As we established in Part 1, Mark's gospel was far from being an eyewitness account of remembered history. It was in fact, a fictional drama set in a pseudo-historical landscape, by a Greek author who had probably never set foot in the region. Now that we have that brief refresher, let's move on to Matthew - the second canonical gospel to have been written - and see if he holds up as an eyewitness of Jesus.
Matthew's Mighty Makeover
1. What was Matthew's Source?
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| A graphical representation of the relationship between the synoptic gospels. Note: While the percentages differ slightly between this graph and the cited article, the differences are trivial. |
The first question we should ask, right off the bat is "where did Matthew get his information?" After all, being an eyewitness kind of necessitates that you saw the events yourself, and you're not just plagiarizing someone else's work. Unfortunately, Matthew is going to fail this test right out of the gate. If you compare the text of Matthew to that of Mark, you will find that 97% of Mark’s Gospel is duplicated in Matthew, whereas less than 60% of Matthew is duplicated in Mark. (To put it another way, Matthew contains virtually every single story present in Mark; however, Matthew also contains a plethora of additional stories that are not present in Mark.) So right out of the gate, things are looking pretty bleak for Matthew.
However, it might be claimed that the similarity of these gospels does not prove that Matthew was a plagiarist. It could possibly be that there was an actual Jesus figure who inspired Mark to write his play, and also inspired Matthew to write his independent, historically reliable, eye-witness account.
While I will admit that this is hypothetically possible, it is a very naïve and biblically illiterate position to take. To demonstrate this, let's consider a couple of passages.
“But when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be” (let the reader understand), “then those in Judea must flee to the mountains." ~ Mark 13:14Now let's look at Matthew's version of the same passage:
“So when you see the abomination of desolation—spoken about by Daniel the prophet—standing in the holy place” (let the reader understand), “then those in Judea must flee to the mountains." ~ Matthew 24:15-16If you read the full chapters for both of these verses, these verses come in the middle of one of the rare instances where Jesus actually has a monologue instead of simply giving a pre-packed parable. Bearing that in mind, look at those passages closely. In both cases the authors interrupt Jesus' monologue in the middle of the exact same sentence to implore the reader to "understand" using the exact same words. While some translations try to frame the parenthetical information as a part of Jesus' monologue, both authors address this interruption to "the reader" and not "the listener". This indicates that this was not a part of a historical speech that both authors dutifully recorded independently of each other, but was inserted by both authors as a note to their readers.
We can find similar instances of this parenthetical plaigarism in Mark 15:10/Matthew 27:18, Mark 15:22/Matthew 27:33, and Mark 2:10-11/Matthew 9:6, among other passages. In fact, both Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46, both opt to list Jesus' last words in his native tongue, before translating them into Greek, and use the exact same words to do so. Considering all of these verses in which the authors state the exact same thing in the exact same way, I hope I don't have to go into further detail as to why the claim that Mark and Matthew wrote their gospels independently of one another, is incredibly naïve and ultimately false. The simple fact is that Matthew routinely copied from Mark's earlier drama, often using the exact same wording.
2. What's the Motive?
This leaves us with one remaining question: Why? If Mark already existed, and Matthew was just a plagiarist, when why did Matthew even bother?
The short answer is that Matthew wasn't just a plagiarist; Matthew took Mark's Jesus (who we established in Part 1 as being a man with very limited access to divine power, very much in keeping with the various "sons" of the Greek gods) and upgraded him to a demigod who could actually be worshipped, and who could intercede for you in the afterlife. Matthew also put substantial effort in making Jesus' every move be a fulfillment of Jewish Prophecy. In so doing, he was taking Mark's play, and attempting to historicize it in an effort to create a new religion based to some extent on Jewish folklore. In explaining these goals, I will begin with Matthew's fixation with prophecy, and work my way back to his upgrade of the Jesus character.
It is worth noting that in the Gospel of Mark, only two prophesies are said to be fulfilled one is supposedly a prophecy of John the Baptist's ministry, and the other is supposedly a prophecy that the religious leaders of the day would only pay lip-service to Yhwh. Conspicuously absent is any prophecy with regards to Jesus himself (and for that matter, there's no reason to think that Mark was familiar with any of the Jewish scriptures save for the book of Isaiah). This will not do for Matthew! Matthew's Jesus needs to have been prophesied extensively, which makes the Jews all the more evil for having not recognized him.
To fix this perceived problem, Matthew inserts no fewer than 12 instances in which Jesus explicitly fulfills supposed Jewish prophecy. Of course, these "prophecies" are pretty weak in their own right. The source for Matthew 2:23 is found nowhere in Jewish scripture. Matthew 1:22-23 was supposedly fulfilled long before Jesus came on the scene. Matthew 2:4-6 shows that Matthew knew so little about Jewish scripture that he was able to mistake a person for a town. In Matthew 27:7-10 the author quotes from the wrong book when making his so-called prophecy. In five other cases, even if the verses were prophecies, they are so easy to fake that Jesus' fulfilling them would be no evidence of anything. Of course, the other three supposed prophecies have their problems as well, but I hope that I've made my point. To further bolster the supposed prophecies of Jesus, Matthew also includes numerous other signs that would be easily recognizable to an audience familiar with Jewish folklore. The most obvious example being Herod's murder of newborn boys which, of course, was shamelessly ripped from the Moses story.
