Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

The Focus of This Commentary

Different commentaries emphasize differing primary concerns, such as redaction criticism (Gundry 1982), structuralism (Patte 1987), and the history of interpretation (Luz 1989; cf. idem 1994; Schnackenburg 1996). Without minimizing or excluding such concerns, this commentary focuses especially on two aspects of interpretation: analysis of the social-historical contexts of Matthew and his traditions on one hand, and pericope-by-pericope suggestions concerning the nature of Matthew's exhortations to his Christian audience on the other. The latter aspect can be helpful today in that most readers of Matthew commentaries use them not simply to reconstruct early Christian history but to attempt to reapply Matthew's instruction (or those of his traditions) to their own generation (or, in the case of scholars, often to teach those who will do so).

But if there is to be any degree of analogy between the early Christians' wisdom and that of their modern interpreters, we must take into account the historical context not only in which but also to which they communicated their message. Such a context naturally shaped the form of their message, suggesting the importance of my first focus for my second. Intrinsic study of the text is more essential to understanding the text than extrinsic analysis, but most users of commentaries will require more assistance with extrinsic data.¹ This social-historical study of Matthew will include some attention to the rhetoric both of his Gospel (especially in terms of genre, forms, and narrative techniques) and of its traditions, as well as to historical matters made relevant to a study of Matthew by Matthew's genre (see below).

Yet our information concerning the precise social situation the First Gospel addresses is quite limited.² For this reason, the social situation of the earliest traditions behind the Gospel sometimes provide more fertile ground for exploration. Even if we cannot reconstruct the precise social situation of Matthew or his traditions, the general social context is far more accessible for both. Most of Matthew's traditions probably reflect the same general eastern Mediterranean, perhaps Syrian, Jewish milieu as that in which Matthew writes. Comparing the issues Matthew addresses with what we know of the historical situation of Jewish-Christian relations in the late first century provides us a basic picture of what issues he must have considered relevant for his community, but to move too far beyond that basic picture into details is necessarily speculative.³ Given modern readers' cultural remove from the first-century eastern Mediterranean world, however, background from the larger milieu remains helpful even where we cannot reconstruct more precisely the details of Matthew's particular situation.

A detailed analysis of how Matthew uses his tradition would require a full-scale commentary devoted largely to redaction-critical concerns (like Gundry's massive 1982 work), which is not the primary focus of this commentary. At the same time, given the Gospel's basic genre, Matthew's literary method is inseparable from his presuppositions as a biographer+/historian, so I will often pause to explore historical questions behind particular Matthean sections or pericopes, interacting to some degree with contemporary Jesus research.

Because ancient biography normally included some level of historical intention, historical questions are relevant in evaluating the degree to which Matthew was able to achieve the intention his genre implies. This does not require us to demand a narrow precision regarding details, a precision foreign to ancient literature, but to evaluate the general fidelity of substance.⁴ (Ironically, however, Matthew remains closer to the earliest sources than we are, so any attempt to evaluate his success demands some humility.)⁵ My most striking discovery while writing this commentary was how often Matthew "re-Judaizes" his sources, probably mostly on the basis of concrete Palestinian, Jewish-Christian oral traditions. (This re-Judaizing is all the more noticeable in view of Matthew's frequent abridgment of Mark.) I suspect that Matthew remains closer to the earliest strata of tradition than has often been supposed.

The purpose of this commentary does not allow me to summarize and interact in detail with all secondary sources on Matthean research.⁶ At the same time, to make this commentary as useful as possible to students who wish to pursue their own research further, I have cited as much of the secondary literature as is feasible where it proves most relevant.⁷ The brevity with which I have cited many sources does not permit the fine nuancing of detailed interaction, nor in most cases the opportunity to list both strengths and weaknesses of various works. Nevertheless, I have provided them for the reader's further exploration. It should be understood that, as in most scholarly work, disagreement with any author on a particular point does not indicate criticism of that author's scholarship in general, nor is the reader obliged or expected to concur with all the exegetical decisions reflected in this commentary.

I have often chosen to include far more citations than necessary for the point in the text because scholars and seminarians who use this commentary will thereby have access to much more information, which they can then expand in research articles and papers, than I could include in other than such summary fashion. (In lecturing I prefer to illustrate my points with some concrete ancient examples, usually the more graphic or entertaining; but here I frequently list instead multiple references for those who may wish to investigate more sources for themselves.) Naturally those who wish to make use of a commentary without such documentation (like my lighter Matthew commentary for the InterVarsity New Testament Commentary series) will generally simply ignore it. Where possible, I have tried to provide primary sources that have not been available in other commentaries, although in the interest of thoroughness I have also followed other commentators at many points (noted in the commentary where space permits); because a significant percentage of my sources do not appear in earlier commentaries I hope that this commentary will contribute to further research.

The focus of this commentary will lie in understanding the lessons Matthew's Gospel may provide his first-century, predominantly Jewish-Christian community. That is, rather than merely providing various bits of information related to details in verses of Matthew's text, I will subsume as much of the detailed information as possible under the larger lessons or morals found in each of Matthew's narrative units. This attempt is somewhat more precarious and less certain than simply placing various items within the text in their social-historical context.

Nevertheless, looking for the text's lessons fits the genre and purpose for which Matthew undoubtedly wrote it. Ancient narrators regularly sought to teach morals or lessons through their narratives;⁸ some historians explicitly listed as central to their purposes for writing history both the desire to praise the virtuous and the urge to spur others to emulate them (Dion. Hal. 1.6.3-5). Others stated that history tells about a nation's greatness and provides models one may imitate (Livy 1, pref. 10). Understanding why events happened could allow statesmen to use such historical accounts as precedents or models (paradeigasin — Dion. Hal. 5.56.1),⁹ just as early Christians (1 Cor 10:11) and other early Jews (Philo Abr. 4) used Israelite Scripture. Some biographers and historians emphasized moral lessons more than others, or even varied the level within their own works according to their sources.¹⁰ But among the various overlapping purposes for biographies, praising the subject, using his life as an example, and teaching ethics were common. Many philosophers and politicians employed historical biographies as propaganda in apologetic or polemical situations (Burridge 1992: 80, 149-51, 185-88); official writers also tended to reflect positively on their political or economic patrons (cf. Josephus's pro-Flavian propaganda in, e.g., Saulnier 1991; cf. his portrayal of pagan rulers in Feldman 1993e; 1994a).

The Gospels demonstrate features consonant with such purposes, including the early Christian use of Jesus as a moral example (Phil 2:5; 1 Pet 2:21; 1 Jn 2:6). Matthew probably provides the clearest example of this purpose; his "intention to provide a 'paradigm' for discipleship is noted by many redaction critics" (Burridge 1992: 214-15).¹¹ Contemporary literary criticism has properly demonstrated the limitations of endeavoring to infer the author's "intention" from a text. At the same time, the implied author has given us enough explanations and thematic clues throughout the narrative for us to observe his general didactic method.¹²

Thus, when I infer the lessons Matthew or his tradition may have been preaching from the stories and teachings in this Gospel, I extrapolate on the basis of his rhetorical method to the kinds of lessons I believe Matthew would at least affirm to be consistent with his purpose.¹³ This step can help bridge the gap between traditional exegesis and modern sermon or Bible study preparation, which I suspect also returns more consistently to the purpose for which Matthew recorded his Gospel (cf. 28:19). That is, when we consider the contexts in which Matthew's exhortations find their greatest relevance, we are better positioned to hear the true force of his exhortations. Others will undoubtedly note didactic principles I have missed and question some of those that I think I have found; the historical question of what the writers intended and their audiences inferred is always more hypothetical than the much broader possibilities of what could be inferred in any given historical context. Nevertheless, I hope that this commentary will point readers toward further fruitful explorations of their own into Matthew's probable didactic methods.

Relevant Social Contexts

Because we cannot locate Matthew's community or communities with absolute certainty, reconstructing specific settings remains hypothetical. Where patterns emerge consistently in specifically Matthean emphases, we may infer the sorts of community needs Matthew was addressing, but the fruits of such inferences are usually more slender than a historian would like. Reconstructing the general milieu of the eastern Mediterranean, however, sheds much light on how Matthew's first readers (vis-a-vis modern readers) would approach his Gospel. Even if we knew the precise location, variables like social class and prevailing ideologies in the particular synagogue and church communities there might elude us, but a general knowledge of antiquity provides more of the data Matthew and his first audience would have assumed than a purely modern reading of the text would.

For such reasons as these, I have drawn from as wide a range of sources as possible.¹⁴ Diverse Greek and Roman sources often attest to customs or ideas that had long before begun to permeate society in general. No one can read Josephus, Egyptian Jewish papyri, or many documents widely circulated among first-century Jews (like the Wisdom of Solomon or 2 Maccabees) without recognizing that Judaism, even Palestinian Judaism, was part of a broader Mediterranean social world. Although sources depicting Jewish life in Syria-Palestine may therefore be most directly helpful (especially when considering Jesus' Galilean ministry), other sources that place that life in its broader eastern Mediterranean context will also be helpful (especially when considering how Matthew's audience would have understood his work). A wide variety of ancient narratives, from distant genres like widely circulated epics of the past to nearer ones like history and especially biography, shed light on Matthew's narrative techniques.

None of the specific Jewish sources on which this commentary depends is without some problems. For example, Josephus, one of my most important sources, is early and adequately broad, but as frequently as possible he translates native Jewish ideas into broader hellenistic categories to make them more intelligible (and acceptable) to his milieu. (Philo carries this process still further, and, while providing one helpful perspective on how hellenistically educated aristocratic Jews in Alexandria could think, must be counterbalanced by other sources closer to Jesus' usual milieu.) The Dead Sea Scrolls are early, Palestinian, and in many respects analogous to early Christianity (although the latter never segregated themselves physically from the larger Jewish society), but they represent particular sectarian perspectives that do not always indicate the sentiments of common Judaism. Rabbinic texts preserve many customs and ideas that appear in the broader culture, but when unparalleled in other Jewish texts must be employed with greater caution because even the earliest texts stem from a period after their particular segment of Judaism had achieved some measure of power, in contradistinction to the first-century situation.¹⁵

Given the limitations of using any single pool of ancient data, the safest way to reconstruct a knowledge of the general milieu in which Jesus lived, in which Palestinian Jewish Christians transmitted the traditions, and in which Matthew wrote, is to look for customs and ideas within the widest possible frame of sources. Thus if third-century rabbis, the Qumran sect, and a second-century Roman novel all inadvertently attest a common practice, we may guess that some form of this practice widely permeated ancient Mediterranean society. Standard logic can also be helpful; whereas some later Jewish texts contain likely Christian interpolations,¹⁶ other texts bear no signs of direct or indirect Christian influence, suggesting that the Christian practice reflects the influence of the Jewish custom rather than the reverse. Thus dependence on the widest possible range of sources seems the safest method for reconstructing Matthew's general milieu (even if not always his local situation).

Nor is the function of a given "parallel" necessarily self-evident. Parallels in wording can represent coincidence (especially if one has large samples of nonparallel texts in the collection from which the parallel text derives), reflections of a common milieu, analogous function within a common milieu, linguistic influence, allusion, deliberate contrast, or deliberate quotation.¹⁷ Thus, although I sometimes simply list citations to keep the commentary to a workable size, I usually endeavor to emphasize how they shed light on a Matthean text. At the same time, my attention to Matthew itself has not permitted me to digress here into questions of dating, textual problems, and so forth in each text I cite, because of the limits of a one-volume commentary.¹⁸ Some sources are more valuable than others, but I have listed the broadest range of sources, trusting that those readers who pursue further work with those sources will already have or will acquire adequate competence in those sources.¹⁹

Questions of Interpretation

Before treating other questions, it is important to survey various methods traditionally employed in critical works on the Gospels. A brief treatment of these methods is relevant here because these methods inform this commentary to some degree, although the space limitations and purpose of this work have led me to focus especially on social-historical methods and social-historical information less accessible to most readers of commentaries.²⁰

Source Criticism

As nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars sought to test the historical reliability of the Gospels, their attention naturally turned to source criticism.²¹ Source criticism asks the question: What written sources might the author of a Gospel have used? Scholars who study Greco-Roman literature have increasingly recognized the weaknesses of traditional source criticism (e.g., Whittaker 1969: lxi-lxii), but the criteria appear somewhat more objective in Matthew, where we probably retain evidence for at least two of Matthew's sources. Although various source theories have come and gone, the majority of scholars today agree that Matthew used Mark, "Q" (i.e., a source shared by Luke), and some other material not employed by Mark or Luke. Scholars commonly call this view the "Two-Source Hypothesis."

