When you pick up the Bible to begin reading the New Testament, you will commonly start with Matthew. It may come as a surprise to you to learn that the Gospel itself makes no claim as to authorship. But all the early Christian traditions ascribe it to Matthew. As we can see in Matthew 9, this is the man who was a tax collector before becoming a disciple of Jesus.
Many scholars think that Matthew had Mark’s writings in hand when he wrote his account, but I don’t think so. I think what he had was the oral gospel that
00:00:02 Introduction to Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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When a person picks up his Bible and begins to read the New Testament, well, nearly everyone begins with Matthew. It may come as a surprise to you to learn the gospel itself makes no claim at all as to who wrote it. but all the early Christian tradition ascribes it to Matthew. This is the man who was a tax collector, of all things, before becoming a disciple of Jesus. His story, Matthew records it. He doesn’t act as though it’s really important to him, but he says, as Jesus passed over from one area, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom. You’ll find it in Matthew 9, verse 9. He said to him, follow me. And he got up and followed him. It’s really, you know, I would have to assume that the job of a tax collector was a fairly lucrative job at this particular point in time. In fact, reputation tells us, the stories tell us that they were kind of dishonest and usually lining their own pockets with what they were doing. But Jesus saw him and he called him. It came to pass that as Jesus sat at meat in the house, Matthew says, in the house. The other gospels say, in Matthew’s house. Behold, many publicans, that’s the word for a tax collector. By the way, in case you never knew it, the word publican, it comes from the Latin, and the word public is in it. He is a publican. He is a person who collects taxes for the public or from the public. So there are many of these people that were, and sinners, I guess they put them in the same category, came and sat down with him as disciples to eat. And the Pharisees saw this and they said to Jesus’ disciples, why does your master eat with publicans and sinners? When Jesus heard that, he said, hey, they who are whole don’t need a physician. They who are sick need a physician. He makes it very clear. He came to help people who needed help. One of the earliest extra-gospel records of the authorship of the book of Matthew comes not much more than 50 years later from a man named Papias, bishop of Hierapolis. Hierapolis was up near Colossae, where the book of Colossians was sent to. This is the general area of the Apostle John and of a man known in Christian history as Polycarp. Unfortunately, the original writings of Papias are lost, but we have some lengthy quotations from his work written in other church fathers and historians, men like Eusebius, who, in order to discuss early church history, wrote out at length things that Papias had said much earlier. Papias describes his way of gathering information. This wonderful Internet comes to our rescue here, and a thing called Wikipedia. Just search the word Papias, P-A-P-I-A-S, and you can read the story about this remarkable man. He says, I will not hesitate to add also for you my interpretation of what I formerly learned with care from the presbyters. Now, let me back up. This is Papias saying this. He says, I’m not going to hesitate to add my interpretation. What he’s saying is, I’m going to add to my interpretations what I formerly learned with care from the presbyters. That’s a Greek word that means the elders. and what I have carefully stored in memory, giving assurance of its truth. That expression, carefully stored in memory, I think modern man would read something like that, and it would go right over our heads as to the importance of that. But we’re back in a time when people didn’t have books to carry around. They didn’t have iPods. They didn’t have all these modern conveniences. If they wanted to keep something, they had to sit down and deliberately memorize it so it would never get away from them. So when he says, I have carefully stored it in memory— That means he systematically memorized what he had learned from the presbyters, that is, the elders, giving assurance of its truth. He continues, “…for I did not take pleasure, as the many do, in those who speak much, but in those who teach what is true, nor in those who relate foreign precepts, but in those who relate the precepts which were given by the Lord to the faith and came down from the truth itself.” And also, if any follower of the elders happened to come by my place, I would inquire for the sayings of the elders, what Andrew said or what Peter said or what Philip or what Thomas or James or what John or Matthew or any of the other Lord’s disciples. You realize what he’s saying here? He is saying that he had the occasion to talk to people. who actually heard words from Peter’s mouth, or Matthew’s mouth, or John. And he goes on to say, “…for the things that other of the Lord’s disciples, and for the things which Aristion and Presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, were saying. For I consider that I should not get much advantage from matter in books as from the voice which yet lives and remains.” You know, this last seems to me an important support for my own theory of a formulated oral gospel that existed in the first century. Here is a man who had participated in the systematic memorization of this gospel story. He said, I don’t put my stock in books. Interesting all by itself. What he wanted to talk about was the voice. And, you know, this is really important because we go to trial. They don’t generally just bring in the depositions, the written records and signed things that people have testified to. They bring the people. And we hear their voice. We actually see their face. We can watch how they respond to our questions. We can draw our own conclusion as to the truthfulness or the honesty of people testifying on the stand. Well, Papias was the same. He said, I don’t care about books. What I care about is the voice. Person-to-person testimony to him was the important things. And he talked about the origins of the gospel. Papias, as he’s quoted by Eusebius, wrote this, Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or the deeds of Christ. for he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him. Now, this is a very early tradition, and it suggests that this Mark was not one that heard all these things. He wasn’t with him all the time. What he did do, however, was he followed Peter around. