Meditations on Matthew's Gospel

Reflections on Matthew 8 and 9

Reflections on Matthew 8 and 9

One of the things I’ve found most striking about Matthew’s Gospel is its sense of continuity. The public reading of the Gospel in churches is usually done piecemeal, a single passage or even just a few verses at a time. We begin to get the impression that these stories or quotes from Jesus are just loosely connected “nuggets” of information. A careful reading of the Gospel shows us that this is not the plan in Matthew at all. Matthew is intensely interested in structure, from the shape of the book, which is built around the five great pillars of Jesus’ discourses, to the genealogy of Christ, to even the origins of Jesus’ ministry in Capernaum, presented in chapters eight and nine as essentially one great narrative chunk.

Chapters eight and nine take place almost entirely in and around Peter’s house in Capernaum. We meet Jesus walking into Capernaum in 8:5, and by 8:14, He has reached Peter’s house. When the crowds seeking His healing touch become too large, He and the disciples sail across the Sea of Galilee to Gadara. After performing exorcisms that end up causing an upheaval in the community, He sails back to Capernaum, calls Matthew to be a member of the Twelve, and then is back to Peter’s house in 9:10. After discussing various questions with the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist, Jesus is approached by the ruler of the synagogue, who tells Him that his daughter has died. Jesus walks to the man’s home, raises his daughter from the dead, and in 8:28 He is back at Peter’s house again, where His healings are declared to be the results of demonic power. By comparison, in Mark’s Gospel, one has to bounce around three separate chapters in order to encounter most of these stories. In Matthew’s Gospel, all of Mark’s anecdotes, as well as a few that Mark misses completely, are part of one continuous narrative flow. Granted, Mark includes names and other interesting details that make his telling more memorable. Matthew’s accounts are stripped down and much more simple by comparison. At the risk of being unfair to Matthew, his is like a book written by someone more interested in arranging information than in telling colorful stories.

Matthew	Mark
8:5. Jesus enters Capernaum	1:29. Jesus enters Simon’s house in Capernaum
8:5-13. The healing of the centurion’s servant	No parallel
8:14-15. The healing of Peter’s mother-in-law	1:30-31. The healing of Peter’s mother-in-law
8:23-27. They set sail for Gadara.	5:1. They arrive in Gadara
8:28-34. Jesus exorcises two possessed men.	5:1-19. Jesus exorcises a possessed man
9:1. They sail back to Capernaum.	5:21. They sail back to Capernaum.
9:2-8. The healing of the paralytic.	2:2-12. The healing of the paralytic.
9:9. The call of Matthew the tax collector	2:14. The call of Levi the tax collector
9:10. Jesus in Peter’s house eating w/ sinners.	2:15-22. Jesus in Peter’s house eating w/ sinners.
9:18. The ruler of the synagogue’s daughter	5:22. The ruler of the synagogue’s daughter
9:20-22. The woman with the issue of blood.	5:25-34. The woman with the issue of blood
9:23-26. The ruler’s daughter raised	5:35-43. The ruler’s daughter raised
9:28. Healing two blind men at Peter’s house	No parallel
9:32-34. Jesus heals a mute man	7:31-37. Jesus heals a deaf and mute man
9:34-38. The Father, Lord of the Harvest	2: 23-28. Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath

Matthew 9:35-38, “The Lord of the Harvest”

Matthew 9:35-38, “The Lord of the Harvest”

Matthew 9:35-38. Up until this point in Matthew’s Gospel, other than a detour into the country of the Gadarenes, all of Christ’s activity has been focused in Capernaum in northern Galilee, where He has used Peter’s home as the center of His ministry. After the accusation by the Pharisees in v. 34 that Jesus was performing His miracles through demonic power, Jesus leaves Capernaum and begins to teach and preach throughout Galilee and the surrounding region. Specifically, He is teaching in both large cities and country villages. He is not only speaking on hillsides and on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, but also in the synagogues. It is at this point that the moment from Luke 4:16-21 would seem to fit best – when Jesus reads from Isaiah 61 in Nazareth’s synagogue, and He declares the Scripture fulfilled in their hearing. Synagogue services during the time of Jesus had a set lectionary, and they typically read through the Torah over the course of three years (Graves, p. 473). A selection from the prophets of the Old Testament referred to as the haftarah would be chosen and read by the last person – the maftir – who had a reading from the Torah. The task of reading from the Torah was divided between seven readers (Ibid., p. 475), so on the day referred to in Luke 4, Jesus would have been the last Torah reader, and so He was the one to read from the prophets. Upon hearing that the prophet’s words had been fulfilled, His audience began to scoff at Him. He knew that His fame has preceded Him, and He knew the thoughts of the people in the synagogue – “Do here also in your home town the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum (Luke 4:23).” Of course, Jesus was constantly busy in Capernaum with healings and exorcisms of many kinds – He even raised the daughter of the ruler of Capernaum’s synagogue from the dead. Word of that would have spread quickly to all of Galilee’s synagogues – including the one in Nazareth.

