I have noticed that reviews of biblical commentaries often focus on the introduction rather than undertaking the more demanding task of reading and responding to the commentary itself. Potential reviewers of this commentary who hope to use that convenient short cut will, I fear, be disappointed. If as a result this book receives only very short or superficial reviews, so be it. Let me explain.
Sixteen years ago I published a wide-ranging study of issues relating to the gospel of Matthew, under the title Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher. It covered most of the areas traditionally found in the introduction to a commentary, though at greater length than most commentary series would allow. Scholarship has moved on since then, and new approaches have emerged, but the issues on which today’s debates are focused are not significantly different from those I dealt with then. Nor have my views on those issues changed to any significant degree. Those who are so inclined will be able to find places in the present commentary where I do not now express myself quite as I did in 1989. But these are not at a fundamental level, and I am loth to reinvent the wheel by attempting another full introduction in which I should be simply repeating myself. Nor does the present commentary series allow me to expand on such general issues at the sort of length I was able to indulge in a free-standing volume.
I hope, therefore, that a reader who wishes to find a fuller expression of my views set out in terms of general introduction rather than in the exegesis of specific passages will be willing to consult that earlier volume. I will from time to time draw attention to appropriate sections in it. But I hope also that such consultation will seldom be necessary for the purposes of this volume. This is intended to be an exegetical commentary which proceeds from the text outward rather than one which seeks confirmation in the text for a separately formulated position. It is intended for the use of those who are seeking help in understanding and appreciating the text rather than in locating my position within a constantly moving academic debate.
The remainder of this introduction therefore does not attempt to cover all the traditional issues normally included, and already discussed in my 1989 book. In particular it attempts no general summary of Matthew’s theological perspective; this will emerge as issues arise in specific pericopae.1 My only purpose here is to draw attention to a small number of broader issues which affect a number of passages and are therefore better introduced by a general summary here, so that I can use notes in the commentary to refer back to these overviews rather than have to repeat the discussion at each relevant point. But in no way are the following paragraphs intended to provide a comprehensive guide to Matthean issues and scholarship.
The text of the Gospel of Matthew is not provided with markers to draw attention to a comprehensive outline of sections within which the author intended it to be read. Any proposed outline of the gospel is thus imposed by the interpreter, not dictated by the author, and is therefore open to discussion as to whether it truly represents the intended shape of the narrative. It is not surprising, therefore, that this gospel, like most other NT books, has been analyzed in several different and sometimes contradictory ways. The debate up to the 1980s is well surveyed by D. R. Bauer.2
Recent discussion has often focused on the search for formulae which may be taken to mark structural divisions.3 By far the most prominent is the slightly varying formula which concludes Matthew’s five main collections of Jesus’ teaching (see below): “And then, when Jesus had come to the end of these sayings, …” (7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1). In each case this formula marks the end of a discourse and the beginning of a new phase of the narrative, but the proposal of B. W. Bacon4 to use this formula as the basis for dividing the whole gospel into five “books” (which Bacon understood to be Matthew’s deliberately polemical counterpart to the five books of Moses) has not been widely accepted, though it still appears in some more popular accounts of the gospel. The obvious fact that this formula marks the conclusion of the five discourses does not entail that the discourses are themselves the central structural principle of the gospel.
More recent structural schemes have sometimes been based on a different “formula:” “From that time Jesus began to …” (4:17; 16:21). These words, like the discourse conclusion formula noted above, clearly mark the beginning of a new stage in the story, but a phrase which occurs only twice in the gospel seems a slender basis on which to construct a total framework for the narrative. This is, however, what has been proposed by J. D. Kingsbury and his pupil D. R. Bauer, among others.5 They thus divide the gospel into three main sections dealing with Jesus’ person (1:1–4:16), Jesus’ proclamation (4:17–16:20) and Jesus’ passion (16:21–28:20). The first two sections do in fact correspond closely to what I shall be proposing below, and the “formula” of 4:17 and 16:21 appropriately marks these two turning points in the narative. But the long section following 16:21 seems to me to include a number of distinct phases of the story, and contains within it two or possibly three major turning-points which Matthew has not marked by the same formula, but which represent significant new stages in the narrative development.
My own approach to the structure of Matthew derives from noting how closely Matthew has adhered in broad terms to the overall narrative pattern of Mark, which, after a brief prologue set in the wilderness (1:1–13), presents Jesus’ public ministry in three phases set successively in Galilee, on the journey from Galilee to Judea, and in Jerusalem. In my commentary on Mark6 I have argued that this represents a conscious structuring of the story within a geographical framework which owes more to Mark’s systematization than to the actual movements of Jesus throughout the period after his baptism. The impression Mark gives is that Jesus did not visit Jerusalem at all until the final week of his life, but this conflicts with the far more historically plausible account of John who has Jesus, like any other religiously observant Galilean, making regular trips between Galilee and Judea particularly in connection with the major festivals. Moreover, there are elements in Mark’s story of Jesus’ week in Jerusalem which make it clear that Jesus has in fact been there before.7 The simplified structure of a single progress from north to south is thus best understood as one devised by Mark for its dramatic effect in drawing attention to the hostile reception of the Galilean prophet when he ventures into the “foreign” territory of Judea (see further the next section on Galilee and Jerusalem).