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities of his hearers, but with no intent of giving a regular narrative of the Lord’s sayings. So here we have a fellow named Mark, who follows Peter all over the place, listens to Peter speak again and again and again. And Mark, according to Papias, wrote down the stuff that he heard Peter say, not in any particular order, but but it may perhaps in the order in which he heard Peter speak them. But Peter was speaking to the necessities of the people who heard him, to the problems that existed, to the fears that existed, not to some systematic order of the gospel, which I kind of think explains in a way why Mark’s gospel is so compact. He didn’t put down a lot of extraneous material. And he wasn’t there. He didn’t know some things. What he knew was, very clearly, precisely what Peter said. Continuing with Papias, Wherefore Mark made no mistake in this writing, some things, as he wrote things, as he remembered them. For of one thing he took special care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements. I would gather Papias heard this directly from an elder who heard it straight from Mark, so that he understood what Mark’s intent was. Then he makes this interesting statement about Matthew, which is what we’re talking about today. He says, and I quote, Matthew put together the oracles of the Lord in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could. Now, that’s of some interest, because along with the book of Hebrews, Matthew is one of the only two Gospels of which there is even a tradition of having been written in Hebrew. Nothing else is ever said was written in Hebrew. They were all written in Greek. And if Papias is correct… Whatever Matthew wrote has been lost long since. There remain no ancient manuscripts of Matthew that are not written in Greek, and the Greek really shows no signs of being translated from the Hebrew. Now, that said, there is a Hebrew Matthew, but it’s only found in a Jewish manuscript that was written to refute it sometime, I think, about the 10th century. It’s called the Shem Tov, and it was a Jewish scribe or Jewish writer, arguing against the New Testament, and he cites a complete Hebrew Matthew, but it’s rather different. I once thought it might yield some understanding of those ancient times, but when I really got into it, I found it no real help at all. It seems Papias talked to men who had actually served under apostles or with those who had seen the Christ, and he was particularly interested in oral testimony, not written testimony. There’s a great deal more to learn from Papias, and we’ll come back to that. But first, grab a pencil and a piece of paper. I want to give you an address and a phone number because we have an album where I go verse by verse through the entire book of Matthew, and you might like to have a copy. Stay with me.
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I’ll be right back. The book of Matthew is available in album form. If you would like to get in on this story from the very beginning, write or call and ask for your free introductory CD titled The Book of Matthew. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44. That’s 1-888-242-5344.
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Papias is an important witness. There are some very interesting items about him at the same Internet resource I mentioned before. About his date, which is important, they say, in connection with his credibility. There’s Irenaeus’ statement later in the second century that Papias was, quote, a hearer of John, a companion of Polycarp, a man of old time, end quote. The article continues, if Polycarp was in fact born not later than A.D. 69, then we can look at Eusebius, who deals with him along with some other men. He says that he wrote about 115 A.D., and no known fact is inconsistent with A.D. 60 to 135 as the period of Papias’ life. Now, this is really fascinating because it is suggested he was born before the first gospel was written. If he was born in 8060, as now Eusebius seems to make very clear that he did, then he grew up a contemporary with some men who actually knew Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He may have made his note about Matthew’s gospel less than 50 years after the gospel was written. Just to get this in perspective, how many people are there walking around among us today who actually fought in the Korean War and can tell stories about it? Well, I didn’t fight in the Korean War. I was in the Navy during that period of time, and I’m 73. Now, this is the time frame we are talking about for Papias’ remarks coming so close to the time of the writing of the Gospels. But then, when was the Gospel itself written? How much do we know about this? Everett Harrison comes down with a date between 70 and 80 A.D., although there are some early sources that place it earlier than that. Personally, with a full realization of my limitations in this particular area, I think Matthew was written in the 60s. My reasons for this are fairly simple. The destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. must have been one of the most traumatic events