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Preaching that honours the vision of the Gospel of Matthew

Preaching that honours the vision of the Gospel of Matthew. Alan Cadwallader Australian Catholic University. Critiquing a Dispensationalist Reading of Matthew (half-time). Rethinking Matthew’s Jewish Origins. Setting the scene: a few fragments. Kurt Aland

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Preaching that honours the vision of the Gospel of Matthew

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  1. Preaching that honours the vision of the Gospel of Matthew Alan Cadwallader Australian Catholic University

  2. Critiquing a Dispensationalist Reading of Matthew(half-time) Rethinking Matthew’s Jewish Origins

  3. Setting the scene: a few fragments • Kurt Aland — measuring early popularity of gospels by number of papyri — Matthew: c24 Mark: 3 • Matthew the catechetical gospel of the early church • The macro and micro structure supports the use of the gospel in teaching

  4. Matthew macro-structure(s)Emmanuel 1:23 The Christ, the Son of the Living God 16:16 with you always 28:20

  5. The new Moses — WD Davies, DC Allison The immanent God in Christ — J Kingsbury, R Schnackenburg Theological Implications of Structures

  6. Formulaic language Structure of similar material together Repetition of key words and sayings Use of triads and doublets Use of thematic generalisations Use of inclusios Use of chiasmus (esp. concentric) Use of parallelism Use of authorial comments and expansions All this implies: Matthew fashioned carefully written for study, repeated reading influenced by OT forms and contemporary Jewish practice Matthew micro-structures

  7. Early testimony to Matthew’s orderliness [After describing Mark], Papias said these things concerning Matthew: Matthew therefore arranged the oracles in orderly fashion in the Hebrew dialect and everyone interpreted [or “translated”] them as each was able. Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 3.39.16

  8. The fundamental problem • What does it mean to assert that Matthew was first written in Hebrew? • How is it that a document specially privileged amongst Jewish-Christian groups (the Didache, Gospels of Nazarenes/Ebionites, Didascalia) became widespread throughout the Church? • How is it that a Gospel with such a strong retention of Jewish practices, comes to occupy such a privileged position with Gentile Christians?

  9. Ulrich Luz on the problem • Because Matthew encouraged his Jewish-Christian community to the Gentile mission, his Gospel was received by the Great Church, which consisted of a majority of Gentile Christians and became very early — in my opinion already with Justin — its chief Gospel. It is obvious that there must be a development between Matthew and the Gentile-Christian church which received him. The Matthean integral affirmation of the law was not accepted, and his "ethical" Gospel was accepted at most as to structure. Only in a limited sense, therefore, can the Great Church claim the Matthean heritage for itself. It can do so because Matthew himself in the name of the exalted Christ has opened his community to the Gentile mission, and because in his understanding of the law he preserved the Jesuanic priority of love over the ritual law — a perspective in which the freedom of the Gentile Christians from the law could become conceivable. Commentary on Matthew 1-7, p. 87

  10. The darker implications of the problem • The Gentile Christian vilification of the Jews • Evidenced in preaching, liturgy, bible translation and commentary

  11. The Antioch setting The Jews are more savage than any highwaymen and do greater harm to those who have fallen among them. They do not simply strip off their victim’s clothes nor inflict wounds on his body as did those robbers on the road to Jericho. Rather the Jews mortally hurt their victim’s soul, inflicting ten thousand wounds and leave it in a pit of ungodliness…If the devil is a murderer, as Our Lord said over and over, it is clear that the demons who serve him are murderers too. from Against the Jews c 390 CE

  12. Antioch • Christians were attending Sabbath synagogue services, fasted with Jews on Yom Kippur, went to watch the ceremonial shofar (ram’s horn) being blown on Rosh Hashanah and assisted in building the outdoor palm-branch tents for the festival of Sukkoth, marrying Jews • “The continued presence of the synagogue threatened Christian claims to have superseded it.” M Maas “People and Identity in Roman Antioch”, 19-20

  13. Snippets of anti-semitism through Christian history • Those who have dealings with Jews or Jewesses, those who commit bestiality and sodomists are to be buried alive Fleta, treatise on English law 1290 CE • Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion Derived from the Literal Fulfilment of Prophecy Particularly as Illustrated by the History of the Jews and the Discoveries of Modern Travellers by theRev’d Alexander Keith (photographs by his son) The ruins in the holy land are proof of God’s judgment on the Jews [the camera does not lie!]

