2:1-12 The Magi and their star

There is much going on in this section. Historical-critical questions are raised about the verisimilitude of the magi and their star, questions that can take us away from the goals of the narrative. As we have come to expect, these questions are most exhaustively dealt with by Raymond Brown. We will summarize Brown's discussion of some of these and put forward his suggestion that the story of Balaam generates the detail of the story at this point.

The reference to the birth of Jesus taking place “in the days of Herod the King,” here and in Luke’s birth narrative (Lk. 1:5), give us a latest possible date for the birth of Jesus (a “terminus ad quem”). Herod the King of Judea is Herod the Great, whose death is linked by Josephus to a year in which a lunar eclipse occured shortly before Passover; the concensus is that this year was 4 BCE. Jesus’ birth can be no later than this.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem at home. This means there is no journey, no pregnant mother on a donkey, no “Inn”, no manger no animals as well as no shepherds in the fields, no heavenly host. All this detail comes from Luke and is kept alive by the Christmas card industry. But all is not loss! We are in the world of the Magi, their Star and their Gifts.

Magi arrive in Jerusalem. In the first century CE, people know of magi from out East “as those engaged in occult arts and [the term] covers a wide range of astronomers, fortune tellers, priestly augurers, and magicians of varying plausibility” (Brown, 167). Matthew’s linking them to a star suggests astrologers. There is no suggestion at all that Matthew sees these characters as anything other than wholly admirable. They come from the East; this point of detail owes its origin to the Balaam story, as will be laid out later. Their coming provides a vehicle for the homage of the Gentiles to this new son of Abraham. As we would expect, these mysterious magi characters have provided occasion for endless speculation as to: where they came from, how many there were, what their names were. None of these questions are issues for the story. It is said that the genuine bones of the magi travelled further as objects of veneration than did the magi themselves.

The child “born king of the Jews” sets up a tragic rivalry, a threat, to the King of Judea, that in the story leads to the “slaughter of the innocents” in Bethlehem.

They have observed “his star at its rising”. This is the biggie for those who are interested in the questions of historical criticism. As an element in a story of the Messiah’s birth it would not, in itself, have occasioned surprise. But we are talking about the “what actually happened and how would we refer to it now” questions. Such speculation has clustered around three general possibilities: (i) It was a supernova explosion, such as are occurring all the time; (ii) It was a comet, observances of which have been noted for millennia; (iii) It was a planetary conjunction of, say, Jupiter and Saturn. (See Brown, 170 -173.)

They have come following their observation of the rising of the star. There is no implication that they have followed the star to Jerusalem; the five miles from Jerusalem to Bethlehem is a different story. Having seen the appearance of the “star” associated with the birth of the king of the Jews, let’s hoof it over to Jerusalem and check out what is happening.

Who knows where the king of the Jews is to be born? Certainly not Herod the Great! The Jerusalem leadership speak for Matthew: “in Bethlehem of Judea” Matthew gives us a compound quotation of Micah 5:2 and 2 Samuel 5:2 (that is about as convincing as saying that our apartment has a “sea view”). The changes that Matthew has made in the Micah text make Bethlehem in Judea to be significant, whereas Bethlehem in Ephrathah is insignificant.

We don’t need to point out the historical problems that arise when we take this story and confuse it with history, but we’ll do it anyway. (i) The historical and scientific oddity of a star that leads the Magi to Jerusalem, disappears for a while, then reappears and goes backwards to Bethlehem where it lights up one house; this unique event receives no notice from the records of the time. (ii) The depicted relationship between Herod and the Sanhedrin is totally at odds with what we know – they were not at his beck and call. (iii) Herod’s intelligence system is not able to find out which house in the small town of Bethlehem received the exotic Magi from the East, nor did they attempt to follow them. (iv)The slaughter of all the boys under the age of two in Bethlehem receives no mention in Josephus’ detailed history. (v) The story, on this level, is irreconcilable with Luke’s nativity story. (vi) The Gospel stories of Jesus’ ministry do not know about this extraordinary association of Jesus with Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Whereas the story of Matthew 2:13-23 draws heavily on the story of the birth of Moses in Egypt and the threat to his life, the background to the story of the Magi and their star (2:1-12) had been found in the story of the prophet Balaam and the threats made against him by Balak, King of Moab (Numbers 22-24). Balaam is a non-Israelite, an occult visionary, a practitioner of enchantment. Philo of Alexandria calls him a magos (singular of magoi/magi). He comes from the East, accompanied by two servants and their coming is accompanied by the rising of a star (Num 24:17). In both stories “the wicked king sought to use the foreign magus to destroy his enemy, but the magus actually honored his enemy” (Brown, 190 -196).

The proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah is given to the learned Gentile magi gained through “general revelation”. The specific location of the new Messiah can only be gained through “special revelation”, given through Scripture, the preserve of the learned Jewish sages. In the light of the Star and Scripture, the Gentile magi arrive and pay homage whereas the leaders of Jerusalem stay away and do not believe. This paradox reflects the contemporary experience of Matthew’s community and their telling of the passion story.

1:18-25 The Conception of Jesus:

Take note of the fact that pretty well everything in chapter one comes from the narrator to us, it is privileged information. The narrator tells us about the conception of Jesus in a way that reflects the assumptions of the author's world, not ours. Let’s look at some of these.

• There are two stages of marriage. “When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together.” The first stage, the betrothal, was the part where they actually, contractually became married. It involved the formal exchange of assent and happened when the girl was between 12 and 13 years old. Following this marriage, the two were legally married: the young man had rights over the woman, the infringement of which would constitute adultery. Yet the young women continued to live in her own family home The second stage involved the taking of the wife to her husband’s family home. This would happen about a year after the marriage. We could therefore re-express the original sentence as “When his mother Mary had been married to Joseph, but before they lived together.”
• Were “sleep overs” allowed? Not in Galilee, maybe in Judea. Verse 25 clarifies that for the purposes of this story, no intercourse had taken place; “but Joseph had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son”.
• It became apparent that she was pregnant. Not as a result of the snooping of a busybody but as the natural result of pregnancy: she “began to show”.
• Her husband Joseph was a righteous man. He was law-observant and hence would feel constrained to withdraw out of the marriage in the face of what would have naturally been construed as adultery. He doesn’t yet know what we know! He was not willing to make public accusation of adultery against Mary. He would set the tone by a lenient divorce; soon, her pregnancy would be “a matter of public record”, she “would begin to show” and people could draw their own conclusions.
• The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Not the dreams of his namesake Joseph with the amazing technicolour dreamcoat, the type of dream that required an interpretation. Our Joseph will have four dreams, and the magi one, at key stages of the birth story. These dreams provide the context for passing on of key information to Joseph: the child is by the Holy Spirit; flee to Egypt; go to Israel as the one seeking the child’s life is dead; go to Galilee. The magi are warned in a dream to return home, bypassing Jerusalem.
• The angel of the Lord spoke to Joseph. The divine messenger (which is what “angel of the Lord” means) does not necessarily imply a spiritual being intermediate between God and man (Brown, p. 129). We have just finished reading the ending of the story where an “angel of the Lord” appeared in the resurrection story, sitting in the empty tomb. In a moment we will encounter another example of an echoing between the beginning and ending of the story: “God with us”.
• The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. There is no suggestion here that the Spirit provides the male element in the birth process. There is no suggestion of any sexual process here; the Spirit is the Spirit that hovers over the deeps in the creation story. A new creation is about to happen.
• Do not fear. Do not hold back out of fear.
• You are to name him “Jesus.” Joseph, who is a son of David (without implying a close royal lineage), by exercising the father’s (non-exclusive) right to name the child, acknowledges Jesus and thus become the legal father of the child (Brown, 139).
• Jesus for he will save his people. “Jesus” is the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name “Joshua”, meaning “Yahweh helps” (from shwy to help). There was another etymology, or explanation, which derived the meaning of Joshua from ishy “to save.”
• A virgin shall conceive and bear a son. This is how early Christian reflection understood Isaiah 7:14. In its context in the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah is saying to King Ahaz that somewhere close by, there is a child who is just about to be born to a young woman. This imminent birth will illustrate God’s providential care for his people. He is not prophesying that in some 700 years time there will be a virginal conception. He is talking about a young woman of marriageable age who, as he speaks, is alive and well and very pregnant – by the normal, time-honored process.
• Which means “God is with us” God is with us at the beginning of Matthew’s story and Jesus is with us at the end of the story “to the end of the age” (28:20).
  

Matthew 1:1 - 2:23 The Birth of Jesus the Christ

1:1-17 The Birth-Record of Jesus

The beginnings and the endings of stories are important because they send us signals as to what we need to know if we are going to make sense of the story. Matthew’s story of Jesus begins with the “birth record”. Others have seen the resurrection as the point when Jesus “was declared to be Son of God with power” (Rom. 1:4) Still others have understood the baptism of Jesus by John as this “Christological moment”, the moment when the story really begins (Mk. 1:1-11). Matthew sees Jesus birth as the beginning of the story. Another Gospel will agree with this, but talk about it in a different manner, and another will push the beginning of Jesus’ story back before the dawn of time.

The birth is neither random nor ahistorical. Jesus: Jesus is born into a people whose story goes back to Abraham. Matthew wants to show us the lineage and show off the patterns of the generations. There is a “wow!” factor at work here that we shouldn’t miss.

