Book Review: Matthew's Theology of Fulfillment,Its Universality and Its Ethnicity: God's New Israel as the Pioneer of God's New Humanity,by Herman C. Waetjen

The title of this monograph indicates that it is a work of biblical theology. While it is that, it is also a commentary on the entire Gospel of Matthew. In the preface, Waetjen criticizes “the traditional critical methods of biblical interpretation” for creating an unhelpful “subject/object” distance between interpreter and text and for restricting “the plenitude of meaning” that “the subjectivity of the a priori understanding of the interpreter” allows (p. xiii). Nevertheless, he still finds it necessary to study Matthew's Gospel with reference to “its specific historical context” in order to provide “a comprehensive interpretation” (p. xv). Thus, he promises to provide a study of the First Gospel that integrates a subjective reader-response method with objective historical investigation, with priority given to the former (pp. xiv–.xv).

Nevertheless, what one finds in Waetjen's commentary is, for the most part, straightforward exegesis that relies on standard critical methods, including grammatical analysis, lexical analysis, textual criticism, background studies, and engagement with other commentaries (especially those by France, Luz, and Davies and Allison) and other secondary literature. Waetjen adheres to the Two Document Hypothesis (1); he occasionally engages in redaction criticism (e.g., p. 73), but much more often reads Matthew without reference to the other Gospels. But despite the use of standard methods, the book is certainly not free from subjectivity. Waetjen holds to a particular reconstruction of the historical situation of Matthew and his audience, one that would be questioned by some scholars.

Waetjen adopts the common scholarly view that Matthew's audience was a Jewish-Christian community in Antioch of Syria. He imagines the historical situation of this community in terms of the crisis that befell Judaism following the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in ad 70. In Waetjen's reconstruction, there arose three factions, represented by three books, which offered competing visions and programs for the reconstitution of Jewish identity and life. One faction, with an apocalyptic vision, is represented by the book of 2 Baruch. Another faction, with a focus on Torah, is represented by the rabbis of the academy of Yavneh and the Mishnah. The community addressed by Matthew's Gospel was the third faction (pp. 1–12). Matthew wrote his Gospel to provide “a foundation myth” that calls its audience to regard itself as the “New Israel” and to cooperate with God “to terminate empires and to draw all humanity into the justice, love, and reconciliation of God's Reign” (p. 17).

With his eye on how the Gospel's pericopes contribute to Matthew's post-ad 70 community formation project, Waetjen pays little attention to questions about the historical Jesus. Throughout the commentary, he portrays Matthew as intentionally and directly refuting the arguments of his apocalyptic and (more often) rabbinic opponents. A reader could easily get the impression that Waetjen thinks that the evangelist had copies of the Mishnah and 2 Baruch in his study, and continually consulted them while composing his Gospel. Indeed, Waetjen states that Matthew is “well informed of the efforts of the Pharisees to control the post-70 reconstitution of the religious life of Israel” and that “he knows and uses the … text of 2 Baruch” (p. 5).

An example Matthew's engagement with rabbis of Yavneh, according to Waetjen, is seen in Matthew 9:13. When Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 (“I want mercy and not sacrifice”) to the Phari-sees, Waetjen sees Matthew as directly challenging Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai's use of this text to reconstitute Judaism on the basis of oral Torah in place of the temple. To Waetjen, Matthew was attacking the rabbis for using their “purity code” to separate “God's people into two communities, the clean and the unclean, and alienating them from each other.” In contrast, Matthew uses the same text to promote “a community building that is directed toward the mercy of forgiveness, reconciliation, and wholeness.” Moreover, Waetjen believes that Matthew's audience was familiar with the rabbis' use of Hosea 6:6 and understood how Matthew turned this text against them (pp. 118–19).

Unfortunately, Waetjen does not interact with scholars who express caution or uncertainty about the historical significance and influence of the academy of Yavneh on post-temple Judaism (See, e.g., N. T. Wright & Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians, SPCK and Zondervan Academic, 2019, 103–06). It is also unfortunate that Waetjen's view of Matthew's Gospel as polemicizing against early rabbinic Judaism causes his book sometimes to seem to carry an anti-Jewish tone, as when he describes the rabbinic legal system, in Matthew's view, as demonic (pp. 242–43).

Many of the claims in this commentary run counter to traditional interpretations. To give a few examples: The demon-possessed people encountered by Jesus were actually victims of mental illness caused by the socio-economic oppression of the Roman Empire (pp. 113–15). Jesus's disciples have a non-hierarchical relationship with God; God depends on them just as they depend on God (p. 192). It is not Jesus alone, but also his disciples, who will give their lives as ransoms for many (p. 215). The Trinitarian formula of baptism in 28:19, though present in every known manuscript of Matthew, is not original to the text; it “originated at the Council of Nicea in 325 ce” (p. 293).

Matthew's Theology of Fulfillment will be of interest to scholars of the Gospels, especially those who study Matthew's engagement with his Jewish milieu. It will also be welcomed by those interested in non-traditional interpretations of Scripture.