Making
the best of it
"Matthew collected
the oracles in the Hebrew language, but everyone translated
them as he was able."
– Papias
c. 135 AD (Eusebius, Ecclesiastic History III, 39.16)
The final draft of Matthew's Gospel (still unnamed)
emerged sometime after the war of 135 AD.
In the aftermath of that
devastating conflict, a Greek-speaking Jew, writing in the pagan
city of Antioch, had been at pains to reassure the Roman authorities
that his particular faith posed no threat to the imperium. The writer
had fled 'fundamentalist' Jerusalem for the relatively enlightened
pagan city of Antioch. He had with him an early version of 'Mark'
and used this as the basis for his own story. His creation would
eventually become known as 'Matthew.' He wrote for a Jewish
audience, one still close to the ancestral faith. He thus has his
hero say:
"I come not
to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfil them. Till
heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle shall pass
from
the law, till all be fulfilled" (Matthew 5.17,18)
Compare this
to Paul's frequent references to the Law having been superseded
by the 'risen
Christ'! (Romans 7.4,6; Galatians 5.18; Ephesians 2.15 etc.).
After 'losing' to Rome, no doubt all Jews felt defensive, and Matthew accommodates
these sentiments.
At this point,
the Christ story acquired the first of two (contradictory!)
genealogies. Though ‘son of the creator god’,
and presumably not really needing an earthly pedigree at all,
Jesus none the less acquired a surrogate father, Joseph, and
a lineage
back to King David. Again, none of this is to be found in
Paul’s writings but Paul is now dead.
In order to meet
traditional Jewish expectations that the messiah would arise from
the ‘House
of David’ the writer prefaced 'Mark's' baptism story
with an impressive genealogy. The author of Matthew also tried to
tidy
up the embarrassing theology of Christ’s baptism by the
'sinner' John the Baptist, by adding a ‘rationale’, absent
from Mark:
‘Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us
to fulfil all righteousness.' (Matthew 3.15)
Some rationale!
But establishing a bona fides claim to messianic hopes of
the Jews had to go hand-in-hand with toadying to Rome.
Thus the writer rehashes the story of Pharaoh’s murder
of male babies (found in Exodus 1.15,22) into Herod’s
murder of male babies. Since Herod had died in 4 BC and
the supposed Jesus had not been ‘born’ until the
governorship of Quinirius (beginning in 6 AD) the validity of
this mass
murder is questionable,
even before one considers the total absence of historical evidence.
Yet the point was to blacken further the
Jews (Christ-killers
and
baby- killers!) and distance Paulite Christians from them.
"Fulfilling
Prophecy"?
– An easy trick when you rewrite both 'prophecy' and
its 'fulfillment'!
'Matthew', though
building his story upon a copy of Mark, goes to great pains
to add an element of his own: the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.
On eleven occasions he introduces the formula "... this
happened in order to fulfil what was said by the prophet ..."
How better to convince fellow Jews that the god-man really had arrived,
was in fact the chosen 'Jesus of Nazareth', than to show that his
every word and deed had been presaged by the ancient Jewish oracles.
Matthew's task
was to tease out new interpretations of the old scripture –
wrenching his references completely out of context in fact – and
juxtapositioning these 'quotations' with some pithy incident in
the Jesus biography which he is fabricating. How
can he get away with this duplicity? Because fortunately for
'Matthew' he was writing in Greek for a Greek-speaking audience,
most of whom had no direct familiarity with Hebrew scripture but
relied – if on any other source at all – on the Greek
translation, the Septuagint. Matthew even misquotes freely
from this secondhand source to serve his own purposes.
Faking
the prophecy of a Virgin Birth: Famously, Matthew maintains
that 'Isaiah' had prophesied that Jesus would be born
of a virgin:
"Behold,
a virgin will be with child, and will bring forth a son,
and they
will call his name Emmanuel..." (Matthew 1:23)
Matthew's source
is the
Septuagint (Isaiah
7.14). But the Greek-speaking translators of this
version of Hebrew scripture (prepared in 3rd century BC Alexandria)
had
slipped up and had translated 'almah' (young woman) into
the Greek 'parthenos' (virgin).
The Hebrew original says:
'Hinneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath shem-o immanuel.'
Honestly translated,
the verse reads: 'Behold, the young woman has conceived —
and bears a son and calls his name Immanuel.'
The slip did
not matter at the time, for in context, Isaiah’s prophesy
(set in the 8th century BC but probably written in the 5th
century BC) had been given as reassurance to King Ahaz of Judah that
his royal line would survive, despite the ongoing siege of Jerusalem
by the Syrians. And it did. In other words, the prophesy had nothing
to do with events in Judaea eight hundred years into the future!
Yet upon this
doctored verse from Isaiah the deceitful scribe who wrote Matthew
was to concoct the infamous prophecy that somehow the ancient Jewish
text had presaged the miraculous birth of the Christian godman.
