Hi again!
You may or may not have missed my Bible study blog over the past—almost a year, I think! But I have missed you, and missed writing it. I won't go into all the details now. But those who live in the Chicago area or are close to my family know that we have been heavily involved in selling one house and buying a smaller, one-storey one, and paring down our possessions for the move, and making it. Whew! Just talking about it exhausts me! The upshot is, that now we are relatively settled, and I have re-established my schedule of work on various projects. The decks are cleared, and I am eager to do some serious Bible study again with whomever wants to follow along.
As many of you know, Bible study isn't just about accumulating facts, as intriguing and fascinating as that can be. It is about deepening our knowledge of the God who wrote the Bible, and about disciplining our lives to be His good disciples. This takes a great deal of commitment.
As in some of our past studies, this one is also being pursued simultaneously by the choir Bible study group of the church Wini and I attend. I wish it were possible for each of you to meet and get to know the others. I am probably the only one who knows you all. And it is my privilege and joy to do so.
Well, let me get to the main point of today's posting. What will we be studying together? I have chosen one of the gospels. It is one that I have not taught for—I think—over ten years at least. It is the Gospel according to Matthew. The early Church decided to put it at the very beginning of the New Testament for a good reason. The man whom God used to compose it, Matthew, or Levi as he is sometimes called, was a "tax collector" by trade, which meant he was very organized and efficient. He had a mind for facts and figures and an excellent memory. On top of that, because he was in the profession of tax-collection, he knew shorthand and could take brief notes of what Jesus said or did quickly and accurately. He was one of the original Twelve disciples chosen by Jesus and probably an eyewitness himself of much of the events he records, but whatever he himself did not see or recall he collected from the material in the Gospel of Mark which appeared earlier than Matthew's own Gospel.
Since Matthew's gospel is long—28 chapters—we will require over a year to work through it, one lesson per week, with a summer break.
Some of you, who like to plan ahead, may want to have some idea of what I intend to cover in the upcoming weekly postings. So here is just a general overview.
Last Sunday in the choir study group I gave a brief introduction to the Gospel of Matthew. So I have appended that here.
This coming Sunday afternoon I will post my study of the first chapter of Matthew. We will then continue at a pace of no more than one chapter per week, sometimes taking one chapter's material over a two-week period. By the time we break from Matthew for the summer months (around the first of June), we will have studied the first 10 (possibly 11) chapters of the total of 28. Then we will resume in the fall and continue through to the following June, when we will have completed the study.
So welcome to the group! And now here (below) is the gist of what I taught last Sunday by way of introduction.
Why are we told some things and not others in the four canonical gospels? The great biblical scholar Alfred Edersheim, who was also a Jew who had come to believe in Jesus as his Messiah, said it well:
“Why,“ we may ask, “does each of the four gospel writers omit some stories that are in others and include other events not in the others? And why does each follow his own order of events, except for the main events? Is this merely in order to express their own individuality? Or are they writing for different audiences?"
It is quite fashionable nowadays in scholarly circles to think that each gospel was not so much a product of a single author as of a single church or ”community,” and that the “gospel” that is produced is more of a statement of faith of that community, defining itself over against differing groups, often in a rather polemic way and by representing its own unique views as stemming from the Founder, in this case Jesus. Therefore much of what each community produces as the deeds and sayings of Jesus is rather a reflection of the distinctive history and beliefs of that community.
It follows that there is much in each gospel that does not represent authentic deeds and sayings of Jesus. To make such inventions less reprehensible to today’s audience, scholars like these maintain that the new “sayings” were uttered by local Christian prophets in the name of the risen Jesus and were therefore considered legitimate to read back into the earthly ministry of Jesus. These scholars read the gospel accounts not with any hope of learning about the historical Jesus, but in order to learn about four of the earliest communities of Christians.
Such a conception may appeal to some scholars, even paralleling in their thinking the authorship of certain Old Testament books—such as Isaiah—by “schools” of that prophet’s disciples. But it departs dramatically not only from the views of biblical authorship held by Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries, but also from the specific teaching of Jesus himself and the apostles, who always held to individual authorship of inspired scripture. For example, the apostle Peter wrote:
More likely each gospel writer wrote his gospel in order to fill a perceived evangelistic and pastoral need for information about what Jesus did and taught. His own location may have been the first readers, but just as Paul could write a letter to one church and ask that it be passed to neighboring ones, so each gospel writer expected that his gospel would circulate in a much broader circle, and not only among those already believers.
