Jesus the Jewish Messiah:

The Gospel according to Matthew  

Much of the glory that the Gospel of Mark did not receive, as the original prototype gospel, was given to the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew was given pride of place as the first gospel, and the first book, in the New Testament, an honor which Matthew did not deserve. St. Augustine judged that Mark was Matthew's pedisequus (horse boy, squire) and breviator (abbreviator), and when Augustine spoke, Christianity listened. After all, unlike Mark, Matthew had fabulous Christmas stories and dramatic Easter stories, and Jesus had a lot of beautiful things to say, like the sermon on the mount, including the Lord's prayer, the golden rule, and the beatitudes.

The document known today as the Gospel of Matthew was supposed to have been written by Jesus' personal apostolic secretary, Levi, the educated, literate tax collector, but there is confusion among the Gospels about the name of this tax collector (click here and here). If Matthew was an eyewitness to Jesus--one of his twelve original apostles even--and if Mark was only a second-hand witness, then why would Matthew have to copy his narrative information from Mark? And if Mark was Matthew's abbreviator, why would Mark cut out Matthew's Christmas and Easter stories, eliminate all of Jesus' most beautiful and inspiring sayings listed above, and then go through and systematically corrupt Matthew's literary style and demote Jesus to being a sinful human who needed a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of his sins? Obviously these are vexing questions, and there are more, but the four-source hypothesis seems to answer most of them.

Read Carefully and Consider the Implications for our study:

• What to Expect, p. 101
  

• Pages 101-102, especially the part on redaction criticism,
  and browse my web pages on how Matthew Modifies Mark
  to present a different Jesus for dogmatic, doctrinal purposes

Major Themes: , pp. 76-89

• The Importance of Beginnings (pp. 102-108, Boxes 8.1, 8.2)
   

  • The Genealogy of Jesus in Matt 1; compare to Luke's genealogy (Full Texts)
    p1/P.Oxyrhynchus 2 verso - recto (recto line 7 ex hes)
     

    • Jesus identified as "son of David, son of Abraham":
      a Roman would not have known either of these personalities,
      so Matt was probably written to the Jews and Jewish-Christians,

    • Read Box 8.1 on Matt's scheme of 14 generations;
      actually there are 3 sets of 14 making a total of 42 generations,
          or 6 sets of 7 generations,
      making Jesus the first of the "sabbath" generation,
      the beginning of the Messianic generation

    • Read Box 8.1 on the Women in Matt's Genealogy;
      why does Matt mention only 4 of the 42 female ancestors of Jesus,
      and why are those 4 all ones who were involved in scandalous sexual situations,
      and then why is Mary the 5th woman mentioned?

    • See also how Matt softens Mark's reference to Jesus as the "Son of Mary."
       

  • The Birth of the Messiah;
     

    • focus on Matt's use of "fulfillment citations" in an attempt to prove
      that Jesus was the Messiah foretold in the Hebrew scriptures

    • consider the hypothesis that Matt's Gospel is a new Pentateuch in which

      • Jesus is the new Moses,

      • the 12 apostles the new 12 patriarchs of the tribes of Israel,

      • the sermon on the mount the new Law from Mt. Sinai
        (Luke's version occurs on a plain)

    • only in Matthew do Joseph, Mary, and Jesus flee to Egypt to escape Herod
      so that God can call his son out of Egypt (Matt 2:15 misrepresents Hosea 11:1)
      
      Is Matthew an early Christian writer who would fabricate an event in Jesus' life
      just to present Jesus as fulfilling a prophecy in the Old Testament?
       

  • Did Matthew Invent the Virginity of Mary?
     

    • Matthew's Nativity Story: Matt 1:18-25
      (note the fulfillment citation in 1:22-23)
       

    • Was Mary a Virgin only before giving birth to Jesus? Matt 1:24-25
      And did medieval monk/scribes change "a son" to "her firstborn son"?
       

    • The Text of Matt 1:23 reads "PARQENOS"

      “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son . . ."
      
      Matthew is quoting Isaiah 7:14 (characteristically out of context)
          but he is not quoting from the Hebrew text of Isaiah;
          he is quoting from the IIBCE Greek translation of Isaiah:
              the Septuagint text of Isaiah 7:14 cf. NETS
      
          Greek "parthenos" does mean "virgin"
          but the word in the original Hebrew text of Isaiah is "almah"
          which does not mean "virgin" but "young woman"
           (the Hebrew word for "virgin" is "bethulah").

          Christians and Jews have been arguing over this passage for centuries,
          even accusing each other of falsifying the text of Isaiah to support their position.
          But until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940's,
          there were no Hebrew copies of Isaiah dating before the 9th century CE.
          The Christians had the great 4th century CE codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus,
          but there was no way for either side to really prove their case.

          Among the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls to be published photographically
          was the "Great Isaiah Scroll," a complete copy of the book of Isaiah
          dating to the 2nd century BCE, well before the arrival of Christianity.

          And the Great Isaiah Scroll at column 6 reads . . . "almah" or "bethulah"?
              see also The Israel Museum
       

• Jesus and his Forerunner:
   

  • Review how Matthew changes the Baptism story of his source Mark,
    and consider his possible motivation for doing so
     

• The Portrayal of Jesus:
   

  • Matthew created the Sermon on the Mount
    by collecting together Sayings of Jesus from Q;
    Luke has these sayings scattered throughout his Gospel;
    is the Sermon on the Mount Matthew's Book of Exodus?
     

  • Matthew makes the anti-Law historical Jesus pro-Law
     

  • Matthew makes his Jesus more powerful than Mark's
     

  • Matthew Reverses Mark's Messianic Secret
     

• Jesus Rejected by the Jewish Leaders
   

  • Although Matt is the most Jewish of the NT Gospels,
    paradoxically it is the most anti-Jewish of all the Gospels as well;
    see Matt 27:22-25 (found only in Matthew)
    where Pilate washes his hands of Jesus' innocent blood
    and the Jews cry out "his blood be on us and our children."
     

• Who was Matthew?
  Or rather, who was the anonymous author
  of the book known as the Gospel of Matthew?
   

  • Would Jesus have wanted to destroy the Jerusalem Temple
    only to set up a new "temple," the Christian Church?
    Did Jesus ever even say the word "church"?
    Or is this just another of many examples of Matthew
    putting his own words into Jesus' mouth to promote his own agenda?

Learn the Key Terms on p. 120 with special reference to their original context in the chapter