Matthew’s
Genealogy as Eschatological Satire: Bakhtin Meets Form Criticism
Christopher
C. Fuller
Introduction
In this paper I argue that the genealogy in Matt. 1:1-17 is composed in a manner that invites the reader to engage the remainder of the First Gospel as an eschatological satire. I make this argument by positioning form critical conclusions about the genealogy as the basis for a Bakhtinian reading of this text that focuses on its chronotopic qualities in patnership with a recurrent pattern of otherness.
Throughout his life Bakhtin addressed the role of memory in aesthetic activity. In his early philosophical essays it contributed to how one participated in the finalizing of another’s life. He writes, “Memory of someone else’s finished life (although anticipation of its end is possible as well) provides the golden key to the aesthetic consummation of a person.”[1] In his later literary studies he addressed memory and its relationship to genre. The concept through which Bakhtin expresses this relationship is the chronotope.
The chronotope is one of Bakhtin’s most distinctive conceptions. It is also one of his most difficult, not
least because he never provided an adequate definition of it. He describes it as “the intrinsic connectedness
of temporal and spatial relationships that are expressed in literature.”[2] For Bakhtin, time and space within a literary
narrative are inseparable. Chronotopes
are “the organizing centers for the fundamental narrative events of the novel. The chronotope is the place where the knots
of narrative are tied and untied. It can
be said without qualification that to them belongs the meaning that shapes
narrative.”[3] Its primary function is to materialize time
and space which are fused within a given context. According to Emerson and Morson, “For a truly
chronotopic imagination . . . time must be understood in its interconnection
with specific space, and space must be understood as saturated with historical
time.”[4]
What chronotopes do is infuse events within a narrative with
significance beyond their ability to present straightforward information. In this way, they organize literary texts as
worlds that exist independent of the text.
That is, they create a context within which the reader participates in
the text’s dialogic relations. In
addition, Jay Ladin writes, “Through the chronotope, abstract ideas (such as
fate, or the absurdity of human existence) are translated within a text into
sensual descriptions and ontological circumstances.”[5]
Bakhtin argues that any and every literary language is chronotopic. He writes, “Language, as a treasure-house of
images, is fundamentally chronotopic.
Also chronotopic is the internal form of the word, that is, the
mediating marker with whose help the root meanings of spatial categories are
carried over into temporal relationships (in the broadest sense).”[6] Because language not only participates in the
present construction of meaning but is also inhabited by the history of its
prior use, the chronotope does not transcend history. Rather, it is enmeshed within history. It mediates the relationship between a
narrative’s literary discourses and the historical, biographical, and social
contexts that intersect with them. The
results, according to Alice Bach, are “fictional environments where
historically specific constellations of power are made visible.”[7]
Chronotopes can dialogically interact with one another. This kind of dialogue is not part of the
world represented in the text but rather an interaction between this world and
that of the author and the reader. This
does not mean that there is not a distinction between the world of the text and
the world around the text. However, this
distinction does not preclude interaction between the author, text, and reader. Emerson and Morson rightly point out that
failure to acknowledge the boundaries between the text’s world and the reader’s
world invites a naïve realism or naïve reader reception.[8] On
the other hand, in Bakhtin’s view, adherence to a rigid, impermeable, boundary
is likely to result in “oversimplified, dogmatic hairsplitting.”[9] Near the end of his life Bakhtin advocated
“benevolent demarcation, without border disputes.”[10]
In the zone between the world of the reader and the represented world of
the text there is the creating world where, “uninterrupted exchange goes one .
. .similar to the uninterrupted exchange of matter between living organisms and
the environment that surrounds them.”[11] The potential for meaning within this
creating world is never finalized but is continuously excavated as different
chronotopes emerge to readers within different contexts and different
historical periods. Therefore, one’s
temporal, spatial, and cultural outsideness in relation to a work is necessary
for creative understanding to thrive.
