The Enigma of the Antitheses

Abstract While it is easy to interpret the first and second of the Matthean Antitheses (5.21–30) as intensifications of the Mosaic law, it is difficult to interpret the remaining Antitheses (5.31–48) in this manner. In the history of interpretation, two main strategies have been adopted for dealing with these later Antitheses, the ‘rejected interpretation’ hypothesis and the revocation hypothesis. The ‘rejected interpretation’ hypothesis, however, is only plausible for the last Antithesis (5.43–8), which appends ‘and hate your enemy’ to the Levitical exhortation to love one's neighbour; in all other instances, the ‘thesis’ statement is either a biblical citation or a close paraphrase of one or more biblical passages. Although the revocation hypothesis has often been deployed in an anti-Jewish way, there is nothing intrinsically anti-Jewish about it; indeed, both biblical authors, such as the Deuteronomist and Ezekiel, on the one hand, and some rabbis, on the other, explicitly revise prior biblical laws while at the same time claiming to be changing nothing. Matthew does something similar when he introduces the revisionist Antitheses with a programmatic statement about the unchangeableness of the Law (5.17–20). The Matthean Jesus, then, is not ‘seconding Sinai’ but correcting it.