. I have argued that reference to Scripture in the Gospel of Matthew is essentially complicated by the linguistic divide within the redactional history of the Gospel. In order to appreciate the attitude toward Scripture exhibited in Matthew, and in order to understand the choice of many quotations, a consideration of the linguistic layers of the Gospels are indispensable.

John the Baptist in the Gospel of Matthew Comparison and Distinction Joel Marcus Joel Marcus

John the Baptist is an important person in the Gospel of Matthew – as, indeed, he is in all of the canonical Gospels. But like all the other Gospel writers, Matthew is careful to subordinate John to Jesus in ways big and small. At the same time, he links the two men strongly. The purpose of this essay is to ask about both aspects: why the linkage, and why the subordination? Striking examples of both tendencies occur in John’s first and most important appearance in Matthew, the account in chapter 3 of his preaching and baptismal ministry, which climaxes with his baptism of Jesus. John’s very first words in this Gospel are, “Repent, for the dominion of heaven has come near” (Matt 3:1–2).1 These words are significant in themselves, since they associate the Baptist with the sort of eschatological expectation that inspired not only his movement and the Jesus movement in the thirties of the first century but also, as Martin Hengel showed in his 1959 dissertation, the revolt against the Romans in the late sixties and early seventies.2 This sort of eschatological expectation is, of course, also critical to Matthew himself, writing towards the end of the century, as can be seen, for example, in the special M passage, Matt 10:23 (“For, Amen, I say to you, you shall by no means finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes”). But John’s inaugural words are also significant because they are exactly, word-for-word, the words that Jesus himself speaks in his inaugural sermon in the Gospel’s next chapter (Matt 4:17). This is a peculiarly Matthean parallel. Although Matthew’s source Mark also has John proclaiming the nearness of the kingdom and calling for repentance (1:4–5, 7–8), only Matthew has John and Jesus proclaiming the exact same message in the exact same words. This parallel is worthy of notice and needs an explanation, which I will attempt to provide in what follows.

1

Unless otherwise specified, all translations are my own, though biblical translations are often indebted to the RSV. 2 Martin Hengel, Die Zeloten. Untersuchungen zur jüdischen Freiheitsbewegung in der Zeit von Herodes I. bis 70 n. Chr, 2nd ed., AGJU 1 (Leiden/Köln: Brill, 1976) // ET: The Zealots: Investigations into the Jewish Freedom Movement in the Period from Herod I Until 70 A.D. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989).

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While Matthew thus accents the parallel between John and Jesus, he also emphasizes the distinction between them. He is particularly concerned to stress Jesus’s superiority to John. This, again, has sources in the tradition before him. Matthew retains, and expands from Q,3 the Markan passage in which John prophesies the coming of one stronger than him (Mark 1:7–8); in the Q form, this “Stronger One” will clear God’s threshing-floor, burn its chaff, and baptize the elect in Spirit and fire (Matt 3:11–12//Luke 3:15–18). Through the juxtaposition between this prophecy of the “Stronger One” and the immediately subsequent story of Jesus’s baptism, it is clear that Matthew (3:13–17), drawing on Mark and Q, regards the “Stronger One” as Jesus. We will need to consider later whether or not the historical Baptist actually did regard Jesus as “the Stronger One.” We should also observe, for explication later, that Matthew has subtly but significantly changed Mark’s description of the purpose of John’s baptism. Whereas in Mark, John proclaims “a baptism of repentance unto forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4), Matthew has retained the link between John’s baptism and repentance but removed its link with forgiveness (Matt 3:11). It will be crucial to the second half of this essay to ask why. Matthew has not been content, however, merely to retain Mark’s emphasis on the superiority of Jesus as the Stronger One. He has also creatively underlined that superiority by constructing a little dialogue between the two men in the scene where Jesus comes to John for baptism (3:14–15). In this dialogue, John tries at first to prevent the baptism from going forward, objecting that he needs to be baptized by Jesus rather than the other way around.4 Jesus responds significantly, albeit somewhat obscurely, by insisting that the baptism needs to take place in order to “fulfill all righteousness.” “Fulfill” and “righteousness,”

3

I continue to embrace the scholarly consensus that Mark and the hypothetical Q document were the earliest Gospel sources, which were subsequently used independently by Matthew and Luke; for a summary of recent research, see Christopher M. Tuckett, “The Current State of the Synoptic Problem,” in New Studies in the Synoptic Problem. Oxford Conference, April 2008. Essays in Honour of Christopher M. Tuckett, ed. Paul Foster, Andrew Gregory, John S. Kloppenborg, and Joseph Verheyden, BETL 239 (Leuven/Paris/Walpole: Peeters, 2011), 9–50. For a challenge to the consensus, see Mark Goodacre, The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2002); for a rebuttal to Goodacre, see John S. Kloppenborg, “On Dispensing with Q? Goodacre on the Relation of Luke to Matthew,” NTS 49 (2003): 210–36. 4 As W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 1, Introduction and Commentary on Matthew I–VII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 323 note, this christological certainty contrasts with the doubt expressed in 11:26, and this in itself suggests that the passage is unhistorical and probably Matthean. On 11:2–6, see section C below, “The Matthean Baptist and the Historical Baptist.”

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however, are two of Matthew’s most characteristic terms,5 confirming the impression that this expansion of the Markan story – like most such expansions in Matthew’s Gospel – is the work of Matthew himself.6 Matthew 3:14–15, therefore, is Matthew’s own creative work, and again we must ask why – what purpose does it serve? Why is it necessary to have John object to Jesus’s baptism, and for Jesus to overrule his objection? John’s baptism of Jesus, as a matter of fact, posed several problems for the early church. One was, as we have seen, that John’s baptism was connected with forgiveness of sins,7 but the church came to believe that Jesus had been sinless.8 It is difficult to know if the doctrine of Christ’s sinlessness had developed in Matthew’s part of the church by the time his Gospel was written (though see already 2 Cor 5:21), but it is striking that the same Gospel that removes the Markan reference to forgiveness of sins from its account of John’s baptism also has John express scruples about baptizing Jesus. But the more immediate concern in the passage seems to be the assumption that the baptizer is superior to the person baptized. We know that, in early Christianity, a certain prestige clung to those who performed the rite (cf. 1 Cor 1:10–17); the principle seems to be similar to that enunciated in Heb 7:7, that the lesser is blessed by the greater. So, again, the question of the relative status of Jesus and John is raised, and it is emphasized – indeed, overemphasized – that Jesus is John’s superior.

5 Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary, trans. Wilhelm C. Linss (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 177 points out that δικαιοσύνη occurs seven times in Matthew, “without exception redactional.” Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:326 note that πληροῦν occurs sixteen times in Matthew, “thirteen times in formula citations or in verses where prophecy or the prophets are the subject,” as is the case here. Cf. p. 323, where Davies and Allison pronounce 3:14–15 “full of redactional vocabulary.” 6 On Matthew’s expansions of Mark, see Joel Marcus, “Did Matthew Believe His Myths?” in An Early Reader of Mark and Q, ed. Joseph Verheyden and Gilbert Van Belle, Biblical Tools and Studies 21 (Leuven/Paris/Bristol: Peeters, 2016), 217–49, here 246–49. 7 Matthew retains a trace of this connection in 3:6, where (drawing on Mark 1:5) he describes John’s baptizands as confessing their sins while being baptized. This may be an example of editorial fatigue, on which see below, n. 33. 8 See, e.g., Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 88.4; Gospel of the Nazoreans (Jerome, Adversus Pelagianos dialogi 3.2).

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A. The Competitive Missions of Baptists and Christians Why this emphasis – the sort of reaction that a Freudian analyst might call overdetermined? It probably has something to do with the competition that existed in the early years of the Christian mission – and, indeed, persisted in some circles for centuries – between followers of Jesus and followers of John.9 We get some hints of this competition already in the New Testament, though all the New Testament authors who mention the Baptist are at pains to emphasize that he and Jesus were on the same page. The very care they take to emphasize this consonance, however, seems to reflect the painful realization that not all adherents of the two men saw things the same way. Consider, for example, the strange passage at the beginning of Acts 19 (vv. 1–7). Here Paul, on a preaching tour in Ephesus, encounters a group of people whom Luke calls “disciples” and “believers” (vv. 1–2). But these are strange disciples, strange believers, since they have never heard either of the Holy Spirit or of Jesus (vv. 2 and 4). “Into what then were you baptized?” Paul asks them. Receiving the answer, “Into the baptism of John” (v. 3), he then informs them that John was only a forerunner of another figure, Jesus, whom he exhorted people to believe (v. 4). Hearing this, the Ephesian “disciples” are baptized – that is, rebaptized – “into the name of the Lord Jesus,” and receive the Holy Spirit (vv. 5–6). Luke, then, makes the orthodox Christian point that John pointed to Jesus and that the true follower of John will end up following Jesus (also, that Christian baptism alone imparts the Spirit, a point to which we will return). But the way in which Luke makes these points allows us to glimpse the uncomfortable reality that there were followers of John who disagreed – that, for them, the Baptist movement and the Jesus movement were two different things. In the Acts story, this separateness is immediately overcome, but it seems probable that, on the ground, it was a more persistent issue.10 This is the context in which Matthew’s strong emphasis on the parallel between Jesus’s preaching and John’s begins to make sense – it is directed at the perception that the two men were involved in different missions with different purposes.

9 For a defense of the “competition hypothesis,” including a treatment of the counterarguments of Knut Backhaus, Die “Jüngerkreise” des Täufers Johannes: Eine Studie zu den religionsgeschichtlichen Ursprüngen des Christentums, Paderborner Theologische Studien 19 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1991), see Joel Marcus, John the Baptist in History and Theology, Personalities of the New Testament (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2018), 11–26. 10 On Acts 18:24–19:7 as evidence for competition between early Christians and followers of John the Baptist, see already the work of Wilhelm Baldensperger mentioned in the next note; cf. Ernst Käsemann, “The Disciples of John the Baptist in Ephesus,” in Essays on New Testament Themes (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964), 136–48, here 142–43.

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Similar hints of a situation of competition between Baptists and Christians emerge from the Fourth Gospel – a case that was already strongly outlined in an 1898 monograph by Wilhelm Baldensperger,11 then somewhat discredited by the lengths to which Rudolf Bultmann took it, arguing on the basis of Mandean sources that the Fourth Evangelist was battling against Gnostics from Baptist circles.12 But it seems undeniable that Baldensperger’s basic point was right – that the Fourth Gospel emerged out of a situation in which belief in the Baptist was contending with belief in Jesus. Even Knut Backhaus, who devoted his 1991 dissertation to refuting the competition hypothesis, makes an exception for the Fourth Gospel.13 And there are good reasons for doing so. The Gospel’s author has reached only the sixth verse of his narrative when he inserts a pointed parenthesis about the Baptist into the Logos-hymn he has apparently adapted from another source.14 In this intrusive comment he insists that John was not the Light, but only came in order to bear witness to it. But why stress that John was not the Light, unless there were people around who were asserting that he was? A similar conclusion arises from a look at the first words the Baptist speaks in this Gospel, his reply to “the Jews” from Jerusalem about his identity (1:20). “And he confessed, and he did not deny, and he confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’” Oscar Cullmann rightly observes that this emphatic repetition “can only be explained as aimed at an assertion to the contrary” – that is, the assertion that John was the Messiah.15 Elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel we see the author mustering his forces against this assertion of the preeminence of the Baptist by emphasizing the subordination of John to Jesus. Indeed, the Evangelist repeatedly mobilizes the Baptist himself to testify to his own inferiority, making him acknowledge that he is neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor even a prophet (1:19–20); that he is 11 Wilhelm Baldensperger, Der Prolog des vierten Evangeliums. Sein polemisch-apologetischer Zweck (Freiburg/Leipzig/Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1898). 12 See Rudolf Bultmann, “Der religionsgeschichtliche Hintergrund des Prologs zum Johannes-Evangelium,” in Eucharistērion. Studien zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments. Hermann Gunkel zum 60.Geburtstage, dem 23. Mai 1922 dargebracht von seinen Schülern und Freunden. 2 Teil. Zur Religion und Literatur des Neuen Testaments, FRLANT 36 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1923), 1–26; Rudolf Bultmann, “Die Bedeutung der neuerschlossenen mandäischen und manichäischen Quellen für das Verständnis des Johannesevangeliums,” ZNW 24 (1925): 100–146; Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. George Raymond Beasley-Murray, Rupert William Noel Hoare, and J. K. Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 17–18. 13 Backhaus, Jüngerkreise, 365–66, 370. 14 On John 1:6–8 as an editorial insertion into a preexistent Logos Hymn, see Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I–XII, AB 29 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1966), 21–23, 27–28. 15 See Oscar Cullmann, “Ὁ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος,” in The Early Church: Studies in Early Christian History and Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956), 177–82, here 178.

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unworthy to bend down and untie the “Coming One’s” sandal (1:26–27); that the whole purpose of his baptismal ministry has been to reveal Jesus to Israel (1:31); and, climactically, that Jesus’s influence must increase while his own must decline (3:30). A similar diminution of the Baptist with regard to Jesus is implicit elsewhere in the Gospel. When Jesus begins his own baptismal ministry, he makes and baptizes more disciples than John (3:26; 4:1). John performs no miracles, whereas Jesus accomplishes a plethora (10:41–42). The point of all of this is that Jesus rather than John is the one to be followed. This is what paradigmatically happens towards the end of the first chapter (1:35–37): disciples of the Baptist hear him acclaiming Jesus as “the Lamb of God” and begin following Jesus instead of John. At least one of the purposes of the Fourth Gospel seems to be to encourage such defections. In the subsequent centuries, the Baptist movement continued to compete with early Christianity in a way that needed to be countered from the Christian side. In the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, a fourth-century Christian document that incorporates a second-century Syrian source,16 we hear of followers of John who proclaimed him rather than Jesus as the Messiah (Rec. 1.54.8; 1.60.1). Unlike the Ephesian believers described in Acts, the adherents of the Baptist in these Pseudo-Clementine passages do not end up becoming Christians, but remain steadfast in their commitment to John. Since the PseudoClementines are Christian documents, they describe these followers of the Baptist as heretical; but this is even stronger evidence that such people existed, and were significant enough to need refutation, not only in the second century, but on into the fourth. This second-century Pseudo-Clementine source does not accuse John of proclaiming himself Messiah; only some of his disciples are blamed. A later stratum of the Pseudo-Clementines, however, does blame John for this error and makes him the predecessor of the arch-heretic, Simon Magus (Homilies 2.17.23). No historicity can be assigned to this eccentric fourth-century attack on John; but the fact that such venom could be displayed against him in a Christian source is nevertheless significant, as it suggests that competition between John’s followers and those of Jesus continued for several centuries, and even 16

On the date of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies and their sources, see Georg Strecker, Das Judenchristentum in den Pseudoklementinen, TU 70 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1981), 268; F. Stanley Jones, An Ancient Jewish Christian Source on the History of Christianity: Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1.27–71, Texts and Translations 37 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 166; Annette Yoshiko Reed, “‘Jewish Christianity’ After the ‘Parting of the Ways’: Approaches to Historiography and Self-Definition in the PseudoClementines,” in The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, TSAJ 95 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 189–231, here 197; Jürgen Wehnert, “Taufvorstellungen in den Pseudoklementinen,” in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism, BZNW 176 (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2011), 2:1071–114, here 1073–77.

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grew more intense. This attack on John by some Christians was reciprocated on the other side by some followers of John. The Mandean sect, for example, which probably arose in second-century Syria and still exists in small numbers in Iraq and a worldwide diaspora, reveres John as the True Prophet while reviling Jesus as a false one.17

B. John’s Baptism, Forgiveness of Sins, and the Spirit With eyes sharpened by this digression into the larger context of competition between the Jesus movement and the Baptist movement, we return to Matthew’s redacted version of the purpose of John’s baptism (Matt 3:11): “I baptize you in water unto repentance.” As noted above, this is a significant alteration of Mark’s version. Whereas Mark describes John’s baptism as εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν, “unto forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4), Matthew describes it merely as εἰς μετάνοιαν, “unto repentance.” This looks like an intentional weakening of the Markan formula, deliberately decoupling John’s baptism from forgiveness and letting only the association with repentance stand. And this suspicion becomes a near certainty when we realize that Matthew has not only removed the formula εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν from the description of John’s baptism but has also inserted it into the description of Jesus’s death. For whereas, in Mark, Jesus’s word over the cup at the Last Supper is merely, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many” (Mark 14:24), Matthew’s version becomes, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many unto forgiveness of sins” (εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν, Matt 26:28). Matthew, then, denies to John’s baptism the power to forgive sins, instead transferring that power to the death of Jesus. And this, of course, is a logical thing for an early Christian writer to do. As a matter of fact, the Markan description of the purpose of John’s baptism presented a problem not only to Matthew but also to many others in the early church, and we can see them struggling with it. Tertullian, for example (On Baptism 10.5–6), opines that John’s baptismal preaching of forgiveness of sins was only “an announcement made in view of a future remission” (in futuram remissionem enuntiatum est). This became the standard explanation of the Markan formula: the forgiveness it announces is provisional, anticipating the future forgiveness that will happen through Christ’s death and Christian baptism, which actualizes that death sacramentally. And this provisionality is connected with the early Christian belief that forgiveness comes through impartation of

17

On the relevance of the Mandean literature for competition between followers of Jesus and followers of the Baptist in the early Christian centuries, see Marcus, John the Baptist, 19–22.

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the Spirit, and only Christ imparts the Spirit – a conviction we have already noticed behind the story in Acts 19. But it is doubtful that John himself would have agreed with this denuded account of his baptism. Rather, I would claim, he saw his baptism as imparting both forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit – or, rather, imparting forgiveness through impartation of the Spirit. This may seem at first to be a speculative claim, since John himself is portrayed in Mark (1:8) as well as Q (Matt 3:11//Luke 3:16) as contrasting his baptism in water with the “Coming One’s” baptism in the Spirit (Mark) or the Spirit and fire (Q). But several scholars have hypothesized that the original form of that saying was a variation of the Q version, minus the reference to the Spirit, so that the two clauses were perfectly balanced: “I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with fire.”18 I favor this view, for if John associated his own baptism with forgiveness of sins, he probably associated it with the Spirit as well. Those two things, after all, go together with each other, as well as with water imagery and repentance vocabulary, in a famous eschatological passage, Ezekiel 36:25–31. So, if John saw his baptism as imparting forgiveness, he probably saw it as imparting the Spirit as well. That he did so is supported first by the imagery of baptism itself; it is a washing, and in a context in which washings were associated with ritual or moral purity, it suggests a cleansing from uncleanness and sin. This is the way the Qumran sectarians saw things, and a good case can be made that John started out as a member of the Qumran community.19 The Qumranians practiced daily lustrations, and they connected these lustrations with the Ezekiel passage just mentioned (see, e.g., 1QS 4:20–22), apparently viewing their washings as a foretaste of the Spirit-bestowed purity that would be experienced in the new age. But they also believed that they were already participating in this new age and experiencing the Spirit through their membership in the elect community and participation in its purificatory rites (see, e.g., 1QS 3:6–9). Realized eschatology, then – contrary to many New Testament exegetes – was not an invention of Jesus and the early Christians. As Herbert Braun already pointed out in his 1966 dissertation, the members of the Dead Sea Sect also believed that they were presently experiencing the powers of the new

18 See already Charles Augustus Briggs, The Messiah of the Gospels (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 67 n. 4; subsequently Martin Dibelius, Die urchristliche Überlieferung von Johannes der Täufer, FRLANT 15 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1911), 56–58; Steve Mason, “Fire, Water and Spirit: John the Baptist and the Tyranny of Canon,” SR 21 (1992): 163–80, here 170; and those listed by James D. G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit (London: SCM, 1970), 8 n. 1. 19 See Marcus, John the Baptist, 27–45.

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age.20 And if the Qumranians believed that their lustrations imparted the eschatological Spirit, and the early Christians believed that their lustrations imparted the eschatological Spirit, it makes sense that John the Baptist, who linked the two groups, also believed so. The alternative is to posit that the Qumranians linked their water rites with the Spirit; that John, who started out at Qumran, for some reason de-linked his water rite from the Spirit; and that the early Christians then re-linked their water rite, which they inherited from John, with the Spirit. And this seems less likely than positing a continuity in belief in possession of the Spirit between Qumran, John, and the early Christians.21 Even the Gospel tradition, moreover, almost in spite of itself, attests the linkage between John’s water-baptism and endowment with the Spirit. For, in the Gospels, Jesus himself receives the Spirit immediately after being baptized by John (Mark 1:10//Matt 3:16//Luke 3:21–22; cf. John 1:33) – a connection that was pointed out in an important but little-noted essay from 1970 by Otto Böcher significantly entitled “Wasser und Geist.”22 Böcher’s insight was already anticipated by several centuries by St. Jerome (Dialogue with the Luciferians 7 [PL 23.161C]), who asks rhetorically why John’s baptism could not impart the Spirit, when it imparted it to Jesus.23 Jerome, of course, does not think that John’s baptism did impart the Spirit and forgive sins, but the way he goes about arguing his point is illuminating. For essentially he says that, if John’s baptism had brought about forgiveness of sins, it would have been perfect; but if it had been perfect, there would have been no need for Christian baptism, which depends on Christ’s death and resurrection (PL 23.162C–163A). Christ’s sacrifice, in other words, would have been otiose; therefore, John’s baptism could not have accomplished forgiveness. The whole argument is retrospective, based on the presumption that only Christ’s death and resurrection created the conditions for salvation. And

20

Herbert Braun, Qumran und das Neue Testament, 2 vols. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1966); cf. David E. Aune, The Cultic Setting of Realized Eschatology in Early Christianity, NovTSup 28 (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 29–44; E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 280–81. 21 Compare Dale Allison’s argument against the Jesus Seminar’s contention that John the Baptist was apocalyptic; that Jesus deapocalypticized John’s message; and that the church then reapocalypticized it. Allison argues that it is more likely that all three were apocalyptic; cf. Dale C. Allison, Jr., “A Plea for Thoroughgoing Eschatology,” JBL 113 (1994): 651–68, here 654–55; idem, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 54–55. 22 Otto Böcher, “Wasser und Geist,” in Verborum Veritas: Festschrift für Gustav Stählin zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Otto Böcher and Klaus Haacker (Wuppertal: Theologischer Verlag Rolf Brockhaus, 1970), 197–203. 23 Quid est hoc, quod Joannes in baptismate suo aliis Spiritum sanctum dare non potuit, qui Christo dedit.

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this is the same soteriological reasoning, I would claim, that leads Matthew to remove the reference to forgiveness of sins from his account of John’s baptism and insert it instead into his Last Supper account.

C. The Matthean Baptist and the Historical Baptist Have Matthew and other early Christian writers, then, totally remade John – have they baptized him, so to speak, into their own Christian image? Although much of the previous argument seems to point in this direction, the conclusion needs to be nuanced. For despite the creative reshaping that has taken place, there are limits to early Christian inventiveness in the Gospel tradition. Sometimes the evangelists are creative theologians; but sometimes, to adopt Rudolf Pesch’s terminology, they are conservative redactors.24 I conclude by investigating a Matthean example. We have previously seen that Matthew implies that John’s prophecy of the coming of a “Stronger One,” that is, the Messiah,25 refers to Jesus. He does this, following Mark’s lead, by juxtaposing this reference to a coming figure who will baptize in the Spirit with the account of Jesus’s baptism, where the Spirit descends upon Jesus and a heavenly voice declares him to be God’s son. In Mark (1:9–11), these visionary events are part of a private revelation to Jesus, corresponding to the Markan motif of the messianic secret.26 Matthew, however, turns this revelation into a public event (Matt 3:16–17): the heavens are (objectively) opened,27 and the heavenly voice says, “This is my beloved Son,” not “You are my beloved Son,” as in Mark. Presumably, then, some of those present, including John, hear God call Jesus his son, and in this context the Russian Synodal Translation seems to be right to take John as the subject of εἶδεν in the Matthean account.28 In Matthew, then, John seems to be clued

24 Joel Marcus, Mark: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 27/27A (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2000–2009), 1:59–62. 25 On the association of the Messiah with strength in ancient Jewish texts and other evidence that “the Stronger One” = the Messiah, see Marcus, John the Baptist, 188 n. 7. 26 On the relation between the Markan version of Jesus’s baptism and the motif of the messianic secret, see Marcus, Mark, 1:164. This correspondence is obscured by the Russian Synodal Translation of Mark 1:9a, which introduces in square brackets a reference, not present in the Greek text, to John as the subject of the vision. In the Greek, the subject of the verb εἶδεν (“he saw”) is the same as the implied subject of the participle ἀναβαίνων (“coming up”), namely, Jesus. 27 The impression of objectivity, however, is somewhat attenuated by the harmonizing αὐτῷ (“the heavens were opened to him”) introduced by Codex Vaticanus, which is followed by the Russian Synodal Translation (отверзлись Ему небеса; emphasis added). 28 и увидел [Иоанн] Духа Божия….

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into Jesus’s identity, and the messianic secret seems to be broken, at least by the time of Jesus’s baptism. But this is not said explicitly. John’s knowledge of Jesus’s messianic identity is merely, as we postmodernists like to say, gestured toward. The Baptist does not, as in the Fourth Gospel, declare of Jesus, “This is he of whom I said” (John 1:30), or “Behold the Lamb of God” (1:29), or “He must increase, but I must decrease” (3:30). A historical restraint is operative in Matthew, and in the Synoptic tradition in general, that is not operative in the Fourth Gospel, where there is more of a tendency to retroject later Christian insights freely. This restraining force becomes more evident by the time we reach Matthew’s eleventh chapter. Here we find an account (Matt 11:2–6), substantially paralleled in Luke 7:18–23, and hence from Q, in which John, in prison towards the end of his life, sends messengers to Jesus to ask whether or not he is the Messiah (“the Coming One”). Jesus responds by referring to his miraculous healings and pointedly concluding, “Blessed is whoever is not offended by me.” This is an indirect exhortation to believe, one which seems to carry an undertone of threat (“Take care that you don’t take offense at what I’m claiming”). Significantly, the passage concludes with this exhortation; we are not told how John responded. This tradition likely has a historical core. It goes against the grain of early Christian theology – and, as we have seen, Matthew’s own grain – by making John into something of a skeptic about Jesus; we might even call him a Kyrioskeptic. Or, if not a Kyrioskeptic, at least a person who is not totally convinced about Jesus’s messianic identity. For surely if those who transmitted the tradition knew that John had been convinced, they would have said so. But they did not. A literary restraint is operative here, conditioned by a historical memory: John did not openly accept Jesus’s messiahship. Late in his career, he may have begun to consider it, but he never became a believer.29 The theological imperative to proclaim the opposite, of course, has never been thwarted by the absence of a christological confession in this passage. Origen, John Chrysostom, and Jerome, for example, suggest that John’s question to Jesus was for the sake of his disciples, not for himself, so that they might become convinced of Jesus’s messiahship.30 In modern times, many have preferred a more psychological approach: though John was convinced of Jesus’s messiahship when he baptized him, he went through a “dark night of the soul” as a result of his prison experience, and so he needed reassurance 29

Cf. Walter Wink, John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition, SNTSMS 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 24: “The absence of a further response by John merely indicates what parties on both sides knew to be fact, that John did not accept Jesus as the Coming One.” For the basic argument, see already Dibelius, Überlieferung, 18. 30 For Origen, see frag. 202 in GCS Origenes 12.165; for Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 36.2; for Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 11:1–2.

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from Jesus. Alfred Edersheim, for example, in a nineteenth century tome still popular in evangelical circles, speaks melodramatically of John’s “day of darkness and terrible questioning.”31 In my opinion, these explanations simply do not work. In our passage, John sends his messengers to Jesus because he has heard stories of Jesus’s miracles. The question he asks, then, seems to be his own question, which has been engendered by hearing these stories: do they, or do they not, demonstrate messiahship? And the passage taken by itself is far from conveying the impression that John has just begun to doubt Jesus in prison; it suggests, rather, that he has just begun to consider the possibility of belief.32 The interpretations of Origen, Chrysostom, Jerome, and the modern psychologizers, in other words, are the sorts of explanations that only convince those already convinced of what needs to be proven – that John cherished a prior belief in Jesus. The most interesting question for us, however, is why Matthew – and Luke – include this story, which goes so much against the grain of Christian theology in general and their own theologies in particular. One could respond that they were after the main point, and they were not worried about all the peripheral ramifications. They want to say that Jesus’s miracles established his messianic credentials, and they do so with a story from their bag of Jesus-traditions, which may have circulated before belief in John’s acceptance of Jesus’s messiahship became established. Perhaps they do not realize the problem this creates for their earlier picture of John as a Jesus adherent (even in his mother’s womb, in Luke 1:41–44). Perhaps, in other words, this is an instance of what my Duke University colleague Mark Goodacre calls “editorial fatigue.”33 But it is also possible that Matthew and Luke are leading up to the somewhat more critical evaluation of John that emerges a little later in their parallel narratives. Yes, John like Jesus was rejected by the childish nitpickers of “this generation,” though for opposite reasons (Matt 11:16–19//Luke 7:31–35). Yes, he was a great prophet, indeed, more than a prophet (Matt 11:7–9//Luke 7:24– 26). In fact, he was the greatest person ever born of woman in the penultimate age (Matt 11:11a//Luke 7:28a). But the least person in the new age, in the

31 Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (London: MacDonald,1883; repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), 1:666–69. On the history of interpretation of the passage, see further Joel Marcus, “John the Baptist and Jesus,” in When Judaism and Christianity Began: Essays in Memory of Anthony J. Saldarini, 2 vols., ed. Alan J. AveryPeck, Daniel Harrington, and Jacob Neusner, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004), 1:179–97, here 1:185–87. 32 See Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2003), 221. 33 Mark Goodacre, “Fatigue in the Synoptics,” NTS (1998): 45–58.

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dominion of heaven – the most insignificant of Jesus’s disciples – is nevertheless greater than John (Matt 11:11b//Luke 7:28b).34 If my argument so far has been correct, this is probably not how John saw himself. He saw himself, rather, as the vanguard of the age of fulfillment, or, as Böcher puts it, as a Heilsmittler, a channel of salvation.35 In his baptism, people were already experiencing forgiveness of sins through the power of the Spirit. The new age of fulfillment had arrived with the irruption of redemptive power into the earthly sphere that occurred through his baptism; soon the Davidic Messiah would come to bring this process to completion. But this would essentially be a mopping-up operation, as those who had refused John’s offer of repentance and forgiveness were winnowed out and burnt up in the fire of God’s wrath. John’s ministry, then, was one of grace; he would leave the fiery judgment to the Messiah. This reconstruction of John as the vanguard of the new age, again, contrasts with the way in which he has often been portrayed in Christian scholarship, as illustrated by the classic statement of Joachim Jeremias: John the Baptist remains within the framework of expectation; Jesus claims to bring fulfilment. John still belongs in the realm of the law, with Jesus, the gospel begins. … Here is the gulf which separates the two men, despite all the affinities between them.36

Correspondingly, there has been a tendency in the supposedly “scientific” scholarship of the past two hundred years, to contrast John, the judgmental Jew who proclaimed coming wrath, with Jesus, the merciful transcender of Judaism. Not only Jeremias, but such other famous luminaries as Ernest Renan, David Friedrich Strauss, Adolf Harnack, and Martin Dibelius, down to the Je-

34 On the vexed question of whether Matthew and Luke see John as belonging to the old age or the new, see Hans Conzelmann, The Theology of St. Luke (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 12–17, 20–27; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke, AB 28/28A (New York: Doubleday, 1981–85), 2:1115–16J; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 2, Commentary on Matthew VIII–XVIII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 254–55; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 142; François Bovon, Luke, Hermeneia, 3 vols. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002–12), 2:253–54. A crucial passage here is Matt 11:12–13//Luke 16:16, which says that the era of the law and the prophets lasted “until John” (ἕως Ἰωάννου/μέχρι Ἰωάννου) but that from then on the dominion of God has suffered violence (Matthew) or has been proclaimed (Luke). Unfortunately, it is unclear whether the “until” in “until John” is inclusive or exclusive, or exactly what ἀπὸ τότε (“from then on”) in Luke 16:16b means. What is clear is that Matt 11:11//Luke 7:28, taken by itself, seems to exclude John from the dominion of God, relegating him to the status of a precursor. 35 Böcher, “Wasser,” 203. 36 Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 49.

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sus Seminar in our own day, could be cited as representatives of this approach.37 The roots of this subordination of John to Jesus, as we have seen, are present in the Gospels, and probably reflect the competition between the early Christian and Baptist missions. But it has often been expressed with a sharpness and sense of polemic that owes more to Marcion than to Wissenschaft and that contrasts with the complexity of the New Testament portrait of John. It also needs to be said, however, that the competition between the Baptist movement and the Jesus movement probably did not begin with the Gospel writers or Q. It probably goes back, rather, to John and Jesus themselves. A good case can be made, for example, that Matt 11:11//Luke 7:28 probably reflects the attitude of the historical Jesus towards John the Baptist.38 It is the sort of ambivalent response that often, in the history of religions, marks a successor figure in relation to his predecessor: think Malcolm X in relation to Elijah Muhammad, Bahā’ Allāh in relation to the Bāb, even, in a way, Muhammad in relation to Jesus.39 There is, on the one hand, the need to acknowledge the predecessor, to whom one owes so much, and in whose movement one began one’s spiritual life (the greatest of those born of women). There is, on the other hand, the need to cut this spiritual father figure down to size (less than the least in the kingdom).40 Ultimately, then, Jesus’s evaluation of the Baptist came to differ from the Baptist’s evaluation of himself. He relativized the Baptist as he came to a higher estimation of his own role in salvation history. The Christian tradition, by and large, has followed in his footsteps. If we are Christians, we may see a fittingness in this development, which we believe was guided by the Spirit. After all, who really knows his own worth, or where he ultimately stands in the scheme of things? So perhaps the hand of God was behind the transformation of John into Jesus’s forerunner and subordinate, inferior to the least in the kingdom; John had to decrease in order for Jesus to increase. But if we are Christian

37 For citations, see Marcus, John the Baptist, 203 n. 68. See also Eugen Drewermann, Das Markusevangelium (Olten/Freiburg im Breisgau: Walter Verlag, 1987–88), 129 n. 2, who claims that Jesus’s proclamation of God’s forgiveness “presupposes the failure of the Baptist’s preaching of judgment” (emphasis in original: setzt … das Scheitern an der Gerichtspredigt des Täufers voraus). 38 Against Dibelius, Überlieferung, 13, who thinks that only Matt 11:11a/Luke 7:28a, the exaltation of John, reflects Jesus, since it goes against the grain of the Christian tendency to downgrade him. Matthew 11:11b//Luke 7:28b, which relegates John to an inferior position, he finds impossible to ascribe to Jesus, since it so blatantly contradicts the first half of the verse. 39 For these parallels, see Marcus, John the Baptist, 91–96. 40 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973) describes the similar process of a great poet relativizing his predecessor and analyzes this ambivalent response as a literary outworking of the Oedipus complex.

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historians, we will want to recognize the contingent factors behind this transformation.

An Epitome of Matthean Themes: Matthew 28:18–20 Craig S. Keener Craig S. Keener

A. Introduction Although ancient works often had abrupt endings,1 such as most scholars find in Mark 16:8,2 many works closed instead by pulling together major themes. Indeed, some rhetorical handbooks recommended such conclusions,3 and many ancient speeches closed accordingly.4 Matthew is not a speech, but the work is carefully structured, and Matthew seems to follow this pedagogically useful approach. Works in various other genres sometimes offered closing summaries,5 including in historical volumes.6 Matthew’s Gospel closes with Jesus’s commission to reach the nations. Whatever else we might infer about Matthew’s ideal audience, they presumably would not hear the work’s pericopes read in isolation; they would hear the work as a whole (note Alan Culpepper’s mention of the passage’s continuity with the rest of Matthew, offered earlier in this conference, presented in this book under the title “The Place of Matthew in Early Christianity” under part B.

1

See e.g., Thucydides 8.109.1; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demosth. 58; Valerius Maximus 9.15. ext. 2; Lucan, Civil War 10.542–46; Plutarch, Fame Ath. 8, Mor. 351B; Fort. Alex. 2.13, Mor. 345B; Fort. Rom. 13, Mor. 326C; Uned. R. 7, Mor. 782F; Isocrates, Demon. 52, Or. 1; Demetrius, Style 5.304; Herodian 8.8.8. See further David Wardle, ed., trans., Valerius Maximus: Memorable Deeds and Sayings (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 289; John Moles, “Time and Space Travel in Luke-Acts,” in Engaging Early Christian History: Reading Acts in the Second Century, ed. Rubén R. Dupertuis and Todd Penner (Bristol: Acumen, 2013), 101–22, here 113; especially J. Lee Magness, Sense and Absence: Structure and Suspension in the Ending of Mark’s Gospel, SBLSemS (Atlanta: SBL, 1986). 2 See e.g., Thomas E. Boomershine and Gilbert L. Bartholomew, “The Narrative Technique of Mark 16:8,” JBL 100 (1981): 213–23; esp. again Magness, Sense. For a rare exception to this view, see William R. Farmer, The Last Twelve Verses of Mark, SNTSMS 25 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). 3 E.g., Rhet. Alex. 20, 1433b.29; 37, 1445b.21–23. 4 E.g., Aeschines, Tim. 196; Isaeus, Cleon. 48; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thuc. 55; Demosth. 32; Cicero, Quinct. 28.85–29.90 (for entire proofs section, immediately before the conclusion); Gorgias, Hel. 20 (cf. Hel. 21); Aelius Aristides, Fifth Leuctrian Oration 43–44; Ps.-Quintilian, Decl. 338.2. 5 E.g., Cicero, Fin. 5.32.95–96; Musonius Rufus, 3, p. 42.23–29; 6, pp. 54.26–56.11, with a summary of the summary in p. 56.7–11; Hippolytus, Her. Bk. 10, esp. 10.1. 6 E.g., Polybius 2.71.7–8; 39.8.3–6.

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“Matthew’s Use of Its Sources,” sections I. and IV.). The audience would probably hear the work multiple times. By this point in Matthew’s Gospel, however, even an attentive first-time reader will have some familiarity with what has gone before. The concluding lines of this Gospel draw together some key themes that run throughout the Gospel.7

B. Authority First, in 28:18, Jesus has all authority. Throughout the Gospel, a key theme is the kingdom, or authority, of heaven. (One might compare the theme of kingship throughout Philo’s Life of Moses, as Carl Holladay illustrated for us in this conference.8) In the prophets, the good news of God’s reign, or kingdom, signified the restoration of God’s people (Isa 52:7); Matthew emphasizes Jesus proclaiming τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς βασιλείας, good news about God’s reign, in his summaries of Jesus’s ministry in 4:23 and 9:35, and disciples carry among the nations the message so designated in 24:14. Matthew highlights the continuity of the message: in 3:2, John proclaims the coming of the kingdom; Jesus does the same in the summary of his message in 4:17, and he sends his disciples to do the same in 10:7. Yet the Gospel opens in 1:1 and 6 by mentioning Jesus as son of David, who is “the king.” In the infancy narrative, Magi come to worship the true king of the Judeans, who contrasts with Herod the king in 2:1–3. As in Mark’s Gospel, the theme of kingship toward the end of the Gospel climaxes in Jesus as king of the Jews, crowned with thorns and enthroned on a cross (27:11, 29, 37, 42). By the end of Matthew’s Gospel, a reader should recognize that Jesus is king in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus’s followers understand that Jesus the king has already come but is also yet to come, and that the kingdom is thus in him already as well as not yet. Matthew balances seven parables of the future kingdom in 24:32–25:46 with seven or eight parables of the present one in 13:1–52.9 This conclusion also balances present mission, authorized by Jesus who rules heaven and earth, with

7 Much more briefly, cf. Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 715–21. 8 Carl R. Holladay, “The Gospel of Matthew Within the Context of Second Temple Judaism,” Sept. 26, 2018, paper presented at The International Conference of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas on “The Gospel of Matthew in its Historical and Theological Context,” Moscow, Russia, Sep. 24–28, 2018. See Holladay’s article above, published under the same title, section C. “Philo’s De vita Mosis.” 9 With e.g., Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 2nd ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972), 92–93.

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a future consummation implied in the statement in 28:20, τῆς συντελείας τοῦ αἰῶνος, “the end of the age.” If we turn to the specific language of ἐξουσία, Jesus’s authority is a theme that runs through Matthew’s Gospel. Nearly all these references to authority also appear in Mark, but only in Matthew do we have the explicit reference to Jesus’s authority in the conclusion. In Matt 7:29, crowds marvel that Jesus teaches with authority, not like the scribes. In 21:23–27, his elite interlocutors do not want to acknowledge that Jesus’s authority, like that of John the Baptist, is from heaven. Jesus often expresses his authority in healings. Thus, for example, in 8:9 the Gentile centurion, who is backed by the authority of Rome, recognizes that Jesus can heal his servant because he is backed by the authority of heaven. Jesus demonstrates his authority on earth to forgive sins by healing the paralytic in 9:6. Matt 28:18, however, climaxes this theme, echoing Dan 7:13–14, 27 more fully. No longer does the Son of Man have authority only on earth, as in Matt 9:6, but now he has all authority in heaven and on earth. With the addition of authority “in heaven,” it becomes clear that Jesus reigns in the kingdom of heaven. This authority undergirds the following commission in 28:19–20. That is clear because already in 10:1, Jesus delegated to his disciples authority to expel impure spirits and to heal all sorts of diseases and sicknesses. Just as Jesus proclaims the message of the kingdom and demonstrates its authority through signs in 4:23–25, so, we learn in Matthew 10:8, will his followers, or at least key leaders in the mission. From 9:35–10:1, the passage preceding the commission to the Twelve, we may infer that Jesus sends the disciples precisely to multiply his ministry of proclaiming and demonstrating the kingdom.10 It is clear that Matthew wants his audience to learn from and apply the commissioning of the Twelve in Matt 10 not only because this chapter incorporates material that appears in the eschatological discourse of Mark 13 but also because in 10:23 the mission to Israel explicitly continues until the coming of the Son of Man. Thus, the Son of Man’s authority, delegated from the Father, is delegate to those who carry on his mission.

C. Discipleship Making disciples for Jesus is the key command in this section, dependent on, and thus as the proper response to and expression of Jesus’s authority. We know that it is Jesus for whom Jesus’s followers make disciples because Matt

10

See my further comment in Craig S. Keener, The Spirit in the Gospels and Acts: Divine Purity and Power (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1997), 110–17.

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23:8–10 is explicit: “Do not be called Rabbi; for you have one teacher, and all of you are siblings … nor are you to be called instructors, because you have one instructor, the Christ.” (I suppose that our title “professor” likely falls into the same prohibited category.) This differs from typical ancient expectations for making disciples.11 Three participial clauses are subordinate to this single imperative μαθητεύσατε, “make disciples,” probably suggesting a single command that is implemented in three ways. Even if one or more of these participial clauses functions imperatively in its own right, disciple-making remains the heart of the mission.12 Making disciples of the nations is thus carried out in three ways: (1) by going, presumably among the nations, since it is they who must be discipled; (2) by baptizing, in distinctively Christian terms of initiation specified here; and (3) by teaching, which is specified as obedience to all that Jesus has commanded. I will focus for the moment specifically on several of Jesus’s teachings in Matthew’s Gospel that underline the cost of discipleship.13 Those who are to “make disciples” of the nations must understand what discipleship involves. Jesus’s calling of disciples in 4:19–20 shows that true disciples must value Jesus above job security. The disciples leave their nets to follow Jesus, and not from a subsistence occupation for a more lucrative one. While ordinary fishermen were not among the elite, they were probably also better off than the majority of people who were peasant farmers.14 To forsake their livelihoods for

11 In Jesus’s day, “Rabbi” was probably an honorary greeting meaning, “my master” (23:7–8). Likewise, “father” (23:9), while a greeting applicable to all elders, was particularly applicable to teachers (2 Kgs 2:12; 4 Bar. 2:4, 6, 8; 5:5; t. Sanh. 7:9; Sipre Deut. 34.3.1–3, 5; 305.3.4). 12 The first participle (“going”) may be part of the command (“make disciples”; Cleon Rogers, “The Great Commission,” BSac 130 [1973]: 258–67), but Matthew does often coordinate this participle with the main verb (cf. 2:8; 11:4; 17:27; 28:7; Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew, NAC 22 [Nashville: Broadman, 1992], 431). Even as an attendant circumstance participle, it remains an essential part of the commission (Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996], 645). 13 I adapt material, here and at various points in the rest of this paper, from my article, “Matthew’s Missiology: Making Disciples of the Nations (Matt 28:19–20),” American Journal of Pentecostal Studies 12 (2009): 3–20, developing ideas in my Matthew commentary. For the phrase, “cost of discipleship,” see Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan; London: SCM, 1963). 14 With Sean Freyne, Galilee, Jesus and the Gospels: Literary Approaches and Historical Investigations (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), 241; cf. Martin Hengel, Property and Riches in the Early Church: Aspects of Social History of Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 27.

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ministry was a serious act of faith. Ancient accounts of people forsaking everything to convert to Judaism15 or philosophy16 underlined the value of what the converts were acquiring (cf. Matt 13:44–46). Their behavior illustrates repentance in light of the coming kingdom, as articulated in 4:17, directly preceding this paragraph; like a pearl of great price or treasure hidden in a field, the kingdom matters more than anything else (13:44–46). Furthermore, true disciples must value Jesus above residential security. Seeing Jesus about to cross the lake, a prospective disciple offers to follow him “wherever” he goes (8:18–19) – perhaps implying, “even across this lake.”17 Jesus invites him to count the cost of real following: despite a home in Capernaum in 4:13, in 8:20 Jesus’s itinerant ministry in a sense leaves him no place to rest,18 except perhaps on a boat during a storm in 8:24. (Matthew does omit the makeshift cushion mentioned in Mark 4:38.) Elsewhere, in 2:13–15 Matthew shows that even as an infant, Jesus was a refugee. Those who follow him have no certain home in this world. True disciples must also value Jesus above financial security. Jesus admonishes a rich young man who wants eternal life to give everything he has to the poor (19:21). Radical teachers in antiquity sometimes tested would-be disciples, including rich ones, to see if they could count the cost.19 Jewish tradition already valued “treasure in heaven.”20 But Matthew uses the account to articulate a principle that extends beyond this particular rich man: in 6:19–21, Jesus summons all his disciples to lay up treasures in heaven rather than on earth. In 6:24–34 Jesus goes on to summon disciples to concern themselves with the affairs of the kingdom rather than with the source of their food or drink (6:24– 34). True disciples must further value Jesus above social obligations. Wishing to defer discipleship, one prospective disciple wants to first bury his father; Jesus invites him instead to follow, leaving the burial to others who are dead (8:21– 22). In Jesus’s day, the son would have gone home immediately on hearing of the father’s death, and would not likely have been talking with Jesus, so the son is likely asking for one of two things. One possibility is that he is asking 15

Sipre Num. 115.5.7. Diogenes Laertius, Lives 6.5.87; Diogenes, Ep. 38. 17 For the contextual connection, see Jack Dean Kingsbury, “On Following Jesus: the ‘Eager’ Scribe and the ‘Reluctant’ Disciple (Matthew 8.18–22),” NTS 34 (1988): 45–59, here 56. 18 His comparison with birds (cf. Ps 11:1; 84:3; 102:6–7; 124:7; Prov 27:8) and foxes (Lam 5:18; Ezek 13:4) is apt, since they lacked much residential security. 19 E.g., Diogenes Laertius, Lives 6.2.36, 75–76; 6.5.87; 7.1.22; cf. Aulus Gellius 19.1.7– 10. Such teachers intended these challenges as tests, not absolute rejection; they normally accepted as disciples those who agreed to their demands (Diogenes Laertius, Lives 6.2.21; Diogenes, Ep. 38; cf. Sipre Num. 115.5.7). 20 Cf. e.g., Tob 4:9; Sir 29:10–11; 4 Ezra 7:77; 2 Bar. 14:12; 24:1; 44:14; t. Peʾah 4:18. 16

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for as much as a year’s delay; after the completion of the initial burial and seven days of mourning,21 the son would need to remain available for the secondary burial a year later.22 The other and perhaps more likely possibility is that the son is asking for an indefinite delay: in a related Middle Eastern idiom, one can speak of fulfilling one’s final filial obligation with reference to the father’s future death – thus the father might not even be dead yet.23 Whichever of these approaches is more likely, we should not think that they significantly reduce the social scandal of Jesus’s demand. Burying a father was one of a son’s greatest social responsibilities. Many Jewish sages in fact considered honoring parents a son’s greatest responsibility,24 and burying them was perhaps the greatest expression of that responsibility.25 Only God himself could take precedence over parents in such a matter!26 A son who failed to fulfill this task would be ostracized in his home village for the rest of his life. The call to follow Jesus, who is “God with us” (1:23), takes priority over social obligations and honor. Yet, all of these demands for discipleship pale in comparison to Jesus’s ultimate demand of prospective disciples. In both 10:28 and 16:24, those who want to be his disciples must take up their cross and follow him – that is, to the cross. In Jesus’s day, when people spoke of going to the cross they normally meant being led to execution, often through a hostile mob.27 Jesus demands nothing less than his followers’ lives. While there is surely an element of hyperbole in a number of Jesus’s teachings,28 the point of hyperbole is not so that hearers will dismiss it lightly as 21

Cf. Sir 22:12; Jdt 16:24; S. Safrai, “Home and Family,” in The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions, 2 vols., ed. Shmuel Safrai and Menahem Stern with David Flusser and Wilhelm Cornelius van Unnik (vol. 1: Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974; vol. 2: Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 2:728–92. 22 See Byron R. McCane, “‘Let the Dead Bury Their Own Dead’: Secondary Burial and Matt 8:21–22,” HTR 83 (1990): 31–43. 23 Kenneth Ewing Bailey, Through Peasant Eyes: More Lucan Parables, Their Culture and Style (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 26. 24 Let. Aris. 228; Josephus, Apion 2.206; Ps.-Phoc. 8; George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, 2 vols. (New York: Schocken, 1971), 2:132. 25 E.g., Tob 4:3–4; 6:14; 1 Macc 2:70; 4 Macc 16:11. Failure to bury a father was offensive throughout Mediterranean antiquity (e.g., Demosth., Against Aristogeiton 54). 26 Cf. Deut 13:6; 4 Macc 2:10–12; Josephus, Apion 2.206; Ps.-Phoc. 8; b. Meg. 3b. Some teachers claimed priority over parents (e.g., m. B. Meṣ. 2:11; cf. Diodorus Siculus 10.3.4), but not to the extent of damaging funeral arrangements! 27 Jeremias, Parables, 218–19; idem, New Testament Theology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 242. 28 A common ancient pedagogic device (e.g., Rhet. Her. 4.33.44; Cicero, Orator 40.139; Philostratus, V.A. 8.7; Hrk. 48.11; R. Dean Anderson, Jr., Glossary of Greek Rhetorical Terms Connected to Methods of Argumentation, Figures and Tropes from Anaximenes to

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“simply hyperbole.” The point of hyperbole is to challenge hearers. Nevertheless, while Jesus’s standard is an absolute one, it is implemented with grace, as Matthew’s narratives reveal. Whereas Jesus warns that a true disciple must follow him to the cross, in 26:56 his first disciples abandon him and flee. Their failure leaves the Romans to draft a bystander, Simon of Cyrene, to carry the cross that Jesus’s disciples fail to carry for him (27:32).29 He warns that whoever denies him will be denied before his Father (10:33), and denying him is precisely what Peter does in 26:70–75. Yet Jesus does not repudiate his disciples. In 28:7, the angels send the women at the tomb to announce Jesus’s resurrection to his μαθηταῖς, and in 28:16 the eleven μαθηταί (which must include Peter) gather in Galilee and receive the very commission we now discuss. Making disciples involves content beyond Jesus’s teachings about discipleship; I shall return to this content further when I address the mission of “teaching” in 28:20.

D. Going among the Nations The first participle connected with the command to make disciples is πορευθέντες, “going.” This term evokes Jesus’s earlier command to his disciples to “go” in preaching the kingdom (10:5–7): there the Twelve must not go on roads leading to gentile towns or enter Samaritan ones (10:5).30 Instead, they should go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (10:6); as they go (πορευόμενοι), they must proclaim the kingdom of heaven (10:7). Although the verb is common in Matthew (by contrast, it never appears in Mark before 16:12, 15), the distinction between the prohibition to go among Gentiles in 10:5 and the command to make disciples of them here invites the reader’s attention. Still, although the mission in Israel continues until the end in 10:23, in 10:18 the mission involves witness to Gentiles: already Matt 10 looks forward to the continuing mission. Whereas there is continuity in the Quintilian [Leuven: Peeters, 2000], 122–24; Galen O. Rowe, “Style,” in Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period 330 B.C.–A.D. 400, ed. Stanley E. Porter [Leiden: Brill, 1997], 121–57, here 128). 29 Keener, Matthew (2009), 676. On Simon of Cyrene, see e.g., Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to Grave. A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 913. 30 “Ways of Gentiles” probably meant roads leading to Gentile cities in or around Palestine (cf. T. W. Manson, The Sayings of Jesus [London: SCM, 1957; repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979], 179; Joachim Jeremias, Jesus’ Promise to the Nations, trans. S. H. Hooke, SBT 24 (London: SCM, 1958], 19 n. 3). Samaria and Gentile territories surrounded Galilee; Jesus’s instructions thus restricted their immediate mission to Galilee (see Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on his Literary and Theological Art [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982], 185).

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kingdom mission throughout Matthew, and some development in the kingdom message here, one element of the mission is specifically revoked: the limitation to Israel. Jesus already foreshadows this revocation when, after declaring in 15:24 that his mission was initially only for the lost sheep of Israel, he delivers a Gentile woman’s daughter in 15:28 on account of the woman’s persistent and self-abasing πίστις, faith. Matthew’s Gospel as a whole prepares for this conclusion, beginning already with his opening genealogy. Biblical and ancient Jewish genealogies typically included only male ancestors, but Matthew includes four women. Of the women he might have included, we might have expected him to include the most famous, the four matriarchs of Israel (or at least the three who were part of Jesus’s royal lineage).31 Instead, Matthew includes four women who have some sort of association with Gentiles.32 Tamar (Gen 38) was a Canaanite; ancient Jewish sources acknowledge her as a Gentile.33 Rahab was from Jericho; through a series of comparisons, Joshua’s narrative contrasts this Gentile, who brought her family into Israel, with the Judahite Achan whose sin destroyed his family (Josh 2; 6–7).34 Ruth was from Moab; though Moabites officially were not permitted to enter Israel (Deut 23:3), God welcomed Ruth, who followed him (Ruth 1:16). “Uriah’s widow” was probably from Judah herself (compare 2 Sam 11:3 with 2 Sam 23:34) but is named by her deceased husband to reinforce her Gentile association: she was married to Uriah the Hittite. Thus, three ancestors of King David, the Gospel’s first named figure (Matt 1:1), and the mother of King Solomon had some sort of association with Gentiles! The normal purpose of Jewish genealogies was to emphasize the purity of one’s Israelite (or sometimes levitical)

31

For the fame of the matriarchs, see e.g., Jub. 36:23–24; 1Qap Genar 20:2–10; ’Abot. R. Nat. 26, §54B. 32 With e.g., Eduard Schweizer, The Good News According to Matthew, trans. David E. Green (Atlanta: John Knox, 1975), 25; Bo Reicke, The New Testament Era: The World of the Bible from 500 B.C. to A.D. 100, trans. David E. Green (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 118; F. F. Bruce, The Message of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 65; Gundry, Matthew, 15; David E. Garland, Reading Matthew: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the First Gospel (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 18. For early Jewish emphasis on their Gentile character, see e.g., Yair Zakowitch, “Rahab als Mutter des Boas in der Jesus-Genealogie (Matth. I 5),” NovT 17 (1975): 1–5; Jeremias, Promise, 13–14; Marshall D. Johnson, The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies: with Special reference to the Setting of the Genealogies of Jesus, 2nd ed., SNTSMS 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 167–70. Some commentators instead associate these women with sexual scandal, but the pattern does not fit Ruth, and miraculous matriarchal births would have better prepared for the virgin birth (1:18–25) than scandalous ones did. 33 See e.g., L.A.B. 9:5; T. Jud. 10:6. 34 E.g., Rahab hides spies on her roof; Achan hides loot beneath his tent; Rahab saves her family by betraying her people, whereas Achan destroys his family by betraying his people.

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ancestry.35 Matthew, by contrast, specifically highlights the mixed character of Jesus’s royal lineage. In the next chapter, those who come to “worship” the new king of the Jews are the Magi (2:1), Persian astrologers. Their role might shock Matthew’s audience, who, inference from Josephs may suggest, would expect Parthians to be polytheistic,36 and who recognized the evil of pagan astrology.37 Magi appear negatively in the LXX of Daniel 2:2, 10, and more widely in Theodotian and Aquila.38 Rhetorical handbooks show us that ancient hearers were accustomed to contrasts and comparisons among characters.39 Whereas these likely pagans come to worship the true king (2:2), the current king over Judea, the Idumean Herod, acts like a pagan king. Matthew’s audience is a few generations later than Herod and probably lies outside Jewish Palestine, so they might not know how many temples Herod built for pagan deities40 or his reputation for murdering members of his own family.41 Any biblically informed hearer of this passage, however, would recognize the analogy implied in his murder of Bethlehem’s baby boys (2:16): Herod acted like Pharaoh of old (Exod 1:15–22), as well, perhaps, as Antiochus IV Epiphanes.42 The Persian wise men honor Israel’s true king, whereas the king of Israel acts like a pagan king! In Matt 3:9, John reminds Jewish people that they cannot depend on their ancestry for salvation. Whereas some believed that Abraham’s descendants as

35 E.g., Josephus, Apion 1.30; cf. b. Pes. 62b; y. Ter. 7:1; Johnson, Biblical Genealogies, 88–95. 36 See e.g., Josephus, Ant. 18.348. Some may have been Zoroastrian, but evidence may be lacking that Zoroastrian religion was already as widespread as some scholars suppose (see Donald J. Wiseman, foreword to Persia and the Bible, by Edwin M. Yamauchi [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996], 395–466; Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Did Persian Zoroastrianism Influence Judaism?” in Israel: Ancient Kingdom or Late Invention?, ed. Daniel I. Block, Bryan H. Cribb, and Gregory S. Smith [Nashville: Broadman & Holman Academic, 2008], 282– 97, here 291–92). 37 E.g., 1 En. 6:7, MSS; 8:3; Jub. 8:3; 12:17; 13:16-18; Philo, Praem. 58; Syr. Men. Sent. 292–93; Sib. Or. 3:221–222, 227–229; Sipra Qed. pq.6.203.2.1; Sipre Deut. 171.4.1; still, astrology exerted a wide influence even in early Judaism (e.g., Mek. Pisha 2.44–46). 38 See also Josephus, Ant. 10.195–203. 39 See e.g., Theon, Progymn. 2.86–88; Hermogenes, Progymn. 8. On Syncrisis 18–20; Anderson, Glossary of Greek Rhetorical Terms, 110–11; Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 916–17, 1183–84. 40 E.g., Josephus, Ant. 14.76; 15.298; 16.147; 19.329, 359; War 2.266. His building projects and “benefactions” were not, however, limited to Palestine (e.g., War 1.422–428). 41 E.g., Ant. 16.394; 17.187, 191; War 1.443–44, 550–51, 664–65. For other atrocities or attempted atrocities, see e.g., Ant. 17.174–179; War 1.437, 659–660. The Herod of Matt 2 acts “in character” with what we know of him historically. 42 Cf. 1 Macc 1:60–61; 2 Macc 6:10; 8:4.

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a whole would be saved,43 John warns that God can raise up children for Abraham from stones!44 In 4:13–15, Jesus relocates to Capernaum, fulfilling a prophecy of Isaiah about “Galilee of the Gentiles” (4:15). In 8:28–34, Jesus delivers demoniacs from a conspicuously largely Gentile, swine-herding region (8:28–34).45 In 8:5–13, Jesus heals a centurion’s servant, and in 8:10 commends the centurion’s faith as greater than that of his own fellow-Israelites. There, Jesus notes that many of Abraham’s genetic descendants would perish (8:12), but many would come from the east and west for the expected kingdom banquet with the patriarchs (8:11). Matthew has illustrated both directions: from the east, like Magi, and from the west, like Romans.46 Soon afterward he also illustrates north and south: Sheba and Nineveh, which repented, will fare better at the judgment than his own generation of Israel, which has not (12:41– 42).47 Indeed, in 10:15 and in 11:23–24, Jesus warns that even wicked Sodom will have a lighter judgment than his generation, for they would have repented had they seen the miracles that his generation was seeing.48 Likewise, as already noted, in 15:21–28 Jesus heeds the plea of a Canaanite woman. In Mark, she is a Syro-Phoenician “Greek” – that is, a resident of Syrophoenicia who belongs to the ruling Greek class of urban citizens. She belongs to a class of people who have been exploiting the workers of the countryside, but now must come as a supplicant.49 Matthew focuses instead on her

43

See especially m. Sanh. 10:1. See more detailed discussion on the background in Keener, Matthew, 124–25; idem, “Human Stones in a Greek Setting – Luke 3.8//Matthew 3.9; Luke 19.40,” Journal of GrecoRoman Christianity and Judaism 6 (2009): 28–36; cf. also idem, “‘Brood of Vipers’ (Mt. 3.7; 12.34; 23.33),” JSNT 28 (2005): 3–11. 45 On Gadara’s predominantly Gentile character, cf. e.g., Josephus, Ant. 17.320; War 2.478. 46 The centurion was probably geographically from the eastern empire, perhaps Syria (cf. Josephus, War 2.267–268; G. H. Stevenson, “The Army and Navy,” in The Augustan Empire: 44 B.C.–A.D. 70, vol. 10 in The Cambridge Ancient History, 12 vols., ed. Stanley Arthur Cook, Frank E. Adcock, and Martin Percival Charlesworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966], 218–38, here 226–27; John Brian Campbell, “Legion,” 839–42 in OCD,3 839), but he officially represents Rome. 47 The thought would be intelligible in an early Jewish setting. Some later rabbis suggested that Gentile converts would testify against the nations in the judgment (Lev. Rab. 2:9; Pesiq. Rab. 35:3), and some found in Nineveh’s quick repentance a threat to Israel (Mek. Pisha 1.81–82). 48 The prophets used Sodom to epitomize immorality (Isa 13:19; Jer 50:40; Zeph 2:9) and applied the image to Israel (Deut 32:32; Isa 1:10; 3:9; Jer 23:14; Lam 4:6; Ezek 16:46–49). It continued to epitomize immorality in early Judaism (e.g., Sir 16:8; Jub. 36:10; 3 Macc 2:5; t. Sanh. 13:8; t. Šabb. 7:23; Sipra Behuq. par. 2.264.1.3; Sipre Deut. 43.3.5). 49 See discussion in Gerd Theissen, The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic Tradition, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 70–72. 44

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location: she lives in a region populated by descendants of the ancient Canaanites.50 Yet Matthew’s Gospel opened with mention of two Canaanite women of faith, and this Canaanite woman also becomes, like the Gentile centurion earlier, a model of faith (15:28). Jesus puts the question about his identity to his disciples not in Jerusalem or Jewish Galilee but in Caesarea Philippi (16:13). Caesarea Philippi was a pagan city, originally named Paneas for its famous grotto of the god Pan.51 By choosing such a setting Jesus likely prefigures the future mission to proclaim his message outside the holy land. It is also surely no coincidence that in 27:54 the first people to acknowledge Jesus as God’s son after the crucifixion are the Gentile execution squad.52 Lest anyone miss the point of this recurrent theme of Gentiles, Matthew reports Jesus’s one prerequisite for the end. In contrast to end-time signs predicted by some his contemporaries such as wars and famines,53 of which Jesus says in 24:6–8 that, “The end is not yet,” he announces in 24:14 that the good news about the kingdom will be proclaimed among all peoples, and “then the end will come.” The closing parable of Jesus’s final Matthean discourse probably reinforces that idea. In 25:31–46, the nations are judged by how they have received the messengers of the kingdom, the “least of these my siblings” (25:40, 45). Everywhere else in Matthew Jesus’s spiritual siblings represent his disciples (12:49–50; 19:29; 23:8; 28:10); moreover, elsewhere in Matthew it is those who receive and give drink to Jesus’s agents who do the same for him

50 Some scholars find some continuity with Canaanite culture in this period (R. A. Oden, Jr., “The Persistence of Canaanite Religion,” BA 39 (1976): 31–36; David Flusser, “Paganism in Palestine,” in The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions, 2 vols., ed. Shmuel Safrai and Menahem Stern with David Flusser and Wilhelm Cornelius van Unnik; vol. 1: Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974; vol. 2: Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976], 2:1065–1100, here 1070–74). 51 See Pliny, N.H. 5.15.71; Josephus, War 1.404; further Josephus, The Jewish War, ed. Gaalya Cornfeld with Benjamin Mazar and Paul L. Maier (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 458; Vassilios Tzaferis, “Cults and Deities Worshipped at Caesarea Philippi-Banias,” in Priests, Prophets and Scribes: Essays on the Formation and Heritage of Second Temple Judaism in Honour of Joseph Blenkinsopp, ed. Eugene Ulrich, John. W. Wright, Robert P. Carroll, and Philip R. Davies, JSOTSup 149 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 190–201. 52 Mark notes only the centurion (Mark 15:39); Matthew broadens this to his colleagues. The detachment for execution may have been as few as four (cf. Acts 12:4; Kirsopp Lake and Henry J. Cadbury, English Translation and Commentary, vol. 4 of The Beginnings of Christianity [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979], 134; Philostratus, Vit. Apoll. 7.31). 53 Cf. e.g., Jub. 23:11–25 (esp. 23:13; 36:1); 1QM 15:1; Sib. Or. 3:213–215; 4 Ezra 8:63– 9:8; 13:30; 2 Bar. 26:1–27:13; 69:3–5; T. Mos. 7–8; m. Soṭah 9:15.

