Surprises in the Gospel of Matthew with Professor Dale Martin (2021-06-20) ​

0:00:02 Good evening everyone and welcome to Blogging Theology. My name is Paul Williams. I'm calling 0:00:06 from the South of France today and I'm honoured again to have as our guest Dale Martin who I 0:00:14 understand is in Texas in the USA and a professor at Yale University and other places as well. 0:00:22 And he is today going to talk us through aspects of the Gospel of Matthew. This is the first gospel 0:00:30 in the New Testament and by way of Overview of this brief introduction i just want to read a 0:00:36 few words from his book one of many books: New Testament History and Literature, published by Yale 0:00:43 University Press and in chapter 7 The Gospel of Matthew he writes as an overview 'The Gospel of 0:00:50 Matthew contains some of the most famous passages that both Christians and non-christians recognize 0:00:57 but matthew presents itself paradox paradoxically as preaching both a Torah-observant Christianity 0:01:05 and a gentile mission a christian mission to gentiles the figure of Jesus in matthew is as 0:01:13 a teacher the founder of a church uniquely uh the model for the apostles and matthew's own community 0:01:21 matthew is writing for a church community that needs encouragement to have faith uh in a time of 0:01:27 trouble and then the first sentence on the chapter itself the gospel of matthew from the second 0:01:34 century on has been the most popular gospel which is probably why it ended up first in our bibles 0:01:42 um there's a lot there particularly the paradoxical bit which i really like to explore 0:01:46 but dale could you just i really want to know who wrote this gospel who is the author and um and 0:01:53 when was it written because we've all been told christians have been told for most of the last 0:01:57 2000 years that a disciple called matthew um the tax collector disciple of jesus himself authored 0:02:05 the text but i've heard rumors that scholars don't believe this anymore and why would they doubt 0:02:11 such a such an obvious truth this is by an apostle himself well one of the things you have to realize 0:02:17 is that um none of the names that are attached to the gospels in the bible were part of the text 0:02:29 they all they weren't there in the first century we can't find any reference in the first century 0:02:37 that matthew wrote matthew mark wrote mark blah blah blah um the the type the names of 0:02:46 these gospels got attached to the gospels only in the second century and most of us think it 0:02:52 was only in the late second century you know after 150. well why would you believe something 0:03:01 uh that's a hundred years separated from when it was supposed to have happened 0:03:08 um i mean just think about it we you know we just separated the first anniversary of juneteenth here 0:03:18 in texas in galveston as a matter of fact where i'm sitting right now this was the day in june 0:03:26 when black people were first told that they were free they had been freed for two years by the 0:03:33 emancipation proclamation but they weren't told um and so we celebrate juneteenth as uh june 19th 0:03:43 is the date when uh emancipation was proclaimed in texas and it was proclaimed in four different 0:03:52 buildings in galveston and then it spread out throughout the state of texas now imagine that 0:03:59 you know that was only a hundred years ago how do we know about that well we have newspapers 0:04:09 from the time we have letters we have people's accounts we even had live memories of people who 0:04:16 were alive back then who can tell us uh what it was like when they first heard about it
0:04:25 there was nothing like that for the gospels there were no newspapers 0:04:29 there was no uh tv there was no radio there was no nothing you just had these papyrus texts that were 0:04:37 floating around being shared by different church groups and they were probably just 0:04:43 small house churches and they would copy them out by hand and send them a copy to somebody else but 0:04:51 that's all there was so how do you know that the gospel of matthew that never gets the name matthew 0:04:59 attached to it until sometime after 150 how do you know that goes back to the year 35 or 40. 0:05:10 it's just unbelievable you just have to you just have to work with some historical skepticism 0:05:18 so there's simply no evidence that matthew the author uh wrote it uh himself because as 0:05:24 you say it was a later second century idea that materialized uh but but also is it not the case 0:05:31 that i mean how significant is it when i read that gospel it's not in the first person it's not i'm 0:05:37 it's not implying an eyewitness account it reads like a third person account he did this and he's 0:05:43 not that in fact third fourth fifth sixth person account matthew never says oh well there was that 0:05:51 time when jesus and i were sitting by the sea of galilee and he handed out a bunch of fish and he 0:05:58 did this or that there's nothing like that and in fact we know that whoever wrote the gospel 0:06:04 of matthew used the gospel of mark as a source he just copies it out verbatim at times he also uses 0:06:12 a source that the gospel of luke uses that we