According to Bakhtin:
The work and the world represented in it enter the real world and enrich it, and the real world enters the work and its world as part of the process of its creation, as well as part of its subsequent life, in a continual renewing of the work through the creative perception of listeners and readers.[12]
Single works, as well as the complete oeuvre of a single author, may contain a number of different chronotopes as well as complex interactions between them. The reader encounters them in “external material being of the work and in its purely external composition.”[13] Bakhtin focuses his attention primarily on the chronotopic qualities of genre. Those chtonotopes that Bakhtin identifies that bear on studies of the Gospels are the adventure novel of ordeal,[14] the adventure novel of everyday life,[15] and ancient biopgraphies and autobiographies.
Bakhtin does not propose impermeable criteria to identify these genres. He recognizes that genres grow and change through time. He writes that a genre “is always the same and yet not the same, always old and new simultaneously. Genre is reborn and renewed at every new stage in the development of literature and in every individual work of a given genre.”[16] Genres are coalescences of “givenness” and “creation.” They provide the “givenness” but final works are not constrained by it. The result is that they become something new through the act of composition or creation. Such a view comports well with the New Testament gospels. They exhibit the qualities of biography[17] but also possess “novelness” as well.[18] Bakhtin’s insights provide the opportunity to view the gospels not entirely as one or the other genre nor as completely sui generis but at the crossroads of givenness and creation.
As important as the literary elements of each generic chronotope are to Bakhtin, he also examines the relationship between genre and memory. For him genres are more than an assembly of literary devices or linguistic elements; they are a form of thinking. They accumulate experience and, through repeated use, acquire a sedimented memory of their use through time. “Genres . . . throughout the centuries of their life accumulate forms of seeing and interpreting particular aspects of the world.[19] Genres bring their own languages into the novel and, consequently, they “stratify the linguistic unity of the novel and further intensify its speech diversity in fresh ways.”[20] Memory not only preserves the past but also enacts a creative transformation in the present. The accretion of lived experience collaborates with others’ surplus to produce something new.
Bakhtin’s argument that all language is chronotopic means that one may encounter chronotopes not only at the macro generic level but also within individual words themselves. Ladin rightly points that a world-by-word chronotopic analysis would be an arduous and, ultimately, self-defeating undertaking. It is necessary, however, to decide at what level such an undertaking is useful. He advocates examination of what he calls “local chronotopes.” He provides four ways that one can determine their significance: (1) they are associated with the enactment of key scenes and events; (2) they repeat or explicitly use language that calls attention to time and space; (3) they fuse a particular quality of time and “well-delineated” space in a manner that is distinct from other space-times; and (4) they provide physical metaphors for abstract ideas.[21] More important than the specific qualities of different local chronotopes is that their existence also argues for generic examination at the local level within a text as well as analysis of the dialogic relationships between local genres.
Anyone familiar with Bakthin’s writings is aware that it is folly to propose his work as the foundation of a method to interpret the First Gospel. Rather, he serves as a guide by providing concepts that attune the reader to relationships within the text and between the text and the reader. Barbara Green refers to this process as reading a text with or “like Bakhtin.” In this manner of reading “we do not try to peer beneath the frame to see more of the picture but try to see well what is represented on the verbal canvas.”[22] This process pushes the reader to be more aware of and creative about the choices he makes and to be responsible for those choices. There is no passive acceptance, only active and answerable engagement with the plenitude of voices within the text. With this in mind, the search for meaning moves beyond conscious authorial intent. This approach is premised upon Bakhtin’s description of what he called “creative understanding.”
Creative understanding relies on the interpreter’s surplus of vision, due to his position outside of the literary world of the text (e.g., his or her own cultural experience), as a dialogic partner in the process of excavating potential meaning. According to Bakhtin, “Creative understanding does not renounce itself, its own place in time, its own culture; and it forgets nothing. In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding—in time, in space, in culture.”[23] This conviction grows from Bakhtin’s notion of unfinalizability and his belief that great literature has a surplus of meaning that exists as an as-yet-unencountered potential. With these insights in mind, what follows is a creative understanding of Matt. 1:1-17 that results from reading it “like” Bakhtin.