Faking
a prophecy of the city of birth: The 8th century BC Jewish sage 'Micah'
writes about Assyrian invaders and a series of skirmishes in Samaria.
He predicts (quite incorrectly as it turns out) that a ruler will
arise from David's Bethlehem and conquer Assyria.
What does Micah actually
say? The Massoretic (Hebrew) text of Micah 5.2, translated,
says:
"But thou,
Bethlehem Ephrathah who is little among the clans of Judah, yet
out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be a ruler
in Israel."
'Bethlehem Ephrathah'
here refers to the clan who are descendants from a man called
Bethlehem, the son of Caleb's second wife Ephrathah referred
to in 1 Chronicles – it does not refer to a town at all!
Undeterred, Matthew
subtly alters the quoted text in his own story (2.6):
"And thou Bethlehem,
in the land of Judah, are by no means the most insignificant of
Judah, for out of you will come forth a ruler in Israel."
What Matthew has
done is change the reference to a clan to a reference to
a city – but who would notice!
The
Man Who Spoke in Old Testament Quotes:
"Behold
I send a messenger who will clear a path before me."
Matthew 11.10?
Yes,
but also Malachi 3.1 !!
"I
desire mercy not sacrifice."
Matthew 12.7?
Yes,
but also Hosea 6.6 !!
"My
God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?"
Matthew
27.35?
Yes, but also Psalm 22.1 !!
'Old
Testament' scripture provided the author of Matthew
not only with scenarios for the various 'mini dramas'
but dialogue for his character as well! |
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Faking
a prophecy of the hero's hometown:
The writer of Matthew started
the deceit that the title 'Jesus the Nazarene' should in some manner
relate to Nazareth, by quoting 'prophecy':
"And he
came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might
be fulfilled
which
was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene." (Matthew
2.23)
With this, Matthew
closes his fable of Jesus's early years. Yet Matthew is misquoting– he
would surely know nowhere in Jewish prophetic
literature is there any reference to a Nazarene. What is
'foretold' (or at least mentioned several times) in Old Testament
scripture is the appearance of a Nazarite. For example:
"For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor
shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto
God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out
of
the hand of the Philistines." (Judges 13.5)
Matthew slyly
substitutes one word for another. By replacing Nazarite ('he
who vows to grow long hair and serve god') with a term which appears
to imply 'resident of' he is able to fabricate a hometown
link for his fictitious hero.
Faking
a reason for the trip to Egypt: Only Matthew tells the story of the
holy family rushing off to Egypt to escape the murderous intent
of Herod. According to Luke the blessed trio returned immediately
to Nazareth. But the Egyptian connection is vital to Matthew's purposes – he
has in mind a literary vignette in which Herod plays the part of
'Pharaoh', infants are killed, and 'Israel' (='Jesus')
is rescued.
Matthew this time
quotes the venerable 'Hosea', though without
giving his source:
"So he got
up and took along the young child and its mother by night
and
withdrew into Egypt, and he stayed there until the decease of
Herod, for that to be fulfilled which was spoken by Jehovah
through
his prophet, saying: 'Out of Egypt I called my son.' "
(2.14,15)
Perhaps if Matthew
had admitted that he was selectively quoting from Hosea 11.1
informed listeners would have known that the reference is not a
prophesy at all. Hosea is lamenting the 'degenerate vine' of
Israel of his own day, unlike the chosen people at an earlier time:
"When Israel
was a boy, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my
son."
'Israel' and 'son' here
mean the Jewish people. In other words, the connection of
the Hebrew exodus with Jesus is completely spurious – but
it makes a good story.
Faking
a prophecy of Herod's (fictional) 'Massacre of the Innocents':
Here Matthew
switches his source to 'Jeremiah', whose commentary
is actually on the 6th century BC Babylonian captivity. At verse
31.15 the oracle says:
"This is
what Jehovah has said, 'In Ramah a voice is being heard,
lamentation
and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping over her sons. She has refused
to be comforted over her sons, because they are no more.' "
Are Rachel's sons 'no
more'? No, they are in Babylon and what's more God
himself assures Rachel that they will be back in the very next
verses:
"Hold back
your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears ... they
will
certainly return from the land of the enemy. And there exists
a hope for your future ... and the sons will certainly return
to
their own territory." (31.15,17)
Lifting the sage's words
for his own story, Matthew juxtapositions Herod's 'crime'
with the convenient 'Babylonian' wailing:
"Herod ... sent
out and had all the boys in Bethlehem and in all its districts
done away with, from two years of age and under ... Then
that was
fulfilled which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying:
'A voice was being heard in Ramah, weeping and much wailing;
it
was Rachel weeping for her children and she was unwilling to
take comfort, because they are no more.' " (2.16-18)
Predictably, neither
Josephus nor any other source mentions the mass killing – and
yet they detailed Herod's real crimes are at great length.
