#40daybible Day 21 (Matthew 1:1-7:29)

So we begin the second half of this 40 day journey with the Gospel of Matthew. For today's reading, which goes through the Sermon on the Mount, click here.

Reading notes:

• I thought the intro to Matthew here was bold (for the NIV especially) to suggest that the author probably wasn't Matthew but rather someone with extensive training in the Law. Of course the Gospel is anonymous technically. But right or wrong in this case, submission to the Truth requires openness to modifying our traditions, including traditions about the Bible.
• The genealogy of Matthew 1 is intriguing both in its division into 14s (the number of King David's name) and its mention of key women throughout. Each of these women is a testament to how God can use women considered questionable by others.
• Perhaps these women implicitly prepare us for the story of the virgin birth (or more accurately, virgin conception), since Mary would have been looked at with suspicion. 
• The importance of the virgin birth for Christian faith highlights the importance of the church after the New Testament, since the virgin birth receives almost no attention whatsoever in the Bible alone. 
• The most important part of today's reading is the Sermon on the Mount. In my opinion, the key verses of the Sermon on the Mount are 5:17-20. The entire sermon maps out how Jesus' teaching gives the full meaning of the Law, as well as what kind of righteousness God is looking for in relation to the kingdom of God.
• Matthew 5:21-48 gives a number of examples of this full meaning to the Law. It is not merely extending. Jesus gets to the heart of each matter in the light of the law of love. It's not enough not to murder outwardly. The person who fulfills the law of love does not murder inwardly either.
• Similarly, it's not enough not to commit adultery outwardly or illegally. The person who fulfills the law of love does not commit adultery inwardly or legally by getting a divorce.
• However, the last examples in Matthew 5 show that the law of love does not merely extend the OT law. At points it modifies or even reverses it. Jesus models for us that OT commands have to be filtered carefully through the law of love.
• Matthew 5:43-48 pretty much sums up the chapter.
• Matthew 6 shows what it means for your righteousness to surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees.
• Matthew 7 gives the bottom line after hearing the sermon. If you're a wise person, you'll build your house on Jesus' teaching.
• The NIV introduction is probably right that "Matthew" wanted his audience to think of Moses as they read. Jesus has more authority than Moses, and gives the fulfilled meaning of the Law from a new mountain.

Personal take-away:

• Again, Matthew 5:43-48 pretty sums up all of Christian ethics. Love everyone, including your enemies, or to put it another way, "Do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 7:12). You can't trump these verses with other verses. 

Luke's Birth Story

We've seen that Matthew's birth story focuses on Jesus as the promised king.  It leads in Matthew 1 with Jesus' royal lineage and then shares the story of the wise men, where even Herod the Great recognizes that Jesus is king.  Luke, who may have known of Matthew's gospel, decided to highlight a different aspect of Jesus' birth. [1]

If Matthew emphasizes Jesus as king, Luke highlights the humility of Jesus' birth. Rather than being welcomed by kings, Jesus is greeted by shepherds, some of the lowest in society.  Luke focuses on the role of women in the story, individuals with low status in that world.  One of these is the prophetess Anna, who had been a widow perhaps for as much as sixty years--again, individuals usually overlooked and disempowered in that world.

We are so used to splicing together these "Christmas stories" that we often miss that each of the gospels has something unique to contribute to our understanding of Jesus.  It's interesting to wonder how our Christmas plays would be different if we only had Matthew or only had Luke. For example, if we only had Matthew, we would think Jesus was originally from Bethlehem and only later moved to Nazareth in the north to escape persecution (Matt. 2:1, 22-23).

Luke begins with the birth of John the Baptist. We would not know from Matthew, Mark, or John that Jesus and John the Baptist had any family connection. From Luke we also learn that John the Baptist is of priestly lineage, something we are not told in any other gospel. It is intriguing to speculate if John was an Essene or if some early believers had been Essenes. John baptized not far from the most famous Essene location on the northwest side of the Dead Sea.

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The Essenes were the third of the three best known religious groups among the Jews of Israel, the others being the Pharisees and the Sadducees. [2] Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we knew of them primarily from some scattered comments in ancient writings like those of the Jewish historian Josephus and the Jewish thinker Philo. Since the Dead Sea Scrolls were probably the library of an Essene community, we have since been able to form a more extensive sense of who they were.

