Matthew The Apostle Extract

The Gospel of Matthew, composed between 80 and 90 CE , is the opening book of the New Testament. Despite the original author remaining anonymous, it is widely suggested that the book was written by Matthew the Apostle. The extract is taken from chapter 27 of Matthew’s gospel, which commentates on the Trial of Jesus, led by Pontius Pilate, and the eventual crucifixion of the self-proclaimed Messiah. The extract focuses on the controversial decision made by the Jewish crowd to execute Jesus rather than the Barabbas. This passage is often used to justify anti-Jewish polemic throughout Christianity.
Matthew the Apostle was a well-educated Jewish tax collector who was approached by Jesus and asked to follow him, according to the Gospel of Matthew
(Matt 9:9). Despite being a member of the Jewish faith, Matthew was despised amongst the devout Jews as they believed he had betrayed his own people through working for the Romans. This made his decision to follow Jesus much easier. Matthew became one of Jesus’ Twelve apostles and was sent to preach his word. ‘As a disciple and an Apostle he thenceforth followed Christ, accompanying Him up to the time of His Passion’ . Following the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension, the apostles, including Matthew, ‘withdrew to an upper room’, (Acts 1:10-14) and preached the gospel to the Jews of Jerusalem proclaiming that Jesus was in fact the Messiah. His gospel has been interpreted as ‘reflecting the struggles and conflicts between the evangelist's community and the other Jews, particularly with its sharp criticism of the scribes and Pharisees’ .
As a result of the ‘cast of thought and the forms of expression employed by the writer’ , it is clear that the main message of Matthews’s gospel is aimed at the Jewish Christians located in the Roman Empire. The main aim of Matthew’s preaching’s was to prove to the Jewish Christians that Jesus had fulfilled the ancient prophecies laid out in the Old Testament and to show that ‘Jesus is he "of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write’” ( John 1:45).This was an attempt to try and encourage the Jews to convert, like Matthew had. The Gospels of the New Testament have played a hugely significant role in emphasizing the Christian impedance from Judaism.
As a Jew himself, Matthew was very wary of Jewish laws, traditions, and customs.
He expressed these concerns through ‘frequent citations of Jewish scripture, the evocation of Jesus as the new Moses along with other events from Jewish history, and the concern to present Jesus as fulfilling, not destroying, the Law’ . He expresses his desire ‘of an assembly or church in which both Jew and Gentile would flourish together’ , providing they were willing to accept that Jesus was the Messiah. A key factor to consider here is the fact that this gospel originated from within a distinctive Christian communities. This is important because the communities would have been made up of several different religions, including a significant Jewish population. It could be argued that Christianity grew out of these Jewish communities, with a different identity. Therefore the relationship between the two, will always have been intensified to try and separate them, which could lead to uncertainty regarding their
nature.
Matthews Gospel is open to great interpretation. Despite suggestions that his gospel was catered for the Jewish Christian community, there is plenty of evidence which degrades and denunciates the Jews. Following the clear rejection of Christ as the son of God, Matthew’s works contained several negative connotations of Jews. The New Testament symbolises a clear division between Jews and Christians, and the hastiness of Christians to emphasize this independence brought about glimpses of anti-Jewish feeling.
The extract states that when posed with the question of whether Pontius Pilate should release the ‘notorious prisoner, called Barabbas’ (Matt 27:16) or Jesus Christ, the self-proclaimed Son of God, the predominantly Jewish crowd unanimously asked ‘for Barabbas and destroy Jesus’ (Matt 27:20).
This reading brought with it several anti-Jewish connotations such as Christ killers. Matthew reported that the crowd shouted ‘his blood be on us and our children’ (Matt 27:26). This suggests that in Matthews’s eyes, the entire Jewish race can be held accountable for the execution of the messiah. The language used by Matthew displays a clear hostility to Judaism. This extract further pushed the apostle’s case of preaching the pure word of Jesus throughout the Roman Empire. This extract is hugely significant as it is often considered the root justification for anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic polemic amongst Christians. It is used as a means of defining itself against
Judaism.
Therefore, despite claims that salvation is ‘first to the Jew, then the Gentile’ (Matt 15:27), it is generally agreed that the negative portrayals of Judaism completely outweigh the positive statements made in Matthew’s gospel. This is the exact opposite of Paul’s letters in Romans. In addition to the original extract, later on in Matthew 27, he explains that when Jesus was taken to be crucified, the soldiers and Jews were mocking him and even explains that ‘they spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again’. (Matt 27:30). It was statements such as these which have been at the forefront of the blame for supposedly fuelling anti-Judaism within Christian nations throughout history. ‘An increasing number of Christian scholars and clergy have concluded that the root of anti-Semitism in the Christian world community is ultimately found within the New Testament’ . This is hugely significant because it enables us to understand why the welfare of the church has taken precedents over the welfare of the Jewish race. For example, somewhat shockingly, ‘the number of Jewish people who have been adversely affected in the name of Jesus throughout the history of Christianity significantly exceeds the six million who were massacred by the Nazis’ .