Matthew
Overview and Place in the New Testament
The Gospel according to Matthew stands first in the New Testament canon and has exercised enormous influence on Christian worship, doctrine, ethics, art, and mission. It tells the story of Jesus from genealogy and birth through Galilean ministry, teaching, conflict, journey to Jerusalem, crucifixion, resurrection, and the Great Commission. Matthew shares much material with Mark and Luke but arranges and expands it in a distinctive way. Jesus is portrayed as Messiah, Son of David, Son of Abraham, authoritative teacher, healer, Son of Man, and Emmanuel—“God with us.” The Gospel repeatedly connects Jesus with Israel’s Scriptures and story, using fulfillment quotations and typological patterns. Five major teaching blocks organize much of the narrative, including the Sermon on the Mount and the discourse on discipleship, parables, community life, and the end. Matthew presents Christian discipleship as hearing Jesus’ words, doing them, and joining a mission that extends to all nations.
Authorship, Date, and Community
The Gospel itself is formally anonymous; the text does not name its author in the narrative. Early Christian tradition, attested by figures such as Papias and later church writers, associated it with Matthew the tax collector and apostle. That traditional attribution has remained important in the church. Many modern scholars, however, note that Matthew appears to use the Gospel of Mark extensively and often date the work after 70 CE, commonly in the final decades of the first century. Proposed locations include Syria, with Antioch often discussed, but no setting can be proven with certainty. The Gospel reflects deep knowledge of Jewish Scripture, practices, debates, and interpretive methods while also addressing a community engaged in mission to Gentiles. Rather than imagining a simple break between “Christianity” and “Judaism,” Matthew is best read within the complex Jewish and Jesus-following world of the first century, where questions of Torah, Messiah, synagogue, authority, and identity were intensely contested.
Jesus and the Story of Israel
Matthew’s opening chapters deliberately place Jesus within Israel’s story. The genealogy begins with Abraham, moves through David and the exile, and structures history in three groups of fourteen generations. The birth narrative presents Jesus amid scriptural patterns: a ruler from Bethlehem, a threatened child, descent into Egypt, return from Egypt, and settlement in Nazareth. Herod can resemble a new Pharaoh, while Jesus recapitulates Israel’s path. After baptism, Jesus spends forty days in the wilderness, answering temptation with texts from Deuteronomy that recall Israel’s forty years of testing. This does not mean Matthew portrays the church as simply replacing Israel. The Gospel is saturated with Israel’s Scriptures and sees Jesus as bringing Israel’s story to a decisive messianic fulfillment. Christian interpretation should therefore resist anti-Jewish readings that turn Matthew’s internal first-century disputes into contempt for Judaism as a whole. Jesus, his disciples, and his earliest opponents all inhabit a Jewish scriptural world.
The Sermon on the Mount and Kingdom Righteousness
Matthew 5–7 gathers Jesus’ teaching into the Sermon on the Mount, one of the most influential ethical texts in world history. The Beatitudes bless the poor in spirit, mourners, meek, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted. Jesus calls disciples salt and light, intensifies commandments concerning anger, lust, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and enemy-love, and teaches practices of almsgiving, prayer, fasting, trust, judgment, and discernment. The Lord’s Prayer sits at the sermon’s center. Jesus states that he has not come to abolish Torah and Prophets but to fulfill them, and he calls for a righteousness exceeding that of scribes and Pharisees. The sermon should not be reduced either to impossible ideals or to a checklist for earning salvation. In Matthew, it describes life under the reign of God, culminating in the image of a wise person who hears Jesus’ words and does them.
Five Discourses and the Formation of Disciples
Matthew is often organized around five major discourses, though the exact structural significance remains debated. The Sermon on the Mount teaches kingdom righteousness; Matthew 10 commissions the Twelve for mission; chapter 13 gathers kingdom parables; chapter 18 addresses life within the disciple community; chapters 24–25 focus on judgment, vigilance, and the coming of the Son of Man. Each discourse ends with a formula such as “when Jesus had finished these sayings.” Some interpreters see an intentional echo of the five books of Moses, fitting Matthew’s presentation of Jesus as an authoritative interpreter of Torah, though the Gospel never explicitly announces such a scheme. Whatever its symbolic meaning, the arrangement makes teaching central. Discipleship is not admiration from a distance. Followers are taught how to pray, forgive, reconcile, handle power, care for “little ones,” proclaim the kingdom, endure opposition, and remain faithful while awaiting the Lord.
