Yet at the same time, the order of the “new” and then the “old” in Matt. 13:52 is unexpected. It indicates that the old order is now to be interpreted in light of the new order.70 Augustine famously said, “The New Testament is latent in the Old, the Old patent in the New.”71 The difficulty comes in trying not to err on either side of this balance beam. Some of the richest reflections on the Scriptures come from exploring the connection between promise and fulfillment. Matthew demonstrates that to understand the Scriptures well, one must steady these two weights and see Jesus as the balance of it all. Therefore, Matthew gives his readers their first hermeneutical lesson in the form of a story about Jesus, not in a list of directives that can become a new law. Narrative resists tabulation and requires wrestling. An expansion of Augustine’s words puts it this way:
The New is in the Old contained,
The Old is in the New retained;
The New is in the Old concealed,
The Old is in the New revealed;
The New is in the Old enfolded,
The Old is in the New unfolded.72
Conclusion to the Scribe
Matthew is the discipled and trained scribe from Matt. 13:52 who learned wisdom from his teacher. More than maybe any other NT author, Matthew centers on the relationship between the new and the old. He summarizes the association through the word “fulfillment.”73 The First Evangelist teaches his readers his method in the writing of his Gospel, where readers find a complex yet consistent interchange between the new and the old.
This is not unlike the relationship of Jesus to the Hebrew Bible. Jesus is the singular candlelight that is best understood and seen through the reflection of thousands of surfaces in the Hebrew Bible. But in a similar way, without the candlelight, those surfaces are dark.74 Matthew unearths connections between the new and the old by reading both backward and forward. Sometimes he sees predictions about Jesus in the OT that are blatant, and other times he reconsiders nascent old texts in light of Jesus’s coming. He also is quite generous with his language. He does not simply look for word-for-word correspondences, but he uses his encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish beliefs and practices to construct his image of Jesus. At times he is explicit with these shadows; other times he is subtle. As a skillful scribe, Matthew goes in and out of these techniques, not always telling his reader which tactic he will use next. By so doing, he encourages his reader to engage and open their minds to the wonder of Jesus as the key not only to the OT but also to all of heaven and earth.
Where did Matthew get this method? Where is wisdom to be found? Who is responsible for this original, concrete, and even flexible exegesis? Although the typical answer hails and salutes either the early church, postmodern or modern theories, or early Jewish interpretation, it was C. H. Dodd who pushed further into this question. He said, “Creative thinking is rarely done by committees,” but individual minds usually originate creativity.75 Who was this originating mind? His answer: “The New Testament itself avers that it was Jesus Christ himself who first directed the minds of his followers to certain parts of the scriptures as those in which they might find illumination upon the mission and destiny.”76 God’s wisdom is found in Jesus the Son of God.
The early disciples rethought their OT because the origin of this rethinking came from Jesus, their teacher and sage. Matthew is discipled by the messiah. “Messianic exegesis—the interpretation of Scripture with reference to the messiah—is ultimately based on interpretation of Scripture by the messiah. Jesus, it appears, is his own best exegete.”77 My argument is that the best exegete, the most skilled rabbi, passed down these skills to his disciple: Matthew the scribe. Fulfillment, at its base level, is not so much a methodology as a presupposition,78 or even better, it is a presupposition, a conviction, which produces a methodology. I agree with France when he says, “I am not so sure that a neat distinction can be drawn between the hermeneutical technique and the theology of fulfillment which inspires it.”79
My plan is to trace the scribe’s writings through the contours of Matthew’s narrative, focusing on how he has the new interact with the old. Studies like this have tended to focus on the titles and the identity of Jesus and forget that much of what we learn about Jesus is from his role and function within the larger narrative. Therefore, for each subject I deal with, I will not simply be doing a word study but attempting to keep my ear close to the ground of Matthew’s narrative. I will allude back to the section on Matthew’s method simply to point out more specific examples of shadow stories, history unified, reception and production, and apocalyptic-messianic fulfillment. The best methods are supported with evidence, not simply asserted.
