Q: Heres a tough one. In Matthews account of the Healing of the Centurions Servant (in Matthew 8:5-13), the centurion appears in person and informs Jesus about his sick servant. In Lukes account, however (in Luke 7:2-10), the centurion sent elders of the Jews to Him, and as far as one can tell from Lukes account, Jesus and the centurion never even meet face to face. Isnt this a contradiction?
A: This problem is more difficult than most, partly because most writers today do not use metonymy in their narratives the way Matthew seems to here (Ill define "metonymy" real soon), and thus most modern readers do not expect to encounter it. But the accounts can be reconciled in more ways than one. Ill give two possible solutions here.
The first solution is to propose that Matthew here condenses his source-material, in a way comparable to the way in which he frequently condenses material from Mark (or Ur-Mark, a provisional text which was a stepping-stone toward what we know as the Gospel of Mark). In this case, Matthew has employed metonymy as a means of compressing the account. "Metonymy is an idiomatic expression in which the name of a representative, symbol, or proxy of one thing is exchanged for the name of the thing for which it stands. . . . Let's illustrate that.
When someone says Alexander the Great defeated the Persians, he means that Alexanders army, under Alexanders direction, defeated the Persians, not that Alexander personally, with no assistance, stood alone at Issus and defeated the Persians. Or, when someone says, The White House unveiled a new policy today, the meaning is not that an edifice did anything, but that something was done by the President and/or his administration. An example of this sort of idiom in the Bible is found in Matthew 27:26, in the phrase and when he [Pilate] had scourged Jesus. Pilate did not personally scourge Jesus; he ordered his soldiers to do so. Another example is in Matthew 8:34, where the whole city came out to meet Jesus. It was, clearly, the inhabitants of the city, and not the buildings that comprised the city, that came out to see Jesus.
So, lets review the events in the pericope about the centurion and his servant's healing, and as a working hypothesis, let's say that the centurion is out of sight the whole time -- either he's on duty somewhere, or in his house. In this case, historically, the individuals pleading with Jesus in Matthew 8:5 would not be the centurion himself, but his representatives, and what Jesus says to them, Matthew presents as being said to the centurion whom they represent. And in 8:5, Jesus word spoken to the centurion is, in strict historical terms, spoken to the centurions messengers in their capacity as messengers of the centurion.
Why wouldnt Matthew simple tell the story the way Luke does? Probably Matthew did not want to give his readers any potential ammunition for the idea that Gentiles had to approach Jesus via Jewish intermediaries or sponsors, and so he re-shaped the pericope, preserving its portraiture of Jesus and the detail about the centurions faith, but omitting the role of the centurions Jewish intermediaries. In other words, the picture that Matthew presents is fuzzy -- highly condensed via metonymy -- but not false.
Another solution is to posit that the historical situation was more complicated than either Matthew or Luke present it, and they each simplified their presentation of events in order to avoid raising questions that they each considered irrelevant. For instance, what if the Roman centurion was in the crowd that was following Jesus in Capernaum, but for whatever reason (plain reticence? Or maybe, adapting a diplomatic strategy, he wanted the request delivered in Aramaic) had arranged for the Jewish elders to speak as his proxies. This would not be unlikely if the centurion naturally assumed that Jesus would not readily grant a Roman centurions request but might do so if it was communicated through respected Jewish intermediaries, who accompanied him. The developing picture, on this theory, looks like this:
(1) The Roman centurion and his friends, the Jewish elders, go to Jesus.
(2) Some of the friends of the centurion present the centurions request, while others stay with him in the crowd, a short distance away.
(3) Jesus agrees to go to the centurions house to heal the servant.
(4) As they approach the house, the centurion decides to send the friends who have remained with him in the crowd to speak to Jesus, telling Him not to trouble Himself, and so on as Luke 7:6-8 relates.
(5) Jesus marvels at the centurion (He marveled at him in Luke 7:9 possibly indicating that the centurion by this point was personally in Jesus presence), tells the centurion to go his way, and heals the servant with a word.
(6) The centurion goes back to his official duties for the rest of the day; meanwhile his friends go to the centurions house and there discover that the servant is well.
Either of these theories resolves the alleged problem. For additional material regarding this, see the prolonged (and at times meandering) discussion entitled The Centurion which begins at p089.ezboard.com/fsabdisc...1229.topic
with the first SAB-post by Diskeyezed. The two theories Ive presented here are crystallizations of my posts in that discussion. Btw, that discussion, despite its branchiness, is a good read, and is notable for being a survivor of the post-massacre that was perpetrated upon EZ-Board discussion-records a while ago. A couple of other references are at
www.comereason.org/bibl_cntr/con015.asp and
www.jeff-jackson.com/Reli...Q/Q7A.html .
