Social Science and the Christian Scriptures, Volume 2: Sociological Introductions and New Translation

By Anthony J. Blasi

Sociologist Anthony Blasi analyzes early Christianity using multiple social scientific theories, including those of Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Max Scheler, Alfred Schutz, and contemporary theorists. He investigates the canonical New Testament books as representative of early Christianity, a sample based on usage, and he takes the books in the chronological order in which they were written. The result is a series of "stills" that depict the movement at different stages in its development. His approaches, often neglected in New Testament studies, include such sociological subfields as sect theory, the routinization of charisma, conflict, stratification theory, stigma, the sociology of knowledge, new religions, the sociology of secrecy, marginality, liminality, syncretism, the social role of intellectuals, the poor person as a type, the sick role, degradation ceremonies, populism, the sociology of migration, the sociology of time, mergers, the sociology of law, and the sociology of written communication. Needing to treat the New Testament text as social data, Blasi uses his background in biblical studies and a review of a vast literature to establish the chronology of the compositions of the New Testament books and to present the "data" in a new translation that is accessible to non-specialists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Apr 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532615108

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Social Science and the Christian Scriptures

Sociological Introductions and New Translation,

Volume 2

Anthony J. Blasi

48118.png

Social Science and the Christian Scriptures

Sociological Introductions and New Translation, Volume 2

Copyright © 2017 Anthony J. Blasi. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Scripture quotations from the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament cases that take up translation per se are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, ©

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

Chapter 11: The Gospel of Matthew

Introduction

Parallels in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas

Marginal Social Status of the Matthean Community

The Q Community

Genealogy and Lineage

Scribal Communities

English Translation

Gospel of Matthew

Chapter 12: uke’s History of Christianity: Part I. The Gospel

Introduction

Social World

Genealogy

Lukan Themes

Parallels in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas

English Translation

Gospel of Luke

Chapter 13: Luke’s History of Christianity: Part II. The Acts of the Apostles

Introduction

Missions and Missionaries

The Place of Women in the Early Christian Movement

The Acts of the Apostles and the Jews

Liminality

Microsociology

English Translation

Acts of the Apostles

Chapter 14: Interpolations in the Paulines

Introduction

English Translations

Interpolation on Love (1 Corinthians 12.31b—14.1a)

A Doxology (Romans 16.25–27)

Chapter 15: Pseudepigraphic Letter to the Colossians

Introduction

Oikos

Syncretism

English Translation

Pseudepigraphic Letter to the Colossians

Chapter 16: Pseudepigraphic Letter to the Ephesians

Introduction

Intellectuals

Change in Christian Leadership Structure

English Translation

Pseudepigraphic Letter to the Ephesians

References

Preface

Volume 1 covered the canonical Christian literature from the letters of Paul of Tarsus to the Gospel of Mark, from about the early fifties CE to about seventy CE. The present volume resumes the chronological sequence, beginning with the Gospel of Matthew and continuing through the Pseudepigraphic Letter to the Ephesians. This part of the chronology falls in the eighties CE. Volume 3 will begin with works that were likely written in the late eighties or in the nineties CE.

Chapter 11

The Gospel of Matthew

Introduction

There is no solid evidence concerning who wrote the Gospel of Matthew and little information about where or when it was written.¹ The earliest copies bear no title; consequently we cannot take seriously the name Matthew in the later title, which translates literally as Good News According to Matthew. Eusebius of Caesarea (ca 260/265–339/340) quotes Papias (ca 155) as saying Matthew collected the sayings of Jesus in the Hebrew dialect but that each interpreted or translated them as they were able.² He also quotes Irenaeus (130–202) as saying that Matthew published a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect.³ And he writes that Bartholomew brought what Matthew had written in Hebrew letters, to India.⁴ Finally he quotes Origen Adamantius (184/185–253/254 CE) as saying Matthew wrote the first gospel in Hebrew.⁵ A superficial reading of the traditions that Eusebius preserved can lead to a straightforward conclusion: Matthew wrote a gospel in Hebrew, the gospel that appears first in codices (hand-written pages bound in book-like covers) and in modern printed Bibles. However, there are serious problems with such a statement. The Greek Gospel of Matthew was not the first gospel chronologically; we know that much because it used the Gospel of Mark as a source, often taking over Mark’s Greek vocabulary. Moreover, it shares extensive Greek textual material with the Gospel of Luke; literary critics generally agree that Matthew and Luke both used Mark and another Greek-language source, by convention called Q (from German for source, Quelle), that consists of close parallels between Matthew and Luke that are not dependent on Mark.⁶ Our Matthew was written in Greek. Consequently, we cannot be confident that the author of the gospel we call the Gospel of Matthew was the Matthew, presumably one of the twelve associates of Jesus, who reportedly wrote a gospel in Hebrew. Irenaeus, Origen, and Eusebius assumed it was one and the same gospel and one and the same author.

