Matthew

The Gospel of Matthew is the first book of the New Testament and, in the early church, was the most widely read and quoted of the four Gospels. It is the most Jewish of the Gospels - deeply rooted in the Hebrew scriptures, addressed to a community wrestling with its relationship to Judaism, and structured around the figure of Jesus as the authoritative interpreter of the Torah. Its five major discourse sections (chapters 5-7, 10, 13, 18, and 23-25) are widely understood as a deliberate echo of the five books of Moses - presenting Jesus as the new Moses who gives the new law from the mountain.

The Gospel is anonymous. The name Matthew was attached to it in the 2nd century by the early church based on tradition, and the Gospel itself never claims authorship. Most scholars date it to roughly 80-90 CE, after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, on the basis of internal evidence including the apparent knowledge of that event in chapters 22 and 24. It was almost certainly written in Syria, possibly in Antioch, which was a major center of Jewish Christianity in the early period. The author used Mark as a primary source, along with the sayings source Q and material unique to this Gospel (designated M by scholars).

Matthew's distinctive theological concerns run through the entire Gospel. The fulfillment of scripture is central - Matthew uses the formula "this was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet" more than any other Gospel, explicitly connecting events in Jesus's life to Old Testament texts. The question of the relationship between Jesus's teaching and the Torah is addressed directly in the Sermon on the Mount: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (5:17). The community's relationship to Israel - the tension between the Jewish roots of the movement and the Gentile mission - is present throughout, culminating in the Great Commission's command to "make disciples of all nations" (28:19).

The Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7) is Matthew's most distinctive contribution to Christian ethics and one of the most discussed passages in the entire New Testament. Its demands - love of enemies, non-retaliation, purity of heart, prayer in secret, trust rather than anxiety - are radical and have been interpreted variously as an impossible ideal that drives us to grace, as a description of life in the kingdom community, as a practical ethic for disciples willing to follow Jesus fully, and as an eschatological vision of how life will be in the age to come. The history of interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is itself a significant chapter in Christian moral theology, and engaging it honestly requires sitting with its difficulty rather than resolving it too quickly.