Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus might be the first one we read in the New Testament, but it was not the first to have been written. Gospel’s opening verses were shaped by earlier references to Jesus’s birth and by the books of the Old Testament.
Anybody wanting to read the earliest account of the Christmas story could be forgiven for thinking that the beginning of the New Testament would be the best place to start. But there is a problem. Matthew’s Gospel is placed at the beginning of the New Testament, not because it was the first of the New Testament’s books to be written, but because it is the gospel in which we find the most elevated portrait of Jesus, the fullest exposition of his teaching and the only references to the Church in all the gospels. Expert opinion informs us that all the gospels date from a time after the major epistles of Paul were composed, and also that Matthew’s was not the first New Testament gospel to take shape. T. Matthew’s ‘Christmas story’ represents a report that dates from the third generation of Christianity – that is, around the mid-eighties of the first century, many years after the events it describes – and was no doubt shaped by earlier texts. So in order to understand what Matthew is trying to tell us in the opening chapters of the New Testament, we would do well to think about the beginning of his gospel in the context of what we read elsewhere in the bible.
Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus might be the first one we read in the New Testament, gospel’s opening verses were shaped by earlier references to Jesus’s birth and by the books of the Old Testament.
Anybody wanting to read the earliest account of the Christmas story that the beginning of the New Testament would be the best place to start. Matthew’s Gospel is placed at the beginning of the New Testament, not because it was the first of the New Testament’s books to be written, but because it is the gospel in which we find the most elevated portrait of Jesus, the fullest exposition of his teaching and the only references to the Church in all the gospels. also that Matthew’s was not the first New Testament gospel to take shape. . Matthew’s ‘Christmas story’ represents a report that dates from the third generation of Christianity – that is, around the mid-eighties of the first century, many years after the events it describes – and was no doubt shaped by earlier texts. So in order to understand what Matthew is trying to tell us in the opening chapters of the New Testament, we would do well to think about the beginning of his gospel in the context of what we read elsewhere in the bible.
The Gospel of Matthew
We can surmise that the gospel attributed to Mark became known and valued in places other than its initial destination, which may have been Rome in the time of the Emperor Nero or Syria in the tense years before the Jewish revolt of AD 70. It reflected the needs and interests of a persecuted community and was less obviously relevant to those for whom Matthew is reckoned to be writing, who may well have been a group of former members of a synagogue in the cosmopolitan city of Antioch, a group struggling to establish its identity as God’s special people after expulsion from their community. So, the person whom we know as Matthew rewrote Mark’s Gospel in ways more appropriate for that community’s need – in worship, the instruction of their converts and defence against their critics. He does this as a ‘scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven . . . who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old’ (Matthew 13:52).
In this new gospel account, the main points of Mark’s beginning are not only kept but expanded. Matthew tells us more about John the Baptist, and about the baptism of Jesus and his testing by Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 3:1-4:12). But before this, Matthew inserts four sections about the origin and background of Jesus. We learn about Jesus’s ancestry (1:1-17). We learn about his birth and how he came to be born (1:18-25). We learn about his reception by foreigners and his rejection by the leaders of his own people (2:1-12). We learn about the drama of his early years, how he escaped death, went into exile in Egypt and how finally he came to be in Nazareth (2:13-23).
The Generations (Matthew 1:1-17)
The first section is a genealogical table. It is introduced by an announcement that Jesus is Son of David and Son of Abraham. There may well be two Old Testament passages implied by these two titles. The first is God’s promise to King David through the prophet Nathan that God ‘would establish the throne of his kingdom for ever’ (2 Samuel 7:13). The second is the promise that God makes to Abraham that, ‘in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed’ (Genesis 12:3). This beginning suggests that the community of Matthew was a mixed one of Jew and Gentile – Jesus belonged to both.
There follows a list of the ancestors of Jesus. At first sight, this is the sort of list that we find in various places in the Old Testament. We read about the ancestors of Abraham in Genesis (11:10-32) and of David in the book of Ruth (4:18-22). We might think that such a list has little to tell us, but it repays careful reading. It gives us an insight into how God works in unexpected and surprising ways. Among the royal ancestors of Jesus are bad kings as well as good kings. Some are known to us from the Old Testament, others are quite unknown. Some are first-born in the family but others are junior siblings. Somehow God overcomes many obstacles to bring about the birth of Jesus. This is surely a God of mystery. It is this God who speaks from heaven and proclaims Jesus as his beloved Son (Matthew 3:17). He is the God whom Jesus will later acknowledge as his Father, ‘Lord of heaven and earth’ (11:25).