of their failure to understand. In Matthew the disciples do understand. And at this point Matthew is as consistent as he seems everywhere else to be inconsistent.37 But if that is so, it is methodologically unsound to explain on the one hand his consistent and on the other his thoroughly inconsistent procedure by the same catch-phrase “comprehensive historicizing.” Instead we must ask why Matthew treats the knowledge of the disciples differently from their other qualities. The evidence for Matthew’s
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