tend to call q which just comes from the german word 0:06:20 which is just the german word for source you know german scholars just decided well look there was 0:06:27 some written document that luke and matthew use that's not in mark these are sayings they're not 0:06:33 in mark but they are verbatim the same you know blessed are blah blah blah you know you are the 0:06:42 salt of the earth you know uh how did matthew and luke come up with these sayings neither of them 0:06:48 appears to be a follower of jesus so they're getting it from a written source so matthew 0:06:54 and luke are using a written source of mark and they use a written source that we call q it's a 0:07:01 hypothetical written source and some people doubt that it never existed but i don't see how they can 0:07:06 get around it because it's verbatim and matthew and luke and if if you put matthew and luke next 0:07:11 to one another they don't look like they copied each other no and so where did they get these 0:07:18 verbatim quotations well one of the things that impresses me is uh if you look in mark's gospel 0:07:25 mark chapter 13 you get this long discourse where jesus is talking about the destruction 0:07:30 of the temple and the the return of the son of man and so on and in the middle of this discourse 0:07:35 it jesus says apparently in parenthesis let the reader understand i'm thinking hang on this is 0:07:42 not reading this is jesus talking to disciples and then you get an identical phrase in matthew's uh 0:07:48 version of the same episode in matthew 24 where it says lo and behold halfway through let the 0:07:54 reader understand what a coincidence um unless of course uh as you're suggesting that one gospel 0:08:00 is common from another and it's clearly a written account let the reader understand 0:08:05 um but that's a that's a great place to go for the idea of when it was written right according to the 0:08:12 gospel of mark the gospel of mark in chapter 13 which we're talking about says right now 0:08:20 at this point jesus is going to come back the angels are going to come in and we're 0:08:26 going to have the big blow up of the world and we're going to have the kingdom of god come
0:08:32 matthew doesn't like that and luke doesn't like that because it sounds like mark is saying 0:08:41 right when the romans are surrounding jerusalem which happened what 69 and 70 right 0:08:49 so the gospel that's why we say the gospel of mark was probably written around the year 70 because 0:08:56 he tells the story of what's going to happen with the romans and the war 0:09:02 against the jews and he tells it all up against the year 70 and he says that's when 0:09:08 jesus is going to come or jesus is basically saying that's when the son of man is going to come
0:09:16 did it happen
0:09:19 not not according to any of us we're still here um and so matthew and luke change that 0:09:29 they change it very slightly um luke puts in this thing saying you will get the romans surrounding 0:09:37 jerusalem and they will be around jerusalem and you'll get jerusalem destroyed so luke even has 0:09:45 the destruction of jerusalem and he's copying this out of mark and yet he's changing it all 0:09:52 to bring it up today and so mark didn't talk about the destruction of jerusalem happening right then 0:09:58 luke adds that because he's sitting over there i think luke was probably sitting in i don't know 0:10:04 galilee or asia minor or some place and he's looking over there in the palestine he goes 0:10:10 the romans destroyed jerusalem so why didn't jesus come back and so luke brings it up to 0:10:18 date and he says then you'll have jerusalem where we trampled down until the times of the gentiles 0:10:27 the times of the gentiles well what does that mean mark didn't say anything about that 0:10:32 no and matthew doesn't say anything about that either which is why one of the reasons 0:10:36 i don't think matthew knew luke um why wouldn't matthew copy some of luke into his own gospel 0:10:43 he doesn't he uses a mark and then he goes off on his own but matthew also knows that the time of 0:10:51 the end that mark predicted didn't happen and so you get you get time kind of factored in both in 0:11:01 matthew and in luke which is why we know i mean if you're gonna practice this historical critical uh 0:11:10 game at all then you use this kind of stuff you say you know why do they tell the story of the 0:11:19 end of time differently it's because they lived at different times so there's a bit of detective work 0:11:30 really isn't it you've got to be someone with an acute be blunt an acute intelligence a desire to 0:11:36 really notice these subtle differences my case you just have to go to school 0:11:45 and and from that you can actually really get a sense of what might be going on have one gospel 0:11:50 change the other gospel and why would they do it what's the agenda what's going on rather than just 0:11:55 seeing the differences are there's eyewitness accounts people traditionally say well matthews 0:11:58 and i when is mark no we were dealing here with people copying and changing and editing redacting 0:12:04 each other and that can tell us a lot about their agenda and what their theology is and what their 0:12:09 physiology