Matthew tells the story in the same way (as indeed does Luke, though with a vastly expanded “travel narrative” from 9:51 to 19:28). Matthew’s prologue is more extensive, providing richer material for scripturally-based meditation on the origin and nature of the Messiah, but from 4:17 onward Jesus’ ministry in Matthew, as in Mark, is set entirely in and around Galilee until Jesus announces his intention to travel south to Jerusalem in 16:21. Like Mark, Matthew sets a substantial body of material, particularly concerned with the reorientation and training of the disciples, on the journey between Galilee and Jerusalem. And Jesus’ eventual arrival outside the walls of Jerusalem in 21:1–9 is his first narrated approach to the city within this gospel, even though Matthew, like Mark, will drop a number of hints that Jesus has in fact been there before (see e.g. on 23:37; 27:57, and the fact that Jesus can apparently depend on already established local supporters in 21:2–3, 17; 26:6, 18). The story from that point to Jesus’ resurrection is, as in Mark, entirely set in Jerusalem, though Matthew’s expansion of Jesus’ teaching in this part of the story has led me to treat the passion narrative which begins at 26:1 as a separate section, even though still set in the same location.8 The one major departure of Matthew from Mark’s geographical outline is that at the end of the Jerusalem phase of the story there will be a dramatic return to Galilee (28:16–20), so that the messianic mission is triumphantly relaunched in the place where it had originally begun before the débacle in Jerusalem. Yet even this “innovation” by Matthew only makes explicit what Mark had twice signalled, that the reunion of the disciples with their risen Lord was to take place back in Galilee (Mark 14:28; 16:7).9
This geographical outline of the story seems to me a more satisfying basis for discerning its narrative structure than the search for verbal division markers (even though in fact the “formula” of 4:17 and 16:21 fits snugly into it). I have therefore divided the text for commentary purposes into six major divisions. The following outline shows those major sections together with the more significant sub-sections, though of course most of these will need to be further subdivided into shorter pericopae for comment. Among these subdivisions are the five major discourses, or collections of Jesus’ teaching, which are marked out by the concluding formula noted above. I shall say more about the nature and function of these “discourses” later in this introduction.
To read the Gospel of Matthew as a continous narrative, structured around the geographical progress of the Messiah from his Galilean homeland to his rejection in Jerusalem, with its final triumphant scene back home in Galilee, is to begin to appreciate its power as a work of literature, not simply as a source for theological or historical data. We should not forget, however, that the term “literature” may be anachronistic, since only a minority of those for whom it was first written would have been able to read: the majority would encounter the gospel as an oral presentation. It is now widely recognized that the Gospel of Mark would have been presented orally, probably at a single session, and its quality as a piece of arresting story-telling is increasingly applauded. Matthew is a much longer and more complex work, including long sections of quite concentrated teaching, and it is less easy to envisage an eager audience drinking in the whole gospel at a single sitting. It may be that sections of the gospel (most obviously the discourses) were designed for separate presentation in an oral context. It is possible too that the different phases of the story might lend themselves to presentation as a series of episodes of the one story, in the manner of a modern television serial.10 But even so, I believe that an attentive audience would have been able to discern the continuity and force of the plot as I have outlined it, and to appreciate the build-up of dramatic tension and of theological challenge which becomes increasingly powerful as the story nears its remarkable end.
Modern readers of the New Testament often know little about the geo-political world of first-century Palestine. It is commonly assumed that “the Jews” were an undifferentiated community living amicably together in the part of the world we now call “the Holy Land,” united in their resentment of the political imposition of Roman rule to which all were equally subject. One of the more significant gains in recent New Testament studies has been the increasing recognition that this is a gross distortion of the historical and cultural reality.11 In particular it is now widely recognized that Galilee was in the first century, as indeed it had been ever since the death of Solomon, a distinct province with a history, political status and culture which set it decisively apart from the southern province of Judea, despite the fact that the latter contained the holy city of Jerusalem to which all Jews felt a natural allegiance as the focus of the worship of the God of Israel.
The situation in the time of Jesus may be drastically oversimplified as follows. Racially the area of the former Northern Kingdom of Israel had had, ever since the Assyrian conquest in the eighth century BC, a more mixed population, within which more conservative Jewish areas (like Nazareth and Capernaum) stood in close proximity to largely pagan cities, of which in the first century the new Hellenistic centers of Tiberias and Sepphoris were the chief examples. Geographically Galilee was separated from Judea by the non-Jewish territory of Samaria, and from Perea in the south-east by the Hellenistic settlements of Decapolis. Politically Galilee had been under separate administration from Judea during almost all its history since the tenth century BC (apart from a period of “reunification” under the Maccabees), and in the time of Jesus it was under a (supposedly) native Herodian prince, while Judea and Samaria had since AD 6 been under the direct rule of a Roman prefect. Economically Galilee offered better agricultural and fishing resources than the more mountainous territory of Judea, making the wealth of some Galileans the envy of their southern neighbors. Culturally Judeans despised their northern neighbors as country cousins, their lack of Jewish sophistication being compounded by their greater openness to Hellenistic influence. Linguistically Galileans spoke a distinctive form of Aramaic whose slovenly consonants (they dropped their aitches!) were the butt of Judean humor. Religiously the Judean opinion was that Galileans were lax in their observance of proper ritual, and the problem was exacerbated by the distance of Galilee from the temple and the theological leadership which was focused in Jerusalem.
