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The Biblical Quotations in Matthew

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Sherman E. Johnson
Sherman E. Johnson
Affiliation:
Episcopal Theological School
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Extract

In his most recent book, the great Semitist, Professor Charles Cutler Torrey, presents a new theory to explain the phenomena of the Old Testament quotations in the Gospel of Matthew, and thus adds one more element to the recurrent debate on Aramaic origins of the gospels. Hitherto most critics have held that the vast majority of citations in the first gospel were taken over from the Septuagint (or, more properly, the Old Greek) version, the chief exceptions being the Reflexionszitate or “formula citations,” a group of passages introduced by some such formula as “in order that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying” (1:22). The latter were thought to have been made on the basis of the Hebrew text, either directly by the evangelist, or borrowed from an old book of Christian testimonies or proof-texts, or, as Bacon believed, taken over from the Aramaic “targumic material” which had grown up in Syria around Mark's gospel. Torrey completely rejects this usual view, which assumes that our Mt. was originally written in Greek. The original Mt., he says, was in Aramaic, and its principal source was the originally Aramaic Mk.; its biblical quotations were, however, in the Hebrew of the Bible. If, at many points, quotations in the Greek Mt. agree with Greek Mk., it is only because the translator of Mt. made use of the latter.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , April 1943, pp. 135 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1943

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References

1 Torrey, C. C., Documents of the Primitive Church, New York, 1941, chapter IIGoogle Scholar.

2 Harris, J. Rendel, Testimonies, Part II, Cambridge, England, 1920, chapter VIIGoogle Scholar; Bacon, B. W., Studies in Matthew, New York, 1930, pp. 470–477Google Scholar. The point of view generally accepted is reflected by SirHawkins, J. C., Horae Synopticae2, Oxford, 1909.Google Scholar On p. 154 Hawkins classifies the “formula citations” separately, as having been avowedly introduced by the author or editor.

3 Novum Testamentum Graece, ed. Nestle, Eberhard, revised by Nestle, Erwin, Stuttgart, 1936Google Scholar.

4 2: 11; 5: 8, 28, 48; 7: 22; 8: 4, 11, 29; 12: 4; 19: 26; 24: 6 f., 10, 24, 38; 25: 46; 26: 28.

5 5: 34 f.; 6: 6; 9: 36; 10: 21; 13: 42 f.; 21: 33; 24: 21, 29, 31; 25: 31; 26: 38; 27: 48.

6 3:17; 5: 3–5; 12: 40; 13: 32; 17: 5; 27: 46.

7 I shall use the symbol Mt. indiscriminately to refer to our Greek Matthew and to its author or redactor.

8 Bacon, op. cit., pp. 470, 475. Klostermann, E., Das Matthäusevangelium2, Tübingen, 1927, p. 9Google Scholar, notes that the formula is Jewish; see the literature which he cites.

9 Torrey, op. cit., pp. 49–53, 60, 68 f.

10 Ibid., pp. 57–59.

11 See, e.g., Sperber, A., “The Problems of the Septuagint Recensions,” Jour. of Bibl. Lit., LIV, 1935, 73–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lieberman, S., Greek in Jewish Palestine, New York, 1942, pp. 47–60Google Scholar; and the literature cited by Montgomery, J. A., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Internatl. Crit. Comm., New York, 1927, pp. 46–50Google Scholar.

12 Orlinsky, H. M., “On the Present State of Proto-Septuagint Studies,” Jour. of the Amer. Or. Soc., LXI, 1941, 81–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially his quotation of Margolis on pp. 83 f. and his remarks on p. 87.

13 Montgomery, op. cit., p. 50. Every prophetic passage mentioned in this paper has been looked up in the Targum of Jonathan. While this yielded no positive results for the present study, it has convinced me more than ever of the correctness of Montgomery's general position. Mt.'s approach to the Old Testament is similar to that of the Targumists; e.g., his use of Isa. 53: 4, which seems so clumsy to us, is not unlike the Targum's interpretation, and in Zech. 9: 9 the Targum's bar, like the translations of Mt., Aquila, etc., is a literal rendering of the Hebrew.

14 Torrey, op. cit., pp. 64–66. Bacon, op. cit., pp. 474 f., wrongly argues from this that “it becomes more apparent than ever that R's reliance was the LXX.” As we shall see, the evidence indicates that, with few exceptions, the quotations taken over from the Second Source (Q) are much closer to the LXX than those made by Mt. himself. It is worth remarking that Mt. 17: 5 = Mk. 9: 7 also has contacts with Isa. 42:1–4, and Mt. shows knowledge of this by his addition of the words ἐν ᾧ εὐδόκησα, but he does not use the Hebrew here; he simply reproduces Mk., as so often.

