Abstract
This is a major and important study, that seeks to better understand both the Gospel of Matthew and the Mishnah as texts that seek to redefine group identities in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple. Cohen sets out a number of ‘warrants’ for making the comparison between Matthew and the Mishnah—two texts which in their final forms are separated by more than a century. Cohen, however, sees the post-destruction setting as more unifying than other comparative studies—such as those that have compared Matthew with the sectarian matrix of the Qumran community (pp. 13–22). Thus Matthew and the Mishnah are viewed as ‘post-Destruction documents which reflect the reality of a temple-less Judaism which confronted both the authors and their respective communities’ (p. 30).
In the second chapter, Cohen discusses various introductory issues pertinent to Matthew. Of particular interest are debates around the dating of Matthew. Cohen adopts the majority view of a post-70 c.e. date. However, because this dating is so fundamental to his argument, reading Matthew as a post-destruction document, he pays detailed attention to attempts that try to argue for a pre-70 c.e. dating. In so doing, he mounts one of the strongest defences of the critical consensus on dating and this is an important, though not central, contribution of this study. After a broader discussion in chapter three of ‘Jewish Christianity’, in chapters four and five Cohen respectively discusses ‘the theological orientation of Matthew’s sources’ and the appropriate way in which to locate Matthean believers in their late first-century context. The heart of the discussion on Matthew’s understanding of the temple in the post-destruction period occurs in chapter six. Here Cohen discusses in depth sixteen key references to the temple in the first gospel. The second half of the volume focuses on the perspectives of the Mishnah on the temple from a post-destruction perspective. After discussing preliminary and introductory issues related to the Mishnah in chapters eight and nine, in chapters eleven to thirteen Cohen engages with several select passages from the Mishnah that illustrate the perspectives on the editors on the temple after the destruction. Cohen suggests that ‘temple-related discourse provides the structural template that frames the vast majority of the Mishnah’s Sedarim tractates and mishnayot’ (p. 491). Cohen argues that in the post-destruction period Matthew and the Mishnah were both concerned to map out continuities with the religion of Israel as understood prior to the destruction, but that process of reflection presented divergent routes for continued religious piety. Significantly Cohen notes that ‘[w]hereas the temple-veil of the Mishnah continues to be sprinkled with the blood of goat and bull by the Kohen ha-gadôl on Yom Kippur, the paroket of the Matthean temple has been rent in two signaling the end of the temple’s role in the Matthean system of Judean religion’ (p. 519). Therefore, according to Cohen, the spiritualization and symbolic sacralisation of the temple in Mishnaic reflection transform the temple into an enduring and indestructible symbol, whereas for Matthew the very destruction of the temple results in the formation of a community of Israel and all the nations gathered around Jesus who becomes the locus of religious piety.
Cohen’s study is fascinating and compelling. There is much to be learnt on every page, and one gains deep insight from the meaningful comparison he undertakes. This is a study that will enrich the research of both Mishnaic and Matthean scholars.