Understanding the first chapter of Matthew

Background:
There is every reason for believing that Mark must have been the first of the gospels to be written. Mark can be divided into 105 sections. Of these sections 93 occur in Matthew and only 4 which do not occur either in Matthew or in Luke. Mark is in a hurry and breathless as he quickly tells us who this Jesus is and what it means to be told that in terms we can know and understand, the character of God. Mark is written in a rush and it has the main points that are simple and quickly stated.

Matthew, as a Gospel, is the most Jewish of all of the Gospels, and the Jewish scholars always put the most important thing first. But most scholars feel that this Gospel was not penned by Matthew the Apostle. My thinking is that someone who was an eye witness to the life of Christ would not have needed to use Mark as a source-book. But one of the first Church historians, a man called Papias, wrote “Matthew collected the sayings of Jesus in the Hebrew tongue”. The Gospel was written in Greek, and written by one for whom it was not a second language.

The biggest item with all else aside, to the writer of Matthew we owe the beauty of the Sermon on the Mount” and the “Laws of the Kingdom.”

We know that the Apostle Matthew was a tax gatherer and he did this for the oppressive occupiers of Rome, and he must have been bitterly hated as one who had entered into the civil service of the Jews oppressive conquerors, or in our words, a “quisling.” He could charge the tax that he wanted and keep the overage for himself.

The other disciples were fishermen and I feel they would have had little patience for the effort of putting sentences together. Matthew was expert at that art. What Matthew does is to state that it was the primary and deliberate purpose of his to record the events. The record was to show how the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus. It was to show the Jews that Jesus truly was the Christ, the Messiah they had been promised. Hence Matthew is supremely and foremost the teaching gospel.

He begins his book with the lineage of the King. This list of names was most natural for the Jew. In the OT we often find generations of famous men listed. It is also interesting to note that the Jew, Josephus, the Jewish historian in writing his own autobiography, begins it with his own pedigree, which he tells us he found in the public records.

Why? Because the Gentile (other nations) were as a people unclean, so if any foreign blood was in his linage, the Jew lost his right to be called a Jew. A priest in order to be a priest had to produce his linage back to Aaron, which some is Israel can do to this day. A man when entering into marriage had to produce his list of ancestors back at least five generations before the marriage was allowed. Harold the Great was always despised by the pure blooded Jew because he was half Edomite. (He had all public records burned so no one could prove a purer pedigree than his own.) Matthew list of names was impressive that Jesus could trace his pedigree back to Abraham. (1)

The list is arranged in 3 groups of 14 people each. This let it be a handle for easy memorization and why it survived Harold the Great. There were no printed books so it had to be by memory for almost every one in any case. (2)

The first section of names reads down to David. Second section goes from the exile to Babylon. Third group of names read down to Jesus, who is the Christ, the promised Messiah. The ordinary people addressed Jesus as “son of David” for this reason. The Jews were a waiting people, they never forgot the promises made to them as a people and their destiny was in those promises. Matthew by doing this stresses that Jesus was the fulfillment of prophecy. In Him prophecy becomes true.

The strangest and most startling thing is that the names of women are in the list. This was not normal, but rather scandalous. The woman had no legal status, or rights. She was regarded as a thing. Sabbath prayers for the Jew of that time began with the words: "I thank God because He had not made him a Gentile, a slave, or a woman."

Rachab, or as the Old Testament Rahab was a harlot of Jericho (Joshua 2:1-7) Ruth was a Gentile, (she was a Moabitess) (Ruth 1:4). In the book of the law (Deuteronomy 23:31) it says rather clearly: “No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the Lord even to the tenth generation none belong to them shall enter the assembly of the Lord for ever.” Ruth was of a heritage that was hated and despised.

Tamar is a name to raise eye brows, because she was a deliberate seducer and an adulteress (Genesis 38) Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, was the young bride David seduced, and whose husband, Uriah, David had put out of the way.(killed) (2 Samuel 11, and 12) Why include such when you want to extol the awesomeness of this one who this one called Jesus?

Matthew could not have come up with a list that had more scandal. But with time and reflection Matthew shows us the essence of the gospel of God in Jesus Christ.
He shows the great walls and barriers being dismantled with the birth of Jesus.
The wall between Jew and Gentile.
The wall between male and female.
The wall between saint and sinner.

He shows the width of the love of God, and that God chooses His servants among those that would cause the respectable orthodox person who would shudder at their name and run away in horror. (If the shadow of a Gentile fell across a Jew, they had to go through a purification ceremony, and here in the blood line are Gentiles and some people who sure were not any where close to being saints.)

When we read Matthew 1:18-25, it is at first glance somewhat bewildering.
He writes that Joseph is said to be betrothed to Mary, then he is said to be mercifully planning to quietly divorce her, to put her away, and then Mary (3) is called his wife. All of this was not strange to the Jewish culture of that time. But it is very strange to us in our time.

