Seminars

As part of a larger project on mockery in the passion narratives and their ancient contexts, this paper examines the role of bodies in acts of mockery in Philo’s Flaccus and the Markan passion narrative. Philo’s In Flaccum 36–39, where the madman Karabas is brought into the gymnasium and mocked as a king, has often been compared with the Markan passion narrative. New Testament scholars, however, have been hesitant to articulate the significance and heuristic value of this comparison. This paper argues that the vicarious function of the bodies of Karabas and Jesus provides a key to understanding the relationship between the two texts. Rather than serving as mere silent effigies, their bodies function as sites of vicarious mockery, becoming instruments of indirect political critique that ultimately affirms divine sovereignty.

This presentation is a portion of a larger project that is combining a close reading of the Gospel of Matthew alongside its history of reception and interpretation. It makes two general moves: noting carefully how Matthew uses popular culture and source texts popular to Second Temple era Jews, and reviewing, as well, how subsequent readers have engaged Matthew (both formally and informally). I will argue that Matthew, candidly, misreads; Matthew’s later readers, however, very much do so as well, pushing against the clear sense of Matthew’s text at times, politely ignoring it at others. After exploring this dynamic, and the productivity of the readings it produces, I am also going to argue that, in many ways, Matthew “works” better when it misreads and, in turn, is misread.