No other text in Matthew's Gospel has resisted assimilation into proposed interpretive frameworks for the book as a whole as stubbornly as 23:2-7. These few verses appear to present ideas that flagrantly contradict what is said elsewhere in the Gospel, and, despite numerous attempts at resolution, many scholars have come to regard this passage as a vagrant pericope that simply cannot be reconciled with the theology of the overall work. (1) If that is the case, so be it! Perhaps the deconstructing of what Wolfgang Iser calls "consistency building" (2) is necessary for scholarship to continue with integrity in a postmodern age. But let us not give up too soon. In this article I beg the patience of my colleagues to receive yet one more possible solution to the crux interpretum of Matt 23:2-7. First, I shall describe what I call the "apparent reading" for this text, that is, the pervasive interpretation that most modern readers seem to be inclined to give the passage. Next, I will describe two problems with this reading--the main problem that has prompted many scholars to interpret the text differently and an additional problem that, while largely unnoticed, makes the apparent reading even less acceptable. Then I will describe the major proposals that have been offered to resolve this exegetical dilemma and will indicate why none of these has managed to do so. Finally, I will propose a new solution, one that is remarkably simple and yet has the potential for resolving the interpretive problems more satisfactorily than any other alternative reading.