Another problem with a superficial reading of the traditions preserved by Eusebius is that our Gospel of Matthew takes over from the Gospel of Mark a narrative biography of Jesus, while Papias spoke of sayings. It is tempting to conclude that the saying source used by our Matthew and by Luke consisted of the sayings Papias said Matthew wrote, but Q was clearly in Greek, because Matthew and Luke reproduce identical sections of it word-for-word in Greek. Did our Matthew and Luke use the same Greek translation of what the Matthew of Papias wrote in Hebrew? Such is at best speculation and would involve something of a coincidence. It is best to accept Q and the Gospel of Matthew as anonymously-authored works. It is interesting, however, to follow up on the tradition that Bartholomew brought the gospel to India that Matthew had written in Hebrew letters. What is significant is that Eusebius reports that Matthew wrote the gospel in Hebrew letters. That it was Matthew who wrote it is what was of interest to the ancients; they were interested in an apostolic provenance of a gospel they accepted into the Christian canon. That it was reported to have been written in the Hebrew alphabet is of potential importance here.

By analogy, we might consider modern scholars who often transliterate Hebrew and Greek into the Roman alphabet. To do otherwise could be quite inconvenient: When the older people among us used typewriters, we had to leave a blank and fill in Hebrew or Greek characters by hand, or perhaps transfer the typed page to a Greek or Hebrew typewriter. With the later models of electric typewriter, it was possible to change the typing element to a Greek or Hebrew one. It was particularly awkward to do that with Hebrew, however, since one had to situate the letters backward (right to left). We might assume that an ancient writer, accustomed to writing right to left in the Hebrew alphabet, would write out Greek words phonetically in Hebrew letters. This could have been done by our Matthew and by a scribe making a copy of what our Matthew wrote.⁷ Insisting upon using one alphabet rather than another may also be an ethnic statement.

The prevailing view about the composition of Matthew is that it was written late in the first century CE somewhere in Palestine or Syria. The author used Semitic Greek, the language of the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible.⁸ It had Semitisms but was better than Paul’s translation Greek, the Greek of someone for whom Greek was a second language that corresponded to thoughts formulated in a first language.⁹ The audience seemed to be largely Jewish in composition, Greek-speaking, and open to gentiles. Through much of the gospel, Matthew depicts Jesus as limiting his ministry to the Jewish nation, but the risen Christ sends his followers on a mission to all nations.¹⁰ Schuyler Brown cites Matthew 10:23 as an indicator of a Palestinian Jewish background (But when they persecute you in one city, flee to another; for amen I say to you, you will not exhaust the cities of Israel until the human son comes.); he suggests that the missionary impulse to the gentiles was a post-70 development.¹¹ Daniel Harrington suggests that Antioch on the Orontes, Damascus, and Edessa were likely settings for such a group in the late first century.¹² The reason Harrington and most other scholars believe the audience was largely Jewish in ethnicity is that Matthew does not translate terms from Aramaic and understands Christian Jews as upholding Torah practices. Matthew also deletes material from the Gospel of Mark that depicts Jewish Christians in a negative light—e.g., Mark’s report that Jesus’ family thought he was possessed.¹³ L. Michael White observes that the Matthean community, as he and others call the intended audience, looks to the Galilean ministry of Jesus for its roots, but Lower Galilee is referred to as a distant place. He thus speaks of the Syro-Phoenecian region, with its mixed Jewish and gentile population and its mixed village and urban setting, as a symbol of its own situation.¹⁴ Alan F. Segal speaks of a setting where there were many Jewish movements, some of them critical of the Pharisaic school. The Matthean community would be part of one such movement.¹⁵ Matthew upholds the primacy of the law, but denies the Pharisees’ prerogative of interpreting it definitively.¹⁶ The Gospel of Matthew depicts Peter, a moderate concerning Torah, more favorably than do Mark and Luke.¹⁷

The author of the Gospel of Matthew, as noted above, used at least two sources: Mark and Q. Consequently, inferences about the place of composition and the intended audience need to be made from what Matthew does not take over from Mark but deletes, and what he does not take over from Q but, again, leaves out. Establishing what he leaves out is easier for Mark than for Q, since we have the full text of Mark. Because Q is the textual material common to Matthew and Luke, it is necessary to hypothesize what wording in Luke is Q material but not present in Matthew. I will not attempt that here; rather I will simply indicate in the translation of Matthew below what is Markan material and what is definitely Q material (i.e., non-Markan material found in both Matthew and Luke). In addition to the Markan and Q material, there is additional text in Matthew that by convention is termed M material. In older commentaries, the description of this material that has no parallels is that it comes from a document that, like Q, is not extant. Such a view was the result of a view that Matthew and the other evangelists were mere editors of received source material. A more recent view of them is that they were creative theologians. This latter view leaves the nature of the M material open. Some of it may be Q material that Luke did not use. Some of it may be the creation of Matthew. Some of it may be otherwise unattached legends and reports.¹⁸ J. Smit Sibinga makes a case that Ignatius of Antioch did not cite Matthew for the legend of the magi visiting the infant Jesus, as is sometimes argued, but used such pre-Matthean M material.¹⁹

