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Torah Observance and Radicalization in the First Gospel. Matthew and First-Century Judaism: A Contribution to the Debate
Abstract
L'article analyse la tension, repérable dans quelques passages du premier Évangile, entre l'obéissance aux commandements se situant à l'intérieur du cadre donné par la Loi, et la radicalisation à laquelle invite le Jésus matthéen. L'enquête débute par une exégèse détaillée de Mt 5, 17–20. Dans un second temps, elle s'intéresse à trois épisodes où la tension entre obéissance et radicalisation est apparente: les antithèses du Sermon sur la Montagne (5, 17–48); la controverse sur le divorce (19, 1–9); l’épisode du jeune homme riche (19, 16–22). Dans une troisième partie, l'interrogation porte sur la cohérence des passages analysés avec la déclaration de Jésus en Mt 23, 2–3. Il résulte de l'enquête le constat que le référent du premier Évangile s'est déplacé: la colonne vertébrale structurant la théologie de Matthieu—et donc son identité religieuse—n'est plus prioritairement la Loi et l'obéissance aux commandements, mais le Messie et son enseignement.
... Scholars employ a variety of methodologies to analyze Jesus's adherence to the Written Torah. These methodologies include comparative (Bjork 2021;Bernauer 2020;Sumney 2021), historical (Homolka and Shafer 2015;Perrin 1984), legal (Sanders 2016;Viljoen 2006), narrative-critical (Blanton 2013), and exegetical analysis (Allison 2013;Cuvillier 2009;Marcovich 2015;Reese 2022). No singular method predicts scholars' conclusions about Jesus's Torah observance; however, noncompliance determinations seem to correlate with anti-missionizing scholarship (Eisen 1948;Kessler 2022;Reese 2022;Singer 2014). ...
... Kingsbury (1989) holds that Matthew's redactional purpose was to justify his brand of Jewish faith against the Pharisaic opprobrium, which made Matthew's redactional intention paraenetic. His Gospel highlights the importance of "listening to Jesus" over emotion, impulsivity, and religious and cultural influences (Cuvillier 2009, p. 159;Kingsbury 1969, p. 11). 1 To Viljoen (2006) and Cuvillier (2009), Matthew's view of the Torah is Christological in meaning and function because Matthew sees Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of the law. Viljoen (2006) and Bornkamm (1963) argue that Jesus is the one who perfectly obeys the law and brings the law to its "full meaning", where "full meaning" and, thus, fulfillment demonstrate the deeper attitude of one's heart (Bornkamm 1963, p. 24;Viljoen 2006, p. 138; See also Bernauer 2020). ...
... There are three views within the observant camp: (1) complete obedience to the Torah (Bjork 2021;Douglas et al. 1989;Bernauer 2020;Przybylski 2004), (2) the obedience of Jesus to his reinterpreted but intensified Torah (Allison 2013;Neusner 2017;Sumney 2021), and (3) the obedience of Jesus via pluralistic Judaism (Blanton 2013;Küng and Lapide 1977;Martin 2012;Sadeh 1989;Stahl 2015). There are also three views within the nonobservant camp: (1) complete disobedience (Cuvillier 2009), (2) partial Torah abrogation (Bornkamm 1963;Meier 1976;Verhey 2014), and (3) complete Torah abrogation (Harvey 2017;Marcovich 2015). ...
The Torah is central to Judaism. Jesus’s relationship with it sparks conflict with Christianity. Some Jews think that Jesus violated the Torah, while some Christians believe that he sinlessly followed it. This clash escalated on 22 June 2023, when Ultra-Orthodox Jews protested a Messianic convention in Jerusalem. Social media videos and comments highlighted Jesus’s purported Torah compliance, placing Matthew 5:17 at the center stage. The comments proved indicative of the gaps within the literature as neither determined all the unique Written and Oral Torahic/legal issues raised within the Gospels nor quantified the extent of Jesus’s compliance. To address these gaps, this study employs artificial intelligence (LDA), statistics, and legal analysis and exegesis to determine Jesus’s compliance with the Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, and Mishneh Torah. The findings show the Gospels’ consensus: Mark, Luke, and John reflect that Jesus was non-Torah-compliant (14.80, 43.80, and 0.00%, respectively); Matthew states otherwise (70.80%). Overall, the study revealed that Jesus kept 79 of 162 Written and Oral Torah laws (48.80%). This study has significant implications for Christian doctrines, the definition(s) of sin, and the missionizing ethnoreligion members and serves as a case study that illustrates AI’s impact on religious authority (i.e., clergy, scholarship, and doctrines).
