Continuing the discussion of Matthew’s appropriation of OT scripture as prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ, we turn to these exegetical questions found in yesterday comic section of the newspaper. The passage in question come from Matthew 2.16-18 (REB):

When Herod realized that the astrologers had tricked him he flew into a rage, and gave orders for the massacre of all the boys aged two years or under, in Bethelem and throughout the whole district, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the astrologers. So the words spoken through Jeremiah the prophet were fulfilled: “A voice was heard in Rama, sobbing in bitter grief; it was Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they were no more.”

The fulfilled passage in question is from Jeremiah 31.15 and in its original context has nothing to do with Jesus, Herod or the slaughter of young children. William Barclay describes the situation as this:

Jeremiah was picturing the people of Jerusalem being led away in exile. In their sad way to an alien land they pass Ramah, and Ramah was the place where Rachel lay buried (1 Samuel 10:2); and Jeremiah pictures Rachel weeping, even in the tomb, for the fate that had befallen the people.

Remember that Rachel was the mother of Joseph and Benjamin; Ramah was located in the area allotted to Benjamin, just north of Jerusalem. The NET Bible has this further note:

Ramah is a town in Benjamin approximately five miles (8 km) north of Jerusalem. It was on the road between Bethel and Bethlehem. Traditionally, Rachel’s tomb was located near there at a place called Zelzah (1 Sam 10:2). Rachel was the mother of Joseph and Benjamin and was very concerned about having children because she was barren (Gen 30:1-2) and went to great lengths to have them (Gen 30:3, 14-15, 22-24). She was the grandmother of Ephraim and Manasseh which were two of the major tribes in northern Israel. Here Rachel is viewed metaphorically as weeping for her “children,” the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh, who had been carried away into captivity in 722 b.c.

Whether Rachel was weeping for Jerusalem (Barclay) or the northern kingdom tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (NET) is evidently disputable, though the latter seems more appropriate. Regardless, we do now have the specific “who”, “where” and “why” that Linus seeks.

We often caution about taking a verse-by-verse view of scripture - applying individual passages to whatever we want by interpreting them outside of context - yet at first blush it seems that this is what Matthew is doing here and elsewhere in this second chapter of his gospel (cf. Matthew 2:15 and Hosea 11:1, Matthew 2:23 and Isaiah 11:1) when he uses the literal words themselves to communicate, outside of original context or metaphorical meaning. Or is there something else here? In comments to my previous post on Matthew, Damian noted that:

Regarding Matthew’s use of the OT, I’m of the school that tends to assume that an OT quote implies the relevance of the entire passage that quote is within. In Matthew, especially early Matthew, this approach works quite well, and so I don’t think he misappropriates prophecy at all.

So we return to Jeremiah and tackle the larger picture. Chapters 30 and 31 fall under a general categorization of promises and hopes for the restoration of Israel and Judah. So while Rachel is weeping in 31.15, the overall trajectory of the passage is positive; keep reading in Jeremiah 31.16-17 (REB):

These are words of the Lord to her [Rachel]:
Cease your weeping,
shed no more tears;
for there will be a reward for your toil,
and they will return from the enemy’s land.
There will be hope for your posterity;
your children will return within their own borders.

In the face of bitter lamentation and exile from wrongdoing, there is the ultimate promise of hope and consolation:

The days are coming, says the Lord, when I shall establish a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. [...] I shall set my law within them, writing it on their hearts; I shall be their God, and they will be my people. No longer need they teach one another, neighbour or brother, to know the Lord; all of them, high and low alike, will know me, says the Lord, for I shall forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I shall call to mind no more. (Jeremiah 31.31, 33-34 — REB)

Again, these verses were originally specific to the exiled Israelites, but Matthew is surely calling to mind the promises of the covenant for all people, Jew and Gentile alike. That is, Herod has slaughtered the children of Bethlehem and there is much weeping, but like the exiled kingdoms, the Christ has survived and will return (out of Egypt) to establish a new covenant with all people and for all time. If we view Matthew’s scripture quotations in this light, then we perhaps understand that he is telling the gospel story as a massive typological argument, using huge blocks of Hebrew scripture to underpin the good news message of Jesus Christ as the annointed Messiah and fulfillment of all scripture.

Matthew collected the sayings of Jesus in the Hebrew tongue.

