Gospel According to Matthew

I

Introduction

Gospel According to Matthew, first book of the New Testament.

II

Authorship

Early Christian writers believed this book to be the earliest of the synoptic Gospels (hence its position at the beginning of the New Testament) and attributed it to Saint Matthew, one of the 12 apostles. They believed that he wrote the Gospel in Palestine, just prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. Although this opinion is still held by some, most scholars consider the Gospel According to Mark the earliest Gospel. They believe, on the basis of both external and internal evidence, that the author of Matthew used Mark as one of his two major sources and a hypothetical collection of Jesus' sayings called Q (from Quelle, German for “source”) as the second. They doubt, moreover, that the apostle Matthew wrote the book. Whoever the actual author was, he is identified as a Jew partly because his Gospel contains numerous references to Jewish Scripture, law, and ways of life that presuppose the reader's familiarity with them, and partly because other evidence suggests that he wrote chiefly for Christians of Jewish origin. The place where the Gospel was written is not definitely known. Some authorities think it was Palestine; others favor another early Christian center, possibly the city of Antioch in Syria. The commonly accepted time of composition is sometime after 70, perhaps about 80.

III

Content

The Gospel of Matthew is built around five discourses of Jesus Christ. Each of the five discourses is introduced by a narrative concerning deeds of Jesus. These introductory sections serve as a preparation for the discourses and are interpreted by them. The group of five discourses as a whole is preceded by an introductory narrative and followed by two culminating narratives. The first of these final narratives concerns the passion, and the second, Jesus' resurrection. Thus Matthew is made up of eight fairly distinct sections.

The introductory narrative (chapters 1-2) traces the genealogy of Jesus from the Hebrew patriarch Abraham and the Hebrew king David and includes accounts of Jesus' birth and infancy (1:18-2:23). Well-known stories in this section unique to Matthew include the visit of the Magi, the “wise men from the East” (2:1); the flight into Egypt by Joseph and Mary with the infant Jesus to escape the massacre of the male children by Herod the Great, king of Judea; and their return from Egypt after Herod's death.

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The five narrative-discourse sections, each marked at its conclusion by the formula “... when Jesus finished these sayings,” are drawn largely from Mark and Q. The background of the first four narrative discourses is Galilee; Jerusalem is the setting for the fifth.

A

First Narrative Discourse

The first narrative (chapters 3-4) tells of Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist, his temptation in the desert, and the beginning of his public ministry. It is followed by the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), in which Jesus speaks of his coming to fulfill “the law” and “the prophets” (5:17) and instructs the multitude “as one who has authority” (7:29). Included in the sermon are the Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer (6:9-13).

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