F. Matthew 9:35 - 10:42 Discourse to the Twelve.

9:35 – 10:4 Introduction

The metaphor of the shepherd and his sheep is powerful in Israel’s developing understanding of its relation to its God YHWH. The story of its first national king David as a shepherd boy, protective of his sheep and his family tribe could not have been stage managed better. The Psalms, of which David becomes the patron, are one of the places this metaphor of “the Lord” as the shepherd of the devout flock, is explored. A part of the common fund of experience and wisdom about sheep and shepherds was the high level of intimacy between Sheep and shepherd, the very high worth of the individual sheep and the high level of danger and risk associated with being a shepherd. The two Christian Jewish gospels develop the metaphor, Matthew here the “compassionate shepherd” and John 10 the good/noble shepherd who is also the door of the sheep.

The metaphor mixing begins here with the sheep being a harvest and the trainee shepherds becoming labourers for the harvest. It will continue throughout this discourse.

Matthew’s contribution to the listings and naming of the twelve occurs here. His listing is characterized by pairing up list members, Simon and Andrew, James and John, …

Lists

What Matthew’s list shares with the list in Mark and the two Luke-Acts lists is that Peter’s name comes first and that there are twelve names in the list (this may appear to be contradicted by the list in Acts 1 but the whole point of that list is to say it is lacking one member following Judas’ death and that lack must be made up immediately.) The names and the order of names is not consistent. Perhaps what was remembered most clearly was that there was a group of twelve selected from the disciples and that Peter played a special role amongst them. The calling and naming of the group also differs. Mark has Jesus call those whom he wanted from which he selects twelve to a special task; he also calls them “apostles” (also in 6:30 when they return). Luke also has the sequence calls … 12 … apostles. Matthew cuts to the chase and has Jesus call twelve apostles. Some of the twelve never occur in stories in the Gospel. The Gospel of John has six of the named disciples but has its own inner group of disciples Lazarus, Mary & Martha. There are clearly women among the group of disciples and some of them accompany him to his grave. All of this goes to show that the traditional equation of Jesus’ disciples with the twelve tells us very little.

10:5 – 15 Mission to Israel

The ministry of Jesus was centred on Capernaum on the north west of the Galilee. As with any contemporary new religion or philosophy, if it were to spread and gain a footing beyond this small localized area it was going to be through the work of travelling missionaries. For the word of Jesus to get out, the word of the Kingdom and the word of healing, it was going to have to be by carried by wandering charismatic preachers, carried into Syria and Palestine. The conduct of such preachers had to be controlled. The principles laid out here are:

• It is to be confined to Israel. Others would go to the Gentiles (e.g. Luke 10 has a parallel set of instructions for such a mission).
• It was to be supported locally and a dramatic sign of this was that they were to take no provisions with them, no money or food or clothing or weapons.
• Go to one house in a village and stay there until you leave the village. (Luke’s Gentile instructions say eat what is put in front of you – no shopping around.) The contemporary Christian writing called the “Didache” (teaching), from the church in Syria, says that anyone who stays longer than three days is a false prophet. Clearly there was a recognized danger of a fraudulent exploitation of religion or philosophy by its missionaries.
• How do you know when it is time to move on? If you don’t get even a toe hold in the door, so to speak, if hospitality is refused by a house, if they don’t even return your “shalom” then move on to another house but register your disdain by treating that house as a foreign land and shaking off its insult like dust from your feet. If they do return your peace and welcome you in then stay put there until it is time to leave that village.
• The simply lifestyle was to exemplify the urgency of the proclamation of the Kingdom and to distinguish wandering Christian preachers from wandering Cynic philosophers. The kingdom of God has been ushered in and time is a wasting.

The fixed home base and extended family local based on ancestral land, the illiteracy of peasant existence would all have to be replaced by a new family, with new skills and with a new set of loyalties (Mk 3:31-35 “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother”). It differs too from the world of Paul, the literate, educated travelling artisan who would found churches in towns and cities in the Greco-Roman world outside of the land of Israel. In time, this would be the world that would become most fertile for the growth of this new way of being the people of God.

But that time had not yet come for the church of Matthew who still saw themselves as a part of the one flock under the one shepherd. That metaphor was still powerful and it was still calling out for more apprentice shepherds to go out amongst the wolves to preach and heal.

10:16 – 25 Future Sufferings

As it was with the master Jesus, so it will be with the twelve and so in turn it will be with the members of Matthew’s community. The language of the persecution is the language of Mk 13 and Matt 24: it is the language of eschatology, the period of the end of this age and the ushering in of the next. The mission of Matthew now becomes one of the features of this transition.

Danger will come from being arraigned before local councils and kings and from within the family (Micah 7). It would be anachronistic to see this as evidence of a widespread and systematic persecution of Christians by Jews in the late first century. It need reflect no more than an inner-Jewish squabble. Matthew’s Christian-Jews may have experienced this as short and violent but we probably don’t want to blow it out into a general and irrevocable split.

The disciples are given assurance of support from God (“will be given you” taken as an instance of the “divine passive”). This will take the form of the giving of the Spirit and the coming of the Son of Man. Who is he, when does he come, and what is the extent of the “cities of Israel”? Was Matthew’s Jesus mistaken?

