Matthew, Disciple and Scribe

by Patrick Schreiner

  We have seen how Matthew spreads out his fulfillment quotations, thereby showing us that all of Jesus’s life fulfills the OT. Many studies on Matthew have too much of a love affair with the fulfillment quotations, neglecting and abandoning the other Matthean allusions. There is much more to explore in Matthew, and therefore the rest of the book will also look to the less explicit references. We have also looked at how fulfillment should be understood in the eschatological sense and how it functions as a summary of Matthew’s conviction for his scribal work: Jesus fills up, completes, perfects the history of Israel. This is Matthew’s major conviction, which caused him to write about Jesus in the form he did. Now we need to turn to the reason Matthew wrote a fulfillment document.

  Appearance of the Apocalyptic Sage-Messiah

  The conviction that the fulfillment of all things has come is based on the arrival of the apocalyptic sage-messiah. Each of these terms will be taken in turn. First, the arrival, the coming, the appearance of Jesus is the key that unlocks the fulfillment door. While many works on Matthew focus on fulfillment, few explicitly tie this to the coming of Jesus—not because commentators disagree with this, but because it is assumed. Yet when we assume something, it gets sidelined. While the coming of Jesus centers on his incarnation, it is not limited to it. For the biblical authors, the incarnation and atonement of Jesus are two sides of the same coin.20 To put this another way, the incarnation paves the way for atonement.21 Though the purposes for Jesus coming to earth are numerous, one of the key reasons is to teach his people wisdom as the messiah and thereby reestablish the relationship between God and human beings and bring forth the kingdom. This happens through the incarnation, instruction, and ultimately the death of the God-man on the cross. Matthew writes because Jesus has appeared on earth, taught him about the kingdom of God, and died for the sins of his people. Wisdom personified suddenly has appeared in history, and things must change after his coming. The appearance of Jesus is the most basic cause for Matthew seeing things in terms of fulfillment. To put this negatively, without the emergence of Jesus, there is no fulfillment.

  Second, Jesus’s coming is apocalyptic. Though this term runs the risk of overuse, it still retains the sense I am attempting to get across. What I mean here is not that Matthew’s writing is an apocalypse; rather, in Matthew Jesus reveals mysteries. He reveals the secrets of wisdom.22 Matthew as the scribe of Jesus’s life may employ an apocalyptic worldview without writing an apocalypse per se. Hagner goes so far as to say, “From beginning to end, and throughout, the Gospel makes such frequent use of apocalyptic motifs and the apocalyptic viewpoint that it deserves to be called the apocalyptic Gospel.”23

  Orton emphasizes the apocalyptic nature of scribal activity. He found in Sirach, apocalyptic literature, and the Qumran documents “that the principle underlying true scribalism . . . is that the teaching offered by the true scribe derives from divine revelation; it is a matter of inspiration. This is reflected constantly in the emphasis on God-given insight, the claim to special access to divine mysteries, and on the ideal scribe’s commission to instruct his posterity in understanding and true righteousness.”24 In light of scribal backgrounds, Orton asserts, the apocalyptic understanding works far better than some notion of Matthew as a rabbinic author.25

  Jesus’s coming is apocalyptic not only in that it is revelatory but in that it is an upheaval, a liberating invasion of the cosmos. The turning of the ages occurs; the introduction of a new epoch begins. Jesus enters not merely the history of the first century but the history of the cosmos. His crucifixion is the crucifixion of the cosmos; sin and death are now defeated. New creation invades the present evil age. The first words of Matthew are evidence of this: βίβλος γενέσεως. This phrase harks back to the creation of all things in Gen. 2:4 and 5:1. Jesus is inaugurating the new heavens and the new social order in the midst of a world of darkness.

  Apocalyptic thus maps onto the term “new” in Matthew’s new-old paradigm. While continuity exists with what came before, there is also discontinuity.26 Modern “biblical theology” may be too focused on stability and continuity, not recognizing that the arrival of Jesus upsets the political, social, and religious orders (even Jewish orders!). Mystery and newness surround Jesus. Matthew is the scribe who brings out the “new” and the “old” (καινὰ καὶ παλαιά, 13:52). The instigation for Jesus’s death is evidence of the newness of Jesus’s message. If he merely came and did all that the first-century Jewish leaders expected, then he would not have been crucified. There is new revelation––the secrets of the kingdom of heaven are exposed.

