Everyday Conversations with Matthew

John Holdsworth

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780334057468
• eBook ISBN: 9780334058533
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

How might a young student be inspired by the sermon on the Mount? Refusing to be intimidated by the challenges implicit in reading the gospel, Everyday Conversations with Matthew brings the situations of ordinary readers into conversation with the scholarship to help make the text accessible and practically useful in specific instances.

1

Painting Jesus by Numbers

Chris is not alone in her dismay. Academic commentators on Matthew’s Gospel are well aware of how distant it can feel from our own times and assumptions. John Fenton goes so far as to make a list of the problems the Gospel presents for the modern reader (Fenton 1963, pp. 17–26), and some commentaries read as if the author is quite overwhelmed by them. Difficulties include matters of style and presentation and methods of argument that we do not nowadays find compelling. Additionally, there are issues that arise from the message itself with its emphasis on end times and judgement, its treatment of rewards and punishment, and its uncompromising vitriol against Jewish religious leaders.

In the Introduction to her commentary, Anna Case-Winters asks: ‘Why Matthew? Why now?’ (Case-Winters 2015, p. 1) and approaches the Gospel from a direction unimpeded by questions around style. She locates the book in what she decides is its historic context within the infant Christian community. ‘In these texts’, she says, ‘we see Jesus facing up to conflict and controversy, ministering at the margins, overturning presuppositions about insiders and outsiders, privileging the powerless, demonstrating the authority of ethical leadership, challenging allegiance to empire and pointing the way to a wider, divine embrace than many dared imagine’ (p. 1).

Case-Winters’ approach displays a frustration with the kind of commentary that deals at length with the question, for example, of whether the Christian community for which Matthew was writing was made up mostly of former Jews or mostly of Gentiles, without telling us why that should matter to us. In this context ‘us’ is the modern Church community – people like Chris. She translates that critical question into a description of a time ‘when there was conflict and division in the community of faith’, and ‘when some were insiders and some were outsiders’ (p. 1). In other words, she combines exegesis – the traditional method of interpreting texts based on reading out from what the text says and trying to get behind its original meaning – with eisegesis. Eisegesis starts with contemporary experience and looks at the text to see whether that experience can be mirrored there. In other words, it reads in instead of, or as well as, reading out. This is an approach which is much more likely to feed Chris’s appetite. Case-Winters’ list is not exhaustive though and it is tempting to add to the list of contemporary issues that we might recognize in the Gospel.

Perhaps one very important one concerns institutions. Matthew certainly has much to say about the institutions of Jewish religion. He is hugely critical of religious leaders and what passes for religious liturgy and observance. Based as it is on religious principles, this has implications for his understanding of law, and its demands, and perhaps even on the whole question of Jewish identity. He clearly has an agenda here and sees in Jesus the remedy he seeks. So what is the basic problem?

It could be argued that it is a very modern problem, sometimes described in terms of ‘reputational damage’ – that is, when the reputation of an institution is deemed more important than the pursuit of its supposed core values. For example, when abuse allegations in a church are covered up because the institution’s reputation is considered more important than the damage to the abused. Or when, in wider society, wrongdoing in a public body, such as the police or politicians or aid agencies, is covered up to protect the reputation of those institutions. These are all institutions whose core values commit them to the care and protection of the vulnerable, but sometimes they are justly accused of having developed to a point where that vision has been overtaken by an institutional dynamic that demands protection. This is all the more dangerous when those institutions carry with them power, and particularly the power to shape identity.

Those who are concerned about this widespread modern phenomenon are extremely critical of leadership that lacks moral courage. They are among those who urge a ‘back to basics’ approach to remind those institutions of what they truly represent and the values they are meant to hold. These are values that are crucial for society, and no institution, it is claimed, should be deemed too big to fail because of its power, its place in society or its place in national consciousness and identity. It could be argued that this is Matthew’s mission too.

To do

Is this a picture of society that you recognize? Do you feel comfortable in beginning study of a Bible passage from these kinds of considerations?

Such considerations may whet our appetite for Matthew and encourage us to be more tolerant of its style as we try to find ways of reading that enable us to get under its skin, but we still have to come to terms with its peculiar presentation. How might we get a handle on that?