is and their eschatology and how that's changed because of the flow of time history itself 0:12:16 has had to change things because here we get to the contradictions in matthew that you were 0:12:22 talking about why is it that matthew wants his church to be a law abiding torah keeping 0:12:31 a basically jewish church and yet at the the last verses of the gospel jesus tells the disciples 0:12:41 to go and make disciples of all nations the word nations is directly ethnoi it's that word ethnos 0:12:50 we can translate it nations but it means all the different ethnic groups so yeah matthew's 0:12:58 having jesus at the very last so here's what i think is going on first you have to say 0:13:04 there are different levels as i've said there's the historical jesus 0:13:09 and jesus may have said things that got into matthew's gospel um that the historical jesus 0:13:18 actually said would an example of that be the canaanite woman her faith in matthew 15 yes 0:13:26 can i just read that out for people i know you know it but just so because i think it's a really 0:13:30 significant passage in the light of what happens at the end of the gospel so according to this 0:13:35 is the nrsv uh version jesus left that place and went away to the district of ty and sidon 0:13:41 just said a canaanite woman this is not a jews a gentile from that region came out 0:13:46 and started shouting have mercy on me lord son of david my daughter is tormented by a demon 0:13:52 but he did not answer her at all really important silence and his 0:13:58 disciples came and urged him saying send her away but she keeps shouting after us 0:14:04 he answers jesus this is the killer the key thing i was sent only to the lost sheep of the house 0:14:12 of israel was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of israel not even all israel just 0:14:16 for the lost sheep of the house of israel but she knelt before him saying lord help me he answered 0:14:22 uh it is not fair to take the children's food this is the israelites food and throw it to the dogs 0:14:28 oh she said yes lord yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table 0:14:36 then jesus answers her woman great is your faith let it be done for you as you wish and 0:14:42 her daughter was healed instantly so here we have a series of rebuffs from from silence initially to 0:14:50 the disciples urging jesus to send her away then jesus saying look i'm not sent to you go away 0:14:55 and then you get a clever faithful response than this gentile and because of this exceptional 0:15:01 response great is your faith he actually accedes to her request and does actually heal the daughter 0:15:08 immediately apparently but this seems to be an exception rather than the rule but you're clear 0:15:13 clearly the disciples and jesus did not want to deal with her and yet at the end of this very same 0:15:19 gospel jesus teaches the very same disciples go into all the nations the ethnic the ethnos 0:15:27 and teaching them to obey everything that i've commanded you and baptized them etc etc and 0:15:32 i'm thinking what's going on here matthew what's going on you've got jesus who said look i'm only 0:15:38 sent to the jews and then he's changed his mind i mean what is jesus mission but you're saying 0:15:44 that we're dealing with different levels of history here you're saying the historical jesus 0:15:50 whatever that means uh was restricting his mission to the israelites but the church after paul 0:16:00 in the 80s 90s was largely a gentile organization movement and so you had different levels of 0:16:08 um discourse going on here you have the historical jesus you have the later 0:16:12 gentile church and then you have matthew's community which includes gentiles presumably now 0:16:19 am i am i on the right this is what you're saying a little bit yes but i don't want to make it 0:16:24 i don't want to make it too clearly simply the historical jesus versus 0:16:28 the textual jesus of matthew because i believe that even in matthew there are layers 0:16:34 of meaning um i do believe that the historical jesus saw himself as being only a prophet 0:16:42 to the people of israel i think that he was a disciple of john the baptist i think 0:16:49 he was baptized by john the baptist i think he thought he was inferior to john the baptist um
0:16:58 and yet after john the baptist was arrested and killed jesus comes out of the closet 0:17:07 and starts um speaking more openly well did he did he have a change in his 0:17:15 self-concept i don't know but see that's getting way back into the 0:17:20 undiscoverable historical jesus stuff right but even in matthew there's a tension 0:17:28 um for example matthew i think matthew drew a line between jesus in his ministry in israel 0:17:43 uh which matthew would have included all of palestine including galilee and
0:17:53 and then jesus after his death
