Does Matthew exagerate, or does he use an idiom of dialect?

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Voco_proTatiano

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We see Our Lord riding into Jerusalem, on (sorry, magic censor at it again), an a|s|s, and the colt of an a|s|s.
We see Blind Bartimaeus and the son of Timaeus waiting for Our Lord.
We see two mad men living among the tombs,.
The other evangelists do not see these pairs.
Can it be that the first two give a clue to the third, (a wild man and a fierce man).
If I say: ‘A brave man and a hero stood before me’, how many men am I talking about?
 
Voco_proTatiano said:
We see Our Lord riding into Jerusalem, on (sorry, magic censor at it again), an a|s|s, and the colt of an a|s|s.
We see Blind Bartimaeus and the son of Timaeus waiting for Our Lord.
We see two mad men living among the tombs,.
The other evangelists do not see these pairs.
Can it be that the first two give a clue to the third, (a wild man and a fierce man).
If I say: ‘A brave man and a hero stood before me’, how many men am I talking about?
Click to expand...
Note that Matthew was there and is telling what he saw. Mark and Luke are repeating what others told them. The story may have been shortened in transmission.

Re We see Blind Bartimaeus and the son of Timaeus waiting for Our Lord.
Bartimaeus is literally Son of Timaeus; same person.
 
Joe_Kelley said:
Note that Matthew was there and is telling what he saw. Mark and Luke are repeating what others told them. The story may have been shortened in transmission.

Re We see Blind Bartimaeus and the son of Timaeus waiting for Our Lord.
Bartimaeus is literally Son of Timaeus; same person.
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So we accept that in the case of Blind Bartimaeus, and the son of Timaeus, Matthew is referring to a single person, not two.
Context strongly suggests that the a|s|s and the colt of an a|s|s are the same beast.
Matthew here is not exagerating, we are just misunderstanding idioms in his dialect.
Can it also be that the two wild men in the graveyard were in fact the same person, there having been a similar misunderstanding in an earlier translation?
That was the point I was aiming at.
 
Voco_proTatiano said:
We see Our Lord riding into Jerusalem, on (sorry, magic censor at it again), an a|s|s, and the colt of an a|s|s.
We see Blind Bartimaeus and the son of Timaeus waiting for Our Lord.
We see two mad men living among the tombs,.
The other evangelists do not see these pairs.
Can it be that the first two give a clue to the third, (a wild man and a fierce man).
If I say: ‘A brave man and a hero stood before me’, how many men am I talking about?
Click to expand...
It is not easy to consider these numerical discepancies as simple pairs devised by Matthew. Although we cannot exactly know why Matthew doubled the demoniac and the blind man in Mark & Luke, we can still draw conclusions after analyzing the Matthean version of the stories. 🙂

Mark is the only Evangelist to give us the name of the blind man healed by Jesus in Jericho:10:46. And they came to Jericho. And as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a very great multitude, Bartimeus the blind man, the son of Timeus, sat by the way side begging.

The identification of the blind man is peculiar to Mark, but this peculiarity recurs when Mark gives the individual names of Simon’s sons in the passion narrative (15: 21).

Luke, on the other hand, follows the Marcan account in terms of the number of the blind man, but does not tell the name of the man healed (19: 35)

Thus, Matthew is the only Evangelist to state that Jesus opened the eyes of the two blind men rather than one (20: 30) The reason for this variation is most likely Matthew’s literary device that aims to highlight the shift in Jesus’ attitude to people on the basis of the manifestation of His identity. We read only in Matthew that the Lord opened the eyes of another pair of blind men before sending His disciples on a mission.(9: 27)Strikingly, the words used by the blind men are almost identical in both accounts of the same miracle (compare Matthew **9: 27-31 **with 20: 29-34) Thus, Matthew relates Jesus opened the eyes of the two blind men before His entrance into Jerusalem, making an association between these two incidents of the same healing, but stressing that the later pair of blind men were not urged by Jesus to keep quiet about this miracle.

to be continued…
 
continuing from above

Two demoniacs versus one:

In contrast to Mark & Luke, who say that Jesus expelled the demons from one certain man (Mark 5: 1-20; Luke 8: 26-39), Matthew records Jesus healed two demoniacs (8: 28-34). The reason underlying this numerical difference is presumably another literary technique applied by Matthew with thelological concerns. In addition to the numerical variation, there is another more significant difference between Mark & Luke’s version of the story and that of Matthew’s. The dialogue between the healed demoniac & Jesus seems to be missing from Matthew although it is present in Mark & Luke. In both Gospels, Jesus asks the man to return to his home and give testimony to his savior:

Mark 5:18-20. And when he went up into the ship, he that had been troubled with the devil, began to beseech him that he might be with him. And he admitted him not, but saith him: Go into thy house to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had mercy thee. And he went his way, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men wondered.

Luke 8: 38-39 Now the man out of whom the devils were departed besought him that he might be with him. But Jesus sent him away, saying: Return to thy house and tell how great things God hath done to thee. And he went through the whole city, publishing how great things Jesus had done to him.

