Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 74:1 (NA 2023)
Article: Exodus Allusions In The Midsection Of The Gospel Of Matthew
Author: Cedric E. W. Vine

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Exodus Allusions In The Midsection Of The Gospel Of Matthew

Cedric E. W. Vine

Associate Professor of New Testament
Andrews University
[email protected]

Abstract

Matthean scholarship is divided as to whether the first recipients of the Gospel considered themselves to be part of early formative Judaism. Within the context of this debate, this study calls for the recognition of multiple exodus allusions in the midsection of the Gospel. These allusions reveal an Evangelist who either anticipated the possible need for withdrawal from hostile host communities or, equally plausibly, affirmed an ongoing separation process.

1. Exodus Allusions And Their Impact

A prominent debate within Matthean scholarship concerns the distance between Matthew and his first readers, often characterised in communal terms, and the wider Jewish community.1 Many scholars, such as Andrew Overman, Anthony Saldarini, and contributors to a recent volume edited by Anders Runesson and Daniel Gurtner, maintain that Matthew and his readers were Christian Jews, part of a Matthean community embedded within Judaism.2

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In contrast, other scholars, such as Georg Strecker, Robert Gundry, Ulrich Luz, and Graham Stanton, have argued that Matthew and his readers were Jewish Christians who had distanced themselves in some manner from wider Judaism.3

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Often overlooked in this debate is the impact of the Evangelist’s call in Matthew 10:14 to withdraw from host communities that fail to extend hospitality to the followers of Jesus. The proposition of this study is that this call to withdraw is amplified within the midsection of the Gospel, approximately chapters 12 to 17, through an extensive range of complementary intertextual devices intended to evoke the exodus of Israel from Egypt.4 The significance of this section for our purposes is that it follows the rejection of Jesus’s prophetic appeal by the cities of Galilee and his subsequent condemnation of them (cf. 11:20–24).

How we determine the significance of these devices depends upon our own assumptions as readers regarding the referential nature of the Gospel. One scholarly approach, ably represented by Strecker, ...