Page 80 - A Dissertation for Doctor of Philosophy

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Gospel. This symmetrical, chiastic, arrangement of the Gospel places the parable of the
preaching on the Kingdom of God (Matt. 13) at the center, creating parallel development towards

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and away from this central parabolic preaching. Lohr comments that “[t]he great central
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discourse on the nature of the Kingdom forms the high point of the Gospel.” Indications

evident from a structural analysis of Matthew’s Gospel, point to Jesus’ portrayal as a preacher of

the Kingdom of God.

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Matthew also recounts Jesus’ preaching to his disciples before sending them out to preach.
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This account is sometimes called the “Missionary Discourse” or “Sermon to the Disciples.”
By preserving the extensive amount of Jesus’ teaching to his disciples, Matthew attempts to

describe Jesus as a tutor of preachers. Jesus was instructing them to perform the apostolic

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Charles H. Lohr, “Oral Techniques in the Gospel of Matthew” The Catholic Biblical
Quarterly 23 (October 1961): 427. The word ‘chiasm’ or ‘chiasmus’ is “a criss-cross pattern in
which words, phrases, sentences, or whole paragraphs are introduced in the order A-B, or A-B-C,
etc., and then resumed in the reverse order B-A, or C-B-A, etc.” John Bligh, Galatians in Greek:
A Structural Analysis of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians with Notes on the Greek (Detroit, MI:
University of Detroit Press, 1966), n.1, 2. Cf. also, Nils Wilhelm Lund, Chiasmus in the New
Testament: A Study in Formgeschichte (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press,
1942).

34 Lohr, “Oral Techniques,” 427. For similar suggestions, see H. J. Bernard Combrink,
“The Structure of the Gospel of Matthew as Narrative,” The Tyndale New Testament Lecture vol.
34, (1982): 61-90; and Peter F. Ellis, Matthew: His Mind and His Message (Collegeville, MN:
The Liturgical Press, 1974), 12.

35 Ibid.

36 Matt. 9:35-10:42.

37
Lohr, "Oral Techniques,” 427.
38
Old, Reading and Preaching, 140.