# 2026 Addendum: Matthew 21 and TJ 22

**Matthew 21:28–45 compared with Talmud Jmmanuel 22:24–49**  
**Date:** 4 October 2026  
**Primary source:** Francis Wright Beare, *The Gospel according to Matthew: Translation, Introduction and Commentary*, pp. 423–431.  
**Authorship:** Codex, an AI research assistant, working with the site's researcher. This is new commentary, not a text written or endorsed by Prof. James W. Deardorff.  
**Purpose:** Develop the evidence-based case for TJ authenticity and priority by asking how Matthew's changes to a TJ-like source would produce the specific difficulties identified by Beare.

> **Finding under the TJ-first premise:** TJ preserves several specific narrative connections that are absent or disrupted in Matthew: the leaders' concrete wrongdoing, a more orderly sequence of violence, the rejected son's survival and vindication, the explicit identification of the son and tenants, the national scope of the application, and the separate referent for the crushing stone. Read together, these provide a substantial textual case for Matthew having abbreviated and theologically redirected a fuller TJ-like account.

[Read Matthew 21](../../mt/mt21.htm#verse28) · [Read TJ 22](../../tj/tj22.htm#verse24) · [Deardorff's original comparison](../mt21.htm#Mt21.28-32) · [Chapter comparison summary](../comparison/mt21.htm) · [HTML edition](2026-mt21-tj22.htm)

## Summary of findings

**TJ contains explanations that Matthew leaves out, and several of those explanations answer problems Beare identified in Matthew.** Taking TJ as the earlier account, we can show how particular cuts and changes would leave Matthew's story harder to follow.

The passage contains two stories: a father asking his sons to work in a vineyard, and a vineyard owner whose tenants attack his messengers. Beare questions how parts of these stories fit their explanations. Comparing them with TJ reveals seven useful points. [Beare, pp. 423–431](#source-b1)

1. **TJ explains what the religious leaders did wrong.** Matthew accuses them of failing to obey, but Beare points out that they were carrying out their public duties. TJ 22:31 supplies the missing accusation: they knowingly deny truth and exploit people for profit. This explains how they can perform religious duties while failing the lesson of the story. Removing that sentence leaves the gap Beare identifies. *(Beare, p. 424.)*

2. **TJ gives the violence a clearer progression.** Matthew lists beating, killing, and then stoning. Beare criticizes that order because it reaches killing before the final act. TJ 22:35 lists beating, torture, and finally stoning to death. The list builds toward its most serious outcome. *(Beare, pp. 428–429.)*

3. **The change in the son's identity fits a change in religious teaching.** TJ sends the administrator's son; Matthew sends the owner's own son. Beare reads Matthew's son as representing Jesus as God's own Son. Under TJ priority, changing this relationship helps turn the story into the Christian account of the Father's Son being killed. *(Beare, pp. 428–429.)*

4. **TJ supplies the missing ending—and makes the story a forecast of Jmmanuel's ordeal.** In Matthew, the son is killed; the story then invokes a rejected stone becoming the important cornerstone of a building. Beare asks how a murdered son matches something rejected and later honored. In TJ 22:39–41, the son survives and returns, and the listeners say the owner would have given him his inheritance early. Jmmanuel identifies himself with this son in 22:43. Later, TJ 30–31 narrates his apparent death, three days and nights in the tomb, and return alive; the authorities also recall his prediction. **TJ therefore connects the parable's ending both to the cornerstone and to Jmmanuel's later story.** *(Beare, p. 430; TJ 30:48–67; 31:35–45.)*

5. **TJ tells the listeners how the story applies to them.** In TJ 22:43, Jmmanuel explicitly identifies himself with the son and his listeners with the tenants. Matthew omits that explanation. TJ therefore gives a clearer step between the listeners answering a question about the story and recognizing that it concerns them. *(Beare, p. 430.)*

6. **TJ makes the scope of the warning clearer.** Matthew addresses the leaders but then speaks of giving the kingdom to another nation. Beare questions this shift between leaders and an entire people. TJ 22:46–49 explicitly names both the leaders and their people, and states that peace and joy will be taken away. The reader is told whom the warning concerns and what they will lose. *(Beare, pp. 430–431.)*

7. **TJ distinguishes the two stone images.** Beare observes that a cornerstone fixed in a building cannot also be a loose stone that people trip over or that falls on them. TJ 22:48 introduces a different stone: an image of the people's heavy burden. Removing that introduction leaves the crushing language apparently referring back to the cornerstone. This comparison concerns Matthew 21:44 where it is included; the site's RSV omits that verse. *(Beare, pp. 425–426.)*

**Together, these findings support our TJ-first explanation:** Matthew's changes to a fuller TJ-like account would remove the stated wrongdoing, disrupt a progression, omit the son's recovery and reward, and leave parts of the explanation without their original context. The support comes from the close match between Beare's specific criticisms and the details TJ supplies.

