{"id":916,"date":"2009-11-22T09:04:03","date_gmt":"2009-11-22T09:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2009\/11\/sbl-lecture--wise-and-sagacious-vistas-on-matthew.html"},"modified":"2009-11-22T09:04:03","modified_gmt":"2009-11-22T09:04:03","slug":"sbl-lecture-wise-and-sagacious-vistas-on-matthew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/11\/sbl-lecture-wise-and-sagacious-vistas-on-matthew.html","title":{"rendered":"SBL Lecture— Wise and Sagacious Vistas on Matthew"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"May2008<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n



Wise and Sagacious Vistas: The Past and Future of a Sapiential Reading of Matthew--- 
\n <\/span><\/span><\/pre>\n
               <\/span><\/span><\/pre>\n
          <\/span><\/span>My
\nearliest memories of serious study of the Gospel of Matthew come from my time
\nin college at UNC.  <\/span>There was this book
\nby a Harvard Professor name Krister Stendahl about the School of St. Matthew,
\nsuggesting that it reflected a school setting, or production in a school.  <\/span>Little did I realize then I would end up
\nstudying with the man at Harvard some years later when I did my masters work in
\nthe Boston
\narea.  <\/span>What came to intrigue me most
\nabout this little book by Stendahl full of big ideas was that it suggested that
\nscribes had something to do with the production of the Gospel of Matthew.  <\/span>This was a germinal seed that has grown and
\nflowered over the years in the work of many Matthean scholars.  <\/span>What is odd about this, is that in some ways
\nit has not changed the way scholars have view Matthew’s approach to the Mosaic
\nLaw, or law in general.  <\/span>But in light of
\nwhat we know about scribes it should have done so.   <\/span><\/p>\n
Yes, there have
\nbeen, along the way, revelations that Matthew’s Gospel not only reflects scribal
\npractices, but more specifically the practices of sapiential scribes. One
\nthinks for example of the work done on Matthew 11 by Marshall Johnson, or
\nElizabeth Johnson, or even Ulrich Luz to some extent.  <\/span>There has been a recognition as well, however
\ngrudging, that Jesus is, at least in some Matthean passages presented both as a
\nsage and as God’s Wisdom come in person, but the connection between this fact
\nand how the Law is presented and viewed in Matthew has seldom been made.   <\/span><\/p>\n
When I wrote Jesus
\nthe Sage, <\/u>some fifteen years ago now, as a sequel to my The Christology
\nof Jesus, <\/u> <\/span>what surprised me the most
\nwas the paucity of consistent sapiential readings of so much of the NT, even
\nthough it had long since been admitted that Wisdom literature, in tandem with,
\nand sometimes in combination with apocalyptic literature had become a dominant
\ntrain of thought in early Judaism by Jesus’ day, and indeed even before then.   <\/span>It was hard to ignore the evidence of Wisdom
\nof Solomon or Sirach, but many scholars managed to do so, continuing to present
\nus with an anachronistic portrait of the Matthean Jesus, as if he were like
\nlater post-70 A.D. rabbis with ‘talmudim’ in his teaching and use of the
\nLaw.  <\/span>Thankfully, Jacob Neusner managed
\nto convince most of us, that post-70 A.D. Judaism should not be read back into
\npre-70A.D. Judaism willy- nilly, and especially not when it came to approaches
\nto the Law.<\/p>\n
It is in light of
\nthis culmination of studies of early Judaism, and Law in early Judaism and our
\nincreasing knowledge about scribes and sages in early Judaism that I set about
\nto provide a comprehensive sapiential reading of the two Gospels which
\nnaturally lent themselves to such a reading— Matthew and John.  <\/span>I pursued this agenda by writing commentaries
\non the two books, not least because I figured the inch worm approach would help
\nme avoid oversights or missing something that might be a problem for such a
\nreading.  <\/span>These projects were undertaken
\nin the 1990s and the early part of this century, in the case of Matthew, with
\ninteresting results.  <\/span><\/p>\n
Had I to do it over
\nagain, one thing I would certainly now do is take full advantage of the
\nlandmark work of Karel van der Toorn on Scribal Culture and the Making of
\nthe Hebrew Bible, <\/u> <\/span>(Harvard,
\n2007).  <\/span>Had this work appeared soon
\nenough it would have provided far more ammunition for my thesis about scribes
\nand sages in regard to Matthew’s production and its presentation of Jesus as
\nthe ultimate sage and God’s Wisdom.  
