The King Who Teaches: St. Matthew’s Royal Curriculum: A Pedagogical Aid

By Eugene E. Lemcio

This unique work is a teaching-learning guide to help instructors and students to determine "What makes Matthew Matthew?" Displays followed by leading questions and statements help one to determine how the Evangelist adopted, adapted, and arranged his sources (both "sacred" and "secular") in light of his convictions about and experience of Jesus. Comparing and contrasting the first Gospel with the other Synoptics (and occasionally with John) also contributes to identifying his concerns. Neither standalone nor comprehensive in its intention, method, or scope, this work of pedagogy is meant to be used (and not simply read) alongside--rather than instead--of standard tools such as introductions and commentaries. Although no knowledge of biblical languages is presupposed, references to Matthew's own use of Greek--and the Greek of his Jewish Scriptures--also enrich this study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jul 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666777529

Eugene E. Lemcio

Eugene E. Lemcio is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Seattle Pacific University, where he taught for thirty-six years. His writings about Canonical Hermeneutics, the Gospels, the Son of Man, and the Unifying Kerygma of the New Testament have appeared in leading academic publications. He is the author of Navigating Revelation: Charts for the Voyage: A Pedagogical Aid (2011) and >Travels with St. Mark: GPS for the Journey: A Pedagogical Aid (2012).

Book preview

Preface

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

—Jacques Barzun

¹

Here is the fifth volume in an informal series of works² that seek to assist both teacher and student to prepare for instruction and learning, both within and beyond the college or seminary classroom.³ The goal has been to highlight that which is characteristic of the Gospels—in this instance that which makes Matthew Matthew.

Disclaimers

This is not an historical quest aimed at reconstructing traditions (oral or written) nor identifying sources (oral or written) that Matthew used to compose his Gospel. Such study runs the risk of becoming a history of early Christian religion—a legitimate scholarly pursuit in its own right. My work stands somewhere between an exercise in redaction criticism (whereby one studies how the Evangelist adopted (chose), adapted (modified), and arranged (organized) his materials about Jesus and an exercise in literary criticism, which focuses upon the development of characters and plots. I am inclined to regard that which follows as an attempt at what might be called composition criticism.⁴

Furthermore, the comparisons and contrasts that I make between Matthew and the other Gospels do not rest upon a rigid theory of Gospel relationships. When I refer to Q, it is simply shorthand for material common to both Matthew and Luke. Whether or not it was an oral or written source plays no part in my attempts to get at the First Evangelist’s distinctive message(s). Fortunately, debates about Gospel priorities need not be engaged in this instance.⁵ Examining how Matthew differs from the others is a clue to significance, especially if such differentiation is frequent and consistent in content. M simply stands for material found only in this Gospel. Regularity of content in such instances also suggests the hues that Matthew used to paint the portrait of his Subject.

This is not a commentary whereby one is obliged to cover just about everything. Although at least some part of nearly every chapter is touched upon, I have not tried to be complete. My Aid ought not to be thought of as a stand-alone work. Rather, it should be used alongside other, more standard resources: commentaries, introductions, lexical helps,⁶ background studies about Second Temple Judaism and the Greco-Roman world, etc.⁷

About the bibliography of cited works: Specialists will note that I have not comprehensively accessed the vast array of Matthean scholarship available for conducting standard exegesis and historical research. Instead, my goal has been to exploit those works that contribute most to pedagogy, as I have envisioned it.

Affirmations

My book, like the other four, is meant to encourage and enhance first-hand engagement with primary texts in English—employing both sides of the brain (hemisphericity) visualizing and verbalizing, displaying as well as discussing, seeing as well as saying, showing as well as telling. Such is my distinctive contribution. Not everything is covered in this dual manner, partly because not everything lends itself to both types of presentation. One desired outcome of providing such materials and methods is to promote discovery, exploration, and one’s own investigation.

Another strategy to foster such learning is the posing of questions, familiar to police interrogations and to students of journalism needing to cover all of a story’s or a statement’s bases: Who? (Agent: initiator or recipient), What? (Action/Event), When? (Time), Where? (Place), How? (Means/Manner/Method/Instrument), How far/many/much? (Scope/Quantity); What kind? (Quality), Why? (Purpose/Cause), So what? (Significance); etc.⁸ Of course, not all the material lends itself to this mode of analysis and presentation; the kind of genre plays a part.

Using these categories enables analysis and synthesis to be comprehensive in the sense that many aspects of a selected narrative or teaching can be dealt with. At the same time, they make it possible for one to detect that which integrates the parts. Approaching literature in this way assists students to develop skills in comparison (noting similarities) and contrast (seeing differences). Furthermore, applying such neutral classification helps to increase objectivity and to limit imposing agendas foreign to a text.

