17 Do not
think that I have come to abolish the law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill
them. 18 I tell you the truth,
until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke
of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is
accomplished. 19 Anyone who breaks one of the least of these
commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the
kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be
called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you that unless your
righteousness surpasses that of the
Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
I propose to comment briefly on a select few
of the redaction critical judgments currently in vogue.
1. Some see the separate verses as originally
four discrete sayings that have been put together by the Evangelist. This does
not seem compelling. Did Jesus speak only in one-liners? Despite the contention
of Banks (“Matthew’s Understanding of the Law: Authenticity and Interpretation
in Matthew 5:17-20,” JBL 93 [1974]:226-42),
the connecting words like γαρ and ουν constitute no proof that the sayings were once separate; in fact
if they had been joined together, would there not have been a need for
connecting particles? What criteria can be offered to distinguish the one case
from the other?
2. Some hold that the words “Do not think
that” are a late rhetorical device that does not go back to Jesus (so also in a
structurally similar verse, Matt. 10:34). What external evidence is there that
this is a late rhetorical device? How
does one explain that both here and in 10:34 Matthew ascribes these words to Jesus?
If it is a late rhetorical device,
and Jesus does not say precisely these words (in Aramaic or Greek), how does
one methodologically distinguish between the possibility that Matthew made this
part up and the possibility that even if the expression is Matthean the
essential truth content is to be traced to Jesus?
3. Several see the words “or the prophets” as
a Matthean addition, since the disjunctive “or” occurs” in thirteen other
instances in this Gospel; and of these, nine are probably due to Matthew’s
redactional activity. Moreover, it is agreed that eight of these betray a
similar construction, viz., a conjunction followed by a noun. However, it must
be noted that (1) this is not a rate construction in the New Testament; (2) the
nine probable redactional instances
of “or” are not entirely indisputable; (3) “nine out of thirteen” provides a
statistical basis with a massive margin for error (or, otherwise put, the ratio
is not demonstrably significant); and (4) even
if Matthew added the term to his tradition (What tradition, precisely, if
he was an eyewitness?, the joint expression may mean no more than the simpler
expression, since “law” can refer to
the entire Old Testament Scriptures (e.g., John 12:34; 15:25; 1 Cor. 14:21).
4. The words “I tell you the truth” are
rejected as unauthentic by some on several grounds; (1) In the parallel saying
in Luke 16:17, this clause is missing; (2) the clause might well have arisen in
Greek-speaking Judaism, and (3) Matthew is the only New Testament writer to use
this particular formula with γαρ (αμην γαρ λεγω υμιν). But in response we may well
ask: (1) Does Luke’s parallel seem to come from the same occasion? Is it
certain the utterance was unattached in the tradition and nailed down in one
place by Matthew and in another by Luke? How can this hypothesis be
distinguished from the more plausible one—that an itinerant preacher says
similar things on many occasions? And if the
two accounts have the same source, how may we know Matthew added it, rather than
supposing Luke dropped it? (2) Perhaps the
clause arose in Greek-speaking Judaism, but perhaps
not. Note the transliterated word αμην. What does this suggest? And if the expression arose in such
circles, perhaps Jesus was trilingual and invented it. And perhaps not. What methodological control is there to
enable one to respond to any of these questions? (3) If Matthew is the only one
to associate γαρ with the clause,
might this not just as easily mean that only γαρ was added as that the entire
clause is redactional? Is it not remarkable that only Jesus in the New Testament
uses αμην at the beginning of clauses—would this not
argue for authenticity? In any case, though it is true that Matthew is the only
New Testament writer to use γαρ with the expression, he does so in only four of thirty-two occurrences.
That means he uses the expression without γαρ twenty-eight times, but Mark
uses the expression (without γαρ) only thirteen times, and Luke a mere six. Perhaps, it may be
argued, if Mark or Luke had used the expression more, they too would have
slipped in the odd γαρ. In any case, since I am not worried about the ipsimma verba of Jesus (i.e., Jesus’ own
words) but only his ipsimma vox
(i.e., Jesus’ own voice), might it be that where γαρ does appear, there is simply a
Matthean connection that reveals a connection that Jesus himself made, whether
by contextual implication, logic, explicit statement (in Aramaic?), or some
other means? How does one methodologically eliminate
such possibilities?
5. Banks argues that the italicised words for, unless, righteousness, surpasses,
and kingdom of heaven are probably
all unauthentic and that the verse as a whole though traditional, is probably
not authentic. However, he insists that Matthew is nevertheless not imposing
something essentially alien to Jesus’ intention but is simply drawing out some
practical implications from the attitude Jesus maintains. My problem with this
approach is in part akin to my hesitations in all the other passages; but I
will press on and ask a broader question. Did Matthew (according to Banks)
simply made deductions about Jesus’ general attitude
without ever hearing Jesus deal with this subject? If he did hear Jesus deal with it, might he
not be giving the gist of what Jesus said (ipsimma
vox)? And how, methodologically speaking, can Banks (or anyone else)
distinguish between these two cases?
I must hasten to add that these reflections in
no way prove the authenticity of this
snippet or that. I am at the moment concerned only with the methodological
problems inherent in redaction criticism; and I am trying to demonstrate that
at least in this passage redaction criticism is intrinsically incapable of dealing believably with questions of
authenticity. It is not really a “tool” in any precise sense: it is freighted
with subjective judgments; it is based on too many implausible assumptions;
and, worst of all, in each judgment it makes it ignores numerous questions that
not only are relevant but expose its fundamental weakness. (D.A. Carson, Collected Writings on Scripture [comp.
Andrew David Naselli; Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2010, 163-65)