Matthew
opens his Gospel with, “An account
of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham”
(1:1). He then records the genealogy of
Jesus from Abraham through his birth to Mary.
A series of thirty-eight begettings does not resonate well with many
modern readers, but it does immediately establish the evangelist’s goals to
excavate the Old Testament for language that defines the life, ministry, death,
and resurrection of Jesus. The evangelist
alerts the reader to this relationship with the first line which in its Greek
form, BiBlos Geneseös, evokes not only the creation of the
world in the Book of Genesis but also the genealogies of the Old Testament.[24] In
this paper I will not speculate on how Matthew composed the genealogy or what
sources he drew from to compose it.
Instead, I will focus on the form of the genealogy and survey arguments
for its function within Matthew’s narrative.
I will then examine the chronotopic elements of Matthew’s genealogy to
argue that Matthew employs the genealogical genre as a form of parody.
Genealogies attest to a person’s ancestral descent and to a sense of his
or her connection to the past. They
existed in oral form within the Near Eastern culture that nourished the
composition of the Old Testament. Thus,
it is no surprise that genealogies emerge as a literary form within the Old
Testament. They appear ubiquitously in
texts like Genesis and Exodus which tell the stories of the early history of
the Israelites or in literature from the period after the return from the
Babylonian exile in 538 B.C.E.[25]
Robert Wilson identifies two genealogical forms. The most common is the segmented genealogy
which shows the relationship of children to their parents (Gen. 35:22-26; Num.
26:5-51). This form possesses a vertical
orientation that describes the relationship between two generations and a
horizontal orientation that defines the relationship between siblings by
tracing them to a common ancestor. The
function of a segmented genealogy is not only to describe family relationships
but also to express status, economic position, geographical location or
position within the cult.
The other form is the linear genealogy.
In either their segmented or linear forms genealogies serve different
social, political, or theological functions.
The result is that different genealogies may be created for the same
person depending upon their purpose.
Genealogies may present the order of descendants from parent to child (1
Chron. 9:39-44) or the reverse (1 Chron. 9:14-16).
Marshall Johnson argues that in the post-exilic period the colonized
political status of the Jewish people and the diversity of cultures within
which it finds itself results in two areas of genealogical focus: (1) the
concern to preserve the distinctive identity of Jewish culture (as documented
in Ezra-Nehemiah), and (2) speculation about the Messiah and his ancestry (see
Psalms of Solomon 17).[28]
Ezra, chapter 2, tells of the Jews who return to the
Johnson identifies within some strands of early rabbinic literature a
reaction against the use of genealogies to establish cultural standing and
social rank.[29]
While one must always exercise caution with rabbinic literature because
of its later date of compilation and composition, Moody’s insights establish an
emphasis on genealogical purity during the
Another object of ancestral speculation during the
In 2 Sam. 7:11-16 God provides assurance that the house of David will
rule
Though it is neither Wilson’s nor Johnson’s intention to do so, their
examination of genealogies within biblical texts alerts the person who reads
with Bakhtin to the potential of the genealogical form to function as a local
chronotope within a biblical narrative.
