RBL 04/2011

Basser, Herbert

The Mind behind the Gospels: A Commentary to

Matthew 1–14

Boston: Academic Studies, 2009. Pp. xvii + 377.

Hardcover. $69.00. ISBN 9781934843338.

Robert H. Gundry
Westmont College
Santa Barbara, California

By The Mind behind the Gospels, Herbert Basser does not mean the mind of Matthew or
of the other Evangelists—or particularly even of Jesus, about whom they wrote. Basser
means, instead, the “collective ‘mind’ shared by Jewish teachers from the first century (if
not earlier) until the present: a mind of which early Jewish-(Christian) raconteurs [who
‘spread stories of Jesus … before the earliest written Gospels were composed’] were still a
part.” This mind deals in Jewish rhetoric—having to do with interpretive methods more
than with content—such as is found in rabbinic tradition dating at least from Jesus’ time
up through the fifteenth century.

Basser’s stress falls therefore on continuity so as to blunt the criticism that he freely uses
rabbinic sources too late to be of service for the interpretation of Matthew. It then
becomes a question whether the generally late rabbinic rhetoric really does correspond
more closely to the pre-Matthean rhetoric embedded in the First Gospel than does the
rhetoric appearing elsewhere in that Gospel, in other early Christian literature, and in the
nonrabbinic Jewish literature of the Second Temple period. But Basser often neglects to
establish dissimilarity between the latter literature and the supposedly pre-Matthean
elements in Matthew. In fact, to keep these elements purely as well as rhetorically
rabbinic, Basser regularly assigns nonrabbinic elements to later Christian revisions,

This review was published by RBL 2011 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
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especially to Matthean revisions—so much so that he pronounces Matthew himself a
non-Jew in all likelihood or, if a Jew, one who loathed his Jewishness, inveighed against
the unwritten traditions of the Jews, and in favor of the Gentiles excluded the Jews from
God’s kingdom. Thus the rabbinic hypothesis determines Basser’s method, which works
out to produce a sharp cleavage in Matthew between pro-Jewish, rabbinic-like material
and anti-Jewish, nonrabbinic-like material.

On the one hand, furthermore, the Evangelist Matthew becomes diabolically clever by at
first commandeering mainly the original traditions that reflect a thorough Jewishness on
Jesus’ part, then by increasingly overlaying those traditions with a false ascription to Jesus
of virulently anti-Jewish sentiments. Ex hypothesi, for example, a Jesus who speaks of
Gentiles’ inclusion in and Jews’ exclusion from the kingdom of heaven (Matt 8:11–12) is
almost certainly unhistorical, whereas a Jesus who affirms each jot and tittle of the Torah
(5:17–19) is likely historical. For Matthew, then, a parting of the ways between church
and synagogue has already occurred. (An early date for this parting need not depend on
Basser’s hypothesis, of course.)

On the other hand, says Basser, as a Gentile or (less probably) as a Jew-turned-Gentile,

Matthew often did not even understand the Jewish rhetoric represented in the Jesuanic
traditions at his disposal. Sometimes, nevertheless, he followed them to the letter, and at
other times he interpolated his own anti-Jewish and especially anti-Pharisaic point of
view. “To the letter” includes not only his following of those traditions exactly, but
includes also the traditions themselves in that both the rabbis, Jesus, and his original
tradents found hyperliteral meanings even in the discrete words and letters of an Old
Testament passage—that is, quite apart from an overarching, contextually determined
meaning. So in regard to pre-Matthean materials, Basser challenges the currently popular
effort to discover echoes of a context, be it an Old Testament context or a historical
context in Jesus’ life, and consequently challenges any “conceptual paradigm,” say, of
Matthew’s Jesus as a new Moses. “The images and the words” are “no more than
evocative of biblical vocabulary.”

