I have received and read several recent issues of The Skeptical Review. While I appreciate Mr. Till's efforts to state his positions clearly, frequently I find that his arguments -- otherwise sound -- fail to take into account matters that either invalidate his arguments or render them moot. (I am the first to concede that some of his opponents' arguments suffer from the same malady; often they do not sufficiently close up loopholes in their arguments, or they fail to write in a nonequivocal manner, thus exposing themselves to Mr. Till's counterattacks.)
An example of this with which I wish to deal here involves one of the points of contention in Mr. Till's exchange with Dr. Hugh Ross on the subject of fulfilled prophecy, published in the January/February 1996 Skeptical Review. The controversy involved the question as to whether the Gospel writer Matthew incorrectly attributed the prophecy of the 30 pieces of silver to Jeremiah, and Mr. Till's argument that the passage in Zechariah 11:12-13 cannot reasonably support the notion that Matthew was actually quoting Zechariah. I offer the following observations that were not addressed by either Dr. Ross or Mr. Till.
Two difficulties arise in connection with Matthew 27:9-10, and a number of solutions have been proposed to meet them.
The first difficulty is that the words quoted from and attributed to Jeremiah are not found in his written prophecy. Solutions that have been suggested include the following: (1) that "Matthew quoted from memory" (Augustine and others), (2) that the passage was originally in Jeremiah, but the Jews cut it out (Eusebius and others); however, no evidence for this has been located or produced, (3) that it was contained in another writing by Jeremiah, which is now lost (Origen and others), (4) that Matthew intended to put Jeremiah for the whole body of the prophets (Bishop Lightfoot and others), but again no evidence of such a tactic can be found in the other prophets, (5) that it was "a slip of the pen" on the part of Matthew (Dean Alford), (6) that the mistake was allowed by the Holy Spirit deliberately, to teach us not to concern ourselves as to who the writers were but to faithfully accept all prophecy as coming directly from God, Who spoke by human prophets (Bishop Wordsworth), (7) that some annotator wrote "Jeremiah" in the margin and it "crept" into the text (Smith's Bible Dictionary).
However, the foregoing "solutions" create difficulties far more grave than the one that they attempt to eliminate. All of them may be shown to be unnecessary by observing the simple fact that Matthew does not state that the prophecy was written by Jeremiah but that it was "spoken" by him. I suggest that herein lies the answer to the alleged problem.
The second difficulty is created by the suggestion that the prophecy attributed to Jeremiah is really written in Zechariah 11:10-13. For some time I accepted this notion, and on one occasion promoted it in writing, but further study has convinced me that this idea cannot be correct, for the following reasons:
(1) Zechariah 11:10-13 contains no reference either to a "field" or its purchase. In fact, the word "field" (shadah) occurs only in chapter 10, verse 1, which in no way relates to our subject at all.
(2) Regarding the "thirty pieces of silver," the passage in Zechariah speaks of them with approval, while in Matthew they are not so spoken of. "A goodly price" (`eder hayekar) signifies "sufficiency," and the verb yakar carries the meaning of being "precious." The text does not indicate that the amount was paltry or that the offer of it was in any sense an insult. However, this latter sense is conveyed in Matthew 27:9-10.
(3) The givers were "the poor of the flock," and this enhanced its value, very much as in the case described in Mark 12:43-44.
(4) The waiting of "the poor of the flock" was not characterized by hostility but friendliness. The Hebrew word shamar occurs more than 450 times in the Old Testament, of which only about 14 express hostility.
(5) Concerning the disposal of the silver, the sense of the verb cast must be determined by the context in which it is used, not by the verb itself. In Zechariah 11, the context shows it to be in a good sense, as in Exodus 15:25, 1 Kings 19:19, 2 Kings 2:21, and others.
(6) The "potter" is a fashioner; his work was not necessarily confined to fashioning "clay," but his work extended also to metals. For confirmation of this, compare Genesis 2:7-8; Psalm 33:15; Isaiah 43:1, 6, 10, 21; and others. The verb yazar occurs in the Old Testament about 62 times, and in about 45 of these it has nothing whatever to do with a "potter." Moreover, a "potter" in connection with the temple or its service is unknown in fact or to Scripture. Furthermore, silver would be useless to a potter, but necessary to a fashioner of metallic things or for payment to such artisans. One might as well cast clay to a silversmith as silver to a potter.
(7) The Septuagint, and also its revision by Symmachus, reads in verse 13, "cast them, i.e., the 30 pieces of silver) into the furnace" (Greek: eis to choneuterion). This shows that before the Gospel of Matthew was written, yotzer was interpreted as referring not to a "potter" but to a fashioner of metals.
(8) Note that the persons mentioned in the two passages are different. In Matthew we have "they took," "they gave," "the price of him"; in Zechariah one reads "I took," "I cast," "I was valued." In addition, Matthew names three parties as being concerned in the transaction; Zechariah speaks of only one.
(9) In Matthew the money was given "for the field"; in Zechariah it was cast "unto the fashioner."
(10) Matthew not only quotes Jeremiah's spoken words but names him as the speaker. This is parallel to Matthew 2:17-18, where the figure of speech known as "metonymy of cause" is employed, referring to a prophecy of Jeremiah that was spoken as well as written.
On the basis of all the foregoing, I suggest that the passage in Matthew 27:9-10 cannot have any reference to Zechariah 11:10-13. But the following considerations must also be kept in mind:
(1) It is not inconceivable that Matthew quoted Jeremiah's spoken words (of which he had knowledge either from some historical source or by direct revelation from the Holy Spirit through the process referred to as "inspiration" in 2 Timothy 3:16) and interjected other words by way of parenthetical explanation. These are not to be confused with the quoted words. They may be considered to have been combined thus:
Thus Matthew quotes that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, and combines with the actual quotation a parenthetical reference to the price at which the prophet Zechariah had been priced.
(2) Had the sum of money been twenty pieces of silver instead of thirty, a similar remark might have been interjected thus:
(3) Or had the reference been to the compensation for an injury done to another man's servant, as in Exodus 21:32, a similar parenthetical remark might have been introduced thus:
By not taking into account the literary device known as "parenthetical interjection," Mr. Till has once again wasted much space, ink, and energy fulminating on a nonexistent problem in his attempt to impugn the inerrancy of Scripture. To summarize briefly: a designed parenthetical insertion by the inspired Evangelist of a reference to Zechariah, interjected in a direct quotation from the prophet Jeremiah, is very different from a "mistake," or "a slip of the pen," "a lapse of memory," or "a corruption of the text," any of which needs an apology.
The quotation itself, as well as the parenthetical reference, are both similarly exact.
Much of the above material is not due to my original research. It was noticed by many scholars of preceding generations to whom I am deeply indebted.
(Wilhelm E. Schmitt, 14575 Louisiana Avenue, Prior Lake, MN
55372.)