Perhaps one of the least noticed (but arguably most important) reasons why Matthew felt the need to rewrite Mark's work was to establish Jesus as being a descendent of King David, who is ordained by Yhwh and who will be (at least metaphorically) taking up David's throne. This is obvious enough in that David is listed by name in Jesus' genealogy, and that magi show up with gifts of gold and expensive perfumes that were - quite literally - fit for a king, but Matthew wanted it to go much deeper than that, so he crafted an entire genealogy for Jesus, focused around lucky numbers.
If you'll notice Matthew organizes his genealogy so that there are fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, and fourteen from the exile to Jesus. This is important because, in Hebrew, letters can also be used to express numbers (similar to the common practice of A=1, B=2, etc. in the English language). In Hebrew, "David" is spelled "DWD" which equates to "4,6,4" which adds up to fourteen. Similarly, in the Bible "seven" is considered the number of "spiritual perfection" it is the number of creation, and in total, "seven" occurs 860 times in the Bible. So having a king (David) who's name adds up to fourteen (seven twice over), and then establishing a messiah who is linked to this king by three sets of fourteen generations each, is Matthew's attempt to prove that Jesus' birth and messiahship was very clearly ordained by Yhwh.
Of course Matthew's poetic genealogy had a couple of problems. The first one is that, in order to get the second set of generations to his magic number of fourteen, Matthew had to omit kings Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah from his list, and claims that Joram was the father of Uzziah, instead of his great great grandfather. Clearly Matthew was more interested in his lucky numbers than in reporting any sort of factual information. Similarly, in the third set of generations there is no list of Davidic kings for Matthew to copy from. The Davidic bloodline was lost in the Babylonian exile, and as such Matthew had to make up the third set of fourteen names. Christians might want to argue that Matthew didn't make them up, but received the names through "divine inspiration". Unfortunately for such Christians, Matthew lost count. If you go through the third set of names, you will notice that the third set contains only thirteen generations, and that there are only 41 generations in total. If a Christian wants to support Matthew's claim that the three sets of fourteen generations proves that it was Yhwh's will, then that Christians must accept that Jesus' son was supposed to be the messiah, and Jesus was correctly put to death for blasphemy for impersonating the messiah.
[As an aside: It's small wonder that many Christians are prone to concocting conspiracy theories by "discovering some hidden meaning" in biblical numbers in some way or another. Apparently the Gospel authors themselves were prone to invoking lucky numbers and creating number-based prophecies.]
3. Creating a Demigod.
For our final section of this post, I think it would be good to go through and note the ways in which Matthew changes the Jesus character.
Let's begin by comparing the story of the demon-possessed man spoken of in Mark 5:1-20 and retold in Matthew 8:28-34. In Mark's version of events Jesus encounters this man, asks the demons' name - to which they respond "Legion" - and casts the demons into a herd of 2,000 pigs who run off of a cliff to their death. The herdsmen and some other people then come out of the city and ask Jesus to leave the region, while the man who Jesus healed begs to come with him. In Matthew's reworking of the story, Jesus encounters two demon-possessed men, doesn't bother asking the demons for their name, but almost immediately casts the demons into a herd of pigs (the size of the herd is not mentioned) who run over a cliff to their death. Now the entire city comes out to beg Jesus to leave the region.
Note the differences in these stories. First of all, Matthew doubles the number of of demon-possessed men (We will shortly see that we should never put it past Matthew to resort to such pathetic exaggeration in his efforts to make his Jesus seem more grand than Mark's Jesus). As Matthew wants his version of Jesus to be omniscient, he omits the part where Jesus has to ask the demons for their name. It is no longer just some of the townspeople who come out to see what's going on. Matthew requires an audience worthy of his upgraded Jesus and so he writes that "all the city came out to meet Jesus". Finally, extraneous details like the number of pigs, or the healed man begging to come with Jesus are omitted, lest they distract from the main point that Jesus is a demigod of unlimited knowledge and power. In removing these extraneous details, Matthew reduces the story from 20 verses and 420 words, down to only 7 verses and 166 words, while simultaneously making the miracle appear more grand. (It will shortly become apparent Matthew's accounts of Jesus' miracles typically excise any details that might make these miracles appear difficult, and thereby allows his Jesus to effortlessly carry out any miracle on a whim.)
Another example of Matthew upgrading Mark's Jesus comes in Matthew 13:53-58, which is a retelling of Mark 6:1-6. In Mark's version of events, when Jesus went to his home town, he "could do no mighty works there... and he marveled because of [the people's] unbelief." Here we are presented with a picture of a Jesus who's divine power is limited by the lack of faith of those around him. Meanwhile in Matthew's reworking of the story Jesus "did not do many mighty works there, because of [the people's] unbelief." Now it is because of the people's lack of faith, that Jesus chose not to work miracles there. By switching "could not" to "did not", Matthew preserves his Jesus' almighty power. Similarly, Matthew cuts out enough extraneous detail to cut the story from 151 words, down to 121 words.
