Was the Author of Matthew's Gospel Jewish? (Part 2)

In my last post I outlined the arguments for concluding that the author of Matthew Gospel was jewish; in fact proponents of this view generally consider him to have been a devout Jew. I started with something about how the traditional view arose, and why the arguments behind it are discounted these days, although that doesn't mean that the traditional view is necessarily wrong. Then I ran through Udo Schnelle's first list - the arguments, from the text itself, that Matthew was a (devout) Jew.

In this post I run through Schnelle's list against Matthew being a Jew or, at the very least, a devout Jew. However before I start looking at this list, I'm very conscious that this is an internet blog - an arena where some unpleasant things can be said, and I think I'd better make some brief comments to address this head on.

Anti-Semitism, Christianity and the Internet

In christianity there is a long history of anti-semitism, and in certain places of the internet, such bigotry, whether connected or unconnected with christianity, soemtimes raises its ugly head. I very much hope that my comments here will not attract this kind of input - I still have moderation of comments turned off, but I will keep this under close review.

Arguments that I outline below that Matthew may not have been jewish, or at least not as devoutly jewish as he has often been portrayed, should not be taken as giving succour to racism. 

Udo Schnelle's List For Gentile Standpoint of Matthew's Gospel:

Again for this post I take Schnelle's list items as sub headings.

a) The Gospel's offer of salvation to all clearly points to a Gentile mission that has been underway for some time (cf. Matt 28:18-20; 8:11-12; 10:18; 12:18, 21; 13:38a; 21:43-45; 22:1-14; 24:14; 25:32; 26:13).

In part this point of Schnelle's is the converse of his point c in his previous list; i.e. contrary to his point there, Matthew does in fact include in his Gospel all nations, not just Israel. The fact that Matthew finishes his Gospel with the great commission to go and make disciples of all nations, serves to counteract any impression of favouritism to Israel.

But in fact some of the passages he lists here go beyond that. Take Matt 8:11-12:

11 λέγω δὲ ὑμῖν ὅτι πολλοὶ ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν καὶ δυσμῶν ἥξουσιν καὶ ἀνακλιθήσονται μετὰ Ἀβραὰμ καὶ Ἰσαὰκ καὶ Ἰακὼβ ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν,  12 οἱ δὲ υἱοὶ τῆς βασιλείας ἐκβληθήσονται εἰς τὸ σκότος τὸ ἐξώτερον· ἐκεῖ ἔσται ὁ κλαυθμὸς καὶ ὁ βρυγμὸς τῶν ὀδόντων.
11 But I say to you that many from the East and West will come and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens. 12 But the children of the kingdom will be cast out to outer darkness; there will be weeping and grinding of teeth. 

This looks like a condemnation of jewish religion of the day and promotion of a more gentile viewpoint.

Another thing to note here is the quantity and spread of these salvific messages for Gentiles as opposed to the briefer lineup in point c of his previous list.

b) The nullification of ritual laws (cf. Matt 15:11, 20b; 23:25-26).

Of course the new religious movement that became christianity rejected the food laws at some point, and partly these passages fit into that pattern. However the combination of rejection of food laws with purity rituals around eating food (particularly in the chapter 15 passage) does show considerable movement on from the judaism(s) contemporary with Jesus.

c) The Matthean critique of the Law. Especially in the Antithesis of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:21-48) Jesus places his authority higher than that of Moses, for which there is no parallel in ancient Judaism.

It's hard to add to what Schnelle outlines here, and I think this one is a particularly strong argument for a radical gap between Matthew's view of his religion and the judaism(s) of his time. Notice how the "crowds" in Matthew's Gospel accept this usurping of Moses' authority; well beyond the section of the sermon comprising the antitheses, indeed right at the end of the entire sermon, the crowds mention Jesus' authority, and do so in a positive way (Matt. 7:28f).

Moreover, there's no sympathetic treatment for Mosaic law here; the antitheses are simply stated, with the assumption that the audience will have to, in modern vernacular, "deal with it". No veneration, no explanation as to why the change, no attempt to rescue cherished traditions. It really is quite striking.

d) Matthew presents a thoroughgoing polemic against Pharisaic casuistry (cf. Matt 5:20; 6:1ff; 9:9ff; 12:1ff, 9ff; 15:1ff; 19:1ff; 23:1ff).

I find arguments that involve condemnation of the pharisees weaker (particularly compared with the preceding argument). "Inter-nicene" polemics, I find, really don't add much to the debate about the jewishness of Matthew. Rather, clearly he didn't agree with the pharisees; well there were plenty of Jews who didn't! So I find most of these passages really don't answer the question of how jewish Matthew was.

Where, however, the dialogue can be widened out to reflect a greater range of judaism than simply the pharisaic perspective, then perhaps the argument is stronger.

This is perhaps possible with a number of these passages, but certainly the Matt. 6:1ff section of the sermon on the mount. Indeed, I don't know why Schnelle includes this text in the "pharisaic casuistry" section, as pharisees aren't mentioned here (have I missed something?). This passage does seem to constitute criticism of widespread jewish practice of the time in "synagogues" and so probably does add to his argument overall, although I think he has mis-categorized it.

e) Matthew avoids Aramaisms (cf. Mark 1:13/ Matt 4:2; Mark 5:41/ Matt 9:25; Mark 7:34/ Matt 15:30; Mark 7:11/ Matt 15:5).

The following assumes the priority of Mark - a position held by an overwhelming majority of New Testament Biblical Critics, and also argued for by Schnelle himself.

We can add to Schnelle's list here Mark 9:5/ Matt 17:4 (use of "Rabbi") and Mark 14:36/ Matt 26:39 (use of "Abba").

