What is it about?
Matthew and the Mishnah have long seemed likely candidates for comparison. In their markedly different ways -- Matthew because his Jesus uniquely claims to wish to fulfill the Torah rather than to abolish it (Matthew 5:17), the Mishnah by reconstructing the literal Temple with its constitution of purity by means of “orderly discourse” embedded in the Torah (p. 518, citing Yoma 8:9) -- their programs appear similar, even as their results diverge.
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Why is it important?
The divergence, which Cohen's treatment reveals, is especially prominent in their attitudes toward the Temple and its destruction.
Perspectives
Matthew claims that the basis of the new order that permits “all nations” (Matthew 28:16-20) access to divine authority is a disclosure from heaven, rather than a fact on the ground. The destruction of the Temple is for Matthew an occasion that permits this disclosure to be located in time and space, rather than an event to be understood in its own terms. For that reason, and across the century that separates their times of composition, Matthew and the Mishnah talk past one another while appearing to speak of the same historical occurrence.
Bruce Chilton
Bard College
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Matthew and the Mishnah. Redefining Identity and Ethos in the Shadow of the Second Temple’s Destruction, written by Akiva Cohen, Review of Rabbinic Judaism, August 2017, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15700704-12341331.
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