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5 How Matthew Helped Jesus Fulfill Prophecy Robert J. Miller The belief that Jesus fulfilled prophecy has been a cornerstone of the notion that Christianity supersedes Judaism.1 From the first century until now, Christians have correlated statements about Jesus with carefully chosen Old Testament prophecies to document their belief that God’s plan for human salvation reached its fulfillment in Jesus. That interpretive practice is evident in much of the New Testament, but it is Matthew’s Gospel that carries it out most thoroughly and most explicitly. The way Matthew matches prophecies to the story of Jesus creates the strong impression that anyone who believes in the Scriptures of Israel must see that Jesus is the promised Messiah. Matthew thus uses prophecy as a proof that Israel’s history had all along been preparing for the coming of Jesus. Since Matthew’s proof-from-prophecy theme has been foundational to Christianity’s conviction that it is superior to Judaism, and since that conviction has had such pernicious consequences historically, Christian scholars and all who are committed to the honest examination of Christian origins have an ethical obligation to examine Matthew’s claims critically and to assess their value for Christian theology. This essay is offered as a step in that direction. First, we will examine how Matthew handled prophecy—or, more precisely, how he manipulated it—as he integrated the words of the prophets into his narrative. Second, we will investigate how the proof-from-prophecy theme works in Matthew’s Gospel. Third, we will assess whether the belief that Jesus fulfilled prophecy is helpful or harmful to contemporary Christian faith. 1. This essay is an excerpted and revised version of “Did Jesus Fulfill Prophecy?,” in my Born Divine: The Births of Jesus and Other Sons of God (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 2003). 127 How Matthew Uses Prophecy There are sixteen scenes in the Gospel of Matthew in which the narrator (or Jesus himself) interrupts the action in order to quote a prophecy and point out that it was fulfilled in that scene. Nearly half of those scenes occur early in the story, before Jesus becomes a public figure—five of them in the infancy narrative alone. This gospel thus starts with a flurry of fulfillment, creating a strong impression that Israel’s sacred history has been building up to Jesus. In the limited length of this essay, it is not possible to examine every prophecy fulfillment scene in Matthew nor to inquire into every technique Matthew uses in integrating quoted prophecies into his narrative. For our present purposes, it will suffice to briefly analyze a few examples of two of the ways in which Matthew handles prophetic passages: first, tailoring his stories so that they can fulfill prophecy, and second, rewording prophecies so that they match the stories that fulfill them. TAILORING STORIES TO FULFILL PROPHECY The large number of prophecy fulfillment scenes in Matthew is an obvious indication that the author considers prophecy to be a vital part of his story of Jesus. In a few scenes, Matthew goes so far as to treat prophecies as source material for his narrative, using details in the prophecies to shape the scenes in order to spotlight how the actions in the scenes fulfill the prophecies with extraordinary precision. There are three scenes in which it is fairly easy to track how Matthew tailors the stories to fit the prophecies. MATT. 4:15-16 In recounting the start of Jesus’ public career, Matthew follows Mark’s outline: Matt. 4:12 = Mark 1:14, and Matt. 4:17 = Mark 1:15. Between Mark 1:14 and 1:15, Matthew inserts a detailed geographical elaboration of Jesus’ movements in Galilee (Matt. 4:13), followed by Matthew’s fulfillment formula (Matt. 4:14) and his quotation of Isa. 9:1-2 (Matt. 4:15-16). The prophet cited, Isaiah, mentions Galilee along with the old Israelite tribal names Zebulun and Naphtali and locates them on the way to the sea and across the Jordan River (Isa. 9:1). In Matt. 4:13, Matthew uses the geographical markers from Isa. 9:1 to fill out the description of Jesus’ movements that he found in Mark. Matthew knows from Mark that Jesus had a house in Capernaum, a town on the coast of the Sea of Galilee. (Mark refers to “his house” there in Mark 2:1 and 2:15.) So Matthew reports that Jesus moved from Nazareth to Capernaum, which allows 128 | The Message...

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