10:26 – 42 Other Instructions

• The disciple is not above the master. If they have called the master of the house … how much more will they malign those of the household. This is an example of an “a fortiori argument” (sometimes referred to by the Hebrew label “qal wahomer,” meaning light and heavy) This example may not be persuasive to us because they might only be interested in the master. A better example might be that of the sparrows (see below).
• What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light. Though the context now may require a degree of secrecy, the teaching is ultimately public property, not secret teaching. Luke uses the saying in the context of unmasking hypocrisy and Mark makes the context the teaching in parables.
• Two sparrows sold for a penny. The cheapest meat available in the market. Here the light and the heavy argument comes into its own. If (you Father is concerned for something as lowly as a sparrow) how much more (will he take care of you). Therefore don’t be afraid. We can understand the argument without necessarily being persuaded by it. The sparrow get killed and become someone’s dinner. How convincing is this to someone starving in Zimbabwe, facing today’s (June, 27th) sham of an election?
• Not peace but a sword. The larger context of Matthew, with the beatitude for the peacemakers (5:9) and the command to love enemies (5:43-48) and his refusal to allow arms to be taken up in his defence (26:52), requires that this metaphor of the sword be fully explained as a reference to the choices and consequences forced on the would-be disciple. His call forces a choice that severs what, in an agrarian society, was the ultimate loyalty to the family and its land.
• Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Luke ultimately says the same thing but it is dressed up in what is, to us, a stumbling block: “…and does not hate father and mother … cannot be my disciple”(Lk. 14:26). “Hate” means “to love less than …”
• Welcomes you … welcomes me … welcomes him who sent me. Underlying this is the law of agency: the agent is as the one who sent him. To see and hear the agent is to see and hear the one who sent him. To insult or mistreat the ambassador is to insult or mistreat the king who sent him. This is the stuff of diplomacy: we represent Jesus and speak on his behalf.
• What is the prophet’s reward? What is the righteous one’s reward?
• One of these little ones. A favorite expression of Matthew, seemingly referring to the members of his community. Check it out!

So then, what are we seeing? A community of “little ones” that sees itself as under threat. As the notables, Peter and the rest of the twelve represented Jesus as the carriers and performers of the kingdom while Jesus was here, how much more do we represent Jesus now in the time of his absence? If Jesus and the twelve received stick, it would be totally unrealistic to think that we are going to get anything less, now at the end of the first century. “But,” says Matthew’s Jesus, “don’t be afraid of them!” Be afraid rather of those who can destroy body and soul, those people and things that can gnaw away at our sense of integrity, desensitizing us little by little, so that we are not capable of standing up for what is right.

9:2 –17 Three conflict stories

Matthew follows Mark in presenting three “conflict stories” that are set in the midst of two sets of miracles stories. “Conflict stories” (and if you want to see a full discussion of this type of story, see Arland Hultgren, Jesus and his Adversaries) follow this pattern: (i) Jesus does something (or doesn’t do something) e.g. he forgives sins, he eats with tax collectors and sinners or his disciples don’t follow the practice of the twice weekly fast. (ii) Representative opponents get upset and take him to task: why is he doing this e.g. why does he forgive sins, or why does he eat with the tax collectors and sinners, or why do your disciples not fast. (iii) Finally Jesus comes back with a wise or memorable saying that ends the sequence e.g. the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, or “Those who are well have no need for a physician” or “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is present”.

(i) He forgives sins (9:2 – 8)
Who are ‘they’ Matthew has cut off the detail of Mark’s “Five guys on a roof” story. The confidence of the paralytic’s associates that Jesus will heal him, despite all the trouble they have to go to, exhibits great faith. The scribes, who can write and therefore can create and copy documents, are like law clerks. Their particular hot button is “who authorized this?” Why do the scribes say Jesus is blaspheming? God alone can forgive sins. Jesus is acting as a source, not merely as a channel for forgiveness.

Why does Jesus forgive the man first? The simple answer is “so that the story will work”. (The paralytic comes looking for a healing and instead he gets a forgiving! The punchline of the conflict story is about the Son of Man being authorized to forgive sins on earth. Issues of authority aside, forgiving sins is the easier task since it is not verifiable – unlike telling him to get up and walk. Carrying out the more difficult healing serves to underscore the power that has been given to the Son of Man. The view that sickness proceeds from sin does not play a part in this story. The healing is a vehicle for the controversy/conflict. “Son of Man” here is equivalent to “I”: “I have been given authority in earth …”

(ii) He eats with sinners (9:9 – 13)
Why are “tax collectors and sinners” linked? Toll collectors are well known sinners because of their need to handle unclean material as a part of their job. Who are the Pharisees? The Pharisees are the lay religious order who, with a lot of popular support, seek to bring the religious distinctiveness out of the Temple and into the home. The father at the table is as the priest in the Temple. The sanctity of table fellowship is a hot button for the Pharisees. What is the issue with eating with tax collectors and sinners? It’s an issue of identification: we don’t just invite anyone to share our table, do we?

Why do they talk to Jesus’ disciples? They ought to be able to explain what Jesus is about. Why does he eat with sinners? There are three pronouncements Did the first one attract the second and so on? (i) Those who are well have no need of a physician, do they? How can you argue with that? (ii) Go and learn what God desires. (iii) I have come to call …Is one more original than the others?