Their work demonstrates the use of a familiar form that acquired a
cultural memory through repeated use over a long span of time. This form was not static but was adapted to
creatively transform Judaism’s understanding of itself within changing cultural
circumstances. Finally, the genealogy is
a form that fuses time with space in order to define cultural identity and
socio-political power. As someone who
employs the genealogical form, Matthew harvests the potential of the chronotope
to provide a creative understanding of Jesus as
The temporal nature of Matthew’s genealogy is easily apparent. It begins with Abraham as the great patriarch
of the Jewish people and ends with the advent of Jesus as the fulfillment of
The evangelist also emphasizes the temporal importance of the genealogy
by dividing it into three periods of fourteen generations. Scholars debate the meaning of the number
fourteen and the fact that the last period (1:12-16) seems only to contain
thirteen generations.[32]
However, there is abundant evidence from the Old Testament and Second
Temple literature of the importance of numbers to emphasize the divine purpose
with which God created the world (e.g., Gen. 1:1-2:4a) and the eschatological
purpose with which God has guided Israel’s history (e.g., Jubilees, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch 53-74). Matthew’s accent on the three groups of
fourteen generations that conclude with the Messiah clearly possess an
eschatological thrust.[33]
Thus, Matthew’s genealogy betrays a theological thrust that exceeds the
need for historical accuracy. One
example is the absence of names within the genealogy in order to preserve the
3x14 structure.[34]
These absences betray the evangelist’s selectivity in fashioning the
genealogy.[35] As a genealogy that employs the words BiBlos Geneseös, it evokes the Old Testament as memory and form to establish the
messianic credentials of Jesus. In this
way Matt. 1:1-17 possesses the qualities of a linear genealogy within the
I have thus far not argued anything that is foreign to standard
scholarship on Matthew’s genealogy.
However, a chronotopic focus emphasizes an element that Matthean
scholars have ignored, the spatial character of the genealogy. As much as the names and their sequence evoke
the direction of
Thus, in Matthew’s genealogy time and space are fused within the context
of
Bakhtin argues that chronotopes bear, as do genres and utterances, the
memory of their prior use whenever they are employed in other contexts. With this in mind, it is productive to
consider how the chronotope of Matt. 1:1-17 carries the memories of the
genealogical form and how its use of this form contributes to the relationship
between author, text, and reader.
Matthew’s genealogy employs the traits of a linear genealogy in a time
when ancestral lineage was important to maintain Judaism as a distinctive
culture in relation to the foreign governments that had ruled over it before
and since its return from the Babylonian exile.
However, while the use of BiBlos Geneseös does identify Matt. 1:1-17 within the
tradition of genealogies from the Old Testament, it also departs from that
tradition in several ways. One way is in
the naming of the genealogy itself. Old
Testament genealogies normally identify themselves by the first name on the
list (e.g., Gen. 10:1), not the last.[39]
Yet, the evangelist clearly identifies Jesus, the last person in
Matthew’s genealogy, as the person who gives the genealogy its name.
Another manner with which Matthew departs from the genealogical form is
by highlighting the subversion of primogeniture as the path through which
Finally, there are the four women: Tamar (1:3a), Rahab (1:5a), Ruth
(1:5b), and “the wife of Uriah” (i.e., Bathsheba [1:6b]). I have already noted that, while rare, women
do appear in Old Testament genealogies.
However, scholars have noted that the manner with which the evangelist
includes the women in Matthew’s genealogy breaks the formal pattern throughout
the rest of the genealogy (“A was the father of B”).[41]
In addition, while Tamar and Bathsheba do appear in one of Matthew’s
possible sources, 1 Chronicles 1-2, Ruth and Rahab do not appear in any Old
Testament genealogies.
There is no scholarly consensus about the role of the women in Matthew’s genealogy. The following explanations have been offered to account for their inclusion. Some of the explanations are combinations or nuances of others.