Beare provides the criticisms of Matthew; the application of those criticisms to TJ is this study's argument. Some questions, including the repeated messengers and the tenants' inheritance scheme, remain in both accounts. The detailed analysis below distinguishes those shared questions from the particular problems TJ answers.

**Scoring the seven findings:** The [scorecard in section 9](#9-my-phoax-assessment) assigns each point a subjective pHOAX-style rating. Their cumulative product is **0.000448**. This is a comparative scoring index, not a measured probability of fabrication; several points describe connected parts of the same story.

## 1. Scope and method

This study takes **TJ → Matthew as its working premise**. Its task is to develop that explanation: identify a difficulty independently described by a Matthew scholar, inspect the corresponding TJ wording, and specify the omission or substitution that would account for the difference.

Beare is particularly useful because his criticisms were developed within his own study of Matthew. The question is not simply whether TJ is longer or more agreeable. It is whether its distinctive details answer the particular deficiencies he identifies: missing conduct, a broken climax, an absent vindication, an unstable application, and incompatible uses of the stone image.

An argument for TJ authenticity can be affirmative and rigorous at the same time: its claims should follow the text, and its author should not attribute conclusions to Beare that he did not draw.

The principal critical source is Francis Wright Beare's *The Gospel according to Matthew: Translation, Introduction and Commentary*, pp. 423–431, with p. 422 providing adjacent context. All references to Beare use the book's page numbers. [B1](#source-b1)

Verse comparisons use the site's English TJ text and the Revised Standard Version of Matthew unless otherwise stated. Beare's translation and his critical reconstruction are separately attributed.

**What is assumed and what is shown.** TJ priority is the premise being developed. The observed differences and Beare's documented criticisms are the evidence being compared. Showing that this premise explains several differences is a positive result for the argument; it is not the same operation as independently dating the TJ or calculating a probability of fraud.

## 2. Evidence map

| Beare's observation | Corresponding TJ feature | Proposed change from TJ to Matthew | Assessment within the TJ-first case |
|---|---|---|---|
| No concrete explanation of the leaders' failed obedience, p. 424 | TJ 22:31 identifies knowing denial, profit, and exploitation | Omission of the specific accusation | Direct answer to the missing-conduct criticism |
| The servants' treatment loses its climax, pp. 428–429 | TJ 22:35 gives beating, torture, then fatal stoning | Replace torture with killing before the final stoning | Clear improvement in the local ordering; not a cure for every escalation issue |
| Repeated delegations lack a narrative reason, pp. 427, 429 | TJ 22:36 retains a larger delegation | No corrective difference here | Shared difficulty; not counted as a TJ solution |
| The owner's own son expresses Christian sonship, pp. 428–429 | TJ 22:37 has the administrator's son; 22:43 identifies Jmmanuel with him | Change the relationship to the owner's son and remove the explicit identification | Coherent theological redirection under the premise |
| The stone supplies a vindication missing from the murdered son's story, p. 430 | TJ 22:39–43 supplies survival, return, inheritance, and identification | Replace apparent death with death; omit the return, reward, and identification | Strongest connected explanation of Matthew's missing narrative link |
| Terrible death becomes only loss of the lease, p. 430 | TJ 22:41 has punishment and banishment; 22:46 has loss of peace and joy | Intensify the tenants' sentence while changing the application to loss of the kingdom | TJ avoids this particular death-to-lease mismatch, though duration and scope expand in its application |
| Application shifts between leaders and a nation, pp. 430–431 | TJ 22:46–49 explicitly includes leaders and their people | Remove the explicit collective application while retaining transfer to a people/nation | Addresses the national scope ambiguity Beare identifies |
| An installed cornerstone cannot also be a loose or falling stone, p. 426 | TJ 22:48 first introduces the burden as a different heavy stone | Retain crushing language after removing its new referent | Direct answer to the image conflict; verse 44's transmission is a separate question |

These are connected textual observations, not independent statistical trials. The strongest support lies in how several proposed changes fit one intelligible editorial direction.

## 3. The two sons and their order

**Passages:** Matthew 21:28–31; TJ 22:24–28. **Beare:** p. 424. [B1](#source-b1)

Beare documents variants even among major Greek witnesses. His text follows the order in which the first son refuses and then goes; the second promises and does not go. He explains that Vaticanus reverses the order and changes the answer correspondingly. He also identifies a third form that retains the first order but gives the wrong son as the answer, which he calls “obvious nonsense.”

