Studies in Canonical Criticism

Reading the New Testament as Scripture

Robert W. Wall

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780567704825
• eBook ISBN: 9780567693662
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

As one of the leading figures in New Testament studies, Robert W. Wall has continually focused on the function of the New Testament as a "canonical" or authoritative collection of writings, reflecting not only the content and essence of the Church's emerging faith, but also the life to that community of followers of Jesus who eventually became widely known as "Christians." In the vein of his defining work, The New Testament as Canon: A Reader in Canonical Criticism, Wall now reflects upon his more recent body of study. Always emphasizing 'canonical conversation', Wall had collected and revised some of his most important essays of the last two decades, including Unity of Luke and Acts (2010), The Unifying Theology of the Catholic Epistles (2003-13) and Images of Church in John's Revelation (2015). Completed by a new essay on the canonical approach to the Paratext of Hebrews, and with vital "introductory notes" for each chapter that highlight both Wall's revisions and his response to critical reception, this book is yet one more asset in Wall's continuing pursuit of the canonical function of the church's Scriptures.

Part One

The Fourfold Gospel

1

A Canonical Reading of a Gospel Pericope: Matthew 2:7-15 (2012)

Introductory notes: The following chapter is a revised excerpt from my contribution to Biblical Hermeneutics: Five Views, ed. Beth Stovell and Stanley E. Porter (Downers Grive, IL.: InterVarsity Press, 2012), pp. 111–31. The primary purchase of this book is to introduce, demonstrate, and then compare five different interpretive approaches to a single biblical set-text, Matthew 2:7-15. The contribution of each “view”—historical, literary, theological, philosophical, and canonical—is provided by a practitioner; I contributed the “canonical” view. This excerpt has been significantly revised to include both a new introduction and a “plain sense” reading of the selected Gospel pericope to help readers envisage how a canonical approach to the fourfold Gospel implicates a toolbox of historical and (mostly) literary criticisms without necessarily dislocating the text from its setting within the church’s two-testament scripture. In doing so, I attempt to respond to a cautionary note sometimes sounded that the canonical approach to exegesis amounts to a “canonical fundamentalism”—a replacement methodology to modern biblical criticism. More properly understood, the canonical approach refocuses all the tools of historical and literary criticism by the orienting concerns of scripture’s ecclesial address and by its ongoing performances that target the theological and moral formation of its particular communities of readers and auditors in their worship, catechesis, mission, and personal devotions.

Introduction

The following chapter seeks to demonstrate a canonical approach to a single Gospel pericope, Matthew 2:7-15. Matthew’s placement within the fourfold Gospel and the Gospel’s role within the two-testament biblical canon, however, provides a context for the exegesis of a single passage. A canonical approach to exegesis resists the kind of atomism that drills down on a single passage seemingly without an awareness of what surrounds it either within its compositional setting (i.e., Matthew’s Gospel) or within canonical context (i.e., the NT’s fourfold Gospel). My exegetical “probes” into Matthew 2:7-15 seek to wrap this context around the pericope to interpret a thicker meaning. The claim of Matthew’s “priority,” for instance, is not made on the basis of typical historical criticisms of a narrative of the Evangelist’s life of Jesus first composed and then used as a source for the writing of other canonical Gospels. The consensus of Gospel criticism is that this historical priority belongs to Mark’s Gospel. The claim of Matthew’s priority when comparisons are made between the four canonical Gospels is because it’s placed first among the four in the final canonical form of the whole Gospel. In a sense, this too is based upon historical precedent, since Matthew’s was probably the first Gospel used as scripture in the worship and catechesis of early Christians (see below). But this observation begs the question: why Matthew? I would suggest two good reasons, both rhetorically adduced, for Matthew’s canonical priority: first, its preface to the story of Jesus’s messianic mission offers the NT reader the best transition from OT to the NT; and, second, its narrative architecture is well suited for uses as scripture in Christian worship and catechesis.¹

The role of Matthew’s introduction of Jesus (Matt 1–4) as an effective “canonical seam” is mentioned in most commentaries on the Gospel. What often goes unmentioned is the threat that this transitional narrative throttles: namely, a Marcion-like theology that marginalizes or dismisses altogether the OT witness to Israel’s God as the oracles of an inferior god. Although not admitting this as a reason, many Christians today practice the church’s two-testament Bible as though Marcion was right all along: the OT rarely is used in worship or instruction and when “scripture” or “church” is mentioned Christians have only the NT in mind.

