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Martyred Prophets and Matthean Polemics: Tracing the Reception and Impact of the Matthean Tradition in the Ascension of Isaiah

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Martyred Prophets and Matthean Polemics: Tracing the Reception and Impact of the Matthean Tradition in the Ascension of Isaiah Martyred Prophets and Matthean Polemics: Tracing the Reception and Impact of the Matthean Tradition in the Ascension of Isaiah by Warren Craig Campbell A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Wycliffe College and the Graduate Centre for Theological Studies of the Toronto School of Theology. In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Theology awarded by Wycliffe College and the University of Toronto. © Copyright by Warren Craig Campbell 2018 Martyred Prophets and Matthean Polemics: Tracing the Reception and Impact of the Matthean Tradition in the Ascension of Isaiah. Warren Craig Campbell Master of Theology Wycliffe College and the University of Toronto 2018 Abstract This thesis makes a bivalent argument relative to the Ascension of Isaiah (AscIs), one that targets both the reception history of early Christian traditions and literary functionality. First, this project contends that the AscIs reveals dependence upon the Matthean tradition by adopting lexical items from Matthew and by fashioning the figure of Isaiah as an imitation of the Matthean Jesus. This Matthean association provides an alternative vantage point by which to consider the social and literary function of the AscIs. Hence, the second dimension of this thesis argues that the AscIs has imbibed the dual Matthean traditions of martyred prophets and in-group polemical discourse from esteemed figures as a means of perpetuating the polemic style against leadership groups that is characteristic of Matthean Christianity in order to substantiate the praxis of its own community. ii Acknowledgments I would like to express my thanks to my primary supervisor, Prof. Terence Donaldson, as well as the other readers of this thesis, Prof. Judith Newman and Prof. John Marshall. Their critical feedback has been invaluable. iii Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................1 Basic Features: Date, Provenance, Narrative Structure ....................................................2 Navigating the Status quaestionis .....................................................................................6 The Present Thesis ..........................................................................................................17 The Guiding Form ...........................................................................................................19 Chapter 1 The Matthean Tradition and the Ascension of Isaiah .........................................21 Reception History: Wirkungsgeschichte and Auslegungsgeschichte ..............................21 The Auslegungsgeschichte of the Matthean Tradition in the Ascension of Isaiah Part I: Lexical Contacts ......................................................................................23 The Auslegungsgeschichte of the Matthean Tradition in the Ascension of Isaiah Part II: Narrative Imitation ..................................................................................36 Conclusion: The AscIs as a Literary Prequel for the Gospel of Matthew .......................44 Chapter 2 Martyred Prophets and In-Group Polemics ........................................................46 The Tradition of Martyred Prophets: A Matthean Access Point ....................................49 Esteemed Figures and In-group Jewish Polemics: Defending Group Praxis .................50 Conclusion: The Ascension of Isaiah as a Perpetuation of Matthean Christianity .........61 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................63 Appendix A: The Greek Amherst Papyrus ............................................................................65 Bibliography ..............................................................................................................................67 iv Introduction What does it mean for a group to constitute its identity through the memory of past suffering? – Castelli1 The Ascension of Isaiah (hereafter AscIs) is frequently advertised as a neglected literary source for the study of both early Judaism and early Christianity.2 Upon closer assessment, this claim is perhaps more descriptive of North American scholarship than a field-wide characterization; a notable group of Italian scholars have produced a considerable amount of research on this particular ‘pseudepigraphon’.3 Still, as scholars of early Christianity and early Judaism incorporate ‘Christian apocryphal’ and Christian-Jewish ‘pseudepigraphic’ texts of the first and second centuries into their respective fields, the AscIs will inevitably serve as a key datum for a number of related subjects (reception history of earlier scriptural traditions, apocalypticism, cosmology, Christology, Jewish-Christian relations, etc). The present thesis aims to investigate the AscIs as an early instantiation of the reception of the Matthean tradition. Specifically, it will 1 Elizabeth Anne Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2004), 10. 2 See Jonathan Knight, Disciples of the Beloved One: The Christology, Social Setting and Theological of the Ascension of Isaiah, JSPSup 18 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 92; Richard Bauckham, “Ascension of Isaiah: Genre, Unity and Date,” in The Fate of the Dead: Studies on the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses, NovTSup 93 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 389: “…extraordinary neglect…”; Robert Daly, Apocalyptic Thought in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), 110: “curiously neglected by students of earliest Christianity”. 3 The terms ‘pseudepigrapha’ and ‘pseudepigraphon’ (not to mention ‘Old Testament Pseudepigrapha’; a designation betraying the particularly Protestant and canonical stance taken towards ancient sources) have often been employed without further definition and reflection. In what sense is the AscIs a ‘pseudepigraphon’, when the text does not (explicitly) attribute authorship to a single figure? Having traced the history of the use of ‘apocrypha’ and ‘pseudepigrapha’, Marinus De Jonge (Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament as Part of Christian Literature: The Case of The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Greek Life of Adam and Eve [Leiden: Brill, 2003], 9-17) rightly notes that very rarely does a text serve as an example of “pseudepigraphy” in a restricted definition (i.e. explicit pseudonymous attribution) and more often the term serves as some wide designator for texts in which biblical figures are centralized and are produced between 200 BCE and 100 CE (Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, 16-17). The AscIs is therefore an example of what Bart Ehrman designates as “embedded pseudepigraphy”, a style of writing in which first-person narratives are embedded within the text, “without differentiating the first person from the author (Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013], 56-57, 533).” After all, throughout the AscIs the voice alternates between the third and the first person (see e.g. AscIs 3.30 -31). For discussions of the lingering effects and heuristic power of these terms see Kyle Keefer, “A Postscript to the Book: Authenticating the Pseudepigrapha,” in Reading Bibles, Writing Bodies: Identity and The Book, eds. T. K. Beal and D. M. Gunn (London: Routledge, 1997); Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Pseudepigraphy, Authorship, And The Reception Of ‘The Bible’,” in The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2008); “The Modern Invention of ‘Old Testament Pseudepigrapha’.” JTS 60.2 (2009): 403-436; Liv Ingeborg Lied, “Text–Work–Manuscript: What Is an ‘Old Testament Pseudepigraphon’?,” JSP 25.2 (2015): 150-165. 1 2 seek to articulate the manifold manner in which the AscIs has received the Matthean tradition, and what that reception means for the literary function of the text. The present chapter will present a scholarly context in which this study is situated. Accordingly, it presses three basic aims: (1) highlight the basic features of the AscIs, (2) outline the major contours and points of division in the history of scholarship on the AscIs, and (3) introduce the present thesis within this larger academic milieu. 1. Basic Features: Date, Provenance, Narrative Structure Determining a precise date, provenance, and original language for many extant pseudepigrapha is made notably complex by the (often) sparse manuscript evidence. The Ascension of Isaiah is no exception to these complexities, and thus any chronological, spatial, and linguistic proposals should be held cautiously.4 Still, a fairly uniform approximation for the date of composition has arisen from the reception data (forming a working terminus ante quem)5 and the apparent signature features from early Christian texts (forming a working terminus post quem).6 In large 4 The range given by Michael Knibb stretches from the second century BCE to the fourth century CE (“Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol. 2: Expansions of the ‘Old Testament’ and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judeo-Hellenistic Works, ed. James H. Charlesworth [New York: Doubleday & Company, 1985], 143, 149-150). 5 Without committing to a particular source critical reconstruction, it is beneficial to group the reception of AscIs 1-5 and AscIs 6-11 separately in order to display how both of the major sections of
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