Nonviolent Conflict Resolution in the Doubled Plot of Matthew
Robert R. Beck, Loras College
As well we know, Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount has long served as a radical Christian pacifist source-text, even while this same Gospel can evoke descriptions as "a violent biblical text that portrays Jews as ‘hypocrites’ and ‘killers of children’."1 We may safely assume of Matthew’s text that ambiguities on the question of violence are perceived to run deep. I cannot hope to resolve those ambiguities, but I may open a line of thought suggesting new possibilities for resolution by making the question stranger and more complex.
While historical and anthropological studies try to understand the impact of violence on the persons and events behind the text,2 my own attention falls upon the literary features of the text itself. My focus is on the plot and, even more specifically, the plot’s depiction of conflict.3 It seems to me that narrative conflict development and resolution promises a privileged look into a narrative text’s understanding of violence and its values or disvalues.
When I come to Matthew’s Gospel with an eye for narrative conflict and plot, the first thing I notice, of course, is the common synoptic narrative, conventionally credited to Mark as Matthew’s narrative source. But other features also attract attention. For one, the infancy narrative no longer presents itself as a quasi-detachable prologue to the story, since, as narrative, it is integral to the narrative plot. This is shown, for instance, in the similarity between the two arrival scenes at Jerusalem -- that of the Magi in chapter 2, and that of the Messiah in chapter 21. In both instances the city is deeply disturbed, questions are asked, those in power recognize a threat, and they make concerted moves toward what they believe to be a permanent solution.
This much simply puts us on notice. In addition to their similarities, the two incidents are also seen to be connected by a chain of events that eventually closes back on Jerusalem in a narrative sequence that literary critics would call the rising action of the plot. The arrival of the Magi jumpstarts the action, evoking the repressive response that drives the family of Jesus out of the territory, eventually to Nazareth, previously unmentioned in this Gospel.4 The Messiah escapes into obscurity, to emerge again years later as an adult ready to assume the responsibility of his calling.5 And here I offer the first of two propositions: Given the circle of departure and return, Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem has the narrative force of a Judean homecoming, one that serves as climax to the rising action of the plot.6 After a long deferment the Messiah prince returns to Judea, in a nostos of sorts, to the place where he belongs. His exile over, he comes to stake his claims.
But once we speak of a Judean homecoming we are alerted to a disjunction in Matthew’s text concerning the meaning of ‘home,’ since the messianic figure entering Jerusalem is described there as being "of Nazareth" (Mt 21:11). Earlier, at Mt 13:54, when Jesus is said to return to his "native place" (he patris idos), Nazareth is implied. Which brings me to my second proposition: The textual ambiguity concerning the meaning of "home" in Matthew is embedded in an intertextual struggle of two narrative plots, present in the gospel and competing for attention. This doubled plot comprises, on the one hand, the common synoptic narrative that unequivocally features Nazareth as Jesus’ native place; on the other, the expanded homecoming narrative of Matthew indicating Jerusalem is the true home of the Messiah. The homecoming story interfering with the received synoptic narrative represents an ancient and still popular story formula, familiar to us today through films such as the Lion King and literary classics such as Hamlet and the Odyssey.7 From the time J. Kristeva introduced the term, intertextuality has meant that any given text is to be understood as a site of struggle where different ideologies compete.8 Intertextuality has long been a recognized feature of Matthew’s text, and although source study may be considered a banal form of intertextual inquiry, even here we can expect the more radical implications of ideological tensions among component texts.
So what is this formula story? A typical version might be summarized as follows:
The wicked brother of the king gains control of the kingdom. The royal family is executed, except for the infant prince, who escapes with the help of faithful retainers such as an ancient nurse and a simple gardener. The child is spirited away to a distant land to be raised to adulthood by a childless peasant couple, perhaps a woodcutter and his wife. Upon reaching maturity, the prince is discovered to be the true king by means of signs and/or trials, such as pulling a sword from a stone. Prepared for his new role by a mentor, such as Merlin, he mounts a victorious campaign in which he returns to the kingdom, expels the usurper and restores the kingdom to its rightful rule and former prosperity. Marrying a princess he re-establishes the lost dynasty, and order is ensured for the foreseeable time to come, if not forever.
