vid

I often see claim that Gospel of Matthew was written by messianic Jew, because he gets the Jewish customs and laws right, unlike other writers. Unfortunately, if there is reference it is usually some printed book I don't have easy access to.

So I wonder, what passages are those which identify Matthew as coming from someone more judaistic than Matthew or Luke?

Some which are known to me: Jewish law applies forever (Mt 5:17-19), Matthew refuses to say "god" in "kingdom of god" and instead uses "kingdom of heaven", he is really keen on showing Jesus as fulfilling Jewish prophecies (especially in Mt 2).

Do you know some others? I seem to remember reading about instance where Mark (and maybe Luke too?) gets some detail of Jewish practice wrong, and Matthew corrects it, I am not sure though.

John Kesler

Matthew omits Mark's statement in Mark 10:12, attributed to Jesus: "and if she [the wife] divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." Robert Horton Gundry states on page 381 of his commentary on Matthew:

vid

Thanks. Any more?

Nimes

Udo Schnelle does for and against lists:

For Matthew being Jewish:

1. The fundamental affirmation of the Law (cf. Matt 5.17-20; 23.3a, 23b).
2. The sustained reference to the Old Testament and the emphatic application of the idea of fulfilment (cf. e.g. Matt 1.22-23;2.5-6, 15, 17-18; 3.3; 4.4-16; 8.17 and others).
3. The fundamental limitation of Jesus’ mission to Israel (cf. Matt 10.5-6; 15.24).
4. The Matthean community still keeps the Sabbath (cf. Matt 24.20).
5. The Matthean community still lives within the jurisdiction of Judaism (cf. Matt 17.24-27; 23.1-3).
6. The Moses typology in Matt 2.13ff.; 4.1-2; 5.1 and the five great discourses in the Gospel present Jesus as having an affinity to Moses.
7. The language, structure, reception of the Gospel of Matthew point to a Jewish Christian as its author.

Against:

1. The Gospel’s offer of salvation to all clearly points to a Gentile mission that has been underway for some time (cf. Matt 28.18-20; 8.11-12; 10.18; 12.18, 21; 13.38a; 21.43-45; 22.1-14; 24.14; 25.32; 26.13).
2. The nullification of ritual laws (cf. Matt 15.11, 20b; 23.25-26).
3. The Matthean critique of the Law. Especially in the Antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5.21-48) Jesus places his own authority higher than that of Moses, for which there is no parallel in ancient Judaism.
4. Matthew presents a thoroughgoing polemic against Pharisaic casuistry (cf. Matt 5.20; 6.1ff.; 9.9ff.; 12.1ff., 9ff.; 15.1ff.; 19.1ff.; 23.1ff.)
5. Matthew avoids Aramaisms (cf. Mark 1.13/ Matt 4.2; Mark 5.41/ Matt 9.25; Mark 7.34/ Matt 15.30; Mark 7.11/ Matt 15.5).
6. The Matthean community understands its life to be at some distance from that of the synagogue (cf. Matt 23.34b ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς ὑμῶν [in your synagogues]; Matt 7.29b καὶ οὐχ ὡς οἱ γραμματεῖς αὐτων [and not as their scribes]).
7. Ritual prescriptions for the Sabbath have lost their significance (cf. Matt 12.1-8).
8. The rejection of Israel, i.e. that Israel has lost its distinct place in the history of salvation, has been accepted by Matthew as reality for some time (cf. Matt 21.43; 22.9; 8.11-12; 21.39ff.; 27.25; 28.15).

He adds:
The tension between these two lists is best understood to mean that the evangelist Matthew is the advocate of a liberal Hellenistic Diaspora Jewish Christianity that had been engaged in the Gentile mission for some time. The lack of any reference to the debate over circumcision in Matthew points in the same direction, for in the earlier conservative Palestinian Judaism the relaxing of the practice of circumcision was regarded as contempt for the Torah, while in the broad circles of Hellenistic Diaspora Judaism circumcision was not considered an important issue.

spin

Another possibility for explaining the for and against is that we are dealing with two different authorings which reflect different times and states of the religion in the locale of writing.

I find the assumption that there was only one evangelist writer per gospel preposterous.


spin

neilgodfrey

This assumes that the real author can be identified with the authorial voice of the gospel. Narrators adopt a certain "voice" or persona through which they write. This is the impression about the narrator that the audience picks up -- and it is something engineered by the real author who can remain hidden from view and vibe.

Listen to writers explain how they came to write a certain work and they'll sometimes discuss the way they came to find the appropriate "voice" for their work. We sometimes see a scholar writing for peers or a writer of adult novels taking a break and writing a book for children. The respective audiences will hear totally different voices and imagine different narrators. And it has more to do than with just the subject matter itself.