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(10:40–42; cf. 10:11).54 These texts involving proclamation to the nations before the end explains why 28:20 emphasizes that Jesus will be with his disciples “until the end of the age”: he will be with them in the task of discipling the nations (28:19). Apart from Matt 1–2 and 28:19, most of Matthew’s material about the Gentile mission already appears in Q (for those of us who accept Q) or Mark. Texts about the limitation to Israel seem not to reflect his own emphasis, but prior material from his circle of churches. What seems most important here is not so much Matthew’s sources, but what he does with them. Given what we know of Jewish conditions in the Roman province of Syria in the second half of the first century, Matthew likely addresses a Jewish audience that had suffered at the hands of Gentiles and may have felt every reason to hate them. Yet, Matthew’s message summons them to cross all barriers to reach these very Gentiles who had been their enemies – even such stereotypical enemies as Canaanites and Roman officers. Such an audience would hear very concretely commands such as loving one’s enemy.

E. Baptizing Making disciples for the kingdom involves not only going among other peoples to make disciples of them, but baptizing them. Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, baptism functions as an act of repentance, a response to John’s message about the kingdom (as in 3:2–6). Matthew’s conclusion presents a more developed form of the kingdom message, but presumably retains baptism as an expression of repentance, that is, of people turning to become disciples of Jesus. Judeans had many kinds of ceremonial washings, but the specific sort of baptism used once for a turning from an old way of life to a new one was applied to the purification of Gentiles joining the Jewish people.55 John the Baptist, who claims that God can raise up children for Abraham from stones, requires a washing that looks much like the washing normally required for Gentile converts.

54

Historically most interpreters applied the passage specifically to believers (whether as the believing poor or, as more often today, to missionaries; for the history of interpretation; see Sherman W. Gray, The Least of My Brothers: Matthew 25.31–46: A History of Interpretation, SBLDS 114 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989]). 55 For this element of the background, see e.g., H. H. Rowley, “Jewish Proselyte Baptism and the Baptism of John,” HUCA 15 (1940): 313–34; Karen Pusey, “Jewish Proselyte Baptism,” ExpT 95 (1984): 141–45; cf. Sib. Or. 4:162–165; Epictetus, Diatr. 2.9.20; m. Pesaḥ. 8:8; possibly Juvenal, Sat. 14.104. I argue the case in some detail in Keener, John, 445–47; idem, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012–15), 1:977–82.

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What distinguishes John’s baptism from various ritual washings of his contemporaries is that it is associated with John’s distinctive message: repentance in light of the coming kingdom. In 3:11, however, John anticipates a greater baptism to come, a baptism in the Holy Spirit; in 3:14 he wants such a baptism from Jesus. Thus, we can expect that, despite elements of continuity with John’s baptism, the newer baptism of Jesus will include a more fully developed message. As noted already, Jesus’s cosmic authority in 28:18 focalizes the kingdom message on him. The message of the kingdom is now not simply the message that “heaven” will reign (“heaven” being a Jewish title for God),56 but more specifically, that the reigning God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (28:19). Jewish people regularly invoked God as Father;57 they also recognized the Spirit as divine.58 Ranking the “Son” alongside the Father and the Spirit presents Jesus as divine and cosmic Lord, fitting the basic early Christian confession of Jesus’s Lordship (Acts 2:21, 38; 22:16; Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3). As I shall note later, Jesus’s promise to be “with them” also reprises a divine role. John and Jesus preached the reign of heaven; Jesus’s disciples preach the reign of Jesus. The immediate context of 28:18–20 offers two concrete models of proclamation, one positive and the other negative. In 28:1–10, the women are commissioned to take the message of Jesus’s resurrection, and bear witness faithfully. They do so despite the prejudice against women’s testimony throughout ancient Mediterranean culture.59 By contrast, in 28:11–15 the

56

Some Jewish texts employ “kingdom of heaven” as periphrasis for “God’s kingdom” (Sipra Qed. pq. 9.207.2.13; y. Qidd. 1:2, §24), though this phrase seems particularly characteristic of Matthew. For “heaven” as a familiar Jewish periphrasis for “God,” see e.g., Dan 4:26; 3 Macc 4:21; 1 En. 6:2; 1QM 12:5; Rom 1:18; Luke 15:18; m. ʾAbot 1:3; t. B. Qam. 7:5; Sipra Behuq. pq. 6. 267.2.1; 79.1.1. 57 E.g., Sir 23:1, 4; 3 Macc 6:8; m. Soṭah. 9:15; t. Ber. 3:14; t. B. Qam. 7:6; t. Ḥag. 2:1; t. Peʾah 4:21; Sipra Qed. pq. 9.207.2.13; Behuq. pq. 8.269.2.15; Sipre Deut. 352.1.2. 58 In contrast to Johannine and some other Christian theology, however, they viewed the Spirit as an aspect of God rather than a distinct divine person (cf. e.g., discussion in Keener, John, 961–66; idem, “Spirit, Holy Spirit, Advocate, Breath, Wind,” in The Westminster Theological Wordbook of the Bible, ed. Donald E. Gowan [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003], 484–96, here 484–87, 495–96). 59 See e.g., Josephus, Ant. 4.219; m. Yebam. 15:1, 8–10; 16:7; m. Ketub. 1:6–9; t. Yebam. 14:10; Sipra VDDeho. pq. 7.45.1.1; Hesiod, W.D. 375; Livy 6.34.6–7; Babrius 16.10; Phaedrus 4.15; Avianus, Fables 15–16; Justinian, Inst. 2.10.6 (though contrast the earlier Gaius, Inst. 2.105); Plutarch, Publicola 8.4; cf. Luke 24:11; Craig S. Keener, Paul, Women, and Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1992), 162–63.

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guards, because of fear and greed, bear false witness.60 These two models immediately precede the commissioning of the eleven to make disciples of the nations, a legacy the disciples impart to those they disciple. That is, the women at the tomb offer the positive model for the church’s message; the guards offer the antithesis of that model.61

F. Teaching them to Obey all that Jesus Commanded When Jewish people thought of disciples, they most often envisioned those who learned from a teacher. Whereas some aspects of disciple-making in Matt 28:19–20 are distinctive, teaching is more characteristic of general disciplemaking. Here it is the content that is distinctive. When Jesus speaks of “teaching them to obey everything I commanded you” (28:20), Matthew’s ideal audience will think of Jesus’s commands throughout this Gospel. Many of these teachings are arranged in five major discourse sections,62 each ending with the phrase, “when Jesus had finished these sayings” (or “parables”; 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1).63 These discourses address the ethics of the kingdom (chs. 5–7), model proclamation of the kingdom (ch. 10), parables involving the presence of the kingdom (ch. 13), relationships in the kingdom (ch. 18), and the future of the kingdom from the standpoint of Jesus’s first disciples (chs. 23–25). The last section includes woes against the religious establishment of Jesus’s day, as well as the destruction of the Temple and judgment on the generation that rejected Jesus. Yet it also looks ahead to judgment on the generation of his second coming, when some of his servants might prove as oblivious to his demands as was the religious establishment at his first coming (e.g., 24:45–51;

60 Their fear and greed evoke the failures of Peter (who denied Jesus from fear, 26:70– 75) and Judas (who betrayed Jesus from greed, 26:15–16; on the narrative contrasts with Judas in that context, see Keener, Matthew [2009], 617, 620). 61 Keener, Matthew (2009), 699, 715. 62 Some have followed Papias in comparing the five sections with the Pentateuch (Peter F. Ellis, Matthew: his mind and his message [Collegeville: Liturgical, 1974], 10; Samuel Sandmel, Anti-Semitism in the New Testament? [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978], 51), but most who recognize five sections fail to find this correspondence (W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 1, Introduction and Commentary on Matthew I–VII, ICC [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998], 1:61; Donald A. Hagner, Matthew, 2 vols., WBC 33A–B [Dallas: Word, 1993–1995], 1:li). 63 Such phrases offered a natural way to close a section; see e.g., Exod 34:33; Jub. 32:20; 50:13; Dale C. Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 192–93 compares Deut 31:1, 24; 32:45

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25:14–30). Matthew’s audience might thus well think of all of Jesus’s teachings in this Gospel, not least those specifically involving discipleship, as treated earlier.

G. Jesus Promises to Be with his Disciples Finally, in 28:20 Jesus promises to be with his disciples in carrying out this mission until the end (συντελείας, nom. συντέλεια) of the age. In 24:14, the “end” (τέλος) was already associated with the completion of witness among all nations. Given the presumable mortality of some, most or all of the eleven by the time of this Gospel’s current form, the Gospel seems to presuppose that the mission must extend beyond the lifetimes of the eleven. As the first disciples would make other disciples (28:19), the mission would carry on until Christ’s παρουσία. Moreover, Jesus’s promise to be “with you” (μεθ´ὑμῶν) until the end of the age (28:20) revisits his divine role earlier in this Gospel. Jewish tradition acknowledged only God as omnipresent; later rabbis called him makom, “the place,” as a way of emphasizing his omnipresence.64 The Gospel’s opening narrative announces Jesus as none other than “God with us” (1:23; cf. Markus Bockmuehl’s paper in this conference, published under the title “Being Emmanuel”). Later, Jesus tells his disciples that where two or three are gathered in his name, there he is among them (18:20). This claim recalls a familiar Jewish principle: where two or three gather to study God’s Torah, his presence is among them.65 All three of these “with” passages, then, depict Jesus in a divine role.

H. Historical Tradition? For the sake of keeping discussion lively, let me turn to some more contested matters. So far I have focused on Matthean themes, but I am aware that academic discussions of the Gospels also often ask historical questions about what the Gospels communicate about Jesus historically, and I would not want to disappoint those with such concerns. Ancient biographies did make historical claims (as those were understood by the criteria of ancient historiography),

64

E.g., 3 En. 18:24; m. ʾAbot 2:9, 13; 3:14; t. Peʾah 1:4; 3:8; t. Šabb. 7:22, 25; 13:5; t. Roš Haš. 1:18; t. Taʿan. 2:13; t. B. Qam. 7:7; t. Sanh. 1:2; 13:1, 6; 14:3, 10; Sipre Num. 11.2.3; 11.3.1; 42.1.2; 42.2.3; 76.2.2; 78.1.1; 78.5.1; 80.1.1; 82.3.1; 84.1.1; 84.5.1; 85.3.1; 85.4.1; 85.5.1; Sipra VDDen. pq. 2.2.4.2; 4.6.4.1. 65 M. ʾAbot 3:2, 6; Mek. Bahodesh 11.48ff; cf. m. Ber. 7:3.

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though more often on the level of events, message and character than in terms of specific details, and not in necessary chronological sequence.66 This commission provides a fitting conclusion for Matthew’s Gospel, clearly displaying Matthean design. You might therefore suppose that I believe it to be a purely Matthean creation, without prior historical information behind it. But while my focus here has been the passage’s Matthean function and character, I believe that Matthew has given his own free reflection on historical tradition, reframing rather than purely inventing the ideas. Despite their distinctive emphases, we find many of these same themes multiply attested in the final commissions in Luke and Matthew and, to a lesser extent, in John. (I think the similar commission in Mark 16:9–20 reflects the second-century church trying to conform Mark’s different Gospel to what became a noted standard in the other three extant first-century Gospels.) In Luke 24/Acts 1 and John 20, we note the following features:

– Jesus’s divine role.67 In John 20:22, Jesus breathes on the disciples and imparts the Spirit;

–

–

this passage echoes God breathing into Adam the breath of life, and perhaps also the eschatological, life-giving wind of Ezekiel 37:1–14.68 In Acts 1:8, YHWH’s Spirit-empowered witnesses to the ends of the earth in Isaiah become Jesus’s witnesses to the ends of the earth.69 This precedes a context in which the divine Lord who pours out his own Spirit in Joel 2:28–29 (ET) is Jesus in Acts 2:33, and the name of the divine Lord on whom hearers should call in Joel 2:32 (ET) is Jesus of Nazareth in Acts 2:21 and 38.70 A post-resurrection commissioning appears in both sources. Luke specifies that the commission is fulfilled among “all the nations” (Luke 24:47) and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). John simply notes that Jesus sends the disciples as the Father had sent him (John 20:21), but this Gospel is clear that the Father sent Jesus into “the world” (John 3:17; 10:36), and in 17:18 specifies that as the Father sent Jesus into the world, so has he sent his followers into the world. Even if the κόσμος in John’s narrative is primarily Judean, in 4:42 it plainly looks beyond the Jewish people to include Samaritans (4:42) and in the context of 12:19 probably includes gentiles as well (12:20–21). In each of the three passages, God’s presence provides power for mission. In Luke-Acts and John, the power is specifically associated with the Holy Spirit; in Matt 28:20, it is Jesus’s presence.

66 See Craig S. Keener, Christobiography: Memories, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), developing relevant insights by Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, 25th Anniversary ed. (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2018). 67 For the idea is of Father, Son, and Spirit already in Paul’s letters, see e.g., Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), 839–42. 68 See further discussion in Keener, John, 2:1204–06. 69 See further discussion in Keener, Acts, 1:696. For the use of Isaiah in key programmatic statements of Luke-Acts, see David W. Pao, Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus, WUNT 2/130 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). 70 See further discussion in Keener, Acts, esp. 1:988.

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– Each of these passages include the thought of delegation. In Matthew, Jesus commissions

–

the disciples because the Father has given him all authority. In John 20:21, Jesus sends the disciples as the Father has sent him. In Acts 1:8–11, Jesus passes on the Spirit and the mission at his ascension as Elisha receives Elijah’s spirit and mission at his ascension.71 The open ending of Acts72 and messages for the future in John (esp. 17:20) suggest that, as in Matthew, the mission is expected to continue.

Each writer displays his distinctive emphasis, yet each includes some key elements shared with the others. This is not likely a coincidence based merely on shared milieu. The earliest Christian emphasis on the Spirit and current prophetic empowerment is distinctive within early Judaism, exceeding even claims in the Qumran scrolls; the Gentile mission emphasis in much of early Christianity differs even more starkly from its milieu.73 Far from being coincidence, I believe that these emphases are related and that they do ultimately go back to a post-resurrection commissioning or commissionings by Jesus. I would not limit multiple or coherent attestation or historical plausibility to pre-resurrection material. But I have entered enough controversy for now, and a discussion for another day.

I. Conclusion Matthew’s Gospel offers a clear, concise conclusion that caps many themes that run throughout this Gospel. The immediate basis of this final commission is Jesus’s cosmic authority, which itself climaxes and (with its mention of authority in heaven) completes a motif that runs throughout the Gospel. The command to make disciples carries on Jesus’s mission of making disciples. It includes cross-cultural movement, reaching all peoples, a point abundantly prefigured earlier in this Gospel (1:3–6; 2:1–2; 8:10–12; 15:21–28; 24:14; 27:54; cf. 3:9; 4:15; 8:28; 10:15; 11:23–24; 12:41–42; 16:13; 25:32). It includes baptizing, that is, initiating people into the faith. This echoes John’s baptism of repentance earlier in the Gospel. John’s message of the kingdom of heaven, however (3:2), carried on by Jesus (4:17) and his first disciples (10:7), now climaxes more fully in the message of the reign of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The women and the guards provide contrasting models for announcing Jesus’s message (28:1–15). Moreover, the Gospel itself provides material for those called to make disciples by teaching Jesus’s commands: it is replete with Jesus’s teachings, including not only five discourse sections but also other specific teachings on the 71

Again, see ibid., esp. 1:719–20. See ibid., 4:3758–61. 73 See e.g., ibid., 1:511–16. 72

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cost of discipleship relevant to the new mission (e.g., 4:19–20; 8:20, 22; 16:24; 19:21). Finally, Jesus is “with” his people (28:20), as the one already designated “God with us” earlier in the Gospel (1:23; 18:20).

The Depiction of God in the Gospel of Matthew Paul Foster Paul Foster

A. Introduction In a frequently cited essay, originally published in 1975, Nils Dahl lamented the lack of scholarly attention on the figure of God in the writings of the New Testament.1 Dahl went so far as to describe the failure to focus on the role of God in New Testament writings as “the neglected factor” in the theological study of those documents. He stated, The neglect of theo-logy in New Testament theology has been conditioned by the history of the discipline and of Christian theology in general. … The elementary but all too neglected task must involve a careful, analytic description of words and phrases and of their use within sentences and larger units of speech (e.g., narratives, kerygmatic, creedal and hymnic texts, maxims, doctrinal and parenetic topoi).2

More recently Larry Hurtado took up the challenge of providing a short overview of the understanding of God in the New Testament as a whole.3 Hurtado referred to an article he had written on the subject for a reference work prior to the publication of his short volume on the topic.4 With the appearance of the short monograph, Hurtado, in a somewhat jovial manner, noted that, “I found the bibliographical task easy! A few further publications had appeared since I wrote that article, but there remained plenty of scope for further work.”5 What remains true of the New Testament in general is perhaps even more intently correct of the Gospel of Matthew in particular. There is in fact no overarching study on the figure of God in the Gospel of Matthew, and even the comments in various commentaries appear ad hoc and unconnected in their focus. 1 Nils Dahl, “The Neglected Factor in New Testament Theology,” Reflections 75 (1975): 5–8; reprinted in idem, Jesus the Christ: The Historical Origins of Christological Doctrine, ed. Donald H. Juel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1991), 153–63. All citations are taken from the reprinted edition. 2 Ibid., 153, 155. 3 Larry W. Hurtado, God in New Testament Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 2010). 4 Larry W. Hurtado, “God,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Scott McKnight, and I. H. Marshall (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1992), 270–76. 5 Larry W. Hurtado, “A Neglected Factor (and Book) in NT Studies,” n.p. [cited 16 December 2019]. Online: https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/a-neglected-factorand-book-in-nt-studies/.

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Perhaps, in some ways, the first evangelist is himself responsible for this lack of interest in the figure of God in his narrative. If one considers the infancy narrative (Matt 1–2), then there is little that overtly signals the author’s interest in the figure of God. The term θεός is used only once, and in that case it is a mere gloss to explain the that the appellative Immanuel means “God with us” (Matt 1:23). So, at least explicitly, God appears absent from the opening of Matthew’s narrative. This stands in striking opposition to the swathe of characters, both biblical and non-biblical, named in Matthew’s genealogy. Here the evangelist signals the link between his narrative and that of historic Israel, especially through its Davidic line. The infancy accounts are also replete with interventions from the mystical and celestial sphere. A series of dream-revelations are provided that direct the actions of key characters (Matt 1:20; 2:12, 19), and an angelic being appears twice to provide direct instruction to Joseph, albeit through the medium of a dream (Matt 1:20, 24; 2:19). Another factor that reduces the prevalence of the use of term θεός is the evangelist’s nearly consistent preference to replace the language of ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ in his sources, with his own phrase ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.6 Thus whereas the term θεός occurs in the expression ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ eight times in Q (Q 6:20; 7:28; 10:9; 11:20; 13:18–19, 20–21, 28, 29; 16:16) and fourteen times in Mark (Mark 1:15; 4:11, 26, 30; 9:1, 47; 10:14, 15, 23, 24, 25; 12:34; 14:25; 15:43), in Matthew there are probably only four occurrences (Matt 12:28; 19:24; 21:31, 43)7. This stands in contrast with the thirty-two occurrence of the phrase ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. Hence, this results in a marked reduction of the use of the term θεός in comparison with the source texts. While classically it was suggested that the alteration was due to a reverential circumlocution to avoid the term θεός,8 this has been challenged in a number of recent 6

Although the term ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν, “the kingdom of the heaven” predominates in the Gospel of Matthew, on a few occasions Matthew employs the phrase ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, “the kingdom of God” (Matt 12:28; 19:24; 21:31, 43). In the second of these references, Matt 19:24, there is a textual variant where instead of the typically preferred reading of εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ, the reading εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν occurs in the following manuscripts Z f1 33 ff1 sys.c boms. However, the earliest manuscripts attest the reading “kingdom of God.” By contrast, with the Matthean imperative ζητεῖτε δὲ πρῶτον τὴν βασιλείαν [τοῦ θεοῦ] (Matt 6:33), as indicated the bracketed words τοῦ θεοῦ are not read in the earliest surviving manuscripts attesting to this passage (‫ א‬B). The later inclusion of the words τοῦ θεοῦ is likely due to assimilation to the better-known expression, and this is further supported by the addition of τῶν οὐρανῶν in part of the manuscript tradition. 7 The text critical problems that surround the possible appearance of the phrase ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ in Matt 6:33 and 19:24 are discussed in detail below (see note 14). It is unlikely that the phrase is the earliest reading in Matt 6:33, but it appears to be the earliest reading in Matt 19:24. If this assessment is correct, then there are four occurrences of the phrase in the Gospel of Matthew. 8 See Gustaf Dalman, The Words of Jesus Considered in Light of Post-Biblical Jewish Writings and the Aramaic Language, trans. D. M. Kay (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1902).

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works.9 Regardless of the motivation for this change, the result in relation to reference to the kingdom is that explicit connection with “God”/θεός is substantially reduced. Consequently, the overall frequency of the term θεός is reduced in comparison with the other Synoptic accounts due to their preference for the use of the “kingdom of God” expression. In fact, the raw statistics for the frequency of the use of the term θεός in the four Gospels might further bear out the impression of Matthew’s disinterest in the figure of God. Gospel

Verses in Gospel

Matthew Mark Luke John Q

1068 661 1149 866 235

Occurrences of θεός 47 48 111 80 17

Verses per Occurrence 22.25 14.06 10.35 10.82 13.82

Here it becomes apparent that not only does the Gospel of Matthew have the fewest occurrences of the term θεός in comparison with the other canonical Gospels, but more significantly the rate of occurrence is far smaller. The term θεός occurs far less frequently than in the other accounts. Whereas in the Gospel of Matthew the term θεός occurs on average only once every 22.25 verses, in both Luke and John it occurs once around every 10 or 11 verses, and even in Mark and Q the frequency is far greater than Matthew, with the term occurring once around every fourteen verses in those texts. Despite these apparent ways in which God-language is lessened or diminished in the Gospel of Matthew, there are many other ways in which it is prominent and essential for a correct understanding of the Matthean narrative. First, Matthew uses other terms to refer to God, which, while not unevidenced in the other canonical Gospel accounts, are far less common. Chief among these is Matthew’s use of πατήρ, “father,” language. Matthew can use such terminology in a variety of ways. Either he can used the unadorned form πατήρ “father,” or in a variety of related expressions that locate the father in terms of the celestial sphere: ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος, “your heavenly father,” or τὸν πατέρα ὑμῶν τὸν ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, “your father who is in heaven.” In total Matthew employs such father language to designate God on 44 occasions. Apart from using alternative nomenclature to refer to the deity, it needs to be recognized that the divine being is often an assumed but unnamed presence in the actions that take place in the Gospel. In this regard the use of divine passives, again not unique to the first Gospel, is prominent in the Matthean

9 John C. Thomas, “The Kingdom of God in the Gospel According to Matthew,” NTS 39 (1993): 136–46; Robert Foster, “Why on Earth Use ‘Kingdom of Heaven’? Matthew’s Terminology Revisited,” NTS 48 (2002): 487–99; Jonathan T. Pennington, Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew, NovTSup 126 (Leiden: Brill, 2007).

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narrative. Therefore, the figure of God, sometimes explicitly and at other times implicitly, is a key actor in the Gospel of Matthew who animates the narrative and the actions of various characters in that story. This study will progress in two major ways. First, it will present an analysis of the major terms and titles that Matthew uses for the deity throughout his narrative. Second, it will consider how the figure of God influences and directs the actions of the narrative or shapes the thought-world of the first evangelist. In this way an overarching understanding of the role of God in the Gospel of Matthew will be described.

B. Matthean Terminology for the Deity The conceptual background for Matthew’s understanding of the deity is most strongly shaped by Jewish reflection on the nature and being of God. The deity in the Gospel of Matthew is the God of the patriarchs (Matt 22:32). Furthermore, drawing on Jewish precedents, the evangelist uses a recast version of the Shema10 (Deut 6:4) to present Jesus commending whole-hearted devotion to God (Matt 22:37). In response to Jesus’s healing activities, those who observe such phenomenon are said to respond by glorifying “the God of Israel” (καὶ ἐδόξασαν τὸν θεὸν Ἰσραήλ, Matt 15:31). While Matthew speaks of a variety of heavenly beings, such as angels and demons, he never uses the term θεός in the plural. Despite not reproducing a Markan statement from one of Jesus’s scribal interlocutors about God being “one” (Mark 12:32; cf. the parallel in Matt 22:34–40), Matthew’s conceptual perspective is thoroughly indebted to his Jewish understanding of God,11 namely, that there is one God, the God of Israel and the God of the patriarchs, the one to whom glory and whole-hearted love should be offered. What more can be gleaned concerning Matthew’s understanding of this supreme heavenly figure depends on a careful reading of the evangelist’s statements about the deity.

10 Paul Foster, “Why Did Matthew Get the Shema Wrong? A Study of Matt 22:37,” JBL 122 (2003): 309–33. 11 What is true of Matthew is seen by Dahl as characteristic of all early Christian reflection on God. Thus, Dahl states, “Articulated beliefs about God in contemporary Judaism informed the way early Christians understood the crucifixion of Jesus and related events. … Traditional (i.e., Jewish), more or less generally accepted, and specifically Christian statements about God are combined and interpenetrate one another in all the New Testament writings, even if the manner of combination varies a good deal” (“The Neglected Factor in New Testament Theology,” 158).

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I. θεός Language in the Gospel of Matthew Matthew’s use of the term θεός occurs in clusters as well as in some isolated contexts in the first Gospel. For instance, in the temptation narrative (Matt 4:1– 11), of the five occurrences in this pericope, two are to be found in the address of the devil to Jesus, where the title “Son of God” is questioned in a skeptical manner, εἰ υἱὸς εἶ τοῦ θεοῦ (Matt 4:3, 6). In these two instances, the θεός terminology is used to communicate the relationship of Jesus to the deity, albeit that the devil is questioning the validity of that status. The three remaining occurrences of the term θεός in Matt 4:1–11 are each found in the three responses of Jesus to the devil, and are part of the scriptural texts that Jesus uses to rebut the devil in reply to the three temptations. In turn, Jesus, with scriptural warrant, declares that human existence depends on every word that proceeds “out of the mouth of God” (διὰ στόματος θεοῦ, Matt 4:4, cf. LXX Deut 8:3), that one must not test “the Lord your God” (κύριον τὸν θεόν σου, Matt 4:7, cf. LXX Deut 6:16), and using the same formulation again, that one must only worship and serve “the Lord your God” (Matt 4:10, cf. LXX Deut 6:13). Here the choice of terminology reflects the pre-existing selection found in the three passages cited from the LXX. Moreover, it is to be observed that in dialogue with an opponent (in this context the devil) Jesus does not use the familial form of address “father” for the deity, but the more generic term θεός. Similarly, in a statement placed on the lips of John the Baptist and directed towards the Pharisees and Sadducees, John chides these religious figures for claiming Abrahamic decent, and instead undermining any sense of privilege he warns them, ὅτι δύναται ὁ θεὸς ἐκ τῶν λίθων τούτων ἐγεῖραι τέκνα τῷ Ἀβραάμ (Matt 3:9). Here θεός terminology is deployed as outward-facing language in a conflictual situation. This choice of the most general and recognizable term to refer to the deity appears to be selected both because it can refer to God without any comment on the commitment to the Jesus group, and because of its universality as a referent for the divine being. Related to this type of usage, reference to the deity using the term θεός is also employed to describe the reaction of the crowds who respond to Jesus’s healing of a paralytic by glorifying God (καὶ ἐδόξασαν τὸν θεόν, Matt 9:8). In another conflict story dealing with food purity and the practice of korban, Jesus appeals to the divine intention of the commandments. In this context, in debate with scribal and Pharisaic opponents Jesus uses θεός-phraseology to appeal to divine intention. He accuses his opponents of transgressing the commandment of God (τὴν ἐντολὴν τοῦ θεοῦ, Matt 15:3), and then he cites a specific commandment to typify the nature of their transgression introduced with the formula ὁ γὰρ θεὸς εἶπεν (Matt 15:4). The conclusion to Jesus’s argument is stated with a third occurrence of θεός terminology: καὶ ἠκυρώσατε τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ διὰ τὴν παράδοσιν ὑμῶν (Matt 15:6). While various commentators note that the stakes are raised by the selection of a command from the Decalogue and accusing the opponents of

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violating the Torah that they claimed to uphold rigorously,12 few note that the choice of the generic θεός terminology is employed to portray the interlocutors as not being in a close or filial relationship with the deity. This pattern of using θεός language in controversy stories is readily seen in the series of interchanges with opponents in Matt 22. In the controversy concerning the legitimacy of paying tax to Caesar, the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians attempt to entrap Jesus first by addressing him with flattering speech, including the phrase τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν ἀληθείᾳ διδάσκεις (Matt 22:16). The phrase “the way of God” is a metaphor that “means ‘the way [= behaviour] demanded by God,’ that is the demands of Jewish halakah.”13 In this context the opponents refer to God in generic and impersonal terms. In response, Jesus adopts this same register of language to answer his opponents: ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ τῷ θεῷ (Matt 22:21). While numerous commentators have sought to unpack the ideology of this maxim in terms of larger questions concerning the relationship between church and state,14 it also needs to be observed in terms of language used to reference the deity that Jesus responds to his opponents on their own terms. This language is generic. It also connotes a formal relationship with the deity, rather than reflecting the warmer insider language frequently used by Jesus when addressing God directly, or when speaking about the deity with his disciples. In the following controversy story (Matt 22:23–33), where there is a debate with the Sadducees over the reality of post-mortem existence, it is Jesus who employs all six examples of θεός terminology. Admittedly, three occur in the formulaic citation ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ θεὸς Ἀβραὰμ καὶ ὁ θεὸς Ἰσαὰκ καὶ ὁ θεὸς Ἰακώβ (Matt 22:32). The first use of the term θεός occurs as part of Jesus’s initial threefold response to the reductio ad absurdium example of the seven times married woman as a perceived illustration of the impossibility of resurrection. Jesus first rejects the supposed interpretative approach of the Sadducees: πλανᾶσθε, μὴ εἰδότες τὰς γραφὰς μηδὲ τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ θεοῦ (Matt 22:29). In turn, they are accused of being deceived, not knowing the Scriptures, and failing to apprehend the power of God. If this sequence is intended to present an intensifying list of failings, then the failure to perceive “the power of God” is likely to be the greatest defect in the reasoning of the Sadducees. Jesus offers

12

For instance, Donald A. Hagner notes in this context that “[t]he very heart of Pharisaism, the tradition of the elders … that was supposed to protect against violation of the Torah, had in fact become responsible for (διά, ‘because of’) the grievous transgression of God’s command” (Matthew 14–28, WBC 33B [Dallas: Word, 1995], 431). 13 W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 3, Commentary on Matthew XIX–XXVIII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 213. 14 R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 834.

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a corrective to the alleged scriptural misunderstanding by citing a text introduced with the phrase τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑμῖν ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ λέγοντος (Matt 22:31). In common with the citation of Scripture in the debate over the korban vow (Matt 15:4), Jesus uses generic θεός language to refer to Scripture as material spoken by God. Although the lack of perception concerning “the power of God” is not directly addressed,15 it is surely wrapped up in the concluding use of θεός language in this pericope. That is when Jesus draws out what he sees as being the relevant point from the scriptural text he cites. That conclusion is presented in the following pithy terms: οὐκ ἔστιν [ὁ] θεὸς νεκρῶν ἀλλὰ ζώντων (Matt 22:32). The implication that the Matthean Jesus draws is that the power of God transcends death. Here, while again using θεός language to engage in debate with opponents, there may be an additional reason why that terminology is maintained in the conclusion that Jesus draws from the scriptural citation. Ulrich Luz notes that in order to present an argument in support of the resurrection of the dead “Jesus bases his claim on the central biblical text Exod 3:6 (cf. 3:15), which is immediately connected with the self-revelation of the name of God (3:14).”16 Therefore, the choice of terminology in LXX Exod 3:6 is reproduced in the citation in Matt 22:32a, and for the sake of the consistency of the argument is continued into Jesus’s conclusion that God is God of the living. In the subsequent question concerning the greatest commandment (Matt 22:34–40), the sole use of θεός terminology occurs in the first phrase of Jesus’s citation of LXX Deut 6:5. That phrase, ἀγαπήσεις κύριον τὸν θεόν σου (Matt 22:37), is a direct and accurate reproduction of the Greek phraseology of LXX Deut 6:5. Therefore, the form of the text cited has dictated the use of θεός language in this context. In the final controversy in this sequence (Matt 22:41– 46), θεός language is absent. The reason for this is entirely obvious. This debate depends on a play on the word κύριος (Matt 22:44) and its presence in the citation from LXX Ps 109:1 (= MT Ps 110:1). Furthermore, the discussion of the κύριος title revolves around the status and significance of the identity of Jesus in relation to David. Therefore, an appeal to God, or the use of God language is not relevant in this final controversy story. It is well-known that Matthew prefers the phrase ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν in place of the formulation found in his sources ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. Notwithstanding this preference for his own formulation, Matthew uses the phrase ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ probably on four occasions (Matt 12:28; 19:24; 21:31, 43). The precise number depends on how one resolves the text-critical issues.17 J. 15 Hagner notes, “[t]he scriptural argument is pursued further in vv 31-32, but the argument concerning God’s power is left at this point” (Matthew, 2:641). 16 Ulrich Luz, Matthew 21–28: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 71. 17 In Matt 6:33, the NA28 text presents the opening clause as ζητεῖτε δὲ πρῶτον τὴν βασιλείαν [τοῦ θεοῦ], with the words τοῦ θεοῦ bracketed to indicate uncertainty about the

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Pennington has argued against the previously widely accepted assertion that the phrase ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν is a circumlocution to avoid the term θεός. In opposition to this, he notes that θεός is a term which Matthew uses fairly frequently throughout his narrative.18 Instead, Pennington finds the heaven and earth theme as central to Matthew’s theological reality and perceptions. He argues that the references to heaven emphasize the universality of God’s domain, creating links with the Jewish Scriptures, strengthening christological claims, undergirding the radical nature of Jesus’s ethics, and legitimating readers as the true people of God.19 The more significant question is why Matthew retains the four cases of the expression “kingdom of God,” and whether there is a difference intended in distinction from ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν, According to Pennington, The solution to understanding why Matthew retains four instances of kingdom of God comes from recognizing that Matthew uses a full quiver of expressions when describing Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom. While kingdom of heaven is the preferred and predominant one, he uses a variety of phrases with differently-shaped points (to continue the archery metaphor) such as kingdom of the Father, the kingdom of the Son of Man, and simply ἡ βασιλεία. These assorted expressions appear for stylistic variation as well as for particular contextual reasons.20

It has also been suggested that the retention of these four examples of the phrase “the kingdom of God” occurs for a consistent reason, such as addressing the unbelief of outsiders. If that were the case, then it would align with the examples discussed where θεός terminology is used as outsider language with a particular resonance in controversy stories. The problem is that it is difficult to make all four examples cohere to one purpose. For instance, Matt 19:24 is part of Jesus’s teaching to disciples concerning the cost of discipleship in this

originality of these lexemes within the text of the Matthew. While the numerical majority of manuscripts preserve the words τοῦ θεοῦ (K L N W Δ Θ f1.13 33. 565, 579. 700. 892. 1241. 1424. l844 l2211 lat sy mae), the earliest manuscripts attest a variety of readings. For instance, ‫( א‬k) l sa bo; Eus contains the shorter reading ζητεῖτε δὲ πρῶτον τὴν βασιλείαν. Alternatively, inverting the order of the shorter reading, the text of B is ζητεῖτε δὲ πρῶτον τὴν δικαιοσύνην καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν. Lastly, Clement of Alexandria preserves the reading ζητεῖτε δὲ πρῶτον τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν καὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην. In this case, it is most likely that the reading preserved in ‫ א‬is the earliest form of the text and gave rise to the other variants. This is supported by the double tradition parallel contained in Luke 12:31. For a fuller discussion of this variant see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 15–16. In Matt 19:24, the majority of manuscripts including the earliest extant witnesses read τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ. However, a few read τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν (Z f1 33 ff1 sys.c boms), presumably to produce conformity with standard Matthean phraseology. 18 Pennington, Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew, 4–10. 19 Ibid., 343–48. 20 Ibid., 309.

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life, compared with the rewards in the age to come (Matt 19:28–29). Here is surely a case where the heaven and earth theme is prominent and in fact the phrase ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν would have been more appropriate. In the end, it is possible on the one hand to agree with Pennington that the choice to replace “kingdom of God” in the majority of cases is motivated by something greater than mere avoidance of the term θεός. However, on the other hand, finding meaningful or even unified intentionality in the four cases where the phrase “the kingdom of God” occurs in the Gospel of Matthew is problematic. Therefore, although the explanation is quickly dismissed by Pennington, those remaining four cases may be due to authorial oversight or editorial fatigue.21 Matthew uses θεός language in a variety of ways, including as a translational gloss for the term Immanuel (Matt 1:23), in semi-titular expressions, such as “son of God” (Matt 4:3, 6; 8:29; 14:33; 16:16; 27:40), or spirit of God (Matt 3:16; 12:28). It can also be used in designations of places, such as the house of God (Matt 12:4), the Temple of God (Matt 26:61), or objects or beings, such as the angels of God (Matt 22:30), and the throne of God (Matt 23:22). However, one significant observation that emerged is that when Jesus is in dialogue with opponents he frequently uses the generic term θεός to reference the deity as he engages in debate, rather than more familial or personal ways of referring to the deity. In this way, in general the term θεός is seen as outward-facing language. It is the widely accepted way of referring to the deity. By contrast, as will be discussed in the following section, the Matthean Jesus employs familial language when speaking of his own relationship with God, and that terminology is also part of the privileged way in which Matthean disciples are encouraged to address God. II. The Father in the Gospel of Matthew Reference to God using familial, or more specifically paternal language is a prominent feature of the sociolect of the first Gospel. There are a number of related but slightly different formulations Matthew employs to refer to God as father. Particularly prominent in the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’s description of God as ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς (Matt 5:16, 45; 6:1; 7:11). There are several closely related forms of this expression. The first related variant of the phrase ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς is when the possessive pronoun changes to the first person singular in the formulation τοῦ πατρός μου τοῦ ἐν οὐρανοῖς (Matt 7:21; 10:32, 33; 12:50; 16:17; 18:10, 14, 19). A further closely related form occurs in the opening address of the Lord’s prayer, when the pronoun is changed to the first person plural and the vocative form of πατήρ is used, Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς (Matt 6:9). Another related formulation 21

The case for editorial fatigue has been argued previously in Paul Foster, “Is It Possible to Dispense with Q?,” NovT 44 (2003): 313–37, esp. 328–32.

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occurs four times in the Sermon on the Mount when the evangelist places the following mode of denoting God on the lips of Jesus, ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος (Matt 5:48; 6:14, 26, 32). Here, instead of a substantivized noun in the dative case governed by the preposition ἐν expressing a locative sense,22 with this variation, ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος, a substantivized attributive adjective is used to communicate a quality of the noun, πατήρ, being further described.23 Whereas the former construction ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς reveals the location of the father and the plural τοῖς οὐρανοῖς suggests that the deity’s dominion is indivisible over the totality of the sphere of the heavens, the later speaks more of the ontological nature of the being of the deity. God’s being is not of the same nature as earthly beings, but simply existing in a different cosmological sphere. Rather, the nature of being of the father is celestial or heavenly, and thus fundamentally different from and superior to the nature of being of earthly creatures. Leon Morris, in part, notes this nuance. He states, “Matthew thus employs the term [οὐράνιος] to stress the difference between God and others, just as Father brings out his nearness and his love.”24 Apart from describing the father in relation to location in heaven or the nature of being as heavenly, the Matthean Jesus also uses the term πατήρ in a more absolute manner. Addressing aspects of the dominical teaching of the Sermon on the Mount directly to individuals, on five occasions Jesus reminds hearers that the father sees actions that are supposedly hidden or secret. In making this claim, God is denoted using the formulation ὁ πατήρ σου (Matt 6:4, 6 [twice], 18 [twice]). This daring appellation narrows the universality of the fatherhood of God, and instead focalizes it on the individual believer. In essence this personalizes the experience of God as father and creates an intimacy that perhaps is not as strongly present in corporate or cosmic expressions of the portrayal of God as father of all believers (ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν, pl.), or as the heavenly father (ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος). W. D. Davies and Dale Allison note that “ὁ πατήρ σου, which puts the concept of reward in the context of a father/son relationship appears in 6.4, 6 (bis), 18 (bis), and nowhere else in the

22

As Wesley Olmstead notes of the phrase ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, its sense is “Locative. In keeping with Matthew’s idiolect the plural οὐρανοῖς refers to the invisible, divine realm”; cf. Wesley G. Olmstead, Matthew 1–14: A Handbook on the Greek Text, BHGNT (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2019), 84. 23 In relation to the form ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος, Charles Quarles states that “Οὐράνιος, -ον, ‘heavenly,’ is apparently equivalent to the cstr. in 5:16”; cf. Charles L. Quarles, Matthew, EGGNT (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2017), 61. However, it is probably more accurate to see the two constructions as broadly related, but not equivalent. 24 Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 134.

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First Gospel, or in Mark or Luke for that matter.”25 This reflects the fact that the material in Matt 6:1–6, which has no Synoptic parallel, is best understood as the redactional activity of the evangelist. As such it reflects one of Matthew’s theological concerns and contributions. By emphasizing the fatherhood of God especially in relation to individual believers, Matthew creates a greater sense of the immediacy and the proximity of the relationship between the deity and each pious adherent. As the narrative of the first Gospel continues after the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew’s most frequent and widespread formulation of πατήρ language emerges. Again spoken by Jesus, he refers to his own relationship with God using the intimate and familial expression ὁ πατήρ μου (Matt 11:27; 20:23; 25:34; 26:29, 39, 42, 53), or the more expanded form either as the expression ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς (Matt 10:32, 33; 12:50; 16:17; 18:10, 14, 19) or ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ οὐράνιος (Matt 15:13; 18:35). These sixteen occurrences of a formulation expressing Jesus’s statement that God can be described as “my father” or “my heavenly father,” are linked to a key Matthean christological affirmation that Jesus is God’s son in a unique way.26 With the two examples in the Matthean form of the confessing and denying tradition (Matt 10:32, 33), the double tradition parallel in Luke 12:8–9 strongly suggests that Matthew has redactionally reworked the tradition to introduce the twice repeated phrase τοῦ πατρός μου τοῦ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. Instead, the Lukan parallel speaks of confession and denying before τῶν ἀγγέλων τοῦ θεοῦ (Luke 12:8, 9). Many reconstructions of Q argue that the source text spoke simply of confession and denial before the angels, and that Luke added the qualifier τοῦ θεοῦ. H. Fleddermann notes that, Luke preserves the Q form of the second clause with one slight alteration. The problem lies in the prepositional phrase. … only ἔμπροσθεν τῶν ἀγγέλων goes back to Q. Luke added the clarifying τοῦ θεοῦ. Q had “before the angels” corresponding exactly to “before men” in the first clause. Matthew altered “before angels” to “before my Father in heaven.”27

With the tradition behind Matt 10:32–33 Matthew takes up an idea conducive to his own thought about heaven and earth, namely, that actions on earth have direct and even greater consequences in heaven. To this idea from his source, he introduces his own redactionally favored terminology, τοῦ πατρός μου τοῦ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. This increases the significance of the heavenly confession or 25

W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 1, Introduction and Commentary on Matthew I– VII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 584. 26 For further discussion of this point see Christopher M. Tuckett, Christology of the New Testament: Jesus and His Earliest Followers (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), 120–23. 27 H. T. Fleddermann, Q: A Reconstruction and Commentary, Biblical Tools and Studies 1 (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 573–74.

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denial, for it is no longer merely before the angels but in the presence of God. Furthermore, through use of the pronoun μου Matthew emphasizes both the relationship and the commonality of purpose between the actions of the son and the role of the father. In regard to the confession in Matt 10:32, Donald Hagner makes the following observation of the consequence for faithful confession on earth: “This will result in a corresponding acknowledgement of the disciple in the heavenly court before God (cf. 25:34), referred to here as ‘my Father,’ thus underlining the special relationship between Jesus and God.”28 The unique and divine prerogatives possessed by Jesus are stated when he notes that πάντα μοι παρεδόθη ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρός μου (Matt 11:27a). Following on from this statement of filial relationship, the mutual epistemological knowledge between the father and the son is emphasized and is stated as being due to their symbiotic relationship (Matt 11:27b).29 Here the mutuality of the father-son relation is outlined in terms of the absolute knowledge each possesses of the other. Furthermore, in a startling moment of disclosure the son promises his followers revelation of knowledge of the father (Matt 11:27c). Therefore, incorporation into relationship with Jesus and God is promised to all followers who do τὸ θέλημα τοῦ πατρός μου (Matt 12:50). In this way the relationship category present in Jesus’s reference to God as “my father” is shown to be open and available to believers. The eschatological work of judgment that is portrayed as part of the future activity of the Son of Man (Matt 25:31–46) is also work in which Jesus says ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ οὐράνιος participates, since he will uproot every unproductive plant (Matt 15:13). This is one of the two occurrences of the formulation “my heavenly father” (as opposed to “my father in heaven”). The other occurrence of ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ οὐράνιος is found in Matt 18:35. As John Nolland notes, “‘My heavenly Father’ is restricted to 15:13; 18:35 (another judgment text).”30 At one of the christological highpoints in the Gospel of Matthew in response to Peter’s declaration that Jesus is “the Christ, the son of the living God” (16:16), Jesus attributes that insight to divine revelation. He states that this insight is not due to human revelation, but comes from ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς (Matt 16:17). Here Matthew presents the central christological perspectives of his narrative as being inextricably intertwined with the revelatory activity of the father. In this way the deity is active in the narrative, making it possible for correct christological declarations to emerge. Here Matthew continues to emphasize the tension between the human and the divine, and the way 28

Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, WBC 33A (Dallas: Word, 1993), 288. France notes the ontological significance of this declaration. He states, “The exclusive mutual knowledge of Father and Son has the effect of placing them in a category apart from other sentient beings” (The Gospel of Matthew, 445–46). 30 John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Bletchley: Paternoster, 2005), 623. 29

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in which the heavenly breaks into the earthly in order to disclose the truth of the identity of Jesus. Davies and Allison capture this dynamic in Matthew’s theology when they state in relation to this passage that it “should probably be given its full eschatological content. God has not simply unveiled a secret for Peter’s benefit: he has unveiled an eschatological secret.”31 In the community or ecclesiological discourse of chapter 18, there is a high concentration of language where Jesus refers to “my father” in various formulations. The first two (Matt 18:10, 14) can be taken together, because the use of the phrase τοῦ πατρός μου τοῦ ἐν οὐρανοῖς in Matt 18:10 in regard to not despising the little ones in the community is replicated in the illustrative parable that follows it, communicating the same sense. There exist several textual variants here that make the reading in 18:14 uncertain. The variation in pronoun render the phrase as either τοῦ πατρός μου, τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν, or τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν.32 It is difficult to determine whether in 18:14 the reading τοῦ πατρός μου was later changed due to a scribe harmonizing the text to 18:10, or whether the parallel reading was altered by a later scribe to preserve the form of address introduced in 18:13 “I say to you.” It should also be noted that on the previous occasion when Jesus spoke of carrying out the divine will, the evangelist used the formulation τὸ θέλημα τοῦ πατρός μου τοῦ ἐν οὐρανοῖς (Matt 12:50). In the end, it needs to be noted that the choice between the first two variants is difficult, the manuscript evidence is fairly evenly split, and competing internal arguments can be presented in favor of either of these two variants. Regardless of the resolution of the text-critical issue in 18:14, the statement in 18:10 promises the safety of the least of the disciples because of the presence of protecting angels who will intercede on their behalf before τοῦ πατρός μου τοῦ ἐν οὐρανοῖς. Morris notes that “[t]he whole expression is surely a way of saying that these angels have immediate access to God.”33 While that is certainly a key implication of the statement, it is also important to note that for these followers of Jesus, the deity to whom they entrust themselves is none other than the one Jesus calls “my father in the heavens.” Again, intercessory access to the deity is the theme of the statement in Matt 18:19. Corporate agreement is said to bring about the action of God. Hagner argues that the reference to “my father” rather than “your father” is significant in this context. He states,

31 W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 2, Commentary on Matthew VIII–XVIII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 623. 32 In turn the reading τοῦ πατρός μου is supported by B N O Σ 078 0281 f13 33 579 700 892 1241 1424 pm latt sys.h co; τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν by ‫ א‬D1 K L W Δ f1 565 pm latt sys.hm; and τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν by D* l890. The pronoun ἡμῶν can be discounted as being the original reading. It probably came about as an itacism for ὑμῶν. See Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 36. 33 Morris, Matthew, 465.

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“The fact that the Father is referred to as ‘my’ (μου) rather than ‘your’ hints at the involvement of Jesus in the concerns of his community.”34 The final reference to “my father” in chapter 18 occurs in the concluding statement in the parable on forgiveness (Matt 18:23–35). As has been noted, the exact phrase ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ οὐράνιος occurs only in two places in Matthew’s Gospel (15:13; 18:35). In both contexts it is used in connection with the father passing judgment. Towards the conclusion of the Gospel and particularly in connection with Jesus’s impending passion, he refers to God simply as ὁ πατήρ μου, without any reference to heaven. Proleptically referring to his death as “my cup” (a metaphor to be reused in the Passion narrative), Jesus informs the sons of Zebedee that only those destined to partake of it will drink of the cup prepared ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρός μου (Matt 20:23). The reason for dropping the qualifiers that refer to the father as “the one in the heavens” or “heavenly” is not entirely obvious. Perhaps it is simply economy of language. Alternatively, perhaps as Jesus nears his death and the meaning of his obedience to the will of God becomes more apparent, then the immediacy of his filial relationship to the father requires no spatial or ontological clarification. This form of designating God using father language in the short-form expression ὁ πατήρ μου continues throughout the Passion narrative. In the description of the final judgment (Matt 25:31–46), the king summons those on his right by addressing them as οἱ εὐλογημένοι τοῦ πατρός μου (Matt 25:34). In common with the cup in Matt 20:23 being prepared for certain people, here “those blessed of my father” are the ones who have the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Hagner notes the similarity of these two formulations, “for the same verb used in reference to eschatological blessing, see 20:23, with the addition of ‘by my father’.”35 The use of the title ὁ πατήρ μου increases in concentration in chapter 26. At the last supper in connection with the cup, Jesus informs his disciples that he will not drink the cup with them again until the day when πίνω μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν καινὸν ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ πατρός μου (Matt 26:29). In comparison with the previous two examples (Matt 20:23; 25:34), there are some striking similarities. In common with Matt 20:23 the motif of the cup and drinking recurs. Whereas in the former context the motif functioned as a metaphor for the impending death of Jesus, here it denotes the physical cup at the supper and the promise of an eschatological banquet. Also in common with Matt 25:34 where “those blessed of my father” were informed that the kingdom had been prepared for them, here Jesus again refers to the kingdom as the domain belonging to the father and as the space in which the disciples will drink the cup with him in the future. In each of these three examples the minimal formulation ὁ πατήρ 34 35

Hagner, Matthew, 2:533. Ibid., 743.

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μου is used to designate God. This terminology to designate God continues in the Gethsemane scene (Matt 26:36–46). Along with Peter, again the sons of Zebedee are in the presence of Jesus (Matt 26:37). No doubt their presence here is intended to recall their previous appearance in (Matt 20:20–23), and in this context they will begin to see what it means for Jesus to drink the cup. Using the vocative form, πάτερ μου (Matt 26:39), Jesus implores the one he addresses intimately as “my father” to remove the cup. As is frequently noted, Jesus’s prayer here echoes the prayer he taught his disciples (Matt 6:9–13), with “my father” recalling the vocative “our father” form of address, as well as the connections in terms of the statement of obedience to the will of God being done (Matt 26:39, esp. γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου in 26:42; cf. Matt 6:10), and the injunction given to disciples that they might not be led into temptation (Matt 26:41: μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς πειρασμόν; cf. μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν in Matt 6:13).36 Here the intimacy and the immediacy of the address πάτερ μου, which Jesus uses twice (Matt 26:39, 42), conveys a proximity to the deity and an absolute, although anguished trust in God. The final time that Jesus refers to God as ὁ πατήρ μου is as part of a more confident declaration in the presence of the group that arrested him. In response to one of his disciples cutting off the ear of a servant of the high priest, Jesus commands that the sword should be put away and states that if he wanted deliverance then he could appeal to τὸν πατέρα μου (Matt 26:53). Here Jesus speaks of the overwhelming power of the one he refers to as “my father,” and in accord with his prayer in the previous scene he forgoes such miraculous deliverance in order that he may obey his father’s will and drink the cup that his father has prepared for him. The final reference in the narrative to God as father, occurs in the climactic last words of the risen Jesus. In Galilee the eleven are commanded to continue Jesus’s work by making new disciples. Such new followers are, according to Jesus, to be baptized using the triadic formula εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος (Matt 28:19). The term “father” is the first component of the threefold baptismal formula. While not reflecting any developed Trinitarianism, the threefold formula, which may reflect liturgical practice, is certainly daring, and probably represents a development of the primitive postEaster practice of baptizing in the name of Jesus alone. In this sense, the one who has addressed God as ὁ πατήρ μου so frequently throughout the Gospel now has his own descriptive and relational title ὁ υἱός placed alongside that of the father, as part of what is the final reference in the Gospel to God using paternal language.

36

See France, The Gospel of Matthew, 1004–05.

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The heightened use of πατήρ language is a key feature of the Gospel of Matthew in comparison with the other Synoptic Gospels. On each of the 44 occasions when God is described using the term “father” it is Jesus alone who uses that terminology without exception.37 This mode of referring to God is insider language, it is used by Jesus, and is taught to his disciples by him. In this sense, the privileged and intimate access that Jesus has to his father is not restricted but becomes the language of address that the followers of Jesus are to use when addressing God. III. Κύριος Language for God in the Gospel of Matthew As elsewhere in the New Testament, in the Gospel of Matthew the term κύριος occurs in a range of different registers and with several different shade of meaning. At times in the vocative it can be used as a respectful form of address from a subordinate to a superior. This use is seen on several occasions in the Matthean parables (13:27; 21:30; 25:20, 22, 37). The vocative form is also used to address Jesus on several occasions. As Tuckett observes regarding the use of the term in relation to Jesus, Matthew takes over some of the occurrences in Mark … but he also has a number of additional instances where people address Jesus directly in the vocative as kyrie “Lord” (or “master”; cf. 7:22; 8:2, 6, 8, 21, 25; 9:28; 14:28, 30; 15:22, etc.). Further, Matthew appears to restrict the use of the term either to those who are recipients of Jesus’ miraculous powers (e.g. the leper in 8:2, the centurion in 8:6), or the disciples and other followers of Jesus (e.g. Peter in 14:28, 30).38

Apart from its commonplace use to designate a person of superior standing, or as a designation for Jesus, Matthew also uses the term as a designation for God. At least in part it would appear that the Matthean use of this term is influenced by the Jewish translation practice of using κύριος as an equivalent for the tetragrammaton. This practice can be traced back at least as early as the initial phase of the translation of the Jewish Scriptures into Greek. However, the practice might predate that third century BCE translation of the Torah into Greek. When Matthew use the term κύριος to designate the deity, some of the usages are formulaic in nature. For instance, on five occasions Matthew speaks of a being sent from the heavenly realm as ἄγγελος κυρίου (Matt 1:20, 24; 2:13, 19; 28:2). On other occasions the divine origin of a scriptural citation is described using the formula ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου διὰ τοῦ προφήτου (Matt 1:22; 2:15). On these occasions it is obviously God who is designated

37

The forty-four occurrences are Matt 5:16, 45, 48; 6:1, 4, 6 [twice], 8, 9, 14, 15, 18 [twice], 26, 32; 7:11, 21; 10:20, 29, 32, 33; 11:25, 26, 27 [three times]; 12:50; 13:43; 15:13; 16:17, 27; 18:10, 14 [reading uncertain], 19, 35; 20:23; 23:9; 24:36; 25:34; 26:29, 39, 42, 53; 28:19. 38 Tuckett, Christology of the New Testament, 123.

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using the term κύριος. Also in regard to the citation of Scripture, several times Matthew cites a text where God is described using the term κύριος and Matthew preserves the form of the Greek scriptural text (Matt 3:3 = LXX Isa 40:3; Matt 4:7 = LXX Deut 6:16; Matt 4:10 = LXX Deut 6:13; Matt 21:9 = LXX Ps 118:26; Matt 21:42 = LXX Ps 118:23; Matt 22:37 = LXX Deut 6:5; Matt 22:44 = LXX Ps 109:1; Matt 23:39 = LXX Ps 118:26; Matt 27:10 = LXX Zech 11:13). This leaves four further passages where Matthew introduces κύριος terminology to designate God (Matt 5:33; 9:38; 11:25; 22:45). With the prohibition against oaths, the opening tradition that is recalled is presented in the form οὐκ ἐπιορκήσεις, ἀποδώσεις δὲ τῷ κυρίῳ τοὺς ὅρκους σου (Matt 5:33). Although certainly not a scriptural citation, nonetheless this appears to be based on the command of Lev 19:12 where κύριος language is used as a self-designation by God, ἐγώ εἰμι κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν (LXX Lev 19:12 BGT). Therefore, Matthew’s use of κύριος in Matt 5:33 may be under the influence of the tradition in LXX Lev 19:12. With the example of κύριος language in Matt 22:45, εἰ οὖν Δαυὶδ καλεῖ αὐτὸν κύριον, this choice of the term κύριος is dictated by the scriptural text cited in the previous verse (LXX Ps 109:1), and Matthew uses the term again simply to continue the logic of the argument in this controversy story. The remaining two cases are examples where Matthew or his source text designate God using κύριος language. In the first example, Matthew instructs his disciples δεήθητε οὖν τοῦ κυρίου τοῦ θερισμοῦ (Matt 9:38). While in the Jewish Scriptures the harvest or reaping image is typically one of judgment (Isa 17:4–6; 24:12–13; Jer 51:33; Hos 6:11; Joel 3:13),39 here it functions in a positive manner as a metaphor for the ingathering of further disciples. In this context the “Lord of the harvest” is a reference to God, to whom prayer is to be directed for a successful harvest. The phrase δεήθητε οὖν τοῦ κυρίου τοῦ θερισμοῦ is in exact agreement with the parallel in Luke 10:2 (as in fact is nearly the whole of Matt 9:37b–38). As Fleddermann states, “In the Harvest Saying Matthew and Luke differ only in the position of ἐργάτας. Most probably Luke moved the object forward for emphasis.”40 While not suggesting that Matthew objected to the use of the term κύριος to designate God, with Matt 9:38 it was terminology that the evangelist found in his source rather than being due to his redactional creation. Similarly, the occurrence of κύριος in the phrase πάτερ, κύριε τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ τῆς γῆς (Matt 11:25) reproduces exactly the tradition shared with Luke 10:21. This tradition is interesting since it reveals that Matthew could on the one hand take terminology describing God found in his source, such as πατήρ, and redactionally multiply its use, while at the same

39 40

France, The Gospel of Matthew, 373. Fleddermann, Q, 404.

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time replicating the use of κύριος as a reference to God in this tradition but not repeating its use to any great extent in his own narrative. Matthew is not opposed to the use of κύριος as a term to designate God. However, his use of the term is restricted. He employs it in formulaic expression such as ἄγγελος κυρίου, or introductions to scriptural citations τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου. Moreover, he uses κύριος to designate God when it occurs in scriptural texts that he cites that use the term in that way (or is implied in the wider context of those texts; Matt 5:33, cf. LXX Lev 19:12), or if it is found in the source texts on which he depends (Matt 9:38; 11:25). It is likely that Matthew’s redactional tendency was in general to reserve κύριος terminology to designate Jesus, rather than God.

C. The Invisible God in the Gospel of Matthew While the titles used to describe God are examples of explicit references to the deity in the Matthean narrative, the animating activity of God can be detected at several other points in the Gospel. These are more implicit or implied in nature, with divine activity understood to be operative even when there is no direct reference to God. In this way the Gospel of Matthew is a more thoroughgoing theocentric text than is often recognized. I. The Use of Divine Passives in the Gospel of Matthew In common with other texts in the New Testament and the scriptural tradition more widely, there are numerous places in the narrative where the passive voice is used to describe an action without an agent being implicitly designated. When the likely but unstated agent is God, such a construction constitutes what typically is called a divine passive.41 For instance in John the Baptist’s judgment oracle, he warns that the axe is already τῶν δένδρων κεῖται, and every unproductive tree ἐκκόπτεται καὶ εἰς πῦρ βάλλεται (Matt 3:10; cf. 7:19). Here no agent is named. However, in the previous verse God is named as the subject able to raise up children for Abraham. This confirms the suggestion that the three passive verbs in Matt 3:10 have God as their unstated agent. Davies and Allison make the following observation in relation to the first verb κεῖμαι. They 41

Following on from what Daniel B. Wallace calls “the suppression of the agent” in conjunction with the passive voice, he discusses the subcategory where God is the implied agent. He states, “The passive voice is also use when God is the obvious agent. Many grammars call this a divine passive (or theological passive)”; cf. Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 437. He continues by noting that the case that this construction is due to the Jewish aversion for use of the divine name is overstated. Rather, the use is seen as having rhetorical effect as it draws the reader into the story.