A epígrafe do Evangelho de Mateus baliza sua catequese. Propõe-se a escrever o “livro da origem de Jesus Cristo” (Mt 1,1), narrar Jesus em sua condição messiânica. Sua identidade vai sendo descrita ao longo da narração, desde a genealogia até o envio dos apóstolos pelo Ressuscitado. O presente texto tem o escopo de verificar o horizonte da ação messiânica de Jesus, ou seja, os objetivos visados. Servindo-se das intuições do método da análise narrativa, a catequese mateana será revisitada, na tentativa de sistematizar os elementos que permitem captar a pretensão do Messias Jesus, no sentido de fazer germinar a nova humanidade, querida pelo Pai dos Céus. E, afinal, esboçar, em grandes linhas, o rosto dessa nova humanidade, expressão do Reinado de Deus e parâmetro para o agir dos discípulos e das discípulas de Jesus de Nazaré, de todos os tempos.
How did Jews perceive the first Christians? By what means did they come to appreciate Christianity as a religion distinct from their own? In The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Professor Joshua Ezra Burns addresses those questions by describing the birth of Christianity as a function of the Jewish past. Surveying a range of ancient evidences, he examines how the authors of Judaism's earliest surviving memories of Christianity speak to the perspectives of rabbinic observers who were conditioned by the unique circumstances of their encounters with Christianity to recognize its adherents as fellow Jews. Only upon the decline of the Church's Jewish demographic were their successors compelled to see Christianity as something other than a variation of Jewish cultural expression. The evolution of thought in the classical Jewish literary record thus offers a dynamic account of Christianity's separation from Judaism counterbalancing the abrupt schism attested in contemporary Christian texts.
This essay analyses the tensions which can be traced in some passages of Matthew's Gospel between obedience to commandments within the framework of the law and the radicalization of the latter suggested by the Matthean Jesus. First, Élian CUVILLIER closely examines Matt. 5:17-20, and proposes a detailed exegesis of the pericope. Next, he focuses on three specific episodes where such tensions are particularly apparent: (1) the antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount, (2) the controversy about divorce (19:1-19), (3) the rich young man episode (19:16-22). Then he checks how far those three passages are coherent with what Jesus declares in Matt. 23:2-3. Eventually, and as a conclusion, he ventures some reflections about Matthew's relationships to late-first-century Judaism.
This study proposes that Matthew's discussion of a righteousness that «exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees» is an attempt to distinguish and separate his community from the Pharisees, a group that would include Jesus-followers. While scholars have often viewed the antagonism between Jesus and the Pharisees in Matthew as a polemic against rising Formative Judaism, the use of the Pharisees as the advocates of another righteousness may indicate the influence of Pharisees among the Jesus-following Jews of Matthew's community. Matthew points out the destructiveness of the teaching of the Pharisees and constructs a form of righteousness based on the person of Jesus as the true interpreter of the Law and the Prophets. In the process of dissociating his group from the Pharisees, Matthew develops a number of key ideas that would later become characteristic of "mainstream" Christianity, thus laying the foundation for the construction of a Christian identity distinct from Judaism.
Three times within Matt 5, 17-20 passage Matthew uses the verb signaling its importance. Consequently, I will focus on two historical events around which these words cluster; the Antiochan persecution and the destruction of the Temple, Since Jewish literature characterizes the Hellenizers of the Maccabean period as law abolishcrs, labeling a group as such implicated it in endangering the nation. As Josephus' Jewish War demonstrates, after the Jewish Revolt, law abolishers were blamed fur the Temple's destruction. Thus, Matthew addresses the charge that Jesus abolished the law and, in so doing, brought about the destruction of the Temple.
The Gospel of Matthew can be characterized by its special emphasis on the worship of Jesus. In the scenes where Jesus is worshiped, Jesus was depicted as the king of the Jews, Christ/Messiah, the "I am" and the Divine Being holding authority both in heaven and on earth, thus being worthy of worship. Matthew employed both Jewish and Gentile traditions in abundance so that both Jews and Gentiles of the Greco-Roman world might understand the religious and socio-political implications of the worship of Jesus. The worship of Jesus, practiced by the Matthean community, led to the community's isolation from formative Judaism centered in the synagogues and facilitated the community's position in relation to Roman imperial propaganda.
