>Would Mark Goodacre and Stephen Carlson care to comment on this one
>(and perhaps also on the question whether Matthew the evangelist is
>capable of irony)?
I have nothing to add on the garments / beasts question which I
brought up on b-greek and Synoptic-L on Palm Sunday, but I would like
to comment again on the issue of irony in Matthew.
My feeling would be that there is irony in Matthew, especially in the
Passion Narrative, but that most of it comes in from Mark's much more
richly ironic Passion Narrative. Matthew's tendency is to play down
the elements of dramatic irony, most clearly in the Centurion's
confession. In Mark this is clearly ironic: the reader can see that
the veil of the temple has torn in two from top to bottom (15.38) but
all that the centurion can see is the last despairing cry of Jesus
(15.39). Mockingly, he says "Huh, surely this was a son of God".
Matthew apparently transforms the scene: Matt. 27.51a repeats Mark
15.38, the veil of the temple tearing in two, but Matt. 27.51b-53
adds an earthquake and people rising; Matt. 27.54 then has plural
centurions seeing "the earthquake and all that had happened" and
making the confession "Surely this was a Son of God".
Likewise Mark 14.65 has people spitting, flogging and mocking
Jesus and asking him to "Prophecy!", little realising that they were
in the midst of fulfilling the very prophecy that Jesus has made that
he will be mocked, spat upon and flogged (10.33-34). Matthew
(26.67-68) does not pick up the irony and adds "Who is it who smote
you?" -- and Luke (famously) agrees with him in this against Mark.
My feeling would therefore be that the elements of dramatic irony
present in the Passion Narrative come in to Matthew from his
source in Mark. The classic is Matt. 27.27-29 // Mark 15.17-19: the
crown of thorns, the scarlet robe, "the king of the Jews", to the
persecuters a farce but to the reader Jesus' coronation.
Mark
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Dr Mark Goodacre M.S.Goodacre@bham.ac.uk
Dept. of Theology, University of Birmingham
Homepage: http://www.bham.ac.uk/theology/goodacre