Open Bible Matthew Popular Books

Open Bible Matthew Biography & Facts

The Gospel of Matthew is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel's Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people (the Jews) but is rejected by them and how, after his resurrection, he sends the disciples to the gentiles instead. Matthew wishes to emphasize that the Jewish tradition should not be lost in a church that was increasingly becoming gentile. The gospel reflects the struggles and conflicts between the evangelist's community and the other Jews, particularly with its sharp criticism of the scribes and Pharisees with the position that through their rejection of Christ, the Kingdom of God has been taken away from them and given instead to the church. The gospel is traditionally attributed to the Apostle Matthew. According to predominant scholarly views, it was written in the last quarter of the first century by an anonymous Jew familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture. Composition Author and date According to early church tradition, originating with Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD), the gospel was written by Matthew the companion of Jesus, but this presents numerous problems. Most modern scholars hold that it was written anonymously in the last quarter of the first century by a male Jew who stood on the margin between traditional and nontraditional Jewish values and who was familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time. However, scholars such as N. T. Wright and John Wenham hold there are problems with dating Matthew late in the first century, and argue that it was written in the 40s-50s AD. German scholar Adolf Jülicher argued that the gospel "cannot possibly be the translation of a Hebrew original" and that it most likely dates from "about the year 100." The majority of scholars believe that Mark was the first gospel to be composed and that Matthew and Luke both drew upon it as a major source for their works. The author did not simply copy Mark but used it as a base, emphasizing Jesus's place in the Jewish tradition and including details not found in Mark. Writing in a polished Semitic "synagogue Greek", he drew on the Gospel of Mark as a source, plus a hypothetical collection of sayings known as the Q source (material shared with Luke but not with Mark) and hypothetical material unique to his own community, called the M source or "Special Matthew." Matthew has 600 verses in common with Mark, which is a book of only 661 verses. There is approximately an additional 220 verses shared by Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark, from a second source, a hypothetical collection of sayings to which scholars give the name Quelle ('source' in the German language), or the Q source. This view, known as the two-source hypothesis (Mark and Q), allows for a further body of tradition known as "Special Matthew", or the M source, meaning material unique to Matthew. This may represent a separate source, or it may come from the author's church, or he may have composed these verses himself. The author also had the Greek scriptures at his disposal, both as book-scrolls (Greek translations of Isaiah, the Psalms etc.) and in the form of "testimony collections" (collections of excerpts), and the oral stories of his community. Setting Most scholars view the gospel of Matthew as a work of the second generation of Christians, for whom 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 evolving in time into a separate religion. They hold that the author wrote 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. Other scholars hold that the historical Jesus had already predicted that the Jerusalem Temple would be destroyed. 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 divine nature of Jesus was a major issue for the Matthaean 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 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 of Israel sent to Israel alone. 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. Of his three presumed sources only "M", the material from his own community, refers to a "church" (ecclesia), an organized group with rules for keeping order; and the content of "M" suggests that this community was strict in keeping the Jewish law, holding that they must exceed the scribes and the Pharisees in "righteousness" (adherence to Jewish law). Writing from within a Jewish-Christian community growing increasingly 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, alone among the gospels, alternates five blocks of narrative with five of discourse, marking each off with the phrase "When Jesus had finished" (see Five Discourses of Matthew). 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.... Discover the Open Bible Matthew popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Open Bible Matthew books.