0:17:58 and i think that jesus he recognized and i think this is where matthew is probably historically 0:18:03 accurate he recognized that jesus saw himself as being sent only to israel 0:18:13 but matthew's church is a combined church of jews and gentiles 0:18:18 and so he has to believe that somehow jesus's will was to include the gentiles into israel 0:18:27 and i don't mean that he wanted the church to be gentile he wanted the gentiles to become israel 0:18:35 that's why matthew never says unlike paul would say or luke would say or other new testament 0:18:43 rather than say that gentiles don't have to keep the law matthew insisted that everyone in his 0:18:49 church keep the law yeah the gentiles included the same entirely you have to follow the sabbath laws 0:18:56 the kosher food laws and be certain the males be circumcised gently exactly there's not one hint 0:19:04 in any of the gospel of matthew that he believed that gentile believers didn't have to keep the 0:19:12 entire torah how however he understood it now of course in matthew's day there were lots of ways of 0:19:19 interpreting the torah so for example some people said you know you couldn't rub your hands together 0:19:25 with grain on the sabbath that's breaking the sabbath well matthew doesn't believe that uh 0:19:31 some people say you have to wash your hands before you eat or handle matthew doesn't believe that so 0:19:38 he said he has jesus disciples not washing their hands and jesus calls that oh that's just your the 0:19:45 tradition of your elders but nowhere does jesus in matthew say moses said to you and i'm throwing 0:19:57 it out in fact in the center of the mount jesus says moses says to you do not commit adultery
0:20:08 i say to you do not even look at a woman with the intention of committing adultery notice 0:20:15 jesus is not throwing away the anti-adultery commandment he's making it harder to keep 0:20:20 it's intensifying it it's making it more difficult in a way because
0:20:27 intensely personal into the heart rather than just mere external obedience in matthew jesus 0:20:33 internalizes the mosaic law and puts it inside the human being which makes it even harder to keep 0:20:42 right um you might say don't you know don't kill well jesus says in matthew don't even be angry 0:20:54 what do you mean don't be angry how can you not be angry jesus intensifies the torah 0:21:03 in matthew this is totally different from luke and ax and paul totally different so matthew 0:21:14 has a jesus who's completely jewish completely torah observant and yet at the very end he says 0:21:21 go get the gentiles and bring them in but notice he doesn't say they get to stay gentiles they have 0:21:30 to keep the law also now he doesn't say they have to become jews so that's a difference but i don't 0:21:35 know what he would call them he doesn't call them jews but he doesn't call them gentiles if you look 0:21:42 at the word gentile in matthew matthew never uses the word gentile for people in his own community
0:21:52 gentiles are out there
0:21:55 so matthew has this weird view that jesus opened up the church to the nations but he didn't really 0:22:06 open it up to gentiles did he because they have to keep the law also but this is why what you're 0:22:14 saying is so um shocking really to the uninitiated you write on page 99 most christians have been 0:22:21 taught traditionally and at one time or another that christianity represents the supersession the 0:22:28 superseding of judaism the thing that makes jews and christians alike is their worship of the same 0:22:35 god what separates them is that christians need not follow jewish law it surprises people when 0:22:42 they come to realize as modern scholars have done that this is not at all the attitude to the law in 0:22:50 matthew and then you go on which i won't read uh to quote matthew 5 17-20 and you also later 0:22:56 on quote uh matthew 23 verses 1 to 4 which also kind of reinforced the same point this is really 0:23:03 shocking because uh it's a kind of christianity or kind of jewish christianity which we're just 0:23:10 not familiar with today there is no such and paul himself who predates the writing of matthew 0:23:15 arguably would uh intensely disagree with that as well absolutely absolutely and that's why i find 0:23:24 um matthew so amazing i imagine i don't know this because we don't know we can't know this 0:23:34 but i imagine matthew being a gospel that was written for a community living somewhere in 0:23:39 syria which would have been a very semitic place arabic jewish strong strong jewish 0:23:49 community that's one of the birthplaces of later rabbinic judaism 0:23:56 and and his church is a law observant this is so ironic it's a law observant mixed church 0:24:12 this is the you know the young the one of the parables in matthew that's not in any place else 0:24:17 are the parables about the mixture um there's the weeds and the wheat 0:24:24 and how do you keep apart the weeds and the wheat well you can't you just have to 0:24:31 wait for jesus to come and then he'll separate the weeds and the wheat and i think that's the 0:24:38 way he saw his church is a mixture of jews and gentiles that he couldn't separate out
0:24:48 but he wanted the gentiles to be law observant and i believe it's because 0:24:57 he just thought jesus never foresaw that there would be a law free form of the jesus movement 0:25:07 so how would the author of matthew whoever he was have viewed paul's gospel which