  Third, Jesus comes as the apocalyptic teacher-sage. Jesus comes in Matthew as the personification of wisdom. As Witherington argues, it may be that the personification of wisdom arose partly because although it was understood that wisdom was hidden, Jews also believed that their God was one who revealed himself. Their God reveals wisdom to his people. A particularly key passage for this comes from Matt. 11:25–27.27 The context begins with John the Baptist asking Jesus who he is, for he has heard of “the deeds of Christ” (τὰ ἔργα τοῦ Χριστοῦ, 11:2). Jesus answers with a quote from Isaiah, who also prophesied that the Spirit of wisdom would rest on the messiah. The short episode ends with a reference to the deeds of wisdom (ἡ σοφία ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων αὐτῆς, 11:19) paralleling the “deeds of Christ” in 11:2.28 Yet in 11:20–24 Jesus denounces the towns he has traveled in because they have rejected him. This leads Jesus to thank his Father in heaven for having “hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children” (11:25, emphasis added). Many key wisdom terms and concepts occur here: revelation, hidden, wise, understanding. Jesus goes on to say, “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (11:27).29 As the messiah, Jesus was the apocalyptic inbreaking of Wisdom into this world. He was the very embodiment of wisdom, the incarnation of the kingdom of heaven.

  This is further supported by the nature of Jesus’s sayings in the Gospels. Though we usually think of Wisdom literature as a fixed form, such as parables or short sayings, we should remember that since there is considerable influence of the wisdom tradition on the prophetic tradition, the whole of Scripture could be described as a wisdom text.30 Therefore it might be that our view of the wisdom tradition is narrower than the ancients’ view. For example, the Wisdom of Solomon (composed around the first century AD) offers extended exhortation in discourse form and chooses to offer something of a historical review. The prophets seemed to take this wisdom tradition and modify it into narrative form to serve their concerns. Jesus as the teacher-sage drew on a variety of Israelite traditions so that he could intermix aphorisms and narrative meshalim. In fact, most of his material takes one of these two forms. Scribes were responsible for the preservation and production of all sorts of genres. However, the narrative nature of Matthew’s Gospel should also not blind readers to the particularity of Jesus’s teaching. Witherington even says that by a conservative estimate, at least 70 percent of the Jesus tradition is in the form of some sort of wisdom utterance, such as an aphorism, riddle, or parable.31

  I submit that the vast majority of the Gospel sayings tradition can be explained on the hypothesis that Jesus presented himself as a Jewish prophetic sage, one who drew on all the riches of earlier Jewish sacred traditions, especially the prophetic, apocalyptic, and sapiential material though occasionally even the legal traditions. His teaching, like Ben Sira’s and Pseudo-Solomon’s before him, bears witness to the cross-fertilization of several streams of sacred Jewish traditions. However, what makes sage the most appropriate and comprehensive term for describing Jesus is that he either casts his teaching in a recognizably sapiential form, or uses the prophetic adaptation of sapiential speech—the narrative mashal.32

  Though I disagree with Witherington that “sage” is the most comprehensive term, it is one term among many that throws light onto Jesus’s life and Matthew’s re
counting of it. The implication of Jesus’s various wisdom sayings indicates the presence of Wisdom on the earth in the arrival of Jesus.

  Fourth, the substance of this conviction revolves around the term messiah. Although early Jewish literature cannot produce a checklist of what the messiah will do, and there were diverse opinions about the messiah, we can read backward from Matthew’s presentation to get a better understanding of what was expected.33 Many biblical scholars are wary of appealing to later writings, thinking that they confuse and distort our picture of early Jewish hopes. In other words, they assert that it is anachronistic to force later views on earlier texts. But could it be that the passing of time clarifies anticipations rather than concealing them? The coming of Jesus actually defines the hope rather than obscuring it. As Wright says, although we can’t re-create a single unified picture of Jewish messianic expectation, such expectation, though not unified, certainly existed. “The early Christians . . . took a vague general idea of the Messiah, and redrew it around a new fixed point, this case Jesus, thereby giving it precision and direction.”34

