Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Yueh Han Yieh, PhD is the Molly Laird Downs Professor in New Testament at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. He joined the faculty at VTS in 1995. His research focuses on the Gospel of Matthew and the Johannine Literature from the vantage of sociological and history-of-effects approaches. His published works include Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of Matthew; A History of Biblical Interpretation in China; and One Teacher: Jesus’ Teaching Role in Matthew’s Gospel. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

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CONVERSATIONS WITH SCRIPTURE: THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

Morehouse Publishing

Contents

Chapter One

Attending a memorial service is an intense spiritual experience. As we all know, bidding farewell to the deceased is emotionally draining, and no words of comfort are ever sufficient to sooth the grieving family. Oftentimes we simply cannot accept the fact that our loved one has gone. It is also true that, as we try to cope with the sorrow, the gathered family and concerned friends are vital supports. Their presence enables us to bear the unbearable, because they remind us that we do not have to face death alone. Prayers, scriptures, and hymns also bring some release, because they reassure us of God's promise of peaceful rest and eternal life. There is hope beyond death.

Eulogy performs a special function in the memorial service. It often provides a curriculum vitae of the deceased's family background, life experiences, and great accomplishments, and reveals memorable characteristics and special qualities of the person in the eyes of the family and friends. As we listen quietly to eulogies, vivid memories of the deceased will surge and episodes of past encounter will replay in our minds. Suddenly the person seems to have come back to life in our midst, and we are ushered into an experience of communion, a moment of grace that is authentic and heartwarming. Eulogies are informative, relational, and emotionally affecting, so they often bring laughter, tears, tranquility, and some catharsis to people in mourning.

To their readers, the gospels in the New Testament functioned like eulogies of Jesus. Of course, the authors of the gospels were convinced that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and they had experienced his powerful presence in their lives as Lord and Savior. Each author remembered, celebrated, and highlighted some aspects of Jesus' life and death for their readers; each had a special relationship with Jesus and held a particular perspective on his legacy. When we read the gospel of Matthew as a eulogy of Jesus, therefore, we get to know about its author as well as Jesus, and our beliefs and lives will inevitably be challenged and reshaped by its author's point of view.

Why Another Gospel?

Since the early nineteenth century, New Testament scholars have preoccupied themselves with the historical questions of who Jesus was and what he actually said or did in his life. To some, such as Bultmann, Crossan, and Borg, these gospels are "faith-tainted" reports, devoid of objectivity, so researchers have to play cool-minded detectives peeling off layers of post-Easter theological interpretations in order to uncover the core facts. Reading the gospels thus becomes a scientific process of evidence gathering, the kind of forensic analysis we see on television that reconstructs the scene of a crime. To them history and faith belong to separate realms; believers will need to take a giant leap of faith from history to confess Jesus as personal Lord.

Other scholars, such as Bornkamm, Johnson, and Meier, acknowledge the mixed nature of the gospels, but they also insist that there is no such thing as objective history without personal prejudice or, at the very least, bias. Every journalist reports news from one point of view, every photographer shoots a picture from one angle, and every historian comments on an event with one perspective. Gospels contain historical reports of Jesus based on Christian experiences, so historical facts and faith interpretations cannot be clearly separated. Nor should they be, because Christian faith is not fantasy but commitment to Jesus Christ, the incarnate God who once walked on earth as a man. The one who proclaimed the kingdom of God from Nazareth and the proclaimed Lord of the church are the same person. These scholars thus propose to see Jesus through the lens of early church authors whose witnesses are recognized as partial but honest. In other words, they read the gospels as documents of history and faith, critically but not skeptically.

Regardless of their positions on the debate, most scholars agree to the following sketch:

* Jesus was a Jew growing up in Nazareth near Sepphoris, Herod Antipas' first capital city, and became a wandering teacher in Galilee, a fertile region in the southern part of the Roman Syrian province in the early first century.

* Like John the Baptist, who preached judgment and repentance by the Jordan River, Jesus announced the arrival of the kingdom of God and traveled from town to town to urge his compatriots, who interacted daily with Gentiles but took pride in their status as the chosen people of God, to change their lifestyle and do righteousness according to the law.

* He befriended sinners and tax collectors, debated with the Pharisees and the priests, and confronted hypocrites and money lovers.

* He performed miracles with compassion and power, healing the sick and casting out demons, so he attracted a significant number of followers.

* He initially chose twelve men to follow him as disciples, explaining to them the mystery of the kingdom of God and sending them on missions to proclaim his kingdom messages.

* While in Jerusalem, he was arrested and convicted as a blasphemer by the high priest and a rebel king by the Roman governor, and then was crucified.

* But his followers believed that he was raised from the dead, so they continued to talk about him and wrote down many extraordinary things he had said and done (see Luke 1:1–2).

After Jesus' departure, his followers began to eulogize him and share their memories of him with others. Some remembered his compassion and power in performing miracles, having been cured of painful diseases or freed from demon possessions. Others testified how their lives were changed by his incisive teaching on God's mercy and justice, or spoke of how their minds were enlightened by his fascinating parables regarding the mystery of the kingdom of God. Very soon, the stories of how the righteous Jesus suffered and died in the hands of Caiaphas the high priest and Pilate the Roman governor was recollected and written down in some detail to commemorate his innocent death and to explain God's purposes. It was thus that miracle stories, teaching discourses, and passion narratives came into existence. The early churches also used these sacred memories to defend Jesus' credentials as the Messiah, to preach his gospel of salvation, and to encourage believers to bear witness to him. In other words, it is in the efforts to justify their faith in Jesus under polemic, missionary, and educational circumstances that the early churches began to conserve and expand their eulogies of Jesus. Before Matthew composed his gospel, moreover, several oral traditions and written sources had already been established and circulated among the churches. Would it not be easier simply to make copies of those earlier eulogies? Why did he decide to write a new gospel? What did he hope to accomplish with it?

In one sense the author of Matthew did make "copies," using at least three earlier eulogies in order to compose his gospel. What were these earlier accounts he drew on? In 1924 the scholar B. H. Streeter at Oxford proposed the "four sources hypothesis," a theory that many scholars still support today, to explain the agreements and disagreements among the first three New Testament gospels (also known as the...