Schuyler Brown observes that while Matthew does not mention the Christians being excommunicated from synagogues, Luke does.²⁰ When such an excommunication had been formalized is unclear, but Brown infers that it occurred between the composition of Matthew and the composition of Luke.²¹ If that was the case, maintaining a Jewish identity would be easier at the time and place of Matthew than at the time and place of Luke. Brown suggests that the circumcision of converts was not an issue in the Matthean community; they were circumcised. The issue facing the community was whether to actively missionize gentiles.²² Interestingly, while Peter is generally presented as an authority for Matthew and his community, the eleven disciples as a group rather than Peter alone are the authority for the gentile mission.²³

Many make the assumption that Antioch on the Orontes, or its environs, was the locale in which the Gospel of Matthew was composed because it was a large city in the region, because it had an established Christian community, and because Ignatius of Antioch cited Matthean or Matthean-like material.²⁴ Robert H. Gundry would eliminate Antioch as a likely place of composition because the Christian culture reflected in Matthew is so Jewish and that reflected in Ignatius is so un-Jewish.²⁵ H. Dixon Slingerland provided the only hard evidence about the geographical provenance of Matthew many years ago: Matthew 19:2 locates the author and audience east of the Jordan River.

And it happened when Jesus completed this discourse, he departed from Galilee and went to the regions of Judea beyond the Jordan.²⁶

For Judea to be beyond the Jordan, the author and audience have to be on the other side of the Jordan from Judea, which would be east of the river. Matthew places Galilee beyond the Jordan too, when he makes a change in an Isaian passage where he uses a composite of Septuagint and Masoretic Text information.

There is external evidence for a Christian presence in the Transjordan. L.E. Elliott-Binns cites Eusebius, who reports Judean Christians fleeing to Pella, east of the Jordan, at the time of the Jewish War and Roman invasion. Pella had been sacked by the Judeans in 66 and was therefore, Elliott-Binns presumes, no longer a gentile city. Pella was in Peraea, a region east of the Jordan through which Judeans and Galileans traveled to one another’s territory in order to avoid going through Samaria.²⁷ The report by Eusebius reads as follows:

On the other hand, the people of the church in Jerusalem were commanded by an oracle given by revelation before the war to those in the city who were worthy of it to depart and dwell in one of the cities of Perea which they called Pella. To it those who believed in Christ migrated from Jerusalem. . . . ²⁸

It sounds like an exercise in prophecy predicted the destruction of Jerusalem. However, if we recall that Christians faced hostility in Jerusalem, a Christian community there could have obeyed a prophecy that was inspired by a present circumstance, and later in hindsight it would be interpreted in light of the Jewish War and Roman invasion.

How did Matthew and his community obtain the Gospel of Mark, which circulated in Rome, if they were somewhere east of the Jordan River? It is important to place the region east of the Jordan into its political and economic context. The region was Nabataean territory; the Nabataeans were, historically, a trading people, with Petra, south of the Dead Sea, as their capital. They were generally successful in maintaining some autonomy from the various empires that were hegemonic in the region over the centuries. As a naval power in the Red Sea, the Nabataeans foiled the plans of Antony and Cleopatra to escape Octavian (later Caesar Augustus) by sea to India. Consequently, they were officially allies of the Empire, gaining great profits by selling Yemeni incense to the Romans. Caesar Augustus sent an army to conquer Yemen, but their Nabataean guide, later chief minister of the Nabataean kingdom, led them through deserts and hostile tribes, so that the greater part of the Roman force was lost to sickness. By the time the Romans realized what had befallen them, little could be done. In response, the Idumaean, Herod, rather than the Nabataean King Obodas III, was given control of Judea and other areas, but the Nabataeans still controlled the trade in incense. An inconsequential war between Herod and the Nabataeans broke out in 9 BCE. A new Nabataean king, Aretus IV (9 BCE–40 CE) was astute enough to join the Roman conquest of the Jews; he made peace with the Herodian dynasty by marrying off his daughter, Phasaelis, to Herod Antipas, whom the Romans made tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea. Aretus IV championed Hellenistic culture and architecture in his kingdom; artifacts from his reign attract tourists today. Herod Antipas pursued a similar policy in Galilee, begun earlier by Herod the Great; among other things he built Tiberias on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Because of his own intrigues in Roman politics, Herod Antipas fell out of favor and was replaced in 39 CE by Herod Agrippa. Meanwhile, Herod Antipas had divorced Phasaelis to marry his brother Philip’s wife, Herodias. (Evidently, Philip was glad to be rid of her.) But Aretas swore revenge and invaded Antipas’ territory and even captured part of the West Bank of the Jordan. It will be recalled that Aretas controlled Damascus too, for Paul escaped the guards of the governor there under the king around 39 CE.²⁹ Aretus died in 40 CE, and the next Nabataean king, Malichus II (40–46 CE) assisted the Romans in the Jewish War. Little is known about the next king after Malichus II, Rabbel II (70–106 CE), who ascended the throne as a minor. What is important is that the former Nabataean Empire became a Roman province in 106 CE, evidently by agreement. Coins minted during the time of the Roman Emperor Trajan read Arabia adquesta, Aquired Arabia, rather than Conquered Arabia. Archaeological finds indicate that there was a great deal of trade between Nabataea and Rome to the west, and Nabataea and points east as far as China. Multitudes of merchants were travelling between Rome and Nabataea during the later first century and after.³⁰ Consequently it is not surprising that a document of Roman provenance, such as the Gospel of Mark, would find its way to the Nabataean region.