In addition to leading the reader in comparing and contrasting categories within the text itself (thereby allowing the Evangelist to speak on his own terms and in his own way—the main objective), I provide opportunities for readers to compare and contrast the Gospel with external sources—both canonical and extrabiblical. Examples of the former are of two kinds: (a) the OT Scriptures acknowledged by all Christians—as well as those acknowledged as authoritative by Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy—and (b) the New Testament. Extrabiblical sources refers to Jewish literature such as the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) and to Greco-Roman texts. This is an attempt to provide for modern readers samples of the literary environment that shaped the religious world of Jesus, Matthew, and the earliest Christians. They enable one to visualize the similarities and differences (the continuity and discontinuity) between Athens and Jerusalem.

So far as the remainder of the NT is concerned, I have studiously avoided interpreting Matthew with reference to other authors. However, in the case of the SG, some accounts of the same event or teaching are similar enough that the Lessons will do double and even triple duty in providing a procedure by which one can subsequently study the others on their own. Rather than diluting the work and taking away from its distinctiveness by harmonizing, such a move serves to highlight the salient features of Matthew by maintaining the integrity of the others.⁹

As before, I have used the NRSV, except in those passages referring to the son of man (where I resort to the RSV). I did so principally because this translation has preserved the expression rather than converting it to the generic human or mortal. Although not a title per se, the term retains a certain formal quality, which NT writers exploit when they appropriate it. Such usage is obscured by the NRSV’s otherwise welcome efforts to avoid gender-specific translation.¹⁰

When all of this is said and done, it is the instructor of a particular class who bears the responsibility of using these tools and other techniques to engage in the complex act of pedagogy. Ink on a page cannot teach; nor can literature fulfill literature. The Bible per se is unable to do so. Although notable exceptions might be cited, one needs the help of an agent—as the encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch shows (Acts 8:30–35). The identity of the Servant in Isa 53 was not self-evident.¹¹

While it is true that none of my books advocating these approaches has been systematic and thoroughgoing (as required in a commentary), they have attempted to be orderly and disciplined. Furthermore, if instructor or student asks, Why was this passage or that subject not covered by the author? the response should be, Well, given the tools and method provided, let us try filling in the gaps!

Although this is primarily a teaching-learning aid often reflecting common observations by Matthean specialists, I have also included unrefined bits of original research. In each of them, I have hinted at lines of inquiry that I (or others) might pursue. Although my aim has not been to propose a fresh thesis, I have in all five books made observations and raised questions that could bear additional fruit.

For those who will have experienced the Gospels’ diversity for the first time (and perhaps been troubled by it), I supply in appendix 2 a statement about such variety by Origen, the greatest biblical scholar of his era (the third century CE). This father of the church might have been wrong in these and other opinions, but what he held was considered within the bounds of that which a Christian was permitted to think. Such knowledge might possibly reduce (if not remove) some of the unnecessary heat often generated in contemporary debates about the Bible’s nature.

As I had observed in the previous aid for Luke’s Gospel,¹² perhaps the most controversial sections of this study for more conservative readers will be the parallels that I have adduced in Lesson 51 between the Gospel story and those of heroes in the ancient world:¹³ genealogical heritage, supernatural conception, dual parentage (human mother, divine father, adoptive father), exalted names/titles, threatened childhood, mighty deeds/teaching, opposition, violent death, afterlife.

Several reasons compel me to include them: (1) The common patterns exist; they cannot be denied. (2) Early Christian apologists critically engaged in debates about the similarities and differences of their content and morality.¹⁴ (3) Until recent times, students receiving a classical education (both secular and ecclesial) would have encountered the stories. (4) Analogous accounts are being reintroduced into popular culture through books,¹⁵ film,¹⁶ and video games.¹⁷ (5) Award-winning books/titles of children’s literature¹⁸ are readily available.

Although many have observed that Matthew grounds Christianity in the narratives and texts of God’s original people, at the same time, he and Luke¹⁹ told the story (put their readers in the frame) according to the well-known conventions of Greco-Roman biography with which Greek-speaking (that is, hellenized) Jews would have been familiar—as displayed in Lesson 51. As an alternate pedagogical move, one might begin here to consider the overall narrative scheme of the Gospel in connection with such stories.²⁰ One may thereby get an idea of the entire context, to see the forest within which individual trees grow, and to survey the lay of the land. Besides providing a sense of the whole, from which to interpret the parts, the bird’s eye view enables one to get a feel for proportion—where the emphases lie, what weight is attributed to certain themes.

