THE DEATH OF JESUS IN MATTHEW’S GOSPEL AS A RECAPITULATION OF ISRAEL’S EXILE IN THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES AND POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH TRADITION By NICHOLAS J. SCHASER Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in Religion December, 2013 Nashville, TN Approved: Professor Amy-Jill Levine Professor Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. Israel in Exile/Bondage and God’s Return. Targum and New Testament: A Comparative Method.23 Jesus and Israel in Matthean Scholarship.
“Cast Out” as Exile .33 ljlj in the Targums of Isaiah and Jeremiah.33 evkba,llw in Classical Greek Literature.37 evkba,llw in the LXX and its Relation to ljlj. “Cast Out” in Matthew and the Isaiah Targum .44 Matthew’s Use of evkba,llw as Exile in 8:12.44 The Parable of the Tenants (Mt 21:33-46) and Isaiah 5:1-7 MT.46 Isaiah 5:1-7 in Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation.48 The Parable of the Tenants and Isa Tg 5:1-7. Exile in the Matthean Passion Narrative .68 ii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The Gospel writers’ use of scriptural antecedents in framing the life of Jesus has long been a focus of New Testament scholarship. Matthew’s Gospel, in particular, is marked by connections between Jesus and various figures and events in the Jewish Scriptures.1 Along with the Scriptures themselves, Matthew also draws on Jewish traditions current in the first century, some of which also appear in the Targums, the Aramaic translations and paraphrases of the Scriptures.
Matthew uses these traditions to cast Jesus’ death as a restaging of Israel’s exile, which validates Jesus’ messianic credentials insofar as Israel’s story is retold in the life and, in this case, the death of Israel’s Messiah. Matthew argues for the necessity of a suffering and dying Messiah by drawing on texts in which God’s people suffer as a result of the Babylonian siege and exile, and showing how Jesus recapitulates these events in his own suffering and death. Matthew claims that such suffering was an essential component of the messianic mission; as an embodiment of Israel, the Messiah enters into exile as a “ransom” (Mt 20:28), which pays the price for the debt that Israel had incurred through its sin. 1 For treatments of Matthew’s Jesus in relation to the biblical narrative see, for example, Leroy A.
Huizenga, The New Isaac: Tradition and Intertextuality in the Gospel of Matthew (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Mervyn Eloff, “ vApo,… e[wj and Salvation History in Matthew’s Gospel,” in Daniel M. Gurtner and John Nolland, eds., Built Upon the Rock: Studies in the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 85-107; Jörg Frey and Jens Schröter, eds., Deutungen des Todes Jesu im Neuen Testament (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005); David R. Bauer, “The Literary and Theological Function of the Genealogy in Matthew’s Gospel,” in David R. Bauer and Mark Allan Powell, eds., Treasures Old and New: Recent Contributions to Matthean Studies (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 129-59; Michael Knowles, Jeremiah in Matthew’s Gospel: The Rejected-Prophet Motif in Matthaean Redaction (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993); Dale C., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
1 Several scholars have developed the idea that for many in the Second Temple period Israel was still “in exile” and, according to the Gospel writers, Jesus brought about the end of exile.2 This view provides the framework for Matthew’s presentation of Jesus as an individual representative of corporate Israel whose death pays the ransom-price necessary for release from exile. While first-century Jews were not in literal exile from their geographic homeland, Matthew contends that even those living in Israel were still in bondage to sin, which separated them from God. The Targums also maintain that Israel’s sin is a debt whose payment will be followed by the coming of God’s kingdom. In the Targums, as in the Jewish Scriptures, the debt is paid off through Israel’s exile; in Matthew, this debt is paid through Jesus’ death, which is explicitly patterned on Israel’s exile.
By ascertaining commonalities in the traditions that appear in Matthew and the Targums, we can isolate analogous phenomena within these distinct literatures; such analogies constitute instances in which phrases in both texts have the same meaning in similar contexts. In the case of the First Gospel, the writer utilizes Jewish traditions, which the Targums share, in order to describe Jesus of Nazareth in relation to the sacred history of Israel. Therefore, an analysis of how Matthew patterns his protagonist on Israel, as well as a survey of the patterns that New Testament scholars have already 2 See N. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 268-70; Idem., Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 268-74; Daniel G.
Reid, “Jesus: New Exodus, New Conquest,” in Tremper Longman III and Daniel G. Reid, God Is a Warrior (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995), 91-118; Craig A. Evans, “Jesus and the Continuing Exile of Israel,” in Carey C., Jesus and the Restoration of Israel: A Critical Assessment of N. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 77-100; Idem., “Aspects of Exile and Restoration in the Proclamation of Jesus and the Gospels,” in James M., Exile: Old Testament, Jewish and Christian Conceptions (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 299-328; Mervyn Eloff, “Exile, Restoration, and Matthew’s Genealogy of Jesus `O CRISTOS,” Neot 38 (2004): 75-87; Richard B.
Hays, “The Gospel of Matthew: Reconfigured Torah,” HTS 61 (2005): 165-90; Gary A. Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 75-94; Nathan Eubank, Wages of Cross-bearing and Debt of Sin: The Economy of Heaven in Matthew’s Gospel (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 109-32. 2 discovered, provides the basis for our connections between Matthew’s Jesus and Israel’s exile as it is presented in the Targums. Specifically, Matthew’s use of evkba,llw (to cast out) to describe exile, parallels the Aramaic ljlj (to cast out), which the Targums use to describe the Babylonian exile.
