The Gospel of Matthew is the first book of the New Testament, one of the four canonical Gospels, and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells of Jesus, recording his birth, his ministry from his baptism by John the Baptist, his crucifixion, his resurrection, and his mission to the world. It emphasizes that Jewish tradition should not be lost in an increasingly gentile church and presents Jesus as the Jewish Messiah who fulfills the prophecies written in the Jewish scriptures.
The gospel reflects conflicts between Jewish Christians and other Jews, particularly with its criticism of the scribes and Pharisees, presenting the view that the Kingdom of Heaven has been taken away from them and given to the church. It emphasizes Jesus’s role as the Son of David, Son of Man, and Son of God, and frames his teachings, miracles, and parables to reflect both Jewish law and the Christian church. It culminates in the Passion, Resurrection, and Great Commission, having been structured around alternating narratives and discourses.
The gospel was written in the last quarter of the first century anonymously by a Jewish author who was familiar with legal aspects of scripture and the Hebrew language. Papias of Hierapolis, a companion of the Elder and the daughters of Philip, provides the first attribution to Matthew. The text may incorporate a source from Matthew, and traditional authorship still has conservative defenders. The gospel was highly popular among early Christians; scholars increasingly contend that it was used by both Luke and John. Most scholars believe that Matthew used Mark and the Q source, but a growing number of scholars are skeptical of Q and advocate for the Farrer hypothesis or Matthean Posteriority instead.
The Synoptics follow Mark closely compared to other ancient historians’ usage of sources, though the parallels and variations are typical of ancient historical biographies. The text is the product of the second generation of the Christian movement, although it draws on the memory of the first generation of the disciples of Jesus.
Composition Author and date
Papias of Hierapolis (), who had met the Elder and the daughters of Philip the Evangelist, attributed the gospel to Matthew, an apostle and companion of Jesus. Most scholars view it as an anonymous composition, as was common for biographies, such as those of Plutarch and Suetonius which were originally anonymous, though the traditional authorship "still has its defenders." It is possible that this gospel incorporates a prior source by Matthew. In any case, it was attributed to Matthew very early and was highly popular in the early church. Most contemporary scholars argue that the Gospel of John, which is traditionally attributed to the Beloved Disciple, knew and used the Synoptic Gospels, and a growing number of scholars argue that the Gospel of Luke used Matthew as well. Most scholars agree from both external attributions and the familiarity with the Hebrew language, the Torah, and the technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time, that the author was a Jew who stood on the margin between traditional and non-traditional Jewish values. Other scholars, such as N. T. Wright and John Wenham, argue that it is problematic to date this gospel to the late first century, maintaining that it was composed in the 40s–50s CE. According to Bas van Os, it was likely written within the lifetime of various eyewitnesses that include Jesus's own family through the end of the first century;] Markus Bockmuehi finds this structure of lifetime memory in various early Christian traditions.
The Gospel of Mark is the first gospel to be composed and was used by the others. The author of Matthew emphasizes Jesus's place in the Jewish tradition and includes details not found in Mark. Luke and Matthew treat their sources more conservatively than other ancient historians like Diodorus Siculus, though the parallels and variations of the Synoptics are typical of ancient historical biographies.
This does not necessarily show a linear approach of continual development and addition alone, as some of the words of Paul the Apostle are more similar to Matthew's details. Matthew could have depended on Mark through oral tradition, or used memorisation rather than simply copying. Alan Kirk praises Matthew for his "scribal memory competence" and "high esteem for and careful handling of both Mark and Q", which makes dubious the claims that the latter two works are significantly different in terms of theology or historical reliability.
Matthew has 600 verses in common with Mark, which is a book of only 661 verses. There are approximately 220 verses shared by Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark. While the Two-source hypothesis considers this to be drawn from a hypothetical Q source, a growing number of scholars support alternative hypotheses, such as the Farrer hypothesis and the Matthean Posteriority hypothesis, which argue for Luke's direct usage of Matthew and Matthew's dependence on Luke, respectively, and dispense with Q, and a unified M source is largely rejected by scholarship today. Michael Goulder argued that non-Markan material in Matthew were mostly authorial creations, but modern advocates of the Farrer hypothesis have abandoned this idea. The author also had the Greek scriptures at his disposal, both as book-scrolls (Greek translations of Isaiah, the Psalms etc.), "testimony collections", and the oral stories of his community. Many of the quotations of the scriptures in Matthew are more closely matched with the Masoretic, leading many scholars to believe that the author could understand Hebrew.
