Table Of Contentl i b r a ry o f n e w t e s ta m e n t s t u d i e s
MATTHEW’S
NARRATIVE WEB
Over, and Over, and Over Again
JANICE CAPEL ANDERSON
JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
SUPPLEMENT SERIES
91
Executive Editor
Stanley E. Porter
Editorial Board
Richard Bauckham, David Catchpole, R. Alan Culpepper,
Joanna Dewey, James D.G. Dunn, Craig A. Evans, Robert Fowler,
Robert Jewett, Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Dan O. Via
JSOT Press
Sheffield
Matthew's Narrative Web
Over, and Over, and Over Again
Janice Capel Anderson
Journal for the Study of the New Testament
Supplement Series 91
Copyright © 1994 Sheffield Academic Press
Published by JSOT Press
JSOT Press is an imprint of
Sheffield Academic Press Ltd
343 Fulwood Road
Sheffield S10 3BP
England
Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
EISBN 9781850754503
CONTENTS
Preface 7
Abbreviations 10
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION AND METHOD 11
1. Introduction 11
2. Previous Studies of Verbal Repetition in Matthew 12
3. Method 25
4. The Matthean Narrative, Verbal Repetition,
and Redundancy 43
Chapter 2
NARRATIVE RHETORIC: NARRATOR AND NARRATEE, DIRECT
COMMENTARY, AND POINT OF VIEW 46
1. Introduction 46
2. The Narrator and Narratee 46
3. Direct or Explicit Commentary 47
4. Point of View 53
5. Point of View in Matthew 55
6. Conclusion 74
Chapter 3
CHARACTER 78
1. Introduction 78
2. John The Baptist 83
3. Simon Peter 90
4. The Jewish Leaders 97
5. Conclusion 126
6 Matthew's Narrative Web
Chapter 4
PLOT 133
1. Introduction 133
2. Previous Outlines 134
3. General Descriptions of Plot 141
4. Summary Passages 147
5. Anticipation and Retrospection 152
6. The Johannine Subplot 172
7. Double and Triple Stories 175
8. Conclusion 189
Chapter 5
CONCLUSION: LITERARY ANALYSES OF REPETITION IN
NARRATIVE, READER-RESPONSE, AND AURALITY 192
1. Introduction 192
2. Literary Studies of Repetition in Narrative 193
3. Orality, Aurality, Narrative, and Reader-Response 218
Appendix A
EXTENDED VERBAL REPETITION IN THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW 226
Appendix B
EXTENDED REPETITIONS OF NINE WORDS OR MORE 241
Bibliography 243
Index of References 251
Index of Authors 260
PREFACE
This book is a slightly revised version of my doctoral dissertation,
'Over and Over and Over Again: Studies in Matthean Repetition'
(University of Chicago, March 1985), available from the Regenstein
Library, the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, 60637. I have
revised, combined and condensed Chapters 1 and 5 of that dissertation.
Chapters 2 through 4 have only minor changes, primarily improving
typographical errors and clarity of expression. I have eliminated a
comparison of repetition in Matthew with one literary critic in
Chapter 5 and added a brief discussion of orality and aurality. In the
footnotes to each chapter I have given references to important works
that have carried the discussion forward since the dissertation was
written. I would appreciate hearing from readers who know of
additional bibliography.
I was at first reluctant to publish this work, some ten years after I
completed it in Advent of 1983. A great deal of water has passed
under the bridge since then. For example, then I composed the disserta-
tion by hand and mailed it from Idaho to Chicago to be typed by an
approved dissertation office typist, and today I am word processing
this preface on a computer. The key method I used then I called
rhetorical literary criticism. It was essentially a position lying between
what the guild has now settled on calling narrative and reader-
response criticisms. In Gospel studies since then the problems as well
as the possibilities of these approaches have been revealed. Several
criticisms have been particularly telling. One is that the rallying cry
of the Gospels as wholes, the Gospels as unified narratives, is just as
much an a priori presupposition as previous assumptions that they
were not. Secondly, narrative critics, influenced by American New
Criticism, tended somewhat polemically to overemphasize the separa-
tion of text and historical context. Thirdly, the 'implied reader', pre-
tending to be a neutral concept, masks a real reader: the Gospel critic
herself (or more often himself) with a very particular social location.