for Jewish Christians since the crucifixion itself. It’s hard to overstate how dramatic this event was. Do you remember what the disciples came to Jesus one day, showing him all the buildings of the temple? And Jesus said to them, well, I’ll tell you, the time is coming when there will not be one stone here left up on top of another that will not be thrown down. I can’t think of very many things Jesus could have said that could have so more devastated those men than that statement. then the event itself confirming that would have been incredibly dramatic. Now, Matthew’s account of the Olivet Prophecy about the destruction of Jerusalem has led some scholars to say, well, he wrote after these terrible events. But in reading through the gospel, I get no sense of that at all. Unless, of course, you don’t believe in prophecy. If you believe that Matthew invented those words of Jesus, I’m not in that camp. I believe that we would be able to detect in Matthew’s gospel some sense of the trauma the church had undergone with the destruction of Jerusalem and the flight to Pella. It just isn’t there. I think Matthew was written before 70 A.D. We have the testimony in hand of Matthew the tax collector that Jesus called from his bench collecting taxes somewhere near the Sea of Galilee. Everett Harrison lists ten distinctive characteristics of Matthew’s gospel. Number one, eschatology. That’s the study of the last days and the events of the end time. He said it looms very large in this gospel. It gives attention to the final events in the history of mankind. As I said, some think the Olivet Prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD. Well, it was, but only in type. Matthew’s gospel looks way further than that to the end times. The second characteristic is that Jesus speaks repeatedly of God as Father. It’s not that he doesn’t in the other gospels, but it is dominant in Matthew’s gospel, far exceeding those of the others. Number three, the teaching of the kingdom is dominant. And Matthew differs in one important respect, which even a lot of casual Bible readers have noticed. Matthew again and again calls it the kingdom of heaven. Other gospels call it the kingdom of God. 32 times Matthew speaks of the kingdom of heaven. No other gospel writer uses that expression at all. Matthew does use kingdom of God, but only five times. It’s obvious that the terms are synonymous, but one really wonders at Matthew’s choice of words. It is, of course, a translation of Jesus’ words, which were probably in Aramaic, and Matthew chose kingdom of heaven as opposed to kingdom of God for reasons that are lost to us. The fourth characteristic he lists is the royal majesty of Jesus as the Christ and his preeminence over Judaism’s prized institutions. This is really important, and Matthew just comes down hard on these issues. That Jesus had preeminence over the law, over the Sabbath, over the prophet, the great prophet to come, over the temple, and over the king. It’s hard to overstate how dramatic this emphasis would have been in the first century, in Judaism in particular. The fifth characteristic, an unusual degree of interest in fulfilled prophecy. Matthew goes out of his way to provide an Old Testament context for all the big events in Jesus’ life. He will point out how it was written in the prophets that Jesus would do this. Number six, the gospel has a very strong Judaic background. There’s a persistent interest in God’s kingdom and Christ as his chosen king. All of this speaks to the messianic expectations of first century Judaism. And it’s extremely sensitive to current Jewish practice in that time. The seventh characteristic is a notable concern manifested for the Gentiles. And when you see this in Matthew, it’s fairly dramatic if you can capture the places where it shows up. Because in that time and place, most Jews couldn’t care less about the Gentiles, as becomes evident in the book of Acts. They’re all Jesus’ admonitions to his disciples to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel in Matthew. And yet, there are the Magi at the birth of Jesus who appear to be Gentiles. But the strongest of them all is the wording of the Great Commission in Matthew 28. It’s lost, frankly, in most translations, but it’s right there on the page. Matthew 28, verse 19, Jesus said to his disciples, one of the last things he ever told them, Therefore go and make disciples of all the Gentiles, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age. You’ve heard that scripture probably before where it says, go and make disciples of all nations. But the word for nations is exactly the same word everywhere else that’s translated Gentiles. And the really curious thing, Matthew makes it clear that during the time that he was here, during Jesus’ earthly ministry, those guys were not sent to the Gentiles. They were specifically said, don’t go there. Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, which they did. And so indeed, when he says here at the very end, go and make disciples not merely of Jews, but of all the Gentiles, baptizing them, he has said something that nobody else has said. Characteristic number eight, Matthew is the one gospel that mentions the church. And it’s kind of funny when you think about it. Jesus said, I will build my church. And the disciples did not say, Lord, what’s a church? But that is one particular thing here that you don’t find elsewhere. Number nine, the teaching of Jesus has special prominence beginning with the Sermon on the Mount. It was what he had to say that is emphasized strongly in Matthew. And the tenth characteristic Harrison lists is the two broad divisions of Jesus’ ministry. His public ministry and his private ministry to the disciples is more clearly delineated. There’s more, but first, grab that pencil and a piece of paper again. I want to give you that phone number and that address and a free offer, and then I’ll be right back.
