Description:

The prominence in the First Gospel of mountains as settings for events in the ministry of Jesus has been widely recognized, but this book represents the first full-scale redactional investigation of Matthew’s mountain motif. Building on a thorough investigation of the mountain symbol in Second-Temple Judaism and on detailed tradition-historical study of six Matthean mountain narratives, the present study moves to conclusions that run counter to the scholarly consensus at several points.

First, ‘the mountain’ in Matthew functions not as a ‘place of revelation’, as is often held, but as an eschatological site—the place where the messianic community is constituted, where Jesus’ role as the obedient and enthroned Son is manifested, and where, as a consequence, a new epoch in salvation history is inaugurated.

Further, the dominant typology at work in these scenes is not that of Sinai, but rather that of Zion, the geo-theological centre of Israel’s eschatological hope. ‘The mountain’ is to be seen not as a new Sinai, nor even as a new Zion, but as the place where Jesus’ role as the one in whom Zion expectations are fulfilled comes clearly into focus.

Matthew’s chain of mountain scenes is linked together to form a literary and theological pattern, encompassing central Matthean themes (ecclesiology, christology, and salvation history) and cul­minating in the concluding scene on the Mountain of Commissioning. This pattern was forged in the context of a church with Jewish Christian roots which, facing the destruction of the temple and increasingly being pushed to the margins of Jewish life by a resurgent Pharisaism, was being forced to discover a theological foundation for its self-understanding that could no longer be found in Zion.

Reviews:

“Donaldson’s choice of topic deserves commendation. A study of the mountain motif in Matthew was certainly needed. The chief strengths of this study are twofold: (the gathering together and analysis of materials dealing with the mountain motif in the OT and in the literature of second-temple Judaism; (2) the exegesis of the main mountain passages in Matthew, especially the pointing up of relationships between those passages.... Donaldson has read very widely and his provided rich notations and bibliography; there is much to be learned from him by exegetes of the passages that he has treated.”