Who wrote the Gospel of Matthew?
The Gospel of Matthew is anonymous: there is no internal, direct evidence for authorship. Sometime early in the second-century the Gospel of Matthew was designated as such. (This at least offers prima facie evidence that the apostle Matthew wrote this work.) As far as internal, indirect evidence is concerned, three data should be noted. It suggests that he was a Jew, because a gentile would tend not to be interested in such teaching tradition. It suggests that the author was a Jew, since a Jew would be concerned to understand Jesus as such. It is possible that this was an attempt at self-depreciating sort of self-identification on the part of the author.
For whom was the Gospel of Matthew written?
From the data covered when considering the question of the authorship of the Gospel of Matthew, who do you think the intended readers were?
Internal, indirect evidence for the intended readership of the Gospel of Matthew is the concern of the author to present the fulfillment nature of Jesus' ministry. This implies that the intended readers were Jews. In addition, much of the teaching material unique to the Gospel of Matthew is only fully understandable by and of interest to a Jewish readership:
That the author wrote for a Jewish readership is confirmed, if the external, direct evidence that Matthew wrote a gospel in Hebrew/Aramaic for Jews is correct and if this original text has some connection to the canonical Gospel of Matthew, written in Greek.
When was the Gospel of Matthew written?
There is no internal, direct evidence for the date of the composition of the Gospel of Matthew. There is, however, a piece of internal, indirect evidence to consider. The Gospel of Matthew transmits several sayings of Jesus that concern the role of the Temple in the life of the Jewish people (Matt 5:23-24; 12:5-7; 17:24-27; 23:16-22). On the assumption that the author would not include sayings of Jesus that were not longer relevant to his readers, it might be argued that the Gospel of Matthew was written before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Do you find this convincing?
Where was the Gospel of Matthew written?
Based on what you know so far, what do you conclude about the place of the composition of the gospel of Matthew?
The Gospel of Matthew was probably written in or near Palestine, where there were many Jewish believers.
This work is also said to be anonymous, and believed to have been produced in Syria within a large Jewish and Jewish-Christian community. It is apparent from a number of shared accounts, and overlapping stories of Jesus that the author of Matthew’s Gospel used Mark as a source. Although many of the stories are expanded upon, and carry different connotations, the same basic stories are found in all of the synoptic gospels, and because Mark was the first written, scholars assume it was a source used by both Matthew and Luke. It should also be noted that many of Jesus’ teachings in Matthew were not found in Mark. This led scholars to search for a second source, which resulted in the Q document. Although not available as a feasible document, Q designates a compilation of Jesus’ parables and sayings from about 50 to 70 CE, which are present in Matthew (Harris p.156). Throughout the gospel, Matthew uses formula quotations, meaning he quotes from the Old Testament. This strong relationship with the Hebrew Bible helps scholars determine that Matthew wanted to emphasize his Jewish position. This is important because his interpretations of Jesus throughout the gospel are not agreed upon by all Jews, in fact only a small fraction. Although it is obvious to the readers than John and Matthew carry very different stories of Jesus’ life, it is interesting to
The study of the Gospel of John can be viewed as distinct and separate from the study of any of the previous three synoptic gospels. The Fourth Gospel contains language and conceptions so distinct from the synoptics that scholars are often faced with the question of its historical origins. Originally, scholars believed the main source for the Gospel of John to be Jewish wisdom literature, Philo, the Hermetic books and the Mandaean writings, leading to the idea that John was the most Greek of the Gospels. However, with the discovery of the scrolls, scholars were now faced with source materials, remarkably similar to the concepts and language found in John, illuminating the literature as not only Jewish but Palestinian in origin. The discovery of the manuscripts opened up an entirely new interpretation of the gospel of John and a progressive understanding of its proper place within biblical scripture.
S: Well, as followers of Jesus we should fulfill the Jewish law; we should even take it as far and fulfill it better than the Pharisees and scribes. In my opinion, the Gospel of Matthew does not tell to abandon the Jewish law; it in fact, says the opposite. Jesus fulfills this Law and prophecy!
Although the New Testament is the main source of information regarding Jesus’ life, Jews often disregard it as a reliable source of information. It was not written until two to three generations after Jesus, hence it cannot be considered a primary source. Also, from a Jewish perspective, the aim of the Gospels is not to give an accurate account of Jesus’ life and teachings; the Gospels served as missionary documents containing accounts recorded by biased evangelists. They reflect the aims of the church rather than actual facts, and their writers were more concerned with the advancement of Christianity than the transmission of factual historical information. For these reasons, it is impossible to separate the historical Jesus from the divine Christ presented in the Gospels, and Judaism regards the Gospels as unreliable and irrational.
