Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew's Gospel
This podcast takes a journey through the Gospel of Matthew, unpacking its story of Jesus as a peasant leader of a nonviolent movement for a new society that he calls “The Kingdom of Heaven.” Each episode explores literary, cultural and historical context, passage by passage.
Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew's Gospel
Episode 5: The Flight into Egypt, Matthew 2:13-18
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Bert Newton
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In this episode, Jesus and his family become refugees. Fleeing their home country, which is under the brutal occupation of a foreign empire, they take refuge in Egypt, which, according to their national history, was both the place of their people's slavery and also a refuge for those escaping the Babylonian invasion.
With this story, the author of Matthew introduces the themes of Jesus-as-Moses and Jesus-as-Israel by using Exodus imagery. The texts from Jeremiah 31 and Isaiah 53 also play an important role in setting up the gospel motif of Jesus bearing the suffering of his people.