If, as I hope, this is not a complete caricature, it means that even an impeccably Jewish Galilean in first-century Jerusalem was not among his own people; he was as much a foreigner as an Irishman in London or a Texan in New York. His accent would immediately mark him out as “not one of us,” and all the communal prejudice of the supposedly superior culture of the capital city would stand against his claim to be heard even as a prophet, let alone as the “Messiah,” a title which as everyone knew belonged to Judea (cf. John 7:40–42).
To recognize the realities of the situation is to gain new insight into the obstacles facing Jesus of Nazareth in gaining acceptance as a credible “Messiah” in the southern province, despite (or even perhaps because of) the enthusiasm he had excited in his own province. We shall note this element in the narrative especially of Jesus’ first arrival outside the walls of Jerusalem in 21:1–11, and it will be a constantly underlying element in the subsequent confrontation between the Galilean prophet and the Jerusalem establishment.
It has long been recognized that the geographical framework of Mark’s gospel accentuates this north-south divide, and many have argued that there is an ideological, not merely an historical, basis for Mark’s decision to tell the story in this way.12 In Mark Jesus’ ministry in Galilee is in general a success story, with enthusiastic crowds, copious miracles, and the open proclamation of the good news; the only mentions of Jerusalem in this part of the story are as the source of opposition and misunderstanding (Mark 3:22; 7:1). But from the moment Jesus, in the far northern area of Caesarea Philippi, turns toward Jerusalem the shadow of the cross falls across the story, and nothing but disaster is expected in Jerusalem. And so it transpires: the southern capital rejects and kills the northern prophet; hope for the future is found not in Jerusalem but in the declaration that the risen Jesus will be restored to his scattered flock back home in Galilee (Mark 14:28; 16:7).
Matthew has not only endorsed this ideological divide by his adoption of Mark’s outline for his narrative (see previous section), but he has also considerably enhanced it. His chapter 2 focuses on the link between the Messiah’s birth in Judea and his eventual domicile in Galilee, and the final prophetic motif that “he should be called a Nazarene” (2:23) reflects the dismissive tone of a superior Judean observer. Jesus’ decision to settle in Capernaum leads Matthew to insert a substantial formula-quotation from Isaiah which identifies “Galilee of the nations” as the place where the true light is to shine (4:13–16). When Jesus arrives at Jerusalem it is only Matthew who comments on the reaction not only of the accompanying crowds but also of the people of the city (21:10–11), and the two rival “teams” of Galileans and Judeans are seen as starkly opposed in their attitudes to the northern prophet. When Peter, as distinctive a northerner as his master, is unmasked in the high priest’s courtyard it is, Matthew tells us, as a companion of “Jesus the Galilean” (26:69). Above all, whereas Mark’s story (as we have it) merely looks forward to a new start back in Galilee, Matthew gives flesh to that hope in his magnificent Galilean climax in 28:16–20, and the juxtaposition of the last two pericopae of the gospel forms a poignant contrast between the desperate cover-up maneuvers of the defeated priests in Jerusalem and the triumphant launch of the messianic mission in Galilee. In these ways, distinctive to Matthew’s telling of the story, the Marcan Galilee/Jerusalem schema is underlined. To read Matthew in blissful ignorance of first-century Palestinian socio-politics is to miss his point. This is the story of Jesus of Nazareth.
We noted above the prominently repeated formula “And then, when Jesus had come to the end of these sayings, …” (7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1), and in the outline of the structure of the gospel given above I have marked out the five sections which lead up to this formula as the five “discourses” which are widely recognized as a distinctive feature of Matthew’s gospel. Other gospels have substantial sections of teaching and/or dialogue (the latter particularly in the Gospel of John), as indeed Matthew has outside the five marked “discourses” (see e.g. 11:1–19; 21:28–22:14; ch. 23), but only Matthew draws attention to a group of such collections with a formula which suggests that for him these are the main places to look for the concentrated teaching of Jesus. Moreover, it is relatively easy to discern in each of these sections a coherence of theme which suggests deliberate composition around a particular aspect of Jesus’ teaching.
Each discourse is presented as what Jesus said at a particular time in the course of his ministry, and in each case the surrounding narrative portrays a situation to which that particular aspect of teaching is relevant. Those who think of the gospels as chronicles of the events and sayings of Jesus in the order in which they occurred therefore prefer to regard these “discourses” as actual sermons given at one time and place by Jesus in substantially the form in which Matthew has recorded them. But careful study the gospels (particularly in comparison with each other) soon reveals that simple chronology is not the only or the main basis of their composition, and that the evangelists are authors capable of marshalling their material to form a coherent literary composition rather than simply chronicling events in the order in which they happened. If that is true of the narrative elements of the gospels, it is not unreasonable to expect the same method to be followed in the presentation of Jesus’ sayings, and the study of Matthew’s five discourses gives good grounds for concluding that they are not so much transcripts of actual sermons as anthologies of the remembered sayings of Jesus organized around some of the central themes of his ministry. This conclusion is strengthened by noting that where the content of these discourses is paralleled in the other Synoptic Gospels, the parallels are widely scattered.13 As there is no obvious reason for Mark and (especially) Luke to deliberately dismember existing sermons and distribute their contents in other contexts, the natural conclusion is that it is Matthew who has collected related material together from his traditions in order to blend it into coherent discourses.
