How the New Testament Authors Created Many of Jesus’ Words and Actions

For this Post, I want to focus on two pericopes (group of verses) to bolster my thesis.

The first is taken form “The Triumphal Entry” where Jesus enters Jerusalem at Passover as recorded in Matthew 21:1-7. Since Jesus was long dead when the Synoptic account of Matthew was composed (after 70 CE or over 40 years after the Crucifixion (The Inter national Critical Commentary: Matthew, by Dale Allison and W. D. Davies, vol. I; 1988)) this Gospel, which is more Jewish than Mark and Luke, feels the need to use a proof text to convince Jews and God fearing Greeks (Gentiles who attended the synagogue, but were uncircumcised) that Jesus was the Messiah. To do this, Matthew quotes a section from Zechariah 9:9 (= Matt. 21:5) and builds his whole Synoptic account around it.

However, in doing so, the editor of Matthew fails to understand ancient Semitic Parallelisms found in Wisdom literature written in early Akkadian through Late Hebrew where a verse is citied and then the very same verse is restated again in another way. Example here is the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible. Proverbs 4:20 “My son give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings.” This is addressed to only one son, not two.

By not understanding the Semitic semantics, Matthew has Jesus riding on 2 animals at once (talk about a miracle!). The stage is set in 21: 2-3 and carried out in 21: 7 (Compare Mark 11 1-7 = Luke 19: 28-35 who have it correct since they don’t build their story around a proof text).

The second problematic pericope is found in Matthew 18:15-18 in the discipline of an unrepentant brother. Jesus says “…go to him and reprove him…” (15). If he still does not repent, take two more with you “…by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed.” (16). and concludes in verse 17: “And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church (ekklesia); and if he refuses to listen even to the church (ekklesia), let him be to you as a Gentile (ethnikos) and a tax-gatherer.”

The word church (ekklesia) only occurs three times in the four Gospels and all three times in Matthew (twice here and one with Peter) and all three times scholars feel it has been interpolated into the text.

It is a fact that Jesus as a Jew who attended the synagogue and that the lingua franca of Jesus was Aramaic which had no word for church (“church” is a Greek term). So why is it that Jesus talking about “the church” and giving church discipline on how unrepentant members should be dealt with?

In addressing this issue in 1989, a conservative Presbyterian minister told me: “You have to understand the Christology of Jesus. He, being God in flesh, was omniscient (Having total knowledge) and thus He knew the Church was coming and wanted to advise it accordingly.”

I then asked the Minister that if Jesus was indeed omniscient and knew the church was coming, than why did He not also know that Gentiles would be allowed into the early church (the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15) by the Apostle to the Gentiles: Paul and that Gentiles would out number Jewish Christians?

Realized that he had used an absolute attribute of God (omniscient) to get him out of the first bind with the word “church”, only to end in a divine contradiction in Acts 15 with Paul, he just sat there. The discussion ended.