Gospel of Matthew - Comparison With Other Writings

Comparison With Other Writings

Matthew, like Luke, incorporates nearly the whole of Mark, keeping the outline intact and adding genealogy-birth-infancy stories to the beginning and post-resurrection appearances to the end. Many scholars have argued that Matthew is simply an expanded version of Mark, but it is also a creative reinterpretation of the source, stressing Jesus' teachings as much as his acts, and making subtle changes in order to stress Jesus' divine nature – Mark's "young man" who appears at Jesus' tomb, for example, becomes a radiant angel in Matthew. The miracle stories in Mark do not demonstrate the divinity of Jesus, as this is an idea not found in that gospel, but rather confirm his status as an emissary of God (which was Mark's understanding of the Messiah).

There is a broad disagreement over chronology between Matthew, Mark and Luke on one hand and John on the other: all four agree that Jesus' public ministry began with an encounter with John the Baptist, but Matthew, Mark and Luke follow this with an account of teaching and healing in Galilee, then a trip to Jerusalem where there is an incident in the Temple, climaxing with the crucifixion on the day of the Passover holiday. John, by contrast, puts the Temple incident very early in Jesus' ministry, has several trips to Jerusalem, and puts the crucifixion immediately before the Passover holiday, on the day when the lambs for the Passover meal were being sacrificed in Temple. Matthew agrees with Paul that gentiles did not have to be circumcised in order to enter the church, but unlike Paul (and like Luke) he believed that the Law was still in force, which meant that Jews within the church had to keep it.