Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew's Gospel Bert Newton

In this episode, I describe how the genealogy in Matthew is actually a parody of a genealogy. In the gospel in which Jesus instructs his followers to "call no one on earth 'father,'" this list of fathers is intentionally ironic.

I also talk about other "trickster" texts in the Bible such as the praise of King Solomon and the story of the rise of Joseph to the second most powerful person in Egypt. These stories are not what they appear to be.

The "virgin birth" of Jesus, the title "Son of God," and the concept of the forgiveness of sins all had resonances in the first century Mediterranean world that they no longer have today. Understanding what those terms and concepts signaled, as well as how this story "fulfilled" the prophetic texts will greatly expand our understanding of what this story was all about. 

This episode is the only one that will not look at one particular text (all the other episodes will continue progressively through Matthew), but rather at the book as a whole. I make the argument in this episode that the whole Gospel of Matthew parodies a genre in the ancient world to get across a very serious message.

The story of the Magi evokes sentimental, feel good memories of Christmas for many of us, but this story, for its original audience, signaled hopes of liberation from a brutal occupation.

In this episode, Jesus and his family become refugees. Fleeing their home country, which is under the brutal occupation of a foreign empire, they take refuge in Egypt, which, according to their national history, was both the place of their people's slavery and also a refuge for those escaping the Babylonian invasion.

With this story, the author of Matthew introduces the themes of Jesus-as-Moses and Jesus-as-Israel by using Exodus imagery. The texts from Jeremiah 31 and Isaiah 53 also play an important role in setting up the gospel motif of Jesus bearing the suffering of his people.

If this series has not been controversial already, it gets even more controversial in this episode. I make the claim that Jesus joins a liberation movement already in progress to get his start as "Messiah." Also I will assert that temples in the ancient world were government institutions that served as mechanisms through which the ruling classes controlled the people. A significant part of the movement of John the Baptizer was to undercut temple authority.