Loading...I am near the end of this thread on the Jewishness of Matthew’s Gospel. I have several more posts to go, so I’m not completely at the finish line; but it’s within sight. (I should stress that I am not intending to give an exhaustive analysis of the problem and all the relevant issues. That would take a very long book. In fact, scholars have indeed written significant books on the topic. One of my graduate students, Judy Siker, wrote her dissertation on one aspect of the issue. She’s also the author of Who is Jesus? What a Difference a Lens Makes. I hope to close out the thread with posts on three related topics: this post and the next on whether Matthew was himself Jewish; the one after on whether Matthew – whether Jewish or not – was anti-Jewish (I hope to do that in just one post, but it may take more); and finally one on whether Matthew and the apostle Paul would have or could have seen eye-to-eye on the relationship of the new faith (call it Christianity) in relationship to the Jewish law.
So, after all I’ve posted so far, was Matthew Jewish? We might mean several things by that question. One would be: was Matthew (that is, the author of the Gospel, whatever his name really was) born and raised as a Jew and did he continue to practice Judaism by following the Jewish law after becoming a follower of Jesus and at the time of the writing of the Gospel? Another would be: was Matthew a gentile who was converted to Judaism before he became a follower of Jesus and who continued to practice Judaism afterwards, by following the Jewish law? Another would be: was Matthew a gentile who became a follower of Jesus and in so doing came to think that he was obliged to practice Judaism by following the Jewish law? There are probably other things it could mean as well.
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I remember being surprised that during the Second-Temple period many non-Jews were attracted to Judaism and adopted its ways, and that Jews were able to conceive of a positive place for Gentiles within their religion. The book Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE) by Terence L. Donaldson shows this quite well.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=Ayf057kcuJsC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Throughout these posts, I have wondered about Matthew frequently quoting Old Testament scriptures “proving” that Jesus was the Messiah. I thought the Old Testament canon was not really formed until a couple of centuries after the death of Jesus. So, how did Matthew know what was “scriptural” in order to repeatedly quote it in this way?
Different Jews accepted different books as scriptural authorities, but by this time virtually everyone accepted the Torah, the Prophets (Former and Latter), and several of the Writings, such as Psalms.
Maybe, like with the Gospel of John, there was more than one author of the Gospel of Matthew.
It’s always possible, though I’ve never seen a sustained argument for it.
It has always struck me that if Matthew had been a Jew, he would have read Isiah 7 in Hebrew instead of Greek and would not have used it to predict the Virgin Birth of Jesus. Therefore, I agree with your conclusion.
The problem with that view is that most Jews in the ancient world read their Bibles in Greek, not Hebrew.
Bart.
Do you mean most Jews living outside Palestine or most Jews living in Palestine?
If it’s the latter, I’m totally confused!!
Also, does Matt. 21:7 support or undermine the argument that Matthew was a Jew? Or is it irrelevant if he was brought up reading the Bible in Greek?
Outside of Palestine (which is where Matthew was located). I deal with Matt 21:7 in my earlier post in this thread.
Bart,
I’ve long awaited the topic of the discussion to get to this point as I didn’t want to take you too far afield from your main thread. But, as you are now flirting with Paul’s letter to the Galations and the first recorded “split” in the 1st Century Church: circumcision. “Christ’s Ventriliquists: the event that Created Christianity,” by Eric Zuesse, promotes the proposition that Paul overturned the cart on original Christianity as taught by James the brother of Jesus and Peter and the other remaining original disciples of Jesus and created a wholly new (essentially bastardized) religion based on his own ambitions to create something the Romans would find acceptable and therefore, aggrandize Paul in the process. Have you read this book or otherwise known of this proposition and secondly, what do you make of it?
I haven’t read the book, but it’s a very old and well known theory, often promoted — even by non-biblical scholars in trenchant essays for example by Nietzsche and, in a hilarious one, by George Bernard Shaw. I think the view is too simplistic, but explaining why would take a number of posts!
I can never figure out Paul. Sometimes I think he’s genuinely struggling with these questions, trying to come to terms with his delusory “visions”, and other times I wonder if he’s not just an excellent con-man – someone like L.Ron Hubbard with mesmerising personality, but who’s seen an opportunity to exploit a popular new fad religion – i.e. he fakes his “vision” and manages to convince James and Peter that he’s a legitimate apostle, and then seeks to implement his grand plan. I’m not saying that is the case… but I wouldn’t put it beyond him! It’s not an uncommon trait for ‘Doomsday’ preachers.
Bart: “But it is striking that [Matthew] says nothing about the cultic aspects of the law that were widely seen in his environment as being distinctive to Judaism: circumcision, for example, or kosher food laws or Jewish festivals.”
Why do you refer to circumcision and kashrut as cultic aspects of the law? They don’t directly pertain to the Temple cult. Is there perhaps a better word to describe these boundary markers in Jewish law?
I suppose there are. You’re right, they aren’t really about worshiping God per se. I vaguely think some people do bifurcate the law into ethical and cultic legislation, or ethical and ritual. I know many balk at that, but there seems to me to be clear distinctoins (maybe going back to the Nohaide regulations). But what should we call those parts of the laws that more or less “make Jews Jewish” but are not distincitve in terms of ethical requirements?
