Calvin Synod Herald, 2013 (114. évfolyam, 3-12. szám)

2013-07-01 / 7-8. szám

CALVIN SYNOD HERALD

9

The Keys of the Kingdom

Matthew 16: 18-19

The conversation recorded in Matthew 16: 13-20 appears in all of the synoptic gospels. It is between Jesus and his disciples, and it takes place as Jesus starts to withdraw from the masses and turns specifically to those who are closest to him. The dialogue is quite similar in all of the three gospels until Peter’s famous confession: “[y]ou are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus’ answer to Peter is absent in the other two synoptic gospels. Why this difference? Are verses 17, 18 and 19, addressed to Peter, later additions to the text designed to support an early claim to the primacy of the bishop of Rome? “Whether or not they give any such support,” says Dr. Richard Thomas France, “there is no textual evidence for their addition to the Gospel after its original composition, and the strongly Semitic character of the language throughout these verses points to a relatively early origin in Palestinian environment.”

Perhaps we can find a better explanation for the difference if we understand it as a message to Matthew’s targeted audience. Comparison of Matthew’s Gospel with the other two synoptic

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gospels shows that Matthew has a pronounced Jewish orientation. Therefore if we try to gain a fuller understanding of this passage we must investigate the Jewish religious thought of Matthew’s days. Recent studies have identified points of contact with Jewish scribal and interpretive traditions some of which follow the Targumim (especially Targum Isaiah). So we must look into this direction. In this essay I will give special attention to Bruce Chilton’s work related to Matthew 16: 19, and to the figure of speech in this verse (i.e. the “keys,” and the “binding-loosing” metaphors) as they are used in Jewish literature in the first two centuries B.C.E and C.E. (especially in the Babylonian Talmud).

Commentaries generally point out the connection between verse 19 and Isaiah 22:22. The correlation is even clearer in the Aramaic interpretation. Bruce Chilton’s Targum translation gives us the following text: “And I will place the key of the sanctuary and the authority of the house of David in his hand; and he will open, and none shall shut and he will shut, and no one shall open.” He also mentions the Septuagint’s reading of the verse in Isaiah which says: “And I will give David's glory to him, and he will rule, and none will contradict.” Both the Targum (the Aramaic interpretation of the Hebrew text which was widely used in Jesus’ days) and the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew text also broadly used in Jesus’ days) give a more emphatic version of the promise to Eliakim than as it is found in the Masoretic text. It proves that the text carried significant meaning in the time period when the Aramaic and Greek interpretational traditions were developed, not just in Palestine, but throughout the Jewish diaspora. Therefore, according to Chilton’s interpretation, the persons in the Isaiah text (Shebna and Eliakim) convey not information about specific persons and the programs of identifiable groups but an attitude of hostility toward priestly administration, and then the conviction that the temple will suffer, or already has suffered, as the result of that administration. He also points out the developing “halakoth” (the practical interpretation of God’s Law) concerning the Temple in Jesus’ ministry (which is especially evident in Matthew). Therefore Chilton suggests that in Matthew 16:18-19 Jesus was establishing the mechanism for articulating the cultic “halakah” by using the theological language of his time. According to this explanation Jesus was in the business of founding a new assembly (“I will build my church”), built according to (or on) a new tradition. However, as Colin Brown points it out, this “new tradition” is really the “original” one. He says that in Matthew, Jesus is the teacher of the church who supersedes the Sinaitic revelation and its rabbinic interpretations ("it was said to men of old") in order to lay a new foundation ("but I say to you”). In his reading Peter has a foundational role (see Mat. 16: 18) after the death of Jesus, holding the office of the keys which to the Jews meant the office of a teacher. The foundation guaranteed by him is not a new “Torah,” but the fulfillment of the old, now freed from rabbinic distortions.

Samuel Tobias Lachs says in his Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament that “[possessing the keys is to possess the authority over that which the keys open.” According to him from the view of authority there is not much dissimilarity between “open-shut” (see Isaiah 22: 22) and “bind and loosen” (see Matthew 16:19). The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology also derives its understanding about the “keys”