separate theophanies. First, in chapter 5, he promulgates the Word of God on a mountain (v. 1). Moses came down from the mountain and gave the Torah after speaking with God at the summit. Jesus stands on top of the mountain and directly promulgates the Word of God to the people as God himself. In chapter 17, Jesus is transfigured, which as we have noted in the last section, must necessarily represent a theophany. The third theophany occurs as Jesus stands on the Mount of Olives, where we are told that God’s glory rested when it left the temple (Ezek 11:23). It is also the location where Zechariah prophesied that God will stand before the final battle that will destroy Jerusalem (Zech 14:4). This fits well with Jesus’s discourse in this section, which describes the destruction of Jerusalem. He ends the discourse by saying “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (24:35) an echo of Isaiah 40:8: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” The fourth theophany occurs on Golgotha as Jesus is crucified. The darkness and earthquakes that accompany his death are direct parallels with Amos’s description (Amos 8:9) of the Day of the Lord, that is, God’s own epiphany in judgment. It is also somewhat reminiscent of the coming of God to commune with Israel as seen in Exodus 20, wherein the old covenant was ratified. In keeping with this, Jesus’s death ratifies the “new testament” in his “blood.” The fifth and last theophany is on a mountain in Galilee after the resurrection, when Jesus commissions the disciples as they “worship” or “prostrated” (prosekynēsan) themselves before him (Matt 28:17). In this context, such an action can only be understood as divine worship.251 Indeed, Jesus states, “All authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me” (v. 18). This means that Jesus transcends merely human dominion on the earth (Gen 1:28), and also possesses all authority in heaven, which according to his earlier statement in the gospel, is “God’s throne” (Matt 5:35).
From this pattern, the question arises: why five theophanies? To begin to answer the question, it should be observed that Matthew’s five theophanies parallel his five great discourses (5:3—7:27, 10:5–42, 13:3–52, 18:2–35, 23:2—25:46).252 Dale Allison has observed Matthew’s use of Mosaic typology.253 If this is so, Jesus’s five great discourses might represent the giving of a new Torah of law and promise. He also leads the new Israel out of the exile of sin and death, as we will see later.
Nevertheless, there also appears to be a deeper significance to the five discourses. N. T. Wright has noted that in Second Temple Judaism Torah was viewed in many circles as the living Word of God. It represented a means (particularly in Pharisaic circles) of entering into the divine presence, equal even to that of the temple.254 If this is the case, then the parallel between the five theophanies and the five discourses makes sense. Jesus is the living Torah, and therefore the presence of God with Israel. He is not the one who merely speaks with God “face to face” (as Moses did), but is in fact the very presence of God. Gerhard Barth agrees, remarking, “The presence of Jesus in [Matthew’s] the congregation is here described as analogous to the presence of the Shekinah . . . the place of Torah is taken by . . . Jesus; the place of the Shekinah by Jesus himself.”255
In keeping with this, Matthew also describes the Name of Jesus as taking over the position of the divine Name in the Old Testament: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (18:20). Charles Gieschen asserts that passages like these in the New Testament suggest that for early Jewish Christians the divine Name properly belonged to Jesus along with the Father.256 Therefore, just as the temple was the location of the divine Name and presence in the Old Testament (2 Sam 7:13), Jesus as the divine Name and presence now takes over the position of the temple. For this reason, the Church is also the eschatological temple, because it is the locus of the divine presence. The Church is the place where Jesus’s Name (i.e., presence) is manifest in Word and sacrament.257
In support of this reading, there is evidence that Matthew structures his gospel around an inclusio of Name and presence.258 At the beginning of the work, Joseph is informed that “you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21). Matthew then cites the prophecy of Isaiah: “they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us” (v. 23). At the end of the gospel, the divine Name is repeated to the disciples: “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (28:19).259 Again, the Name is linked to the divine presence: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (v. 20).260
This makes Jesus’s rejection as a prophet much more serious than those of the Old Testament. The final rejection of Jesus and the crowd’s acceptance of Barabbas is in fact nothing short of the rejection of God’s own person. Jesus is not just one of the prophets who possesses the Word of God, but the Word himself. As the parable of the vineyard indicates (21:33–40), Jesus is the culmination of the rejection of prophetic mediation. Again, much like the worship of the golden calf, such rejection seeks alternative false mediators, in this case in the form of Barabbas.261 As an insurrectionist, Barabbas (“son of the father”) also claims to be one who can bring the kingdom of heaven, the content of Jesus’s new Torah of law and promise.262 Nevertheless, even in their rejection of Jesus, God’s faithfulness succeeds. At his trial, those who condemn him demand that “his blood be on us and on our children” (27:25). We are reminded of the fact that Jesus’s own blood is that of the “testament” (26:28) and that the Servant of Isaiah, the new Moses, would sprinkle the nations (Isa 52:15), much like Moses did when he ratified the Sinaitic covenant in Exodus 24. In effect, their rejection of the promise of the gospel paradoxically means its ratification through his bitter, innocent suffering and death.263
As God returned to his people, Jesus is also the one who fulfills the Old Testament promises of rest. In recounting Jesus’s genealogy and human origin, Matthew highlights that Jesus is a descendent of Abraham and of David (Matt 1:17). He thereby implicitly suggests that Jesus is a fulfillment of the Abrahamic and Davidic testaments, both of which promised rest from Israel’s enemies. It should also be observed that in giving Jesus’s genealogy, Matthew makes the number of generations symbolic of the eschatological rest that Christ brings. The evangelist tells us that there were forty-two generations between Abraham and Christ. The symbolism here appears to be associated with the numbers seven and six in the genealogy, in that the number forty-two is six times seven. Seven is of course the number of the original creation. Six would be the number of creation minus the extra day of Sabbath. This final “seven” is then inaugurated by the birth of Jesus. This seems to suggest that Jesus’s forgiveness brings a new creation and a new Sabbath. Just as Christ is the eternal Word of God (i.e., the living Torah) who was the agent of the old creation, he stands at the beginning and enacts a new narrative of creation. In this regard, David Scaer has also pointed to the fact that the first words of the gospel are BIBLOS geneseōs, suggesting the beginning of a new Genesis.264
Jesus’s life not only has the goal of a new Sabbath, but is also itself the presence of that Sabbath. Throughout the gospel, Matthew repeatedly introduces the theme of the messianic Sabbath. It should be noted that many Second Temple Jews held that when the
