Loading...In continuation of the question of the relationship of the Gospel of Matthew – both the Gospel itself and its anonymous author – to Judaism, I lift from something I wrote somewhere else at some point a while back:
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Contrary to what many Christians have thought throughout the ages, for Matthew following Jesus does *not* mean abandoning Judaism and joining a new religion that is opposed to it. It is worth observing that even some Christians in Matthew’s own day appear to have thought that this is what Jesus had in mind, that is, that he sought to overturn the law of Moses in his preaching about the way of God. For Matthew, however, nothing could be further from the truth. The keynote of the sermon is struck soon after the Beatitudes in the striking statement, found only in this Gospel:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is fulfilled. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (5:17-20).
In Matthew, Jesus is not opposed to the law of Moses. He himself fulfills it, as seen in the important events in his birth, life, and death, events that are said to be “fulfillments” of the prophecy of Scripture. But even more, Jesus in Matthew requires his followers to fulfill the law as well, in fact, to fulfill it even better than the Jewish leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees. Matthew indicates what he means by this difficult saying in the very next passage, the famous “Antitheses” (5:21-48).
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The question that nags me throughout these discussions is: Where does Paul fit into this mix? To my mind, his theology and notion of who Jesus was and what he was teaching is very much at odds with the first three Gospels at the very least. Yet his letters pre-date the Gospels. If the Gospel of Matthew reflects a more Jewish notion of Jesus – your explanation of fulfilling the Law certainly seems to be at odds with the notion of salvation by faith along – how did this tradition survive the earlier, Pauline orthodoxy? Could the more Jewish notion of Jesus have been simply a parallel stream of Christianity that existed alongside the Pauline? Ultimately, it seems, the Church fathers decided to embrace the contradictions and fold Paul and the four Gospels into the same canon. Maybe that explains the Book of Hebrews, since that book seems to work so feverishly at explaining away so many of the apparent contradictions.
I’ll be dealing with that a bit soon.
Bart,
I am very pleased that you are now posting portions of your blog entries on our Facebook pages. As you might recall, I am very interested in communicating what you present to the “common folk” in the churches (that includes me).
To help this along, I am posting this to my Timeline and to that of other groups to which I belong and will continue to do so.
This is what I wrote as an opening introduction to you and your blog Today:
“Bart Ehrman is a renowned New Testament Scholar teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He does NOT present the New Testament from a faith-based (biased) perspective. He analyses both the text in the original languages of the New Testament (Koine Greek) and examines the documents in their historical context. What he Presents is NOT a soothing bedtime story but gives us the hard facts of how the New Testament was formed 300 plus years after the death of Jesus.
If you want a daily presentation of a topic on Jesus and the New Testament I strongly suggest that you join his blog. The membership is about $25 a year for full content and it gives you the opportunity to dialog directly and daily with Dr. Ehrman, ask questions, and get personalize answers.
You are not required to accept what he says and you can question his point of view, but everything is presented from an unbiased scholarly perspective wrtiten for us who are not scholars, and it really gets you thinking and reading your Bible.
Please consider joining, and join us in the dialog.
Thank you, Todd Frederick “
Hmmm. This post seems to be arguing that Matthew was indeed a Jew. Is that right? I’m still very skeptical of that contention. (But I know you like to build a case over several posts, so maybe that’s a premature assumption.)
I’ve also been baffled by the “loophole” fundamentalists create regarding Jesus’ rather strict, spirit-of-the-Law pronouncements that appear in Matthew, as you describe it so well, “the Jesus means to set up an ideal standard that no one could possibly achieve to force people to realize that they are utter sinners in need of divine grace for salvation. The point of Jesus’ words, then, would be that people cannot keep God’s law even if they want to.” It seems clearly the OPPOSITE of what Jesus had in mind – which I believe was to set up a “school” around him and his teachings as other Rabbis had done.
Jesus’ teachings set the bar high, even while eliminating the foolish minutiae the Pharisees and others had invented around the Law, in order to get at the ROOT of the intentions BEHIND the Laws. This is a profound difference between his teachings and any others’, but I credit not Matthew for this (a Greek speaker, of unknown residency) but instead Q or other Sayings Gospels, which have been lost. The sheer uniqueness of the sayings, and how they stand out so starkly against Paul’s rejection of ALL the Law and even modern Christians’ views (the “he was just ‘convicting’ us” crowd) indicates to me, at least, that these sayings are very likely authentic. Is that a valid analysis?