In fact the only Aramaism I can think of that Matthew retains from Mark is the cry from the cross Mark 15:34/ Matt 27:46. Matthew does also retain the hebraism "hosanna" from Mark (21:9), however I suspect that this has become liturgical, for "hosanna" doesn't exist in this form in hebrew biblical texts that we have. Otherwise Matthew seems to have systematically stripped Mark of its Aramaisms, which is quite striking.

Is this a sign of Matthew's lack of jewish perspective? Or at least lack of semitic jewish perspective? After all he could have followed some kind of hellenistic judaism. At very least he seems not to have considered Jesus' original language very important, or perhaps have had something against it, considering the extent of the expunction. I think this latter stance would go against him Matthew being a hellenistic Jew, but I guess it is a matter of judgement.

f) The Matthean community understands its life to be at some distance from that of the synagogue (cf. Matt 23:34b ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς ὑμῶν [in your synagogues]; Matt 7:29b καὶ οὐχ ὡς οἱ γραμματεῖς αὐτῶω [and not as their scribes]).

The first of these passages is part of a long condemnation of scribes and pharisees and so could, in theory, be a castigation limited to those groups. However, the use of "your synagogues" does seem to widen this out which, in addition to its adoption of a "them and us" attitude, does lend a certain force to an argument against Matthew's jewishness.

The second of Schnelle's passages come at the end of the sermon on the mount already mentioned above. As the criticism is of the scribes, following arguments I've outlined above, I find Schnelle's argument has less force here.

g) Ritual prescriptions for the Sabbath have lost their significance (cf. Matt 12:1-8).

Hmm. This argument cuts both ways. Matthew has taken over the pericope in Mark 2:23-28 and reworked it. So this raises the question, is Matthew's redaction any less jewish than Mark's original?

There is a lot of ink spilled over the Markan text, particularly as regards the "son of man" expression. But we'll come to that.

I think the first thing to notice is how Matthew corrects Mark's error about Abiathar. Matthew just discreetly drops reference to the high priest at David's time, and thus gets his text back in line with the Hebrew bible. This really is an argument for Matthew's familiarity with Hebrew scriptures, although it would work just the same for familiarity with them in Greek translation; however I'm sure that Mark Goodacre would see this as bolstering his argument in part.

Nevertheless, immediately Matthew detracts from this sense of familiarity with the scriptures by adding to Mark's version with (Matt 12:5):

ἢ οὐκ ἀνέγνωτε ἐν τῷ νόμῳ ὅτι τοῖς σάββασιν οἱ ἱερεῖς ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τὸ σάββατον βεβηλοῦσιν καὶ ἀναίτιοί εἰσιν;
Or have you not read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and they are innocent?

This is one of those passages which makes people read around to find out what on earth Matthew was talking about! The best people can find for a fit for this quotation/allusion is Numbers 28:9-10, which is hardly convincing.

So to the "son of man" expression at the end of the parallel passages. This is something of a can of worms which I am very reluctant to open. Really the "son of man" topic needs a series of posts itself, if not rather more. There is an enormous amount of disagreement about its usage in the gospels.

Nevertheless, perhaps I can restrict myself to saying that Mark's treatment of the "son of man", with its twofold stages to the argument (Mark 2:27-28) seems much more coherent than Matthew's citation of just the latter part (Matt 12:8). The Markan argument is a good one in that it fits the context, it possibly uses Aramaic elements of the expression (cf. practically anything written by Maurice Casey!) and almost undoubtedly portrays Hebrew parallelism. Matthew has lost a very jewish feeling of this argument in his partial citation. It seems that he really didn't understand the argument that Mark's Jesus was making.

h) The rejection of Israel, i.e. that Israel has lost its distinct place in the history of salvation, has been accepted by Matthew as reality for some time (cf. Matt 21:43; 22:9; 8:11-12; 21:39ff; 27:25; 28:15)

I basically agree with this point of Schnelle's although I do think he double counts - Matt 21:43 is the explanation of the parable in 21:39ff, so really ought to count as one. Matt 28:15 is remarkable, not just for the sentiment expressed here, but also for the "them and us" approach:

Καὶ διεφημίσθη ὁ λόγος οὗτος παρὰ Ἰουδαίοις μέχρι τῆς σήμερον.
And this story was spread widely amongst jews [even] until today. 

Could Matthew really have considered himself amongst these jews? I guess it depends on how you look at this text.

Summary

Well there you have Schnelle's "against" list - that is against Matthew having been jewish. Just as with the "for" list, I've agreed with some and diminished others.

But he has missed a common additional argument in his "against" list. This one deserves a post of its own; so I'll save it for later, along with some attempt to make sense of the contrary data.

Was the Author of Matthew's Gospel Jewish?

Here's a short break from my Goliath series, which I'll resume some time later.

In one of my posts critiquing Mark Goodacre's critique of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, I mentioned that there is a significant amount of debate about whether the author of Matthew's Gospel was Jewish or not, and if he was, then what kind of Jew he was. This may have taken some people by surprise; I think most readers of the New Testament take it as a "result" that Matthew was written by a Jew, just as people generally take Luke to have been a Gentile. Much like so many areas of scholarly biblical criticism, the work of the experts has failed to get out there to people in the streets or pews.

So I thought it would be worth taking a look at the question - not that this blog's readership levels will do much to redress society's unfamiliarity with the issue!

Why did people originally think Matthew was written by a Jew rather than a Gentile?

First a note to say I'll be following the established convention of calling the author of the Gospel of Matthew - "Matthew". Please do not take this as any indication that I think the author was any individual Matthew, nor even that the actual author happened to be named Matthew; here it's just shorthand for indicating the author of the Gospel concerned. And whilst I'm giving disclaimers, perhaps I should also mention that just because I refer to the "author" of this Gospel in the singular, that should also not be taken to mean that everything in the Gospel of Matthew was written by just one person; on the contrary the author undoubtedly used sources and there may be elements of later redaction present in texts of the Gospel found today.

