The Gospel of Matthew: Setting expectations on its authors' terms

This continues the review of various documents both inside and outside the Bible in order to look at the author's point of view and message based on their presentation of material.

Analyzing a Document's Table of Contents : The Gospel of Matthew

Parts of Matthew are noticeably similar in presentation to Mark. In Matthew, as in Mark, we can find collections of events where the author focuses on the action and mentions who, when, where, and what was involved in an event. Matthew is noticeably more likely to record one more element when presenting an event: a quotation of Jewish scripture referenced as another context tag alongside the time, the place, the people, and the action. In Matthew, we also find some events from before Jesus' birth that are recorded with some but not all of the details that are common when recording an event: they may lack a specific time and place. Still, even these events with incomplete context are recorded as events with people and actions. However, there is a significant amount of material in Matthew that does follow that same focus of narrating events.

The Gospel of Matthew begins by presenting Jesus' genealogy. Leaving aside various questions about the genealogy's details, at this level we want to focus on the more basic fact that the author considered a genealogy to be worth including. In the culture that I write from, any given person's genealogy is not generally of interest to people who do not share their ancestry. An author would not include a genealogy when writing about someone. But those familiar with the Jewish scriptures will recognize that genealogy was an important part of Jewish culture, inextricably connected to Jewish religion.

The Gospel of Matthew also contains extended sections of Jesus' teachings. While they may be introduced in their settings with a place and people, Matthew's focus is on the content of the words themselves. The Sermon the Mount is recorded in so much detail that a thorough study of it involves looking at individual sections of the sermon, moving beyond the "event" level and into the teachings themselves. Jesus' instructions on sending out his disciples likewise show the author's focus moving beyond the event and into the content of what Jesus said. Matthew contains more than one section in which the items collected are parables. The parables, presented in their groups, may have some event context or actions when people ask for clarification or otherwise react to what Jesus said, but individually they are often presented without any event context, and again the author's focus has moved to Jesus' words.

While Mark focuses largely on what Jesus did, Matthew -- while including such events -- often brings the focus onto Jesus' teachings. He also presents Jesus' life within the context of Jewish culture, and as closely interrelated with Jewish scripture.

In comparison to Mark, Matthew's focus covers more types of things than events, and his context is more explicitly religious. Within a broader range of material we see Matthew presenting genealogy, a birth narrative, and extended passages of teaching. Matthew's focus closely follows the life and teachings of Jesus.

As obvious as that may seem, the point of restating it here is that we didn't assume the author's subject or take someone's word for that; it's something that we can observe with objective methods. Using those methods, we can study a text and find the author's focus. That will come to matter more as we move into documents whose main topic is often assumed by people who have not necessarily read the documents in question.