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state, “Concerning the verb κεῖμαι (never with ἀξίνη in the LXX), God is implicitly the agent of the passive.”42 Thus, although unnamed, God is understood to be the one who will bring judgment upon those whose actions do not befit John’s baptism of repentance. Still focused on eschatological outcomes, the beatitudes speak of the reception of future blessings – those who mourn will be consoled (Matt 5:4), those who hunger for righteousness will be satisfied (Matt 5:6), those who show mercy will receive mercy (Matt 5:7),43 and peacemakers will be called sons of God (Matt 5:9). In none of these four cases is the agent of the future blessing named. However, there is no doubt that God is viewed as the one who will bestow the reversal of these eschatological blessings. This same promise of the addition of everything that is necessary for those who seek the kingdom and righteousness is expressed using another divine passive construction καὶ ταῦτα πάντα προστεθήσεται ὑμῖν (Matt 6:33). Thus, Charles Quarles states that “προστεθήσεται … is a divine pass. and predictive, expressing a promise for the fut.”44 Although a complete survey of all possible divine passives will not be provided for the entire span of the Gospel of Matthew, this linguistic feature does continue throughout the narrative. In some cases, the context makes it unambiguously apparent that the unnamed agent is divine. As part of the mission discourse, along with the warning that disciples will be brought before authorities, Jesus also assures his followers that the response they need to make will be given to them with the implication that the gift of speech comes from a divine source: δοθήσεται γὰρ ὑμῖν ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ὥρᾳ τί λαλήσητε (Matt 10:19). The following verse makes the implicit agent of Matt 10:19 explicit. It states that the necessary speech will be provided by τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ πατρὸς ὑμῶν τὸ λαλοῦν ἐν ὑμῖν (Matt 10:20). The formulation “the spirit of your father” is somewhat unusual and melds more typical references to the holy spirit with those to the father. Commenting on this striking formulation, Hagner notes, “This unusual expression (substituted for Mark’s τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, ‘the Holy Spirit’) is unique in the NT and reflects the Matthean preference for the intimate title ‘Father’.”45 It is probably not helpful to separate the source of divine speech as originating exclusively with the Spirit precisely because Matthew foregrounds the father in this statement. Notwithstanding this issue, the passive δοθήσεται (Matt 10:19) clearly reflects divine provision of speech for those making faithful testimony. Furthermore, discussing which acts of verbal dis-

42

Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:309. Commenting on Matt 5:7, France observes that the “passive verb here (as in vv. 4b, 6b and 9b) speaks primarily not of how other people will respond to the merciful person, but of how God will deal with those who live by his standards” (The Gospel of Matthew, 168). 44 Quarles, Matthew, 69. 45 Hagner, Matthew, 1:277. 43

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paragement against the Son of Man or the Holy Spirit might have eternal consequence, Matthew states that the one speaking against the Son of Man ἀφεθήσεται, whereas the one speaking against the Holy Spirit οὐκ ἀφεθήσεται (Matt 12:32). The context suggests that the forgiveness (or lack thereof) is not from the Son of Man or the Holy Spirit, but rather from God. Therefore, while the agent who passes this judgment is not explicitly stated, the clear implication is that it is God who determines the respective fates of those who speak against the Son of Man or against the Holy Spirit. The description of the resurrection of Jesus may be another example where Matthew uses passive verb forms to highlight the action of God in reversing the effect of death and of demonstrating a vindication of Jesus. Against this, R. T. France sensibly warns against drawing extended theological implications from the occurrence of such passive forms. Primarily discussing the three Matthean Passion predictions (Matt 16:21; 17:22–23; 20:18–19), he states that, Matthew regularly uses the passive verb “be raised” (egeiromi) to refer to Jesus’ resurrection, rather than the active anistēmi (“rise”). He uses the same term also for the raising of the dead other than Jesus (9:25; 10:8; 11:5; 14:2; 27:52). The two verbs seem to be used interchangeably for Jesus’ resurrection in the NT generally, so that any attempt to draw a theological distinction between them is implausible: that Jesus “was raised” by the power of God is not to be set over against his “rising” victorious. But the passive formulation perhaps encourages us to see in this event God’s vindication of his faithful Messiah.46

Thus, in the two forms of the phrase about resurrection in the three passion predictions, καὶ τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἐγερθῆναι (Matt 16:21), καὶ τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἐγερθήσεται (Matt 17:22–23; 20:18–19), the passive verb expresses an agency beyond that of the Son of Man, which will be responsible for raising that figure from the dead.47 This appears to be affirmed during the visit of the women to the tomb, when the angel informs them of Jesus’s absence: οὐκ ἔστιν ὧδε, ἠγέρθη γὰρ καθὼς εἶπεν· (Matt 28:6). Again, the passive form of the verb suggests that divine agency is responsible for returning Jesus to life.48 While in some cases it might be debated whether or not a passive form has an implied divine agent, there are many cases in the Gospel of Matthew where divine agency is self-evident. This phenomenon reveals the evangelist’s view of the events surrounding Jesus. That perspective is the understanding that God is animating such events even when not explicitly identified in the narrative.

46

France, The Gospel of Matthew, 632–33. This is recognized by Grant Osborne when he states, “The divine passive ‘be raised’ (ἐγερθῆναι) stresses the vindication of Jesus’ death by God”; cf. Grant R. Osborne, Matthew, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 635. 48 Thus, Hagner states that ἠγέρθη is “a divine passive with God as the acting subject” (Matthew, 2:870). 47

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II. The Fulfilment of Divine Purpose in the Gospel of Matthew One of the most distinctive features of the Gospel of Matthew is the use and deployment of the fulfilment citations.49 In particular, Matthew sees events in the life of Jesus as fulfilment of certain Jewish scriptural texts. France draws attention to the most fulsome of the citation formulae: “Ten references to the Old Testament are introduced in a rather ponderous way (Matt 1:22–23; 2:15; 2:17–19; 2:23; 4:14–16; 8:17; 12:17–21; 13:35; 21:4–5; 27:9–10).”50 Most typically, the fulfilment formula which precedes the actual citation is roughly of the form ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ Ἠσαΐου τοῦ προφήτου, λέγοντος (Matt 4:14), with the appropriate prophet named and with minor variations. However, this formulation is in fact an abbreviated version of the longer form that occurs in the first two cases: ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου διὰ τοῦ προφήτου λέγοντος (Matt 1:22–23; 2:15). In these instances, although the specific prophet is not identified, the ultimate source of the scriptural citation is stated as being τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου. Even in those eight cases where there is no reference to the ultimate source of what was spoken being the Lord, the prophet still remains the medium for communication διὰ τοῦ προφήτου, not the origin of what is spoken. In relation to the fulfilment of Scripture, God stands behind the events that Matthew narrates, albeit perhaps even greater removed than is the case with the use of the divine passives. With the divine passives, the deity while functioning as an unnamed agent is nonetheless the one animating various actions that take place. By contrast, with the fulfilment of the Jewish Scriptures, the context or perhaps better the matrix for understanding the reason why events had to transpire in the way they did was set by God as part of the divine plan and purpose. In fact, the implication of this notion of fulfilment may be more far reaching for perceiving the Matthean understanding of the role of God in relation to the narrative that he constructs. It is not that just a few incidental details in the story represent places where the purposes of God are fulfilled. Rather, such explicit statements of fulfilment are key examples of the divine plan coming to fruition. However, that plan in its entirety is communicated in the larger narrative, which climaxes with the resurrection of Jesus. Behind all these events, the evangelist appears to operate with an understanding that the purpose of the deity is being achieved. Raymond Brown echoes this perspective on the larger purpose of the fulfilment motif:

49

With a specific focus on the use of such formula citations in the infancy narrative see George M. Soares-Prabhu, The Formula Quotations in the Infancy Narrative of Matthew: An Enquiry into the Tradition History of Matthew 1–2, AnBib 63 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1976). 50 R. T. France, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher (Exeter: Paternoster, 1989), 171.

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For Matthew, these citations did more than highlight incidental agreements between the OT and Jesus. He introduced them because they fit his general theology of the oneness of God’s plan (a oneness already implicitly recognized by the appeal to the OT in early Christian preaching) and, especially, because they served some of his own particular theological and pastoral interests in dealing with a mixed Christian community of Jews and Gentiles.51

Therefore, through utilization of divine passives, or presenting fulfilment of Scripture as representing the accomplishment of the divine plan, Matthew offers a cosmological understanding that the deity behind the narrative is an everpresent and constantly involved force in the events that take place.

D. Conclusion: The God of the Gospel of Matthew Given the significant role of God in the Gospel of Matthew, both as an explicitly named figure and as one that implicitly animates the action of the narrative and its larger purpose, the lack of interest in the God whom the evangelist depicts is surprising. This study has attempted to rectify that lacuna, and in the process some significant observations have emerged. First, in regard to the use of terminology to depict the deity, both in absolute numerical terms and also measured by frequency in relation to number of verses, Matthew has the fewest occurrences of the term θεός (47 occurrences) and the term occurs with the lowest frequency (on average once every 22.25 verses). This represents the lowest use of the term θεός among the four canonical Gospels. However, it would be erroneous to conclude from this that Matthew has the lowest use of God language among the evangelists. The prominence of reference to the deity in the Gospel of Matthew is achieved by the use of the term πατήρ, which occurs in a number of formulations. This outstrips the use of the term in the other Synoptic Gospels. Moreover, in the Gospel of Matthew it is a term that is used exclusively by Jesus, and the use of such familial language denotes proximity to and intimacy with God. By contrast, either on the lips of other characters or when Jesus is in conversation with outsiders, the term θεός tends to be used to denote the deity. In the Gospel of Matthew, the term κύριος is used primarily to designate Jesus. However, on certain occasions it can be used to denote God. The contexts in which κύριος is employed in reference to God include designation of celestial beings, such as ἄγγελος κυρίου, as part of a formulaic introduction to a scriptural citation (Matt 1:22; 2:15), or when it is part of a scriptural text that Matthew cites (Matt 3:3; 4:7, 10; 21:9, 42; 22:37, 44; 23:39; 27:10). Lastly, there are four cases where Matthew appears to be utilizing a scriptural context or a source text and 51 Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, 2nd ed., ABRL (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 104.

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this determines the use of κύριος language (Matt 5:33; 9:38; 11:25; 22:45). Therefore, in terms of choices of terminology Matthew employs a range of terms to designate God. The term θεός is the most frequently used term by a small margin (47 times, πατήρ being used 44 times). When it occurs on the lips of Jesus it is chiefly used in conversation with outsiders or opponents. It is also the term that other characters apart from Jesus use when referring to the deity. The term πατήρ is terminology favored by Matthew. It is spoken exclusively by Jesus and occurs in the context of the language of prayer, giving teaching to the disciples, or addressing God directly. The term κύριος is the least frequent of Matthew’s three main terms to designate the deity. The use of the term is often dictated by the source material that the evangelist employs, be that a scriptural text or context, or material taken over from sources of pre-existing Jesus tradition. Second, apart from these explicit references to God, Matthew also operates with a worldview and a conceptual understanding of a deity who is actively involved in the events that are recounted in the narrative. The frequent use of passive verbs with no named agent, but where the agent is implied to be God, is not a feature unique to the first Gospel. However, it is a linguistic feature that Matthew uses on several occasions throughout the narrative. This allows the evangelist to communicate the presence of divine purpose behind events that transpire in the narrative. Related to this phenomenon, Matthew also presents the events of the narrative as representing the notion of “fulfilment.” What is typically being fulfilled in the person of Jesus or the events that surround him is something previously described in the Jewish scriptures. While Matthew typically designates the event as fulfilling something spoken “through the prophet,” on two occasions he explicitly names the Lord as the source of communication (Matt 1:22–23; 2:15). While Matthew does not state on every occasion that he presents a fulfilled scriptural citation that it was spoken by the Lord, each citation conveys the understanding that what has transpired is accord with the divine plan spoken by God in the Scriptures. God is a figure of central and determinative importance in relation to the events described by Matthew in his narrative. The father language which is so prominent in the Gospel depicts Jesus’s unique and intimate relationship with the deity. The disciples of Jesus are introduced to this personal mode of addressing God. This is nowhere more so than in the instructions given to them concerning how to address God in prayer (Matt 6:9). The figure of God is also central in determining the events reported in the narrative. What happens in relation to Jesus only occurs because it is in fulfilment and in accord with God’s plan. In this way, Matthew’s narrative is as theocentric as it is christocentric. God who is the father of Jesus and Jesus who is the son of God are indivisibly united in the actions of the narrative. If that unity of purpose and intimacy of relationship ever breaks down, it is at the moment when Jesus utters the cry of

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dereliction.52 For here Jesus does not address the deity as father. Yet, even in this context the relation is not fully dissolved. Even in this passage Jesus addresses God using the first-person possessive pronoun θεέ μου θεέ μου (Matt 27:46). In this way, the story Matthew tells of the one he describes as Immanuel is the story of God the Father with Jesus from his birth to his death. God is an ever-present presence animating the narrative, even at those moments when Matthew feels no need to state explicitly what he understands to be a very obvious perspective.

52 Hagner notes that the pain expressed here derives not from the physical suffering, but from the sense of a rupture in the relationship with the father. He states, “The meaning of the words in the mouth of Jesus, the Son of God, is something about which the reader and the exegete can only wonder. It may fairly be said that it was whatever occurred here – this breach with his Father (although the prayer avoids this intimate term, using simply ‘God’) – and not the excruciating pain or ignominious death of crucifixion that Jesus dreaded above all else” (Matthew, 2:870).

Table of Contents

Following Jesus and Fulfilling the Law Considerations on the Ethical Conception of the Gospel of Matthew Matthias Konradt Mattias Konradt

An adequate analysis of Matthew’s ethical conception needs to consider a couple of different aspects. The following outline is built on a differentiation of three basic steps. I will first very briefly analyze the theological basis of Matthean ethics. In the second step I will evaluate the significance of the Torah therein. This aspect is usually the focus of the current academic debate; repeatedly, Matthean ethics was discussed even exclusively on the basis of Jesus’s Torah-related teaching. But it should be noticed that this exclusive approach to the Matthean understanding of the Torah is short-sighted. Firstly, Jesus’s ethical instructions are not only related to the Torah; and beyond the ethical teaching of Jesus, secondly, an adequate study of Matthean ethics has to take mimetic aspects into account, which result from the life of Jesus as a model for his disciples.1 For this reason, the entire Matthean Jesus story should serve as the textual basis. In the third section, I will thus discuss aspects of following and imitating Jesus. In the way the Gospel of Matthew brings together Old Testament and early Jewish heritage with an orientation toward the ethical potential of the Christ-event, it proves itself to be one of the main testimonies of New Testament ethics.

A. Theological Foundation Without any doubt, the ethical dimension has central significance for Matthew’s understanding of being a Christ-believer. This includes a soteriological relevance, as is documented in the numerous announcements of judgment.2 1 Cf. on this approach Richard A. Burridge, Imitating Jesus. An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2007). 2 See e.g., Matt 3:7–12; 5:19–20, 22, 25–26, 29–30; 7:1–2, 13–27; 8:11–12; 10:32–33, 41–42; 11:20–24; 12:31–37, 41–42; 13:36–43, 47–50; 16:25–27; 18:3–4, 8–9, 34–35; 19:23–27; 22:11–14; 23:32–39; 24:29–25:46. Herein, it is characteristic for Matthew that

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However, Matthew’s emphasis on the role of works for one’s fate in the last judgment should not be misinterpreted as being part of a line of thought according to which people are able to prove themselves just in the eyes of God solely by their works with no fundamental human dependence on the mercy of God. For this reason, it is hardly theologically adequate to characterize Matthew as a representative of “works righteousness,” which focuses one-sidedly on human behavior. This is all the more true, since Matthew by no means just lets a cascade of demands rain down on the addressees. Rather, the ethical demands of the Gospel are embedded in the basic story of salvation,3 which tells of God’s engagement in compassion towards people through Jesus Christ. This can already be seen in the prologue: as early as 1:23 Jesus is programmatically presented as the Immanuel, “God-with-us,” by which a sign is set over the following story of Jesus’s earthly ministry: in Jesus, his engagement in helping and healing, humans experience God’s “being with them.” Moreover, as is well-known, the Gospel of Matthew ends with the promise of the Risen One to his disciples to be with them to the end of the age (28:20). Through this, since Jesus is the Immanuel, they are simultaneously promised God’s presence. These key texts reflect and underline the motif of “being-with” as a major theological theme (see also Matt 18:20). It is not only that 1:23 and 28:20 construct a framework which surrounds everything narrated in between with the promise of God’s being-with in Jesus and Jesus’s being-with his people. At the same time, the crowning conclusion of the Gospel in 28:20 also relates the promise of being-with to the presence of the reader beyond the narrated time. Nota bene, the Gospel of Matthew is the only Gospel that does not end with a commentary of the narrator but with an (encouraging) word of the Risen One. Experiencing God’s being-with in Jesus means on closer inspection that the people partake in God’s mercy: by sending Jesus to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (15:24) God takes care of the plight of his people (9:36; 14:14) who dwell in the darkness (4:15–16). Matthew emphasized not only Jesus’s teaching, but also his healing ministry,4 in the context of which the cry “have mercy!” is often heard (9:27; 15:22; 17:15; 20:30, 31). Matthew has also placed statements of judgment are not directed toward the opponents of Jesus or against outsiders only, but also have a parenetical, inward aspect. 3 Cf. the considerations of Ulrich Luz, Die Jesusgeschichte des Matthäus (NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993), 58–63 and idem, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: 1. Teilband, Mt 1–7, 5th ed., EKK I/1 (Düsseldorf: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2002), 292–94. 4 See besides the healing narratives the summary notes in Matt 4:23–24; 8:16; 9:35; 12:15; 14:14, 34–36; 15:29–31; 19:2; 21:14. Matthew by no means only follows his templates, but sets his own accents. See Matthias Konradt, Israel, Church, and the Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew, trans. Kathleen Ess, Baylor-Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014), 39–40.

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a note about Jesus’s therapeutic ministry immediately before the Sermon on the Mount (4:24), going beyond the summary in 4:23 (cf. 9:35). Matthew’s intention in this striking compositional move is hard to miss: he wanted to anchor the ethical admonitions illustrated in the Sermon on the Mount in the messianic gift of salvation: the crowds, to whom the Sermon on the Mount opens up the will of God, have already experienced Jesus’s healing care for them. In addition to the healings, God’s merciful engagement in compassion towards people through Jesus is manifested in the forgiveness of sins, which stands at the center of Jesus’s mission.5 The situation of human beings coram Deo is pointedly illustrated by the burden of the debt of the servant to his king in 18:23–27: the compassionate king has mercy and forgives his servant all his debts. Jesus’s mission centrally serves the realization of God’s purpose of salvation. Already in Matthew 1 the interpretation of the name “Jesus” underlines salvation from sin as the central point of the task and ministry of Jesus (1:21).6 In Immanuel God is present for and with humanity as the one who does not take care only of their bodily needs, as is illustrated both through healing works and through the feeding-stories (14:15–21; 15:32–38) and is expressed in the supplication of bread in the Lord’s Prayer (6:11). God shows himself to be merciful also by releasing people from their debt and by sending Jesus to save his people from sin. In the following story, the theme introduced in 1:21 is unfolded in the promise of forgiveness of sins in concrete encounters with the earthly Jesus. It is exemplarily described in Matt 9:2–8: the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins on earth. Similarly, the pericope directly following, the call of the tax collector in 9:9–13, continues the theme of the forgiveness of sins7 and thus emphasizes this as a central characteristic of Jesus’s mission. The explicit promise of forgiveness of sins in 9:2 corresponds here to the table fellowship offered by Jesus. At the end of the text, in Jesus’s reply to the protest of the Pharisees, Matthew inserted the quotation of the prophet’s word, “Mercy is what I desire, not sacrifice” from Hos 6:6 (see Matt 9:13), and thus explicitly identified the reaching out to sinners as an act of mercy. This initial experience of merciful, salvific engagement is the prerequisite and basis for everything else that is connected to discipleship – including ethical instructions. If nothing 5 See Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: 4. Teilband, Mt 26–28, 5th ed., EKK I/4 (Düsseldorf: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2002), 116. 6 On the soteriological need of the people as an implication of Matt 1:21 cf., e.g., David D. Kupp, Matthew’s Emmanuel: Divine Presence and God’s People in the First Gospel, SNTSMS 90 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 59. 7 Cf., e.g., Christof Landmesser, Jüngerberufung und Zuwendung zu Gott. Ein exegetischer Beitrag zum Konzept der matthäischen Soteriologie im Anschluss an Mt 9,9–13, WUNT 133 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 138; Jeongsoo Park, “Sündenvergebung im Matthäusevangelium. Ihre theologische und soziale Dimension,” EvT 66 (2006): 210–27, here 221–22.

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else, Matt 9:9–13 exemplifies how short-sighted it is to speak one-sidedly of “works righteousness” in consideration of Matthean soteriology. The event described in 9:9–13 corresponds to the sending of the servants in the parable of the royal wedding feast (22:1–14) in 22:8–10, which reflects the mission of the disciples after Easter (22:1–14), because here besides (already) good people also (still) evil people are brought together for the banquet. Here too, the invitation applies to sinners as well, it is not tied to any conditions on the part of the people.8 Simultaneously, the conclusion in 22:11–14 makes it just as clear that those called as sinners must not remain such, but need to repent and change their life, as it is indicated by the required wedding garment, which, as is well known, signifies good moral conduct. On the other hand, Jesus’s task to save from sins finds its – final – realization in his death: Matthew added the words “for the forgiveness of sins” in the words of institution of the cup (26:28), which he had previously omitted in the presentation of the Baptist’s ministry (cf. Mark 1:4), so that the forgiveness of sins is concentrated in the figure of Jesus. Both christological horizons, which coexist in the Gospel of Matthew without Matthew having felt compelled to clarify their relationship, have direct relevance for the present times of the congregation. In the Lord’s Supper, the congregation remembers the salvation given to it through the forgiveness of sins. Jesus’s authority to grant the forgiveness of sins through God to people in an immediate encounter is connected with the corresponding authority of the church. Being implied in the praise of the multitude in 9:8, which generalizes that God “has given such authority to men,”9 Matt 18:18 states it explicitly: as disciples of Jesus, the congregation is given the authority to bind and to loose, that is, to leave sins unforgiven or to forgive. In contrast to the Lord’s Supper, the members of the congregation here do not have the role of receiving the forgiveness of sins themselves, but of effectively granting the forgiveness of sins to others. Herein it is evident that the intention of those who realize the forgiveness they themselves receive in the Lord’s Supper will always be directed toward granting forgiveness of sins to others. The precondition of this, however, is the repentance of the sinner. Apart from the aspects mentioned above, Jesus’s ministry further aims at salvation from sin in another way, namely, in revealing the will of God to humankind in a fully valid way, and thus making a life according to the will of God possible.10 In other words, Jesus’s ethical teaching in this sense is also an

8

Cf. Armin Wouters, “… wer den Willen meines Vaters tut”. Eine Untersuchung zum Verständnis vom Handeln im Matthäusevangelium, Biblische Untersuchungen 23 (Regensburg: Pustet, 1992), 166. 9 Cf. for many Park, “Sündenvergebung,” 221. 10 Cf. Thomas R. Blanton, “Saved by Obedience: Matthew 1:21 in Light of Jesus’ Teaching on the Torah,” JBL 132 (2013): 393–413.

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expression of God’s salvific will. The central point, however, is that it is experiencing God’s being with humanity in Jesus and the helping and healing engagement with people that forms the basis of the ethical demands. The fundamental aspect that the ethical demands are embedded in the history of salvation narrated in the Gospel and further that Matthew understands Christian action as a dimension of the relationship to Christ is expressed with paradigmatic clarity in Jesus’s inviting call in 11:28–30.11 For in the unfolding of the invitation δεῦτε πρός με (11:28) in verse 29, the first call of Jesus to take his yoke upon oneself (11:29a) addresses comprehensively the relationship to him as royal Messiah, before the second imperative to learn from him (v. 29b) then explicates specifically the aspect of the conduct of life included therein. Phrased the other way around: ethical conduct is part of submitting to the rule of the Messiah. According to Matthew, however, this reign is realized in merciful and salvific engagement for humankind, which – in the Matthean interpretation – culminates in Jesus’s taking the way to the cross to save others. Moreover, the Son, who has exclusive knowledge of the Father according to 11:27, is the Immanuel for Matthew (1:23). Those who take their yoke upon themselves thus submit themselves to the rule of the one in whom God himself is present. Far from merely admonishing the observance of Jesus’s instruction, Jesus’s invitation in 11:28–30 refers to the “indicative” foundation of the Matthean ethics (to formulate it in classical nomenclature) and makes clear that its adequate thematization can only be realized within the comprehensive framework of the larger view of reality offered in the Gospel – and thus only within the horizon of Christology as it is unfolded narratively by the evangelist in his narration of Jesus’s life.

B. The Fulfilment of the Torah and the Matthean Understanding of the Torah In the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:20–49, the Lukan equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount, the law is not mentioned expressis verbis at all. Matthew, on the other hand, inserted a programmatic passage in 5:17–20 on the validity of the Torah and the prophets (5:17–19) and – following on from this – on the “better righteousness” (5:20) expected of the disciples, which together with the Golden Rule in 7:12, detached by Matthew from its presumed context in Q (cf. Luke 6:31) and declared as a summary of the law and the prophets, frames the

11

For a detailed explanation of the understanding of the text presumed in the following, see Matthias Konradt, “‘Nehmt auf euch mein Joch und lernt von mir!’ (Mt 11,29): Mt 11,28–30 und die christologische Dimension der matthäischen Ethik,” ZNW (2018): 1–31.

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body of the Sermon on the Mount (5:17–7:12).12 With this, Matthew has editorially put Jesus’s teachings, which had been handed down to him, into an explicit context with God’s manifestation of his will in the Scriptures, in the Torah and the prophets. Within the body of the Sermon on the Mount this reference to the Torah finds its clearest expression in the antitheses in 5:21–48. The relation of Jesus’s instruction in the Sermon on the Mount to the Torah is also reflected in its carefully arranged narrative embedding in 4:23–5:2 and 7:28–29. In accordance with several programmatic statements in the prologue (1:21; 2:6; 4:16), Matthew in 4:23 explicitly identifies the people of God as the addressees of Jesus’s ministry (ἐν τῷ λαῷ), which is summarily described here as “teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness.”13 In 4:25 this aspect is echoed in the fact that Matthew has large crowds of people from all Israel, as the geographical information indicates, come together with Jesus.14 The reaction of these crowds at the end of the sermon (7:28–29) makes clear that the appearance of the disciples in 5:1 does not mean that the teaching is exclusively for them. The disciples form only the inner circle of a larger audience formed by the crowds. Thus, Matthew symbolically has all of Israel represented by the crowds. The meaning and intention of God’s manifestation of his will, which Israel once received at Sinai, is now made accessible to the people of God through its Messiah – and thus with ultimate authority.15 That Jesus – like Moses once did at Sinai (Exod 19:3, 20 and elsewhere) – climbs a mountain (Matt 5:1) underlines the constitutive reference of the Sermon on the Mount to the revelation on Sinai. With regard to the compositional positioning of the Sermon on the Mount within the Matthean narrative thread, it therefore does not suffice just to point out that, within the frame of the two almost identical summaries in 4:23; 9:35, the Sermon on the Mount gives an exemplary presentation of the teaching of Jesus and thus illustrates what it means to change one’s life in view of the gospel of the (near) kingdom of heaven (4:17). Rather, the Israel-theological horizon of the Sermon on the Mount must also be taken into account, which is manifested in the speech itself through the explicit reference to the Torah and the prophets (5:17; 7:12). In other words, the reference of Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount to the Torah, as editorially pointed out 12 For a convincing proposal on the structure of the Sermon on the Mount see Christoph Burchard, “Versuch, das Thema der Bergpredigt zu finden,” in Studien zur Theologie, Sprache und Umwelt des Neuen Testaments, ed. Dieter Sänger, WUNT 107 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 27–50. 13 On the connection between Matt 4:23 and 1:21; 2,6; 4,16 cf. Konradt, Israel, Church, and the Gentiles, 50. 14 For the interpretation of the geographical references see ibid., 50–52. 15 Cf. Gerhard Lohfink, “Wem gilt die Bergpredigt? Eine redaktionskritische Untersuchung von Mt 4,23–5,2 und 7,28f,” in Ethik im Neuen Testament, ed. Karl Kertelge, QD 102 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1984), 145–67, here 155–57.

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by Matthew, and the scenic embedding of the discourse form a conceptual context which is defined by an Israel-theological agenda. This aspect, however, must be complemented by the fact that the Sermon on the Mount at the same time already points beyond Israel. The proposition of its theme that precedes the body of the discourse in 5:13–16 defines the role of the disciples as “salt of the earth” and “light of the world.” This universal horizon corresponds to the fact that in 5:16 it is generally the people (ἔμπροσθεν τῶν ἀνθρώπων) who are to be led to the praise of God through the good works of the disciples. The Torah of Israel, as interpreted by Jesus, is also the Torah for the nations. This is also the reason why within the framework of their mission to the nations the disciples can be entrusted to teach others everything that Jesus has commanded them (28:19–20). This expansion of the Sermon on the Mount, indicated by 28:20, that goes beyond the reference to Israel that is created by the narrative embedding of the discourse, corresponds to the fact that the Matthean speeches as a whole are not only part of a past story, but also directly addressed to the recipients of Matthew’s Gospel.16 The fact that the Torah can be Torah for the nations is – as will become clear in a moment – grounded in the Matthean understanding of the Torah. The compositional positioning of 5:17–20 as the opening of the body of the Sermon on the Mount and as the first statement in the Gospel about Torah and prophets underlines the programmatic relevance that Matthew ascribes to these verses.17 His use of the verb “to fulfil” with reference to the Torah and prophets in the positive part of 5:17 is noticeable, since such usage is rare in early Jewish tradition.18 Its basic meaning becomes clear from the correspondence of “do and teach” to “fulfil” in verse 19, as the counterpart to “abolish.” In the context of Matthew 5 the emphasis lies on teaching, which nevertheless should facilitate appropriate conduct. In the light of other christologically oriented usage of “to fulfil” in the Gospel of Matthew, however, a specifically christological meaning should also be heard in verse 17. On the one hand, the mention of “fulfilling” in the Matthean context invokes the association of the formula quotations.19 Just as the promises of the prophets are fulfilled in Jesus, he also stands in continuity with the proclamation of the will of God in the Torah and 16

Cf. Luz, Matthäus, 1:38: “Die fünf großen Reden sind zum ‘Fenster’ der matthäischen Jesusgeschichte hinaus gesprochen. Sie sind direkte Anrede an die Leser/innen und direkt für sie gültiges Gebot Jesu” (in the original in italics). 17 Cf. ibid., 1:308; Klyne Snodgrass, “Matthew and the Law,” Society of Biblical Literature 1988 Seminar Papers, SBLSP 27 (Atlanta: SBL, 1988), 536–54, here 546; Hubert Frankemölle, “Die Tora Gottes für Israel, die Jünger Jesu und die Völker,” in Schrift und Tradition. Festschrift für Josef Ernst zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Knut Backhaus and Franz Georg Untergaßmair (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1996), 85–118, here 97, and elsewhere. 18 See T. Naph 8:7; Sib. Or. 3:246; Philo, Praem 83, cf. in the New Testament Rom 8:4; 13:8; Gal 5:14; (6:2). 19 See Matt 1:22–23; 2:15, 17–18, 23; 4:14–16; 8:17; 12:17–21; 13:35; 21:4–5; 27:9–10.

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Prophets.20 On the other hand, we must think back to the only other use of the verb in active form in 3:15: it is befitting for Jesus (and the Baptist) to “fulfil all righteousness.” As in the Sermon on the Mount (5:6, 10, 20; 6:1, 33) and in 21:32, “righteousness” is here used in the sense of demanded conduct.21 To Jesus it is revealed what God specifically asks of him and he acts accordingly. As is well known, the motif of obedience is of leading importance in Matthew’s Son-of-God-Christology.22 Likewise, it is revealed to Jesus what God demands of all people in the Torah and the prophets. More precisely, for Matthew, Jesus is not just one interpreter of the Torah in concert with others, but rather the one teacher (see 23:8, 10), who, on the basis of his exclusive knowledge of the Father (see 11:27c), brings to light through his interpretation (and his exemplary conduct) what the will of God in the Torah and the prophets contains in its full meaning.23 The programmatic statement in 5:17 is concretized by verse 18 and verse 19 in two ways. On the one hand, verse 18 affirms the all-encompassing validity of the Torah: no iota is rendered invalid. This principle is illustrated in various ways in the Gospel of Matthew by the further teaching of Jesus: the tithe (cf. Lev 27:30; Deut 14:22–23) is not obsolete (23:23), the Sabbath (12:1–14; 24:20) is not a day like any other, and the Matthean Jesus, contrary to Mark 7:19, by no means declares all food pure (Matt 15:1–20). On the other hand, Matthew operates with the principle of weighting among the commandments in his Torah hermeneutics. The question about the greatest commandment finds its answer in the double commandment of love (22:34–40), in which Matthew explicitly places the commandment of neighborly love on an equal level with the commandment of love of God (22:39a). According to 23:23 the weightier matters of the law are justice, mercy, and faithfulness. In particular, by quoting Hos 6:6 twice Matthew asserts that mercy stands above sacrifice (Matt 9:13; 20 Cf. Andrea J. Mayer-Haas, “Geschenk aus Gottes Schatzkammer” (bSchab 10b). Jesus und der Sabbat im Spiegel der neutestamentlichen Schriften, NTAbh 43 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2003), 473, 481. 21 Cf. Matthias Konradt, “Die Taufe des Gottessohnes. Erwägungen zur Taufe Jesu im Matthäusevangelium,” in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Alida Euler, WUNT 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 201–18, here 203–08. On the ethical dimension of “righteousness” in Matt 3:15, see e.g., Heinz Giesen, Christliches Handeln: Eine redaktionskritische Untersuchung zum δικαιοσύνη-Begriff im Matthäus-Evangelium, Europäische Hochschulschriften Reihe 23: Theologie 181 (Frankfurt am Main/Bern: Lang 1982), 40; Benno Przybylski, Righteousness in Matthew and His World of Thought, 2nd ed., SNTSMS 41 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 91–94. 22 Cf. Ulrich Luz, “Eine thetische Skizze der matthäischen Christologie,” in Anfänge der Christologie. Festschrift für Ferdinand Hahn: Zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Cilliers Breytenbach and Henning Paulsen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 221–35, here 231–34. 23 Cf. David C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism. The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community, SNTW (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 124; Mayer-Haas, Geschenk, 471, 480.

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12:7). In 5:19 this hierarchy of commandments is reflected in the statements about the least commandments. They are not to be dissolved in principle, but disregard of these least commandments does not exclude individuals from the kingdom of heaven; it only leads to a “worse place in the kingdom.”24 Concretely and somewhat casually spoken: whoever likes pork, forgets to tithe, and likes to ride their motorbike on the Sabbath will still go to heaven according to Matthew, but will not get a front-row-seat. That Matt 5:19 must be taken at its word is confirmed by the Matthean version of Jesus’s encounter with a rich young man in 19:16–22. At the same time, the Matthean Torah hermeneutics gains further profile through this text. The man’s question about the conditions for gaining eternal life (19:16) is answered in the Matthean version, in contrast to Mark 10:17–22, with the precise reference to the keeping of the commandments (19:17). The dialogue could end here. What follows now appears to be a clarification of what exactly is meant by the condition “to keep the commandments.” The continuation of the dialogue is caused by an inquiry from the rich man: “What commandments?” Now Jesus does not answer “all” but states the main issue: commandments of the Decalogue concerning the interpersonal sphere, plus – added editorially by Matthew – the commandment of neighborly love (19:18–19). The implication of this answer is evident: gaining access to the kingdom of heaven is dependent on the observance of these commandments. The selection of commandments in 19:18–19 converges harmoniously with the range of commandments on the basis of which in the antitheses the “better righteousness” (5:20) demanded for the entrance into the kingdom of heaven is illustrated exemplarily, as well as with the commandments that are emphasized as central in Matthew 15 with verses 4–6 (honor of one’s parents) and the catalogue of vices in verse 19 with its orientation on the sixth through nineth commandments of the Decalogue. The focus on acts of mercy or works of love in the scenario of the Last Judgment in Matt 25:31–46 also inserts itself seamlessly here. When one looks at the two series of statements mentioned in the Matthean remarks on the Torah, they appear at first sight to be in tension: in principle Matthew insists on the validity of all commandments; but at the same time his Torah hermeneutics not only distinguishes between great and small commandments, but treats this differentiation as soteriologically relevant. This tension can be resolved if one considers text-pragmatic aspects and the main thrust of the respective statements. The first series of statements has its place on the one hand within the dispute with the pharisaic opponents concerning who the true 24 It has to be taken seriously that Matt 5:19 does not speak of exclusion (for the opposite view see David C. Sim, “Are the least included in the kingdom of heaven? The meaning of Matthew 5:19,” HTS 54 [1998]: 573–87, esp. 583–84). For the notion of different degrees of honor in the kingdom of heaven cf. Matt 5:12; 11:11; 10:41–42; 18:1–4; 20:23, in early Jewish writings cf., e.g., 4 Ezra 8:49; 10:57; 2 En. 44:5.

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trustee of the theological traditions of Israel is, that is to say in disputing the accusation of disregard for the Torah made by the Pharisees against those who believe in Christ, which Matthew in turn reverses against the Pharisees. On the other hand, the first series of statements probably also has its place in defense against positions within the Christ-believing movement that amount to a disregard or at least marginalization of the Torah or parts of the Torah (cf. 7:21– 23). The other series of statements might well reflect the actual focus of the ethical teaching of the Torah commandments in the Matthean congregations. When the disciples, in the context of their mission to the nations, are instructed to teach them all that he has instructed them, this, as far as the teaching of the Torah is concerned, refers centrally to the very areas to which Jesus has contributed an interpretation and which he has (thus) brought into focus. Regarding the question of the Torah for the nations this means that persons from the nations are obliged to the Torah, but in a way that allows them to access the ecclesia as persons from the nations. Especially in relation to Matthew 5–7, in the Sermon on the Mount, directed at Israel, Jesus interprets the Torah in such a way that its adoption is at the same time open to people from the nations, without them having to formally become Jews. The thesis advocated by some in recent research that in the Matthean congregation circumcision was demanded of believers in Christ from the nations25 – contrary to the decision of the convent of the apostles (Gal 2:1–10; Acts 15) – is improbable on the basis of Matthew’s understanding of the Torah that has just been presented.26 Seen in context, the antitheses in Matt 5:21–48 serve to explicate the statement found in verse 20 that the righteousness of the disciples must far exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees if they are to enter the kingdom of heaven. In other words, 5:20 functions as a kind of superscription of the antitheses.27 The 25 See, e.g., Sim, Gospel, 251–54 (cf. David C. Sim, “Christianity and Ethnicity in the Gospel of Matthew,” in Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark G. Brett, BibInt 19 [Leiden/New York/Köln: Brill, 1996], 171–95, here 184–94); Roger Mohrlang, Matthew and Paul. A Comparison of Ethical Perspectives, SNTSMS 48 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 44–45; Amy-Jill Levine, The Social and Ethnic Dimensions of Matthean Salvation History. “Go nowhere among the Gentiles …” (Matt. 10:5b), SBEC 14 (Lewiston/Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), 181–85; Michelle Slee, The Church in Antioch in the First Century CE: Communion and Conflict, JSNTSup 244 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), 141–44; Anders Runesson, Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew: The Narrative World of the First Gospel (Minneapolis, Fortress, 2016), 32–36, 379–80. 26 For a more thorough treatment of the question of circumcision cf. Matthias Konradt, “Matthäus im Kontext. Eine Bestandsaufnahme zur Frage des Verhältnisses der matthäischen Gemeinde(n) zum Judentum,” in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Alida Euler, WUNT 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 3–42, here 23–37. 27 Cf., e.g., Luz, Matthäus, 1:319; Sim, Gospel, 130–31; Matthias Konradt, “Die vollkommene Erfüllung der Tora und der Konflikt mit den Pharisäern im Matthäusevangelium,” in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Alida Euler, WUNT 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 288–315, here 297–98.

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implication of Matt 19:18–19 discussed above is emphatically supported by 5:20: if the scribes and Pharisees, in contrast to those who abolish lesser commandments (5:19), will not enter the kingdom of heaven, their deficit must be more severe than is the case when lesser commandments are abolished. They fall short of the great commandments (cf. 23:23). This is precisely what is illustrated by the series of antitheses in verses 21–48. The position that the antitheses are not to be read in a Torah-critical way but as directed against the interpretations of the scribes and Pharisees28 can now be referred to as majority opinion. The Torah interpretations of the scribes and Pharisees and of Jesus are placed opposite each other in thesis and counterthesis, and are the basis for measuring the level of righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees on the one hand, and the “better” righteousness expected by the disciples on the other. The Pharisees are accused of either taking the commandments only by the letter, or, as is the case, for example, with the commandment of love, of limiting their meaning by restrictive interpretations so considerably that the practice of Torah based on their interpretation of the Torah does not lead to a righteousness that qualifies one to enter the kingdom of heaven. In contrast to this, Jesus presents in the counter-theses what the proclamation of God’s will in the Torah means according to its deeper purport and its actual intention, thus enabling a righteousness that far exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. As much as it may be obvious from the analytical perspective of an exegete using historical critical methods that, for example, Matt 5:22 far exceeds the original scope of the prohibition of killing stated in the Decalogue, even so Matthew is of the opinion that Jesus’s counter-thesis does not state anything other than what the commandment itself purports to say in its full or deeper meaning. In this, the antitheses are not a special case, but are to be seen in the context of the lively processes of early Jewish interpretation of the Torah and its fundamental openness in doing so.29 At this point, I will omit the contents of the interpretation of the commandments of the Decalogue and the love-commandment in the antitheses,30 because in this essay I am primarily interested in the fundamental aspects of the ethical conception of the first evangelist. This much only: Matthew not only shows an

28

For the justification of this interpretation see Konradt, “Erfüllung.” Cf. with regard to the sixth and seventh commandment in Matt 5:21–32 and to the third commandment in Matt 5:33–37 Matthias Konradt, “Rezeption und Interpretation des Dekalogs im Matthäusevangelium,” in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Alida Euler, WUNT 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 316–47, esp. 324–28, 332–35, 338–40, with regard to Matt 5:38–48 cf. idem, “‘... damit ihr Söhne eures Vaters im Himmel werdet‘. Erwägungen zur ‘Logik’ von Gewaltverzicht und Feindesliebe in Mt 5,38–48,” in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Alida Euler, WUNT 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 348–80, esp. 350–58. 30 See the comments regarding this aspect in the publications mentioned in note 29. 29

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extremely extensive understanding of the purport of the Decalogue commandments, which makes them far more than key points of an ethical minimal consensus or basic minimal standards; he also includes the factor of the disposition of the heart (5:28; 15:19). I would like to elucidate the latter aspect by taking a brief look at the Matthean beatitudes, which, as is well known, show a strong ethicizing tendency. In this context, it is important to note that not merely individual actions come into view, but that the focus is directed strongly towards basic attitudes, fundamental dispositions. Considered in light of Greek ethics, the concept of virtue is not far from this ethical approach. In the context of the Sermon on the Mount, it is to be emphasized that the ethical characterization of a “Christian” way of life, which is given in the macarisms as the portal of the Sermon on the Mount, is related to the fulfilment of the Torah and the prophets throughout the corpus of the Sermon on the Mount. This connection can be substantiated by many cross-references. The beatitude about the peacemakers (5:9) is linked to the commandment to love one’s enemies (5:44–45) through the promise of sonship to God. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (5:6) strive for “better” righteousness (5:20). He who is pure in heart (5:8) does decide to not commit adultery in his heart (5:28) and does not gather treasures on earth but has his treasure in heaven (6:19–21). Those who are merciful (5:7) support those in need (5:42; 6:2–4, 19–21) and forgive those who have sinned against them (6:12, 14–15). He who is meek (5:5) does not get angry with his “brother” (5:22) and does not meet him with a spirit of judgment (7:1–5). It follows from these connections, that the macarisms, with their focus on essential ethical attitudes – on inner disposition – also define what fulfilment of the Torah and the prophets means: it is not simply a matter of outward observance of commandments, but – in good Jewish tradition – of the orientation of the heart. In addition to what has already been said, two further fundamental aspects should be mentioned: first, the prophetic dimension of Matthean hermeneutics of the law. Matthew, in 5:17, 7:12, and 22:40, speaks not only of the law, but of the law and prophets. The prophets here come into view as interpreters of the will of God that is fundamentally laid down in the Torah. At the same time, this role of the prophets means that for Matthew the way in which the prophets obliged Israel to the will of God serves as the guiding perspective of his Torah reception. In order to be able to understand the Torah adequately, it must also, indeed essentially, be read in the light of the prophets.31

31 On the prophetic coloring of the Matthean understanding of the law cf. Boris Repschinski, Nicht aufzulösen, sondern zu erfüllen. Das jüdische Gesetz in den synoptischen Jesuserzählungen, FB 120 (Würzburg: Echter, 2009), 136, 138–39. Concisely Carolin Ziethe, Auf seinen Namen werden die Völker hoffen. Die matthäische Rezeption der Schriften Israels zur Begründung des universalen Heils, BZNW 233 (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter,

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The most important manifestation of this perspective is the centrality of mercy in Matthean ethics, for this aspect is introduced in its substance through the twofold quotation of a prophetic word, of Hosea 6:6 in Matt 9:13 and 12:7, as the basic principle of Matthean ethics. As has been shown, in Matt 9:13 Jesus invokes the prophetic word to identify his own actions, his turn toward sinners, by reference to Scripture as being in accordance with divine will. In the larger context of the Gospel of Matthew, the explicit appeal to Hos 6:6 needs to be read in connection to Jesus’s programmatic demand to fulfil the law and the prophets (5:17). That another statement about the meaning of the coming of Jesus follows in Matt 9:13b (the first after Matt 5:17) solidifies the connection: the fulfilling of Torah and prophets incorporates a praxis of life, that – with Hos 6:6 – is guided by the centrality of the demand for mercy. The merciful turn to sinners is precisely not lived criticism of the Torah, rather contrarily it is a manifestation of the fulfilling of Torah and prophets through Jesus.32 Prophetic coloring is also noticeable in Matt 23:23, where Matthew identifies “justice, mercy, and faith” as “the weightier matters of the law.” For this Matthean triad can be intertextually associated to the similar triad in Mic 6:8 LXX, according to which God does not demand more than “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”33 It needs to be noted in this context that the Torah – even though it includes a string of laws that protect the concerns of the poor and those in need34 and can be listed under the heading of mercy as their main topic – never explicitly demands mercy expressis verbis.35 Only with the prophetic tradition – together with the wisdom-tradition36 – does the notion of mercy surface explicitly as a key interpretative motif. In general, the Matthean emphasis within the commandments, the categorical superiority of social commandments over ritual commandments, cannot necessarily be inferred from the Torah itself, while a

2018), 297, who notes “dass das mt Gesetzesverständnis als Schriftenauslegung mit prophetischer Hermeneutik zu charakterisieren ist.” 32 For a more detailed explanation see Matthias Konradt “‘Glückselig sind die Barmherzigen’ (Mt 5,7). Mitleid und Barmherzigkeit als ethische Haltung im Matthäusevangelium,” in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Alida Euler, WUNT 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 413–41, here 421–24. 33 See further e.g., Jer 9:23; 22:3; Hos 2:21; Zech 7:9–10. 34 See e.g., Exod 22:20–26; 23:9–11; Lev 19:9–10; 23:22; 25:36–38; Deut 15:1–11; 24:6– 22. 35 Exod 23:3 LXX rather admonishes that the poor shall not receive pity or compassion in a legal procedure (καὶ πένητα οὐκ ἐλεήσεις ἐν κρίσει). Deut 7:2 commands that the Israelites shall not show compassion and mercy during the seizure of land with the peoples (οὐδὲ μὴ ἐλεήσητε αὐτούς). However, God’s mercy is referred to in Exod 22:25–26 with the admonition not to take one’s neighbor’s cloak in overnight pawn. 36 See e.g., Prov 14:21, 31; 17:5 LXX; 19:17; 22:9 LXX.

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number of prophetic texts beside Hos 6:6 can be used to establish this focus (see, e.g., Isa 58:1–8; Jer 6:20; 7:3–11; Amos 5:21–24). The second aspect simultaneously leads to the last main part of this essay: for Matthew, life in accordance with the Torah as it is interpreted by Jesus is an integral part of discipleship. This aspect, which cannot be overemphasized in Matthean ethics, can once again be illustrated exemplarily with the Matthean version of Jesus’s encounter with the rich man in Matt 19:16–22, which Matthew has significantly adapted in comparison to his Markan template. After Jesus answered the rich man’s question about the requirements for attaining eternal life with “keep the commandments!” and quoted social commandments from the Decalogue and the love command upon further inquiry (“which ones?”), the rich man declares that he has kept all these commandments. Matthew now – differently than Mark – does not have Jesus answer that he is still lacking one thing, namely, selling his belongings in favor of the poor and entering into discipleship. Rather, according to Matthew, the rich man asks what he is still lacking from a position of certainty about his fulfilment of the commandments. The interesting question is whether Matthew shares the self-assessment of the rich man. The answer to this question is a clear “no,” since the question of fulfilment of the commandments is a question of how the commandments are understood. In short, the rich man incorporates an insufficient understanding of the commandments, the accusation made also of the Pharisees and scribes in the antitheses in the Sermon of the Mount. If, instead, one takes the analysis of the full and deep meaning of the commandments in Jesus’s teachings as a basic criterion, it can be concluded that the rich man has not fulfilled the commandments but rather makes an unjustified claim.37 This definitely applies to his encounter with Jesus, for the call to sell his belongings in favor of the poor in the flow of the Matthean pericope is an application of the love-commandment to the specific circumstance of the rich man, who demonstrates with his departure that he loves his property more than those who are in need.38 Phrased differently, the intention of the Matthean insertion of the lovecommandment into the list of commandments in verses 18–19 is only fully revealed if one keeps in mind that Matthew thereby seeks to connect Jesus’s call in verse 21 to the Torah. Other than for Mark, the call to give away one’s

37

Cf. Edward Yarnold, “Τέλειος in St. Matthew’s Gospel,” in Se 4, ed. F. L. Cross, TU 102 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1968), 269–73, here 271; Wim J. C. Weren, “The Ideal Community According to Matthew, James, and the Didache,” in Matthew, James and Didache. Three Related Documents in Their Jewish and Christian Settings, ed. Huub van de Sandt and Jürgen Zangenberg, SBLSymS 45 (Atlanta: SBL, 2008), 177–200, here 189. 38 Cf. Roland Deines, Die Gerechtigkeit der Tora im Reich des Messias: Mt 5,13–20 als Schlüsseltext der matthäischen Theologie, WUNT 177 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 391.

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property is not a second step after fulfilling the commandments,39 but for Matthew verse 21 displays what God’s will contained in the Torah means, specifically regarding the rich man and his situation. Matthew understands keeping the commandments and being a disciple of Jesus as an integral unit; more precisely, Matthew understands the fulfilment of the commandments in the interpretation conveyed by Jesus as an integral part of discipleship. This definition of the relation of Matt 19:18–19 and 21 is not only confirmed by the fact that Jesus in verses 23–25 does not respond to the rich man’s walking away by asserting that he will stay deprived of higher soteriological blessings, but rather relates it to the basic question of entering into the kingdom of God as remaining the central focus (vv. 23–25), and for which the criterion had been unambiguously formulated with the call to “keep the commandments” in verse 17. In addition to this, the motif of perfection inserted in 19:21 needs to be noted. Perfection had been mentioned before in Matt 5:48 in association with the radical interpretation of the love-commandment as commandment to love one’s enemies. Since in Matt 19:21 the motif of perfection also stands in direct connection with the love-commandment, this suggests that we may assume an analogous connection also in this case and therefore should read fulfilment of the demand for perfection in verse 21 as a further “radical” explication of the meaning of the love-commandment.40 Perfection is thus interpreted by Matthew in correlation with the Torah: it is rooted in the complete fulfilment of the Torah according to Jesus’s interpretation that is hermeneutically centered in the love-commandment in 19:21 as well as in 5:48. In both verses “perfection” therein serves as a type of boundary-term as opposed to an insufficient understanding of the law.

39 On the Markan version see Hermut Löhr, “Jesus und der Nomos aus der Sicht des entstehenden Christentums. Zum Jesus-Bild im ersten Jahrhundert n. Chr. und zu unserem Jesus-Bild,” in Der historische Jesus. Tendenzen und Perspektiven der gegenwärtigen Forschung, ed. Jens Schröter and Ralph Brucker, BZNW 114 (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 2002), 337–54, here 346; Repschinski, Nicht aufzulösen, sondern zu erfüllen, 192–93. 40 Cf. Hubert Meisinger, Liebesgebot und Altruismusforschung. Ein exegetischer Beitrag zum Dialog zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, NTOA 33 (Freiburg Schweiz: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 40–41; Martin Meiser, “Vollkommenheit in Qumran und im Matthäusevangelium,” in Kirche und Volk Gottes. Festschrift für Jürgen Roloff zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Martin Karrer, Wolfgang Kraus, and Otto Merk (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2000), 195–209, here 198; Deines, Gerechtigkeit, 391. Differently Rudolf Hoppe, “Vollkommenheit bei Matthäus als theologische Aussage,” in Salz der Erde – Licht der Welt: Exegetische Studien zum Matthäusevangelium. Festschrift für Anton Vögtle zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. Lorenz Oberlinner and Peter Fiedler (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1991), 141–64, here 159–64; Élian Cuvillier, “Torah Observance and Radicalization in the First Gospel. Matthew and First-Century Judaism: A Contribution to the Debate,” NTS 55 (2009): 144–59, here 156–57.

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We can therefore conclude the following: Adhering to the Torah according to Jesus’s interpretation is not a separate factor but for Matthew connects directly to entering into discipleship, while conversely, a life in accordance with the commandments as interpreted by Jesus is a necessary constituent of being a disciple of Jesus. Simultaneously it shall be added that the Matthean ethics of discipleship is not complete in the observance of the teachings of Jesus related to the Torah.

C. Following and Imitating Jesus The thematization of further aspects of Matthean ethics in this section of my essay illuminated by aspects of discipleship and imitation is not to be understood as addressing a second area fully separated from the interpretation of the Torah. Just as the life according to the Torah, as was shown above, is viewed by Matthew as an integral part of discipleship to Jesus, the aspects that we will turn our attention to in the following show multifaceted connections and references to the interpretation of the Torah. To put it differently, this is a matter of focus and prioritization. However, it needs to be emphasized that an approach that places the whole of the Matthean ethics within the field of interpretation of the law and the prophets does not adequately mirror the significance of the mimesis of Christ in the Matthean ethics. As a preliminary point, the importance of mimesis of Christ can be illustrated by a remarkable aspect in two of Matthew’s key concepts: righteousness and God’s will. In both cases, there are specific references to Jesus. According to Matt 3:15 it befits Jesus to fulfil all righteousness while it is characteristic for the disciples to hunger and thirst (5:6) after righteousness and to seek it (6:33). In the Gethsemane-pericope Matthew emphasizes Jesus’s obedience to God’s will (26:39, 42), while it is decisive for the disciples to do the will of God (7:21) rather than to merely utter the profession that Jesus is the κύριος. For whoever does the will of Jesus’s Father is his brother, sister, or mother (12:50). In terms of content, the exemplarity of Jesus becomes tangibly specific in his merciful turn to sinners, the sick and hungry that has been pointed out above in terms of the theological key principles of Matthean ethics. However, it is not one’s own experience of receiving the messianic gifts of salvation but the resulting consequences for one’s conduct that are significant here. The orientation towards Jesus’s earthly life as the essential model of life for the disciples can be found concisely summarized in Matt 20:28. Jesus has not come to let others serve him but to give his life as ransom for many. Matthew replaced the causative “for” in Mark 10:45 with the comparative particle “as” to emphasize that Jesus’s behavior is not only the reason but also the benchmark for the disciples’ orientation. Being a disciple of Jesus has its core purpose in serving

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others, which is determined in contrast with the demeanor of the Gentile rulers (Matt 20:25). For Matthew, Christian community is not a place for wanting to rule over others and be served; instead, its founding principle is selfless service for others based on the model of Jesus. Viewed in its context, the ethos of humbleness called for in Matt 20:25–28 gets to the heart of an ethical aspect and justifies it explicitly by reference to the model of Jesus, which had already been essential in the discourse on community life in the congregation in Matthew 18. Next to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7, Matthew 18 constitutes a second significant ethical speech. It will be shown in the following that, like the Sermon on the Mount, this speech is connected closely with the christological thematic of its narrative setting. It here becomes clear in an exemplary way that the gradual unfolding of ethically relevant aspects in the Gospel of Matthew is purposefully woven into the narrative development and furthermore correlates with the thematic shifts of the narrative. I can focus on very few points here:41 Based on the disciples’ question “who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?,” the Matthean Jesus develops an ethos of humbleness in Matthew 18. He calls a child to their midst and presents it to his disciples as a mark of orientation – diametrically opposed to the societal standing the child has in antiquity. The call for humbleness programmatically introduced in verses 1–4 is specified in the following explications. Firstly, self-humiliation manifests itself in care for those of low social status as verse 5, in connection with the introductory verses, illustrates with the behavior toward children. Secondly, an attitude of humbleness is part of the effort made for unstable members of the community and sinners. To explicate this, Matthew continues with exhortations concerning one’s behavior toward the little ones, who are understood by Matthew as those members of the community that are (still) uncertain and wavering in their Christian life orientation42 – as is shown through the illustration of these exhortations in the parable of the sheep gone astray (Matt 18:12–14). The following regulations about the practice of “fraternal correction” found in verses 15–17 are by no means an alien element; instead, they continue the subject matter of the parable of the lost sheep.43 They are a kind of explications for rules that define how the search for

41

In greater detail on Matt 18, cf. Matthias Konradt, “‘Whoever humbles himself like this child …’. The Ethical Instruction in Matthew’s Community Discourse (Matt 18) and its Narrative Setting,” in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. by Alida Euler, WUNT 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 381–412. 42 For a detailed explanation of this interpretation see ibid., 387–90. 43 Cf. Wouters, Willen, 350–51; Petri Luomanen, Entering the Kingdom of Heaven. A Study on the Structure of Matthew’s View of Salvation, WUNT 2/101 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 288; Konradt, “Whoever,” 394–96.

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the one gone astray should take place. Conversely, the previously noted pastoral care for sinners functions as a sign before verses 15–17. Regarding ethics, two focal aspects need to be noted: First, reprimanding the sinner apart from the public life of the congregation is intended to protect them – this is an expression of love. Second, the obligation to conduct a multi-level process makes clear that the search for one gone astray may not end after a first failure; it calls for long-term commitment. The search only ends when the sinner ignores even the correction of the whole congregation – however, one can still pray for the sinner even in this case (v. 19). It furthermore needs to be added that the expulsion from the community does not exclude the possibility of a later return of the sinner. Verse 17b restricts the attempts of reproof but not the readiness to forgive. In Matt 18:21–35, the understanding of forgiveness represented in the Gospel of Matthew ultimately reaches its radical peak while also being connected to the motif of humbleness elaborated in the beginning of the speech. In verse 21, Peter brings up the open question about a possible limit of forgiveness and simultaneously qualifies this question in terms of personally suffered injustices. Both aspects are linked insofar as the question about a possible limit of forgiveness surfaces more acutely if one is affected oneself by the sin the other has committed. Jesus’s reply does not confine itself to the radical demand that forgiveness of sins does not know any limits at all (v. 22), but he adds a parable in verses 23–35 where a servant forfeits through his own inclemency toward a fellow servant the immeasurably great mercy that he himself had been granted previously. The function of the parable is not fully comprehended if we focus on the fact that Jesus substantiates his demand with a massive threat, for it is notably more significant that through this parable Peter is confronted with a change of roles. The question Peter asks corresponds to the role of the relationship of the servant and his fellow servant. Considered in itself, it seems ordinary and quite legitimate to demand that the fellow servant pays his debt. But the parable contains a preceding scene with a parallel structure. Through this, the servant appears as someone whose large debt has been forgiven with an analogous plead. His behavior and role now appear in a completely different light.44 It is recognized as grotesque and deeply merciless. If one refers this back to Peter’s initial question, it becomes clear that the question cannot be discussed in isolation and solved by merely regarding the role of relationship of the two involved parties. For the one who is asked for forgiveness by a fellow human is presented through the parable as someone who himself lives out

44 Cf. e.g., Joachim Gnilka, Das Matthäusevangelium: 2. Teil, Kommentar zu Kap. 14,1– 28,20, 2nd ed., HTKNT 1 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1992), 146; Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, 3. Teilband: Mt 18–25, EKK I/3 (Düsseldorf: Benziger; NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1997), 71.

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of the incomparably greater forgiveness of God.45 In this way interpersonal forgiveness is defined as a result of the forgiveness one experiences with God. The question posed by Peter in verse 21 therefore needs to be considered with regard to the mercy granted by and experienced in God – and thus in light of one’s own lowliness as a sinner before God. Matthew 18 formulates a radical challenge that matches the radical ethic demands of the Sermon on the Mount. At the same time, the call for unlimited readiness to forgive implies that the radical demands are balanced through a decidedly merciful behavior toward sinners from which one profits as well. Matthew does not understand the idea of the congregation as a flawless community that in its pursuit of perfection does not provide space for ethically unstable sisters and brothers. Matthew calls for perfection (Matt 5:48; 19:21) but knows simultaneously that those who have faith in Christ are sinners who remain dependent on God’s mercy. To obtain a sufficient understanding of the teachings contained in Matthew 18, as previously noted, their narrative placement needs to be taken into consideration. Matthew 18 is Jesus’s speech on the way to Jerusalem to the passion (Matt 16:21–20:34). The section of the narrative is not only structured but also defined in terms of content through the threefold foretelling of Jesus’s suffering and resurrection (Matt 16:21–23; 17:22–23; 20:17–19). Jesus himself walks the path of humbleness to save “the many” from their sins; this means: lowliness, which is connected with renunciation of manifestations of the power that belongs to Jesus as Son of God (cf., e.g., 26:52–54), and his commitment to sinners are the central characteristics of his passion. Viewed within this horizon, Matthew 18 needs to be read as a piece of applied Christology: the motif of humbleness introduced as a characteristic of Christian orientation in 18:1–4 and exemplified in the following verses by reference to the nature of interaction with the little ones and with sinners appears as an ethical implication of the path that Jesus walked in his suffering. This christological horizon is accentuated through 18:20 in the speech itself. Jesus’s assurance of his presence where two or three are gathered in his name is the christological foundation that the whole speech is built on.46 This recalls the interpretation of Jesus’s name in Matt 1:21: Jesus will save his people from their sins. The christological embeddedness of the speech in the narrative context of Jesus’s path to passion emphasizes this aspect. To congregate in the name of Jesus correspondingly means in the presence of the one who did not only turn to the lost sheep (15:24, cf. 10:6) as meek king (11:29; 21:5) and shepherd of his people (2:6) in his earthly ministry, but even gave his life for 45 Even though it needs to be conceded that the concrete amounts of debt cannot be generalized, especially because the 10,000 talents are to be interpreted as deliberately exaggerated information. 46 Cf. Luz, Matthäus, 3:52.

