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The Gospel of Matthew in a Nutshell
Are you familiar with the Gospel of Matthew? If not, read on! If so, try to summarize its distinctive portrayal of Jesus in one sentence. (of say, 50 words or so max). If you really can’t, then again, read on! If you give it a try, check to see that you have both described it accurately and shown how it is distinctive among the other Gospels. Here’s a sentence that I might try if I were given the assignment:
January 16, 2025
The Gospel of Matthew: Who, When, and Why?
In my previous post we took the first step in understanding the Gospel of Matthew, grasping its major themes and emphases. It is also important to situate the book in its own historical context. For that we need to know something about the author, the approximate time he was writing it, and why he appears to have taken on the task. In short: Who, When, and Why? We start with the “who.” Our oldest full manuscripts of the Gospel call it “According to Matthew.” These manuscripts date from around 375 CE, and so were created about three hundred years after the book was in circulation. We wish we had earlier manuscripts to help us gauge when it was first called this. This designation (“according to Matthew”) is obviously not the original title. When I write a book, I don’t title it “According to Bart.” I give it a title. Whoever wrote this book either gave it a title that is lost (that seems unlikely), or simply published it anonymously (which happened a good deal in […]
January 18, 2025
Seats Still Available! Blog Dinner in Tampa this Friday (January 17)
In case you didn’t see the announcement the first time! There are still some seats that can be filled for my blog dinner this week in Tampa, if you’re interested. Here is the original post: I will be in Tampa next week and would like to do a Blog Dinner on Friday, January 17, with any blog members who happen to be around or can, well, get around. Probably around 6:30 or so for drinks to start (for whoever is interested in quenching thirst before satisfying hunger), and location TBD. You interested? I’ll limit the table to 8, me and the perfect number 7. For those who come there are no obligations other than: Being a blog member Showing up Talking Paying for whatever you ingest. Whatever you exgest is free. If you’re interested, do NOT reply here as a comment. Send along an email at [email protected]. Hope some of you can come!
January 11, 2025
Was (the author of) Matthew Really a Jew?
My previous posts were dealing with the themes and historical context of the Gospel of Matthew, along with a list of suggested readings for those who want to go deeper. I would like to go deeper myself by returning at greater length to one of the most puzzling features of Matthew, its relationship to Judaism. To begin with, I suggested in my post “Who, When, and Why” that the author himself was Jewish. I want to explore that at some greater depth here. The first thing to say is that not all New Testament scholars have thought so. Au contraire. One of the premier scholars of the NT and the historical Jesus is John Meier. Before he began his massive multi-volume study of the historical Jesus, called A Marginal Jew, he was principally known as an expert on the Gospel of Matthew. Meier’s view was that Matthew was not actually Jewish. One of his pieces of evidence is very interesting and has always struck me as rather amusing. It is this. In Matthew 21 we […]
January 21, 2025
Mark’s Messianic Secret
In my previous posts I have pointed out that the Gospel of Mark (unlike the other Gospels) portrays Jesus as trying to keep his messiahship a secret. He doesn’t allow the demons to identify him when he casts them out; when he heals people he strictly instructs them not to tell anyone; he teaches his disciples the “secret of the Kingdom” privately when no one else is around; he teaches the crowds only using parables precisely (Mark indicates) so no one can understand what he means. And he never publicly teaches about his own identity. This last point should be emphasized. Unlike other Gospels (see John 4:25-26!) Jesus never tells anyone publicly that he is the messiah. When he is acknowledged as the messiah by Peter in a private conversation with the disciples in Mark 8:29-30, Jesus orders them not to let anyone know. And then he starts teaching that as the messiah he has to be rejected and executed. That seems to be a complete contradiction of terms for Peter, who has just made […]
January 28, 2025
The Flukes of Life: How I Almost Never Became a Professor