There seem to have been different groups of Essenes, some of whom were stricter than others (just as the Pharisees had different schools as well). Some married and lived in cities. Others separated themselves from society and were celibate. At least some of them were much stricter than your average Pharisee. For example, the community at Qumran by the Dead Sea viewed itself as a substitute for the temple while the temple was impure and they lived by the purity standard of priests.

Their sense of purity seems to be closer to the Sadducees than to the Pharisees, which makes sense if they had a significant priestly background at some point of their history. They seemed to have shared their possessions in common.  They probably had a more "apocalyptic" outlook on soon coming events in which God would judge the world and those in the true assembly or church would be saved. They perhaps had a stronger sense of eternal punishment and hell than other Jewish groups. They have also provided us with some of the clearest examples of the expectation that a Messiah was coming to restore and purify Israel.
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Another feature of Luke's birth story are the number of songs in them...

[1] The majority position of experts is that Matthew and Luke are independent of each other but used common sources like Mark and another collection of Jesus' sayings.  However, it would explain a few other similarities if, in addition to these sources, Luke also knew about Matthew's gospel. See Mark Goodacre, Questioning Q, ***. The real answer to how it happened may be more complicated than any of us would imagine.

[2] One of the best overviews of Judaism in the lead up to Jesus is James VanderKam's An Introduction to Early Judaism ***.

Christmas Reflections

I was listening to a very old Christmas CD the other day and it had "Go Tell It on the Mountain" on it.  One line in the recording explicitly mentioned Jesus being born on December 25.  I suspect most people who would read this know that is not the real date, just the date we celebrate.

This piece in BAR is very interesting (I think I got the link from Allan Bevere).  It suggests that some early Christians before Augustine  started using the dates January 6 and December 25 because they were nine months after suggested dates for Jesus' crucifixion, the assumption being that Jesus was conceived and died on the same date.  It argues that some Christians were already celebrating Christ's birth on Dec. 25 prior to Constantine.

The birth narratives in Matthew and Luke are quite different.  They do have a common core.  They both agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and ended up in Nazareth as a child.  They both agree that Mary was a virgin when the Holy Spirit brought about her conception.  That's about it.

Each gospel emphasizes in its presentation the kinds of things we would expect them to, given their emphases elsewhere.  Matthew has overtones of Moses, which fits since Jesus gives the fulfilled understanding of the Law.  As Pharaoh killed Israelite babies, Herod kills the boys of Bethlehem.  Moses came out of Egypt; Jesus comes out of Egypt.  Matthew connects Jesus' birth to the OT.  The Magi remind us that the gospel is for the Gentiles too and that Jesus would become a king.

Luke gives prominence to women in the story of Jesus' birth, as he does elsewhere. Lowly shepherds come, fitting with Luke's emphasis on the poor and lost sheep. The temple features prominently, as it does elsewhere in Luke's presentation.

I suppose that different Christians take different things from Christmas.  For me, Christmas is the incarnation.  It is God coming to earth.  It is the beginning of salvation for the whole world.

For me it is also Jesus being born amid scandal, yet another identification of Jesus with the lost sheep of the world.  Was he ridiculed as a child for being born before his parents were married?  Did his younger brother James think himself a little purer than his older brother?

For Matthew, the birth story revealed that Jesus birth was in continuity with who he came to be in life later.  This was the expectation of ancient biography.  So there were signs he was a king from the start.  Did Luke want to balance this out, if Luke knew Matthew?

Interestingly, the New Testament does not make much of the virginal conception. [PS]  Even Matthew and Luke themselves never mention it again and they give no interpretation to its meaning. It does not seem required for Jesus to be divine, since he is not half man and half God but fully human and fully divine.

So what do you celebrate at Christmas?  I celebrate "the beginning of the gospel" (Mark 1:1), even though Mark is referring to Jesus' baptism.

[PS] We informally refer to the virginal conception as the virgin birth.  Catholics do believe Mary miraculously remained a physical virgin even in birth, as well as that Joseph never had sex with her thereafter.  Most Protestants believe Mary went on to have other children--James, Jude, etc...