Setting Most scholars view the gospel of Matthew as a work of the second generation of Christians, though it draws on the memory of the first generation of Jesus's disciples. For these early Christians the defining event was the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD in the course of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 AD); from this point on, what had begun with Jesus of Nazareth as a Jewish messianic movement became an increasingly gentile phenomenon which would evolve in time into a separate religion. Other scholars hold that the historical Jesus had already predicted that the Jerusalem Temple would be destroyed. The author appears to have written for a community of Greek-speaking Jewish Christians located probably in Syria; Antioch, the largest city in Roman Syria and the third largest city in the empire, is often proposed. Alternatively, towns in Galilee such as Sepphoris or Tiberias, or adjacent regions such as Transjordan, could also fit.
The community to which Matthew belonged, like many 1st-century Christians, was still part of the larger Jewish community. The relationship of Matthew to this wider world of Judaism remains a subject of study and contention, the principal question being to what extent, if any, Matthew's community had cut itself off from its Jewish roots. It is evident from the gospel that there was conflict between Matthew's group and other Jewish groups, and it is generally agreed that the root of the conflict was the Matthew community's belief in Jesus as the Messiah and authoritative interpreter of the law, as one risen from the dead and uniquely endowed with divine authority.
The divinity of Jesus was a major issue for the Matthean community, the crucial element separating the early Christians from their Jewish neighbors; while Mark begins with Jesus's baptism and temptations, Matthew goes back to Jesus's origins, showing him as the Son of God from his birth, the supposed fulfillment of messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. The title Son of David, used exclusively in relation to miracles, identifies Jesus as the healing and miracle-working Messiah sent to Israel alone; the reason for disregarding the gentiles and Samaritans is not due to prejudice but the immediate needs of God’s people: Israel. As Son of Man he will return to judge the world, an expectation which his disciples recognize but of which his enemies are unaware. As Son of God, God is revealing himself through his son, and Jesus proving his sonship through his obedience and example.
Unlike Mark, Matthew never bothers to explain Jewish customs, since his intended audience was a Jewish one; unlike Luke, who traces Jesus's ancestry back to Adam, father of the human race, he traces it only to Abraham, father of the Jews. Writing from within a Jewish-Christian community growing distant from other Jews and becoming increasingly gentile in its membership and outlook, Matthew put down in his gospel his vision "of an assembly or church in which both Jew and Gentile would flourish together".
Structure and content Structure: narrative and discourses Matthew alternates five blocks of narrative with five of discourse, marking each off with the phrase "When Jesus had finished". Some scholars see in this a deliberate plan to create a parallel to the first five books of the Old Testament; others see a three-part structure based around the idea of Jesus as Messiah, a set of weekly readings spread out over the year, or no plan at all. Davies and Allison, in their widely used commentary, draw attention to the use of "triads" (the gospel groups things in threes), and R. T. France, in another influential commentary, notes the geographic movement from Galilee to Jerusalem and back, with the post-resurrection appearances in Galilee as the culmination of the whole story. An 'eleven' sectioned structure is also recognized, where the sections alternate between narrative and teachings in a 1,2,3,4,5,C,5',4',3',2',1' arrangement (and the parables of the Kingdom take central place). In this reading, the sections comprise 'fourteens' of units of text, where in the first and last units of the gospel the writer provides these numbers, 'threes', 'fourteens' and 'eleven', as a reading check.
Prologue: genealogy, Nativity and infancy ()
The Gospel of Matthew begins with the words "The Book of Genealogy [in Greek, 'Genesis'] of Jesus Christ", deliberately echoing the words of in the Septuagint. The genealogy tells of Jesus's descent from Abraham and King David and the miraculous events surrounding his virgin birth, and the infancy narrative tells of the massacre of the innocents, the flight into Egypt, and eventual journey to Nazareth.
First narrative and Sermon on the Mount ()
Following the genealogy and nativity of Jesus, the first narrative section begins. John the Baptist baptizes Jesus, and the Holy Spirit descends upon him. Jesus prays in the wilderness for forty days and is tempted by Satan. His early ministry in Galilee meets with much success, and leads to the Sermon on the Mount, the first of the discourses. The sermon presents the ethics of the kingdom of God, introduced by the Beatitudes ("Blessed are..."). It concludes with a reminder that the response to the kingdom will have eternal consequences, and the crowd's amazed response leads into the next narrative block.
Second narrative and discourse () From the authoritative words of Jesus, the gospel turns to three sets of three miracles interwoven with two sets of two discipleship stories (the second narrative), followed by a discourse on mission and suffering. Jesus commissions the Twelve Disciples and sends them to preach to the Jews, perform miracles, and prophesy the coming of the Kingdom, commanding them to travel without staff or sandals.
Third narrative and discourse ()