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
A: This problem is more difficult than most, partly because most writers today do not use metonymy in their narratives the way Matthew seems to here (Ill define "metonymy" real soon), and thus most modern readers do not expect to encounter it. But the accounts can be reconciled in more ways than one. Ill give two possible solutions here.
The first solution is to propose that Matthew here condenses his source-material, in a way comparable to the way in which he frequently condenses material from Mark (or Ur-Mark, a provisional text which was a stepping-stone toward what we know as the Gospel of Mark). In this case, Matthew has employed metonymy as a means of compressing the account. "Metonymy is an idiomatic expression in which the name of a representative, symbol, or proxy of one thing is exchanged for the name of the thing for which it stands. . . . Let's illustrate that.
When someone says Alexander the Great defeated the Persians, he means that Alexanders army, under Alexanders direction, defeated the Persians, not that Alexander personally, with no assistance, stood alone at Issus and defeated the Persians. Or, when someone says, The White House unveiled a new policy today, the meaning is not that an edifice did anything, but that something was done by the President and/or his administration. An example of this sort of idiom in the Bible is found in Matthew 27:26, in the phrase and when he [Pilate] had scourged Jesus. Pilate did not personally scourge Jesus; he ordered his soldiers to do so. Another example is in Matthew 8:34, where the whole city came out to meet Jesus. It was, clearly, the inhabitants of the city, and not the buildings that comprised the city, that came out to see Jesus.
So, lets review the events in the pericope about the centurion and his servant's healing, and as a working hypothesis, let's say that the centurion is out of sight the whole time -- either he's on duty somewhere, or in his house. In this case, historically, the individuals pleading with Jesus in Matthew 8:5 would not be the centurion himself, but his representatives, and what Jesus says to them, Matthew presents as being said to the centurion whom they represent. And in 8:5, Jesus word spoken to the centurion is, in strict historical terms, spoken to the centurions messengers in their capacity as messengers of the centurion.
Why wouldnt Matthew simple tell the story the way Luke does? Probably Matthew did not want to give his readers any potential ammunition for the idea that Gentiles had to approach Jesus via Jewish intermediaries or sponsors, and so he re-shaped the pericope, preserving its portraiture of Jesus and the detail about the centurions faith, but omitting the role of the centurions Jewish intermediaries. In other words, the picture that Matthew presents is fuzzy -- highly condensed via metonymy -- but not false.
Another solution is to posit that the historical situation was more complicated than either Matthew or Luke present it, and they each simplified their presentation of events in order to avoid raising questions that they each considered irrelevant. For instance, what if the Roman centurion was in the crowd that was following Jesus in Capernaum, but for whatever reason (plain reticence? Or maybe, adapting a diplomatic strategy, he wanted the request delivered in Aramaic) had arranged for the Jewish elders to speak as his proxies. This would not be unlikely if the centurion naturally assumed that Jesus would not readily grant a Roman centurions request but might do so if it was communicated through respected Jewish intermediaries, who accompanied him. The developing picture, on this theory, looks like this:
(1) The Roman centurion and his friends, the Jewish elders, go to Jesus.
(2) Some of the friends of the centurion present the centurions request, while others stay with him in the crowd, a short distance away.
(3) Jesus agrees to go to the centurions house to heal the servant.
(4) As they approach the house, the centurion decides to send the friends who have remained with him in the crowd to speak to Jesus, telling Him not to trouble Himself, and so on as Luke 7:6-8 relates.
(5) Jesus marvels at the centurion (He marveled at him in Luke 7:9 possibly indicating that the centurion by this point was personally in Jesus presence), tells the centurion to go his way, and heals the servant with a word.
(6) The centurion goes back to his official duties for the rest of the day; meanwhile his friends go to the centurions house and there discover that the servant is well.
Either of these theories resolves the alleged problem. For additional material regarding this, see the prolonged (and at times meandering) discussion entitled The Centurion which begins at p089.ezboard.com/fsabdisc...1229.topic
with the first SAB-post by Diskeyezed. The two theories Ive presented here are crystallizations of my posts in that discussion. Btw, that discussion, despite its branchiness, is a good read, and is notable for being a survivor of the post-massacre that was perpetrated upon EZ-Board discussion-records a while ago. A couple of other references are at
www.comereason.org/bibl_cntr/con015.asp and
www.jeff-jackson.com/Reli...Q/Q7A.html .
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