1. They were sinners and their inclusion
points to Jesus’ ministry to sinners and the outcast.[42]
2. There were irregularities in the sexual
activity of each woman. This and the
initiative each woman took to further God’s plan points to Mary and the birth
of Jesus.[43]
3. The irregular nature with which the sexual
activity of each woman furthered salvation history provides a defense against
those who argue that Jesus was of illegitimate birth.[44]
4. The four women were Gentiles or
“foreigners” whose inclusion points to the universality of the salvation that
Jesus will offer.[45]
5. The women serve a dual role: their status
as Gentiles points to the universality of Jesus’ mission, and, despite their
lowly status, they were used by God to further salvation history thus
connecting them to Mary.[46]
6. Johnson argues that their inclusion
reflects a polemic between the Pharisees who expected a Davidic Messiah and the
Sadducees who expected a Levitical Messiah.[47]
7. The women were Gentiles and the natures of
their sexual unions points to Mary and the birth of Jesus. Thus, their inclusion reminds the reader of
the unexpected ways by which divine intervention has guided the salvation history
of
8. In a variation on the sinners argument,
John Paul Heil argues that the women themselves were not sinners, but their
presence draws the implied reader’s attention to the sinful nature of the
Davidic dynasty. Jesus’ birth as the
Messianic Son of David eliminates the dynasty’s sinful history.[49]
9. The women represent the fashion with which
God often fulfills divine promises by deviating from human expectations. Their presence prepares the way for Mary, the
birth of Jesus, and the displacement of Joseph from the patriarchal line of
descent.[50]
10. Elaine Wainwright contends that the women
occupy positions that disrupt the andocentric thrust of the genealogy and
remind the reader of the place of women in
11. Amy-Jill Levine argues that Tamar, Rahab,
Ruth, and Bathsheba are examples of “higher righteousness.” That is, as persons without power in
male-dominated cultures, the women acted when the men in power failed to do
so. They ignored social mores in order
to further
Some of the explanations can be discounted entirely or as singular
arguments. There is a near consensus
that Matthew did not include the women because they were sinners. In fact, Heb. 11:31 heralds Rahab’s
faithfulness while Gen. 38:28 acknowledges Tamar’s righteousness, and Ruth 4:11
compares Ruth to Rachel and Leah.[53]
Other scholars correctly note that the genealogy includes many males who
were sinners.[54]
It should also be noted that it is difficult to make the connection to
Mary who is not described as a sinner.
Several scholars discount the argument that the four women provide a
defense against the claim that Jesus was of illegitimate birth. They note that to foreground the sexual
irregularities of the women provides little argument against controversies
surrounding Jesus’ birth. More likely,
they were the impetus for those controversies.[55]
Craig Keener does not discount sexual irregularity as a possible element
to explain the presence of the four women.
However, he does note that there are other more prominent women for whom
this argument also holds true: Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel. Therefore, this cannot provide the sole
explanation for the presence of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba.[56]
Johnson argues that proponents of a priestly Messiah bolstered their
claim by noting that David’s lineage included Gentiles, particularly Ruth the
Moabite. In Deut. 23:3 God, through
Moses, declares that, even up to the tenth generation, “no Moabite shall be
admitted to the assembly of the LORD.”
Therefore, no descendant of David could be the Messiah. The Pharisees defended this attack by arguing
that God’s intervention in
Finally, while Rahab and Ruth were Gentiles, the cultural status of
Tamar and Bathsheba is not clear. In 2
Sam. 11:3, Bathsheba is identified as the daughter of Eliam, an Israelite from
Giloh (2 Sam. 23:34). However, Matt. 1:6
describes Bathsheba as “the wife of Uriah” which alludes to her affiliation with
a Hittite Gentile. The Old Testament
ascribes no cultural identification to Tamar.
Post-biblical Jewish literature describes her as a Gentile. [58]
In spite of their Gentile origins, some of these women were also
recognized as proselytes to Judaism. For
example, Tamar is celebrated for her virtue in turning to the worship of
While the arguments that the women were sinners or that the genealogy is
a defense of Jesus’ legitimacy can be dismissed, the other explanations offer
credible, although in some cases incomplete, cases for their presence. Carter correctly warns against accepting only
one argument at the expense of all others and, in so doing, cautions against a
monologic reading of the role of the four women. However, these scholarly conclusions do serve
as reminders of Bakhtin’s insight that genres are never static. Instead, they are renewed with each use. How Matthew renews the genealogical
chronotope in the First Gospel comes into view when the credible arguments are
allowed to work together to form a pattern greater than any single claim.
