Matthew Introduction Part One

History of the Modern Bible

The New Testament contains four gospel accounts of the life, purpose and meaning of Jesus. The creation and ordering of the New Testament addition to the Bible occurred in the early 3rd Century A.D. (and until that time the Bible consisted only of the New Testament).

The four gospels and come of Paul’s letters and many other documents were circulated among the dozens of congregations of believing Jews and Gentiles in the First Century. However, the only document which was authorized was the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament.

Over the next several centuries, the gospels and other documents to be included in the New Testament vacillated, depending own the branch of the Church and which Bishop was in charge. The books and the order they are presented in the West is either the Protestant version o the Catholic version. Please note, the Catholic version contains Apocryphal books not included in the Protestant version. Furthermore, the books of James, Hebrews and Revelation have been removed, added back in, removed again and so on over the centuries depending on the Church branch. For the sake of simplicity, we can generally say that at the moment the order of the New Testament books is the same for nearly all Christian denominations and branches.

Almost all New Testaments open with the four Gospels, and in the order of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The first three Gospels are seen as having a different approach to telling the life of Jesus when compared to the fourth Gospel (the Book of John). The first three are lumped together and are called the Synoptic Gospels. The word synoptic is taken from the Greek, and it means “to see together”. The idea is that the first three Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are similar to one another and more or less seek to tell a story in an easy to read style. Yet, despite their similarities, there are differences and a number of complexities when comparing them.

The Gospel of John is seen be Bible scholars as substantially different in approach and style so as to not be included in the Synoptics. This is in no way an attempt to diminish the importance or impact of the fourth Gospel. I question this scholarly attempt to make John’s Gospel as a sort of outlier as compared to the other three Gospels.

When one researchers various Bible academics’ explanations as to why it is proper for the Gospel of John to be seen as different enough from the others so as to be considered as a separate category, one begins to understand how subjective the arguments are. For instance, John’s Gospel is usually said to be “the spiritual Gospel”. I have no idea what that means. Are the first three absent of any spiritual element? Hardly. I think the grouping of the three into something substantially different is overblown and little more than an academic’s attempt to rethink (or revise) these Gospel accounts. This grouping of the three into something similar and common, and therefore different and apart from the fourth only occurred shortly before the beginning of the 19th Century and only in the West.

Each of the Gospels brings its own distinctive perspective to the life, purpose and meaning of Jesus. Since they are all telling the story of the same man, there is natural overlap and repetition. At the same time, since not everything Jesus did can possibly be included in these modest sized documents, each author picked and chose what he thought to be the most important events his readers ought to know about, and he presented events that helped put together a logical progression and history of Jesus’ life to best explain who He was, and the impact He made.


Why is Matthew the first Gospel?
Many Bible scholars are divided on this issue.The oldest New Testament manuscripts have Matther as the first Gospel. Although we have large fragments of the four Gospels going back to the second and third centuries, the oldest completed New Testament is from the fourth century and is given the name Codex Sinaiticus. Many wonder why Matthew was placed first of the four Gospels and also the whole New Testament. The most logical explanation is that it was the first Gospel written. Yet, the majority of modern scholars do not accept that Matthew is the oldest. Rather, they say it was Mark.

I will not bore you with the tiny details of just how modern Bible scholars have come to the conclusion that it was Mark who write his Gospel first, and Matthew drew from this. However, the method is that generally similar quotes from Mark and Matthew are held up side by side, and modern experts choose which one they think is the most authentic. Often this choice is made on the assumption that the shorter quotation is always the correct one, and the longer one is merely modifying the shorter. You may ask, “What evidence is for this?” The answer is none. It is all subjective analysis . The academic world tilts heavily toward Mark being the first Gospel, and Matthew and Luke drew from it, there is a substantial minority who inset that it was the Gospel of Matthew which came firts, and Mark and Luke drew from it.

One of the early Church fathers, a man names Papias, states the following: “Matthew, also among the Hebrews, published a written gospel in their own dialect, when Peter and Paul were still preaching in Tome and found the church there.”

These records state that the Gospel of Matthew was written while Peter and Paul were still alive (early in the 60’s A.D.), and that Matthew was a Hebrews, and that he published a Gospel in his own dialect (which could have been either Hebrew or Aramaic as they are close-cousin languages. Both were spoken fluently among Jews in the first century A.D.).

From this reference to Peter and Paul, we can easily deduce that Matthew was almost certainly the first Gospel account written, and thus Mark and Luke drew some of their information and quotes from him. If this is fact, it would seem to offer insight into the reason why the Christian Council decided the order of the Gospels to open the New Testament as they did. To their knowledge Mathew should be first because it was written first. Mark is second because it was written second. Luke is third because it was written third. And John is fourth because it was the last Gospel written.

Matthew was a Jew, and his Gospel is aimed primarily toward Jewish Believers. The Gospel of Matthew is filled with Jewish cultural expressions which can be masked when translated into Greek and then into other languages such as English. Many of these Jewish expressions can be misunderstood especially when taken out of their first century Jewish context.

We have seen this before in the Bible. During our study of the Book of Judges, we have Deborah’s Song in chapter 5. Many of the verses were extremely hard to understand because they were literal translations of Jewish expressions. If you have ever translated from one language to another, you will understand there are phrases and cultural ideas which do not translate across languages. For example, it we say it is raining cats and dogs, this cannot be directly translated into Spanish. If it was, the reader would be confused how the sky could open up and cause cats and dogs to come down. It is my goal in the study of the Gospel of Matthew to point out some of these cultural expressions and attempt to explain what they mean in our modern culture.

Matthew can be said to be the most Jewish in its form, approach and in addressing matters which were critically important to the Jewish community. As 21st century readers of the Bible, expanded explanations of certain subject matters we hope would have been there aren’t. Why is this.? Because Matthew’s intended Jewish audience did not need explanations. They would have understood what Matthew was talking about.

 

A similar thing can be seen in almost every activity we do in life. If we go to the grocery store and pay for our groceries with “plastic”, we do not need detailed instructions that “plastic” is a credit or debit card, we pay for our good by sliding the card into a card reader, our charges are sent to a bank or financial institution, etc. However, if you are from a foreign country in which credit and debit cards are rare, then a very detailed process would need to be explained in order for the reader to understand.