Specific descriptions in the Gospel of Matthew: How they refine, enlarge, and direct the biblical text

Abstract

This article examines the Gospel of Matthew in a broad sense through its specific descriptions of people, places, and ideas. Such descriptions take various forms, including nicknames, endearments, monikers, appositives, slang terms, epithets, and insults, and they appear across both Testaments. Like verbs in their succinctness and brevity, specific descriptions sharpen a text’s prose and direct its interpretation. From ‘You are the light of the world’ (Mt 5:14), to ‘you hypocrites!’ (Mt 23:13), to ‘my betrayer’ (Mt 26:45), specific descriptions such as these praise, identify, and specify within the Gospel of Matthew. Employing a literary methodology, this article draws on canonical references in its exploration of specific descriptions as a subset of onomastics, the history and study of names. Metaphors, similes, and phrases introduced by a pronoun such as who assist in identifying specific descriptions. The Gospel writer deftly employs these devices to sharpen characterisation and stress major themes, for example the presentation of Jesus as the King of the Jews (Mt 27:37). This article approaches specific descriptions in a broad sense, encompassing character traits, insults, locations, and self-designations. It includes insights from sociolinguistics, which explores the relationship between society and language.
Contribution: This article presents specific descriptions as a new lens not only for enjoying the Bible but also for discerning its subtle and terse nuances. It focuses on the Gospel of Matthew and integrates canonical principles, literary terminology, and selected insights from onomastics and sociolinguistics. It uses literary tools like tone, character, and diction. This article demonstrates that the literary categories of simile (a comparison often introduced by the words like or as) and metaphor (a figure of speech that implicitly compares two unrelated things) broadly apply to specific descriptions like endearments, locations, insults, and nicknames.