Hi everyone. Welcome to logical Bible study
podcast. This is a special bonus episode
where I want to introduce you to the gospel of Matthew.
That's my favorite gospel and it's the gospel that you're
about to hear a lot of in the liturgical year.
So, over the next couple of months, we're going to be moving
systematically through that gospel.
So it's worth diving into the background of the Gospel to find
out who the author was what his intentions are and things.
Like that, that will help us really understand why he writes
the way that he does in comparison to the other gospels.
So firstly, when will you hear the gospel of Matthew the First
Gospel during the lectionary on weekdays?
It's red semi continuously in the middle part of the year.
So from ordinary time, week 10, right up until ordinary time
week 21. And usually, depending on when
Easter is in that year, that means from around June to
August, From Monday, through Saturday Saturday every week,
you will hear from the gospel of Matthew.
So on ordinary time week 10 Monday, it starts at Matthew
Chapter 5 and then it finishes with chapter 25 ordinary time
week 21 Saturday. During the weekdays, it goes
through most of each of those chapters.
Although, it leaves out a little bit occasionally and the first
four chapters of the Book of Matthew usually get to here
around Christmas. And then the last few chapters
of the Book of Matthew usually get to here around Easter.
You'll all see here some of it during Lent and Advent.
So there's bits of Matthew scattered all throughout the
year. On Sundays, you'll hear a lot of
the Gospel of Matthew, if it's year a of the liturgical cycle.
So, here I is the gospel of Matthew, and if you listen, if
you only go to mass on Sundays and that's your only exposure to
the gospel of Matthew during year a, you will hear 55.5% of
the Gospel by just going to Sunday mass in, yay.
So just over half If you go to all the weekday masses as well
as the weekend Messes in year, a by the end, you would have heard
85.5% of the Gospel of Matthew. So it's a big gospel, one of the
largest, but you do get to hear most of it if you go to mass
every single day, so who's the author of The Gospel of Matthew?
The early church was unanimous that the author is the Apostle
Matthew or sometimes called Levi.
He is the tax. Up, who Jesus calls from being a
tax collector to becoming an apostle.
This view that Matthew the tax collector is the author of The
Gospel was uncontested for most of Christian history.
Pretty much everyone agreed. It was Matthew.
Now in recent centuries, particularly the last 200 years.
Some Scholars have started to doubt this idea, that it was
actually the Apostle Matthew. And the reason for that is
because of the assumption that the gospel of Mark was written
first most Scholars. Believe Mark was written first
but we know that Mark was not an apostle and we know that there's
a lot of similarities between Marx writing in Matthews
writing. So if Mark wrote first and he's
not an apostle and then Matthew at a copy, departs from the
gospel of Mark, why would the Apostle Matthew do that?
He would know that Mark is not an apostle.
Why would the Apostle Matthew feel that it's necessary to copy
from someone who's not an eyewitness?
Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
Now obviously that depends on whether it really is true if the
gospel of Mark was written first.
And that's certainly not settled.
But even if that is true, there is an explanation for this.
It could be that Matthew borrowed from Mark, even though
he knew that Mark was not an eyewitness because he would have
known that Mark is primary source for his gospel, was
Peter, the Apostle? And that appears to be the case.
Mark, wrote down the things he heard from Simon, Peter and
Matthew certainly Simon, Peter and he trusted him, and he held
him in high regard, based on the things that Matthew himself says
in his gospel about Peter. So there is a solution there.
Certainly it was written by a Jewish Christian of some sort
and we know that because of three main reasons.
If you look at his gospel, the author seems to have known
Hebrew, many of the quotations from the Old Testament from the
Hebrew version, rather than the common Greek Septuagint version.
Also, he has a keen interest in showing how Jesus fulfills Old
Testament Prophecies of the Messiah.
There's almost 200 allusions to the Old Testament in the gospel
of Matthew. Also, the author is quiet.
Millia with Jewish rituals and customs.
All of this would fit. What we know of Matthew here was
a Jewish Christian and he was a tax official who would have been
familiar with many languages. So although it doesn't prove
that it's Matthew or the data seems to fit with identifying
the author as Matthew. What about the date of the
Gospel of Matthew? That's a little harder to work
out the internal evidence suggests that the gospel was
written before the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.
So there's two pieces of evidence that would give it this
early date. So firstly, Jesus in The Gospel
of Matthew spends quite a bit of time, predicting the destruction
of the temple, particularly towards the end of the Gospel.
So in the gospel Jesus is predicting that the temple is
going to be destroyed but then Matthew doesn't add an editorial
comment along along the lines of and Jesus predictions were
fulfilled. So that would suggest that
Matthew. We're still waiting for them to
be fulfilled at the time that he was writing.
