Who Did Matthew Think Jesus Was?
Who Did Matthew Think Jesus Was?
Robert Gundry finds Jesus assuming the role of Yahweh in his teaching in Matthew, citing numerous specific examples (Matt 10:32-33; 11:5, 10, 28, 29; 13:41; 16:27; 17:11; 24:31; 25:31).120 Although not all of these passages require this interpretation, a number do use imagery typically associated with God in Scripture or early Judaism, and it is clear that Matthew believes Jesus to be more than an earthly messiah.
When Jesus invites hearers to accept his “yoke” (Matt 11:29-30), he may allude to the traditional idea of God’s law or kingdom as a good yoke.121 By speaking of God’s law or kingdom as Jesus’ own, Jesus implicitly claims authority from the Father (cf. the “Q” saying in Matt 11:27) greater than that of Moses himself; other Jewish texts would have spoken only of God’s yoke here,122 or of the yoke of God’s Torah.123 Jesus’ words clearly evoke the invitation of the sage Joshua ben Sira (Sir 51:23-27):
Draw near to me, you who are uneducated . . .
Why do you delay in these matters,
when your souls thirst so much? . . .
Place your neck under the yoke,
and let your soul accept training —
she is near if you wish to find her.
Witness with your own eyes that I have labored little,
yet have found much rest for myself.
Yet the offered yoke here is not Ben Sira’s, but that of divine Wisdom, and Wisdom elsewhere invites the hearer, “Come to me, you who earnestly desire me,” and eat and drink of wisdom (Sir 24:19-21). John is not the only Gospel writer with a “wisdom christology” (Jn 1:1-18; 6:35; 7:37).125 Even Jesus’ promise of “rest for your souls” in this passage evokes a divine role; in Scripture, this promise belonged to God’s people if they obeyed God (Jer 6:16 MT).126
In Matt 1:23, toward the beginning of his Gospel, Matthew calls Jesus “God with us” (Is 7:14). This claim cannot be a mere slip of the pen; because it fits two other strategic texts about Jesus and the divine presence in Matthew, one at the Gospel’s conclusion (18:20; 28:20), Matthew surely makes an exalted claim about Jesus here.127 In Matt 18:20, Jesus implicitly claims to be the divine presence, using language familiar in a specifically Jewish environment. An ancient Jewish saying promised God’s presence not only for ten males (the minimum prerequisite for a synagogue),128 but for even two or three gathered to study God’s law.129 Here Jesus himself fills the role of the Shekinah, God’s presence, in the traditional Jewish saying.130 (Jewish teachers often emphasized God’s omnipresence.) 131 For Matthew, Jesus is “God with us” (1:23; 28:20).
Is it plausible that Jesus actually uttered words like these during his earthly ministry, at least privately to his disciples (who understood such words in a more exalted way at a later time)?132 The theme is multiply attested in the tradition, though more dominant in Matthew (and certainly John).133 What we can unquestionably say historically is that, contrary to some modern scholarly constructs about them, our early Christian sources offer a consensus about Jesus’ identity and, where they address it, his own knowledge of his identity.