Matthew seems to have had two lists at his disposal. One of them, from Abraham to David, is largely available to us in Ruth 4:18-22. The second is a “more popular list” (i.e. it errs on the side of being sloppy) and goes from David down to Jacob the father of Joseph.

The first list has thirteen fathers and thirteen sons but if you count from the beginning of the list to the end, and if your name is ‘Matthew’, you can reckon this to be fourteen generations. If the second list is set out using the same pattern, and with the same degree of numeracy, then it can be split into two further lists of fourteen generations. This is a wonder to behold: an era going from the father of the nation to its anointed king, a second fourteen generation era stretching down to the time of the exile, and a third from the exile to the birth of the Christ.

This patrilineal listing uses the pattern A is the father of B, B is the father of C. Thus
Abraham is the father of Isaac;
Isaac the father of Jacob;
Jacob is the father ...
When the lists are set out like this, it is move evident that there are disruptions to the pattern caused by the mention of five women and the mention of other brothers.

The five women have been a puzzle at least as far back as St Jerome in the mid second century. Jerome says that the five women were sinners and hence foreshadowed Jesus the savior of sinners. This is a little far-fetched and inaccurate. Luther suggests the common thread is that women were all foreigners and hence reflect Matthew’s interest in the Gentile mission. This would not have fitted the way these women were currently viewed. It may be more to the point to note that these women had irregular relationship with their partners, took initiative and took a central role in God’s plan. For example, Bathsheba bore Solomon through her affair with David and she intervened to have her son succeed David.

Why the brothers? Because God’s providence is at work when one brother is preferred over another and in the choice of some feisty but resolute women.

Why did the number fourteen stand out for Matthew? It may be no more than in “Gamatria” the sum of the values assigned to the consonants of the Hebrew word “David” is fourteen.

Raymond Brown points out the artificiality of the fourteen generations pattern. The three epochs mentioned by Matthew are approximately 700, 400 and 600 years long. Fourteen generations would be a little over 300 years (Brown, Birth of the Messiah, p. 74f.)

The genealogy set out by Matthew is clearly not genealogy as we know it nor is it close to what we would expect to find on the fly leaf of a family Bible. A “birth record” such as Matthew gives us could have a number of purposes: it could undergird the status of a family, structure history into epochs, authenticate a line of office holders (“apostolic succession”). We note in passing that Luke’s Gospel has a different genealogy serving a different purpose.

We have left till last the break in the pattern caused by “… Joseph, the husband of Mary; of her was begotten Jesus called the Christ.” In Matthew’s story, Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus. This is by no means an ordinary birth at the beginning of an ordinary story. He wants tp say that Jesus was born into a family and a people that stretched through David and back to Abraham. David and Abraham will play their part in the story that is about to unfold but everything will be under the direction of the God of Israel..

What we are beginning is a story that involves God and the story of an extraordinary individual, Jesus the Christ,

Breaking the story up into parts:

• Those of us who will be hearing, or preaching on, the Gospel of Matthew this year will only be exposed to part of the story. The Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) has picked the “low hanging fruit” for reading in church on Sunday, as often happens.
• See the section “Matthew in the RCL” for a summary showing when Matthew comes onto the Sunday stage this year.
• I have made a decision to teach and preach systematically through Matthew so that my parishioners can get a sense of Matthew’s story.
• I will generally follow the divisions of Harrington.

Matthew within the Revised Common Lectionary:

1:18-25 Advent 4
2:13-23 Christmas 1
2:1-12 Epiphany 1
3:1-12 Advent 2
3:13-17 Epiphany 2
4:12-23 Epiphany 4
4: 1-11 Lent 1
6: 24-34 Ordinary 8
7: 21-29 Ordinary 9
9: 9-13, 18-26 Ordinary 10
9:35 - 10:8 Ordinary 11
10: 24-39 Ordinary 12
10: 40-42 Ordinary 13
11:2-11 Advent 3
11: 16-19, 25-30 Ordinary 14
13: 1-9, 18-23 Ordinary 15
13: 24-30, 36-43 Ordinary 16
13: 31-33, 44-52 Ordinary 17
14: 13-21 Ordinary 18
14: 22-33 Ordinary 19
15: 10-28 Ordinary 20
16: 13-20 Ordinary 21
16: 21-28 Ordinary 22
17: 1-9 Lent 2
18: 15-20 Ordinary 23
18: 21-35 Ordinary 24
20: 1-16 Ordinary 25
21: 1-11 Palm Sunday
21: 23-32 Ordinary 26
21: 33-46 Ordinary 27
22: 1-14 Ordinary 28
22:15-22 Ordinary 29
22: 34-46 Ordinary 30
23: 1-12 Ordinary 31
24: 36-44 Advent 1
25: 1-13 Ordinary 32
25: 14-30 Ordinary 33
25: 31-46 Ordinary 34
28:1-10 Easter 1
28: 16-20 Trinity