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the forgiveness of sins for the many (26:28), and whose effort to save sinners binds those who congregate in his name to care for sinners. From the outlined correlations, a crucial factor for understanding ethical conduct in Matthew may be noted that adds to the emphasis placed on the inner attitude of the heart as basis for one’s actions while also shaping this aspect: right (ethical) conduct is not simply an outer completion of obedience to the commanding God, but rather the expression of an inner stance and inner agreement that results from one’s relationship with God. To put it briefly, it is integrated into the God-given relationship with God and the connectedness with Jesus Christ.

Jesus and the Torah according to the Gospel of Matthew Roland Deines1 Roland Deines

A. Introduction The Gospel of Matthew boasts many superlatives: it was without any doubt “the most popular gospel in the post-apostolic church” as can be demonstrated by the references in the Biblia Patristica for the first three centuries.2 The same is true of the gnostic literature,3 and Édouard Massaux, in his survey of the influence of Matthew in the literature before Irenaeus, claims that the first Gospel was “the normative fact of Christian life. It created the background for ordinary Christianity.”4 This is a contested issue, to be sure; Helmut Koester, Hans Dieter Betz, and others have protested against this preference for written sources over against oral traditions, but even with modifications the weight and

1

For generous help with the final editing of this article I owe thanks to my former doctoral students Dr Jonathan Rowlands and Dr Mark Wreford. 2 Sean P. Kealy, Matthew’s Gospel and the History of Biblical Interpretation, 2 vols., Mellen Biblical Press Series 55a–b (Lewiston: Mellen, 1997), 1:5; see further David L. Balás and D. Jeffrey Bingham, “Patristic Exegesis of the Books of the Bible,” in Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity, ed. Charles Kannengiesser, The Bible in Ancient Christianity 1 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 271–373, 336–43 on the exegetical tradition for Matthew, compared to only one page each for Mark (p. 343) and Luke/Acts (p. 344); for John see pp. 345–47; Ian Boxall, Matthew Through the Centuries, Wiley Blackwell Bible Commentaries (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2019), 9–14 (“The First Gospel as the Church’s Gospel”). 3 Christopher M. Tuckett, Nag Hammadi and the Gospel Tradition (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 149–50: “The overall pattern of synoptic allusion is thus reasonably clear, and consistent with the pattern of allusions in other patristic sources: Matthew’s gospel is widely favoured, Luke’s gospel is sometimes used, whilst there are relatively few instances of Mark’s gospel being clearly echoed” (p. 150, see also the index of passages cited on pp. 182–86, where Matthew has as much entries as Mark and Luke combined). 4 Édouard Massaux, The Influence of the Gospel of St. Matthew on Christian Literature before Saint Irenaeus, 3 vols., trans. by Norman J. Belval and Suzanne Hecht, ed. Arthur J. Bellinzoni, New Gospel Studies 5/1–3 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1990–1993) 3:187, see also Kealy, Matthew’s Gospel, 1:6–7.

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influence of Matthew is hard to overestimate.5 Origen’s commentary on Matthew, written around 246–248 when he was over sixty, comprises 25 volumes and is as such “the most extensive commentary composed in the early Church,” roughly half of which has survived.6 The Tractatus super Matthaeum of Hilary of Poitiers (ca. 315–367) is “the first continuous commentary, composed in Latin in the West, on a biblical book.”7 And John Chrysostom’s ninety Homilies on Matthew delivered in 390 as Patriarch of Constantinople “provide the oldest complete commentary on Matthew which has survived from the patristic period.”8 Taken together, these superlatives, related to Matthew and its interpretation, read as “most popular,” “the only one,” “most extensive,” “first continuous,” and “oldest complete.” No wonder then, that even as early a figure as Jerome, when writing his own commentary on Matthew and giving an extensive list of the commentaries known to him, made the despairing comment that “it is difficult to read everyone who has written on the Gospels.”9 5 Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Harrisburg: Trinity, 1990), 315–16 (on quotes of Matthew’s Gospel in the first two centuries; for the general debate, cf. pp. 14–43). Important studies after Massaux include Wolf-Dietrich Köhler, Die Rezeption des Matthäusevangeliums in der Zeit vor Irenäus, WUNT 2/27 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1987); Rainer Metzner, Die Rezeption des Matthäusevangeliums im 1. Petrusbrief: Studien zum traditionsgeschichtlichen und theologischen Einfluss des 1. Evangeliums auf den 1. Petrusbrief, WUNT 2/74 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995); D. Jeffrey Bingham, Irenaeus’ Use of Matthew’s Gospel in “Adversus haereses,” Traditio exegetica Graeca 7 (Louvain: Peeters, 1998). For short summaries of the discussion see Arthur J. Bellinzoni, “Preface to the English Translation,” in Massaux, Influence, 1:vii– x, and in the same volume also the introductory essay of Frans Neirynck, “Preface to the Reprint,” from 1986 (Massaux, Influence, 1:xi–xix); Kealy, Matthew’s Gospel, 1:5–6; see also Alan Culpepper’s essay in this volume. 6 Kealy, Matthew’s Gospel, 1:36. On Origen’s commentary on Matthew see Hermann Josef Vogt, “Der Kommentar zum Evangelium nach Matthäus,” in Origenes als Exeget (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1999), 23–89; Manlio Simonetti, Matthew 1–13, ACCS 1a (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2001), xlii–xliii. 7 Kealy, Matthew’s Gospel, 1:45–48, see also Simonetti, Matthew 1–13, xliii–iv; Hilary of Poitiers, Commentary on Matthew, trans. D. H. Williams, FC 125 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 3–4, discussing 4th century exegetical works, writes, “Hilary’s commentary on the Gospel of Matthew provides the only nearly complete text, also making it the first full Latin commentary on the Gospel to be preserved…” Hilary’s commentary ends rather abruptly with Matt 28:11–15, meaning that the last five verses seem to be missing. 8 Kealy, Matthew’s Gospel, 1:49–56. 9 Comm. Matt. prol. 4, trans. Thomas P. Scheck, St. Jerome: Commentary on Matthew, FC 117 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 56. I use this as apology for my own oversights and omissions – nowadays it is indeed totally impossible to read even a fraction of the literature produced on Matthew. As a result, interesting research done on Matthew remains unrecognized by a wider audience, especially if it is not written

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Augustine is not only accredited with coining the term “Sermon on the Mount” but was also the first to write a commentary on only a part of a biblical book, namely, Matthew 5–7, in two volumes. It was his first exegetical text ever, composed in 393–396 as a result of his “study leave,” requested after his ordination in 391.10 Augustine, however, was not the first to highlight the Sermon on the Mount: “For the Ante-Nicene period the fifth chapter of Matthew was the most frequently quoted and Matthew 5–7 was referred to more frequently than any other three chapters in the whole Bible.”11 Within the Sermon of the Mount, Matt 5:17–18 was the most frequently cited passage because it “provided a key apologetic defence against Marcion and the Manichaeans who saw Jesus and the N.T. as a radical break from Judaism and the O.T.”12 In addition to the reception history of Matt 5:17 in Christian sources, it is the only verse from the NT which is quoted in rabbinic literature (b. Šabbat 116b), and it remains the key verse for Jewish polemical literature against the Christians until the 19th century, when the focus shifted from the question of the law to the question of the highest ethical principle, which was found in the Golden Rule (Matt 7:12).13 As a result, a fierce debate flared up about who could claim responsibility for it: Judaism or Christianity, Hillel or Jesus?

in English. For authors writing in Russian or another Eastern European language it might be even more frustrating that hardly anybody in Western scholarship engages with their writings and insights. In the present essay references to literature are limited due to constraints on time and space. 10 Kealy, Matthew’s Gospel, 1:59–60; Kannengiesser, Patristic Exegesis, 1173; Denis J. Kavanagh, St. Augustine, Commentary on the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount with Seventeen Related Sermons, FC 11 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1951; repr. 2001). 11 Kealy, Matthew’s Gospel, 1:9; Balás and Bingham, “Patristic Exegesis,” 338–39; Massaux, Influence, 3:183: The Sermon on the Mount “constituted the principal source upon which common Christian teachings were based.” 12 Kealy, Matthew’s Gospel, 1:9; Massaux, Influence, 3:183, offers a different list. The verses which he singles out as being used “more generally” include Matt 5:28, 39–42, 44– 47; 7:12, 21. He later adds (3:184) “that the various texts that were most popular are the ones which establish the New Law and which determine its relationship to the Old Law.” 13 Roland Deines, “Die Verwendung der Bergpredigt im ältesten erhaltenen Text der jüdischen Adversus-Christianos-Literatur,” in Judaistik und neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, ed. Lutz Doering, Hans-Günther Waubke, and Florian Wilk, FRLANT 226 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 372–400; Christoph Ochs, Mattheus Adversus Christianos: The Use of the Gospel of Matthew in Jewish Polemics Against the Divinity of Jesus, WUNT 2/350 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 11–12 (on b. Šabb. 116b); Holger M. Zellentin, Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature, TSAJ 139 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 137–66; the founder of the Methodist church, John Wesley (1703–1791), is one of the first to emphasize Matt 7:12 as the climax of the Sermon of the Mount, see T. Meistad, Martin Luther and John Wesley on the Sermon on the Mount, Pietist and Wesleyan Studies 10 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1999), 91, 194–98.

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But it is not just this one verse that was known in Jewish circles, but the Gospel of Matthew generally is the best known New Testament writing among Jews. The fragments of the various Jewish Christian Gospels (esp. the Gospel of the Nazoreans and the Gospel of the Ebionites), insofar as they represent material relating to Matthew, are increasingly seen as adaptations of the canonical Matthew towards their specific theological interests. In his survey, Craig Evans sees in the Jewish Gospels, among other points, “evidence of enrichment of their narratives with Jewish halakic traditions” and a “wrestling with the validity and interpretation of the Law, both written and oral.”14 If this is indeed the case, it would somewhat challenge contemporary views that Matthew’s Gospel was written for Torah-observant Jewish Christians. Rather, it seems that at least some Jewish-Christian communities did not view Matthew as presenting a satisfactory response to their interest in a continuing Torah obedience with regard to circumcision and (certain) purity laws. Epiphanius of Salamis relates the strange story of the Jewish patriarch Hillel residing in Tiberias, who requested on his deathbed to be secretly baptized. The man who told this story, Joseph of Tiberias, a kind of Jewish-Christian celebrity in the fourth century, related further that he found in the secret book chest of the patriarch not only a Hebrew translation of Matthew but also of the Gospel of John and the Book of Acts. There is no way to check the historicity of the claim, but the least that can be said is that contemporary research in Jewish studies dealing with this period is no longer averse to the possibility that Jews had knowledge of and access to Christian texts.15 Hebrew translations of parts of canonical Matthew and other select Gospel passages appear frequently in Jewish polemical texts. One of the earliest of such texts is The Book of Nestor the Priest (Sefer Nestor Ha-Komer), a 12th century Hebrew translation of the Judeo-Arabic Account of the Disputation of the Priest (Qiṣṣat Mujādalat al-Usquf, ca. 7th–9th century). Other prominent polemic works that frequently quote Matthew are Jacob ben Reuben’s Book of the Wars of the Lord (Sefer Milḥamot Ha-Shem, ca. 1170), Joseph ben Nathan 14

Craig A. Evans, “The Jewish Christian Gospel Tradition,” in Jewish Believers in Jesus, ed. Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2007), 241–77, here 277; see also Jörg Frey, “Zur Vielgestaltigkeit judenchristlicher Evangelienüberlieferungen,” in Jesus in apokryphen Evangelienüberlieferungen, ed. Jörg Frey and Jens Schröter, WUNT 254 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2010), 93–137. 15 Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 122– 29; Zellentin, Rabbinic Parodies, 141, 166, on Jewish knowledge of (parts of) the New Testament. On the story of the “Patriarch Hillel” and his conversion see Epiphanius, Panarion 30.3.7–8. The story of “Count” Joseph(us) of Tiberias (ca. 285–356), Epiphanius’s contemporary and witness for this, is told in 30.4.1–12.9, cf. Oskar Skarsaune, “Evidence for Jewish Believers in Greek and Latin Patristic Literature,” in Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries, ed. Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2007), 505–67 (esp. 528–40).

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Official’s Book of Joseph the Zealot (Sefer Yosef Ha-Meqanne, before 1269), and Niẓẓaḥon Vetus (late 13th century) amongst others. The earliest known text that includes a complete version of the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew – albeit with some peculiar details – is the Spanish Rabbi Shem Ṭov Ibn Shapruṭ’s Touchstone (Even Boḥan, ca. 1384). These texts open a unique window into Jewish readings of Matthew, and especially Matt 5:17–19 (the most frequently cited text) and other Torah-related passages. Their polemical strategies in using NT texts vary but what they all have in common is their disqualification of Jesus as a teacher of Torah. In other words, they would not share the position that has become so dominant in Matthean scholarship, namely, the understanding of the Matthean Jesus as demanding the adherence to the Law of Moses in its entirety, and himself as teacher of Torah (and Halakhah). Many of the papers initially delivered at the conference which gave rise to this volume and now included here have taken up the topic of Torah – seemingly exhausting it! – and there is nearly complete agreement that Matthew is writing a Gospel that expects its readers to keep all the commandments of the Torah, even the least among them (the tithing of kitchen herbs mentioned in Matt 23:23 is cited repeatedly16) until the end of time. Even if some modifications in light of Jesus’s teaching are accounted for, these alterations are not considered to go beyond what would be acceptable for the non-Christian Jewish contemporaries of Matthew. In other words, what Matthew wrote about the Torah was intended as a contribution to a discourse within the boundaries of the Judaism of his time and his intention was to keep his community within the Jewish community.17 Paul Foster labelled the scholarly position of a halakhically observant Matthean community as an “emerging consensus” in Matthean scholarship, prominently advocated inter alii by Anthony Saldarini, Ulrich Luz, and David Sim.18 A subsequent question would then be whether these law16 Interestingly, in most cases only the first half of the verse is quoted but not Jesus’s criticism of leaving aside “the heavier matters of the Torah, namely judgement, (God’s) mercy, and faith.” For my reading of this verse see Roland Deines, “Gerechtigkeit, die zum Leben führt: Die christologische Bestimmtheit der Glaubenden bei Matthäus,” Zeitschrift für Neues Testament 18 (2015): 46–56 (50–53 on Matt 23:23). 17 Situating the Matthean community in this way (intra muros) does not mean from the outset that the Matthean attitude towards Torah obedience is in favor of a strict law-observant community. It can also mean that the Matthean Christians within Israel kept the Torah in such a way that no offences were given to their fellow Jews because they wanted to continue to be part of Israel. Besides, a teaching of Jesus as the fulfillment of law and prophets could be seen as a contribution to the discourse about the right way to do God’s will, as expressed in the Torah, even if this meant in the end a fundamentally different allocation of the Torah in the order of salvation. 18 Paul Foster, Community, Law and Mission in Matthew’s Gospel, WUNT 2/177 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 78. For bibliographical references see Roland Deines, “Not the Law but the Messiah: Law and Righteousness in the Gospel of Matthew – An Ongoing Debate,” in Built upon the Rock: Studies in the Gospel of Matthew, ed. John Nolland and

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observant Matthean Christians preserved the attitude of the historical Jesus towards the Torah more faithfully than a non- or less-observant Christianity.19 The question of Jesus’s attitude towards the Torah is often separated from Matthew’s description of Jesus’s attitude towards the Torah, but it is obvious that the – currently preponderant – Matthean image of Jesus as interpreter of Torah fits well with the portrayal of the historical Jesus as a law-abiding “marginal” Jew also currently preponderant within the Third Quest. That “the historical Jesus is the halakic Jesus” is “the mantra” of John P. Meier’s fourth volume of A Marginal Jew, but after making this “politically correct realignment” (I feel free to use this accusation, as it is a quote by himself to characterize “all too many American academics” who only pay – in his view – “lip service” to the Jewishness of Jesus), he too steers clear of making “the halakic Jesus” the focal point of his understanding of Jesus.20 Meier is forced to admit that “the legal material that can be reasonably traced back to the historical Jesus is distressingly sparse and scattered,” but this does not lead him to consider

Daniel M. Gurtner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 53–84 (esp. 53–54). For Matthew’s Gospel as an attack especially on Pauline Christianity see e.g., David C. Sim, “Matthew’s Anti-Paulinism: A Neglected Feature of Matthean Studies,” HTS 58 (2002): 767–83 (esp. 777), who sees Matthew as waging “a bitter and sustained polemic against Paul”; see idem, “Matthew 7.21-23: Further Evidence of Its Anti-Pauline Perspective,” NTS 53 (2007): 325– 42. For Sim, Matt 16:17–19 is evidence that Matthew wanted Peter to be recognized as the divinely favored voice to be heard in the church, whereas Robert H. Gundry, False Apostle and Apostate according to Saint Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), argues for exactly the opposite (the title of his book gives away its result quite openly). For a critical evaluation of Sim’s position see Kelly R. Iverson, “An Enemy of the Gospel? Anti-Paulinisms and Intertextuality in the Gospel of Matthew,” in Unity and Diversity in the Gospels and Paul: Essays in Honor of Frank J. Matera, ed. Christopher W. Skinner and Kelly R. Iverson, SBLECL 7 (Atlanta: SBL, 2012), 7–32; JongHyun Kwon, The Historical Jesus’ Death as ‘Forgiveness of Sins’: A Comparative Study of Paul and Matthew, WUNT 2/467 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 34–39. 19 The traditional terminology of “law-free” with regard to gentile Christianity or the Pauline mission is unhelpful. Also, for Paul the Torah remains God’s revelation and, as such, holy and irreplaceable. Paul can say about himself that he upheld the Law (Rom 3:31), while others would accuse him of apostasy from Judaism. We should, in general, allow for a much greater variety in attitudes towards the Torah amongst Jews than is usually the case by creating an idealized picture of what all Jews would do or think at all places with regard to the Torah. In this respect, Anders Runesson, “Entering a Synagogue with Paul: First-Century Torah Observance,” in Torah Ethics and Early Christian Identity, ed. Susan J. Wendel and David M. Miller (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 11–26, is helpful. Runesson warns against the confidence in Jesus scholarship that we actually know “what keeping the law in the first century meant” (p. 13). On the relative freedom of “Jewish associations” to decide “what was to be defined as Torah observances,” see ibid. 26. 20 John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, vol. 4 of Law and Love, ABRL (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 648–49.

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whether his presupposition “No halakic Jesus, no historical Jesus” is wrong.21 Rather, it has led him to the completely unsupported conjecture (based on the prejudice of what a Torah teacher has to do) “that a fair amount of Jesus’ hălākôt have been lost to history.”22 On the other hand, Meier concludes, and this is indeed important, that Jesus decided ethical questions brought before him not on the basis of a structured or principled “moral or legal ‘system’” but on the basis of “it’s so because I say it’s so.”23 Meier explains this attitude as that of “the religious charismatic”: “The religious charismatic intuitively knows God’s will both in general and in particular, and that is sufficient reason for the charismatic’s pronouncements and commands.”24 The analogy Meier draws on as role-model for Jesus’s own embodiment of the religious charismatic attitude is Elijah: Jesus’ self-presentation to Israel as Elijah-like prophet of the end-time may help elucidate why he dares to appropriate to himself the authority to make startling decisions about the Law, with no priestly status or formal scribal training on which to base his authority.25

He finds the “catalyst for Jesus’s combination of his role as eschatological Elijah with his role as interpreter of Torah” in 1 Macc 14:41, 46, where Elijah is expected to decide halakhic questions.26 The problem is, however, that none of the extant Gospels (canonical or non-canonical) describe Jesus, in any accentuated way, as primarily a teacher of the Law. Not even in Matthew, where Moses typology is used as one way to portray Jesus. Instead, Matthew presents Jesus as one who is able to discuss matters of the Torah when asked but who never explains or teaches the law on his own initiative, with one remarkable exception. Every discussion about the right form of Torah obedience is brought to Jesus by the Pharisees and scribes, and the one exception, namely, the misnamed “antitheses” in the Sermon on the Mount, are hardly meant as an invitation to a halakhic debate.27 For Matthew, though it seems sometimes to get forgotten, Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God. This implies that in the same way as he is David’s Lord (cf. Matt 22:45) he is also Moses’s.

21

Ibid., 648. Ibid., 652. 23 Ibid., 653. 24 Ibid., 655. 25 Ibid., 656. 26 Ibid. 27 Roland Deines, “Jesus and Scripture: Scripture and the Self-Understanding of Jesus,” in All That the Prophets Have Declared: The Appropriation of Scripture in the Emergence of Christianity, ed. Matthew R. Malcolm (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2015), 39–70, here 49–50; see also Foster, Community, Law and Mission, 139: “In the Matthean community Jesus’ authority overrides that of Torah, and the ethical norms in the community stem ultimately from Jesus own behaviours and attitudes.” 22

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B. Matthew and the Church – A Great Misunderstanding? My own contribution to Matthew’s understanding of the relationship between Torah and righteousness in the kingdom of the Messiah (Die Gerechtigkeit der Tora im Reich des Messias) aimed to provide an alternative to the “emerging consensus” view of the key Matthean passage 5:17–20.28 The reasons are of an exegetical and historical nature. But I have conerns for theological reasons as well, and want to mention them first:29 For the tradition of the church in both East and West, the historical Jesus, in the sense of the true man, was the Matthean Jesus until the 19th century. The iconic representation of this understanding is Irenaeus’s likening of the four living creatures around God’s throne, as described in Ezekiel 1:10, to the four evangelists in his defense of the four-Gospel-canon at the end of the 2nd century. According to the bishop of Lyons, God “has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit” (Haer. III 11,8). As is well known and pervasive in Christian iconography from illustrated codices like the Book of Kells to pulpit ornamentation and stained glass windows, he then interprets the four faces of the cherubim – a lion, a calf, a man, and a flying eagle – as each representing a key aspect of Jesus: “their faces were images of the dispensation of the Son of God.” Alongside this, he associates every Gospel with one particular cherubian face: the lion, he claims, is apt for the Gospel of John as it airs the same confidence one could find in a lion.30 Luke is associated with the calf with reference to the father who welcomes his lost son with “the

28

For my own position see Die Gerechtigkeit der Tora im Reich des Messias: Mt 5,13– 20 als Schlüsseltext der matthäischen Theologie, WUNT 177 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004); short summaries and further developments include my “Not the Law” and “Gerechtigkeit, die zum Leben führt”; similar objections were raised, e.g., by Foster, Community, Law and Mission; Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., “Matthew 5:17–18 and the Matthean Use of ΔΙΚΑΙΟΣΥΝΗ,” in Unity and Diversity in the Gospels and Paul: Essays in Honor of Frank J. Matera, ed. Christopher W. Skinner and Kelly R. Iverson, SBLECL 7 (Atlanta: SBL, 2012), 33–54; Charles E. Carlston and Craig A. Evans, From Synagogue to Ecclesia: Matthew’s Community at the Crossroads, WUNT 334 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), esp. part 2 on “The Law” (pp. 96–242); Michael Patrick Barber, “Jesus as the ‘Fulfillment’ of the Law and His Teaching on Divorce in Matthew,” Letter & Spirit 9 (2014): 31–50. 29 During the conference, only Jan Joosten expressed a similar concern about what it would mean that the church used her most influential Gospel, from the very beginning, in a way that contradicted its authorial intention in the most fundamental way. 30 Probably Rev 5:5, a book ascribed to the apostle John, played a role here as well, as it is the only place in the NT where Jesus is hailed as “lion of Judah.”

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fatted calf” (15:23), and Mark’s beginning with reference to the Spirit is associated with the eagle.31 It is both quite fitting and unchanged throughout the centuries that Matthew’s Gospel is related to the human face: Matthew, again, relates his “generation” (Matt 1:1 genesis / γένεσις) as a man, saying, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham;” and also, “The birth (genesis) of Jesus Christ was in this way” (Matt 1:18). This, then, is the Gospel of his humanity (humanae formae); for which reason it is, too, that [the character of] a humble and meek man (cf. Matt 11:29) is kept up through the whole Gospel.32

The early church used Matthew’s Gospel as their foundational Gospel, but there is no evidence that they felt compelled by its message to practice the Mosaic Torah in any comprehensive and literal way (despite Matt 5:18). It is quite likely that, in the first generations of Jesus followers, the question of Torah-keeping was in some sense fluid, and that it took some time before the developed practice (with a focus on the “ethical” commandments and an increasing indifference – but only in practical, not in exegetical regard – towards the ritual commands) was formulated in a more theoretical way.33 The startling number of patristic commentaries on the Books of Moses demonstrate the keen interest in these books of the Law, but these commentaries are, for the most part, allegorical or typological interpretations of the Law. Philo’s influence and usefulness is palpable here, and the fact that his personal library ended up in the church’s library in Caesarea is evidence enough that we are dealing here with direct contacts between the study-circle around Philo and Christian teachers. The patristic authors took Jesus’s saying about “fulfillment” (5:17) literally: the Law had a prophetic element which points towards Jesus, and the fulfillment that accompanied his life and death completely altered the understanding of the “old law.” Nevertheless, the early church was eager to defend and to keep it in her struggle against Marcion: fulfillment means neither abrogation nor supersession!34 However, if Matthew’s Gospel was meant in the

31 In the Western tradition, the order was revised with the result that the eagle represents John and Mark takes the lion as his symbol, cf. Angela R. Christman, What Did Ezekiel See? Christian Exegesis of Ezekiel’s Vision of the Chariot from Irenaeus to Gregory the Great, Bible in Ancient Christianity 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 17–18. 32 Irenaeus, Haer. III 11,8. On “The Gospel with the Human Face,” see also Boxall, Matthew Through the Centuries, 12–13. 33 Deines, Gerechtigkeit, 363–70; Matthias Konradt, Israel, Church, and the Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew, trans. Kathleen Ess, Baylor-Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014), 357–58. For a short summary of the developments in the 2nd and 3rd century see Michael Patrick Barber, “‘The Yoke of Servitude’: Christian Non-Observance of the Law’s Cultic Precepts in Patristic Sources,” Letter & Spirit 7 (2011): 67–90. 34 The allegorical interpretation of the ritual and cultic laws of Exodus to Deuteronomy is visible for the first time in the work of Origen, see Joseph T. Lienhard, Exodus, Leviticus,

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way the “new consensus” proposes, then the Christian use of this Gospel within the wider church from the end of the first century onwards35 is either the result of an unintended misunderstanding of Matthew’s ethical and soteriological agenda,36 or the result of a deliberate re-interpretation that ignores the authorial intention. This earliest reception of Matthew’s Gospel would then represent the Christian usurpation of a Jewish text that survived in the Christian canon and tradition only because its original meaning was forgotten or suppressed. I admit that this is something that would worry me theologically, because it would mean that one of the main sources of Christianity was used, from the very beginning, contrary to its intended meaning. And, to continue this line further, if Matthew’s representation of Jesus (as understood by the “new consensus”) is a fair representation of Jesus’s life and teaching, then Jesus himself wanted his followers to live according to the Torah. This would leave Christianity in Numbers, Deuteronomy. ACCS 3 (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2001), xxi; Balás and Bingham, “Patristic Exegesis,” 281–89; the other important author is Ambrose of Milan (Kannengiesser, Patristic Exegesis, 1067): Omnis scriptura divina vel naturalis vel mystica vel moralis est: … mystica in Levitico, in quo comprehenditur sacerdotale mysterium; moralis in Deuteronomio, in quo secundum legis praeceptum vita humuna formatur (“All divine scripture is either ‘natural,’ ‘mystical’ or ‘moral’: ‘natural’ in Genesis … ‘mystic,’ in Leviticus which includes a priestly mystery; ‘moral,’ in Deuteronomy, in which human life is regulated according to the precept of the Law”); on the influence of Philo on early Christian exegesis, see David T. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey, CRINT III/3 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1993). Commentaries or homilies on Leviticus (or parts thereof) are attested for Victorinus of Poetovia (Pettau) from the late 3rd century (Kannengiesser, Patristic Exegesis, 637, no longer preserved), Eusebius of Emesa (4th century, commentaries on all five books of the Torah, ibid., 734), Rufinus of Aquileia (ibid., 1134); Cyril of Alexandria (ibid., 841), Hesychius of Jerusalem (ibid., 878), Augustine (ibid., 1174), and Isidore of Seville (ibid., 1370). A slightly different list can be found in Lienhard, Exodus, xx–xxiii; this commentary also provides examples for the allegorical reading of the ritual and cultic laws esp. in Leviticus and Numbers. The final sorting of the Mosaic Law in “three classes of precepts: moral, judicial, and ceremonial” took place only in the 13th century in a group of Franciscan scholars around Alexander of Hales (d. 1245), with the clear intention to uphold the ongoing validity of the whole Torah in its fulfilled sense (again, Matt 5:17 is key), cf. Matthew Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 6–7, and 19–30 for Aquinas’ understanding. 35 If Metzner and others are right, then 1 Peter is among the first literary works influenced by the Gospel of Matthew, cf. Metzner, Rezeption, 265–71, where he summarizes the reception of Matthew in Syria and Palestine, Rome, and Asia Minor. This is a truly impressive list, which underlines what was said right at the beginning, namely, that no other New Testament writing in the first two centuries (perhaps with the exception of the Gospel of John) has a comparable influence on the formation of Christianity. 36 Some might object against the use of “soteriological” in a description of Jewish religion, because it sounds so very like traditional Christian dogmatics. But for Matthew the need to be saved is the key to Jesus’s life (1:21) and the desire (and fear) of the people (10:22; 16:25; 19:25; 24:13, 22).

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the end with a huge and – at least historically – unbridgeable gap between the teaching of the historical Jesus and later Christianity. Despite this, religious sentiments, however concerning they might be, do not count as an argument in a historical debate, so I will stop here. Nevertheless, the point must be noted that a historical argument should not be dismissed solely due to the fact that its outcome is in line with a faith tradition, and, vice versa, the mere “critical” challenge of an established faith tradition does not necessarily make it true.37 Therefore, it is not just theological bias that makes me hesitant to subscribe to the “new consensus,” but exegetical and historical reasons, some of which are discussed in the following.

C. Historical Reasons The most important historical argument against the understanding that Matthew’s authorial intention was to demand that even the least of the Torah commandments must be kept to the letter is the absence of any evidence for a hostile usurpation of Matthew’s Gospel by the Gentile church(es). If Matthew had written his Gospel in the 80s or 90s and it became the most widely used Gospel instantaneously thereafter (see above n. 35), one would expect some resistance by those groups to whom it was initially addressed (if one follows the sectarian paradigm in Gospel-writing). Based on the plausible assumption that the fast distribution and success of this Gospel not only occurred by chance, but was the result of purposeful promotion, we can assume that the group behind the Gospel (which most likely includes the author) had the financial means and the “network” necessary to organize such a quick and wide dissemination.38 In

37 Cf. Metropolitan Hilarion’s critical remarks against the “myths” created by Western liberal scholars in their fight to liberate the New Testament writings from the “myths and dogmas” held sacred by the Church, in Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, The Beginning of the Gospel, vol. 1 of Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching (Yonkers: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018), 71–82. A challenging example of this fight against “the myth of an incipient orthodoxy,” namely, “an early church driven toward unity and orthodoxy by literature forged under the didactic hand of apostles or evangelists” represents Edwin K. Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, WUNT 378 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 1–2. 38 There are some hints in other New Testament writings that allow a glimpse into such striving for publicity of one’s own writing, see 1 Thess 5:27; Col 4:16; 1 Tim 4:13; 2 Thess 2:2 provides an illustration for resistance against being used in ways other than intended. For questions related to the role of authors in the performance, subsequent publication and dissemination via networks or book shops see Elaine Fantham, Roman Literary Culture: From Cicero to Apuleius (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996), 7–11; Katharina Schickert, Der Schutz literarischer Urheberschaft im Rom der klassischen Antike (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 20–29.

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other words, the group behind Matthew’s Gospel was not small or hidden but rather a self-assured community, who made “their” Gospel widely known.39 In addition, one should not forget that an author usually survives the publication of his book and he could have protested – as we know from other cases – against a misuse of his work.40 When taken together, this means that it is unlikely that no one would have protested if any form of “gentile” hijacking of the “Jewish” Gospel had happened. Also, the various discussions in the Patristic literature of the use of the Gospel of Matthew in Jewish-Christian groups provide hardly any evidence that they justified their Torah observance with reference to it. The fact that at least some of the Jewish-Christian Gospels (whose precise number and delineation from each other is still unsolved) were adaptions of Matthew fits, as noted above, into this picture. Matthew was closest to their interests, but it was obviously not sufficient.41 A second argument would be that the sectarian hostility-paradigm, which sees the four Gospels mainly as the argumentative weapons of one Christian group against another, is unable to explain why Matthean Christians, Markan Christians, Lukan Christians, Johannine Christians, Pauline Christians, etc. were miraculously brought into agreement with each other in the 2nd half of the 2nd century to create the Four-Gospel-Collection when they had, according to this model, engaged primarily in in-group fighting and in drawing demarcation lines against each other until that point. And this in a time without an ecclesial or political hierarchy which could impose such a decision on the churches/bishops in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Rome, etc. This proto-canonical unity is only explicable if there was an ecclesial and social

39

Konradt, Israel, Church, and the Gentiles, 358–59, describes the Matthean churches as actively engaged in missionary work among Jews and Gentiles. 40 Schickert, Urheberschaft, 52–99. 41 Eusebius, in his discussion of Symmachus, one of the later translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, whom Eusebius identifies as an Ebionite, relates that they are “insisting strongly on keeping the Law in a Jewish manner” and that Symmachus supported this “by attacking the Gospel of Matthew” (so the translation of Hist. eccl. VI 17 by A. F. J. Klijn and G. Reinink, Patristic Evidence for Jewish-Christian Sects, NovTSup 36 [Leiden: Brill, 1973], 147). More likely the phrase κατὰ Ματθαῖον ἀποτεινόμενος is to be translated with “by adapting the Gospel of Matthew.” Philip Haeuser in the German edition (Eusebius von Caesarea, Kirchengeschichte, ed. H. Kraft, Munich: Kösel, 2nd. ed. 1981) translates “unter Berufung auf das Matthäusevangelium,” which would then be, if this is the correct understanding, such a reference to Matthew’s unaltered Gospel as proof for a “keeping the Law in a Jewish manner.” Most references to Jewish Christian groups using the Gospel of Matthew (most prominently the Ebionites), are rather vague; for example, for their defense of circumcision and insistence on a closer adherence to Jewish customs (ἤθεσιν Ἰουδαϊκοῖς μᾶλλον προσέχουσι, Hippolytus of Rome, Haer. Prol. VII 8) they referred to Matt 10:24–25 (see Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, 23), which is rather far-fetched and another hint that Matthew did not easily lend support to a law-abiding form of Christianity.

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unity (not uniformity!) among the early churches throughout the Roman empire and beyond.42

D. Exegetical Reasons A careful reading of the first Gospel reveals not only pointers towards a lawabiding attitude among Jesus and his followers, but also a repriorisitation of the Torah as a result of it being fulfilled by Jesus. If one takes as a starting point that the evangelist was able and willing to write a coherent account of what he thought Jesus did, taught and wanted to achieve, the two sets of evidence should not contradict each other, and should allow for a reading which is not self-contradictory.43 I have presented a comparison of the sets of evidence elsewhere,44 therefore, I only want to pick out some points and combine them with a necessary differentiation of the chronological space the Gospel of Matthew covers. Hence I distinguish three periods in the understanding of the Torah in Matthew: 1. The time of Jesus’s life and especially of his ministry, that is, the years roughly between 28 and 30 of the first century.45 If Matthew wrote a βίος of Jesus, we can assume that he wanted to say something about what actually happened in this period; even if we accept that not all the words and deeds are authentic, these words and deeds were written to tell the story of this life in its own time. Further, even if we allow that writing a biography is in most cases not motivated solely by antiquarian interests but is driven by impulses in the author’s context, this does not mean that the current agenda manipulates the historical data beyond recognition. In other words, a biography – especially in the case of a person from the very recent past – aims to say something about this person. With regard to the Torah, this would mean that whatever Matthew presented Jesus as saying and doing is, first of all, presented as a narrative about what Jesus said and did in his own time. What he said, he said first of all to his disciples and contemporaries. There should be no doubt that Matthew wrote with the understanding that the words and deeds of Jesus had meaning 42

Cf. Alfeyev, Jesus Christ, 73–75. For a totally different approach to Matthew as a book without an author and the category of assumed author deconstructed as a scholarly construct used mainly to “exert a strong control over how the text” should be read and interpreted, see Broadhead, The Gospel of Matthew on the Landscape of Antiquity, 316. Instead the text should be seen as a “Living Tradition” (capitalization in the original) with the vision of engaging its readers “in dialectical engagement – through collaboration and conflict – with a host of vital Jewish traditions” (321). 44 Deines, “Not the Law but the Messiah,” 58–70. 45 For a helpful summary of the chronological questions, which need not to be discussed here, see Alfeyev, Jesus Christ, 181–90. 43

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for his own generation and beyond, not least because he was convinced that Jesus’s words (which are preserved and made available in his own writing) will outlast even the passing away of heaven and earth (Matt 24:35). It is plausible, in my view, to further assume that Matthew was deliberately and intentionally writing Scripture, which means the readership he had in mind was defined by the expectations expressed in Matthew 24:14 and 28:19–20.46 2. The second time period which needs to be considered is the period between Jesus and the author. How did the words and deeds of Jesus shape and influence his followers in the time between the end of Jesus’s earthly ministry and their current situation when Matthew was writing? What experiences did they have of his teaching shaping their own lives and religious practices, but also what reactions did they suffer from their compatriots? Persecution for Jesus’s sake is an obvious element in Matthew’s Gospel – but if Jesus was simply one Torah-teacher among others, why would this have occurred?47 If the final editing of the Gospel happened before 70, a position still upheld by many, then the immediate social context of this “Gospel for the Jews” was the Jewish world in Israel and the Roman province of Syria (cf. Matt 4:24–25).48 3. Scholars who date Matthew post-70 have to consider three potential phases in dealing with the Law: 1. the time of Jesus; 2. the time between Jesus and 70; and 3. the time after 70 until the distribution of Matthew’s Gospel. In particular, they need to consider more seriously than is usually the case the

46 Cf. Roland Deines, “Did Matthew Know He was Writing Scripture?,” European Journal of Theology 22 (2013): 101–09 and 23 (2014): 3–12. 47 Deines, Gerechtigkeit, 155–64. 48 The usual date for Matthew (80–90 CE) is challenged from both ends. The current extremes are marked for an early date by Maurice Casey, who thinks a date of 50–60 as most likely (Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching [London: T&T Clark International, 2010], 86; in the history of scholarship, dates as early as 38 CE were discussed; see William Baird, History of New Testament Research, vol. 1 of From Deism to Tübingen [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992], 21, 71, 134, 143); on the opposite side of the spectrum see Marcus Vinzenz, Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels, StPatr Suppl. 2 (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), and Matthias Klinghardt, Das älteste Evangelium und die Entstehung der kanonischen Evangelien, TANZ 60/1–2 (Tübingen: Francke, 2015), who regard the four canonical Gospels as post-Marcionite writings, reacting to and editing Marcion’s gospel around the middle of the second century (in Klinghardt’s view, Matthew is only indirectly influenced by Marcion’s gospel via Mark). For the majority view around 80–90 see e.g., Udo Schnelle, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 9th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 291, and the thorough and exhaustive assessment of the recent discussion about authorship, date, and provenance by Akiva Cohen, Matthew and the Mishnah: Redefining Identity and Ethos in the Shadow of the Second Temple’s Destruction, WUNT 2/418 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 32–99; for a nuanced argument in favor of a pre-70 date see Donald A. Hagner, The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 212–14, who aptly comments that “there is little room for dogmaticism here” (214).

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implications of the destruction of the Temple for a law-abiding life-style: without the Temple severe impurities could no longer be cleansed; the sacrificial elements of the Torah could no longer be practiced; tithing became problematic because priests had to eat tithes in purity, a status which they could no longer maintain; the pilgrimage festivals were no longer possible. So what did lawabiding mean in the year 80 or 90?49 One could, of course, keep the so-called moral or ethical commandments, but this is not the controversial point regarding the keeping of the Torah, because, as indicated above, at no point was Christianity “law free,” with regards to the moral precepts of the Torah. There are, however, other commandments which do not depend on the Temple, like circumcision (which is not mentioned at all in Matthew), the Sabbath and other elements of the Jewish festive calendar, as well as the laws regarding the purity of food – that is, mainly those elements of the Torah which Jews also practiced in the Diaspora. These are the commandments about which Jesus-followers seemed to differ the most and which were kept by many. This is, however, not surprising because they are not only a part of the Torah but had also become identity markers for the Jewish ethnos during the second century BCE. The adherence to these laws is therefore not necessarily indicative of the will to keep Torah, but rather to maintain a distinct Jewish identity within the Roman world and also to continue social and familial ties with non-“Christian” members of the Jewish ethnos.50 These laws, which form a kind of middle group between moral and ritual precepts, are understandably the disputed ones within Christian literature of the first four centuries. For a third group, which can be labelled as laws of everyday purity and which played an important and highly visible role in the time of Jesus and beyond (but not in Matthew), see Section D, I–IV below. As a result, the sayings about the Torah can be tentatively applied to these time periods as follows. I. The Torah in the Life(time) of Jesus If we start with the assumption that the Gospel of Matthew wants to portray the life of Jesus first and foremost, then texts like Matt 5:23–24 about which circumstances are appropriate for offerings on the altar in Jerusalem, or 8:4, about the sacrifice Jesus commands the healed leper to bring, are of no surprise because these sayings fit perfectly with the life of Jesus. They are primarily

49

The question is addressed by Alfeyev, Jesus Christ, 91, in his argument in favor of a date of Matthew pre-70. 50 Cf. Roland Deines, “The Apostolic Decree: Halakhah for Gentile Christians or Christian Concession to Jewish Taboos?” in Acts of God in History: Studies Towards Recovering a Theological Historiography, ed. Christoph Ochs and Peter Watts, WUNT 317 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 121–88, esp. 159–62 and 169–71.

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descriptive and not necessarily prescriptive, and they might intend nothing beyond what they tell.51 Furthermore, in 9:20 (par. Luke 8:44) and 14:36 (par. Mark 6:56) Jesus is described as wearing Zizit – that is, the tassels the Israelites were commanded to wear on the four corners of their garments.52 The function of these tassels according to Num 15:40 was remembrance of God’s commandments and of Israel’s obligation to be holy, so it is appropriate to see in Jesus’s dress-code a reference to his law-abiding behavior.53 Only Matthew mentions the wearing of these tassels twice in his Gospel, so one could argue that he wants to highlight Jesus’s literal adherence to the Torah. However, Matthew alone mentions that the Pharisees and Scribes wore zizit (and τὰ φυλακτήρια, phylacteries) as well, and they were criticized by Jesus for their ostentatious behavior (23:5).54 Matthew does not say that Jesus wore them, although doing so is a biblical commandment (Deut 6:8). Does this mean anything? Did Jesus follow one command but not the other? Or should we assume that because he wore tassels he also applied phylacteries? I do not know, and the evangelist seemingly has no interest in telling us the answer. Nevertheless, I am inclined to think that he did not mention the tassels without reason: In Zechariah 8:23 they are connected to the eschatological future, when the nations of the world will come to Jerusalem to worship God: This is what the Lord Almighty says, “In those days ten men from all languages and nations will take hold of the tassels of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’” τάδε λέγει κύριος παντοκράτωρ Ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις ἐὰν ἐπιλάβωνται δέκα ἄνδρες ἐκ πασῶν τῶν γλωσσῶν τῶν ἐθνῶν καὶ ἐπιλάβωνται τοῦ κρασπέδου ἀνδρὸς Ιουδαίου λέγοντες Πορευσόμεθα μετὰ σοῦ, διότι ἀκηκόαμεν ὅτι ὁ θεὸς μεθ᾿ ὑμῶν ἐστιν.

The last part of this saying, “God is with you,” is reminiscent of the Emmanuelsaying in Matthew 1:23, where the name Ἐμμανουήλ is translated as μεθ᾿ ἡμῶν

51 That Matt 5:23–24 is applicable (and meant to be) to a situation without an existing Temple or altar goes beyond saying. 52 Num 15:38–39; Deut 22:12; Zech 8:23, τὸ κράσπεδον in Greek. 53 Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 42; Anthony J. Saldarini, Matthew’s Christian-Jewish Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 178. 54 Examples of phylakteria have been found in Qumran, cf. Yonatan Adler, “The Context and Order of the Scriptural Passages in Tefillin: A Reexamination of the Early Rabbinic Sources in Light of the Evidence from the Judaean Desert,” in Halakhah in Light of Epigraphy, ed. Albert I. Baumgarten et al., Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplement 3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 205–29; idem, “The Distribution of Tefillin Finds among the Judean Desert Caves,” in The History of the Caves of Qumran: Proceedings of the International Conference, Lugano 2014, ed. Marcello Fidanzio, STDJ (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 161– 73.

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ὁ θεός. The tassels are therefore most likely not just a hint at Jesus’s keeping of the law but an indication of the presence of “those days,” when God will be with his people and subsequently will reach out to the nations through his people.55 Whether Jesus himself gave his wearing of tassels any deeper meaning is again something we cannot know for sure. However, Matthew’s intention in retelling this historical detail might have been inspired by the subsequent development of the Jesus movement whose experience was that the fulfilment of Zech 8:23 has already begun. Returning to 8:4, the sacrifice of the leper after being healed by Jesus, a reason for the command is given: “… show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony for them” (δεῖξον τῷ ἱερεῖ καὶ προσένεγκον τὸ δῶρον ὃ προσέταξεν Μωϋσῆς, εἰς μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς).56 The last part of this command is an unusual element reported in all three Synoptics (Mark 1:44; Luke 5:14), but, interestingly enough, neither in Markan nor in Lukan scholarship is this episode taken as evidence to support the idea that these two evangelists also reinforced the keeping of the whole Torah in their respective communities. The real question is thus: how and for what aim can doing what the Torah prescribes be a witness or a testimony? Two options are possible: it can be meant as a reference back to 5:17 and therefore as a “testimony” that Jesus indeed fulfills the law and even wants others to do the same. Jerome in his commentary speaks of “several reasons,” one being that Jesus wants to demonstrate his deference for the priests and, as “a concurrent reason … that he would not seem to be breaking the Law,” which was, as Jerome remarks, “a charge with which they were frequently accusing him.”57 Within the life of Jesus this makes perfect sense, but again that might not be all of it. Jesus’s actions are often motivated by biblical precedents and therefore he (or Matthew) could have meant this command to be 55 Both Luz and Saldarini (and many others) do not pay attention to Zech 8:23 (Luz, Matthew, 2:43 n. 17, briefly mentions the verse as reference for a “petitionary gesture”), although the influence of this specific prophet on Matthew’s theology is widely recognized, see Craig A. Evans, “Jesus and Zechariah’s Messianic Hope,” in Authenticating the Activities of Jesus, ed. Bruce D. Chilton and Craig A. Evans, NTTS 28/2 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 373–88, and, more specific, J. T. Cummings, “The Tassel of his Cloak: Mark, Luke, Matthew – and Zechariah,” in Studia Biblica 1978, vol. 2 of Papers on the Gospels, ed. Elizabeth Anne Livingstone, JSNTSup 2 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1980), 47–61; Charlene McAfee Moss, The Zechariah Tradition and the Gospel of Matthew, BZNW 156 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 210, mentions that “Matthew 1.21-23 may reflect themes from Zechariah 8.” Cf. Markus Bockmuehl’s paper in this volume who highlights the futuric formulation of 1:23, “and they will/shall call him Emmanuel” – this is not simply a name but a promise: people will themselves experience that the presence of Jesus means “with us is God.” 56 Although “them” does not fit very well with the priest (singular), there is good reason to assume that the evangelist saw “the priest” as a representative of the priesthood in general. Interpreting “them” as the people of Jerusalem seems less likely. 57 Jerome (trans. Scheck), Commentary on Matthew, 99–100. The other understanding Jerome provides is an invitation to “believe in the Savior.”

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reminiscent of the most famous healing story of a leper in the Hebrew Bible: Naaman, a Syrian military commander, who suffered from leprosy and sought healing from the God of Israel but initially went to the wrong person – the king – instead of “the man of God,” who was at this time Elisha.58 The key verse is 2 Kgs 5:7 where the king of Israel received the letter from the king of Syria requesting welcome and cure for his servant Naaman: “When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.’” To heal leprosy is, according to this text, to demonstrate power over life and death: that is, to do what is believed to be within God’s power alone.59 Until this point in Matthew’s narrative, the rumors about Jesus have drawn crowds from all over the province of Syria, including Jerusalem and Judea, to Jesus (4:24–25), but now Jesus sends a first sign back to Jerusalem: the priests in the Temple (and perhaps the population of Jerusalem) shall hear that there is a man in Galilee who can heal a leper. The Matthean Jesus uses the phrase “as a testimony” again in 10:18 (ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ εἰς μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς καὶ τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, parr. Mark 13:9; Luke 21:13; however, the context is different in Matthew from Mark and Luke) and then once more in 24:14 (“as a testimony to all the nations” – εἰς μαρτύριον πᾶσιν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν), belonging to the single tradition. The three verses are the only occurrences of μαρτύριον in Matthew, with 10:7 and 24:14 clearly connected to the proclamation of the message of the kingdom (10:7) and “the gospel of the kingdom” (24:14). A similar understanding might therefore also lie behind 8:4.60 The testimony is a reminder to the authorities in Jerusalem that “God is with us” has come and that new things are going to be fulfilled. When it also serves as witness for Jesus being obedient to what the Law commands, all the better. To draw this point to a conclusion: one can find in the texts just mentioned the meaning that Jesus lived the life of a pious, law-abiding righteous Israelite, that he kept the Torah as part of God’s revelation to his people, and that he expected others to do the same. This meaning was, as we have seen, also entertained by the fathers of the church. However, it only says something about Jesus, and not about what his followers should do in the future. Moreover, it is also possible to see these and similar texts as a further element of Matthew’s description of Jesus as the recapitulation of Israel’s history. Most scholars

58

Second Kings 5:8; Elisha is addressed in this chapter either as “prophet” (2 Kgs 5:13) or as “man of God” (5:14, 15, 20). 59 Cf. Reinhard Feldmeier and Hermann Spieckermann, Der Gott der Lebendigen: Eine biblische Gotteslehre, TOBITH 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 515–24. 60 That Matthew does not simply use the phrase because it is in Mark (as e.g., Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, WBC 33A [Dallas: Word, 1993], 200, suggests), can be deduced from Mark 6:11 par. Luke 9:5, where he drops it (10:14), most likely because in this context it does not mean a witness to the Gospel.

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would agree that Jesus’s stay in Egypt refers back to Israel’s time in Egypt; that the 40 days in the wilderness are meant as a restatement of Israel’s 40 years in the desert; that the twelve disciples are a symbolic representation of the twelve tribes of Israel; that Jesus’s role as Son of David is to be seen against the background of the kings of Israel61; and that, in light of the above, the betrayal by Judas should be understood as a recapitulation of either Ahitophel’s or Absalom’s (or a combination of both) betrayal of David.62 Why should we not interpret Matthew 5:17 in the same manner? Jesus is fulfilling the law and the prophets as a recapitulation of the righteous Israelite according to Leviticus 18:5: “You shall keep my statutes and my ordinances; by doing so one shall live: I am the Lord” (καὶ φυλάξεσθε πάντα τὰ προστάγματά μου καὶ πάντα τὰ κρίματά μου καὶ ποιήσετε αὐτά, ἃ ποιήσας ἄνθρωπος ζήσεται ἐν αὐτοῖς· ἐγὼ κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν, cf. also Hab 2:4). Where Israel failed, he succeeded. I think the verse means more than that, but for Matthew’s first task – the description of Jesus’s life and work as that of Israel’s true king who fulfilled the whole will of God to the last letter of the Law – it also means that. II. The Experience of the Church between 30 and 70 For a text that goes beyond the life of Jesus and covers the second timespan indicated above, the question about paying the Temple tax, which is a single tradition (Matt 17:24–27), can serve as an example. The tax-collectors came to Capernaum to collect the tax and approached Peter – interestingly, not Jesus – to ask whether he might pay the tax. The way of asking the question, “(Surely), your teacher does not pay the didrachma” (διδάσκαλος ὑμῶν οὐ τελεῖ [τὰ] δίδραχμα;) could imply that they anticipated Jesus not paying the tax. Whether they assume that Peter will pay it, or whether the assumption is that a teacher pays for his students as well, is not clear. In any case, Peter, without asking Jesus, confirms that Jesus pays the tax. The pericope ends with the explicit notion that Peter paid for himself and for Jesus. So the conclusion can be drawn: Jesus pays for the Temple and therefore for the sacrifices and the maintenance of the priesthood, and thus provides an example for his disciples, in the person of Peter, to do the same – at least as long as the Temple exists. But this is not the whole story Matthew tells. When Peter comes to Jesus, he is confronted with a question: “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their children or from others?” 61 This is marked by the inclusio bracketing Matt 2:2 “King of the Judeans” (cf. the first reference to βασιλεύς in 1:6 to “King David”) and 27:11, 29, 37, 42 (βασιλεὺς Ἰσραήλ). 62 The connection to Ahitophel might be indicated in Matt 27:5 (Judas commits suicide: καὶ ἀπελθὼν ἀπήγξατο), which alludes to 2 Sam 17:23 (καὶ ἐπέσαξεν τὴν ὄνον αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀνέστη καὶ ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν πόλιν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐνετείλατο τῷ οἴκῳ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀπήγξατο … ). The rare verb ἀπάγχω is used only here in the NT, and in the LXX besides 2 Sam 17:23 just once more in Tob 3:10 (for an attempted suicide).

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When Peter said, “From others,” Jesus replied, “Then the children are free.” “Free” means, they do not have to pay taxes. Consequently, those whom Jesus enables to be God’s children (that is to say, the disciples, see 5:16, 45, 48; 6:1, etc.) do not have to pay the Temple tax. This fits with the other sayings of Jesus about the Temple, namely, that God wants “mercy” and not sacrifices (9:13; 12:7). Nevertheless, the tax was paid, but why? “However, so that we do not give offense to them” (ἵνα δὲ μὴ σκανδαλίσωμεν αὐτούς) – and then a miracle provides the coin. The hermeneutical principle with regard to Torah obedience that can be derived from this and other passages like 23:2–3 is that no unnecessary offence should be given to those amongst whom the disciples live and to whom they want to reach out with the message of Jesus.63 But this would mean that Torah obedience is no longer absolute but situational, that it is a recommendation born out of love and respect for Israel as God’s people but no longer out of a soteriological necessity. III. The Situation post-70 Whether Matthew thought that this applied also to the time after the Temple was no longer functioning is less clear, but at least likely. If we assume that Matthew was written between 80 and 100, then he could not foresee that the time of the Temple was over forever. Many Jews will have had the expectation that the Temple would be rebuilt after 70 years at the latest, but I doubt that this was of any concern for Matthew: the disciples are sent out to all the nations but this centrifugal drive is not mirrored by any centripetal movement back to Jerusalem or the Temple (which is much stronger in Acts, for example).64 The disciples will go to all the nations, but these nations are not envisaged as bringing their gifts to Jerusalem (and one could even say they have already done so in the visit of the magi). Much depends on the dating of Matthew, which seems to me to be more complicated than is usually acknowledged. Related to this is the question of authorship, and, again, the arguments in favor of or against apostolic authorship of the first Gospel are rather complex. Even a traditional view, which takes

63 The “omission” of Mark 7:19 (“By saying this he declared all foods clean”) – which is a comment similar to 7:3–4 that Matthew also ignores – falls into the same category. Jewish readers would not have missed the challenge that Matt 15:11a provides, they did not need the Markan explanation. It is further possible that Matthew would have supported the Apostolic decree, which forbids the eating of blood, a restriction widely observed in early Christianity. 64 See Matthias Konradt, Israel, Church, and the Gentiles, 323, and the discussion in Cohen, Matthew and the Mishnah, 530–31, who argues for a much stronger relationship of the “Mattheans” with Jerusalem.

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the earliest testimonies of the Fathers as their main reference, faces the challenge that they connect the authorship of the apostle Matthew only to a Gospel written in Hebrew for the Jewish people in his homeland.65 As Jerome relates, no reliable knowledge is preserved of the translator of Matthew’s work into Greek: “who subsequently translated it into Greek is not known for sure” (Vir. ill. 3). Admittedly, a number of names appear in the fourth century and later, namely, the evangelist John, Bartholomew or James, the brother of Jesus, with whom Matthew supposedly lived in a house in Jerusalem, but they are legendary at best and have no historical credibility. The first challenge to a Hebrew original came from Erasmus, and, from the 18th century on, the authorship of the apostle Matthew became increasingly contested as well.66 The chapter on “The Gospel of Matthew” in Metropolitan Hilarion’s book Jesus Christ is symptomatic of this complexity.67 On the one hand, the authorship of the apostle Matthew and a date pre-70 is defended, on the other the Hebrew version is downplayed and the reference to the “Church Tradition” about the author being one of the Twelve is adduced to support the Greek Matthew,68 which is not what it says. The last sentence, after discussing the “logic in the presupposition that the Gospel of Mark was elaborated by Matthew and adapted for the Jewish reader” leaves the possibility open that only an early version of Matthew should be regarded as the oldest gospel and “appeared no later than the middle of the AD 60s.”69 A tentative solution for this conundrum is suggested by Armin Baum’s new Einleitung, which offers a number of new 65 Starting with Papias (first half of the 2nd century), the tax-collector Matthew who followed Jesus’s call was regarded as author of the first Gospel: “Matthew compiled the sayings (of the Lord) in the Hebrew language; but everyone translated them as he was able” (Papias, in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.16). Together with Irenaeus’s short comment that “Matthew composed his Gospel among the Hebrews in their language, when Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel in Rome and founding the church (there)” (Haer. 3.1.1 = Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.8.2–3), these two sentences form the basis for the tradition that Matthew was the first evangelist. Further support includes e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Hyp. Book 6; quoted in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.14.5; Origen, quoted in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.25.6: “For I learned by tradition concerning the four Gospels, … that first there was written that according to the one-time tax-collector and later Apostle of Jesus Christ, Matthew, who published it for those who from Judaism came to have the faith, being composed in the Hebrew language”; Jerome, Praefatio in Evangelio; the Hebrew origin is also attested by Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 14.15; Epiphanius, Pan. 51.5.3. Eusebius adds that Matthew left the Gospel in his mother language behind as replacement for his oral teaching when he departed Judea to go to other nations (Hist. eccl. 3.24.6). 66 Theodor Zahn, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 2 vols., 3rd ed. (Leipzig: Deichert, 1906/1907; repr., Wuppertal: R. Brockhaus 1994), 2:273–75; Baird, History, 436 (index of subjects under “Matthew”). 67 Alfeyev, Jesus Christ, 84–93. 68 Ibid., 89. 69 Ibid., 93.

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avenues in a much-worked field. Taking the earliest evidence from Papias and Ireneaus of Lyons as point of departure, he proposes a Hebrew proto-Matthew as the first written Gospel going back to the apostle Matthew. Parts of it were used (mainly orally) in various Greek renditions and one of these influenced the Gospel of Mark which is in his view the oldest written Gospel in Greek. With Mark going back to the apostolic preaching of Peter, it is not too farfetched to entertain the possibility that Peter himself made use of his coapostle Matthew’s written collection as aide-memoire which would also explain the close connection between these two Gospels. The canonical Greek Matthew, however, is in Baum’s view the work of an unknown translator (who also acted as an editorial reviser) of the Hebrew original. This translation postdates Mark (and Luke) and in turn used Mark (and perhaps Luke) as a linguistic and editorial pattern. When viewed together, this would mean that “Matthew” functions as a frame for the Synoptic tradition: it started with the apostle Matthew’s Hebrew script on the legacy about Jesus, and it finished with the Greek edition of this legacy, enriched by the experience of the “church” with this Gospel until the 80s or 90s of the first century. Such a model of the Synoptic question is able to make sense of the patristic tradition and of insights from historical-critical research of the last two hundred years.70 IV. Additional Indicators of a Transformed (Diminished) Role of the Torah in Matthew’s Gospel The following is an exploratory list of further points that need to be taken into account, but can be done only in the form of a sketch here: (i) The relative unimportance of Moses: That Moses does not hold a comparably pivotal role in Matthew’s Gospel to that which he does in other Jewish writings from this period is seldom addressed. The relative unimportance of Moses is one of the reasons why I remain unconvinced that the Matthean Jesus should primarily be understood as a second Moses. This does not mean that I am arguing against any form of Moses-typology in Matthew;71 only that Jesus is more than Moses, as he is more than Jonah (12:41), Solomon (12:42), or the

70 Armin D. Baum, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, vol. 1 of Evangelien und Apostelgeschichte (Gießen: TVG Brunnen, 2017), 243–56, 909–14. 71 On this motif see Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016), 117–20, 143–45, but there is in my eyes no “special interest in portraying Jesus as a Moses-like teacher” (134). Actually, in Hays’s chapter on Matthew one could find much more sentences, in which he makes very clear that for Matthew Jesus “is more than a sage, more than a prophet: he can speak authoritatively of ‘my yoke’ as none of Israel’s sages could ever do” (158). For the patristic understanding of Jesus “to be the second, or new Moses,” see Balás and Bingham, “Patristic Exegesis,” 281.

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Temple (12:6).72 However, as an authority for the present, Moses is not prominent in Matthew’s narrative.73 One instance of the “Moses-gap” arrives as early as the genealogy of Jesus, which does not mention the Mosaic period at all, but jumps from the time of the patriarchs to the pre-monarchic period in the land. The Davidic impression is much stronger, and more of the fulfillmentquotations in the infancy narrative can be read with a Davidic background than with a Mosaic one.74 A second startling “Moses-gap” appears when Jesus asked his disciples whom the people think he is and they answer, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets” – but apparently not Moses! Any attempt to see in Jesus a second Moses needs to explain why this connection was missed by all the people (and why the evangelist missed this opportunity). Moses’s most prominent role in the first Gospel is to appear – together with Elijah – during the transfiguration of Jesus. But in the presence of the two iconic representatives of the law and the prophets the voice addressing the disciples says, “Listen to him” – that is, listen to Jesus. Assuming that Moses and Elijah are still present when the divine voice is heard, even these two are among those who have to listen to Jesus (17:3–4). This fits with Matt 13:16–17, where Jesus addresses the disciples with the beatitude: “But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”75

Jesus knows what the prophets wanted to see and presents himself as the fulfillment of their hopes, whereas Moses died before he could enter the promised land. When the disciples asked Jesus about divorce, Moses is 72

On the discussion whether the neuter μεῖζον can be used as pointer to Jesus or whether “the something greater” refers to something else see Deines, “Gerechtigkeit, die zum Leben führt,” 49–50. 73 Cf. Carl Holladay’s essay in this volume. The difference between the exaltation of Moses esp. in Philo and his relative minor role in Matthew is striking. See further J. R. Daniel Kirk, A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 77–87, on Moses as “Idealized Human Figure.” 74 As Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 117, relates, “one of the properties of figurative language is to hold different, overlapping significations in simultaneous suspension,” so that one does not have to decide for one option against the other (see also p. 145). For my own reading of Matthew’s birth story as dominated by Davidic figurations over against the Mosaic one so popular in recent scholarship, see Deines, Gerechtigkeit, 473–84. For the classic study in favor of Moses see Dale C. Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993). 75 Cf. R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), writes with reference to Matt 5:17 and 11:13: “The law is thus linked with the prophets as looking forward to a time of fulfillment which has now arrived. The Torah, then, is not God’s last word to his people, but is in a sense provisional, looking forward to a time of fulfillment through the Messiah” (p. 183).

