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Gospel of Matthew

Book of the New Testament

  • 15 min read
  • 5 chapters

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The gospel reflects conflicts between Jewish Christians and other Jews, particularly with its criticism of the scribes and Pharisees, presenting the view that the Kingdom of Heaven has been taken away from them and given to the church. It emphasizes Jesus’s role as the Son of David, Son of Man, and Son of God, and frames his teachings, miracles, and parables to reflect both Jewish law and the Christian church. It culminates in the Passion, Resurrection, and Great Commission, having been structured around alternating narratives and discourses.

The gospel was written in the last quarter of the first century anonymously by a Jewish author who was familiar with legal aspects of scripture and the Hebrew language. Papias of Hierapolis, a companion of the Elder and the daughters of Philip, provides the first attribution to Matthew. The text may incorporate a source from Matthew, and traditional authorship still has conservative defenders. The gospel was highly popular among early Christians; scholars increasingly contend that it was used by both Luke and John. Most scholars believe that Matthew used Mark and the Q source, but a growing number of scholars are skeptical of Q and advocate for the Farrer hypothesis or Matthean Posteriority instead.

The Synoptics follow Mark closely compared to other ancient historians’ usage of sources, though the parallels and variations are typical of ancient historical biographies. The text is the product of the second generation of the Christian movement, although it draws on the memory of the first generation of the disciples of Jesus.

Composition

Author and date

Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD), who had met the Elder and the daughters of Philip the Evangelist, attributed the gospel to Matthew, an apostle and companion of Jesus. Most scholars view it as an anonymous composition, as was common for biographies, such as those of Plutarch and Suetonius which were originally anonymous, though the traditional authorship "still has its defenders." It is possible that this gospel incorporates a prior source by Matthew. In any case, it was attributed to Matthew very early and was highly popular in the early church. Most contemporary scholars argue that the Gospel of John, which is traditionally attributed to the Beloved Disciple, knew and used the Synoptic Gospels, and a growing number of scholars argue that the Gospel of Luke used Matthew as well. Most scholars agree from both external attributions and the familiarity with the Hebrew language, the Torah, and the technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time, that the author was a Jew who stood on the margin between traditional and non-traditional Jewish values. Other scholars, such as N. T. Wright and John Wenham, argue that it is problematic to date this gospel to the late first century, maintaining that it was composed in the 40s–50s CE. According to Bas van Os, it was likely written within the lifetime of various eyewitnesses that include Jesus's own family through the end of the first century;] Markus Bockmuehi finds this structure of lifetime memory in various early Christian traditions.

The Gospel of Mark is the first gospel to be composed and was used by the others. The author of Matthew emphasizes Jesus's place in the Jewish tradition and includes details not found in Mark. Luke and Matthew treat their sources more conservatively than other ancient historians like Diodorus Siculus, though the parallels and variations of the Synoptics are typical of ancient historical biographies.

This does not necessarily show a linear approach of continual development and addition alone, as some of the words of Paul the Apostle are more similar to Matthew's details. Matthew could have depended on Mark through oral tradition, or used memorisation rather than simply copying. Alan Kirk praises Matthew for his "scribal memory competence" and "high esteem for and careful handling of both Mark and Q", which makes dubious the claims that the latter two works are significantly different in terms of theology or historical reliability.

Matthew has 600 verses in common with Mark, which is a book of only 661 verses. There are approximately 220 verses shared by Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark. While the Two-source hypothesis considers this to be drawn from a hypothetical Q source, a growing number of scholars support alternative hypotheses, such as the Farrer hypothesis and the Matthean Posteriority hypothesis, which argue for Luke's direct usage of Matthew and Matthew's dependence on Luke, respectively, and dispense with Q, and a unified M source is largely rejected by scholarship today. Michael Goulder argued that non-Markan material in Matthew were mostly authorial creations, but modern advocates of the Farrer hypothesis have abandoned this idea. The author also had the Greek scriptures at his disposal, both as book-scrolls (Greek translations of Isaiah, the Psalms etc.), "testimony collections", and the oral stories of his community. Many of the quotations of the scriptures in Matthew are more closely matched with the Masoretic, leading many scholars to believe that the author could understand Hebrew.

Setting

Most scholars view the gospel of Matthew as a work of the second generation of Christians, though it draws on the memory of the first generation of Jesus's disciples. For these early Christians the defining event was the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD in the course of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 AD); from this point on, what had begun with Jesus of Nazareth as a Jewish messianic movement became an increasingly gentile phenomenon which would evolve in time into a separate religion. Other scholars hold that the historical Jesus had already predicted that the Jerusalem Temple would be destroyed. The author appears to have written for a community of Greek-speaking Jewish Christians located probably in Syria; Antioch, the largest city in Roman Syria and the third largest city in the empire, is often proposed. Alternatively, towns in Galilee such as Sepphoris or Tiberias, or adjacent regions such as Transjordan, could also fit.

The community to which Matthew belonged, like many 1st-century Christians, was still part of the larger Jewish community. The relationship of Matthew to this wider world of Judaism remains a subject of study and contention, the principal question being to what extent, if any, Matthew's community had cut itself off from its Jewish roots. It is evident from the gospel that there was conflict between Matthew's group and other Jewish groups, and it is generally agreed that the root of the conflict was the Matthew community's belief in Jesus as the Messiah and authoritative interpreter of the law, as one risen from the dead and uniquely endowed with divine authority.

The divinity of Jesus was a major issue for the Matthean community, the crucial element separating the early Christians from their Jewish neighbors; while Mark begins with Jesus's baptism and temptations, Matthew goes back to Jesus's origins, showing him as the Son of God from his birth, the supposed fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The title Son of David, used exclusively in relation to miracles, identifies Jesus as the healing and miracle-working Messiah sent to Israel alone; the reason for disregarding the gentiles and Samaritans is not due to prejudice but the immediate needs of God’s people: Israel. As Son of Man he will return to judge the world, an expectation which his disciples recognize but of which his enemies are unaware. As Son of God, God is revealing himself through his son, and Jesus proving his sonship through his obedience and example.

Unlike Mark, Matthew never bothers to explain Jewish customs, since his intended audience was a Jewish one; unlike Luke, who traces Jesus's ancestry back to Adam, father of the human race, he traces it only to Abraham, father of the Jews. Writing from within a Jewish-Christian community growing distant from other Jews and becoming increasingly gentile in its membership and outlook, Matthew put down in his gospel his vision "of an assembly or church in which both Jew and Gentile would flourish together".

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