Returning to the question of this section, of course this Gospel was, from early on, not just attributed to any Jew, but to the disciple of Jesus  Μαθθαῖος ὁ τελώνης (Matt 9:9; 10:3). Indeed given this attribution, the jewishness of the Gospel would be pretty much guaranteed; surely Jesus' disciples were Jewish themselves, just like Jesus himself. And if such an early disciple had written the Gospel, then the Gospel itself must be very early, thus not allowing time for any great split between the new religion and Judaism of Jesus' day.

That's all very well as far as it goes. The problem is that no biblical scholar these days thinks that the Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew the tax-collecting-disciple mentioned in the Gospel. Of course many evangelical fundamentalists do still hold to this position, but even amongst them there are some who don't - after all the Gospel doesn't actually say this, so some have been able to break free from this doctrine.

But there's another reason why, early on, people thought Matthew's Gospel was particularly jewish - it was thought that it had originally been written in either Hebrew or Aramaic before being translated into Greek. Being written in a semitic language, it was argued, betrayed its semitic (and therefore jewish!) origins. In this respect a quotation is often given from Papias, which, strictly speaking, is a quotation of a quotation - we only know of this quotation via Eusebius writing in his Ecclesiastical History (3:39:16):

Ματθαῖος μὲν οὖν Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ τὰ λόγια συνετάξατο, ἡρμήνευσεν δ᾽ αὐτὰ ὡς ἦν δυνατὸς ἕκαστος
So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able.

This is a passage which is cited to support numerous arguments in modern day biblical criticism, but is only a snippet about Matthew (or even about a Matthew) amongst argumentation in Eusebius' text about Mark. Needless to say, biblical scholars are agreed that the Gospel we know as Matthew Gospel (which may or may not be what Eusebius/Papias were talking about here) was not written in a semitic language, but was written right from the outset in Greek.

So these two arguments for the Gospel of Matthew's jewishness come to nought. Of course that doesn't mean that the Gospel isn't jewish, it's just that we have not yet established that it is.

But how could you tell if a document were written by a Jew or, more particularly, by a devout Jew? To do that, really you need to get to grips with the content of the Gospel. And that is what I was saying in my previous post that Udo Schnelle had helpfully done by way of "for and against lists" in his The New Testament Writings (translated from the German Einleitung in das Neue Testament).

I thought it would be helpful to go through these lists here, and see if that gets us any further in understanding the debate.

Arguments for Intrinsic Jewishness in Matthew's Gospel

I'll use Schnelle's points as subheadings:

a) The fundamental affirmation of the Law (cf. Matt 5:17-20; 23:3a, 23b).
The first of these passages seems quite forceful, and is often quoted in many contexts. So it's well worth taking a close look.

17 Μὴ νομίσητε ὅτι ἦλθον καταλῦσαι τὸν νόμον ἢ τοὺς προφήτας· οὐκ ἦλθον καταλῦσαι ἀλλὰ πληρῶσαι.  18 ἀμὴν γὰρ λέγω ὑμῖν· ἕως ἂν παρέλθῃ ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ, ἰῶτα ἓν ἢ μία κεραία οὐ μὴ παρέλθῃ ἀπὸ τοῦ νόμου, ἕως ἂν πάντα γένηται.  19 ὃς ἐὰν οὖν λύσῃ μίαν τῶν ἐντολῶν τούτων τῶν ἐλαχίστων καὶ διδάξῃ οὕτως τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ἐλάχιστος κληθήσεται ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν· ὃς δ᾿ ἂν ποιήσῃ καὶ διδάξῃ, οὗτος μέγας κληθήσεται ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν.

20 Λέγω γὰρ ὑμῖν ὅτι ἐὰν μὴ περισσεύσῃ ὑμῶν ἡ δικαιοσύνη πλεῖον τῶν γραμματέων καὶ Φαρισαίων, οὐ μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν.

17 Do not consider that I [Jesus] have come to destroy the Law and the Prophets. I have not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you until the heaven and the earth pass away, not one iota nor one serif will pass away from the Law until everything comes about. 19 Whoever, then, looses one of the least of these commandments and teaches people thus, he will be called least in the kingdom of the heavens, but whoever does and teaches [them], he will be called great in the kingdom of the heavens.
20 For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will certainly not enter into the kingdom of the heavens.

This at first sounds very strong stuff indeed - a robust defense of the Torah and Prophets. However, as Maurice Casey points out in his Jesus of Nazareth (pp. 91-2, albeit making an argument for an early date of Matthew's gospel which fails to convince), verse 19 is not really as strong as people often claim. After all, for this verse everyone gets to the kingdom of the heavens regardless of their attitude to the Law; just some of them will be called "least" - hardly fire and brimstone stuff! Yes, in verse 20 one's righteousness has to be better than the Scribes and Pharisees, but this is more a condemnation of them than anyone else.

Undoubtedly the Law (and the Prophets - oh am I sorely tempted to comment on this formula - but one thing at a time!) is important for Matthew, but from here it is not the deciding factor for humanity or religion.

b) The sustained reference to the Old Testament and emphatic application of the idea of fulfillment (cf. e.g. Matt 1:22-23; 2:5-6, 15, 17-18; 3:3; 4:4-16; 8:17 and others).

These are generally the fulfillment passages, one of which we dealt with at length in a previous post. They clearly are a "feature" of Matthew's Gospel, and must surely be taken to indicate that either Matthew thought he could make good arguments from fulfillments of jewish scripture or he thought this would be important to his readers.

There are a couple of interesting points to note, however. Firstly, Matthew often quotes from the Greek translations of scriptures available to him, to the extent that, as we have already seen, the very point he makes about a "virgin" can only be maintained from the Greek translation of his time, not the Hebrew.  Ulrich Luz in A Commentary on Matthew (Hermeneia series) concludes that "Matthew's bible was the LXX [Septuagint]" (vol. 1, p. 128).