Matthew’s Gospel begins its testimony of Jesus by carefully locating him within Israel’s biblical story, not only his genesis from Israel’s family tree (Matt 1:1-16) but his identification as Israel’s Messiah (Matt 1:21). Naturally, the Gospel bears witness to a number of surprises that prevents the religious leaders of Jesus’s Judaism from recognizing him as their savior including, ironically, his own genesis from God as “Emmanuel” (Matt 1:18-20, 22-25).

While this “canonical seam” as I call it is best understood more generally as connecting the two testaments together by Matthew’s constant references to fulfilled prophecy or allusions to OT Israel that Matthew’s Jesus then embodies from his beginning, this may be more precisely understood by the final form of the OT in the Christian canon in which the collection of prophets (including Daniel) comes last. The narrative of this reordering from the Synagogue’s Tanakh to follow the church’s Greek translation of the OT (LXX) follows a complicated plotline and need not concern us here. My point is that Matthew’s priority facilitates an interpretive rubric that reads the OT witness to God who promises to restore God’s people. These promises according to the OT are realized because of Jesus’s messianic work according to the NT. I might even allow that the OT book that concludes the various editions of the OT typically forges a “seam” that makes this point in more particular ways, whether Malachi (as in the church’s present Bible), Daniel (as in Sinaiticus) or Sirach (as in Alexandrinus) or 2 Chronicles (as in Tanakh). When read by this prophecy-fulfillment rubric, each book that concludes the OT and stands juxtaposed with the NT in the Christian biblical canon presents readers with a profile of messiahship that is personified by Matthew’s Jesus. There is a sense in which any intertextual reading of Matthew’s Gospel, such as engaged in below, is an evocation of the relationship between the two testaments in a way that presents a faithful God’s realization of promises made to Israel through the messianic agency of Jesus.

The early use of Matthew in Christian worship and catechesis is partly the result of its narrative structure: it is a carefully ordered Gospel. Although Krister Stendahl’s conclusions about a “School of St. Matthew” track a different point, his argument that Matthew is the production of teachers who used it in training disciples to read and teach scripture after rabbi Jesus (following the “Great Commission” in which the risen Jesus commanded his disciples to teach others as he had taught them; Matt 28:20) seems pertinent here.² That is, whether or not the faculty of this School trained new disciples in Jesus’s pesher hermeneutics of scripture, which does make sense of the Jesus tradition received in Luke 24:44-48, the final form and early reception of Matthew’s Gospel reflects a pedagogical interest. The sermons of Matthew’s Jesus, spread across the entire Gospel with related narrative units, effectively consolidates his instruction in discrete thematic units in a way that allows an orderly and comprehensive overview of what Jesus taught his disciples, which they in turn are to teach and “make disciples” of all nations. In this sense, the continuity that extends from OT to NT extends to present readers, who are responsible for proclaiming the biblical story of salvation into their own worlds.³

A Plain Sense Reading of Matthew 2:7-15

A canonical approach is less about a particular interpretive method and more about a way of thinking about scripture and its theological (rather than historical) referent, and how this approach shapes exegesis and its existential and ecclesial effects. Practitioners of the canonical approach in its various guises share the full array of biblical criticisms. In particular the proper beginning point of every modern strategy of biblical interpretation is the construction of a text’s “plain sense.”⁴ Matthew 2:7-15 belongs to the First Gospel’s infancy narrative (Matt 1-2), which introduces NT readers to Jesus as the Son of God Messiah. The plotline delivers on the narrator’s promise to tell readers about the Messiah’s origins (γένεσις; 1:18a) by connecting the narrator’s clipped narratives of his birth in Bethlehem (2:1-6) and rescue there from Herod’s treachery (2:7-15, 16-23) to the angelic and biblical prophecies of his birth (1:18b-25) and ancestry (1:2-17) by a cache of common motifs (dream, angel of the Lord, Joseph, fulfillment of biblical prophecy) and catchwords, including γεννάω (“to give birth;” cf. 1:2-16 and 2:1, 4) and τίκτω (“to conceive;” 1:21-25 and 2:2).⁵ That is, the Jesus who is conceived in Matt 1 as “son”—of Abraham (1:1, 2), king David (1:1, 6), Mary (1:16)⁶ and God (1:18, 23)—is this same “child” of Matt 2 (2:8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 20, 21) who is rescued from harm’s way to rescue “his people from their sins” (1:21). Matt 1-2 form an integral whole that performs the role of preface to the gospel’s telling of the Messiah’s story.