This conclusion becomes the more probable when it is noted that each of the five discourses has a shorter “parallel” in either Mark or Luke, which forms the basis of the compilation but is expanded by varying amounts of related material found elsewhere. These basic units are as follows:
for | Matthew 5–7 (107 verses) | Luke 6:20–49 (30 verses) |
| Matthew 10 (38 verses) | Mark 6:7–13 (7 verses) [and Luke 9:1–6/10:1–16] |
| Matthew 13 (50 verses) | Mark 4:3–34 (32 verses) |
| Matthew 18 (33 verses) | Mark 9:35–48 (14 verses) |
| Matthew 24–25 (94 verses) | Mark 13:5–37 (33 verses) |
Each of these shorter units in Mark or Luke has a distinctive theme, and in each case the additional material introduced by Matthew belongs to the same subject area (and in the case of ch. 13 the same literary genre: parables). The longer Matthean discourses are thus apparently the work of a responsible anthologizer who had a wide range of traditional sayings of Jesus at his disposal, and, starting from the basic units of tradition he had received, integrated other related sayings into powerful thematic collections which would then serve as resources for his church as they explored and communicated the key aspects of Jesus’ teaching. The generally didactic character of Matthew’s gospel prompts the suggestion that “Matthew” was himself an experienced teacher, and that these discourses arise in part from his own way of presenting Jesus’ teaching thematically, perhaps to groups of enquirers or catechumens in his local church.
The discourses differ in length and character, depending on the nature of the basic traditional unit around which they are compiled. The longest and most elaborate (chs. 5–7) expands on an existing sermon outline which is found in Luke 6:20–49 in roughly the same sequence and with the same opening and closing motifs, but Matthew’s inclusion of three major sections not found as such in the Luke parallel (on fulfilling the law, 5:17–48, on religious observance, 6:1–18, and on material concerns, 6:19–34) produces a different and more systematic structure, though a satisfying outline of the Sermon on the Mount as a whole continues to elude commentators. In ch. 10 the basic element of the mission charge, with its varied form in the synoptic parallels, is then superseded by more general reflections on the experience of Jesus’ disciples in a hostile world. The parable discourse in ch. 13 corresponds to a similar collection in Mark 4, but Matthew has drastically reshaped it by omitting one parable and including six others, and has given to the whole a quasi-symmetrical structure (see below pp. 500–501) which aids both the teacher and the learner in remembering its contents. Unlike the Sermon on the Mount and the mission discourse, the “discourse” of ch. 13 is modelled on that of Mark 4 in that it does not flow as a single speech but is punctuated by a number of narrative introductions designating the intended audience, introducing new parables and commenting on Jesus’ parabolic method. The Marcan basis for the discourse of ch. 18 is itself a collection of apparently independent sayings partly linked by catchwords (Mark 9:35–48). Thereafter, as in the second and third discourses, Matthew having started with Mark sets off into new territory with a series of separate sayings about the mutual relationship of disciples. Here too, as in ch. 13, a brief narrative interruption at v. 21 divides the discourse into two sections, each answering a specific question asked by the disciples. The final discourse is also in two sections dealing with different questions, though in this case the two questions are asked together at the beginning (24:3), so that there is no interruption to the discourse once begun. For most of ch. 24 Matthew stays fairly close to the pattern of the Marcan discourse, but with the three parables and the concluding tableau which take up 24:45–25:46 he has massively expanded the account of the “unknown day and hour” which is tackled with tantalizing brevity in Mark 13:32–37.
These general observations will be filled out in the commentary which follows. What they indicate is not that Matthew set out to create five parallel discourses on a consistent pattern, but that where the traditional material he had received provided a suitable basis for collecting other comparable sayings of Jesus he compiled his material in a manner appropriate to the received unit of teaching and in the light of the narrative setting into which he had placed it. The concluding formula then marks the end of such a thematic anthology and returns the reader to the next phase of the narrative with a deeper understanding of the theological and pastoral issues which will underlie it.
IV. Fulfillment—the “Formula-Quotations”
I have argued elsewhere14 that the central theme of Matthew’s gospel is “fulfillment.” The opening genealogy is designed to portray the coming of the Messiah as the climax of the history of God’s people, and the remainder of chs. 1–2 directs the reader’s attention to a wide variety of aspects of God’s revelation in the OT which find their fulfillment in the coming of Jesus. The opening of the book thus sets the tone for Matthew’s whole gospel. The UBS Greek New Testament lists 54 direct citations of the OT in Matthew and a further 262 “allusions and verbal parallels,” and that is a conservative figure based only on the most widely recognized allusions. While not all of these are explicitly concerned with the theme of fulfillment, many are. In addition, we shall note in the commentary many places where Matthew’s presentation of the story of Jesus, even without direct verbal alllusion, is designed to bring to mind OT people, events or institutions which may serve as models for understanding the continuity of God’s purpose as now supremely focused in the coming of Jesus. This “typological” understanding of OT scripture, which is widely deployed in the NT (notably in the letter to the Hebrews) finds one of its most enthusiastic exponents in the author of the first gospel.15 It is thus for Matthew not only the explicitly predictive portions of the OT that can be seen to be “fulfilled” in Jesus, but also its historical characters, its narratives and its cultic patterns, even the law itself (5:17; 11:13).