In accordance with the name of the city given in Mark, it is not difficult to guess that the demoniac was a Gentile. Jesus thus sends a Gentile on a personal mission of preaching Jesus to the people in his territory, which Matthew probably found irrelevant to the thematic unity of his account since he primarily addressed the Hebrew audience and underscored that even Jesus gave the primacy to Jews before the resurrection. This is why in Matthew Jesus sends His apostles to the lost sheep of Israel only, not to Gentile territories or even Samaritan villages (10: 5)

Consequently, Matthew doubles the singular demoniac in Mark & Luke so as to skip a personal dialogue between a foreigner and the Christ and omit the mission given to the Gentiles.

to be continued…
 
How many animals did Jesus ride on His way to Jerusalem? One (Mark 11: 1-7; Luke 19: 28-35; John 12: 14-15) or two (Matthew 21: 1-7)???

The number of the animals Jesus rode while entering Jerusalem has long been disputed among the biblical scholars with no definite solution to the supposed problem posed by the two animals in Matthew’s account. Most people assume that Matthew referred to two animals in his narrative due to his faithfulness to the prophecy in Zechariah:

9: 9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion, shout for joy, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold thy king will come to thee, the just and saviour: he is poor, and riding upon an a*s, and upon a colt, the foal of an a*s.

Nevertheless, some biblical translations replace the word “and” in the original text with a comma in order to point out the poetic parallelism in Hebrew literature. Thus, some suggest that Zechariah actually talked of one single animal even though the literary figure he used made it sound like there were to different animals. Hence John omitted some words in the prophecy and reduced the number of the animal to one, being familiar with the technique used by most Hebrew writers. Some commentators comparing Matthew & John in both their narrative styles and peculiar quotation of the prophecy claim that Matthew either misunderstood Zechariah’s prophecy or he deliberately pluralized the referent (animal) since he expected a colt to be tied next to its mother!

My assumption is that Matthew’s account has two animals because he implicitly points at the second part of the prophecy ensuing the verses quoted:

Zechariah 9:10. And I will destroy the chariot out of Ephraim, and the horse out of Jerusalem, and the bow for war shall be broken: and he shall speak peace to the Gentiles, and his power shall be from sea to sea, and from the rivers even to the end of the earth.

I suppose that Matthew considered chariot and horse in this verse as the equivalents of the a*s and the colt in the previous prophecy since Zechariah contrasted peace & humility with war & arrogance by the help of the animals given in negative pairs. As chariots and horses referred to two things bound together, Jesus rode two animals, one being a baby tied up to the mother. (my personal supposition!) 😉

Peace & blessings,
Theophilos N.
 
Parallelism, or the repetition of a thought, was a major feature of Hebrew poetry. The Psalms and prophetic books are riddled with it.

A possible explanation is that Matthew used this poetic device (rode upon an ***, and the colt of an ***) and the guy who translated his Gospel from Aramaic into Greek was unfamiliar with this literary form and mistakenly translated it as being two separate animals, blind men, demoniacs, whatever.
 
Asbestos_Mango said:
Parallelism, or the repetition of a thought, was a major feature of Hebrew poetry. The Psalms and prophetic books are riddled with it.

A possible explanation is that Matthew used this poetic device (rode upon an ***, and the colt of an ***) and the guy who translated his Gospel from Aramaic into Greek was unfamiliar with this literary form and mistakenly translated it as being two separate animals, blind men, demoniacs, whatever.
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Dear Asbestos,
Thankyou for confiming my suspicion.
Do you think that errors resulting from this ignorance should be corrected?
 
You really should interview people about a car wreck sometime.
 
Asbestos_Mango said:
Parallelism, or the repetition of a thought, was a major feature of Hebrew poetry. The Psalms and prophetic books are riddled with it.

A possible explanation is that Matthew used this poetic device (rode upon an ***, and the colt of an ***) and the guy who translated his Gospel from Aramaic into Greek was unfamiliar with this literary form and mistakenly translated it as being two separate animals, blind men, demoniacs, whatever.
Click to expand...
Actually, I think the first instance is that they just didn’t have parentheses. You’re writing for a Greek audience (only John is in Aramaic), and you say, “Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus”. Because how the dickens are Greeks supposed to know Bar is the Aramaic patronymic?

“A brave man and a hero” is similar–a better translation might be, “A brave man, a hero.”

Does anybody happen to know if the Greek text has “and” in there all those times? I have a feeling it doesn’t. Greek has at least two “ands”, I know that, and I’m not sure they’re always necessary, just like they’re not always necessary in most languages.
 
Voco_proTatiano said:
Dear Asbestos,
Thankyou for confiming my suspicion.
Do you think that errors resulting from this ignorance should be corrected?
Click to expand...
I don’t worry too much about it. This story is recorded in Mark as well, and there is only the one donkey, and also, (well, I haven’t actually checked, but) I would imagine that the poetic parallel would be explained in the footnotes to Matthew’s gospel, assuming you weren’t using a “reader’s edition”.
 
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