0:25:16 a particularly lutheran reading is a law free gospel that it completely rejects the law as 0:25:22 something completely inappropriate and even just in martyr not just ignatius of antioch 0:25:27 i should say the turn of the first century uh you know he said don't follow judy you're not 0:25:32 jews you're christians don't follow this religion this is a really convincing how 0:25:38 would matthew would have viewed paul what as a imposter an apostate a nerdy well a an 0:25:44 an and not a real authentic follower of jesus i guess if that message went well 0:25:50 we know for a fact from other sources there were a whole lot of christians who thought paul was crazy 0:25:57 and wrong and heretical and you know this is not news um 0:26:05 that paul was seen as um heretical uh but it makes perfect sense doesn't it um 0:26:17 the real revolution was in people who came along like paul and like luke
0:26:28 and said you know
0:26:33 this whole thing about the torah that was fine for a time but it's gone it's over
0:26:43 they were the ones who were the red the revolutionaries
0:26:49 matthew did what we should have expected people to do
0:26:55 so his religion his christianity if i can use that word anachronistically his he was a jewish 0:27:02 movement within judaism i guess would have been the normative faith that the original disciples 0:27:09 would have recognized as an expression of their faith but you're saying there was a parallel 0:27:14 movement uh expressed bubble famously by paul and by luke which kind of went off in a different 0:27:20 trajectory and ended up with a different kind of expression of faith law free gentile centered 0:27:28 but centered on the church and this is something else i wanted to mention in 0:27:31 in matthew uniquely in all of the gospels this is a real surprise um to me i'm sure to many people 0:27:40 none of the gospels mentioned jesus founding a church anywhere apart from matthew 0:27:47 and he has jesus found the church in matthew 16 i think it is uh and you found on peter this great 0:27:56 great roman catholic phrase you know you are peter petros the rock and on this rock i will build my 0:28:02 church and the gates of hell will not overcome it wow but for some reason 0:28:09 no one else mentions this never speaks about a church paul doesn't mention the founding 0:28:13 of the church in that way on the rock on peter surprisingly why is matthew mentioning a founding 0:28:20 of the church where does that come from well i think that you have to go back to the greek
0:28:28 church is just a translation of ecclesia which means those who are called out right now 0:28:35 matthew is very very much um centered in the prophets uh he he constructs his narrative 0:28:46 to portray jesus as a prophet who is called out of egypt 0:28:52 um as a prophet like his father joseph joseph is fashioned out of joseph in the hebrew bible
0:29:06 jesus comes out of egypt
0:29:11 so there's so much of the prophets the israel prophets in matthew 0:29:20 and ecclesia doesn't mean church in that sense it means the called ones the set aside ones 0:29:32 the prophetic ones the ones like jeremiah jeremiah and isaiah were called 0:29:42 they weren't christians they were called uh and that's what matthew means i think by ekklesia 0:29:52 is these are the people who are called out of israel as a remnant you know this is a thing 0:30:00 all the way through jewish history there's a theology of the remnant there's you know 0:30:06 the all the people of israel are not holy necessarily uh according to this theology uh only
0:30:17 a remnant of israel is truly holy and that's exactly what matthew believes 0:30:26 but why is this if jesus did this historically why is there no trace of this seemingly anyway 0:30:32 in mark and luke and john there's no none of this calling of a remnant that i can see 0:30:38 well there's not there's not the term ecclesia but i do i would argue that there is remnant 0:30:45 theology in some of the other places too okay um that not all of israel will be saved 0:30:55 that's you know a phrase you find in other places too okay um and so um
0:31:06 i think i don't think you can separate out any of first century judaism
0:31:15 from remnant theology whether you're talking about qumran the dead sea scrolls 0:31:23 um john the baptist what was john the baptist doing he was trying to call out and uh prove their 0:31:34 remnant status by dipping them in water um that's pure remnant theology 0:31:42 but remnant theory is different from the more catholic understanding which where you have the 0:31:46 college of the apostles you have peter of course as the preeminent um uh the premier apostle um 0:31:53 founding a church i mean this is using the word church now as an organization and there are 0:31:58 successors the apostles appoint others who will carry on their ministry after their passing and 0:32:05 they pass on to their successes you have the apostolic succession idea which is there in 0:32:09 the second century um of course um and you seem to be saying that that's not quite what jesus 0:32:15 is the historical so-called historical jesus dude this is ma this is matthew's understanding 0:32:22 perhaps influenced by that later first century uh and is he is he reading back into jesus ministry 0:32:29 that um that more developed understanding perhaps embryonically there in the remnant theology 