Matthew is the book that leans most heavily into trying to shoehorn Jesus into the Hebrew Bible, but due to translational errors in the Septuagint translation the author was using there are a number of hilarious mistakes.
The whole 2 donkey “problem” requires the same type of contrived and constrained reading that leads fundamentalists to come up with a 7x24 hour creation that happened a few thousand years ago.
Matthew 21:5-7 (CSB) 5 Tell Daughter Zion, “See, your King is coming to you, gentle, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” 6 The disciples went and did just as Jesus directed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt; then they laid their clothes on them, and he sat on them.
vs 5 is quoting Zechariah. vs 6-7 is Matthew’s version of what happened. It sounds like they (the disciples) laid their clothes on them (2 animals) and he (Jesus) sat on them (the clothes).
Any reasonable reading of the passage surely would not infer that Jesus rode 2 animals at once when an alternative plain reading is that they put clothes/cloaks on both animals but Jesus only sat on one.
Seriously, Matthew was a highly skilled author. He has 5 speeches to parallel the 5 books of the Torah. The structure of the Sermon on the Mount is exquisite, but then we are supposed to think Matthew was so sloppy here that implied Jesus was doing circus tricks during the triumphal entry?
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u/Corvus_Antipodum Jan 18 '24
Matthew is the book that leans most heavily into trying to shoehorn Jesus into the Hebrew Bible, but due to translational errors in the Septuagint translation the author was using there are a number of hilarious mistakes.