St. Matthew

Introduction

Matthew’s Gospel is written at a time of great turmoil, in about 80-90AD. This is a time of dispersion. The Romans had destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and the Jews were dispersed throughout the lands around. Matthew is writing to one such group of Jews who were in transition.

With the destruction of the Temple, Israel lost its system of cultic practice – gone were its priest, its sacrifices; gone was the one central place where Jews could experience the presence of God in a concrete way. What developed instead was a system of synagogues dispersed throughout the countries. These were headed by a rabbi (teacher) and focused upon teaching the law and developing practices that could supported in people everyday life. Great writings began development at this time. Mishna and Talmud had there beginnings. These were books of rabbinical commentary and discussion about the law and how to live it out. Matthew’s Gospel is much the same thing, a book of instruction on living the life of a disciple.

Because Matthew was instructing Jews, we can expect that he is going to talk their language. Matthew builds is the story being careful to note Jesus’ lineage in the tradition of the Jewish great one. Matthew traces Jesus’ connection to Abraham, and to David, as well as to Moses; because Jewish teaching was centered upon the Law (Torah), Matthew’s account is going to be connected to the law (Moses was the law given); Matthew is going to be careful to connect the story of Jesus with the current teaching of the scriptures. We can expect to see frequent connections to the writings of our Old Testament. There are, in fact, more quotations from the Old Testament in Matthew then in any of the other gospels.

The structure of the Matthew’s gospel is simple:

He follows a chronology of Jesus life
He breaks Jesus’ teaching into 5 discourses (5 to signal a reflection of the Pentateuch [Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy]. The Pentateuch or Torah is making a connection to the substance of Jewish teaching.

Chapters 5-7 The Sermon on the Mount
Chapter 10 Instructions for missionary disciples
Chapter 13 The Parables of the Kingdom of Heaven
Chapter 13 On Sincere Discipleship
Chapters 24-25 On the End of the Present Age

(Note: The outline of discoursers is cited in the introduction to “The Gospel According to Matthew”, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, edited by Bruce M. Metzger, Roland e. Murphy, New Revised Stand Version, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), NT 1.

The Rev. Dr. Kipp W. Zimmermann

Thursday, January 12, 2006