Daily Gleanings (8 April 2019)

Reading time: < 1 minutes

Charles Quarles’s Theology of Matthew: Jesus Revealed as Deliverer, King, and Incarnate Creator (P&R, 2013) is available this month for free from Logos Bible Software.

Cover of Quarles's "Theology of Matthew"

Matt D’Avella hosts a short (< 9 min) video with Greg McKeown that introduces some of the key lines of thinking around essentialism.

For additional discussion, see previous posts about essentialism.

Lightfoot, Works

Reading time: < 1 minutes

Rob Bradshaw has collected John Pitman’s 13-volume set of John Lightfoot’s works.

Among other things, Lightfoot’s works include a series of “Hebrew and Talmudical Exercitations” on Matthew–1 Corinthians (i.e., discussions of texts in light of select Talmudic and other Jewish literary parallels).

Via a convenient master table of contents page, the set is available in one PDF file per printed volume.

Tempting a Hen to Play a Chick(en)

Reading time: 3 minutesIn Matt 4:5–7; Luke 4:9–12, Jesus cites Deut 6:16 in response to his temptation at the temple. The full text there runs “you shall not test Yahweh, your God, as you tested him at Massah” (Deut 6:16; לא תנסו את־יהוה אלהיכם כאשר נסיתם במסה) and refers to Israel’s grumbling about their lack of water in Exod 17:1–7. In this narrative, Exodus reports that Moses “[] called the name of the place ‘Massah’ and ‘Meribah’ on account of the dispute of the sons of Israel and of their testing Yahweh, saying, ‘Is Yahweh in our midst or not?’” (Exod 17:7; ויקרא שם המקום מסה ומריבה על־ריב בני ישראל ועל נסתם את־יהוה לאמר היש יהוה בקרבנו אם־אין; cf. Num 20:2–13). Although this interpretation is Exodus’s own, Exodus does not directly narrate the people’s posing this question (Exod 17:1–6). Instead, they demand water from Moses and inquire whether lacking it indicates that they have been brought into the wilderness to die of thirst (Exod 17:2–3). Thus, the pericope’s interpretive conclusion seems to represent the recorded speech as tantamount to having asked the question “Is Yahweh in our midst or not?” (Exod 17:7; היש יהוה בקרבנו אם־אין).

When Jesus quotes Deut 6:16 to the devil, he quotes only the first part of the text about the inappropriateness of testing God and omits the direct reference to Massah (Matt 4:7; Luke 4:12). Yet, the connection with Massah apparently helps make Deut 6:16 an apt retort to the temptation in which the devil has taken Jesus to “the pinnacle of the temple” (Matt 4:5; Luke 4:9; τὸ πτερύγιον τοῦ ἱεροῦ). Once there, the devil urges Jesus to jump and trust Yahweh’s angels to catch him, in the words of Ps 91:11–12, “lest you should strike your foot on a stone” (Matt 4:6; Luke 4:11; μήποτε προσκόψῃς πρὸς λίθον τὸν πόδα σου).

Yahweh “will [indeed] command his angels” (τοῖς ἀγγέλοις αὐτοῦ ἐντελεῖται), and they will indeed minister to Jesus (Matt 4:7, 11; Mark 1:13; Luke 4:10). Yet, Yahweh is himself one who does touch foot to stone: when Israel was at Massah, Yahweh said to Moses, “Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb” (Exod 17:6; הנני עמד לפניך שם על־הצור בחרב).‭1

Thus, even as Jesus enacts what should have been Israel’s proper response of trusting Yahweh, so he also enacts Yahweh’s faithful care over his people.2 In Ps 91:4, somewhat earlier than the devil’s quotation, the psalmist says Yahweh “will cover you with his pinion, and under his wings you will seek refuge” (באברתו יסך לך ותחת־כנפיו תחסה). In one respect, though much differently than the devil now suggests, Jesus is the properly trusting recipient of his Father’s care (Matt 4:6, 11; Mark 1:13; Luke 4:11). In another, Jesus is the hen that would gather her chicks to protect them—even at the cost of his own life—if they would but come under his “wings” (Matt 23:29–39; Luke 13:31–35; πτέρυγες).3


1 Perhaps also in the background of this interchange is an exegetical tradition about Massah like that represented in Tg. Ps.-J. Exod 17:6: “Behold, I will stand before you there at the place where you saw the mark of the foot on the rock at Horeb” (Kaufman, Pseudo-Jonathan; האנא קאים קדמך תמן באתרא דתיחמי רושם ריגלא על טינרא בחורב). Thus, on the targumist’s reading, “the foot” (ריגלא) had apparently come into contact with “the rock at Horeb” (טינרא בחורב) with sufficient force to leave a “mark” (רושם).

2 Cf. Augustine, Enarrat. Ps., 40.5 (Schaff, NPNF1, 8:121).

3 Cf. Augustine, Enarrat. Ps., 91.5 (ibid., 8:447); Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 570–72.

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 56, no. 1

Reading time: < 1 minutes

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Image via Wikipedia

The latest issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society arrived in yesterday’s mail and includes the following:

  • Paul House, “Investing in the Ruins: Jeremiah and Theological Vocation”
  • Daniel Block, “‘What Do These Stones Mean?’: The Riddle of Deuteronomy 27”
  • Paul Tanner, “The Cost of Discipleship: Losing One’s Life for Jesus’ Sake”
  • Greg Rhodea, “Did Matthew Conceive a Virgin?: Isaiah 7:14 and the Birth of Jesus”
  • Daniel Wallace, “Sharp’s Rule Revisited: A Response to Stanley Porter”
  • Stanley Porter, “Granville Sharp’s Rule: A Response to Daniel Wallace, Or Why a Critical Book Review Should Be Left Alone”
  • Daniel Wallace, “Granville Sharp’s Rule: A Rejoinder to Stan Porter”
  • Walter Schultz, “Jonathan Edwards’s Concept of an Original Ultimate End”
  • Shawn Bawulski, “Reconciliationism, a Better View of Hell: Reconciliationism and Eternal Punishment”

Runge, "Relative Saliency and Information Structure in Mark's Parable of the Sower"

Reading time: < 1 minutesSteven Runge has the latest article in Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics: “Relative Saliency and Information Structure in Mark’s Parable of the Sower.” According to the abstract:

This study applies the cognitive model of Chafe and Givón, and the information-structure model of Lambrecht as applied by Levinsohn and Runge to the Markan explanation of the Parable of the Sower (4:14–20). The primary objective is to identify and analyze other linguistic devices, besides demonstratives, which might clarify the apparent prominence given to the unfruitful scatterings in Mark’s account. This study provides the necessary framework for comparing Mark’s pragmatic weighting of saliency to that found in Matthew and Luke’s accounts in order to determine whether Mark’s version is consistent with or divergent from the other traditions.

For the full text of the article in PDF format, see here.

Biblical Theology Bulletin 42, no. 4

Reading time: < 1 minutes

Image:BTB vol 40 no 1.gif
Image via Wikipedia

The next issue of the Biblical Theology Bulletin includes:

  • David M. Bossman, “The Ebb and Flow of Biblical Interpretation”
  • Joel Edmund Anderson, “Jonah in Mark and Matthew: Creation, Covenant, Christ, and the Kingdom of God”
  • Peter Admirand, “Millstones, Stumbling Blocks, and Dog Scraps: Children in the Gospels”
  • Zeba A. Crook, “Memory and the Historical Jesus”
  • John W. Daniels, Jr., “Gossip in the New Testament”