Processing Scripture: Psalm 22 in Matthew, John, and Barnabas

Abstract

Perhaps the most impressive religious innovation of the Jewish followers of Jesus was their idea that Jesus, a person who had suffered and died on a cross, was God’s eschatological agent. Therefore, such an idea required scriptural proof. Obvious Old Testament passages serve to legitimate this idea. The best-known of these is Psalm 22. In this paper, the use of Psalm 22 is compared in the Gospels of Matthew and John and in the Epistle of Barnabas. Since tradition has, so to speak, been solidified here in the relatively fixed authoritative text of Scripture, we can compare the processed text of the Psalm with the original text used by these early Christian authors and we can study the interpretations they give to the Psalm. The use of Psalm 22 by Matthew, John, and Barnabas shows how processing one’s context and processing one’s tradition go hand in hand.