(iii) He does not fast or mourn (9:14 – 17)
Who are the disciples of John? Their hot button was preparing for the end of the age, the parousia. Why do they and the Pharisees fast? Why do the disciples of Jesus not fast? Is it a matter of capturing the moral high ground, ducking the onus of proof? Jesus no longer numbered himself among the disciples of John. As great as the Baptist was, Jesus had moved on. He was no longer into baptizing or fasting. There will be a time for that later. It is now honeymoon time, time for partying.

We are to learn from the two metaphors. (i) What is the wedding guest metaphor saying? Who is the bridegroom: presumably Jesus? With the advent of the “absence of Jesus”, things have changed. Is fasting and mourning now appropriate in a way it wasn’t when Jesus was about? (ii) Matthew makes a total hash of the piece of cloth metaphor: it is unclear what is of value. Luke gets the wineskin metaphor totally right and makes the spoiling of the old cloak flow on from this.

As Luke reminds us “the old wine is best”. There is a hierarchy of values at work here: new wine is rubbish and can easily be replaced. Of more value are the new wine skins whose sole function is to flex and expand under the pressure of fermentation. Of much greater value is the old wine which is lip smacking good. It gets that way by being stored within the articles of greatest value, the old wineskins that are brittle with age but encrusted with all the goodies of vintages past. Prima!

Is Jesus sighting himself alongside the good old wine from the past and dismissing his opponents as mere new wine? Maybe yes!

9:18 – 34 Three more healings

(i) The two daughters (9:18 – 26)
This story occurs in all three (synoptic) gospels. Mark has the most detail and Matthew the least – Luke is in between. Mark and Luke call the synagogue leader “Jairus” and hence it is the story of the healing of Jairus’ daughter. In Matthew he is just an unnamed ruler and the daughter is already dead: the supplicant has great faith and he is not located in the synagogue. In every case, this raising from the dead story, for that is what it is, thoroughly intertwined with a story of the healing of a woman who has had bleedings for twelve years. It looks like they have always been linked together. Matthew leaves out a great deal of detail, including the secret touching of the hem of Jesus’ garment (which is almost the longest part of the whole story). Jesus’ perceives her interior dialogue (“If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well”) and says “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well”. In Matthew, he doesn’t touch an unclean person.

In going through Mark a couple of years ago [check out the Mark blog: http://www.interactive-mark.blogspot.com/ on Mark 5] I noted evidence for suggesting that this woman was Jairus’ wife, and hence the mother of the young girl and that she had been suffering from vaginal bleeding since the birth of the young girl twelve years ago. In this case, the two stories really do belong together because a family is healed and brought back together. The two daughters are healed.

(ii) The two blind men (9:27 – 31)
This story is a “doublet”, not meaning a doublet of finest Lincoln green but a story that occurs twice. Let me explain. Mark has two distinct giving of sight stories and he places them at the beginning and end of the centre piece of his story, on following Jesus.

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Mark uses these two separate stories as metaphors for coming to faith. The first story is set in Bethsaida and the man is unnamed: we can call him “Bethsaida guy”. This story shows us that coming to faith is a multistage affair. The second story, which is placed at the end of the central section, takes place at Jericho and involves a man called Bartimaeus who, when his eyes were opened, gets up and joins Jesus “on the way” – he becomes the archetypal disciple of Jesus. Matthew and Luke don’t use the story of “Bethsaida guy”, they ignore him completely. Luke uses the Bartimaeus story, but leaves the man unnamed, (“Jericho guy”) when he gets to the point where Mark uses Bartimaeus. Matthew does the same thing.

But in addition, Matthew uses this story a second time, much earlier in the story, in the section of the story we are currently reading. So the Bartimaeus story is used twice; it’s a doublet. But that’s not all. Instead of talking about a single character called Bartimaeus, Matthew has two, unnamed blind men. He doesn’t do this because “in the real world” there were actually two people whom Jesus healed. No, Matthew has used Mark’s story and he has changed it. (He creates other doublets 9:13, 12:7. See Luz, Vol 1pp. 6f for a full list and discussion of doublets.) So Matthew adds to the mystery of the big story of the healing of two women with the small story of two men who receive their sight – in neither story in the doublet do they follow Jesus on the way. The mystery deepens.

(iii) The two demons (?) 9:32 – 34)
In the case of the third story we have a man who, for whatever reasons, was mute, unable to speak. The story attributes this disability to the presence of a demon. Demons don’t form a part of our mental furniture and particularly they don’t play a part in our medical diagnoses. But in the first century Mediterranean world they did: remove the demon and the man can now speak. Matthew’s details are very skimpy because he wants to get to the slander at the end of his story:”By the ruler of demons he casts out the demons”. Social anthropologists have a grand name for this: “deviance labeling”. We might call it “negative stereotyping” or “bad mouthing” and we might say “give a dog a bad name and hang him” (and we might even recall our parents saying the opposite “Sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you”). Each culture and each generation has its own set of “bad names”, mud that gets thrown and sticks forever.