While this remains the general consensus, however, scholars are no more unanimous on this subject than on most others. Following the older Griesbach Hypothesis, some able scholars have made a defensible case that Mark used Matthew rather than the reverse (e.g., Farmer 1964), and their case merits fair consideration in modern scholarship.²² But because so much of Mark appears in Matthew and Luke, most scholars remain convinced that Matthew and Luke both used Mark and at least one other source they shared in common (see Senior 1983: 17-19; Davies and Allison 1988: 98-114). Consistent patterns appear in Matthew's abbreviation of Mark (Davies and Allison 1988: 73-74),²³ and Matthew uses an eclectic text-type for his Old Testament quotations except where he overlaps with Mark, in which case he tends to follow Mark in employing the Septuagint (see Gundry 1975: 9-28; cf. Stanton 1993: 353-63).²⁴

Most scholars also agree that Matthew shared with Luke another source (e.g., Davies and Allison 1988: 115-24), which is nicknamed Q (probably from the German Quelle, "source," which Weiss abbreviated to "Q" in 1890) for lack of a better name (Stanton 1995a: 63). Here, too, scholarship lacks complete unanimity. Although some write as if they are very certain about the substance and extent of Q (e.g., Edwards 1975; Mack 1988: 84; idem 1993), most scholars express skepticism about the degree of certainty to which it can be reconstructed.²⁵ Still others have debated even its existence as a conplete document (e.g., Burkitt 1907: 123; Dodd 1961: 39; idem 1968: 70). While most view Q as a complete document (e.g., Schweizer 1971: 124-25; Tuckett 1996: 1-39), some envision it as purely oral tradition (e.g., Betz 1968: 22), and still others as a composite of sources (e.g., Petrie 1959; Perry 1920: 11). Some dispense with Q altogether, suggesting that Luke (some here add Mark) simply used Matthew;²⁶ this final view, however, remains a distinct (though respectable) minority position (see Martin 1956; Grant 1965; Tuckett 1984).²⁷ Q was probably also edited a number of times, and the Gospel writers probably employed Q in various stages of its editing (cf. Koester 1982: 2:46).

But since Matthew and Luke often follow Q in the same sequence (with Tuckett 1996: 34-39; the divergences to which Ellis 1991: 35 points are minor and explained by Matthew's penchant for rearrangement), I concur with the most common theory about Q: it probably represents a single prominent written source. Although I acknowledge weaknesses in this position (and probably interaction with continuing oral tradition at every stage of writing), this commentary will begin from the basic Two-Source Hypothesis. Because the Q collection was probably edited in the 40s, less than two decades after the events it describes (Theissen 1991: 203-34, especially 220-21, 230-32; pace Mack 1988: 84), we may assume a high degree of reliability for its traditions. In contrast to the arguments of some who radically distinguish Q from other elements of early Christianity, its theology resembles that of other early Christian documents (see, e.g., Meadors 1992; Keener 1995; for future eschatology, see Tuckett 1996: 139-63).

Because Matthew follows Mark and Q closely (by ancient literary standards) where we can check him, the assumption held by many scholars that he simply invents material where we cannot check him (traditionally loosely called "M" material, though no longer held to represent a single source) appears to be simply imagination run amuck.²⁸ His basically conservative editing at most points will impress one if one begins with neither a thoroughgoing skepticism nor a naive fundamentalism, but the standards of ancient texts in general. As Witherington puts it (1994: 214), Matthew

takes over more than 90% of his Markan source (606 out of 661 Markan verses), while Luke takes over only a little over 50%. The difference in degree of word for word appropriation of Mark in the pericopes and sayings that Matthew and Luke take over is minimal. Luke uses about 53% of Mark's exact words in the material culled from that source, while the First Evangelist uses about 51% of Mark's exact words of the 606 verses he appropriates. This means that Luke and the First Evangelist are about equally likely to preserve the exact wording of their source, and they do so about half the time.

So "conservative" is Matthew's editing by ancient standards that Witherington suspects that Matthew "very likely saw himself as primarily an editor or redactor, not an author" (1994: 343).²⁹ Even if this suggestion overstates the case (Matthew edited his Gospel so tightly that it surely functions as a unified whole), many changes that Matthew makes in some of his sources depend on information his other sources supply.³⁰ Thus Matthew sometimes "corrects" ambiguities in Mark (e.g., Mt 12:3-4//Mk 2:25-26; Mt 3:3//Mk 1:2-3; Mt 14:1/ /Mk 6:14); sometimes he re-Judaizes his language ("kingdom of heaven/God"; Mt 19:3, 9//Mk 10:2, 11-12); and at least on some occasions he makes his changes because of early tradition older than Mark (Mt 12:28//Lk 11:20; missing in Mk 3:23-29).

At the same time, Matthew's relative conservatism need not render all his sources of equal historical worth; and where the sources were oral, Matthew may have exercised greater freedom in their retelling.³¹ At any rate, Matthew's community certainly had other Palestinian traditions besides Mark and Q, and these traditions had undoubtedly been interacting with Mark and Q long before he wrote his Gospel (Meier in Brown and Meier 198 3 : 55).³² From the earliest period, Mediterranean storytellers regularly drew on a much larger body of oral traditions; for example, though countless allusions in Homer (e.g., Od. 12.69-72) were developed later, they are often so incomplete by themselves that it is clear that Homer alludes to commonly known fuller stories that he does not record.

Form Criticism

Because the early Christians told and retold the stories about Jesus orally before writing Gospels, scholars also began to ask about the way the early Christians transmitted them, and developed form criticism (see, e.g., Duling and Perrin 1994: 16-20; Carson, Moo, and Morris 1992: 21-25). Many form critics noted that Jesus used teaching forms popular among his contemporaries (such as parables and witty sayings), and that early Christians transmitted Jesus' sayings and deeds in forms used by other biographers and storytellers of their day. Some form critics started with skeptical presuppositions and consequently produced studies with predictably skeptical conclusions (e.g., Bultmann 1968); others started with less skeptical premises and produced more favorable conclusions (e.g., Dibelius 1971; Jeremias 1971; Taylor 1935).

The conclusions differed in part because of the varying premises with which different scholars started, and in part because flaws existed in the standard methodology (see Sanders 1969). Some criteria for authenticity that form critics developed were, however, reasonable; for instance, a saying of Jesus attested in a variety of independent sources or which would not have been made up by the later church was probably authentic. At the same time, although these criteria could logically help to verify traditions, they could not logically help to falsify them; one could hardly assume that a saying of Jesus preserved only once or that his followers agreed with must be inauthentic! In other words, the best criteria of form criticism work much better to demonstrate the reliability of the Gospels than to argue the reverse (see France 1976).

The abuse of these criteria has led to pure speculation grounded only in preexisting theories about the development of early Christianity (so Wright 1992a: 341-42). In a post-Schweitzer period of skepticism about the historical Jesus, Bultmann and many other New Testament scholars focused on the early communities that transmitted reports about Jesus, which they thought might prove more fruitful historically. But this approach has proved ironic, for we know far less about the earliest transmitting communities than we know about the historical Jesus (Wright 1992a: 342).³³

Redaction Criticism

While source and form criticism were sometimes helpful in understanding the nature of Jesus' teachings and the way the Gospels are written, scholars asked these questions mainly to test the Gospel stories' reliability, not to understand the Gospels' message. Inevitably scholars began to ask, "Given that Matthew used Mark and Q, why does Matthew edit Mark and Q the way he does? What is Matthew's point?" This question became the focus of the editorial critics, generally called redaction critics.³⁴

More sober controls eventually checked the early excesses of some redaction critics. Some early redaction critics assumed that any material Matthew or Luke added to their main sources was not historical; this view stemmed not from the method, however, but from some unlikely presuppositions, namely, that Matthew and Luke had no other information available except in Mark and Q, and that editing a source for literary style or theological emphasis renders one's information unhistorical.³⁵ The probable presence of substantial traditional material in Matthew besides Mark and Q weakens the premises of stylistic analysis (Jones 1995: 13-14).³⁶ Further, characteristic diction or style does not make elements ahistorical (see Payne 1983: 209); indeed, writers could openly acknowledge their stylistic redaction of earlier sources even for purely aesthetic reasons (Phaedrus 2, prol. 8-12). Current scholarship thus practices its redaction criticism more carefully, though it would be a mistake to abandon the method's insights altogether (Stanton 1993: 23).

Other redaction critics focused on the Gospel writers' theology, preferring more conservative historical conclusions or leaving historical questions aside (e.g., Marshall 1970; Martin 1972; cf. Osborne 1991: 169-70). By focusing on how Matthew consistently edits his sources, one can observe some of his emphases, which in turn helps one interpret more obscure passages in light of his whole Gospel (cf., e.g., Gundry 1982: 624-25). This tool can provide checks on scholarly imagination concerning Matthew's emphases (Jones 1995: 33). The Gospel writers' contemporaries, such as Josephus, noticeably exercised a degree of both freedom and fidelity in their handling of biblical history (see, e.g., Begg 1996), and one would expect the Gospels to represent the same mixture, albeit not necessarily in the same degree of each. Luther apparently considered concern over divergences among the sources on points of detail a pedantic exercise (Stanton 1995a: 8); modern historians of the period regularly mine various ancient historians for data despite divergences among them (e.g., Whittaker 1969: xlv-lii).

Although I have exercised severe restraint in making redactional observations due to this commentary's focus and length and the potentially competing literary or theological explanations for most changes Matthew makes in his sources, one important social-rhetorical pattern has emerged. Where possible, Matthew has made Mark's Jesus "more Jewish." That is, where Mark adapted Jesus to a broader (more "universal") Greco-Roman audience, Matthew has consistently re-Judaized Jesus. In some cases, Matthew may have been following the rhetorical practices of speech-in-character and historical verisimilitude,³⁷ making Jesus fit what was known about him in general (e.g., as a Jewish teacher, he should have introduced parables with the sorts of formulas used by Jewish teachers; he may have used "kingdom of heaven"); and, given Matthew's proximity to Jesus' situation, his guesses are more apt to be correct than ours. In other cases, however, I am reasonably sure that Matthew has re-Judaized Jesus based on solid traditions available to him. Some of these may be more Palestinian (e.g., 27:51-53) but not necessarily more historical than Mark (so Brown 1994: 59-60); others may actually represent the original oral traditions behind Mark or some other materials shared with Luke. Thus the Didache regularly cites some of this pre-Matthean tradition, sometimes material attested nowhere else but in Matthew (e.g., Blomberg 1995: 42; cf. Draper 1984).³⁸

Such revision should not surprise us; Matthew elsewhere "corrects" Mark's adaptations for Gentile readers to accord better with historical data available to him (see especially Theissen 1991: 88n.70, who concludes that Matthew here improves Mark's historical accuracy). Matthew and Luke occasionally add the same material from oral tradition or from Q where Mark has omitted something (e.g., Mt 12:28//Lk 11:20), further indicating Matthew's readiness to adapt Mark on the basis of prior tradition. At times Matthew also demonstrates a more sensitive understanding of Palestinian Jewish nuances than Luke or his tradition (Vermes 1993: 153-54; cf., e.g., Mt 19:3//Mk 10:2) or at least a more sensitive understanding of how his Jewish audience would be able to hear Jesus' original message as he has reconstructed it. (Omission of Mark's Aramaic might be for purely stylistic reasons, since some Roman teachers similarly often disapproved of including foreign terms in a Latin composition, e.g., [Virgil] Catalepton 1.)Vermes is thus correct to argue that Matthew has preserved much of the special Jewish coloring of Jesus, which fits with our picture of Jesus in undeniably authentic traditions (1993: 17-19).

