The Gospel of Matthew within Early Judaism

 03 March 2022

        To understand how the Gospel of Matthew operates within the context of early Judaism, one must first understand the importance of Torah. Holding the symbolic power of being the written word of God, the scriptures of Torah were held by early Jews as their highest authority. In calendar and in practice, their lives were completely structured around the laws outlined by these Old Testament texts. At the core of Judaism was not a creed, but rather an understanding of God’s sovereignty that was made manifest by adhering to Torah’s rituals and ethics. The ritual observances of Torah were expanded during the Second Temple period of Judaism; the democratization of religion and the sanctification of everyday life led to the obligation to participate in the study of Torah shifting from resting solely on the elite to being the entire community’s individual responsibility. In the Gospel of Matthew, one might expect to find Jesus,

the founder of the Christian faith, giving strong polemics against the Torah. Instead, Jesus is found within Matthew referencing, affirming, and fulfilling Torah’s teachings and prophecies. An example of Jesus’ referring to the text of Torah is when He combats the devil in the wilderness by repeatedly quoting scripture from Deuteronomy (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10). Considering how knowledgeable in Torah writings the Jewish target audience of Matthew would have been, these quotations would have resonated with them deeply and been immediately understood. As an example of covenantal nomism, 4 Ezra provides a picture of the following framework: God gave the Torah to His people, then His people disobeyed the laws and ethics of Torah, and now His people need to be called back to the Torah. Similarly, Jesus affirms this viewpoint that people need to live by Torah and its commandments now. In the 22nd chapter of Matthew, after the Sadducees question Jesus about resurrection and marriage, Jesus tells them, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God” (v. 29). Jesus espouses the writings presented by the Torah but accuses the Sadducees of not knowing or understanding the law of Torah well enough. Even when Jesus makes jarringly bold claims about being the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies, the author of Matthew never portrays Jesus as being in conflict with the Torah. In Matthew 5:17, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Here, Jesus plainly explains that He is not in opposition with the Torah or the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, but rather He has come to bring them to completion. With an audience that knew these writings so well, the author of Matthew supports Jesus’ claim by citing specific examples of prophecies that Jesus fulfills, e.g., Jesus’ riding in on a donkey (Matthew 21:2-5).

        The question of how to interpret and obey Torah leads to another topic that relates to how the Gospel of Matthew interacts with the world of early Judaism: the Pharisees. Serving as a physical symbol for power itself, the Pharisees were religious leaders that wielded a unique level of political influence. They were the party of the people and were widely supported by the masses. Throughout the book of Matthew, Jesus is constantly interacting with the Pharisees as they approach Him with various questions about why He or His disciples apply the law to their lives differently than the religious leaders. During the “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus speaks on different elements of the law using the structure of “You have heard it said... but I tell you that...” to juxtapose His teachings with that of the Pharisees (Matthew 5:21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43). The framing of this juxtaposition communicates the idea that just because Jesus’ interpretation of the law was not identical to the Pharisee’s interpretation did not necessarily mean that Jesus’ interpretation was incorrect or going outside of Torah. While the Pharisees’ perspective is focused on the external actions and matters linked to each legal element, Jesus’ mentality involves a “fleshing out” of the laws, saying that it is not enough to only avoid the big, identifiable sins. In each of the cases discussed (i.e., murder, adultery, divorce, eye for an eye, love for enemies) in Matthew 5:21-48, Jesus upholds the beliefs of the Pharisees, but takes them one step farther and encourages His audience to do the same. For example, in Matthew 43-48, Jesus says it is not enough to just love your neighbor and hate your enemy, and He instead charges His audience to love and pray for both their neighbor and their enemy. This direction must have been somewhat shocking to a minority people group who had experienced so many generations of persecution.

        Along with the importance and interpretation of Torah, there is another concept especially fundamental to understanding the context of early Judaism at large: Judaism was a religion based not on creed or dogma, but on practices. It was not beliefs or theology that identified someone as a Jew or that defined the lines of sectarian groups. Rather, what set them aside as God’s chosen people were the actions and external markers involved in the “legalism” of obeying Torah’s rituals and ethics, like circumcision for example. Jesus condemns this emphasis on outwardly-focused acts and instead espouses acts of unseen and unsung honor and obedience to God: “’Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them’” (Matthew 6:1). As Matthew 6 continues, Jesus explains how giving (v. 2-3), praying (v. 5-13), and fasting (v. 16-18) not in public but in private will be rewarded by God, which would have been quite in opposition to early Judaism’s understanding of what it means to be identified as one of God’s people.

        Purity was a contentious topic within early Judaism. From menstrual blood to dead bodies, anything that could result in impurity and risk polluting the Temple was considered a danger. Even the formation of sects is reflective of the desire to separate oneself from the impurities of unclean people and things. As Hellenization began to close in on Judea and threatened to taint the institutions central to Jewish culture, the pressure to protect purity of the Temple only intensified. During the Second Temple period, the boundary between resistance and assimilation to the insertion of Greek culture was increasingly challenged. Eventually, the fear relating to the question of how to accommodate manifested into two new developments: mikvahs (ritual bath to achieve ritual purity) and clean stone pottery (replacing clay vessels so blood could now simply be washed off). In Matthew, Jesus does not exhibit this same fear, let alone concern, for ritual purity: “A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, ‘Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean!’ Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy” (Matthew 8:2-3). Jesus deliberately chooses to touch the unclean man, showing that purity did not carry the meaning to Him as it did in normative Judaism. Later in Matthew 23, Jesus clarifies his view on purity: “’You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self- indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean” (Matthew 23:25-26). Here, Jesus challenges the belief that you must first clean away the external, physical impurities, and instead tells them to rid themselves of internal sins so that they can find true purity. Jesus’ lack of fear for keeping with the customs of purity was threatening to the culture that held these traditions so tightly.

        Throughout Matthew, the author tries to frame the chapters with implications of Jesus’ being the true teacher of God’s will rather than the Pharisees. The use of messianic language when referencing Jesus is one example of the author uses the text to espouse Jesus’ claims of being the true “Son of David.” The entire book starts with the genealogy record in the first chapter, helping the author prove Jesus’ standing as one of God’s chosen people in the line of Abraham, which would give His teachings more authority in the eyes of the Jewish community. However, I think the most compelling example of the author convincing them that Jesus is the true teacher of God’s will is at the close of the Parable of the Evil Farmers when the he cites the rejected cornerstone text from Psalm 118 and then alludes to the Pharisees being “crushed” upon the stone. The use of aggressive imagery here creates a sense of urgency that to me communicates a “follow him, now!” call-to-action.

        Before taking this course and reading about what ancient Judaism truly looked like, I knew almost nothing about Judaism at all. If you had asked me about it, the only information I would have offered you would be that Jewish men knew every word of the Old Testament by heart. I now know that even this statement is not accurate, as literacy and education in Torah was sometimes at times to only the elite, and the “Old Testament” did not even in the canonized form that I know today. Since I had none of my own knowledge on early Judaism, I read Matthew through the eyes of Paul and polemics I was taught in church. I viewed the Pharisees as horribly evil people who wanted to kill Jesus purely out of jealousy. Now, I understand the threat that Jesus posed to the Pharisees. Their identity, their sense of place/space, their authority, and even their very understanding of the God they lived to worship and obey were all directly threatened by Jesus. Judea was their place; the Jews were their people. And suddenly, someone who was nothing like the Messiah they were waiting for came into the picture and turned everything they knew on its head. Now when I read Matthew, I read it with much more sympathy for how confusing, and honestly scary, Jesus’ personhood and teachings must have been – not just for the Pharisees, but for the entire Jewish community.