RTS Papers / Gospels / Summer 2016
An Exegetical Paper on Matthew 10:1-15
Literary Analysis
We should begin by listing the characters and putting them all in their order of importance. Of course that begins with Jesus. The King gets to define the kingdom by his own words and works. And it would seem important to Jesus to make much of an authority structure in this age. That is what translates these disciples into apostles.
The parallel identities, twelve disciples (1) … twelve apostles (2), are obviously the same roster. The question is Matthew’s design in using both words so close together. The most obvious explanation is for the reader to equate the two — one being their schooling stage and the other their ultimate office. Matthew’s phrase “twelve apostles” has support from another New Testament author, John, in Revelation 21:14.
Some will closely examine the order of the apostles’ names in the various New Testament lists (cf. Mark 3:13-19, Luke 6:12-16, and the eleven in Acts 1:13), or else the “variant descriptions of the second Simon and Luke’s Judas where the others have Thaddeus” (Morris, 244). Whatever may be gained from such a study, it exceeds the boundaries of our question. What does have weight is that in all four lists of the apostles in the New Testament, Peter comes first and Judas Iscariot comes last. As we will see, order communicates something of authority and legitimacy. “Of the inner circle,” France says, “it is probable that all except Judas Iscariot (if his name means ‘man of Kerioth’) were from Galilee” (France, 1995, 567).
The number of disciples, twelve, is “undoubtedly based on the number of tribes of Israel in OT times (cf. 19:28). Jesus is reconstituting God’s covenant community among his followers” (Carson & Beale, 35).
France is equally confident about this allusion (180). We will have to hold this though for the moment until we come to redemptive-historical significance.
Another character group was the Samaritans, who “are equated with Galileans in John’s Gospel … near neighbors up in northern Israel” (Anderson, 1055). This is Matthew’s lone mention of them. Why do the Samaritans stand out at this point?
Jesus thought it worth distinguishing the Samaritans as a third category, beyond simply the Jew and Gentile. This third category was apparently widespread. It essentially amounted to ‘half-breed,’ as even Jospehus alternated between considering the Samaritans fellow countrymen and foreigners” (Ferguson, 534).
With the characters established we move on to the plot. The first way to do that is to identify the basic structure of the passage. The whole of 10:1-15 belongs to the narrative genre. However we can be more specific as to sub-genre. We will notice that vv. 1-5a is spoken in the third person by the author. We can call it simply the narrative. Then vv. 5b-15 is spoken in the second person by Jesus. This is the discourse, or instructions. We may also zoom out our literary lens, as Keener does, and classify the tenth chapter as the second of “five major blocks of Jesus’ sayings” (27). A stricter outline of our passage should also be constructed. Here is one possibility:
The authority and nature of the mission (1)
The names of the apostles (2-4)
The target audience of the kingdom mission (5-7)
The life of the kingdom mission (8-15)
A. Their lifestyle (8-12) or how they are to be supported
B. What to do with their responses (13-14)
C. The outcome of those who reject (15)
If we want to be concise, we could divide the whole text into (I) Commission (1-4) and (II) Mission (5-15). Hendriksen divides the mission intruction section into: (1) where they should go, (2) what they have to proclaim, (3) what they must do, (4) in what condition they are to set out on their tour, and (5) with whom they must lodge (cf. 447). And yet what follows, all the way to verse 42, may be classified as “the charge.”
What literary devices are employed by Matthew to give shape to this teaching? A pairing of similes are used. Jesus calls the lost of Israel ‘sheep’ (v. 6), but then in the following pericope He refers to the disciples as “sheep in the midst of wolves” (v. 16). This is no more problematic than the mixing of metaphors already at the end of Chapter 9. The whole reason that more workers are needed is because the demand of souls to be harvested far exceeds the supply of gospel preachers. This crop had just been referred to as a flock of sheep in the sentence before. Morosco points to a more puzzling feature: “the seeming contrast between the lush and ready harvest described in 9:37-38 and the stress on the terrible resistance to the mission in 10:16-22” (325).
Israel functions as an inclusio (v. 6 / v. 23) if you want to see what is included in between as a summary of the disciples’ exclusive mission to the Jews. If that is the case, then the pair of sendings (v. 5 / v. 16) form the imperative (Go) and indicative (I send you) headings.
The final piece of our literary analysis is Matthew’s use of a few words: apostles, authority, and instructing. We have already noted the designation apostles (ἀπόστολοι), or “sent ones.” It is the office into which the disciples would grow. However its meaning suggests that, in an embryonic sense, they are right at this point apostles. Ridderbos argues that this word “must first be approached from the juridical sphere. It denotes an ambassador with a special mission who acts on behalf of a person, represents him and has been given full powers and authority for this purpose” (370). So “Matthew presents these new disciples as Israel’s new leaders” (Turner, 264).
Hendriksen agrees that this is the intended allusion (449). “Matthew is the only New Testament writer to say ‘the twelve disciples’ (11:1; 20:17; 26:20), though there are quite a few references to ‘the twelve.’” (Morris, 242). That means that they are the church’s first leaders, and that makes us wonder what function such a list had by the time Matthew wrote. The reference to authority with power seems to perform a legitimizing function for this church hierarchy, just as other kinds of references to the disciples and kingdom do: cf. 16:28, 19:28, 21:43.
The word for ‘authority’ (ἐξουσία) is especially important in this setting. This same Greek word can mean either authority or power. However the kind of power it entails is not brute force, but legitimate force. We might think of Nehemiah making the journey back to Jerusalem with the sealed papers of the Persian monarch. Put together it is “power plus the right to exercise it” (Hendriksen, 449). So the works of those who are sent by King Jesus have this same tendency to authenticate their right to be heard. Morris says the word for ‘instructing’ (παραγγείλας) carries “a military ring about it” (245). We have already seen how this “sending forth” has the King-to-royal-ambassador connotation. So this is really another link in the chain to see that Matthew has establishing authority as his agenda here.
(#Matthew #Gospels #Jesus #disciples #discipleship #apostles #kingdom)
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