In verse 37, Jesus looks at the crowds of people who are following after Him, and He sees them as both weary and scattered. His mind turns to 1 Kings 22:17a. “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, like sheep that have no shepherd …” Jesus is struck with compassion for these people, and His thoughts are also in a sense a judgment call against the shepherds – the synagogue elders, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes – who were all supposed to be looking out for God’s flock. It isn’t that the flock didn’t have shepherds. It is that the shepherds were looking out for themselves and for their own glory. Jesus’ mind stayed on this subject a great deal of the time, which is clear from so much of that the Sermon on the Mount in chapters five through seven. Most of the Sermon can be summarized as, “Don’t be like so many of today’s religious authorities – keep your hearts clean before God and find a better way.” Then Jesus turns from an image of God’s people as sheep to an image of God’s people as a large garden that promises a great crop. People were responding to the message of Jesus, and much good was being done – but who will take care of the Lord’s garden – this garden so close to the time of harvest? At this point, Jesus gives the Father a new name: the Lord of the Harvest, and He encourages His disciples to pray for the Lord to send workers out into that harvest. Pope Paul VI’s words based on this passage are worth remembering. “… the responsibility of spreading the saving Gospel belongs to everyone! of all who received it. Missionary duty involves the whole body of the Church. In different ways and in different measures, yes; but we all, we must all show solidarity in the fulfillment of this duty. Now let the conscience of every believer ask himself: have I fulfilled my missionary duty? Prayer for the Missions is the first way of fulfilling this duty (Angelus Domini).”

Bibliography

Graves, Michael, “The Public Reading of Scripture in Early Judaism,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. 50/3 (September 2007) pp. 467–87. >

Paul VI, Angelus Domini, 23 October 1977.

Matthew 9:32-34. “The prince of demons”

Matthew 9:32-34. “The prince of demons”

Matthew 9:32-34 . The people Jesus ministered to near Peter’s house in Capernaum enter and exit the Gospel narrative at a dizzying rate of speed. After the healing of the two blind men, a mute man whose illness had a spiritual root to it is brought to him. Interestingly, the word “mute” in Greek is kophon, and refers to blunted or dulled speech or hearing. However, he is not simply a man who is unable to speak or hear – Matthew tells us that he is daimonizomenon, or vexed by an evil spirit. The afflicted in the Gospels are not all the same. Here in chapter nine, Matthew has given us three quite different case studies in Jesus’ ministry to the sick. Some are simply sick or disabled, as the blind men were in the previous passage. Some sick people had an illness which was connected to their sins in some way, as the paralytic was at the beginning of chapter nine. In this passage, demonic activity was involved. People’s life situations are as varied as they are, and most of us are not as wise or as discerning as the Master in knowing what lies at the root of someone’s problems. Not everything is demonic possession or oppression, though in the superstition of the time there was an evil spirit at the root of practically everything. Nor is it always a hidden sin which has disabled the sick. Often, as Jesus Himself tells us in John 9:3, a person’s disability is no one’s fault. In this man’s case, Jesus performed an exorcism, and when the man was released from his oppression, he was able to speak, amazing the crowds.

In verse 34, the Pharisees – likely the same Pharisees who had criticized Jesus for spending time with tax collectors and sinners in verse 11 – accuse Jesus of casting out demons by the ruler or archonti of demons. The notion that demons, just like angels, have ranks of authority or power isn’t unusual, and during the time of Jesus, a thoroughly fictional work called The Testament of Solomon was written that reflects various ancient Jewish beliefs about demons. In the book, Solomon discovers a way to command demons to do his bidding and build the temple of the Lord. At one point, he conjures up Beelzeboul, the exarch of the demons. The name comes from Baalzebub, the god of Ekron, as mentioned in 2 Kings 1:2. Is it possible that the Pharisees were sarcastically referring to a contemporary work of fiction in which Solomon, the son of David, was commanding demons? At any rate, they were indeed claiming that Jesus of Nazareth, the Messianic son of David, was doing this. Their accusation sets the scene for Matthew 12:24, in which they directly accuse Jesus of working through Beelzebub, the demon king, the lord of the flies – Satan. Here in chapter nine, Jesus ignores them for the moment, choosing rather to continue to do good and heal people.

Matthew 9:27-31 — Jesus Heals Two Blind Men

Matthew 9:27-31 — Jesus Heals Two Blind Men

Matthew 9:27-31. After reviving the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, Jesus begins His walk back to Peter’s house, where the rest of the disciples were still feasting with new disciple Matthew, as well as tax collectors and people living on the fringe who had been Matthew’s friends in that life. At this point, two blind men begin following after Jesus, no doubt following the flow and movement of the crowd. As they walked along, they were crying out – krazontes – shrieking – and saying “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” This is a call back to a Messianic title for Jesus that is so important that Matthew used it as the opening line for his Gospel – Jesus, the son of David, who was, ultimately, the son of Abraham. In the most literal sense, the son of David was King Solomon.

“I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”
2 Samuel 7:12b-13

However, in a Messianic sense, the son of David was the one who would bring about a new temple and establish His kingdom forever in the world that was coming. “Son of David” was another term for Ha-mashiach , the Christos, the one from the family line of David who would be anointed king of Israel. Maimonides, the Jewish sage of the Middle Ages, considered a belief in a coming Messianic Age as one of the most fundamental tenets of Judaism. While Judaism does not believe that Jesus was the Christ, a belief in a coming Messianic Age is deeply ingrained in the faith.

Thus, the blind men in Matthew 9 recognized Jesus as the promised king of the Jews, and they cried out for just a meager amount of the sovereign’s mercy. When Jesus reached Peter’s house, the blind men finally caught up with Him, and He reached out and healed them. At the same time, Jesus told them not to tell anyone what He had done. This seems to be a strange request, and it is repeated several times over the course of the Gospels. Make no mistake, Jesus was not trying to be cute here, and He was not engaging in reverse psychology either. Jesus knew very well that things could very quickly get out of control. In John 6:14-15, following the miracle of the loaves and fishes, a crowd decided to try to force Jesus to be king, and He had to distance Himself from that kind of mob mentality. By asking for a kind of confidentiality, Jesus was in fact asking for their cooperation. Yes, the kingdom would come, and the future would unroll as certainly as one day led to the next – but in the Master’s own good time. He didn’t receive that cooperation, though, and the men who had been blind made sure that everyone knew that the son of David had arrived.