This story is also a doublet, so if we look over to Matt 12:22-30 we see Jesus pursuing some of the options available to him to reject this deviance label, this sticky little demon of a bad name. He launches a multi-pronged attack on the gainsayers:

• To attribute Jesus’ activity to the “master demon” would imply a civil war, a kingdom divided against itself, which would be a recipe for disaster
• Do you say the same thing about your own exorcists, “your sons” who cast out demons
• Jesus has already “bound up the strong man” in the “temptation stories”. What you see now is Jesus plundering his house
• In fact, what you are seeing is the activity of the Spirit of God ushering in the reign of God
• To speak against the activity of this Spirit by name calling then it’s blasphemy.

Is it stretching too long a bow so say we are intended to see a “second demon” here, the bad mouthing of the activity of the coming of the reign of God. This second demon, this bad naming, will also cut off all speech and render us mute – if it is not cast out, if it is not refuted. Reflect on that, if you will.

Two daughters bonded by blood, two blind men waiting to come to faith and now two demons of which the more insidious is the negative stereotyping that can crush us into silence.: arithmetic rules!

E. Matthew 8:1 - 9:35 In Galilee

8:1 Introduction
This verse brings us back down from the mountain and back into the crowds, seeking healing from “every disease and every sickness” (4:23 – 5:1). The framework around the SM is closed.

8:2 –17 Three healings
The leper (8:2 – 4)
The leper, who could be suffering from a wide range of skin disfigurements (Lev. 13–14) and not necessarily from “Hansen’s disease”, was a social outcast. His approach to Jesus, with the kneeling down and the homage, reminds us of the magi in chapter 2. The title Sir/Lord does not appear on the lips of outsiders (Luz). Jesus touches him, restoring the social contact and healing him. The one who came to fulfill the Torah then sends the former leper off to the priests to complete the process by certifying the cleanliness.

The centurion (8:5–13)
Entering Capernaum, his base in northern Galilee, Jesus is accosted by a Gentile centurion, serving in Herod Antipas’ garrison, who requests healing for his sick child/servant. Jesus’ response, which can be seen as a question, serves as a rejection: “You can’t expect me to come to your place and do this!” Again, Jesus’ does not abrogate Torah by entering the house of a Gentile. The centurion’s response confirms this and clarifies what the man wants. He is not expecting Jesus to come personally: he is not worthy of the “Lord” doing that and that’s not how things work. A word from Jesus is sufficient, just as his own word accomplishes what he wants. There is an additional possibility. As the centurion sends out soldiers to carry out his commands so too Jesus could send one of his “men” to carry out the healing. The time for that has not yet come in Matthew’s story (10:1) and the mission to the Gentiles is also for a later time. The centurion’s confidence that Jesus’ word could heal, and heal at a distance, is taken by Jesus as an expression of such faith, not seen in Israel. The centurion can thus serve as a Gentile exemplar of faith. The servant/child is healed and the social grouping is restored.

Peter’s mother in law (8:14 – 17)
The trimmings are removed from Mark and Jesus is left alone with the woman, He heals with a touch, as he will cast out with a word. The society of this household is restored and this is demonstrated by the woman offering hospitality to the guest.

The words of Mark’s transitional summary are carried over into Matthew: the three healings are examples of the sort of things that Jesus did. The crowds include a leper, a centurion and his servant/child and an elderly woman. All are healed of their various diseases: society is restored.

8:18 – 9:1 Three words of power
To the scribe and the other disciple (8:18 – 22)
In response to Jesus’ command, the disciples are about to enter the boat and depart to the other side. A potential disciple is warned of the total poverty of the Son of Man and those who follow him. This is a poverty necessitated by being on the move as a “wandering charismatic” (Gerd Theissen, Sociology of Early Palestinian Christianity). Jesus does have a home base and we know (because we are not first time readers) of the women from Galilee who minister to Jesus (27:55-56). To this scribe, the word looks like a proverb from the world of the charismatic: “Foxes have dens …”. A comparison of Matthew with Mark shows that Matthew has removed the cushion in the boat so that Jesus has nowhere to lay his head.

To the one who is a disciple, who would like Elisha (1 Kgs. 19:20) go back and attend to the basic religious obligation of burying the dead, the word is a shocking, more basic obligation to the preaching of the Kingdom.

To the storm (8:23 – 27)
Jesus in a boat, on the lake, during a storm, commanding the storm has to evoke the image of creation. The obedience of the wind and the seas recalls the spirit hovering over the waters of the deep in Gen 1:2. In what looks like an enactment of Ps 107:23-32, the crossing shows the lordship of Jesus over the chaos and demonic powers lurking in the seas. The fact that Jesus is asleep (without the cushion on which to lay his head) contrasts with the smallness of faith of the disciples. As we noted in Mark, the sleeping Jesus evokes the absence of Jesus to this small Jewish-Christian community. Their prayer: “Lord save us, we are perishing!” “Little faith” is a favorite designation of the disciples in Matthew. (Go check it out in a concordance.) Their faith is far from perfect (Harrington)

To the demons of the town (8:28 – 9:1)
To those who “sit in tombs and eat swine flesh” (Is 65:4), Jesus says “Go”(into the swine)!” These (gentile) demons recognize Jesus for who he is (“Son of God”) but appear puzzled that he is there ahead of time. Do the evil spirits return to the sea? With their livelihood destroyed and their brand in tatters, the shareholders ask Jesus to leave town.