Secondly, as Mark Goodacre points out in his podcast that I criticized, one of the fulfillment "quotations" (strangely omitted from Schnelle's list here) references a passage that is simply not found in any scriptural literature found today, nor any that were known to early Christians who wrote about it. Matt 2:23 has:

καὶ ἐλθὼν κατῴκησεν εἰς πόλιν λεγομένην Ναζαρέτ· ὅπως πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ τῶν προφητῶν ὅτι Ναζωραῖος κληθήσεται. And he came to reside in a city named Nazareth in order that it would be fulfilled that which was spoken through the Prophets, "He will be called a Nazarene"

There have been many attempts to identify such a "scripture" with no convincing success. So the question arises what purpose does this particular fulfillment passage serve? The author seems more concerned with the idea of "fulfillment" than accuracy about what jewish scriptures actually say.

A further error of the author is in Matthew 13:35 where the author incorrectly attributes a quotation of the Psalms (78:2) to the Prophets, or indeed, in some early manuscripts, even to the Prophet Isaiah.

These points serve to reduce suggestions of the author's familiarity with jewish scriptures both in Greek and Hebrew, but it seems he was even less familiar with scriptural sources in Hebrew than he was those in Greek.

c) The fundamental limitation of Jesus' mission to Israel (cf. Matt 10:5-6; 15:24).

These two passages seem rather undone by other passages concerning the mission to the Gentiles that will be considered in the "against" list, and I'll have more comment there. However, for the moment here's a suggestion about these two passages. I liken them to a sort of Matthean "Messianic Secret à la Wrede"; that is, they seem to me to be more of an explanation for readers that the new religion started out amongst Jews even though it was Jesus' intent all along for everyone to hear the message. Their aim might have been apologetic in this way, and if I'm right then they could equally have been written by a Jew or a Gentile.

d) The Matthean community still keeps the Sabbath (cf. Matt 24:20).

I actually think Schnelle understates this point. It's not just that the Matthean community observes the Sabbath, but also the author expresses concern for all those who keep the Sabbath, thus going beyond Matthew's own community. Matthew here, it seems to me, shows quite a link to Jews of his day.

e) The Matthean community still lives within the jurisdiction of Judaism (cf. Matt 17: 24-27; 23: 1-3).

The first of these passages probably deserve a whole post to itself, if not more. It is an extraordinary passage in terms of its form. It starts off seemingly as a controversy story but at its end it announces a miracle without actually recounting the event.

24 Ἐλθόντων δὲ αὐτῶν εἰς Καφαρναοὺμ προσῆλθον οἱ τὰ δίδραχμα λαμβάνοντες τῷ Πέτρῳ καὶ εἶπαν· ὁ διδάσκαλος ὑμῶν οὐ τελεῖ [τὰ] δίδραχμα;  25 λέγει· ναί. καὶ ἐλθόντα εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν προέφθασεν αὐτὸν ὁ Ἰησοῦς λέγων· τί σοι δοκεῖ, Σίμων; οἱ βασιλεῖς τῆς γῆς ἀπὸ τίνων λαμβάνουσιν τέλη ἢ κῆνσον; ἀπὸ τῶν υἱῶν αὐτῶν ἢ ἀπὸ τῶν ἀλλοτρίων;  26 εἰπόντος δέ· ἀπὸ τῶν ἀλλοτρίων, ἔφη αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· ἄρα γε ἐλεύθεροί εἰσιν οἱ υἱοί.  27 ἵνα δὲ μὴ σκανδαλίσωμεν αὐτούς, πορευθεὶς εἰς θάλασσαν βάλε ἄγκιστρον καὶ τὸν ἀναβάντα πρῶτον ἰχθὺν ἆρον, καὶ ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ εὑρήσεις στατῆρα· ἐκεῖνον λαβὼν δὸς αὐτοῖς ἀντὶ ἐμοῦ καὶ σοῦ.

24 When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the two-drachma-coin came to Peter and said, "Your [pl] teacher pays the two-drachma-coin, doesn't he?" 25 He said, "Yes." And coming to the house, Jesus anticipated him saying, "What does it seem to you, Simon? The kings of the earth, from whom do they receive their tolls and taxes? From their children or from foreigners? 26 And he said, "From foreigners." Jesus said to him, "Well then, children are free. 27 But so that we don't shock them, go to the sea and cast a hook and take the first fish that comes up; having opened its mouth you will find a stater-coin; taking that, give it to them for me and you."

This passage reflects a pre-70 CE situation, which was modified for Matthew's post-70 CE timeframe. This temple tax was replaced by the fiscus Iudaicus following the destruction of the temple. One interesting thing is the brief but overwhelmingly positive "yes" that Peter gives to this tax, compared with the rather more reticent we-shouldn't-have-to-pay-it-because-we're-not-foreigners-but-I'll-pay-it-through-a-miracle approach of Jesus. Many have seen some considerable redactional activity here. Nonetheless, most maintain that Matthew received a pre-70 CE oral tradition here, and may have redacted it further.

Whatever the case, it is very striking that Matthew includes this passage. Does it refer to a principle that Matthew sees as applying in his community? Well it's hard to say. Nonetheless, it is clear that Matthew is including something here which would strike a chord more with Jews than Gentiles.

The other passage Schnelle cites for this part, Matt 23:1-3, is less interesting being a further example of condemnation of Scribes and Pharisees, with a warning about hypocrisy.

f) The Moses typology in Matt 2:13ff; 4:1-2; 5:1 and the five great discourses in the gospel present Jesus as having an affinity to Moses.