This is now my 40th year of teaching at a university, 36 of the years at UNC Chapel Hill and 4 before that at Rutgers as a 28 year old. It very nearly didn’t happen at all. Life is so strange. I was on the job market while I was writing my dissertation.. And even though there were job openings, I couldn’t get an interview to save my soul. Part of the problem was that my PhD was from a theological seminary, and a lot of the jobs were at secular institutions – state universities, private colleges, and the like. Most places simply don’t want to take a chance on someone who has been trained in a theological environment. Especially someone like me at the time. I had never set foot in a secular setting since high school! Starting when I was 17, I was at Moody Bible Institute (3 years), (Christian evangelical) Wheaton College (2 years), and then (Presbyterian ministerial training ground) Princeton Theological Seminary (7 years). Yikes! Even theological schools and Christian colleges […]
January 22, 2025
The Gospel of Luke in a Nutshell
If you already have Matthew and Mark, why would you need Luke? Aren’t they all the same? Nope. Next question: do you know these Gospels very well? If not, AOK: Keep reading! If so – see if you can summarize the themes and emphases of Luke in one sentence (say, 50 words) in a way that both highlights what it’s about and shows what is distinctive about its portrayal of Jesus. How’d that go for you? Here’s what I would come up with as a first go (I’ve never tried this before!) The Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus both as a Greco-Roman “divine man” – shown by his supernatural birth, astounding miracles, death, and exaltation – and as the final prophet sent by God to the Jewish people, who rejected him, fulfilling God’s plan for salvation to go to all the peoples of earth. It would take volumes to fill out this brief summary (many such volumes have been written! I’ll give suggestions for reading in a future post on Luke). Here I will try […]
January 29, 2025
The Gospel of Luke: For Further Reading
Now that I’ve devoted two posts to the major sine qua non of Luke’s Gospel – one that lays out its major themes and emphases, the other that deals with who wrote it, when, and why, I can provide some suggestions for further reading, important works written by scholars for non-scholars. I have given brief annotations for each book a mention, to give you a sense of what it’s about and so help you decide which, if any, might be worth your while. I have divided the list into three sections: Books that provide important discussion of Luke in general or with respect to a particularly key topic Commentaries that give lengthy introductions to all matters of importance about the Gospel and then go passage by passage to provide more detailed interpretation (that’s where you can dig more deeply into “what does this particular word actually mean?”; “what is the real point of this passage”; how does this passage relate to what Luke says elsewhere in his Gospel or to what we can find in […]
February 1, 2025
Is the Gospel of Luke Anti-Jewish?
If Luke is the most “gentile” Gospel, is it also “anti-Jewish”? In my earlier post on “The Gospel of Luke in a Nutshell,” I argued that Luke, more than the other Gospels, went out of its way to portray Jesus as a great prophet (like Samuel, like Elijah, etc.). In part, in Luke’s understanding, that is why Jesus had to die. The Jewish people, in his view, always reject their own prophets sent from God. Jesus was the last of the great prophets. He too had to be rejected and killed at the hands of the Jewish people (see Luke 13:33-35). Some scholars have argued that because of this denigration of the Jewish people for always rejecting the prophets and Jesus, Luke is probably to be seen as an “anti-Jewish” Gospel. In my judgment there is a lot to be said for this view. The only Jews that the Gospel appears to approve of are the ones who recognize Jesus as a great prophet and son of God (his mother, Symeon and Anna, John the […]
February 2, 2025
The Gospel of Luke: Who Wrote It? When? And Why?
Everyone says that the Gospel of Luke was written by … Luke! Do we know if that’s true? Whether Luke or not, do we know when he wrote it? And why did he want/need to do so? Now that I’ve summarized the major themes and emphases of the Gospel we can delve into these equally interesting and important historical questions. For as long as anyone has named an author of this Gospel, it has been Luke, a gentile traveling companion of Paul thought to be a medical doctor. I’ll continue calling him “Luke” for the sake of convenience, even though I don’t think we can know who he was. Years ago on the blog (in January 2020) I devoted a series of posts to the question: Was Luke Luke (so to say)? There are a lot of issues to consider, including seemingly unrelated things, such as whether Paul actually wrote Colossians (!). The series ended with my wrap-up overview posted on January 19: So: Was Luke Luke?, in case you’re interested in digging deeper. I […]
January 30, 2025
The Synoptic Problem: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Who’s Zoomin Who?