Undergirding Basser’s interpretation of Matthew is an extremely wide-ranging treatment

of comparable rabbinic tradition, but the consideration of modern secondary literature
on Matthew, the other Gospels, and the rest of the New Testament is lamentably spotty.
Such consideration might have saved Basser from a number of missteps. Confusingly, he
speaks of his own translations of the Hebrew Bible, Greek Matthew, and the
Hebrew/Aramaic writings of rabbis yet speaks also of utilizing a translation of Matthew
by Peter Zaas and various Internet translations of biblical passages. In any case, some
unusual and even provocative translations appear: “students” instead of “disciples,”
“impersonators” instead of “hypocrites,” “houseboy” instead of “servant,” and “blather”

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instead of “babble” or “heap up empty phrases.” Numerous references to Dale Allison
arise out of private communication, indicating a fair amount of friendly disagreement
between him and Basser. The usual questions of historicity and Synoptic interrelations go
largely ignored, and the failure to discuss Synoptic interrelations sometimes leads to a
neglect of Matthew’s redaction of Mark and Q.

Despite Basser’s resolve to avoid saying what earlier commentators have said, he often
does just that, as in his comments on betrothal and marriage and on the eye as the body’s
lamp. But against the grain of most other commentaries, he detects a surprising amount
of gnostic thought in what he judges to be Matthew’s later, non-Jesuanic elements.
Though reserving most of his criticisms for the secondary Jesus of Matthew’s anti-Jewish
making, Basser is not above criticizing the original, Jewish Jesus, too, as when he scores
that Jesus for asking poor fishermen to leave their families destitute by following him and
for following “the pattern of all populist leaders” by mocking the current leadership of his
day and treating its members as enemies “while at the same time [according to Basser]
espousing most of their values.”

Here are several of Basser’s interpretations worth considering: “The Prophets” (Matt
2:23) and “the Writings” (21:43) refer to the second and third sections of the Hebrew
Bible. Unworthiness to carry the shoes of the coming one (3:11) makes the Baptist unfit to
become his disciple rather than unfit to become his slave. Except for being homiletic
rather than exegetical, the Antitheses (5:21–48) compare well with the rabbis’ building a
fence around the law. Cross-taking (10:38) was a known idiom (Gen. Rab. 56 to Gen 22:6)
and therefore did not necessarily allude in advance to Jesus’ crucifixion.

Here are some of Basser’s eyebrow-raising interpretations: The genealogy of Jesus (Matt
1:1–17) corresponds to the phases of the moon. In Jesus’ teaching, as distinct from
Matthew’s understanding, the persecuted (5:10) were almost certainly the children of
Israel in general. The Pharisees are puzzled rather than critical when asking why Jesus
eats with tax collectors and sinners (9:11) and informative rather than confrontational
when telling him that his disciples are breaking the Sabbath (12:2), because the story of
Jesus underlying the Synoptics presents him as aligned to and in sympathy with Pharisaic
teaching. The twelveness of the apostles (10:1) is not symbolic of Israel’s twelve tribes and
therefore is only historical. God is the treasure- and pearl-finder (13:44–46), and the
treasure and pearl represent—in Matthew’s view—Gentiles as opposed to the Jews.
Similarly in Matthew’s view, the tares sown among wheat (13:24–30, 36–43) represent the
Pharisees or, more widely, the Jews as the devil’s tools who must be eradicated—hence
the representation’s “toxic effect on Christendom’s treatment of Jews from early times
through the twentieth century.” (In this connection Basser does not document any
Christian equation of the tares with the Pharisees or Jews, does not take account that the

This review was published by RBL 2011 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
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parable prohibits an uprooting of the tares during the present age, does not distinguish
between Christians and the angels who will do the uprooting, and does not relate the tares
to the theme of false discipleship that runs throughout Matthew.)

Finally, with a citation of Josephus, J.W. 3.516–521, Basser locates Gennesaret (Matt
14:34) outside the territory ruled by Herod Antipas and within the territory ruled by
Philip. Not so, as a reading of Josephus’s text and a glance at the map will show. The
present reviewer has noted several other questionable citations. To ensure that Basser has
not played fast and loose with the numerous remaining texts he cites, especially the
rabbinic ones, perhaps scholars should check them, too.

This review was published by RBL 2011 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a
subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.