TJ presents the promise-without-action son first and the initially refusing but obedient son second. Its answer correctly identifies the latter. This is compatible with an attested Matthew ordering; it is not an otherwise unknown narrative arrangement.

**Contribution to the case.** The evidence establishes that this small parable has a real history of rearrangement and, in one transmitted form, a damaged question-and-answer relationship. It makes textual alteration a documented fact rather than a purely hypothetical explanation. It does not establish that every Matthew reading is defective: the local RSV and TJ each identify the correct son.

Deardorff prefers TJ's order because the father can turn to the second son after the first fails to work. That is a reasonable reading of the sequence, but neither text says only one son was needed. This preference should remain a modest supporting observation, not carry the main authenticity argument.

## 4. The omitted accusation gives the first parable its concrete application

**Passages:** Matthew 21:28–32; TJ 22:24–31. **Beare:** pp. 423–424. [B1](#source-b1)

**The independently identified problem.** Beare considers Matthew 21:32 a supplement connecting the parable to the preceding discussion of John. On p. 424, he then raises a more concrete difficulty: the priests and elders were performing their official duties. He writes, “There is no indication of how they were failing in obedience.” He also questions an implication of wholesale conversion among tax collectors and prostitutes.

**TJ's supplied explanation.** TJ 22:31 identifies the failure that Beare finds unstated: the leaders know the truth but deny it for gold, silver, and goods, enriching themselves by misleading and exploiting people. They may perform institutional duties while betraying the teaching those duties should serve. Working at the temple and obeying the truth are not treated as equivalent.

TJ 22:29 also frames the contrast as recognizing wisdom before the leaders do, rather than entering the kingdom before them. This places the contrast on responsiveness to teaching. TJ still makes a generalized claim about the outcasts' trust, so it does not independently establish a historical mass conversion. Its strongest improvement is the explicit diagnosis of the leaders' conduct.

**Proposed redaction.** Omit TJ 22:31, change the recognition-of-wisdom saying into a kingdom saying, and narrow “John and the prophets” to John. The resulting account retains a charge of disobedience but loses its specific account of knowing exploitation. This is closely matched to Beare's complaint, not merely a preference for fuller prose.

**Finding.** TJ gives a direct answer to Beare's missing-conduct objection. Olmstead's report of Michaels's words/deeds versus belief/unbelief concern remains relevant, but it does not exhaust what the direct Beare text contributes. [S2](#source-s2)

## 5. The servants, the escalation, and the son

**Passages:** Matthew 21:33–39; TJ 22:33–39. **Beare:** pp. 427–429. [B1](#source-b1)

### 5.1 A specific broken sequence that TJ does not share

Beare criticizes Matthew's loss of a climactic progression. On p. 429 he writes that the sequence “flogged, killed, stoned” is “hardly climactic.” The site's RSV likewise moves from beating to killing and then to stoning.

TJ 22:35 instead gives **beating → torture → stoning to death**. This is a more readily intelligible escalation of narrated violence. Fatality comes at the end of that three-part list rather than preceding its final action.

**Proposed redaction.** Replacing torture with killing disrupts an ordered progression already available in TJ. The correspondence between a precise scholarly criticism and a precise textual difference is useful evidence for the TJ-first explanation.

There are two levels to Beare's criticism. TJ answers the local ordering problem; it does not reserve all fatal violence for the final messenger, since a servant is already stoned to death. It also retains multiple groups. The narrower improvement should be stated firmly without calling it a solution to the whole history of escalation Beare reconstructs on p. 428.

### 5.2 The administrator's son and theological redirection

Beare reads the owner's son as an expression of Christian theology: the final messenger is God's own Son rather than another prophet. On p. 428 he interprets the received parable as looking back on Jesus' death from the early church's perspective. That is Beare's historical reconstruction, not an endorsement of TJ. [B1](#source-b1)

Under TJ priority, the relevant transformation is concrete. TJ has the administrator's son, an expectation of fear, apparent death, survival, and an explicit identification with Jmmanuel. Matthew has the owner's own son, an expectation of respect, and actual death. The direction of change fits a move toward the Christian father–son and death narrative that Beare identifies in Matthew.

The argument is therefore stronger than merely saying Matthew is more religious. **The particular relationship and outcome differ at the very points where Beare identifies theological shaping.**

### 5.3 What the comparison does not solve

Beare questions why repeated violence would lead the owner to send further messengers and why a larger delegation would help if it was not a punitive expedition. TJ 22:36 retains the larger delegation. Fear instead of respect provides a different intention for the final mission but does not explain the enforcement behind it. These remain shared narrative questions.

