Pharisees of course are mentioned throughout Matthew’s gospel.  After Jesus’ scathing denunciation at the temple (Matthew 23), they disappear for most of the rest of the gospel.  They appear one last time, along with the chief priests, asking for a seal on Jesus’ tomb (27:62). It’s fitting: The last time we saw Pharisees Jesus was denouncing them for “building the tombs of the prophets and adorning the monuments of the righteous,” while confessing they are sons of those who murder... Read more

Joseph places Jesus’ body in a “new tomb.” New wine cannot be contained in old wineskins.  The new wine of the new covenant, the wine that Jesus will drink new in the Father’s kingdom, cannot be contained in old wineskins.  So too, a new kind of body requires a new kind of tomb, and Jesus’ body is definitely a new sort of body.  It’s not surprising that Matthew uses the word “tomb” ( mnemeion ) seven times, and the seventh... Read more

Three women are mentioned in Matthew 27:56: Mary Magdalene, another Mary, identified as “the mother of Jakobos and Joses,” and the unnamed mother of James and John.  Who is the second Mary? Matthew 13:55 is the only other reference to these names, Jakobos and Joses, and their mother.  There, the mother Mary is clearly Jesus’ mother: “Is not this the carpenter’s son?  Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers, Jakobos and J0ses and Simon and Judas?”  We know... Read more

The women who come from Galilee minister to Jesus along the way (27:55).  They take the place of angels, who minister to Jesus after the devil has tempted Him (4:11).  They are daughters of Peter’s mother-in-law, who rises and ministers to Jesus and the disciples (8:15). They are among the sheep, who see Jesus hungry, thirsty, naked, a stranger, imprisoned, and serve Him (25:44). Read more

The women of Matthew 27 are the only ones in Matthew’s gospel to behold ( theoreo ) anything (27:55 and 28:1 are the only uses of the verb). Women theorists.  What will Matthew think of next? Read more

Magdalene has plausibly been linked with Migdal-el (Joshua 19:38), one of the fortified cities in the tribal area of Naphtali.  Migdal-el means “Fortress” of God.  Mary from Magdala is a tower of God. What does that mean?  Perhaps many things, but it puts one in mind of the descriptions of the Bride in the Song of Songs (4:4; 7:4; 8:10). Read more

Where’d the Galilean women of Matthew 27:55 come from?  The only other references to a group of women, the only uses of the plural of gune occur in Matthew 14:21 and 15:38.  They are the women included among the 5000 and 4000 who are fed in the “desolate place” near the sea of Galilee.  In both cases, the women are associated with children, and in both cases Matthew includes them as an apparent afterthought: “besides women and children.”  He’s setting... Read more

A group of women from Galilee suddenly appears in Matthew 27:55.  They are “beholding from a distance” ( makrothen ), having “followed” Jesus ( eklouthesan ). This is precisely the description given of Peter in 26:58: When Jesus is arrested, he too “follows Him at a distance” ( ekolouthe auto apo makrothen ).  The women have not only taken up the place of the disciples in general, but specifically of Peter, who had confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the... Read more