1. While there are some excellent resources on Matthew’s use of the OT (including Beale and Carson, New Testament Use of the Old), few attempt to integrate the interpretative stance of each author. Beale himself notes this weakness. The work “did not attempt to synthesize the results of each contributor’s interpretative work on the use of the OT in the NT. Consequently, the unifying threads of the NT arising out of the use of the OT are not analyzed and discussed.” Beale, New Testament Biblical Theology, 13. A notable exception is Richard Hays (Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels) in his work on the Gospels.
2. Esther Juce (“Wisdom in Matthew,” 135) says, “Jesus is seen as the consummate law-giver, the consummate prophet, and the consummate sage, thus completely fulfilling the Hebrew scriptural tradition in all of its three aspects.”
3. Some might object that I am losing the wisdom trail here with the statement about the Law and the Prophets. However, as noted earlier, many are now seeing wisdom less as a genre and more as a characteristic like righteousness or holiness. In addition, Longman notes how many of the teachings of the Proverbs, Wisdom of Solomon, and Ben Sira connect wisdom and law. For example, the command to honor your father and mother is echoed in Prov. 1:8; 4:1, 10; 10:1; 13:1, while the command not to bear false witness is echoed in 3:30; 6:18, 19; 10:18; 12:17, 19. Longman (Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom, 11, 163–75) argues that wisdom, law, and covenant are more closely associated than many realize (cf. Sib. Or. 5.357; Sir. 23:27; Wis. 9:9; Bar 3:37–4:1; 2 Bar. 5.3–7; 38.2; 77.16).
4. Matthew employs a fulfillment quotation twelve times, compared to Mark’s one use and Luke’s double use.
5. France (Gospel of Matthew, 10) argues that the central theme of Matthew’s Gospel is fulfillment. Brandon Crowe (“Fulfillment in Matthew”) argues for eschatological reversal; James Hamilton (“‘The Virgin Will Conceive’”) argues for typological fulfillment; Daniel Kirk (“Conceptualising Fulfilment in Matthew”) goes the lexical route and defines it as “to fill up, to complete, to perfect.” Carson (“Christological Ambiguities,” 99) speaks of fulfillment in that “laws, institutions, and past redemptive events have a major prophetic function in pointing the way to their . . . culmination in Jesus.” Turner (Matthew, 25) argues that fulfillment in Matthew “includes ethical, historical, and prophetic connections. . . . By recapitulating these biblical events, Jesus demonstrates the providence of God in fulfilling his promises to Israel.”
6. Moule, “Fulfilment-Words in the New Testament,” 301.
7. Bruner, Christbook, 33; Turner, Matthew, 25. France (Gospel of Matthew, 12) agrees: “Fulfillment for Matthew seems to operate at many levels, embracing much more of the pattern of OT history and language than merely its prophetic predictions.”
8. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 186.
9. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 186.
10. Pennington, review of Hidden but Now Revealed.
11. Hays (Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 186) rightly asserts, “For Matthew, Israel’s Scripture constitutes the symbolic world in which both his characters and his readers live and move. The story of God’s dealings with Israel is a comprehensive matrix out of which Matthew’s Gospel narrative emerges. The fulfillment quotations, therefore, invite the reader to enter an ongoing exploration of the way in which the law and the prophets in their
entirety find fulfillment (Matt. 5:17) in Jesus and in the kingdom of heaven.”