On p. 429 Beare also rejects elaborate assumptions needed to turn the tenants' inheritance plan into sound legal reasoning. TJ retains the same plan. It can portray their reckless ambition; it does not supply a legal mechanism. The administrator's son's existing entitlement is asserted in verse 38 and reinforced by the anticipated early transfer in verse 41, but its prior arrangement is not explained.

These points set the boundary of the claim. They do not cancel the specific escalation improvement or the coherent theological substitution; they should simply not be counted as additional solutions.

## 6. The rejected son and the cornerstone

**Passages:** Matthew 21:39–42; TJ 22:39–43. **Beare:** p. 430. [B1](#source-b1)

**The independently identified problem.** Beare describes an abrupt transition from vineyard to building. More importantly, he asks how the hearers could equate a murdered son with a rejected stone subsequently raised to the key position. His explanation is that Christian interpretation supplies the missing resurrection and exaltation. He explicitly identifies a gap in the immediate narrative, rather than merely observing a change of metaphor.

**TJ's complete sequence.** The tenants think they have killed the administrator's son. He survives, returns to the owner, and reports the attack. The listeners propose punishment and banishment of the tenants, replacement tenants, and early transfer of the inheritance to the son. The cornerstone saying then describes a reversal the story has already supplied. Jmmanuel explicitly identifies himself with the son and his hearers with the tenants.

| Function | TJ 22:39–43 | Matthew 21:39–42 |
|---|---|---|
| Rejection | Son attacked and cast out | Son attacked and cast out |
| Outcome for the son | Apparent death followed by survival | Death |
| Return and report | Explicit | Absent |
| Positive reversal for the son | Early inheritance in the hearers' answer | No corresponding reward in the parable |
| Cornerstone saying | Follows the son's rejection and vindication | Follows his death and the tenants' punishment |
| Personal application | Explicitly identifies speaker and hearers with son and tenants | Identification left implicit in this passage |

**Proposed redaction.** Change apparent death to death. Remove survival, return, report, and early inheritance. Retain the rejected-stone saying, but remove the explicit explanation identifying Jmmanuel with the surviving son. The result closely matches Beare's diagnosis: the parable no longer contains the son's vindication, so the stone saying has to supply it through a theological interpretation external to the parable.

**Finding.** This is the strongest connected case in the selected passage. TJ does not merely add decoration; it supplies the narrative function Beare specifically says is missing. The vineyard-to-building change still occurs, but its common theme is now rejection followed by elevation. The same metaphorical move is easier to follow because the son actually undergoes that reversal within the account.

This supports an argument that Matthew's compression and theological redirection damaged the immediate explanatory sequence. It need not be described as a contradiction in the whole Gospel: the narrower and more defensible claim is that Matthew's parable depends on an unstated vindication which TJ narrates.

### 6.1 The hearers' answer and subsequent recognition

Beare also questions the relation between the hearers pronouncing their own condemnation in verses 40–41 and the statement in verse 45 that they perceived the parable concerned them. TJ gives the recognition a clearer sequence: answer about the tenants; cornerstone saying; explicit identification of speaker and hearers; explanation of their wrongdoing and consequences; final recognition of the curse. [B1](#source-b1)

The wording in TJ 22:42, “You have recognized the meaning,” can refer to recognizing the parable's appropriate outcome; verse 43 then states its personal application. Under this reading, deleting verse 43 removes an explicit step that helps explain the later recognition. A parabolic trap remains a possible reading of Matthew, but TJ's supplied explanation directly serves the comparison Beare invites.

### 6.2 The parable as a forecast of Jmmanuel's ordeal

The son does more than illustrate a general lesson about rejection. **TJ 22:43 explicitly identifies Jmmanuel with him.** That identification invites readers to recognize the events of the parable in the later account of Jmmanuel's ordeal. The relevant pattern is a son sent by a higher authority, rejected by those he approaches, apparently killed, and subsequently shown to be alive.