\n<\/span>Going forward, someone needs to take full stock of this work for
\nMatthean studies.  <\/span>Here I only have room
\nfor a pr\u00e9cis or brief summary of some of the things he says of relevance.  <\/span>Lets start with a few basic assertions and
\nassumptions.<\/p>\n
Firstly the
\nculture into which Jesus was born and which produced the Gospel of Matthew was
\na Jewish oral culture.  <\/span>Clearly, an oral
\nculture is a different world than a largely literate text based culture, and
\ntexts function differently in such a world.  
\n<\/span>All sorts of texts were simply surrogates for oral speech, and this
\nstatement applies to most of the Biblical texts themselves, including Matthew’s
\nGospel.[1]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> <\/p>\n
            <\/span>It
\nis hard for us to wrap our minds around it, but texts were scarce in the
\nBiblical world, and often were treated with great respect.  <\/span>Since literacy was largely a skill only the
\neducated had, and the educated tended to be almost exclusively from the social
\nelite, texts in such a world served the purpose of the elite–conveying their
\nauthority, passing down their judgments, establishing their property claims,
\nindicating their heredity and the like. 
\n<\/span>But since all ancient people were profoundly religious, the most
\nimportant documents even among the elite were religious texts, sacred
\ntexts.  <\/span>And of course the most literate
\nof all in such a culture were scribes, whose stock and trade was the copying
\nand composing of documents.  <\/span>We can make
\na distinction between sages as the oral carriers and conveyors of the wisdom
\ntradition, and scribes who were the recorders and enhancers and consolidators
\nand preservers of such a tradition.  <\/span>In
\nsuch a setting Law was viewed as part of the larger corpus of divine wisdom
\nwhich came from God.  <\/span>Torah was revealed
\nby Wisdom to God’s people, and as wisdom for God’s people.  <\/span>This becomes especially clear in a book like
\nSirach, who far from dividing the Pentateuch from the Wisdom tradition, reads
\nthe Pentateuch in light of, and as an expression of the Wisdom tradition.  <\/span>This is a typical conservative scribal
\napproach, seeking to synthesis the tradition, or at least make it coherent and
\nconsistent throughout. <\/p>\n
            <\/span>How then did a sacred text function
\nin an oral and rhetorical culture?  <\/span>For
\none thing it was believed that words, especially religious words, were not mere
\nciphers or symbols.  <\/span>They were believed
\nto have power and effect on people if they were properly communicated and
\npronounced.  <\/span>It was not just the sacred
\nnames of God, the so-called nomina sacra, which were considered to have
\ninherent power, but sacred words in general.  
\n<\/span>Consider for example what Isaiah 55.11 says: “so shall my word be that
\ngoes forth out of my mouth: it shall not return to me void, but it shall
\naccomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing I sent it to
\ndo.”   <\/span>The Word or words of a living and
\npowerful God, were viewed as living and powerful in themselves.[2]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>  <\/span>You can then imagine how a precious and
\nexpensive document, which contained God’s own words would be viewed.   <\/span>It would be something that needed to be kept
\nin a sacred place, like a temple or a synagogue, and only certain persons, with
\nclean hands and a pure heart would be allowed to unroll the sacred scroll and
\nread it, much less interpret it.  <\/span><\/p>\n
From what we can
\ntell, the texts of the NT books were treasured during the first century, and
\nwere lovingly and carefully copied for centuries thereafter.  <\/span>There is even evidence beginning in the
\nsecond century of the use of female Christian scribes who had a ‘fairer’ hand,
\nto copy, and even begin to decorate these sacred texts.[3]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>  <\/span>But make no mistake–even such texts were seen
\nto serve the largely oral culture. Before the rise of modern education and
\nwidespread literacy, it had always been true that “In the beginning was the
\n(spoken) Word.”[4]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>  <\/span>All of this has implications for how we
\nshould approach the NT, and especially a Gospel like Matthew, which was, from
\nwhat we can tell, by far the most popular Gospel in early Christian history,
\nand the most copied. How then would a better knowledge
\nof both the Jewish sapiential culture and scribal culture help us better
\nunderstand Matthew?  <\/span>Consider for a
\nmoment the remark of  <\/span>Van der Toorn— <\/p>\n
Our concept of the author as an
\nindividual is what underpins our concern with authenticity, originality, and
\nintellectual property. The Ancient Near East had little place for such notions.