I can't disagree that in Matthew's Gospel the hero Jesus is frequently given a Moses typology; however this is not unique to Matthew. Indeed in Luke-Acts, which is generally considered much more gentile (and written for a gentile audience), Jesus also receives a Moses typology, perhaps more so in Acts than in the Gospel of Luke.

Take Stephen's speech in Acts 7. His whole speech says an awful lot about Moses, which is all transferred to Jesus in verse 37. It would be hard to interpret the speech without acknowledging that it considers jewish scriptural history to be extremely important, yet this is in a book written supposedly by a Gentile for Gentiles.

So does the Moses typology in Matthew count any differently?

g) The language, structure, reception of the Scripture, argumentation and history of the influence of the Gospel of Matthew point to a Jewish Christian as its author.

It's a bit difficult to address such generalizations, so I won't attempt to do so.

Well, although I've argued to diminish some points, and supported others, it remains an impressive list from Schnelle. So what could possibly be said in the "against" list? I'll leave that for my next post.

Who Killed Goliath? (Part 3)

Sorry for the delay in getting this post up - I've been ill.

In my last post I gave an example of the difference between the Old Greek (OG) text of 1Samuel 17 and the Masoretic Text (MT). I pointed out that overall the OG is considerably shorter than the MT although, conversely, there are a few details that the OG has that are missing in the MT.

The example I gave (1Sam 17:49-51) is only a small example of the shortness of the OG text. So before moving on to examining some possible models for explaining how these differences arose, I'd like to look at one further example which is a much more major absence from the OG text.

Earlier on in 1Samuel 17 an entire section is absent from the OG, that is verses 12-31. In the MT this passage serves to:

1. Introduce David again (cf. 1Sam 16:1-13) and some of his brothers,
2. Situate David in Bethlehem and yet explain how David was in Bethlehem whereas he had been with Saul at the end of chapter 16 (1Sam 17:15),
3. Provide an explanation of how David came to be at the battlefield, rendered necessary by placing him in Bethlehem,
4. Explain how he heard the taunts of Goliath,
5. Outline the reward of the hand in marriage of a daughter of Saul to the one who kills Goliath,
6. Relate a small argument between Eliab and David, and
7. Describe how David came to volunteer to enter the duel.

Okay so there's a lot there, and we've not yet looked at how the OG works without these elements (I'll address that below). Some of the elements here work well independently of the rest of the story.

For example, the small dispute between Eliab and David is only really referenced in this passage. Eliab's only other mention in Samuel is back in chapter 16, when he was the first son of Jesse to be presented to Samuel. So the dispute story here is nicely self-contained.

But not all the elements above are so neat. We're going to meet a considerable development of the offer of the hand in marriage of a daughter of Saul later on in the book, something which contains its ongoing confusions (just which daughter?).

However some of the elements listed above have to deal with tensions created within these verses themselves. Take the introduction of David; no-one who reads the work from start to finish can fail to be intrigued that David gets this second introduction. Let's have a look at the first verse (1Sam 17:12):

וְדָוִד בֶּן־אִישׁ אֶפְרָתִי הַזֶּה מִבֵּית לֶחֶם יְהוּדָה וּשְׁמוֹ יִשַׁי וְלוֹ שְׁמֹנָה בָנִים וְהָאִישׁ בִּימֵי שָׁאוּל זָקֵן בָּא בַאֲנָשִׁים׃

And David was the son of that Ephrathite man from Bethlehem of Judah, his name was Jesse, and to him were eight sons; and the man, in the days of Saul, had come to be old amongst men.

There's a little problem at the end of this verse, and most translations modify the last word following the Lucianic recension, the Vorlage of which presumably read בַשָּׁנִים (or rather the same word without the vowel-pointing). This would make the ending "... had come to be old in years.".

As you read this verse there are some things which seem very familiar, even formulaic - well perhaps almost but not quite. Other things are a little odd about this verse. Starting with the oddities, who is the subject? David is right there as the first word (again in vss 14 and 15 - some significant prominence!), and yet the subject swiftly changes to Jesse. The subject stays with Jesse through vs 13 as other sons are (re-)introduced.

Verse 12 feels very reminiscent of the standard formula for introducing someone in the Hebrew bible. Let's take Judges 17:1 as a good example, but there are lots of others (Judg 13:2; 19:1; 1Sam 1:1; 9:1 etc.):

וַיְהִי־אִישׁ מֵהַר־אֶפְרָיִם וּשְׁמוֹ מִיכָיְהוּ׃

There was a man from the mountain of Ephraim, his name was Micah.

How close is our 1Sam re-introduction to this standard formula? It has often been pointed out that one would only need to replace וְדָוִד בֶּן by וַיְהִי and delete the word הַזֶּה and you'd get the standard formula, which would read:

וַיְהִי־אִישׁ אֶפְרָתִי מִבֵּית לֶחֶם יְהוּדָה וּשְׁמוֹ יִשַׁי וְלוֹ שְׁמֹנָה בָנִים וְהָאִישׁ בִּימֵי שָׁאוּל זָקֵן בָּא בַאֲנָשִׁים׃

There was an Ephrathite man from Bethlehem of Judah, his name was Jesse...

This also has the advantage of eliminating the multiple subjects problem. David would now be introduced in verse 14.

So what are we saying here? Well there are two introductions to David, the first in 1Sam 16:1-13 and the second here in 1Sam 17:12-15. In particular, 1Sam 17:12 seems a very formulaic introduction with just the amendment of a couple of words. The fact that the OG doesn't have this second introduction (amongst other things) serves to enhance its coherence.

If you add it to this mix other elements from the list of elements to 1Sam17:12-31 I started with above, such as getting David to be back with Saul when he was already with him according to chapter 16, it looks like this passage has a history independent from the main 1Sam 17 text, or at least we may have independent strands that have been woven together.

