Each of the parables in this trilogy rehearses the story of Yahweh and Israel. This much seems clear. Whether the nations also have a role in these stories is perhaps less certain. Of whom shall the ἔθνος, to whom the kingdom is transferred, be composed (21.43)? To whom is the final invitation in the parable of the Wedding Feast extended (22.8–10)? Traditionally, Matthean scholars have found in the former an allusion to the church and in the latter veiled reference to the Gentile, or at least universal, mission, but this consensus has recently been challenged. In this chapter we continue the task begun in chapter 3 of bringing the evidence of the wider narrative to bear on these parables. Here, however, we turn our attention to the narrative's characterisation of the nations and to the development of the ‘Gentile sub-plot’ in Matthew's story, asking in both instances how the patterns of the wider narrative help to shape the reader's reception of this trilogy of parables.

The view at the end: the nations and the narrative conclusion (28.16–20)

For most stories, last scenes are of first importance, and this story offers no exception. We have noted the importance of the Passion Narrative for Matthew's portrait of Israel. The final stages of the story are no less important for the narrative's characterisation of the nations. Indeed, at 28.16–20 several of the most important motifs that have been planted like seeds throughout this narrative finally bear fruit and receive climactic articulation.

Every verse in the parable of The Two Sons is dotted with textual problems. The most significant, however, is the string of variants that runs through verses 29–31. Although UBS4 lists five variant readings in these verses, three principal alternatives may be isolated, as Table 6 indicates. Readings 1 (NA27 et al.) and 2 (NA25 et al.) introduce the two sons in differing order but they agree that the son who eventually repents and sets out to work has done the father's will. By contrast, the third reading pronounces a blessing upon the son who only promises to work in the vineyard. We begin our discussion with this distinctive third reading.

Reading 3

Though not accepted today by any major critical text or translation, this third reading has not been without eminent proponents. J. R. Michaels has offered one of the most distinctive defences of this reading. He notes first that the parable proper (21.28–31a; ‘saying vs. doing’) and its interpretation (21.31b–32; ‘belief vs. lack of belief’) lack correspondence, but that the interpretation is closely linked in theme to 21.23–27. Second, no less than three key words in the parable are ambiguous. In each case, Michaels abandons the usual understanding, noting that the resulting sense brings the parable into close connection with its context. μεταμέλεσθαι can describe repentance but also a regret that falls short of repentance.

I suggested in chapter 1 that narrative criticism has a role to play in the rehabilitation of the Synoptic parables both as stories worth examination in their own right (not merely as the necessary starting points for reconstructing Jesus' parables) and as part of the evangelists' wider communicative actions. Part two of this study aims to contribute to this rehabilitation. Chapters 3 and 4 consider the relationship of the parables to the wider narrative, asking both what impact they make upon the developing storyline and, especially, how this wider story influences the reader's reception of the trilogy. Chapter 5 attends to the parables themselves, exploring the ways in which this trilogy addresses its readers.

In this third chapter, we turn our attention to the narrative's portrait of Israel for the following reasons. First, the trilogy is set in the midst of Jesus' escalating conflict with the Jewish establishment. Second, Jesus addresses each of these parables to the Jewish leaders. Third, The Tenants rehearses the story of Jesus' reception in Israel. Fourth, following both The Two Sons and The Tenants, the Jewish people are distinguished from their leaders. Fifth, from the earliest scenes, Jesus' encounter with Israel is seldom far from centre stage in the dramatic story that Matthew tells. Indeed, at one level, Matthew's narrative is the story of Jesus' encounter with Israel. Sixth, this story is already well advanced before the reader meets this trilogy of parables.

Method

This study has attempted to demonstrate the validity of the proposal that redaction- and narrative-critical approaches to the Gospels can function as effective allies in addressing the intended meaning of the Gospel narratives and the responses they elicited from their first readers.

Narrative critics have distanced themselves from redaction critics in several ways. At two important points, I have defended a mediating position. First, whereas redaction criticism has typically been a cognitive, author-oriented discipline, and narrative criticism has focused on the text and its affective impact on the reader, I have argued that careful attention to the author and the reader (or to the cognitive and the affective domains) are not mutually exclusive. Following the lead of speech-act theorists, I have suggested that, in addition to propositional content, speech-acts – whether verbal or written – have both illocutionary and perlocutionary force. On this model of communication, questions may be posed about both the intended meaning and the intended function of written texts – questions embracing both author and reader, both what a text means and what it does. Accordingly, this study has repeatedly returned to one question: ‘What does the text suggest that the evangelist intended to elicit from his readers by way of response?’

