Banished Messiah

Violence and Nonviolence in Matthew's Story of Jesus

Beck

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781498271516
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

By arguing that Matthew's Gospel can be read as a homecoming story according to the ancient formula of the Banished and Returning Prince, Robert Beck offers a fresh and provocative reinterpretation of the Gospel. He exploits this understanding of the narrative to disclose new elements within the plot, to identify a fresh resolution to conflict development within the tale, and to arrive at an unprecedented explanation of the place of violence and nonviolence within Matthew's text. The traditional roles of Usurper, Impostor, and Mentor are examined for insight into what Matthew's narrative achieves as well as, perhaps more importantly, what it excludes in the way of cultural expectations of violent reprisal.

Part One

Constructing a Narrative

One way to assess a story’s stand on violence is to see how it handles conflict in its narrative plot. Violent stories tend to resolve their problems through further violence. So it is that the gunslinger is shot, the hostage-taker targeted, and the terrorist eliminated with extreme prejudice. And yet there seems to be a contradiction lurking here in the failure to reduce the sum total of violence in the realm of the story. The Gospels present an interesting alternative. Because Jesus is determinedly not violent and yet suffers a violent death, a narrative analysis seems to offer insight into the teaching of the Gospels. The question arises as to how this apparent dichotomy is resolved satisfactorily. Matthew’s Gospel in particular promises significant results, given its explicit language about nonretaliation and love of enemies (5:38–48) along with, in considerable tension with this, sayings that promise final and violent retribution, as in the endings of certain parables (13:41–42, 49–50). But if we go beyond the sayings of Jesus to the story itself, beyond the teachings to the plot, what does Matthew’s narrative have to tell us?

A critical truism holds that Matthew came to the common synoptic narrative second-hand, with Mark’s Gospel as his source. This can be put more directly: Mark’s Gospel provided Matthew’s work with its story line. Mark is the narrative source, whereas supplementary sources added teachings and sayings of Jesus. Although the source relationships have been established on philological grounds, narrative analysis makes an even more convincing impression. Matthew’s account parallels Mark’s, but with significant elaborations that both extend the reach of the narrative even while flattening it. Given these circumstances, Mark’s text appears in Matthew’s as an intertext, borrowed and revised to other purposes. In the second chapter we will look briefly at the story line of Mark with an eye to comparing that Gospel with Matthew’s intertext—Mark-in-Matthew, in effect. For the moment we will simply note that although this is a literary study, it does not ignore the legacy of historical criticism, just as it will not avoid consideration of archeological and social studies contributions to our understanding of the world in which Matthew wrote and his original readers interpreted.

Matthew’s story is “flattened” in that it loses some of the dramatic intensity that is found in Mark’s original. Pageantry replaces dramatic tension. Mark’s effort was focused on producing a narrative with dramatic qualities of suspense, conflict, building, peaking, and eventually coming to a denouement. This difficult work having been done, Matthew could borrow it to use for other purposes. Principal among those purposes was teaching. In this Gospel Jesus is preeminently a teacher, as the evangelist is himself a scribe, bringing from his treasure the new and the old. In Matthew’s hands the synoptic narrative becomes a showpiece, a pedagogical display that downplays Mark’s incessant “immediately” with the more Matthean “behold.”

But if pedagogical interests dictate a different treatment of the story for Matthew, that is not the only reason for the decrease in dramatic impact. For Matthew, Mark’s story is only one part of the narrative. Indeed, Matthew has embarked on his own narrative development by framing the synoptic narrative with another narrative element, an itinerary circuit described later as a homecoming story. This in turn is recognized as an ancient and still familiar story pattern, sometimes known technically as the formula story of the Banished and Returning Prince. Much of the first part of this book will be devoted to explaining and defending this proposal for Matthew’s narrative. Before we analyze a narrative, we need first to establish it.

Although an interest in Matthew’s narrative has produced a number of significant studies in recent years, the legacy of source criticism has made it difficult to move past the sense that Matthew’s story, apart from a few minor details, simply borrows that of Mark. As a result, the infancy narrative of Matthew has been difficult to place. Some tend to view the first two chapters as prologue, preliminary foreshadowing of later developments. Others recognize that the first two chapters are part of the story, without agreeing on their relationship to the larger plot. The view taken here is that the entry of the Magi (2:1–5) initiates the conflict. Coming from outside the world of the story, they are the catalyst that interrupts the false stillness that prevails where a new king is born, while an old, paranoid king has yet to learn of it. Which is not to say that the first chapter is unrelated to the narrative. The genealogy (Matt 1:2–17) makes claims for Jesus that define the terms of conflict. As such we will have occasion to return to it repeatedly. The subsequent episode of Joseph’s dream gives the story its narrative program, or mandate, in the angel’s message: “He shall save his people from their sins” (1:21). The rest of the story is the mandate’s fulfillment.

