Abstract
Analysis of 22 references to scribes in the Gospel of Matthew shows that a few of them are positive comments and that the author himself was a scribe. What type of scribe was he and how can we clarify his social context? By means of the models of Lenski and Kautsky, by recent research about scribes, literacy, and power, and by new marginality theory, this article extensively refines Saldarini’s hypothesis that the scribes were “retainers”. The thesis is that in “Matthew’s” Christ-believing group, his scribal profession and literacy meant power and socio-religious status. Yet, his voluntary association with Christ believers (“ideological marginality”), many of whom could not participate in social roles expected of them (“structural marginality”), led to his living between two historical traditions, languages, political loyalties, moral codes, social rankings, and ideological-religious sympathies (“cultural marginality”). The Matthean author’s cultural marginality will help to clarify certain well-known literary tensions in the Gospel of Matthew.
Highlights
In 1993 I published a paper titled “Matthew and Marginality” in the SBL Seminar Papers (Duling 1993b); two years later, it appeared with minor revisions in Hervormde Teologiese Studies (Duling 1995b)
I wanted to fill this lacuna for New Testament scholars
At the end of the article I suggested that the Matthean author was a scribe who freely associated with a Jesus Messianic group (2: voluntary marginality)
Summary
In 1993 I published a paper titled “Matthew and Marginality” in the SBL Seminar Papers (Duling 1993b); two years later, it appeared with minor revisions in Hervormde Teologiese Studies (Duling 1995b). With Gerhard Lenski‟s macrosocial model of an advanced agrarian society and models of small groups a backdrop (Lenski 1966; Lenski and Lenski 1987), I developed three senses of term and conceptuality of “marginality”: involuntary marginality, the most familiar meaning of marginality, which included artisans, the poor and dispossessed, and the unclean, and those at any level of the social structure who according to commonly accepted criteria were denied the opportunity to participate in roles expected of them (Germani 1980); voluntary marginality, applied the individuals and groups who choose “outsiderhood,” that is, to not live according to commonly accepted norms, beliefs, and behaviors of the larger society (Victor Turner 1969); and “Marginal Man,” an individual who, because of birth, migration, or conquest is “doomed” to live between two or more competing normative schemes, that is, two or more historic traditions, languages, political loyalties, moral codes, or religions” (Stonequist 1937; developed from Park 1928; 1931) This concept, typified by the experience of “in between-ness”, was historically the basis for the other analytical conceptions of marginality. I want to refine my view that the Matthean author was a marginal scribe in a marginal group in an advanced agrarian society
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