Under the label of the "Aryan Expulsion and Return Formula," late nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars such as F. G. von Hahn, A. Nutt, Lord Raglan and others, explored it as a subset of the mythic hero cycle, one that featured a forced departure rather than a hero seeking adventure. In a comparison of Greek, Roman, Teutonic, Persian, and Hindu myths, published in 1876, von Hahn discovered a common sequence of 16 episodes. In 1871, Nutt added Celtic heroes to the group. In a 1934 address to the English Folklore Society, Raglan proposed 22 episodes in an expanded roster of heroes, including some who were not so "Aryan," such as Moses and Joseph.9
These lists are useful in showing how the story formula contributes to our investigation of Matthew and violence. If, with a few adjustments, we extract from Raglan’s list the features concerning the flight and the return, we arrive at six steps that clearly show the narrative symmetry of the formula. Three steps describe the flight; another three steps describe the return, occurring much later in the hero’s life. Each of the triads consists of a leave-taking or relinquishment of place, a physical change of place, and a subsequent resettlement in a new place.
Spelled out, the six steps of the story formula of the banished prince are as follows:
(1) A violent usurpation leads to
(2) the flight or escape of the infant prince, who
(3) finds a foster home in a distant land, – and later, upon reaching adult state
(4) experiences the discovery of his true identity, enabling
(5) his victorious return against enemies, and
(6) the restoration of the dynasty. 10
In the version I wish to emphasize, the symmetry of flight and return is heightened by the supporting symmetry of usurpation and reconquest. Here especially the narrative pattern impinges on our theme, since the violence of the usurping violation establishes an agenda for the hero. In narrative, violence calls forth violence. In this story formula, it sets the expectation that the hero will reciprocate in his recovery of the kingdom. The slaughter of the Hebrew children, in the Moses story, sets the terms for the slaying of the Egyptian first-born. The elder Hamlet’s murder prompts his ghost to demand the murder of his usurping brother in response. When Scar, in The Lion King, takes the life of his brother and usurps his kingdom, we know his own life will be forfeit before the film is over.
So this is what we want to notice about the story formula. It begins in violence and sets the stage for reciprocal violence, under the dual rubrics of revenge and purgation. The hero is faced with two obligations to be discharged before the conclusion of the story. The first of these is to exact revenge for the honor violated and damage done. The second is to purge the realm of the evil that has contaminated it.11 Payback and purgation: Hamlet shows us both. The revenge dominates the play, but the rottenness in Denmark demands purging, seen in the bodies littering the stage at the conclusion.
How does the intertext of the banished prince story formula enter into our consideration of Matthew’s gospel? Let us notice, first, that in his notion of an "ethos" of popular narrative in Matthew’s special material, R. Brown has suggested an appropriate social location for such a narrative. A hallmark of popular narrative is the use of formula plots and scenes. Brown claimed a common "format" in the birth, flight, and return scenes in the infancy narrative. 12 These correspond to the main parts of the classic hero myths.
But the homecoming narrative that engages us reaches beyond the early chapters of the Gospel to embrace the entire rising action of the plot. This can be seen in another aspect of Matthew’s text – by way of the Scripture citations introduced into the text.13 Five of these feature place names – in chapter two, Bethlehem (vv. 5-6), Egypt (vv. 15), and Nazareth (v. 23); in chapter four, Galilee (vv. 15-16); and in chapter 21, Zion (vv. 4-5). By no means indicators of simple movement, the moves are relocations, changes in residence, new addresses. They are road signs marking a progress that forms an itinerary. It is here we find our clue to the Matthean use of the formula story, for when we map one pattern onto the other, we yield a correlation: The scriptures register the hero’s progress –
Bethlehem (2:5-6) registers the usurper’s violence;
Egypt (2:15) gives us the hero’s flight;
Nazareth (2:23), the home in exile;
Galilee (4:15-16) the announcement of the hero’s return; and
Zion (21:4-5) the victorious return itself.
