A PRESENTATION OF JESUS TO JEWISH CHRISTIANS
The Gospel According to Matthew
The Gospel of Matthew is probably, as has been said, the most important book that was ever written. Its importance is due to the information which it contains about Jesus Christ. More fully perhaps than any other one book, the Gospel of Matthew has preserved the knowledge of Jesus.
Whatever be the future of the Church, the life of Jesus will now always remain the central fact of history. Even the secondary influence of Jesus is incalculable; even if none were left to own him as Lord and Master, still he would remain incomparably the most influential man that has ever lived. As a matter of fact, however, such a condition has never existed and never will exist. From the very beginning the life of Jesus made itself felt through those who accepted him, to the exclusion of all others, as the supreme Lord of their lives. If Jesus had been regarded merely as a quiet teacher of ethics, the Gospel of Matthew never would have been written, and probably the very name of Jesus would have perished. The wonderful influence of Jesus, which has transformed the world from darkness to light, which alone gives promise of a final reign of righteousness, has been exerted through the instrumentality, not of admirers, but of disciples. Jesus has been a Teacher only because he has been a Master.
To make Jesus Master in the lives of men was the purpose of the Gospel of Matthew, and it is the purpose of our study of the book. The Gospel was not written with merely scientific interest; it was not written merely to preserve certain gems from the lips of an inspired teacher. The ultimate purpose of the book was to make men fall at Jesus' feet with the words, "My Lord and my God." Such a purpose is not inconsistent with the most scrupulous truthfulness. Adoration of Jesus can be induced best of all, not by fanciful elaboration, but by sober fact. In the case of Jesus, truth was more glorious by far than the boldest fiction.
To make Jesus Lord and Saviour is the purpose of our work as teachers. That purpose cannot be attained by exhortation or by threatening, but only by impartation of knowledge. To know Jesus is to trust him and adore him. Many readers of the Gospels never attain to the true knowledge. Their failure is due to various causes—to moral laxness, to preconceived opinions, to spiritual dullness. One obstacle, however, is of a simpler kind. One thing that stands in the way of a real understanding of the Gospels is the habit of piecemeal reading. We read the Gospels bit by bit instead of allowing the whole to make its impression. We do not see the wood for the trees. Jesus is concealed from us by his individual acts. The Gospels should be read as well as studied—read rapidly, like an ordinary book, preferably in some rational form of printing where verse numbers and all editorial matters are relegated to the margin and the lines stretch across the page. These things may seem to be trivialities, and certainly they are not essential. What is essential—not in place of detailed study, but in addition to it—is a rapid reading of the Gospels, by which, through the exclusion of all non-essentials, the mysterious, holy person of Jesus is brought simply and freshly before the wondering soul. Not to know about Jesus, but to know him, is the prime object of our study. To know about him is a valuable part of education; but to know him is life eternal.
1. MEANING OF "GOSPEL"
The Greek word for "gospel" means "good news." Nowhere in the New Testament, however, is that word applied to a book. There is no reference in the New Testament to a "Gospel" of Matthew or of Mark or of Luke or of John. In the New Testament the word "gospel" has a more general reference. It designates the "good news" which lies at the basis of Christian preaching, however that news may be known. Christianity is based upon "a piece of information." The subject of that information is the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without Christ we should have been hopeless, but Christ has saved us. Information about what he has done for us, however that information be conveyed, is the gospel.
This broad use of the word "gospel" appears even in the titles "Gospel according to Matthew," "Gospel according to Mark," "Gospel according to Luke," and "Gospel according to John," which are not due to the original authors of the books. "Gospel according to Matthew" did not originally mean the same thing as "Gospel of Matthew." It did not mean the Gospel which Matthew produced, but the one Gospel of Jesus Christ as Matthew narrated it. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John produced simply four accounts of the same thing. That common subject of the four accounts is the gospel, the good news, of what Jesus Christ has done for his followers.
At a very early time, however, books which had the gospel as their subject came themselves to be designated as "Gospels." The usage is convenient, and will be freely adopted in these textbooks. We may speak indiscriminately of the "Gospel according to Matthew" and of the "Gospel of Matthew."