D. Matthew 5:1 - 7:28 The Sermon on the Mount

Introductory Matters

1. Outline of sections

It wasn’t just thrown together; it made sense to someone! Here is the outline given in H.D. Betz’s commentary. It’s as good a place to start as anywhere.

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2. Recent major researchers on the SM

Since St Augustine gave this part of Matthew the name “Sermon on the Mount” and wrote a commentary on it, the SM has received a lot of attention. The two most significant, recent, critical writers are (I reckon) W.D. Davies and Hans Dieter Betz Read Davies (The Sermon on the Mount, 1964) and you will see him seek to understand Matthew’s SM as a part of a larger presentation of the Christians’ law-giver Jesus as the Second Moses, set out in five books or narrative and discourse, with the same stylized ending, a presentation that engaged current, late post 70CE Jewish expectations within early Judaism. Read Betz (Essays on the Sermon on the Mount, 1985 and The Sermon on the Mount, 1995) and you will see him lay the foundation for understanding the SM as an older Jewish Christian distillation of Jesus’ teaching that can be understood to exemplify the Greco-Roman epitome. Betz then gives us a massive commentary on the SM (1995). See Stanton for a sustained critique of Betz’s stimulating thesis.

3. Purpose of the SM

It has often been assumed that the SM gives us Jesus’ ethical system, his instructions for daily living. Many have seen it as a system that is impossible to follow but which serves to usher in the grace of God.

Betz, in understanding the SM as an epitome, sees the author Matthew creatively condensing Jesus’ teaching, not to produce something that the disciple can then regurgitate, but rather to “enable the disciple to theologize creatively along the lines of the theology of the master. To say it pointedly: The SM is not law to be obeyed, but theology to be intellectually appropriated and internalized, in order then to be creatively developed and implemented in concrete situations of life.” (Essays, 15f.) It is like an “aide memoir”, carried into battle by a soldier that will allow and encourage him to think his way through conflict. Betz sees Paul as “thinking” his way through a problem confronting the “unmarried” in 1 Cor. 7:25).

4. Distinctive point of view

It is the contention of the SM, stated in the four hermeneutical principles, that Jesus “came to fulfill the law and the prophets”. Examples of this are presented in the antitheses, with their distinctive pattern “you have heard that is was said [quotation from Torah] but I say to you [Jesus’ extension, not abrogation, of Torah]”.

The ghost of an anarchical Paul is often detected behind the label “the least in the kingdom of heaven” given to the one(s) who break the least of these commandments and teaches other to do the same (cf. 1 Cor. 15:9).

The dismissive tone of “do not even the Gentiles do the same?” evokes a time before the community of the Gospel became outward facing, a time in “the mid-first century, when the Jewish-Christian community was still part of Judaism” (Essays, 19.), “The community of the SM is, without a doubt, a Jewish-Christian minority in distress.”(Essays, 21)

5. The SM within Matthew

The SM forms the first of the five discourse blocks of the Gospel. It has been used by Matthew and is marked with favored Matthean language but has it been substantially written by Matthew. No one would seriously see the SM as a cohesive, verbatim piece of Jesus-speak, such as a “sermon”. A piece of the jigsaw is the existence of the much, much smaller “Sermon on the Plain” in Luke 6: 17 – 49. It does not advance things too much further to consign them both to the Q source because the pieces they have in common are so different.

Betz argues that the SM has an integrity that pre-dates Matthew but which Matthew has incorporated and integrated into his Gospel. Wherever it has come from, this Jewish Christian treasure is now a part of a self-consciously Christian community that is looking outward to a Gentile mission field. Its author “Matthew” is the householder “who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." (13:52). The SM is the precious jewel amongst the old treasure

The Discourse Itself

The Beatitudes (5:3 – 12)

• Betz refers to them as “macarisms”, using the Greek, rather than the Latin, root to bless
• They now exist as members of a list of ten, though originally they existed independently
• They have been arranged with the most important, the signal blessing, at the head and its counterpart in v. 10
• The other eight have their “pay off” in the future
• They exist in four different forms: vv 3 & 10, 4-9, 11, 12.
• `Why have the macarisms been placed at the head of the SM? What is their function?
• Hebrew literature distinguishes at least four types of macarisms: religion secular, the wise man, and satirical.
• The head macarism (5:3) anticipates the verdict belonging to the last judgment (25:34)
• It corrects the notion that it is the economically poor who are to be called blessed: human existence is recognized as miserable.
• It moves far beyond all other forms of macarism to the status of “a fundamental theological definition” (Essays, 35). “It contains everything one must know to pass through this life into paradise.”
• Betz judges that “the first macarism is unfolded, and variously developed, in the following [nine] macarisms… The rest of the SM is nothing else that the concretization and elucidation of the first macarism.”(Essays, 35)

The Hermeneutical Principles (5:17 – 20)

