Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 144:574 (Apr 1987)
Article: Is Matthew Midrash?
Author: Scott Cunningham

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BSac 144:574 (Apr 87) p. 157

Is Matthew Midrash?

Scott Cunningham

Darrell L. Bock

[Scott Cunningham: Lecturer in New Testament
ECWA Theological Seminary, Igbaja, Nigeria]

and

[Darrell L. Bock: Assistant Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis
Dallas Theological Seminary]

The type of literature or genre of a book of the Bible enables one to better comprehend its message. When it comes to the Gospels, the church has traditionally held that whatever Gospel-genre is, it is certainly historical. However, Robert Gundry has proposed that Matthew was written in the Jewish tradition of “midrash and haggadah.”1 He says that Matthew used the Gospel of Mark and an expanded source known as Q and treated them in a midrashic fashion, that is, in a way that parallels the treatment of the Old Testament by Jewish midrashic works. Thus Matthew embroidered the Gospel tradition represented by Mark and Q with unhistorical embellishments. Gundry suggests that sometimes Matthew created stories as reflections on historical events and other times he modified the authentic traditions and made them contradictory to the historical picture represented by Mark and Q. For example Matthew switched the annunciation of Jesus’ birth from Mary to Joseph. And from the story of Jesus’ walking on the water Matthew composed Peter’s walking on the water.

BSac 144:574 (Apr 87) p. 158

Particularly controversial are Gundry’s suggestions of how Matthew changed the infancy narrative: “Matthew now turns the visit of the local Jewish shepherds (Luke 2:8–20) into the adoration by Gentile magi.”2 In addition, “Matthew has transformed the praiseful return of the shepherds (Luke 2:20) into the magi’s flight from persecution.”3 And further, Matthew “changes the sacrificial slaying of a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, which took place at the presentation of the baby Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:24; cf. Lev 12:6–8), into Herod’s slaughtering the babies in Bethlehem.”4

Such deliberate and frequent alteration of the Gospel tradition, according to Gundry, would clue the original readers that they were reading midrash. Midrash would be a recognizable genre appreciated by the early readers of Matthew’s Gospel; and thus those readers did not (just as today’s readers should not) expect everything they...

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