I have skimmed the ThinkTank as well as Tektonics and I have yet to find an answer for my question. I'm sure I'll find some way to be satisfied by the time I get an answer from you, but it'd still be great to hear your response because we all know you do not give 'shallow, that's how it is' answers. I'm a firm believer in the Word of God - 100% and that is where I base my faith. Here are my apologetic questions:
In Matthew 27 I have been presented with a problem. Matthew 27:9-10 says: Then what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled "They took the thirty silver coins, the price set on him by the people of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter's field, as the Lord commanded me". Yet where is that found in Jeremiah? Was Matthew confusing Jeremiah with Zechariah? In Zechariah 11:12-13 it says "I told them, "If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it." So they paid me thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said to me, "Throw it to the potter" - the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD to the potter."
How can that be if all Scripture is God-breathed & written through the Holy Spirit? Your thoughts?
I
didn't have time to
write up an answer, so I just did the research and
posted the source
quotes for the person:
"Jewish scholars could cite some texts while simultaneously
alluding to others. Matthew here quotes Zechariah 11:12–13, but
by attributing it to Jeremiah he also alludes to a similar text
that he wishes his more skillful readers to catch (Jer 32:6–10;
cf. 19:1–4, 10–11). (The quotation is almost verbatim, and it is
unlikely that Matthew would have known the text so well yet
attributed it accidentally to the wrong author, unless he is
using a list of standard messianic proof texts instead of citing
directly from Zechariah, or he is purposely “blending” texts, as
I suggest here.) Zechariah 11:12–13 refers to the low valuation
God’s people had placed on him; they valued him at the price of
a slave (Ex 21:32)." [Keener, C. S. (1993). The IVP Bible
background commentary: New Testament (Mt 27:9–10). Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.]
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"Matthew
viewed these events as the fulfillment of a prophecy of Jeremiah.
But the prophecy Matthew quoted was primarily from Zechariah, not
Jeremiah. There is a close resemblance between Matthew 27:9–10 and
Zechariah 11:12–13. But there are also similarities between
Matthew’s words and the ideas in Jeremiah 19:1, 4, 6, 11. Why then
did Matthew refer only to Jeremiah? The solution to this problem
is probably that Matthew had both prophets in mind but only
mentioned the “major” prophet by name. (A similar situation is
found in Mark 1:2–3, where Mark mentioned the Prophet Isaiah but
quoted directly from both Isaiah and Malachi.) In addition,
another explanation is that Jeremiah, in the Babylonian Talmud
(Baba Bathra 14b), was placed first among the prophets, and his
book represented all the other prophetic books." [Barbieri, L. A.,
Jr. (1985). Matthew. (J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck, Eds.)The
Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures.
Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.]
"(x) According to Brown, Death, p. 651, ‘he most plausible [explanation] is that in 27:9–10 Matt is presenting a mixed citation with words taken both from Zech and Jer, and …he refers to that combination by one name’ Jeremiah 18–19 concerns a potter (18:2f; 19:1), a purchase (19:1), the Valley of Hinnom (where the Field of Blood is traditionally located, 19:2), ‘innocent blood’(19:4), and the renaming of a place for burial (19:6, 11); and Jer 32:6–15 tells of the purchase of a field with silver.