Copious quotation of and allusion to the OT is not of course peculiar to Matthew; it is found throughout the NT, some books of which would match and even exceed the statistics given above. But among the gospels Matthew stands out for his sustained and creative presentation of this theme of fulfillment in Jesus. And it comes to its most characteristic expression in the series of so-called “formula-quotations”16 which are a distinctive feature of this gospel.17 The introductory “formula” varies slightly, but the first is typical: “All this happened to fulfill what had been declared by the Lord through the prophet, who said …” (1:22).18 Sometimes the prophet is named (but only where it is Isaiah or Jeremiah), and the agency of “the Lord” is more often left to be understood. In one case the formula is conspicuously varied by referring to “the prophets” in the plural and without the concluding “who said” (2:23; see comments there for the reasons for this different formula). But with these variations the formula occurs ten times (1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 27:9), and most commentators agree in including an eleventh member in the list at 2:5, where the editorial intention appears to be the same even though the insertion of the quotation into the direct speech of the priests and scribes leads to a modification of the formula (see p. 71). There are other specific quotations, such as 3:3; 11:10; 13:14–15; 15:7–9; 21:42, which convey the same message of fulfillment, but because this is expressed by means of different introductory formulae they have not traditionally been included in accounts of Matthew’s distinctive “formula-quotations;” they are, however, an equally important part of his project to trace in the story of Jesus the fulfillment of what was written in the OT, as also are the statements, without reference to specific OT passages, of the necessity for the scriptures to be fulfilled (26:54, 56).
These formula-quotations (with the exception of 2:5–6, see above) are presented as editorial comments on the events being narrated. Some of them draw on what were probably well-known prophetic texts, whose fulfillment in the coming of Jesus would have been widely recognized among Christians (Micah 5:2; Isaiah 9:1–2; 42:1–4; 53:4; Zech 9:9), but others would not have been on anyone’s list of “obvious” messianic prooftexts. One focuses specifically on events in the eighth century BC (Isa 7:14); one is simply a reminiscence of the exodus (Hos 11:1); one reflects on the trauma of the Babylonian exile (Jer 31:15); one is not even from the prophets at all but expresses the psalmist’s agenda (Ps 78:2); one is an obscure prophecy of Zechariah, drastically reworked and attributed to Jeremiah (Zech 11:13); and one is so elusive that scholars are still debating what text (if any) Matthew is referring to (Mat 2:23). There is obviously something more subtle going on here than the simple claim that messianic predictions have been fulfilled.
We shall consider the bearing of each quotation as we come to it in the commentary. Some depend on apparently superficial points of correspondence, some on a more far-reaching typology. In many cases it is possible to suggest several different levels of significance depending on the degree of scriptural erudition and of shared interpretive assumptions the reader is able to bring to the quotation.19 “Fulfillment” for Matthew seems to operate at many levels, embracing much more of the pattern of OT history and language than merely its prophetic predictions. It is a matter of tracing lines of correspondence and continuity in God’s dealings with his people, discerned in the incidental details of the biblical text as well as in its grand design. Those who have studied the interpretation of scripture among other Jews at the time, particularly at Qumran and among the rabbis, recognize that they are on familiar ground in Matthew, sometimes in the actual interpretive methods he employs, but also more widely in the creative ways he goes about discovering patterns of fulfillment, ways which modern exegetical scholarship often finds surprising and unpersuasive. But Matthew was not writing for modern exegetical scholars, and we may safely assume that at least some of his intended readers/hearers would have shared his delight in searching for patterns of fulfillment not necessarily in what the original authors of the OT texts had in mind but in what can be perceived in their writings with Christian hindsight.
One feature of the formula-quotations (and, to a much lesser extent, of some of Matthew’s other scriptural quotations and allusions) that has been the subject of much scholarly interest has been the actual form of text which Matthew cites. Often it does not correspond to the LXX text which is the basis of most of his (and the other NT writers’) quotations. Sometimes it looks like an independent rendering of the Hebrew, but often it does not correspond closely to any version of the text now available to us. While it is always possible to postulate variant Greek OT texts available to Matthew but since lost,20 the prevalence of this textal “freedom” especially in the formula-quotations suggests that Matthew was willing sometimes to modify the wording of the text in order to draw out more clearly for his readers the sense in which he perceived it to have been fulfilled in Jesus. One particular way in which the text was modified was by the combination of two or more related OT texts into a single “quotation,” as for instance in 2:6; 21:5 and most elaborately in the Zechariah/Jeremiah quotation in 27:9–10. For details of these and other textual variations see the commentary on the individual quotations.
The distinctive features of these formula-quotations have led some scholars to suggest that they came to Matthew as an already collected group, perhaps from some sort of book of “testimonies,” OT proof-texts for Christian apologetic. But while some of them would find an appropriate place in such a collection others, such as Rachel weeping for her children or the elusive prophetic motif that “he should be called a Nazorean” (2:18, 23), could hardly have done so. Such “texts” owe their presence in Matthew’s gospel not to any “messianic” significance they possessed in their own right but to his imaginative perception of OT “pre-echoes” of details in the stories of Jesus. They are editorial comments, arising from Matthew’s own creative biblical interpretation, on the story he is telling, inviting readers to join the author in his eager search for underlying patterns of fulfillment.