Yet, each gospel writer tells the plan of God in Jesus a little bit differently, because some of the four had a particular audience mainly in view. Most scholars think that Mark wrote mainly for a Gentile audience, perhaps even a Roman one. Matthew, on the other hand, wrote primarily for Jewish believers.
Although Matthew could count on his Jewish hearers having more “background” than a raw pagan audience, he wished to correct false conceptions within the Judaism of his day, just as Jesus had done.
In the Gospel of Matthew we encounter the following issues that the author treats:
Since raw pagans had no preconceived notions of what “righteousness” might mean, nor did they care about the relationship of the law of Moses to their salvation, these were subjects of particular relevance only to Jews.
Content Unique to Matthew
Since it appears that Matthew had access to Mark’s gospel and used it as a source, we will see the ways in which he adapted that material in order to convey his own particular concerns. We will see that he and Luke also had access to a source of the sayings or discourses of Jesus that Mark either did not know or chose not to use. And each used this source in slightly different ways.
But like Luke, Matthew also contributed additional content from his own research. Some of Matthew’s unique content gives us some idea of the particular emphases that he wished to give tp the understanding of our Lord Jesus’ person, his mission, and his intentions for his disciples.
Among these are the following: (1) attention to Joseph's role as Jesus’ protector and foster father, (2) the visit of the Magi which hints of gentile involvement in God’s plan for the salvation of the lost, (3) Jesus' stay in Egypt as an infant and its connection with the typology of Jesus as a personification of Israel, (4) Herod's massacre of the children of Bethlehem and the comparison it evokes with David’s persecution by Saul, (5) the Sermon on the Mount and its suggestion of Jesus as the new Moses, (6) the Transfiguration, (7) and the Olivet Discourse, comparing Jesus both with Moses’ farewell discourses and with OT prophets of the End-Time.
Among the particular emphases of Matthew in his presentation of Jesus are:
The Kingdom and Kingship of Jesus. This emphasis is present from the very first chapter, where the genealogy of Joseph, the foster-father and therefore legal father of Jesus, is given, showing him to be descended from the royal line of King David. Then, at the time of Jesus' birth, pagan scholars from the East see a star that portends the birth of a king of the Jews, leading them to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem and inquire as to his whereabouts. When Jesus announces "the kingdom of God is near," he clearly implies that he is the King in person, and in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5) and the rest of the Sermon on the Mount he proclaims the "constitution" or law of his kingdom, and does so with an authority which contemporary teachers of the law of Moses did not have.
The Fulfillment of OT Prophecy in Jesus. Much more often than the other three gospel writers, Matthew identifies events in Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection as fulfilling specific, quoted prophecies from the Old Testament.
Jesus as Expounder and Expander of Torah. Far from rejecting the Torah of God given through Moses, Jesus taught it correctly and sought to protect it from false interpretations imposed upon it by some religious leaders in Israel in his own day. His interpretations were not all unique. Some can be found in other Jewish teachers of his time. But most of them show a striking originality and profound understanding of the heart of the Torah. An indication of the confident originality and authority of his teachings is evident in the phrases often found in the Sermon on the Mount: "You have heard how it is said … but I say to you …"
Jesus as Personification of Israel. Jesus was not only a loyal Jew and a protector of his people's heritage as the chosen people of God. He was also the very embodiment of the ideal that God intended for Israel in the Old Testament. So that Matthew, unlike the other three gospel writers, highlights ways in which Jesus appears to represent Israel itself as God intended her to be. We see this in several places, but chiefly in Matthew chapter 2, where Herod tries to kill the infant Jesus, as the pharaoh of the exodus tried to eradicate Israel by killing all the boy babies, and where Matthew describes Joseph’s bringing Jesus back from Egypt after the death of Herod by quoting the prophet Hosea’s words “out of Egypt have I called my son,” which refer to Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Matthew wishes us to see in Jesus the achievement of what God intended in Israel, the perfect obedient Son.
Jesus as Founder of the Church. Jesus came to call God's chosen people Israel to repentance and to faith in himself as the promised Messiah and King. But, also in accordance with promises in the Hebrew Bible, he came to call to faith and to incorporation in the people of God, Gentiles. And because it was predicted that many among the Jewish people would not accept him, thus excluding themselves from God's people, there would arise a new community of the Messiah, showing both continuity with Israel and distinctiveness. In Matthew chapter 16 Jesus told his disciples that "… I will build my Church" (Matt. 16). "Will" is a future tense. The building would not begin until Jesus had died and risen again, and until the Holy Spirit would descend upon the community of believers in Acts chapter 2. The English word "church" sounds very un-Jewish to most of us. But the Hebrew or Aramaic word Jesus used, and the Greek equivalent that Matthew used to translate it, is right at home in the Greek translation of the Old Testament as a designation of Israel herself. It means a community of obedient worshipers, which is what Jesus meant when he spoken of building "my community of obedient worshipers," my "church."