The first five steps of the story formula are sutured across the common synoptic narrative by way of the scripture citations. The overlay of citations establishes the formula story as a latent intertextual presence in Matthew’s text evoking an agenda of retribution. However, the agenda is not fulfilled in the working out of the plot, as the sixth step yields no corresponding citation and no full parallel in the Matthew account. 14 Instead of a victorious ascent to the control of the kingdom we have the passion and death of Jesus. Instead of a restored dynasty we have its promise – "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (28:18). From the point of view of the formula story (and not, of course, the common synoptic narrative), this seems a failed story. And the "failure" traces to the ineffectuality of the return, an insufficiently violent nostos. No revenge is exacted, as Jesus enters as Zechariah’s Prince of Peace. Furthermore, the temple purgation is gestural at best. Jesus’ opponents are not liquidated, which allows them to remain in place to mount the counter-offensive that results in his death. And so he dies, but the tomb is found to be empty. This, and the interpreting angel waiting there, inform us that this story, despite appearances, is not a failed story. In narrative terms the result might be described as the intertextual disruption of the formula story by the common synoptic narrative. The received story of Jesus, the common synoptic narrative, disallows the expected resolution of the violent formula story.15 The latter’s symmetry is disrupted and broken, relieving us of its bloody satisfactions.
The disruption of expectations leading to revenge finds endorsement in the text. Three moments come to mind. The first is the revision of the laws of Talion in 5:38-42, which adapts the Q Source to Matthew’s text. The teaching of Jesus reverses the expectation of retaliation. The reversal in turn confirms the inhibition of expected revenge exhibited in Matthew’s plot.
A second moment is Peter’s question concerning forgiveness, with Jesus’ reply, in 18:21-22. The injunction to unconditional forgiveness is assigned an outlandish number – seventy times seven – echoing Lamech’s boast song of seventy-sevenfold revenge, in Gn 4:24. H. Arendt, for one, has proposed forgiveness as the only initiative that satisfactorily serves to conclude the reciprocal chain of violent recriminations that result from revenge.16
A third moment takes place at the arrest of Jesus in Gethsemane – a critical juncture in the action of the common synoptic narrative as the initiative of action is handed over to Jesus and he responds with a declaration of nonretaliation. Matthew enhances the moment. The sword saying is inserted at this point, underlining the implacable drive of the pattern of revenge: "The one who lives by the sword, by the sword will perish" (26:52). The episode itself dramatizes Jesus’ refusal to enter that pattern. This moment concludes with the scripture formula repeated in 26:56, without a specific scripture cited. Here the lack of a specific scriptural text would suggest the various citations culminate in this one.
A word about the series of Old Testament citations: It is always tempting for readers to view them as a divine script for Jesus’ life story. But if the picture I have drawn is to be believed, the "script" is better conceived as the sketch of a common cultural narrative, dramatized in the gospel in order to be rejected – a rejection divinely warranted. Contrast the ending of the Odyssey. Despite Odysseus’ misgivings about reciprocal violence, Athena, the divine presence in charge of the action, insists on comprehensive revenge. Odysseus is assured that all recriminations will be stopped here. This is, of course, one of the lies narrative is prone to, when it is interested in rounding off a story and satisfying listeners. In human experience, each reprisal of previous violation becomes a new violation requiring further reprisal. The viable and re-vivifying alternative is the forgiveness proposed by Matthew’s Jesus, as possibly one of those "things hidden since the foundation of the world."17
Endnotes
1. G. Aichele and G. A. Philips, "Introduction: Exegesis, Dieresis, Intergesis," Semeia 69/70 (1995), p. 13 – one rather harsh example of an important and growing discourse that has recently even moved into the bestseller ranks with J. Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword (NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), e.g., pp. 83-84, 132-33.
2. The essays by D. J. Weaver, R. Horsley, and W. Wink, in The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament, ed. Willard M. Swartley (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992) exemplify an historical critical approach to the question. The works of R. Girard, such as Violence and the Sacred, trans. P. Gregory (Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins Press, 1977) and Things Hidden From the Foundation of Time, trans. S. Bann and M. Metteer (Stanford, CA: Stanford U. Press, 1978), currently typify anthropologically based studies.
