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The Gospel of Matthew 1:1 to 28:20 - MATTHEW, GOSPEL OF
Matthew,
Gospel according to
— The author of this book was
beyond a doubt the Matthew, an
apostle of our Lord, whose name
it bears.
He wrote the Gospel of
Christ according to his own
plans and aims, and from his own
point of view, as did also
the
other "evangelists."
As to the time of its
composition, there is little in
the Gospel itself to indicate.
It was evidently written before the destruction of Jerusalem (Matthew 24), and some time after the events it
records. The probability is that
it was written between the years
A.D. 60 and 65.
The cast of thought and the
forms of expression employed by
the writer show that this Gospel
was written for
Jewish
Christians of Palestine. His
great object is to prove that
Jesus of Nazareth was the
promised Messiah,
and that in
him the ancient prophecies had
their fulfillment. The Gospel is
full of allusions to those
passages of the Old Testament in which Christ is predicted and
foreshadowed. The one aim
pervading the whole book is to show that Jesus is he "of whom
Moses in the law and the
prophets did write."
This Gospel
contains no fewer than
sixty-five references to the Old
Testament, forty-three of these
being direct verbal citations,
thus greatly outnumbering those
found in the other Gospels. The
main feature of this Gospel may
be expressed in the motto, "I am
not come to destroy, but to
fulfill." As to the language in which this Gospel was written there is much
controversy. Many hold, in
accordance with old tradition,
that it was originally written
in Hebrew (i.e., the Aramaic or Syro-Chaldee dialect, then the
vernacular of the inhabitants of
Palestine), and afterwards
translated into Greek, either by
Matthew himself or by some
person unknown.
This theory,
though earnestly maintained by
able critics, we cannot see any
ground for adopting. From the
first this Gospel in Greek was
received as of authority in the
Church. There is nothing in it
to show that it is a
translation. Though Matthew
wrote mainly for the Jews, yet
they were everywhere familiar
with the Greek
language. The
same reasons which would have
suggested the necessity of a
translation into Greek would
have led the evangelist to write in Greek at first. It is
confessed that this Gospel has
never been found in any other
form than that in which we now possess it.
The leading characteristic of
this Gospel is that it sets
forth the kingly glory of
Christ, and shows him to be the
true heir to David's throne. It
is the Gospel of the kingdom.
Matthew uses the expression
"kingdom of heaven"
(thirty-two times), while Luke uses the
expression "kingdom of God"
(thirty-three times). Some
Latinized forms occur in this Gospel, as kodrantes (Matthew
5:26),
for the Latin quadrans, and
phragello (27:26), for the Latin flagello. It must be remembered that Matthew was a
tax-gatherer for the Roman
government, and hence in contact
with those using the Latin
language.
As to the relation of the
Gospels to each other, we must
maintain that each writer of the
synoptics (the first three) wrote independently of the other
two, Matthew being probably
first in point of time."Out of a total of 1071 verses, Matthew has 387 in common with Mark
and Luke, 130 with Mark, 184
with Luke; only 387 being
peculiar to itself."
The book is fitly divided into
these four parts:
(1.) Containing
the genealogy, the birth, and
the infancy of Jesus (1; 2).
(2.) The discourses and actions of John the Baptist preparatory to
Christ's public ministry (3; 4:11).
(3.) The discourses and actions of Christ in Galilee (4:12-20:16).
(4.) The sufferings, death and resurrection of our Lord (20:17-28). |
