Why does Jesus ride on two donkeys?

 

The gospels are a fascinating genre of ancient writing. They are unhistorical, fallible, and contain certain oddities that cannot easily be explained away. To illustrate this point there is an interesting incident which is recorded in the gospel of Matthew. Jesus has been wandering the lands and spreading his message to his fellow Jews. He is hailed as the messiah himself who has come to restore Israel and its people and usher in the awaited kingdom of heaven. His words must be true as he has worked nothing less than miracles- he has healed the sick and cast out evil demons. But his life is drawing to a close. Jesus knows that as he approaches the ancient city of Jerusalem that this will be his last trip. Ahead awaits only misery, pain and a humiliating death nailed to a Roman cross like a common criminal.  The scene couldn’t be more dramatic as he approaches the culmination of his life’s work. The people assemble along the road to Jerusalem to cheer their saviour on his last journey. He passes them by, the lord, seated on two donkeys.

 

This is the scene as preserved and handed down to us in Matthew and the reader would be forgiven, quite rightly, for asking what Jesus Christ was doing on two donkeys. Why not simply ride one?

 

Matthew writes that Jesus has just instructed his followers thus; “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me... The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them.” (Matthew 21:1-8) It seems quite odd why a man would sit on two donkeys when he might simply have sat on one. It is a little too comical, but alas this is what Matthew is saying. So what is happening here? Did Matthew really believe that Jesus sat on two donkeys? Why?

 

The key to understanding the two donkey mystery can be found in the Old Testament itself. After Matthew tells us that Jesus mounted the donkeys he says that: “This took place to fulfil what was spoken through the prophet: ‘Say to the Daughter of Zion, See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’” Matthew is referring to the Book of Zechariah in the Jewish scriptures (see Zechariah 9:9) which was later incorporated into the accepted Christian canon. Zechariah is a prophet from the post- exile period, a time when the Jews are returning to their homelands after a long exile under the Babylonians and the book contains a prophetic vision of a new Israel in which god will return to live among his chosen people and cleanse them of their sins. Christians, ancient and present, regard the Book of Zechariah as an important text that actually predicts the arrival of Jesus. And Matthew was evidently using the text in order to foresee how the messiah would arrive in Jerusalem. So what relevance does this have to donkeys?

 

Many biblical historians with a critical eye have understood Matthew’s two donkey passage as being a misunderstanding of an ancient Hebrew rhetorical device called Parallelism. Parallelism in Hebrew literature was a way of emphasising a subject by repeating other known facts about it. To give another way of looking at it I might use a parallelism to refer to myself as thus; I am a person, a son, a son of a father. In the original prophecy in Zechariah there is reference to only one donkey but with this device the donkey is also a colt, the son of a donkey.

 

Matthew appears to have trouble understanding the intricacies of ancient Hebrew literature, perhaps because he himself is writing his gospel in Koine Greek and reading from a Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures and he mistakenly understands the passage in Zechariah as referring to two donkeys. Although the rest of the Matthew presents a very Jewish outlook it is the case that in Jesus’ time Koine Greek was the lingua franca of the eastern Roman Empire. Indeed all of the gospels in the New Testament were originally written in this international language. Evidence also suggests that even the Jews who were spread throughout the Empire used Greek as their mother tongue, read the Torah in Greek, and may have had very little familiarity with either Aramaic or Hebrew.

 

This two donkey incident is not just a simple curiosity because when we look into matters a little more thoroughly it allows us to glimpse something of Matthew’s motivation and methodology behind writing his gospel. Clearly he believed that Jesus was the long awaited messiah. And since the messiah was predicted in the texts of the Jewish scriptures, logically, in Matthew’s mind, the scriptures must therefore contain biographical information about the life of Jesus. This is not a deliberate attempt to mislead his readers because Matthew truly believes that Jesus’ life is predicted in these ancient books. So when he misreads the prophecy as having two donkeys he naturally assumes this is what actually happened to Jesus on his final approach to Jerusalem.

 

Furthermore, Matthew’s donkey confusion has weightier consequences for those who profess that the gospels are accurate eye witness accounts to the life of Jesus. Christian tradition about the authorship of the gospel attributes it to a repentant tax collector (hated then just as they are now) who joins the Jesus movement and is taken onboard as one of the all important twelve disciples. In the Christian apologetic view the gospel of Matthew is a reliable, first-hand account by one of Jesus’ closest followers. However, Matthew’s misreading of Zechariah actually shows us that he was not present at these events. It would be absurd to suggest that a man could ride on two donkeys, and indeed the other gospels only present Jesus riding on one such creature.

 

Instead this incident shows us how the gospels were written. Matthew and the other gospel writers actively turn to the Old Testament for evidence of Jesus’ life, taking bits of prophecies written centuries previous and applying them to Jesus. Indeed there are literally hundreds of references to the Old Testament scattered throughout the four gospels, evidence Christians say that Jesus did fulfil the prophecies. Evidence say the sceptics that he did not.

 

Although this is a seemingly trivial incident it does lead us to be very cautious when evaluating the gospels as historical sources. It shows us that elements of Jesus’ life were borrowed from other sources within the Jewish tradition and the authors of the gospels had specific theological points they were trying to express. From this example we can surmise that the authors are unlikely to have been present at the events they describe. But, if the gospels are biased accounts written by men who never met Jesus does that mean we can learn nothing about the historical Jesus? Not necessarily. When properly analysed through critical eyes the gospels can in fact lead us to a few solid conclusions about Jesus. And we must analyse the gospels because despite all of their evangelical and theological glosses they are practically the only sources of information about the life of the man.