The Trinitarian Ending

At the very end of Matthew’s Gospel, he gives us the words of the Master, what is usually called the Great Commission:

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” – Matthew 28:18-20.

As I noted in my post on the Ascension of the Lord, this passage harks back to Matthew 24:14. When Jesus spoke to them at that point, everything he was telling them was prophecy. By Matthew 28, he lets them know that they are living in the very fulfillment of that prophecy, which means that this moment in Matthew is truly the very beginning of the beginning of the end. From this point, they can expect to see many of the other things from Matthew 24 begin to come to pass, much of it in that generation.

What makes this passage from the twenty-eighth chapter of particular interest is the mention of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as part of what would become the standard formula for Christian baptism. F.C. Conybeare at the beginning of the 20^th century offered up the possibility that the Trinitarian formula was a later addition to the Gospel, just as Mark’s Gospel had had various endings added onto it. This was in spite of the fact that the earliest copies of Matthew that included chapter 28 never failed to mention it.

Conybeare offered up the Theophania by Eusebius of Caesarea (written A.D. 324 – 337) as possible proof that Eusebius was familiar with an older version of Matthew that had an ending more in line with Luke’s Gospel and the early teaching in Acts, which stressed baptism in the name of Jesus. Eusebius wrote:

“‘Go and make Disciples of all nations in my name.’ And, when He had said this to them, He attached to it the promise, by which they should be so encouraged, as readily to give themselves up to the things commanded. For He said to them, ‘Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.’ It is stated, moreover, that He breathed into them the Holy Ghost with the Divine power; (thus) giving them the power to work miracles, saying at one time, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost” and at another, commanding them, to ‘Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, and cast out Demons:—freely ye have received, freely give.’” Eusebius, Theophania, V.49

In this passage and others, while Eusebius is indeed stressing the power and the authority of the name of Jesus, he clearly isn’t always quoting passages of Scripture verbatim – or in any linear way. In this short paragraph alone, he begins by combining Matthew 28:19 and Luke 24:47, he quotes Matthew 28:20, John 20:22, and then he ends it by quoting Matthew 10:8. While he may have been familiar with a copy of Matthew that used a shorter baptismal formula, it’s also possible that he was simply combining Matthew and Luke in a few instances.

There’s no real evidence that the Trinitarian ending of Matthew was added after Nicea, and much evidence that believers were familiar with it – or at least the apostolic tradition behind it – from the earliest decades of the Christian era. While exactly what Jesus might have meant by that phrase would be the stuff driving Church Councils for centuries, the Trinitarian formula itself was a solid part of the deposit of faith.

Fortunately, the Great Commission is not the only place that we encounter the Trinity in Matthew’s Gospel. As Matthew is wont to do, he plants seeds in one chapter and that spring up in another. In chapter three, he writes:

“And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’” – Matthew 3:16

The mission of Jesus begins with his baptism and the voice of God, self-identifying as the Father of the Son, with the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. The continuing mission of Jesus after the resurrection contains the command to teach and baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. The promise is that Christ’s presence with his people will continue until the end of the age.

As clearly defined Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are lively and closely aligned in the Gospel of Matthew. God is referred to as “Father” in Matthew some forty-five times, according to F.W. Beare – a massive change from the Old Testament usage. Even moreso than in the other Gospels, in Matthew “the Father” is God’s central identity. Although Matthew only mentions the Holy Spirit twelve times, we are given a great deal of information about him. The Spirit is the one who conceives the son of God in time and space within the womb of the Virgin (Matt. 1:18). He is the one who comes upon (Matt. 3:16), empowers (Matt. 12:28) and directs (Matt. 4:1) Jesus during his life on earth. For John the Baptist, the presence of the Holy Spirit is an identifier of the true Messiah (Matt. 3:11), and in the lives of the disciples, the Spirit is the giver of inspiration and holy wisdom (Matt. 10:20). The Holy Spirit also appears to be the most tender member of the Holy Trinity, because purposely calling him unholy is the one sin that cannot be forgiven (Matt. 12:32). Thus, we not only find the Holy Trinity at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus and at the end, but all throughout.

The earliest document outside of the New Testament to use the Trinitarian formula found in Matthew 28 for baptism is the Didache, an ancient church manual written between A.D. 50 – 70:

“And concerning baptism, baptize this way: Having first said all these things (i.e., catechesis), baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit …” Didache, 7.

While St. Clement of Rome doesn’t use the Trinitarian formula for baptism per se, in A.D. 96 he did give a Trinitarian benediction which is likely an allusion to baptism, as an integral part of the faith of true Christians.

“Receive our counsel, and you shall be without repentance. For, as God lives, and as the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost live — both the faith and hope of the elect, he who in lowliness of mind, with instant gentleness, and without repentance has observed the ordinances and appointments given by God— the same shall obtain a place and name in the number of those who are being saved through Jesus Christ, through whom is glory to Him for ever and ever. Amen.” – St. Clement of Rome, Epistle to the Corinthians, 58.

Matthew’s baptismal formula is quoted by St. Hippolytus before the year 200:

“The Father’s Word, therefore, knowing the economy (disposition) and the will of the Father, to wit, that the Father seeks to be worshipped in none other way than this, gave this charge to the disciples after He rose from the dead: Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” – St. Hippolytus of Rome, Against Noetus, 14.