At the same time, Matthew also fills the story of Jesus with fresh insights, interpreting the Jesus tradition with an abundance of intentional overt and covert biblical allusions (Allison 1993b: 139) that should have been intelligible to his Jewish audience (cf. Vermes 1993: 186). His explicit fulfillment quotations derive from whole sections of the Old Testament that early Christians had already applied to Jesus (Gundry 1975: 205-8), perhaps on principles drawn from Jesus' own teaching (Gundry 1975: 213-14; cf. Lk 24:25-27, 44-47). Matthew often builds on a typological scheme, recognizing analogies in God's work in history (see Longenecker 1975: 141-42). Nevertheless, it is more likely that Matthew generally finds such analogies already present in his tradition than that he creates them simply to fulfill the Old Testament; otherwise we would have to expect far more new fulfillment material than we in fact have, with far less of it beyond the special Matthean material overlapping with Mark and Luke. We would also expect his narratives to conform more closely to the citations and expect Matthew to have chosen more obvious citations (see comment on the infancy narratives).

Contemporary Literary Criticism

Because redaction criticism's focus was in locating the Gospel writers' emphasis, redaction-critical questions naturally led to a new set of questions that were more concerned with the points the Gospel writers sought to convey than with their historical accuracy or attempts to reconstruct a history of tradition behind an extant text. The 1970s began to expose more of the weaknesses of traditional redactional assumptions (e.g., that all changes were theologically motivated and that what writers change is more significant than what they retain), paving the way for a more wholistic interpretation of each Gospel (see Spencer 1993: 385-86; cf. Jones 1995: 7-16). Scholarship also increasingly recognized that the traditional redactional attempt to explain every emphasis in the Gospel by reconstructing hypothetical external referents represented simply a new form of allegorization (Anderson 1996: 248; Watson 1998).³⁹

Redaction criticism thus gave way to "composition criticism," which examines themes that run through each Gospel and asks, "What does this Gospel mean as a whole?"⁴⁰ (Earlier formalist literary critics like T. S. Eliot and C. S. Lewis emphasized discovering meaning from the text itself rather than from something extrinsic to it; unfortunately, Gospels scholarship had remained decades behind trends in literary criticism in general.) Narrative criticism adds characterization, plot, and perspective (matters that also concerned ancient readers, e.g., Arist. Poetics 15, 1454a) to the thematic pursuits of composition criticism (Powell 1992; Bauer and Powell 1996: 9-10).

More recent literary approaches such as structuralism and reader-response criticism have approached texts for their transcultural literary themes or to examine how current readers in various interpretive communities interpret texts.⁴¹ Although various forms of literary criticism adopt different methodologies, they all point beyond layers of tradition behind the text, whether to the text itself (as in the older formalism) or to the act of reading the text from various social locations or interpretive frameworks (as in various reader-response orientations). In contrast to some modern literary critics, Matthean scholars usually embrace the various interpretive strategies as complementary rather than contradictory (Bauer and Powell 1996: 25).

But though literary questions are essential, not all literary approaches are equally helpful for a given purpose. My aim is to reconstruct as well as possible what Matthew endeavored to communicate to his readers in their shared historical and social context (which, on almost all views, is at least one important goal in interpretation — see Allison 1993b: 3; Ashton 1991: 113). Focusing on this approach is not intended to devalue other approaches that remain outside this focus. Thus, for example, as helpful as hearing a text from a first-time reader's perspective may be, it was probably not the dominant reading experienced in the earliest Christian communities. Matthew's audience probably knew Mark, and probably listened to Matthew in segments (Stanton 1993: 76), and Matthew probably expected his audience to hear his Gospel more than once. Reading Matthew as a narrative whole, however, is fully in keeping with his Gospel's biographical genre (Burridge 1998: 127).

Social-Historical and Sociological Interpretation

Although the extant evidence is incomplete, it is adequate to allow us to reconstruct a general first-century Mediterranean setting more relevant to the original constructions of Matthew than are our own contemporary settings, which we might otherwise presuppose. Asking social-historical questions is therefore essential, provided we acknowledge the requisite limitations imposed by incomplete knowledge of some matters.

This commentary involves less application of more direct social-sciences approaches, however, except in interacting with works that employ them as their primary method. Such approaches can be quite helpful in reconstructing the social context by extrapolation (often on the basis of cultures with some social patterns more like the culture we study than our own is) where our evidence is limited. Nevertheless, the assurance of modern interpreters' conclusions must remain constrained to some degree by the limitations of our data. Current sociological and anthropological scholarship emphasizes that models must function heuristically, and be adjusted or discarded where they do not fit the hard data.⁴² In all cases, then, I will give preference to hard data from archaeological or literary sources over extrapolations from models or generalized cultural patterns, helpful as the latter can sometimes be.

Above all, Matthew invites his audience to hear the Gospel in the context of the early Christian message: his central discourse is emphatic that only those who press close as persistent disciples of the kingdom can truly understand the message of the kingdom (13:11-23). Matthew's Jewish-Christian community, rooted both in the new message of the kingdom and the broader context of Israel's ancient kingdom story (13:52), held a special advantage.

Matthew as Biography

Readers approach different works with different expectations, which affect the meanings they construct on those texts (see Shuler 1982: 25-28; Hirsch 1967: 68-126). Expectations also affected the way ancient readers approached works, and many ancients no less than contemporary literary theorists recognized this principle. Thus ancient writers distinguished literary forms from one another (Theon Progymn. 2.5-33), and on a larger level one genre from another (see Burridge 1992: 27-29, 34), though then, as today, writers in practice mixed categories (Burridge 1992: 56-57, 61; Aune 1981: 10-11, 48; idem 1987: 83).

What kinds of questions would ancient readers expect a work like Matthew to answer? Scholars have offered various proposals concerning the genre into which a Gospel like Matthew falls. Some writers have said that the Gospels are "unique" (e.g., Hennecke 1963: 1:80; Riesenfeld 1970: 2), but in whatever sense this description might be true (cf. Jones 1995: 43, 169; Guelich 1991), it is not very helpful in informing us how the first readers would have approached them.⁴³ Indeed, while the Gospels are in some sense distinct from other kinds of narrative, they are also distinct from each other (Marxsen 1969: 150). K. L. Schmidt's view that the Gospels are popular or "folk literature" of the lower classes (Schmidt 1923; also, e.g., Kümmel 1965: 37) is equally unhelpful and at the same time inaccurate. Schmidt's "high" literature actually influenced "folk" literature, rendering clear-cut distinctions questionable (Burridge 1992: 11, 153; Aune 1987: 12, 63; Downing 1988c). Further, the Gospels themselves vary in levels of audience expectation (e.g., Luke is far more conscious of considerations of classical style than Mark — Koester 1982: 1:108). Finally, biographies appear at both ends of the continuum (Tacitus' s Agricola versus the popular Life of Aesop).

Readers throughout most of history understood the Gospels as biographies (Stanton 1989a: 15-17), but after 1915 scholars tried to find some other classification for them, mainly because these scholars compared ancient and modern biography and noticed that the Gospels differed from the latter (Talbert 1977: 2-3; cf. Mack 1988: 16n.6).⁴⁴ The current trend, however, is again to recognize the Gospels as ancient biographies.⁴⁵ The most complete statement of the question to date comes from a Cambridge monograph by Richard A. Burridge. After carefully defining the criteria for evaluating genre (1992: 109-27) and establishing the characteristic features of Greco-Roman "lives" (128-90), he demonstrates how the canonical Gospels fit this genre (191-239). The trend to regard the Gospels as ancient biography is currently strong enough for British Matthew scholar Graham Stanton to characterize the skepticism of Bultmann and others about the biographical character of the Gospels as "surprisingly inaccurate" (1993: 63; idem 1995: 137)⁴⁶

Ancient biographers did not write the way modern biographers do; they could start in the subject's adulthood (so Mark or Life of Aesop)-, they also had the freedom to rearrange their material topically rather than in chronological sequence (4 Macc 12:7; Aune 1987: 31-32; Stanton 1974: 119-21). Further, like other writers they could expand or abridge accounts freely (2 Macc 2:24-25; Theon Progymn. 3.224-40; 4.37-42, 80-82).⁴⁷ Thus Matthew often abridges Mark, probably sometimes because of considerations of length.⁴⁸ Historians likewise wrote history differently than most historians do today. Where biographers and historians lacked access to definite historical sources, they simply tried to construct as reasonable an account as they could (Plut. Theseus 1.3; Aune 1987: 83). Nevertheless, it appears that even more frequently ancient writers, like modern ones, cited the divergent sources, sometimes preferring one source but at other times leaving the decision to the reader (Diog. Laert. 1.23; 6.113; 8.2.67-72; Paus. 2.5.5; 2.26.3-7; Plut. Lycurgus 1.1; Diod. Sic. 5.70.1; Dion. Hal. 1.84.4; 1.87.4; 3.35.1-4; 8.79.1; Suet. Tib. 5; Appian R.H. 11.9.56; 12.1.1; Livy 9.44.6; 23.19.17; 25.11.20; 25.17.1-6; 42.11.1; Arrian Alex. 1, pref. 1-3; 3.3.6; 4.9.2-3; 4.14.1-4; 5.3.1; 5.14.4; 6.2.4; 7.14.2; 7.27.1-3; Corn. Nep. 7 [Alcibiades], 11.1; 9 [Conon], 5.4; Herodian 7.9.4; 7.9.9; Contest of Homer and Hesiod 323; Parthenius L.R. 11.1-3; 14.5; p. Sota 9:13, §2). (That the Gospels do not list divergent sources may result from the recentness of the events they narrate, which have not yet generated such widely divergent traditions in the apostolic circle. This observation would be consistent with works reporting relatively recent events.) But though such historians did not always write the way we write history today, they were clearly concerned to write history as well as their resources allowed (Jos. Ant. 20.156-57; Arist. Poetics 9.2-3, 1451b; Diod. Sic. 21.17.1; Dion. Hal. 1.1.2-4; 1.2.1; 1.4.2; cf. Mosley 1965).⁴⁹

Although the historical accuracy of biographers varied from one biographer to another, biographers intended biographies to be essentially historical works (see Aune 1988: 125; Witherington 1994: 339; cf. Polyb. 8.8).⁵⁰ Although the biographical genre differs from that of history, shared interests between them allow us some comparisons. Historians sought to make their accounts interesting (2 Macc 2:24-25; Aune 1987: 80, 95) and had specific emphases in writing,⁵¹ but these practices do not oppose historical interest.⁵² Biographers shared some common interests with historians, though they focused more on the virtues of their chosen protagonists and generally intended their works for less technical audiences (Corn. Nep. 16 [Pelopidas], 1.1). Historians focused on events rather than persons (Lucian How to Write History 7), but even historians distinguished "history" from mere "chronicles" by the way one selected and arranged the material (Lucian History 4-6).

Yet to what extent their historical interest determined their historical accuracy varies from one writer to the next, depending on how they used their sources. Chronological distance from the events they report inevitably affected writers. Whereas biographers like Plutarch and Livy spice up their accounts and often depend on ancient legends, biographers like Tacitus and Suetonius are much more accurate and depend on information closer to their own time.⁵³ Many are freely skeptical of some earlier accounts (Diod. Sic. 1.6.2; 1.9.2; 4.8.4; Dion. Hal. 1.39.1; 1.41.1; Livy 6.1.2; 7.6.6; Arrian Alex. 4.28.1-2; Jos. Apion 1.15,58; some, like Hesiod W.D. 158-60, 165; Arrian Alex. 5.1.2, allow for a supernatural element) but have a higher standard for the more recent period (Diod. Sic. 4.8.3; Livy 6.1.3), especially while eyewitnesses remain alive (Jos. Life 359-66; Apion 1.50).⁵⁴ Some report their sources but urge the reader to employ discretion in evaluating them (Livy 4.29.5-6; 23.47.8), evaluate the historical probability of their sources (Arrian Alex. 3.3.6), determine the historically probable nucleus of their sources (e.g., Livy 3.8.10), explain legendary material on rationalistic grounds (Arrian Alex. 2.16.6), or simply admit that they do not know how something happened (Sail. Jug. 67.3).

