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Loading...In the last post I indicated one way that Matthew understood Jesus to have fulfilled Scripture – a prophet predicted something about the messiah (to be born of a virgin; to be born in Bethlehem, etc.) and Jesus did or experienced what was predicted. There’s a second way as well, one with considerable implications for understanding Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus. Here’s how I talk about it in my textbook on the New Testament.
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The second way in which Jesus “fulfills” Scripture is a little more complicated. Matthew portrays certain key events in the Jewish Bible as foreshadowings of what would happen when the messiah came. The meaning of these ancient events was not complete until
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1. Luke places Jesus’ sermon on the plain (Luke 6:17). Do you think Matthew deliberately changed it to the mountain to mimic Moses? 2. Who do you think the prophecy in Deuteronomy was originally intended to point to? Perhaps Josiah, or Jeremiah, or someone else living around the time it was written?
1. Either changed it or simply put it in (it’s not clear if a setting would have been likely in Q; probably not). 2. My sense is that most modern Hebrew Bible scholars think it’s not a reference to a specific prophet to came to but to a series of prophets whose prophetic pronouncements can be judged on the criteria given. I.e., Moses will have successors who speak for God.
The answer may lie in the Aramaic word טורא (taura), which in Galilean is often written טוורה (taura). While in most Aramaic dialects it means “mountain,” in Galilean it can mean both “mountain” and “field.”
טור בית מקדשה tor bet maqdasa = “Mount of the Temple”
טור תלגה tor talga = “Snowy mountain” (a title)
פעליא הוו בטורא palaia hu betaura = “The workers were in the field.”
As the early oral traditions circulated and were retold many times before being written down in the Gospels, this kind of confusion could easily have occurred. It’s possible that Galilean Aramaic speakers (who were among the earliest followers of Yeshua) did not grasp the distinction without context, and once the story was translated into another dialect of Aramaic, or even into another language like Koine Greek, the meaning of that narrative became codified.
Words that mean “mountain” in other languages often also mean something else: in Spanish, the word “monte” can mean a plain in Spanish toponymy and also a mountain, a natural elevation of the terrain.
Dr. Ehrman,
My friend, who teaches 8th grade, recently told me about a speech given by Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?” that has two published transcriptions: one in 1851 and the other in 1863. And even though these sources are relatively recent, and both only about a paragraph in length, they differ significantly! A great example of working with multiple sources and authors’ different motivations. I highly recommend reading both versions.
https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches
In Luke’s birth narrative, after the Bethlehem birth, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus travel to Jerusalem for the circumcision when he is 8 days old, then returned to Nazareth in Galilee.
Of course, both birth narratives may be inventions, but in comparing the two, is it likely that Matthew invented the entire “escape to Egypt” episode, in order to make this comparison to Moses?
Yup, either Matthew or his source.
Hello Professor Ehrman! An observation and a question. When I was an evangelical, we were taught that one should not “allegorize” the scriptures, but take them literally whenever possible. The Golden Rule we were taught was “when the plain sense of scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense…”
But isn’t Matthew allegorizing Hosea 11:1? Surely Hosea’s original intent was not to offer a prophesy about the Messiah, was it? He was talking about the Israelites being delivered from Egypt. So is Matthew allegorizing? And wouldn’t that fly in the face of a basic principle held by many conservative Bible teachers?
Thank you!
Good point. He certainly isn’t reading Hosea in what we would consider a historical way. And as to allegorical/figurative interpretatoins in scripture itself, consider Galatians 4:21-31, Paul himself! (v. 24: “Now this is an allegory”)
My bad! I see you addressed this question in part on January 9th. That’s the I get for reading in reverse chronological order! If you have any more to say about Hosea and Matthew, I’m all ears. Thanks!
People seem to read or interpret the scriptures differently. Many people agree on different points but most everyone will disagree on things that they all might feel are very simple texts. One thing seems to be true, at least in the evangelical circles that surround me, is that how a person reads the scriptures (in subjective religious purposes not necessarily academic) seems to consistently reflect the state of their “heart” they approach them with. An angry person may read god and Paul as judgmental and full of wrath. A person in the beginning stages of grief after being hurt deeply may see the scriptures as continually supporting justice in form of eternal hell until further along in the healing process they may read the same texts as full of grace or radical acceptance. A person who loves without strings attached may read only universal salvation. Some read and expected a political and violent messiah. Some expected one just like Jesus. In the often subjective ways that many read the Bible, historically have the scriptures ever been seen as more of a tool for reflection of a persons current state than an accurate book on how to live?
I’d say that’s a modern understanding for the most part, and there’s obviously some truth in it, just as one reads texts in certain ways depending on what their own theology is, not just their emotional state. That’s why historical scholarship tries to bracket personal views/feelings/assumptions when trying to figure out what a text probably meant.
