Here are some intriguing questions I have received about Matthew and Paul, with my best attempt at brief responses.

 

QUESTION:

I’ve been debating my adult son on the tie between Jeremiah 7:11 (NRSV: “Has this house , which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?”) and what Jesus said in the gospels, (Matthew 21:11: “It is written: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a den of robbers’”) which are translated to robbers or thieves (depending on the translation). Is there a consensus among scholars on what the term used in the original Hebrew of Jer 7:11 meant prior to the later translations into Greek (lestes) and English (robbers)? Also Is there any other verse in the Hebrew Bible where that term was used for a comparative analysis of meaning? Thank you for your insight.

RESPONSE:

The Hebrew uses a kind of unusual word that means something like “person of violence,” which can be used of a murderer or robber, so literally, I guess, “Place of violent people.”  It is used also in Deut. 11:14; Ps. 17:4; Isa 35:9; and Ezek 7:22 and 18:10, but nowhere else, I believe. The Greek translation (the Septuagint) translates it (in Jer 7:11) as a “den of robbers,” using the term lestes.  One problem is that lestes sometimes means the robber who breaks into your house” and sometimes it refers to “insurrectionist, guerilla.”  The only way to know which it means is by carefully looking at the context in which it is used, as is true of most words (so that one might disagree what it means in one verse or another).  In both Jeremiah and Matthew it does seem to be connected to financial rather than military activities.

QUESTION:

What is your opinion about the apparent overlap between what happens in the Temptation and Crucifixion Narratives in the Gospel of Matthew, particularly regarding the possibility of conscious mirroring of the two narratives?

It is theorized that Matthew 4:6 and Matthew 27:40 act as mirrors of each other, with Satan’s call for the Son of God to leap from the Temple to show his power echoed by the enemies of Jesus at the scene of the Passion, in which they mockingly call for the Jesus to descend from the Cross to display his claimed authority as Messiah/Son of God.

It seems, to my untutored view, that Matthew may be developing the limited Markan Temptation narrative in order to connect the words of Satan in the desert to the bystanders of the Crucifixion. If I may ask, do you believe that this is a genuine connection/mirroring in the narrative of the Gospel, or am I perhaps reading too much into the text ?

 

RESPONSE:

Interesting idea.  I’m not sure I’ve heard it before.  You do get that kind of mirroring phenomenon sometimes in the Gospels, e.g., in Mark with the baptism recorded in 1:10 and the crucifixion in 15:38-39; in Mark’s case the connection between the two events is made particularly evident because both passages use the unusual word “schizo” — “ripping” open (at the baptism of the heavens, where God dwells, and at the crucifixion of the curtain in the temple, where God dwells on earth): the word is found only in these two places in Mark; and in both places a “voice” declares Jesus to be the son of God.

Your idea about a similar connection between Matthew’s temptation narrative and crucifixion does seem plausible to me at first glance.

 

QUESTION:

Among other quotes from Papias, Eusebius has Papias saying something that I see translated in English as, “So Matthew arranged the oracles in Hebrew dialect, and each interpreted them as he was able.”

In English this is ambiguous, similar to “He beat his son because he was drunk” doesn’t pin down whether the father or the son was drunk, to wit, whether “in Hebrew dialect” was about the oracles, which Matthew arranged, or about Matthew’s arrangement of the oracles.

Is it ambiguous in the original, or is it clear in Greek that being in a Hebrew dialect referred to the work product, and not to the original oracles?

 

RESPONSE:

In my edition of Papias in the Loeb Classical Library (The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2), I provide a different translation that I believe is more accurate:  “And so Matthew composed (or compiled: there are differences in the manuscripts) the sayings in the Hebrew tongue, and each one interpreted [Or: translated] them to the best of his ability.”

Whether Papias originally said “composed” or “compiled” the sayings (the Greek word is LOGIA), in either case what he wrote down was in Hebrew.  Other writers (or readers, at least), according to this passage, “translated” or “interpreted” them as best as they could (the word for “interpreted” can also means “translated”)

 

QUESTION:

In your opinion, is 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 a non-Pauline later interpolation?  The passage in the NRSV reads:

 ¹⁴ For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews ¹⁵ who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone ¹⁶ by hindering us from speaking to the gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins, but wrath has overtaken them at last.

 

RESPONSE:

The person asking the question is noting that some scholars claim that the passage was not originally in 1 Thessalonians, but was inserted by someone much later.  But since it is in all of our surviving manuscripts, it is not a “textual variant” (since the texts don’t vary: they all have it) but would be an “interpolation” (that is, a passage inserted by someone BEFORE any of our surviving copies were produced.)  And this person wants to know if I think so as well.

My view is:  I don’t think it’s an interpolation. The reason people argue that it was inserted later by someone else into the letter is that the phrase “the wrath of God has come upon them” sounds like he’s referring to the destruction of the Temple/Jerusalem, but I don’t think he means that. In Rom. 1:18 he says the “wrath of God” has come upon pagans too.  It just means that God is showing his anger at them in one way or another.

Even though that’s the *argument* that is often used, I’ve always thought that in most cases the people/scholars who advance the argument do so because they don’t want Paul to be seen calling Jews “Christ killers.”  My view is that the verse doesn’t teach that either.  He is indicating in the passage that just as the Thessalonian followers of Jesus were persecuted by (other) Thessalonians, the Judean followers of Jesus were persecuted by (other) Judeans.  The word translated into English as “Jews” and “Judeans” is the same Greek word and here, in my view, should be rendered “Judeans.”