Footnote 2 – The Great Gulf Between Scholars and the Pew

Zechariah foretells that a king will arise for Jerusalem triumphant “riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” This is an example of parallelism, in which the repetition of an idea in different words is analogous to a musical variation on a theme. There is only one animal, however. The author of Matthew misread this, so he has Jesus entering Jerusalem riding on two animals.