Also writing around the year 200 was Tertullian of Carthage:

“For the law of baptizing has been imposed, and the formula prescribed: Go, He says, teach the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The comparison with this law of that definition, Unless a man have been reborn of water and Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of the heavens, has tied faith to the necessity of baptism.” Tertullian, On Baptism, 13.

Many other citations could be given, but it should be enough to say that even before the Council of Nicea, the Trinitarian ending of Matthew was commonly known, and not just known, but quoted. As for the possibility that Constantine could have organized a massive, Empire-wide effort to insert the Trinitarian formula into every possible document written or copied within the Church’s first three centuries … if that’s true, then Luke and Acts would not have escaped unscathed, as well as any version of the ending of Mark’s Gospel. It also seems probable, at least to me, that if this had happened, it would have resulted in heavy handed, obvious edits. Indeed, something like that might have occurred if the four Gospels had been discarded for a “harmonized” Gospel – one with all of the various differences ironed out – but thank God that did not happen.

Resources:

Clement of Rome, “First Epistle,” Keith, John, tr., Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 9, Menzies, Allan, ed., Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1896.

<http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm>.

Conybeare, F.C., “The Eusebian Form of the Text of Matt. 28:19,”
<https://areopage.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Conybeare_1901.pdf>

The Didache, Riddle, M.B., tr., Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 7, Roberts, Alexander; Donaldson, James; and Coxe, A. Cleveland, eds., Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886.<http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm>.

Eusebius of Caesarea, “Theophania,” Early Church Fathers – Additional Texts, Pearse, Roger, ed.. 2002. <https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eusebius_theophania_01preface.htm>

Ge, Liangyan. “Father/Father in Matthew.” Paragraph, vol. 15, no. 3, 1992, pp. 261–78. JSTOR, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/43151753>.

Hippolytus, “Against Noetus,” MacMahon, J.H., Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5. Roberts, Alexander; Donaldson, James; and Coxe, A. Cleveland, eds., Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886.<http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0521.htm>.

Tertullian, “On Baptism,” Thelwall, S., Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3. Roberts, Alexander; Donaldson, James; and Coxe, A. Cleveland, eds., Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.<http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0321.htm>.

20 June 2022

Ascension

Matthew’s Gospel, unlike Luke, the book of Acts, and a brief mention tagged onto the end of Mark’s Gospel, does not give us an account of Christ’s ascension to the right hand of the Father. Why Matthew and John chose not to include the kind of detailed account that Luke did is unknown, but that does not mean that the communities that embraced Matthew and John were unaware of the ascension of Jesus into Heaven. The ascension, specifically the return of Jesus to the right hand of the Father, is an expectation woven into the fabric of the Gospels, even if it is not stated explicitly.

In Matthew, it is inferred that Jesus is going to be leaving in some fashion. Oddly enough, it is the disciples of Jesus who bring this up in Matthew 24:3, when Jesus mentions the destruction of the temple. “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Already, they seem to understand, vaguely, that the Jesus they are familiar with will leave, and that at some point he will return in a strange, apocalyptic manner. While Jesus has tried to make the unfolding plan of his death and resurrection clear to them (Matt. 16:21), they hardly understand what he has told them. Yet, they know, somehow, that the mission of Jesus will have two definite phases. Between the ministry of Jesus the itinerant preacher from Galilee and the reign of Jesus the Lord of Heaven and earth there would be a necessary physical absence.

In response to their question, Jesus tells them that many terrible, frightening things will occur, and that false prophets will come in his name, proclaiming that they are the Messiah. He warns the disciples not to be fooled by these people. The historian Josephus recorded how Antonius Felix, the procurator of Judea, dealt with such false prophets in the late 50s of the first century, during the time of St. Paul. This is worth quoting at length:

“And now these impostors and deceivers persuaded the multitude to follow them into the wilderness, and pretended that they would exhibit manifest wonders and signs, that should be performed by the providence of God. And many that were prevailed on by them suffered the punishments of their folly; for Felix brought them back, and then punished them. Moreover, there came out of Egypt about this time to Jerusalem one that said he was a prophet, and advised the multitude of the common people to go along with him to the Mount of Olives, as it was called, which lay over against the city, and at the distance of five furlongs. He said further, that he would show them from hence how, at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down; and he promised them that he would procure them an entrance into the city through those walls, when they were fallen down. Now when Felix was informed of these things, he ordered his soldiers to take their weapons, and came against them with a great number of horsemen and footmen from Jerusalem, and attacked the Egyptian and the people that were with him. He also slew four hundred of them, and took two hundred alive. But the Egyptian himself escaped out of the fight, but did not appear any more. And again the robbers stirred up the people to make war with the Romans, and said they ought not to obey them at all; and when any persons would not comply with them, they set fire to their villages, and plundered them.” – Josephus, Antiquities, XX.8.6

It was at this time, some ten to fifteen years before the destruction of the temple, that the prophetic words of Jesus began to overlap with the historical events which led up to that terrible moment. The author of the Gospel, seeing these things, no doubt remembered the words of his Master, and saw them graphically unfold as time passed. This is important to understand. The Gospels were written in the rearview mirror, so to speak. None of these prophecies were written down by Jesus at the time, and when the Gospel tradition finally did reach the written page, it was some 30 – 50 years later. What we have before us is a memory of Jesus that becomes more meaningful as time passes. There were things that Jesus said that made little sense when the disciples first heard them. After the resurrection, many, many things the Master had said began to pull together in their understanding. As John 2:22 states, “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this …” In the same way, Jesus’ apocalyptic discourses would have made little sense until they actually began to come to pass. They could be described more accurately because they were finally understood with more clarity. Understanding the passage in this way gives the Gospel writer the benefit of the doubt. This is a reasonable way a disciple would look back on his time with the Master. While the description of the destruction of the temple is sketchy in a visionary sort of way that reaches back to Daniel, the description of the tumult and anarchy at the end of the age fits the 50s of the first century perfectly.

