Browsing by Author "Negewo, Tekalign Duguma"

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    Identity formation and the Gospel of Matthew : a socio-narrative reading
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-12-02) Negewo, Tekalign Duguma; Nel, Marius Johannes; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Theology. Dept. of Old and New Testament.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: With the assumption that texts have identity-forming roles, this study attempted to answer the question: Why does the author of the Gospel of Matthew include non-Judean characters in his narrative? To explore a possible answer to this question, I coined and used the socio-narrative reading method, which merges socio-scientific criticism, narrative criticism, and semiological reading through social identity, characterisation, and semiotic theories as a heuristic interpretive tool. I contend that the implied author of Matthew used the non-Judean characters to form the identity of the ideal readers’ community. This community is not a specific, isolated community, but an imagined 1st-century group of people, i.e., an ideal readers’ community, who could read, grasp, and accept the ideology1 propagated by the Gospel of Matthew as it was expressed by the implied author in the narrative. Many Matthean scholars have pointed to the role of the non-Judean characters in the Matthean narrative as having implications for the mission to the non-Judeans, but without providing a theoretical basis. I argue that Ronald Barthes’ semiological reading method, specifically the second order meaning of stories, fills this lacuna in Matthean scholarship. Furthermore, most of the studies on the non-Judean characters in the Gospel of Matthew considered them as a reflection of the addressed community. However, I contend that these characters have an identity forming role. I argue that, on the one hand, the implied author used the negatively stereotyped non-Judeans in the Matthean Jesus’ teaching (i.e. Matt. 5:47; 6:7; 6:32; 18:17; and 20:19), which are exemplified in the stories of the negatively characterised non-Judean individuals such as the Gadarenes (Matt. 8:32-34), Pilate (Matt. 27:1-6; 27:62-66), and the Roman soldiers (Matt. 27: 27-28:15), to demonstrate the “otherness”, the “outsiderness” of the non-Judeans. On the other hand, the positively characterised non-Judeans in the genealogy account (Matt. 1:1-17), the Magi (Matt. 2:1-12), the centurion (Matt. 8:5-13), and the Canaanite woman (Matt. 15: 21-28) are used in the Matthean narrative to form the identity of 1 In this disseretation ideology has the meaning of what the implied author wants to promote, shuch as in the first century context in which the idea of non-Judeans being a part of God’s people and rightful beneficries of the kingdom blessings was contested, the implied author promote the possibility of the non-Judeans being a part of such people. the ideal readers’ community. If the positively characterised non-Judeans were shown to be rightful beneficiaries of the messianic blessings, the social boundary that excluded non-Judeans, who were perceived as others and outsiders in relation to God’s people, is either compromised or demolished. Therefore, the positive and negative characterisations of non-Judeans in the Matthean narrative have a role in forming the identity of the ideal readers’ community.