When the unusual presence of the women is partnered with the spotlight
that is cast upon the unexpected manner with which
However, reading with Bakhtin argues that the genealogy does more than
remind the reader of the unexpected ways that God has preserved
A chronotopic reading of Matthew’s genealogy also suggests that the present also folds back to interpret the past. Wainwright’s insights are helpful in this regard. She maintains that the argument that the women were “foreigners” or “irregular” in some manner reflects a “form of gender politics” in which women are either recognized only when they are problems or they are positioned as outsiders in a patriarchal world. Contrary to these solutions, Wainwright argues that the four women alert the reader to a break in the orderly pattern of salvation history; their disrupting presence calls attention to itself provoking an acknowledgement of patriarchal literary forms within biblical narratives.[61] Through chronotopic memory the genealogies of the past cannot now escape this scrutiny and the reader’s queries about the general absence of women in them.
The generic inversion and interaction of conflicting spheres of cultural experience in the genealogy correspond with elements of what Bakhtin defines as the menippean satire. Bakhtin writes, “Very characteristic for the menippea are scandal scenes, eccentric behavior, inappropriate speeches and performances, that is, all sorts of violations of the generally accepted and customary course of events and the established norms of behavior and etiquette, including manners of speech.”[62] Scandal, eccentricity, impropriety, and cultural contravention are all present in Matthew’s genealogy when it is read “like” Bakhtin. The evangelist will also employ them as elements of Jesus’ ministry. Thus, Matt. 1:1-17 not only prepares the reader for theological themes that will echo throughout the remainder of the narrative,[63] but for Jesus’ ministry as the satirical fulfillment of God’s plan for Israel and the world. It is not satire that inspires laughter but an overturning of cultural and narrative expectations through the active participation of the reader.
Conclusion
Bakhtin’s
advocacy for creative understanding provides many opportunities for biblical
studies, not least of which is an approach that accounts for more than the
authorial intentions (real or implied) of texts.
Bakhtin’s ideas are rich with potential because their focus on relationships requires answerability between readers, authors, texts, and histories. They do not preclude other methods of biblical criticism. Rather, they recontextualize these methods as appropriate within the sphere of dialogic exchange. For example, I argue elsewhere that composition criticism aids the reader in engaging the dialogic voices of the fulfillment citations in Matthew’s infancy narrative (1:22-23; 2:5b-6; 15b; 17-18; 23b) and that narrative criticism provides the basis for a carnivalesque reading of the story of the Magi in Matt. 2:1-12.[64] At their most fundamental, Bakhtin’s ideas provoke serious reconsideration of issues that span from the historical-critical to postmodern methods such as genre and its relationship to meaning. R. Branham correctly notes that the novelty of Bakhtin’s terms is far less important than their power to provoke reconsideration of how texts are constructed and the relationships they inscribe.[65]
With this in mind, in this paper I have applied the concept of the chronotope to the genre of the biblical genealogy. In a similar manner, Michael Vines employs the chronotope to argue that the genre of the Gospel of Mark is not a Greco-Roman biography.[66] His work moves beyond formalist typologies to considerations of how Mark’s apocalyptic use of space and time resonate with Hellenistic Jewish novels. Vines acknowledges that Bakhtin provides a beginning to the rethinking of the matter of genre not an end. With this in mind, the challenge that Bakhtin offers is not only a reconsideration of what literary forms the Gospels employ but also how they use these genres. In the following excerpt, Bakhtin addresses the use of quotation in Hellenistic literature, but his concluding question could easily apply to the matter of genre:
One of the more interesting
stylistic problems during the Hellenistic period was the problem of
quotation. The forms of direct,
half-hidden and completely hidden quoting were endlessly varied, as were the
forms of framing quotations by a context, forms for intonational quotation
marks, varying degrees of alienation or assimilation of another’s quoted
word. And here the problem frequently
arises: is the author quoting with reverence or on the contrary with irony,
with a smirk?[67]
If genre is both what is given and what is being created, perhaps the First Evangelist is casting his own smirking glance at the genealogical forms from which he draws influence.
[1] Mikhail M. Bakhtin, "Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity," trans. Vadim Liapunov, in Art and Answerability, 107.