After describing times of great sorrow, Jesus gives his people hope. “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.” (Matt. 24:14). This verse is echoed at the end of the Gospel of Matthew in the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:19-20). Even in his physical absence, which is assumed here at the close of the book, he promises to always be with his people.

In the hymn that St. Paul gives us in Philippians 2, we find something that that may find its origins in the earliest days of the Jesus movement – long before the Gospels and possibly even Paul’s own epistles. Here, the ascension is described as an exaltation (Phil. 2:9), as Jesus the servant returns to his proper place in Heaven as Lord, to the glory of God the Father. “Ascension as exaltation” is a concept that Matthew would have found entirely appropriate.

In the Old Testament, people were assumed into Heaven only a few times (Genesis 5:24, 2 Kings 2:11). Almost as rare, they were brought back to life after death, and only then through the agency of a prophet or even a prophet’s body (1 Kings 1:17-34, 2 Kings 4:32-37, 2 Kings 13:21). The kind of resurrection, total transformation, and ascension that is spoken of in the Gospels is nowhere to be found in the Old Testament. The message is clear: the Gospels speak of something wholly Other.

Titus Livius, an early historian who died when Jesus was a teen, told the legend of Romulus, the first king of Rome, and how he had been assumed into heaven, accompanied by lightning and great peals of thunder. He also described how the king descended from heaven in glory to visit a friend, before making a speech about Rome’s might and vanishing into the clouds (Livy, Rome, I.17). Plutarch, the Roman biographer in the first century, told various stories regarding those whose bodies had vanished after their deaths or who, as in the case of Romulus, had been taken up into heaven in a whirlwind (Plutarch, Romulus, 27, 28). When comparing these legends to the Gospel accounts, we realize, first of all, that the stories Livius and Plutarch told took place in what, to them, was the mythic past – some eight centuries earlier. By contrast, the Gospel accounts are drawing off of a recent Event. The Roman legends contain no trace of a resurrection account – in the case of Romulus, he is simply glorified and taken to the realm of the gods. The Roman legends are a full special effects light and sound extravaganza. The resurrection was witnessed by no one – there is not one soul who saw Jesus walk out of the tomb. Far from being extravagant, the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are quiet and almost anonymous. When he returns to the Father, there is no whirlwind. There is only the promise of his abiding presence.

Resources:

Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Whiston, William, tr., London, 1737.<https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2848/2848-h/2848-h.htm>

Plutarch, “The Life of Romulus,” The Parallel Lives, Perrin, Bernadotte, tr., Loeb Classical Library, 1914. <https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Romulus*.html>

Titus Livius, The History of Rome, Spillan, D., tr., Henry G. Bohn, 1853.<https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19725/19725-h/19725-h.htm>
06 June 2022

The Seat of Moses

In the twenty-third chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, Jesus pronounces “woes” – a series of judgments – on the scribes and Pharisees. A scribe, or sofer, was originally a royal official – a literate and intelligent person – who was responsible for recording the daily life of the courts. By the time of Ezra (538 B.C.), they were primarily teachers of the Law of Moses (Ezra 7:6). As for the Pharisees, the Perishaya, they were a religious party of the separate, the holy, and the undefiled, scrupulously following the Law of Moses as it was taught by the scribes. The two groups tended to work together.

While the writings in the New Testament about the Pharisees are typically considered an angry polemic, they are often in line with criticisms of the Pharisees in the Talmud, much of which was assembled just a few centuries after Christ out of older material.

There are seven kinds of religious people: Religious on the shoulder, religious on credit, religious balancing, religious “what is the deduction,” religious “I shall do it when I realize my guilt,” religious from fear, religious from love. Religious on the shoulder, he carries his deeds on his shoulder. Religious on credit, “give me credit that I can perform commandments.” Religious balancing, he commits one sin and observes one commandment and balances one against the other. Religious “what is the deduction,” what I have that is what I am using to deduct for doing a commandment. Religious “I shall do it when I realize my guilt,” I committed that sin and therefore I shall do this good deed to counteract it. Religious from fear, like Job. Religious from love, like Abraham. No one is beloved as much as the religious from love, like Abraham. – Jerusalem Talmud, Sotah 5:5

As a summary, there are seven types of Pharisees, but only one is pleasing to God. The first six fail because of pride, ego, legalism that isn’t much more than moral bookkeeping, defensiveness, stinginess, and fear. The seventh kind of Pharisee, the one who actually pleases the Lord, loves God just as Abraham did. This is a kind of justification that St. Paul would approve of, though St. Paul focused on Abraham’s faith (Rom. 4:1-12), rather than the patriarch’s love for God, though the two certainly overlap.

The scribes and Pharisees, as recorded in the Jewish Talmud, claimed Mosaic authority for their interpretation of the Law. Jesus did not disagree with them at all, which is worth noticing. He did not question their place as the teachers of Israel. What he did disagree with was their pride and their hypocrisy. He prefaces all of those many “woes” with a curious admonition to the disciples.

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” – Matthew 23:1-3.