And we all we do know that later in his Full, there are certain
things where Matthew does make it at Oriole comments and he
says things, like and this rumor has continued until this day.
So that's in chapter 27, but he doesn't do that.
He doesn't make some sort of editorial, closing, comment
about the Prophecies of the destruction of the temple.
So that would suggest it hadn't happened yet.
When Matthew was writing. Also there's a significant
emphasis on the Sadducees in the gospel of Matthew, but after the
destruction of the temple in 90 ad the Sadducees, no longer
existed. So there wouldn't be a point of
talking about the Sadducees because Matthews audience
wouldn't really be having any issues with the Sadducees.
It's much more likely that Matthew included the episodes of
the Sadducees because his current audience was facing
them, which means it was before 70 AD.
So those are some interesting bits of evidence.
We can use, can we narrow it down a bit further than before?
70 AD, it's not easy because Scholars of all Persuasions Of
split on a number of things. So, conservative, Orthodox.
Scholars have different opinions about when to place Matthew
Progressive critical Scholars. Have different views about it as
well. One of the key questions is
whether Matthew was written before the gospel of Mark or
after it, it seems that Mark was written around a.d. 55, if
Matthew is written first and then Mark borrowed from Matthew
and that is the traditional view that most of church history
held. Then Matthew's gospel was
written first, and that would Place Matthew's gospel in around
a D50. So very early, but if the gospel
of Matthew was written after the gospel of Mark, and that's the
Common View today, even amongst most conservative Scholars.
Then that would mean the gospel of Matthew was written around a
D60. Now there is an interesting
quote from the church father irenaeus he says that Matthew
wrote his gospel while Peter and Paul were preaching in And so,
that will place the composition of Matthew between Paul's
arrival in Rome, which was a d-58 and the death of Peter and
Paul, which occurred sometime in ad 65 or 66.
So, that would mean, Matthew is, if this quote is correct, then
Matthew was written between AD 58 and AD 66 so around 80 60.
Again although that quotes this some dispute about how literally
we should take irenaeus as words that What's the audience here
again? There's different views about
who Matthew is writing to. So, for a long time in church,
history, people thought that Matthew was writing for Jewish
Christians, who lived in Israel in particular, because there's
an ancient tradition and lots of church fathers quote, this, that
Matthew was, originally originally written in Hebrew or
Aramaic. Now, we don't have the original
copies in Hebrew or Aramaic, but that was a belief.
And if Matthew was writing in here, Or Aramaic then the only
people who would understand those languages were Jews in
Israel. But that is disputed and some
scholars believe that Matthew's gospel was written for a
community of both Jews and Gentiles in the area of Syria,
particularly the city of Antioch.
There's a couple of bits of evidence in the gospel itself,
that would suggest that Matthew was writing to Antioch.
We can't prove it, but there is this interesting phrase towards
the start of the Gospel. It says that when Jesus started
his ministry in, Galilee his Fame, spread throughout all of
Syria and that's in 4:24. None of the other three gospels
mentioned this all of Syria phrase, so that might suggest
that Matthew had a Syrian concern in mind on For that.
The book seems to focus heavily on Peter and history suggests
that Peter was the bishop of Antioch before being the bishop
of Rome. So perhaps Matthew is
highlighting stories from Peters life because he knows that those
in Antioch will be interested in Peter.
Thirdly, we do know from the book of Acts that some Jewish
Christians did flee from Jerusalem to Antioch.
And from there, they started to preach to Gentiles.
So there was quite a big group of Christians at Antioch, both
Jewish. And Gentiles, we see that in
Acts chapter 19, none of that is conclusive, but that seems to be
what most Scholars say about it. Today, we can say, with
confidence that Matthews original audience, whoever they
were, they lived somewhere in the Syria, Palestine region.
That's where we would find a unique mix of Jewish and Gentile
concerns which are covered in the gospel.
Of course, like all the gospels, we shouldn't read too much into
who the audience was because it's likely that All of the
Gospel, authors intended, their gospel to be circulated around
the known world. And so really, they're writing
for everyone. What was Matthews purpose in
writing? Well, we know that Matthew was
what was certainly regarded as the First Gospel to be written
and it was certainly the most widely used in early
Christianity. It was the one that most of the
church fathers, most of the ones who are developing early
theology. They turn to Matthew first.
It was the primary gospel used in theology as well as
catechesis and instruction. So for that reason, it's often
called The catechists Gospel. It continued to be held in very
high esteem out of all the gospels.
That was the one that they turn to First.
Matthew's main purpose in writing appears to be to help
his readers understand two things, although probably more
than this. But those two primary things
that he really wants to get across.
Firstly, the nature of the kingdom of God, what is the
kingdom of God? And secondly, to help his
readers realize that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah of the
Old Testament? When we turn to Matthew, there's
some features that will find. So firstly, it's a very
well-written and very well organized gospel.