This is further borne out when one looks at how the text works in the OG, or how it would work in the MT without the verses 17:12-31. If you remember from chapter 16, David has become Saul's "music-therapist" (a bit of a tongue-in-cheek term I know, but an easy way to remember that David was always present for Saul when needed). In chapter 17 Saul leads the Israelites to meet in battle the Philistines who have encroached its borders. If it weren't for verses 12-31 it would be reasonable to assume David was still with them (for verses 12-31 David has unexpectedly returned to Bethlehem - verse 15 is a harmonizing verse which tries to explain this). In the confrontation, Goliath issues taunts against the Israelites. In verse 11 we get the reaction of the Israelites and Saul:

וַיִּשְׁמַע שָׁאוּל וְכָל־יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת־דִּבְרֵי הַפְּלִשְׁתִּי הָאֵלֶּה וַיֵּחַתּוּ וַיִּרְאוּ מְאֹד׃

Saul and all of Israel heard these words of the Philistine; they were dismayed and were very afraid.

In the OG the next verse gives David's response to this fear. Here it is from the MT (17:32):

וַיֹּאמֶר דָּוִד אֶל־שָׁאוּל אַל־יִפֹּל לֵב־אָדָם עָלָיו עַבְדְּךָ יֵלֵךְ וְנִלְחַם עִם־הַפְּלִשְׁתִּי הַזֶּה׃

And David said to Saul, "Do not let the heart of a man fall upon him; your servant will go and will fight with this Philistine."

In the OG of this verse, instead of "a man" we read τοῦ κυρίου μου presumably meaning Saul. Both versions of this verse follow nicely on from verse 11 with David telling Saul that he (or no man) need fear - David will deal with the situation. So the OG makes very good sense without the intervening verses in the MT.

Summary

What are we to make of all this? Well the OG is very much shorter than the MT. Yet it is a remarkably coherent text which, indeed, does not contain a good many of the difficulties that are found in the MT (and more examples of such difficulties could be given). It sometimes gives a few details missing from the MT. Nevertheless, some of the details given only in the MT seem to foreshadow later themes (e.g. the promise of the hand in marriage of a daughter of Saul).

We seem to have two forms of the story with significant differences from each other, both of which have been cherished enough to have been preserved and passed down to us. The obvious question is, which form of the story is earlier? Indeed, what can we say about the evolution of this story?

For my next post on this theme I want to have a look at some of the models that have been proposed to address these questions. I'm going to see if I can get this blogger software to allow me to do some diagrams, so this may take some time.

Postscript

In the meantime, I'm tempted to alternate some of my Goliath posts with other material, particularly something about the New Testament, as I want to establish this blog as addressing a wide range of biblical literature. Also, I haven't really finished on the Goodacre - Stavrakopoulou issue. For those that are here simply for Goliath, have no fear - I will continue with this theme; there really is much, much more to say.

Some issues for this blog

I thought I'd wrap up a few issues here about this ABC blog.

Fonts and layout

I'm still very much struggling with the limitations of the blog software. I've noticed myself how different browsers on different platforms present things differently. Also, my layouts look different in my word-processor before copying them across to the blog software, and I lose various features or things become rather disrupted.

Coping with Hebrew and getting it to line up in any pretty and consistent way is extraordinarily difficult. I've abandoned cantillation/accents as many browsers just can't cope - even when it appears correctly on my Mac, I can't get it to appear correctly on my work PC.

So I'm afraid you'll have to bear with me as I get used to the software and do what I can.

I'd like to be able to do tables and insert pictures, but this is going to have to wait until I have at least mastered the basics.

Audience

I need to do some work here, clearly. It's already a rather esoteric subject that I have chosen to blog about, and my marketing of the site is pretty non-existent for the moment. I'll see what I can do to get more people visiting. I've already contacted the Biblioblogs site, but had no reply so far - I'll chase.

Purpose of blog

I probably need to expand on what I say in the "About me" section.

I see this blog primarily as exploring issues of biblical criticism. Although ABC "wears its atheism on its sleeve", it's not here simply to say theists are wrong. Indeed, I will often quote supportively theists who are biblical critics. Theists can and do get biblical criticism right; sometimes some of them get it wrong, and sometimes that is linked to their confessional bias. Atheists who practice biblical criticism are not free from error either. Much of what I write echoes results from theist biblical critics who have been able to work beyond their confessional biases.

I would like the blog to include discussion of biblical critical ideas - and I need to improve its audience considerably to achieve this.

I am very likely to be critical of those who impose inerrancy ideas on the bible, as this is a very destructive human doctrine. So there won't be any sympathy for those who visit this site and propose such fundamentalism.

I may, from time to time, step outside the strict field of biblical criticism to comment on some related area. But I hope to keep such extra-ABC comments to a minimum and focus on biblical critical issues.

I have turned moderation of comments off for the moment - not that I have a big audience to be worried about! But given the experience of other bloggers in this field, I'll need to keep this under review should commenting become an issue. Perhaps I'll need a commenting policy one day; for the moment I'll just say "keep it polite and respectful to others".

It may be that my ideas for the blog will evolve over time, but that's it for now.

Who killed Goliath? (Part 2)

I've received some constructive criticism that I should be clearer on this blog about what I am trying to do. For the time being I'll restrict myself to explaining what I'm trying to set out in this Goliath mini-series of posts (for the first post see here). But I think later on I might devote a whole post to the purpose of this blog as I see it at the moment.

Different traditions about Goliath

Most readers of the bible miss that there are a number of divergent stories about Goliath. All these stories have links to each other, but I find it fascinating to consider how each one came into existence, how they came to be included in the bible and what connections they have with each other. To summarize so far:

1) David killed Goliath (1Samuel 17).
2) Elhanan killed Goliath (2Samuel 21).
3) Elhanan killed Lahmi, Goliath's brother (1Chronicles 20).

