Matthew's Bible: The Old Testament Text of the Evangelist

Matthew's Bible: The Old Testament Text of the Evangelist. By Maarten J. J. Menken. BETL 173. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004, xii + 336 pp., euro60.00 paper.

The pleasant green-colored slipcase of this volume should contain a noticeably bright yellow warning label: "Do not read while operating heavy machinery." This warning of reading density is not because the book is poorly written, irrelevant, or confusing-it is none of these things. In fact, there is an uncommonly clear thesis and direction throughout, and the writing style is clear. However, the nature of the thesis being propounded requires a very detailed form of argumentation, one that oscillates between texts in the Hebrew Bible, LXX, and the Greek of Matthew and examines minute differences in words and forms. The result, at times, is some very thick reading.

So what thesis occasions such a work? Menken, a NT scholar at the Catholic Theological University of Utrecht (Netherlands), seeks to establish this simple thesis: the OT text behind Matthew's quotations (= "Matthew's Bible") was an already-existing revised form of the LXX. Rather than being his own translation from the Hebrew or his own ad hoc revision of the LXX, Matthew's OT quotes reflect his use of an existing LXX different from our current one.

Menken does an admirable job of maintaining a singular focus on this thesis throughout the sixteen chapters of the book. After a brief introduction, he lays out his argument in two parts. Part 1 examines in turn each of Matthew's famous "fulfillment quotations." Ten of the eleven chapters in the section were previously published almost without change as articles in various journals and books. To some degree this makes one question the value of a book for which well over half has already been published elsewhere. On the other hand, together these chapters do make a sustained argument that is best appreciated in this unified book form rather than in disparate essays. For each of Matthew's fulfillment quotations Menken provides a detailed examination of Matthew's wording, comparing it to the other Gospels, the Hebrew text(s), and the LXX. The prose is clear enough, though this type of argumentation is necessarily tedious at points. In each case he concludes that, although at times the data is mixed, on balance Matthew appears to be drawing from a version of the LXX that is different from our standard critical edition at points, one that reflects a revised translation (into Greek) of the Hebrew Bible. Part 2 of the book is of a somewhat different sort and is much shorter. In these 50 pages, Menken takes the theory he has developed from the fulfillment quotations and seeks to test it by examining the other direct OT quotes in Matthew. Here again he concludes that, while the data is mixed and at times inconclusive, it appears that the thesis of a revised LXX text as "Matthew's Bible" is sustainable. The book finishes with a brief conclusion, followed by a bibliography and extensive indices.

So how shall we evaluate this thesis and the book in general? First it must be noted that Menken's argument is indeed original and sounds a new voice in the ongoing discussion of the form of the OT text in Matthew. This topic has spawned a variety of theories and volumes over the years, many of which have as their starting point Krister Stendahl's landmark book, The School of St. Matthew (ASNU 20; Lund: Gleerup, 1954). Those noteworthies who have since weighed in on this difficult topic include Gundry, van Segbroeck, Stanton, Prabhu, Boismard, and others. Menken shows intimate knowledge of these works and posits his own view in this field of study. Another strength of the book is that Menken is a competent NT scholar who shows more than a superficial knowledge of current Septuagintal studies. Few scholars today navigate both fields well, but Menken's citation (and apparent digestion) of a wide variety of secondary sources is commendable. This volume also manifests a refreshing amount of detailed, original language work not seen much today in an age when grammar is somewhat passé. Finally, and very importantly, Menken appears to be a level-headed, fair-reasoning scholar who seems intent on not contorting or massaging the evidence only to make his point.

Yet this same academic virtue leads to one of the major weaknesses in the persuasiveness of the book. As Menken works carefully through each OT quote in Matthew, he shows deftness and fairness in handling the materials. However, in nearly every instance, admitted exceptions occur to his thesis, and quite often the data is mixed and appears inconclusive. Nonetheless, he concludes every chapter with the same suggestion: that Matthew is using a revised LXX text. This may indeed be the case, and the carefulness of the work is inspiring, but I am left wondering whether such a conclusion is sufficiently grounded in light of the inconsistent data. At an even more foundational level, the methodology employed in this study poses a perpetual question mark over the firmness of Menken's conclusion. The type of argument made throughout the work is one that rests on several levels of more or less probable assumptions. When the probabilities of such assumptions are multiplied together, the level of confidence we can have in the final thesis is greatly diminished. Thus, to argue that any particular OT quote in Matthew comes from a continuous, revised LXX text rather than being Matthew's own translation of the Hebrew or his own adaptation of the LXX or something he found in a sayings source, we must assume we rightly understand several difficult issues such as what is the literary relationship of the Gospels, what constitutes a mark of Matthean redaction, what is a better or worse Greek translation of the Hebrew in the original quote, and any number of textual variants, both in Matthew as well as in the MT and LXX. When following Menken's arguments I often found myself commenting in the margin, "This is a possible deduction but not a necessary one." This criticism is not intended to question Menken's scholarly abilities but to point out that the very nature of such hypothetical arguments about what OT text Matthew used is an uncertain business. A final word of critique: in light of the length of the book and the detail of the arguments within, the final conclusions are rather low-flying and thin. Beyond a restatement of his oft-repeated thesis that Matthew is using a revised LXX text, Menken offers only two paragraphs (pp. 282-83) of overarching conclusions. One conclusion is that there was a variety of LXX texts extant in the first-century of our era. This is certainly true and well recognized today. second, Menken says that from his study we learn a little about Matthew's sources and that he was a conservative editor. Again, this is a rather modest conclusion. It seems more broad-ranging reflections would be in order here.