That was actually a great advantage in assisting with
memorization in a predominately oral culture.
Remember that? Most of Matthew's audience
probably couldn't write. So Matthew it appears
deliberately structured. His gospel in such a way that it
would be easily memorized and then passed around via oral
tradition. It definitely appears that
whoever wrote the Gospel was very smart, very well cultured.
And very good at writing, which would fit what we know of the
Gospel of Matthew as a tax collector, when you look at the
gospel of Matthew, it's broken down into chunks, and it tends
to alternate between chunks of Jesus works and people's
reactions to him. And then a chunk of discourse, a
long discourse that Matthew gives Matthew wants his readers
to understand that both Jesus works.
And his It's are important in achieving our Redemption.
Matthew has a focus on Jesus words more so than any of the
other gospel writers. Interestingly Matthew appears to
provide an outline of his book or a table of contents for his
book. Remember, we said it's very well
structured and it appears, he's deliberately shown his readers
how to read his gospel as, in his show, in his readers, where
the divisions are And he does that by repeating key phrases
all throughout his gospel, to Signal the end of a section and
it appears that there was carefully planned in advance.
The most common view among Scholars today, is that Matthew
deliberately uses this key phrase when he wants to Signal
the end of a section. So, the phrase is when Jesus
finished these He uses that phrase five times and it's
always at the end of a sermon. So the predominant view, then if
we're going to divide Matthew up into groups, is that Matthew
deliberately has broken his own Gospel up into five units
because at the end of each of these five units, we find the
phrase when Jesus finished these So, here's the five units that
will see there's five discourses.
And between each of these five discourses, there are sections
of Jesus going around and doing Deeds, but the five discourses
are The Sermon on the Mount chapters 5 to 7.
The missionary sermon in chapter 10 Parables of the Kingdom,
that's in Chapter 13. There's a long sermon about
those. The fourth sermon is the
ecclesial sermon on life in the community.
That's in chapter 18 and the final sermon is the
eschatological sir. In chapter 24 and 25.
Some Scholars have gone even further and have said that
Matthew has deliberately picked the number five, as in his
deliberately divided, his book into five, because he wants his
readers to recall the five books of Moses.
Clearly Matthew is presenting Jesus as the new Moses, and the
final Moses. And so some Scholars think that
Matthew has deliberately written his gospel to almost be like a
new pentateuch, a new Torah. That's a little more
speculative, but it's an interesting idea.
One thing that's really important to emphasize when we
deal with Matthew, is that it's very well structured but it's
not necessarily structured chronologically.
Matthew has grouped events and sayings in Jesus life thin
matically. Not chronologically.
He brings together events and sayings which probably did not
occur at the same time, but he includes them as part of the
same discourse or as part of the same narration because they
cover the same basic topic. And this is pretty common with
ancient biographies. The gospels are ancient
biographies. They weren't written the same
way that we write biographies today, where we are concerned
with Chronological Precision, ancient biographies, tended, to
be more concerned with getting helping people to get to know
the person that the biography is about and that meant that they
could group, things more along the lines of theme.
So they could say all the things that Jesus said about Penance,
Matthew might have group those together even if they were
separated by a couple of years. And then all the things that
Matthew said about other Jesus said about, Sacrifice.
Maybe he's grouped all those together.
That's probably not how we would write a biography of Jesus.
If we were to do it today, but that was quite common in that
culture. That particular comes out.
If you compare Matthew's gospel to Luke's gospel, although they
both have the same broad chronology, obviously, Matthew's
gospel starts with his birth and ends with his death.
If you look at Luke's gospel, Luke appears to have
deliberately set things out chronologically.
And he actually places he splits things apart which On together,
in the gospel of Matthew, the best explanation for that is
that Luke has tried to be chronological as possible.
Whereas, Matthew has occasionally group things
together on the basis of theme rather than chronology.
So just keep that in mind as we go through.
What about the themes? What does Matthew commonly
talked about? Well, it's a big gospel and he
talks about all sorts of things certainly.
There is one big theme that comes through and that is the
kingdom of God, or sometimes it's translated the kingdom of
heaven, but it's the same basic idea.
Clearly, that is the main theme. The word Kingdom appears over 50
times in the gospel of Matthew. What is the kingdom of God?
While? It's a multi-faceted concept,
it's very hard to summarize. Actually whole books have been
written about what Jesus view of the kingdom of God.
Was, its basic idea is that the kingdom of God occurs when God's
Will, and rain is done on Earth through the Messianic people,
that's the basic idea and we'll look at unpacking that a bit
more as we move through the gospel of Matthew.
The kingdom of God was considered to be according to
Matthew, a fulfillment of Daniels Visions where God rules
over the Earth, through the son of man that's a vision in Daniel
and also themes about the davidic kingdom, clearly Jesus.
