Comments

• Gracious Rebel Shipmate

  April 14

  I've always understood it to just be giving more detail about the donkey - the fact that it was a young one (which I assume is what is meant by colt). Never occured to me to imagine two animals!!
• ThunderBunk Shipmate

  April 14

  It's a parallelism - a standard poetic device, particularly common in the psalms as I recall. This proves Matthew's focus on the fulfilment of prophecy, to the exclusion of minor issues such as verisimilitude, never mind biography.
• Hedgehog Shipmate

  April 14

  It is an interesting question. Matthew is clearly linking it to Zechariah 9:9, but even there there is ambiguity. Here is a convenient listing of English translations of Zechariah. You will notice that some follow the two-animal reading ("a donkey AND a colt"), while others opt more for a single animal ("a donkey, in fact, a young donkey that is the foal of a donkey!"). There seems to be no consensus.
  
  But it cannot be denied that Matthew's account clearly is following the two-animal reading while John's account is favoring the single animal reading. Neither Mark nor Luke overtly reference Zechariah and so they cleverly dodged the issue. Which, personally, makes me think that they are giving the more historically accurate description, not trying to hammer the facts to fit a prophecy. But that's just me. I have long admitted to a pro-Luke bias.
  
  
• Lamb Chopped Shipmate

  April 14

  There's no need to imagine that Matthew (a very Jewish gospel) is written by an ignoramus who doesn't recognize Hebrew parallelism. There's a perfectly sound reason for having a second donkey in the story, completely aside from the prophecy. The colt is still young and about to be in a very stressful situation--being ridden for the first time by a human being, and that in a parade. Given the stress on the colt, it makes perfect sense to bring its mother along as well, to calm it and give it something to follow after. And once you HAVE the extra donkey, using it to carry your extra stuff (cloaks, etc.) is an easy cognitive leap.
  It's also very understandable why the other Gospel writers would omit the presence of the older donkey. The story makes perfect sense if you just hit the high points (the colt, Jesus, the shouting people, etc.) and there's no need to go into extra details like how the colt was kept calm. Just different authorial choices.
  
• Hedgehog Shipmate

  April 14

  That does seem reasonable.
• TurquoiseTastic Kerygmania Host

  April 14

  It is striking how the ambiguity in Zechariah is carried over into differences in the Gospel presentations though. I had never thought of @Lamb Chopped 's proposed harmonisation.
  
  I suppose this is a case where Jesus is very deliberately and formally enacting the fulfilment of a prophecy. So in a way it doesn't really matter exactly what the details are, it obviously corresponds because that is Jesus's intention.
  
  But perhaps Jesus too is well aware of the ambiguity and deliberately sets things up in order to fulfil any possible interpretation of the prophecy! So it is not Matthew catering to the "prophecy literalist nerds" but Jesus himself "throwing a bone" to them if you like...
• Lamb Chopped Shipmate

  April 15

  I suppose.... but he isn't usually so kind to people who... ah, how do I say it... people who deliberately resist education? Now people who make mistakes all unwittingly, and are happy to be corrected, that's another matter.
• Gramps49 Shipmate

  April 15

  One way or another, Jesus got into Jerusalem, and then the troubles began. Focus more on the forest than the one, or two, trees in front of you.
• Gill H Shipmate

  April 15

  It does bring up thoughts of a circus acrobat, doesn’t it?
  
  Another thing I have always wondered about in the story is telling the disciples to say “The Lord needs it”. Was it a prearranged code phrase, I wonder? Or did Jesus just know that would work?
• Lamb Chopped Shipmate

  April 15

  It is interesting. Why “the Lord”? Why not “Jesus” (and as some honorific if you like)? On its own, the phrase could be taken to mean “God,” which would be accurate but odd at this stage of the disciples’ understanding (not to mention that of whoever they are talking to). Either that, or it assumes they know Jesus as their own Lord already, just as the disciples do, and therefore need no other identification. Which makes it the more likely to be a prearranged signal. If a name had been included, we’d have the option of translating kyrios as “Mr” or a similar honorific, committing no one to anything; but not here.
• Hedgehog Shipmate

  April 15

  A note in the NET version observes that:

  The custom called angaria allowed the impressment of animals for service to a significant figure.

  That would explain why some title was necessary to justify borrowing the animal. But it does not explain exactly why the honorific "Lord" was used. I image "Rabbi" would have been sufficient to satisfy custom.