So cavalier is Matthew
with his 'quotations' from the prophets that he even wrongly
attributes one quote: in referring to Judas's "thirty pieces of silver"
(27.3,10) he maintains that the prophecy of 'Jeremiah'
had been fulfilled – and yet it is 'Zechariah'
(11.12-13) who used the phrase!
Original
thinker?
"That
which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.
That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary."
– Hillel,
leading Pharisee and theorist of Judaism during
the
time of Herod the Great. (Babylonian
Talmud, tractate Shabbat 31a.)
Placed into the mouth of Jesus a century later: " All things whatsoever ye
would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them:
for
this is the law and the prophets." – Matthew 7.12. |
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Faking an Ass
prophecy:
Matthew (21.4,5)
throws in another "prophesy" from 'Zechariah'
that the King will arrive at Jerusalem mounted on an ass (and
actually misreads the quotation and brings along a colt as well!)
Zechariah actually
says:
"O daughter
of Jerusalem. Look! Your king himself comes to you. He is
righteous, yes, saved; humble and riding
upon an
ass, even upon a full-grown animal the son of a she-ass."
(9.9)
But he goes on to say:
"His rulership
will be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends
of the earth." (9.10)
When was all this
written? Quite late, possibly during the Maccabean period, and
certainly not by the scribe identified as Zechariah, the
author of chapters 1 - 8. What was being prophesied? Much
of the book relates hostility to the vast empire of Darius
the Great (522-486 BC). Darius was the suppressor
of rebellion and conqueror of Egypt. He really did have an empire from "sea to
sea." The scribe who wrote in Zechariah's name, prophesying
with hindsight, certainly was not thinking about events two or three
hundred years after his own time.
Rise
And Shine
Having bulked out Mark's
story of the god-man with "ancient prophecy" – in
other words, with the "evidence" that would convince
Jews who still had faith in the prophets – Matthew writes
an altogether more exciting ending to the sacred biography.
The
god-man's death is the catalyst for severe earthquake, the rising
of many corpses that go off to Jerusalem (!!), guards on the
tomb
(an idea copied from Joshua), and a snowy white angel
sitting on a tombstone. This angel instructs Mary Magdelene and
the "other
Mary" to quickly tell the disciples of the risen god-man, though
before they can do so, JC himself puts in an appearance
and repeats the instruction. Unlike in Mark, the women
are ecstatic with joy, not filled with fear; and Jesus promises
the disciples
to be with them "always". Significantly, Matthew
devotes rather fewer words to the fabulous resurrection than
to rebutting the idea that the disciples had simply stolen
the body – a tale obviously popular among the Jews
when the fable was written ("This saying has been spread
abroad among the Jews up to this very day" – 28.15).
No doubt
his keenness to add the "miraculous birth" preface had a similar motivation
– to rebut Jewish slurs that if the Christian god-man had
been born to an unmarried mother it was pretty scandalous
origin.
Priestly Discourse Matthew groups
the main body of his fable into five chunks of priestly instruction,
each ending with the same formula – "Now when Jesus
had finished these words ..." (7.28;11.1;13.53;19.1.26.1).
Each discourse emphasizes in some way the role of the Church in
inheriting the promised 'Kingdom'.
"The Gospel
of Matthew emphasized the Jewish festival calendar, and for
this reason Matthew provided blocks of Christian teaching
material to be used in preparation for or during the five
great celebratory Jewish festivals of the year." (Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p92/3)
In other words,
in Matthew, we have a gospel for an embryonic Church,
appealing primarily to a Jewish audience, and servicing its own
need
for a sacred text. The work is a pious fantasy, its hero
a fabrication from his humble beginnings to his portentous end.
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Where
Did They Get Their Ideas From?
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Ankh
Gives Life
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The "Holy
Family"? The Whole Nativity Sequence, Luxor
1700 BC !
– Birth
Room, Temple of Amen, court of Amenhotep III
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Birthing
stool (Roman)
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Annunciation: In the first panel, Thoth ("Gabriel")
hails Mut-em-ua ("Mother of One"),
informing her she will bear a son (Amenhotep) in
the character of Horus, the divine child.
Conception:
In the second panel, Kneph ("the Holy
Spirit") descends & assisted by Hathor,
impregnates the virgin by holding the "ankh",
symbol of life, to her mouth.
Birth:
In the the third panel, Mut-em-ua, is seated on a
birthing stool; a nurse holds the newborn child.
Adoration:
Below, the child is enthroned and receives gifts from
three kneeling human figures.
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Copyright © 2004
by Kenneth Humphreys.
Copying is freely permitted, provided credit is given to the author and no material
herein is sold for profit.
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