"We accept solution (x), for not only was it common practice to substitute part of one verse for part of another, that is, to create conflated citations, but, in early Christian circles, such citations were sometimes attributed to one rather than two sources. Mk 1:2 attributes Mal 3:1 + Isa 40:3 to Isaiah. Rom 9:27 assigns Hos 2:1 + Isa 10:22 to the same prophet. Mt 2:5– attributes to ‘the prophet’ a quotation from Mic 5:2 + 2 Sam 5:2 = 1 Chr 11:2, and 21:5 prefaces its conflation of Isa 62:11 and Zech 9:9 with ‘the word through the prophet saying’ Mt 27:9–10 is one more example of this phenomenon. That Jeremiah is named rather than Zechariah (who is never assigned a quotation in the NT despite several citations) may be due to the prominence of the former or to his reputation as the prophet of doom or to Matthew's desire to call attention to what might otherwise be missed (whereas the use of Zechariah is obvious; cf. Senior). The effect in any event is to prod us to read Zech 11:13 in the light of Jer 18:1ff. (the allegory of the potter) and 32:6–15 (Jeremiah’ purchase of a field with silver). [International Critical Commentary]
So it is appropriate that the story reaches its climax (9–10) in
a formula-quotation, allegedly from Jeremiah, about using blood
money to buy a potter’s field. The words quoted are in fact most
closely based on Zc. 11:12–13, with its mention of ‘thirty
silver coins’ (see on 26:15) which are mysteriously thrown down
in the house of the Lord ‘to the potter’. The money in the
Zechariah passage is the insulting price at which the God-given
shepherd (Messiah) is paid off by his rebellious flock (see on
26:31 for other allusions to this strange prophecy). This is
not, however, a simple quotation of a single passage but a
subtle weaving together of themes from Jeremiah and Zechariah in
the light of the events just recorded. The ‘fulfilment’ Matthew
here traces is something much richer than the simple occurrence
of a predicted event." [Carson, D. A., France, R. T., Motyer, J.
A., & Wenham, G. J. (Eds.). (1994). New Bible commentary:
21st century edition (4th ed., pp. 941–942). Leicester, England;
Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press.]
...................
"While commenting on what happened to Judas Iscariot and his blood money, Matthew introduces a reference to the prophets as part of his favorite theme of the fulfillment of Scripture. He clearly cites Jeremiah as the prophet who gave the saying, but the saying itself is from Zechariah 11:12–13. Did Matthew make a mistake?
The quotation is not entirely a quotation of Zechariah. The majority of the quotation does come from Zechariah 11:13, but there is a change from the first person singular (“I”) to the third plural (“they”). Furthermore, there is no field mentioned in Zechariah (in fact, in Matthew the NSRV follows the Syriac translation and has “the treasury” instead of “the potter” because Matthew clearly is not quoting Zechariah about the location). Finally, Zechariah does not include the phrase “as the Lord commanded me.”
Second, Jeremiah is also involved with potters (Jer 17:1–11; 19:1–13—in this second passage he purchases something from a potter). Furthermore, Jeremiah purchases a field (Jer 32:6–15), although the price is seventeen pieces of silver rather than thirty. Finally, Jeremiah 13:5 has the phrase “as the Lord commanded me” (RSV) (which also has to do with a purchase).
In the first century the Old Testament did not come as a bound volume with chapters and verses. Instead, the work was a series of scrolls. Shorter books were often put together on a single scroll. For example, Zechariah would be part of “The Book of the Twelve,” a single scroll containing all twelve minor prophets. There were paragraph divisions, but they were not numbered. It would be after A.D. 1500 before chapter and verse divisions and numbering were introduced. That means that Jesus in Matthew would have cited an Old Testament passage simply by the name of the author.
When it came to interpreting the Old Testament, it was common to bring passages together based on words they had in common (this is the second of Hillel the Elder’s seven rules of interpretation). In this case, it is clear that Jeremiah and Zechariah have several words in common, especially potter and shekel. Probably potter is the key term. As even the English reader might suspect from the information above, the quotation in Matthew is really Zechariah mixed with several phrases taken from Jeremiah. Again, we need to remember that while this may not be an acceptable way of citing Scripture today (although it is still done by accident!), it was a perfectly acceptable technique in the Palestine of Matthew’s day. (Matthew was probably written in Syria or northern Palestine; he is certainly focused on the Jewish community. Thus he reflects the usage of Scripture in such communities.)
What we have, then, is Matthew pulling together at least two texts in Jeremiah with one text in Zechariah to show that there was a type of biblical prefiguring of Judas’s actions, down to the amount of blood money and the fact that it was given to a potter and was used for the purchase of a field. While the logic of this type of exegesis is strange to the modern Western way of thinking, it would have been viewed as quite normal in Matthew’s time. Likewise it was normal for Matthew to cite the more important prophet, Jeremiah, despite the fact that most of his material came from Zechariah. Thus judged by first-century standards, Matthew is quite accurate and acceptable in what he does." [Kaiser, W. C., Jr., Davids, P. H., Bruce, F. F., & Brauch, M. T. (1996). Hard sayings of the Bible (pp. 399–400). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity.]