What message did Jesus want to tell?

Answer 1

We know that Matthew used the Gospel According to Mark as his primary source for information about the life of Jesus, because whenever Matthew agrees with Mark, the text is virtually identical in Greek - something that could not have happened if he was relying on oral traditions, or even Aramaic sources. He used another source for sayings that he attributed to Jesus, a sayings document we call the Q document. And whereas Mark's Gospel, in the oldest form known to us, contained nothing of the appearances of the risen Jesus, Matthew's Gospel has an account of Jesus appearing to the women and then to the disciples in Galilee. It also contains a version of the story of the birth of Jesus, and his genealogy back through Joseph and King David. Matthew's Gospel, more so than any other gospel, refers to the Old Testament for apparent proof of the role and divinity of Jesus.

So, Matthew introduced a miraculous birth, but also descent through Joseph from David, proof that he rose from the dead, and many more wise sayings and miracles. It may be that Matthew was responding to pagan or Jewish criticism that Mark had not proven that Jesus was really the Messiah nor that Jesus was more than a wandering preacher. Matthew was telling us that proof of Jesus' divinity could be found in the Old Testament; that his birth was divinely ordained and that the risen Jesus had been seen by his disciples.

Answer 2

More than any other gospel, Matthew's Gospel seeks to portray Jesus as having been prophesied or anticipated in the Old Testament. He may have been trying to answer criticism that Jesus was merely a wandering preacher, but more likely was attempting to prove that Christianity really was the inheritor of the Jewish legacy. This Gospel was written only ten to twenty years after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, a desperate time when many Jews might have wondered what their future would be. If the Jewish War and the destruction of the Temple could be seen as presaging the end of Judaism, then Matthew might have declared that the future of the Jews was to be Christians.

Answer 3

Neil Godfrey suggests that Mark's Jesus was an impersonal theological construct, with a reasonable case to be made for the first gospel being written as a parable - implying that its characters and narrative are entitled to a presumption of being fictional and metaphorical only. When Mark introduced John the Baptist, he painted a vivid picture by describing his clothes and diet, but he introduced Jesus without any interest in his appearance. Mark described Jesus as having extraordinary powers and had God call him his Son, but does not appear to have believed Jesus to be God, for example: 6:5: And he (Jesus) could there do no mighty work; 10:18 Why call me good. There is none good but God.

It seems likely that the author of the Gospel of Mark knew Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians and the Epistle to the Romans, but Paul does not seem to have known of Jesus as a human who had lived on earth in the recent past. Mark may have been trying to convey that Paul's spiritual Jesus was an actual person who really had lived and been crucified in Palestine.

AnswerMark's Gospel is unique and is not a biography of Jesus like Matthew and Luke. Instead, Mark is a record of Jesus' actions and achievments. It presents Jesus as a Savior-King, who conquers demons, disease, and death.

Generally speaking, Mark presents the miracle-working Jesus, not the teaching Jesus.

Answer 4

A:To learn what the Gospel of Matthew tells us, it is best to begin by establishing what it does not tell us. Like all the New Testament gospels, it was written anonymously and only attributed by the early Church Fathers to the disciple Matthew later in the second century. New Testament scholars say that the gospel could not have been written by an eyewitness to the events portrayed, so we can be sure that the Gospel was not written by Matthew or any of the other disciples. Thus, it does not tell us the personal experiences of the disciple Matthew.

Matthew is one of the synoptic gospels, which means that if a copy written in the original Greek language is laid beside the Gospels of Mark and Luke and read synoptically ('with the same eye'), it can quickly be established that large parts of Matthew and Luke were copied from Mark. Further analysis shows that Matthew and Luke must have shared a second common source of sayings material not found in Mark. This second source is now known as the hypothetical 'Q' document, which has been reconstructed by scholars from Matthew and Luke, as no copy of the original document still exists. This now tells us that whenever Matthew agrees with Markor 'Q', the author was relying on a source he believed probably to be correct. As a first estimate, this could be historical material about Jesus.

On the other hand, material unique to Matthew could be in doubt, unless we can establish another, reliable source from which the author copied this material. After all, his reliance on Mark and Q means that the author had no first-hand or even close knowledge about the life and mission of Jesus. For example, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the world's Anglicans, has described the story of the three wise men as nothing but a "legend" and says there is little evidence that they existed. Others go further and say that the entire nativity story in Matthew is a myth, and that the genealogy is unlikely to be historical. The famous reference, in Matthew 1:23, to Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy that Jesus would be born of a virgin is a literary invention.

Matthew's Gospel tells us that its author saw a need to improve on Mark's Gospel, since that is exactly what he set out to do. It was important to show that Christianity had deep roots in Judaism and was not a new religion, so he added many more references to the Hebrew scriptures. He also believed that Christians needed to know more about Jesus, including his birth and childhood, adding the account of Jesus' virgin birth in Bethlehem, the visit of the magi and the flight to Egypt. At that time, Mark's Gospel still ended at verse 16:8, with the young man telling the women that Jesus had risen and the fled in terror, telling no one, which meant that no one could be really sure that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead. Matthew's author knew that evidence of the resurrection was needed, so he wrote about Jesus meeting the disciples in a mountain in Galilee, where he instructed them to begin to travel around the world, spreading his gospel.

Answer 5

Christ's message was the same in all the gospels - repent and turn to God.

Jesus said ........... "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Matthew 15:24. Much of Jesus' teaching was about the nation of Israel and their turning away from God.

However Israel rejected Jesus as Messiah and Jesus was crucified, making away for all people to come to God

Answer 6

Matthew presented Jesus as the Son of God 23 times. He also presented Jesus as an authoritative teacher.

Answer 7

His core message was the coming Kingdom of God - God's government on the New Earth.