Why are Matthew, Mark, and Luke are so similar to each other and yet have so many differences, lots of them minor but some of them significant? In my previous posts I’ve given “Nutshell” explanations of each of these Gospels. Before moving on to John – which is remarkably different in many ways from these three, both individually and as group – I want to devote a series of posts to their relationship to one another. How could they be so alike – often word for word the same – without some copying going on? And how do we account for the (sometimes serious) differences? This has long been known as the “Synoptic Problem.” It is not a problem connected with John because the features that create the problem for Mathew, Mark, and Luke (their extensive similarities often in extensive verbatim agreements) do not apply to John. I have just reread my explanation of the problem in my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings 7th ed. (Oxford University Press) […]
February 5, 2025
Why Assume the Synoptic Gospels Were COPYING One Another (and Other Sources)?
Why couldn’t Matthew, Mark, and Luke just have the same stories? Why do we have to assume someone was copying someone else’s? In yesterday’s post, I simply stated that copying must have been going on to explain the literary relationship among Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Synoptic Gospels, since they have so many similarities: they tell many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes – lots of times – in the very same words. That is to say, someone must be copying someone else, or they are all using the same written sources. But some of my students have trouble seeing that if two documents are word-for-word the same, one must be copying the other (or they both are copying a third source). Many older adults don’t seem to have any problem seeing that, right off the bat. But younger adults need to be convinced. And so I do a little experiment with them that more or less proves it. I do this every year in my New Testament class, which […]
February 6, 2025
Was Mark the First Gospel? Evidence for “Markan Priority”
Scholars almost always say that Mark was the first Gospel and that Matthew and Luke were both copying it. But why should anyone think so? Is there any evidence or is it just one of those scholarly whims that everyone repeats because it’s what they’ve always heard? I continue here with my explanation of the evidence from my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 7th ed. (Oxford University Press). I am using the 7th edition instead of the more recent 8th that was co-authored with my colleague Hugo Mendez because he and I disagree on some things connected with the Synoptic Problem and the chapter was rewritten significantly as we compromised over our differences. But we’re still talking to each other! 🙂 **************************** For the past century or so, three arguments have proved widely convincing for establishing Mark’s priority to Matthew and Luke. Patterns of Agreement. Since the main reason for thinking that the Gospels share a common source is their frequent verbatim agreement, it makes sense to examine the […]
January 8, 2025
Gospel Problems: Does Matthew Ever “Correct” Mark?
In my previous post I indicated that one of the reasons for thinking that Matthew copied Mark instead of the other way around is that there are passages in Mark that can be read in ways (or maybe even were meant in ways) that could be seen as problematic — they might be worded in an awkward way, for example, or they might say something that cold be seen as confusing or just wrong — but that in Matthew are worded differently so that there is no longer a problem. That would make sense if Matthew was copying Mark and just reworded something to “correct” it or at least to get rid of the problem. It would be harder to explain why Mark would create a problem that wasn’t in the story he was copying. If that’s right, it would suggest Mark is the source of Matthew. Here’s one example to consider out of many. I choose this one because, well, it’s one of my favorites!