  14. Supercessionism as anti-semitism (and anti-Catholicism) The translation and classification of Matt 5:21-48 “The six antitheses” “You have heard that it was said of old … but I say to you …” OR “You have heard that it was said of old … and I say to you Is the particle de/ to be understood as adversarial or connective? Early translations forged against the backdrop of Protestant vs Catholic, looking for a paradigm —> Protestant became Christian, Catholic became Jew (Hans Dieter Betz) Any notion of fulfilment (Mt 5:17) was understood as accomplished by displacement not extension What a difference a de/ makes!

  15. The grand post-resurrection appearance: Mt 28:16-17 “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.” (NRSV) The translation posits two groups on the mountain: the good (worshippers) vs the bad (doubters) The oi9 de/ of the opening to v.16 “Now the” is identical to the oi9 de/ of v. 17b “but some” Division (and deprecation) has been built into the translation of the text What a difference a de/ makes! #2

  16. Judas, given his name, becomes the ‘type’ of the Jews Jewish leaders (eg Pharisees) are seen as emblematic of the Jews The temple is taken as rejected in favour of unmediated access An alternate significance to the tearing of the cherubic curtain — the heart-break of the three-tiered universe (27:51-52) Implications of division and deprecation in the (interpretation) of the text

  17. The assertion of a Hebrew original maybe more polemical than historical Matthew’s gospel is good Greek Matthew relies on Greek puns (eg ka/lamoj, malako/j Mt 11:7-8) Reliance on Q document is reliance on a Greek writing (eg Mt 6:28) Matthew’s OT is the LXX not the Hebrew (eg Is 7:14 in 1:23). Justin Martyr accused Jews of tam-pering with the Heb text “The Gospel of Matthew is an original Greek work, and the evangelist may have been a second-generation (Hellenistic) Jew” R Schnackenburg, Gospel of Matthew 6 Suspicion about Gentile triumphalism

  18. Matthew also among the Hebrews published a written gospel in their own dialect, when Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome and founding the church there. Irenaeus Adv. Haer. 3.1.1 Matthew in Judea was the first to compose the gospel of Christ in the Hebrew character and speech for the sake of those who came over to the faith from Judaism Jerome vir. inl. 2, 3 first was written that according to Matthew who was once a tax-collector but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published it for those who from Judaism came to believe, composed as it was in the Hebrew language. Origen apud Eusebius H.E. 6.25.4-5 So, why the early church emphasis on Aramaic/Hebrew?

  19. The underlying polemics Matthew who wrote the Gospel wrote it in the Hebrew tongue; and Paul the preacher was a Hebrew of the Hebrews; and the twelve apostles were all of Hebrew race: then fifteen Bishops of Jerusalem were appointed in succession from among the Hebrews. What then is your reason (O disobedient Jews) for allowing your own accounts, and rejecting ours, though these also are written by Hebrews from among yourselves. Cyril of Jerusalem Orat 14.15

  20. The result • The canonical placement of Matthew as an indictment on the Jews (“to the Jew first” and, given their rejection, “then to the Greeks”) • Righteousness in Matthew equated with Paul’s denunciation of his Jewish heritage (in spite of Paul’s failure in Antioch — Gal 2) • Polemic with Pharisees taken as denunciation of all Jews • “his blood be on us and on our children” taken as proof-text of final judgment (not of a covenant-making ceremony)

  21. A pause in proceedings …

  22. Re-thinking Matthew as a Jewish gospel

  23. Matthew as a gospel for Jews — for Jewish refugees • The exile as a dominant note of the genealogy (1:11, 12, 17bis) • The flight to Egypt (2:13-15) • Flight as a dominically authorised response to massive threat (24:15-21) — “the eagles” of empire (24:28) • Psalm 22 as the psalm of exile