Conflict, Pharisees, and Responsible Historical Reading
Matthew contains some of the New Testament’s harshest polemic, especially chapter 23’s woes against scribes and Pharisees and passages that speak of synagogues, leaders, and “their” institutions. These texts have tragically been used in Christian anti-Judaism and antisemitism. Historical reading requires greater care. Matthew’s disputes belong to a first-century Jewish environment in which different groups argued intensely over Torah, authority, purity, leadership, and the meaning of Israel’s Scriptures after the temple’s destruction. Polemic among related communities can be especially sharp. Jesus’ criticism of hypocrisy should therefore be directed first toward hypocrisy in every religious community, including the church, rather than treated as a timeless caricature of Jews or Judaism. Matthew’s own Jesus affirms Israel’s Scriptures, debates Jewish teachers using Jewish interpretive methods, worships the God of Israel, and defines his mission through Israel’s story. Christian fidelity to Matthew requires rejecting contempt for the people from whom Jesus and the apostles came.
Passion, Resurrection, and Emmanuel
Matthew follows Mark’s passion sequence while adding distinctive details: Judas’ remorse, Pilate washing his hands, the dream of Pilate’s wife, extraordinary signs at Jesus’ death, guards at the tomb, and a final resurrection appearance in Galilee. The narrative remains historically and ethically sensitive because later Christian interpretation often shifted blame for Jesus’ execution from Roman crucifixion toward Jews collectively. Matthew presents conflict with particular Jerusalem leaders, but crucifixion was a Roman form of execution carried out under Pontius Pilate. The Gospel’s theological focus is that Jesus willingly completes his mission, gives his life, is vindicated by resurrection, and possesses universal authority. The ending returns to a theme announced in the infancy narrative. Jesus was called Emmanuel, “God with us,” and the risen Jesus promises, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Presence frames the whole Gospel.
The Great Commission and the Nations
Matthew 28:16–20 concludes with the risen Jesus meeting the disciples on a mountain in Galilee. He declares that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him and commands them to make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and teaching people to obey everything he commanded. Mission therefore includes proclamation, sacramental incorporation, teaching, and sustained obedience. The command fulfills trajectories already present in the Gospel: Abrahamic blessing in the genealogy, Gentile magi, the centurion, the Canaanite woman, and Jesus’ repeated concern for Israel that finally opens outward to the nations. Christian missions history includes heroic translation, service, and witness but also episodes of coercion and colonial entanglement. Matthew’s commission should be practiced in the spirit of the Gospel’s own Jesus—humble, truthful, compassionate, non-coercive, and committed to teaching rather than domination.
Annotated Bibliography (Chicago Style)
- Davies, W. D., and Dale C. Allison Jr. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. 3 vols. International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988–1997. Monumental technical commentary on sources, Jewish context, exegesis, theology, and reception.
- Luz, Ulrich. Matthew. 3 vols. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001–2007. Major historical-critical and reception-historical commentary on the Gospel’s text, community, ethics, and later interpretation.
- France, R. T. The Gospel of Matthew. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. Extensive evangelical scholarly commentary on structure, Old Testament fulfillment, discipleship, and Christology.
- Hagner, Donald A. Matthew. 2 vols. Word Biblical Commentary 33A–33B. Dallas: Word Books, 1993–1995. Detailed exegetical commentary balancing historical, literary, and theological interpretation.
- Keener, Craig S. A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Context-rich commentary drawing extensively on Jewish and Greco-Roman backgrounds.
- Allison, Dale C. Jr. The New Moses: A Matthean Typology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993. Influential study of Matthew’s presentation of Jesus in relation to Moses and Israel’s scriptural story.
- Yale Bible Study. “The Gospel of Matthew.” yalebiblestudy.org. Accessed August 28, 2026. Academic course covering Matthew’s infancy narrative, Sermon on the Mount, parables, controversies, passion, and resurrection.
- Powell, Mark Allan. God With Us: A Pastoral Theology of Matthew’s Gospel. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. Theological study of Matthew’s narrative portrait of God, Jesus, discipleship, and the church.