\nAuthenticity is subordinate to authority and relevant only  <\/span>inasmuch as it underpins textual authority;
\noriginality is subordinate to the common stock of cultural forms and values….To
\nus it would seem wrong to credit an editor with the work of an author. The
\nauthor in our mind, is the intellectual source of the text, whereas an editor
\nmerely polishes; the former is the creative genius, the latter merely the
\ntechnician. This distinction was obviously less important to the ancients. They
\ndid not place the same value on originality. To them, an author does not invent
\nhis text but merely arranges it; the content of the text exists first, before
\nbeing laid down in writing. [5]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
It is the premise
\nof van der Toorn that scribes manufactured what Christians call the OT, and in
\nparticular scribes in Jerusalem who were
\nemployed by the Temple,
\nor perhaps in some case by the rulers who lived there. “They practiced their
\ncraft in a time in which there was neither a trade in books nor a reading
\npublic of any substance. Scribes wrote for scribes….The text of the Hebrew
\nBible was not part of the popular culture. The Bible was born and studied in
\nthe scribal workshop of the temple. In its fundamental essence, it was a book
\nof the clergy.” [6]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>   <\/span><\/p>\n
While this thesis
\ncertainly can be debated, let us assume for a minute it is true about the
\nOT.  <\/span>This immediately raises the
\npossibility that the NT is something quite different than the OT in this
\nregard.  <\/span>The NT seems, on the surface to
\nhave been produced by and large by various non-Jerusalem persons who were not
\nthemselves scribes. They seem on occasion to have used scribes such as Paul
\nused Tertius, but they do not seem to have been scribes, even in their
\npre-Christian lives, with one possible exception— Matthew’s Gospel.  <\/span><\/p>\n
When you have a
\ngroup of writings produced in a variety of places by a variety of persons, the
\nnotion of central control of the sacred text, much less scribal control, would
\nseem to go right out the window.  <\/span>Thus
\nwhile it can be argued that the story of the making of the OT portion of the
\nBible can be said to be the story of the scribes behind the Bible,[7]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>
\nthis thesis seems far less plausible, much less compelling when it comes to the
\nNT.   <\/span>Yet van der Toorn is right to
\nemphasize the fact that prior to the Hellenistic era  <\/span>(i.e. 300 B.C.) there seems to have been no
\nsuch thing as books, as we know them, nor a trade in books, nor a book buying
\npublic. “Insofar as literature reached a larger audience, it was by way of oral
\nperformance.”[8]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>  <\/span><\/p>\n
Scribes in antiquity
\nwere not just secretaries copying documents. 
\n<\/span>They were in addition the scholars of their world.  <\/span>They were usually recruited from the upper
\nechelons of society, and far from just copying and preserving documents they
\ncreated and interpreted them as well. [9]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a>  <\/span>They were also the lawyers of their day,
\nwhich is to say the interpreters and adjudicators of the Law but they had a
\nvariety of other functions as well. This becomes important not only to the
\nstudy of Jesus’ interchange with scribes and Pharisees in various places in
\nGalilee and Judea, but even more tellingly it becomes possibly important when
\nwe are told in Acts 4-6 (see especially Acts 6.7) that various priests and
\nLevites in Jerusalem were converted to the following of Jesus. If this is true,
\nwe may assume of course they brought with them not only their own literacy but
\nprobably also various scribes with them. This would explain then the production
\nof some Christian documents in Jerusalem
\nby James for instance (see e.g. Acts 15.23, and perhaps also the letter of
\nJames).  <\/span>And this brings us to the
\nproduction of Matthew’s Gospel itself.   <\/span>Who produced it and how?  <\/span><\/p>\n
Firstly, scholars
\nhave quite rightly pointed to Mt. 13.52 as a clue about the person who produced
\nthis document. This saying follows the parable of the net, which speaks about
\nthe sifting process necessary for fishermen, which leads to this saying about
\nthe discerning teacher of the Law who brings out of his storeroom treasures
\nboth old and new.  <\/span>What is being
\ndescribed here is scribal practice. It is possible that Jesus is referring to a
\nscribe schooled both in the OT and the new wisdom of the Kingdom, and so he is
\nable to produce both sorts of wisdom, comparing, contrasting, combining them.