When he sets out the kingdom of God, it's in some sense.
A continuation of the kingdom of David, all of those themes about
Jewish hopes of the Kingdom Come Together in Matthews
presentation of the kingdom of God.
Also in his gospel, there's a strong focus on Showing how
Jesus fulfills Old Testament Prophecies of the Messiah,
particularly in relation to David.
So, Matthew often goes out of his way to show how Jesus
fulfills prophecies from the Old Testament even obscure
prophecies that you wouldn't have at first glance assumed
were about the Messiah, but Matthew clearly has perceived
through the help of the holy spirit that Jesus has fulfilled.
These and he wants his audience, who are familiar with the Old
Testament to know that Jesus is the Fulfillment of those.
Matthew also has some important things to say about the
relationship between the old and new covenants.
And that comes out particularly in The Sermon, on the Mount,
which makes sense because his audience might have been
struggling to understand as Christians.
What should the relationship be with the legal and liturgical
traditions of Israel that they were surrounded with
particularly if this occurred before the destruction of the
temple. So Matthew spends a bit of time
I'm unpacking. What Jesus had to say about the
law. Jesus is presented in Matthew as
the one who fulfills all of Israel's longings.
He is considered to be the greater Moses and the greatest
Solomon. Matthew also talks about the
church a lot. He talks about how the church
should be structured and led by the apostles.
And basically, he depicts the church as the new Messianic
Community led by Jesus. So in fact, it's the only gospel
to use the word church. And Matthew also deliberately
includes many of Jesus teachings about what it means to be a
Christian disciple. In your particular, he says a
Christian is one who does the father's will?
That's a theme that keeps coming up over and over in Jesus,
teaching in Matthew Jesus, teachings.
There's a lot of them in the gospel and it covers a broad
range of things. There's a moral and spiritual
matters that are covered in particular, the disciples are
challenged to put God in his kingdom first in their lives.
That's in chapter 6. And in fact, Jesus says he wants
them to pursue a righteousness that exceeds even the Jewish law
that's in chapter 5. He says Christian disciples are
to aim for unconditional love and we see that in The Sermon on
the Mount as well. So The Sermon on the Mount best
captures. What Jesus teaching is about how
to live as a member of the kingdom of God as a member of
the Messianic. Community.
So it's a really interesting gospel and it's the gospel that
I think yields the most useful insights for us.
If we're willing to put in the hard work and really think about
what the text means on the literal level.
So there's a lot of great spiritual benefit from doing a
proper study of the Gospel of Matthew, which is what we
attempt to do in this podcast. So if you want some more
resources on the gospel of Matthew, there's three that I
would recommend, of course, there's so many commentaries on
the gospel of Matthew. Lot has been written about it
three that I have found really useful.
So firstly, the gospel of Matthew from the Catholic
commentary on sacred scripture so they have done a commentary
on every single book of the Bible.
And this particular one on the gospel of Matthew is written by
Curtis Mitch and Edwards. Three who are first-rate
Catholic Scholars. I have found that really useful
in preparing the podcast every day for the gospel of Matthew,
so I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
If you're interested in getting that commentary.
Also there's a book from the 1980s called gospel and Kingdom
by Graham goldsworthy. Now this is a book that's
actually more about the Old Testament than the Book of
Matthew. However, it does an excellent
job of describing what the Jewish view was about the
kingdom of God and how God sets up.
The kingdom in the Old Testament and points towards its
fulfillment in the new. So, if you want to do a good
study on the kingdom of God, particularly the book gospel and
Kingdom, or it also comes in a three book set called the
goldsworthy, trilogy really, really good biblical theology.
And another book that I found, really interesting and helpful
in understanding why Matthew writes the way he writes
particularly, in relation to his last sermon, the eschatological
sermon is a book called Rapture and times error that leaves the
Bible behind, and that's behind by a Catholic scholar called
David Curry. So, if you're interested in
Prophecy, and you're particularly interested in what
Jesus says, about the signs in the heavens, and the stars were
not, give their light. And all of that language, It's
used in connection with the destruction of the temple and
that some people have thought is a prophecy about the end of the
world. It's quite a fascinating
discourse to look at. And I think this book by David
Curry does an excellent job of unpacking Jesus view of the end
times which comes up a few times in the Book of Matthew.
And certainly, those resources will lead you to other really
good quality resources as well. So I'll put a link to those in
the show notes for today. So, I hope you found that
introduction to the gospel of Matthew, really interesting.
And if sets you up, well, for the coming weeks, I think, if
you approach the gospel of Matthew with an open mind, you
will learn so much. And it will really deepen your
relationship with Jesus as the Messiah.
So, we'll start to look at the gospel of Matthew systematically
from tomorrow. Thanks for listening.