I. Distinctive Characteristics
I. DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS
Matthew shares many features with the other Gospels, but some of them are especially characteristic of the first Gospel.
A. Jewishness
The writer seems concerned throughout to show that Christianity is the true continuation of the Old Testament—the true Judaism, if we may put it that way. He was clearly a knowledgeable Jew, well acquainted with the kind of teaching we find in the Mishnah and the Talmud, and some would say not averse to the use of Midrash. He does not find it necessary to explain Jewish customs (compare 15:1–9 with Mark 7:1–13). He begins his genealogy with Abraham, the great ancestor of the Jewish race (1:1–2). He alone tells us that Jesus was sent to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (15:24; cf. 10:5–6). He writes of matters that would interest Jews, such as the Sabbath (12:1–14) and the temple tax (17:24–27).8 Not all his comments, of course, are favorable to the Jews. There are some strong criticisms, notably in chapter 23, and we should notice his use of expressions like “their” scribes (7:29) and “their” synagogues (9:35), which distance the author from official Judaism.9
But most of all he was a genuine follower of Jesus, a convinced Jewish Christian. A striking example of his Jewishness is his emphasis on the fulfilment of prophecy. He has a formula, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet —,” which we find as early as 1:22 and which recurs throughout the Gospel. From another angle, the United Bible Societies’ The Greek New Testament (3rd edn.) lists 61 quotations from the Old Testament in this Gospel compared with 31 in Mark, 26 in Luke, and 16 in John. Clearly the writer has a special interest in what the Old Testament Scripture says and the way it applies to Jesus. And it is not only the number of quotations that is important; it is the way they are used. Running throughout this Gospel is the thought that God is working his purpose out and that one way in which that purpose is to be discerned is the manner in which what God has inspired his prophets to say can be seen to have been fulfilled in the life and teaching of Jesus. And this Gospel ends with the great commission to make disciples from all the nations (28:16–20). Matthew has a Jewish background and he is deeply interested in Jews, but he is also interested in the relevance of Jesus for all the nations.
B. Fulfilment in Christianity
As we have indicated, the idea that what God was promising in the Old Testament scriptures is fulfilled in Christianity runs throughout this Gospel. This is to be seen in the many references to the fulfilment of prophecy, but, as Albright and Mann point out, “It was of the essence of the Gospel—supremely exemplified in Matthew and in Paul’s teaching—that all Israel’s experience had been gathered up, fulfilled, in Jesus.”10 We find it, for example, in the theme of kingship that features so prominently in this book. Jesus is seen as the Messiah (Matthew has the term “Christ” 17 times, whereas Mark, whom he follows so closely, has it 7 times, and Luke 12 times; John, however, uses it most,11 with 19 references). Matthew refers to Jesus as “the Son of David” 8 times (with another use of the term for Joseph [1:20]), an expression with overtones of royalty. This is brought out especially in a passage where Matthew emphasizes that Jesus is greater than David (22:41–45). He also refers to “the kingdom of heaven” 32 times, “the kingdom of God” 5 times, “the kingdom” 6 times, and “the kingdom of the Son of man” 3 times. But however it is expressed, the thought is that the divine kingdom has drawn near in the person of Jesus. It is another way of bringing out the fulfilment of the divine purpose, and it is a Jewish way of doing this.
In addition, it is a way of emphasizing that the blessing of God that the Jews had looked for had now passed to the followers of Jesus. The Jews had not recognized the divine visitation when the Son of God came among them: “Many will come from the East and the West and will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (8:11). With this we should take the many passages that speak of those who will or who will not enter the kingdom. There can be no doubt that these point to a Jewish way of thinking, but no doubt either that this Evangelist looks for them to be fulfilled in the followers of Jesus, not the Jewish nation.
C. Ecclesiastical Interest
By the time this Gospel was written the followers of Jesus were clearly distinct from the Jews (and not merely a group among the Jews as they had been in Jesus’ lifetime). Matthew is interested in them as a separate group, and it may be significant that he is the only one of our Evangelists to use the word “church” (16:18; 18:17). This can be exaggerated, and not too much should be built on the use of this particular word. But throughout the Gospel there is clearly an interest in the church as an organization. Its relationship to Jesus Christ is brought out in the incident in which Jesus spoke of building his church on Peter’s confession of his messiahship and the fact of its continuing existence in the passage in which Jesus tells his followers what to do when a brother offends and when he speaks of the power of binding and loosing (18:15–18). Matthew is very interested in Peter, and he has this apostle appear frequently in his narrative (even if it may be going a trifle too far to say, “if he had named his own book he might well have called it ‘The Good News According to Peter’ ”).12
Perhaps we should notice here Kilpatrick’s view that this Gospel is to be understood as a lectionary. He argues that the church would have taken over the synagogal custom of the regular reading of Scripture, that Mark had been used in Christian services of worship, and that Matthew was written “as a kind of revised gospel book, conveniently incorporating into one volume the three documents Mark, Q, and M.”13 He holds that Matthew “was intended primarily to serve a liturgical purpose,” and he concludes his book with “The revision, if so we may describe it, was carried out so successfully that the Gospel, itself the most used of the four, has had no successors.”14 The case is argued with learning and skill, but few have been persuaded. There are some grievous weaknesses. For example, Kilpatrick assumes far too easily that we know what was done in first-century synagogues. We should not assume that the church was taking over a well-known custom of the Jews, for we at any rate do not know what the Jews did by way of lectionary, if indeed they had a lectionary.15 And he ignores the New Testament indications that there was a strong charismatic element in early Christian worship. It is hard to fit a lectionary into the worship of which we read in 1 Corinthians (where it was not even known for certain who would preach, 1 Cor. 14:30). That this Gospel came to be used in church services is clear enough. That it was written to be used as a lectionary is not and is highly unlikely.