3. J. C. Anderson, Matthew’s Narrative Web: Over and Over and Over Again JSNTSup 91 (Sheffield, 1994) p. 134, distinguishes plot from structure: "Most of the proposed [past] outlines have focused on structure rather than plot. Plot involves the temporal arrangement of the episodes of a story, the motivation for events, and the pragmatic effects of arrangement and motivation upon the reader." Other influential recent studies taking a literary approach to Matthew’s Gospel include J. D. Kingsbury, Matthew as Story (Phila: Fortress, 1986); D. R. Bauer, "The Structure of Matthew’s Gospel" JSNTSup 31 (Sheffield: Almond, 1989); D. B. Howell, Matthew’s Inclusive Story: A Study in the Narrative Rhetoric of the First Gospel. JSNTSup 42 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1990). For a constructional theory of Matthew’s narrative see J. Matera, "The Plot of Matthew’s Gospel" CBQ 49 (1987) 233-53; W. Carter, "Kernels and Narrative Blocks: The Structure of Matthew’s Gospel" CBQ 54 (1992) 463-81. My own approach to plot understands it as centering on conflict – usually between characters. This is also a reasonable entry point for discerning a narrative’s practical theory of violence. See, e.g., Sam Smiley, Playwriting: The Structure of Action (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall) pp. 115-121.
4. Nazareth is differently placed in this account. When my personal bible titles the ending of ch. two as "The Return to Nazareth," it is not being quite candid, since in this Gospel the family of Jesus has not yet been there.
5. Matthew has moved beyond Mark’s delineation of the rising action, from "cleansing" of the Capernaum synagogue (Mk 1:21-28) to the "cleansing" of the Temple (Mk 11:15-19). Matthew’s version, from Magi entry to Messianic entry, links with Mark’s by joining the latter entry with the Temple Action, as being activities that take place on the same day, in one narrative gesture. In the synoptics, the Temple Action motivates the final moves of the religious authorities against Jesus, bringing about the completion of the narrative.
6.The victorious arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem is a homecoming because the evangelist has contrived to make it so. The narrative logic demands it. Although Jerusalem obviously is not the same locality as the nearby village of Bethlehem, they have equivalent designations as David’s city (2:6; 21:5), making a claim for Messianic royal status in the territory of Judea – which is to say the territory more than the town is the site of banishment and return in the pattern of homecoming. As capital, Jerusalem is symbol of Judea as home and country, and figures as the proper place to post a notice of return.
7.The story is to some extent outside the text of Matthew, where it exists as a group of texts shaped by a story formula. And it is to some extent inside Matthew’s text as a formula story, being the coordinating impulse behind the circle of events that lead from Magi to Triumphal Entry.
8. J. Kristeva, "The Bounded Text," Desire in Language: A Semiotic approach to Literature and Art, ed. L. S. Roudiez (NY: Columbia N. Press, 1980), p. 36: "The text … is a permutation of texts, an intertextuality: in the space of a given text, several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize on another." Also see G. Allen, Intertextuality (London & NY: Routledge, 2000), pp. 35-47.
9.J. G. von Hahn, Sagwissenschaftliche Studien (Gena, Ger., 1876). A. Nutt, "The Aryan Expulsion-and-Return Formula in the Folk and Hero Tales of the Celts," The Folklore Record, Vol. 4 (1881), pp. 1-44. For Lord Raglan’s seminal article and taxonomy, "The Hero of Tradition," along with von Hahn’s list in a helpful introduction, see A. Dundes, The Study of Folklore (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965). My intent here is not to review 19th century New Testament myth studies but simply to identify a popular story line that is evidenced in certain myths, and elsewhere.
10.Raglan’s list covers the flight and return in steps six through thirteen, as follows:
6. At birth an attempt is made, often by his father, to kill him, but
7. He is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild best,
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor, and
13. Becomes king.
My adjustments includes the elimination of the gap, in 9 as a separate step, insofar as it does not involve an action, along with combining steps 12 and 13, as being two sides of the one act of restoring the dynasty. In addition, I have brought forward the usurpation theme, which seems to be suppressed in these "Aryan" studies.
11.Insofar as the initial usurpation involved a purge of the original regime, the two impulses are combined in the narratives. But they are logically, and often enough explicitly, distinct. Cf. the discussion of the folk narrative formula developed by E. K. and P. Maranda, in R. Beck, Nonviolent Story: Narrative Conflict Resolution in the Gospel of Mark (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), pp. 164ff. The payback pivots on the transformation of the hero, who at some point decides to adopt the procedures of the villain – in opposition to the villain, of course. The purgation pivots on the transformation of the villain, who changes from a character with an evil trait to an evil with a character’s face – noun and adjective trade places – so that the story world can be purified by the simple expedient of erasing the villain.