Of the four gospels, Matthew's shows is organized and presented in a way that is easiest to learn. The sequence of events and teachings is not chronological, but topical. And, having a good mind for numbers, Matthew often remembered ways in which Jesus used groups of teachings, in threes, and fives and sevens. This he passed along, so that future disciples of Jesus could remember them in these groups.
From beginning to end, Matthew's gospel stresses the need for believers in Jesus to be "learners," that is "disciples." In Jesus' final command to his apostles in chapter 28, he tells them not just to spread the gospel to the nations, but to "make disciples" out of all nations.
As we read and study it this winter and spring, let us commit ourselves to do so as Jesus disciples, learning from each chapter and verse how to follow Him.
How is Matthew Distinctive?
[T]he design of the Gospels was manifestly not to furnish a biography of Jesus the Messiah, but, in organic connection with the Old Testament, to tell the history of the long-promised establishment of the Kingdom of God upon earth.
“Why,“ we may ask, “does each of the four gospel writers omit some stories that are in others and include other events not in the others? And why does each follow his own order of events, except for the main events? Is this merely in order to express their own individuality? Or are they writing for different audiences?"
It is quite fashionable nowadays in scholarly circles to think that each gospel was not so much a product of a single author as of a single church or ”community,” and that the “gospel” that is produced is more of a statement of faith of that community, defining itself over against differing groups, often in a rather polemic way and by representing its own unique views as stemming from the Founder, in this case Jesus. Therefore much of what each community produces as the deeds and sayings of Jesus is rather a reflection of the distinctive history and beliefs of that community.
It follows that there is much in each gospel that does not represent authentic deeds and sayings of Jesus. To make such inventions less reprehensible to today’s audience, scholars like these maintain that the new “sayings” were uttered by local Christian prophets in the name of the risen Jesus and were therefore considered legitimate to read back into the earthly ministry of Jesus. These scholars read the gospel accounts not with any hope of learning about the historical Jesus, but in order to learn about four of the earliest communities of Christians.
Such a conception may appeal to some scholars, even paralleling in their thinking the authorship of certain Old Testament books—such as Isaiah—by “schools” of that prophet’s disciples. But it departs dramatically not only from the views of biblical authorship held by Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries, but also from the specific teaching of Jesus himself and the apostles, who always held to individual authorship of inspired scripture. For example, the apostle Peter wrote:
“knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).Therefore most Evangelicals would reject the extreme forms of this view that Matthew and the other gospel writers were merely retrojecting upon the gospel narratives of Jesus' earthly career teachings that arose only within their own worshiping community.
More likely each gospel writer wrote his gospel in order to fill a perceived evangelistic and pastoral need for information about what Jesus did and taught. His own location may have been the first readers, but just as Paul could write a letter to one church and ask that it be passed to neighboring ones, so each gospel writer expected that his gospel would circulate in a much broader circle, and not only among those already believers.
Yet, each gospel writer tells the plan of God in Jesus a little bit differently, because some of the four had a particular audience mainly in view. Most scholars think that Mark wrote mainly for a Gentile audience, perhaps even a Roman one. Matthew, on the other hand, wrote primarily for Jewish believers.
Although Matthew could count on his Jewish hearers having more “background” than a raw pagan audience, he wished to correct false conceptions within the Judaism of his day, just as Jesus had done.
In the Gospel of Matthew we encounter the following issues that the author treats:
- the meaning of "righteousness,"
- the nature of the reign of God and salvation,
- the identity and roles of Jesus,
- the relationship between God’s grace and his demands,
- judgment by works,
- the extent of the Church’s mission,
- the role of the law in Israel’s history and for the believer in Jesus,
- the place of Israel in God’s plan,
- the extent of love,
- the communal life of the Church, and
- the nature of discipleship.
Since raw pagans had no preconceived notions of what “righteousness” might mean, nor did they care about the relationship of the law of Moses to their salvation, these were subjects of particular relevance only to Jews.
Content Unique to Matthew
Since it appears that Matthew had access to Mark’s gospel and used it as a source, we will see the ways in which he adapted that material in order to convey his own particular concerns. We will see that he and Luke also had access to a source of the sayings or discourses of Jesus that Mark either did not know or chose not to use. And each used this source in slightly different ways.
