CAN WE TRUST MATTHEW? Part 2 There are five crucial questions when we consider how reliable th
e Bible is. 1 Who wrote it? 2 How near to the events was it written?3 Does the author intend to be truthful? 4 Is he actually truthful or does he let his prejudices get in the way.5 What do other sources say? The first two questions were looked at last week. We now come to the last three:
3 Did Matthew intend to be truthful? The answer for me is yes and no. He did reproduce stories and sayings from his sources, and did so by and large reliably. But if there was a problem with something, he editorialised.
We have a good example at the very beginning of his gospel. The first seventeen verses give the genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham. Amazingly, “all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations; and for the deportation to Babylon to the Christ, fourteen generations”. (v.17) Except that there weren’t. There were seventeen generations from David to the deportation. Matthew leaves out three kings of Judah, namely Ahaziah, Joash and Amaziah (2 Kings 11 and 12). He also miscounted the next series as only thirteen names appear.
So: did he forget? Did he ‘conveniently’ forget? Did he deliberately construct the genealogy so that the ill-educated would be taken in? Did he act from theological motives, in that 14 is 2 x 7 and 7 was a symbol of perfection or completeness?
We don’t know. And we can’t ask him. But it is a sign that when we read something that is unique to Matthew, “Caveat lector – let the reader beware!”
4 Is he actually truthful or does he let his prejudices get in the way. I am sorry to say that he does let his prejudices get in the way. In four ways. He is sometimes ‘churchy’. He enjoys people being punished. He enjoys a good miraculous events, even when they may not have happened. And he does somewhat gild the lily.
a) Churchiness Some of the teaching in Matthew, compared with Luke, is better suited to church than to the radical teaching of Jesus the Galilean rabbi. The Lucan beatitudes (Blessed are you who are poor, woe to you who are rich…) has been spiritualised and made more comfortable (though still challenging) in Matthew (Blessed are the poor in spirit). The Lord’s prayer has become more liturgical in Matthew 6 as contrasted with the brief prayer in Luke 11. There are rules laid down for dealing with a church member who sins, Matthew 18.15-18.
b) Punishment Matthew tends to add material which stresses the idea of God punishing people. For instance, both Matthew and Luke carry the story of the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant. At the end, Matthew has Jesus say this: “I tell you, many will come form the east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 8.11-12) Both Matthew and Luke have the parable of the great banquet to which the invited guests refuse to come. Instead the rich man (king in Matthew) invite the riff-raff off the streets. But Matthew has an extra bit of the story. “The king noticed a man who was not wearing a wedding garment…. he told the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 22.11-14) The phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth occurs six times in Matthew, once in Luke and never in Mark or John or Paul. I am convinced that Jesus did not say these words, that they are Matthew’s addition.
c) Adding a miracle There are 6 episodes which are recorded in Matthew alone, excluding the infancy narratives which I regard as a special case – more of that in a later blog.
Peter walking on the water (14.28-32) It could be a local addition to the story of Jesus walking on the water, which all four gospel writers record. Personally, I have my doubts. To me it sounds like a sermon illustration that got out of hand.
Pilate’s wife’s dream (27.19) It could have happened. I wonder how Matthew would have heard of it from a Roman source, though.
Judas’ suicide (27.3-10) Quite a likely story. Luke records that Judas bought a field and while there “his bowels gushed out” (Acts 1.18-19) You simply have to make a choice
Earthquake 1 (27.51-53) “The earth shook, the rocks split, the tombs also were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.” Why is there no hint of this in the other gospels? I think it is because it did not happen.
The Guards (27.62-66, 28.11-15) Why does only Matthew mention the guards? I think it is because it is a later addition to the Easter story.
Earthquake 2 (28.2) This version of the Easter story sounds like a version directed by Cecil B de Mille, of the ‘Ten Commandments’ fame. Contrast it with the sober account in Mark and even John.
d) Gilding the lily Matthew has a very high view of Christ as the Son of God, as the one whom we should worship. Quite often he changes his source material to reflect that attitude of worship. For example, after Jesus walked on water, his disciples “were utterly astounded.” (Mark 6.51) Matthew records the same scene: “Those in the boat worshipped him, saying ‘Truly, you are the Son of God.’” How we react to that depends on our personality: how far do we look to historical truth, how far to theological truth.
5 What do other sources say? The whole of this blog has been comparing Matthew with Mark and Luke. The latter two both come out of it better.
Summary If we only had Matthew’s gospel, we would still have the basic facts and the basic teaching of Jesus. But on his own, his gospel tends to blunt the radical newness of Jesus’ ministry in favour of a high theology of Jesus as the Son of God.
Note: the picture is of scribes in ancient Greece – according to 19th century Americans!