P'nei Adonai resources for walking in the presence of God
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P'nei Adonai resources for walking in the presence of God
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Matthew
• Introduction (We are doing a weekly study of Mattiyahu. Please check back weekly for additional essays, until we finish going through the text.) (Apologies! June and July were unexpectedly busy. The missing study notes will be added to the website as soon as possible.)
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AuthenticityIt is not surprising that Mattiyahu, representing both the earliest and latest of the synoptic material, is an extremely reliable account of the good news.
As Greek BiographyMattiyahu follows the literary traditions of a Greek biography used by historical contemporaries. This includes length of the biography, focusing on the subject's adult life, spending a long time on a significant death, arranging material topically rather than strictly chronologically, using multiple sources but sticking to a primary source, abridging older sources, combining narrative and sayings, and using events (to praise or condemn the subject, or to teach morality) rather than inventing tradition.1Greek biographies of recent events were historical accounts. Like other historians, their authors might embellish an event to add an interpretation of the event's significance, but an event would not simply be fabricated. Historical accounts so recent that eyewitnesses still lived were held to especially strict standards of accuracy. There is no reason to doubt that Mattiyahu is not like the biographies of contemporaries such as Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius in this regard. Greek biographers of recent events would make their works entertaining and moralistic by the choice of events to portray the person's vocation and by how they ordered this material, not by inventing material. A biographer who was historically inaccurate would be ridiculed (for example, Plutarch versus Herodotus). Even adding too much embellishment invited criticism (Polybius versus Timaeus). Drafts of biographies were normally read aloud in public and feedback was solicited; this would happen for months. At the time Mattiyahu spread eyewitnesses to Yeshua's life were present and prominent among Yeshua's followers. If a written account of Yeshua's life had contained fictitious events, it is extremely unlikely these would have been retained during this process of public editing. (In a similar way, Paul writes of miracles and eyewitness of which he expects his readers have previous knowledge.) Thus we should assume that the events of Mattiyahu are historical, but should be wary that where Matthew adds to details not present in other synoptic gospels to events such additions may be "interpretation" to provide meaning (what Jewish culture calls midrash) rather than historical fact.
As Hebrew BiographyJewish historical biography was a less-established genre. It was never completely distinct from the conventions of Greek biography, as the writings of Josephus and Philo make clear. It was also affected by a second, more popular Jewish literary genre: the fictitious elaboration of scriptural stories (such as Life of Adam and Eve). The difference was that historical biographies were faithful to prior sources, especially when the Tenach was cited, whereas the fictions based on scripture used few scriptural details, often only people's names.Mattiyahu carefully cites the Tenach and older sources such as the other synoptics gospels, both to show significance of biographical events and to spotlight new significance given to scriptural verses by the biographical events. This again indicates that Mattiyahu uses actual events, which may be embellished to interpret tradition but would not be attempts at creating new tradition. As Cherished EventsIn Mattiyahu's culture important persons were understood to have deeds and deaths that set worthy examples. School exercises would include memorizing chreiai: brief accounts of an event from someone's life told in a way to imply a moral lesson, often mixing narrative and sayings. It is likely that much of the synoptic material was originally shared as similar brief stories since that is how people were used to communicating stories about important people.2Evidence for this theory is especially strong for events whose accounts end abruptly with Yeshua making a witty remark that silences his opponents. In reality opponents would rarely be silenced even when shamed, but chreiai often followed this structure. Some scholars also claim that most of the accounts of miracles also follow another established chreiai structure.
