Matthew And Luke Essay

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3. Since Matthew and Luke are not modern day biographies, they do not follow the standard that we imagine. I think the explanation for the combination of similarities and differences comes from the fact that the Matthew and Luke are styled differently and also have different audiences. Since Matthew and Luke are interpreting history for a specific audience, this would explain why Matthew and Luke contains differing details. For example, Matthew tells of the Wise Men that came to visit Jesus in Matt.2:1-12 while Luke tells of shepherds that came to visit Jesus in Luke 2:8-20. Since Matthew is styled for a Jewish audience, perhaps it is considered more impactful and stunning that wise philosophers came to worship a child. On the other hand, …show more content…

So perhaps both parties did visit Jesus, but at different times. Luke 2:16 shows that the shepherds “came in a hurry and found their way to Mary and Joseph, and the baby as He lay in the manger.” In Matthew 2:11, it says “after coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him.” These two passages show that the shepherds visited Jesus as a baby while the Magi visited Jesus as a child. The point of this example is show to that the differing stories in Matthew and Luke did happen, but the authors could have decided that one story was more important than the other. In the very end, the differences from the gospels doesn’t come from the issue that one account is true and the other is false, it may come from the fact that the authors may have omitted details that they thought weren’t essential to the …show more content…

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

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