Second, narrative critics have typically denounced the fragmentation of the Gospel narratives that is too often the accompaniment of redaction criticism, and have instead emphasised – rightly, in my view – the integrity of the Gospel narratives.

The later chapters of this study argue that reading the parables of The Two Sons (21.28–32), The Tenants (21.33–46) and The Wedding Feast (22.1–14) as a trilogy offers important insight with respect to the responses the evangelist wished to elicit from his readers. In this chapter we survey previous twentieth-century studies of the trilogy before turning to defend the conclusion that Matthew himself was responsible for its formation.

Forschungsgeschichte: the trilogy in twentieth-century Matthean studies

Commentators have long recognised the presence of both formal and conceptual parallels that bind these parables together. These conceptual parallels were already important for Chrysostom, who drew attention to the strategic arrangement of the parables that underscored the failure of the Jewish leaders: ‘Therefore He putteth [The Tenants] after the former parable, that He may show even hereby the charge to be greater, and highly unpardonable. How, and in what way? That although they met with so much care, they were worse than harlots and publicans, and by so much.’

In the modern era, Matthean scholars have drawn attention with increasing precision to the striking formal links that unite the three parables. B. Weiss's nineteenth-century commentary noted in The Wedding Feast the clear repetition of entire phrases from The Two Sons and, especially, The Tenants:

For Weiss, 21.28–22.14 functions as a great parable trilogy that confronts the Jewish hierarchy with its guilt and its judgement with increasing intensity.

Early twentieth-century approaches to the trilogy

Many twentieth-century commentators have echoed these observations and conclusions.

The reading of the trilogy offered in chapter 5 concentrated on the trilogy's rhetoric and the inclusion of the reader. In this chapter our focus shifts from reader and rhetoric to author and composition. Like the wider narrative to which it belongs, this trilogy of parables is marked by an intriguing combination of old and new, of tradition and redaction. Here we examine the manner in which the old has been made new, offering not so much a redaction-critical reading of the trilogy as a discussion of the distinctive emphases that arise from this redaction. An examination of the sources upon which the evangelist drew in composing this trilogy introduces the chapter and lays the foundation for the subsequent discussion of the distinctive treatment they receive at his hand. But, although my approach shifts dramatically, my interest in the responses that the evangelist intended to elicit from his readers remains central.

The sources of the parables

The Two Sons

The three parables that compose the trilogy pose distinctive challenges to a redaction-critical investigation. The Two Sons is unique to Matthew and there is little agreement about the sources that stood behind the Matthean parable. For Jülicher, the parable proper was an authentic word of the authentic Jesus. Jeremias concurred with this judgement and attributed the story to ‘the special Matthaean material’. For Van Tilborg, as we have noted, both this story and the trilogy in which it now stands are pre-Matthean.

On reading the Gospel narratives

The landscape of Gospels scholarship has shifted dramatically in the last three decades. Redaction criticism has yielded pride of place as the primary method in Gospels studies but there has been no single obvious successor. Instead, Gospels critics offer readings from a bewildering variety of interpretive stances and, increasingly, refer to the methodological pluralism that undergirds their work.

Nevertheless, narrative criticism, in its various forms, posed some of the earliest and most persistent challenges to a redaction-critical approach. The early exponents of a more ‘literary’ approach commonly set themselves over against more traditional historical critics, mourning the poverty of a redactional approach and proclaiming the end of an era. Similar sentiments – or at least interpretations that reflect these sentiments – continue to punctuate the discourse of Gospels scholarship.

But it has also become more common for scholars on both sides of the methodological divide to call for a more cooperative, interdisciplinary approach. To date, the most significant of these have tended to operate under the assumption that literary and historically oriented methods complement one another by casting light in rather different directions. Where narrative critics focus on the unity of the final text, redaction critics turn their attention to the evangelists' reworking of their diverse sources that gave rise to the text in its ‘final’ form.

Paul uses a cluster of related terms to refer to his initial missionary preaching and to the proclamation at the heart of his letters. The nouns 'gospel' (euaggelion), 'word' (logos or rhema), 'preaching' (akoe), 'proclamation' (kerygma), and 'witness' (martyrion) are often used almost synonymously, as are the corresponding verbs.