Five of the eleven generally recognized formula-quotations occur within the short section 1:18–2:23, where, together with the genealogy of 1:1–17, they form a concentrated “manifesto” setting out how Jesus the Messiah fulfills the hopes of OT Israel. Indeed, I shall argue that the whole narrative structure of 1:18–2:23 is designed to provide the basis for this scriptural argument, each successive scene of the story building up to the quotation of the text which it “fulfills” and its wording designed to highlight that fulfillment. Yet in several cases (notably Hos 11:1 and Jer 31:15) the text would have no reason to be brought into connection with the story of Jesus apart from the specific content of the incident to which it relates. There is thus a mutual interaction between story and text, the latter being chosen because of its relevance to the event being narrated, but the story being told in terms which draw attention to the correspondence. The same interaction between text and story may be seen especially in 27:3–10 (see below pp. 1039). So it seems that far from being a pre-existing set of proof-texts, the OT passages cited in the formula-quotations have been brought freshly to Matthew’s mind by the traditions he has received, and that he has then worded those traditional stories in such a way as to help the hearer/reader to see the connection. The formula-quotations are thus not themselves part of Matthew’s tradition, but his own editorial gloss on the story of Jesus; their subtle and elusive quality is testimony to the ingenuity of his pervasive midrashic agenda, of which these eleven quotations are but the most prominent and distinctive outcrops.
V. Who? Where? When? How? Some broad proposals on the provenance of the “Gospel of Matthew”
As I explained above, I do not intend to argue again here the traditional issues of authorship, provenance, date and sources which would normally be found in a commentary introduction. This final section of the introduction simply sets out quite baldly the conclusions to which I have come and for which I have argued in detail elsewhere.21 The reader has a right to be informed of my views on these issues, since at some points they are likely to affect my exegetical choices, but I shall not seek here to persuade anyone to agree with them; those who wish may find my reasons in my earlier book.22
I think that much modern scholarship has too hastily assumed that the gospels circulated for a generation or more without attribution and that the names of proposed authors were rather arbitrarily attached to them some time in the second century.23 Attribution of this gospel to Matthew the apostle goes back to our earliest surviving patristic testimonies, and there is no evidence that any other author was ever proposed. As far back as we can trace it, and from the earliest manuscript attributions that have survived, it is always the Gospel kata Matthaion. It often seems to be assumed that whatever the early church said about the origins of the NT books must be treated with suspicion unless it can be independently proved, but I do not share that assumption.24 Of course authorship cannot now be proved, and for practical purposes of exegesis it does not matter very much, but the contents and tone of the gospel (including its “love-hate relationship” with Judaism, see below) seem to me to make someone like the apostle Matthew as likely a candidate as any, once it is accepted that the gospel is likely to have been written well within his lifetime (see below).
The actual geographical location in which the gospel was written remains a matter of debate. I am happy to accept the general consensus that it was somewhere in Syria or Palestine (the latter being generally assumed in patristic accounts), but am less convinced by the confident assertion of some that the specific location was Antioch.25 Nor does it seem to me important to be able to locate it more precisely.
More important than the precise location is the nature of the community within which and for which the author was writing. Here too debate continues vigorously. Most would now26 agree that the gospel derives from a largely Jewish Christian community, but there are differing views both as to (a) how that community was related to non-Christian Judaism and (b) its aims and expectations with regard to its own mission among Jews and Gentiles.
The former debate has, to my mind, been hindered by the historically dubious assumption that there was a relatively clear point in the latter first century at which the nascent Christian community parted company with non-Christian Judaism; scholars have thus debated whether the Matthean community was still operating (however uneasily) within the structures of Judaism or whether the decisive break had already taken place (the terms intra muros and extra muros have become traditional). This debate has usually been linked to the supposition that the Birkat-ha-Minim, the denunciation of “Nazarenes (Christians) and minim (heretics)” which was introduced into the regular synagogue liturgy toward the end of the first century, came into use at roughly the same time throughout the Jewish world and at a date which can be fairly precisely determined (usually given as about AD 85), so that there is a cut-off point before which Christians were “inside” the synagogue and after which they were “outside.” I believe that this scenario is far too simple: evidence for the introduction of the Birkat-ha-Minim is sketchy, and it is improbable that it could have been universally imposed by some central authority at one time. It is more probable that the separation of Jewish Christians from the synagogue was a gradual process, prompted as much by Christian hostility toward non-Christian Judaism as by any official action on behalf of the synagogue to exclude them, and that the process developed at different rates in different communities. Thus at any time during the middle and latter part of the first century there might be Jewish Christian groups in more and less amicable relations with their local synagogues. The specific point of “expulsion” in relation to which the situation of the Matthean community has commonly been assessed seems to me more a modern scholarly simplification than a realistic account of the likely pattern of relations between Jews and Christians in the first century.27
The debate on the missionary ideology and expectations of Matthew and his church in relation to Jews and Gentiles has gained new strength since my earlier book was written. At that time it was widely agreed that Matthew’s church already contained a significant Gentile element and that the continuation of the mission to Gentiles was a clear priority for it. Indeed D. R. A. Hare had argued28 that the mission to Jews had already ceased, and that Matthew and his church had turned its back on non-Christian Judaism, so that the “great commission” of 28:19 should be understood as relating to “all the Gentiles” to the exclusion of Jews (this specific proposal was, however, not widely shared). More recently, however, the significance of the Gentile mission for Matthew’s church has been called in question by a number of interpreters29 who give greater weight to the handful of “anti-Gentile” comments in the gospel (5:46–47; 6:7–8, 31–32; 18:17) than to the expectation of the extension of God’s purpose outside Israel which most readers have taken to represent Matthew’s essential perspective. They have thus understood Matthew’s church to be not only still comfortably within the bounds of Judaism but also content to stay there and to regard the adherence of Gentiles as at best a peripheral option. This recent trend, which of course coheres well with the currently fashionable attempt to reclaim the historical Jesus for Judaism and to play down the extent of his challenge to scribal tradition, seems to me to be no less one-sided in its reading of the evidence than the curiously opposite position earlier advocated by Hare. I suspect that a commentary written in twenty years’ time would not feel obliged to give it so much attention. I shall take up the issue exegetically at several points in the gospel especially in relation to the thorough-going presentation of this reading of Matthew by David Sim.30