Despite Josephus's self-serving agendas (and sometimes reasonable self-defense — Life 336-67; Krieger 1994 may go too far), he gets correct many details now confirmed by archaeology (see Josephus 1982: passim; cf. Rajak 1983: 9-10; Sanders 1992: 6; Syon 1992; Cotton and Geiger 1989), though he remained quite capable of making mistakes (Fischer and Stein 1994).⁵⁵ N. T. Wright likewise notes that Josephus retells the same event differently in different books (comparing the ascension in Lk 24:51; Acts 1:3), but that this does not imply that the event "did not happen, only that he is presenting it from a different angle" (1992a: 378). However creative they may have been with many details,⁵⁶ even Plutarch and Livy apparently did not create for their accounts events from whole cloth.

Specifically Jewish biographies without Greco-Roman influence are more difficult to locate. Our best examples rarely represent biographies in the sense of entire books depicting the life of a main character. Traditional Jewish books surrounding central characters (Job, Ruth, Judith, Jonah. Esther, Daniel, and Tobit; see Hengel 1991: 219-20) were not strictly biographies, since they focused more on events than on persons (Stanton 1974: 126; though cf. Dihle 1991: 366-67); clear dependence on earlier sources is also missing. Nevertheless such works may provide our closest Jewish models widely circulated in Jesus' day, when they were usually treated as historical. Although the parallels in these sources may be inadequate, biographical information in rabbinic sources is still much more incidental (e.g., Neusner 1970: 8).

Jewish sources also reveal another range of writings that provides some overlap with historical or biographical sources, though the examples at the least historical extreme of the spectrum could be classified as historical novels. Palestinian Jewish storytellers gradually expanded biblical stories (especially from the Pentateuch) (e.g., Jubilees; Ps-Philo) and sometimes produced wholly new, novelistic accounts about the characters (1 Enoch; Life of Adam and Eve/Assumption of Moses; History of Joseph; Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs; Testament of Abraham). Although works in the former category like Pseudo-Philo's Biblical Antiquities add many details (e.g., Murphy 1988), they may follow the biblical narrative closely (often virtually quoting it); works in the latter category, however, sometimes share with the Bible no more than the names of characters. Although these reworkings are not strictly midrash nor targum (Harrington 1986: 242), the writers employed some midrashic or haggadic principles in their composition (e.g., Johnson 1985: 252). Such works could involve rewritings of biblical narratives in ways relevant to their own audiences (Mendels 1988; Vander Kam 1992).

As in other Greco-Roman literature, ancient Jewish literature generally permitted variation in detail. Although amplification in matters of halakah was sometimes discouraged (e.g., ARN 1A), the practice was especially frequent in narratives, either to answer questions posed by a narrative⁵⁷ or to heighten the praise of God or the protagonist,⁵⁸ sometimes by fanciful midrash.⁵⁹ Similarly, negative incidents could be toned down,⁶⁰ omitted,⁶¹ or justified⁶² in the character's favor. This could range from the sort of "twist" on a narrative acceptable in modern journalism to fabricating details to explain what was not said. The way to distinguish Jewish works on this continuum between historical works and novels surrounding historical characters is to evaluate their degree of fidelity to prior sources (especially the Old Testament, which the Jewish works regarded as historically accurate — e.g., Philo Creation 1-2). In this respect, Matthew and Luke, whose fidelity we can test against some of their sources, rank high among ancient works.

All four Gospels, written in Greek and probably addressing audiences outside Palestine, are closer to the Greek model (Aune 1987: 22); but of course Jewish documents in Greek typically adopted hellenistic narrative techniques (Cohen 1987: 43; cf. van der Horst 1978). Most Jewish works in Greek (especially those from outside Palestine) followed Greek models to varying degrees. The Lives of the Prophets resembles the briefer Greek lives of the poets (Aune 1987: 41-42). Philo follows hellenistic biographic conventions (cf. Canevet 1986), though like some traditional Greek biographers he writes lives of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses mainly to interpret them for lessons about virtue and adjusts details where necessary to accommodate his ideals (cf. Petit 1976; Stanton 1974: 127). Josephus follows hellenistic literary (both biographic and novelistic) conventions in describing the Aqedah, Joseph, Moses, Saul, and others.⁶³ Shaye Cohen in fact lists 2 Maccabees and Josephus among Jewish historical works owing "more to Herodotus, Thucydides, and hellenistic historiography than to Kings and Chronicles" (1987: 194).

Nevertheless, the language and thought of the Greek version of the Old Testament pervades the Gospels, and Matthew and John stand closer to Palestinian Jewish biographical forms than Mark and Luke do.⁶⁴ Thus, while adapting the genre of the hellenistic bios, or "life," the Gospel writers developed a style steeped in Old Testament historiography (Luz 1989: 44-45).

For this reason, some writers have suggested that Matthew "midrashically" expanded elements in his tradition's story of Jesus. There is probably some measure of truth in this proposal, but it must not be pressed too far. That Matthew interprets Jesus in light of the Old Testament is clear, but Matthew also interprets the Old Testament record in light of Jesus; indeed, had Matthew been creating infancy narratives about Jesus to match Old Testament messianic texts, he usually could have chosen better texts to start with and created stories that matched them better (cf. Soares Prabhu 1976: 159-60). Matthew customizes his account to show fulfillment of prophecy, but this is not the same as creating events from whole cloth. Like most Greek-speaking Jewish biographers, Matthew is more interested in interpreting tradition than in creating it⁶⁵ Many scholars thus point out, against other scholars, that it is too simplistic to define Matthew's narratives as midrash and to define midrash as historically inaccurate embellishment (see Payne 1983; Cunningham and Bock 1987; Blomberg 1987: 43-53).⁶⁶

Whether one reads Greek-speaking Jewish historical writers or Roman historians, one must evaluate the degree of fidelity to a writer's sources by comparing the sources. A Gospel writer like Luke was among the most accurate of ancient historians, if we may judge from his use of Mark (see Marshall 1978; idem 1991) and his historiography in Acts (cf., e.g., Sherwin-White 1978; Gill and Gempf 1994). Luke clearly had both written (Lk 1:1) and oral (1:2) sources available, and his literary patron Theophilus already knew much of this Christian tradition (1:4), which would exclude Luke's widespread invention of new material.⁶⁷ Luke undoubtedly researched this material (1:3)⁶⁸ during his (on my view) probable sojourn with Paul in Palestine (Acts 21:17; 27:1; on the "we-narratives," cf., e.g., Maddox 1982: 7).⁶⁹ Although Luke writes more in the Greco-Roman historiographic tradition than Matthew does, Matthew's normally relatively conservative use of Mark likewise suggests a high degree of historical trustworthiness behind his accounts.

Matthew did not write his Gospel without forethought; he was a historian-biographer and interpreter and not just a storyteller. Just as speech writers carefully premeditated their works (Quint. Inst. Or. 10.6.1-2), writers of narratives began with a rough draft, then revised and polished it (Aune 1987: 82, 128; cf. Hata 1975; Krieger 1992a).⁷⁰ Like other writers, Matthew would follow one main source (in this case Mark) and weave his other sources around it.⁷¹ Matthew also had to plan the length of his Gospel; the Gospels conform to the standardized lengths of the scrolls on which they are written, all of which fall into the appropriate range for ancient biography (Burridge 1992: 118, 199, 225-26).⁷²

If Matthew's basic genre suggests historical intention, his relatively conservative use of sources (where we can check them, especially Mark) indicates that Matthew's other purposes did not obscure an essential historical intention. My survey of data below suggests that the sources on which Matthew depends also preserved a substantially reliable picture of Jesus, the tradition being "carefully transmitted and relatively stable" as well as quite close in time to the events described (Hagner 1993: xliii).

How Reliable Are Jesus' Teachings in Matthew?

My own judgment, after working through the Synoptic pericopes and comparing how Matthew and Luke adapt Mark, supports this assignment of the burden of proof to those skeptical of Matthew's historical accomplishment. Nevertheless, in many cases inadequate historical evidence remains to make a clear historical judgment in either direction. Needless to say, therefore, scholars who start with the working assumption that material is likely inauthentic till proven otherwise are apt to arrive at conclusions quite different from those who start with the opposite assumption. For that reason it is important to form the most reasonable assumptions possible before approaching the material. While genre provides a very general framework for forming accurate critical assumptions, it is only an introductory step.

Although our survey of matters of genre suggests that Matthew has followed his sources about Jesus in a substantially accurate manner, "substantial accuracy" only minimally circumscribes freedom in matters of detail. Further, even if the Gospel writers simply transcribed their sources verbatim (and they did not), this transcription would not guarantee the accuracy of their sources. Critical scholars have sometimes followed traditions about what is or is not historically accurate (note Meier 1994: 2), but scholars increasingly recognize that on historical grounds issues must be decided case by case (hence the historical comments in this commentary). The most one can say from the above study is that in any given instance the burden of proof weighs on those who deny, rather than on those who affirm, historical authenticity.⁷³ The burden of proof shapes one's general approach to the material, but it does not invite one to neglect more specific historical data where available.

The Importance of Such a Question for Matthew

As noted above, ancient biographers often arranged their material topically; a good disciple could also arrange his teacher's sayings for relevance to the issues that he felt compelled to address.⁷⁴ With his five major blocks of Jesus' sayings (Mt 5-7; 10; 13; 18; 23-25), Matthew clearly wants to emphasize Jesus' teachings (28:19). Many scholars even suggest that Matthew intended Christian scribes to use the collections of Jesus' teachings in his Gospel as a teaching manual, the way later rabbis and probably earlier scribes provided running commentary on Scripture (28:19; cf. Bultmann 1968: 356; F. F. Bruce 1972a: 62-63; Sandmel 1958: 180). The manual may offensively support the church's missionary task, but it may also function defensively as an apologetic tool to equip new disciples for challenges from hostile synagogue leaders (cf. Blomberg 1992a: 34-35).

Matthew's emphasis highlights one of Jesus' historical activities. Whatever Jesus' other roles, he was undoubtedly a sage as well; I will discuss this issue in more detail under Jesus' identity, below. Matthew is not the only Gospel to portray people asking Jesus legal questions, faith questions, or difficult riddles (e.g., Mk 10:2, 17; 12:18-23, 28; Lk 12:13). Matthew deepens this emphasis, however, so that the wording of Jesus' teachings in his Gospel comes closer to Jewish rabbis' formulations than does the way Mark and Luke put Jesus' teachings.⁷⁵

The Rhetoric of Jesus

Returning to the historical question, how accurately does Matthew preserve Jesus' teachings? How accurately would Jesus' followers still remember his teachings? As a Jewish teacher, Jesus used parables, graphic illustrations, hyperbole, and other standard rhetorical techniques to communicate points to his readers (see Stein 1978; Tannehill 1975; Funk 1993: 28, 31). Further, although reconstructing the Aramaic behind the Gospel traditions is more complex than often allowed, some have argued that the Aramaic original of as much as 80 percent of the Synoptic sayings material appears to fit a poetic or rhythmic form helpful for memorization (Witherington 1990: 16-17; Riesner 1982b: 507).

These standard Jewish rhetorical forms helped Jesus communicate his point, but they also made it easier for disciples to remember their teachers' sayings, and (as we argue further below) it is quite likely that Jesus' disciples accurately remembered and transmitted his teachings.

Later Revision by the Church?

Clearly the early Christians resisted the temptation to read major issues of their day (such as the debate about Gentile circumcision) into Gospel materials (Stein 1980: 225-28; Wright 1992a: 421; Stanton 1995a: 60-61)⁷⁶ Some of Paul's occasional letters also inadvertently attest the accuracy of elements of the Jesus tradition (1 Cor 7:10-12; 11:23; 15:3; 1 Thess 4:15), whereas the Jesus tradition in the Gospels exhibits little Pauline influence (Gundry 1975: 191; cf. Pfitzner 1979; Thompson 1991; Richardson and Gooch 1984: 52). That Paul does not quote the Jesus tradition frequently should not surprise us any more than the lack of quotations from the Fourth Gospel in the Johannine Epistles; the specific genre of apostolic letters differs considerably from gospels and "calls specifically for only occasional or incidental reference to the Jesus-tradition" (Stuhlmacher 1991b: 16-19, especially 18; cf. Gerhardsson 1991.)