Bart: “But what should we call those parts of the laws that more or less “make Jews Jewish” but are not distincitve in terms of ethical requirements?”
No fair! I asked you first.
But since you ask, I’m tempted to merely use the terms used by the authors of 4QMMT, namely “some works of the law” (מקצת מעשי התורה) by which “we have separated ourselves from most of the people” (פרשנו מרוב העם) and by which “it will be reckoned to you as righteousness” (ונחשבה לך לצדקה) “in the last days” (באחרית הימים). Just as the Jews were separated from the other people by some of these works of the law, so these Qumran ‘Pharisees’ separated themselves further from most of the people of Israel by these additional works of the law. It doesn’t hurt that the word translated here as “some” (מקצת) is related to the word for a corner/edge (מִקְצֹעַ) or knife (מַקְצֻעָה) to separate. Thus these are “some/separating” laws establishing boundaries between one group and another. Laws/customs intrinsically identify a people and differentiate them from other peoples.
Not bad, eh?
So are you calling them “works of the law”? I agree with your helpful explanation of them, but is this what you are calling them? Seems like “works” of hte law refers to the doing of them rather than to the laws themselves?
Bart: “So are you calling them “works of the law”? I agree with your helpful explanation of them, but is this what you are calling them? Seems like “works” of hte law refers to the doing of them rather than to the laws themselves?”
For now I’m just calling them “select works of the law,” and I think the “works of” carries with it the nuance of how these laws were interpreted and implemented by a particular group (the disputed traditions of the fathers that would later be called the oral law). I’m not sure Paul would differentiate circumcision or kashrut as something separable from the whole law (Gal 5,3.14). Thus he must relativize the Law as a whole as a pedagogue, good and useful for its time. What we call the moral law was universal for Paul (Rom 2,12-16).
So maybe Paul didn’t distinguish between different types of law, but rather how one interprets and implements select ‘works’ of the law. The author(s) of 4QMMT interpreted and implement select ‘works’ of the law in a hyper-exclusive manner, while Paul, using much of the same language, interpreted the law universally and morally and abandoned exclusive, sectarian works/interpretations/practices of the law.
Does that work?
Yeah, it’s obvoiusly tricky, and we’ll never resolve Paul’s view of the law on blog posts. The literature on the problem — yikes! My view is that Paul did expect gentiles to keep aspects of the law (the *reason* to love is because that “fulfills the law”!), but not those things that make Jews Jewish. He expects gentiles to keep what we (but not he) would call ethical requirements (seeing them as related to the love commandment) but not circumcision, kashrut, sabbath, etc. So even though it’s not a popular view among a lot of our colleagues, I think he did (whether consciously or not, I don’t know) have a kind of bifurcatoin. But it’s hard to speak of “ethics” vs. “things that made things Jewish” and the problem with “select works of the law” is that it’s accurate but vague, since it doesn’t specify how the “select” works cohere with one another to constitute a category.
Bart: “My view is that Paul did expect gentiles to keep aspects of the law (the *reason* to love is because that “fulfills the law”!), but not those things that make Jews Jewish.”
Again, it is the whole law that is fulfilled according to Paul. How can he say that? The later Jewish tradition would also record a debate about what makes up the whole law, whether it include both the written and the oral law, the latter being the divisive interpretations, the traditions of the fathers. This particular debate also centered around how one should receive gentiles interested in learning the law. Hillel took the position of Paul as to how the whole law is fulfilled. The rest is ‘interpretation’. And the word used for ‘interpretation’? פֵּירוּשָׁ The same root used by the sectarian Pharisee author(s) of 4QMMT for separating themselves by means of their divisive interpretation of how to practice select works of the law. It is this ‘divisive interpretation’ of the law that Paul, the Pharisee, is rejecting in his universal interpretation of the law. b Shabbat 31a
Now how cool is that?
The select works of the law are everything but the Paul’s messianic law (Gal 5,14 6,2).
Yup, the whole law. Even by gentiles who do not get circumcised or keep kosher!
One final question in this imaginary midrash upon Paul. Whatever can he mean when he says that the work of the law is written on hearts of gentiles?
The work of the law is obviously not just one or more external acts of following the law for it is internal, written on their hearts. And their conscience is also bearing witness while their thoughts are both accusing or even excusing. It’s as if their thoughts, accusing and excusing, are arguing like like the last of הזוגות, Hillel and Shammai, or some later תנאים.
That’s a funny thought, isn’t it?
I guess he means that gentiels know what the law of God indicates they are to do (how to behave) even though they don’t have it, just another expression of natural theology, no?
Is it possible to get a post about your opinion on Jesus’ relationship to Gentiles during his ministry?
There’s a few instances in the Gospels that indicate he only came for “the lost sheep of Israel”, but also parts where he helps Gentiles.
What was Jesus’ historical connection to Gentiles during his ministry?
Ah, good idea. He appears not to have spent time in gentile places, but passages like the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 show that he thought gentiles could enter the kingdom. (And Matt. 8:10-12 is pretty emphatic; I’m not sure if that one goes back to Jesus or not…)