Matt 2:1-6 supplies the approach into our text by its ominous introduction of two competing royal families. On the one hand is Jesus, son of king David (1:1, 6), whose royal purchase is indicated by his birthplace in Judean Bethlehem (2:1) in accordance with biblical testimony (2:5-6); and on the other hand is king Herod, whose “days” in Roman Palestine were ostensibly his (2:1). The tension between them is made clear to the reader by the arrival of “magi from the East” in Jerusalem, the epicenter of God’s sacred universe where the biblical promise of salvation will be realized in due time. The arrival of these astrologers in the holy city raises questions about a “king of the Jews;”⁷ their claim to be on an unlikely pilgrimage “to worship him” should provoke suspicion in the reader. Not only are the practices magi engage in forbidden by Israel’s scripture (see Acts 8, 19), they are followers of stars rather than scripture. The constructive theological role of this unsettling element in the birth story of Israel’s messiah is anticipated by Jesus’s other title as “son of Abraham” (1:1), the father of Gentile proselytes, ancestor of the four Gentile women included in the opening genealogy (i.e., Tamar, Ruth, Rahab, Bathsheba).

While the gospel’s universalist theme might explain the presence of magi in Jesus’s birth story, their entrance into the narrative world also introduces readers to a persistent conflict between the Messiah’s more nationalistic ambition to save the household of Israel from their sins and, failing this, to prepare a band of disciples “to make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19-20). Although there is no mention of their conversion in the pericope, the magi’s worshipful response to Jesus—they had come to Jerusalem to “worship” (purpose indicated by use of infinitive aorist active from προσκυνέω) him (2:2) and did so when they found him (2:11) anticipates the Gentiles’ positive response to the gospel.⁸

But the magi’s real role is as Herod’s foil. In the first place, the reader should be shocked by Herod’s responsiveness to their claim. After all, they are outsiders “from the East” who are listed in scripture as among those whom Israel should avoid. Yet Herod in solidarity with “all of Jerusalem” becomes “frightened” (ταράσσω; cf. Matt 14:26) by their words. Why should any Jew be made restless by the prospect of the arrival of Israel’s messianic ruler!? It is highly ironical that Herod convenes Jerusalem’s magisterium—sharply stated by the narrator as “scribes of the people” (2:4; cf. 1:21)—for scripture’s confirmation of the magi’s secular wisdom (2:4-6); but then upon hearing it turns back to the magi (2:7) to plot evil rather than to respond faithfully to what God has made clear by the cooperation of star and scripture.

Nothing is said of Herod’s motives in paying heed to the magi, in being alarmed by what they say about a king’s “birth” or then rejecting its obligation. Nor is there any hint given that the scribes Herod calls upon for biblical confirmation of messiah’s birthplace will one day come to accuse Jesus of abolishing the very scripture that bears witness to it (cf. 5:17-18; 3:15). The narrative approach to our text concentrates the reader on the irony that will come to shape the gospel’s plotline: the very ones for whom the prophecy of a messianic ruler is given will reject him and even conspire against him.

The narrator’s repetition of Τότε Ἡρῴδης (2:7, 16) marks out two stages of Herod’s opposition, perhaps implying that his horrific plan of infanticide (2:16) was in mind all along. Initially he simply exchanges information with the magi in secret (cf. 1:19), advising them from scripture that Bethlehem is the messiah’s birthplace. He then commissions them to find him there so that “I too can come and worship him.” His use of the aorist subjunctive of προσκυνέω suggests disingenuousness: the real reason he will come is not to worship his rival but to kill him.

The magi are led by the star to “the place where the child was” (2:9). Neither the scribes nor Herod join them on the final leg of their pilgrimage; almost surely they do not need instructions to find Bethlehem, which is a short distance from Jerusalem. The relevant issue is to find “the place where the child was” to worship him, and for this they need a star (2:2). The extravagant joy the magi experience⁹ when they find the right address in Bethlehem (2:10) seems odd, but is explained by their sighting of the child who is then worshiped with similar extravagance (2:11). They find him with “Mary his mother,” an intimacy that is repeated in this chapter (2:11, 13, 14, 20, 21) to recall an Exodus trope (LXX Ex 4:19-20) and prepare ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations of Secondary Sources
• Introduction
• Part One The Fourfold Gospel
• Part Two The Apostolos: Acts and the Catholic Epistles Collection
• Part Three The Pauline Letters Collection and Hebrews
• Part Four The Revelation of John
• Works Cited
• Index of Authors
• Index of Biblical Figures
• Index of Scriptures
• Copyright Page