\nNotice here the reference to ‘every scribe’, which likely includes our
\nEvangelist.  <\/span>Just as Jesus is an example
\nof adopting and adapting old and new wisdom, written Torah wisdom and oral
\nwisdom, so also the Evangelist. Notice that Mt. 23.24 suggests that there were
\nscribes who were followers of Jesus.<\/p>\n
Now it stands to
\nreason that this Evangelist is not expecting everyone in his audience to become
\na scribe or scholar, only those like the Evangelist himself who was a converted
\nscribe, perhaps one who formerly worked for the Pharisees or Sadducees or both.
\n  <\/span>Possibly then the Evangelist has
\nincluded this saying and the parable before it as a justification or
\nlegitimization of how he has put his Gospel together, critically sifting,
\nweighing, limiting, combining OT material with the Jesus tradition.  <\/span>This saying of course comes at the very end
\nof the third discourse in Matthew and at a climactic position after a
\nconsiderable discussion of discipleship. 
\n<\/span>It suggests that one form of discipleship was continuing one’s scribal
\nactivities in the service of the Gospel and the Kingdom it spoke of.  <\/span>And this brings us back to the school of St. Matthew notion of Stendahl’s. <\/p>\n
The rise to
\nprominence of the already extant Hellenistic schools used to train scribes in
\nhow best to use papyrus and scrolls coincides with the rise of the Roman empire, an enterprise which required many documents
\nand long paper trails.  <\/span>And Jews realized
\nthey needed to respond to the propaganda of the Republic and Empire, especially
\nonce they became a conquered and dominated people.  <\/span>So it is of interest for our study that there
\nwas a rise of Jewish schools in the Hellenistic and Roman eras. Already around
\n180 B.C. we hear of the school of Ben Sira (Sir. 51.23), and one Talmudic text tells us
\nthere were some 480 schools in Jerusalem
\nalone (J.T. Meg. 73b). Doubtless this is an exaggeration even in the
\npost-second Temple
\nera, but there is no reason to doubt there were many such schools. Van der
\nToorn stresses “These Jewish schools arose in part in response to the
\nHellenistic policy of establishing Greek schools in conquered territories. As
\nthe tuition fee for the schools was substantial (Sir. 51.28) formal education
\nwas restricted to the well-to-do. Under the guidance of their teachers,
\nstudents could familiarize themselves with the classics–Homer in the Greek
\nschools; the Law and the Prophets in Ben Sira’s bet midras <\/b>(Sir. 39.1-3).”  
\n<\/span>Furthermore, it was possible for a Greek-speaking Jew like Paul or a
\n‘Matthew’ to get training in rhetoric in Jerusalem
\nitself. We must not underestimate the extent of Hellenization in the Holy Land and the length it had had its effect on early
\nJudaism before we reach the time of the production of NT documents.[10]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n
Scribes did not
\ngenerally see themselves as modern authors would. They saw themselves as the
\nmidwives of an ongoing process, their job being to deliver to the next
\ngeneration the current and previous wisdom. 
\n<\/span>When they produced documents, they were of course not mere editors, but
\nthey did not see themselves as authors either. They would ascribe their
\ndocuments to their patrons, or their most famous sources.  <\/span>This, I would suggest, is exactly what we
\nfind in the First Gospel.  <\/span>Assembled by a
\nscribe, possibly in a Jewish school setting in Galilee or Antioch, much as the Didache probably was,
\nthe most famous source for this Gospel was an important, literate early apostle
\nnamed Matthew. Possibly the special M material in this Gospel and\/or possibly
\nthe so-called Q material went back to him and his own assembling of Gospel
\ntraditions.  <\/span>And so the final composer
\nand editor of this document ascribed the Gospel to its most famous
\ncontributor–not Mark the non-apostle non-eyewitness who was the other notable
\nsource for this document.  <\/span>But rather
\nMatthew himself.<\/p>\n
 <\/span><\/p>\n
AND SO?<\/p>\n
There is much more
\nthat could be said along these lines, and many good dissertations are waiting
\nto be written about reading Matthew in light of sapiential literature and early
\nscribal practices but I must conclude with a few final comments.  <\/span>Firstly, I think we have been thinking about
\nthe issues of authorship, when it comes to the Gospels, in the wrong way, and
\nwithout regard to the probable social contexts out of which such composite
\ndocuments arose–a scribal context. 