This is worth giving a bit more context. After the earthly life of Jesus, his Jewish followers would continue to worship in the synagogues for about ninety years, and this passage takes that situation into account. What we call Christianity today has its roots in Judaism, and for a long time, Jewish believers would worship in the synagogue on Saturdays and then gather again with their fellow followers of “the Way” (Acts 9:2) on Sundays, the day of resurrection. Traditionally, Gamaliel II, grandson of the Pharisee who instructed St. Paul, is said to have encouraged the writing of the Birkat ha-Minim, a benediction pronounced upon heretics. This would result in the Jewish believers, the Nazerene sect, (Acts 24:5), being unwelcome in the synagogues and shunned by Jewish society in general, since heretics were considered worse than Gentiles. The very same benediction also contained a condemnation of Rome, the world power that oppressed them (Jews and Christian, p. 9). If Gamaliel II was involved, the prayer against the heretics would have been composed some time before the Sanhedrin leader’s death in A.D. 118. While not enforced – simply because no mechanism existed to do so – over the next century the Birkat ha-Minim in the synagogues of Palestine became common. At that point, the ability for Jesus worshipers to participate in the life of the synagogue and obey the Pharisees in good conscience would come to a definite close. The earliest Church Father who seems to be familiar with the Birkat ha-Minim was Justin Martyr in the middle of the second century. He mentions Christ being cursed in the synagogues and after their prayers (Dialogue XVII, CXXXVII).

To return to the Gospel passage at hand, it is important to reiterate that Jesus does not question the authority of the scribes and Pharisees to teach the people. As mentioned earlier, the scribes had been teachers of Israel for some five hundred years. Their place was legitimate. What Jesus questioned was their pride, their opulence, their hypocrisy, and an accountant’s approach to worshiping God that was dead spiritually. When he refers to the authority of the scribes and Pharisees, he says that they “sit on Moses’ seat,” which was the presidential seat in the synagogue (Vermes, Authentic, p. 71). Such seats, carved out of stone, have been found by archaeologists. According to Jesus, the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees needed to be completely embraced, even if they did not practice what they preached. Jesus came to fulfill the Law of Moses, but he did not preach against it, or even the teaching of those who were plotting his death. This was a very important piece of direction for the Jewish believers of those early years, as they struggled to maintain their ethnic, religious, and cultural identity even as they embraced the message of their messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.

Resources

Dunn, D.G., Jews and Christians: the Parting of the Ways, Eerdmans, 1999.

Guggenheimer, Heinrich W., The Jerusalem Talmud, translation and commentary, De Gruyter, 1999-2015. <https://www.sefaria.org/texts/Talmud/Yerushalmi>

Justin Martyr, “Dialogue With Trypho,” Dods, Marcus, and Reith, George, tr., Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1. Roberts, Alexander, Donaldson, James, and Coxe, Cleveland A., eds., Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0128.htm>.

Kohler, Kaufmann, “Pharisees” The Jewish Encyclopedia, Funk & Wagnalls, 1901. <https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12087-pharisees>

Singer, Isadore; Seligsohn, M; Bacher, Wilhelm; Eisentstein, Judah David, “Scribe,” The Jewish Encyclopedia, Funk & Wagnalls, 1901. < https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13831-sofer>

Vermes, Geza, The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, Penguin Books, 2004.

20 May 2022

The Structure of Matthew’s Gospel

For the modern reader, a casual reading – even when done devotionally – reveals Matthew’s Gospel as a curious work. Depending on the translation that is being read, the book begins with a lot of “begats,” followed by a kind of Christmas story that is without either shepherds or a stable. Jesus says things and does things, says things and does things, is betrayed by Judas, is crucified, and is raised up from the dead. The book ends with a mission to go tell the world, and a baptismal formula to go along with that mission. All of the “middle parts” of the book are usually studied or preached in a piecemeal fashion. If there is a structure within the book at all, it’s a bit difficult to see. Yet, there are patterns, and patterns within patterns. It is a most amazing thing.

Most people familiar with the New Testament know about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which is recorded in chapters 5 – 7 of the Gospel, but that is not all that Jesus had to say. There are four other long sermons or discourses by Christ to be found in Matthew – five in all. Matthew uses these five longer sermons as tent poles that support and fill out the entirety of the Gospel.

The Sermon on the Mount – chapters 5 – 7.
The Missionary Discourse – chapter 10.
Various Parables – chapter 13.
Community Instructions – chapter 18.
Discourse on the Future and on Judgment – chapters 23 – 25.

Matthew also has an interesting way of signaling to the reader when the sermon is over, and the next section of his Gospel is about to begin:

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things … (7:28)
When Jesus had finished these parables … (11:1)
When Jesus had finished these parables … (13:53)
When Jesus had finished saying these things … (19:1)
When Jesus had finished saying all these things … (26:1)

Viewed in this way, the Gospel of Matthew contains five books or divisions of sermons and narratives, bookended by the Nativity and the Crucifixion and Resurrection. All in all, seven parts, which tells us that he has given us a Gospel that is as complete in its parts as possible within the limits of one scroll. Although Matthew never directly tells the reader, a fair assumption would be that he is presenting the good news of Jesus Christ as the new Torah (a reference to the first five books of the Old Testament), with Jesus himself as the new lawgiver. At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, Jesus is even presented as ascending “the mountain,” as Moses ascended Sinai to receive the Law.

