The Gospel of Matthew

Synopsis

Matthew opens where Luke does not — with a genealogy, tracing Jesus's ancestry back through David to Abraham, immediately framing him as heir to Israel's story. A birth narrative follows, told largely from Joseph's perspective, including the visit of the magi and the flight into Egypt, both absent from the other Gospels. From there, Matthew settles into a distinctive rhythm: narrative sections alternating with five extended blocks of teaching, each closing with some version of the phrase "when Jesus had ended these sayings." The first and most famous of these is the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5–7), which contains the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer, and much of the ethical teaching most associated with Jesus in popular memory.

The other four discourses cover instructions to the twelve disciples sent out on mission (10), a collection of parables about the kingdom of heaven (13), teaching on community life and forgiveness (18), and a long eschatological discourse on the end of the age delivered on the Mount of Olives (24–25). Between and around these blocks, Matthew narrates Jesus's healings, his escalating conflict with the Pharisees and scribes, and the events of the final week in Jerusalem. The Gospel closes with the resurrection and the Great Commission, in which the risen Jesus sends the disciples to "all nations," instructing them to baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (28:19).

Scholars have long noted that this five-discourse structure may be deliberate. An early twentieth-century theory, associated with the scholar B. W. Bacon, proposed that Matthew arranged his Gospel to mirror the five books of Moses, presenting Jesus as a new lawgiver delivering a new Torah. Not every scholar accepts the parallel in its strong form, but the general sense that Matthew is consciously shaping Jesus's story around Israel's scriptures runs through the whole book.

Historical Background

Early church tradition attributes this Gospel to Matthew, also called Levi, the tax collector called by Jesus and listed among the twelve apostles (9:9; 10:3). The tradition again traces back to Papias, as reported by Eusebius, who states that "Matthew compiled the sayings in the Hebrew language," a claim that has generated considerable discussion, since the Gospel of Matthew as it survives is written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic, and shows clear literary dependence on Mark's Greek text if Markan priority is correct. Some scholars have proposed that Papias was describing an earlier Hebrew or Aramaic sayings-collection by the apostle Matthew that was later used as one source among several for the Greek Gospel we have; others think Papias's testimony may simply be mistaken or refer to something else entirely.

A further complication for traditional authorship is that if Matthew the apostle was an eyewitness to Jesus's ministry, it is not entirely clear why he would rely so heavily on Mark's account, a Gospel traditionally understood as secondhand, coming from Peter's preaching rather than direct eyewitness testimony. This tension is part of why a large share of contemporary scholars regard Matthew as formally anonymous, written by an unknown but clearly learned Jewish-Christian author, while other scholars, including many in more traditional scholarship, continue to defend apostolic authorship as plausible.

Most scholars place Matthew's composition in the range of AD 80 to 90, after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70, a date consistent with Matthew's use of Mark and with passages, such as 22:7, that some read as reflecting knowledge of Jerusalem's fall. A minority of more conservative scholars continue to argue for a date before AD 70. The Gospel's heavy use of Old Testament fulfillment citations, its concern with the Jewish law, and its comparatively Jewish vocabulary ("kingdom of heaven" rather than "kingdom of God," reflecting a Jewish reluctance to write the divine name) point to an audience of Jewish Christians, likely writing in a period when the relationship between the church and the synagogue was becoming increasingly strained.

Scholarly Discussions and Open Questions

Sources: Mark, Q, and "M"

Under the widely held Two-Source Hypothesis, Matthew is understood to have used Mark as a narrative framework and supplemented it with a second source of sayings shared with Luke but not found in Mark, conventionally called "Q." Matthew also contains a substantial amount of material found in no other Gospel — unique parables, sayings, and narrative details, referred to by scholars simply as "M." Whether "M" represents a single additional written source, an oral tradition, or material composed by the author himself remains an open question, and not all scholars accept the Q hypothesis in the first place; a minority continue to argue for Matthean priority instead.

The Genealogies

Matthew's genealogy (1:1–17) and Luke's genealogy (3:23–38) both trace Jesus's ancestry but differ substantially, particularly between David and Joseph, and even disagree on the name of Joseph's father. Proposed explanations vary widely: some scholars and interpreters suggest one genealogy traces Joseph's legal line and the other a biological or Mary's line; others regard the two as reflecting different, not fully harmonizable theological purposes rather than strict historical record-keeping, which was not always the primary aim of ancient genealogies. The question remains genuinely debated rather than resolved to universal satisfaction.

Fulfillment Citations

Matthew repeatedly introduces Old Testament quotations with formulas like "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken." Scholars have studied these citations closely, noting that Matthew sometimes draws on the Hebrew text and sometimes the Greek Septuagint translation, and that his use of texts like Isaiah 7:14 (applied to the virgin birth) or Hosea 11:1 (applied to the flight into Egypt) often reads the Old Testament in ways that go beyond the original historical context of those passages — a common feature of how early Jewish and Christian interpreters read scripture typologically, though it raises interpretive questions that scholars continue to discuss.

Key Themes

Fulfillment. More than any other Gospel, Matthew presents Jesus's life as the fulfillment of Israel's scriptures, repeatedly quoting the Old Testament to frame events in Jesus's life as the completion of prophecy.

The Kingdom of Heaven. Matthew's preferred phrase for what Mark and Luke usually call "the kingdom of God" runs through the Gospel, especially concentrated in the parables of chapter 13.

Law and righteousness. Matthew's Jesus does not abolish the law but repeatedly intensifies it ("Ye have heard that it was said... but I say unto you"), and the Gospel shows sustained concern with what right conduct within the community of disciples looks like.

Conflict with religious leaders. Matthew contains some of the sharpest denunciations of the scribes and Pharisees found in any Gospel, especially the extended series of woes in chapter 23.

A widening mission. The Gospel that opens with magi from the East and closes with a command to make disciples of "all nations" traces a deliberate arc from a story rooted in Israel toward a universal mission.

Peter and the church. Matthew is the only Gospel to use the Greek word for "church" (ekklesia), and it contains Jesus's well-known declaration to Peter, "upon this rock I will build my church" (16:18), along with teaching on binding and loosing, church discipline, and forgiveness "seventy times seven" — material that has made Matthew especially influential for later Christian thinking about the structure and practice of the church.

Common Questions