It is generally acknowledged that the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel is a dramatic and fitting end to the evangelist’s narrative. In the eyes of many scholars this final pericope does more than simply conclude the Gospel; it serves as a summary of the text’s major themes and even provides the interpretative key by which the earlier story should be read. This view, however, is questionable for two reasons. Firstly, the Great Commission introduces new themes and motifs into the Gospel story, which means that it cannot be viewed as a mere summary of what has come before. Secondly, this passage does not mention all the major themes of the Gospel. While some important motifs are included in the final pericope, there are others that receive no mention at all. This point too casts considerable doubt on the view that Matthew 28:16–20 serves to summarise Matthew’s story of Jesus. Moreover, the Great Commission, despite recalling a number of earlier themes, looks more towards the time of the future Church than back to the time of ‘the historical Jesus’. It is therefore better viewed as a bridging text that concludes one Christian story about the mission of Jesus and introduces another story about the history of the Church.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the experience of reading the gospels, for both beginning students and those who have been at it for decades, is the growing awareness of how the gospels convey their message. Our attention is usually focused first on what the message is: the storyline, the plot, the climax or resolution, and its implications. As we continue to read and reread, we may find that we begin to grow interested in various features of the narrative, such as its organisation, collections of material (parables or miracle stories), repetitions, the ways characters are represented or the narrator's comments. These are not incidental features of the gospel narrative. On the contrary, they are the elements with which it is constructed and that guide the reader's experience of the narrative. In this article we will explore how Matthew leads its Jewish-Christian readers, sometime late in the 1st century and during the process of the separation of early believers from the synagogue, to accept Jesus' teachings as a new teaching on righteousness and functionally at least a new Torah. Specifically, we will analyse the role of repetition and redundancy in Matthew's narrative rhetoric in relation to this theme.
The Sermon on the Mount: Freudian critique and ethical restructure
It is dangerous to use Freud’s commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. We run the risk of making the “Love thy neighbour” commandment express the constantly escalating demands of a Superego that transforms aggressiveness into self-punishment. Lacan, for his part, does not refute the dangerousness of the “love thy neighbour” commandment commented by Freud; but he adds a reflection on the imago Dei. Our neighbour, in the eyes of the French analyst, is beyond all specularity. The Sermon on the Mount does not define an imitatio Christi ethic. The radicalism Jesus invites us to practice is one that incites us to obey someone, and not a law whose purpose is to produce effects. Contrary to Freud’s fears, what emerges is a “first person singular” subjectivity. To support this interpretation, the author also refers to the thoughts of Paul Ricœur, Jacques Derrida and the debates between Jean-Luc Nancy and Alain Badiou.
Some dispute surrounds the correct interpretation of παλιγγενεσία in Mt. 19.28. While all scholars accept that this term possesses eschatological import, there is no agreement on its precise meaning. One school of thought argues that the term reflects the common apocalyptic belief in the re-creation of the cosmic order after its prior destruction at the eschaton. Other scholars, however, dispute this interpretation and insist that παλιγγενεσία has basically temporal connotations; it refers merely to the new age which will succeed the present age. This study will defend the first interpretation by introducing to the discussion two other Matthaean passages, namely 5.18 and 24.35, whose importance in relation to this subject has not been fully appreciated.
Both Matthew and Paul view Christianity as the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures, yet they also accent the newness that fulfillment brings with it. Each writer articulates in his own way what it means to be faithful to the righteousness of the Torah.
In his book Paul and Palestinian Judaism , E. P. Sanders challenged the traditional assessment of early rabbinic soteriology as based upon legalistic works-righteousness. Sanders contended that the strict Pauline view of the law was foreign to early rabbinic Judaism:
There is no hint in Rabbinic literature of a view such as that of Paul in Gal. 3.10 or of IV Ezra, that one must achieve legal perfection... Human perfection was not considered realistically achievable by the Rabbis, nor was it required.
Andrew Overman, Anthony Saldarini and David Sim overstate their case when they conclude that the religion of the Matthean community was not Christianity but Judaism. The appeal to 5.17ff. and the exclusivist sayings will not bear the weight of the hypothesis. There is far too much newness in Matthew and the differences with Judaism are too great to conclude that Matthew exhibits mere ‘deviance’ from other Jewish groups. The ‘new things’ involve a radical reorientation of previous perspectives wherein Christ takes central place previously held by Torah. Matthew's community is thus best described as a Jewish form of Christianity.
Justification by Deed: The Conclusion of the Sanhedrin-Makkot and Paul's Rejection of Law
- Steinmetz
“Life” Redefined: Wisdom and Law in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch
- Burkes
L’ Évangile de Matthieu et l'héritage d'Israël
- Beauchamp
Jesus and the Law: An Exegesis on Matthew 5.17–20
- Wenham
La posizione di Gesù di fronte alla legge seconde il Vangelo di Matteo e l'interpretazione di Mt 5,17–20
- Corsani
Particularisme et universalisme chez Matthieu: quelques hypothèses à l’ épreuve du texte
- Cuvillier
Divorce, Celibacy and Joseph
- Allison
The Principles of the Sermon on the Mount
- McEleney
Matthieu et le judaïsme: chronique d'une rupture annoncée
- Cuvillier
Mathieu 5, 17–20 et le rôle prophétique de la Loi (cf. Mt 11, 13)
- Sabourin
Die Erfüllung des Gesetzes bei Matthäus (Mt 5,17–20)
- Luz
Attitudes to the Law in Matthew's Gospel: A Discussion of Matthew 5.18
- Hamerton-Kelly