The parable of the virgins.

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Ben C. Smith
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Re: The parable of the virgins.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

neilgodfrey wrote: Wed Jul 05, 2017 3:49 pmIn this proposed scenario it would appear that the author has decided to introduce a variation of the parable that has a distinctly different implied message from the more commonly known version but then failed to point readers to the lesson or message that he intended his variant to convey. Evidently his variant had a message that was inconsistent with the common version, yet he forgot to tell readers what it was and after all his trouble of writing down the alternative he simply repeated the message that undercut the whole reason for his variant.

Are there other instances in the Gospel of Matthew of such evidence of authorial incompetence and failure of attention to what he was writing? (I ask because my knowledge of Matthew's gospel is not nearly so up to date or thorough as it should be, sorry.)
Well, there are instances of weird editing in Matthew which can sometimes produce clumsy results:
  1. Both Matthew 14.1-3a and Mark 6.16-17a narrate the story of the death of John the baptist as a nonchronological flashback. It is clear in both accounts that Herod had already killed John by this point, since he is now thinking of Jesus in terms of John redivivus, raised from the dead. The account in Matthew 14.3-12 = Mark 6.17-29, therefore, is a flashback to a previous time, a perfectly workable literary device so far. Mark 6.29-30 pulls out of this flashback sequence fully by having the apostles sent in 6.12-13 return and report to Jesus, but Matthew 14.12-13a does not, since it has the disciples of John the Baptist reporting John's death to Jesus. It is as if Matthew has forgotten that John's death was a flashback.
  2. Matthew, in my judgment, has taken a parable which looked similar to what we find in Luke 14.15-24 or Thomas 64 and made something of a mess of it in Matthew 22.1-14.
  3. Matthew 26.67-68 says, "Then they spat into his face and buffeted him, and others slapped him, saying, 'Prophesy to us, Christ! Who is it who hit you?'" The call to prophesy is odd here, since there is little or nothing in the text to suggest that Jesus would be unable to tell who it was who had just hit him. While we may be able to imagine that being spat upon and pummeled could cause him confusion, the text itself takes no pains to let the reader know why this kind of prophesying should be such a feat. I think that what is missing is the datum which we find in Mark 14.65 and Luke 22.63-64, to wit, that Jesus was blindfolded, a detail which Matthew has omitted.
  4. Matthew 8.1 has "many crowds" following Jesus down the mountain after the sermon on the mount, yet still Jesus enjoins the cured leper in 8.4, "See that you speak to no one," a rather meaningless injunction amidst the crowds. What has happened? Mark 1.40 offers no setting for the healing of the leper, thus allowing us to suppose that Jesus healed him in private. Luke 5.12 sets the incident in a city, but does not mention any crowds. Matthew, on the other hand, is writing quite characteristically when he speaks of many crowds; the exact Greek phrase for "many crowds" occurs six times in Matthew, only twice in Luke, and not at all in Mark; and crowds in general are a frequent feature of Matthean pericopes. Furthermore, Matthew may have a redactional motive to have moved this pericope to follow the immediately preceding sermon on the mount, the thematic connection being the Mosaic elements in both that sermon and this healing (notice the line, "bring the gift that Moses ordered" in Matthew 8.4, and note the parallels in Mark 1.44 and Luke 5.14).
  5. Matthew 18.1, after relating the incident of the didrachma tax in 17.24-27, sets out in a different direction with an abrupt question from his disciples: "At that hour the disciples came up to Jesus, saying, 'Who then [ἄρα] is the greatest in the kingdom of the heavens?'" That word ἄρα ("then, next, for, therefore") seems to presuppose a previous discussion about who is greatest in the kingdom. Yet Matthew has no such discussion in the preceding narrative. The parallel passages in Mark 9.33-34 and Luke 9.46, however, in which the disciples are arguing on the road as to who is greatest in the kingdom, appear to provide us with exactly the sort of discussion that Matthew is presupposing, but which he has omitted. (This example is interesting in that it seems to presuppose two separate editorial moves, first to add ἄρα, which Mark lacks, to the question, which Luke lacks, and second to get rid of the dispute on the way.)
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