Today, literary criticism and social scientific criticism are attempting
8 Matthew's Narrative Web
a rapprochement. Cultural criticism reigns, at least currently, in non-
biblical literary studies.
Several factors have persuaded me to take the plunge anyway. The
first is the strong encouragement I received from Elizabeth Struthers
Malbon, whose own work, involving a structuralist approach to Mark,
was also published by Sheffield Academic Press. Professor Malbon
pointed out to me that readers are at different places in regard to
developments in Gospel criticism. While my dissertation may appear
to some as an example of an earlier stage of work, to others it will
appear as a break with scholarly tradition—a break nonetheless more
comprehensible to a redaction critic than a leap directly into post-
structuralism. Further, I am convinced by Mieke Bal (Murder and
Difference: Gender, Gen re, and Scholarship on Sisera's Death
[Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988]) that interpreters should
read a text with multiple disciplinary codes in order to see what each
code reveals and conceals about the text as well as the interests of the
guild that employs it. If not quite a discipline, narrative/reader
criticism constitutes one code through which the Gospels can be read
along with historical, social scientific, theological and gender codes.
What Bal says about the narratological code in relation to Judges 4
and 5 applies equally to narrative/reader criticism of the Gospels:
'Like other codes, it can be used judiciously or injudiciously, to open
or close the interpretation, to oppose or support other codes, to
impoverish or enrich the thematic universe of a text' (p. 85). Like
other codes it can be used in the service of and against various
ideological interests.
A second factor that persuaded me to publish was the continuing
requests I receive for copies of my dissertation. Scholars who find
references to it have difficulty obtaining it. Chapter 2 also essentially
contains an unpublished 1981 paper on point of view in Matthew for
the Society of Biblical Literature's Literary Analysis of the Gospels
and Acts Group. Since it was cited in Jack Kingsbury's widely used
Matthew as Story, I have received a number of requests for copies of
it.
Finally, I have several convictions that remain unchanged. One is
that analyzing the gospels with categories familiar to educated readers,
such as plot, character, and point of view, makes the work of biblical
critics—and the Gospels themselves—more accessible to students and
to the public at large. Scholars may debate the exact genre of the
Preface 9
Gospels, but all readers need at least a vague sense of generic expecta-
tions to read. This is true whether the text they read is a letter, a
chemistry textbook, or a detective story. Reading the Gospels with the
basic categories of narrative at least allows readers to take up the
Gospels without giving up on them as too alien or nonsensical.
Narrative and reader-response criticisms also provide a set of reading
conventions that continue to reveal/create new and exciting interpre-
tations. The final conviction that remains unchanged is that the web of
verbal repetitions in the Matthean narrative is a key to constructing
any reading of the gospel.
In the original preface to my dissertation I dedicated the work to
my teachers: to my teachers at Macalester College: David H. Hopper,
Calvin J. Roetzel, and Lloyd Gas ton, who introduced me to biblical
studies; to my teachers at the University of Chicago Divinity School:
Paul Ricoeur, William G. Thompson, SJ, and Jonathan Z. Smith, who
graciously took over when Norman Perrin, my original advisor, died;
and to a great scholar and man of faith, Norman Perrin. To this dedi-
cation I would like to add my thanks to my friends and colleagues in
the Group on the Literary Analysis of the Gospels and Acts of the
Society of Biblical Literature. Without their stimulation and encour-
agement this and subsequent work would have been greatly
impoverished. I would also like to thank the staff of Sheffield
Academic Press, especially my desk editors, Malcolm Ward and
Andrew Kirk, for helping to bring this work to publication.
Janice Capel Anderson
Moscow, Idaho