0:32:34 you mentioned he's he's working it towards a more developed ecclesiology i don't i don't 0:32:42 i would not want to read any of matthew in those second century terms i think the 0:32:49 establishment of uh catholic christianity takes decades and decades and decades to development 0:32:58 to develop when paul when matthew says you are peter and upon this rock i will build my church 0:33:08 i i just resist reading that in later catholic 0:33:13 uh foundational theology i just don't think that's what i don't think it i don't think 0:33:18 number one the historical jesus ever said that number two i don't think that's what matthew meant 0:33:25 i think what matthew meant was this is what i'm gonna found my remnant theology on is on your 0:33:34 confession and that confession being true for other people um and i do believe that matthew 0:33:44 came to believe that jesus was the messiah which i do believe took time to develop
0:33:53 i don't think anybody in the year 30 thought jesus was the messiah uh much less jesus um but it was 0:34:04 a belief that's developed after that to the point it developed quickly i think so that i would place 0:34:13 uh paul's let's call it a conversion he would not call it a conversion because he didn't convert 0:34:19 from one religion to another but his call to be an apostle i think paul that happened in around the 0:34:26 year 34 and i think the death of jesus happened around the year 30 four years is not very long 0:34:36 for this kind of stuff to develop but paul thought that he was called by jesus of nazareth the 0:34:47 messiah hmm so in four years jesus he becomes his name doesn't it becomes jesus christ almost like 0:34:55 his second name uh it's almost the the title sort of takes a change and becomes 0:35:02 it is tight as his name jesus christ yeah we used to joke about him and say you know
0:35:10 h was not jesus's middle name jesus christ you know right can i just tackle one other 0:35:18 thing at the very end of matthew uh we've kind of alluded to already that jesus uh this is after the 0:35:23 resurrection and he commissions the disciples to go into all the world as we've discussed 0:35:28 and then he says go therefore make disciples of one nation baptizing them in the name of 0:35:32 the father and of the son and of the holy spirit and it's that that struck me but when when i read 0:35:40 acts the book of acts by luke which is proposed to be the history of the early earliest church 0:35:45 from the resurrection of jesus onwards i i don't see anyone baptizing them in this three-fold name 0:35:53 and i i don't understand why because i've heard some people say oh well luke doesn't need to 0:35:59 mention all the names he's just abbreviating it to jesus because that's the baptized the name of 0:36:04 jesus but then i think also it's very you know some people say that this is a very developed 0:36:10 theology where the talk of father's son and holy spirit is almost trinitarian if one can use that 0:36:17 term anachronistically perhaps so it seems to be more going on there perhaps than first glance 0:36:24 it's uh it's a it's one of those puzzling verses in the whole bible to me um how could you get 0:36:33 let's say matthew is written around the year 85 yeah yes it's got to be after 70 0:36:41 and it's got to be long enough after that mark has become well known and q has become well known 0:36:49 um so most of us just kind of pick 85 out of the air yeah as a possibility
0:37:02 and i honestly don't understand how you could get what 0:37:09 i interpret i don't interpret the full trinity into that baptizing name of the 0:37:15 father-son holy spirit that would mean that you have to believe that they're all three 0:37:20 unique persons but one manifestation different manifestations of the one god
0:37:29 that's just too complicated 0:37:32 but that's the most trinitarian statement you'll find anywhere in the bible and i find that amazing
0:37:44 i would not want to call it the trinity yet um but it is remarkably trinitarian 0:37:53 it's trinitarian structure but is there could one interpret the words differently say the name of 0:37:58 the father the father is god of course in matthew jesus prays to god um so we have the father is god 0:38:05 the son well what does the sun mean well it can mean lots of things in the psalms it can 0:38:10 mean one thing it can blessed are the peacemakers jesus says in matthew for they should be called 0:38:15 sons of god it doesn't necessarily have to mean a person of the same stature ontology 0:38:21 or uzia the same being as the father and then you have this thing the holy spirit and 0:38:26 that that's why i don't know what he means but it it could be read in a in a binary or even in 0:38:31 a unitarian way without just defaulting to it an embryonic trinitarianism could it not absolutely 0:38:38 in fact that's why i say i i would not want to read into that verse a full trinitarian theology 0:38:46 but simply saying those three terms in the same statement for example why include the spirit there
0:38:58 or why include the sun along with the spirit because in matthew the spirit uh actually plays a 0:39:06 pretty big role you know it's in matthew that the spirit drives him out into the desert um and in 0:39:16 matthew the spirit occupies you know a big place in the beatitudes and in the sermon on the mount