This isn’t the only place where allusions to the five books of Moses appears. The first five chapters follow the path of the Torah. Matthew begins his Gospel in Greek with the words, “Biblos geneseos Iesou Christou,” or “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.” Thus, the very second word of the Gospel here is a rather overt reference to Genesis, the first book of Moses. Is there an Exodus in the story of Jesus? Yes. Just as Joseph the Old Testament patriarch led his family into Egypt for their safety, in Matthew 2:14, Mary and the Christ child are led by Joseph into Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod. Following Herod’s death, they make their exodus back out of Egypt (Matthew 2:15). In the Torah, the third book, Leviticus, deals with laws and rituals. In Matthew 3, Jesus approaches John the Baptist and permits himself to experience water baptism, which will become the single most important ritual in the Church. It is the sacrament that opens the door to all of the other sacraments. Then, just as the fourth Old Testament book, Numbers, gives the account of Israel’s forty years in the wilderness, the fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel presents Christ in the desert for forty days. In Deuteronomy, the Law that God gave Moses is repeated, and Moses reminds the people, “The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain (Deut. 5:4a).” In the same way, Matthew chapter five begins with the words, “When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak …” At this point, Jesus lays the foundation stones of his New Law, beginning with the Beatitudes. I’m not insinuating that Matthew fabricated these stories in order to fit this framework, but that the framework seemed, naturally, to fit the events as he knew them.

It would be fair to wonder if Jesus was the only figure to be compared to Moses. The truth is that the great Jewish teacher Hillel, who was still alive when Jesus was a boy, was also compared to Moses in the Sifre Devarim, a midrash or Hebrew commentary on the Torah. The imagination of Hillel’s admirers found similar patterns when they placed his life next to that of the great lawgiver:

“Moses was 120 years of age when he died” (Dt.34:7).
He is one of four who died at 120 years of age:
And here they are:
Moses, Hillel the Elder, Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai, and R. Akiva.
Moses lived in Egypt for forty years,
and in Midian for forty years,
and saw to Israel’s needs for forty years.
Hillel the Elder ascended from Babylonia at the age of forty years,
and attended sages [in discipleship] for forty years,
and saw to Israel’s needs for forty years.”
– Sifre Devarim, 357:4

The original audience for Matthew’s Gospel were primarily Jewish adherents of the Lord Jesus, people well versed in the concepts found in the first five books of what we call the Old Testament. They also would have been familiar with Greek, the language in which his Gospel was written. Chances are very, very good that they would have understood many of these patterns, as well as many others found in the book. He was, after all, referring back to their own culture and their own deeply held beliefs. The complex tapestry of Matthew’s Gospel reveals it to be more than a memoir, and more than just a copy-and-paste affair cobbled together from various sources. It was, quite deliberately, the inspired work of a lifetime.

Resources:

Eslin, Morton S.,”’The Five Books of Matthew’:Bacon on the Gospel of Matthew,” The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Apr., 1931), pp. 67-97.
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/1507706 >

Halverson, Taylor, “New Testament insights: Matthew’s Gospel patterned on the 5 Books of Moses,” 11 May 2015, Deseret News. <https://www.deseret.com/2015/5/11/20564388/taylor-halverson-new-testament-insights-matthew-s-gospel-patterned-on-the-5-books-of-moses>

The Holy Bible, NRSVCE <https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-Revised-Standard-Version-Catholic-Edition-NRSVCE-Bible/>

Scheiner, Patrick, “The Sermon on the Mount and Jesus as the New Moses,” 2019, BibleProject.<https://bibleproject.com/blog/sermon-mount-jesus-new-moses/>

Sifre Devarim, Jaffee, Marty, tr., Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Washington, 2016.<https://jewishstudies.washington.edu/book/sifre-devarim/>

6 May 2022

The Shema

In Jewish spirituality, the Shema is the most primary part of their confession of faith – that there is but one God, that he is the Lord, and that it is the responsibility of his people to love the Lord God with every fiber of their being. Found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, the very essence of the Shema reads:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

The three parts of God’s command for his peoples’ commitment to this love involves theirs hearts, their souls, and all of their might. The Hebrew word for “heart” here is lebab, and it indicates the innermost core of a human being. “Soul” is a translation of the world nephesh, and means the life, the person and all of his or her desires, appetites, and emotions. Meod is the Hebrew word for “might,” and scholar Bernard L. Levinson tells us that while the word’s basic meaning is “might” or “strength,” it also meant “property” and “wealth” in some contexts, and so “each call for full commitment to God, whether psychology or practical (Jewish Study Bible, p. 380).”

When Jesus is asked about the greatest of the commandments, he brings us back to the Shema.

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:34-40.

Instead of heart, soul, and might, in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus lists heart, soul, and mind – kardia, psuche, and dianoia in Greek. At first, it seems as if Matthew has gotten the Shema wrong somehow, which wouldn’t make sense if the sacred author was actually an observant Jew – someone who had been in the habit of professing the Shema two times a day, every day, for all of his life, as was the custom (Kaufmann). Matthew, who was writing in Greek, didn’t even copy the version found in the Septuagint, which used kardia, psuche, and dunamis – easily translated as heart, soul, and might. What could be going on in this text?

The first thing to remember is that what is being dealt with is a translation, which is also a matter of interpretation. Jesus and the people he knew typically spoke Aramaic, though most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, including the Shema. The Septuagint was the standard translation of the Old Testament in Greek during the time of Jesus and the apostles, but often the sacred writers were either quoting from memory or, just as likely, were working at translating not only words, but meaning. This is what we find in Matthew and also in Mark. Mark’s Gospel, for instance, gives us four words by way of trying to interpret the three terms found in the Shema:

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:28-31.

