The Gospel of Matthew

The Gospel ascribed to Matthew has stood first among the four in every canonical ordering since the second century, and it is the most carefully architected of the Synoptics — a narrative of the Messiah’s birth, ministry, death, and resurrection built around five great discourses, each closed by a recurring formula. This file reads the Gospel as a whole: its structure, its opening genealogy and infancy, its narrative arc, its closing Great Commission, and its place at the head of the canon.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

The Structure of Five Discourses

The most visible feature of Matthew’s architecture is its alternation of narrative and discourse. Five times the evangelist gathers the Lord’s teaching into a sustained block, and five times he closes the block with a near-identical formula — “and when Jesus had finished these sayings” (Matt. 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1). The five discourses are: the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7), on the righteousness of the Kingdom; the Mission Discourse (Matt. 10), the charge to the Twelve sent out to preach; the Parables of the Kingdom (Matt. 13); the Community or “Church” Discourse (Matt. 18), on humility, forgiveness, and discipline among the brethren; and the Eschatological Discourse (Matt. 24–25), on the end and the judgment, closing with the parables of the virgins, the talents, and the sheep and the goats. Each discourse is preceded by a section of narrative that prepares it, so that the Gospel reads as five great paired movements of deed and word, framed by the infancy at the start and the Passion and resurrection at the end.

This fivefold scheme was given classic expression by B. W. Bacon, who proposed that Matthew deliberately arranged the teaching into five “books” in conscious imitation of the five books of the Torah, presenting Jesus as a new lawgiver and the Gospel as a new Pentateuch (B. W. Bacon, Studies in Matthew, 1930). Bacon’s “Pentateuchal” theory is not universally accepted — many scholars note that the Passion narrative does not fit the scheme and prefer an alternation built around the formula “from that time Jesus began…” (Matt. 4:17; 16:21), as argued by J. D. Kingsbury (Matthew: Structure, Christology, Kingdom, 1975) — but that Matthew has organized the Lord’s teaching into five formula-closed discourses is plain on the face of the text and is the structural backbone of the Gospel.

The Genealogy and the Infancy

The Gospel opens not with a baptism (as Mark) or a hymn to the Word (as John) but with a genealogy and a birth-narrative oriented wholly toward Israel’s hope. The first words are “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1), and the genealogy that follows is arranged into three sets of fourteen generations — Abraham to David, David to the Exile, the Exile to Christ (Matt. 1:17) — a deliberately schematic structure (fourteen being the numerical value of “David” in Hebrew) that presents Jesus as the goal of Israel’s history and the promised Son of David. The infancy narrative (Matt. 1–2) is built around five fulfilment-citations — the virgin (Isa. 7:14), Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2), “out of Egypt” (Hos. 11:1), Rachel weeping (Jer. 31:15), and “he shall be called a Nazarene” — and is dominated by Joseph, the dreams, the magi from the East, the flight into Egypt, and Herod’s massacre of the innocents. The whole prologue announces the Gospel’s governing concern: that in Jesus the Scriptures of Israel are fulfilled.

The Narrative Arc

From the baptism by John (Matt. 3) and the temptation (Matt. 4) the Gospel moves into the Galilean ministry, summarized as proclaiming “the gospel of the kingdom” and healing (Matt. 4:23). The first discourse (the Sermon, Matt. 5–7) is followed by a cycle of ten miracles (Matt. 8–9), within which stands the call of Matthew (Matt. 9:9); then the mission of the Twelve (Matt. 10). The middle of the Gospel turns on growing conflict with the Pharisees and on the disciples’ dawning recognition of who Jesus is, climaxing in Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi — “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” — and the Lord’s answer, “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matt. 16:16–18), which only Matthew records. The journey to Jerusalem, the entry, the temple confrontations and the woes on the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 23), and the Eschatological Discourse (Matt. 24–25) lead into the Passion (Matt. 26–27), which Matthew tells with details unique to it — Judas’s remorse and the potter’s field (27:3–10), Pilate’s wife’s dream and Pilate washing his hands (27:19, 24), the guard at the tomb (27:62–66). The Gospel ends in Galilee, on a mountain, with the risen Lord and the Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit… and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:18–20). The Gospel that opened with “Emmanuel… God with us” (Matt. 1:23) closes with “I am with you always,” an inclusio that frames the whole book as the presence of God among his people.

First in the Canon

From the earliest period for which we have evidence, Matthew stands first among the four Gospels. Origen, as quoted by Eusebius, gives the order Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and says that Matthew was written first, “for those who came to the faith from Judaism,” and “composed in the Hebrew language” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.25.4; NPNF II/1). Irenaeus likewise lists Matthew first and ascribes to him a Gospel “among the Hebrews in their own dialect” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1; ANF 1). The canonical order is not universal in the manuscript tradition — the so-called “Western order” (Matthew, John, Luke, Mark) appears in some witnesses — but the precedence of Matthew is overwhelming, and it shaped the Church’s use of the Gospel: it was the most quoted Gospel in the second century, the one the Didache draws on most heavily, and the one chosen for the fullest patristic commentaries. Whether this primacy reflects a judgment about chronological priority, about apostolic authorship, or about catechetical usefulness is itself part of the synoptic and reception questions (see Sections 06 and 09); but the fact of it — Matthew at the head of the New Testament — has been constant since the second century.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Gospel according to Matthew 1–28. Cited by chapter and verse; the discourse formula at 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1; the Great Commission at 28:18–20.
  • Eusebius of Caesarea. The Ecclesiastical History 6.25.3–6 (Origen on the Gospels). Trans. McGiffert. NPNF II/1.
  • Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies 3.1.1. ANF 1.
  • Bacon, B. W. Studies in Matthew. New York: Holt, 1930 (the five-discourse / Pentateuch theory).
  • Kingsbury, Jack Dean. Matthew: Structure, Christology, Kingdom. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975.
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew. NPNF I/10.