Krister Stendahl refers to Kilpatrick’s work and proceeds to sum up his own notable contribution to Matthean studies in this way: “We have elsewhere suggested a somewhat broader and yet more specific interpretation of the nature of Mt. by calling it a handbook for teaching and administration within the church, and we have compared its form with the Manual of Discipline from Qumrân.”16 Stendahl stresses Matthew’s use of the Old Testament and speaks of a “school” with its own methods of interpretation. Not many scholars today accept his entire theory, but the comparison of Matthew to the Manual of Discipline is often accepted.
D. Anti-Pharisaism
Matthew also has a strong polemic against the Pharisees. These men formed a highly regarded sect among the Jews and were insistent that the traditions that came from the great ones of the past must be adhered to. They could not recognize the hand of God in what Jesus was doing, but opposed him at every turn. Matthew reports Jesus’ criticisms of the Pharisees as well as the attempts of these Jewish leaders to defeat the purposes of God he discerned in what Jesus taught and did.
E. The Gentiles
Matthew is interested in the way Gentiles were drawn in to follow Jesus. We do not find here the universalism of Paul or of Luke, but there is an insistence that Gentiles have their place in the divine scheme of things, and specifically in receiving the teaching and the help of Jesus. Thus Matthew reports the coming of the Magi to see the infant Jesus, he centers much of what he has to say on “Galilee of the Gentiles,” and he recounts stories like that of the healing of the centurion’s slave and of the daughter of the Canaanite woman.
F. Teaching
Matthew has a great interest in the teaching of Jesus,17 and he expresses what he says very clearly.18 Thus the Sermon on the Mount is one of five great discourse sections, many parables are recorded, and from time to time there are statements that Jesus taught, without his teaching being expressly included in the Gospel. It is plain that Matthew valued the teaching of Jesus and made a point of passing a good deal of it on to his readers. He was also, it would seem, both a good teacher himself and a man with a great interest in the teachers in the church. There is little doubt that he wrote in such a way as to be of help to them (cf. Filson, “His immediate aim is to provide the Church’s teachers with a basic tool for their work”).19 Writing in a day when the possession of books was not common, he puts a good deal of teaching in a form easily memorized.20 He also arranges things in threes (three messages to Joseph, three denials of Peter), sevens (seven parables in ch. 13, seven woes in ch. 23), and other numerical groups that could be readily memorized.
Matthew has a great gift for economy of words; where he shares a narrative with Mark he is almost always shorter. Thus France points out that to tell the story of the woman with a haemorrhage Mark takes 154 words and Luke 114, but Matthew uses only 48 words. “Yet Matthew’s bare account contains all the essential elements: the length of her illness, her conviction that a mere touch of his garment would suffice, Jesus’ declaration, ‘Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well’, and the fact of her instant healing.”21 But where he has additional information that he sees as important he can be longer than the others, as when he adds the words about Jesus being sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel to the story of the Canaanite woman (15:24).
Matthew has five considerable sections of teaching (chs. 5–7, 10, 13, 18, 23–25)—a fact that B. W. Bacon made the basis of a view that attracted a good deal of support, namely, that Matthew is replacing the five books of Moses with five books of the messianic Torah.22 Sometimes this notion is linked with suggestions of a New Moses or a New Exodus, but this does not seem to be what Matthew is driving at. W. D. Davies has examined Bacon’s view and concluded that Matthew’s “fivefold structure cannot certainly be held to have any theological significance, that is, it does not necessarily point to a deliberate interpretation of the Gospel in terms of a new Pentateuch, as, in its totality, a counterpart to the five books of Moses.”23 Anyone who works with this Gospel must come to some conclusion about the sections into which it may be divided, but the difficulty in doing this is brought out by the fact that Filson comes up with three different outlines, each based on a way of looking at the Gospel as a whole.24
We should also bear in mind that seeing Jesus’ teaching merely in five discourses may be a trifle too confident. Furthermore, it involves lumping together chapters 23–25, whereas most students regard chapter 23 as a discourse distinct from chapters 24 and 25. H. B. Green also draws attention to the importance of chapter 11 and speaks of seven discourses.25 The resemblance to the Pentateuch has to be read into this Gospel; it is not the most natural way of understanding it.
G. The Kingdom
An important feature of Matthew’s Gospel is his emphasis on God’s kingdom. As we noted earlier, he uses the expression “the kingdom of heaven” most frequently (32 times), though he also has the expression favored in the other Gospels, “the kingdom of God” (5 times), as well as “the kingdom” (5 times), and once also (in prayer) “your kingdom.” He uses expressions like “the kingdom of their Father” and “the kingdom of my Father,” and he refers to the kingdom of the “Son of man” (13:41, etc.). Ten times he introduces parables with “The kingdom of heaven is like —.” Sometimes the kingdom is clearly future (25:31), but sometimes it is thought of as coming in the person of Jesus (4:17; 12:28). For Matthew it is important that God is sovereign over all and that his rule will one day be brought to a glorious consummation. The present or the future aspect of the kingdom underlies a great deal of what is written in this Gospel.
Kingsbury draws attention to the importance of the expression “the gospel of the kingdom” (4:23; 9:35, etc.) and regards it as Matthew’s own designation of “the contents of his work … an expression that enables him to summarize in the same terms both the pre-Easter message of Jesus and the post-Easter message of his church.”26 This may be going too far; after all, Matthew does head his work “The book of the story of Jesus Christ” (1:1). But it does draw attention to the importance of the kingdom for Matthew.