My own understanding of the situation of Matthew and his community locates the gospel in a period of uncomfortable tension, which may have been experienced at any point during the middle and latter parts of the first century depending on the way relations with the synagogue had developed in their particular local community. Interpreters regularly comment on the apparently incompatible elements within this one gospel of a deeply-rooted Jewishness and pride in their OT heritage alongside a sharp antipathy to the Jewish establishment and a conviction that the future for the kingdom of heaven lies not in the institutions of Judaism but in a newly constituted people of God focused not on national origin but on allegiance to Jesus the Messiah. Elements of continuity and of discontinuity are equally prominent in Matthew’s theology of “fulfillment.” Such a gospel seems to me to be better explained not by a theory of incompetent editing of conflicting sources but by the existential situation of the author and his Jewish Christian community. They have come to recognize in Jesus the true Messiah of Israel, and enthusiastically search the OT scriptures for indications of how God’s purposes for his people have come to their culmination in the prophet of Nazareth. But they have also recognized that the new covenant he has established is no longer limited to the descendants of Abraham, and most probably already include Gentiles within their membership. They are thus inevitably becoming an increasingly distinct community from that of the synagogue which has not recognized Jesus as Messiah. As Jewish Christians (who might today be referred to as “messianic Jews”) there are senses in which they are both “inside” and “outside” that community, and that ambivalent relationship seems to me closely reflected in the love-hate relationship with “Judaism” which we find in this gospel. If it seems to speak with two voices, that is because its situation and its ideology contain these two apparently competing strands. But I believe that the “contradictions” of Matthew’s gospel arise primarily in the minds of interpreters who do not appreciate the distinction he makes between on the one hand the values and ideals which derive from OT Israel and its scriptures and on the other hand the (in his view failing and obsolete) institutions of the current Jewish community with its scribal establishment and its ideological focus on the temple and its rituals. Matthew portrays a new community which is both faithful to its scriptural heritage and at the same time open to the new directions demanded by Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of heaven, and therefore necessarily expanding beyond the bounds of the Jewish people. His contribution to an integrated Christian theology of salvation and of the people of God is thus similar to that of the Letter to the Hebrews, but with the added dimension of an explicit recognition that, as Paul puts it in Romans 4, Abraham is now the father of many nations.31
The current majority view that Matthew’s gospel was written in the fourth quarter of the first century depends mainly on three arguments: (a) that its setting reflects the period of final separation between church and synagogue, probably around AD 85, (b) that it is written in the light of the experience of the Roman capture of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple in AD 70, and (c) that it is dependent on the gospel of Mark, which some scholars also date after AD 70, others shortly before.
I have expressed my scepticism on the first point in the previous section. The second depends on the assumption that neither Jesus nor Matthew would have foreseen the events of the Roman war, so that the destruction of the temple could only be mentioned after the event—though the substantial body of scholars who date Mark before AD 70 have clearly found this argument unpersuasive, and Matthew’s language about the fate of the temple is not significantly more precise than that of Mark (see also below on 22:7 for the burning of the city, and p. 913 on the difficulty of identifying Matthew’s “devastating pollution” in the light of known historical events). Moreover, there are a number of passages in the gospel which presuppose that the temple is still standing (see below on 5:23–24; 17:24–27; 23:16–22), and while it is of course possible that Matthew has preserved such sayings even after they have ceased to be applicable, in at least one case this would have been to risk significant misunderstanding by post-70 readers (see below p. 668, n. 15).
Probably the most influential reason for dating Matthew toward the end of the century is not a specific argument from the text of Matthew itself but a presumed order of composition of the gospels combined with a relative dating scheme which is widely adopted in current scholarship, but which has few if any fixed points. I shall comment briefly on the literary relations of the Synoptic Gospels in the next section. As for the wider dating scheme, I believe there are sound reasons for questioning the consensus, and for exploring an alternative scheme which takes its cue from the lack of reference in the Book of Acts to any events later than AD 62, even though the Neronian persecution in Rome in AD 64/5 had such major implications for the church in Rome and was the probable cause of the death of both Peter and Paul, the two key figures of the book. In my commentary on Mark32 I have noted the patristic tradition that Mark’s gospel was written while Peter was still alive, i.e. not later than the early sixties, and while there is probably an element of guesswork in such traditions, such a dating would tie in with the proposal33 that the main period of the writing of the Synoptic Gospels was in the sixties (a period when, incidentally, it is more likely that the apostle Matthew would still be active than in the fourth quarter of the century). A pre-70 date for Matthew remains a minority view, but one which has been strongly supported,34 and which is usually dismissed not so much by specific arguments as on the basis of a preferred overall dating scheme. The issue is not of great exegetical importance for most of the gospel, but it does clearly affect one’s assessment of the anti-temple theme which is such a prominent emphasis in Matthew. In the commentary that follows I shall favor the possibility that the gospel was, as Irenaeus declared, written in the sixties, while the temple was still standing.
