The Formula-Quotations of Matthew 2 and the Problem of Communication

Abstract

This paper takes its cue from L. Hartman's study of ‘Scriptural Exegesis in the Gospel of Matthew and the Problem of Communication’,1and more specifically from two comments on that paper made by Professor M. D. Hooker.2The first was to the effect that the title of Hartman's study involved a promise which was not fulfilled, in that he did not in fact deal significantly with ‘communication’, in the sense of discussing what the ordinary reader might have been expected to get out of Matthew's scriptural quotations and allusions. The second was the related question whether the ordinary Jew of New Testament times, as opposed to the professional theologians or the exegetes of Qumran, could be expected to have as full an acquaintance with the Old Testament as Hartman assumed. This last point reminded me of a principle set out in a recent article by Humphrey Palmer, which neatly articulated a persistent doubt which I have felt when reading suggestions of sophisticated midrashic developments in the Gospels: ‘The complexity of allusion intelligible to a modern scholar with lots of books and little else to do is much greater than that accessible to any member of Jesus' audience.’3A civilization based on the printed book may be in danger of forgetting that a scroll of even one Old Testament book was in the first century an inconvenient and expensive luxury, and so of assuming an ease of reference which is more appropriate to the age of the ‘pocket Bible’ than to primitive Christianity.

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