Matthew In Recent Studies 94
MATTHEW IN RECENT STUDIES
Until the last few years, English-language commentators ignored Matthew more than any other of the canonical gospels. This has been partly redressed by six commentaries, 54 with several more on the way. Two of these six, however, are mildly eccentric. The bibliography and discussion in Beare (1981) was fifteen years out of date the day it was published. Gundry’s work (1982) is a detailed redaction-critical study of the Greek text but comes to so many conclusions that scholars of all stripes find implausible that it has not been well received. In particular, several of his contentions— (1) that Q (see chap. 1 above) embraces far more than the 250 or so verses normally assigned to it, (2) that the changes and additions Matthew makes in his sources are entirely motivated by theological concerns and are without historical referent (including, e.g., the birth narratives in Matt. 1-2), and (3) that the genre of literature he was writing (which Gundry labels "midrash”) would have been recognized as a mixture of history and ahistorical reflection by the first readers—have all come in for considerable criticism. On the third point, it has repeatedly been observed that in the first century, "midrash” could refer to many different kinds of commentary: it was not a well-defined genre that readers would instantly recognize, thereby enabling them to draw conclusions about its nonreferential nature. Extending well beyond the commentaries, excellent surveys in English of recent Matthean studies are provided by Stanton 55 and France. 56
Much scholarly energy during the last three decades has been devoted to redaction-critical studies of Matthew. Beginning with the groundbreaking work of Bornkamm,
Barth, and Held, 57 many scholars have focused on differences between Matthew and Mark, and between Matthew and what can be retrieved of Q, in order to determine what is distinctive in Matthew’s gospel. Although many of these have proved suggestive, not a few are so narrowly based as to be somewhat eccentric. Rolf Walker thinks that Matthew was written to show that Israel has been entirely rejected: the great commission authorizes that the gospel be preached exclusively to Gentiles. 58 Only rarely is Walker exegetically convincing. His treatment of pavta ta έθνη (panta ta ethne, "all nations”) in Matt. 28:19 has persuaded almost no one; nowhere does he adequately struggle with the fact that all the disciples and early converts were Jews. Hubert Frankemolle argues that Matthew is so unlike Mark that it cannot meaningfully be called a gospel at all; 59 it is, rather, like Deuteronomy and Chronicles, a book of history—the history not of Jesus but of the community, since in this "literary fiction,” "Jesus” is an idealized figure intentionally fused with Matthew the theologian. But Frankemolle overemphasizes formal differences between Mark and Matthew and neglects substantial differences between Matthew and Deuteronomy or Chronicles. Although he is right to read Matthew as a unified book, he does not adequately reflect on the fact that for most of his gospel, Matthew heavily depends on Mark and Q (however Q is understood).
Some studies have been widely accepted, not least the work of Bornkamm. 60 He holds that whereas in Mark the disciples do not understand what Jesus says until Jesus explains things to them in secret, Matthew attributes large and instant understanding to the disciples. In fact, this is what sets the disciples off from the crowds: the disciples understand. The faltering of the disciples at various points stems from their lack of faith, not from any lack of understanding. Yet one is tempted to qualify this thesis. Apart from the fact that he relies rather too heavily on the so-called Messianic secret in Mark, Bornkamm does not adequately deal with the disciples’ request for private instruction (Matt. 13:36), their failure to understand Jesus’ teaching about his passion even after his explanations (e.g. 16:21-26; 17:23; 26:51-56), or the passages that deal with "stumbling” and "falling away.” This is not a peripheral failure; at bottom, Bornkamm does not wrestle with the degree to which the failure of the disciples turns on their location in the stream of redemptive history. They were unprepared before the passion and resurrection to conceive of a Messiah who could be defeated, who could die the ignominious and odious death of the scum of Roman society. To this extent, the disciples’ coming to deeper understanding and faith was unique: it was in part a function of their place in salvation history, a place rendered forever obsolete by the triumph of Jesus’ resurrection. Our coming to faith and understanding today, or even in Matthew’s day, therefore cannot be exactly like the coming to faith and understanding of the first disciples. In numerous ways Matthew makes this clear, but Bornkamm is so interested in reading Matthew’s church into Matthew’s description of the first disciples that the exegesis becomes skewed. 61 Some recent studies, however, have manifested an increasing concern to read Matthew holistically—that is, to read Matthew in his own right, even while keeping an eye cocked on the synoptic (and other) parallels. Where the first gospel is studied as a book on its own and not simply as a modified Mark, its themes, unity, and essential power more easily come into focus. This is not to deny the validity of both approaches; it is to insist that the traditional historical-critical method be complemented by greater literary sensitivity.