Re: Matthew 21.7

From: Mark Goodacre (goodacms.p&t.arts.bham@hhs.bham.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Apr 06 1998 - 17:28:39 EDT


Carlton Winberry wrote:

> Mark, the first EP' AUTWN in vs. 7 has to refer to the animals. TA
> hIMATIA clearly is the object of the verb and EP' AUTWN indicates
> where they put the garments.

Of course. My question simply related to whether or not one should
translate "he sat on them" = the donkeys or "he sat on them" = (some
of?) the garments that were on the donkeys. I was suggesting that we
tend to translate the former because we are over-sensitive to the
parallel in Mark.

> That means that even if you can apply
> the EPANW AUTWN to the garments, he still sits on the garments which
> were placed on BOTH the animals.

Yes, perhaps. Some of the garments? Does my translation at least
partly deal with the absurdity of Jesus actually mounting two
donkeys simultaneously? Perhaps not, but I had to find something
to think about while reading the GNT listening to a Palm Sunday
sermon yesterday!

> The real question (not for
> b-greek) is why Matthew sees two animals (perhaps connected to his
> love of fulfillment passages and the use of KAI in the LXX). The
> mss represented by M, family 1, and a few others have EPANW in front
> of both AUTWN's in vs 7.

The doubling up of motifs from Mark does occur elsewhere in Matthew,
two Gadarene demoniacs (Matt. 8.28-34 // Mark 5.1-17), two blind men
(Matt. 9.27-31; cf. Mk 8.22-26), two blind men again (Matt. 20.29-34
// Mark 10.46-52) and so on. I suppose Matthew's desire to double
up, as often, was confirmed here by a 'literal' reading of Zech. 9.9
(not Isa. 62.11 as I wrongly said in my original post), a reading
which did, nevertheless, have bizarre consequences. But I think you
are right that this is not a b-greek question -- perhaps more
obviously Synoptic-L.

With good wishes

Mark
-------------------------------------------
Dr Mark Goodacre M.S.Goodacre@bham.ac.uk
 Dept. of Theology, University of Birmingham
Homepage: http://www.bham.ac.uk/theology/goodacre.htm



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