0:39:25 um so you would if i thought about 0:39:32 what you would include baptizing them in the name of the father and the spirit would make more sense
0:39:40 and but then why stick in the sun
0:39:44 um so
0:39:47 i don't want to say that it's trinitarianism 0:39:51 i just want to say that it's the most trinitarian statement we have in the bible
0:39:58 and and why does luke in acts fail to mention that anyone ever baptized them in this triadic 0:40:06 formula even though it's the explicit command of jesus apparently at the end of matthew why 0:40:12 is it never mentioned then obviously i would conclude that in fact it was unknown to luke 0:40:17 or the early church i think so i think probably it was just unknown but um 0:40:25 the spirit occupies a very different role in luke and acts
0:40:31 the spirit is present during the ministry of jesus but if you notice 0:40:40 once jesus disappears from earth the spirit disappears from earth also right 0:40:48 and all the way through the acts of the apostles the spirit is the main actor in fact you know i've 0:40:55 taught this many times the acts of the apostles is mistitled it's not the acts of the apostles it's 0:41:02 if at all the acts of peter and paul but really what it is is the acts of the spirit 0:41:11 but the spirit is never present the spirit is kind of like off stage hollering things onto stage now 0:41:21 paul you go over here to damascus now paul you're going to go over here now uh philip you're going 0:41:26 to go down to the you know river jordan the spirit is like this off stage actor with stage directions 0:41:35 telling people where to go in acts and that's very different from the way the spirit was in 0:41:42 luke so i think the spirit retreats in acts to go behind the scenes i'm not sure why that is um
0:41:57 maybe the author of acts had a run-in with people who were too i don't know in our terms pentecostal 0:42:07 maybe he was wary of people who were claiming to have the spirit 0:42:11 you know right on their lips all the time so speaking in tongues happens what twice
0:42:23 and then it kind of disappears
0:42:27 uh much to the chagrin of pentecostals well it's all it's there in paul i guess the authentic 0:42:34 paul so they can make it up from that but okay the last thing i want to just ask in the light 0:42:39 of what you have written and what you have said about the gospel of matthew it's a jewish gospel 0:42:46 by the way it does have some pretty um alarming things in terms of our own reception of them 0:42:53 today to say about the jews you know um at the crucifixion when the jews bring upon themselves 0:42:59 a curse uh both on that generation and then on their children but given that it's a paradoxically 0:43:05 a torah observant gospel uh that jesus is not abolishing the law he actually says i have not 0:43:12 come to abolish the law in the sermon on the mount although christians have pretended to interpret 0:43:17 the in the opposite way bizarrely it seems if what you're saying is correct historically and it's 0:43:23 certainly the widely accepted scholarly view of what value is this gospel for christians today and 0:43:30 again i'm moving beyond history now in terms of the church the church is given this message is so 0:43:37 uh different shall we say from that of paul the churches seem to have adopted paul as their guide 0:43:42 all the churches that the orthodox the catholic the pentecostals the 0:43:45 episcopalians the baptists they all follow paul seemingly in in this regard about the law 0:43:52 and yet matthew doesn't so is matthew effectively marginalized pretty much completely when 0:43:59 understood correctly in his historical context no no that's exactly uh part of the thing i want to 0:44:05 say about the theological appropriation of matthew matthew forces the church to its jewishness
0:44:17 the church has to be jewish it can't be gentile 0:44:24 it can have gentiles in it and it has to be open to gentiles but when christians
0:44:33 start forgetting that they're jewish that's heresy
0:44:45 and matthew is right there first in the canon to insist that you notice that 0:44:53 so there's genesis at the beginning and then the beginning of the new testament there's matthew 0:45:01 and they both start out in the beginning yeah 0:45:05 in the genesis the same word isn't it in greek in matthew and in the greek translation of genesis 0:45:11 in the beginning the same word and you one thing you haven't talked about but i used to 0:45:16 lecture about a lot was there's different ways to split up matthew formulaically uh one of the 0:45:24 ways scholars have done is say there are five books of matthew there's the sermon on the mount 0:45:33 then there's i can't remember what order they're in but there's the apocalyptic discourses 0:45:40 yeah is it matthew 10 matthew matthew 10 is the sending out of the apostles then matthew 18 or 0:45:50 something like that matthew 23 through 25 is yep you get these five blocks of teaching which kind 0:45:58 of yeah the pentateuch meaning five in green you have five you have five blocks of teaching in 0:46:06 matthew yeah and some people have argued that that's intentionally built on the pentateuch 0:46:15 another way of organizing matthew though i think jack kingsbury was famous for pointing this 0:46:22 out is that you have three sections of matthew that correspond to three journeys right um and 0:46:33 that also takes its uh inspiration from the hebrew bible right um so 0:46:41 people have been very creative and i think in perfectly legitimate ways in 0:46:48 mapping the gospel of matthew onto the hebrew bible