The literary relationship between the first three gospels which has come to be known as the “Synoptic Problem” is a much more complex issue even than the questions of authorship, provenance and date, and the intensification of the debate since the 1970s means that it would be foolish to attempt even an overview here. The most striking feature of the debate for our purposes has been the revival on the part of a vocal minority of scholars of the view held almost without exception by the church until the middle of the nineteenth century that Matthew was the earliest gospel to be written. For something over a century after that it became the almost unquestioned scholarly consensus that Mark came first and that Matthew and Luke drew on Mark and on other shared tradition conveniently labelled “Q” and often supposed to have been a single lost document to which they both had access. But now everything seems, in the view of some scholars, to be up for grabs again. All I can do here is to state baldly my own approach to explaining the complicated literary relationship,35 and give some indication of how it may have affected my presentation of exegetical issues within the commentary.
Recent debate has to my mind made it impossible to claim that the simple “two-document hypothesis” is a total solution to the problem. The data have proved to be too complex and multi-faceted for that. But on the other hand I am unable to explain how the Gospel of Mark could be written by someone who had the much fuller Gospel of Matthew in front of him; he would have had to omit, for instance, the whole of the Sermon on the Mount and yet find space for considerable and rather inconsequential expansion of the narrative detail in many of the stories of Jesus’ ministry. To suggest that Mark was uninterested in what Jesus had to teach is simply untrue.36 The remarkable “omissions” in his gospel therefore make much better sense if he did not have Matthew (and Luke), or the materials they used, in front of him. In other words, I continue to believe in the priority of Mark. But to conclude that Mark did not use Matthew does not necessarily lead to the view that Matthew “used” Mark, in the sense that he sat with a copy of Mark’s gospel in front of him and consciously “edited” it by alteration, addition and omission. The simple x-copied-y approach to the Synoptic Problem which has characterized many of the proposed “solutions” seems to me more appropriate to a modern scholar’s study than to the real world of first century church tradition. I incline to the view promoted by E. P. Sanders37 and developed by J. A. T. Robinson,38 that neat theories of literary dependence (even complex ones like that of Boismard)39 are unlikely to do justice to the varied data of the synoptic texts, and that we should think rather of a more fluid process of mutual influence between the various centers of Christian gospel-writing as people travelled around the empire and visited and consulted with one another. In such a scenario the Synoptic Gospels may better be seen as at least partially parallel developments of the common traditions, rather than placed in a simple line of “dependence.” (This possibility would also cohere well with the proposal noted above that all three Synoptic Gospels reached their final form within a relatively short period—the sixties—rather than over some twenty years or more as has been more commonly proposed.)
Within such a flexible process I would regard Mark as the earliest of the surviving compilations, but this does not necessarily mean that at every point Mark’s version of a saying or event must be the “original” from which the others are “deviations.” The most obvious point at which Mark has, on this view, provided a formative influence is in the overall narrative structure of his gospel, which, as we have noted above, is taken up and expanded by Matthew, and, rather less closely, by Luke. If, as I believe,40 Mark’s narrative structure with a single journey of Jesus from north to south is an artificial construction rather than a reflection of the likely geographical pattern of Jesus’ total ministry (as perhaps more faithfully reflected in the Gospel of John), it is improbable that two or three writers independently made the same literary decision. To that extent Mark must be understood to be the foundation gospel among the three, but that is far from demanding that we assume that in the detailed contents of the gospel Matthew is always simply copying and/or editing Mark’s text in the final form in which we know it. And as for a unitary document “Q”, I am among the growing number of scholars who find it an improbably simple hypothesis; I am happy to talk about “Q tradition” (which may have been oral or written, and not necessarily all gathered into a single source), but not about Matthew “editing Q” if by that is meant making alterations to a supposedly fixed text (which is in any case not available to us). And I am afraid that the even more esoteric and hypothetical debates about “the Q community” or “recensions of Q” leave me cold.
Given this understanding of the Synoptic Problem I am more reluctant than many other interpreters to speak simply of how Matthew has “redacted” Mark’s material or to attempt in Q material to discern how Matthew has “adapted” the common tradition. I regard the Marcan and Lucan parallels as other witnesses to the traditions Matthew had available, but not necessarily as his direct sources. Where he differs from them it may be because he is deliberately altering the tradition as they have recorded it, but it may also be because he has received the tradition in a rather different form. This commentary will therefore call attention to differences between the synoptic accounts where they help to highlight the distinctive contribution of Matthew, but without always assuming direct dependence and therefore deliberate alteration of an already formulated tradition. The results may in many cases be quite similar to what would have been reached by a more rigid x-copied-y approach, but they are likely to be more cautiously expressed.