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the origin of nearly everything the Christian Church teaches about Jesus. The Gospels, in turn, serve as the scale or test of truth and authenticity of everything the church teaches about Jesus. It is said that the Gospels are the link between Jesus of Nazareth and the people of every age throughout history who have claimed to be his followers. Although the Gospels teach us about Jesus’ life they may not provide concrete evidence that what they speak of is true there are several other sources.
The Gospel of Matthew exhibits the plan of atonement and salvation for all people and the beginning of a new era. The Kingdom has come. Matthew’s Gospel is eschatological. Through the direct use of and allusions to the Hebrew scriptures, as well as fulfillment citations Matthew clearly connects Jesus’ life and ministry with Israel’s traditions and promised history.4...
Compare and contrast the birth narratives in the Gospel of Matthew and that of the Gospel of Luke.
There are four Gospels in the new testament; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each one writing his perspective story about Jesus, his teachings, his works, his sacrifice, and his resurrection. At the same time, they each seem to elaborate on specific elements of Jesus. The gospel of Matthew writes about the bloodline, the ancestors of Jesus. The gospel of Mark, writes about Jesus as a servant to God. The gospel of Luke, writes about Jesus being the son of a human. The gospel of John, writes about Jesus being the son of God. Having an understanding on the focus of each gospel will help the reader know Jesus and his works better. However, this essay will concentrate on “The Gospel According to Mark,” written in Bruce Manning Metzger, translator of, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version with The Apocrypha (p. 1791). The gospel of Mark is documentation of
Matthew In the Bible’s New Testaments, the book of Matthew is of Gospels genre. In the Old Testament, God appointed the people who we know as prophets. They were the ones to describe Jesus life and work. What they wrote, those things did happen during Jesus life on earth.
Matthew characterizes Jesus as the prophesized Messiah that has finally arrived. Every time a significant event, Matthew highlights that these events fulfill a certain specific prophecy. One example is the revelation that the power of the Holy Spirit caused the Virgin Mary to conceive. Matthew 1:22-23 says, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.” Later on, Matthew 2:18 quotes a prophecy in Jeremiah that foretold the Herod’s actions, and Matthew again quotes another prophecy in Matthew 2:15 where “the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘out of Egypt I called my son.’” This was when Joseph, Mary, and Jesus had fled to Egypt to avoid the wrath of Herod. Other important details that fulfilled prophecies are Joseph’s lineage of the House of David and Jesus’ childhood in Nazareth (which makes him a Nazarene). (Matt. 2:23) The very end picture that Matthew intends to portray is that Jesus fulfills so many specific prophecies in the Old Testament, that surely, without a doubt, Jesus was the Messiah the Jews were waiting
Matthew was one of the first twelve disciples of Jesus (Matthew 9:1; 10:1-4) and therefore an eye-witness; he records more of Jesus' teaching concerning God's heavenly kingdom than the other writers, for example the entire Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew directed this passage toward the Matthean reader for it supplies instruction and a sense of warning to those who wish to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. “Matthew uses tension and surprise, in both form and content, to address this situation, while affirming that Jesus Christ, “God is with us,” is the defining figure around which the community’s self-understanding, imagination, and social relations are to be formed” (Saunders 871). By presenting the text in the form of a parable, the message of God’s will is omitted in a historical and cultural context that enables society to comprehend the meaning behind the words chosen by Matthew.
It was written to the Gentiles. We see in Mark 6, that they sent people 2 by 2’s to spread the good news of Jesus. One may wonder the reason for this. In Greek and Jewish cultures, this was actually very customary, because it verified the message or testimony they were bringing to the people. The audience’s commitment here is somewhat undetermined, but their decision to follow Christ says a lot about how they feel about His work.
Another common theme is that the gospel should be spoken to believers and non-believers alike. Luke’s gospel was written to heighten the faith of believers and to give answers to non-believers. There were Jewish and Gentile followers of Christ, and it was spoken that the faith of God is available to both. Matthew’s audience is primarily the Jew who is familiar with the Old Testament. At many points in Jesus’s ministry, he healed people who were outcasts, as well as the poor and the sick. He provided everyone an invitation to join Him since The Kingdom of God does not belong to one particular ethnic group, nation or
The reason that the Gospel of Matthew is in the first place among the four Gospels is due to the early church tradition that Matthew was the earliest one who recorded Lord’s word and Jesus stories. In the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo claimed that "the canonical order of the four Gospels was the chronological order." In the late-eighteenth century, J. J. Griesbach stated that The Gospel of Mark was a short version of the combination of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. In the nineteenth century, German scholars concluded that the Gospel of Matthew was preceded by the Gospel of Mark and Matthew used the Gospel of Mark as his primary source. No matter which theory that most New Testament scholars accept, Matthew did not simply copy sources from other Gospels, but also included his own ideas and quoted verses from the Old Testament. So the question of readers should rise is "How strong relationship did the Gospel of Matthew have with the Old Testament?" or "How accurately did Matthew use the Old Testament?