Harry and Paul Eberts argue that the Gospel of Matthew was the gospel of the Brothers, a Christian faction that emerged early on in Jerusalem. The fact that both Matthew and the Brothers were concerned with the observance of Torah argues for their theory. However, we do not know how salient identification with the early factions was after the destruction of Jerusalem, and geographically the gospel does not seem to have emerged in Alexandria, as proposed by Eberts and Eberts, but rather some locale east of the Jordan. ³¹

Parallels in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas

Two brothers in the Naj’ Hammādi region of Upper Egypt, transporting fertilizer by camel, came upon a large jar of ancient volumes in 1946. One of them brought the volumes home. The brothers had been involved in tribal violence, and their home was frequently searched for weapons. So the volumes were given to a Coptic priest for safe-keeping, and his brother-in-law sold them to the Department of Antiquities. They are now in the Coptic Museum in Cairo. Most of the volumes have been characterized as Coptic translations of Greek gnostic works.³² The Gospel of Thomas was one of the works found in this Nag Hammadi library. Unlike the other works, it is not particularly gnostic, and it may not have been originally written in Greek. Greek fragments paralleling it turned up elsewhere (among the Oxyrhynchus papyri), but these fragments are not necessarily earlier versions of the Coptic texts they resemble.

This gospel is a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus, something similar to what Q might have been.³³ It is a mixed bag, containing Coptic translations of some very old Jesus sayings that are independent of Q and the canonical gospel versions of them, but also containing sayings that have a later origin. Some of the earlier sayings contain additional material introduced into their text, evincing a contemplative and anti-materialist slant. April D. DeConick believes this gospel did not have one author or redactor but a number of them over centuries, each meeting the demands of a different communal situation. She refers to a rolling corpus model of the gospel’s development. She refers to the older sayings as kernel sayings, and she notes that over half of the kernel sayings have Q parallels while none of the non-kernal sayings are paralleled in Q. Moreover, her analysis comes to the conclusion that neither the Thomas kernel sayings nor Q are dependent on one another. Some of the later sayings in Thomas, however, may be dependent on the canonical gospels.³⁴

In the translation of Matthew below, and in the translation of Luke, I will put the parallels from Thomas in footnotes; in doing so I will not include those parallels that DeConick concludes were influenced by the canonical gospels but instead include only the kernel sayings. The reader should understand them as versions of the Jesus sayings that reflect social contexts other than that of Matthew (or, in the chapter on the Gospel of Luke, a social context other than that of Luke); one may see the differences between the canonical versions and the Thomas versions as potential indicators of the nature of the Matthean (or Lucan) contexts. For example, Matthew 9:37–38 includes the familiar saying, The harvest is great but the workers few; so ask the lord of the harvest that he send out workers into his harvest. Matthew places the saying in the narrative context of the calling of the Twelve, beginning with the calling of Peter. Logion 73 of the Gospel of Thomas has essentially the same saying, but without any context. Since all the Thomas logia lack any real literary context, a comparison of the two does not point to anything about the social context of the Gospel of Thomas, but it does reveal a concern with the organization of Christian leadership on the part of the Matthew and on the part of the audience for the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of Luke similarly associates the saying with a call of Christian leaders, but rather than the calling of the Twelve, generally thought to be a Jewish Christian leadership group, it is the call of the Seventy-Two (Luke 10), part of a doublet in the Gospel of Luke referring to a gentile Christian leadership.

As is well known, Matthew says Blessed are the poor in spirit, while Luke says Blessed are you poor.³⁵ Thomas Logion 54 reads, Blessed are the poor, which suggests that the qualifier in spirit came from Matthew. This would lead one to think Matthew and the audience of the Gospel of Matthew were not particularly poor. A similar reading of parallels suggests Matthew and his audience were concerned with presenting their Christian teachings quite publicly despite opposition and persecution (Matthew 5:15 and Thomas logion 33b about not hiding a lamp; Matthew 10:16 and Thomas logion 39c about becoming as cunning as a snake and innocent as a dove; and Matthew 10:27 and Thomas logion 33 about preaching from the housetop). In particular, Matthew’s use of the sayings suggests competition with Pharisees.³⁶

