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The Gospel According to Matthew Essay

Decent Essays

The Gospel according to Matthew, although being the first book of the New Testament canon, it was not considered the first gospel genre to be written. Matthew’s gospel gives an account of the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. In this essay, I intend to look at how the exegesis and interpretation of this gospel may be affected by our understanding of the authorship, its intended readership and where and when it was written. Although all these categories are important in their own right, I will focus more of the intended audience and readership of this gospel.
Authorship
Mitch & Sri suggest that early in biblical history, everyone from Irenaeus in the second century to Origen and Tertullian in the third …show more content…

(Lk 5:27)
Harrington suggests that there is nothing in the biblical text of Matthew’s gospel to “suggest the name of the author and that the title ‘according to Matthew’ was not part of the first gospel edition.” Neither is there anywhere in the text which suggests that the author was “an eyewitness to the events that he describes.” He also argues that the credit of Matthew’s gospel to the tax collector Levi (Mt 9:9) also raises some questions. e.g. “Why as a tax collector is he also known as Levi, how did a tax collector on the margin of the Jewish religion life get such an extensive education, why did an apostle and companion of Jesus not put forward and claim to be personally involved in the events of Jesus life, why did he rely on Mark and Q as his written sources, rather than this person memory?”
If this traditional credit of authorship to Matthew the apostle is rejected, then we must question who this Matthew was. Was he a missionary or was he the Patron to the author. Whatever the reason we have some knowledge of the author. We are aware that he was either a Jew or had a Jewish background, evidence for this is the interest he had in Jewish affairs and Hebrew Scriptures. He also showed an interested in the life and work of Jesus, his teaching, especially Jesus teaching on the ‘Kingdom of Heaven.’ Although the author of the gospel of Matthew, remains anonymous, there is some evidence suggested that the author was probably a highly educated and

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