Why would Matthew want to compare Jesus and Moses?

Answer 1

well first of all jesus is gods son and his only. moses went into the mountain to get the stone of the ten commandments . jesus is preaching and he says why do you follow moses but when your god is here you go with a prophet? well he says something like that. not exact words.

Answer 2

Dale Allison (The New Moses: A Matthean Typology) points out that many important figures of Judaism and early Christianity were portrayed as being like Moses. Allison says that Matthew makes Jesus a type of Moses in several key places: the birth and infancy narrative, the temptation, the Sermon on the Mount, the transfiguration and the appointment of a successor. Even when the Moses connection comes from Mark or Q, Allison tries to show how Matthew altered the tradition to more fully stress the connection with Moses. Matthew was simply more thorough in making the connection clear, than were other biblical biographers. Some undisputed Matthean parallels with Moses include:

• Matthew 1:16 says the Jesus' father, Joseph, was the son of Jacob (cf Luke: Heli), just as in the Old Testament, Moses was the descendant of Jacob, who was the son of Jacob.
• Matthew 2:14 has Joseph go with Jesus to Egypt and Jesus saved his people, just as in the Old Testament Joseph went to Egypt and Moses saved his people.
• Matthew 2:16 has Herod slaughter the innocent infants of Bethlehem because he feared Jesus, but only Jesus survived just as the Old Testament says that the pharaoh slaughered the Israelite infants because he feared Moses, but Moses survived.
• Matthew 4:2 has fast for forty days and forty nights in the desert, being tempted by Satan, just as Moses did not eat or drink for forty days and forty nights while on the mountain.
• Matthew 5:1 has Jesus go up a mountain to give a new Law, including the nine Beatitudes) to the people, just as Moses went up a mountain to receive the Law, including the Ten Commandments, which he gave to the people.

Answer 3

A:There are several passages in Matthew's Gospel, where there are subtle comparisons between Jesus and Moses, but the best known and most important is Matthew's nativity account. First of all, looking at the genealogy, we see that Joseph's father is Jacob, just as in the Old Testament, Joseph's father is Jacob. For comparison, Luke says that Joseph's father is called Heli. Matthew says that when Jesus was born, King Herod sought to slaughter all the boys under two years old, just as the pharaoh had sought to slaughter all the boys under two years old when Moses was born. The baby Jesus was saved from this slaughter, just as Moses was saved. Joseph took Jesus to Egypt to mirror the Israelite Joseph's journey to Egypt, and just as Moses travelled back to the Promised Land to save his people, Jesus travelled back from Egypt to save his people. If these narratives were historically true then Matthew's author was not comparing Jesus and Moses but reporting the facts he knew. However, the author of Luke knew nothing of these things and gives us an entirely different nativity story.

Moses is traditionally thought to have been the founder of Judaism, a role that the author of Matthew wanted to emphasise as parallelled by Jesus in founding Christianity. In the Old Testament, Moses brought the Israelites the law and fulfilled the covenant God gave to Abraham. Matthew tells us that Jesus came, not to destroy the law but to fulfil it. If Jesus could be compared to Moses, then he was indeed much more than a wandering preacher.