Do you think there are some strong analogies between the gospels and dramatic literature, ie, plays?
What I mean is that, in many important ways, the gospels tend to be kind of a bare bones text, eg, a lot of emphasis on dialogue, not a lot of elaboration of emotions and inner thoughts, a kind of “one thing after another” narrative style, etc. I contrast this with other kinds of narrative fiction that often give fuller descriptions of what the author is trying to say.
My question is whether the gospels are almost begging for interpretation, perhaps in ways similar to how many plays beg directors and actors to give their own interpretations? One might also see the evangelists as struggling to express what Jesus meant to them and their communities with a resulting text that is strongly enigmatic and open-ended.
In the same vein, maybe a more literal, unpolished and less idiomatic translation does a better job of recognizing this aspect of the gospels that may be more appropriate for some purposes, eg, understanding the gospels more emotionally and in relation to one’s own personal life, than more polished and nuanced translations.
The way to pursue the mater, of course, would be to consider ancient drama instead of modern — how it works in terms of character, plot development, and so on. And each of the Gospels would be different; Mark e.g., does not have nearly as much speech as action.
Thanks. As a follow up are there any modern day NT scholars or more traditional Christian thinkers who see the gospels as analogous to drama in that they appear to be a rather bare bones framework that beg for interpretation? Has this idea attracted at least some serious attention even if it’s far from widespread? Can you suggest an author or book on this topic?
Do you mean theatrical drama to be performed on stage? I’m not sure how you’re characterizing drama here…
Bart, “Matthew maintains that the choice is instead between Moses without Jesus and Moses with Jesus” might have been a good message for gentiles but by the 80s when the author of Mathew composed this, the Temple had been destroyed and the “parting of the ways” was underway. If gentiles had the option of Jesus without Moses, don’t you think most would opt for the one less associated with those rebellious Jews?
I’d say it’s a bit complictated. Christians from the beginning insisted on the importance of Moses, the Law, the covenant with the Jews, etc, because they saw themselves as part of the long divine plan, rather than as something that just sprang up out of nowhere. In part this identification was because it was empirically true (they did spring up as a part of Judaism), part because Jesus’ message makes no sense apart from assuming the (one-time at least) validity of the Jewish message, part because attaching to Moses provided vemerable antiquity ot their views, and .. and probalby other parts…
Lately I’ve been thinking about how absolutely crucial special revelation is to the claims of truth and authority by traditional Christianity.
When did a fairly firm doctrine of special revelation first emerge? Did Jews think of their scripture as revelation?
I believe you’ve said something like one of the major motives of Christians for accepting the OT as scripture was to help give Christianity the credentials of an ancient and thereby deeply respected religion in the classical world.
Was there a period when Christians had decided at least some parts of what became the NT were revelation but the OT, while perhaps highly respected, was not given that status?
It seems to me that if Christians had determined that the gospels were the entirety of revelation that would greatly strengthen Christianity’s claims. If Jesus was/is God then what Jesus said and did is much more clearly God speaking than what comes from the variegated sources of the OT and the reflections of other NT writers. At least the gospels should be thought vastly more authoritative than the OT and other parts of the NT.
It seems like this could also enormously reduce the inconsistencies in the whole of special revelation.
Yes, Jews believed God had revealed his truth in the Torah and other books of Scripture, so Christians picked it up from there. There were very different views of the OT among early Christians, from eacceptance of it as completely revelatory and applicable still after the coming of Christ to complete rejection of it as being opposed to the views of Jesus, to the view that won out that it was given by God, was valid for its time, still has limited validity for today, but has been superseded in many respects with the coming of Jesus.
Matthew always tries to give Jesus credentials: his birth story is similar to Moses, his genealogy shows he is the Davidic Messiah, he fulfills prophecies, his life is predicted by Israeli prophets (example betrayal for 30 pieces of silver), a star heralded his birth, his conception came from the Israeli God, and so on. It seems Matthew is trying to convince the reader that Jesus really is even more important than Moses. Do you think this is because there was strong resistance to the idea of Jesus as the Davidic Messiah by Matthew’s readers? Also, if the scribe that authored Matthew’s gospel was a Roman, it seems that Greco-Roman notions of fate and destiny may be at play in Matthew’s gospel. Like the idea that people need to find and fulfill their destiny and Jesus was fulfilling his destiny. Do you think this is a possibility? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
No, I don’t see much resistance to the idea that Jesus was the davidic messiah; matthew is presupposing his readers agree with that, and tries to give them additional basis for it. It does appear thought that many of htem think the law of Moses is no longer importnat to follow, and that is where he is directing his attack. Nothing suggests that the author lived in Rome or was a Roman citizen, but he certainly lived in the Roman empire and may have well been a gentile. It’s debated. (And yes, Jews and then Christians, like Romans and many others, understood themselves to be directed by divine destiny).