Marginal Social Status of the Matthean Community

The Matthean community appears to be urban and relatively well-off. Matthew talks about larger denominations of money than do Mark and Luke. For example, where Mark has Jesus telling the disciples to take no copper coins with them, Matthew has him telling them to take neither gold, nor silver, nor copper coin.³⁷ Robert H. Smith points out that Matthew’s concern with genealogy is typically an upper status concern. Matthew presumes on the part of his audience knowledge about debt and credit. He encourages his audience to be generous, which presumes they are in a position to be generous. His work is a literary piece that its audience would appreciate.³⁸ To be relatively well-off in terms of material security and cultural capital is not the same thing, however, as having high social status in terms of rank or family prestige. As noted in the chapter on the first letters of Paul to the Corinthians, sociologists since Max Weber differentiate three pure types of stratification: class, based on property; status based on prestige, and party based on power. Inequality in life chances in the modern world is class inequality. Inequality based on race, estate, or lineage is status group inequality. Inequality based on connections in a totalitarian state is party inequality. Viewed from this perspective, the relative material security of the Matthean community would indicate a community’s class, and the concern about genealogy—if in fact it indicates anything in terms of social standing—would express an ethnic identity.³⁹

Warren Carter has developed the interesting depiction of the Matthean community as a marginal community:

I suggest that the gospel legitimates a marginal identity and way of life for the community of disciples.⁴⁰

My thesis is that the gospel calls its audience to such an existence. It offers the audience a vision of life as voluntary marginal, confirms and strengthens those who already embrace such an existence, and challenges them and others to greater faithfulness.⁴¹

Carter begins his analysis of marginality with Robert Ezra Park’s famous essay on migration and the marginal man.⁴² Park, citing earlier sociologists’ observations about catastrophes in history, suggested that migrations that result from catastrophes engender contacts and collisions between cultures. The traditional organization of society—both that of the host society and that of the migrants—breaks down, with a resultant emancipation of the individual man from custom and tradition. Park cites Georg Simmel’s essay on the stranger, based on, Park suggests, Simmel’s own life as a European Jew.⁴³ Simmel did not migrate, but he was a good example of a marginal man—deeply involved in European music, philosophy, and social science, but ethnically disqualified from any major academic appointment. Park may have been blind to a more permanent kind of marginality; Mary Jo Deegan points out that Park depicted a marginal man, and that the deep involvement in the world from a position of relative marginality had been a millennial-long situation of women.⁴⁴ In applying the concept of marginality to the Matthean community, Carter emphasizes voluntary marginality, wherein one cultivates being in both of two alternative cultures yet maintains a stance of difference from both, combined with an orientation toward an alternative existence. The context of the Roman Empire may make marginality involuntary, but marginal people can overcome the involuntariness in a sense by cultivating their alternative lifeway.

I have elsewhere suggested that marginality is a social position in which religion can thrive. Religion, particularly of the Abrahamic type, maintains an inherent ironic tension between a predisposition, developed in early life, to see reality as ultimately nurturing, and an adult collective doubt about the claims of this world. Religious faith entails both belief and doubt; it knows of both providence and want.⁴⁵ The Matthean community was Jewish, clearly oriented to an Abrahamic religiosity. It experienced the socio-political world of the Roman Imperial context, either in its pre- or in a post-migration setting. As relatively prosperous people, likely engaged in economic activity other than farming, its members had experience of the world, but they did not, or could not, identify with that world. They had feet in two worlds and sought coherence in an alternative one.

The Q Community

If the existence of the Gospel of Matthew implies an author and an audience who are members of a community, it can also be argued that there must have been a community associated with the Q material that Matthew and Luke incorporated into their respective gospels. This, of course, depends on Q being a literary work, not a miscellany of textual materials that Matthew and Luke happened to come upon at random. In his magisterial treatise on Q, John Kloppenborg Verbin maintains that it is indeed a literary document. He points to near-verbatim agreements between Matthew and Luke in some double tradition pericopae, to significant sequence agreement between Matthew and Luke in the double tradition material, and to the use by Matthew and Luke of the same unusual phrases or words.⁴⁶ The Q material has recurring motifs—a coming judgment, the story of Lot wherein Sodom was destroyed not because of sexual sin but because of arrogance and inhospitality, the Deuteronomist theology with a repetitive cycle of sin, prophetic calls to repentance that are ignored, and divine punishment.⁴⁷ The existence of a document, however, does not imply as much fixity as a modern print publication would. Ancient documents had no spaces or punctuation between words. A reader had to sound out a text, perform it in the way a modern musician would perform a score. The phrasing and emphases had to be enacted. Thus the same text would result in different interpretations when people made efforts to reproduce them.⁴⁸ Matthew and Luke could consequently understand and use the same text in different ways. There are also subcollections of sayings within Q that are characterized by different motifs. The subcollections differ in their purposes, implied audiences, and modes of rhetoric. Consequently there was a complex compositional history behind Q, but that history is not readily ascertained.⁴⁹ The speaker in Q is neither a prophet nor a visionary who conveyed secrets. Rather the speaker accomplishes intended effects through the skillful use of words: maxims, admonitions, and arguments. Kloppenborg Verbin characterizes the genre of Q as instruction; he speaks of a bios of a teacher form of literary genre. In this case the teacher whose life is presented is Jesus.⁵⁰