Though Matthew is not dependent on the Aramaic texts, the use of ljlj, particularly in the Targums of Isaiah and Jeremiah, is the clearest example of a Jewish tradition that clarifies the exilic nuance of evkba,llw in the Gospel. Further, similar uses of evkba,llw to describe exile, particularly in classical Greek literature and the Septuagint, form a basis for the tradition as it would appear in Matthew and the Targums. Matthew first uses evkba,llw as exile with reference to the “sons of the kingdom” who will be “cast out” into outer darkness (Mt 8:12), and then in the Parable of the Tenants (Mt 21:33-46) when the parabolic “son,” who represents Jesus, is cast out of the vineyard (21:39). A parallel usage of ljlj in the targumic version of Isaiah’s vineyard parable (Isa Tg 5:1-7), in which the people of Israel are cast out in exile, provides the interpretive key to reading the Parable of the Tenants as an allegorical description of Jesus reenacting Israel’s exile in his death—cast out from the “land of the living” (cf.
Ps 52:5; Isa 53:8; Jer 11:19). This aspect of the Parable of the Tenants shows how Matthew understands Jesus’ death as a ransom payment that cancels the debt of sin and allows for reunification between God and those within Israel who choose to follow his Son. Matthew’s many allusions to Israel’s exile in the Passion Narrative (Mt 26-27) support the portrayal of Jesus’ death introduced in the Parable of the Tenants. While much of the material in Matthew’s parable and passion is also found in Mark, Matthew’s Jesus-Israel connections are more pronounced.
Jesus is equated with Israel, to varying 3 degrees, in each of the Gospels; however, scholars have long noted that Matthew increases these equations. Moreover, because Matthew explicitly cites the Jewish Scriptures more often than Mark, and due to the shared motif of sin-debt and its relationship to exile in Matthew and the Targums, the First Gospel represents the most appropriate test case for our specific connections between Jesus and Israel’s story as it was known in early Judaism. Throughout the Passion Narrative, Matthew builds on the Markan allusions to scriptures that link Israel’s exile with Jesus’ death. When Jesus finally dies, Matthew echoes scriptural language associated with the end of exile and the imminent return from Babylon (cf.
Mt 27:50-51; Isa LXX 13:13; 24:20; 48:20-21). While these intertexts point to Jesus’ resurrection, they also confirm the efficacy of Jesus as a ransom who was sent to “save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). 4 CHAPTER II ISRAEL IN EXILE/BONDAGE AND GOD’S RETURN The idea that Second Temple Jews viewed themselves as “still in exile,” championed most prominently by N. Wright, has been well established in recent scholarship.
Drawing on evidence from post-exilic texts that speak of Israel’s continued bondage and the as yet unfulfilled promise that God would return to his people,3 Wright concludes, “Israel’s exile was still in progress…. Israel has returned to the land, but is still in the ‘exile’ of slavery, under the oppression of foreign overlords [i. the Roman Empire]…. Israel’s god had not returned to Zion.”4 Indeed, Nehemiah notes that even after the Jews had returned to the land, they remained enslaved to foreign kings whom God had set over them because of their sins (see Neh 9:36-37).
Yet, the hope remained that God would fulfill his promise to return to Zion (Isa 52:8; Zec 8:3), so that post-exilic Jews could still maintain, “God has not forsaken us in our bondage” (Ezra 9:9). Thus, it may be more accurate to say that Israel was in bondage rather than literal exile, which connotes a physical separation from the land.5 Nevertheless, Wright’s argument that some Jews of this time awaited God’s return to Zion still holds, and this return would be the concrete manifestation of the end of Israel’s bondage. 3 Wright cites, among other texts, Isa 58:8-10; Ezek 43:1-7; 48:35; Neh 9:36-37; CD 1:3-11; Tob 14:5-7; Bar 3:6-8; 2 Macc1:27-29 as reflecting the view that the exile had not ended during the Second Temple period. See New Testament, 268-70.
In agreement with Wright’s view, Craig Evans includes further evidence in texts of the Second Temple period and shortly thereafter, including Tob 13:3; Bar 2:7- 10; 2 Macc 2:7-8; 4Q504-06; Ezra 9:8-9; 1 Enoch 89:73-75; T. See “Continuing Exile,” 82-87. Gary Anderson makes a similar argument based on Isa 60:1-5; Dan 9, esp. 4 Wright, New Testament, 269.
Evans, “Continuing Exile,” 78. 5 The reason for this bondage was an outstanding debt that Israel had incurred through its sin. Isaiah speaks of the time Israel spent in exile as a “term of service” (habc halm) that had “paid her sin” (hnw[ hcrn) (Isa 40:1-2).6 However, as Gary Anderson points out, because post-exilic Jews were still under bondage and God had not returned, Second Temple texts claimed that the payment of which Isaiah speaks had not yet been fulfilled. Daniel 9:24, for example, envisions a future when the debt for “sin” would be “brought to completion” (tajx ~thl).7 It is against this backdrop of unpaid sin-debt that Matthew presents Jesus as the one who would “save his people from their sins” by paying the debt through his death, thereby ending the effects of “exile” (or bondage to sin) and ushering in God’s return (Mt 1:21).
Evidence for this view in Matthew can be found in the opening chapter, which contains the only reference to “exile” (metoikesi,aj) in the Gospels. Matthew splits the genealogy of Jesus before and after the “exile to Babylon” (1:11-12). He then summarizes the generational breakdown of his genealogy: “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the exile to Babylon (metoikesi,aj Babulw/noj) fourteen generations, and from the exile to Babylon to the Messiah fourteen generations” (Mt 1:17). Based on the juxtaposition of the exile and the Messiah, Matthew seems to offer a solution to the problem of ongoing exile.