  24. The cry of dereliction as the anguish of the refugee • With-holding God’s language (Jub 12:26-27) until the cataclysmic moment (Mt 27:46) — the point of identification with the outcast • persecution, escape, the loss of key elements of a cultural and religious heritage, the struggles to live as a minority group in a foreign context • But continued oppression as mimetic ripples amongst diasporan groups (eg Alexandria, Crete, Antioch)

  25. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? • The land, the temple and sacrifices, the priesthood and leaders, the language and its exponents were broken • Romans were eager to break Jewish racial identity: key symbols and thousands of captives were ripped from the land • Matthew’s community in Antioch (4:24 “Syria”)

  26. The burden on women for survival • The mother of the sons of Zebedee (20:20 cf 27:56) “also” a disciple, like Joseph of Arimathea (27:57) • The 2-levelled witness to the cry of dereliction (Jesus AND exile) • The authentication of the witness of women • Cf genealogy (next session)

  27. The memory of women Jewish recriminations Roman distrust Infra-group Disputes BENEDICTION 12 For the apostates let there be no hope. And let the arrogant government be speedily uprooted on our days. Let the nosrim and the minim be destroyed in a moment. And let them be blotted out of the Book of Life and not be inscribed together with the righteous. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who humblest the arrogant. The Problem of Identity

  28. “Hated by all by reason of my name” (24:9) • “You in your synagogues curse all those who are called from him Christians; and the Gentiles effectively carry out the imprecations, putting to death those who simply confess themselves to be Christians; to all of whom we say you are our brothers and sisters." Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho 96

  29. Recognising the battle for Israel’s identity • The battle over Scripture and its fulfilment in the infancy narratives (2:5-6 cf 15) • The battle over the interpretation of miracles (12:22-32) • The internecine battle (chap 23) [and the dangers of Gentile appropriation] • The charge of leading astray (27:63 cf Deut 13:5-11) • Jesus the master as the community disciple (10:25)

  30. Recognising the impact of crisis:how shall we survive, how shall we remember, how shall we sing • Recognising the loss: of land, of family, of home, of temple, of language, of identity … of all that has been familiar • Remembering the story in a different place, a different set of relationships, a competitive minority religious setting … among all that is unfamiliar • Allowing a new reading, a new listening … a new fulfillment of Scripture in order to retain and reshape identity • Matthew’s task is simply this — to bring the story of Jesus into engagement with the severe dislocation that came in the aftermath of “The Jewish War”. Matthew is a Jew writing for Jews

  31. After all this … some guidelines to preaching Matthew’s Gospel • 1. Matthew addresses directly those who are struggling to survive and to make sense of their current circumstances, when so much has been lost or has changed. • 2. Matthew is written into a context where there are many competing voices about how to survive, voices to be countered but not blamed. • 3. Matthew is concerned for the preservation of the essentials of the identity of the assembly of faith. • 4. At the same time, Matthew resists any ghettoisation of the church. The church is to open out to a world which is often “foreign” to it, not merely for mission but for survival.

  32. Guidelines to preaching Matthew • 5. The life of Jesus is read in such a way as it touches in upon the experience of the community/ies to whom Matthew writes. • 6. The particular accents of Matthew’s understanding of Jesus can be discerned by the shifts and changes he makes to pre-existing materials. • 7. Matthew’s method as well as Matthew’s content invites a creative imitation for the later community/ies of faith. • 8. Matthew is designed to be taught. It is education into fulfilment of past and present hopes, and into the discovery of the presence of “Immanuel” — ‘God with us’.

  33. Guidelines to preaching Matthew • 9. In Matthew, marginal voices — of women, children, foreigners, the disabled, even the land — hold the memory or the clue to faith. • 10. This one is yours … to name what becomes your discovery of a guideline for the reading of Matthew: …

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