- Chapters
- 28
- Verses
- 0
- Where it sits
- The Gospels
What it is
The longest of the four, and the one the Church put first — because it is the bridge. It opens with a genealogy running from Abraham through David to Christ, and then spends twenty-eight chapters saying, in one form or another, this is what the prophets meant.
Only Matthew has the Magi, the flight into Egypt, the Sermon on the Mount entire, the sheep and the goats, the coin in the fish’s mouth, Pilate’s wife and her dream, the guard at the tomb, and the command at the end to baptise in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It is also the only Gospel that uses the word church.
Most readers notice five great blocks of teaching, each closed with a formula — when Jesus had finished these sayings. Some scholars read the five as a deliberate echo of the five books of Moses. That is a proposal about the structure, not something the book states.
Where it came from
The oldest surviving comment on it is from Papias early in the second century, preserved because Eusebius quoted him: Matthew collected the oracles in the Hebrew dialect, and each interpreted them as he was able. Irenaeus, around 180, says Matthew issued a Gospel among the Hebrews in their own language while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome.
That is the tradition, and it is early. The difficulty, stated plainly, is that the Greek Matthew we have does not read like a translation from Hebrew or Aramaic — it follows Mark’s Greek closely, and quotes the Old Testament in Greek. So either Papias is describing an earlier document that is not this book, or he is describing something we no longer have. Most critical scholars date the Gospel to the 80s and place it in Syria; others argue for an earlier date and direct apostolic authorship. Both are positions held by serious people.
When the Church reads it
Matthew is the Gospel of the new church year. It begins on the Monday after Pentecost and runs in course for about eleven weeks; after that its readings continue on Saturdays and Sundays while Mark takes the weekdays, until the Lukan cycle begins in September.
Before you start
- The Sermon on the Mount is chapters 5 to 7, and it is worth reading in one sitting rather than in pieces.
- The doxology at the end of the Lord’s Prayer — for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory — is in the text printed here, as it is in the Byzantine manuscripts. It is absent from the oldest Alexandrian copies. It is one of the clearest places where the two text traditions part.
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