"His blood be on us and on our children!” Matthean irony and the ratification of covenant through blood

This thesis addresses the interpretive problem of Matt 27:25: And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” Historically, the verse has been understood as condemning all Israel and so associated with anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism and sometimes justifying Jewish persecution. While recent scholarship attempts to distance the verse’s meaning from a tradition of “national curse” or “blood guilt” by instead directing the author’s intention in judgement upon Jerusalem, its cultic system and/or the Matthean community’s ideological opponents, such interpretations fail to do justice to the narrative. This is primarily due to the use of language in Matt 27:25 (πᾶς ὁ λαὸς, “all the people”), which seems to intentionally signify “Israel”. The interpretation favoured by this thesis is one grounded in an ironic, particularly double-entendre, reading of the text. Its is argued that Matt 27:25 is part of the Gospel’s recapitulation of the Mosaic covenant at Sinai, signalled at the Last Supper and fulfilling Jesus’ function in the narrative as a second Moses. The people’s cry is an anticipated response that seals the compact (the sacrificial blood is upon them and their children); however, remaining within Christ’s reformed covenant requires obeying his commandments (to find blessing) or else fall under judgement.

This work © 2024 by Jonathan Hili is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).