[2] Mikhail M. Bakhtin, "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes Toward a Historical Poetics," in The Dialogical Imagination, 84.
[3] Bakhtin, "FTC," 250.
[4] Caryl Emerson and Gary Saul Morson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 417.
[5] Jay Ladin, "Fleshing Out the Chronotope," in Critical Essays on Mikhail Bakhtin, ed. Caryl Emerson, Critical Essays on World Literature (New York: G.K. Hall, 1999), 212.
[6] Mikhail M. Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel," trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, in The Dialogical Imagination (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 251.
[7] Alice Bach, "Whatever Happened to Dionysus?" in Biblical Studies/Cultural Studies, ed. J. Cheryl Exum and Stephen D. Moore, vol. 266, JSNTSup (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 99.
[8] Emerson and Morson, Bakhtin, 428.
[9] Bakhtin, "FTC," 254.
[10] Mikhail M. Bakhtin, "The Problem of Speech Genres," in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, 137.
[11] Bakhtin, "FTC," 254.
[12] Ibid., 254.
[13] Ibid., 252.
[14] Ibid., 99.
[15] Ibid., 116.
[16] Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevky's Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson, Theory and History of Literature, vol. 8 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 106.
[17] Charles H. Talbert, What is a Gospel? The Genre of the Canonical Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977); David E. Aune, The New Testament in Its Literary Environment, Library of Early Christianity, ed. Wayne A. Meeks, vol. vol. 8 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987), 46-76; Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels?A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, SNTSMS, vol. 70
[18]
Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel:
Mark's World in Literary-Historical Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1989); Michael E. Vines, The Problem
of Markan Genre: The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish Novel, Academia Biblica,
ed. Mark Allan Powell, no. 3 (
[19] Mikhail M. Bakhtin, "Response to a Question from the Novy Mir Editorial Staff," in Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, 5.
[20] Bakhtin, "DiN," 321.
[21] Jay Ladin, "Fleshing Out the
Chronotope," in Critical Essays on Mikhail Bakhtin, ed. Caryl
Emerson, Critical Essays on World Literature (New York: G.K. Hall, 1999),
218-19.
[22] Barbara Green, Mikhail Bakhtin and
Biblical Scholarship: An Introduction, Semeia Studies, ed. Danna Nolan
Fewell, vol. 38 (
70.
[23] Bakhtin, "RQ, 7". The emphasis is his.
[24] See the LXX form of Gen. 2:4 and Gen. 5:1 which use this same phrasing with respect to the creation of the world and the descendants of Adam.
[25] See 1 and 2 Chronicles; Ezra; Nehemiah.
[26] Robert R. Wilson, "Genealogy, Genealogies," in ABD, ed. David Noel Freedman, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 930.
[27]
[28] M. D. Johnson, The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies with Special Reference to the Settings of the Gospel of Jesus, 2d ed., SNTSMS, vol. 8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 85.
[29] Johnson, Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies, 93-95.
[30] Ibid., 116. These writings include a collection of
primarily Jewish texts written during the
[31] Documents among the Dead Sea Scrolls identify a kingly Messiah from the line of David and a priestly Messiah from the line of Aaron (1QS 9:10; CD 12:23; 14:18; 19:10).
[32] For a survey of opinions, see Johnson, Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies, 189-208.
[33] Herman C. Waetjen, "The Genealogy as the Key to the Gospel according to Matthew," JBL 95 (1976): 211-13.
[34] See the tables in Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, 2d ed., ABRL (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 77-79.
[35]Warren
Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A
Sociopolitical and Religious
[36] Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7, trans. Wilhelm C. Linss (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989), 108.