But like Luke, Matthew also contributed additional content from his own research. Some of Matthew’s unique content gives us some idea of the particular emphases that he wished to give tp the understanding of our Lord Jesus’ person, his mission, and his intentions for his disciples.
Among these are the following: (1) attention to Joseph's role as Jesus’ protector and foster father, (2) the visit of the Magi which hints of gentile involvement in God’s plan for the salvation of the lost, (3) Jesus' stay in Egypt as an infant and its connection with the typology of Jesus as a personification of Israel, (4) Herod's massacre of the children of Bethlehem and the comparison it evokes with David’s persecution by Saul, (5) the Sermon on the Mount and its suggestion of Jesus as the new Moses, (6) the Transfiguration, (7) and the Olivet Discourse, comparing Jesus both with Moses’ farewell discourses and with OT prophets of the End-Time.
Among the particular emphases of Matthew in his presentation of Jesus are:
The Kingdom and Kingship of Jesus. This emphasis is present from the very first chapter, where the genealogy of Joseph, the foster-father and therefore legal father of Jesus, is given, showing him to be descended from the royal line of King David. Then, at the time of Jesus' birth, pagan scholars from the East see a star that portends the birth of a king of the Jews, leading them to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem and inquire as to his whereabouts. When Jesus announces "the kingdom of God is near," he clearly implies that he is the King in person, and in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5) and the rest of the Sermon on the Mount he proclaims the "constitution" or law of his kingdom, and does so with an authority which contemporary teachers of the law of Moses did not have.
The Fulfillment of OT Prophecy in Jesus. Much more often than the other three gospel writers, Matthew identifies events in Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection as fulfilling specific, quoted prophecies from the Old Testament.
Jesus as Expounder and Expander of Torah. Far from rejecting the Torah of God given through Moses, Jesus taught it correctly and sought to protect it from false interpretations imposed upon it by some religious leaders in Israel in his own day. His interpretations were not all unique. Some can be found in other Jewish teachers of his time. But most of them show a striking originality and profound understanding of the heart of the Torah. An indication of the confident originality and authority of his teachings is evident in the phrases often found in the Sermon on the Mount: "You have heard how it is said … but I say to you …"
Jesus as Personification of Israel. Jesus was not only a loyal Jew and a protector of his people's heritage as the chosen people of God. He was also the very embodiment of the ideal that God intended for Israel in the Old Testament. So that Matthew, unlike the other three gospel writers, highlights ways in which Jesus appears to represent Israel itself as God intended her to be. We see this in several places, but chiefly in Matthew chapter 2, where Herod tries to kill the infant Jesus, as the pharaoh of the exodus tried to eradicate Israel by killing all the boy babies, and where Matthew describes Joseph’s bringing Jesus back from Egypt after the death of Herod by quoting the prophet Hosea’s words “out of Egypt have I called my son,” which refer to Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Matthew wishes us to see in Jesus the achievement of what God intended in Israel, the perfect obedient Son.
Jesus as Founder of the Church. Jesus came to call God's chosen people Israel to repentance and to faith in himself as the promised Messiah and King. But, also in accordance with promises in the Hebrew Bible, he came to call to faith and to incorporation in the people of God, Gentiles. And because it was predicted that many among the Jewish people would not accept him, thus excluding themselves from God's people, there would arise a new community of the Messiah, showing both continuity with Israel and distinctiveness. In Matthew chapter 16 Jesus told his disciples that "… I will build my Church" (Matt. 16). "Will" is a future tense. The building would not begin until Jesus had died and risen again, and until the Holy Spirit would descend upon the community of believers in Acts chapter 2. The English word "church" sounds very un-Jewish to most of us. But the Hebrew or Aramaic word Jesus used, and the Greek equivalent that Matthew used to translate it, is right at home in the Greek translation of the Old Testament as a designation of Israel herself. It means a community of obedient worshipers, which is what Jesus meant when he spoken of building "my community of obedient worshipers," my "church."
Of the four gospels, Matthew's shows is organized and presented in a way that is easiest to learn. The sequence of events and teachings is not chronological, but topical. And, having a good mind for numbers, Matthew often remembered ways in which Jesus used groups of teachings, in threes, and fives and sevens. This he passed along, so that future disciples of Jesus could remember them in these groups.
From beginning to end, Matthew's gospel stresses the need for believers in Jesus to be "learners," that is "disciples." In Jesus' final command to his apostles in chapter 28, he tells them not just to spread the gospel to the nations, but to "make disciples" out of all nations.
As we read and study it this winter and spring, let us commit ourselves to do so as Jesus disciples, learning from each chapter and verse how to follow Him.
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