In searching for the social position of the Q community, Kloppenborg Verbin must rely on the literary quality of the Q document. The writing was skilled, but its lack of sophisticated organization suggests to him that the community members were not from the upper reaches of the scribal establishment.⁵¹ In separating out several layers of redaction in Q, he labels the earliest Q.¹ He observes concerning Q,¹ If one asks, who would be in a position to frame the Sayings Gospel as it has been framed, the answer would appear to be village and town notaries and scribes.⁵² The references are generally to the concerns of small land holders and hand workers. Coin references are to small denominations. The cultural context is Israel, but there is no resort to Torah, Temple, or priests.⁵³ The next stage, Q,² adds some sayings in defense of the Q¹ material and changes the rhetoric with woes, warnings,⁵⁴ and prophetic accusation, but the only indication of a change in provenance comes from references to things typical of larger cities. Here one finds, for example, a critique of riches.⁵⁵ Only in the final form of Q does he find citations of Torah. The framers of Q are scribes to be sure, but their interests and inclinations do not coincide with the scribes and literati of Jerusalem. Nor do they appear to be very high on the social ladder. . . . ⁵⁶

It would be useful to know the geographical provenance of Q, so that other information about the location could be used in developing a sociologically-informed description. Kloppenborg Verbin notes that Q pays considerable attention to Capernaum and to Pharisees, and he suggests that this could be used to argue for Lower Galilee as a location of composition. He concedes, however, that this is far from definitive, though when collaborating with others ten years earlier he argued for such a provenance.⁵⁷ He examines the material in Matthew 17:4, where Peter is asked about the Temple tax. Galileans generally did not need to comply with that tax; so he suggests that the question presupposed the Galilean non-compliance.⁵⁸ I think it is equally plausible that the question would arise where people were in fact under pressure to pay the tax. Kloppenborg Verbin also finds other features of Q that are consistent with a Galilean setting: an Israeli audience, ambivalence over the Temple and Judean Torah, acceptance of circumcision, Sabbath observance, some dietary restrictions, controverting purity distinctions, tithing, the role of Jerusalem and the Temple in the economy, and a critique of monetization of the economy and of urbanization. While there are negative references to Tyre and Jerusalem, he concedes that no mention is made of Tiberias or Sepphoris.⁵⁹ I think that Kloppenborg Verbin has chosen his words well; all this is consistent with a Galilean setting; however, none of it is definitive. There are many locales with which these features would be consistent. Moreover, the simple historical fact that Jesus’ ministry centered in lower Galilee would result in some Galilean references appearing in the material.⁶⁰

Nicholas Taylor argues that Q may not have originated as a document; some scholars detect a rhythm in its Greek that suggests oral delivery in that language. More importantly, it was recited or written in Greek; he argues that the language of Galilee was Aramaic, not Greek. Among the common people, Greek was limited to commerce. Taylor also argues that village scribes would not have the skills to produce Q. They were instruments of governance and business from outside their villages, not interpreters of local culture. For whom, he asks, would a village scribe write Q? Galilee was an oral society. One would put the Q material into written form to facilitate its diffusion elsewhere, not in Galilee. A place like Capernaum that was a location for Jesus’ ministry would have no lack of orally transmitted information about Jesus. Taylor also maintains that the mission charge in Q presupposes distant travel to all nations. Q reflects conflict with the Jerusalem authorities and elites, and it expresses an openness to gentiles. Those features should be the beginning of any geographical location for its composition. Finally, he argues, the theology of Q does not require a Galilean provenance.⁶¹ In a December 7, 2013 communication to me, Taylor gave the example of the Hellenists in the Jerusalem Christian community as one that would have required a tradition of Jesus’ teaching rendered into Greek. Consequently, the geographical provenance of Q remains open.

Bradley W. Root has conducted a review of Galilean archaeological evidence, references to Galilee by Josephus, and evidence from the gospels. Concerning the language(s) of Galilee, he notes that archaeological remains point to a knowledge of Greek only on the part of the aristocracy in the larger region, including Judea and Galilee. The common spoken language was Aramaic. In Galilee, there were three subcultural areas: Upper Galilee was the most rural and least Hellenized. Lower Galilee was slightly more urban and Hellenized. Lakeside Galilee was the most urban and Hellenized. Among Jesus’ disciples, Andrew and Philip had Greek names and were from Bethsaida, on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee.⁶² In the Johannine Gospel they mediate between a group of Greek-speakers and Jesus.⁶³ Thus some Greek-speakers were to be found in the Jesus movement early on, though they were not necessarily gentiles. So while we may infer that some followers in a part of Galilee may have been responsible for Q, Root does not believe that a definitive statement on the matter would be justified. He leans more toward Taylor’s view than Kloppenborg Verbin’s, but in agreement with both he sees the matter as an open question.⁶⁴