The hypothesis would be then that the narrative portions of Matthew’s gospel were edited from Mark’s account and merged with the above mentioned “sayings of Jesus” collected by the apostle Matthew. Who the author/editor of the gospel is remains shrouded, but why not consider Matthew himself as the author of Q?

The December issue has an article on “The Real King Herod” of Biblical lore and his influence and positive contributions to the architectural layout of Israel. The article, written by Tom Mueller, is centered around Israeli archaeologist Ehud Netzer’s discovery of Herod’s tomb. Embedded in the first paragraph is this quote:

Yet today he is best known as the sly and murderous monarch of Matthew’s Gospel, who slaughtered every male infant in Bethlehem in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the newborn Jesus, the prophesied King of the Jews. During the Middle Ages he became the image of the Antichrist: Illuminated manuscripts and Gothic gargoyles show him tearing his beard in mad fury and brandishing his sword at the luckless infants, with Satan whispering in his ear. Herod is almost certainly innocent of this crime, of which there is no report apart from Matthew’s account.

Scholars have long tried to line up the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, accounting for the differences and unique items reported. However, how do we approach this claim, that one of the unique items - Matthew’s report of Herod’s killing of the infants and presumably the subsequent flight of Joseph, Mary and Jesus to Egypt - is “almost certainly” false?

In matters of OT concordance, I’ve been using the maxim that the gospels were written after Jesus’ resurrection and subsequent time teaching the disciples and followers “in the whole of scripture the things that referred to himself.” (Luke 24:27) If the gospel accounts were vetted as accurate by the apostolic eyewitnesses within the first century church (cf. Luke 1:1-4), then the accounts we still have today must have their roots in this post-resurrection teaching. However, this presupposes that the events actually happened… or else Jesus was making stuff up!

Now, thanks to a comment from Esteban in a previous post, I’ve become familiar with the case of Bob Gundry, an expelled member of the Evangelical Theological Society. Gundry was expelled from ETS in 1983 for publishing an account of Matthew that claimed that “the four Evangelists, especially Matthew and Luke, have adapted the deeds and words of Jesus to fit the life and experiences of their readers” and that ” in the ‘infancy narratives’ (Matt. 1, 2) and elsewhere Matthew uses a Jewish literary genre called midrash. Like many preachers today, the writer of a midrash embroidered historical events with nonhistorical additions.” (Source) In particular, Gundry claims that Matthew changed the role played by the Jewish shepherds to that of Gentile astrologers in order to better bookend their arrival at Jesus’ birth with Jesus’ final commission that the apostles go to the nations/Gentiles at the ends of the earth.

I’ve not read Gundry myself, so I don’t know the extent of his claims that are based on the scholarly technique known as “redaction criticism.” But I recently speculated that the flight to Egypt might similarly be an allegorical or typological addition to the narrative, especially as Matthew concerns himself with messianic fulfillment of OT prophecy. Which of course then lays bare the question of what prophecy means and how it is fulfilled.

In matters of liberal scholarship, I tend to reference William Barclay. However, that bastion of liberal evangelicalism and skeptic of Jesus’ divinity makes this note:

There is not the slightest need to think that the story of the coming of the Magi to the cradle of Christ is only a lovely legend. It is exactly the kind of thing that could easily have happened in that ancient world. When Jesus Christ came the world was in an eagerness of expectation. Men were waiting for God and the desire for God was in their hearts. They had discovered that they could not build the golden age without God. It was to a waiting world that Jesus came; and, when he came, the ends of the earth were gathered at his cradle. It was the first sign and symbol of the world conquest of Christ. (Matthew, Vol. 1, p. 27)

Barclay goes on to state that Matthew’s use of the quote from Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15 is

typical of Matthew’s use of the Old Testament. He is prepared to use as a prophecy about Jesus any text at all which can be made verbally to fit, even although originally it had nothing to do with the question in hand, and was never meant to have anything to do with it. [...] When we read a passage like this we must remember that, though it seems strange and unconvincing to us, it would appeal to those Jews for whom Matthew was writing. (Matthew, Vol. 1, p. 36)

So on one hand, Barclay accepts the historical accuracy of the Magi’s visit, but also notes Matthew’s tendancy to appropriate prophecy as needed in order “to convince the Jews that Jesus was the promised Annointed One of God”. There is a balance of veracity and verisimilitude - the question is does the balance between the two really matter?

