Summary: Bible - Book of Matthew

The GIST

The Gospel according to Matthew is the first book of the New Testament and, for most of Christian history, the best known of the four Gospels. It tells the life of Jesus: his birth, his baptism by John, his teaching and healing in Galilee, his journey to Jerusalem, his crucifixion and his resurrection. What distinguishes it is its angle of vision. Matthew writes as a Jew for readers steeped in the Jewish scriptures, and his central claim is that Jesus is the Messiah those scriptures promised, the one who came, in words the Gospel gives him, "not come to destroy, but to fulfil."

It is also the Gospel of the teacher. Matthew gathers the sayings of Jesus into five great speeches, the first of them the Sermon on the Mount, and sets them between blocks of narrative, marking the end of each with the phrase when Jesus had finished. Some readers see in the five speeches an echo of the five books of Moses. The early church quoted Matthew more than any other Gospel and placed it first.

What It Says

Origins (chapters 1 and 2). The opening line announces the theme: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." A genealogy traces his descent from Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, through King David. The account of his birth to a virgin follows. Then wise men from the east arrive in Jerusalem asking, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?" and King Herod is troubled. The family flees to Egypt, Herod has the infants of Bethlehem killed, and the child is eventually brought to Nazareth. Where Mark begins with Jesus as an adult, Matthew reaches back to show him as Son of God from the start.

Baptism, testing and the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 3 to 7). John the Baptist appears in the wilderness preaching, "Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Jesus is baptized, and a voice from heaven declares, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." He spends forty days in the wilderness, where the tempter challenges him to prove his sonship, and then begins his work in Galilee, calling disciples and drawing crowds.

The first great speech follows. It opens with the Beatitudes, blessings pronounced on unexpected people: "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." His followers are told they are "the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world." Jesus insists that he has not come to abolish the law and the prophets, and then sets out the way of life that belongs to the kingdom. He teaches his disciples how to pray, beginning "Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name." He warns, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," and sums up the law in one sentence: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." The sermon closes with a reminder that how people respond has lasting consequences, and the crowds are astonished.

Deeds and mission (chapters 8 to 10). After the words come works. Matthew arranges miracles in three sets of three, with stories about the cost of discipleship in between. Jesus then chooses the Twelve and sends them out with the second speech, on mission and the suffering it will bring. For now they are to go only "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Opposition and parables (chapters 11 to 13). Resistance hardens. The Pharisees charge that Jesus works his wonders by the power of Satan, and he answers with a grave warning of his own. The third speech is a collection of parables about the kingdom, beginning, "Behold, a sower went forth to sow." Matthew almost always says kingdom of heaven where the other Gospels say kingdom of God, out of the Jewish reverence that avoids speaking God's name.

The church takes shape (chapters 14 to 18). This section holds the two feedings of the multitudes and the turning point of the Gospel. Asked who he thinks Jesus is, Simon Peter answers, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus replies that on this rock he will build his church. From then on he begins to speak of his coming death. On a mountain he "was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun," and the voice from heaven is heard again. The fourth speech concerns life in the community he will leave behind, with humility and responsibility for one another as its marks.

To Jerusalem (chapters 19 to 25). Jesus travels toward Jerusalem, tested by the Pharisees along the way. He welcomes children, saying "of such is the kingdom of heaven," and overturns ordinary ideas of rank: "So the last shall be first, and the first last." He enters Jerusalem to shouts of "Hosanna to the son of David," and drives the traders from the Temple: "My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." Days of debate with the chief priests and other leaders follow. An attempt to trap him over taxes draws the famous answer about rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. His public teaching ends in a fierce denunciation: "woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" The fifth and last speech looks to the future, with warnings of false messiahs, upheavals and persecution, and a call to be ready.

Passion and resurrection (chapters 26 to 28). The events of the last week take up a large part of the book. Judas agrees to hand Jesus over "for thirty pieces of silver." Jesus shares a last supper with his disciples and prays in anguish to be spared, ending with the words "thy will be done." He is betrayed, tried before the council, and brought before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who asks, "Art thou the King of the Jews?" Pilate washes his hands of the affair. Jesus is mocked and crucified. At his death the earth quakes and the veil of the Temple is torn.

Mary Magdalene and another Mary come to the tomb and are met by an angel: "He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay." The Gospel ends on a mountain in Galilee. The risen Jesus declares that all authority has been given to him and sends his followers out, no longer to Israel only: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." He promises to be with them to the end of the age.

Why It Matters

Matthew has shaped Christian life more than perhaps any other single book. The Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, the golden rule and the Great Commission are all found here.

His portrait of Jesus works through three titles. As Son of David he is the healing Messiah sent to Israel. As Son of Man he will return as judge. As Son of God he is God made present, the one the Gospel calls Immanuel, God with us. Matthew's prime concern, scholars suggest, was that the Jewish inheritance should not be lost in a church that was becoming more and more gentile. Hence the constant citation of scripture, the presentation of Jesus as a new Moses, and the insistence that the law is fulfilled, not discarded.

The Gospel also bears the marks of a painful family quarrel. It reflects conflict between the evangelist's community and other Jews, and its sharp words against the scribes and Pharisees need to be read against that background. Readers today are right to remember that it was written by a Jew, about a Jew, within a Jewish argument over who Jesus was.

On its origins, tradition and scholarship differ. From Papias in the early second century the book was attributed to the apostle Matthew, and that view still has defenders. Most scholars regard it as an anonymous work from the last quarter of the first century, written by a Jewish Christian, probably in Syria, perhaps at Antioch, for a Greek-speaking community. Most also hold that the author drew on the Gospel of Mark, with which Matthew shares some six hundred verses, and on further material in common with Luke, though how that shared material is to be explained is debated. Whatever its history, the book draws on the memory of the first disciples.

Who Should Read It

Read Matthew if you want to meet the teaching of Jesus in its fullest and most ordered form. It is the natural starting point for anyone new to the New Testament, and it rewards readers who know the Old Testament, since it is in constant conversation with it. Those interested in ethics will find the Sermon on the Mount inexhaustible. Those who come for the story will find, in the closing chapters, one of the most carefully told narratives in ancient literature.