Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] How Jesus fills scripture full in Matthew by Bart D. Ehrman, read by John Paul Middlesworth in the last post, I indicated one way that Matthew understood Jesus to have fulfilled scripture. A prophet predicted something about the messiah to be born of a virgin, to be born in Bethlehem, etc. And Jesus did or experienced what was predicted. There's a second way as well, one with considerable implications for understanding Matthew's portrayal of Jesus. Here's how I talk about it in my textbook on the New Testament.
[00:00:35] The second way in which Jesus fulfills scripture is a little more complicated. Matthew portrays certain key events in the Jewish Bible as foreshadowings of what would happen when the Messiah came. The meaning of these ancient events was not complete until that which was foreshadowed came into existence. When it did, the event was quote unquote fulfilled, that is, filled full of meaning. As an example from the birth narrative, Matthew indicates that Jesus'family flees to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod. Quote, in order to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying, out of Egypt I have called my son. Unquote, chapter two, verse 15. The quotation is from Hosea eleven one and originally referred to the exodus of the children of Israel from their bondage in Egypt. For Matthew, Jesus himself fulfills that event. That is, he fills it full of meaning. The salvation available to the children of Israel was partial, looking forward to a future time when it would be made complete with Jesus, the messiah that has now taken place.
[00:01:43] Understanding this second way in which Jesus fulfills scripture for Matthew can help explain certain aspects of the opening chapter of Matthew's Gospel, chapters one through five that have long intrigued scholars. Think about what happens here in rough outline and ask yourself how it might have resonated with a first century jew intimately familiar with the jewish scriptures. A male child is miraculously born to jewish parents, but a fierce tyrant in the land is set to destroy him. The child is supernaturally protected from harm in Egypt. Then he leaves Egypt and is said to pass through the waters of baptism. He goes into the wilderness to be tested for a long time afterwards, he goes up on a mountain and delivers God's law to those who have been following him. Sound familiar? It would to most of Matthew's jewish readers. Matthew has shaped these opening stories of Jesus in order to show that Jesus's life is the fulfillment of the stories of Moses. Read exodus, chapters one through 20. The parallels are too obvious to ignore. Herod is like the egyptian pharaoh. Jesus baptism is like the crossing of the Red Sea, the 40 days of testing are like the 40 years the children of Israel wandered in the desert. The sermon on the mount is like the law of Moses delivered on Mount Sinai. These parallels tell us something significant about Matthew's portrayal of Jesus. Certainly he agrees with Mark that Jesus is the suffering son of God, the Messiah. But here Jesus is also the new Moses, come to set his people free from their bondage to sin, come to give them the new law, his teachings. At this point I should stress once again that among Jews in the first century, there was not just one set of expectations concerning their future deliverer. I have already indicated that many hoped for a future king like David, who would lead his people to military victory over their oppressors and establish Israel as a sovereign state in the promised land. Others anticipated the appearance of a cosmic figure on the clouds of heaven coming in judgment on the earth. Yet others looked forward to an authoritative priest who would guide the community through divinely inspired interpretations of the mosaic law. One other form that the future deliverer sometimes took is of particular relevance for understanding Matthew's portrayal of Jesus. Some Jews hoped that a prophet would appear who would be like Moses, who had not only brought salvation from the hated oppressors of Israel, the Egyptians who had enslaved them for 400 years, but had also disclosed the law of God to his people. Indeed, according to the ancient traditions, Moses himself had said that there would be another prophet like him who would arise among his people. Deuteronomy, 1815 through 19, the hope for a messianic figure like Moses, one chosen by God to bring salvation and new direction, was very much alive among some Jews in the first century. This is important to recognize if we are to understand the overarching portrayal of Jesus in Matthew. For one thing, unlike later christians like Marcion, who insisted that a person had to choose between Moses and Jesus, Matthew maintains that the choice is instead between Moses without Jesus and Moses with Jesus. For him, false religion involves rejecting Jesus precisely because Jesus is a new Moses. But this new Moses does not do away with the old one. Quite the contrary, he is the true and final interpreter of what the earlier Moses recorded in his law.
[00:05:15] Jesus, too, gives the divine law in this gospel, but for Matthew it is not a law that stands at ods with the law of Moses it is a fulfillment of that law. Chapter five, verse 17.
[00:05:28] Followers of Jesus must follow the law of Moses, not abandon it. Moreover, they must follow it by understanding it in the way prescribed by the new Moses. Jesus the messiah just as Moses was a prophet who was confronted and rejected by those who refused to recognize his leadership like all of the prophets in the jewish scriptures, according to Matthew, so too Jesus in Matthew is constantly opposed by the leaders of his own people. We have already seen this basic motif of Jesus'rejection in Mark. In many respects, Matthew emphasizes the antagonism even more, and here Jesus engages in a far more active counterattack, accusing his opponents of placing a higher value on their own traditions than on the law of God, attacking their wicked motives, and above all, charging them with hypocrisy, that is, for knowing and teaching the right thing to do, but failing to do it themselves.