Thanks, that clarified things. The only places I could find in the New Testament that dealt with the idea of destiny is Romans 8:29-30, 1 Thessalonians 3:3, Acts 4:28, Ephesians 1:5, and Ephesians 1:11 (although, as you know, Ephesians is not one of the undisputed letters). Do you think the early Christians got their notions of destiny from Greco-Roman thought or rabbinic thought? In either case, do you think that these verses in the New Testament is what largely motivated Calvinism? I think a blog post from you on the topic of destiny in early Christian thinking and a blog about Calvinism would be very instructive. Again, thanks in advance for your thoughts.
The divine plan is a very big thing in the New Testament, and it’s different from what you find in a number of Greco-Roman traditions, where “fate” can be fickle and unpredictable and soemthign that a divine being (e.g., Isis) can save a person from. In the Xn tradition I think the idea of destiny derives from the notion of an omnipotent, omniscient, Sovereign-over-all- God who since he “knows” everything past present and future must in some sense have determined it. I’d say the later Calvinist views definitely relied on these NT passages, but go in directions not found in them (double predestination, e.g.)
For me, the “fulfilment of prophecy” in the gospels is most like the fad that peaked in … was it the 1980s? … claiming that Nostradamus was a great prophet and that many modern events were foretold in his vague and obscure quatrains. The difference is that modern events can be accurately documented and recorded, unlike those in Israel two millennia ago, and the believers could only massage and distort the prophesies to make them fit. In the case of the gospels, the writers could also invent or massage contemporaneous events, and the discrepancies between the narratives demonstrate their efforts.
As the song Jesus Christ Superstar addressed Jesus, “Why’d you choose such a backward time, and such a strange land?”, and “If you’d come today you could have reached a whole nation. Israel in 4BC had no mass communication”.
Mr. Ehrman, I would like to ask something about the law and its fulfillment. Is Gal 3:19 at odds with Mt 5:17?
Not necessarily, but I’d say 2:16 comes close. 3:19 could be interpreted as saying that it wsa indeed important to keep the law before Jesus’ death, and Matthew 5:17 could be interpreted in line with that, I should think.
I am quite convinced that it Matthews potrayal of Jesus, the Christ was of God, and that “Matthew” wrote his protrayal of Jesus from a Jewish perspective, using a “Midrashic style” of writing. By doing that, I am also quite convinced that everythink was not meant to be understood literally as the Midrashic approach to writing even embraces the extensive use of parables (mashalim) or stories, symbols and allegories I’m sure Matthew used thos to illustrate points, (like Jesus Christ’s origin was devine) or even give. moral and ethical lessons. This woiuld also give reasons to use biblical narratives (as reference to Moses) as a foundational element to assist conveying a deeper truth about Jesus and assimilate Jesus with what Moses and the more full Moses story.
Another aspect I find interesting is that John Shelby Spong also shares this view but takes it a step further. He talks about Jesus’ father, Joseph, who in both stories is the son of Jacob. Spong points out similarities between them, like both being dreamers or interpreters of dreams and both being firstborn sons, as shown in their genealogies, and his role in htis story.
Continue:
I am quite convinced that it Matthews potrayal of Jesus, the Christ was of God, and that “Matthew” wrote his protrayal of Jesus from a Jewish perspective, using a “Midrashic style” of writing. By doing that, I am also quite convinced that everythink was not meant to be understood literally as the Midrashic approach to writing even embraces the extensive use of parables (mashalim) or stories, symbols and allegories I’m sure Matthew used thos to illustrate points, (like Jesus Christ’s origin was devine) or even give. moral and ethical lessons. This woiuld also give reasons to use biblical narratives (as reference to Moses) as a foundational element to assist conveying a deeper truth about Jesus and assimilate Jesus with what Moses and the more full Moses story.
Another aspect I find interesting is that John Shelby Spong also shares this view but takes it a step further. He talks about Jesus’ father, Joseph, who in both stories is the son of Jacob. Spong points out similarities between them, like both being dreamers or interpreters of dreams and both being firstborn sons, as shown in their genealogies, and his role in htis story.
pong points out something interesting. He believes that Matthew used a verse from Isaiah (7:14) about a ‘virgin’ or ‘young woman’ to show Jesus had a holy origin. This idea comes up because there were doubts about who Jesus’ father was. For example, in Mark 6:3, Jesus is called ‘the carpenter, the son of Mary,’ and no father is mentioned. Also, in John 8:41, there’s a line about not being born of fornication, which might hint at questions about Jesus’ birth.