• The authentic Jesus saying exists as a concept in the mind of the reader. “The text is intentionally written so that that the reader cannot simply read-off the correct saying as he can the false one, but he must construct the saying himself out of the the building materials that the text provides.” (Essays, 41) The correct saying is: “I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets”.
• This points to the functioning of the SM as epitome. The non-text of v.17a “compels the reader to compose the intended text from personal knowledge and experience, based on the building materials at hand.”(Essays, 42)
• The author of the SM makes choices, that differ from those made by the later Evangelists, as to what Jesus material he incorporates. One thing that is important is that he refutes the charge of heresy against Jesus by establishing his orthodoxy as a Jewish teacher.
• It is the written, Hebrew text of the Torah that is authoritative but it is also transient. Torah is neither eternally valid nor did it end with the coming of Jesus (as in Paul). It ends when “all things are accomplished”.
• The third principle distinguishes between the true teacher who does and teaches the commandments of Jesus that are about to follow in the SM, and the one (Paul?) who abolishes even the least (not specified) of these SM commandments of Jesus. At first glance, the teachings of Jesus are light and easy to fulfill (11:30), in contrast with those of the Pharisees, but this is only at first glance. Even the teacher who is judged to be “least” is still a part of the kingdom. “This implies that a form of Christian teaching guided by theological principles other than those of the SM is recognized as legitimate in a relative sense, even if it remains excluded for the teachers of the community of the SM.”(Essays, 51)
• The final principle shows that the SM’s take on the common Jewish quest for righteousness: it can only be spoken about in terms of comparison and contrast. More than external observance, more a “turning toward the inner disclosure of the human heart before God. This is the principal reason the commands of Jesus in the SM cannot simply be regarded as legal provisions, subject to outward fulfillment. Rather they are to be regarded as a set of instructions whose purpose is to educate the disciples of Jesus so that they may be able to recognize for themselves the demands of God that apply to them, and thus do justice in their thought and conduct to the will of God.”(Essays, 53) This is recognizable righteousness.

The Antitheses

• Who called them “antitheses”? The second century “heretic” Marcion, that’s who. He saw a contrast between “Law and Gospel”, the old and the new. He was wrong on this, if not on some other things. He would have said what the SM has Jesus say is wrong, viz. “I came to abolish the law and the prophets”
• “Torah” is not “law” it is the teaching of God. The SM has us formulate the correct saying, viz “I came to fulfill the Torah and the Prophets”.
• The formal structure of the six “antitheses”: “You have heard … but I say …” does not turn against the original quotation but rather extends it. It is like a fence put around the Torah.
• It is without parallel in early Christian literature. Christian vice and virtue catalogs (e.g. Mark 7:21-22 cf. Matt 15:9)come from Hellenistic-Christian sources, not Jewish-Christian.
• There is no accepted order in the antitheses.
• The antitheses deal, under the metaphor of the family, with broken relationships.
• Betz sees the antitheses as pre-Matthean but not going back to Jesus.
• Davies & Allison note: (i) Jesus’ words are not set over against Jewish interpretations nor do they contrast with Torah. (ii) They present a new teaching grounded in Jesus’ authority. (iii) They do not offer a set of rules but, rather, they seek to instill a moral vision.
• Walter Wink’s interpretation of 5:38-42 (seen, for example, in Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way) is a gem

Teaching on Piety

• Into the instruction on piety (6:1-6, 16-18) the Lord’s Prayer (6:7-15) has been inserted. The former has a theology of God who is and sees “in the hidden”. The instruction on prayer (6:7-8) emphasizes God’s omniscience.
• The instruction on prayer is woven around assumptions of inconspicuous piety, a doctrine of rewards that eschews all rewards in this world and a contrast of true piety with the piety of the hypocrites and the pagans, a contrast that comes from within Judaism rather than being anti-Jewish.
• There are issues of authorship of the larger piece on piety (6:1-6, 16-18) and of the inner 6:7-15. The Lord’s Prayer (6:9-13) exists in three independent forms (Luke & Didache) and, as a result of this multiple attestation, can sustain a claim to go back to Jesus. The same cannot be said for its present context (6:1-6, 16-18).

The Eschatological Warnings

• The two ways and the two gates. Jewish tradition knows of the doctrine of the two ways (Deut. 30:15-19). The path leads to the gate through which we pass, not the gate marking the start of the path. What lies through the gate? The Kingdom of Heaven, which has not yet fully come. The path is not straight, it is narrow, it is difficult to find and many take the other path. Few find the true path. Our choices are not obvious.
• The false prophets. The one(s) who we thought was speaking the word of God, we now suspect are telling us lies – false prophets, false leaders. The SM is taking on the colouring of the end of the age – eschatology. They will lead us astray, saying “I am the one, I am he”. The SM grapples to put forward a new test that will get around the old test of fulfillment: you will know them by their fruit.
• Self delusion. Some might be on the narrow path, bearing good fruit and yet not make the cut. They pass all the tests, look and smell like the real thing. They are members of the community, they say “Lord, Lord”, but they are shut out. Who then will be saved?
• There will come a time, the SM tells us, when it will be very hard to tell if we are on the right path. The only assurance might be that the way is not straight nor the path easy.

27:27- 66 The crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus

Matthew, following Mark, works with two themes: the irony of his condemnation and mockery as the “King of the Jews” and the fulfillment of Scripture. The mocking is seen in the soldiers having their way with Jesus, the placard on the cross together with the taunting of the passersby to show what he was made of and come down from the cross. The ironic fool has much to laugh about and much to learn.