In a determined, but ultimately doomed, attempt to encourage me to be an artist, well-meaning relatives used to make me childhood presents of the craft activity called ‘painting by numbers’. The idea was (and is) that a colourful picture would be reduced to a delineated plan of the distribution of each of the colours. The craft element was then to apply numbered paints to the equivalent numbered sections on the picture outline in order to recreate a beautiful coloured picture. Inevitably the result differed from a work of original art (in my case very greatly). Original art often does not have distinct lines but its hues and colours shade in subtle sophistication. By contrast, a painting by numbers picture, even at best, has a more formal and strict appearance. It seems to relate less to the world of art than to some more mathematical or scientific discipline.

To do

Think for a moment about the truths you most rely on for meaning in your life. Then think about how you know that they are true. Are you reassured by scientific and evidence-based means of truth, in which case, what is the evidence that supports what you rely on? Is truth for you something less tangible, in which case how would you describe it? Do the most important truths rely more on faith than certainty? You may need quite some time to think about these questions, but they are central to the way we respond to the different Gospel presentations, each of which seek to persuade us of what the authors in each case believe to be fundamental truth.

Of the four Gospels, it might well be helpful to see Luke or John as works of original art in that sense; and if so, by comparison, to see Matthew as more strict, formal and, perhaps, even more academic. It could be said to attempt to paint a picture of Jesus by numbers, fitting the stories about him into pre-designed shapes. So where did the pre-designing come from? One convincing answer would be, from Jewish tradition. Throughout the Gospel there is ample evidence that the writer is familiar with Old Testament writing and, in particular, that he interprets that writing in terms of the expectation of a Messiah. He also understands contemporary Jewish culture. But beyond the evidence of what Matthew writes is the evidence of how he arranges what he writes. For the past hundred years or so it has been generally accepted that there is an intentional structure to the Gospel that mirrors Jewish literary convention.

The repeated phrase ‘after these sayings’ occurs five times at the conclusion of collections of material, much of which is not collected in the same way in other Gospels. In other words, the suggestion is that Matthew has brought together in a thematic way material that is presented in a different way in the other Gospels where it occurs, and has done so five times. B. W. Bacon (Bacon 1930) suggested that this arrangement determines the structure of the Gospel as a whole, and that each of the discourses is preceded by a narrative section, so producing five ‘books’ that would be equivalent to a kind of Christian Pentateuch. The arrangement of books in fives is well attested in the Old Testament as well as in other Jewish literature. It can be seen in both the Psalms and Proverbs, for example, as well as in the Torah, otherwise known as the Pentateuch, the first section of the Hebrew Bible and the first five books of the Christian Old Testament. The detail of this view has been challenged, but the five-fold pattern of discourses is an inescapable fact. However, it is not the only possibility of structural engineering suggested by a repeated phrase.

J. D. Kingsbury (1975) noted the repetition of the phrase ‘from that time Jesus began . . .’ at 4.17 and 16.21 and suggested that on each occasion they introduced a new intentional section of the Gospel. This would produce a three-part structure. At this point we do not need to look at the proposed contents of these sections, but rather to note that there does appear to be an intended formal structure to Matthew, and that it may conform to Jewish conventions surrounding the numbers three and five.

The many quotations from the Old Testament bear witness not only to the author’s knowledge of the tradition but also to a way of presenting Jesus that puts a great premium on evidence-based truth. This also accords with the more scientific approach that we have already noted. Matthew aims to convince his audience by relating episodes in the life of Jesus to Old Testament prophecies as he understands and interprets them. One almost expects to see QED at the end of some sections. If our aim is to find a human Jesus with whom we can identify, clearly we shall have to read between the lines.

To do

There is a series of humorous books that attempts to describe complex human conditions in the manner of a car manual (see B. Starling, 2016, Haynes Explains Marriage: Owners Workshop Manual, Haynes, London. Others in the series describe pensioners or teenagers. You get the point). You may be able to get hold of a copy, but whether you can or not, what do you think are the limitations of this approach with regard to religious practice? Does a Manual to explain Religion have advantages?