* * * * *

The New English Bible (NT: 1961, OT/A/NT: 1970) was one of the first modern English Bibles to be translated directly anew from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts rather than by revising existing translations. It was born by the recommendation of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1946 that “a translation of the Bible be made in the language of the present day.” [Hunt, p.1]

From the vision of that seed, the NEB and later Revised English Bible (REB) revision were born and guided. I hope to cover more of the historical developments of these translations in later posts; however, in this entry I want to look at the conditions that predicated the Church of Scotland’s radical recommendation and the initially stated goals of the translation project.

While there are undoubtedly a great many motives that might be discovered in the origins of this new Bible translation, one unifying experience seems to be the tap root of the project’s genesis: that the beautiful but ultimately foreign language of the KJV proved to be a hindrance to pastors, chaplains and teachers in conveying the gospel message during the difficult conditions of World War II. The language of the KJV was foreign to young soldiers who came from outside of Church traditions and, in the immediacy of the war front, the chaplains had no time to translate the scripture into the language of the day. Hunt describes a “veil of unreality between the scriptural writers” and an audience that desperately “needed something that would speak to them immediately.” [Hunt, p.10]

Coleman goes further in describing this wartime audience as “from industrial urban backgrounds, unchurched and the products of an increasingly secular education.” [Coleman, p.5] In addition, Coleman notes the dilemma of civilian clergy and teachers who encountered displaced persons for whom English was a foreign language, as well as children whose religious education had been interrupted by the various pressures of wartime life. In short, the church was encountering a generation bubble of school-age youth and young adults who were, to a large extent, religiously illiterate, at least compared to previous generations. This population “was unlikely to bring immediate understanding to scripture in the idiom of three centuries or more earlier, however beautiful, solemn, or literary it might be.” [Coleman, p.5]

Another major factor in the drive behind the NEB was the Education Act in 1944, which fundamentally changed the education system for secondary schools in England and Wales. Among its various reforms was the introduction of compulsory prayer into all state-funded schools on a daily basis. In response, the affected churches were bonded by a spirit of ecumenical cooperation to provide religious education; the unity achieved across denominations and doctrinal differences in creating the NEB was an end-result of this spirit as well as of the overall social need for reconnection and rebuilding following the wartime stresses.

With these recent experiences in mind, and also being sensitive that the KJV was still firmly established within Church tradition, C.H. Dodd, later the General Director of the Project, issued a memorandum entitled “Purpose and Intention of the Project”, in which he outlines three key audiences of the new translation:

1. The large section of the population which has no effective contact with the Church in any of its communions, [who are sufficiently educated, but to whom] the language of the current versions is in part actually unintelligible or misleading, and where it is not actually unintelligible has an air of unreality.

2. The young people now growing up … for whom the Bible, if it is to make any impact, must be ‘contemporary’.

3. A considerable number of intelligent people who do attend church, and for whom the traditional language is so familiar that its phrases slide over their minds almost without stirring a ripple… [Hunt, p.22]

The NEB was thus aimed at an educated audience (or one being educated), both inside and outside the Church; however, the new translation was not intended for “those for whom the language of the [Authorized Version] and the Book of Common Prayer is the familiar and natural language of devotion.” [Hunt, p.22]

That is, the NEB was not conceived to replace the traditional use of the KJV in the Church, but to supplement and explain it for those who needed explanation, and to cause the message of the scripture to be heard new on deafened and dulled ears. How true does that intent still ring today?!

Dr. Walton has now been kind enough to provide a significant reply, which John has also posted.

Paul L. Maier has written an article for ChristianityToday.com on the historical events and fallout of AD 70:

Not One Stone Left Upon Another
The catastrophic fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 forever changed the face of Judaism-and the fate of Christians in the Holy Land.

Jesus predicted it 37 years before it happened. Herod Agrippa II and his sister Bernice, who heard Paul’s testimony at Caesarea (Acts 26), tried hard to prevent it, as did the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (our main source of first-century information). But the fall of Jerusalem and the burning of the Temple in A.D. 70 happened nevertheless, and it was a catastrophe with almost unparalleled consequences for Jews, Christians, and, indeed, all of subsequent history. It compelled a whole new vector for synagogue (not Temple) Judaism, it submerged the Jewish homeland for the next 19 centuries under foreign domination, it helped foster the split between church and synagogue, and it set the stage for rampant prophetic speculation about the End Times that continues to the present day. Few episodes in history have had that sort of impact.

Read the entire article