  W. D. Davies argues that Matthew redraws and defines messianism around David, Abraham, Moses, and the Son of Man.35 The genealogy begins by asserting nothing less than that Jesus of Nazareth is Israel’s long-awaited messianic king. While the Davidic connotations govern Matthew’s presentation, they are also balanced by Matthew’s description of Jesus as the son of Abraham. Messianism is defined by both a particular and a universal focus. Jesus is a Jewish messiah whose goal is to bless the nations. But he is also the new messianic Moses who fulfills the law by both accomplishing all and teaching others to do the same. By being the Danielic Son of Man, Jesus also balances out these portraits because he comes as judge. As Davies notes, messianism also has a dark side: it can lead to unrealistic, visionary enthusiasms that prove destructive. Matthew tempers and defines those messianic hopes by fashioning the messianic hope according to these four figures.36

  Wright argues that messianic hopes were transformed by the NT writers in at least four ways: (1) they lost their ethnic specificity and became relevant to all nations; (2) the messianic battle was not against the worldly powers but against evil itself; (3) the rebuilt temple would be the followers of Jesus; and (4) the justice, peace, and salvation that the messiah would bring to the world would not be a geopolitical program but the cosmic renewal of all creation.37 Messianic hopes were primarily transformed by the reality of a suffering messiah (as Isaiah predicted). The Gospel writers’ central conviction revolves around the cross. It is important to recognize here that the thread of messianic hope runs through diverse terrains, and readers can’t siphon them off and lock them in their respective rooms. Yet Matthew also employs the suffering messiah as the gravitational axis through which all the other terms travel. So while I won’t devote an entire chapter to Jesus as the suffering messiah, each chapter should be read as defining what Matthew means by asserting that Jesus is the Christ.

  In sum, Matthew brings out the new because of the arrival of the apocalyptic sage-messiah who inaugurates the kingdom. Old Testament texts are consummated in the person and work of Jesus the Messiah. He is not taking out his “messianic searchlight” and finding texts that adhere to his program. The opposite is the case. Neither Matthew nor the NT has this searchlight, but the OT is the “messianic searchlight.”38 The messiah fulfills these hopes in that they were “shadows” before he came, but now these texts are “filled” with reality. What earlier was dark now comes to light in Jesus. Alternatively, to change the metaphor, the Prophets and the Law give a blurry or foggy view of the messiah. The bits and pieces are there, but when Jesus comes, the substance is now present. As Paul says, “All the promises of God are Yes and Amen in Christ Jesus” (2 Cor. 1:20 AT). Jesus satisfies the hunger for eschatological consummation throughout the OT story. Matthew’s theology inspires, determines, and controls his hermeneutical approach to the OT Scriptures. As Matthew writes, in every Scripture “something greater is here” (Matt. 12:6, 41–42). Every shadow dancing across the pages of Matthew’s narrative is cast by some greater eschatological substance. Matthew recalibrates these texts to have them refer to God’s apocalyptic agent.

  History Unified

  Because Jesus has come and fulfilled all things, the result is that Jewish history (and all history) is now unified. While the apocalyptic nature of the messiah maps onto the “new,” the newness paradoxically also brings forth the “old.” The Hebrew Scriptures are fulfilled in that their history is now viewed through the window of Jesus. History, at the most basic level, is about people, time, and place. In Matthew’s Gospel, all three of these meet in the messiah. The people (Moses, Abraham, David, et al.), the places (mountains, rivers, temple, desert, etc.), and time (new and old) all incorporate together under the banner of Jesus.