A simple checklist of pros and cons leaves us with no way of telling if the author of Matthew was in fact adopting the voice or persona of a Jewish Christian to reach a certain audience. Or if he really was one.

N

maryhelena

Yes, my thinking is moving that way i.e.that there was more than "one evangelist writer per gospel". And a follow on from that would imply that if a gospel is being dated according to the updated version ( an updated version that included the later developments in interpretations or theology or historical circumstances) then, while that dating might indeed be interesting and relevant, it is not telling us much about the dating of the original, the source document or documents. Documents that are now no longer available - but documents, sources, that could well have implied a much earlier beginning for Christianity than that which might be interpreted from the updated documents. That earlier documents are 'missing' could well be a simple matter of people preferring the updated versions - and thus place no importance on preserving the outdated version - since the updated version would, of necessity, still have some connection to the past.

Who knows where Christianity might be today if the early Church did not seek to canonize their pick of what documents were available - and declare heretical anything else. The end result being documents frozen in time - instead of being the living documents, documents relevant to the time and place of those reading them, that their authors were endeavoring to create. In other words - a gospel of a never-ending-story - which, after all is said and done - is the story of intellectual endeavors anyway

neilgodfrey

It is the generally accepted view that

• the Old Testament literature is a stitching of J, E, D and P,
• the NT epistles show marks of interpolations, from minor to major edits, both from manuscript and internal textual evidence.
• There is little doubt about the canonical endings of Mark and John being later additions.
• Marcion might be said to have split the church over the question of interpolations.

And we so often seem to come across some strange reference from a Syriac manuscript or a Justin or Origen or Clement of Alexandria referring ostensibly to one of our gospels but saying something odd about what it is supposed to contain.


There was a "culture of interpolations" in pre-printing days, as evidenced from Walker's list of texts with known interpolations as taken from an old blog post:

• Homer’s Iliad
• Homer’s Odyssey
• Orpheus
• Musaeus
• Hippocrates
• Aristophanes
• Euripides
• Thucydides.
• Letters of Plato
• Letters of Aristotle
• Letters of Epicurus
• Letters of Seneca
• The Testimonium Flavianum or at least part thereof;
• The Sibylline Oracles,
• The Synagogal Prayers and such literature
• The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,
• The Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah
• 4 Ezra.
• The LXX
• Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, claimed “heretics” had both added to and deleted from his letters.
• Irenaeus feared his writings would be interpolated.
• “Many Greek patristic writings” according to Rufinius
• Letters of Paul and gospel of Luke according to Marcion
• Pentateuch and gospels were likely built up layer by layer
• Epistles of Ignatius
• The adulterous woman episode in gospel of John
• The longer ending of Mark
• Perhaps final chapter of John
• The Western text of the Gospels and Acts
• And even the Western “non-interpolations”

So one would need to have one's head examined if one began with an a priori assumption that the gospels alone are as pure as a virgin mary.

N

maryhelena

Yes - however, the other extreme, a scarlet woman scenario, might well take things a bit too far.....
Perhaps, once the virgin scenario is shelved the gospel's 'true' identity might be seen to be more beneficial....that 'she' was just a misunderstood woman all along....

Interestingly, an effort has been made to 'rehabilitate' two women who feature in the gospel storyline - Herodias and her daughter, Salome.

Chili

I will argue that by looking at the intricate weave between the gosples they were all written by one author instead of four.

It is fair to say that Matthew is what we call a messianic Jew for that is what Galilee is all about, and it is good to come from Galilee as the lamb but it is not good to go back there again and be the wolf that feeds the lamb.

Galilee is where relegion is left behind as the prime mover behind salvation that we call Purgatory and in the Gospels this is where salvation is worked out [in fear and tremblling]. Faith is represented there by Peter who later was called to be the seat of Paul in Rome and so is 'under' Paul as first pope in Rome.

The movement here is from "get thee behind me satan" that is confirmed by his not so eloquant betrayal to show the total abandonment of faith that led to the crucifixion, after which, in confirmation of this abandonment Thomas exclaimed "my Lord and my God!" Thomas here is the twin of faith in 'faith and doubt' that cannot be conceived to exist without the other and that is exactly what defrocked Peter on his next fishing trip where they 'caught nothing all night' . . . until Peter first 'learned to walk on water' and go by intuition instead and so cast his nets on the 'other side' of his [household] boat before he move to Rome where he built the church that Jesus promised on his keen insight of Math 17:18.

Indeed it would not surprise me if Paul wrote the Gospels too, which is not necessarily so because Galilee was a busy place in those days (that kind warranted the destruction of the temple as an end in itself instead of just being a means to the end), and there could easy have been two similar salvation experiences that here compliment each other with the Gospel writer showing "the way" and Paul writing in confirmation that way.