In the Jewish world of that time a couple followed this path:

1. First was the engagement. This arrangement was often made when the couple were children. It was usually made by the parents, and sometimes through a professional match-maker. It was serious business and not lightly held. It was joining families then and in the future. It was serious business.

2. Then came the “betrothal”. The meant the affirmation of the engagement, and at this time the engagement could be broken by either party. But if it was entered into, it was absolutely binding. This contract lasted for one year. During this time of one year the couple were known as man and wife, though they did not have the rights of man and wife.

This contract could not be terminated any other way during this period than by divorce. A twist in Jewish law was that if the man died during that year, the “wife” though a virgin was called and seen by the community as a widow. It was at this stage that Mary and Joseph were in their relationship. If at this point Joseph wanted out, it was only by divorce. During this time Mary was known in her village as Joseph wife. If during this time she was with child, she was stoned to death.

3. Third stage of this relationship was the marriage proper, which could only take palace at the end of the year of betrothal. To the Jew, to whom this book is addressed, all of this procedure was perfectly clear. It was the norm, it was how things were done.

So if during the betrothal the “wife” was found with child, it was an open scandal, with the results that she would be stoned to death. At this point when Joseph wanting to protect her but also choosing to opt out of the upcoming marriage, he is visited by an angel and told that he must call the child by the name of Jesus (Jesus is the Greek form of the Jewish name Joshua, and Joshua means Jehovah is salvation.) Joseph is told that this is the action of the Holy Spirit.

Having lived in several small “village” myself, there were those who lvied there who knew everyone business, and some knew some things that wasn’t any ones business. I can’t believe that it was any different in the time of Jesus. As one Irish lass told me: “You can’t swing a cat by the tail with out all of Kilarney knowing about it.”

At this point it has to be noted that this issue of the virgin birth is not a point of mandatory belief or faith in the Christian doctrine. But we can look at it with fresh eyes and if we do, we see what it could mean when we are told that: “Mary was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit”. What does it mean to say that Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit?

First lay aside all of our ideas of what the Holy Spirit might be, because Joseph, being before the Christian revelation, would have no idea what those words meant. What he knew as a Jew was that the Holy Spirit brought God’s truth to men. It was the Holy Spirit that taught the prophets what to say; it was the Holy Spirit who taught men of God what to do; it was the Holy Spirit who though out the ages and generations, brought God’s truth forth. So then, Joseph was told that this child was a person who would bring God’s message and truth to men. (He was told that Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit)

So the message is that Jesus will be the one person who can tell us what God is like, and what God means us to be. In Him alone do we see what God’ character is and what man ought to be. Before Jesus came to be with us in our three dimensions in which we mortals exist, there was only vague and shadowy ideas of what God was truly like. It was guess and grope, and do your best to keep the law which was impossible. Jesus said: “He who has seen me has seen the Father”(John 14:9) In Jesus we see the love, the compassion, the mercy, the seeking heart, the purity of God as nowhere else in all this world. With Jesus, the time of guessing about the true nature of God is over.

The truth is that we are most often blinded by our own ignorance or emotions. We are led into strange ways of thinking by our own prejudices and preconceived notions planted by a word spoken to us when we were either young, or open to suggestions. In truth our minds and eyes are darkened by our own self wills and passion, as hard as it is to admit. The message of Matthew is that Jesus can open our eyes until we are able to see the truth, for He is the Way, the Truth and the Light. God’s Holy spirit filling a flesh and blood human being so we can know that God not only crated us but loves us as a Father. It centers in John 3:16.

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1. In the book, “Three Cups of Tea” (which I highly recommend) Greg Mortenson writes: “Korphe’s mosque had adapted to a changing environment over the centuries, much like the people who filled it with their faith. The Balti, lacking a written language, compensated by passing down exacting oral history. Every Balti could recite their ancestry, stretching back ten to twenty generations.” When I was in Africa I found that there were those who were set aside to remember the names of those in generations who had gone before. (My guess is that they did the same in the time of Jesus)

2. There were no books at this time. There were scrolls, and by sheer weight and awkwardness, they were limited to about 40 feet in length. As the most important things were written on tanned sheep skin, they were very expensive, thus extremely rare. In order to make the most of the space to write on these skins, there were no spaces between thewordsmuchlikethis. One would read these manuscripts by placing ones thumb at the end of one word and moving the other thumb until you recognized the next word. At least that is the way I had to do such.

3. The immaculate conception in Roman Catholic theology refers Anna, Mary’s mother. This was in order to have no original sin passed along to Mary.

Bibliography :

Strong Concordance.
Three Cups of Tea Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
The Gospel of Matthew William Barclay
Notes Lectures