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presented as the one who commanded the Israelites to write a divorce bill. Jesus took this up and said, “Moses allowed you to divorce your wives…” but then he made clear this is not how it was in the beginning, and it is not as it should be now (19:5–9). Matthew differentiates carefully between Moses’s commandment and God’s will. Moses appears again in the words of the Sadducees (22:24), but Jesus answers that they do not know what is written. He then quotes from the Torah (Exod 3:6), but without mentioning Moses as an authority (22:31). The last reference to Moses is in 23:2, with the Pharisees and Scribes sitting on his cathedra.76 Moses is therefore associated with Elijah and linked with priests and the Temple, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes, but nowhere is he named as an authority on his own or for the “Christian” community (aside perhaps from 8:4, προσέταξεν Μωϋσῆς, which is not very strong). This might appear to be a minor point but, if one compares it with the way Isaiah is mentioned, the difference is obvious: − − − − − −

3:3 This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness …” 4:14 so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled … 8:17; 12:17 This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah … 13:14 With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says … 15:7 You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said… (cf. also 1:22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet …)

Equally Jeremiah, who is the first and the last prophet named in the book (2:17; 27:9), is held in high regard, and people compare Jesus to him (16:14). This is all Matthean Sondergut which shows his orientation towards the prophets, but also his relative neglect of Moses (and other priestly figures like Aaron or Phinehas). David is also mentioned (not just in the Son of David clause), and Jesus uses his example in 12:3 to counter the Pharisees’ accusation of him breaking the Sabbath commandment (that is, Jesus sides with David against Moses). On the only occasion when Jesus himself initiates a question to the Pharisees, it concerns an inspired saying of David (22:42–43). (ii) Jesus is not described in Matthew as an interpreter of the Torah, at least not as a teacher of the Torah on his own initiative. As mentioned already, with the exception of the so-called antitheses (which are not introduced with “what is written” as in 4:4, 7, 10; or with γραφή as in 21:42; 22:29; 26:54, 56), Jesus never discusses legal matters of the Torah without prompting. Generally, Jesus is described by Matthew to be very proficient in the use of Scripture in arguments with Pharisees and scribes, and the references he quotes (often in his defense) reveal a wide, and in some cases detailed, knowledge. In halakhic discussions, Jesus’s use of Scripture is always a reaction to a request from his interlocutors (such as in Matt 9:11–13). When questioned he is able to give 76

On the “Seat of Moses” see Cohen, Matthew and the Mishnah, 532–37.

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advice and apply the law, but this is not his own way of teaching and, one might add, not the issue he is concerned with predominantly. An example is the enquiry of the rich young man about how to inherit eternal life. Jesus’s first answer is to obey the commandments (Matt 19:16–22 parr. Mark 10:17–22, Luke 18:18–23). Yet, to know the Ten Commandments (Jesus quotes only the “ethical” commandments, starting with “You shall not murder”) was perhaps rather basic and it was clearly not what the man expected to hear, nor was it all that Jesus had to say about his question. The final words addressed to him carry all the weight: “Come, follow me.”77 (iii) Jesus is not understood as a new lawgiver – at least not in the sense that Philo understood Moses as the lawgiver. If this label is retained, it must be defined more precisely concerning whether Jesus is to be compared with Moses or with God. I would argue that only the latter fits Matthew’s Gospel, because in the same way as God has given the law, Jesus now – as God’s representative amidst his people – gives “commandments” (it is often overlooked that Matthew prefers ἐντολή over νόμος when it comes to what he assumes as binding for the time after Jesus), which result in an easy yoke (11:29–30).78 This was already seen by Fortunatianus of Aquileia in the middle of the fourth century. In this newly found commentary on the Gospels he explains in reference to Matt 10:1 that Jesus authorizes his disciples like he once authorized Moses: “The Gospels affirm that the disciples received authority from the Lord to free those who were in the grip of demons, and to cure various sicknesses. So the Lord gave authority to his disciples, plainly because he had long before given Moses authority to perform signs and wonders in Egypt…”79

In support of this, it is important to note that Matthew (4:13–17) introduces the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry with a quotation of Isaiah 8:23–9:1: He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles – the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

This is not the introduction of a new teacher of the Torah, nor the introduction of Moses, but of the light that overcomes death. Israel’s need in Isaiah is not a

77

For a fuller discussion see Deines, Gerechtigkeit, 389–92. For details, see ibid., 386–405; see further Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 151–59. 79 Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Commentary on the Gospels, trans. Hugh A. G. Houghton, CSEL Extra Seriem (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2017), 46 (10:1). 78

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lack of Torah-understanding, but a much deeper “soteriological need.”80 Accordingly, when Jesus calls his first followers, he calls them not to become his students but he calls them to become “fishers of men” (4:19). Traditionally, students chose their teacher, as is presupposed, for example, in John 1:35–42.81 But in Matthew (following Mark) Jesus is the one who calls. The unusual title “fishers of men” (ἁλιεῖς ἀνθρώπων), which is used only in Mark 1:17 and Matt 4:19, is an allusion to Jer 16:16–18, where God says that he is sending fishers and hunters among the Israelites to gather them – either for judgment or for the return from exile (the text of Jeremiah can be understood both ways but the former reading is more likely).82 The crucial element here is that God calls the fisher and hunter in Jeremiah, which means that here already Jesus is described as taking over God’s role. The same is indicated in the next scene where the disciples are present, in Matt 5:1, which clearly alludes to the Sinai episode: When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them saying …

In going up the mountain it seems that Jesus is described in the role of Moses, and this has become the cornerstone of the widespread notion of Jesus as “the new Moses.” But whereas Moses was standing in the presence of God (Exod 3:5 [burning bush]; 33:21; 34:2; Deut 5:5, 31, cf. also Exod 20:18, 21: the people stood at a distance; Num 9:8; 11:16, 24; Deut 4:10) Jesus is sitting down and the disciples come to him. This means a switching of roles which is often overlooked but which is clearly intended by Matthew, as can be seen in the unnecessarily verbose and solemn character of the first two verses, which highlight the sitting down of Jesus and the opening of his mouth. This is important, because to sit is the “normal” position of God, and those around him are to stand.83 In other words, what started with Jesus calling fishermen to become God’s fishers of men continues here: Jesus imitates the role of God on Mount Sinai, whereas his disciples take over the role of Moses (and the 80 Matthias Konradt, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, NTD 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 58 (“soteriologische Notlage”). See also above n. 36. 81 Cf. Josephus, Vita 10–12: Josephus chose his teachers, and the same is implied in Acts 22:3, when Paul talks about having studied with Gamaliel. In Matthew (and also in the other Gospels) it is Jesus who calls, although the traditional mode of a prospective student approaching him and asking for the opportunity to become his follower is presupposed as well (see Matt 8:19–22 par. Luke 9:57–62). 82 Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 24–25, sees in the fishermen “agents of judgment, hauling people in so that God can ‘repay their iniquity and their sin’” (p. 24). 83 Gen 18:1, 8, 22: Sit-stand-sit-stand; Exod 25:17, 22: God meets Moses from above the mercy seat [capporet], flanked by two wing cherubim; 1 Kgs 22:19, where the prophet Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, with all the host of heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him”; see further Dan 7:9–10; Ps 47:8; 99:1; 110:1; Isa 6:1; but cf. Num 12:5 and Exod 24:10 LXX, where God is described as standing.

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prophets, see Matt 5:12: “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you”). But it is not just the posture that puts Jesus on another level in comparison to Moses, but also the mode of speaking. Jesus opens his mouth and teaches (καὶ ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ ἐδίδασκεν αὐτοὺς λέγων). No authorization is given for his words, something Matthew is keen to stress at the end of the Sermon on the Mount (7:28–29). When Moses was called by God, he promised the reluctant man that he would open his mouth: “I will open your mouth and I will advise you what you are going to speak” (ἐγὼ ἀνοίξω τὸ στόμα σου καὶ συμβιβάσω σε ὃ μέλλεις λαλῆσαι).84 Therefore, when we describe Jesus as the new lawgiver, we need to indicate whom we regard as the previous lawgiver: God, or Moses? For Matthew, only the first option seems to be the right one, and this is in conformity with the LXX, where νομοθετέω, νομοθεσία and νομοθέτης are always indicative of the divine element.85 We could continue with this argument: when Jesus sends his disciples out to call the lost sheep of the house of Israel (10:1–8), their task is not to repeat the words of their Torah-teacher or to teach Torah, but to participate in his ministry to call the lost sheep of Israel and in his authority to heal and to cast out demons. At the end of the Gospel the disciples are sent out to teach all the nations to obey everything that Jesus has commanded them (28:20: διδάσκοντες αὐτοὺς τηρεῖν πάντα ὅσα ἐνετειλάμην ὑμῖν) – and this is, after the trinitarian baptism formula in v. 19, hardly to be understood as the Torah of 84 See also Exod 4:15: Moses shall speak to Aaron and put God’s word into his mouth; to do this, God will open Moses’s mouth first and then he will open also Aaron’s mouth so that he is able to speak with the Pharaoh: “And you shall speak to him and put my words in his mouth. And I will open your mouth and his mouth and will teach you what you shall do.” The syntagm ἀνοίγω τὸ στόμα is used in the LXX in the transitive sense with God as subject (all references in the following according to versification of the LXX), see Num 22:28 (Balaam’s donkey as object); Ezek 3:27; 29:21; 33:22; Sir 15:5; 24:2; Wis 10:21 (the latter three with Wisdom as subject). In cases where it is used for humans speaking about God or to God a certain submissiveness can be noted as in Ps 38:10; 50:17; Prov 31:28; Sir 39:5; Isa 53:7; Ezek 16:63; Dan 10:16. In other places it is clear that the content of what is said is based on God’s words or deeds, see Ps 77:2ff.; 118:131; Job 33:2–4; Sir 51:25–26. In Matthew the only other reference is 13:35 (quoting Ps 78:2), which again underscores Jesus’s unique ‘speaking’ authority. For διδάσκω cf. Deut 4:1, the first verse in the Pentateuch, where Moses is described as teacher. He teaches Israel what God has commanded him (Deut 4:2, 14; 5:31), something that is not said about Jesus’s teaching. 85 Νομοθέτης is used only once in the NT (Jas 4:12) referring to God or Jesus; the only LXX reference is Ps 9:21, and there it designates God as judge of the nations and is not related to Moses or Sinai. The verb νομοθετέω occurs as divine passives only in Heb 7:11; 8:6, and is used in the LXX, with the exception of the profane meaning in 2 Macc 3:15, always with God as subject. The single reference for νομοθεσία in Rom 9:4 describes a divine gift to Israel (in the LXX only in 2 Macc 6:23; 4 Macc 5:35; 17:16, always assuming God’s agency and not Moses’s).

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Moses. The followers of Jesus refer to him as “Lord,” and they prophesy and cast out demons “in his name” (three times in 7:21–22); because of his name they will be persecuted (10:22, which is in itself not comprehensible if Jesus is simply taking part in an halakhic discourse); the house built on rock is the house built on hearing and doing “these words of mine” (7:24: μου τοὺς λόγους τούτους). When Matthew lets Jesus say, “heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away” (24:35), then the attentive reader will not fail to recall 5:18: a careful comparison shows that the eternal quality of Jesus’s words surpasses that of law and prophets. (iv) The law is absent in those passages that contain the theological or soteriological core of Matthew’s Gospel, namely, sin, forgiveness, judgment, and eternal life: the Torah is not the scale according to which judgment takes place (23:23). Jesus’s main task is “to save his people from their sins” (1:21). Matthew connects this with the name of Jesus, Jehoshua. Whereas in Greek the connection between name and task is not recognizable, in Hebrew this turns into a word play (figura etymologica), with the name of Jesus and the verb “to save” sharing the same stem: Yeshua‘ yoshia’. This is the first indication of the purpose of Jesus’s being born by divine intervention, and, being part of the single tradition, is unique to Matthew. The name is programmatic and the question is raised: why do the people of Israel need forgiveness for their sins? Is this not, right from the beginning of the Gospel, at least an indirect hint as to how Matthew understood the Torah and the Messiah’s main task? The prominence of the forgiveness-motif, which stretches from its first mention in the programmatic statement in 1:21 to 26:28 (“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”), is visible throughout the Gospel and nowhere is it connected to the Torah (aside from the fact that the sinners are sinners because of the Torah).86 In the Lord’s Prayer the plea for forgiveness is the only one which is related to a reciprocal, precedent action (v. 12b “as we also have forgiven our debtors”), and the only one which is exemplified immediately after in 6:14–15 (par. Mark 11:25), and again in the parable about the unforgiving servant (18:23–35). In the story of the paralytic (9:2–7), Jesus instead of healing the man forgave his sins (v. 2), and “only” as a proof of the Son of Man’s authority to forgive sins does he also heal him (vv. 5–6). After he has demonstrated that he can forgive sins, Jesus is described in company with tax-collectors and sinners (9:10–13), being slandered by others as a friend of tax-collectors and sinners, “yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds” (11:19). But Jesus is not only able to forgive sins, he also knows which sins can be forgiven and which cannot (12:31–32). In the fourth of Jesus’s five major speeches in Matthew – focusing on the ecclesia, the community in his 86

Different from Mark 1:4, Matt 3:6 speaks only about the confession of sins and no forgiving is mentioned; see further Matt 9:2–6, 13; 12:31; 20:28; Jesus is further described as taking care of the sinners 9:10–11; 11:19, cf. Kwon, Jesus’ Death, 150–79.

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name which is based on faith in him (cf. 18:6, 20) – nearly half of the chapter is a long and detailed parable about forgiving (18:23–35), introduced as an answer Jesus gave to one of Peter’s questions and at the same time an illustration of the fifth plea of the Lord’s Prayer. The last word of Jesus about sin is in the words of institution during his last meal with his disciples before his death: “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (26:28). Then he is handed over into “the hands of sinners” (26:45), and with his sufferings he fulfils the Scriptures (26:54, 56) and pays “the ransom for many” (20:28). Matthew 27:4 adds a powerful postscript: whereas Jesus is prepared to take away sin by giving up his life and being handed over into “the hands of sinners” (26:45), the priestly elite ignored Judas’s confession of sin (ἥμαρτον, “I have sinned …”) and sent him away without compassion: “What is this to us? See to it yourself!” They, in other words, cannot forgive sins, as Jesus claimed to do (cf. 9:2–6) and is now going to fulfill.87 The task of the Torah was never to provide for forgiveness of sins! (v) The Gospel does not take any opportunity to demonstrate how Jesus kept any of the “least of these commandments” although there were plenty. When Jesus touched a leper, he became deliberately impure. This is not in any way sinful or forbidden or otherwise negatively loaded as long as the necessary purification takes place afterwards.88 Matthew highlights the bodily contact between Jesus and the leper in 8:3 by using the word ἅπτω, which is usually translated as “he touched him” and the image evoked is that of a liturgical touch on the shoulder or head but not a firm grip, embrace, or a hard hit, though this is within the semantic range of ἅπτω.89 In Gen 32:26 the angel who wrestled with Jacob, “touched his hip socket” (ἥψατο τοῦ πλάτους τοῦ μηροῦ αὐτοῦ), with the result that “Jacob’s hip was put out of joint.” But even if it was only a light touch it does not alter the fact that Jesus became impure by this touch.90 The same is true in 9:20, when the woman with a blood flow touched Jesus,

87 It is likely that Matthew also understood the tearing of the Temple curtain as an indicator of a new way for forgiveness, as this curtain separated the Holy from the Holy of Holies which the high priest entered once a year with the blood of a sin-offering to atone for Israel’s sins (Lev 16). 88 Cf. Lev 5:3–5; the purification rites after touching a leper are not spelled out in Leviticus but one must assume that they range between Lev 11:24ff. and Lev 15:5ff. 89 In Gen 20:4, 6 to touch a woman means to have sex with her; in 26:11 it is used in the meaning of “to harm.” However, in Gen 3:3 the idea of a fleeting touch is most likely meant, and the same is possible for most of the references in Matthew, see esp. 9:29 and 20:34 (the touching of the eyes). In 8:15; 9:20; 14:36 and 17:7, however, a firm grip is equally likely. 90 Matt 8:3 needs to be seen in relation to 2 Kgs 15:5, where it is said that the Lord “touched” Azariah, the king of Judah, and he became a leper for the rest of his life (καὶ ἥψατο κύριος τοῦ βασιλέως, καὶ ἦν λελεπρωμένος ἕως ἡμέρας θανάτου αὐτοῦ). In addition, in Leviticus ἅπτω is used throughout as the verb for contagious contact with impurity, see e.g., Lev 5:2; 12:4; 15:5, 7, 10–12, 19 etc.

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though the case of the daughter of the leader of a synagogue is less clear: the father thought she had already died, which would mean that by entering the house and touching her (9:18, 23–24) Jesus would incur death-impurity upon himself (cf. Num 19:11) which would require a seven-day purification ritual of sprinkling with the ashes of the red heifer. But because Jesus says that she is not dead but only sleeping, it remains open for debate as to whether Matthew wants to imply that Jesus touched (v. 25) a living or a dead person. This last point is not a very strong one, but an argument from silence. It only speaks loudly if we assume that Matthew wanted his addressees to keep the laws of everyday purity, which played an important role in Jewish society even beyond the destruction of the Temple. Torah observance in the first century and at least up until the Bar Kokhba revolt had a very visible side when it came to purity, and this has led to what is now labelled as “purity archaeology” or “archaeology of Halakha” in the last thirty years. Yonatan Adler, who is one of its main proponents, describes an “intensive concern for the proper observance of the levitical purity laws” as “characteristic of various Jewish groups living in Judea during the late Second Temple period.” It is in archaeological finds which provide evidence for the centrality of ritual purity observance in the daily lives of Jews in Judea during the Roman period. Chief among these finds are stepped water installations which served as ritual baths (mikvaot) for the purificatory immersion of ritually impure people, clothing, and vessels. Another important archaeological phenomenon which indicates observance of ritual purity laws is the widespread use of chalkstone vessels because stone was regarded as a material impervious to ritual impurity.91

These practices did not stop immediately in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple but only after the defeat of the Bar Kokhba rebellion, when all hopes for a restoration of the cult in Jerusalem were lost.92 For those who postulate a Matthean group striving for a comprehensive Torah obedience, this “centrality of ritual purity” needs to be taken into account. It would have been easy to describe Jesus, at least at some point in the Gospel, as immersing himself in a ritual bath after he contracted a form of impurity or before entering

91 Yonatan Adler, “Purity in the Roman Period,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Archaeology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2:240–49, here 240–41; Roland Deines, “Archaeological Finds as Evidence for Everyday Purity Practice in the HellenisticRoman Period in Judea and Galilee” (forthcoming). 92 Yonatan Adler, “The Decline of Jewish Ritual Purity Observance in Roman Palaestina: An Archaeological Perspective on Chronology and Historical Context,” in Expressions of Cult in the Southern Levant in the Greco- Roman Period: Manifestations in Text and Material Culture, ed. Oren Tal and Zeev Weiss, Contextualizing the Sacred Series 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 269–84.

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the Temple. To be sure, I do think that Jesus undertook immersion, when required, but it is not taken up by the evangelist, whom we should assume was familiar with these ritual practices.

E. Conclusion I have presented some arguments to demonstrate why I am convinced that Matthew’s Gospel is not meant to encourage “radical obedience to the Torah.” Such an obedience would include the regular observance of ritual purity, sacrifices in the Temple, tithes to the priests, and a life regulated by the biblical food laws and the festival calendar of the Torah. Even with all the modifications made, insofar as “radical obedience” is qualified as “the Torah rightly understood,” or with “a hermeneutical refocusing of the law in terms of justice, mercy, and faith,” there is no way around the fact that Torah obedience cannot be divided into “merely outward obedience to the law’s requirement” and “an inner obedience from the heart.”93 For Matthew, Jesus is the fulfillment of every aspect of “the Law and the Prophets” (5:17; 7:12; 11:11–14; 22:40), and neither Matthew 7:12 (Πάντα οὖν ὅσα ἐὰν θέλητε ἵνα ποιῶσιν ὑμῖν οἱ ἄνθρωποι, οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖς ποιεῖτε αὐτοῖς· οὗτος γάρ ἐστιν ὁ νόμος καὶ οἱ προφῆται) nor 22:40 can be read as introductory statements to all 613 commandments. Matthew differentiates between the time of “the prophets and the Law” (11:12) and the new obedience which is owned to Jesus (7:24). During the former period, the relationship between Torah, Messiah, and righteousness can be described as follows: 1. Righteousness is a necessity for a life before God (whether this life is regarded only as an earthly life or has a post-mortem element does not alter the perspective here). 2. The Torah (and subsequently the Prophets) are given by God to Israel to allow for such a life before him; the Prophets support and emphasize the Torah. 3. The task of the Messiah will be to enable the Torah to fulfill its divinely ordered function.

For Matthew, what the Torah foreshadowed and taught is fulfilled by Jesus and, as a consequence, its function in the mediation of the relation between God and his people has given way to a new form of messianic Jesus-

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All quotes from Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 121. It would be worthwhile to collect all the verbal contortions made by scholars attempting to harmonize all-encompassing Torah obedience with a form of keeping the Torah that nevertheless allows for ignoring many of its commandments. Hays for example offers: “Matthew’s concern is not to advocate a program of rejecting Jewish food laws but rather to shift the emphasis to purity of the heart as the Torah’s chief concern. … Clearly, Matthew is operating with a flexible theological notion of ‘fulfillment’ that is not rigidly identified with literal performances of all of the law’s commandments” (122).

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righteousness. The reprioritisation Matthew undertook as a result of his experience with Jesus can be summarised in the following way: 1. Righteousness is what is necessary to enter the kingdom of God (5:20, cf. 5:5:6, 10), but the righteousness that is required is not based on a deeper commitment to the Torah, but on the achievements of Jesus from his baptism (3:15) to the cross (cf. 1:21; 20:28; 26:28). 2. The Messiah, Son of David (the promises given to Israel) and Son of Abraham (the promises given to the Gentiles) (Matt 1:1), fulfills all righteousness (3:15) by fulfilling the law and the prophets (5:17) through his complete obedience to the will of God the father.94 3. The Torah and the Prophets point towards the Messiah and support him in fulfilling his divinely ordered function; they are witnesses for the fulfillment that came to pass with the inauguration of God’s kingdom, and as such witnesses they can be read figuratively (e.g., Richard Hays) or typologically (cf. Rom 10:4), because their meaning is not exhausted through their fulfillment.

It is within this wider framework that I understand Matt 5:17–20, and within this framework these verses can be understood in an exegetically, historically, and theologically satisfying way. Therefore, I claim that there are good reasons why the Gospel of Matthew should not be read as advocating a law-abiding Christian life-style but in critical sympathy with the fathers of the church from the second century on. But to do this we need scribes “trained for the kingdom of heaven” who are able to bring out of their treasures “what is new and what is old” (Matt 13:52). To add a personal afterthought: There seems to be an unspoken agreement amongst us “Western” scholars that the questions of dating and authorship of the Gospel need no serious discussion, and that the issues which were raised by Metropolitan Hilarion in his contribution to the conference can be politely ignored. We continue to work in what we regard as a strict historical and critical manner. It seems the majority is convinced that this is the only appropriate scholarly way to deal with the Gospel of Matthew. The approach suggested by our Orthodox brothers and sisters, namely, to engage the texts in a tradition-sensitive way, has not been taken up so far. I find myself in between these two approaches: I do not accept something as true solely on the basis of Papias or Irenaeus or Chrystostom. Their historical judgments often do not stand up to scrutiny, and I frequently regard their exegesis as farfetched and not based on the meaning of the biblical texts. On the other hand, I see no good historical reason to dismiss the patristic evidence about the origin of the New Testament

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Cf. Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment, 45–46, describing Thomas Aquinas’s position: “Finally, Aquinas notes that Christ’s manner of life included, as would have been expected from a member of the people of Israel, obedience to all the commands of the Torah. He states that Christ ‘wished’ to conform His conduct to the Law, first, to show His approval of the Old Law.’ Christ’s prophetic mission did not entail rejecting the teachings of Moses and the other prophets of Israel; he himself lived under and submitted to the Mosaic Law. On the other hand, Christ, as the Messiah for whose coming Israel had been prepared by the law and the prophets, is the ‘end’ to which the Mosaic Law is ordained by God. In short, Christ was not merely another prophet, as if he had been sent simply to confirm the teachings of Moses. Rather, the Messiah’s obedience to the Old Law enabled him to fulfill and to transform the Old Law.”

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writings in general, and of Matthew in particular, from the outset. A tradition-sensitive approach, or, in the words of Peter Stuhlmacher, “eine Hermeneutik des Einverständnisses” (a hermeneutic of consent)95 not only with the biblical texts but also with the ecclesial tradition (however, as a protestant scholar I would defend the prerogative of Scripture against the tradition derived from it), is indeed a goal worth working for. A key necessity for such a new hermeneutic would be the willingness to break the barrier between the purely naturalistic historical-critical paradigm that has dominating biblical scholarship for nearly 300 years, and a historical-critical methodology which is able to incorporate “transempirical realities,” to borrow a phrase from my former Nottingham colleague Anthony Thiselton’s work on The Hermeneutics of Doctrine. Metropolitan Hilarion describes his work on Jesus as an outstretched hand to work together as scholars and theologians to better understand the foundation of our faith.96 After Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) he is another outstanding leader of the church who asks biblical scholarship to contribute to the well-being of the church. I take this as a promising sign.97

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Peter Stuhlmacher, Historical Criticism and Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Toward a Hermeneutics of Consent (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977). Important, but often overlooked, is also Oscar Cullmann, “The Tradition,” in The Early Church, ed. A. J. B. Higgins (London: SCM, 1956), 59–99. 96 Alfeyev, Jesus Christ, 49. 97 Roland Deines, “Can the ‘Real’ Jesus be Identified with the Historical Jesus? Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict XVI) Challenge to Biblical Scholarship,” in Acts of God in History: Studies Towards Recovering a Theological Historiography, ed. Christoph Ochs and Peter Watts, WUNT 317 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 351–406. On my own attempt to integrate “transempirical realities” into the historical work see in the same volume my essay “God’s Role in History as a Methodological Problem for Exegesis” (1–26).

Matthew’s Idea of Being Human God’s Righteousness and Human Responsibility according to the Gospel of Matthew Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr

A. Introduction From the point of view of reception history,1 the Gospel of Matthew has always been valued as the most important among the Synoptic Gospels, as can be observed once again in the recently published volume of Novum Testamentum Patristicum on Matthew 19–21.2 For the forming of a characteristically “Christian” image of the human being and life, the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5–7), in particular, played a decisive role.3 Christian virtues and vices, the right way of praying, the self-understanding of pious and humble believers and the future of the righteous and the wicked are clearly depicted here. In this connection texts from the Gospel of Matthew have always been read and understood as the voice of the Lord, emerging straight from the mouth of Jesus to appeal to and to comfort Christian believers as well as how to interact with their enemies or any other human being. In his recently published comprehensive work on Jesus, consisting of sixvolumes, His eminence, the Metropolitan Hilarion also opts for such an approach by devoting one volume solely to the Sermon on the Mount as the most comprehensive compendium of the teaching of Jesus.4 This approach, according to my view, is appropriate in principle from a theological and pastoral point of view, even though, from a historical point of view questions can and perhaps should be raised on details of historicity and compositional development.5 In 1

For this, cf. the massive commentary on Matthew by Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, 4 vols., EKK I/1–4 (Zurich: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag 1990–2007). 2 Justina C. Metzdorf, Das Matthäusevangelium, Teilband 6: Kapitel 19–21, Novum Testamentum Patristicum 1/6 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017). 3 Cf. most recently William C. Mattison III, The Sermon on the Mount and Moral Theology: A Virtue Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 4 Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, The Sermon on the Mount, vol. 2 of Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching (Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2019). 5 For more recent analyses of the Sermon on the Mount from a historical critical point of view, cf. Alan Kirk, Q in Matthew: Ancient Media, Memory, and Early Scribal Transmission

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my own textbook on New Testament anthropology still in preparation I will attempt to carve out from the different New Testament sources a “Grundimpuls Jesu” (basic impulse of Jesus) that can be detected from among the distinct voices that are brought together in the New Testament canon. I cannot explain my approach here in more detail, but I think that Matthew’s idea of being human resulted from a particular perception in the Jesus tradition and points the readers back to Jesus by attempting to guide their way of faith and life according to the voice of the Lord.6 A second preliminary thought refers to the place of the Gospel of Matthew in ancient literature and the history of religion. As an ancient literary document, Matthew’s story belongs to the broader field of historical works, to the genre of biography in particular.7 Irrespective of any particularities of Matthew’s Gospel in this regard, the work as an ancient biography serves to draw a paradigmatic picture of human beings and what is for them a right or wrong way of life. Therefore, by emphasizing the particular shape and importance of Matthew’s idea of being human we should set it in the context of and compare it with other ancient biographies in Hellenistic Roman or Jewish literature. I assume that such a comparative approach will lead to interesting results even in anthropological terms, although I cannot execute this task here.8 A third and final introductory remark concerns theology. During the interpretation history of Matthew, the term “righteousness” or “justice” has always occupied a large space.9 In “western” theology since Augustine, in particular, of the Jesus Tradition, LNTS 564 (London: T&T Clark, 2011); Hans-Ulrich Weidemann, ed., Er stieg auf den Berg … und lehrte sie (Mt 5,1f.). Exegetische und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Studien zur Bergpredigt, SBS 226 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2012); Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3–7:27 and Luke 6:20–49), ed. Adela Yarbro Collins, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995). 6 I have already developed my approach in the Epistle of James; see for this my “Ethics and Anthropology in the Letter of James: An Outline,” in Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts, ed. Jan Willem van Henten and Joseph Verheyden, Studies in Theology and Religion 17 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 223–42. 7 For the debate on the genre of Gospel writing, cf. Eve-Marie Becker, Das MarkusEvangelium im Rahmen antiker Historiographie, WUNT 194 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006); Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004); Dirk Frickenschmidt, Evangelium als Biographie: Die vier Evangelien im Rahmen antiker Erzählkunst, Texte und Arbeiten zum neutestamentlichen Zeitalter 22 (Tübingen: Francke, 1997). 8 For recent discussion on genre in Matthew and Mark, cf. David E. Aune, “Genre Theory and the Genre-Function of Mark and Matthew,” in Mark and Matthew I. Comparative Readings: Understanding the Earliest Gospels in their First Century Settings, ed. Eve-Marie Becker and Anders Runesson, WUNT 271 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 145–75. 9 For this see my “Gerechtigkeit und Rechtfertigung bei Matthäus und Jakobus. Eine Herausforderung für gegenwärtige lutherische Hermeneutik in globalen Kontexten,” TLZ

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this term acquired a central role as part of the pivotal doctrine of justification, which received its biblical input not only from Paul, but also from Matthew, Peter, and even James. The reformers took this Augustinian focus on the individual believer as a sinner justified by God in order to build on it their particular view on the human being as lost without hope to the power of sin and saved by faith alone without works of the law. This anthropological approach of the reformers, based on a new understanding of freedom, experienced further transformation during the time of the enlightenment and has become formative for most modern approaches to anthropology.10 In “eastern” theology, however, other concepts of biblical anthropology have been much more important, as for instance the idea of the spiritual human being.11 When it comes to Matthew’s idea of being human, it may offer new insights into how Matthew understands “justice” by removing some of the constrictions of “western” theology and pointing to a broader perspective.

B. Justice and Faith in Matthew An intense debate has recently emerged in German scholarship about how to understand justice or righteousness in Matthew. For a long time, modern exegesis understood this term predominantly in an ethical or even socio-political sense.12 A new input into that debate came through Roland Deines’s monograph, Die Gerechtigkeit der Tora im Reich des Messias.13 Deines developed 140 (2015): 1329–48; see also Martin Meiser, “Protestant Reading of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew in the 20th Century,” in Mark and Matthew II. Comparative Readings: Reception History, Cultural Hermeneutics, and Theology, ed. Eve-Marie Becker and Anders Runesson, WUNT 304 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 151–67. 10 For two selected examples from the huge debate on Paul’s doctrine of justification from an inter-confessional perspective, cf. David E. Aune, ed., Rereading Paul Together. Protestant and Catholic Perspectives on Justification (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006); Thomas Söding, ed., Worum geht es in der Rechtfertigungslehre? Das biblische Fundament der “Gemeinsamen Erklärung” von katholischer Kirche und Lutherischem Weltbund, QD 180 (Freiburg: Herder, 1999). From an ecumenical point of view, cf. the interconfessional document based on the “Joint Declaration,” Task Force of Biblical Scholars, The Biblical Foundations of the Doctrine of Justification: An Ecumenical Follow-Up to the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (New York: Paulist, 2012). 11 For this see my contribution to the Eighth International East-West Symposium of New Testament Scholars at Caraiman Monastery, Romania, May 26 to 31, 2019, on “The Spiritual Human Being in Paul: 1 Cor 2:15 from a ‘Western’ Perspective,” to be published in the conference volume in WUNT (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming). 12 For this understanding see the commentary of Luz, Matthäus, 1:212–14, 283–85, 481– 83. 13 Roland Deines, Die Gerechtigkeit der Tora im Reich des Messias: Mt 5,13–20 als Schlüsseltext der matthäischen Theologie, WUNT 177 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004).

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his understanding of justice thorough an analysis of the complete text of the Gospel interpreted as a result of the Christological interpretation of the Jesus story by Matthew. In this connection, according to Deines, justice in Matthew cannot be reduced to an ethical meaning, but has to be interpreted as based on faith in Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel, who has revealed God’s eschatological salvation for Israel and the Gentiles. To ground his view, Deines points to the first and last occurrences of δικαιοσύνη in Matthew,14 where the term is not restricted to human activities, but refers to the coming of Jesus and also John the Baptist. To this new interpretation, Matthias Konradt replied in his commentary on Matthew as well as in several articles.15 Recently, a scholarly debate about this question between Roland Deines and Manuel Vogel was published in Zeitschrift für Neues Testament.16 Let us take this debate as starting point to explore Matthew’s particular view on human beings and on the conditions of human life.17 From an anthropological perspective, the relationship between justice and faith in Matthew should be relevant for our discussion, because, from a Christian point of view, human beings are not separable from human actions, feelings, or beliefs. By examining the use of terms, we observe that Matthew uses the noun δικαιοσύνη only in a limited number of chapters, with a cluster in the Sermon on the Mount. In the beatitudes (Matt 5:3–12), Matthew describes 14

Cf. Matt 3:15; 21:32. Matthias Konradt, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, NTD 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015); idem, Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Alida Euler, WUNT 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). 16 Roland Deines, “Gerechtigkeit, die zum Leben führt. Die christologische Bestimmtheit der Glaubenden bei Matthäus,” Zeitschrift für Neues Testament 36 (2015): 46–56; Manuel Vogel, “Die Ethik der ‘besseren Gerechtigkeit’ im Matthäusevangelium,” Zeitschrift für Neues Testament 36 (2015): 57–63. 17 For exegetical details, see my articles on Matthew: “Die Antithesen des Matthäus. Jesus als Toralehrer und die frühjüdische weisheitlich geprägte Torarezeption,” in Gedenkt an das Wort. Festschrift für Werner Vogler zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Christoph Kähler, Martina Böhm, and Christfried Böttrich (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1999), 175–200; idem, “Jesu Heilungen und Exorzismen. Ein Stück Theologie des Neuen Testaments,” in Frühjudentum und Neues Testament im Horizont Biblischer Theologie. Mit einem Anhang zum Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti, ed. Wolfgang Kraus and Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, WUNT 162 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 99–112; idem, “Die Makarismen Jesu als Ausdruck seines Menschenbildes,” in Evangelium ecclesiasticum. Matthäus und die Gestalt der Kirche. Festschrift für Christoph Kähler zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Christfried Böttrich, Hans-Peter Hübner, Kerstin Voigt, and Dietmar Wiegand (Frankfurt am Main: edition chrismon, 2009), 329–52; idem, “Die Seligpreisungen in der Bergpredigt nach Matthäus und im Brief des Jakobus. Zugänge zum Menschenbild Jesu?,” in Neutestamentliche Exegese im Dialog. Hermeneutik – Wirkungsgeschichte – Matthäusevangelium. Festschrift für Ulrich Luz zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Peter Lampe, Moises Mayordomo, Migaku Sato, and Armand Puig i Tàrrech (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2008), 275–96; idem, “Gerechtigkeit und Rechtfertigung bei Matthäus und Jakobus” (n. 9). 15

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those whom Jesus addresses and who receive his blessings on the basis of their comprehensive attitude. Presently they experience manifold afflictions, but they are comforted by Jesus’s words regarding their future destiny. However, what they receive as hope for a better life in future will already improve their present condition seen from the perspective of belief in Jesus, the proclaimer of God’s kingdom. Justice, in this context, is part of their hope, yet a cause for their afflictions as well (5:6, 10). Because hungering and thirsting for justice means striving for something that is lacking, but not actively doing anything, the experience of persecution for righteousness’ sake is the result of being close to Jesus according to Matthew’s story.18 The remaining occurrences of δικαιοσύνη in the Sermon on the Mount confirm this understanding. In Matt 5:20, Jesus compares the justice of the disciples with that of the scribes and Pharisees, yet not by counting any of their deeds, but by pointing to the qualitative difference of attitude to Jesus and his message regarding entry into the heavenly kingdom. In 6:1, the term describes an overall attitude that can be displayed to other people, yet again without mentioning any particular deeds. In 6:33, as in 5:6, justice is something to gain or to strive for. If we take into consideration the first and the last occurrences of δικαιοσύνη in the Gospel of Matthew, which bracket most of Matthew’s story, the overall concept of justice becomes clearly evident: It is Jesus and John the Baptist who form a team by proclaiming God’s righteousness. When they meet for the first time (and when Jesus speaks for the first time in the Gospel), it becomes immediately clear what justice really means: something to “fulfil” (πληρῶσαι) eschatologically (3:15). And when Jesus mentions John for the last time in the Gospel, he points to the wrong way by which the leaders of the Jews in Jerusalem reply to the proclamation of the kingdom of God as revealed in Jesus’s whole life and message (21:32).19 Matthew’s use of the adjective δίκαιος underlines this understanding of justice. The adjective occurs more frequently than the noun and is distributed through the whole Gospel, but the meaning of the word is comprehensive rather than concrete. Usually, the term in Matthew qualifies human figures as righteous in a very broad sense. This refers to either biblical-historical or to contemporary personalities. The series in the Gospel story starts with Joseph, the “husband of Mary” (Matt 1:19). It continues with the prophets as biblical paradigms (10:41; 13:17; 23:29) and with exemplary righteous persons from Abel to Zechariah, son of Barachiah, who were murdered (23:35). It ends with Jesus, 18 Cf. Matt 5:11–12, where the present affliction and the future hope of the believers closely relate to the fate of Jesus’s disciples. 19 For Matthew’s picture of John the Baptist cf. Ulrich B. Müller, Johannes der Täufer: Jüdischer Prophet und Wegbereiter Jesu (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2002), 123– 34.

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when even the wife of Pilate recognizes him as righteous (27:19). However, the term also applies to the audience of Jesus when Jesus intends to distinguish between the righteous and sinners of his own time. In these contexts, according to Matthew, the righteous are those who “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (13:43). To them the king will say, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (25:34). They will enter eternal life (25:46), in contrast to the evil doers (5:45; 13:49), the sinners (9:13), the hypocrites and the lawless (23:28). All these terms refer to comprehensive attitudes, without any detailed descriptions of particular deeds, right or wrong. The righteous and the evil in Matthew, therefore, function like archetypes, paradigmatic figures, which is also the case in biblical and Jewish tradition.20 Both types belong to the grand story according to which God at the end of time will judge and justify those who lived their life according to his will and will punish those who left the right way. This, of course, does not exclude ethical applications, as ancient Jewish Torah paraenesis in particular may indicate.21 Nevertheless, the contrast between the righteous and the wicked belongs to a broader perspective of eschatological hopes that were alive in Jesus’s own time. The pericope on the question of John the Baptist to Jesus through his disciples about whether he is the one who is to come is particularly plain in this regard. In Jesus’s answer, the biblical hopes that God in the end will take away all infirmities from his people (Isa 35:5–6) and that the Lord “lifts up those who are bowed down … and loves the righteous” (Ps 146:8), are now said to be fulfilled.22 To conclude, the concept of justice in Matthew is more than a term referring to doing the right things. It includes the direction of the entire life of the believer to God’s reign as revealed by Jesus Christ. Matthew exhibits a strong tendency to qualify righteousness in a religious sense. The term denotes a comprehensive religious attitude of trust in God and of following his will in everyday life. The righteous are those who subject themselves to God’s will. They live their lives with this attitude. Their closeness to God is not the result of their righteous deeds or even as a wage for their good works, but their way of 20

For an overview see Markus Witte, “Gerechtigkeit als Thema der Theologie,” in Gerechtigkeit, ed. Markus Witte, Themen der Theologie 6 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 1– 14; idem, “Altes Testament,” in ibid., 37–67; D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brian, and Mark A. Seifrid, eds., The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, vol. 1 of Justification and Variegated Nomism, WUNT 2/140 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001). 21 For this see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Gesetz und Paränese: Katechismusartige Weisungsreihen in der frühjüdischen Literatur, WUNT 2/28 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987), index s.v. δικαιοσύνη. 22 Cf. Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Die Werke des eschatologischen Freudenboten (4Q521 und die Jesusüberlieferung),” in The Scriptures in the Gospels, ed. Christopher M. Tuckett, BETL 131 (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 637–46.

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life in justice results from their attitude of wanting their religious and ethical lives to correspond to God’s will and to trust in him thoroughly. The Russian word “pravednik” denoting a way of life guided by trust in God and avoidance of sin may be a good illustration for this. The religious substance of the semantic domain of righteousness in Matthew is reinforced when we include Matthew’s discourse on faith in our examination.23 There is a particular profile in Matthew’s use of the terminology of πίστις, πιστεύειν. It occurs most frequently in healing stories.24 Moreover, when Jesus speaks to his disciples by asking them to trust in him and his claims, he either demands faith from them or he grants them faith: “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.”25 Finally, a particular focus on faith appears in the controversy stories on John the Baptist.26 There, Jesus polemically addresses the elites from Jerusalem who do not believe in him. By repudiating John and Jesus, they turn away from God and from God’s eschatological agency towards Israel in the events connected to Jesus’s life and message.27 Hence, by using the terms of faith or believing, Matthew points to the particular bond that people developed towards Jesus during his earthly life. Since in his particular life God himself has been present in his eschatological agency towards Israel, the attitude to Jesus defines how people stand towards God. Those who deny Jesus’s claims in his coming, acting, and destiny, concurrently repudiate God. This is the flipside of believing in Jesus, and here is the link to how Matthew understands justice/righteousness. As we have seen, how people act and trust in God defines whether they are righteous or wrong, just or evil. The same opposition refers to their faith or faithlessness. Both belong together. In conclusion, Matthew’s idea of being human as far as faith and righteousness are concerned is strongly determined by the religious attitude of human beings. If they turn to Jesus and accept Jesus’s claim to act as the representative of God who promised to send his Messiah to Israel to take away all its calamities, then they fulfil the demand of being just. Of course, this attitude also includes a life lived according to God’s will. In this connection, being righteous

23 For this cf. Matthias Konradt, “Die Rede vom Glauben in Heilungsgeschichten und die Messianität Jesu im Matthäusevangelium,” in Glaube: Das Verständnis des Glaubens im frühen Christentum und in seiner jüdischen und hellenistisch-römischen Umwelt, ed. Jörg Frey, Benjamin Schliesser, and Nadine Ueberschaer, WUNT 373 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 423–50. 24 Five out of eight occurrences of πίστις are in healing stories; cf. 8:10; 9:2, 22, 29; 15:28, plus twice πιστεύειν in 8:13; 9:28. 25 Matt 17:20; cf. 21:21–22. 26 Cf. Matt 21:23–27 and 21:31–32. 27 Note the occurrence of δικαιοσύνη in this context, Matt 21:32!

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may also mean doing good and avoiding wrongdoing. However, an understanding of justice restricted to social-ethical matters or even focused on them would not correspond to Matthew’s convictions.

C. Individuals and the Community in Discipleship of Jesus There seems to be a tension in Matthew regarding the focus on individual figures who react to the proclamation of God’s kingdom by Jesus and on collective entities. On the one hand, Jesus turns to individual figures to call them to discipleship or to heal them from their hardships.28 On the other hand, Matthew draws pictures of typical groups who react to Jesus positively or negatively,29 as for instance, the Pharisees and the scribes, the elite from Jerusalem,30 or the twelve disciples.31 Moreover, by using elements from biblical and Jewish wisdom tradition, Matthew describes a typical ethos of those who follow the will of God in their everyday life or who defy such an ethos without discriminating between individual situations or experiences.32 To substantiate this feature we will briefly compile the most important references to this phenomenon in Matthew’s Gospel. The tension just mentioned appears in connection with the healing ministry of Jesus. Typically, Matthew describes how Jesus encounters a single person afflicted by a particular hardship. He turns towards him or her individually by addressing them with a personal word and then healing them. However, nowhere else among the Gospels do we find so many summaries of Jesus’s healing ministry as in Matthew.33 Therefore, by pointing to Jesus as healer, Matthew intends to describe something typical for Jesus and those who encounter him. A similar observation applies to discipleship. On the one hand, Matthew by following his sources retells how Jesus met individual persons and called them to follow him, either individuals by name, like Simon and Andrew at the Sea of Galilee and Matthew the tax collector,34 or people who remain nameless.35 On the other hand, Jesus’s followers form a particular, coherent collective without individual description. They act as a group in doing right or wrong, and Jesus addresses them collectively. As a group, the believers are called “the

28

Cf. Matt 4:18–22; 8:5–13; 9:9–13; 15:21–28; 17:14–18; 19:16–26. Cf. Matt 4:23–25; 15:29–31; 21:14–17. 30 Cf. Matt 9:1–7, 14–17; 12:38–45; 16:1–4; 22:15–46. 31 Cf. Matt 10:1–4; 11:1–6; 12:46–50. 32 Cf. Matt 5:20–48; 19:1–12, 16–26; 22:34–40. 33 Cf. Matt 4:23–24; 8:16; 9:35; 10:1, 8; 11:5; 12:22; 15:30. 34 Matt 4:18–21; 9:9. 35 Matt 8:19–22. 29

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little ones,”36 or addressed as “being of little faith.”37 All of them must become like children to enter the heavenly kingdom.38 Their behaviour appears paradigmatic in some of the parables.39 Nevertheless, entering into discipleship of Jesus means leaving behind all social relations and personal ties to any individual family, relatives, home, or profession. Each time it is an individual decision to follow Jesus’s call, which is intrinsically linked to a radically new way of life distinct from any form of conventional social life.40 However, after the disciples leave their common environment, they are to form a new community of followers of Jesus who develop their own conventions and community rules. Their new community stands out by solidarity and empathy. Disciples of Jesus are to forgive one another not only seven times but without limit.41 They should act among each other not as rulers or instructors, but as servants or slaves.42 Whoever is not ready among them to be merciful as the heavenly father has been merciful to him or her will not enter the heavenly kingdom, but will be consigned to torment at the last judgment.43 Only as a group do the disciples act in view of the arrival of God’s kingdom. The number twelve, constitutive for their origin, indicates the role of the disciples as part of the eschatological events as evoked by the coming of Jesus. As a group, they form a model of the people of Israel as re-established at the end of time. The power “to bind and loose” is not with Peter alone, but with the disciples as a group as well,44 and when Peter asks Jesus, “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus addresses all disciples with his promise: “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”45 To conclude, in Matthew the individual decision of people to follow Jesus is strongly emphasized (as was probably already the case in pre-Matthean Jesus tradition), as well as the radical consequences for the disciples as followers of Jesus that arise from their decision. At the same time, discipleship in Matthew appears as a common task for everybody who joins the communion with Jesus. Those who want to belong to Jesus’s discipleship must develop a particular 36

Matt 10:42; 18:6, 10, 14. Matt 16:8, cf. 6:30; 8:26; 14:31. 38 Matt 18:1–4. 39 Cf. Matt 18:23–35 (the foolish slave); 25:1–12 (the ten bridesmaids); 25:31–46 (the Son of Man at the last judgment). 40 Cf. Matt 8:19–22; 10:32–33; 16:24–27; 19:16–22, 27–30; see also 10:9–10. 41 Matt 18:21–22. 42 Matt 20:24–28; 23:10–11. 43 Matt 18:23–35. 44 Compare Matt 16:19 and 18:18. 45 Matt 19:28. 37

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profile distinct from other groups. This profile is characterized by trust in the merciful God, by believing in Jesus, God’s son and messianic representative on earth, and by directing one’s mind toward the judgment of the Son of Man.46 The community to which Jesus and his disciples belong is the people of Israel restored at the end of time. However, this people is open for Gentiles as well, who repent and believe in Jesus.47

D. Physical or Biological Aspects of Being Human So far, we have dealt predominantly with human existence as it concerns the way of life particularly of Jesus’s disciples. However, to obtain a more complete picture of Matthew’s idea of being human, we must not disregard those aspects that are common to every person as a human being, whether as a disciple or not, namely, aspects pertaining to eating, drinking, family, marriage, sexuality, pregnancy, childbirth, housing, profession, illness, death, and so on. Otherwise, we would lose sight of the realities of human life that are shared by the disciples of Jesus as well – they still do not live like angels in heaven!48 Such everyday realities, if compiled into a general conspectus, occupy a surprisingly broad space in Matthew. They are more than just formal decorations of Matthew’s story. They are clear indications that Jesus encounters real people in their habitual everyday life. Moreover, Jesus himself, although the true Son of God and the Messiah of Israel, acts like a real human being and experiences the needs and the pleasure of human life. Jesus is hungry. He likes eating and drinking, as his enemies noticed, and the human, or better, inhuman circumstances of his brutal death must not be forgotten.49

46

Cf. Matt 19:27–30; 24:29–31, 45-51; 25:31–46. Cf. Matt 15:21–28. 48 Corporeal aspects concerning the human life have become an important topic in more recent biblical-anthropological studies, in Pauline research in particular; cf. Christian Strecker, “‘It matters’! – Der Körper in der jüngeren neutestamentlichen Forschung,” Zeitschrift für Neues Testament 14 (2011): 2–14; Gregor Etzelmüller and Annette Weissenrieder, eds., Verkörperung als Paradigma theologischer Anthropologie (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2016). Studies on Matthew with this focus, as far as I see, are still missing (for Luke see Annette Weissenrieder, Images of Illness in the Gospel of Luke, WUNT 2/164 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003]). On the other hand, aspects like sexuality, nutrition, housing, or illness are dealt with in New Testament scholarship predominantly as matters of ethics, not of anthropology. For sexuality in Matthew in particular, see William R. G. Loader, The New Testament on Sexuality (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 109–39; for my own view on ethical aspects in the beatitudes and the antitheses in Matthew, see Niebuhr, “Die Makarismen Jesu,” 329–52; idem, “Die Antithesen des Matthäus,” 175–200. 49 Cf. Matt 4:2; 11:19; 21:18. 47

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Family life is touched on quite often in Matthew’s story, to begin with the “holy family” and the more or less orderly circumstances around the birth of Jesus, including migration.50 Yet, pregnancy and children,51 marriage and adultery, 52 weddings and divorces,53 and funerals54 are topics in other places of the Gospel story as well. Quarrels and conflicts occur inside and outside of families.55 As in biblical-Jewish tradition, the commandment of honoring one’s parents is pivotal.56 However, when it comes to discipleship, even this commandment has to step aside.57 Ideal family values, at any rate, are not an overall concept in Matthew. Rather, divisions within families are indicators and harbingers of the parousia of the Son of Man.58 The true familia Iesu, to be specific, does not consist of his biological relatives, but of those who are doing the will of God, that is, the disciples of Jesus.59 Eating and drinking likewise matter in Matthew, as does lodging. These topics are either part of the scenery in episodes told about Jesus or they appear as motifs in his parables or sayings. Surprisingly frequently bread is mentioned, although right from the beginning Jesus himself has made it clear that “one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”60 This Gospel contains wine, symposia, and weddings,61 during which fasting is forbidden.62 In contrast to John the Baptist, Jesus was not famed as an ascetic, but as a “glutton and drunkard.”63 There is plenty of food, showing that if necessary Jesus could take things into his own hands.64 However, this does not say that Matthew draws a picture of a “land of milk and honey.” On the contrary, hungering and thirsting, worries about food and clothes pervade the story,65 and even Jesus himself can be hungry.66

50

Matt 1:18–25; 2:13–15. Cf. Matt 24:19; 11:16–17; 18:2–5; 19:13–15; 21:15. 52 Cf. Matt 23:24–28; 5:27–28; 19:18. 53 Cf. Matt 9:15; 22:2–13; 24:38; 25:1–12; 5:31–32; 19:3–10. 54 Cf. Matt 27:57–66; 28:11–15. 55 Cf. Matt 5:20–25; 5:38–48; 7:1–5; 10:21; 10:35–36; 12:25; 18:15–18. 56 Cf. Matt 15:3–6; 19:19. 57 Matt 8:21. 58 Cf. Matt 10:35–37; 19:28–29. 59 Matt 12:46–50; 13:55–56; cf. 18:20. 60 Matt 4:4; cf. 6:11; 7:9; 12:4; 14:17, 19; 15:2, 26, 33, 34, 36; 16:5–12 (ἄρτος seven times!); 26:26. 61 Cf. Matt 9:17; 23:5; 22:2–13; 24:38; 25:1–12. 62 Matt 9:15. 63 Matt 11:19. 64 Cf. Matt 14:15–21; 15:33–39. 65 Cf. Matt 5:6; 6:25–34; 21:18; 24:35, 37, 42, 44. 66 Cf. Matt 4:2; 21:18. 51

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Housing is not foreign to Jesus, even though he lived with his disciples outside of human settlements.67 Several sorts of clothes occur as well, beginning with wedding gowns and high-end soft robes and ending with the patched rags of the poor.68 The disciples, eventually, are sent on mission without sandals and a tunic to change clothing.69 Even though Jesus and his disciples did not earn their own living, it is surprising how many different professions occur in Matthew’s Gospel. Fishermen,70 shepherds of pigs and sheep,71 farmers and harvesters,72 landowners, tenants and slaves,73 merchants,74 scribes and teachers,75 carpenters and construction workers,76 tax collectors,77 soldiers,78 not to forget housewives,79 and prostitutes80 are mentioned. Similarly, illnesses of many kinds are frequently mentioned. One could almost establish a medical catalogue of diseases in Greek: λεπρός (8:1); παραλυτικός (8:5; 9:1); πυρέσσουσα (8:14); δαιμονιζόμενοι (8:28; 9:32; 11:18; 15:22; 17:18); apparent death (οὐ γὰρ ἀπέθανεν τὸ κοράσιον ἀλλὰ καθεύδει, 9:18); αἱμορροοῦσα (9:20); τυφλοί (9:27; 20:30; 21:14); κωφός (9:32); χεῖρα … ξηρά (12:10); σεληνιάζεται (17:14); χωλοί (21:14). To this list, we may add the many summaries of the healing ministry of Jesus.81 To conclude this section, the Jesus story takes place in Matthew, as in the other Gospels, in real life. Its setting is the experience of ordinary, contemporary people alongside Jesus, depicting their good and bad times, their sorrows and joys. This setting certainly contributed to the success of the Gospels with their readers or listeners, then and today. The idea of being human as apparent in Matthew’s story seemed to be familiar. It is neither idealistic nor pessimistic, neither unrealistically dramatized nor philosophically x-rayed from a higher point of view. It is merely retold with many details, good and bad, so that any readers or hearers may find their own lives reflected in this story.

67

Cf. Matt 5:14–16; 6:6; 7:24–27; 8:20; 10:12–14; 12:44; 17:4; 24:17, 26, 43. Cf. Matt 22:12; 11:8; 9:16. 69 Matt 10:9. 70 Cf. Matt 4:18–22; 13:47–48; 17:27; 9:36; 18:12–13; 24:32. 71 Matt 8:33. 72 Cf. Matt 13:3–8, 24–30; 22:5; 24:18, 40; 25:24, 26; 9:38. 73 Cf. Matt 20:1–16; 21:33; 24:14–30. 74 Cf. Matt 10:29; 13:45; 21:12; 22:5; 24:27; 25:9. 75 Cf. Matt 13:52; 10:24–25. 76 Cf. Matt 13:55; 21:42. 77 Cf. Matt 9:9–11; 10:3; 11:19; 21:31; 17:24. 78 Matt 22:7. 79 Cf. Matt 13:33; 24:41. 80 Matt 21:31. 81 Cf. n. 33. 68

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E. Birth and Death, Beginning and End of Human Beings To this sort of human experience obviously also belong the events at the beginning and end of life: birth and death. We have already mentioned the occurrences of pregnancy, childbirth, and childhood in Matthew. Let us focus briefly on death.82 Death as an existential experience of human beings occurs frequently in connection with healing stories.83 Generally, healing and raising from death closely relate to each other in the Jesus tradition.84 Illness and dying in antiquity were closely connected, much more than today.85 Therefore, several of the healings carried out by Jesus are at the same time rescues from the danger of death. Murder and homicide occur in Matthew’s Gospel as well, beginning with the murder of all children aged two or less in Bethlehem.86 The series of capital crimes in Matthew continues with the murder of John the Baptist and reaches an extreme with the passion narrative, foreshadowed already in the parable of the wicked tenants.87 Twice in between Matthew quotes the commandment against murder from the Decalogue.88 Above all, as Jesus had already forecasted, persecutions and even murder will belong to the lot of his disciples.89 Most frequently, however, the final death of the unrighteous at the last judgment is a subject matter in Matthew’s Gospel. John the Baptist had already made it a particular topic in his prophetic accusation against the Pharisees and Sadducees.90 Jesus quite similarly proclaimed it when he blamed “this generation” of not believing in him or when he accused the scribes and the Pharisees of being hypocrites.91 Many of Jesus’s parables particularly in Matthew emphasize explicitly this flipside of Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom of God.92 The way Jesus spoke of the “hell of fire” (Gehenna) or of “weeping and

82 We leave aside here the passion narrative and its frequent foreshadowing through the narrative; cf. for this most thoroughly Luz, Matthäus, vol. 4. 83 Cf. Matt 9:18–26; 10:8; 11:5. 84 Cf. Bernd Kollmann, Jesus und die Christen als Wundertäter. Studien zu Magie, Medizin und Schamanismus in Antike und Christentum, FRLANT 170 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996); idem, “Totenerweckungen und Naturwunder,” in Jesus Handbuch, ed. Jens Schröter and Christine Jacobi (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 318–27. 85 Gregor Etzelmüller and Annette Weissenrieder, eds., Religion und Krankheit (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010). 86 Cf. Matt 2:16–18. 87 Cf. Matt 14:3–12; 20:37–39. 88 Matt 5:21; 19:17. 89 Matt 10:28–39; 16:24–26. 90 Cf. Matt 3:7–12. 91 Cf. Matt 12:14–15; 23:32–36. 92 Cf. Matt 13:24–43 (the weeds among the wheat); 13:48 (the fishing net, cf. 13:50); 22:2–14 (the wedding guest without a wedding gown).

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gnashing of teeth” has become proverbial.93 We must not overlook this particular feature in the Gospel of Matthew, even though it confronts us with serious hermeneutical problems today.

F. Conclusion In conclusion, we have seen that Matthew’s idea of being human is an important part of his Jesus story. The Gospel of Matthew not only is about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, about Jesus’s fate on the cross and about his mighty rising from the dead. It is also about people. Moreover, the focus on human beings with their sorrows and their joys is an important contribution to Matthew’s theology as well. For, even “the Son of Man has come not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”94 By this particular configuration in his Gospel story about belief in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the reflexion on the conditions of human existence on earth, Matthew has become formative for the faith of the church during all centuries. Even if Matthew inherited this concept from his sources, whether we call them Mark, or “Q,” or something else, in the course of church history Matthew has become the most important voice of Jesus in the Bible. Therefore, Matthew’s idea of being human deserves highest attention even today if we ask for a Christian understanding of the human being. By focussing on the disciples of Jesus, on their strengths and their weaknesses, Matthew formed a portrait of a Christian way of life that has become formative for many generations. What Jesus demanded from his disciples has been authoritative for every Christian of any generation, even though neither every Christian nor the church as a whole has followed the directives of Jesus at all times, regrettably. Therefore, the biblical yardstick for a Christian idea of being human as found in Matthew’s Jesus story remains valid, and the church must continue to proclaim it. Nevertheless, in a world becoming less controlled or less influenced by churches, the common aspects of human life as pictured in Matthew’s story deserve our attention. The potential of the Bible reaches far beyond an inner Christian circle of people. Let us communicate the portraits of human beings as pictured in the Bible to people of our own time who, perhaps, have never seen any Bible or experienced any form of church community during their own life. I am convinced that these pictures are still attractive to “non-religious” or

93 94

Cf. Matt 5:28–30; 7:19; 18:8–9; 24:51; 25:30, 41, 46. Matt 20:28.

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“differently-religious” people of today as they remain formative for Christians in any church for all time.

Basileia is Gaining Space God’s Will, Mimesis of Christ, and the Spatial Shaping of the Basileia in Matthew’s Gospel1 Christian Blumenthal A. History of Research and the Focus of this Study Christian Blumenthal

In international New Testament exegesis, increasing attention is given to space and spatial concepts.2 Space is understood less as a backdrop for events or as a decorative background, but rather as a social construct, as a dynamic and changeable entity.3 This understanding of space brings the question of the construction of space with its pragmatic-political implications into focus. These implications are particularly evident in the case of literary creation of space as it can be found in the New Testament Scriptures.4 That is to say, literary con-

1 I would very much like to thank Britta Fernandes and Daniel Lanzinger (Bonn) for the English translation of my article. 2 In a current contribution, Konrad Huber, “Von ‘Turn’ zu ‘Turn’ und von ‘Quest’ zu ‘Quest’: Zu aktuellen Trends in der neutestamentlichen Exegese,” TPQ 166 (2018): 248–59, 252, expresses his conviction that spatially focused investigations are entering the area of New Testament research “Schritt für Schritt”. At present, he says, they are “deutlich spürbar im Aufwind” (p. 253). Nevertheless, this “erwartbare[] neue[] Trend” is “erst punktuell greifbar” (p. 253); for example, Eric Stewart, “New Testament Space/Spatiality,” BTB 42 (2012): 139–50; Patrick Schreiner, “Space, Place and Biblical Studies: A Survey of Recent Research in Light of Developing Trends,” CBR 14 (2016): 340–71, especially 351–60; and Moisés Mayordomo-Marín, “Raumdiskurse in der neutestamentlichen Forschung,” VF 62 (2017): 50–56 have presented first research reports. 3 See Huber, “Turn,” 253. In recent research contributions, he observes a striking broadening of perspective from a previous primary focus on “strukturalistische Modelle der Raumanalyse” to “Erforschung der kulturellen Konstruktion von Räumen und deren Funktionalität im Sinne einer Metasprache zur Beschreibung von kulturellen, sozialen, ethischen, politischen oder religiösen Beziehungen.” 4 The following remarks are based on a broad concept of political theology in which I follow Samuel Vollenweider, “Politische Theologie im Philipperbrief?” in Paulus und Johannes: Exegetische Studien zur paulinischen und johanneischen Theologie und Literatur, ed. Dieter Sänger and Ulrich Mell, WUNT 198 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 457–69, 468. This broad concept not only refers to the system of rule but also to “das breite Spektrum von Willensbildung, von Entscheidungen und Handlungen sozialer Kollektive” (p. 468).