Yup, I’ll get to that soon!
an interesting read professor. on a completely unrelated note what is the quality of NT scholarship coming from Australia? r there any well respected scholars coming out of Oz?
thank you
I’d say the greatest contributions from Australia have been in papyrology and related disciplines in connection with the NT. Maybe someone else has other ideas?
In terms of Australian NT scholars, two that come to mind are Paul Barnett http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Barnett_(bishop) and Leon Morris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Morris – both are on the conservative side.
Maybe I should wait for what’s yet to come…but there are two points I’m wondering about.
First, with Jesus’s intentions being what you say, how can you think he was a teacher whose message is still relevant today? Not getting angry, not feeling desire for an unavailable person…those commands aren’t impossible, but they’re unreasonable and unnecessary. They’d only make sense if unwholesome thoughts/emotions really do create bad “vibes,” and Jesus knew it. But there’s no indication that was the case. Did none of these ancients ever address real problems like rape – which can be spousal – or pedophilia?
Second, what’s your opinion of this claim I’ve heard about how the “other cheek” reference would have been understood in Jesus’s day? Let’s say A and B are standing face to face, and A slaps B on the cheek. According to the “explanation” I’ve heard, this indicates he considers B his inferior. He expects B to slink away. But if B stands his ground and turns his face slightly to present his other cheek, A has a dilemma. If he turns away and leaves, he’ll be “losing face” to some extent. But if he uses his *other hand* to slap B’s *other cheek*, he’ll be acknowledging that B is his equal, not an inferior. Is there any truth to there having been such a…perceived etiquette?
On your two points/ questions: 1) I’m not saying that these were Jesus’ teachings. They were Matthew’s view of Jesus’ teachings — not the same thing.
2) I’d never heard of that before, and it seems to run counter to the tenor of the entire passage.
Folks, Bart’s “The Greatest Controversies of Early Christianity” is now available at http://www.thegreatcourses.com for $35 for the digital download and $50 for the CD version with free streaming. As Bart mentioned a few months ago, (unfortunately) no DVD version was recorded.
Might it not be useful to consider how observant Jews think of the point of the Law ( both Written and Oral Torah ) ? As I understand , it is that Israel ( the Jewish People ) might ” be a holy nation ” and a Light unto the Gentiles ” in fulfillment of its end of the Sinai Covenant . The notion that God would reveal the Law , with the knowledge that it was impossible to observe , wait 1,300 years and them send Paul to reveal the ” Good News ” that it had all been some form of Cosmic Practical Joke would have struck them as ludicrous . Of course , human beings will fall short- thus Yom Kippur today and sin offerings in the Temple days . In the Hebrew Bible , there arise , from time to time , the Prophets to snap the troops back to attention and to make sure that they were not merely ” going through the motions ” . The entirely self assured , intense , fiery hyperbole y of Jesus in Mathew strongly echoes that heritage as does his vehement denunciation of those who ” are not fully getting with the program “. Might not that have been how Jesus actually saw himself ?
Yes, my view is that Jesus stood in the line of the prophets of Hebrew Scripture.
I have always been conflicted with Matthew’s statement that Jesus came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Yet in Mark’s Gospel he did not seem to take the sabbath very seriously and he didn’t fast when the law apparently required the Pharisees to fast. And in all three of the synoptis Gospels he shunned his Mother and family. It looks like he may have violated the fourth and fifth Commandments as will as some arcane fast day. So how was this fulfilling the Law?
He doesn’t do what hte Pharisees insist; but so far as I can see, he never breaks what hte Law says. Different Jewish groups and different Jews (even among the Pharisees) (or rather, *especially* among the Pharisees) had very different interpreations of what hte law required.
but did not jesus say that all food is clean in mark’s gospel ?
which means abrogating jewish food laws ?
does what jesus say in mark’s gospel that all food is clean contradict with matthew ?
Yes he did, and yes it does.