12. R. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (NY: Doubleday, 1977) and The Death of the Messiah (NY: Doubleday, 1994). For Brown’s discernment of a three-part "format" in the infancy account of birth, flight, and return, see Birth, pp. 110-113. For Brown’s characterization of the social setting as "ethos" see Death, p. 1345; for his definition of popular narrative, Death, p. 1304, n. 41; for his description of "folklorist" features in Matthew, see Death, pp. 60-62. Brown sees a connection between this ethos and the later gospel of Peter; for his discussion of the gospel of Peter in relation to this, Death, p. 1345. Although we cannot address it here, this stratum also contains the anti-Pharisaic sentiments in the Gospel. The special material of Matthew is, of course, usually termed the M source. Senior, among others, would attribute this "special material" to the evangelist himself. If we accept Brown’s source theory, we have a situation in which the intertextual narrative struggle is positioned between the Mark Source and the M Source.
13. K. Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968), based his original list of eleven quotation formulae on the need of redaction criticism to isolate passages unique to Matthew. The expanded lists, such as that of fourteen instances given in Brown, Birth of the Messiah, p. 98, are more suitable for narrative study, since they reflect an interest in the final design and its literary functioning.
14. No quotation formula corresponds to the last step. However, it could be argued that all of the Scripture citations introduced into the text relate to the story formula. The citation at 1:22 marks the miraculous birth; 2:17, the usurper’s purge; 3:3, the Merlin-like mentor figure of the Baptist. The Servant song citations at 8:17 and 12:17-20 refer to the nonviolent program of the Messiah, while the citations in 13:14-15 and 13:35 put on notice this program’s challenge to cultural conventions. As seen below, the series culminates in the arrest scene, 26:51-56, with its sword saying (v. 52) and citation formula (v. 56) without a cited text (!). The other scripture texts presumably reach cumulative fulfillment here. The last instance of citation, Judas’ death, at 27:9-10, confirms by contrast the sentiments expressed in the sword saying at Jesus’ arrest, at Judas’ instigation.
15. Elsewhere I have studied this narrative in its Markan form and have showed, at least to my own satisfaction, how its handling of narrative conflict resolution fits a pattern of action that we would today refer to as nonviolent resistance or nonviolent action. Nonviolent action differs from some forms of pacifism in its will to engage in confrontation against opponents. Cf. Beck, Nonviolent Story, esp. chs. 6-7. It is the nonviolent plot that disrupts the progress and completion of the formula story of the banished prince.
16. H. Arendt, The Human Condition (U. of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 236-47. "Without being forgiven, released form the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we would never recover; we would remain the victim of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell." (237) See also D. W. Shriver, Jr., An Ethic for Enemies (NY: Oxford, 1995), pp. 34-39.
17. The expanded plot of Matthew with its intertextual formula suggests numerous lines of development that cannot be taken up here. However, a few of the more prominent might be indicated in passing.
(1) This paper has concentrated on the rising action, with some suggestions for the falling action. A clear understanding of the plot’s depiction of conflict resolution is yet to be explored. Related to this, how does forgiveness, as the dominant configuration of conflict resolution in this text, relate to nonviolence?
(2) In terms of sacrifice, is Girard’s notion of the scapegoat mechanism useful here? (Cf. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, p. 12.) Or does Jesus’ emphatically purposeful nonviolence in Mt 26:52-56 remove him from the ranks of helpless victims?
(3) To what extent does Matthew’s sketch of expulsion and return formula carry the burden of his notion of the "royal" Messiah? And to what extent is the "hiddenness" of the Messiah a function of the intertextual indirection of the formula?
(4) The question of imputed anti-semitism, alluded to at the beginning of our inquiry, needs to be pressed, especially since it is the "popular" text source that contributes this theme.
(5) Finally, the story formula itself can be more clearly located in relation to the text of Matthew – is it within or without the narrative? Or is it more properly located in the history of Israel, to be echoed in the fortunes of the protagonist of Matthew’s gospel?