As Cherished TeachingsYeshua's teachings would also have fit into the genre of both Hellenistic and Rabbinical teachers who expected their disciples to memorize their sayings and be able to recite them verbatim or paraphrased.3Memorization of texts longer than Mattiyahu was commonplace. Over several generations variations would arise, but Mattiyahu, only one generation distant from Yeshua, can be expected to be as accurate as Yeshua and Mattiyahu would desire, since the community preserving their traditions was so young. As with events, Mattiyahu would have interpreted Yeshua's sayings but would not have invented new ones. (For example, in his effort to show Yeshua as similar but superior to the Pharisees, he words Yeshua's sayings more similarly to Pharisaic formulations, and in all but four instances replaces "Kingdom of God" with the Pharisaic synonym "Kingdom of Heaven"). Some analysts have claimed that up to 80% of the synoptic material would have poetic or rhythmic forms in spoken Aramaic, but the truth of such claims is impossible to evaluate. More significantly, there are fewer Aramaic figures of speech in Mattiyahu's narrative than in his recounting of Yeshua's sayings. This shows that Mattiyahu was preserving Yeshua's words more precisely than descriptions of what Yeshua did, and in the historical context probably means the former were translated into Greek as verbatim as possible while the latter were open to paraphrase. Greek was widely spoken and written in Israel (at least at a rudimentary level) especially the urban areas (more than two-thirds of contemporary Jewish funerary inscriptions are in Greek). The Aramaic figures of speech in the Mattiyahu make it likely that most of its records of speech are records of spoken Aramaic. But this does not imply that a largely-multilingual community would introduce errors when translating Yeshua's sayings into Greek. Also noteworthy is that some of Yeshua's teachings troubled the early community of believers, but were not removed -- and other issues were hotly debated by this community by the time Mattiyahu was written but were not fictitiously inserted into the content of Yeshua's teachings. The similarity of the synoptic gospels further attests that Yeshua's sayings were interpreted but not invented (i.e., compare them to the diversity in the later Gnostic "sayings" writings). The different synoptic gospels arrange Yeshua's sayings into different topical groups, but all refrain from inventing sayings that would provide obviously needed smooth transitions. It was considered arrangement, not invention, to insert established sayings into established narrative or collections of sayings (or a combination). Thus the synoptic authors frequently differ in where they place sayings, doing so to each provide a certain emphasis. Finally, Mattiyahu's record of Yeshua's teaching contains a believable "style" for Yeshua. It was common for traveling sages to follow all of an established set of rhetorical forms (proverbs, parables, riddles, woes, contrasts with hyperbole, etc.) while having one or two distinct mannerisms (such as Yeshua's "Truly I tell you...").
As ScholarshipThe author(s) of Mattiyahu were certainly not scholars in the modern sense of that word. But compared to their peers they were remarkably precise in using sorce texts.Mattiyahu uses more than ninety percent of Mark (as opposed to Luke, which uses only about 50%). Both Mattiyahu and Luke use the exact wording in Mark about half the time, which is atypically "conservative" by ancient standards.4 Mattiyahu also corrects ambiguities in Mark. In verse 12:3-4 he clarifies Mark's reference (Mark 2:25-26) to First Samuel 21 to state that those with David also were not allowed to eat the showbread. In verse 3:3 he clarifies Mark's reference (Mark 1:2-3) to Isaiah 40:3 to state that verse applied to Yochanan, not Yeshua or the text itself. In verse 6:14 he clarifies Mark's comment (Mark 6:14) that Herod suspected Yeshua, not one of his disciples, of being Yochanan risen from the dead.4 Mattiyahu also edits Mark's text to be more true to the contemporary Jewish culture. The most obvious instances of this are how he normally uses "Kingdom of Heaven", the culturally polite phrase, instead of the scriptural "Kingdom of God", and how he makes more of Yeshua's words in the form of chreiai as discussed above. Finally, Mattiyahu (and Luke also) use the earlier text actually written by Mattiyahu himself to edit Mark's text. For example, in Mattiyahu 12:28 (and Luke 11:20) detail left out of Mark's account in Mark 3:23-35.
Other IssuesThe reliability of Matthew's Gospel is also supported by a few miscellaneous issues.The Gospel highlights the role women played, especially regarding the resurrection. This use of non-respected testimony would not have been fabricated. The resurrection story has no parallels in existent myths, and was not expected (or even initially understood) by the Jews. In historical and literary context it is too "out of place" to have been included as midrash instead of a historical event. Luke did careful investigation (Luke 1:3), probably as indicated in Acts 16:10 through 18. This would have given him extra accuracy. But his work is synoptic with Matthew's.
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