Indeed, many sayings in the tradition imply a setting relevant only to Palestine and/or the specific time of Jesus (see Theissen 1991: 25-59). More to the point, written Gospels were appearing within three decades of Jesus' ministry, while eyewitnesses maintained positions of prominence in the church;⁷⁷ Luke attests his reader's awareness of many existing written sources (Lk 1:1-4). Had early traditioners and writers indulged in free invention in various communities, we could have expected Gospels much more diverse than our Synoptics are (Gundry 1975: 191) — more like the later Gnostic materials formed under such conditions (e.g., Hill 1979: 163, 172; cf. P. Oxy. 1 in Jeremias 1964c: 106-11).

Discerning "tradition" on the basis of spontaneous revelation (cf. Acts of Paul 3:1; Thecla 1) also appears to be a later practice. Although all concur that the early Christians prophesied, it is highly unlikely, as suggested by some scholars⁷⁸ that many "sayings of the risen Jesus" were attributed to the historical Jesus.⁷⁹ The few clear examples of prophecies we have in the New Testament are always explicitly identified as such (cf., e.g., Hill 1979: 160-170; Aune 1983: 243-44; Stanton 1995a: 97),⁸⁰ and again, issues of the later church rarely appear in collections of Jesus' teachings (see Witherington 1990: 3-7). Jesus was a prophet who launched a prophetic movement (see below); but he was also a sage who taught his disciples to preserve and expound his teachings. The disciples probably were communicating the substance of Jesus' teaching even during his lifetime, if (as I argue in my comments on Mt 10) even a historical kernel lies behind Jesus' sending the Twelve in his lifetime (Witherington 1990: 181).

Written and Oral Tradition

It is unlikely that the early Christians depended only on the memories of those who knew Jesus. Disciples of Greek teachers normally took notes on what their teachers said (Stowers 1988: 74; Gempf 1993: 299; cf. Diog. Laert. 6.1.5), and sometimes published them afterward (Kennedy 1980: 19). Such notes often reflected the teacher's own style (Epict. Disc. 1, pref.), and the teachers themselves might later attest the accuracy of the notes (Quint. Inst. Or. 1, pref. 7-8; cf. Diod. Sic. 40.8.1); some also gathered other forms of research in copious written notes (Aul. Gel., pref. 2, 22). Jewish students emphasized oral transmission far more than Greek students did, but they could also take some notes to help prod them in memorizing larger bodies of oral tradition (Gerhardsson 1961: 160-62; cf. Safrai 1974/1976a: 966). Eventually many sayings were gathered into collections (e.g., Proverbs; 'Abot; cf. Diog. Laert. 2.18-47; Plut. Sayings of Kings, Mor. 172B-194E).

Even without notes, however, disciples' memories in the first generation should have preserved Jesus' teachings quite accurately.⁸¹ Some more skeptical scholars have depended on studies of oral tradition that focused on modern folklore transmission in limited regions like the Balkans (see Witherington 1990: 17-18), but their conclusions underestimate Palestinian Jewish education (especially its emphasis on learning Scripture — Jos. Apion 1.60; 2.204),⁸² assume a much longer period of transmission than is possible before the Gospels were written, compare accounts whose historical rootage is quite different, and fail to explain the preservation of so many elements in Jesus' teachings uncomfortable to the later church (Witherington 1990: 8, 19-20).⁸³

While some cultures have shown rapid adaptation of oral traditions, methods of transmission in many other cultures have proven substantially accurate and enduring even over centuries (e.g., African traditions confirmed by European travelers' accounts — Lewis 1975: 43; for a humorous European example, see Lampe and Luz 1991: 404). Ancient Mediterranean society as a whole also emphasized memory. Thus, for example, Roman orators regularly memorized their speeches even when these were several hours long (Quint. Inst. Or. 11.2.1-51); memoria, "learning the speech by heart in preparation for delivery," was one of the orator's five primary tasks (Satterthwaite 1993: 344). More relevant here, members of Greek schools passed on sayings of founders from one generation to the next (Culpepper 1975: 193; cf. Diog. Laert. 10.1.12; Diod. Sic. 10.5.1; Aul. Gel. 7.10.1; Socrates Ep. 20); inattentive students could warrant public rebukes (Aul. Gel. 8.3). Although this practice could introduce error over a number of generations, the first generations should have preserved the teacher's message accurately. Greco-Roman education as a whole emphasized memorization (Quint. Inst. Or. 1.3.1; 2.4.15; Isoc. Demon. 18, Or. 1; Seneca Controversies l.pref., 2; Plut. Educ. 13, Mor. 9E; Koester 1982: 1:93; Ferguson 1987: 84), and Jewish education⁸⁴ was no exception (Jos. Life 8; m. 'Abot 6:6; Gerhardsson 1961: 124-25; Riesner 1982a: 51-64).⁸⁵ Given the breadth of evidence, it is highly unlikely that the basic models of transmission later attested in rabbinic sources arose only in a later period (Hagner 1993: xlix).

At least by the second century and probably earlier, rabbis expected disciples to memorize their teachings through repeated practice (e.g., Sifre Deut. 48.1.1-4; 48.2.3; 306.19.3; Goodman 1983: 79). Although over the passage of generations disciples undoubtedly conflated and confused some sayings, rabbis highly valued careful transmission (t. Yebam. 3:1; Mek. Pisha 1.135-36; ARN 24 A). Of course, students regularly paraphrased sayings of teachers; paraphrase was in fact a standard school exercise in Greco-Roman education (Theon Progymn. 1.93-171; cf. Gerhardsson 1961: 136-48), and it was the "gist" rather than the verbatim precision that ancients valued (Small 1995). Scholars from across the theological spectrum thus acknowledge that Jewish and Christian sources alike both preserved and adapted earlier tradition (Davies 1967b: 156; Draper 1984: 269-87).

Some scholars argue that ancient writers may have modified written texts more often than oral traditions; hence Matthew may have adapted Mark more freely than the whole process of oral tradition modified Jesus' sayings (Gundry 1974: 102; Witherington 1990:22; cf. Diog. Laert. 1.48). This is one reason that redaction criticism (examining how the Gospel writers adapted earlier sources) can help us examine historical tradition as well as a specific Gospel writer's emphases.

The burden of proof thus rests with New Testament scholars who betray an unduly skeptical bias toward the Gospel accounts (on the question of the burden of proof, cf. Goetz and Blomberg 1981: 39-63); such scholars must imply that disciples who considered Jesus Lord were far more careless with his words in the earliest generations of Christianity than first- and second-generation students of most other ancient teachers were (see Davies 1966a: 115-16; Benoit 1973/1974: 1:33). Especially given how much of Jesus' teaching was disseminated in public during his lifetime, the sort of "radical amnesia" this skepticism requires of Jesus' first followers (Witherington 1990: 14) is certainly not typical of schools of other early sages.

Some Form-Critical Issues

Form critics earlier in the century established some criteria that remain helpful today, although form criticism's serious weaknesses have rendered most contemporary scholars skeptical about the degree to which it remains valuable (e.g., Hill 1972: 58; Stuhlmacher 1991b: 2-12; more forcefully, Theissen 1991: 5).⁸⁶ One criterion, that of dissimilarity, has fallen on hard times; used to exclude Jesus tradition, the criterion excludes the likelihood of Jesus having a high degree of continuity with his Jewish contemporaries and the likelihood of his disciples' having a high degree of continuity with his teachings. From what we know of ancient schools, the reverse is far more likely; hence the criterion is useful only in its positive role: what later Christians would not have invented is authentic tradition (this resembles what scholars currently call the criterion of embarrassment). Further, the criterion of Palestinian Jewish environment makes far more sense than the criterion of dissimilarity and frequently cancels it out.⁸⁷ In recent years scholars have thus seriously critiqued the negative use of this criterion and urged special caution (see, e.g., Meier 1991a: 173; Brown 1994: 19; Stanton 1995a: 143; Young 1995: 257; cf. Mealand 1978a; Mack 1993: 193).⁸⁸

Aramaic figures of speech also tend to suggest authentic Jesus material (Witherington 1990: 11; cf. Barrett 1967: 6), especially if the first translators into Greek frequently sought word-for-word fidelity, as some suggest (Young 1989: 180). Aramaic was probably the first language of most Galileans outside the urban centers, even in Lower Galilee (see Horsley 1995: 247-49). Greek was nevertheless quite widespread in the land (e.g., Mussies 1983; cf. p. Sota 7:1, §4); even in Jewish Palestine, as many as two-thirds of known funerary inscriptions are in Greek (van der Horst 1992; cf. Leon 1960: 75), though more in some areas and later periods.⁸⁹ Semitic remains prevail primarily in part of heavily traditional Upper Galilee (cf. Meyers 1988: 74), but Aramaic inscriptions are common around villages of Jesus' Lower Galilee as well (Horsley 1995: 249). Despite its use as a holy language (e.g., Jub. 12:25-27), and hence its significance in developed scribal settings (attested in the Mishnah and many Qumran scrolls) and its value for nationalistic fervor (attested in the Bar Kokhba materials — Carmon 1973: 73), Hebrew was probably not a primary spoken language among the common people (pace Safrai 1991ab; Ep. Arist. 11, 30, 38; Sifre Deut. 46.1.2); epigraphic data and coins indicate that, as a common language, Aramaic had long before begun to supplant it (Neh 13:24; Bright 1981: 411).

Because most of Jesus' teachings in the Synoptics appear to have been delivered to Galilean villagers, they probably reflect Aramaic (Meier 1991a: 267-68; Deissmann 1978: 64; Black 1957: 305; Jeremias 1971: 4) rather than Greek originals. Because he also taught in urban Jerusalem, the scholars who suggest that he sometimes taught in Greek (Porter 1993; cf. Argyle 1956; pace Draper 1956) are also likely correct.⁹⁰

It is quite true that the earliest church, like Jesus, often spoke Aramaic; the bilingual milieu of the Syrian and Palestinian churches undoubtedly facilitated the ready translation on a popular level of Jesus' sayings from Aramaic to Greek, sometimes in diverse forms (Dibelius 1949: 25). Some might therefore charge that the earliest Christians could have invented some sayings attributed to Jesus in this period (Meier 1991a: 178-80). But given all we know of Jewish and (for that matter) Greco-Roman traditioning and the growth of legends (see discussion above), this would be the least likely period in which sayings or stories would be invented.⁹¹ (Paul attests two of the leading eyewitnesses — Peter and John — plus Jesus' brother in positions of leadership in the Jerusalem church — Gal 2:9; cf. 1 Cor 15:7.) At the same time, the early Christians wrote our Gospels and probably their direct sources in Greek, and just as Matthew frequently adjusts Mark's Greek, his sources may also have adapted earlier language. So Aramaisms suggest traditions stemming from the earliest (hence most reliable) community; but (pace Burkitt 1910: 20) good Greek is not a mark against the reliability of the traditions (especially if most Palestinian Jews were bilingual, as is probably the case; see Meier 1991a: 255-68; cf. Argyle 1973).⁹²

Conclusions regarding the Sayings Material

Matthew's method may be, if anything, more conservative than that of many of his predecessors in preserving what he believes to be the substance of Jesus' teaching, although he freely rearranges and midrashically adapts that teaching. As E. P. Sanders observes (1993: 193):

The gospel writers did not wildly invent material. They developed it, shaped it and directed it in the ways they wished. But even Matthew did not create a sizeable body of material in favour of the Gentile mission, though he seems to have enhanced what he had.

One need only read afresh Jesus' sayings in many Matthean discourses to see that they represent collections of isolated sayings or groups of sayings that Matthew has arranged as topically as possible, often even without literarily adequate explanatory transitions. Had Matthew wished to create teaching material for Jesus (apart from minor transitions), the importance of his work's literary unity would have provided him plenty of incentive to do so. But the evidence of Matthew's text suggests not merely his freedom to rearrange sayings but also his conservatism in reporting rather than inventing them.