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For a free CD of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only. And request the program titled, Introduction to the New Testament, number 8. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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The consensus of scholarship, if there is any such thing, is that Matthew actually had the gospel of Mark in hand when he wrote his gospel and then he cribbed off of it, that he actually copied verbatim things from Mark’s gospel. I don’t think so. I think what Matthew had in hand, if in hand is the word for it, was the oral gospel that the church had been repeating for 30 years. And it’s altogether probable that he did not even know Mark had written a gospel. People today just aren’t familiar with word-for-word memorization. They don’t realize how powerful it used to be. Hard for us in the 20th century to understand the role and power of memorization in first-century Jewish culture. Little Jewish boys and girls were taught to memorize stuff. They had a system, an approach to it. It worked. I don’t remember. The last thing I think I ever memorized was Mark Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. But Matthew surely wrote from within that culture, and you can feel it as you read it. To me, one of the greatest passages in Matthew is the Sermon on the Mount. It dominates the entire book in many ways. Because here he really comes down to the basics of the way a man of God ought to live. By the time this sermon was given, and it’s early, Jesus had already developed quite a following. And it was not metaphorically a following. It wasn’t like a modern guru might have. It was a literal following. He had people wandering around behind him. In Matthew 4, the story is told. His fame went throughout all Syria. They brought to him all sick people who were taken with various diseases and torments. Those who were possessed with devils. Those who were lunatic. And those that had the palsy. And he healed them. And a great multitude of people from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, the other side of Jordan, were following him all over the place. It must have been a wonderful time. But the Sermon on the Mount was not given to those crowds. Matthew tells us in chapter 5 that he saw the multitudes and he went away up into a mountain. And when he was set, his disciples came to him. So this is the serious set of individuals who are not merely following Jesus because they saw him heal some sick people. These are individuals who were determined disciples of Jesus. And he opened his mouth and he taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I found something interesting about that as I began to work my way through the translations of the Bible. No translation, no version seems to be able to improve on the old King James Version here. They all follow it word for word. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I think the way to take the expression in spirit is in the sense of one’s attitude, one’s mindset, the way one approaches life. In Proverbs 18, we’re told, the poor use entreaties, the rich answers roughly. And what you have there is two very different mindsets, two different approaches to life, two different ways of dealing with people based upon your circumstances in life. So what Jesus is saying is, blessed is the man whose heart is lowly, who is humble, who responds to life not with the arrogance of the wealthy, but with the entreaties of the poor. Now, I take away from this set of blessings that are commonly called the Beatitudes a sense of the kind of person who is blessed by God. And a person can put himself up against this and measure himself. They are, one, the humble man. Secondly, closely connected, the man who grieves for sin, his own and that of the world around him. The third is the meek person, which is another aspect of humility. It’s said in the Bible that Moses was meek. Those who are hungry and thirsty to do the right thing, people who have a conscience, these are blessed by God. The merciful are blessed. The pure in heart are blessed. The peacemakers are blessed. The meddlers, who try to make the peace of other people, don’t fall in that category. and those finally who are persecuted for doing the right thing, which takes uncommon courage. There is much in the book of Matthew to help a Christian live the life.
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I’ll be back in a moment. Ronald Dart will be right back. If you would like more information or if you have any questions, write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. In the U.S. and Canada, call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44 and visit our website at borntowin.net. When corresponding, please be sure to tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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I can’t go on today about the content of Matthew, but I’ve done it already long before. Several years ago, we did a complete broadcast series on the book of Matthew going verse by verse from front to back, the whole thing. It’s available in album form. If you get in touch with us, we’ll be glad to… send you information on how you can get it on the other hand if you uh watch our website we are continually putting up various series of the bible and in time we’ll be rolling around the book of matthew one more time you can download them into your computer to listen to anytime you want to free of charge or you can move them onto your ipod so you can carry them with you when you walk bicycle or whatever your other activity you’re involved in Anytime you can, if you missed the first part of this program, you can listen to it again in whole or in part right now on your computer. If you’re plugged into the Internet, you can go to our website, borntowin.net, click on Born to Win Audio Services, and play today’s program one more time. Not only that, but if you click on Radio Archives, you’ll find two weeks of daily programs you can download, listen to them at your leisure. That’s on borntowin.net. And it’s free. But that’s not all. We’ll also have my Sermon of the Month listed there, a sermon archive with dozens of sermons available for download. All that and more at www.BornToWin.net. You’ll also find a link to contact us with comments and questions. And believe me, we do like to hear from you. And you can also subscribe to our email newsletter. Thanks a lot for listening in today. Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart.
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