2. AUTHORSHIP OF THE FIRST GOSPEL
(1) Not Indicated in the Gospel Itself.—The Gospel of Matthew should be sharply distinguished from those books which themselves make definite claims as to their authorship. The Epistle to the Romans, for example, claims to have been written by the apostle Paul. If it was not written by Paul, it is a forgery. The book of The Acts, also, though it does not mention the name of the author, claims at least—through the use of the first person plural—to have been written by some companion of the apostle Paul. Even the Gospel of John, as we shall see, really affords clear indications about its own authorship. The Gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, lays no claim to any particular authorship. We might believe that it was written by some other person than Matthew and yet be perfectly loyal to the book itself. The self-witness of the book is confined merely to a claim of truthfulness. If we believe that the record which the book contains is true, then we might, in perfect loyalty to the Gospel, believe that it was written by some one like Luke or Mark, outside of the company of the apostles. Such a view, however, would display an unreasonable distrust of Christian tradition.
(2) Papias on the First Gospel.—The earliest extant information about the authorship of the First Gospel is to be found in a fragment which Eusebius, the church historian of the fourth century, has preserved from a lost work of Papias. Papias was bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor in the former half of the second century.
The fragment from Papias, which is found in Eusebius, Church History, iii, 39, 16, may be translated as follows:
"Matthew accordingly wrote [or compiled] the oracles in the Hebrew dialect, and everyone translated them as he was able."
It seems pretty evident that Papias is here referring to the First Gospel. Some, indeed, have supposed that he means by "the oracles" a writing composed almost exclusively of sayings of Jesus, which formed merely one of the sources of our First Gospel. This view is probably incorrect. Papias could designate the Gospel of Matthew as "the oracles" either because of the large place which sayings of Jesus have in this Gospel, as compared, for example, with the Gospel of Mark, or else because the whole Gospel, both speeches and narrative, was of divine, oracular authority. The view that "according to Matthew" in the ancient title and in Christian tradition means not that Matthew wrote the book, but that it is based in some way ultimately on his authority, is opposed by the analogy of Mark. As we shall see, the Gospel of Mark, in early tradition, was referred ultimately to the authority of Peter; if, therefore, "according to" was used in the sense indicated above, the Second Gospel would have been called the Gospel "according to Peter" instead of the Gospel "according to Mark."
The testimony of Papias involves two principal assertions: in the first place, that Matthew wrote the First Gospel; and in the second place, that he wrote it in the "Hebrew" language.
The former assertion, which is supported by a striking consensus of early writers, has already been considered. The latter is much more puzzling.
3. WAS THE FIRST GOSPEL ORIGINALLY ARAMAIC?
(1) Meaning of "Hebrew."—By "the Hebrew dialect," Papias no doubt means Aramaic rather than what we call Hebrew. The term "Hebrew" was applied to both of the two closely related languages. Compare Acts 21:40. It is exceedingly unlikely that a Gospel would have been written in Hebrew; for before the time of Christ that had ceased to be the living language of Palestine. What Papias asserts, then, is that Matthew wrote in Aramaic.
(2) "Everyone Translated Them as He Was Able."—Papias asserts further that everyone translated the oracles as he was able. These words may be interpreted in various ways. Perhaps they mean that every man who used the original of Matthew had to translate it for himself; or perhaps that the Gospel was translated orally in the churches, as the Jews translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Aramaic in the synagogues; or perhaps that a number of written translations of the Gospel were made. At any rate Papias seems to imply that the condition which he here describes had come to an end when he wrote. Some one Greek form of the Gospel had gained general acceptance; the time when everyone translated as he was able was at an end.
(3) Value of the Tradition.—The tradition of an Aramaic original of Matthew is not preserved merely by Papias, but appears in a considerable number of early writers. How far the other writers are independent of Papias is a disputed question. The tradition may be variously estimated. Some have supposed that it is entirely correct—that our Greek Gospel of Matthew is a translation, by Matthew himself or by some one else, of an Aramaic work: others have supposed that the tradition is altogether false—for example, that an Aramaic translation of the Greek Gospel was mistaken for an original from which the Greek Gospel had been translated: others hold intermediate views—for example, that one of the sources of our Greek Gospel was written in Aramaic. An important objection to the view that there was an Aramaic original of Matthew is that the Greek Gospel looks more like an original Greek work than like a translation. The tradition of the Aramaic Matthew places before us one of the unsolved problems of New Testament criticism.