How Accurate Are Matthew's Narratives?

Ancient biographers generally felt that a record of the subject's deeds and words revealed the person's character far better than editorial comments might (Stanton 1995a: 139). Jewish disciples cared about their teacher's lifestyle, which they normally sought to imitate (Jos. Life 11; among later rabbis, cf., e.g., b. Ber. 62a; Kirschner 1986), and which later might even function as legal precedent (t. Piska 2:15-16; Sifre Deut 221.1.1; p. B. Mes. 2:11, §1; Nid. 1:4, §2; Sanh. 7:2, §4; Yebam. 4:11, §8). Jewish children learned by practice and imitation as well as by memorization (Jos. Apion 2.171, 173-74, 204).⁹³ In Greek as well as Jewish culture, students were eager to preserve the deeds and character of their masters as well as their teachings (cf. Liefeld 1967: 223; Robbins 1992: 64). Although the early Christians undoubtedly retold the stories in a variety of ways, the most common form of Synoptic pericopes suggests that the early Christians adopted the sort of short narratives typically used to recount the deeds and deed-related sayings of famous teachers.

Form-Critical Considerations

Although we have our present Gospels as finished literary works intended to be read as such, they still reflect some of the process of oral tradition that stands behind their sources. For instance, many of our stories in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are brief accounts of events in Jesus' ministry, often with a minimum of chronological links to their context. On average these Synoptic accounts resemble chreiai, brief examples (often of heroes of history) recounted, memorized, and paraphrased in regular school exercises in the ancient Mediterranean world⁹⁴ (The length and form of chreiai admittedly varied — cf.Robbins 1988: 3; Mack and Robbins 1989: 196-97. Jewish forms of transmitting tradition often closely resembled broader Greco-Roman patterns.) It was natural for Jesus' disciples and their first hearers to remember stories about Jesus in the same way they were accustomed to remember stories about other important figures. The combination of such narratives with anecdotes, teaching material (sayings and speeches), and an extended account of the protagonist's end characterizes ancient biography in general (Burridge 1992: 203).

In the first half of the twentieth century form critics pointed out some particular patterns in the Synoptic Gospels' accounts about Jesus. Some form critics called one recurrent pattern "controversy narratives," paragraphs in which Jesus debates with his opponents and proves his case. Although we may guess that the social repercussions of these debates continued long after the recorded narratives end, such narratives typically close with a rejoinder or quip from Jesus (what contemporary North Americans would call a "slam") that silences and shames his opponents. Some form critics called narratives concluding with Jesus' witty retorts "pronouncement stories." Such stories about teachers were common in antiquity,⁹⁵ suggesting that Jesus shamed his opponents in a way understood by his disciples from their culture.⁹⁶ The use of such accounts also suggests why the disciples would have transmitted the stories as they did. Occasions on which restraint is shown in describing miracles (e.g., Mk 9:26) suggest controls on these traditions similar to those on the sayings traditions (e.g., Gundry 1975: 190).

Because Jesus authored the sayings material but not the narratives about him, his disciples presumably transmitted the sayings more carefully and the narratives more in their own words (e.g., Witherington 1990: 28-29; Pesch 1991: 107; Theissen 1991: 60); hence Aramaisms predominate in the former. Other ancient writers also seem to have adapted narratives with some degree of freedom. Like historians today, ancient historians could abridge accounts; one Jewish document claims to be a careful abridgment of another five-volume work, observing that the writer followed the "rules" of abridgment (2 Macc 2:24-25, 28). But in antiquity one could "expand" accounts as well; Theon advised students to "expand" or "condense" fables by elaborating speeches or descriptive details (Progymn. 4.37-42, 80-82). One could of course edit historical stories interfering with historical details less than one might render fables. While he may add details known from other sources and add some description that is either implicit in the narrative or inherently probable in itself, Theon's example for expanding a chreia does not change its basic meaning much (Progymn. 3.224-40; cf. 2.115-23; Longinus On the Sublime 11.1). Similarly, while Matthew often abridges Markan accounts, possibly for the sake of space, and sometimes adds what fits his theological interests (Stanton 1991: 259-71), expansion was more characteristic of the apocryphal Gospels (although some later accounts also abridge the early Gospels; cf. Carmignac 1980: 411-15; Blomberg 1984: 195).

Did the Earliest Christians Reject Narrative?

Some contemporary scholars, however, are highly suspicious of early Christian narrative. They have questioned whether the Gospel narratives and sayings are compatible, as well as whether the eschatological and wisdom sayings are compatible (e.g., Crossan 1991a: 265-306).⁹⁷ In both matters, they employ forced-choice logic. On the latter, for instance, the Similitudes of Enoch freely mixes wisdom and apocalyptic thought; no necessary boundary in antiquity rendered these categories mutually exclusive (Witherington 1990: 243; on 4Q300, see Schiffman 1993).⁹⁸ Although most modern scholars recognize the apocalyptic eschatological element in Jesus' teaching, a few scholars, eager to eliminate that element, have tried to read second-century Gnosticism back into Palestinian Judaism and make Jesus the precursor of Gnostic teachers.

The same move supports the suspicion of narrative. Noting that the second-century Gnostic Gospels are mainly sayings traditions, such scholars have also suggested that some Gospels, such as the Gnostic Gospels, represent the original Gospels, and that the first Gospels (which were "antinarrative") included only sayings. This idea, however, goes against all the extant evidence.⁹⁹ While sayings collections, like narratives, could be either early or late, both the Gnostic texts and the more "orthodox" apocryphal Gospels are clearly later, expansive, and considerably farther removed from the Palestinian Jesus tradition than the canonical Gospels are, as the mainstream of New Testament scholarship currently recognizes (see Meier 1991a: 114-39; Sanders 1993: 64; Stanton 1995a: 77-95).¹⁰⁰ It is, moreover, clear that, excepting some Jewish-Christian Gospels (Nazarenes, Ebionites, and Hebrews), sayings "gospels" and infancy "gospels" do not even represent the basic biographical genre of the canonical Gospels, rendering comparisons strained (Burridge 1992: 249-50).

Further, though his disciples probably remembered some of Jesus' teachings in collections of short, pithy sayings like Proverbs and Pirqe 'Abot (Vermes 1973: 27),¹⁰¹ the earliest Christian "sayings collections" were not opposed to the inclusion of narrative; they regularly included some. The very early Gospel source Q was probably not, as many have argued, purely a collection of Jesus' sayings and nothing else; although it emphasizes sayings, the material Matthew and Luke share in sequence includes some narrative (e.g., Mt 3:1-12; 4:1-11; 8:5-13; ll:l-19//Lk 3:3-18; 4:1-13; 7:1-10; 7:18-35). (Eliminating narrative in Q to preserve the hypothesis that Q lacked narrative is not an argument; it is assuming what one hopes to prove.)

Rather than regarding sayings and narrative as mutually opposed, biographers like Diogenes Laertius typically included both kinds of sources in their biographies. Ancient writers regularly reported sayings and narrative separately or combined them at will: although teachers of rhetoric formally distinguished sayings chreiai and action chreiai, they also formally recognized mixed chreiai, which included both (Theon Progymn. 3.22-23); sayings chreiai could also include both statement and response (Progymn. 3.27-28). Biographers regularly reported sayings from separate sources after narrating a "life," without implying that the two genres were contradictory (e.g., Plut. Timoleon 15.1); Ahiqar's wisdom sayings and narrative were probably already combined more than half a millennium before the Gospels were written.

Outside of sayings collections, sayings were often transmitted apart from one another (e.g., Aune 1987: 34). Ancient readers considered inserting sayings from sayings collections into narratives, or from narratives into sayings, a matter of arrangement, not of fabrication (Theon Progymn. 4.73-79; cf. 5.388-441). The alternative to such combined narratives was simply to relate narratives in episodic fashion, as Mark sometimes does; although this practice did not conform to established literary tastes, most readers found it acceptable alongside the more approved method (Drury 1976: 30).

Structure, Authorship, Provenance, and Date

Whereas we have focused on general observations based on literary type and traditions, questions about structure are more difficult, and specific questions concerning authorship, provenance, and date may never be resolved with certainty unless excavations bring unexpected new evidence to light.

Structure

Matthew's arrangement coheres with basic principles of ancient rhetoric and biography (cf. Kennedy 1984: 101-2).¹⁰² As noted above, many biographers arranged their material topically;¹⁰³ Matthew arranges even many sayings thematically (see Davies and Allison 1988: 87-88). In part because various outlines of Matthew abound¹⁰⁴ and in part because his favorite points recur, some are reticent to outline this Gospel (Gundry 1982: 10; cf. Davies and Allison 1988: 61; Guthrie 1990: 43).¹⁰⁵ Yet we should not despair of structural clues altogether; later rabbis whose thought-world may be similar to Matthew's repeatedly emphasized their points, though their edited literature betrays substantial structural forethought (cf. Daube 1973: 64-65).

This Gospel may divide chronologically into three sections (Kingsbury 1975: 7-25);¹⁰⁶ the teaching material divides topically into five. Whereas Luke provides (or preserves) settings for more of his teaching material from Q, as was common in biographies, Matthew gathers it primarily in topical sections (Burridge 1992: 196-97). Most scholars identify five discourses by the closing formula "when he had finished speaking" in 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1.¹⁰⁷ Although some scholars object that chapter 23 is a discourse distinct from that in chapters 24-25 (Kingsbury 1975: 4-5; Senior 1983: 21),¹⁰⁸ their theme of judgment on the religious establishment binds them together (see my comments loc. cit.). Others object by citing 11:7-30 as another section of Matthew with extended discourse (Senior 1983: 21), but this passage is much shorter than the others, especially when one accounts for Jesus' sayings directly connected with the preceding narrative about the Baptist. Some narrative critics have claimed that Matthew is only a plot and reject the older division by discourse sections. Yet if Matthew is only a story, "it is a rather dull one for several long stretches, where the disciples basically sit around while Jesus talks." Hence we should take note of the discourse sections in addition to the broader narrative structure that provides their final context (Smith 1997: 541). One need not choose between these two most common alternatives; the threefold chronological narrative structure and the fivefold discourse structure are not incompatible (Senior 1983: 26-27; Blomberg 1992a: 24-25). Ultimately, a more detailed confluence of structural elements is probably unnecessary, especially if Matthew intended his Gospel for oral performance in shorter sections (Justin 1 Apol. 67; Stanton 1993: 75).

Some scholars have compared Matthew's five discourse sections to the five books of the Pentateuch (e.g., F. F. Bruce 1980a: 41; F. F. Bruce 1972a: 62-63; Ellis 1974: 10; Sandmel 1978a: 51), a view that originated with Papias in the early second century and was revived by B. W. Bacon early in the twentieth (Davies 1966b: 6). Most contemporary scholars who recognize five discourse sections nevertheless remain skeptical about an implied parallel with the Pentateuch (e.g., Davies and Allison 1988: 61; Hagner 1993: li). Some ancient works did have five divisions (Psalms; Proverbs; Ecclesiastes; Megilloth; the prototype of 2 Maccabees; 1 Enoch;¹⁰⁹ 2 Enoch; Pirqe 'Abot; cf. Strack 1969: 53; Charles-worth 1981: 104); but it is not clear how many of their editors consciously modeled this number after the number of books in the Pentateuch (cf. Davies 1966b: 6; Dimant 1983).¹¹⁰ Because only Matthew's discourse sections (not the Gospel as a whole) divide into five parts and because no correspondence with specific Pentateuchal books is obvious, one must either dismiss the theory (so Kingsbury 1975: 5) or, more likely, accept it as correct but not particularly useful in the interpretation of Matthew's structure. Even if Matthew views himself as passing down Jesus' words as a sort of "oral law" (which is possible, but scholars currently debate how early that phrase appears in early Judaism), he may have arranged the sayings into five sections simply to emphasize that point, without assuming any correspondence between his discourses and particular books of the Pentateuch. While some reject the traditional Jewish image of the new Moses in Matthew (Filson 1960: 29; Albright and Mann 1971: 49 et passim), some examples of this possibly related motif do appear (e.g., 2:16; 4:2; cf. 5:1; see especially Allison 1993b).