Spong also notes that Matthew’s family tree for Jesus is divided into three groups of 14 generations (which seems unlikely if we count the average years of the generations would be). But what’s really interesting , as Spong points out is that Matthew includes four women in this genealogy: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. These women were involved in actions that were seen as morally questionable at the time. By including them, Matthew seems to be saying that God used these women in founding of the holy people, and also important to prepare for Jesus’ birth. This way of telling Jesus’ story helps support the idea that he came from a divine origin.
This is more of a general question and may not be answerable at all, but in reading Matthew and other NT books in Greek, do you get any impression as to the author’s personality, what sort of person he was? Paul, to me, doesn’t seem very simpatico, but would you like to have a beer with any of MMLJ?
I’d like to have a beer with each of them, as long as it was brewed by modern craft beer standards and not the muck they would have had. But no, it’s not possible to get a beat on an author’s personality based just on his / her vocabularly, grammar, and sentence structure.
Bart,
Thanks for the exposition of how Matthew understood the various ways Jesus “fulfilled” Moses. It is nice to understand this, but I also think it is of little real importance ~2,200 years later. I’ll stick with Mark and Luke — Matthew and John (as well as the many fictional stories in the OT) are of little interest to me).
Bill Steigelmann
For further reading on Matthew: what commentary or other material do you recommend? Thank you. Your blog is part of my daily morning routine.
The best, fullest, critical commentary is the three-volume one by Dale Allison and W.D. DAvies. Probably a lot more manageable and recent would be the one by Alan Culpepper
A third way Matthew’s Jesus fulfills the law is by expanding it so as to make it a richer resource for knowing and doing God’s will. He says in 5:17 that he hasn’t come to destroy the law but fulfill it, and then he proceeds to describe in vv. 21-48 a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees (who were also engaged in similar activity).
This, I think, is the meaning of the Parable of the Talents in 25:14-30. The master’s treasure is entrusted to slaves; two enrich it further, while one simply preserves it intact. I think Jewish hearers would consider Torah as the great treasure which God has entrusted to Israel’s spiritual leaders. Some enrich it by expanding it, but others merely stick with the surface meaning of the text. The main target here, though, is the Sadducees.
You said at the end “Followers of Jesus must follow the law of Moses”, which is interesting since this seems fairly anti-Paul. Given Paul came first, is this mostly an indication as to the diversity of thought in the early church and are there other early writers who took this position?
Yes, there were groups of Jewish CHristians who held this view, and thought of Paul as the “enemy” of the faith — groups sometimes called Ebionites, and Nazoreans, etc.
Till I read this, I did not fully grasp all of Matthew’s genius although I understood some of the ideas from the earlier discussion. While I understood the sojourn in Egypt and the naming of Jesus’s father as Joseph to facilitate that Mosaic typology, the idea of the Sermon on the Mount as also reflecting Mosaic typology I did not realize. Further in Matthew 8, Jesus seems to command the wind and the sea and they seem to obey him. Then again in Matthew 14, Jesus walks on water. There is also the idea of “offer the gift that Moses commanded” after curing leprosy. This is seen in Exodus where Miriam develops leprosy and is cured.
The additions based on Isaiah while keeping Matthew mostly intact, delivers a very different gospel to a generally different audience possibly.
One additional idea is whether Matthew was himself Egyptian(Alexandrian) who came from a Philo esque school and thus favored Mosaic allegories. It is important to note also the ideas of Joseph Atwill who seems to also link the Gospel of Matthew to Moses. A further important giveaway here is that Matthew is a tax collector, and the Alexandrians were among the richest tax collectors. Thus a linkage to Tiberius Alexander would make sense for the author of Matthew. The Apostle Matthew also has linkages to Ethiopia and Egypt.
The question remains of Paul and if Matthew knew Paul. Perhaps Paul and Luke represent a more European Hellenization. And thus never were linked. Paul may have passed before the entrance of Mark and his letters may not have gone far. Matthew knew Mark hence the linkages might be through Rome.
Bart,
Compare Matthew 12:39-42 to Luke 11:29-32, especially Matthew 12:40’s reference to the sign of Jonah being that Jonah was “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
Given that the Jonah reference comes from Q, and given that Luke took that in a different direction–that the sign was Jonah’s preaching and the people’s response to it—this suggests that 12:40 was Matthew’s own spin on Q. And further, since Matthew has other places in which Jesus says he will rise “on the third day” (Matthew 16:21, 17:23, 20:19), and that the request was to have the tomb secured “until the third day” (Matthew 27:64), which was based on Jesus words in Matthew 12:40 (Matthew 27:63), does this not suggest that for Matthew, there was no difference between “three days and three nights” and “on the third day”? In other words, for Matthew and his Jewish readers, “inclusive reckoning” is the best explanation?
Either that or he didn’t notice the difference himself. That wouldn’t be odd since this kind of inconsistency happens a lot, and most people never notice. I know peole who have read Matthew a hunred times and not noticed it! (I’m not sure I ever did 🙂 )