At this point it may be useful to let Matthew speak for himself. The first two chapters of the book are only found in Matthew. They are his particular introduction. They act as a kind of formal overture to the symphony that will be the Gospel, rehearsing its themes, teasing the reader with what will follow, introducing the presentation of Jesus, which will be its central intention. We might be tempted to begin at 1.18, and to dismiss the genealogy which begins the work, simply because it’s boring to read, but that would be to miss some important clues, and to fail to recognize the textbook-like presentation. Nowadays textbooks in many disciplines include tables, graphs and boxed sections of interpretation. That was not available to Matthew, and this is his equivalent.

Read Matthew 1.1–17

The first clue is not evident in English translation, and that is that the Greek word used for genealogy is genesis and in fact the whole line is a direct quotation of the Greek version of Genesis 2.4. Just as the Gospel of John begins with an overt reference to the Genesis account of creation, so Matthew immediately suggests a link to the beginnings of the story, but which story? The answer is given immediately afterwards. This is the story of Israel beginning with Abraham. It will be immediately apparent that the genealogy is contrived in a number of ways. The most obvious is that there are not enough people there for this to be an actual family tree. Luke also includes a genealogy in his Gospel, which is completely different and much longer. It has been suggested that Matthew’s genealogy is based on significant figures and events in the story of Israel, and that it is closely related to the idea of kingship, witness the pointed mention of David. Just as some monarchs have a ‘real’ birthday and an official birthday, so perhaps Jesus as king has a real gene­alogy and an ‘official’ one.

For an ‘official’ genealogy this one has some surprising entrants. In the first section, we have four women who are all controversial in some way. Tamar acted as a prostitute in order to secure children and shame her father in law (Genesis 38). Rahab, the harlot of Jericho (Joshua 2.1–21), saved the lives of two spies – the original tart with a heart – but hardly a role model to be claimed in a royal genealogy. Both were Canaanites. Bathsheba is mentioned in passing. She was married to a Hittite and so she may well have been one, but she is best remembered for David’s shameful act in which they both committed adultery, and its considerable aftermath (2 Samuel 11 and following). Perhaps more damaging than that is the mention of Ruth (1.5). Morally she was blameless but a whole book had been written about her by this time, not yet part of holy scripture but certainly well known, demonstrating that someone as close to David as his great grandmother was a foreigner, a Moabitess. The final woman to be mentioned is Mary, and at this point the whole scandal of the genealogy is revealed. What we have been reading is, if regarded as a truthful family tree, the genealogy of Joseph, who has nothing genetically to do with Jesus. Mary too is, as the next chapter will reveal, a suspicious character at this point in the story, as someone pregnant but unmarried.

The artificial nature of the genealogy is emphasized by the summary comment that 14 generations separate each of the three periods of Israelite history. To understand the significance of that, we have to remember that within contemporary Jewish literary practice, one genre which influenced Matthew’s writing was that of apocalyptic. We shall have opportunity, as we progress, to see various instances of how this fairly complex genre is more evident in this Gospel than elsewhere. Apocalyptic is a way of writing about destiny. From a theological standpoint it is a way of saying that just as God has created the physical world, so also he has created the structure for human society, and has designed a history in which that society will fulfil God’s purposes.

Apocalyptic writers looked for clues as to how that history was organized and how it might develop. They did this in a kind of scientific way that must have appealed to Matthew. They looked at the evidence for divisions within history and saw that God had created seven days. They deduced that seven was thus a very important number in understanding the creation/history plan. Within apocalyptic writing the number seven and its derivatives assumed great significance. Seven came to be regarded as the number of God himself and so the number of perfection and completeness. Three is also an important number since it can express intensity. So to describe that which is wholly God could be given the code 777. That which might appear to be God, but actually turns out to be an impostor, at its most intense would be 666.

For our purposes the number 14, as twice times seven, is describing God’s creative work in designing and maintaining history. These numbers might not be accurate, but wha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Everyday Conversations with Matthew
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Starting a Conversation
• 1 Painting Jesus by Numbers
• 2 Jesus the Radical
• 3 Jesus and his Followers
• 4 Jesus and Disappointment
• 5 Jesus and Peter
• 6 Jesus: The End of the Beginning
• 7 Jesus: The Beginning of the End
• 8 Ends and Beginnings
• Reading List
• Bible References Index