Authorship

Like modern critics, ancient writers often questioned traditional attributions of various works (e.g., Jos. Apion 1.221; Arrian Alex. 5.6.5). The minority of scholars favoring Matthean authorship have marshaled important arguments and provided answers to those more skeptical that Matthew wrote this Gospel (Gundry 1982: 609-22; cf. Guthrie 1990: 43-53). Yet while Matthew is the best individual named candidate offered, the lack of evidence for any other particular suggestion does not necessarily make the limited evidence for Matthean authorship compelling. In favor of Matthean authorship, the titles of the Gospels were unanimously accepted over a large geographical region in the second century (see Hengel 1985: 81-82). Papias in the very early second century preferred oral tradition, but reported attributions for the Gospels he believed accurate (Hengel 1991: 232-38). Because travelers networked early Christian assemblies throughout the Empire and word traveled quickly among them (cf., e.g., Aune 1983: 215-16),¹¹¹ early traditions concerning the authors of popular Christian works' are probably generally correct.

External evidence (church tradition) stemming from Papias in the early second century and confirmed by the unanimous title (added after early Christians identified the extant Gospels as one genre, though possibly before they were collected)¹¹² supports Matthean authorship.¹¹³ But these arguments depend on early church tradition, not on the earliest text of the Gospel itself; and in this instance, the argument from tradition may be suspect. If Papias is wrong that Matthew wrote in Hebrew or Aramaic (the most natural way to take his words; cf. Hagner 1993: xli-xlv)¹¹⁴ and wrong that Matthew wrote before Mark did,¹¹⁵ he may also be mistaken that Matthew wrote the extant Gospel of Matthew (though he could be mistaken about one while correct about the other). Even if Matthew wrote at one stage of the tradition (say, an early version of Q—the version behind Matthew and Luke was probably already in Greek—Tuckett 1996:84; for the Aramaic original, see Polag 1991:99), we have no guarantee that the finished product is largely from Matthew's hand. Matthew's use of Mark also may speak against the author's having been a firsthand witness of the events he describes (Luz 1989: 94), as much as the church would have liked him to have been (where we can check him, the writer of the Fourth Gospel, who claims eyewitness information, is not as dependent on sources like Mark as Matthew appears to be).¹¹⁶ This point may make Matthew's claim to authorship on any level the weakest among the four canonical Gospels, a claim which I at one time therefore dismissed without further consideration.

Still, Papias's tradition probably dates to within half a century of Matthew's publication, and no one in the years surrounding Papias's testimony challenged Matthean authorship; nor was Matthew the most obvious name to attach to the Gospel (apostles like Peter, Andrew, and perhaps even Thomas might commend themselves with greater authority; cf. Carson 1984b: 17-19; Blomberg 1992a: 44; Hagner 1993: lxxvi).¹¹⁷ Many thus accept a Matthean tradition edited among a community of Matthew's disciples or by one of his disciples (e.g., Hagner 1993: lxxvii; cf. Hill 1972: 55).¹¹⁸

In contrast to my earlier opinion (1993: 43), and as a result of reevaluating the earliest patristic materials that depend most heavily on apostolic Christianity, I am currently inclined to give more weight to the voice of early Christian tradition than I did previously. The break between the first and second century, or between "apostolic" and "subapostolic," was not complete; oral tradition, in some circles still frequently reliable, remained important in the late first (Jn 21:25) and into the second century (Hengel 1991: 213). Confusion might reign on a number of issues in the tradition, but authorship would be the last point forgotten. Further, that this Gospel originally circulated without oral knowledge of its author is unlikely; as an anonymous work it would not have quickly commanded wide acceptance, and authors of biographies of this length normally were named (though persecution could have demanded a special case of anonymity here).¹¹⁹ The early second-century church cited the "Gospels" alongside traditional Jewish Scripture, and Matthew was the most popular of the Gospels in circulation by this period (Stanton 1995a: 98).

I am therefore presently inclined to accept the possibility of Matthean authorship on some level, although with admitted uncertainty. Perhaps the most probable scenario that incorporates the best of all the currently available evidence is the presence of at least a significant deposit of Matthean tradition in this Gospel, edited by the sort of Matthean school scholars have often suggested (though I believe the final product is the work of a single author, not a "committee").

Yet the discussion of this Gospel's authorship ultimately involves neither the authority nor accuracy of the Gospel, because it does not name its author (the titles were added to all four Gospels later). Thus even most of the more conservative scholarly commentators, while varying in their views of Matthean authorship or influence, acknowledge that the matter is uncertain (Carson 1984b: 19; France 1985: 34; Blomberg 1992a: 43-44; McKnight 1992: 528). Likewise, some scholars who reject Matthean authorship are troubled by the antiquity of the Gospel titles and the tradition of authorship; Luz complains that too many scholars simply ignore these difficulties (1989: 94-95).

Yet what we do conclude about the author does affect our understanding of the Gospel. Matthew is clearly Jewish, in dialogue with contemporary Jewish thought, and skilled in traditional Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament (Iren. Fr. 29).¹²⁰ Matthew also knows the context of his citations much better than many modern readers have supposed (Gundry 1975; Ellis 1974: 22), and he demonstrates familiarity with a variety of text-types (see above).¹²¹

Location of Origin

Scholars have proposed a variety of places of writing for the first Gospel. Brandon's suggestion of Alexandria (1967: 290-91) runs counter to our evidence for the character of Jewish thought in first-century Alexandria. Osborne argues for the relatively obscure Edessa based on various Eastern parallels (Osborne 1973), but Palestinian Jewish parallels seem far stronger. Most scholars, however, accept a Syrian provenance for Matthew, most commonly (but not exclusively) Antioch,¹²² in part due to Matthew's influence on Ignatius and the Didache in that region. Matthew emphasizes locations in Syria (4:24-25), background that may fit only Syria (17:24-27), and advocates a Gentile mission that the Syrian Jewish church had first embraced (Gundry 1982: 609; Theissen 1991: 250, 258). Apostolic tradition would naturally center in and a published Gospel naturally spread most rapidly from an urban center like Antioch; possibly the church in Antioch would also have preserved data about Peter such as we find in Matthew that is not included in Mark (Hengel 1980: 98).¹²³ In contrast to Alexandria, Antioch recognized the citizenship of its Jewish population (Jos. Apion 2.39); the largest concentration of Jewish people outside Palestine was also in Syria, especially in Antioch (Jos. War 7.43; cf. Levinskaya 1996: 128-32).

Other scholars prefer a provenance in rural rather than urban Syria, perhaps nearer Galilee or the Decapolis; after all, Antioch had embraced the Gentile mission from the start (Theissen 1991: 251, also comparing the water shortage of Did. 7:2-3). Some have suggested that Matthew wrote this Gospel in Palestine (Viviano 1979; Hengel 1974a: 1:105); Overman 1996: 16-19 is among recent authors making a sound case for Galilee (which the Gospel certainly does emphasize); he favors especially Sepphoris or Tiberias or their outskirts (18).

In view of all the evidence (which is admittedly more meager than we would like, as Luz 1989: 90-91 notes), I would prefer an urban center in Syro-Palestine that spoke Greek, included a sizeable Jewish community residentially segregated from Gentiles, probably remained bitter against the Romans for the recent massacres of 66-70, and remained in touch with rising currents in Judea. Although any proposal ultimately remains a guess, a community in Antioch appears more likely than the alternatives if, despite its heritage in the Gentile mission, it has recently shifted toward embracing more conservative Jewish-Christian traditions in the wake of the bitter Jewish-Roman war of 66-73.¹²⁴ But no evidence limits the provenance specifically to Antioch, and wherever Matthew's specific provenance, he was probably within range of the emerging sphere of rabbinic or rabbinic-like scribal influence, hence probably somewhere in Syro-Palestine.

Date

Although some scholars have made a good case that Matthew could precede a.d. 70,¹²⁵ the contents of the book may suggest a date after 70, perhaps as late as the 80s¹²⁶ (though a date after the end of the first century is untenable).¹²⁷ As noted above, this does not imply that Matthew is inaccurate; he depends on earlier traditions. But like preachers today, Matthew emphasized those features of his tradition that best addressed the pastoral situation of his readers. Especially the following evidence seems to favor a date after a.d. 70:

Other supporting evidence, such as the fire of Matthew 22:7, offers some support but is not as critical to the discussion. Those who argue for an earlier date dispute each of the above points. They also provide counterarguments, such as early Christian tradition, or suppose that practices related to the temple are less relevant after a.d. 70 (e.g., 5:23-24; 23:16-17), although one might reply that Matthew preserves many other authentic Jesus traditions whose details remained local or outdated when the principles remained valid. That Matthew's own redaction seems to announce Jesus' return "immediately" after the temple's destruction (24:29) may also strongly support a pre-70 date (Hagner 1995: 712), unless (as I think) Matthew merely echoes a recent expectation that caused confusion in the first years after 70, a confusion he has sought to counter in 24:2-3. Within the present space constraints I can offer only a tentative case consistent with my reading of the Gospel as a whole.

The weight of some of the strongest arguments, including the situation the Gospel addresses, initially suggested to me a date as late as the mid-80s, making it (in my opinion) later than both Mark and Luke, but with a polemic less developed (and with opponents less powerful and less targeted) than in the Fourth Gospel in the 90s. Yet because I believe some post-70 bitterness toward Gentiles informs the need for stressing the Gentile mission (especially for those who would place this Gospel or its author in Antioch, a home of that mission),¹³⁰ and because I believe other recollections of the trauma of 70 remain quite relevant to the church (including perhaps false teachers claiming a false parousia during the war),¹³¹ I am inclined to lower the date by perhaps half a decade and guess that Matthew was written in the late 70s.¹³² (In addition, one should not place the Gospel too late in the first century, for example, around 90, since by the early second century Matthew already appears as the favorite Gospel.)¹³³

Again, I have chosen to favor internal evidence (in a case where the available external evidence is inadequate to be decisive) over second-century tradition (that the apostle Matthew wrote before Mark), a move some more conservative scholars would dispute. But I readily concede that arguments for a pre-70 date merit more consideration than they have often received. And as R. T. France, a British scholar who tentatively advances a pre-70 date, rightly warns, our proposed dates "depend on the relative dating of various writings and events . . . there are few fixed points." Thus, "any 'publication date' can be advanced only very tentatively" (1985: 30), whether that date is "early" or "late." Despite our best attempts to pinpoint a precise date, Luke Timothy Johnson is correct when he observes, "The dating of the four canonical Gospels is entirely a matter of scholarly deduction based on arguments concerning literary dependence" (1996: 90). Uncertainty about the date also affects the degree of precision to which our attempts to reconstruct the historical situation addressed can be successful.

The Situation Matthew Addresses

A recent collection of essays argues that the canonical Gospels were written for the whole of ancient Mediterranean Christianity rather than for specific communities (see Bauckham 1998b). As biographers, the Gospel writers most likely sought wider circulation than letter-writers normally did (Burridge 1998: 113-45). Gospels are more "open texts," requiring less locally specific information for correct understanding by implied readers, than are epistles (Bauckham 1998a: 48). Their written publication extended their audience beyond the previous oral setting (Alexander 1998: 90). This view is a helpful and necessary corrective to previous reconstructions of hypothetical communities, many of which piled guess upon guess about specific matters for which no data remain. Certainly Luke writes for an audience that is specific yet also knows many circulated gospels (Lk 1:1).

Nevertheless, at least some Gospel writers seem to have addressed primarily a particular range of ideal audience within the ancient Mediterranean world; even the necessity of understanding Greek would restrict the Gospels' immediate accessibility in some parts of the Roman empire. Matthew includes recurrent emphases (e.g., the Gentile mission) and appears to presuppose a largely Jewish ideal audience who will understand many of his allusions. But looking for Gospel audiences and their locations is not the same as reconstructing detailed "communities" (Barton 1998: 194); seeking to ascertain Matthew's ideal audience is more like "our modern concept of 'target audience' or 'market niche'" than traditional redactional assumptions (Burridge 1998: 143). When we use the traditional language of "community," we mean not a single house-church nor even a movement within a particular city; even if we suspected a narrower audience, we could in any case infer only the broadest judgments about the author's ideal audience based on the gospel itself. But whoever else was invited to listen in, Matthew probably addressed most fully and deliberately those parts of the church he knew best.