| Element in the vineyard story | Correspondence in Jmmanuel's story | What the connection contributes |
|---|---|---|
| The lord sends the administrator's son, TJ 22:37 | Jmmanuel describes his prophetic task as undertaken according to god's desire, TJ 29:18–21 | A mission under higher authority; not an exact statement that Jmmanuel is the lord's biological son |
| Jmmanuel identifies himself with the son, TJ 22:43 | His later ordeal supplies the events to which that identification points | The connection is made by the text itself |
| The tenants think they have killed the son, TJ 22:39 | Jmmanuel enters near-death and is presumed dead, TJ 30:48–51 | Apparent death is distinguished from actual death in both accounts |
| The son remains in the tomb for three days and nights, TJ 22:39 | Jmmanuel receives care in the tomb for three days and nights, TJ 30:65 | The same stated interval links the two episodes |
| The son leaves the tomb and returns, TJ 22:39 | Jmmanuel appears alive to his disciples, TJ 31:35–40 | The central movement from apparent defeat to survival recurs |
| The hearers are told whom the son represents, TJ 22:43 | The authorities recall a public prediction of return from near-death, TJ 30:67; Jmmanuel recalls it in TJ 31:45 | The parable offers an identifiable public setting for that prediction |

This gives the TJ-first argument a connection across chapters as well as a local explanation of the cornerstone. The later narrative preserves the same distinction between presumed death and survival that makes the parable's ending intelligible. The authorities' recollection in TJ 30:67 is especially relevant: TJ 22:39 and 43 provide an earlier public statement of the essential content they remember, although the wording is not an exact quotation. [TJ 29:18–21](../../tj/tj29.htm#verse18); [TJ 30:48–67](../../tj/tj30.htm#verse48); [TJ 31:35–45](../../tj/tj31.htm#verse35).

**The father–son distinction matters.** Matthew makes the messenger the owner's own son, lending itself directly to the Christian image of God sending his Son. TJ calls him the administrator's son. TJ 22:45 and 29:18–21 distinguish Jmmanuel's begetting by a celestial being from the higher authority's commissioning of his mission. The analogy supports the sent son's mission and experience without requiring every parabolic role to have a demonstrated one-to-one identity. This study does not identify the administrator by name or claim a literal later transfer of a vineyard inheritance.

Under TJ priority, changing apparent death to actual death and removing the return has two related effects: it removes the son's positive outcome from the parable and changes the event the parable forecasts. That makes the proposed editing significant to the story's theology as well as its readability. Matthew retains its own death-and-resurrection interpretation, but it does not narrate the son's vindication within this parable.

**This is why point 4 receives the strongest score.** The supplied ending serves several related functions: it completes the son's story, explains the cornerstone, anticipates Jmmanuel's survival, and gives context to the authorities' later recollection. These functions make a substantial connected argument; because they belong to the same narrative pattern, they are not counted as additional independent scores. The correspondence establishes literary consistency within TJ; whether the speech historically preceded the events is a separate question of dating.

## 7. The cornerstone and the crushing stone

**Passages:** Matthew 21:44 where transmitted; TJ 22:48. **Beare:** pp. 425–426. [B1](#source-b1)

**The independently identified problem.** Beare's note begins on p. 425 and continues on p. 426. He records strong manuscript support for verse 44, the suspicion of assimilation from Luke 20:18, and its relegation to the margin in RSV. On p. 426 he identifies both its awkward position and the incongruity of a stone securely installed in a building also functioning as a loose stumbling or falling stone. He notes a comparable combination in 1 Peter; the observation is about the image, not an assertion that it occurs only in Matthew.

**TJ's supplied referent.** TJ first uses the rejected-stone/cornerstone image in 22:42. Before the crushing language in 22:48, it introduces another image: the burden of the Israelite people as a heavy stone of seven Great Ages. The later stone does not have to be the installed cornerstone. The sentence gives the reader a new referent at the point where it is needed.

**Proposed redaction.** Remove the introduction of the heavy burden while retaining the language of falling and crushing. The preceding cornerstone becomes the apparent referent, producing precisely the incompatibility Beare describes. This is a specific explanation of how lost context could create the difficulty.

**Finding.** TJ directly resolves the need for the cornerstone itself to act as the loose or falling object. The explicit referent answers a separately documented criticism of Matthew.

The site's RSV omits verse 44, so the criticism applies to the transmitted verse and its placement, not to a nonexistent sentence in this RSV's main text. The clause's route into Matthew remains a textual-history question. If it arrived through Luke, the proposed loss of context must be located in that transmission chain rather than automatically assigned to Matthew's original author. Lanier and the NET editors document differing later judgments; they do not erase Beare's literary observation. [S6](#source-s6); [S7](#source-s7)

## 8. The application: leaders, people, and punishment

**Passages:** Matthew 21:41–45; TJ 22:41, 44–49. **Beare:** pp. 430–431. [B1](#source-b1)

### 8.1 The national scope is explicit in TJ

Beare identifies a mismatch between a saying addressed to the leaders and a transfer to a nation. In his reading, all the tenants participate in the guilt; narrowing the application to their overseers does not naturally reproduce the parable or the national imagery of Isaiah. He understands the mention of a nation as pointing toward the Gentile church rather than simply replacement leaders.