The fact that these 3 stories are intimately linked is evident, amongst other things, from the fact that they all share verbatim a short phrase about the victim:

וְעֵץ חֲנִיתוֹ כִּמְנוֹר אֹרְגִים
The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam

Thus there must be some common history to the transmission of these stories. Indeed I've already pointed out that the Chronicler's version is an attempt to harmonize the 2 accounts in the books of Samuel.

Those who read the Old Greek (OG) translation of the Hebrew bible usually have something else to contend with; I've called this the "third-and-a-half version", because it is really a variant of the 1Samuel 17 story. But it's quite dissimilar to the Hebrew text, and so there also arises the question of why it is so dissimilar, and what does this dissimilarity mean for the evolution of the 3½ stories.

And that's what this mini series is about. I'm not really trying to prove anything, just explore some of the variations in the the story of Goliath's death.

The Old Greek (aka the Septuagint - but I'm trying to avoid that term)

The first thing to point out is the Old Greek agrees that the victim's spear had a "shaft like a weaver's beam" in all three full versions of the story. This snippet is translated slightly differently each time, but the differences in translation are small, and thus the vorlage of the OG must have contained these words.

καὶ ὁ κοντὸς τοῦ δόρατος αὐτοῦ ὡσεὶ μέσακλον ὑφαινόντων (1Sam 17:7)

καὶ τὸ ξύλον τοῦ δόρατος αὐτοῦ ὡς ἀντίον ὑφαινόντων (2Sam 21:19)

καὶ ξύλον δόρατος αὐτοῦ ὡς ἀντίον ὑφαινόντων (1Chr 20:5)

So far so good! So what are the differences in the 1Sam 17 OG version from the Hebrew version that we now have?

Well overall the OG version is much shorter than the Hebrew version although, set against this, there are some small details that are only found in the OG version. It's the shortness of the OG version that I want to look at first, and this shortness is the overriding characteristic of the OG in this passage. In fact the shortness is a characteristic that is found in the proceeding and succeeding chapters as well i.e. all of 1Sam 16 - 18 is shorter in the Greek than in the Hebrew. Reading the OG of these chapters really does give quite a different flavour to the whole story.

I'll give a small example of the shortness of the OG text, but first a vocabulary question:

What does "to smite" mean?

"Smite" is not a word we use often these days. Those brought up on old English translations of the bible, like the KJV, will undoubtedly have heard it many times, and perhaps they know exactly what it means, but equally perhaps they think they know what it means. So here's a little test:

If Amos, say, smote Benjamin, say, is Benjamin now:

a) dead, or

b) grievously wounded?

Well the answer is that it varies according to the context. The KJV translators (and presumably those before them on whom they relied, but I haven't checked) tended to translate the verb נָכָה as "smite". And נָכָה varies in the Hebrew text as to just how "done in" the smitten individual is. Such texts can be quite ambiguous; I don't know if the English verb "smite" was ambiguous before it was used in bible translations in this way, but it has to be now.

That said, here's another question:

In what specific verse in 1Sam 17 does Goliath actually die?

Before you read on here on this blog, go back to the text and answer for yourself the question above.

Okay, for those reading in Hebrew we have an instance of נָכָה. Here's verse 49:

וַיִּשְׁלַח דָּוִד אֶת־יָדוֹ אֶל־הַכֶּלִי וַיִּקַּח מִשָּׁם אֶבֶן וַיְקַלַּע וַיַּךְ אֶת־הַפְּלִשְׁתִּי אֶל־מִצְחוֹ וַתִּטְבַּע הָאֶבֶן בְּמִצְחוֹ וַיִּפֹּל עַל־פָּנָיו אָרְצָה׃

So, not wishing to sound cruel, is Goliath dead yet? Hmm... will he was smitten with the stone deep into his forehead and he has fallen on his face to the ground. Remember, "to smite" is ambiguous, but that's not all there is here. One could argue that he was seriously wounded, yet still alive; however in the Hebrew, verse 50 makes it clear he was dead:

וַיֶּחֱזַק דָּוִד מִן־הַפְּלִשְׁתִּי בַּקֶּלַע וּבָאֶבֶן וַיַּךְ אֶת־הַפְּלִשְׁתִּי וַיְמִיתֵהוּ וְחֶרֶב אֵין בְּיַד־דָּוִד׃

David was stronger than the Philistine with the sling and with the stone, and he smote the Philistine and killed him, yet there was no sword in his hand.

Quite clearly he's dead. But there are a couple of curious things here:

i) the OG doesn't have verse 50 in most of the manuscripts, and

ii) he dies again in verse 51.

Here's the first part of verse 51:

וַיָּרָץ דָּוִד וַיַּעֲמֹד אֶל־הַפְּלִשְׁתִּי וַיִּקַּח אֶת־חַרְבּוֹ וַיִּשְׁלְפָהּ מִתַּעְרָהּ וַיְמֹתְתֵהוּ וַיִּכְרָת־בָּהּ אֶת־רֹאשׁוֹ

And David ran and stood near the Philistine and took his sword; he drew it from its sheath and killed him, and cut off with it [the sword] his head.

Well that's odd isn't it!? Yet it's not odd in the OG. If you look at the sequence of action, the Hebrew doesn't make much sense:

1) David kills Goliath (verse 49),
2) David had certainly killed Goliath and there wasn't even a sword in his hand (verse 50),
3) David kills Goliath again, this time with a sword (verse 51).

But the sequence in the OG makes much more sense:

1) David grievously wounds Goliath with sling and stone (verse 49),
2) David  kills an already grievously wounded Goliath with a sword (verse 51).

Because the OG doesn't have verse 50, the sequence here actually makes much more sense than the Hebrew.