Some of the things I noticed while reading the text right through:

• There is not the same sense of urgency we noted in Mark. Why should there be? This is quite a different story. Fair enough!
• Jesus is very much a teacher. It’s not just that the crowds say that he is might in word and deed, but here we are exposed to the teaching – e.g. in the Sermon on the Mount and the chapters on parables.
• He groups together blocks of teaching interspersed with narrative in a way that attracts attention but defies easy explanation.
• The teaching blocks are often brought to an end by a “formulaic wrap up” like “When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he …” (e.g. 7:28, 26:1).
• The early part of the story shows patterns and events that seem to owe a lot to the Hebrew Bible – e.g. a patterning of the young Jesus on the young Moses.
• There is a strong sense that events happened in order to fulfill scripture. This tends to be expressed using various formula such as “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the prophet …” (e.g. 1:22).
• The characters “the Pharisees” do not fare well, especially in chapter 23 and we know about “that remark” put on the lips of “the people as a whole” in 27:25. We wonder if this reflects contemporary hostility between young church and young synagogue as they compete for the same client base.

Stuff about stories:

• We read stories and let them have their way with us and then we read them again and again and marvel at how they work.
• The Gospel of Matthew is just such a story and deserves to be honoured in this way.
• Matthew too has a plot. It begins with a story about the birth of Jesus the Christ. As an adult, Jesus begins a ministry to Israel in Galilee and then moves to Jerusalem. This ministry is characterized by an increasing conflict with the leaders of Israel which leads to his death in Jerusalem. We become increasingly aware of Jesus moving towards this impending death and the difficulty of Jesus’ disciples accepting the positive resolution of this conflict. The story ends with an appearance, a task and a promise.
• For Matthew’s development of characters (Jesus, Jewish leaders, disciples), location, the narrator and all those other good things, see JD Kingsbury’s Matthew as Story. It is the equivalent of Rhoads and Michie’s Mark as Story, but not as satisfying to read (that's my opinion).
• Have you read the Gospel right through yet?

Assumptions about me:

• I am an Anglican priest, currently living in Wellington New Zealand.
• I am a scholar who counts John Donahue as a teacher and a friend. I treasure his classes on Mark and on the Parables that I was a part of while a doctoral student at Vanderbilt University. Much of this carries over into Matthew.
• I am a teacher. This blog is an adjunct to weekly teaching and preaching to the congregation of St Peters on Willis in Wellington. It also makes good on promises made to groups of priests in the Waiapu Diocese.
• I have been “worrying away” at the New Testament for some thirty mumble years.. Last year I did a blog on Mark and next year I will do one on the Fourth Gospel.

My assumptions about the Gospel of Matthew:

• The Gospel of Matthew draws heavily on the Gospel of Mark; it is still the leading conclusion of study of the “Synoptic Problem” that Matthew has used Mark as one of its sources. Most of the Gospel of Mark appears within the Gospel of Matthew
• Another major source of Matthew is shared with the Gospel of Luke. This source is largely a collection of sayings and teaching of Jesus referred to as “Q”. This source is not unlike the recently-discovered Gospel of Thomas.
• While reading the Gospel of Matthew, even though we might have the feeling that we are on familiar territory, familiar to us from what we have read in Mark, Matthew deserves to be read as a story in its own right.
• Matthew has put together a new story using Mark and Q and some material that is unique amongst the Synoptic Gospels – e.g. Matthew’s nativity story.
• Before it stood alongside the other gospels in the New Testament, it stood alone. It deserves to be taken seriously and on its own terms, without reference to any other gospel.
• We need to treat it critically, i.e. using all our critical faculties.
• We encounter it first and foremost as a story; stories are good.
• All of the text of Matthew forms the story: we have access to everything.We don’t need to cut parts out because they are unhistorical.
• We may have access to history behind that story, but we may not. This is not a loss.
• The Gospel of Matthew is anonymous. For convenience we call the author as ‘Matthew’.
• The stories that make up the Story of this gospel developed over several decades.
• For a long time, people heard Matthew rather than read it.
• The world inhabited by Matthew is quite different to the one(s) we live in: we are separated from it by 2000 years, two languages and a social world that is strange to us. All of this strangeness and distance can be disguised when we read the Gospel as a part of a book written in 21st century English.
• The Gospel of Matthew is not objective: it is unashamedly biased towards its point of view of Jesus.

Introductions

My assumptions about you:

• You want to think about how you might interact with the Gospel of Matthew in this “Year of Matthew”.
• You are intelligent grown ups who want to take responsibility for your own learning
• You want to be able to ask questions and make comments
• You understand yourself as having some sort of relationship with the Christian tradition.
• At some point, early on, you will read the Gospel right through in one sitting using the New Revised Standard Version translation. You will worry away at the text often after that.
• You will consult some of the resources mentioned here