Extract Bart provided from his NT Textbook.
The Gospel of Matthew – AT A GLANCE
- Matthew’s Gospel was written in Greek, around 80–85 c.e.
- Its author, later thought to be the tax collector mentioned in Matthew 9:9, in fact left his identity anonymous; he must have been a Greek-speaking Christian, probably from outside Palestine.
- Among his sources were Mark, Q, and M.
- By studying his additions, omissions, and alterations of Mark (i.e., by doing redaction criticism), we can get a sense of some of his major emphases.
- In the genealogy and birth stories (not found in Mark), he stresses Jesus’ Jewishness, as the Jewish messiah sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish Law.
- In other passages, such as the Sermon on the Mount (also not found in Mark), Matthew’s Jesus stresses that his followers must also adhere to the Jewish Law.
- Matthew, in fact, portrays Jesus as the new Moses, who provides the correct interpretation of the Mosaic Law and expects his followers to keep it.
- Jesus, however, is rejected by the Jewish leaders, who are lambasted severely for their failure to keep the Law in the way God desires.
Bart Ehrman’s Series
- Is Matthew Duplicitous in His Reading of Scripture?
- What Does It Actually Mean to “Fulfill” Scripture? Bart Ehrman
Does Matthew Gild the Lily? by Chris Massey – Most readers will already be aware of the two quite different versions of the story found in Acts and Matthew. In Acts 1:18-19, Judas takes the money he receives for betraying Jesus (no amount is ever specified; see Luke 22:3-6) and buys some land. While on his newly-acquired property, Judas falls, spills his guts (literally), and folks take to calling the place “Field of Blood” as a result.
From the slides in Bart’s Course The Genius of the Gospel of Matthew™
| Jesus in Matthew | Moses in Scripture |
| A Jewish boy is miraculously born The king tries to kill him A miraculous escape To Egypt Leaves Egypt for Israel Baptized in the water 40 Days in the Wilderness being tempted The Sermon on the Mount The five discourses of Jesus | An Israelite boy is miraculously born The Pharaoh tries to kill him A miraculous escape In Egypt Leaves Egypt for the Promised Land Goes through the Red Sea 40 Years in the wilderness being tempted The Law on Mount Sinai The five books of Moses |
Was the Writer of Matthew Jewish? By Ehrman here.
The prophecy near the end of Matthew that gets fulfilled in a rather strange way is when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey at the Triumphal Entry in 21:1-10. Or does he ride on a colt? He does in the other Gospels, but in Matthew we are given a fulfillment citation “This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,
Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble and mounted on a donkey
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Anyone familiar with how Hebrew poetry works would understand this passage from Isaiah 62:11 and Zechariah 9:9 (the OT prophets usually wrote in poetic verse). In Hebrew poetry, two lines are given in relation to one another. They rhyme not in sound but in sense. The second line can contrast with the first line; or it can fill out what is found in the first line; or it can repeat the sense of the first line in different words. This final kind of “parallelism,” between the lines – called “synonymous parallelism” – is what is found in the Zechariah passage, so that the one coming is mounted on a donkey, that is, a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Matthew, for some very odd reason, did not see that this was a synonymous parallelism, and took Zechariah literally, thinking that the prophecy must refer to two animals: a donkey and a colt. And so in order that Jesus might literally fulfill what the prophet predicted, the disciples of Jesus acquire *two* animals, a donkey and a colt. They spread their cloaks on them, and Jesus rides into Jerusalem straddling the two. It’s a rather humorous sight.
Some scholars have argued that Matthew’s failure to understand how the Hebrew poetry worked shows that he could not have been Jewish. Any Jew would understand synonymous parallelism in poetic texts! [Bart says] But that’s probably taking the matter too far.
Jesus the Prophetized Moses – See Ehrman’s very good article here.
Matthew has shaped these opening stories of Jesus in order to show that Jesus’ life is a fulfillment of the stories of Moses (read Exodus 1-20). The parallels are too obvious to ignore: [bullet formatting is mine]
- Herod is like the Egyptian Pharaoh,
- Jesus’ baptism is like the crossing of the Red Sea,
- the forty days of testing are like the forty years the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness,
- the Sermon on the Mount is like the Law of Moses delivered on Mount Sinai.
These parallels tell us something significant about Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus. Certainly he agrees with Mark that Jesus is the suffering Son of God, the messiah. But here Jesus is also the new Moses, come to set his people free from their bondage (to sin 1:21), come to give them the new law, his teachings. Ehrman
Here is the handout for Lecture 15 from Mark Goodacre’s course on BSA, Mysteries of the Synoptics. Hilites are mine.
Matthew directs obedience to Moses/Torah itself, not to Pharisaic rulings.
From the transcript (in his directory in Dropbox) of Dr. James Tabor’s lecture 8 from his course titled Christianity Before Paul: Rediscovering the Jewish Movement of Jesus on MVP in his series in January 2026.
NRSVue – Matthew 23:1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’s seat; 3 therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it, but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.
This is the passage that creates the tension Tabor highlighted in Lecture 8, On its face, Greek Matthew appears to affirm Pharisaic interpretive authority over Torah (“do whatever they teach you”), while simultaneously condemning their hypocrisy. Tabor contrasts this with the Shem Tov Hebrew Matthew, where obedience is redirected to Moses/Torah itself, not to Pharisaic rulings, which removes the implication that Jesus endorses Pharisaic halakhic authority.
For more, see https://theway.davisinterests.com/wp/the-bible/new-testament/matthew/hebrew-matthew/