Attention to detail

I mentioned above that although the OG text is much shorter in these chapters than the Hebrew text, occasionally the OG does give a detail which is missing from the Hebrew. One such instance occurs here. In verse 49, when David's stone strikes Goliath on the forehead the OG describes it thus:

...καὶ διέδυ ὁ λίθος διὰ τῆς περικεφαλαίας εἰς τὸ μέτωπον αὐτοῦ...

...and the stone slipped through the helmet to his forehead...

The Hebrew text has the forehead but nothing about the helmet here. The Greek text has remembered that Goliath wore a helmet (it's back in verse 5) and has dealt with the fact.

So all in all we have a very coherent Greek text and a rather less than coherent Hebrew text here. When situations like this arise I always like to ask myself which version is likely to be earlier and which later? Is one text directly dependent on the other? Has one text sought to "correct" the other. Has there been a degree of independence in the evolution of the two texts?

I hope to do some more posts looking at this issue. There are an awful lot of different readings between the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Goliath story. In the meantime you might like to check out a 2012 thesis at Durham University by Benjamin J.M. Johnson entitled "A Reading of the David and Goliath Narrative in Greek and Hebrew". It's available online here and whilst I wouldn't agree with everything he says, it is certainly quite thorough.

Goliath

Until I happened across Deane Galbraith's excellent Remnant of Giants blog  I was only vaguely aware of the recurrent theme of giants in the Hebrew bible. Galbraith has shown for some considerable time now that this theme really is quite pervasive, and his blog is fascinating and well worth visiting if you haven't stumbled on it yourself.

Goliath is only one incarnation of such giants, perhaps the most famous one thanks to its reception in western art, literature and language; the term "a David and Goliath contest" is now standard fare for describing an unbalanced match.

The story we all know and love is contained in 1Samuel 17, but one of the intriguing things about this story is really there are 3½ versions in the Hebrew bible (I'll explain the half later).

Who killed Goliath?

This sounds like one of those TV panel show questions (in the UK it would be on QI with Stephen Fry) where there's a "bleedin' obvious" answer, so it's got to be wrong! Well not quite. David does indeed kill Goliath in 1Sam 17 and all the elements are there with which one is so familiar. Take this snippet about Goliath:

וְעֵץ חֲנִיתוֹ כִּמְנוֹר אֹרְגִים

Well there's some difficult vocab there. I'd translate it as:

The shaft [lit. tree] of his spear was like a weaver's beam.

A large individual indeed, and this is only one of the element of the story that points to his size. But wait a second. We have another story later on in the books of Samuel. At 2Sam 21:19 we read:

 וַתְּהִי־עוֹד הַמִּלְחָמָה בְּגוֹב עִם־פְּלִשְׁתִּים וַיַּךְ אֶלְחָנָן בֶּן־יַעְרֵי אֹרְגִים בֵּית הַלַּחְמִי אֵת גָּלְיָת הַגִּתִּי וְעֵץ חֲנִיתוֹ כִּמְנוֹר אֹרְגִים׃

[my bold - as if I needed to say!]

And there was again war in Gob with [the] Philistines, and Elhanan, son of Jaere [Oregim/the weaver] of Bethlehem smote Goliath the Gathite and the shaft [lit. tree] of his spear was like a weaver's beam.

The important point is that although this version is much shorter, and the identity of the slayer has changed, it's clearly, at its base, the same story. The victim (if I can call Goliath a "victim") is identified as the same individual: from Gath (cf 1Sam 17:4) and with the same mighty spear; a hero smote him, just in this case it's someone called Elhanan rather than David. As a side note, you can see that the word אֹרְגִים has been repeated in the verse, probably through dittography.

Thus we have two slightly contradictory versions of the same event. The fact that they are contradictory has evidently been spotted by the Chronicler(s), because in 1Chr 20:5 we read:

וַתְּהִי־עוֹד מִלְחָמָה אֶת־פְּלִשְׁתִּים וַיַּךְ אֶלְחָנָן בֶּן־יָעוּר [יָעִיר] אֶת־לַחְמִי אֲחִי גָּלְיָת הַגִּתִּי וְעֵץ חֲנִיתוֹ כִּמְנוֹר אֹרְגִים׃

[my bold, again]

And there was again war with the Philistines, and Elhanan son of Jaur [Jair] smote Lahmi brother of Goliath the Gittite and the shaft [lit. tree] of his spear was like a weaver's beam.

This is a nice little harmonization of the two accounts in the books of Samuel. If you look at the Hebrew texts you can see it even constructs the name Lahmi from the consonantal text of Bethlehem in the 2Sam 21:19 text.

I've taken this text as the third of the 3½ versions mentioned above even though here Goliath doesn't die, rather his brother does. Presumably the Chronicler(s) was/were happy to leave David with the credit of killing Goliath himself, although that particular episode is not mentioned here.

Explaining how these 3 texts have come about and how they have influenced each other has been subject to much study and a degree of disagreement. I have my own views (some of which I have reflected above without discussion), but I would really like to do a post about the half version, and how it fits in.

So where is this half version? Well in some manuscripts of the Old Greek translation (I'm trying to adopt OG nomenclature rather than LXX - it's a bit hard to break a habit) the well-known story of 1Sam 17 is a little different, and significantly shorter than the familiar well-elaborated Hebrew story. What does it look like and why, are important questions. That's what I'll take a look at in my next post.

An Excursus - Font Size

Being new to blogging I've trusted this site's suggestions for font size, and most of the text you see in my posts is "normal" size, according to Blogger; the one exception outside titles is when I've posted Hebrew with vowel points - I've increased the font size otherwise the points were just unreadable.

However, I'm finding the English text quite small to read, and I wondered what others thought. I've recently got to the age where I've had to procure reading glasses, so perhaps it's just me, but I'm not so sure. This is normal font.

And this is large. What do you think - should I just opt for large for every post?