In both Gen 6:1–4 and several texts from the Greek world, especially the Catalogue of Women, the mating of the gods with mortal women is followed by the decision of the head god to put an end to this coupling and bring vast destruction upon the generation of the heroes and all of humanity. This chapter analyzes these similarities and examines the relationship between this motif and flood stories that circulated in the eastern Mediterranean.

This chapter discusses stories describing pairs of brothers representing rival groups—such as two cities, two tribes, two families, two kingdoms, and so forth—that form a pattern characteristic of the origin story genre of the ancient eastern Mediterranean basin. In some of these stories, the siblings begin fighting at birth or even in the womb. A similar pattern can be found in the writings of Philo of Byblos, in the story of Samemroumos (Hypsouranios), who bears the same name as a quarter in Sidon, and his brother Ousoos, who represents Ushu, mainland Tyre.

This chapter is dedicated to the pattern of the “First Inventor,” characteristic of genealogical writing concerning the primeval era. While ancient Near Eastern literature reveals an interest in the beginning of human civilization, it does not contain the pattern of a genealogical lineage that includes first inventors. The chapter analyzes this pattern in biblical and Greek sources, as well as in the remnants of the composition of Philo of Byblos.

This chapter examines the similarities between biblical and Greek literature regarding the story of the first woman, found in the genealogical traditions of both cultures. Many ancient Near Eastern stories describe the process of the creation of the first humans from clay, and these may have disseminated and influenced the story of the creation of the woman in biblical literature, as well as the story of Pandora (especially the description of Hephaestus as a potter, in contrast to his usual portrayal as a blacksmith). However, Near Eastern literature does not include a comparable story about the creation of the first woman as distinct from the man or one that explains the origin of evil in connection to it. In addition to the unique parallel, it transpires that the Pandora tradition was integrated into the Catalogue of Women and other Greek genealogical traditions within the same sequence as the Flood hero Deucalion.

Past scholarship has ignored Davidic material after Matthew’s last mention of “David,” with the result that Davidic sonship is either overlooked or, even more drastically, subordinated to other messianic “titles” in Matthew’s passion narrative. Appealing to both intertextuality and messianic grammar, I call for a methodological corrective that attends to David material in Matthew’s passion with the goal of understanding Matthew’s startling claim that Jesus is the Davidic messiah despite his shameful death.

Building upon the foregoing chapter, Chapters 4 and 5 read Matthew’s passion psalm references Davidically, as was common in the Second Temple period. This chapter focuses on Matthew’s trial narratives before the Sanhedrin and Pilate, with the resulting portrait that Jesus– like the innocent-but-taciturn David of the lament psalms– is maligned by false witnesses but nevertheless remains silent.

Matthew’s passion constantly references the psalms. Though scholarship has frequently taken the speaker of these psalms to be “the Psalmist,” I show this to be a fourth-century neologism. Instead, Second Temple readers most often equate the speaker with the figure of David and his struggles. The result is that Matthew’s psalm references can be read Davidically.

Beginning with the puzzle of which “scriptures” Jesus claims direct his fate and demise, I detail the many parallels between Matthew’s arrest narrative and the Absalom revolt in the Davidic succession narrative– in both, the Davidic figure is betrayed and oppressed. After surveying Davidic messianic figures who were either the beneficiaries of divine violence or themselves militant leaders, I argued that, by contrast, Matthew draws upon a text in which David, like Jesus, suffers without retaliating, thus helping him make the case for his humiliated Davidic messiah.

The sum of the previous chapters suggests how Matthew uses scripture to present Jesus as a new David to his primarily Jewish audience. Matthew attempts to resolve the tension in his Gospel between Jesus as “the messiah, the son of David” (1:1) and Jesus as humiliated, executed criminal by situating Jesus’s suffering within the scriptural suffering of David. In so doing, Matthew attempts to make the startling case that Jesus is the Davidic messiah not despite, but because of, his trials and woes.