0:46:54 it's like a re-expression of the hebrew bible in greek in the new testament so you 0:47:02 you said see matthew then as a useful reminder to the the church the contemporary church about 0:47:08 its jewishness its jewish heritage its jewish understanding as a way to counter the uh the 0:47:16 vicious anti-semitism that was was endemic in the church for many centuries uh until perhaps 0:47:23 after the second world war with the holocaust and that there's a you know review of that and that's 0:47:30 that's what's highly ironic is that you know as we already mentioned in matthews where you get 0:47:35 that awful awful blood guilt thing upon us and our children me his blood 0:47:43 you know um that's in the gospel of matthew which is the most jewish gospel of all yeah 0:47:52 it's another it's full of paradoxes isn't it this gospel whether it be jew and gentile the the law 0:47:57 uh and uh and it's just so many you said to me that matthew was your favorite gospel and i told 0:48:06 it's not mine in fact i think i think matthew is boring in a lot of places why is matthew 0:48:12 your favorite gospel because to me it provides uh indirectly a root or route back to what i consider 0:48:21 as a non-scholar the historical jesus more clearly than say john does or mark does or luke by that i 0:48:28 mean jesus as a torah observant jew that comes out very clearly in matthew it's not there in 0:48:35 the other gospels anything like the same extent at all um so i i kind of meant that really that that 0:48:42 it and also i like it because it's it shatters paradigms you know as you said in your book you 0:48:48 know we christians have been told we're all told that christianity supersedes judaism jews have the 0:48:55 law but christians have grace and truth and all this matthew messes with that and refutes it big 0:49:02 time and i like it for that because it has that kind of uh shocking reality check so that those 0:49:08 are concerned they come to the reasons from a jewish point of view the law is grace and truth 0:49:15 exactly exactly absolutely it is pure grace uh uh god says that to the prophet so so i i like it for 0:49:23 for uh how challenging it is either it shatters paradigms and also it indicates something really 0:49:29 important about the historical jesus i personally understand him that he is a torah observant jew 0:49:33 which has been lost in virtually all christian discourse in the last 2000 years so i like it 0:49:38 for those kinds of reasons not for any sentimental reasons but because of its uh power to challenge 0:49:44 our inherited ideas about jesus himself well but i mean there are things to add to that i mean um
0:49:55 this there's no better part of the bible than the sermon on the mount
0:50:03 i was going to mention that but you seemed i thought you're going to say you're going to 0:50:06 dismiss that i think it's a marvelous a marvelous sermon as well yeah the lesser of the peacemakers 0:50:14 how can you beat that yeah yeah absolutely um yeah no i i yeah so that's why i look lootcaster
0:50:28 you you asked me to persuade you that was a good reason or good reasons are you persuaded 0:50:33 or you still think matthew is for you it's not my favorite gospel i won't say that but i i 0:50:40 see some very positive parts of it i do believe that uh when it comes to simply quotable quotes 0:50:48 matthew is about the best yeah especially in the king james yes pretty good yeah 0:50:56 good all right well um unless you want to add anything dale i i perhaps draw it to a close there 0:51:01 it's been absolutely as always a fascinating um journey through this these gospels which are much 0:51:08 more than they first seem to the the christian and other reader i think there's much more going 0:51:12 on there historically theologically creatively and uh that sort of makes it fascinating so is 0:51:18 there anything else you want to add before we no that's fine with me perfect um obviously you 0:51:24 are uh most welcome to come back again talk about the next installment which is the gospel of luke 0:51:31 next is is that right or would you prefer to go to your number five with 0:51:35 yeah because there's some really interesting things about luke let's go chronological order 0:51:39 logical order and then we can save the best to last in john all right well thank 0:51:44 you so much sir and uh the best for last means thomas right of course there are five gospels
0:51:54 if you don't want to look gospel thomas is a seriously interesting it's not a gospel it's 0:51:59 a series of sayings but there's some very strange weird stuff going on in the gospels
0:52:07 but nevertheless some very early stuff as well anyway that's 0:52:10 another time all right well thank you so much sir and uh until next time all right talk to you later