User:Matt

The Gospel of Matthew (literally: according to Matthew, Greek: Κατα Μαθθαιον ) is one of the four Gospel accounts of the New Testament. The Gospel accounts are traditionally printed with Matthew first, followed in order by Mark, Luke and John.

Overview

For convenience, the book can be divided into its four structurally distinct sections, each of which is autonomous, without transitional passages

1. Containing the genealogy, the birth, and the infancy of Jesus .
2. The discourses and actions of John the Baptist preparatory to Christ's public ministry (3; 4:11).
3. The discourses and actions of Christ in Galilee (4:12-20:16).
4. The sufferings, death and Resurrection of Jesus (20:17-28).

The one aim pervading the book is to show that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah — he "of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write" — and that in him the ancient prophecies had their fulfilment. This book is full of allusions to passages of the Old Testament in which Christ is supposedly predicted and foreshadowed. This Gospel contains no fewer than sixty-five references to the Old Testament, forty-three of these being direct verbal citations, thus greatly outnumbering those found in the other Gospels. The main feature of this Gospel may be expressed in the motto, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."

This Gospel sets forth a view of Jesus as Christ, and portrays him as an heir to King David's throne.

The cast of thought and the forms of expression employed by the writer show that this Gospel was written for Jewish Christianity of Judea.

Some critics charge that some of the passages in this book are anti-Semitic, and that these passages have shaped the way that many Christians viewed Jews, especially in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the Old Testament prophets had strong words to the Jews in terms of correction. A majority of the phrases spoken by Jesus in this gospel were worded against the major Jewish parties of the time, primarily citing them for hypocrisy and a misunderstanding of the Jewish religion. Actually, a radical Jewish sect was transforming itself into a new religion, which grew into Christianity.

Date of Gospel

There is little in the gospel itself to indicate the date of its composition. Some conservative scholars argue that it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem (Matthew 24), probably between the years A.D. 60 and 65, but others would date it in the 70s, even as late as A.D. 85.

In regards to most recent scholarship, John Wenham is considered to be one of the more notable defenders of an early date for the gospel of Matthew. In addition, Carsten Peter Thiede in Eyewitness to Jesus, argued for the redating the Magdalen papyrus and the Gospel of Matthew to before A.D. 70. His writings have been hotly contested.

Authorship

The authorship of this Gospel is traditionally ascribed to St Matthew the Evangelist, a tax-collector who became an apostle of Jesus. However, most modern scholars are content to let it remain anonymous.

The relation of the gospels to one another is the subject of some debate. Most modern scholars believe that Matthew borrowed from Mark and the hypothetical Q document, but some scholars believe that Matthew was written first and that Mark borrowed from Matthew (see: Augustinian hypothesis). Out of a total of 1071 verses, Matthew has 387 in common with Mark and the Gospel of Luke, 130 with Mark, 184 with Luke; only 387 being peculiar to itself.

Like the authors of the other gospels, the author of Matthew wrote this book according to his own plans and aims and from his own point of view, while at the same time borrowing from other sources. According to the two-source hypothesis (the most commonly accepted solution to the synoptic problem), Matthew borrowed from both Gospel of Mark and a hypothetical sayings collection, known by scholars as Q document (for the German Quelle, meaning "source").

In The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (published in 1924), Burnett Hillman Streeter argued that a third source, referred to as M and also hypothetical, lies behind the material in Matthew that has no parallel in Mark or Luke. Through the remainder of the 20th century there were various challenges and refinements of Streeter's hypothesis. For example, in his 1953 book The Gospel Before Mark Pierson Parker posited an early version of Matthew (proto-Matthew) as the primary source of both Matthew and Mark, and Q source used by Matthew.

A Hebrew Gospel of Matthew?

There are numerous testimonies, starting from Papias and Irenaeus, that Matthew originally wrote in the Hebrew tongue, which could also refer to Aramaic. The sixteenth century Erasmus was the first to express doubts on the subject of an original Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew: "It does not seem probable to me that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, since no one testifies that he has seen any trace of such a volume." Here Erasmus distinguishes between a Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew and the lost apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews and Gospel of the Nazoraeans, from which patristic writers do quote. The vast majority of contemporary scholars, based on analysis of the Greek of canonical Gospel of Matthew and use of sources such as the Greek Gospel of Mark, conclude that the book we have today was written originally in Greek and is not a translation from Hebrew or Aramaic (per Rev. Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, p. 210). If they are correct, then writers such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Jerome referred to a document or documents distinct from the present Gospel of Matthew, as confirmed by the fact that Nicephorus lists the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of the Hebrews separately in his Stichometry. All of the aforementioned texts are distinct from the Gospel of the Ebionites, Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, and Shem-Tov Matthew.

An alternative to this conclusion is at Aramaic primacy. Ron Miller, of Lake Forest College, retranslated and wrote an extensive commentary on Matthew, The Hidden Gospel of Matthew: Annotated and Explained (2004).

Theology of canonical Matthew

According to R.T. France: "Matthew's gospel, more clearly than the others, presents the view of Jesus as himself the true Israel, and of those who have reponded to his mission as the true remnant of the people of God...To be the true people of God is thus no longer a matter of nationality but of relationship to Jesus." (New Bible Commentry, Inter Varsity Pres)

Of note is the phrase "Kingdom of Heaven" used so often in the gospel of Matthew, as opposed to the phrase "Kingdom of God" oftentimes used in the other gospels. It is speculated that this indicates that this particular Gospel was written to a primarily Jewish audience, as many Jewish people of the time felt the name of God was too holy to be written. The gospel, or "good news", that the Jewish Messiah had come at long last, also included the new idea that citizenship in Heaven is what would liberate the Jewish people from the unwanted rulership of pagan Rome. Jesus had said, "My kingdom is not of this world, or else my followers would be fighting", and "The kingdom of Heaven is within you", which apparently means that your soul is hidden in Heaven, and Heaven is in your soul, which contains the Holy Spirit. And the apostle Paul said, "Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?" (letter to the Corinthians)