TJ 22:46 explicitly includes both the leaders and their people. Verse 48 names the Israelite people, and verse 49 makes the collective scope of the hearers' understanding explicit. Therefore the movement to another people in verse 46 has a stated collective counterpart. The inference does not depend on silently equating the few listeners with an entire nation.

**Proposed redaction.** Shorten the explicit leaders-and-people application to “you,” substitute the kingdom for peace and joy, and retain the transfer to a nation. This produces the unstable scope Beare identifies. Under TJ priority, these changes explain why Matthew seems to shift between replacing an administration and replacing a people.

**Finding.** On Beare's own structural criticism, TJ is the more explicit and coherent application. Turner offers an alternative reading focused on leadership replacement; Beare's national-scope criticism supplies the basis for this comparison. [S8](#source-s8)

### 8.2 The punishment changes in different ways

Beare observes that Matthew's hearers prescribe a terrible death for the tenants, whereas the application threatens what he describes as cancellation of the lease. TJ's parable instead specifies punishment and banishment, and its application concerns deprivation of peace and joy. It therefore avoids that particular transition from execution to mere loss of office or lease.

The parallel is not exact in every respect: TJ expands duration and collective scope beyond the tenants' punishment. The defensible claim is that it removes Beare's particular death-versus-lease discrepancy, not that every dimension of the sentence maps one-to-one.

**A separate question.** Explaining how TJ makes the national application explicit does not endorse collective guilt or establish that future suffering is deserved. The ethical judgment and the literary comparison are different questions. Nor does harsher or milder language, by itself, date either text. These distinctions keep the structural argument precise without diverting it into a defense of Matthew.

## 9. My pHOAX assessment

### 9.1 What the numbers mean

The seven findings are scored separately to make the assessment explicit. **These are my subjective pHOAX-style ratings, not measured probabilities or values supplied by Beare.** They express my judgment of how each observation weighs in the comparison between modern gospel-dependent construction of TJ and preservation of an earlier TJ-like source used by Matthew.

On this rubric, **0.50 means no directional preference; a lower value favors the TJ-first explanation; a higher value favors modern construction.** A value of 0.20 expresses a stronger preference for TJ priority than 0.40. The numerical intervals are judgment calls rather than empirically calibrated steps. No score is zero: narrative coherence alone does not make another origin impossible.

The scores concern the individual findings in the selected passage, with the explicit later-story connections described in section 6.2. They are not assessments of the entire TJ, and they do not establish an author's intent. TJ priority guides the reconstruction being tested; it is not itself counted as evidence in assigning the ratings.

### 9.2 Seven-point scorecard

| Summary point | Subjective pHOAX-style rating | Reason for the rating |
|---|---:|---|
| **1. The leaders' missing offense** | **0.35** | TJ's specific charge of knowing exploitation directly answers Beare's question about the leaders' failed obedience. A single explanatory sentence supplies a clear omission mechanism. The improvement is substantial but could also be made by an attentive adapter. |
| **2. The progression of violence** | **0.40** | Beating, torture, and fatal stoning give the local list a clearer progression. This is a precise match to Beare's criticism, but a relatively simple change, and it does not resolve the shared repeated-delegation problem. |
| **3. The son's identity and theological change** | **0.40** | Administrator's son → owner's own son fits the Christian sonship interpretation Beare identifies. This supplies a plausible reason for the proposed alteration. It is primarily an interpretive difference, not an independent contradiction in Matthew, so its score is modest. |
| **4. The son's ending and the forecast of Jmmanuel's ordeal** | **0.20** | Survival, return, and anticipated inheritance explain the cornerstone; self-identification and the later near-death narrative extend the connection across chapters. This is the most substantial integrated correspondence. Its several functions belong to one connected argument. |
| **5. The explicit identification of son and hearers** | **0.40** | TJ supplies a direct explanatory step between answering the parable and recognizing its personal application. This supports a missing-context reading, but overlaps closely with point 4 and is a relatively straightforward clarification. |
| **6. Leaders, people, and the scope of judgment** | **0.40** | TJ explicitly names the collective target, answering Beare's leaders-versus-nation criticism. Its force depends partly on accepting Beare's reading of Matthew; greater clarity does not settle the ethical question of collective punishment. |
| **7. The separate crushing stone** | **0.25** | TJ introduces a distinct heavy-stone image exactly where Matthew's transmitted crushing language lacks that explicit referent. It is a particularly close fit between a missing phrase and an independently identified difficulty. The transmission of Matthew 21:44 still needs separate treatment. |

All seven ratings favor the TJ-first explanation on this rubric, but they do not represent seven identical or wholly independent defects. Points 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 concern missing explanation, ordering, or application; point 3 chiefly supplies a theological reason for changing the story. This distinction makes the case more precise.