12. Pennington, review of Hidden but Now Revealed.
13. Fulfillment is both a method and a conviction, but it can be helpful to put different terms on what Matthew is doing so that categories can be more clearly divided. As Aquinas says, Jesus fulfilled the law in five ways: (1) by fulfilling the things prefigured in the law (Luke 22:37); (2) by fulfilling its legal prescriptions to the letter (Gal. 4:4); (3) by doing works through grace, through the Holy Spirit, which the law was unable to do in us (Rom. 8:3–4); (4) by providing satisfaction for the sins by which we were transgressors of the law, and when the transgressions were taken away, he fulfilled the law (Rom. 3:25); (5) by applying certain perfections to the law, which were either about the understanding of the law or for a greater perfection of righteousness/justice (Heb. 7:19; confirmed by Matt. 5:48). See Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew.
14. Huizenga (New Isaac, 19) notes that the lure of the formula quotations in Matthew has left the more covert allusions less examined.
15. As in 21:4. While the quotations in 2:5–6 and 13:14–15 have also been considered under this category, at this stage it is important simply to look at the ones introduced by a formula.
16. Menken, “Messianic Interpretations.”
17. Menken, “Messianic Interpretations,” 486.
18. Menken, “Messianic Interpretations,” 485.
19. See a similar point in Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 106.
20. Although these are theologically loaded terms that many in biblical studies might attribute to the early church, this is a propensity that stems from Kantian and Enlightenment thinking. As Matthew clarifies earlier Jewish hopes, so too early church developments clarify and define Christology.
21. See Crisp, The Word Enfleshed; Allison, Constructing Jesus, 31–43.
22. Macaskill (Revealed Wisdom) argues for the mutual presence of sapiential and apocalyptic elements in Judaism and early Christianity.
23. Hagner, “Apocalyptic Motifs,” 60. He also states that an apocalyptic perspective “holds a much more prominent place than in any of the other Gospels” (53).
24. Orton, Understanding Scribe, 167–68.
25. Orton (Understanding Scribe, 175) asserts, “We hope to have demonstrated that Matthew in some essential respects—in his sense of vested authority and mission, in his apocalyptic understanding of scripture and in his insight into the essence of Jesus’ instruction in understanding the mysteries of the kingdom and the will of God for the righteous—sees Jesus, the church and himself standing squarely in the tradition of the prophets and in the quasi-prophetic tradition of the apocalyptic scribes.”
26. While I don’t follow “apocalyptic theology” or its adherents in their proposal for radical disjointedness, a view that trims the sharp edges from their thought is on target.
27. I deal more with this text in the chapter on Moses, where I discuss the parallels of “yoke” with the wisdom tradition.
28. For a more detailed analysis, see Walter Wilson, “Works of Wisdom.”
29. Wisdom 8:21 says, “But I perceived that I would not possess wisdom unless God gave her to me” (NRSV).
30. Dryden argues this in Hermeneutic of Wisdom.
31. Witherington, Jesus the Sage, 155–56.
32. Witherington, Jesus the Sage, 158–59.
33. I acknowledge that this method is not popular in biblical studies, but either we approach the Gospels with suspicion, or we approach them with trust. As J. Charlesworth (“From Messianology to Christology,” 35) claims, “The gospel and Paul must not be read as if they are reliable sources for pre-70 Jewish beliefs in the Messiah.” It is fine for historians to examine sources and compare them and respect their historical placement, but this is also a view of history that fails to see how later writings can shed light and new meaning on earlier writings.
34. Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 310.
35. Throughout this work, I will argue that while Davies’s proposal is right, Matthew’s portrayal of the messiah is also more expansive than this. He defines Jesus the Messiah around Moses and around Israel as well.
36. W. Davies, “Jewish Sources of Matthew’s Messianism,” 511: “His messianism, in short, is a corrective messianism, corrective of excesses and illusions, even as it recognizes ethnic privacy (or particularity) and at the same time affirms universalism.” While I disagree with Davies that we can precisely identify the nature of the dark side of the Matthean communities’ hope, I argue that Matthew is providing some sort of corrective, and this corrective is best found in how Matthew defines and redefines messianic hope.
37. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 554–55.