1

The Homecoming Story

Home is not “home” until you leave it. It is the name of the place of departure and earns its name by way of the departure. The act of leaving “here where I am,” or “here where I have always been,” or even “here where I feel stifled,” establishes it in the mind as “home.”

And Home names the end of the wandering. It is Leopold Bloom at the end of the day in Joyce’s Ulysses, and Odysseus at the end of his life in the foundational epic. It is Cavafy’s “Ithaca” and Tarwater’s shack in Flannery O’Connor’s novel, The Violent Bear It Away, borrowing its title from a verse in Matthew. For in these accounts the truth about “home” comes home. The Odyssey has given to the moment of homecoming the name “Nostos,” and that epic describes particularly well the deep need to return home that drives certain narratives. It is a longing that is typically increased by being continually deferred. In delaying the return, the sense of need heightens, sometimes to the degree of being barely tolerable, and so the story holds us.

The biblical expression of the pattern is inscribed in large over the entire book, as the need propels the larger narrative of Israel’s history—from the promises made to Abraham, to the belated and incomplete return from the exile. It continues in the experience of diaspora, is prominent in the letters of Paul, and underlies the surface narrative of the Gospels. Yet, as we will see, Matthew’s account has its own explicit expression of the homecoming story. It appears in smaller form in certain narratives, such as the Book of Ruth, which can be read as a parable of the major narrative of Israel’s longing.

Conspicuous Entrances

What sets Matthew’s narrative apart from the other gospels is its story of homecoming. In an abstract way, of course, most stories tell a tale that finds its way home in the end. After a struggle with adversity the characters finally arrive at a place they can permanently inhabit. They return to the condition of bliss from which they were roughly evicted when the story with its troubles began. “Once upon a time” becomes “happily ever after.” The warrior returns from the wars; the hero returns with the prize. The lovers marry and settle down, and we never hear from them again. In this general way, most stories come home.

But some stories go out of their way to make a particular point of homecoming, naming places and, as a central feature of their plots, returning to those places. Ithaca, Elsinore, and Eccles Street, Dublin, would be on any list of such places. As we will see, the popularity of this kind of plot means that it provides a favorite story formula for animated films by Disney and its competitors.

Some of these stories are in the Bible. One of them is the story of Naomi, in the Book of Ruth. Another is the story of Jesus, Son of David, as told in the Gospel of Matthew.

Ruth

This short biblical masterpiece is about many things, but certainly one of them is the pull of physical place on human beings and the changes that being in place or out of place can work on them. After ten years away from her home in Bethlehem, her husband and her sons now dead, Naomi sees no reason to stay in the land of Moab. Of course, home means more than a physical place. Naomi wishes to return to a place she can find the network of family relationships and the security they traditionally provide. But that solace does not come quickly, for considerable damage needs to be repaired. The townsfolk realize the change in Naomi. When she entered Bethlehem after the ten long years away, her daughter-in-law Ruth coming with her, the two of them did not arrive unnoticed. Like the chorus in a Greek drama, the townspeople assess the action.

On their arrival there, the whole city was astir over them, and the women asked, “Can this be Naomi?” But she said to them, “Do not call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has made it very bitter for me. (Ruth 1:19–20)

In its narrative context the vignette registers the decline in Naomi’s fortunes. This is less than a welcome home. She returns bitter and unblessed, bereft of any signs of the favor she once enjoyed. In case we hadn’t been paying attention to her own strident complaints, the townsfolk are putting the matter on record: Things have changed for Naomi. With this small scene of arrival, the narrative sets a stylistic marker, emphasizing the very fact of the homecoming as well as its forlorn nature.

So it is. But as the story unfolds, we discover matters to be not as obvious as they first seemed. Certainly part of her motivation is the deep comfort offered by one’s traditional physical place, the pull of roots. We first see her debating with her daughters-in-law, who struggle with meeting their obligations to the older woman. And, as we know, the intrepid one named Ruth refuses to be left behind. However, in joining Naomi’s homeward journey, Ruth herself is carried away from her homeland; she too becomes a sojourner among strangers, among the “alien corn,” exchanging her own homeland for Naomi’s—albeit with a better chance of finding a new one. Simple return to place is not a sufficient experience of homecoming. Although Naomi and Ruth arrive in Bethlehem before the end of the first chapter, all three of the remaining chapters of the book will be needed for Naomi, and Ruth for that matter, truly to arrive home. The story turns on themes of emptiness seeking ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Part One: Constructing a Narrative
• Chapter 1: The Homecoming Story
• Chapter 2: Discourses in Conflict
• Chapter 3: The Return of the King
• Part Two: Banished King; Exiled Nation
• Chapter 4: Usurper
• Chapter 5: Impostor
• Chapter 6: Mentor
• Part Three: The Reckoning
• Chapter 7: Nostos
• Bibliography