Abstract
Nathan Johnson has made a significant contribution to Matthean scholarship in this revised version of his dissertation which was supervised by Dale C. Allison, Jr. Johnson contends Matthew’s passion narrative seeks to demonstrate that Jesus’s heinous suffering and humiliating death were fully consistent with his identity as the Davidic messiah and served to confirm that identity. A widely held Messianic view expected the Messiah to destroy the Romans and liberate the subjugated people of Judea and Galilee. Yet Jesus was brutally executed by the Romans instead. Many probably felt that the reality of Jesus’s crucifixion dispelled any serious notions of his messianic identity. Ancient writers such as Cicero and Seneca describe crucifixion as an especially shameful form of execution. The Trypho of Justin Martyr’s diatribe understandably argued that it was both impossible and unimaginable for the true Messiah to have suffered such a disgraceful death. Matthew presents the ‘daring thesis’ that Jesus is the messianic Son of David precisely because he is the crucified one who suffered in ways analogous to David’s own experiences.
Johnson shows that previous scholarship on Jesus’ identity as the Son of David has largely, almost entirely, neglected the passion narrative. Because scholars have focused heavily on a titular Christology and since the Davidssohnfrage in Matt 21:41–45 marks the final explicit reference to David’s son, they have wrongly assumed that the passion narratives essentially abandon the earlier Son of David Christology and replace it with a Son of God Christology. However, Johnson reminds readers that the Son of David is frequently portrayed as the Son of God in the Hebrew Scriptures (2 Sam 7:12–14; Ps 2:7; 89:27–28) and Jewish literature of the Second Temple era (4Q174, 4Q369, 4Q246, 4 Ezra 11–13). Thus, Matthean scholarship should affirm Eusebius of Caesarea’s statement that ‘the Son of David is one and the same as the Son of God, and the Son of God one and the same as the Son of David.’
Johnson applies several complementary methods in his research: intertextuality, ‘messianic grammar,’ narrative reading guided by historical investigation of the Jewish and Greco-Roman milieu, typology, and reception history. Although many scholars are squeamish about utilizing rabbinic literature, Johnson takes up Geza Vermes’ argument that, given the relatively small amount of usually fragmentary material from the Dead Sea Scrolls, ignoring rabbinic literature in the reconstruction of Jewish backgrounds impoverishes interpretation of the Gospels and especially the Gospel of Matthew. Thus, Johnson sees rabbinic literature as essential to understanding Jewish messianic idiom when that literature is used judiciously. Comparing Matthew’s interpretation of Israel’s scripture with rabbinic interpretation of those same texts is most informative.
Chapter 2, ‘Matthew’s Arrest Narrative, the Absalom Revolt, and Militant Messianism,’ demonstrates that the first portion of the passion narrative is saturated with allusions to David traditions. Although many scholars argue that the references to Jesus’s arrest fulfilling the scriptures (Matt 26:54, 56) were not intended to direct the reader’s attention to specific texts, Johnson argues persuasively the scriptures here refer primarily to texts in 2 Samuel describing David’s suffering during Absalom’s revolt. The arrest narrative contains a litany of thematic and verbal parallels to the David narrative. These two narratives not only share these same features; in both accounts they appear in precisely the same sequence. The highlighted parallels serve to correct messianic views that expected the messiah’s rule to be characterized by divine destruction of Israel’s enemies or militant retaliation against those enemies. The arrest narrative provides a different paradigm of messianism in which the Son of David emulates David’s response to the Absalom revolt by refusing to retaliate against his enemies and submitting fully to God’s will.
Chapter 3, ‘The Psalms before ‘the Psalmist’: Setting the Psalms within the Life of David,’ examines David’s relationship to the psalms. Johnson argues that the psalms went through an extended process of increasing Davidization. Ancient scribes added superscriptions to the psalms that claimed David as author and sometimes described the Sitz im Leben. The number of Davidic subscriptions increased over the centuries: 73 in the MT, 88 in the early LXX, and 103 in the late LXX. A Qumran Psalter (11Q5a) has four Davidic subscriptions that the MT lacks. The Targum and Peshitta also have significantly more Davidic captions than the MT. Some ancient texts such as 4QMMT, 2 Maccabees, and the Babylonian Talmud credit David in some sense with the entire Psalter. This Davidic reading of the psalms paved the way for Matthew’s use of the psalms in his portrayal of the new David. Johnson demonstrates that the vague moniker ‘the Psalmist’ was a neologism of the fourth century. Prior to that time, writers referred to the speaker in the psalms as ‘David’ even if the psalm’s ascription did not.
Chapter 4, ‘Setting Jesus’s Trial Narratives within the Davidic Psalms: Matthew without ‘the Psalmist’,’ contends that references to the Davidic lament psalms permeate Matthew’s account of Jesus’s trial. These references enhance Matthew’s presentation of Jesus as the new David by clarifying that he suffered like David suffered. Johnson argues that Matthew drew numerous themes, phrases, and words from the lament psalms to describe the trial. All allusions derive from Book One of the Psalter and most from a cluster in Psalms 26–39. Psalm 38 most strongly influences Matthew’s account.
Chapter 5, ‘Setting Jesus’s Crucifixion within the Davidic Psalms: Constructing a Psalmic Sitz im Leben Jesu,’ investigates allusions to the Davidic psalms, especially Psalm 22, in Matthew’s narrative of the crucifixion. Contrary to interpreters who see a generic righteous sufferer or the nation of Israel as the referent of the psalm, Johnson contends that David is the most probable figure whom the psalm describes. Johnson traces eighteen different allusions to the Davidic psalms in Matt 27:34–28:10, twelve of which draw elements from Psalm 22 (21 LXX). Matthew added half of these references to the psalms to his Markan source. The allusions characterize David as the suffering archetype and portray Jesus as the new and greater David whose suffering exceeds David’s (since Jesus suffered to the point of death) and whose deliverance surpasses David’s (since Jesus was resurrected).
The concluding chapter, ‘The New David: Matthew’s Executed Messiah,’ summarizes the preceding chapters and restates the book’s thesis—Matthew’s trial and passion narratives appeal to a fresh set of David texts not previously regarded as messianic to demonstrate that the new David would suffer, die, and be raised. Matthew regarded the Davidic psalms as prophecy in which the suffering of David prefigured the suffering of the Messiah. Although contemporary Messianic expectations had little room for a suffering Messiah, Matthew insisted that Jesus was the Messiah because of (not despite) his sufferings. Matthew’s comparison of Jesus’s suffering to David’s confirms that the discussion about Psalm 110:1 in Matt 22:45 did not question if the Messiah is the son of David but ‘in what sense’ the Messiah is that son. The narrative that follows shows that Jesus recapitulates and exceeds the suffering of David. Thus, Jesus is the son of David not merely in the sense that he reigns as king and makes his enemies his footstool but also in the sense that he suffers.
Johnson’s arguments supporting his thesis are compelling and many are irrefutable. Although readers may doubt the intentionality of some of the more subtle parallels to Davidic material (like the guarding of Jesus’ cross and tomb vis-à-vis the guarding of David’s house by Saul’s agents), the impressive number of definite, probable, and even plausible allusions establishes a strong cumulative argument. Johnson’s convincing volume shifts the burden of proof to any scholars who claim that Matthew abandoned his son of David Christology in Matt 22:45 and thereafter. Johnson’s volume enriches Matthean scholarship, and his major thesis seems destined to stand the test of time.