[37] The concept evolves from Pasolini’s concept of language and its use in artistic representation. According to Pasolini, stylistic contamination is a form of pastiche that blends high artistic form with popular social expression to position the audience at the intersection of the past and the present that in a manner that foregrounds the relationship between structure and social history. In his cinema, Pasolini, the art historian, most often contaminated his cinema with painting traditions that varied from the Renaissance to seventeenth-century Rajput miniature illustrations. In his cinematic interpretation of the First Gospel, Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel according to St. Matthew, 1964), Pasolini’s most overt use of stylistic contamination manifests itself in the Jewish leaders who are a visual citation of Piero della Francesca’s fresco cycle, The Legend of the True Cross (1452-55). For a discussion of Pasolini’s use of stylistic contamination, see Patrick Rumble, Allegories of Contamination: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life (Toronto, Buffalo, & London: University of Toronto Press, 1996).
[38] Emerson and Morson, Bakhtin, 367.
[39] Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church Under Persecution (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 13.
[40] Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 58.
[41] Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew, SacPag, vol. 1 (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1991), 32; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, ICC, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 184; Elaine Mary Wainwright, Towards a Feminist Critical Reading of the Gospel according to Matthew, BZNW, vol. 60 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), 66-67; Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 58.
[42]St. Jerome, Commentariorum in Matheum,
CChr, vol. LXXVII (Turnholti: Typograph Brepols Editores Pontificii, 1959), 8;
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica,
vols. III QQ XXVII-LIX, trans. Fathers
of the
[43]
Krister Stendahl, "Quis et Unde?
An Analysis of Matthew 1-2," in Judentum Urchristentum Kirche,
Festschrift J. Jeremias, ed. W. Eltester, 2d. ed., BZNW, vol. 26 (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1960), 94-105; Janice Capel
Anderon, "Matthew: Gender and
[44] For multiple citations from the early twentieth century, see W. D. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 65. For a contemporary scholar who argues this view, see Ben Witherington III, "Birth of Jesus," in DJG, 65-66. For an argument that the genealogy implicitly acknowledges the illegitimacy of Jesus’ birth, see Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995).
[45] Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 78-80; Donald Senior, Matthew, ANTC (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 38; David E. Garland, Reading Matthew: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the First Gospel (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 14-15; Augustine Stock, The Method and Message of Matthew (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1994), 24-25; Carter, Matthew, 123; Luz, Matthew 1-7, 110.
[46] David R. Bauer, "The Literary and Theological Function of the Genealogy in Matthew's Gospel," in Treasures New and Old: Recent Contributions to Matthean Studies, ed. David R. Bauer and Mark Allan Powell, vol. 1, SBL Symposium (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 148-50.
[47] Johnson, Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies, 176-79.
[48] Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel of
Matthew, trans. Robert R. Barr (
[49] John Paul Heil, "The Narrative Roles of the Women in Matthew's Genealogy," Biblica 72 (1991), 544-45.
[50] Waetjen, "Genealogy," 216.
[51] Wainwright, Matthew, 60-69.
[52] Amy-Jill Levine, "Matthew," in Women's Bible Commentary, ed. Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville, KY: Westminser John Knox Press, 1998), 340-41.
[53] See, also, James 2:25 where Rahab’s righteousness is recalled.
[54] Waetjen, "Genealogy," 205-30; Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1.170; Carter, Matthew and the Margins, 59.
[55] Johnson, Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies,
148; Harrington, Gospel of
Matthew, 32; Levine,
"Matthew," 340; Waetjen,
"Genealogy," 219.
[56] Keener, Matthew, 79.
[57] Davies and Allison, Matthew, 171.
[58] Philo, Virt., 220; Jub. 41:1; T. Jud. 10:1.
[59] Philo, Virt., 220-22.
[60] For a description of the honor/shame codes of ancient Mediterranean culture, see Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1981).
[61] Wainwright, Matthew, 65-67.
[62] Bakhtin, PDP, 147.
[63] See Johnson, Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies, 210-28.
[64]
Christopher C. Fuller, "’Udiste
che fu detto…, ma io dico che…’ Pasolini as Interpreter of the Gospel of
Matthew" (Ph. D. diss., Graduate Theological
[65] R. Bracht Branham, "Inventing the Novel," in Bakhtin in Contexts: Across the Disciplines, ed. Amy Mandelker (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995), 79.
[66] Vines, Markan Genre.