Genealogy and Lineage

The Gospel of Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus through his legal father, Joseph. In fact, the genealogy highlights Joseph, who, in the manner of his namesake from the patriarchal narrative in the Hebrew Bible, serves as a type: the wisdom-endowed refugee who can draw upon revelations received in dreams. Everyday economic and family activities involve three generations and therefore do not require extended genealogies of the kind found in Matthew. From a cross-cultural perspective, however, marriage arrangements may be made according to traditional tribal affiliations, making lineage a significant issue. Similarly priestly lineages may be important in the performance of rituals, and people of a common ancestry may be called upon to serve together in time of ethnic warfare. In the case of Matthew, ethnic identity and ritual practices associated with that are important. The genealogy becomes relevant to the rest of the Gospel for that reason. While lineage can serve the purpose of identifying social units based on kinship, it can also mark lines of inequality and tension. Dispute resolution may take place through judicial proceedings and negotiations within large heritage groups, but generally not between them. For purposes of economic cooperation, family formation, religious ritual, and dispute resolution, foreign individuals or groups may be incorporated into lineage groups through adoption.⁶⁵ There may have been pressure to handle converts to Christianity in this way in the case of the Matthean community.⁶⁶

Scribal Communities

Two scribal communities are important in the Gospel of Matthew—the Matthean community itself and the Pharisees.⁶⁷ As noted in the chapter on the Gospel of Mark, Anthony J. Saldarini has examined the Pharisees from the perspective of macrosociology; he applies the agrarian society model to the Palestinian corner of the Roman Empire and locates the Pharisees within the resultant picture. Unlike modern industrial societies with their multiple classes, agrarian societies have two major classes that are separated by a wide gulf—a peasantry and a ruling military elite. Through taxation and rent the rulers coerce the peasants to produce surpluses that constitute the rulers’ disposable wealth. The rulers rely on lower military staff and on administrative personnel, retainers, to manage their operations. In Palestine scribes and Pharisees were to be found among the retainers; they did not comprise an independent middle class but were rather dependents of the rulers.⁶⁸ The Roman Empire departed from the pure type, agrarian society, insofar as a small market economy existed within it, providing the elite largely with luxury products. The ruling class comprised a system with five subclasses: the ruler, the governing subordinates, the retainers, a merchant subclass, and a priestly stratum. The last of these, the priestly stratum, sometimes had a separate rentier economic foundation, but its general function was to legitimate the ruler. The peasant class comprised a system with four subclasses: the peasants themselves, artisans—an unclean class engaged in tanning and mining—and the expendables (homeless, beggars, bandits).⁶⁹

The Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes originated and flourished in Palestinian cities, especially Jerusalem. The scribes were an occupational category that overlapped with the Pharisee and Sadducee parties. The Pharisees had sought influence with the Hasmonians⁷⁰ by serving as retainers, but they were out of favor through much of the Hasmonian period. The Sadducees replaced them through intrigue, according to Josephus. Both groups maintained their own religious and legal systems. Josephus observed that the Pharisees had a wide following among the people and that they were influential with Herod the Great early in his reign. Some notable Pharisees, according to Josephus, were among the ruling elite in Jerusalem.⁷¹ Not all Pharisees were rulers, nor all rulers Pharisees. Similarly not all Sadducees were rulers, though perhaps more rulers in Jerusalem were Sadducees rather than Pharisees. Josephus, who identified himself as a Pharisee, wrote approvingly of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, but disapprovingly of a fourth philosophy that he associated with Judas the revolutionary of Galilee. Unfortunately, Josephus does not provide much detail about the legal systems of the groups; he does say the Pharisees had an oral tradition of rules in addition to the written Law, while the Sadducees favored only the latter.⁷² The Sadducees also favored harsher criminal penalties than did the Pharisees. The Pharisees did not survive the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 as an organized group.⁷³

The Christians and the Pharisees were opponents. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul associates his having been a Pharisee with his having persecuted the Christians.⁷⁴ While Josephus places the Pharisees in Jerusalem, Mark usually has them in Galilee disputing with Jesus. Mark has them favoring the purification of hands, fasting, strict Sabbath observance, divorce, and avoiding sinners. He also has them plot with the Herodians. Matthew often replaces scribes with Pharisees in the Markan textual material that he incorporates into his gospel. He locates them in Jerusalem as well as Galilee, but does not ordinarily associate them with the Herodians.