February 8, 2025
Was Mark Really Written First? The Arguments for “Markan Priority”
I’ve begun blogging on the “Synoptic Problem,” the problem of why Matthew, Mark, and Luke are so similar in so many ways (many of the exact same stories, often told in the same sequence, and even in the very same words), and yet so different (often in wording, sometimes in sequence, etc.). The solution virtually everyone accepts is that there is some kind of copying going on. The first step is to see if one of them was copied in part by the others, and based on long examinations of all the evidence, the vast majority of scholars have come to agree Matthew and Luke had a copy of Mark that they copied as the basis for their accounts. They each changed it in places, moving a story to another place, rewording sentences either a little, or a lot, etc.. But Mark was first and the others copied most of it. I should point out that Matthew and Luke almost certainly didn’t have the same *copy* of Mark. And the copies they each had may […]
February 9, 2025
The Q Source Used by Matthew and Luke
If Mark was the first Gospel written, as I tried to explain in my previous post, and it was used by both Matthew and Luke, how do we explain that there are many places in Matthew and Luke that agree with each but are not in Mark.? They didn’t get these passages from Mark, but if they agree word for word in places, there must be copying. What are they copying? Welcome to the world of Q! Q is the hypothetical source that scholars believe was used by Matthew and Luke to supplement the materials they got from Mark (“hypothetical” because it no longer survives – which is true, of course, of the vast majority of the earliest Christian writings). The Q hypothesis was developed in the 19th century and has been the dominant view of scholarship for the past century, but it has come under attack in recent years (as I mention below). But it continues to be the most widely accepted hypothesis to help solve the Synoptic Problem, for reasons I’ll explain in […]
February 11, 2025
An Argument for Q: The Hypothetical Source That Seems to Have Existed
Why should we think there was a Q, the hypothetical document that contained principally sayings of Jesus, that was (according to this hypothesis) used by Matthew and Luke (but not by Mark) in constructing their Gospels? It is an issue because if Matthew and Luke both used Mark, as almost everyone agrees (for reasons I laid out in my earlier post), then one has to explain why they have so many other materials (mainly sayings) in common that are *not* found in Mark. They didn’t get them from Mark! Where then? In my earlier post I claimed that Matthew does not seem to have gotten those sayings from Luke or Luke from Matthew, and so they both most have gotten them from some other one-time-existing source. That is a source commonly called Q (for the German word Quelle: Source). But some readers have asked exactly why it is unlikely that Matthew got these sayings from Luke or Luke from Matthew? In particular, isn’t the best theory the one that has the least hypotheticals? Why invent […]
February 12, 2025
Other Sources for Matthew and Luke: M and L! And Who CARES?
We have seen that most scholars agree that the problem of the close similarities and striking differences among our Synoptic Gospels — the “Synoptic Problem” — is best solved by thinking that Mark was copied (to a greater or lesser extent) by both Matthew and Luke, the view called “Markan Priority.” The majority continues to believe there was a “sayings source” available independently as well to Matthew and Luke, that gave them many of the sayings of Jesus that they record but are not found in Mark (the Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, some of the parables, lots of his memorable one-liners). Others, as I’ve said, maintain that Matthew copied Mark and that Luke copied both Matthew and Mark. Even if we agree there was probably a Q source and even if we don’t, we are still left with the fact that a good number of Matthew’s stories are not found in either Mark or Luke (Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, the visit of the Magi, a bunch of his parables), just as there are a […]
February 15, 2025
For Further Reading on the Synoptic Problem and Its Possible Solutions
I have now finished my short thread on the Synoptic Problem and here would like to provide some guidelines for additional reading for anyone who, well, just can’t get enough! These are books written by experts dealing with various aspects of the problem and its solution; I’ve indicated which ones are most suitable for beginners and non-specialists. This is taken from my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (New York: Oxford University Press). The eighth edition was co-authored with Hugo Mendez.
February 16, 2025
Evidence for Q: The Sequence of the Sayings
In my previous post I gave a simplified illustration to show why it is problematic to get rid of the Q source (the hypothetical collection of sayings found in both Matthew and Luke but not in Mark). Having this hypothetical source does not actually complicate the solution of the Synoptic Problem, it makes the solution simpler. Supposing there was a Q is not a perfect solution, but it is better than the alternatives, in my opinion. As my Doktorvater Bruce Metzger used to say (about Q and other things), “It is the least problematic solution.” The reason it makes simplest and best sense is because of the sequence of the sayings of these “double traditions” (the technical term for the sayings materials in the TWO Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in Mark). Unlike many of the narratives of these texts, these double-tradition sayings invariably occur in different places in the two Gospels. Why is that? It would make sense if both of them have a source with a collection of Jesus’ sayings of […]
February 13, 2025