This is a follow-up to my earlier post relating to Matthew 10.5-7:
Matt 10.5 These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, 6 but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7 And preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
This passage is sometimes seen as being hostile to Gentiles and Samaritans. I think this is a misinterpretation, as Matthew’s gospel is not in fact anti-Gentile. It concludes with with the risen Jesus commanding the disciples to go forth and make disciples of all nations, which would include Gentiles and Samaritans.
The point of Jesus’ instruction to the twelve in in Matt 10.5 is not that Gentile and Samaritans are to be excluded from the people of God, but that God is first keeping his promises made through the prophets (particularly Isaiah) to the dispossessed and abandoned ones in Israel, i.e., the poor or the lost sheep. It is the fact that Jesus has been fulfilling God’s promises that allows him to answer John the Baptist’s question:
Matt 11.2 Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, “Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is he who takes no offense at me.”
But even before Jesus’ command to his disciples make disciples of all nations, there are a few signal examples in Matthew of Gentiles with exemplary faith, such as the Centurion:
Matt 8.5 When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him 6 and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress.” 7 And he said to him, “I will come and cure him.” 8 The centurion answered, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me, and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” 10 When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. 11 I tell you, many will come from east and west and will take their places at the banquet with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, 12 while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 13 And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; let it be done for you according to your faith.” And the servant[e] was healed in that hour.
The Gentile Centurion not only has faith, he has faith such as Jesus has not found in anyone in Israel. Jesus goes on to say that many who come from east and west (i.e., Gentiles) will take their place at the banquet in the kingdom of heaven while the heirs of the kingdom (i.e., the Jew or those of of Israelite descent) will be thrown into the outer darkness. Matthew’s Gospel is not anti-Gentile. Matthew seems to reserve his particular antipathy for the Jews, or, at least, those Jews who do not acknowledge Jesus as the Christ (e.g. Matt 27.25, ‘His blood be on us and on our children’, seems to have the Jews collectively not only accepting the blame for killing Jesus but making it hereditary).
Then there’s the Canaanite Woman, which is Matthew’s version of Mark’s Syrophoenician Woman from Mark 7.24-30. Matthew has changed Syrophoenician to Canaanite, perhaps to emphasize that she belongs to a people who are not only not Israelite, but from a people traditionally supposed to be hostile to Israel and portrayed negatively in the Scriptures of Israel.
Matt15.21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” 23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” 24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” 25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. 26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” 27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” 28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Like the Centurion, the Canaanite woman shows exemplary faith and Jesus grants her request (it does not matter that she is a Canaanite, only that she has faith in Jesus), healing her child at a distance, just as he had for the Centurion. In fact, the two stories are so very much alike, other than the change in gender of the parent and child, that we might reasonably suspect that Matthew has created the story of the Centurion by using Mark’s Syrophoenician woman a second time and varying it a little bit (i.e., it’s a redactional doublet in NT Studies lingo).
In both stories a Gentile approaches Jesus, asking him to heal his/her child, who is not present in the scene. Jesus initially demurs. (Most commentators understand Jesus’ ‘I will come and cure him’ as questioning just what the Centurion expects rather than Jesus acceding to his wishes). The Gentile makes a statement of both remarkable humility and great faith. Jesus then praises the Gentiles’ great faith and says that the child will be healed, and the child, who is some unknown distance away, is healed at that very moment.
If this is correct, and Matthew has indeed created the story of the Centurion from Mark’s Syrophoenician woman, then it follows that Luke’s Centurion in Luke 7.1-10 and John’s Royal Official in John 4.46-54 are dependent on Matthew for their stories. The Q theory and the theory of John’s independence of the Synoptics allow scholars to claim we have multiple independent attestation for the story and attest to the fact that stories that Jesus was a miracle worker circulated very early, at least before the gospels were written, and perhaps during the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses themselves. If the Farrer theory is correct, essentially all we have is Mark and nothing to check it against (except possibly the statement in Josephus’ Antiquities that Jesus was ‘a maker of miraculous works’).
Finally, there is the missionary statement to the disciples at the end of the gospel. Unlike the missionary statement in Matt 10.5, which commanded the disciples to go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, the risen Jesus command his disciples to go forth and make disciples of all nations:
Matt 28.16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”
In summary, I don’t think Jesus’ command in Matt 10.5 to go only to the lost sheep of Israel and not to the Gentiles or Samaritans ought to be interpreted as reflecting an anti-Gentile or anti-Samaritan agenda on the part of the author of Matthew. The rest of the gospel does not bear this out.
Best,
Ken