Matthew’s Vehicular Use of Scripture
Dee Dee Warren recently posted some quotes from R. T. France’s commentary on Matthew. Concerning Matthew’s use of the Old Testament, France writes:
There has been much debate about the origin and function of these formula-quotations. Most scholars now regard them as Matthew’s own contributions, rather than as traditional elements in the story of Jesus, and the study of their textual peculiarities indicates that behind them lies some quite original and sophisticated study of the Old Testament in order to discover points of correspondence much more subtle than the direct fulfillment of clear prophetic predictions. Sometimes the subtlety results in an application of the Old Testament text which is ‘to our critical eyes, manifestly forced and artificial and unconvincing’; but C.F.D. Moule, in a helpful discussion from which those words are taken, goes on to argue that this ‘vehicular’ use of Scripture ‘is a symptom of the discovery that, in a deeply organic way, Jesus was indeed the fulfiller of something which is basic in the whole of Scripture.’ In an article which concentrates on the four formula-quotations of Chapter 2, I have suggested that what may seem to us as embarrassingly obscure and even irresponsible way of handling Scripture is in fact the outworking of a careful tracing of scriptural themes, which in different ways point to Jesus as the fulfiller not only of specific predictions, but also of the broader pattern of God’s Old Testament revelation.
Now, what could that broader pattern, that “vehicle,” be? I think Moule was onto something. The Bible Matrix is the chariot of God.
See also Matthew’s Literary Artistry.