The scourging and mockery (27:27-31)

The exact location of the praetorium (the Governor’s residence in Jerusalem) the number of soldiers (a cohort would be 600 soldiers) and whose soldiers they were is unknown. It begins the need to make a public example of the condemned and fires up the soldiers for a killing. The soldier’s scarlet cloak, the throne-crown and the read scepter create an ironic image to match the charge “king of the Jews”. Jesus has already been flogged.

The crucifixion (27:32-44)

Simon of Cyrene, of whom Mark makes much, is pressed into carrying the crossbeam – for whatever reason. The location of “Golgotha (Latin calvaria) is unknown. The reference to those who “passed by” (27:39) fits with a road side or crossroads where the public example could be maximized. When the Roman soldiers got into the swing of things, they would crucify victims on door lintels or on windows or anywhere. The “green hill” is indeed far, far away! The offer of wine mixed with gall continues the theme of mocking; drinking a narcotic or a poison is another easy out,

A watch is set over the crucified as one will set over the tomb. The practice of breaking the legs to hasten the process of suffocation is not mentioned here. It was not done for humanitarian reasons. A spear thrust would end the suffering, breaking the legs makes it worse.

“If you are the Son of God” echoes the tests put to Jesus in chapter 4. Both sets have three members – the rule of three lives on. (OK. There are three tests in chapter 4 and here in chapter 27 but it is a well established rule of storytelling to uses sets of three characters or three incidents.) “He has trusted in God” possibly alludes to Psalm 22:8.

The death (27:45-56)

The cry beginning “Eli, Eli, …” is fittingly ambiguous. It could be a cry of abandonment, a a cry of the pious one quoting the first verse of the Psalm of the Righteous Sufferer (Ps. 22:1) that put the whole Psalm on the table, so to speak. Who would not know that this was a cry to God but be able to confuse it with a cry to Elijah? In what world would such a confusion work? Is it a Hellenistic pun? I think it works better as a Semitic pun where “my God” is confused with “Yahweh is God”.

A major cause of the death would have been suffocation but the human body was not designed to cope with the gross trauma inflicted by the whole process of crucifixion. As Jesus takes his last breath the lights go out in nature and events associated with the end of the age give the color and force to the story – the sky turning black, the exposure of the Temple, the tombs opening . This is not the death of just anyone but the death of everyone: “this one is the Son of God”.

The burial of Jesus (27:57-66)

That the body was taken down from the cross before it was mauled by wild animals is extraordinary enough; that is was buried, with necessary haste and loving care in a cave tomb is a fitting end to the story of the one who has been associated with Abraham, David, Moses and who at his death has (once again) be acclaimed by the Gentiles. Like John the Baptist, Jesus’ body is gathered up by his disciples and buried. In contrast to Moses, the burial place of Jesus is known. It is guarded by a Roman (or is it a Jewish) watch and watched over by women disciples.

[Now that we are into Easter, we will go back and pick up the story with the (so-called) "Sermon on the Mount". I haven't forgotten chapter 28 but will return there when we have finished the story.]

27:1- 26 Jesus before Pilate

Jesus delivered over to Pilate (27:1-2)

In the early morning, all the chief priests and elders of the people confer together against Jesus that he might be put to death. These characters in the story are acting as though they were formally the Council and as though they had power to pass a capital sentence. In time (27:25) they will act as though they can take responsibility for the action that only Pilate can take. Jesus is taken in chains to the Governor Pilate. The third passion prediction (20:18-19) links the handing over of Jesus to this group of Jerusalem leaders and to Pilate. Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea from 26 – 36 CE and in less precipitous times would be found in Caesarea Maritima. Three passion predictions of a “delivery” are matched by Judas delivering Jesus to the Jerusalem authorities, the authorities delivering Jesus to Pilate and Pilate delivering Jesus over to the execution detail.

The death of Judas (27:3-10)

This is the first of four new features in Matthew’s passion story. There is another story of the end of Judas’ life in Acts 1:18-19) There, Judas does not explicitly take his own life, he buys the field. The “Field of Blood” may refer to Judas’ blood. Here, the returned money is “blood money” and the use of it by the Temple authorities to purchase the Potter’s Field gives the name to the field. The return of the money and the subsequent suicide is modeled on the actions of Ahithophel (2 Sam 17) and the prophet Zechariah (Zech. 11) rather than Jeremiah. (The parallels are set out in Davies and Allison, p. 502, 504f.) Judas’ “change of mind” (27:3), followedby “confession” (27:4) and return of the money (27:5) perhaps indicates repentance.

Jesus before Pilate (27:11-26)

The other three features peculiar to Matthew occur here, along with the revamped Barabbas scene. (i) Pilate’s wife, an impartial observer (?) declares Jesus to be a “just man” Her message comes as a result of a dream (going back to the infancy story). (ii) Pilate is portrayed as going out of his way to get Jesus to disentangle himself from the jealous accusations. He eventually washes his hands of the matter, alluding to Deut 21:6-7, Ps 26:6. Unlike Joseph, Pilate does not act decisively upon warnings given in dreams.

