Who did Matthew write his gospel?

Answer 1

Biblical scholars believe Matthew wrote his version of the Gospel sometime between 85 and 105 AD. Matthew's gospel is placed at the start of the New Testament not because it was first, (some of Paul's letters were written before this) but because it serves as a good bridge between the Old Testament and the New.

Answer 2

Matthew wrote his gospel primarily for a Jewish audience to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and the promised Jewish Messiah. He sought to establish Jesus' authority and link his teachings to Jewish scripture.

Answer 3

All writings had an immediate audience and a future one. This is no less true of the Scripture. Matthew appears to have multiple purposes with an emphasis on Jewish law and how Christ is the fulfillment of the promise to Moses, the Messiah and King. It is Christ who inherited the promises to David of an eternal dynasty where Matthew emphasizes the Jewish royal title, 'Son of David' nine times in his Gospel. These same 1st century Jews put an emphasis on 'righteousness' and Matthew uses the terms righteous and righteousness more than any other Gospel writers - combined.

Matthew also directly addresses the Church of God and the new Gentile composition therein. He expresses several stories of Gentile faith. He records Jesus' prediction that this gospel will be preached to all nations and speaks of the commission of disciples to 'make disciples of all the nations.' Finally but not conclusively, Matthew teaches the Kingdom of Heaven 33 times and the Kingdom of God 4 times. No other Gospel stresses this as much. The restoration of the Kingdom of David as Jeremiah's mission was to pull down and plant again (Jeremiah 1:10).

Answer 4

Another answer from our community:

Matthew wrote his Gospel in order that all men would hear the Gospel message of salvation that Jesus had brought to the world. It also served to present the extraordinary life and resurrection of Jesus, something that had not happened before to any man.

Matthew's chief purpose was to show other Jews that Christ is the Messiah and the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. It stresses the kingship of Christ.

Answer 5

Although scholars are not really certain who wrote Mark's Gospel, as it was originally anonymous and only attributed to John Mark later in the second century, they are confident that it was written approximately 70 CE, and probably just after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.

A war had been raging between Rome and the Palestinian Jews since 66 CE. Unbelievably, a bloody civil war was taking place within Jerusalem, even while it was under seige by the Romans. This is evidenced in Mark, where the author refers to the great buildings that would fall down (13:2). Of course verse 13:12 ("Now the brother shall betray brother to death, and the father the son, and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death") is a reference to that bloody civil war.

Josephus had been captured by the Romans in Galilee and, probably in order to save his life, told Vespasian that a star which had appeared overhead meant that he was the hoped-for Jewish Messiah, and that he would become emperor of Rome (which prophecy actually came true).

Answer 6

The earliest gospel, which was attributed by the second-century Church Fathers to Mark, is traditionally thought likely to have been written in Rome. This is firstly because Mark was thought to be the son of Peter and that Peter went to Rome, where he was executed, and secondly because the book contains some words that suggest a familiarity with Latin.

However there is no good reason to believe that Mark's Gospel was really written in Rome. The gospel was originally anonymous and although it was later attributed to Mark, there is no apparent justification for this attribution. Moreover the link between Mark and Peter is disputable, and Peter does not seem likely to have actually gone to Rome at all. If the gospel was written in Rome, by someone familiar with the Latin language and for Latin speakers, it can be expected to have been written in Latin, yet it was written in Greek Koine.

Greek Koine was a dialect used throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. It is here that the first gospel is likely to have been written.

Answer 7

The author of Matthew's Gospel left us no explanation as to why the Gospel was written, but we can arrive at some conclusions by understanding the context of Matthew's Gospel. The four New Testament gospels were all written anonymously and only in the second century were they attributed to the apostles whose names they now bear. Modern New Testament scholars say that none of the gospels was written by an eyewitness to the events portrayed. Since the author was not really the apostle Matthew, we can leave out any reasons based on recording what Matthew himself had experienced.

A parallel reading of the synoptic gospels in the Greek language shows that much of Matthew (and Luke) was copied from Mark's Gospel, often using exactly the same words in the Greek language. Mark was written approximately 70 CE, and the consensus of scholars is that Matthew was written in the 80s ofd the first century, a little more than ten years after the end of the First Roman-Jewish War, the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the traumatic events that followed. It is very possible that, although written in Greek and outside the Jewish homeland, Matthew was written to demonstrate that Christianity was the natural successor to Second-Temple Judaism. John Dominic Crossan (The Birth of Christianity) says that Christianity and rabbinic Judaism both claimed exclusive continuity with the past, but each was as great a leap and as valid a development from that common ancestry as was the other.

Matthew's contribution was to demonstrate that the life of Jesus should be seen as a fulfilment of the Old Testament. The infancy narrative portrayed parallels between Moses and Jesus, and even the genealogy of this Gospel demonstrates that Jesus was descended from David, through the line of kings of Judah, so that Jesus could claim to be the rightful king of the Jews. In the event, the Jews largely rejected Christianity in favour of rabbinic Judaism, but Matthew's story impressed those Gentiles sympathetic to Judaism and possibly some Greek-speaking Jews of the diaspora.

Answer 8

Matthew wrote a Gospel to the Jews showing how Jesus was the promised Messiah and King, fulfilling God's promises to the Jews and extending God's salvation to the nations.

Answer 9

cause he needes a poo