  Time is presented in duality for Matthew as he constructs both a linear chronology and presses in on the reality of “higher time.” Linear chronology views time in sequence; “higher time” views events as not detached but joined together. For example, the exodus from Egypt happened in the past (chronological), yet it is also recapitulated (higher time) in Jesus’s departure from Egypt (Matt. 2:15).39 Robert Jenson put this another way: a biblical understanding recognizes time as neither linear nor cyclical but perhaps more like a helix, “and what it spirals around is the risen Christ.”40

  This distinction is important to comprehend in Matthew. Chronologically speaking, Jesus comes on the scene at a certain time, after many events have been completed. But Matthew contends time can be compared to a casting net. When the center line is drawn up, the points on the edges are drawn together. For Matthew, the moments in the OT suddenly draw together at a higher time in the person of Christ. Higher time does not overrun linear time but recognizes the simultaneity of distinct, previously unconnected moments in time. Matthew does not impose alien meanings onto the biblical text and avoid historical meaning. Rather, he is persuaded that the OT events are contiguous with their christological fulfillment in the NT—a fulfillment often incomprehensible until the arrival of Jesus.

  These assertions are similarly true about space and place in Matthew’s narrative. Many biblical theologies form time-based readings of the text, but a neglected area of reflection lies in the spatial perspective.41 For Matthew, places can be both separate and unified: Matthew conceptualizes separate mountains as coinciding, the water crossings as holding together in simultaneity, heaven as bending down to touch earth, and Jesus as looking out over the land in Matt. 28 as Moses did at the end of Deuteronomy. Earthbound events suddenly participate in heavenly realities because the God-man has come to be with his people.

  The same casting net employed for time and space is also used for people. As the center line is drawn up, the people through the corridors of time begin to point toward their destination. Matthew draws the line, and suddenly Moses’s life is not black and white but filled with color; the promises to Abraham begin to fill out, the covenant with David is fulfilled, and all Israel as a nation mirrors the actions of Jesus. Because of Matthew’s conviction about history, his shadow stories can have multiple references. These manifold references are not contradictory but complementary. Is Jesus’s going through the water in his baptism a picture of Moses, Israel, Joshua, the new creation, or the kingdom? The answer is yes. These can all coalesce because Jesus is the gravitational force that pulls all things together.

  Northrop Frye writes that the immediate context of a sentence is as likely to be three hundred pages off as to be the next or preceding sentence.42 This is because not only the characters participate in the drama of God; history itself, including time and space, does as well. “Jesus Christ constitutes the center of linear and participatory history as the Incarnate Word.”43 Another way of putting this is that Matthew’s theory of history is not one in which random fluidity is the core idea, but history progresses to a determined end. History has a telos. It is an arena of promise and fulfillment; it is the stage u
pon which the creator God speaks and acts.

  The Scribe’s Methods

  Convictions produce methods and techniques. For example, photographers will normally shoot at sunset because they are persuaded that the lighting is best at dusk. Their convictions drive their methods and systems. In the same way, the scribe’s method flows from his persuasions about his teacher. Matthew therefore tells the story of Jesus in (1) the form of an ancient biography, indicating how his subject is worthy of emulation. Another influence on Matthew’s writing is (2) the historical narrative of the Hebrew Bible. The early church and the evangelists understood the four narratives about Jesus as “gospels” and therefore as continuing the great story of God. The First Evangelist particularly shapes, embeds, and builds his narrative in the apparel of other Jewish texts. Shadow stories govern his presentation of the story of Jesus. For Matthew, the best way to show how Jesus disrupts and completes the story of Israel is to employ Israel’s texts in the repainting of Jesus’s life. The form of Matthew’s work (biography and OT narrative) conveys his conviction and the wisdom received from his sage: the new completes the old.

  Genre and Purpose

  Though some still argue that the Gospels are sui generis, the work of Richard Burridge has turned the tide toward viewing the Gospels as ancient biographies (βίοι), though with some differences.44 In the ancient world biographies presented their subjects as exemplars. Plutarch, for example, draws a distinction between comprehensive histories and the writing of his βίοι.45 “I do not tell all the famous actions of these men, nor even speak exhaustively at all in each particular case, but in epitome for the most part. . . . For it is not Histories that I am writing, but Lives; and in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue or vice.”46 Plutarch specifically says he does not include everything in a person’s life because he is concerned with the virtuous character of his subjects. This use of stories to promote moral exemplars is commonly used in Greco-Roman and biblical discourse. Matthew therefore puts his writing of Jesus’s life into this genre because he wants to encourage wisdom by highlighting the actions and teachings of his sage.