### 9.3 Cumulative score

Multiplying the seven ratings gives the requested cumulative product:

**0.35 × 0.40 × 0.40 × 0.20 × 0.40 × 0.40 × 0.25 = 0.000448.**

**Cumulative multiplicative index: 0.000448.** This summarizes seven judgments that all lean toward the TJ-first explanation. It must not be described as a 0.0448% probability of fabrication or a 99.9552% probability of authenticity. Multiplication of these ratings does not establish either probability, and several ratings concern the same underlying narrative changes.

For a summary on the original 0-to-1 scale, the **geometric mean is approximately 0.332**:

`(0.000448)^(1/7) = 0.3323618…`

| Aggregate | Value | Interpretation |
|---|---:|---|
| Product of all seven ratings | **0.000448** | Cumulative scoring index; sensitive to the number of points counted |
| Geometric mean of the ratings | **0.332** | Average direction and strength on the original scoring scale; below the neutral value of 0.50 |

The geometric mean makes the average judgment easier to read without presenting the shrinking product as a historical probability. It is still a descriptive score, not a statistical correction for dependence. Points 3–5 are closely connected, and points 6–7 share aspects of the expanded application. A statistical probability would require a defined prior, justified likelihoods, and a model of those relationships.

**Interpretive conclusion:** The importance of the seven points lies in their combined explanatory fit. Several details that Matthew lacks perform useful, connected functions in TJ. The proposed edits also follow an intelligible theological direction, most clearly in the change from the administrator's son's apparent death and survival to the owner's own son's death. The scores express that affirmative assessment while preserving the distinction between a cumulative argument and a calculated historical probability.

### 9.4 Relationship to Deardorff's figures

Deardorff's original comparison gives approximately 0.45 for Matthew 21:28–32, 0.25 for 21:42, 0.40 for 21:43, and 0.10 for 21:44. Their arithmetic product is 0.0045. His approximately 0.00011 is given for the entire chapter, including earlier comparisons outside this addendum's scope. Those figures remain attributed to him; neither is a probability calculated by this study. [L3](#source-l3)

The seven scores in this addendum are new judgments with their own stated rubric. They are not added to Deardorff's numbers or represented as his calculations. The method retained from Deardorff is the substantive comparison: independently identified difficulty, corresponding TJ wording, and an explicit explanation of the proposed redaction.

## 10. The resulting TJ-first argument and next source checks

The strongest defense developed by this comparison is specific:

1. **TJ states the offense.** Its charge of knowing exploitation explains how leaders can perform public duties while failing the father's will. Removing that charge produces the missing application Beare describes.
2. **TJ preserves an ordered list of violence.** Beating, torture, and fatal stoning answer Beare's objection to Matthew's local sequence.
3. **TJ tells the vindication before invoking its image.** The son survives and receives the anticipated inheritance; the rejected cornerstone then illustrates an event already present in the parable.
4. **TJ makes the identification explicit.** The speaker identifies himself with the administrator's son and the hearers with the tenants, supplying an interpretive step Matthew leaves unstated.
5. **TJ keeps the collective application visible.** Leaders and their people are named before the transfer to another people, addressing Beare's scope criticism.
6. **TJ introduces a second stone before using it.** The crushing image refers to the stated burden rather than requiring an installed cornerstone to become a loose object.

Taken together, these observations support a coherent reconstruction of Matthew as an abridged and theologically redirected version of a TJ-like account. They explain more than a general claim that Matthew contains editing: they identify what would have been changed, what explanatory material would have been lost, and what difficulty each loss would produce. This is the passage's positive contribution to the TJ-authenticity case.

Further research can strengthen that case by checking the earliest available TJ editions for these precise readings, comparing German wording with the English translation, and tracing the earliest scholarly discussion of each problem. Beare's commentary dates to 1981; that date alone does not establish when each observation first became available or which TJ edition first contained its corresponding wording. No claim of uniquely anticipating later scholarship is made without those checks.

The shared larger-delegation and inheritance questions remain bounded qualifications. They do not eliminate the documented correspondences, but they keep the claim focused on the difficulties TJ actually answers.