15 Torrey, op. cit., pp. 85–88; cf. his earlier discussion, “The Foundry of the Second Temple at Jerusalem,” Jour. of Bibl. Lit., LV, 1936, 247–260Google Scholar.

16 Cf. the wise words of Swete, H. B., An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek2, Cambridge, England, 1914, p. 398Google Scholar.

17 Cf. Montgomery, op. cit., p. 49.

18 Torrey, op. cit., pp. 71 f.

19 Torrey does not consider this passage.

20 Torrey, op. cit., p. 79.

21 Bacon, op. cit., p. 472.

22 Torrey, op. cit., p. 56. Sinaiticus is the only LXX MS. that precedes ἐπί in v. 12 with καί, hence the LXX text is no problem.

23 See Bacon, op. cit., p. 473.

24 Torrey, op. cit., pp. 56 f.

25 SirKenyon, F. G., Recent Developments in the Textual Criticism of the Greek Bible, London, 1933, p. 108Google Scholar.

26 The quotation in Lk. 4: 18 f. is an exact duplicate of the LXX of Isa. 61: 1 except that it omits the words ἰάσασθαι τοὺς συντετριμμένους τῇ καρδίᾳ. The passage then picks up a phrase from Isa. 58: 6 except that it changes the imperative ἀπόστελλε to an infinitive, and concludes with a phrase from 61: 2, changing καλέσαι to κηρῦξαι. Ac. 28: 26 f. shows that Lk. obviously uses the LXX when he brings in a quotation of his own. One interesting and puzzling feature of 4:18 f. is that the changes in the LXX are in the interest of a more perfect chiastic arrangement; cf. Lund, N. W., Chiasmus in the New Testament, Chapel Hill, 1942, pp. 236–238Google Scholar. It would appear, then, that Lk. finds the citation in a source, since he himself is often indifferent to chiasmus.

27 15: 4a (= 19: 19a); 17:11; 19: 7, 19b; 21: 13; 22: 24, 32; 24:15; and 21: 33 (not considered by Torrey).

28 In The Four Gospels, New York, 1933, p. 304, Torrey discusses the Aramaic of the word from the Cross but says nothing of the evangelists' Greek interpretation. Mk. reproduces the LXX of the psalm almost word for word; why Mt. makes his changes, and on what basis, is not certain; but probably his sole motive is a smoother Greek sentence.

29 Just so, in 27: 46 Mt. fails to make a satisfactory emendation of σαβαχθανεί — unless, of course, Dalman's conjecture, not accepted by all orientalists, is correct; see Buckler, F. W., “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani,” American Jour. of Sem. Lang., LV, 1938, 378–391Google Scholar, especially p. 384.

30 Torrey, op. cit., pp. 77 f. Cf. also Mt. 15: 8 f.; 27: 39; apparently also 24: 21, 29.

31 Professor A. T. Olmstead writes me: “The reading which is in disagreement with the LXX is correct; agreement with LXX proves nothing.” Generally speaking, this is true; but the tendency to conform the other gospels to Mt. is still stronger. Furthermore, Mk. could have been affected either by Mt. or by the A text of the LXX.

32 Kenyon, op. cit., p. 109, speaking of the British Museum Coptic MS., says, “Like 963 and θ, it agrees decidedly with A F rather than with B, a consensus which goes far to support the A text rather than B in this book. In the order of the commandments, however, it agrees with B against A F in placing the seventh before the sixth.”

33 Cf. Mt. 26:64; Rev. 14:14, 16; ἐπάνω in Justin, Apol. 51:9; Didache 16:8; Montgomery, op. cit., p. 304.

34 Bacon, op. cit., p. 477, remarks that it is impossible to say whether the Hebrew or the LXX is responsible for this.

35 Cf. my review of Torrey, Anglican Theol. Rev., XXIV, 1942, 259 f.

36 Cf. also 9: 36 (not studied by Torrey); 19:14 f.; 22: 44; 26: 31, 64; 27: 84.

37 Probably no wiser estimate of Mt. exists than that of Jülicher-Fascher, , Einleitung in das Neue Testament7, Tübingen, 1931, especially the remarks on pp. 281 f.Google Scholar, 287–294. Much the same point of view is expressed, and with more supporting evidence, by my teacher, Professor F. C. Grant, who taught me much of what I know about method; see The Growth of the Gospels, New York, 1933, chapter VIIGoogle Scholar.