Although Matthew's dependence on earlier tradition prevents him from adapting everything in his Gospel to his readers' situation, enough of his emphases remain and fit what we know of the issues of his day.¹³⁴ Matthew's plot, like that of the other Gospels, focuses on conflict (Kingsbury 1992). While conflict could simply imply a good story, if anything can be clear from the issues Matthew addresses in his Gospel, then Matthew is engaged in some sort of polemic against the Jewish authorities, as scholars commonly contend.¹³⁵ Jesus' popularity with the masses in Matthew, uncommitted as they may prove to be either for or against him, weighs against the possibility that the main source of opposition his Jewish Christian communities faced was on the popular level; more than likely it stemmed instead primarily from the minority that wielded more intellectual influence in the community.

As noted above, Matthew's special target appears to be the successors of the scribes and Pharisees, the founders of the rabbinic movement at Jamnia and whatever Jewish leaders throughout Syro-Palestine may have been aligned with or influenced by them.¹³⁶ Like his teacher Jesus, Matthew agrees with some of these Pharisees' teaching (23:2-3), but he resents their behavior and opposition to the truth of Jesus and his followers (23:29-37; note Bornkamm 1963a: 31; Barth 1963: 89, but contrast Barth 1963: 103). Probably the Jerusalem Christians and the Pharisees were getting along reasonably well in the 60s (Acts 15:5; cf. Acts 23:6) when, led by James, the Jerusalem church was known for its piety in the law (Acts 21:20). Given Josephus's regular association of the Pharisees with observance of the law, those who most firmly protested James's unjust execution as a transgressor of the law (Jos. Ant. 20.200-201) may also have been Pharisees (traditionally known for leniency in any case —Ant. 13.294). But when most of the Jerusalem Christians abandoned Jerusalem (cf. 24:15-16), willing to flee if necessary even on the Sabbath (24:20), they may have incurred more suspicion. And if, as is likely, aristocratic elements dominated the new coalition of leadership at Jamnia, class issues may have joined competition and the new leadership's attempts to consolidate influence to foster a difficult breach between the Jamnian alliance (probably dominated in some measure by well-to-do Pharisees) and Jewish Christians.

The current consensus is that the first generations of rabbis exercised little direct power in Palestine (e.g., Horsley 1995: 98, 103-5). Yet evidence within Matthew itself suggests a specifically Pharisaic component of some sort in the community's opposition, likely competing with the early Christians for influence over popular thought.¹³⁷ The conflict Matthew addresses need not involve the oft-cited Birkath ha-Minim, the curse against schismatics (e.g., Ellis 1974: 5; Burridge 1994 : 91),¹³⁸ usually dated ca. 85, although that probably provides one extant illustration of the tensions characterizing the period.¹³⁹ Even if the curse had been quickly disseminated among many synagogues outside Judea (which is unlikely),¹⁴⁰ the polemic of the First Gospel can be accounted for easily enough in broader tensions already building in the years after 70.¹⁴¹ (Indeed, the conflicts had begun well before 70 and continued long after it could be remembered as only one conflict among many.)¹⁴² Previous generations of scholars overestimated rabbinic power and underestimated Judaism's diversity in late first-century Palestine. I suspect that contemporary scholarship, in evaluating Jewish and Christian texts from diverse communities, underestimates the oral networks of frequent travelers connecting these communities, as well as these communities' knowledge of one another.¹⁴³ 1 also suspect that the status of the emerging leadership coalition in Judea may have been analogous to the role of the scribes and Pharisees before 70 and many prominent social groups today: widely known and respected in Judea (and perhaps Galilee) on those occasions when people thought of them, even though most of the common people did not know or attend to the intricacies of their scribal conclusions.

Some scholars have regarded Matthew as anti-Jewish (Cook 1983; cf. van Tilborg 1972b: 96-97), but their position needs to be qualified or rejected.¹⁴⁴ One need survey only some of the genuine anti-Judaism of Matthew's Gentile contemporaries (e.g., claims recorded in Jos. Apion 2.145: Moses was a deceiver and Jewish laws promoted immorality) to recognize the difference. Matthew writes as a Jewish Christian critiquing other Jews, especially the leadership, just as Israel's prophets critiqued Israel from within. Amy-Jill Levine's observations are apropos (1988: 99):

... to claim that the entire Jewish world has aligned itself against Jesus and his church is incorrect. The Jewish leaders are most accurately to be compared not with coreligionists such as the sinners, prostitutes, and lepers lacking full or equal participation in the cultus but with members of other elite, exploitive groups: the Roman rulers, those who attempt to control the church through domination rather than those who guide through service, even the disciples of Jesus and of John who on occasion perceive themselves to be better than those more distanced from the prophetic figures.

Matthew provides positive historical precedents for the Gentile mission in Jesus' life and ministry, but rarely at the expense of his own people's identity. Matthew may emphasize divine judgment on Jerusalem, but this no more constitutes a repudiation of Israel or of his own Jewish heritage than the same theme in 4 Ezra or 2 Baruch does (Davies and Allison 1997: 202).

A majority of commentators believe that Matthew's audience had already decisively broken with the synagogue when the Gospel was written, although the Gospel preserves traces of earlier conflict.¹⁴⁵ Yet an increasing number of scholars doubt that Matthew's audience had completely ruptured with the syna-gogues¹⁴⁶ or question whether the evidence is decisive in either direction.¹⁴⁷ Some differences between the two positions may be semantic; the Matthean Christians clearly held their own structures distinguishable from the synagogue communities (Stanton 1993: 130); but this concession to the majority view need in no way suggest that they had broken with their own ethnic heritage.

Concurring with the perspectives of what is still probably the minority view, I find in the Gospel an author and audience intensely committed to their heritage in Judaism while struggling with those they believe to be its illegitimate spokespersons.¹⁴⁸ On this reading, Matthew writes to Jewish Christians who, in addition to being part of their assemblies as believers in Jesus, are fighting to remain part of their local synagogue communities.¹⁴⁹ Even if local authorities or Judean leaders with influence in the local situation have sought to expel them, they have not yet (and perhaps never did) ceased to regard themselves as Jewish by culture and faith. Nor is it easily conceivable (except to later Gentile Christians) that first- or second-generation Jewish Christians would have abandoned ethnic ties merely in reaction to those whom they considered illegitimate guardians of their heritage.¹⁵⁰ As Davies and Allison complain (1997: 695),

Modern scholars sometimes leave the impression that a Jewish believer in Jesus could leave Judaism as easily as a person can today leave, let us say, the Methodist Church for the Episcopalian... . But... to leave Judaism meant... to move from one society to another: it involved the painful severing not only of family and cultic ties but being cut off from the whole life of a community upon which one was socially and economically dependent.

Thus I concur with Overman's claim (1996: 10): Matthew does not represent a conflict between Jews and "Christians" as mutually exclusive groups, but "details the tensions and issues that existed between different Judaisms at the close of the first century C.E. in Palestine."

Claiming that Matthew's primary audience is essentially Jewish Christian does not imply that it excluded Gentile converts;¹⁵¹ it suggests only that those Gentile converts recognized that in converting to Christianity they were adopting a Jewish faith and with it some elements of the Jewish culture that had brought it to them.¹⁵² As far apart as Jewish Christians and many non-Christian synagogue leaders may have felt themselves, to outsiders a sect that claimed the one God of Israel and Israel's Bible and that originated in a messianic matrix on Jewish soil could not have appeared far from Judaism. That sort of distinction could take place only after Gentile Christianity became a sufficiently dominant force to influence public perceptions and discourse concerning it.¹⁵³ Further, even in most Diaspora cities where Jews and Gentiles shared the same city, Jews (like other ethnic minorities) most often congregated in their own parts of the city. House churches within walking distance for most members would therefore most often involve their own ethnic community (although exceptions in some cities, like Corinth, are likely).

Of all four Gospels, the language and method of Matthew most closely resemble those of the part of Pharisaic scribalism growing into the emerging rabbinic movement.¹⁵⁴ Noting the similarities, Overman even sees early rabbinic Judaism and Matthean Christianity as "fraternal twins" (1990b: 160). Whether Matthew reflects some "rabbinic" thought or simply more popular Jewish scribal currents also found in early rabbinic traditions, the parallels are noteworthy. Some scholars have rightly pointed out the evidence of Christian scribes in Matthew (13:52; 23:34; see Stendahl 1968; Cope 1976), people ready to make disciples of the Gentiles (28:19; cf. Harrington 1980: 96). Probably Matthew responds to Jewish charges that Christians oppose the law, a charge his Gospel therefore emphatically denies (5:17-20; cf. Smalley 1977: 185).¹⁵⁵ Thus as early as the sixteenth century Sebastian Münster called Matthew a "new Torah" (Lapide 1984: 55).

Of course, Matthew's readers are not so fortunate as to be facing only one problem (cf. also Stanton 1993: 3). Scholars who suggest that false teachers provide a threat to his community are undoubtedly also correct (cf. Thompson 1970: 258-64). One may note that condemnations of the scribes and Pharisees (3:7-10; 12:24, 33-34) coalesce with warnings regarding false charismatic prophets (7:15-23; 24:24). Likewise, judgments against the false religious leaders of Jesus' day (23:13-29) serve as a warning to religious leaders of the end-time generations (24:45-51).¹⁵⁶ But most of all, Matthew probably functions as a discipling manual, a "handbook" of Jesus' basic life and teaching, relevant to a Jewish-Christian community engaged in the Gentile mission and deadlocked in scriptural polemic with their local synagogue communities.

Matthew and "Historical Jesus" Research

A central character's "great deeds" generally comprise the bulk of an ancient biographical narrative, and the Gospels fit this prediction (Burridge 1992: 208). In other words, biographies were about someone in particular. Aside from the 42.5 percent of Matthew's verbs that appear directly in Jesus' teaching, Jesus himself is the subject of 17.2 percent of Matthew's verbs; the disciples, 8.8 percent; those to whom Jesus ministers, 4.4 percent; and the religious establishment, 4.4 percent. Even in his absence he often remains the subject of others' discussions (14:1-2; 26:3-5). Thus, as was common in ancient biographies (and no other genre), at least half of Matthew's verbs involve the central figure's "words and deeds" (Burridge 1992: 196-97, 202). The entire point of using this genre is that it focuses on Jesus himself, not simply on early Christian experience (Burridge 1992: 256-58).¹⁵⁷ Thus it is consonant with Matthew's purpose to inquire, to the extent the extant evidence will allow, into the degree to which his portrait of Jesus coheres with historical data.

Nevertheless, the available data for such an inquiry lend themselves to a variety of interpretations, depending on one's interpretive grid. History has passed a negative verdict on most of the past two centuries of "historical Jesus" research.¹⁵⁸ While quests for the historical Jesus have started with the reasonable assumption that later orthodox Christology should not be read into our earliest accounts of Jesus, they have almost invariably read Jesus in light of too narrow a background (e.g., a revolutionary, a teacher, a prophet, or otherwise, but rarely more than one at a time) or as a reflection of their own values.¹⁵⁹ Unfortunately, some quests have also ignored basic historical constraints — such as the radically eschatological predecessor (John the Baptist) and followers of Jesus who make a noneschatological Jesus highly improbable (Johnson 1996: 25). Although scholars after Schweitzer for a time gave up the picture of Jesus as a comfortable, noneschatological sage, some have returned to this position, prompting one critic to remark, "There is something disturbingly familiar about a mildly reforming, sagacious teacher, who ... does not use language and imagery that promises the reversal of the rulers of the world" (Overman 1990a: 195). As Meier complains (1991a: 177):

A tweady poetaster who spent his time spinning out parables and Japanese koans, a literary aesthete who toyed with 1 st-century deconstructionism, or a bland Jesus who simply told people to look at the lilies of the field — such a Jesus would threaten no one, just as the university professors who create him threaten no one.

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