Using four words broke the rhythm of the original Hebrew, but Mark was after clarity, not poetry. In recording the words of Jesus, Matthew kept the rhythm of the original Hebrew, finished with a word to translate meod that would also imply strength – dianoia, and he wrote in a more exact form of Greek than Mark used. Dianoia implies strength because it is used in regard to critical thinking. It is loving God with all of our ability to think rationally.

On the more exact nature of Matthew’s Greek, Tresmontant explains that a literal translation of the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy would be to love the Lord your God in all of your heart, in all of your soul, and in all of your might rather than with. In the Greek of Matthew’s Gospel, the author uses the word en, which is closer to the original meaning than Mark’s version, which uses ex, presumably following the translation of Deuteronomy found in the Septuagint (Tresmontant, p. 515).

To sum it all up, in the Gospel of Matthew, the sacred author improved on the text of the standard Greek translation of Deuteronomy. He also sought to keep the rhythm of Deuteronomy’s tripartite commitment to loving God, and he used a word that would note a specific kind of mental strength, dianoia. This was a different kind of interior life than the words “heart” or “soul” would convey. He was not just being redundant or careless.

Resources:

“Deuteronomion,” Peters, Melvin K.H.,, tr., A New English Translation of the Septuagint, https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/05-deut-nets.pdf

The Holy Bible, NRSVCE, https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-Revised-Standard-Version-Catholic-Edition-NRSVCE-Bible/

Kaufmann, Kohler, and Eisenstein, Judah David, “Shema,” Jewish Encyclopedia. 1906.
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13548-shema

Levinson, Bernard M., The Jewish Study Bible, Berlin, Adele, and Brettler, Marc Zvi, editors, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Tresmontant, Claude, The Gospel of Matthew, Whitehead, K.D., tr., Christendom Press, 1996.

1 May 2022

The Resurrection

Easter is usually called some variation of “Pascha” by most Christians around the world, and it is the day when we celebrate the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Matthew prefaces this event by writing about the placing of the temple guards at the tomb.

“The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Therefore command the tomb to be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception would be worse than the first.” Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.” So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.” Matthew 27:62-66.

Matthew records a most remarkable event here. Christ has been crucified on Friday, the day of Preparation. That day and the next, the Sabbath, were holy days for Jewish people everywhere. Under no circumstances would the Jewish authorities have wanted to meet with any Gentile, let alone Pilate (Josephus, Ant., XVI.6.2.). Writing for a Jewish audience, Matthew understands that his readers know this, and it emphasizes how extreme the chief priests and Pharisees must have felt that the situation was. At this point, they felt pressed to do something that they would not have done – ever – in any other circumstance.

Another surprising element in this passage is that we discover that the Pharisees had actually been listening to Jesus. In Matthew 12:38-40, Jesus tells them about his resurrection – including the three day time frame. He was very explicit in how he phrased his prophecy, even couched in thinly veiled terms. During the trial of Jesus, some accused him of claiming to raise the “temple of God” in three days (Matt. 27:61). They understood, to some extent, and they planned to keep Jesus safely dead in his tomb past that third day, when his body was expected to begin to really decay, and when any hope of resuscitating Jesus would presumably be long gone. Not only that, but the plan of the Pharisees was to attempt to keep the apostles from stealing Christ’s body and foisting a resurrection hoax on the public, so a seal was placed on the stone which was in front of the tomb. This verse is a call back to Daniel 6:17, in which the prophet is thrown into the lion’s den, and a stone marked with a seal was placed over the den. Like Daniel, Christ would also emerge from the place that should have been his tomb.

“After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” Matthew 28:1-7.

On Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph (Matt: 27:55) come to the tomb to tend to the body of Jesus. We shouldn’t be surprised at the multitude of Marys that we find in the New Testament. Based on the name of Moses’ sister, Miriam was a very common name in Jewish culture. They experience an earthquake with the guards falling like dead men, and we’re told that an angel rolled the stone away from the tomb. The angel is not one of the cherubim or seraphim (Ezekiel 1, Isaiah 6), winged creatures with animal and human features who attend to the throne of God. He is one of the malakim, a messenger of God like Michael or Gabriel. These angels may shine brightly from being in the presence of God (ref. Exodus 34:29-35), but unlike other angelic creatures they look more like human beings and are never described as having wings. Notice that the angel has not come to let Jesus out – this has already occurred. Rather, he is there to let the women in.

So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
Matthew 28:8-10

Matthew doesn’t mince words – he’s quite clear that the two Marys saw the risen Christ first and then ran to tell the disciples what they had seen. They had remained with him throughout the crucifixion, watching from a distance (Matt. 27:55-56), while the disciples scattered like pearls on a broken necklace. We aren’t told anything at all about Mary Magdalene’s past as someone who had been possessed by seven demons – something both Mark and Luke mention (Mark 16:9, Luke 8:2). All that Matthew’s first readers might have known about her is that she may have come from the fishing village of Magdala and that she loved Christ. That was enough. When they meet the risen Lord, they prostrate themselves and grab his feet, worshiping him. Matthew’s account is brief enough and direct enough to permit a number of things to occur that the other Gospels record – including Christ telling Magdalene not to cling to him (John 20:17). His interest is in getting to the point. When they meet Jesus, he says, “Greetings!”, which may likely have been the most welcome “Shalom!” every heard. After telling them not to be afraid, he sends the women to the apostles – deserters who he charitably calls “brothers” – to give them the good news, and that they will find him in Galilee. There, he would give them the mission that would occupy them for the rest of their lives (Matt. 28:16-20).

Resources used in this post:

Antiquities of the Jews, by Flavius Josephus

New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Catholic Edition

17 April 2022