(iii) Jewish acceptance of responsibility. In this story, the characters representing the leadership of Jerusalem are made to accept responsibility for Jesus’ death. In the world of history, the most that can be aligned with this is to say that Pilate’s decision to put Jesus to death as a political revolutionary furthered the interest of the Temple hierarchy who were threatened by Jesus. In the history of the world of Christian anti-Semitism, this has been generalized without restraint to say that all Jews for all times and in all places bear total responsibility for Jesus’ death. Shame on us!

(iv) The Barabbas story of a condemned man Barabbas being swapped out for an innocent man Jesus is found in all Gospels. Matthew, in the NRSV translation, has the manuscript suggestion that there was poignant choice between Jesus Barabbas and Jesus the Christ. "Which Jesus do you want?" This will be made much of in the Fourth Gospel where the people cannot distinguish between the Good Shepherd and the lestes who climbs over the wall and whose voice the sheep do not know. There is no historical evidence of such a swapping. The irony of the choice is rich.

What is being served by writing about Pilate and the Jewish leadership in this way, this transfer of blame away from the Roman Pilate and onto the Jewish leaders, this portrayal of Jesus as being innocent on any and all charges of insurrection, is the attempt to exonerate the early Christian communities in the eyes of the Roman state in the late first century. It is political apologetic: we are the good guys, you have nothing to fear from us!

26:57- 75 Confession and Denial

Jesus’ confession is contrasted with Peter’s denial by means of a “sandwich structure” which tells us that two things are happening at the same time: Jesus’ is taken into Caiaphas’ house, Peter is hanging around outside, Jesus is questioned and confesses, Peter is questioned and denies. This provides a connection between the two incidents and also makes for an ironic contrast. This is the overall setting.

On the assumption of Matthew using Mark as his major source, we see changes made that could be understood as corrections of what we have called [in the Markan blog] Mark’s “rough spots”. (i) There is one high priest and he is Caiaphas, (ii) the repetition of the inadequacy of the witnesses is toned down, (v) the trial before Pilate is made distinctive by the addition of new material.

Here are still “rough spots”: (iii) the function of the first (temple) charge is perhaps even less clear with “not made by hands” removed. The second (blasphemy) charge is not clear – there is no use or abuse of the name!

The motivation for this “arraignment” from the point of Matthew’s community is not too hard to see. The Jerusalem leadership’s opinion “he deserves death” comes at the conclusion of their opposition to the preaching in Matthew’s story. This group of characters in Matthew’s story will admit culpability in 27:25.

Were we to attempt to go behind Matthew’s story and look for historical verisimilitude we would run into the problems that have been discussed over the years: (i) Is this in any sense a “Jewish trial” of Jesus by a legally constituted group, such as the Sanhedrin? (ii) Pilate was known to be a “hanging judge” who did not shared neither his power nor his hated of Jews. He alone can pass, and carry out, a death sentence. (iii) The whole wife-warning, hand-washing no-fault thing tells us about Matthew’s need for “Christians” to appear to Rome as the “good guys”, not about the historical Pilate. What is realistic is that Jesus was a challenge to the Jewish and Roman authorities and, particularly at the well-known flash point of Passover, had to be dealt to. “Thus Jesus was probably viewed as one in a series of political-religious messianic pretenders in first-century Palestine.”(Harrington, 383)

Matthew reduces the complexity of Mark’s “Christological tableau” (Mk. 14:61-62) but Jesus’ response “you say so”, to the high priest’s question (“tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God”) is no less direct that Mark’s “I am”. We have already met the circumlocution “you say so” in the “is it I, Lord” sequence at the Last Supper. When Judas says “Surely not I, Rabbi?” Jesus responds “you say so”(Matt 26:25). Jesus’ response means “You’ve got that right!” It does not mean: “they are your words, not mine!”

Why did Jesus say Peter would deny him three times? Perhaps to distinguish it from a mistake: more likely to make a good story. Three strikes and you’re out! Just as Jesus faces two charges, so too does Peter: (i) he has been “with Jesus” and (ii) his accent betrays him as being “one of them”. Matthew has omitted Mark’s “he called them to be with him” (Mk 3:14) from the appointing of the twelve but we hear it here anyway. This seems to be the more damning of the “charges” although it comes like a toss away remark. Peter “doth protest too much”, twice, and he begins to back his way outside (vv. 71, 75).

There is a progression as Peter digs himself deeper into a hole (i) A chance remark by a serving girl to Peter is denied in front of everyone. (ii) Peter moves outside onto the porch and a different servant girl makes the same remark, this time to the larger audience that Peter has created, and Peter responds with a (forbidden) oath of denial. (iii) The crowd, sensing blood, closes in on Peter and he totally looses it and swears an oath: Ï do not know the man!” How “Clintonesque”.

Peter’s three-fold denial had been prophesied as coming before the night is out (“cock crow” is about half an hour before “sparrow fart”). Three fold confession is usually balanced off by three-fold denial. In the Fourth Gospel the three-fold denial is countered by the three-fold “do you love me?” (Jn. 21:15ff)

One other thing to note is the use of oaths and curses by both the Jerusalem authorities (“I put you under an oath before the living God, tell us”) and Peter (“Then he began to curse and he swore an oath”). Matthew’s Jesus had taught (Matt. 5:33-37) not to swear oaths but to let your “Yes” be “Yes” and your “No” be “No”.