The Matthean community does not appear to have been interested in serving as retainers, and in that respect it differed from the Sadducees and Pharisees. Anders Runesson suggests that the Matthean community separated from the Pharisees,⁷⁵ but there seems to be little evidence that they came in fact from that party. One would expect them to have a greater interest in political participation if they were former Pharisees. Moreover, Christians and Pharisees were at odds as early as the time that Paul was a Pharisee; why would the Matthean community delay separating from the Phrisees? The two groups share some features, however, insofar as they were both scribal communities. Antoinette Clark Wire describes scribal communities as scribes, their kin, and a miscellany of others who form a voluntary association dedicated to a tradition, usually a religious tradition.⁷⁶ In describing the Matthean community as a scribal one, she points to their respect for written tradition, as evident in Matthew’s multiple citations of the Hebrew scriptures.⁷⁷ The Matthean community had an ethical orientation, was concerned with reward and judgment on a final day, and articulated apologetical arguments in the face of opposition. Wire’s specific concern is with the distribution of roles within the Matthean community. The formal disciple role—i.e., being one of the Twelve—was Jewish and male. Women also had faith, as modeled by the women who received aid from Jesus. There were also women who served Jesus, presumably modeling women in the community who similarly served it. The audience seems to have consisted of men. Little ones and children seem to have been marginal believers.⁷⁸ Despite the gendered distribution of roles, Wire takes the Matthean critique of patriarchal titles as a critique of patriarchy as such; at least there was ambivalence over them.⁷⁹ There was a spectrum of literacy among the men in the community, ranging from functional to classical; charity and the spiritualizing of need suggest an audience that experienced some economic security.⁸⁰ She proposes that the expressions of concern in the gospel for the little ones and women reflect a previous migration of the Jesus legends and sayings from marginal people in Galilee into a scribal community of a city.⁸¹ Dennis Duling suggests that the members of the scribal community called themselves brothers and points to evidence of communal rules for the brotherhood.⁸² He also highlights passages in which Matthew views some scribes favorably.⁸³

Krister Stendahl used the term school to refer to a group very similar to Wire’s scribal community. He suggests that the author of Matthew was not an individual but a collective school. The activities common in the school would have been storytelling and teaching.⁸⁴ The written gospel would serve as reading material for the school and, later, other such schools. As such, its genre would be that of a handbook.

. . . (T)he school may be invoked as a more natural Sitz im Leben. The systematizing work, the adaptation towards casuistry instead of broad statements of principles, the reflection of the church leaders and their duties, and many other similar features, all point to a milieu of study and instruction.⁸⁵

Stendahl goes on to note that the Matthean school was analogous to the synagogue. The official who taught basic Christianity in the school was a servant of the word.⁸⁶ He suggests that the school called itself the Disciples. In time, the Matthean school became a center for educating teachers and church leaders. Matthew’s type of midrashic interpretation,

is not principally halakic or the haggadic one favoured by the rabbinic schools, but it closely approaches what has been called the midrash pesher of the Qumran Sect, in which the O.T. texts were not primarily the source of rules, but the prophecy which was shown to be fulfilled.⁸⁷

Stendhal’s account is notable in not reducing the Matthean text to a process of editing sources but describing it as a document in use.

English Translation

Gospel of Matthew

[Textual material dependent on Mark is underlined, and Q material (i.e., text shared with Luke but not with Mark) is in italics.]

⁸⁸

1¹Book of the origin of Jesus, the Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham.⁸⁹

²Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaak the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Jouda and his brothers, ³Jouda the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar,⁹⁰ Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Aram, ⁴Aram the father of Aminadab, Aminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, ⁵Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, ⁶Jesse the father of David the king.⁹¹

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, ⁷Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asaph, ⁸Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, Joram the father of Uzziah, ⁹Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, ¹⁰Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amos, Amos the father of Josiah, ¹¹Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers at the time of the Babylonian deportation.⁹²

¹²And after the Babylonian deportation Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel of Zerubbabel, ¹³Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, ¹⁴Azor the father of Zadok, Zakok the father of Achim, Achim the father of Eliud, ¹⁵Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, ¹⁷Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, from whom Jesus, called the Messiah, was born.

¹⁷So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the Babylonian deportation fourteen generations, and from the Babylonian deportation to the Messiah fourteen generations.⁹³

¹⁸And the origin of Jesus the Messiah was thus: His mother Mary, betrothed to Joseph, was found pregnant by the holy spirit⁹⁴ before they lived together. ¹⁹And her husband Joseph, being just and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to divorce her secretly. ²⁰But when he was considering this, behold a messenger of the Lord appeared in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for what is in her is begotten by the holy spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. ²²All this happened that what was said by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled: ²³Behold the maiden will be pregnant and bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel,⁹⁵ which is translated, God with us. ²⁴And rising from sleep Joseph did as the messenger of the Lord ordered him, and he took his wife. ²⁵And he did not know her until she bore a son; and he called his name Jesus.

2¹And after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, behold magi⁹⁶ arrived in Jerusalem from the east ²saying, "Where is the one born king of Judea? For we in the east saw his star and came to do obeisance to him.⁹⁷ ³But hearing this King Herod⁹⁸ was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him, ⁴and assembling all the high priests and scribes of the people he inquired from