Why Did Matthew Get the Shema Wrong? a Study of Matthew 22:37

Abstract

(ProQuest Information and Learning: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) (ProQuest Information and Learning: ... denotes formula omitted.) In his influential article Gentile Bias in Kenneth W. Clark argues not only that the primary orientation of the Gospel is to demonstrate that Gentiles have displaced Jews in the divine salvific plan but, moreover, that such a claim could have originated only from an author who was himself a Genile.1 This identification of the author's background stood in opposition to the universal consensus of Clark's day that Matthew was a converted Jew. However, Clark argued that the thesis of Gentile authorship aligned with the Matthean heilsgeschichtliche scheme, which was understood as depicting the transference of divine favor from the Jewish people to Gentiles who accepted the kerygma centered on Jesus. From this perspective Clark argued: The Matthean picture of judgment and rejection is not presented as a warning to Judaism to repent. The author believes that the warning has already been sufficient, and penitence is no longer to be expected. Judaism as such has definitely rejected Jesus as God's Messiah, and God has finally rejected Judaism. This Gentile bias is the primary thesis in Matthew, and such a message would be natural only from the bias of a Gentile author.2 The paradigm shift involved in Clark s thesis is illustrated by W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison's table Opinions on the Authorship of Matthew,3 which traces scholarly views on the authorship of the Gospel from the work of H. J. Holtzmann in 1886 onward. It is possible to see in the table the monolithic view that the author was a Jewish Christian.4 Not until the appearance of Clark's article was this consensus challenged in the modern era.5 Clark's thesis concerning the Gentile authorship of the first Gospel has never seriously threatened to displace the majority view that the author was a Jewish Christian, or the more recent notion that the author was a self-conscious Jew with messianic beliefs;6 nonetheless, after the appearance of his provocative paper there has been a small minority of scholars attracted to this position. A number of these scholars have basically reiterated Clark's arguments, which include the supposed final rejection of Israel contained in Matthew's Gospel, other statements in the first Gospel that are perceived to be incompatible with Jewish authorship,7 and also the judgment that the author lacked facility with Aramaic.8 Others, however, have attempted to strengthen Clark's case by looking for additional material in the first Gospel that could be seen as reflecting non-Jewish authorship. John P. Meier has advanced some exegetical points that he takes as reflecting the composition of the Gospel by a Gentile hand. First, he sees the misreading of the synonymous parallelism contained in Zech 9:9, which results in the description of two animals in Matt 21:2, 7 and the ludicrous depiction of Jesus mounted on both (presumably simultaneously!) as the product of an author with no sensitivity to the nuances of the poetic nature of the underlying Hebrew text. Meier comments on the way in which Matthew depicts Jesus' literal fulfillment of the Zechariah citation. ... [Matthew] does so because he understands the text to speak of two separate animals, not the one animal which in fact is mentioned twice because of the Hebrew parallelism. Such a misreading of the intent of the OT text is hardly understandable if the writer is an intelligent, well educated Jew (the supposed converted rabbi of the school of Johanan ben Zakkai!).9 However, the tendentious reference to ben Zakkai aside, this argument is effectively countered by Davies and Allison. They note that rabbinic texts contain numerous tendentious renderings of Scripture which ignore the rules of poetry in favor of excessively literal interpretation . . . [and] some rabbis found two animals in Zech 9. …