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cepts of space encompass both a “representative” and a “performative dimension.”5 On the one hand, such concepts provide an insight into culturally predominant ideas of space and, on the other hand, due to the cultural power of literature, they are able to shape or even to undermine the reality of power structures.6 The focus of scholarly interest is primarily the Revelation of John7 and the writings of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.8 The extent to which such approaches from the perspective of space are suitable for shedding new light on central theological topics of the respective writings has been vividly demonstrated by Sleeman and Schreiner.9 Sleeman points out that when reading the Acts of the Apostles it is necessary to consider heaven as the abode and action space of the elevated Christ and that only in this way the Lucan concept of space and the Christology of Acts can be adequately grasped.10 Schreiner, on the other hand,

5 Cf. Wolfgang Hallet and Birgit Neumann, “Raum und Bewegung in der Literatur: Zur Einführung,” in Raum und Bewegung in der Literatur: Die Literaturwissenschaften und der Spatial Turn, ed. Wolfgang Hallet and Birgit Neumann (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2009), 11–32, 16. 6 According to ibid., 16. They regard space as a “Signatur sozialer und symbolischer Praktiken” (p. 11), which is “kulturell produziert und kulturell produktiv” (p. 11). 7 See Stefan Alkier and Tobias Nicklas, “Wenn sich Welten berühren. Beobachtungen zu zeitlichen und räumlichen Strukturen in der Apokalypse des Johannes,” in Poetik und Intertextualität der Johannesapokalypse, ed. Stefan Alkier, Thomas Hieke and Tobias Nicklas, WUNT 346 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 205–26; Konrad Huber, “Imaginierte Topoi: Zu Raum und Raumkonzept in der Narration der Johannesoffenbarung,” in New Perspectives on the Book of Revelation, ed. Adela Yarbro Collins, BETL 291 (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 131–59; Michael Sommer, “Die literarische Konzeption von räumlicher und zeitlicher Wahrnehmung in der Johannesoffenbarung,” Bib 96 (2015): 565–85. 8 For the first advances in the field of the Pauline epistles, see Jorunn Økland, Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space, JSNTS 269 (London: T&T Clark, 2004); Ksenija Magda, Paul’s Territoriality and Mission Strategy: Searching for the Geographical Awareness Paradigm Behind Romans, WUNT 2/266 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009); Laura S. Nasrallah, “Spatial Perspectives. Space and Archaeology in Roman Philippi,” in Studying Paul’s Letters: Contemporary Perspectives and Methods, ed. Joseph A. Marchal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 53–74; Michael J. Thate, “Paul, Φρόνησις, and Participation. The Shape of Space and the Reconfiguration of Place in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians,” in “In Christ” in Paul: Explorations in Paul’s Theology of Union and Participation, ed. Michael J. Thate, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, and Constatine R. Campbell, WUNT 2/384 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 281–327. 9 Mayordomo, “Raumdiskurse,” 56 considers the gains of space-focused approaches much more cautiously. 10 Matthew Sleeman, Geography and the Ascension Narrative in Acts, SNTSMS 146 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). On p. 59 he refers to the “key theological change in geographical horizon within Acts” (italics in the original), “namely heavenly Christocentrism, a change played out spatially across the narrative, towards the end of the earth.” The Assumption of Jesus is in the Lucan conception of space “the moment of

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dedicates himself to the basileia theme as a fundamental theological building block of the Matthean Jesus narrative.11 He aims “to form a coherent picture of the spatial kingdom of God”12 in the Gospel of Matthew. Therefore, Schreiner focuses “on the kingdom as space/place and its relation to Jesus’ presence”13 and “on Jesus’ creation of space in the Gospel.”14 He is convinced that through “the body of Jesus and his community space is produced.”15 Schreiner bases his investigation on a conceptualization of space and place according to which both are “not static, but active”;16 space and place are “not simply geographical concepts to be studied on maps, but need to be thought through socially as well.”17 According to Schreiner, Matthew shows “the space of earth ‘under construction.’ The earth is tilled and turned over via the incarnation. Through Jesus’ body, he contests the space of earth, installing the kingdom of heaven on earth. Matthew forges a bond between heaven and earth through the presence of Jesus.”18 The political dimension of this basileia concept lies in the fact that Jesus’s “body is the main vehicle of protest against the kingdoms of the earth.”19 In his body the “spatial kingdom” begins. Jesus “extends it to his community by promising his presence.”20 After Easter, the church is Jesus’s “body on earth.”21 Schreiner underscores that by promising his presence in Matt 18:19– 20, Jesus emphasizes the community dimension: He does not promise his presence to individuals, “but to a corporate body.”22 Taking the characterization of the disciples as salt of the earth and light of the world in Matt 5:13–16 as a starting point, Schreiner explores their role in establishing the rule of God on earth. According to Schreiner, Jesus clarifies in spatial realignment in Acts (cf. 1:1–2a), and Acts as a narrative whole cannot be understood without ongoing reference to the heavenly Christ” (p. 80, italics in the original). 11 The outstanding importance of the basileia theme for Matthew is evident both from the quantity of references and from their positioning at interfaces in the narrative process. 12 Patrick Schreiner, The Body of Jesus: A Spatial Analysis of the Kingdom in Matthew, LNTS 555 (London/New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 19. 13 Ibid., 15–16. 14 Ibid., 16. 15 Ibid., 15. 16 Ibid., 17 and 150. Schreiner is convinced that for Matthew the earth “is open and vulnerable, not shut and unable to change”. 17 Ibid., 17. To capture the spatial dimension of the Matthean basileia concept, he draws on the distinction between first, second and third space. Whereas first space is physical space, second space is mental space and third space is imagined space (see pp. 54–55). 18 Ibid., 37. 19 Ibid., 38; see also p. 164; “The nucleus of this revolution (sc. the reordering of the earth) was his (sc. Jesus) body and the body of his community” (both insertions: C.B.). 20 Both quotations: Ibid., 18. 21 Ibid., 150. 22 Ibid., 145.

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the Sermon on the Mount that “the production of space happens through radical loving social interactions.”23 His task is to reorder the earthly space through his bodily, earthly presence, and he transfers that “to his followers as well.”24 In other words, “Jesus, the heavenly king, begins to reunite the two realms of heaven and earth through his words. In the Sermon on the Mount, he calls his followers to be salt and light upon the earth. They are to impact earthly space by living virtuous lives.”25 Schreiner emphasizes the bodily dimension of the earthly formation of the heavenly basileia in Jesus’s body or in the bodies of Jesus’s followers. By doing so he escapes the danger of imputing to Matthew the idea of an abstract basileia space. Schreiner consistently observes the claim of the Matthean Jesus that enable a concrete manifestation of God’s reign in the world. At the same time, this allows Schreiner to perceive the political dimension of the Matthean Basileia concept.26 Despite his emphasis on the spatial and material aspect of the divine basileia, however, Schreiner does not sufficiently consider the Matthean ethics in his study. He essentially limits himself to a reference to the fulfilment of the love commandment.27 Thus, he hardly comments on questions about the complex christological foundation of Matthean ethics28 and about the contribution of Jesus’s followers for the earthly manifestation of God’s reign. Furthermore, Schreiner repeatedly emphasizes that Matthew’s characteristic Basileia term, that is, the “kingdom of the heavens,” suggests the outstanding importance of the spatial facet, but he does not seek to explain the use of the different basileia terms in the Matthean narrative.

23

Ibid., 102. Ibid., 103. 25 Ibid., 119–20. 26 With this focus, Schreiner is completely in agreement with the current line of spatial debates within the spatial turn. The cultural scientist Doris Bachmann-Medick, Cultural turns: Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften, 5th ed., Rororo Rowohlts Enzyklopädie 55675 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2014), 423 sees a decisive moment in the current orientation of the cultural turn in spatial theory, in the regaining of a stronger reference to reality; in 2014 she suggests a “neue[] Aufmerksamkeit auf die Übersetzbarkeit des Kulturellen ins Materielle, ins Ökonomische, ins Soziale und Politische”. 27 In Schreiner’s case, this restriction seems to be due to the fact that he places his main focus on the aspect of corporeality and recognizes in it above all the concrete, material content of the spatial grasp of the basileia on earth. 28 Cf. on the complexity of this foundation recently Matthias Konradt, “‘Nehmt auf euch mein Joch und lernt von mir!’ (Mt 11,29): Mt 11,28–30 und die christologische Dimension der matthäischen Ethik,” ZNW 109 (2018): 1–31: It is not enough to focus on Jesus’s role as teacher of the Torah. Rather, aspects of Christ’s mimesis and the presentation of Jesus as king should be considered (cf. pp. 4 and 30–31). 24

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Two topics at the heart of the narrative development of the Matthean basileia concept in general and its spatial-dimension in particular are only touched upon by Schreiner and must therefore be treated separately, namely, “Basileia and Ethics” and “Choice of Terms.” I would like to contribute to this with the present study, in which I reflect on some of my observations on the Matthean basileia concept29 from a decidedly spatial perspective. I base this reflection on the following two guiding questions: (1) How is the narrative development of the spatial dimension of Matthew’s basileia conception linked to the narrative presentation of his ethical approach? (2) To what extent can the narrative-strategic functions of the different basileia syntagmas be determined more precisely by considering spatial aspects? My discussion of these two questions, which will reveal their inner coherence in the course of the investigation, is based on the assumption that space is not present in the Matthean Jesus narrative in the form of a fixed code. Rather, the recipient, in the course of his or her reading process, is invited to link the information provided textually with his or her everyday knowledge and thus to reconstruct the space of the narrated world. In Matthew’s Gospel, the narrated world has the shape of a mental model created by the recipient. The recipient is invited to process the textual information by actively incorporating his or her everyday notions of concrete (cosmic) space and spatial allocations, and thus to reconstruct the spatial conditions of the narrated world in their mutual allocations. In doing so, I assume that Matthew ascribed to his first addressee an everyday notion of space, especially of cosmic macro-spaces, such as heaven and earth and their mutual allocation. Due to the essential symbolic charge of ancient worldviews, Matthew can rely on the assumption that his first recipients, in their cognitive reconstruction process, would not have regarded the respective (cosmic) space as a neutral backdrop for the life of Christ, his death and resurrection. Rather, by activating their everyday knowledge, they would have ascribed (symbolic) evaluative associations and attributions to “space,” thus giving rise to their mental model of space and spatial attributions of the Matthean narrative of Jesus.30

By choosing this narrative theoretical approach, I methodically take into account the fact that Matthew unfolds his basileia concept and his ethics in a narrative way.

29 See in particular the following contributions: Christian Blumenthal,“‘… wie im Himmel so auf Erden’: Die räumlichen Implikationen der Vergebungsbitte des matthäischen Vaterunsers,” ZNW 108 (2017): 191–211; idem, “Gott ist alles möglich: Das Gleichnis von den Arbeitern im Weinberg im Rahmen der erzählerischen Entfaltung der matthäischen Basileiakonzeption in Mt 17,24–20,16,” NTS 64 (2018): 281–306; idem, Basileia im Matthäusevangelium, WUNT 416 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019). 30 Described in more detail in Blumenthal, Basileia, 21–29.

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B. Basileia Takes Place In Matt 12:28, the Matthean Jesus claims that in his exorcisms the rule of God breaks into earthly reality31 and begins to gain space.32 With this he irreversibly initiates a process of earthly transformation, at the end of which the complete assertion of the divine basileia on earth will be achieved.33 Already in the Sermon on the Mount, in the Lord’s Prayer,34 the Matthean Jesus explicitly addressed the following aspect: The earthly reality will be assimilated with the heavenly one in the sense that the basileia takes place on 31

Cf. the wording: ἄρα ἔφθασεν ἐφ᾽ ὑμᾶς ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. The syntagma ἔφθασεν ἐπί is used to express that the object or state attached in the nominative (a ship [so T. LXX Naph. 6:9], a battle [so Ri 20:41–42B text] or the fury [so T. Levi 6:10–11 or 1 Thess 2:16]) has reached and caught up with a certain goal, which is defined in a prepositional phrase introduced with ἐπί; cf. especially for Matt 12:28; cf. John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Bletchley: Paternoster, 2005), 501 (“come upon”/“God’s rule comes into effect”); Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, JSNTS 204 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 273 (“has come to you”). While according to Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: 2. Teilband, Mt 8–17, EKK I/2 (Zurich: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag), 260 the proprium of φθάνω is to be seen in the aspect of goal achievement, Olaf Rölver, Christliche Existenz zwischen den Gerichten Gottes: Untersuchungen zur Eschatologie des Matthäusevangeliums, BBB 163 (Bonn: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Unipress, 2010), 432 concludes differently. He speaks of the coming of the basileia: “Das Gottesreich steht ‘vor der Thür’” (ibid. n. 374). Boris Repschinski, The Controversy Stories in the Gospel of Matthew: Their Redaction, Form, and Relevance for the Relationship Between the Matthean Community and Formative Judaism, FRLANT 189 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 125 n. 130 thinks that φθάνω is “probably … not to be taken as expressing sentiments different from 4:24; 10:8 (ἐγγίζω),” and explains, “The exorcisms of Jesus are a sign of the imminence of the kingdom, while at the same time they bind Beelzebul.” 32 The basileia statement in Matt 12:28 is to be understood in the context of the early Jewish conviction, shared by Matthew, of the dominion of God already existing in heaven (cf. e.g., 1 En. 9:4–5; T. Ab. 8:3 or 1 Kgs 22:19 [3 Kgs 22:19 LXX]), as a statement about a spatial movement from heaven to earth: In Jesus’s acts of salvation, the dominion of God already existing in heaven takes on a visible earthly form. 33 Cf. the mustard seed and sourdough parable in 13:19–21. For a different recent (and more often) interpretation, cf. Volker Gäckle, Das Reich Gottes im Neuen Testament: Auslegungen – Anfragen – Alternativen, Biblisch-Theologische Studien 176 (Neukirchen/Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 90–91: In the so-called growth parables the invisible ‘genetic,’ ontological and causal relationship and conditional relationship between the currently preached word of Jesus, i.e.. his preaching of the βασιλεία or the Gospel and the eschatological revelation of the Kingdom of God in glory is unfolded. 34 The determination of the structural place of the Lord’s Prayer within the Sermon on the Mount is controversial. Is this prayer a text within the main part of the Sermon on the Mount or is it its heart or its axis of symmetry? For discussion cf. Blumenthal, Basileia, 137– 43; Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the

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earth. Thus, he not only calls for prayer for the coming of the basileia in the first half of the prayer (6:10a), but at the end of the first part of the prayer in 6:10c he names the two macro-spaces of the narrated world, heaven and earth. These spaces come into view both in their separateness (ἐν οὐρανῷ – ἐπὶ γῆς) as well as under the aspect of the approach of earthly and heavenly reality (ὡς … καί).35 When it is taken into consideration that the comparison in 6:10c refers to the first three petitions as a whole,36 this approach to reality is specifically concerned with the complete sanctification of the name of God, with the complete assertion of his dominion and the complete implementation of his will “also on earth” (καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς). In the first part of the prayer there is a complex, dynamic assignment of heavenly and earthly space. On the one hand, the fact that the sanctification of the name of God, the coming of basileia, and the realization of the divine will must be prayed for implies that there is a noticeable difference between heavenly and earthly reality. While in heaven God’s name is completely sanctified, his dominion is comprehensively established and his will is fully realized, this state does not exist in the earthly realm and must be requested. On the other hand, however, the very fact that the realization of the heavenly conditions on earth is prayed for indicates that the status quo of a present opposition of both conditions should not remain. Rather, the first petitions aim at overcoming this contrast in favor of the realization of the heavenly reality on earth, so that the moment of present contrast is set aside in favor of the expectation of a future complete harmonization. Concerning the protagonists in this assimilation process, one witnesses how the Matthean Jesus balances divine and human levels of action in the you-petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. For this purpose, he uses the passive forms ἁγιασθήτω and γενηθήτω and renounces an explicit naming of the author of Mount, including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3–7:27 and Luke 6:20–49), ed. Adela Yarbro Collins, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); Ernst Baasland, Parables and Rhetoric in the Sermon on the Mount: New Approaches to a Classical Text, WUNT 351 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). 35 Cf. e.g., Schreiner, Body, 159: “The Lord’s Prayer expresses a hope to bring the two realms of heaven and earth together in a harmonious whole.” 36 The fact that the comparison in 6:10c marks a caesura in the Lord’s Prayer between the you-petitions and the petitions to us allows the assumption that this verse, because of its structure-building significance, can be applied to all the you-petitions; cf. e.g., Marc Philonenko, Das Vaterunser: Vom Gebet Jesu zum Gebet der Jünger, UTB 2312 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 76; Thomas Schumacher, “Das matthäische Vaterunser (Mt 6,9–13) in seinem narrativen Kontext: Beobachtungen zur bundestheologischen Perspektive des ersten Evangeliums,” in Jesus im Glaubenszeugnis des Neuen Testaments: Exegetische Reflexionen zum 100. Geburtstag von Anton Vögtle, ed. Lorenz Oberlinner and Ferdinand-Rupert Prostmeier, HBS 80 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2015), 162, 171; cf. further the observations on the syntactic integration of the comparison in 6:10c by Nolland, Matthew, 288– 89 and pp. 287–88 in Nolland’s text on the temporal interplay of the three you-petitions.

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the respective action. In this way he opens a space for interpretation: He indicates that the position of the protagonist is occupied on two levels, and he clarifies this in the further course of the prayer.37 (a) First, at the most basic level it is unquestionably certain that God carries out the acts of sanctification of his name as well as the enforcement of his lordship and his will, as requested by him as Father. In doing so, God acts in closest cooperation with his Son.38 (b) On a level derived from this, there are also components of human action.39 When collecting and classifying these components, it must be fundamentally taken into account that any demand on Jesus’s followers is surrounded by God’s initiative of salvation. The human act of becoming a follower of Jesus presupposes a divine initiative, namely, the call of God. This idea that the relationship between God and the human being40 exists through the love of God was introduced by Matthew in various ways in the course of the story up to the Lord’s Prayer. Two aspects of this accentuation of the divine initiative of salvation may be mentioned here as examples: (1) In the birth announcement narrative in Matt 1:18–25, the angel of the Lord announces to Joseph that Jesus is sent to forgive the sins of the people: He will be called Immanuel by the people who follow him because the salvific divine presence can be experienced in him on earth. (2) The Beatitudes in Matt 5:3–12, which are not to be interpreted in a continuously ethicizing way, also serve to strengthen the idea of the divine promise of salvation: The demands of Jesus are demands of “Immanuel,” who accompanies his church and helps it.41

Against this background, the inclusion of the human level of action in the first three petitions in the Lord’s Prayer appears as follows:42 As members of the family of the heavenly Father, a Jesus follower has to ensure through an appro-

37 What is meant is the explicit inclusion of the human level of action in the prayer for forgiveness in 6:12 (more in the main text). 38 This thought can be seen in the background of the second petition, if one reads it in the horizon of, say, the basileia statements in 12:28 and 13:31–33. 39 Cf. for the discussion Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: 1. Teilband, Mt 1– 7, 5th ed., EKK I/1 (Düsseldorf: Benziger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2002), 446–49. 40 Schumacher, “Vaterunser,” 182–83 explicitly speaks here of a “Bundesverhältnis.” 41 According to Luz, Matthäus, 1:293. 42 The inclusion of the human level of action must not be accompanied by a functional reduction of the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer to their parenetic moment. These are genuine petitions; e.g., for the request for the sanctification of the name, cf. Reinhard Feldmeier, “‘Geheiligt werde dein Name’. Das Herrengebet im Kontext der paganen Literatur,” in Das Vaterunser in seinen antiken Kontexten: Zum Gedanken an Eduard Lohse, ed. Florian Wilk, FRLANT 266 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 25–81, 75.

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priate way of life43 (1) that the sanctification of the name of God is already promoted in the respective present time,44 (2) that the concern for the formation of the divine basileia has absolute priority in his or her life,45 and (3) that the divine will, which is founded by God in the Scriptures of Israel and revealed by Jesus in its fullest sense, increasingly takes shape on earth.46 The assumption that there is such a human contribution for the ἁγιασθήτω, ἐλθέτω, and γενηθήτω envisaged in the first part of the prayer is supported by the fact that the human being is expressly named as the actor in the petition for forgiveness in the second part of the Lord’s Prayer (ἡμεῖς ἀφήκαμεν).47 According to the classification of action chosen there, this inclusion of the human level of action even goes so far that God binds himself so much to the human action (ἄφες ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφήκαμεν) that he makes the degree of his forgiveness dependent on the preceding action of man. By that Jesus’s followers do not have a claim to a corresponding divine action,48 but they have the irreplaceable task of preparing the basis for God’s forgiving action and thus, from a spatial point of view, of making an indispensable contribution to the alignment of earthly reality with heavenly reality. Jesus has already outlined the concrete form of the expected contribution to the alignment of reality in Matt 5:17–20. With the emphasis that he came to fulfill and not to abolish, Jesus counters any accusation of a relativization of the Torah by his interpretation of the law.49 He strongly emphasizes the unrestricted validity of the Torah with all its detailed regulations (cf. 5:18). After that, he presents the counterweight necessary for his interpretation of the law in 5:19. In this basileia statement he points the way for a logical connection of the aspect of the unrestricted validity of the entire Torah (at least) in this aeon with the possibility of interpreting the law in the sense of weighting the individual commandments. For this purpose, Jesus changes the perspective: after 43 On this subordinate level, God is asked for his support for human action (it should be remembered that God’s Son comes into the world as Immanuel and permanently accompanies the Matthean church [28:20]). 44 For the first request this means that the sanctification of the name requested there is realized in the course of a God-human interaction. This is already taking place at present. 45 So explicitly in 6:33. 46 For the third request, Schumacher, “Vaterunser,” 170–71 emphasizes too one-sidedly the human level and suggests the following working translation: “Das dir Wohlgefällige werde [von uns] getan.” 47 According to Luz, Matthäus, 1:452, the idea that divine forgiveness is tied to human forgiveness is “verbreitet” in Judaism and is found, for example, in Sir 28:2 (ἄφες ἀδίκημα τῷ πλησίον σου, καὶ τότε δεηθέντος σου αἱ ἁμαρτίαι σου λυθήσονται), T. Zeb. 5:3; 8:1–3 or m. Yoma 8:9. The peculiarity of the Lord’s Prayer is that human action is “in einen zentralen Gebetstext hineingenommen” (p. 453). 48 The granting of forgiveness cannot be claimed, but is in the free decision of the one who is asked for forgiveness, both in the God-human and in the interpersonal sphere. 49 One might think, e.g., of his interpretation of the Sabbath commandment in 12:1–14.

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the previous focus on his own actions (5:17), he now looks at the actions of people in his discipleship (5:19). This enables him to introduce in 5:19 the idea of different degrees of honor in the kingdom of the heavens.50 For the Matthean Jesus the following is clear: Those who possibly break one of the least commandments, such as the tithing of garden herbs (23:23–24) or the purity regulations (23:26–27), are not threatened with a general loss of salvation. But they will have to reckon with being able to occupy ‘only’ a subordinate place in the kingdom of the heavens;51 nevertheless, they will be located within the kingdom of the heavens.52 This counterweight to the previous emphasis on the ongoing validity of the entire Torah makes it possible for the Matthean Jesus to develop a coherent understanding of the law. Although the validity of the entire Torah is the highest principle,53 this teaching does not preclude the notion that some commands are weightier than others, as when Jesus implies that showing mercy is more important than strictly adhering to the Sabbath. By implying that certain commands of the Torah can subordinate others54 and by indicating that this does not threaten a complete loss of salvation, Jesus tries to mediate two seemingly opposing tendencies with each other: On the one hand, he resolutely counters the accusation of relativization, dissolution, or replacement of Torah and prophets and, on the other hand, he can introduce a legally binding interpreta-

50 In Matthew, this idea is also found in 5:12; 10:41–42; and 20:23. Outside of this Gospel it is found for example in 4 Ezra 11:57 or 2 En. 44:5; on rabbinic literature cf. Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus: Erläutert aus Talmud und Midrasch, 8th ed., Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (Munich: Beck, 1982), 249–50. 51 Joachim Gnilka, Das Matthäusevangelium: 1. Teil, Kommentar zu Kap. 1,1–13,58, 2nd ed., HTKNT 1 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1993), 146 refers to the conviction documented in rabbinic literature that the righteous will not envy one another despite their different ranks. 52 The interpretation repeatedly put forward, according to which 5:19 is about a confrontation between inside and outside, i.e., inside and outside the kingdom of the heavens, is not convincing in view of the explicit statement of being ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν in v. 19. Scholars voting for this assumption mention for example W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 1, Introduction and Commentary on Matthew I–VII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 497 n. 47 (they themselves remain undecided) and Luz, Matthäus, 1:317 n. 88 (he voted carefully against this interpretation on p. 318). 53 The observance of even the smallest commandments is not suspended. 54 This point of view is of decisive importance for the people in the discipleship of Jesus and thus for the people of the Matthean circle of addressees.

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tion of God’s manifestation of will under the authoritative interpretation criterion of mercy and compassion.55 If we now also consider the basileia statement in 5:20, a striking shift in perspective can be recognized: In contrast to 5:19, the Matthean Jesus in 5:20 not only emphasizes the distinction of degrees of honor within the kingdom of the heavens (inside ↔ inside), but is essentially interested in naming the conditions of access to the kingdom of the heavens (inside ↔ outside). The linchpin of 5:20 is the reference to the greater justice, which allows access εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν. With the reference to the greater justice (ἡ δικαιοσύνη πλεῖον), the Matthean Jesus introduces a new criterion for the access to the kingdom of the heavens. While in the early Jewish concept of God’s basileia, belonging to Israel was the necessary condition for participating in God’s salvation, the Matthean Jesus replaces this with the notion of doing of greater justice. This does not necessarily exclude anyone in Israel from the kingdom of the heavens, but it does make it very clear that belonging to Israel alone is not enough. Jesus makes a first fulfillment of the new criterion for the access to the basileia in the five antitheses in 5:21–48, which immediately follow the basileia statement in 5:20. He lets this concretization run purposefully56 towards the call to perfection in 5:48: ἔσεσθε οὖν ὑμεῖς τέλειοι ὡς ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος τέλειός ἐστιν. Seen from this striking endpoint, the notion of greater justice in 5:20 appears as the demand for an imitation of divine action that transcends individual action and is subject to the requirement of perfection (ἔσεσθε τέλειοι). With recourse to the idea that people on earth can display a behavior characteristic of God in heaven, the thread of 5:14–16 is continued at the end of the antithesis series and decisively sharpened by the introduction of the aspect of perfection. In 5:48 the Matthean Jesus links human and divine levels in such a way that he sees his addressees on earth as being able to be perfect like (ὡς) God in heaven. To avoid the impression of a complete overtaxing of man in the discipleship of Jesus, the demand for perfection in the course of the story is flanked and “abgefedert”57 by the repeated reference to the thought of forgiveness. It is not least because of this support that the demand for perfection 55

He lets God himself name this criterion in 9:13 (more details in Blumenthal, Basileia, 160–62); cf. 16:19; 18:18 for the role of Jesus’s followers in the process of the interpretation of the Torah (more about this option in Blumenthal, Basileia, 83–87). 56 That means not limited to the sphere of action of swearing (5:33–37), retaliation (5:38– 42) or charity (5:43–48); so also Rudolf Hoppe, “Vollkommenheit bei Matthäus als theologische Aussage,” in Salz der Erde – Licht der Welt: Exegetische Studien zum Matthäusevangelium. Festschrift für Anton Vögtle zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. Lorenz Oberlinner and Peter Fiedler (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1991), 141–64, here 158. 57 Matthias Konradt, “Die vollkommene Erfüllung der Tora und der Konflikt mit den Pharisäern im Matthäusevangelium,” in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Alida Euler, WUNT 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 288–315, 315. There is no corresponding

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has the potential for a real approximation of the earthly reality to the heavenly one:58 Jesus’s disciples appear to be able and enabled to advance the process of bringing earthly reality closer to the salvific heavenly reality through acts of greater justice. In other words, through a life in perfection, the two macrospaces are brought closer together in such a way that in perfection the disciples of Jesus on earth are beginning to realize what essentially shapes the state in heaven through God’s perfection. Thus, the process of transformation initiated by Jesus continues unstoppably. In the course of my investigation so far, Jesus has come into view primarily as the initiator of the earthly process of establishing the reign of God and as the authentic teacher of the Torah. However, the role attributed to him by Matthew in this basileia process has not yet been sufficiently described concerning these two aspects. Rather, Jesus’s portrayal as the Messianic King and as a Torah practitioner still requires attention, that is, his presentation as a person who consistently translates the divine will into lived action.59 On the latter track, Matthew shows Jesus both as an authentic interpreter of the divine will and as an imitable model/example of a practical implementation of this will.60 If one takes a closer look at the Christ mimesis from Matthew’s post-Easter perspective, one gets the following impression: By offering to follow his kind of acting, the Matthean Jesus seeks to enable a faithful continuation of the earthly process of establishing the rule of God even under the changed postEaster conditions. Jesus comprehensively equips his followers, even for the time of his bodily absence from earth, to advance the basileia process initiated

cushioning in the recourse to the perfection theme in the Qumran writings (cf. ibid., 315 with notes 123 and 124). Instead, it is accompanied by “drastischen Strafbestimmungen” (e.g., 1QS 6:24–7:25); see also on the idea of perfection in Qumran and Matthew Martin Meiser, “Vollkommenheit in Qumran und im Matthäusevangelium,” in Kirche und Volk Gottes. Festschrift für Jürgen Roloff zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Martin Karrer, Wolfgang Kraus, and Otto Merk (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2000), 195–209, especially p. 206 for the empowerment of human beings to perfection in Matthew. 58 The theme of a rapprochement of heavenly and earthly space through a step-by-step transformation of earthly reality, which is subtly introduced in 5:48, is explicitly unfolded in the Sermon on the Mount at the next basileia reference, i.e., in the basileia petition of the Matthean Lord’s Prayer using explicitly space-referential expressions. 59 With emphasis Konradt, “Joch,” 25. For him, Jesus’s life practice is of “elementarer Bedeutung” for an understanding of the “christologische[n] Dimension der matthäischen Ethik”; cf. also Celia Deutsch, Hidden Wisdom and the Easy Yoke: Wisdom, Torah and Discipleship in Matthew 11.25–30, JSNTS 18 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987), 45. 60 For Matthew, people who are disciples of Jesus have a standard of orientation in Jesus (Christ’s mimesis). In this, Matthew sees a fundamental difference from the situation of the followers of the Pharisees, who do not have such a model and are therefore in danger of failing (Matt 23:3, 13).

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by him step by step under his lasting guidance from heaven (cf. Matt 28:20).61 Therefore, he has given his disciples, together with the authentic interpretation of God’s will, a permanently imitable example of the actual realizability of this will. Finally, the aspect of Christ mimesis in the narrative development of the ethical and basileia conception of Matthew is complemented by the presentation of Jesus as the Messianic King. For Matthew, the ethical change of Jesus’s disciples is “darin eingebunden, sich der Herrschaft des Messias zu unterstellen.”62 This Messiah as a shepherd of his people (2:6) turns to the lost sheep of Israel (15:24) and sheds his blood on the cross for the forgiveness of sins for the many (26:28). It is in this service and selfless dedication to people in alignment with the will of God that Jesus’s exercise of lordship takes its fundamental form.63 In 20:25–28, he gives this ethos of service to the people in his succession as a binding model and commits them in Matt 18 to an ethos “whose central form of concretization appears in the merciful dealing with sinners, determined by unlimited willingness to forgive”64 (cf. Matt 18:6–35). This ethos of ruling through service in imitation of Jesus’s life proves to be completely contrary to the earthly, common ideas of power and rule. In this alternative concept of dominion, dominion is not to be expressed in privileges and supremacy at the expense of others. Rather, it is about the implementation of the will of God and the readiness to engage in this ‘career downwards’ by imitating the example of Jesus.

C. The Kingdom of the Heavens is Near The observations at the beginning of section B give a helpful impression of the complex, dynamic assignment of heaven and earth in Matthew’s Gospel. Separation and opposition on the one hand, and the hope of the eschatological assimilation of space on the other determine the Matthean way of assigning the two macro-spaces throughout the narrative. For example, heaven and earth are contrasted in 5:34–35; 6:19–20 or 23:9, while “heaven” and “earth” in 11:25;

61 On the role of Emmanuel in the Matthean image of Jesus, cf. especially David D. Kupp, Matthew’s Emmanuel: Divine Presence and God’s People in the First Gospel, SNTSMS 90 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) (on 28:20, cf. pp. 216–19). 62 Konradt, “Joch,” 31. 63 Matthew depicts Jesus entering Jerusalem as a peaceful, meek king (21:5); also Jesus’s saying in 11:28–30 shows corresponding parts of royal goodness and humility (in detail: ibid., 13–26; cf. p. 30 on the compositional positioning of this call in the overall structure of the Matthean Jesus narrative). 64 Ibid., 29.

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16:19; and 28:1865 designate the entirety of the cosmos. In light of this complex way of attribution, Matthew’s favorite term ‘kingdom of the heavens’ also reveals its profile. This can be outlined in three points: (a) In view of the repeated sharp confrontation between heavenly and earthly reality in the first Gospel, the closer definition of basileia as τῶν οὐρανῶν is first of all a reminder of the otherworldly origin of this dominion and its heavenly quality.66 For Matthew, this quality is essentially determined by the fact67 that in heaven the full sanctification of the name of God, the comprehensive execution of his rule and the complete realization of his will68 are permanently taking place (ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ).69 (b) In the horizon of the hope for a complete alignment of the earthly state with heavenly reality in the end of times, the term ‘kingdom of the heavens,’ especially in 3:2 and 4:17, serves to anchor firmly this decisive expectation in the narrative development of the basileia conception within the Matthean Gospel. The aspect of completeness, which firmly belongs to the Matthean understanding of heavenly space,70 permits the assumption that the ἤγγικεν-statements in 3:2 and 4:17 specifically articulate the hope of a full realization of heavenly reality on earth. While for Matthew the designation ‘heavenly’ implies the idea of full comprehensiveness, it is only possible for him to speak of the presence of the kingdom of the heavens when this heavenly state with its complete realization of the divine will has also been reached on earth. If one concedes this implication, the statement about the partial beginning of God’s reign in 12:28 – ἔφθασεν ἐφ᾽ ὑμᾶς ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ – can easily be integrated into Matthew’s overall concept. In Jesus’s earthly salvific action, 65 The classification of 28:18 is controversial. Contrary to my understanding, Jonathan T. Pennington, Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew, NovTSup 126 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 203–06 votes for an antithetical understanding of the classification of heaven and earth in this verse. 66 So also ibid., 293–99 (esp. 298). 67 This feature is to be mentioned particularly because Matthew himself explicates this thought in the context of the comparison in the Lord’s Prayer ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς and does not “simply” assume it. For him, in the horizon of the contrast between heaven and earth in connection with the expectation of a spatial alignment, the aspect of the full implementation of the divine will is the feature that distinguishes heaven from earth in the present (thought from the perspective of the Matthean Jesus and the narrator). 68 In this comprehensive sense one can speak of universal. 69 So, for instance, also Philonenko, Vaterunser, 75 or Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:606 in distinction to an understanding of v. 10c as “both in heaven and in earth”, i.e., that also in heaven rebellion reigned or could reign and God would still be there to enforce his rule or his will; Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13, WBC 33A (Dallas: Word, 1993), 148 remains unclear: He says that “[a]ll of reality must finally come under his rule”. 70 For Matthew, heaven is the space of the complete sanctification of the divine name, the complete assertion of the rule of God, and the comprehensive realization of the divine will.

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concretely in his exorcisms, through which Satan’s sphere of influence is effectively suppressed, basileia does indeed break into earthly reality at certain points. However, because of his understanding of heaven, the punctuality of this process of realization makes it impossible for Matthew71 to speak of ἔφθασεν ἐφ᾽ ὑμᾶς ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν in 12:28. In other words, for Matthew the earthly presence of the kingdom of the heavens is an eschatological and future hope inasmuch as this expectation quite essentially embraces the idea of the full realization of God’s will and the complete exercise of divine dominion with the simultaneous abolition of all earthly spheres of power. Together with this overarching expectation of a complete eschatological implementation of the royal rule of God on earth, the idea of a partial arrival of this reality into earthly reality also has its own place in the Matthean conception of basileia.72 For Matthew, the universal earthly enforcement of βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν together with the complete sanctification of the name of God, the enforcement and recognition of his rule and the complete realization of his will is that point in time when, due to the identity of heavenly and earthly reality, one can actually speak of the earthly presence of the kingdom of the heavens in the sense of its complete realization on earth. Before such a comprehensive earthly realization, through which all earthly forms of rule are suppressed and become superfluous, it is not appropriate for Matthew to speak of the presence of the kingdom of the heavens ἐπὶ γῆς. (c) If one hears the ‘basileia’ statement73 of the devil in 4:8 in the context of the Matthean assumption of the limitation of all earthly dominions and in the context of Matthew’s favorite basileia term (βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν), the essential difference between the power of God and the claim to power of the devil can be recognized. This difference becomes visible when one hears the devil’s offer in 4:8 in the light of the βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν terminology. Linguistically, this confrontation is expressed through the alternation of singular and plural forms in the syntagmas πάσας τὰς βασιλείας τοῦ κόσμου and βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.

71 This understanding is, as seen further above in the main text, essentially determined by the idea of the complete recognition of God as sole ruler. 72 See the beginning of section 2. 73 If the noun ‘basileia’ is put in single quotation marks here, this is because the statement in 4:8 is not a theological or christological basileia statement. If this statement is nevertheless taken into account here in a comparative way, this is due to the following observation: by comparing 4:8 with the Matthean sayings of the kingdom of the heavens, the notion of the fullness of things, which essentially belongs to the Matthean concept of the kingdom of the heavens, becomes very comprehensible; in addition, the limits of the devil’s sphere of influence, as shown in the story, become clearly visible.

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While the devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth74 together with their glory (τὴν δόξαν αὐτῶν) and promises him power of disposal over them if he would acknowledge him as God (ἐὰν πεσὼν προσκυνήσῃς μοι), the radically limited influence of the devil is already apparent in the material form of the offer. According to his own statement, he can indeed dispose of all kingdoms on earth (plural: πάσας τὰς βασιλείας), but “only” over the earth (singular: τοῦ κόσμου). This power of disposition is opposed by the divine omnipotence, whose dominance is manifested linguistically in the use of the plural form τῶν οὐρανῶν. Through the choice of the plural, the heavens appear in their confrontation with the earth (τὰς βασιλείας τοῦ κόσμου versus βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν) as the dominating, because multiply existing and overarching magnitude. In contrast to the devil, God does not have kingdoms, but only one basileia (sg.), and it is precisely in this singularity that the comprehensive divine power of rule is manifested. This one, eternally existing dominion in heaven supersedes all still existing earthly forms of dominion when it begins to take shape on earth with Jesus. As a result, πάσας τὰς βασιλείας, which the devil can offer Jesus in 4:8, are existentially threatened in their continued existence and will no longer exist at the latest when the kingdom of the heavens is fully established on earth.75 In view of the already started, irreversible process of the earthly formation of the divine basileia (12:28), the seemingly powerful offer of the devil loses all its attraction. If the juxtaposition76 of the two basilea syntagmas reveals the essential difference between unlimited divine power and the devil’s temporally77 and locally78 limited power of disposition, and if the claim of the divine βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν to fullness and universality is duly taken into account, a christological perspective must finally be adopted. This is a reminder that the Matthean Jesus does not reject the ‘devilish’ offer because it is unattractive. Instead, Jesus’s

74 κόσμος here in the meaning “earth” (cf. Walter Bauer, Kurt Aland, and Barbara Aland, Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur, 6th ed. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), 906 s.v. κόσμος 5a). In this meaning κόσμος is also found for example in Wis 9:3a and Philo, Legat. 309, and moves close to οἰκουμένη (cf. Hermann Sasse, “κοσμέω, κόσμος,” TWNT 3:879). 75 According to Gnilka, Das Matthäusevangelium, 1:90, τὴν δόξαν αὐτῶν (sc. of the earthly kingdoms) alludes to the “Unbeständigkeit” and the “trügerische[] Glanz” which are inherent in the dominion of the devil. 76 In the course of the narrative, this contrast is achieved by the fact that the narrative addressee first takes note of the saying ἤγγικεν γὰρ ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν in 3:2 and, knowing this, encounters the syntagma πάσας τὰς βασιλείας τοῦ κόσμου in 4:8. 77 The power of the devil ends at the latest with the earthly presence of the kingdom of the heavens, i.e., the full assertion of the dominion of God on earth. 78 He commands “merely” the kingdoms of the earth.

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rejection ὕπαγε σατανᾶ documents his fundamental decision to bow completely to the divine will, from which the devil wants to dissuade him in 4:1– 11. With his complete orientation to the divine will, Jesus as the Son of God makes his specific contribution to the realization of this will and proves its practicability in his own life. This decision, together with its implementation to the bitterest consequence on the cross, finally qualifies Jesus, after his resurrection, to acquire such extensive power of disposal over heaven and earth, which the devil could not have offered him at all because of his limited power of disposal. If the observations of points (a) to (c) are combined, the following can be noted: With the term βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν Matthew does not refer to a reality other than the kingdom of God- or the kingdom of the father-terminology. However, on the level of the discourse in the Matthean narration, the use of the term “kingdom of the heavens” reminds us of the otherworldly origin and the otherworldly quality of this dominion. This offers a reminder that the presence of the kingdom of the heavens on earth can only be spoken of when the reality on earth corresponds completely to the heavenly one, which includes the full realization of divine rule on earth, with the simultaneous abolition of all other systems of rule. Until this final state is reached, that is, until the kingdom of the heavens is present on earth and earthly reality is completely aligned with heavenly reality, the basileia (in progress) determines the inner-worldly reality, starting with the time of the Baptist as the forerunner of Jesus. It is the inevitably close approaching reign of God (ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν) which breaks into the earthly reality at certain points and has set in motion an irreversible spreading process there. Thus, while the syntagma “kingdom of the heavens” in the Gospel of Matthew serves to keep the claim of the full realization of divine basileia consistently in mind, the matter is different with the five-fold use of the syntagma βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ in 6:33, 12:28, 19:24, 21:31, and 21:43. In terms of narrative strategy, this syntagma serves to present the owner and regent of basileia as a personal figure. In doing so, it is mainly the aspect of the unrestricted power to act and the sovereignty of God that is expressed. Without explicitly showing God as King,79 the narrator has the possibility of accentuating God as the personal pivot of his kingship by using the syntagma βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. With this syntagma, in view of the use of the genitive attribute τοῦ θεοῦ in a monotheistic context, it demonstrates that no human being as God’s creature80 will be able

79

In Matthew this is almost exclusively limited to the two parables in 18:23–35 and 22:1–

14. 80 This dimension comes into play especially in the context of the basileia statement in 6:33. Here Matthew assigns God comprehensive competence in creation: see the statements formulated with the noun θεός in 3:8, 6:30 or 19:6; in 19:4 the Creator is explicitly mentioned.

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to completely escape this God. Because of the divine nature of God, everyone must relate to his royal claim to dominion,81 even those who are not or no longer in a living relationship with him (cf. 6:33 or 12:28). The care for the earthly formation of basileia, that is, the care for a gradual realization of his will on earth, can be entrusted by God on the basis of his comprehensive power of disposition to that group of people who can fulfill his will and become the teacher and shepherd of Israel by an appropriate shaping of life (21:43). Furthermore, he is unrestrictedly able to give salvation by granting access to the space of the basileia (19:24). While the use of the syntagma βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ in 19:24 specifically serves to juxtapose human incapacity and divine power,82 its use in 12:28 also has a contrasting function. In 12:28 it functions to contrast the kingdom of God with the kingdom of Satan (cf. 12:26). This contrast has a distinct dynamic component, such that in Matthew’s eyes Jesus’s exorcisms ἐν πνεύματι θεοῦ effectively suppress the dominion of Satan. By emphasizing that Jesus acted together with God (12:28a) in bringing about the basileia of God (12:28b), the theocentric dimension of the entire basileia conception is recalled: It is about God’s established reign in which Jesus is significantly involved.

D. Final Reflection – God’s Reign on Earth without Submission The Matthean Jesus makes a scathing criticism of the religious and political realities in Israel (cf. e.g., 5:20; 23:1–39). He repeatedly contrasts earthly reality with the salvific heavenly reality (cf. e.g., 6:19–20). Because of this, a radical change in the present conditions is inevitable for him (cf. 6:9–10). At the same time, he claims to have irreversibly set in motion this process of change of inner-worldly reality, for example in his exorcisms (12:28). Thereby the divine basileia increasingly gains space on earth and spreads out. Matthew does not want the kingdom idea to be sullied with imperialist overtones.83 Hence, he has Jesus present an alternative kind of kingdom. In contrast to earthly ideas of power and domination, the kingdom brought by Jesus is not designed to oppress and subjugate the weak. It is not established or maintained

81 If God has proven his power through the work of the Son of Man, e.g., this leads to the acknowledging praise of God (see 9:8; 15:31). 82 Cf. 19:26: παρὰ ἀνθρώποις τοῦτο ἀδύνατόν ἐστιν, παρὰ δὲ θεῷ πάντα δυνατά. 83 See the relevant questions raised by James P. Grimshaw, Review of Patrick Schreiner, “The Body of Jesus: A Spatial Analysis of the Kingdom in Matthew,” BibInt 26 (2018): 287– 89, esp. 289.

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by means of (military) power, but through humble service.84 The Matthean Jesus explains how he himself would act as a model for others within this kingdom by giving his own life as a ransom for others (20:25–28). Later he puts these words into action by undergoing crucifixion.85 Furthermore, in 28:17–20 he makes it clear in a time-spreading and prospective way that he will not change anything about this practice of rule permanently even after his appointment to universal power after Easter. He is fundamentally committed to his followers even in this outstanding royal position of power.86 For this purpose, the risen Jesus renounces the use of royal and imperious terminology in 28:17–20 beyond the statement of the reception of universal power in 28:16. In his eyes, he will bring to bear his power as king (cf. 13:41) in the sending of the disciples to all peoples and his lasting heavenly assistance. Supported by this heavenly care, the followers of Jesus know that they are capable of bringing the new order of rule of the divine basileia to all people on earth. By a consistent orientation towards the divine will in the interpretation brought and exemplified by Jesus, his followers contribute to the earthly spreading of the divine basileia without wanting to impose a foreign rule on the peoples. In other words, the aim of the mission of the disciples by the risen Lord is not the (hostile) appropriation of the peoples but their becoming familiar with the divine salvation. They shall come to know of the possibilities of a livable Torah practice and a lifestyle oriented towards King Jesus in the sense of a career ‘downwards.’ In conclusion, it should be remembered that the substantial inclusion of the human action in the earthly formation of the divine basileia, which is decisive for the conception of Matthew’s basileia, is by no means to be (mis)-understood as an expression of a weakness of God or as an indication of his lacking authority to act. In the mission of his Son, God has decided87 not to let his reign

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Via this trace, my preoccupation with the Matthean conception of basileia fits into the reading of the first Gospel in its Roman Imperial context: cf. the contributions in John K. Riches and David C. Sim, eds., The Gospel of Matthew in its Roman Imperial Context, JSNTS 276 (New York: T&T Clark International, 2005), especially the essay by Riches, “Matthew,” 128–42 in this text explaining this approach. 85 This is matched by the aspect that the Matthean Jesus presents himself as a gentle king (21:5). 86 On the basileia of Jesus in Matthew and the assignment of his royal rule to the royal rule of God, see Blumenthal, Basileia, 186–266 and on the royal facets of Matthean Christology see Matthias Konradt, “Davids Sohn und Herr: Eine Skizze zum davidisch-messianischen Kolorit der matthäischen Christologie,” in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Alida Euler, WUNT 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016); idem, “‘Ihr wisst nicht, was ihr erbittet’ (Mt 20,22): Die Zebedaidenbitte in Mt 20.20f und die königliche Messianologie im Matthäusevangelium,” in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, ed. Alida Euler, WUNT 358 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 171–200. 87 Here lies the all-decisive, absolute divine authority of action.

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become suddenly effective all over the earth (cf. 12:28).88 Rather, he has ordained that it spread gradually (13:31–33). At this point, God has firmly bound Jesus’s followers in his fundamental decision to gradually establish his rule on earth: God empowers and entrusts these followers with the task of making a relevant contribution to the earthly shaping of basileia, and this in the horizon of the inevitable approach of the full establishment of God’s rule on earth (3:2; 4:17). Once this point is reached, the earthly presence of the kingdom of the heavens in the Matthean conception can be spoken of.

88 The idea of such a full and abrupt intrusion of the rule of God determines the (early) Jewish conception of the basileia: see Zech 14:3–9; Dan 2:44; Sib 3:46–56 or As. Mos. 10:1–8a. Here the sudden and universally presented earthly construction of the basileia is essentially intertwined with the expectation of the appearance of God himself.

Resurrection of the Righteous Sufferers in the New Testament The Case of Matthew 27:52–53 Alexey Somov Alexey Somov

A. Introduction1 Matthew 27:52–53, the story unique to the New Testament corpus, is about the enigmatic saints who were raised after Jesus’s death and resurrection and appeared to many in Jerusalem. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection (μετὰ τὴν ἔγερσιν αὐτοῦ) they came out of the tombs (ἐξελθόντες ἐκ τῶν μνημείων) and entered the holy city (τὴν ἁγίαν πόλιν) and appeared to many (πολλοῖς). (NRSV)2

This passage has long been the subject of debate and interpretation. Among others, the question which has been often asked is: who are these resurrected saints? In this article it is also the main issue with which I would like to deal. Thus, with whom could Matthew identify these saints? This question is discussed here in the context of the fulfillment of the Scriptures of Israel, about which Matthew is always careful. Usually scholars suggest that Matthew here refers to Zech 14:4–5 or 1 En. 51:2. However, there is another important passage from early Jewish writings that is quite often neglected in this discussion: 2 Macc 7. This text has not been seriously discussed in the context of Matt 27:52–53 thus far.3 From my point of view, the question about identification

1 I am very grateful to William R. G. Loader, Tobias Nicklas, and Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr for their careful reading of the draft of my article and for their important suggestions about its content and terminology. 2 In this article, translations of biblical and other ancient literature are indicated in parenthesis or in footnotes. If such an indication is absent, the translation is that of the author. 3 There are, for instance, some brief remarks on it in John Dominic Crossan, The Cross That Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 392 and in Andries van Aarde, “ʻOn Earth as It Is in Heaven’: Matthew’s Eschatology as the Kingdom of the Heavens That Has Come,” in Eschatology of the New Testament and Some Related Documents, ed. Jan van der Watt, WUNT 2/315 (Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen, 2011),

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of the saints should be discussed in the context of the promise of the bodily resurrection for the righteous sufferers as described in 2 Macc 7. In order to identify these saints, another issue should also be addressed: why and how Matthew binds together the resurrection of the saints and the resurrection of Jesus in his narrative? In what follows I propose that Matthew (if 27:52–53 is not simply a scribal insertion, as some scholars believe) takes both the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of the saints as instances of the resurrection of righteous sufferers. The resurrection of the saints is not only connected with the resurrection of Jesus but also depends on it. As I demonstrate below, Jesus’s death may have been understood as the death of the righteous sufferer and his resurrection, which is clearly a bodily one, as the resurrection of such a righteous one. At the earliest stages of the development of the tradition about Jesus, this type of resurrection was seen as a pre-eschatological event, in the sense that it does not directly inaugurate the immediate end of the world. Thus, for Matthew, who is very conscious of the fulfillment of prophecies, the promise of bodily resurrection for the righteous sufferers could have been taken very seriously – namely, that those who refuse to reject the law will be saved and raised from the dead. If my proposal is correct, one can see in Matt 27:52–53 one of the earliest Christian receptions of this view. In this article, I first briefly survey the most important scholarly interpretations of the resurrection of the saints in Matt 27:52–53.4 Then, I discuss in more detail what the resurrection of the righteous sufferer might consist of. Further, I treat Matt 27:52–53 as a case of this type of resurrection and demonstrate that Matthew could have in mind the righteous sufferers from 2 Macc 7.

B. Interpreting the Resurrection of the Saints in Matt 27:52–53 The episode about the resurrection of certain saints in Matt 27:52–53 belongs to Matthew’s Passion narrative (26:1–27:66) and actually inaugurates its climax. The passage we discuss narrates some spectacular events (27:51–54) following the death of Jesus on the cross (27:45–50) and is quite unique and distinctive. First, the curtain of the Temple was torn in two5 and then there was an

35–63, here 55. However, even these authors only mention this passage among other references to biblical and cognate texts but do not discuss it in detail. 4 Some materials from my earlier article “Individual Resurrection in The New Testament: Matt 27:52–53,” The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute 32 (2019): 48–66 [in Russian]) are used in this research. 5 According to Matthew, the darkness over all the earth at noon precedes the death of Jesus (Matt 27:45; cf. Mark 15:33). Together with this sign, this material could have been taken from Mark 15:33, 38. The additional Matthean signs (earth shaken, rocks rent, tombs open, bodies of the saints raised in Matt 27:51b–52b) may be a pre-Matthean poetic text

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earthquake (27:51). Perhaps, these two events are related, as the same verb σχίζω is used for both the tearing of the curtain (ἐσχίσθη) and the splitting of the rocks at the earthquake (ἐσχίσθησαν).6 After this, the graves (μνημεῖα) were opened and many bodies (σώματα) of deceased saints (τῶν κεκοιμημένων ἁγίων) were raised (ἠγέρθησαν) (27:52). Some of the vocabulary in Matt 27:52–53 resembles the language of Ezekiel and Zechariah. First of all, one is reminded of Ezek 37:1–14, especially 37:12: “I am going to open your graves (ἀνοίγω ὑμῶν τὰ μνήματα), and bring you up from your graves (ἀνάξω ὑμᾶς ἐκ τῶν μνημάτων ὑμῶν).” Additionally, similarly to Matt 27:51 and 28:2, the process of resurrection in Ezek 37:7 is also represented by earthquake-like imagery.7 Further, according to Zech 14:4–5 on the day of the Lord, the Lord will appear on the Mount of Olives, which “will be split in two” (σχισθήσεται; cf. αἱ πέτραι ἐσχίσθησαν in Matt 27:51), and “all the saints with him” (καὶ πάντες οἱ ἅγιοι μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ). While in the context of Zechariah’s prophecy οἱ ἅγιοι most probably refers to the celestial beings functioning as the Lord’s retinue at his coming,8 Matthew may have used this imagery for his own purposes. Does all this imply that the prophecies of Ezekiel and Zechariah had been fulfilled in the resurrection of the saints?9 It is not easy to prove, but, one, at least, can state that this language and imagery was important for Matthew in his representation of this resurrection. Additionally, it is also possible that Matt 27:52–53 alludes to 1 En. 51:1–2, which is sometimes observed:10

adopted by the evangelist, while the entry of the saints, who were seen by many (27:53), into Jerusalem could have been created by Matthew himself. 6 Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 14–28, WBC 33B (Dallas: Word, 1998), 849. 7 R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 1082. 8 Dale C. Allison, Jr., The End of The Ages Has Come:The Early Interpretation of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, Studies on the New Testament and Its World (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987), 45. 9 Although Dale C. Allison Jr. is very positive about “pre-Christian” and early Christian use of Ezek 37:1–14 as a proof of eschatological resurrection (“The Scriptural Background of the Matthean Legend: Ezekiel 37, Zechariah 14, and Matthew 27,” in Life Beyond Death in Matthew’s Gospel: Religious Metaphor or Bodily Reality?, ed. Wim Weren, Huub van de Sandt, and Joseph Verheyden, Biblical Tools and Studies 13 [Leuven: Peeters, 2011], 153– 88, here 155–61), it is not so obvious. For instance, Johannes Tromp is not so optimistic and argues that the imagery of the dry bones was not used as a proof of the bodily resurrection until the 2nd century CE; cf. Johannes Tromp, “‘Can These Bones Live?’ Ezekiel 37:1–14 and Eschatological Resurrection,” in The Book of Ezekiel and Its Influence, ed. Henk Jan de Jonge and Johannes Tromp (Burlington: Ashgate, 2007), 61–78; see also Ulrich Luz, Matthew 21–28: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 567. Nevertheless, one can state that the reception of this passage in the resurrection context was at least not widespread in the time Matthew wrote his Gospel. 10 Crossan, The Cross That Spoke, 393; Aarde, “On Earth as It is in Heaven,” 55.

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In those days, Sheol will return all the deposits which she had received and hell will give back all that which it owes. And he shall choose the righteous and the holy ones from among (the risen dead) for the day when they shall be selected and saved has arrived.11

In spite of some thematical and terminological similarities, this passage, however, has to be understood in its immediate context as directly referring to the eschatological event following the final judgment at the end of time (cf. 1 En. 50:1–5). Furthermore, grammatically, it is difficult to decide whether μετὰ τὴν ἔγερσιν αὐτοῦ (“after his resurrection”) in 27:53 relates to the preceding καὶ ἐξελθόντες ἐκ τῶν μνημείων (“having come out from the tombs”) or to the following εἰσῆλθον εἰς τὴν ἁγίαν πόλιν (“they entered the holy city”). There are arguments for both solutions.12 In addition, it has been suggested that μετὰ τὴν ἔγερσιν αὐτοῦ is an early scribal interpolation motivated by theological concerns.13 Indeed, Paul links Jesus’s resurrection with the eschatological resurrection (1 Cor 15:12–19; cf. John 11:25), of which Jesus is “the first fruit” (15:20).14 Besides, the resurrection of the saints may refer to the early Christian belief in Christ’s descent to hell and releasing the righteous dead from the cap-

11 Quoted from Ephraim Isaac, “1 (Ethiopic Apocalypse of) Enoch: A New Translation and Introduction,” in OTP 1:5–89, here 36. 12 In support of the first option, that the saints came out from the tombs after Jesus’s resurrection and entered Jerusalem; cf. France, The Gospel of Matthew, 1082; John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGCT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Bletchley: Paternoster, 2005), 1216; David L. Turner and Darrell L. Bock, Matthew and Mark, vol. 11 of Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, ed. Philip W. Comfort (Carol Stream: Tyndale House, 2005), 364; D. A. Carson, Matthew, The Expositors’ Bible Commentary, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995); Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew, NAC 22 (Nashville: Broadman, 1992), 421; Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew, PNTC (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans; 1992), 725. This is how the NRSV translates the whole passage: “The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.” The second option thinks the saints came out from the tombs at the time of Jesus’s death and the splitting of the rocks. However, they entered Jerusalem only after Jesus’s resurrection (Hagner, Matthew, 850; Robert H. Mounce, Matthew, NIBCNT [Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991], 260; William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to Matthew, New Testament Commentary [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973], 976; R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1943], 1131; Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The New Testament. Part 1: The Gospel of Matthew, vol. 2 [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1879], 278). 13 See the main bibliography on this subject in Charles Quarles, “ΜΕΤΑ ΤΗΝ ΕΓΕΡΣΙΝ ΑΥΤΟΥ: A Scribal Interpolation in Matthew 27:53?” TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Crititsm 20 (2015): 1–15, here 1–2. 14 The connection between the resurrection of Jesus and the eschatological resurrection of the dead in early Christianity will be discussed below in more detail.

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tivity of death (cf. Irenaeus, Haer. 4.7.2), as Dale C. Allison suggests.15 Moreover, it is more natural for Matthew to use the term ἀνάστασις (Matt 22:23, 30–31, 38) than ἔγερσις for resurrection. Matt 27:53 is the only occurrence of ἔγερσις in the entire New Testament. This may indicate that Matthew used some pre-Matthean material here.16 However, Charles L. Quarles offers an important argument that refutes the proposal about scribal interpolation in this verse. Quarles convincingly demonstrates that this assumption is based on an incorrect view of ancient and internal evidence.17 After all, μετὰ τὴν ἔγερσιν αὐτοῦ in Matt 27:53 may serve as a link between Jesus’s death and resurrection in Matthew’s narrative in order to add a paschal color to the Passion story and to unite both Jesus’s death and resurrection into one coherent event.18 Next, if Matthew in fact indicated that the saints have been resurrected right after the death of Jesus, where would they have been during three days before he was raised from the dead? This tension seems to be resolved if we accept that Matthew had in mind only a single earthquake in both 27:51 and 28:2.19 Then, the opening of the tombs, both that of Jesus and that of the saints, would 15

Dale C. Allison, Jr., “‘After His Resurrection’ (Matt 27,53) and the Descens Ad Inferos,” in Neutestamentliche Exegese im Dialog. Hermeneutik – Wirkungsgeschichte – Matthäusevangelium. Festschrift für Ulrich Luz zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Peter Lampe, Moises Mayordomo, Migaku Sato, and Armand Puig i Tàrrech (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2008), 335–54, here 353. Ulrich Luz, however, demonstrates that in early Christian writings, Matt 27:52–53 was never used as a proof of this idea; cf. Luz, Matthew, 3:564. 16 Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to Grave. A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 2:1139 n. 105. John Nolland suggests that the evangelist is basing himself on his source language here; Nolland, Matthew, 1215. 17 Quarles argues inter alia that the μετά phrase in Matt 27:53 modifies the verb that follows it (“ΜΕΤΑ ΤΗΝ ΕΓΕΡΣΙΝ ΑΥΤΟΥ,” 4). Therefore, the chronological problem may be resolved by punctuating the text so that “after his resurrection” refers only to the entrance of the saints into Jerusalem. Then, referring to Brown, who demonstrates that ἐγείρω is a regular verb in Matthew for resurrection (The Death of the Messiah, 1139 n. 105), Quarles indicates that this evangelist may have wanted to draw a connection between the verb and a rare noun from the same root. After all, ἔγερσις is not the only hapax legomena in Matthew and therefore cannot be a significant argument for a scribal interpolation in 27:53 (pp. 5–6). Furthermore, although some scholars argue that μετὰ τὴν ἔγερσιν αὐτοῦ is absent in some ancient textual witnesses (the Palestinian Syriac lectionary, the Diatessaron, Egerton Papyrus 3, and Minuscule 243), only the Palestinian Syriac Gospel lectionary in fact lacks this phrase. However, due to their late date, these manuscripts can hardly be a reliable evidence for the early state of the text (pp. 6–14). 18 “Ein Geschehenszusammenhang,” as Matthias Konradt puts it; cf. Matthias Konradt, Das Evangelium Nach Matthäus, NTD 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 447– 48. 19 Alan Hugh McNeile, The Gospel according to St. Matthew (London: Macmillan, 1915), 424.