## 11. Sources and citation notes


Beare's commentary is the principal critical source. The other scholarship below provides supplementary discussion and context for the direct Beare-to-TJ comparisons. External sources were consulted on 4 October 2026. No cited scholar is represented as endorsing TJ priority unless their own work explicitly does so.


- <a id="source-b1"></a>**B1 — Francis Wright Beare (1981).** [*The Gospel according to Matthew: Translation, Introduction and Commentary*](../../additional/The%20Gospel%20according%20to%20Matthew%20-%20translation,%20introduction%20and%20commentary%20-%20Beare,%20Francis%20Wright,%201902-1986.pdf#page=218). Harper & Row, pp. 423–431; p. 422 provides adjacent context. The stone-image discussion is on p. 426, continuing the textual note begun on p. 425.

- <a id="source-l1"></a>**L1 — Local Matthew:** [Matthew 21, RSV reading edition](../../mt/mt21.htm#verse28). Directly inspected the requested verses and adjacent context. Verse 44 is marked as omitted by this edition.
- <a id="source-l2"></a>**L2 — Local TJ:** [TJ 22, current English chapter](../../tj/tj22.htm#verse24). Directly inspected verses 24–49 and adjacent context. No reliance on the archived conversion parts as the reading edition.
- <a id="source-l3"></a>**L3 — Deardorff:** [Matthew 21 comparison](../mt21.htm#Mt21.28-32). Directly inspected the four relevant comparison sections and chapter conclusion after identifying independent scholarly discussions.
- <a id="source-s1"></a>**S1 — Paul Foster (2001):** [“A Tale of Two Sons: But Which One Did the Far, Far Better Thing? A Study of Matt 21.28–32”](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/abs/tale-of-two-sons-but-which-one-did-the-far-far-better-thing-a-study-of-matt-212832/0403825A9385F3BEE3693609E01DD710), *New Testament Studies* 47, 26–37. DOI: 10.1017/S0028688501000029. Publisher abstract inspected; full article not inspected.
- <a id="source-s2"></a>**S2 — Wesley G. Olmstead (2003):** [“The text of the parable of The Two Sons”](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/matthews-trilogy-of-parables/text-of-the-parable-of-the-two-sons/ADDD5C325C9989B79A984B63CAD265EB), appendix to *Matthew's Trilogy of Parables*, 167–176. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511488122.008. Publisher excerpt inspected, including its discussion of Michaels; full appendix and Michaels's original article not inspected.
- <a id="source-s3"></a>**S3 — Craig S. Keener:** [“The Murderous Tenants (21:33–44)”](https://classic.biblegateway.com/resources/ivp-nt/Murderous-Tenants), *IVP New Testament Commentary: Matthew*. Accessible commentary inspected. Used for the owner's strategy and the tenants' inheritance scheme.
- <a id="source-s4"></a>**S4 — H. A. W. Meyer:** [Commentary on Matthew 21](https://biblehub.com/commentaries/meyer/matthew/21.htm). Relevant accessible commentary inspected, particularly the explanation of 21:31. This supplies an existing interpretation, not a claim that all scholarly disagreement is resolved.
- <a id="source-s5"></a>**S5 — James D. Hester (1992):** [“Socio-Rhetorical Criticism and the Parable of the Tenants”](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0142064X9201404502), *Journal for the Study of the New Testament* 14(45). DOI: 10.1177/0142064X9201404502. Publisher abstract inspected; full article not inspected. Used for research context, not as a direct source for all local narrative deductions.
- <a id="source-s6"></a>**S6 — Gregory R. Lanier (2016):** [Author's explanation and abstract of “A Case for the Assimilation of Matthew 21:44 to the Lukan ‘Crushing Stone’ (20:18), with Special Reference to P104”](https://glanier.wordpress.com/2016/03/29/on-papyrus-104-scribal-assimilation-and-matthew-2144/), *TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism* 21, 1–21. Author's explanation and abstract consulted; full article not consulted.
- <a id="source-s7"></a>**S7 — NET Bible editors:** [Matthew 21:43–44 textual note](https://classic.net.bible.org/passage.php?passage=Mat+21:43,44). Note inspected as a contrasting editorial judgment retaining verse 44.
- <a id="source-s8"></a>**S8 — David L. Turner (2002):** [“Matthew 21:43 and the Future of Israel”](https://fathersonthefuture.com/__static/9f84af1ef6e2cc20810f8d0c4b3e69db/turner-matthew-21-and-future-of-israel.pdf), *Bibliotheca Sacra* 159, 46–61. Relevant discussion and conclusion consulted. Used for the leadership-versus-national-replacement interpretation.