\n<\/span>Rethinking is needed.  <\/span>Secondly,
\nit is a consummation devoutly to be wished that some scholars would pursue more
\nextensively than I could in my Matthew commentary the fact that the whole of
\nthis Gospel is a sapiential take on the Jesus tradition, not just containing
\nwisdom’s bits and pieces from the words of Jesus.  <\/span>If we want to unlock the treasuries of this
\nGospel and produce things of lasting value, then we need to approach its
\ntreasures like the wise men of old. 
\n<\/span>Thirdly,  <\/span>a sapiential reading of
\nthis Gospel unveils how Jesus is presented as both sage and Wisdom throughout
\nthis Gospel, not just here and there. 
\n<\/span>The Emmanuel theme frames this Gospel with good reason.  <\/span><\/p>\n
Fourthly, the
\napproach to Torah in this Gospel is like unto the approach of that earlier
\nJesus- Jesus ben Sira, which is to say that Law is viewed as a part of, and in
\nlight of the larger Wisdom tradition, which had already been combined with the
\napocalyptic tradition, such that there was both revelatory wisdom that came
\ndown from above, but also wisdom to be learned from studying nature and human
\nnature.   <\/span>Indeed, Law is viewed as part
\nof the new covenant, for this Evangelist is not just suggesting that Moses’ is
\nreaffirmed for the new community.  <\/span>To the
\ncontrary, some of Moses has been fulfilled and is finished, some of it has been
\ncarried over into the new covenant, and some of the new covenant wisdom is
\nindeed new. In Mt. 13.52 we also find then an eschatological hermeneutic that
\nreveals how the Law was approached in an early Jewish Christian community.  <\/span>Jesus is not viewed as merely the prophet
\nlike unto Moses who fulfills the Law.  <\/span>He
\nis Wisdom come in the flesh, and with new and sometimes radically new things to
\nsay.  <\/span>He offers six discourses when Moses
\nonly offered five, he not merely delivers them from Pharaoh, he saves them from
\nsin, which is why Matthew suggests that the sagacious should still seek
\nhim.  <\/span>If we will pursue some of these
\nleads more carefully and thoroughly, we scribes of the twenty-first century
\nwill have a chance to bring out of our own storeroom, something old, something
\nnew, something borrowed, and something true.[11]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> <\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
Dr. Ben Witherington, III
\nAmos Professor of NT for Doctoral Studies
\nAsbury Theological Seminary
\nWilmore Ky.
\nDoctoral Faculty St. Mary’s College, St. Andrews University, Scotland<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
  <\/span>          <\/span>  <\/span>  <\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n
[1]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> On
\nlevels of literacy and the creation of ancient texts see Harry Y. Gamble’s Books
\nand Readers in the Early
\nChurch. A History of
\nEarly Christian Texts<\/u>,  <\/span>(New Haven: Yale U. Press,
\n1995),  <\/span>pp. 1-41.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
[2]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> See my The
\nLiving Word of God<\/u>,  <\/span>(Baylor Press,
\n2007).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
[3]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> See K.
\nHaines-Etzen, Guardians of Letters<\/u>, (Oxford:
\nOxford
\nU. Press, 2000).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
[4]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> It is
\ninteresting that an important literate figure like Papias of Hierapolis who
\nlived at the end of the NT era repeatedly said that he preferred the living
\nvoice of the apostle or one who had heard the eyewitnesses to a written document.
\nIn this he simply reflected the normal attitude of ancient peoples, literate or
\nnot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
[5]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> K. van
\nder Toorn, Scribal Culture, <\/u>(Harvard, 2007), pp. 47-48. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
[6]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Van der
\nToorn, Scribal Culture, <\/u>p. 2.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
[7]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> IBID.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
[8]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Van der
\nToorn, p. 5. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
[9]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Van der
\nToorn, p. 6.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
[10]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Van der
\nToorn, p. 24.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
[11]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> See in
\ndetail B. Witherington, Matthew, <\/u>(Smyth and Helwys, 2006). <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wise and Sagacious Vistas: The Past and Future of a Sapiential Reading of Matthew—                            My earliest memories of serious study of the Gospel of Matthew come from my time in college at UNC.  There was this book by a Harvard Professor name Krister Stendahl about the School of St. Matthew, suggesting that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nSBL Lecture- Wise and Sagacious Vistas on Matthew - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2009\/11\/sbl-lecture-wise-and-sagacious-vistas-on-matthew.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SBL Lecture- Wise and Sagacious Vistas on Matthew - 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He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. 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