The most important of these terms is undoubtedly the noun 'gospel', which is used 48 times in the undisputed letters; the verb 'to proclaim good news' is used 19 times. Paul probably inherited the distinctive early Christian use of 'gospel' from those who were followers of Jesus before his own call or conversion. Indeed the noun may well have been used by Greek-speaking Jews in Jerusalem and Antioch very soon after Easter.

The noun ‘gospel’ is rarely used in the Old Testament, and never ina religious context with reference to God’s good news. So early Christianuse of this noun must be understood against the backdrop of current usagein the cities in which Christianity first took root. Literary evidence andinscriptions both confirm that the term ‘gospel’ was closely associated withthe imperial cult in the cities of the eastern Mediterranean. One particularinscription provides striking evidence.

Written to a Christian community with whom Paul has had a long and happy relationship, the letter to the Philippians is characterized by joy - a remarkable fact, since it was sent from prison, where its author was held on a capital charge. The letter expresses confidence about Paul's own future since, whether he lives or dies, Christ is with him (1:19-26), and about the Philippians, whom he describes as his joy and his crown (4:1), concerning whom he will boast on the day of judgment (2:16).

CONTEXT

Paul’s authorship of this letter has rarely been doubted. It was written to Christians in Philippi, a fairly small city of about 10,000 inhabitants in eastern Macedonia. In the first century ad, Philippi was important as an agricultural centre; it was a Roman colony, which meant that its citizens enjoyed considerable legal and property rights, and the city’s administration was modelled on that of Rome. Communications were reasonably easy by the standards of that time, since the city was conveniently placed on the Via Egnatia, along which one could travel westwards to the Adriatic coast, while the port of Neapolis lay ten miles to the south.

Among the major distinctives of Ephesians within the Pauline letter collection, there are two that make the most immediate impression. In terms of content, the concentrated attention it gives to the phenomenon of the church stands out, so that it is not at all surprising that this letter has been a key resource for theological reflection on the corporate nature of Christian existence. In terms of form, it is noticeable that discussion of the church appears in both halves of a document that does not have the usual Pauline letter body. Instead, between its letter opening (1:1, 2) and closing (6:21-4), Ephesians is divided into two lengthy parts – an expansion of the usual thanksgiving section that runs from 1:3 to 3:21, and an extended paraenesis or section of ethical exhortation that stretches from 4:1 to 6:20. In the former the letter's recipients are reminded of the privileges they enjoy as believers in Christ and members of the church and of their significant role in God's plan for the cosmos. In the latter they are summoned, in the light of their privileged status, to conduct their lives in an appropriate fashion in the church and in the world.

Ephesians is also distinctive as the most general of the Pauline letters. Since the usual strategy for interpreting Paul’s letters builds on the recognition that he carries out the pastoral application of his gospel in interaction with the particular circumstances and needs of his readers, Ephesians proves initially frustrating. It gives us extremely little information about its recipients or their specific circumstances.

Victorian leaders in church and state are typically memorialized in rarely read volumes of Life and Letters. Paul too is known today from an account of his life and a collection of his letters, but the book in which both are preserved will continue to be read for as long as Christianity endures. Paul's impact on this religion and the cultures it has largely shaped began with his mission and the thought it stimulated but has been mediated by the records of both and magnified by their location in the New Testament. Elijah's cruse offers an image of scripture steadily nourishing faith communities without exhausting its deposit of oil; the financial metaphor of a legacy providing not only a regular income but varying dividends that sometimes exceed the original investment hints at Paul's revolutionary potential.

Religions depend on and live from their traditions, some especiallyfrom their scriptural traditions. Contemporary Christianity is heir to whatPaul achieved historically and owes much to the example of his life, theteaching and inspiration of his letters, and their impact on other influentialfigures in Christian history.

COLOSSIANS: GENERAL SITUATION

Author and readers

Colossians purports to be written as a letter by the apostle Paul, along with Timothy (1:1), through the services of a scribe (4:18). This letter is addressed to the Christians in Colossae, a city in Phrygia located inland from Ephesus on the south side of the river Lycus in western Asia Minor. Paul himself did not found the Colossian church (2:1); the letter suggests that his link to the Christians there may have developed through Epaphras, who had worked among them (1:7-8) and from whom he sends them greetings (4:12). According to the text, Paul composed the letter while in prison (4:3, 18; see 4:10; 1:24).

Date

If the letter was composed or endorsed by Paul, then it was written during one of Paul’s imprisonments, that is, either in Ephesus (during the mid 50s CE) or in Rome (which would imply a date around 60 CE, just prior to the earthquake which struck the Lycus region in 60–1 CE).