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refer to the time of Jesus’s resurrection. However, it is more likely that Matthew distinguishes two separate earthquakes in these verses.20 In 28:2 the earthquake, which happens at Jesus’s resurrection only in this Gospel (cf. Mark 16:4; Luke 27:2; John 20:1), accompanies the descent of the angel who rolls away the stone from Jesus’s tomb. In 27:51 the angel is not mentioned, while the earthquake works together with the tearing of the curtain.21 As Quarles rightly states, “this view, of course, leaves unanswered the question as to where the resurrected saints went immediately after they exited the tombs. Although the question troubles modern readers, it was apparently not a concern of the author of the text.”22 Thus, one can acknowledge that, according to Matthew, after Jesus’s resurrection the resurrected saints came out from their tombs and entered Jerusalem, which is here called “the holy city” (τὴν ἁγίαν πόλιν; cf. 4:5), and there they were seen “by many” (πολλοῖς). Now I turn to the question of the identification of these people. Matthew does not specify who these saints are. As “the saints” they may be identified with the righteous from Israel’s past (Dan 7:18, 21–22, 25, Wis 18:9;23 cf. λαὸς ἅγιος in Deut 7:6; 14:2; 14:21; 26:19; 28:9; Dan 7:27; 8:24; ἡγιασμένοι in Deut 33:3), though this term was often used in the New Testament for believers in Jesus (e.g., Acts 9:13; 9:32, 41; 26:10; Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:2; 2 Cor 2:1; Eph 1:1; Rev 5:8; 8:3; 11:18; 13:7, 10; 14:12; 16:6; 22:21). Therefore, potentially, Matthew’s readers would comprehend 27:52–53 as referring to the eschatological resurrection of the followers of Jesus, but the context of this passage hardly allows for such an understanding.24 Kenneth L. Waters argues that Matt 27:52– 53 is a pre-Matthean early Christian apocalyptic insertion, which refers not to the past historical event but to the eschatological resurrection. Moreover, according to Waters, the saints, who are not the Jewish righteous but Christian martyrs (see Rev 20:4, 6), appear in the new Jerusalem (Rev 21:2) after Jesus’s resurrection. They appear to an eschatological community of believers in Rev 7:4; 14:1.25 However, Water’s argument is not very convincing.26 20

Hagner, Matthew, 850. Charles L. Quarles, “Matthew 27:51–53: Meaning, Genre, Intertextuality, Theology, and Reception History,” JETS 59 (2016): 271–86, here 273. 22 Quarles, “ΜΕΤΑ ΤΗΝ ΕΓΕΡΣΙΝ ΑΥΤΟΥ,” 4. 23 The same term is also found in Wis 5:5, but as a part of a parallel structure (“the sons of God”). Therefore, it may refer to angels. 24 Hagner, Matthew, 849. 25 Kenneth L. Waters, “Matthew 27:52–53 as Apocalyptic Apostrophe: Temporal-Spatial Collapse in the Gospel of Matthew,” JBL 122 (2003): 489–515. 26 First, it is quite difficult to prove the dependence of Matthew on the Book of Revelation and its imagery of the holy city. Then, the vision of “the holy city” may still easily relate to the historical city of Jerusalem in Matt 4:5, but not to the new or heavenly Jerusalem, as Waters argues (“Matthew 27:52–53,” 494–96). There is a physical Temple in the historical Jerusalem, according to Matt 4:5, while the eschatological Jerusalem will not have one (Rev 21

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Matthew also could have Job in mind, who is seen as one of the suffering righteous and who is promised to be resurrected with some others in Job 42:17 LXX. Neither the end of time nor any other eschatological context of this resurrection is emphasized in Job 42:17 LXX: γέγραπται δὲ αὐτὸν πάλιν ἀναστήσεσθαι μεθ᾽ ὧν ὁ κύριος ἀνίστησιν (“it is written that he will rise again with those whom the Lord raises up”). Other candidates should not, however, be discounted. For instance, the belief that some righteous will be raised prior to the universal resurrection is found, for example, in T. Jud. 25:1–4: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will rise first to participate in the restored Israel (cf. 2 Bar. 21:24). However, there are no direct clues or references to these stories in Matt 27:52–53. With whom, then, can these saints be identified? Most previous scholarship identifies Matthew’s saints with pious Jews probably buried around Jerusalem,27 or more precisely with the patriarchs, prophets, heroes, or martyrs from the past.28 Can one define them more precisely? Before answering this question, I have to discuss what type of resurrection Matthew ascribes to these saints.

C. The Concept of the Resurrection of the Righteous Sufferer At least three types of resurrection can be distinguished in early Jewish literature. First, some texts depict resurrection as an eschatological event, taking

21:22) (see also Hagner, Matthew, 850). After all, how can we prove that everyone in the ancient Church unconditionally supported Paul’s idea that Jesus is the firstborn of those who are risen from the dead (1 Cor 15:20–23; cf. Waters, “Matthew 27:52–53,” 492–94)? It seems that in contrast to Paul, the Synoptic Gospels do not have an explicit connection between the resurrection of Jesus and the eschatological resurrection, unless Matt 25:52–53 is seen as referring to it; see Nolland, Matthew, 1216. 27 France, The Gospel of Matthew, 1081. In popular Jewish religion the tombs of the righteous saints were venerated; Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1993), 122. 28 Hagner, Matthew, 849; Grant R. Osborne, Matthew, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 1045; Jens Herzer, “The Riddle of The Holy Ones in Matthew 27:51B–53: A New Proposal For A Crux Interpretum,” in “What Does the Scripture Say?”: Studies in the Function of Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity, vol. 1: The Synoptic Gospels, ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias, LNTS 469 (London: T&T Clark, 2013), 142–157. Frederick Dale Bruner indicates that they could be identified with the pious Jews of Luke 1–2 (Zechariah, Simeon, Anna, and Joseph), but there is not enough evidence for this; cf. Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary, Volume 2: The Churchbook, Matthew 13–28 (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1990), 1061. See other important commentaries and bibliography in Allison, “After His Resurrection,” 335–54.

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place after the last judgment as the reward of the righteous. This type of resurrection I call here “the eschatological resurrection of the righteous” (e.g., 1 En. 104:2–6; Pss. Sol. 3:10–12). Second, some other texts deal with resurrection at the end of time before the last judgment. This resurrection can be called “general eschatological resurrection” (e.g., Dan 12:2–3; 4 Ezra 7:31–36). Third, in other works that speak about resurrection, the issue of the last judgment is not so important or simply not mentioned, although not denied. This is the resurrection of certain righteous ones (a single individual or several individuals). Here I distinguish resurrection from the mere restoration of physical life.29 This third type of resurrection, which is explored in more detail below, will be the focus of what follows. In this discussion, I consider eschatology and the word “eschatological” in terms of specific events of an existential crisis and the final future consummation at the end of times, associated with the last judgment and the resurrection of the dead.30 In this context the concept of resurrection of certain righteous individuals (or of small groups of them) is not eschatological or “pre-eschatological” in the sense that it is not an eschatological universal event but as related to Jewish understanding of a preliminary or even final destiny of the individual as defined immediately after his/her death.31 Therefore, in contrast to the eschatological resurrection that is promised to the large group of the deceased, for instance, all the righteous, or both the righteous and the wicked, there also was a Jewish concept of individual “pre-eschatological” resurrection dealing with the destiny of the individual. Although it may be in a certain sense connected with the end of time, it does not directly inaugurate or follow it. Such a distinction between the types of resurrection as well as receiving the idea of resurrection itself was by no means homogeneous in Jewish thought. There were some Jewish groups that either did not believe in any type of resurrection32 or did not treat collective eschatological issues.33

29 E.g., 1 Kgs 17:17–24; 2 Kgs 4:31–37; 13:21; cf. Mark 5:22–24, 35–43; Matt 9:18–19, 23–26; Luke 8:40–42, 49–56; John 11:1–44; Act 9:36–41; 20:7–12. 30 Jan G. van der Watt, “Preface,” in Eschatology of the New Testament and Some Related Documents, ed. Jan G. van der Watt, WUNT 2/315 (Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen, 2011), V–VII, here VI. 31 Alexey Somov, Representations of the Afterlife in Luke-Acts, LNTS 556 (London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2017), 51–55; 133–34. 32 E.g., the Sadducees did not believe in any form of the afterlife, according to Josephus, Ant. 18.16. 33 For, instance, Joseph and Aseneth does not deal with collective eschatology and the last judgment, but is concerned with the afterlife of the individual in the context of conversion to Judaism. Philo of Alexandria prefers to discuss the destiny of the soul of the individual with no reference to the intervention of God at the end of the world, collective resurrection, or the last judgment. Similarly, Josephus prefers to speak about immortality rather than about resurrection and seems to be silent about the last judgment, nevertheless believing that

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Further, this type of resurrection has been sometimes connected with the scholarly concept of the so called “martyrological resurrection.” This, in turn, relates to the concept defined by some researchers as “the heavenly vindication of the martyr,” an elevation of the martyr into heaven immediately after death. Sometimes such an elevation is represented as a resurrection.34 This concept has been elaborated by such scholars as T. E. Pollard (1972), Ulrich Kellermann (2001), Henk de Jonge (2002), and Joost Holleman (1998), who argue that this “instant” resurrection happens immediately after death or a short time after it.35 Therefore, it is not directly connected with the end of time. As a result of this resurrection, the martyr receives a new glorified and imperishable body in heaven.36 Hence, according to the proponents of this concept, the martyrological resurrection is “a resurrection into heaven” or “a heavenly resurrection.”37 These scholars indicate several Jewish texts that can support this idea (2 Macc; 4 Macc; Wis 1–6; Pseudo-Philo, T. Job, and some others). The problem, however, is that only a few of these texts speak about resurrection. Instead, some of them, for instance, 4 Macc and Wis 1–6, deal with a more general view of immortality or a certain ongoing afterlife existence, which can hardly be called resurrection. Nevertheless, there is another point that brings these texts together. As George W. E. Nickelsburg emphasizes, there is a literary motif of the persecution and vindication of the righteous in biblical and cognate texts, which deal with a humiliation and a subsequent vindication and exaltation of the innocent righteous one who suffers from his or her wicked enemies.38 The idea of the resurrection of the martyr fits well into this motif. the world will be burnt in fire in the end (Ant. 1.70), which reminds the Stoic idea of conflagration; See Lester L. Grabbe, “Eschatology in Philo and Josephus,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity: Part 4, Death, Life-After-Death, Resurrection and the World to Come in the Judaisms of Antiquity, ed. Alan J. Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, (Leiden/Boston/Köln: Brill, 2001), 163–88; Casey D. Elledge, Life after Death in Early Judaism: The Evidence of Josephus, WUNT 2/208 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006); Sören Swoboda, Leben nach dem Tod: Josephus im Kontext antiker Geschichtsschreibung, Stuttgarter Bibelstundien 245 (Stuttgart: KBW Bibelwerk, 2019). 34 Joost Holleman, Resurrection and Parousia: A Traditio-Historical Study of Paul’s Eschatology in 1 Cor. 15:20-23 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 145. 35 Cf. e.g., T. E. Pollard, “Martyrdom and Resurrection in the New Testament,” BJRL 55 (1972): 240–51, here 244. 36 Ulrich Kellermann, Auferstanden in den Himmel. 1 Makkabäer 7 und die Auferstehung der Märtyrer, Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 95 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1979), Henk Jan de Jonge, “De opstanding van Jezus. De joodse traditie achter een christelijke belijdenis,” in Jodendom en vroeg Christendom: continuїteit en discontinuїtet, ed. Tjitze Baarda, A. Hilhorst, Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, and Adam S. van der Woude (Kampen: Kok, 1991), 47–61; Holleman, Resurrection and Parousia, 144–56. 37 Holleman, Resurrection and Parousia, 148. 38 George W. E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

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In the present research, however, I prefer to call the resurrection of the martyr the resurrection of the suffering righteous one, because my understanding of such a resurrection is broader than that of those who speak about the heavenly vindication of the martyr. I argue that such a resurrection of the righteous sufferer is a special case of the individual resurrection in contrast to the collective eschatological resurrection. It includes not only the resurrection of one single righteous individual but also a small group of the righteous. It would take place not only immediately after death but also in a certain period of time, though not at the end of time. In addition, the term “martyr” applied to Jewish suffering righteous ones is anachronistic, as they were never explicitly called “μάρτυροι” in early Jewish literature, even though their “extreme tortures” (ὑπερβαλλούσας αἰκίας, 2 Macc 7:42) are mentioned. Fourth Macc prefers to call this suffering ἀγών (“struggle,” e.g., 13:15; 16:16; 17:11; cf. Wis 4:2; 10:12), ὑπομονή (“endurance,” e.g., 1:11; 5:23; 7:9, 9:30; 15:30; 17:17, 23), and καρτερία (“patience,” e.g., 8:26; 11:12; 15:30; 16:14), and the righteous sufferer as ἀθλητής (“athlete,” “prizefighter,” 17:15, 16). Therefore, while it is quite common to call Jewish righteous sufferers “martyrs” and their suffering “martyrdom,” in the strict sense of the word, the term “martyr” is better suited to Christian martyrs than to Jewish ones. As shown below, the term “saints” is more appropriate for the latter. This is also why I avoid the above-mentioned term “martyrological resurrection” in the present research. The most important account of the resurrection of righteous sufferers in Jewish literature of the Second Temple period is found in 2 Macc 6:18–31 and 7 (see also 14:37–46).39 In this text, the resurrection of the seven righteous sufferers and their mother is expected. Furthermore, suffering (or martyrdom, in the broader sense of the word) and resurrection are directly connected in this story: resurrection is described as the individual and bodily resurrection of these righteous. It is significant that this resurrection is explicitly corporeal, as the righteous are promised new bodies instead of those in which they suffered and died. It is also worth noting that 4 Macc 5–7 and 8–18 also deal with vindication and exaltation of the righteous ones, but not in terms of resurrection. Nevertheless, both 2 Macc and 4 Macc speak about those righteous sufferers who died for others. There have been some attempts to link together the resurrection of Jewish righteous sufferers in 2 Macc 7 and the eschatological resurrection in Dan

Press, 2006), 119–40. The elements of this motif are found already in the story about Joseph and his brothers (Genesis 37–45); then in Isa 52–53; the Book of Esther; Daniel 3 and 6; the story of Ahikar; the story of Susanna; Wis 1–6; 2 Macc 7; 3 Macc; 1 En. 62–63; 4 Macc, the Story of Taxo and his seven sons (T. Mos. 9), and some other accounts. 39 Razis, one of the elders of Jerusalem, committed suicide by falling on his sword and then “tore out his entrails, took them in both hands and hurled them at the crowd, calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to give them back to him again” (2 Macc 14:46 NRSV).

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12:2–3.40 For instance, for Kellermann, “martyrological resurrection” is a development of the idea of eschatological resurrection or a special case of such a concept. Then, if Dan 10:1–12:4 is dated earlier than 2 Macc, it means that the promise of resurrection in Dan 12:2–3 (which he regards not as a resurrection to heaven but as an earthly resurrection) was not fulfilled after the end of the persecution of the Jews in 165/164 BCE.41 In turn, this may have triggered the idea of the resurrection of the righteous sufferer into heaven.42 In spite of all these suggestions, there is, however, not enough evidence for such conclusions.43 Moreover, the resurrection in Dan 12:2–3 is that of a large group of those who have been granted resurrection. For some of them it will be not a reward, but a punishment (12:2). In addition, the resurrection in 2 Macc 7 is clearly a bodily one, while that of Dan 12:2–3 can be interpreted in different ways (e.g., as a bodily resurrection, the resurrection to angelic state or astral existence).44 After all, the distinction between the resurrection into heaven and the resurrection on earth, which is often held by proponents of the idea of the martyrological resurrection, looks artificial and does not consider the ancient worldview in which “heaven” is often just a metaphorical marker of the divine presence, but not a literal geographical localization.45 Next, I suggest that there are three clear examples of the resurrection of righteous sufferers in the New Testament: the resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection of the saints in Matt 27:52–53, and that of two witnesses in Rev 11:3– 12. Although the latter two accounts use some eschatological language, their contexts do not explicitly mention the end of times. In spite of the fact that at some point the resurrection of Jesus came to be associated with the first step of the collective eschatological resurrection (cf. 1 Cor 15:20–23),46 the emphasis on the corporeality of his resurrection indicates that at a very early stage of the development of early Christian tradition, Jesus’s

40

Jonathan A. Goldstein, II Maccabees: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 41A (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 306; N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 150–53, 202; Ulrich Kellermann, “Das Danielbuch und die Märtyrertheologie der Auferstehung,” in Die Entstehung der Jüdischen Martyrologie, ed. Jan Willem van Henten, StPB (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 51–70. 41 Kellermann, “Das Danielbuch,” 52. 42 Kellermann, Auferstanden in den Himmel, 65; Kellermann, “Das Danielbuch,” 69–70. 43 Holleman, Resurrection and Parousia, 155. 44 Somov, Representations of the Afterlife in Luke-Acts, 171–72. 45 Ibid., 214–19. 46 As Holleman argues, this idea was developed by Paul (Resurrection and Parousia, 137). I disagree with William D. Davies and Dale C. Allison who, referring to Rom 1:4 and 1 Cor 15:20, argue that already in the earliest period Jesus’s resurrection was closely connected with the eschatological general resurrection; cf. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: Vol. 3, Commentary on Matthew XIX–XXVIII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 629.

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death could have been understood as a death of an innocent righteous sufferer, who unfairly suffered from the wicked, died, and then was vindicated by God.47 One, of course, may in any case regard the resurrection of Jesus not as a preeschatological but as a kind of the present-oriented eschatological event,48 as it was accompanied by certain eschatological signs (in Matt 27:51–53 it is, e.g., the earthquake, the splitting of the rocks, and finally resurrection). However, I would agree with John Nolland that in the Synoptic Gospels no connection between Jesus’ own resurrection and the resurrection prospect of others is evident unless it be here in Mt. 27:53. In some sense the holy ones are clearly a “supporting cast” to Jesus as his own resurrection and appearances are enacted: their resurrections and appearances are miniatures of his own.49

Jesus’s death could have been seen as “that of an envoy of God rejected by Israel” (cf. Luke 11:49–51; Matt 23:34–36; Luke 13:34–35; Matt 23:37–39; Mark 12:1–9; 1 Thess 2:14–16).50 In addition, Jesus was understood as God’s suffering righteous one (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:32–34). The early followers of Jesus saw him as the Son of God who was delivered from suffering and death and then was resurrected and vindicated.51 Thus, another example of this type of resurrection in the New Testament is Matt 27:52–53.

47

George W. E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2006). John Downing also indicated that the ancient Church adopted the Jewish idea of suffering (literally, “martyrdom”), applying it to Jesus. Although, in contrast to Jewish sufferers, Jesus seemed to die not for the nation but against the nation, it is more correct to speak of his expiation of the sins of others; see John Downing, “Jesus and Martyrdom,” JTS 14 (1963): 279–93. 48 See the discussion about questionable categories related to the terminology and understanding of the New Testament eschatology in Jörg Frey, “New Testament Eschatology – an Introduction: Classical Issues, Disputed Themes, and Current Perspectives,” in Eschatology of the New Testament and Some Related Documents, ed. Jan van der Watt, WUNT 2/315 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 3–32. 49 John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Bletchley: Paternoster, 2005), 1216. 50 Marinus de Jonge, “Jesus’ Death for others and the death of the Maccabean Martyrs,” in Text and Testimony: Essays on New Testament and Apocryphal Literature in Honour of A. F. J. Klijn, ed. Tjitze Baarda, A. Hilhorst, Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, and Adam S. van der Woude (Kampen: Uitgeversmaatschappij J. H. Kok, 1988), 142–51, here 143. See also here some important bibliography on Jesus as a suffering righteous servant (de Jonge, “Jesus’ Death for others,” 143 n. 5). 51 Ibid., 143–45.

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D. The Resurrection of the Saints as the Resurrection of the Righteous Sufferers in Matthew Turning back to the question about the identification of the raised saints in Matt 27:52–53, I suggest that a step forward can be made if one treats this passage as a case of the resurrection of righteous sufferers. The fact that Matthew may have shared Jewish belief in such a resurrection is seen in his inclusion of Mark’s material (Mark 8:28; cf. Luke 9:19) about a series of rumors about Jesus in Matt 16:14, which reflect some Jewish beliefs in the resurrection of a righteous sufferer with no reference to the end of time. In addition, Matthew may have been aware of the clearest and most important example of this type of resurrection, found in 2 Macc 7. Indeed, there are some points that indicate that Matthew knew this tradition. While 2 Macc as a whole was not so popular among Jews,52 the story about the martyrdom of the elder Eleazar, the seven brothers, and their mother was, as several references to this story in Rabbinical literature indicate (e.g., b. Giṭ. 57b; Midr. Lam. 1:16; Pesiq. Rab. 43).53 It was also known in some early Christian circles, as seen in Heb 11:35b (“Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection” [NRSV]).54 The parallel between Matthew and 2 Maccabees can be found also in the report of rumors about Jesus, since only this Gospel mentions the prophet Jeremiah (16:14).55 An expectation of Jeremiah’s return to earth as a heavenly intercessor is found in 2 Macc 15:14–16 (cf. 4 Ezra 2:18).56 Another possible connection between Matthew and 2 Maccabees is that in 2 Macc 15:14 (cf. 1:12; 3:1; 9:14) Jerusalem is called “the holy city” (ἡ ἁγία πόλις), exactly as in Matt 4:5 and 27:53. Could Matthew’s term for Jerusalem be taken from 2 Macc? It could be so, but both books probably borrowed this term from the book of Isaiah: τῆς πόλεως τῆς ἁγίας (“of the holy city,” Isa 48:2); Ιερουσαλημ πόλις ἡ ἁγία (“Jerusalem, the holy city,” Isa 52:1).57 52 Daniel R. Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 85–88. 53 For more details see Robert Doran, “The Martyr: A Synoptic View of the Mother and Her Seven Sons,” in Ideal Figures in Ancient Judaism: Profiles and Paradigms, ed. John J. Collins and George W. E. Nickelsburg, SBLSCS 12 (Chico: Scholars Press, 1980), 189–220. 54 Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, 88. 55 Konradt, Matthäus, 258. 56 Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8–20: A Commentary, trans. James E. Crouch, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 361 n. 5. On the reception of Jeremiah in 2 Maccabees see also Armin Lange, “Jeremia in den Makkabäerbüchern,” in Die Makkabäer, ed. Friedrich Avemarie, Predrag Bukovec, Stefan Krauter, and Michael Tilly, WUNT 382 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 209–19. 57 This term is also used in Neh 11:1, 18 and in Dan 9:24 (Ù ֶ‫ ;ﬠִ יר קָ דְ שׁ‬cf. also ἡ πόλις ἡ ἁγία in Theodotion’s translation of Dan 9:24). In the book of Daniel, Jerusalem is holy because it bears the Lord’s holy name (9:18).

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In addition, in 2 Macc 15:24, Jews are “the holy people” (ἅγιος λαός) as a whole. But this may also refer to Jewish righteous sufferers. The elder Eleazar is defined as “an example of nobility” (ὑπόδειγμα γενναιότητος) and “a memorial of courage” (2 Macc 6:31). Moreover, in 4 Macc, which directly relates to the same story about the suffering of Eleazar, the seven brothers, their mother – though with no reference to their resurrection – and Eleazar are called “the most holy” (πανάγιοι, 4 Macc 14:7; cf. 7:4), while, all these sufferers and the mother of the seven brothers are “holy” (ἱεροί, 6:30; 14:6; 16:12). Such a definition of the righteous sufferers is not unique to 2–4 Maccabees. The book of Daniel, which may have influenced Matthew’s views on the vindication of the persecuted righteous and as well as their resurrection, also uses the term “the saints” for those righteous ones who will battle against the wicked eschatological king and will then possess the kingdom of the Most High (Dan 7:18, 21– 22, 25; cf. λαὸς ἅγιος in 7:27; 8:24; 12:7). The location of the execution of Eleazar, the seven brothers, and their mother is rather problematic,58 but at first, in 2 Maccabees, it was believed that they had been murdered and buried in Jerusalem, “the holy city.”59 The author of 4 Macc (e.g., 4:22–23; 18:5) also confirms this.60 However, later Jewish and Christian tradition (since the 4th century CE) located their burial place in Antioch.61 All this indicates that Matthew may have been aware of the Jewish tradition about the Lord’s promise to resurrect righteous sufferers bodily, the belief which did not always explicitly refer to the end of times. Nickelsburg applies the literary motif of the persecution and vindication of the righteous to the New Testament Passion narrative.62 Although this idea is especially prominent in Luke-Acts,63 Matthew could be no stranger to this, as his allusion to Wis 2:18 (“for if the righteous man is God’s child, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries”; NRSV) in Matt 27:43 demonstrates (“He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s

58

Margaret Schatkin, “The Maccabean Martyrs,” VC 28 (1974): 97–113, here 99. Goldstein, II Maccabees, 282, 296–97. 60 Schatkin, “The Maccabean Martyrs,” 98. 61 Goldstein, II Maccabees, 297; Schatkin, “The Maccabean Martyrs,” 98–102; Julian Obermann, “The Sepulchre of the Maccabean Martyrs,” JBL 50 (1931): 250–65, here 252. 62 Nickelsburg, Resurrection, 249–79. 63 Outi Lehtipuu, “Biblical Body Language: The Spiritual and Bodily Resurrection,” in Anthropology in the New Testament and Its Ancient Context, ed. Michael Labahn and Outi Lehtipuu (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 151–68, here 161. See also Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 2nd ed. (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 117, 133. 59

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Son’”; NRSV). Wis 2:18 belongs to Wis 1–6, which is a good example of Jewish tradition of the vindication of the righteous after death.64 This text declares that an innocent righteous person who was unjustly condemned and killed by the wicked will be vindicated and granted eternal life. An allusion to this text in the Passion narrative is found among the Synoptics only in Matthew. For this evangelist, Jesus is vindicated in his claim to be the Son of God through his obedient death. If this is the case, his resurrection could imply the resurrection of the saints.65 In other words, “Jesus’s resurrection would only be along with and at the head of those other Jews who had died unjustly or at least righteously before him.”66 Furthermore, as is well known, Matthew is very careful when referring to the Old Testament in the context of the fulfillment of the Scriptures.67 Although in contrast to his more formulaic style of quoting found elsewhere (e.g., 1:22– 23; 2:15, 17–18, 23; 3:3; 4:14–16; 8:17; 12:17–21; 13:14–15, 35; 21:4–5; 27:9– 10), he does not quote any text of Jewish Bible in Matt 27:52–53; nevertheless, he could allude to some of them, since he is always theologically concerned about the fulfillment of the expectations of the Scriptures in Jesus the Messiah.68 Matthew was definitely familiar with the LXX,69 whose canonical status had not been yet established.70 Thus, Matthew could have shared the early Christian belief that Jesus died as a righteous sufferer and was resurrected as it is predicted in the Jewish tradition of the vindication of the righteous after death. His resurrection is a bodily one, as it is promised to Jewish sufferers. Matthew could have taken the idea very seriously that those righteous sufferers who refuse to reject the Law will be raised. Therefore, when Jesus’s body is 64 Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 168–69. Another allusion in Matt 27:43 is to Ps 22:8: “Commit your cause to the LORD; let him deliver – let him rescue the one in whom he delights!” (NRSV). This also depicts Jesus’s passion and death as a suffering of the righteous one; see also Tobias Nicklas, “Die Gottverlassenheit des Gottessohns: Funktionen von Psalm 22/21 LXX in frühchristlichen Auseinandersetzungen mit der Passion Jesu,” in Aneignung Durch Transformation: Beiträge zur Analyse von Überlieferungsprozessen im frühen Christentum. Festschrift für Michael Theobald, ed. Wilfried Eisele, Christoph Shaefer, and Hans-Ulrich Weidemann, Herders Biblische Studien (Freiburg/Basel/Vienna: Herder, 2013), 395–415, here 395–402. 65 Donald Senior, “The Death of Jesus and the Resurrection of the Holy Ones (Mt 27:51– 53),” CBQ 38 (1976): 312–29, here 325–28. 66 Borg and Crossan, The Last Week, 174. 67 Hagner, Matthew, liv–lvii. 68 Ibid., lvii. For instance, in Matt 27:43 Matthew alludes to Wis 2:18 without mentioning this explicitly. 69 Ibid., lvi. 70 Lee Martin McDonald, The Old Testament, Its Authority and Canonicity, vol. 1 of The Formation of Biblcal Canon, 4th ed. (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 67–75, 310– 14.

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raised as promised, the bodies of other Jewish righteous sufferers should also be raised. Since the most explicit promise of this resurrection is found in 2 Macc 7, it is very logical to assume that Matthew, first of all, had in mind those Maccabean righteous ones to whom it was promised.

G. Conclusion I have proposed that Matt 27:52–53 is much more than only an allusion to several biblical prophecies (e.g., Ezek 37:1–14 or Zech 14:4–5), a combination of Mark’s Passion material with some oral epiphanic traditions, or probably a sign of the eschatological resurrection. It is a reference to a fulfillment of the promise of resurrection for the righteous sufferers. In the Jewish tradition, this type of resurrection is designated for an innocent righteous one who suffered unjustly at the hands of the wicked, died, and will be vindicated by God and granted eternal life through his/her bodily resurrection. For Matthew, Jesus is vindicated by God to confirm that he is indeed the Son of God. Therefore, his death brings salvation, while his resurrection inaugurates the deliverance from death. Moreover, according to Jewish beliefs, resurrection is promised to all righteous individuals who suffered for their faith and allegiance to the Lord and his law. Perhaps for Matthew, who may well have been aware of this belief, Jesus’s resurrection, which is also a case of the resurrection of the righteous sufferer, initiates the resurrection of such martyrs. In other words, if Jesus is raised as a righteous sufferer, other righteous sufferers from the past have to be raised as well. Second Macc 7, which is the clearest example of such Jewish belief, emphasizes the bodily character of this resurrection. Matthew also emphasizes such a character of resurrection for both Jesus and the saints, indicating the same type of resurrection in both cases. This is how and why the resurrection of the saints and the resurrection of Jesus are bound together in Matthew’s narrative. Finally, with whom could these saints be identified? Although, it might be that Matthew did not have any specific figures in mind, but rather was concerned with the particular fulfillment of this expectation of resurrection, some important details of his story that were discussed above demonstrate that this evangelist could relate this to the righteous sufferers of 2 Macc, whose graves, according to some early beliefs, were near Jerusalem. If my suggestion is correct, Matt 27:52–53 can be seen as an example of one of the earliest Christian receptions of 2 Macc 7.

List of Contributors List of Contributors Christian Blumenthal Acting Professor of Exegesis of the New Testament, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany. Ian Boxall Associate Professor of New Testament, The Catholic University of America, USA. Richard A. Burridge Professor of Biblical Interpretation, King’s College London, Great Britain. R. Alan Culpepper Dean and Professor Emeritus of New Testament, Mercer University, USA. Research Fellow, Department of Old and New Testament, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Roland Deines Professor of Biblical Theology and Ancient Judaism, Internationale Hochschule Liebenzell (University of Applied Sciences), Bad Liebenzell, Germany. Paul Foster Professor in New Testament Language, Literature and Theology, The University of Edinburgh, Great Britain. Thomas R. Hatina Professor of Religion and Culture, Trinity Western University, USA. Visiting Professor, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk President of the Theological Educational and Research Association, Moscow, Russian Federation. Carl R. Holladay Charles Howard Candler Professor Emeritus of New Testament, Emory University, USA. Jan Joosten Professor of Old Testament, Faculté de Théologie Protestante, Université de Strasbourg, France. Craig S. Keener F. M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies, Asbury Theological Seminary, USA.

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Matthias Konradt Professor of New Testament, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany. William R. G. Loader Professor Emeritus of New Testament, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. Extraordinary Researcher, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. Joel Marcus Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Christian Origins, Duke Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina, USA. Tobias Nicklas Professor of Exegesis and Hermeneutics of the New Testament, Universität Regensburg, Germany. Research Fellow at the Department of New Testament Studies, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr Professor of New Testament, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany. Alexey Somov Associate Professor of New Testament, St. Philaret’s Orthodox Christian Institute, Moscow, Russian Federation. Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Studies “Beyond Canon,” Universität Regensburg, Germany. Michael Tilly Professor of New Testament and Ancient Judaism, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany. Research Associate at the Department of New Testament Studies, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

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Index of Sources Hebrew Bible Genesis 2:1–3:19 2:4–28:9 3:3 3:19 3:24–31:21 5:18–24 5:24 12:10–20 18:1, 8, 22 20:3–7 20:4 25:7 31:24 32:26 35:24 37–45 37:5–11 37:26–28 37:28 38 39:7–20 45–46 46:1–4 46:1–7

28, 90, 114 114 114 323 142 114 91 91 29 320 37 323 44 37 323 36 374 36 37 36, 86 240 36 36 37 29

Exodus 1:15–22 2:1–10 2:11–15a 2:15b 2:14–25 2:16–22 3:1–4:17 3:5 3:6 4:15

114, 303 241 124 124 124 124 124 124 320 257, 318 321

4:18–27 5:22 6:2–30:10 7–12:32 7:8–13 9:16 12:33–42 13:17–15:21 14 15:22–26 15:27–16 16:4–36 17:1–7 17:8–16 18 19–24 19:3, 20 20:18, 21 22 22:20–26 22:25–26 23:3 23:9–11 24:10 24:15–18 25:10–40 25:17 26:1–14, 31–37 26:15–30 27:1–8 27:9–19 28 29 31:14 32 34:29–35 34:33

124 124 114 124 124 205 124 124 119, 126 124 124 119, 126 124 124 124 115, 124 278 320 320 287 287 287 287 320 125 125 320 125 125 125 125 125 126 119, 126 119, 126 125 246

428

Index of Sources

35:2 38:8

119, 126 125

Leviticus 5:2 5:3–5 8 8–9 11:24ff. 12:4 15:5, 7, 10–12, 19 15:5ff. 16 19:8 19:9–10 19:12 23:22 24:10–16 25:36–38 27:30

207, 304, 313, 323 323 323 126 126 323 323 323 323 323 212 287 267–268 287 119, 126 287 282

Numbers 9:1–14 9:8 11:31–33 12:5 13–14 15:32–36 15:38–39 15:38–41 15:40 16 16:1–3 17 17:23 19:11 20:1–13 20:14–21 21:1–3 21:16–18 21:21–32 22–24 22:28 24 24:17 25 27:1–11 31 31:16

114, 304 119, 126 320 124 320 124 119, 126 310 157 310 119, 126 126 126 34 324 124 124 124 124 124 124 321 105–106 19, 107 124 119, 126 125 124

32

125

Deuteronomy 4:1 4:2, 24 4:10 5:5, 31 5:31 6:4 6:5 6:6–7 6:8 6:13 6:16 7:2 7:6 8:3 13:6 14:2 14:21 14:22–23 15:1–11 22:12 23:3 24:6–22 25:17–19 26:19 28:9 28:25 31:1, 24 32 32:32 32:45 33–34 33:3 34:7

303–304 321 321 320 320 321 255 212, 257, 267 202 310 255, 267 255, 267 287 370 255 238 370 370 282 287 157, 310 240 287 124 370 370 210 246 204 242 246 119, 126 370 44

Joshua 2 6–7 8:31

240 240 240 87

Ruth 1:16

240 240

2 Samuel 1:18 11:23 17:23

87 240 86, 313

429

Index of Sources 23:34

240

1 Kings 2:3 11:17, 40 12:15 17:17–24 22:19

87 29 87 372 320

2 Kings 1:8 2:12 4:31–37 5:7 5:8 13:21 15:5 15:13 15:14, 15, 20 25

110 236 372 312 312 372 323 312 312 90

3 Kings LXX 22:19

320

2 Chronicles 12:15 23:18 24:20–22 31:3 36:21

87 87 27 87 87

Nehemiah 11:1, 18

377

Esther 4:17

89, 374 201

Job 33:2–4 42:17

50, 207, 371 321 371

Psalms 9:21 11:1 16/15:10 22:8 22/21 LXX 22:2 38:10

5, 140, 205 321 237 205 379 379 207 321

47:8 50 50:17 77:2ff. 78:1 79:2b–3 84:3 99:1 102:6–7 109:1 109:1 LXX 110:1 118:23 118:23 LXX 118:26 LXX 118:131 119 124:7 146:8

320 5 321 321 321 205 237 320 237 257 267 132, 257, 320 26 267 267 321 202 237 334

Proverbs 14:21, 31 17:5 LXX 19:17 22:8 22:9 LXX 27:8 31:28

287 287 287 379 287 237 321

Ecclesiastes 9:3–6

142

Isaiah

1:10 1:15 6:1 6:9–10 7 7:14 8:23–9:1 11 13:19 17:4–6 19:1 22:2–4 24:13 25:8

107, 135, 140, 157, 242, 248, 318–319, 377 242 213 320 137 131 162, 209 155, 317 105–106 240 167 24 165 136 204

430

Index of Sources

35:5–6 40:3 42 42–53 43:1 48:2 52–53 52:1 52:7 53 53:4 53:7 58:1–8 61 66 66:19

334 110, 267 187 105 31 377 374 377 232 195 205, 209 321 288 107 135 165

Jeremiah 6:20 7:3–11 9:23 16:14 16:16–18 18:2 19:2, 11 23:14 27:3–10 31:15 34:17 39 41:17 LXX 43:6–7 50:40 51:33

86, 320, 377 288 288 287 377 320 86 86 242 164 77–78 210 90 210 29 242 267

Lamentations 4:6 5:18

242 237

Ezekiel 1:10 3:27 13:4 16:46–49 16:63 29:21 33:22 34 36:25–31

8, 224, 367 302 321 237 242 321 321 321 116 224

37:1–14 37:7 37:12

248, 367, 380 367 367

Daniel 1:7 2:2, 10 2:26 2:44 3 4:26 6 7 7–12 7:9–10 7:13 7:13–14 7:18, 21–22, 25 7:27 8:24 9:24 10:1–12:4 10:16 12 12:2 12:2–3

89, 377–378 23 241 23 364 202, 374 245 374 106–107 137 320 204 235 370, 378 370 370 377 375 321 131 142 372, 375

Hosea 2:21 6:6a 6:6 6:6b 11:1

287 211–214 156, 206, 212–214, 277, 282, 287–288 212 77, 205

Joel 2:28–29 2:32 3:13 4:13

248 248 267 136

Micah 6:7 6:8

8 214 287

Nahum

140

Habakkuk 2:4

140 313

431

Index of Sources Zephaniah 2:9 1:2–3

242 135

Zechariah 8:23 14

367 310–311 367

14:3–9 14:4–5 11:12–13 11:13 LXX 7:9–10

364 365, 367, 380 86 267 287

Malachi

6

Early Jewish Literature Apocrypha Judith 16:24

89, 201 238

1 Maccabees 1:60–61 2:70 4:21 6:8 7:17 14:41,46 14:41–43

88–90 241 238 245 245 205 301 111

2 Maccabees

7:42 8:4 14:37–46 14:46 15:14 15:14–16 15:24

90, 373, 375, 377– 378, 380 321 241 374 321 378 195, 365–366, 374– 375, 377, 380 374 241 374 374 377 377 378

3 Maccabees 2:5 4:21 6:8

374 242 245 245

3:15 6:10 6:18–31 6:23 6:31 7

4 Maccabees 1:11 2:10–12 4:22–23 5–7 5:23 5:35 7:4 7:9 8–18 8:26 9:30 11:12 13:15 14:7 15:30 16:11 16:14 16:16 17:11 17:15, 16 17:16 17:17, 23 18:15

373–374, 378 376 238 378 374 374 321 378 374 374 374 374 374 374 378 376 238 374 374 374 374 321 374 378

Sirach 15:5 16:8 22:12 23:1, 4 24:2 24:19–20 28:2 29:10–11 39:5 51:23–26 51:25–26

321 242 238 245 321 187 353 237 321 186–187 321

432 Tobit 2:6 3:10 4:3–4 4:9 6:14

Index of Sources 89, 205 205 313 238 237 238

Wisdom of Solomon work 201 1–6 373–374, 379 2:18 378–379 4:2 374 5:5 370 9:3a 360 10:12 374 10:21 321 18:9 370 Pseudepigrapha Apocalypse of Abraham work 113 Apocryphon of Ezekiel work 113 Aramaic Levi Document work 113 Ascension of Isaiah work 172, 176 Assumption of Moses 10:1–8a 364 1 Baruch

113

2 Baruch 14:12 21:24 24:1 26:1–27:13 29 44:14 69:3–5

90–91, 105, 113 237 371 237 243 140 237 243

3 Baruch

113

4 Baruch 2:4

236

1 Enoch 1–36 3–71 6:2 6:7 9:4–5 37–71 38:2 39:6 40:5 45:3 45:3–4 46:2–4 47:3 48 48:2 48:6 48:10 49:2, 4 50:1–5 51:1–2 51:2 51:3–4 52:4 52:6, 9 53:6 55:4 60:2 61:5, 8, 10 61:8 62–63 62:1 62:2–3, 5 62:5, 7, 9, 14 63:11 69:27, 29 70:1 71:14, 17 104:2–6

91, 106, 113 136 107 245 241 350 106 106 106 106 190 106 106 190 107 106 106 106 106 368 367 365 106 106 106 106 106, 190 190 106 190 374 106 190 106 106 106 106 106 372

2 Enoch 44:5

186 283, 354

3 Enoch 18–24

247

433

Index of Sources 4 Ezra 2:18 6:35–9:25 7 7:31–36 7:77 8:49 8:63–9:8 10:57 11:57 13 13:30

105, 113 377 139 140 372 237 283 243 281 354 107 243

Letter of Aristeas 228

238

Jubilees 8:3 12:17 13:16–18 23:11–25 23:13 32:20 36:1 36:10 36:23–24 50:13

90, 113 241 241 241 243 243 246 243 242 240 246

Letter of Jeremiah 113 Levi Document

113

Liber antiquitatum biblicarum (Pseudo-Philo) work 373 9 37 9:5 240 Life of Adam and Eve work 113 Lives of the Prophets work 113 Prayer of Nabonidus work 113 Psalms of Solomon 210 3:10–12 372

9:2 17:21–25

210 106

Pseudo-Ezekiel

113

Song of Miriam

113

Sibylline Oracles 1:323–401 3:46–56 3:213–215 3:221–222 3:227–229 3:246 3:741–761 4:162–165

176 364 243 241 241 281 140 244

Testament of Abraham 8:3 350 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs Work 113, 176 Testament of Job

373

Testament of Joseph work 37 Testament of Judah 10:6 240 25:1–4 371 Testament of Levi 6:10–11

350

Testament of Moses 7–8 243 9 374 Testament of Naphtali 8:7 279 Testament of Zebulun 5:3 353 8:1–3 353 Testament of Solomon work 25

434

Index of Sources

Visions of Amram 113 Vision of Samuel

113

Philo of Alexandria De Abrahamo 118 De Iosepho

118

In Flaccum 25

112

Legatio ad Gaium 309 360 324–326 112 Legum allegoriae

114, 120

De migratione Abrahami 89–92 186 De opificio Mundi work 113 De praemiis et poenis work 114 58 241 83 281 Quaestiones et solutions in Genesin 1–4 114 Quaestiones et solutions in Exodum 1–2 114 De specialibus legibus work 113 1.315 109 De vita Mosis 1 1.1 1.1, 4–5 1.1–4 1.5–334 1.5–17 1.18–33 1.20 1.32

113,120–123, 234 114–118, 121, 123 121 120 115, 123 123 123 123 115 115

1.34–43 1.44–46 1.46 1.47–50 1.51–59 1.57 1.60 1.60–62 1.61 1.63–84 1.67–70 1.85–95 1.96–146 1.147 1.148 1.148–162 1.149 1.150 1.153–154 1.157 1.158 1.160 1.162 1.163–180 1.175 1.181–187 1.188–190 1.191–208 1.201 1.209 1.210 1.210–211 1.212–213 1.214–219 1.220–236 1.237–238 1.239–249 1.250–254 1.255–257 1.258–262 1.263–299 1.300–304 1.305–318 1.319–333 1.334 1.8 2 2.1–7 2.3, 8

123 123 115 123 123 115 116 123 116 123 118 123 123 124 116 116, 123 116 116 116 116 116 116 117 124 115, 119 124 124 124 115, 119 124 115 124 124 124 124 124 124 124 124 124 115, 124 124 124 124 115, 124 115 115, 117–118, 124 115, 117, 124 120

435

Index of Sources 2.8–25 2.8–65 2.26–44 2.45–65 2.66 2.66–67 2.68–70 2.66–70 2.66–186 2.69–70 2.71–76 2.77–83 2.81–82 2.84 2.84–88 2.88 2.89–93 2.94–108 2.96 2.98–99 2.101 2.103 2.104 2.109–135 2.115 2.117–135 2.136–140 2.138–139 2.141–145 2.146–160 2.161–173 2.174–179 2.180–186 2.181–186 2.187 2.187–191 2.187–291 2.191 2.192 2.192–208 2.192–245 2.198 2.200 2.204 2.209–220 2.211 2.211, 215 2.216 2.221–232

117, 124 117, 121, 124 117, 124 124 114 125 125 117 117–118, 121, 125 115 125 125 118 118 125 118 125 125 118 118 118 118 118 125 118 118 125 118 125 125 125 125 125 118 117, 119 125 119, 121, 125 119 119, 121 119, 126 126 119 119 119 119, 126 121 119 120 119, 126

2.233–245 2.237 2.246–257 2.246–287 2.258–269 2.270–274 2.274 2.275–287 2.279 2.280 2.288–291 2.292

119, 126 120 119, 126 126 119, 126 119, 126 120 119, 126 120–121 120 126 126

Josephus Vita 10–12

320

Contra Apionem 1.1ff 1.30 2.206

89 241 238

Antiquitates judaicae work 88, 109 2.216 37 4.219 245 10.195–203 241 13.230–299 111 13.301 111 14.4–7 111 14.76 241 14.145–148 111 14.152, 172 111 14.190–212 111 14.194–195 112 14.379–389 112 15.298 241 16.147 241 17.149–167 108 17.174–179 241 17.206–218 108 17.216 108 17.269–270 108 17.271–272 108 17.273–277 108 17.278–284 108 17.317–320 112 17.320 242 18.15 182

436

Index of Sources

18.16 18.34 18.116–119 18.237 18.240–255 18.252 19.329, 359 20.97–99 20.169–172 20.188

372 241 110 112 112 112 241 108 107 109

Bellum judaicum 1.50–53 1.68–69 1.70 1.120–122 1.153 1.169–170 1.243–244 1.282–285 1.404

109 111 111 111 111 111 111 112 112 243

1.422–428 1.437, 659–660 1.648–655 2.5–13 2.11 2.55 2.56 2.57 2.60–65 2.93–94 2.119–166 2.162 2.181 2.182–183 2.183 2.258–262 2.261–263 2.264–265 2.266 2.267–268 2.478

241 241 108 108 108 108 108 108 108 112 104 182 112 112 112 107 109 109 241 242 242

Dead Sea Scrolls Apocryphon of Joshua work 113

1Qap Genar (Genesis Apocryphon) 20:2–10 240

Genesis Apocryphon work 115

1QM (War Scroll) 1:9b–11a 11.6–7 12:5 15:1

Prayer of Nabonidus work 113 Pseudo-Ezekiel

113

Song of Miriam

113

The Vision of Samuel work 113 Visions of Amram work 113 1Q56

106

137 106 245 243

1QS (Community Rule) 3:6–9 224 4:20–22 224 6:24–7:25 356 9:11 106 4Q201–206 (The Enoch Scroll) work 136 4Q521 (Messianic Apocalypse) work 107 CD (Damascus document) 7:19–21 106

437

Index of Sources

Rabbinic Literature b. Giṭ. 57b

377

b. Meg. 3b

238

b. Pes. 62b b. Šabbat 116b

y. Ter. 7:1

241

m. ʾAbot 1:3 2:9, 13 3:2, 6 3:14 5:25

245 247 247 247 202

m. B. Bat. 8:6

31

m. B. Meṣ. 2:11

238

m. Ber. 7:3.

247

m. Soṭah 9:15 m. Yebam. 15:1, 8–10

t. Ber. 3:14

245

t. Ḥag. 2:1

245

t. Peʾah 1:4 3:8 4:18 4:21

247 247 237 245

t. Roš Haš. 1:18

247

t. Šabb. 7:22, 25 7:23 13:5

247 242 247

t. Sanh. 1:2 7:9 13:1, 6 13:8 14:3, 10

247 236 247 242 247

t. Taʿan. 2:13

247

t. Yebam. 14:10

245

’Abot. R. Nat. 26, §54B

240

Behuq. 8.269.2.15 16:7

245 245

297

245

m. Sanh. 10:1

245 245 247

241

y. Qidd. 1:2, §24

m. Ketub. 1:6–9

t. B. Qam. 7:5 7:6 7:7

245

242

243, 245

245

438

Index of Sources

Lev. Rab. 2:9

242

Mek. Bahodesh 11.48ff

247

Mek. Pisha 1.81–82 2.44–46

242 241

Midr. Lam. 1:16

377

Pesiq. Rab. 35:3 43

242 377

Sipra Behuq. 2.264.1.3 6. 267.2.1 79.1.1.

242 245 245

Sipra Qed. 6.203.2.1 9.207.2.13

241 245

Sipra VDDeho. 7.45.1.1

245

Sipra VDDen. 2.2.4.2 4.6.4.1. 65

247 247 247

Sipre Deut. 43.3.5 171.4.1 352.1.2.

242 241 245

Sipre Num. 11.2.3 11.3.1 42.1.2 42.2.3 76.2.2 78.1.1 78.5.1 80.1.1 82.3.1 84.1.1 84.5.1 85.3.1 85.4.1 85.5.1 115.5.7

247 247 247 247 247 247 247 247 247 247 247 247 247 247 237

New Testament Matthew

3–14, 17–20, 22, 26–28, 31, 33, 36, 38–39, 41–42, 44, 46–47, 52–59, 61, 65, 67, 69, 71–73, 76–81, 83, 85–87, 90, 92–93, 97, 101– 103, 105, 110–113, 120–123, 127–128, 131, 134–135, 137, 139, 142–145, 147– 183, 185–191, 193– 197, 201–203, 205– 215, 217–219, 223, 226–229, 233–235,

1 1–2 1:1 1:1, 20 1:1–17 1:2 1:3–6

237, 239–244, 248, 251–255, 257–262, 266–342, 346–350, 352, 354, 356–359, 361–363, 366–367, 369–371, 377–380 277 36, 45, 152, 162, 244, 252 28, 46, 110, 122, 234, 240, 303, 326 162 79, 138 138 249

Index of Sources 1:6 1:11–12 1:15 1:16 1:16, 18 1:17 1:18 1:18–25 1:18–2:23 1:19 1:20 1:20, 24 1:20–21, 23 1:21

33, 234, 313 138 33 36, 44, 138 29, 33 162 32, 303 29, 34, 36, 339, 352 33, 79 29, 42, 46, 333 36, 252 252, 266 36, 122 277–278, 280, 293, 304, 322, 326 1:22 77, 266, 272, 318 1:22–23 141, 271, 273, 281, 379 1:23 208, 238, 247, 250, 252, 259, 276, 279, 310 1:25 36 1:45 87 2 20, 241 2:1 44, 102, 241 2:1, 3 102 2:1, 5, 22 102 2:1, 5–6, 8, 16 102 2:1–2 19, 249 2:1–3 234 2:1–12 19–20, 30 2:2 111, 241, 313 2:2, 9–10 174 2:5–6 77 2:6 280, 293, 357 2:6, 15, 17–18, 23 141 2:10–11 19 2:11 19, 33 2:12, 19 19, 36, 252 2:13, 19 36, 266 2:13, 19, 22 36 2:13–15 24, 237, 339 2:13–15, 19–23 29, 36, 38 2:13–23 36, 102 2:14 36 2:14, 21 29 2:15 77, 205, 266, 271– 273 2:15, 17, 23 77

2:15, 17–18, 23 2:16 2:16–18 2:17 2:17–19 2:18 2:19 2:20, 21 2:20–21 2:22 2:22–23 2:23 3 3:1, 5 3:1–2 3:2 3:2–6 3:3 3:3–12 3:5 3:5–6, 13 3:6 3:7–12 3:8 3:9 3:9–4:15 3:10 3:10–12 3:11 3:11–12 3:13 3:13–17 3:14 3:14–15 3:15 3:16 3:16–17 3:17 4:1–11 4:2 4:3, 6 4:4 4:4, 7, 10 4:5 4:7

439 281, 379 21, 241 39, 341 318 271 77–78 252 102 102 36, 102, 155 30 33, 46, 81, 102, 271 102, 138, 178 102 194, 217 189, 234, 249, 358, 360, 364 244 86, 267, 272, 318, 378 188 102 102 194, 322 142, 275, 341 361 241, 255 249 268 188 194, 218, 223–224, 245 218 102, 155 218 245 218–219 46, 78, 174, 282, 290, 326, 332–333 225, 259 226 122, 187 255, 361 338–339 255, 259 255, 339 318 5, 26, 370, 377 26, 255, 267

440 4:7, 10 4:8 4:10 4:12 4:12, 15, 18, 23 4:13 4:13–15 4:13–17 4:14 4:14–16 4:15 4:15–16 4:16 4:17

4:18 4:18–21 4:18–22 4:19 4:19–20 4:23 4:23–24 4:23–25 4:23–5:2 4:24 4:24–25 4:25 5 5–7 5:1 5:3–10 5:3–12 5:3–7:27 5:4 5:5 5:5, 6, 10 5:6 5:6, 10 5:6, 10, 20 5:7 5:7–7:12 5:9 5:10–12 5:11–12 5:12

Index of Sources 272 26, 359–360 26, 255, 267 155 102 102, 237 242 319 77, 271, 318 141, 271, 281, 379 46, 102, 155, 242 276 280 189, 194, 217, 234, 237, 249, 280, 358, 364 102, 155 336 336, 340 320 236, 250 155, 180, 191, 234, 277, 280 276, 336 235, 336 280 277 308, 312 102, 155, 280 178, 281 121, 143, 172, 246, 284, 291, 297, 329 159, 280, 320 143 332, 352 4 268 286 326 268, 286, 290, 333, 339 333 282 268, 286 280 268, 286 139 333 283, 321, 354

5:13–16 5:14–16 5:16 5:16, 45 5:16, 45, 48 5:16, 48 5:17

5:17–18 5:17–19 5:17–20

5:18 5:18–19 5:19 5:19, 21–26 5:19–20, 22 5:20

5:20–25 5:20–48 5:21 5:21, 27, 33, 38 5:21–24 5:21–32 5:21–48 5:21–7:11 5:22 5:23 5:23–24 5:25–26, 29–30 5:26 5:27–28 5:28 5:28, 38–42 5:28–30 5:29–30 5:31–32 5:33 5:33–32 5:33–37

281, 347 340, 355 281 259 314 266 78, 160, 189, 280– 281–282, 286–287, 297, 303–304, 311, 313, 317, 325–326, 354 6, 78, 297 279, 299 46, 159, 188–189, 279, 281, 302, 326, 353 189, 282, 303, 322, 353 154 190, 281, 283, 285– 286, 353, 354–355 142 275 143, 160, 279, 283– 284–286, 326, 333, 355, 362 339 336 341 6 163 285 189, 280, 284–285, 355 163 5, 285–286 173 173, 309–310 275 173 163, 339 286 297 342 142 160, 339 267–268, 273 285 163, 355

Index of Sources 5:34–35 5:35 5:37 5:38–42 5:38–48 5:39 5:42 5:43 5:43–48 5:44, 46–47 5:44–45 5:44–47 5:45 5:46 5:48 6:1 6:1, 4, 6, 8, 9, 14 6:1–18 6:1–6 6:2–4, 19–21 6:4, 6, 18 6:4, 6, 18–27 6:5 6:5–6 6:5–13 6:6 6:9 6:9–10 6:9–13 6:10a 6:10c 6:11 6:12, 14–15 6:12b 6:13 6:14, 26, 32 6:14–15 6:15, 18, 26, 32 6:16 6:16–18 6:19–20 6:19–21 6:24 6:24–34 6:25–34 6:30 6:33

357 102 164 355 285, 339 87, 173 286 6 355 173 286 297 334 87 173, 260, 289, 293, 355–356 259, 282, 314, 333 266 163 261 160, 163, 286 260 142 173 163 160 340 259, 273 362 142, 173, 195, 265 351 351 277, 339 286 322 265 260 156, 172, 195, 322 266 173 155, 160, 163 357, 362 237, 286 5 237 339 154, 337, 361 252, 257, 268, 290, 333, 353, 361

7:1–2, 12 7:1–2, 13–27 7:1–5 7:3–4 7:6 7:7–11 7:9 7:11 7:11, 21 7:12 7:12, 21 7:16, 20 7:19 7:21 7:21–22 7:21–23 7:22 7:24 7:24–27 7:28 7:28–29 7:29 8:1 8:2, 6, 8, 21, 25 8:3 8:4 8:5 8:5–13 8:6 8:9 8:10 8:10–12 8:11 8:11–12 8:12 8:13 8:14 8:15 8:16 8:17 8:18–19 8:19–22 8:20 8:20, 22 8:21 8:21–22 8:24

441 172 275 286, 339 314 163, 173 160 235, 339 259 266 156, 160, 173, 279– 280, 286, 297, 325 297 5 268, 342 259, 290 322 189, 284 266 322, 325 143–145, 340 4, 143, 159, 246 280, 321 190 340 266 323 309, 311, 318 102, 339 158, 242, 336 266 235 158, 335 249 137, 242 275 5, 242 158, 335 340 323 276, 336 77, 141, 205, 209, 271, 281, 318, 379 237 320, 336–337 237, 340 250 339 237 237

442 8:26 8:28 8:28–34 8:29 8:33 9 9:1 9:1–7, 14–17 9:2 9:2, 22, 29 9:2–6 9:2–6, 13 9:2–7 9:2–8 9:5–6 9:6 9:6, 8 9:8 9:9 9:9–11 9:9–13 9:10–13 9:10–11 9:11–13 9:13

9:13b 9:14–17 9:15 9:16 9:17 9:18–19, 23–26 9:18–26 9:18 9:20 9:25 9:27 9:28 9:29 9:32 9:35 9:35–10:1 9:36 9:37b–38 9:38

Index of Sources 153–154, 337 249, 340 242 122, 259 340 155 340 336 277, 322 335 195, 323 322 322 277 322 235 156 255, 278, 362 174, 336 340 277–278, 336 214, 322 322 318 46, 86, 156–157, 211, 277, 282, 287, 314, 334, 355 287 155 339 340 156, 339 372 341 324, 340 157, 310, 323, 340 270, 324 46, 110, 122, 276, 340 266, 335 323 340 180, 191, 234, 276– 277, 280, 336 235 158, 276, 340 267 267–268, 273, 340

10 10:1 10:1, 8 10:1–4 10:1–8 10:2 10:3 10:5 10:5–7 10:5–42 10:6 10:7 10:8 10:9 10:9–10 10:10 10:11 10:12–14 10:15 10:15, 26–33 10:16 10:16–23 10:17 10:18 10:19 10:20 10:21 10:20, 29, 32, 33 10:22 10:23 10:24–25 10:28 10:28–39 10:29 10:32 10:32, 33 10:32–33 10:32–33, 41–42 10:33 10:35–36 10:35–37 10:39 10:39–42 10:40–42 10:41 10:41–42

121, 143, 165, 235, 246 235, 319 336 336 321 166 340 102, 239 239 4 85, 165, 239, 293 194, 234, 239, 249, 312 235, 270, 341 340 337 87, 173 244 340 242, 249 143 174 139 164, 180, 191 239, 312 268 268 339 266 304, 322 158, 163, 165, 217, 235, 239 306 238 341 340 262 259, 261 261, 337 275 239 339 339 5 144 244 333 283, 354

Index of Sources 10:42 11:1 11:1–6 11:2–3 11:2–5 11:2–6 11:5 11:7–9 11:8 11:10 11:11 11:11–14 11:11a 11:11b 11:12 11:12–13 11:13 11:16–17 11:16–19 11:18 11:19 11:20–24 11:21 11:21–22 11:23 11:23–24 11:25 11:25, 26, 27 11:26 11:27 11:27a 11:27b 11:27c 11:28 11:28–30 11:29–30 11:29a 11:29b 12:1–8 12:1–14 12:3 12:4 12:5 12:5–7 12:6 12:7 12:8 12:9

337 4, 143, 159, 246 336 122 107 188, 227 270, 336, 341 228 340 86 229–230, 283 325 228, 230 229–230 325 229 317 339 228 340 322, 338–340 275 102 102 102 242, 249 267–268, 273, 357 266 218 188, 261, 279 262 262 262, 282 279 163, 187, 279, 357 279, 293, 303, 319 279 279 156, 160, 187, 214 282, 353 83, 318 259, 339 161 156 317 46, 86, 211, 283, 287, 314 257 180, 191

12:9–14 12:14–15 12:15 12:17 12:17–21 12:18–21 12:22 12:23 12:25 12:26 12:27, 36–37 12:28 12:28a 12:28b 12:30 12:31 12:31–32 12:31–37, 41–42 12:32 12:33 12:33–37 12:38–45 12:41 12:41–42 12:42 12:44 12:46–50 12:49–50 12:50 13 13:1–52 13:3–8 13:5–52 13:11 13:14 13:14–15, 35 13:14–17 13:16–17 13:17 13:18 13:18–23 13:24–30 13:27 13:24–43 13:30, 39–43 13:31–33 13:33

443 160, 187 341 276 77, 318 141, 271, 281, 379 187–188 336 46, 110 339 362 143 252, 259, 350, 352, 358–362, 364 362 362 135, 138 173, 322 322 275 138, 270 174 136 336 165, 316 242, 249 316 340 33, 336, 339 243 259, 261–263, 266, 290 121, 143, 246 234 340 4 137 318 379 137 317 40, 333 153 120 162 266 341 135 352, 364 340

444 13:35 13:36–43, 47–50 13:39–40 13:41 13:42 13:43 13:44–46 13:45 13:47–48 13:47–50 13:48 13:49 13:49–52 13:50 13:52 13:53 13:53–56 13:54 13:55 13:55–56 14:2 14:3–12 14:6 14:14, 34–36 14:15–21 14:17, 19 14:28, 30 14:28–29 14:31 14:33 14:36 15 15:1 15:1–20 15:2, 26, 33, 34 15:3 15:3, 6 15:3–6 15:4 15:4–5 15:6 15:7 15:8 15:11 15:11a 15:12 15:13 15:13–14

Index of Sources 77, 141, 271, 281 275 138 363 5 266, 334 162, 237 340 340 162 78, 341 334 144 341 190, 326, 340 4, 143, 159, 246 33–34 191 30, 33, 41, 43 178, 339 270 341 155 276 277, 339 339 266 166 154, 337 153, 259 310, 323 283 102 157, 282 339 255 157 339 255, 257 283 255 318 172 157 314 157 174, 261–262, 264, 266 157

15:19 15:20 15:21 15:21–28 15:22 15:23 15:24 15:28 15:29 15:29–31 15:30 15:31 15:32–38 15:33–39 15:36 16:1–4 16:5–12 16:8 16:8–12 16:13 16:14 16:16 16:17 16:17, 27 16:17–19 16:18 16:19 16:21 16:21–23 16:21–20:34 16:24 16:24–26 16:24–27 16:25 16:25–27 17:3–4 17:4 17:5 17:7 17:10 17:14 17:14–18 17:15 17:18 17:20 17:22

283 157 102, 158 158, 242, 249, 336, 338 46, 110, 266, 276, 340 303 85, 158, 240, 276, 293, 357 158, 240, 243, 335 102, 155 276, 336 336 254, 362 277 339 339 336 339 154, 337 154 102, 243, 249 318 122, 259, 262, 377 259, 261–262 266 17, 19, 163, 300 12, 138, 150, 166 337, 355, 358 102, 141, 270 293 293 238, 250 341 337 304 275 317 340 122 323 335 340 336 276 340 154 102, 122, 155

Index of Sources 17:22–23 17:24 17:24–27 17:27 18

141, 270, 293 102, 340 313 340 121, 246, 291, 293, 357 18:1–4 283, 291, 293, 337 18:2–5 339 18:3–4, 8–9 34–35 275 18:3–35 4 18:5 291 18:6 77 18:6, 10, 14 337 18:6, 20 323 18:6–35 357 18:8–9 342 18:8–9, 23 143 18:10 263 18:10, 14 261, 263 18:10, 14, 19 259, 266 18:12–13 340 18:12–14 291 18:13 263 18:14 85, 263 18:15–17 139, 173, 291–292 18:15–18 339 18:17 12, 150 18:17b 292 18:18 278, 337, 355 18:19 263, 292 18:19–20 347 18:20 250, 276, 293, 339 18:21 292 18:21–22 337 18:21–35 292 18:22 292 18:23–27 277 18:23–35 163, 264, 292, 322– 323, 337, 361 18:35 195, 261–262, 264, 266 19 261 19–21 329, 329 19:1 4, 102, 143, 155, 159, 246 19:1–9 160 19:1–12, 16–26 336 19:2 276 19:3–10 339