Let's now consider the story of the man with a withered hand, first mentioned in Mark 3:1-6 and retold in Matthew 12:9-14. In Mark's version, Jesus asks a question to which he seems to expect an answer: "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?" However, in Matthew's retelling, Jesus is omniscent and as such, he does not need to ask any questions. Jesus is asked if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath, and Jesus answers this question. Jesus' own questions are purely rhetorical. By cutting out details, Matthew manages to add in an entire teaching about how "it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath" while adding only a single word to the total length of the passage.
Moving on to the story of Jesus healing the blind man in Mark 8:22-26. In this version of events Jesus' power is portrayed as both limited and imperfect as it takes him two attempts to properly heal the blind man. Similarly, Mark displays that Jesus is not omniscient, as he has to ask if the man can see. Clearly this will not do for Matthew's Jesus. In Matthew 9:27-31 it is no longer one blind man, but two (where have we seen that before?), Jesus only needs one miracle to simultaneously heal both of them, and - being omniscient - Jesus no longer needs to ask them if his miracle worked or not. While quadrupling Jesus' divine power (one miracle to heal two people, instead of two miracles to heal one person) Matthew still manages to cut the length of the story from 109 words to only 97.
As a final example let's look at the healing of Peter's mother-in-law in Mark 1:30-31. This passage seems simple enough, Jesus learned that Peter's mother-in-law was ill came to see her, "took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her". Yet even this is too much work for Matthew's Demigod to have to carry out. In Matthew 8:14-15 Jesus needed only to touch her hand and the fever left her. Even in this tiny passage, Matthew cuts the length from 39 words down to 32.
If - for some strange reason - you are still not satisfied then please feel free to compare the rest of these passages at your leisure. Pay attention to the relative length of the passages, and also see if you can spot all of the the ways Matthew uses to exaggerate the miracles of Mark's Jesus (i.e. the number of people healed, the number of witnesses to the miracle, the excised details that make the miracle seem virtually effortless) and exaggerate Jesus' importance (i.e. in Mark 4:36-41 vs. Matthew 8:23-27 do the disciples take Jesus with them onto the boat, or does Jesus lead the disciples onto the boat; in other instances, is Jesus referred to as "Teacher" or is he upgraded to "Lord", "Son of David", etc?)
At every conceivable opportunity Matthew moves to "one-up" Mark, and to establish that his Jesus is no mere mortal like Hercules, Achilles, or other sons of gods, but is an all-powerful demigod nearly on par with Yhwh himself. Nearly all of Matthew 5-7 is then spent explaining what this new demigod and his divine father want from us and what their new moral codes are.
All but one of 18 miracles reappear in Matthew. For Jesus' first miracle in Mark 1:23-26 Jesus heals a demon-possessed man in the synagogue. Presumably, the idea of a demon-possessed man who is still attending synagogue was a bit blasphemous for Matthew, who replaced the story with the story of a Roman centurion with a paralyzed servant with Matthew 8:5-13. In this story a Roman Centurion declares that he is unworthy to have Jesus come under his roof and begs Jesus to heal his servant from afar instead. The whole story is a bit melodramatic for remembered history, but for establishing Jesus as a powerful demigod, one can hardly imagine a better story than one in which a commander of Roman armed forces humbles himself before the main protagonist, who is of no temporal importance.
4. In Closing
To sum up, Matthew is very clearly not writing an eye-witness account of Jesus. He simply took Mark's play, plagiarized it, and improved old miracles and inserted new ones to his liking. He did this to create a new religion by attempting to historicize Mark's play, and to elevate Jesus to demigod status. To any who doubt that people could so easily be fooled, I must ask you: How many people now believe (or at least entertain the notion) that Jesus was married and/or had children, simply because Dan Brown published "The DaVinci Code"? I would say the number is ridiculously high both in Christian and non-Christian circles. Now, imagine a similar thing occurring in a time where even the earliest priming press is more than 900 years away. There is virtually no ready access to information. If someone writes a book, there is no fact-checking. The author's words are more or less taken as truth because they're at least educated enough to be able to read and write.
That said, now there is no such excuse. Basic literary analysis is now easily within the grasp of virtually everyone in the first world. There is no longer any excuse for those who wish to pretend that Matthew was an eye-witness to the life of Jesus, and who wish to deny that Matthew is nothing more than a second-rate plagiarist.
Well, that ought to do it for Matthew, come back next week when we'll see if Luke can live up to the challenge of being an eye witness.
[End Note: While much of this post is my own research, I borrowed heavily enough from Ken Humphrey's youtube channel that I feel that I should provide links to his videos that I used (and fact-checked) in writing this.
Matthew's Mighty Makeover
Bloodline -- or Baloney?]
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