One thing is certain—the language of the Gospel of Matthew, like that of the other Gospels, has a strong Aramaic coloring. This, however, does not require the hypothesis that our Matthew was translated from an Aramaic original. Undoubtedly, however our Greek Matthew was written, there was a time in the early days of the Church when the tradition of the life of Christ was carried on chiefly or wholly in the Aramaic language. The words of Jesus, at any rate, as they appear in our Gospels, have at some time or other undergone translation; for Jesus taught in Aramaic. The Aramaic coloring of the Gospels is one of the evidences of their trustworthiness. Though written in Greek, they are evidently rooted deep in the original Palestinian soil.
4. DATE
The date of the Gospel cannot be determined with accuracy. Some indication, however, is afforded by the assertion of Irenæus, of the latter part of the second century, that Matthew published his Gospel while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome. Even if this assertion should prove not to be absolutely correct, it would exhibit an early tradition for the years between about A. D. 60 and 70 as the date of the Gospel. This tradition is confirmed by the widespread view among early writers that Matthew was written before Mark; for Mark is now generally admitted to have been written before the destruction of Jerusalem in A. D. 70. There is really no serious objection to the traditional dating of Matthew. It was probably written in the sixties of the first century, and probably, as tradition says, in Palestine.
There are traces of the use of the Gospel in writers of the early half of the second century. On the other hand, there is no clear indication that it was used by any New Testament writer. The absence of citations from our Gospels in the epistles of Paul would tend to indicate that in the very earliest period the gospel tradition was carried on by word of mouth rather than by books.
5. THE APOSTLE MATTHEW
In the four lists of the apostles, Matt. 10:2-4; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:13-16; Acts 1:13, Matthew is designated by the bare name, except in his own Gospel, where he appears as "Matthew the publican." In Matt. 9:9, his call is narrated. In the parallel passages in Mark and Luke, Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27,28, the name of the publican who was called is given only as "Levi." Without the Gospel of Matthew we should not have been able to identify Levi and Matthew. Evidently the apostle had two names, as was the case with so many others of the persons mentioned in the New Testament. After his call, Matthew made a great feast for Jesus. Luke 5:29; compare Mark 2:15. Matthew himself, alone among the Synoptists, does not even make it perfectly clear that it was he in whose house Jesus sat at meat. The peculiarities of the First Gospel in what is said about Matthew become significant when the authorship is known. Of course of themselves they would be quite insufficient to indicate who the author was. The assertion by early writers that Matthew wrote the Gospel, was based not upon indications in the Gospel itself, but upon independent tradition.
6. "THE BOOK OF THE GENERATION OF JESUS CHRIST"
The first verse of the Gospel is evidently based upon the formula, occurring for the first time at Gen. 5:1, which marks off the divisions of the book of Genesis. It is most naturally regarded as a heading for the genealogy that follows in Matt. 1:2-17. There is only one objection to that view. In Genesis "the book of the generations of Adam," or "the generations of Shem" or the like, introduces an account, not of ancestors of the persons in question, but of their descendants. In Matt. 1:2-17, on the contrary, we have an account not of descendants of Jesus, but of ancestors. This objection has led some scholars to regard Matt. 1:1 as the title not of the genealogy but of the whole Gospel. The title would then represent Jesus as the beginning of a new race, or of a new period in the history of humanity.
This interpretation is unnecessarily subtle. It should rather be admitted that there is a difference between the phrase in Genesis and that in Matthew. The difference is very natural. In the case of Abraham the descendants were in view; in the case of the Messiah, the ancestors. Adam and Noah and Abraham were bearers of a promise; Christ was the culmination. Genesis looks forward; Matthew looks back. The difference in the use of the phrase is natural and significant.
The title, with the whole genealogy, is significant of what is to follow. At the very start, the ruling thought of Matthew's Gospel finds expression. Jesus is son of David, and son of Abraham; he is the culmination of the divine promise.
In the Library.—Purves, "Christianity in the Apostolic Age," pp. 270-272, 290-293. Davis, "Dictionary of the Bible": Purves (supplemented), articles on "Gospel" and "Matthew." M'Clymont, "The New Testament and Its Writers," pp. 1-20. Stevens and Burton, "A Harmony of the Gospels." Ellicott, "A New Testament Commentary for English Readers," vol. i: Plumptre, "The Gospel According to St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke," pp. xli-xliii, 1-186. Zahn, "Introduction to the New Testament," vol. ii, pp. 367-427, 506-601. The last-named work is intended primarily for those who have some knowledge of Greek, but can also be used by others.