19:4 19:5–9 19:6 19:13–15 19:16 19:16–22 19:16–22, 27–30 19:17 19:18 19:18–19 19:19 19:19–26 19:21 19:23–25 19:23–27 19:24 19:25 19:27–30 19:28 19:28–29 19:29 19:35 20:1–16 20:20–21 20:13 20:17–18 20:17–19 20:18 20:18–19 20:20–23 20:23 20:24–28 20:25 20:25–28 20:28 20:30 20:30, 31 20:30–31 20:31 20:34 20:37–39 21 21:1, 10 21:1–9 21:4 21:4–5

445 83, 361 318 361 339 283 283, 288, 319 337 283, 341 339 283, 285, 288–289 339 336 237, 250, 288–289, 293 289 275 252, 258, 361–362 304 338 138, 337 259, 339 243 87 163, 340 154 121 102 293 122 141, 270 265 261, 264, 266, 283, 354 337 291 291, 357, 363 195, 290, 322–323, 326, 342 340 276 46, 87, 110 122 323 341 155 102 83 77 141, 271, 281, 379

446 21:5 21:9 21:9, 42 21:9, 15 21:11 21:12 21:14 21:14–17 21:16, 42 21:18 21:21–22 21:23 21:23–27 21:24 21:25 21:26 21:28–32 21:30 21:31 21:31–32 21:32 21:33 21:33–46 21:34, 43 21:34–37, 43, 45 21:39 21:42 21:43 21:46 22 22:1–14 22:2–13 22:2–14 22:5 22:7 22:8–10 22:11–14 22:12 22:13 22:14 22:15–46 22:16 22:21 23:23 22:23–33 22:24 22:29 22:30

Index of Sources 293, 357, 363 267 272 46, 110 102, 110, 155 340 276, 340 336 83 338–339 335 83 235, 335 87 339 110 163 266 252, 340, 361 335 282, 332–333 340 121 257 178 121 26, 191, 267, 318, 340, 362 26, 361 110 256 162, 278, 361 339 341 340 101, 141, 340 278 275, 278 340 5 139, 172 336 256 256 287, 369 256 318 256, 318 259

22:30–31, 38 22:31 22:31, 43 22:32 22:32a 22:34–40 22:36–40 22:37 22:37, 44 22:39 22:39a 22:40 22:41–45 22:41–46 22:42–43 22:42–45 22:44 22:45 23 23–25 23:1–3, 5, 7b–10 23:1–39 23:2 23:2–3 23:3 23:3, 13 23:4, 11 23:5 23:7–8 23:8 23:8, 10 23:8–10 23:9 23:10 23:10–11 23:13–15, 23 23:15–22 23:16–22 23:16–26 23:17, 19 23:18 23:23

23:23–24 23:24–28 23:25 23:25, 27 23:26

369 257, 318 83 254, 256–257 257 254, 257, 282, 336 160 254, 257, 267 272 272 282 286, 325 122 257 318 110 257, 267 267, 273, 301 17, 156, 164 121, 143, 246 164 19, 362 164, 191, 318 6, 160, 314 164 356 164 164, 310, 339 236 243 282 236 266 164, 243 337 5 164 160 6 5 164 154, 160, 164, 190, 214, 282, 285, 299, 322 354 339 164 5 164

Index of Sources 23:26–27 23:27 23:28 23:29 23:29–34 23:30–34, 35–39 23:32 23:32–36 23:32–39 23:34 23:34–35 23:34–36 23:35 23:37 23:37–39 23:39 24 24–25 24:2 24:3–25:46 24:4–22 24:6–8 24:9 24:10, 13 24:10–12 24:13, 22 24:14

24:14–30 24:15 24:16 24:17, 26, 43 24:18, 40 24:19 24:20 24:27 24:29–25:46 24:29–31, 45–51 24:30 24:30–31 24:31 24:32 24:32–25:46 24:35 24:35, 37, 42, 44 24:36 24:37–42 24:37–25:30

354 174 334 164, 333 174 178 78, 259 341 275 164, 180, 191 139 376 27, 333 102 376 267 138, 158, 166 134, 143 141 4 139 243 139, 158 173 173 304 137, 308, 158, 234, 243, 247, 249, 308, 312 340 83, 101 102 340 340 339 5, 282 340 275 338 173 137 173 340 234 308, 322 339 266 144 132

24:38 24:40–41 24:41 24:42 24:45–51 24:51 25:1–12 25:1–13 25:9 25:14–30 25:20, 22, 37 25:24, 26 25:30, 41, 46 25:31 25:31–46 25:32 25:34 25:34–46 25:40, 45 25:46 26 26:1 26:1–27:66 26:7 26:14–16 26:15–16 26:21–25 26:24 26:26 26:26–28 26:28 26:29 26:29, 39, 42, 53 26:32 26:34 26:36–46 26:37 26:39 26:39, 42 26:41 26:45 26:52–54 25:53 26:54 26:54, 56 26:54–56

447 339 143 135, 340 173 246 342 337, 339 163 340 163, 247 266 340 342 190 163, 188, 243, 262, 264, 283, 337–338 135, 249 261–262, 264, 266, 334 145 243 144, 334 178, 264 4, 143, 159, 246 366 174 37 246 141 17 339 12 195, 223, 278, 293, 322–323, 326, 357 264 261, 266 102, 155 141 265 265 265 265, 290 265 323 293 265 85 318, 323 85–86

448 26:56 26:57 26:61 26:63–64 26:70–75 26:71 27:1–10 27:3–10 27:4 27:5 27:9 27:9–10 27:10 27:11, 29, 37 27:19 27:19, 24 27:24 27:25 27:32 27:40 27:42 27:43 27:45 27:45–50 27:46 27:51 27:51–53 27:51–54 27:51b–52b 27:51b–53 27:52 27:52–53 27:53 27:54 27:55 27:57–66 27:62–66 28 28:1–10 28:1–15 28:2 28:2–4 28:6 28:7 28:7, 10. 16 28:9–10 28:10, 16 28:11–15

Index of Sources 85, 239 26 172, 259 122 239, 246 102 86 164 323 313 77, 318 141, 271, 281, 379 267, 272 111, 234, 313 30, 36, 164, 334 46 19 17, 164 239 259 234, 313 377, 379 366 366 207, 274 367, 369–370 376 134, 366 366 164 44, 270, 367 364–367, 369–371, 375–377, 379–380 367–369, 376–377 122, 243, 249 102, 155 339 164 131, 165 245 249 266, 367, 369–370 134, 164 270 155, 239 102 164 155 164, 245, 296, 339

28:15 28:16 20:17–20 28:18 28:18–20 28:19

28:19–20 28:20

28:20b Mark

1:1–3 1:4 1:5 1:7–8 1:8 1:9a 1:9 1:9–11 1:10 1:14 1:15 1:16 1:17 1:22 1:23–28 1:25, 34 1:28

164 239, 363 363 5, 234–235, 245, 358 135, 158, 164, 245 12, 46, 165, 173, 245, 247, 265–266, 321 235, 246, 281, 308 138, 235, 239, 246– 248, 250, 276, 281, 321, 353, 357 147 3, 5–7, 9–10, 12– 13, 41, 55, 57–59, 61, 65, 71–72, 76, 79–80, 83, 85–86, 90, 110, 143, 152– 159, 161–162, 166, 168–169, 177–180, 182, 186–187, 194– 195, 206–207, 211, 213, 217–219, 223– 224, 226, 234–235, 242–244, 248, 252– 253, 261, 266, 269, 288–289, 295, 303, 308, 312, 315–316, 320, 342, 346, 377, 380 86 218, 223, 278, 322 219 218 194, 224 226 155 226 225 155 77, 194, 252 155 320 190 155 153 155

449

Index of Sources 1:39 1:44 1:45 2–3 2:5–10 2:14 2:23–28 2:27 3:1–8 3:7 4:10–12 4:11, 26, 30 4:13 4:34 4:38 4:40 5:18–20 5:19 5:22–24, 34–43 5:41 5:43 6:3 6:11 6:21 6:56 7:1–23 7:3–4 7:15 7:17 7:19 7:24 7:31 7:36 8, 9, 10 8:7 8:31 9:1, 47 9:30 9:31 10:1 10:14, 15, 23, 24 10:17–22 10:25 10:32–34 10:35–36 10:45 11:1–10 11:25 12:1–9

155 311 153 187 195 177 187 156 187 155 153 252 153 153 237 153 158 158 372 5 153 41–43 312 155 310 157 157 157 153 154, 157, 282, 314 153 155 153 154 79 376 252 155 376 155 252 283, 319 252 376 154 195, 290 83 195, 322 376

12:6 12:17–21 12:32 12:33 12:34 13 13:1–37 13:9 13:10 13:14 13:35 14:22–24 14:24 14:25 14:28 14:43–47 14:49 14:53 14:62 15:33 15:33, 38 15:34 15:39 15:41 15:43 16:4 16:7 16:8 16:9–20 16:12, 15

121 79 254 212 252 133, 158, 235 134 312 158 83 79 12 223 252 155 86 85–86 26 204 366 366 207 243 155 252 370 155 233 131, 248 239

Luke

3, 5–6, 9–10, 26, 29, 31, 33, 39, 41, 58–59, 65, 67, 76, 78, 84–85, 88, 90, 103, 107–108, 110, 114, 152, 156, 159, 166, 169, 172, 177– 178, 186, 211, 218, 220, 228–229, 248, 253, 261, 267, 295, 302, 312, 316, 338, 346, 378 29, 371 33 29 228 31 29

1–2 1:26–27 1:27 1:41–44 1:60–63 2:4, 16

450 2:4, 39 2:51–52 3:15–18 3:16 3:21–22 3:23 4:5 4:9 4:12 4:16–30 4:22 5:14 6:20–49 6:31 6:31, 36–38 7:18–23 7:22 7:24–26 7:28 7:28a 7:28b 7:31–35 8 8:40–42, 49–56 8:44 9:5 9:19 9:57–62 9:60 10:2 10:21 11:2–4 11:49–51 11:51 12:8, 9 12:8–9 12:31 13:34–35 16:16 16:16b 18:18–23 20:13 20:17 20:18 21:13 21:36 22:17–20 22:54 24

Index of Sources 33 40 218 224 225 29 26 26 26 107 29, 41, 43 311 279 279 172 227 107 228 229–230 228, 230 229–230 228 26 372 310 312 377 320 18 267 267 142–143 376 27 261 261 258 376 229 229 319 121 26 26 312 132 12 26 131, 248

24:11 24:27 24:47 27:2

245 86 248 370

John

29, 58–59, 71, 82, 86–87, 90, 149, 167, 171, 178–180, 182, 185–187, 191– 194, 196–197, 221– 222, 248–249, 253, 295, 298, 302–304, 346 221 221 192 191 221 221 222 227 227 222 225 222 320 29, 43 23 43 193 248 222 222 222 192 193 248 25, 133 25 192–193 192 193 29, 41, 43 193 193 180, 192 248 222 23

1:6 1:6–8 1:16 1:17 1:19–20 1:20 1:26–27 1:29 1:30 1:31 1:33 1:35–37 1:35–42 1:45 2:1–11 2:1–12 3:1–10 3:17 3:26 3:30 4:1 4:10–14 4:22 4:42 5 5:2 5:39–40 6:32 6:32–33 6:42 6:63 7:19–24 9:22 10:36 10:41–42 11

451

Index of Sources 11:1–44 11:25 12:19 12:20–21 12:42 16:2 17:18 17:20 18:13 19:25 20 20:1 20:21 20:22 20–21

372 368 248 248 180 180, 192 248 249 26 35 248 370 248–249 248 131

Acts

12, 58, 84–85, 90, 166, 168, 207–208, 222, 248–249, 295, 298, 314, 346–347, 378 248 347 248 249 12 248 245 205 248 132 248 108 84 370 370 243 84 284 205 220 224 220 154 109 110 320 245 182

1 1:1–2a 1:8 1:8–11 1:41–42 2:21 2:21, 38 2:27 2:33 2:36 2:38 5:36 7:2–60 9:13 9:32, 41 12:4 13:16–41 15 15:16–17 18:14–19:7 19 19:1–7 21:21 21:37–39 21:38 22:3 22:16 26:5

26:10

370

Romans 1:4 1:7 1:18 3:31 8:4 9:4 9:17 10:4 10:9 11:25–26a

375 370 245 300 281 321 205 326 245 154

1 Corinthians 1:2 1:10–17 1:12 2:15 7:17–20 8:4–13 9:5 9:19–21 11:24 12:3 15 15:3–4 15:3–8 15:5–6 15:12–19 15:20 15:20–21 15:20–23 15:54

61, 166 370 219 166 331 154 154 166 154 86 245 133 86 131 134 368 375 132 371, 375 204

2 Corinthians 2:1 5:21

370 219

Galatians 2:1–10 2:7–8 2:11–14 2:12–13 5:2–7 5:14 6:2

166 284 166 154 166 154 281 281

452

Index of Sources

Ephesians 1:1 1:23 3

370 78 133

Colossians 4:16

305

1 Thessalonians 1:9–10 2:14–16 2:16 4 4:15 5:27

132 376 350 133 132 305

2 Thessalonians 1 2 2:2

133 133 305

1 Timothy 4:13

305

Hebrews 1:1–2 1:6 7:7

167, 171, 180, 193, 204, 208, 315 86 204 219

7:11 8:6 11:35b 12

321 321 377 133

James

167–168, 171, 174, 180, 182, 330–331

1 Peter

304

1 John 4

133

Revelation 5:5 5:8 7:4 8:3 11:3–12 11:18 13:7, 10 14:1 14:12 14:15–16 16:6 20:4, 6 21:2 21:22 22:21

133 302 370 370 370 375 370 370 370 370 136 370 370 370 370–371 370

Early Christian Literature Apostolic Fathers 1 Clement 13.2 15.2

172 172

2 Clement

172

Didache 1–5 1.2 1.3 1.36–2.1 2.4 2.5

172–174 173 173 173 173 173 173

3.7 6 7 7–15 7.1 8 8.1 8.2 9.5 11.7 13.2 14.2 15.3 16 16.1

173 173 173 173 173 173 173 173 173 173 173 173 173 173 173

453

Index of Sources 16.4 16.5 16.6

173 173 173

Letters of Ignatius work 172 To the Ephesians 14.2 17.1 19.2

174 174 174

To the Magnesians 8.2 172 To the Smyrnaeans 1 175 1.1 174–175 To the Philadelphians 3.1 174 5.1–2 175 6.1 174–175, 180 8.2 175 To Polycarp 2.2

175

Polycarp Letter to the Philippians work 172 2.3 176 Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha, and Later Christian Writings Adomnan of Iona Adamni de locis sanctis libri tres work 28 Ambrose De Joseph patriarcha 14 37 Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucam 3.2 42 Apocalypse of Peter work 176

Arabic Infancy Gospel work 21–22, 24 7 21 8 21 Augustine City of God 18.43

210

De opere monachorum 13.14 34 Sermones 5 51.30

42 34

Bede Commentaire sur luc 1.1.27–28 39 Bernard de Feltro De sancto Joseph 30

35 35

Bernard of Clairvaux Homilies in Praise of the Virgin work 38 2.16 38 12 38 29 40 Clement of Alexandria Hypotyposes 6 315 Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 14.15 315 Breviarius de Hierosolyma work 27–28 Burdigala/Bordeaux Itinerarium 24–26 II 8 25 Epiphanius of Salamis Anchoratus 60.1 34

454 Panarion 51.5.3 51.10.7–8 78.8

Index of Sources

315 34 34

Eusebius of Caesarea Ecclesiastical History 1.7 331 3.39.15–16 176 3.39.16 11, 102, 315 4.17 306 4.24.6 315 5.8.2 176 5.10.3 176 6.14.5 315 6.17 306 6.25.4 176 6.25.6 315 5 Ezra

176

Fortunatianus of Aquileia Commentary on the Gospels work 34 Gospel of James

9

Gospel of Peter

172, 176

Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew work 21, 33, 38 10:1 42 16:1 21 16:2 21 17–25 39 17:2–25:1 36 18–22 39 18:4 34 20 40 27 40 146 107 Gospel of the Ebionites work 172, 176, 298 Gospel of the Nazoreans work 172, 176, 219, 298 Gospel of Thomas 11, 33, 172

Haimo of Auxere Homilary 12

38

Hilary of Poitiers Commentary on Matthew 1.4 34 2.1 46 14.2 43 Hippolytus Refutatio omnium haeresium 5.26.29 42 7.8 306 10.1 233 History of Joseph the Carpenter 1.8 42 2.1 33 2.3 34 9.2 42, 45 15–29 44 17 44 26 44 Homily on the Church of the Rock work 24 Infancy Gospel of Thomas 13 42 Ireneaus of Lyons Against Heresies 3.1.1 176, 315 3.11.8 302–303 5.33.3–4 11 Jacob ben Reuben Book of the Wars of the Lord work 298 Jerome Adversus Helvidium de Mariae virginitate perpetua 19 34 Adversus Pelagianos dialogi 3.2 219

455

Index of Sources Commentariorum in Matthaeum libri IV 11:1–2 227 Dialogue with the Luciferians 7 225 Praefatio in Evangelio work 315 Jeronimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios Summary of the Excellencies of St. Joseph, Husband of the Virgin Mary work 38 John Chrysostom Homilies on Matthew work 296 36.2 227 Joseph ben Nathan Book of Joseph the Zealot work 298–299 Niẓẓaḥon Vetus

299

Justin Martyr Apology 33:2 44:11 52:1

78 78 78

Dialogue with Trypho 36:1 78 88 42 88.4 219 91 37 110 78 117 78 Nativity of Mary 8:4 10:4–5

33–34 34 36

Origen Commentarii in Genesim 14.3 20

Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei work 296 10.17 34 Contra Celsum 1.51 6.36

22 42

Homiliae in Genesim 15.5 37 Fragment 202

227

Peter Chrysologus Sermon 48 42 146 37 Protevangelium of James work 20, 27, 33 8:3 34 9:1–2 34 14:2 36 21:1–22:1 39 22 36 24:1–3 27 Pseudo-Clementines Recognitions 176, 222 1.33–71 175 1.42.8 222 1.60.1 222 Pseudo-Jerome Homilia in Evangelium secundum Matthaeum 2 39 Quentin Massys Rest on the flight into Egypt work 41 Remigius of Auxerre Homeliae in Mattheum 4 39 Shem Ṭov Ibn Shapruṭ Touchstone 299

456 Simon Magus Homilies 2.17.23

Index of Sources Tractatus super Matthaeum work 296 222 Theophilus of Alexandria History of the Monks in Egypt work 39

Tertullian Adversus Judaeos 10 37 Adversus Marcionem 3.18 37

Theophylact of Ohrid Explanation of the Gospel of Matthew work 9–10

On Baptism 10.5–6

Vision of Theophilus work 24, 39

223

Greco-Roman Literature Aulus Gellius Noctes atticae 19.1.7–10 Avianus Fables 15–16

234

Cicero Orator 40.139

238

Hrk. 48.11

238

245 Diogenes of Sinope Epistle 38. 234

Babrius Fables 16.10

245

Demetrius Style 5.304

Dionysius of Halicarnassus De Demosthene 58 233

233

Epictetus Diatribe 2.9.20

244

Hermogenes Progymnasmata 8

241

Herodian Roman History 8.8.8

233

Hesiod Works and Days 375

245

Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca historica 10.3.4 Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent Philosophers 6.2.21 234 6.5.87 234 6.2.36, 75–76 234 6.5.87 234 7.1.22 234

457

Index of Sources Isocrates Ad Demonicum (Or. 1) 52 233 Justinian Institutes 2.105 2.10.6 Livy History of Rome 6.34.6–7 Lucan Civil War 10.542–46 Phaedrus Fables 4.15 Philostratus Vita Apollonni 8.7 Plato Timaeus 39d Pliny Natural History 5.15.71

245 245

To an Uneducated Ruler 7 233 Moralia 326C 345B 351B 782F

233 233 233 233

On the Fame of the Athenians 8 233 245 On the Fortune of Alexander 2.13 233 233

Publicola 8.4

245

245

Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.33.44 238

238

Theon Progymnasmata 2.86–88

77

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War 8.109.1 233

243

Plutarch De fortuna Romanorum 13 233

241

Valerius Maximus Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium libri 9.15. 233

Index of Modern Authors Aarde, Andries van 36, 365, 367 Adler, Yonatan 310, 324 Agourides, Savas 171 Aland, Barbara 360 Aland, Kurt 360 Aletti, Jean-Noël 65, 73 Alfeyev, Metropolitan Hilarion 3, 305, 307, 309, 315, 327 Alkier, Stefan 346 Allison, Dale C., Jr. 31, 37, 52, 86, 101– 103, 151, 156, 159, 161–163, 168– 170, 174–176, 181, 218–219, 225, 229, 246, 256, 260–261, 263, 268– 269, 317, 354, 358, 367, 369, 371, 375 Anderson, Paul N. 171, 179 Anderson, R. Dean, Jr. 238, 241 Argyle, A. W. 37 Ashton, John 59 Assmann, Aleida 96 Assmann, Jan 18 Attridge, Harold W. 88 Aune, David E. 53, 225, 330–331 Aviam, Mordechai 150, 182 Baarlink, Heinrich 135, 141, 145–147 Baasland, Ernst 351 Bachmann-Medick, Doris 348 Backhaus, Knut 220–221 Bacon, Benjamin W. 103, 159 Bailey, Kenneth Ewing 238 Baird, William 308, 315 Balás David L. 295, 297, 304, 316 Baldensperger, Wilhelm 220–221 Barber, Michael Patrick 302–303 Barrett, C. K. 169 Barth, Gerhard 153, 155, 189–190, 194 Bartholomew, Gilbert L. 233 Bassili, William Farid 39

Bauckham, Richard 58–61, 66, 72–73, 151, 172, 179 Bauer, Walter 149, 360 Baum, Armin D. 316 Baxter, Wayne 153, 158 Becker, Eve-Marie 57, 330 Bellinzoni, Arthur J. 172, 296 Bennema, Cornelis 196 Berghorn, Matthias 138 Bernard of Clairvaux 35, 37–38, 40 Berrin, Shani L. 140 Betz, Hans Dieter 163, 190, 295, 330, 350 Billerbeck, Paul 211, 354 Bingham, D. Jeffrey 295–297, 304, 316 Birnbaum, Ellen 113 Black, C. Clifton 57 Black, Matthew 177 Blanton, Thomas R. 278 Blomberg, Craig L. 236, 368 Bloom, Harold 230 Blumenthal, Christian 345, 349–350, 355, 363 Böcher, Otto 225, 229 Bock, Darrell 57, 368 Bockmuehl, Markus 31 Bœspflug, François 39 Boff, Leonardo 33 Bond, Helen 71–73 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 163, 236 Boomershine Thomas E. 233 Borg, Marcus J. 379 Boring, M. Eugene 174 Bornkamm, Günther 136, 143, 145–146, 189, 194 Böttrich, Christfried 135 Bovon, Francois 24, 58–59, 229 Boxall, Ian 17, 29–31, 35, 295, 303 Brandenburger, Egon 147

Index of Modern Authors Braun, Herbert 224–225 Bremmer, Jan N. 20 Brennecke, Hanns Christof 24 Briggs, Charles Augustus 224 Brillante, Carlo 88 Broadhead, Edwin K. 122, 135, 151– 152, 161–162, 165–166, 173, 175– 177, 305, 307 Brodersen, Kai 25 Broer, Ingo 190 Brooke, George 140 Brooks, Stephenson 162 Brown, David 39, 45 Brown, Raymond E. 29, 31–32, 37, 43, 76, 162, 181, 221, 239, 271–272, 369 Bruce, F. F. 240 Bruner, Frederick Dale 371 Buchinger Harald 19 Bulbeck, R. 32 Bultmann, Rudolf 14, 52, 196, 221 Burchard, Christoph 280 Burridge, Richard A. 47–48, 50–51, 53, 56, 62–66, 68–69, 72, 105, 113, 121, 152, 248, 275, 330 Busch, Peter 26 Cadbury, Henry J. 243 Caputo, John D. 91 Carlston Charles E. 127, 132–134, 138– 139, 302 Carson, D. A. 334, 368 Carter, Warren 52–53, 58–59, 137, 350 Casey, Maurice 308 Charles, R. H. 101 Charlesworth, James H. 101, 140 Chorpenning, Joseph F. 30, 35, 38 Christman, Angela R. 303 Clark, Elizabeth A. 84 Claussen, Carsten 150 Cohen, Akiva 308, 314, 318 Cohen, Shayeh J. D. 104 Cohn, Norman 129 Collins, Adela Yarbro 57, 59, 105, 138 Collins, John J. 105–108, 129, 138 Conzelmann, Hans 229 Crawford, Sidnie White 114 Crossan, John Dominic 365, 367, 379 Cullmann, Oscar 221, 327

459

Culpepper, R. Alan 123, 149, 164, 170, 182, 233, 296 Cullmann, Oscar 221, 327 Cummings, J. T. 311 Curtis, K. Peter G. 169 Cuvillier, Élian 142, 289 Dahl, Nils 252, 254 Dalman, Gustaf 252 Davids, Peter H. 167 Davies W. D. 31, 37, 52, 86, 101–103, 156, 159, 161–163, 174–176, 181, 218–219, 225, 229, 246, 256, 260– 261, 263, 268–269, 354, 358, 375 Davis, Stephen J. 24 de Jonge, Henk Jan 373 de Jonge, Marinus 376 De Roche, Michael 135 Deasy, C. Philip 40 Deines, Roland 142, 288–289, 295, 297, 299, 301, 303, 307–309, 317, 319, 324, 327, 331–332 Deleuze, Gilles 95–97 Deutsch, Celia 356 Dibelius, Martin 224, 227, 230 Dodson, Derek S. 36 Donner, Herbert 27 Doran, Robert 377 Douglass, Laurie 24 Downing, John 376 Draper, Jonathan A. 174 Dresken-Weiland, Jutta 23 Drewermann, Eugen 230 Dunn, James D. G. 150, 152, 224 Edersheim, Alfred 228 Ehlen, Oliver 21 Ehrman, Bart D. 32, 42–44, 173, 175, 378 Eißler, Friedmann 21 Elledge, Casey D. 373 Elliott, J. K. 20, 27 Ellis, Peter F. 246 Esler, Philip 60–61, 179 Evans, Craig A. 55–56, 127, 132–134, 138–139, 298, 302 Etzelmüller, Gregor 338, 341 Fantham, Elaine 305

460

Index of Modern Authors

Farmer, William R. 233 Fee, Gordon D. 248 Feldman, Louis H. 101, 109, 113, 115, 128 Feldmeier, Reinhard 312, 352 Fiedler, Peter 137–140, 142, 144 Filas, Francis Lad 30, 44 Fine, Steven 150 Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 39, 229 Fogliadini, Emanuela 39 Fleddermann, H. T. 261, 267 Flusser, David 173, 206 Focant, Camille 57 Förster, Hans 22 Fortunatianus of Aquileia 34, 319 Foster, Paul 168, 251, 254, 259, 299, 301–302 Foster, Robert 253 Fowler, Alastair 49–51 France, R. T. 55, 75–76, 79–81, 189, 256, 262, 265, 267, 269–271, 317, 367–368, 371 Frankemölle, Hubert 284 Frerichs, Ernest S. 104 Frey, Jörg 132, 136, 143, 196, 298, 376 Freyne, Sean 236 Frickenschmidt, Dirk 56, 330 Frow, John 49–50 Gäckle, Volker 350 Gaiman, Neil 50–51 Garland, David E. 52, 164, 240 Garrow, Alan J. P. 174 Gärtner, Bertil 141 Gauthier, R. 41 Gabra, Gawdat 24, 39 Gentry, Peter J. 204 Giamberardini, G. 43 Gibson, Jeffrey B. 143 Giesen, Heinz 282 Gnilka, Joachim 31, 37, 136, 138–140, 142, 144, 292, 354, 360 Gnuse, Robert 36–37 Goldstein, Jonathan A. 375, 378 Good. Deirdre J. 39, 79 Goodacre, Mark 152, 218, 228 Grabbe, Lester L. 373 Gräßer, Erich 132 Gray, Sherman W. 244

Green, William S. 104 Grimshaw, James P. 362 Guattari, Felix 97 Gundry, Robert H. 75, 177, 195, 239– 240, 300 Gurtner, Daniel M. 127, 132, 134, 142, 300 Habicht, Christian 101 Hagner, Donald A. 127, 134–135, 137, 139, 144–148, 160, 189, 195, 246, 256–257, 262–264, 269–270, 274, 308, 312, 358, 367–368, 370–371, 379 Hahn, Ferdinand 137, 145 Hakola, Raimo 170 Halbwachs, Maurice 94–96 Hallet, Wolfgang 346 Hanson, John S. 36, 110 Harrington, Daniel J. 155, 181, 195 Hartin, Patrick J. 168 Hasitschka, Martin 167 Hatina, Thomas R. 75, 79, 92 Hawk, Brandon W. 35 Hays, Richard B. 78, 83, 316-317, 319– 320, 325–326 Heckel, Theo K. 178 Hendriksen, William 368 Hengel, Martin 128, 151, 178, 181, 185, 217, 236 Henning, Meghan 143 Henrichs, Albert 88 Herzer, Jens 127, 371 Hieke, Thomas 28 Hilary of Poitiers 31, 34, 36, 43, 46, 296 Hill, Charles E. 178 Hill, David 211 Holladay, Carl R. 101, 109, 116, 234 Holleman, Joost 132, 373, 375 Holtmann, Thomas 20 Holzmeister, Urbanus 34 Höpfl, Hildebrand 43 Hoppe, Rudolf 289, 355 Horgan, Maurya P. 140 Horrell, David 61 Horsley, Richard A. 110, 130, 134, 139 Howard, George 177 Howell, David B. 78 Huber, Konrad 345–346

Index of Modern Authors Hübner, Hans 189 Hummel, Reinhard 189, 194 Hurtado, Larry W. 178, 251 Iverson, Kelly R. 300, 302 Jacobs, Philip W. 30, 33, 35, 43 Jäggi, Carola 23 Jassen, Alex P. 137 Jeremias, Joachim 229, 234, 238–240 Johnson, Luke Timothy 167 Johnson, Marshall D. 240–241 Jones, F. Stanley. 222 Joosten, Jan 201, 205, 207, 212, 302 Josua, Maria 21 Kaiser, Otto 101 Käsemann, Ernst 149, 196, 220 Kavanagh, Denis J. 297 Kealy, Sean P. 295–297 Keener, Craig S. 34, 53–54, 58–59, 69– 73, 80–82, 181, 233–235, 239, 241– 242, 244–246, 248, 371 Keith, Chris 95 Kelber, Werner H. 94 Kelhoffer, James 178 Keller, Zslot 17 Kellermann, Ulrich 373, 375 Kellogg, Robert 85 Kennedy, George 177 Kent, W. H. 38 Kermode, Frank 76, 86 Kilpatrick, George Dunbar 75 Kingsbury, Jack D. 237 Kirk, Alan 159, 329 Kirk, J. R. Daniel 317 Kister, Menahem 205 Klaiber, Walter 137–140, 142, 144 Klausner, Joseph 8 Klijn A. F. J. 306 Klinghardt, Matthias 308 Klink, Edward W., III 59–61, 73 Kloppenborg, John S. 167–168, 177, 218 Knowles, Matthew P. 85 Knowles, Michael 83 Koch, Christiane M. 142 Koester, Craig R. 167 Koester, Helmut 172, 295–296

461

Köhler, Wolf-Dietrich 17, 173, 175, 296 Kollmann, Bernd 341 Konradt, Matthias 27, 136–140, 142, 144, 147, 151, 160, 165, 170, 181, 189, 191, 194, 275–276, 279–280, 282, 284–285, 287, 291–292, 303, 306, 314, 320, 332, 335, 348, 355– 357, 363, 369, 377 Koselleck, Reinhart 95 Kraft, Robert 103–104 Kruse, Heinz 212 Kugel, James L. 101 Kümmel, Werner Georg 101, 177 Kupp, David D. 277, 357 Kurz, William S. 90 Kürzinger, Josef 177 Kwon, JongHyun 300, 322 Ladd, George E. 132 Lake, Kirsopp 176, 243 Landmesser, Christof 277 Lange, Armin 377 Larsen, Kasper Bro 59 Last, Richard 151 Le Donne, Anthony 95 Lehtipuu, Outi 378 Leonhard, Clemens 19 Lenski, R. C. H. 368 Levering, Matthew 304, 326 Levin, Yigal 31 Levine, Amy-Jill 284 Licona, Michael R. 68–70, 72–73 Lienhard, Joseph T. 303–304 Lim, Timothy H. 140 Lincoln, Andrew T. 58–59, 67, 72–73 Litwa, M. David 81, 116 Loader, William R. G. 14, 185, 191, 194, 196, 338, 365 Lohfink, Gerhard 280 Löhr, Hermut 289 Lowenthal, David 95 Luck, Ulrich 136, 138–140, 142, 144 Luomanen, Petri 291 Luz, Ulrich 18, 30, 32, 36–37, 42, 54– 55, 59, 61, 76–77, 79, 83, 85, 101– 102, 127, 137–140, 142–145, 147, 151, 156, 159, 163, 169–170, 175– 177, 180–181, 219, 229, 257, 276– 277, 281–282, 284, 292–293, 299,

462

Index of Modern Authors

310–311, 329, 331–332, 341, 350, 352–354, 367, 369, 377 MacMullen, Ramsay 18 Magda, Ksenija 346 Magness, J. Lee 233 Manson, T. W. 239 Marcus, Joel 57, 179, 217, 219–220, 223–224, 226, 228, 230 Marincola, John 89 Markham, Ian 47, 66, 72 Martyn, J. Louis 149, 175, 183 Mason, Steve 224, 228 Massaux, Édouard 17, 172, 295–297 Massebieau, Eugene 76 Matera, Frank J. 134 Mattison, William C., III 329 May, Todd 96 Mayer-Haas, Andrea J. 282 Maynard, Arthur H. 171 Mayordomo-Marín, Moisés 345–346 McCane, Byron R. 238 McConnell, Richard S. 75 McDonald, Lee Martin 379 McGuire, Brian P. 35 McKnight, Scot 56 McLay, R. Timothy 204–205 McNeile, Alan Hugh 369 Meeks, Wayne A. 169, 186 Meier, John P. 44, 154, 180, 194–195, 300–301 Meiser, Martin 289, 331, 356 Meisinger, Hubert 289 Meistad, T. 297 Menken, Maarten J. J. 75, 209 Merenlahti, Petri 76 Merkt, Andreas 17–18, 22 Merz, Annette 133 Metzdorf, Justina C. 17, 329 Metzger, Bruce M. 258, 263 Metzner, Rainer 296, 304 Meyer, Heinrich August Wilhelm 368 Mitchell, Margaret 60, 73 Moessner, David Paul 76 Mohrlang, Roger 284 Moles, John 233 Moloney, Francis J., S.D.B. 30, 302 Momigliano, Arnaldo 89 Moore, George Foot 238

Morris, Leon 260, 263, 368 Mortley, Raoul 84 Moss, Charlene McAfee 311 Moule, C. F. D. 103 Mounce, Robert H. 368 Muddiman, John 169 Müller, Mogens 78 Müller, Ulrich B. 333 Mussies, Gerard 36 Nasrallah, Laura S. 346 Neumann, Birgit 346 Neusner, Jacob 104, 228 Newport, Kenneth G. C. 164 Neyrey, Jerome H. 62 Nickelsburg, George W. E. 373, 376, 378 Nicklas, Tobias 17–19, 21, 23–25, 151, 346, 365, 379 Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm 329, 339, 338, 365 Niehoff, Maren R. 105, 113 Nolland, John 56, 190, 262, 350–351, 368–369, 371, 376 Norton, Jonathan D. H. 210 Novakovic, Lidija 153 O’Leary, Anne M., PVBM 153 O’Brian, Peter T. 334 O’Rourke, John J. 78 Obermann, Julian 378 Ochs, Christoph 297 Oden, R. A., Jr. 243 Oegema, Gerbern S. 105, 132 Økland, Jorunn 346 Olmstead, Wesley G. 260 Osborne, Grant R. 270, 371 Oswald, Wolfgang 128 Otzen, Benedikt 128, 130 Overman, J. Andrew 83–84, 122, 181 Painter, John 170, 196 Pao, David W. 248 Park, Jeongsoo 277–278 Parrinder, Geoffrey 44 Parsons, Mikeal 58–59 Paul, John II 32 Payne, Richard E. 22 Pelling, Christopher B. R. 68–69

Index of Modern Authors Pennington, Jonathan T. 66–67, 72–73, 253, 258–259, 358 Philonenko, Marc 351, 358 Pikaza, Xabier 57 Pleše, Zlatko 32, 42–44 Plöger, Otto 101 Pollard, T. E. 373 Popa, Romeo 134, 136 Poplutz, Uta 19 Portier-Young, Anathea E. 130 Potter, Jonathan 114 Przybylski, Benno 282 Pusey, Karen 244 Quarles, Charles L. 260, 269, 368–370 Raju, Elaine 146 Ratzinger, Joseph 63–65, 327 Reed, Annette Yoshiko 222 Reicke, Bo 240 Reinbold, Wolfgang 160 Reinhartz, Adele 179 Reinink, G. 306 Reiser, Marius 136 Repschinski, Boris 286, 289, 350 Rese, Martin 78 Riches, John K. 363 Robinson, Bernard P. 32 Robinson, James M. 159 Rofé, Alexander 214 Rogers, Cleon 236 Roloff, Jürgen 137 Rölver, Olaf 142, 145, 350 Rothfuchs, Wilhelm 75, 141 Rowe, Galen O. 239 Rowley, H. H. 244 Royse, James R. 114 Ruini, Camillo 64 Runesson, Anders 122, 181, 284, 300 Runia, David T. 114, 304 Ryan, Jordan J. 150 Safrai, S. 238 Saldarini, Anthony J. 83–84, 299, 310– 311 Sanders, E. P. 104, 150, 185, 225 Sandmel, Samuel 114, 246 Sasse, Hermann 360 Schäfer, Peter 109, 298

463

Schatkin, Margaret 378 Schickert, Katharina 305–306 Schiffman, Lawrence H. 101 Schiller, Gertrud 35 Schmithals, Walter 147 Schnelle, Udo 308 Scholes, Robert 85 Schreiber, Stefan 132 Schreiner, Josef 101 Schreiner, Patrick 345–349, 351, 362 Schröter, Jens 95, 132 Schumacher, Thomas 351–353 Schürer, Emil 111 Schwartz, Barry 94 Schwartz, Daniel R. 112, 377 Schwartz, Sheila 35, 41 Schweitzer, Albert 106 Schweizer, Eduard 181, 194, 240 Schwienhorst-Schönberger, Ludger 142 Scriba, Albrecht 134, 144 Seifrid, Mark A. 334 Seitz, Joseph 30, 34, 43–44 Senior, Donald 77–78, 85–86, 159, 170, 379 Sicari, Antonio A. 29, 31–32 Sim, David C. 60–61, 83, 122, 127, 134, 137–141, 143, 145, 147, 154–155, 158–159, 165, 167, 175, 179, 181, 189, 282 Simonetti, Manlio 296, 283–284, 299– 300, 363 Skarsaune, Oskar 298 Slee, Michelle 173, 284 Sleeman, Matthew 346 Smallwood, E. Mary 89, 108 Smith, Justin Marc 61–62, 73 Smith, Terence V. 155 Snodgrass, Klyne 281 Snyder, Graydon F. 171 Soares-Prabhu, George M. 30, 37, 75– 76, 271 Söding, Thomas 62, 331 Sommer, Michael 346 Somov, Alexey 365, 372, 375 Sparks, H. F. D. 169 Sparks, Kenton L. 89 Spieckermann, Hermann 312 Stanton, Graham N. 52–53, 56, 59, 80, 83, 86, 141, 170, 173, 178–179

464

Index of Modern Authors

Stassen, Glen H. 163 Stendahl, Krister 202 Sterling, Gregory E. Stevenson, G. H. 242 Stewart, Eric 84, 88 Stock, Augustine 139 Strack, Hermann L. 211, 354 Strecker, Christian 338 Strecker, Georg 76, 103, 134, 139, 141, 143, 146, 222 Streeter, B. H. 7, 173–175, 181 Stuckenbruck, Loren 136 Stuhlmacher, Peter 327 Suggs, M. Jack 160–161 Svartvik, Jesper 154, 157, 168 Swoboda, Sören 373 Tàrrech, Armand Puig i 62–63 Telford, William R. 57 Thate, Michael J. 346 Theissen, Gerd 242 Theobald, Michael 196 Thiselton, Anthony C. 132 Thomas, John C. 253 Thompson, Marianne 196 Thüsing, Wilhelm 196 Tilly, Michael 127–133, 135–137, 139– 142 Tosato, Angelo 32 Tov, Emanuel 203 Trexler, Richard C. 30 Tromp, Johannes 367 Tuckett, Christopher M. 48, 218, 261, 266, 295 Turner, David L. 55–56, 368 Tzaferis, Vassilios 243

Viviano, Benedict T. 169, 181 Vogel, Manuel 332 Vogt, Hermann Josef 296 Vollenweider, Samuel 345 Vuong, Lily C. 27 Waetjen, Herman C. 37 Walker, Rolf 146 Wallace, Daniel B. 236, 268 Walton, Steve 47–48, 52, 58, 70 Wardle, David 233 Wasserman, Tommy 28, 178 Waters, Kenneth L. 134, 370–371 Webb, Robert L. 167 Wehnert, Jürgen 222 Weidemann, Hans-Ulrich 330 Weingarten, Susan 24 Weiß, Hans-Friedrich 140 Weissenrieder, Annette 133, 338, 341 Wendebourg, Nicola 131 Weren, Wim J. C. 92, 181, 288 White, Hayden 93 Wiefel, Wolfgang 137–140, 142, 144 Wilken, Robert L. 180 Williams, Catrin H. 87 Williams, Linda 51 Willits, Joel 155, 168 Wink, Walter 227 Winn, Adam 57 Wiseman, Donald J. 241 Witherington, Ben, III 54, 57, 59, 181 Witte, Markus 334 Wodecki, Bernard 135 Wouters, Armin 278, 291 Wrede, William 13 Wright, Edward T. 69–70 Wright, N. T. 375

Udoekpo, Michael Ufok 135 Vahrenhorst, Martin 139, 145 van der Watt, Jan G. 372 VanderKam, James C. 106–107 Varkey, Mothy 188, 190 Vermes, Geza 114 Verheyden, Joseph 17 Via, Dan O. 29, 46 Viljoen, François P. 157, 179 Vine, Cedric E. W. 60–61, 151 Vinzenz, Marcus 308

Yamauchi, Edwin M. 241 Yarnold, Edward 288 Zahn, Theodor 315 Zakowitch, Yair 240 Zangenberg, J. K. 168 Zellentin, Holger M. 297–298 Zeller, Dieter 132 Ziethe, Carolin 286 Zsengellér, József 114

Index of Subjects Aeon 131, 135, 138–140, 145, 147, 353 Allegorical Exegesis 117–118 Anthropology 330–331, 338 Antioch 7, 101–102, 166, 172–176, 180–182, 241, 306, 378 Antitheses 142, 163, 190, 280, 283–285, 288, 301, 318, 338, 355 Apocalyptic(ism) 59, 91, 104, 109,123, 127–140, 143–148, 158, 172, 225, 370 Aramaic 5, 7, 75, 77, 102, 176–177, 202, 204–208, 215 Audience 5–6, 45, 48–49, 51, 53, 60– 62, 73, 84, 91, 157, 183, 233–235, 241, 244, 246–247, 280, 296, 334 – Jewish 5, 103, 244 Authority 6, 130, 156–157, 160, 165– 166, 171, 180, 182, 185, 186, 190– 192, 234–235, 245, 277–278, 280, 301, 317–319, 321–322, 363 Baptism 12, 34, 43, 64, 79, 122, 165, 173, 175, 187–188, 194–195, 217– 220, 222–229, 244–245, 249, 265, 269, 321, 326 Bethlehem 19–20, 22, 29, 33, 45, 102, 341 Biography 32–33, 43, 47–49, 53–56, 59, 62–63, 66–71, 76, 81, 105, 248, 307, 330 – Biographical Hypothesis 48, 57, 59– 63, 65, 67–73 – βίοι 56, 105, 113, 120 Body 25, 27, 44, 84, 91, 195, 347–348, 373, 379 Canon/Canonical 3, 21–22, 67, 82, 85, 90

– Canonical Gospel(s) 7, 10–11, 26, 41, 43, 52, 67, 101, 105, 217, 253, 272, 298, 301–302, 308, 316, 379 – Christian Canon 304 – Extra/Non-Canonical 20, 22, 25, 27, 33, 36, 45, 62, 91, 301 – New Testament Canon 3, 6, 330 Catacomb Paintings 22–23 Church Tradition 3,7–9, 11, 13, 15, 315 Christology 134, 279 – Docetic Christology 22 – Johannine Christology 188 – Lukan Christology 22 – Markan Christology 134, 179 – Matthean Christology 110, 282, 293, 363 – See also “Messiah” Community(ies) 4, 45, 48, 53, 60, 62, 77, 104, 133, 135, 143, 150–151, 170, 179, 186, 311 – Apocalyptic Community 145 – “Christian” Community(ies) 8, 12, 72, 132–133, 151, 166, 169–171, 179–180, 182, 215, 272, 291, 318, 337, 342, 347, 370 – Jewish-Christian Community 10, 149, 152, 298 – Jewish Community 6, 9, 135, 299, 338 – Johannine Community 88, 169–171, 180, 182–183 – Markan Community 55 – Matthean Community 60, 77, 84–85, 93, 136–137, 139, 148, 150–151, 155–156, 159–160, 162–163, 171, 175, 179–181, 183, 189–191, 197, 263–264, 291–293, 299, 306, 322, 336 – Qumran Community 106, 224 Competition 182, 220–223, 230

466

Index of Subjects

Confession 122, 131, 133, 227, 245, 261–262, 322–323, 331 Coptic Church 39, 43 Council of Trent 43 (Counter-)Reformation 13 Cross 4, 148, 195–196, 207, 234, 237– 239, 279, 326, 342, 357, 361, 366 – See also “Passion,” “Resurrection” Crucifixion 111, 132, 165, 243, 254, 274, 363 David, King 33, 44, 79, 86162, 211, 240, 257, 301, 313, 318 – Davidic Descent 29, 31, 33, 175 – Davidic Lineage 29, 31, 41, 162, 252 – House of David 106, 112 – Son of David 4, 45–46, 110, 112, 122, 153, 158, 166, 234, 303, 313, 318, 326, 363 – See also “Messiah” Dead Sea Scrolls 106, 140, 202–203, 210 Death 38, 43–44, 48, 50, 53, 108, 111, 113, 119, 121, 142, 237–238, 340– 341, 372–374, 376, 379 – of Jesus 4, 32, 44–45, 70, 97, 122, 134, 141–142, 154, 164, 195–196, 223, 225, 257, 264, 270, 274, 278, 303, 312, 319, 323–324, 338, 349, 353, 366, 368–369, 376, 380 – See also “Cross,” “Passion,” “Resurrection” Decision 112, 119, 138, 208, 212, 284, 301, 306, 337, 353, 361, 364 Democratization 104 Discipleship 61, 67, 139, 235–239, 247, 250, 258, 277, 288–290, 336–337, 339, 354–355 Discourses 56, 121–122, 155, 246 Dream 36–38, 46, 79, 130, 164, 252 Drinking 264, 334, 338 Dualism 136–137 Earthquake 134, 164, 367, 369–370, 376 Eating 156–157, 166, 187, 314, 338– 339 Encomiastic Language 121 End of Times 358, 372, 375, 378

Episodic Arrangement 121 Eschatology 106, 123, 127, 131, 133, 144–145, 148, 224, 365, 372, 376 Eternal Life 192–193, 195–196, 237, 283, 288, 319, 322, 334, 379–380 Ethics 117, 125, 144–145, 197, 213, 246, 258, 275, 279, 286–288, 290, 292, 338, 348–349 Faith 8, 14, 38, 64, 91, 128, 131, 141, 143, 148, 153–154, 158, 160, 164– 165, 170, 186, 190, 192–193, 196, 237, 240, 242–243, 249, 287, 293, 299, 305, 315, 323, 325, 327, 330– 332, 335, 337, 342, 380 Family 4, 22, 24, 30, 33, 36, 39–40, 42– 43, 45, 48–49, 238, 240–241, 337– 339, 352 Fasting 155–157, 160, 163, 339 Flight to Egypt (apocryphal reception) 24, 29 Forgiveness 122, 156, 167, 171, 194– 196, 218–219, 223–226, 229, 264, 270, 277–278, 292–294, 322–323, 352–353, 355, 357 Fulfillment/Formula/Quotations/Reflexi onszitate 75, 77–80, 82–85, 87, 90– 95, 97, 103, 141, 161–162, 281 Galilee 35, 38, 46, 102, 108, 110, 152, 155, 158–159, 165, 179–182, 207, 239, 242–243, 265, 312, 319, 324, 336 Genre 47–68, 70–73, 89–90, 92, 101, 105, 113, 120, 123, 134, 152, 233, 330 Gentile(s) 30, 36, 39, 46, 106–107, 153– 154, 158, 161–162, 165–166, 169– 170, 173, 175, 179–182, 187, 191, 235, 239, 240, 242–244, 248–249, 272, 291, 300, 305–306, 319, 326, 332, 338 Geographical Horizon 102, 346 Healing 153, 157, 187–188, 193, 207, 227, 235, 254–255, 276–277, 279– 280, 312, 322, 335–336, 340–341 Heaven 5–6, 34–35, 118, 124, 165, 189, 192–193, 217, 229, 234–235, 237,

Index of Subjects 239, 245, 249, 253, 258–262, 264, 283, 286, 308, 320–322, 338, 346– 351, 355–361, 373, 375 Hellenism 104, 128 Hermeneutic 64, 76, 81–82, 85–86, 91– 92, 135, 170, 327 High Priest 26, 111–112, 115, 118, 125, 265, 323 – See also “Moses as High Priest” History 8, 12–15, 17, 30, 34, 45, 48, 53, 55–56, 69–70, 76–79, 81, 83, 86–89, 91, 93–94, 106, 112, 117, 124, 129– 131, 137–141, 144, 146, 148, 161– 162, 189, 204, 215, 228, 251, 301, 308, 312, 330, 345 – Church/Christian History 54, 150, 180, 342 – Coptic History 34 – History of Interpretation 214 – History of Religions 68, 230, 330 – Redaction History 206, 209, 215 – See also “Reception History,” Salvation History” Historiography 48, 55, 57, 71, 76, 78, 80–82, 86, 88, 90–91, 93–94, 247 Holy City 5, 365, 368, 370, 377–378 Holy Kinship 34–35 Holy Sepulcher 28 Holy Spirit 13, 165, 188, 208, 220, 224, 245, 248–249, 269–270 Housing 338, 340 (Hyper-)Legalism 103, 214 Hyperbole 238–239 Identity 7, 79, 83–84, 87, 89, 92, 94–96, 128–129, 137, 164, 187, 221, 359 – Jesus’s Identity 79, 83, 86, 227, 243, 257, 263 – Jewish Identity 88, 170, 202, 309 – See also “Messianic Identity” Immortality 372–373 Intertextuality 92, 201 Israel 4, 8, 20, 29, 32, 37, 77–79, 82–85, 93, 97, 101–102, 105–106, 110–111, 116, 128, 132–133, 135, 138, 140, 150, 153, 156, 158, 161–163, 165– 166, 170, 179–180, 182, 188, 190– 193, 201, 210, 217, 222, 235, 239– 242, 244, 252, 254, 276, 280–281,

467

284, 286–287, 299, 301, 308, 310, 312–314, 316, 319, 321–323, 325– 326, 335, 337–338, 353, 355, 357, 362 Jerusalem – Pilgrimage 24–28 – Topography 25 Jesus Christ 8–9, 64, 73, 120, 122, 175, 276, 294, 303, 315, 332, 334, 342 Jesus’s Swaddling Bands 21–22, 28–29 John the Baptist4, 6, 27, 39, 102, 107, 121, 142, 187–188, 191, 194, 217, 235, 244, 255, 268, 278, 282, 317, 332–335, 339, 341, 361 Joseph, Father of Jesus 29–46, 87, 241, 252, 333, 352 – Carpenter 41–45 – Protector of Mary 29, 32, 34, 37–38, 40–41, 45 (Joseph) Ratzinger Prize 63, 65–66, 73 Judaism 82, 85, 91, 103–105, 123, 128, 130–131, 133, 137, 140–142, 150– 152, 156, 169–170, 175–176, 181, 185, 191–193, 229, 237, 241–242, 249, 297, 299–300, 315, 353, 372 – Anti-Judaism 17 – “Common Judaism” 104, 150 – Second Temple Judaism 101, 103, 105, 113, 122, 158, 201–202, 214 Judgment 8, 32, 43, 91, 106, 110, 127, 131–133, 135–137, 141–147, 163, 187–188, 190, 229–230, 242, 246, 262, 264, 267–270, 275–276, 283, 286, 299, 320, 322, 326, 337–338, 341, 368, 372 Justice 38, 79, 107, 114, 118–120, 122, 127, 129, 132, 142–143, 145, 147, 160, 164, 190, 213, 142–143, 145, 147, 160, 164, 190, 213–21, 282, 287, 325, 330–336, 355–356 – “Greater Justice” 142–143, 145, 147, 355–356 Justification 331 King/Kingship 4, 19–21, 23, 35, 40, 44, 107–108, 110–112, 115–117, 122, 124, 234, 241, 277, 293, 312–313, 334, 348, 357, 361, 363, 378

468

Index of Subjects

– – – – – –

King Herod 19, 79, 108 King of Israel 79, 111, 241, 312–313 King of Judah 323 “King of the Jews” 19, 111–112, 241 King Solomon 240 See also “David,” “Moses,” and “Messiah” Kingdom of God/Heaven/Messiah 28, 131, 136, 138, 142–143, 146–148, 152, 190, 194, 234–235, 239, 245, 249, 252–253, 258–259, 280, 283– 285, 289, 291, 302, 319, 326, 333– 334, 341, 347–348, 350, 354–355, 357–362, 364 Law 6, 26, 32, 42, 82, 87, 108, 113– 115, 117, 119–120, 124, 142, 146, 150, 154–158, 160–161, 164, 166, 168–169, 174–175, 179–180, 182, 187–190, 193, 207, 213–214, 229, 279, 281–282, 286–290, 297–304, 306, 308–313, 317, 319, 322, 325– 326, 331, 353–354, 366, 379–380 – See also “Torah” Literary Achievement 122 Liturgical Tradition 12, 44 Lord 7, 9, 25, 32, 34, 36, 38, 41, 44, 64, 87, 107, 116, 158, 165, 186, 195, 214, 220, 245, 248, 255, 266–267, 271, 273, 277, 298, 301, 310, 313, 315, 318–320, 322–323, 329–330, 334, 352, 363, 367, 371, 374, 377– 380 – See also “Jesus Christ,” “Messiah” Luther 13 M 152, 162 Magi Pericope 23–26, 30, 36, 46, 234, 241–242, 314 – Reception of 24–27, 30 – Iconography 26–27 Martyrdom 39, 142, 374, 376–377 Martyr(s) 7, 195, 370–371, 373–374, 380 Mary, Mother of Jesus 9, 21, 29, 31–35, 37–46, 208, 333 Matthew’s Jewish Audience 5, 103, 244 Messiah 4, 44, 57, 78–79, 82, 87, 106– 107, 110, 112, 122, 132–133, 138,

140–141, 158, 160, 166, 170, 180, 190, 209, 221–222, 226–229, 270, 279–280, 301–302, 322, 325–326, 332, 335, 338, 357, 379 – As King 4 – Davidic Messiah 106–107, 153, 162, 229 – Jewish Messiah 158 – Priestly Messiah 106 – Royal Messiah 106, 110, 279 – See also “David,” “Messianic Expectation” Messianic Expectation 105 – Jewish Messianic Expectation 105, 160 – Messianic Identity 77, 1553, 227 – Messianic King 356–357 – Messianic Motives 108 – Messianic Pretenders 123 – Messianic Prophet 107 – Messianic Roles 111 – Messianic Ruler 132 – Messianic Secret 152–153, 226–227 – See also “Messiah” Miracle of the Palm Tree 39 Mode 49–50, 130–131, 204, 260, 266, 273, 320–321 Moralistic Emphasis 118, 122 Moses 6, 37, 79, 84, 87–88, 90–91, 109, 114–117, 119–126, 188, 191–192, 301, 303, 311, 316–322, 326 – Jesus as New Moses 169, 188, 280, 316 – Law of Moses 6, 42, 44–45, 113, 117, 124, 142, 159–160, 162, 16, 187, 299 – Moses as High Priest 118–119, 124– 125 – Moses as King 115, 118, 121, 123– 124 – Moses as Legislator 115, 117, 124 – Moses as Philosopher 116, 122 – Moses as Prophet 119, 124–126 – Philo’s “Life of Moses” 114, 120– 126, 234 – See also “Messiah” Murder 27, 78–79, 241, 319, 333, 341

Index of Subjects Nations 31, 46, 95, 128, 135–136, 158, 162, 165, 167, 182, 228, 239, 242– 244, 246–248, 281, 284, 310–312, 314-315, 321 Nazareth 30, 33, 42, 45–46, 63–64, 81– 82, 87, 102, 107, 110, 132–133, 146, 248, 319 Opponents 77, 85, 135, 137, 175, 182, 192, 225, 256, 257, 259, 273, 276, 283 Orthodox 3, 14, 90, 220, 326 Papias of Hierapolis 10–11, 61, 102, 171, 176–177, 246, 315–316, 326 Passion 25–27, 37, 42, 65, 71, 86, 111, 121–122, 154, 162, 164, 264, 270, 293, 341, 366, 369, 378–380 – See also “Cross,” “Resurrection” People’s Religiosity ( = Volksfrömmigkeit) 22 Persecution 37, 133, 139, 147–148, 161–162, 308, 333, 375, 378 Peter 7–10, 19, 23, 61, 122, 141, 158, 163, 166, 171, 176, 180, 182, 239, 246, 262–263, 265–266, 292–293, 300, 313–316, 323, 331, 337 Pharisees 5–6, 19, 104, 143, 150, 155– 158, 160, 164, 167, 169, 171, 175, 179–182, 190, 211, 255–256, 277, 284–285, 288, 301, 310, 318, 333, 336, 341, 356 Profession(s) 9, 33, 290, 337–338, 340 Promise-Fulfillment 78, 95, 121 Prophecy 6, 21, 24, 78, 111, 115, 119, 125–126, 130–131, 140, 161, 213, 218–219, 226, 242, 318, 367 Prophetic Movements 110 Pro-Roman Bias 109 Q 76, 80, 86, 143, 152, 159, 161–162, 168, 177, 179, 188, 206–207, 218, 224, 227, 230, 244, 252–253, 261, 279 Quotations 5, 75, 77, 86, 91, 103, 121, 152–153, 161, 174, 176, 201–202, 204–206, 208–209, 214–215 Rabbinical Literature 377

469

Reality 3, 82, 84, 91, 93, 95, 97, 142, 148, 188, 193, 220, 256, 258, 279, 346, 348, 350–351, 353, 356, 358– 359, 361–362 Reception History 17–28 – Reception History of Matthew, Research 17–18, 29–46, 297, 329– 331, 370 Relics 22 Repentance 110, 143, 165, 188, 194, 229, 237, 242, 244–245, 249, 269, 278 Resurrection 12, 23, 65, 111, 131–132, 134, 139, 141–142, 146, 148, 158, 162, 164, 166, 225, 239, 245, 248– 249, 256–257, 270–271, 293, 349, 361, 365–380 – See also “Cross,” “Passion” Revelation 30, 37, 43, 86, 90, 129–131, 134, 140, 226, 252, 257, 262, 280, 300, 312, 350 “Rewritten Bible” 83, 90, 114–115, 120 Righteousness 45–46, 129, 145, 160, 163–164, 166, 175, 213, 218, 269, 276, 278–279, 282–286, 290, 302, 325–326, 329–331, 333–335 Sabbath 5–6, 119, 126, 152, 155–157, 160, 169, 187, 193, 211, 213–214, 282–283, 309, 318, 353–354 Saints 44, 365–371, 374–375, 377–380 Salvation 13, 109, 129–131, 135–137, 140–141, 143, 146–148, 193, 196, 209, 225, 229, 241, 276–279, 290, 299, 332, 350, 352, 354–355, 362– 363, 380 Salvation History 32, 44, 140, 146, 230 Semitism 103 Septuagint 103, 201–205, 207–214 Sermon on the Mount 4, 6, 122, 142– 143, 159, 163, 168, 172, 190, 259– 261, 277, 279–282, 284, 286, 291, 293, 297, 301, 321, 329, 332–333, 348, 350, 356 Simon Bar Kosiba 107 Social Setting 48, 60, 110 Son of God 82, 87, 106, 141, 153, 255, 259, 273–274, 282, 293, 301–302, 338, 342, 361, 376, 379–380

470

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– See also “Jesus Christ,” “Lord,” “Messiah,” Spirituality 194, 197 Sufferer 366, 371, 374–377, 379–380 Synagogue 83, 155, 164, 169–171, 179– 180, 182, 191–192, 324 Temple 5–7, 24–28, 33, 101, 104, 108, 125, 129, 141, 150, 156–157, 167, 169, 182, 192, 211, 213–214, 246, 259, 309–310, 312–314, 317–318, 323–325, 366 Temptations of Jesus 4, 26, 255 “The Jews” 29,164, 221 Theophany 134, 144 Torah 8, 45–46, 88–89, 91, 104, 156, 160, 165–166, 175, 185–193, 195– 197, 202, 214, 247, 256, 266, 275, 279–290, 295, 298–314, 316–326, 334, 348, 353–354, 356, 363 – See also “Law” Tradition 22, 36, 76, 79–82, 85–86, 88– 92, 96–97, 102–106, 113, 128–129, 131, 142–143, 149, 151, 154, 163, 168–169, 171, 176–177, 186, 247– 248, 303, 305, 327 – Apocalyptic Tradition 133–134, 144 – Catholic Tradition 62, 73 – Christian Tradition 6, 25, 31, 175, 179, 230, 268. 304, 375, 378 – Double Tradition 161, 258, 261 – Enochic Tradition 186 – Historical Tradition 182, 247–248 – Jesus/Gospel Tradition 62, 92, 96, 133, 159, 164, 168–169, 179, 182– 183, 188, 206, 208, 225–228, 273, 316, 337, 341, 366 – Jewish Tradition 8, 28, 30, 39, 139, 156–157, 193, 208, 214, 237, 247, 281, 284, 286, 298, 307, 334, 339, 378–380

– Johannine Tradition 43, 193, 196 – Matthew’s Tradition 42, 55, 80, 152, 162, 164–167, 173–174, 177, 180– 181, 195, 215, 218, 261, 267–268, 312–313, 322, 377 – Literary Tradition 12 – Oral Tradition 33, 39, 70, 149, 172, 206–207, 295 – Patristic/Church Tradition 3–4, 6–11, 13–15, 34, 39–40, 42–45, 102, 302, 315–316 – Wisdom Tradition 104, 113, 287, 336 – Written/Manuscript Tradition 172, 252 Twelve Tribes of Israel 8, 313, 337 Typology 30, 36–38, 45, 62, 301, 316 Universalization 135 Vicarious 195–196 Vindication 270, 373–374, 378–379 Virginity 34, 36, 38 – Perpetual 34, 44 Virtual Jesus Stories 18 Wisdom 118–119, 12, 124, 130–131, 186–187, 191, 193, 196, 321–322 – Wisdom Literature 101 – Wisdom Tradition 104, 113, 287, 336 Worldview 6, 129, 273, 349, 375 Zechariah, Priest and Father of John the Baptist 27, 39, 311