38. I first heard this metaphor from Sailhamer, “Messiah and the Hebrew Bible,” 14.
39. For more on this distinction, see Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis.
40. Jenson, “Scripture’s Authority in the Church,” 35.
41. Schreiner, Body of Jesus.
42. Frye, The Great Code, 208.
43. Boersma and Levering, “Spiritual Interpretation and Realigned Temporality,” 590.
44. Burridge, What Are the Gospels?
45. I was made aware of this reference by Dryden, Hermeneutic of Wisdom, 100.
46. Plutarch, Alexander 1.1–2, in Lives, trans. B. Perrin, LCL 99, 7:225.
47. Alexander, “What Is a Gospel?”
48. For more on the development of the use of this term from oral to written, see Pennington, Reading the Gospels Wisely, 13–16, and esp. 6–10: “From ‘Oral Gospel’ to ‘Written Gospel,’” in chap. 1.
49. About the larger context of Isa. 40–66, Pennington says: “Isaiah describes it [the gospel] with a full artist’s palette of vibrant colors. It is comfort and tenderness from God (40:1, 2, 11; 51:5; 52:9; 54:7–8; 55:7; 61:2–3), the presence of God himself (41:10; 43:5; 45:14; 52:12), help for the poor and needy (40:29–31; 41:17; 55:1–2), the renewing of all things (42:9–10; 43:18–19; 48:6; 65:17; 66:22), the judgment of God’s enemies (42:13–17; 47:1–15; 49:22–26; 66:15–17, 24), the healing of blindness and deafness (42:18; 43:8–10), the forgiving of sins (44:22; 53:4–6, 10–12), and the making of a covenant (41:6; 49:8; 55:3; 59:21).” Pennington, Reading the Gospels Wisely, 15–16.
50. Dryden, Hermeneutic of Wisdom, 123.
51. Hays (Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, 14) popularized the term “intertextuality.” Some debate whether biblical scholars should be using this term at all unless they adhere to the reader-oriented approaches. See Kristeva, Desire in Language; Kristeva and Roudiez, Revolution in Poetic Language; Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination. Fishbane prefers the term “inner-biblical exegesis.” See Fishbane, “Revelation and Tradition”; Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel.
52. Another way to categorize the relationship between the new and the old is summarized by Moo and Naselli (“Use of the Old Testament,” 736–37), whose argument is not far from what I have proposed. They are looking at the entire canon and assert the following: (1) A canonical approach provides the interpretive framework by answering the “why” question. (2) Typology describes one critical way in which the two Testaments within one canon can be seen to relate to each other—the “how.” And (3) sensus plenior is the “what”: the fuller or deeper sense that NT writers find in OT texts as they read canonically. The NT authors discern a “fuller” meaning in OT passages by placing those texts in a wider context than the original authors could have known.
53. I picked up this term from Senior, “Lure of the Formula Quotations,” 115. When I say I will use the term, this does not mean I won’t use typology or figural interpretation as well for the sake of variety.
54. Hays (Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 106) overstates it when he says Matthew leaves nothing to chance in his OT references.
55. The nature of the people seeing only the explicit references may be tied to the tunnel vision I spo
ke of earlier.
56. Allison, New Moses, 284.
57. Leithart (Jesus as Israel, 77–78) claims from this use of Nazareth that Matthew “also indicates that we need to read poetically, even punningly, if we are going to understand how Jesus fulfills the prophets. He does not always fulfill prophecy in a straightforward, literal manner.”
58. This language of “surface meaning” and “bonus meaning” is adopted from France, “Formula-Quotations of Matthew 2.” Consider the example of formula quotations: only one of the formula quotations exactly repeats the text of the LXX. In most cases Matthew’s quotation seems to be a creative yet faithful rendering of the passage, adapting the text to more clearly point out how Jesus’s life completes the OT story (see Matt. 27:9–10 and Zech. 11:12–13). A study of only the explicit OT predictions merely scratches the surface. Matthew’s concept is far broader and more complex.
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