In this connection, some evangelical readers will be surprised (and not a few troubled) that I freely use the word myth in a positive sense when relating Matthew’s Gospel to these accounts.²¹ But I do so according to the understanding of the term employed by such classical scholars and convinced Christians as C.  S. Lewis,²² J. R. R. Tolkien,²³ and others.²⁴ Finally, all along the way, I have been supremely aware that one has to go beyond the sacred page: that a menu is no substitute for a meal, nor is an itinerary (however sacred) a substitute for the journey.²⁵ In other words, the First Gospel must, at the end of the day (and at its beginning), be regarded as a religious document intended to form the reader’s thinking and action as she/he relates as a student/learner to Jesus, the King who teaches.

About the Title

Before proceeding with the task at hand, a word needs to be said about the title of this volume—which the phrase concluding the previous paragraph reflects. I have again tried to approximate the cadence of the previous four aids. However, this time, I have tried tightening the connection between title and subject matter. It was derived from the phenomena that dominate the first seven chapters but also occur throughout. Furthermore, I have attempted something unique for this series: proposing a hypothesis about Matthew that I believe to be fresh.²⁶

Significantly for my proposal, the First Gospel opens with the heading an account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.²⁷ Two things are worth noting briefly. (1) The Messiah (the Christ, the Anointed) is immediately associated with kingship (and his begetting as son), as Ps 2:2, 6–7 explicitly makes clear.²⁸ (2) He is also the son of David, a royal designation that Matthew positions prior to his identity as the son of Abraham (although the latter, of course, preceded the former chronologically).²⁹ The list of David’s reigning sons is followed by aspects of Jesus’ royal foreground: his adoptive father’s descent from King David, the search for the King of the Jews by magi from the East, and the account of King Herod’s rampage as a result (ch. 2).³⁰

Moreover, the royal-political theme of the narrative extends through Jesus’ temptation by the devil (4:2–8), who offers him rule over the world’s kingdoms. Even the opening conditional statements, If you are the Son of God . . . carry royal significance with them.³¹ Furthermore, shortly thereafter (at 4:17), Matthew recounts the subject of Jesus’ public proclamation, the topic of his kerygma: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near. Jesus elaborates the theme during the three chapters that follow: the Sermon on the Mountain. According to many scholars, they represent the first brushstrokes portraying Jesus as the New Moses who instructs God’s people in a higher righteousness.³² However, specialists routinely ignore the royal motifs in the process—aspects about the kingdom of heaven.³³ This topic is also the burden of the parables collected in chapter 13, halfway into the Gospel, as if a reminder is needed.³⁴

Behind my model lies the job description for the Ideal Israelite King set forth in Deut 17:14–20. He is not to multiply horses, wives, or treasure; nor is he to return the people to Egypt. Rather, the king in Israel is to copy a book of the Law gotten from the priests and Levites and become so acquainted with it that he will not deviate from its teachings. Schreiner points out that, both in the ancient world and in Israel, the king was to establish and internalize his laws.³⁵ Perhaps only Josiah, among all the rulers of Israel and Judah, came close to embodying this ideal (2 Kgs 22 and 2 Chr 34).³⁶

While the king appears as student in Deut 17, he—and the queen—both function as teachers of their offspring as reflected in the opening of the Solomonic Proverbs (1:1, 8).³⁷ The role of the ruler as sage also finds its expression in material attributed to him in the Deuterocanon’s Wisdom of Solomon.³⁸ Both collections serve as guides for holy/righteous living, not as manuals for gaining political advantage nor for waging war. Had this pedagogical paradigm been followed, perhaps the descendants of David would not have led the people into exile—the twice-mentioned deportation to Babylon being the only narrative expression (besides ἐγέννησεν) in the entire list of kings (Matt 1:11–12).³⁹ To the extent that Jesus appears as a teacher of wisdom throughout the First Gospel, it is as Royal Sage that he functions so—rather like Daniel did. Not only did he advise the kings of Babylon and Persia, he himself was of royal stock (1:3).⁴⁰

Toward the end, the Gospel closes in a complementary, royal-pedagogical manner. During his attack against the scribes and Pharisees in chapter 23, Jesus forbids the use of honorific titles associated with the teaching role. Among them is a rather stunning prohibition. The disciples are not to be called instructors (καθηγηταί), for they have one instructor [καθηγητής], the Messiah (23:10).⁴¹ Only twice does this term appear in the NT: here. The royal dimension is implied—the Messiah being the anointed king.

In chapter 25, Jesus presides as the King, the enthroned Son of Man. Three chapters later, echoing the Danielic son of man’s endowment with glory, authority, and kingdom, Matthew reports that the resurrected Jesus, fully authorized both in heaven and on earth, commissions his students/learners to make students/learners of all the nations, teaching them to observe all that