Eric, I appreciate this post dogging deeper into what might have been at stake for Matthew insisting Jesus is the new Moses. That has me wondering....did Matthew then not have as high a christology as perhaps the other synoptic? (We know John has high christology) How would Matthew weigh Jesus' divinity? I'm reconciling Matthew paralleling Jesus/Moses and the crucifixion/resurrection/ascension. We Lutherans tend to have high christology and I'm sorting this out!
That's an interesting question, and I almost got into it, but I was already at 2200 words. I think that while we tend to talk about christology in terms of "how high," ancient Jesus followers probably thought of christology in terms of "what kind." Matthew clearly thought that Jesus was christ-ly or divinely-linked, or whatever, in a way that was was indexed to his association with Moses and the history of Israel. Mark, meanwhile, seemed to place value in Jesus' knowledge (contrasted with the disciples' oafishness) and Luke saw Jesus' divinity in terms of an overturning of the world's hierarchies and a fulfillment of certain prophetic imperatives toward justice. And John--well, John was all-in on Logos.
So when we think about christology in the gospels, I think the sliding scale of low-to-high is less useful than thinking about how each one approaches the question of Jesus' importance. They each make different arguments for Jesus, and they aren't even necessarily making those arguments with our modern low-to-high scale in mind. Instead, they're thinking of Jesus' importance in different registers and making different arguments for his proximity to God in concert with the ways they are crafting their narratives.
I really appreciate this. I've read Matthew like you're suggesting here - that Jesus is the New Moses. This leads to the New Exodus, not from Rome, but from sin and death. I've read the Transfiguration as more of a event for the disciples, and by extension, us, too. The symbolism there, that only Jesus remained when the disciples looked up from bowing before the glory and voice of G*d, was the Old Covenant Age and System - represented by Moses (the Law) and Elijah (the Prophets) - was ending and the New Covenant Age and System (represented by Jesus) was to remain.
I like that framing--that the disciples are the one really having an experience. Something I thought about mentioning, but didn't, was that in Exodus Moses was summoned to the mountain, but in the Synoptics Jesus decides to go, and the disciples are summoned. I think that's an argument for your reading of it.
Eric, I appreciate this post dogging deeper into what might have been at stake for Matthew insisting Jesus is the new Moses. That has me wondering....did Matthew then not have as high a christology as perhaps the other synoptic? (We know John has high christology) How would Matthew weigh Jesus' divinity? I'm reconciling Matthew paralleling Jesus/Moses and the crucifixion/resurrection/ascension. We Lutherans tend to have high christology and I'm sorting this out!
That's an interesting question, and I almost got into it, but I was already at 2200 words. I think that while we tend to talk about christology in terms of "how high," ancient Jesus followers probably thought of christology in terms of "what kind." Matthew clearly thought that Jesus was christ-ly or divinely-linked, or whatever, in a way that was was indexed to his association with Moses and the history of Israel. Mark, meanwhile, seemed to place value in Jesus' knowledge (contrasted with the disciples' oafishness) and Luke saw Jesus' divinity in terms of an overturning of the world's hierarchies and a fulfillment of certain prophetic imperatives toward justice. And John--well, John was all-in on Logos.
So when we think about christology in the gospels, I think the sliding scale of low-to-high is less useful than thinking about how each one approaches the question of Jesus' importance. They each make different arguments for Jesus, and they aren't even necessarily making those arguments with our modern low-to-high scale in mind. Instead, they're thinking of Jesus' importance in different registers and making different arguments for his proximity to God in concert with the ways they are crafting their narratives.
I really appreciate this. I've read Matthew like you're suggesting here - that Jesus is the New Moses. This leads to the New Exodus, not from Rome, but from sin and death. I've read the Transfiguration as more of a event for the disciples, and by extension, us, too. The symbolism there, that only Jesus remained when the disciples looked up from bowing before the glory and voice of G*d, was the Old Covenant Age and System - represented by Moses (the Law) and Elijah (the Prophets) - was ending and the New Covenant Age and System (represented by Jesus) was to remain.
I like that framing--that the disciples are the one really having an experience. Something I thought about mentioning, but didn't, was that in Exodus Moses was summoned to the mountain, but in the Synoptics Jesus decides to go, and the disciples are summoned. I think that's an argument for your reading of it.