Matthew:  A Fresh Reading

Gary D. Collier

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Originally published in Christian Matters, July 2003
for the Online Bible Class

The present article is a follow-up to last month’s “Looking at the Gospels.”  Here is an introduction to the Gospel of Matthew and a challenge to see it as an individual witness worthy of attention in its own right.  This series is part of a religious educational project on the same topic which includes also a Sunday morning radio program on WREB  (FM 94.3 from 8:40 to 9:00 A.M.) and two websites. 

A fresh reading of the Gospel of Matthew requires that we take a look at some important issues related to that Gospel.  The subject of inspiration is sometimes used to avoid such issues altogether, but there is no reason for people of faith to be ignorant of the specific ways God may have chosen to work through those who wrote, collected, arranged, and translated the Bible. 

Origins

We know very little about the origins of Matthew. The Gospel never names its author (the titles were added later), although early tradition associates the apostle Matthew with a Hebrew original. But we have no evidence of that Hebrew original—whether it really existed or what it might have looked like. What we have now is a Greek Gospel and it is not “translation Greek” from Hebrew. Matthew the apostle may indeed have had something to do with the Gospel at some early stage, but we have no way to verify that, and the Gospel makes no such claim.  We don’t even know how many editions of Matthew existed prior to the one we have now. But we are able to compare our current edition of Matthew with the other Gospels, and it does appear to be a hefty revision of Mark and some other material. 

Scope and Purpose

The scope and purpose of the Gospel can be gained by reading it.  Matthew appears to have been written to Jewish disciples of Jesus some forty to seventy years after his death at a time after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple when the emerging rabbinic Judaism was separating itself from emerging Christianity.  It is not a biography or a history book per se;  it is literary history – a faith sketch – for people who needed direction:  how were they to understand the law of God now that they’d been removed from official Judaism? 

Today, Matthew is rarely popularly read on its own, and in some cases it (along with the other Gospels) is considered – by Christians! – to be a secondary document for the ongoing life of the church.  Some Christian groups, for example, have regarded Matthew as historically “prior to the cross.”  In such a view, the book is not fully Christian, for even though it is about Jesus, it is not deemed directly relevant to Christian concerns.  During the first half of the twentieth century, for example, numerous chart-sermons depicted the sixty-six books of the Bible with a cross standing between the Gospels and Acts to show that the Gospels actually were part of the Mosaic (not Christian) covenant.  This point of view has had lingering influence.

Matthew is no mere history book.  It is a book that reaches out to disciples of Jesus and says, “Here is why you should be disciples, and here is how you should live!”  The Gospel offers a phenomenal call to discipleship, providing a demanding and even dangerous path behind Jesus as the Messiah and true interpreter of Scripture against the emerging rabbinic alternative.  Discipleship is carefully defined within the larger framework of other major themes, especially:  Jesus as Messiah;  the Kingdom of Heaven; righteousness, and the fulfillment of Scripture.  All of these ideas deserve major attention. 

Matthew’s Outline

Matthew does not have a clear or natural outline that easily explains all its elements. This may be because the author(s) did not care about such a thing, or because the Gospel is an edited version of the Gospel of Mark with other materials added from at least two other sources. The role of oral tradition is also impossible to assess.

Still, there are features that stand out. Matthew alone among all the Gospels contains three key literary elements. 

A Temporal Marker: The literary phrase, “From that time Jesus began to . . .” occurs at 4:17 and 16:21.  This appears to divide the Gospel into at least three parts with three general emphases:  the introduction;  the preaching about the Kingdom of Heaven including healings, miracles, and works;  and the concerns of the Passion.  

A Content Marker: The literary phrase, “When Jesus had finished these . . .” occurs at the end of 5 major speeches in Matthew that do not occur in any other Gospel:  7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; and 26:1.  (More on this below.)

An Inclusio:  The words, “God with us,” and “I will be with you always” at the beginning and end of the Gospel (1:24 and 28:20) serve as an inclusio, a marker at the beginning and end of a section.

There are other important features as well, but all of these are literary markers that help a reader know something about the organizational intent of the author.  The problem is, they don't all easily fit with each other or account for all the other material in the Gospel of Matthew. For example, just how the 5 speeches are to be understood against the temporal markers is a matter of extended discussion and disagreement.  The bottom line is, Matthew appears to be structurally mixed.

Matthew As Story

It does not appear that precise chronology is a major concern of the Gospel.  A reader who begins with an assumption that chronology is a key factor in organization will get hopelessly entangled in any studied comparison between the Gospels.  As literary history, Matthew is less concerned with the exact chronology of events than with the faith-significance of events.  We would do well to read the Gospel as faith story instead of documentary or biography.  Despite what some fear, story does not mean “fairy tale.”  We sing the song:

“Tell me the story of Jesus. Write on my heart every word.”

We do not mean by this, “Tell me the lie about Jesus . . . “  Nor do we want an exact chronology of events.  We want to hear the story!  Well, the Gospels have beat us to it.  In each of the Gospels, Jesus is the main character, there are supporting characters and villains, there are plot lines and transition points, and so on.  A literary history uses history and biographical information in service of the story, not vice versa. 

Other Features

It was mentioned above that many of Jesus' teachings are grouped into five major “teaching blocks” throughout the Gospel.  Each teaching block ends with the phrase, “And when Jesus finished these sayings . . .”  The phrase functions as a literary marker to show that the teaching block is set apart from the rest of the narrative (the flow of the story), and that more is going on than simple chronology or biography.  These teaching blocks are placed at regular intervals throughout the book (chapters 5-7, 10, 13, 18, and 23-25).  Among the Gospels, only Matthew has this type of arrangement of material.

What is really tantalizing is to notice that the teaching blocks appear to be arranged in a special kind of order called in Latin a chiasmus (pronounced “kee-as-mus”).  A chiasmus is a poetic form of writing that may help to highlight points of emphasis in a text. 

As an example, a short chiasmus can be found in 1 Cor. 13:4:  “Love is patient, love is kind.”  But in the Greek New Testament, the phrase is stated in the following word order:  “Love is patient, kind is love” and can be written as follows:

A     Love

B     is

C     patient

C'     kind

B'     is

A'    Love

Here, the words “patient” and “kind” are parallel concepts receiving emphasis since they stand at the center. 

The five teaching blocks in Matthew appear to be arranged chiastically bringing an overarching order to the whole Gospel: 

A     New Order (5-7)

B     Disciples’ Mission (10)

C     K/ Heaven  (13)

B'     Disciples’ Authority (18)

A'    Old Order (23-25)

When viewed together, these teaching blocks contrast the leader and characteristics of the new order, with the leaders and downfall of the old order (A/A');  establish a community of disciples to extend and govern the new order (B/B');  and proclaim the disciples' role in understanding the message (logos) of the new order, the Kingdom of Heaven (C).  In other words, if disciples are to understand who they are supposed to be, they must understand the larger message of the Kingdom of Heaven, and how that message conflicts with other views of that Kingdom.

Scholars argue about such things, but a fresh reading of Matthew may yield some unsullied understandings of its contents. 

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